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The Southern I
sraelite
'Discourses of A fNbyelis
An Exclusive Interview with Virginia Hersch, Noted Authoress
By SALUMITH KRAMER
t
jn contemporary American
literature Virginia Hersch takes an
important place. Her novels, “Bird
0 f God" and “ Woman Under
have set a high standard for
nvmen writers, several of the fore :
most critics classing Mrs. Hersch
above Fannie Hurst and Edna Fer-
ber as a creative artist. In this ex
clusive interview Virginia Hersch
tells about herself and some of the
iieics she holds on things Jewish.—
The Editor.
A basement passage somewhere in Greenwich Vil
lage; at one end a flight of stairs, with a door at the
lead. The door opened, and a pretty, dark-haired girl
i.iine running down the steps.
"It's this way," she told me as she guided me up to
her apartment. "Almost like getting into a speakeasy,
isn’t it?"
We entered a sparsely furnished room that smelled
'lightly of paint. “We’re just moving in,” the girl
txplained, “and we’ve been having a hard time with the
ainters. Their working schedule has been quite upset
by the holidays.”
1 hadn't known that the painting trade also was
initiated by Jews, and said as much. Virginia Hersch
nnled—a lovely smile that started in her eyes. In the
right daylight of the studio—I supposed that that was
diat the room would eventually be—I saw that she was
1 typical Sephardic Jewess: Delicate features almost
eu-like in their purity, a sensitive mouth, slender
hands.
I had heard that Mrs. Hersch came of one of the
''t and most famous American Jewish families, and
wordingly asked her about it.
ie said, “as a matter of fact, I’m a Daughter
‘ American Revolution, through Michael Lazarus,
maternal ancestor of my mother, who came to Charles-
'• S- C, in 1750. My mother’s father’s family also
e tu Charleston very early—Meyer Moses came
r m England in 1771, and Abram Moise from Alsace,
mto Domingo, in 1791. No doubt it is the
0lse tai i 1! !y of whom you heard in particular—a
1 mine, Penina Moise, was quite a well-
• and my maternal grandfather was regarded
as one of tl
"r any nu -
a splendid
"My iV-
knd. His :
*ho came
ai *l his fat
Vote early
b>’ mother
-Pain, jj
’hrough ;
tinally l a ,
‘Your
reason f C; -
books?”
e Civil War heroes of the South. There
er of legends centering about him; he was
"ator, and all that sort of thing.
r s family also came to America via Eng-
ther’s people were the Joneses of England,
New York with the first Dutch settlers,
s ancestors, the Davises, came to America
Of course all of these people, on both
'id my father’s side, originally came from
Ater the Expulsion they were scattered
and, France and England, before they
i here.”
aiish ancestry,” I remarked, “must be the
ur choice of Spanish subjects for your
of
’’Parti
God’ b
■he admitted. “Of course, I wrote ‘Bird
lie I believe El Greco to be the greatest
of all painters, but the fact that he was a Spaniard
made him all the more interesting. You know, there
is a saying that every Spaniard has Jewish blood in him.
I doii t believe it myself, hut no less an authority than
Cardinal Mendozay Bondilla, of the Inquisition period,
is the sponsor of the theory. He was prejudiced,
however, and therefore not entirely reliable."
I must have looked my question.
“You see,” Virginia Davis Hersch elucidated, "at
the time of the Inquisition only pure-blooded Spaniards
were permitted to enter the Church and the army. And
when Cardinal Mendoza's nephew was excluded on the
grounds that he had Jewish blood in his veins the
Cardinal wrote a treatise in which he declared that
there are no Spaniards without an admixture of either
Jewish or Moorish blood. Doubtless that was why the
Spaniards were such fanatical Inquisitionists—they
weren’t very sure of themselves. As a matter of fact,
Torquemada himself was partly Jewish.”
