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diff --git a/41028-0.txt b/41028-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..18ef111 --- /dev/null +++ b/41028-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6315 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41028 *** + +Transcriber's Note: + + Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have + been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. + + Italic text is denoted by _underscores_. + + On page 70, "enlightment" should possibly be "enlightenment". + + + + + _The_ + Spirit + _of the_ + Ghetto + + + + + THE SPIRIT of + THE GHETTO + + STUDIES OF THE JEWISH + QUARTER IN NEW YORK + + By + HUTCHINS HAPGOOD + + _With Drawings from Life by + JACOB EPSTEIN_ + + NEW YORK AND LONDON + FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY + + _NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO_ + + + + + Copyright, 1902 + by + Funk & Wagnalls + Company + + Printed in the + United States of America + + Published + November, 1902 + + + + +NOTE + + +A number of these chapters have appeared as separate articles in "The +Atlantic Monthly," "The Critic," "The Bookman," "The World's Work," +"The Boston Transcript," and "The Evening Post" and "The Commercial +Advertiser" of New York. To the editors of these publications thanks +for permission to republish are gratefully tendered by + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +PREFACE + + +The Jewish quarter of New York is generally supposed to be a place of +poverty, dirt, ignorance and immorality--the seat of the sweat-shop, +the tenement house, where "red-lights" sparkle at night, where the +people are queer and repulsive. Well-to-do persons visit the "Ghetto" +merely from motives of curiosity or philanthropy; writers treat of it +"sociologically," as of a place in crying need of improvement. + +That the Ghetto has an unpleasant aspect is as true as it is trite. +But the unpleasant aspect is not the subject of the following +sketches. I was led to spend much time in certain poor resorts of +Yiddish New York not through motives either philanthropic or +sociological, but simply by virtue of the charm I felt in men and +things there. East Canal Street and the Bowery have interested me more +than Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Why, the reader may learn from the +present volume--which is an attempt made by a "Gentile" to report +sympathetically on the character, lives and pursuits of certain +east-side Jews with whom he has been in relations of considerable +intimacy. + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +CONTENTS + + + Chapter I Page + The Old and the New 9 + + The Old Man + The Boy + The "Intellectuals" + + + Chapter II + Prophets without Honor 44 + + Submerged Scholars: A Man of God--A Bitter + Prophet--A Calm Student + The Poor Rabbis: Their Grievances--The "Genuine" + Article--A Down-Town Specimen--The Neglected + Type + + + Chapter III + The Old and New Woman 71 + + The Orthodox Jewess: Devotion and Customs + The Modern Type: Passionate Socialists--Confirmed + Blue-Stockings + Place of Woman in Ghetto Literature + + + Chapter IV + Four Poets 90 + + A Wedding Bard + A Champion of Race + A Singer of Labor + A Dreamer of Brotherhood + + + Chapter V + The Stage 113 + + Theatres, Actors, and Audience + Realism, the Spirit of the Ghetto Theatre + The History of the Yiddish Stage + + + Chapter VI + The Newspapers 177 + + The Conservative Journals + The Socialist Papers + The Anarchist Papers + Some Picturesque Contributors + + + Chapter VII + The Sketch-Writers 199 + + Some Realists + A Cultivated Literary Man + American Life Through Russian Eyes + A Satirist of Tenement Society + + + Chapter VIII + A Novelist 230 + + + Chapter IX + The Young Art and its Exponents 254 + + + Chapter X + Odd Characters 272 + + An Out-of-date Story-Writer + A Cynical Inventor + An Impassioned Critic + The Poet of Zionism + An Intellectual Debauchee + + + + +Chapter One + +The Old and the New + + +THE OLD MAN + + [Illustration] + +No part of New York has a more intense and varied life than the colony +of Russian and Galician Jews who live on the east side and who form +the largest Jewish city in the world. The old and the new come here +into close contact and throw each other into high relief. The +traditions and customs of the orthodox Jew are maintained almost in +their purity, and opposed to these are forms and ideas of modern life +of the most extreme kind. The Jews are at once tenacious of their +character and susceptible to their Gentile environment, when that +environment is of a high order of civilization. Accordingly, in +enlightened America they undergo rapid transformation tho retaining +much that is distinctive; while in Russia, surrounded by an ignorant +peasantry, they remain by themselves, do not so commonly learn the +Gentile language, and prefer their own forms of culture. There their +life centres about religion. Prayer and the study of "the Law" +constitute practically the whole life of the religious Jew. + +When the Jew comes to America he remains, if he is old, essentially +the same as he was in Russia. His deeply rooted habits and the "worry +of daily bread" make him but little sensitive to the conditions of his +new home. His imagination lives in the old country and he gets his +consolation in the old religion. He picks up only about a hundred +English words and phrases, which he pronounces in his own way. Some of +his most common acquisitions are "vinda" (window), "zieling" +(ceiling), "never mind," "alle right," "that'll do," "politzman" +(policeman); "_ein schön kind_, ein reg'lar pitze!" (a pretty child, a +regular picture). Of this modest vocabulary he is very proud, for it +takes him out of the category of the "greenhorn," a term of contempt +to which the satirical Jew is very sensitive. The man who has been +only three weeks in this country hates few things so much as to be +called a "greenhorn." Under this fear he learns the small vocabulary +to which in many years he adds very little. His dress receives rather +greater modification than his language. In the old country he never +appeared in a short coat; that would be enough to stamp him as a +"freethinker." But when he comes to New York and his coat is worn out +he is unable to find any garment long enough. The best he can do is to +buy a "cut-away" or a "Prince Albert," which he often calls a "Prince +Isaac." As soon as he imbibes the fear of being called a "greenhorn" +he assumes the "Prince Isaac" with less regret. Many of the old women, +without diminution of piety, discard their wigs, which are strictly +required by the orthodox in Russia, and go even to the synagogue with +nothing on their heads but their natural locks. + +The old Jew on arriving in New York usually becomes a sweat-shop +tailor or push-cart peddler. There are few more pathetic sights than +an old man with a long beard, a little black cap on his head and a +venerable face--a man who had been perhaps a Hebraic or Talmudic +scholar in the old country, carrying or pressing piles of coats in the +melancholy sweat-shop; or standing for sixteen hours a day by his +push-cart in one of the dozen crowded streets of the Ghetto, where +the great markets are, selling among many other things apples, garden +stuff, fish and second-hand shirts. + +This man also becomes a member of one of the many hundred lodges which +exist on the east side. These societies curiously express at once the +old Jewish customs and the conditions of the new world. They are +mutual insurance companies formed to support sick members. When a +brother is ill the President appoints a committee to visit him. Mutual +insurance societies and committees are American enough, and visiting +the sick is prescribed by the Talmud. This is a striking instance of +the adaptation of the "old" to the "new." The committee not only +condoles with the decrepit member, but gives him a sum of money. + + [Illustration] + +Another way in which the life of the old Jew is affected by his New +York environment, perhaps the most important way as far as +intellectual and educative influences are concerned, is through the +Yiddish newspapers, which exist nowhere except in this country. They +keep him in touch with the world's happenings in a way quite +impossible in Europe. At the Yiddish theatres, too, he sees American +customs portrayed, although grotesquely, and the old orthodox things +often satirized to a degree; the "greenhorn" laughed to scorn and the +rabbi held up to derision. + +Nevertheless these influences leave the man pretty much as he was when +he landed here. He remains the patriarchal Jew devoted to the law and +to prayer. He never does anything that is not prescribed, and worships +most of the time that he is not at work. He has only one point of +view, that of the Talmud; and his aesthetic as well as his religious +criteria are determined by it. "This is a beautiful letter you have +written me"; wrote an old man to his son, "it smells of Isaiah." He +makes of his house a synagogue, and prays three times a day; when he +prays his head is covered, he wears the black and white praying-shawl, +and the cubes of the phylactery are attached to his forehead and left +arm. To the cubes are fastened two straps of goat-skin, black and +white; those on the forehead hang down, and those attached to the +other cube are wound seven times about the left arm. Inside each cube +is a white parchment on which is written the Hebrew word for God, +which must never be spoken by a Jew. The strength of this prohibition +is so great that even the Jews who have lost their faith are unwilling +to pronounce the word. + + [Illustration] + +Besides the home prayers there are daily visits to the synagogue, +fasts and holidays to observe. When there is a death in the family he +does not go to the synagogue, but prays at home. The ten men necessary +for the funeral ceremony, who are partly supplied by the Bereavement +Committee of the Lodge, sit seven days in their stocking-feet on +foot-stools and read Job all the time. On the Day of Atonement the old +Jew stands much of the day in the synagogue, wrapped in a white gown, +and seems to be one of a meeting of the dead. The Day of Rejoicing of +the Law and the Day of Purim are the only two days in the year when an +orthodox Jew may be intoxicated. It is virtuous on these days to drink +too much, but the sobriety of the Jew is so great that he sometimes +cheats his friends and himself by shamming drunkenness. On the first +and second evenings of the Passover the father dresses in a big white +robe, the family gather about him, and the youngest male child asks +the father the reason why the day is celebrated; whereupon the old +man relates the whole history, and they all talk it over and eat, and +drink wine, but in no vessel which has been used before during the +year, for everything must be fresh and clean on this day. The night +before the Passover the remaining leavened bread is gathered together, +just enough for breakfast, for only unleavened bread can be eaten +during the next eight days. The head of the family goes around with a +candle, gathers up the crumbs with a quill or a spoon and burns them. +A custom which has almost died out in New York is for the +congregation to go out of the synagogue on the night of the full moon, +and chant a prayer in the moonlight. + +In addition to daily religious observances in his home and in the +synagogues, to fasts and holidays, the orthodox Jew must give much +thought to his diet. One great law is the line drawn between milk +things and meat things. The Bible forbids boiling a kid in the milk of +its mother. Consequently the hair-splitting Talmud prescribes the most +far-fetched discrimination. For instance, a plate in which meat is +cooked is called a meat vessel, the knife with which it is cut is +called a meat knife, the spoon with which one eats the soup that was +cooked in a meat pot, though there is no meat in the soup, is a meat +spoon, and to use that spoon for a milk thing is prohibited. All these +regulations, of course, seem privileges to the orthodox Jew. The +sweat-shops are full of religious fanatics, who, in addition to their +ceremonies at home, form Talmudic clubs and gather in tenement-house +rooms, which they convert into synagogues. + +In several of the cafés of the quarter these old fellows gather. With +their long beards, long black coats, and serious demeanor, they sit +about little tables and drink honey-cider, eat lima beans and +jealously exclude from their society the socialists and freethinkers +of the colony who, not unwillingly, have cafés of their own. They all +look poor, and many of them are, in fact, peddlers, shop-keepers or +tailors; but some, not distinguishable in appearance from the +proletarians, have "made their pile." Some are Hebrew scholars, some +of the older class of Yiddish journalists. There are no young people +there, for the young bring irreverence and the American spirit, and +these cafés are strictly orthodox. + + [Illustration] + +In spite, therefore, of his American environment, the old Jew of the +Ghetto remains patriarchal, highly trained and educated in a narrow +sectarian direction, but entirely ignorant of modern culture; +medieval, in effect, submerged in old tradition and outworn forms. + + +THE BOY + +The shrewd-faced boy with the melancholy eyes that one sees everywhere +in the streets of New York's Ghetto, occupies a peculiar position in +our society. If we could penetrate into his soul, we should see a +mixture of almost unprecedented hope and excitement on the one hand, +and of doubt, confusion, and self-distrust on the other hand. Led in +many contrary directions, the fact that he does not grow to be an +intellectual anarchist is due to his serious racial characteristics. + +Three groups of influences are at work on him--the orthodox Jewish, +the American, and the Socialist; and he experiences them in this +order. He has either been born in America of Russian, Austrian, or +Roumanian Jewish parents, or has immigrated with them when a very +young child. The first of the three forces at work on his character is +religious and moral; the second is practical, diversified, +non-religious; and the third is reactionary from the other two and +hostile to them. + + [Illustration: THE MORNING PRAYER] + +Whether born in this country or in Russia, the son of orthodox parents +passes his earliest years in a family atmosphere where the whole duty +of man is to observe the religious law. He learns to say his prayers +every morning and evening, either at home or at the synagogue. At the +age of five, he is taken to the Hebrew private school, the "chaider," +where, in Russia, he spends most of his time from early morning till +late at night. The ceremony accompanying his first appearance in +"chaider" is significant of his whole orthodox life. Wrapped in a +"talith," or praying shawl, he is carried by his father to the school +and received there by the "melamed," or teacher, who holds out before +him the Hebrew alphabet on a large chart. Before beginning to learn +the first letter of the alphabet, he is given a taste of honey, and +when he declares it to be sweet, he is told that the study of the +Holy Law, upon which he is about to enter, is sweeter than honey. +Shortly afterwards a coin falls from the ceiling, and the boy is told +that an angel dropped it from heaven as a reward for learning the +first lesson. + +In the Russian "chaider" the boy proceeds with a further study of the +alphabet, then of the prayer-book, the Pentateuch, other portions of +the Bible, and finally begins with the complicated Talmud. Confirmed +at thirteen years of age, he enters the Hebrew academy and continues +the study of the Talmud, to which, if he is successful, he will devote +himself all his life. For his parents desire him to be a rabbi, or +Talmudical scholar, and to give himself entirely to a learned +interpretation of the sweet law. + + [Illustration: GOING TO THE SYNAGOGUE] + +The boy's life at home, in Russia, conforms with the religious +education received at the "chaider." On Friday afternoon, when the +Sabbath begins, and on Saturday morning, when it continues, he is free +from school, and on Friday does errands for his mother or helps in the +preparation for the Sabbath. In the afternoon he commonly bathes, +dresses freshly in Sabbath raiment, and goes to "chaider" in the +evening. Returning from school, he finds his mother and sisters +dressed in their best, ready to "greet the Sabbath." The lights are +glowing in the candlesticks, the father enters with "Good Shabbas" on +his lips, and is received by the grandparents, who occupy the seats of +honor. They bless him and the children in turn. The father then chants +the hymn of praise and salutation; a cup of wine or cider is passed +from one to the other; every one washes his hands; all arrange +themselves at table in the order of age, the youngest sitting at the +father's right hand. After the meal they sing a song dedicated to the +Sabbath, and say grace. The same ceremony is repeated on Saturday +morning, and afterwards the children are examined in what they have +learned of the Holy Law during the week. The numerous religious +holidays are observed in the same way, with special ceremonies of +their own in addition. The important thing to notice is, that the +boy's whole training and education bear directly on ethics and +religion, in the study of which he is encouraged to spend his whole +life. + +In a simple Jewish community in Russia, where the "chaider" is the +only school, where the government is hostile, and the Jews are +therefore thrown back upon their own customs, the boy loves his +religion, he loves and honors his parents, his highest ambition is to +be a great scholar--to know the Bible in all its glorious meaning, to +know the Talmudical comments upon it, and to serve God. Above every +one else he respects the aged, the Hebrew scholar, the rabbi, the +teacher. Piety and wisdom count more than riches, talent and power. +The "law" outweighs all else in value. Abraham and Moses, David and +Solomon, the prophet Elijah, are the kind of great men to whom his +imagination soars. + +But in America, even before he begins to go to our public schools, the +little Jewish boy finds himself in contact with a new world which +stands in violent contrast with the orthodox environment of his first +few years. Insensibly--at the beginning--from his playmates in the +streets, from his older brother or sister, he picks up a little +English, a little American slang, hears older boys boast of +prize-fighter Bernstein, and learns vaguely to feel that there is a +strange and fascinating life on the street. At this tender age he may +even begin to black boots, gamble in pennies, and be filled with a +"wild surmise" about American dollars. + +With his entrance into the public school the little fellow runs plump +against a system of education and a set of influences which are at +total variance with those traditional to his race and with his home +life. The religious element is entirely lacking. The educational +system of the public schools is heterogeneous and worldly. The boy +becomes acquainted in the school reader with fragments of writings on +all subjects, with a little mathematics, a little history. His +instruction, in the interests of a liberal non-sectarianism, is +entirely secular. English becomes his most familiar language. He +achieves a growing comprehension and sympathy with the independent, +free, rather sceptical spirit of the American boy; he rapidly imbibes +ideas about social equality and contempt for authority, and tends to +prefer Sherlock Holmes to Abraham as a hero. + +The orthodox Jewish influences, still at work upon him, are rapidly +weakened. He grows to look upon the ceremonial life at home as rather +ridiculous. His old parents, who speak no English, he regards as +"greenhorns." English becomes his habitual tongue, even at home, and +Yiddish he begins to forget. He still goes to "chaider," but under +conditions exceedingly different from those obtaining in Russia, where +there are no public schools, and where the boy is consequently shut up +within the confines of Hebraic education. In America, the "chaider" +assumes a position entirely subordinate. Compelled by law to go to the +American public school, the boy can attend "chaider" only before the +public school opens in the morning or after it closes in the +afternoon. At such times the Hebrew teacher, who dresses in a long +black coat, outlandish tall hat, and commonly speaks no English, +visits the boy at home, or the boy goes to a neighboring "chaider." + +Contempt for the "chaider's" teaching comes the more easily because +the boy rarely understands his Hebrew lessons to the full. His real +language is English, the teacher's is commonly the Yiddish jargon, and +the language to be learned is Hebrew. The problem before him is +consequently the strangely difficult one of learning Hebrew, a tongue +unknown to him, through a translation into Yiddish, a language of +growing unfamiliarity, which, on account of its poor dialectic +character, is an inadequate vehicle of thought. + +The orthodox parents begin to see that the boy, in order to "get +along" in the New World, must receive a Gentile training. Instead of +hoping to make a rabbi of him, they reluctantly consent to his +becoming an American business man, or, still better, an American +doctor or lawyer. The Hebrew teacher, less convinced of the usefulness +and importance of his work, is in this country more simply commercial +and less disinterested than abroad; a man generally, too, of less +scholarship as well as of less devotion. + + [Illustration: THE "CHAIDER"] + +The growing sense of superiority on the part of the boy to the Hebraic +part of his environment extends itself soon to the home. He learns to +feel that his parents, too, are "greenhorns." In the struggle between +the two sets of influences that of the home becomes less and less +effective. He runs away from the supper table to join his gang on the +Bowery, where he is quick to pick up the very latest slang; where his +talent for caricature is developed often at the expense of his +parents, his race, and all "foreigners"; for he is an American, he is +"the people," and like his glorious countrymen in general, he is quick +to ridicule the stranger. He laughs at the foreign Jew with as much +heartiness as at the "dago"; for he feels that he himself is almost as +remote from the one as from the other. + +"Why don't you say your evening prayer, my son?" asks his mother in +Yiddish. + +"Ah, what yer givin' us!" replies, in English, the little +American-Israelite as he makes a bee-line for the street. + +The boys not only talk together of picnics, of the crimes of which +they read in the English newspapers, of prize-fights, of budding +business propositions, but they gradually quit going to synagogue, +give up "chaider" promptly when they are thirteen years old, avoid the +Yiddish theatres, seek the up-town places of amusement, dress in the +latest American fashion, and have a keen eye for the right thing in +neckties. They even refuse sometimes to be present at supper on Friday +evenings. Then, indeed, the sway of the old people is broken. + +"Amerikane Kinder, Amerikane Kinder!" wails the old father, shaking +his head. The trend of things is indeed too strong for the old man of +the eternal Talmud and ceremony. + +An important circumstance in helping to determine the boy's attitude +toward his father is the tendency to reverse the ordinary and normal +educational and economical relations existing between father and son. +In Russia the father gives the son an education and supports him until +his marriage, and often afterward, until the young man is able to take +care of his wife and children. The father is, therefore, the head of +the house in reality. But in the New World the boy contributes very +early to the family's support. The father is in this country less able +to make an economic place for himself than is the son. The little +fellow sells papers, blacks boots, and becomes a street merchant on a +small scale. As he speaks English, and his parents do not, he is +commonly the interpreter in business transactions, and tends generally +to take things into his own hands. There is a tendency, therefore, for +the father to respect the son. + +There is many a huge building on Broadway which is the external sign +(with the Hebrew name of the tenant emblazoned on some extended +surface) of the energy and independence of some ignorant little +Russian Jew, the son of a push-cart peddler or sweat-shop worker, who +began his business career on the sidewalks, selling newspapers, +blacking boots, dealing in candles, shoe-strings, fruit, etc., and +continued it by peddling in New Jersey or on Long Island until he +could open a small basement store on Hester Street, then a more +extensive establishment on Canal Street--ending perhaps as a rich +merchant on Broadway. The little fellow who starts out on this +laborious climb is a model of industry and temperance. His only +recreation, outside of business, which for him is a pleasure in +itself, is to indulge in some simple pastime which generally is +calculated to teach him something. On Friday or Saturday afternoon he +is likely, for instance, to take a long walk to the park, where he is +seen keenly inspecting the animals and perhaps boasting of his +knowledge about them. He is an acquisitive little fellow, and seldom +enjoys himself unless he feels that he is adding to his figurative or +literal stock. + +The cloak and umbrella business in New York is rapidly becoming +monopolized by the Jews who began in the Ghetto; and they are also +very large clothing merchants. Higher, however, than a considerable +merchant in the world of business, the little Ghetto boy, born in a +patriarchal Jewish home, has not yet attained. The Jews who as +bankers, brokers, and speculators on Wall Street control millions +never have been Ghetto Jews. They came from Germany, where conditions +are very different from those in Russia, Galicia, and Roumania, and +where, through the comparatively liberal education of a secular +character which they were able to obtain, they were already beginning +to have a national life outside of the Jewish traditions. Then, too, +these Jews who are now prominent in Wall Street have been in this +country much longer than their Russian brethren. They are frequently +the sons of Germans who in the last generation attained commercial +rank. If they were born abroad, they came many years before the +Russian immigration began and before the American Ghetto existed, and +have consequently become thoroughly identified with American life. +Some of them began, indeed, as peddlers on a very small scale; +travelled, as was more the habit with them then than now, all over the +country; and rose by small degrees to the position of great financial +operators. But they became so only by growing to feel very intimately +the spirit of American enterprise which enables a man to carry on the +boldest operation in a calm spirit. + +To this boldness the son of the orthodox parents of our Ghetto has not +yet attained. Coming from the cramped "quarter," with still a tinge of +the patriarchal Jew in his blood, not yet thoroughly at home in the +atmosphere of the American "plunger," he is a little hesitant, though +very keen, in business affairs. The conservatism instilled in him by +the pious old "greenhorn," his father, is a limitation to his American +"nerve." He likes to deal in ponderable goods, to be able to touch and +handle his wares, to have them before his eyes. In the next +generation, when in business matters also he will be an instinctive +American, he will become as big a financial speculator as any of them, +but at present he is pretty well content with his growing business on +Broadway and his fine residence up-town. + + [Illustration: FRIDAY NIGHT PRAYER] + +Altho as compared with the American or German-Jew financier who does +not turn a hair at the gain or loss of a million, and who in personal +manner maintains a phlegmatic, Napoleonic calm which is almost the +most impressive thing in the world to an ordinary man, the young +fellow of the Ghetto seems a hesitant little "dickerer," yet, of +course, he is a rising business man, and, as compared to the world +from which he has emerged, a very tremendous entity indeed. It is not +strange, therefore, that this progressive merchant, while yet a child, +acquires a self-sufficiency, an independence, and sometimes an +arrogance which not unnaturally, at least in form, is extended even +toward his parents. + +If this boy were able entirely to forget his origin, to cast off the +ethical and religious influences which are his birthright, there would +be no serious struggle in his soul, and he would not represent a +peculiar element in our society. He would be like any other practical, +ambitious, rather worldly American boy. The struggle is strong because +the boy's nature, at once religious and susceptible, is strongly +appealed to by both the old and new. At the same time that he is +keenly sensitive to the charm of his American environment, with its +practical and national opportunities, he has still a deep love for his +race and the old things. He is aware, and rather ashamed, of the +limitations of his parents. He feels that the trend and weight of +things are against them, that they are in a minority; but yet in a +real way the old people remain his conscience, the visible +representatives of a moral and religious tradition by which the boy +may regulate his inner life. + +The attitude of such a boy toward his father and mother is +sympathetically described by Dr. Blaustein, principal of the +Educational Alliance: + + "Not knowing that I speak Yiddish, the boy often acts as + interpreter between me and his exclusively Yiddish-speaking + father and mother. He always shows a great fear that I + should be ashamed of his parents and tries to show them in + the best light. When he translates, he expresses, in his + manner, great affection and tenderness toward these people + whom he feels he is protecting; he not merely turns their + Yiddish into good English, but modifies the substance of + what they say in order to make them appear presentable, less + outlandish and queer. He also manifests cleverness in + translating for his parents what I say in English. When he + finds that I can speak Yiddish and therefore can converse + heart to heart with the old people, he is delighted. His + face beams, and he expresses in every way that deep pleasure + which a person takes in the satisfaction of honored + protégés." + +The third considerable influence in the life of the Ghetto boy is that +of the socialists. I am inclined to think that this is the least +important and the least desirable of the three in its effect on his +character. + +Socialism as it is agitated in the Jewish quarter consists in a +wholesale rejection, often founded on a misunderstanding, of both +American and Hebraic ideals. The socialists harp monotonously on the +relations between capital and labor, the injustice of classes, and +assume literature to comprise one school alone, the Russian, at the +bottom of which there is a strongly anarchistic and reactionary +impulse. The son of a socialist laborer lives in a home where the main +doctrines are two: that the old religion is rubbish and that American +institutions were invented to exploit the workingman. The natural +effects on such a boy are two: a tendency to look with distrust at the +genuinely American life about him, and to reject the old implicit +piety. + +The ideal situation for this young Jew would be that where he could +become an integral part of American life without losing the +seriousness of nature developed by Hebraic tradition and education. At +present he feels a conflict between these two influences: his youthful +ardor and ambition lead him to prefer the progressive, if chaotic and +uncentred, American life; but his conscience does not allow him entire +peace in a situation which involves a chasm between him and his +parents and their ideals. If he could find along the line of his more +exciting interests--the American--something that would fill the +deeper need of his nature, his problem would receive a happy solution. + +At present, however, the powers that make for the desired synthesis of +the old and the new are fragmentary and unimportant. They consist +largely in more or less charitable institutions such as the University +Settlement, the Educational Alliance, and those free Hebrew schools +which are carried on with definite reference to the boy as an American +citizen. The latter differ from the "chaiders" in several respects. +The important difference is that these schools are better organized, +have better teachers, and have as a conscious end the supplementing of +the boy's common school education. The attempt is to add to the boy's +secular training an ethical and religious training through the +intelligent study of the Bible. It is thought that an acquaintance +with the old literature of the Jews is calculated to deepen and +spiritualize the boy's nature. + +The Educational Alliance is a still better organized and more +intelligent institution, having much more the same purpose in view as +the best Hebrew schools. Its avowed purpose is to combine the American +and Hebrew elements, reconcile fathers and sons by making the former +more American and the latter more Hebraic, and in that way improve +the home life of the quarter. With the character of the University +Settlement nearly everybody is familiar. It falls in line with +Anglo-Saxon charitable institutions, forms classes, improves the +condition of the poor, and acts as an ethical agent. But, tho such +institutions as the above may do a great deal of good, they are yet +too fragmentary and external, are too little a vital growth from the +conditions, to supply the demand for a serious life which at the same +time shall be American. + +But the Ghetto boy is making use of his heterogeneous opportunities +with the greatest energy and ambition. The public schools are filled +with little Jews; the night schools of the east side are practically +used by no other race. City College, New York University, and Columbia +University are graduating Russian Jews in numbers rapidly increasing. +Many lawyers, indeed, children of patriarchal Jews, have very large +practices already, and some of them belong to solid firms on Wall +Street; although as to business and financial matters they have not +yet attained to the most spectacular height. Then there are +innumerable boys' debating clubs, ethical clubs, and literary clubs in +the east side; altogether there is an excitement in ideas and an +enthusiastic energy for acquiring knowledge which has interesting +analogy to the hopefulness and acquisitive desire of the early +Renaissance. It is a mistake to think that the young Hebrew turns +naturally to trade. He turns his energy to whatever offers the best +opportunities for broader life and success. Other things besides +business are open to him in this country, and he is improving his +chance for the higher education as devotedly as he has improved his +opportunities for success in business. + +It is easy to see that the Ghetto boy's growing Americanism will be +easily triumphant at once over the old traditions and the new +socialism. Whether or not he will be able to retain his moral +earnestness and native idealism will depend not so much upon him as +upon the development of American life as a whole. What we need at the +present time more than anything else is a spiritual unity such as, +perhaps, will only be the distant result of our present special +activities. We need something similar to the spirit underlying the +national and religious unity of the orthodox Jewish culture. + +Altho the young men of the Ghetto who represent at once the most +intelligent and the most progressively American are, for the most +part, floundering about without being able to find the social growths +upon which they can rest as true Americans while retaining their +spiritual and religious earnestness, there are yet a small number of +them who have already attained a synthesis not lacking in the ideal. I +know a young artist, a boy born in the Ghetto, who began his conscious +American life with contempt for the old things, but who with growing +culture has learned to perceive the beauty of the traditions and faith +of his race. He puts into his paintings of the types of Hester Street +an imaginative, almost religious, idealism, and his artistic sympathy +seems to extend particularly to the old people. He, for one, has +become reconciled to the spirit of his father without ceasing to be an +American. And he is not alone. There are other young Jews, of American +university education, of strong ethical and spiritual character, who +are devoting themselves to the work of forming, among the boys of the +Ghetto, an ideal at once American and consistent with the spirit at +the heart of the Hebraic tradition. + + +THE "INTELLECTUALS" + +Between the old people, with their religion, their traditions, the +life pointing to the past, and the boy with his young life eagerly +absorbent of the new tendencies, is a third class which may be called +the "Intellectuals" of the Ghetto. This is the most picturesque and +interesting, altho not the most permanently significant, of all. The +members of this class are interesting for what they are rather than +for what they have been or for what they may become. They are the +anarchists, the socialists, the editors, the writers; some of the +scholars, poets, playwrights and actors of the quarter. They are the +"enlightened" ones who are at once neither orthodox Jews nor +Americans. Coming from Russia, they are reactionary in their political +opinions, and in matters of taste and literary ideals are Europeans +rather than Americans. When they die they will leave nothing behind +them; but while they live they include the most educated, forcible, +and talented personalities of the quarter. Most of them are +socialists, and, as I pointed out in the last section, socialism is +not a permanently nutritive element in the life of the Ghetto, for as +yet the Ghetto has not learned to know the conditions necessary to +American life, and can not, therefore, effectively react against them. + +It is this class which contains, however, the many men of "ideas" who +bring about in certain circles a veritable intellectual fermentation; +and are therefore most interesting from what might be called a +literary point of view, as well as of great importance in the +education of the people. Gifted Russian Jews hold forth passionately +to crowds of working men; devoted writers exploit in the Yiddish +newspapers the principles of their creed and take violent part in the +labor agitation of the east side; or produce realistic sketches of the +life in the quarter, underlying which can be felt the same kind of +revolt which is apparent in the analogous literature of Russia. The +intellectual excitement in the air causes many "splits" among the +socialists. They gather in hostile camps, run rival organs, each +prominent man has his "patriots," or faithful adherents who support +him right or wrong. Intense personal abuse and the most violent +denunciation of opposing principles are the rule. Mellowness, +complacency, geniality, and calmness are qualities practically unknown +to the intellectual Russian Jews, who, driven from the old country, +now possess the first opportunity to express themselves. On the other +hand they are free of the stupid Philistinism of content and are not +primarily interested in the dollar. Their poets sing pathetically of +the sweat-shops, of universal brotherhood, of the abstract rights of +man. Their enthusiastic young men gather every evening in cafés of the +quarter and become habitually intoxicated with the excitement of +ideas. In their restless and feverish eyes shines the intense idealism +of the combined Jew and Russian--the moral earnestness of the Hebrew +united with the passionate, rebellious mental activity of the modern +Muscovite. In these cafés they meet after the theatre or an evening +lecture and talk into the morning hours. The ideal, indeed, is alive +within them. The defect of their intellectual ideas is that they are +not founded on historical knowledge, or on knowledge of the conditions +with which they have to cope. In their excitement and extremeness they +resemble the spirit of the French "intellectuals" of 1789 rather than +that more conservative feeling which has always directed the +development of Anglo-Saxon communities. + + [Illustration: IN THESE CAFÉS THEY MEET AFTER THE THEATRE OR AN + EVENING LECTURE] + +Among the "intellectuals" may be classed a certain number of poets, +dramatists, musicians, and writers, who are neither socialists nor +anarchists, constituting what might roughly be called the literary +"Bohemia" of the quarter; men who pursue their art for the love of it +simply, or who are thereto impelled by the necessity of making a +precarious living; men really without ideas in the definite, +belligerent sense, often uneducated, but often of considerable native +talent. There are also many men of brains who form a large +professional class--doctors, lawyers, and dentists--and who yet are +too old when they come to America to be thoroughly identified with the +life. They are, however, a useful part of the Jewish community, and, +like others of the "intellectual" class, are often men of great +devotion, who have left comparative honor and comfort in the old +country in order to live and work with the persecuted or otherwise +less fortunate brethren. + +The greater number of the following chapters deal with the men of this +"intellectual" class, their personalities, their literary work and the +light it throws upon the life of the people in the New York Ghetto. + + + + +Chapter Two + +Prophets without Honor + + +SUBMERGED SCHOLARS + +A ragged man, who looks like a peddler or a beggar, picking his way +through the crowded misery of Hester Street, or ascending the stairs +of one of the dingy tenement-houses full of sweat-shops that line that +busy mart of the poor Ghetto Jew, may be a great Hebrew scholar. He +may be able to speak and write the ancient tongue with the facility of +a modern language--as fluently as the ordinary Jew makes use of the +"jargon," the Yiddish of the people; he may be a manifold author with +a deep and pious love for the beautiful poetry in his literature; and +in character an enthusiast, a dreamer, or a good and reverend old man. +But no matter what his attainments and his quality he is unknown and +unhonored, for he has pinned his faith to a declining cause, writes +his passionate accents in a tongue more and more unknown even to the +cultivated Jew; and consequently amid the crowding and material +interests of the new world he is submerged--poor in physical estate +and his moral capital unrecognized by the people among whom he lives. + + [Illustration: HE IS UNKNOWN AND UNHONORED] + +Not only unrecognized by the ignorant and the busy and their teachers +the rabbis, who in New York are frequently nearly as ignorant as the +people, he is also (as his learning is limited largely to the +literature of his race) looked down upon by the influential and +intellectual element of the Ghetto--an element socialistic, in +literary sympathy Russian rather than Hebraic, intolerant of +everything not violently modern, wedded to "movements" and scornful of +the past. The "maskil," therefore, or "man of wisdom"--the Hebrew +scholar--is called "old fogy," or "dilettante," by the up-to-date +socialists. + +Of such men there are several in the humble corners of the New York +Ghetto. One peddles for a living, another has a small printing-office +in a basement on Canal Street, a third occasionally tutors in some one +of many languages and