The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle from Milwaukee, Wisconsin • Page 4

THE WISCONSIN JEWISH CHRONICLE April 17, 1931 4 By the Way ISAAC GIMBEL DIES AT 74 -FOUNDER OF BIG STORE HERE (Continued from pace 1) Wisconsin Towish (ftr onide AWeMy Pap Ca for the Jorisl4me Offices and Printing Plant, 625 N. Milwaukee Street, Pioneer Bldg. Telephone MArquette 4700 Milwaukee, Wisconsin Cable Address Chron, Milwaukee NATHAN J. GOULD Editor IRVING G. RHODES Publisher To insure publication in the current issue, all correspondence and news matter must reach this office by Wednesday evening of each week.

Subscription in Advance Per Year duces, regardless of the shock to our sensibilities. The occasion for the publication of Mr. Kohler's findings was the active prosecution of a campaign conducted by Haym Salomon Monument Committee of the Federation of the Polish Jews of America to raise $150,000 to erect a monument in New York City to commemorate the deeds of the Jew of the revolution. Mr. Kohler undoubtedly felt that it were better to have all the facts argued before the monument was erected than have it stand as a symbol of constant doubt and controversy for generations, on the theory that the worst truth is more clesirable than the best myth, disagreeable though it be.

Mr. Kohler's findings have been challenged by the proponents of the monument. Like all questions involving the shattering of traditional beliefs, other issues involving personalities have been injected, and the controversy rages with much heat. It is unfortunate that this be so, because the whole matter should be a very simple one. It resolves itself on the question whether or not Haym Salomon did lend the huge sums for the prosecution of the Revolution and which were never repaid to him or his heirs.

This is essentially a question of fact. There is no academic argument about it. Even though Kohler be correct in that Salomon did not lend all the money tradition savs he did, it probably does not establish that Salomon did not perform some service to the Revolutionary cause that was valuable enough to be lauded in historv. So far as we are concerned the fact that Salomon lent only $5,000 instead of $116,000 is no terrible reflection on his patriotism. And whether he should be memorialized in a monument of stone on Broadway, New-York, for the sacrifices he did make, is not entirely settled one way or the other.

On this point the controversy may continue indefinitely. But whatever the merits of the monument mav be, we doubt the advisability of a campaign for $150,000 aY this time when the Jewish people are much more concerned about feeding their starving brethren than satisfying their historical pride. The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle invites correspondence on subjects of interest to the Jewish people, but disclaims responsibility for an endorsement of the views expressed by the writer3. Communications will not be given consideration unless signed by name and address of writer. If reauested by known writer name will be omitted in published letters.

All anonymous correspondence will be destroyed. 17, 1931 No. 7 Vol. 26 APRIL God may grant our desire, but that we may find the vision and strength to do His bidding. Such prayer is always efficacious.

3. Whv Do We Suffer? Often because we deserve to suffer. We do wrong and have to pay the penalty. Why complain? God is just. We bring suffering on each other.

"Man's inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn." Why blame God? We suffer because of unsatisfactory social conditions. But who is responsible for these conditions? We suffer because of wars. Who makes wars? Often suffering is "but the stuff to try the soul's strength on." "The suffering servant of Jehovah." We need to suffer to become efficient for divine service. Our most serviceable men and women are such as have been ground between the upper and nether millstones, and have walked "through the valley of the shadow." Some suffering we cannot understand at all. Let us have faith, the faith which represents inference based on experi-nce.

"What I have seen of God leads me to trust Him for what I have not seen." That kind of faith should satisfy not only emotion but logic. 4. After Death, What? Why believe in immortality? Because the mystic belief has outlived the ages. Because not only the masses, but great men of every age, philosophers, scientists, have shared the belief. Nature does not die.

Why should God be true to physical nature and false to man, the highest expression of His creative capacity? The moral universe is no less dependable than the material. Matter does not cease to be. Why spirit? God is just. Itrfs inconceivable that He will permit an eternal hope simply to disappoint it. God is just.

Somewhere there must be opportunity for completing what here as death we must lay down unfinished, where, what here seems crooked, may be made straight. Moreover, nothing but that which we call soul, makes us here what we are. And that soul, intangible, spiritual and therefore immrrtal, simply uses the body as an artist uses his brush or an artisan his toois, and is no more dependent on it for its existence than are they in the instruments of their callings. Destroy a musical instrument. The musician may not even know it.

