Blog Nov 6

6. What caused the divisions between the "uptown" German Jews and the "downtown" eastern European Jews? How did the German Jews and the Russian Jews perceive the other? (For this question, see also pp. 545-546 Mendes-Flohr, the article on the "Division between German and Russian Jews").

The German and Russian Jews living in the United States took opposing positions. Russian Jews became fed up with the Jewish Diaspora and called for the Holy Land, Palestine. Germans saw potential in the Jewish Diaspora; rather than claiming one land they believed Jews could organize in any country within their nationalistic lines. German Jews were considered native to the U.S. but Russians Jews were not. In almost every aspect the German Jew had the upper hand. They were the richer and the donors of charity while the Russian Jews were the poor employee clinging on to anything they could get. “Russian Jews were quick-tempered, emotional, theorizing, haters of formalities, with a decided bent toward individualism.

8. What happened to Leo Frank in 1915?

Leo Frank was taken from the State Farm Prison only to be lynched by a crazy Jew hating mob in Atlanta, Georgia. Frank was a factory superintendent who was convicted of murdering one of his factory workers, but was pardoned in 1986 on technical grounds. He was cast as a rich northern Jew, representing Yankee Capitalism, which created a lot of anti Semitic sentiment around his case. In 1915 a lynch mob of citizens of Marietta, Georgia bypassed prison authority to take Frank from his cell only to murder him in cold blood. This entire event can serve as a microcosm for Anti Semitic treatment in the United States, especially in the northeast. For a STATE PRISION, that means its run by the government, to allow a group of unlawful citizens to take a defenseless prisoner to his death is frankly barbaric. The ‘technical grounds’ that were used to base Franks pardon on were the fact that the prison never protected him from the lynch mob. The entire investigation was shady and it was never really conclusive that Frank killed his little factory worker, but the way his incarceration was handled was despicable.