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No. 16. | Vienna, 19 April 1900. | Fourth Year

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"Le Juif Polonais."

By O. Erter.

A tale by the well-known Alsatian twin-star of letters, Erckmann-Chatrian, the composition of which already lies three decades back, has furnished the title "Le Juif Polonais" to an opera by Camille Erlanger, which was performed in Paris a few days ago. We intend here neither to offer a belated literary appreciation of the old tale, nor a timely musical one of the newest opera. We follow merely a suggestion given by the title, in reflecting a little upon how greatly the fine arts and the literature of all highly civilised peoples have of late occupied themselves with us Jews, and how little has come of it for us.

In the new Erlanger opera "Le Juif Polonais," which, as has been said, borrows its libretto from the Erckmann-Chatrian tale, the "Polish Jew" is not an acting person, but a victim. He is not seen upon the stage, for he was murdered before the action begins, for the sake of his heavy money-belt, by the innkeeper Mathis. One sees only the latter, who has fared well all this while upon his victim's money, until in the memory of the people, and of his own household too, the recollection of the long-forgotten story of the Jew's murder suddenly revives and stirs up the innkeeper's conscience, so that he can no longer be rid of the Jew's spectre and perishes miserably of the fear of discovery, of the terror of bloody dreams, of the torture of frightful visions.

At the time when the Erckmann-Chatrian tale had a large circle of readers, cosmopolitanism was uppermost, and cosmopolitanism, which let the banner of humanity flutter above its head, had a certain sentimental tolerance to spare for the Jews as well. Men read Spindler's novel "Der Jude"; they went to the theatre to see the noble Jew in Cumberland's play; they admired the great Jewish picture of the Düsseldorf painter Bendemann. The seeds of assimilation were strewn abroad in that time. Men felt pity for the Jew of the Alsatian tale, who was set upon, robbed and murdered on the high road in a winter's night, and did not grudge the innkeeper Mathis, the villainous murderer, the ghastly retribution which his own conscience exacted of him. Since assimilation has proved a delusion, and cosmopolitanism a fair, iridescent soap-bubble, there is an end of all that sentimental Jewish spectre-play in art and literature; the "Juif Polonais" is a ghost of the day before yesterday. The Jews themselves no longer wish to see the noble Jew upon the stage, for they fear it might be paid back to them that anyone should dare to set a decent Jew upon the boards like any other decent human being; and indeed no one does them the favour of dragging them on to the scene otherwise than in caricature.

In other words: it is a culpable anachronism to believe that pity, interest and human sympathy are still to be awakened for the "Juif Polonais." We do not say this in order to complain of it or to lament over it. We merely record a change. And in recording it we have also already explained it. The fatal error of assimilation lay in the confusion of pity with right. Pity may be granted us, if men will; right we may demand, because as men we have a claim to it. What was granted to assimilation was pity under the semblance of right — that is to say, something revocable. This semblance of right was scattered to the winds as soon as men were no longer disposed to pity. And therewith everything was at one stroke in fact revoked which the assimilated, or those greedy for assimilation, had accepted as right. That is the situation of to-day. The forms of the so-called emancipation of the Jews still subsist, but they have no content any more. The Jew — even the most advanced in culture and the most penetrated by modern ideas, the Jew in Germany, in France — is, according to his actual position in the state as in society, the "Juif Polonais," however fully he has proved for half a century past his complete capacity for