A merieam !elvish Periodical Curter

CLIFTON ATY.N01 • CINCINNATI 10, 011I0

WEPerRon; Arm (A HON las

He begins to despise himself as one he published any new poems, and even
worshipped by all free peoples in his-
physical courage and physical, who has prostituted sacred, solemn among these the best one begins with
tory.
re of no use, prowess of the prayers to no purpose. In the Arvis the words: "Let my lot be with those
feeewe
(g l'rayer) he gives this bitter that are silent . . ."
lather an object of ridicule. The Evenin
body
r
During the war he delivered a re-
ly true heroism the Ghetto ack- resume of all his life's work: "I went
On
nowledged was that of self-suppres-lout to seek your farthing—and I lost markable lecture in Moscow. The
s snit dogged obedience to the Will my own golden sovereign; and Ash- subject was: "Aggadah and Halls-
s io . Malik revolts, and becomes a' medal, the devil, rises before me and chah." Those are the names of the
a loe
two elements constituting the Tal-
inger of triumphant, invincible, re- jeers in cruel mockery."
s
bellious Manhood, of the arm that
And the poet decides "to go." "I mud; Aggadah its poetic element, le-
lds the sword, of muscles of gran- b are failed, " he says in one of his last gends, proverbs, parables,—Hallachah
w ie
Re and sinews of steel. The Dead of poems before the Silence,—•the the its stern philosophy and legislation.
the Desert published in 1902, is cer- , vitt is not mine—my hammer has The gist of the lecture was: we have
tainly the best of his long poems. It found no anvil, and my axe has fallen all of as been worshippers of the Ag-
a vision of those rebels—rebels , upon a decayed trunk. Well, I submit gadah, dreamers of dreams, who
is
thought we were living in a world of
, accordi n to f ate; I s ha ll dga th er m
y iniments
ple
fate—whoGod's
God and hallenged
legends. I have made the same mis-
own
again st Gd
ble, cg in my belt, an go as I came —a day
the
to mmand
and Moses' word, and aban• laborer who has not even earned his take. It is time for us to awake.
co
the pillar of fire, went alone hire. Woods shall be my friends, and There is no room yet in our life for
Boned by
to death in battle with the Aniale- the valleys my home; and Y01.1—you Aggadic vagaries—and we need no
kites. Bialik sees them, asleep for are but rust and rot, and the Tempest poets. This is the time of the Halle-
ever in the sands of the desert, r!, of tomorrow shall scatter you like chah of drab realities, of prosaic
.
thought and work.
mighty camp of silent in and , dust
lies n u-
Early in 1923, Bialik's fiftieth an-
With this bitter farewell began the
he clothes the powerful I
summons
he h
n mcence;
agn ifi
fourth stage of Ilialik's trajectory- niversary was celebrated throughout
per hum a
awaken th em and, f SO far, the last. The less said about the Jewish dispora. He refused to be
o
the tempest to
present at any of these functions; his
n awakened, they sing . a ym n
b
lc ti
a I m t's • .1 ti • t.
wh e
n of majestic pride, of dom,.
during the lost twelve years, has only answer to the flood of enthusias-
Revolt, • hymn
unbending will to struggle against

a

•

-

will play the Tau Beta Midgets,
Northern High School, corner of they ?. will be camp movies. Last, but
Woodward and Owen avenues. A then l least, there will be eats—cake,
not
very entertaining program has been
y and ice cream.
arranged. Among the numbers to be cand
presented will be a play entitled
Has: dnut Tournament:
"Fraternity," by the West Side Jew-
TI h e Young Fenkell A. C.'s and the
ish Leaders of Delray. Mrs. Mary
You ng Sportsmen had an interesting
Shubow will give a recitation in Yid-
Harl n lnut tournament at the Custer
dish, vocal and instrumental music
Scha of on Wednesday, March 24. The
as well as aesthetic dances and color-
two winners of each club were given
ful tableaux significant of Passover
a pa and of nuts, the price of which
will be presented. The Jewish Cen-
was covered by the respective club
ters Orchestra of which Jack Weiss-
trea suries.
berg is leader will open and close the
program with appropriate numbers.

