This week we present another Jew’s comment on his race and for the good of the race. Bert Levy has said these things before Jewish Women’s Councils, and B’nai B’rith lodges, and they will assist readers of this series to an understanding of some of the truer, though minority, influences which are at work in American Jewry. He sincerely exposes every obvious defect, and it is to be hoped that one day, with as sincere a pen, he will go deeper. Mr. Levy’s chosen title is:
FOR THE GOOD OF THE RACE
From a far-off land I came, a sad-eyed, pale-faced, poetic young Jew, with an unspeakable love of my people burning in my heart. Of Polish-Russian parentage, there was implanted in my nature an indefinable sorrow (born perhaps of my father’s and mother’s persecution), which left me high-strung and sensitive to the anti-Semitic taunts of my schoolmates.
Given to idle dreaming by some old abandoned shaft or roaming the deserted alluvial diggings of the little mining town of my youth, I would conjure up visions of that new world I had so often read about—that great country where there was no prejudice against my race—the New Jerusalem.
Shyly hugging to my breast some borrowed American book or magazine I would seek the shadows of the huge decaying poppet legs and dream over the pages containing many Jewish faces, and I read with pride and gratitude of the high places occupied by my people in music, art, literature and the drama. Filled with Jewish names and good Jewish