Stephen Wise rebukes henry ford’s antisemitism
One hundred years ago today … Rabbi Stephen Wise was in the news for protesting the antisemitism of Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, in his Saturday sermon at Carnegie Hall for the congregation of the Free Synagogue.
New York Sun and Herald, 11 October 1920, p. 11. Chronicling America.
Throughout 1920, Ford had published a series of virulently antisemitic articles in the newspaper he bankrolled, the Dearborn Independent (circulation 900,000). He was now having them printed, in revised form, as pamphlets, which spurred Wise’s response.
Dearborn Independent, 2 October 1920, p.1. Chronicling America,
Wise rebuked Ford’s allegations that Jewish people were influencing world affairs through disproportionate holdings in wealth. He brings Jewish refugees and Zionism into the discussion: “So poor and powerless are we that we cannot even afford to bring to Palestine tens of thousands of homeless Jews struggling afoot and staving about Europe.”
New York Tribune, 11 October 1920, p. 9. Chronicling America.
The International Jew has been re-circulated and re-read by antisemites for a hundred years. It continues to be wielded as anti-Jewish propaganda, and has been resurgent as such over the last few years, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
Also resurgent is the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the antisemitic forgery from the late 1800s that Adolph Hitler loved, and that Ford printed and distributed starting in 1922 (Nick Tosches, King of the Jews. New York: Harper and Row, 2005, 273).
Related posts:
January 22, 1920: Stephen Wise Records Speech
September 23, 1920: Yom Kippur and Jewish Refugees
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, OCTOBER 11, 1920
TAGS: antisemitism, religion, Jews