38 - Friday, December 20, 1985 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS LAST YEAR WE HELPED 2305 PEOPLE JOIN THE JCC. BOOKS D.H. Lawrence: Was He Or Wasn't He BY JOSEPH COHEN Special to The Jewish News CLASSES, CULTURAL JCC MEMBERSHIP PROVIDES A VARIETY OF ACTIVITIES EVENTS, SWIMMING, JOGGING, GYMNASTICS, RACQUETBALL, AND MUCH MORE! FOR INFORMATION REGARDING SPECIAL REDUCED FEES, PLEASE CALL THE MEMBERSHIP DEPARTMENT 661-1000 EXT: 166* THIS YEAR WE CAN HELP YOU. A JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER *Does not include Health Clubs 6600 W. MAPLE ROAD WEST BLOOMAELD, MICHIGAN 48033 (313) 661-1000 Advertising in The Jewish News Gets Results Place Your Ad Today. Call 354-6060 oot dovlo to oor Co ati Ctiristolas OM SOW, XMAS DAY SALE I Everything In The Store Friday & Saturday 25-50% OFF Sun. 25-60% OFF Mon. 25-75% OFF Tuesday 25-75% OFF 1Wednesday XMAS DAY 12 4 25 80% OFF - - Open This Sunday & Wednesday 12-4 6692 Orchard Lk. Rd., West Bloomfield In The WEST BLOOMFIELD PLAZA 851-4410 on the title-pages of Kotelians- Over the years, most Jews, I ky's books. suppose, have assumed that D. Though Koteliansky is not H. Lawrence, like the majority remembered, Mark Gertler cer- of 20th Century British writers, tainly is. Handsome, charisma- was anti-Semitic. It has been tic, debonair and talented, Ger- easy to draw this inference from tler came out of London's East Lawrence's characterization of End about 1912 to bedazzle a Loerke, the brutalizing and host of influential and titled primitive German-Jewish people in Kensington and sculptor in Women in Love. Mayfair with both his art and Moreover, opposition to the his charm. Today, Gertler's pic- Jews could have seemed consis- tent with Lawrence's working- class Midlands background, his family's Congregational fun- damentalism, and his outrage new book and the and despair over the growing power of the industrialized author's centennial state, understructured by com- revives the question mercial and financial interests, which in his view routinely about anti-Semitic exploited common humanity. The question of Lawrence's attitudes. assumed anti-Semitism has sur- faced again in Anthony Burgess' informal biographical tribute Flame Into Being: The Life and tures are a staple of early 20th Work , of D. H. Lawrence (Arbor Century Anglo-Jewish art. House), issued in conjunction When two years ago, the Ben with the centennial this year of Uri Art Gallery decided to sell Lawrence's birth. Lawrence's Gertler's most famous painting, attitude toward Jews is never "The Merry-Go-Round," to shore Burgess' concern, but through up its sagging finances, howls of his repeated emphasis upon his protest were heard throughout subject's uniqueness, he has the London Jewish community made it my concern. A hundred for fear the painting would years after Lawrence's birth, we leave the British Isles. ought to know where this In 1916, Gertler sent a post- famous writer stood vis' a vis' card reproduction of "The the Jews. Merry-Go-Round" to Lawrence, Despite Lawrence's mercurial who was also a painter. Lawr- temperament, his mood swings, ence replied "it is the best mod- his willingness to bully, cudgel em picture I have seen," adding, and blast both his friends and "It would take a Jew to paint his enemies, despite his using this picture. It would need your practically everyone he knew national history to get you here, well as models, negatively draw, without disintegrating you first. for the characters of his stories, You are of an older race than I, two of his longest, sustained and in these ultimate processes, friendships were with immig- rant East European Jews. While you are beyond me, older than I am. But I think I am suffi- other friends grew disenchanted ciently the same, to be able to with Lawrence and abandoned understand." him if he hadn't already cast Perhaps he did understand, them off, Samuel Solomonovich without being conscious of the Koteliansky, a writer and trans- lator, and Mark Gertler, the significance of identifying with East End artist, remained de- the Jewishness in Gertler's voted to him to the end. Gertler, work. Probably through Gertler, we should remember,, was the though it could have been model for Loerke. Koteliansky, Lawrence came Koteliansky is little remem- briefly into contact with another bered today, hardly more than a Jew, the Mile-End Road printer familiar footnote in Lawrence's I. Narodiczky. Opposed to the life. When they met in 1914, Great War, Lawrence and some "Kot" was working in the Hol- of his friends, including John born office of the Russian Law Middleton Murry and Katharine Bureau, having come to London Mansfield, proposed to issue a from Kiev a few years before, small, fortnightly pacifist paper. some accounts say, as a radical Narodiczky was chosen to do the fugitive. A swarthy, secular Jew printing. Though he was a with a passsion for "groaning friend of Chaim Weizmann, Hebrew music," he struck Lawr- Vladimir Jabotinsky, Chaim ence as "a bit Jehovah-ish." It Bialik and Sholem Asch, and a was from him that Lawrence got well-known personality in the Hebrew word "Rananim" for Whitechapel, no one outside of the Utopia he once proposed to London's East End knew he establish in Florida. existed. Lawrence preferred it Koteliansky never succeeded that way. Narodiczky, without as a writer or translator. Sev- bothering to read what he was eral times, Lawrence assisted setting into type, published him by editing his stories and three issues of the seditionist polishing his translations paper for Lawrence before the amounted to collaboration — an police intervened. unusual act of generosity be- cause, despite his great ego- By the time Lawrence was needs, Lawrence never de- writing his pieces advocating manded that his name appear sedition, he was already re-