The Human Touch

Marvin Lowenthal does not #ok like a Talmudic scholar or ###st-covered antiquarian. He #ooks rather like a laughing phil##sopher with whom it would be very pleasant to break pretzels and drink beer. His gleaming eyes contain in them the promise of hearty humor. The first time I ever saw him he ### laughing in an almost aban###ed way. It was at a gathering ###at which Meyer Levin, who had just published his latest novel, “The New Bridge,” was to pull the strings of his puppets. I thought then, and I still think, that he vaguely suggests Einstein, but perhaps the resemblance would be less striking if his greying hair weren’t so rebellious.

Mr. Lowenthal recently published his first book, “A World Passed #y,” a work of charming scholarship ### which I hope to be able to advert rater on. It is a history of the Jews told through what can still be seen of their monuments from ancient days down to the 19th century. But his distinction antedates the publication of this book, or, we might say that for the author of one book he has a distinction which others might not achieve with less than ten works. Perhaps that distinction has not put jam on his bread, but even at auction prices it is worth something.

The first expressions of his charm and his scholarship were contained in a department he conducted for some time in the still surviving Menorah Journal. The department was called the Adversary’s Note Book and he wrote also the Moroccan Note Book. These departments might be termed intellectual mousetraps which were so much better than many others on the market that a few people did, in a way, beat a passage to the maker’s doorstep. Upon the occasion of our meetings it occurred to me that he was at least a second generation, or maybe third generation American Jew, a member of that class of which it may be generally said that it has no large amount of Jewish consciousness. I implied all this in one of my first questions to Mr. Lowenthal, saying, in effect: “How did you get this way?”

He made his fatal error, it appears, during his first year at the University of Wisconsin—he was born in Bradford, Pa.—when he wrote a paper on the Jew in Colonial America, which won an hundred dollar prize and was published, in part, in the Menorah Journal. To understand how much $100 was then worth, consider that young Mr. Lowenthal was living at the university at the rate of $8 a week, and not so badly at that. Well, that $100 gave Mr. Lowenthal the impression that a living could be made out of Jewish history, and, as he says, “I have been repenting ever since.” He wishes that he had written about the Zulus.

But Mr. Lowenthal’s error—if either he or we were justified in calling it that—was really made at the age of five or six, when he became interested in the Biblical stories—not as theology, but as fictional history. He knew the little town Bradford—the parents of Louis Marshall had a house across the street from the Lowenthals—and the universe became the city of Bradford, an actually visualized universe. Each ward became a country and he created an imaginary world history, with diplomacy, intrigues, battles, geneologies of kings, rises, declines and falls of empires. Within the limits of Bradford historical events which took centuries to unfold occurred—in the mind of young Marvin. Wars were fought. Histories, Biblical and other, that he had read became transferred to Bradford and transmuted in the mind of Lowenthal. Bradford became Palestine, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Persia and Phoenicia rolled into one. Why not? The poet in Lowenthal so willed it and so it was.

The first great tragedy of his life occurred at the age of ten. He was visiting an aunt in the country. He found a large sheet of tough wrapping paper. He spread it on the floor, as smoothly as he could and on it began drawing an imaginary continent, defining and naming nations, mountains, rivers, lakes, oceans, bays and the other things one usually finds in or on a continent. It was a thrilling creative experience while it lasted. He left the paper on the floor, forgetting to post a warning that he had just created a universe, or merely a continent. His aunt, meanwhile, was starting a fire in the kitchen stove. She had a little trouble starting it. Seeing the wrapping paper, she thought that would make the fire start, and that is how Lowenthal’s continent went up in smoke.

His background was that of a conventional German-Jew. Both his parents had been born in Syracuse. They belonged to the reform Temple. His formal education was that of the typical American. It just happened that his hobby, which became his life-work, was Jewish. During his residence in Paris, as foreign correspondent of the Menorah Journal, he became the representative of Jewish minority interests at the League of Nations, and as secretary of the World Conference for International Peace through Religion visited North Africa, seeking the cooperation of Moslem authorities. He plans an early visit to Europe, traveling from the Baltic to the Adriatic, the line along which, he believes, the next world war will break out. In other words, he plans to visit the battlefields of tomorrow before they become battlefields. A cheerful thought! From the rough materials which he will bring back he plans to write another book and give a series of lectures.

In an English Court recently a Durham Jew who was bringing a complaint against a neighbor refused to be sworn on the Bible, asserting that, as a Jew, he could swear only on the Old Testament. No Old Testament by itself could be found. In compromise, he was sworn as a Scotsman, which means that his oath, unsupported by a holy book, was deemed sufficient.

The Magistrate in the case was apparently an obvious person. He was peeved at what he regarded Mr. Barnett’s racial stiff-neckedness. But had he reflected a moment before speaking, he might have realized that Mr. Jacob Barnett, the Jew in question, could not be planning to testify falsely since he was insisting that his oath be made upon a book in which he believed. If you are a Christian strong in your faith, an oath made upon the Koran, say, absolves you from the obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. How ### swear by a book in which ### not believe?

German courts, it appears ### solved from the responsi### tearing out the Old Testame### the Bible, which consistenc### new faith of Hitler would ### upon them. The reason is does not swear upon the ### any other holy book, in the ### Germany. Up to at leas###### weeks ago, a witness in a ### court had his choice between ###ing “by God” or by a sim###tion, omitting God. P# they will swear “byGo###