Monthly Archives: February 2022

Wed, 9 Feb 2022 18:00 - 19:00 Greenwich Mean Time (UTC0)

Register here.

Ancient rabbinic advice about mad dogs

About this event

This lecture will discuss some significant passages from the early (Mishnah/Tosefta) and late (Palestinian/Babylonian Talmud) rabbinic traditions of late antiquity that deal with so-called mad dogs (kelev shote). The texts introduce different classifications or taxonomies of this condition and elaborate on theoretical and practical knowledge about appropriate cures and remedies. These therapeutic advices, embedded in a religious-normative discourse, contain unexpected and sometimes puzzling details and terminology. Moreover, they display conceptual structures and literary techniques that point to a certain familiarity with technical or epistemic genres (e.g., recipes, diagnosis, incantations), while deploying also traditional rabbinic discursive forms.

The regionally diverse Talmudic texts from Palestine and Babylonia seem to reflect different assumptions and medical approaches of their surrounding cultures. The analysis will shed some light on possible interactions with and transfers of medical and cultural concepts from ancient Graeco-Roman, Byzantine-Christian, Mesopotamian, and Persian-Zoroastrian traditions. Moreover, the discussion will provide some keys to the specific ways in which the rabbis adopted, integrated and authorized such knowledge.

The speaker is Lennart Lehmhaus (PhD), lecturer at the Institute for Jewish Studies at the University of Tbingen (Germany). Before that he held positions as research fellow and lecturer at Martin-Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg (Germany), Freie Universitt Berlin (as a member of the research center SFB 980 Episteme in Motion), The Katz Center for Judaic Studies- University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. His research and teaching interests comprise ancient Jewish cultures and literatures, specifically rabbinic and Talmudic; premodern knowledge and sciences; trajectories of Jewish traditions, motifs and customs into contemporary Jewish and Israeli culture.

He has published widely on the so-called late Midrash texts in their early Islamicate contexts. His monograph on discursive features and cultural backgrounds of the ethical work Seder Eliyahu Zuta is currently in press and will be published in the Text and Studies in Ancient Judaism series with Mohr Siebeck.

In his current research, Lehmhaus works on Talmudic discourse on medical knowledge and practice in comparison to Graeco-Roman and Ancient Near Eastern medical traditions. As publications from this project will emerge the Sourcebooks of Medical Knowledge in Talmudic Literature (Mohr Siebeck, 202225) and Talmudic Bodies of Knowledge Jewish Discourse on Health, Illness, and Medicine in Late Antiquity (forthcoming 2023).

Besides several peer-reviewed articles, he has edited the volumes: Collecting Recipes. Byzantine and Jewish Pharmacology in Dialogue. De Gruyter, 2017 (with M. Martelli), Defining Jewish Medicine Transfers of Medical Knowledge in Jewish Cultures and Traditions. (Harrassowitz, 2021), and Female Bodies and Female Practitioners in Ancient Mediterranean Cultures (Mohr Siebeck, 2022).

Lehmhaus is the founding editor of the series ASK Ancient Cultures of Sciences and Knowledge (Mohr Siebeck, 2022-).

Read the rest here:

Rabbinic Rabies and Rabid Rabbis the 'Mad Dog' in Talmudic Texts - The Media Line

The Torah begins with the world being created by words. Let there be is the recurring refrain. God names each item Light. Day. Night. Darkness. Earth. Sea. Heaven. From this emerges the concept that words can build or destroy.

Words matter. Every letter in the Torah is believed to have significance, and every word is essential. There are no errors. The idea of precision is so important in the Jewish origin story that we have pages of commentaries, stories, explanations and laws when an extra letter is added onto a phrase. While some critical readers of the Torah define extra letters, words and redundancy as scribal errors, there is a deep spiritual practice in combing through phrases, repetitions and words. We find meaning to justify each phrase; each phrase justifies its meaning.

It is difficult to reconcile this deep relationship between word and meaning with a 21st-century culture of using words as if they do not matter. Last week the Jewish world erupted after Whoopi Goldberg, a co-host of The View, used ill-informed words on the show to describe the Holocaust, saying the genocide was not about race and was, instead, essentially a case of infighting between two groups of white people. A flurry of conversations, articles and rage emerged in response. The words evoked fear and reflections on antisemitism, and revealed ignorance of the history of race (and genocide).

