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JOSEPH J. CUMMINS
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March 29, 1929

II Adar 24, 5689

The Tradition of Moos Chitim.

The Hebrew term for "Charity," "Zedakah,"
which doesn't mean charity at all but is literally in-
terpreted as "justice," finds it's most beautiful enact-
ment in the tradition of Moos Chitim.
It is the customary fund out of which the needy are
supplied with matzoth, food and other necessities on
the Passover. It calls for the best for even the poorest,
that all Jews, regardless of station in life, may enjoy
royally the great Jewish Festival of Freedom.
The tradition of Moos Chitim makes real the "Kol
Dichfin" of the Hagadah, the age-old invitation of the
more fortunate Jews to their needy brethren to come
and to participate in their Passover feast. But Moos
Chitim is even nobler in that it makes of every Jew a
"king in his own domain."
The Detroit appeal for this fund has been sounded
and even if every Jewish cause on earth were conduct-
ing appeals at this time, Moos Chitim must top the list
for the sake of a happy Passover.

If Detroit Jews Fail Palestine.

If Detroit Jews do not raise the full quota of $100,-
000 for Palestine, there will be no one to punish them.
We have no police force. Public opinion is the only
weapon of might at work really in force to make the
unwilling give what is due from them for Zion's up-
building, and public pressure should be exerted to con-
demn the unwilling.
But if Jews in Detroit and Cleveland and other
cities fail Palestine and do not give mere dollars for a
work that will survive gold, then they retard the pro-
gress of the work and cause history to pronounce a ver-
dict on their failure.
Should this generation fail in the great privilege
assigned to it as the generation of the redemption, his-
tory will condemn it as the generation that has gone in-
to voluntary moral and physical bankruptcy insofar as
their people's holiest ideal is concerned.
Our query of Detroit Jewry is: Will we permit such
a verdict?
Let us prevent it by subscribing nobly to the cause
of a rebuilt Zion.

Ludwig Lewissohn Travels Upstream.

.7o

From a Jewish viewpoint Ludwig Lewissohn's
"Midchannel," his latest work, the ninth and conclud-
ing chapter of which appears in the current issue of
the Menorah Journal, is undoubtedly the best. In "Up-
stream" Mr. Lewissohn first set out to find his people.
He knew them not. But the past five years he has trav-
elled far and wide, has visited many Jewish communi-
ties, large and obscure, and has made a covenant with
his own.
Mr. Lewissohn wanted to know something about
Chassidism, so he travelled to Vienna to study with
Martin Buher. He sought acquaintance with the East-
ern European Jew, and he found him in Poland and
in Galicia. He sought first hand information on the
great Palestinian adventure and he came to greet
Mother Zion. Thus he travelled on Jewishly upstream,
and in "Midchannel" we find him not only a full fledged
Jew, but a well informed and a well learned one. His
discourses on Judaism and Christianity even, in a
sense, assume a pilpulistic form. His closing plea to
the Christian world is a masterpiece of style, philos-
ophy, and argument. We quote it for its value almost
verbatim:

