To the Editor:
I did not know the late Adolph Ochs intimately, but I knew him well enough to be able to characterize Louis Berg’s appraisal of him as unjust and wholly distorted.
I met Mr. Ochs for the first time in March or April 1917, when I directed the effort to raise $10,000,000 for Foreign Jewish Relief. The task was a tremendous one. The invariable comment was: “It can’t be done.” There were only a few persons who felt the objective attainable, among them Morris D. Waldman and the late Cyrus I. Sulzberger, both of whom persuaded me to assume that great undertaking.
I called on Mr. Ochs seeking the support of the powerful New York Times. Said he: “I should like to contribute 10 percent of the amount which will be raised in my native state, Tennessee,” and then proceeded in his calm and reserved manner to give assurance that the cause could count on the wholehearted cooperation of his paper. I can truthfully say that it would have been extraordinarily difficult to organize the campaigns in 1,516 communities, particularly in the city of New York, and to raise more than $30,000,000 during 1917 and 1918 if it had not been for the Times.
Over a period of years I had occasion to appeal to Mr. Ochs in behalf of a variety of causes and individuals. He was always sympathetic, and he did many of his works of kindness anonymously. I cite one instance merely because it was typical of the man.
In 1915 Henrietta Szold resigned from her secretarial post with the Jewish Publication Society. In recognition of her past services, but, more than that, in the hope of liberating her for greater services in the future, several persons through the mediation of the golden-hearted Julian W. Mack provided Miss Szold with a stipend that made her financially independent. Thereafter, according to her biographer, Marvin Lowenthal, that remarkable woman could work at what she pleased and for whom she pleased. Adolph Ochs was one of three or four who made this possible, but with the characteristic provision that his contribution should be treated in confidence.
Many such instances could be cited, indicating the deep sympathy and human warmth of Mr. Ochs.
Again and again I used to hear Louis Marshall say, whenever Adolph Ochs was criticized for not taking a more active interest in Jewish communal affairs, that the publisher of the Times was rendering inestimable service to American and world Jewry because he created a newspaper which by common consent was the greatest in this country.
Mr. Berg says: “Mr. Ochs built a veritable Temple, a journalistic cathedral dedicated— alas!—to a Roman deity, Status Quo.”
Certainly Mr. Ochs was not for the status quo when he supported Woodrow Wilson, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Alfred Smith, Herbert Lehman, and Senator Robert F. Wagner—all of whom have been responsible for so much of our progressive legislation. True, on occasions the Times did not adhere to the “party line,” as when it criticized, not unjustifiably, some of the features of the Wagner Labor Relations Act and other New Deal measures. But it should be borne in mind that Justice Brandeis, Justice Cardozo, and Governor Lehman also assailed the attempt to “pack the Supreme Court.”
In his splendid letter to COMMENTARY, Judge Proskauer pointed out, and I know this to be a fact, that Arthur Hays Sulzberger was not identified with a delegation which called on President Roosevelt urging him not to appoint Felix Frankfurter to the Supreme Court bench “lest a Jew make himself conspicuous and provoke the malice of the anti-Semites.” This story was repeated by many persons who claimed to speak with authority of the White House. When the appointment was made, the Times had a powerful editorial about Justice Frankfurter.
In his comment on Proskauer’s letter, Berg says he is deeply distressed that anyone should have read into his words a connection between Mr. Sulzberger and the Frankfurter episode, but anyone reading the article so full of innuendoes and insinuations could not fail to draw the inference that there was such connection.
I resent the frequent references to the “Yahudim.” Many years ago I pointed out to B. Charney Vladeck that it was time for the Yiddish press to abandon this opprobrious epithet. How can we possibly expect the non-Jews to cease calling us names when we indulge in the use of such expressions? Vladeck, too, deplored this tendency.
There are many other items in the Berg article to which one might justifiably take exception.
Jacob Billikopf
New York City
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To the Editor:
I could write pages of comment deriding Louis Berg’s appraisal of Adolph Ochs and his epic achievement. But while resisting that temptation I do feel impelled to call your attention to the writer’s reference to the gift to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in order to correct the implication in his phrase “propitiatory offering.” Those words strike me as deliberate malice. I recall the incident and the flare-up, at the time, on the part of some Jewish bigots. I happen to know that the publisher of the Times, like other prominent New Yorkers, was solicited for a contribution to the building and furnishings of that great ecclesiastical structure, an edifice of which all New Yorkers might well be proud. Not being a bigot any more than, say, the Rockefellers—who have repeatedly made gifts to Jewish causes—he responded promptly and generously. Being loyal to Judaism, he conceived the idea of presenting a pair of Menorahs (rare examples of medieval Jewish art) as perpetual reminder to the Christian worshipers of the historic connection between Judaism and Christianity—a connection, by the way, which the American Jewish Committee has repeatedly, consistently, and very properly stressed in diverse ways.
Morris D. Waldman
New York City
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Mr. Berg’s article, “The Americanism of Adolph S. Ochs,” represented, in our opinion, a serious effort to appraise Mr. Ochs’ philosophy of Jewish adjustment to American life as presented in a sympathetic biography, An Honorable Titan, by Gerald Johnson. Mr. Berg differed with this philosophy and its implications for our day as he saw them. Readers interested in learning Mr. Berg’s views fully are referred to his article in the January issue of this magazine, and to his reply to criticisms of his views by Joseph M. Proskauer and Rabbi Nathan A. Perilman in the “Letters from Readers” department in the February issue—EDITOR.
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