Anyone interested in Jewish literature, having an understanding of the profound value hidden in it or being impressed by its beauty and clearness, can see the approach of new stars on our literary heaven dispersing dense, dark clouds and illuminating Jewish life, now depicted by the pens of these new authors in a way that we can understand, discern, and admire. The artist sees life in more detail than the average person, for to him, more so than to others, is revealed the general combination of its separate phenomena. Each particular venture of a person is but a part of the whole; one link in the chain. To the artist an individual's deeds are due to environment, which influences his actions. When his deeds are presented to us, embodied in his work, we can understand and re-live all his past life as an actuality.

But this is only possible in fiction, where the writer creates his own types and controls at will the characteristics and surroundings of his characters.

New fiction in Jewish literature is of importance to us, for it indicates 2a new era in Jewish literature, with new interests and new inspirations. The two best novels to appear lately are, according to my choice, Marie, by Sholom Ash, and After All, by David Bergelson.

Sholom Ash not only possesses color, unity, and glamour to picture "a village," but the power to analyze a whole epoch of Jewish Russian life in the Revolutionary days of 1905. With beauty and forcefulness he brings forth in his novel the joys and sorrows of that time; the sublime, self-sacrificing types, and the enslaved Jewish spirit, the heritage of an exiled people. But Mr. Ash has painted these types and characters too lightly, even if he has adorned them with strong, poetic wholeheartiness. One feels frequently, when reading the novel, that something is lacking. In spite of the fact that we become acquainted with the whole existence of his main character, "Marie," yet he fails to explain who she is, so that we cannot enter or become a part of her soul.

The novel by David Bergelson, who deals with a much more complicated type, is so psychologically deep, has so strongly penetrated the soul of the small town "Mirel," that we are forced to live again each step of her innocent adventures.

The novels of Ash and Bergelson display their romanticism in descriptions of the passing of our aristocracy, the fall of our nobility. We Jews have no princes or lords, but we do have an aristocracy of illustrious nobility. And just as the present capitalistic world broke through the fetters of world feudalism, so, in proportion, has the rich in the Jewish small towns of Russia commenced to destroy Jewish lineage. Social heights were being attained by the illiterate, newly rich, whose only claim to any pedigree is money, and who ridicule the true Jewish aristocrats.

We also have here another problem. The children, learning a strange culture (Russian), seeing the movement of an awakening world, become in the course of events estranged from their parents. They view the depth of their elders' genealogical pride, which is instilled in their own hearts, influencing their every actions, for they were reared in this atmosphere. But in a corner of their souls, they long for that world where there is a greater and unlimited happiness.

This develops a twofold personality in "Mirel," which Bergelson pictures 4and clothes in the richness of his imagination. He brings before us the constant struggle of the small town elite: "Mirel," the spoiled, beautiful, rich girl with her pride, and "Mirel," the girl longing for happiness, the girl who imagines another world obliterating everything about the small-town.

How well can Ash portray the rift between child and parent! When Hyman Rosenzweig hears his daughter speaking so enthusiastically to Misha in Russian, he feels the gulf between them widening. Only now does he realize how much of a stranger she is to him. He is ignorant of what she does or thinks. It appears that during her high school years she developed into a stranger, both to his language and his ways of thinking. This is not the same little girl, with the little curls, whom he held so often on his lap, who looked so adoringly up at her father. The little girl is a young lady, a person over whom he has no authority. It seems she has a contempt for him, nor does she consult him on books she reads, or even speak to him of things she speaks to "Misha." "Although I am intelligent, her father says to himself, "I know what are in books, and have even read Schiller's dramas."

This tragedy is reflected in both novels. Both keep throughout a definite respect for the old elite, who so royally crowned our Jewish life. Both Ash and Bergelson took the feminine type from homes of nobility, for only there can be found material for such artistic work. Both portray Jewish tragedies of parents and their children due to a deep gulf between the two. Thus far are the two novels parallel, although painted in various profuse colors. There are also many differences on which I will write in another article.

B.