
 |
|
May 9, 2008
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: Reverence, Yes; Worship, No
Mona Charen: Did Israel Drive Out the Arabs 60 Years Ago?
JWisdom:
Ultimate opportunities by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
May 8, 2008
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Israel at 3,500+
Jonathan Tobin: Still Fighting the Same War
Steven Plaut: How nakba proves the fiction of a Palestinian Nation
JWisdom:
Taking Israel for Granted? by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
May 7, 2008
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Israel is irrelevant to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
Dion Nissenbaum: Latest Olmert scandal could derail efforts to force Israel's compromises
JWisdom:
My Inner Ventriloquist by Sara Yoheved Rigler
May 6, 2008
Caroline B. Glick: Anti-Zionism at 60
The Kosher Gourmet
By Ethel G. Hofman: In honor of Israel's 60th anniversary, the former president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, whose members included the likes of Julia Child, is back with a smorgasbord featuring the taste and essence of the Jewish homeland
JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Jewish Deer in Nazi Headlights
May 5, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Busy work
Jonathan Mark: Remarkable half-century old Mike Wallace interview with Abba Eban puts current anti-Israel sentiment into perspective
May 2, 2008
Rabbi Berel Wein: Rote religiosity
Caroline B. Glick: Whitewashing Hamas
JWisdom: Parent trap?
May 1, 2008
David Zwiebel: Faith communities can learn from Orthodox Jews in stimulating private philanthropy for religious education
George Friedman and Peter Zeihan of Stratfor: The Shift Toward an Israeli-Syrian Agreement
JWisdom: It's time to wake up by Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis
April 30, 2008
Jonathan Tobin: Pennsylvania's Democratic slugfest may leave some Jewish votes up for grabs
The Kosher Gourmet
by Linda Gassenheimer: Fresh herbs, sauteed veal and tiny creamer potatoes makes a light spring dinner
JWisdom: How to Build a Mentch by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
April 29, 2008
Daniel Pipes: Barack Obama's Muslim Childhood
Joel Brinkley:
On human rights, the U.N. once again strikes out
JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: When The Truth is Unbelievable
April 28, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist
by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I'm often stuck in the doctor's waiting room for hours! Doesn't he owe me something for my wasted time?
Steven Emerson:
New U.S. government policy advises agencies to avoid using some of the very same words that make up terror groups' names
JWisdom: Why You & I Never Die: A Jewish View of Immortality, Part I by Rabbi David Aaron
April 25, 2008
Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg: Schadenfreude isn't kosher for Passover --- or at any other time
Rabbi Berel Wein:
The secret of how the data bank of memory is transferred from one generation to the next
JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part III
April 24, 2008
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: The successful failure
Fred Burton and Scott Stewart of Stratfor: Placing the terrorist threat to the food supply in perspective
JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen, Part II
April 23, 2008
Connie Ogle: An intricate game of a novel
Jonathan Tobin: Making Sense of the 'J Street' Jive
JWisdom: Stepping Up to A Higher Spiritual Life by Rabbi Lawrence Kelemen
April 22, 2008
Jonathan Rosenblum: Why Israel's 'Leaven law' matters
Caroline B. Glick:
Obama the Savior
April 18, 2008
Rabbi Harvey Belovski: Multimedia tool of antiquity
Caroline B. Glick: Revealed Truths vs. revealed lies
JWisdom: More than miracles by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
April 17, 2008
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Deconstructing Dayeinu
Rabbi Elazar Meisels: Is innovation at the Seder a slap at tradition?
JWisdom: Discovering Your Divine Mission, Part III by Rabbi David Aaron
April 16, 2008
Jonathan Tobin: A Prayer for Sderot's Children
Ethel G. Hofman: Sumptuous Seder
JWisdom: The Divine is in the details by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
April 15, 2008
Rabbi Dovid Zauderer: Let Charlton Heston Go!
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.: Jimma, tyranny's enabler
JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part IV by Dr. Lisa Aiken
April 14, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: The Snitching Supervisor
Jonathan Tobin: Forget the Fun and Games!
JWisdom: Sincerity is Valued Most by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.
April 11, 2008
Rabbi David Gutterman: A Mystery in the Middle East
Caroline B. Glick: Why Ahmadinejad smiles
JWisdom:
Elevated illness by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
April 10, 2008
Stratfor Intelligence Briefing by George Friedman: A Mystery in the Middle East
The Kosher Gourmet
By Steve Petusevsky: The spring elegance of asparagus
JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith by Rabbi Nosson Scherman: The Power of Rational Lies
April 9, 2008
Michael Feldberg:
An all but forgotten Colonial doctor who put his Jewish values before his life
Jordan "Gorf" Gorfinkel's "Everything's Relative" gets philosophical
JWisdom: Four Rabbis in Bnei Brak by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
April 8, 2008
Caroline Glick: Covering for the enemy
Elliot B. Gertel: 'House' goes Hasidic
JWisdom: Relationships: Beyond Mars & Venus, Part III by Dr. Lisa Aiken
April 7, 2008
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I have a translating business. Recently someone asked me to translate some financial documents that are clearly forged. Should I agree?
