Studies of Leading American Jews is the Subject of New Book

A book which is intriguing many circles among American Jews was published this week by Brentano’s under the title “Jews Are Like That.”

Under the sub-caption “Semitic Silhouettes,” the author, who hides himself behind the name “Analyticus,” attempts to give an estimate and description of the lives and work of Louis D. Brandeis, Henry Morgenthau, Louis Lipsky, Stephen S. Wise, Ludwig Lewisohn, Felix Adler, Aaron Sapiro, Louis Marshall, and Nathan Straus.

In his introduction, the anonymous author, referring to the American background and its relation to the Jew asserts: “He is the most assimilated and assimilating being on the American scene–and still an alien being. Passionately, at times pathetically, anxious to ‘belong’–his clothes, his books, his beard, his diet, his mind have been refashioned to suit American conditions and conventions. He will not, he wills not to be different.

“Superficially he has succeeded. Basically he has failed. For his important and growing share in the nationa’s industry, in its politics, in its sports, in its education, in its culture, do not obscure the fact that into all these spheres the Jew has brought a quality and a flavot uniquely his. American to his fingertips, he remains inwardly and profoundly, an alien, the exotic, the unconquerable Jew. Not inquisition, nor pale, nor pogrom revealed the eternal Jew, as does the freedom to lose himself which in America is his–freedom which somehow, despite himself, he does not, cannot use.”

Various suppositions are current as to the identity of the author. The publishers issued a denial of a rumor that Felix Frankfurter, professor of law at Harvard, is the author, who treats some of the American Jewish leaders harshly in the book.

Another rumor, still unverified, has it that James Waterman Wise, son of Dr. Stephen S. Wise, is the author of the book.