Newspaper Page Text
the south F. RM isr
11
highlights and Sidelights
Gossip and News of Jewish Personalities
By MARTIN GOLDE
k his death to make people re-
Leopold Jacob Greenberg 1 ,
f the London Jewish Chronicle.
,s the first English-Jewish
iperman to feel that the pur-
f a sheet was to make people
. even if they didn’t like it.
erg wrote more things that
hated than any other living
-Jewish journalist; and yet he
jr av . his newspaper the biggest cir-
in the world. He proved in
la id what H. L. Mencken demon
strat'd here: that the boobs respect
h«> who knock them. Greenberg was
you might call the perpetual
agim r". He was against the leaders
■ he Zionist Organization, against
the dr wish Agency, against the Jew
ish Hoard of Deputies; against the
Cutisfnatives, the Liberals and the
Li bo rites, against everybody in fact.
He was a man with guts. That is
inly indelicate but just way to
•ribe him and pay tribute at the
same time. There was many a time
when Joseph Cowen, virtual owner of
th* paper, felt like firing his editor,
but the latter, fortunately, had a con
tract which made him immune from
the whims of the publishers.
Take the time, for example, when
he ascended a platform at a tremend
ously crowded mass meeting and prac-
111 y called the Chief Rabbi of the
Sephardic community a “skunk”. To
kft an idea of what courage was re-
quired, try to think of a newspaper
man in this country getting up at a
public meeting and saying the same
about a Cardinal, a Bishop or even a
rabbi. It just isn’t done, you know.
Hut Greenberg never worried about
what isn’t done.
Those who hated him had to admire
th» uniformity of his courage. There
was that time that he was accosted
the street by Lord Walter Roths-
'h’M. the man to whom the Balfour
Declaration was addressed. “What do
1 mean by writing that drivel?”
i Rothschild demanded of Green-
Whereupon the editor stuck his
i in his pocket, took out the price
the Jewish Chronicle and said:
1 don’t like it. Well, here’s your
i two pennies back.”
"pie often wondered where this
-T man got his energy as well as
•ggressiveness. Many a time he
to sit at his desk writing his
"-'■uials, with his pants rolled up to
knees, his bare feet stuck into a
1 hot water. You see, he suffer-
' erribly from gout. Maybe some
t Ludwig will give us the psycho-
al connection between a man suf-
t rom gout and the venom of
writing and speaking,
was a great editor. No question
a! it it.
gi
fo
Jt
B,
l
hi
hi
ack Grossman of Rutgers isn’t
a place on the All-American
all teams that are now being se-
it won’t be his fault. Here is a
boy who has proved that
1 riedman, Michigan’s gift to
a ll» is not an exception. Now,
three years of great work for
luta Mater, Jack must retire,
he has the satisfaction of be
aded the finest left halfback any
American college boasts today The
big Jewish lad is one of those all-
around stars whom the Nordics usual
ly claim for themselves. Jack not only
passes and kicks the football; he helps
Rutgers to win in basketball, baseball
and track. A four-letter man, as thev
call him.
There is only one person who is
awfully glad that the college eligibil
ity rules allow a man to play only
three years on the varsity team. And
that is Jack’s mother. She couldn’t
help taking pride in the newspaper
writeups that her boy has been get
ting for his brilliant work against
Rutger’s opponents, but now she feels
considerably relieved. For there never
was a game when she didn’t fear
that her boy was going to be smashed
up. There you have the older and
younger Jewish generation.
The Foreign Legion, that romantic,
terrifying band of ex-thiexes, lovers,
cutthroats and misanthropes, has rep
resentatives of practically every na
tion, every race, every creed. But,
strange to say, it only had one Jew.
That is, as far as the record shows.
But is that so strange, after all ?
Jews are always talking about being
lonely and morbid and so forth. But
the fact is that there isn’t anybody in
the world who likes as much as the
Jew to be with the crowd. That’s why
he sticks in the cities. Anyway, to
get* down to my story, the only Jew
who ever penetrated the barrier of
the secretive Legion is Major Zonovy
Pechkoff. Doesn’t sound very Jewish,
you say? Well, why should it, since
that isn’t his real name. Actually he
used to be Zinovy Sverdlov, I suppose
he got his more Russian sounding
surname from the habit of name
changing which is customary among
all those who abandon the world to
join the Foreign Legion. Incidentally,
Pechkoff has another distinction. He
is the only adopted son of Maxim
Gorky, the Russian writer. That may
account to some extent for the great
interest that Gorky has always shown
in the Jews.
It’s too bad that words can’t shrug
their shoulders and close their eyes.
And how else are you going to get
the flavor of this story of the two
Jews who were arrested for begging
without a permit.
“Where do you live?” the officer
demanded, as he turned to one of the
schnorrers to w r rite dow'n his record.
“Where can a poor Jew live?” the
schnorrer shrugged.
“And how about you?” the cop re
quested the other schnorrer.
“I am his neighbor.”
Some day somebody is going to
write the story of the Jewish Francois
Villon. In prosaic life he was called
Naftali Herz Imber. Few Jews know
of his vivid imagination, his tremend
ous eating and drinking bouts, his
wanderings. The Zionists recall his
name solely because he was the author
of that famous national song, “Hati-
kvah”. He probably died many years
earlier because of overindulgence.
(Please turn to page 16)
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