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Book Review  by Ida Nasatir

Renegade by Ludwig Lewisohn 
December 2, 1949—Ida Nasatir book review—Renegade by Ludwig Lewisohn—Southwestern Jewish Press, page 3 : Though not a "new" book in the sense of just having come off the press, Renegade is a powerful novel, written by a man who has mastered the art of story telling. The setting of the novel is in 18th century France, the years shortly before the French Revolution. Behind the squalor of slums and ghettos, behind the refined gluttony of Versailles, there rises a new truth, the great discovery of the age that "man is good." Rousseau has published his Contrat Social. Frederick King of Prussia, praises Voltaire as the greatest mind. In Strasbourg, the young Goethe begins to impress even the courtiers of Versailles.  In the center of the novel stands a French Jew, Joshua Vidal, who leaves the Paris Ghetto to live a free life as the Chevalier Jean de Vidal, pretending he is Gentile.  He cannot reconcile the medieval life, to which the Jews of France are condemned, with the teachings of his age: teachings which loudly proclaimed: "Liberty , Equality, Fraternity." He steps down from the shy darkness and open fright into the free streets of Paris. However, he steps out only physically, pretending to be free and avoiding the true fight for liberty.  And here lies his guilt.  For Vidal's conflict is the conflict of one who HOPES to lose identity of DENYING it.  He believes that it takes only a Chevalier's cloak to hide the tragic burdens of his destiny. But he fails to change into the Chevalier Jean de Vidal. He merely becomes two Joshuas instead of one, and two Joshuas distrusting each other bitterly. His fianl downfall, actually brought about by a woman, had really been decided long before by his own psychological dilemma.  Meeting face to face the Gentiles who are supposed to spread the enlightenment, he perceives how much it is with them a matter of words rather than feelings. When they find out that he is a Jew, they draw away. This, despite the new spirit of tolerance, which found expression in the eloquent writings of Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau.When Vidal flees without warning from the Jewish community, he becomes, to them, a "meshumad,"—a renegade. Ultimately he goes back to the people he has forsaken. To read Renegade is an experience. Lewisohn's penetrating mind and his superb gifts as a story teller make this book rank above the average good novel. His voice is too powerful to ever get lost.