text:
Welcome to the Archive
More than a half-century of opinion and ideas. Still timeless.
January, 1950Back to TopWhat Makes Richmond Run
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Congratulations on publishing "Slow Revolution in Richmond, Va." by David and Adele Bernstein [in the December issue]. As a description of a Jewish community in flux, the Bemsteins' article stands out for its clear-cut analysis and excellent depiction of the dynamic factors in Jewish community life.
Low Life and High Life
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I heartily enjoyed the vivid and competent article of Mr. Klonsky on his Paris experiences ["On the Margin in France," in the November COMMENTARY].
Judaic Lore in Heine
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I should like to convey my appreciation to David Daiches for the fine review of my study Judaic Lore in Heine which he wrote for the October issue of COMMENTARY.
Religion in Literature
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Leslie Fiedler, in his review of Philip Rahv's Image and Idea in the November number, gives us to understand that a critic who relies upon naturalist assumptions is incapable of adequately understanding the work of writers animated by religious faith: ".
The Labor Zionists and Halutziut
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I have read with surprise a statement in Arthur Hertzberg's article, in your October issue, that "The Labor Zionists, though encouraging halutziut as a firm part of their traditional work, did not mention it at all in their declaration"—that is, in the declaration of the National Assembly for Labor Israel. Since I had something to do with drafting the document referred to, it would be a source of chagrin to find that this particular item had been left out. But on examining the text of the declaration I find it contains the following: "A great voluntary mobilization of the Israeli labor movement is necessary, to colonize waste places and devise forms for absorbing the refugees into the cooperative, dynamic structure of Israel.
Another View
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Irving Kristol in his excellent article "God and the Psychoanalysts" calls attention to the odd alliance between religion and the psychoanalysts, recently so fervently praised and recommended by certain theologians.
Mr. Kristol Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The distinction that Dr. Cronbach makes between religion and theology is important, though I fail to see why it should be an occasion for flippancy with regard to "theological quandaries." Do not theological quandaries arise from religious ones, from trying to justify the ways of God to man, from trying to explain how it is that the wicked prosper and the good perish? In any case, from the fact that religion is not identical with theology it does not follow that religion is everything that theology is not.
"God and the Psychoanalysts"
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The article "God and the Psychoanalysts," which appeared in the November issue, illustrates a widespread misconception, namely, that of identifying religion with theology.
American Jews Through Israeli Eyes:
A Traveler's Report on Some Current Attitudes
by Arthur Hertzberg
An array of ideologists has been busy telling us what form the relations between Israel and American Jewry must or must not take, on pain of a variety of predicted penalties.
British Labor's Half-Way House:
The Socialist Government Faces the Electorate
by George Lichtheim
In recent weeks two members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, Australia and New Zealand, have seen the passing of their well-established Labor governments.
A Humanist Religion for Modern Men:
Judaism as a This-Worldly Way of Life
by Israel Knox
The present revival of Jewish religious thinking has evoked considerable interest—often, however, tinged with perplexity, for many of the voices speak with religious accents rather unfamiliar to American Jewish thought: there is a novel stress on the supernatural as against the natural, and the religious as against the ethical.
The Jews Under Turkey's "New Deal":
The Struggle for Democracy is Still Not Won
by Hal Lehrman
Turkey, the easternmost recipient of Marshall Plan funds, is the cornerstone of American foreign policy in the Eastern Mediterranean. Yet, as compared with its neighbor Greece, very little information on Turkey's qualifications to be included in the democratic camp has been published in the American press.
The Ordeal of Arnold Friedman, Painter:
Life and Works of an American Jewish Artist
by William Schack
William Schack is the author of that remarkable biography of Louis Eilshemius which appeared in 1939, And He Sat Among the Ashes.
Dickens, Fagin, and Mr. Riah:
The Intention of the Novelist
by Edgar Johnson
As a by-product of the successful efforts of Jewish groups to prevent the showing of the film version of Oliver Twist in this country, and the more recent (and unsuccessful) effort to ban the novel from the New York public schools, there is a noticeable tendency in the public mind to classify Charles Dickens as an enemy of the Jews.
The Dowry
A Story
by Harry Jr.
"As we grow older and reach the ripe years," Daniel said to his wife, lying back in his chair and pressing his fingertips together in a half-serious archiepiscopal gesture, so that he reminded her more than usual of a praying mantis, "the years just before the decline, the years of—say—twenty-nine, death .
by Howard Nemerov
I went under cover of night By back streets and alleyways, Not as one secret and ashamed But with a natural discretion. I passed by a boy and a girl Embraced against the white wall In parts of shadow, parts of light, But though I turned my eyes away, my mind shook Whether with dryness or their driving blood; And a dog howled once in a stone comer. _____________ II Rabbi, I said, How is a man born, being old? From the tom sea into the world A man may be forced only the one time To suffer the indignation of the child, His childish distempers and illnesses. I would not, if I could, be born again To suffer the miseries of the child, The perpetual nearness to tears, The book studied through burning eyes, The particular malady of being always ruled To ends he does not see or understand. A man may be forced only the one time To the slow perception of what is meant That is neither final nor sufficient, To the slow establishment of a self Adequate to the ceremony and respect Of other men's eyes; and to the last Knowledge that nothing has been done, The bitter bewilderment of his age, A master in Israel and still a child. _____________ III Rabbi, all things in the springtime Flower again, but a man may not Flower again.
Rudolf Borchardt: Poet of Assimilation:
The Extreme Case of an Extreme Tendency
by Heinz Politzer
The life and work of the German poet Rudolf Borchardt is, Heinz Politzer suggests here, a symbol in its most extreme form of those many German Jewish men of letters who sought to integrate themselves in a culture that was never quite ready to accept them—and who, by the very violence of the rejection of their Jewish background, succeeded only in making their dilemma, and their ultimate moral and artistic failure, more poignant.
Scene With Figure
by Babette Deutsch
The treadmill prisoner of that century Whose sufferings seem quaint beside our own Ground corn, ground stone. With steady tramping, she, Repeating her gray round, grinds misery. A choking heap, that she must eat alone. Awake, asleep, she walks, she walks, she treads The steps her crippled feet have worn.
From the American Scene: The Peanut Machine and the Kramers
by Louis Zara
In this department, informal sociologists have explored the impact of American society, its modes and its machines, on the Jewish family, its cultural patterns, and its various members—and vice versa.
Cedars of Lebanon: The Creation
by Our Readers
The Aggada is made up of stories, dialogues, homilies, sayings, proverbs, fables, and riddles scattered through the Mishna and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, as well as other sources.
On the Horizon: A Musician Speaks Out
by Chemjo Vinaver
Chemjo Vinaver has won the high respect of American critics and audiences alike for his devotion to the highest standards of musicianship as displayed in the performances of the Vinaver Chorus, of which he is organizer and conductor.
The Study of Man: The Prophets of the New Conservatism
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Conservatism Revisited, by the Pulitzer-prize poet Peter Viereck, is only one of a small tide of recent books in the same vein.
Stalin: A Political Biography, by Isaac Deutscher
by Franz Borkenau
Stalin's Political Contribution Stalin: A Political Biography. by Isaac Deutscher. Oxford. 600 pp. $5.00. If the image we have of Stalin is blurred and distorted, it is certainly no fault of the historians.
College Yiddish, by Uriel Weinreich; Yiddish for Adults, by Nathaniel Buchwald
by Ralph Weiman
The Yiddish Language College Yiddish. by Uriel Weinreich. Yiddish Scientific Institute—Yivo. 397 pp. $4.50. Yiddish For Adults. by Nathaniel Buchwald. The Book League of the Jewish Peoples Fraternal Order.
The Sure Thing, by Merle Miller; The Sea Change, by Nigel Dennis; The Oasis, by Mary McCarthy
by Isa Kapp
The "Liberal" in the Novel The Sure Thing. by Merle Miller. William Sloane. 341 pp. $3.00. The Sea Change. by Nigel Dennis. Houghton Mifflin. 372 pp.
Letters to My Son, by Dagobert D. Runes
by Monroe Engel
The Misuses of Adversity Letters To My Son. by Dagobert D. Runes. Philosophical Library. 92 pp. $2.75. After reading Dagobert Runes's slim volume of letters to his son, one is prepared to believe that Dr.
Knight's Gambit, by William Faulkner
by Martin Greenberg
Gambit Declined Knight's Gambit. by William Faulkner. Random House. 246 pp. $2.75. The five stories and one novelette making up this volume, despite the technical brilliance of their telling, are all extremely slight.
Reader Letters January 1950
by Our Readers
"God and the Psychoanalysts" TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: The article "God and the Psychoanalysts," which appeared in the November issue, illus- trates a widespread misconception, namely, that of identifying religion with theology.
Since its first issue in 1945, COMMENTARY has published hundreds of articles about Jews and Judaism. As one would expect, they cover just about every important aspect of the topic.
February, 1950Back to TopPsychological Roots of Ritual
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Permit me to break a lance in favor of Mr. Rosenfeld, whose article, "Adam and Eve on Delancey Street" [October 1949], received such a sad drubbing in your letters section.
Mr. Vinaver Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Mrs. Cohen's rather weak reaction to my article seems to me to miss the bus on both points she is trying to make.
Raising Musical Standards
by Our Readers
To the Editor: In Chemjo Vinaver's article in the January issue of your magazine, he assumes that Dr. Gradenwitz shared in the editorial policy of Jewish Music Notes, June 1949 issue, since his name appeared among the paper's contributing editors. Dr.
Books for Jewish Children
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I read with pleasure Isa Kapp's refreshing and provocative article on "Books for Jewish Children" in your December issue.
The U.N. Tangle Over Jerusalem:
Prospects for a Settlement
by Hal Lehrman
The UN decision to internationalize the city of Jerusalem, which called forth prompt and vigorous reactions from Israel and Jordan, appeared to reopen a bitter controversy; but, paradoxically, the vote for internationalization may have had the effect of mobilizing forces that will eventually bring about a more equitable solution.
Discrimination in the Colleges Dies Hard:
Progress Report on an American Sore Spot
by Edward Saveth
The system of "quotas" maintained in the vast majority of our colleges and professional schools, flying in the face of the basic American principle of equal opportunity, is perhaps among the most frustrating of the various forms of discrimination practiced in this country.
Hunger Is Obsolete, If-
The Unused Weapon to Win the Cold War
by James Rorty
The recent meeting of the United Nations Scientific Conference on Conservation and Utilization of Resources underlined a new fact in human history that may ultimately be of far greater importance than all the deliberations of the UN's more publicized organs: the perfecting of what is in essence a technological weapon as constructive in its potential as the atom bomb is destructive.
A Religious Bridge between Jew and Christian:
Shall We Recognize Two Covenants?
by Hans Schoeps
In most of the various attempts to secure interfaith understanding, social, political, and public relations linkages have been sought and one important question is usually slighted: How on religious grounds can a religious Christian regard the Jew, and how can a religious Jew regard the Christian, in such a way as to gain mutual respect? This is the question Hans Joachim Schoeps here tries to answer, endeavoring, while recognizing and honoring distinctivenesses and differences, to throw a theological bridge across the present gulf.
