Leben zul Columbus'n

Leben zul Columbus’n

Born in Ukraine, Harry Golden (1902-1981) came to America at age three and grew up on the Lower East Side of New York City. One of my all time favorites, he was the author of several books of essays including Only in America. Much of it is political and social satire, but many of his essays are about growing up as a Jew in the garment district of NYC, and his immigrant family’s and people’s love for America.

Harry Golden comes to mind on this holiday weekend celebrating Christopher Columbus and his discovery of the New World in 1492. Some years ago, and probably still, many folks, including the National Council of Churches, urged Christians not to honor Columbus, because his discovery led to many atrocities against Native Americans, and basically their decimation as aboriginal peoples on the North American continent. Conquest is the history of humanity, though, and any Christian who thinks otherwise might read the Old Testament for starters. 

In history, every society, every nation has fallen. We mightn’t imagine it, but in due course that will happen to the United States of America as well; and we will be our own undoing, as Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” The proper word is inexorable and it’s already perceptibly in motion. 

If it were possible to go forward a hundred years then look back at my life and choose the age of America in which I could live, it might be my grandfather’s era, late 1800s to mid 1900s, right here by St. Andrews Bay. The bay teeming with sea life. Most travel by train. The automobile industry growing from infancy through its classic age. Of course, that would be without many modern medical marvels that have saved my life, without weather satellites that are so fascinating, without computers, the internet and blogs. But looking back from 2112, I would be dead anyway and that would be my favorite time: after the War between the States and certainly before Vietnam. An age of real or imagined innocence, at least internationally, before the inexorableness set it.  

One of Harry Golden’s books, which is in my collection right here on the bookshelf in Joe’s room, is Long Live Columbus. The subtitle is Leben Zul Columbus, a Yiddish expression of joy in America that was often spoken among the Jews that he grew up with, folks who had come here from poverty and oppression in Europe to a land of freedom if not necessarily always the riches of their dreams. But freedom is the greatest wealth of all. Harry Golden said they blurted it, “leben zul Columbus’n.” 

That's where I am. Long live Columbus.

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