He unlocked our minds and stole our hearts
OVER
MY MANY YEARS in this job, which takes me all through the city, I’ve seen his name on more of your refrigerators than General Electric’s.
Rabbi Bernard Baskin. Under the magnets. His byline is on articles, usually from The Spectator’s op-ed section, that you’ve clipped out and saved in order to be reminded opening a door of what you once happily found turning a page: the jewelry of his gentle intelligence. So many of you, of us, touched and moved and guided by his words.
I dare say, even when not clipped out, the rabbi’s words get held in place for us, fixed fast by the magnetic pull of conscience and memory, in a reflex of husbanding wisdom against what might come — bad or good.
And consider the man, in person — as I’ve been so fortunate to do — off the page, standing among us, how true to his writing has been his “way.” How faithful to
the map of his ideas and values has been the course of his living, the compass of his humanity.
And now Rabbi Baskin — our Bernie — is about to leave us for Toronto, at the tender age of 97, though he will be forever ours. His children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren are mostly there. They long for him to be nearer.
He has lived in the same house in Hamilton, for 60 years — the old Binkley carriage house, east of the larger Binkley fieldstone homestead. Good solid Mennonite structures, 160 years old, to peg the setting for a Reformed Jew, who would help us all learn how much we have in common.
“It is my city,” says Bernie (who was born and grew up in New Jersey/New York City) of Hamilton. “It is closer to me than any other city. I will never lose that inevitable and understandable affection.”
If he’s lived in Hamilton, Hamilton has lived in him. It is not too much to say, I don’t think, that he has helped shape and define this city as much as any politician or developer, steelworker or doctor. It is hard to think of us without his civilizing voice and vision, without his oratory, without his role developing Temple Anshe Sholom, his synagogue since 1949, not just the community but the distinctive building.
It is hard to think of us without his famous and enormously popular books-and-ideas series over the course of decades. These were enlarging public exchanges, exercises in connecting thoughts, writing and history across barriers
of time and circumstance.
It is hard to think of us without the ecumenical outreach Bernie did with other faith groups and places of learning or without the contributions of late wife, Marjorie, who helped found Meals on Wheels and DARTS, headed the public school board and ran for public office for the NDP.
Over the last months there’ve been farewells and valedictory moments, none so jam-packed with admirers and friends as the service for Temple Anshe Sholom congregation, at which Bernie spoke.
“It was a large turnout,” he says, as though surprised, and with a kind of Jack Benny deadpan, delivered in that distinctive
intonation of voice, bassy and rich but with an endearing nasal finality on the closing beat.
“They must have been glad to see me go.” Bernie can’t help sliding in a bit of wit. His humour is the irresistible swirl in his marble.
Leaving? It is difficult, he says ... but it is time.
“I have had doubts about moving,” he tells me as we sit in his house, three-quarters emptied out but still more full of books and art than houses twice its size.
Everywhere still are great volumes from the literatures of so many traditions, beautiful sculpture, and paintings and prints on the wall (some by his famous brother, the late Leonard Baskin, who created part of the Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C.).
“It is difficult, people calling and sending notes. Letters and personal farewells. But I have no illusions.” People, he explains, will go on with their lives. And he with his.
His words, even in casual conversation, are unhurried, patient; and implicit in them, as in a good chess move, is deliberate forethought of the path of what’s to follow.
The rabbi takes me downstairs to a room with an unusual curved ceiling, looking as it must have 150 years ago. It’s a long flight of steps to this basement. Rabbi Baskin takes my arm for support as we go. I feel somehow flushed with honour, and yet in the gesture there is neither presumption nor dependence nor inequality — just a natural intimacy that comes easily to the man. I feel as much supported as supporting. And this is his special wonder.
Bernie’s is an intelligence of the rarest proof. I’ve talked, as you have, to smart people whose dazzle is meant to make you feel stupid by contrast. But the good rabbi is one whose clarity is not meant to but just naturally makes you feel that the light coming from him is a reflection of the light coming from you. Always, that vast learning and wisdom, worn with humility and civility, in service to others.
“I can only keep a little,” he says of his great and treasured store of books and art, “so I am trying to put the rest in the hands of people I respect. You can’t hold on forever. But it is hard to leave things behind. Things you love.”
He is leaving his beloved Hamilton on what he feels is a good note. “It is growing favourably. We are more cognizant of our waterfront. Our two biggest industries are health and education. What a difference from the days of steel.”
In the broad front yard of his Hamilton house, there are four or five towering evergreens. He and Marjorie planted them, 60 years ago. They look like they’ve been there forever. There is another tree he planted along with them. It is robust and branching and putting forth new shoots even as I write this; and it grows, I hope, in you and me and in the very veins of this city.
It is the tree of a conviction: that tolerance, learning, humour and progress are civilizing; that the civilized life is one built on love and self-respect; and that those are strong — they are strength itself.
And so, rabbi, teacher, master, great civilizer, might I say friend? You have swung your lamp against the shadows for so long, we will not say goodbye. We will use rather a word you yourself have taught us. A word not only of farewell but of greeting and good tiding, mostly of peace.
Bernard Baskin, we say humbly, and with much love: shalom. From a grateful city, which — humbly protest all you like to the contrary — will never forget you. Ever.
(“The Essential Bernard Baskin, Volume Two,” edited by Judith R. Baskin, Bernard’s daughter, available at Temple Anshe Sholom. And we must mention his other children: David Baskin and Susan Baskin Micay.)