BOOKS—NEW AND OLD
"In Milchome Zeiten"
Dr. Levin's second book of timely essays. Published by The Federation of American Zionists, New York. Price, $1.20. 305 pages.
IN reading Dr. Levin’s second volume of essays entitled “In Milchome Zeiten” I was filled with an ever-growing sorrow that his writings as a whole had not been made available for the English-speaking public. It is a great pity that many of our most convincing articles and speeches fail to penetrate to the eyes and ears of the unregenerate. We give our best energies to the process popularly known as “bringing coals to Newcastle.” The glowing sparks of divine wrath issue from the mouths of our prophets only to fall harm- lessly about the heads of those who have already repented, who have nothing to gain from the storm of denunciation but æsthetic enjoyment. Meanwhile the worshippers of Baal, or in modern parlance the assimilationists, sit at the movies in placid ignorance of the judgment which has been pronounced against them.
I Oo kettle lg te 000 Dr. Levin’s lucid intellect lays bare the very heart of the Jewish question and displays it before our inquiring eyes in the relentless glare of truth. Frequently his pen is dipped in gall, for Dr. Levin loves his people with an intense and all-absorbing love, and his soul is wrung with anguish at the blind heedlessness with which they toy with their destiny. And yet the essays make agreeable, nay, delightful reading. Not only does one smile appreciatively at the author’s keenness of perception and chuckle at his sly darts of caustic humor. Dr. Levin has the rare and charming gift of making his reader feel clever. His smoothly flowing style and the logical sequence of his arguments delude the reader into believing that he himself is the originator of those pithy phrases and trenchant epigrams.
The first essays in the series deal with two brochures on the Jewish question written by non-Jews, the one antagonistic to Jewish nationalism, the other favorable. Dr. Levin makes these brochures the basis for a disquisition on the evolution of the socialist attitude to nationalism, from the Marxian to the ultra-modern conception. The rest of the book is devoted to the psychology of the assimilationist, in particular of the Reform Jew, to the problems born of the world war, and to a critical analysis of American Jewry. Of peculiar interest is the essay entitled “The Return from the ‘Western Wall’ of Assimilation,” in which Dr. Levin explains why it is easier to make converts to Zionism among the wholly assimilated than among those who have not yet completely divested themselves of the trappings of Jewishness. The traveler from East to West wages a continued struggle with the promptings of his nature. Finally there comes a critical moment when he reaches the “Western Wall” of assimilation, that is to say, the frontier of “assimilatedness,” and it is then that his true nature, on the point of permanent extinction, makes a supreme effort to assert itself.
It is illuminating and instructive for us to read Dr. Levin's articles on America and American Jewry. I am inclined to suspect that Dr. Levin does not fully understand this country. His is the old-world attitude, that of the adult watching with tolerant amusement the clumsy attempts at self-expression of a gawky adolescent.
Dr. Levin fails to perceive a “dominated nation” on this continent, in other words, he thinks that a national type is yet to emerge from the seething ingredients within the melting-pot. In this I cannot agree with him. America is first and foremost an Anglo-Saxon country, and if Uncle Sam is not identical with John Bull he is an Anglo-Saxon none the less. According to Dr. Levin the dangers of assimilation are not so great in America as elsewhere, for the reason that there is no “dominant nation” into which alien elements may merge. And yet, if this were so, we should have no American Jewish type. But we all know that there ts an American Jew, just as surely as there is a German Jew and a Russian Jew. And what is more, we suspect that Dr. Levin does not admire him. In fact, he looks down upon him, and justly, as the vigorous Jew atingle with race consciousness, quickened and ennobled by the vision of Israel’s future must necessarily look down upon the puny and indolent slave of circumstance who is blind to the vast possibilities of the moment. He looks down upon him, too—and this we read between the lines—as the Slav who manages to be good without a moral code looks down upon the Anglo-Saxon who manages to be just as good despite his Shulhan Aruch of bourgeois morality. ....
The caprice of history, says Dr. Levin, has foisted the burden of shaping Israel’s future upon the unwilling shoulders of American Jewry. And American Jewry is not rising to the occasion. A great part of it indignantly denies that Israel has a future, and the rest consumes itself in petty and futile internal conflict. And the great moment is at hand, and may slip by unheeded! .. .
The last two essays in the volume deal with assimilationist activities in general, and in particular with the attitude of the English “Board of Deputies” and the “‘Anglo-Jewish Association.” It is fortunate, Dr. Levin maintains, that the English assimilationists, who are closely allied with the assimilationists of other nations, have been forced to come into the open instead of striking in the dark as heretofore. Now at last we shall be able to measure swords with them. After all, what chance has a negative ideology against a positive one, a man who is struggling to die against a man who is striving for life and health?
The Story of Bible Translations
Max L. Margolis, Philadelphia, The Jewish Publication Society of America.
To weave so unpalatable a subject as Bible Translations into a story not without its romance is an achievement of no little merit. Max Margolis has done more: he has presented the fruits of scientific research in a popular way, and has skillfully blended this scholarly presentation of facts with a devout