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The Project Gutenberg eBook, Ghetto Comedies, by Israel Zangwill, Illustrated by J. H. Amschewitz

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Title: Ghetto Comedies

Author: Israel Zangwill

Release Date: May 28, 2009 [eBook #28982]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GHETTO COMEDIES***

 

E-text prepared by David Edwards, Jeannie Howse,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)
from digital material generously made available by
Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries
(http://www.archive.org/details/toronto)

 

Note: Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/ghettocomedies00zanguoft

 

Transcriber's Note:


Inconsistent hyphenation and inconsistant spelling in the original document have been preserved. This document contains Yiddish and other dialects.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected. For a complete list, please see the end of this document.

Click on the images to see a larger version.

 

 

 

 

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LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 21, BEDFORD STREET.



At last I said "Good morning."

At last I said "Good morning."ToList



Ghetto Comedies By Israel Zangwill Author of
'The Grey Wig,' 'Dreamers of the Ghetto,'
'The Master,' 'Children of the Ghetto,'
'Ghetto Tragedies,' etc.



With Illustrations by J.H. Amschewitz



Publisher's Mark



London
William Heinemann
1907






Copyright by William Heinemann, 1907









TO
MY OLD FRIEND
M.D. EDER






NOTE


Simultaneously with the publication of these 'Ghetto Comedies' a fresh edition of my 'Ghetto Tragedies' is issued, with the original title restored. In the old definition a comedy could be distinguished from a tragedy by its happy ending. Dante's Hell and Purgatory could thus appertain to a 'comedy.' This is a crude conception of the distinction between Tragedy and Comedy, which I have ventured to disregard, particularly in the last of these otherwise unassuming stories.

I.Z.

Shottermill,
April, 1907.






CONTENTS


  PAGE THE MODEL OF SORROWS 1 ANGLICIZATION 49 THE JEWISH TRINITY 89 THE SABBATH QUESTION IN SUDMINSTER 119 THE RED MARK 173 THE BEARER OF BURDENS 193 THE LUFTMENSCH 225 THE TUG OF LOVE 249 THE YIDDISH 'HAMLET' 259 THE CONVERTS 293 HOLY WEDLOCK 313 ELIJAH'S GOBLET 335 THE HIRELINGS 351 SAMOOBORONA 375






LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


AT LAST I SAID 'GOOD MORNING' Frontispiece   To face page 'I WORK ONβ€”ON SHABBOS' 142 'YOU COMPARE MY WIFE TO A KANGAROO!' 276 THE JEWS SCATTERED BEFORE HIM LIKE DOGS 408









THE MODEL OF SORROWS






THE MODEL OF SORROWSToC



CHAPTER I HOW I FOUND THE MODEL


I cannot pretend that my ambition to paint the Man of Sorrows had any religious inspiration, though I fear my dear old dad at the Parsonage at first took it as a sign of awakening grace. And yet, as an artist, I have always been loath to draw a line between the spiritual and the beautiful; for I have ever held that the beautiful has in it the same infinite element as forms the essence of religion. But I cannot explain very intelligibly what I mean, for my brush is the only instrument through which I can speak. And if I am here paradoxically proposing to use my pen to explain what my brush failed to make clear, it is because the criticism with which my picture of the Man of Sorrows has been assailed drives me to this attempt at verbal elucidation. My picture, let us suppose, is half-articulate; perhaps my pen can manage to say the other half, especially as this other half mainly consists of things told me and things seen.

And in the first place, let me explain that the conception of the picture which now hangs in its gilded frame is far from the conception with which I startedβ€”was, in fact, the ultimate stage of an evolutionβ€”for I began with nothing deeper in my mind than to image a realistic Christ, the Christ who sat in the synagogue of Jerusalem, or walked about the shores of Galilee. As a painter in love with the modern, it seemed to me that, despite the innumerable representations of Him by the masters of all nations, few, if any, had sought their inspiration in reality. Each nation had unconsciously given Him its own national type, and though there was a subtle truth in this, for what each nation worshipped was truly the God made over again in its own highest image, this was not the truth after which I was seeking.

