EZRIEL
NAKS (ISRAEL KNOX) (May 3, 1907-June 9, 1986)
He was born in Rogatshov (Rogachev),
Mohilev district, Byelorussia. His
father, an elementary school teacher and Torah reader in synagogue, left for
the United States in 1909, and five years later the rest of the family arrived
there. Until age seventeen he studied in
a Talmud Torah, and at the same time he also attended high school in New
Haven. He later graduated from City
College in New York, and then proceeded to Columbia University, from which he
received his M. A. degree in 1932 and his Ph.D. in 1936. His dissertation on Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer
established his name among American philosophers.[1] Already in his school years, he expressed
himself with Yiddish and became an uncompromising Yiddishist. In the school years he also wrote essays in
Yiddish and was close with Dr. Chaim Zhitlovsky ideologically. Over the years 1927-1932, he was a teacher of
Yiddish in the Sholem-Aleykhem schools in New York, a leader among the youth in
the Yiddish Cultural Association, and for a long period of time he was the
director of the English-speakers’ youth section of Workmen’s Circle and editor
of its serial The Call. He was professor of philosophy (1947-1951) at
Ohio University and from 1951 at New York University. He was a well-known lecturer and author in
both English and Yiddish. He contributed
work to the Anglophone serials: Journal
of Philosophy and Ethics—in which
he published chapters of his work on the philosophy of humor). In the English-language publication of
Workmen’s Circle, The Call, he was in
charge of a column entitled “In the Yiddish World.” He also frequently wrote for such Anglophone
Jewish periodicals as Commentary. In Yiddish he placed work in: Di Tsukunft (The future), Fraye arbeter-shtime (Free voice of
labor), and Der veker (The alarm),
among others. He also contributed to
separate publications, such as Yitskhok-nakhmen
shtaynberg gedenkbukh (Remembrance volume for Yitskhok-Nakhmen Shtaynberg). From January 1961 he served as editor of Point of View, an English-language
quarterly publication of the Jewish Labor Committee in New York. In book form in English: Rabbi in America: The Story of Isaac M. Wise (Boston: Little, Brown
& Co, 1957), 173 pp.—a biography of the founder of Reform Judaism in
America, Isaac Mayer Wise, a rabbi from Bohemia, arrived in the United States in
1846 at age twenty-seven and until 1900 played an exceptional role in Jewish
spiritual life there. “This is a piece
of Jewish history and human history. The
human illusions emerge with striking clarity, when a certain amount of time
passes…. An instructive and interesting
work.” wrote Y. Varshavshi [Isaac Bashevis Singer]. “Dr. E. Naks,” noted Y. Zilberberg, “is among
the few philosophically schooled writers and speakers, who remain active in our
world…. The essays that Naks has
published, primarily in Tsukunft and Commentary, are always innovative,
always educative. In everything that Dr.
Naks writes, one senses an ethical-humanistic approach…. His striving is to get at the Jewish
root. He gains inspiration from world
redemption, from the governance of heaven, in the vision of our prophets,
although Dr. Naks is fundamentally grounded in the world of ideas and social
concepts of the nineteenth century.”
Naks’s book, write F. Sandler, “is a condensed history of the Reform
movement in the Jewish religion in the United States, whose architect, builder,
and most influential leader was Rabbi Wise.
It is the history of Reform Judaism, as it arose and developed in
America under the leadership and impact of Rabbi Wise.” Naks gave public lectures with great success
(both in English and in Yiddish) in numerous cities in the United States and
Canada. On several occasions he served
on the managing committee of the Yiddish Pen Club in America and from 1961 was
its vice-president. In 1964 he was
invited to Australia, and for two months he gave lectures with extraordinary
success in Yiddish and English. He died
in New York.
Sources:
Who’s Who in World Jewry (New York, 1955),
p. 406; Sh. Slutski, Avrom
reyzen-biblyografye (Avrom Reyzen bibliography) (New York, 1956), no. 5238;
H. I. Brock, “The Old and the New,” New
York Times Book Review (November 17, 1957); A. Leyeles, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (New York) (February
22, 1958); Y. Zilberberg, in Fraye
arbeter-shtime (New York) (March 1, 1958); Dr. L. Rukhames, in Tog-morgn-zhurnal (English section)
(March 23, 1958); Y. Varshavski, in Forverts
(New York) (June 1, 1958); F. Sandler, in Kultur
un dertsiung (New York) (October 1958); Meylekh Ravitsh, in Keneder odler (Montreal) (February 23,
1961); Y. Rapoport, in Di yidishe post
(Melbourne) (September 4, 1963).
Yankev Kahan
[1] Translator’s note.
He later published: The Aesthetic
Theories of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer (New Jersey: Humanities Press,
1978), 219 pp. (JAF)
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