A Charming, Learned, Gay Litvak.”
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Seforim blog) have already was born in Riga in 1909, was identified as Saul Lieberman. After famously fluent in Russian.) A CHARMING, studying at the Slobodka yeshiva Although the job in Washington (where he was ordained at the age that Berlin believed to be awaiting LEARNED, of eighteen), Lieberman completed him never materialized, he returned his MA at the Hebrew University in to the U.S. in early 1941 as a 1931 and married the former Judith “specialist attached to the British GAY LITVAK Berlin in the following year. By Press Service,” which was located at Elliott Horowitz 1940 Lieberman was in New York, Rockefeller Center. During his serving as Professor of Palestinian wartime years in New York, Berlin riting home to London Literature and Institutions at the met almost everyone worth meeting from Jerusalem on the Jewish Theological Seminary. and befriended many American Wfirst day of Rosh Jews, including Governor Herbert Hashanah 1934, Isaiah Berlin, who As fate would have it, the year 1940 Lehmann (“a very nice comfortable had recently become the first Jew also saw the arrival, albeit more man, like a little brown bear”) and elected to a fellowship at All Souls briefly, of Isaiah Berlin in the Rabbi Stephen Wise who headed College, provided his parents with a United States, to which he had both the Jewish Institute of long list of the people he had met sailed in the company of his (then) Religion (JIR) and the American during his first three days in the friend Guy Burgess, both of whom Jewish Congress. Of the latter, a Holy City. These included “Dr. were then affiliated with British fellow Zionist who had been born Scholem the Kabbalist” and Intelligence Services. (Berlin, who in Budapest, educated at Columbia, Scholem’s Hebrew University colleague D. H. Baneth who had shown Berlin the “library of the University, which is splendidly equipped,” and in which works of philosophy were even “more numerous than at Oxford.” (Those were the days!) On the first night of Rosh Hashanah the young Oxford don had met the Volozhin-born Meir Berlin (no relation), whom he described as a “clever cunning man with an unpleasant son-in-law, who teaches the Yerushalmi at the University.” Henry Hardy, the dutiful editor of most of Isaiah Berlin’s writings, including his 2004 collection of letters (published in England under the title Flourishing: Letters 1928–1946 and in the United States under the subtitle of the British edition), provides information concerning Scholem, Baneth, Berlin (later Bar-Ilan), and almost every other person mentioned in the 1934 letter, including “a Syrian anti-semite called [George] Antonius,” with whom Berlin had lunched. Uncharacteristically, however, Hardy fails to identify Berlin’s “unpleasant son-in-law,” whom many readers (especially those who have seen my post at the Portrait of Louis Ginzberg. Image provided by The Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary. 20 and ordained in Vienna, Berlin scholarly, learned, and sweet,” and translate the fourth volume of wrote to his parents in January of his “terrible” wife, the former Adele Legends, or any of the subsequent 1941: “Wise is very lovable. Katzenstein. Berlin’s divergent ones, something for which, as Absurd, unbalanced, erratic, noisy, opinions regarding the two Ginzberg’s son Eli later wrote, he unreliable, he is also generous, Ginzbergs are also reflected in a “would bear the author a lifelong large, clever, understands who is letter written several months later, grudge,” though it was evidently who and what is what, has in which he informed his parents the Jewish Publication Society imagination, courage, and a golden that he would soon be dining “with which was responsible for his heart.” removal from the ERLIN S DIVERGENT OPINIONS REGARDING THE TWO project. Although Berlin, B ’ not surprisingly, GINZBERGS ARE ALSO REFLECTED IN A LETTER WRITTEN Why Radin was did not seek out brought in to Saul Lieberman SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, IN WHICH HE INFORMED HIS replace Szold during his early (1860–1945) is months in New PARENTS THAT HE WOULD SOON BE DINING “WITH PROF. well known, and York, he did may also be easily meet GINZBERG, THE OUTSTANDING JEWISH SCHOLAR OF THIS inferred from Lieberman’s Hardy’s note on older colleague LAND, A CHARMING, GAY LITVAK WITH A TERRIBLE LOUD, the “terrible” Louis Ginzberg, Adele Katzenstein, who had been BRIGHT, SHINY SNOWMANESQUE WIFE FROM FURTH.” to whom Ginzberg instrumental in became engaged bringing his fellow Slobodka Prof. Ginzberg, the outstanding during a brief visit to Germany in alumnus to the seminary. In fact, it Jewish scholar of this land, a 1908. “The shock of this is possible that the meeting was charming, gay Litvak with a terrible engagement led Ginzberg’s close facilitated by Stephen Wise, whom