(Author: Joseph Sherman, Vol. 65 #1, Pesach 2010)
Editor’s Note: This essay, suitably abridged, by the late Dr. Joseph Sherman first appeared in A World Too Wide: Essays on Libraries and Other Themes in Honour of Reuben Musiker (edited by Dr. Sherman, University of the Witwatersrand Library, 1993). Aside from the importance of the subject matter, the essay well conveys the flamboyant humor, passion, erudition and sometimes outspoken acerbity that made Sherman so memorable and forceful a personality, especially when he was arguing on behalf of his beloved, and sadly all too often neglected, Yiddish language and literature.
Although most of my life has been spent among books, candor and astonishment alike compel me to confess that from earliest childhood I always loathed librarians. Fascination with the contents of libraries was for me akin to the stupefaction attributed to the discoverers of wondrous treasures described in countless fairy tales, and my approach to them equally fraught with menace. Like so many rubies and pearls, the books I coveted were imprisoned in gorgeous caves, the entrances to which were guarded by venomous monsters disguised as uncomely, unpleasant and unblinking old women (so they seemed), who had been created solely to ensure that no child ever took pleasure in a room full of books, or was ever permitted to borrow one without wrenching fear and worse foreboding.
This dread was first instilled in me by the ambience of the so-called ‘Children’s section of the Johannesburg Public Library, a building whose imperiously dismissive grandeur was reinforced by highly polished brass handles on enormous glasspaned doors of costly wood, and feet-repulsing mirrorlike parquet floors. In this room, there was to be absolutely no talking, no laughter (perish the thought), and no joy. Every attempt to take out a book summarily called forth a ferocious cross-examination regarding one’s previous borrowing record and one’s future intentions, which always concluded with a savage reminder – several times repeated – of when the book was to be returned, and of what appalling punishment would befall if it were not. To a little boy growing up in Mayfair, who took no interest in sports of any kind, and whose chief pleasure in school holidays was to sit on the top deck of the tram and travel Townwards to the Library, this was a sorry introduction to the workings of the [self-styled] “Mind’s Treasure-House”.
Would things be different at high school? Consistently determined to waste no energy on balls and bats, I offered to help in the library. Guess what? Horribly, impossibly, but all too tangibly, there again was another incarnation of Grendel’s dam, foureyed and silent-soled, hissing and creeping. Given some catalogue cards to fill out, I found myself within seconds being criticised for the way I formed my Ns and dotted my capital Is; patronized with a supercilious smirk; and sharply told that handwriting defects automatically disqualified me from making any useful contribution to the ordering of a proper library. All I was allowed to do was to shelve the returned books, as long as – Mother Grendel was odiously emphatic about this – I was certain I knew the alphabet accurately. It was then that I decided despite all financial disadvantages – to start collecting my own books in hopes of escaping librarians forever. I eagerly awaited the day I could enter university and discover there the delights of a ‘proper’ library. There I was certain to be at home.
O vain is the trust of users! When I came as an undergraduate to Wits there was only one Library whose main Reading Room was a larger, quieter (were such things possible?) more forbidding version of the Children’s Morgue at JPL. And here too, alas, I did not know how to behave. I whispered to friends, discussed books and periodicals, received regular rebukes, was finally criminalized into a ‘delinquent borrower’ and served time in exile. Still later, when I was a part-time post-graduate student, I was unremittingly persecuted by a small-time Fafner who derived obsessive gratification from repeatedly telephoning me both at work and at home, at all hours of day and night, to demand the return of books which no one else needed and without which I could not continue my research.
Drawn always to great collections of books, beckoning invitingly into worlds yet unexplored, I was for years malevolently repulsed from them by a series of hateful custodians who appeared to uphold as a sacred and self-evident truth that a library was a place where millions of books, all neatly catalogued in handwritings displaying no eccentricities whatever, quietly gathered dust on the shelves where they were perfectly arranged in the most exact alphabetical order, and were never – but never – disturbed by the rough and all unready hand of a borrower. And then I met Reuben Musiker.
I went to that meeting twelve years ago with a great deal of trepidation. I needed to make what was for me a momentous request, and hard experience had taught me that librarians automatically answered all requests in the negative. A friend of mine – a Russian emigré whose mother was a typesetter on one of Israel’s few Yiddish daily newspapers – was at that time a social worker based at Benevolent House, the Yeoville head-quarters of the Johannesburg Jewish Women’s Benevolent Association. Wandering through the building one day he had opened a locked door into a darkened room, and had there discovered dozens of shelves filled with Yiddish books in perfect condition, marked up and classified, to all appearances ready for borrowing, but utterly bereft of readers. The directors of the building’s operations were vociferously demanding the removal of those books. They took up space needed for more important purposes; they were no longer read; in any case they were in the despised Yiddish tongue. Who needs Yiddish books nowadays? Throw them out. My friend appealed to me – would not the University, where I was then working, take them? After all, was not a university a repository of the accumulated learning of the ages?
