July 28
100 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD
New York’s Jewish Quarter witnessed one of its most horrible scenes this week when Rebecca Greenberg, a mother of three, took her own life by slashing her throat and leaping out of a third-story window. The wife of Sam Greenberg, the woman lived with her three children, who range in age from 18 months to 7 years, in a small, dingy, three-room tenement on East Second Street. Sam, who worked as a cloak maker, made a decent living until he began to gamble day and night. Soon, Sam was in jail and Rebecca was evicted from the couple’s apartment. She worked in a number of different shops and moved to a number of different apartments, but life was impossible. After failing to get Sam out of jail, she simply gave up and committed suicide.
75 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD
Moyshe Litvakov, editor of the Soviet Yiddish daily Der emes, has been attacked for spreading Menshevik ideology and for forcing “national-democratic” ideals on Yiddish literature via the Minsk-based monthly, Der shtern. In the run-up to the Yiddish Proletarian Writers’ Conference, Der shtern wrote that the upcoming conference must put an end to Litvakovism in Yiddish literature and that the editor of the USSR’s largest Yiddish publication was guilty of the following, among other sins: obstructing the development of proletarian Yiddish literature; fomenting Menshevik and national-democratic literary tendencies, and ignoring public opinion.
On a current visit to the Soviet Union, famed British writer Bernard Shaw determined that the “Jewish problem” there is being solved in the best way possible and that it can be solved elsewhere by way of the same process: through mixed marriages. In an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Shaw said that when Jews marry Christians, it reduces the differences between the two sects. He added, “ The Jews should stop thinking they are better than other races, even though they are often correct in thinking they are better.”
50 YEARS AGO IN THE FORWARD
In a letter delivered this week to the United Nations Security Council, Israel has said that it no longer will be patient in the face of attacks by Arab terrorists, and that it will take whatever steps are necessary to protect its citizens and to prevent the wave of attacks that have been occurring, mostly from Jordanian territory. The same letter accuses the Jordanian government of inciting its citizens to attack Israel. The message to the Security Council is the second in two weeks that has informed them of Jordanians’ lack of interest in maintaining a truce.
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