Page 138 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Immigration and sweatshops

our heritage that was nationalistic. Another enemy of Zionism and
everything that stood for Jewish independence were the rich Jews of
German descent, who hated both socialism and Zionism; they, of
course, were hated by the Jewish socialists. So the mass of Jewish
people in New York and other cities thought of Zionism as a fantasy,
and considered me and the others as a bunch of shlemiels—now they
would call us nuts. They hustled us out of their meeting places and
synagogues when we came to collect pennies to build a billion dollar
state. As I said, pennies; it was just pennies we collected. For
instance, we asked the synagogues to tax the people who came on
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to pray. A tax of one cent on a
ticket would have raised a few dollars, and then we would have to
wait another year to collect a few more. For that request we were
pushed bodily out of places, for being a joke!
It was certainly a joke to come to those self-satisfied Jews and beg
pennies to build a future refuge for the relatives they had left behind
in misery in Europe. What a paradox! The very same so-called
religious people, who called us materialists, also called the socialists
and communists materialists. They only saw the land of America as
the place to satisfy their own materialism, and never thought of
creating something concrete which others might someday need.
Those who believe in the spiritual and wish to bestow on their fellow
man the great blessing of spiritual things are really the greatest
materialists, and fearing that the masses will infringe on their material
domain, give them the toy of a spiritual life to distract their attention.
The real spiritual work was being done by idealists who did not think
of the immediate present or for themselves, but for future
generations or other people who need material comforts.
So, when I first met Fannie, I was very enthused over Zionism.
Those were precarious days for the Jews in Russia—and in other
countries, too—and we hoped that some miracle would happen, and
Palestine would open for the Jewish wanderers. When I learned that
she was studying German, I felt like an injustice was being done to
Hebrew. Jews prayed every day and went to the synagogue on
Sabbath and were learning every language but their own. That led me
to tell her what I was reading in Hebrew, and thereby increase her
willingness to study Hebrew. It is a natural instinct of every human
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