sells a patent medicine, and a fourth is the +principal of the Talmud-Thora, a Hebrew school in the Harlem Ghetto, +where he teaches the children to read, write, and pray in the Hebrew +language. + +Moses Reicherson is the name of the principal. "Man of wisdom" of the +purest kind, probably the finest Hebrew grammarian in New York, and +one of the finest in the world, his income from his position at the +head of the school is $5 a week. He is seventy-three years old, wears +a thick gray beard, a little cap on his head, and a long black coat. +His wife is old and bent. They are alone in their miserable little +apartment on East One Hundred and Sixth Street. Their son died a year +or two ago, and to cover the funeral expenses Mr. Reicherson tried in +vain to sell his "Encyclopædia Britannica." But, nevertheless, the +old scholar, who had been bending over his closely written manuscript, +received the visitor with almost cheerful politeness, and told the +story of his work and of his ambitions. Of his difficulties and +privations he said little, but they shone through his words and in the +character of the room in which he lived. + +Born in Vilna, sometimes called the Jerusalem of Lithuania or the +Athens of modern Judæa because of the number of enlightened Jews who +have been born there, many of whom now live in the Russian Jewish +quarter of New York, he has retained the faith of his orthodox +parents, a faith, however, springing from the pure origin of Judaism +rather than holding to the hair-splitting distinctions later embodied +in the Talmud. He was a teacher of Hebrew in his native town for many +years, where he stayed until he came to New York some years ago to be +near his son. His two great intellectual interests, subordinated +indeed to the love of the old literature and religion, have been +Hebrew grammar and the moral fables of several languages. On the +former he has written an important work, and of the latter has +translated much of Lessing's and Gellert's work into pure Hebrew. He +has also translated into his favorite tongue the Russian fable-writer +Krilow; has written fables of his own, and a Hebrew commentary on the +Bible in twenty-four volumes. He loves the fables "because they teach +the people and are real criticism; they are profound and combine fancy +and thought." Many of these are still in manuscript, which is +characteristic of much of the work of these scholars, for they have no +money, and publishers do not run after Hebrew books. Also unpublished, +written in lovingly minute characters, he has a Hebrew prayer-book in +many volumes. He has written hundreds of articles for the Hebrew +weeklies and monthlies, which are fairly numerous in this country, but +which seldom can afford to pay their contributors. At present he +writes exclusively for a Hebrew weekly published in Chicago, +_Regeneration_, the object of which is to promote "the knowledge of +the ancient Hebrew language and literature, and to regenerate the +spirit of the nation." For this he receives no pay, the editor being +almost as poor as himself. But he writes willingly for the love of the +cause, "for universal good"; for Reicherson, in common with the other +neglected scholars, is deeply interested in revivifying what is now +among American Jews a dead language. He believes that in this way only +can the Jewish people be taught the good and the true. + + [Illustration: MOSES REICHERSON] + +"When the national language and literature live," he said, "the +nation lives; when dead, so is the nation. The holy tongue in which +the Bible was written must not die. If it should, much of the truth of +the Bible, many of its spiritual secrets, much of its beautiful +poetry, would be lost. I have gone deep into the Bible, that greatest +book, all my life, and I know many of its secrets." He beamed with +pride as he said these words, and his sense of the beauty of the +Hebrew spirit and the Hebrew literature led him to speak wonderingly +of Anti-Semitism. This cause seemed to him to be founded on ignorance +of the Bible. "If the Anti-Semites would only study the Bible, would +go deep into the knowledge of Hebrew and the teaching of Christ, then +everything would be sweet and well. If they would spend a little of +that money in supporting the Hebrew language and literature and +explaining the sacred books which they now use against our race, they +would see that they are Anti-Christians rather than Anti-Semites." + +The scholar here bethought himself of an old fable he had translated +into Hebrew. Cold and Warmth make a wager that the traveller will +unwrap his cloak sooner to one than to the other. The fierce wind +tries its best, but at every cold blast the traveller only wraps his +cloak the closer. But when the sun throws its rays the wayfarer +gratefully opens his breast to the warming beams. "Love solves all +things," said the old man, "and hate closes up the channels to +knowledge and virtue." Believing the Pope to be a good man with a +knowledge of the Bible, he wanted to write him about the Anti-Semites, +but desisted on the reflection that the Pope was very old and +overburdened, and that the letter would probably fall into the hands +of the cardinals. + +All this was sweetly said, for about him there was nothing of the +attitude of complaint. His wife once or twice during the interview +touched upon their personal condition, but her husband severely kept +his mind on the universal truths, and only when questioned admitted +that he would like a little more money, in order to publish his books +and to enable him to think with more concentration about the Hebrew +language and literature. There was no bitterness in his reference to +the neglect of Hebrew scholarship in the Ghetto. His interest was +impersonal and detached, and his regret at the decadence of the +language seemed noble and disinterested; and, unlike some of the other +scholars, the touch of warm humanity was in everything he said. +Indeed, he is rather the learned teacher of the people with deep +religious and ethical sense than the scholar who cares only for +learning. "In the name of God, adieu!" he said, with quiet intensity +when the visitor withdrew. + +Contrasting sharply in many respects with this beautiful old teacher +is the man who peddles from tenement-house to tenement-house in the +down-town Ghetto, to support himself and his three young children. +S. B. Schwartzberg, unlike most of the "submerged" scholars, is still a +young man, only thirty-seven years old, but he is already discouraged, +bitter, and discontented. He feels himself the apostle of a lost +cause--the regeneration in New York of the old Hebrew language and +literature. His great enterprise in life has failed. He has now given +it up, and the natural vividness and intensity of his nature get +satisfaction in the strenuous abuse of the Jews of the Ghetto. + +He was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of a distinguished rabbi. In +common with many Russian and Polish Jews, he early obtained a living +knowledge of the Hebrew language, and a great love of the literature, +which he knows thoroughly, altho, unlike Reicherson and a scholar who +is to be mentioned, Rosenberg, he has not contributed to the +literature in a scientific sense. He is slightly bald, with burning +black eyes, an enthusiastic and excited manner, and talks with almost +painful earnestness. + +Three years ago Schwartzberg came to this country with a great idea in +his head. "In this free country," he thought to himself, "where there +are so many Russian and Polish Jews, it is a pity that our tongue is +dying, is falling into decay, and that the literature and traditions +that hold our race together are being undermined by materialism and +ethical skepticism." He had a little money, and he decided he would +establish a journal in the interests of the Hebrew language and +literature. No laws would prevent him here from speaking his mind in +his beloved tongue. He would bring into vivid being again the national +spirit of his people, make them love with the old fervor their ancient +traditions and language. It was the race's spirit of humanity and +feeling for the ethical beauty, not the special creed of Judaism, for +which he and the other scholars care little, that filled him with the +enthusiasm of an apostle. In his monthly magazine, the _Western +Light_, he put his best efforts, his best thoughts about ethical +truths and literature. The poet Dolitzki contributed in purest Hebrew +verse, as did many other Ghetto lights. But it received no support, +few bought it, and it lasted only a year. Then he gave it up, bankrupt +in money and hope. That was several years ago, and since then he has +peddled for a living. + +The failure has left in Schwartzberg's soul a passionate hatred of +what he calls the materialism of the Jews in America. Only in Europe, +he thinks, does the love of the spiritual remain with them. Of the +rabbis of the Ghetto he spoke with bitterness. "They," he said, "are +the natural teachers of the people. They could do much for the Hebrew +literature and language. Why don't they? Because they know no Hebrew +and have no culture. In Russia the Jews demand that their rabbis +should be learned and spiritual, but here they are ignorant and +materialistic." So Mr. Schwartzberg wrote a pamphlet which is now +famous in the Ghetto. "I wrote it with my heart's blood," he said, his +eyes snapping. "In it I painted the spiritual condition of the Jews in +New York in the gloomiest of colors." + +"It is terrible," he proceeded vehemently. "Not one Hebrew magazine +can exist in this country. They all fail, and yet there are many +beautiful Hebrew writers to-day. When Dolitzki was twenty years old +in Russia he was looked up to as a great poet. But what do the Jews +care about him here? For he writes in Hebrew! Why, Hebrew scholars are +regarded by the Jews as tramps, as useless beings. Driven from Russia +because we are Jews, we are despised in New York because we are Hebrew +scholars! The rabbis, too, despise the learned Hebrew, and they have a +fearful influence on the ignorant people. If they can dress well and +speak English it is all they want. It is a shame how low-minded these +teachers of the people are. I was born of a rabbi, and brought up by +him, but in Russia they are for literature and the spirit, while in +America it is just the other way." + +The discouraged apostle of Hebrew literature now sees no immediate +hope for the cause. What seems to him the most beautiful lyric poetry +in the world he thinks doomed to the imperfect understanding of +generations for whom the language does not live. The only ultimate +hope is in the New Jerusalem. Consequently the fiery scholar, altho +not a Zionist, thinks well of the movement as tending to bring the +Jews again into a nation which shall revive the old tongue and +traditions. Mr. Schwartzberg referred to some of the other submerged +scholars of the Ghetto. His eyes burned with indignation when he +spoke of Moses Reicherson. He could hardly control himself at the +thought that the greatest Hebrew grammarian living, "an old man, too, +a reverend old man," should be brought to such a pass. In the same +strain of outrage he referred to another old man, a scholar who would +be as poor as Reicherson and himself were it not for his wife, who is +a dressmaker. It is she who keeps him out of the category of +"submerged" scholars. + + [Illustration: REV. H. ROSENBERG] + +But the Rev. H. Rosenberg, of whose condition Schwartzberg also +bitterly complained, is indeed submerged. He runs a printing-office in +a Canal Street basement, where he sits in the damp all day long +waiting for an opportunity to publish his _magnum opus_, a cyclopedia +of Biblical literature, containing an historical and geographical +description of the persons, places, and objects mentioned in the +Bible. All the Ghetto scholars speak of this work with bated breath, +as a tremendously learned affair. Only two volumes of it have been +published. To give the remainder to the world, Mr. Rosenberg is +waiting for his children, who are nearly self-supporting, to +contribute their mite. He is a man of sixty-two, with the high, bald +forehead of a scholar. For twenty years he was a rabbi in Russia, and +has preached in thirteen synagogues. He has been nine years in New +York, and, in addition to the great cyclopedia, has written, but not +published, a cyclopedia of Talmudical literature. A "History of the +Jews," in the Russian language, and a Russian novel, "The Jew of +Trient," are among his published works. He is one of the most learned +of all of these men who have a living, as well as an exact, knowledge +of what is generally regarded as a dead language and literature. + +Altho he is waiting to publish the great cyclopedia, he is patient and +cold. He has not the sweet enthusiasm of Reicherson, and not the +vehement and partisan passion of Schwartzberg. He has the coldness of +old age, without its spiritual glow, and scholarship is the only idea +that moves him. Against the rabbis he has no complaint to make; with +them, he said, he had nothing to do. He thinks that Schwartzberg is +extreme and unfair, and that there are good and bad rabbis in New +York. He is reserved and undemonstrative, and speaks only in reply. +When the rather puzzled visitor asked him if there was anything in +which he was interested, he replied, "Yes, in my cyclopedia." The only +point at which he betrayed feeling was when he quoted proudly the +words of a reviewer of the cyclopedia, who had wondered where Dr. +Rosenberg had obtained all his learning. He stated indifferently that +the Hebrew language and literature is dead and cannot be revived. "I +know," he said, "that Hebrew literature does not pay, but I cannot +stop." With no indignation, he remarked that the Jews in New York have +no ideals. It was a fact objectively to be deplored, but for which he +personally had no emotion, all of that being reserved for his +cyclopedia. + + [Illustration: "SUBMERGED SCHOLARS"] + +These three men are perfect types of the "submerged Hebrew scholar" of +the New York Ghetto. Reicherson is the typical religious teacher; +Schwartzberg, the enthusiast, who loves the language like a mistress, +and Rosenberg, the cool "man of wisdom," who only cares for the +perfection of knowledge. Altho there are several others on the east +side who approach the type, they fall more or less short of it. Either +they are not really scholars in the old tongue, altho reading and +even writing it, or through business or otherwise they have raised +themselves above the pathetic point. Thus Dr. Benedict Ben-Zion, one +of the poorest of all, being reduced to occasional tutoring, and the +sale of a patent medicine for a living, is not specifically a scholar. +He writes and reads Hebrew, to be sure, but is also a playwright in +the "jargon;" has been a Christian missionary to his own people in +Egypt, Constantinople, and Rumania, a doctor for many years, a teacher +in several languages, one who has turned his hand to everything, and +whose heart and mind are not so purely Hebraic as those of the men I +have mentioned. He even is seen, more or less, with Ghetto _literati_ +who are essentially hostile to what the true Hebrew scholar holds +by--a body of Russian Jewish socialists of education, who in their +Grand and Canal Street cafés express every night in impassioned +language their contempt for whatever is old and historical. + +Then, there are J. D. Eisenstein, the youngest and one of the most +learned, but perhaps the least "submerged" of them all; Gerson +Rosenschweig, a wit, who has collected the epigrams of the Hebrew +literature, added many of his own, and written in Hebrew a humorous +treatise on America--a very up-to-date Jew, who, like Schwartzberg, +tried to run a Hebrew weekly, but when he failed, was not discouraged, +and turned to business and politics instead; and Joseph Low Sossnitz, +a very learned scholar, of dry and sarcastic tendency, who only +recently has risen above the submerged point. Among the latter's most +notable published books are a philosophical attack on materialism, a +treatise on the sun, and a work on the philosophy of religion. + +It is the wrench between the past and the present which has placed +these few scholars in their present pathetic condition. Most of them +are old, and when they die the "maskil" as a type will have vanished +from New York. In the meantime, tho they starve, they must devote +themselves to the old language, the old ideas and traditions of +culture. Their poet, the austere Dolitzki, famous in Russia at the +time of the revival of Hebrew twenty years ago, is the only man in New +York who symbolizes in living verse the spirit in which these old men +live, the spirit of love for the race as most purely expressed in the +Hebrew literature. This disinterested love for the remote, this +pathetic passion to keep the dead alive, is what lends to the lives of +these "submerged" scholars a nobler quality than what is generally +associated with the east side. + + +THE POOR RABBIS + +The rabbis, as well as the scholars, of the east side of New York have +their grievances. They, too, are "submerged," like so much in humanity +that is at once intelligent, poor, and out-of-date. As a lot, they are +old, reverend men, with long gray beards, long black coats and little +black caps on their heads. They are mainly very poor, live in the +barest of the tenement houses and pursue a calling which no longer +involves much honor or standing. In the old country, in Russia--for +most of the poor ones are Russian--the rabbi is a great person. He is +made rabbi by the state and is rabbi all his life, and the only rabbi +in the town, for all the Jews in every city form one congregation, of +which there is but one rabbi and one cantor. He is a man always full +of learning and piety, and is respected and supported comfortably by +the congregation, a tax being laid on meat, salt, and other foodstuffs +for his special benefit. + +But in New York it is very different. Here there are hundreds of +congregations, one in almost every street, for the Jews come from many +different cities and towns in the old country, and the New York +representatives of every little place in Russia must have their +congregation here. Consequently, the congregations are for the most +part small, poor and unimportant. Few can pay the rabbi more than $3 +or $4 a week, and often, instead of having a regular salary, he is +reduced to occasional fees for his services at weddings, births and +holy festivals generally. Some very poor congregations get along +without a rabbi at all, hiring one for special occasions, but these +are congregations which are falling off somewhat from their orthodox +strictness. + + [Illustration] + +The result of this state of affairs is a pretty general falling off in +the character of the rabbis. In Russia they are learned men--know the +Talmud and all the commentaries upon it by heart--and have degrees +from the rabbinical colleges, but here they are often without degrees, +frequently know comparatively little about the Talmud, and are +sometimes actuated by worldly motives. A few Jews coming to New York +from some small Russian town, will often select for a rabbi the man +among them who knows a little more of the Talmud than the others, +whether he has ever studied for the calling or not. Then, again, some +mere adventurers get into the position--men good for nothing, looking +for a position. They clap a high hat on their heads, impose on a poor +congregation with their up-to-dateness and become rabbis without +learning or piety. These "fake" rabbis--"rabbis for business +only"--are often satirized in the Yiddish plays given at the Bowery +theatres. On the stage they are ridiculous figures, ape American +manners in bad accents, and have a keen eye for gain. + +The genuine, pious rabbis in the New York Ghetto feel, consequently, +that they have their grievances. They, the accomplished interpreters +of the Jewish law, are well-nigh submerged by the frauds that flood +the city. But this is not the only sorrow of the "real" rabbi of the +Ghetto. The rabbis uptown, the rich rabbis, pay little attention to +the sufferings, moral and physical, of their downtown brethren. For +the most part the uptown rabbi is of the German, the downtown rabbi of +the Russian branch of the Jewish race, and these two divisions of the +Hebrews hate one another like poison. Last winter when Zangwill's +dramatized _Children of the Ghetto_ was produced in New York the +organs of the swell uptown German-Jew protested that it was a pity to +represent faithfully in art the sordidness as well as the beauty of +the poor Russian Ghetto Jew. It seemed particularly baneful that the +religious customs of the Jews should be thus detailed upon the stage. +The uptown Jew felt a little ashamed that the proletarians of his +people should be made the subject of literature. The downtown Jews, +the Russian Jews, however, received play and stories with delight, as +expressing truthfully their life and character, of which they are not +ashamed. + +Another cause of irritation between the downtown and uptown rabbis is +a difference of religion. The uptown rabbi, representing congregations +larger in this country and more American in comfort and tendency, +generally is of the "reformed" complexion, a hateful thought to the +orthodox downtown rabbi, who is loath to admit that the term rabbi +fits these swell German preachers. He maintains that, since the uptown +rabbi is, as a rule, not only "reformed" in faith, but in preaching as +well, he is in reality no rabbi, for, properly speaking, a rabbi is +simply an interpreter of the law, one with whom the Talmudical wisdom +rests, and who alone can give it out; not one who exhorts, but who, on +application, can untie knotty points of the law. The uptown rabbis +they call "preachers," with some disdain. + +So that the poor, downtrodden rabbis--those among them who look upon +themselves as the only genuine--have many annoyances to bear. Despised +and neglected by their rich brethren, without honor or support in +their own poor communities, and surrounded by a rabble of unworthy +rivals, the "real" interpreter of the "law" in New York is something +of an object of pity. + +Just who the most genuine downtown rabbis are is, no doubt, a matter +of dispute. I will not attempt to determine, but will quote in +substance a statement of Rabbi Weiss as to genuine rabbis, which will +include a curious section of the history of the Ghetto. He is a jolly +old man, and smokes his pipe in a tenement-house room containing 200 +books of the Talmud and allied writings. + +"A genuine rabbi," he said, "knows the law, and sits most of the time +in his room, ready to impart it. If an old woman comes in with a goose +that has been killed, the rabbi can tell her, after she has explained +how the animal met its death, whether or not it is _koshur_, whether +it may be eaten or not. And on any other point of diet or general +moral or physical hygiene the rabbi is ready to explain the law of the +Hebrews from the time of Adam until to-day. It is he who settles many +of the quarrels of the neighborhood. The poor sweat-shop Jew comes to +complain of his "boss," the old woman to tell him her dreams and get +his interpretation of them, the young girl to weigh with him questions +of amorous etiquette. Our children do not need to go to the Yiddish +theatres to learn about "greenhorn" types. They see all sorts of +Ghetto Jews in the house of the rabbi, their father. + +"I myself was the first genuine rabbi on the east side of New York. I +am now sixty-two years old, and came here sixteen years ago--came for +pleasure, but my wife followed me, and so I had to stay." + +Here the old rabbi smiled cheerfully. "When I came to New York," he +proceeded, "I found the Jews here in a very bad way--eating meat that +was "thrapho," not allowed, because killed improperly; literally, +killed by a brute. The slaughter-houses at that time had no rabbi to +see that the meat was properly killed, was _koshur_--all right. + +"You can imagine my horror. The slaughter-houses had been employing an +orthodox Jew, who, however, was not a rabbi, to see that the meat was +properly killed, and he had been doing things all wrong, and the +chosen people had been living abominably. I immediately explained the +proper way of killing meat, and since then I have regulated several +slaughter-houses and make my living in that way. I am also rabbi of a +congregation, but it is so small that it doesn't pay. The +slaughter-houses are more profitable." + + [Illustration: THE RABBI CAN TELL WHETHER OR NOT IT IS KOSHUR] + +These "submerged" rabbis are not always quite fair to one another. +Some east side authorities maintain that the "orthodox Jew" of whom +Rabbi Weiss spoke thus contemptuously, was one of the finest rabbis +who ever came to New York, one of the most erudite of Talmudic +scholars. Many congregations united to call him to America in 1887, so +great was his renown in Russia. But when he reached New York the +general fate of the intelligent adult immigrant overtook him. Even the +"orthodox" in New York looked upon him as a "greenhorn" and deemed his +sermons out-of-date. He was inclined, too, to insist upon a stricter +observance of the law than suited their lax American ideas. So he, +too, famous in Russia, rapidly became one of the "submerged." + +One of the most learned, dignified and impressive rabbis of the east +side is Rabbi Vidrovitch. He was a rabbi for forty years in Russia, +and for nine years in New York. Like all true rabbis he does not +preach, but merely sits in his home and expounds the "law." He employs +the Socratic method of instruction, and is very keen in his indirect +mode of argument. Keenness, indeed, seems to be the general result of +the hair-splitting Rabbinical education. The uptown rabbis, +"preachers," as the down-town rabbi contemptuously calls them, send +many letters to Rabbi Vidrovitch seeking his help in the untying of +knotty points of the "law." It was from him that Israel Zangwill, when +the _Children of the Ghetto_ was produced on the New York stage, +obtained a minute description of the orthodox marriage ceremonies. +Zangwill caused to be taken several flash-light photographs of the old +rabbi, surrounded by his books and dressed in his official garments. + +There are many congregations in the New York Ghetto which have no +rabbis and many rabbis who have no congregations. Two rabbis who have +no congregations are Rabbi Beinush and Rabbi, or rather, Cantor, +Weiss. Rabbi Weiss would say of Beinush that he is a man who knows the +Talmud, but has no diploma. Rabbi Beinush is an extremely poor rabbi +with neither congregation nor slaughter-houses, who sits in his poor +room and occasionally sells his wisdom to a fishwife who wants to know +if some piece of meat is _koshur_ or not. He is down on the rich +up-town rabbis, who care nothing for the law, as he puts it, and who +leave the poor down-town rabbi to starve. + +Cantor Weiss is also without a job. The duty of the cantor is to sing +the prayer in the congregation, but Cantor Weiss sings only on +holidays, for he is not paid enough, he says, to work regularly, the +cantor sharing in this country a fate similar to that of the rabbi. +The famous comedian of the Ghetto, Mogolesco, was, as a boy, one of +the most noted cantors in Russia. As an actor in the New York Ghetto +he makes twenty times as much money as the most accomplished cantor +here. Cantor Weiss is very bitter against the up-town cantors: "They +shorten the prayer," he said. "They are not orthodox. It is too hot in +the synagogue for the comfortable up-town cantors to pray." + +Comfortable Philistinism, progress and enlightment up town; and +poverty, orthodoxy and patriotic and religious sentiment, with a touch +of the material also, down town. Such seems to be the difference +between the German and the Russian Jew in this country, and in +particular between the German and Russian Jewish rabbi. + + + + +Chapter Three + +The Old and the New Woman + + +The women present in many respects a marked contrast to their American +sisters. Substance as opposed to form, simplicity of mood as opposed +to capriciousness, seem to be in broad lines their relative qualities. +They have comparatively few _états d'ame_; but those few are revealed +with directness and passion. They lack the subtle charm of the +American woman, who is full of feminine devices, complicated +flirtatiousness; who in her dress and personal appearance seeks the +plastic epigram, and in her talk and relation to the world an indirect +suggestive delicacy. They are poor in physical estate; many work or +have worked; even the comparatively educated among them, in the +sweat-shops, are undernourished and lack the physical well-being and +consequent temperamental buoyancy which are comforting qualities of +the well-bred American woman. Unhappy in circumstances, they are +predominatingly serious in nature, and, if they lack alertness to the +social _nuance_, have yet a compelling appeal which consists in +headlong devotion to a duty, a principle or a person. As their men do +not treat them with the scrupulous deference given their American +sisters, they do not so delightfully abound in their own sense, do not +so complexedly work out their own natures, and lack variety and grace. +On the other hand, they are more apt to abound in the sense of +something outside of themselves, and carry to their love affairs the +same devoted warmth that they put into principle. + + +THE ORTHODOX JEWESS + +The first of the two well-marked classes of women in the Ghetto is +that of the ignorant orthodox Russian Jewess. She has no language but +Yiddish, no learning but the Talmudic law, no practical authority but +that of her husband and her rabbi. She is even more of a Hausfrau than +the German wife. She can own no property, and the precepts of the +Talmud as applied to her conduct are largely limited to the relations +with her husband. Her life is absorbed in observing the religious law +and in taking care of her numerous children. She is drab and plain in +appearance, with a thick waist, a wig, and as far as is possible for a +woman a contempt for ornament. She is, however, with the noticeable +assimilative sensitiveness of the Jew, beginning to pick up some of +the ways of the American woman. If she is young when she comes to +America, she soon lays aside her wig, and sometimes assumes the rakish +American hat, prides herself on her bad English, and grows slack in +the observance of Jewish holidays and the dietary regulations of the +Talmud. Altho it is against the law of this religion to go to the +theatre, large audiences, mainly drawn from the ignorant workers of +the sweat-shops and the fishwives and pedlers of the push-cart +markets, flock to the Bowery houses. It is this class which forms the +large background of the community, the masses from which more +cultivated types are developing. + + [Illustration: HER LIFE IS ABSORBED IN OBSERVING THE RELIGIOUS LAW] + +Many a literary sketch in the newspapers of the quarter portrays these +ignorant, simple, devout, housewifely creatures in comic or pathetic, +more often, after the satiric manner of the Jewish writers, in +serio-comic vein. The authors, altho they are much more educated, yet +write of these women, even when they write in comic fashion, with +fundamental sympathy. They picture them working devotedly in the shop +or at home for their husbands and families, they represent the sorrow +and simple jealousy of the wife whose husband's imagination, perhaps, +is carried away by the piquant manner and dress of a Jewess who is +beginning to ape American ways; they tell of the comic adventures in +America of the newly-arrived Jewess: how she goes to the theatre, +perhaps, and enacts the part of Partridge at the play. More +fundamentally, they relate how the poor woman is deeply shocked, at +her arrival, by the change which a few years have made in the +character of her husband, who had come to America before her in order +to make a fortune. She finds his beard shaved off, and his manners in +regard to religious holidays very slack. She is sometimes so deeply +affected that she does not recover. More often she grows to feel the +reason and eloquence of the change and becomes partly accustomed to +the situation; but all through her life she continues to be dismayed +by the precocity, irreligion and Americanism of her children. Many +sketches and many scenes in the Ghetto plays present her as a pathetic +"greenhorn" who, while she is loved by her children, is yet rather +patronized and pitied by them. + +In "Gott, Mensch und Teufel," a Yiddish adaptation of the Faust idea, +one of these simple religious souls is dramatically portrayed. The +restless Jewish Faust, his soul corrupted by the love of money, puts +aside his faithful wife in order to marry another woman who has +pleased his eye. He uses as an excuse the fact that his marriage is +childless, and as such rendered void in accordance with the precepts +of the religious law. His poor old wife submits almost with reverence +to the double authority of husband and Talmud, and with humble +demeanor and tears streaming from her eyes begs the privilege of +taking care of the children of her successor. + +In "The Slaughter" there is a scene which picturesquely portrays the +love of the poor Jew and the poor Jewess for their children. The wife +is married to a brute, whom she hates, and between the members of the +two families there is no relation but that of ugly sordidness. But +when it is known that a child is to be born they are all filled with +the greatest joy. The husband is ecstatic and they have a great feast, +drink, sing and dance, and the young wife is lyrically happy for the +first time since her marriage. + +Many little newspaper sketches portray the simple sweat-shop Jewess of +the ordinary affectionate type, who is exclusively minded so far as +her husband's growing interest in the showy American Jewess is +concerned. Cahan's novel, "Yekel," is the Ghetto masterpiece in the +portrayal of these two types of women--the wronged "greenhorn" who has +just come from Russia, and she who, with a rakish hat and bad English, +is becoming an American girl with strange power to alienate the +husband's affections. + + +THE MODERN TYPE + +The other, the educated class of Ghetto women, is, of course, in a +great minority; and this division includes the women even the most +slightly affected by modern ideas as well as those who from an +intellectual point of view are highly cultivated. Among the least +educated are a large number of women who would be entirely ignorant +were it not for the ideas which they have received through the +Socialistic propaganda of the quarter. Like the men who are otherwise +ignorant, they are trained to a certain familiarity with economic +ideas, read and think a good deal about labor and capital, and take an +active part in speaking, in "house to house" distribution of +socialistic literature and in strike agitation. Many of these women, +so long as they are unmarried, lead lives thoroughly devoted to "the +cause," and afterwards become good wives and fruitful mothers, and +urge on their husbands and sons to active work in the "movement." They +have in personal character many virtues called masculine, are simple +and straightforward and intensely serious, and do not "bank" in any +way on the fact that they are women! Such a woman would feel insulted +if her escort were to pick up her handkerchief or in any way suggest a +politeness growing out of the difference in sex. It is from this class +of women, from those who are merely tinged, so to speak, with ideas, +and who consequently are apt to throw the whole strength of their +primitive natures into the narrow intellectual channels that are open +to them, that a number of Ghetto heroines come who are willing to lay +down their lives for an idea, or to live for one. It was only recently +that the thinking Socialists were stirred by the suicide of a young +girl for which several causes were given. Some say it was for love, +but what seems a partial cause at least for the tragedy was the girl's +devotion to anarchistic ideas. She had worked for some time in the +quarter and was filled with enthusiastic Tolstoian convictions about +freedom and non-resistance to evil, and all the other idealistic +doctrines for which these Anarchists are remarkable. Some of the +people of the quarter believe that it was temporary despair of any +satisfactory outcome to her work that brought about her death. But +since the splits in the Socialistic party and the rise among them of +many insincere agitators, the enthusiasm for the cause has diminished, +and particularly among the women, who demand perfect integrity or +nothing; tho there is still a large class of poor sweat-shop women who +carry on active propaganda work, make speeches, distribute literature, +and go from house to house in a social effort to make converts. + + [Illustration: INTENSELY SERIOUS] + +As we ascend in the scale of education in the Ghetto we find women who +derive their culture and ideas from a double source--from Socialism +and from advanced Russian ideals of literature and life. They have +lost faith completely in the orthodox religion, have substituted no +other, know Russian better than Yiddish, read Tolstoi, Turgenef and +Chekhov, and often put into practice the most radical theories of the +"new woman," particularly those which say that woman should be +economically independent of man. There are successful female dentists, +physicians, writers, and even lawyers by the score in East Broadway +who have attained financial independence through industry and +intelligence. They are ambitious to a degree and often direct the +careers of their husbands or force their lovers to become doctors or +lawyers--the great social desiderata in the match-making of the +Ghetto. There is more than one case on record where a girl has +compelled her recalcitrant lover to learn law, medicine or dentistry, +or submit to being jilted by her. An actor devoted to the stage is now +on the point of leaving it to become a dentist at the command of his +ambitious wife. "I always do what she tells me," he said +pathetically. + +The career of a certain woman now practising dentistry in the Ghetto +is one of the most interesting cases, and is also quite typical. She +was born of poor Jewish parents in a town near St. Petersburg, and +began early to read the socialist propaganda and the Russian +literature which contains so much implicit revolutionary doctrine. +When she was seventeen years old she wrote a novel in Yiddish, called +"Mrs. Goldna, the Usurer," in which she covertly advocated the +anarchistic teachings. The title and the sub-theme of the book was +directed against the usurer class among the Jews, and were mainly +intended to hide from the Government her real purpose. The book was +afterwards published in New York, and had a fairly wide circulation. A +year or two later her imagination was irresistibly enthralled by the +remarkable wave of "new woman" enthusiasm which swept over Russia in +the early eighties, and resulted in so many suicides of young girls +whom poverty or injustice to the Jew thwarted in their scientific and +intellectual ambition. She went alone to St. Petersburg with sixty +five cents in her pocket, in order to obtain a professional education, +which, after years of practical starvation, she succeeded in securing. +With several degrees she came to America twelve years ago and fought +out an independent professional position for herself. She believes +that all women should have the means by which they may support +themselves, and that marriage under these conditions would be happier +than at present. Her husband is a doctor, and her idea is that they +are happier than if she were a woman of the old type, "merely a wife +and mother," as she put it. She maintains that no emotional interest +is lost under the new régime, while many practical advantages are +gained. Since she has been in America she has furthered the Socialist +cause by literary sketches published in the Yiddish newspapers, altho +she has been too busy to take any direct part in the movement. + + [Illustration: A RUSSIAN GIRL-STUDENT] + +The description of this type of woman seems rather cold and forbidding +in the telling; but such an impression is misleading. There is no +commoner reproach made by the women of the Ghetto against their +American sister than that she is unemotional and "practical." They +come to America, like the men, because they cannot stand the +political conditions in Russia, which they describe as "fierce," but +they never cease loving the land of their birth; and the reason they +give is that the ideal still lives in Muscovite civilization, while in +America it is trampled out by the cult of the dollar. They think +Americans are dry and cold, unpoetic, uninterested in great +principles, and essentially frivolous, incapable of devotion to +persons or to "movements," reading books only for amusement, and +caring nothing for real literature. One day an American dined with +four Russian Jews of distinction. Two were Nihilists who had been in +the "big movement" in Russia and were merely visiting New York. The +other two were a married couple of uncommon education. The Nihilists +were gentle, cultivated men, with feeling for literature, and deeply +admired, because of their connection with the great movement, by the +two New Yorkers. The talk turned on Byron, for whom the Russians had a +warm enthusiasm. The Americans made rather light of Byron and incurred +thereby the great scorn of the Russians, who felt deeply the +"tendency" character of the poet without being able to understand his +æsthetic and imaginative limitations. After the Nihilists had left, +the misguided American used the words "interesting" and "amusing" in +connection with them; whereupon the Russian lady was almost indignant, +and dilated on the frivolity of a race that could not take serious +people seriously, but wanted always to be entertained; that cared only +for what was "pretty" and "charming" and "sensible" and "practical," +and cared nothing for poetry and beauty and essential humanity. + +The woman referred to, as well as many others of the most educated +class in the quarter, some of them the wives of socialists, doctors, +lawyers or literary men, are strongly interesting because of their +warm temperaments, and genuine, if limited, ideas about art, but most +of them are lacking in grace, and sense of humor, and of proportion. +They are stiff and unyielding, have little free play of imagination, +little alertness of ideas, and their sense of literature is limited +largely to realism. Japanese art, for instance, as any art which +depends on the exquisiteness of its form, is lost on these stern +realists. They no more understand the latest subtle literary +consciousness than they do the interest and eloquence of a creature +who makes of herself a perfect social product such as the clever +French woman of history. + + [Illustration: WORKING GIRLS RETURNING HOME] + +But the charm of sincere feeling they have; and, in an intellectual +race, that feeling shapes itself into definite criticism of society. +Emotionally strong and attached by Russian tradition to a rebellious +doctrine, they are deeply unconventional in theory and sometimes in +practice; altho the national morality of the Jewish race very +definitely limits the extent to which they realize some of their +ideas. The passionate feeling at the bottom of most of their +"tendency" beliefs is that woman should stand on the same social basis +as man, and should be weighed in the same scales. This ruling creed is +held by all classes of the educated women of the Ghetto, from the poor +sweat shop worker, who has recently felt the influence of Socialism, +to the thoroughly trained "new woman" with her developed