Sholom Asch: The Jewish Maupassant
A Menorah Prize Essay
By Percy B. Shostac
PERCY B. SHOSTAC, born in 1892, in New York City, where he attended the Ethical Culture School and High School; graduate of the University of Wisconsin (1915), where he was an active member of the Wisconsin Dramatic Society and contributed frequently to the Wisconsin Play-Book. He is now teaching English at the University of Kansas. The present Essay was awarded the Wisconsin Menorah Prize for 1915.
I
The Man and His Work
IT was in the little parlor of a four-room New York flat. The room was furnished sparsely: a table and a few chairs of bamboo, a long row of books on the yellow floor along one wall, some Chinese ornaments and plants, a few Russian embroideries, a rich Persian covering on the couch, and candles—many candles burning and flickering on their rest of saucer or glazed clay candlestick. Our hostess seemed part of her room; she was a Russian Jewess, decidedly Oriental in type, rare in her beauty and still more rare in her personality and charm.
Sholom Asch sat opposite me smoking his cigarette and sipping his coffee—a big man of thirty-five, with broad shoulders and a frame sturdy and substantial; thick black hair, a high forehead, a characteristically Jewish nose, a firm mouth, a little black moustache, and deep brown eyes—eyes that at times would seem to be unaware of anything surrounding them, yet one felt that they saw everything and understood everything. His complexion was that of a ruddy boy, yet his large handsome features had the sensitiveness which classed him unmistakably as an artist.
He was talking in Yiddish. His voice was soft and his sentences followed each other in musical cadence and beauty.
"YES," Asch was saying, "he was the best Jew I ever met. I always think of him as 'The Light of Damascus.' I was in Damascus last year. The most beautiful city in the world! The houses on the winding streets are centuries old. The people seem older than the houses. For hours I stood in the market-place watching the camels and the asses pass by. Some had the dust of the desert on their feet and some had mud and dirt. Each went slowly on its way with its turbaned rider sitting still as a figure of stone on its back.
"Through the kindness of a friend we entered a house on one of the strange streets. Like most of the old houses its front was plain and unattractive. We went through a court and on to a balcony overlooking an enclosed garden. Such a garden I had never seen! It seemed a picture transported from the 'Thousand and One Nights.' In the center was a fountain of extraordinary workmanship, so inlaid with gems that after the water had gushed out it seemed to splash down again in a shower of ruby and amethyst. About the fountain were palms and fig trees. The flowers were more wondrous than the jewelled water or the many-colored mosaics of the walls and arches.
"On the grass sat a grey-bearded Mohammedan. He smoked his hookah in silence. Suddenly we heard voices. Three young women came from the house and bathed in the fountain. Their lord and husband sat stoically and smoked. They laughed and played in the splashing waters. And as I watched this old man and these beautiful women, I thought myself back in the ancient Damascus, in the city that I had thought was dead for a thousand years.
"THAT evening I was walking in the city. Suddenly I saw a light before me. To my surprise it was an electric bulb—the only one in Damascus. It was fastened to the head of a donkey and illuminated a painted advertisement attached to his back. By following the wires I found they led to a large wholesale warehouse. It hurt me to find this electric light in Damascus. I was still more hurt when I found that the man who had installed it was a Jew, a Russian Jew who had come to the city some years before.
"The next day I visited a shop where hammered gold and silver, for which Damascus is famous, was sold. With the permission of the proprietor I went upstairs to the workroom. What I saw there I shall never forget.
"I found myself in a long but very narrow room, dimly lighted by a few dirty windows. In two long rows in front of two long tables sat fifty or sixty little girls huddled so close together that they touched one another. Each child was bent over the table and each held a little hammer. She was tapping on a piece of metal. The tapping was never-ending—a sharp clicking sound like the falling of hail. The children never spoke nor smiled. Near me sat a little girl. She was not more than eight years old. Her hammer had stopped tapping and her eyes were closed. She was asleep. The girl next to her, evidently her elder sister, seeing the foreman approach, pinched the child sharply. She opened her eyes and dully began her tapping. As I left this room of darkness my eyes were wet with tears.