loud, bright, shiny Snowmanesque friend Henrietta Szold, the Ginzberg (as may be learned from wife from Furth [Fürth, in translator of much of his work…to the 1966 biography by his son Eli) Bavaria].” reassess her life, a process which had first befriended in the 1920s, eventually led her to found while soliciting funds for the The earlier letter also mentioned Hadassah in 1912.” The close publication of Benjamin Lewin’s Ginzberg’s “excellent book on friendship and subsequent rift multivolume Otzar Ha-Geonim. Jewish legends,” which, as Hardy between the Baltimore-born Szold Wise had later been instrumental in (almost) correctly notes, “appeared and the Lithuanian luminary has convincing the faculty and board of in six volumes between 1909 and been chronicled by Eli Ginzberg in the (Reform) JIR to confer an 1938.” (The sixth volume appeared his rather candid biography of his honorary degree upon Ginzberg, in 1928 and a seventh, the index, father and by some of Szold’s who, in his letter of thanks to Wise, appeared a decade later.) The first biographers, most recently (and humbly belittled his own two volumes of Legends of the Jews extensively) by Baila R. Shargel. considerable achievements. “If I are described on their frontispieces have ever rendered any service to as having been “translated from the Shargel’s Lost Love (1997) contains Jewish learning, there is no reason German manuscript by Henrietta not only numerous letters between whatever for me to be proud,” he Szold,” but the third, which Ginzberg and his devoted translator, wrote in 1932. “A descendant of a appeared in 1911, was translated by but also many entries from Szold’s long line of Jewish intellectuals the Lodz-born anthropologist Paul private journal, from which we learn [including the Gaon of Vilna], Radin (1883–1959), who was a good deal not only about the ups brought up in Lithuanian yeshivot working on his doctorate at and downs of their complicated and educated at German Columbia, and whose first academic relationship, but also about the universities, could not help specialization was the Winnebago wider Seminary community in the contributing something to Jewish tribe of American Indians. One early twentieth century. It emerges, learning.” thing that Radin had in common for example, that it was Alexander with Henrietta Szold, his senior by Marx, Ginzberg’s close colleague Writing to his parents shortly after more than two decades (other than and (slightly) younger friend, who Passover of 1941, Berlin mentioned a knowledge of German), was that became Szold’s chief confidant having met both Ginzberg, whom both their fathers were European- during the traumatic months that he described as “very modest, born rabbis. Paul Radin did not followed Ginzberg’s return from 21 Europe in 1908 as a newly engaged biography, the couple’s first kiss restive when confronted man, and that she and Ginzberg occurred after their engagement: with the rigidities of had first met some five years earlier German orthodoxy, awaited at the home of Solomon and When I returned to Berlin the return of the elevator to Mathilda Schechter. When she [from Amsterdam, in the the ground floor, stepped entered the apartment, Szold later fall of 1908] even though in, and rode up. Marx, recalled, they were teasing the we were engaged, her astonished, reminded him unmarried Ginzberg “about writing [German-Jewish] family that he had just stated that the article on ‘Kissing’ for the didn’t let her meet me at using an elevator was not Jewish Encyclopedia,” a publication the train alone; so her permitted. He replied: “I for which he had already written brother came with her. didn’t ask for an opinion.” more than 400(!) entries during the Nevertheless I kissed her for hiatus between his abortive the first time at the station. Whether or not the story is entirely appointment at Cincinnati’s I stayed for a week, met her accurate, one can see easily how Hebrew Union College and the parents, and then came decades later Isaiah Berlin, to whom beginning of his long career at JTS. home to New York. Ginzberg may have told the story, (The entry on “Kiss and Kissing” could describe him as “a charming, learned, gay Litvak.” “IN HARMONY WITH HER ORTHODOX UPBRINGING, Elliott Horowitz is senior lecturer in Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University. MY MOTHER WORE A WIG WHEN SHE WAS MARRIED. He is the author of Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish WHEN MY FATHER DISCOVERED IT SHORTLY AFTER THE Violence. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the CEREMONY, HE RIPPED IT OFF, AND OFF IT STAYED.” Modern World (Princeton University Press, 2006). was eventually written by Joseph This was not the only occasion on Jacobs, one of the encyclopedia’s which Ginzberg expressed disdain editors, who may be the only for the Yekkish-fromm ways of the scholar who contributed more Katzensteins.