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Fife Twe
THE SODTHEKN ISRAELITE
Friday, Sept. 8, 1961
Off the Record —by Nathan Ziprin
Midrash David
For the past twenty-five
yim
David Schwartz bftsbnen witt
ing a weekly column fttr the Jew
ish Telegraphic Agency In the
tradition of the brilliant feuille
tonists of another day: Rim he
has collected his sheave* into
bookform under the modest title
“Hainan Taschen and Roths
child's Millions” when a more
fitting one would have been
“Midrash David.”
The publishers (Twayne) de
scribe the book as a collection of
Jewish wit and humor, but it is
more than that description en
compasses, for it derives its roots
not alone from folk wisdom but
from sacred tome, history and
human experience.
Pgvid Schwartz is a keen ob
server of his surroundings, of the
madness about us, and he reacts
to the climate not with weari
some semantics in the style of
the sophisticates but with a hu
mor and satire that not only
pierce but illuminate the theme,
the midrash.
Essentially a' sad person,
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Schwartz likes to rock himself
into security to the tune of wit.
Chochma, wisdom, through the
ages has been a weapon of Jew
ish survival, and it is brilliantly
reflected in every page of the
206-page volume. There is no
theme he touches to which the
author does not bring an appro
priate anecdote or adage. Nor is
there a theme he touches that
stands by itself. Always he finds
strikingly original relationships
to other events and persons. The
volume essentially savors of folk
wisdom, lore, legend and Jew
ish tale, yet it is replete with
erudition and history, not in the
textbook but in the human sense.
To every subject he touches,
Schwartz introduces a paragraph,
a page, a line from history and
from tomes of wisdom, ancient
and modern. The world to the
author does not move in a vacu
um, nor is it a missile that has
lost its path or its links with the
generations of man.
There is continuity in history
and in human relationships, and
it is against this perspective that
Schwartz pours out his wit.
It would be easy to belabor
this point with countless illustra
tions. A few will suffice. In a
column on Purim, he remarks
that the Book of Esther affected
American history. For a moment
the reader pauses in surprise, in
disbelief. But Schwartz quickly
brings him out of the daze with
a brilliant explanation. When
ratification of the Constitution
was before the Massachusetts
state convention, a preacher ob
jected to its adoption on the
ground that it did not mention
God. One of the delegates, a
young lawyer, retorted that the
omission was not fatal since
some of the biblical books had
not mentioned God either. When
the stunned preacher demanded
proof, the young lawyer pro
duced the Book of Esther and the
Constitution was of course rati
fied. The men of the Midrash,
he ruminates elsewhere, “seem
ed to like their heroes a little
earthy,” and he treats us to a
salty story about a rabbi in the
days of the Talmud who was so
delighted at couples being mar
ried that he would seek out
weddings and dance with the
bride in his arms to exhaustion.
When one of his pupils asked
him whether he might not emu-
uate his teacher in that respect,
the rabbi replied yes, but only
if there were no sinful in ten-
ions.
One of the finest pieces in the
book is on humility. A Jew who
had sought to impress the Cha-
sam Sofer with his erudition kept
on professing lack of claim to
learning. Whereupon the vener
able Sage reminded him: “Listen,
my friend, you are not so great
a man as to have to be humble.”
In a column dealing with She-
vuoth, marking the Giving of the
Law, Schwartz refers to a dia
logue in a sacred tome wherein
it is asked why God had chosen
Mount Sinai for the historic
event when there were higher
and more imposing mountains in
the world. He finds the answer
in a Midrash which says that
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God chose Sinai for the revela
tion precisely because it was so
small a mountain. God loves the
humble.
There isn’t a facet of human
interest that Schwartz overlooks,
and he brings to every theme a
refreshing angle. Take Beatniks,
for instance. To whom would it
occur to search the Bible for a
forerunner to that elan? Yet
Schwartz finds one in the Bible
—Samson, of whom he says he
“liked to go down to the Philis
tine girls in the dives and read
poetry. It wasn’t exactly poetry.
It was riddles really, but modern
poetry is a riddle too." Here is
a truly perceptive observation.
The volume is replete with
gems on every page. Schwartz
has no literary pretensions. In his
own craft, however, he is a uni
que and incomparable artist with
colorful and deep dimensions.
Man’s path to man is through
the word and its telling. And
Schwartz has told the story ex
ceedingly well.
Report On Reform
Fund Campaign
NEW YORK, (JTA)—The
Combined Campaign for Ameri
can Reform Judaism raised a
total of $2,489,000 in its 1960-61
nationwide drive for support of
the Union of American Hebrew
Congregations and the Hebrew
Union College-Jewish Institute
of Religion, it was reported
last week by Irving S. Schneider,
the campaign’s executive vice-
chairman.
Reporting to the campaign’s
national council and to the gov
erning boards of the two bene
ficiary institutions, Mr. Schneider
noted that the 1960-61 cash total
came to $152,000 more than was
raised last year. The campaign
head termed the cash outcome
“especially gratifying in view of
the fact that most of the fund
raising effort was conducted dur
ing the general business reces
sion. For most of the year,” he
noted, “gifts lagged seriously as
compared with contributions the
year before. It was not until
late April that there was a nota
ble increase in the volume and
size of gifts and grants.”
’ 1
On Conn. U. Faculty
HARTFORD, Conn., (JTA) —
Dr. Edith Varon, former research
director of the Jewish Family
and Children’s Bureau of Balti
more, has been appointed asso
ciate professor at the University
of Connecticut School of Social
Work.
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