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Essay  by Ida Nasatir

Do Jews Read Jewish Books?
October 1949—Ida Nasatir, essay—"Do Jews Read Jewish Books?"—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 6:  I have often heard it said that Jews read few, if any, books concerning themselves. As a matter of fact, there exists a legend of long standing which has been casting a dark shadow on the American Jewish community for as long a time as any writer can remember. Ludwig Lewisohn, the most persistent exponent of that legend, has expressed it best. He says: "As I have said and written a thousand times, what must be broken down is the illiteracy and pride in that very illiteracy of the vast masses of American Jews." The thesis has been that although Jews are literate, educated and cultured, they shy away from reading Jewish literature. Jews, they say, read books—but not Jewish books; they buy books—but not Jewish books.  How true is this?  Gentlemen's Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson, is not entirely a Jewish book, but certainly it is the kind of a book that Jews, read. Gentlemen's Agreement sold 196,511 copies in the original Simon and Shuster edition, 55,000 more through the Book-of-the-Month Club, and 1,026,039 through the Dollar Book Club. In total, Mrs. Hobson's novel on anti-Semitism in America has sold about 1,250,000 copies. Norman Katkov and Arthur Miller both were comparatively unknown when they published Eagle at My Eyes and Focus. The former dealt with intermarriage; the latter with the persecution of a Gentile who looked like a Jew. Both were first novels. Yet the Katkov book sold 30,000 copies and Focus 22,000. By all book publishing standards these are remarkable sales. Peony by Pearl Buck may or may not be a fair example for the author is a Nobel Prize winner and all of her books sell well if for no other reason than that they are generally chose by a book club.  Yet Peony dealing with Chinese Jews, does involve a Jewish theme. 490,000 copies of this book were sold.  Fiction concerning Palestine includes Arthur Koestler's Thieves in the Night, and Meyer Levin's My Father's House.  The Koestler volume sold 80,000 copies, and the Levin book, 11,250.  Sholom Aleichem has been experiencing a revival and it was particularly interesting to discover the sales of The Old Country and Tevye's Daughters. Surely Sholom Aleichem appeals mainly to Jewish readers. The sale of The Old Country placed it among the national best sellers for a number of weeks. Some 13,200 people bought copies of Tevye's Daughters in the first ten weeks after publication.  Trial and Error by Chaim Weizmann, of course, received a wide and apprciative receptions and to date more than 50,000 copies have been sold.  Books difficult to classify such as The Treasury of Jewish Folklore, The Prince of the Ghetto and Blessed is the Match have been read by many thousands of Jewish readers. Such a book as Mordecai Kaplan's The Future of the American Jew, which sells for $6.00, has sold nearly 7,000 copies. It seems to me that Jews do read Jewish books; the legend of "Jewish illiteracy" is just that—a legend.