Black on White

A great Jewish motion picture will be produced one of these days. Its making holds a thrilling opportunity for some group of Jews with the imagination and the means to carry it through. It will immortalize the names of its sponsors. It will meet a deep craving in every Jewish heart. And its appeal will be so intense and prolonged that it will, in the long run, pay for itself manifold.

I begin in this vein of advertising “teaser” because I, personally should like to see that film produced. I know that millions of others, once they envison the idea, will wish for it too. The theme, moreover, is so universally interesting that millions of non-Jews will find it, if less poignant and intimate, no less fascinating.

A PERENNIAL SEARCH

Let me begin in Central Asia: in places like Tashkent, Samarkand, Boukhara. My erudite neighbor across the aisle here, Boris Smolar, was with me and a group of other journalists some years ago. Wherever we arrived in that exotic region, Smolar would be off on a personal errand. It was always the same errand: he was looking for the local Jews. His quest for Jews has become internationally famous. Two gifted Soviet writers, Ilf and Petrov, in their satire “The Little Golden Calf,” now translated into many languages, described Smolar and his persistent hunt for Jews.

The interesting part of the story, for you and for me, is that Smolar always did find them. However distant and curious the town, always the sons and daughters of Israel were there, had been there for thousands of years, living a life outwardly like that of their neighbors but under the surface utterly different, suffused by the Hebraic spirit, stamped by the unique destiny of our people.

ALWAYS FIRST THOUGHT

Smolar’s quest, though partly professional, was none the less typical of all Jews who travel. Wherever they alight, their first thoughts are: do Jews live here and how do they live? Their first wish is to seek out the Jewish locality, whether in civilized Europe or Asiatic backwaters or Oceanic islands. In Paris or Rome or Samarkand or Teheran, I, too, sought out the Jewish quarter on my first visit.

And Jews who do not travel make the same quest. In their reading, in talking to people returned from distant parts, they want always to know how Jews elsewhere live. With their mind’s eye they see the Jews in Eastern Europe and Ireland and Morocco and China and the South Seas and Palestine. They marvel at Jews so diverse in language and custom and history and social status—yet bound together by a common racial thread as tough as leather.

AS FOR THE FILM

Having said this much, perhaps it is no longer necessary to outline the film which I dream. It would be a super-travelogue, taking the audience clear around the world, wherever the seed of Israel is planted. Everywhere it would show Jews in their homes, their houses of prayer, their places of work. Everywhere it would reveal the Hebraic spark and how it is being kept alive through the ages under the alluvial deposits of local custom and historical accident.

I have a name for that picture, too. I plagiarize it from a brilliant Jewish painter, Lionel S. Reiss. Like all other Jews, the quest of Israel on the face of the earth fascinated him and he tried to record it in paint and on copperplate. He called his search “In the Footsteps of the Wandering Jew.” And that is the perfect title for my projected film. The motion picture camera and sound apparatus, in the proper hands, can achieve the objective more expeditiously and effectively than even painting or engraving.

POT OF GOLD WAITING

Such a film, I am sure, would do marvels in giving Jews the world over an awareness of the romance and grandeur and significance of our race. It would translate into tangible terms of sight and sound those vague nostalgias which are part of our heritage.

The audience for this picture will be almost inexhaustible. Intelligently edited, it will be more truly exciting than any synthetic Hollywood product. Whoever sponsors and finances it will be richly rewarded. Whoever carries it through will live through an unprecedented adventure, and those who see the picture will share it. Together they will have followed the footsteps of the Wandering Jew through all the five continents.