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HE. DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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, , _ 1984
8 P
Temple Beth El • 7400 Telegraph Rd. • Birmingham, MI
ill*
A Sephardic i /
Musical Co-ncert , ,
4
-
.
•
...-
The Cultural Council of United Hebrew Schools
in cooperation with
The Woman's Auxiliary of UHS and Temple Beth El
presents
Voice of tht Turtle
performing
"A Coat of Many Colors "
Tickets may be obtained at no charge at
Adat Shalom Synagogue,
United Hebrew Schools or Temple Beth El
ADMISSION FREE
•
Sassoon; name means more than trade
By JOSEPH COHEN
Tulane University
NEW ORLEANS — Car-
rying forward a centuries-
old merchant-family tradi-
tion, Vidal Sassoon is well
known today not only for
the spectacular success of
his hair styles, salons and
grooming products but also
for his philanthropies. He
comes by his callings hon-
estly, for his Jewish
forebears were charity-
conscious merchant princes,
well established since the
Middle Ages in the once fa-
bled fairy-tale capital of
Persia, the city of Baghdad,
long since shorn of its
glories.
By the 18th Century, the
family, too, had all but sunk
into oblivion, only to rise
Phoenix-like not in Persia
but in England in the 19th
Century, building and con-
solidating a banking and
mercantile empire both in
the West and Orient so vast
that the Sassoons came to be
known as "the Rothschilds
of the East."
The particular merchant
prince behind the re-
surgence of the family was
David Sassoon (1792-1864),
whose English progeny
from two marriages was suf-
ficiently large to launch a
dynasty of major propor-
tions.
Looking at the family
genealogy, one is fascinated
by the transition from the
ancient oriental clan-names
to contemporary British
ones. , The Abdullahs,
Mazaltobs and Amams, all
Orthodox Jews, have now
become the Reginalds, De-
smonds and Dereks, some
Jewish and others not, who
carry forward the family's
famous surname.
While the Sassoons were
noted for the dynamic and
astute businessmen the
family produced, they were
also remarkable for their
artists, musicians and
poets. Foremost among the
latter was Siegfried Sassoon
whose work occupies a sig-
nificant niche in the anti-
war poetry of the 20th Cen-
tury. Though he died in
1967, his World War I ver-
ses are still widely known
and quoted in Great Brit-
ain, and his first (of two) au-
tobiographical trilogies,
The Memoirs of George
Sherston, has remained a
favorite of the English for
the last 50 years.
Americans unfamiliar
with this Sassoon can now
sample both his poetry and
prose in a recently released,
profusely ilustrated compi-
lation called Siegfried Sas-
soon's Long Journey: Selec-
tions from the Sherston
Memoirs (Oxford Univer-.
sity Press), edited by Paul
Fussell.
Siegfried Sassoon was the
second of three sons born of
an ill-fated marriage con-
tracted between Alfred Sas-
soon (1861-1895) and
Theresa Georgina Thornyc-
roft, a talented artist, from
the English landed gentry.
The couple could not have
been less suited to one an-
other, holding in common
only an interest in art.
Alfred was spoiled, ithina:
ture, volatile, restless, lazy,
bred for the city and only 22.
Theresa was five years
older, on the rebound from
an indiscreet romance,
placid, athletic and bred for
the country.
Alfred was the first of the
family to marry out of the
faith; and his mother, on
learning of the elopement,
is said to have rushed to the
synagogue to curse any
offspring born of the union,
after which she returned to
her home to sit shiva, for-
bidding the rest of the fam-
ily to maintain any future
contact with the outcast
couple.
After 10 years of living
uneasily as a country
squire, Alfred ran off with
Theresa's best friend who
soon abandoned him. He
lived out his last days,
lonely and in misery, dying
from tuberculosis while he
was still a young man.
Siegfried and his two
brothers - were reared in
their mother's faith. He
never denied his Jewish
background but he wasn't
proud of it either, and in his
middle age he became a de-
vout Roman Catholic. The
fusion of his Oriental and
Anglo-Saxon blood contrib-
uted to the unique nature of
his poetry.
That uniqueness man-
ifested itself in two con-
trasting roles he played
throughout his lifetime. On
the one hand he became a
modern model of an angry
Old Testament prophet up-
braiding the wicked for
their sins. On the other
hand, he effected the style of
a more meditative New
Testament-oriented coun-
try vicar. Behind both poses
one sometimes could detect
the robust swagger of the
English gentleman as fox-
hunter and rider to hounds.
It is Sassoon's role as
angry prophet that has held
the most appeal, and it is
• that facet of his poetry
which remains peculiarly
Jewish. An often decorated
infantry officer in the
trenches of the Western
Front, he wrote incisively-
ironic poetic diatribes
against the British
authorities for prolonging
the war and ignoring its
then unparalleled human
slaughter. The closing lines
of "The General" are typical
of what was a strikingly
new development in the
long history of poetry; ver-
ses articulated not for the
glory of combat but in oppo-
sition to its horrors:
"He's a cheery old card,"
grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras
with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by
his plan of attack.
Probably, Sassoon never
once used the word
"Shalom," but that was the
message of his war poems in
its fullest, Jewish meaning.
Not content to publish his
poems opposing the war,
Sassoon, urged on by the
pacifist philosopher Ber-
trand Russell, issued a proc-
lamation while he was
home on leave in 1917 stat-
ing his flat refusal to return
to the front and urging the
government to stop the kil-
ling since only the muni-
tions manufacturers were
profiting from the prolonga-
tion of the conflict.
The proclamation was
read in Parliament, scan-
dalizing the nation. It con-
stituted an act of treason,
but Sassoon was too promi-
nent, not only in his own
name but because his
mother's family was build-
ing warships for the British
Navy, to be shot for this cap-
ital wartime offense. He
was trundled off to a mental
hosptal in Edinburgh to re-
cover his senses.
Today we recognize three
World War I poets as having
dramatically changed the
course of 20th Century
poetry and the poetry of war
by their eloquent protests
direct from the trenches.
They are Wilfred Owen, an
almost fanatic Christian
purist, Isaac Rosenberg, a
stuttering Isaiah from Lon-
don's East End who wanted
swords turned into plow-
shares, the son of immig-
rant Russian Jews, and
Siegfried Sassoon.
Owen and Rosenberg died
on the Western Front; only
Sassoon survived to turn
from his role as angry pro-
phet to become''the medita-
tive Christian versifier. It is
a curiosity of literary his-
tory that of these three
poets, all British subjects,
one-and-a-half of them, so to
speak, were Christian
apologists, while the other
one-and-a-half were Jewish
prophets who championed
the great Jewish causes of
peace and freedom.
1984 Israel Festival site
An American choir is shown performing at the Kahn
Theater in Jerusalem, which will be one of the sites for the
1984 Israel Festival, May 18 to June 17. The Kahn Theater
was built' by the Turks in the 18th Century as a coach inn,
and was converted into an entertainment complex in the
1960s.