TEMPLE ISRAEL, petitions and the jewish community in portsmouth
In 2005, research in local newspapers found references to conversations between Russian Jewish shopkeepers in downtown Portsmouth and members of the Russian delegation who had arrived on August 9, 1905 for negotiations to end the Russo-Japanese War. Senior diplomat Witte, his secretary Korostovetz and other members of the delegation heard from their former countrymen, in Russian, about the much better conditions Jews enjoyed in America while Jews were still suffering pogroms and other persecutions in Russia.
In 1905 there were just 26 Jewish households in Portsmouth, living and working in a population of 14,000. Yet for 30 days the eyes of the world, especially the Jewish world, were upon the seacoast city. Temple Israel itself was founded as a congregation shortly after the negotiations between Russia and Japan had produced the Portsmouth Peace Treaty.
Although the first Jewish family in the area arrived in New Castle from Palestine in 1693, the great wave of Russian Jewish immigration came in 1880-1914, when 3.2 million Russians (90 percent Jewish) arrived in the US. At the time Jews were outcasts in Russia – literally confined to an area of Poland and the Ukraine called “The Pale” – and deprived of most rights – they could not own land, they could not hold government or professional jobs, and only 10 percent were allowed to attend school.
When Bernard Michaelson told Korostovetz that “his family were all educated” it was the contrast to what he had known at home that made this fact so important. Michaelson also said, “A man with five cents in his pocket in this country is better off than a millionaire in Russia.” When Korostovetz asked Nathan Raymond from Max Goodman’s store on Market Street, “You are both American citizens?” and Mr. Raymond and Louis Slosburg replied “Yes, we are voters and honor the flag of America,” one might read something extra in Korostovetz’ reply, “You could do nothing better, and I am pleased that you can say so.”
Temple Israel’s historical documents at the Portsmouth Athenaeum list these families living in Portsmouth in 1905, the year the Temple was organized: Mayer Alkon, Harry Cohen, Philip Cohen, Abram Dreller, John Dreller, Lois Gerber, Max Gilman, Max Goodman, Moses Goodman, Jacob Gouse, Julius Gouse, Abraham Halprin, Sam Katz, David Levi, Nathan Levine, Joseph Polimer, Samuel Polimer, Morris Port, Nathan Raymond, Reverend Jacob Segal, Samuel Shapiro, Meyer Siegel, Harry Sussman (whose business was the Dye House of Bernard Michaelson) Bell Sussman, Louis Slosburg. Wolf Weinstein, Samuel Yoffee, Harry Zeidman and Julius Zeidman.
The Russian diplomats also received two important delegations arguing for an end to the pogroms and other persecutions Jews were then suffering in Russia: international banker Jacob Schiff on August 19 and representatives from the Lawrence MA Jewish community on August 21. Jacob Schiff was the head of the international banking concern Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. To protest the pogroms and other outrages the Russian government was wielding against Russian Jews, he had convinced fellow American bankers not to fund Russian war bonds. He had been less successful in Europe where the Rothschilds, for example, feared that such actions would make it harder on their Jewish countrymen at home. With Schiff at Wentworth were Oscar Strauss (whom TR later made Secretary of Commerce – the first Jewish Cabinet member), the industrialist Adolph Lewisohn, Adolph Kraus of Chicago (later president of the executive committee of the national B’nai B’rith) and Isaac Seligman of J&W Seligman & Co. an international banker with offices in New York and London.
It may be that the encounters between the Russian delegation and the various Jewish communities who expressed their feelings about the Russian government’s treatment of Jews to Witte were in some ways as pivotal as the formal Treaty negotiations that had brought Russia and Japan to Portsmouth. While the Treaty addressed a redistribution of the balance of power in Asia and established President Theodore Roosevelt as a Nobel Peace Prize winning diplomat, the Jewish influence may have affected how Sergius Witte as Russian Prime Minister later helped modify the attitude of the Czar towards the oppressed – Russian workers and Jews alike.
In 1905 there were just 26 Jewish households in Portsmouth, living and working in a population of 14,000. Yet for 30 days the eyes of the world, especially the Jewish world, were upon the seacoast city. Temple Israel itself was founded as a congregation shortly after the negotiations between Russia and Japan had produced the Portsmouth Peace Treaty.
Although the first Jewish family in the area arrived in New Castle from Palestine in 1693, the great wave of Russian Jewish immigration came in 1880-1914, when 3.2 million Russians (90 percent Jewish) arrived in the US. At the time Jews were outcasts in Russia – literally confined to an area of Poland and the Ukraine called “The Pale” – and deprived of most rights – they could not own land, they could not hold government or professional jobs, and only 10 percent were allowed to attend school.