literary +taste; and all its variations find expression in the literature of the +quarter. + + +PLACE OF WOMAN IN GHETTO LITERATURE + +Ibsen's "Doll's House" has been translated and produced at a Yiddish +theatre; and an original play called "Minna" registers a protest by +the Jewish woman against that law of marriage which binds her to an +inferior man. Married to an ignorant laborer, Minna falls in love (for +his advanced ideas) with the boarder--every poor family, to pay the +rent, must saddle themselves with a boarder, often at the expense of +domestic happiness--and finally kills herself, when the laws of +society press her too hard. Another drama called "East Broadway" +presents the case of a Russian Jewess devoted to Russia, to idealism +and Nihilism, and to a man who shared her faith until they came to New +York, when he became a business man pure and simple, and lost his +ideals and his love for her. In a popular play called "The Beggar of +Odessa," lines openly advocating the freest love between the sexes +accompany other extreme anarchistic views put into the loosest and +most popular form. "Broken Chains" is a drama which criticises the +relative freedom of action given to the man in matters of love. The +heroine reads Ibsen at night while her husband amuses himself in the +quarter. A young bookkeeper is there who serves to make concrete her +growing theories. But her sense of duty to her child restrains her +from the final step, and she dies in despair. Suicides in sketches and +plays abound, and as often as not result simply from intellectual +despondency. "Vain Sacrifice" is the fierce outcry of a woman against +the poverty which makes her marry a man she loathes for the sake of +her father. In the newspaper sketches there are many pictures of +sordid homes and conditions from the midst of which fierce protests +by wives and mothers are implicitly given. + + [Illustration: A RUSSIAN TYPE] + +An appealing characteristic of the "new woman" of the Ghetto is the +consideration which she manifests towards the orthodox "greenhorn" who +may be her aunt, her mother, her mother-in-law or her grandmother. The +sense of infinite form prescribed by the Talmud is dead to her, but +extraordinary love for the family bond is not, and, moved by that, she +observes the complicated formulæ on all the holidays in order to +please the dear old "greenhorn" who lives with her; eats unleavened +bread, weeps on Atonement Day in the synagogue, and goes through the +whole long list. Her conduct in this respect is in striking contrast +to the off-hand treatment of parents by their American daughters, and +to that of the Orthodox Jewish woman in relation to the theatre. The +law forbids the theatre, but even the slightly disillusioned ladies of +the quarter will go on the Sabbath; and it is said that they sometimes +hypocritically relieve their consciences by hissing the actor who, +even in his rôle, dares to smoke on that day. This is on a par with +the hypocrisy which leads many Orthodox Jewish families to have a +Gentile as their servant, so that they can drink the tea, and warm +themselves by the fire, made by him, without technically violating +"the law." + +Love in the Ghetto is, no doubt, very much the same as it is +elsewhere; and this in spite of the fact that among the Orthodox +marriage is arranged by the parents, a custom which is condemned in +"The Slaughter," for instance, where the terrible results of a +loveless union are portrayed. The system of matrimonial agents in the +quarter does not seem to have any important bearing on the question of +love. In this respect the free thinking of the people grows apace, and +love-marriages in the quarter are on the increase. In matters of taste +and inclination between the sexes, however, there are some qualities +quite startling to the American. The most popular actor with the girls +of the Ghetto is a very fat, heavy, pompous hero who would provoke +only a smile from the trim American girl; and the more popular +actresses are also very stout ladies. From an American point of view +the prettiest actresses of the Ghetto are admired by the minority of +Jews who have been taken by the rakish hat, the slim form, and the +indefinite charm to which the Ghetto is being educated. It is alleged +that at an up-town theatre, where a large proportion of the audience +is Jewish, the leading lady must always be of very generous build; and +this in spite of the fact that the well-to-do Jews up-town have been +in America a long time, and have had ample opportunity to become +smitten with the charms of the slender American girl. + + + + +Chapter Four + +Four Poets + + +In East Canal Street, in the heart of the east side, are many of the +little Russian Jewish cafés, already mentioned, where excellent coffee +and tea are sold, where everything is clean and good, and where the +conversation is often of the best. The talk is good, for there +assemble, in the late afternoon and evening, the chosen crowd of +"intellectuals." The best that is Russian to-day is intensely serious. +What is distinctively Jewish has always been serious. The man hunted +from his country is apt to have a serious tone in thought and feeling. + +It is this combination--Russian, Jewish, and exile--that is +represented at these little Canal Street cafés. The sombre and earnest +qualities of the race, emphasized by the special conditions, receive +here expression in the mouths of actors, socialists, musicians, +journalists, and poets. Here they get together and talk by the hour, +over their coffee and cake, about politics and society, poetry and +ethics, literature and life. The café-keepers themselves are +thoughtful and often join in the discussion,--a discussion never +light but sometimes lighted up by bitter wit and gloomy irony. + +There are many poets among them, four of whom stand out as men of +great talent. One of the four, Morris Rosenfeld, is already well known +to the English-speaking world through a translation of some of his +poems. Two of the other three are equally well known, but only to the +Jewish people. One is famous throughout Jewish Russia. + + +A WEDDING BARD + +The oldest of the four poets is Eliakim Zunser. It is he that is known +to millions of people in Russia and to the whole New York Ghetto. He +is the poet of the common people, the beloved of all, the poet of the +housewife, of the Jew who is so ignorant that he does not even know +his own family name. To still more ignorant people, if such are +possible, he is known by what, after all, is his distinctive title, +Eliakim the _Badchen_, or the Wedding Bard. He writes in Yiddish, the +universal language of the Jew, dubbed "jargon" by the Hebrew +aristocrat. + +Zunser is now a printer in Rutger's Square, and has largely given up +his duties as _Badchen_, but at one time he was so famous in that +capacity that he went to a wedding once or twice every day, and made +in that way a large income. His part at the ceremony was to address +the bride and bridegroom in verse so solemn that it would bring tears +to their eyes, and then entertain the guests with burlesque lines. He +composed the music as well as the verses, and did both extempore. When +he left his home to attend the wedding there was no idea in his head +as to what he would say. He left that to the result of a hurried talk +before the ceremony with the wedding guests and the relatives of the +couple. + +Zunser's wedding verses died as soon as they were born, but there are +sixty-five collections of his poems, hundreds of which are sung every +day to young and old throughout Russia. Many others have never been +published, for Zunser is a poet who composes as he breathes, whose +every feeling and idea quivers into poetic expression, and who +preserves only an accidental part of what he does. + + [Illustration: ELIAKIM ZUNSER] + +He is a man of about seventy years of age, with kind little eyes, a +gray beard, and spare, short figure. As he sits in his printing +office in the far east side he wears a small black cap on his head. +Adjoining the office is another room, in which he lives with his wife +and several children. The stove, the dining-table, the beds, are all +in the same room, which is bare and chill. But the poet is hospitable, +and to the guests he offered cake and a bottle of sarsaparilla. Far +more delightful, however, the old man read some of his poems aloud. As +he read in a chanting tone he swayed gently backwards and forwards, +unconscious of his visitors, absorbed in the rhythm and feeling of the +song. There was great sweetness and tenderness in his eyes, facility +and spontaneity in the metre, and simple pathos and philosophy in the +meaning of what he said. He was apparently not conscious of the +possession of unusual power. Famous as he is, there was no sense of it +in his bearing. He is absolutely of the people, childlike and simple. +So far removed is he from the pride of his distinction that he has +largely given up poetry now. + +"I don't write much any more," he said in his careless Yiddish; "I +have not much time." + +His poetry seemed to him only a detail of his life. Along with the +simplicity of old age he has the maturity and aloofness of it. The +feeling for his position as an individual, if he ever had it, has +gone, and left the mind and heart interested only in God, race, and +impersonal beauty. + +So as he chanted his poems he seemed to gather up into himself the +dignity and pathos of his serious and suffering race, but as one who +had gone beyond the suffering and lived only with the eternities. His +wife and children bent over him as he recited, and their bodies kept +time with his rhythm. One of the two visitors was a Jew, whose +childhood had been spent in Russia, and when Zunser read a dirge which +he had composed in Russia twenty-five years ago at the death by +cholera of his first wife and children--a dirge which is now chanted +daily in thousands of Jewish homes in Russia--the visitor joined in, +altho he had not heard it for many years. Tears came to his eyes as +memories of his childhood were brought up by Zunser's famous lines; +his body swayed to and fro in sympathy with that of Zunser and those +of the poet's second wife and her children; and to the Anglo-Saxon +present this little group of Jewish exiles moved by rhythm, pathos, +and the memory of a far-away land conveyed a strange emotion. + +Zunser's dirge is in a vein of reflective melancholy. "The Mail Wagon" +is its title. The mail wagon brings joy and sorrow, hope and despair, +and it was this awful mechanism that brought Zunser's grief home to +him. "But earth, too, is a machine, a machine that crushes the bones +of the philosopher into dust, digests them, that crushes and digests +all things. From it all comes. Into it all goes. Why may I not +therefore be chewing at this moment the marrow of my children?" + +Another song the old man read aloud was composed in his early +childhood, and is representative in subject and mood of much of his +later work. "The Song of the Bird" it is called, and it typifies the +Jewish race. The bird's wing is broken, and the bird reflects in +tender melancholy over his misfortunes. "Take me away from Roumania" +has the same melancholy, but also a humorous pathos in the title, for +the poet meant he would like to be taken away from Russia, but was +afraid to say so for political reasons. But the sadness of Zunser's +poetry is lightened by its spontaneity and by the felicity of verse +and music, and the naïve idea in each poem is never too solemnly +insisted upon for popular poetry. + +The dirge, which touched upon an episode of his life, led the poet to +tell in his simple way the other events of a life history at once +typical and peculiar. + +He was born in Vilna, the capital of ancient Lithuania, and became +apprentice to a weaver of gold lace at the age of six. His general +education was consequently slight, tho he picked up a little of the +Talmud and sang Isaiah and Jeremiah while at work. At the end of six +years, when he was supposed to know his trade, his master was to give +him twenty roubles as total wage. But the master refused to pay, and +young Zunser took to the road with no money. He went to Bysk in the +Ostsee province, and there worked at his trade during the day and at +night studied the Talmud under the local rabbi. He also began to read +books in pure Hebrew for the love of the noble poetry in that tongue. +Before long he received word from home that his little brother had +died. He went back and helped his mother cry, as he expressed it. Away +he went again from home to a place called Bobroysk, where he obtained +a position to teach Hebrew in the family of an innkeeper, who promised +to pay him twenty-five roubles at the end of six months. When the time +came his employer said he would pay at the end of the year. Ingenuous +Zunser agreed, but the innkeeper, just before the end of the year, +went to a government official and reported that there was a boy at his +house who was fit to be a soldier. Young Zunser was pressed into the +service. He was then thirteen. It was in the barracks that he composed +his first three songs. In these songs he poured out his heart, told +all his woe, but did not print them, "for," he said, "it was my own +case." + +On being released from the service, Zunser went to Vilna and continued +his trade as a gold-lace maker. He also wrote many poems and songs. +They were not printed at first, but circulated in written copies. +Zunser is said to be the first man to write songs in Yiddish, and soon +he became famous. "It was 'the lacemaker boy' everywhere," as the poet +expressed it. Now that he could make money by his songs he gave up his +trade and devoted himself to art. In 1861 he returned to his native +town a great man. There he first saw his work in print. Then came a +period when he wrote a great deal and performed every day his function +as wedding bard. For ten years things prospered with him, but in 1871 +his wife and four children died of cholera. Zunser composed the famous +dirge, left Vilna, which appeared to him unlucky, and went to Minsk. +Here he continued to get a living with his pen, and married again. Ten +years ago he came to New York with his family and kept up his +occupation as wedding bard for some time. + +The character of Zunser's poetry is what might be expected from his +popularity, slight education, and humble position in the Jewish world. +His melancholy is common to all Jewish poets. There is a constant +reference to his race, too, a love for it, and a sort of humble pride. +More than any of the four poets whom we are to mention, with the +possible exception of Morris Rosenfeld, Zunser has a fresh lyric +quality which has gone far to endear him to the people. Yet in spite +of his sweet bird-like speed of expression, Zunser's is a poetry of +ideas, altho the ideas are simple, fragmentary, and fanciful, and are +seldom sustained beyond what is admissible to the lyric touch. The +pale cast of thought, less marked in Zunser's work than in that of the +other three poets, is also a common characteristic of Jewish poetry. +Melancholy, patriotic, and thoughtful, what is lacking in Zunser is +what all modern Jewish poetry lacks and what forms a sweet part of +Anglo-Saxon literature--the distinctively sensuous element. A Keats is +a Hebrew impossibility. The poetry of simple presentation, of the +qualities of mere physical nature, is strikingly absent in the +imaginative work of this serious and moral people. The intellectual +element is always noticeable, even in simple Zunser, the poet of the +people. + + +A CHAMPION OF RACE + +A striking contrast to the popular wedding bard is Menahem Dolitzki, +called the Hebrew poet because he has the distinction of writing in +the old Hebrew language. + +His learning is limited to the old literature of his race. He is not a +generally well educated man, not knowing or caring anything about +modern life or ideas. The poet of the holy tongue, he is what the Jews +call _maskil_, fellow of wisdom. The aloof dignity of his position +fills him with a mild contempt for the "jargon," the Yiddish of +Rosenfeld and Zunser, and makes him distrustful of what the fourth +poet, Wald, represents--the modern socialistic spirit. + +Singularly enough, he is called by the socialists of the Ghetto the +poet of the dilettanti. An Anglo-Saxon American employs the term to +mean those persons superficially interested in much, deeply interested +in nothing; but these socialistic spirits stigmatize as dilettante +whatever is not immersed in the spirit of the modern world. The man of +form, the lover of the old, the cool man with scholastic tinge has no +place in the sympathetic imagination of the Ghetto intellectuals. They +leave him to the learned among old fogies. And it is true that +Dolitzki's appeal is a limited one, both as a man and as a poet. He is +a handsome man of about forty-five years, with a fine profile, an +unenthusiastic manner, a native reserve very evident in his way of +reading his poetry. He has nothing of the buoyant spontaneity, the +impersonal feeling of Zunser. The poet of the people was a part of his +verse as he read. He threw himself into it, identified himself with +his musical and fanciful creation. But Dolitzki, who has been recently +a travelling agent for a Yiddish newspaper on the east side, and has a +little home suggesting greater cleanliness and comfort than that of +Zunser, held his manuscript at arm's length and read his verses with +no apparent sign of emotion. About his poetry and life he talked with +comparative reserve, in the former evidently caring most for the form +and the language, and in the latter for the ideas which determined his +intellectual life rather than for picturesque details and events. + + [Illustration: MENAHEM DOLITZKI] + +Dolitzki's life and work are identified with the revival of Hebrew +literature of fifty years ago, and, more narrowly, of twenty years +ago. He is one of the great poets of that revival, and wherever it is +felt in the Jewish world, there Dolitzki is known and admired. He was +born in Byelostock, but spent his early manhood in Moscow, whence he +was expelled. That event partly determined the character of his first +writings--patriotic poems of culture, reasoned outcries against the +religious prejudice of the orthodox Jews, the Jews who take their +stand on the Talmud, led by the hair-splitting rabbi, upholders of the +narrow Jewish theology. Just as the revival of learning in Europe +brought doubt of orthodoxy along with it, so the revival of the pure +Hebrew literature brought doubt of the religion of the established +rabbi, founded on a minute interpretation of the Talmud. The Hebrew +scholars who went back to the sources of Jewish literature for their +inspiration were worse than infidels to the orthodox. And Dolitzki was +the poet of these "infidels." + +When, however, the Jews were expelled from Moscow, Dolitzki's interest +broadened to love of his race. It is not so much interest in human +nature that these noble and austere poems manifest, as an epic love +for the race as a whole, a lofty and abstract emotion. The +intellectual and moral element characteristic of Jewish poetry is +particularly marked in Dolitzki's work. His first poems, those of +culture inspired by hatred of Talmudic prejudice, and his later ones, +filled with the abstract love of his race, are poems of idealism +expressed largely in complicated symbolical language, lacking, as +compared with Zunser's poetry, spontaneity, wholly wanting in sensuous +imagery, but written in musical and finished verse. + +A poem illustrating Dolitzki's first period tells how a cherub bore +the poet, symbolizing the Jewish people, aloft where he could see pure +and beautiful things, but soon the earth appeared, in the shape of a +round loaf of bread symbolizing need and poverty and prejudice; and to +this the aspiring Jew must return and from this he could not escape. +One of the poems in which Dolitzki's love of his race is expressed +describes a man and a maiden (the Jewish race) who, driven by love of +one another and fear of oppression, are sitting upon a lofty rock. +Below them on the plain they see their family murdered by the +invaders. Then they voluntarily die, declaring that they will yet live +forever in the race. + +Dolitzki's remote idealism represents a nobler kind of thing than what +is generally associated with the east side. A dignified and epic +poet, he is filled with moral rather than enthusiastic love of the +old language and the old race. + + +A SINGER OF LABOR + +Morris Rosenfeld, poet and former tailor, strikes in his personality +and writings the weary minor. Full of tears are the man and his song. +Zunser, Dolitzki, and Wald, altho in their verse runs the eternal +melancholy of poetry and of the Jews, have yet physical buoyancy and a +robust spirit. But Rosenfeld, small, dark, and fragile in body, with +fine eyes and drooping eyelashes, and a plaintive, childlike voice, is +weary and sick--a simple poet, a sensitive child, a bearer of burdens, +an east side tailor. Zunser and Dolitzki have shown themselves able to +cope with their hard conditions, but the sad little Rosenfeld, +unpractical and incapable in all but his songs, has had the hardest +time of all. His life has been typical of that of many a delicate +poet--a life of privation, of struggle borne by weak shoulders, and a +spirit and temperament not fitted to meet the world. + + [Illustration: MORRIS ROSENFELD] + +Much younger than Zunser or Dolitzki, Morris Rosenfeld was born +thirty-eight years ago in a small village in the province of Subalk, +in Russian Poland, at the end of the last Polish revolution. The very +night he was born the world began to oppress him, for insurgents threw +rocks through the window. His grandfather was rich, but his father +lost the money in business, and Morris received very little +education--only the Talmud and a little German, which he got at a +school in Warsaw. He married when he was sixteen, "because my father +told me to," as the poet expressed it. He ran away from Poland to +avoid being pressed into the army. "I would like to serve my +country," he said, "if there had been any freedom for the Jew." Then +he went to Holland and learned the trade of diamond-cutting; then to +London, where he took up tailoring. + +Hearing that the tailors had won a strike in America, he came to New +York, thinking he would need to work here only ten hours a day. "But +what I heard," he said, "was a lie. I found the sweat-shops in New +York just as bad as they were in London." + +In those places he worked for many years, worked away his health and +strength, but at the same time composed many a sweetly sad song. "I +worked in the sweat-shop in the daytime," he said to me, "and at night +I worked at my poems. I could not help writing them. My heart was full +of bitterness. If my poems are sad and plaintive, it is because I +expressed my own feelings, and because my surroundings were sad." + +Next to Zunser, Rosenfeld is the most popular of the four Jewish +poets. Zunser is most popular in Russia, Rosenfeld in this country. +Both write in the universal Yiddish or "jargon," both are simple and +spontaneous, musical and untutored. But, unlike Zunser, Rosenfeld is a +thorough representative, one might say victim, of the modern spirit. +Zunser sings to an older and more buoyant Jewish world, to the +Russian Hebrew village and the country at large. Rosenfeld in weary +accents sings to the maimed spirit of the Jewish slums. It is a fresh, +naïve note, the pathetic cry of the bright spirit crushed in the +poisonous air of the Ghetto. The first song that Rosenfeld printed in +English is this: + + "I lift mine eyes against the sky, + The clouds are weeping, so am I; + I lift mine eyes again on high, + The sun is smiling, so am I. + Why do I smile? Why do I weep? + I do not know; it lies too deep. + + "I hear the winds of autumn sigh, + They break my heart, they make me cry; + I hear the birds of lovely spring, + My hopes revive, I help them sing. + Why do I sing? Why do I cry? + It lies so deep, I know not why." + + +A DREAMER OF BROTHERHOOD + +Abraham Wald, whose _nom de plume_ is Lessin, is only twenty-eight +years old, the youngest and least known of the four poets, yet in some +respects the most interesting. He is the only one who is on a level +with the intellectual alertness of the day. His education is broad and +in some directions thorough. He is the only one of the four poets whom +we are discussing who knows Russian, which language he often writes. +He is an imaginative critic, a violent socialist, and an excitable +lover of nature. + +One of his friends called the poet on one occasion an intellectual +_débauché_. It was in a Canal Street café, where Wald was talking in +an excited tone to several other intellectuals. He is a short, stocky +man, with a suggestion of physical power. His eyes are brilliant, and +there seems to be going on in him a sort of intellectual consumption. +He is restlessly intense in manner, speaks in images, and is always +passionately convinced of the truth of what he sees so clearly but +seldom expresses in cold logic. His fevered idealism meets you in his +frank, quick gaze and impulsive and rapid speech. + + [Illustration: ABRAHAM WALD] + +Lacking in repose, balance, and sobriety of thought, Wald is well +described by his friend's phrase. Equally well he may be called the +Jewish bohemian. He is not dissipated in the ordinary sense. Coffee +and tea are the drinks he finds in his little cafés. But in these +places he practically lives, disputing, arguing, expounding, with +whomsoever he may find. He has no fixed home, but sleeps wherever +inevitable weariness finds him. He prefers to sleep not at all. Like +all his talented tribe he is poor, and makes an occasional dollar by +writing a poem or an article for an east side newspaper. When he has +collected three or four dollars he quits the newspaper office and +seeks again his beloved café, violently to impart his quick-coming +thoughts and impulses. Only after his money is gone--and it lasts him +many days--does he return to his work on the paper, the editor of +which must be an uncommonly good-natured fellow. + +Impelled by political reasons, Wald left Russia three years ago, but +before that time, which was in his twenty-fifth year, he had passed +through eight mental and moral crises. Perhaps the number was a +poetical exaggeration, for when I asked the poet to enumerate he gave +only five. As a boy he revolted from the hair-splitting Talmudic +orthodoxy, and was cursed in consequence; then he lost his Jewish +faith altogether; then his whole _Cultur-Anschauung_ changed, on +account of the influence of Russian literature. He became an atheist +and then a socialist and perhaps a pantheist: at least he has written +poems in which breathes the personified spirit of nature. Without the +peace of nature, however, is the man and his work. He dislikes America +because it lacks the ebullient activity of moral, imaginative life. +Wald likes Russia better than America because Russia, to use the +poet's words, is idealism, hope, and America is realization. + +"Before I came to America," he said, "I thought it would not be as +interesting as Russia, and when I got here I saw that I was right. +America seemed all worked out to me, as if mighty things had already +been done, but it seemed lifeless at the core. Russia, on the other +hand, with no external form of national prosperity, is all activity at +heart, restless longing. Russia is nothing to see, but alive and +bubbling at the core. The American wants a legal wife, something there +and sure, but the Russian wants a wife behind a mountain, through +which he cannot penetrate, but can only dream and strive for her." + +These four poets have what is distinctive of Jewish poetry--the pulse +of desire and hope, in which there is strain and reproach, constant +effort. The Russian Jew's lack of appreciation of completed beauty or +of merely sensuous nature is strikingly illustrated by the fact that +there has never been a great expression of plastic art in his history. +Painting, sculpture, and architecture are nothing to the Jew in +comparison with the literature and music of ideas. In nearly all the +Jews of talent I have met there is the same intellectual consumption, +the excitement of beauty, but no enjoyment of pure beauty of form. The +race is still too unhappy, too unsatisfied, has too much to gain, to +express a complacent sense of the beauty of what is. + +Wald's is the poetry of socialism and of nature, and one form is as +turbulent as the other. He writes, for instance, of the prisoner in +Siberia, his verses filled with passionate rebellion. Then he tells +how he dreamed beside the gleaming river, and of the fancies that +passed through his brain--not merely pretty fancies, but passionately +moral images in which rebellion, longing, wonder, are by turns +expressed; never peaceful enjoyment of nature, never simply the humble +eye that sees and questions not, but always the moral storm and +stress. + +Wald and Rosenfeld represent at once things similar and unlike. Both +are associated with the modern spirit of socialism, both are +identified with the heart of big cities, both are very civilized, yet +in temperament and quality no two poets could be more widely +separated. Rosenfeld is the finer spirit, the more narrow, too. He is +eminently the Ghetto Jew. But Wald, as one sees him talking in the +café, his whole body alive with emotion, with his youthful, open face, +his constant energy, and the modernity and freshness of his ideas, +seems the Russian rather than the Jew, and suggests the vivid spirit +of Tolstoi. + +In comparison with Wald and Rosenfeld the older men, Dolitzki and +Zunser, seem remote. Dolitzki has the remoteness of culture and Zunser +that of old age and relative peace of spirit. But compared among +themselves the poets of the four are Zunser and Rosenfeld, the +spontaneous lyric singers. Wald, however, is making his way rapidly +into the sympathetic intelligence of the socialists--a growing +class--but has not as yet the same wide appeal as the two poets who +sing only in the tongue of the people. + + + + +Chapter Five + +The Stage + + +THEATRES, ACTORS AND AUDIENCE + +In the three Yiddish theatres on the Bowery is expressed the world of +the Ghetto--that New York City of Russian Jews, large, complex, with a +full life and civilization. In the midst of the frivolous Bowery, +devoted to tinsel variety shows, "dive" music-halls, fake museums, +trivial amusement booths of all sorts, cheap lodging-houses, ten-cent +shops and Irish-American tough saloons, the theatres of the chosen +people alone present the serious as well as the trivial interests of +an entire community. Into these three buildings crowd the Jews of all +the Ghetto classes--the sweat-shop woman with her baby, the +day-laborer, the small Hester Street shopkeeper, the Russian-Jewish +anarchist and socialist, the Ghetto rabbi and scholar, the poet, the +journalist. The poor and ignorant are in the great majority, but the +learned, the intellectual and the progressive are also represented, +and here, as elsewhere, exert a more than numerically proportionate +influence on the character of the theatrical productions, which, +nevertheless, remain essentially popular. The socialists and the +literati create the demand that forces into the mass of vaudeville, +light opera, historical and melodramatic plays a more serious art +element, a simple transcript from life or the theatric presentation of +a Ghetto problem. But this more serious element is so saturated with +the simple manners, humor and pathos of the life of the poor Jew, that +it is seldom above the heartfelt understanding of the crowd. + +The audiences vary in character from night to night rather more than +in an up-town theatre. On the evenings of the first four week-days the +theatre is let to a guild or club, many hundred of which exist among +the working people of the east side. Many are labor organizations +representing the different trades, many are purely social, and others +are in the nature of secret societies. Some of these clubs are formed +on the basis of a common home in Russia. The people, for instance, who +came from Vilna, a city in the old country, have organized a Vilna +Club in the Ghetto. Then, too, the anarchists have a society; there +are many socialistic orders; the newspapers of the Ghetto have their +constituency, which sometimes hires the theatre. Two or three hundred +dollars is paid to the theatre by the guild, which then sells the +tickets among the faithful for a good price. Every member of the +society is forced to buy, whether he wants to see the play or not, and +the money made over and above the expenses of hiring the theatre is +for the benefit of the guild. These performances are therefore called +"benefits." The widespread existence of such a custom is a striking +indication of the growing sense of corporate interests among the +laboring classes of the Jewish east side. It is an expression of the +socialistic spirit which is marked everywhere in the Ghetto. + +On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights the theatre is not let, for +these are the Jewish holidays, and the house is always completely sold +out, altho prices range from twenty-five cents to a dollar. Friday +night is, properly speaking, the gala occasion of the week. That is +the legitimate Jewish holiday, the night before the Sabbath. Orthodox +Jews, as well as others, may then amuse themselves. Saturday, altho +the day of worship, is also of holiday character in the Ghetto. This +is due to the Christian influences, to which the Jews are more and +more sensitive. Through economic necessity Jewish workingmen are +compelled to work on Saturday, and, like other workingmen, look upon +Saturday night as a holiday, in spite of the frown of the orthodox. +Into Sunday, too, they extend their freedom, and so in the Ghetto +there are now three popularly recognized nights on which to go with +all the world to the theatre. + +On those nights the theatre presents a peculiarly picturesque sight. +Poor workingmen and women with their babies of all ages fill the +theatre. Great enthusiasm is manifested, sincere laughter and tears +accompany the sincere acting on the stage. Pedlers of soda-water, +candy, of fantastic gewgaws of many kinds, mix freely with the +audience between the acts. Conversation during the play is received +with strenuous hisses, but the falling of the curtain is the signal +for groups of friends to get together and gossip about the play or the +affairs of the week. Introductions are not necessary, and the Yiddish +community can then be seen and approached with great freedom. On the +stage curtain are advertisements of the wares of Hester Street or +portraits of the "star" actors. On the programmes and circulars +distributed in the audience are sometimes amusing announcements of +coming attractions or lyric praise of the "stars." Poetry is not +infrequent, an example of which, literally translated, is: + + Labor, ye stars, as ye will, + Ye cannot equal the artist; + In the garden of art ye shall not flourish; + Ye can never achieve his fame. + Can you play _Hamlet_ like him? + The _Wild King_, or the _Huguenots_? + Are you gifted with feeling + So much as to imitate him like a shadow? + Your fame rests on the pen; + On the show-cards your flight is high; + But on the stage every one can see + How your greatness turns to ashes, + Tomashevsky! Artist great! + No praise is good enough for you; + Every one remains your ardent friend. + Of all the stars you remain the king. + You seek no tricks, no false quibbles; + One sees Truth itself playing. + Your appearance is godly to us; + Every movement is full of grace; + Pleasing is your every gesture; + Sugar-sweet your every turn; + You remain the King of the Stage; + Everything falls to your feet. + +On the playboards outside the theatre, containing usually the portrait +of a star, are also lyric and enthusiastic announcements. Thus, on the +return of the great Adler, who had been ill, it was announced on the +boards that "the splendid eagle has spread his wings again." + +The Yiddish actors, as may be inferred from the verses quoted, take +themselves with peculiar seriousness, justified by the enthusiasm, +almost worship, with which they are regarded by the people. Many a +poor Jew, man or girl, who makes no more than $10 a week in the +sweat-shop, will spend $5 of it on the theatre, which is practically +the only amusement of the Ghetto Jew. He has not the loafing and +sporting instincts of the poor Christian, and spends his money for the +theatre rather than for drink. It is not only to see the play that the +poor Jew goes to the theatre. It is to see his friends and the actors. +With these latter he, and more frequently she, try in every way to +make acquaintance, but commonly are compelled to adore at a distance. +They love the songs that are heard on the stage, and for these the +demand is so great that a certain bookshop on the east side makes a +specialty of publishing them. + +The actor responds to this popular enthusiasm with sovereign contempt. +He struts about in the cafés on Canal and Grand Streets, conscious of +his greatness. He refers to the crowd as "Moses" with superior +condescension or humorous vituperation. Like thieves, the actors have +a jargon of their own, which is esoteric and jealously guarded. Their +pride gave rise a year or two ago to an amusing strike at the People's +Theatre. The actors of the three Yiddish companies in New York are +normally paid on the share rather than the salary system. In the case +of the company now at the People's Theatre, this system proved very +profitable. The star actors, Jacob Adler and Boris Thomashevsky, and +their wives, who are actresses--Mrs. Adler being the heavy realistic +tragedienne and Mrs. Thomashevsky the star soubrette--have probably +received on an average during that time as much as $125 a week for +each couple. But they, with Mr. Edelstein, the business man, are +lessees of the theatre, run the risk and pay the expenses, which are +not small. The rent of the theatre is $20,000 a year, and the weekly +expenses, besides, amount to about $1,100. The subordinate actors, who +risk nothing, since they do not share the expenses, have made amounts +during this favorable period ranging from $14 a week on the average +for the poorest actors to $75 for those just beneath the "stars." But, +in spite of what is exceedingly good pay in the Bowery, the actors of +this theatre formed a union, and struck for wages instead of shares. +This however, was only an incidental feature. The real cause was that +the management of the theatre, with the energetic Thomashevsky at the +head, insisted that the actors should be prompt at rehearsals, and if +they were not, indulged in unseemly epithets. The actors' pride was +aroused, and the union was formed to insure their ease and dignity +and to protect them from harsh words. The management imported actors +from Chicago. Several of the actors here stood by their employers, +notably Miss Weinblatt, a popular young ingénue, who, on account of +her great memory is called the "Yiddish Encyclopedia," and Miss +Gudinski, an actress of commanding presence. Miss Weinblatt forced her +father, once an actor, now a farmer, into the service of the +management. But the actors easily triumphed. Misses Gudinski and +Weinblatt were forced to join the union, Mr. Weinblatt returned to his +farm, the "scabs" were packed off to Philadelphia, and the wages +system introduced. A delegation was sent to Philadelphia to throw +cabbages at the new actors, who appeared in the Yiddish performances +in that city. The triumphant actors now receive on the average +probably $10 to $15 a week less than under the old system. Mr. Conrad, +who began the disaffection, receives a salary of $29 a week, fully $10 +less than he received for months before the strike. But the dignity of +the Yiddish actor is now placed beyond assault. As one of them +recently said: "We shall no longer be spat upon nor called 'dog.'" + +The Yiddish actor is so supreme that until recently a regular system +of hazing playwrights was in vogue. Joseph Latteiner and Professor M. +Horowitz were long recognized as the only legitimate Ghetto +playwrights. When a new writer came to the theatre with a manuscript, +various were the pranks the actors would play. They would induce him +to try, one after another, all the costumes in the house, in order to +help him conceive the characters; or they would make him spout the +play from the middle of the stage, they themselves retiring to the +gallery to "see how it sounded." In the midst of his exertions they +would slip away, and he would find himself shouting to the empty +boards. Or, in the midst of a mock rehearsal, some actor would shout, +"He is coming, the great Professor Horowitz, and he will eat you"; and +they would rush from the theatre with the panic-stricken playwright +following close at their heels. + +The supremacy of the Yiddish actor has, however, its humorous +limitations. The orthodox Jews who go to the theatre on Friday night, +the beginning of Sabbath, are commonly somewhat ashamed of themselves +and try to quiet their consciences by a vociferous condemnation of the +actions on the stage. The actor, who through the exigencies of his +rôle, is compelled to appear on Friday night with a cigar in his +mouth, is frequently greeted with hisses and strenuous cries of +"Shame, shame, smoke on the Sabbath!" from the proletarian hypocrites +in the gallery. + + [Illustration: MR. MOSHKOVITZ] + +The plays at these theatres vary in a general way with the varying +audiences of which I have spoken above. The thinking socialists +naturally select a less violent play than the comparatively illogical +anarchists. Societies of relatively conservative Jews desire a +historical play in which the religious Hebrew in relation to the +persecuting Christian is put in pathetic and melodramatic situations. +There are a very large number of "culture" pieces produced, which, +roughly speaking, are plays in which the difference between the Jew of +one generation and the next is dramatically portrayed. The pathos or +tragedy involved in differences of faith and "point of view" between +the old rabbi and his more enlightened children is expressed in many +historical plays of the general character of _Uriel Acosta_, tho in +less lasting form. Such plays, however, are called "historical +plunder" by that very up-to-date element of the intellectual Ghetto +which is dominated by the Russian spirit of realism. It is the demand +of these fierce realists that of late years has produced a supply of +theatrical productions attempting to present a faithful picture of the +actual conditions of life. Permeating all these kinds of plays is the +amusement instinct pure and simple. For the benefit of the crowd of +ignorant people grotesque humor, popular songs, vaudeville tricks, are +inserted everywhere. + +Of these plays the realistic are of the most value,[1] for they often +give the actual Ghetto life with surprising strength and fidelity. The +past three years have been their great seasons, and have developed a +large crop of new playwrights, mainly journalists who write +miscellaneous articles for the east side newspapers. Jacob Gordin, of +whom we shall have frequent occasion to speak, has been writing plays +for several years, and was the first realistic playwright; he remains +the strongest and most prominent in this kind of play. Professor +Horowitz, who is now the lessee of the Windsor Theatre, situated on +the Bowery, between Grand and Canal Streets, represents, along with +Joseph Latteiner, the conservative and traditional aspects of the +stage. He is an interesting man, fifty-six years of age, and has been +connected with the Yiddish stage practically since its origin. His +father was a teacher