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Chreente Publishes./ Ce., lee.

Published Weekly hr The
► Jewish

3.

1914. at the Poet.
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office at Detroit. Mich , under the Act of March S. WV.

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h
dt•e:aim. region.-
yect• of tr::erea to the J•wyh
bility for an indomentent of the yews expretied by -he writer.

ot

Sabbath Reading t of the Torah.
Pentateuchal portion— Ex. 18:1-20:23.
Prophetical portion—Is . 6:1-7:6; 9:5, 6.
Rosh Chodesh Reading s of the Torah, Friday,

The Yiddishists Protest.

Yiddish editors are enraged because The
Detroit Jewish Chronicle in its issue of Jan-
uary 24 dared to accept as truth the state-
ment of Dr. S. Margoshes, editor of the
Yiddish Daily Day of NeW York, that the
Yiddish press is declining; and because we
assumed to state that "the Anglo-Jewish
press, including some sixty publications of
the type of The Detroit Jewish Chronicle,
has now assumed the controlling journalis-
tic position among Jews of this country."
Mr. Jacob Fishman. editor of the Jewish
Morning Journal. led the attack on the pres-
ent writer. and other publications joined
him in a verbal onslaught upon us.

The joke of it all is that these very publi-
cations whose editors now attack us. with
Sheet 23, 5690 the exception only of the Jewish Morning
February 21, 1930
Journal, at ()tie time or another published,
and many continue regularly to publish
The Allied Campaign
English pages. or columns, or sections, as
For a number of nu nths anxiety ruled in
bait for the English-reading Jew and for
wry
over
the
plans
of
the ranks of local Jest
the Jewish youth which in the main does
Detroit's Jewish comrr iunal leaders to raise
not read Yiddish. The tragedy is that these
the necessary funds to carry on the
editors fail to see farther than their noses
numerous national a id local projects to
and do ,not realize that with the shutting
which Jews are pledg A. Those interested
of the doors of the United States to immi-
in Palestine were seri ously concerned over
gration the reservoir of Yiddish readers is
r
in
the
upbuilding
of
consummation of unit.
also shut off. The farce is that one of the
the Jewish Homeland . The Jewish youth,
weeklies which thought it wise to attack
and the men and worn en who interest them-
our viewpoint speaks of The Chronicle's ef-
selves in youth activit ies, were impatient to
fort to "baptize" ("opshmaden") the Yid-
see the beginning of a structure to serve as
dish reader. We call the attention of this
a home for youth acti rities. Leaders in the
editor to another editorial appearing on this
ttion
were
anxious
to
cause of Jewish educ
page, which was written before we read the
be assured that the co mmunity will not for-
Yiddish attacks upon us and therefore let
get its obligations to the United Hebrew'
it stand as a separate item of comment on
Schools.
the decline of Yiddish. In this second item
at
the
dinner
of
the
The announcement
we reiterate the sentiment we expressed
Detroit Service Group last Sunday evening again and again that the decline of Yiddish
that Detroit Jews wi II be asked. probably is a loss to the Jew. Nevertheless facts are
in April, to subscribe the sum of $305,000 facts.
to be apportioned am tog a number of local
But the writer who linked us with "bap-
and national causes, not only served to ap-
tism" ("shmad") wasn't satisfied with just
pease these anxieties , but was a signal to
that bit of foolishness. He evidently aimed
the various groups co ncerned to prepare to
at winning the applause of his followers
honor creditably the obligations of this com-
when he pronounced rhetorically that The
munity to the movem mis involved.
Detroit Jewish Chronicle and newspapers
The campaign for $305,000 is to be an
of its type will never replace the Yiddish
unusual campaign. For the first time, all
press and that while the latter will always
major movements w ill join in one drive.
continue as an important instrument among
nists
will
jointly
cam-
Zionists and non-Zio
Jewish readers, the "Anglo-Jewish press
paign for Palestine. The United Hebrew
will continue to report 'bridge parties' and
Schools will again b e a subject of major
similar 'cultural' happenings." What a
consideration for co mmunal effort. The
pity that this editor cannot take an hour a
fact that the sum of $100,000 is to be set
week . from his argumentative periods to
aside for a site and for the planning for a
perfect his knowledge of the English lan-
Jewish center should hearten the commun-
guage. It would no doubt be a revelation
ity because a long f dt need is soon finally
to him to know what a storehouse of infor-
to be filled.
mation The Detroit Jewish Chronicle real-
Detroit Jewry, un ited in this drive, can
ly is, and what a sincere tendency motivates
do no other, during the forthcoming cam-
the policies of this paper to encourage Jew-
paign, than to signa I to the youth of our
ish idealism among the youth who are not,
own city, and to the i nstitutions that beckon
and may never be, reached by the Yiddish
to us in Palestine an :1 Eastern Europe, that press.
it will honor its obli :cations.
s.

