Hillel's Paradox
At 16 I got into Ethics From Sinai, by Irving Bunim. I bought it at Gift World and got a discount because I took the display. It had been in the window for a long time and the cover was faded from the sunlight. Experiences surrounding this book are rushing through me (reading it in my grandparents' bedroom, lending it to a cute girl in my class, asking Rav Margolis about something I read in it and my Rebbe disagreeing...) but I have to focus. All I wanted to do right now was to cite a passage from the book that I recall striking me when I first read it. I don't recall why this comment on "Eem ein ani lee mee lee?" popped into my head or what I wanted to say about it.
"The most loving wife cannot share my pain,
experience my anxieties, or suffer my death."
i
- Irving Bunim, Ethics From Sinai page 91, Feldheim, 1964
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 7:56 AM
4 Comments:
Truly, we are each of us alone in the universe, no matter the quantity or quality of our familial relationships.
Alone except for faith, or hope, in G-d.
Yes. And I appreciate your commenting.
My son received two sets of that three-volume book set as bar mitzvah gifts. I was rather surprised to learn of the early sixties pub date when first I checked the copyright page.
That quote you picked to highlight rang so true in my childhood home.
Pearl, without realizing it, you raised a major issue for me.
The original version of this work included sophisticated English, quotes from a wide array of literature, culural references, and the occasional comment that would today be deemed politically incorrect. It was all part of who the author was (actually the adapter, Charles Wengrove, too. It was fabulous, and also totally frum and lesheim shamayim.
In the 2002 edition the editors write in their preface to the new edition that "with the massive changes in the English-speaking Jewish community over the years, the need arose for an updated edition." The upshot of the update is the removal of poetic and literary references as well as poetic and literary writing within the text itself.
This makes me very sad. The odds are that your son got the "upgrade." Many Orthodox families have an old, orange covered, original of this master work that's been sitting somewhere on a shelf for generations- worth seeking out.
If you search Ethics From Sinai within this site you'll find that I've written of this and showed how they changed things.
I've also posted about this in comments on the Hirhurim blog in relation to other books that have been similarly revised. I don't get it:
http://js-kit.com/api/static/pop_comments?ref=http%3A%2F%2Fhirhurim.blogspot.com%2Fsearch&title=Hirhurim%20-%20Musings&path=%2F6548191993284913941&standalone=no&scoring=yes&backwards=no&sort=date&thread=yes&permalink=http%3A%2F%2Fjs-kit.com%2Fapi%2Fstatic%2Fpop_comments%3Fref%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fhirhurim.blogspot.com%252Fsearch%26path%3D%252F6548191993284913941&skin=echo&smiles=no&editable=yes&thread-title=Echo&popup-title=Hirhurim%20comments&page-title=Hirhurim%20-%20Musings
Post a Comment
<< Home