The New JerusalemChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The New Jerusalem
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Jerusalem; Jews -- Restoration; Palestine
over the head is decidedly a dignified and even poetic gesture.
One can imagine something like justice done to its majesty
and mystery in one of the great dark drawings of William Blake.
It may be true, and personally I think it is true, that the Hebrew
covering of the head signifies a certain stress on the fear of God,
which is the beginning of wisdom, while the Christian uncovering
of the head suggests rather the love of God that is the end of wisdom.
But this has nothing to do with the taste and dignity of the ceremony;
and to do justice to these we must treat the Jew as an oriental;
we must even dress him as an oriental.
I have only taken this as one working example out of many that
would point to the same conclusion. A number of points upon
which the unfortunate alien is blamed would be much improved
if he were, not less of an alien, but rather more of an alien.
They arise from his being too like us, and too little like himself.
It is obviously the case, for instance, touching that vivid vulgarity
in clothes, and especially the colours of clothes, with which a certain
sort of Jews brighten the landscape or seascape at Margate or many
holiday resorts. When we see a foreign gentleman on Brighton Pier
wearing yellow spats, a magenta waistcoat, and an emerald green tie,
we feel that he has somehow missed certain fine shades of social
sensibility and fitness. It might considerably surprise the company
on Brighton Pier, if he were to reply by solemnly unwinding his
green necktie from round his neck, and winding it round his head.
Yet the reply would be the right one; and would be equally logical
and artistic. As soon as the green tie had become a green turban,
it might look as appropriate and even attractive as the green turban
of any pilgrim of Mecca or any descendant of Mahomet, who walks
with a stately air through the streets of Jaffa or Jerusalem.
The bright colours that make the Margate Jews hideous are no brighter
than those that make the Moslem crowd picturesque. They are only worn
in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and in conjunction with a type
and cut of clothing that is meant to be more sober and restrained.
Little can really be urged against him, in that respect,
except that his artistic instinct is rather for colour than form,
especially of the kind that we ourselves have labelled good form.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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