The Maccabaean

During the last two decades a great revolution has taken place in Jewish life and Jewish ideals, a great awakening of the National sentiment, the like of which the long history of our exile can hardly show. The attribute of apologetic self-effacement maintained by the Jew during hundreds and hundreds of years, is giving way to an attitude of self-respect and of racial pride. The attitude of appeal and “schnorring” for pity and commiseration from the land- holding members of the family of nations is making room for an attitude of self-conscious right and a bold demand for the long withheld justice. If we take the proverbial bent back of the Golus Jew as typical of his humiliated beggar-like Golus existence, then we may call the present period a period of straightening out. The limbs long twisted and crippled out of shape through pressure and oppression are gaining their normal form, their normal health and their normal strength and vitality. After a long uninterrupted reign of the brain cells at the expense of their other colleagues, the red blood corpuscles are asserting themselves. We are not satisfied any longer with an embalmed past, but we want to have it resuscitated. We want it to come to life again and bear living blossoms and living fruit in the present. We want Judaism not to be a mere archaelogical treasure viewed under a glass case, but we want it to step out strong and vigorous and fully panoplied in the air and in the sunshine.

The revival of Jewish nationalism and the new self-assertive spirit was bound to find its expression in the fields of art and literature. This it actually did directly and indirectly. Directly by an open propaganda and campaign for Jewish nationalism and indirectly by depicting Jewish life by all the means of art and notably in fiction.

Jewish art—there is a refreshing and

hopeful sound in these two words. There is a world of joy and delight to the Jewish heart in them.

Now, you must know what I mean by Jewish art. In every period and especially during the nineteenth century we had our representatives in all the European arts and literatures. Our Meyerbeers, our Rubensteins, and our Mendelssohns thrilled whole nations with their divine music. Our Rachels have charmed Gentile audiences. from every celebrated stage. Our Antokol- skys chiseled living beauties out of the uncouth stone. Our Heines and Boernes and Saphirs delighted whole continents with their wit and humor. But they were Jews by accident of birth only. If their art as it was bound to do, shows their Jewish origin and has all the characters of Jewish genius, it was rather unintentionally, . unconsciously done and in most instances in spite of the author, who in his ordinary life either denied or suppressed his Hebrew descent. It is a well known fact that Meyerbeer, who furnished scores for religious hymns to various Catholic and Protestant churches, refused to compose anything for the Jewish synagogue in Berlin. It is also told that the celebrated opera “Le Propher” had originally for. its theme “Moses,” but on second thought it appeared to him too Jewish and he recast it to “Mahomet.” Heine is the one who said “Judaism is not a religion. Judaism is a curse.” The Jewish poems of Heine have been written not in the heyday of his life and his love for Jewish history and Jewish traditions in-. creased inthe same ratio as his spinal disease. If we could appropriate to ourselves all these great Jewish geniuses and deduct them from the world’s -treasure of literature and art, these literatures and art would be robbed of some of their most important possessions and their greatest ornaments, while we would have an array of brilliant