"I found out that only little girls were employed in this industry: that they began when eight or nine years old. When they were sixteen they usually were dead from the metal that had entered their lungs. The children were mostly Jewish, for you must know that when the Jews become part of a slow Eastern civilization they sink yet lower and become yet more phlegmatic and listless than the people among whom they have settled. I was indignant and asked if nothing was being done to remedy this terrible evil. Then I was told that there was one man who was devoting his life to freeing these children. It was the Jewish merchant who used the only electric light in Damascus. He gave every cent he earned to this work. He maintained an industrial school for Jewish children and was trying to interest the Jews of the world in the movement. And then I blessed this man's electric light. I think of him always as 'The Light of Damascus.'"
AND thus Sholom Asch talked. I cannot reproduce his words; I have only tried to give the spirit of them. He talked in the finished style of a Maupassant, with all the imagination and all the strength of that great master. I saw then, before I had read his work, that his title of "The Jewish Maupassant" was not extravagant. And I saw also that here was an artist with human sympathy immeasurable, and yet not lacking sensuous imagery and elemental strength and beauty.
Sholom Asch was born and brought up in a little town in Poland, Kuttnow, near Lodz. His father was a merchant on a small scale. He bought sheep and oxen from the peasants and shipped them to be marketed in Lodz, in Germany, in France. He rode about the country and sometimes took Sholom with him, whom he loved especially because he studied so well. Sholom liked the sheep and the cattle, and he loved the melancholy Polish landscape—mystic, fearful.
His father was a healthy, normal, honorable Jew; not fanatical but deeply religious. He was philosophic toward life, he cared nothing for money and was content without it. His mother, on the other hand, was nervous and worldly. She was dependent on the externals of life and to her no money was misery. There was a big house with much food, many new clothes, much hospitality, and many big brothers and sisters; something like eleven children. The ceremonies of the Jewish faith were observed beautifully, the holidays kept happily. There was substance and spirit.
AND Sholom absorbed this atmosphere of the old religious rites, and the paganism of the cattle and nature, and spoke little. When he was six he was sent to the Jewish school. This was in session from eight in the morning until five in the evening. He and the other children used to watch the sun shine on certain spots and know the time. How they waited for the moment of freedom, little knowing how well one of their number was to picture for the world each intimate emotion and thought of their imprisoned souls.
One day a peasant came to his house and Sholom went with him on his wagon. That was a wonderful day; he played hookey. The next day the rabbi, who believed in corporal punishment, expressed his views on the matter of absence.
Asch was extremely clever at learning the Talmud and the old history and philosophy of the Jews. He learned to reason from the Talmud and to-day he says, "Art is logic. There must be an 'Urkraft' (elemental strength) behind a man's work." And if there is one outstanding characteristic of Asch's work, it is this elemental, this passionately strong and elemental vein.
Max Reinhardt, whom Asch calls "Ein Dichter im Theater," loves Asch dearly. In his Deutsches Theater, the most artistic and best equipped theatre in the world, he produced Asch's God of Vengeance. This was a marked success and is still a most popular play in Germany, Russia, and in the Yiddish theatres of New York. Asch was only twenty-four years at this time. From this play he made much money and a whole village was made happy an entire summer.
Since then his income from his writings has increased steadily. Much of his work is now translated into Russian and German, but as yet not into English. The income from his translations far exceeds that from his Yiddish publications, and he is able to support his wife and four children in ease and comfort. Although he has been to America a few times during the last six years, it is only several months ago that his wife and children arrived from Poland and he settled here permanently.
AN important happening in the history of Jewish literature occurred in the beginning of April. Perez, the intellectual father of the new movement, died. Asch and Perez were deep friends. Of all living writers Perez has had most influence on Asch, both as writer and as man. When Asch brought him his first story, Perez gave him a volume of his poems. He said of Asch, "A bird is breaking through the shell—who knows, is it an eagle or a crow?" It proved to be an eagle. Perez was a revolutionist, a poet, a dramatist, the defender of the weak, the inspiration of the talented. A little story of his, "Bonchi the Silent," about a Jewish workingman who never complained and who took all his misfortunes as a matter of course, whose desires and hopes were so thoroughly crushed out of him that on reaching Heaven and being asked by God to request what he desired most, he said, "I want a piece of white bread every Friday"—that story, more than any one influence, caused the formation of the "Bund of the Russian Revolution." It made the intelligenzia of Russia feel that it was their duty to teach the workingman to demand the earth.
