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Durst Old York Library 1 Digitized by the Internet Arcliive in 2013 http://archive.org/details/spiritofghettostOOhapg_0 II SLi PER I nEW YOP YJHAIJUDa^ A 8TV132aHq asiTAaHT aHT THE THEATRE PRESENTS A PECULIARLY PICTURESQUE SIGHT {See page 116) THE SPIRIT of THE GHETTO STUDIES OF THE JEWISH (^ARTER IN NEW YORK By HUTCHINS HAPGOOD With Drawings from Life by JACOB EPSTEIN NEW YORK AND LONDON FUNK k WAGNALLS COMPANY NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWO Of I. lis. ^ Copyright, 1902 by Funk & Wagnalls Company Printed in the United States of America Published November, 1902 NOTE A number of these chapters have appeared as separate articles in " The Atlantic Monthly," " The Critic," " The Bookman," " The World's Work," "The Boston Transcript," and "The Evening Post" and "The Commercial Ad- vertiser " of New York. To the editors of these publications thanks for permission to republish are gratefully tendered by The author. PREFACE HE Jewish quarter of New York is generally * supposed to be a place of poverty, dirt, igno- rance and immorality — the seat of the sweat- shop, the tenement house, where red-lights " sparkle at night, where the people are queer and repulsive. Well-to-do persons visit the Ghetto " merely from motives of curiosity or philanthropy; writers treat of it "sociologically," as of a place in crying need of improvement. That the Ghetto has an unpleasant aspect is as true as it is trite. But the unpleasant aspect is not the subject of the following sketches. I was led to spend much time in certain poor re- sorts of Yiddish New York not through motives either philanthropic or sociological, but simply by virtue of the charm I felt in men and things there. East Canal Street and the Bowery have interested me more than Broadway and Fifth Avenue. Why, the reader may learn from the present volume — which is an attempt made by a Gentile" to report sympathetically on the character, lives and pursuits of certain east-side Jews with whom he has been in relations of considerable intimacy. The Author. 5 CONTENTS Chapter I P^ge The Old and the New The Old Man The Boy The " Intellectuals " 9 Chapter II Prophets without Honor 421 Submerged Scholars : A Man of God — A Bitter Prophet — A Calm Student The Poor Rabbis : Their Grievances — The " Genu- ine " Article — A Down-Town Specimen — The Neg- lected Type Chapter III The Old and New Woman 71 The Orthodox Jewess : Devotion and Customs The Modern Type : Passionate Socialists — Con- firmed Blue-Stockings Place of Woman in Ghetto Literature Chapter IV Four Poets » ao A Wedding Bard A Champion of Race A Singer of Labor A Dreamer of Brotherhood Chapter V The Stage . 113 Theatres, Actors, and Audience Realism, the Spirit of the Ghetto Theatre The History of the Yiddish Stage 7 CONTENTS Chapter VI Pa?e The Newspapers 177 The Conservative Journals The Socialist Papers The Anarchist Papers Some Picturesque Contributors Chapter VII The Sketch-Writers 199 Some Realists A Cultivated Literary Man American Life Through Russian Eyes A Satirist of Tenement Society Chapter VIII A Novelist 230 Chapter IX The Young Art and its Exponents . . . 254 Chapter X Odd Characters 272 An Out-of-date Story-Writer A Cynical Inventor An Impassioned Critic The Poet of Zionism An Intellectual Debauchee 8 Chapter One %\)t (Z^lli anil t|)e J^etu THE OLD MAN O 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 tra- ditions 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 9 that environment is of a high order of civil- ization. Accordingly, in enlightened America they undergo rapid transformation tho retaining much that is distinctive ; while in Russia, sur- rounded 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 sen- sitive 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 " (win- dow), *^zieling" (ceiling), "never mind," *^alle right," "that'll do," " politzman " (policeman) ; ''em schon 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 cate- gory 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 ''free- thinker." 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 re- quired 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 ped- dler. 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 insur- ance 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. Another way in which the life of the old Jew is affected by his New York environment, perhaps the most im- portant way as far as intellectual and educative influences are concerned, is through the Yid- dish newspapers, which exist nowhere except in this country. They keep him in touch with the world's happenings in a way quite impos- sible 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 13 to the other cube are wound seven times about the left arm. Inside each cube is a white parch- ment 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 un- willing to pronounce the word. 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 Commit- tee 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 some- times 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 14 why the day is cele- brated; 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 dur- ing the year, for every- thing must be fresh and clean on this day. The night before the Pas- sover the remaining leavened bread is gath- ered 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 IS almost died out in New York is for the congre- gation 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 addi- tion to their ceremonies at home, form Talmudic clubs and gather in tenement -house rooms, which they convert into synagogues. In several of the cafes 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 i6 beans and jealously exclude from their society the socialists and freethinkers of the colony who, not unwillingly, have cafes of their own. They all look poor, and many of them are, in fact, ped- dlers, shop-keepers or tailors; but some, not distinguishable in appearance from the proleta- rians, have **made their pile." Some are He- brew scholars, some of the older class of Yid- dish journalists. There are no young people there, for the young bring irreverence and the American spirit, and these cafes are strictly orthodox. In spite, therefore, of his American environ- ment, the old Jew of the Ghetto remains patri- archal, highly trained and educated in a narrow sectarian direc- tion, but entirely igno- rant of modern cul- ture ; 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 unprece- dented 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 intellec- tual anarchist is due to his serious racial charac- teristics. 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. 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 i8 THE MORNING PRAYER to say his prayers every morn- ing 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 19 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 after- wards 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 inter- pretation of the sweet law. 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 prep- aration 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 GOING TO THE SYNAGOGUE Sabbath." The lights are glowing in the candle- sticks, 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 Sat- urday 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 encour- aged 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 environ- ment 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 edu- cation 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 en- tirely lacking. The educational system of the 23 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 in- struction, in the interests of a liberal non-secta- rianism, is entirely secular. English becomes his most familiar language. He achieves a grow- ing comprehension and sympathy with the inde- pendent, 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 Eng- lish, he regards as ^'greenhorns." English be- comes his habitual tongue, even at home, and Yiddish he begins to forget. He still goes to "chaider," but under conditions exceedingly dif- ferent 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. Com- pelled by law to go to the American public school, the boy can attend ''chaider " only before 24 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 ooy goes to a neighboring **chaider." Contempt for the **chaider's" teaching comes the more easily because the boy rarely un- derstands his Hebrew lessons to the full. His real language is English, the teacher's is com- monly 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 ve- hicle 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 law- yer. 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 gener- 25 ally, too, of less scholarship as well as of less devotion. 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 THE "CHAIDER" 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 for- eign 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 de- 27 termine 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 transac- tions, and tends generally *-o 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, wno began his business career on the sidewalks, selling newspapers, blacking boots, dealing in candles, shoe-strings, fruit, etc., and continued it by ped- 28 dling 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 gen- erally 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 en- joys 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, how- ever, than a considerable merchant in the world of business, the little Ghetto boy, born in a patri- archal 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 29 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 conse- quently 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 in- timately 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. Com- ing 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 30 American plunger," he is a little hesitant, though very keen, in business affairs. The con- servatism instilled in him by the pious old greenhorn," his father, is a limitation to his American ''nerve." He likes to deal in ponder- able 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 be- come as big a finan- cial speculator as any of them, but at pres- ent he is pretty well content with his growing business on Broadway and his fine residence up-town. 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 phleg- matic, Napoleonic calm which is almost the most impressive FRIDAY NIGHT PRAY thing in the world to an ordinary man, the young fellow of the Ghetto seems a hesitant lit- tle **dickerer," yet, of course, he is a rising busi- ness man, and, as compared to the world from which he has emerged, a very tremendous entity indeed. It is not strange, therefore, that this pro- gressive 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 ori- gin, to cast off the ethical and religious influ- ences 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 relig- ious 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 Amer- ican 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 con- 32 science, 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 ex- presses, in his manner, great affection and ten- derness 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 par- ents 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 de- lighted. His face beams, and he expresses in every way that deep pleasure which a person takes in the satisfaction of honored proteges." The third considerable influence in the life of the Ghetto boy is that of the socialists. I am in- clined to think that this is the least important and the least desirable of the three in its effect on his character. 33 Socialism as it is agitated in the Jewish quarter consists in a wholesale rejection, often founded on a misunderstanding, of both Ameri- can 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 Rus- sian, 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 in- vented 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 be- tween 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 34 > — 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 Educa- tional Alliance, and those free Hebrew schools which are carried on with definite reference to the boy as an American citizen. The latter dif- fer 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 ac- quaintance with the old literature of the Jews is calculated to deepen and spiritualize the boy's nature. The Educational Alliance is a still better or- ganized and more intelligent institution, having much more the same purpose in view as the best Hebrew schools. Its avowed purpose is to com- bine the American and Hebrew elements, recon- cile fathers and sons by making the former more 35 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 insti- tutions 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 heter- ogeneous 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 al- ready, and some of them belong to solid firms on Wall Street ; although as to business and finan- cial matters they have not yet attained to the most spectacular height. Then there are innu- merable boys' debating clubs, ethical clubs, and literary clubs in the east side ; altogether there is an excitement in ideas and an enthusiastic 3^> energy for acquiring knowledge which has inter- esting 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 suc- cess. 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 de- pend not so much upon him as upon the develop- ment 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 under- lying 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 37 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 be- gan 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 paint- ings of the types of Hester Street an imagina- tive, 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 edu- cation, 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 3S 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 anar- chists, the socialists, the editors, the writers; some of the scholars, poets, playwrights and actors of the quarter. They are the ''enlight- ened" 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 Euro- peans 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 con- ditions 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 39 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 calm- ness 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 cafes of the quarter and become habitually intoxicated with the excitement of 40 IN THESE CAFES THEY MEET AFTER THE THEATRE OR AN EVENING LECTURE 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 cafes 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. Among the "intellectuals" may be classed a certain number of poets, dramatists, musicians, and writers, who are neither socialists nor anar- chists, 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 perse- cuted 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. 43 Chapter Two ^ropfjets t«ttl)out 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 44 he is submerged — poor in physical estate and his moral capital unrecognized by the people among whom he lives. 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 HE IS UNKNOWN AND UNHONORED 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 45 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 "dilet- tante," 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 " Encyclopaedia Britannica." But, nevertheless, 46 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 Judaea 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 47 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 manu- script, 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. When the national language and literature 48 live," he said, ''the nation lives; when dead, so is the nation. ^ '^'^^l: 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 se- crets, much of its beau- • " tiful poetry, would be v lost. I have gone deep ; into the Bible, that greatest book, all my ^^A T ^r^^,. MOSES REICHERSON life, and I know many oi 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 knowl- edge 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 ex- plaining 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 49 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 refer- ence to the neglect of Hebrew scholarship in the Ghetto. His interest was impersonal and de- tached, 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 5i 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 Lightf he put his best efforts, his best thoughts 52 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 material- ism 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 famou^ 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 53 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 re- ferred to some of the other submerged scholars of the Ghetto. His eyes burned with indignation 54 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. 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, sl cyclopedia of Biblical litera- ture, 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 55 been nine years in New York, and, in addition to the great cyclopedia, has written, but not pub- lished, a cyclopedia of Talmudical literature. A History of the Jews," in the Russian lan- guage, 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 cyclo- • K i pedia, he is patient and _ cold. He has not the W^'^h 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 Schwartzbergisex- / REV. H. ROSENBERG treme 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. Rosen- berg had obtained all his learning. He stated indifferently that the Hebrew language and literature is dead and cannot be revived. know," he said, ''that Hebrew literature does not pay, but I cannot stop." With no indigna- tion, 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 emo- tion, all of that being reserved for his cyclopedia. 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 57 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 "SUBMERGED SCHOLARS" 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 5« 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 cafes express every night in impas- sioned 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 Rosen- schweig, 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 discour- aged, and turned to business and politics in- stead ; 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 pub- lished books are a philosophical attack on ma- 59 terialism, 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 60 caps on their heads. They are mainly very poor, Hve 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 sup- ported 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, 6i but these are congregations which are falling off somewhat from their orthodox strictness. 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 posi- tion — men good for nothing, looking for a position. They clap a high hat on their heads, impose on a poor con- gregation with their up-to-dateness and become rabbis without learning or piety. These "fake " rabbis — "rabbis for business only" — are often satirized in the Yid- dish plays given at the Bowery theatres. On the stage they 62 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 interpre- ters 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 down- town 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 up- town 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. 63 Another cause of irritation between the down- town 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 re- formed " 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 Tal- mudical wisdom rests, and who alone can give it out ; not one who exhorts, but who, on applica- tion, 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 64 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. 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 ^^5 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." 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 66 THE RABBI CAN TELL WHETHER OR NOT IT IS KOSHUR 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 in- clined, 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 impres- sive 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 *Maw." 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-split- ting Rabbinical education. The uptown rabbis, preachers," as the down-town rabbi contemp- tuously calls them, send many letters to Rabbi Vidrovitch seeking his help in the untying of knotty points of the 'Maw." It was from him that Israel Zangwill, when the Children of the 68 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 congre- gation, but Cantor Weiss sings only on holidays, for he is not paid enough, he says, to work regu- larly, the cantor sharing in this country a fate similar to that of the rabbi. The famous come- dian of the Ghetto, Mogolesco, was, as a boy, 69 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 accompHshed 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 en- lightment 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 particu- lar between the German and Russian Jewish rabbi. 70 Chapter Three C|)e 0Vti anti jBteto ^omau 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 etats 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 undernour- ished and lack the physical well-being and con- sequent 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 71 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 or- thodox 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 orna- ment. She is, however, with the noticeable assimilative sensitiveness of the Jew, beginning 72 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 HER LIFE IS ABSORBED IN OBSERVING THE RELIGIOUS LAW 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 73 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 com- munity, the masses from which more cultivated types are developing. Many a literary sketch in the newspapers of the quarter portrays these ignorant, simple, devout, housewifely creatures in comic or pa- thetic, 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 fundamen- tally, 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 74 in order to make a fortune. She finds his beard shaved off, and his manners in regard to reUg- ious 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, irre- ligion 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 sim- ple 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 ren- dered 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 de- meanor and tears streaming from her eyes begs the privilege of taking care of the children of her successor. 75 i 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 affec- tionate 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 por- trayal 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 wo- men, is, of course, in a great minority; and this division includes the women even the most slightly affected by modern ideas as well as 76 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 prop- aganda 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 de- voted 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 77 that are open to them, that a number of Ghetto heroines come who are wiUing 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 trag- edy 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 remark- able. 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 in- sincere agitators, the enthusiasm for the cause has diminished, and par- ticularly among the women, who demand perfect integrity or noth- ing; tho there is still a large class of poor sweat-shop women who carry on active propaganda work, make speeches, distrib- ute literature, and go from 78 INTENSELY SERIOUS house to house in a social effort to make converts. 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 Social- ism and from advanced Russian ideals of litera- ture and life. They have lost faith completely in the orthodox religion, have substituted no other, know Russian better than Yiddish, read Tol- stoi, Turgenef and Chekhov, and often put into practice the most radical theories of the *'new woman," particularly those which say that wo- man 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 den- tistry, 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 com- mand of his ambitious wife. always do what she tells me," he said pathetically. 