Photo is Magician and book collector Harry Houdini.
Houdini donated his books and manuscripts collection to The Library of Congress https://www.britannicauctions.com/blog/harry-houdini-rare-book-collection
Two Extremely Educated (and even intelligent) Non-Clown Clown Rabbis
The two Rabbis in question had extensive secular educations. Steinsaltz to some degree in Science. Sacks was educated at the universities of Cambridge; Oxford; and Kings College London. His breadth of secular knowledge was such that he could at any moment have become a professor of Philosophy; Psychology; Literature; or History. At a turning point he was advised to become an ordained Rabbi. In some videos he tells his story and its turning point.
There are only a few public videos of Rabbi Steinsaltz but he clearly is a Non-Clown Clown as his Cheshire grin ever ready to see the light side of life and to share his next witty quip. There are 100s of Rabbi Sacks’ talks and teachings. Every video talk or lesson that I have viewed has humor embedded as well as informed asides to Literature, History, Philosophy, Psychology.
This blog informally juxtaposes two sets of two. Two Rabbis each who are Non-Clown Clowns (one of my highest compliments of human accomplishment) in counter to two Writers of Copenhagen yet I don’t know if they ever met on friendly terms. Notably one of those great Danes had his first published writing as an attack on the writing of the other great Dane. The two Writers were Soren Kierkegaard and Hans Cristian Andersen.
Portrait drawings of Hans Christian Andersen & Søren Kierkegaard
“I own a second hand copy of Either/Or (by Kierkegaard), previously owned by a prison inmate. It has all the most depressive passages about the meaninglessness of life underlined, with added commentary. Very educational – tells you something about where some people have to be in their lives, before they start to think :)” just an online comment regarding the Philosopher/Writer Soren Kierkegaard of Denmark.
Here is the pre-publication information for Katie Ashton’s soon to be published book about Kierkegaard and Andersen: “In her unique dual biography, Kate Ashton delineates the parallel lives of Hans Christian Anderson and Søren Kierkegaard, their personal relationship, literary careers, and lasting cultural influence on the western and wider world. These two towering literary geniuses followed radically divergent paths, and yet each read and reacted to the immense power and depth of the other’s growing oeuvre as it refracted their own. Against the backdrop of the end of Golden Age Denmark within a warring Europe, and the spiritual and sexual repression of Reformed Christianity, each suffered the fate of the prophet unhonoured in his hometown of Copenhagen.
Tracing their lives from childhood trauma to tragic love affairs and anguished isolation, Ashton illuminates counteractive response to experience: one an inward search for truth and self-knowledge, the other flight into distraction and fantasy. Mirrored Minds offers the reader an opportunity to explore each author and his legacy within the context of the other, just as their long-standing association held up a mirror for Anderson and Kierkegaard themselves.”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gave a talk for Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz’s 80th Birthday in 2018. The 23 minutes video is below. Rabbi Steinsaltz was educated in Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry at university overlapping with his advanced Jewish studies. He was raised a devout Atheist but his Parents insisted that he study Gemora/Talmud because as they said: “wanted him to be an Atheist but not an ignoramus”. At Sacks’ home once Steinsaltz asked “What is the one book that Soviet Jews need to read to rediscover their Jewish identity”? Sacks did not know the answer. Steinsaltz informed him that the book is by Hans Christian Andersen. It is The Ugly Duckling. I didn’t realize or remember until I began writing this Post that in 1998 in my co-created play Artist in Exile… Requiem for Strindberg I had one character explain the solution to the protagonist trio’s philosophical quandary. The solution was in Andersen’s tale of The Ugly Duckling. The play’s character who tells the trio the secret was the Danish philosopher/writer Soren Kierkegaard. The protagonist trio were 3 Clowns who wanted to be Writers: Auguste Strindberg; Henryk Ibsen; and Ingmar Bergman. I only have a copy of the play in Swedish. A few people whose first language is Swedish have the whole script. We continue to wait anxiously for the translation – from somebody but I know not who.