I Was My Father
by Jacob Sloan
I was my father: a bald, full-lipped man with absent eyes, hoarse throat and mouth of wit, studied heresy at the cabin hearth, and bought the Times the first day off the ship. I was my father; fought the kids who mocked his poor wild pinching of the spitball class, missed him like a tooth when I awoke into adolescence, swore, harassed, to outfather father: wish, work, win what he had never dared, or lost.
I Kill a Nazi Gauleiter:
Memoir of a Jewish Assassin
by David Frankfurter
In February 1936, David Frankfurter, then a student at the University of Bern, killed Wilhelm Gustloff, Nazi Gauleiter of Switzerland.
Jewish Art and the Fear of the Image:
The Escape from an Age-Old Inhibition
by Herbert Howarth
In addition to scholarship and enthusiasm, Herbert Howarth brings to the study of the long-obscured problem of the relation of the Jewish spirit to pictorial art the perhaps useful personal detachment of a non-Jew. _____________ When interpreted by Gentiles, the commandment "Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image.
Shabbat in Tel Aviv:
Israel on the Seventh Day
by Ruth Gruber
Ruth Gruber, recently returned from a visit to Israel, here seeks to recapture the flavor of Tel Aviv's Sabbath. _____________ Israel is at peace.
From the American Scene:The Woman Downstairs
by Alfred Kazin
Alfred Kazin, who contributes this story of life in Brownsville, is one of this country's most highly regarded critics. He has written for the New Yorker, New Republic, Partisan Review, and numerous other periodicals, and is the author of On Native Grounds (1942), a study of American literature.
Cedars of Lebanon: Revealment and Concealment in Language
by Hayim Bialik
Translator's Introduction: In this essay, Hayim Nahman Bialik (1873-1934), the foremost poet of the Hebrew renaissance, treats a problem that has assumed particular relevance not only in modern literature, but in modern culture as a whole.
On the Horizon: Interfaith at Walla Walla
by Joseph Gumbiner
Too often, the typical "interfaith" meeting or conference, for all its good intentions, is no more than a drearily formal bow to a lifeless "unity." Joseph H.
by David Ignatow
His head split in four parts, he walks down the street—pleasant with shady trees and a sun softened by leaves touching it. He walks, a revolving turret for a head from each slit of which he looks guardedly: the enemy approaches or he approaches the enemy.
Study of Man: The French Turn to Psychoanalysis
by Sherry Mangan
France, the country of reason and clarity, has always been cool to psychoanalysis, the science of the unreasonable. But recently there has been a turnabout, and the doctrines of Freud have been adopted with all the intensity characteristic of French intellectual life.
Jews in Transition, by Albert I. Gordon
by Oscar Handlin
The American Jewish Pattern Jews in Transition. by Albert I. Gordon. University of Minnesota Press. 331 pp. $4.00. If we are now troubled by doubts as to what is the place of Jews in American life, that is in part at least because of the fact that there have been so few serious attempts to analyze the evidence.
Rehearsal for Destruction, by Paul Massing
by Samuel Hurwitz
Breeding Ground for Nazis Rehearsal for Destruction: A Study of Political Anti-Semitism in Imperial Germany. by Paul Massing. Harper. 341 pp. $4.50. Rehearsal for Destruction is an illuminating and often moving account of the tactics of various groups in the Germany of the Kaisers in politically manipulating a latent, widespread, and often virulent anti-Semitism.
The Life and Times of Jehudah Halevi, by Rudolf Kayser
by David Daiches
Jehudah Halevi The Life and Times of Jehudah Halevi. by Rudolf Kayser. Translated from the German by Frank Gaynor. Philosophical Library. 176 pp.
Trade Unions in the New Society, by Harold J. Laski
by Martin Diamond
Trade Unions: Real and "Ideal" Trade Unions in the New Society. by Harold J. Laski. Viking. 181 pp. $3.00. The title of Mr. Laski's latest book suggests a subject of considerable significance and one badly in need of fresh theoretical treatment.
Christian Voss und die Sterne, by Hertha von Gebhardt
by Alfred Werner
Berlin's Jews Christian Voss und die Sterne. by Hertha von Gebhardt. Berlin, Cornelsen Verlag. 367 pp. The author of this novel about Gentiles and Jews in wartime Berlin has an interesting background.
Baxter Bernstein, by Stephen Seley
by Paul Goodman
Hero on the Loose Baxter Bernstein: A Hero of Sorts. by Stephen Seley. Scribner's. 239 pp. $3.00. The first part of this book is first rate.
The Knife
A Story
by Sholom Aleichem
Sholom Aleichem, the greatest of Yiddish writers, was born in Pereyaslav, Russia, in 1859, and died in 1916 in New York.
Reader Letters February 1950
by Our Readers
TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: I read with pleasure Isa Kapp's refreshing and provocative article on "Books for Jewish Chil- dren" in your December issue.
March, 1950Back to TopA Correction
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Belatedly I noticed that there is a misprint in my poem, "Scene With Figure," which appears in your January issue.
Our Suffering Readers
by Our Readers
To the Editor: That story by Sholom Aleichem is supposed to be for children? And that translation is supposed to be into English? Oh, woe is me!
Another View
To the Editor: As a Protestant Christian who has often had occasion to appreciate COMMENTARY, may I give a special word of thanks for Will Herberg's review of Blanshard's American Freedom and Catholic Power.
Mr. Herberg Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: There is no better way of answering the charges of your anonymous correspondent than by asking your readers to check my review against Mr.
Paul Blanshard on the Catholics
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Many readers who thought they appreciated the political, social, and religious ideals for which COMMENTARY seemed to stand, have been very much perplexed by Will Herberg's extremely critical review (COMMENTARY, August 1949) of Paul Blanshard's book American Freedom and Catholic Power. In the fight of your magazine for vigorous group development, inter-group tolerance, and against exploitation and tyranny over the mind and soul of man, we regarded Blanshard as an ally.
Richmond's Rabbi Calisch
by Our Readers
To the Editor: In "Slow Revolution in Richmond, Va." [COMMENTARY, December 1949], David and Adele Bernstein have presented a realistic picture of their subject.
Mr. Hook Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: "Fantastic" is the word for Mr. Taylor's reading of my article and rejoinder in the October and December issues of COMMENTARY.
Mr. Hook and Academic Freedom
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Mr. Sidney Hook's renewed attack upon Mrs. Helen Lynd's integrity [letter to the editor published in December COMMENTARY] is helpful neither to Mr.
Europe Turns to the Right:
The Dangerous Weakness of the Democratic Left
by David Williams
Many expected—either with hope or fear—that the aftermath of the war would provoke a shift to the Left in the European political spectrum.
Do Israeli Ties Conflict with U.S. Citizenship?:America Demands a Single Loyalty
by Dorothy Thompson
Among those who have expressed concern lest the strong emotional attachment that American Zionists have exhibited for Israel cast suspicion on the loyalty of American Jews to the United States, Dorothy Thompson's has been an especially outspoken voice.
Do Israeli Ties Conflict with U.S. Citizenship?: America Recognizes Diverse Loyalties
by Oscar Handlin
Oscar Handlin writes as an American historian whose studies have been focussed on the various groups that make up America and their relation to the common society and to government policy, foreign and domestic.
Six Poems
by Delmore Schwartz
Look, in the Labyrinth of Memory Regard, O reader, how it is with me: This year am I five thousand years of age, Secure in Pharaoh's great society, Like uncle Joseph on that ancient stage. This year will be the thirtieth eternity The thirtieth time around the solar fire. But if I count night watches, obviously, How I am aged in hope and dead desire! For I am fifty years by sleepless toil: And more than that!
Is Science Evil?
Answering the Attack on Modern Knowledge and Technology
by Karl Jaspers
With the atom and hydrogen bombs and the monstrous "medical" experiments in Hitler's concentration camps, our men of science have a guilty conscience, and there are those who have lost no time in taking advantage of this in order to launch an attack on science itself as the true criminal.
The Battle of Abington Township:
A Case History in Cooperative Housing
by Morton Hunt
Morton M. Hunt here presents a case history in veterans' housing—the story of a plan for a cooperative project on the outskirts of Philadelphia which uncovered some of the ugly tensions that so often lie beneath the apparently placid surface of American suburbia.
Man's Morals and God's Will:
The Meaning of Abraham's Sacrifice
by David Baumgardt
The Biblical story of the akedah—Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac at the command of God—has been a wellspring for the most diverse theological commentary, from the Talmud to Existentialism.
Peretz at Home:
A Young Writer Meets the Great Yiddish Litterateur
by J. Trunk
The secular Yiddish culture at the turn of this century held out glamor and excitement to many of the young men who had been raised in traditional homes.
The Death of the Prophet
A Story
by James Baldwin
On this same avenue down which he hurried now, he had once walked with his father on bright Sunday mornings and vibrant Sunday nights.
From the American Scene: Seventh Avenue: Boss and Worker
by Wallace Markfield
Wallace Markfield would not claim that these portraits of bosses and workers in New York's garment center by any means exhaust the pattern—these are only a few of many types in one of the most diversified industries—"racially" and culturally—in the United States. _____________ He started west from the Lower East Side and then reached a point beyond which he could not pass; this was Seventh Avenue and he settled there.
Cedars of Lebanon: Adam and Eve and the Serpent
by Our Readers
This the third of a series of translations from the Bialik-Ravnitzky Sefer Ha-Aggada. Previous selections from the Sefer Ha-Aggada ("Men and Women" and "The Creation") appeared in the July and January issues. The Aggada is made up of stories, dialogues, homilies, sayings, proverbs, fables, and riddles scattered through the Mishna and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, as well as other sources.
On the Horizon: Franz Werfel: Reporter of the Sublime
by Heinz Politzer
Franz Werfel, a writer of enormous talent who yet fell continuously into the second-rate, remains one of those enigmatic figures who seem to represent not so much a literary tendency as the very problem of being a writer in the modern world.
Study of Man: What Sociology Knows About American Jews
by Nathan Glazer
The sociological study of American Jews should help us to find the answers to many of the questions about the nature of Jewish life that are continually being raised in private and public discussion by Jews and non-Jews.
The God That Failed, edited by Richard Crossman
by Granville Hicks
The Appeal of Communism The God that Failed. by Richard Grossman. Harper. 273 pp. $3.50. Mr. Crossman, an editor of the New Statesman and Nation and a Labor MP, explains in his introduction that this symposium developed out of an argument with Arthur Koestler.
Prophets of Deceit, by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman
by Irwin Ross
The American Demagogue Prophets of Deceit: A Study of the Techniques of the American Agitator. by Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman. Harper. 164 pp.
The Crippled Giant, by Milton Hindus
by Irving Howe
The Inflation of Literature The Crippled Giant. by Milton Hindus. Boar's Head. 159 pp. $2.00. In the summer of 1948 Milton Hindus, then a young teacher of literature at the University of Chicago, made a strange journey.
