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The Southern Israelite
Demonstrations s?
St
Thv AVir
i
ii
VICTOR \
IIAIMO
ISoic!
at
innrsj
is now on display at Cable’s. This
new instrument—designed, de
veloped, and produced by
Victor, completely revolution
izes radio performance.
See and hear it today at the
Piano Company
ATLANTA—MACON
Note the netf,
full vision illu
minated station
selector.
Liberal allowance on your
old Phonograph or Radio
Morris Gest can weep real tears
now. Morris always weeps over his
losses for Art’s sake. But generally
they are crocodile tears. This time
they are real honest-to-goodness
weeps. It’s all because of the Passion
Play that Morris dug up somewhere in
the'Hinterland of the U. S. A. It was
announced as the famous Freiburg
Passion Play. When the ministerial-
looking gentleman, David Belasco,
who happens also to be the father-in-
law of Morris Gest, decided to go in
with Morris on the presentation of
the play, a wave of protest arose from
the Jewish press. The leaders of Jew
ry urged him for the sake of his faith
and his people not to present this
travesty on the crucifixion. But Morris
replied that all the king’s men and
all the king’s horses, not even Louis
Marshall or Stephen Wise included
could get him to stop the performance
in the interest of Art. So he went
ahead with it in the Hippodrome.
But what Jewry couldn’t do the
public has done very nicely. It has put
the Freiburg Passion Play on ice. It
is dead. And Morris is weeping over
its bier. He may take it barn-storm
ing where the yokels may find in it
some interest but so far as New York
is concerned it’s finished. It didn’t
patronize it very much in the begin
ning and in the end scarcely at all.
But the worst pen-lashing Gest re
ceived was from a young writer nam
ed Louis Browdy, a former Pittsburgh
boy, but now free-lance writer in New
York. 1 know Louis very well in
deed and I want to congratulate him
self on his masterpiece in the “Na
tion,” which featured it under the
title of “Morris Gest and the Passion
Play.” Read some of the choice bits
that follow:
Says Browdy:
“Inside the theatre I saw a
dull, interminable spectacle pre
senting an incredible distortion
of the Gospel story. The most
remarkable and, to me, the most
memorable moment of the eve
ning occurred in the intermissions
when, as the curtain descended
and the houselights came slowly
on, an outcry arose in the aisles.
Get, your ice-cold Eskimo pies,’
shouted the eager candy venders.
Mr. Gest had not forgotten to
sell the candy concession for the
gieat drama of the crucifixion.
Had he not amply displayed his
deep sense of the sanctity of the
play when in his advertisements
he had requested the Hippodrome
audience to refrain from ap
plause?” P
It is quite in line with the
other mis-statements in Mr.
Gest’s announcements that he has
advertised his Passion Play as
Direct from Freiburg with the
Original Cast of 1,000 living per
sons.’ The cast is actually made
up of fifteen or twenty German
actors and about 200 super-numer-
aries (some of whom told me that
they were paid the munificent
sum of $8 a week and many of
whom were discharged at the end
of the first fortnight after re
hearsing two weeks without payi.
The Fassnacht troupe has been
in America for nearly a year
having given their first Ameri
can performance in St. Joseph.
Missouri last August . . jj r
Gest, the Christus and the Judas
are receiving $1,000 a week each;
in addition, 60 per cent of the
profits go to Gest and 40 p er
cent to the Fassnachts.”
Mr. Milton Schayer, the well-known
Jewish columnist, dropped in to see
me the other day with the idea of a
Jewish Book-of-the-Month Club. This
matter has been discussed from time
to time in the Jewish press and an
interesting statement regarding it
was made recently by Rabbi Louis
Gross, of Brooklyn, N. Y. I think the
idea is a good one. It should en
courage a wider interest in books by
Jewish authors dealing with subjects
of interest to the Jew. It would also
serve the purpose of intelligently
guiding the Jewish reading public in
the direction of worth-while books on
Jewish subjects. It would also help
Jewish authors who today are hiding
their light under a bushel. I hope
that Mr. Schayer will continue to
agitate the idea until it becomes a
reality.
I am in receipt of a letter stating:
“The Pittsburgh Conference of
Jewish Women’s Organizations is
eager to get an expression of
your opinion on a matter of great
importance not only to local but
to international Jewry as well.
Quoting Chancellor Bowman, of
the Cathedral of Learning (Uni
versity of Pittsburgh), ‘the va
rious rooms of the Cathedral of
Learning are to represent the
cultural contributions of the
many peoples of the world to
civilization.’ At the present time,
groups representing all peoples
of the world, with the exception
of the Jews, have plans under
way to express their own parti
cular contribution in these rooms.
Have the Jews as a people con
tributed in a sufficient degree to
the culture, civilization, art, liter
ature and religion of the won
to warrant the establishment
a purely Jewish Room in t i-
Cathedral of Learning?”
I would answer, “no.” It 1S „
that Jews have contributed cu ‘ tur j ?
to civilization but not neces
JEWISH culture. Einstein haso
much for science but not
science. Great Jewish musicians
contributed masterpieces to t e
but not JEWISH music. It has ^
the music of the country in ,,
they lived. Josef Israels " 3 - 3 J
Jewish painter but he did no I
a JEWISH art. So c * d *
through the whole list and ^
definitely JEWISH contribution^,
music, art, literature ( e ^ ep “ ve bti [j
gious), to civilization. 1 j e
innumerable contributions .