When Bernard Michaelson told Korostovetz that “his family were all educated” it was the contrast to what he had known at home that made this fact so important. Michaelson also said, “A man with five cents in his pocket in this country is better off than a millionaire in Russia.” When Korostovetz asked Nathan Raymond from Max Goodman’s store on Market Street, “You are both American citizens?” and Mr. Raymond and Louis Slosburg replied “Yes, we are voters and honor the flag of America,” one might read something extra in Korostovetz’ reply, “You could do nothing better, and I am pleased that you can say so.”
Temple Israel’s historical documents at the Portsmouth Athenaeum list these families living in Portsmouth in 1905, the year the Temple was organized: Mayer Alkon, Harry Cohen, Philip Cohen, Abram Dreller, John Dreller, Lois Gerber, Max Gilman, Max Goodman, Moses Goodman, Jacob Gouse, Julius Gouse, Abraham Halprin, Sam Katz, David Levi, Nathan Levine, Joseph Polimer, Samuel Polimer, Morris Port, Nathan Raymond, Reverend Jacob Segal, Samuel Shapiro, Meyer Siegel, Harry Sussman (whose business was the Dye House of Bernard Michaelson) Bell Sussman, Louis Slosburg. Wolf Weinstein, Samuel Yoffee, Harry Zeidman and Julius Zeidman.
The Russian diplomats also received two important delegations arguing for an end to the pogroms and other persecutions Jews were then suffering in Russia: international banker Jacob Schiff on August 19 and representatives from the Lawrence MA Jewish community on August 21. Jacob Schiff was the head of the international banking concern Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. To protest the pogroms and other outrages the Russian government was wielding against Russian Jews, he had convinced fellow American bankers not to fund Russian war bonds. He had been less successful in Europe where the Rothschilds, for example, feared that such actions would make it harder on their Jewish countrymen at home. With Schiff at Wentworth were Oscar Strauss (whom TR later made Secretary of Commerce – the first Jewish Cabinet member), the industrialist Adolph Lewisohn, Adolph Kraus of Chicago (later president of the executive committee of the national B’nai B’rith) and Isaac Seligman of J&W Seligman & Co. an international banker with offices in New York and London.
It may be that the encounters between the Russian delegation and the various Jewish communities who expressed their feelings about the Russian government’s treatment of Jews to Witte were in some ways as pivotal as the formal Treaty negotiations that had brought Russia and Japan to Portsmouth. While the Treaty addressed a redistribution of the balance of power in Asia and established President Theodore Roosevelt as a Nobel Peace Prize winning diplomat, the Jewish influence may have affected how Sergius Witte as Russian Prime Minister later helped modify the attitude of the Czar towards the oppressed – Russian workers and Jews alike.
jacob schiff visits witte
On April 19, 1903, Orthodox Easter Sunday, armed thugs attacked the Jewish community of Kishineff in the Ukraine. Accounts of how many were killed, injured or made homeless range from the hundreds to the thousands. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “For three days it went on, glutting itself with bloodshed, torture and nameless barbarities, unchecked by the officials… The story of the massacre is appalling. Its proportions and the indisposition or the inability of the officers to protect the unoffending victims assuredly merit the attention of the world.”
The outrage in response to this pogrom (not the first, or the last) – was universal. Jacob Schiff (left) was the head of the international banking concern Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. By June, he had organized a delegation to visit President Theodore Roosevelt, demanding an official US Government complaint. Knowing that the Czar would reject such a message as diplomatic interference in Russia’s internal affairs, Roosevelt instead played a master hand: he asked Secretary of State John Hay to send a cable that included the signed condemnation to the American ambassador in Russia, asking if the Czar would accept such a petition. He knew the Czar would not – but also knew that the international press would publish the message in full and achieve the desired effect. Thousands of people signed the petition at rallies, lectures and protests nationwide. When the final document was filed at the State Department, it contained 12,544 signatures.
To protest the pogroms and other outrages the Russian government was wielding against Russian Jews, he had convinced fellow American bankers not to fund Russian war bonds. He had been less successful in Europe where the Rothschilds, for example, feared that such actions would make it harder on their Jewish countrymen at home. With Schiff at Wentworth were Oscar Strauss (whom TR later made Secretary of Commerce – the first Jewish Cabinet member), the industrialist Adolph Lewisohn, Adolph Kraus of Chicago (later president of the executive committee of the national B’nai B’rith) and Isaac Seligman of J&W Seligman & Co. an international banker with offices in New York and London.
