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Page 6 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. lews need not be ^ ? this b ® ok i Th o e t e from're»di»* ,vere gained not from * al slanders like Toldo am contemporary works s * ible merit by professors * lent exegesis in the0 of indisputable respectabiU 1Q90 hv bexen