American Jewry’s Man in Roumania
In 1870, H. Z. Sneerson, great grandson of the founder
of Lubavitch Hasidism, was granted an interview with President Ulysses S.
Grant and his secretary of State, Hamilton Fish. Arriving from Palestine,
the black-frocked, Sneerson hoped to persuade Grant and Fish to remove the
incumbent American consul at Jerusalem, whom many considered an
anti-Semite. Some months later, Sneerson wrote to Grant to ask that
Sneerson’s protégé, Benjamin Franklin Peixotto of San Francisco, be
appointed unpaid consul to the newly established independent principality
of Roumania. At Sneerson’s bidding, Peixotto – a descendant of an
American Sephardic dynasty whose personal papers reside at the American
Jewish Historical Society–abandoned his budding legal career to advocate
for his afflicted co-religionists in Roumania. Peixotto’s politically
influential friends, particularly the Seligman family, intervened with
Grant to assure Peixotto’s appointment. Peixotto’s pursuit of political
equality for Roumania’s Jews seemed quixotic at the time, but proved
prescient in light of historical hindsight.
Under its 1858 constitution, Roumania, which remained
nominally a part of the Ottoman Empire, granted equal political rights to
all of its Christian citizens. The constitution proclaimed that "the
enjoyment of these rights may [also] be extended to other religions by
legislative arrangements." In other words, if Jews were to be allowed
to vote or hold public office – and thus be able to defend their other
rights – the legislature would have to grant such rights explicitly. When
Grant appointed Peixotto to represent the United States in Roumania, he
understood that Peixotto’s primary mission would be to advocate on behalf
of Jewish political rights in Roumania. Grant was trying to live down his
own reputation for anti-Semitism, and American popular opinion at the time
mildly supported humanitarian battles for Jewish rights in benighted
countries overseas.
Peixotto arrived in Bucharest, the Roumainian capital,
with expectations characteristic of other "enlightened" American
and Western European Jews of his time: first, that Great Power diplomatic
efforts could persuade Roumania’s government to emancipate its own Jews
and, secondly, that progressive secular education would help Roumania’s
traditional Orthodox Jews assimilate and modernize so that they would
appear worthy of the same rights that English, German and French Jews
enjoyed. As Peixotto wrote to an American friend, he hoped to start schools
that would begin "disseminating modern thought, liberalizing the mind,
reaching into [Roumanian Jewry’s] hearts by showing them how they may
still be Jews without the frightful social costumes and customs which they
persist in retaining."
At first, Peixotto had little luck attaining either of
his goals. His efforts to win Roumanian citizenship for Jews were thwarted
by the reluctance of the legislature to act and, somewhat, the
unwillingness of the handful of successful, assimilated French-speaking
Roumainian Jews to advocate on behalf of their Yiddish-speaking brethren.
Nor was Peixotto able to raise the funds to organize secular schools for
Jewish students. After two years of begging his American and European
friends to support his personal expenses incurred while lobbying and his
outlays on Jewish schools, Peixotto was bankrupted and discouraged.
Pogroms in two provincial Roumanian cities in 1872, plus
attacks on his character in the Roumanian press, persuaded Peixotto to
abandon hope that Roumania’s nationalistic government might improve the
Jewish condition. Instead, Peixotto decided to encourage Roumanian Jewish
emigration to the United States. Without consulting his own government,
Peixotto broached the topic in a letter to the Roumanian government, which
greeted the proposal with enthusiasm. However, the Grant administration and
many European and American Jewish leaders generally opposed the idea. Some
argued that Roumania’s Jews would not want to leave. Others worried that
Peixotto’s proposal would make things worse for the Jews, who would now
be considered disloyal by their Christian neighbors. Others worried that,
realistically, few Roumanian Jews could afford the passage, and that they
might not be welcome in America. Secretary Fish considered recalling
Peixotto, but refrained because he feared signaling American indifference
to Roumanian Jewry’s fate.
However unpopular Peixotto’s plan was abroad, it was
strongly embraced by Roumania’s Jews. Thousands of individuals tried to
apply when they heard a rumor that Peixotto would pay the passage of any
Jew wishing to emigrate to America. Peixotto had no such resources
available, but he encouraged members of local Jewish communities to
establish emigration societies that might send individuals to America to
earn enough money to bring others over. American railroads and steamship
lines encouraged the dream by sending agents to promote emigration.
Assessing his efforts to encourage Jewish emigration
when he found his fight for constitutional reform thwarted by intractable
anti-Semitism, Peixotto wrote: "I, a free man, knowing my country and
its inhabitants as I do – knowing how she has assimilated hundreds of
thousands – nay – millions before, of foreign birth and equally
inferior in every way to these poor people – hope that it [the United
States] might at least hope to rescue some and possibly promote the
safety of all." Peixotto’s words prefigured those of another
American Sephard, Emma Lazarus, who also turned her heart to the plight of
Eastern Europe’s oppressed Jews.
Peixotto’s encouragement of emigration anticipated
America’s role as haven to nineteenth-century European Jewry, which
emigrated by the millions between 1887 and 1920. It also highlights what
that role might have been -- but was not -- to the vast majority of victims
of oppression in the 1930s and 1940s.
Sources: American Jewish
Historical Society |