Sublime

Moshe, the proud owner of two thriving theaters and a grocery store that lost money every year thanks to his American-born Jewish wife, felt proud to be American. He cherished American life. He tried hard to convince his new friend of the goodness of America’s ways.

Reb was a cheerful soul, a man of boundless enthusiasm, who believed the Talmud empowered him with the gift of making everyone around him happy and comfortable, including Negroes, whom he saw as fellow immigrants who, like him, were forced by poverty and lack of resources to learn many skills and continually adjust.

For Shimen, the “community” is a set of concentric circles beginning with his (dead) family, extending to Gerer Hasidim, and extending further to others committed to the Jewish way of life; the farther out the circle, the less weight it earns in Shimen’s calculus.

The prohibition on embarrassing another is one of Judaism’s cardinal sins, they say, and one should sooner die than transgress