The Song That Is Solomon's

( Originally Published 1922 )

THERE is always a Jewish renaissance, and that is why we have lately been talking about the beauty of the Jewess.

It is a great theme and there is none other in the world charged with more sweet and terrible poetry.

The beauty of the Jewish woman is the eternal witness of the great epic of the Bible. If that divine Book were to be lost in some unthinkable catastrophe, it could be re-written wholly from the lips and eyes of Jewish beauty.

In no long time we should have again the complete stories of Sarah and the daughters of Lot (those forward but provident young per-sons) ; of tender-eyed Leah, of Rebekah and Rachel, sweet rivals in love; of Deborah and Hagar and Jael; of Ruth, that pensive figure whom so many generations have strained to see, "standing breast-high amid the corn" ; of Rahab the wise harlot and Jezebel the furious; of Tamar who played her father-in-law Judah so shrewdly wanton a trick; of Esther who fired the heart of the Persic king, saving honest Mordecai a painful ascension and much slaughter of the Chosen People; of Susanna, whom the elders surprised in her bath, not the first nor the last instance of the folly of old men; of Bathsheba, the fatal "one ewe lamb" or wife of Uriah, the lust for whose perfect body drove the holy king David to blood-guiltiness; of the Shulamite (lacking a name) whom Solomon, son of David, has sung to the world's ravishment; lastly—why not?—of her who has glorified Israel among the Gentiles and hath honor beyond all the daughters of the earth,—Mary of Bethlehem.

In this way, I repeat, the Bible could easily be put together again—it can never perish while a Jewish woman remains on the earth.

There never was a book written (worthy of the name) but that was more or less directly inspired by a woman. Cherchez la femme is the true theory of literary origins.

This is eminently true of the Bible, with which women have had (and still have) more to do than with any other book in the history of the world.

The beauty of Jewish women is a wine that needs no bush; it is the sacred treasure that kept alive the hope of the race during the weary ages of shame and bondage. But for that jealously guarded talisman, the Jew would long ago have lost both place and name upon the earth.

Much of the old, consecrated, fatidic character attaches to the Jewish woman of the better class, even in this faithless day. She is honored above the wife of the Gentile, and she is conscious of a mission which fills her with the pride of an immemorial race. One fancies that no other woman either inspires or returns love in such measure as the Jewess; that she has some profound joys to give whose secret she alone possesses. The Jew has found in his home compensations for all the cruelty and ignominy which he has had to suffer from the world.

I admire true Jewish beauty so much that I would make a slight discrimination. Not all the Grecian women were Helens, and it need not be said that the highest type of beauty among Jewish women is less often seen than praised.

In truth, the rule holds good here, that great beauty and great ugliness are found side by side.

One reason for this is, undoubtedly, the bad taste of the average Jew, who can not have his women fat enough and who, therefore, encourages such departures from the ideal standard as serve to caricature the natural beauty and comeliness of Hebrew women. I believe there are Jews who would like to grow their women in a tub, according to the medieval method of producing monstrosities. This bad taste the Jew comes by as a part of his Oriental inheritance—the Turk similarly fattens his women with all kinds of sweetmeats and suets. On account of this vicious taste among too many Jews, one often sees women of hideous corpulence at thirty who were types of ideal beauty at sixteen. Flesh is a good thing, but the Jew should not seek to suffocate himself in it, like Clarence in his Malmsey butt. Certes, it was not for an excess of "adipose tissue" that the Royal Poet named his love the rose of Sharon and the lily of the valleys.

Let the Jewish woman, therefore, vigilantly cherish the wonderful beauty which has come down to her from those historic sisters of her race whom kings desired with a passion that kindled the land to war, whom prophets and sages glorified, with whom heroes and martyrs walked and concerning whom God Himself has written many of the best pages in His own Book. Let her keep as near as she can to the ideal of loveliness which the great king, drunk with beauty and rapture, pictured thou-sands of years ago in the lineaments of his Beloved :

Thy lips are like a thread of scarlet and thy speech is comely; thy temples are like a piece of pomegranate within thy locks.

Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins which feed among the lilies.

Thy lips, O my spouse, drop as the honey comb; honey and milk are under thy tongue and the smell of thy garments is as the smell of Lebanon.