The Talmud teaches, The world exists only in the merit of the person who restrains him or herself at the time of an argument (Chullin 89a). Words create narratives. Words have the ability to disrupt, provoke and uproot, and in a world that is divided, they can cause terrible harm. Building false narratives about Jews or any other group for that matter can destroy. In Nazi Germany, Jews were dehumanized first by words as they were described as rats, defiling society. Dehumanizing another by using words can help categorize a people as less than, thus normalizing horrific acts. Of course Jews are not the only people to have been leveled by words. Indeed throughout history, efforts to separate cultural, religious, ethnic or racial groups from one another consider Rwanda or the Balkans have often begun with dehumanizing descriptions and unraveled from there. Words can highlight vulnerability and trigger attack.

Though Ms. Goldberg had no intent to deny the Holocaust, the gaps in knowledge she was forced to reconcile exposed a different lack of understanding: the degree of trauma Jews carry around all the time.

Since the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, the need for heightened security has increased the feeling among Jews that we are in existential danger. We have a history as a people of not being fully accepted into the places we call home. There is a weariness and a wariness in the Jewish community; much like for other minority groups, there is a feeling of never quite being able to rest.

How can we? Just two weeks ago a man walked into a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and terrorized a rabbi and three congregants for 11 hours. The next week, in Washington, D.C., the city where I live and worship, the citys landmark train station was defaced by swastikas, and two Chicago synagogues and a Jewish high school were vandalized. Each incident pulls us back, echoing darkly for us the racist narratives that targeted Jews through history, and in the not-so-distant past, causing us, at various times, to lose our right to citizenship, our right to work and finally our right to live. This year the Church of England has promised that a formal apology is forthcoming to the Jews for the medieval antisemitic laws that led to their expulsion in 1290. Groups in Britain say the history of antisemitism in that country, set in motion 800 years ago, cast a shadow to this day.

Let me be clear: We are, thank God, certainly not in a time resembling 1937 Germany or medieval England. But there is good reason our community has never quite been able to calm our instinct toward fight or flight. That is why moments of misunderstanding projected from a national platform let alone having synagogues terrorized are never just about that one incident. They evoke a traumatized past that has never healed.

Jews care about not just the words that hurt, but also those meant to mollify. Ms. Goldbergs apology I said the Holocaust wasnt about race and was instead about mans inhumanity to man. But it is indeed about race because Hitler and the Nazis considered Jews to be an inferior race has itself been dissected and analyzed. Has it gone far enough? Had her original words had more impact than her apology could? Did it represent real teshuvah, a real desire to atone, through understanding? I believe it did. I believe there needs to be a space for error and apology in our society.

Teshuvah is the process of regretting, renouncing, confessing, reconciling and making amends. Ms. Goldberg regretted her words, renounced what she said, confessed in public, reconciled by educating herself on national television and sought to make amends. Teshuvah shleimah a complete teshuvah is when we are in the same situation again and we choose to act differently. Then we know that our internal work has taken effect.

The Jewish tradition asks me to guard my tongue, to be careful of what I say, of promises I make. If these promises are said with Gods name, I must carry out the actions promised by my words. In this time of social platforms that influence millions, pausing before we speak and taking words seriously might not be such a bad thing. Indeed it might do the work of repairing the world.

Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt is a co-senior rabbi at Adas Israel Congregation in Washington, D.C.

Read this article:

Opinion | In the Jewish Tradition, the Words We Choose Matter - The New York Times

NINETEENTH-CENTURY RABBI Simcha Bunim of Peshischa told one of his followers to transcribe a quotation from the Talmud The world was created for me onto a slip of paper to keep in his right pocket. Whenever he felt sad or distraught, the man could pull out the words to remind himself that his life was of boundless value. When he was feeling powerful or important, he should instead read the words in his left pocket I am nothing but dust and ashes which would point out the humbleness of his true state. By reading these reminders, suggested the rabbi, human beings can maintain balance in their daily lives. While there are times when people might need one particular message more than the other, fundamentally both truths are always in our pockets: we are everything and we are nothing, at the same moment.

