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PARTISAN REVIEW
man by describing him, tends toward morality in the same way that
Robert Frost's poem is 'a momentary stay against confusion.' Art
celebrates life and gives us our measure." So if this Maestro of
humanity protested the phrase
Jewish writer,
it was the imputation of
parochialism he was, with furious justice, repudiating. Whoever
thinks of Jewish writers as "ethnic" has long ago lost the origin, in–
tent, and meaning of our civilization; or, worse yet, believes that
conscience and mercy are ethnic traits.
I danced with him once. We linked arms-wasn't this in
Donald Barthelme's living room in the Village? - and twirled to–
gether.
It
was a wedding party, and the only music available was in
the strong throat of the Israeli writer Matti Megged, who sang, in
Yiddish, a song about a frolicsome rabbi with certain affinities to
Old King Cole. The Rabbi Eli Melech calls for his fiddlers, his
drummers, his cymbal-players; his phylacteries fly from him, his
robes; he goes rollicking with the sexton, he cavorts, he carouses, he
drinks! To this tune the Maestro and I danced, arm in arm, and we
will do it again, I trust, when the International PEN Congress meets
at last in the Garden of Eden, in Paradise.
He wrote about suffering Jews, about poor Jews, about grocers
and fixers and birds and horses and angels in Harlem and match–
makers and salesmen and rabbis and landlvrds and tenants and egg
candlers and writers and chimpanzees; he wrote about the plenitude
and unity of the world. And that is why, in his memory and for his
sake, I want to recite the Sh'ma, which calls us to listen to the in–
divisible voice of Unity, of Allness - that Unity and Allness in whose
image all humankind is made, well-worn words that are found on
the living and dying lips of every Jew:
- that comprehensive vision of mercy under whose wings we stand.
May the memory of this great and humane Master be blessed
and forever green. As it will be, as long as there are readers.
Cynthia Ozick
