Chapter Twelve

344About the beginning of Gordin's activity as a dramatist I have already told (third volume, pages 186-194 and 460-461). There I pointed to the abyss between the plays and influence of "Professor" Hurwitz and Joseph Lateiner, who had previously ruled in the Jewish theaters of New York, and the kind of plays that Jacob Gordin brought in. In their time the Yiddish theater, chiefly under the effect of "Professor" Hurwitz, found itself in the depths of a swamp. Through Gordin's plays, and through Gordin's personal influence, a better taste and higher demands developed. Gordin stood far higher than Hurwitz and Lateiner both in art and in spirit.

In the third volume of these "Bleter" (Pages) I had occasion to mention only the first few plays from Gordin's pen — "Sibir" (Siberia), "Der rusisher yid in Amerika" (The Russian Jew in America), "Tsvey veltn" (Two Worlds), and "Der yidisher kenig Lir" (The Jewish King Lear).

There already I spoke about the significance that Gordin had for the Jewish actors. He had them345given an opportunity to act. He gave them roles (third volume, page 192). And later I gave them still better roles. He made them complete as a dramatist, and thanks to him, they made themselves complete as actors.

The ones who chiefly developed were Jacob P. Adler, David Kessler, Keni Liptzin, Sara Adler, and Bertha Kalish. Sigmund Mogulesko also played in Gordin's plays, in most of them, and in them he had an opportunity to create strong roles. But he used to create strong roles in the plays of other writers as well — even of such as Hurwitz. Mogulesko had so much inborn talent and so much inborn charm on the stage that, with his own artistic power and personal magnetism, he always used to have an enormous success. In Mogulesko's career Gordin also had a significance, but not so great as in the careers of the other actors and actresses whom I have named here.

Names they had all had earlier too. They were favorites with the theater public even before Jacob Gordin wrote his first play. But the success they used to have was a success with the ordinary Jewish theater masses, whereas as actors in Gordin's works they began to draw the attention of the more intelligent public; and the old theater "patriots" began to value them in a new way, on a higher level.

They themselves became enthusiastic about the new kind of roles that they received, and a large part of the theater public became enthusiastic about the plays and about their acting in them.

346First a few words about the real worth of Gordin's creations.

In this regard the opinion that I expressed in 1892 has not changed with me. For our stage he had an enormous significance. But from a literary standpoint, as that term is understood in the literary world proper, his things had no value. In the criticism that I wrote in 1892 (in the "Arbeiter Zeitung"), I gave a parable about a Jew who is a freethinker (apikoyres). Among pious Jews he is not a Jew, but among Christians he is a Jew. In literature Gordin's plays were not reckoned as literature; but for our stage (in its then pitiful condition) they were very important (see third volume, page 190). With this matter, however, one must first apologize regarding the relation of theatrical roles to the question of literary art.

A dramatist can create strong roles for actors and at the same time not create any literature. There are trashy plays in which talented actors have enormous artistic opportunities on the stage. One must not forget that in a drama not only the writer takes part, but also the actor. And often, very often, the actor brings into the role life, reality, soul, poetry, which the written role does not have in itself at all. The dramatist must chiefly have a dramatic instinct, a sense of the stage. If he has that, the artist can already do the rest himself. He can make a living creature out of a dead character.

Gordin's theatrical roles were quite far from reality. The words that he put into the mouths of his characters did not sound natural. His men or women used to say "khokhmes" (clever sayings), phrases,347which such people would never in real life have uttered from their lips. These were the author's witticisms, the author's phrases, not theirs.

The repetition of a certain unnatural phrase was the way Gordin often used to present the depiction of a type. Most of the time his types were mechanical dolls, and their speeches — mechanical "khokhmes" (clever sayings). They rang with countless false notes. There occurred in them countless cheap effects.

But despite all these unnaturalnesses and artificialities, he used to sketch a rewarding role for a talented artist. Such trash as the stage creations of the earlier Jewish dramatists his creations were, in any case, not. They stood far higher. They had more flavor.

And one more thing: the "little khokhmes," in and of themselves, were often well turned. If the person in question could not have said it, the witticism would have been interesting (in some cases, at least) had Gordin simply written it down as his own remark, in a feuilleton, for example. As a feuilletonist he was a good one, with brilliant humorous fancies. And the actors used to be delighted by his little phrases. That in itself was a source of inspiration for them.

348Gordin's name and power grew. The aforementioned group of actors and actresses were the most important forces of the stage, as well as the proprietors and directors of the theaters. The "star" actor was also the director of the theater, or an important partner in it. And if it was a woman, her husband was the proprietor and director. So it was with Mrs. Liptzin's husband, Michael Mintz, and Mrs. Kalish's husband, Leopold Spachner. As for Sara Adler's husband, Jacob P. Adler, he was a "star" actor and at the same time the theater director.