In her new book Lost & Found, Pulitzer Prizewinning essayist Kathryn Schulz comes to an understanding similar to the rabbis: the experience of grief and sadness and the experience of love and joy always happen at the same time, even when we are not fully aware of how much they are connected. In her lyrical and deeply thoughtful memoir, Schulz recounts the emotional confluence of grieving for her father following his death and falling in love with a woman, whom she soon married.

Schulzs title, Lost & Found, establishes the structure of the three-part memoir. In Lost, the books first section, the author expresses her resistance to euphemisms for dying such as passing away. Such metaphoric language, she feels, turns away from deaths shocking bluntness and instead chooses the safe and familiar over the beautiful or evocative. Despite her rejection of such evasive language, she finds herself turning to one particular phrase after her father dies: I have lost my father. The idea of losing a loved one rang true to Schulz. As she writes, these particular words seemed plain, plaintive, and lonely, like grief itself.

Schulz spends much of the Lost section exploring not the details of her fathers death or her own grieving, but the multiple meanings of the word lost. She first recounts its etymology, discovering that the word emerged from the Old English verb meaning to perish. For Shulz, to lose has its taproot sunk in sorrow. Over time, the word lost began to take on a wider variety of usages. We can lose our keys or lose a game. We can be lost in thought, or lost in a book. And we can lose our minds and lose our hearts.

As Schulz begins her intensely logical analysis of the words implications in various circumstances, the reader might be tempted to wonder if the authors riff into these abstractions is simply its own kind of evasiveness another way of looking away rather than reading the words in the pocket filled with grief. But Schulzs intellectual meditation on the language of loss is not an effort to pivot away from pain. Instead, it is an effort to open grief up to a larger and deeper kind of engagement.

Schulz returns to her familys story with a broadened perspective. Long after the familys decision to stop treatment and begin hospice, Schulz comes to the awareness that part of her loss was that everything that happened in my life from that point on would be something else my father would not see. That is, the loss she felt most acutely was that she knew she and her father would no longer be able to share in an ongoing life together. He would not see whatever might be newly found.

Schulz experienced intense grief at the loss of her father, but one thing above all others made it bearable, she says: [T]he year before he died, I fell in love. So begins the early pages of the books second section, Found, which details how Schulz initially fell in love with C. and how their relationship grew. These scenes are full of sweet romance, starting with the story of how, shortly after their first meeting, her mind underwent a life-altering reorganization as she imagined their future together. Next, she gives her account of an evening stroll during an early date: I can still remember the exact route we took, writes Schulz, and also the wending way we walked, now closer and now farther, the shifting amount of space between us suddenly uppermost in my mind. She recounts the magic of making pancakes together in the middle of the night, and the mornings reality of seeing her new partner settling down with a mug of coffee and a legal pad to start her work day. In its own way, this everyday scene was equally magical: [T]here she was, going about her life in my home, realizes Schulz, going about her life in my life.

Just as Schulz does in the previous section, in Found she considers the variety of meanings and usages of the word that makes up the sections title. She analyzes the difference between finding that is recovery and finding that is discovery. Recovery essentially reverses the impact of loss. It is a return to the status quo, a restoration of order to our world, she explains. Discovery, by contrast, changes our world. Instead of giving something back to us, it gives us something new.

Unlike in the first section, however, in the books second part Schulz has a constant awareness of how grief is always waiting for her in her other pocket. Lost and found are opposing concepts, just as grieving and falling in love are, yet both change our perception of our place in the world: What an astonishing thing it is to find someone. Loss may alter our sense of scale, reminding us that the world is overwhelmingly large while we are incredibly tiny, writes Schulz. But finding does the same; the only difference is that it makes us marvel rather than despair.

The stunning final section of the memoir is a description of what lies for Schulz between grief and joy, between what is lost and what is found: the symbol of union the author uses in the middle of her title, &. She points out that until almost the 20th century, the end of the English alphabet was not the letter Z but the ampersand symbol. When schoolchildren recited the alphabet, it was the last symbol they pronounced. And is not an ending, writes Schulz; it is a word that leaves us hanging, waiting for what is yet to come.