79 The career of a certain woman now practising dentistry in the Ghetto is one of the most inter- esting 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 irresisti- bly 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 intel- lectual ambition. She went alone to St. Peters- burg 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 80 independent professional posi- tion for herself. She believes that all women should have the means by which they may sup- port themselves, and that mar- riage under these conditions would be happier than at pres- 3 ent. 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 in- terest is lost under the new regime, while many practical ad- vantages are gained. Since she has been in America she has^^ furthered the Socialist cause by literary sketches published in the Yiddish news- papers, altho she has been too busy to take any direct part in the movement. 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 81 A RUSSIAN GIRL-STUDENT 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, un- interested in great principles, and essentially frivolous, incapable of devotion to persons or to "movements," reading books only for amuse- ment, 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, be- cause of their connection with the great move- ment, 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 aesthetic and imaginative limitations. After the Nihilists had left, the mis- guided American used the words "interesting" 82 and ''amusing " in connection with them ; where- upon 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 "sen- sible" 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 pro- portion. 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 conscious- ness 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. But the charm of sincere feeling they have ; and, in an intellectual race, that feeling shapes 83 itself into definite criticism of society. Emotion- ally strong and attached by Russian tradition to a rebellious doctrine, they are deeply unconven- tional 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 de- veloped 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 mar- riage which binds her to an inferior man. Mar- ried 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 85 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 criti- cises 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 theo- ries. 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 de- spondency. "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 86 from the midst of which fierce protests by wives and mothers are implicitly given. 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 ob- serves the complicated formulae on all the holi- days 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 for- bids the theatre, but even the slightly disil- lusioned 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 role, 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 87 the fire, made by him, without tech- nically 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 con- demned 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 re- spect the free thinking of the people grows apace, and love- marriages in the quarter are A RUSSIAN TYPE ou the iucrease. In matters of taste and inclination between the sexes, however, there are some qualities quite start- ling LO 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 88 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 Ameri- can girl. 89 Chapter Four In East Canal Street, in the heart of the east side, are many of the little Russian Jewish cafes, 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 cafes. The sombre and earnest qualities of the race, emphasized by the special condi- tions, 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 cafe-keepers themselves are thought- 90 ful 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 trans- lation of some of his poems. Two of the other three are equally well known, but only to the Jewish people. One is famous throughout Jew- ish 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 9^ 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 extem- pore. 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 feel- ing and idea quivers into poetic 111 1} expression, and who preserves only an accidental part of what he does. 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 92 / ELIAKIM ZUNSER 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 nis 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. don't write much any more," he said in his careless Yiddish; 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 feel- ing for his position as an individual, if he ever 93 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 chil- dren — 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 mem- ories of his childhood were brought up by Zun- ser'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 melan- choly. ^'The Mail Wagon" is its title. The mail wagon brings joy and sorrow, hope and 94 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 mar- row of my children ? " Another song the old man read aloud was composed in his early childhood, and is repre- sentative 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 melan- choly, 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 naive 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. 95 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 educa- tion was consequently slight, tho he picked up a little of the Talmud and sang Isaiah and Jere- miah 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. In- genuous 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 Zun- 96 ser was pressed into the service. He was then thirteen. It was in the barracks that he com- posed 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 cir- culated in written copies. Zunser is said to be the first man to write songs in Yiddish, and soon he became famous. It was *the lace- maker 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 wed- ding 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. 97 The character of Zunser's poetry is what might be expected from his popularity, sUght 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 admis- sible 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 im- aginative work of this serious and moral people. The intellectual element is always noticeable, even in simple Zunser, the poet of the people. 98 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 maskU, 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 An- glo-Saxon American employs the term to mean those persons superficially interested in much, deeply interested in nothing ; but these social- istic 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 intellec- tuals. They leave him to the learned among old 99 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, iden- tified himself with his musical and fanciful creation. But Dolitzki, who has been recently a travelling agent for a Yiddish news- paper 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 de- tails and events. Dolitzki's life and work are identified with the MENAHEM DOLITZKI lOO 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 e^^ent partly determined the character of his first writ- ings — patriotic poems of culture, reasoned out- cries against the religious prejudice of the or- thodox Jews, the Jews who take their stand on the Talmud, led by the hair-splitting rabbi, up- holders 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 He- brew 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 'Mnfidels." 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 lOI 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 compli- cated symbolical language, lacking, as compared with Zunser's poetry, spontaneity, wholly want- ing 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 ap- peared, 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, de- claring 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, I02 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 Do- litzki have shown themselves able to cope with their hard conditions, but the sad little Rosen- feld, 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. Much younger than Zunser or Dolitzki, Mor- ris 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 103 revolution. The very night he was born the world began to oppress him, for insurgents threw rocks through the window. His grand- father was rich, but his father lost the money in business, and Morris received very little educa- tion — only the Talmud and a little German, MORRIS ROSENFELD 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. would like to serve my coun- 104 try," 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 feel- ings, and because my surroundings were sad." Next to Zunser, Rosenfeld is the most popular of the four Jewish poets. Zunser is most pop- ular in Russia, Rosenfeld in this country. Both write in the universal Yiddish or ^'jargon," both are simple and spontaneous, musical and un- tutored. 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 105 Hebrew village and the country at large. Rosenfeld in weary accents sings to the maimed spirit of the Jewish slums. It is a fresh, naive 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 re- spects 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 1 06 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 occa- sion an intellectual debauchL It was in a Canal Street cafe, where Wald was talking in an ex- cited tone to several other intellectuals. He is a short, stocky man, with a suggestion of physi- cal power. His eyes are brilliant, and there seems to be going on in him a sort of intellectual consumption. He is restlessly intense in man- ner, 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. 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 cafes. But in these places he practically lives, disputing, arguing, expound- ing, 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 107 an article for an east side newspaper. When he has collected three or four dollars he quits the newspaper office and seeks again his be- loved cafe, violently to impart his quick-coming thoughts and impulses. Only after his money is gone — and it lasts him many days — does he re- turn 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 conse- quence ; then he lost his Jewish faith altogether; then his whole CuUur-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, how- ever, 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 109 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 Rus- sia, 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 long- ing. 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 na- ture 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, no the excitement of beauty, but no enjoyment of pure beauty of form. The race is still too un- happy, 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 na- ture, and one form is as turbulent as the other. He writes, for instance, of the prisoner in Siberia, his verses filled with passionate rebel- lion. Then he tells how he dreamed beside the gleaming river, and of the fancies that passed through his brain — net 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 civil- ized, 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 cafe, his whole body alive with emotion, with his youthful, open face, his con- stant 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 in- telligence 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. Chatpter Five 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, triv- ial amusement booths of all sorts, cheap lodg- ing-houses, ten-cent shops and Irish-American tough saloons, the theatres of the chosen people alone present the serious as well as the trivial in- terests 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 journal- ist. 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 113 proportionate influence on the character of the theatrical productions, which, nevertheless, re- main 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 ele- ment, 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 repre- senting 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 or- ders ; the newspapers of the Ghetto have their constituency, which sometimes hires the theatre. 114 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 cor- porate 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 holi- days, 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 legiti- mate Jewish holiday, the night before the Sab- bath. 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 influ- ences, to which the Jews are more and more sensitive. Through economic necessity Jewish workingmen are compelled to work on Saturday, 115 and, like other workingmen, look upon Saturday night as a holiday, in spite of the frown of the orthodox. Into Sunday, too, they extend their freedom, and so in the Ghetto there are now three popularly recognized nights on which to go with all the world to the theatre. On those nights the theatre presents a pecu- liarly picturesque sight. Poor workingmen and women with their babies of all ages fill the theatre. Great enthusiasm is manifested, sin- cere laughter and tears accompany the sincere acting on the stage. Pedlars of soda-water, candy, of fantastic gewgaws of many kinds, mix freely with the audience between the acts. Conversation during the play is received with strenuous hisses, but the falling of the curtain is the signal for groups of friends to get together and gossip about the play or the affairs of the week. Introductions are not necessary, and the Yiddish community can then be seen and ap- proached with great freedom. On the stage curtain are advertisements of the wares of Hes- ter Street or portraits of the ''star" actors. On the programmes and circulars distributed in the audience are sometimes amusing announcements of coming attractions or lyric praise of the ''stars." Poetry is not infrequent, an example of which, literally translated, is : 1 16 Labor, ye stars, as ye will. Ye cannot equal the artist ; In the garden of art ye shall not flourish ; Ye can never achieve his fame. Can you play Hamlet like him ? The Wild King, or the Huguenots ? Are you gifted with feeling So much as to imitate him like a shadow ? Your fame rests on the pen ; On the show-cards your flight is high ; But on the stage every one can see How your greatness turns to ashes, Tomashevsky ! Artist great ! No praise is good enough for you ; Every one remains your ardent friend. Of all the stars you remain the king. You seek no tricks, no false quibbles ; One sees Truth itself playing. Your appearance is godly to us ; Every movement is full of grace ; Pleasing is your every gesture ; Sugar-sweet your every turn ; You remain the King of the Stage ; Everything falls to your feet. On the playboards outside the theatre, con- taining usually the portrait of a star, are also lyric and enthusiastic announcements. Thus, on the return of the great Adler, who had been ill, it was announced on the boards that **the splendid eagle has spread his wings again." The Yiddish actors, as may be inferred from the verses quoted, take themselves with peculiar seriousness, justified by the enthusiasm, almost worship, with which they are regarded by the 117 people. Many a poor Jew, man or girl, who makes no more than $io a week in the sweat- shop, will spend $5 of it on the theatre, which is practically the only amusement of the Ghetto Jew. He has not the loafing and sporting in- stincts of the poor Christian, and spends his money for the theatre rather than for drink. It is not only to see the play that the poor Jew goes to the theatre. It is to see his friends and the actors. With these latter he, and more frequently she, try in every way to make ac- quaintance, but commonly are compelled to adore at a distance. They love the songs that are heard on the stage, and for these the de- mand is so great that a certain bookshop on the east side makes a specialty of publishing them. The actor responds to this popular enthusiasm with sovereign contempt. He struts about in the cafes on Canal and Grand Streets, conscious of his greatness. He refers to the crowd as Moses" with superior condescension or hu- morous vituperation. Like thieves, the actors have a jargon of their own, which is esoteric and jealously guarded. Their pride gave rise a year or two ago to an amusing strike at the People's Theatre. The actors of the three Yiddish companies in New York are normally paid on the share rather than the salary sys- 118 tern. In the case of the company now at the People's Theatre, this system proved very prof- itable. The star actors, Jacob Adler and Boris Thomashevsky, and their wives, who are ac- tresses — Mrs. Adler being the heavy realistic tragedienne and Mrs. Thomashevsky the star soubrette — have probably received on an average during that time as much as $125 a week for each couple. But they, with Mr. Edelstein, the business man, are lessees of the theatre, run the risk and pay the expenses, which are not small. The rent of the theatre is $20,000 a year, and the weekly expenses, besides, amount to about $1,100. The subordinate actors, who risk noth- ing, since they do not share the expenses, have made amounts during this favorable period ranging from $14 a week on the average for the poorest actors to $75 for those just beneath the ''stars." But, in spite of what is exceedingly good pay in the Bowery, the actors of this theatre formed a union, and struck for wages instead of shares. This however, was only an incidental feature. The real cause was that the management of the theatre, with the energetic Thomashevsky at the head, insisted that the actors should be prompt at rehearsals, and if they were not, indulged in unseemly epithets. The actors' pride was aroused, and the union 119 was formed to insure their ease and dignity and to protect them from harsh words. The man- agement imported actors from Chicago. Several of the actors here stood by their employers, notably Miss Weinblatt, a popular young in- genue, who, on account of her great memory is called the ''Yiddish Encyclopedia," and Miss Gudinski, an actress of commanding presence. Miss Weinblatt forced her father, once an actor, now a farmer, into the service of the management. But the actors easily triumphed. Misses Gudin- ski and Weinblatt were forced to join the union, Mr. Weinblatt returned to his farm, the scabs" were packed off to Philadelphia, and the wages system introduced. A delegation was sent to Philadelphia to throw cabbages at the new ac- tors, who appeared in the Yiddish performances in that city. The triumphant actors now receive on the average probably $io to $15 a week less than under the old system. Mr. Conrad, who began the disaffection, receives a salary of $29 a week, fully $10 less than he received for months before the strike. But the dignity of the Yid- dish actor is now placed beyond assault. As one of them recently said : "We shall no longer be spat upon nor called *dog.* " The Yiddish actor is so supreme that until recently a regular system of hazing playwrights 120 was in vogue. Joseph Latteiner and Professor M. Horowitz were long recognized as the only legitimate Ghetto playwrights. When a new writer came to the theatre with a manuscript, various were the pranks the actors would play. They would induce him to try, one after another, all the costumes in the house, in order to help him conceive the characters ; or they would make him spout the play from the middle of the stage, they themselves retiring to the gallery to see how it sounded." In the midst of his exer- tions they would slip away, and he would find himself shouting to the empty boards. Or, in the midst of a mock rehearsal, some actor would shout, He is coming, the great Professor Horowitz, and he will eat you " ; and they would rush from the theatre with the panic-stricken playwright following close at their heels. The supremacy of the Yiddish actor has, how- ever, its humorous limitations. The orthodox Jews who go to the theatre on Friday night, the beginning of Sabbath, are commonly somewhat ashamed of themselves and try to quiet their consciences by a vociferous condemnation of the actions on the stage. The actor, who through the exigencies of his role, is compelled to appear on Friday night with a cigar in his mouth, is frequently greeted with hisses and strenuous cries of Shame, shame, smoke on the Sabbath ! ** from the proletarian hypo- crites in the gallery. The plays at these the- tres vary in a general way with the varying audiences of which I have spoken above. The thinking so- cialists naturally select a less violent play than the comparatively illogical an- archists. Societies of rela- tively conservative Jews desire a historical play in which the religious He- brew in relation to the per- secuting Christian is put in pathetic and melodra- matic situations. There are a very large number of ''culture" pieces produced, which, roughly speaking, are plays in which the difference be- tween the Jew of one generation and the next is dramatically portrayed. The pathos or tragedy involved in differences of faith and ''point of view" between the old rabbi and his more enlightened children is expressed in many his- torical plays of the general character of Uriei Acosta, tho in less lasting form. Such plays. MR. MOSHKOVITZ 122 however, are called "historical plunder" by that very up-to-date element of the intellectual Ghetto which is dominated by the Russian spirit of realism. It is the demand of these fierce real- ists that of late years has produced a supply of theatrical productions attempting to present a faithful picture of the actual conditions of life. Permeating all these kinds of plays is the amusement instinct pure and simple. For the benefit of the crowd of ignorant people gro- tesque humor, popular songs, vaudeville tricks, are inserted everywhere. Of these plays the realistic are of the most value,* for they often give the actual Ghetto life with surprising strength and fidelity. The past three years have been their great seasons, and have developed a large crop of new playwrights, mainly journalists who write miscellaneous arti- cles for the east side newspapers. Jacob Gor- din, of whom we shall have frequent occasion to speak, has been writing plays for several years, and was the first realistic playwright ; he remains the strongest and most prominent in this kind of play. Professor Horowitz, who is now the lessee of the Windsor Theatre, situated on the Bowery, between Grand and Canal Streets, represents, along with Joseph Latteiner, the conservative * See text , section on "Realism." i23 and traditional aspects of the stage. He is an interesting man, fifty-six years of age, and has been connected with the Yiddish stage practi- cally since its origin. His father was a teacher in a Hebrew school, and he himself is a man of uncommon learning. He has made a great study of the stage, has written one hundred and sixty-seven plays, and claims to be an authority on dramaturgic* Latteiner is equally productive, but few of their plays are anything more than Yiddish adaptations of old operas and melo- dramas in other languages. Long runs are impossible on the Yiddish stage and conse- quently the playwrights produce many plays and are not very scrupulous in their methods. The absence of dramatic criticism and the ignorance of the audience enable them to **crib " with im- punity. As one of the actors said, Latteiner and Horowitz and their class took their first plays from some foreign source and since then have been repeating themselves. The actor said that when he is cast in a Latteiner play he does not need to learn his part. He needs only to understand the general situation ; the char- acter and the words he already knows from having appeared in many other Latteiner plays. The professor, nevertheless, naturally regards himself and Latteiner as the ''real" Yiddish 124 playwrights. For many years after the first bands of actors reached the New York Ghetto these two men held undisputed sway. Latteiner leaned to "romantic," Horowitz to culture," plays, and both used material which was mainly historical. The professor regards that as the bright period of the Ghetto stage. Since then there has been, in his opinion, a decadence which began with the translation of the classics into Yiddish. Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and plays of Schiller, were put upon the stage and are still being performed. Sometimes they are almost literally translated, sometimes adapted until they are realistic representations of Jewish life. Gordin's Yiddish King Lear, for instance, repre- sents Shakespeare's idea only in the most general way, and weaves about it a sordid story of Jewish character and life. Of Hamlet there are two versions, one adapted, in which Shake- speare's idea is reduced to a ludicrous shadow, the interest lying entirely in the presentation of Jewish customs. The first act of the Yiddish version represents the wedding feast of Hamlet's mother and uncle. In the Yiddish play the uncle is a rabbi in a small village in Russia. He did not poison Hamlet's father but broke the latter's heart by wooing and winning his queen. Hamlet is off some- 126 where getting educated as a rabbi. While he is gone his father dies. Six weeks afterwards the son returns in the midst of the wedding feast, and turns the feast into a funeral. Scenes of rant follow between mother and son, Ophelia and Hamlet, interspersed with jokes and sneers at the sect of rabbis who think they communi- cate with the angels. The wicked rabbi con- spires against Hamlet, trying to make him out a nihilist. The plot is discovered and the wicked rabbi is sent to Siberia. The last act is the grave- yard scene. It is snowing violently. The grave is near a huge windmill. Ophelia is brought in on the bier. Hamlet mourns by her side and is married, according to the Jewish custom, to the dead woman. Then he dies of a broken heart. The other version is almost a literal translation. To these translations of the classics, Professor Horowitz objects on the ground that the igno- rant Yiddish public cannot understand them, because what learning they have is limited to distinctively Yiddish subjects and traditions. Another important step in what the professor calls the degeneration of the stage was the introduction a few years ago of the American pistol" play — meaning the fierce melodrama which has been for so long a characteristic of the English plays produced on the Bowery. 127 But what has contributed more than anything else to what the good man calls the present deplorable condition of the theatre was the advent of realism. " It was then," said the professor one day with calm indignation, "that the genuine Yiddish play was persecuted. Young writers came from Russia and swamped the Ghetto with scurrilous attacks on me and Latteiner. No number of the newspaper ap- peared that did not contain a scathing criticism. They did not object to the actors, who in reality were very bad, but it was the play they aimed at. These writers knew nothing about drama- iurgiet but their heads were filled with senseless realism. Anything historical and distinctively Yiddish they thought bad. For a long time Latteiner and I were able to keep their realistic plays off the boards, but for the last few years there has been an open field for everybody. The result is that horrors under the mask of realism have been put upon the stage. This year is the worst of all — characters butchered on the stage, the coarsest language, the most revolting situa- tions, without ideas, with no real material. It cannot last, however. Latteiner and I continue with our real Yiddish plays, and we shall yet regain entire possession of the field." At least this much may fairly be conceded to 128 Professor Horowitz — that the realistic writers in what is in reality an excellent attempt often go to excess, and are often unskilful as far as stage construction is concerned. In the reaction from plays with pleasant" endings, they tend to prefer equally unreal "unpleasant" endings, "onion" plays, as the opponents of the realists call them. They, however, have written a num- ber of plays which are distinctively of the New York Ghetto, and which attempt an unsenti- mental presentation of truth. A rather extended description of these plays is given in the next section. Professor Horowitz's plays, on the con- trary, are largely based upon the sentimental representation of inexact Jewish history. They herald the glory and wrongs of the Hebrew peo- ple, and are badly constructed melodramas of conventional character. Another class of plays written by Professor Horowitz, and which have occasionally great but temporary prosperity, are what he calls Zeiistucke* Some American news- paper sensation is rapidly dramatized and put hot on the boards, such as Marie Barberi, Dr, Bu- chanan and Dr* Harris* The three theatres — the People's, the Wind- sor and the Thalia, which is on the Bowery opposite the Windsor — are in a general way very similar in the character of the plays pro- 1 29 duced, in the standard of acting and in the char- acter of the audience. There are, however, some minor differences. The People's is the ''swell- est " and probably the least characteristic of the three. It panders to the uptown" element of the Ghetto, to the downtown tradesman who is beginning to climb a little. The baleful influence in art of the nowveaux riches has at this house its Ghetto expression. There is a tendency there to imitate the showy qualities of the Broadway theatres — melodrama, farce, scenery, etc. No ba- bies are admitted, and the house is exceedingly clean in comparison with the theatres farther down the Bowery. Three years ago this com- pany were at the Windsor Theatre, and made so much money that they hired the People's, that old home of Irish-American melodrama, and this atmosphere seems slightly to have affected the Yiddish productions. Magnificent performances quite out of the line of the best Ghetto drama have been attempted, notably Yiddish dramati- zations of successful up-town productions. Hauptman's Versunkene Glocke, Sapho, Quo Vadis, ^ and other popular Broadway plays in flimsy adaptations were tried with little success, as the Yiddish audiences hardly felt themselves at home in these unfamiliar scenes and settings. The best trained of the three companies is at 130 present that of the Thalia Theatre. Here many excellent realistic plays are given. Of late years, the great playwright of the colony, Jacob Gordin, has written mainly for this theatre. There, too, is the best of the younger actresses, Mrs. Bertha Kalisch. She is the prettiest woman on the Ghetto stage and was at one time the leading lady of the Imperial Theatre at Bucharest. She takes the leading woman parts in plays like Fedora, Magda and The Jewish Zaza* The principal actor at this theatre is David Kessler, who is one of the best of the Ghetto actors in realistic parts, and one of the worst when cast, as he often is, as the romantic lover. The actor of most prominence among the young- er men is Mr. Moshkovitch, who hopes to be a "star" and one of the management. When the union was formed he was in a quandary. Should he join or should he not ? He feared it might be a bad precedent, which the actors would use against him when he became a star. And yet he did not want to get them down on him. So before he joined he entered solemn protests at all the cafes on Canal Street. The strike, he maintained, was unnecessary. The actors were well paid and well treated. Discipline should be maintained. But he would join because of his universal sympathy with actors and with the 131 poor — as a matter of sentiment merely, against his better judgment. The company at the Windsor is the weakest, so far as acting is concerned, of the three. Very few realistic" plays are given there, for Pro- fessor Horowitz is the lessee, and he prefers the historical Jewish opera and ''culture" plays. Besides, the company is not strong enough to undertake successfully many new productions, altho it includes some good actors. Here Mrs. Prager vies as a prima-donna with Mrs. Karb of the People's and Mrs. Kalisch of the Thalia. Professor Horowitz thinks she is far better than the other two. As he puts it, there are two and a half prima-donnas in the Ghetto — at the Wind- sor Theatre there is a complete one, leaving one and a half between the People's and the Thalia. Jacob Adler of the People's, the profes- sor thinks, is no actor, only a remarkable carica- turist. As Adler is the most noteworthy repre- sentative of the realistic actors of the Ghetto, the professor's opinion shows what the tradi- tional Yiddish playwright thinks of realism. The strong realistic playwright, Jacob Gordin, the professor admits, has a "biting" dialogue, and "unconsciously writes good cultural plays which he calls realistic, but his realistic plays, properly speaking, are bad caricatures of life." 133 The managers and actors of the three theatres criticise one another indeed with charming di- rectness, and they all have their followers in the Ghetto and their special cafes on Grand or Canal Streets, where their particular prejudices are sym- pathetically expressed. The actors and lessees of the People's are proud of their fine theatre, proud that no babies are brought there. There is a great dispute between the supporters of this theatre and those of the Thalia as to which is the stronger company and which produces the most realistic plays. The manager of the Thalia maintains that the People's is sensational, and that his theatre alone represents true realism ; while the supporter of the People's points scorn- fully to the large number of operas produced at the Thalia. They both unite in condemning the Windsor, Professor Horowitz's theatre, as producing no new plays and as hopelessly be- hind the times, " full of historical plunder." An episode in The Ragpicker of Paris, played at the Windsor when the present People's company were there, amusingly illustrates the jealousy which exists between the companies. An old beggar is picking over a heap of moth-eaten, coverless books, some of which he keeps and some rejects. He comes across two versions of a play. The TolVs House with the boarder, — a young man whom they have been forced to take into the house because of their poverty. He is full of ideas and philosophy, and the two women fall in love with him, and give him all the good things to eat. When the laborer returns from his hard day's work, he finds that there is nothing to eat, and that his wife and daughter are going to the play with the boarder. The women despise the poor man, who is fit only to work, eat, and sleep. The wife philosophizes on the atrocity of marrying a man without intellectual interests, and finally drinks carbolic acid. This Ibsen idea is set in a picture rich with realistic detail : the dialect, the poverty, the types of character, the humor of Yiddish New York. Jacob Adler plays the husband, and displays a vivid imagina- tion for details calculated to bring out the man's beseeching bestiality : his filthy manners, his physical ailments, his greed, the quickness of his anger and of resulting pacification. Like most of the realistic plays of the Ghetto, Minna is a genuine play of manners. It has a general idea, and presents also the setting and charac- ters of reality. The Slaughter^ written by Gordin, and with the main masculine character taken by David Kess- ler, an actor of occasionally great realistic 143 strength, is the story of the symbolic murder of a fragile young girl by her parents, who force her to marry a rich man who has all the vices and whom she hates. The picture of the poor house, of the old mother and father and half-witted step- son with whom the girl is unconsciously in love, in its faithfulness to life is typical of scenes in many of these plays. It is rich in character and mtlku drawing. There is another scene of miser- able life in the second act. The girl is married and living with the rich brute. In the same house is his mistress, curt and cold, and two children by a former wife. The old parents come to see the wife ; she meets them with the joy of starved affection. But the husband enters and changes the scene to one of hate and vio- lence. The old mother tells him, however, of the heir that is to come. Then there is a su- perb scene of naive joy in the midst of all the sordid gloom. There is rapturous delight of the old people, turbulent triumph of the husband, and satisfaction of the young wife. They make a holiday of it. Wine is brought. They all love one another for the time. The scene is repre- sentative of the way the poor Jews welcome their offspring. But indescribable violence and abuse follow, and the wife finally kills her husband, in a scene where realism riots into 144 burlesque, as it frequently does on the Yid- dish stage. But for absolute, intense realism Gordin's Wild Man, unrelieved by a problem idea, is un- rivaled. An idiot boy falls in love with his step- mother without knowing what love is. He is abused by his father and brother, beaten on account of his ineptitudes. His sister and an- other brother take his side, and the two camps revile each other in unmistakable language. The father marries again ; his new wife is a heartless, faithless woman, and she and the daughter quar- rel. After repeated scenes of brutality to the idiot, the daughter is driven out to make her own living. Adler's portraiture of the idiot is a great bit of technical acting. The poor fellow is filled with the mysterious wonderings of an incapable mind. His shadow terrifies and interests him. He philosophizes about life and death. He is puzzled and worried by everything ; the slightest sound preys on him. Physically alert, his senses serve only to trouble and terrify the mind which cannot interpret what they present. The bur- lesque which Mr. Adler puts into the part was inserted to please the crowd, but increases the horror of it, as when Lear went mad ; for the Elizabethan audiences laughed, and had their souls wrung at the same time. The idiot Indi- es crously describes his growing love. In pantomime he tells a long story. It is evident, even without words, that he is constructing a complicated symbolism to express what he does not know. He falls into epilepsy and joins stiffly in the riotous dance. The play ends so fearfully that it shades into mere burlesque. This horrible element in so many of these plays marks the point where realism passes into fan- tastic sensationalism. The facts of life in the Ghetto are in themselves unpleasant, and conse- quently it is natural that a dramatic exaggera- tion of them results in something poignantly disagreeable. The intense seriousness of the Russian Jew, which accounts for what is excel- lent in these plays, explains also the rasping falseness of the extreme situations. It is a cur- ious fact that idiots, often introduced in the Yid- dish plays, amuse the Jewish audience as much as they used to the Elizabethan mob. One of the most skillful of Gordin's Yiddish adaptations is The Oath, founded on Hauptman's Fuhrmann HenscheL In the first act a dying peas- ant is exhibited on the stage. In Hauptman's play it is a woman ; in Gordin's it is a man. He is racked with coughing. A servant clatters over the floor with her heavy boots. Another servant feeds the sick man from a coarse bowl and the 146 steward works at the household accounts. The dying man's wife, and their little boy, enter and it is apparent that something has been going on between her and the steward. They and the servants dine realistically and coarsely and neglect the dying man. When they leave, the dying man teaches his son how to say " Kaddish " for his soul when he is dead. When he dies he makes his wife swear that she will never marry again. In the second act she is about to marry the steward, and the Jewish customs are here used, as is often the case with the Yiddish playwright, to intensify the dramatic effect of a scene. It is just a year from the time of her husband's death, and the candles are burning, therefore, on the table. According to the orthodox belief the soul of the dead is present when the candles burn. The little boy, feeling that his mother is about to marry again, blows out the candles. The mother, horror-stricken, rushes to him and asks him why he did it. I did not want my father to see that you are going to marry again," says the little fellow. It was an affecting scene and left few dry eyes in the audience. At the beginning of the third act the wife and servant are living together, married. He comes on the stage, sleepy, brutal, calling loudly for a 147 drink, abuses the little boy and quarrels with his wife ; he is a crude, dishonorable, coarse brute. He drives away a faithful servant and returns to his swinish slumber. An old couple, the woman being the sister of the dead man, who are always torturing the wife with having broken her vow, hint to her that her new husband is too attentive to the maid-servant. She is angry and incredulous, and calls the maid to her, but when she sees her in the doorway, before a word is spoken, she realizes it is true, and sends her away. The husband enters and she passionately taxes him. He admits it, but justifies himself: he is young, a high-liver, etc., why shouldn't he ? Just then the child is brought in, drowned in the river nearby. In the beginning of the fourth and last act the husband again appears as a riotous, jovial fellow. He has played a joke and turned a driver out of his cart, and he nearly splits his sides with merriment. Drunk, he admirably sings a song and dances. His wife enters. She hears her vow repeated by the winds, by the trees, everywhere. Her dead child haunts her. Her husband has stolen and misspent their money. She talks with the faithful servant about the maid's baby. She wanders about at night, unable to sleep. Her brute husband calls to her from the house, saying 148 he is afraid to sleep alone. Another talk ensues between them. He asks her why she is old so soon. She burns the house and herself, the neighbors rush in, and the play is over. Some of the more striking of the realistic plays on the Ghetto stage have been partly described, but realism in the details of character and setting appears in all of them, even in comic opera and melodrama. In many the element of revolt, even if it is not the basis of the play, is expressed in occasional dialogues. Burlesque runs through them all, but burlesque, after all, is a comment on the facts of life. And all these points are em- phasized and driven home by sincere and forcible acting. Crude in form as these plays are, and unpleas- ant as they often are in subject and in the life portrayed, they are yet refreshing to persons who have been bored by the empty farce and inane cheerfulness of the uptown theatres. THE HISTORY OF THE YIDDISH STAGE The Yiddish stage, founded in Roumania in 1876 by Abraham Goldfaden, has reached its highest development in the city of New York, where there are seventy or eighty professional actors; not far from a dozen playwrights, of 149 whom three have written collectively more than three hundred plays; dramas on almost every subject, produced on the inspiration of various schools of dramatic art ; and an enormous Rus- sian Jewish colony, which fills the theatres and creates so strong a demand that the stage re- sponds with a distinctive, complete, and interest- ing popular art. The best actor now in the Ghetto, with one exception, was in the original company. That exception, with the help of a realistic playwright introduced an important element in the develop- ment of the stage. With the lives of these three men the history of the Yiddish stage is inti- mately connected. The first actor was a singer in the synagogue of Bucharest, the first play- wright a composer of Yiddish songs. The foun- dation of the Yiddish stage might therefore be said to lie in the Bucharest synagogue and the popular music-hall performance. Zelig Mogalesco, the best comedian in the New York Ghetto, has seen, altho not quite forty years of age, the birth of the Yiddish stage, and may survive its death. He was born in Koloraush, a town in the province of Bessarabia, near Roumania. His father was a poor shop- keeper, and Mogalesco never went to school. But he was endowed by nature with a remark- able voice and ear, and composed music with easy felicity. The population of the town was orthodox Jewish, and consequently no theatre was allowed. It was therefore in the synagogue that the musical appetite of the Jews found sat- isfaction. It was the habit of the poor people to hire as inexpensive a cantor as possible, and this cantor might very well be ignorant of everything except singing. Yet these cantors were so pop- ular that the famous ones travelled from town to town, in much the same way that the visiting German actor — Cast — does to-day, and sometimes charged admission fees. When Mogalesco was nine years old, Nissy of the town of Bells, the most famous cantor in the south of Russia, visited Mogalesco's town. The boy's friends urged him to visit the great man and display his voice. Little Mogalesco, with his mezzo-soprano, went to the inn, and Nissy was astounded. "My dear boy," he said, *'go home and fetch your parents." With them the cantor signed a contract by which Zelig was bound to him as a kind of musical apprentice for three years. The boy was to receive his board and clothing, five rubles, the first year, ten the second, and fifteen the third — fifteen dollars for the three years. Soon Mogalesco became widely known among 151 the cantors of South Russia. In six months he could read music so well that they called him " Little Zelig, the music-eater." At the end of the first year the leading cantor of Bucharest, Israel Kupfer, who, by the way, has been cantor in a New York synagogue of the east side, went to Russia to secure the services of Mogalesco. To avoid the penalties of a broken contract, Kupfer hurried with little Zelig to Roumania, and the boy remained in Bucharest for several years. At the age of fourteen he conducted a choir of twenty men under Kupfer. He also be- came director of the chorus in the Gentile opera. While there he began **to burn," as he expressed it, with a desire to go on the stage, but the Gen- tiles would not admit the talented Jew. It was when Mogalesco was about twenty years old that the Yiddish stage was born. In 1876 or 1877, Abraham Goldfaden went to Bu- charest. This man had formerly been a success- ful merchant in Russia, but had failed. He was a poet, and to make a living he called that art into play. In Russia he had written many Yid- dish songs, set them to music, and sung them in private. In the society in which he lived he deemed that beneath his dignity, but when he lost his money he went to Bucharest and there on the stage sang his own poems, the music for 152 which he took from many sources. He became a kind of music-hall performer, but did not long remain satisfied with this modest art. His dissatisfaction led him to create what later de- veloped into the present Yiddish theatre. The Talmud prohibited the stage, but at the time when Goldfaden was casting about for some- thing to do worthy of his genius, the gymnasia were thrown open to the Jews, and the result was a more tolerant spirit. Therefore, Gold- faden decided to found a Yiddish theatre. He went to Kupfer, the cantor, and Kupfer rec- ommended Mogalesco as an actor for the new company. Goldfaden saw the young man act, and the comedy genius of Mogalesco helped in the initial idea of a Yiddish play. Mogalesco at first refused to enter into the scheme. A Yid- dish drama seemed too narrow to him, for he aspired to the Christian stage. But when Gold- faden offered to adopt him and teach him the Gentile languages Mogalesco agreed and became the first Yiddish actor. Other singers in Kup- fer's choir also joined Goldfaden's company. Thus the foundation of the Yiddish stage lay in the Bucharest synagogue. The beginnings, of course, were small. Several other actors were secured, among them Moses Silbermann, who is still