The aforementioned group was then the complete ruler of all the Jewish theaters in New York, and New York was then the largest and most important Jewish theatrical center in the world. Almost the only one, in fact. For in Russia the Jewish stage was then forbidden or strongly suppressed, and the Jewish theater companies that played in England and in Romania had no significance.

And just as the group of actor-directors of whom I speak here ruled over the Jewish theaters in New York, so Jacob Gordin, one may say, ruled over them.

The Jewish stage, as Gordin found it, stood so low, and its actors were so unaccustomed to art and refinement, that it was natural for him to look upon them with contempt. And having a gifted and fiery character, he used to hurl at the actors a great deal of disdain and dread.

They felt a deep respect toward him, and they literally trembled before him.

349Most clearly Gordin's achievements made themselves felt in the career of David Kessler. Earlier Kessler used to enchant the theater public with his roles as a cheap hero of a "historical opera." Part of his "art" used to consist in declaring himself in love, in singing couplets, and in dancing a little "heroic" dance. He was tall and well built, and the theater "patriots" used to take pleasure in his figure and in the "princely" costumes that he used to wear on the stage (see the second volume, pages 384 and 385). In his roles he did not speak, but declaimed "theatrically."

Even in the trashy plays, which were supposedly "from contemporary life," he also used to declaim. To speak like a human being was simply not done on the Jewish stage. People did not even know that one could demand such a thing. Only the comic actor used to be an exception in this respect. And the very fact that the comic actor spoke on the stage like an ordinary human being — that itself was regarded as a part of the comedy.

In Gordin's plays Kessler began for the first time to speak on the stage, instead of declaiming. It came about of itself. The role brought him to it. It kindled his power of imagination; he lived himself into the role, felt himself to be350had known. Intelligent theatergoers explained this to him, and I was one of them.

Kessler was an ignorant man. At home (in Kishinev) he had learned very little in his childhood years. Later he kept a stall of haberdashery on a street corner. He had a voice and could sing a little, and in those days the ability to sing was the usual entry to the Jewish stage. As he once told me himself, the main force that drove him to become an actor consisted in the envy that he felt toward the actor Shengold, who was then a great star in the Jewish theater world of southern Russia. He was tall and slender, Shengold, and in the street he used to wear a "pelerine" (cape) and a tall hat. It was with this pelerine and hat that he bewitched the young Kessler. It was a theatrical gait. Ordinary dandies did not walk like that. Only actors. Jewish actors in those years used to be actors in the street as well.

After, then, Kessler had acted in cheap trashy plays for more than a decade, first in Russia and then in America, he almost suddenly became a talented actor in a new and far better sense of the word. He began to create roles, living roles. And this he had to thank Gordin's plays for. He became an entirely new Kessler.

With Adler it was different. He was an entirely different type. But he too had the best part of his career to thank Gordin for.

Adler was not so ignorant from home. He spoke good Russian and wrote Russian. In Odessa, where351he was born and raised, he was in his boyhood years a great mischief-maker, who chummed about with street urchins and could land a blow. But he was able to carry himself and to speak like an intelligent, respectable boy. He was an unusually handsome youth, and in his beauty lay an intelligent kind of charm. He was drawn to the stage, and when he came to it, it at once became evident that he belonged to it from birth.

He had dramatic power and an inborn sense for stage effects. To speak on the stage simply, naturally, he never learned. That went against the special sort of artistic nature that he had. He was drawn to melodrama far more than to drama in a realistic sense, but his melodramatism had in it a poetic sweep. The more I became acquainted with his acting, the more I became convinced that he was best suited to Shakespearean roles, where declamation is self-evident. In such roles he would have brought a classical beauty, as it is called.

In his very makeup there used to lie artistic originality. On the stage he was always pictorial and impressive. So he used to be in the old trashy plays that he used to play in Russia and then in London and still later in Chicago and in New York; and so he remained in Gordin's plays. In this respect Gordin had nothing to do for him. But Gordin's roles opened up for him a broader world, a vast one with new possibilities. He, therefore, also developed in them.

As a personality he was the most interesting and striking figure among all the Jewish actors. I used352to love chatting with him. Clever, with a peculiar humor, and full of interesting impressions from his own life, he used to present, in his private conversations, living character-portraits and living scenes. That, and a remarkable openheartedness with which he also used to tell about his personal experiences, even such as people usually do not touch on, used to make a conversation with him into an unusually interesting entertainment.

Kessler was less interesting behind the scenes. But in private conversations he too used to display power of imagination, often in the form of an indecent phrase. From such little phrases themselves one could see that he had an inborn talent.

A striking figure in the Jewish theater life in general, and in the Gordin group in particular, was also Madame Liptzin. When she stepped onto the stage (in Adler's troupe, in southern Russia), she was an absolutely ignorant woman; and as far as acquaintance with the written word, she remained so. Even her roles someone had to read out for her. But this did not prevent her from developing and reaching a high level as an actress.