Schulz finds a series of deeply touching ways to honor and celebrate both the conjunction and continuity that her entwined experiences of losing and finding love have shown her. Life, she realizes, is clearest in the forward-moving union that and promises: that moment when were alive with both grief and joy, both the knowledge that we are nothing and the awareness that the world is waiting for us. This gorgeous memoir is heartbreaking and restorative all at once.

Hannah Joyner is a freelance critic and an independent historian. She is the author of Unspeakable(with Susan Burch) andFrom Pity to Pride.

Read more:

Written in the Book of Life: On Kathryn Schulz's Lost & Found - lareviewofbooks

In ancient times the holy Torah was a manuscript that Jews would write upon a parchment scroll.Once printing was invented they divided all its verses and its chapters in an annotated book,but always their interpretation of the words made their imagination play a greater rolethan the printed or handwritten text on which they hung their own ideas like an imaginary hook,

and fill up to the brim,like vavei amudim,ideas that link like hookshiddushim in their books,to ands in columns ofthe Torah where a vavstarts each page with an and.A maskil will understand,thanks to his eruditionthe process of addition.Like vavei amudimit generates hiddushim,thereby enabling Torahto glow, and grow its aurajust like the Torahs vavim,lead-letters of its qelaphim,no less important thanits leading words which fanthe texts and make them coolfor those who use this tool.

The practice of starting every Torah column with a vavwas frowned on by great Rabbi Meir, known as Maharam,and on top of Torah columns showing as little loveas what all great rabbis showed to halakhic decisions that are dumb.

Theres more: another function that each vav not just a hookthat links all Torah columns in the parchment scroll, by signifying addition implies that, like the columns of the tabernacle, all the verses of the bookare templates of reversal of the tense into a non-linear edition.

The second verse of this poem was inspired by David Z. Mosters article inthetorah.com, Scribing the Tabernacle: A Visual Midrash Embedded in the Torah Scroll :

https://www.thetorah.com/article/scribing-the-tabernacle-a-visual-midrash-embedded-in-the-torah-scroll

Moster writes about the custom of beginning each amud, column, of a Torah scroll with a vav, the sixth letter of the alphabet, which means hook, and points out that the practice follows a paradigm that was applied to the building of the tabernacle. The columns of the Torah scroll are called (ammudim), the same term as the columns of the Tabernacle, and the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet, a (vav), denotes each hook that was attached to the columns of the Tabernacle to become one of the vavei hamishkan, the hooks of the tabernacle, adding that the scribal practice of the vavei haammudim is not mentioned by theTalmud or Maimonides and was attacked by Rabbi Meir ben Yekutiel HaKohen (d. 1298) and his famous teacher, Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg (d. 1293).

Follow this link:

Scrolls, Books, Hooks and Ands - Jewish Journal

This op-ed was first published on eJewishPhilanthropy.com.

Last week, a 26-year-old Jewish educator named Jessie Sander filed a lawsuit against her former employer, a flagship Reform synagogue, claiming she was fired because of her anti-Zionist beliefs, in violation of New York State law.

While I cannot speak to the legal claim, I have been thinking about the value of inclusivity which many Jewish organizations espouse. Lately, one would be hard pressed to find a synagogue, JCC or federation whose mission statement does not include words like welcoming, inclusive, everyone. Westchester Reform Temple itself, the synagogue that dismissed Sander, expresses on its website its intent to create a warm and welcoming community.

Get The Jewish Chronicle Weekly Edition by email and never miss our top storiesFree Sign Up

I believe our institutions are sincere in wanting to create a community where diverse kinds of people feel included. Many of our communal organizations welcome with open arms a full spectrum of people with various racial or gender identities, sexual orientations, religious practices or beliefs. Many of these organizations proport but one acceptable form of ostracism, and that is toward those who express anti-Zionist viewpoints.

The number of Jews who think like Sander is not insignificant. A June 2021 poll by the Jewish Electoral Institute found that 34% of American Jews agreed that Israels treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States, 25% agreed that Israel is an apartheid state and 22% agreed that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. The percentages are even higher when you isolate adults under age 30.

