Jews in the C (ity)

Last week, while attending the annual dinner of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, a fellow Ann Arborite approached me for reassurance in the face of what she saw as the narrowness of the Jewish community's vision and civic engagement.   

I admire this woman so much for her intense commitment to the broader community that I wanted to encourage her to see the vibrant progressive energy pulsing around us at the ACLU gathering as at least in part an expression of Jewish community as well.  

This wasn't about documenting the place of Jews in creating and building the ACLU or even reviewing the religious affiliations of its staff and supporters (though others are welcome to do so). What I wanted to suggest was that if we look closely at the foundations of our Jewish communal structures, we will see that American Jewish community arose and  thrived in the context of engaged commitment to the broader society, not in self-centered isolation. 

I told her that in recent public talks I've been focusing on how the creation of organized Jewish communities in different cities shows the vital role of Jews and Jewish communities in making our cities cleaner, healthier, more open, and more just. "Have you written this down?" she asked. 

Well, no time like the present.  Yesterday, I came across a 1930 Jewish newspaper article  that speaks to this theme and offers the opportunity to commit some of this to bloggish print.

Eighty-four years ago,  Cincinnati's Mayor Russell Wilson shared Rosh Hashanah greetings with his Jewish constituents via Cincinnati's Jewish radio hour (recorded in the October 10, 1930 edition of Every Friday, a local Jewish weekly). Mayor Wilson offered up some wooden cliches praising the wisdom of ancient Jewish teachings and Jewish contributions to world and American culture.

Nice enough, but then Wilson brought his talk closer to home. "Certainly the City of Cincinnati has been the recipient of many superb contributions of citizenship by Jews," he notes. And then he starts listing a stunning array of local Jewish civic leaders, starting with Murray Seasongood, his mayoral predecessor.

In the early 20th century, Cincinnati, under the influence of the Boss Cox political machine, was known as one of the most corrupt cities in the nation. In the words of muckraker Lincoln Steffens the city was "all one great graft."* Seasongood, described by Wilson as "the leader in the movement that has regenerated Cincinnati by substituting citizenship for partisanship" engineered the transition to a city manager form of government that soon had others describing the town as one of the "best governed cities in America." [see e.g. The Rotarian, January 1931]

As Wilson continues his list of Jewish civic leaders, the impact of Jewish involvement in Cincinnati's progressive municipal reforms fairly leaps off the page. What does it take to move a city from worst to best?   Part of the answer must be found in the men who served as the heads of the City Planning Commission, the Board of Education, and the Park Board, not to mention others serving on  the Boards of Education and University and as the County Treasurer.

There's a lot more to say about the prominence of these men in local civic affairs (stay tuned). But what interests me right now is how many of them I already know - not from their civic good works -- but from their extensive roles in creating and leading the Cincinnati Jewish community's foundational philanthropic and communal efforts.

For most of them, civic engagement originated in ameliorating the precarious conditions faced by Cincinnati's turn of the century Jewish Eastern European Jewish immigrants. As it turned out, addressing the economic, health, residential, and cultural needs of this vulnerable population required a deep engagement with the challenges of public health, housing, education, parks and recreation. In the case of these gentlemen and of many other men and women that I hope to document, there was a clear connection between the obligation/desire to create better conditions for their own religious brethren (and sistern) and the welfare of the city as a whole. Not just for their part of it.

Buried deep in the DNA of American Jewish philanthropy lies this core piece of wisdom. You can't separate your own group's welfare from that of the community as a whole. Or, to end by going back to Mayor Wilson:  "We must not be prejudiced nor must we create prejudice in others. We all are fellow Cincinnatians, fellow Americans, possessing common ideals. Let us share those ideals to the glory of our city and of our country."

*Zane Miller, Boss Cox's Cincinnati: Urban Politics in the Progressive Era (Chicago, 1968). Miller offers the best account of this era in Cincinnati along with much astute research on the Jewish community's participation in reform efforts.