American Jewish Yearbook, 1950, prepared by the American Jewish Committee
by Samuel Koenig
Volume 51 American Jewish Year Book, 1950. by The American Jewish Committee. Morris Fine, Editor; Jacob Sloan, Assistant Editor; and Irving Kaplan, Editorial Assistant. The American Jewish Committee and The Jewish Publication Society of America.
Jewish Artists of the 19th and 20th Centuries, by Karl Schwartz
by S. Faison
What Is Jewish Art? Jewish Artists of the 19th And 20th Centuries. by Karl Schwartz. Philosophical Library. 273 pp., 48 ill. $4.75. Here, in all conscience, is a bad book.
Reader Letters March 1950
by Our Readers
Mr. Hook and Academic Freedom TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: Mr. Sidney Hook's renewed attack upon Mrs. Helen Lynd's integrity [letter to the editor pub- lished in December COMMENTARY] is helpful neither to Mr.
April, 1950Back to TopThe Jewish-Christian Dialogue
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Professor Schoeps' proposal for "A Religious Bridge Between Jew and Christian" (COMMENTARY, February 1950) requires thoughtful consideration if only because the author is a distinguished student of Jewish religious thought.
Miss Himmelfarb Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Liberalism and conservatism have become semantical horrors, but they are still useful in defining a tendency of thought.
Conservatism and Freedom
by Our Readers
To the Editor: In the New York Herald Tribune of October 9, Professor Crane Brinton notes that an ignorance of the Srbik documentation has resulted in "the standard American textbook notion of Prince Metternich" as "the tyrant who tried to turn the clock back in 1814.
The American Credo Survives the Modern Crisis:
The "Great Exception" in a New Version
by Golo Mann
For native and immigrant alike America meant something unique in world history; it is a uniqueness that Americans have taken pride in, and Europeans acknowledged.
Is Egypt Planning a Second Round?
A Key Sector of the Arab-Israel Cold War
by Brian Faulkner
Egypt is rearming rapidly. The government in Cairo has earmarked one hundred and forty million dollars—one third of its total budgetary expenditure—for the Egyptian fighting forces this year.
The Postwar Revival of the Synagogue:
Does it Reflect a Religious Reawakening?
by Will Herberg
It was not so long ago that rabbis and Jewish educators were lamenting the general lack of interest in all matters pertaining to the synagogue.
Saving Asia for Democracy:
A Realistic Basis for American Policy in the Far East
by Sidney Hertzberg
The Communist conquest of China has been the occasion for an intense re-evaluation of our responsibilities—and opportunities—in all of Asia.
The Blue Piano of Else Lasker-Schueler:
"A Hebrew Poetess in the German Tongue"
by Heinz Politzer
The interest of American readers of poetry has been piqued but not satisfied by the little they have known of Else Lasker-Schueler.
Bread Gathering
by Ralph Gordon
The house seems large and empty, clean and quiet, Grandfather has a candle, a feather brush, Some broken bread; he walks about to lay it In this room and that; we follow, through the hush Of the orderly house.
Montreal: The Bonds of Community:
The Town Within the City
by Betty Sigler
Our readers tell us that previous COMMENTARY articles on Jewish communities—New Haven, Richmond, "Spruceton," and an unnamed town in Maine—have given them valuable insights into the unfolding process of American Jewish life, even when they have quarreled with this or that interpretation of the writer.
Israel, Human Rights, and American Jewry:
New Roles in the Centuries-Old Struggle
by Robert Weltsch
With this reminder to Jewry of its particularly close and perhaps unique connection with the issue of human rights whenever and wherever it is raised, ROBERT WELTSCH continues as before his latter-day contribution to the immemorial Jewish tradition that requires that at least one voice be raised up in every generation in Israel to stir our consciences in the name of justice and righteousness.
The Campaign
A Story
by Julius Horwitz
Paul stood on the bleak windy comer where the ward officially began. Down the drab side-streets ran the squared-off residential blocks, ill-kept, dim, gray, wooden frame houses, heated by coal furnaces, fed by credit grocery stores.
From the American Scene: Boyhood in Mobile
by Joseph Proskauer
Joseph M. Proskauer has been for some decades an outstanding leader in Jewish affaìrs, and a distinguished personality on the American scene.
Cedars of Lebanon: The Pious Cat
by Y. Peretz
Y. L. Peretz (1851-1915) was one of the most important influences in the emergence of a major secular Jewish literary tradition in the second half of the 19th century.
On the Horizon: Anti-Semitism in Socialism
by Samuel Gringauz
Recently, socialism has found itself under attack as anti-Semitic in certain Jewish quarters. How this happens, and what truth there is in the charge, Samuel Gringauz attempts here to discover; and in tracing the connection of anti-Semitism with socialism he offers a suggestive generalization on the relationship to anti-Semitism of all political movements.
Study of Man: The "Break-Up" of the American Family
by Dennis Wrong
For more than a decade newspaper writers—after quoting sociologists—have described the break-up of the American family. But of late—at least on the academic level—a new note is beginning to be heard among the sociologists, somewhat less alarmist, and suggesting that what we may be witnessing (and living through) in the American family is not necessarily a single one-way trend, headed inevitably downward.
The Wall, by John Hersey
by David Daiches
Record and Testament The Wall. By John Hersey. Knopf. 632 pp. $4.00. This book, as most people will have learned by now, is the story of the Warsaw ghetto from November 1939 to May 1943 told by means of a fictional diary kept by Noach Levinson, self-appointed archivist of Polish Jewry.
Southern Politics, by V. O. Key, Jr.
by Richard Hofstadter
The Southern Citadel Southern Politics: In State and Nation. By V. O. Key, Jr. With the assistance of Alexander Heard. Knopf. 675 pp.
A Long Day's Dying, by Frederick Buechner; The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles; and The Cannibal, by John Hawkes
by Wallace Markfield
Three First Novels A Long Day's Dying. By Frederick Buechner. Knopf. 267 pp. $3.00. The Cannibal. By John Hawkes. New Directions. 272 pp. $1.50. The Sheltering Sky. By Paul Bowles. New Directions.
The Prophetic Faith, by Martin Buber
by Emil Fackenheim
In the Here and Now The Prophetic Faith. By Martin Buber. Macmillan. 247 pp. $3.75. Thomas à Kempis wrote: "Every holy writing ought to be read in the same spirit in which it was written." Our modern era fails to understand the Bible to the degree to which it fails to heed Thomas's warning. The Hebrew Bible is a report of a succession of dialogues between God and Israel; the present-day student—formidably armed with philology, archaeology, and other tools of critical research—almost without reflection regards it as a metaphorical account of the "evolution of religious experience," or—which is worse—religious "ideas." He does not argue or attempt to prove, but takes it for granted that his categories are correct, and those of the Bible wrong.
Authority and the Individual, by Bertrand Russell
by Jim Cork
Freedom and Society Authority and the Individual. By Bertrand Russell. Simon and Schuster. 79 pp. $2.00. Professor Russell poses the basic problem he is to consider in his very first sentence: ".
Reader Letters April 1950
by Our Readers
Conservatism and Freedom TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: In the New York Herald Tribune of Octo- ber 9, Professor Crane Brinton notes that an ignorance of the Srbik documentation has re- sulted in "the standard American textbook notion of Prince Metternich" as "the tyrant who tried to turn the clock back in I814.... The defense of Metternich has long been needed." This "standard textbook notion of Metternich" is nowhere better illustrated than in Gertrude Himmelfarb's analysis in the Janu- ary COMMENTARY ['The Prophets of the New Conservatism"] of my recent Scribners book Conservatism Revisited.
May, 1950Back to TopLoyalties Legitimate and Illegitimate
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Thank you for publishing the two illuminating articles on Zionism by Dorothy Thompson and Oscar Handlin. It appears that Dorothy Thompson once held the identical views which Handlin now so logically presents and defends. On November 1, 1943, Miss Thompson delivered an address at Carnegie Hall in New York.
Congress Blocks the Civil Rights Program:
Haw to Break the FEPC Log Jam
by Scott Fowler
Caught in the quicksand of Congressional maneuvering and partisan politics, the administration has yet to get through a Fair Employment Practices act, the very cornerstone of the Truman civil rights program.
A European Declaration of Independence:
French Culture is Doomed, Unless—
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Recently, a law was passed in France suppressing Coca-Cola as subversive of the French way of life. At about the same time, the distinguished Catholic novelist François Mauriac wrote an article in the conservative newspaper Le Figaro denouncing American culture as a menace in no way less threatening than the Russians.
Unbiblical History
by Chester Kallman
Wandering jew, what comfort now?; After the horde of walking years, the climb Was doubly difficult. Who minded it For finally the shiftless view of home, That hovering before you long had cut The desert as a smoky track? There then it was, no larger, no, Nor greener than a pea; hardly a spot Where oceans could be hugged apart, Rocks might explode to water, law And manna might descend. It was what it was.
The Autobiography of Weizmann's Zionism:
The Road from Motol to Jerusalem
by Solomon Bloom
Chaim Weizmann's autobiography, Trial and Error, published after its writer had become the first president of Israel and at a time when Zionism had closed a most important phase of its history, offers the opportunity to view in historical perspective the movement and its philosophy, in the interpretation and emphasis given it by its most distinguished living leader and spokesman.
After Recognition
by Jackson MacLow
With drooping wings the angels sit Among the florid vegetation. Some fiery swords half-hearted hold: Hear: joyous angels wail in desolation! The air is cold without, although The garden, like a celebration, Bums still brightly on, and gray The light, despite the keen illumination There, within. O angels, weep, weep! Till garden steam to swamp And mists obscure the rays That mock you as you pass, Or sit, among the trees, Plaining your distress In tones unearthly sweet, Unearthly desolate. _____________
German Youth in a Vacuum:
The Threat of a New Lost Generation
by Norbert Muhlen
The future of Germany—that immense question mark in international politics—may depend on the present moods and currents of thought among the German youth who grew up under Hitler and find themselves today turned loose upon a world they are ill equipped to understand.
Marquand's Vanishing American Aristocracy:
Good Manners and the Good Life
by Nathan Glick
A prominent literary critic recently complained of the absence, in the American novel, of that subtle awareness of class, manners, and morals which plays so active a role in the heritage of English fiction.
What Happened to Me in My Childhood:
A Document of Modern History
by Ephraim Shtenkler
Edwin Samuel discovered and translated this remarkable document—remarkable whether or not it is literally true in every detail (having been written, after all, by a child). _____________ I found this document by chance during a visit in December of 1949 to the children's village of Hadassim, on the main Tel Aviv-Haifa road, about an hour's run from Tel Aviv itself.
The Expatriate
by Julius Horwitz
"The Expatriate" is the fourth of Julius Horwitz's stories of urban Jewish life to appear in COMMENTARY. _____________ The first thing he did when he stepped off the hot grimy train was to go to the public washroom and clean up.
The Modern Jew's Path to God:
Inviting the Great Encounter
by Emil Fackenheim
Is traditional Jewish religious thinking irrelevant to the 20th century—or does it merely seem so to many because of our misunderstanding of it? Emil L.
From the American Scene: 'Twas a Dark Night in Brownsville
by William Poster
The study of Brownsville here published represents the end product of a rigorous, often painful process of selection; so much had to be left out, in fact, that Mr.
