56 Friday, March 2, 1919 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Jewish Upbringing Had Major Role Bacall Autobiography Reveals By HEIDI PRESS What the Jewish reader finds noteworthy in the autobiography of stage and screen actress Lauren Bacall, is that despite the influences of the show busi- ness world and her mar- riages outside the faith, she never forgot her Jewish roots. In "Lauren Bacall By My- self," published by Alfred A. Knopf, the actress makes no bones about revealing her Jewish background. The reader is introduced to it in the beginning of the book, and it carries through until the end when she states: "Going back through my life until now, the Jewish family feeling stands strong and proud, and at last I can say I am glad I spring from that. I would not trade those roots — that identity." An example of how strongly she feels about her roots, is seen in the episode when her actor husband, Humphrey Bogart, urges that the children be christened in the Episcopalian faith so that they can attend a particular school: "I, with my family- ingrained Jewish back- ground, bucked it — it felt too strange to me. True, I didn't go to synagogue, but I felt totally Jewish and al- ways would. I certainly didn't intend to convert to Episcopalianism for the children, or to deny my own heritage .. . "All ended on a happy note, but I still felt odd, church procedure being to- tally foreign to me. Yet I was glad about having done it for Stephen and Leslie — and determined that they would always be aware of their Jewish blood." Natalie Born to Weinstein-Bacal and William Perske, Miss Bacall (who later added the extra "L" to her mother's maiden name — her parents were divorced), describes the code for "nice Jewish girls" impressed upon her by her mother and grandmother: "The purity of Jewish upbringing — the restric- tions that one carries through life being a 'nice Jewish girl, — what a burden. But if you were — and I was — you had it drummed into your head from childhood by your mother, grandmother, uncles, that nice Jewish girls didn't smoke — we- ren't fast — nice Jewish girls had character." She always refers to that admonition, and although the fast Hollywood lifestyle changed her in some ways, the "nice Jewish girl" code remains with her to the pre- sent. An interesting note is LAUREN BACALL that she was confirmed at Temple Emanu-El, New York, by the late Rabbi B. Benedict Glazer shortly be- fore he came to Detroit to assume the spiritual lead- ership of Temple Beth El. In a recent televised interview with Dick Cavett, was too — but we had each Miss Bacall said that in her other, so the hell with it. We early days in Hollywood she stayed where we were — it felt she had to conceal her cost too much, but at least Jewish background. She no apologies had to be made said she felt like cringing for being what we were." when she heard an anti- On the other hand, the ac- Semitic remark. "I felt like tress said that being Jewish quite a misfit." She said she probablx helped her get a wished she had the courage role in a Max Gordon- then to answer back. George S. Kaufman play on She said that all her life Broadway. people were surprised "My first speaking part that she was Jewish. "I in a Broadway show, always felt an element of produced by Max Gor- prejudice upon that dis- don, directed by George covery, though." S. Kaufman. It wasn't so She recalls one incident bad to be a little Jewish in which being Jewish was girl, now was it? As a mat- not a boon. Miss Bacall re- ter of fact, it was the best members a Florida trip dur- possible thing to be. Oh, ing her modeling career: was I happy!" "Mother and I went to The story of the actress' Florida by train. She had life is told honestly, and fil- made a reservation in what led with sarcasm. There turned out to be a good hotel are no chapters, just a run- on the sea, but expensive for ning tale as if she were hav- us. We looked for rooms in a ing a casual conversation smaller establishment and over coffee. found a charming old house Much of the book revolves with a sign outside advertis- around her marriage to ing rooms to let. Mother told Bogie, their careers, their me to go in to inquire, which children and his illness I did, whereupon the man- from cancer and subsequent ager asked, 'Religion?"Jew- death. She never let his ish' was my response. death get the best of her. In `Sorry, no rooms' was his. fact, she became even more Mother was furious, and I determined to be successful in movies and on Broadway, where she reached a major triumph in "Applause." The book is enlightening about the Hollywood and Broadway scenes, and offers some insight into the per- sonalities of show business idols: Frank Sinatra, with whom she had a long and almost marriage relation- ship; her second husband, Jason Robards, a then alco- holic, by whom she had a son, Sam; Katherine Hep- burn and Spencer Tracy, with whom the Boga-f a long-standing fried and more. Many stage and screen names will be familiar to the reader, and their roles in the Bogart-Bacall story lend added interest. Never liking the "Lauren" given to her as a stage name by a Hollywood producer, Betty Bacall has many friends in the theater and movie world, and she is admired on many fronts. "Lauren Bacall By My- self" is a noble effort.. A literary chef-d'oeuvre, the book will never be, but for its entertainment value, this is a book deserving of much acclaim. Paul Co wan's Tribe s of America' Searches for Roots, Identity Paul Cowan went on a bing the melting pot theory, . mission of finding himself, with a comment in which he of learning about the asserted: " 'The Tribes of America' peoples who make up is a metaphor for my way of America. seeing this country. And it As a reporter for the Vil- lage Voice he retraced the is a political statement. "I was raised to believe steps of the various ele- ments who make up that the United States is a melting pot, and since I'm . America. He called his pil- grimage "Jews Without a confirmed racial, sex- Money Revisited." That's ual, and cultural integra- when he took into account tionist, I'd still