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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)