Yeshiva University - Masmid Yearbook (New York, NY)

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M A SM I D C-vurylliiiiL; lli.il lie had kl ' l htliiiiil. Ii iii.ulc liiiii sad and sick. Copious tears poured down lii cheeks, and he clenched his hands over Ins iIkm as though about to lacerate it, so veiicmendy hiiicr was the train of thoughts that entered his soid. At last, however, he submitted pliiloso|ihieally to the force of circumstances that had coinpelled him to take such a step. Love was indestructible; it acknowledged neither racial nor religious boundary lines. The confidence of his comrade was infectious. His heart warmed towards her; he straightened his back and inwardly resoUed to do her credit. She gave him one of those fas- cinating smiles of hers, when every one of her teeth shone like an oriental beryl. Fortified by it, he discarded the burden of his heart-searchings. It gave him just that pleasant sense of security of which he was in di re need: he gasped with relief. His emotional mood overwhelmed him, and he glorified in the idea of his supreme sacrifice for the kindred soul by his side, for Nathaniel had an instinct for getting the full flavour of an ex- perience. Once more he gazed in rapt wonder .ind ad- miration at the imposing beauty of her counte- nance ; once more he heard her exuberant voice and he was again obliged to pay attntion to her. He lost consciousness of everything but the girl along- side of him. She symbolized the quintessence of what his victory meant to him. With her. Life would be vested with new meaning, clothed with new m.ignihcence, and crowned with new majesty. At that moment he felt big; he utterly despised the whole world. Everything was behind, but the glorious future was in front. In aggrieved seclusion, David L rks sat as usual at the head of the table. His eyes gazed down upon the holy volume open before him, but today they could not continue their roving quest after the great truths of the Word. To-d.iy for the first time in his life, he could not con- centrate upon the text, for evervthing was blurred .Mid iiidisruiii 111 his eyes. The whole world seemed to revolve in a demoniac dance around him. His .soul was sour, hi.s heart bleak, his mind hitler, his eyes leaden. How he had a ed since the calamitous days of his son ' s desertion! His shoulders drooped, crushed beneath the burden of Ills sorrows. His crisp hair had lost it colour — .1 sure sign of worry. The blue, velvet skull-cap that crowned his head accentuated the distressing | deness of his complexion. The deadly white l.iee, haggard and seamed and lined, registered I he boundless .sorrow which he was undergoing. lie could not but think with affectionate regret tor the departed transg ressor. It was the greatest tragedy in his life; in losing his son he had lost everything near and dear to him and he felt as if he had left everything a great distance behind. The last link with the physical world had snapp ed like ,1 thin thread, and in vain he tried to dislocate his mind from terrestrial affairs, finally attempting to console his sen.se of failure and unhappiness by turning to that ideal companion of every Jew in every affliction — the con.soling Word of God. David felt his whole flesh burning within him; every fiber of his whole physical being quivered from the shock. For many long minutes he sat rigid and motionless as Death. With difficulty, he tried to reconstruct his life from those very remote beginnings: how abject, inglorious, and squalid seemed the closing chapter of his life. He wanted to pierce the air with his anguished cries, but suddenly a cold tremour ran through his veins: the stony stillness of the atmosphere seemed to take on some tangible shape like the furniture and walls of the room. It seemed to expand and t.ike the form of a hooded giant with clumsy ex- postulating arms. David felt the evil presence of this important, mysterious being and bowed his head in fear and shame. And as a M.ister governs his Slave with abso- lute sway, so did this Olympian-like Silence bind his cruel iron fetters around this humble, quiet man and claim him as his victim. Tbirli-

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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

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M A SMID Ihc iL,terual JVLind of the h,ternal JreopU b) D.wtD W. Pi;tix;orsk.v Aristotle ' s assertion that all men desire to know enunciated a fundamental truth of human nature. And if Aristotle designated as men only the Greeks, it was because of his conviction that only those of Hellas could achieve knowledge. From time immemorial this desire to know has prodded man in his search for divine secrets, for the Open, Sesame that will reveal to man ' s view the vast vista of universal knowledge. In this never-ending quest, three approaches dominate the field of human thought, the Greek, the Roman, and the Jewish. These three great cultures, that were conceived in antiquity, have recorded their impress on human speculation in a manner that renders the influence of even the former two, a living and vital one in our own day. Each is characterized by a distinctiveness that makes it possible for us to speak of a mind, characteristically Greek, Roman, or Jewish. The nature of these respective genii and a proper un- derstanding of the peculiarly Jewish traits of mind may go far in explaining the immortality of the Jewish nation. The Greek and Roman cultures speak their message to the world, garbed in the raiment of more modern civilizations, or through the musty pages of tattered books. The Jewish mind persists and addresses itself to humanity through living exemplifiers of the practical value of its profound philosophical teachings. The Greek and Roman minds scintillated during their respective hey-days. Exhausted by their spurt into the glorious heights of supremacy, they fell by the wayside. Jewish thought continued its steady gait and marched through history even to the modern era. The Greeks brought to bear on the universe and its problems an approach essentially intel- lectual. Mind, they felt, was an ideal plumbing line with which to fathom the depths of the uni- verse. Everything could be explained in terms and categories of mind. Thus they initiated that all-inclusive search that extended not only to the realm of the purely physical sciences but to the study of hum an and social relationships as well. AH aspects of existence were to be approached from the perspective of mind. To abstract the general from the particular, the universal from the specific, was their major preoccupation. The Greek was then primarily a contemplator. The field of positive action did not represent the sphere of his activities. He shone as a thinker rather than as a doer. But the star of Greece waned and that of Rome rose to dazzle the horizon. Like the Eagle which symbolized its essence, the Roman genius gave to the world a philosophy of action. To conquer not in the domain of ideas but in the physical sense was the ambition of Rome — an ambition that it realized as its armies marched through country after country, taking possession of the soil in the name of the Empire. Philosophy and speculation were pursuits for the aged and the infirm. Able-bodied human beings must concern themselves with physical exploits. Politics and economics were the doors through which one could enter upon an understanding of the uni- verse. Abstract thought opened on a blind alley in which people wandered aimlessly and to no purpose. Progress can be realized only by energy .md forcefulness. Shining forth in the chaos of ideas like a beacon that was not dimmed by the flashes of radiance that momentarily outshone its glow, the Jewish mind directed life in different channels. Combining thought and action, theory and prac- tice, into a practical doctrine of life, its sobering influence was felt as both Christianity and Moham- medanism borrowed prolifically from it in spread- Thiily-tu ' o