And now since Perez's death, on Asch's shoulders has fallen the responsibility of being the greatest Jewish writer living to-day. He is assuming the added duty of revolutionist as well as artist. For the serious Jewish writer is a sort of rabbi to his people. Ethically he stands for the old Jewish ideals. To these Asch has added the beauty of paganism and the vision of anarchistic communism.
In Paris once he came to a meeting of Zionists. He spoke against the Zionist idea and was not listened to with great deference. Another writer, Abraham Raisin, coming in shouted, "Hear! Listen to a great Jew." Asch was given the floor and finished the speech.
Asch feels that only now is he beginning to drop his Jewish past as material for his work. He is going out into the future: he is becoming impressed with a vision of the America to be—the ideal democracy. And his work is showing it. He is planning a poetic industrial drama, he is finishing a gripping war play. His deep understanding of the industrial slavery of our times is shown wonderfully in his novel, Motke the Scamp, which is now appearing in serial form in the New York Yiddish Forward. He begins with Motke's infancy. His mother's milk is sold to the rich man's baby; Motke is cheated of everything. Picture after picture of sordid Polish ghetto life follows—intermixed with wood and river sunshine as only Asch can do it. One feels the sun resting eternally over all, while man with his laughter and tenderness and pain struggles toward perfection.
ASCH is becoming an exposer and a prophet, but with great beauty of style and purity of emotion. He is decidedly modern, decidedly Russian, decidedly Hebraic, and eternally universal. He is bringing the message of beauty and freedom to the American Yiddish working man. Asch is not a socialist; he is a real individualist. With a sincere contribution to the happiness of the world he believes that every human being is entitled to all the joy of the world, no matter what form his contribution may assume; shirts, street cleaning, cooking, a painting, dishes, a poem. He does not preach eight hours and a dollar more, he demands joy in labor. He wants people to play—to be happy at their work. He demands freedom in one's personal life and beauty in mind and body. He is an industrialist plus an artist.
Asch has traveled through Russia talking on various subjects to Jewish gatherings, not for money but for love of his race. He has visited Palestine, but with a keen interest in the growth and development of the Jew—not from a nationalistic standpoint but from a world point of view.
And this is why he admires America—because it brings to him a vision of a perfect race, the result of the mixture of all races, perpetuating the fine traits of all. He is immensely interested in the public school. He believes in democracy and thinks we have it in America.
For artists, however, he says this country is not good. The newspapers in Europe, he says, print what Tolstoi eats and how he sleeps. Here Rockefeller is the national hero. The artist here lacks artistic obstinacy; he succumbs to money, he leaves starvation and his Kunst.
ASCH loves Shakespere above all other writers; he is his master. For months he went each night to the Berlin theatres and often, with his eyes shut, would listen to the words and cadences of Shakespere's lines. Hamlet he considers the greatest play ever written. Midsummer Night's Dream and Romeo and Juliet are two of his favorites. From the ghost scene in Hamlet he can trace Maeterlinck and all the modern mystics. He says that Shakespere is universal in his appeal and that his work in translation, when done by a master like Schlegel, takes on the peculiar flavor of the tongue and people into which it is translated and loses none of its intrinsic worth.
He loves Gogol and Tolstoi. Faust is one of his favorite dramas. He loves the old masters Greco and Rembrandt; among the moderns, Cézanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Manet. In opera he does not care for Wagner, but he is very fond of The Magic Flute, of Madame Butterfly, of Pagliacci. He loves music and the theatre. Asch reads in many languages, German, French, Russian, Polish, Hebrew, and a little English. But to everybody he talks in Yiddish. He has no ear for other languages except English, which he says is like his mother tongue!
In the spring Asch goes out to the country and works, in the summer he loafs, in the winter he lives among his friends. He writes all the time, being chock full of energy—for work, for love, for friendship, for happiness. As he says, "I am thankful to God for three things: first that he gave me life, second that he gave me my talent, third for my love for you" (this to whomever the lady happens to be).
