Altho Mr. Imber's best work is in Hebrew poetry, he is yet a very voluminous writer on science, economics, medicine, mysticism, history and many other subjects.
"I have written on everything," said the poet, "everything. I know almost nothing about the subjects on which I write. I don't believe in reading. I believe in knowing myself. In that way we learn to know others. Psychology is the only science. All others are fakes, and I can fake as well as anybody. Why read, or why seek amusement in the theatres or elsewhere, when one can sit in a café and talk to a man like that?"
He pointed in the old "magid" opposite him.
"Whenever I want to amuse myself," he said, "I talk to a man like that, and I cannot amuse myself without learning more about psychology."
With the exception of his poems most of the poet's work was written in the English language.
"I began to write English late in life," he said. "Israel Zangwill helped me to begin. He said he would correct what I wrote, but I wrote so much that Mr. Zangwill stopped reading it and told me to go ahead on my own hook. So I did. I have written infinitely in English, some of which has been published--_Music of the Psalms_; _Education and the Talmud_, which was issued by the United States government in the report of the commissioner of education; many articles on mysticism and other subjects in the magazine _Ariel_; _The Mystery of the Golden Calf_, _The Music of the Ghetto_, and many other works on the cabalistic mysticism. I have also written, _Who Was Crucified?_ wherein I prove that it was not Jesus. If I kept on all day I could not tell you the names of all I have written. I have published many articles in the Jewish-American papers satirizing the rabbis, who consequently hate me. Much of my work, indeed, is satirical. The world needs cleaning up a little, particularly the rabbis. Put the reformed and orthodox rabbis together and some good might come of them. I am not afraid of these people, whom I call silk-chimney rabbis, because they wear tall hats instead of knowing the Talmud. It was my own invention--'silk-chimney rabbis.'"
Mr. Imber is evidently very fond of this phrase, for he repeated it many times. Indeed, he does not seem to be a very pious Jew. He himself admits it, for he said: