Despite such notable public examples as Hank Greenberg, Bernard Baruch, and Maxie Rosenbloom, and the clearly observable fact that Jewish storekeepers outfit their families from the same size ranges as the cash customers, the common image of the Jew persistently resists reference to such plain realities. Why do people —not only his neighbors, but himself as well— see the Jew as only so tall? From years of reading in various literatures, Nathan Asch wryly documents this puzzler—but leaves it for us to speculate upon an answer.
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The quotations below, listed by authors alphabetically, are the byproduct of indiscriminate reading. I’m a compulsive reader, the way some people drink, or keep the radio turned on all day. For years now I have been noticing that authors of stories, articles, and books, when mentioning Jews, almost invariably describe them as little. Several of these authors are themselves Jews; among them are some of the greatest writers of our time, as well as writers of potboilers. Rereading a book I wrote more than twenty years ago, I found to my surprise I must include myself among them. The list does not contain all the little Jew mentions I came across. I became aware of the coincidence only gradually; sometimes I neglected noting it down, the reading being too exciting, or pencil and paper not handy.
Sherwood Anderson (Memoirs): “The man we had thus found was a little dark Russian Jew.”
Nathan Asch (Pay Day): “A little guy in the corner read a Jewish newspaper.”
Michail Artzybashev (Sanine): “The little Jew was sitting alone on the steps of his house.”
Lewis Browne (This Man Heine): “In place of the familiar little Jewish teachers. . . .” “A little Jew with a big beard. . . .” “A stoutish little Jew with a stern pallid face. . . .”
“This pale, emaciated, nervous little Jew. . . .”
Suzanne Chantal (Dieu ne dort pas): “Quand on est un petit juif, on le reste.”
“Un petit emigrant juif, c’est ce que je suis.”
Richard Harding Davis (“The Card Sharp”): “There, at the end of the wharf—the little Jew in furs. . . .”
Samuel Dickson (Saw Francisco Is Your Home): “The first outdoor Christmas tree was lighted at the command of the little London Jew.”
John Dos Passos (USA): “When little Mr. Feinstein from the office. . . .”
Norman Douglas (South Wind): “Mr. Marten was a hirsute and impecunious young Hebrew.”
“[Mr. Marten was] a slovenly little plebeian.”
Theodore Dreiser (A Traveler at Forty): “This particular little Jew had a quizzical, screwed up expression on his face.”
Karl Eskblund (My Danish Father): “No, Lena was a little Jewish girl.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (“Mayday”): “Little Jew with long black whiskers. . . .”
David Footman (Red Prelude): “Goldenberg, a little Ukrainian Jew. . . .”
Paul Goodman (The Breakup of Our Camp): “A tiny Polish Jew, he. . . .”
“. . . about the little Jew in the crowded trolley-car. . . .”
Nancy Hale (The Prodigal Women): “In a corner cringed a little Jewish messenger.” “A small man. . . Mr. Levy. . . .”
Heinrich Heine (The Poetry and Prose of Heinrich Heine):
“[God] was gazing contentedly out of a little window of heaven, with his pious old face with its little Jewish beard.”
“Your grandfather was a little Jew with a long beard.”
“. . . petit juif d’Amsterdam.”
Ruth Hunter (Come Back on Tuesday): “A nice little Jewish man, Mr. Leventhal, met us at the Hoboken Theatre.”
Henry Kane (Report for a Corpse): “My agent was small and round, all glasses and no hair. ‘Moe,’ I said. . . .”
John Kerouac (The Town and the City): “The motherly little intellectual girl he had met at college, Dora Zelnick.” “His poor little Jew’s past. . . .”
Gerald Kersh (“The Conquistador Worm”): “He was a Jew, very small, closely wrapped in a wolf’s skin.”
Sidney Kingsley (Detective Story): “Joe Feinson, police reporter, enters. . . tiny man. . . exaggerated nose.”