She had a character, a fiery temperament and353When one speaks of Madame Liptzin, one ought also to mention her husband, Michael (Mikhael) Mintz. An actor he was not; but as his wife's manager and "publicity man" he played a role not only in the development of her career, but also in the development of Gordin's career.

He was the son of a well-known respectable family in Brest, and I became acquainted with him in my young years, while still in Vilna, where he had planned to enter our institute. With Madame Liptzin he met several years later, in New York. He was very hot-tempered but good-hearted, with an open hand and with a mass of energy, an indefatigable man, a live wire. To his wife and her theatrical interests he was boundlessly devoted, and with this devotion, with this fire of his, he greatly helped to make a name both for her and for the plays in which she distinguished herself. And these were chiefly Gordin's plays.

A little later, as an actress in Gordin's works (in his "Sappho," "Kreutzer Sonata," and others), Bertha Kalish acquired a great name. She too had temperament, and in addition she was young and very beautiful. Her husband (Spachner) was the director (or one of the directors) of the theater in which she played.

As a realistic actress there developed in Gordin's roles the aforementioned Sara Adler, the wife of Jacob P. Adler. She was a talented, brilliant artist, and she had success in several of Gordin's plays, as well as a series of theater pieces by Z.

354Libin, and L. Kobrin, who had also already begun to write for the stage.

Through Gordin's plays a young actor, also an Odessan, by the name of Moskovitch^*, also became known.

Jacob Gordin spoke and wrote Russian well. He belonged to the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia. When his name as a dramatist began to rise, so too began to rise his significance in our "Russian colony," as we usually called ourselves. Had he written plays of the old Jewish sort, his theater career would have aroused no interest among his Russian acquaintances. But since his works stood far higher than the earlier Jewish dramas, and from all sides he was greeted as a talent and as the elevator of the Jewish stage, his standing among the intelligentsia rose as well. People took an interest in him, and showed him attention.

The stage is a key to the gates of publicity. He became popular and important. People sought his acquaintance. Incidentally, he could tell a good joke. In the company of friends he was a cheerful, pleasant man, and at home he was very hospitable. And so there gathered around him a355group of intelligent doctors, lawyers, dentists, businessmen.

An "Educational League" was founded, a society with the aim of running evening classes and evening lectures for workers. Gordin was the heart of the organization. He raised money for it, drew in the best teachers and lecturers, helped to arrange benefit performances, gatherings. The group that surrounded him was active in this. This group, and the executive committee of the "League," were one and the same. All this made closer the friendship of the members among themselves and of all of them together toward Gordin.

To the socialist movement Gordin did not directly belong; but through the "League" he came into contact with our communal activities, which were bound up with our labor movement.

From the previous volume the reader knows that in the first months of the "Forverts," when I was still the editor (the first time), he was a regular contributor with us, and in our office, on Duane Street, beside my desk there stood a desk for him. Afterwards, for a certain time, he took part in the "Forverts" as an outside contributor.

356had an enormous success with our radically inclined public. Miller tore both of them down mercilessly (about "God, Man and Devil" he wrote a whole six articles. He declared that the theme was taken from "Faust" and "Job"). — And this is naturally true — and that, the way Gordin had put the drama together, it really makes no sense.

On Miller's account Gordin then took a hostile attitude toward the "Forverts" in general (see this volume, page 254).

Afterwards they — Miller and Gordin — became good friends, and the dramatist began to take a friendlier attitude toward the newspaper as well.

When I came back to the "Forverts," Gordin's relations to the newspaper changed again, because of the strained relations between him and me. But this was no sharp change. In general he remained friendly. One must note the following:

Gordin, as a playwright and as a devoted leader of the "Educational League," had "khasidim" (devotees) in our movement, and that means also in the "Forverts" Association, whether he was estranged from Miller or from me or not. Apart from that, he was closely befriended with some of our prominent comrades. To our party in general, then, he always held himself as a sympathizer. And to our unions, certainly.

If he was not a formal socialist, he was in any case one of the important radically inclined immigrants in the Jewish quarter.

And this made itself felt ever more clearly in his works. His "God, Man and Devil," "Sappho," "Kreutzer Sonata," "The Truth" — all these plays contain masses of phrases, sentences, and whole acts that give expression to radical ideas about marriage, love, eco-357nomic inequality, religion. And this created for him much popularity among the socialists.

I will bring here only one example: in his "God, Man and Devil," at a certain moment, the worker in the play says to the rich man: "It seems that one can only get rich from robbery. We work, and you live the good life."

At these words a stormy applause used to break out. (The worker here is an antiquated type from the old home. He could not in reality have said such words. The whole socialist phrase is here an inserted nonsense, and from the stage it sounds very unnatural. The radical "nonsensicality" simply grates on the ears. But such things our theatergoers did not yet understand back then. Even our more intelligent comrades did not either.)

