Page 8 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Introduction

divisions, be they chapters or paragraphs, are my imposition; he
rarely provided any visual or logical transition between topics. Any
punctuation other than commas and periods is mine, as well, and I
endeavored to correct and standardize spelling of English and foreign
words (The Chicago Manual of Style was of some help in italicization
and capitalization, some of the rules of which have changed since my
school days; I followed its lead in allowing bar mitzvah into the
English language, but balked at spelling Chanukah “Hanukkah”).
Syntax required a more delicate touch; whenever possible I retained
his word order and verb tenses, even at the expense of grammatical
integrity. Although unschooled in the rules of English, AR read
widely and had both a large vocabulary and a wide frame of literary
reference. I hope I have retained the flavor of his writing while
serving it up in a vessel he could not—but wished he were able to—
provide.
The reader of AR’s narrative will be struck by its sudden shifts in
tone and content, from sarcasm to sentiment, triviality to profundity,
private soul-searching to historical analysis on the grand scale. This is
an artifact of the author’s spontaneity; he was not following an
outline. Consideration of his own circumstances inevitably led him to
larger contexts: man and nature, Jewish identity, the politics and
economics of his society. In the range of his interests and his manner
of expressing them, AR is revealed, in the final analysis, as a
philosopher—one of those “individuals who in any group are
concerned with and interested in formulating their attitude toward
God, toward man, and toward society” (Paul Radin, Primitive Man as
Philosopher, p. 169).
AR’s writings, then, are not merely autobiographical anecdotes—
any more than his carvings are purely aesthetic exercises. Again,
executed without any overarching design, the narrative has several
qualities; it is at once a series of memoirs, a confession and apology,
and an ethical treatise—resembling in its diversity Carl
Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections. It is possible to discern four levels
of writing in what I have chosen to call AR’s testament; they alternate
and commingle in the text, leaving the reader on occasion in the
middle of a rather dry discourse. The strata also constitute a hierarchy
of analysis and commentary, mimicking perhaps a Talmudic dialectic;
4