Russia and R

1s2

t ;
e(..

Judaism

Dr. Julian Morgen :stern, president of 11e-
brew Union College of Cincinnati, training
school for Reform Rabbis, made a state-
ment on the proble i ✓ affecting the Jewish
position in Russia which is the most as-
tounding declaratio yet heard in associa-
tion with the Russia :n-Jewish tragedy.
Think of it! At a time when Catholic
and Protestant, Ort todox and Liberal Jew,
throughout the wo rid, are bending their
efforts toward relic ving the sad religious
situation under the Soviets for all faiths,
Dr. Morgenstern pr opuses that the Ortho-
dox in Russia shou Id accept Reform as a
means of appeasing the "spiritual leader-
ship" of the Yevsek tzia!
Dr. Morgenstern' s statement is so amaz-
ing, in the light of a II the facts which speak
of the Jew's traged in Russia, where he is
oppressed religious ly and culturally, that
it is impossible to I relieve that a man who
tills such a responsi l de position should have
so blundered.

C.

The Crisis in the Yiddish Theater.

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Decline in attendance in Yiddish thea-
ters throughout the country and the general
increased indifference on the part of Jews
toward the Yiddish stage is creating a
problem which is beginning to tax the at-
tention of those immediately concerned.
Conferring on this problem, actors in
New York last month seriously faced the
existing situation and proposed to co-oper-
ate with theater owners to revive interest
and again attract such Jews as have been
lured away by the motion picture theaters.
The frankest admission at that confer-
ence was that restriction of immigration
has taken from the Yiddish theater the cli-
entelle which at one time replaced those
who became Americanized and as a result
forgot about the mother tongue and the
mother theater. Just as the Yiddish lan-
guage and the Yiddish press has suffered,
so has the theater declined with the shut-
ting of the doors of this country to new-
comers.
For the Jew th decline of the Yiddish
press and the Yid fish theater is a distinct
loss. It is robbing Jewish life of something
very distinctive, wen if both do mirror
much that is me rely European and not
strictly Jewish. But for the sake of the
little that is genui l rely Jewish which is lost
by the decline of t he press and the theater,
we must feel that we are impoverished by
the new conditions

Scanning
Horizon

o.

Charles N. Joseph

I HAVE known Col. Samuel Harden Church, presi•

By DAVID SCHWARTZ

DR. FREUD SPEAKS

We Jews are a great folk for
talking in terms of slogans. The
trouble is, that few of us ',Ally
take them seriously. One of our
most favored is the old reli,,hle:
"Israel's mission is peace." Well
now along comes no lesa a man
than Dr. Sigmund Freud of "...m-
oles" fame with a new tome, The
Discomfort of Civilization," and
in it he declares that "the Jew- de-
serve considerable credit for ab-
sorbing or attracting the hate and
aggressiveness of the Christians,
thus enabling theaChristians to get
along fairly well together."
Now I ask you, if that does not
mt an that "Israel's mission is
peace." The doctor says that the
human being has a lot of hat,. and
aggressiveness that he must get
out of his system, and tha: the
Christian us-s th, Jew for this
purpose s it "enabling the I Miss
tians to get along fairly well to-
gether."

CAUSE OF ANTI-SEMITISM

There have been at least five
hundred and sixty-seven r•isons
given for anti-Semitism. We are
told that the Jews are all Social-
ists. that they are all capita:ists,
that we killed the Messiah, the list
is endless.
But now comes Freud and says
simply that people have got to hate
something. It seems to me about
as good a reason as any.
And perhaps the cue is her, for
the solution of the Arab troubles
in Palestine. We have got to fur-
nish them with something else to
hate. Wm. James, you remember,
suggested something similar about
war—a moral equivalent for war.
Who will invent a moral equiva-
lent for anti-Semitism?

The Failure of Assimilation.