Like all the artists he is erratic, original, attractive, all-seeing. But unlike most he has much strength of character and a brilliant logical faculty that makes him check up his personal relations. He has much affection in him and a great honesty and integrity which wins him admiration and respect, and he has many friends among many kinds of people in many parts of the world.
Sholom Asch is a philosopher, a novelist, a poet, and a dramatist. He loves the clouds and the sea, he truly loves mankind. Always through all he writes one feels a deep and elemental strength, an elemental belief in nature and truth. He is not ahead of his time; he is rather an interpreter and inspirer of his own day. This makes him the happy person that he is. He is greatly honored in Russia and in Germany, and by all writers in Europe.
II
Asch as a Novelist and Short-Story Writer
WITH this brief sketch of Sholom Asch the man, I shall turn to a consideration of a few of his most important works. As Sir Walter Raleigh, the eminent English critic, has said, the best way to form a judgment of an author is to quote his good passages. Accordingly I have been as liberal as space would allow in my insertion of translated passages. The most recent works, mentioned in the early part of this essay, I shall not treat, as it was impossible for me to procure them at the time of writing. I shall take up each work individually before making generalizations.
DIE Jüngsten is a novel by Asch in which he tries to portray the character and the influences at work on the younger generation of Jews in Russia. The plot can be simply set forth. The younger generation is represented by five characters of three social classes. Mery Lipskaja is the daughter of a well-to-do Jewish manufacturer—in other words, she is of the middle or bourgeois class. She has completed her gymnasium (high-school) education and has absorbed the prevalent ideas about women and emancipation, and a desire for higher education, for a broader life, for St. Petersburg. Kowalski is an artist. He, like Mery, is not interested in the class struggle; all that vitally concerns him is his art and "living." David and Rahel Lazarus are the children of a physician who is giving his life to the people of the "Grube" or ghetto. They have grown up among the suppressed and impoverished Jews and they are filled with the spirit of the revolution; David actively and Rahel passively. Mischa, the cousin of Mery, is a member of the middle class. He has become aware of the conditions in the Grube and his struggle lies between his middle class environmental influence, which includes his love for Mery, and his desire to join the revolution.
At the beginning of the novel Mery has just returned from the gymnasium. She is oppressed and dissatisfied with her provincial surroundings and longs to go to the university at St. Petersburg. Mischa, in love with Mery, has also just completed work at the gymnasium, and they plan to go to St. Petersburg together. The artist Kowalski now comes to the little south Russian village and soon Mery is in love with him. Mischa is much distressed and suffers greatly. Kowalski leaves, promising to meet Mery at St. Petersburg.
The second part of the novel opens with Mischa and Mery in St. Petersburg. The climate does not agree with Mery and Mischa arranges that they go to a Finnish village. Here they grow very dear to each other and Mischa is about to propose when Kowalski melodramatically appears. Kowalski and Mery now give expression to their love. Mischa returns to St. Petersburg but cannot pursue his studies because the revolutionary disturbances have closed the university. Kowalski and Mery return to St. Petersburg soon after and are admitted to the bohemian life there. Kowalski meanwhile has become famous. The lovers gradually grow apart and when the revolution breaks out Mery returns to her home for safety, leaving Kowalski never to see him again. Mischa has returned home also. After a massacre of the Jews in the Grube in which Rahel, the sister of David, is outraged, he sees that in marrying her lies his only means of becoming one of the Jews whom he was so desirous of helping. So despite the fact that he still loves Mery and she is now willing to be his wife, he marries Rahel. Mery after a period of restlessness in the little town returns to St. Petersburg to join the bohemian group there.
THE outstanding excellence of the novel lies in its characterization. The characters live before us and we see the workings of their minds and emotions with remarkable clarity. The mental struggles of Mischa between his love for Mery and his desire to help the oppressed Jews, always inhibited by inherited powerlessness to act; the carefree, art-centered, egotistical Kowalski; the adolescent romanticism and sympathetic insight of Mery; the cynically idealistic and self-sacrificing Dr. Lazarus—these constitute the real substance and artistic worth of the book. The pictures of contemporary Russian Jewish life are of marked interest, especially to the western reader. The following passages are descriptive of the Grube or ghetto and characterize the condition of the poorer Jews in the towns throughout Russia:
"The sun seldom shone into the valley. Old people lost their vision early and the percentage of child mortality was enormous. But even those who remained alive under these conditions were weak, sick, half crippled people; impoverished figures with crooked legs, large heads and weak arms crept through the streets.
