Our Jewish MO from a Surprising Source

The last thing I expected to find in Jacob Glatstein’s prose was spiritual inspo.

Is the name failing to ring any bells? Now forgotten except by scholars, Glatstein, who lived from 1896 to 1971, was a leading member of New York’s once thriving Yiddish literary scene.

Escaping antisemitism in his native Lublin, he landed in the city on the eve of World War I. At first Glatstein’s toiled in a sweatshop by day and learned English at night school.

After a brief stint in law school Glatstein turned to his real metier -writing producing not just poems but also  journalism, essays and even fiction.

In 1934, the writer traveled back to Poland to visit his dying mother, a voyage he chronicled in his fictionalized memoir. “The Glatstein Chronicles.” The highly acclaimed volume provides a rare glimpse into the everyday life of Polish Jewry just before its tragic end.

An excellent writer with a poet’s eye Glatstein offers not just detailed descriptions of places and people but also observations about the meaning of being a Jew.

Here is a sampling.

“I don’t care what kind of burden a Jew chooses to bear all his life, but he should never be without one. We ought to amaze our neighbors by the purity of our lives. It would be truly marvelous if we could get along on so little that there would be nothing to take from us!

….Just think. What is the glory of our past? The prophet, the pure man, the fiery chastiser, the man of conscience, unable to tolerate wrongdoing. Well, this is the secret of our existence going forward. We must recover the spirit of our prophets, prophets, mind you, not profits! Since it is our fate to be a gadfly to the world we must protest every injustice not just wrongs against ourselves….to shout into the ears of the world unafraid of everything

But to give substance to our protests and warnings every Jew–from the highest to the lowest from the richest to the poorest must become a high priest…..We can and must become the embodiment of the highest purity so that we may conquer them by sheer moral strength without rifles, artillery or airplanes, by the resurrected voice of our eternal prophets.”

Though he received a traditional education Glatstein lived his life as a secular Jew but unlike his contemporary Rabbi Abraham Yitzchok HaKohein Kook he envisioned Judaism as a world shaping endeavor.

We even those of us who are punctiliously observant often fail to see Judaism’s  forest because we are lost within its proverbial trees. Let these words remind us that Hashem has tasked us with a grand mission.

May we merit to fulfill it even in part.