Aunt Chasha's Umbrella

A GUIDE FOR THE BEDEVILLED -- Ben Hecht--Scribners ($2.50).

When Ben Hecht was six years old his aunt, Tante Chasha, took him to see a Yiddish play in which the hero was falsely charged with stealing a diamond bracelet.

Little Ben yelled his indignation. Ushers rushed to silence him. Tante Chasha smote them hip & thigh with her umbrella. "He's a bright boy," she roared, "and he's got a right to complain. . . ." "Mrs. Swernofsky," begged the manager, "I am really surprised. ... I must ask you to apologize." Tante Chasha shattered the remains of her umbrella on the manager's head. Then she whisked little Ben away. "Remember what I tell you," she said. "That's the right way to apologize."

In A Guide far the Bedevilled Author Hecht (Erik Dorn, Gargoyles, Afternoons in Chicago) has followed Tante Chasha's advice. It is one of the most ferocious attacks on anti-Semitism ever written--and the first to be written by a Jew of Ben Hecht's literary conspicuousness.

Author Hecht begins by explaining that, as a boy (he was raised in New York City and Racine, Wis.), he didn't know that anti-Semitism existed. His Russian-Jewish father was a passionately Americanized Elk, Knight of Pythias, Mason, Modern Woodsman and Loyal Moose. Later he met Jewish writers. But, like himself, they were "Semites far away from Semitism . . . whose only synagogue was Broadway." When he became famous, Ben was outraged if friends mentioned antiSemitism. "I said that it was not Jews who were being discriminated against but obviously individuals too ill-favored for social appeal." Ben filled his novels, plays and movies with carefree characters to whom social prejudices meant nothing.*

Why Pogroms, Mr. Hecht? But a few years ago a "famous lady" buttonholed Ben, begged him to tell her what it was about Jews that made people persecute them. "Only a Jew can speak on this subject," she explained. Ben was shocked. He had never imagined that the famous lady thought of him as a Jew. Suddenly he became race conscious, began to study Jewish history, resolved to write a book. "My mission was to write of Jews with love and of their enemies with hatred."

A Guide for the Bedevilled is written with ample hatred. Author Hecht's love for the Jews is expressed in phobic language suggestive of Nazi Julius Streicher's obscene anti-Jewish paper, Der Stuermer. Hechtic sample: Anti-Semites are "Spiritual harelips, tormented homosexuals, lonely sadists . . . bile peddlers . . . invalids whose . . . bladders drip and whose hearts are a sackful of worms . . . religious zanies who woo God by spitting in His eye . . . mincing and bepimpled, clapper-tongued and swivel-brained . . . lame ducks."

Last fortnight reviewers were hectically disagreeing over Author Hecht's diatribe. Said New York Post Reviewer Marvin Berger: "Welcome back into the lodge, Ben. Let's forgive and forget A Jew in Love." Said New York Times Reviewer John Chamberlain: "[A Guide for the Bedevilled] is a sort of antiSemitism, turned inside out."

*Hecht's most controversial novel, A Jew in Love (TIME, Jan. 26, 1931), was roundly denounced as anti-Semitic by many readers.

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