tic greetings from every corner of the
earth was a short poem in which the
same refrain of renunciation is re-
peated: "I am not a poet nor a pro-
phet, I am a hewer of wood . . ."
The name we have given to this
period is Silent Work. Bialik is not
only a gifted poet, he is also a great
worker. In his despair, he did not
turn his back on his people, nor even
upon its Renaissance movement: he
still works for it, but no longer in
the role of a prophet who leads: he
simply plays the part of an ordinary
toiler who executes. His remarkable
activity as editor and publisher of
classical and school literature in He- Midget Championship i
brew need not be reviewtsl in an es-
D. J. I. Midgets expect to play the
say dedicated to the poet; as the poet's
Tau Beta Midgets fur the champion-
story, for the moment, is told.
ship of their division on Thursday
night, April 8. if they defeat the
Dodge Community House Midgets on
Saturday, April 3, also win over Tau
Beta, they will have an indisputable
Passover Program:
claim to the title of the Midget Di-
The Passover program of the Jew- vision of the Inter-Settlement Bas-
«
ish Centers Association wi
Wednesday evening, April 17, at the ketball League. On the same night

CENTERS ASS'N

JE' WISH COMPLAINTS
Cl USE ASTONISHMENT

Poll sls Prime Minister Skrsynski 3o

Informs Jewish Deputies.

'ARSAW. — (J. T. A.) — Aston-

ishn lent at the complaints of the dele-
gat i on of Jewish deputies, represent-
ing the Club cf Jewish Deputies, was
expl reseed by Count Alexander Skr-
ZYM iiki Polish prime minister, when

he received Deputies Hartglass and
Farbstein. The delegation called on
the prime minister in accordance with
a decision of the Club of Jewish
Deputies to present to the prime min-
ister the demands of the Jewish pop-
ulation before a decision is taken by
the club to proceed to opposition to
the government. Deputies Hartglass
and Farbstein expressed the resent-
ment of the club that the Polish Jew-
ish agreement has been unfulfilled,
particularly with regard to the unof-
ficial application of the numerus
clauses anti the clausus of the indus-
trial bill pending in the Seim.
Count Skrzynski proposed that the
matter be taken up at a special con-
ference of cabinet members which
will be held next week, at which Stan-
islaw Grabski, minister of education,
and Osiecki, minister of commerce,
will be present.
At a general meeting of the club
held after the audience with the
prime minister, it was decided to
postpone further action.

man and God.
This tale of mighty ancestors was
e
evidently told in order to stir the
descendants by shame. Less than
year passed after the publication of
the Dead of the Desert—and a tragic
howed, both to the poet, and to
s
event
the crowd, how deep was the gulf be-
tween the ancestors and the children.
That event was the Kishinev pogrom