acting on the New York Ghetto stage. No 153 girls could at that time be obtained for the stage, for it is against the Taimudic law for a man even to hear a girl sing, and men consequently played female roles, as in Elizabethan times in Eng- land. The first play that Goldfaden wrote was The Grandmother and her Grandchild \ the second was The Sh^endrick and Mogalesco played the grandmother in one and a little spoiled boy in the other. His success in both was enormous, and he still enacts on the Bowery the part of the little boy. The first performances of Goldfaden's play were given in Bucharest, at the time of the Russian-Turkish war, and the city was filled with Russian contractors and workmen. They overcrowded the theatre, and applauded Moga- lesco to the echo. From that time the success of the Yiddish stage was assured. Goldfaden tried to get a permit to act in Russia, without success at first ; but he played in Odessa with- out a license, in a secret way, and in the end a permit was secured. Other Yiddish companies sprang up. Girls were admitted to the chorus, and women began to play female roles. The first woman on the Yiddish stage was a girl who is now Mrs. Karb, and who may be seen in the Yid- dish company at present in the People's Theatre on the Bowery. She is the best liked of all the Ghetto's actresses, has been a sweet singer, 154 and is now an actress of considerable distinction. In Bucharest, before she went on the stage, she was a tailor-girl, and used to sing in the shop. She appeared in 1878 in The E^U Eye, and made an immediate hit. That was the third Yiddish play, and, in the absence of Goldfaden, it was written by the prompter, Joseph Latteiner, who, with the possible exception of Professor Horowitz, who began to write about the same time, was for many years the most popular play- wright in the New York Ghetto. In 1884 the Yiddish theatre was forbidden in Russia. It was supposed by the Government to be a hotbed of political plots, but some of the Yiddish actors think that the jealousy of Gentile actors was responsible for this idea. Two years before there had been a transmigration of Rus- sian and Roumanian Jews to America on a large scale. Therefore the players banished from Russia had a refuge and an audience in New York. In 1884 the first Yiddish company came to this country. It was not Goldfaden's or Mo- galesco's company, but one formed after them. In it were actors who still act in New York — Moses Heine, Moses Silbermann, Mrs. Karb, and Latteiner the playwright. The first Yiddish theatre was called the Ori- ental. It was a music-hall on the Bowery, trans- 155 formed for the purpose. A year later Mogalesco, Kessler, Professor Horowitz, and their company came to New York and opened the Roumania Theatre. From that time they changed theatres frequently. It is worthy of note that with one exception the actors identified with the begin- nings of the Yiddish stage are still the best. That exception is Jacob Adler, who, not count- ing Mogalesco, is the best actor in the Ghetto. They are both character actors, but Mogalesco is essentially a comedian, while Adler plays roles ranging from burlesque to tragedy. Moga- lesco is a natural genius, with a spontaneity superior to that of Adler, but he has no general education nor intellectual life. But the forcible Adler, a man of great energy, a fighter, is filled with one great idea, which is almost a passion with him, and which has marked a development in the Yiddish theatre. To be natural, to be real, to express the actual life of the people, with serious intent, is what Jacob Adler stands for. Up to the time when he appeared on the scene in New York there had been no serious plays acted on the Yiddish stage. Comic opera, lurid melodrama, adaptations and translations, histori- cal plays representing the traditions of the Jews, were exclusively the thing. Through the acting, indeed, which on the Yiddish stage is constantly 156 animated by the desire for sincerity and natural- ness, the real life of the people was constantly suggested in some part of the play. When Mo- galesco took a comic part, he would interpolate phrases and actions, suggesting that life, which he instinctively and spontaneously knew, and it was so with the other actors also. But this ele- ment was accidental and fragmentary previous to the coming of Jacob Adler. Until then Latteiner and Professor Horowitz, the authors of the first historical plays of the Yiddish stage, and still the most popular play- wrights in the Ghetto, held almost undisputed sway. Joseph Latteiner, of whom brief mention has already been made, represents thoroughly the strong commercial spirit of the Yiddish stage. He writes with but one thought, to please the mass of the people, writes "easy plays," to quote his own words. His plays, therefore, are the very spirit of formlessness — burlesque, popularly vulgar jokes, flat heroism combined about the flimsiest dramatic structure. He is the type of the business man of the Ghetto. Altho success- ful, he lives in an unpleasant tenement, and seems much poorer than he really is. He has an unemphatic, conciliatory manner of talking, and everything he says is discouragingly practical. 157 He is a Roumanian Jew, forty-six years of age. His parents intended him for a rabbi, but he was too poor to reach the goal, altho he learned several languages. These afterwards stood him in good stead, for he often translates and adapts plays for the Bowery stage. Unable to be a rabbi, Latteiner cast about for a means of making his living. As a boy he was not interested in the stage, but one day he saw a German play in one act and thought he could adapt it with music to the Yiddish stage. It was successful, and Lat- teiner, as he put it, "discovered himself." He has since written over a hundred plays, and is engaged by the company at the Thalia Theatre as the regular playwright. He calls himself %olksdichterf and maintains that his plays improve with the taste of the people, but this statement is open to considerable doubt. In speaking of the popular playwright, and the purely commercial character and consequent formlessness of the plays before the appearance of Adler, important mention should be made of Boris Thomashevsky, already briefly referred to as the idol of the Jewish matinee girls. He is the most popular actor on the Yiddish stage, and for him Latteiner particularly writes. Thom- ashevsky is a large fat man, with expression- less features and curly black hair, which he 158 arranges in leonine forms. He generally ap- pears as the hero, and is a successful tho a rather listless barnstormer. The more intel- ligent of his audience are inclined to smile at Mr. Thomashevsky's talent in romantic parts, of the reality of which, however, he, with a large section of the community, is very firmly con- vinced. In fairness, however, it should be said that when Mr. Thomashevsky occasionally leaves the role of hero for an unsentimental character, particularly one which expresses supercilious superiority, he is excellent. As time goes on he will probably take less and less the romantic lead and grow more and more satisfactory. He is the youngest of the prominent actors of the Bowery. Before the coming of Heine's company in 1884, he was a pretty little boy in the Ghetto, who used to play female roles in amateur the- atricals. But when the professionals came he was eclipsed, and went out of sight for some time. He grew to be a handsome man, how- ever; his voice changed, and, with the help of a very different man, Jacob Adler, Thomashevsky found an important place on the Yiddish stage. He and Adler are now the leading actors of the People's Theatre, but they never appear to- gether, Thomashevsky being the main interpre- ter of the plays which appeal distinctively to the 159 rabble, and Adler of those which form the really- original Yiddish drama of a serious nature. Jacob Adler was born in Odessa, Russia, in 1855, of middle-class parents. He went to the pubHc school, but was very slow to learn, and was treated roughly by his teachers, whose fav- orite weapon was a ruler of thorns. School, therefore, as he says, **made a bad impression " on him, and he left it for business, but got along equally badly there, not being able to brook the brutally expressed authority of his masters. But while he passed rapidly from one firm to another, through the kindness of a wealthy uncle he was able to cut a swell figure in Odessa, and became a dandy and something of a lady-killer. He was then only eighteen, but the serious ideas which at a later time he strenuously sought to bring into prominence in New York already began to assert themselves. Then there was no Yiddish theatre, but of the Gentile Russian theatre in Odessa he was very fond. The serious realistic Russian play was what particularly took his fancy. The Russian tragedians Kozelski and Milos- lowski especially helped to form his taste, and he soon became a critic well known in the gal- leries. It was the habit of Russian audiences to express their ideas and impressions on the spot. The galleries were divided into parties, with op- 160 posing artistic principles. One party hissed while the other applauded, and then and there they held debates, between the acts and even during the performance. Adlersoon became one of the fiercest leaders of such a party that Odessa had ever known. He stood for realism, for the direct expression of the life of the people. All else he hissed down, and did it so effectively that the actors tried to conciliate him. One season two actresses of talent, but of different schools, were playing in Odessa — Glebowa, whom Adler supported because of her naturalness, and Koz- lowski, whose style was affected and artificial from Adler's point of view. After the strife be- tween the rival parties had waged for some time very fiercely, one night Kozlowski sent for Adler, and asked him what she could do to get the great critic to join her party. Adler replied that so long as Glebowa played with such wonderful naturalness he should remain faithful to her colors, and advised Kozlowski, who was a kind of Russian Bernhardt, to change her style. Adler's lack of education always weighed on his spirit, and his high ideals of the stage seemed to shut that art away from him. Yet his friends who heard him recite the speeches of his favorites, which he easily remembered, told him he had talent. I wanted to believe them," Adler said, i6i "but I always thought that the actor ought to know everything in order to interpret humanity." But just about that time, when Adler was twenty-three years old, he heard that a theatre had been started in Roumania by a Russian Jew named Goldfaden, and that the actors spoke Yiddish. I was astonished," he said. "How could they act a play in a language without literature, in the jargon of our race, and who could be the actors ? " Soon Adler heard that the Jewish singers of hymns who sometimes visited Odessa, and who moved him so, because "they sang so pitifully," were the actors of the first Yiddish company, and his astonishment grew. In 1879 Goldfaden went to Odessa with his company, and his theatre was crowded with Gentiles as well as Jews ; and Adler saw with his eyes what he had hardly believed possible — a Jewish company in a Yiddish play. The plays, however, seemed to Adler very poor — mainly light opera with vaude- ville accompaniment — and the acting was also poor ; but Israel Rosenberg, whom Adler de- scribes as a long-faced Jew with protruding teeth, enormous eyes, and a mouth as wide as a saucer, amused Adler with the wit which he in- terpolated as he acted. Rosenberg, "more 162 ignorant than I," says Adler, "was yet very suc- cessful." The two became intimate, and Rosen- berg and Fraulein Oberlander urged Adler to go on the stage ; Rosenberg because Adler at that time was comparatively rich, and the Fraulein because she loved (and afterwards married) the vigorous young man from Odessa. And Adler felt his education to be superior to that of these successful actors, and decided to make the ex- periment. To choose the stage, however, was to choose poverty, as he had begun to succeed in business, but he did not hesitate and, leaving his friends and family, he went on a tour with the company. In the first performance he was so frightened that he did not hear his own words. He lost all his critical faculty, and played merely instinc- tively. It was a long time before he acted better than the average, which was at that time very low ; but, finally, in a small town named Eliza- betgrad, Adler learned his lesson. A critic visited the theatre every night, and wrote long articles upon it, but Adler never found his name mentioned therein. He used to get up in the morning very early, before any one else, to buy the newspaper, but was always chagrined to find that the great man had overlooked him. At first he thought that the critic must have a personal 163 spite against him, then that he was not noticed because he had only small roles. At last he was cast for a very long and emotional role. He thought that this part would surely fetch the critic, and the next morning eagerly bought a paper, but there was no criticism of the play at all. Rosenberg went to the critic and asked the reason. Adler spoiled the whole thing," was the reply. His acting was unnatural and loud. I advise him to leave the stage." "Then," said Adler, "I began to think. I cut my hair, which I had allowed to grow long after the fashion of actors, and was at first much dis- couraged. But thereafter I studied every role with great care, and read the classic plays, and never played a part until I understood it. Before that it was play with me ; but after that it was serious work." For a number of years Adler continued to act in the cities of Russia, and became the head of a company. In 1883, when Russia was closed to the Jewish stage, Adler took his company to London, where he nearly starved. There was no Ghetto there, and the company gave occa- sional performances at various Yiddish clubs scattered through the city. Adler lost all his money, and got into debt. His wife and child 164 died, and at one time in despair he thought of leaving the stage. But it was too late to go back to Odessa, for he had once for all cut him- self off from his family and friends. He was falsely informed by a Jev/ who had been to America that to succeed there he would have to sing, dance, and speak German. So he stayed some time longer in London. The Roths- childs, Dr. Felix Adler, and others, took an in- terest in him, and told him that as the Jewish theatre could have no future, since Yiddish must ultimately be forgotten, he had better give it up. It was in 1887 that Adler came to New York, where he found two Yiddish companies already well started. To avoid conflict with them, he went to Chicago, where, however, a Yiddish theatre could get no foothold. Some rich Chi- cago people tried to induce Adler to learn Eng- lish and go on the American stage ; but Adler, always distrustful of his education and ability to learn, declined their offers, now much to his regret. He returned to New York, where Mo- galesco and Kessler urged him to stay, but the Ghetto actors in general were hostile to him, and he went back to London. The next year, how- ever, he was visited by four of the managers of the New York Ghetto companies (among them Mogalesco), vying with one another to secure 165 Adler, whose reputation in the Jewish commu- nity was rapidly growing. He went back to New York in 1889, where he appeared first at the Germania Theatre. He was advertised in advance as a Salvini, a Barrett, a Booth, as all stars combined. When he found how extrava- gantly he had been announced he was angry, and wanted to go back to London, feeling that it was impossible to live up to what his foolish managers had led the people to expect. He consented to stay, but refused to appear in Uriel Acosta for which he was billed, prefer- ring to begin in comedy, in order not to appear to compete with the reputation of Salvini. The play, which was called The Ragpicker, can still be seen in the Ghetto. In it Adler tried to score as a character actor. But the people, ex- pecting a tragedy, took The Ragpicker seriously, and did not laugh at all. The play fell flat, and the managers rushed before the curtain and told the audience that Adler was a poor actor, and that they had been deceived in him. Through the influence of the management, the whole company treated him with coldness and contempt, except the wife of one of the directors. She is now Mrs. Adler, and is one of the capable serious actresses at present at the People's Theatre. Finally, the lease of the theatre 166 passed into Adler's hands, and he dismissed the whole company and formed a new one. Soon after began the struggle which brought about the latest development of the Yiddish stage. For some time Adler was successful, but he grew more and more dissatisfied with his reper- tory. He could find no plays which seriously portrayed the life of the people or contained any serious ideas. Only the translated plays were good from his point of view; he wished some- thing original, and looked about for a playwright. One night in a restaurant he was introduced to Jacob Gordin, who afterwards wrote the greater part of the only serious original Yiddish plays which exist. Gordin at that time had written no plays, but he was a man of varied literary activity, of a rarely good education, a thorough Russian schooling, and of uncommon intelligence and strength of character. He is Russian in appear- ance, a large broad-headed man with thick black hair and beard. As he told me in his little home in Brooklyn, the history of his life, he omitted all picturesque details, and emphasized only his intellectual development. He was born in the same town as Gogol, Ubigovrod in southern Russia, of rich parents. As a boy he frequented the theatre, and like Adler, became a local critic 167 and hissed down what he did not approve. Like Adler, too, he was often carried off to the poHce station and fined. He married early, became a school-teacher and then a journalist (in Russian), writing every sort of article, except political, and often sketches and short stories for newspapers and periodicals in Odessa, where he finally con- trolled a newspaper — the Odesss.kis.no'vosti* He was a great admirer of Tolstoi, and desiring to live on a farm to put into practice the Count's ideas, he came to America in 1891, and nearly starved. He became an editor of a Russian newspaper in New York and contributed to other journals. In his own paper he wrote vio- lent articles against the Russian Government, as well as literary sketches. In Russia, Gordin had never been in a Yiddish theatre, and when he met Adler in the New York restaurant he knew little of the conventional Yiddish play. So he wrote his first play in a fresh spirit, with only the character of the people and his own ideals to work from. Stberta, produced in 1892, was a success with the critics and actors, and may fairly be called the first original Yiddish play of the better type. The play struck a new note. It fell into line with the Russian spirit of realism now so marked in intellectual circles in the Ghetto. Life and 168 V types are what Gordin tried for, and Jacob Adler had found his playwright. Since then Gordin has written about fifty plays, some of which have been successful, and many have been marked by literary and dramatic power. Some of the better ones are Siberia, the Je^wish King Lear, The Wild Man, The Je%ish Priest, Solomon Kaus, The Slaughter, and the Jeli?ish Queen Lear* Jacob Adler has been until recently his chief interpreter, altho Mogalesco, Kessler, and Thomas- hevsky take his plays. For several years an actress, Mrs. Liptzen, was the main inter- preter of Gordin's plays. She is one of the most individual, if not one of the most skillful, actresses i on the stage of New York's Ghet- I to, and is sometimes spoken of in the quarter as the Yiddish Duse. She is the only actress of the east side who is thus compared, by a sub-title, with a famous Gentile artist, altho in many directions there is a great tendency in the Ghetto to adopt foreign names and ideas. As a matter of fact, her art is 169 / ! f MADAM LIPTZEN exceedingly limited, but she has the unusual dis- tinction of appearing only in the best plays, steadfastly refusing to take part in performances which she deems to be dramatically unworthy. She consequently appears very seldom, usually only in connection with the production of a new play by Jacob Gordin, who at present writes many of his plays with the Yiddish Duse " in mind. Mrs. Liptzen was born in Zitomir, South Rus- sia, and was interested exclusively in the stage from her childhood. The founder of the Yiddish stage, Abraham Goldfaden, and Jacob Adler, played in her town for a few nights when she was about eighteen years old. Her parents were orthodox Jews, and to go to the theatre she was forced to resort to subterfuge. She be- came acquainted with Goldfaden and Adler, and ran away from home in order to accompany them as an actress. At first she sang and acted in such popular operatic plays as T)er Schmendriky and continued for three years in Russia, until the Yiddish theatre was forbidden there. Then she went with a new company to Berlin, where the whole aggregation nearly starved. They were reduced to selling all their stage properties, the proceeds of which were made away with by a dishonest agent. During the time their per- 170 formances in Berlin continued Mrs. Liptzen re- ceived, it is said, the sum of ten pfennige (two and one-half cents) a day, on which sh€ lived. She paid five pfennige for lodging and five pfen- nige for bread and coffee ; and there is left in her now a correspondingly amazing impression of the cheapness with which she could live in Ger- many in those days. Jacob Adler was at that time in London with a company, eking out a miserable existence. He wrote to Mrs. Liptzen's husband, an invalid in Odessa, to send his wife to London to play in his company. About 1886 Mrs. Liptzen went to London and played in Esther arts; the editor of one of the conservative papers, distinguished for his logic and his clever business manage- ment, is interesting because of the facility with which he adapts his principles to the commercial needs of the moment. Atone time he was a Socialist, then became a Christian, then a Jew again simply, and now is a conservative Jew. Another editor remarked that he was a man of sense and logic. One of the Jews who writes for the Ghetto papers is A. Frumkin, who has the rare distinction of having been born and educated in Jerusalem. There he lived until he was eighteen, when he went to Constantinople and studied Turkish law; after- wards he journeyed to Paris, where he married, and then to New York, where he writes many articles in Yiddish about Jerusalem and Pales- tine, which are published largely in the ^orlparts. 