Recalling the meeting with Witte to the national B’nai B’rith assembly, Adolph Kraus commented that in 1905 some members of the American Jewish community thought that their complaints to the Czar should be more deferential, while others felt the time was now to take a more forceful stand. Clearly Schiff, whom Witte described as pounding on the table in the room at Wentworth By the Sea where they met, took the more radical position.
In Portsmouth, throughout the month of August, members of the Russian delegation were confronted with the contrast between how members of the local Jewish community lived and how the Jews in their homeland fared. In these years when 3.2 million Russians (90 percent Jewish) arrived in the US, Jews were outcasts in Russia – literally confined to an area of Poland and the Ukraine called “The Pale” – and deprived of most rights – they could not own land, they could not hold government or professional jobs, and only 10 percent were allowed to attend school. When Korostovetz recalled a conversation he had with Bernard Michaelson of the BM Dye House on Penhallow Street who said that “his family were all educated,” it was the contrast to what he had known at home that made this fact so important. Michaelson also said, “A man with five cents in his pocket in this country is better off than a millionaire in Russia.”
Kirill Finkelshteyn, a recently arrived Russian in Boston has assisted with research on a member of the Russian delegation – Gregory Vilenkin, who attended the same St. Petersburg school as his father. Vilenkin was Jewish, from an old Russian family and was married to the daughter of one of the Seligman bankers in London. Isaac Seligman who came to Wentworth with Schiff was his wife’s uncle. Vilenkin was sent to New York in 1904 as a financial agent of the Russian government, hoping he could favorably influence American bankers to support Russian war bonds. It was Witte as the Russian Minister of Finance in 1895 who had taken a personal interest in Vilenkin’s career, making him assistant financial agent of the Russian government in London. Perhaps because Witte’s wife, whom he adored, was Jewish, too.
At one point in the Wentworth meeting Schiff pointed to Vilenkin (who acted in Portsmouth as Witte’s interpreter) and said to Witte, “Will you please tell me why you as a Russian have all the rights in that country which are given to any one and why this man has no rights whatsoever?” According to Kraus, who reported the meeting in the Bnai Brith Annual Report and Korostovetz who recalled the meeting in his diary, the immediate result was what the Jewish delegation sought: that Witte would relay their message to the Czar.
Three days after the meeting, Kraus received a letter from Vilenkin saying, “I am officially instructed by his Excellency Mon de Witte to inform you and the gentlemen who met him with you, that after your departure he cabled to St. Petersburg … to inquire whether any changes were made … concerning ‘the rights of the Jews to elect and be elected in the proposed National Assembly.’ His Excellency received by cable answer that… Jews will have the same right as the rest of the population to elect and be elected in the National Assembly.” In October 1905, as Prime Minister of Russia (and after earning the title of Count for concluding the Portsmouth Peace Treaty in September), Witte convinced the Czar to accept the “four freedoms” Manifesto to end the mass workers’ strike and moderate the government’s harsh treatment and denial of human rights.
The outrage in response to this pogrom (not the first, or the last) – was universal. Jacob Schiff (left) was the head of the international banking concern Kuhn, Loeb & Co. in New York. By June, he had organized a delegation to visit President Theodore Roosevelt, demanding an official US Government complaint. Knowing that the Czar would reject such a message as diplomatic interference in Russia’s internal affairs, Roosevelt instead played a master hand: he asked Secretary of State John Hay to send a cable that included the signed condemnation to the American ambassador in Russia, asking if the Czar would accept such a petition. He knew the Czar would not – but also knew that the international press would publish the message in full and achieve the desired effect. Thousands of people signed the petition at rallies, lectures and protests nationwide. When the final document was filed at the State Department, it contained 12,544 signatures.
To protest the pogroms and other outrages the Russian government was wielding against Russian Jews, he had convinced fellow American bankers not to fund Russian war bonds. He had been less successful in Europe where the Rothschilds, for example, feared that such actions would make it harder on their Jewish countrymen at home. With Schiff at Wentworth were Oscar Strauss (whom TR later made Secretary of Commerce – the first Jewish Cabinet member), the industrialist Adolph Lewisohn, Adolph Kraus of Chicago (later president of the executive committee of the national B’nai B’rith) and Isaac Seligman of J&W Seligman & Co. an international banker with offices in New York and London.
