Second, the Jews may be credited also with having introduced Oriental sensuality to the American stage. Not even the most ardent Jewish defender will deny this, for the thing is there, before the eyes of all who will see. Little by little the mark of the filthy tide has risen against the walls of the American Theater until now it is all but engulfed. It is a truism that there is more unrefined indecency in the higher class theaters today than was ever permitted by the police in the burlesque houses. The lower classes must be restrained in the vicarious exercise of their lower natures, apparently, but the wealthier classes may go the limit. The price of the ticket and the “class” of the playhouse seems to make all the difference in the world between prohibited and permissible evil.
In New York, where Jewish managers are thicker than they ever will be in Jerusalem, the limit of the¬ atrical adventuresomeness into the realm of the for¬ bidden is being pushed further and further. Last season’s spectacle of “Aphrodite” seemed to be delib¬ erately designed as a frontal attack on the last en¬ trenched scruple of moral conservatism. The scenes are most Oriental in their voluptuous abandonment. Men in breech-clouts, leopard skins and buckskins,