A pilgrimage of modest dimensions

Stanley Aronson M.D.

Editor’s note: As we go to press, we are deeply saddened to learn of the death of our distinguished columnist, teacher and friend. His final column appears here. May his memory be a blessing.

In the final days of 2014, I had sent a brief letter to Fran Ostendorf, editor of The Jewish Voice, telling her of my intent to cease submitting columns to the paper for reasons of personal health. In return, I received a gracious letter of thanks with a suggestion that I may wish to offer, for some future issue, a brief closing commentary.

A closing commentary, I suppose, would require that I comment on something, perhaps what the world appeared to be doing – or avoiding – at the time of my first column in The Jewish Voice, some 18 years ago. It might consider what subjects these columns shared with the readership. And finally, what was Providence, and the surrounding world, oriented to in November of 1997, the month when this inauspicious column appeared?

The inaugural column explored what factors made a recurring disease to be categorized as “Jewish.” Certainly there were hereditary disorders that are customarily said to be Jewish and are transmitted from one generation to the next either by recessive or dominant genes. And then there are non-hereditary illnesses which arise more readily in Jewish populations by virtue of some religion-oriented idiosyncrasy in diet or lifestyle.

The subsequent columns, well over 100 of them, touched upon the professional lives of members within the local Jewish community (e.g., Beck, Goldowsky, Hamolsky, Lichtman), those beyond Rhode Island but within a century (e.g., Sachs, Jacobi, Koplik, Touro, Sanger, Baruch, Metchnikoff, Galton, Sabin, Lewis/Clark, Salk, Axelrod, Ehrlich, Wald, Goldwater), and those in the mythical or historical past (e.g., Hippocrates, Maimonides, Esau, Moses, Asaph). And then there were columns paying homage to the Jews of the European ghetto, those in transit to the Western Hemisphere, and the onset of Jewish life in these United States.

And finally, what was the world like, and what was it responding to, in November of 1997? A beleaguered Bill Clinton was in the White House, Bibi Netanyahu was prime minister in Jerusalem and Lincoln Almond was governor of Rhode Island. Major working-class disputes paralyzed much of France; Mary McAleese was elected as President of Ireland; communal massacres took place in Algeria; Pakistan and Egypt initiated a subsequent decade of a pandemic of terrorist acts of assassination; the capital of Kazakhstan was moved from Almaty to Astana, much to the chagrin of countless adolescents who consider data memorization to be the equivalent of creative learning. And the highest ever grossing of a film, Cameron’s “Titanic,” appeared at this time. Given the many events disrupting some adjacent years, 1997, in retrospect, was a relatively quiet 12 months.

So these many columns served a purpose: they documented, sometimes simplistically, the lives of a few of our coreligionists and the many historical happenings which impacted upon them and, in general, yet other Jewish enclaves. For this privilege, I am most thankful to a succession of gifted and committed editors of The Jewish Voice. Thank you, thank you.