The Ruined House of Intellectual Self-Sufficiency

'He has never been a pedantic library rat. Scholarship is an art for for him. His light, airy manner suggest a painter or a sculptor working in a spacious, well-lit studio, whisting to himself as he works. Most academics of his generation, products of the ecstasis of the sixties, transliterated their own youthful rebellion into political radicalism, but that did not necessarily lead to methodological creativity. Andrew had never succumbed to the cheap temptation of being a professional rebel or playing the exhibitionistic role of the university enfant terrible. Although well versed in the standard critiques of capitalist society and proficient in teaching them to his students, he had never fallen prey to the anger and bitterness that characterized many of his colleagues. The buoyancy of his ideas keeps them afloat. From above, they can easily shift perspective, sometimes tumbling into creative free fall like Alice down the rabbit hole'.

Meet Andrew P. Cohen, professor of comparative culture at NY University. He is easygoing, divorced with 2 children, dating a much younger former student, enjoying the good life and the high social status conferred by his impressive intellectual and academic achievements. He is not going through an identity crisis and doesn't want to be anywhere else he is already. Moderate, not dillematic and crossed against himself and the rest of the world as the academics portrayed decades ago by Saul Bellow or Philip Roth. He doesn't care about religion more than he should. It doesn't match anyway the average aesthetical outline of the NYC intellectual landscape.

At least, he used to be so until the crisis occurred. His reality started to get intruded by strange creatures from the time of the Temple, Cohanim and their ancient rites, to whom theoretically Andrew belongs too. Only that his temple sits on a different ground or he insisted to believe so. It is not a matter of life and death and the world of comparative cultures doesn't accept a hierarchy. Can you live without a basis, your own, not all the world's cultures?

The fact that often, regardless of educational background one needs a basis to stand is a basic issue, and has often a stereotypical solution. The ways in which Ruby Namdar created his story, the construction of his literary temple is outstanding and although I've often felt overwhelmed by the bias, I couldn't leave the book because of the beautiful writing and images created. The book was beautifully translated from Hebrew which make me curious to look into the original version that it might be a fundamental work of Hebrew language too. The Biblical knowledge is equally outstanding, with Talmudic commentaries and episodes that require dozen of books and additional commentaries to understand.

The Ruined House is a fundamental literary work about intellectual perception and identity and marks a complete new shift into the mainstream contemporary approaches. Its contribution to the history of ideas and Jewish mentalities is an important brick into our Temple after the Temple projections.

Rating: 4 stars 

Book Review: Creators and Disturbers. Reminiscences by Jewish Intellectuals of New York

At the beginning of the 80s, when this book was published, Jewish intellectuals continued to be an interesting topic. Nowadays, I would rather say that they might be interesting from the point of view of their specialization: writers, scientists, artists in various domains. Or not interesting at all.

The interest at the time was understandable: after long decades of fight with a system not so friendly with the Jews, the new Jewish elites were taken into consideration by the establishment.

New York was and continues to be an important hot potato for the main intellectual mainstream, hence the focus of the articles. The authors are covering many perspectives, geographical areas - Bronx, Harlem, Brooklyn - and denominations. Their origins - Russian, German - are diverse as well. Some are writing about their literary adventures (I.B.Singer) or about their stages of the assumed assimilation (Hans Morgenthau), about their connection with the other minorities (Dan Morgenstern, on the Jewish-Black connection) or the return to Jewish values after facing the precarious situation of the Soviet Jewry (Ted Solotaroff).

Overall, it was an extremely interesting intellectual trip.

Novel delivers Yiddish intellectual world with zest

Chauncey Mabe
Sun Sentinel

Reviewing each new book by Curt Leviant, I open with some variant of the same line: "Curt Leviant is the best unknown novelist in America." His latest gives no cause to change that practice.

Set in New York in the early 1970s, "A Novel of Klass" takes place in the overlapping realms of Manhattan's art scene and the fading Yiddish intellectual world, once centered on The Jewish Daily Forward, which produced such talents as Isaac Bashevis Singer.

Ayzik Klass, Holocaust survivor and self-styled "Yiddish painter," has worked in obscurity for decades, known only to a small coterie of fellow Jewish intellectuals, when by chance he meets a gallery owner named Breslauer at a bookstore.

Breslauer, visiting Klass' small apartment, is impressed to learn the old painter was a friend of Marc Chagall's. Looking at Klass' own pictures - all with Holocaust themes - he's amazed to see they are works of real artistic value.

But Breslauer's efforts to mount a show and gain Klass the attention he deserves (and make some money in the process) are complicated by the artist's wife, Griselda, a homely woman with the figure of a goddess. She's also paranoid, scheming, endlessly argumentative. She takes an instant dislike to Breslauer.

Further barriers arise in the form of Gimpl Englander, a Yiddish poet in a long-running feud with Klass; a gentile Holocaust expert who turns up embarrassing information about Griselda, and Klass' own eccentricities.

Writing with verve and wit, Leviant mines his story for sly comedy. He writes with great affection of his characters and their foibles, yet avoids sentimentality. Here, for example, is the Yiddish speaker Englander struggling with English: "A good thing is worth repeating. Like Emerson said, 'A hobgoblin is the inconsistency of little minds.' "

Leviant's use of Yiddish words and phrases, and the layering of Yiddish rhythms into the English prose, recalls Junot Diaz's use of Spanglish in "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao."

Indeed, if Diaz were a retired Jewish scholar and translator, instead of a young, Latin, English professor, this is the kind of novel he might write.

For all of its comic brio, "A Novel of Klass" is about the Holocaust and the price exacted from its survivors. Leviant shows it can be refreshed by the application of talent, sensibility and energy.