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The Southern Israelite
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People speak so glibly of a
person as being a Jew. What
is meant by that designation?
Are there certain eharaeter-
istics whieh are an inextric
able part of the trutke-up of
the American Jew? Mr. Men
tor has discussed the qnes-
What Is A Jew?
A Conversation with Joseph Auslander,
Eminent American Poet
By HENRY MONTOR
Written for The Southern Israelite
tion with Joseph Auslander,
one of America’s foremost
poets—and a Jew—The Edi
tor.
There are many types of people in
cluded under the designation “Jew.”
There are Walter Lippmann and
George Jean Nathan. There is Char
lie Chaplin. There is Dr. Stephen S.
Wise. There is Felix Warburg. There
is Bernard Baruch. There is Rabbi
Meyer Berlin. There is Fannie Hurst.
And there is Joseph Auslander. What
is the strange anomaly which permits
each of these aforementioned people
to be clnimed as a Jew by professional
Jew-claimers?
They obviously do not subscribe to
the same religious tenets. Still more
obviously they are as wide apart as
the poles on the question of the na
tionality of the Jew. Some of them,
in fact, would rather not be claimed
so eagerly. Nevertheless, when Jew
ish publications list the contributions
of Jews to civilization they are not
hesitant about including any of the
names which have been used.
The fact was brought home to me
by Joseph Auslander, one of Ameri
ca’s distinguished poets, that those
individuals whose names loom largest
in the contemporary history of Ameri
ca are in most instances far removed
from their people and their problems.
For every Julius Rosenwald there are
ten Albert Michelsons. For every
Stephen Wise there are a hundred
David Belascos. For every Henrietta
Szold there are a thousand Edna
Ferbers.
But statisticians insist upon figuring
that there are approximately four and
a half million Jews in this country.
Presumably this number includes the
voluntary and the involuntary Jews.
With some doubt in my mind as to the
category in which he might be placed
I went to see Joseph Auslander, poet
by inclination as well as by vocation.
His latest collection of verses, “Let
ters to Women,” had won most of the
national prizes—'both of a critical and
of a monetary nature—that are dis
tributed.
He has the soft, round features of
an East European wonder rabbi. This
relationship is accepted by a high
forehead almost slipping back into
baldness. His sonorous voice has a
southern inflection. But he has not
the repose of the wonder-working
sages. Gestures are an integral part
of his speech. Eyes flashing, body
swaying, finger pointing, he has all
the superfic'al characteristics of that
race of prophets with which many
Jews too easily identify themselves.
“Do you consider yourself a Jew?”
A rather discourteous question to
ask a host but I had to have common
ground for the subject which I in
tended discussing. I had no idea what
I meant when I asked the question, but
it served as an opening wedge.
“Of course,” was Auslander’s reply;
but it was said with none of that
saccharin with which people who have
products to sell laud the virtues of
their customers.
“I am never oppressed by the feel
ing that I am a Jew; I am often ex
alted by it; but I am always aware
of it.”
There was just a slight touch of the
pose of the epigrammatist in that
sentence. There was much conviction
in the tone and such sonorousness in
the rhythm of the phrases as he ut
tered them that I could not help feel
ing, however, that Auslander was dis
tinctly not being clever but rather
sincere.
“I never say that I am proud of be
ing a Jew. My being born a Jew is
not a virtue for which I can claim
credit. I don’t understand the type
which patronizingly says: ‘I am proud
to be a Jew’ as though the glorious
traditions of the Jewish people were
the individual creation of that person.
I can only feel proud of being a Jew
when I do something that adds to the
sum total of Jewish cultural values,
when I myself do something that
makes me a part of the unique history
of the race. In the same sense I am
proud to be a poet. It is obviously
absurd for every one who utters that
phrase to claim automatic kinship
with Byron, Keats and Shelly. When
I write a poem which meets with my
most critical approval and which con
stitutes an addition to poetic litera
ture I may be justified in saying: ‘I’m
proud to be a poet’.”
Washington (J. T. A.)—A bill
which would give the Secretary of
Labor discretion to admit 15,000 im
migrants per year free of any quota
limitations in cases where the “dic
tates of humanity and justice de
mand” was introduced yesterday into
the House of Representatives by Con
gressman William Sirovich of New
York.
This bill would take care for ex
ample, Congressman Sirovich said,
of orphans having American relatives
and other cases of extreme hardship
and separation of families now barred
by technicalities in the law. Another
provision of the bill proposes a change
in the present law by restricting pref
erence visas for agriculturist to five
per cent of the quota, instead of
twenty-five per cent which Congress
man Sirovich said is now allotted to
this class under the law which sets
aside fifty per cent of the quota for
sharing between certain relatives and
It was inevitable that after this we
should drift into a rambling discus
sion of the attributes of the Jew.