Jonathan Rosenblum : Israel is unwittingly helping to fuel the international campaign of delegitimization against it
JWisdom: Matzah and leaven as a life philosophy by Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski, M.D.
April 4, 2008
Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The Mystery of Suffering
Caroline B. Glick: Fear of democracy
JWisdom: Dirty Jews by Rabbi Sroy Levitansky
April 3, 2008
Rabbi Y. Y. Rubinstein: Parents --- and the children who would be them
The Kosher Gourmet
by Kathy Manweiler: Tempted by restaurant dressings? Don't be. Here are recipes that can be made at home, healthier!
JWisdom: The importance of retaining a 'slave mentality' by Rabbi Mordechai Becher
April 2, 2008
Mitch Albom: Child abuse, disguised as faith
Jonathan Tobin:
Unreasonable Accommodations
JWisdom: Holocaust in the Perspective of Faith with Rabbi Nosson Scherman: Eliminating Jewish Influence over Germans
March 22, 2007
J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 11, 2008
/ 4 Adar II 5768
What is a genius? We use the word frequently but surely, to guard its meaning, we should bestow it seldom
By
Paul Johnson
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
To me, a genius is a person whose gift contains an element of the inexplicable, not to be accounted for by heredity, upbringing, background, exertions and talents, however noble. Thus, we can't account for the extraordinary imagination of Chaucer, the vintner's son, brought up at a military-minded court. Equally, where Shakespeare got or acquired his magic is a mystery. By contrast, Jane Austen, though one of the greatest of novelists and my personal favourite is a straightforward case of a clever girl, brought up in the congenial environment of a reading family, with its jokes, theatricals, verse-writing and wide acquaintance, who used her natural wit and sharp gift of observation, helped by her appreciative but critical siblings, to create a new kind of realistic fiction. No mystery there, whereas Dickens, coming from nowhere and nothing, to explode his Sketches by Boz and Pickwick Papers as a superbly self-confident young master, is an enigma. We can't explain it, any more than we can explain why Kipling, at 18, wrote so truthfully and enchantingly about the secrets of human hearts, of both sexes and many races.
When I was 12 or 13, and first making incursions into the musical repertoire, my idea of a genius was Arturo Toscanini. He was then conducting New York's NBC Symphony Orchestra, an orchestra he virtually created and which was disbanded after his retirement. I contrived to hear him conducting all Beethoven's symphonies, either on records or on the wireless, and they are still my ideal of how they should be played; rightly so, for his fidelity both to the score and the spirit and intention of the composer was his lifelong object, achieved so comprehensibly that he changed the art of conducting for good. He looked the part too: not tall, in fact, though he seemed immense at the rostrum, but gloriously handsome with fierce, penetrating eyes and an expression of such masterful intensity as to make you gasp; a terror to the idle, incompetent, insincere or anyone who did not take great music with total seriousness.
Toscanini came from Parma, where they certainly had always taken all the arts seriously. His father was nothing much: a tailor by trade who made a bare living, or less. His chief interest in life was politics. He had been a follower of Garibaldi, and his proudest possession was his red shirt, worn as a militant irredentist. His family was lucky if they got enough to eat. On the other hand, in his tailor's shop, men used to congregate to read aloud poetry and dramas and to sing opera. It was an age and a place where art was more important than a full stomach or a comfortable dwelling. When young Toscanini showed signs of musical talent, even his father, lazy though he was, stirred himself to get the boy into the local conservatoire, and eventually succeeded, Arturo specialising in the cello. He was then nine, and he was there nine years. It was then (1877) a fearsome place, dirty and insanitary; cold in winter. The food was disgusting, often fish bought cheap because it was going rotten, and the nastiest wine. There was only one water closet and no baths: the boys, who wore military uniform, went once a year for a bath at the town hospital. They slept on palliasses of straw, changed infrequently, and the dormitory stank. The boys were rarely allowed out. Discipline was strict and punishments severe. When Toscanini failed to button up his uniform properly, he was locked up in a small room with his cello. After some hours, he called the custodian and asked permission to go to the lavatory. He was told: 'No! Control yourself!' In the end he was obliged to pee into his cello, and when this was later discovered, he was further punished.
