American Tewish Archives - American Jewish Archives

THE IMAGE OF AMERICA IN TWO EAST EUROPEAN HEBREW PERIODICALS 14.5
described as having an active economic life with abundant produc-
tivity, and in commenting on her need for developing foreign mar-
kets, one article reported:
This matter [the developing of commerce with Mexico] has much good
implicit within it, not only for America, but also for other nations. For
America is still spacious enough [to be able] to gather together within her
thousands and thousands of immigrants drawn from all the ends of the earth,
and with the flourishing of commerce and national wealth in America,
salvation shall go out from her to all the world.2
The axiom that America possessed abundant opportunity for all,
without distinction as to race or creed, implied two corollaries:
America was a land of freedom and a land of work. Thus a colony
in North Dakota wrote:
. . . . It is our strong hope that in the course of some years we will be able
to support our families honorably and comfortably and not with trouble,
and we will be citizens of this free state which is the most fortunate of all
lands.3
The freedom of America was, however, seen as a mixed blessing.
On the one hand, the background of persecution in Europe made the
liberty of America seem most desirable:
. . . in a new motherland . . . they [the newcomers] will go out to freedom
from laws of iniquity and oppression to live as citizens in a free country
and to find sustenance in it.4
On the other hand, the new liberty was considered an inducement
to the breaking of traditional bonds and a threat to religion. Hence,
in connection with the famous "shrimp cocktail" served at a Hebrew
Union College banquet, one correspondent wrote:
The abundant freedom which is practiced in America, the land of freedom,
can sometimes be like an ever swelling breach in the wall of religion
[which] destroys its foundations.5
Ibid., p. 237.
3 Ibid,, p. loo.
4 Hatzfirah, XI, 263.
Hamelitz, XIX, I z z 3 ; David Philipson, My Life as an American Jew (Cincinnati, I g41),
p. 2 3, gives an account of "the tereja banquet."