"And in spite of everything the inhabitants never left their grave (Grube) and made no attempt to find a better, more healthy home. A sort of sick love bound them to their unfortunate homes, and like a curse it rested on each who was born in the valley—that he could not free himself from it and that until the end of his days he must eke out his sad existence there."
After the massacre Mischa walks through the Grube:
"The murmur of prayers re-echoed to his ears. From the little windows of the synagogue came the soft gleam of candles. He entered. Deep as in a cellar, as miserable and abandoned as themselves, lay the little house of prayer of the wretched inhabitants of the Grube. The walls were bare. The Ark of the Covenant was hung with only a piece of coarse linen. In front of the broken 'altar' stood an old man in a torn prayer shawl and prayed before the small penny candles. The room was full of worshippers, all inhabitants of the Grube. Their prayer was a groaning, and sighing, and screaming, out of tormented hearts. It rose up to the low ceiling and hung over them all like a heavy black cloud."
And then Mischa knew his people:
"He felt his strength to bear everything; sorrow and misery and persecution. He saw his people doing the work of servants through the centuries, from the farthest past to the present day. He saw the bare walls of the synagogue, the wretched Ark of the Covenant, he heard the sad melody of their prayers which grew to despairing screams. . . . He had the feeling that he was with his people in a large ship. For eternities this ship was on a voyage of searching. It landed at harbors always new and strange: Egypt, Palestine, Babylon, Arabia, Spain, at Turkey, at Holland and Russia. And to-day is also a test day for the Jews. And also this day will end, and many, many, but the ship will always sail on, will carry them all to new harbors into the farthest future."
BEFORE leaving Die Jüngsten, I cannot refrain from translating two passages concerning Kowalski—the first his longing for the open country after his long stay in St. Petersburg, and the other his remarks on clouds:
"St. Petersburg had become sickening to him. For loneliness he longed, for solitude. Solitude, with his brush behind the mountains, in the deep woods. To see every day sun, mountains, and water! The water that pushes blocks of ice before it, and to see the cloud shadows which camp on the wide snow fields. To live again in the little room with his comrade the Lithuanian peasant with whom he studied in the academy! To have no money. To eat bread; much good black bread with honey which his comrade's father would send from the village. For whole days to wander about and paint clouds!"
Mery discovers him at work, and looking at his painting he says:
"Everything is clouds—the warmth that I feel, the warmth— . . . and do you see the pride that such a cloud has, the pride, the formality? 'The cloud is no small thing,' my fat professor used to say. It is no small thing to paint a cloud, for then one must feel eternity. As lovingly as a girl's body must one model a cloud. And warmth and pride must come to expression. To paint a cloud means to step into Heaven, into the middle of Heaven and to see a new world which we do not know here at all. Such a nobody as I wishes to paint a cloud, a Heaven—wishes to have seen God and create Him anew with his little art! That is an impudence, isn't it?
"There you see what I have painted. It is nothing—it is worthless—something is lacking." He looked amusedly at the picture. "Love is lacking. So it is as my professor with the fat belly loved to say, 'To paint a real cloud one must love.' Yes, yes, to be able to create something good one must be in love or—do you know what? Or to feel a great sin in one's soul. Yes, yes, with a burning sin in one's heart one can create big things. When one has entirely fallen. . . ."
BILDER aus dem Ghetto is a series of sketches dealing with Jewish life. Many Jewish characters are pictured in dramatic situations but with very little plot. The characters are all poor; fishmongers, children of the Ghetto, a Jewish farmer, two mothers, an old married couple. A few typical plots follow.
"Ein Eilbotte" is really a prose poem describing a sunrise, a storm, and the reappearing sun—more properly perhaps a series of paintings, of symphonic word canvases. Let me translate the opening passages:
"Behind the town ruin which stands on a small hill like a national monument, flaming and fiery rises the red of the morning and floods with its glow the gray clouds that hang in the horizon. It brings a son of the sun into the world. The day tears itself from the lap of the mother Night.