195 KATZ He is a young man of about thirty, with a fresh, rosy look and a buoyant manner. He is an Anarchist, and his energetic bearing is in strong contrast to the pale cast of thought that marks his fellows, the intellectuals among the An- archists of New York. Other occasional or con- stant writers are the Hebrew poet Dolitzki, who is characterized in another chapter ; and the poets Morris Winchevsky and Abraham Sharkansky. These two men are in a class quite different from that of the four poets to whom a separate paper has been devoted. They are, as opposed to Rosenfeld, Zunser, Dolitzki and Wald, inter- esting rather for form than for substance. They are men with some lyric gift and a talent for verse, but are strong neither in thought nor feeling. Winchevsky is a Socialist, a man who has edited more than one Yiddish publication with success, of uncommon learning and cultiva- tion. In literary attempt he is more nearly like the ordinary American or English writer than the Jewish. Most of the Ghetto poets portray the dark and sordid aspect of their lives. Most of them do it with unhappy strength, certainly one of them, Rosenfeld, does it with genius. But Winchevsky attempts to give a bright pic- ture of things. He tries to be entertaining, and 196 heartfelt, sentimental and sweet. Truth is not so much what he attains as a little vein of senti- mental verse which is sometimes touched with a true lyric quality. Sharkansky can not be put in any intellectual category. He is a man of considerable poetic talent, but he seems to have little feeling and fewer ideas. There is no movement" or ten- dency for which he cares. In character he is a business man, with a detached talent unrelated to the remainder of his personality. Philip Kranz and A. Feigenbaum, editors and writers of political editorials, are two of the most prominent men con- nected with the history of Yiddish journalism. They are men of energy and force and represent a large class of Jews interested in social science and political economy. A. Tan- nenbaum occupies a peculiar and interest- ing position as a writer for the newspapers. . He writes very long novels, the plots of which are drawn from books in French, Ger- man or Russian. About A. FRUMKIN these plots he weaves incidents and characters from American history, and inserts popular ideas of science and philosophy. His aim is to educate the Ghetto by dishing up science and philosophy in a palatable form. D. Hermalin's distinctive character is that of a translator of foreign books into Yiddish. Swift, Tolstoi, de Maupassant, have been in part translated by him into the Ghetto's dialect. He, like some of the other men best known for more unpretentious work, is an author of very poor plays. David Pinsky, a writer for the Abendblatt, is very interesting not only as a writer of short sketches of literary value, in which capacity he is mentioned in another chapter, but also as a dramatic critic and as one of the more wide-awake and distinctively modern of the young men of Yiddish New York. He is so keen with the times that he looks even on realism with distrust. Even the great philosopher, the second Spinoza, a man highly respected in a professional way by eminent scientists of the day, Silverstein, is an occasional contributor to these interesting newspapers. 198 CKoLpter Seven ^* The Russian Jews of the east side of New- York are, in proportion as they are educated, as I have said, realists in literary faith. Is it nat- ural ? Is it true to life ? they are inclined to ask of every piece of writing that comes under their eyes. As their lives are circumscribed and more or less unfortunate, their ideas of what constitutes the truth are limited and gloomy. Their criteria of art are formed on the basis of the narrow but intense work of modern Russian fiction. They look up to Tolstoi and Chekhov, and reject all principles founded upon more ro- mantic and more genial models. The simplicity of their critical ideals lends, however, to their intellectual lives a certainty which is striking enough when compared with the varied, waver- ing, ungrounded literary norms and judgments of the ordinary intelligent Anglo-Saxon. The lack of authoritative literary criticism in Amer- ica is partly due to the multiplicity of our classic models. With a simpler literature in mind the 199 Russian is more constantly able to apply a decisive test. The Russian Jew of culture when he comes to New York carries with him Russian ideals of literature. The best Yid- dish work produced in Amer- ica is Russian in principle. Many of the writers who pub- lish literary sketches in the newspapers of the Ghetto have written originally in the Rus- sian language, and know the Russian Jewish life better than the life of the Yiddish east side ; and even now they write mainly about conditions in Russia. Moreover, those who know their New MAN 200 York and its special Jewish life thoroughly and mirror it in their work are in method, tho not in material, Russian ; are close, faithful, unhappy realists. Whatever its form, however, a considerable body of fiction is published more or less regu- larly in the daily and weekly periodicals of the quarter which represents faithfully the life of the poor Russian Jew in the great American city. A " Gentile " who knew nothing of the New York Ghetto, but could read the Yiddish language, might get a good picture of something more than the superficial aspects of the quarter through the sketches of half a dozen of the more talented men who write for the Socialist newspapers. The conditions under which the children of Israel live in New York, their manners, problems and ideals, appear, if not with completeness, at least with suggestiveness, in these short articles, usually in fiction form, the best of them direct, simple and unpretentious, true to life in general and to the life of the Russian Jew in America in particular. The sad aspect of life predominates, but not through conventional sentimentality on the part of the writers, who are not aware that they are objects of possible pity. They merely tell without comment the facts they know. For the most part, those facts are gloomy and sor- 20I did, often lightened, however, by the sense of the ridiculous, which seldom entirely deserts the Jew; and as likely as not rendered attractive by feeling and by beauty of characterization. SOME REALISTS S. Libin holds the place among prose writers that Morris Rosenfeld does among poets. Like Rosenfeld, he has been a sweat-shop worker, and, like him, writes about the sordid conditions of the life. The shop, the push- cart pedler and the tenement - house mark the range of his subjects ; but into these un- sightly things he puts constant feeling and an unfailing pathos and humor. As in the case of Rosenfeld, there are tears in everything he writes ; but, unlike Rosenfeld, he also smiles. He is a dark, thin, little man, as ragged as a tramp, with plaintive eyes and a deprecatory smile when he speaks. He is uncommonly poor, and at present sells newspapers for a living and writes an occasional sketch, for which he is paid at the rate of $1.50 or $2.00 a column by the Yiddish newspapers. He is able to pro- duce these little articles only on impulse ; and, consequently, altho he is one of the more prolific of the sketch-writers of the quarter, writes for 202 C- - relief rather than for income. Some of his contemporaries, with greater constancy to commercial ideals, have partly given up unremunerative lit- erature for the position of newspaper hacks ; but Libin, remembering his sweat-shop days, does not like a *'boss," and is under the constant necessity of relieving his feelings by his work. Libin lives with his wife and child in a tenement - house in Harlem, where he has continually before his eyes the home conditions which form the sub- ject of so many of his sketches. This little man, who looks like the commonest kind of a sweat-shop sheeny," has the simplest and sin- cerest interest in domestic things. With great pride he pointed out to the visitor his one- year-old baby, who lay asleep on a miserable sofa, and talked of it and of his wife, who has also been a worker in the shops, with greater pleasure even than of his sketches, which, how- ever, he writes with joy and solace. He wept when he spoke of his child that died, and he has written poems in prose about it which weep, too. In the story of his life which he told, a common, ignorant Jew was revealed, a thorough product 203 S. LII of the sweat-shop — a man distinguished from the proletarian crowd only by a capacity for feeling and by a genuine talent. He was born in Russia twenty-nine years ago, and came to New York when he was twenty-two years old. For four years he worked as a cap-maker in shops which were then more wretched than they are now, from sixteen to seventeen hours a day. While at his task he would steal a few minutes to devote to his sketches, which he sent to the Arbeiier-Zeitung* Cahan recognized in Libin's misspelled, illiterate, almost illegible manuscript a quality which worthily ranked it with good realistic literature. Since then Libin has written extensively for the Zukunfi, a month- ly now defunct ; the Truth, published at one time by the poet Winchevsky in Boston, and for the New York daily ^orwdrts, to which he still con- tributes. One of his sketches, the ''New Law," about a column and a half long, expresses one aspect of the life led by a sweat-shop family. A tailor, going to the shop one morning, as usual, finds the boss and the other workers in a state of excitement. They have just heard about the new law limiting the day in the shop to ten hours and forbidding the men to do any work at home. This to them is a serious proposition, 204 for, as they are paid by the piece, they need many hours to make enough to pay their expen- ses. The tailor goes home earlier than usual that night, about ten o'clock, with the custom- HE IS TIRED, DISTRESSED AND IRRITATED ary bundle of clothes for his wife and children to work over. He is tired, distressed and irritated at the thought of the law. He finds his wife and ten-year-old daughter half asleep, as usual, but yet sewing busily. They, too, are pale and tired, and near them on the lounge is a sleeping baby ; on the floor another. The little girl tries to hide her drowsiness from her father, and works more busily than ever. Why are you back so early ? " asks his wife. ''Pretty soon," he replies morosely, 'Til be back still earlier." '*Is work slack again?" she asks, her cheek growing paler. *' It's another trouble, not that," he says. '' It's a new law, a bitter law." To his little daughter he adds: ''Sleep, child, you will soon have time to sleep all day." His ignorant wife does not understand. "A new law? What is that? What does it mean ? " she asks. " It means that I can work only ten hours a day." Then they calculate how much money he can make in ten hours. Now he works nineteen hours, and they have nothing to spare. Under the new law he will be idle seven or eight hours a day. What will they do ? She thinks the boss must be responsible for the terrible ar- rangement, for does not all trouble come from the boss ? He is irritated by her simplicity, and she begins to weep. The little girl is overjoyed 206 at the thought that she will no longer have to work, but tries to conceal her pleasure. The laborer, moved by his wife's tears, endeavors to comfort her. *'Ah," he says, ^*it's only a law ! Two years ago there was one like it, but the work went on just the same." But she continues to weep until their evening meal is ready, when the chil- dren are aroused from their sleep to obey **the supper law," Libin concludes in a spirit of tragi- comedy. "She Got Her Prize" is the title of a sketch in which unexhilarating comedy predominates. A laborer borrows some clothes to go to a party. In his absence his wife sells a number of rags to the old-clothes man, who innocently takes off her husband's only suit, carelessly put near the bundle he was to carry away. The husband does not notice the loss until the next day, when he has nothing to wear, cannot go to the shop, and so loses his job. "Betty" is the story of a girl who falls sick just before the day set for her wedding, and is taken to the hospital. The sketch pictures her in bed, read- ing a farewell letter from her lover who has deserted her. "Misery" is a prose poem, writ- ten by Libin when his child died. It has no plot, is merely the outcry of a simple, wounded 207 heart, telling of pain, longing and wonder at the sad mystery of the world. A pleasing rhythm runs through the Yiddish, and as the author read it aloud it seemed, indeed, like a human document." A Child of the Ghetto," one of the longest and most detailed of all, is full of the sad, tho gently satiric, quality of Libin's art. The author meets a pedler on Ludlow Street, who rec- ognizes him as the man who once saved his life by attracting to himself the snow -balls of a number of ur- chins who had been plaguing the pedler one cold winter HE WAS BEWITCHED BY MATHEMATICS cart man how he is getting on in the world. The pedler repHes that all of his class have their trou- bles — the fruit quickly spoils, and the bees" (po- licemen) come around regularly for some of the "honey." But he has a sorrow all to himself. His oldest son is a mathematician, and no good. When in the Jewish school in Russia the little fellow had learned to figure, and had been fig- uring ever since. His father had found, much to his disappointment, that in America also the boy would have to spend some time in school. The ''monkey business" of learning had ruined the child. He was bewitched by mathematics and studied all day long. Sent successively to a sweat-shop, a grocery, to tend a push-cart, he proved thoroughly incapable of learning any trade ; was absent-minded and constantly calcu- lating, and always lost his job. And his old father bemoaned the misfortune all day long as he sold his bananas on Ludlow Street. Younger than Libin, less mature and less devoted to his art, with a very limited amount of work done ; simpler and more naive, if possible, than the older man, is Levin, a typesetter in the office of ^ormj'arts. His sketches are swifter and shorter than those of Libin, more effective and dramatic in form, with greater conventional relief of surprises and antitheses, but they have not so 209 much feeling and do not manifest so high a de- gree of reaHstic art. In contrast with Libin, who aims only for the quiet picture of ordinary life, Levin seeks the poignant moment in the flow of daily events. With more of a commercial atti- tude toward his work, Levin is, consequently, in more comfortable circumstances. Like Libin, he has worked in the shops, is uneducated and has married a tailor girl. Like Libin, again, he takes his subjects from the sweat-shop, the tenement house and the street. He is a handsome, ingen- uous young fellow of twenty-two years. Only eight of these have been spent in America, yet in this short time he has worked himself into the life of Hester and Suffolk streets to such an ex- tent that his short sketches give most faithful glimpses of various little points of human nature as it shapes itself on the east side. Where Is She?" is a striking and typical incident in the career of a push-cart pedler. The itinerant seller of fruit is doing some hard thinking one day in Hester Street. He is wor- ried about something, and does not display the activity necessary for a successful merchant of his class. A vivid picture of the street is given — the passers-by, the tenement-houses, the heat. He knows that his business is suffering, but his thoughts dwell, in spite of himself, with his wife, who is about to be confined, perhaps that very day. Yesterday she had done the washing, but on this day, for the first time, remained in bed. But he must go to the street, as usual. Other- wise, his bananas would spoil. He worries, too, about the condition of his children, left without the care of their mother. A woman crosses the street to inspect his bananas. Perhaps a buyer, he thinks, and concentrates his attention. She selects the best bananas, those that will keep the longest, and asks the price. " Two for a cent," he says. "Too much," she replied. I will give you two cents for five." That is less than they cost him, and he refuses, and she goes away, and then he is sorry he had not sold. Just then his little daughter runs hatless, breathless up to him. "Mamma," she says, and weeps. She can say no more. He leaves her with the cart and runs to the tenement-house, finds his little boy playing on the floor, but his wife gone. He rushes distractedly out, looks up the stairs, and sees clothes hanging on a line on the roof, where he goes and finds his wife. She had left the bed in order to dry the wash of the day before, and was unable to return. He carries her back to bed and returns to his push-cart. "Put Off Again" is the story of a man and a girl who try to save enough money from their 212 work in the sweat-shop to marry. They need only a couple of hundred dollars for clothes and furniture, and have saved almost that sum when a letter comes from the girl's mother in Russia : her husband is dead after a long illness, and she needs money. The girl sends her $70, and the wedding is put off. The next time it is the girl's brother who arrives in New York and borrows $50 to make a start in business. When they are again ready for the wedding, and the day set, the young fellow quarrels with the sweat- shop boss, and is discharged. That is the evening before the day set for the wedding, and the young man calls on the girl and tells her. "We must put it off again, Jake," she says, "till you get another job." They cling to each other and are silent and sad. A sketch so simple that it seems almost child- ish is called "The Bride Weeps." It is a hot evening, and the people in the quarter are all out on their stoops. There are swarms of chil- dren about, and a bride and groom are embrac- ing each other and watching the crowd. " Poor people," says the bride reflectively, "ought not to have children." "What do you know about it ? " asks the groom, rather piqued. Their pleas- ure is dampened, and she goes to bed and wets her pillow with tears. 213 "Fooled," one of the most interesting of Le- vin's sketches, is the tale of an umbrella pedler. It is very hot in the Ghetto, and everybody is uncomfortable, but the umbrella pedler is more uncomfortable than any one else. He hates the bright sun that interferes with his business. It has not rained for weeks, and his stock in trade is all tied up in the house. He has no money, and wishes he were back in Russia, where it sometimes rains. He goes back to his apart- ment and sits brooding with his wife. "When are you going to buy us some candy, papa?" ask the children. Suddenly his wife sees a cloud in the sky, and they all rush joyfully to the window. The sun disappears, and the clouds continue to gather. The wife goes out to buy some food, the children say, " Papa is going to the street now, and will bring us some candy " ; and the pedler unpacks his stock of umbrellas and puts on his rubber boots. But the clouds roll away, and the hated sun comes out again, and the pedler takes off his boots and puts his pack away. " Ain't you going to the street, papa?" ask the children sorrowfully. "No," replies the pedler, " God has played a joke on me. Libin and Levin, altho they differ in the way described, are yet to be classed together in 214 essentials. They are both simple, uneducated men who write unpretentious sketches about a life they intimately know. They picture the conditions almost naively without comment and without subtlety. Libin, in a way to draw tears, Levin with the buoyant optimism of healthy youth, notice the quiet things in the every-day life of the Yiddish quarter that are touching and effective. A CULTIVATED LITERARY MAN Contrasting definitely with the sketches of Libin and Levin are those of Jacob Gordin, who, altho he is best known in the Ghetto as a play- wright, has yet written voluminously for the newspapers. Unlike the other two, Gordin is a well-educated man, knowing thoroughly several languages and literatures, including Greek, Rus- sian and German. His greater resources of culture and his sharper natural wit have made of him by far the most practised writer of the lot. With many literary examples before him, he knows the tricks of the trade, is skilful and effective, has a wide range of subjects and is full of 'Mdeas " in the semi-philosophical sense. The innocent Libin and Levin are children in comparison, and yet their sketches show greater 215 fidelity to the facts than do those of the talented Gordin, who is too apt to employ the ordinary literary devices wherever he can find them, car- ing primarily for the effect rather than for the truth, and almost always heightening the color to an unnatural and pretentious pitch. In the drama Gordin's tendency toward the sensational is more in place. He has the sense of character and theatrical circumstance, and works along the broad lines demanded by the stage ; but these qualities when transferred to stories from the life result in what is sometimes called in the Ghetto onion literature." So definitely theat- rical, indeed, are many of his sketches that they are sometimes read aloud by the actors to crowded Jewish audiences. Another point that takes from Gordin's interest to us as a sketch- writer is that his best stories have Russia rather than New York as a background ; that his sketches from New York life are comparatively unconvincing. He has a great contempt for America, which he satirizes in some of his sketches, particularly the political aspect, and intends some day to return to Russia, where he had a considerable career as a short-story writer in the Russian language. He is forty-nine years old, and, compared with the other men, is in comfortable circumstances, as he now makes a 216 good income from his plays, which grow in popularity in the quarter. Before coming to America he taught school and wrote for several newspapers in Russia, where he was known as Ivan der Beissende," on account of the sharp character of his feuilletons. He came to this country in 1891, and shortly after, his first play, Siberia^ was produced and made a great hit among the 'intellectuals" and Socialists of the quarter. He began immediately to write for the Socialist newspapers, and also established a short-lived weekly periodical in the Russian language, which he wrote almost entirely him- self. Nipped Romance" is a story of two chil- dren who are collecting coals on a railway track. The boy of thirteen and the girl of eleven talk about their respective families, laying bare the sordidness, misery and vice in which their young lives are encompassed. They know more than children ought to know, and insensibly develop a sentimental interest in each other, when a train comes along and kills them. "Without a Pass," sometimes recited in the theatre by the actor, Moshkovitch, pictures with grue- some detail a girl working in the sweat-shop. The brutal doorkeeper refuses to let her go out for relief without a pass, and she dies of weak- 217 ness, hunger and cold. '' A Tear," one of the best, is the tale of an old Jewish woman who has come to New York to visit her son. He is married to a Gentile, and the old lady is so much abused by her daughter-in-law that she goes back to Russia. The sketch represents her alone at the pier, about to embark. She sees the friends of the other passengers crowding the landing, but no one is there to say good-by to her ; and as the ship moves away a tear rolls down her cheek to the deck. Who Laughs?" satirizes the Americans who laugh at Russian Jews because of their beards, dress and accent. Another sketch denounces the **new woman" — she who apes American manners, lays aside her Jewish wig, becomes flippant and interested in movements." Still another is a highly colored contrast between woman's love and that of less- devoted man. A story illustrating how the author's desire to make an effect sometimes results in the ludicrous is the would-be pathetic " wail of a calf which is about to be slaughtered. AMERICAN LIFE THROUGH RUSSIAN EYES In connection with Gordin, two other writers of talent who work on the Yiddish newspapers may be briefly mentioned, altho one of them has writ- 218 ten as yet nothing and the other comparatively little that is based on the life of New York. They are, as is Gordin in his best sketches, Russian not only in form, but also in material. David Pinsky, who did general translating and critical work on the Abendblati until a few months ago, when that newspaper died, has been in New York only a little more than a year, and has writ- ten very little about the local quarter. He has not even as yet approached near enough to the New York life to realize that there are any spe- cial conditions to portray. He is the author, how- ever, of good sketches in German and is some- what different in the character of his inspiration from the other men. They are close adherents of the tradition of Russian realism, while he is under the influence of the more recent European faith that disclaims all "schools" in literature. His stories, altho they remain faithful to the sad life portrayed, yet show greater sentimentality and some desire to bring forward the attractive side. The other of these two writers, B. Gorin, knew his Russian-Jewish life so intimately before he came to New