Perversion of Justice (in Serbia)

In one of the recent issues of Ha-Melits, which for unknown reasons I only received today, I read about Mr. W. Shor’s complaint¹ about the Serbian Jews’ refusal to accept Jews, persecuted in other lands, into Serbia and who therefore turned to the AIU (Alliance Israélite Universelle) organization, etc. Any intelligent reader knows that the affairs of our brethren here in Serbia are better known to me than to Mr. Shor in Vienna, and I therefore allow myself to say quite simply that his statements are false from beginning to end, and that he merely saw the shadow of the mountains² in a dream.

The truth of the matter is this: One of our Ashkenazic brethren, whom I have known for a while, and has been living here, was occupied for many years with the solution to the Jewish question in various lands, and suggested to me to write to the honorable Rabbi Dr. [Isaak] Rülf of Memel³ about sending some Jews who are persecuted in the northern lands to Serbia, since, in his opinion, they could easily be absorbed here as citizens. I know that the interlocuter [Shor] is mistaken, for I know the nature of the matter. The few Slavic [Ashkenazic] Jews who live in Serbia have not yet integrated with the [larger] Sephardic Jewish community among whom I reside; despite my desire to be silent so as not to appear biased, I must say that the blame for that [failed integration] is not with our Sephardic brethren. The Ashkenazim in our community do not contribute at all in the charitable work of our Sephardic community; nevertheless, those who benefit from the communal fund that was established to provide for the itinerate poor are only Ashkenazim—only on rare occasions does a Sephardi express his need and ask for help. If it comes to pass that many poor people come here—the Ashkenazim (who are in fact Polish and Hungarian) will stand aside and the burden of providing bread for the poor will fall on our Sephardic brethren (for rich people do not move here). Moreover, the strangers do not know the language of the land (Serbian) nor the language of our Sephardic brethren (Spanish [i.e., Ladino])—to whom can they turn for help? The Jewish population in Serbia is not that large, and aside from the community of Belgrade, there are only a few small and poor communities, and in [the rest of] the country, there are no Jews. If I call upon the Jews of Romania or Russia to come here, I would be recklessly risking lives; I will not do that. And especially, it is clear to me from experience that the growing [population of] Slavic Jews in our country will cause hatred of all Jews to grow, and we would provide no deliverance to our miserable persecuted brethren. From the day when certain ideas began to circulate in the Jewish world, simple logic came to be considered a sin, and I will not accept responsibility in such a crucial matter in order to please Mr. W. Shor and his ilk.

I spoke of these matters to my [aforementioned] honorable [Ashkenazic] friend and the honorable Rabbi Ya‘akov Alkalai,⁴ may God protect him, the leader of our community and a great lover of the Jewish people, who validated my argument. How astonished was I to suddenly see outraged statements in some Jewish periodicals regarding my suggestion. I know who made these statements; I raged and laughed⁵ uncomfortably. I did not want to protest in the newspapers in order to avoid alerting certain people to this matter. I only wrote discreetly to one of my acquaintances—who has worked very hard for the benefit of our brethren—and I proved to him with irrefutable evidence that it is a worthless plan, for the fate of our brethren will be evil and bitter if they come here. When I was in Vienna and Berlin, I discussed the matter with those capable of protesting and stopping this evil. The Sephardim did not approach the AIU and I believe that aside from the aforementioned R. Alkalai, who heard about these matters from me, not one Sephardi in our community knows anything about this. But truth be told, I have heard from the Ashkenazim that many are complaining about the irresponsible people who wish to bring a disaster on our [Sephardic] brethren.

Mr. Shor has an easy job: he sits in Vienna and expresses his outrage against our Sephardic brethren, suggesting that we should not consult with them and fabricating things that never took place. It is a great deficiency in our nation that our writers have nothing in the world but the four cubits of literature.⁶ If not for this, we would not see this perversion of justice and baseless accusations against our brethren.

I hope that these words of mine will suffice to withdraw a harsh judgment about a great number of our brethren and remove their unwarranted disgrace.

Dr. Shimon Bernfeld, rabbi of the community of Belgrade, 16 Kislev