In hearing the voices of Jews of times past, we must be mindful of the great differences between the pre-automobile world of a bygone century and the super-computer world of the late twentieth century. In his ways of living and working, in his language and his ideas, the Jew of the 1990s North American cities is, collectively speaking, a very different person from his 1890s forebear. All is different-the world about him, the world within him.

The American Jew's locale itself is much different. Once crowded into dose "downtown" quarters of the larger cities, many Jews are now settled in out spreading suburbs. This is especially true of the so-called "New York" Jews, now spread over a dozen counties in three states, besides what are now the five boroughs of the City of New York-although they may still be among those relative few still contentedly living amid transformed surroundings on Grand Street on the Lower East Side of what was once all there was of New York City and is now New York's Borough of Manhattan.

The island of Manhattan is where, as the nineteenth century neared its close, the city's Jewish population, having passed the half-million mark, was daily multiplying to reach its eventual two million It is where nine of every ten Jewish New Yorkers then dwelt. And so it was with the immigrant settlers in Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, St. Louis, Denver, San Francisco, and so on, and across the border in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg, and any number of larger and smaller cities and towns across the continental span.

New York was, for those of the immigrant generations, a Jewish community tightly packed into a few score city blocks composed largely of fiveand six-story tenement buildings. Each such building on each such block was jammed roof to cellar, wall to wall, room to tiny, boxlike room, with growing families. Blocks of streets pulsated with the noise and uninhibited motion of vibrant human life. New York meant blocks lined with pushcarts of goods for poor people's everyday needs; blocks punctuated with fetid workshops and hole-in-the-wall stores; blocks of synagogues large and small, shul after vibrant shul, shtibel after backroom shtibel, squeezed in here, there, and everywhere rooms for Torah study-chevroth shas, chevroth mishnayoth. New York was blocks of heartbreaking struggle and want, blocks of indestructible hope, purpose, will to five, will to five Jewishly. Moving, stirring, shocking, exhilarating, saddening, bewildering, inspiring-Jewish New York was a world drawing to and from itself every sense, every emotion except only that of dullness.

In this New-World portal, each entered on a new life in a new age, each starting afresh, each fending for himself in new scenes of bewildering strangeness. Here was America, there was the Old Country. What pertained to the one was out of place in the other. In the United States, one was to think and act and live differently than in the life of before; one must, perforce, be a different person than the person of before.

So, for all coming to its shores, America proffered its new day and, with magnetic force, engaged each in the process of absorption into American life. For many, the process of self-translation, from Old-World self to New-World self, was strewn with perplexity. For the Jew, it was more than a matter of "American self' versus "Old Country self'-it was a matter of implanting in the new self the self of Jewish being, the self of the Jewish ages and Jewish eternity. 'This problem has ever been at the heart of the Jewish situation in America; it still exists today.

In the unstructured, high-tempo froth of Jewish life in the United States during the mounting tide of immigration, this problem confronted one and all in harsh terms. Some, interested only in their personal material betterment, cared little; others were in conscious rebellion against the beliefs and the fife of before. Most, however, strove amid the struggle for existence to maintain their Jewish selves.

There ensued the makeshift improvisation that was the hallmark of immigrant days: a bit here, a bit there. Who in that harried pressure-cooker situation could be expected to view broadly the scope of American realities in relation to Jewish needs? Yet, fortunately, those of stronger purpose emerged from among the ranks, those who could think and act for the group interest. Thanks to this spontaneous leadership, there came about in hand-to-mouth fashion the varied complex of institutional development that was the product of eastern European Jewry in the cities of the United States and Canada, and in many smaller communities, too. By far the greatest concentration of all, the most massive and most vibrant, was that to be found in the New York of the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, there were also those who exploited Jewish need. There were charlatans pretending to be rabbis, and even rabbis turned charlatans; there were self-appointed "reverends," self-designated mhalim, self-certified shochatim, respectively-and, on occasion, in two or all three capacitiesexploiting needs in the performance of marriage, b'rith milah, and shechitah. In these areas and in such as the granting of hechsherim, in the issuance of divorces, in the manufacture of religious requisites-in every function of Jewish religious practice that lent itself to exploitation and manipulation, there was a range of wrongdoing from gross incompetence to gross fraud. Fattening on the abuses, distinguishable from the less culpable driven by desperate need, were men who, prior to debarking on American shores, had dropped overboard, with or without their tephillin, their consciences.

