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December 18, 2009
Lessons from the past
Two different prefaces make David Kirk curious.
TIM HUMPHREYS
On Nov. 24 at the Jewish Community Centre of Victoria, David Kirk spoke on topics dear to both his heart and his head: publishing books, the great cultural contributions of the Jewish people in society and the need for constant awareness, despite these contributions, of the world around them.
In the 1920s and '30s, as Hitler and the Nazis rose to power in Germany, publisher Salman Schocken worked assiduously to produce a stream of Jewish books meant to give hope and dignity to a people being attacked and humiliated from all sides, said Kirk. By 1935, Schocken had produced 67 titles.
One of these books was Der [sic] Ghetto und Die Juden in Rom (The Ghetto and the Jews of Rome) by 19th-century German historian Ferdinand Gregorovius. It is a scholarly and esthetically pleasing story of the oldest Jewish settlement in Europe and it once included a preface by Leo Baeck, who was a household name among Jews of that period. Born in 1873, he held his first rabbinical post at age 25, and the publication, in 1905, of his Das Wesen des Judentums (The Nature of Judaism), made him a major spokesman for modern Judaism. Yet his preface was highly critical of Gregovorius, explained Kirk – to the point where someone reading the preface might not have continued to finish the volume. In 1948, an English translation of the book was published, but without the Baeck preface.
The lack of the Baeck preface intrigued Kirk, himself a publisher (and also a retired sociology professor) because Baeck was well known and his name still commanded tremendous respect at that time. In 1943, at 70, during the roundup of the remaining Berlin Jews, Baeck and his four sisters were sent to the concentration camp at Terezin (Theresienstadt). Older inmates were supposedly assigned lighter work, but Baeck insisted on joining young Jews at their assignments, gaining their confidence and eager attendance at his secret lectures on Judaism and philosophy, said Kirk. Baeck's sisters were among the many who died in Terezin of overcrowding and hunger, but he survived. When the camp was liberated, he made his way back to Germany and, from there, to join his daughter in England. True to form he continued traveling, lecturing and writing, until his death in 1956.
Kirk said he first learned about Gregorovius in 1971, when he found a copy of the English translation. On reading it, his reaction was one of delight: "Almost from the first, it seemed to me an amazing mix of scholarly work and poetic genius for, in the little book, the reader meets the poet in the 17 stanzas-long poem called 'Lament of the Children of Israel in Rome.'"
In 1988, Kirk came upon the original 1935 German volume but, he said, "the systematic comparison of the 1935 and 1946 editions had to wait another 20 years. Only then, did I discover that Leo Baeck's introduction was missing from the English translation and that not even his name was mentioned there."
But reading the original German volume was too difficult, so Kirk began his own translation and, as he worked through the Baeck preface, Kirk realized that something was extremely odd.
"I asked how it was possible, especially in the year of the infamous Race Laws, for Schocken to have accepted and published so negatively colored an introduction [for] a book intended to bolster the self-respect of Jews under the Nazi heel."
Of his interpretation of Baeck's forward Kirk said, "An enigmatic piece like Leo Baeck's introduction cannot be understood outside of the period in which it appeared. In 1933, at 15 ... it was my first and last school year in Germany. From the beginning of Nazi rule, one had to learn that all speech, including joking, was dangerous. Everything that could be heard or seen must be said or written in code.
"Could it be that, throughout his critique of Gregorovius, Leo Baeck seems to be saying, 'Don't cling to the past like Gregorovius does – don't, like Gregorovius, understate the importance and power of the present.'
"That is how I interpret Leo Baeck's critique of Gregorovius, but what could he have meant by a message critical of the past displacing the present?... I believe that Leo Baeck's negativism implied a hidden message, an urging not to hide in the more humane past as a defence against the inhumane present.
"That this introduction does not appear in the American edition, and there is no mention of a Leo Baeck, who, in 1948, was still alive and active, leads me to propose that it was a story of caution not understood."
Kirk's talk was followed by spirited discussion among the group in attendance. One participant suggested to Kirk that he should perhaps focus his research more on the many current threats to the Jewish people and the state of Israel, a comment to which another participant quoted the philosopher George Santayana, who said, "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
Enigmatically, in the true spirit of Baeck's preface, Kirk suggested that they were both right.
Tim Humphreys is executive director, community development, of the Jewish Federation of Victoria and Vancouver Island, which sponsored David Kirk's talk.
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