To the Editor:
The article in the January number of COMMENTARY entitled “The Americanism of Adolph S. Ochs” has, as you know, provoked grave dissent and concern. In the interest of COMMENTARY itself, I gladly accede to your suggestion that I write for publication these observations amplifying what I have said to you.
By way of preface I repeat my conviction that COMMENTARY has established itself under your editorship as a dignified, useful, and potent magazine. It is, moreover, my belief that the authority of the editor must not be trammeled by ukase of the publisher. You carry every month the legend: “The opinions and views expressed by Commentary’s contributors and editors are their own and do not necessarily express the Committee’s viewpoint or position.”
Yet there are certain limitations which 1 think the editor should impose upon himself consistent with the fundamentals of free discussion. To take a reductio ad absurdum: If a notorious anti-Semite offered you an article blatantly attacking Jewry, I am sure that your own sense of fitness would cause you to remember that the claim to free discussion should not be the key to unlock your door to such a contributor.
With this introduction I state the reasons which impel me to believe that this article on Adolph Ochs should not have been published.
The biographical note of the author refers to his “ironic insight.” Now irony is a treacherous weapon. There is an old couplet by Lady Mary Wortley Montague which suggests that the wounds of satire should come from a weapon so keen that they should be neither felt nor seen. And when that subtlety is missing, irony too often lapses into opprobrium that needlessly inflicts deep wounds without any compensating advantage whatever. Basic wisdom tends to degenerate into surface smartness. The evidence, I submit, sustains such an indictment of this article.
The writer resorts to the conventional technique of the caricaturist, who does not paint a portrait, but takes well-established characteristics, distorts some of them out of proportion, ignores others, and evolves thereby an object of ridicule or detestation.
The biographer of Mr. Ochs indulged in no panegyric. “One looks in vain,” he writes, “for those inspirations of genius that have immortalized great artists, great philosophers, and great soldiers.”
Building on this and the Times’ slogan, “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” your contributor takes a fling at “respectability.” It is, he says, only a “minor virtue,” and he taunts: “When was genius ever respectable?”
That sense of respectability prompted Adolph Ochs to exclude from his advertising columns indecent advertising, while some of his competitors were battening upon its proceeds—and that at a time of desperate financial need; to refuse to accept city advertising from a Tammany Hall administration lest it be deemed by some that it might interfere with the political independence of his editorial page; similarly to refuse an offer of the Republican National Committee to buy and circulate a million copies of his paper; to write to an inquiring advertiser that it was his determination never to discuss with an advertiser the editorial policy of his paper; to take upon his own shoulders with heroic self-sacrifice an editorial blunder, committed in his absence, ineptly suggesting appeasement with Austria at the time of the First World War. Such respectability is shot through and through with elements of moral grandeur which I commend as worthy of emulation.
Your contributor then uses another technique of the iconoclast—to appear fair in a partial statement and follow with a blow which seems unfair. He proclaims, to the credit of Mr. Ochs, that under him “the Times became more than a newspaper; it became a newspaper of record” that “he started a business, and developed a public institution.” But then, after this short show of fairness, he adds: “He built a veritable temple, a journalistic cathedral dedicated—alas—to a Roman Deity, Status Quo.”
The innuendo from this and kindred passages is of an Ochs bowing before the seats of the mighty and truckling only to the rich and powerful.
What are the facts?
Mr. Ochs’ life is in a very real sense a saga of America. His first struggle of importance was in the life of a Tennessee city in the Reconstruction period. I spent my youth in your birthplace and mine, an Alabama city, a generation later. Yet even then I could sense the overwhelming impetus, born of the instinct of self-preservation, that impelled men to stand firm against the removal of the ancient landmarks. And in that sense Adolph Ochs was a conservative. It may be that someone can fairly argue that he was over-conservative. But the thrust here is over and beyond that—that he stood against all liberal and truly democratic processes.
Without the slightest suggestion that your contributor is a Communist, I do suggest that the method is that of the party line, which seeks by this kind of half-truth to make qualities which in their proper setting are virtues, appear, by throwing them out of true focus, to be grave and vicious defects of character.
Indeed, in truth, for many years the Times under Mr. Ochs followed this objective which he announced: “to give the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of any party, sect or interest involved; to make the columns of the New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”
The editorial page of the Times was thus for years neither conservative nor radical nor progressive. It was planned as a source of information and a forum for all shades of opinion. It thus fell short of championing progressive causes; it certainly did not champion reactionary causes. It may be granted that this was not the philosophy of a crusader; it is factually incorrect to suggest that it was the fawning of a toady.
The same mechanisms are disclosed in your contributor’s appraisal of Adolph Ochs as a Jew.
Now, I personally differ, as your contributor does, with Mr. Ochs in his statement, “Religion is all I stand for as a Jew. I know of no other definition for a Jew except religion.” I believe that this is as faulty a concept in one direction as the insistence on Jewish nationalism by a small but vocal minority is on the other. And yet I challenge the right of this satirist to intimate that this misconception of Mr. Ochs’ grew out of his servile and “undiluted Americanism” at which “a fellow Jew can only smile.”