The above data should give us pause. Across our communal landscape, donor bases of legacy institutions are shrinking. Synagogue membership is dwindling. Is it wise to shun Jews like Sander, at a time when Jewish affiliation and literacy are at an all-time low?

To be sure, opposition to Israel can sometimes overlap with antisemitism. But the profile of anti-Zionist Jews is not uniform, and some participate actively in Jewish life. They can be found devoting significant hours to Talmud study (at yeshivot like SVARA), to social justice learning (at organizations like Repair the World), and to training for the rabbinate (at several seminaries). They can also be found in some Haredi communities. Jessie Sander appears to be passionate about Judaism. She is pursuing a masters degree in Jewish professional studies. She is a co-founder of the startup Making Mensches, whose goal is to create Jewish communities that explore Jewish values within the context of our daily lives. Jews like Sander find inspiration from Jewish heritage and teachings. In fact, they approach the ethical questions of Israel/Palestine through the lens of the very Jewish values they were taught at our schools, camps and JCCs .

Of course, our synagogues and organizations are fully entitled to hold Zionism and support for Israel as core values. Millions of Jewish philanthropic dollars go to support The Jewish Agency for Israel, along with a variety of social service programs within the state. Jewish educational institutions from day schools to youth groups to camps highlight Zionism in their curricula. We cannot expect our institutions to abandon their core principles. But neither should we keep all anti-Zionist Jews outside the tent, while at the same time claiming to be inclusive and welcoming.

In the Talmud we learn that Jews who have been excommunicated cannot cut their hair or launder their clothes. Nor can their relatives perform acts of mourning after they die. But excommunicated Jews are allowed to teach Torah (Moed Katan 15b). Even though they are shunned in several ways for their wrongdoing, they are nevertheless permitted to teach Torah to others, and we are permitted to learn from them.

Our institutions have to wrestle with the reality that increasing numbers of passionate Jews do not support the State of Israel. Is it in our best long-term interest to be welcoming to everyone but them? I propose that we spend less time labeling all anti-Zionist Jews as antisemitic, and more time figuring out how to be truly inclusive. PJC

Amy Bardack is a rabbi in Pittsburgh. The views expressed here are her own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

The rest is here:

How inclusive are we willing to be? | The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle - thejewishchronicle.net

A new exhibit at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe takes a page from Jewish graphic novels and comics. Showcasing 12 projects that recount biblical tales, rabbinic writings and personal biographies, the exhibit pairs image and text to spark conversation.

When Ben Schachter and Andrew Julo began work on People of the Book & the Storyboard nearly two years ago, neither of the Saint Vincent staffers considered their efforts particularly prescient. Yet, in recent weeks, Jewish graphic novels have gained national attention. Just before Jan. 27 International Holocaust Remembrance Day a 10-person school board in McMinn County, Tennessee, voted unanimously to remove Art Spiegelmans Maus from its curriculum, saying the work contained language and imagery unsuitable for students.

Along with depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats, Maus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning nonfiction book written in the graphic style, describes the authors relationship with his father, a Holocaust survivor.

As news of the school boards decision traveled nationwide, the conversation and debate around Maus grew. During an on-air discussion about the books banning during The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg ignited new controversy by claiming the Holocaust was not about race. Goldberg later apologized but received a two-week suspension from ABC. Meanwhile, the uproar spurred by the Tennessee school boards decision generated new interest in Maus and sales of the book exploded. The Complete Maus, which contains volumes 1 and 2 of Spiegelmans work, has remained the third-most-sold book on Amazon Charts since the controversy began.

Schachter, an art professor at Saint Vincent, said he never imagined Jewish graphic novels would feature so prominently in national discourse.

Ben Schachter. Photo courtesy of Ben Schachter

It was Schachters contribution to the genre that originally prompted the push for an exhibit about Jewish graphic novels, Julo said.

In 2020, Schachter completed Akhnai Pizza, a graphic novel that reimagines a Talmudic dispute regarding the ritual purity of an oven. But as opposed to offering readers a black-and-white page of Aramaic language in which rabbis debate Jewish law, Schachter departed from the traditional Talmudic style and set his story in Pittsburgh, with illustrated characters arguing, in English, about which pizza is the citys best.

