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The Southern Israelite
A Portrait of Myself
Although thus far I have published
nothing in book form except non-fic
tion, I have always thought of myself
primarily as a novelist. Since child
hood I have been interested in fiction,
and even at the age of nine I began
to write what I imagined to be a nov
el. My mother still has the manu
script of that book, and I reread it
only recently. It is extraordinarily
good, because it contains whole para
graphs which were lifted I hope un
consciously—from Dickens and Sir
Walter Scott.
When I was a student at the He
brew Union College I produced some
three novels, all of which were dili
gently submitted to all the publishers
in America and all of which were
summarily rejected. When I reread
these novels now I congratulate my
self that they were rejected. They
were all of the egregiously autobio
graphical and were full of the spleen
of a juvenile radical. They had been
written pretty largely under the in
fluence of the Russian novelists, ami
were almost comically gloomy. In all
of them the hero is a young student
at a theological seminary who rebels
inwardly against the pedantry of cer
tain of his professors and the bully
ing stupidity of one of them. I can
laugh at those novels now; but when
I wrote them 1 imnginc I must have
wept.
I’m not at all sorry I wrote them.
They gave me practice in the use of
English and, much more important,
they helped to vent my bitterness
against certain people who held my
academic life in their hands.
While I was a rabbi at Waterbary
I continued to attempt to write novels.
But the inertia which is almost un
avoidable in clerical life kept me from
finishing any of the books I began.
This inertia of which I speak was of
course spiritual rather than physical.
I was physically very busy, running
about here and there on all sorts of
small errands of a communal nature
and preaching with furious might.
But spiritually 1 remained largely in
ert. I shirked the truly difficult tasks
by drowning myself in a flood of
petty errands.
When I left Waterbury in 1923 I
again attempted a novel, and this
time carried it through to the bitter
end. The book was again largely auto
biographical, and it was altogether
too vehement. I have since been asked
by several publishers for that novel,
but I would rather go to jail or Con
gress than see it published. Not
merely is it lamely written, but it is
altogether too crudely realistic. It
deals with the gilded ghetto—that
was the title of the book—and while
it is scrupulously true to life it is, at
the same time, cruelly unfair.
It was after I finished this novel
that I realized I must grow up consid
erably before I could produce one wor
thy of being read. I decided therefore
to devote myself to historical writ
ings for a time. I saw that the labor
of research was a good discipline for
Some Autobiographical Notes
By LEWIS BROWNE
There are few people in the American literary world to whom
the name of Leads Browne is unknown. He is often referred to
as the first man to make a best-seller of Jewish history. But he
has written other works winch hare given him a distinguished
place in American letters. His life of Heine won him the high
est critical praise and his history of comparative religions is re
garded as the best popular work on the subject. But Browne is
tired of non-fiction. In fact, he has always felt that he is es
sentially a fiction writer. In these notes that follow, written es
pecially for The Southern Israelite, he touches on some of the
main incidents in his rather young life and shows how his varied
career formed the background for a novel, which is to come out
late this year, and to be entitled “All Things Are Possible.” Read
ers may recall that in “Elmer Gantry” Sinclair Lewis referred tf
may
a rabbi who had won his esteem and affection.
Lewis Browne.—The Editor.
to
That rabbi is
Britain Spent SI 70.000 to
London (J. T. A.)—The British
government has spent $170,000 on the
measures undertaken by the Pales
tine government following the recent
disturbances in that country. This
was the statement made yesterday by
Phillip Snowden, Chancellor of the
Put Down Palestine Riots
Exchequer, in response to a question
raised in the House of Commons. This
sum does not include the expenditures
made from Palestinian funds nor the
value of British stores issued from
stock. No accurate figure has yet
been reached as to the ultimate cost
of the outbreaks.
59 Assaults On den's In Jerusalem Since September 5th
Jerusalem, (J. T. A.)—According to
incomplete statistics now available
from September 5th to November
15th, there have been 59 assaults re
corded on Jews in Jerusalem, includ
ing murder, stabbing and robbery.
The High Court has reduced to six
months the sentence of an Arab orig
inally sentenced to a year for keeping
a revolver. The Court also substituted
$500. deposit for one year imprison
ment on an Arab found with a bomb.
These are the first riot cases sub
mitted to the High Court.
Sentences Of Arabs Reduced From Five Years To
Three Months
Jerusalem (J. T. A.)—The Pales
tine Court of Appeal has reduced the
sentence of the inhabitants of the
Tireh villages from five years im
prisonment to three months, the latter
term taking effect from the date of
conviction. On the day of the riots
the inhabitants of the Tireh villages
who were armed, had marched on
Haifa.
Mandate Commissioners See Palestine Movie
Geneva (J. T. A.)—At the initiat
ive of the Zionist Political Bureau a
moving picture about Palestine was
shown to the members of the Swiss
Geographic Society in the presence of
all the members of the Mandates Com
mission of the League of Nations, in
cluding A. Theodoli, Vanries and Vito
Catastini, permanent director. Eugene
Pittard, president of the Society em
phasized the non-political character of
the show 7 . After the performance the
secretary of tht Zionist Political Bu
reau spoke about the Palestine Man
date and the Jewish National Home.
Bucharest Budget Provides 200.000 Lei For Jewish Students
Bucharest (J. T. A.)—The budget
of the Bucharest municipality will in
clude 200,000 lei for Jewish students
as a result of the intervention of Dr.
William Filderman, president of the
Union of Roumanian Jew’s, with the
mayor, D. Dobresko, complaining that
whereas the municipality supports
other institutions and cultural bodies,
it does not assist the Jewish insti
tutions.
me. It. somewhat watered my gpl*.
and^reduced my intensity. So for t]>
past four years I have been writint
nothing except history and biography
But during all these years I hue
yearned to get back to fiction, bu-
now at last I have finished a novel
which I think I shall not be ashamed
of a few years hence.
I have been careful in this novel to
avoid autobiography and the contem
porary scene. In a sense it is a logical
stepping-stone from the writing of
the past to the writing which I hope
to do henceforth. For while it is fiction
it is also historical. “All Things Are
Possible” is the story of the disciples
w’ho followed Jesus to Jerusalem. It
is quite realistic and very carefully
documented. By the last I mean that
I have gone to great pains to paint
the scene accurately. I have grouped
about in historical sources to find out
how people lived, what they ate and
how 7 they slept, what were their hope?
and what their torments nineteen hun
dred years ago in Palestine.
I imagine most of the readers who
are not themselves acquainted with
the sources will be amazed, and per
haps even horrified, at the resultant
picture. We have romanticized and
sentimentalized those times so exten
sively that now it is almost impossible
to believe what were the actual condi
tions then. I doubt whether many peo
ple w r ill like the picthre I have drawn
But it is, to my mind, the truest pic
ture—or, at least, the least untrue ore
—that a man today can paint.
Those who have read what I wrote
about Jesus in “Stranger Than Fic
tion” and “This Believing World
will probably be astonished when the}
read this new book. My ideas ha'v
changed radically within the last three
years. Previous to that time I was un
der the influence of Jewish writers o.
Jesus, most of whom were afrai«
be realistic about Him.
Since then I have been reading t e
critical studies by modern
scholars and have conversed wit ro
like Professor S. J. Case of the
versity of Chicago, Professor
Foote Moore of Harvard and 1 rotten
sor F. J. Foakes Jackson of bm
Theological Seminary. It is, P ara “® ‘
cally enough, from these
scholars that I gained a less sent
tal idea of that Galilean peasant _
wandered down to Jerusalem an
crucified there.
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