Send the body into the grave. The soul may not only be The Mills of the Gods Do Grind Two events of the past week startle us out of our immediate worries and focus our attention on the moving drama of history. A large page in the story of mankind was written when King Alfonso of Spain signed his absolute abdication and ended the rule of monarchy in that country. And another large page was written when the Polish Parliament finally abolished the Czaristic laws that had remained on its statute books after Polish independence, which restricted its Jewish citizens in their civic rights. It has been the privilege of this generation to witness more important changes in history than has occurred in any previous century.

Within the lifetime of a person not yet qualified to vote, the powerful dynasties of Europe that have held autocratic sway for hundreds of years have tottered. Tyrannies that no human mind 50 years ago would dare conceive as vulnerable, have been wiped out overnight, as it were. The bloody Czars of Russia, the despotic Emperors of Austria, the Kaisers of Germany, the Sultans of Turkey, the Dynasties of China, the Kings of Portugal, Greece, Hungary, Spain, and the lesser royal potentates of other countries are gone. And the few kings and emperors that are left are mere pitiful puppets maintained for comic-opera pageantry and display. The institution of rule by family blood in the nations of the world is actually gone.

We wonder how many, obsessed with the immediate concern of the present depression, appreciate the significance of this astounding fact. Many will undoubtedly ask, conceding all this, are the peoples of the world any better off without these so-called oppressors? Are not all the nations who have so successfully overthrown their ancient masters suffering in chaos, attempting to establish some form of democratic rule of the people? What good is it to get rid of Kings and Sultans and Emperors if millions of people have to starve? What good is it for the Jews in Poland to be given the full rights of citizenship, if they do not have the wherewithal or the opportunities to keep body and soul together? It is true that all these nations are in the throes of disorganization, but they are merely suffering the birth pangs of a new order. The story of all progress is a story of human suffering and misery. In the travail of this transitional period from the old to the new, we must not forget that for many centuries the people have been tortured by oppressive rule. The so-called peace and contentment that prevailed in the "good old days of King Arthur" was only the resignation and inactivity of despair.

For every one person that enjoyed the privileges of life in those days, there were ten thousand who lived and died without the consciousness of human beings. It is generally accepted that, despite all that might be said against the monarchial systems of government, the people at least had enough to eat. That is a fiction of "good old days" mythology. The masses of people always feared the spectre of actual starvation, and millions did starve. Progress is purchased at a price.

The people pay and pay dearly for every little advance, every little step forward, in government and in economic and social organization. The Kings and Emperors stood in the path of progress. They had to be eliminated. They were cancerous sores that no method of tolerance could be devised to ease their destructive processes. They had to be cut out of the body politic, by major operation.

And the operation was performed. It was painful, of course, and it made of the patient a temporary invalid, impotent to move and carry on the usual pursuits of life in the same vigor of the old days. But the effects of the operation will wear off, the patient will rise from his bed of pain, enter the wheel-chair of convalescence and then suddenly he'll find that he can stand and walk. And the consciousness of health and power will infuse into him new life and energy, new hopes, new ambitions, and he'll be a better man. And the world will be a better world, no question about that.

Progress is slow, frightfully slow. The Jew in Europe today feels that there isn't a chance for him to crash through the obstacles of anti-Semitism and oppression and disability, but even for the Jew there is hope. The laws of the Czars that made him officially an inferior citizen are abolished. A generation ago no one dared to think that possible. But it has happened.

The Jew, even only in name, is legally an equal citizen in Poland and in Russia. That IS progress. Let no one minimize it. He is starving over there, that's only too distressingly true; but there will come an end even to his misery. And it won't be so long now, as history goes.

The peoples of Europe ARE rid of their worst tyrants, at last. They never thought it possible. The Jew IS gradually getting upon a basis of solution to his age-long problem. There is the utmost hope in the darkest clouds that weigh down and obscure the vision of the millions at the present moment, for though the mills of the Gods grind ever so slow, they DO, they DO By DAVID SCHWARTZ A Strange Parallel It is a singular fact, which apparently no one has noticed, that the careers of both Robert Morris, the superintendent of finance of the Revolution and Haym Salomon, who is supposed to have rendered him much aid, had many similarities. For one thing, controversy runs through the life of Morris as it does that of Salomon.

On the one hand, we have some saying that Morris was an immensely wealthy man a millionaire, and on the other hand, we have such a man as John Adams saying that he was not wealthy at all. Both Ended Poor That is one parallel. There are quite a few others. For instance, the thread of misfortune misfortune and disgrace wedded to glory. Today, we all stand with bowed heads when the name of Robert Morris is mentioned.