There can be no doubt that the weedlike spread of such abuses was a potent factor in the alienation of many from religious adherence. These abuses festered in the anarchic confusion of the hard-pressed immigrant world.

By the later decades of the nineteenth century, the state of fragmentation was recognized by the percipient as the key problem. By that stage, however, the complexity and sheer mass of the problem seemed to defy resolution. After a succession of efforts at unity among Orthodox groups had collapsed in turn, better promise appeared with the launching in 1887 of the Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations. At the initiative of Beth Hamidrash Hagodol, the leading synagogue of New York's Lower-East-Side community, representatives of eighteen congregations joined in forming the association. Out of it was to come an undertaking with potential for reshaping the character of Jewish fife in America: the establishment, within an organized Torah community frame, of a Chief Rabbinate.

The participants in the new Association were convinced that only the effectuation of the office of Chief Rabbi could move the diversity of congregations and groups to function together and to address pressing needs in the common interest.

The letters to the aforementioned rabbis, as cited in Karp's study, stated in part:

Many improvements must be undertaken to raise the standard of Judaism in our country, and if the Orthodox congregations do not unite, then there is no hope for the preservation and upbuilding of Judaism in our city.

For this purpose . . . we unanimously decided to invite as our spiritual leader a Rav noted for his scholarship and piety. His mission would be to remove the stumbling blocks before our people, to unite the hearts of our brethren, the House of Israel to serve God with one heart and soul, and to supervise with an open eye the shochatim and all other matters of the House of Israel, which to our sorrow are neither observed nor respected, because there is no authority nor guide revered and accepted by the whole community, and each one is an authority unto himself. The congregations already participating have pledged to [share the salary expense], and many other congregations stand ready to join the Association, and thus make it possible to offer the rabbi a generous salary as would befit the Chief Rabbi of so important a community as New York.

We are not unaware that the person we would invite is one respected in his community, and there is no reason that would urge him to leave his home and travel across the seas. Yet our faith is in God ' and there has not ceased among our people those who are deeply concerned with the preservation of our holy, faith. The rabbi who heeds our call will do so for the sake of the Jewish community across the sea, to save many souls of our brethren who have emigrated and wandered to this land, and infuse in them the spirit of knowledge and the fear of God.

Most of the rabbinic leaders addressed responded in one form or another, saluting the establishment of the Association and requesting more information. Hesitation came with the realization that, unlike elsewhere, the American context with its separation of religion and state could not provide a basis of civil authority for a Chief Rabbinate. Shortly, however, some serious candidates emerged. After pursuing various possibilities, the Association then turned with its proffering of the office of Rav Ha-Kollel, Chief Rabbinate of New York, to the illustrious Rav Ya'akov Yoseph (Jacob Joseph in English usage). This personage, famed as Reb Yankele Ha-charif ("the acute-minded") served as both moreh tzedels (law decisor) and maggid yesharim (community preacher) of Vilna, "the Jerusalem of Lithuania.' Negotiations proceeded, terms were agreed on, and preparations were made for Rabbi Jacob Joseph's departure for America.

In view of the fact that the Association of American Hebrew Orthodox Congregations was the product of the "downtown" congregations of eastern European immigrant origin, it is notable that, as reported in the American Israelite of March 30, 1888, the assemblage convened to resolve the funding of the undertaking was addressed by the spiritual leaders of the two foremost "uptown" Orthodox congregations. One was Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes, Minister of the patrician Congregation Shearith Israel, the  Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, parent congregation of American Jewry. Already a rising voice in American Jewish affairs, Dr. Mendes was   later to become the founding president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish   Congregations of America. The other leader was Dr. Bernard Drachman, then the Rabbi of the long-established prominent Congregation Orach Chayim, who in due course succeeded Dr. Mendes as Orthodox Union president. I

While both the foregoing had initially feared that any incumbent to the Chief Rabbinate lacking familiarity with American minds and conditions and without a command of English would be fatally handicapped in coping with the onerous difficulties of the projected office, once the matter had been determined, they gave the undertaking, and the Chief Rabbi himself, when in office, their full support.

Rabbi Ya'akov Yoseph is very dear to us. A great charif [keen mind), he is of a rare devoutness. Our hearts ache that we had to part with him. It is hard to lose such a precious treasure. See to it that he is well appreciated. Tell everyone that Vilna gloried in him. See to it that New York Jews know what a gem they have taken from us, and that New York must recognize what a precious crown it bears.

