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Page 5 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)