in a Hebrew school, and he himself is a man of +uncommon learning. He has made a great study of the stage, has written +one hundred and sixty-seven plays, and claims to be an authority on +_dramaturgie_. Latteiner is equally productive, but few of their plays +are anything more than Yiddish adaptations of old operas and +melodramas in other languages. Long runs are impossible on the Yiddish +stage and consequently the playwrights produce many plays and are not +very scrupulous in their methods. The absence of dramatic criticism +and the ignorance of the audience enable them to "crib" with impunity. +As one of the actors said, Latteiner and Horowitz and their class took +their first plays from some foreign source and since then have been +repeating themselves. The actor said that when he is cast in a +Latteiner play he does not need to learn his part. He needs only to +understand the general situation; the character and the words he +already knows from having appeared in many other Latteiner plays. + + [Illustration: YIDDISH PLAYWRIGHTS DISCUSSING THE DRAMA] + +The professor, nevertheless, naturally regards himself and Latteiner +as the "real" Yiddish playwrights. For many years after the first +bands of actors reached the New York Ghetto these two men held +undisputed sway. Latteiner leaned to "romantic," Horowitz to +"culture," plays, and both used material which was mainly historical. +The professor regards that as the bright period of the Ghetto stage. +Since then there has been, in his opinion, a decadence which began +with the translation of the classics into Yiddish. _Hamlet_, +_Othello_, _King Lear_, and plays of Schiller, were put upon the stage +and are still being performed. Sometimes they are almost literally +translated, sometimes adapted until they are realistic representations +of Jewish life. Gordin's _Yiddish King Lear_, for instance, represents +Shakespeare's idea only in the most general way, and weaves about it a +sordid story of Jewish character and life. Of _Hamlet_ there are two +versions, one adapted, in which Shakespeare's idea is reduced to a +ludicrous shadow, the interest lying entirely in the presentation of +Jewish customs. + +The first act of the Yiddish version represents the wedding feast of +Hamlet's mother and uncle. In the Yiddish play the uncle is a rabbi in +a small village in Russia. He did not poison Hamlet's father but broke +the latter's heart by wooing and winning his queen. Hamlet is off +somewhere getting educated as a rabbi. While he is gone his father +dies. Six weeks afterwards the son returns in the midst of the wedding +feast, and turns the feast into a funeral. Scenes of rant follow +between mother and son, Ophelia and Hamlet, interspersed with jokes +and sneers at the sect of rabbis who think they communicate with the +angels. The wicked rabbi conspires against Hamlet, trying to make him +out a nihilist. The plot is discovered and the wicked rabbi is sent to +Siberia. The last act is the graveyard scene. It is snowing violently. +The grave is near a huge windmill. Ophelia is brought in on the bier. +Hamlet mourns by her side and is married, according to the Jewish +custom, to the dead woman. Then he dies of a broken heart. The other +version is almost a literal translation. To these translations of the +classics, Professor Horowitz objects on the ground that the ignorant +Yiddish public cannot understand them, because what learning they have +is limited to distinctively Yiddish subjects and traditions. + +Another important step in what the professor calls the degeneration of +the stage was the introduction a few years ago of the American +"pistol" play--meaning the fierce melodrama which has been for so long +a characteristic of the English plays produced on the Bowery. + +But what has contributed more than anything else to what the good man +calls the present deplorable condition of the theatre was the advent +of realism. "It was then," said the professor one day with calm +indignation, "that the genuine Yiddish play was persecuted. Young +writers came from Russia and swamped the Ghetto with scurrilous +attacks on me and Latteiner. No number of the newspaper appeared that +did not contain a scathing criticism. They did not object to the +actors, who in reality were very bad, but it was the play they aimed +at. These writers knew nothing about _dramaturgie_, but their heads +were filled with senseless realism. Anything historical and +distinctively Yiddish they thought bad. For a long time Latteiner and +I were able to keep their realistic plays off the boards, but for the +last few years there has been an open field for everybody. The result +is that horrors under the mask of realism have been put upon the +stage. This year is the worst of all--characters butchered on the +stage, the coarsest language, the most revolting situations, without +ideas, with no real material. It cannot last, however. Latteiner and I +continue with our real Yiddish plays, and we shall yet regain entire +possession of the field." + +At least this much may fairly be conceded to Professor Horowitz--that +the realistic writers in what is in reality an excellent attempt often +go to excess, and are often unskilful as far as stage construction is +concerned. In the reaction from plays with "pleasant" endings, they +tend to prefer equally unreal "unpleasant" endings, "onion" plays, as +the opponents of the realists call them. They, however, have written a +number of plays which are distinctively of the New York Ghetto, and +which attempt an unsentimental presentation of truth. A rather +extended description of these plays is given in the next section. +Professor Horowitz's plays, on the contrary, are largely based upon +the sentimental representation of inexact Jewish history. They herald +the glory and wrongs of the Hebrew people, and are badly constructed +melodramas of conventional character. Another class of plays written +by Professor Horowitz, and which have occasionally great but temporary +prosperity, are what he calls _Zeitstucke_. Some American newspaper +sensation is rapidly dramatized and put hot on the boards, such as +_Marie Barberi_, _Dr. Buchanan_ and _Dr. Harris_. + +The three theatres--the People's, the Windsor and the Thalia, which is +on the Bowery opposite the Windsor--are in a general way very similar +in the character of the plays produced, in the standard of acting and +in the character of the audience. There are, however, some minor +differences. The People's is the "swellest" and probably the least +characteristic of the three. It panders to the "uptown" element of the +Ghetto, to the downtown tradesman who is beginning to climb a little. +The baleful influence in art of the _nouveaux riches_ has at this +house its Ghetto expression. There is a tendency there to imitate the +showy qualities of the Broadway theatres--melodrama, farce, scenery, +etc. No babies are admitted, and the house is exceedingly clean in +comparison with the theatres farther down the Bowery. Three years ago +this company were at the Windsor Theatre, and made so much money that +they hired the People's, that old home of Irish-American melodrama, +and this atmosphere seems slightly to have affected the Yiddish +productions. Magnificent performances quite out of the line of the +best Ghetto drama have been attempted, notably Yiddish dramatizations +of successful up-town productions. Hauptman's _Versunkene Glocke_, +_Sapho_, _Quo Vadis_, and other popular Broadway plays in flimsy +adaptations were tried with little success, as the Yiddish audiences +hardly felt themselves at home in these unfamiliar scenes and +settings. + +The best trained of the three companies is at present that of the +Thalia Theatre. Here many excellent realistic plays are given. Of late +years, the great playwright of the colony, Jacob Gordin, has written +mainly for this theatre. There, too, is the best of the younger +actresses, Mrs. Bertha Kalisch. She is the prettiest woman on the +Ghetto stage and was at one time the leading lady of the Imperial +Theatre at Bucharest. She takes the leading woman parts in plays like +_Fedora_, _Magda_ and _The Jewish Zaza_. The principal actor at this +theatre is David Kessler, who is one of the best of the Ghetto actors +in realistic parts, and one of the worst when cast, as he often is, as +the romantic lover. The actor of most prominence among the younger men +is Mr. Moshkovitch, who hopes to be a "star" and one of the +management. When the union was formed he was in a quandary. Should he +join or should he not? He feared it might be a bad precedent, which +the actors would use against him when he became a star. And yet he did +not want to get them down on him. So before he joined he entered +solemn protests at all the cafés on Canal Street. The strike, he +maintained, was unnecessary. The actors were well paid and well +treated. Discipline should be maintained. But he would join because of +his universal sympathy with actors and with the poor--as a matter of +sentiment merely, against his better judgment. + + [Illustration: DAVID KESSLER] + +The company at the Windsor is the weakest, so far as acting is +concerned, of the three. Very few "realistic" plays are given there, +for Professor Horowitz is the lessee, and he prefers the historical +Jewish opera and "culture" plays. Besides, the company is not strong +enough to undertake successfully many new productions, altho it +includes some good actors. Here Mrs. Prager vies as a prima-donna with +Mrs. Karb of the People's and Mrs. Kalisch of the Thalia. Professor +Horowitz thinks she is far better than the other two. As he puts it, +there are two and a half prima-donnas in the Ghetto--at the Windsor +Theatre there is a complete one, leaving one and a half between the +People's and the Thalia. Jacob Adler of the People's, the professor +thinks, is no actor, only a remarkable caricaturist. As Adler is the +most noteworthy representative of the realistic actors of the Ghetto, +the professor's opinion shows what the traditional Yiddish playwright +thinks of realism. The strong realistic playwright, Jacob Gordin, the +professor admits, has a "biting" dialogue, and "unconsciously writes +good cultural plays which he calls realistic, but his realistic plays, +properly speaking, are bad caricatures of life." + +The managers and actors of the three theatres criticise one another +indeed with charming directness, and they all have their followers in +the Ghetto and their special cafés on Grand or Canal Streets, where +their particular prejudices are sympathetically expressed. The actors +and lessees of the People's are proud of their fine theatre, proud +that no babies are brought there. There is a great dispute between the +supporters of this theatre and those of the Thalia as to which is the +stronger company and which produces the most realistic plays. The +manager of the Thalia maintains that the People's is sensational, and +that his theatre alone represents true realism; while the supporter of +the People's points scornfully to the large number of operas produced +at the Thalia. They both unite in condemning the Windsor, Professor +Horowitz's theatre, as producing no new plays and as hopelessly behind +the times, "full of historical plunder." An episode in _The Ragpicker +of Paris_, played at the Windsor when the present People's company +were there, amusingly illustrates the jealousy which exists between +the companies. An old beggar is picking over a heap of moth-eaten, +coverless books, some of which he keeps and some rejects. He comes +across two versions of a play, _The Two Vagrants_, one of which was +used at the Thalia and the other at the Windsor. The version used at +the Windsor receives the beggar's commendation, and the other is +thrown in a contemptuous manner into a dust-heap. + + +REALISM, THE SPIRIT OF THE GHETTO THEATRE + +The distinctive thing about the intellectual and artistic life of the +Russian Jews of the New York Ghetto, the spirit of realism, is +noticeable even on the popular stage. The most interesting plays are +those in which the realistic spirit predominates, and the best among +the actors and playwrights are the realists. The realistic element, +too, is the latest one in the history of the Yiddish stage. The Jewish +theatres in other parts of the world, which, compared with the three +in New York, are unorganized, present only anachronistic and fantastic +historical and Biblical plays, or comic opera with vaudeville +specialties attached. These things, as we have said in the last +section, are, to be sure, given in the Yiddish theatres on the Bowery +too, but there are also plays which in part at least portray the +customs and problems of the Ghetto community, and are of comparatively +recent origin. + + [Illustration: JACOB ADLER] + +There are two men connected with the Ghetto stage who particularly +express the distinctive realism of the intellectual east side--Jacob +Adler, one of the two best actors, and Jacob Gordin, the playwright. +Adler, a man of great energy, tried for many years to make a theatre +succeed on the Bowery which should give only what he called good +plays. Gordin's dramas, with a few exceptions, were the only plays on +contemporary life which Adler thought worthy of presentation. The +attempt to give exclusively realistic art, which is the only art on +the Bowery, failed. There, in spite of the widespread feeling for +realism, the mass of the people desire to be amused and are bored by +anything with the form of art. So now Adler is connected with the +People's Theatre, which gives all sorts of shows, from Gordin's plays +to ludicrous history, frivolous comic opera, and conventional +melodrama. But Adler acts for the most part only in the better sort. +He is an actor of unusual power and vividness. Indeed, in his case, as +in that of some other Bowery actors, it is only the Yiddish dialect +which stands between him and the distinction of a wide reputation. + +In almost every play given on the Bowery all the elements are +represented. Vaudeville, history, realism, comic opera, are generally +mixed together. Even in the plays of Gordin there are clownish and +operatic intrusions, inserted as a conscious condition of success. On +the other hand, even in the distinctively formless plays, in comic +opera and melodrama, there are striking illustrations of the popular +feeling for realism,--bits of dialogue, happy strokes of +characterization of well-known Ghetto types, sordid scenes faithful to +the life of the people. + +It is the acting which gives even to the plays having no intrinsic +relation to reality a frequent quality of naturalness. The Yiddish +players, even the poorer among them, act with remarkable sincerity. +Entirely lacking in self-consciousness, they attain almost from the +outset to a direct and forcible expressiveness. They, like the +audience, rejoice in what they deem the truth. In the general lack of +really good plays they yet succeed in introducing the note of realism. +To be true to nature is their strongest passion, and even in a +conventional melodrama their sincerity, or their characterization in +the comic episodes, often redeems the play from utter barrenness. + +And the little touches of truth to the life of the people are +thoroughly appreciated by the audience, much more generally so than in +the case of the better plays to be described later, where there is +more or less strictness of form and intellectual intention, difficult +for the untutored crowd to understand. In the "easy" plays, it is the +realistic touches which tell most. The spectators laugh at the exact +reproduction by the actor of a tattered type which they know well. A +scene of perfect sordidness will arouse the sympathetic laughter or +tears of the people. "It is so natural," they say to one another, "so +true." The word "natural" indeed is the favorite term of praise in the +Ghetto. What hits home to them, to their sense of humor or of sad +fact, is sure to move, altho sometimes in a manner surprising to a +visitor. To what seems to him very sordid and sad they will frequently +respond with laughter. + +One of the most beloved actors in the Ghetto is Zelig Mogalesco, now +at the People's Theatre, a comedian of natural talent and of the most +felicitous instinct for characterization. Unlike the strenuous Adler, +he has no ideas about realism or anything else. He acts in any kind of +play, and could not tell the difference between truth and burlesque +caricature. And yet he is remarkable for his naturalness, and popular +because of it. Adler with his ideas is sometimes too serious for the +people, but Mogalesco's naïve fidelity to reality always meets with +the sympathy of a simple audience loving the homely and unpretentious +truth. About Adler, strong actor that he is, and also about the +talented Gordin, there is something of the doctrinaire. + +But, altho the best actors of the three Yiddish theatres in the Ghetto +are realists by instinct and training, the thoroughly frivolous +element in the plays has its prominent interpreters. Joseph Latteiner +is the most popular playwright in the Bowery, and Boris Thomashevsky +perhaps the most popular actor. Latteiner has written over a hundred +plays, no one of which has form or ideas. He calls them _Volksstücke_ +(plays of the people), and naïvely admits that he writes directly to +the demand. They are mainly mixed melodrama, broad burlesque, and +comic opera. His heroes are all intended for Boris Thomashevsky, a +young man, fat, with curling black hair, languorous eyes, and a rather +effeminate voice, who is thought very beautiful by the girls of the +Ghetto. Thomashevsky has a face with no mimic capacity, and a +temperament absolutely impervious to mood or feeling. But he +picturesquely stands in the middle of the stage and declaims +phlegmatically the rôle of the hero, and satisfies the "romantic" +demand of the audience. Nothing could show more clearly how much more +genuine the feeling of the Ghetto is for fidelity to life than for +romantic fancy. How small a part of the grace and charm of life the +Yiddish audiences enjoy may be judged by the fact that the romantic +appeal of a Thomashevsky is eminently satisfying to them. Girls and +men from the sweat-shops, a large part of such an audience, are moved +by a very crude attempt at beauty. On the other hand they are so +familiar with sordid fact, that the theatrical representation of it +must be relatively excellent. Therefore the art of the Ghetto, +theatrical and other, is deeply and painfully realistic. + + [Illustration: JACOB GORDIN] + +When we turn to Jacob Gordin's plays, to other plays of similar +character and to the audiences to which they specifically appeal, we +have realism worked out consciously in art, the desire to express life +as it is, and at the same time the frequent expression of revolt +against the reality of things, and particularly against the actual +system of society. Consequently the "problem" play has its +representation in the Ghetto. It presents the hideous conditions of +life in the Ghetto--the poverty, the sordid constant reference to +money, the immediate sensuality, the jocular callousness--and +underlying the mere statement of the facts an intellectual and +passionate revolt. + +The thinking element of the Ghetto is largely Socialistic, and the +Socialists flock to the theatre the nights when the Gordin type of +play is produced. They discuss the meaning and justice of the play +between the acts, and after the performance repair to the Canal Street +cafés to continue their serious discourse. The unthinking Nihilists +are also represented, but not so frequently at the best plays as at +productions in which are found crude and screaming condemnation of +existing conditions. The Anarchistic propaganda hired the Windsor +Theatre for the establishment of a fund to start the _Freie Arbeiter +Stimme_, an anarchistic newspaper. The _Beggar of Odessa_ was the play +selected,--an adaptation of the _Ragpicker of Paris_, a play by Felix +Piot, the Anarchistic agitator of the French Commune in 1871. The +features of the play particularly interesting to the audience were +those emphasizing the clashing of social classes. The old ragpicker, a +model man, clever, brilliant, and good, is a philosopher too, and says +many things warmly welcomed by the audience. As he picks up his rags +he sings about how even the clothing of the great comes but to dust. +His adopted daughter is poor, and consequently noble and sweet. The +villains are all rich; all the very poor characters are good. Another +play, _Vogele_, is partly a satire of the rich Jew by the poor Jew. +"The rich Jews," sang the comedian, "toil not, neither do they spin. +They work not, they suffer not, why then do they live on this earth?" +This unthinking revolt is the opposite pole to the unthinking +vaudeville and melodrama. In many of the plays referred to roughly as +of the Gordin-Adler type--altho they were not all written by Gordin +nor played by Adler--we find a realism more true in feeling and cast +in stronger dramatic form. In some of these plays there is no problem +element; in few is that element so prominent as essentially to +interfere with the character of the play as a presentation of life. + +One of the plays most characteristic, as at once presenting the life +of the Ghetto and suggesting its problems, is _Minna_, or the Yiddish +Nora. Altho the general idea of Ibsen's _Doll's House_ is taken, the +atmosphere and life are original. The first scene represents the house +of a poor Jewish laborer on the east side. His wife and daughter are +dressing to go to see _A Doll's House_ with the boarder,--a young man +whom they have been forced to take into the house because of their +poverty. He is full of ideas and philosophy, and the two women fall in +love with him, and give him all the good things to eat. When the +laborer returns from his hard day's work, he finds that there is +nothing to eat, and that his wife and daughter are going to the play +with the boarder. The women despise the poor man, who is fit only to +work, eat, and sleep. The wife philosophizes on the atrocity of +marrying a man without intellectual interests, and finally drinks +carbolic acid. This Ibsen idea is set in a picture rich with realistic +detail: the dialect, the poverty, the types of character, the humor of +Yiddish New York. Jacob Adler plays the husband, and displays a vivid +imagination for details calculated to bring out the man's beseeching +bestiality: his filthy manners, his physical ailments, his greed, the +quickness of his anger and of resulting pacification. Like most of the +realistic plays of the Ghetto, _Minna_ is a genuine play of manners. It +has a general idea, and presents also the setting and characters of +reality. + +_The Slaughter_, written by Gordin, and with the main masculine +character taken by David Kessler, an actor of occasionally great +realistic strength, is the story of the symbolic murder of a fragile +young girl by her parents, who force her to marry a rich man who has +all the vices and whom she hates. The picture of the poor house, of +the old mother and father and half-witted stepson with whom the girl +is unconsciously in love, in its faithfulness to life is typical of +scenes in many of these plays. It is rich in character and _milieu_ +drawing. There is another scene of miserable life in the second act. +The girl is married and living with the rich brute. In the same house +is his mistress, curt and cold, and two children by a former wife. The +old parents come to see the wife; she meets them with the joy of +starved affection. But the husband enters and changes the scene to one +of hate and violence. The old mother tells him, however, of the heir +that is to come. Then there is a superb scene of naïve joy in the +midst of all the sordid gloom. There is rapturous delight of the old +people, turbulent triumph of the husband, and satisfaction of the +young wife. They make a holiday of it. Wine is brought. They all love +one another for the time. The scene is representative of the way the +poor Jews welcome their offspring. But indescribable violence and +abuse follow, and the wife finally kills her husband, in a scene where +realism riots into burlesque, as it frequently does on the Yiddish +stage. + +But for absolute, intense realism Gordin's _Wild Man_, unrelieved by a +problem idea, is unrivaled. An idiot boy falls in love with his +stepmother without knowing what love is. He is abused by his father +and brother, beaten on account of his ineptitudes. His sister and +another brother take his side, and the two camps revile each other in +unmistakable language. The father marries again; his new wife is a +heartless, faithless woman, and she and the daughter quarrel. After +repeated scenes of brutality to the idiot, the daughter is driven out +to make her own living. Adler's portraiture of the idiot is a great +bit of technical acting. The poor fellow is filled with the mysterious +wonderings of an incapable mind. His shadow terrifies and interests +him. He philosophizes about life and death. He is puzzled and worried +by everything; the slightest sound preys on him. Physically alert, his +senses serve only to trouble and terrify the mind which cannot +interpret what they present. The burlesque which Mr. Adler puts into +the part was inserted to please the crowd, but increases the horror of +it, as when Lear went mad; for the Elizabethan audiences laughed, and +had their souls wrung at the same time. The idiot ludicrously +describes his growing love. In pantomime he tells a long story. It is +evident, even without words, that he is constructing a complicated +symbolism to express what he does not know. He falls into epilepsy and +joins stiffly in the riotous dance. The play ends so fearfully that it +shades into mere burlesque. + +This horrible element in so many of these plays marks the point where +realism passes into fantastic sensationalism. The facts of life in the +Ghetto are in themselves unpleasant, and consequently it is natural +that a dramatic exaggeration of them results in something poignantly +disagreeable. The intense seriousness of the Russian Jew, which +accounts for what is excellent in these plays, explains also the +rasping falseness of the extreme situations. It is a curious fact that +idiots, often introduced in the Yiddish plays, amuse the Jewish +audience as much as they used to the Elizabethan mob. + +One of the most skillful of Gordin's Yiddish adaptations is _The +Oath_, founded on Hauptman's _Fuhrmann Henschel_. In the first act a +dying peasant is exhibited on the stage. In Hauptman's play it is a +woman; in Gordin's it is a man. He is racked with coughing. A servant +clatters over the floor with her heavy boots. Another servant feeds +the sick man from a coarse bowl and the steward works at the +household accounts. The dying man's wife, and their little boy, enter +and it is apparent that something has been going on between her and +the steward. They and the servants dine realistically and coarsely and +neglect the dying man. When they leave, the dying man teaches his son +how to say "Kaddish" for his soul when he is dead. When he dies he +makes his wife swear that she will never marry again. In the second +act she is about to marry the steward, and the Jewish customs are here +used, as is often the case with the Yiddish playwright, to intensify +the dramatic effect of a scene. It is just a year from the time of her +husband's death, and the candles are burning, therefore, on the table. +According to the orthodox belief the soul of the dead is present when +the candles burn. The little boy, feeling that his mother is about to +marry again, blows out the candles. The mother, horror-stricken, +rushes to him and asks him why he did it. "I did not want my father to +see that you are going to marry again," says the little fellow. It was +an affecting scene and left few dry eyes in the audience. + +At the beginning of the third act the wife and servant are living +together, married. He comes on the stage, sleepy, brutal, calling +loudly for a drink, abuses the little boy and quarrels with his wife; +he is a crude, dishonorable, coarse brute. He drives away a faithful +servant and returns to his swinish slumber. An old couple, the woman +being the sister of the dead man, who are always torturing the wife +with having broken her vow, hint to her that her new husband is too +attentive to the maid-servant. She is angry and incredulous, and calls +the maid to her, but when she sees her in the doorway, before a word +is spoken, she realizes it is true, and sends her away. The husband +enters and she passionately taxes him. He admits it, but justifies +himself: he is young, a high-liver, etc., why shouldn't he? Just then +the child is brought in, drowned in the river nearby. + +In the beginning of the fourth and last act the husband again appears +as a riotous, jovial fellow. He has played a joke and turned a driver +out of his cart, and he nearly splits his sides with merriment. Drunk, +he admirably sings a song and dances. His wife enters. She hears her +vow repeated by the winds, by the trees, everywhere. Her dead child +haunts her. Her husband has stolen and misspent their money. She talks +with the faithful servant about the maid's baby. She wanders about at +night, unable to sleep. Her brute husband calls to her from the house, +saying he is afraid to sleep alone. Another talk ensues between them. +He asks her why she is old so soon. She burns the house and herself, +the neighbors rush in, and the play is over. + +Some of the more striking of the realistic plays on the Ghetto stage +have been partly described, but realism in the details of character +and setting appears in all of them, even in comic opera and melodrama. +In many the element of revolt, even if it is not the basis of the +play, is expressed in occasional dialogues. Burlesque runs through +them all, but burlesque, after all, is a comment on the facts of life. +And all these points are emphasized and driven home by sincere and +forcible acting. + +Crude in form as these plays are, and unpleasant as they often are in +subject and in the life portrayed, they are yet refreshing to persons +who have been bored by the empty farce and inane cheerfulness of the +uptown theatres. + + +THE HISTORY OF THE YIDDISH STAGE + +The Yiddish stage, founded in Roumania in 1876 by Abraham Goldfaden, +has reached its highest development in the city of New York, where +there are seventy or eighty professional actors; not far from a dozen +playwrights, of whom three have written collectively more than three +hundred plays; dramas on almost every subject, produced on the +inspiration of various schools of dramatic art; and an enormous +Russian Jewish colony, which fills the theatres and creates so strong +a demand that the stage responds with a distinctive, complete, and +interesting popular art. + +The best actor now in the Ghetto, with one exception, was in the +original company. That exception, with the help of a realistic +playwright, introduced an important element in the development of the +stage. With the lives of these three men the history of the Yiddish +stage is intimately connected. The first actor was a singer in the +synagogue of Bucharest, the first playwright a composer of Yiddish +songs. The foundation of the Yiddish stage might therefore be said to +lie in the Bucharest synagogue and the popular music-hall performance. + +Zelig Mogalesco, the best comedian in the New York Ghetto, has seen, +altho not quite forty years of age, the birth of the Yiddish stage, +and may survive its death. He was born in Koloraush, a town in the +province of Bessarabia, near Roumania. His father was a poor +shop-keeper, and Mogalesco never went to school. But he was endowed by +nature with a remarkable voice and ear, and composed music with easy +felicity. The population of the town was orthodox Jewish, and +consequently no theatre was allowed. It was therefore in the synagogue +that the musical appetite of the Jews found satisfaction. It was the +habit of the poor people to hire as inexpensive a cantor as possible, +and this cantor might very well be ignorant of everything except +singing. Yet these cantors were so popular that the famous ones +travelled from town to town, in much the same way that the visiting +German actor--_Gast_--does to-day, and sometimes charged admission +fees. + +When Mogalesco was nine years old, Nissy of the town of Bells, the +most famous cantor in the south of Russia, visited Mogalesco's town. +The boy's friends urged him to visit the great man and display his +voice. Little Mogalesco, with his mezzo-soprano, went to the inn, and +Nissy was astounded. "My dear boy," he said, "go home and fetch your +parents." With them the cantor signed a contract by which Zelig was +bound to him as a kind of musical apprentice for three years. The boy +was to receive his board and clothing, five rubles, the first year, +ten the second, and fifteen the third--fifteen dollars for the three +years. + +Soon Mogalesco became widely known among the cantors of South Russia. +In six months he could read music so well that they called him "Little +Zelig, the music-eater." At the end of the first year the leading +cantor of Bucharest, Israel Kupfer, who, by the way, has been cantor +in a New York synagogue of the east side, went to Russia to secure the +services of Mogalesco. To avoid the penalties of a broken contract, +Kupfer hurried with little Zelig to Roumania, and the boy remained in +Bucharest for several years. At the age of fourteen he conducted a +choir of twenty men under Kupfer. He also became director of the +chorus in the Gentile opera. While there he began "to burn," as he +expressed it, with a desire to go on the stage, but the Gentiles would +not admit the talented Jew. + +It was when Mogalesco was about twenty years old that the Yiddish +stage was born. In 1876 or 1877, Abraham Goldfaden went to Bucharest. +This man had formerly been a successful merchant in Russia, but had +failed. He was a poet, and to make a living he called that art into +play. In Russia he had written many Yiddish songs, set them to music, +and sung them in private. In the society in which he lived he deemed +that beneath his dignity, but when he lost his money he went to +Bucharest and there on the stage sang his own poems, the music for +which he took from many sources. He became a kind of music-hall +performer, but did not long remain satisfied with this modest art. His +dissatisfaction led him to create what later developed into the +present Yiddish theatre. The Talmud prohibited the stage, but at the +time when Goldfaden was casting about for something to do worthy of +his genius, the gymnasia were thrown open to the Jews, and the result +was a more tolerant spirit. Therefore, Goldfaden decided to found a +Yiddish theatre. He went to Kupfer, the cantor, and Kupfer recommended +Mogalesco as an actor for the new company. Goldfaden saw the young man +act, and the comedy genius of Mogalesco helped in the initial idea of +a Yiddish play. Mogalesco at first refused to enter into the scheme. A +Yiddish drama seemed too narrow to him, for he aspired to the +Christian stage. But when Goldfaden offered to adopt him and teach him +the Gentile languages Mogalesco agreed and became the first Yiddish +actor. Other singers in Kupfer's choir also joined Goldfaden's +company. + +Thus the foundation of the Yiddish stage lay in the Bucharest +synagogue. The beginnings, of course, were small. Several other actors +were secured, among them Moses Silbermann, who is still acting on the +New York Ghetto stage. No girls could at that time be obtained for +the stage, for it is against the Talmudic law for a man even to hear a +girl sing, and men consequently played female rôles, as in Elizabethan +times in England. The first play that Goldfaden wrote was _The +Grandmother and her Grandchild_; the second was _The Shwendrick_ and +Mogalesco played the grandmother in one and a little spoiled boy in +the other. His success in both was enormous, and he still enacts on +the Bowery the part of the little boy. The first performances of +Goldfaden's play were given in Bucharest, at the time of the +Russian-Turkish war, and the city was filled with Russian contractors +and workmen. They overcrowded the theatre, and applauded Mogalesco to +the echo. From that time the success of the Yiddish stage was assured. +Goldfaden tried to get a permit to act in Russia, without success at +first; but he played in Odessa without a license, in a secret way, and +in the end a permit was secured. Other Yiddish companies sprang up. +Girls were admitted to the chorus, and women began to play female +rôles. The first woman on the Yiddish stage was a girl who is now Mrs. +Karb, and who may be seen in the Yiddish company at present in the +People's Theatre on the Bowery. She is the best liked of all the +Ghetto's actresses, has been a sweet singer, and is now an actress of +considerable distinction. In Bucharest, before she went on the stage, +she was a tailor-girl, and used to sing in the shop. She appeared in +1878 in _The Evil Eye_, and made an immediate hit. That was the third +Yiddish play, and, in the absence of Goldfaden, it was written by the +prompter, Joseph Latteiner, who, with the possible exception of +Professor Horowitz, who began to write about the same time, was for +many years the most popular playwright in the New York Ghetto. + +In 1884 the Yiddish theatre was forbidden in Russia. It was supposed +by the Government to be a hotbed of political plots, but some of the +Yiddish actors think that the jealousy of Gentile actors was +responsible for this idea. Two years before there had been a +transmigration of Russian and Roumanian Jews to America on a large +scale. Therefore the players banished from Russia had a refuge and an +audience in New York. In 1884 the first Yiddish company came to this +country. It was not Goldfaden's or Mogalesco's company, but one formed +after them. In it were actors who still act in New York--Moses Heine, +Moses Silbermann, Mrs. Karb, and Latteiner the playwright. + +The first Yiddish theatre was called the Oriental. It was a music-hall +on the Bowery, transformed for the purpose. A year later Mogalesco, +Kessler, Professor Horowitz, and their company came to New York and +opened the Roumania Theatre. From that time they changed theatres +frequently. It is worthy of note that with one exception the actors +identified with the beginnings of the Yiddish stage are still the +best. + +That exception is Jacob Adler, who, not counting Mogalesco, is the +best actor in the Ghetto. They are both character actors, but +Mogalesco is essentially a comedian, while Adler plays rôles ranging +from burlesque to tragedy. Mogalesco is a natural genius, with a +spontaneity superior to that of Adler, but he has no general education +nor intellectual life. But the forcible Adler, a man of great energy, +a fighter, is filled with one great idea, which is almost a passion +with him, and which has marked a development in the Yiddish theatre. +To be natural, to be real, to express the actual life of the people, +with serious intent, is what Jacob Adler stands for. Up to the time +when he appeared on the scene in New York there had been no serious +plays acted on the Yiddish stage. Comic opera, lurid melodrama, +adaptations and translations, historical plays representing the +traditions of the Jews, were exclusively the thing. Through the +acting, indeed, which on the Yiddish stage is constantly animated by +the desire for sincerity and naturalness, the real life of the people +was constantly suggested in some part of the play. When Mogalesco took +a comic part, he would interpolate phrases and actions, suggesting +that life, which he instinctively and spontaneously knew, and it was +so with the other actors also. But this element was accidental and +fragmentary previous to the coming of Jacob Adler. + +Until then Latteiner and Professor Horowitz, the authors of the first +historical plays of the Yiddish stage, and still the most popular +playwrights in the Ghetto, held almost undisputed sway. + +Joseph Latteiner, of whom brief mention has already been made, +represents thoroughly the strong commercial spirit of the Yiddish +stage. He writes with but one thought, to please the mass of the +people, writes "easy plays," to quote his own words. His plays, +therefore, are the very spirit of formlessness--burlesque, popularly +vulgar jokes, flat heroism combined about the flimsiest dramatic +structure. He is the type of the business man of the Ghetto. Altho +successful, he lives in an unpleasant tenement, and seems much poorer +than he really is. He has an unemphatic, conciliatory manner of +talking, and everything he says is discouragingly practical. He is a +Roumanian Jew, forty-six years of age. His parents intended him for a +rabbi, but he was too poor to reach the goal, altho he learned several +languages. These afterwards stood him in good stead, for he often +translates and adapts plays for the Bowery stage. Unable to be a +rabbi, Latteiner cast about for a means of making his living. As a boy +he was not interested in the stage, but one day he saw a German play +in one act and thought he could adapt it with music to the Yiddish +stage. It was successful, and Latteiner, as he put it, "discovered +himself." He has since written over a hundred plays, and is engaged by +the company at the Thalia Theatre as the regular playwright. He calls +himself _Volksdichter_, and maintains that his plays improve with the +taste of the people, but this statement is open to considerable doubt. + +In speaking of the popular playwright, and the purely commercial +character and consequent formlessness of the plays before the +appearance of Adler, important mention should be made of Boris +Thomashevsky, already briefly referred to as the idol of the Jewish +matinée girls. He is the most popular actor on the Yiddish stage, and +for him Latteiner particularly writes. Thomashevsky is a large fat +man, with expressionless features and curly black hair, which he +arranges in leonine forms. He generally appears as the hero, and is a +successful tho a rather listless barnstormer. The more intelligent of +his audience are inclined to smile at Mr. Thomashevsky's talent in +romantic parts, of the reality of which, however, he, with a large +section of the community, is very firmly convinced. In fairness, +however, it should be said that when Mr. Thomashevsky occasionally +leaves the rôle of hero for an unsentimental character, particularly +one which expresses supercilious superiority, he is excellent. As time +goes on he will probably take less and less the romantic lead and grow +more and more satisfactory. He is the youngest of the prominent actors +of the Bowery. Before the coming of Heine's company in 1884, he was a +pretty little boy in the Ghetto, who used to play female rôles in +amateur theatricals. But when the professionals came he was eclipsed, +and went out of sight for some time. He grew to be a handsome man, +however; his voice changed, and, with the help of a very different +man, Jacob Adler, Thomashevsky found an important place on the Yiddish +stage. He and Adler are now the leading actors of the People's +Theatre, but they never appear together, Thomashevsky being the main +interpreter of the plays which appeal distinctively to the rabble, +and Adler of those which form the really original Yiddish drama of a +serious nature. + +Jacob Adler was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1855, of middle-class +parents. He went to the public school, but was very slow to learn, and +was treated roughly by his teachers, whose favorite weapon was a ruler +of thorns. School, therefore, as he says, "made a bad impression" on +him, and he left it for business, but got along equally badly there, +not being able to brook the brutally expressed authority of his +masters. But while he passed rapidly from one firm to another, through +the kindness of a wealthy uncle he was able to cut a swell figure in +Odessa, and became a dandy and something of a lady-killer. He was then +only eighteen, but the serious ideas which at a later time he +strenuously sought to bring into prominence in New York already began +to assert themselves. Then there was no Yiddish theatre, but of the +Gentile Russian theatre in Odessa he was very fond. The serious +realistic Russian play was what particularly took his fancy. The +Russian tragedians Kozelski and Miloslowski especially helped to form +his taste, and he soon became a critic well known in the galleries. It +was the habit of Russian audiences to express their ideas and +impressions on the spot. The galleries were divided into parties, with +opposing artistic principles. One party hissed while the other +applauded, and then and there they held debates, between the acts and +even during the performance. Adler soon became one of the fiercest +leaders of such a party that Odessa had ever known. He stood for +realism, for the direct expression of the life of the people. All else +he hissed down, and did it so effectively that the actors tried to +conciliate him. One season two actresses of talent, but of different +schools, were playing in Odessa--Glebowa, whom Adler supported because +of her naturalness, and Kozlowski, whose style was affected and +artificial from Adler's point of view. After the strife between the +rival parties had waged for some time very fiercely, one night +Kozlowski sent for Adler, and asked him what she could do to get the +great critic to join her party. Adler replied that so long as Glebowa +played with such wonderful naturalness he should remain faithful to +her colors, and advised Kozlowski, who was a kind of Russian +Bernhardt, to change her style. + +Adler's lack of education always weighed on his spirit, and his high +ideals of the stage seemed to shut that art away from him. Yet his +friends who heard him recite the speeches of his favorites, which he +easily remembered, told him he had talent. "I wanted to believe them," +Adler said, "but I always thought that the actor ought to know +everything in order to interpret humanity." + +But just about that time, when Adler was twenty-three years old, he +heard that a theatre had been started in Roumania by a Russian Jew +named Goldfaden, and that the actors spoke Yiddish. + +"I was astonished," he said. "How could they act a play in a language +without literature, in the jargon of our race, and who could be the +actors?" + +Soon Adler heard that the Jewish singers of hymns who sometimes +visited Odessa, and who moved him so, because "they sang so +pitifully," were the actors of the first Yiddish company, and his +astonishment grew. In 1879 Goldfaden went to Odessa with his company, +and his theatre was crowded with Gentiles as well as Jews; and Adler +saw with his eyes what he had hardly believed possible--a Jewish +company in a Yiddish play. The plays, however, seemed to Adler very +poor--mainly light opera with vaudeville accompaniment--and the acting +was also poor; but Israel Rosenberg, whom Adler describes as a +long-faced Jew with protruding teeth, enormous eyes, and a mouth as +wide as a saucer, amused Adler with the wit which he interpolated as +he acted. Rosenberg, "more ignorant than I," says Adler, "was yet +very successful." The two became intimate, and Rosenberg and Fräulein +Oberländer urged Adler to go on the stage; Rosenberg because Adler at +that time was comparatively rich, and the Fräulein because she loved +(and afterwards married) the vigorous young man from Odessa. And Adler +felt his education to be superior to that of these successful actors, +and decided to make the experiment. To choose the stage, however, was +to choose poverty, as he had begun to succeed in business, but he did +not hesitate and, leaving his friends and family, he went on a tour +with the company. + +In the first performance he was so frightened that he did not hear his +own words. He lost all his critical faculty, and played merely +instinctively. It was a long time before he acted better than the +average, which was at that time very low; but, finally, in a small +town named Elizabetgrad, Adler learned his lesson. A critic visited +the theatre every night, and wrote long articles upon it, but Adler +never found his name mentioned therein. He used to get up in the +morning very early, before any one else, to buy the newspaper, but was +always chagrined to find that the great man had overlooked him. At +first he thought that the critic must have a personal spite against +him, then that he was not noticed because he had only small rôles. At +last he was cast for a very long and emotional rôle. He thought that +this part would surely fetch the critic, and the next morning eagerly +bought a paper, but there was no criticism of the play at all. +Rosenberg went to the critic and asked the reason. + +"Adler spoiled the whole thing," was the reply. "His acting was +unnatural and loud. I advise him to leave the stage." + +"Then," said Adler, "I began to think. I cut my hair, which I had +allowed to grow long after the fashion of actors, and was at first +much discouraged. But thereafter I studied every rôle with great care, +and read the classic plays, and never played a part until I understood +it. Before that it was play with me; but after that it was serious +work." + +For a number of years Adler continued to act in the cities of Russia, +and became the head of a company. In 1883, when Russia was closed to +the Jewish stage, Adler took his company to London, where he nearly +starved. There was no Ghetto there, and the company gave occasional +performances at various Yiddish clubs scattered through the city. +Adler lost all his money, and got into debt. His wife and child died, +and at one time in despair he thought of leaving the stage. But it was +too late to go back to Odessa, for he had once for all cut himself off +from his family and friends. He was falsely informed by a Jew who had +been to America that to succeed there he would have to sing, dance, +and speak German. So he stayed some time longer in London. The +Rothschilds, Dr. Felix Adler, and others, took an interest in him, and +told him that as the Jewish theatre could have no future, since +Yiddish must ultimately be forgotten, he had better give it up. + +It was in 1887 that Adler came to New York, where he found two Yiddish +companies already well started. To avoid conflict with them, he went +to Chicago, where, however, a Yiddish theatre could get no foothold. +Some rich Chicago people tried to induce Adler to learn English and go +on the American stage; but Adler, always distrustful of his education +and ability to learn, declined their offers, now much to his regret. +He returned to New York, where Mogalesco and Kessler urged him to +stay, but the Ghetto actors in general were hostile to him, and he +went back to London. The next year, however, he was visited by four of +the managers of the New York Ghetto companies (among them Mogalesco), +vying with one another to secure Adler, whose reputation in the +Jewish community was rapidly growing. He went back to New York in +1889, where he appeared first at the Germania Theatre. He was +advertised in advance as a Salvini, a Barrett, a Booth, as all stars +combined. When he found how extravagantly he had been announced he was +angry, and wanted to go back to London, feeling that it was impossible +to live up to what his foolish managers had led the people to expect. +He consented to stay, but refused to appear in _Uriel Acosta_ for +which he was billed, preferring to begin in comedy, in order not to +appear to compete with the reputation of Salvini. The play, which was +called _The Ragpicker_, can still be seen in the Ghetto. In it Adler +tried to score as a character actor. But the people, expecting a +tragedy, took _The Ragpicker_ seriously, and did not laugh at all. The +play fell flat, and the managers rushed before the curtain and told +the audience that Adler was a poor actor, and that they had been +deceived in him. Through the influence of the management, the whole +company treated him with coldness and contempt, except the wife of one +of the directors. She is now Mrs. Adler, and is one of the capable +serious actresses at present at the People's Theatre. Finally, the +lease of the theatre passed into Adler's hands, and he dismissed the +whole company and formed a new one. Soon after began the struggle +which brought about the latest development of the Yiddish stage. + +For some time Adler was successful, but he grew more and more +dissatisfied with his repertory. He could find no plays which +seriously portrayed the life of the people or contained any serious +ideas. Only the translated plays were good from his point of view; he +wished something original, and looked about for a playwright. One +night in a restaurant he was introduced to Jacob Gordin, who +afterwards wrote the greater part of the only serious original Yiddish +plays which exist. + +Gordin at that time had written no plays, but he was a man of varied +literary activity, of a rarely good education, a thorough Russian +schooling, and of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. He +is Russian in appearance, a large broad-headed man with thick black +hair and beard. As he told me in his little home in Brooklyn, the +history of his life, he omitted all picturesque details, and +emphasized only his intellectual development. He was born in the same +town as Gogol, Ubigovrod in southern Russia, of rich parents. As a boy +he frequented the theatre, and like Adler, became a local critic and +hissed down what he did not approve. Like Adler, too, he was often +carried off to the police station and fined. He married early, became +a school-teacher and then a journalist (in Russian), writing every +sort of article, except political, and often sketches and short +stories for newspapers and periodicals in Odessa, where he finally +controlled a newspaper--the _Odessakianovosti_. He was a great admirer +of Tolstoi, and desiring to live on a farm to put into practice the +Count's ideas, he came to America in 1891, and nearly starved. He +became an editor of a Russian newspaper in New York and contributed to +other journals. In his own paper he wrote violent articles against the +Russian Government, as well as literary sketches. In Russia, Gordin +had never been in a Yiddish theatre, and when he met Adler in the New +York restaurant he knew little of the conventional Yiddish play. So he +wrote his first play in a fresh spirit, with only the character of the +people and his own ideals to work from. _Siberia_, produced in 1892, +was a success with the critics and actors, and may fairly be called +the first original Yiddish play of the better type. + +The play struck a new note. It fell into line with the Russian spirit +of realism now so marked in intellectual circles in the Ghetto. Life +and types are what Gordin tried for, and Jacob Adler had found his +playwright. Since then Gordin has written about fifty plays, some of +which have been successful, and many have been marked by literary and +dramatic power. Some of the better ones are _Siberia_, the _Jewish +King Lear_, _The Wild Man_, _The Jewish Priest_, _Solomon Kaus_, _The +Slaughter_, and the _Jewish Queen Lear_. Jacob Adler has been until +recently his chief interpreter, altho Mogalesco, Kessler, and +Thomashevsky take his plays. + + [Illustration: MADAM LIPTZEN] + +For several years an actress, Mrs. Liptzen, was the main interpreter +of Gordin's plays. She is one of the most individual, if not one of +the most skillful, actresses on the stage of New York's Ghetto, and is +sometimes spoken of in the quarter as the Yiddish Duse. She is the +only actress of the east side who is thus compared, by a sub-title, +with a famous Gentile artist, altho in many directions there is a +great tendency in the Ghetto to adopt foreign names and ideas. As a +matter of fact, her art is exceedingly limited, but she has the +unusual distinction of appearing only in the best plays, steadfastly +refusing to take part in performances which she deems to be +dramatically unworthy. She consequently appears very seldom, usually +only in connection with the production of a new play by Jacob Gordin, +who at present writes many of his plays with the "Yiddish Duse" in +mind. + +Mrs. Liptzen was born in Zitomir, South Russia, and was interested +exclusively in the stage from her childhood. The founder of the +Yiddish stage, Abraham Goldfaden, and Jacob Adler, played in her town +for a few nights when she was about eighteen years old. Her parents +were orthodox Jews, and to go to the theatre she was forced to resort +to subterfuge. She became acquainted with Goldfaden and Adler, and ran +away from home in order to accompany them as an actress. At first she +sang and acted in such popular operatic plays as _Der Schmendrik_, and +continued for three years in Russia, until the Yiddish theatre was +forbidden there. Then she went with a new company to Berlin, where the +whole aggregation nearly starved. They were reduced to selling all +their stage properties, the proceeds of which were made away with by a +dishonest agent. During the time their performances in Berlin +continued Mrs. Liptzen received, it is said, the sum of ten pfennige +(two and one-half cents) a day, on which she lived. She paid five +pfennige for lodging and five pfennige for bread and coffee; and there +is left in her now a correspondingly amazing impression of the +cheapness with which she could live in Germany in those days. + +Jacob Adler was at that time in London with a company, eking out a +miserable existence. He wrote to Mrs. Liptzen's husband, an invalid in +Odessa, to send his wife to London to play in his company. About 1886 +Mrs. Liptzen went to London and played in _Esther von Engedi_ (the +Yiddish _Othello_), _Leah the Forsaken_, _Rachel_, _The Jews_, etc. In +London she stayed three years, when, the theatre burning down, she +went with Adler to Chicago. They tried to find a place in New York, +but the Yiddish company, with Kessler and Mogalesco at its head, +already in New York, froze them out, and they tried to get a foothold +in Chicago. A little later Mrs. Liptzen left Chicago for New York, +called by the Yiddish company there to play leading parts. She began +in New York with _Leah the Forsaken_, and received only $10 for the +first three performances. It is said that she now receives from $100 +to $200 for every performance, a fact indicating not only her growth +in popularity but also the great financial success of the Yiddish +theatres in New York. + +Twelve years ago Mrs. Liptzen retired for a time from the stage, the +reason being that there were no new plays in which she desired to +appear, since the demand was entirely supplied by the romantic and +historical operatic playwrights, Prof. Horowitz and Mr. Latteiner. + +It was not until Jacob Gordin came into prominence as a realistic +playwright, that Mrs. Liptzen came out of her dignified retirement. +Jacob Adler was the first to play Gordin's pieces; but he played many +others, too, trying in a practical way gradually to make the cause of +realism triumphant. Mrs. Liptzen, however, made no compromise, and +kept quiet until she was able to get the plays she wanted, which soon +were written by Gordin. + +Mrs. Liptzen's first success with a Gordin play was in _Medea_, for +which Gordin received, it is said, the enormous sum of $85--having +sold plays previous to that time for the well-fixed price of $35. +_Medea's Youth_, written by Gordin for Mrs. Liptzen, was a failure, +altho the author thought so well of it as a literary production that +he had it translated into English. The next of Mrs. Liptzen's +successes was the _Jewish Queen Lear_, for which Gordin received +$200--an enormous sum for a Yiddish playwright in those days. _The +Slaughter_ was produced two years ago, and last year Mrs. Liptzen +appeared in Gordin's _The Oath_, a Yiddish production of _Fuhrmann +Henschel_. Of late Mr. Gordin's plays have been produced by a younger +actress of more varied talent than Mrs. Liptzen--Mrs. Bertha Kalisch, +on the whole a much worthier interpreter than the older woman. + +It is Adler, however, who has been the belligerent promoter of the +original and serious Yiddish drama. In 1893 he tried to introduce +Gordin's plays and the new spirit of realism and literature into his +company at the Windsor Theatre. But the old style is still strong in +popular affection, and Adler's company rebelled. Whereupon Adler went +to Russia to form a new company which would be more amenable to his +ideas. He came back with the new troupe, and ordered a new play from +Gordin, who produced _The Jewish King Lear_. At the first reading of +the play the company protested, but Adler begged for a trial, telling +them that they did not know what a good play was. The play proved a +great and deserved success, and is now frequently repeated. It +contains several scenes of great power, and portrays with faithful art +the life of the Russian Jew. In 1894 Adler tried the experiment of +leasing a small theatre, the Roumania, in which nothing but plays +which expressed his ideas should be presented. A number of Gordin's +plays were given, but the theatre had much the same fate that would +befall a theatre up town which should play only the ideally best. It +failed completely. After that both Adler and Gordin were compelled to +compromise. Adler is now associated with a company which presents +every kind of play known to the Ghetto, and Gordin has had to +introduce horseplay and occasional vaudeville and comic opera into his +plays. Even the best of the Yiddish plays contain these excrescences. + +But both Adler and Gordin, while remaining practical men, with an eye +to the box-office receipts, are working to eliminate more and more +what is distasteful to them and impertinent to art. A year ago last +autumn Gordin succeeded in having his latest play, _The Slaughter_, +performed without any vaudeville accompaniment. He deemed it a +triumph, particularly as it was successful, and felt a debt of +gratitude to Mrs. Liptzen, who produced the play without insisting on +unworthy interpolations. + +Gordin now hopes that the days of compromise for him are past, and +Adler expects to secure, some day, a theatre in which he can +successfully produce only the serious plays of Jewish life. But both +these men are pessimistic about the future of dramatic art in the +Ghetto. They feel not only the weight of the commercial spirit, but +also the imminent death of their stage. For the Jews of the Ghetto as +they become Americanized are liable to lose their instinctive Yiddish, +and then there will be no more drama in that tongue. The only Yiddish +stage, worthy of the name, in the world will probably soon be no more. +Jacob Adler consequently regrets that his "jargon" confines him to the +Bowery stage, and Jacob Gordin longs to have his plays translated and +produced on the English stage. + +Mogalesco, the actor, who has, perhaps, the greatest talent of them +all, whose dramatic art was born with the Yiddish stage, and who is +equally happy in a comedietta by Latteiner or a character-play by +Gordin, is, like the true actor, without ideas, but always felicitous +in interpretation, and enthusiastically loved by the Jewish +play-goers. He and Adler, if they had been fortunate enough to have +received a training consistently good, and had acted in a language of +wider appeal, would easily have taken their places among those +artistically honored by the world. Even as it is they have, with +Gordin, with Kessler, with Mrs. Liptzen, Mrs. Kalisch and the rest, +the distinction of being prominent figures in the short career of the +Yiddish stage, which, founded by Goldfaden in 1876, in Roumania, has +received to-day, in New York, its highest and almost exclusive +development. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[1] See text, section on "Realism." + + + + +Chapter Six + +The Newspapers + + +Yiddish newspapers have, as compared with their contemporaries in the +English language, the strong interest of great freedom of expression. +They are controlled rather by passion than by capital. It is their joy +to pounce on controlling wealth, and to take the side of the laborer +against the employer. A large proportion of the articles are signed, a +custom in striking contrast with that of the American newspaper; the +prevalence of the unsigned article in the latter is held by the +Yiddish journals to illustrate the employer's tendency to arrogate +everything to himself, and to make the paper a mere organ of his own +policy and opinions. The remark of one of the Jewish editors, that the +"Yiddish newspaper's freedom of expression is limited by the Penal +Code alone," has its relative truth. It is, of course, equally true +that the new freedom of the Jews, who in Russia had no journal in the +common Yiddish, runs in these New York papers into an emotional +extreme, a license which is apt to distort the news and to give over +the editorial pages to virulent party disputes. + +Nevertheless, the Yiddish press, particularly the Socialistic branch +of it, is an educative element of great value in the Ghetto. It has +helped essentially to extend the intellectual horizon of the Jew +beyond the boundaries of the Talmud, and has largely displaced the +rabbi in the position of teacher of the people. Not only do these +papers constitute a forum of discussion, but they publish frequent +translations of the Russian, French, and German modern classics, and +for the first time lay the news of the world before the poor Jewish +people. An event of moment to the Jews, such as a riot in Russia, +comes to New York in private letters, and is printed in the papers +here often before the version "prepared" by the Russian Government +appears in the Russian newspapers. Thus a Jew on the east side +received a letter from his father in Russia asking why the reserves +there had been called out, and the son's reply gave him the first +information about the war in China. + +The make-up of the Yiddish newspaper is in a general way similar to +that of its American contemporary. The former is much smaller, however, +containing only about as much reading matter as would fill six or +eight columns of a "down-town" newspaper. The sporting department is +entirely lacking, the Jew being utterly indifferent to exercise of any +kind. They are all afternoon newspapers, and draw largely for the news +upon the morning editions of the American papers. The staff is very +limited, consisting of a few editors and, usually, only one reporter +for the local news of the quarter. They give more space proportionately +than any American paper to pure literature--chiefly translations, tho +there are some stories founded on the life of the east side--and to +scientific articles of popular character. The interesting feature of +these newspapers, however, consists in their rivalries and their +differences in principle. This can be presented most simply in a short +sketch of their history. + + +THE CONSERVATIVE JOURNALS + +Yiddish journalism in New York began about thirty years ago, and +continued in unimportant and unrepresentative newspapers until about +twelve years ago, when the _Tageblatt_, the first daily newspaper, and +the _Arbeiterzeitung_, an important Socialistic weekly, now defunct, +but from which developed the present Socialist dailies, came into +existence. The _Tageblatt_, which has maintained its general character +from the beginning, is the most conservative, as well as the oldest, +of the daily newspapers of the Ghetto. It is national and orthodox, +and fights tooth and nail for whatever is distinctively Jewish in +customs, literature, language, and religion. It hates the reform sects +in religion and the Socialistic tendencies in politics and economics. +It is called a "capitalist" paper by its opponents, and is so in the +sense that it is more dependent upon its advertisements than the +Socialistic papers, which are partly supported by frequent +entertainments and balls, to which all their friends go. And yet how +little capitalistic is even this paper is shown by the fact that while +it takes a non-committal attitude towards strikes in the Ghetto it +supports those which occur outside. + +Sympathetic with workingmen and not antagonistic to the employers of +the Ghetto, the _Tageblatt_ conventionally unites all the Jewish +interests it consistently can, and has admittedly the largest +circulation of any daily paper in the Ghetto. The Socialists call it +"bourgeois" as well as "capitalistic" (which is the most horrid of all +words in the quarter). Some call it chauvinistic because of its strong +Nationalist tendency, and fanatic because it upholds the religion of +the Jews; the Jew who wants first of all to be an American and +up-to-date hates the _Tageblatt_ as tending to strengthen the +distinction between Jew and Gentile. This paper goes so far in its +conservatism that, according to its enemies, it condemns all rabbis +who mention the name of Christ in their sermons, and holds to a strict +interpretation of Talmudic law in regard to habits of life. "It is +only the old-fashioned greenhorns," said the editor of one of the +other papers, "coming from the old country, who will stand for it." + + +THE SOCIALIST PAPERS + +The Socialist weekly, the _Arbeiterzeitung_, marked the beginning of +the most vital journalism of the east side, and stood in striking +contrast to the _Tageblatt_. In the circumstances attending its +development into the two existing rival Socialistic papers, the +_Vorwärts_ and the _Abendblatt_,[2] a picture of the progressive and +passionate character of the Russian-Jewish Socialists of the Ghetto is +presented, and some of the most important and picturesque personages. +The most educated and intelligent among the Jews of the east side +speak Russian, and are reactionary in politics and religion. Coming +from Russia, as they do, they have a fierce hatred of government and +capitalism, and a more or less Tolstoian love for the peasant and the +workingman. The purpose of the organizers of the _Arbeiterzeitung_ +Publishing Association was to educate the people, promulgate the +doctrines of Socialism, and be altogether the organ of the workman +against the employer. From the outset, beginning in 1890, the +_Arbeiterzeitung_ was a popular and influential paper. + +All the older journals had affected a Germanized Yiddish, which the +people did not understand; but the new paper, aiming at the modern +heart of the Ghetto, carried on its propaganda in the common jargon of +the Jew, the pure Yiddish; and, growing enormously in circulation, +forced the language down the throats of the conservative journals. In +this popular tongue, the _Arbeiterzeitung_ carried on for five years a +most energetic campaign for a broad Socialism, admitting all allied +movements in favor of common ownership, directing and encouraging +strikes, printing popular scientific articles, realistic stories, +dramatic criticisms, and expressing and leading generally the best +intelligence of the Yiddish community. With the constituency of which +this journal was the organ, Socialism had almost the force and passion +of a religious movement. An example of the paper's power was in +connection with the Bakers' Union. That organization imposed a label +on all bread made in the Ghetto, and insisted that all the bakers +should handle only bread of that brand. The _Arbeiterzeitung_ +supported the Union so effectively that no other bread could possibly +be obtained in the quarter. At the first _Yahresfest_ of the journal, +Cooper Union overflowed with enthusiastic workingmen, and long lines +of the excluded stretched out down the Bowery to Houston Street. + + [Illustration: IN THE OFFICE OF THE "VÖRWARTS"] + +The man whose name is most intimately connected with the +_Arbeiterzeitung_ is its former editor, Abraham Cahan, now known +outside of the Ghetto as a writer in English of novels and short +stories of Jewish life. He is of the best type of the ethical +agitator; a convincing and impassioned speaker; he has held hundreds +of workingmen by his clear and strongly expressed ideas, whether +written in his paper or spoken at nightly meetings in some poor hall +on the east side, where the men gathered after the labors of the day. +Twice he went abroad to speak at international labor conferences. At +the same time that he supported the definite cause of the Social +Democracy, he put the same energy and passion into the education of +the people in scientific and literary directions. He spoke and wrote +for directness, simplicity, and humanity. In art, therefore, the +realistic school of Russian writers, of whom in our generation there +have been so many great men, received his fighting allegiance. For +five years Cahan put all his intelligence and devotion into this work, +and the power of the _Arbeiterzeitung_ was partly his power. To-day, +in the Ghetto, where fierce jealousies are rampant, Cahan is admitted +to be the man, among many men of energy, intelligence, and devotion, +who has wielded most influence in the community. + +A literary and dramatic event happened in 1892 which showed the power +of Cahan and his Socialist associates in influencing the taste of the +Ghetto. It was the production of Gordin's drama _Siberia_. Up to that +time, nothing but conventional opera, melodrama, and historical plays +had been given on the Bowery, but the day after the performance of +_Siberia_ the _Arbeiterzeitung_ contained a long review of the play by +Cahan, welcoming it enthusiastically as an event breaking the way for +realistic art in the colony. Since then this type of play has taken a +prominent place in the repertory at the Yiddish theatres. For five +years the _Arbeiterzeitung_ continued its influence, but then came a +split among the Socialists, which resulted in two daily papers--the +_Abendblatt_ and the _Vorwärts_. + + [Illustration: BUYING A NEWSPAPER] + +Cahan, Miller and others of the men who had started the +_Arbeiterzeitung_ gradually lost control through the share system +which had been inaugurated. They desired to maintain a liberal policy +towards all labor movements, and to allow the literary and Socialistic +societies to be represented in the paper, but the other faction wanted +the newspaper to be exclusively an organ of Socialism in its narrow +sense. The result was that, soon after the publication of the +_Arbeiterzeitung_ as the _Daily Abendblatt_, Cahan resigned the +editorship and turned disgusted to English newspapers and to realistic +fiction, in which he was absorbed until recently. A few months ago he +resumed the editorship of the _Vorwärts_ after an absence of several +years from participation in Yiddish journalism. Louis Miller, a witty +and energetic Socialist and writer, who had from the first been active +in the management of the weekly, was one of the most prominent of the +men who continued the fight against the narrower Socialistic +element--a fight which resulted in the establishment in 1897 of the +other Socialist daily now existing, the _Vorwärts_. + +These two papers were, until recently, when the _Abendblatt_ died, +bitter rivals. The _Abendblatt_ was devoted to the interests of the +Socialist Labor Party while the _Vorwärts_ supports in a general way +the Social Democracy; altho it is not so distinctively a party paper +as was the _Abendblatt_. The adherents of the latter paper looked upon +the _Vorwärts_ as unreliable and the _Vorwärts_ people thought the +_Abendblatt_ intolerant. The _Abendblatt_ prided itself on its +uncompromising character, and the _Vorwärts_ is content to adapt +itself to what it deems the present needs of the Jewish community. +Thus the _Vorwärts_ is willing to join hands with reform movements in +general, with trades unions, etc., while the _Abendblatt_ stiffly +demanded that allied organizations should enter the socialist camp. +The triumph of the _Vorwärts_ was therefore a triumph of the more +liberal spirits. + +Two other daily publications are more distinctively mere newspapers +than the two Socialistic organs, and make no consistent attempt to +influence public opinion, at least in the definite direction of a +"movement." The _Abend-Post_ seems to have no very distinctive policy +or character; it is neither Socialistic nor conservative Jewish; the +distinction it aims at is to be a newspaper simply, to reflect events +and not to determine opinion. In the editor's words, the _Abend-Post_ +"is not chauvinistic, like the _Tageblatt_; the Jew does not resound +in it. It aims to Americanize the Ghetto, and diminish or ignore the +chasm between Jew and Gentile." The editor of one of the Socialist +papers calls this sort of thing by another name. "The _Abend-Post_," +he said, "is an imitation of American yellow journalism." A fifth +daily, the _Herald_, is even less distinctive than the _Abend-Post_. +It has no party and is not as sensational as the other. It might, +perhaps, be called the Jewish "mugwump." + +Recently a sixth daily, _The Jewish World_, has been organized under +favorable auspices. Its avowed policy is to bridge the chasm which +exists between sons and fathers in the Ghetto; to make the sons more +Hebraic and the fathers more American; the sons more conservative and +the fathers more progressive. Connected with its management is H. +Masliansky, one of the most impassioned orators of the Ghetto. + +The question of the circulation figures of these five dailies is a +difficult one. About the only thing that seems certain is that the +_Tageblatt_ leads in this respect. Even the editors of the other +papers admit that, altho they differ as to the absolute figures. The +editor of the _Tageblatt_ places his paper's circulation at 40,000, +the _Abend-Post_ at 14,000, the _Herald_ next, and the two Socialistic +papers last, which ending is a felicitous consummation for the editor +of the most conservative newspaper in the Ghetto. The editor of the +_Abend-Post_ says the _Tageblatt_ leads with a daily issue of about +30,000, the _Abend-Post_ coming next with 23,700, the _Herald_ and the +Socialist papers stringing out in the rear. The editors of the +Socialist sheets naturally give a somewhat different order. Mr. Miller +of the _Vorwärts_ puts the actual circulation of the _Tageblatt_ at +about 17,000; his own paper, the _Vorwärts_, next, with about 14,000 +daily except on Saturday, the Jewish Sunday, when the number ranges +between 20,000 and 25,000, owing to the fact that the conservative +newspapers (_i. e._, those that are not Socialistic) do not appear on +that day. The circulation of the rival Socialistic paper, the +_Abendblatt_, he puts at about 8,000. In these figures there is no +attempt at entire accuracy. + + +THE ANARCHIST PAPERS + +There are several Yiddish weekly and monthly journals published in New +York. The _Tageblatt_, _Abend-Post_ and _Herald_ have weekly editions, +but by far the most interesting of the papers which are not dailies +are the two Anarchistic sheets, the _Freie Arbeiter-stimme_, a weekly, +and the _Freie Gesellschaft_, a monthly. + + [Illustration: A "GHETTO" NEWSPAPER OFFICE] + +Contrary to the general impression of the character of these people, +in which bombs play a large part, the Anarchists of the Ghetto are a +gentle and idealistic body of men. The abnormal activity of the +Russian Jews in this country is expressed by the Socialists rather +than the Anarchists. The latter are largely theorists and aim rather +at the education of the people by a journalistic exploitation of their +general principles than by a warlike attitude towards specific events +of the time. Their attitude is not so partisan as that of the +Socialists. They quarrel less among themselves, and are characterized +by dreamy eyes and an unpractical scheme of things. They believe in +non-resistance and the power of abstract right, and are trying to work +out a peaceful revolution, maintaining that the violence often +accompanying the movement in Europe is due to the fact that many +Anarchists are passionate individuals who in their indignation do not +live up to their essentially gentle principles. The Socialists aim at +a more strictly centralized government, even than any one existing, +since they desire the whole machinery of production and distribution +to be in the hands of the community; the Anarchists desire no +government whatever, believing that law works against the native +dignity of the individual, and trusting to man's natural goodness to +maintain order under free conditions. A man's own conscience only can +punish him sufficiently, they think. The Socialists go in vividly for +politics, while the Anarchists have nothing to do with them. The point +on which these two parties agree is the common hatred of private +property. + + [Illustration: S. JANOWSKY] + +The weekly Anarchistic paper, the _Freie Arbeiter-stimme_, prints +about 7,000 copies. Out of this circulation, with the assistance of +balls, entertainments, and benefits at the theatres, the paper is +able to exist. It pays a salary to only one man, the editor, S. +Janowsky, who receives the sum of $13 a week. He is a little +dark-haired man, with beautiful eyes, and soft, persuasive voice. He +thinks that government is so corrupt that the Anarchists need do +little to achieve their ends; that silent forces are at work which +will bring about the great day of Anarchistic communism. In his +newspaper he tries to educate the common people in the principles of +anarchy. The aim is popular, and the more intelligent exploitation of +the cause is left to the monthly. The _Freigesellschaft_, with the +same principles as the _Freie Arbeiter-stimme_, has a higher literary +and philosophical character. The editors and contributors are men of +culture and education, and work without any pay. It is still gentler +and more pacific in its character than the weekly, of whose +comparatively contemporaneous and agitatory method it disapproves +calmly; believing, as the editors of the monthly do, that a weekly +paper cannot exist without giving the people something other than the +ideally best. With reference to the ideally best, a number of +serious, contemplative men gather in a basement opposite the Hebrew +Institute, the headquarters of the monthly, and there talk about the +subjects often discussed within its pages, such as Slavery and +Freedom, Darwinism and Communism, Man and Government, the Purpose of +Education, etc.,--any broad economic subject admitting of abstract +treatment. + + [Illustration: KATZ] + +The talk of these Anarchists is distinguished by a high idealism, and +the unpractical and devoted attitude. One of the foremost among them +(they say they have no leaders, as that would be against individual +liberty) is Katz, literary editor of the _Vorwärts_, a contributor to +the Anarchistic monthly, a former editor of the Anarchistic weekly, +and a recently successful playwright in the Ghetto. His play, the +_Yiddish Don Quixote_, was produced at the Thalia Theatre on the +Bowery. Not since Gordin's _Siberia_ has a play aroused such +intelligent interest. The hero is a Quixotic Jew, full of kindness, +devotion, and love for his race and for humankind. + + +SOME PICTURESQUE CONTRIBUTORS + +There are many other picturesque and interesting men connected with +these Yiddish journals, either as editors or contributors. Morris +Rosenfeld, the sweat-shop poet, writes articles and occasionally poems +for the Socialistic papers; Abraham Wald, the vigorous and stormy +young poet, contributes literary and Socialistic articles three times +a week to _Vorwärts_; the editor of one of the conservative papers, +distinguished for his logic and his clever business management, is +interesting because of the facility with which he adapts his +principles to the commercial needs of the moment. At one time he was a +Socialist, then became a Christian, then a Jew again simply, and now +is a conservative Jew. Another editor remarked that he was a man of +sense and logic. One of the Jews who writes for the Ghetto papers is +A. Frumkin, who has the rare distinction of having been born and +educated in Jerusalem. There he lived until he was eighteen, when he +went to Constantinople and studied Turkish law; afterwards he +journeyed to Paris, where he married, and then to New York, where he +writes many articles in Yiddish about Jerusalem and Palestine, which +are published largely in the _Vorwärts_. He is a young man of about +thirty, with a fresh, rosy look and a buoyant manner. He is an +Anarchist, and his energetic bearing is in strong contrast to the pale +cast of thought that marks his fellows, the intellectuals among the +Anarchists of New York. Other occasional or constant writers are the +Hebrew poet Dolitzki, who is characterized in another chapter; and the +poets Morris Winchevsky and Abraham Sharkansky. + + [Illustration: A. FRUMKIN] + +These two men are in a class quite different from that of the four +poets to whom a separate paper has been devoted. They are, as opposed +to Rosenfeld, Zunser, Dolitzki and Wald, interesting rather for form +than for substance. They are men with some lyric gift and a talent for +verse, but are strong neither in thought nor feeling. Winchevsky is a +Socialist, a man who has edited more than one Yiddish publication with +success, of uncommon learning and cultivation. In literary attempt he +is more nearly like the ordinary American or English writer than the +Jewish. Most of the Ghetto poets portray the dark and sordid aspect of +their lives. Most of them do it with unhappy strength, certainly one +of them, Rosenfeld, does it with genius. But Winchevsky attempts to +give a bright picture of things. He tries to be entertaining, and +heartfelt, sentimental and sweet. Truth is not so much what he attains +as a little vein of sentimental verse which is sometimes touched with +a true lyric quality. + +Sharkansky can not be put in any intellectual category. He is a man of +considerable poetic talent, but he seems to have little feeling and +fewer ideas. There is no "movement" or tendency for which he cares. In +character he is a business man, with a detached talent unrelated to +the remainder of his personality. + +Philip Kranz and A. Feigenbaum, editors and writers of political +editorials, are two of the most prominent men connected with the +history of Yiddish journalism. They are men of energy and force and +represent a large class of Jews interested in social science and +political economy. A. Tannenbaum occupies a peculiar and interesting +position as a writer for the newspapers. He writes very long novels, +the plots of which are drawn from books in French, German or Russian. +About these plots he weaves incidents and characters from American +history, and inserts popular ideas of science and philosophy. His aim +is to educate the Ghetto by dishing up science and philosophy in a +palatable form. D. Hermalin's distinctive character is that of a +translator of foreign books into Yiddish. Swift, Tolstoi, de +Maupassant, have been in part translated by him into the Ghetto's +dialect. He, like some of the other men best known for more +unpretentious work, is an author of very poor plays. David Pinsky, a +writer for the _Abendblatt_, is very interesting not only as a writer +of short sketches of literary value, in which capacity he is mentioned +in another chapter, but also as a dramatic critic and as one of the +more wide-awake and distinctively modern of the young men of Yiddish +New York. He is so keen with the times that he looks even on realism +with distrust. Even the great philosopher, the second Spinoza, a man +highly respected in a professional way by eminent scientists of the +day, Silverstein, is an occasional contributor to these interesting +newspapers. + +FOOTNOTE: + +[2] Recently defunct--June, 1901. + + + + +Chapter Seven + +The Sketch-Writers + + +The Russian Jews of the east side of New York