“Shall a man be proud h### Jew, an Eskimo, or a Basque? ### Louis Golding, author of “Mag### Street,” in an article entitled “I ### a Jew,” in the Glasgow News. “S### he be ashamed?” he queries.
Mr. Golding answers by saying He may as well be proud or ashame# that the color of the grass is gre## that the number of his fingers ### each hand is five. Let him be gla### or sorry. These are distinctly mo### philosophical conditions. The col# of the grass might have been pin# which would have been trying. Fourteen difficult to negotiate. So mig## I intelligently be glad or sorry I a# a Jew. But proud? As##amed?### to!”
He has pity for the Jew who see ### to escape his Jewishness. Mr. Golding stresses the point that he cannot escape; he will instead “breed co#plexes and have to journey to V#enna to resolve them.”
Analyzing the Jew, the author# “Magnolia Street” feels that the Jewish soul may be conquered and ### mind drugged, but “it is the Jew the marrow that persists.”
“The Jew in the marrow,” he continues. “I do not think I should ### if, resolving that homely and intel#gible word into its equivalent in t### Viennese jargon, I should call it t### Jew in the subconscious.”
Glad that he is a Jew because ### main ambition is to be a good arti## Mr. Golding declares that the “Jewish artist starts out rich, as no n### Jew does; he is no babe born in t### manger, but a king crowned on ### throne.” Commenting on the f### that so many Jews attempt the ###shionable sophistication of the G#tile movement and forswear ### wealth and variousness of the Jew### eternity,” he states that it is the t#gedy of the Jewish artist that he ### frequently and so strenuously s#jects his whole subsequent life t### deliberate self-impoverishment a## frustration.
“I start out with a subconsci# recollection of the highly comp#comedies and tragedies that were #acted by my ancestors, while th#ancestors (those of the non-Jewish### from generation to generation, p##formed the same stereotyped sa##veries and gratified the same unima##native time. It is a question also circumstance, of condition. The ###nese, in his integrity, has existed a considerably longer time than Jew, but though his subconsi# wisdom is more exquisite than Jew’s, it is not so profound. Jew since the Diaspora has not incidentally lived two lives. He ### the world’s supreme double-dea#“The Gentile lives in a to# which looks out upon the world ### way. The Jew lives in a tower ### looks out through two opposite ###dows simultaneously. He has ### at the back of his soul. It is ### that he must pay for his privil# frequently and heavily. I will expatiate, as I heartbreakingly mi# on that theme.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