With Akhnai Pizza, Schachter tapped into a growing trend, according to Julo, director and curator of the Verostko Center for the Arts at Saint Vincent. During the past several decades, authors and illustrators have created a really interesting subset within graphic arts, he said. And the new exhibit offers recent examples of sophisticated ways of telling stories to lots of audiences, regardless of age group.

Among the 12 items within the exhibit is an illustrated Haggadah, a graphic novel of Pirkei Avot and a visual adaptation of Anne Franks diary.

Part of the exhibits uniqueness, Schachter said, is that it provides visitors three distinct ways to experience the materials. Attendees can see images displayed in a traditional gallery style, but theres also space set up like a living room, where people can take any of the 12 works and sit down and enjoy the books in a casual, natural way. People can also experience the exhibit virtually by watching and listening to several upcoming lectures on Zoom.

Page 24 and 25 from Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel by Jordan B. Gorfinkel, illustrations by Erez Zadok. Published by Koren Publishers, Jerusalem: 2019. Images courtesy of Jordan B. Gorfinkel

On Feb. 10, at 6:30 p.m., Samantha Baskind, a professor of art history at Cleveland State University and author of several books on Jewish American art and culture, and comic artist JT Waldman will discuss the impact of Jewish illustrators, authors and publishers on 20th-century American sequential art. On Feb. 23, at 3 p.m. Nina Caputo, an associate professor of history at the University of Florida, will discuss her visually-narrated book Debating Truth: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263, A Graphic History and the historic exchange between Rabbi Moses ben Nahman and Catholic priest Pablo Christiani.

Rabbi James Gibson, a Saint Vincent professor and rabbi emeritus at Temple Sinai, participated in a Jan. 27 lecture to open the exhibit. Following the talk, Gibson told the Chronicle that he encourages Allegheny County residents to trek eastward to Westmoreland County to see People of the Book & the Storyboard and that those who live in highly-populated Jewish areas should appreciate the exhibits regional significance.

I think the fact that the exhibit is in rural western Pennsylvania, in a Catholic institution, underscores the attempt of Saint Vincent to bring the Jewish experience to people who may have never met Jews, and we should support that effort by our presence and attendance at that exhibit, Gibson said.

Pages 14 and 15 from Opening the Windows: A Readers Guide to The Prophetic Quest The Stained Glass Windows of Jacob Landau by JT Waldman. Published by Temple Judea Museum Congregation Keneseth Israel, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania: 2015. Image courtesy of JT Waldman

Julo agreed, saying that he hoped the exhibit would serve as a bridge-builder between communities and that the exhibit and recent Maus-related controversies highlight the role of graphic novels as critical educational tools, especially when it comes to the Holocaust.

Theres revisionist history going on right now, and a widening of narratives about World War II, but we need to keep [clear] that this was an attack on Jews first and foremost,Julo said. And as a Catholic school, it is important for us to say that this was an attack on Jews and that an attack on any faith group is unacceptable.

Although several items within the exhibit including the Holocaust Center of Pittsburghs Chutz-Pow! focus on World War II and the Holocaust, the exhibit functions as a commentary and conversation starter on events and periods apart from those occurring last century, Schacter said.

The comic book page and graphic novel, he said, is a way to engage those difficult topics in a way that is approachable.

People of the Book & the Storyboard, at the Verostko Center for the Arts at Saint Vincent College, runs through March 11. The center is open Wednesdays 1-4 p.m., Thursdays 1-7 p.m., and Fridays 1-4 p.m. Those looking to visit the center outside its normal hours can make an appointment by emailing verostkocenter@stvincent.edu. The exhibit and its programs are free and open to all. Masks are required for in-person events. PJC

Adam Reinherz can be reached at areinherz@pittsburghjewishchronicle.org.