At last I dare to say what I have long wanted to say in
strong plain words: The Jewish problem is the decisive
problem of Western civilization. By its solution this
world of the West will stand or fall, choose death or life.
But it is not the Jew's problem; it is the Gentile's. The
wound is not in our side, 0 Gentiles whom we love, whose
world we love and live in and would help to save--it is in
yours. . .. For consider once more the deepest strain in
your history. You were turned from your paganism not
by the Jew Jesus who proclaimed the ethics of the fathers,
but by your hellenizing apostle who, from the un-Jewish
notes in the character of Jesus--his asceticism, his moral
pessimism, his assumption of superhuman authority—built
up the religion of Christ. In the sign of the Cross in
which Constantine conquered, you conquered the world.
But evil you could not conquer; peace you could not gain.
The history of Christendom is a history of warring sects
and warring nations, of cruelty, of hatred and slaughter.
You persecuted and made war and hatred in the name of
Christ and of his church. You would not have dared to do
so in the name of Jesus: the teacher of the Jewish tradi-
tion.... No, this is not a complete picture of your civil-
ization. For you are the most gifted of all the peoples of
the earth, you Germanic and Latin peoples, and all through
the horrors of the moral dualism stamped on your souls by
Paul, and through all your infamous cruelties perpetrated
through persecution and through war, you produced beauty
in word and marble and music and, from the return of
Hellenism to you in the Renaissance on, knowledge and
worldly wisdom that have seemed to make men to attain
the stature of gods.... You have all beauty—how poor
are we Jews in that compared to you! You have all
knowledge. You have no gift for righteousness, for
humanity, for peace. And the result is that with all your
beauty, your Shakespeare and your Beethoven, and with
all your knowledge and with your unimaginable inventions
wherewith you transmute into miracles the substance of
the ancient earth and rail the air as though it were a
lake, you lapsed in this high noon of time in your World
War into the foulest barbarism of the age, slaughtering
and being slaughtered like the beasts of the jungle, black-
ening each others' souls with insensate lies like savage
children and gravely recording these stupid lies in your
amusingly solemn pacts and covenants. And you go on
end on manufacturing your engines of war and your poison
, gases and fomenting your foolish hatreds and rivalries and
strutting truculently before each other's eyes, careless,
apparently, whether by barbarous catastrophes yet unheard

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of you destroy this marvelous civilization which you have
builded with your gifts. You act like brilliant but evil
children. And still, though at last with a tremor of mis-
giving, you invoke your Christ Have you ever thought
upon the Jew Jesus and his Jewish teachings concerning
righteousness and peace? Oh, yes, he has always been an
obscure sting and fret at the core of your consciousness.
From earliest ages on you have accused the heretic and dis-
senter of "Judaizing," and all reformers who were fright-
ened of the pagan pomp and power and cruelty of Chris-
tianity were indeed "Judaizers," though imperfect ones,
and it is no wonder that the Inquisition was busier with no
charge than with this charge and crime of "Judaizing."
Jesus always troubled your conscience. And no by a sym-
bolical identification the Jew troubled your conscience and
you made us outcasts to bear witness for your mystical
Christ against our troubling Jesus, and harried us and
burned us and slew us and are still doing it to this (lay in
order to vindicate the Christ of your pagan barbarism
against the Jewish Jews who knocks at your hearts in vain.
That we crucified Christ is an old wives' tale. For Christ
is a myth. That you have crucified Jesus and his Jewish
righteousness through us day by day for innumerable gen-
erations is the central fact of history. .. It is not, I
repeat, our problem. It is yours. Will you continue to
Judge and hate and compete and then kill with engines
ever more madly formidable? Will you continue to cor-
rupt your moral lives with the sickly and groundless asce-
tism of Paul? Or will you reject at last your pagan
churches and your belligerent nationalisms and save
the beauty and the wisdom that you have wrought by turn-
ing toward that eternal Hebraic ethos in which the sayings
that Jesus received from his teachers are but an a graceful
eddy in a great river? You have all gifts, all graces, all
genius. We have the secret of righteousness. . . . And
the choice is yours I have said that the future of
civilization needs a new synthesis of Ilellenism and
Ilebraism, of nature and spirit, of knowledge and right-
eousness. . . . . Is it not true? Is it not the chief task
to which the friends of mankind, of whatever blood, should
address themselves?

There are times when such sentiments need the
stamp of emphasis from non-Jews, and we were im-
pressed by a statement made to Dr. Isaac Landman of
the American Hebrew by Sir Gilbert Parker, author of
the new novel "The Promised Land," which is based
on the Biblical story of King David.
Said Sir Gilbert:

We sometimes forget that Christ and all his Apostles
were Jews, and that the influence on the world today
through Christ is Jewish. Christ was always a Jew. All
his Apostles were Jews. Even the Mohammedans believed
in Christ as a Prophet, although they claim that Moham-
med was the greater Prophet. I say frankly that if I had
been born a Jew, I should, like the rest of the Jews, always
remain a Jew.

