We were walking up the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery. Our Good Will Pilgrimage, consisting of Father Riggs, Doctor Clinchy and myself, was about to address a special joint session of both Houses of the Alabama Legislature. I inquired how this invitation happened to be offered. For Alabama, as I recalled, had not always been the most tolerant State in the Union. Its present Governor, Bibb Graves, ran in his first campaign on the Ku Klux Klan ticket, and was elected. My companion replied that Senator Hodges of Fayette had introduced the resolution to invite us and had secured its adoption. I expressed a desire to meet this broad-minded Alabama legislator.
“There he is,” said my friend, “waiting to greet us.”
I quickly thought of what I would say to this distinguished Southern gentleman. I wondered whether to call him “Cuhnel” and to discuss the greatness of Robert E. Lee. Should I praise the beauty and purity of Southern womanhood or pay tribute to the heroism of his people in the War Between the States (fortunately I remembered it is not called the Civil War down there)? By this time we had reached the Senator, a well set up man of about fifty.
“Senator Hodges,” said my friend, “I have the honor to present Rabbi Bernstein.”
“Sholom Aleichem,” said the Senator.
“Aleichem Sholom,” I responded, rather weakly.
“I’m a Litvak,” said the Senator.
“Kovno?” I asked.
“No—Suvalki,” he replied.
“How did you get the name Hodges?”
“It was Choydesh and I changed it to Hodges. What’s the difference, Choydesh or Hodges, so long as you make a living and you bring ### your children to be good Jews?”
By this time I had regained my composure sufficiently to make some inquiries about the Senator. It appears that he is the only Jew in Fayette County. Thirty years ago when as a green immigrant he was peddling, he came upon this little town and liked it. To it he brought his bride and there they settled and raised a family. He opened a little dry goods store and prospered. The hill billies liked him even though they laughed at his foreign ways. He was honest, decent and kindly, and with the passing of years won for himself a vast host of friends.
Once, before election time, some of these friends urged him to run for the Legislature. He laughed at the though of an immigrant Jew representing Fayette County. But they prevailed on him—and he made a friendly campaign and was elected by an unprecented majority. Each election he is returned by ever greater majority.
Senator Hodges of Alabama!
People go to Mexico to see Popocatapetl, bull fights, and the frescoes of Diego Rivera. Of the snow-capped mountain I could not get enough; of the slaughter of bulls for amusement—a little was too much; meeting Diego Rivera was a great experience.
The foremost mural painter of our time lives in a gaily colored modernistic house in the fashionable San Angel suburb of Mexico City. He told me that he had reduced about 100 pounds in the last year; he now weighs a mere 250. He speaks English fluently and colorfully, and he loves to talk. Here are some of the sparks that flew from his anvil.
Henry Ford, he thinks, is the greatest artist in America. Only the intellectual regards an automobile factory as messy or unpleasant; the worker knows what a thing of beauty it really is. The Ford plant is a masterpiece.
Stuart Chase, whose book on Mexico he illustrated, is a nice man, but doesn’t know much about Mexico. When he wrote the book, he was thoroughly disillusioned with American industrial civilization, then in the worst throes of depression, and he became enamoured of the simple agricultural life of the Indian. Had he learned a little more about the Indian, said Rivera, he would have realized how profoundly impoverished and miserable he really is. The only hope for the Indian is industrial civilization, but socially owned.
The present Mexican government, Rivera says, is Socialist in name only. In reality, it is the police agent of Wall Street. Only Communism will redeem Mexico. But not the Communism of the Third Internationale. For that, he thinks, has also sold out to Wall Street. Rivera is a Trotzkyist; that is, he believes in World Revolution. For this, the Russian Communists who are ready to make bargins with Wall Street in order to promote the success of the Russian experiment, have expelled him from the party.
He refused to ocmpromise in the Rockefeller Center controversy, not because of principle, but to advance the Revolution. If he had deleted Lenin’s face, it would have made no essential difference in the picture. But then only a relatively small number of people would see the picture and learn of his views. If he refused to do it, a controversy would arise; the press would be full of it, and a hundred million people would be exposed to his Communistic ideas. He would gladly destroy all of his paintings if that would hasten by a day the coming of the Revolution.
While discussing the Jewish question in Mexico, he told me some interesting and little known facts about himself. His grandfather was a Spanish nobleman who participated in an unsuccessful Revolution, and fled to Mexico. There he met and married a Portuguese Jewess. Their son was a mining engineer and an educator of the Indians. He married a Mexican woman, half Spanish and half Indian. Diego was the product of this union.
“Does your Jewish descent mean anything to you?” I asked.
“My Jewishness is the dominant element in my life,” he replied. “Wherever I have gone, I have acknowledged myself a Jew. Whatever disabilities our people have suffered, I have experienced with them. From this has come my sympathy with the downtrodden masses which motivates all of my work.”
Amazing people—these Jews.
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.
