by Lawrence Bush on February 22, 2012
Mayer Amschel Rothschild (Bauer), whom Forbes magazine has called “a founding father of international finance,” was born in the Jewish ghetto of Frankfurt, Germany on this date in 1744. His father had a business trading goods and currency; the family home, above his shop “at the sign of the red shield” (zum roten Schild, from which the name Rothschild was derived) was 11 feet wide and housed some 30 people. Mayer developed his own coin business and provided banking services to German nobility, most notably Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel, who had made a great fortune providing Hessian mercenaries to the British against the revolution in the American colonies. Rothschild himself especially profited by smuggling high-value goods during Napoleon’s continental blockade of German lands after 1806 and by caretaking Wilhelm IX’s fortune after Wilhelm was forced by Napoleon’s advance to flee to Denmark. Rothschild also helped to finance the British resistance to Napoleon’s conquests (and manipulated the British stock market after receiving advance news of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo). By then, the family business had grown into an international bank with offices headed by his sons in Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, Naples, and London. “Rothschild helped invent modern banking by introducing concepts such as diversification, rapid communication, confidentiality and high volume,” according to Forbes. “[E]arlier than most, he understood that time and information meant money, and he pulled out all the stops to remain in constant contact with associates across Europe.”
“Permit me to issue and control the money of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” —Mayer Rothschild
by Lawrence Bush on February 21, 2012
Gerald Stern, who has been described as “a post-nuclear, multicultural [Walt] Whitman for the millennium — the U.S.’s one and only truly global poet” (Kate Daniels), was born in Pittsburgh on this date in 1925. He was already 50 when his poetry first received critical acclaim, and his many awards since then include a 1998 National Book Award for This Time: New and Selected Poems. Stern was poet laureate of New Jersey from 2000 to 2002. His “Jewish heritage,” says the Poetry Archive, “enables him to write from a very distinct viewpoint. His America is a surreal place, alive with biblical intensity and shaded by themes of Judaic loss, and his tone — sometimes chatty, sometimes streetwise — takes the reader into a landscape where grandeur combines strangely with the everyday.” To see Stern reading his poem, “The Dancing,” click here.
“We’re destroying the earth! We live in a country that’s governed by confusion and lies and that operates through greed and selfishness and cruelty. We’ve killed or forced into exile two million Iraqis. Where is the poetry? What are our important poets doing?” —Gerald Stern
by Lawrence Bush on February 20, 2012
Gershom Scholem, the first professor of Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University, died in Jerusalem at age 84 on this date in 1982. Scholem pioneered the contemporary study of kabbalah and other sources and streams of Jewish mysticism while remaining a committed Jewish secularist throughout his life. He is best known for Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, a 1941 collection of lectures, and for his 1973 biography of Shabbatai Zvi, the messianic figure of the 17th century. Scholem was lifelong friends with Walter Benjamin, the Marxist philosopher who committed suicide under Nazi pressure in 1940, whose reputation Scholem helped build and preserve. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1958 and became a very influential commentator on Israeli culture and politics, while training three generations of scholars and raising the profile of Jewish mysticism from an obscure to a central role in Jewish history and thought.
“All of us have students, schools, but only Gershom Scholem has created a whole academic discipline!”—Martin Buber
by Lawrence Bush on February 19, 2012
Jimi (John Allen) Hendrix, a 16-year-old high school student, played his first public gig with an unnamed band in the basement of Temple De Hirsch, a Reform synagogue in Seattle, Washington, on this date in 1959. Hendrix was actually auditioning for the band, and his wild playing and show-off style (dropping to his knees, sticking out his tongue, flailing his arms) got him fired before the second set. Jimi Hendrix would be also fired early in his career by Little Richard and by Ike and Tina Turner for similar hijinks. (“He was a real good guitar player, but he liked gimmicks,” complained Ike Turner.) The musical director of Temple De Hirsch from 1930 to 1963 was Samuel E. Goldfarb, co-writer of the famous Dreidel Song (“I have a little dreydl . . .”), which Hendrix, unfortunately for Jewish civilization, never covered. Today, the synagogue has campuses in Seattle and Bellevue and is the largest synagogue in the Pacific Northwest.
“Hendrix trudged home devastated, but was still buzzing about what he’d unleashed in himself. From the start, Hendrix was provoking, unsettling and thrilling people.” —Rebel Streets
