Mordecai Richler's Critical Essays Throw Light on Sports, Include Personal Views
Mordecai Richter has
earned acclaim for his novels.
Now another of his works in-
vites commendation for a
number of its remarkable
approaches to his personal
reminiscences as a Canadian
Jew and his tackling of sev-
eral important issues.
In "Notes on an Endanger-
ed Species," a Knopf-pub-
lished book, he has inserted
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several of his important
essays. Several are auto-
biographical. These are in
themselves worth reading for
the enjoyment of his humor
and his revelations of Jewish
life factors in Canada.
Especially notable is the
essay in which he exposes
the James Bond myths and
shows how anti-Semitic tend-
encies were resorted to Ian
Fleming. He analyzes and
dissects. He doesn't mince
words.
The essay first appeared
in Commentary. He shows
how "Fleming continued to
type out his dream-life at
Goldeneye, visualizing him-
self as gentleman's James
Bond, but the self-evident
truth is he had infinitely
more in common with his
pushy, ill-bred foreign vil-
lians, and one is obliged to
consider his sophisticated
racialism as no less than a
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projection of his own coarse
qualities." The essay exposes
the racialism. Then Richter
states:
"It is possible to explain
the initial success of Bond
novels in that they came at
a time when (John) Buchan's
vicious anti-Semitism and
neo-fascist xenophobia were
no longer acceptable; never-
theless a real need as well
as a large audience for such
reading matter still existed.
It was Fleming's most bril-
liant stroke to present him-
self not as an old-fashioned
frothing wog-hater, but as an
ostensibly civilized- voice
which offered sanitized raci-
MORDECAI RICHLER
alism instead. The Bond nav-
els not only satisfy Little der to their continuing notion
Englanders who believe they of self-importnace."
have been undone by dastard.
In the process, Richter ex-
ly foreign plotters, but pan- posed the vile resort to the:
The Hebrew
Book—An Essay
By H. N. BIALIK
Translated by Minni Halkin
Bialik Institute, Jerusalem.
Sixty years ago, Hayim
Nahman Bialik's essay "The
Hebrew Book" was published
for the first time in "Hashil-
oakh." The essay, historically
important, is still timely and
will remain so until its reali-
zation.
In this essay, the great poet
advocates the "canonization"
of the works of the Jewish
genius "in which there is con-
cealed a bit of the holy spirit
of the people, a bit of the
creative force of the finest of
its personalities."
Bialik used the term canon-
ization as an approximate
equivalent to the Hebrew
term "kinus" meaning in-
gathering.
The essay was written
years before the establish-
ment of the state of Israel;
Hebrew wasn't yet the offi-
cial language of a sovereign
nation and the living tongue
of millions of people. Neither
were there institutions of
higher learning where every
conceivable and imaginable
subject was taught in He-
brew.
When proposing the "Ki-
nus," Bialik envisaged that
it would consist of both the
Hebrew and "all the praise-
worthy works produced by
Jewish talent in •foreign lan-
guages, all that bear the im-
print of the Jewish spirit."
He even composed a list of
some of the works he would
have liked to be included in
the "Kinus." Among others,
he recommended all the bib-
lical books, the Apocrypha,
Pseudepigrapha, "selections
from the Alexandrian litera-
ture," a "complete edition of
all the works of Josephus
Flavius," the "Mishna in a
popular edition, vocalized and
supplied with a brief but ade-
quate commentary."
It is interesting to note that
Bialik left out the "Halakha,"
while including the "Agada"
and the "Midrashim." It
should also be noted that he
did not mention works cre-
ated in Yiddish. However,
this seems to be implied in
the proposal that the "Kinus"
comprise "the best works by
the most gifted writers, the
finest writing produced by
Jews in the last 150 years."
On the other 'hand, Bialik's
attitude to Aramaic was pos-
itive and unequivocal. He
predicted that Hebrew and
Aramaic would someday
blend, because " . . . Their
mutuality of stem and devel-
opment has long ago made
possible their complete un-
ification."
Naturally, Bialik's central
idea was that all the selected
books would be translated in-
to Hebrew, and ingathered
by scholars inspired by the
holy spirit.
Should the "kinus" be rea-
lized, it would mark a turn-
ing point in the history of
Jewish thought, and would be
the fourth such undertaking
in Jewish history. The others
were the canonization of the
Holy Scripture, the Mishna
and the Gemara.
Bialik was convinced that
the fulfillment of his dream
would forever unite the "Am
Hasefer"—the People of the
Book with the "Sifrei Ha-
Am"—the Books of the Peo-
ple.
"Protocols of the Elders of
Zion," the "Goldfinger" in-
sults, the anti-Semitism of
Harold Nicholson.
"Jews in Sports" is a most
interesting review of the
book "Encyclopedia of Jews
in Sports" by Bernard Postal,
Jesse Silver and Roy Silver.
Many errors are corrected,
some facts are set straight.
Richter emerges very knowl-
edgeable on athletics and
athletes. While he is very
critical, perhaps the authors
of that encyclopedia should
be grateful to him—for cor-
rections and the advertising
thus given their book.
The background of his ex-
periences in Jewish schools
in Canada, the humor inher-
ent in these descriptions, add
magnificently to the fascina-
tion of his narrativeness. He
He wrote from . London to
make this comment on ac-
cents:
"Many years ago my par-
ents emigrated from Poland
to Canada, to Montreal,
where I grew up ashamed of
their Yiddish accents. Now
I had seemingly settled in
London, where my own chil-
dren (spoiled, ungrateful, en-
joying an easier childhood
than I had, etc.) -found my
American accent just as em-
barrassing."
A devastaing critique of a
history of Canadian Jewry
by Rabbi Stuart Rosenberg
throws light on Richler's abil-
ity to do research on his own
and to assail a rabbi's lit-
erary shortcomings.
And there is lots more,
of humor and fact, about fel-
low Jews and others, teach-
ers in the Jewish school and
fellow classmates.
It's an entertaining book,
and it is revealing in his-
torical facts. It certainly
gives Richter added status as
a storyteller reviewer, critic
and essayist.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Friday, July 5, 1974-31
P rescription
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Wool, Linen
Garment Rules
By RABBI SAMUEL J. FOX
(Copyright 1974, JTA, Inc.)
It is prohibited for a Jew
to wear a garment whose
cloth consists of a mixture
of wool and linen.
The basis of this prohibi-
tion is the text in the Bible
itself where it is written
"Thou shalt not wear a gar-
ment of mixture of wool and
linen" (Deuteronomy 22:10).
Rabbinic commentators try
to give reasons for this pro-
hibition. Maimonides (Guide
to the Perplexed, 37) ex-
plains that such garments
were worn by ancient people
when they worshiped idols.
Since such a mixture is as-
sociated with idol worship,
Jews are forbidden to wear
such a garment. Nach-
manides explained that since
these two fibers were kept
apart by the Almighty's plan
— coming from two different
sources (i.e. animal and
plant), — man should not try
to defeat the purpose of God
in keeping them apart. In
the Midr a sh (Tanchuma
Genesis 9) we find another
explanation. Cain's offering
was linen seeds while Abel's
was a sheep (the bearer of
wool). Since one was good
and the other evil, the two
fibers should not be mixed
so as not to confuse good
with evil. This is also an
indication that one should be
careful of the company one
keeps.
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