Yet Toscanini emerged at the end of nine years an accomplished musician with an extraordinary knowledge of the repertoire. His memory was prodigious, perhaps the best in the whole history of music. It was this particular gift, assisted by ceaseless industry and application, and by huge self-discipline and concentration, which pushed him into the magic circle of genius. At 18, his first job was with a third-rate travelling opera company which toured Brazil. In Rio, the local conductor, a Brazilian, had to be sacked for incompetence. His Italian substitute, from the company, was booed even before he could begin to conduct, and he fled from the theatre. In despair the manager turned to 18-year-old Toscanini, still playing cello but known to be an all-rounder. The young man took over. The opera was Aida long, difficult and exhausting. He used no score. He knew it by heart. He soon had the audience hushed, the company playing and singing their best, and the evening was a triumph. Here was a victory of genius over circumstances, and though Toscanini's subsequent ascent to the rostra of La Scala and the Metropolitan was by no means smooth, his destiny was fixed.
I don't know of any other case in which memory played so important a part in the evolution of a genius. At 18, it seems, Toscanini already knew 50 operas by heart, and the number eventually rose to over 100. He never wore glasses, either from vanity or more likely because he could not find a pair to suit him. Perfect memory of a score was therefore indispensable to him. It was also a godsend, for if a conductor can avoid constant reference to a score, and all the business of turning pages, he can concentrate on the players and singers much more intently and comfortably. And it goes without saying that he knows the score in a way which mere familiarity through reading will never permit. It meant that Toscanini could go straight to the heart of great music to grasp the composer's intentions. So his memory was the means whereby he dragged the musical world into a new era of conducting and authenticity beginning with the first proper performance of the cliché-encrusted Trovatore at La Scala. No wonder the aged Verdi once sent him a telegram, after a performance of Otello, which read simply: 'Grazie, grazie, grazie.'
The way in which a particular single gift, like Toscanini's memory, heightened to an almost unimaginable pitch, becomes the key to genius, can be illustrated by other examples. Vermeer, for instance, had such unwavering control over his brush that he put the paint on the canvas without appearing to do so with any physical action of his own. It is as though it floated down to settle with total accuracy on the place designated by his mind. This skill, without parallel in the history of painting, was the key to his particular genius, which was to render stillness and make it living, even dynamic.
Some writers have a particular skill in bending and twisting words to a special purpose. What raised Mark Twain from being merely an exceptionally resourceful (and ruthless) writer to the genius level was his skill with dialects: he uses seven, all distinct and perfect in Huckleberry Finn. Again, it is hopeless to single out the special skill in Shakespeare, because he had so many. But if one had to choose, I would say it is his brilliant dialogue: terse, direct, exciting to speak and hastening on the action at a terrific lick as for instance in Macbeth, act two, scene two. Dialogue of this quality has not been bettered in the four centuries since the play was written. Or again, in the case of Tchaikovsky, the sheer invention and beauty of the melodic line are the title deeds to genius. I often think of this, and the poor man's sad, solitary death, a victim of harsh convention, when I sing that moving song, 'None but the lonely heart'. We cannot explain genius but we can salute it.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
| BUY THE BOOK |
|
Click HERE to purchase it at a discount. (Sales help fund JWR.). |
|
Eminent British historian and author Paul Johnson's latest book is "American Presidents Eminent Lives Boxed Set: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant". Comment by clicking here.
Previously:
03/03/08:Fiction as a crutch to get one through life
02/26/08: Impatience + Greed = Trouble
02/13/08: Shakespeare, Neo-Platonism and Princess Diana
02/07/08: Where Industry Has Failed Us
12/19/07: People who put their trust in human power delude themselves
12/12/07: What is aggression?
12/04/07: Pursuing success is not enough
11/07/07: Are famous writers accident-prone?
10/31/07: Courage needed to disarm Iran
09/20/07: Who Will Say I Promise to Lay Off?
07/24/07: Greed is safer than power-seeking
04/02/07: Benefactors must be hardheaded
03/07/07: American idealism and realpolitik
11/28/06: Space: Our ticket to survival
10/24/06: Envy is bad economics
10/11/06: Better to Borrow or Lend? Rethinking conventional wisdom
08/22/06: Don't practice legal terrorism
08/08/06: A summer rhapsody for a pedal-bike
08/03/06: Why is there no workable philosophy of music?
07/11/06: Historically speaking, energy crisis is America's opportunity
07/06/06: The misleading dimensions of persons and lives
06/06/06: First editions are not gold
05/23/06: A downright ugly man need never despair of attracting women, even pretty
ones
04/25/06: Was Washington right about political parties?
04/12/06: Let's Have More Babies!
04/05/06: For the love of trains
03/29/06: Lincoln and the Compensation Culture
03/22/06: Bottle-beauties and the globalised blond beast
03/15/06: Europe's utopian hangover
03/08/06: Kindly write on only one side of the paper
02/28/06: Creators versus critics
02/21/06: The Rhino Principle
© 2006, Paul Johnson
|
|

Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Rod Dreher
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Michael Goodwin
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
James Klurfeld
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Jonathan Last
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
The Medicine Men
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Jonathan Tobin
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
Paul Combs
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Jeff Stahler
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Know-It-All
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
Marybeth Hicks
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Nutrition Myths
Supermarket Shopper
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|