Eldridge Street Synagogue
New York

Zion

        My performances before my East-side audiences ceased to have any connection with ordinary lectures. With these subtly intellectual and extremely nervous Jews it was no longer necessary for me to restrain myself. And I gave up restraining myself. I let myself go to the extreme limit! I became a sort of lacerated and yet mystically-sensual Dionysus — a Dionysus of East Fourteenth Street.
        I had an amusing clash with both the Rabbi Wise and the Rev Fosdick at Dr Durant's dinner... The generosity of these bourgeois Jews in supporting their proletarian tribal brothers was astonishing to see. The bank-bills and cheques kept pouring in (for his Labour Temple) from obviously persons who were quite small business employers and clerks, as he described the purposes of his system in a really touching address larded with quips from the Seine and oracles from the Academy and the Porch. (John Cowper Powys, Letters to his Brother Llewelyn, vol.I)

        I have all my life been very well treated by Jews; and have always, as I think is generally the case with Englishmen, found all my lodgements within the tents of Israel extremely lucky for me.
        The truth is that I have inherited from my Welsh ancestors a peculiar power — with something almost Jewish in it — of gathering, intellectually and imaginatively, all the beautiful essences of the country I am living in, while at the same time, rising up from the pit of my stomach, my 'Emanation', as William Blake would say, weeps for Zion as it tries to sing the Lord's Song in a strange land. (John Cowper Powys, Autobiography)