The Maccabaean

THE ancient Greek fable of Pygmalion and Galathea is well known. The late Rodin hewed it into a characteristic marble which may be seen in the Rodin room of the Metropolitan Museum. But there is a modern version of the ancient story, wrought into an equally characteristic play by that most serious of all buffoons—Bernard Shaw. In this play the heroine is a guttersnipe picked up by a professor of phonetics who sets himself to the interesting but almost hopeless task of weaning her from her cockney speech and teaching her correct English. Whether this analogy between the two Pygmalions is strained or not, there is this truth in it that language is the molding power of the soul. In the original Pygmalion, it is Venus that breathes life into Galathea; in Shaw's version no external agency is required: cultured language it is which breathes a new soul into the little flower-girl from the Ghetto— I beg pardon, I mean from the gutter—turning her into a glorious new creature, a woman conscious of her womanly dignity.

It is this modern Pygmalion of Shavian make that occurs to me, as I sit down to the grateful task of writing, in compliance with the editorial request, an appreciation of the work of my honored friend, Eliezer Ben Yehudah, on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. He is the Jewish Pygmalion, the fashioner of the modern Jewish soul into sculptured beauty. He found the Jewish soul in the Ghetto, amorphous because speechless, nay marred beyond recognition because of the uncouth speech of the "Gass"—the harsh cacophony of the Galuth! He taught the modern Jew how to speak his own language—and behold! the wondrous new creature of the Jewish renascence.

If we accept the usual trinitarian conception of the Jewish renascence: the People, the Land, the Language, then we well say that the People is the shapeless clay, the Land the pedestal, but the Language is the Soul in all its plastic perfection. At the time when the Pedestal—the Land—did not stand on such firm basis as today, when the People represented still cruder and less yielding Material than today, Eliezer Ben Yehudah, master-sculptor of the Jewish soul, began to shape between his puny fingers but with his indomitable spirit the Image of the Future. He did it by a mere breath, a forgotten, well-nigh vanished breath at that: the Hebrew language!

Bernard Shaw says in his preface (in his prefaces G. B. S. is always unbecomingly serious) to Pygmalion: “The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it . . . German and Spanish are accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to Englishmen.” Put Jews in place of “Englishmen,” and Hebrew in place of “English,” in this pungent pronouncement, and you have the exact statement of conditions as they prevailed then, and still largely prevail now, in the Jewish camp. Also, you will understand the spirit that animated our Pygmalian: Respect for the Hebrew language as the expression of Jewish self-respect!

Eliezer Ben Yehudah it was who, in every truth, made Hebrew accessible to Hebrews. . . .

I first met him shortly after his arrival in America at the Public Library. He stood in the door of his private study conversing with a lady. I looked at him and recognized him at once, though never having set eyes on him before. So, this was the famous author of the Millon. He had alt ways appeared in my imagination as unreal—part of the fascinating romance of the Jewish Revival. This touch of unreality, this mythic glamor, did not vanish on beholding him, it became rather more intense, it vibrated around his person. I must have looked my eagerness to be introduced to him, for the lady, whom I slightly knew, hailed me. The introduction followed—in French. We engaged in a French conversation, but I soon lapsed into Hebrew, somewhat timidly, essaying even to pronounce the words Sepha- radi-fashion. I should not like to have a phonographic record of my first conversation in Palestinian Hebrew. However, after five minutes or so, I got fairly into the swing of the thing, and Mr. Ben Yehudah expressed his surprise to hear an American rabbi converse in Hebrew. Mirabile dictu. I explained that though somewhat a rabbi, I am nowise an American rabbi.