This is not quoted in order to strengthen Jewish
faith as opposed to Christianity, but, first, to point to
the need for Jews themselves better to understand
their people and their faith, and, secondly, to point
once more to a stupidity and fallacy of proselytizing.
The first, involving understanding and acquaintance
with things Jewish, arouses within us the passionate
hopes that we may see an increase of the sentiments
displayed by Ludwig Lewisohn among many more of
our intellectuals.

When Publicity Stunts Nauseate.

The publicity man has his place in every activity.
In his turn he does much good. lie has his stunts
which help to bring his causes to the attention of the
people. He is the pivot around whom is centered ac-
tivity for every movement of worth.
But there are certain stunts which should not be
resorted to and which nauseate when ill considered.
Take as an instance the appearance of Nathan Straus
before the convention of the Union of Orthodox Con-
gregations of America the past week-end. Mr. Straus
is such a fine and noble soul, ready to help in every
undertaking that spells Jewishness. When the pub-
licity genius makes his plans to benefit his cause at
any cost, even at the expense of inviting Mr. Straus to
a place he doesn't belong, he harms a good soul and
a good cause. Think of Mr. Straus coming to a con-
vention of Orthodox Jews and getting the following
off his chest:
"I belong to one of the first Reform Congregations
in America. The second generation doesn't suit me.
I am with you heart and soul."
We all know that when such sentiments are ex-
pressed before Reform conventions concerning Ortho-
dox youth, the Orthodox rightfully protest. Perhaps,
in this instance, the reform have a right to object. In
any event, logic protests. Because youth is youth no
matter what its group affiliation, and in each group we
have been equally failed by our young, the Orthodox
not excepted, we need to stimulate them all. But we
fail to see how cheap publicity stunts can accomplish
the aim.

Shifting the Center of Learning.

Another example of the manner in which the cen-
ters of Jewish learning have shifted from one land to
another; of the regularity with which our history has
guaranteed for us that when we are driven from one
spot another liberal home be opened for us, is the
growth of the library of the Jewish Theological Semi-
nary of America. Dr. Alexander Marx, librarian, in an
announcement following the acquisition of valuable
historical manuscripts "assure the Jewish Theological
Seminary in New York of the most valuable and most
important collection of Jewish incunabula in the
world."
Thus, the United States is shaping itself admirably
as the leading center of the world Jewish communities.
It began with our lead in point of numbers and in vol-
ume of support for our less fortunate brethren over
seas. That in turn is stimulating the establishment of
better institutions of learning, pointing to the possibil-
ity that here, as in proceeding great Jewish centers,
we may build a cultural aristocracy to justify our world
leadership.
In the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary
is an early printed book, completed before the expul-
sion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Another volume
was completed in 1512 in Constantinople. Both have
the same ornamental borders. Both were printed in
the same printing plant which was moved from Spain
to Turkey after the expulsion. Now these volumes
are the property of American Jewry. This is the great
symbol of the unending Jewish life, marking it is true
a shifting of centers, but retaining the identity of an
undying race.

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Modern Currents In Jewish
Literature

BIAS.JOSEPH-=

Rather a nice present Rabbi Stephen Wise received on
his fifty-fifth birthday. Easy to remember the Doctor's
birthday because he was born on St. Patrick's Day. And
if you are not well versed in Irish lore, that March 17 is
the date. Just before the services in the Free Synagogue
in New York, Charles E. Bloch, the president, announced
that nogotiations had just been closed for the acquisition
of the site for the future Synagogue Home. The plot
involves an area of over 30,000 square feet and is located
on Sixty-fourth and Sixty-fifth streets. It will have an
auditorium seating more than 2,000 and over the audi-
torium will be the religious school department, the social
service department, men's club, women's organization,
the Junior League (I don't like that name, sounds too
much like the larger snob organization among the na-
tion's blue stockings). The property costs about a mil-
lion and the buildings will cost another million and will
be completed, if all plans work out as intended, by 1932.
The Free Synagogue was established in April, 1907, and
it certainly has made itself felt, through its rabbi,
throughout the nation, both in the world of Jewry and
non-Jewry. I congratulate Dr. Wise on having achieved
so much and still half of his life yet to go.