None but will honor him. And yet some years after the American Revolution, Robert Morris was in prison for three and a half years for bankruptcy. Like Salomon, he ended his days in insolvency. Salomon fortunately was spared imprisonment. Morris spent nearly four years in prison.

From Glory to Jail It is pathetic as one reads his words as he expects the sheritT to come and put him under arrest he, the man, whom, some said, twinn'd with Washington as being the two most important figures in America's struggle for independence. Morris was made a sort of Hoover as far as the material side of the Revolution. And when Washington organized his cabinet, he invited Morris, and Morris declined and recommended Hamilton. Yet in the latter years of Morris' life, he cries: "My money gone; my furniture is to be sold; I am to go to prison and my family to starve." Washington Visited Him In Jail And to prison he went and stayed for nearly four years. Prison in Philadelphia.

And when Washington came to Philadelphia, he was sure to visit the place where Morris was jailed. What a piece of drama. The Father of the Country visiting the Financier of the Revolution in a jail! And even Jefferson, when he came to the presidency, although he had no use for the political ideas of Morris, for Morris was a Federalist of the aristocratic type, yet Jefferson lamented that for his imprisonment, he might have invited him to his cabinet. Both Speculated Thus, Morris like Haym Salomon ended his days, a poor man. The age in which they lived was one in which great fortunes were born and died overnight.

It was an age of high speculation, and Morris with great confidence in the future of the country, speculated too much. The bankruptcy laws of those days were of course more severe than today. Today unc does not go to jail as in Morris' day for bankruptcy. Jewish Friends of Morris Browsing around among some old musty books, I have come across a little item, which so far as I know, has been overlooked. It is a paragraph in a little biography of Robert Morris issued, I believe, in 1841.

The writer goes on to praise the personal generosity of Robert Morris and instances the case of a loan of a thousand pounds he once made, without any genuine security, to a Jewish friend. Who this Jewish friend, is, I have no means of knowing. But I give the paragraph, for whatever it is worth, and I think it is worth a good deal. "A gentleman of the Jewish persuasion who had lived on terms of intimacy with him, fell into sudden embarrassment and became greatly distressed. As soon as Mr.

Morris was acquainted with the matter, he advised an immediate removal to Baltimore, for the purpose of attempting to retrieve his broken fortunes; at the same time, placing in his hands 500 pounds, with a written agreement never to demand its repayment, and taking as- a nominal security the personal bond of the party obliged; to this sum, he subsequently added another 500 pounds, neither of which loans were ever repaid him." Morris, it seems, from this old biography, had persons "of the Jewish persuasion" who were on terms of intimacy with him, to such an extent that he lent one of them $5,000 with only nominal security. The Daughter of Baruch Washington papers during the past few days have been having a good deal to say about rumored romance of Belle Baruch, daughter of Bernard Baruch, with Charles Davila, Roumanians minister. As Mark Twain said about his death, the "report seems very much exaggerated, so Minister Davila is quoted by the Washington News as saying that the rumor is without truth, but adding, "I wish it were so." In Roumania, by the way, says the news, the rumor got about that the young woman was not Belle Baruch, but Belle Borah. It happens however, that Senator Borah has no children. Washington and Zangwill I met Abraham Shomer in Washington the other day.

He, it will be recalled, claims to be the father of the American Jewish Congress. He told a good little story about Zangwill, and is particularly aprobos to this Washington environment. Washington, you know was the father cf his country. Well, one day, the late J. L.

Gordon approached Zangwill and introduced himself as the father of a certain well known fictional character, which his writings had made famous. "That's nothing," replied Zangwill, "I am the father of the children of the Ghetto." Zancwill. it aDDears. had the bigger family, but then Washington as the father, of this had an even larger family. Isaac and his brothers decided that Philadelphia should be the field of development and in 1894 they purchased the Granville B.

Hayes business there. The Gimbel methods, which had been successful in the West, proved equally so in Pennsylvania. The new store developed rapidly. Two years after it was taken over, Adam Gimbel died and Jacob, the eldest of the brothers, took the helm. After continued years of prosperity, the brothers decided to enter the New York City field, where the Gimbel store was erected' and opened in 1910.

Isaac Gimbel was active in all of these preparations and shared the responsibilities of the new venture which proved brilliantly successful. He assumed charge of the New York store upon its opening. Five years after the new store opened it had absorbed Simpson, Crawford and the Greenhut store, both well known and prosperous in their way. When Jacob Gimbel, familiarly known as "the judge" to his friends, died in 1922, Isaac was elected president of Gimbel Brothers, Inc. Long before this the organization had established a well-equipped foreign service with resident management in Paris and London and with a buying staff in China, Japan and the Philippines.