People began to compare Gordin to Ibsen. The American drama then stood not appreciably lower than it stands today. Of plays with a radical content one could not even dream on Broadway.

In Russia, where literature stood higher than358In all other countries, no one had yet heard then of Gordin's dramas. And how the connoisseurs there would have regarded them, no one in America imagined. On the whole, however, with some exceptions, people here thought that in Russia too he would have been declared a literary artist of the highest class.

And such too was the opinion of many members of the intelligent Russian colony. They did not consider him a thinker, a highly developed man. Intelligent, however, he certainly was, and as already said: with respect to his great significance for the Jewish stage there could be no difference of opinion. Nor could there be any doubt that he had talent, humor, and that he understood the stage excellently. And so a large part of our intelligentsia regarded him as an Ibsen.

His naive and powder-keg sensitivity earned him in the Russian colony some personal enemies. But he also had in it warm friends and enthusiastic followers. And when he used to appear at a "vecherinka" (evening party) or at our annual New York ball, his tall, broad-shouldered figure, stately face, and great beard used to be the center of a large group of admirers.

On October 12, 1903, there was performed at the Thalia Theater for the first time Jacob Gordin's drama "Di Yesoyme" (The Orphan Girl), with Kessler and Madame Kalish in the leading roles. A few days later, in the Orthodox "Ta-359geblatt" there appeared a review of the play — an unfavorable one.

A few days later there occurred at the Thalia Theater, between the acts, the following scene:

Jacob Gordin stood on the stage and spoke to the audience. He spoke about the "Tageblatt" review of his new play. He attacked the newspaper and the critic. He used sharp words.

In the theater there happened to be Johann Paley, the writer of the review, and Sapirstein, the chief proprietor of the Orthodox "Morgen Zhurnal," where Gordin's plays also used to be torn down (the proprietors of the "Morgen Zhurnal" also had a large share, as owners, in the "Morgen Zhurnal").

When Gordin caught sight of them, he began pointing at them with his fingers.

"There they sit, the cabmen (izvoshchikes)!" he cried, beside himself with rage. "They didn't even pay for their tickets!"

The audience began to look in the indicated direction. The two newspapermen left the theater.

A few days later there appeared in the "Tageblatt" an attack on Gordin personally and on the whole radical spirit of his writing. And not only on him alone, but also on our whole movement, which had360on Gordin and on progressive literature. As the reader will see a little further on, I had a different opinion about the matter. But Miller, through a comrade, asked that I let him conduct this struggle in the "Forverts." Had we been on speaking terms, I would have been able to show him that one ought not to make any great affair out of the story, all the more so since it was Gordin who made the beginning, and in such a manner as we may not defend. I would probably have remained of my own opinion.

But we were on bad terms, and therefore I granted his request. For despite our official enmity, we had not shown any unfriendliness toward one another. And when one is in such relations, one is even more inclined to be obliging than when one is "good friends."

Miller made the beginning with a leading article in the "Forverts" of Wednesday, October 23, 1903. The heading over the article was: "Cross, Yarmulke, and Art."

The first two words were already well known to the readers of the "Forverts" from the attacks that Miller used to make on the "Tageblatt," even before I came back to the "Forverts." The word "cross" was an allusion to the editor of the "Tageblatt," who some fifteen years earlier had been baptized into a361When I returned to the "Forverts," in 1902, the three words — "cross," "yarmulke," "little sword" — were popular among the "Forverts" readers.

In the article Miller relates that Paley calls Gordin's works "cadet plays" and Gordin himself a "literary cadet"^*. Further on Miller says there:

"Jacob Gordin's dramas are the greatest achievements in the movement for the progress of the Jewish people. It is the most brilliant chapter in the cultural struggle against both spirits of the past. Wherever there is a Jew with a heart, a Jew with an ideal, a Jew with an idea for a better future, he will rally under the banner that we have now raised most beautifully of all our struggles against falsehood, filth, and rascality."

The comrades issued an appeal to progressive organizations to take part in the struggle, and from various cities protests began to arrive, which were printed in the "Forverts" — those of writers against the "Tageblatt," with praises for Gordin as a writer and as a bearer of culture and progress. The resolutions were printed in the "Forverts" two or three times a week, or even more often, in the course of several weeks.

On October 22 there took place a mass meeting about the affair (in a hall on Clinton Street, near Delancey) with Miller, Dr. Kaspe, and Dr. Zolotarov (both strong adherents of Jacob Gordin) as362speaker. The committee that arranged the meeting had invited me. But I did not take part.

In the report of the gathering, which was printed in the "Forverts" the next morning, it is stated that the hall was packed; one could have filled two such halls.

