Good Morning by Dr. S. M. Melamed
Daily Jewish Courier, Mar. 6, 1923
The rabbis in America are in a dilemma. They feel that, after the Tillinger scandal [a renegade Jew in New York who posed as a rabbi], something must be done to get rid of the pseudo rabbis who are a disgrace to American Jewry. They will ruin the whole institution of rabbinism in America. Something must be done to clean this camp, but who is to do it? The rabbis feel that it is the task of the laymen and the laymen believe that the rabbis must do it. This question would not even arise if there were organized Jewish kehiloth in America. There are no fake rabbis in Europe because there are organized kehiloth in all the cities. I repeat that as long as we in America do not have any organized kehiloth, chaos will prevail, and rabbinism and Jewish life will sink lower and lower. Is there any reason why we should not have a kehilah in Chicago?