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No. 11.
Vienna, 14 March 1902.
6th Year

The Liquidators.

If one observes from a bird's-eye view the proceedings and the doings of our congregational boards and of all those bodies which administer some portion of Judaism, whether in a charitable or in an educational respect, one cannot escape a general impression that must fill every disinterested third party with bitterness. One sees there men to whom has been entrusted the administration and direction of Judaism, with all its significance — colossal even in our own day — for the culture and civilisation of mankind, and these men are not ashamed to regard this lofty task as merely an affair of the fifth or sixth order, one that does not deserve to be properly discharged. These "honourable men," who reckon Jewish affairs among their agenda alongside a great many other things, conduct themselves as the liquidators of Judaism — to borrow a simile from their own circle of ideas — and not as its board of directors. They do not wish to bring Judaism to high honour or to let it flourish; they strive, as liquidators, to "realise" it, as the terminus technicus has it. For these gentlemen are for the most part excellent men of business, who know very well what is to be done with bankrupt joint-stock companies: to wind up current business as quickly and as quietly as possible. Only, for God's sake, no entering upon new business that does not serve the settlement of pending transactions. The gentlemen are excellent liquidators, who do not shrink even from cancelling contracts; they discharge the obligations of the dissolved company. They are very charitable with Jewish money. They collect the claims of the dissolved company. They levy congregational taxes. They realise the company's assets. In return for orders and decorations they suffer the remaining rights of the Jews to be curtailed. They represent the dissolved company — at the balls en vogue at least one Jewish congregational director is invited. They conclude settlements and enter into compromises — in place of the Sabbath service they strive, in high reforming spirit, for a Sunday service. And — last not least — they wind up current business: they assimilate brilliantly; Kohn becomes Krana, Winternitz becomes Tinternitz, and so forth.

To the liquidators Judaism is a cause doomed to destruction, a res nefasta, or a most unprofitable business that must be disposed of at any price. For some of the present representatives of Judaism the final goal of Judaism is: the cessation of Judaism. But not, of course, with the shrill dissonance with which peoples and nations vanished in antiquity — not, to keep to our glorious contemporary history, as the Boers are heroically vanishing from the soil of South Africa! No! The nerves of the liquidators could not bear that, and they must, after all, be spared.

The liquidators are enthusiasts only for a gentle evolution. They desire a slow and gradual emancipation from everything that constitutes the strength and greatness of Judaism. This, to be sure, is not among the business of the dissolved company, but they are united in corpore, before their God and before their company, in maintaining that this business is indispensably necessary for the final settlement of the pending affairs of Judaism. Had they not regarded themselves as liquidators, they would never have undertaken the direction and administration of Judaism, this cause consecrated to destruction. Only from this narrow point of view can the policy of these gentlemen be understood; only thus can one comprehend their direction and administration of Jewish affairs, straight towards destruction and dissolution. As directors they would shrink, by reason of the heavy responsibility, from dealing in this fashion with the most precious possession of the Jewish nation; as liquidators they are irresponsible: they wind up, they dissolve, they wash their hands in innocence.

The gentlemen forget only one thing — and as shrewd men of business they ought not to — that there is a provision of law by which even liquidators are bound to comply with orders unanimously adopted by the company, that the liquidators