like to the lives of many who still think that was true. But I live on New York's East don't. The last seven Side, the survivors of the years have convinced me shtetl and of the concentra- that the melting pot — tion camps, those who had with its dream of a single, suffered pogroms under unified America — is largely a myth. Czarism. "We are unified during He visited the Hasidim and the Orthodox elite of times of crisis like World Williamsburg and he found War II, like assassinations. We're united as consumers. himself. He began as an adhe- We vote in the same na- rent of the New Left, as a tional elections. We have a Harvard intellectual with mass culture in common — an assimilatory trend most of us are aware of El- vis' death, we can imitate who- found his roots. The Cowan saga is told in the Fonz, we argue about "The Tribes of America" Muhammad Ali or the Yan- (Doubleday), the journalis- kees or the Dallas Cowboys. "But, to an unrecognized tic pilgrimage which in- spired the author into a extent, we're a nation of pro- search into his own soul, his fessional, religious, ethnic recapitulation, and rejec- and racial tribes — the tion of the theory of a melt- Tribes of America — who ing pot, and his promise to maintain a fragile truce, himself to look further into easily and often broken. We his past for an acceptance of had to conquer this conti- the heritage he had neg- nent — and its original tribes-- in order to exploit lected. It is interesting, there- its resources. • But we were fore, that Cowan should never able to conquer our have gone deeply into pro- atavistic hatreds, to accept our widely diverse pasts, to transcend them, to live to- gether as a single people!' But new awareness of his Jewishness, the pledge to himself to continue the af- filiation, is an emphasis on continuity which gains spe- cial status in the search for the tribal affinity. Cowan asserts: "But race isn't the only tribal banner. In Kanawha County, West Virginia, the `creekers' — working-class whites, mostly Baptists — were at war with the 'hill- ers' — professional people, mostly Congregationalists and Episcopalians. The immediate issue was the textbooks that would be used in the schools. But the battle was really a cultural civil war between fun- damentalist Christians and secular humanists over the kind of nation their children would inhabit. "All along the Mexican border, Anglos are ter- rified that Hispanics — particularly illegal aliens — will steal their jobs, enjoy special privileges, and smuggle a new kind of separatism — the separatism of language — into American life. "On the Lower East Side of New York, a Puerto Rican who disperses poverty funds can ignore the stark fact that hundreds of thousands of elderly Jews live below the poverty level of $3,500 my loneliness in America by teaching me that I do have a home in a tradition I love." There are some specific lessons that are learned by Cowan,, and his readers, as this one from Rabbi Singer: "We are all heirs to a pre- cious past, with coherent humane sets of values that can help us gain some perspectives and find some meaning in these confusing times." "The Tribes of America" is an exciting book. Perhaps it has the lessons needed for the assimilated, for the lef- "There's no question that tists who have lost track my deepening awareness of with their people. Cowan being Jewish has given me a finds himself and helps the more secure sense of my lost also to regain Jewish own identity. It has eased ground. by echoing the old tribal myth that 'there is no such thing as a poor Jew.' "Of course, tribalism has its advantages, too. These days they're most often suggested by phrases like `my search for my roots.' I've tried to show how that atti- tude affected me when I wrote about the unexpected strong links I felt to the poor Jews I met on New York's Lower East Side or my un- expectedly close, almost fi- lial relationship with the Polish-born Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Singer. Putnam's Publishes Zeldis' The Brothel' NEW YORK — Set in an ancient Judea groaning under the harsh rule of im- perial Rome and about to be revolutionized by the birth of Christianity, "The Brothel" by Chayym Zeldis (Putnam's) explores the conflict between good and evil which exists in every man. With the infamous brothel of Nazareth the symbolic touchstone for the degradation of the times, "The Brothel" is peopled with a cast of characters torn between the choice of faith and action. Beset by a nightmarish sequence of events, a tran- quil village rabbi is reluc- tantly but irresistibly drawn into a savage strug- gle between Jewish patriots and Roman conquerors. Mara, the daughter of a murdered whore, loves his son, Yosef, a young man whose deed of valor brings him castration. Together they raise the "divine" son of her brother Omer, a "wild- man of the forest," and Lucretia, a Roman aris- tocrat who abandons the gods of her past for the God of Israel. Others, too, face the psychological and moral problems implicit in human history: Enoch, the captain of the militia who deserts Herod's puppet army and joins the rebels; Aquinas, the Roman nobleman and CHAYYM ZELDIS courier whose flight to Egypt proves to be his re- demption; the Egyptian prostitute, Tanaka, who es- capes slavery; and giant eunuch, Shor-Par, who risks his life to save her; and Kalastra, the whoremis- tress, whose malicious \hold over human souls lies in her infamous brothel Nazareth. An imaginative and pow- erful rewriting of biblical history, "The Brothel" goes beyond its time and pre- sents the dilemmas facing all men as its characters be- come trapped in the shock- ing drama of passion and unbridled sexuality m- and dream, history agination, psychological and moral turmoil that make up the world. Zeldis, recipient of an Avery Hopwood Award in poetry as a student at the University of Michi- gan, was born in Buffalo and lived in Israel for many years where he worked in many branches of farming and served in the Israeli armed forces during the Sinai campaign of 1956. Zeldis is public relations di- rector for Women's Ameri- can ORT. .