love each other less, but altogether they hate the non-Jew more, and that is their common bond.
The Kehillah is an alliance, more offensive than defensive, against the “Gentiles.” The majority of the membership of the New York Kehillah is of an extremely radical character, those seething hundreds of thousands who carefully organized on the East Side the government which was to take over the Russian Empire, even choosing in the Jewish Quarter of New York the Jew who was to succeed the Czar—and yet, in spite of this character of membership, it is officered by Jews whose names stand high in government, judiciary, the law and banking.
It is a strange and really magnificent spectacle which the Kehillah presents, of a people of one racial origin, with a vivid belief in itself and its future, disregarding its open differences, to combine privately in a powerful organization for the racial, material and religious advancement of its own race to the exclusion of all others.
The Kehillah has mapped New York just as the American Jewish Committee has mapped the United States. The city of New York is divided into 18 Kehillah districts which comprise a total of 100 Kehillah neighborhoods, in accordance with the population. The Kehillah District Boards administer Kehillah affairs in their respective districts in accordance with the policy and rules laid down by the central governing body.
Practically every Jew in New York belongs to one or more lodges, secret societies, unions, orders, committees or federations. The list is a prodigious one. The purposes interlace and the methods dovetail in such a manner as to bring every phase of New York life not only under the watchful eye, but under the swift and powerful action of experienced compulsion upon public affairs.
At the meeting which organized the Kehillah a number of sentiments were expressed which are worthy of consideration today. Judah L. Magnes, then rabbi of Temple Emanu-El, chairman of the meeting, set forth the plan.
“A central organization like that of the Jewish
