The Bulletin’s Day Book

An almost whimsical item appeared on the first page of the Bulletin on Monday. It was a JTA dispatch from Czernowitz, Rumania, to the effect that the town had decided to name a street in honor of Baruch Spinoza, but never quite got around to it. And that’s where the whimsy comes in.

A university professor named Alexiann entered a protest which the judge in a local court upheld on the grounds that naming streets with alien names would be apt to arouse ill-feeling, leading to disturbances. So there will be no Baruch Spinoza street in Czernowitz. An episode of this sort could, of course, be entered in the psychopathic case book of civilization without comment.

It is interesting to recall, however, the passionate intolerance of Amsterdam’s Jews toward Spinoza, the almost absolure lack of Hebraic idcology in Spinoza’s writings, the deep isolation of his soul, stretching be yond life to a place without race or religion. Spinoza, the philosopher, was a Jew only by birth: it remained for the town of Czernowitz to recognize that the inbred intellect of the Jew is a strong cobred intellect of the Jew is a strong cohesive force. The Rumanian judge legislated wisely; bigots lump the gold with dross.

Einstein is always news. The world never tires of reading about this littlee man with a measureless mind. In many ways, Einstein’s popularity is a very strange phenomenon, for you probably could not count on the fingers of one hand the other living scientists whose full names you know.

It was Carr V. van Anda, eiditor of the New York Times in the days when the realtivity theory was being confirmed, who played-up Einstein on his front page so persistently that soon the entire press caught on. Papers everywhere were suddenly agogu with inept explanations of relativity and huge cuts of cannon shooting men out into infinity.

Pretty much in the news these days is William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor, a small town boy who made good. From coal miner, in his youth, “Bill” Green climbed to the seat of chief exective in labor circles. He is a solid, well-built man of medium height, a commanding presence the speakers’ platform from whi# his powerful voice has often rung good effect. His diplomatic mann# has won great victories for t# worker.

With labor powerfully organiz# all over the country, and with I own attention focussed on the natic# al scene, “Bill” Green has overlook one thing. He has never sent an # ganizer into his home town, Cosh# ton, Ohio, where except for a sm# miner’s union, labor is very much the mercy of the bosses.

“Bill” Green lined up the America Federation of Labor as a stau# enemy of Hitlerism back in the da# when Germany’s Angel of Death w# no more than a feeble flap of hel# less pinions. Now that the Na# have grown strong. William Gre#says that the A. F. of L. “will neith tolerate nor condone the persecution of this people of a noble race. N# thing will ever occur to move lab# to substitute racial nate for #frantert regard and good will.”

A Talmudist teaches a Harva#law course ! University, who recent lectured before the Menorah Ass# ciation on the Application of Talm# dic Principles and Law in Mode# Life, is a devoted student of t# Torah. He reads it in the origi# Hebrew, softening its rugged, en# clopedic style with the rising and fa#ing tone and rhythm of the traditical yeshiva-bocher. Though a universally # recognized authority on mode law, he is, nevertheless, a strict c# server of the orthodox rithuals, bir#ing his wrists and brow with tefille# and reciting the prayers for p#scribed occasions.

Yet, in the calssroom, before I students, he becomes the typical c# interpretations of legal practise th#ring with a clear, contemporary no “Knolwledge of the Talmud”, he sa# “provides a sound understanding all law.”

As Ben Bag Bag sagely put long ago: “Turn the Torah abc# and about, for everything is in Contemplate it; stir not from there is no better rule than this.”

N. R. T.