At a banquet celebrating the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Anshe Sholom Congregation in 1925, Rabbi Saul Silber expressed anxieties about the future that were shared by Polish, Czech, and Italian community leaders. On this seemingly joyous occasion, he lamented:

What will become of our children? Do we want them to grow up pinochle players and poker sharks, or do we want them to grow up men and women who have an understanding of the problems of life, who know the history of their ancestors, who are proud Jews, and who will be a credit to us? Our children are running away from us … Let us build houses of worship, social centers and Hebrew schools, and let us provide the means for the coming generation to learn and to know.

During the 1920s, newspapers of the “new immigrant” groups, those who had emigrated from eastern and southern Europe in the decades between 1880 and World War I, were filled with concerns about the falling away of the flock. Czech “Jaroslavs” who became “Jacks,” Poles who dropped the “wicz” or the “ski,” Jews who intermarried, immigrants who packed away the once treasured handicrafts of the old country, all worried ethnic leaders. The move away from European customs, they feared, signified a decline in ethnic identity of consequence to their communities as well as themselves personally.