The Jews of Chicago: From Shtetl to Suburb<\/a>, in which the complete story was laid out, and gave the photograph even greater significance. According to Cutler, relief committees in Chicago to help the Jews in Russia had been fundraising for the better part of a decade. Starting from the middle of the First World War, they had succeeding in raising millions of dollars for Jewish communities in Eastern Europe who were suffering from persecution, pogroms and wars. Chicago\u2019s wealthy Jews were deeply affected by slogans like \u201cSave our dying brothers!\u201d and contributed generously. However, for Jacob Loeb, one of the Chicago community\u2019s Jewish leaders, this was not enough. He wanted to hold an extraordinary fund-raiser that would collect a sizeable sum all at once. Loeb decided to actually implement one of those slogans that had so moved Chicago\u2019s wealthy: \u201cSuppose you were starving!\u201d<\/p>\nLoeb organized a gala dinner to which the cr\u00e8me de la cr\u00e8me of Illinois Jewish society, including Chicago\u2019s greatest industrialists and businessmen, were invited. On the evening of December 7, 1921, eight hundred men dressed in their Sunday best, gathered at the luxurious Drake Hotel in Chicago for what they were certain would be an exclusive social event at the center of which would be a lavish banquet. However, the guests were in for a surprise. As the last of them entered the hotel ballroom, the doors were locked. Jacob Loeb stepped up to the podium and began speaking: \u201cFor so many to dine in this place would mean an expenditure of thirty-five hundred dollars, which would be unwarrantable extravagance and in the face of starving Europe, a wasteful crime.\u00a0 Thirty-five hundred dollars will help to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and heal the sick. What right have we to spend on ourselves funds which have been collected for them? So that this money might be saved for them, you are brought here to this foodless banquet.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the midst of Loeb\u2019s admonishment, the astonished guests noticed that the tables, with the exception of the long slender candles that illuminated the strange event in which they now found themselves, were indeed bare. Their bewilderment was captured by the flash of Kaufman and Fabry\u2019s camera, and recorded in the photograph commemorating this unique event.<\/p>\n
The evening Loeb organized turned out to be a great success. Checkbooks were opened and fat were sums recorded for the Relief of Jewish War Sufferers Fund. That night the wealthy businessman Julius Rosenwald exceeded all others with a donation of one million dollars. This was an unprecedented sum, even for a philanthropist like Rosenwald, who later went on to establish the renowned Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago.<\/p>\n
Word of the huge donation reached US President Woodrow Wilson. Well aware of the attempts of American Jewry to help its brethren in Eastern Europe, the president immediately sent a telegram to Rosenwald thanking him for his generosity and for serving the American values of democracy and humanism.<\/p>\n
The liberality of Illinois\u2019s Jews would help numerous humanitarian and Zionist causes over the decades. However, it would appear that the success of the fundraising at the foodless banquet at the Drake Hotel, was never duplicated.<\/p>\n
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