Among the masses of East-Side Jews, and among their counterparts elsewhere throughout the United States, the arrival of the awaited figure in New York after the conclusion of Shabbath on July 7, 1888, was greeted with rapturous enthusiasm. Karp, drawing on reports in The American Hebrew, the Jewish Messenger, and other contemporary sources, writes:

When the reception procession reached the house chosen for the Chief Rabbi's residence at Henry and Jefferson Streets, thousands upon thousands milled about. Police had been called earlier. The crowd consisted almost entirely of East European immigrant Jews, who felt that the arrival of Rabbi Jacob Joseph marked the beginning of a spiritual revival for American Jewry and a new deal for the disregarded and despised Russian Jews.

(At the time, the term "Russian Jews" was the general identifying term for all Jews from eastern Europe.)

The arrival of the religious leader was widely reported in the leading daily newspapers as well as in Jewish media. The foremost New York daily of the time, the New York Herald, referred to the Chief Rabbi as "the only such dignitary in this country;" and gave continuing coverage to the development.

Needless to say, the enthusiasm of the traditional loyalists was not shared by those of opposing outlook. The channels of the Reform movement voiced acid sentiments about the Chief Rabbinate undertaking and the advent of the luminary from Vilna. One Reform periodical, Jewish Tidings, editorialized on August 17, 1888: 'What do we need of an ignorant and prejudiced rabbi? He should go back to the land that gave him birth."

Apparently, similar sentiments were voiced by others of assimilationist circles who were interviewed in this connection by a New York Herald reporter who, in his news story-published on July 21, 1888 under the headline, "Will He Be an Autocrat?" -quoted the hostile expressions of several of this type. This same reporter, however, also interviewed to very different effect Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes, who, as spokesman for a heritage of over two centuries of Torah loyalty on American soil, said: "The introduction of the office of Chief Rabbi is a very good move in the right direction." In awareness of the slurs that had been cast, Dr. Mendes added: "Most of the uptown Jews themselves who may object to it are themselves a bad lot [Jewishly] except in the charitable way, and are hardly Jews at all."

When the Chief Rabbi appeared at the Beth Hamidrash Hagodol to deliver his first discourse, the pressure of the thousands surrounding the synagogue, itself packed to the last inch, made it necessary for the police in attendance to call for reinforcements.

Calling for 'loving kindness and understanding" on the part of all, Rabbi Jacob Joseph said, in part:  "Our principal efforts shall be to gain recognition and to attract the adherence of others to laws of grace and truth, by virtue ... of our moral living and our deeds of liberality and kindness."

The happy aura of the 'honeymoon days" continued to pervade the scene until the point where Rabbi Jacob Joseph came to grips with his formidable tasks.

In view of the overwhelming urgency of the need to eradicate the flagrant evils in the slaughter and the handling and sale of meat and poultry, it was decided that the Chief Rabbi's efforts should at once be focused on that problem. So forthwith plunged both the Association and the Chief Rabbi into what promptly proved to be an utter morass.

A sharp difference of opinion had arisen as to the respective primacies of jurisdiction between the Chief Rabbinate and the Association itself. As quoted from Karp:

Those who looked to the Chief Rabbinate and to the person of the rabbi as a source of prestige and acceptance, spent their efforts in exalting the office. Others who saw the. election as a means toward the consolidation of Orthodoxy and the office of the Chief Rabbi as an effective way to deal with the abuses that plagued the Orthodox Jewish community, contended that greater concern and labor be devoted to strengthening the organization and establishing its effectiveness through committees and boards.

The leaders, Henry Chuck and Dramin Jones, chose to concentrate on the rabbi. But . . . the group which placed emphasis on organization began to exert greater influence. . . .

The Board of Trustees had the power to charge fixed fees for such hashkamoth and hechsherim as the Chief Rabbi may issue. All funds derived from the supervision of Kashruth [were to] be added to the funds of the Association. . . .

Karp observes the fact that "this income (from kashruth supervision] was to be utilized for maintenance of the Chief Rabbinate via the Association was not sufficient to rebut the criticism that the Association would compel buyers of kosher meat to foot the bill for the Chief Rabbi."

