—Vol. 20, American Jewish Historical Society “Documents regarding the Thanksgiving Proclama¬ tion of Gov. Hoyt, of Pennsylvania (1880)”
Jew Versus Non-Jew in New York Finance rPHE Jewish problem in the United States is essen- tially a city problem. It is characteristic of the Jew to gather in numbers, not where land is open nor where raw materials are found, but where the greatest number of people abide. This is a note¬ worthy fact when considered alongside the Jews'’ claim that the Gentiles have ostracized them; the Jews congregate in their greatest numbers in those places and among those people where they complain they are least wanted. The explanation most frequently given is this: the genius of the Jew is to live off people; not off land, nor off the production of commodities from raw material, but off people. Let other people till the soil; the Jew, if he can, will live off the tiller. Let other people toil at trades and manufacture; the Jew will exploit the fruits of their work. That is his peculiar genius. If this genius be described as parasitic, the term would seem to be justified by a certain fitness.
In no other city of the United States can the Jew¬ ish Problem be studied with greater profit than in the city of New York. There are more Jews in New York than in all Palestine. The communal register of the Jewish Kehillah (or Kahal) of New York sets the population at about 1,527,778. “The next largest Jewish community in the world, that of the city of Warsaw, is estimated to have been between 300,000 and 330,000 Jews, about one-fifth as many as we esti¬ mate for New York.” (Communal Register, 1917- 1918.) “If we accept the estimate of the number of Jews in the world as about 14,000,000, one Jew out of every ten resides in New York.”