York, seven years ago, that he has continued to draw from that source the material of his best stories ; altho he has written a good deal about Yiddish New York. His 2 i9 sketches have the ordinary Russian merit of fidelity in detail and unpretentiousness of style. Compared with the other writers in New York, he is more elaborate in his workmanship. More mature than Libin, he is free from Gordin's artistic insincerity. He has been the editor of several Yiddish papers in the quarter, and has contributed to nearly all of them. Of Gorin's stories which touch the Russian- Jewish conditions in New York, Yom Kippur " is one of the most notable. It is the tale of a pious Jewish woman who joins her husband in America after he has been there several years. The details of the way in which she left the old country, how she had to pass herself off on the steamer as the wife of another man, her difficulties with the inspecting officers, etc., give the impression of a life strange to the Gentile world. On arriving in America, she finds her husband and his friends fallen away from the old faith. He had shaved off his beard, had grown to be slack about the kosher" preparation of food and the observ- ance of the religious holidays, no longer was careful about the morning ablutions, worked on the Sabbath and compelled her to take off the wig which every orthodox Jewish woman must wear. She soon fell under the new influence and felt herself drifting generally into the un- godly ways of the New World. On the day of the great "White Feast" she found herself eat- ing when she should have fasted. On Yom Kip- pur, the Day of Atonement, the sense of her sins overpowered her quite. "Yom Kippur ! Now the children of Israel are all massed together in every corner of the globe. They are congregated in synagogues and prayer-houses, their eyes swollen with cry- ing, their voices hoarse from wailing and suppli- cating, their broken hearts full of repentance. They all stand now in their funeral togas, like a throng of newly arisen dead." She grows delirious and imagines that her father and mother come to her successively and reproach her for her degeneracy. In a series of frightful dreams, all bearing on her repentance, the atmosphere of the story is rendered so in- tense that her death, which follows, seems entirely natural. The theme of one of Gorin's longer stories on Jewish-American life is of a young Jew who had married in the old country and had come to New York alone to make his fortune. If he had re- mained in Russia, he would have lived happily with his wife, but in America he acquired new ideas of life and new ideals of women ; and, therefore, felt alienated from her when she joined 221 him in the New World. Many children came to them, his wages as a tailor diminished and his wife grew constantly less congenial. He re- mained with her, however, from a sense of duty for eleven years, when, after insuring his life, he committed suicide. A SATIRIST OF TENEMENT SOCIETY Leon Kobrin stands midway between Libin and Levin, on the one hand, and Gordin on the other. He carries his Russian traditions more intimately with him than do Libin and Levin, but more nearly approaches to a satu- rated exposition in fiction form of the life of Yid- dish New York than does Gordin. Unlike the latter, he has the pretence rather than the re- ality of learning, and the reality rather than the pretence of realistic art. Yet he never quite attains to the untutored fidelity of Libin. Many of his sketches are satirical, some are rather burlesque descriptions of Ghetto types, and some suggest the sad "problem" element which runs through Russian literature. He was born in Russia in 1872 of poor parents, orthodox Jews, who sent him to the Hebrew school, of which the boy was never very fond, but preferred to read Russian at night surreptitiously. He found some good friends, who, as he put it, helped me to the Hght through Ghetto dark- ness." Incidentally, it may be pointed out that the intellectual element of the Ghetto — the re- alists and Socialists — think that progress is possible only in the line of Russian culture, and that to remain steadfast to Jewish traditions is to remain immersed in darkness. So Kobrin stiuggled from a very early age to master the Russian language, and even wrote sketches in that tongue. He, like Gordin, refers to the fact of his being a writer in Yiddish apologetically as something forced upon him by circumstances. Unlike Gorin, however^ he believes in the liter- ary capacity of the language, with which he was first impressed when he came to America in 1892 and found stories by Chekhov translated by Abraham Cahan and others into Yiddish and published in the Arbeiterzeitung, It was a long time, however, before Kobrin definitely identified himself with the literary calling. He first went through a course somewhat similar to that of the boy mathematician in the sketch by Libin, described above. He tried the sweat-shop, but he was a bungler with the machines ; then he turned his hand with equal awkwardness to the occupation of making cigars; failed as distinctly as a baker, and finally, in 1894, was forced into 223 literature, and began writing for the c/lrbeiier- zeitung* One of Kobrin's sketches deals with a vulgar tailor of the east side, who is painted in the ugliest of colors and is as disagreeable an indi- vidual as the hottest anti-Semite could imagine. The man, who is the **boss" of a sweat-shop, meets the author in a suburban train, scrapes his acquaintance, fawns upon him, offers him a cigar and tells about how well he is doing in New York. In Russia, where he had made clothes for rich people, no young girl would have spoken to him because of his low social position ; but in the new country young women of good family abroad seek employment in his shop, and are often dependent on him not only for a living, but in more indescribable ways. Mr. Kobrin and his wife refer to this sketch as the "pig story." A subtler tale is the picture of a domestic scene. Jake has returned from his work and sits reading a Yiddish newspaper. His wife, a passionate brunette, is working about the room, and every now and then glances at the apathetic Jake with a sigh. She remem- bers how it was a year ago, when Jake hung over her, devoted, attentive; and now he goes out almost every evening to the "circle" and returns late. She tries to engage him in con- 224 versation, but he answers in monosyllables and finally says he is going out, whereupon she weeps and makes a scene. " He is not the same Jake," she cries bitterly. After some words in- tended to comfort her, but really rubbing in the wound, her husband goes to the "circle," and the wife burns the old love-letters one by one; they are from another man, she feels, and are a torture to her now. As she burns the letters the tears fall and sizzle on the hot stove. It is a simple scene, but moving: what Mr. Kobrin calls "a small slice out of life." An amusing couple of sketches, in which satire approaches burlesque, represent the infelicities of an old woman from Russia who had recently arrived in New York. One day, shocked at her children's neglect of a religious holiday and at their general unholiness, she goes to visit an old neighbor, at whose house she is sure to have everything "kosher" and right. She has been accustomed to find the way to her friend by means of a wooden Indian, called by her a "Turk," which stood before a tobacco shop. The Indian has been removed, however, and she, consequently, loses her way. Seeing a Jew with big whiskers, who must, therefore, she thinks, be orthodox, she asks him where the "Turk" is, and repeats the question in vain to many others, among 225 them to a policeman, whom she addresses in Polish, for she thinks that all Gentiles speak that language, just as all Jews speak Yid- dish. On another occasion the old lady goes to the theatre, where her experiences are a Yiddish counterpart to those of Partridge at the play. Some of the best sketches from the life form portions of the plays which are produced at the Yiddish theatres on the Bowery. In the dramas of Gordin there are many scenes which far more faithfully than his newspaper sketches mirror the sordid life and unhappy problems of the poor Russian Jew in America ; and the ability of the actors to enforce the theme and language by realistic dress, manner and intonation makes these scenes frequently a genuine revelation to the Gentile of a new world of social conditions. Kobrin and Libin, too, have written plays, very few and undramatic as compared with those of Gordin, but abounding in the sketch " element, in scenes which give the setting and the milieu of a large and important section of humanity. Some of the plays of Gordin have been con- sidered in a previous chapter, and those of Kobrin and Libin merely add more material to the same quality which runs through their newspaper sketches. Libin is the author of two 226 plays, The Belated Wedding and A Vain Sacrifice, for which he was paid $50 apiece. They are each a series of pictures from the miserable Jewish life in the New York Ghetto. The latter play is the story of a girl who marries a man she hates in order to get money for her consumptive father. The theme of The Belated Wedding is too sordid to relate. Both plays are unrelieved gloom and lack any compensating dramatic quality. In Kobrin's plays — The East Side Ghetto, East Broad- m)ay and the Broken Chains — the problem element is more decided and the dramatic structure is more pronounced than in those of Libin. In East Broadway a young man and girl have been devoted to each other and to the cause of Nihil- ism in Russia, but in New York the husband catches the spirit of the American "business man " and demands from his father-in-law the money promised as a dot* The eloquence of the new point of view is opposed to that of the old in a manner not entirely undramatic. The fact that there are a number of writers for the Yiddish newspapers of New York who are animated with a desire to give genuine glimpses of the real life of the people is partic- ularly interesting, perhaps, because of the light which it throws on the character of their Jewish readers and the breadth of culture which it 227 implies. Certainly, there are many Russian Jews on the east side who like to read anything which seems to them to be natural," a word which is often on their lips. It would be mis- leading, however, to reach conclusions very optimistic in regard to the Ghetto Jews as a whole ; for the demand which makes these sketches possible is practically limited to the Socialists, and grows less as that political and intellectual movement falls off, under American influences, in vitality. To-day there are fewer good sketches published in the Yiddish news- papers than formerly, when the Arbeiterzeitung was a power for social and literary improve- ment. Quarrels among the Socialists, resulting in many weakening splits, and the growth of a more constant commercial attitude on the part of the newspapers than formerly are partly re- sponsible for the change. The few men of talent who, under the stimulus of an editorial demand for sincere art, wrote in the early days with a full heart and entire conviction have now partly lost interest. Levin has given up writing alto- gether for the more remunerative work of a typesetter, Gorin has become largely a trans- lator and literary hack on the regular newspaper staff, and Gordin and Kobrin have turned their attention to the writing of plays, for which 228 there is a vital, if crude, demand. Libin alone, the most interesting and in a genuine way the most talented of them all, remains the poor- est in worldly goods and the most devoted to his art. 229 ChoLpter £ight 91 iEotjeltst Altho Abraham Cahan began his literary ca- reer as a Yiddish writer for the Ghetto news- papers his important work has been written and pubHshed in English. His work as a Yiddish writer was of an almost exclusively educational character. This at once establishes an impor- tant distinction between him and the Yiddish sketch-writers considered in the foregoing chap- ter. A still more vital distinction is that arising from the relative quality of his work, which as opposed to that of the Yiddish writers, is more of the order of the story or of the novel than of the sketch. Cahan's work is more developed and more mature as art than that of the other men, who remain essentially sketch-writers. Even in their longer stories what is good is the occasional flash of life, the occasional picture, and this does not imply characters and theme developed sufficiently to put them in the cate- gory of the novel. Rather than for the art they reveal they are interesting for the sincere way in 230 which they present a life intimately known. In fact the literary talent of the Ghetto consists almost exclusively in the short sketch. To this general rule Abraham Cahan comes the nearest to forming an exception. Even in his work the sketch element predominates ; but in one long story at least something more is successfully achieved ; in his short stories there is often much circumstance and development ; and he has now finished the first draft of a long novel. His stories have appeared from time to time in the leading English magazines, and there are two volumes with which the discriminating American and English public is familiar, Yekt and The Imported Bridegroom and Other Stories* As well as his work Cahan's life too is of unusual interest. He had a picturesque career as a Socialist and an editor in the Ghetto. Abraham Cahan was born in Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, Russia, in i860. He went as a boy to the Jewish ''chaider," but took an early and overpowering interest in the Russian language and ideas. He graduated from the Teache/s Institute at Vilna, and was appointed government teacher in the town of Velizh, Province of Vi- tebsk. Here he became interested, altho not active, in the anarchistic doctrines which filled the intellectual atmosphere of the day ; and, feel- 231 ing that his liberty and activity were endangered by a longer sojourn in Russia, he came to Amer- ica in 1882, when a time of severe poverty and struggle ensued. From the first he, like most Russian Jews of intelHgence, was identified with the Socialist movement in the New York Ghetto ; he threw himself into it with extraordinary activity and soon became a leader in the quarter. He was an eloquent and impassioned speaker, went twice abroad as the American-Jewish delegate to Socialist congresses, and was the most influ- ential man connected with the weekly c/lrbeiter- zeitung, of which he became editor in 1893. This paper, as has been explained in a former chap- ter, for several years carried on an aggressive warfare in the cause of labor and Socialism, and attempted also to educate the people to an appreciation of the best realistic Russian wri- ters, such as Tolstoi, Turgenieff and Chekhov. It was under Cahan's editorship of this weekly, and also of the monthly Zukunfi, a journal of literature and social science, that some of the realistic sketch-writers of the quarter discovered their talent ; and for a time both literature and Socialism were as vigorous as they were young in the colony. Literature, however, was at that time to 232 Cahan only the handmaiden of education. His career as an east side writer was that primarily of the teacher. He wished not merely to edu- cate the ignorant masses of the people in the doctrines of Socialism, but to teach them the rudiments of science and literature. For that reason he wrote in the popular ''jargon," pop- ularized science, wrote Socialistic articles, ex- horted generally. Occasionally he published humorous sketches, intended, however, always to point a moral or convey some needed infor- mation. In literature, as such, he was not at that time interested as an author. It was only several years later, when he took up his English pen, that he attempted to put into practise the ideas about what constitutes real literature to which he had been trying to educate the Ghetto. The fierce individualism which in spite of Socialistic doctrine is a characteristic of the intellectual element in the Ghetto soon brought about its weakening effects. The inevitable oc- curred. Quarrels grew among the Socialists, the party was split, each faction organized a Socialist newspaper, and the movement consequently lost in significance and general popularity. In 1896 Cahan resigned his editorship, and retired dis- gusted from the work. From that time on his interest in Socialism 233 waned, altho he still ranges himself under that banner ; and his other absorbing interest, real- istic literature, grew apace, until it now absorbs everything else. As is the case with many imaginative and emotional men he is predomi- nantly of one intellectual passion. When he was an active Socialist he wanted to be nothing else. He gave up his law studies, and devoted himself to an unremunerative public work. When the fierce but small personal quarrels began which brought about the present confused condition of Socialism in the Ghetto, Cahan's always strong admiration for the Russian writers of genius and their literary school led him to experiment in the English language, which gave a field much larger than the ''jargon. " Always a reformer, always filled with some idea which he wished to propagate through the length and breadth of the land, Cahan took up the cause of realism in English fiction with the same passion and en- ergy with which he had gone in for Socialism. He became a partisan in literature just as he had been a partisan in active life. He admired among Americans W. D. Howells, who seemed to him to write in the proper spirit, but he felt that Americans as a class were hopelessly "roman- tic," "unreal," and undeveloped in their literary tastes and standards. He set himself to writing 234 stories and books in English which should at least be genuine artistic transcripts from life, and he succeeded admirably in keeping out of his work any obvious doctrinaire element — which points to great artistic self-restraint when one considers how full of his doctrine the man is. Love of truth, indeed, is the quality which seems to a stranger in the Ghetto the great virtue of that section of the city. Truth, pleasant or unpleasant, is what the best of them desire. It is true that, in the reaction from the usual "affable" literature of the American book-mar- ket, these realists rather prefer the unpleasant. That, however, is a sign of energy and youth. A vigorous youthful literature is always more apt to breathe the spirit of tragedy than a liter- ature more mature and less fresh. And after all, the great passion of the intellectual quarter re- sults in the consciously held and warmly felt principle that literature should be a transcript from life. Cahan represents this feeling in its purest aspect ; and is therefore highly inter- esting not only as a man but as a type. This passion for truth is deeply infused into his liter- ary work. The aspects of the Ghetto's life which would naturally hold the interest of the artistic ob- server are predominatingly its characteristic 235 features — those qualities of character and condi- tions of social life which are different from the corresponding ones in the old country. Cahan came to America a mature man with the life of one community already a familiar thing to him. It was inevitable therefore that his literary work in New York should have consisted largely in fiction emphasizing the changed character and habits of the Russian Jew in New York ; de- scribing the conditions of immigration and de- picting the clash between the old and the new Ghetto and the way the former insensibly changes into the latter. In this respect Cahan presents a great contrast to the simple Libin, who merely tells in heartfelt passionate way the life of the poor sweat-shop Jew in the city, with- out consciously taking into account the relative nature of the phenomena. His is absolute work as far as it goes, as straight and true as an arrow, and implies no knowledge of other condi- tions. Cahan presents an equally striking con- trast to the work of men like Gordin and Gorin, the best part of which deals with Russian rather than New York life. If Cahan's work were merely the transcribing in fiction form of a great number of suggestive and curious ''points" about the life of the poor Russian Jew in New York, it would not of course 236 have any great interest to even the cultivated Anglo-Saxon reader, who, tho he might find the stories curious and amusing for a time, would recognize nothing in them sufficiently familiar to be of deep importance to him. If, in other words, the stories had lacked the universal ele- ment always present in true literature they would have been of very little value to anyone except the student of queer corners. When however the universal element of art is present, when the special conditions are rendered sym- pathetic by the touch of common human nature, the result is pleasing in spite of the foreign element ; it is even pleasing because of that element ; for then the pleasure of easily under- standing what is unfamiliar is added to the charm of recognizing the old objects of the heart and the imagination. Cahan's stories may be divided into two gen- eral classes : those presenting primarily the spe- cial conditions of the Ghetto to which the story and characters are subordinate ; and those in which the special conditions and the story fuse together and mutually help and explain one another. These two — the "information" ele- ment and the human nature" element — strug- gle for the mastery throughout his work. In the most successful part of the stories the 237 "human nature" element masters, without sup- pressing, that of special information. The substance of Cahan's stories, what they have deliberately to tell us about the New York Ghetto, is, considering the limited volume of his work, rich and varied. It includes the descrip- tion of much that is common to the Jews of Russia and the Jews of New York — the picture of the orthodox Jew, the pious rabbi, the marriage customs, the religious holidays, etc. But the orthodox foreign element is treated more as a background on which are painted in contrasting lights the moral and physical forms resulting from the particular colonial conditions. The falling away of the children in filial respect and in religious faith, the consequent despair of the parents, who are influenced only in superficial ways by their new environment ; the alienation of "progressive" husbands from "old-fashioned" wives; the institution of "the boarder," a source of frequent domestic trouble; the tendency of the "new " daughters of Israel to select husbands for themselves in spite of ancient authority and the " Vermittler," and their ambi- tion to marry doctors and lawyers instead of Talmudical scholars ; the professional letter-wri- ters through whom ignorant people in the old country and their ignorant relatives here corre- 238 spond ; the falling-off in respect for the Hebrew scholar and the rabbi, the tendency to read in the Astor Hbrary and do other dreadful things implying interest in American life, to eat treife food, talk American slang, and hate being called a "greenhorn," e,, an old-fashioned Jew; how a "Mister" in Russia becomes a "Shister" (shoemaker) in New York, and a ^'Shister" in Russia becomes a "Mister" in New York; how women lay aside their wigs and men shave their beards and ride in horse-cars on Saturday : all these things and more are told in more or less detail in Cahan's English stories. Anyone who followed the long series of Barge Office sketches which during the last few years Cahan has published anonymously in the Commercial Adver- tiser, would be familiar in a general way with the different types of Jews who come to this country, with the reasons for their immigration and the conditions which confront them when they ar- rive. Many of these hastily conceived and writ- ten newspaper reports have plenty of life — are quick, rather formless, flashes of humor and pathos, and contain a great deal of implicit liter- ature. But the salient quality of this division of Cahan's work is the amount