making of "graven images" are no more. In all of which we see the progress of beliefs and ideals which will form an integral part of the cultur of the future Jewish State. Of that cultur religion will not be the sine qua non; the Jewish soul will have an opportunity to express itself
In Perez, we have a story-teller whose tales lose no merit when gauged by the harshest rules of literary criticism. The masterly portrayal of the ebb and flow of men's hopes and idea's, their longings and their strivings, their foibles and their frailties, evidence the pen of a genius. The Jewishness of feeling that throbs and pulsates in each and every one of the idyls, the genuine love that tenderly and sympathetically investigates every nook and cranny of Jewish life, enables us, with pardonable pride, to place the word "Jewish" before the term "genius." Perez may fittingly be termed a "Jewish genius."
Sympathy is the first essential to insight; and it is because Perez's own heart is akin to that of his people that he draws his characters so charmingly and withal so truly.
Perez applies a mirror, and not a microscope to life. He unites truth with beauty, facts with fiction. Jewish life, its bright and dark sides, its charms and its imperfections, its strong men and its frail women, are all sketched with a simplicity whose strength is indescribable. Ilis personality is visible in every character, in every story. It is not obtruded on the listener; it is not unduly emphasized in unnecessary comments and observations; it is beneath, in evidence only when the divining-rod of study calls attention to its existence. And
it is a personality which is all afire with its attachment to the Jewish life it so ably portrays. Throughout we feel that the author is a Jew, writing about Jews for Jews, and therefore has nothing to hide or extenuate. He is proud of his people, aware of their good traits and their failings, yet willing to portray both and abide by the result.
In her translation, Miss Frank has given
* "Stories and Pictures." by Isaac Loeb Perez. Translated from the Yiddish by Helena Frank, Philadelphia. The Jewish Publication Society of America.
in the true language of the soul, viz, the beaute arts.
The Editor of the Maccabaean will be pleased to consider manuscripts in prose or verse.
Like Irving, his is a personality whichis warm and genial, his is an individualitythat looks at things Jewish subjectively,rather than objectively, with the eye of theparticipator rather than that of the onlooker.
His power of drawing character is unequalled in that literature to which his book is so splendid an addition. It is not his knowledge of human nature that has given him his ability, it is his artistic appreciation of character. His is not only an understanding of his creations and their world; he possesses a deep psychological insight into their motives and souls. He understands that behind the man whom we see, lies the man whom we do not see, the soul or character proper, which is sometimes mean, sometimes noble, but always profoundly interesting and worthy of study.
Perez's book has endured successfully the severest of all tests—a translation. And yet there is preserved for the English reader all the beauty and nobility of the original, so well has the task of the translator been performed.