Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative. Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.–Editor.]

The Habima theatre, which arrived in this country yesterday, has been a topic of discussion in the American press.

The New York "Times," in a recent issue, carried an article by H. I. Brock, remarking, inter alia:

"The Habima is an entirely new phenomenon even in this city with so large a Jewish population. For the first time in this field, at least, Jewish art appears as such. To be sure, the Jewish Theatre–the Habima-comes out of Russia, and to be sure also, it has grown up more or less under the artistic guidance of Constantine Stanislavsky and the Moscow Art Theatre. But the impulse, the material and the inspiration go far back of the period of Stanislavsky’s tutelage-back to 1907, when a company of Jewish players was formed in Bialystock by a young actor named N. L. Zemach, who is the present head of the organization.

"This Summer found the company playing at the Theatre Madeleine in Paris and winning extraordinary commendation from the discriminating. It appeared to the cosmopolitan audiences who saw their performances in Paris, and to the French and visiting critics, that these people had something real to show-that the outside world was be holding a genuine Jewish theatre with a distinctive art and quality-with a religious mood informing the entire performance."

URGES J. D. C. COLONIZE POLISH JEWS

That the salvation of Polish Jewry, whose situation is as bad as that of Russian Jewry, lies in colonization and that the Joint Distribution Committee should turn its attention to this form of assistance to the Polish Jews, is the conviction expressed in the "Jewish Morning Journal" by Jacob Fishman.

"The Russian colonization has diverted attention from the catastrophic condition of the Polish Jews," we read. "It is now obvious that they have realized that the only way to get the attention of the American relief is to start a colonization movement. Is it necessary to say that the Polish Jews must be helped in their colonization work as well as the Russian Jews? If land settlement is the only way to save the Russian Jews it is also the only way to save the Polish Jews.

"Jewish public opinion will demand that the Joint Distribution Committee show as much interest in the colonization work of the Jews in Poland as in that of the Jews in Russia. Of course, an investigation of the possibilities for such an enterprise in Poland will have to be carried out first and we hope that the Joint Distribution Committee will undertake the work at once in order to prove that it is not more indifferent to the plight of Polish Jewry than to that of Russian Jewry."