DAY BY DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 93, Issue 14493, 16 October 1920, Page 6

DAY BY DAY.

■» ■ ■ Here is a picture of the Jewish quarter in Damascus as quote! Damascus from a new book by the and Zionist Review: "Th 9 Its JOws. houses look incredibly, ruinously old—as old a$ the immemorial antiquity of this city ■ —which was old when Abraham was lying in his cradle. The houses of the Jewish quarter are full of Assures, poor in windows, hovel-like and of a yellowish, loamy colour. The side* streets and alleys are full of hea'rt- » rending destitution—the Oriental kind of destitution which has parted with, its last shirt. A middle-class of highly-skilled Jewish mechanics Uv3 •here in comparative comfort. The well-to-do traders look like Arabs, affect French airs, and live, for the most part, the stupidly dissolute lives of Levantines. On the streets of Jewish Damascus, on a Sabbath, I met Yellin, the greatest of all living Hebraists, an exile from Jerusalem and a director, a! present, of the Arab National Library—* a man whose beautiful mind is sheltered within the most beautiful head to oe found in a land rich in fine types. Hi 3 spoken Hebrew sounded like the mus:e of the spheres. There arc, in this ter-* rible and desolate Ghetto of Damascus, inconspicuous, wretched-looking hous-i fronts hiding the most wonderful in* teriors human eye ever beheld, with gorgeous arcades, inlaid floors, loft/j dome-like roofs, priceless hangings, scented bowers covered with dark; green leaves—the houses of the rich hiding their splendid habitations behind dilapidated fronts. The hostesses of these houses are, as a rule, anything but attractive —their dresses —European and 'extreme' in style—untidy, their bodies unwieldy with fat, and their souls suffering from the fatty de« generation of Levnntinism. They ara victims of French boarding schools, domestic idleness, ignorance and gluttony —hybrids of two cultures, with th»j' schools of the Alliance Israelite for aa unsuccessful intermediary between them. In Palestine, this sort of cub* ture is now generally known for what it is—and combated, not only by BensiMe Jews, but by the Arabs as well. Both Jews and Arabs of Damascus are disgusted with foreign schools. The Arabs are eager now to leam Hebrew, and the Jews to learn Arabic, and both are heartily sick of the sham-* culture emanating from the Alliance and the mission schools."