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Essay by Ida Nasatir

Why Read?
Southwestern Jewish Press, April 1949, Page 4,12.

It is good to be writing again for "Lew and Ray Solomon's paper." In a sense, it's like returning to a familiar and well loved home base. Since this is the Passover edition, and since during this very special holiday, we are reminded that we are a "people of the book," I thought I would write on Books in general rather than discuss any specific book.  Somewhere in the writings of Mendele Sefarim, we are presented with a picture of a market place in a small ghetto town in Russia. Between the rows of stands, on which there are meager displays of wares, kercheifed women and bearded men in long caftans wend their way eyeing the articles for sale and wondering whether the coins in their pockets are enough to buy these articles. If the answer is "yes," then the bargaining begins. The small pile of vegetables on one stand, the bit of dry goods on the other, and the few pieces of crockery and hardware in a third stand, reveal the pathetic poverty of the population of the village.  Between these stands with edible goods and other articles, there is a table on which there are a few bound volumes and pamphlets. In front of the table there stands the "Mother Sefarim,"—the seller of books, a bespectacled elderly gentleman with a gentle manner and kindly eyes. He calls the attention of bypassers to his wares: "Here are Bibles with excellent type, and paper like parchment, and, with all standard commentaries," he cries with a voice more of a teacher than a hawker. Now and then a woman stops to look at the books. She seems to hesitate. He helps her: If you wish a wonderful tale, read this romance...read it, and you need not make the costly trip to Kamenetz.." When this sales talk does not produce the desired effect, the bookseller starts with another approach. He says: "If your husband has trouble in earning Parnoso (a livelihood) then recite this "Techina," (prayer) and he will find that those difficulties will melt away like the snows of spring. If the woman is still not convinced, and has not made a purchase, the bookseller lowers his voice, he looks at the demure and reserved woman, and he tells her that if she will read the prayers of this booklet in pious fashion, it will constitute a sure "segula" (relief) for childbearing. He concludes by saying: "I know of one woman who read this Techina, and God blessed her with twins." I have brought this picture to you to show that in the midst of want and poverty, books were deemed by Jews to be an essential commodity, and that to their contents was attributed a power which (despite the crust of superstition that gathered around them) displays a realization of the sovereignty of ideas. For what is a book if not the material presentation of vital ideas? Books are to thought, what storage batteries are to electricity. From nowhere and everywhere that mysterious and dynamic essence is drawn. One may say, "Why make such a fuss about books? You don't see people languishing and dying when they are deprived of books.. Has it not been said that 'of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh' and is there not a maxim that 'ignorance is bliss'?' Let us therefore examine the value of books; Good books tend to make our minds keen. They do not merely sharpen the mind, they cultivate one's imagination. So that, living in this 20th century, on may, through books, transport himself to bygone periods and eras. Books, in a sense, may be said to bestow upon the reader as well as the author a form of immortality—not the immortality which expresses itself in the egotistical desire for self-perpetuation. The immortality which books give to reader and writer is one which comes from the imperishability of one's influence—an influence which leaves a deep and lasting impression upon the minds of one's fellow men, and therefore, upon the very Universe itself!  Jewish Tradition, more than that of any other folk, reflects this noble estimate of the value and significance of books. When an ark containing The Book is placed in a room, humble as it may be, that room becomes a shrine.  The tone and color of any people, in any era, is best reflected in the books they read. Take, for instance, the reading of Reb Chaim, a former pushcart peddler on Allen Street. When Red Chaim sold something to a customer, he wrapped the goods, accepted the money and gave the change, but his thoughts continued to be engrossed with the discussion of the Talmudic doctors. When his wife, Hannah, came to relieve him in the afternoon, he dashed to the synagogue where he recited Mincha (afternoon prayers) and for an hour sat listening to the Rabbi's discussion of a chapter of the Mishna. He returned to his pushcart refreshed and invigorated..One cannot help but think of this question: What will Reb Chaim's sons and grandsons read during and after their business hours? Will it be the Mishna and Gemara, will it be Goethe and Schiller, or will it be detective stories and articles of pulp magazines?