The New York store has 27 acres of floor space, the one in Philadelphia had 24 acres and the Milwaukee establishment 17 acres. Merged With Saks in 1923 In April, 1923, announcement was made of the merger of Gimbel Broth ers, and Saks and Co. The Pittsburgh store was acquired in December, 1925, when Gimbel Brothers purchased 100 per cent of the stock of the Kaufman Baer company. In November of the following year a new 12-story structure was opened, adjoining the former Gimbel store in Philadelphia. Speaking on that occasion, Isaac Gimbel told how his father came to the United States 90 years earlier with less than $25 and had laid the foundation of a business which then represented an investment of When Mr.

Gimbel retired as president in 1927 to become chairman of the board and virtually relinquished active business, he turned the leadership of the business over to Bernard F. Gimbel, his son. Fair Dealing Basis of Success Just before Mr. Gimbel retired he expressed the belief that the modern department store would undergo fur ther and broader development. "Department stores in the future will be still greater establishments.

It is impossible to say where the limits of thejr operations will They may engage in kinds of business that now seem remote. But this development is logical, because the department store brings together in one place innumerable things and services required by one individual. The wider number of these things assembled for convenience, the stronger becomes the department store's appeal. Need I say that at the basis of everything lies intelligent management above all, fair dealing?" Following Mr. Gimbel's death, 13 other descendents of the founder remain in the management of Gimbel Brothers.

In addition to Bernard F. Gimbel, the president, they are: Frederick at the head of Saks Thirty-fourth street; Adam L. and Louis Gimbel who conduct the Fifth Avenue store; Ellis Charles, Daniel, Richard, Benedict and Nathan Hamburger, a son of the founders adopted son, in Philadelphia and J. Oscar Greenwald, Isaac's nephew, in charge in Milwaukee. French Jewry Will Honor Catholic Bishop Who Fought For Emancipation of Jews Paris.

(J.T.A.) Under the patronage of President Doumergue and former premier Paul Painleve and Sylvain Levi, president of the Alliance Universalle Israelite, a society to commemorate the centennial of the death of Henri Gregoire, a Catholic bishop, who more than anyone else was responsible for the emancipation of French Jewry by the Revolutionary Assembly 142 years ago, was founded here. Bishop Gregoire died May 28, 1831. One of the most remarkable figures that the great French Revolution produced, Gregoire, who was a Jesuit priest, fought all his life for the rights of all men, regardless of creed and nationality. When he died his cortege was followed by a crowd of 20,000 Parisians and the hearse was drawn up to the cemetery by students who had unyoked the horses. "Fifty thousand Frenchmen arose this morning as slaves: it depends on you whether they shall go to bed as free men thundered Gregoire at tTre meeting of the Revolutionary Assembly when he put in his motion for the emancipation of the Jews.

He also wrote a famous work on the "Regeneration, Physical, Moral and Political, of the Jews," which won the prize of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences. During the terror, in spite of attacks in the convention, in the press, and in placards on the street corners, Gregoire appeared everywhere in his episcopal dress and daily read Mas3 in his house. In the face of the deputies he refused to abjure his religion or his office, and stood ready to face death. His record in the Revolution, however, saved him and he was allowed to have his way. But when, on the other hand, Napoleon signed a treaty with the Vatican, Gregoire resigned hi.3 bishopric.

To the last Gregoire remained a devout Catholic, but refused to budge from his revolutionary principles. It was on his motion too that Negroes in the French colonies were emancipated. FOUR ETERNAL QUESTIONS Excerpts of a Recent Address of Rabbi Harry Levi of Temple Israel, Boston, Before the Free Synagog At New York City "Why?" Men have been asking questions since they learned to think. And they have been asking questions about religion since first they became religious and questions God since first they found Him. And they are asking more questions today than ever before.

They have a right to ask. It is well that they do ask. It is the duty of the church to recognize the legitimacy of these inquiries and to meet them as reverently and as adequately as it can. There is warrant for doubt, but also for belief. "God is near those who seek Him in truth." To seek in truth may be to find the truth.

"Why?" On the answer to such vital questions depends the happiness of millions. We cannot simply turn our backs on them. We cannot forget even when we would. Negatives bring little happiness. "To make life worth living we need something to some one to love and something to hope for." More than this, we need something to believe.

