SINAI HOSPITAL
We're on the move to serve you better.
Gerald N. Loomus, M.D. and Burton H. Weintraub, M.D.
1
of Sinai Hospital Ambulatory Services Division
are pleased to announce the relocation of their practice to
17550 W. 12 Mile Road
Southfield, MI 48076
Effective October 1, 1995
joining
Hershel Sandberg, M.D. and Eric Lerman, M.D.
in the practice of Internal Medicine,
with specialties in Endocrinology and Oncology.
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To schedule an appointment, please call
(810) 557-3440
during normal business hours.
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Roth's Life Mirrors
American Jewry
NEIL RUBIN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
I
have yet to fully read Henry
Roth's Call It Sleep, which has
been called "among the few
great novels of the 20th centu-
ry." So when its author died last
week, at age 89, I pored through
the obituaries. In doing so, I was
struck at how the life of this
strange man symbolizes the phe-
nomenal transition of 20th cen-
tury American Jewish identity.
Call It Sleep, published in 1934,
through gritty and vivid language,
chronicles the emotional traumas
of a young Jewish boy in New
York City's Lower East Side.
But it is the historical lessons
of Mr. Roth's actions in the ensu-
ing seven decades that American
Jews must heed. In particular, his
final years speak to our core chal-
lenge: to find the formula to Jew-
ish belonging that transcends the
powerful pull of secularism, but
does not lead to ghettoization —
physically or psychologically.
Henry Roth's life was bizarre.
Born in Galicia in 1906, then part
of the Austro-Hungarian empire,
he was 3 years old when his fam-
ily arrived in the Lower East Side.
He later referred to that teeming
Jewish ghetto as "a virtual Jew-
ish mini-state ... It never even oc-
curred to me that I belonged
there. I simply belonged."
That comfort was shattered a
few years later when his family
moved to an Irish and Italian
neighborhood in Harlem. For Mr.
Roth, as the New York Times re-
ported, that marked "the begin-
ning of the end of my sense of
belonging, and with it, my sense
of identity."
The rest of his life would be
spent trying to recapture that
sense of identity. The journey took
him to communism and "plebeian
work," including raking blueber-
ries, collecting maple sugar sap
and cutting pulp. He and his wife
finally bought a farm, selling duck
and geese carcasses and feathers.
The story gets stranger. This
widely acclaimed author, who at
28 was a literary sensation, did
notpublish another novel until
1994. Of the six decades between
works, he has said, it was "a time
of real regret."
From the late 1970s until a
few years ago, despite crippling
arthritis, Henry Roth wrote
3,500 pages. Those works are
now being published as six fic-
tion books, which chronicle their
characters' Jewish sagas.
But it is Mr. Roth's personal
travels from and back to Jewish
identity that need our attention.
Neil Rubin is editor of the
Atlanta Jewish Times.
His Jewish stirrings re-emerged
in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day
War. When the communists sup-
ported the Arabs in their attempt
to annihilate Israel, Mr. Roth
walked away from them. He was,
he said, "heading back to being
a Jew."
But it was too late. In the next
two decades, while he slowly
wrestled with Jewish identity,
the universe Mr. Roth sought
breathed its last breath.
The Jewish ghettos of his
childhood had been replaced by
smaller and less diverse ones pri-
marily populated by Orthodox
Jews. His world of Yiddish cul-
ture had been relegated to acad-
emic studies and nostalgic
memory.
Further, painfully and un-
knowingly, the author was an ar-
chitect of destruction of his
youthful world. He turned his
back on it, rejecting a chance,
through his talents, to guide his
people in any direction. This is
the choice of every Jew in Amer-
ica, an option made easier by the
efforts of people such as Mr.
Roth. To be fair, he and others
could not be expected to under-
stand the historical implications
of what they were doing.
One change that Mr. Roth's re-
newed Jewish attachment
brought was an affinity for Is-
rael. Only there, he said, can a
Jewish writer disagree with most
people and maintain a sense of
belonging. "He — or she — will
not suffer the anguished dislo-
cation, the discontinuity, of those
of us in the diaspora who once
felt — and lost — a deep sense of
belonging and the identity that
stemmed from it."
Such talk is a sad admission
of failure. Mr. Roth could not find
ultimate meaning or comfort in
the diaspora. No Jew ever
should, but such discomfort can
lead to a strong sense of identity
as well as a healthy and vibrant
Jewish individual and commu-
nal life.
It is through study, communi-
ty and challenging our staid or-
ganizational structures that we
can thrive. Along the way, we
must press our people's claims
for universal purpose while de-
bating, maintaining and re-
shaping our internal traditions.
That is the message, in years
of reading about Mr: Roth but
never his work, that I always
wanted to relate to him either in
letter or conversation. And now,
like the world he sought to re-
capture, he, has vanished. 0