A Great Teacher at
a Great Age:
Abraham Auerbach at 95
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
Ninety-five
year old Abraham Auerbach, autodidact, linguist, “malamud,” lets nothing pass that
isn’t totally accurate. With gentle humor and a watchful concern that
his interlocutor does not take offense, he explains, in an accented whisper,
his head slightly propped up on a pillow, that, yes, he was and still is a “teacher”—he
leads a class in intermediate Hebrew at the Jewish Council Center for Senior
Citizens in Brooklyn —but to understand, “malamud” is not
the right word (there’s a slight connotation of the healer, the feldshuh,
in the Yiddish vernacular). “Lehrer” is probably more to the point,
though even here, on solid semantic ground in explaining the differences between
Hebrew and Yiddish, which he has also taught, along with Bible study, at various
other centers and synagogues, he smiles and modestly opines that he’s
not really a lehrer, either, because, well, he’s having a wonderful time “giving
of myself” at the Council. There, once a week, coaching a flock of devoted
women and men, ages 60-80, anywhere from 6 to 16 people, he feels he is “participating
fully in life.” What they, in turn, feel is evidenced by the fact that
most of his students keeps coming back for more, year after year. He tilts
his head back, laughs quietly, and implies that he can’t imagine why.
Those who have
seen him in action, however, and know his life story know why. They talk
of his great patience, his calm, his phenomenal memory. He generously credits “Dina” and “Ruthie,” two
particularly knowledgeable members of the group, “interesting women,” who,
he says, “know more [international Hebrew] than I do,” and tends
to rely on them as assistants, but it’s hard to believe they know more
than he does, whether the subject is Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, Greek, French,
Spanish, or literature, nonfiction, poetry (which he continues to write). In
fact, he started a library in a room in his house when he was a youngster of
13 back in Shershev, a shtetl in Eastern
Poland near the Russian border, a town without a doctor, a high school, books.
The young boy fell in love with languages, with popular literature and learned
texts.
And so, Shershev
would have books, Victor Hugo novels, autobiographical tales from the great
Yiddish writers, some of whom wrote about poor, itinerant musicians, wandering
the countryside. Yiddish, of course, lends itself to music, and at one point,
he recalls, he also “played [taught himself] the mandolin.” But
it was reading that was his love. Collecting a few pennies from the parents
of friends, he set about ordering books and periodicals but would take nothing
for lending them out, though parents supportive of his efforts encouraged
him to do so. An older brother, who did manage to go to a high school in
another town, would come back with other books and magazines and occasionally,
a newspaper, a treat in impoverished Shershev.
He would go on,
but his throat is dry, and he has hardly touched his orange juice. Tired,
still animated, he seems humbly unaware that his life is arguably the most
important lesson he could teach. The hour is late but he insists on seeing
his visitor to the elevator noting that if it’s necessary to hurry down the hall, he’ll
do it. And he does.#
