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Page 56 The Southern Israelite EAST TENNESSEE NATIONAL BANK KNOXVILLE, TENN. (Capital, Surplus and Undivided Profits $2,000,000.00 IF YOU NEE!) CEMENT, PLASTER, SEWER PIPE OR ASPHALT SHINGLES Rear in mind that these articles are our specialties, and we can give you better Quality, Service, Prices and Information than any other dealer. Chandler & Company 126 West I Avr. KNOXVILLE, TENN. Phone 385 !» H-X »'!« scan » X n n x » st » » XKX n n » » sc imi i! h sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc x sc sc sc sc sc Jt sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc m x “YOUR FAMILY” They are everything to you—you are providing for them, but have you thought how much a good photo graph means—in happiness to them? Knaffl & Brakebell Photographers in Your Town New HOME Studio 1630 W. Cumberland Ave. KNOXVILLE, I’ENN. Call For K X sc x sc k X SC » K X SC it K it it it it it H it it it it sex n k DIXIE PRIDE DIXIE PRIDE —BUTTER —ICE CREAM —PASTURIZED MILK —CULTURED MILK —SWEET CREAM —COTT AC ECU K ESE MADE \\\ Tennessee Valley Creamery Co. KNOXVILLE, TENN. it SC it it it it it H it it 3? St it it H it it St St St St St it St sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc sc (X St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St St ‘•THE SAFE MILK and CREAM IN STERILIZED BOTTLES DELIVERED TO YOUR HOME If Its Elmore's It's Pure Elmore Milk Company 107 Luttrell St. KNOXVILLE, TENN. The Weakness of Jewish Drama The Play as a Symbol of Jewish Life By ARNOLD ZWEIG Why is it that so few plays are written an Jews either by J €l( themselves or by non-Jews which are worthy of occupying a high place in the drama? In answering this question Arnold zweig h n < analyzed the essential character of the Jewish people in that keen concise manner for which he has become internationally famous Arnold 'zweig tvill be remembered in this country far his best-sell ing navel, “The Case of Sergeant Grischa” zweig has also dustin', g id shed himself in other branches of literature, and has taken an intense interest in every phase of Jewish culture.—The Editor. Young, vigorous nations naively anti quished one flowed into him who w a . blessed, modifying his fortunes and th* tendencies of his will, changing hi> en tire life. haughtily represent the beginnings of their history by heroes who boldly mir ror the true essence of their nature. We see in this tendency the relentless honesty of a people toward itself. Thus Homer’s Ulysses: Ever human, a de ceiver, liar, slandered, beggar, thief, yet with the sacred image of his home inextinguishably in his heart—always suspicious, never at a loss for a cun ning trick, accepting every humiliation yet never giving up his kingdom, fin ally washing olT all affronts with blood. To the Greeks he was the perfect hero, an ideal of virility, the peer of the valiant Achilles, beloved of the gods. The Jews of the heroic period find such a reflection of themselves in Ab raham, the friend of God and Jacob, the son of Isaac and Rebecca. In a passage of Hosea where the character of this Israel is defined we read: “In the womb he took his brother by the heel, and by his strength he strove with a godlike being; so he strove with an angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made supplication unto him; at Beth el he would find him, and there lie would speak with us.” A Titan whom fate has destined to struggle with God even in his mother’s womb; this is the cell from which that figure is developed. The well-known exact account of Genesis then accumu lates these attributes and recounts the methods of an artful negator of force in his struggle with destiny: Imposi tion and deceit, fervor and an ardent desire for greatness and community with God. To the Jews of that great, stern age —this we can set* clearly from the biblical account—Jacob was beloved and blessed of the Lord. It is symbolic of the desperate grandeur of his voca tion that he, destined to he horn after his twin, held back the firstborn by the heel; that later, his heart filled with the eternal upward urge of a gigantic character, he took away that birth right from the robust and joyous hunt er who was his brother— in exchange tor food for which he, exhausted, was greedily hungry; that he took advan tage ot his blind old father, obtaining, through a deceitful trick, the sacred promise and blessing intended for the eldest; that he was constantly opposed to friends and kin, ever in a state of tension; and that finally he bested his uncle, Laban, in a contest of wits. But this is the man who through an entire night struggled bitterly against his God in human form—and at dawn forced Him, too, to give him His blessing, the blessing which meant that all the magic fate-compelling powers of the van- This is the man who was deemed worthy of seeing the hosts of the Lord in the heaven-revealing dream of Beth el, who was permitted to witness th.- fulfilment of the blessing he had oh tained through foree, trickery and suf. fering; To know—at the end of a long life full of joy and sorrow, the life of now a fugutive and now a gue>t of kings—that an entire nation sprung from his loins would inhabit the fruit ful Promised Land. A people that can set up so earthly and innerly discordant an image of it self on the horizon of its history \- aware of its intrinsic duality and ha" the courage to confess it. Such a people knows of the electric Ixdts that leap violently between two distant pole>, fights its own weakness and the resis tanee of the world to gain assurance of its divine mission. And it does not solve—or even formulate—the question of whether it was blessed because it conquered or whether it was blessed by- God; it feels content, regardless of which may he the case. But at times of defeat or greater moral consciousness it feels as a reproach that which ear! ier, before its moral doubts had arisen, it was able to set up as its ideal. Then it seeks to justify its progenitor before its own more delicate sense of moral values; hut although it censures hi" character and the means he employed in his rise it cannot deny entirely him who was truly blessed. With psychological analysis, therefore, it place- the blame for many important traits of this no* rejected ancestor upon his mother, who had made him her favorite, and work? untiringly at apologies that are to raw- the Titan to sainthood. Thus the force that impels Jewish writers to use biblical material may he defined as the wish to derive from the great wealth of undistorted heroic fig ures of ancient Jewry currents who influence would augment the prestige of modern Jews. And this brings us tt the Jewish plays that represent the Jew of today—unerahellished, i° * his greatness and abjectness, weakness of all these dramas from the impossibility of an un ia ‘ 5 *\ presentation of the Jew on the ? to-day—except, perhaps, in the incidental figures of little important At the present time only a Ja P an , or Eskimo dramatist would be e*Pf of seeing and creating a Jewish <“ *. aeter who would be the P 1 ^‘ ' (Continued on Page 66'