To the Hebrew Congregation in Newport Rhode Island.

Gentleman.

While I receive, with much satisfaction, your Address replete with expressions of affection and esteem; I rejoice in the opportunity of assuring you, that I shall always retain a grateful remembrance of the cordial welcome I experienced in my visit to Newport, from all classes of Citizens.

The reflection on the days of difficulty and danger which are past is rendered the more sweet, from a consciousness that they are succeeded by days of uncommon prosperity and security. If we have wisdom to make the best use of the advantages with which we are now favored, we cannot fail, under the just administration of a good Government, to become a great and happy people.

The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my character not to avow that I am pleased with your favorable opinion of my Administration, and fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and figtree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.

G. Washington

A Bintel Brief

1906
Esteemed Editor,

I hope that you will advise me in my present difficulty.

I am a “greenhorn,” only five weeks in the country, and a jeweler by trade.  I come from Russia, where I left a blind father and a stepmother.  Before I left, my father asked me not to forget him.  I promised that I would send him the first money I earned in America.

When I arrived in New York I walked around for two weeks looking for a job, and the bosses told me it was after the season.  In the third week I was lucky, and found a job at which I earn eight dollars a week.  I worked, I paid my landlady board, I bought a few things to wear, and I have a few dollars in my pocket.

Now I want you to advise me what to do.  Shall I send my father a few dollars for Passover, or should I keep the little money for myself?  In this place the work will end soon and I may be left without a job.  The question is how to deal with the situation.  I will do as you tell me.

Your thankful reader,

I.M.

Answer:

The answer to this young man is that he should send his father the few dollars for Passover because, since he is young, he will find it easier to earn a living than would his blind father in Russia.

1906

Worthy Editor,

I am a workingman from Bialystok, and there I belonged to the Bund.  But I had to leave Bialystok, and later came to Minsk where I worked and joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries.  What convinced me to join this organization is this: in Minsk there was a Bundist demonstration that was attacked by the police.  They beat up the demonstrators brutally, and arrested many of them.  The prisoners were lashed so severely that many of them became ill.  One worker from Dvinsk was sentenced to fifty lashes, which caused him to develop epilepsy and while working in a factory he would suddenly fall in a fit.

When we, his co-workers, saw this, it aroused in us a desire for revenge against Czar Nicholas and his tyrannical police force.  But when there was a convention of the Bund at that time, and they declared a policy against revenge, many of our Bund members joined the Socialist-Revolutionaries.  I wanted to enter the militant organization, but war was declared against Japan and since I was a reservist, I began to get mail from home advising me to flee to America.  I let myself be talked into it and left.

I have been in the country now two years, and life is not bad.  I work in a jewelry store, for good wages.  But my heart will not remain silent within me over the blood of my brothers being spilled in Russia.  I am restless because of the pogroms that took place in Bialystok, where I left old parents and a sister with three small children.  I haven’t heard from them since the pogrom and don’t know if they’re alive.  But since they lived in the vicinity of the “Piaskes” where the Jewish defense group was located, it’s possible they are alive.

Now I ask your advice.  I cannot make up my mind whether to fulfill my duty to my parents and sister and bring them to America, if I hear from them, or to go back to Russia and help my brothers in their struggle.

If I had known what was going to happen there, I would not have gone to America.  I myself had agitated that one should not leave for America but stay and fight in Russia till we were victorious.  Now I fee like a liar and a coward.  I agitated my friends, placed them in the danger of soldiers’ guns and bullets.  And I myself ran away.

Respectfully,

M.G.

Answer:

If one were to ask us the question before leaving Russia, we would not advice him to leave the revolutionary battlefields.  Since the writer of the letter is already here and speaks of his two duties, we would like to tell him that the Assistance Movement in America is developing so rapidly that everyone who wants to be useful will be able to do enough here.  He should bring his parents and sister here, and become active in the local movement.

A word:

For Jews, America has symbolized freedom, the Golden Land, though clearly it has not always been all our ancestors hoped it would be. 

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