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No. 17. Vienna, 24 April 1903 — 27 Nisan 5663. 7th Year

The Alliance israélite universelle.

W. On the 29th of April the General Assembly of the Alliance is to take place in Paris. It is therefore fitting, no doubt, not merely to listen to the official reports of the Alliance itself — which, its self-adulation excepted, it dispenses very sparingly and summarily — but also to examine what complaints stand against it. The first and chief duty of the Alliance, to guard the honour of the Jewish name everywhere and to render effective aid to those who suffer in their capacity as Jews, it has in the last decade most grossly neglected. Only under compulsion, when the throngs of expelled and homeless Jews were already carrying their naked misery into the comfortable homes of more fortunate brethren, when the want and the lamentation of the unfortunate already filled the streets of the greatest European cities, and only when the comfortable hours of the richest of our people were in danger of being disturbed — only then did it rouse itself to a wholly unorganised, costly and often completely misdirected action. What concerned it therein was not the honour of the Jewish name, but only the removal of the wretched, in one way or another, to some other place. The scenes of horror of the Roumanian Jewish migration of recent years live on too dreadfully in my memory for me not to regard this part of the Alliance's activity as one of its most unhappy. True, the calamity had by then grown too great to be overlooked for long, even by the Alliance. And so it has in fact, in recent years, made attempts to concern itself with the emigration movement as well. It has, as it says, "been successfully active for an improvement through its material means as well as through the personal standing of its directors." We have always admired the modesty by which the Alliance distinguished itself whenever it boasted of its successes. But one must truly marvel to hear talk of success after all the abominable proceedings that took place, after the sorry want of judgment it has shown in precisely this field. Before me lies a letter from Roumanian emigrants settled in Canada. One of many. Incredible things are related in it. The people were brought into an uncultivated region; there they were experimented upon for a time, and then they were simply left to their fate. It would be wrong to lay the blame for this and numerous other cases upon the Alliance alone; but it shares the guilt, and unhappily bears the chief share of it too.

When one considers that men of name, and men of sound Jewish feeling as well, sit in the direction of the Alliance, one can only suppose that they concern themselves far too little with what their officials do.

But we shall not dwell too long on this point. This kind of activity — help for the oppressed and for emigrants — is, after all, the most difficult, and also the one least congenial to the Alliance. Its favourite pursuit is the founding of schools, and it relates with pride that 30,000 pupils attend the schools of the Alliance. The elementary, trade and agricultural schools are meant. This great and undoubtedly fine work, too, the Alliance has happily turned into a danger for the Jewish people instead of a mighty aid. The Alliance, which boasts in its appeal of having brought up "many thousands of children as faithful adherents of their religion," has thereby trumpeted one of the grossest untruths into the world. The very opposite is true. The Alliance systematically endeavours to weaken, in its schools, whatever Jewish spirit still remains. One need only recall the very latest occurrences in Philippopolis, and one will not find this dictum — which, moreover, might be illustrated by many other cases of a similar kind — too harsh. The Jewish people has no need of admirers of French-Jewish trivialities who chatter French but are only barely instructed in their inherited tongue. We do not grudge the Alliance the fame of being entitled, with justice, to the lavish praise of Leroy-Beaulieu as a propagator of the French language in every land where its pupils are found. That aim may be an eminent one in the eyes of the French. The Jews expected of the Alliance services on behalf of quite another language and quite another view of life. To produce such imitation French dandies as may be seen in all the larger cities of the East, such caricatures of a truly eminent people, such as the Fren-