However well-conceived in principle, the policy manifest was all e6o subject to detraction in the conditions of the time, as events were to show. Few could appreciate that fiscal viability was necessary for Association and Chief Rabbinate alike, and the alternative of dependence on allocations from the meager means and fluctuating interest of the mostly small, hard-pressed, struggling congregations was at best an uncertain and inadequate resource. In view of the dismaying experience of rabbis on income from hechsherim, it was obviously preferable to free the Chief Rabbi from the financial and business aspects of this service, with full jurisdiction for him in rabbinic areas proper.

In one way or another, the purchaser is "compelled to foot the bill" for what is involved in meat and poultry production from the point of slaughter to the point of sale and for the indispensable supervision thereof. The provision of means to authoritatively assure that what was offered as kosher was truly kosher was necessarily to be funded somehow. And surely the redeeming of the kosher meat and poultry process from the demeaning, demoralizing, and corrupting subjection to the financial rule of the slaughterhouse operators, wholesalers, or butchers was well in order.

Hence the Association provided that the costs involved in the administration and functioning of the reorganized kashruth apparatus and the requisite Beth Din was to be met by a fee levied through the purveyors of the supervised products on the consumers. But-and this proved to be a very big but-such a concept could be effective only if prevailing conditions could be adapted to it, if the minds of the people could respond to it, and, especially, if those with personal interests at stake would yield to it. The answer was revealed in the course of events.

From the first, Rabbi Jacob Joseph and an influential group in the Association of American Hebrew Orthodox Congregations had differed as to the advisability of its constitutionally adopted supervisory fee policy. Under the existing conditions, the policy was actually a pitfall: A public unversed in the principles involved and the procedures required, and mostly struggling for a bare livelihood, could too easily be led to see the fee as an unwanted, exploitive imposition. Better, Rabbi Jacob Joseph urged, in light of the critical need for an atmosphere of order and harmony, for the Association to bear the costs directly, raising the necessary funds from other channels.

The dominant group in the Association, however, looking for long-term viability, insisted on application of its policy. It compromised only to the extent of limiting application of the fee to poultry and not levying it on meat, then the staple of the poor.

Herewith I make known to all our brethren, the Children of Israel, who tremble at the word of the Lord, that inspectors have already been appointed in the poultry slaughter houses to test the knives and to have supervision of everything in their care. From this day forward every bird slaughtered in the abbattoir under our supervision will be stamped with a plumba Read seal]. On the pluma will be the words:

Rav ha-Kollel R. Jacob Joseph:

and we make it known to you that if you find any butcher's chicken not so stamped, that it was not killed under our supervision and we cannot guarantee it to be kosher. May those who hearken [to our words] prosper and share in the heavenly blessing. On the third day of the Sidra Zoth Ha-Berachah 5649 [September 18, 1888].
Saith: JACOB JOSEPH, Chief Rabbi of New York

One cent was to be charged for the metal tag attached to the leg of the chicken to certify its kashruth. In the English announcement, the footnote was added: "The fowl bearing seals should not be sold for any higher price than others, except one cent on each fowl for the seal."

No sooner did the announcement appear than there broke upon Jewish New York a storm that darkened its skies as never before, bringing poisoned air that was to linger for a long time to come. It was precipitated by an assortment of people whose interests had been touched by the emergence of the Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations and the Chief Rabbinate, with their joint capacity for decisive, abuse-purging religious authority. Now the announcement of the plumba and the cent charge offered them a weapon to their purpose. They seized it instantly, with avidity.

The opposition now unleashed came from certain local rabbis, shochatim, poultry and meat wholesalers, butchers, and an assortment of 'reverends" and others feeding, barnacle-like, on the vessels of religious life. Allied with these for the nonce-and, as experts in vilification of the faith of their fathers, well-tooled allies-were the clusters of anarchists, socialists, and others of the radical forces that had bestowed their edifying presence on the Lower East Side. To again quote Abraham J. Karp:

It was a heaven-sent opportunity... Karobka became the battle cry. Karobka was a tax imposed by the Russian government on kosher meat. The Russian Jew knew its meaning well, and the very mention of the word conjured up all the disabilities and persecutions he had suffered in the land of the Czars. They knew too, that income from the tax was used for anti-Jewish purposes. "Karobka" represented everything evil in Czarist Russia. What was the Chief Rabbi's poultry tax but "karobka"? Were the heads of the Association any better than the Jewish tax farmers who were lackeys to the Czar and enemies of their people? A successful catch-phrase is often far more effective than the most reasoned argument. "Karobka" was such a word. It evoked deep emotion; there was no arguing its evil and it could so aptly describe the newly imposed tax.