Recalling the meeting with Witte to the national B’nai B’rith assembly, Adolph Kraus commented that in 1905 some members of the American Jewish community thought that their complaints to the Czar should be more deferential, while others felt the time was now to take a more forceful stand. Clearly Schiff, whom Witte described as pounding on the table in the room at Wentworth By the Sea where they met, took the more radical position.
In Portsmouth, throughout the month of August, members of the Russian delegation were confronted with the contrast between how members of the local Jewish community lived and how the Jews in their homeland fared. In these years when 3.2 million Russians (90 percent Jewish) arrived in the US, Jews were outcasts in Russia – literally confined to an area of Poland and the Ukraine called “The Pale” – and deprived of most rights – they could not own land, they could not hold government or professional jobs, and only 10 percent were allowed to attend school. When Korostovetz recalled a conversation he had with Bernard Michaelson of the BM Dye House on Penhallow Street who said that “his family were all educated,” it was the contrast to what he had known at home that made this fact so important. Michaelson also said, “A man with five cents in his pocket in this country is better off than a millionaire in Russia.”
Kirill Finkelshteyn, a recently arrived Russian in Boston has assisted with research on a member of the Russian delegation – Gregory Vilenkin, who attended the same St. Petersburg school as his father. Vilenkin was Jewish, from an old Russian family and was married to the daughter of one of the Seligman bankers in London. Isaac Seligman who came to Wentworth with Schiff was his wife’s uncle. Vilenkin was sent to New York in 1904 as a financial agent of the Russian government, hoping he could favorably influence American bankers to support Russian war bonds. It was Witte as the Russian Minister of Finance in 1895 who had taken a personal interest in Vilenkin’s career, making him assistant financial agent of the Russian government in London. Perhaps because Witte’s wife, whom he adored, was Jewish, too.
At one point in the Wentworth meeting Schiff pointed to Vilenkin (who acted in Portsmouth as Witte’s interpreter) and said to Witte, “Will you please tell me why you as a Russian have all the rights in that country which are given to any one and why this man has no rights whatsoever?” According to Kraus, who reported the meeting in the Bnai Brith Annual Report and Korostovetz who recalled the meeting in his diary, the immediate result was what the Jewish delegation sought: that Witte would relay their message to the Czar.
Three days after the meeting, Kraus received a letter from Vilenkin saying, “I am officially instructed by his Excellency Mon de Witte to inform you and the gentlemen who met him with you, that after your departure he cabled to St. Petersburg … to inquire whether any changes were made … concerning ‘the rights of the Jews to elect and be elected in the proposed National Assembly.’ His Excellency received by cable answer that… Jews will have the same right as the rest of the population to elect and be elected in the National Assembly.” In October 1905, as Prime Minister of Russia (and after earning the title of Count for concluding the Portsmouth Peace Treaty in September), Witte convinced the Czar to accept the “four freedoms” Manifesto to end the mass workers’ strike and moderate the government’s harsh treatment and denial of human rights.
lawrence, ma delegation visits witte
delegation from Lawrence, MA presented an elaborately illuminated resolution, in Russian, signed by 612 members of the Lawrence Jewish community. Walter Rushforth, editor and Arthur Bailey, both from the Illustrated Journal of Lawrence presented the resolution to Witte and Rosen. It read in part, “… we, Jewish residents of Lawrence, extend to [the Russian envoys] a brotherly welcome and devoutly pray that success may follow their efforts…We are not unmindful of the powerful nation you represent nor of the high and noble services you have rendered your country and humanity in the past. Though Americans, we have the natural love of all people for the land of their birth and it is our earnest--our constant prayer and hope that the white dove of peace shall find an abiding place as a result of your deliberations, and that prosperity and happiness shall take the place of the bloodshed, riot, and discontent, not only at home but abroad everywhere." Signed: Louis H. Ginsberg, Samuel Kopelman, Arron Berenson, Harris Gruber, Jacob Klein, and many others.
TEMPLE ISRAEL CHERRY TREE & SHOFAR
The Temple Israel's Portsmouth Peace Treaty Living Memorial Cherry Tree honors the Russian Jewish citizens of Portsmouth who welcomed the 1905 Russian diplomats in their own language. According to a newspaper story, the diplomats shopped downtown, shopping in stores run by members of the Russian Jewish community. When asked by the diplomats, "How do you like America?" they replied, "We will always love Mother Russia; but here my children can go to school." Shortly after this experience in the summer of 1905, the Russian Jewish community in Oct 1905 founded Temple Israel. Planting the cherry tree was one of the last, and personally important, things Rabbi David Senter did for Temple Israel.