A few enquiries revealed that the custodian of the Landau Library, the University’s collection of Judaica, was not simply uninterested in Yiddish books – she was positively hostile. Being Israeli, she had no use for lashon ha-Galut. No, she definitely did not want them. Whatever for? We are living in the present now, and preparing for the future – and both present and future are Hebrew and Israel. Forget it. Pulp them. So I was left with no alternative but to try to appeal to the Blatant Beast himself, ‘a dreadful fiend, of gods and men ydrad’. Nevertheless, I wanted those books to be saved, and I wanted them to be in a ‘proper’ library, so I made an appointment to see Professor Musiker.
The moment of our meeting was one of those rare epiphanies that privileged individuals experience only once in a whole lifetime. All my bitter memories and deep resentments against the species librarian, if they did not vanish – how could they? – assumed a new dimension. Not all librarians were negative, self-opinionated, self-righteous and unpleasant. Here was a person gently spoken, attentive, and above all caring. Yes, of course the University Library would take these books – such a valuable addition, such a splendid nucleus to what could become a growing collection. What a valuable resource, what a treasure trove … We could have the books! Professor Musiker had said so! And the books could not come ‘on permanent loan’ as the Benevolent Women had at first unbenevolently demanded – the Library could accept them only on condition that their ownership was vested in the University. These volumes had originally belonged to Mendel Tabatznik, one of South Africa’s most prolific Yiddish writers, most dedicated teachers and most active folksmentshn. On his death, he had left them to be used as a lending library, to enrich the lives of others as they had enriched his own. For several years they had indeed done so, until those dwindling numbers of readers themselves slowly passed on. Now orphaned and homeless, they were to be adopted and sheltered.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column]
Opening of the Mendel Tabatznik Yiddish Collection, Landau Library, 26 November 1984.From left, Joseph Sherman, Professor Reuben Musiker, David Tabatznik and the distinguished Yiddish poets David Wolpe and David Fram.
So arrangements were made at the University of the Witwatersrand to receive the collection, and a fitting official function was planned at which this impressive addition to the Library’s holdings could be welcomed. The Jewish Women’s Benevolent
Association now generously agreed to do the catering, the Library found some money to provide drinks, invitations to a variety of distinguished patrons were sent out, and the function – held on Monday evening, 26 November 1984 in the Landau Library itself – became one of the great memories of my association with libraries.1
As Reuben had anticipated, the Tabatznik collection, which was formally handed over by its founder’s son David, began to bud. Once it became known that the University Library was prepared even eager – to receive Yiddish works, we were flooded with offers from people all over the city eager to find homes for once cherished Yiddish books. With the willing acquiescence of Reuben, I traveled all over Johannesburg once or twice a month for over two years, gathering up donations large and small. Each little gift contained some special treasure of its own; among larger endowments, we were especially fortunate to receive some irreplaceable collections. Those of the late Nochum Winik, the late Leibl Yudaken, the SA Jewish Board of Deputies and the Yiddish Cultural Federation stand out, as do the superb private libraries of the late H.W. Wedcliffe and the late Philip Lochoff. Among these books were, naturally enough, complete sets of the significant body of Yiddish writing in all genres produced in South Africa itself over a period of some eighty years. Possession of these remarkable pieces of Africana enabled me to complete one project on which I had long set my heart, and to plan another. The first was to prepare a selection of South African Yiddish short stories in English translation, with introductory biographical and explanatory material, which appeared in 1987.2 The second was to compile a detailed annotated bibliography of all Yiddish writing ever published in South Africa. In both cases, Reuben Musiker was indispensable.
As boxes began to crowd in, there was of course, insufficient space: neither the library itself not the basement stacks were yet able to house them. So I gladly offered to keep the books in my own study in the University until they could be professionally catalogued, arranged and made part of the ‘proper’ library.
As a result of the generosity of the Sheila Samson Fund, money became freely available to make Landau one of the finest collections of Judaica in South Africa, and the latest and best in books and periodicals had been vigorously streaming in. Now was manifestly the time to bring those Yiddish books from mourning to rejoicing, to house them with respect in the beautiful place prepared for them as their permanent home. Now they could be sorted, catalogued and shelved; now they would be revived as they ranged themselves with pride in a ‘proper’ library. A Yiddish-speaking cataloguer was found, and she had started her work. The books seemed as eager to move as we were to bring them home. In my study each day they seemed to me to be rustling with impatient delight.
Then, with brutal swiftness, those who govern the University of the Witwatersrand took the decision to close down the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies as part of what is now outlandishly called its ‘rationalisation exercise’.