The barrage of propaganda that ensued had a dire effect. Ridicule was joined to falsification, distortion to condemnation. Housewives struggling hard to make ends meet, faced with the declaration that an outrageous exploitation was afoot, were stirred to bitter protest. Among all ranks there was puzzlement and doubt,

Daily the organs of the antireligious forces poured forth, with every ingenuity of ridicule and calumny, their portrayal of the Chief Rabbi as the willing instrument of schemers inflicting price-gouging on poor families. Those butchers who, doubtless for reasons of their own, were opposed to real supervision, attacked in concert. In collusion with these strange allies were several rabbis who, seeing their standing and jealously guarded prerogatives subject to scrutiny, were jealous of the Chief Rabbi and were no longer hesitant to act. So, too, it was the shochatim. and other functionaries, such as one impassioned "marriage performer, mohel, and preacher,' who, as spokesman at a public meeting for the opposing parties, declared that Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the charif, moreh tzedek, and maggid yesharim of Vilna, had no right to the title of "Chief Rabbi of New York.' Thus armed, a group of butchers and the rest of the assortment projected a rival setup. The supporting rabbis thereupon constituted themselves as the "Beth Din Tzedek, the Great Court," and announced their appointment of "qualified ritual slaughterers in the slaughterhouse" and of two supervisors who, they pointedly stated, 'serve without pay."

The karobka plumba on chickens which evil men wish to import from the Old Country to the New World is an insult to Judaism and an affront to Mosaic law, because these men mean only to flay the skin off our backs through this despicable tax and put us to shame in our city, New York. Therefore at this assemblage in the presence of three rabbis we declare as terefah all meats sold by the butchers who have made common cause with the charlatans who impose the karobka. All this we do and ordain the permission and under the supervision of the Beth Din Zedek [Righteous Court] which consists of three rabbis. Down with the shameful karobka.

Rabbi Jacob Joseph responded to the attacks with words free of rancor. Undeterred, he proceeded with the work of eradicating abuses and wrongdoing in the conduct of religious requirements. The kashruth problems in meat and poultry were addressed at all levels, from the point of slaughter to the point of retail sale. In a letter to the Association of American Hebrew Congregations that responded to attacks on his shechitah regulations, published in the American Israelite of October 19, 1888, the Chief Rabbi said: "Those who oppose my regulations are nonetheless to be treated with humane consideration. It is a question of business with them. . . . Believe me, I have not the least sense of resentment in my heart for all the evil they speak and publish about me."

It is not to be supposed, however, that he could remain altogether impervious to the barrage of attacks heaped upon him. He was impelled at one point to voice reproaches: "If they choose, they can demand truly kosher meat or poultry or if they choose they can buy whatever is offered them, little concerned whether it is really kosher or not ..."

Despite the furor of the attacks, the more conscientious butchers bore on the windows of their shops the sign of the official Chief Rabbinate hashgachah. But as the vilification and disruptive moves took their cumulative toll, proponents of the Chief Rabbi, among them those most noted for Torah learning, drifted away, weary of the ugly dispute. The Association itself became enfeebled as 'downtown" support diminished. Rabbi Jacob Joseph then turned for aid to his "uptown' well-wishers, Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes and Dr. Bernard Drachman.

These two supporters, young but already marked out for fervent devotion to the Torah cause at large, responded readily, bringing their prestige and influence to the embattled Chief Rabbi's aid. The public support of the two uptown leaders proved, however, to be but a transient shelter from the unceasing war waged against the Chief Rabbi.

Not least of the mounting fray was rising friction between the "Litvaks" and the "Galitziener," those originating, respectively, from Lithuania and from Galicia, the parts of Poland which, upon the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century dismemberments of Poland, had been absorbed by the Russian Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now the bitterness of the communal fray in New York had sharpened differences that were due to differing temperaments.

From the discussion appearing in the American Israelite of July 28, 1888, it seems that among the Galitziener particularly, including their spiritual leaders, a feeling had already arisen that the illustrious scholar from Vilna and the Litvak-led Association of Congregations were not really attuned to their views and concerns. The downtown Hungarian congregations, of similar inclination, also began to look askance at the Association and the Chief Rabbi.

With so prejudicial an attitude taking hold among such important constituencies, the Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations began to crumble. The Chief Rabbi became increasingly more isolated as the months passed. His entire situation became ominously insecure.