of strange and picturesque information which it conveys. Many of his more carefully executed stories 239 which have appeared from time to time in the magazines are loaded down with a like quantity of information, and while all of them have marked vitality, many are less intrinsically interesting, from the point of view of human nature, than even the Barge Office sketches. A marked instance of a story in which the information element overpoweringly predominates is " The Daughter of Reb Avrom Leib," published in the Cosmopolitan Magazine for May, 1900. The tale opens with a picture of Aaron Zalkin, who is lonely. It is Friday evening, and for the first time since he left his native town he enters a syna- gogue. Then we have a succession of minutely described customs and objects which are inter- esting in themselves and convey no end of " local color." We learn that orthodox Jewish women have wigs, we read of the Holy Ark, the golden shield of David, the illuminated omud, the reading platform in the centre, the faces of the wor- shippers as they hum the Song of Songs, and then the cantor and the cantor's daughter. We follow the cantor in his ceremonies and prayers. Zalkin is thrilled by the ceremony and thrilled by the girl. But only a word is given to him before the story goes back to picturing the scene, Reb Avrom Leib's song and the actions of the congregation. In the second division of 240 the story Zalkin goes again the next Friday night to the synagogue, and the result is that he wants^ to marry the girl. So he sends a "marriage agent" to the cantor, the girl's father. Then he goes to *Wiew the bride," and incidentally we learn that the cantor has two sons who are American boys," and "will not turn their tongues to a Hebrew word." When the old man finds that Zalkin is a Talmudic scholar he is startled and delighted and wants him for a son-in-law. They try to outquote one another, shouting and gesticulating "in true Talmudic fashion." There is a short scene between the two young people, the wedding-day is deferred till the "Nine Days" are over, for "who would marry while one was mourning the Fall of the Temple ? " And it is suggested that Sophie is not quite content. Then there is a scene where Zalkin chants the Prophets, where the betrothal articles, "a mixture of Chal- daic and Hebrew," are read and a plate is thrown on the floor to make a severance of the cere- mony "as unlikely as would be the reunion of the broken plate." Then there are more quotations from the cantor, a detailed picture of the services of the Day of Atonement, of the Rejoicing of the Law, blessing the Dedication Lights, The Days of Awe, and the Rejoicing of 241 the Law again. The old man's character is made very vivid, and the dramatic situation — that of a Jewish girl who, after the death of her father, marries in compliance with his desire — is picturesquely handled. But the theme is very slight. Most of the detail is devoted to making a picture, not of the changing emotions in the characters and the development of the human story, but of the religious customs of the Jews. The emphasis is put on information rather than on the theme, and consequently the story does not hold the interest strongly. Many of Cahan's other short stories suffer be- cause of the learned intention of the author. We derive a great deal of information and we gener- ally get the picture," but it often requires an effort to keep the attention fixed on what is un- familiar and at the same time so apart from the substance of the story that it is merely subordi- nate detail. In these very stories, however, there is much that is vigorous and fresh in the treatment and characterization ; and a vein of lyric poetry is frequent, as in the delightful Ghetto Wedding, the story of how a poor young Jewish couple spend their last cent on an elaborate wedding-feast, expecting to be repaid by the presents, and thus enabled to furnish their apartment. The gifts 242 don't turn up, only a few guests are present, and the young people, after the ceremony, go home with nothing but their enthusiastic love. The na'i'vete and simplicity of the lovers, the implicit sympathy with them, and a kind of gentle satire, make this little story a gem for the poet. The Imported Bridegroom is a remarkable char- acter sketch and contains several very strong and interesting descriptions. Asriel Stroon is the central figure and lives before the mind of the reader. He is an old Jew who has made a business success in New York, and retired, when he has a religious awakening and at the same time a great longing for his old Russian home Pravly. He goes back to Pravly on a visit, and the description of his sensations the day he returns to his home is one of the best examples of the essential vitality of Cahan's work. This long story contains also a most amusing scene where Asriel outbids a famous rich man of the town for a section in the synagogue and tri- umphs over him, too, in the question of a son-in- law. There is in Pravly a ''prodigy" of holiness and Talmudic learning, Shaya, whom Reb Lippe wants for his daughter, but Asriel wants him too, and being enormously rich, carries him off in triumph to his daughter in America. But Flora at first spurns him. He is a "greenhorn," 243 a scholar, not a smart American doctor such as she has dreamed of. Soon, however, Shaya, who is a great student, learns English and mathematics, and promises Flora to become a doctor. The first thing he knows he is a free- thinker and an American, and Flora now loves him. They keep the terrible secret from the old man, but he ultimately sees Shaya going into the Astor Library and eating food in a ireife restaurant. His resentment is pathetic and intense, but the children marry, and the old man goes to Jerusalem with his faithful servant. The book, however, in which there is a perfect adaptation of "atmosphere " and information to the dramatic story is Yekt* In this strong, fresh work, full of buoyant life, the Ghetto characters and environment form an integral part. Yekl indeed ought to be well known to the English reading public. It is a book written and conceived in the English language, is essen- tially idiomatic and consequently presents no linguistic difficulties. It gives a great deal of information about what seems to me by far the most interesting section of foreign New York. But what ought to count more than anything else is that it is a genuine piece of literature ; picturing characters that live in art, in an envi- ronment that is made real, and by means of a 244 story that is vital and significant and that never flags in interest. In its quality of freshness and buoyancy it recalls the work of Turgenieff. None of Cahan's later work, tho most of it has vital elements, stands in the same class with this fundamentally sweet piece of literature. It takes a worthy place with the best Russian fiction, with that school of writers who make life actual by the sincere handling of detail in which the simple everyday emotions of unspoiled hu- man nature are portrayed. The English classic novel, greatly superior in the rounded and con- templative view of life, has yet nothing since Fielding comparable to Russian fiction in vivid presentation of the details of life. This whole school of literature can, I believe, be compared in quality more fittingly with Elizabethan drama than anything which has intervened in English literature ; not of course with those maturer dramas in which there is a great philosophical treatment of human life, but in the lyric fresh- ness and imaginative vitality which were com- mon to the whole lot of Elizabethan writers. YeM is alive from beginning to end. The virtuosity in description which in Cahan's work sometimes takes the place of literature, is here quite subordinate. Yekl is a sweat-shop Jew in New York who has left a wife and child in 245 Russia in order to make a little home for them and himself in the new world. In the early part of the book he is becoming an ^'American" Jew, making a little money and taking a great fancy to the smart Jewish girl who wears a rakish " hat, no wig, talks "United States," and has a profound contempt for the benighted pious "greenhorns" who have just arrived. A sweat- shop girl named Mamie moves his fancy deeply, so that when the faithful wife Gitl and the little boy Yossele arrive at the Barge Office there is evidently trouble at hand. At that place Yekl meets them in a vividly told scene — ill-concealed disquiet on his part and naive alarm at the situ- ation on hers. Gitl's wig and her subdued, old- fashioned demeanor tell terribly on Yekl's nerves, and she is shocked by everything that happens to her in America. Their domestic unhappiness develops through a number of char- acteristic and simple incidents until it results in a divorce. But by that time Gitl is becoming "American " and it is obvious that she is to be taken care of by a young man in the quarter more appreciative than Yekl. The latter finds himself bound to Mamie, the pert "American" girl, and as the book closes is in a fair way to regret the necessity of giving up his newly ac- quired freedom. This simple, strong theme is 246 A SWEAT-SHOP GIRL MOVES HIS FANCY DEEPLY treated consistently in a vital presentative way. The idea is developed by natural and constant incident, psychological or physical, rather than by talk. Every detail of the book grows nat- urally out of the situation. "Unpleasant" is a word which many an American would give to Yekt on account of its subject. Strong compensating qualities are nec- essary to induce a publisher or editor to print anything which they think is in subject disagree- able to the big body of American readers, most of whom are women. Without attempting to criticise the ''voice of the people," it may be pointed out that there are at least two ways in which a book maybe ''unpleasant." It may be so in the formal theme, the characters, the re- sult — things may come out unhappily, vice tri- umphant, and the section of life portrayed may be a sordid one. This is the kind of unpleasant- ness which publishers particularly object to ; and in this sense Fe^/may fairly be called "unpleas- ant." Turgenieff's Torrents of Spring is also in this sense "unpleasant," for it tells how a young man's sincere and poetic first love is turned to failure and misery by the illegitimate temporary attraction of a fascinating woman of the world. But Turgenieffs novel is nevertheless full of buoyant vitality, full of freshness and charm, of 248 youth and grace, full of life-giving qualities ; be- cause of it we all may live more abundantly. The same may be said of many another book. When there is sweetness, strength and early vigor in a book the reader is refreshed notwith- standing the theme. And it is noticeable that youth is not afraid of subjects." Another way in which a book may be "un- pleasant" is in the quality of deadness. Many books with pleasant and moral themes and endings are unpoetic and unpleasantly mature. Even a book great in subject, with much philos- ophy in it, may show a lack of sensitiveness to the vital qualities, to the effects of spring, to the joy in mere physical life, which are so marked and so genuinely invigorating in the best Russian fiction. The extreme of this kind of unpleasantness is shown in the case of some modern Frenchmen and Italians ; not primarily in the theme, but in the lack of poetry and vigor, of hope ; in a sodden maturity, often indeed combined with great qualities of intellect and workmanship, but dead to the little things of life, dead to the feeling of spring in the blood, to naive readiness for experience. An American who is the antithesis of this kind of thing is Walt Whitman. His quality put into prose is what we have in the best Russian novels. In 249 GITL the latter acceptation of the word unpleasant, too, it cannot be applied to Yekl; for Yekl is youthful and vital. There is buoyant spring in the lines and robust joy in truth whatever it may be. Apropos of Cahan's love of truth, and that word "unpleasant," a discussion which took place a few years ago on the appearance of Zangwill's play. The Children of the Ghetto^ is illuminative. That poetic drama represented the life of the poor Ghetto Jew with sympathy and truth ; but for that very reason it was severely criticised by some uptown Israelites. Many of these, no doubt, had religious objections to a display on the stage of those customs and observances of their race which touched upon the "holy law." But some of the rich German Jews, practically identified with American life, and desiring for practical and social purposes to make little of their racial distinction, deprecated literature which portrayed the life of those Jews who still have distinctively national traits and customs. Then, too, there is a tendency among the well- to-do American Jews to look down upon their Ghetto brethen, to regard the old customs as benighted and to treat them with a certain con- tempt ; altho they spend a great deal of chari- table money in the quarter. Feeling a little 251 ashamed of the poor Russian east side Jew, they object to a serious literary portrayal of him. They want no attention called to what they deem the less attractive aspects of their race. An uptown Jewish lady, on the appearance in a newspaper of a story about east side Jewish life, wrote a protesting letter to the editor. She told the writer of the sketch, when he was sent to see her, that she could not see why he didn't write about uptown Jews instead of sordid east side Jews. The scribe replied that he wrote of the Ghetto Jew because he found him interest- ing, while he couldn't see anything attractive or picturesque about the comfortable Israelite up- town. Abraham Cahan's stories have been subjected to criticism inspired by the same spirit. Feeling the charm of his people he has attempted to picture them as they are, in shadow and light ; and has consequently been accused of betraying his race to the Gentiles. The attitude of the east side Jews towards writers like Zangwill and Cahan is in refreshing contrast. The Yiddish newspapers were enthu- siastic about Children of the Ghetto, in which they felt the Jews were truthfully and therefore sym- pathetically portrayed. In the literary sketches and plays now produced in considerable numbers 252 in the "jargon," a great pride of race is mani- fest. The writers have not lost their self-re- spect, still abound in their own sense and are consequently vitally interesting. They are full of ideals and enthusiasm and do not object to what is "unpleasant" so strenuously as do their uptown brethren. 253 CKoLpter Nine %fjt louns Srt anti its On Hester Street, east of the Bowery, the poor Jew is revealed in many a characteristic way. It is the home of the sweat-shop, of the crowded tenement-house. Old pedlers, as ragged as the poorest beggars, stand on street corners. In long uninterrupted lines are the carts — contain- ing fruit, cake, dry goods, fish, everything that the proletarian Jew requires. Behind these tower the crowded tenement-liouses, with fire- escapes for balconies. Through the middle of the street constantly moves a mass of people. No vehicle can go rapidly there, for the thor- oughfare is literally alive. In the least crowded part of the day, however, tattered little girls may sometimes be seen dancing with natural grace to the music of a hand-organ, the Italian owner of which for some strange reason has embedded himself in the very heart of poverty. Between the lumbering wagons which infest the street at the less busy part of the day these little 254 children wonderfully sway and glide and consti- tute the only gladsome feature of the scene. Just as Canal Street, with its cafes where the poets, Socialists, scholars and journalists meet, is the mind of the Ghetto, so Hester Street represents its heart. This picturesque street has recently become the study of several young Jewish artists. The last few years have brought the earliest indications of what may develop into a charac- teristic Ghetto art. In the course of their long civilization the Jews have never developed a national plastic art. Devoted to the things of the spirit, in an important period of their history in conflict with the sensuous art of the Greeks, they have never put into external forms the heart of their life. There have been occasional painters and sculptors among them, but these have worked in line with the Gentiles, and have in no way contributed to a typical or national art. With the slackening of the Hebraic reli- gion, however, which prohibits images in the temple — that fertile source of inspiration in Christian art — the conditions have been more favorable, and the beginning of a distinctive Ghetto art has already made its appearance in New York. On the corner of Hester and Forsyth streets 255 is a tumble-down rickety building. The stairs that ascend to the garret are pestiferous and dingy. In what is more like a shed than a room, with the wooden ribs of the slanting roof curtailing the space, is the studio of an east side artist. A miserable iron bedstead occupies the narrow strip of floor beneath the descending ceiling. There is one window, which commands a good view of the pushcart market in Hester Street. Near the window is a diminutive oil- stove, on which the artist prepares his tea and eggs. On a peg on the door hang an old mack- intosh and an extra coat — his only additional wardrobe. About the narrow walls on the three available sides are easels, and sketches and paintings of Ghetto types. Jacob Epstein, the name of the artist, has a melancholy wistful face. He was born in the Ghetto twenty years ago, of poor Jews, who were at first tailors and afterwards small trades- people, and who had emigrated from Poland. He went to the public schools until he was thirteen years old. Since then he has worked at various jobs. Until recently he was an in- structor in the boys' out-door gymnasium near the corner of Hester and Essex streets. For one summer, in order to get a vacation, he became a farm laborer. His art education as 256 well as his education in general is slight, consist- ing of two terms at the Art Students' League. But for so young a man his intellectual, as well as his artistic activity has been considerable. He belongs to a number of debating societies, and is now hesitating in his mind whether to become a Socialist or an Anarchist, altho he is tending towards a humane socialism. Two things, however, he seems definitely to have settled— that he will devote himself to his art, and that that art shall be the plastic pictur- ing of the life of his people in the Ghetto. He seems to rejoice at having lost his various pot- boiling positions. I was not a gymnast," he said cheerfully, explaining why he left the last one, **and now they have a gymnast." Now he lives alone on his beloved Hester Street and the studio, where he sleeps and eats. For that modest room he pays $4 a month, and as he cooks his own meals, $12 a month is quite sufficient to satisfy all his needs. This amount he can usually manage to make through the sale of his sketches ; but when he does not he ''goes to bed," as he puts it, and lies low until one of his various little art enterprises brings him in a small check. Withal, he is very happy, altho serious, like his race in general ; and full of 257 idealism and ambition. On one occasion the idea occured to him and to his friend, Bernard Gussow, that men ought to live closer to nature than they can in the Ghetto. It was in the winter time that they were filled with this con- viction, but they nevertheless packed off and hired a farmhouse at Greenwood Lake, and stayed there the whole winter. When their money gave out they cut ice in the river to pay the rent. "We enjoyed it very much," said Epstein, "but there were no artistic results. The coun- try, much as I love it, is not stimulating. Clouds and trees are not satisfying. It is only in the Ghetto, where there is human nature, that I have ideas for sketches." With a kind of regret the artist spoke of the beauty of Winslow Homer's landscape. He called it "epic," and was filled with sorrow that such an art could not be in the Ghetto. "There is no nature in the sweat-shop," he said, "and yet it is there and in the crowded street that my love and my imagination call me. It is only the minds and souls of my people that fill me with a desire to work." It is this ambition which makes Jacob Epstein and the other young artists to be mentioned of uncommon representative interest. Epstein is 258 filled with a melancholy love of his race, and his constant desire is to paint his people just as they are : to show them in their suffering pic- turesqueness. So he goes into the sweat-shop and sketches, induces the old pedlers of Hester Street to pose in his studio, and draws from his window the push-carts and the old women in the street. It is thus a characteristic Ghetto art, an art dealing v/ith the peculiar types of that Jewish community, that Epstein's interest leads to ; a national plastic art, as it were, on a small scale. In the studio and at an exhibition at the He- brew Institute Epstein had two years ago a number of sketches and a few paintings — the latter very crude as far as the technique of color is concerned, and the sketches in charcoal rough and showing comparatively slight mastery of the craft. But, particularly in the sketches, there is character in every one, and at once a sympathetic and a realistic imagination. He tells the truth about the Ghetto as he sees it, but into the dark reality of the external life he puts frequently a melancholy beauty of spirit. Portraits of old pedlers, roughly successful as Ghetto types, in order to retain whom as models the artist was frequently forced to sing a song, for the pedlers have a Jewish horror of the 259 A LITTLE GIRL OF HESTER STREET image, and it is difficult to get them to pose ; one of them with an irregular, blunted nose and eyes sad and plaintive, but very gentle ; an old Jew in the syna- gogue, praying ^'Holy," Holy"; many sweat-shop scenes, gaunt figures half- dressed, with enormously long arms and bony figures ; mothers working in the shops with babies in their arms ; one woman, tired, watching for a moment her lean husband working the machine — that machine of which Morris Rosenfeld sings so powerfully in The Sweat-Shop " ; a woman with her head leaning heavily on her hands ; Hester Street market scenes, with dreary tenement-houses — a kind of prison wall — as background ; one pedler with a sensitive face — a man the artist had to catch at odd times, surreptitiously, for, religious to an ex- treme, the old fellow would hastily trundle off whenever he saw Epstein. A characteristic of this young artist's work is the seriousness with which he tries to get the type as it is ; the manifest love involved in the way it takes his imagination. With his whole soul he hates caricature of his race. Most of the magazine illustrations of Ghetto characters he finds distorted and untrue, many of them, 260 however, done with a finish of technique that he envies. A big and ugly nose is not the enthusi- astic artist's idea of what constitutes a down- town Jew. The Jew, to him, is recognized rather by the peculiar melancholy of the eyes. In the nose he sees nothing particularly typical of the race. It is a forcible illustration of how, while really remaining faithful to the external type, his love for the race leads him to emphasize the spiritual and humane expressiveness of the faces about him ; and so paves the way to an art imaginative as well as typical, not lacking even in a certain ideal beauty. Bernard Gussow, Epstein's friend and fellow- worker in the attempt to found a distinctive Ghetto art, is in a still earlier stage of develop- ment. His essays in the plastic reproduction of Hester Street types are not yet as humanly interesting as those of the younger man, who, however, has been working longer and more assiduously. It is only for the past year or two that Gussow has definitely espoused this cause. Unlike Epstein he was not born in New York. The town of Slutzk, in the government of Ulinsk, Russia, is his birthplace, where he stayed until he was eleven years old. His father is a teacher of Hebrew, and young Gussow con- sequently received a much better education than 261 Epstein ; and also became much more familiar with the religious life of the Orthodox Jews. For that reason Epstein urges his friend to take the New York Orthodox synagogue and the domestic life of the religious Jew as his dis- tinctive field in the great work in hand. For this, too, Gussow hopes, but in the present con- dition of his technique he limits himself to Hes- ter Street scenes. In New York Gussow continued to build up an education uncommonly good in the Ghetto. He went through the High School, entered the City College, which he left for the Art School, and spent one season at the League and two at the Academy of Design. He has for many years given lessons in English ; to which occupation he, unlike his more emotional friend, prudently holds on. But Gussow, also, is deeply if not emotionally interested in the life of the Ghetto, and in a broader if less intense form than is Epstein. With the contemporary Yiddish liter- ature and journalism of New York he is well acquainted. His mind is more conservative and judicial than that of Epstein ; but his sketches lack, at present at least, the touch of strong sympathy and imagination which is marked in the art of the younger man. Gussow lives with his father's family, where 262 he keeps his sketches — but to work, he goes to a room on the corner of Hester and Essex streets occupied by a poor Jewish family. Here the artist sits by the window and watches the poor and picturesque scenes in the big push-cart market directly beneath him. The subjects of his sketches are roughly the same as those of Epstein, altho he draws rather more from the street and Epstein from the sweat-shop. Groups standing about the push-carts, examining goods and bargaining ; an old woman with a cheese in her hand, and an enormous nose (which Epstein reproachfully calls a caricature); several sketches representing men or women holding eggs to the sun, as a test preliminary to buying ; carpenters waiting on the corner near the market for a job ; an old Jew critically examining apples ; a roughly indicated, rather attractive Jewish girl ; a woman standing by a push-cart counting her money ; a confused Hester Street crowd, walled in by the lofty tenement-houses ; a wall-painter with an interesting face, who peddles horse-radish when not occupied with painting; a pedler out of work, just from the hospital, his beard straggling in again, with the characteristic sad eyes of his race ; this rather small list comprises the greater part of Gussow's work, and most of it is of a distinctly sketchy nature. 