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Page 12 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 .