Page images
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][merged small][merged small][graphic][merged small][merged small][merged small]

- 411

414

JEWISH DREAMERS IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES

RECENT ADDITIONS TO THE PRINT COLLECTION
CENSUS OF FIFTEENTH CENTURY BOOKS OWNED IN AMERICA - PART IV. 417

[blocks in formation]

PRINTED AT THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

form p-s vil-12-18 14c)

BULLETIN

OF THE

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

VOLUME 22

JULY 1918

NUMBER 7

JEWISH DREAMERS IN THE PUBLIC LIBRARIES

BY RUEBEN BRAININ

N 42nd Street and 5th Avenue you can meet and study the most

[ocr errors]

remarkable types of Jewish idealists, dreamers and visionaries. They are men of whom the wide Jewish world knows very little, and the Christian world knows nothing. They were never depicted in the stories and sketches from New York Jewish life, although they are the most interesting and the most remarkable in our midst. These are the dreamers of the Ghetto, which even Israel Zangwill never described and never characterized.

I say that you will meet and study them in the great public library. It is not, however, easy to make their acquaintance, for these book people -book gluttons have withdrawn into an inner world. They scrupulously hide from the outer world their idealism, their dreams and visions. They guard themselves against coming in direct contact with the street and its coarse realities. Their entire life is a living protest against materialism, against the dollar cult. You have to spend time to gain their confidence. When they enter into conversation with you they talk no idle gossip. They will debate on things that matter; on philosophy, on the far future of mankind, on the still unborn art, and on the literature that is to be.

I know many of the zealous visitors of the public library, some of them quite young men, others middle aged, and yet others old men - but they have all young souls and childish, naive hearts. A good many of

them work in stores and factories. After their day's work they repair to the library and only leave it when the lights are turned out.

On Saturday afternoon and the whole day Sunday you will find them there. All professions are represented by these visitors. I know a few of them who are waiters, a number of peddlers and some men of indefinite professions. Their requirements are reduced to a minimum. They need very little. You will find them in the Russian Department, in the Reference Room, and in the Jewish Department.

Most of them are devouring the latest literature and scientific works. With extreme impatience they look for the last Russian or Hebrew periodical. They swallow every new word. They seek everywhere the modern, the revolutionary, in the spiritual world. They were the first readers of the world-famous novel "Jean Christophe," by the French poet and thinker, Romaine Rolland. They were the first readers of the epochmaking novel the "Tunnel," by Kellerman. They sense the future. They were the first worshippers at the shrine of the Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore.

These library frequenters read for the sake of reading. They have no ulterior aim. Just as in former days Jews used to study the Talmud, simply for the sake of study. They make no practical use of their reading.

1 know some of them who for years and years have been cherishing the hidden thought of becoming writers. They still diligently gather material for a great epoch-making work. But years pass, and the work is not created. Some of them grow old gathering notes, quotations

Many of them dream of a They live outside of space

for their works, which will never come out. new world-religion, of a new world order. and outside of time. The noisy life of New York, the hustle and bustle of the East Side does not affect them.

I know one of them who has for years been gathering facts in the Fifth Avenue Library for a book showing that the entire Darwinian theory is to be found in the Bible and the Talmud; that Herbert Spencer has copied from the "Guide of the Perplexed" of Maimonides, that Oscar Wilde has borrowed from the Zohar. And they sincerely believe that their discovery will take the world by surprise.

I know another one who has for the last fifteen years studied the literature of Shakespeare. He knows all his dramas almost by heart. He is acquainted with every Shakespearian version. No other books interest him. No world-event can tear him away from Shakespeare.

This is his Bible and his religion. Hunger, cold, life in a cellar are trifles in comparison with a new commentary on a phrase of Hamlet. All catastrophes of the world, even the world-war, are the result of men not being acquainted with the creations of Shakespeare. Shakespeare is his panacea, his radical remedy for all present and future ills of mankind.

I know one of these whose idol is Emerson. There is nothing in the literature of the world to rival this writer. Emerson is the incarnation of the real American spirit. Because European countries did not have an Emerson, they are barbaric states. They have no culture. He has no money to purchase the works of Emerson, but he has time. So he has rewritten in his own hand-writing the entire edition of this American thinker. It took him some three years to complete the work.

Another of these dreamers is of the firm belief that Yiddish literature will conquer the world literature. All universities of Europe and America will found colleges for Yiddish. The late Bovshover is much deeper and finer than Shelley; Peretz is certainly stronger and more poetical than Byron; Shomer, of greater importance than Dickens. It is vain to argue with him. He reads nay, he studies-old back numbers of the New York Jewish papers, whether existing or defunct.

[ocr errors]

Many of these people would have left New York, for there are better opportunities for them in the provinces. In New York they are lonesome, forsaken, without friends or relatives; in the provinces they have brothers, parents. It is the Fifth Avenue Library that keeps them riveted to New York. They cannot part with it. They cannot live without it. It is their temple. They come there with reverence. They look contemptuously on all who pass by this temple where the greatest spirits of all nations and all ages are preserved, and where one forgets the miseries and the worries of the petty life of today.

- From the "American Weekly Jewish News" for April 12, 1918. (All Rights Reserved)

« PreviousContinue »