We need a positive faith. Nor is this beyond our reach. If we will, we may still be able to grope our way through the darkness to the light. 1. Why Believe in God? Because the belief is so old.

Age is no proof of truth. But no such time-tested belief can represent more folly and falsehood. Because we cannot otherwise satisfactorily interpret the universe, with its beauty, its serv-iceableness and its order. You call him a great artist who faithfully reproduces on canvas the grandeur of nature. What of the artist who fashioned the original? You count him a genius who invents a labor-saving machine.

What of the Power responsible for the universe, life, consciousness, memory, conscience How, without God, explain history with its moral triumphs, and civilization with its onward march? How otherwise explain the race-assurance of the ages that "behind the dim unknown, standeth God within the shadow keeping watch above His own?" "I know that my Redemer liveth." 2. Why Pray? "We pray because we must," said William James. Often our prayers are not answered? Sometimes it is best tfiey shoud not be. Sometimes denial is blessing. Often we deserve no favorable answer.

We have not earned it. And God is Father of all, not just our Father. Perhaps the prayers of others, contradicting our own, represent that which is more necessary. Moreover, God is constant, expressing Himself in definite ways. Nor can He deny Himself, or violate the nature of His own being, just for our sakes.

It is because He is consistent, not variable, vacillating and uncertain, that we can count on Him. We need to learn, not to defy this will, not to seek to escape it, but to adjust ourselves to it. When we pray, therefore, we should pray not that The Jewish Rosh Chodesh Shebat Rosh Chodesh Adar Purim Rosh Chodesh Nissen First Day Pesach Seventh Day Pesach Rosh Chodesh Iyar Lag b'Omer Rosh Chodesh Sivan First Day Shabuoth Rosh Chodesh Tammuz Fast of Tammuz Rosh Chodesh Fast of Ab Rosh Chodesh Ellul 5692 Rosh Hashonah Yom Kippur Also observed the day All Jewish holidays begin at sunset undisturbed by the separation, but freed, may be the better able to carry on the work it had to do here in such hamperd and inadequate form. Shall we see our dead again? Why not? Shall we recognize Why not? Why should personality lack identity? Shall we ever be able to converse with our dead? Why not? We simply need to learn a spirit tongue. Did God have to use articulae speech to make the prophets hear and understand? Does God speak now? If so, need He have recourse to human language? And are wp not part of God, Children of God? Let us believe.

Pity the man who knows no faith. Fortunate indeed if we can find proof for our faith, reason for that which means so much to us. And because this faith means so much to us, we must seek to support it. Under any circumstance we must study it, bringing to bear on it all with which God has so richly endowed us, to the end that it may comfort and help and guide and sustain us as it did our fathers. Calendar 1931 Monday, January 19 Wednesday, February 18 March 3 Thursday, March 19 Thursday, April 2 Wednesday, April 8 Saturday, April 18 Tuesday, May 5 Sunday, May 17 Friday, May 22 Tuesday, June 16 Thursday, July 2 Wednesday, July 15 Thursday, July 23 Friday, August 14 Saturday, September 12 Monday, September 21 previous to Rosh Chodesh the preceding secular day.

The Controversy Anent Haym Salomon One of the sad things about truth is that it shatters many of our enjo3rable illusions. It is very often harshly iconoclastic, smashing the idols that we have been worshipping with implicit faith. Every child when eventually told that "there is no Santa Claus" nurtures a resentment to this exposition of truth, and bows to its unquestioned authority with the utmost reluctance. Like children, we all delight in believing the things that please us most and appeal to our imagination and our pride. And just in that spirit have we believed the story of t-told by Jewish writers and orators that a Jew, Haym Salomon, was the "financial saviour of the American Revolution." We never doubted the story.

We never wanted to doubt it. We read and heard it so often that it became not only a tradition but a historical fact. But the cold steel of the historical scientist's scalpel has been probing around and through the story of Haym Salomon and we are told that the great contribution of this hero is more legend than fact. The historical surgeon who shows us something wrong in our otherwise healthy belief in this instance is none other than Max J. Kohler, a distinguished lawyer in New York, a learned and scholarly gentleman, whose word based upon factual research has never been questioned on any subject.

He is the son of Dr. Kaufman Kohler, late president of the Hebrew Union College and the grandson of the great Rabbi David Einhorn. With such a background coupled with a notable record of service to the Jewish people on many mooted questions, we are compelled to examine the evidence he pro.