Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M A SM I D iDilcnci :l IAS I.I A ' l The home of tlie Marks family was rcnowiinl within knowing distance as the reieptade ol that abstract substance called Silence tiiat deej- ' incomparable stillness which reigns supreme in graveyards, when the wind is absent . m ilie slumbering foliage has ceased its rustling. Here lived and moved two phantom-like figures — a father and an only son— who flitted noiselessly about the rooms, strictly avoiding conversation, each living in the limitless, unexplored region of his own thoughts and bearing his own burdens. David Marks, the master of the household (though the only other inmate was his son), sat invariably at the head of the table, with the ponderous volume of the Talmud before him, meditating upon its text (for he always assiduously studied in silence), and occasionally pulling out a stained grimy cloth (a sort of handkerchief) from the pocket of his long coat, to wipe his perspiring forehead. He was a tall, strong man in his early sixties, with a closely-cropped grey beard, and bore his age astonishingly well. As though hound by a terrible oath which could never be expunged. David dreaded to disturb this heavy, brooding stillness; for his long years of tailoring, from which he had retired with a tidy sum invested for the proverbial rainy day, had taught him — if nothing else — to sit speechless and motionless like the statue of Buddha, gazing blankly into space. What a profound change everything had under- gone since he had lost his jewel — the com- panion of his earthly pilgrimage. The Reaper had gathered her into His harvest while she was yet in the prime of life. But David was not ith- out his consolation, for she had left him with an only son Nathaniel, the gift of the Lord, who was then five years old. A time there was when faithful Ruth, his wife — peace be upon her soul in the abode of the blessed — supplied the tangible link between him and the child who was the de- light of his eyes. A meek, timid woman she was, of stunted physique and intellect, who.se compre- hension of things was very limited, but who, splendid little woman, could not harm a fly even if she wanted to. Ruth lived in total dissociation from all intellectual effort, for her mental ac- tivity was hindered by gross physical actualities. Bound to a purely domestic routine, she could claim only a few minor accomplishments, but for fully fifteen years she had been his trusty partner in life, the confidante of his joys, hopes, and dreams, the soother of his great sorrows; and he had not found her wanting. A woman of super- lative goodness, he boasted of her. She was a shining epitome of that class of womanhood which yives itself up ungrudgingly in absolute devotion to its menfolk; she nursed him in his illnesses, and busied herself sensibly w ith all those details of comfort for his sake, which reflected her tender feelings towards him, and her homely manners and methods always met with his approval and praise. When she had completed her household duties she would sit opposite him — who was steeped in the delights and rigorous discipline of the Talmud — and dread to attempt any trifling conversation, lest she thereby commit the grievous sin ot Bittul Torah and consequently bring upon herself the perdition of her soul both in this present world and in the future existence. Instead she would sit silent, and allow her mind to wander aimlessly, now and again admiring the dark, meditative eyes of her husband, his broad and intellectual brow; her patient and long-suf- fering face would shine with delight, and a be- nevolent smile ever played at the corners of her thin-lipped, ashen-white mouth. In the spiritual realm especially, Ruth allowed herself to be shepherded by her husband. She had a fixed no- TueKiy-nifie

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M ASMID The philosophy of Maimonides is not that of a lonely conttmplator drawint; a faith for living out of an intellectual love and total embrace cf God. His ideas are not the outcome of a spiritual resurrection attendant upon rejection by the world and man. He is not a solitary thinker spinning universal panaceas from the pinnacle of despair or devising a universal formula of Happiness that would apply to all men under all conditions. Man ' s happiness does not consist in a selfless de- votion to infinite Being or in an absorption in the One of Plotinus. Spiritual life, according to Maimonides, does not consist in a laughter cf Democritus or in the cry of despair of an Ec- clesiastes that All is vanity; there is no Epi- curean garden or Painted Porch of the Stoics in which to find refuge from the defeats and frustra- tions of this world. Human life is no longer an accidental occurrence in a universal pandemonium, a Platonic medital ' to mortis, an ante-chamber to the world to come, or a longing for a sensuous paradise. Neither the persecutions which he wit- nessed nor his personal misfortunes could mar his conviction that the ideal must spring from the natural and not the reverse, that human blessed- ness can not be dissociated from its material basis, and that immortality can only be achieved in living and not in dying. If the neo-Platonists exalted the transcendental realm of Ideas as the natural dwelling place of the human spirit, Maimonides exalted the realm of nature as the womb and matrix of all spiritual values. . . . here, cries Maimonides, ' .; man ' s world, here is his home, ill which he has been placed, and of which he is himself a portion. (Italics mine.) In this emphasis upon man ' s earthly existence lies the philosophical significance of Maimonides. He suggested a way of life that required more reason and less authority, more analysis and