are, in proportion as +they are educated, as I have said, realists in literary faith. Is it +natural? Is it true to life? they are inclined to ask of every piece +of writing that comes under their eyes. As their lives are +circumscribed and more or less unfortunate, their ideas of what +constitutes the truth are limited and gloomy. Their criteria of art +are formed on the basis of the narrow but intense work of modern +Russian fiction. They look up to Tolstoi and Chekhov, and reject all +principles founded upon more romantic and more genial models. The +simplicity of their critical ideals lends, however, to their +intellectual lives a certainty which is striking enough when compared +with the varied, wavering, ungrounded literary norms and judgments of +the ordinary intelligent Anglo-Saxon. The lack of authoritative +literary criticism in America is partly due to the multiplicity of our +classic models. With a simpler literature in mind the Russian is more +constantly able to apply a decisive test. + + [Illustration: A TYPE OF LABORING MAN] + +The Russian Jew of culture when he comes to New York carries with him +Russian ideals of literature. The best Yiddish work produced in +America is Russian in principle. Many of the writers who publish +literary sketches in the newspapers of the Ghetto have written +originally in the Russian language, and know the Russian Jewish life +better than the life of the Yiddish east side; and even now they write +mainly about conditions in Russia. Moreover, those who know their New +York and its special Jewish life thoroughly and mirror it in their +work are in method, tho not in material, Russian; are close, faithful, +unhappy realists. + +Whatever its form, however, a considerable body of fiction is +published more or less regularly in the daily and weekly periodicals +of the quarter which represents faithfully the life of the poor +Russian Jew in the great American city. A "Gentile" who knew nothing +of the New York Ghetto, but could read the Yiddish language, might get +a good picture of something more than the superficial aspects of the +quarter through the sketches of half a dozen of the more talented men +who write for the Socialist newspapers. The conditions under which the +children of Israel live in New York, their manners, problems and +ideals, appear, if not with completeness, at least with +suggestiveness, in these short articles, usually in fiction form, the +best of them direct, simple and unpretentious, true to life in general +and to the life of the Russian Jew in America in particular. The sad +aspect of life predominates, but not through conventional +sentimentality on the part of the writers, who are not aware that they +are objects of possible pity. They merely tell without comment the +facts they know. For the most part, those facts are gloomy and +sordid, often lightened, however, by the sense of the ridiculous, +which seldom entirely deserts the Jew; and as likely as not rendered +attractive by feeling and by beauty of characterization. + + +SOME REALISTS + + [Illustration: S. LIBIN] + +S. Libin holds the place among prose writers that Morris Rosenfeld +does among poets. Like Rosenfeld, he has been a sweat-shop worker, +and, like him, writes about the sordid conditions of the life. The +shop, the push-cart pedler and the tenement-house mark the range of +his subjects; but into these unsightly things he puts constant feeling +and an unfailing pathos and humor. As in the case of Rosenfeld, there +are tears in everything he writes; but, unlike Rosenfeld, he also +smiles. He is a dark, thin, little man, as ragged as a tramp, with +plaintive eyes and a deprecatory smile when he speaks. He is +uncommonly poor, and at present sells newspapers for a living and +writes an occasional sketch, for which he is paid at the rate of $1.50 +or $2.00 a column by the Yiddish newspapers. He is able to produce +these little articles only on impulse; and, consequently, altho he is +one of the more prolific of the sketch-writers of the quarter, writes +for relief rather than for income. Some of his contemporaries, with +greater constancy to commercial ideals, have partly given up +unremunerative literature for the position of newspaper hacks; but +Libin, remembering his sweat-shop days, does not like a "boss," and is +under the constant necessity of relieving his feelings by his work. + +Libin lives with his wife and child in a tenement-house in Harlem, +where he has continually before his eyes the home conditions which +form the subject of so many of his sketches. This little man, who +looks like the commonest kind of a sweat-shop "sheeny," has the +simplest and sincerest interest in domestic things. With great pride +he pointed out to the visitor his one-year-old baby, who lay asleep on +a miserable sofa, and talked of it and of his wife, who has also been +a worker in the shops, with greater pleasure even than of his +sketches, which, however, he writes with joy and solace. He wept when +he spoke of his child that died, and he has written poems in prose +about it which weep, too. In the story of his life which he told, a +common, ignorant Jew was revealed, a thorough product of the +sweat-shop--a man distinguished from the proletarian crowd only by a +capacity for feeling and by a genuine talent. He was born in Russia +twenty-nine years ago, and came to New York when he was twenty-two +years old. For four years he worked as a cap-maker in shops which were +then more wretched than they are now, from sixteen to seventeen hours +a day. While at his task he would steal a few minutes to devote to his +sketches, which he sent to the _Arbeiter-Zeitung_. Cahan recognized in +Libin's misspelled, illiterate, almost illegible manuscript a quality +which worthily ranked it with good realistic literature. Since then +Libin has written extensively for the _Zukunft_, a monthly now +defunct; the _Truth_, published at one time by the poet Winchevsky in +Boston, and for the New York daily _Vorwärts_, to which he still +contributes. + + [Illustration: HE IS TIRED, DISTRESSED AND IRRITATED] + +One of his sketches, the "New Law," about a column and a half long, +expresses one aspect of the life led by a sweat-shop family. A tailor, +going to the shop one morning, as usual, finds the boss and the other +workers in a state of excitement. They have just heard about the new +law limiting the day in the shop to ten hours and forbidding the men +to do any work at home. This to them is a serious proposition, for, +as they are paid by the piece, they need many hours to make enough to +pay their expenses. The tailor goes home earlier than usual that +night, about ten o'clock, with the customary bundle of clothes for his +wife and children to work over. He is tired, distressed and irritated +at the thought of the law. He finds his wife and ten-year-old daughter +half asleep, as usual, but yet sewing busily. They, too, are pale and +tired, and near them on the lounge is a sleeping baby; on the floor +another. The little girl tries to hide her drowsiness from her father, +and works more busily than ever. + +"Why are you back so early?" asks his wife. + +"Pretty soon," he replies morosely, "I'll be back still earlier." + +"Is work slack again?" she asks, her cheek growing paler. + +"It's another trouble, not that," he says. "It's a new law, a bitter +law." To his little daughter he adds: "Sleep, child, you will soon +have time to sleep all day." + +His ignorant wife does not understand. + +"A new law? What is that? What does it mean?" she asks. + +"It means that I can work only ten hours a day." + +Then they calculate how much money he can make in ten hours. Now he +works nineteen hours, and they have nothing to spare. Under the new +law he will be idle seven or eight hours a day. What will they do? She +thinks the boss must be responsible for the terrible arrangement, for +does not all trouble come from the boss? He is irritated by her +simplicity, and she begins to weep. The little girl is overjoyed at +the thought that she will no longer have to work, but tries to conceal +her pleasure. The laborer, moved by his wife's tears, endeavors to +comfort her. + +"Ah," he says, "it's only a law! Two years ago there was one like it, +but the work went on just the same." But she continues to weep until +their evening meal is ready, when the children are aroused from their +sleep to obey "the supper law," Libin concludes in a spirit of +tragi-comedy. + + [Illustration: HE WAS BEWITCHED BY MATHEMATICS] + +"She Got Her Prize" is the title of a sketch in which unexhilarating +comedy predominates. A laborer borrows some clothes to go to a party. +In his absence his wife sells a number of rags to the old-clothes man, +who innocently takes off her husband's only suit, carelessly put near +the bundle he was to carry away. The husband does not notice the loss +until the next day, when he has nothing to wear, cannot go to the +shop, and so loses his job. "Betty" is the story of a girl who falls +sick just before the day set for her wedding, and is taken to the +hospital. The sketch pictures her in bed, reading a farewell letter +from her lover who has deserted her. "Misery" is a prose poem, written +by Libin when his child died. It has no plot, is merely the outcry of +a simple, wounded heart, telling of pain, longing and wonder at the +sad mystery of the world. A pleasing rhythm runs through the Yiddish, +and as the author read it aloud it seemed, indeed, like a "human +document." "A Child of the Ghetto," one of the longest and most +detailed of all, is full of the sad, tho gently satiric, quality of +Libin's art. The author meets a pedler on Ludlow Street, who +recognizes him as the man who once saved his life by attracting to +himself the snow-balls of a number of urchins who had been plaguing +the pedler one cold winter day. They have a chat, and the author asks +the ragged push-cart man how he is getting on in the world. The +pedler replies that all of his class have their troubles--the fruit +quickly spoils, and the "bees" (policemen) come around regularly for +some of the "honey." But he has a sorrow all to himself. His oldest +son is a mathematician, and no good. When in the Jewish school in +Russia the little fellow had learned to figure, and had been figuring +ever since. His father had found, much to his disappointment, that in +America also the boy would have to spend some time in school. The +"monkey business" of learning had ruined the child. He was bewitched +by mathematics and studied all day long. Sent successively to a +sweat-shop, a grocery, to tend a push-cart, he proved thoroughly +incapable of learning any trade; was absent-minded and constantly +calculating, and always lost his job. And his old father bemoaned the +misfortune all day long as he sold his bananas on Ludlow Street. + +Younger than Libin, less mature and less devoted to his art, with a +very limited amount of work done; simpler and more naïve, if possible, +than the older man, is Levin, a typesetter in the office of +_Vorwärts_. His sketches are swifter and shorter than those of Libin, +more effective and dramatic in form, with greater conventional relief +of surprises and antitheses, but they have not so much feeling and do +not manifest so high a degree of realistic art. In contrast with +Libin, who aims only for the quiet picture of ordinary life, Levin +seeks the poignant moment in the flow of daily events. With more of a +commercial attitude toward his work, Levin is, consequently, in more +comfortable circumstances. Like Libin, he has worked in the shops, is +uneducated and has married a tailor girl. Like Libin, again, he takes +his subjects from the sweat-shop, the tenement house and the street. +He is a handsome, ingenuous young fellow of twenty-two years. Only +eight of these have been spent in America, yet in this short time he +has worked himself into the life of Hester and Suffolk streets to such +an extent that his short sketches give most faithful glimpses of +various little points of human nature as it shapes itself on the east +side. + + [Illustration: HE LEAVES HER WITH THE CART AND RUNS TO THE + TENEMENT-HOUSE] + +"Where Is She?" is a striking and typical incident in the career of a +push-cart pedler. The itinerant seller of fruit is doing some hard +thinking one day in Hester Street. He is worried about something, and +does not display the activity necessary for a successful merchant of +his class. A vivid picture of the street is given--the passers-by, the +tenement-houses, the heat. He knows that his business is suffering, +but his thoughts dwell, in spite of himself, with his wife, who is +about to be confined, perhaps that very day. Yesterday she had done +the washing, but on this day, for the first time, remained in bed. But +he must go to the street, as usual. Otherwise, his bananas would +spoil. He worries, too, about the condition of his children, left +without the care of their mother. A woman crosses the street to +inspect his bananas. Perhaps a buyer, he thinks, and concentrates his +attention. She selects the best bananas, those that will keep the +longest, and asks the price. "Two for a cent," he says. "Too much," +she replied. "I will give you two cents for five." That is less than +they cost him, and he refuses, and she goes away, and then he is sorry +he had not sold. Just then his little daughter runs hatless, +breathless up to him. "Mamma," she says, and weeps. She can say no +more. He leaves her with the cart and runs to the tenement-house, +finds his little boy playing on the floor, but his wife gone. He +rushes distractedly out, looks up the stairs, and sees clothes hanging +on a line on the roof, where he goes and finds his wife. She had left +the bed in order to dry the wash of the day before, and was unable to +return. He carries her back to bed and returns to his push-cart. + +"Put Off Again" is the story of a man and a girl who try to save +enough money from their work in the sweat-shop to marry. They need +only a couple of hundred dollars for clothes and furniture, and have +saved almost that sum when a letter comes from the girl's mother in +Russia: her husband is dead after a long illness, and she needs money. +The girl sends her $70, and the wedding is put off. The next time it +is the girl's brother who arrives in New York and borrows $50 to make +a start in business. When they are again ready for the wedding, and +the day set, the young fellow quarrels with the sweat-shop boss, and +is discharged. That is the evening before the day set for the wedding, +and the young man calls on the girl and tells her. "We must put it off +again, Jake," she says, "till you get another job." They cling to each +other and are silent and sad. + +A sketch so simple that it seems almost childish is called "The Bride +Weeps." It is a hot evening, and the people in the quarter are all out +on their stoops. There are swarms of children about, and a bride and +groom are embracing each other and watching the crowd. "Poor people," +says the bride reflectively, "ought not to have children." "What do +you know about it?" asks the groom, rather piqued. Their pleasure is +dampened, and she goes to bed and wets her pillow with tears. + +"Fooled," one of the most interesting of Levin's sketches, is the tale +of an umbrella pedler. It is very hot in the Ghetto, and everybody is +uncomfortable, but the umbrella pedler is more uncomfortable than any +one else. He hates the bright sun that interferes with his business. +It has not rained for weeks, and his stock in trade is all tied up in +the house. He has no money, and wishes he were back in Russia, where +it sometimes rains. He goes back to his apartment and sits brooding +with his wife. "When are you going to buy us some candy, papa?" ask +the children. Suddenly his wife sees a cloud in the sky, and they all +rush joyfully to the window. The sun disappears, and the clouds +continue to gather. The wife goes out to buy some food, the children +say, "Papa is going to the street now, and will bring us some candy"; +and the pedler unpacks his stock of umbrellas and puts on his rubber +boots. But the clouds roll away, and the hated sun comes out again, +and the pedler takes off his boots and puts his pack away. "Ain't you +going to the street, papa?" ask the children sorrowfully. "No," +replies the pedler, "God has played a joke on me." + +Libin and Levin, altho they differ in the way described, are yet to be +classed together in essentials. They are both simple, uneducated men +who write unpretentious sketches about a life they intimately know. +They picture the conditions almost naïvely without comment and without +subtlety. Libin, in a way to draw tears, Levin with the buoyant +optimism of healthy youth, notice the quiet things in the every-day +life of the Yiddish quarter that are touching and effective. + + +A CULTIVATED LITERARY MAN + +Contrasting definitely with the sketches of Libin and Levin are those +of Jacob Gordin, who, altho he is best known in the Ghetto as a +playwright, has yet written voluminously for the newspapers. Unlike +the other two, Gordin is a well-educated man, knowing thoroughly +several languages and literatures, including Greek, Russian and +German. His greater resources of culture and his sharper natural wit +have made of him by far the most practised writer of the lot. With +many literary examples before him, he knows the tricks of the trade, +is skilful and effective, has a wide range of subjects and is full of +"ideas" in the semi-philosophical sense. The innocent Libin and Levin +are children in comparison, and yet their sketches show greater +fidelity to the facts than do those of the talented Gordin, who is too +apt to employ the ordinary literary devices wherever he can find them, +caring primarily for the effect rather than for the truth, and almost +always heightening the color to an unnatural and pretentious pitch. In +the drama Gordin's tendency toward the sensational is more in place. +He has the sense of character and theatrical circumstance, and works +along the broad lines demanded by the stage; but these qualities when +transferred to stories from the life result in what is sometimes +called in the Ghetto "onion literature." So definitely theatrical, +indeed, are many of his sketches that they are sometimes read aloud by +the actors to crowded Jewish audiences. Another point that takes from +Gordin's interest to us as a sketch-writer is that his best stories +have Russia rather than New York as a background; that his sketches +from New York life are comparatively unconvincing. He has a great +contempt for America, which he satirizes in some of his sketches, +particularly the political aspect, and intends some day to return to +Russia, where he had a considerable career as a short-story writer in +the Russian language. He is forty-nine years old, and, compared with +the other men, is in comfortable circumstances, as he now makes a +good income from his plays, which grow in popularity in the quarter. +Before coming to America he taught school and wrote for several +newspapers in Russia, where he was known as "Ivan der Beissende," on +account of the sharp character of his feuilletons. He came to this +country in 1891, and shortly after, his first play, _Siberia_, was +produced and made a great hit among the "intellectuals" and Socialists +of the quarter. He began immediately to write for the Socialist +newspapers, and also established a short-lived weekly periodical in +the Russian language, which he wrote almost entirely himself. + +"A Nipped Romance" is a story of two children who are collecting coals +on a railway track. The boy of thirteen and the girl of eleven talk +about their respective families, laying bare the sordidness, misery +and vice in which their young lives are encompassed. They know more +than children ought to know, and insensibly develop a sentimental +interest in each other, when a train comes along and kills them. +"Without a Pass," sometimes recited in the theatre by the actor +Moshkovitch, pictures with gruesome detail a girl working in the +sweat-shop. The brutal doorkeeper refuses to let her go out for relief +without a pass, and she dies of weakness, hunger and cold. "A Tear," +one of the best, is the tale of an old Jewish woman who has come to +New York to visit her son. He is married to a Gentile, and the old +lady is so much abused by her daughter-in-law that she goes back to +Russia. The sketch represents her alone at the pier, about to embark. +She sees the friends of the other passengers crowding the landing, but +no one is there to say good-by to her; and as the ship moves away a +tear rolls down her cheek to the deck. "Who Laughs?" satirizes the +Americans who laugh at Russian Jews because of their beards, dress and +accent. Another sketch denounces the "new woman"--she who apes +American manners, lays aside her Jewish wig, becomes flippant and +interested in "movements." Still another is a highly colored contrast +between woman's love and that of less-devoted man. A story +illustrating how the author's desire to make an effect sometimes +results in the ludicrous is the would-be pathetic wail of a calf which +is about to be slaughtered. + + +AMERICAN LIFE THROUGH RUSSIAN EYES + +In connection with Gordin, two other writers of talent who work on the +Yiddish newspapers may be briefly mentioned, altho one of them has +written as yet nothing and the other comparatively little that is +based on the life of New York. They are, as is Gordin in his best +sketches, Russian not only in form, but also in material. David +Pinsky, who did general translating and critical work on the +_Abendblatt_ until a few months ago, when that newspaper died, has +been in New York only a little more than a year, and has written very +little about the local quarter. He has not even as yet approached near +enough to the New York life to realize that there are any special +conditions to portray. He is the author, however, of good sketches in +German and is somewhat different in the character of his inspiration +from the other men. They are close adherents of the tradition of +Russian realism, while he is under the influence of the more recent +European faith that disclaims all "schools" in literature. His +stories, altho they remain faithful to the sad life portrayed, yet +show greater sentimentality and some desire to bring forward the +attractive side. + +The other of these two writers, B. Gorin, knew his Russian-Jewish life +so intimately before he came to New York, seven years ago, that he has +continued to draw from that source the material of his best stories; +altho he has written a good deal about Yiddish New York. His sketches +have the ordinary Russian merit of fidelity in detail and +unpretentiousness of style. Compared with the other writers in New +York, he is more elaborate in his workmanship. More mature than Libin, +he is free from Gordin's artistic insincerity. He has been the editor +of several Yiddish papers in the quarter, and has contributed to +nearly all of them. + +Of Gorin's stories which touch the Russian-Jewish conditions in New +York, "Yom Kippur" is one of the most notable. It is the tale of a +pious Jewish woman who joins her husband in America after he has been +there several years. The details of the way in which she left the old +country, how she had to pass herself off on the steamer as the wife of +another man, her difficulties with the inspecting officers, etc., give +the impression of a life strange to the Gentile world. On arriving in +America, she finds her husband and his friends fallen away from the +old faith. He had shaved off his beard, had grown to be slack about +the "kosher" preparation of food and the observance of the religious +holidays, no longer was careful about the morning ablutions, worked on +the Sabbath and compelled her to take off the wig which every orthodox +Jewish woman must wear. She soon fell under the new influence and felt +herself drifting generally into the ungodly ways of the New World. On +the day of the great "White Feast" she found herself eating when she +should have fasted. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the sense of +her sins overpowered her quite. + +"Yom Kippur! Now the children of Israel are all massed together in +every corner of the globe. They are congregated in synagogues and +prayer-houses, their eyes swollen with crying, their voices hoarse +from wailing and supplicating, their broken hearts full of repentance. +They all stand now in their funeral togas, like a throng of newly +arisen dead." + +She grows delirious and imagines that her father and mother come to +her successively and reproach her for her degeneracy. In a series of +frightful dreams, all bearing on her repentance, the atmosphere of the +story is rendered so intense that her death, which follows, seems +entirely natural. + +The theme of one of Gorin's longer stories on Jewish-American life is +of a young Jew who had married in the old country and had come to New +York alone to make his fortune. If he had remained in Russia, he would +have lived happily with his wife, but in America he acquired new ideas +of life and new ideals of women; and, therefore, felt alienated from +her when she joined him in the New World. Many children came to them, +his wages as a tailor diminished and his wife grew constantly less +congenial. He remained with her, however, from a sense of duty for +eleven years, when, after insuring his life, he committed suicide. + + +A SATIRIST OF TENEMENT SOCIETY + +Leon Kobrin stands midway between Libin and Levin, on the one hand, +and Gordin on the other. He carries his Russian traditions more +intimately with him than do Libin and Levin, but more nearly +approaches to a saturated exposition in fiction form of the life of +Yiddish New York than does Gordin. Unlike the latter, he has the +pretence rather than the reality of learning, and the reality rather +than the pretence of realistic art. Yet he never quite attains to the +untutored fidelity of Libin. Many of his sketches are satirical, some +are rather burlesque descriptions of Ghetto types, and some suggest +the sad "problem" element which runs through Russian literature. He +was born in Russia in 1872 of poor parents, orthodox Jews, who sent +him to the Hebrew school, of which the boy was never very fond, but +preferred to read Russian at night surreptitiously. He found some +good friends, who, as he put it, "helped me to the light through +Ghetto darkness." Incidentally, it may be pointed out that the +intellectual element of the Ghetto--the realists and Socialists--think +that progress is possible only in the line of Russian culture, and +that to remain steadfast to Jewish traditions is to remain immersed in +darkness. So Kobrin struggled from a very early age to master the +Russian language, and even wrote sketches in that tongue. He, like +Gordin, refers to the fact of his being a writer in Yiddish +apologetically as something forced upon him by circumstances. Unlike +Gorin, however, he believes in the literary capacity of the language, +with which he was first impressed when he came to America in 1892 and +found stories by Chekhov translated by Abraham Cahan and others into +Yiddish and published in the _Arbeiterzeitung_. It was a long time, +however, before Kobrin definitely identified himself with the literary +calling. He first went through a course somewhat similar to that of +the boy mathematician in the sketch by Libin, described above. He +tried the sweat-shop, but he was a bungler with the machines; then he +turned his hand with equal awkwardness to the occupation of making +cigars; failed as distinctly as a baker, and finally, in 1894, was +forced into literature, and began writing for the _Arbeiterzeitung_. + +One of Kobrin's sketches deals with a vulgar tailor of the east side, +who is painted in the ugliest of colors and is as disagreeable an +individual as the hottest anti-Semite could imagine. The man, who is +the "boss" of a sweat-shop, meets the author in a suburban train, +scrapes his acquaintance, fawns upon him, offers him a cigar and tells +about how well he is doing in New York. In Russia, where he had made +clothes for rich people, no young girl would have spoken to him +because of his low social position; but in the new country young women +of good family abroad seek employment in his shop, and are often +dependent on him not only for a living, but in more indescribable +ways. Mr. Kobrin and his wife refer to this sketch as the "pig story." +A subtler tale is the picture of a domestic scene. Jake has returned +from his work and sits reading a Yiddish newspaper. His wife, a +passionate brunette, is working about the room, and every now and then +glances at the apathetic Jake with a sigh. She remembers how it was a +year ago, when Jake hung over her, devoted, attentive; and now he goes +out almost every evening to the "circle" and returns late. She tries +to engage him in conversation, but he answers in monosyllables and +finally says he is going out, whereupon she weeps and makes a scene. +"He is not the same Jake," she cries bitterly. After some words +intended to comfort her, but really rubbing in the wound, her husband +goes to the "circle," and the wife burns the old love-letters one by +one; they are from another man, she feels, and are a torture to her +now. As she burns the letters the tears fall and sizzle on the hot +stove. It is a simple scene, but moving: what Mr. Kobrin calls "a +small slice out of life." An amusing couple of sketches, in which +satire approaches burlesque, represent the infelicities of an old +woman from Russia who had recently arrived in New York. One day, +shocked at her children's neglect of a religious holiday and at their +general unholiness, she goes to visit an old neighbor, at whose house +she is sure to have everything "kosher" and right. She has been +accustomed to find the way to her friend by means of a wooden Indian, +called by her a "Turk," which stood before a tobacco shop. The Indian +has been removed, however, and she, consequently, loses her way. +Seeing a Jew with big whiskers, who must, therefore, she thinks, be +orthodox, she asks him where the "Turk" is, and repeats the question +in vain to many others, among them to a policeman, whom she addresses +in Polish, for she thinks that all Gentiles speak that language, just +as all Jews speak Yiddish. On another occasion the old lady goes to +the theatre, where her experiences are a Yiddish counterpart to those +of Partridge at the play. + +Some of the best sketches from the life form portions of the plays +which are produced at the Yiddish theatres on the Bowery. In the +dramas of Gordin there are many scenes which far more faithfully than +his newspaper sketches mirror the sordid life and unhappy problems of +the poor Russian Jew in America; and the ability of the actors to +enforce the theme and language by realistic dress, manner and +intonation makes these scenes frequently a genuine revelation to the +Gentile of a new world of social conditions. Kobrin and Libin, too, +have written plays, very few and undramatic as compared with those of +Gordin, but abounding in the "sketch" element, in scenes which give +the setting and the _milieu_ of a large and important section of +humanity. Some of the plays of Gordin have been considered in a +previous chapter, and those of Kobrin and Libin merely add more +material to the same quality which runs through their newspaper +sketches. Libin is the author of two plays, _The Belated Wedding_ and +_A Vain Sacrifice_, for which he was paid $50 apiece. They are each a +series of pictures from the miserable Jewish life in the New York +Ghetto. The latter play is the story of a girl who marries a man she +hates in order to get money for her consumptive father. The theme of +_The Belated Wedding_ is too sordid to relate. Both plays are +unrelieved gloom and lack any compensating dramatic quality. In +Kobrin's plays--_The East Side Ghetto_, _East Broadway_ and the +_Broken Chains_--the problem element is more decided and the dramatic +structure is more pronounced than in those of Libin. In _East +Broadway_ a young man and girl have been devoted to each other and to +the cause of Nihilism in Russia, but in New York the husband catches +the spirit of the American "business man" and demands from his +father-in-law the money promised as a _dot_. The eloquence of the new +point of view is opposed to that of the old in a manner not entirely +undramatic. + +The fact that there are a number of writers for the Yiddish newspapers +of New York who are animated with a desire to give genuine glimpses of +the real life of the people is particularly interesting, perhaps, +because of the light which it throws on the character of their Jewish +readers and the breadth of culture which it implies. Certainly, there +are many Russian Jews on the east side who like to read anything which +seems to them to be "natural," a word which is often on their lips. It +would be misleading, however, to reach conclusions very optimistic in +regard to the Ghetto Jews as a whole; for the demand which makes these +sketches possible is practically limited to the Socialists, and grows +less as that political and intellectual movement falls off, under +American influences, in vitality. To-day there are fewer good sketches +published in the Yiddish newspapers than formerly, when the +_Arbeiterzeitung_ was a power for social and literary improvement. +Quarrels among the Socialists, resulting in many weakening splits, and +the growth of a more constant commercial attitude on the part of the +newspapers than formerly are partly responsible for the change. The +few men of talent who, under the stimulus of an editorial demand for +sincere art, wrote in the early days with a full heart and entire +conviction have now partly lost interest. Levin has given up writing +altogether for the more remunerative work of a typesetter, Gorin has +become largely a translator and literary hack on the regular newspaper +staff, and Gordin and Kobrin have turned their attention to the +writing of plays, for which there is a vital, if crude, demand. Libin +alone, the most interesting and in a genuine way the most talented of +them all, remains the poorest in worldly goods and the most devoted to +his art. + + + + +Chapter Eight + +A Novelist + + +Altho Abraham Cahan began his literary career as a Yiddish writer for +the Ghetto newspapers his important work has been written and +published in English. His work as a Yiddish writer was of an almost +exclusively educational character. This at once establishes an +important distinction between him and the Yiddish sketch-writers +considered in the foregoing chapter. A still more vital distinction is +that arising from the relative quality of his work, which as opposed +to that of the Yiddish writers, is more of the order of the story or +of the novel than of the sketch. Cahan's work is more developed and +more mature as art than that of the other men, who remain essentially +sketch-writers. Even in their longer stories what is good is the +occasional flash of life, the occasional picture, and this does not +imply characters and theme developed sufficiently to put them in the +category of the novel. Rather than for the art they reveal they are +interesting for the sincere way in which they present a life +intimately known. In fact the literary talent of the Ghetto consists +almost exclusively in the short sketch. To this general rule Abraham +Cahan comes the nearest to forming an exception. Even in his work the +sketch element predominates; but in one long story at least something +more is successfully achieved; in his short stories there is often +much circumstance and development; and he has now finished the first +draft of a long novel. His stories have appeared from time to time in +the leading English magazines, and there are two volumes with which +the discriminating American and English public is familiar, _Yekl_ and +_The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories_. As well as his work +Cahan's life too is of unusual interest. He had a picturesque career +as a Socialist and an editor in the Ghetto. + +Abraham Cahan was born in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, Russia, in +1860. He went as a boy to the Jewish "chaider," but took an early and +overpowering interest in the Russian language and ideas. He graduated +from the _Teacher's Institute_ at Vilna, and was appointed government +teacher in the town of Velizh, Province of Vitebsk. Here he became +interested, altho not active, in the anarchistic doctrines which +filled the intellectual atmosphere of the day; and, feeling that his +liberty and activity were endangered by a longer sojourn in Russia, he +came to America in 1882, when a time of severe poverty and struggle +ensued. + +From the first he, like most Russian Jews of intelligence, was +identified with the Socialist movement in the New York Ghetto; he +threw himself into it with extraordinary activity and soon became a +leader in the quarter. He was an eloquent and impassioned speaker, +went twice abroad as the American-Jewish delegate to Socialist +congresses, and was the most influential man connected with the weekly +_Arbeiterzeitung_, of which he became editor in 1893. This paper, as +has been explained in a former chapter, for several years carried on +an aggressive warfare in the cause of labor and Socialism, and +attempted also to educate the people to an appreciation of the best +realistic Russian writers, such as Tolstoi, Turgenieff and Chekhov. It +was under Cahan's editorship of this weekly, and also of the monthly +_Zukunft_, a journal of literature and social science, that some of +the realistic sketch-writers of the quarter discovered their talent; +and for a time both literature and Socialism were as vigorous as they +were young in the colony. + +Literature, however, was at that time to Cahan only the handmaiden of +education. His career as an east side writer was that primarily of the +teacher. He wished not merely to educate the ignorant masses of the +people in the doctrines of Socialism, but to teach them the rudiments +of science and literature. For that reason he wrote in the popular +"jargon," popularized science, wrote Socialistic articles, exhorted +generally. Occasionally he published humorous sketches, intended, +however, always to point a moral or convey some needed information. In +literature, as such, he was not at that time interested as an author. +It was only several years later, when he took up his English pen, that +he attempted to put into practice the ideas about what constitutes +real literature to which he had been trying to educate the Ghetto. + +The fierce individualism which in spite of Socialistic doctrine is a +characteristic of the intellectual element in the Ghetto soon brought +about its weakening effects. The inevitable occurred. Quarrels grew +among the Socialists, the party was split, each faction organized a +Socialist newspaper, and the movement consequently lost in +significance and general popularity. In 1896 Cahan resigned his +editorship, and retired disgusted from the work. + +From that time on his interest in Socialism waned, altho he still +ranges himself under that banner; and his other absorbing interest, +realistic literature, grew apace, until it now absorbs everything +else. As is the case with many imaginative and emotional men he is +predominantly of one intellectual passion. When he was an active +Socialist he wanted to be nothing else. He gave up his law studies, +and devoted himself to an unremunerative public work. When the fierce +but small personal quarrels began which brought about the present +confused condition of Socialism in the Ghetto, Cahan's always strong +admiration for the Russian writers of genius and their literary school +led him to experiment in the English language, which gave a field much +larger than the "jargon." Always a reformer, always filled with some +idea which he wished to propagate through the length and breadth of +the land, Cahan took up the cause of realism in English fiction with +the same passion and energy with which he had gone in for Socialism. +He became a partisan in literature just as he had been a partisan in +active life. He admired among Americans W. D. Howells, who seemed to +him to write in the proper spirit, but he felt that Americans as a +class were hopelessly "romantic," "unreal," and undeveloped in their +literary tastes and standards. He set himself to writing stories and +books in English which should at least be genuine artistic transcripts +from life, and he succeeded admirably in keeping out of his work any +obvious doctrinaire element--which points to great artistic +self-restraint when one considers how full of his doctrine the man is. + +Love of truth, indeed, is the quality which seems to a stranger in the +Ghetto the great virtue of that section of the city. Truth, pleasant +or unpleasant, is what the best of them desire. It is true that, in +the reaction from the usual "affable" literature of the American +book-market, these realists rather prefer the unpleasant. That, +however, is a sign of energy and youth. A vigorous youthful literature +is always more apt to breathe the spirit of tragedy than a literature +more mature and less fresh. And after all, the great passion of the +intellectual quarter results in the consciously held and warmly felt +principle that literature should be a transcript from life. Cahan +represents this feeling in its purest aspect; and is therefore highly +interesting not only as a man but as a type. This passion for truth is +deeply infused into his literary work. + +The aspects of the Ghetto's life which would naturally hold the +interest of the artistic observer are predominatingly its +characteristic features--those qualities of character and conditions +of social life which are different from the corresponding ones in the +old country. Cahan came to America a mature man with the life of one +community already a familiar thing to him. It was inevitable therefore +that his literary work in New York should have consisted largely in +fiction emphasizing the changed character and habits of the Russian +Jew in New York; describing the conditions of immigration and +depicting the clash between the old and the new Ghetto and the way the +former insensibly changes into the latter. In this respect Cahan +presents a great contrast to the simple Libin, who merely tells in +heartfelt passionate way the life of the poor sweat-shop Jew in the +city, without consciously taking into account the relative nature of +the phenomena. His is absolute work as far as it goes, as straight and +true as an arrow, and implies no knowledge of other conditions. Cahan +presents an equally striking contrast to the work of men like Gordin +and Gorin, the best part of which deals with Russian rather than New +York life. + +If Cahan's work were merely the transcribing in fiction form of a +great number of suggestive and curious "points" about the life of the +poor Russian Jew in New York, it would not of course have any great +interest to even the cultivated Anglo-Saxon reader, who, tho he might +find the stories curious and amusing for a time, would recognize +nothing in them sufficiently familiar to be of deep importance to him. +If, in other words, the stories had lacked the universal element +always present in true literature they would have been of very little +value to anyone except the student of queer corners. When however the +universal element of art is present, when the special conditions are +rendered sympathetic by the touch of common human nature, the result +is pleasing in spite of the foreign element; it is even pleasing +because of that element; for then the pleasure of easily understanding +what is unfamiliar is added to the charm of recognizing the old +objects of the heart and the imagination. + +Cahan's stories may be divided into two general classes: those +presenting primarily the special conditions of the