This will scarcely be denied, at least by Jews. Some “Gentile fronts” may feel obliged to rush to the defense of the Jews by denying it, but their work is unnecessary. Jews themselves make no bones about it. They did not favor Prohibition, but they did not fear it; they knew that they would be exempt, they knew that it would bring certain illegitimate commercial advantages; they would be winners either way. Jewish luck!
It is not surprising, therefore, that violation and evasion of the Prohibition law has had a deep Jewish complexion from the very beginning. The Dearborn Independent would be glad to be excused from making the raw statement that bootlegging is a 95 per cent controlled Jewish industry in which a certain class of rabbis have been active; we, therefore, avail ourselves of the report of an address of Rabbi Leo M. Franklin, of Detroit, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, as given before that body at Washington in April, 1921, confirming the general fact:
“In making the recommendation I gave you in my message in regard to this matter, and in going to the extreme in suggesting that we appeal to the government to rescind that part of the Prohibition law which gives rabbis permission to issue permits for the purchase and distribution of wine for ritual purposes, I did so after very mature consideration. I am sure that after (his successor) shall have been in the chair of the conference for any length of time, he will come to exactly the same conclusions as I did.
“You gentlemen, members of the conference, who have dealt with this situation as a local question have had, here and there, some small question to solve; but when you become president of the conference and have letters from every part of the country, almost day by day, asking you as president of the conference to give the necessary authority to all sorts of men in all sorts of conditions, to purchase and distribute wine for ritual purposes, then you will take a different angle on this whole situation.