The Maccabaean

The Rabbi's Dilemma

"THE CHOSEN PEOPLE," by Sidney L. Nyburg, author of "The Final Verdict," "The Conquest," etc., 8vo, 363 pp., J. B. Lippincott Co.

Mr. Nyburg’s book is a notable and distinctive contribution to English-Jewish literature produced in this country. The unity of the work and its sustained interest mark it as a real novel. Despite an excessive amount of philosophical discussion, the action proceeds with due swiftness and several of the situations are genuinely dramatic. Making allowances for a certain heightening of coloring—which is rather the fault of a whole school than of an individual writer—the story is essentially true to life. Its leading characters are not the puppets of the regulation American magazine story, but are real human beings of flesh and blood. And it will be no small achievement on the part of Mr. Nyburg if many readers will, as they are bound to, recognize David Gordon, Israel Ginsberg, Clarence Kaufman, Ruth Herman, and Philip Graetz, as characteristic figures in American Jewish life. They are characters whom many of us have met.

We all know the sentimental and visionary young rabbi who starts out to reconstruct Judaism and to regenerate the hopelessly reformed Jews, and who, because of a loose grip upon reality and of intellectual incapacity to comprehend the real conditions of Jewish life, after futile attempts to reconcile the irrecon- cileable, ultimately degenerates to a mere pulpit entertainer or to a philanthropic agent. We all sympathize with young Rabbi Graetz in his dilemma when he finds himself helplessly torn between his duties to his fashionable and barren congregation and his sympathies for’ the Jewish laboring masses; but we know in advance that he is not the man, nor are his the means of bridging the gulf which crosses his path— if indeed such means can be found. The experiences of the young rabbi are not at all unfamiliar to us, and we discern again the insincerity which lurks between the prattle about the Jewish mission. The young enthusiast finds it impossible to carry the mission even as far as the Ghetto of Baltimore, the city of his ministry.

That this story has come to us out of denationalized surroundings to illustrate the hollowness of assimilationist pretentions is all the more remarkable. It proves how well truer conceptions of Jewish life are ‘penetrating to all parts, and even to the periphery of Jewry. Also, it proves again how the gift of vision and understanding raises the writer above his environment. Mr. Nyburg has seen much further than the average English Jewish writer of the day, and in telling his effective story, and in the excellent delineation of his characters he has pricked more than one bubble of the existing Jewish order of things. Though, perhaps, without intending to do it, he has refuted more than one assimilationist contention. Take the matter of the Yiddish language. All of the inane and vapid speeches against Yiddish which have been delivered in this country in the last twenty years are effectively disposed of in the touching scene at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, when young Rabbi Graetz,

hastily summoned to minister to a Jew dying, finds himself unable to understand one word of the mortally wounded man, who passes away with a curse on his lips for the Goy who was brought to him in the place of a rabbi.

WA ₪. 1 One must take exception, however, from a certain straining after cleverness which threatens to become monotonous. The author is very fond of illustrating the fine wit and biting sarcasm of the brilliant Russian Jew—the most interesting character in the book —David Gordon, the attorney for the strikers—but it is not always clever to say the most clever things, and the display of mental fireworks plus chuzpah which Gordon makes at the meeting of the board of directors of the Jewish Charities, brings the scene to the verge of the preposterous and spoils what other- 156 would have been a most effective situation.

Mr. Nyburg, who has taken for his novel the identical name of Eugene Chirikoff’s splendid Zionist play, has not written a Zionist story (though he has presented the striking character of a Zionist in the person of David Gordon), but his large outlook on Jewish life and his stern facing of the facts of Jewish existence lead directly to nationalist implications. At any rate, nationalists are always grateful for a true picture of Jewish life.

Zangwill on the Principles of Nationalities

"THE PRINCIPLES OF NATIONALITIES," Conway Memorial lectures, by Israel Zangwill. Published by Macmillan Co., New York. 111 pp. Price, 50 cents.

Mr. Zangwill has published in book form his lecture delivered on this subject last year. The general question of the principles of nationalities is now engrossing the attention of thoughtful people of all countries. The war has left no recourse. It is essential that there be no misunderstanding as to the content of the Zionist idea ; that friends and opponents be acquainted with the cultural and spiritual aspirations interwoven with our political and economic aims. This is not the task attempted by Mr. Zangwill, but though he makes no original contribution, he does attempt to make clear the underlying basis of nationality, and gives a lucid statement of the forms and varieties of nationalities.

He formulates the distinction between nationality, race, state and nation, so often confused. The form of nationality undergoes constant flux, changing from the simple national state, possessing a common religion, common blood, common customs (of which ancient Judea was a prototype), to the highly complicated form of nationality which embraces many races, languages and religions.

He points out that the criterion of nationality is not in a common language, nor in a common blood, nor in a common territory (as is attested by the modern Jew), nor in a political unity, nor yet in the “soul of a people.”

“Yet,” as Mr. Zangwill says, “Nationality is no illusion, no accident. . . . It is a psychological fact having its regular laws of origin, development and decay.”

At first nationalities represented combinations of "mechanical" constituents, such as blood, creed and custom. The modern nationality is formed of "chemical" constituents created by a common cause and common danger.