Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership Karla Goldman Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, by Naomi W. Cohen. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (Brandeis University Press), 1999. 320 pp. $35.00. Jacob Schiff was a singular figure in American Jewish history. He came to prominence at a time when one man, given sufficient financial resources, personal commitment, and communal vision, could dominate and define the public agenda for the entire commun ity of American Jews. From 1880 through 1920, Schiff stood at the center of American Jewish public life, a key figure in shaping its institutions, its relationship to the nation’s political leadership, and its role in international efforts to respond to Jewish persecution and suffering across the globe. The era of Schiff’s communal leadership coincided of course with the greatest period of Jewish immigration from Russia and Eastern Europe to the United States, expanding the nation’s Jewish population from a few hundred thousand to more than a few million. The harsh economic and social conditions encountered by huge numbers of Jewish immigrants placed unprecedented demands on the nation’s acculturated Jewish community as it sought both to cushion the deprivations faced by the new arrivals and to ensure that they learned to behave like proper Americans. Schiff embodied the engaged response of a significant segment of the established community working tirelessly if quietly to push American policymakers to pressure Russia into ending anti-Jewish persecution and pogroms. Publicly, he led the way in creating institutions like the Montefiore Hospital, the Hebrew Free Loan Society, and the Henry Street settlement house directed by Lillian Wald, which were meant to attend to the physical, economic, and social well-being of the newcomers. At the same time Schiff was instrumental in establishing and defining the program of institutions (like the Jewish Theological Seminary and the American Jewish Committee) that would define the broader course of the American Jewish community. There seems to have hardly been one aspect of Jewish communal life in which Schiff did not take a central role. [End Page 139] As suggested by its subtitle, Naomi Cohen’s biography, Jacob H. Schiff: A Study in American Jewish Leadership, etches the public life of a public man. Apart from being told that Schiff enjoyed spending time with his family, we learn little about his day-to- day life or his personal relationships. This seems a reasonable biographical choice, although it is complicated by the extent to which, in Schiff’s world, business and public relationships mirrored private relationships established by marriage and birth. Cohen does make clear that Schiff’s professional opportunities and accomplishments were shaped by the world of German Jewish immigrants he encountered in New York as a new arrival from Frankfurt-am-Main in 1865. Likewise, the organizational structure of his business concern, Kuhn, Loeb, was completely determined by family connections. Schiff married the daughter of his employer Solomon Loeb, and his own son and son- in-law (Felix Warburg) in time rose to take their places among the various kinfolk who constituted the Kuhn, Loeb leadership. Although Cohen offers little insight into Schiff’s personal life, she does convey a sense of his personal style, emphasizing that Schiff’s engagement in all his fields of interest represented much more than the expenditure of cash or the exercise of power. In all the causes close to his heart, Schiff took an active and engaged role both in setting policy and in reaching out to those being served. He was a familiar presence at these institutions. Although he may have felt that his understanding of what it took to succeed in America meant that he knew what was best for newer immigrants and those who served them, Cohen emphasizes that Schiff encountered his beneficiaries as authentic individuals with authentic needs. As she convincingly demonstrates, the regard and esteem that Schiff won among the immigrant community reflected far more than just attempts to please a wealthy donor. At times the deliberately limited scope of Cohen’s portrait is frustrating. The author offers a fascinating account of Schiff’s extensive investment in Japan and how he essentially...