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JLJi ^ S O U 1 HE R N ISRAELITE
5
The Sage Of Washington
Louis Dembitz Brandeis, The Man Nobody Knows
(On the Occasion of His 75th Birthday)
By ROBERT STONE
Win n, fifteen years ago, the late Presi
dent Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis
Dembitz Brandeis for the post of Associate
j us tin* of the Supreme Court of the United
States, all railroad stocks listed on Wall
Street went down. The big business trusts
)f this country became alarmed and their
representatives in Congress tried their best
to prevent the Confirmation. Large sums
of money were spent to sift the Brandeis record, to investigate
his private life to find that one speck which would make Wilson
give up his selection. But nothing availed. Brandeis’ life and work,
sparkling clear, presented to his antagonists an irritating spot
lessness. There was so complete an absence of anything irregular
about the career of Louis D. Brandeis that the opposition had to
content itself with the charge of radicalism—a label for Brandeis’
liberal views.
Today, on his seventy-fifth birthday, we know Brandeis as one
of the outstanding jurists of all time, whose record in the Su
preme Court will rank second to none. Of his biography only the
milestones of his life are public knowledge. Brilliant studies at
Harvard; a highly successful legal career in New England; his
fights against industrial trusts and his defense of the rights of
the small man, which earned him the title of the People’s Attor
ney; a seven year period of Zionist leadership, begun in 1914
and concluded in 1921; an austere, frugal, almost hermit-like
life in Washington as Justice of the Supreme Court. The phases
of his juridicial achievements and his Jewish interests have been
extolled by more or less talented writers. Brandeis the man has
ne\er been interpreted. Jacob De Haas, who is said to be one ot
his close friends, wrote a book, “Louis Dembitz Brandeis,’ a
couple of years ago. It is a most comprehensive volume on the
role Brandeis played in the Zionist movement. It reveals nothing
of Brandeis, the man.
Brandeis, the sociologist and economist has become a symbol
of liberalism. He and Justice
Holmes, the two permanent dis
senters represent America’s pro
gressive interpretation of the law.
For those who have studied the
minority opinions written during
the last fifteen years by Brandeis
the Associate Justice—Brandeis
the jurist and social thinker is no
enigma. But to us laymen, the
Sage of Washington remains a
mystery, the man nobody knows.
' he late Senator Hoke Smith
' : Georgia—so De Hass tells—
a! ter a session with Brandeis sum
marized his impression as follows:
"I clieve Brandeis is the great-
‘-Jew in the world since Jesus
: s t.” The comment is interest-
It sheds light on the human
tion to Brandeis as regards
m-Jewish contact. The enthu-
1C Senator saw in Brandeis an
re—we are almost tempted
A'-goyish Jew. Brandeis did
make him think of Moses or
of the Jewish prophets. In-
Ively he compared him to
Christ, a Jew whom the
tians accept as a god. We
onvinced that this same Sen-
when first told that Brandeis
a Jew, did not believe his
He did not know that so
The seventy-fifth birthday of Louis Dembitz
Brandeis, first Jew to attain the office of
Justice of The Supreme Court of The United
States and one of the great liberal influences
in this country was celebrated recently. Mr.
Stone in his character sketch of Brandeis
writes of the man so few know and analyses
the pei’sonality no one has ever attempted to
interpret to the general public.
ing
m
hi-
sia
au
to
no
JUDGE LOUIS DEMBITZ BRANDEIS
puritanical, ascetic, ultra-sober a Bostonian
type could belong to the restless Semitic
race. As a matter of fact, till Brandeis ap
peared on the Jewish scene, the Jewish
world had never known so “un-Jewish”
a Jew.
It is a matter of historical accuracy that
Brandeis comes on both hrs paternal and
maternal side of aristocratic Jewish stock,
that his ancestry can be traced as far back as the beginning
ot the 16th century. Brandeis’ father was born in Czechoslovakia,
which makes Louis I). Brandeis’ Americanism less than a century
old. But it you face the tall, bony, thoroughly American-looking
.Justice today, you will be reminded more of the sturdy pioneer
days of the United States than of the caftaned Orthodox rabbis
trom whom this Kentucky born Bostonian springs.
Few anecdotes circulate about him. His private life has re
mained strictly private. The nosy Washington correspondents
always on the search for human material leave him severely alone.
One knows that the newspapermen who could make him talk
has still to be born. His intimate friends, and they are few,
would consider it disloyal to tell of his home life. In other words,
the biographer, with no access to the Brandeis diary—if there is
one—can merely speculate. The sphynxlike face of the Sage of
Washington has hardly relaxed for the last quarter of a century.
It has betrayed no secrets. Brandeis has become, during the last
fifteen years, the least accessible man in the United States.
If you speak to astute observers of the Washington-Merry-Go-
Round, they will give you such contrasting opinions about Louis
Dembitz Brandeis that you will feel more at sea than ever. You
will hear that Brandeis is a man without a soul, a born jurist
whose objectivity has stripped him of all human sentiments.
You will be told that Brandeis’ anonymous gift to charities—
or, rather, constructive social movements—have made him a poor
man. Some will insist that the great dissenter can only think in
figures and satistics and that he
has no sense for the imponderable
human equation. Others will whis
per the secrets that Brandeis is,
au fond, a sentimentalist, that his
stern, severe outlook on life is
merely a mask and that he is more
easily swayed by a suffering
mother than by all the statistics
in the world. If you do not weaken
you will be given a thousand dif
ferent views of the man nobody
knows. But all these characteriza
tions will be preceded by the foot
note: “This is my notion from
what I was told’’. No one will
dare tell you,” I know Brandeis to
be “so and so.”
In their humble apartment,
practically servantless, the Bran
deis couple live a simple life. From
his ivory tower Brandeis observes
the world, hardly leaving his study
except to go to the Supreme Court
Sessions. His modus of life is al
most Ghandi-like. Plain, modest
apparel, the most necessary furni
ture and food fit almost for an
ascetic. Only once in his life did
he venture out on the high sea of
adventure. That was during the
seven years of his Jewish leader
ship, when Jacob De Haas brought
into the (Please turn to Page 15)