On Indian Schools and the Jews of Russia

In the 1870’s some bureaucrat did the math and discovered that it would be cheaper to turn Indians into regular Americans than to kill them. The result was Indian Boarding Schools, the first in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, later a dozen others across the country.

Even assuming a nobility of intention, the process of recruitment was appalling. Troops entered villages, rounded up terrified children, put them onto sealed trains and took them far from their weeping parents. Upon arrival at the school their hair was cut and their Indian clothes burnt, replaced by “American” clothing. This merely increased the separation trauma. At some point early in the process there was an arbitrary selection. Children were assigned a number, 1,2,3,4. All the ones became Methodist, the twos Baptist, the threes Presbyterian, I don’t remember what became of the fours, but my guess is, “not Jewish.”

The school day began at 5:00 with the donning of military attire, military marching, military inspections etc. In class the children were taught math, spelling, history, all of which is useful, and, yes, patriotism as well. In the afternoon the boys learned a manual skill, the girls received domestic and office training. Participation in sports was encouraged, songs were sung. “English only” was the rule, strictly enforced. Upon graduation the Indians had a trade, thought in English and were considered civilized. If they chose to they could return to the reservation, but there was nothing there for them anymore, other than their parents, who now lived in a foreign world, thought uncivilized by their own children. Success, in the eyes of the bureaucrat.

The obvious comparison is to Nazi treatment of Jews, at least in terms of “recruitment” and “selection.” One obvious difference, though, is that whereas American kidnappers thought they were doing the Indians a good (if unappreciated) turn, the Germans were out to annihilate not only a culture, but the physical existence of a people. Similar tactics were attempted in czarist Russia. Nicholas I (1825-1855) decreed that all Jews must wear Russian clothing and trim their beards in the Russian manner. Crueler, he initiated a policy whereby Jewish youths as young as age 12 were kidnapped and placed in army camps (cantons) where over the next six years peasant sergeants would try to force them to give up their religion. Later he recruited an American rabbi to set up a system of Jewish schools where children would be taught the Russian language, history, etc. When the young rabbi realized that the schools were to be a front for proselytizing Jews, he fled the country and the scheme came to naught.

But for all the trauma, for all the negative comparisons, we must still ask—was what Americans did to the Indians worse than life in an English public (boarding) school, designed for the upper classes? Same military grooming, same physical and mental abuse, same tearful early separation from parents and a life loved. The difference, of course, is that the English voluntarily sent their children knowing that for all the cruelty they would encounter, their sons would emerge as leaders of society. Individual Indians, stripped of their culture, were given a trade. A fair exchange? Maybe. Maybe not.

So, the historian in me knows that questions remain—Were the methods used as bad as the results were good? Were the Indians better off living in poverty and disease on the reservation or forcibly removed from their parents’ love and brought hundreds of miles from home to learn to be American. (I suppose that from their perspective it’s an unfair either/or. The best thing that could have happened was if Europeans had never come to America.) The pragmatist in me, the assimilated Jew that I am, says the Indians benefited despite the trauma of the experience. Having a trade (and later, after the era of compulsory “recruitment” taking college preparatory courses) is better than being an unskilled worker. The humanist in me (also the product of being an assimilated Jew) says that if the Indians were doing no harm (their principal crime was being in the way) they ought to have been left alone to live their culture as they had, undisturbed, for centuries. If I knew the correct response to this quandary, I’d give it to you, but I am sunk in my ignorance as to what are the divine intentions. No doubt many of my readers are not, and will inform me of the truth, which will set me free.

On Rabbis against living wage

Returning from schul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah I was happy to see that my copy of the Forward had arrived in the mail. After lunch, my stomach full, my spirits high, I perused the front page and saw a story about “Top rabbis of Conservative Judaism” who promoted a plan to encourage women to go to the mikveh. “Very nice,” I said to myself, totally useless, but very nice. Women who already go to the mikveh will continue to do so and those who don’t, still won’t. But then, just below this courageously ground breaking legislation I read that “In a separate vote, the committee failed to pass an opinion requiring Jewish business owners to pay hourly workers a living wage and, when possible, to hire union workers.” I glanced at the date of the paper. Maybe this was an early or a late April Fools’ Day joke or an early or late Purim edition. But no, it was the September 22 edition. I read further.

Of the 25 members of the Jewish Law and Standards committee, only three rabbis voted that workers employed by Jews should get a living wage; 10 abstained; seven voted against and five were absent. The principal opponent of the resolution seemed to have been one Paul Plotkin, described (I hope erroneously) as religious leader of Margate, Florida’s Temple Beth Am. The proposal would have made a nice sermon, he patronizingly said, but it’s not suitable for an halachic argument. The Forward explains that with increased affluence, today’s Jews are less sympathetic to the plight of workers. This may be so, but it’s a circumstance to be cured, not pandered to.

These rabbis who voted “no” or were brave enough to abstain, have they never read the haftarah from Yom Kippur, the one that contains these words: “Is this the fast that I have chosen? … This is My chosen fast: to loosen all the bonds that bind men unfairly, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke. Share your bread with the hungry; take the homeless into your home. Clothe the naked when you see him, do not turn away from people in need.” Have they never sat at a Seder and discussed the ruthless exploitation of the workers known as Hebrew slaves in the days of pharaoh? Have they not intoned the words “We were slaves in Egypt, not just our remote ancestors?” Don’t they say, “All who are hungry let them come and eat”? Or maybe these Conservative rabbis, fat and happy, representing their affluent congregants, protecting their paychecks, playing golf in Margate while withholding straw from those who need it most read from a different Haggadah, the one that says, “Hey, we’ve got ours, let’s bring in some more Mexicans to whom we can pay bupkiss.” That Hagadah.

Had they no parents or grandparents who lived in slums on the Lower East Side (now the trendy Lower East Side, I’m told)? Wasn’t it the unions that brought the workers the American dream of home ownership, of the opportunity of a college education for their children? Didn’t greater prosperity come when more workers had more money to spend on more goods and services? Don’t these rabbis who claim to be religious leaders know that they are in an exactly congruent position with the founding fathers of the United States? And I don’t mean that as a compliment either. Those wise men decided that it would be better for the country if they allowed the continuation of slavery. No slavery, bad economy. Our (well, not my) rabbis who argue that the “pro-labor paper would create an undue hardship on Jewish business owners” are arguing exactly as the anti-abolitionists argued in the 18th and 19th century.

As the chief proponent of the paper on “Work, Workers and the Jewish Owner” Rabbi Jill Jacobs put it, “We ask people to do all sorts of things that put them at an economic disadvantage. That’s because we believe in Jewish law and we don’t believe that making money is the highest Jewish law.” Brava, rabbi Jacobs, Brava. You stand for Judaism as an ethical norm, not an upwardly mobile social class looking down at those below.

And you? Where is your heart this penitential season? With the exploitation of labor, or with Isaiah? To me, the choice is obvious. If capitalism is going to succeed, wages must be equitable. Workers are what give the things value. Ask Adam Smith. Ask HaShem. They’ll tell you.