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Missing Milton Himmelfarb
- Abstract
Shall I succumb to a cliché by declaring that the death of the writer and critic Milton Himmelfarb last year at the age of eighty-seven signals the passing of an era? Though the temptation is powerful, it may well be that a man who was in critical respects sui generis cannot be said to have represented much more than himself.
Himmelfarb, who for many years was director of research at the American Jewish Committee and edited its American Jewish Year Book, while also serving as a prolific contributor to COMMENTARY, embodied a highly unusual constellation of intellectual characteristics. Many people write about contemporary Jewish affairs; many more write about public affairs in the large. Few write about both, and still fewer about their intersection. Of those few, scarcely any exhibit a deep acquaintance with either classical Jewish sources or academic Jewish scholarship. If we require extensive familiarity with both, we are probably describing a set of one.
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