Speeches about the "Tageblatt" were delivered between the acts of a performance of "Di Yesoyme" (The Orphan Girl), on the 30th of October. This time the speakers were Jacob Gordin himself and Joseph Barondess.

On the front page of the "Forverts," as the main news of the day, Miller several times ran reports about the struggle, with headlines that he set in the largest type we had in our print shop, in a screaming line that took up the entire width of the page. The content of the main headline and of the second headline consisted of stormy words of attack, words of abuse, or such sensational outcries — a demand that the proprietor and the editor of the "Tageblatt" should leave the quarter.

Someone obtained a copy of a letter that Khatskel Sarasohn, the elder son of the owner of the "Tageblatt," had written to Ahearn, the leader of Tammany Hall in the Jewish quarter. The content of the letter consisted, approximately, of the following: the Jews mostly vote for the Republican party, although it is antisemitically inclined. If Tammany Hall will nominate for judge the brother of Khatskel Sarasohn, who is a lawyer, then the Sarasohn newspapers — the "Tageblatt" and the "Morgen Zhurnal" (Morning Journal) — will agitate for Tammany Hall, and this will turn the Jewish population away from the363Republicans and make them into supporters of the Democrats ^*.

Miller gave in the "Forverts" a photographic copy of the letter, with an explanation, over which the headline read:

"The Tageblatt Wallows" (here we skip over a word of abuse that appeared in the main heading). And beneath it stood:

"For six thousand dollars a year (the salary connected with the judgeship in question) Sarasohn [offers] to make his newspapers organs of the 'Red Lights' ^**. If not, they will work for the antisemitic Republicans."

Beneath the copy of the letter stood a line: "A document that covers Jews with eternal shame."

The story of the letter was naturally a great sensation. For the "Tageblatt" it was a great blow — for the moment, at least.

The next morning Miller had, as the main heading on the news page, the two words "In Flames!" in the largest letters.

364The first impression was that there was some terrible conflagration somewhere. Beneath these two thundering words stood:

"The whole Jewish quarter is burning with fury against the harlot of all Israel, who in this campaign has so basely befouled the honor of the Jewish people and has betrayed Jewry."

Then come a few lines about "bandits" who fly about like "poisoned mice," and so forth.

The next morning, the 1st of November, the main headline was (again in the largest letters): "Out of the Quarter!" and beneath it:

"is the cry of all Jews."

"The entire Jewish population is aroused. In the houses of study, in the societies, in the dwellings, and in the streets, there is no end to the seething. Sarasohn's day of judgment is coming."

This was the last week before the elections. It thus came about that the struggle against the "Tageblatt" was a part of our socialist election campaign.

The "Tageblatt," however, had no influence anyway. Our comrades despised it, and its own readers, the Orthodox Jews, did not love it. In later years it conducted itself with more self-respect, and Orthodox people also came to have better feelings toward it. In those times, however, it could not evoke such feelings even in its own camp.

With the two most important people on the "Tageblatt" editorial staff I was well acquainted. When we used to meet, we would chat in the friendliest manner. About their journalistic "morality" and about their "ar-365thodoxy" they used to speak with me with a cynical candor.

— You don't know, Mr. Cahan, how delicious it is to write an article on the Sabbath against desecrating the Sabbath, — one of them once remarked to me with a laugh.

And the other, speaking about theater criticism, once said to me, also with a cynical smile:

— You write your reviews according to your convictions. When an actor pleases you, you praise him and receive no cent from him for it. With me it doesn't work that way. You want a favorable review? Hand over a twenty-five, brother!

The proprietor of the newspaper knew all this. What he did not know was that this was indecent. He naturally understood that this was how the accounting worked. But he was convinced that this was merely how people talked. Both we, the socialists, do not sell ourselves, and our "Forverts" is true to its principles? Then we are a band of madmen! He himself did not desecrate the Sabbath and was actually an honest, decent man. So his writers labor and write on the Sabbath and eat treyf (non-kosher food)? They are not the only ones in America, and besides, it is, after all, business — a word that makes everything kosher.

After the elections, the attacks in the "Forverts" did not cease. The Ahearn letter, however, was by now mentioned very little. It had become a fight against the "Tageblatt" entirely on behalf of Gordin.

Our comrades responded to Miller's call. They were drawn into his crusade against the366"Tageblatt," and its "pious" replies poured oil on the fire.

In a circular that was sent out to our organizations, the committee expressed regret that "our ranks are not united, whereas the 'Tageblatt' side is united." By this they meant me — an allusion to the fact that I was standing aloof. I do not remember whether Miller wrote that circular or someone else. In any case it was done under his influence, for he was the leader of the entire anti-"Tageblatt" campaign.

Comrades began to appeal to me, that I too should come out against the "Tageblatt." My holding back made a bad impression, they argued. Some of my best friends and warmest supporters spoke to me this way. And in my little private office (the "Forverts" was then located at 148 East Broadway) debates about the question often took place.