Cedars of Lebanon: The Time We Waited for the Messiah
by I. Singer
I. J. Singer, who died in 1944 in New York, is regarded by many critics and general readers as among the two or three most important figures in modern Yiddish literature.
On the Horizon: Menotti's "The Consul"
by Heinz Politzer
Heinz Politzer's discussion of Gian-Carlo Menotti's "musical drama," The Consul, now running on Broadway, raises again, in somewhat original terms, the question of whether an "American opera" is possible.
The Study of Man: Changing Social Status and Prejudice
by S. Lipset
The present-day concern of American social science with the study of race, the contacts and conflicts between races, and race prejudice, owes much to the influence of a man who is barely known to the general public, the sociologist Robert E.
As a Mighty Stream, by Julian Morgenstern; and Reform Judaism: Essays by Hebrew Union College Alumni
by Israel Knox
Reform Judaism Today As A Mighty Stream. by Julian Morgenstern. The Jewish Publication Society of America, 442 pp. $4.00. Reform Judaism: Essays by Hebrew Union College Alumni. Hebrew Union College Press.
The Coming Defeat of Communism, by James Burnham
by Richard Crossman
Marxism Through the Looking Glass The Coming Defeat of Communism. by James Burnham. John Day. 278 pp. $3.00. In previous books, James Burnham has revealed a new insight into the factors of modern industrial society which Communist theoreticians still obstinately overlook.
The Earth Is the Lord's, by Abraham Joshua Heschel
by Irving Kristol
Elegy for a Lost World The Earth Is The Lord's. by Abraham Joshua Heschel. With wood engravings by Ilya Schor. Henry Schuman. 109 pp.
Jewish Cookery, by Leah W. Leonard
by Agnes Davis
Cookery Without Frippery Jewish Cookery. by Leah W. Leonard. Crown Publishers. 497 pp. $3.00. After the recent spate of worthless cookbooks—muddle-headed and pretentious, confusing gourmet cooking with an excessive use of truffles, and confounding the user by inept directions—Jewish Cookery is doubly welcome, for its technical excellence as well as for its unusual collection of delectable dishes. As a kitchen manual it is admirably organized, with complete tables, glossary, etc.
To Dwell in Safety, by Mark Wischnitzer
by Sidney Liskofsky
Jews on the Move To Dwell in Safety. by Mark Wischnitzer. Jewish Publication Society of America. 368 pp. $4.00. This is the story—scholarly and documented—of one hundred and fifty years of Jewish migrations, beginning around 1800, and told mainly from the standpoint of how immigration was organized and controlled by Jewish organizations.
Thespis, by Theodor H. Gaster
by Francis Fergusson
The Roots of Ritual Thespis. Ritual, Myth and Drama in the Ancient Near East. by Theodor H. Gaster. Henry Schuman. 498 pp. $8.50. This book is an extremely erudite study of the seasonal rituals of several societies of the ancient Near East, as they may be traced in surviving writings.
Reader Letters May 1950
by Our Readers
Loyalties Legitimate and Illegitimate TO THE EDITOR O COMMENTARY: Thank you for publishing the two illuminat- ing articles on Zionism by Dorothy Thompson and Oscar Handlin.
June, 1950Back to TopSociology and American Jews
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The summary of the sociological findings in Nathan Glazer's article, "What Sociology Knows About American Jews," is, in my opinion, the most adequate and well-reasoned which we yet have in the field.
Abington Township
by Our Readers
To the Editor: After reading "The Battle of Abnegation Township" (COMMENTARY, March 1950), I have come to the depressing conclusion that the veteran group's otherwise gallant fight is completely nullified by its negative stand about including Negroes in the project. I am referring to the statement attributed to Mr.
The Jews in Montreal
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Betty Sigler is to be congratulated for her stimulating and comprehensive survey of the Jewish community of Montreal ["Montreal: The Bonds of Community," in the April COMMENTARY].
The Quality of Life in Israel's Collectives:
Pioneering a Socialism Without Regimentation
by Lewis Feuer
Jeremy Bentham, founder of the philosophy of utilitarianism, which preached the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," once drew up a blueprint for a rationally organized prison.
Jewish Identity in a Free Society:
On Current Efforts to Enforce "Total Commitment"
by Harold Rosenberg
In the intense preoccupation with Jewish survival prevalent in many quarters, partisan ideologists have been having a field day. The simple statement, acceptable for centuries, "I am a Jew," is no longer felt to be enough: unless one can testify to a "total commitment" or a firm affiliation with this or that set of principles or this or that program or organization, one may find one's right to call oneself a Jew questioned—and one's right to speak or write as a Jew challenged.
Tito's Threat to Stalin's Empire:
The Role America Can Play
by Peter Meyer
In the bitter struggle between Stalin and Tito, the democratic world is no mere spectator, but a participant; we have a stake in properly understanding the inner tensions of world Communism, and, if possible, in rendering them more acute.
We Who Sit in Darkness:
The Broadway Audience at the Play
by Alfred Kazin
That the American theater is today in the doldrums few will deny. In their effort to diagnose the sickness of Broadway, critics have turned their stethoscopes on playwrights, producers, and authors.
Long Ago at the Well
by Ralph Gordon
The silent sweetness of the morning sleeps About the well; mossed stone and water slipping, And dark earth coolness where long moisture seeps, Keep April odors, and the slimed wood dripping Smells of the rain before leaves come to see Summer's budding, and the slant dewdrop flipping Leaves downward, falls like a star; and quietly she Comes to the well's edge in the morning, bringing Her bowl of fish to cleanse, and lays before me Their silver, scaling the green, to admire, and singing Softly, performs her task; but the trance of the sound Of the water falling, and the lilt of the wet leaves clinging Seals me to silence—and the pure spacious round Of the sky closing over the leafy ground. _____________
South Africa: Life on a Volcano:
The Jewish Community in a Caste Society
by Bernard Sachs
The racist slogans of the Nationalist government of the Union of South Africa, slogans which helped bring it into power, trouble democratic-minded people everywhere and still ring ominously in the ears of South Africa's Jews, who form a precarious minority in a country that since its birth has been torn by race conflict.
The Fastest Runner on Sixty-First Street
A Story
by James Farrell
Morty Aiken liked to run and to skate. He liked running games and races. He liked running so much that sometimes he'd go over to Washington Park all by himself, and run just for the fun of it.
Nadelman: Recluse of Riverdale:
The Artist as Personality
by Alfred Werner
Elie Nadelman's posthumous re-emergence from obscurity has been an interesting development in the American art scene of the last few years.
The Tragic Farce of Denazification: Two Ladies of the Regime
by Alfred Polgar
Some of the atmosphere of the "German problem"—heavy with guilt, suspicion, smouldering resentments, and personal tragedy—is captured in these two brief glimpses: Alfred Polgar's sketch of two court trials he witnessed recently in Munich, and F.
The Tragic Farce of Denazification: Death of a Writer
by F.S. Grosshut
Some of the atmosphere of the "German problem"—heavy with guilt, suspicion, smouldering resentments, and personal tragedy—is captured in these two brief glimpses: Alfred Polgar's sketch of two court trials he witnessed recently in Munich, and F.
From the American Scene: I Cash Clothes!
by Donald Paneth
The clothes peddler remains a familiar sight to big-city housewives; Donald Paneth here tells the story of Henry Getoff, a member of this ancient and honorable Jewish profession. _____________ The shops of New York City's second-hand clothing dealers crowd the bottom of Elizabeth Street on the rim of Manhattan's Lower East Side, in the block below Canal Street.
Restless as a Wolf
by Moshe Halpern
Moshe Leib Halpern (1886-1932) was a Yiddish poet who lived and wrote in America. His poem "Your Life" appeared in the October 1949 COMMENTARY.
Cedars of Lebanon: Myth in Judaism
by Martin Buber
The following essay by Martin Buber, here translated into English for the first time, represents an early stage in the development of his thought.
On the Horizon: Theological Conference: Cincinnati, 1950
by Eugene Borowitz
During the past two decades, many thoughtful observers have commented on the almost total lack of concern, on the part of the American synagogue, with theological issues and thinking.
The Study of Man: The Authoritarian Personality in Profile
by Nathan Glazer
The five-volume series just published by Harper's under the title "Studies in Prejudice" has won immediate recognition as a landmark, not only in the study of group prejudice, but in American social science generally.
We Survived: The Stories of Fourteen of the Hidden and Hunted of Germany, as told to Eric H. Boehm; and The Root and the Bough,
by Monroe Engel
Martyrdom and Resistance We Survived: The Stories of Fourteen of the Hidden and Hunted of Germany. by Eric H. Boehm. Yale University Press.
A Segment of My Times, by Joseph M. Proskauer
by Israel Knox
Pattern of Integration A Segment of My Times. by Joseph M. Proskauer. Farrar, Straus. 270 pp. $3.00. A Segment of My Times is almost completely concerned with Judge Proskauer's career as a public figure.
The Bible and Modern Belief, by Louis Wallis
by Robert Gordis
Prophets and Priests The Bible and Modern Belief. by Louis Wallis. Duke University Press. 176 pp. $2.50. During the last three decades, Louis Wallis has published a series of volumes (Sociological Study of the Bible, 1912; God and the Social Process, 1935; The Bible is Human, 1942) emphasizing one fundamental thesis—that the struggle of the Hebrew prophets against Canaanite religion in Israel was essentially social and economic in character, though expressed in religious terms.
The Breakup of Our Camp and Other Stories, by Paul Goodman
by Harry Jr.
A Poetic Imagination The Breakup of Our Camp, and Other Stories. by Paul Goodman. New Directions. 160 pp. $1.50. The stories in this serious little collection differ considerably in their success, but their similarity of tone is remarkable.
In Search of Freedom: A History of American Jews from Czechoslovakia, by Guido Kisch
by Sholom Kahn
To America! In Search of Freedom: A History of American Jews from Czechoslovakia. by Guido Kisch. With a Foreword by Jan Masaryk. London, Edward Goldston.
Reason and Law, by Morris Raphael Cohen
by Daniel Boorstin
Counselor of Moderation Reason and Law: Studies in Juristic Philosophy. by Morris Raphael Cohen. The Free Press. 211 pp. $3.50. Most of the miscellaneous articles and book reviews now reprinted in this volume were originally published in legal or philosophical journals between 1912 and 1946.
Reader Letters June 1950
by Our Readers
The Jews in Montreal To THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: Betty Sigler is to be congratulated for her stimulating and comprehensive survey of the Jewish community of Montreal ["Montreal: The Bonds of Community," in the April COM- MENTARY].
July, 1950Back to TopMr. Konvitz Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Your correspondent is entitled to his views concerning the character of Judaism and the Israeli polity. I have no objection to his believing that Judaism is based on soil and blood (if I understand his views correctly).
Israel: The Religious Question
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The essential difference between Milton Konvitz ("A Plea for Religious Freedom in Israel," COMMENTARY, October 1949) and religious Zionists lies less in the details he mentions than in principles and outlook.