"In the little town life is beginning to stir. Here and there one sees a peasant wagon on which the dew drops of the night are still hanging. Here and there a Jew, eyes heavy with sleep. The show windows and house doors are for the most part locked. For many of the inhabitants the day has not yet begun. . . . This day shall be like yesterday, like to-morrow."
A storm rushes over the woods. The storm comes like a mighty giant that wishes to swallow the world or it seems as though God himself were spreading out His black mantle: "The end of the world! Neither heaven nor earth, neither beginning nor end! Black, ominous, dull, empty. . . . Suddenly Heaven opens for a second. . . . A blinding light has torn the clouds. Stabbed by a flaming dagger the giant dies—a confused moaning fills the air. It rains." But the storm passes. "The Heaven is clear and blue as if nothing had happened. The air is clearer and purer, the earth washed clean by the water."
"DIE Mutter." It is in a little Hebrew school in a small town in Russia. The rabbi has gone to say the evening prayer, leaving the small boys to study. Instead they begin to talk of various subjects. Mothers are discussed and each boy praised his most highly. One pale little chap with large eyes says, "My mother also . . ." and then stops. One of the boys laughs uncontrolledly and then there is an embarrassing silence. The teacher returns. The little Josek, however, cannot keep his attention on the book:
"The 'crazy Trajna' stands life-like before him. Out there at the well she stands. . . . He sees her plainly. . . . All too well he knows that dirty sun-burned face plowed through by a thousand wrinkles, those great blood-shot eyes with the swollen, sore lids. . . .
"He remembers her, yes, he remembers. . . . He was still a little boy then, when the teacher carried him to school in his arms. He cried then and hung tightly with both hands to the apron of his mother.
"Mother! . . . this woman his mother?"
And so the emotions of the boy are set forth in memories telling us of his mother before she was insane and now, when she is known to all the village as the "crazy Trajna." The time when he found her insane is described. It was raining and he was hurrying home from school. Suddenly he sees his mother near his father's house:
"There at the corner she stands. . . . Trembling for cold she seeks protection under any roof. . . . The boy stands as rooted to the ground, without turning his gaze from her. The water flows in streams from his coat. She has turned her glassy eyes on him. Slowly as though following some inner force she comes closer to him. He is not able to move from the spot; something unspeakable gleams in those glassy eyes. . . .
"Now he feels in her the mother. . . . His heart beats as though to break. Always closer to him she comes. A hot wave of blood flows through all his limbs and rises to his head. He trembles as in fever.
"Suddenly all fear leaves him. He assumes a waiting position and looks directly into her eyes.
"Now she stands close before him. She looks at him. Away! These eyes! this look! He wishes to fall weeping into her arms. . . . To weep, yes, to weep . . . to weep and to kiss.
"He is in the impulse to carry out his purpose when she suddenly takes his hand. With a quick push he tears himself from her embrace and runs away as rapidly as he can.
"It seems as though she ran after him with outstretched arms and blowing hair, always faster and faster, always grasping more heavily. It seemed to him as though he heard her terrible voice, hoarse with weariness, calling 'Joselle,' 'Joselle' . . ."
The father has taken a new wife and the "crazy Trajna" is no longer a member of the household but is driven about the streets. And as he leaves the schoolroom this evening, Josek is consumed with indignation and sorrow and resolves not to flee from his mother the next time he meets her. On his way home he meets her. The tears flow from her eyes; when she embraces him he again runs away. But that evening he steals a plate of meat from his home and brings it to her. That night he does not sleep. The next noon, coming home from school he sees Trajna standing near the well surrounded by street urchins:
"One pulls her bonnet from her head. Another jerks at her apron. A third tears the prayer book from her hand. Some boys cry loudly,
"'Hurrah! The crazy one, the crazy one!'
"She looks at her son in surprise. Josek can stand it no longer; he goes to his mother and with his fists drives away the urchins that torment her.
"They have run away. Without saying a word Josek reaches out both his hands. His face is deathly pale. His eyes gleam with fever. The boys laugh. . . . Their loud calls press themselves to his ears. . . . Another moment and the hands of his mother reach around him as in a cramp.