More:

'People of the Book': The Jewish graphic novel on exhibit at Saint Vincent College - thejewishchronicle.net

Andy Doctoroff| Detroit Free Press

Seniority entitled him to move his chambers to the seventh or eighth floor of the Theodore Levin United States Courthouse with its marbled hallways, mahogany paneled walls, and ceilings rich with relief. But U.S. District Judge Avern Cohn stayed put, decade after decade, opting to remain in Room 219, his tired, less grandiose chambers on the second floor.

That Judge Cohn had no need for judicial opulence was easily discerned from the hundreds of books lining his office and the quirky bric-a-brac testifying to his myriad passions, like passenger trains and Jewish history.

Obituaries often read like curriculum vitae; so, I expect that notices of Judge Cohns passing Friday evening, at the age of 97, will be chockablock with references to decisions rendered, offices held, and awards garnered. But these impressive litanies miss the essence of the man we just lost.

Judge Cohn enjoyed wealth and power, but they were not the forces that animated him.

More: Iconic federal Judge Avern Cohn dies at 97: 'He was a unique figure'

More: District court will close Monday for funeral of Judge Avern Cohn

Charles Francis Adams rebuffed protestations by his father, John Quincy Adams, that he lacked worthy ambitions by say[ing] with the poet, My mind a kingdom is.

Judge Cohns mind was his kingdom, a vast realm he continued to explore until his final days, a blast furnace of erudition, conviction, and curiosity.

Out-of-state co-counsel with whom I tried a patent infringement case before Judge Cohn were nonplussed by the childlike wonder that compelled him to descend the bench, squint his eyes, and tinker with the subject matter of the lawsuit, a refrigerator shelf.

I last lunched with Judge Cohn at his Birmingham home in the fall. His legs had long since failed him. He received visitors less frequently, and his physical world had grown almost infinitely small, like a star collapsing into a black hole. But, as always, he continued to plow intellectual fields.

Just before our interview ended, Judge Cohn handedme a copy of the Journal of Halacha and Contemporary Society, suggesting I read the article about Talmudic perspective on rent regulation in 16th CenturyRome.

Dont forget to return it, he admonished, handing me the volume.I want it back.

Perhaps Judge Cohn lived as long as he did, as richly as he did notwithstanding physical infirmities, because of the intellectual fires that burned within him, the same fires that drove him to become the rare jurist who, in Richard Hofstadters words, relishe[d] the play of the mind for its own sake, and f[ound] in it one of the major values in life.

The two years I spent as Judge Cohns elbow clerk (his term) ended in 1992.But he has beena singular presence in my life ever since, someone who has influenced me more positively than any person outside my nuclear family.I will soon enter my own seventh decade, but recent memories of his affectionately calling me kid cause my eyes to fill.

An easy mark for those soliciting charitable gifts, Judge Cohn was no saint.His enthusiasms could alienate colleagues, and resulted in lapses in decorum.He had no need for office intercoms; his vocal cords served perfectly well, thank you.He suffered neither fools nor unprepared attorneys appearing before him.

But his capacity for self-growth was unbounded and endeared him to his staff.Age and self-reflection tempered his excesses, a process facilitated by notes, written in his own hand and taped to his courtroom desk,enjoining him to be courteous: "Keep cool!!! Always remember the lawyers have as much rig[h]t to be in the courtroom as the judge!!!

I myself suffered Judge Cohns tetchiness (Youre the law clerk, Im the judge, goddamnit!).But such was the happy cost of a beautiful, fertile mind that has yielded rafts of scholarly, precedent-setting opinions and letters-to-the-editor,and uplifted our justice system in ways small and large but too numerous to count.

Coming so close on the heels of the death of his cousin, Sen. Carl Levin, the loss of Judge Cohns life presages the sad end of an era populated by ambitious but menschy public servants who were born and raised in Detroit during the 1920s and 1930s and obeyed a demanding code of ethics that now too often seems to have lapsed.

A world without Judge Cohn is more than personal misfortune for his family, friends, and members of the legal community.It raises a disconcerting question:Who among us willcarry on his timeless legacy?

Andy Doctoroff, a Huntington Woods attorney, served as law clerk to the Hon. Avern Cohn from 1990 to 1992.

See the article here:

Opinion: 'A blast furnace of curiosity and conviction': Remembering Avern Cohn - Detroit Free Press