At a recent celebration in New York the
keynote of the gathering was the emphasis
on the failure of assimilation to solve the
Jewish problem. The speaker might have
added that assimilation has failed not only
with the masses of Jews, but with the in-
dividual as well. Else why should the
noted German Socialist, Eduard Bernstein,
have expressed regret at having left the
Jewish faith 50 years ago?

Herr Bernstein, who celebrated his
eightieth birthday on Jan. 6, expressed
pride in his Je•ishness when he stated, in
explaining his act of 50 years ago:

"At that time I surrendered to the dis-
cipline of the Socialist Party which recom-
mended that its members have the church-
es. The Jewish Socialist also had to leave
Jewish religious institutions, although this
was very painful to me. Today I could not
possibly leave the persecuted Jewish peo-
ple. I have always fought for Jewish rights
and have demanded a Jewish National
Home in Palestine, but not a nationalistic
state. I am a Poale Zionist and a true
Jew."

The assimilators of a half century ago
are serving a warning to the disloyal of to-
day by their repentance.

Jewry Loses a Great Scholar.

The death of Rabbi Abraham Aaron
Yoodelovitch, the venerable octogenarian,
robs Orthodox Jewry of one of the last of
a great line of scholars who combined devo-
tion to their religion and people with a
sympathetic understanding of the secular
and non-Jewish world and whose minister-
ing to their people was marked by wit as
sharp as a razor.
To know Rabbi Yoodelovitch was to
know a Mark Twain in the garb of a rabbi.
It is to be regretted that his pulpit humor
vas not compiled. It would have made a
collection of stories exceeding in wit that
of the Dubner Maggid and other old-style
preachers. But Rabbi Yoodelovitch is in
no way to be confused with a Maggid, for
his learning was, in the present day, un-
matchable.
Not only Orthodoxy in this country, but
Jewry at large has lost a striking figure
and a great man and scholar.

The editor's version of the economic de-
pression: We once had dollars. Now we
have kop-aches (kopecks).

dent of the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh,
for many years. And 1 was not surprised when I
read the other day that he has sponsored the for-
mation of a Liberal Party to combat the Ku Klux
spirit in this country. When one realizes that
Col. Church heads such an institution as the Car-
negie Institute in a city that is encrusted with
Seotch-Presbyterianism one begins to appreciate
that it takes courage to come out against the Blue
Law., Prohibition and the attempt on the part of the
Protestant Church to destroy that very religious
liberity which is guaranteed to us by the Cimsti-
tution. But Col. Church is a man of great courage,
and he has demonstrated it all his life. lie it was
who delivered an address denouncing Henr• Ford as
a menace to the nation, at the time he was fight-
ing the Jews. He it was who created a sensation a
couple of years ago by pointing out the evils of
drinking among college students and accused Pro-
hibition of being responsible. It brought down on
his head a storm of criticism that might have in-
fluenced a weaker man to hedge on the question.
But hedging un an issue is not the Colonel's style.
The Lib( rats of this country will rise up and a,-
claim this courageous soul who ha' dared to throw
down the gauntlet to the forces of Intolerance in
this country. The old parties don't the his idea.
They wouldn't. But they'll have to like it because
the birth of a Liberal Party is inevitable. It can-
not longer be delayed and those who have sought
to restrict personal liberty to the point of making
themselves annoyingly harrassing have only them-
selves to blame if the millions tired of being told
what to eat, what to drink, what not to smoke, and
a score of other "nuts" and "don'ts" decide to take
the bit in their teeth and bolt both the older politi-
cal ironies. The nation has needed a courageous
voice to inspire them to organized action and Colo-
nel Samuel Harden Church has supplied tmt voice.

THE JEWISH CURSE
I am not a believer in super-
stitions. although I am not crazy
about black cats—but then, well,
you know how it is. Anyway, if I
remember any Jewish history cor-
rectly, at the time the Jews were
expelled from Spain that country
was supposed to have been cursed
by the Jews. Search your histories
of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries and you will find not in-
frequent mention of this "Jewish
curse."
According to the terms of the
Jewish malediction, for the sins
of the Inquisition and the sin of
the expulsion, all of the children of
the Spanish royalty were to be ac-
cursed.
I am reminded of this by a re-
cent magazine article, referring to
the request of Alfonso not no long
ago, asking the Pope to permit him
to divorce his present wife and
marry again, that he might have
an heir. All of his four present
children suffer from some disease
of the blood, it appears, and are
too unsound to succeed to the
throne. And this is not the first
time. All the children of Isabella,
the queen under whom the expul-
sion took place, came to unfortu-
nate endings. So if you are super-
stitious—well, finish it yourself.