The hackneyed question as to whether
a person is a Jew by race, religion
or accident received casual treatment,
Auslander giving it his view that most
American Jews never really thought
about the subject but that if they did
they might have to admit that it was
the accident of birth and the habits
of tradition which made them Jews.
I was not at Auslander’s studio to
convert him to any brand of Judaism,
and he did not conceive it as his obli
gation to convert me. The result was
a frank discussion of qualities and
characteristics which many people pre
fer to leave undiscussed, because
bringing them to the surface is likely
to have an unpleasant aftermath.
“There was a time when being a
Jew meant having a certain mental
and moral color. But that is not true
to-day. In America we have a vast
conglomeration of individuals collec
tively known as Jews but bearing
little relation to each other. The
American Jew has no identity which
sets him apart from his fellow men.
He has no message and no mission.
The mental and physical ideals of his
neighbors find their duplicate in his
own mind. He has not the moial in
tegrity which inflamed the prophets
and which gave to the Jewish people
an aura which has lasted to this very
day. To be a Jew today means any
thing that the individual Jew wishes
it to mean. Cohesiveness and domi
nating moral purpose have vanished.”
agriculturists. Congressman Sirovich’s
bill provides that this difference of
twenty per cent should be set aside for
preference to brothers, sisters, cous
ins, uncles, aunts, nephews and nieces.
Explaining his bill, Congressman
Sirovich declared that he really fa
vors eliminating visas to non-prefer
ence quota immigrants entirely and
confining quota visas to relatives only
because the number of quota immi
grants allowed to enter annually is so
small. He said relatives would have
a much better economic opportunity in
America, whereas non-relatives must
inevitably experience a difficult strug
gle with no one to assist them. He
further declared that there is a great
moral justification for reuniting rela
tives.
Congressman Sirovich said that
Chairman Johnson of the House Im
migration Committee had expressed
himself as being sympathetically in
clined toward the bill.
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I may be taking liberties with Auv
lander’s words, but I believe I a „
transmitting his thoughts. The reader
must not obtain the impression that
Auslander is of the type easily ar .d
fanatically identified as an “assimil*.
tionist.” He was merely expressing
the dilemma with which he is con
fronted when he asks h mself: ‘ What
are my obligations as a Jew—what
responsibilities do I bear to my people
—what is there which links me with
other Jews?”
Auslander was deeply moved when
the disorders in Palestine took place.
His keen sympathy with the Jews of
Palestine was expressed in one of the
most beautiful poems he has written.
There are other occasions when with
out conscious volition he has identified
himself with the Jewish people—but it
was not a matter of principle or con
viction. It was a purely subsconscious
reaction. It is in the same spirit that
Auslander resents evidences of anti-
Semitism.
Joseph Auslander is not impressed
with the American Jewish community.
“Adversity drives the Jews together;
prosperity draws them apart. With
material influence the Jew isolates
himself as a Jew from other Jews.
This phenomenon is to be observed on
every hand in this country.”
What is the future of the Jew in
America? Auslander admitted that
he has never thought deeply about the
matter. In that respect he is Ike
ninety-nine per cent of his fellow Jews.
Neither have they immersed them
selves in the problem. American Jewry
drifts along, content with its evidences
of greater Judaism as exemplified by
larger synagogues, lulled by the feel
ing that the Jewish community is be
ing enlarged as witnessed by increas
ing population statistics. But whether
being a Jew connotes any particular
distinction, or whether the American
Jewish community as a whole is more
than a tenuous appellation are prob
lems that may be discussed when they
become subjects for the archaeologist
In Joseph Auslander American
Jewry has one of the finest represen
tatives. But the kinship is rather to
Jehudah Halevi and Chaim Bialik
than to the average Jew. “The poetic
attitude to the world is a distinctly
Hebraic one,” Auslander says. By
which he means that compassion with
humanity, wrath at injustice, irony
at folly and sympathy with the weak
are characteristics that have disting
uished some of the great priests, pro
phets and poets among the Jews.
The son of a liberal father, a
uct of Harvard, a disciple of the ro
manticists, Joseph Auslander is a P 0 *
who faces realities. He has the
interests of the cosmopolitan and t
keen sensitivity of the solitaire, he
the wide tolerance of the uni\ersais^
but also the stem sense of justice 0
the Jew. In reality, Joseph Auslan e
should be “proud to be a Jew.”
—Copywright 1929 By
Feature Syndicate.
NEW' IMMIGRATION RILL WOULD ADMIT 75,000
ABOVE QUOTA I IS “HUMANITY AND
JUSTICE” CASES