I started by rejecting the blonde, beardless type which Da Vinci and others have imposed upon the world, for Christ, to begin with, must be a Jew. And even when, in the course of my researches for a Jewish model, I became aware that there were blonde types, too, these seemed to me essentially Teutonic. A characteristic of the Oriental face, as I figured it, was a sombre majesty, as of the rabbis of Rembrandt, the very antithesis of the ruddy gods of Walhalla. The characteristic Jewish face must suggest more of the Arab than of the Goth.

I do not know if the lay reader understands how momentous to the artist is his model, how dependent he is on the accident of finding his creation already anticipated, or at least shadowed forth, in Nature. To me, as a realist, it was particularly necessary to find in Nature the original, without which no artist can ever produce those subtle nuances which give the full sense of life. After which, if I say, that my aim is not to copy, but to interpret and transfigure, I suppose I shall again seem to be self-contradictory. But that, again, must be put down to my fumbling pen-strokes.

Perhaps I ought to have gone to Palestine in search of the ideal model, but then my father's failing health kept me within a brief railway run of the Parsonage. Besides, I understood that the dispersion of the Jews everywhere made it possible to find Jewish types anywhere, and especially in London, to which flowed all the streams of the Exile. But long days of hunting in the Jewish quarter left me despairing. I could find types of all the Apostles, but never of the Master.

Running down one week-end to Brighton to recuperate, I joined the Church Parade on the lawns. It was a sunny morning in early November, and I admired the three great even stretches of grass, sea, and sky, making up a picture that was unspoiled even by the stuccoed boarding-houses. The parasols fluttered amid the vast crowd of promenaders like a swarm of brilliant butterflies. I noted with amusement that the Church Parade was guarded by beadles from the intrusion of the ill-dressed, and the spectacle of over-dressed Jews paradoxically partaking in it reminded me of the object of my search. In vain my eye roved among these; their figures were strangely lacking in the dignity and beauty which I had found among the poorest. Suddenly I came upon a sight that made my heart leap. There, squatting oddly enough on the pavement-curb of a street opposite the lawns, sat a frowsy, gaberdined Jew. Vividly set between the tiny green cockle-shell hat on his head and the long uncombed black beard was the face of my desire. The head was bowed towards the earth; it did not even turn towards the gay crowd, as if the mere spectacle was beadle-barred. I was about to accost this strange creature who sat there so immovably, when a venerable Royal Academician who resides at Hove came towards me with hearty hand outstretched, and bore me along in the stream of his conversation and geniality. I looked back yearningly; it was as if the Academy was dragging me away from true Art.

'I think, if you don't mind, I'll get that old chap's address,' I said.

He looked back and shook his head in laughing reproof.

'Another study in dirt and ugliness! Oh, you youngsters!'

My heart grew hot against his smug satisfaction with his own conventional patterns and prettinesses.

'Behind that ugliness and dirt I see the Christ,' I retorted. 'I certainly did not see Him in the Church Parade.'

'Have you gone on the religious lay now?' he asked, with a burst of his bluff laughter.

'No, but I'm going,' I said, and turned back.

I stood, pretending to watch the gay parasols, but furtively studying my Jew. Yes, in that odd figure, so strangely seated on the pavement, I had chanced on the very features, the haunting sadness and mystery of which I had been so long in quest. I wondered at the simplicity with which he was able to maintain a pose so essentially undignified. I told myself I beheld the East squatted broodingly as on a divan, while the West paraded with parasol and Prayer-Book. I wondered that the beadles were unobservant of him. Were they content with his abstention from the holy ground of the Church Parade, and the less sacred seats on the promenade without, or would they, if their eyes drew towards him, move him on from further profaning those frigidly respectable windows and stuccoed portals?

At last I said: 'Good-morning.' And he rose hurriedly and began to move away uncomplainingly, as one used to being hounded from everywhere.

'Guten Morgen,' I said in German, with a happy inspiration, for in my futile search in London I had found that a corrupt German called Yiddish usually proved a means of communication.

He paused, as if reassured. 'Gut' Morgen,' he murmured; and then I saw that his stature was kingly, like that of the sons of Anak, and his manner a strange blend of majesty and humility.

'Pardon me,' I went on, in my

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