Well, I don't know what to say in answer to the gen-
tleman who writes me from Chicago, asking whether I
think the name "Jack" sounds better than Jacob. If a
man doesn't like Jake and prefers Jack, I don't see that
that makes it much a matter for the League of Nations
to bother about. It merely shows that some of us do
grow restive under the Jewish yoke. Jacob II. Schiff
managed to get along very nicely without changing his
name and when old James J. Hill, the great railroad
builder of the northwest, used to call around to see Mr.
Schiff at the Kuhn-Loeb offices, lie always called hint
"Jacob" and I imagine that souned as well as Jack. The
name "Jacob" has quite a historical background, even
better than the Mayflower. Of course it is Jewish, but
then we are Jews, you know.

The Zeta Beta Tau has again invited me to serve on
the committee to select the person who has done most
for Judaism in this country in the year 1928. They will
award to the person chosen the Gottheil Medal, struck in
honor of Prof. Richard Gottheil. The medal will be pre-
sented at a dinner to be held in New York in May. Last
year Aaron Sapiro was given the honor; the year before,
David A. Brown, and the first year, Rabbi Stephen Wise.
Confidentially, I have already voted for a man that I
think deserves it without competition. But mum's the
word. In the meantime, the Z. B. T. gets a lot of free
and quite worth-while advertising and gives it an edge
over the other fraternities. I think it rather a nice thing
to do and while I don't believe it makes anyone work
harder to achieve something unusual for Jewry, yet it is
after all recognition of worthy service. If you were on
the committee for whom would you vote? I am inter-
ested to know. Even if your choice isn't the committee's
choice, I would like to publish the names and say a word
about your selection.

They were going to hold the American Jewish Con-
gress in Atlantic City on Sunday, March 31, which, of
course, was Easter, which seemed to me to be rather an
inconvenient day to choose for such a gathering. The
committee apparently thought the same thing after con-
sulting the calendar and postponed the congress until
May.

I still don't know how I came to make the mistake.
Anyway, some kind friend in Providence, R. I., corrected
me. It's rather a good letter and should be included in
this column:
Dear Mr. Joseph:
May Providence deal leniently with you. In
your article published in the Jewish Advocate of
Boston, relative to the sermon delivered by Dr.
Faunce of Brown University, on the auspicious oc-
casion of the Goodwill Union gathering, you have
unceremoniously diapossessed Rabbi Samuel M.
Cup and removed Temple Beth El from Provi-
dence to Cleveland, Ohio.
I attended the love feast in question and have
since come to the conclusion that while such a
union is a step in the right direction. we Jews are
sorely in need of one amongst ourselves first.
I understand that the objection to a Jewish
fraternity at Brown University is based on the
ground that it would be sectarian.
If you can figure out the logic of this argu-
ment I'll ask you another.

I apologize. Just a matter of old age creeping on
me. If you could see me, dear reader, a decrepit old
man, painfully moving his rheumatic joints from place to
place (of course, I mean moving my whole body, not just
transporting the joints), you would wonder that I don't
move more rabbis about. Maybe some congregations
would thank me if I did. But I am not referring to
anyone in particular. But I do try to keep mentally
alert with the aid of cold towels and hot coffee. And
since my middle name is "Homer" I do not occasionally,
despite the most careful watchfulness. There is some-
thing spooky about that Cleveland business for I am
Os sure as my name is Joseph that they had a Goodwill
gathering in Cleveland. But how I got Rabbi Gup out
of his bed in Rhode Island and placed him in Cleveland
Providence only knows. As for the Faunce attitude
toward the Jewish fraternity issue at Brown I have
written several times on the subject. I think that the
good Doctor got foggy.

