As you know from my previous articles, our friend Ezer Gedaliah, the Galician-Jewish peanut vendor, is a devotee of the Jewish theater. There is no good play in the repertory of the Jewish theater that he has not read and there is no good Jewish actor whom he has not seen. You, therefore, can imagine how greatly disappointed he was when he could not attend the performance of Sholom Asch's macabre drama, "The Dead Man," which was presented last Monday night, at the Palace Theater, by the Dramatic Club, under the direction of Abraham Teitelbaum. Late Monday night, our friend Ezer Gedaliah went to the literary Kibitzarnia [Translator's note: Coined term to indicate gathering place of kibitzers]. There he heard diverse criticisms about the play, the players, the author, 2and everything else.

I hope that my one hundred thousand Jewish readers will not mind hearing "What the people say". We can learn a great deal more from the opinion of many people than from the opinion of one critic.

Our Ezer Gedaliah visited each table in the Kibitzarnia, questioned everyone who was sitting at the tables and listened to their comments. At the same time, he was doing a good business selling nuts (at five cents a small glass). Late at night he went away, a satisfied man.

Yesterday, early in the morning, our Ezer Gedaliah came into the editorial office, put down his basket of nuts in a corner, sat down at my desk, pulled a bunch of small pieces of paper out of his pocket, and said: "Mr. Shneur Zalman, please print these notes in the same order they are arranged here. Here are favorable and unfavorable reactions to 'The Dead Man,' The Dramatic 3Club, and Sholom Asch. The opinions are of interest--more or less. Here they are:

" 'The whole play is a piece of insolence and the acting is idiotic. The play has no plot, no movement; it is a piece of lyric poetry, but in spite of that, it makes one yawn. Most of the players in "The Dead Man" act as if they were made of wood; they aren't even able to tell a story. The decorations and music are O. K. but they are unnecessary, just as the dead body is superfluous.

" 'The play should have had four more months of rehearsals.'

" 'The play is very weak as a drama; it would have been better as a comedy.'

" 'Shakespeare presents a dead person for a moment only, but a Jew has to exaggerate.'

" 'The decorations are wonderful, the music is wonderful, but the play is 4no good and the acting is no good.'

" 'The play makes good reading for one who has time and is interested in spiritualism and poetry.'

" 'Beautiful nonsense.'

" 'A poetic, spiritualistic bore in three acts plus.' [Translator's note: It is not clear to me what that means.]

" 'I did not see the play and I do not want to see it. If you know a foreign language, you do not have to attend the Jewish theater. Most of the plays have been taken over, adopted, translated and patched up from other languages.'

" 'I have never experienced the feelings of a dead person and that is why I do not know about "The Dead Man". I do not trust even my own countryman 5Przybyszewski [in this matter] because he hasn't died yet.' [Translator's note: Przyebyszewski is a Polish writer.]

" 'The play is a remarkable piece of art. One has to be an aesthete to appreciate it. The masses are more cultured than the intelligentsia; they do not believe in death.'

" 'I like the play and I would like to see it performed by actors, not by amateurs, or worse than that.'

" 'Let me tell you, it is not bad.'

" 'A symbolic play. A man arrives from the other world and declaims poetry.'

" 'It is a pity they did not perform an autopsy upon the dead body; then he could not have been resurrected and we would not have had to see him.'

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" 'The play reads well; it is quite possible that it would have been a real failure, if good actors had performed in it.'

" 'The decorations by Ostrowski are excellent, but the uncultured masses say that the decorations for last year's play, "The Rabbi's Daughters," were much more beautiful and realistic.

" 'Teitelbaum in "The Dead Man" proved that he was an actor in the full meaning of the word, but he did not have a good supporting cast. Some fans of the Dramatic Club claim that if Ben Ami had played the role of the dead man, he would have been the right person for the right role.'

" 'There is only one man who could have played Teitelbaum's role and that is the "dead" Kaner whom Goulash, with a long knife in his hand, had chased down Grand Street, in an attempt to stab Kaner. Kaner had said that Adler was a bluffer and not an actor. Unfortunately, Kaner doesn't have a soldier's uniform, and is a minor poet.'

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" 'The only talented member of the Dramatic Club is [Morris] Mason. He plays the part of "Chonon" with discrimination. His intonation, diction, and language are good. He does not permit himself to be bluffed by a dead person. He wants, he says, to begin life anew. May he live one hundred and twenty years and play the part of "living" characters.'

" 'There was only one man who did not play his part correctly. That was the gravedigger who did not bury the corpse in "the mysterious wonderland" where the people have the patience to watch a macabre drama on an empty stomach.'

" 'One good thing can be said about the members of the Dramatic Club; they knew all the lines of the play by heart.'