"The 'crazy one' hugs him, kisses him, now laughing, now crying. Suddenly she clutches him and begins to dance with him. 'Hurrah! Hurrah! The crazy one is dancing with her son!'
"Josek casts a confused glance at the urchins. He draws himself together, tears himself from the embrace of his mother with a quick movement and runs away. He does not even think of the cap which remains in her hand.
"Even from a distance he hears the calls, 'Hurrah! Hurrah! The crazy one dances with her son!'"
"DER Wunderrabbi." He is a very stupid shepherd boy. He will not learn his Hebrew lessons nor prayers. When in the fields he often feels near to God—and whistles. He is taken to the synagogue on a holiday. His parents are ashamed of him. He cannot repeat the prayers from the prayerbook, yet he feels a great desire to praise God. To the consternation of his parents he walks to the altar, and placing two fingers in his mouth he voices his praise in a loud, shrill whistle.
"All stand as though struck by lightning. Who dared to whistle in this holy place? The father is about to grasp the boy and lead him out, the people clench their fists threateningly. But the rabbi turns from his place at the east of the synagogue and asks in a loud voice, 'Where is the saint? Where is the miracle-worker who destroyed the evil forces hanging above us, who bored through heaven that our prayers might easily penetrate the black clouds to the throne of God?'
"There is no sign of the miracle-worker. He has slipped out of the house of prayer and with his shoes and stockings over his shoulder is running as fast as he can toward the village."
"EIN Jüdisch Kind." She is about to be married but will not comply with the Talmudic law requiring married women to cut off their hair and wear wigs. She loves her hair and will not part with it. She is married. Weeks go by and her husband is ostracised. He and his wife have become more and more estranged and they speak to each other hardly at all. One day he comes home and with loving words induces her to let him cut off her black braids.
"When Chanele awoke the next morning, she looked at herself in the mirror that hung opposite her bed. Terror seized her and she thought that she had become mad and that she lay in the hospital. On the table near her bed lay the dead braids. The soul that had lived in these braids when they were on her head was dead, and they reminded her of death . . . She hid her face in both her hands and heart-breaking sobs filled the quiet room."
And there are other "Wortbilder" which I shall not treat. This book of sketches shows Asch at his very best. For the form—one without plot dealing with character and nature description—is decidedly fitted to the elemental, passion-laden flow of his style. It is a great wonder to me that these gems of artistic word portraiture have not yet been translated into English. In my opinion they rank equal in worth with the similar work of Daudet, Maupassant, Tchekoff and Turgenieff.
DAS Städtchen is also a book of sketches. In this, however, the different high points—the Sabbath eve, the holidays, the marriage ceremony and others in Russian Jewish village life, are treated. Character is not emphasized, although one man appears through all the sketches. The book does not come up to Die Bilder aus dem Ghetto.
Asch is essentially a dramatist. In his sketches, in his novels and in his stories, the dramatic point of view is not lost. His plays consequently always move, are always full of action and tense situation. The same elemental strength and purity of emotion that is found in his prose is always present in his dramas. In the concluding part of this essay, I shall touch upon five of his plays in the order of their importance.
Editors' Note—The third and concluding part of Mr. Shostac's prize essay, dealing with Shalom Asch as a Dramatist, will appear in the next issue.
THOSE of us in England who know how much harshness and injustice the Jews have had to suffer will join in your hopes that after the war some means may be found of permanently ameliorating their lot. You may feel the more sure of our sympathy in this because, as you know, England is the European country in which, since Oliver Cromwell sanctioned their return nearly three centuries ago, the Jews have been best treated, being freely admitted to all posts of power and honor, and not exposed to any sort of social disparagement. They have held places in our Cabinets and been among the most eminent lawyers and judges. Such a one was Sir George Jessel, the famous Master of the Rolls. We have no more patriotic citizens, nor more generous benefactors to works of charity and to public purposes supported by private liberality. With those members of the race who have suffered injustice or violence in other countries, there has always been a warm sympathy in Great Britain.—Viscount Bryce, in a Letter to The Menorah Journal.