1

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rinting

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6

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ti.nett .4

in 1903.
The future historian of the Jewish
National Movement will certainly rec-
ognize those three days of massacre
in the13essarabian capital as mark-
ing, in many ways, the birth of a new
Jewish mentality. For the first time
in modern Jewish history the main
feeling provoked in the community
was not that of horror and grief. It
was something else, some new atti-
tude which as yet had no popular
name. Bialik found the name. The
most famous of his poems—The City
of Slaughter, sums up the effect of
a massacre in the following words:
"Great is the sorrow, and great is the
shame,—and which of the two is
greater—answer thou 0 son of Man!"
The main lesson of the pogrom was
sham, the humiliation of a people who
allow themselves to be beaten and
killed. The indignation vibrating in
every line of the poem is not against
the murderer—Bialik hardly condes-
cends to mention him, save for a few
words of contempt, as if speaking of
an irresponsible beast. It is against
the Jew himself that the Jew thund-
ers. Ile descends to the cellar "where
your sisters, daughters of your peo-
ple were polluted." Here are the dark'
corners, the flour-barrels "behind
which lay their brothers, husbands,
lovers, peeping through the holes, and
saw the pure and quivering bodies in,
the embrace of brutes, and never
stirred and never moved, nor lost their
reason." These are the grandsons of
the Maccabeans—"they ran' like mice
'they hid themselves like bed-bugs, and
died the death of dogs wherever
found." The grief of such men is not
worthy of sympathy, and even their
prayers ,re rejected by Cod, whom
Bialik makes scornfully exclaim: "You
beat your breasts; you repeat: we
have sinned. . . Can pieces of clay
offend? And God, humiliated by the
cowardice of His chosen people, longs
for their curses instead of their pray - '
ere—longs to see them rebel against
Him if they are too craven to rebel
against mortal oppressors, longs to see
"their fists threatening Heaven". . •
The effect of this poem, comparable'.
only to the XXVIII chapter of Deu-
teronomy in the bitterness of its in-
vective, was exceptional; there are,
few examples in history of a work of
real poetry influencing a generation
so deeply and so directly. In a way
almost mystical, its lesson reached
even those who could not read Ile
brew; it reached them only partly
through translation, but mainly
through that "wireless" influence
which can only be described as telep-
athy of genius. The revival of Mac.;
cabean tendencies in the Ghetto really
dates from that poem; the self-defense'
organizations which sprang up every- ,
where in Russia to meet the new po-
grom-wave two years later, the Sho-
merim (Yeomanry) movement in
Palestine, even the Jewish Legion
which fought for the Holy Land in
1918—they are all Bialik's children.
A poet with a less exacting attitude,
to life might be expected to feel fairly
satisfied with such immediate results.
Not so Bialik. Average observers,
who live in the street and measure
by the street's standards, register
complacently every small improve-
ment; but there are minds that watch
life from a detached and elevated
viewpoint, and to whom small changes
for the better are only sparks in the,
darkness, sparks that light up a tiny
circle around them and leave the rest
as black as before--or blacker. From
this attitude, the response to the poet's
call to Rebellion was disappointing —
at any rate, inadequate in its actual•
force. The Self-Defense corps in 1905
displayed the greatest heroism, but
they proved too weak to stop the mur-
derers, and thousands of Jews were
killed in spite of them. Assimilation
had long ceased to be an ideal, on the
contrary—in the current phraseology
it had almost entirely been replaced
by Nationalism; but in reality, actual
assimilation went on snatching the
best forces of the younger generation.
Zionism held spectacular congresses
and counted hundreds of thousands of
enthusiastic adherents, and much
praise was given to the Jewish col-
onies in Palestine; but when Bialik
visited the country, he saw that the
colonies were only few, that the heroic
effort of the pioneer fell infinitely
short of its goal—the creation of • I
Jewish Commonwealth—and that gen-
erally, in every field of the so-called
Jewish Renaissance, superhuman ef-
forts of individuals were able to pro-
duce but infinitesimally small results.
From the date of publication of the
City of Slaughter begins the decline
of Bialik's trajectory, the period of
"Despair." The most characteristic
poem of this period is perhaps naval'

(The Word); it voices the poet's feel-
ing that he himself, his Rebellion call,
his protest—all were useless words,
nothing but words. "Break up your
altar, 0 prophet, and scatter its cm-
hers, for the mob to cook their mess
upon them or to light their pipes •
Sweep away the cobwebs in your
heart, the, cobwebs you took for the
strings of a prophet's harp • • • ,
Break your hammer which has failed
to shatter iron hearts--forge it into
a spade, and dig a grave for us . • •
Why should we fear death? Its An-
gel is already riding astride of our
back, and his bit is in our mouth—
and thus, with hymns of Renaissance
and trumpets of triumph, shall we
dance on—to the tomb . . ." This.
last note—the mocking and dismal
discrepancy between the Renaissance
phraseology and the actual wane of
the race's vitality—is the key to his
whole attitude in that period.

IN THIRTY DAYS

A Record For Michigan!

All life insurance underwriting records
in Michigan again were broken in March,
1926, by life underwriters of the Detroit Life
Insurance Company.

A total of new business written in hon-
or of Vice-President Morris Fishman, was
$3,500,000.

This is the largest amount of life insur-
ance ever written by any life insurance com-
pany operating in this state in a single month.

The agents of the Detroit Life Insurance
Company broke all earlier records in June of
1925, when they produced $3,346,000 of new
business in a single month, in honor of Pres-
ident O'Brien.

The Fishman agency, operating exclu-
sively in the city of Detroit, had a record of
$1,750,000 of new business produced in
March. This is the largest amount produced
by any single agency in one month.

In the highly competitive life insurance field, it is
both interesting and significant that the citizens of one
state, Michigan, should express their confidence to such
an extent that the total life insurance policies written
within 30 days, the month of March, establishes a record
in Michigan life insurance history.

Detroit Life Insurance Co.
Detroit, Michigan

HOME OFFICE BUILDING

(Owned by the Company)

M. E. O'Brien, President

Morris Fishman, Vice-Pres.