" 'The mob scene was good. Proof of this was the fact that the audience laughed at the most tragic moments.'

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" 'I saw only the first act and I do not want to see the other acts because I am a living business man and dead people do not eat nuts.'

" 'I shrugged my shoulders, may we all know what misery is if we know whether Asch, himself, knows what he has written.'

" 'One thing is sure. "The Dead Man" will not be translated into a foreign language. It is not a "God of Vengeance" and the Gentiles cannot be shown, through [the dialogue of] a dead person the kind of brothels that Jews maintain. The Gentiles have plenty of spiritualist literature, and it is we who borrow from them.'

" 'In "The Dead Man," Sholom Asch has shown that he is a great poet and a keen observer of Jewish misery; he has shown that he is a Jew who can become enthusiastic about everything. He is the greatest word-artist in Jewish literature. Every artistic spark in our melancholy Jewish life is 9dear and important to him.'

" 'The Jewish public can get along very well without Asch, without his plays, and without the Dramatic Clubs.'

" 'Mm....Write literature for them, act naturally.....They should live so if they understand what is being written for them or why it is being played for them.'

" 'A remarkable theatrical work and remarkable acting--nothing like it has ever been seen in the Jewish theater.'

" 'It is nauseating.'

" 'I cannot critize Teitelbaum because I have never seen a soldier-corpse walking among the living and advising them how to live.'

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" 'The Dramatic Club members are ambitious boys, with a desire for something more beautiful, with a better understanding of life, with an enterprising spirit. Now they are going to show what they can do. Not only one dead man, but an entire cemetery will act for them.'

" 'The Hasidim ball that they gave was a farce. They attracted a crowd, begged three thousand dollars out of it, and gave nothing in return. Thanks to the financial success of the Hasidim ball, we now have dead people on the stage to teach the public how to live,instead of how to die--even wood alcohol can cause death.'

" 'Don't people go to the theatre? Wasn't the theatre crowded last Monday?'

" 'For weeks, larger crowds than that [at Monday night's performance of "The Dead Man"] came to see "Shmendrik," but, just the same, "Shmendrik" has not finished its run, just as "The Dead Man" will do soon.'

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" 'The mob is a fool. It becomes enthusiastic quickly and it cools off quickly. Whatever you may say about "The Dead Man," one thing is sure; the public that has seen it did not show any enthusiasm for it. The cold, scattered applause after the second act proved this.'

" 'Those who are God-anointed poets, are never understood.'

" 'A good play, but one cannot make a living out of it.'

" 'We are subject to the laws of the world we live in. If the people demand trash, we have to give it to them.'

" 'The genius of a woman is in her heart, and the genius of Jewish literature is in Sholom Asch.'

" 'The truth that a person does not understand is considered by him to be 12a fallacy. Those who have something against Sholom Asch do not understand him, and his art is meaningless to them.'

" 'I received a free pass to see the show, and, therefore, I would rather not express my honest opinion.'

" 'Never mind, I wish there were more plays like it, and more players whose purpose was much finer than that of politicians and beggars.'

" 'Anyway, it is much better to spend an evening among the Dramatic Club members than to wander around with a Galician Jew, and to make fun of everything and everybody.'

" 'I would rather read one phrase by Sholom Asch than ten newspaper articles.'

" 'The innocent laughter of a child is a thousand times sweeter and more 13bewitching than the politeness of a prince; and plain jokes told matter-of-factly, without any fuss, and love songs are more pleasing and more exciting than the (not to be compared) plays of some writers whose names I will not mention because the playwrights' union might excommunicate me.'

" 'One doesn't get excited about plays that have been written mechanically, and presented mechanically; one considers them judiciously, spits three times, and goes home.'

" 'Similar works are found among those of Przybyszewski and other artists; the dialogue of the dead soldier reminds one of Gorky's "Once More About The Devil".'

" 'Przybyszewski, Gorky, and the others can learn a great deal from Asch.'

" 'If they have nothing to eat....'

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" 'Sholom Asch likes to be flattered.'

" 'Oh, no. He is a very modest man.'

" 'Let him remain a modest man, but he should not write any more [plays like] "The Dead Man;" it is better to write about live thieves like Motke. You understand?'

"That is all. No more opinions."

As you see, my one hundred thousand Jewish readers, you have here various opinions about "The Dead Man," the Dramatic Club and Sholom Asch; favorable and unfavorable opinions. I have printed them here exactly as they were expressed at the literary Kibitzarnia. I am sure that those people whose opinions were wrong, will not be angry with me, and those people whose opinions were right, will not arrange a banquet with speeches for me, or present me with a bouquet of flowers.

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May we all live in a better world and among better people than we live in now--in a world of truth, justice and harmony. This wish is extended to you by my friend, your friend, and everybody's friend.