HELPING THE BLIND
Not so many years ago Albert
Sokolski, New York realtor and
millionaire, was on the verge of
blindness. Medical care finally
saved his eyes. It gave hint an
idea. Last week Sokolski left for
Palestine, where he plans to estab-
lish an institution for the blind.
Ile will make the last lap of his
voyage from Naples to Jerusalem,
by airplane. Incidentally just be-
fore he left, Mayor Walker named
him a member of the Committee
on Child Welfare, the organization
made famous by the work of the
late Sophie Irene Loch.

IN A LINE OR TWO
Sigmund Freud undertook the
study of medicine as a young man
because a certain medico acquaint-
ance said he could never make a
physician.
Count Kessler's biography of
Walter Rathenau it the current se-
lection of the Business Book of the
Month Club.
Harry Warner was in Wilming-
ton last week. Rumor speculates
that he went to see itaskob and
du Pont.
A Son of Dr. Rubino,. famed
social worker, is the s, rotary of
Julius It OSsi !Maid.
The Jewish Daily Fora.ird, Jew-
ish socialist daily, which formerly
stood apart from such th,ogs, now
goes in heavy and extensi ely cov-
ers the most conservative of Jew-
ish doings.
Rabbi Morris Lazaron of Balti-
more has authored a lay. ,—"The
Seed of Abraham"—which will
shortly be published by the Cen-
tury company. Work deals with
great Jews from the day s of the
Hebrew Patriarch.
Benjamin De Cassere , , who re-
cently married an Indian (Ameri-
can Indian) beauty, is writing a
life (7f Spinoza. Cassese., claims
to be a collateral descendant of
the philosopher of pantheism.
Israel Matz, medicine manufac-
turer, is the leading Macenas of
Hebrew literature in this country.
Al Jolson recently turned down
an offer of 116,005 per week.
The Dreyfuss episode has been
dramatized and was recently given
first presentation in Germany.
Victor Polachek, young man of
'23, has become the owner of the
Elizabeth, N. J., Times.

AN EASY MARK
The sale of the Jerome Kern
library last week is believed to
have marked a record price as for
as private collections of books are
concerned. Close to two million
dollars it the sum. Kern, who
with Berlin and Gershwin, ranks
in the great triumvirate of Ameri-
can musical composition has been
accumulating his bibliothes, which
included many rare editions, for

years.

Funny thing is that Kern was
always looked upon as the "easy
mark" by booksellers. A. soon as
he came near ■ bookstore, the

(Turn to Next Page)

THE ZETA BETA TAU Fraternity has again ask-
ed me to serve on a committee to select the
.Jew or Gentile who has rendered during the past
year the most distinguished service to American
JeaTy, directly or indirectly. This is the fifth time
I have served. The men who were selected in prev-
ious years were Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, Aaron Sa-
pito, Esq., David A. Brown and Julius Rosenwald.
The winner receives the Richard Gottheil Medal,
which is awarded at a dinner held in New York
City in the month of May. I am interested to
know from my readers who they would choose for
such an honor. Who in your opinion has done most
for the Jews of the United States during the year
1929? Your selections will prove interesting and
may influence at least one vote on the committee, if
the claims you present for your favorite are suffici-
ently strong to be convincing. I have one Jew in
mind and of course obviously it is impossible for
me to mention his name at this time. But I wonder
if any of my readers are thinking of the same man?

I

DUG an old letter out of one of my files, which
through one of those unaccountable freaks of
negligence that (log the lives of journalists, was
filed away without being answered. I am not sure
even at this time whether I should notice it. Yet
after all perhaps my correspondent my get a differ-
ent slant on the subject he refers to if I voice my
opinion. lie writes as follows:

I read in the Boston Jewish Advocate about
the Julius Rosenwald Fund being extended to
relief work in New York. And the first thing
he will do for New York will be to relieve con-
ditions in the 'Harlem Negro district.' What
about the East Side of New York? Do the Jews
live in palaces? I don't think he ever visited
the East Side of New York. Mr. Rosenwald
pities the Negro more than he does his own
people. I know what it means to live in an
East Side tenement. First and foremost you
should be for your own people, Mr. Rosenwald.