264 "You see," said Epstein sympathetically, " Bernard has until recently been working for the tenement-house committee, and has only just got away from his job." Both of these young men seem to think it a piece of good luck when they are discharged by their employers. These artists both recognize that the distinct- ive Ghetto art is in its earliest stage ; and that whatever has yet been done in that direction is technically very imperfect. But they call atten- tion even to the crayon art stores of the Ghetto as crudely pointing in the right direction. In those chromos, which contain absolutely no artistic quality, is represented, nevertheless, the religious and domestic life of the Jews and their physical types. And whatever art there is at present is supported by the popularity with the people of this crayon work. On the basis of that the artist proper may work out the type into more truly interpretative forms. For this young art, the object of which is to give a realistic picture of the life of the Ghetto, it is easy to conceive an unduly sentimental inter- est. It is not unnatural in this time of great attention to east side charitable work to give greater value than it deserves to an art which represents the sordidness and the pathos of that part of the city. Against this attitude, which 265 they also call sentimental, Epstein and Gussow earnestly protest, and maintain that unless the Ghetto art becomes some day technically excel- lent it will have no legitimate value. They want it judged on the same basis that any other art is judged ; and they are filled with the faith, or at least the enthusiastic Epstein is, that the time will come when the artists of the Ghetto will paint typical Jewish life, and paint it technically well. It is true, of course, that the ultimate value of this little art movement in the Ghetto will de- pend upon how well the attempt to paint the life is eventually carried out. But, nevertheless, even if nothing comes of it, it is important as suggesting an interesting departure from what is the prevailing limitation of American art. In Epstein's work something of the typical life of a community is expressed ; of what American painter from among the Gentiles can this be said ? Where is the typical, the nationally characteristic, in our art ? Our best painters experiment with all kinds of subjects ; they put talent, sometimes genius, into their work, but at the basis of it there is no simple presentation of well-recognized and deeply felt national or even sectional life; merely essays in art, of more or less skill, showing no warm interest in any one kind of life. 266 There are many other artists, besides these two, in the Ghetto, some of whom also occasion- ally paint a distinctive Ghetto type. But for the most part, trained as they have been in the up- town art schools, they experiment with all sorts of subjects in the approved American style. They paint girls in white and girls in blue, etc., as Epstein expressed it scornfully ; and put no general Ghetto quality into their work. They do not seem deeply interested in anything except painting. Many of them are technically better educated than Epstein and Gussow ; tho it is probably safe to say that no one of them has the sympathetic imagination of Epstein. It is to this eclectic, experimental tendency of the ar- tists in the Ghetto in general that Epstein and Gussow present a contrast — in their love of their people and their desire to paint them as they are. A typical representative of this less centred art is Samuel Kalisch, twenty-six years old, who came to this country from Austria twelve years ago. Older than the two young enthusiasts, Kalisch has had more experience and has devel- oped a more efficient technique. He works in oils to a greater extent than the others and has a number of comparatively finished pictures ; but his studio resembles that of any rather undis- tinguished uptown artist in point of diversity 267 of subject and artistic impulse. There is an Oriental scene of conventional character ; a por- trait of himself taken from the mirror ; a num- ber of examples of still-life, apples, flowers, a "cute" scene of children playing on the beach; a landscape, etc. Of distinctive Ghetto things there are two old men, one just from the syna- gogue, with pensive eyes, a long beard and a Derby hat ; the other, ninety-four years old, who sits in the synagogue, with a long white beard, a black cap on his head, a cane in one hand and the Talmud in the other. These two portraits show considerable technical skill, but are faithful rather than interpretative, and indicate that the artist's sympathy is not absorbed in the life of the Ghetto. They are merely subjects, like any other, which might come to his hand. Now in full sympathy with what may be called the "movement" is Nathaniel Loewenberg, a little, black-haired, sad-eyed, sensitive and ap- pealing Russian Jew of twenty-one years of age. It is only recently, however, that he has turned from landscape to city types, of which he has a few sketches, very incomplete with one excep- tion, that also unfinished but unusually promis- ing ; it is in oil and represents a Jew fish pedler of attractive countenance and shabby clothes trying to sell a fine fish to three Ghetto women ; 268 these latter cleverly distinguished, one who will probably buy, another who apparently would like to if she could reduce the price, and the third indifferent. Loewenberg was born in Moscow, of parents who were then and are now in business. He is enthusiastic at present over two things: Russian literature and the life of the Jews. On his table are two books — one a history of the Hebrews, the other Tolstoi's "Awakening," in Russian. His newest interest is the Ghetto; "for," he said, " the Ghetto is full of character. There the people's life is more exposed than anywhere else, and the artist can easily penetrate into it." The type Loewenberg hopes to delineate is of different character from that of Hester Street, where Gussow and Epstein work. His field is mainly at the corner of Rivington and Attorney streets, where the Jews are Hungarians and Poles and have a distinctive type. That is the location of another push-cart market, and altho the human types are different from those of Hester Street, the peddling occupations are identical. Loewenberg's fancy runs largely to the young Jewish girl of this quarter, and she is represented in several half done sketches. The New York Ghetto is constantly changing. It shifts from one part of town to another, and 269 the time is not so very far distant when it will cease to exist altogether. The sweat-shop will happily disappear with advancing civilization in New York. The tenement-houses will change in character, the children will learn English and partly forget their Yiddish language and peculiar customs. In spite of the fact that the Jews have been at all times and in all countries tenacious of their domestic peculiarities and their religion, the special character of the Ghetto will pass away in favorably conditioned America. The picturesqueness it now possesses will disappear. Perhaps, however, by that time an art will have been developed which will preserve for future generations the character of the present life ; which may thus have historical value, and ar- tistic beauty in addition. Epstein and Gussow, devoted to this result as they are, are yet quite eager to see present conditions pass away. To them the art they have selected seems of trifling importance in comparison with a general im- provement of the people they seem genuinely to love. They would be glad to have the present picturesqueness of the Ghetto give place to con- ditions more analogous to those of happier sections of New York. But in the meantime these few young artists, two or three particularly interested in Ghetto 270 types, five or six others, perhaps more, who occasionally contribute a sketch of the Ghetto, are in a fair way to get together a considerable body of pictures which shall have the distinction of portraying the Jewish community of the east side with fair adequacy. Certainly the interest of that Hester Street life, and of the tenement- houses that line it, is deep enough to inspire some serious man of plastic genius. And then it is not improbable that some great sombre pictures will be painted. The conditions for such a significant art are ripe, and it may find its master in one or another of the young men who are passionately doing" Hester Street. 271 Chapter Ten 0Vt} C|)aracter2i No matter how "queer" are the numerous persons whom one can meet in the cafes of the quarter they are mainly redeemed by a genuinely intellectual vein. It is reserved for this final chapter to tell of some men who do not well fit into the preceding categories, but whose lives or works are, in one way or another, quite worthy of record. AN OUT-OF-DATE STORY-WRITER Shaikevitch is the author of interminable, un- signed novels, which are published in daily installments in the east side newspapers. He is so prolific that he makes a good living. There was a time, however, when he gladly signed his name to what he wrote. That time is over, and the reason for it is best brought out by a sketch of his history. He was born in Minsk, Russia, of orthodox Jewish parents. He began to write when he was twenty years old, at first in pure Hebrew, scientific and historical articles. He also wrote 272 a Hebrew novel, called the Victim of the Inquisition, to which the Russian censor objected on the ground that it dealt with religious subjects. Compelled to make his own living, young Shaikevitch, whose nom de plume has always been Schomer," began to write popular novels in the common jargon, in Yiddish. At that time the Jews in Russia were, even more than now, shut up in their own communities, knew nothing of European culture, had an education, if any, exclusively Hebraic and mediaeval and were outlandish to an extreme. The educated read only Hebrew, and the uneducated did not read at all. Up to that time, or until shortly before it, the Jew thought that nothing but holy teach- ing could be printed in Hebrew type. A man named Dick, however, a kind of forerunner of Shaikevitch, had begun to write secular stories in Yiddish. They were popular in form, intended for the ignorant populace who never read at all. * Shaikevitch followed in Dick's lines, and made a great success. He has written over i6o stories, and for many years he was the great popular Yiddish writer in Russia. The people would read nothing but **Schomer's" works. The ignorant masses eagerly devoured the latest novel ofSchomer's. It goes without saying that, under the circum- 273 stances, these books could be of very slight literary value. They were long, sentimental effusions, tales of bad Christians and good Jews, with a monotonous repetition of stock characters and situations ; and with a melodramatic and sensational element. They probably corre- sponded pretty closely to our nickel" novels, published in some of our cheapest periodicals, and intended for the most ignorant element of our population. Some of their titles are A Shameful Error, An Unexpected Happiness, The Prin- cess in the Wood, Con'bicted, Rebecca* ^'Schomer" was so successful that he had many imitators, who never, however, succeeded so well. The publishers sometimes tried to deceive the ignorant people into thinking that a new novel of Schomer's had appeared. On the cover of the book they put the title and the new author's name in very small letters, and then in very large letters : In the style of Schomer." But it did not work. The people remained faithful to the books of the man whom they had first read. When Shaikevitch, or ''Schomer" himself, describes the purpose and characters of his work he talks as follows : My works are partly pictures of the life of the Jews in the Russian villages of fifty years 274 ago, and partly novels about the old history of the Jews. Fifty years ago the Jews were more fanatical than they are now. They did nothing but study the Talmud, pray and fast, wear long beards and wigs and look like monkeys. I satirized all this in my novels. I tried to teach the ignorant Jews that they were ridiculous, that they ought to take hold of modern, practical life and give up all that was merely formal and absurd in the old customs. I taught them that a pious man might be a hypocrite, and that it is better to do good than to pray. My works had a great effect in modernizing and educating the ignorant Jews. In my stories I pictured how the Jewish boy might go out from his little village into the wide, Gentile world, and make something of himself. In the last twenty-five years, the Jews, owing to my books, have lost a great deal of their fanaticism. At that time they had nothing but my books to read, and so my satire had a great effect." Shaikevitch is not entirely alone in this good opinion of his work. Dr. Blaustein, superin- tendent of the Educational Alliance, said that he owed his position as an educated and modern man to reading novels when he was a boy. Dr. Blaustein lived in a small Russian village, and one day he read a story of **Schomer's" which 275 represented a Jewish boy going out into the world and criticizing his Hebraic surroundings. That was the beginning of Dr. Blaustein's "awakening." Other intelligent Russian Jews probably had this same experience, altho now as mature men they would all, no doubt, grant only a very small, if any, artistic quality to the famous Yiddish writer. A few years after Shaikevitch's great popular- ity two men began to write in Yiddish stories which really had value for the intelligent and educated — Abramovitch and, particularly, his pupil Rabinovitch. It was this work which, in some sort of form, did intelligently for the more educated Jews what Shaikevitch had done for the lowest stratum. Rabinovitch published a book in which he brought Shaikevitch to trial. He literally "tore him up the back" as far as literature is concerned — poinced out the taste- less, cheap, sensational character of his work, and held him up generally to ridicule. As the Jews became better educated this critical feeling about Shaikevitch's work grew more general. It is significant of the progress towards modern things made by the Jews that even the very ignorant no longer admire Shai- kevitch's work as much as formerly. He is "out of date," so much so that he now does not sign 276 N. M. SHAIKEVITCH the stories he publishes in the Yiddish news- papers, which, nevertheless, are still popular among the most ignorant. The intellectual Socialists of the Jewish quar- ter in New York also had their fling at the pop- ular writer, and helped to put him into obscur- ity. Now it is a common thing in the Ghetto to hear a Socialist say that Shaikevitch wielded a more disintegrating and unfavorable influence on the Jews than any other writer. But, never- theless, the calm old man, who has a wife and several grown children, who are making their way in the new world, still sits quietly at his desk, drinking Russian tea and doing his daily stunt " of several thousand words for the Yid- dish newspapers. The reason given by Mr. Shaikevitch for com- ing to America is that he began to be interested in play writing, when the Yiddish stage was prohibited in Russia. The actors left Russia then and came to America, and some of them later wrote Shaikevitch, who was one of the earliest Yiddish playwrights, to join them in New York. He did so, and has written twelve plays, which have been produced in this city. Some of the better known of them are : The Je50 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers NEW YORK & LONDON A ROMANCE OF A STRANGE COUNTRT THE INSANE ROOT By Mrs. Campbell Praed Author ofNadine ; The Scourge Stick''; ''As a Watch in the Nighty'' etc. THIS story has the same motif as Stevenson's Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde, and a weird treatment resembling that of Bulwer's " Strange Story." It will compare favor- ably in strength and literary quality with either of these great productions. Isadas Pacha, Ambassador at the Court of St. James's from AbduUulah Zobeir, Emperor of Abaria, dying at last after a long life of mixed good and evil, leaves to his phy- sician. Dr. Marillier, " the insane root," a mandregora root, enclosed in a small box. Marillier, a suitor of Rachel, the beautiful ward of the Pacha, envies Ruel Bey, his favored rival. Learning from the papers left by the Pacha that the mandrake root has marvelous powers, Marillier succeeds in assuming the body of Ruel who has been accidentally killed. On this change of identities the fascinating story turns. After marrying Rachel the problem of consummating the marriage can not be solved by Marillier, the wraith of the real Ruel preventing. A bolt of lightning solves the problem. There is a mystery about Rachel, who turns out to be the Emperor's own daughter. The scenery is partly that of the Algerian mountains, very graphically and beautifully described. The supernatural elements are handled in a way to make them seem actually credible. The storm climax reminds the reader of Hawthorne's best work in the Marble Fawn. 1 2 mo. Cloth. j8o Pages. $l.^O FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, PubUshers NEW YORK & LONDON THE NEEDLE'S EYE By Florence Morse Kingsley Author of '•^The Transfiguration of M.is% PhilurUy'' Titus,''' Prisoners of the Sea,'' '■^ Stephen," etc. THE NEEDLE'S EYE" is a remarkable story of modern American life, — not of one phase, but of many phases, widely different and in startling contrast. The scenes alternate between country and city. The pure, free air of the hills, and the foul, stifling atmosphere of the slums ; the sweet breath of the clover fields, and the stench of crowded rv^ne- ments are equally familiar to the hero in this novel. The other characters are found in vine-covered cottages, in humble farm- houses, in city palaces, and in the poorest tenements of the slums. Immanuel, the hero, begins life as a foundling, and the chapters telling of his unhappy infancy and happy boyhood are written with a tenderness, a pathos, and an intimacy of knowl- edge and description that touch the deepest sympathies of the reader. Later, Immanuel finds himself the heir of a vast for- tune. His struggle to use the wealth in relieving the miseries of the slums demonstrates the truth of the declaration of Jesus : " It is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye tnan for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Many of the situations in the novel are exceedingly dramatic. Others sparkle with genuine humor. This is a story to make people laugh, and cry, and think. Illustrations by F. E. Mears. i2mo^ Cloth. $1.^0 FUNK A WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers NEW YORK & LONDON St. Louis Globe-Democrat : **It is a simple, gen- tle, quietly-humorous narrative, with several love affairs in it." UNDER MY OWN ROOF By Adelaide L. Rouse Author of The Deane Girls,^^ " Westo'ver House etc. A STORY of a nesting impulse" and what came of it. A newspaper woman determines to build a home for herself in a Jersey suburb. The story of its planning is delightfully told, simply and with a lite'-ary-humorous flavor that will appeal to lovers of books and of the fireside. Before the house-building details are allowed to tire the reader, a love story is begun, and catches the interest. It concerns the home-builder, an old flame, and an old friend, the third of whom has become a next-door neighbor. With this romance are entwined a number of heart affairs as well as warm friendships. The style is bright, and the humor genial and pervasive. The "literary worker" and the "suburbanite" particularly will enjoy the book. Women of culture everywhere should appreciate its delicate style. Illustrations by Harrie A. Stoner. izmo. Cloth. Price, ^i.20, net; postage, 13 cents. FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers, New York & London JESUS THE JEW JND OTHER JBBRESSES By Harris Weinstock Introduction by Prof. David Starr Jordan Ten straightforward talks by a broad-minded stu- dent of the Jewish Race, explaining alike to jew and Christian the fundamental and highest conceptions of liberal Judaism and its relationship in Christianity. HIGH PRAISE FROM THE NON-JEPVISH PRESS Herald and Presbyter^ St. Louis, Mo.: "The author is a man of force and of large liberality, and goes far beyond what the ordinary orthodox Jew would be willing to concede." The Outlooky New York : "It will justify a wide attention from both Jews and Christians, and in many respects will be of peculiar helpfulness to some who have no conscious religious faith. " Neivi-hetter ^ San Francisco : "A very interesting volume, well written, broad in its tendencies, and one that will be help- ful to any one who reads it, regardless of race or creed." COMMENDED BY LEADING JEWISH PAPERS The Je%vii,h Spectator^ New Orleans : "Its tendency is to remove prejudices from the minds of non-Jews and to strengthen the faith of the Jew. Every Israelite in the land should obtain two copies, read one for his own benefit and comfort, and give the other to a Christian friend who entertains yet a few prej- udices and is desirous of divesting himself of them." Jewish Ledger^ New Orleans, La.: "It deserves a con- spicuous place in the homes of intelligent people. . . . Always couched in respectful and courteous language, and refreshing in logical consideration of the question." I2mo, Cloth, 22g pp. $l.OO, net; by Mail, $l.OJ FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers NEW YORK & LONDON \ 4