less enthusiasm, more searching and less quibbling, more action and fewer words. And in praising Maimonides we can do no better than apply to him the celebrated dictum of Aristotle: When one man said, then, that reason was present — as in animals, so throughout nature — as the cause of order and of all arrangements, he seemed like a sober man in contrast with the random talk of his predecessors. MAIMONIDES AND THE PRESENT GENERATION (Continued from page 14) men of wisdom and insight. Spiritually famished mankind will continue to discover the sages of Israel and their essentially constructive and spiritual message and foremost among them Mai- monides, true citizen of the world. As we contemplate the life of Maimonides, man of destiny, the glory of his mind, the unique beauty and nobility of his spirit and the com- pleteness and achievements of his life, we stand in reverence of man ' s unlimited capacity for un- derstanding of the infinite, inherent qualities of the chosen ones. The blessed life of Maimonides has made for greater righteousness and happiness of his people and to this day helps inspire us to a life of deeper meaning, of greater harmony with the ultimate source of life, light and goodness — God. It is in this spirit of reverence and humility — his spirit — that we celebrate the eight-hundred years of life of this Tsadik — the name by which his great son Abraham usually designates him. Especially true of Maimonides is the dictum of our sages: Greater are the righteous in death than in life. Twenty-eight

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M A SMID tion that her husband ' s scriptural studies would provide a passport to Heaven, where they would be elevated to the status of sitting on golden thrones, with crowns on their heads, along with the other righteous. But alas, Ruth ' s constant, excruciating rheumatic pains never left her: they ravaged figure and face. She shrank and shrivelled up before her time. For countless, dreary weeks she lay on her bed — her countenance expressing suffering — like a preg- nant woman con Talsed with the pangs of child- birth — until the Angel of Death flutttered his wings over her bedchamber and her spirit van- ished to the Yeshiva Shel Ma ' la. And with the passing of Ruth a portentious silence came and settled down in her place, that seemed to take on a mysterious Promethean figure, towering above father and son and ready to smite them down if they articulated but a single word. Nathaniel, the son, deprived of feminine care and concern from early childhood (for his mother died before he was capable of retaining any reminiscences of her), was left alone with his tragic thoughts, and as a consequence of his lone- liness grew up to be a shy and sensitive youth. The house seemed to impress his mind with its haunting unhappiness. He felt his mouth gagged by the hands of a strong and powerful presence as soon as he crossed its threshold, and as though to relieve himself from this heavy, oppressive atmosphere, he was seldom at home. It was ru- mored that he consoled himself with amorous adventures, and his father was disturbed and agi- tated by the close secrecy with which he succeeded in shrouding his movements. An impassible bar- rier seemed to separate father and son. As im- miscible as oil and water, so David and Nathaniel could not learn to appreciate and understand each other; for the perceptions of maturity are often restricted and sapless, but the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts. Thus these two, so near each other by reason of their affinity of blood, were yet so distant from each other in their thoughts and deeds, living in complete detach- ment from each other. But as Nathaniel would pass by his father to go to his vocation (he was a teacher in the unpretentious local school) the fond father would be transported to the seventh heaven of bliss, for he joyfully anticipated the day when this blossom of his happy married life — the pale, slight, keen-featured youth of twenty- two — would marry, which, pray God, would not be remote. Thus of late there was an irrepressible, secret joy within his breast, and a perceptible litheness in his footsteps, and slowly and steadily he would build his airy castle in the course of his day-dreams. But one day his whole spurious edi- fice suddenly fell to bits, and he found himself in the nadir of disappointment, for Nathaniel had passed the door and — Lord have mercy — had failed to kiss the Mezuzah on the door post. All his best hopes had dissolved into nothingness, had vanished like an iridescent soap-bubble, for it was a step further to a bleak realisation of the fact that his son treated with utter disregard the cus- toms and ceremonies that are the raison d ' etre of every Jew. So David fasted and prayed for his son ' s sin of omission, and, sad and stricken, beat a retreat from the elusive happiness of the doubtful future and gave himself up in philosophical resig- nation to his books. But Nathaniel was in the dark about the whole affair. The mighty dreamer, Nathaniel Marks, love- lorn and misunderstood, sat in the first-class, fawn- coloured compartment of the train. Beside him was a slender, attractive gentile maiden, displaying her pertly pretty face and slim legs. There were no other occupants in the compartment. Pres- ently amid the hustle and roaring noise of a rail- way station the heavy door was slammed, and the train snorted away, and as it clanked and rumbled along it seemed to say goodbye to the past: the town and all his friends and acquaint- ances: his father whom he had disillusioned in his sunset days. Suddenly he shivered and turned chilly and thought of home and safety. His heart went out to his aged father, who seemed to symbolize Th-Tiy