Book Review: The House of Twenty Thousand Books
Every once in a while I shy away from trying to absorb the classics and find my curiosity about science and philosophy silenced for just long enough to pick up a book indiscriminately. For these rare moments, I’ve decided to keep the NYRB at hand, with my first selection being Sasha Abramsky’s The House of Twenty Thousand Books.
Sasha is the grandson of celebrated Jewish scholar and collector of Hebrew esoterica, Chimen Abramsky. The Abramskys hail from a noted Beolurssian rabbinic lineage, the last of which was Chimen’s father Yehezkel. Sasha’s memoir serves as both biography and tribute, comprehending in Chimen a man who possessed an indefatigable thirst for understanding the ideas contained in the written word and percolating those ideas into a rich and detailed understanding of the world around him.
Chimen’s story is one of marvel. At age twenty he ingratiated himself to the socialist movement contemporary to Stalinist Russia; proffering communism as a panacea to the ills of modernity. At ideological odds with his devout rabbinical father about the plight of mankind, Chimen spent his early years studying the classics — from early apologia to Machiavellian diplomacy and Marxist rationalism. Disenfranchised by Judaic doctrine, Chimen embraced the magisteria of communism as Marx invisioned it. He would later grow to distance himself from the movement, and nurse a deep regret of his efforts in expounding an ideology for which his disquiet could not overcome.
Apart from detailing his grandfather’s ideological journey, Sasha’s commemoration celebrates Chimen’s consuming pursuit of knowledge, rationality and good faith discussion. An account of his lifetime beholds a a softening of pretensions and a growing reverence for empathy. This empathy manifests in understanding one another and our diverging viewpoints; which becomes the enduring takeaway from this biography. Chimen’s legacy is a reminder that if we don’t take the time to understand each other’s perspectives before prescribing solutions, the only real outcomes are fugacious at best.
It’s thanks to The House of Twenty Thousand Books that I decided to pursue further education in philosophy and linguistics, so it is with great fondness that I add my voice to the echoes that acclaim this book, and the journey it takes you on through the life, and life’s work, of the late Chimen Abramsky, with some beautifully written and vivid scenes that Sasha summons in memory of his image.
