storing them away. Of course, no one could prevent them. Was it not “ritual wine”?—even though it was any kind of liquor, it went under the “cover name” of “ritual wine,” and of course, as everybody knows, great scandal resulted. Protests like that of Rabbi Franklin indicate that a part of Jewish public opinion resents the policy of exempting Jews from the Prohibition law, but this is minority opinion. What the Central Conference of American Rabbis may think is of little consequence to the mass of Jews in America. The people to scrutinize with regard to this are not the Rabbi Franklins, who are amenable to the significance of American opinion, but those Jews who do not consult with Americanized rabbis, but run the political end of Jewry as they choose.
There is no reason why the Jews should be exempt from the operation of the Constitution of the United States at all, yet the Constitution is suspended in their favor when the Ten-Gallon Permit is given.
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that there is or could be any objection to the Jews’ ritualistic use of wine, or that the present scandal with regard to law violation rises from that. It is not a religious question at all. It is purely a commercial question. The people who are breaking the Prohibition law are the same people who broke the Pure Food law with regard to the ingredients of whisky. They are essentially a lawbreaking class.
The “Gentile boobs” who patronize bootleggers today are being sold a liquor which is never what it is represented to be, in spite of names blown in the bottles, in spite of seals and in spite of labels. The most conscienceless fraud is being perpetrated on gullible people at an increase in profit of from 400 to 1,000 per cent. The stuff brought from Havana is Jew whisky shipped there, “doctored” still more and shipped back at increased prices—the “Gentile boobs” fancying they are getting something extra special “just brought in from Havana.”