Page 18 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

THE TESTAMENT OF

ABRAHAM ROTHSTEIN

Preface

From time immemorial, man has recorded events of importance,
inscribing crude pictures in the desert sand, on cave walls, rocks and
baked bricks, advancing later to cuneiform and hieroglyphics. His
purpose was to inform future generations of the past deeds and
accomplishments of their forefathers—but it was mostly the history
of the leading warrior, the chief, the king or great statesman who
saved the nation in time of crisis. In Egypt, kings recorded their lives
on the massive stones of their burial chambers—constructed by
thousands of slaves. Plato’s idea of the common man, as a beast of
burden created to serve the rulers, prevailed among all the nations of
his day. Plutarch, the great biographer of ancient Greece and Rome,
had very few words for the common people of that era.
So it runs through all of human history, from the Arthurian tales
through the plays of Shakespeare, down to the Napoleonic era and
the beginning of the twentieth century. The king or prince, and his
amorous conquests, fill the pages of history books: stories about
Madame Pompadour and Anne Boleyn or a thousand of those
concubines and duke’s bastards could fill up a library. But the
ordinary man, of no great intellect or wealth, just a common citizen
who works for a livelihood, has he no feelings, struggles, vicissitudes
and disappointments to record and transmit to his progeny? His
romances and love affairs would not be very different from those of
a prince, since it is harder for him to conquer a lady without jewels
and pearls. The love of an ordinary young girl at the altar of marriage
is greater than a queen’s; she appears sweet and bewitching, in
simpleness and shyness her hopes and dreams radiate from her soft
shining eyes. Yet it is the queen’s affairs, with their salacious aspect of
boudoirs and paramours which occupy the biographers.
While man has always looked to the past and has been influenced
by the past deeds of the race, learning what might await him in the
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