No expert in irony has any right to sneer at an honestly held belief and to follow that sneer by an attempt to attribute to its holder the mental dishonesty of espousing a view merely as an act of snobbishness.
To say that Mr. Ochs’ munificent contribution to the Hebrew Union College was followed by a gift to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine of $10,000, for the purchase of a candelabra as a “propitiatory offering,” is an insult to his memory based on nothing in the record.
And the vice of this is accentuated by the slur on the American Council for Judaism, with the implication that Mr. Sulzberger, at least, is subject to that slur. I disagree with the American Council for Judaism in certain essentials, just as your contributor does; I defend its right to assert its beliefs without subjection to the imputation of evil motive, which has become a dangerous and distressing feature of Jewish ideological controversy. If the author had investigated, he would have found it to be a fact that for some of the reasons of our disapproval of the Council Mr. Sulzberger had resigned from the American Council for Judaism.
To pile Pelion on Ossa, there is the implication that the Jews connected with the Times were in some way responsible for a proposal that Felix Frankfurter pass up his right to sit on the Supreme Court bench. That canard has long since been exploded.
And then comes the final thrust. I quote your contributor: “ ‘What will the Gentile say?’ is hardly a slogan by which a people may express itself or contribute its particular and useful genius to others.” The implication is that that was the sole motivation of the attitude of Mr. Ochs. It was one motivation—and it should be. A decent respect for the opinions of mankind is a consideration fairly to be taken into account by every man who occupies a responsible post. Only those who merely write and do not assume responsibility for action can afford to ignore it. It becomes a vice only if it is exaggerated to the point of appeasement of other groups at the expense of conviction and principle.
There was nothing of that appeasement in the Judaism of Adolph Ochs. At the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1927 he said: “What we as a religious people have preserved through centuries of oppression is rapidly becoming the accepted concept of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.” And in Will Durant’s book On the Meaning of Life there is included in a letter from Mr. Ochs this noble statement:
To make myself clearly understood, if I were able to do so, would take more time and thought than I can give the matter now. Suffice it for me to say that I inherited good health and sound moral principles; I found pleasure in work that came to my hand and in doing it conscientiously; I found joy and satisfaction in being helpful to my parents and others, and in thus making my life worth while found happiness and consolation. My Jewish home life and religion gave me a spiritual uplift and a sense of responsibility to my subconscious better self—which I think is the God within me. The Unknowable, the Inexplicable. This makes me believe I am more than an animal, and that this life cannot be the end of our spiritual nature.
A fair man can disagree, as I do, with the limitations which Mr. Ochs imposed on his Jewishness; but a fair man cannot fail to admit and to proclaim the essential nobility of his religious Jewishness.
I have not attempted to cover the entire content of the article under discussion. I have taken a few instances as typical. I find in it many other instances of unfairness, which could be demonstrated as such under similar examination.
Here was a man who had brought glory to the Jewish people. He was acclaimed as the first citizen of Chattanooga, even in the Tennessee of the Scopes trial. He was complimented by the honorary degrees of Columbia and other universities. He built up on secure foundation one of the greatest journals the world has ever seen. He lived a life of unblemished integrity. He was a potent force for good in his time. To satirize his memory in the manner employed by your contributor is indeed a sad confession that at least for the satirist the prophet is not without honor save in his own country.
It is because in these respects I believe this article falls so short of those standards of good taste, of fair discussion, and of due regard for the dignity of Jewish life which we have come to expect in the contents of COMMENTARY, that I deeply deplore its publication.
Joseph M. Proskauer
New York City
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To the Editor:
I want to congratulate you on the general excellence of the January issue of COMMENTARY. Except for two items, I found every article most interesting and stimulating.
The first, and least important, of the two items to which I refer is the review by Marie Jahoda of the two books by James Parkes. I didn’t like the caption under which the review appeared and the review itself seemed to be extremely forced.
More important is the item called “A Guest in the House,” which purports to be a review of Gerald Johnson’s biography of Adolph S. Ochs and turns out to be an attack upon Mr. Ochs’ Jewishness and Americanism. I know that the opinions expressed in this article are Louis Berg’s and not the thinking of the editor of COMMENTARY. I am convinced from my reading of the article that it is Mr. Berg who is really “a guest in the house” and feels extremely uncomfortable living alongside of his fellow Jews who find it possible to distinguish between their Judaism and Americanism. Under the guise of the review of a rather poor biography of Adolph S. Ochs, Berg has launched a vicious and abusive and personalized attack upon the whole group of men who support Jewish life on the very highest level.
The only justification I can find in my mind for the appearance of this article in COMMENTARY is that it is a comment which represents the thinking of some of our fellow Jews who find themselves not completely at home. I wish you hadn’t given it so prominent a place in what is otherwise a splendid issue of the magazine.
Rabbi Nathan A. Perilman
New York City
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To the Editor:
There are some, I have become aware, who consider my article unfair to Mr. Ochs. I trust that Rabbi Perilman is alone in finding it vicious or abusive. I credited Mr. Ochs with personal honesty, amiability, executive ability of a high order, and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. More importantly, I believe these things about him, and thought I conveyed that belief.