Nationalism: Enemy or Ally?
Can Democracy Afford the Internationalist Fetish?
by Richard Crossman
It used to be the hope of men of good will that our epoch would see the end of nationalism, and that some form of world union would replace traditional sovereignties.
The Spartan Youth of Israel:
A Generation Searches for Its Soul
by J. Teller
Israel is proud of her youth, and with justice: it was the youth who were the pioneers and warriors of the new state.
Hitler and the Idea of Greatness:
Force Is Our Only Measure
by Simone Weil
Three are certain reputations which seem to be in need of the seal of death in order to flourish. SIMONE WEIL is a case in point.
Two Poems
by David Ignatow
After the Storm They lifted their hands out of the muck into which they had slipped, and carried their belongings, smeared, into the house. While they worked their hands would be black, they knew.
Creating an Organic Community:
A Blueprint to Assure American Jewry's Future
by Robert Gordis
Be it a sign of imminent disintegration or just healthy growing pains, at no time have critics of the organized Jewish community been more vociferous, and plans and programs for its overhauling more numerous.
No Greater Love
A Story
by Mortimer Slaiman
Uncle Avraham was dying. Slowly, his sons and nephews and nieces had come by train from the Bronx and Long Island to his small cold-water flat in Brighton Beach.
Gothic Landscape
by Irving Layton
They stand like penitential Augustines These trees; and in my Jewboy mind they are monks, Brown-robed, fearful after their long sleep in dungeons; When I was a child one of them nearly caught me, But I escaped, tunneling the snow to my mother's face— Under her gray shawl I saw God's Assyrian beard, And a page of lameds racing towards me like ostriches. I've taken no vow not to forget The torquemadas stirring in the frosty veins: But the cloister bells deafen me with insults, And sallowfaced acolytes inform The snowdrifts what to whisper against me; Autos-da-fé make red the immaculate sky; Come soon, O bright Tudor sun! I do not like this monastic whiteness of winter— It is a Christ drained of all blood. _____________
Mahler: Father of Modern Music:
He Led the Break with Romanticism
by Kurt List
At the beginning of the school of modern music that flowered in Schoenberg stands the work of Gustav Mahler, who was the first to break out of the stiffening molds of 19th-century romanticism and move in the direction which many critics feel offers the most fruitful possibility for music in the 20th century.
The Last Days of Jewish Salonica:
What Happened to a 450-Year-Old Civilization
by Cecil Roth
Cecil Roth, historian and Jewish scholar, here tells the final terrifying chapter in the Nazi destruction of Salonican Jewry—a community of some fifty thousand Sephardic Jews. _____________ The fate of the Jews of Salonica at the hands of the Nazis is an episode of recent history that for some reason or other has been relatively overlooked.
Portrait of the Inauthentic Negro:
How Prejudice Distorts the Victim's Personality
by Anatole Broyard
In his book Anti-Semite and Jew (published as a series of articles in COMMENTARY in the April, May, and June issues of 1948), Jean-Paul Sartre analyzed the psychological effects upon the personality and behavior of Jews of an unsympathetic surrounding world.
From the American Scene: Culture on Rutgers Square
by S. Blumenson
Here Mr. Blumenson turns his attention to some exotic and luxuriant manifestations of the American Jewish "Kultur" of a bygone era. _____________ What St.
Cedars of Lebanon: Rashi on the Creation
by Our Readers
Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, better known as Rashi, who lived in the 11th century, is beyond question the greatest of all Jewish teachers and educators.
On the Horizon: Sherwood Anderson and the Power Urge
by Irving Howe
In the work of SHERWOOD ANDERSON, IRVING HOWE finds a vein of authoritarianism and love of power which throws some illumination on the complexity of the Populist tradition in American literature, so often assumed to be the purest expression of democratic ideals.
The Study of Man: The Statisdemon
by Samuel Yellen
This is the month when school lets out, and students and teachers traditionally kick up their heels a bit. This department—given over the year round to sober discussion of achievement in the social sciences—here permits itself an excursion into the realm of fantasy.
Einems Yidishe Machshovos, by Melech Ravitch; Yidish un Yidishkeit, by Yosef Opatoshu; and Kedushah un Gevurah bei Yidn, by Y. E
by Arthur Hertzberg
The Worldly Jew Einems Yidishe Machshovos ("Jewish Thought in the 20th Century"). by Melech Ravitch. Montreal, The Book Center. 204 pp. $2.50. Yidish un Yidishkeit ("Yiddish and Jewishness"). by Yosef Opatoshu. Toronto, Gershon Pomerantz.
The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg, edited by Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding
by David Daiches
Isaac Rosenberg: Poet The Collected Poems of Isaac Rosenberg. Edited by Gordon Bottomley and Denys Harding. Schocken Books. 240 pp. $3.50. Isaac Rosenberg, the English Jewish poet who was killed in the First World War before he was twenty-eight years old, is not as well known in this country as some of the other young poets who suffered the same fate.
The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion, edited by Louis Finkelstein
by Milton Himmelfarb
Fruits of Scholarship The Jews: Their History, Culture and Religion. Edited by Louis Finkelstein. New York, Harper. 2 Volumes. xxiii-1431 pp. $12.00. In his prefatory letter to the Honorary President of the American Jewish Committee, which provided funds for these volumes, Dr.
Courts on Trial: Myth and Reality in American Justice, by Jerome Frank
by Milton Konvitz
Humanity and the Law Courts on Trial: Myth and Reality in American Justice. By Jerome Frank. Princeton University Press. 441 pp. $5.00. When, twenty years ago, Jerome Frank published his Law and the Modern Mind, its author took his place as our leading legal critic—a position from which he has not been dislodged.
Preface to Scripture, by Solomon B. Freehof
by Alfred Jospe
Introducing the Book of Books Preface to Scripture. by Solomon B. Freehof. Union of American Hebrew Congregations. 372 pp. $3.00. A remarkable number of books on the Bible have been published in recent years.
Americans Betrayed, by Morton Grodzins; and Removal and Return, by Leonard Bloom and Ruth Riemer
by Herbert Ehrmann
Lest We Forget Americans Betrayed. by Morton Grodzins. University of Chicago Press. 445 pp. $5.00. Removal and Return. by Leonard Bloom and Ruth Riemer. University of California Press.
Reader Letters July 1950
by Our Readers
Israel: The Religious Question TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: The essential difference between Milton Konvitz ("A Plea for Religious Freedom in Israel," COMMENTARY, October 1949) and re- ligious Zionists lies less in the details he men- tions than in principles and outlook.
August, 1950Back to TopFrom Backstage
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I thought Alfred Kazin's article about the Broadway audience ["We Who Sit in Darkness," in the June COMMENTARY] was fascinating and I am sending it to my colleagues on South Pacific.
Roosevelt and Smith
by Our Readers
To The Editor I should like to correct a factual error in my review of Judge Proskauer's A Segment of My Times(June COMMENTARY).
Dr. Fackenheim Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Dr. Kaplan's argument is vitiated by his failure to distinguish sharply between immediate religious experience and the philosophical and theological interpretation which attempts to validate it. 1.
Judiasm and Existentialism
by Our Readers
To The Editor Many a good cause is ruined by a weak argument. That is certainly true of religion. We probably would not have so many atheists, if it were not for the well-meaning but ill-arguing theologians.
Six Poems From the Hebrew: Etching
Translation is by Herbert Howarth. _____________ Conches of sand—the ants' joy. Like a blue eye Spring opens wide, Like a glance swift with covert alarm. A tree watches the sea of heaven. Longing takes us To scatter the seeds of stars. In many colors the night mutters. _____________
France's Homeless Left:
The Slow Awakening from the Communist Dream
by Herbert Luthy
France is the land of radicalism: of liberty, fraternity, and equality; it is also a land whose intellectuals have always prided themselves on their logic.
Human Morality and the Nazi Terror:
The Problem of the "Useless Mouths"
by L. Poliakov
The Nazi concentration camps reduced all problems to one terrible question: Who shall survive? It was the extreme test of our moral values, and often proved them wanting.
The Future of American Zionism:
What Is Still to Be Done?
by Ludwig Lewisohn
It takes no long reflection to make it clear that no important aspect in the life of an ethnic or religious group can be soundly discussed or interpreted without some definition of the group, the aspect in question, the precise present situation of both.
New York, 1950:
Unofficial Notes of a Census-Taker
by Julius Horwitz
While engaged in collecting information for the 1950 census, Julius Horwitz allowed his observations to go beyond the narrow horizons of the government questionnaire; the result is this composite sketch of New York at the half-century: a city of strangers trying to make contact with each other.
Gandhi: Self-Realization Through Politics:
The Mystery of Leadership
by Isaac Rosenfeld
In much of his recent thinking and writing, Isaac Rosenfeld has been preoccupied with tracing the interrelation of deep instinctual drives, politics, and religion in human personality and social action.
Israel's Modern Poetry:
New Voices, New Modes of Speech
by Herbert Howarth
Herbert Howarth, who reports here on current trends in Israeli poetry, speaks from an intimate knowledge of the works and the personalities involved in his subject.
Six Poems from the Hebrew: On the Wings of Eagles
by J. Kamzan
Translation is by Herbert Howarth. _____________ To Watch Zion's flag unfurled On an embassy mast overseas The Exiles rallied in thousands, Survivors of fire and sword, Remnants of Israel overseas. So many, they shone like Israel's fields Bringing to pass The prophecy of Ezekiel That hopeless and desperate, Children and graybeards together, They should come thronging, driving forward Like driven sea.
Six Poems from the Hebrew: Beyond Death
by A. Yahel
Translation is by Herbert Howarth. _____________ Like the elms we are, Melancholy, branching out, Blank of expression, Silent. Day will not rise again for us— We have died. Night will put no fear into us— We are the substance of fear. Terrors are our friends And oblivion the loins about us. All the storms are finished, The absolute slumber come. No yearning.
Six Poems from the Hebrew: Proverbs of the Virgins
by Pinchas Sadeh
Translation is by Herbert Howarth. _____________ The birds above drink blood when sunset burns, And God looks on them, she-birds all. Then my thoughts, my hopes become tears, tears drenching my song In which God is manifest As in the absolute mirror beyond time. Everything is affliction, everything is song.
Six Poems from the Hebrew: Wind from the Sea
by Nathan Alterman
Translation is by Jacob Sloan _____________ The wind is swooping. China jugs And copper drum a chorus loud. Trussed up like a fowl, the trees Beat their wings upon the ground. The quarter flickers with its lightning. Saws are its music's peak. So it sings.
Six Poems from the Hebrew: The Books
by Nathan Alterman
Translation is by Sholom J. Kahn. _____________ Autumn has—its polished brass. The rising wave—its frosty pride. And the never-to-be-forgotten books their light that's left unnamed. I remember the candle burning over battles in the volume and on the silence of its women, window-framed. In this very light, this very night, its city was bared to me, and my city it was in sadnesses, my city in healthless strife. Heedlessly, my comrades, as if I were crossing a pavement, I passed into its lives, beyond the bounds of life. I swear.