Well, here's another one of those missionary maga-
zines or pamphlets or what you will. It's called the
"Hebrew Messenger" and published in Baltimore. I see
that they are going to put up a mission building to the
Jews of Baltimore. I always believed that Baltimore
Jewry was quite a solid group. Not easily moved by mis-
sionary efforts. But they'd better watch out. Quite on
imposing lot of names on this committee of the Board of
National Missions of the Presbyterian Church, U. S. A.
The Rev. T. Roland Philips, Rev. Andrew Neilly, Rev. W.
P. McMillan, Rev. William Cumming, Rev. Bruce Mc-
Donald and others. What its I think about this business
of Jewish missions? I will let Dr. E. L. Hunt, director
of the American Goodwill Union, answer for me:
I indict Christian missionary work on the score
of its futility. One must search far and wide for
a bons fide Jewish convert to Christianity. Those
that we do have are merely social climbers seeking
to sell their birthright of Israel for a cup of after-
noon tea."
Of course, those are very harsh words and I am not
sure that I would have uttered them.

The quarrel I have with the world is that it is no
undiscriminating. Take for example the world's attitude
toward the Jew. Whenever a half a dozen Jews affiliate
themselves with a movement then it becomes a Jewish
movement—that's what the average man thinks. here
we have Communism trying to get a foothold in Pales-
tine. So what's happening. Communists, and there are
Jews among them, of course, are trying to arouse feeling
against Jewish capitalists, against Arab capitalists,
against Zionist land purchasing companies. But do you
believe for a moment that the eye that reads as it runs
and the mind that stands still considers that the Jews are
divided on this question as on every other? Of course
not. The impression will continue that every Communist
is a Jew whether he is in Russia or Palestine. Just be-
cause a few are associated with it. That's what makes
me so impatient. The loose and ragged thinking, or
really the lack of thought, that creates so many embar-
rassing situations. I am sorry, dear world, but it so
happens that, as Shylock says, the Jew feels the same as
his neighbors, if he is hurt he feels it, he has the same
loves and hates and passions, and all the rest of the
mumble-jumble of emotions and instincts that one finds
in human beings. So while I do wish that we could make
all Jews perfect human beings it is quite impossible. So
if we have Jewish Communists so we have Jewish capital-
ists; we have Jewish money lenders and Jewish philan-
thropists; we have Jewish radicals and Jewish reaction-
aries; we have cultured Jews and ill-mannered Jews; we
have all sorts and kinds of conditions just like there are
all sorts and kinds of conditions of every other species
of the human family. So let's not tar them all with the
same stick. It takes time, of course. We are still in the
stone age of Reason. Some day we may be discrimi-
nating.

cw:s wa ssra

sse

By N. E. ARONSTAM

With the appearance of the na-
tional movement on the historical
horizon the pendulum of Jewish
culture swung in the ascent. With
the conception of a national home-
land, cultural values took on dif-
ferent aspects. Jewish art, litera-
ture and learning were inspired by
the new idea of national rejuvena-
tion. The Hebrew language be-
came a living tongue and lent it-
self not only to cultural, but also
to technical expressions. Life and
literature were striving mightily
to establish new foundations
wrought in the crucible of histori-
cal experience, hope and national
aspiration. Of the few outstand-
ing exponents of these renewed
tendencies may be mentioned the
late Miser Ben Jehudah, who
labored valiantly and persistently
for the revival of the spoken He-
brew. He steadily occupied him-
self with the coinage of new words
and enlarged the Hebrew vocabu-
lary according to modern needs.
His lexicon is a veritable The-
saurus of the dispersed wealth of
the Hebrew, from the vast litera-
ture throughout the ages. Another
mind who shaped Jewish thought
in the form of cultural nationalism
is Simon Dubnow in his "Die
Grundlagen der Juedischen Na-
tionalitaet," or "Foundations of
Jewish Nationalism." The far-
reaching influence of this work
cannot be over-estimated. The ef-
fect of his historical philosophy
was readily manifest in the writ-
ings of the modern advocate of
cultural Zionism—Achad Ma'am or
Ascher Gingberg, with whom this
thesis will largely concern itself,
together with an expose of two
great Jewish poets of our time. I
have selected three in order to
point out certain undercurrents
and tendencies of this modern
Renaissance in the creation of a
distinct Jewish national culture.
The first of these is Ached Ma'-
am, whom European anti-Semitism
designates as "A Wise Man of
Zion." Was Achad Ila'am a wise
man of Zion? I answer in the af-
firmative: he was a wise man who
loved and cared for Zion. Ile was
neither a rabbi, as some contend,
nor was he a scholar in the fullest
meaning of the word, as Western
Jewry conceives it; nor was he a
journalist in the accepted sense of
the term. He was a cultural Zion-
ist who labored devoutly for his
ideal or idea as he conceived it,
and worked for it indefatigably
with word and pen.
That is the whole of him; all the
rest that was said and written
about him are but journalistic em-
bellishments that one or another
endeavored to inject in a supple-
mentary way, but which do not
properly evaluate him. Such ap-
pelations as eminent journalist,
brilliant essayist, clear thinker,
profound scholar, and all the at-
tributes that have been appended
to his name in order to appraise his
real value fall short of the mark.
One of his friends and disciples
sees in him a national political
writer. A famous historian who
wrote a history of Jewish philoso-
phy regards him as the greatest
Jewish religious philosopher.