AS I SAID, ordinarily a letter like this only invites
one's anger and the waste-basket seems to be
the proper place for it. Yet, on second thought,
why shouldn't it be answered. Probably others have
the same idea of Mr. Rosenwald'a benefactions as
does the writer of the letter. So, if possible, let's
get him thinking along the right lines ro correct a
wrong impression of Mr. Rosenwald. First, let me
say that in my opinion, no one has done more for
his people than the very man the writer criticises.
He has helped the unfortunate Jews of this coun-
try in many ways, exactly as he has been a leader
in relef work for the Jews of Europe. He has been
a supporter of Jewish education, too, and has been
very liberal in giving for that purpose. At the
same time he has extended his benefactions beyond
sectarian lines and has done much to lend a help-
ing hand to the Negros of this country who have
been outcast and friendless. The Julius Rosenwald
Fund as I recall it, was created for the broadest
humanitarian purposes, without regard to "religion,
race or previous condition of servitude." It is ad-
ministered I believe, by trusteees and not by Mr.
Rosenwald. If the administrators of the Fund be-
lieve that a part of this fund should be used to heln
the Negroes of Harlem, there is no ground for criti-
cism. You may rest assured that many Jewish causes
will be helped, too. As for Mr. Rosenwald never
having been on the East Side and not knowing the
conditions there, that's sheer stuff and nonsense.
What you find in New York you will find in Nii-
cago, too, and perhaps, Mr. Rosenwald feels that
there are plenty of rich Jews in New York to take
care of local problems exactly as he and other Jews
in Chicago take care of Chicago Jewry's local prob-
lems. But no one considers the Negro, therefore
in keeping with a well-known policy to offer relief
to that group of those having in charge the Fund
used a nart of it for that purpose. The writer in-
stead of criticising should thang God that the Jews
of America have a Julius Rosenwald who has in a
thousand ways, been a blessing to his people.

THE distinguished lexicographer who has as many
detiress as a German Field Marshall has medals,
none other than Frank %'isetelly, chief of the Funk
A Warnalls staff, probably "hit the ceiling" when
he reads the following letter written to his firm by
a Jew living in Masontown, Pa.:

Just received the Dictionary (Standard).
bought for my daughter in connection with my
subscription to the Literary Digest. In looking
same over I came across your third definition
of 'Jew' marked 'slang' in brackets: any usur-
ious money lender; an opprobious use applied
irrespective of race. Being ignorant of the
fact that a concern of your prominence would
put into print such an insult to sixteen million
people, and having enough self-respect that I
cannot give this present to my daughter, whose
turning same to you with hopes that you might
still have enough self-respect to return my
money.

must have been a late edition of the "Stan-
T HAT
dard Dictionary" that my indignant reader must

have bought because he would probably be much
more indignant if he read some of the earlier edi-
tions in which the Jew is defined a s "a crafty dealer,
a grasping money lender." I battled for some time
with the distinguished Pr. %'isetelly over this defi-
nition until he became convinced that I was merely
a sensationalist and dismissed the whole contro-
versy by saying that well-known Jews had assisted
in thejob of defining a Jew. Ile pointed out, how-
ever, that I was quibbling over merely "slang." If
the definition my correspondent now objects to is
the latest, then the Doctor has modified his position.
There never was the slightest excuse for the insult
to Jews contained in the slang definition of "Jew,"
and if the Jews of this country had backed me up
in my fight, instead of going to sleep, it might hav e
been removed a long time ago. But I am glad that
Doctor Viaetelly is becoming melbos- and that he has
condescended to remove some of the harsher feat-
ures of the definition.

