Gainesville, FL

Professor Jack Kugelmass

Tovah Levy

I drove 4.5 hours to Gainesville, FL to meet with Professor Jack Kugelmass. We were there for two hours and then drove back home to Boynton Beach.  I drove 9 hours to visit Professor Jack Kugelmass.  It was well worth the drive.  My granddaughter Tovah Levy accompanied me on the trip. 

Tovah wants to be a Jewish history professor and Professor Kugelmass told her that she has to learn to read and speak Hebrew fluently.  She should go on Ulpan to Israel.

Professor Jack Kugelmass and myself.    Bottom Picture – Tovah Levy with the Professor’s paraquet.

Why did I visit Professor Jack Kugelmass?  Five years ago I was at Half Price Books in their Jewish Book section and I saw his book. It intrigued me and I purchased it.

The Miracle of Intervale Avenue was first published in 1986 and again in 1996 with an update. The book is about the last remaining Orthodox Shul in the South Bronx, the Intervale Jewish Center. Professor Jack Kugelmass was an anthropology graduate student and first entered the Shul in February 1980 thinking he would write a magazine article on the last remaining Jews in the South Bronx. He ended up spending over 5 years visiting the Shul on a regular basis and wrote a 250 page book about the Shul and its people.

Jack Kugelmass talks about why these elderly Jews stayed in the South Bronx and attended the Interval Jewish Center and talks about the expected. Towards the end of the book, Jack Kugelmass comes to realize something important about the Shul to its members and why they stayed in the South Bronx. He writes, “For congregants concerned about their legacy and needing the reassurance that they will be remembered, the Intervale Jewish Center has come to serve as a communal kaddish, guaranteeing to each member the recitation of the memorial prayers.” and “For some congregants yorsayt is a major reason for attending.”

Then Professor Jack Kugelmass sums this up with a powerful, powerful conclusion. He writes, “Ultimately, only the knowledge that one is part of something greater than familial bonds and obligations, something that reasserts the existence of a higher order of things, gives man the sense that death and life are linked, that they are both part of a divine plan, and that one gives meaning and purpose to the other. The communal rites of the shul provide that sense of order if only because they tie congregants to the world of their fathers and even, as I argued in an earlier chapter, to the world of their biblical forefathers.”

I have reread this paragraph numerous times and it is profound. Professor Jack Kugelmass was not Frum, yet he came to realize the ultimate purpose of a Shul, and what it should mean to its congregants. For most of my life I thought that Shul was just a place to daven and it really did not make a difference where I davened. I discovered that a Shul must be more than just a place to daven. It must connect the person to his past and to the Jewish people.

This is why I had to visit Professor Jack Kugelmass.  I had to ask him about the book and just talk to him.  He graciously gave me close to two hours.  I asked him how he understood this about a Synagogue.  He told me he just understood the importance of a Synagogue.  

His house is one you would expect from a college professor.  Books in piles all over.  I asked what he was reading and he showed me the book, The Memoirs of Glukel of Hameln.  His walls were adorned with pictures of his travels and people he met.  There was Moshe and David Lent from the Intervale Jewish Center.  Pictures from Israel, Williamsburg, and other places.

Professor Jack Kugelmass is a Professor at University of Florida.  This is his bio:

Education

• Ph.D. New School for Social Research
• M.A. New School for Social Research
• B.A. McGill University

Personal Statement

I am a cultural anthropologist with a background and continuing interest in critical theory. I’ve done fieldwork in Poland and New York City and have an increasing interest in Israel. I’ve long considered myself an urban anthropologist with a strong connection both to traditional neighborhood ethnography as well as to public culture and the study of museums, festivals and restaurants. I have a love for ethnography, writing and photography and enjoy teaching all three. In recent years I’ve become increasingly fascinated by the anthropology of travel. Some of my research in this area involves participation observation, but I find myself increasingly drawn to the study of travel books. My current project looks at Yiddish travel books over a fifty year period between the First World War until the 1960s. Although there are a number of interesting theoretical foci to the essays in this study, the fact is that I like narrative and am drawn to these books in part because of that, and I try to use translation to communicate to readers the narrative strengths of this minor literary genre. The anthropology in these essays is to analyze the social and political issues that underlie the narratives, to see how a group uses the imaginary realm of elsewhere to think through its own predicament especially when its present and future are precarious and home and citizenship are increasingly contested.

Selected Publications

• Kugelmass, J. 2014. Sifting the Ruins: Emigre Jewish Journalists’ Return Visits to the Old Country, 1946-1948. University of Michigan, pp. 1-62.
• Kugelmass, J. 2013.’I’m a Gentile!’ Border Dramas and Jewish Continuity. In Dynamic Belonging: Contemporary Jewish Collective Identities, edited by Harvey Goldberg, Steven M. Cohen, and Ezra Kopelowitz, pp. 223-236. Berghahn Books, New York.
• Kugelmass, J. 2010. Rites of the Tribe: The Meaning of Poland for American Jewish Visitors. In Tourists and Tourism: A Reader, edited by Sharon Bohn Gmelch, pp. 369-396. Waveland Press, Long Grove, IL.
• Kugelmass, J. (editor). 2006. Jews, Sports and the Rites of Citizenship. Illinois University Press, Champaign.
• Kugelmass, J. (editor). 2003. Key Texts in American Jewish Culture. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ.

In the beginning of the book, page five, Kugelmass mentioned the history of The Intervale Jewish Center.  Herman Wouk’s grandfather, Mendel Leib Levine, was the Rov of the Shul.  Page 94 of Herman Wouk’s 2000 book, The Will to Live On, talks about when Rabbi Mendel Leib Levine meets Professor Irwin Edman, Herman Wouk mentor, who was an assimilated Jew.    Please see the below pages 7 – 10.

I am not sure if Herman Wouk understood the meeting in its proper context.  In the exchange Professor Edman tells Herman Wouk’s grandfather that Rabbi Mendel Leib Levine’s statement compared to what Marcus Aurelius said.  Rabbi Levine asks, who is Marcus Aurelius? and Edman answers, a Roman.  Rabbi Levine says, “a Rayme,   Of course I know about Rayme, may its name and memory be blotted out”.  Meaning, Professor Edman, who are you quoting a Roman, a nation that conquered Israel and destroyed the temple.  A nation that fed people to lions, and ruled with brutality.  This is who you draw moral lessons from?  I did look up Marcus Aurelius and discovered that he did say many things that are excellent lessons in life.  Maybe he was a good emperor, however, Roman was brutal and ruled with brutality.  Look at Pages  11 -14.

Sayings of Macus Aurelius Antoninus:

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (/ɔːˈriːliəs/ or-EE-lee-əs;^[2] Latin: [ˈmaːrkus au̯ˈreːlius antɔːˈniːnus]; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoic philosopher. 

‘Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Our life is what our thoughts make it.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.’ – Marcus Aurelius‘

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘A man’s worth is no greater than his ambitions.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Each day provides its own gifts.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Anger cannot be dishonest.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Do every act of your life as if it were your last.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‘This is a misfortune’ but ‘To bear this worthily is good fortune.” – Marcus Aurelius

‘Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Confine yourself to the present.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Poverty is the mother of crime.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘The universe is transformation: life is opinion.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Such as are your habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of your mind; for the soul is dyed by the thoughts.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘That which is not good for the bee-hive cannot be good for the bees.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘Because your own strength is unequal to the task, do not assume that it is beyond the powers of man; but if anything is within the powers and province of man, believe that it is within your own compass also.’ – Marcus Aurelius

‘To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.’ – Marcus Aurelius