There came forth diverse new claimants to the title "Chief Rabbi." Karp's report tells of one of these:

In 1893, Rabbi Chayyim Ya'akov Vidrowitz came to New York from Moscow, gathered a few small Chassidic shtibalech under his control, and hung out a shingle which bore the legend "Chief Rabbi of America." When asked: "Who made you Chief Rabbi?' he replied with a twinkle in his eye: 'The sign painter.'

It is not possible for me to set on paper the depth of my grief on the suffering of this great rabbi, renowned for his learning and piety. We never would have believed this could happen to Rav Ya'akov Yoseph after the honor and glory which was his in this community.

Defying even these outraged luminaries of the Torah world, the wreckers of the Chief Rabbinate continued undeterred. Support for the Association was steadily whittled away as congregation after congregation tired of the battle, and individual backers such as Henry Chuck became unwilling or unable to continue subsidizing the budgetary deficit. After a few months of feeble existence, the Association of American Orthodox Hebrew Congregations finally ceased to function.

Throughout these bitter years, Rabbi Jacob Joseph had maintained his activities as Chief Rabbi in the wider frame of communal service and guidance as well as in the mired kashruth field. Not even now, with his very livelihood without foundation, his financial plight become desperate, did he diminish his endeavors.

Sickness now crowned Rabbi Jacob Joseph's suffering. He remained an invalid for the rest of his sadly shortened life, paralyzed for the last five years. Neglected by all but a few, all but forgotten by the community to which he had brought such new hope and to which he had consecrated his endeavors, Rabbi Jacob Joseph, the one and only Chief Rabbi of New York, died on July 28, 1902, 23 Tammuz 5662, aged 59.

With the passing of this noble figure, a tragic victim of scurrilous mendacity, there ended the dream of New York Jewry as a consolidated Torah community . . . the dream of the largest metropolitan center of Jewry in the world mobilized for mutual weal, structured for integrity, for strength in the fruition of authentic Judaism in the New World.

In a final irony, trouble attended Jacob Joseph's death, even as it had shadowed his life. As his funeral procession, with a hundred thousand remorse-stricken mourners following his bier, passed the printing plant of R. Hoe and Company, plant workmen hurled volleys of stones, pieces of metal, and garbage on the cortege of mourners below. In the ensuing riot, the police-among whose ranks hostility to Jews was notoriously rifewielded their riot sticks more against the attacked than the attackers. Astounded and shocked by the attack on the funeral, and no less shocked by the conduct of the police, aff elements of the country's public, officialdom, and press joined in a storm of denunciation, to subsequent good effect. Also bearing continuing moral benefit, the sturdy resistance mounted by the cortege participants won wide commendation.

The wider public ramifications of the abuses in the provision and representation as kosher of foods and products have prompted governmental intervention at times, on federal, state, and local levels. Of singular interest in this connection is the report of the Fact Finding Commission appointed in 1939 by New York City's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, designated, "An Investigation into the Kosher Poultry Industry." While the Committee's report offered a revealing factual survey of the problems studied, the effects may have been moral rather than specifically corrective.

Since 1915, legislative enactments have provided a measure of protection against outright fraud. While these measures adopted by several states have served to curb the grossest abuses, of themselves governmental means cannot do what only the instrumentalities of a religious fold can and must needs do in a religious matter.

Over the years, and especially in the past fifty years, conditions in this connection have markedly improved. Puzzling questions remain, but the advance toward Torah community coherence offers better promise.

Having culled a selection of voices of the New World from the midseventeenth-century birth of the American Jewish community to the dose of the nineteenth century, this section of the book concludes with the voice of a great figure whose unique contribution to American Jewish life and the Torah cause in the late nineteenth century lives on to this very day-Dr. Henry Pereira Mendes.

With the launching then of a new force for Torah, marking the transition from one era in American Jewish fife to another, the words of its creator, spoken at a subsequent assembly, speak well to our own times:

Watchman, what of the night? I pray that I may not have to answer: Morning comes and also the night, another night with its dreams, phantoms, and nightmares, that mean suffering for the House of Israel. I pray that the dawn of hope is here and that the day of better things has begun for all of us. I pray you, my brothers, let us all work together. We are all working in sincerity, let us work with charity and forbearance, Whatever we do is not for our glory, but for the glory of God. And may the blessing of God rest upon us all.