The B'nai B'rith magazine · 1927-07-01 · 10 (7.1927) · p. Seite 432

432 B'NAI B'RITH MAGAZINE mantilla over their heads, threw out their hands in an imaginary caress, and kissed the tips of their fingers. The assistant cantor blew the Shofar with ease and vigour, and also with unusual rapidity, which was due to his . reading the notes himself instead of having them called out by his colleague. He had scarce concluded the last blast when there was a cry and a disturbance. A man had fallen in a fainting fit and was immediately lifted up and taken out into the fresh air. My neighbor, glad to welcome a stranger, told me that this was the only synagogue in the city, and that the Jewish community had grown, since the war, owing to the arrival of many Jews from the other side of the Mediterranean as well as in smaller numbers, from Russia and Poland. The community followed the Portuguese rite, to which the immigrants from Eastern Europe could not easily adapt themselves, and the latter, therefore, were allowed to hold a service of their own in the vestry-room. Would I like to see it? The Ashkenazi congregation was a typical Polish Chevrah. There were about three dozen men and women, with a sprinkling of children, in a small room entered from the courtyard. The door was wide open owing to the heat. The worshippers were following listlessly the fervid roulades of an amateur precentor, and every now and then one of them would walk out to cool his perspiring brow. I looked on from the doorway, restrained from entering by the oppressive atmosphere, when suddenly I perceived my old man of the previous day. He came shuffling out with heavy tread. "Shalom!" I greeted him. "Whence comes a Jew?" "From Berditchev," he replied wearily. "From a land of misery and bondage, where Jews are treated as in Egypt in olden times." "And wohin?" I asked. "Only the Most High knows," he said wistfully. "I have five children in different parts of the world, and I am waiting for the means to go and join one of them. I have one son in Chicago, another in Buenos Aires, a daughter in Montreal, a fourth son in Johannesburg, and a fifth in Erez Israel. I have written to all of them to send me money to buy a shipping ticket, so that I can go away from here. Whichever child sends me the money first, to that land I shall go. At present I know not whether I am going to the east or to the west, or to the south— or how long I have yet to remain here." "And is it all the same to you to what land you go?" I asked. "What a question," he answered, in a tone of righteous reproach. "The nea'rest land is to me also the dearest. I always dream that my son in Rishonle-Zion will come to my help first." "May your dream soon come true," I said. The piercing blast of the Shofar resounded through the courtyard, and the old man shuffled back to resume his prayers. Juan-Les-Pins \ /fIDWAY between the fashionable attractions of Cannes and Nice there has sprung up of recent years on the Rivera a pleasure resort which basks just as freely in the burning sunshine, but which can be frequented even by those who do not belong to the plutocracy. It abounds in pine trees, which have given it part of its distinctive name, but whether it is called Juan by reason of the legendary sojourn in its vicinity of Don Juan, or the actual presence in its midst of some modern disciples of that amorous adventurer, is a problem that I cannot undertake to solve. As one surveys the happy, laughing crowd on the beach, some plashing in the shimmering waters, and others disporting their bronzed bodies on the golden sand, one would think that this was the last place in the world where one would hear an echo of the Judenschmerz, or be tempted to discuss any phase of the complicated Jewish question. And yet it was in these exhilarating surroundings that I came into contact with a personage whose career exemplified some of the hardships and paradoxes of Jewish life. She was a young woman who came down to the beach every morning with a novel of Marcel Proust in the original, over which she pored, through smoked glasses, with religious devotion. That in itself, and on that particular shore, would not have aroused either my curiosity or my notice. But she spoke with an unmistakable American accent, and that was sufficient to mark her out as a rare phenomenon, for even if it were usual for an American woman to read Proust in French, it is certainly uncommon for her to stay in any place on the Continent for more than forty-eight hours. And this American lady, so I heard, had already been here over a month, as the scorched skin of her arms and neck testified only too well. But as soon as conversation was started, after the unconventional preliminaries of strand etiquette, I was surprised to find that sne was not a real American after all. "I have lived in America ever since I was a little child," she said: "That accounts for my accent." "But aren't you an American citizen?" I asked. "I was," she replied hesitatingly. "But what I am now I really cannot say." After a little diplomatic maneuvering she became somewhat more communicative. "The fact is, I was born in Kharkoff of Jewish parents. I was married to an American and left New York with an American passport. But as I didn't get my passport renewed within twelve months after leaving the States it is no longer valid." "But how does that deprive you of your American citizenship?" I urged. There was a momentary embarrassment, and then the explanation was vouchsafed. She had divorced her husband some months ago, and that act, together with the expiration of her passport, had deprived her for the nonce of citizenship and of all political protection. She could not resume her Russian nationality, for she had no birth-certificate to attest her origin, nor could she speak a single word of the tongue of her native land. She was, in fact, an outlaw. She laughed as though she had not a care in the world, and yet her position was embarrassing. She could not go back to the country in which she had spent the greater part of her life and which had moulded her into her present personality. Nor, without a passport, could she go to any other country. She could not obtain such a document from the Soviet Government without some proof that she was entitled to it, and if she did obtain it and wished to return to America she would be subject to the Russian quota fixed by the American Government and have to wait years before her turn came. "What about Palestine?" she asked, with a flash of hope. "I confess that I am not a nationalist, but then—you understand." "I am afraid that to go there you must also have a passport, even if it's only a Nansen passport, which is given to refugees." "But I'm not a refugee," she said despairingly. "I'm only an outlaw." And she sought distraction in the enthralling pages of Marcel Proust.