You are probably all familiar with Jewish melodies from the East, but I want to try to give you a sense of that music. I think I can best describe it as a mixture of Russia and Jerusalem, of popular song and psalm. It is music that blends the pathos of the synagogue with the naïveté of folk song. The words, when you read them, would seem to demand a light and jaunty melody. But when you hear the song, it’s a sad tune, “smiling through tears.” Once having heard it, you remember it weeks later; the contradiction was more apparent than reaclass="underline" In fact these words can only be sung to this melody. They go:
Ynter die griene Beimelach
sizzen die Mojschelach, Schlojmelach,
Eugen wie gliehende Keulelach.
[Under the green trees
sit the little Solomons and Moseses,
eyes like glowing coalses.]
Note, they’re sitting! They don’t romp about under the green trees. If they were romping, then the rhythm of the line would be as jaunty as it first appears. But then, little Jewish boys don’t go in for romping much.
I heard the old song sung by the city of Jerusalem, so melancholy that the pain of it blows right across Europe far into the East, through Spain, Germany, France, Holland — the whole bitter route taken by the Jews. Jerusalem sings:
Kim, kim Jisruleki l aheim
in dein teures Land arain.
[Come, come, Jerusalemer, come home
to your beloved homeland.]
All the merchants understood it. The little people had stopped drinking beer and eating sausages. In this way they were prepared for the fine, serious, occasionally difficult, and sometimes abstract poetry of the great Hebrew poet Bialik,§ whose songs have been translated into most major languages. They are said to have given a new impetus to the transformation of written Hebrew into a living language. This poet has the wrath of the old prophets and the sweetness of the crowing child.
PARIS
1.
It wasn’t easy for Eastern Jews to make their way to Paris. Brussels and Amsterdam were both far more obvious destinations. The Jewish gem trade goes to Amsterdam. A few reduced and a few aspiring Jewish gem dealers found themselves compelled to remain on French-speaking territory.
The little Eastern Jew has a somewhat exaggerated fear of a completely foreign language. German is almost a mother tongue to him: He would far rather go to Germany than France. The Eastern Jew has a wonderful ear for foreign languages, but his pronunciation is never perfect. It is always possible to pick him out. It’s a sound instinct on his part that warns him against the Romance languages.
But even sound instincts may be mistaken. Eastern Jews live almost as well in Paris as God in France.¶ No one prevents them from having their own businesses, and there are even whole ghettoes here. There are several Jewish quarters in Paris, around Montmartre and close to the Bastille. They are some of the oldest parts of Paris. They are some of the oldest buildings in Paris, with some of the lowest rents. Unless they are very rich, Jews do not like spending their money on “pointless” luxuries.
There are some quite superficial reasons why it should be easier for them in Paris. Their faces do not give them away. Their vivacity does not attract notice. Their sense of humor meets that of the French part way. Paris is a real metropolis. Vienna used to be one. Berlin will one day become one. A real metropolis is objective. Of course it has its prejudices too, but no time to indulge them. In the Vienna Prater there is almost no hint of anti-Semitism, in spite of the fact that not all the visitors are fond of Jews, and they find themselves cheek by jowl with some of the most Eastern of Eastern Jews. And why not? Because people enjoy themselves in the Prater. In the Taborstrasse, on the way back from the Prater, the anti-Semite begins to feel anti-Semitic again. There’s no fun to be had on the Taborstrasse.
There’s no fun in Berlin. But fun rules in Paris. In Paris crude anti-Semitism is confined to the joyless, to the royalists, the group around the Action française. I am not surprised that the royalists are without influence in France, and will remain so. They are not French enough. They have too much pathos and not enough irony.
Paris is objective, though objectivity may be a German virtue. Paris is democratic. The German perhaps has warmth. But in Paris there is a great tradition of practical humanity. Paris is where the Eastern Jew begins to become a Western European. He becomes French. He may even come to be a French patriot.
2.
The Eastern Jews’ bitter existential struggle against “papers” is less intense in Paris. The police are benignly remiss. They are more responsive to the individual case and to personal circumstances. The German police tend to think in terms of categories. The Parisian policeman is open to persuasion. It is possible to register in Paris without first experiencing three or four rebuffs.
Eastern Jews are allowed to live as they please in Paris. They may send their children to Jewish schools or French. The Paris-born children of Eastern Jews may acquire French citizenship. France needs inhabitants. It seems to be positively its duty to be underpopulated, and forever to stand in need of new inhabitants, and to make foreigners into Frenchmen. In that lies both its strength and its weakness.
Admittedly there is anti-Semitism in France, even outside royalist circles. But it is not one hundred proof. Eastern Jews, accustomed to a far stronger, cruder, more brutal anti-Semitism, are perfectly happy with the French version of it.
And why not? They enjoy religious, cultural, and national rights. They are allowed to speak Yiddish as loudly and as much as they like. They are even allowed to speak bad French without incurring hostility. The consequence of such leniency is that they learn French, and that their children no longer speak Yiddish. At most they still understand it. In the streets of the Jewish quarter of Paris, I was amused to hear the parents speaking Yiddish, and the children replying in French — French answers to Yiddish questions. The children are gifted. They will make something of them selves in France, if God wills. And it seems to me, he does.
The Jewish bars in the Hirtenstrasse in Berlin are sad, cool, and quiet. Jewish establishments in Paris are merry, warm, and noisy. They all do a thriving business. I sometimes eat at Monsieur Weingrod’s. He does an excellent roast goose. He distills a good, strong schnapps. He entertains his customers. He says to his wife: “Get me the account book, s’il vous plaît.” And his wife says: “It’s on the table, si vous voulez!” They speak a truly wonderful melange.
I asked Monsieur Weingrod: “How did you come to be in Paris?” And Monsieur Weingrod replied: “Excusez, Monsieur, why not to Paris? In Russia they throw me out, in Poland they lock me up, in Germany they give me no visa. Why should I not come to Paris, hein?”