to automobile races.
And now let us consider what kind of an anti-Semite the second hero of "Israel" is. Thibault, Prince de Clar, says, "It seems to me cowardly and villainous to boycott a Jewish tailor, to break up a dry-goods store, or to molest poor people." We would wish that there were such anti-Semites among our brethren in Poland, in Russia, and Rumania.
I had a pleasant experience in southern France a few years ago. A French colleague of mine in the University, who had never before seen a Jew, as they are scarce in those provinces, said, “The Jews are dirty and ugly people. I can recognize them at once.” He did recognize one, a Russian hooligan, a spy sent by the Russian government to watch the revolutionary students there. Yet my own features passed unnoticed by the shrewd observer. The same knowledge we discover in Bernstein’s characters. They feel a Jew, they smell him, they are physically repelled by him. In reality, though, they have never seen a Jew, except in the articles published in the “Libre Parole.” And Bernstein uses these anti-Semites in a play in which he wishes to bring out the eternal conflict between races.
The Jews in "Israel" are those who have entered the high society of Parisian life. One of them "likes to be in the midst of noblemen." The hero himself has committed the sin of having a son by a French married woman, and this son is the leader of the Royalists, the anti-Semites. It is a clever dramatic trick, we agree, but it is far from real life. Those Jews are no longer Jews. They are not even cosmopolitan. They are Frenchmen. And the conflict is merely a conflict between individuals of the same set. "Israel" is a hybrid work. Of course it comes from the pen of a skilled dramatist and it contains powerful moments. It might have been a Greek drama of high value. The conflict lies in the fact that the two
terrible enemies are father and son without their knowing it. But only the names of the author and hero are Jewish.
How does he handle the Jewish question in his play; As a French political question. It is a local and temporary conflict. It does not pass the frontier. It is not the epopee of Israel, but an incident in Monsieur Justin Gutlieb's private life. We do not agree with this tendency of generalization. Gutlieb is probably as the writer wants to depict him, but he is not "Israel." "Israel" is not Dreyfus. What a tremendous tragedy would "Israel" have been, if Bernstein really had felt that deep sympathy for his martyred countrymen!
The psychology of Gutlieb is superficially studied. One can see that to the Jewish author the Jews are unknown just as they are unknown to his anti-Semitic characters. "My first move is always one of submission," says Gutlieb. To put such words into the mouth of a Jew like Gutlieb is to be far indeed from the truth. Gutlieb utters them in the presence of the woman he once loved. It is supposed that the Gentile woman, who yielded to this Jew, would not have done it to a man whose "first move is one of submission," a man who has the soul of a slave. He must be strong, superb, a hero, to win over a Catholic woman. The words are, put in Gutlieb's lines, because Bernstein himself judges his hero from the point of view of current prejudice. Henry Bernstein, in creating Gutlieb, seems to have looked at him from a certain height, with the superiority of a stranger. He seems to have said to Gutlieb:
"Now I am going to show the people what a Jew is. I, personally, know very little about his soul, for my own soul is no longer Jewish. I am trying to make you as sympathetic a Jew as I can, but you will have to excuse me if I take some material from the treatises of the anti-Semites. As a dramatic author I must be impartial."
With Dances and Singing
Jew, when I heard your violin in the opera-house, Something poignant in my Jewish heart responded, For I heard the wail and pathos of our people, Suffering long centuries, Sobbing up to me, mourning through the galleries, Imploring the tear-stained pale faces in the audience, With sometimes a little twist of laughter, As sunlight flashes through the vines of Zion, Sometimes a little sigh of contentment, Like the wind rippling through the olives on the beloved hills of Zion.
My heart cried out with a vision,Cried out with yearning, louder than the throbbing of your music,For I saw all the genius of our people,Gathering again unto the temple that stood rebuilt more beautiful than of oldUpon the hills of our longing.
Unto the temple which was built with the cry of my heart, With chaste dances and a sound of glad singing, The old hills blossomed anew with their coming, Once more the waters of Zion ran sweet and pleasant, With a joyous sound of instruments, a perfume of Palestinian flowers, they came.
And above all I heard the laughter of your violin, The laughter as of sunlight streaming down amid the bronze vines of the land of our deliverance, Laughter, laughter, alone, from your violin, wailing no longer, As the genius of my people offered itself once more, with music and singing and dances, To the God of our fathers, Upon the altar of that temple which stands on the hill of my desire, The temple that I have built with the longing cry of my heart.