revolutionized the minds, stirred
up the dormant Jewish spirit, in-
flamed the imagination, and cre-
ated a great and powerful move-
ment in Jewry.
This essay spoke more in its sim-
plicity and brevity than all the
heavy tones and volumes of an ab.
street or academic nature. This
essay clearly crystallized the idea
of Achad Ila'am. Whatever he
might have written later in order
to enlarge and dilate upon this
idea, the basic thought remained
unchanged and fixed as enunciated
in this first epoch-making issue.
This basic idea of Achad lia'am
reduced to its final principles ex-
presses itself in just two words,
"cultural center." According to
him Zionism should have no other
functions, ideals and aspirations
than the creation of a Jewish cul-
tural center in Palestine. Ile
sharply differentiates between Ju-
daism on one hand and Jewdom or
Jewry on the other, and rigidly
separates the difference between
the two.

Birth of Cultural Zionism.

His outstanding importance ex-
presses itself in the fact that he
first conceived and created the idea
of cultural nationalism. The most
unique and strange thing that
stands out in Jewish history with-
out analogy or parallel is this cul-
tural Zionism, which was most
poignantly brought out in a single
newspaper article. In the winter
of 1889 there appeared in the St.
Petersburg Daily Hebrew News,
the "Ilamelitz," an article entitled
"This Is Not the Way," that bore
the signature of Achad lia'am.
And in that hour wherein this
most wonderfully lucid and logical
essay, so perfect in style and dic-
tion, left the press, cultural Zion-
ism, or our modern Renaissance,
was born.
In the history of the national
movement, which at that time re-
frained from political aspirations
and strove for nothing else but
colonization, the significance of
such an essay betokened a devia-
tion, a change, a parting of the
ways—in brief, the beginning of
a new chapter. Mighty and fasci-
nating were the effects of this ar-
ticle on the nationalist camp.
There was at last a real case
wherein the voice of the press