Ghetto to which the +story and characters are subordinate; and those in which the special +conditions and the story fuse together and mutually help and explain +one another. These two--the "information" element and the "human +nature" element--struggle for the mastery throughout his work. In the +most successful part of the stories the "human nature" element +masters, without suppressing, that of special information. + +The substance of Cahan's stories, what they have deliberately to tell +us about the New York Ghetto, is, considering the limited volume of +his work, rich and varied. It includes the description of much that is +common to the Jews of Russia and the Jews of New York--the picture of +the orthodox Jew, the pious rabbi, the marriage customs, the religious +holidays, etc. But the orthodox foreign element is treated more as a +background on which are painted in contrasting lights the moral and +physical forms resulting from the particular colonial conditions. The +falling away of the children in filial respect and in religious faith, +the consequent despair of the parents, who are influenced only in +superficial ways by their new environment; the alienation of +"progressive" husbands from "old-fashioned" wives; the institution of +"the boarder," a source of frequent domestic trouble; the tendency of +the "new" daughters of Israel to select husbands for themselves in +spite of ancient authority and the "Vermittler," and their ambition to +marry doctors and lawyers instead of Talmudical scholars; the +professional letter-writers through whom ignorant people in the old +country and their ignorant relatives here correspond; the falling-off +in respect for the Hebrew scholar and the rabbi, the tendency to read +in the Astor library and do other dreadful things implying interest in +American life, to eat _treife_ food, talk American slang, and hate +being called a "greenhorn," _i. e._, an old-fashioned Jew; how a +"Mister" in Russia becomes a "Shister" (shoemaker) in New York, and a +"Shister" in Russia becomes a "Mister" in New York; how women lay +aside their wigs and men shave their beards and ride in horse-cars on +Saturday: all these things and more are told in more or less detail in +Cahan's English stories. Anyone who followed the long series of Barge +Office sketches which during the last few years Cahan has published +anonymously in the _Commercial Advertiser_, would be familiar in a +general way with the different types of Jews who come to this country, +with the reasons for their immigration and the conditions which +confront them when they arrive. Many of these hastily conceived and +written newspaper reports have plenty of life--are quick, rather +formless, flashes of humor and pathos, and contain a great deal of +implicit literature. But the salient quality of this division of +Cahan's work is the amount of strange and picturesque information +which it conveys. + +Many of his more carefully executed stories which have appeared from +time to time in the magazines are loaded down with a like quantity of +information, and while all of them have marked vitality, many are less +intrinsically interesting, from the point of view of human nature, +than even the Barge Office sketches. A marked instance of a story in +which the information element overpoweringly predominates is "The +Daughter of Reb Avrom Leib," published in the _Cosmopolitan Magazine_ +for May, 1900. The tale opens with a picture of Aaron Zalkin, who is +lonely. It is Friday evening, and for the first time since he left his +native town he enters a synagogue. Then we have a succession of +minutely described customs and objects which are interesting in +themselves and convey no end of "local color." We learn that orthodox +Jewish women have wigs, we read of the Holy Ark, the golden shield of +David, the illuminated _omud_, the reading platform in the centre, the +faces of the worshippers as they hum the Song of Songs, and then the +cantor and the cantor's daughter. We follow the cantor in his +ceremonies and prayers. Zalkin is thrilled by the ceremony and +thrilled by the girl. But only a word is given to him before the story +goes back to picturing the scene, Reb Avrom Leib's song and the +actions of the congregation. In the second division of the story +Zalkin goes again the next Friday night to the synagogue, and the +result is that he wants to marry the girl. So he sends a "marriage +agent" to the cantor, the girl's father. Then he goes to "view the +bride," and incidentally we learn that the cantor has two sons who are +"American boys," and "will not turn their tongues to a Hebrew word." +When the old man finds that Zalkin is a Talmudic scholar he is +startled and delighted and wants him for a son-in-law. They try to +outquote one another, shouting and gesticulating "in true Talmudic +fashion." There is a short scene between the two young people, the +wedding-day is deferred till the "Nine Days" are over, for "who would +marry while one was mourning the Fall of the Temple?" And it is +suggested that Sophie is not quite content. Then there is a scene +where Zalkin chants the Prophets, where the betrothal articles, "a +mixture of Chaldaic and Hebrew," are read and a plate is thrown on the +floor to make a severance of the ceremony "as unlikely as would be the +reunion of the broken plate." Then there are more quotations from the +cantor, a detailed picture of the services of the Day of Atonement, of +the Rejoicing of the Law, blessing the Dedication Lights, The Days of +Awe, and the Rejoicing of the Law again. The old man's character is +made very vivid, and the dramatic situation--that of a Jewish girl +who, after the death of her father, marries in compliance with his +desire--is picturesquely handled. But the theme is very slight. Most +of the detail is devoted to making a picture, not of the changing +emotions in the characters and the development of the human story, but +of the religious customs of the Jews. The emphasis is put on +information rather than on the theme, and consequently the story does +not hold the interest strongly. + +Many of Cahan's other short stories suffer because of the learned +intention of the author. We derive a great deal of information and we +generally get the "picture," but it often requires an effort to keep +the attention fixed on what is unfamiliar and at the same time so +apart from the substance of the story that it is merely subordinate +detail. + +In these very stories, however, there is much that is vigorous and +fresh in the treatment and characterization; and a vein of lyric +poetry is frequent, as in the delightful _Ghetto Wedding_, the story +of how a poor young Jewish couple spend their last cent on an +elaborate wedding-feast, expecting to be repaid by the presents, and +thus enabled to furnish their apartment. The gifts don't turn up, +only a few guests are present, and the young people, after the +ceremony, go home with nothing but their enthusiastic love. The +_naïveté_ and simplicity of the lovers, the implicit sympathy with +them, and a kind of gentle satire, make this little story a gem for +the poet. + +_The Imported Bridegroom_ is a remarkable character sketch and +contains several very strong and interesting descriptions. Asriel +Stroon is the central figure and lives before the mind of the reader. +He is an old Jew who has made a business success in New York, and +retired, when he has a religious awakening and at the same time a +great longing for his old Russian home Pravly. He goes back to Pravly +on a visit, and the description of his sensations the day he returns +to his home is one of the best examples of the essential vitality of +Cahan's work. This long story contains also a most amusing scene where +Asriel outbids a famous rich man of the town for a section in the +synagogue and triumphs over him, too, in the question of a son-in-law. +There is in Pravly a "prodigy" of holiness and Talmudic learning, +Shaya, whom Reb Lippe wants for his daughter, but Asriel wants him +too, and being enormously rich, carries him off in triumph to his +daughter in America. But Flora at first spurns him. He is a +"greenhorn," a scholar, not a smart American doctor such as she has +dreamed of. Soon, however, Shaya, who is a great student, learns +English and mathematics, and promises Flora to become a doctor. The +first thing he knows he is a freethinker and an American, and Flora +now loves him. They keep the terrible secret from the old man, but he +ultimately sees Shaya going into the Astor Library and eating food in +a _treife_ restaurant. His resentment is pathetic and intense, but the +children marry, and the old man goes to Jerusalem with his faithful +servant. + +The book, however, in which there is a perfect adaptation of +"atmosphere" and information to the dramatic story is _Yekl_. In this +strong, fresh work, full of buoyant life, the Ghetto characters and +environment form an integral part. + +_Yekl_ indeed ought to be well known to the English reading public. It +is a book written and conceived in the English language, is +essentially idiomatic and consequently presents no linguistic +difficulties. It gives a great deal of information about what seems to +me by far the most interesting section of foreign New York. But what +ought to count more than anything else is that it is a genuine piece +of literature; picturing characters that live in art, in an +environment that is made real, and by means of a story that is vital +and significant and that never flags in interest. In its quality of +freshness and buoyancy it recalls the work of Turgenieff. None of +Cahan's later work, tho most of it has vital elements, stands in the +same class with this fundamentally sweet piece of literature. It takes +a worthy place with the best Russian fiction, with that school of +writers who make life actual by the sincere handling of detail in +which the simple everyday emotions of unspoiled human nature are +portrayed. The English classic novel, greatly superior in the rounded +and contemplative view of life, has yet nothing since Fielding +comparable to Russian fiction in vivid presentation of the details of +life. This whole school of literature can, I believe, be compared in +quality more fittingly with Elizabethan drama than anything which has +intervened in English literature; not of course with those maturer +dramas in which there is a great philosophical treatment of human +life, but in the lyric freshness and imaginative vitality which were +common to the whole lot of Elizabethan writers. + +_Yekl_ is alive from beginning to end. The virtuosity in description +which in Cahan's work sometimes takes the place of literature, is here +quite subordinate. Yekl is a sweat-shop Jew in New York who has left a +wife and child in Russia in order to make a little home for them and +himself in the new world. In the early part of the book he is becoming +an "American" Jew, making a little money and taking a great fancy to +the smart Jewish girl who wears a "rakish" hat, no wig, talks "United +States," and has a profound contempt for the benighted pious +"greenhorns" who have just arrived. A sweat-shop girl named Mamie +moves his fancy deeply, so that when the faithful wife Gitl and the +little boy Yossele arrive at the Barge Office there is evidently +trouble at hand. At that place Yekl meets them in a vividly told +scene--ill-concealed disquiet on his part and naïve alarm at the +situation on hers. Gitl's wig and her subdued, old-fashioned demeanor +tell terribly on Yekl's nerves, and she is shocked by everything that +happens to her in America. Their domestic unhappiness develops through +a number of characteristic and simple incidents until it results in a +divorce. But by that time Gitl is becoming "American" and it is +obvious that she is to be taken care of by a young man in the quarter +more appreciative than Yekl. The latter finds himself bound to Mamie, +the pert "American" girl, and as the book closes is in a fair way to +regret the necessity of giving up his newly acquired freedom. This +simple, strong theme is treated consistently in a vital presentative +way. The idea is developed by natural and constant incident, +psychological or physical, rather than by talk. Every detail of the +book grows naturally out of the situation. + + [Illustration: A SWEAT-SHOP GIRL MOVES HIS FANCY DEEPLY] + +"Unpleasant" is a word which many an American would give to _Yekl_ on +account of its subject. Strong compensating qualities are necessary to +induce a publisher or editor to print anything which they think is in +subject disagreeable to the big body of American readers, most of whom +are women. Without attempting to criticise the "voice of the people," +it may be pointed out that there are at least two ways in which a book +may be "unpleasant." It may be so in the formal theme, the characters, +the result--things may come out unhappily, vice triumphant, and the +section of life portrayed may be a sordid one. This is the kind of +unpleasantness which publishers particularly object to; and in this +sense _Yekl_ may fairly be called "unpleasant." Turgenieff's _Torrents +of Spring_ is also in this sense "unpleasant," for it tells how a +young man's sincere and poetic first love is turned to failure and +misery by the illegitimate temporary attraction of a fascinating woman +of the world. But Turgenieff's novel is nevertheless full of buoyant +vitality, full of freshness and charm, of youth and grace, full of +life-giving qualities; because of it we all may live more abundantly. +The same may be said of many another book. When there is sweetness, +strength and early vigor in a book the reader is refreshed +notwithstanding the theme. And it is noticeable that youth is not +afraid of "subjects." + +Another way in which a book may be "unpleasant" is in the quality of +deadness. Many books with pleasant and moral themes and endings are +unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. Even a book great in subject, with +much philosophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to the vital +qualities, to the effects of spring, to the joy in mere physical life, +which are so marked and so genuinely invigorating in the best Russian +fiction. The extreme of this kind of unpleasantness is shown in the +case of some modern Frenchmen and Italians; not primarily in the +theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, of hope; in a sodden +maturity, often indeed combined with great qualities of intellect and +workmanship, but dead to the little things of life, dead to the +feeling of spring in the blood, to naïve readiness for experience. An +American who is the antithesis of this kind of thing is Walt Whitman. +His quality put into prose is what we have in the best Russian novels. +In the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, too, it cannot be +applied to _Yekl_; for _Yekl_ is youthful and vital. There is buoyant +spring in the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it may be. + + [Illustration: GITL] + +_Apropos_ of Cahan's love of truth, and that word "unpleasant," a +discussion which took place a few years ago on the appearance of +Zangwill's play, _The Children of the Ghetto_, is illuminative. That +poetic drama represented the life of the poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy +and truth; but for that very reason it was severely criticised by some +uptown Israelites. Many of these, no doubt, had religious objections +to a display on the stage of those customs and observances of their +race which touched upon the "holy law." But some of the rich German +Jews, practically identified with American life, and desiring for +practical and social purposes to make little of their racial +distinction, deprecated literature which portrayed the life of those +Jews who still have distinctively national traits and customs. Then, +too, there is a tendency among the well-to-do American Jews to look +down upon their Ghetto brethren, to regard the old customs as +benighted and to treat them with a certain contempt; altho they spend +a great deal of charitable money in the quarter. Feeling a little +ashamed of the poor Russian east side Jew, they object to a serious +literary portrayal of him. They want no attention called to what they +deem the less attractive aspects of their race. An uptown Jewish lady, +on the appearance in a newspaper of a story about east side Jewish +life, wrote a protesting letter to the editor. She told the writer of +the sketch, when he was sent to see her, that she could not see why he +didn't write about uptown Jews instead of sordid east side Jews. The +scribe replied that he wrote of the Ghetto Jew because he found him +interesting, while he couldn't see anything attractive or picturesque +about the comfortable Israelite uptown. + +Abraham Cahan's stories have been subjected to criticism inspired by +the same spirit. Feeling the charm of his people he has attempted to +picture them as they are, in shadow and light; and has consequently +been accused of betraying his race to the Gentiles. + +The attitude of the east side Jews towards writers like Zangwill and +Cahan is in refreshing contrast. The Yiddish newspapers were +enthusiastic about _Children of the Ghetto_, in which they felt the +Jews were truthfully and therefore sympathetically portrayed. In the +literary sketches and plays now produced in considerable numbers in +the "jargon," a great pride of race is manifest. The writers have not +lost their self-respect, still abound in their own sense and are +consequently vitally interesting. They are full of ideals and +enthusiasm and do not object to what is "unpleasant" so strenuously as +do their uptown brethren. + + + + +Chapter Nine + +The Young Art and its Exponents + + +On Hester Street, east of the Bowery, the poor Jew is revealed in many +a characteristic way. It is the home of the sweat-shop, of the crowded +tenement-house. Old pedlers, as ragged as the poorest beggars, stand on +street corners. In long uninterrupted lines are the carts--containing +fruit, cake, dry goods, fish, everything that the proletarian Jew +requires. Behind these tower the crowded tenement-houses, with +fire-escapes for balconies. Through the middle of the street +constantly moves a mass of people. No vehicle can go rapidly there, +for the thoroughfare is literally alive. In the least crowded part of +the day, however, tattered little girls may sometimes be seen dancing +with natural grace to the music of a hand-organ, the Italian owner of +which for some strange reason has embedded himself in the very heart +of poverty. Between the lumbering wagons which infest the street at +the less busy part of the day these little children wonderfully sway +and glide and constitute the only gladsome feature of the scene. Just +as Canal Street, with its cafés where the poets, Socialists, scholars +and journalists meet, is the mind of the Ghetto, so Hester Street +represents its heart. This picturesque street has recently become the +study of several young Jewish artists. + +The last few years have brought the earliest indications of what may +develop into a characteristic Ghetto art. In the course of their long +civilization the Jews have never developed a national plastic art. +Devoted to the things of the spirit, in an important period of their +history in conflict with the sensuous art of the Greeks, they have +never put into external forms the heart of their life. There have been +occasional painters and sculptors among them, but these have worked in +line with the Gentiles, and have in no way contributed to a typical or +national art. With the slackening of the Hebraic religion, however, +which prohibits images in the temple--that fertile source of +inspiration in Christian art--the conditions have been more favorable, +and the beginning of a distinctive Ghetto art has already made its +appearance in New York. + +On the corner of Hester and Forsyth streets is a tumble-down rickety +building. The stairs that ascend to the garret are pestiferous and +dingy. In what is more like a shed than a room, with the wooden ribs +of the slanting roof curtailing the space, is the studio of an east +side artist. A miserable iron bedstead occupies the narrow strip of +floor beneath the descending ceiling. There is one window, which +commands a good view of the pushcart market in Hester Street. Near the +window is a diminutive oil-stove, on which the artist prepares his tea +and eggs. On a peg on the door hang an old mackintosh and an extra +coat--his only additional wardrobe. About the narrow walls on the +three available sides are easels, and sketches and paintings of Ghetto +types. + +Jacob Epstein, the name of the artist, has a melancholy wistful face. +He was born in the Ghetto twenty years ago, of poor Jews, who were at +first tailors and afterwards small tradespeople, and who had emigrated +from Poland. He went to the public schools until he was thirteen years +old. Since then he has worked at various jobs. Until recently he was +an instructor in the boys' out-door gymnasium near the corner of +Hester and Essex streets. For one summer, in order to get a vacation, +he became a farm laborer. His art education as well as his education +in general is slight, consisting of two terms at the Art Students' +League. But for so young a man his intellectual, as well as his +artistic activity has been considerable. He belongs to a number of +debating societies, and is now hesitating in his mind whether to +become a Socialist or an Anarchist, altho he is tending towards a +humane socialism. + +Two things, however, he seems definitely to have settled--that he will +devote himself to his art, and that that art shall be the plastic +picturing of the life of his people in the Ghetto. He seems to rejoice +at having lost his various pot-boiling positions. + +"I was not a gymnast," he said cheerfully, explaining why he left the +last one, "and now they have a gymnast." + +Now he lives alone on his beloved Hester Street and the studio, where +he sleeps and eats. For that modest room he pays $4 a month, and as he +cooks his own meals, $12 a month is quite sufficient to satisfy all +his needs. This amount he can usually manage to make through the sale +of his sketches; but when he does not he "goes to bed," as he puts it, +and lies low until one of his various little art enterprises brings +him in a small check. Withal, he is very happy, altho serious, like +his race in general; and full of idealism and ambition. On one +occasion the idea occurred to him and to his friend, Bernard Gussow, +that men ought to live closer to nature than they can in the Ghetto. +It was in the winter time that they were filled with this conviction, +but they nevertheless packed off and hired a farmhouse at Greenwood +Lake, and stayed there the whole winter. When their money gave out +they cut ice in the river to pay the rent. + +"We enjoyed it very much," said Epstein, "but there were no artistic +results. The country, much as I love it, is not stimulating. Clouds +and trees are not satisfying. It is only in the Ghetto, where there is +human nature, that I have ideas for sketches." + +With a kind of regret the artist spoke of the beauty of Winslow +Homer's landscape. He called it "epic," and was filled with sorrow +that such an art could not be in the Ghetto. + +"There is no nature in the sweat-shop," he said, "and yet it is there +and in the crowded street that my love and my imagination call me. It +is only the minds and souls of my people that fill me with a desire to +work." + +It is this ambition which makes Jacob Epstein and the other young +artists to be mentioned of uncommon representative interest. Epstein +is filled with a melancholy love of his race, and his constant desire +is to paint his people just as they are: to show them in their +suffering picturesqueness. So he goes into the sweat-shop and +sketches, induces the old pedlers of Hester Street to pose in his +studio, and draws from his window the push-carts and the old women in +the street. It is thus a characteristic Ghetto art, an art dealing +with the peculiar types of that Jewish community, that Epstein's +interest leads to; a national plastic art, as it were, on a small +scale. + +In the studio and at an exhibition at the Hebrew Institute Epstein had +two years ago a number of sketches and a few paintings--the latter +very crude as far as the technique of color is concerned, and the +sketches in charcoal rough and showing comparatively slight mastery of +the craft. But, particularly in the sketches, there is character in +every one, and at once a sympathetic and a realistic imagination. He +tells the truth about the Ghetto as he sees it, but into the dark +reality of the external life he puts frequently a melancholy beauty of +spirit. Portraits of old pedlers, roughly successful as Ghetto types, +in order to retain whom as models the artist was frequently forced to +sing a song, for the pedlers have a Jewish horror of the image, and +it is difficult to get them to pose; one of them with an irregular, +blunted nose and eyes sad and plaintive, but very gentle; an old Jew +in the synagogue, praying "Holy," "Holy"; many sweat-shop scenes, +gaunt figures half-dressed, with enormously long arms and bony +figures; mothers working in the shops with babies in their arms; one +woman, tired, watching for a moment her lean husband working the +machine--that machine of which Morris Rosenfeld sings so powerfully in +"The Sweat-Shop"; a woman with her head leaning heavily on her hands; +Hester Street market scenes, with dreary tenement-houses--a kind of +prison wall--as background; one pedler with a sensitive face--a man +the artist had to catch at odd times, surreptitiously, for, religious +to an extreme, the old fellow would hastily trundle off whenever he +saw Epstein. + + [Illustration: A LITTLE GIRL OF HESTER STREET] + +A characteristic of this young artist's work is the seriousness with +which he tries to get the type as it is; the manifest love involved in +the way it takes his imagination. With his whole soul he hates +caricature of his race. Most of the magazine illustrations of Ghetto +characters he finds distorted and untrue, many of them, however, done +with a finish of technique that he envies. A big and ugly nose is not +the enthusiastic artist's idea of what constitutes a downtown Jew. The +Jew, to him, is recognized rather by the peculiar melancholy of the +eyes. In the nose he sees nothing particularly typical of the race. It +is a forcible illustration of how, while really remaining faithful to +the external type, his love for the race leads him to emphasize the +spiritual and humane expressiveness of the faces about him; and so +paves the way to an art imaginative as well as typical, not lacking +even in a certain ideal beauty. + +Bernard Gussow, Epstein's friend and fellow-worker in the attempt to +found a distinctive Ghetto art, is in a still earlier stage of +development. His essays in the plastic reproduction of Hester Street +types are not yet as humanly interesting as those of the younger man, +who, however, has been working longer and more assiduously. It is only +for the past year or two that Gussow has definitely espoused this +cause. + +Unlike Epstein he was not born in New York. The town of Slutzk, in the +government of Ulinsk, Russia, is his birthplace, where he stayed until +he was eleven years old. His father is a teacher of Hebrew, and young +Gussow consequently received a much better education than Epstein; +and also became much more familiar with the religious life of the +Orthodox Jews. For that reason Epstein urges his friend to take the +New York Orthodox synagogue and the domestic life of the religious Jew +as his distinctive field in the great work in hand. For this, too, +Gussow hopes, but in the present condition of his technique he limits +himself to Hester Street scenes. + +In New York Gussow continued to build up an education uncommonly good +in the Ghetto. He went through the High School, entered the City +College, which he left for the Art School, and spent one season at the +League and two at the Academy of Design. He has for many years given +lessons in English; to which occupation he, unlike his more emotional +friend, prudently holds on. But Gussow, also, is deeply if not +emotionally interested in the life of the Ghetto, and in a broader if +less intense form than is Epstein. With the contemporary Yiddish +literature and journalism of New York he is well acquainted. His mind +is more conservative and judicial than that of Epstein; but his +sketches lack, at present at least, the touch of strong sympathy and +imagination which is marked in the art of the younger man. + + [Illustration: THE PUSH-CARTS OF HESTER STREET AND THEIR GUARD AT + NIGHT] + +Gussow lives with his father's family, where he keeps his +sketches--but to work, he goes to a room on the corner of Hester and +Essex streets occupied by a poor Jewish family. Here the artist sits +by the window and watches the poor and picturesque scenes in the big +push-cart market directly beneath him. The subjects of his sketches +are roughly the same as those of Epstein, altho he draws rather more +from the street and Epstein from the sweat-shop. Groups standing about +the push-carts, examining goods and bargaining; an old woman with a +cheese in her hand, and an enormous nose (which Epstein reproachfully +calls a caricature); several sketches representing men or women +holding eggs to the sun, as a test preliminary to buying; carpenters +waiting on the corner near the market for a job; an old Jew critically +examining apples; a roughly indicated, rather attractive Jewish girl; +a woman standing by a push-cart counting her money; a confused Hester +Street crowd, walled in by the lofty tenement-houses; a wall-painter +with an interesting face, who peddles horse-radish when not occupied +with painting; a pedler out of work, just from the hospital, his beard +straggling in again, with the characteristic sad eyes of his race; +this rather small list comprises the greater part of Gussow's work, +and most of it is of a distinctly sketchy nature. + +"You see," said Epstein sympathetically, "Bernard has until recently +been working for the tenement-house committee, and has only just got +away from his job." Both of these young men seem to think it a piece +of good luck when they are discharged by their employers. + +These artists both recognize that the distinctive Ghetto art is in its +earliest stage; and that whatever has yet been done in that direction +is technically very imperfect. But they call attention even to the +crayon art stores of the Ghetto as crudely pointing in the right +direction. In those chromos, which contain absolutely no artistic +quality, is represented, nevertheless, the religious and domestic life +of the Jews and their physical types. And whatever art there is at +present is supported by the popularity with the people of this crayon +work. On the basis of that the artist proper may work out the type +into more truly interpretative forms. + +For this young art, the object of which is to give a realistic picture +of the life of the Ghetto, it is easy to conceive an unduly +sentimental interest. It is not unnatural in this time of great +attention to east side charitable work to give greater value than it +deserves to an art which represents the sordidness and the pathos of +that part of the city. Against this attitude, which they also call +sentimental, Epstein and Gussow earnestly protest, and maintain that +unless the Ghetto art becomes some day technically excellent it will +have no legitimate value. They want it judged on the same basis that +any other art is judged; and they are filled with the faith, or at +least the enthusiastic Epstein is, that the time will come when the +artists of the Ghetto will paint typical Jewish life, and paint it +technically well. + +It is true, of course, that the ultimate value of this little art +movement in the Ghetto will depend upon how well the attempt to paint +the life is eventually carried out. But, nevertheless, even if nothing +comes of it, it is important as suggesting an interesting departure +from what is the prevailing limitation of American art. In Epstein's +work something of the typical life of a community is expressed; of +what American painter from among the Gentiles can this be said? Where +is the typical, the nationally characteristic, in our art? Our best +painters experiment with all kinds of subjects; they put talent, +sometimes genius, into their work, but at the basis of it there is no +simple presentation of well-recognized and deeply felt national or +even sectional life; merely essays in art, of more or less skill, +showing no warm interest in any one kind of life. + +There are many other artists, besides these two, in the Ghetto, some +of whom also occasionally paint a distinctive Ghetto type. But for the +most part, trained as they have been in the uptown art schools, they +experiment with all sorts of subjects in the approved American style. +They paint girls in white and girls in blue, etc., as Epstein +expressed it scornfully; and put no general Ghetto quality into their +work. They do not seem deeply interested in anything except painting. +Many of them are technically better educated than Epstein and Gussow; +tho it is probably safe to say that no one of them has the sympathetic +imagination of Epstein. It is to this eclectic, experimental tendency +of the artists in the Ghetto in general that Epstein and Gussow +present a contrast--in their love of their people and their desire to +paint them as they are. + +A typical representative of this less centred art is Samuel Kalisch, +twenty-six years old, who came to this country from Austria twelve +years ago. Older than the two young enthusiasts, Kalisch has had more +experience and has developed a more efficient technique. He works in +oils to a greater extent than the others and has a number of +comparatively finished pictures; but his studio resembles that of any +rather undistinguished uptown artist in point of diversity of subject +and artistic impulse. There is an Oriental scene of conventional +character; a portrait of himself taken from the mirror; a number of +examples of still-life, apples, flowers, a "cute" scene of children +playing on the beach; a landscape, etc. Of distinctive Ghetto things +there are two old men, one just from the synagogue, with pensive eyes, +a long beard and a Derby hat; the other, ninety-four years old, who +sits in the synagogue, with a long white beard, a black cap on his +head, a cane in one hand and the Talmud in the other. These two +portraits show considerable technical skill, but are faithful rather +than interpretative, and indicate that the artist's sympathy is not +absorbed in the life of the Ghetto. They are merely subjects, like any +other, which might come to his hand. + +Now in full sympathy with what may be called the "movement" is +Nathaniel Loewenberg, a little, black-haired, sad-eyed, sensitive and +appealing Russian Jew of twenty-one years of age. It is only recently, +however, that he has turned from landscape to city types, of which he +has a few sketches, very incomplete with one exception, that also +unfinished but unusually promising; it is in oil and represents a Jew +fish pedler of attractive countenance and shabby clothes trying to +sell a fine fish to three Ghetto women; these latter cleverly +distinguished, one who will probably buy, another who apparently would +like to if she could reduce the price, and the third indifferent. + +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. + +He has written over 160 stories, and for many years he was the great +popular Yiddish writer in Russia. The people would read nothing but +"Schomer's" works. The ignorant masses eagerly devoured the latest +novel of Schomer's. It goes without saying that, under the +circumstances, these books could be of very slight literary value. +They were long, sentimental effusions, tales of bad Christians and +good Jews, with a monotonous repetition of stock characters and +situations; and with a melodramatic and sensational element. They +probably corresponded pretty closely to our "nickel" novels, published +in some of our cheapest periodicals, and intended for the most +ignorant element of our population. Some of their titles are _A +Shameful Error_, _An Unexpected Happiness_, _The Princess in the +Wood_, _Convicted_, _Rebecca_. + +"Schomer" was so successful that he had many imitators, who never, +however, succeeded so well. The publishers sometimes tried to deceive +the ignorant people into thinking that a new novel of Schomer's had +appeared. On the cover of the book they put the title and the new +author's name in very small letters, and then in very large letters: +"In the style of Schomer." But it did not work. The people remained +faithful to the books of the man whom they had first read. + +When Shaikevitch, or "Schomer" himself, describes the purpose and +characters of his work he talks as follows: + +"My works are partly pictures of the life of the Jews in the Russian +villages of fifty years ago, and partly novels about the old history +of the Jews. Fifty years ago the Jews were more fanatical than they +are now. They did nothing but study the Talmud, pray and fast, wear +long beards and wigs and look like monkeys. I satirized all this in my +novels. I tried to teach the ignorant Jews that they were ridiculous, +that they ought to take hold of modern, practical life and give up all +that was merely formal and absurd in the old customs. I taught them +that a pious man might be a hypocrite, and that it is better to do +good than to pray. My works had a great effect in modernizing and +educating the ignorant Jews. In my stories I pictured how the Jewish +boy might go out from his little village into the wide, Gentile world, +and make something of himself. In the last twenty-five years, the +Jews, owing to my books, have lost a great deal of their fanaticism. +At that time they had nothing but my books to read, and so my satire +had a great effect." + +Shaikevitch is not entirely alone in this good opinion of his work. +Dr. Blaustein, superintendent of the Educational Alliance, said that +he owed his position as an educated and modern man to reading novels +when he was a boy. Dr. Blaustein lived in a small Russian village, and +one day he read a story of "Schomer's" which represented a Jewish boy +going out into the world and criticizing his Hebraic surroundings. +That was the beginning of Dr. Blaustein's "awakening." Other +intelligent Russian Jews probably had this same experience, altho now +as mature men they would all, no doubt, grant only a very small, if +any, artistic quality to the famous Yiddish writer. + +A few years after Shaikevitch's great popularity two men began to +write in Yiddish stories which really had value for the intelligent +and educated--Abramovitch and, particularly, his pupil Rabinovitch. It +was this work which, in some sort of form, did intelligently for the +more educated Jews what Shaikevitch had done for the lowest stratum. +Rabinovitch published a book in which he brought Shaikevitch to trial. +He literally "tore him up the back" as far as literature is +concerned--pointed out the tasteless, cheap, sensational character of +his work, and held him up generally to ridicule. + + [Illustration: N. M. SHAIKEVITCH] + +As the Jews became better educated this critical feeling about +Shaikevitch's work grew more general. It is significant of the +progress towards modern things made by the Jews that even the very +ignorant no longer admire Shaikevitch's work as much as formerly. He +is "out of date," so much so that he now does not sign the stories +he publishes in the Yiddish newspapers, which, nevertheless, are still +popular among the most ignorant. + +The intellectual Socialists of the Jewish quarter in New York also had +their fling at the popular writer, and helped to put him into +obscurity. Now it is a common thing in the Ghetto to hear a Socialist +say that Shaikevitch wielded a more disintegrating and unfavorable +influence on the Jews than any other writer. But, nevertheless, the +calm old man, who has a wife and several grown children, who are +making their way in the new world, still sits quietly at his desk, +drinking Russian tea and doing his daily "stunt" of several thousand +words for the Yiddish newspapers. + +The reason given by Mr. Shaikevitch for coming to America is that he +began to be interested in play writing, when the Yiddish stage was +prohibited in Russia. The actors left Russia then and came to America, +and some of them later wrote Shaikevitch, who was one of the earliest +Yiddish playwrights, to join them in New York. He did so, and has +written twelve plays, which have been produced in this city. Some of +the better known of them are: _The Jewish Count_, _Hamann the Second_, +_Rebecca_ and _Dreyfus_. Shaikevitch is interesting mainly as +representing in his work an early stage of the popular Yiddish +consciousness. + + +A CYNICAL INVENTOR + +The "intellectuals" who gather in the Russian cafés delight in +expressing the ideas for which they were persecuted abroad. Enthusiasm +for progress and love of ideas is the characteristic tone of these +gatherings and an entire lack of practical sense. + +Very striking, therefore, was the attitude of a Russian-Jewish +inventor, who took his lunch the other day at one of the most literary +of these cafés. Near him were a trio of enthusiasts, gesticulating +over their tea, but he sat aloof, alone. He listened with a cold, +superior smile. He neither smoked nor drank, but sat, with his thin, +shrewd face, chillily thinking. + +It is common report in the community of the intellectual Ghetto that +Mr. Okun made a great invention connected with the electric arc lamp. +It resulted in lengthening the time before the carbon is burnt out +from four or five hours to 150 hours or thereabouts. He might have +been a millionaire to-day, both he and his acquaintances maintain, +but, with the usual unpractical nature of the Russian Jew, he was +cheated by unscrupulous lawyers. He was a shirt maker, and for six +years saved from his $10 a week to buy the apparatus necessary for the +task. At last it was completed, but he was robbed of the fortune, of +the fame, of the prestige to which his great idea entitled him. As it +is, he gets only $1,250 a year for the great deed, spends much of his +time silently in the cafés, and dreams of other inventions when not +engaged with criticizing his kind. + +An American, who sometimes visited the place for "color" and for the +unpractical enthusiasm which he missed among his own people, sat down +by the inventor, whose face interested him, and entered into +conversation. He spoke of a Yiddish playwright whom he admired. + +"I do not know much about him," said the inventor. "I am not a genius, +like the others." + +He sneered, but it was so nearly imperceptible that it did not seem +ill-natured. + +"But I am told," said the American, "that you are a great inventor. +And that is a kind of genius." + +"Yes, perhaps," he replied, carelessly. "It takes talent, too, to do +what I have done. But I am not a genius, like these people." + +Again he smiled, sarcastically. + +"I find," said the American, "a great many interesting people in these +cafés." + +"Yes, they are what you call characters, I suppose," he said, +dispassionately; "but I find them interesting only for one reason--no, +no, I won't tell you what that reason is." + +"You don't seem to be as enthusiastic about the people as I am," said +the American, "but whenever I come into a café down here I find +serious men who will talk seriously. They are different from the +Americans who amuse themselves in bars, at horse races and farces." + +The inventor smiled coldly. + +"I do not call serious, what you call serious," he said. "It is not +necessary to talk seriously to be serious. Serious men do things. The +Russians don't do things. If they were