By PIERRE VAN PAASSEN

A Message from Turati.
Writing from Paris, where he
edits an anti-Fascist newspaper,
Filippo Turati, the veteran social-
ist leader from Italy has addressed
a letter on the {'./lest ine situation
to Emil VanderVelde, the Belgian
Minister of State, who is generally
considered the successor of Karl
Kautsky as the tactician of the II
Internationale of Labor. M. Van-
derVelde also heads the Pro-Pales-
tine Committee in Brussels and was
responsible for the adoption of a
motion in favor of Palestine recon-
struction work by the Socialist
Congress last year. M. Turati
writes in part: "Tell the Jews of
Palestine that their crime consists
in having dreamed of bringing a
little more goodness, and freedom
and liberty into the world. The
sinister forces of the past rose
against them, as they rise against
all moral progress. You, Vander-
Veldt., have not sufficiently taken
st.sik of the strength of the forces
of reaction that still persist in
this world. Yet I do not believe
in the existence of an unquench-
able Arab hatred against so-called
Jewish usurpation in Palestine.
The Arabs stand to gain every-
thing by the work of redemption,
which the J,WA have undertaken
with such a noble ardor that it has
won the admiration of the socialist
forces in the entire world. It is
nothing less than an agricultural,
industrial and intellectual regener-
atien that they contemplate in Pal-
estine, a work in which we should
be no mere idle spectators. The En-
tente between Jews and Arabs is
necessary. Behind the phrases in-
voked for the massacre, we social-
ists should recognize the hideous
faces of the economic despoilers of
the Arabic peoples, the feudal
lords of the land, and a pseudo-
intellectual rivalry between differ-
ent creeds which all dread to lose
their superannuated privileges over
the masses.
"Those forces seek to perpetu-
ate themselves and lay history in
chains. Foolish hope! we say. The
hard lesson the Jews of Pales-
tine have just received has taught
them to build up their work of
peace and justice, and has inspired
them with the realization of the
necessity of deeper and vaster
propaganda so that those of the
Arabs who were deceived by crim-
inal leaders and who allowed them-
selves to be whipped into a frenzy
of violence, shall come to see the
truth and will join with the Jews
in making Palestine a new center
of human experiment. We should
assure the Palestinian Jews that
we stand behind them; for their
work is part of the common task
of humanity. The problems of
Palestine in the final analysis are
not the problems of races or na-
tions. They are the problems of the
Internationale. To the Internation-
ale of Workers, as well as to that
other Internationale which is germ-
inating at Geneva,—the League of
Nations, strengthened, amplified,
democratized, armed with the will
to peace of all the nations and so
becoming a historic force.—helongs
the solution of the Palestine prob-
lem.
"Tell the Palestine Jews that

half a million Italian exiles in
France understand their sorrow
and realize the gravity of their
position. But tell them also that
we are earnestly convinced of their
inevitable victory in the near fu-
ture."

The Mayor of Oran
The new Mayor of the Algerian
city of Oran, which was the scene
of several sanguinary anti-Semitic
outbreaks in the course of the last
quarter century, assured his fellow
citizens on the occasion of his in-
auguration recently, that he in-
tends to follow in the footsteps of
his predecessors and be as anti-
Semitic as any of them. "At the
Isttom of all social questions," said
this versatile magistrate, "there is
it theological one," a phrase he
borrowed very cleverly from St.
Thomas Aquin. "Every writer,
thinker or philosopher who tries
to solve the Jewish question will
exhaust himself in fruitless ef-
forts," he continued. The Abbe
Gamier, notorious .lew-baiter of the
time of the Dreyfus affair, said
precisely the same thing. The only
hope to exterminate Judaism. for
the mayor thought it is a curse up-
on humanity, is to encourage the
Jews in their unbelief. "The lib-
eral teachers among them," he went
on. "are our best friends. They
will bring about the ruination of
Talmudic teaching." Curiously
enough I found the self-same words
recorded in a little pamphlet, which
is circulated by the Anti-Jewish
Society of Paris, an organization
numbering 72 contributing mem-
bers, and which appears above the
signature of a converted Jew named
Marcel Loeb. "let us not perse-
cute the Jews" went on the merci-
ful head of the Algerian commun-
ity in his inaugural address, "let
at be tolerant. By being tolerant
we will seduce the Jews to become
Christians." To this Le Soir, an
influential liberal paper published
in Paris, replies: "His Honor of
Oran can do all the seducing he
wants, but the first time he lays
himself open to the slightest sus-
picion of discriminating against
Jewish citizens, he will be chased
out of office by us. We can do
nothing about the childish prattle
of an ignorant obscurantist, but we
can prevent him from doing harm."
To this sharp warning the Mayor
of Oran retorts with so vile a
stream of invective, that I need
not search for authority in the
textbooks of anti-Semitism, that is
to say he did not quote anytooly
that time. He is quite himself.

•

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st

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Most Cosmopolitan Individual.
A committee has been formed of
prominent literary men in Holland
and England which will have for
its object to make known to the
world at large the poetic work of
Maarten 5Iaartens, who die(' in
1915. The late Sir Edmund Gosse,
one of the literary princes of the
generation that is fast becoming
extinct referred to Maarten on one
occasion as "the most cosmopolitan
individual ever known." It seems
but natural that an individual to
whom such remarkable character-
ization applies should have been a

•3

(Turn to Next Page)

Edmond Fleg's "Solomon"

A Work of Great Beauty; French Jew Writes Mas-
terful "Life" Which is a Compilation of
Stories from the Talmud.

