Michael Davidow's Blog: The Henry Bell Project - Posts Tagged "as-a-driven-leaf"
A New Leaf
Paula and his sons had frequented this area, once; Stevie had made it his own as a boy. Had always turned west at this same marker, too. The zoo was nearby, and a pretzel stand, and that dirty pond, with its grimy swans. Bell had no idea, what lay beyond. To his own recollection, he had never kept walking.
Bertie Kahn had always sat here, too, whenever Selma had wanted to pray. Temple Emanu-El was right across the street.
That’s Fifth Avenue, of course. And Temple Emanu-El would have been the socialite’s choice in 1972. But I have come to wonder if Bertie should have done his waiting outside a different synagogue: to be specific, the Park Avenue Synagogue, on East 87th Street.
Rabbi Milton Steinberg occupied its pulpit before and during the Second World War. And in 1939, he published a somewhat unlikely forebear to SPLIT THIRTY: an historical novel called As a Driven Leaf. It’s the fictionalized story of Elisha ben Abuyah, a talmudic scholar of the second century who was criticized by his peers for espousing unorthodox beliefs. Steinberg goes a bit further. Per him, his hero abandons his Jewish faith in hopes of discovering a more rational set of beliefs. He flees from Palestine, he enters Syrian society, and he absorbs as much Greek philosophy as he can. The prose gets a little purple here and there. But in the end, Elisha is left both intellectually and spiritually bereft. In the end, he is quoting Ecclesiastes on the vanity of worldly knowledge.
It wasn’t until 1962 that Thomas Kuhn wrote his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and I can’t find any evidence that he and Steinberg crossed paths. They were of different generations and different social backgrounds. Steinberg was a City College kid; Kuhn went to Harvard. Steinberg was a rabbi; Kuhn professed atheism. But they both believed in the terror and the beauty of what can never be delivered by worldly effort.
I kept Kuhn close while writing SPLIT THIRTY; I just learned about Steinberg. And if I wanted to, I suppose I could still edit this book, to change Selma’s choice of shul. I don’t think I will, though. Because Steinberg would understand. He spent a lot of time in his book talking about fashion and wine.
Bertie Kahn had always sat here, too, whenever Selma had wanted to pray. Temple Emanu-El was right across the street.
That’s Fifth Avenue, of course. And Temple Emanu-El would have been the socialite’s choice in 1972. But I have come to wonder if Bertie should have done his waiting outside a different synagogue: to be specific, the Park Avenue Synagogue, on East 87th Street.
Rabbi Milton Steinberg occupied its pulpit before and during the Second World War. And in 1939, he published a somewhat unlikely forebear to SPLIT THIRTY: an historical novel called As a Driven Leaf. It’s the fictionalized story of Elisha ben Abuyah, a talmudic scholar of the second century who was criticized by his peers for espousing unorthodox beliefs. Steinberg goes a bit further. Per him, his hero abandons his Jewish faith in hopes of discovering a more rational set of beliefs. He flees from Palestine, he enters Syrian society, and he absorbs as much Greek philosophy as he can. The prose gets a little purple here and there. But in the end, Elisha is left both intellectually and spiritually bereft. In the end, he is quoting Ecclesiastes on the vanity of worldly knowledge.
It wasn’t until 1962 that Thomas Kuhn wrote his Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and I can’t find any evidence that he and Steinberg crossed paths. They were of different generations and different social backgrounds. Steinberg was a City College kid; Kuhn went to Harvard. Steinberg was a rabbi; Kuhn professed atheism. But they both believed in the terror and the beauty of what can never be delivered by worldly effort.
I kept Kuhn close while writing SPLIT THIRTY; I just learned about Steinberg. And if I wanted to, I suppose I could still edit this book, to change Selma’s choice of shul. I don’t think I will, though. Because Steinberg would understand. He spent a lot of time in his book talking about fashion and wine.
