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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.