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by Pierre Van Paassen
More than a Humanist—
a Pioneer
REUBEN BRAININ SEEN THROUGH GENTILE EYES
S MOULDERING black eyes lit up by a
mystic flame; jet-colored hair falling on his
shoulders in broad curls; delicately chiseled
features as if cut out of fine old ivory; a majestic
bearing accompanied by calm, aristocratic gestures;
a deep basso voice that vibrates softly in echo to
a ceaseless spiritual activity—there you have the
Reuben Brainin of forty years ago as he emerged
from the Russian ghetto and startled the Jewish
world by breaking with the old traditions in writ
ing Hebrew literature in the modern European
manner. Up to that time Hebrew literature was
written, to be sure, but it was not intended to say
Rrubrn Brainin
anything. Brainin as one of the leaders of a new
school blew the breath of life into it. For the
first time the Jews of Eastern Europe were hear-
, ing metaphysical problems discussed in Hebrew.
Brainin launched into dissertations on the judicial
and social questions of the day in a language that
was considered here too sacred as a vehicle for
profane matters, there philologically unsuitable for
adaptation to modern life. Hebrew was, as Renan
had said, never to be a language for every-day use,
but the sole instrument of expression for the fan
tastic visions of the ancient Prophets.
Up to the time of Brainin’s advent, the Hebrew
language as well as spiritual life in the Jewish
world moved wholly in the ether. It is his achieve
ment and the achievement of the men of the new
school of Hebrew literature, of which Nahum
Sokolow is the only other survivor today, that he
brought Hebrew out of the ether back down to
earth.
The revival of the Hebrew language was an
act of revolutionary import. When Reuben
Brainin and a handful of friends boldly swung
the still feeble bark of the sacred tongue upon the
stream of modern life, the Jew's w r ere at first be
wildered by the spectacle. They blinked at the
amazing innovation. Fierce opposition developed.
REUBEN BRAININ’S SEVENTIETH ANNI
VERSARY was recently celebrated at a public
Testimonial Reception in New York. The
writer of this tribute is the noted foreign cor-
respondent who just concluded a five weeks
visit to this country, including a visit to At
lanta. Van Paassen’s views and analysis are
interesting. They express the opinion of an
unprejudiced and objective observer of con
temporary Jewish life.
'File religionists screamed sacrilege in hysterical
alarm. The assimilationists sneered in cynical
aloofness, dubbing Brainin’s venture the brain
storm of a fool. Yet he has lived to see the day
when modern Hebrew became the official language
of Palestine. He has lived to see Nietzsche and
Goethe, Einstein and Freud, Barbusse and Trot-
zky, Unamuno and Brandes translated into He
brew and scores of periodicals and publications,
some of them of the most intricate technical na
ture, appear in the Hebrew language. He could
say in truth that when he w 7 as young the Hebrew 7
language appeared like an old man w'hose days
were spent, w T ho w 7 as resting by the wayside, and
now that he himself has come to the eventide of
life, the Hebrew 7 language has renewed its youth
like an eagle which is testing the strength of its
wings on a sun-drenched morning in May and
filling its lungs with the pure air of a new life.
Some may think that Reuben Brainin is today
a lonely figure. For the last couple of years he
has remained almost silent. Yet his silence has
spoken loudly and clearly to thousands, nay, hun
dreds of thousands of young Jew's w 7 ho are groping
towards a solution of the Jewish problem. These
followers of Brainin are quietly mobilizing, strug
gling to free themselves of the narrow 7 concepts of
a petty nationalism—or, rather, chauvinism—into
w 7 hich some leaders, young and old, are trying to
force them. Just as Romain Rolland, the great
solitary conscience of Europe, is to the ethical in
tellectual the light-house whose mere existence
now shows the path, so Reuben Brainin has
emerged stronger and a sublime personality from
the intolerant barking under which small politic
ians have tried to bury him. To me, contemplat
es the Jewish scene from a distance Reuben
Brainin is a lonely figure. Mountain peaks are
solitary landmarks in any landscape. Few people
can stand the pure, rarified air on a high altitude.
In the eventide of life Reuben Brainin remem
bers the struggles he has witnessed. He has seen
ideas succeed ideas most directly opposed to them
reaction follow action, democracy autocracy,
socialism, individualism. To Reuben Brainin be
longs the honor of having understood each gener
ation and of haying retained a bitter admiration
for the undying faith of humanity even when each
generation consumed in its own heart, believing
it alone had reached the zenith, hurled its prede
cessors down, took unto itself all the glory, only
hind 6 Smitten ^ th ° Se Wh ° Came P ressi "g ™ be-
It is an outrageous calumny to say of Reuben
Brainin that he has deserted the cause of the
Jewish people as expressed in Zionism by recogniz
ing the value of the Russian experiment. He re
mains a nationalist Jew. But to him nationalism
means: first, the people, and then the land, and
not reversely. This view permits, at least, 0 f
tranquil discussion, and only those who are blinded
by Europe’s hereditary malady of chauvinism,
men do not respond to the ideals of tomorrow but
whose entire orientation is directed toward the
past, will persist in condemning Reuben Brainin’s
stand. At a moment in life when most men petrify
and become dead-set in their notions, Brainin re
tained that suppleness of spirit which is charac
teristic of the true cosmopolitan and idealist, ac
knowledging the value of the Russian experiment.
It is the sacred flame of humanity that burns in
Reuben Brainin. His feeling for truth made it
impossible for him to be silent. He has had dis-
illusionments. But they have been precious experi
ences to him; his trials, but ladders to higher
things.
In contrast with many Jews, some of them
leaders in Jewish life, Branin has never confined
his outlook to the Jew'ish scene. Early he recog
nized that every race is necessary, for its peculiar
characteristics are requisite for the enrichment of
multiplicity and for the consequent enlargement
of life. Reuben Brainin did what few 7 Jews, even
modern Jews, have done: he made peace with
the world, when he found that everything had
its appointed place in the whole scheme. He be
lieved and lived out his belief that what may
arouse hostility in isolation serves to bind the
w r hole together. When other men clamped them
selves desperately and in mortal anguish to the
status quo, Reuben Brainin had the courage to
say that it is sometimes necessary to pull down old
buildings and to clear the ground before we can
begin to build anew. Knowing that for the next
century it will be impossible to find a home tor
a majority of the Jew's in their ow r n fatherland,
he wants them to be helpers towards the founda
tion of the universal fatherland.
A nationalist Jew ahvays, he has nevertheless
succeeded in escaping the confines and limits ot hi>
own people and—those of his own generation. Ht*
has felt as by instinct that each nation, as is t' 1 '
case with each individual, has experience ot no
more than a part of life, a part of truth, a p‘
of reality, each mistaking (Please turn to P< l 9 e -
Man and Book by Boris Schatz
* THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE