A universal art is impossible. Though we may keep on forever dreaming about a brotherhood of man, which should embrace the whole world of man, it must remain nothing but a chimera of the imagination. Internationalism is perhaps only a dream, and so far at least it has proven to be incompatible with the greatest creative manifestation.

The Jewish people, dispersed all over the globe, have lived a fragmentary life everywhere. To the creation of something organic in the field of art and literature, one must bring to bear a personality whole in its nature. The average Jew has gone to school in many nations and has not had the opportunity of being the product of a single influence. He has imbided, let us say, something of his own culture, something of the trends of thought, past and present, of the European peoples; if he be a resident of America, he is an American, to 2boot. He has become, therefore, all in all a cosmopolite being, which is to say that he has become not a single but whole personality, but a link of many fragments. If born with a gift for seeing things whole, he, nevertheless, remains a patched-up individual in the end, in that he is taught to think now in the one, now in the other medium.

We believe and we have some grounds for believing that the Jewish people is a gifted people. We believe this to be true not only of the past, but also of the present. Unlike some peoples, like the Greeks who live on their past reputation, the Jewish people have done sufficient creative work to entitle us to a place in the sun of the present. We have been a nervous, passionate, and ubiquitous people. We have fought for spiritual equality in every clime, in every atmosphere, under the most diverse and difficult conditions. We have overcome obstacles that would have halted the advance of other peoples. We have, so to speak, not only built our barricades for purposes of defense, but we have also ascended our barricades and overleaped them for purposes of offense.

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This offense has not been of a military nature, of course, and, therefore, not of a destructive character. It has rather been an offense against the negative elements in nature and in life which have obstructed the development of forces working to the best interests of humanity. It is impossible that such a people should have its soil lie fallow and be unproductive.

It is our contention that the opposite is true; that what we need is but to overcome this fragmentary life of ours, to make our life whole, and to be unafraid of the traits characteristic of us. When we were truly our own in whole and not in part, we produced the Bible. We must be our own again. The lurid blackness and grime of the ghetto is not really ours. Ours is the warm blood of an eastern people, which has at the same time both the southern genius for vivid and concrete creation and at the same time the northern dynamic power for concentration and for detail. We can, therefore, create an art which should embody our characteristic traits. Though there is a deep underlying current of lyrical melancholy in the Jewish temperament, we are no pessimists. On the contrary, we have the optimism both of the dreamer who sees better visions for 4the future and of the practical-minded man who clambers up the mountain though the climbing is painful, full of obstacles, and at times almost impossible. The Jewish people have a strong will to live. If we had not possessed this trait, we would long ago have perished as a people. These are qualities of pregnant value to a development of the arts. The dominant trait of Russian music is its emotional expression. In that respect we are much akin to the Russian people. Jewish genius in the plastic arts has shown an almost abnormal interest in color. It is far from being pale and vague in its work; it has made its characters burst out of the canvas with an almost three-dimensional life. Our melancholy is intense, and one that pulsates with life. There is a harshness in our makeup too which has its merits for art purposes. It has the expression of a people with strong reactions to their environment. There is a sculptural projection in this trait. In music, it gives us an element of solidity, which helps us even in the expression of a mere emotion. Instead of sounding hollow and appearing to be a music without content, it has a tone of concrete realism which makes the music solid and almost graspable.

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Then too our emotion is not vague but picturesque. The fevered life of the ghetto may under present conditions be something of an unhealthy life, but it is characteristic of the people who are restive and taut to do things. The Jewish imagination is strong with local color. There is no mind more universal than ours, but we combine with this type of mind a strong interest in realism, which we find immediately about us. Our life is lurid only in the sense that we have lacked opportunity. We are always, as a matter of fact, striving to escape the gloom surrounding us. We are always stretching out toward the larger world outside. We are always looking to escape from our own milieu.

We have not done the creative work we are capable of doing solely because we have led a fragmentary life; we have been a house divided against itself. We have submerged our individuality in a life alien to our individuality, with the result that we have been trying to act a role unsuited to us. Everyone realizes the absurdity of an actor playing a part unsuited to him. A debutante could hardly play the role of a grandmother, and the man who plays Hamlet could hardly make a success as a vaudevillian. We have been trying to 6play different parts at different theaters. As a matter of fact, there is only one theater that is our own. The sooner we will cease trying the imitation of art models foreign to our temperament and mentality, the sooner will we be able to give expression to the temperament and mentality we can actually call our own. In the eighteenth century, Jean Jacques Rousseau created the slogan, "back to nature". This has been a watchword of inestimable worth since. Some romanticists may have gone too far with their fine frenzies; nevertheless, their contribution was of genuine worth. We must make a slogan of significance to us. We must resurrect an ancient principle that has become very true in our case. We must be true to ourselves. Only by being true to ourselves, can we be genuinely creative. Creation implies sincerity. We have meant to be sincere, but with foreign trappings we cannot possibly represent our part truly. Our trappings must be wholly our own. We must be ourselves.