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An Out-of-date Story-Writer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.