I used to answer that Gordin had made the beginning, and in such a manner as we must not "encourage" ^*. I used to explain that in the attacks against the hypocrisy of the "Tageblatt" I was prepared to take part, but that the fight had been pulled off to one side; that it was chiefly a fight for Gordin, and as such it was not congenial to me. There was also in this a personal feeling on my part, and I used to explain it quite openly.

Gordin had also once attacked me from the theater stage, between the acts, and also for a remark that I had made (in a private conversation) about a certain passage in one of his plays.

367"For me to take up his cause under these circumstances would be hypocrisy on my part," I used to say.

Gordin could not endure the slightest criticism. It might come from a friend and in the friendliest form. He used to "answer" his critics from the stage or in writing and in an indescribable manner.

I had such an experience with him right in the first year of our acquaintance, when his second play, "The Russian Jew in America," was staged, in 1892. We were then on the best of terms. Through the "Arbeiter Zeitung" I had given his activity as a dramatist the warmest support. "The Russian Jew in America" I also supported. Only about one person in the play, an immigrant by the name of "Huzdak," did I express an unfavorable opinion. Huzdak represented in the drama a corrupt Jewish labor leader. In my review I pointed out that the play presents only such a "wheeler-dealer," whereas the good side of our labor movement, its sympathetic types, it does not portray. I expressed this in the mildest, friendliest words. Yet Gordin published in the next issue of the "Arbeiter Zeitung" a letter in which he attacked my review, with a venomous insinuation that probably "Huzdakism" (corruption) had among us "already gone too far"...

I then declared that if this was Gordin's way, I would write no more about his plays.

Peace was afterward made between us, but for a long time thereafter I really wrote no more reviews of his dramas. Personally we were368we at first, however, remained on good terms, and, as has already been told, for the first several months of the "Forverts," in 1897, he was a contributor with us.

A week before my departure from the "Forverts," in August of that year, our peace was once again torn apart.

He had written the first half of a review of my novel "Yekl," and he gave it to me for the "Forverts" (the second half he was to bring later). In an earlier conversation with me, he had expressed a very favorable opinion of "Yekl," and Jacob P. Adler, the actor, also conveyed to me that Gordin had praised my English work to him. To be against the appearance of his article I had, then, no reason; but since I had already submitted my resignation as editor and everything was already ready for my departure, I remarked:

— It will be better if your article appears when the bridegroom will no longer be present. Wait a week. I will no longer be editor, and then you can print it.

I said this in the friendliest tone. To my astonishment he flared up and, taking the manuscript, exclaimed, very angry and proud:

"Jacob Gordin is not accustomed to having people haggle over an article of his!"

I looked at him with surprise, and went out of the room.

The quarrel between us then dragged on for about three years.

Once Dr. Kaplan's friends, the Sobsoviches,369of Woodbine, New Jersey, gave him a surprise party ^* for his birthday. Gordin and I were among those invited; and there Kaplan joined our hands together and a sholem-aleykhem (a reconciliation, lit. "peace be upon you").

A few months later the following occurred:

Gordin's "Shchita" (The Slaughter) was staged for the first time at the Thalia Theater, with Kessler in the role of Tsalel Rapoport, with Mogulesko as the rabbi, Madame Liptzin as Rivkele, and Moshkovitsh as Kalman. My wife and I were at the theater. After the performance I went backstage to see Mogulesko about a certain matter. When Moshkovitsh met me there, he asked me how I liked the new play.

— Tsalel and the rabbi are good — I answered; but about Rivkele I cannot say that. A small-town girl talks in utterly poetic speeches!

My words reached Gordin, and a few weeks later, at a performance that was given in his honor, he, speaking between the acts, "took me to task." He did not mention my name. But he mimicked me, mocked and insulted me with such insinuations that a large part of the audience understood whom he meant.

I learned of this, and then — in a conversation with Moshkovitsh, I said: — It is, then, dangerous to have an opinion about a play of Gordin's. When one does not see his dramas, one has no opinion. Well, you can assure Gordin that370about his further works I would now have no opinion.

For a long time I did not see his plays.

The power that Gordin had among the actors and the honor that he received from the public had an intoxicating effect on him.

By nature he was indescribably great in his own eyes, and the temper in him was no smaller than the pride.

Sometimes all this would show itself in amusing, sometimes in piquant forms. For example: one of his friends had brought in an acquaintance, a college professor, to the cafe where he, Gordin, often used to spend his time, and introduced them. Gordin honored the professor with a glass of tea and a cigar. After they had chatted for a certain time, Gordin's friend and his companion left the cafe. In doing so the professor forgot to say goodbye. In an explosion of anger the dramatist immediately ran after him. He caught up with him on the street and stopped him.

— Professor! — he said, scarcely able to breathe from anger — my glass of tea you drank? My cigar you smoked? But no thanks and no "goodbye" did you say to me. You must come back.