Plaint of a Gentile Intellectual:
A New "Minority Problem"?
by Chandler Brossard
A "minority" was recently defined, somewhat informally, as someone who feels pushed around. Perhaps some will find this personal statement on behalf of a new, unsuspected minority a piece of oversensitivity.
A Messy Leave
A Story
by Amos Mossenson
"A Messy Leave" appeared in Hebrew in Al Hamishmar in December 1949, and later, in an English translation by I.
From the American Scene: Private Enterprise in the Bronx
by Milton Kaplan
Westward from Crotona Park, the Bronx drops so precipitously that a sled, unimpeded, can start at Fulton Avenue and hurtle past Bathgate, Washington, Park, and finally come to rest at the bottom of the valley on Webster Avenue.
Cedars of Lebanon: The Decay of the Generations
by Our Readers
This is the fourth of a series of translations from the Bialik-Ravnitzky Sefer Ha-Aggada. Previous selections ("Men and Women," "The Creation," and "Adam and Eve and the Serpent") appeared in the issues of July 1949 and January and March 1950. The Aggada is made up of stories, dialogues, homilies, sayings, proverbs, fables, and riddles scattered through the Mishna and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, as well as other sources.
On the Horizon: "The Indelible Seal"
by Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch sees in the work of the German novelist Elisabeth Langgässer a profound aesthetic response to the spiritual crisis of our age.
The Study of Man: America's Social Classes
by Walter Goldschmidt
In the work of W. Lloyd Warner and his associates, we are offered a full-scale theory of the nature and effect of class distinctions in American society, a theory which has already begun to influence practices in such fields as education and industrial relations.
Jewish Labor in the USA: 1882-1914, by Melech Epstein
by Daniel Bell
Pins and Needles, Sweat and Tears Jewish Labor in the USA: 1882-1914. by Melech Epstein. Published by the Trade Union Sponsoring Committee. 22-24 West 38th Street, New York.
The Liberal Imagination, by Lionel Trilling
by Stephen Spender
Beyond Liberalism The Liberal Imagination. By Lionel Trilling. Viking. 303 pp. $3.50. This is a difficult book to review. The difficulty is that Mr.
The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood, by Benjamin N. Nelson
by Karl Polanyi
The Brother and the Other The Idea of Usury: From Tribal Brotherhood to Universal Otherhood. by Benjamin N. Nelson. Princeton University Press. 258 pp.
Prison Etiquette: The Convict's Compendium of Useful Information, by The Inmates
by Will Herberg
Pacifists in Prison Prison Etiquette: The Convict's Compendium of Useful Information, by The Inmates. by Holley Cantine and Dachine Rainer. Preface by Christopher Isherwood.
Jewish Survival: Essays and Studies, by Trude Weiss-Rosmarin
by Ralph Marcus
Survival and Revival Jewish Survival: Essays and Studies. by Trude Weiss-Rosmarin. The Philosophical Library. 404 pp. $4.00. William James, may his tribe increase, once made a useful distinction between tender-minded and tough-minded thinkers.
Science Is a Sacred Cow, by Anthony Standen
by Nathan Glazer
A Modern Idol Under Fire Science Is a Sacred Cow. by Anthony Standen. Dutton. 221 pp. $2.75. From a distance, science looks as a whole like the secure, foolproof, intelligent, and eminently successful enterprise that it is only in part.
Reader Letters August 1950
by Our Readers
Judaism and Existentialism TO THE EDITOR or COMMENTARY: Many a good cause is ruined by a weak argu- ment. That is certainly true of religion.
September, 1950Back to TopIsrael's Spartan Youth
by Our Readers
To the Editor: If your correspondent, Mr. J. L. Teller, had put his last paragraph first, in his article "The Spartan Youth of Israel" (July), his style would have had a less irritating effect.
The Authentic Negro
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Anatole Broyard's article "Portrait of the Inauthentic Negro" (July) contains a typology of Negro personality which is more illuminating than any similar discussion to be found in social science literature.
Kibbutz Life
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Lewis S. Feuer's article about "The Quality of Life in Israel's Collectives" (June) presents a picture that is regrettably incomplete, insofar as a quite significant aspect of kibbutz life is overlooked.
One Problem at a Time
by Our Readers
To the Editor: May I reply to a letter from Elwyn Silverman published in the June issue. He refers to my statement quoted in "The Battle of Abington Township" (March) regarding the refusal of big mortgage investors to take mortgages on housing projects of mixed Negro and white occupancy as "offhand irony." He considers it "grossly paradoxical" that our group should "so lightly dismiss Negroes from participating in the Cooperative." The leadership of the Cooperative and the great majority of its members began with the firm determination that there be no discrimination.
Who Shall Be Saved
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Poliakov's article "Human Morality and the Nazi Terror" (August) asserts that the Jewish councils that executed the orders of the Nazis, and, to save their own lives, ran the machinery that sent their fellow Jews to Belsen and Auschwitz, had no principles to go by; there was no tradition, either Jewish or Western European, and no categorical imperative, applicable. With regard to Jewish tradition this is not correct.
Intellectuals Gentile and Jewish
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I should like to comment on Chandler Brossard's "Plaint of a Gentile Intellectual" (August) not as a Gentile (which I am, but excuse the expression) nor as an intellectual (which I may be) but as a native New Yorker who has been around for forty-five years. I am surprised, and I must confess, disturbed that a competent writer living in New York City should have so limited a knowledge of people as Mr.
Turning Point in Jewish Philanthropy?
New Perspectives in Community Giving
by Hal Lehrman
Perhaps the most remarkable of all the institutions created on the American scene by immigrant groups and their children is the great complex structure of Jewish welfare agencies, with their supporting fund-raising and fund-distributing organizations.
The Beginning
by Jacob Glatstein
This poem was translated from the Yiddish by Etta Blum. _____________ Shall we perhaps begin anew, small and toddling, with a small folk? We two, homeless wandering among the nations. Laborers of the soil will bow before you, for you will have become a drowsy idol subsisting upon sacrifices of scorched flour. I shall stroll about reciting the wisdom of the people, my words never finding their way outside our borders, and the least child will greet me with a good-morning. Shall we perhaps go home now, you and I, to begin again small from the beginning? Begin once more!
Einstein: The Passion of Pure Reason:
The Cosmic Religion of the Mathematician
by Irving Kristol
Behind the manifold and varied expressions of the genius of Albert Einstein men have felt they sensed the presence of a philosophy, perhaps a religion, that gave a central impulse and direction to all he said and did.
What Do the Germans Propose to Do?
An Address to the German People
by Elliot Cohen
Introduced as "the first American Jew to speak in Berlin since the war on the relations of Germans and Jews," Elliot E.
Making "Point 4" Work:
Some Unsolved Problems in Aiding Backward Areas
by J. Galbraith
The outbreak of war in Korea, and the general heightening of tension and conflict in the Far East and other socially backward areas, have given even greater importance to the Point Four program, which hopes to raise submerged populations through technological aid.
The New Farmers of Lakewood:
A Jewish Community on the American Soil
by Morris Freedman
Here COMMENTARY's series of informal sociological studies of Jewish communities turns a bit off the beaten track. This community in the making, while rigorously "secular" and lacking many of the traditional institutions and interests of Jewish life, might still be said to be Jewish, not merely because its members are Jews, but also in the sense that its common social and cultural preoccupations and "way of life" would be differentiable by most observers from that of a non-Jewish community similarly situated and composed.
Berlin Congress for Freedom:
A New Resistance in the Making
by Francois Bondy
On June 28, about a hundred and twenty-five outstanding figures in the world of art, science, and thought from America, England, Germany, Western Europe, and countries behind the Iron Curtain, gathered in a Congress for Cultural Freedom in Berlin.
The Prison:
A Story
by Bernard Malamud
Though he tried never to think of it, at twenty-nine Tommy Castelli's life was a screaming bore. It was not just Rosa or the store they tended for profits counted in pennies, or the unendurably slow hours and endless drivel that went with dispensing candy, cigarettes, and soda water; it was this sick-in-the-stomach feeling of being trapped in old mistakes, even those he had made before Rosa changed Tony into Tommy.
The Costs of Arab-Jewish Cold War:
Ihud's Experiment in Moral Politics
by Ernst Simon
For many years, some of the leading thinkers and pioneering figures of modern Israel have formed a small group, "Ihud," with political ideals strikingly at variance with those of the major political parties of the Jewish community of Palestine and, now, of Israel.
From the American Scene: Miss O'Keefe's Children
by Shlomo Katz
This department has from time to time offered portrait sketches of familiar types in the life of Jews in America.
Cedars of Lebanon: Noah and the Flood
by Our Readers
This is the fifth of a series of translations from the Bialik-Ravnitzky Sefer Ha-Aggada. Previous selections ("Men and Women," "The Creation," "Adam and Eve and the Serpent," and "The Decay of the Generations") appeared in the issues of July 1949 and January, March, and August 1950. The Aggada is made up of stories, dialogues, homilies, sayings, proverbs, fables, and riddles which are scattered through the Palestinian and Babylonian Talmuds, as well as other sources.
On the Horizon: The Psychoanalysts and the Writer
by Harold Rosenberg
Harold Rosenberg, writer, here considers two recent books which attempt to explain him to himself: The Writer and the Psychoanalyst, by Edmund Bergler (Doubleday, 265 pp., $3.50), and The Psychoanalyst and the Artist, by Daniel E.
The Study of Man: New Trends in Biblical Criticism
by H. Ginsberg
The system of "higher criticism" of the Bible represented by such scholars as Julius Wellhausen (1844-1917) was firmly established by 1900, and by now, half a century later, has percolated down to the textbooks, encyclopedias, and college courses.
Paths in Utopia, by Martin Buber
by Will Herberg
Socialism With Freedom Paths in Utopia. by Martin Buber. and R. F. C. Hull. Macmillan. 152 pp. $3.00. Martin Buber is professor of social philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but we have so far had very little of his writing on social questions available in English.
The German Catastrophe, by Friedrich Meinecke, and Journal in the Night, by Theodor Haecker
by Gertrude Himmelfarb
Post Mortems on Germany The German Catastrophe. by Friedrich Meinecke. Translated from the German by Sidney B. Fay. Harvard University Press. 121 pp.
A Measure of Freedom: An Anti-Defamation League Report, by Arnold Forster
by Morroe Berger
Progress Report A Measure of Freedom: An Anti-Defamation League Report. by Arnold Forster. Doubleday. 241 pp. $2.50. A Measure of Freedom, the second commercially published report on anti-Semitism and civil rights compiled by the staff of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, was prepared by Arnold Forster, the League's civil rights director.
Modern Hebrew Literature, by Simon Halkin
by Moshe Decter
Two Centuries of Hebrew Modern Hebrew Literature. by Simon Halkin. Schocken Books. 238 pp. $3.00. Jewish literary expression, whether in the form of revelation, law, liturgy, or poetry, has always echoed a conscious sense of the uniqueness of the Jewish people and its history.
