Jew's harp

“ Play always on the Jew's harp, and no one will accuse you of imitating the tone of any other instrument. I do not pretend that my own instrument is an organ: but I would rather it should be the smallest harmonicum than the strongest and shrillest Jew's harp.
From Mr. S. H. Walpole
Ealing, March 29th.
My dear Mr. Reeve,—I am quite ashamed of myself for not having thanked you before for your valuable hints about the effect and ultimate consequences of Gladstone's motion. [Footnote: March 30th, for the Disestablishment of the Irish Church, of which notice was given on March 23rd.] ”

“ At this moment, find him where you will, the qualities for which the Jew is distinguished are not those which win the respect or admiration of his neighbours—he is barren and desolate like his country, and has no beauty in him. Harsh sounds and unmelodious—at the best, a wail of blind inquiry, and long suspense—are all the harp of Judah is capable of now; and till the hand of the Divine musician touch the strings, it is a vain hope that any human finger can wake them to the measure of David or of Solomon, the lofty strains of old. ”

“ A jew’s-harp is placed in the mouth, and played upon for awhile with the finger in the ordinary way. Gradually, however, the performer moves his hand away, but continues the motion of playing some distance from the mouth, while the instrument continues to play quite as clearly and distinctly as before. The hand may wave above the head, or in any position, to show the audience that no thread or string is connected with the tongue of the instrument, but must keep up the motion of playing as long as the sound continues to come. ”

“ Littleton renders Jews-trump by Sistrum Judaicum. But no such musical intrument is spoken of by any of the old authors that treat of the Jewish music. In fact, the Jews-harp is a mere boy's plaything, and incapable of in itself of being joined either with a voice or any other instrument; and its present orthography is nothing more than a corruption of the French Jeu-trompe, literally, a toy trumpet. It is called jeu-trompe by Bacon, Jew-trump by Beaumont and Fletcher, and Jews-harp by Hackluyt. ”

“ If it was given to the Jew to speak with diviner insight and intenser power, it is given to the Gentile also to speak at times with a large and lofty utterance, and we may learn truth from men of alien lips and another tongue. They, too, had the dream, the vision, the dark saying upon the harp, the "daughter of a voice," the mystic flashes upon the graven gems. And such truths come to us with a singular force and freshness; with a strange beauty as the doctrines of a less brightly illuminated manhood ”

“ Music and Dancing
A large assortment of iron and brass Jew’s harps (also known as Jew’s trumps) have been found. This small instrument is lyre-shaped, and when placed between the teeth gives tones from a bent metal tongue when struck by the finger. Modulation of tone is produced by changing the size and shape of the mouth cavity.
As there is no record of spinets, or virginals, having been used at Jamestown, we have no way of knowing whether such wire-stringed, keyboard instruments were used in the homes of the more prosperous planters, together with other musical instruments of the period. ”

“ Like many other uncivilized people, they display a great fondness for the Jews’ harp, partly because it is easy to play, and partly because it reproduces to some extent the peculiar intervals of savage music. ”

“ Unlike the German artisan who becomes fond of what he creates, the Jew does not love the concrete for its own sake. What he cares for is the value in it. Hence he is rarely a good artisan, and perhaps the reason why he makes his craft a mere stepping-stone to business is that he does not relish his work. The Jew shines in literature, music and acting—the arts of expression—but not often is he an artist in the manipulation of materials. In theology, law and diplomacy—which involve the abstract—the Jewish mind has distinguished itself more than in technology or the study of nature. ”

“ Nothing lasts in the Yiddish game—styles of clothing, movies nor songs; it is always something new, to stimulate the flow of money from the popular pocket into the moron music makers’ coffers.
There hasn’t been a real “popular” song of Yiddish origin since the Jewish whistlers and back-alley songsters of New York’s East Side undertook to handle musical America—not one, unless we except in genuine gratitude George Cohan’s “Over There,” a song which came out of a period of strain and went straight to the people’s heart. ”

“ The old man lighted the gas and said, “Sit down,” making obedience possible by clearing a chair of the music it held. Then scrutinizing my face: “You are a Jew, are you not?” he inquired, in his quick, nervous way.
“Yes,” I said, “by birth.”
“And by faith?”
“Well, I am not orthodox, not a zealot.”
“Your name?”
“Neuman—Ernest Neuman.”
“And mine, Tikulski—Baruch. You see we are of one race—the race—the chosen race! ”

“ Jubal is said to have been "the father of them that play upon the harp and organ;" but it is not to be supposed that these instruments at all resembled the harp and organ of modern times. Musical instruments, in the times of David and Solomon, were used in religious services; and music was certainly employed by the Jews on many other occasions, as at funerals and weddings, at harvest home, and at festivals of all kinds.
[175]
Modern, opposed to ancient, pertaining to the present time, or time not long past. ”

“ Then a—a certain ignorance that you betrayed about pictures and books and statuary helped on the process of elimination. I concluded that you were a musician—which conclusion was strengthened by the fact of your being a Jew. Music is the art in which the Jews excel. And one day a chance attitude that you assumed, a twist of the neck, a hitch of the shoulder, cried out Violin! ”

“ To those who know only the trading Jew of our commercial centres, the modern Sadducees, it reveals a new aspect of the race—that of the Jew turning aside from all enterprise, content to live in pious mendicancy, his sole business the observance of the minutiae of the ceremonial law; the Jew who binds on his phylactery, wears long ringlets brought down in front of the ears in obedience to a Levitical precept, and shuns the carrying of a pocket-handkerchief on the Sabbath, save as a bracelet or a garter. Haluka is a mistake and a stumbling-block in the path of Zionism. ”