He almost dragged him back into the cafe, and the other became so confused that he obeyed, and entering the cafe, he, like a frightened boy, said with a serious mien:

371— I thank you! Goodbye! — and he went off.

At the friendliest hint of a flaw in one of his plays, this tall, broad-shouldered man would flare up like a spoiled, angry child. For such "khutspe" (insolence) he sometimes threatened with his cane.

Those who stood around him exaggerated the literary significance of his plays without measure, and he himself exaggerated it still more. He used to display this truly like a spoiled child.

He was an honest man, not in the least equivocal, and without a crumb of slyness; so he used to state his opinion about his talent with an astonishing openness. Speaking from the platform, he used to count himself among the greatest writers of world literature.

"Such great writers as Shakespeare, Ibsen, and Jacob Gordin" — he said on dozens of occasions. The "Jacob Gordin" he used to add with a smile, but in his lectures he used to bring it out without a smile — quite seriously and quite openly.

Societies used to invite him to give lectures; and more than once he took as his theme his newest drama. He used to have it announced that "Jacob Gordin will criticize his latest theater piece," and at the lecture he would show wherein his new drama and Ibsen's work stand so high, and why his new play stands still higher than Ibsen's best plays. I once attended such a lecture of his.

Once one of his friends gave a talk about the modern drama in English. Gordin came to hear him. The talk dealt with the dramatic works of Ibsen, Hauptmann, and Sudermann.

372When the lecturer had finished, Gordin took the floor and made a bit of a scandal: why had the lecturer passed over him, Gordin? And if he had already done so, then he should at any rate have left out Sudermann too, for Gordin is a more important dramatist than Sudermann. Sudermann is a hack-writer in comparison with him, — he declared.

Some of his intelligent supporters also used to speak about his "significance in world literature." Today this sounds very comical, but then serious debates about it used to take place.

I said above that I had not changed the opinion of Gordin's writing that I had expressed in 1892. Since then he had made progress as a connoisseur of the stage. But on the other hand great new flaws had developed in his writing.

Since he had begun to create idea-plays, it became ever clearer that for such tasks he was not suited. He was not sufficiently developed, neither as a thinker nor as an artist. His idea-plays are, from an artistic standpoint, weaker even than "Siberia," his first work. To embody an idea in a drama — that he was absolutely incapable of. As I have already explained: the idea used to be expressed by him with phrases, with witty sayings (often interesting), which he used to put into the mouths of the characters portrayed — of characters who in life could never have said such things.

Later, when his plays appeared in Russia, all this was laughed at; but — as has already been noted — in the ten years of which we are speaking here, in Russia they did not yet know of him. And his American supporters believed that there373people would have just as high an opinion of him as they had.

When he attacked me from the stage, I ignored it. But to become enthusiastic about his manners I naturally could not. So now, when, after he had reviled the leaders of the Orthodox press from the stage, and Miller had begun his noisy struggle on his behalf, I held myself aloof. But this was not only because of my personal feelings. Every impartial person would have agreed with me that, instead of fighting for him, one ought in this case to have let him know that, with the manner in which he conducted himself toward his critics, one could not sympathize.

As for the uncivilized replies of the "Tageblatt," I was convinced that one article about it would have been enough: to expose it in its true colors, to make mock of it, and that's the end. The "Tageblatt" had no influence even on its own readers. We had, then, nothing to take away from it.

The importance of the sensation with the Ahearn letter I acknowledged. But I believed that it ought not to be mixed up with the campaign that Miller was conducting for Gordin. On the whole the measure had been overstepped. Miller always used to overstep the measure. He used to do this in the content of his attacks as well as in the sensational character of their form. He was a passionate fighter. When he used to begin an attack, he used to know no boundary where one ought to stop. Nor did he used to know any boundary between what one may and what one may not do. In such a case he used to374stop at absolutely no means and at no expressions.

In the "Forverts" of the 10th of November, 1903, there is a leading article that I wrote with the purpose of separating the anti-"Tageblatt" struggle from the struggle for Gordin.

I put the question: "Why did the 'Tageblatt' not previously declare Gordin's plays immoral? Why suddenly now?"

My answer is: "It is no secret to anyone that the moral cramps that suddenly seized the 'Tageblatt' came about because of a quite personal stab of business. Gordin had reviled and insulted from the stage the editors of Sarasohn's newspapers for a criticism that they had written against his latest play (whether Gordin's stance here was justified, whether his abuse from the stage was fitting, is a quite separate question, which is not at issue here). Then a whole world began to turn over. Sarasohn's papers set out to fight Gordin, and they took to destroying not only Gordin, but the whole of realism, socialism, every society, every organization, every movement that strives for light, freedom, and progress. The 'Tageblatt' threatens to found Sabbath-keeping unions (that is, unions of workers who will keep the Sabbath), anything you like.

