Page 233 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Letters

June 2 55
My dear grandson Jonathan,

Happy birthday to you, and of course I shall not be so stingy this
time and will wish you eighty-nine happy birthdays to come in your
life. I am enclosing the regular birthday present of five dollars, which
all my grandchildren receive, and from now on I shall raise the
present to double this sum every ten years. Now, when you are one
hundred years old you will receive five thousand one hundred and
twenty dollars. Providing you read Hebrew well.
I have been reading your letters at your house, and you never give
us a report of your studies, in Hebrew or English. You have become
a cheap politician, a lobbyist, a vote-seeker serving the corporations,
and have forgotten us.
Love A. Rothstein grandpaw

June 4 59
My dear grandson,

This is to wish you a happy birthday, and a little gift enclosed for
you. I have traveled, seen many people, worked with different people,
met some Jews and Gentiles who were atheists—unbelievers or what
we called free-thinkers, yet who learned and knew Hebrew for the
very reason they liked to read the Bible in the original, so they could
find the faults of the religion and criticize it. Ernest Renan, a
Frenchman who was an atheist, knew Hebrew, and so did many
other great men. If you do not like Jews, read the Bible in Hebrew
and you will know its fallacies and be able to criticize like an
intelligent young man.
One thing one should know: if one wants to be ignorant,
common, uneducated, of no importance, then no one will be
interested in whether he is a Jew or not. But if one who studies,
becomes known as a professional, a teacher, an artist, or writer, a
person of whom people take notice, they sure scrutinize his
nationality, religion, and ancestry. You are not that kind of boy to
become a truck driver, a coal heaver, or a whatnot. You have the
intelligence to be someday a university graduate and perhaps an

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