EMMANUEL GITLIN
DRAPER’S PAPER ROUTE
EMMANUEL GITLIN
by Adam Carroll Draper
Manny Gitlin was one of the most colorful people in the history of hilarious, and one my very favorite professors. He was a friendly, funny genius who loved Yeshua and spoke something like eight languages. He liked me, mostly because I was a smartass - that, and he was convinced I was Jewish.
“I’m Catholic, Professor Gitlin.”
“You’re loud like a Jew. You’re smart like a Jew. You argue like a Jew. You’re funny like a Jew. You’re Jewish.”
Of course, I loved that, and there was no point in trying to disagree. “Adam, when a Jewish man does this to you,” he’d laugh and say, raising his hand and bringing it down suddenly in dismissive finality, “the conversation is over.” That was hard to get out of him, though. Manny loved dialectic – thought it was heaven!
I love me some Manny Gitlin!
Manny died last summer at a sprightly 94 years old. I just found out this week. He would tell me it doesn’t accomplish anything to stress over failing to bid him a fare-thee-well, but I only learned that he died because I was trying to find how to contact him. I had intended to do that for a while. Is there a concept that would account for the fact that I wrote about procrastination and the law of unintended consequences last week? Manny would know what Jung would have called it (certainly not acausal connection). Whatever it is, I don’t like its implication. The fact remains that I did not have his number.
Manny was an amazing teacher. He conveyed life more than he taught a subject. He expected his students to absorb his reading assignments, and his lectures were more like guided tours, providing anecdotal information to fill in the intertices. I loved his classes, but there was no way to study effectively for one of Manny’s tests. You either got a glimpse of the enormity of what he conveyed or you were lost. Frankly, even that might not help if you weren’t all that bright. In one test he gave in a core 400 level theology course (everyone at Lenoir Rhyne had to take that course, though not necessarily from him), Manny wanted the definition of the word “ameliorate” in a passage we read by Peter Hebblethwaite.
When I saw him roaming about campus musing to himself later, I asked him about that. “Professor Gitlin, what’s up with the vocab test?”
He started laughing. “I knew you would get it, Adam – you and several others. I want a sense of heft; what is there.”
“It’s a stupidity detector?”
“No,” he laughed. “It’s an interest detector. I want to know if they are interested in life, in being, as it were. If not, I cannot help them.”
“You get that out of whether someone knows the difference between ameliorate and exacerbate?”
“Not entirely. Not entirely. Teaching requires probing. I want to know what is being probed.”
We got into a discussion about how, once you learn words, they suddenly appear in stuff you read . I told him that it feels like there is a mystical force that speaks words into common usage once I learn them, when that experience only reveals the banality of my ignorance. He laughed. Manny laughed a lot, but he thought that it was simply enormous that I appreciate humility.
“Adam,” he said once. “You need to know and love the C students. One day, you will work for them.”
When I tried to call Manny the other day (or finally found an excuse for trying to call him, really), it was because I discovered something in Psalm 37 and I wanted to get his take on it. I like to read the Tanach (Old Testament) in at least three translations: the King James Version (KJV)(so I can use Strongs Concordance), the Orthodox Jewish Version (OJV), and the Online Hebrew Interlineal Bible (OHIB). The OHIB not only yields the Hebrew in which the passage was written, it provides a literal translation. In verses 4 and 5 of Psalm 37, the literal translation offers an amazing eye opener. What the King James Version renders “Delight thyself also in the Lord” in verse 4 is literally translated “enjoy-deliciousness-you! on Yahweh” in the OHIB. And what the King James Version translates “Commit thy way unto the Lord” in verse 5 is literally rendered “Roll-you! on Yahweh way of you” in the OHIB. This is so wonderful to read with Psalm 34:8 when David extols, “O taste and see that the Lord is good.”
God is good. Put another way, “Oi, we don’t know from good!” He is what good is! It’s like the joke where the Rabbi tells the waiter “I want you should taste the soup” in order to point out that he needs a spoon. We don’t know from delicious. Taste it! Roll in it! These are the elementary particles of God, His irreducible aspects. Longing for love and peace and joy are baked into who we are – made in His image and after His likeness. “Seek and ye shall find.”
I wanted to talk to Manny this week. I wanted to hear the joy in his voice. He had an amazing way of looking at Hebrew. He might have broken into an old story about the time he carried some of the Dead Sea Scrolls around in the trunk of his car. (Yeah, Manny was a renowned scholar). Now, he is in heaven – probably arguing with Moshe (Moses) about some aspect of Torah.
I miss you, Manny. We’ll pick this discussion back up by and by.