CONTINUING WITH THE GROWING-UP YEARS OF I.I.
RABI IN THE GHETTO COMMUNITY OF BROWNSVILLE
IN BROOKLYN
[ Yesterday we discussed 10-year-old Rabi discovering the
Carnegie Library in Brooklyn and reading about
Copernicus and then coming home and announcing to his
Orthodox Jewish parents : "Who needs God?" ]
Rabi's experiences and reading expanded his horizons beyond the religious system by which his life had been ordered. Whether hr sensed a void that needed filling is open to question. The fact remains, however, that at this time Rabi became interested in another system of thought. As one writer has proclaimed, "three groups of influences are at work on the boy in the ghetto -----the orthodox Jewish, the American, and the Socialist. " Furthermore, as another writer has described, "the East Side and Brownsville . . . seething with social protest. Radicals, social reformers, and all kinds of champions were trying to make the masses cognizant of the deplorable conditions under which they lived."
In this "seething" environment, Rabi happened upon Jack London's The Iron Heel. This novel, written in 1907, is a futuristic story set in the 1930s. It dramatically depicts the injustices heaped upon the people of the working class. Moreover, the tenets of socialism are clearly set forth by the story's main character Ernest Everhard, a heroic figure of persuasive knowledge and self-confidence : he explicitly elaborates Karl Marx's theory of surplus value and the materialistic view of history. This book made a powerful impression on young Rabi, and socialism seemed to offer the all-embracing ideas he found so appealing. "I became very interested in it, for about two years. I used to go to the local Socialist Club most every night. . . Among these Socialists, so very symptomatically , never did anybody address a word to me in the two years I went there."Rabi tried to convert to socialism other students as well as his teachers. His last elementary school-teacher, a Mr. Howell, was particularly patient with the new disciple of Marxism.
"He brought his lunch to the school, and I brought mine. We would sit there, and he would ask me questions, a whole series of questions : What would I do under socialism in this circumstance ? In that circumstance ? I would very glibly answer all his questions and very confidently." By the end of the school year Mr. Howell's questions had damened Rabi's enthusiasm for socialism : "I can see how big-hearted Mr. Howell was, because I must have been a pretty nasty and self-confident kid, a snotty kid."
When Rabi entered high school, he took note of his classmates and said to himself , "These people could never run a country." The socialist ideas became discredited in his thinking and he dropped them from his thoughts.
Although his advocacy of socialism as a system to live by came to an end, the influence of some of its ideas continued. For example, he found that the materialistic interpretation of history brought organization and simplicity to his study of history : "It doesn't matter if it's wrong. It's a system, it's a more or less logical thing . . . It was great."
Many years later, Rabi reflected on this period of his life and on the influences of both religion and socialism :
There's the religious point of view that is universal in its way. If you revolt against religion, where you have nothing, you become an atheist ---whatever that means. For me there was this other system which was universal in its way : Marxism. Although erroneous in some respects, it was something and it was positive. There was this faith that human intellect and human effort formed the basis of what humans could do. What Marxism gives you is a view of society and a view of history ---an integrated view. It's partially wrong, but it's a view. You get the habit from this of thinking of things in a holistic way. You see connections.
That was a hell of a big note for a kid of thirteen, fourteen, but I had the advantage of a religious background. Religion is also a system that encompasses everything, but it has something that Marxism doesn't have : religion has color and class. The whole idea of God, that's real class.
While he was reading London and other socialist writers, Rabi was also reading books from the science shelves of the Carnegie Library. For a while he thought of becoming an astronomer, although neither he nor his father had any idea how an astronomer made a living. He discovered electricity and also he could build electrical devices and do experiments. From magazines published by the late Hugo Gernsback --including the Electrical Importing Company and Modern Electrics --- Rabi learned about radio transmitters and receivers. Soon he was immersed in telegraphy ; and, as sister Gertrude remembers : "Mother's wall in the living room was a radio station and his friends came in and out." Of these activities, Rabi has said :"Whatever I was interested in I could generally get a group to be interested in as well . . . I got some kids together . . . and we strung a telegraph line over two streets . . . I met this kid whose father had a junk shop and he had wire, you know, spools of wire that he thought was junk." By means of stones thrown from roof to roof, wire was stretched through the neighborhood and a telegraph station was set up. Rabi learned Morse code and he got a license.
With the exception of the earphones, Rabi built all the other components of his station : tuner, transmitter, spark coil, and coupler. He also designed a condenser to store electrical energy. His design was sufficiently novel that Hugo Gernsback paid him two dollars for a manuscript describing his design. While he was still in elementary school, Rabi's first scientific paper was published in Modern Electrics.
A thirteen-year-old Jewish boy is expected to celebrate his arrival at the age of responsibility with a bar mitzvah ceremony in the synagogue. On the Sabbath nearest his birthday, he is called to witness the reading of a biblical passage and delivers a talk basedon the Torah. Afterward, his parents provide a festive meal for relatives and friends.
But Rabi, this "formidable kid," would have none of it.
At that time, age thirteen, I was far advanced. I had read extensively and certainly knew about Copernicus. . . and I knew about electricity. The whole Jewish thing, as it appeared to me, began to look like superstition. . . So to get up there and take all that trouble to read something in the synagogue. I just wasn't going to do it.
What could his parents do ? They must have felt badly, but I wasn't so concerned. I was more concerned with the truth, revealed truth. I was a bastard of a kid not to worry about them. I look back now and I consider the sorrows I brought on them, it horrifies me. I wasn't self-righteous about it. I just couldn't figure out how they could miss these things I knew, they were so beautiful.
In the end, a compromise was reached, and David Rabi's son ahd a bar mitzvah---but on his own terms. In the annals of this ceremony, Rabi's bar mitzvah was, in all probability, unique :
They had a party at my bar mitzvah, and they brought in some people. They prevailed on me to make a speech, so I made a speech [in Yiddish] . My speech was "How the Electric Light Works," which which I described in great detail. I talked about the carbon filament, and then there was something I thought was very clever : getting the lead out from the filament.
Rabi's bar mitzvah was not held in the synagogue, but at his home before what he regarded as ancient bearded men.
As high school approached, Rabi's parents suggested that he go into Hebrew studies at a yeshiva. Predictably, Rabi refused. And, predictably, it was he who decided where he would go to high school.
Boys High was, at that time, the school where all of the smart Jewish boys went. At Boys High he could match wits with some of the best. Boys High was the obvious choice, but Rabi elected Manual Training High School in Brooklyn, which, as its name implies, emphasized manual training. He had four years of crafts such as carpentry, machine shop, foundry work, and printing. Since the school was three miles from home, and he was to spend four years avoiding street gangs as he walked through one hostile territory after another on his way to and from school, his choice was clearly not based on convenience : "I went there purposely. I had been raised in an environment where we didn't see anything but Jews. . . I wanted to get away from that. I had very definite notions of being an American in a broader sense. I had read a great deal of history and I wanted to be a part of the greater thing ; so I went to Manual Training where there were almost no Jews."
When Rabi graduated from Manual Training High School in 1916, he was streetwise and self-educated. In the fall of 1916, he enrolled in college at Cornell.
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