“What is more, gentlemen, perhaps some of you don’t realize what popularity has come to the—sermon, and how many Jews have suddenly come to realize the beauty and the duty of the Kiddush on Friday night. I tell you it is a mighty serious problem, and say what you will, our conference, under present conditions, is being used as a medium by unscrupulous men, by the dozens and by the hundreds, to carry on a bootlegging business in the name of religion.... “Now you say there have been just small scandals here and there. A wine company in New York was raided last week and a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of wine was taken away by the authorities, supposed to be for ritual purposes. Don’t forget that rabbi after rabbi last week in New York, a few of whom I happen to know, and in Rochester, Buffalo, Flint, Michigan, and Port Huron, Michigan—in any number of small towns throughout the country, if you have read your papers carefully, you will find that Rabbi So-and-So has been arrested as a bootlegger.” The discussion of this subject by the other rabbis present was very interesting. There was a request that “personal experiences be debarred,” but some crept in. Rabbi Cohen, for example, was quite explicit. “Being one of those who opposed the whole Prohibition law, I am not in sympathy with the whole Prohibition law.... It seems to me that we rabbis ought not to stand in the way of our own members in their legitimate ways of getting wine for their homes.... If a member wants the wine, I would like to be in a position that he may have the wine, even though he may not absolutely have to have it.” Rabbi Cohen pronounced the typical Jewish view. If the fool Gentiles want to prohibit themselves from having liquor, let them do it, but if there is a loophole for the Jews such as the rabbinical permit offers, it should be used generously for any “member,” “even though he may not absolutely have to have it.” The pre-Prohibition Jewish liquor business is also the post-Prohibition Jewish liquor business. That fact is established by mountainous evidence. This does not mean, of course, that every bootlegger you meet is a Jew, nor that you will ever meet a Jew serving as an itinerant bootlegger. Unless you live in Chicago, New York or other large cities, an actual meeting with the Jew in this minor capacity will not be frequent. The Jew is the possessor of the wholesale stocks; he is the director of the underground railways that convey the stuff surreptitiously to the public; seldom does he risk his own safety in being the last man to hand the goods to the consumer and to take the money.