Page 223 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

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had a synagogue and lived in a certain neighborhood called Temple
Street.
I kept searching for more traces in that neighborhood, but, after
weeks of tramping up and down that street, did not succeed in
finding a Semitic face. There is an apartment house now where the
synagogue used to be.
The longer I stay here, the more anxious I am to discover
something of those Jews. I have been digging in the cemetery for
fragments of old marble slabs, but it is difficult to decipher the
names, as the Jews then used English instead of Hebrew letters on
their monuments, and it will take weeks to accomplish that work.
They had an old orthodox cemetery also, but the city built a stadium
on that ground. The bones were exhumed and cremated without
anyone protesting.
I tramped the mercantile district trying to trace a Jewish name on
the signs above the stores, but very faint are the traces left of those
old metallic Jewish names. It is really surprising that they should
disappear in only one century. Just as was Korach, so were the Jews
swallowed up by the surrounding people. They were swept away by
assimilation and they burned everything behind them, leaving nothing
to describe their downfall.
I have been looking at some old periodicals published at that time,
which I found at a museum, trying to find the cause of their
disappearance. In a Jewish paper written in the jargon, it seems that
they were not interested in their future, but in organizing societies,
getting bread a cent cheaper, planning a ball or picnic, or collecting
for this or that society. Another important item was writing up the
big men of the city. One Jew was called a veteran, another a savior,
and still another was criticized, probably because he did not belong to
a certain clique.
As to the movement of that age which established the present
Palestine, the editor does not seem to be much concerned with it, for
he attacks the leader and the organizations. In the last copy of his
paper he announces that his subscribers have decreased to such an
extent that he has to suspend publication, as very few Jews were
coming to this country on account of the influx to Palestine.

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