“ While babies of Gentiles hear meaningless nursery rhymes or comical ditties, Jewish infants are early made acquainted with the serious aspects of life. They are told of the ideal of their future occupation, which is commerce, they are spurred on to 'Tōre,' which is learning, mainly religious, and they are reminded that they must remain an 'ehrlicher,' i.e. an orthodox, Jew. The following poem is, probably, the most popular song in Judeo-German, as it is sung from Galicia to Siberia, and from the Baltic provinces to Roumania ”

“ Non-Jewish music has been stigmatized as “high brow.” It is purveyable only in expensively good society. The people, the masses, are fed from day to day on the moron suggestiveness that flows in a hurtful flood out of Tin Pan Alley.
Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the region in Twenty-eighth street, between Broadway and Sixth avenue, where the first Yiddish song manufacturers began business. ”

“ It is a mere mechanical drumming on the minds of the public. There is often not a single atom of sentiment or spiritual appeal in the whole loudly trumpeted “success”; men and women, boys and girls have simply taken to humming words and tunes which they cannot escape, night or day.
The deadly anxiety of “keeping up with the times” drives the army of piano-owners to the music stores to see what is “going” now, and of course it is the Yiddish moron music that is going, and so another home and eventually another neighborhood is inoculated. ”

“ Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent parlors and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. A clue to the answer is in the above clipping. Popular Music is a Jewish monopoly. Jazz is a Jewish creation. The mush, the slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin. ”

“ The song is procured—by what means, it is not always possible to say. Perhaps one of the “staff” originates a catchy tune, or a girl who plays the church organ in a distant village sends in a pretty little melody. The girl’s melody is, of course, sent back as unsuitable, but if it really had a heart of melody in it, a copy is kept and “adapted.” In such ways are “ideas” procured.
Then there are plenty of Jewish musical comedies and vaudeville teams. A study of the vaudeville and musical comedy business will show it to be as distinctively Yiddish as are the movies and the popular song industry. ”

“ Its leaders are for the most part Russian-born Jews, some of whom have personal pasts which are just as unsavory as THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT has shown the pasts of certain Jewish theatrical and movie leaders to be.
The country does not sing what it likes, but what the vaudeville “song pluggers” popularize by repeated renditions on the stage, until the flabby mind of the “ten-twent’-thirt’” audiences begin to repeat it on the streets. These “song pluggers” are the paid agents of the Yiddish song agencies. ”

“ For if there is anything visible behind the music of Mahler, it is the Jew as Wagner, say, describes him in "Das Judentum in der Musik," the Jew who through the superficial assimilation of the traits of the people among whom he is condemned to live, and through the suppression of his own nature, becomes sterile. It is the Jew consumed by malaise and homesickness, by impotent yearning for the terrain which will permit him free expression, and which he conceives as an otherwheres, or as a dream-Palestine. ”

“ And his blood is on their children at the present day; for while he is acknowledged by three hundred millions of mankind as their Lord and Master, the Jew teaches his children to regard him as an impostor, and spit at the very mention of his name. How great must be the infatuation of the poor Jew, how dark the mind, how thick the veil that hangs over his heart, how terrible the curse that rests upon his head! But the Jew is to be pitied, not distressed; he should be personally treated, in ordinary life, as his conduct merits. ”

“ The orthodox Jewish influences, still at work upon him, are rapidly weakened. He grows to look upon the ceremonial life at home as rather ridiculous, His old parents, who speak no English, he regards as "greenhorns." English becomes his habitual tongue, even at home, and Yiddish he begins to forget. He still goes to "chaider," but under conditions exceedingly different from those obtaining in Russia, where there are no public schools, and where the boy is consequently shut up within the confines of Hebraic education. In America, the "chaider" assumes a position entirely subordinate. ”

“ If the Jew did not step aside quick enough there was a sharp curse, a blow or a kick. And the jeering, contemptuous Muslim passed on while the Jew bowed more deeply than ever.
They were dressed in the traditional costume of the Oriental Jew, long gowns of dark cloth, little skull-caps, and now and then a black or yellow turban. Unlike the European Jews, they were fine, tall, straight, broad-shouldered men, with the hook-nose, the fierce eyes, and the fighters' chin of the Bedawin. But always they gave way before the conquering race, always they bowed deeply before the Muslim. ”

“ The American people have been urged and chided and shamed into the beginning of a rather generous popular support of music in this country, and the first thing they see for their money is that Jewish artists supplant the non-Jewish artists, and use the prestige of their membership in symphony orchestras to work various small business schemes of their own. If they were superior artists, nothing against it could be said, but they are not superior artists; they are only better known and racially favored in Jewish musical circles. ”

“ The insidiousness of the Jewish menace to our artistic integrity is due partly to the speciousness, the superficial charm and persuasiveness of Hebrew art, its brilliance, its violently juxtaposed extremes of passion, its poignant eroticism and pessimism, and partly to the fact that the strain in us that might make head against it, the deepest, most fundamental strain perhaps in our mixed nature, is diluted and confused by a hundred other tendencies. ”

“ Yiddish may be unpleasant, but Yiddish is no less the speech of the Jews than English, no less the speech of the Jews than Aramaic, and Arabic and Ladino, and all of these have acquired literary and qualitative characteristics which are identical as expressions of the spirit of the Jew, of the Hebraic spirit. ”

“ But the real gipsy there is no mistaking—their dark piercing eyes and Asiatic countenance mark them as distinctly as do the eyes and peculiar features of a Jew. (By the by, I wonder that no searcher after the marvellous has endeavoured to prove them to be a remnant of the lost tribes of Israel.) Like the Jews, they are scattered over the whole earth—like them, they are found in every land; and in every land they remain a distinct people. ”