Arthur Koestler (Scum of the Earth): “. . . little Polish Jew of 19. . . .”
Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer (New York: Confidential): “. . . a shabby little tailor who rushed up to the ‘schul.’ . . .”
Andrea Latzko (“A Duel by Candlelight”): “Rabbi Samuel Levi was a delicate little man.”
D. H. Lawrence (as quoted in Little Reviews, 1914-1943)): “We have a little Jew in the East End. . . .”
(The Virgin and the Gypsy): ‘“Ah, lovely, lovely,’ cried the little Jewess.”
A. J. Liebling (“Quest for Molly”): “. . . and a little Jewish tailor down in the neighborhood. . . .”
Federico Garcia Lorca (“El Rey de Harlem”): “. . . las pequenas judias que tiem-blan—. . . “
Robert Lowry (The Big Cage): “So when little Suzy Farber, a tiny dark woman. . . .” “Mr. Farber . . . comic-looking, plump little white-haired guy. . . .”
Klaus Mann (The Turning Point): “. . . he seems just a sickly little Jew. . . .”
Thomas Mann (“Little Lizzy”):“He was a little Jewish gentleman, with a serious face.”
Wallace Markfield (“Ph.D.”): “. . . he, Auerbach, little Jew of C.C.N.Y. . . .”
Richard Mason (The Shadow in the Peak): “He was . . . looking like a little Jewish tailor.”
Somerset Maugham (Ashenden): “. . . the little Jew. . . .”
(“Straight Flush”): “Mr. Rosenbaum was a little hunched-up Jew. . . .”
Mezz Mezzrow (Really the Blues): “His valet, a little East Side Jewish boy called Dinky. . . .”
Henry Miller (Black Spring): “If you were to pass him in the street, little Rubin, you would say, ‘dirty litde kike.’ . . .”
“They were all midgets in the busheling room—Rubin, Rapp and Chaimowitz.”
Irene Nemirovsky (The Ball): “Her father, a spare little Jew with very bright eyes. . . .”
John O’Hara (Butterfleld 8): “Me, a little
Hebe, from Hartford. . . .”
“. . . a beautiful little Jewess. . . .”
Dorothy Parker (“Big Blonde”): “Sydney was a little brightly-dressed clever Jew.”
Drew Pearson (San Francisco Chronicle, March 18, 1950): “. . . Haym Solomon, the little Jewish patriot. . . .”
Franklin Pell (from jacket of Hangman’s Hill): “. . . and Tubby Cohn, genial little photographer with a genius for finding trouble. . . .”
Prudencio De Pereda (“My Grandmother’s Nose”): “. . . little Semite doctor came to see me.”
Burton Rascoe (“What Is Love?”): “A fat bald-headed little Jew sitting at an office desk.”
Abraham Rothberg (“The Booby Hatch”): “I got to know a little Jewish boy very well.”
Franz Schoenberner (Confessions of a European Intellectual): “. . . little Jewish army captain named Dreyfus. . . .”
Ruth Tarbah (Pulaski Place): “Sam Schwartz . . . was a sharp-eyed, sandy-haired nervous little man. . . .”
George Tabori (Companions of the Left Hand): “ ‘Et alors, my little Jewess,’ he would mock me. . . .”
Time (April 3, 1950): “. . . wispy-haired little Painter Chagall . . . left Russia and its harrowing threat of pogroms. . . .”
Lawrence Treat (Over the Edge): “. . . me, a small, undersized little Jew. . . .”
Vogue (March 1, 1950): “Noach Levinson, a sharp, little fellow in a brown suit. . . .”
Edward Weeks (in a review of The Wall): “Noach Levinson, a prying. . . little scholar. . . .”
Virginia Woolf (The Years): “He was a clever little Jew-boy from Birmingham.”
Stefan Zweig (The World of Yesterday): “This blinded, fat little Jew, Lissauer, anticipated Hitler’s example.”
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