My criticism had to do with an attitude, and a theory, which—in my opinion—the public actions (or failure to act) of Mr. Ochs exemplified.
Rabbi Perilman has, however, expressed elsewhere in his letter our true disagreement. He is correct in assuming that I do not find it possible to distinguish between my Judaism and my Americanism, and am made uncomfortable by those who do. I do not feel and will not pretend to be a native white protestant American. I have special Jewish interests, political, social, and cultural, that the vast majority of Americans have no need to share. I defend my right as an American to maintain them nevertheless.
I am more troubled by Judge Proskauer’s animadversions; partly because we seem to have certain agreements in principle, and secondly because I found myself carried away, as a writer, by the eloquence of his style and his felicity of expression to the point of questioning some of my own words. I have re-read my article, however, and I find that I really did not say some of the things Judge Proskauer attributes to me.
I did not criticize Mr. Ochs for being a staunch conservative, but for being a timid liberal, and I attributed his lagging progressivism not to personal cowardice but to a false theory.
A “guest-in-the-house,” precisely because he is a gentleman, behaves with a discretion, a diffidence and an unwillingness to engage in forthright criticism of the household that would indeed be timidity in a full-fledged member of the family. On the other hand, to accept a second-class status is to follow the argument of the Jewish nationalists. But I repeat myself.
I did not “smile” at Mr. Ochs’ “undiluted Americanism,” nor accuse him of servility, except in the sense of the above paragraph, which, I insist, has another meaning altogether. “The fawning of a toady,” the “act of snobbishness”—these are Judge Proskauer’s words and interpretation. I neither felt nor expressed myself so harshly.
Indeed, the sharpness of tone that may have offended Judge Proskauer came precisely from my distress that upright men, able, conscientious, and honorable above others should accept for themselves a secondary role in public affairs. My own deep feeling was that one of the reasons Mr. Ochs was not a great man was because he limited himself. His public actions were in consequence hesitant and tentative. This because of a false philosophy.
I am deeply distressed that anyone should have read into my words a connection between Mr. Sulzberger and the Frankfurter episode. Ignorance in such matters is no excuse, I know, but I was actually not aware of the existence of the canard Judge Proskauer refers to. My reference to Mr. Sulzberger was brief, and only in connection with his refusal to contribute to the United Jewish Appeal. I had no intention of carrying it further by innuendo. My article may have been blunt, but it was not sly. The same goes for any connection that might seem to exist between my separate references to Mr. Sulzberger and to the Council for Judaism. If Judge Proskauer will re-read this portion of the article again, in the light of my denial, I believe that he will recognize how this might be so.
In general I do not know whether my critics are quarreling with me or with Gerald Johnson. Most of my strictures were culled from his friendly biography of Mr. Ochs, which I accepted as reasonable authority. Apparently no one read the book as carefully as I did, for no one protested then.
To clear another matter: a friendly critic has expressed his feeling that I sounded off in the article like a Litvak perpetuating his ancient and traditional feud with the Yahudim, a feud that ought to be considered humorously, if at all. I mean to have no part in this undeclared civil war. Certainly between Judge Proskauer, who comes from one of the oldest Jewish families in the South, and myself, though I come from one of the newest Jewish families in Virginia, there should exist no such feud.
Seriously, I am aware that the “theory” I criticized is held by a number of East-European Jews, and that a large number of German Jews do not share it. But I thought I made the distinction clear in my article.
To end on a slightly malicious note, addressed to Judge Proskauer as a fellow writer: Did he really intend to imply that he is opposed to irony, satire, or even caricature as a means of political or literary expression? I didn’t consciously use any of these forms—I was deadly in earnest when I wrote the article—but would have no hesitancy using any of them to make a valid point.
And what does he mean by “those who merely write”? He strikes me as a gentleman who would have the utmost respect for writing, polemical or otherwise.
Louis Berg
New York City
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The editors of COMMENTARY printed Mr. Berg’s article, “The Americanism of Adolph S. Ochs,” because in their judgment it was a significant discussion of a theory of Jewish adjustment, as the article’s writer saw it exemplified in a friendly biography of an important public figure in American life. Judge Proskauer, whom we know, among his other distinctions, as one of COMMENTARY’S most conscientious and thoughtful readers, vigorously disagrees with our judgment and our taste, as does Rabbi Perilman; but we must say that few indeed of many good people whose comments on the article we have heard have questioned the propriety of its publication, though a number have taken issue with points of fact and emphasis, and some have questioned the thesis. Our readers understand that we allow our writers latitude of opinion, and that in turn these columns are wide open for the expression of protest, differing opinion, and sharp and violent dissent with the views of any writer. We are glad that Rabbi Perilman and Judge Proskauer have availed themselves of this opportunity. Our faith is that truth and understanding result from this interplay of honest opinion (though obviously there are pitfalls and difficulties in the process); and it is to help discover truth and create understanding that COMMENTARY exists.—EDITOR.
