| Letter#36 The Jewish
Name
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| My dear Mr. Isaacs: |
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| You amuse me by asking,
"Why, so long as you denied Judaism, didn't you also deny your Jewish name?"
concluding that "If it were not that your name's Goldstein, I would judge by your
extreme Catholicism that you were to the Catholic manor born." The answer to your query is very simple, I am proud of my Jewish name, and not ashamed of it as are some of the Goldsteins who have changed their family name to Goldin, Gerard, Giddings, and Gould, and their given names from Isaac to William, Israel to Percival, Rebecca to Rosalind, and Rachel to Phyllis, to mention only a few of the hundreds of Jewish name-dodgers read about in the Jewish press. They are like an occasional half-baked Catholic who names his children after nuts--Hazel and Hickory--instead of saints. You bring to mind a conversation regarding ancestors, that took place during a dinner at which a friend and I were being entertained. The honors seemed to go to the lady who proved to be of real new England "blue-blood" stock, as she could trace her family tree back to the Cabin of the Mayflower. Noticing that I kept on silently eating while that part of the conversation was going on, the host good-naturedly asked, "How far back do you go?" My instant proud response, "I date back to Abraham," caused the descendant from the first Cape Codders to be laughed into the discard. While an entire change of name on the part of persons who enter the religious life is obligatory in some religious orders, being an act of severance from all worldly relationship, no such an obligation is imposed as a condition of baptism. Hence, while Jews in growing numbers have been trying to dodge their Jewish origin, long before the Jew-hater Hitler had afflicted the world, I took great satisfaction in parading a name that is as Jewish as Murphy is Irish. It made me feel closer in human relationship with Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Apostles, and St. Paul than are Catholics to the manor born. Besides, a Catholic with a Jewish name, -- Goldstine, not Goldsteen -- emphasizes the fallacy of the notion from which I have been endeavoring to wean you, that the acceptance of God's New Testament principles is a denial of God's Old Testament principles. What you call "extreme Catholicism" is no more a denial of Judaism of old than the majestic oak is a repudiation of the acorn from which it came forth. One is the full-blossoming of what existed potentially in the other. |
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