Long the Imperial Way, by Hanama Tasaki, and Beyond Defeat, by Hans Werner Richter
by Monroe Engel
The Enemies Long The Imperial Way. by Hanama Tasaki. Houghton, Mifflin. 372 pp. $3.50. Beyond Defeat. by Hans Werner Richter. Putnam's. 320 pp. $3.00. To say that these two books are weak novels, though true, is no illumination.
Reader Letters September 1950
by Our Readers
Intellectuals Gentile and Jewish TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: I should like to comment on Chandler Bros- sard's "Plaint of a Gentile Intellectual" (Au- gust) not as a Gentile (which I am, but excuse the expression) nor as an intellectual (which I may be) but as a native New Yorker who has been around for forty-five years.
October, 1950Back to TopMr. Freedman Replies
by Our Readers
To the Editor: My report dealt with a particular group of Lakewood farmers, a group which, as they point out, does not happen to include Mrs.
Lakewood: Another View
To the Editor: Morris Freedman's article in the September issue, "The New Farmers of Lakewood," was a rude shock. . .
Up from Motol
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I enjoyed reading Solomon Bloom's "Autobiography of Weizmann's Zionism" [in the May COMMENTARY] for the fine analysis it contained.
Psychoanalysis and Mr. Rosenberg
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Harold Rosenberg ("The Psychoanalyst and the Writer," September issue) is not the only one who is upset, perplexed, and confused by the books of Dr.
The "Gentile Intellectual" Again
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The letters published in the September Commentary about Chandler Brossard's article, "Plaint of a Gentile Intellectual," seem to have entirely missed the point.
Big City Machines and Liberal Voters:
Need We Throw the Bosses Out?
by Irwin Ross
Last month, the American public was treated to an illuminating display of the earthy intricacies of machine politics in connection with the Democratic nominations in New York City and State.
The Lessons of the Peekskill Riots:
What Happened and Why
by James Rorty
The riots in the small New York city of Peekskill, a little more than a year ago, aroused deep public concern.
The People of the Word:
Seventeen Poems
by Mark Doren
And Did the Animals? And did the animals in Noah's ark— That was of oleander wood, with cabins Cunningly bitumined in and out— Did all those animals lie quietly? For months and weeks and days, until the dove Came home, and they were dry on Ararat, Did every bird, with head beneath its wing, Did every beast, with forepaws folded in, Did every reptile, coiled upon itself, Lie sleeping as no man did, patiently? A man might think this tempest would not end, Nor timbers cease to creak, nor the light come. These did not know it rained, these did not know Their kind survived in them if it survived. A thinking man might doubt it, and in misery Listen.
How to Checkmate Stalin in Asia:
An American Policy Geared to Chinese Realities
by Karl Wittfogel
Karl A. Wittfogel, who here tries to outline the basic long-range realities that should guide American policy in Asia, is professor of Chinese history at the University of Washington, and director of the Chinese History Project, cosponsored by the University of Washington and Columbia University.
The Aftermath of Nazi Rule:
Report from Germany
by Hannah Arendt
In less than six years Germany laid waste the moral structure of Western society, committing crimes that nobody would have believed possible, while her conquerors buried in rubble the visible marks of more than a thousand years of German history.
The Battle That Saved Tel Aviv:
Turning Point in Israel's War of Independence
by Urie Avnery
This account of one of the most important of all episodes in Israel's War of Independence, pieced together months after the battle, was written by a man who was himself an immediate participant, fought through the Palestine war as a corporal in the famous "Samson's Foxes" jeep commandos of the Givati Brigade, and was seriously wounded in the abdomen and arm by machine-gun bullets.
Zangwill's Ghetto Is No More:
The Passing of Whitechapel
by Barnet Litvinoff
The Whitechapel section of London, like the Lower East Side of New York, remains in some sense "home" for thousands of Jews whose parents were part of its bustling life and who themselves grew up on its streets.
The First Three Stars
A Story
by David Schreiber
"Stay by the window and watch," my father told me. "Watch for the first three stars in the sky over there above the house.
From the American Scene: "There's No City Like San Francisco"
by Earl Raab
When Earl Raab found that he would have to leave his Maine farm and become an urban dweller once again, he needed little time to reflect before deciding that of all the cities he knew, San Francisco was the one in which he wanted to live.
Cedars of Lebanon: Sholom Aleichem in Sickness
by Our Readers
I had formed a close friendship with Sholom Aleichem during his two visits to England in the summer of 1906.
On the Horizon: William Faulkner: An American Dickens
by Leslie Fiedler
No one can write about William Faulkner without committing himself to the weary task of trying to disengage the author and his work from the misconceptions that surround them.
The Study of Man: Two Social Scientists View "No Way Out"
by Martha Wolfenstein
No Way Out is perhaps the most ambitious of the growing list of films designed to combat anti-Negro prejudice. All, like those about anti-Semitism, have aroused debate as to their effectiveness by critics, social psychologists, movie-makers, and experts in intergroup relations.
New Star in the Near East, by Kenneth Bilby
by Ian Mikardo
Report on Israel New Star in the Near East. by Kenneth W. Bilby. Doubleday. 279 pp. $3.50. Top-class newspapermen stay out of most controversies because these are usually secondary to a special preoccupation of their own.
Yidn Davenen, by Shlomo Bickel
by Arthur Hertzberg
The Synagogues of New York Yidn Davenen ("Jews Pray"). by Shlomo Bickel. Published by R. J. Novak. 201 pp. $2.50. Peretz tells the story of Berel the tailor who struggled for years to keep his son at medical studies in a German university.
Across the River and Into the Trees, by Ernest Hemingway
by Philip Rahv
Into, the Trees and out of Sight Across the River and into the Trees. by Ernest Hemingway. Scribner's. 308 pp. $3.00. The first thing to be said about this novel is that it is so egregiously bad as to render all comment on it positively embarrassing to anyone who esteems Hemingway as one of the more considerable prose-artists of our time and as the author of some of the finest short stories in the language.
Star of Glass, by Ann Birstein
by Midge Decter
A Rabbi, New Style Star of Glass. by Ann Birstein. Dodd, Mead. 273 pp. $2.75. One thing that has emerged from the recent swarm of nostalgia-novels and memoirs, supposedly depicting Jewish life in America as the author saw or sees it, is a typology of the American rabbi.
The Negro's Morale: Group Identification and Protest, by Arnold M. Rose
by Miriam Reimann
The Problems of Morale The Negro's Morale: Group Identification and Protest. by Arnold M. Rose. The University of Minnesota Press. 152 pp. $2.50. The Commission on Community Interrelations of the American Jewish Congress, which has been studying Jewish group morale, decided that studies in the group morale of other minority groups would be helpful, and asked Professor Rose to consider the group morale of the American Negro.
Reader Letters October 1950
by Our Readers
The "Gentile Intellectual" Again TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: The letters published in the September COM- MENTARY about Chandler Brossard's article, "Plaint of a Gentile Intellectual," seem to have entirely missed the point.
November, 1950Back to TopA Correction
by Our Readers
To the Editor: My article "The Aftermath of Nazi Rule" in the October COMMANTARY contains an error which somehow crept in during the course of revision.
Communism in Asia
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The generalizations in Karl A. Wittfogel's "How to Checkmate Stalin in Asia" (in the October COMMENTARY) are somewhat less than convincing to the present writer, who lived in China for ten years and in 1949 spent seven months under the Chinese Communists. The Chinese Communists, Dr.
In Reply
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Our memory was at fault in attributing "Eye-Witness: Peekskill" to Howard Fast and we are glad to make the correction.
"Eye-Witness: Peekskill"
by Our Readers
To the Editor: The article by James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush ["The Lessons of the Peekskill Riots," in the October issue] refers (p.
Has Europe the Will to Fight?:
Since Korea, the Moral Climate Has Changed
by Herbert Luthy
At this increasingly warm stage in the cold war, Americans, both in the government and out, are asking: Will Western Europe fight for the free world? Simultaneously, Europeans are asking: Will America fight for Europe? These questions intersect at what is probably the most delicate point in the Atlantic Pact.
December Is the Cruelest Month
by Grace Goldin
In these days of strong group self-consciousness and self-assertion existing side by side with an equally strong emphasis on "intergroup relations," perhaps no Jewish parent of young children is entirely at his ease over the question of "what to do about Christmas." Should the Jewish child be encouraged to participate in the holiday celebration? Should he be allowed the Christmas tree he covets? Nor is this merely a problem that engages Jews on a personal level: more than one Jewish community has found itself having to decide whether to support or to deflate the organized effort of a minority militantly demanding that Christmas carols, for example, not be sung in the public schools.
Self-Hatred and Jewish Chauvinism:
Some Reflections on "Positive Jewishness"
by Clement Greenberg
The Jewish "inferiority complex" is customarily regarded as a phenomenon of assimilationism. Clement Greenberg, who has been associate editor of COMMENTARY since its founding, thinks otherwise, and in this self-searching personal essay argues that "self-hatred" is a problem for almost every Jew in our society, and not least for those who most clamantly affirm their "positive Jewishness." Critically examining solutions currently offered to ease the heart of self-blame, failure, or insecurity growing out of inferior status, he indicates the direction in which he believes the remedy lies. _____________ One looks into oneself and discovers there what is also in others.
Freedom for Radio and TV?
The Risks Involved
by Joseph Krutch
The most important inventions for the 20th century may well turn out to be, not the automobile and the atom bomb, but the moving picture and the radio.
The Vatican and the Jewish Question:
The Record of the Hitler Period—and After
by L. Poliakov
Events since 1933 have raised for the Catholic Church, with renewed sharpness, the question of Catholicism's attitude toward the Jews and the "Jewish problem," a question that has always been of great importance to Catholic theology and social doctrine.
Malcah and Sedgewick
A Story
by Mark Raven
Our world narrows around us as we grow older, and so it should not have seemed so startling to receive on one day the news of Malcah's violent death in Palestine and a letter from my old Headmaster Sedgewick, old, but active still as Dean of Brimpton Cathedral in England. Their paths had all but crossed in life; now at last they had met.
E. A. Poe
by Howard Sackler
There were sad, yet certain, rustlings Of the frosted Boston curtain When Poe, Having re-emptied Pandora's box, Was ushered out forever And buried in it. For years, however, A "hideous heart" Underneath Poe's floorboards Amazed his Bronx neighbors With truly vaudevillian tricks (Some fancied) Until, After a prolonged exposure To sea-air and absinthe, The colors, the perfumes and the sounds Croaked in weak correspondence Across the waters. Then the reverence braked the fright To a practical stoppage, And pedestrians went bicycling To Poe's Bronx Cottage. And, The laconic word Of his onyx bird Christened a gin-mill. (Oo-La-La.
Gertrud Kolmar: The Woman and the Beasts:
"I Am Going the Way 1 Have Chosen to Go. . . ."
by Jacob Picard
The poetess Gertrud Chodziesner (Gertrud Kolmar), who after working as a slave laborer in a Berlin munitions plant was sent to her death in an extermination camp, was one of the most remarkable of the figures in the German Jewish cultural upsurge under the early years of Hitler's regime.
