In the Pale of Settlement
from which all my grandparents came—the broad swath of Russia, Ukraine, Poland
and Lithuania to which Jews in 19th-century Imperial Russia were
restricted—the brightest teen-age boys were sent to yeshivas for higher
education. There they mainly
studied the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the Talmud (a
voluminous commentary on the Torah and the codified Jewish law derived from
it). Often working in pairs,
they diligently parsed and disputed these sources using a dialectic called pilpul. It is
a hair-splitting methodology, which may be the origin of the wisecrack,
"Two Jews, three opinions."
The most accomplished yeshiva buchers (yeshiva boys) were encouraged to continue their
studies, some eventually becoming rabbis.
They were admired enough to be sought for bridegrooms, their future
in-laws often committing in the marriage contract to underwrite their ongoing
education for a given term, as part of the dowry. That is not to say that secular vocations were frowned
on. The community accepted the
talents of all upright men, but perhaps the yeshiva bucher got a little more esteem.
My maternal grandfather
was a yeshiva bucher, graduating from
the famed Vilna and Slabodka yeshivas in Lithuania and going on to become a
rabbi. He came to America in 1896
at age 24, after seeing one pogrom too many in the old country. Finding an excess of rabbis here, and
anxious to earn enough money to bring his wife and son to join him in America,
he went into business, eventually very successfully.
Had he ever read it, which I doubt, I believe my grandfather
would have disputed Matthew 6:19-24, "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth … You cannot serve both God and Mammon." For one thing, he no doubt would have
quarreled with the personification of money implied by the capitalized
"Mammon," and also its pejorative connotation. In the Mishnaic Hebrew of the Talmud,
mammon simply means riches, without a disparaging undertone. My
grandfather remained a very observant Jew all his life, and had no difficulty
reconciling the Godly strictures of Jewish law with being in business and
accumulating his fortune. (Sorry
for putting thoughts in your mind a century after the fact, Grampa, but I think
I've got you right.) Through
him, my family received the twin heritages of the intellectual and religious life on the one hand and the world of business on the other.
In a sense, I myself was a yeshiva
bucher until I was 26, although not in
Talmudic studies. I earnestly
pursued my education nonstop until receiving my doctorate in electrical
engineering in 1956. On graduation, I headed to Los Angeles to
work at Hughes Aircraft Company.
Although my
mother was unhappy that I was moving to the West Coast, she was proud that
I was joining industry and earning the then-princely sum of $11,000 per year
I was invited four years later to join
the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley at a much lower
salary. Even though I had been
teaching at night at USC and UCLA, I had missed full immersion in the academic
and intellectually oriented life, and was excited by the appointment. When I phoned my mother to
announce my coming move, there was a long silence. I thought the connection had been broken. Finally, the verdict came: "You always were a bit
lazy!" It was like being
struck by a thunderbolt.
I've heard this same story from a
number of my Jewish friends: the tension between the yeshiva and mammon in the
American Jewish world. Our
families wanted us to be intellectually brilliant, but expected us to be
successful in the hurly-burly of the commercial world too. As children, we were pressed for A
grades, an achievement assumed to lead to a well-to-do later life in a
profession. Our parents' bragging
was often prefaced by "My son, the doctor," or "My son, the
CEO," rarely by "My son, the professor." For an Easterner like my mother, it
might have sufficed to say, "My son, the professor at MIT," but
"My son, the professor at the University of California" wasn't
enough. (In 1960, her friends would
have asked, "Where??")
It was a remarkable reversal from the
ethos of the old country. There,
the scholar was held in greater esteem than the businessman, even if the former
may have been ingenuous and the latter worldly-wise. In America, it's the reverse: we're more impressed by Bill
Gates (or a century ago by Andrew Carnegie) than by any intellectual you might
name. The preference here for
mammon quickly rubbed off onto Jewish and other immigrants.
I guess I should have anticipated my
mother's verdict. She had been
full of praise when I was a yeshiva bucher, but enough already! Her
frame of reference could not be other than the father she adored, the
successful businessman who was still intellectual but no longer a yeshiva
bucher. Why was I sliding back into that status?
My mother ultimately understood that I
was happily following my intellectual star. After all, throughout my youth she had drilled into me that
I should retreat into my intellect whenever I needed sustenance. "Don't worry about what you think
other people think of you when you do so" was her constant refrain. Although I always sought her
approbation, I hadn't fretted about what her response would be before I decided
to move to academia.
Intellectuality was one of my twin birthrights.
None the less, that "You always were a bit lazy!"
rang in my ears for years.