Loewenberg was born in Moscow, of parents who were then and are now in business. He is enthusiastic at present over two things: Russian literature and the life of the Jews. On his table are two books—one a history of the Hebrews, the other Tolstoi's "Awakening," in Russian. His newest interest is the Ghetto; "for," he said, "the Ghetto is full of character. There the people's life is more exposed than anywhere else, and the artist can easily penetrate into it."
The type Loewenberg hopes to delineate is of different character from that of Hester Street, where Gussow and Epstein work. His field is mainly at the corner of Rivington and Attorney streets, where the Jews are Hungarians and Poles and have a distinctive type. That is the location of another push-cart market, and altho the human types are different from those of Hester Street, the peddling occupations are identical. Loewenberg's fancy runs largely to the young Jewish girl of this quarter, and she is represented in several half done sketches.
The New York Ghetto is constantly changing. It shifts from one part of town to another, and the time is not so very far distant when it will cease to exist altogether. The sweat-shop will happily disappear with advancing civilization in New York. The tenement-houses will change in character, the children will learn English and partly forget their Yiddish language and peculiar customs. In spite of the fact that the Jews have been at all times and in all countries tenacious of their domestic peculiarities and their religion, the special character of the Ghetto will pass away in favorably conditioned America. The picturesqueness it now possesses will disappear. Perhaps, however, by that time an art will have been developed which will preserve for future generations the character of the present life; which may thus have historical value, and artistic beauty in addition. Epstein and Gussow, devoted to this result as they are, are yet quite eager to see present conditions pass away. To them the art they have selected seems of trifling importance in comparison with a general improvement of the people they seem genuinely to love. They would be glad to have the present picturesqueness of the Ghetto give place to conditions more analogous to those of happier sections of New York.
But in the meantime these few young artists, two or three particularly interested in Ghetto types, five or six others, perhaps more, who occasionally contribute a sketch of the Ghetto, are in a fair way to get together a considerable body of pictures which shall have the distinction of portraying the Jewish community of the east side with fair adequacy. Certainly the interest of that Hester Street life, and of the tenement-houses that line it, is deep enough to inspire some serious man of plastic genius. And then it is not improbable that some great sombre pictures will be painted. The conditions for such a significant art are ripe, and it may find its master in one or another of the young men who are passionately "doing" Hester Street.
Chapter Ten
Odd Characters
No matter how "queer" are the numerous persons whom one can meet in the cafés of the quarter they are mainly redeemed by a genuinely intellectual vein. It is reserved for this final chapter to tell of some men who do not well fit into the preceding categories, but whose lives or works are, in one way or another, quite worthy of record.
AN OUT-OF-DATE STORY-WRITER
Shaikevitch is the author of interminable, unsigned novels, which are published in daily installments in the east side newspapers. He is so prolific that he makes a good living. There was a time, however, when he gladly signed his name to what he wrote. That time is over, and the reason for it is best brought out by a sketch of his history.
He was born in Minsk, Russia, of orthodox Jewish parents. He began to write when he was twenty years old, at first in pure Hebrew, scientific and historical articles. He also wrote a Hebrew novel, called the Victim of the Inquisition, to which the Russian censor objected on the ground that it dealt with religious subjects.
Compelled to make his own living, young Shaikevitch, whose nom de plume has always been "Schomer," began to write popular novels in the common jargon, in Yiddish. At that time the Jews in Russia were, even more than now, shut up in their own communities, knew nothing of European culture, had an education, if any, exclusively Hebraic and mediæval and were outlandish to an extreme. The educated read only Hebrew, and the uneducated did not read at all. Up to that time, or until shortly before it, the Jew thought that nothing but holy teaching could be printed in Hebrew type. A man named Dick, however, a kind of forerunner of Shaikevitch, had begun to write secular stories in Yiddish. They were popular in form, intended for the ignorant populace who never read at all. Shaikevitch followed in Dick's lines, and made a great success.