Hebrew As She Is Spoke:
Ivrit, Sabrit, Sleng, and Pinglish
by Ruth Gruber
Since the establishment of Israel, the adaptation of Hebrew, language of piety and learning, to the uses of daily life has been proceeding at a high rate of acceleration, with results that are often amazing and sometimes amusing.
From the American Scene: Boarders
by Louis Zara
Readers of this department will remember Louis Zara's story, "The Peanut Machine and the Kramers" (January 1950), a study of the impact of the machine on a Jewish family.
Cedars of Lebanon: Youth of a Bundist
by Vladimir Medem
Vladimir Medem, born of assimilated Russian Jewish parents in Minsk in 1879 and baptized at birth in the Greek Orthodox Church, devoted his life wholly to the cause of the Jewish labor movement in the ranks of the Bund (General Jewish Labor Bund), the Jewish Socialist party founded in 1897. The Bund developed in underground channels in czarist Russia and its Polish and Lithuanian dependencies.
On the Horizon: Shalom, Habibi!
by J. Teller
Lacking a regular night-club editor, COMMENTARY drafted J. L. Teller, who has, so he assured us, a more than reportorial interest in night life, and assigned him to visit Habibi, New York's new—and only—Israeli night club.
The Study of Man: Does Psychoanalysis Cure?
by Lillian Blumberg
In the past few years, psychoanalysts have been debating among themselves the problem of cure—what it means, how often and to what degree it is achieved, how one may know it has been achieved.
Happy Are They
by Avraham Yitzhak
The present poem was translated from the Hebrew by Jacob Sloan and Gabriel Preil. _____________ Happy are they that sow and shall not reap, For they shall journey far. Happy are they that are liberal, whose young splendor Compounds the light of days and their diffusion— Who disburden themselves of finery At the hub of roads. Happy are they that are proud, whose pride has swept their inmost borders To become as the humility of white After the risen rainbow. Happy are they that know what their heart calls from the desert, And the silence flowers on their lips. Happy are they, for they shall be gathered into the heart of the world, And, wrapped round in oblivion, The Constant shall be their wordless portion. _____________
Classics and Commercials, and The Little Blue Light, by Edmund Wilson
by Irving Kristol
American Humanist Classics and Commercials. by Edmund Wilson. Farrar, Straus. 544 pp. $5.00. The Little Blue Light. by Edmund Wilson. Farrar, Straus. 163 pp. $2.75. "He has a genuine classical taste, he is not often influenced by fads, and he reads, and writes about what he reads, because he honestly enjoys doing so.
The Choice, by Boris Shub
by Hal Lehrman
Boring From Within—in Reverse The Choice. by Boris Shub. Duell, Sloan and Pearce. 205 pp. $2.75. Evidence has been publicly accumulating for some time that a large part of the Russian people were ready and eager to trade Joseph Stalin in for any non-Soviet regime at the beginning of their share of World War II.
The Testament of the Lost Son, by Soma Morgenstern
by Judah Goldin
Remembrance of Things Past The Testament of the Lost Son. by Soma Morgenstern. Translated by Jacob Sloan in collaboration with Maurice Samuel. Jewish Publication Society.
Francis Bacon, by Benjamin Farrington
by Roger Jospe
Philosopher of Pre-Industrial Science Francis Bacon. by Benjamin Farrington. Henry Schuman. 202 pp. $3.50. This book emphasizes that Francis Bacon was more than "the Father of Inductive Philosophy." He was not a philosopher immersed solely in scholarly concerns, but a man sensitive to the historical moment through which the England of his times, the England of Elizabeth and James, was passing, and he wanted, as a philosopher, to influence the transformation he sensed was imminent.
Eliakum Zunser, Poet of His People, by Sol Liptzin
by Moshe Decter
The Passing of the Badchen Eliakum Zunser, Poet of His People. by Sol Liptzin. Behrman. 248 pp. $3.00. The poet Eliakum Zunser lived through some of the most exciting decades of modern Jewish history.
Reader Letters November 1950
by Our Readers
"Eye-Witness: Peekskill" TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: The article by James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush ["The Lessons of the Peekskill Riots," in the October issue] refers (p.
December, 1950Back to Top"Weight and Sense. . . ."
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Each time I read my copy of COMMENTARY I feel impelled to write you thanking you and congratulating you on your fine job.
Revisionism in South Africa
by Our Readers
To the Editor: Our attention has been drawn to an article entitled "South Africa: Life on a Volcano" written by B.
Differences...and Differences
by Our Readers
To the Editor: In October's COMMENTARY there is a story ("The First Three Stars," by David Schreiber) about a little Jewish boy who knows that Jews are different.
by Our Readers
To the Editor: I wish to commend James Rorty and Winifred Raushenbush for their most accurate, authentic, and painstaking account of the Robeson "concerts" in Peekskill ["The Lessons of the Peekskill Riots," in the October COMMENTARY].
No German Rearming Without Atlantic Union:
Europe Alone Cannot Assimilate German Power
by Richard Crossman
A recent New York Times dispatch from London opened as follows: "Representatives of the twelve North Atlantic Treaty powers agreed today on the need for speed in settling the question of Germany's participation in the defense of Western Europe.
A Billion Dollars for Israel:
The Four-Point Plan's Impact on American Jewry
by Hal Lehrman
The economic crisis of huge proportions now perplexing the State of Israel can be met only by aid from abroad; and leadership, both in Israel and here, has agreed that America's share in this effort should amount to one billion dollars over the next three years.
Scarsdale's Battle of the Books:
How One Community Dealt with "Subversive Literature"
by Robert Shaplen
If one were to nominate the American community least likely to succumb to Communism, Westchester County's Scarsdale—affluent, Republican, sedate—would be a strong candidate.
Rosenzweig's "Judaism of Personal Existence":
A Third Way Between Orthodoxy and Modernism
by Will Herberg
Franz Rosenzweig died twenty-one years ago, but it is only now that American Jews are beginning to learn that this man—considered by many to be the most original Jewish thinker of the 20th century—ever existed.
The Honekker Song
A Story
by Hamlen Hunt
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, an industrial city of some size (products: soap, books, clean laundry, some machinery), Harvard University is also situated.
At Merton College, Oxford
by Linda Weinberg
By Merton's darkening walls I sat, Brushed by the fall of summer's rain, Feeling the eternal Jew, Homunculus, starting in my veins. Now in the garden of the mind Blooms the dark vintage of my race; No memory binds me to its vine, Yet shattering Time unlocks the gate. By Toledo's walls I wept, (Drinking my tea and milk the while), Under the flame-pierced sky of Spain Bound to the burning stake, I smiled. No cymbals clash, no sparrow falls, I sip, I talk, I choose a cake; Where is the writing on the wall? When shall the stone of silence break? Through Vilna's icy lanes I fled, Safe in the dark shroud of dismay; But the bright star shining on my head No summer's rain shall wash away. On Erudition's arm I walk Past the stern guardian of the Right, Blazing with borrowed wit, I talk Of Plato, Augustine and Christ. With lowered eyes, I phrase the Greek, Sharpen the point in flawless French; What dark-voweled language did I speak Rocking with wisdom on my bench? Once in a city's arms I dreamed, But Oxford's towers have pierced my sleep; A midnight voyage on the sea— Now by Babylon's waters I weep. Destruction's sheltering touch at last In passive union binds all men; Still the deceptive tongue of brass; Jerusalem shall not rise again. _____________
The Various Jews of Israel:
Six Sketches
by A. Davidson
Writing about Israel tends to be pitched on one of two levels—roseate enthusiasm or head-splitting problems. These sketches of life in Israel are a bit different—perhaps because they present the various Jews of Israel as normal human beings, neither heroes nor victims.
The Two Worlds of Delmore Schwartz:
Lucifer in Brooklyn
by Heinz Politzer
Delmore Schwartz has come to be considered possibly the most representative literary man of the Jewish intellectual generation of the 30's, certainly in its own view.
The Unrespectable Proselyte:
The Fortunes of Beckey Wells
by Cecil Roth
Writes Cecil Roth: 'The autobiography of that extraordinary self-recruited addition to the Jewish community, the 18th-century actress Beckey Wells (Memoirs of the Life of Mrs.
From the American Scene: "Hebrew-Christian" Evangelist: Southern Style
by Harry Golden
In the fundamentalist regions of the American South, where religious revival meetings can still draw large crowds away from the movies, a modest but secure niche is occupied by the so-called "Hebrew-Christian evangelists," Jewish converts who seek to bring "their people" to Christianity—an undertaking that has so far produced more tumult than conversions.
Cedars of Lebanon: Marriages Are Made in Heaven
by Israel Abrahams
Israel Abrahams, one of the most distinguished of modern scholars of Judaism in the English-speaking countries, was born in London in 1858, the son of a rabbi who had come to England from Warsaw at an early age.
On the Horizon: Ernest Bloch's "Sacred Service"
by Kurt List
The composer Ernest Bloch, who recently passed his seventieth birthday, was prominent among those who brought the aesthetic revolution of "modernist" music to these shores.
The Study of Man: American Realities and Sociological Methods:
The New American
by Joseph Krutch
The writers in this department are generally social scientists, commenting and reporting upon the work of other social scientists on subjects of interest to the general reader.
The Study of Man: American Realities and Sociological Methods:
New York's Puerto Ricans
by Nathan Glick
The writers in this department are generally social scientists, commenting and reporting upon the work of other social scientists on subjects of interest to the general reader.
The Gentleman and the Jew, by Maurice Samuel
by David Daiches
Judaism "Not Cricket" The Gentleman and the Jew by Maurice Samuel. Knopf. 325 pp. $3.75 Mr. Samuel has written a fascinating and provocative book.
Parade's End, by Ford Madox Ford
by Monroe Engel
Portrait of a Gentleman Parade's End. by Ford Madox Ford. Knopf. 836 pp. $5.00. The publication of Ford Madox Ford's tetralogy in one volume is a long overdue act of justice.
Mink on Weekdays, by Felicia Lamport
by Isa Kapp
In a Climate of Wealth Mink on Weekdays. by Felicia Lamport. Houghton, Mifflin. 309pp. $3.00. "The very rich are different from us," said F.
The Transcendentalists, by Perry Miller
by Marvin Meyers
The American Citizen-Intellectual The Transcendentalists. Edited by Perry Miller. Harvard University Press. 521 pp. $6.50. Is there a dominant style of "Man Thinking" in America which organizes thought and character, art and popular taste, prophecy and history into a meaningful union? To its interpreters, America has always appeared a sort of open-air laboratory, a collective demonstration of grand designs.
Nine Books on Israel
by Milton Himmelfarb
Israel Omnibus Young Hearts. by David Maletz. Schocken Books. 237 pp. $3.00. I Saw the Battle of Jerusalem. by Harry Levin. Schocken Books. 288 pp. $3.00. The Struggle for Palestine. by J.
Reader Letters December 1950
by Our Readers
Peekskill TO THE EDITOR OF COMMENTARY: I wish to commend James Rorty and Wini- fred Raushenbush for their most accurate, au- thentic, and painstaking account of the Robe- son "concerts" in Peekskill ["The Lessons of the Peekskill Riots," in the October COMMEN- TARY].