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Observations of Jewish Life
By DAVID A. BROWN
These observations by one of America's
outstanding communal leaders read as in
terestingly as fiction. David A. Brown is
known the world over as a campaign
leader whose dynamic personality has
raised millions of dollars for various com
munal causes. In this article, written
exclusively for the Seven Feature Syndi-
dicate and The Southern Israelite, he
reveals himself as a forceful commentator
whose personal experiences provide a
liberal education.
V
I do not like to suffer for somebody else’s
acts. I was on a train once in a smoking
car. Four Jews were playing pinochle. If
they had been playing their game without
shouting and demonstrating, I would have
had no objection. But the entire car was
playing their game. There were quite a
few people in the car and they were all
compelled to play. I was reading a book.
My patience was commencing to be ex
hausted, but I did not know who the pino
chle players were—nor did I care. I no
ticed that not one of them weighed more
than 170 pounds, so 1 took a chance. I said
to them: “Why should this whole car play
your game? You are four Jews and the
whole car of people are laughing at you
and commenting on you—not on you as in
dividuals but as Jews. Don’t you think that
you owe it to your people to make such
comment unnecessary?” From that time
on they really played the game very
quietly.
* * *
Some years ago I was telephoned to my
Detroit residence from New York and was
asked if I would come to New York on
Sunday to attend a meeting. There was to
be a conference of distinguished musicians
who at that time were trying to foster a
school of music in Palestine. The man who
called me was a good friend of mine and
he said : “We don’t want you to do anything
but just listen to the discussion of these
great artists. If you sense anything coming
out of the meeting, we would like to have
you give us your impressions as to how to
proceed with this school of music, how to
proceed with the raising of funds.”
The meeting was being held at the apart
ment ot Jasha Heifetz. It was a beautiful
apartment in the Forties or Fifties. A du
plex penthouse—a regular Romeo and Ju
liet balcony—drapes lavishly and tastefully
placed. The magnificent scene was topped
off by an excellent portrait of Heiftz. It
seemed so real that Heifetz looked as
though he were stepping forth from the
wall. In this room sat the most distinguish
ed assembly of men.
On one side was Jascha Heifetz, Max
Rosen and the late Leopold Auer, who bur
ied in a Catholic cemetery, but who at
tended for the purpose of building a school
of music in Palestine. He was in that room
not as a Catholic, not as a Christian, but
as a Jew with other Jews who were going
to build a school of music in Palestine for
Jews. No matter where they buried him
later—he was in that room. There were
also Godowsky, Gabrilowitsch and a num
ber of other celebrities.
It gripped me, as I sat on the side as an
observer. Godowsky, a short-legged man
was sitting in the center on a chair that
had been raised—a piece of the stage scen
ery—on a platform. His legs were dangling
back and forth as one speaker after an
other told of his part in the proposed un
dertaking. The conversation and discussion
developed; it grew livelier. And all the time
Godowsky’s short legs were moving back
and forth. Suddenly somebody asked Leo
pold Godowsky: “Tell me, why do you want
a school of music in Palestine?” And, as
though somebody had explode a bomb in
the room, a startling change took place in
the man.
He spoke in a deep Russian voice. Just
to give you as near an illustration as I can
of what took place—shall try to reproduce
his exact phraseology. He said:
Why do I want a school of music in
Palestine? Who, me? I am Godowsky. What
am 1/ Jew! No; I am Russian. And the
newspapers the next day, what do they
say: ‘Who is it, Godowsky, the Jew?’ No-
Russian. And Jascha Heifetz. I love Jasha.
My sweet Jasha. No greater violinst ever
1* V 7L u . you taught him
to play the violin and Jasha plays s
qu.sitely. He has such marvelous tech*
such human presentation. What is J-
The Jew? No. Russian. And then C
ow.tsch the great conductor, a nmrv,
W °a L U ‘ P‘ amst ’ a swee t man, fine
and when the newspapers speak of Ga
witsch, they ask: ‘Who is he? A Jew*?’ No
Russian.
“Some day I shall have a fight with a
taxicab driver. I do not like taxicab drivers
and I shall have an argument. I shall have
a right. I know I shall have a fight with a
taxicab driver, and I shall be arrested.
They will take me to the police station and
say: ‘Godowsky, the distinguished musi
cian, the great pianist is arrested.’ It will
be a news story and for the first time the
world will know that Godowsky is not a
great Russian, but a Jew.”
And there expressed in his quaint Eng
lish, Godowsky, the great musician, had
condensed the whole philosophy of the eter
nal question: “When is a great man a
Jew ?” A year later Einstein expressed it
more brilliantly when, asked for a defini
tion ot relativity, said: “If my theory will
be vindicated, the Frenchmen will call me
a Jew and the Germans will call me a Ger
man. It my theory fares badly, the French
men will refer to me as a German and the
Germans will say ‘that Jew Einstein’.”
But what does it all mean when reduced
to a formula of behavior? I would give this
recipe to my fellow Jews:
“Do not go around with a chip on your
shoulder. Do not constantly and everlast
ingly complain that you are handicapped.
If you have a clubbed foot and you have
your picture taken, you do not show your
clubbed foot. The German Kaiser had a
paralyzed arm but the world never knew
it. The limitations that you suffer are no'
the things that you want to bring out all
the time.
“Forget that there is anti-Semitism. It
is there like the clubbed foot. Do not worry
about it. I don’t worry about it. Why
should I worry ? I only worry about those
things that worry themselves into a cure.
No matter how hot it is outside—it may
be a thousand degrees—I do not worry
about the weather. I cannot make i coolei
by talking about it.
“Let us respect ourselves. Let us
in the fullest, the truest and ti nne>
sense. Let us give out love, that utitu
and wondrous thing of human love
distributing the best that is in u
hope that a little bit will come bac.
Copyright 1931 by S. A. F. S.