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Travel Piece  by Ida Nasatir

Letter from Paris,  by Ida Nasatir, January 19, 1951

January 19, 1951—Ida Nasatir, "A Letter from Paris," Southwestern Jewish Press, page 7:  Dear Julia and Mac: I admire people who can write good editorials. Of course, they are rare, since this ability to make the printed word stimulate thinking is not given to many. To make people "feel" without resorting to propaganda, bias, too lofty, meaningless words or employing preachments is a gift indeed. Would that I could write an editorial, or that you, who can, were here now in Paris.  I would take you to just two places, and you would see for yourself what I mean. Each place is as far apart as the remote poles, yet there is a wonderfully keen analogy.  First we would go to the Louvre Art Gallery, and there we would join the inevitable crowd which gathers before Rembrand'ts great masterpiece, "The family Group."  People look at this picture with close scrutiny hoping to extract from it some consoling secret. The five figures, mother, father and three unattractive children, seem to emerge from their dark background and return the gaze of their spectators or pursue their timeless communication with each other, dwarfing the onlookers as a mountain range dwarfs the clouds that drift along its flanks.  Nothing is easier than to exclaim "masterly!" Nothing more difficult than to discover where its secrets lie. Rembrandt painted this canvas at the end of his life.  You keep asking yourself: How did this old man, who shared all the limitations of his extremely limited generation, manage to raise the whole level of human experience to a higher plane, and transcend on his narrow, earthy level, all the eagerness of the Renaissance, the lyrical raptures of Venice, the joyful exuberance of Rubens?  How? Well, one seldom finds simple answers to simple questions. But there is an answer and in order to find it, we must leave the Louvre and visit a Paris schul on a Saturday morning or a "Simcas Torah" celebration.  As you watch the elderly bearded Jews sing and dance as they carry their Torah, as you look at their gaunt thin faces as they prod the children and younger folk to join in their joy as being bearers of truth and honor and decency, an "Honor" for which they have paid a terrific price—too often the supreme penalty—as you watch all this you suddenly remember the picture at the Louvre and something breath-taking flashes through your mind. Of course! Rembrandt must have the same great quality which these sages and scholars display--by a unique combination of reverence, of faith and loyalty to an ideal—the commonplace became divine.  Rembrandt created masterpieces in an age when it was a mockery to idealize; these people, my people, thousands of them, are able to rise above gloomy courtyards, littered dirt, miserable, drab lives, and emerge smiling. That's the answer—Rembrandt and the Jew can make the commonplace become divine. Did I say something about an editorial?  Love, Ida Nasatir.