gay and did things, they would +be more serious than they are. But they are solemn and don't do +anything." + +"I don't agree with you," said the American, warmly. "Doesn't Blank, +who writes so many excellent novels, do anything? Don't the actors, +who act so truthfully, without self-consciousness, do anything? Don't +the journalists, who spread excellent ideas, do anything?" + +The inventor nodded judicially and remarked that there were some +exceptions. + +"But," he added, "you are deceived by the surface. There are many men +in our colony who seem to be stronger intellectually than they really +are. In Russia a few men, really cultivated and intellectual, give the +tone, and everybody follows them. In America, however, the public +gives the tone, and the playwright, the literary man, simply expresses +the public. So that really intellectual Americans do not express as +good ideas as less intellectual Russians. The Russians all imitate the +best. The Americans imitate what the mass of the people want. But an +intellectual American is more intellectual than these geniuses around +here whom you like. Of course, they have some good things in them, as +everybody has." + +"What is it that you find to like in this Russian colony?" asked the +American. + +"I find," replied the inventor, "that when they come over here they +lose what is best in the Russian character and acquire what is worst +in the American character." + +"And what do you deem best in the Russian character?" + +"Well, in Russia they are warm hearted and friendly. They are envious +even there, but not nearly so envious as they are here." + +"And what do you find that is worst in the American character?" + +"Oh, you know; they do everything for money. But yet there is more +greatness in the American character. They are mechanical. They are +practical. They don't get cheated by unscrupulous lawyers. + +"Are you married?" asked the American, sympathetically. + +"No, thank God!" he replied, with more energy than he had yet shown. + +"But you have no friends?" + +"No." + +"Some men," commented the American, "find a friend in a wife." + +"That depends on a man's character. It increases the loneliness of +some men," replied the inventor, smiling in spite of what he was +saying. + +"You seem to me to be rather pessimistic," remarked the American. + +"No, I am not pessimistic. I understand that a pessimist thinks life +is worse than it is, but I see things just as they are; that is all. +When I came to New York I was enthusiastic, too; I was an optimist. I +saw life as it is not. But the mists have passed from before my eyes, +and I see things just as they are." + + +AN IMPASSIONED CRITIC + +He loves literature with an absorbing love, and is pained constantly +by what he deems the chaos of art in the United States. The Americans +seem to him to be trivial and immature in their art, lacking in +serious purpose. + +"It is a vast and fruitful land," he will say, "but there is no order +and little sincerity as far as art is concerned. Your writers try to +amuse the readers, to entertain them merely, rather than to give them +serious and vital truth. Why is it that a race which is clever and +progressive in all mechanical and industrial matters, which in such +things has no overpowering respect for the past, is weighed down in +art by a regard for all the literary ghosts of bygone times? Look at +the books put forth in any one year in the United States! What a +senseless hodgepodge it is! Variety of all kinds, historical novels, +short stories, social plays, costume plays, bindings, illustrations, +_editions de luxe_, new editions of books written in all ages +alongside of the latest productions of the day. The Americans have +great tact in most things. They are the cleverest people in the world, +and yet they are very backward in literature. + +"Indeed the whole Anglo-Saxon race, great economically and practically +as it is, is curiously at sea and chaotic in all that pertains to +literary art. There are men of genius, great artists among them, but +they are artists only in part, fragmentarily, artists without being +aware of it, with no consistent and clear understanding of what art +is. Your great men are hindered by their environment. America and +England are the most difficult countries in the world for real art to +get a hearing, for all the people insist on being amused by their +authors. They treat them as they do their actors, merely as public +servants whose duty it is to amuse the public when it is tired. But +art is a serious thing, instinct with sincerity, and should never be +lightly approached either by the artist or the reader. + +"Another indication of what I mean is the way you all talk about style +over here, as if the style had anything to do with art. Some of the +great Russian realists have no style, but they are great artists. +There was a time when to write well was an exception, and people who +did it were supposed to be great. Now so many write well that it +constitutes no longer any particular distinction. Real art consists in +the presentation of ideas in images, and in the power of seeing in +images, and of reproducing imaginatively; what is thus seen is wholly +independent of style. And, more, words often stand in the way of art. +A man writes a pretty style. There may be no idea or image beneath it, +but you Anglo-Saxons say: 'Ha! Here is a man with a style, a great +artist!' But he is no artist. He is a mere decorator, trivial and +empty. He doesn't seize earnestly upon life and tell the truth about +it. Now and then, indeed, I see indications of real art in your +writers--great images, great characters, great truth, but all merely +in suggestion. You don't know when you do anything good, and most of +you don't like it when you see it. You prefer an exciting plot to a +great delineation of character. Sometimes you throw off, often in +newspapers, something that indicates great talent, real art, but you +cover it up with an indistinguishable mass of rubbish. You don't know +what you are after. You have no method. Every writer goes his single +way, confused, at cross purposes. There is no school of literature. +Consequently, there is great loss of energy, great waste of material; +great richness, but what carelessness, what deplorable carelessness, +about the deepest and noblest and most serious things in life! I love +you; I love you all; you are clever, good fellows, but you are +children, talented, to be sure, but wayward and vagrant children, in +the fields of art. Sincerity, realism, purpose and unity are what as a +race you need, if you wish ever to have a consistent and genuine art. + +"The Russian, the Frenchman, the German, knows what he wants. He is +after the truth. He is serious about life. He doesn't try to dodge the +facts for the sake of a little false cheerfulness and optimistic +inanity." + +Thus talks the Russian prophet. He is a robust, earnest man, who is +trying to make head and tail out of contemporary English literature. +He finds no great mainspring of impulse or principle behind it, but an +infinite pandering to an infinitely diversified public taste. He +thinks it is a kind of vaudeville of art, full of compromises, vulgar +in its lack of principle. It makes him sad in much the same way that +skepticism and profanity sadden a deeply religious person. Wisdom and +truth he wants, and doesn't find them. What he finds is haste, greed, +incompleteness and waste, and his soul abhors anything which takes +away from the deepest nature of the soul. He is really a religious +man, profound and sincere, sad at the wasteful, foolish lightness in +art of the Anglo-Saxon world. Like his great countryman, Tolstoy, he +writes stories, and, again like Tolstoy, as he grows older the more he +sees in art and life which he would like to reform and deepen. Economy +of the heart, soul and brain, the direction of them to a constant +end--the feeling of the necessity of this is now an altruistic passion +with this man. Like all reformers, he is sad, but, again like all +reformers, he is robust and calm, self-sufficient. + + +THE POET OF ZIONISM + +Naptali Herz Imber is known to all Jews of any education as the man +who has written in the old Hebrew language the poems that best express +the hope of Zion and that best serve as an inspiring battle cry in the +struggle for a new Jerusalem. Zangwill has translated into English the +Hebrew "Wacht Am Rhein," the most popular of Imber's poems, which is +called _The Watch on the Jordan_. It is in four stanzas, the first of +which is: + + Like the crash of the thunder + Which splitteth asunder + The flame of the cloud, + On our ears ever falling, + A voice is heard calling + From Zion aloud; + "Let your spirits' desires + For the land of your sires + Eternally burn + From the foe to deliver + Our own holy river, + To Jordan return." + Where the soft flowing stream + Murmurs low as in dream, + There set we our watch. + Our watchword, "The sword, + Of our land and our Lord," + By the Jordan then set we our watch. + +Mr. Imber is a peculiar character and is said to be the original of +the poet Pinchas in Zangwill's _Children of the Ghetto_. + +At a Russian-Jewish café on Canal Street he may often be found. Not +long ago I met him there and discovered that the dignified Hebrew poet +had as a man many of the more humorous and less impressive +peculiarities of the character in Mr. Zangwill's book. It is difficult +to take him seriously. He was sitting opposite an old "magid," or +wandering preacher, whose specialty is to attack America, and he +consented to tell about his work and to confide some of his ideas. + +"I am the origin of the Zionistic movement," he said. "It is not +generally known, but I am. Many years ago I went to Jerusalem, saw the +misery of the people, felt the spirit of the place and determined to +bring my scattered people again together. For twelve years I struggled +to put the Zionistic movement on foot, and now that I have started it +I will let others carry it on and get the glory. For long I was not +recognized, but when my Hebrew poems were published our whole race +were made enthusiastic for Zion. + +"If you wish to know what the spirit and purpose of my Hebrew poems is +I will tell you. For two thousand years Hebrew poetry has been +nothing but lamentations--nothing but literature expressing the spirit +of Jeremiah. There have been no love songs, no wine songs, no songs of +joy, nothing pagan. There have been no poets, only critics in rhyme. +Now what I did in my Hebrew verses was to do away with lamentations. +We have had enough of lamentations. I introduced the spirit of love +and wine, the pagan spirit. My theme, indeed, is Zion. I am an +individualist. It is the only 'ist' I believe in, and I want my nation +to be individual, too. I want them to be joyously themselves, and so I +am a Zionist. Therefore I did away with critical poetry and with +lamentations and led my people on to an individual and a joyous life." + +Altho Mr. Imber's best work is in Hebrew poetry, he is yet a very +voluminous writer on science, economics, medicine, mysticism, history +and many other subjects. + +"I have written on everything," said the poet, "everything. I know +almost nothing about the subjects on which I write. I don't believe in +reading. I believe in knowing myself. In that way we learn to know +others. Psychology is the only science. All others are fakes, and I +can fake as well as anybody. Why read, or why seek amusement in the +theatres or elsewhere, when one can sit in a café and talk to a man +like that?" + +He pointed in the old "magid" opposite him. + +"Whenever I want to amuse myself," he said, "I talk to a man like +that, and I cannot amuse myself without learning more about +psychology." + +With the exception of his poems most of the poet's work was written in +the English language. + +"I began to write English late in life," he said. "Israel Zangwill +helped me to begin. He said he would correct what I wrote, but I wrote +so much that Mr. Zangwill stopped reading it and told me to go ahead +on my own hook. So I did. I have written infinitely in English, some +of which has been published--_Music of the Psalms_; _Education and the +Talmud_, which was issued by the United States government in the +report of the commissioner of education; many articles on mysticism +and other subjects in the magazine _Ariel_; _The Mystery of the Golden +Calf_, _The Music of the Ghetto_, and many other works on the +cabalistic mysticism. I have also written, _Who Was Crucified?_ +wherein I prove that it was not Jesus. If I kept on all day I could +not tell you the names of all I have written. I have published many +articles in the Jewish-American papers satirizing the rabbis, who +consequently hate me. Much of my work, indeed, is satirical. The +world needs cleaning up a little, particularly the rabbis. Put the +reformed and orthodox rabbis together and some good might come of +them. I am not afraid of these people, whom I call silk-chimney +rabbis, because they wear tall hats instead of knowing the Talmud. It +was my own invention--'silk-chimney rabbis.'" + +Mr. Imber is evidently very fond of this phrase, for he repeated it +many times. Indeed, he does not seem to be a very pious Jew. He +himself admits it, for he said: + +"I do not think they will say 'Kaddish' for my soul when I am dead. +And yet I am not a skeptic, exactly. I have a principle, Zionism. And +beyond Zionism I have another great interest. I have now perfected +Zionism, so I am free to pass on to Mysticism, in which I am deeply at +work. The mystics are all bluffers. I am a mystic, but my mysticism is +simple and plain. My aim is to present a perfectly simple view of +occultism. It is difficult to persuade Americans to become mystics. +They care nothing for Hegel and Kant. Their philosophy I call +Barnumism." + + [Illustration: NAPTALI HERZ IMBER] + +Mr. Imber has largely given up writing Hebrew now, but lately he wrote +a Hebrew poem comprising 200 closely printed pages. He did it, he +said, to spite a man who said the poet had forgotten Hebrew because of +his penchant for English. + +Not long ago Mr. Imber wrote a _Last Confession_ in Hebrew. He was +very sick in a St. Louis hospital with blood poisoning, and thought he +was going to die. They wanted him to confess his sins. So he did it, +in Hebrew verse, which he translated to me, evidently on the spur of +the moment, thus: + + When my day will come + To wander in distress, + Call the priest to my room, + My sins to confess. + + The sins which I have committed + With deliberation, + They will by the Lord be omitted, + Who promised us salvation. + + The evils I have done, + Not conscious of the action, + Have passed away and gone + Without satisfaction. + + I see near me the green table: + The gamblers play aloud, + And I am sick and unable + To mix up with the crowd. + + There are still beautiful roses, + With aroma blessed; + There are still handsome maidens, + Whose lips I have not pressed. + + This has me affected, + I am full of remorse, + That of late I have neglected + The girl and the roses. + +Written on what the poet thought was his deathbed, this satirical poem +is almost as heroic as _The Watch on the Jordan_. + +Mr. Imber has also written many original poems in English, which, +however, he fears will not live. Many of them are satirical poems +about American life and politics. When in Denver before the Spanish +war he wrote some verses beginning: + + Our flag will soon be planted + In a land where we do not want it. + +It was, the poet said, through the simple, clear character of his +mystical attainments that he was able to predict the results of the +war with Spain. + +Mr. Imber looks upon America as the "land of the bluff" and as such +admires it. But he disapproves of our reform movements. He thinks the +recent attempt to reform the east side was due to the desire of the +rich to divert attention from their own vices. He doesn't approve of +reform any way. + +"We have been trying to reform human nature," he said, "for 2,000 +years, and have not done it yet. The only way to make a man good is +to remove his stomach, for so long as he is hungry he will steal, and +so long as he has other desires he will commit other wicked actions. +Moses and Jesus were smart men and knew that evil could not be rooted +out, and so they tolerated it." + +Mr. Imber has recently made his last will and testament. It is in +Hebrew prose and runs thus in English: + +"To the rabbis I leave what I don't know; it will help them to a +longer life. To my enemies I leave my rheumatism. Between the +Republican and Democratic parties I divide the boodle which they have +not yet touched. To the Jewish editors I leave my broken pen, so that +they can write slowly and avoid mistakes. My books--those intended for +beginners--I leave to the eight professors, so that they can learn to +read. As an executor there shall be appointed a man who knows Barnum's +philosophy through and through. Written on my deathbed. Witness, Mr. +Pluto of the Underground and his Famulus, the doctor. As an +afterthought I leave to my publishers the last bill unpaid by me. They +can frame it and keep it as an amulet to ward away that class of +authors." + +"Is it sarcastic?" asked Mr. Imber, chuckling delightedly. + +Some time ago Mr. Imber sent the news of his own death to the various +Hebrew and Yiddish publications. Many long obituaries--"very fine +ones," said the poet--appeared. + +"In that way," said Mr. Imber, "I learned who were my enemies. It had +one evil consequence, however. When I afterward asked the editor to +publish one of my articles he said: + +"'You are officially dead, and as such cannot rush into print.' + +"That reply really gave me a grievous moment," said the poet, with a +shrewd, Voltairian smile. + + +AN INTELLECTUAL DEBAUCHEE + +Four men sat excitedly talking in the little café on Grand Street +where the Socialists and Anarchists of the Russian quarter were wont +to meet late at night and stay until the small hours. An American, who +might by chance have happened there, would have wondered what +important event had occurred to rasp these men's voices, to cause them +to gesticulate so wildly, to give their dark, intelligent faces so +fateful, so ominous an expression. In reality, however, nothing out of +the ordinary had happened. It was the usual course of human affairs +which kept these men in a constant glow of unhappy emotion; an +emotion which they deeply preferred to trivial optimism and the +content founded on Philistine well-being. They were always excited +about life, for life as it is constituted seemed to them very unjust. + +It was nearly midnight, and the men in the café, altho they had drunk +nothing stronger than Russian tea, talked on, seemingly intoxicated +with ideas. One was the editor of a Yiddish newspaper in the quarter +and a contributor to the Anarchistic monthly. He was a man of about +forty years of age, lighter in complexion than his companions, but yet +dark. Like them he was dressed carelessly and poorly. In his +melancholy eyes shone a gentle idealism. He spoke in a voice lower and +softer than those of his fellows. He was deeply liked by them, for he +was capable of sweet and beautiful ideas about the perfect humanity, +some of which he had put into a play which had a short life on the +Bowery, but lived in the hearts of these warm intellectuals. +Non-resistance to evil was the favorite principle of this gentle +Anarchist, whose name was Blanofsky. + +His companions were younger and more heated and violent in speech, tho +their attenuated bodies and thoughtful and sensitive faces did not +suggest reliance on physical force. On the Bowery the Irish tough +fights after a word, but an all day dispute between two Jews on Canal +or Hester Street is unaccompanied by the clenching of a fist. A dark, +thin young man, whose closely shaven face seemed somehow to fit his +spirit, given over entirely to the "movement," sat at Blanofsky's +right hand. At almost any hour of the day or night Hermann Samarovitch +could be found at the Anarchist headquarters on Essex Street, poring +over the books of the propaganda and engaging in talk with other +bright spirits of the "movement." Now, as he talked or listened in the +café on Grand Street, his pale, smooth face seemed dead to all the +ordinary interests of youth. The spirit of life was represented in him +only by the passion for the cause, which burned in his black eyes. He +had no other function than to worship at the shrine. How he lived, +therefore, was a mystery. + +Of the other two men, one, Jacob Hessler, a labor leader in the +Ghetto, an eloquent speaker, of more commanding presence, but less +sensitive and impressive at short range than either Blanofsky or +Samarovitch, was silent, for the most part. He talked only to crowds, +partly because it was exciting, but mainly because his limited +intelligence put him at a disadvantage in intimate talk with men of +concentrated intellectual character. The fourth man in the café, +Abraham Gudinsky, was a simple admirer of Blanofsky. He was born in +Jerusalem, had studied law in Constantinople, had lived in Paris as a +bohemian, and, after a few years passed in the commonplace, dissipated +gayety of youth, had come to New York, where his sympathetic and +idealistic character had come under the influence of the quiet charm +of Blanofsky. He had small, live, eyes and a high forehead, and his +body perpetually moved nervously. + +"I do not believe," said Blanofsky, in Russian, "that anything can be +accomplished by force. Our cause is too sacred to tarnish it with +blood, and it is too strong in logic and justice not to conquer +peaceably in the end; and that, too, without leaving behind it the +ill-breeding weeds of a violent course. I have nothing but pity for +the misguided wretch who took the life of King Humbert, thinking he +was acting for the cause. It is the acts of such madmen as he that +make us appear to the public as merely irrational monsters." + +"Nevertheless," said Samarovitch, his dark eyes glowing, "it is +natural that the crimes of society against the individual should +irritate us sometimes into violent acts. I am not sure but that it is +good that it should be so. Those devoted men, in the great movement +in Russia, at the time the Czar was killed, were as clearheaded as +they were devoted; and they felt that the governmental evil pressing +in Russia could be relieved only by a kind of terrorism. And they were +right," he concluded, with gloomy emphasis. + + [Illustration: A YOUNG MAN AND A YOUNG WOMAN JUST ENTERED THE CAFÉ] + +Blanofsky shook his head, and was about to speak of Tolstoy, whom he +regarded as the great interpreter of genuine anarchy, when he was +interrupted by the approach of a young man and a young woman who had +just entered the café. Sabina, as she was familiarly known to the +faithful, dark and slender, with very large, emotional eyes and a +mobile mouth, had just come from her lecture to a crowd of workingmen, +to whom she had spoken eloquently of their right to lead a life with +greater light and beauty in it. The emotions expressed by her +eloquence, and stirred by it, still lay in her deep eyes as she +entered the café. Her companion, who had walked with her from the +lecture, was a young poet, whose words followed one another with +turbulent energy. His head was set uncommonly close to his compact, +stout shoulders, seeming to have a firmer rest than usual on the +trunk, and thus better to support the strain of his thick-coming +fancies. His habitual attitude was to hold his closed fist even with +his shoulder, and punctuate with it the transitions of his thought. +Even in winter the perspiration rolled down his face as he spoke, for +thought with him was intense to the point of pain. He was the perfect +type of the intellectual debauchee of the Russian-Jewish colony. He +drank nothing but tea and coffee, but within him burned his ideas. He +made his living by writing an occasional poem or article for a Yiddish +paper, and when he had gathered together a few dollars he repaired +again to the cafés, seeking companions to whom he could confide his +exuberant thoughts, which were always expressed in poetic images. He +slept whenever and wherever he was tired, but he slept seldom, and +unwillingly. Unrest was his quest and unhappiness his dearest +consolation. The type of his mind was as Russian as his name, which +was Levitzky. The girl looked and listened to him, fascinated. They +sat down at the table with the others, and while the waiter was +bringing their tea and lemon, Levitzky continued his discourse: + +"No, I do not like America. The people here are satisfied. Things seem +frozen here--finished. Great deeds have been done, great things have +been created. Wall Street and Broadway fill me with wonder. The +outside is great, showing energy that has been. But at the core, all +is dead. The imagination and the heart are extinguished. Content and +comfort eat up the nation. New York seems to me an active city of the +dead, where there is much movement, but no soul. Russia, which I love, +is just the opposite. There nothing is done, nothing finished. One +sees nothing, but feels warmth and vitality at the heart. In love it +is the same way. The American wants a legal wife and a comfortable +home, but the Russian wants a mistress behind a mountain to whom he +can not penetrate but towards whom he can strive, for whom he can long +and dream. It is better to hope than to attain." + +Sabina looked at him, her bosom heaving. His last words seemed to +trouble her, but she sat in silence and appeared to listen to the +conversation, which turned on a recent strike in the Ghetto. Finally +she got up to go home, refusing Levitzky's offer to accompany her. +Leaving the Anarchists still engaged in talk, she went into the +street, which, altho it was after one o'clock, was still far from +deserted. + +Instead of going to her poor room in the tenement-house on Hester +Street she walked slowly along Grand Street, towards the Bowery, deep +in reflection. She was thinking of Levitzky and of her life. Ten +years before, as a child of twelve, she had come to New York from +Russia, with her father, a tailor, who had worked for several years in +the sweat-shops. He had died two years before, and since then Sabina +had worked in the sweat-shops in the day time and in the evening had +devoted herself to the cause. At first she had gone to the Socialistic +and Anarchistic meetings merely because they were attended by the only +society in the east side which at all satisfied her growing +intellectual activity. These rough workingmen sometimes seemed to her +inspired, and her ardor and youth were soon deeply interested in the +cause of Socialism, partly because of the pity inspired by the sordid +poverty about her, but mainly because of the strong attraction any +earnest movement has for a young and emotionally intellectual person. +As was quite inevitable, she went from an unreserved love for the +group of ideas called Socialistic to the quite contrary ones of +Anarchy. And this change was not founded on intellectual conviction, +but was due to the simple fact that the Anarchistic cause was more +extreme and gave greater apparent opportunity for self-sacrifice; and +for the reason, too, that the most interesting man she had met, +Levitzky, was at that time an Anarchist. These two made, very often, +passionate speeches on the same evening to a crowd of attentive +laborers, and after the meeting walked the street together or sat over +their tea in the café discussing high ideals, not only Anarchy, but +all noble subjects that detach the soul from the sordid business of +life. + +Of course, Sabina loved Levitzky. His robust intellect and exuberant, +poetical nature, a nature constant to passion, but inconstant to +persons, made her beloved ideas seem real, gave a concrete seal to the +creations of her imagination. + +Neither Levitzky nor Sabina were conscious of the strong feeling that +he was arousing in the girl's soul. He poured his mind out to her. His +rich nature unfolded in her sympathetic presence. She loved him for +the mental crises he had passed; and he loved merely the mental images +his words aroused in him when she was present. + +It was not until the evening of the scene in the café that she had +fully understood that she was eternally in love with Levitzky. On the +walk from the lecture to the Grand Street café they had for the first +time spoken of love between man and woman, and Levitzky had launched +forth into an eloquent tirade against satisfied desire, a speech which +was concluded in the café, with the remark about how a Russian loves +an inaccessible mistress, a beautiful creature separated from her +lover by a mountain, while the despised American wants a legal wife +whom he can enjoy and be sure of. + +The sentiment fitted in beautifully with Sabina's habitually +enthusiastic habit of mind. But to-night she was ashamed of herself +because his words filled her with fear and pain. Irrational emotion +drove her theories from her head, and struck her dumb with grief for +what she looked upon as a betrayed ideal. She, who had devoted herself +to the "movement"; she, who had chosen an intellectual career, a life +devoted to the cause of humanity; she, who had been proud of her +independence and had confidently looked forward to a life of celibacy; +this superior person was in love, and loved as passionately and as +personally as any commonplace woman. She devoutly believed in the +worth of Levitzky's ideas against human love between the sexes, and +the fact that her nerves and imagination went against her head +overwhelmed her with remorse. She was unfaithful not only to her own +ideals, but to the ideals of the man she loved. She knew that Levitzky +felt no love for her. If he had, she would not have loved him. She +longed to tear this feeling, which she felt to be unworthy of her and +in the nature of an insult to him, from her heart; but she knew she +could not. + +After leaving Levitzky and the Anarchists in the café, Sabina walked +slowly towards the Bowery, suffering with love and humiliation, +thinking of Levitzky and of the past, the devoted past which now +seemed deeply wronged. Her despair can perhaps be understood by the +fanatical nun whose years of devotion to her vows are rendered vain by +a sudden impulse of the heart which is yielded to; or by the ambitious +man of affairs who betrays a governmental trust because of the +repeated frenzy of an emotion which wears out his resistance and leads +him to the woman who has charmed and deceived him. + +As Sabina passed through the street her attention was mechanically +caught by the notice in a shop window, which was still dimly lighted, +of an important labor meeting, to take place in a couple of days, at +which a famous German Anarchist was to speak--a man who was coming +from Europe to join the "Movement" in New York, whose books she had +read and loved. Such notices always arrested her eager attention, and +even now habit led her to stop by the window and dully read the entire +poster. The thought of the coming event, which would once have been of +palpitating interest to her, increased her remorse and despair. Of +such great activity as this she had rendered herself incapable. To go +to any such meeting now would be hypocrisy, she felt. The cause she +wanted to love and serve and still did love she could yet never again +be wholehearted about. She bore with her a burden. She seemed to +herself to be a sinful creature, and the devoted life she had led +seemed poisoned by this terrible passion which controlled her. She +felt she never again could look Levitzky in the face; for a terrible +impulse in her was about to drag her from the pedestal where he had +helped to place her; and to drag with her the man she loved from the +impersonal height at which he stood. + +Her passionate nature rebelled at the thought of any compromise with +the ideal. She could not endure life otherwise than as her imagination +dictated--and here was a passion which threatened the existence of all +she approved. What in a colder nature would have been a mere +intellectual phase was with her an unbearably emotional upheaval; and +on the spot she made a resolution conceived in despair but carried out +with logical coolness. As the rebellious thought surged over her and +filled her being with hot emotion she became aware that the shop was +that of an apothecary on East Broadway, whither she had unconsciously +wandered. With set lips she entered, aroused the sleeping clerk, a +Socialist whom she knew, and bought that which soon allayed her +problem without solving it. Early the next morning the clerk found her +lying near the doorway, with an expression of impulsive energy on her +dark face. + +About three days later Blanofsky and his three friends were sitting in +the café on Grand Street, drinking their eternal Russian tea and +talking about Levitzky. + +"I never saw a man so broken," said Blanofsky in his soft voice, "as +Levitzky was by the death of that girl. For a week I feared for his +life, he was so desperate. It seems he met Lefeitkin's clerk, who told +him. He disappeared from the quarter for several days, and no one knew +where he went. Four days ago he came to my room looking like a madman. +His hair was full of mud and his clothes torn and filthy. His eyes +burned in his pale face, and his speech, more voluminous than ever, +was broken and incoherent. He stayed all day, refused to eat, but +talked all the time of Sabina, of her mind, of her rare personality, +of her devotion to the cause. He was interrupted by fits of sobbing. I +did not know that this man of intellect was capable of so great +personal feeling." + +"Levitzky is weak," said Herman Samarovitch, "and inconstant. He has +vivid ideas, and imagination, but he never really cared for the cause. +He was a Socialist before he was an Anarchist. Before that he was an +atheist, which followed a period of religious mysticism. At one time +he was a conventional capitalist in principle, with the English +government as his model. He is easily moved by an idea or an emotion, +but he easily passes to another. He will soon forget this girl's +death, to which he should have been superior. He has no steadfastness, +and is not one of us." + +At this point, Levitzky entered the café. With him was the new +arrival, the German Anarchist. To him Levitzky was talking with great +animation. His words rolled over one another with enthusiasm. + +"Do you know," he said eagerly, his face beaming, to Blanofsky and his +companions, "that our distinguished friend here has consented to +debate to-morrow night with our Socialist friend, Jacob Matz, that +mistaken but able man, on the nature of individual right as +interpreted by the Anarchist on one side and the Socialist on the +other. I have written a poem on liberty which I intend to read at the +meeting. Do you wish to hear it?" + +He drew a manuscript from his pocket and read enthusiastically a poem +in which a turbulent love for man and nature, for social equality and +foaming cataracts was expressed in rich imagery. His face glowed and +he seemed transported. He had forgotten Sabina. + + [Illustration] + + + + +_Charles Dana Gibson says_: "It is like a trip to Paris." + +THE REAL LATIN QUARTER OF PARIS + +By F. Berkeley Smith + + +Racy sketches of the innermost life and characters of the famous +Bohemia of Paris--its grisettes, students, models, balls, studios, +cafes, etc. + +_John W. Alexander_: "It is the real thing." + +_Frederick Remington_: "You have left nothing undone." + +_Ernest Thompson Seton_: "A true picture of the Latin Quarter as I +knew it." + +_Frederick Dielman_, President National Academy of Design: "Makes the +Latin Quarter very real and still invests it with interest and charm." + +_Evening Telegraph_, Philadelphia: "A captivating book." + +_Boston Times_: "A genuine treat." + +_The Argonaut_, San Francisco: "A charming volume. Mr. Smith does not +fail to get at the intimate secrets, the subtle charm of the real +Latin Quarter made famous by Henry Murger and Du Maurier." + +_The Mail and Express_, New York: "When you have read this book you +know the 'Real Latin Quarter' as well as you will ever come to know it +without living there yourself." + +_Boston Herald_: "It pictures the Latin Quarter in its true light." + + +_Water-Color Frontispiece by F. Hopkinson Smith. About 100 original +drawings and camera snap shots by the Author, and two caricatures in +color by the celebrated French caricaturist Sancha. Ornamental Covers. +12mo, Cloth, Price, $1.20, net. Postage, 13 Cents._ + + + + +LOVE AND THE SOUL HUNTERS + +By John Oliver Hobbes + +_Author of "The Gods, Some Morals, and Lord Wickenham," "The Herb +Moon," "Schools for Saints," "Robert Grange," etc., etc._ + + +In this new novel Mrs. Craigie (John Oliver Hobbes) has made, +according to her own statement, the great effort of her life. It is +the most brilliant creation of an author whose talent and versatility +have surprised readers and critics in both Europe and America for +several years. It treats of unique examples of human nature as they +are, and not merely as they ought to be. Swayed by complex motives, +they are always attractive, but often do what is least expected of +them. The story is graphically told, and is full of action. Each +personage is distinctively drawn to the life. + +"There is much that is worth remembering in her writings."--_Mail and +Express_, New York. + +"More than any other woman who is now writing, Mrs. Craigie is, in the +true manly sense, a woman of letters. She is not a woman with a few +personal emotions to express: she is what a woman so rarely is--an +artist."--_The Star_, London. + +"Few English writers have so lapidarian a style of writing as Mrs. +Craigie, and few such a capacity for writing epigrams."--_The Toronto +Globe._ + + _12mo, Cloth._ _$1.50_ + + + + +_A ROMANCE OF A STRANGE COUNTRY_ + +THE INSANE ROOT + +By Mrs. Campbell Praed + +_Author of "Nadine"; "The Scourge Stick"; "As a Watch in the Night," +etc._ + + +This story has the same _motif_ as Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, +and a weird treatment resembling that of Bulwer's "Strange Story." It +will compare favorably in strength and literary quality with either of +these great productions. Isadas Pacha, Ambassador at the Court of St. +James's from Abdullulah Zobeir, Emperor of Abaria, dying at last after +a long life of mixed good and evil, leaves to his physician, Dr. +Marillier, "the insane root," a mandragora root, enclosed in a small +box. Marillier, a suitor of Rachel, the beautiful ward of the Pacha, +envies Ruel Bey, his favored rival. Learning from the papers left by +the Pacha that the mandrake root has marvelous powers, Marillier +succeeds in assuming the body of Ruel who has been accidentally +killed. On this change of identities the fascinating story turns. +After marrying Rachel the problem of consummating the marriage can not +be solved by Marillier, the wraith of the real Ruel preventing. A bolt +of lightning solves the problem. There is a mystery about Rachel, who +turns out to be the Emperor's own daughter. The scenery is partly that +of the Algerian mountains, very graphically and beautifully described. +The supernatural elements are handled in a way to make them seem +actually credible. The storm climax reminds the reader of Hawthorne's +best work in the Marble Fawn. + + _12mo, Cloth._ _380 Pages._ _$1.50_ + + + + +THE NEEDLE'S EYE + +By Florence Morse Kingsley + +_Author of "The Transfiguration of Miss Philura," "Titus," "Prisoners +of the Sea," "Stephen," etc._ + + +"The Needle's Eye" is a remarkable story of modern American life,--not +of one phase, but of many phases, widely different and in startling +contrast. The scenes alternate between country and city. The pure, +free air of the hills, and the foul, stifling atmosphere of the slums; +the sweet breath of the clover fields, and the stench of crowded +tenements are equally familiar to the hero in this novel. The other +characters are found in vine-covered cottages, in humble farmhouses, +in city palaces, and in the poorest tenements of the slums. Immanuel, +the hero, begins life as a foundling, and the chapters telling of his +unhappy infancy and happy boyhood are written with a tenderness, a +pathos, and an intimacy of knowledge and description that touch the +deepest sympathies of the reader. Later, Immanuel finds himself the +heir of a vast fortune. His struggle to use the wealth in relieving +the miseries of the slums demonstrates the truth of the declaration of +Jesus: "It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for +a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." + +Many of the situations in the novel are exceedingly dramatic. Others +sparkle with genuine humor. This is a story to make people laugh, and +cry, and think. + + _Illustrations by F. E. Mears._ _12mo, Cloth._ _$1.50_ + + + + +_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_: "It is a simple, gentle, quietly-humorous +narrative, with several love affairs in it." + +UNDER MY OWN ROOF + +By Adelaide L. Rouse + +_Author of "The Deane Girls," "Westover House," etc._ + + +A story of a "nesting impulse" and what came of it. A newspaper woman +determines to build a home for herself in a Jersey suburb. The story +of its planning is delightfully told, simply and with a +literary-humorous flavor that will appeal to lovers of books and of +the fireside. + +Before the house-building details are allowed to tire the reader, a +love story is begun, and catches the interest. It concerns the +home-builder, an old flame, and an old friend, the third of whom has +become a next-door neighbor. With this romance are entwined a number +of heart affairs as well as warm friendships. + +The style is bright, and the humor genial and pervasive. The "literary +worker" and the "suburbanite" particularly will enjoy the book. Women +of culture everywhere should appreciate its delicate style. + + Illustrations by Harrie A. Stoner. 12mo, Cloth. + Price, $1.20, net; postage, 13 cents. + + + + +JESUS THE JEW + +_AND OTHER ADDRESSES_ + +By Harris Weinstock + +Introduction by Prof. David Starr Jordan + + +Ten straightforward talks by a broad-minded student of the Jewish +Race, explaining alike to Jew and Christian the fundamental and +highest conceptions of liberal Judaism and its relationship in +Christianity. + + +_HIGH PRAISE FROM THE NON-JEWISH PRESS_ + +_Herald and Presbyter_, St. Louis, Mo.: "The author is a man of force +and of large liberality, and goes far beyond what the ordinary +orthodox Jew would be willing to concede." + +_The Outlook_, New York: "It will justify a wide attention from both +Jews and Christians, and in many respects will be of peculiar +helpfulness to some who have no conscious religious faith." + +_News-Letter_, San Francisco: "A very interesting volume, well +written, broad in its tendencies, and one that will be helpful to any +one who reads it, regardless of race or creed." + + +_COMMENDED BY LEADING JEWISH PAPERS_ + +_The Jewish Spectator_, New Orleans: "Its tendency is to remove +prejudices from the minds of non-Jews and to strengthen the faith of +the Jew. Every Israelite in the land should obtain two copies, read +one for his own benefit and comfort, and give the other to a Christian +friend who entertains yet a few prejudices and is desirous of +divesting himself of them." + +_Jewish Ledger_, New Orleans, La.: "It deserves a conspicuous place in +the homes of intelligent people.... Always couched in respectful and +courteous language, and refreshing in logical consideration of the +question." + + _12mo, Cloth, 229 pp._ _$1.00, net; by Mail, $1.07_ + + FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers + NEW YORK & LONDON + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Spirit of the Ghetto, by Hutchins Hapgood + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41028 *** |