The temptation was therefore strong to underscore the differences between German “Hebrews,” still widely respected, and “low-class Jews,” who were increasingly suspect. Thus the Rev. Dr. J. Silverman complained in an 1889 lecture at Temple Emanu-El that the newcomers were “a standing menace” because their “loud ways and awkward gesticulations are naturally repulsive and repugnant to the refined American sensibilities.” The “thoroughly acclimated American Jew,” the Hebrew Standard agreed, “is closer to the Christian sentiment around him than to the Judaism of these miserable darkened Hebrews.”