A Reek. by Philip Slomoeits

-4,

THE LIFE OF SOLOMON. lie Edmond
by E. I'.
Flee.
2.4 Fourth avenue, New York, 1131.

rithlkhed

Dutton

Everything M. Edmond Fleg
touches turns into a thing of
beauty. He wrote "The Life of
Moses," and the result was a mas-
terpiece in the choice of words and
stories, in man's ability to compile
the most beautiful that exists in
Mishnaic legends about the Great
Lawgiver.

M. Flog wrote "The Boy Proph-
et." a sort of autobiographical con-
fessional, and he charmed his read-
ers. In another work he told us
"Why I Am a Jew," and once again
he elevated Israel as very few
have done before him.

Now we have M. Fleg's "The
Life of Solomon," and once again
we are confronted with a work the
beauty of which is seldom sur-
passed. It is another of the great
French writer's notable prose-
poems which promise to survive the
thousands of novels and biogra-
phies which yearly come off the
presses of the world.

A Human Work.

In "Solomon," as in "Moses," 31.
Fleg has made a "life" out of the
storehouse of legends in Jewish
tradition about the wise son of Da-
vid. He has drawn upon the tra-
ditional works of Solomon—Prov-
erbs, Ecilesiastes, Song of Songs—
and upon the stories in the Talmud.
lie has related the wise judgments
of the wise king as well as the
fooliah sins to which he was led
by his passions, and the result, in
the English translation from the
French by Viola Gerard Garvin,
is another Hess masterpiece.

In his introduction, Mr. Fleg ex-
plains that "Solomon. uniting Is-
rael to the nations in his own per-
son, appears here as a Faust, at
once Hebraic and universal, in
whom life, as it widens and in-
creases, at length sums up the
whole of human experience." This
is just what Flee's "Solomon" is:
a great human work about a great
Jewish character.

"The Scourge of Israel."
Among the beautiful legends
which abound in this volume is the
story of how Rome came into being
to chastise Israel. We are told
that the Sanhedrin reasoned with
Solomon:
"Get thee a wife, King Solomon;
who hveth unwed is the murderer

of his unbegotten children."
(This, incidentally, is a tradi-
tional Jewish view in opposition to
birth control.)
Solomon announced his intention
to wed Nagsara, daughter of Phar-
aoh, in order to unite Israel to the
nations. This met with opposition.
Solomon's teacher, Shimei, also op-
posed, and paid with his life. But
in the Heavens it was decreed that
the Jewish people suffer for this
misdeed, and this is the story of
Rome:
"And Nagsara, the daughter of
Pharaoh, came into Jerusalem by
the Gate of the Fountain. And, as
she went in by the gate, behold.
the Archangel Michael descended
from the sky and flew to the dis-
tant sea. And on its shores he
planted a reed. And, behold, round
about this reed the mud gathered
day by day. And after many (lays
the heaped-up mud became a land,
and the land in time grew into a
town. And this town Was called
Rome, and Rome was the scourge
of Israel to chastise her."
"The Temple Invisible."
Thus 'tage after page tells
story after story, linking Solomon
with Israel's history, and making
of both a continuous whole. Space'
prevents the quoting of other stop
lea which ihould be read as part of
the entire biography of Solomon.
It is of interest however to note
how M. /leg links Solomon with
the unbroken chain of Jewish his-
tory. Ile tells us in the closing
pages that when Solomon learned
from the Lord God that two Tem-
ples would be destroyed in the
course of time, he ordered the de-
mons to build "the Temple invis-
ible." And as he gave the order he
died. And M. Fleg closes the "life"
with the following paragraph,
again telling a beautiful tradition-
al !dory:
"But the demons think that he
yet liveth. And, under the ring
uplifted on the hand of Solomon.
carving justice from unrighteous-
ness, and in war graving the image
of peace, from century to century,
from generation to generation.
(-rot to the end of days, they build,
in spite of themselves, the Temple
of the Messiah."
M. Fleg's "Solomon" is a great
work. It should be read by every
one wh o loves good literature. And
it will be read because it promises
to be among the books that will
live.

i5,
!'y

!

: 44

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