The Jewish people or Jewry, to
hint is an aggregation of persons
or individuals who have been ce-
mented together by common his-
torical events, by common suffer-
ings and necessities, and by com-
mon woe and weal. On the other
hand, Judaism is the syndrome or
complex of all the spiritual aspira-
tions which the Jewish national
genius has continually evolved
throughout the ages. In the coun-
tries of the diaspora, Ached lia-
'am contends, the needs of Jewry
as a people are great, but far
greater are the needs of Judaism /s.
and the strivings of the Jewish
soul that loses itself in strange
surroundings and cannot aspire
to the height of original creation;
and this need of Judaism, this
spiritual poverty, must above all
be removed before the Jewish
genius is allowed to perpetrate it-
self unhampered.
He adhered to the view that it
•05 not the material but the spirit-
ual needs of the Jewish people that
gave birth to the national move-
ment, the purpose and goal of
which, therefore, is to create for
the Jewish people a spiritual domi-
cile or center in Palestine. Zion
shall once more be the shrine
where from "the law shall go
forth" as of yore; a fertile soil
that shall bear the fruit of a new
Jewish culture, a Jewish renais-
sance.
Ached lia'am's Zionism is not
of a national-economical or social-
political nature, but rests upon a
founda-
historical -philosophical
His nationalism does not
tion.
want to solve the question of
Jewry but that of the Jewish con-
sciousness. The quintescence of
his theories might be formulated
into the following maxim, "Zion
must become the home of Jewish
culture, the spiritual center of the
Jewish people."
I Culture.
His Uni
Asher Ginsberg, whose nom-
sc,
de-plume was Ached Ila'am, mean-
ing "one of the people," and whose
recent death is still mourned by all
Jews, was born in 1856 in Skiriva,
in the province of Kiev, Russia. Ile
was really more a product of his
spirit than his environment. Lucid
thinker and brilliant stylist, he
wrote in the purest Ilebrew, that
possessed both the qualities of
German scholarship and French
elegance. I emphasize this in or-
der to establish the fact that he
was originally a European writer,
perhaps the first Jewish European
who, in spite of his Europeanism,
never sacrificed an iota of his Jew.
ishness. Well conversant with He-
brew literature in all its ramifica-
tions, he also mastered the litera-
ture of the German, French and
English languages. These quali-
ties that furnished a link between
modern culture and historical Ju-
daism enabled him to transcend
the narrow confines of Chavinism
and enter the unlimited domains
of universal culture.
Ached lia'am, whom superficial
observation may perhaps recognize
as a persistent and fiery national-
ist, who does not emerge from the
narrow cubicle of stereotyped
views—this same Ached Ma'am on
closer scrutiny, however, proves to
be made of "sterner stuff." He
does not in a sense condemn as-
similation per se, but he senses in

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r.

Gems From Jewish Literature

Selected by Rabbi Leon Fram.

WHAT'S HAPPENED TO
PURIM?
"Purim has lost its character,
because Jews have lost their
character, their disposition for in-
nocent, unanimous joyousness. We
are no longer so closely united in
interests or in local abodes that
we could, on the one hand, enjoy
ourselves as one man, and, on the
other, play merry pranks, without-
incurring the criticism of indif-
ferent, cold-eyed observers, Criti-
cism has attacked the authenticity
of the Esther story, and proposed
Marduk for Mordecai, and 'star
for Esther. But criticism of an-
other kind has worked far more
havoc, for its 'superior' airs have
killed Purim Joy."—Israel Abra-
hams.

and poor. Do you wish to know
why I am come? My name is !In-
tuit, my mother knows me well. I
ask the gentlemen present why
they are armed with swords. I ad-
vise you to sing-in the King. You
have never seen such a great
King!"
Chorus:
"Noble, high-born
King! Sir Father, step in. We
have mead and wine, mead and
wine, and hens and fish. In he
omen, in he comes!"
King: "God bless you, ladies
and gentlemen, one and all. I am
named Ahasuerus. And I gave a
great feast to all, rich and poor.
The Jews didn't eat, but they
drank."—From a Sixteenth Cen-
tury Purim Play.

"PURIM SPIELER"
Haman: "Herr Haman I am
named. In gluttony and debauch-
ery I am an adept. Brother Scribe,
let us sing a jolly song."
Scribe: "That we will, till the
furniture shakes with merriment."
Haman: "Happy evening and
happy time! You want to know
why I am here? When my noble
King enters I will complain against
the wicked Jean. Come in, all who
serve my gracious King."
Ilatach: "Bless you all, rich

PURIM CUSTOMS
"It is customary in Babylonia
and Elam for boys to make an ef-
figy resembling Haman; this they
suspend on their roofs, four or five
days before Purim. On Purim day
they erect a bonfire, and cast the
effigy into its midst, while the boys
stand around about it, jesting and
singing. And they have a ring
suspended in the midst of the fire,
which (ring) they hold and wave
from one side of the fire to the
other."—From Geonic Responsa.

