Maurice Samuel

Maurice Samuel (February 8, 1895 - May 4, 1972) was a Romanian-born British and American novelist.

A Jewish and Zionist intellectual, he is best known for his work You Gentiles, published in 1924. Most of his work concerns Judaism and the Jew's role in history and modern society, but he also wrote more conventional fiction such as The Web of Lucifer, which takes place under the Borgias' rule in Renaissance Italy and the fantasy/science-fiction novel The Devil that Failed. He and his work won a little bit of acclaim in the Jewish community during his lifetime. (Maurice Samuel also wrote the nonfiction King Mob under the pseudonym "Frank K. Notch.")

Biography

Early life

Born in Măcin, Tulcea County, to Isaac Samuel and Fanny Acker, Maurice moved to Paris with his family at the age of five and about a year later to England, where the Samuels resided in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Manchester.

His father, a shoemaker would often read the works of famous Hebrew writers to Maurice and also taught him Hebrew. They did not get on very well however, though they eventually reconciled several years later. His mother, a very culturally refined woman, had been worn down by village life and the grief of child loss (three of her nine children died in infancy). Samuel appreciated her sensitive nature and often talked to her about various matters.

Samuel's earliest education took place at a public school as well as cheder, but he was a rather indifferent student at both institutions. This changed quite radically in his fifth grade and he became a top student in his English class. He was a gifted speaker and joined the debating club at the school. Later, at age thirteen, he would become a speaker for the Socialist Party of Great Britain in the Manchester area. Between 1911 and 1914, Samuel attended Victoria University. Eventually, he left England and from 1914 he remained in America.

Quotes

• "Jew and Gentile are two worlds, between you Gentiles and us Jews there lies an unbridgeable gulf...There are two life forces in the world: Jewish and Gentile...I do not believe that this primal difference between Gentile and Jew is reconcilable..." - You Gentiles, page 9

• "In everything, we are destroyers--even in the instruments of destruction to which we turn for relief... We Jews, we, the destroyers, will remain the destroyers for ever. Nothing that you will do will meet our needs and demands." - You Gentiles, pages 152, 155, and 147.

• "I cannot find an underlying difference between the moral purpose of the Old Testament and the New, between Judaism and Christianity, between Bachya ibn Pakudah's 'Duties of the Heart' and Boethius's 'Consolation of Philosophy' or Thomas à Kempis's 'Imitation of Christ'. There is, on the contrary, a deep and moving similarity of spirit between Israel Baal Shem, the founder of Chassidism, and Francis of Assisi, though the former had never heard of the latter, and had never looked into the New Testament. What is perhaps more important for my thesis, the gentleness and warmth that I have found in plain Jewish homes in Manchester, New York, Warsaw, Vilna, Johannesburg, I have found also among gentile Lancashire weavers, and midwest American farmers, and French peasants -- all deriving from the same tradition." - Gentleman and the Jew, pages 203-204.

Published works

Fiction

• The Outsider (1921)
• Whatever Gods (1923)
• Beyond Woman (1934)
• Web of Lucifer (1947)
• The Devil that Failed (1952)
• The Second Crucifixion (1960)

Non-fiction

• You Gentiles (1924)
• I, the Jew (1927)
• What Happened in Palestine: The Events of August, 1929: Their Background and Significance
• King Mob: A Study of the Present-Day Mind (1931)
• On the Rim of the Wilderness: The Conflict in Palestine (1931)
• Jews on Approval (1932)
• The Great Hatred (1940)
• The World of Sholom Aleichem (1943)
• Harvest in the Desert (1944)
• Haggadah of Passover (1947) (translation)
• Prince of the Ghetto (1948)
• The Gentleman and the Jew (1950)
• Level Sunlight (1953)
• Certain People of the Book (1955)
• Little Did I Know: Recollections and Reflections (1963)
• Blood Accustation: the Strange History of the Beiliss Case (1966)
• Light on Israel (1968)
• In Praise of Yiddish (1971)
• In the Beginning, Love: Dialogues on the Bible (collaboration) (1975)

References

• Who's Who In World Jewry, 1972 edition
• Louis Kaplan, "On Maurice Samuel's twenty-fifth Yahrzeit - death anniversary of Jewish author", Judaism, Fall 1997
• Maurice Samuel Papers @ americanjewisharchives.org