The 'Tageblatt' argues that the 'Forverts' itself also expressed no good opinion of certain plays of Gordin's ^*. That is true; everyone who understands some-375thing understands that Gordin is the best writer of life-plays for the Yiddish stage, and that he raised the Yiddish stage to a higher level than that on which it had stood before him. But when the 'Forverts' does not like a play of Gordin's, or a part of a play, the 'Forverts' points this out.

"But in this struggle it is not a matter of Gordin. He is no Dreyfus. If it were a question only of a fight of his, that would be nobody's grandmother's worry. But the 'Tageblatt' has taken on a very broad scope; against the whole present-day literature of all living peoples it has set out to fight, against everything that is progressive."

I compare the 'Tageblatt' to someone who has gotten so heated in a quarrel that he threatens to give his adversary the stove on the head; then he threatens to throw the whole house at his head, then the whole city, and finally a whole province.

I make fun of the comrades who complain that around the 'Tageblatt' there is unity, whereas among us there is no unity. And I close with a declaration that in the struggle against darkness and hypocrisy we are all united, whereas around the 'Tageblatt' there is no one to be united, for it has no supporters and no influence.

Miller and Gordin were very angry about the leading article. But Miller did not express this publicly in any way, and Gordin I did not see anyway. The 'Forverts' supported him at any rate.

In the issue in which the leading article I have given here was printed, I, on the376next page placed a box (a little box), with a heading:

"Don't talk your way out of it, Mister Sarasohn! Don't drown out the six-thousand-dollar letter!"

Beneath this heading I give a parable: "A Jew was brought to the rabbi for stealing a turkey. The fellow tells the rabbi a tale about how a cow flew over the roof and laid an egg on the holiday. Now what is the law — he asks — according to Beis Shammai or according to Beis Hillel?"

The moral of the parable was that, in order to drown out the affair of his letter to the Tammany chieftain Ahearn, Khatskel Sarasohn had taken to raising an uproar about morality in literature. I close with the words:

"Whether according to Beis Shammai or according to Beis Hillel, Khatskele, give back the turkey!"

The "box" made a "hit." I printed a second one, with further explanations, but with the same close: "Khatskele, give back the turkey!" A whole series of such "boxes" I published.

The saying became very popular. I myself looked at the affair with a smile. My main aim was to separate the crusade for Gordin from the crusade against the "Tageblatt."

Someone composed couplets with the refrain: "Khatskele, give back the turkey!" and they were sung in a music hall.

The Gordin question was completely set aside from the "Tageblatt" question, chiefly through this "box."

In the middle of December, when Gordin's next play, "The Truth," was staged, in our paper on the morn-377ing there was a large, ornate report on the front page, with hymns of praise about the play and with warm compliments to him. Who wrote the report I do not remember. I did not see the play. To write a review (apart from the report) I assigned M. Katz, the anarchist. His appraisal was a very favorable one. The fact that I myself did not go to see the play made bad blood, but not for long. The bitterness passed. There was almost peace.

A month passed. On a certain forenoon, in December, I was sitting and writing a leading article for the next day's issue. I was sitting at my desk, beside a window that looked out onto the yard, in the "Forverts" office, at 148 East Broadway. Suddenly my brother Isidore — Isaac, as I used to call him — came in, and without greeting me, agitated, he laid a postal card before my eyes.

The handwriting was our father's.

The postal card contained a terrible piece of news: our mother had died.

I sprang up, and going over to M. Katz, I explained why I had to throw down my writing in the middle. I asked him to finish the article for me.

I went home with Isaac.

The leading article was finished, but not by Katz. As an anarchist, he could not allow himself to take part in writing a socialist leading article. He378therefore asked another contributor — Yoel Entin — to fulfill my request.

Isaac for a certain time said Kaddish, and once I accompanied him as far as the synagogue. I envied him greatly that he said Kaddish. My heart was full. I was in such a mood that I felt like crying out to my mother that his Kaddish was for me too.

For hours at a time we used to sit and talk about her, about our father left alone, about our aunt Feyge and her children, about Vilna.

I had not seen our parents again after our meeting, in Vienna, in 1893. Isaac, however, had visited them a few years before. Then my wife, who that summer had visited her family in Kiev, also came to Vilna, and she became acquainted with them. She and Isaac used to describe to me their neat, tidy apartment on Antokolye, near the synagogue.

A short time after Isaac had returned, he married, and now he was the father of a two-month-old son. Megnie — an American translation of Mendele — a name after my father's brother.

For our mother this was a great joy, and she had sent a gift for the grandchild. But soon after that came the sorrowful postal card, and there was no longer anyone to whom to write a thank-you note. (Four years later a daughter was born to Isaac, and she is named after our mother — Sheyne — a name that was translated into Sylvia.)