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NOVEMBER 2004

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.#

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