Despite the fact that the Wits Chair of Hebrew had been in existence since 1919, having been established at the SA School of Mines and Technology long before the University had even been constituted as a University by an Act of Parliament; despite the fact that one of the world’s greatest Hebrew scholars, Chief Rabbi Dr J.L. Landau, had held that chair for nearly a quarter of a century and had bequeathed his magnificent personal library to the university on his death in 1942; despite the fact that no University in the world worth the name does not offer Hebrew as a subject, Wits had decided that it had no obligation to keep this Chair, and told the Jewish community of Johannesburg that if it wanted Hebrew and Jewish Studies, it must provide all the necessary funding. If not, all would be shut down at the end of 1993; all would be as if it never was.
And what of the Yiddish collection, which contains over six thousand volumes, many of them treasures beyond price, and together forming one of the most comprehensive Yiddish libraries in the world? What of that passionate dream which Reuben Musiker encouraged? As far as Wits is concerned, it is over – pie in the sky, a waste of time. Why Yiddish books in Africa, when Hebrew itself is not wanted? So the Tabatznik Yiddish collection is seeking more generous sanctuary. It cannot rest at Wits – but a new home will certainly be found for it. And wherever that home might be, Reuben Musiker will be part of it, ever enthusiastic, always knowledgeable.
Reuben’s involvement with Jewish Studies did not stop with promoting the Yiddish collection, however. It went much further, and can show more lasting achievements. In 1986 he was unanimously elected chairman of the South African Association of Jewish Studies, and therefore became responsible for organizing the Association’s Tenth Anniversary Conference which was held at Wits in September of 1987. This was a project into which Reuben poured all his energies. With the invaluable assistance of Susie Vaccaro, then Secretary of the Friends of the Library, we formed a small organizing committee to prepare for what remains one of the best organised and most productive conferences in the sixteen-year history of the Association.
But Reuben had not yet done everything he wanted. There was to be a book – the papers delivered at the Conference were to be published in a fully refereed volume under the imprint of the Library. Reuben, in consultation with Professor I.A. Ben Yosef of UCT, selected the referees – all distinguished overseas scholars – wrote to all of them, sent them the papers, collated their evaluations, and made the selection of essays to be published. These appeared in a handsome volume entitled Waters Out of the Well in 1988.3 This volume, fully accredited by the DNE, was received with the greatest enthusiasm by contributors and general readers alike. Even its belittling dismissal as ‘mere hagiography’ by an erstwhile colleague, then in a senior position at a well-known Jewish research centre, seemed to us further proof that it had succeeded beyond our best for it. Only undeniable success can breed undisguised envy.
This publication whetted Reuben’s appetite for another. The long-awaited Jewish Studies department was just putting out its first shoots at Wits when I was approached by Minnie Schamroth, daughter of the late Leibl Feldman, to translate with a view to publication her father’s 1940 Yiddish monograph on the remarkable Jewish community which flourished round the magical trade in ostrich feathers in Oudtshoorn during the early years of this century. I went to Reuben with the proposal, which included a generous undertaking on the part of the Feldman family to cover half the production costs. The result was the magnificent limited edition, published by the Friends of the Library, of Oudtshoorn: Jerusalem of Africa (1989).4
Only 250 hand-bound and individually numbered copies were printed; by the time of the book’s public launch at a cocktail party in Hofmeyr House during December 1989, all these had been bought out. Inevitably, this volume too was accepted for full academic accreditation by the DNE, and the book itself has now become a valuable and sought-after piece of Africana.
One of the additional gains for the University of this ambitious venture was that the Feldman family donated to its archives all the Leibl Feldman papers in their possession. These complemented the Richard Feldman papers, which the archives had long held; together they provide invaluable primary source material for vital years of South African history, both Jewish and general, in which both Feldman brothers played such prominent roles.
Autre temps, autre moeurs. Reuben has retired as University Librarian, and the University itself is stumbling uncertainly in an ill-defined direction. No matter. Wherever there are Jewish libraries and Jewish publications in Johannesburg, there will be found Reuben Musiker, giving to them the same dedication, the same expert supervision, the same balanced counsel as he has always done.
NOTES
- The text of the welcoming address which I had the privilege to deliver on this occasion is published in Jewish Affairs, 39, No.12, December 1984, pp. 64-70.
- Sherman, J (ed.), and trans. From A Land Far Off: South African Yiddish Stories in English Translation. Foreword by Dan Jacobson. Cape Town: Jewish Publications – South Africa, 1987.
- Musiker, R., and Sherman, J., eds. Waters Out of the Well. Johannesburg: The Library, University of the Witwatersrand, 1988.
- Sherman, J. (ed.) Oudtshoorn: Jerusalem of Africa by Leibl Feldman. Introductory Essay by Joseph Sherman. Translated by Lilian Dubb and Sheila Barkusky. Historical Notes and Commentary by John Simon. Friends of the Library, University of the Witwatersrand, 1989.
