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Friday, S*pt. 8, INI
THE 80VTUEIN ISRAELITE
F*ge Nlatco
NEW YEAR GREETINGS
Pennington Bean Company
3 Produce Row, S.W. — Atlanta, Ga.
JAckson 3-2444
New Year Greeting’s
Rumbold & Co. Inc.
Distributors
JA. 4-3652
379 - 381 Nelson St. S. W.
Atlanta, Ga.
»•••«
GREETINGS FOR THE HOLY DAYS
Southern Door Closer Service
125 EAST STREET
FOREST PARK, GEORGIA
366-4673
366 3721
ammmm
New Year's Greetings
from
The Dettelbach Corporation
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New Year
Greetings
Luckie Hotel
180 LUCKIE ST., N. W.
Atlanta. Ga.
JA. 4-9879
COMPLIMENTS OF
DRUG SHOP
46-5th Street, N. E.
Atlanta, Ga.
HAYWARD WOODWARD, Mgr. & Reg. Phar.
Pick-up and deliver prescriptions
anywhere in the city, FREE
TR. 6-0367
TR. 6-3737
^Jew 'Ijea r (greetings
• • •
WE ENJOY SERVING YOU
Maytag Laundromat
1424 N. HIGHLAND AVE.
next to Mg Apple
ATLANTA, GA.
Schmaryahu Levin
A Centennial Portrait
by D. BLACK
This year marks the centen
nial of the birth of Schmaryahu
Levin, a great "traveling sales
man for Zionism” as he was once
described.
I recall a story which gives a
capsule description of the mag
netism of his oratory.
One time after speaking in
Philadelphia, a Jew came up to
him and told him how much he
loved his speech.
Schmaryahu Levin turned a
wry face. "Listen, my friend, I
saw you in Brooklyn and also
at a New York meeting. Quit
following me around from town
to town. Because of you I have
to change my speech in every
place.”
Not all were so magnetized by
his oratory as to follow him
around of course, but no one
could be impassive listening to
him.
Levin did not indulge in ora
torical platitudes. He was not
theatrical. He would get up, look
his audience over and, seemingly
after a general survey, center his
eyes on some one individual and
carry on, as it were, a conversa
tion with him. It was this prac
tice which once had an amusing
aftermath-in the early stages of
his career. He centered his talk
on a young woman—and a great
romance ensued between them.
He could be ruthlessly blunt. At
the time he was traveling about
the country and speaking for
Zionism, one of the better known
staff writers of the Jewish Daily
Forward carried on a continuous
tirade against the Zionist idea.
One time, this anti-Zionist
came up and said to Levin,
“Schmaryahu, don’t you remem
ber me, I am So and So from
your home town, I changed my
name in America. I write those
articles against Zionism now.”
Levin looked at him. So, he
said, "abie ich hob gemeint es
seinen zwei paskudnakes. Es is
gor ein paskudnak.”
On his mother’s side, Schmar
yahu Levin came from Hassidim
who had followed the Lubavit-
cher, while his father was an
ardent Misnagid.
He had the usual Cheder train
ing. He recalls in his autobio
graphy the time when one of his
fellow Cheder pupils was being
whipped, word came that the
wife of the boy being spanked
had just given birth to a child
Jews married early in those
days. Levin's mother was mar
ried at the age of fourteen.
But if his early education was
of the primitive sort, later at
Berlin, he partook of the more
sophisticated kind. It didn’t en
tirely ring bells with Schmarya
hu Levin. He found the German
students gloating in the amount
of beer one drank. Unless you
could put down fifteen glasses
of beer daily, even if you had a
Ph D you weren’t regarded as
amounting to anything. Goethe
and Lessing and Kant were no
longer German idols. Instead,
they gloried in Von Moltke and
Bismark. Power alone they re
spected.
Schmaryahu Levin as a young
man had planned to settle in
Eretz Israel, but most of the
early Zionist leaders themselves
in private were not very en
couraging. Levin recalled the
story of another young man who
had read that shells were found
in abundance on the beaches of
Eretz Israel, so he conceived the
idea of going there and opening
a button factory. But one of the
leading Zionist writers said to
him. “Who will buy your but
tons?”
It was not an easy problem.
Later, after Schmaryahu Levin
had done his work winning
American Jewry over, he settled
in Jerusalem. For a lime, 1 be
lieve, he took part in some agri
cultural activities. Later, he help
ed Bialik launch a publishing
house.
But the intense, dynamic Levin
was restless. I used to see him
come in to the Vienna Cafe in
Jerusalem in his last yean early
in the morning looking for some
one to play chess with.
His place was on the podium
and the Jewish population there
at the time was too small to re
quire much oratory or statesmen
as Levin might well have been.
In the state of Israel today, he
would have been much happier.
T. Ralph Grimes
Sheriff,
Fulton County
Extends
Cordial
Holiday
Greetings
*
Extending
Our Best Wishes
For
5722
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