JEWISH CHARITIES. 



BY LEE K. FRANKEL. 



[Lee K. Frankel, magager United Hebrew Charities'; born Philadelphia, August 13, 

 1867; instructor in chemistry, University of Pennsylvania, 1888-93; director Jewish 

 Chautauqua society, 1897-99j member and secretary Ellis Island commission, ap- 

 pointed by President Roosevelt, 1903; assistant secretary National Conference of 

 Charities and Corrections, 1902; in charge of summer school of philanthropy, Jewish 

 Chautauqua society, 1902-03; chairman committee on needy families in their homes, 

 National Conference of Charities and Corrections, 1905-06. Editor, Jewish Charity.] 



On April 26, 1655, the board of directors of the Dutch 

 West India company wrote to Governor Stuyvesant as fol- 

 lows: ''After many consultations, we have decided and re- 

 solved upon a certain petition made by certain Portuguese 

 Jews, that they shall have permission to sell and to trade in 

 New Netherland and to live and remain there, provided the 

 poor among them shall not become a burden to the company, 

 or to the community, but be supported by their own nation." 



The records of the department of charities of the city of 

 New York now show that in a Jewish population approxi- 

 mating 600,000 in Greater New York, in the almshouse oh 

 Blackwell's island there are seventeen pauper Jews, of whom 

 the majority were blind, idiotic or possessed of some peculiar 

 defect which prevented admission to existing Jewish charitable 

 institutions. 



What is true of New York Jews is true of their coreligion- 

 ists everywhere. The Jew has always cared for his own poor. 

 During the biblical period, the wise and humane laws of the 

 Mosaic code made the welfare of the unfortunate a civic duty, 

 and specified the manner in which assistance was to be given 

 in order to do the least harm to the recipient. After the de- 

 struction of the commonwealth, the common woe which fol- 

 lowed the dispersion brought into play new forms of charitable 

 effort to meet the need and distress occasioned by the acute 

 poverty of the people. It is the irony of fate to say that the 

 Jews provided for their poor during the middle ages and the 

 centuries which preceded and followed them. Jewish charity 

 was sectarian through compulsion. When every man's hand 

 was raised against the Jew, rich or poor, it followed that any 



57 