We takled for a while of Spain and the Inquisition,
of the Jews who fled and those who remained, the
latter practicing Judaism in secret while ostensibly
being faithful Catholics. Mrs. Hersch recalled that in
that age Jewish parents had been afraid to teach their
own children Judaism, and instead had sent the little
ones to Jewish neighbors who had secretly instructed
in the Jewish ritual and laws. Later, when the
•en would come home again, they would find that
parents also knew of the Jewish laws, and there
1 be a huge family feast to celebrate the mutual
nition.
rs. Hersch also told me of a curious group that
in the mountains between Spain and Portugal,
■ntly the descendants of those marranos, they are
unconscious of Judaism but have preserved the
•y. “They are Catholics, but they continue certain
ces which they regard as magic rites that must
r ri e( l out in absolute secrecy—and which are easily
nized as parts of the Jewish ritual.
r ou must have spent a great deal of time in Spain,”
erved. . .
have been there often, though never for more
a few months at a time,” she replied. ‘‘I wouldn’t
to live there-but the country is beautiful. I re-
, er that Lee Hersch, Virginia Hersch’s husband,
artist. “The paintings of Greco make it fascinat
or me When I was working on ‘Bird of God I
all the writers of his period that I could find.
1 bat’s how I became interested in St. Teresa of Avila,
wln> was by far the finest writer of that time.”
1 was wondering a little why a Jewish writer should
choose a Spanish saint as the subject of a book,” I said,
referring to her second novel, “Woman Under Glass,"
which has just been published.
\ hginia Hersch smiled. “Teresa was a very inter
esting woman, she told me. “Perhaps not as saintly as
slio might have been, with her very sensuous love of
Jesus; but that simply made her character all the more
fascinating. I'll admit that there is little of the Jewish
in lur. But her follower and disciple, St. John of the
Cross—who, by the way, figures as largely as Teresa
in the latter part of my lx«»k—was very much of the
type oI the Hebrew prophets. The same furious nailing
against sin, the same purity of moral outlook. As a
matter of fact, it is very likely that his mother was <a
Jewess; she was an orphan of virtually unknown parent
age, and whatever was known was of such a nature as
to make John’s father practically an outcast after he
married her. Yes, 1 think we may consider St. John a
Jew, the more so since his father died early and his
mother was the dominant factor in his life."
“Is your interest in Jews confined to those of
Spain?” I queried.
"By no means. I’m very much interested in the
Sephardic Jews of America, and I’m even hoping to
write alxmt them some day. Very little is known of
them; our literature has badly neglected them. But
there have been many prominent Sephardic Jews in the
South.”
"You aren’t affiliated with any Jewish organizations
ur movement, are you?” I ventured.
"No,” she confessed. “You see, we are forever
going from place to place—traveling over Europe, drop
ping into America for a short visit, back to Paris and
Spain. YVe spend most of our time in Paris, but we
aren’t really settled there either. The life isn’t con
ducive to active interest in any cause. I was very much
interested in Zionism at one time, but I feel that it has
been a mistake for the Jews to go to Palestine in large
numbers backed by British guns. Particularly the guns.
A gradual infiltration would have been much better.
It isn’t as if Palestine had been an empty country. The
Arabs have been there for centuries, and they resent
mass immigration and the guns. The racial conflict
should never have been permitted to come into existence
in Palestine, for Jews and Arabs are cousins at the
very least. The slow process of Jewish immigration
that was going on l>efore the war was much In-tter than
what the Zionists are doing now.
“Moreover, I believe that Jewish nationalism is out
of place in many countries. Jews should try to adapt
themselves to the country in which they live. Eventually
th.y will succeed, and this without necessarily sacrificing
their Judaism. In America and Western Europe adap
tation to the environment is the rule. In Eastern Europe,
of course, it isn’t so simple; but it doesn’t seem sensible
to try to transplant the East European ghettos to Pales
tine en masse, either.”
For a while we spoke of the East European Jewish
problem, whose solution we agreed to leave for some
other time; of anti-Semitism, which Mrs. Hersch be
lieves frequently is intensified by the separatism of the
Jew; of anti-Jewish discrimination, which she declared
had never touched either herself or her husband and the
occurrence of which in certain cases she regards as
being attributable to other causes. "In the artistic cir
cles of the Continent we have never encountered active
prejudice against Jews,” she averred.
(Continued on page 16)