Published in 1844 and
recounting a journey in the Middle East made a decade before, it is a masterpiece
of the wry and elliptically self - mocking English travel memoir; only Eric Newby improved on the model in any
respect.
I
recount these anecdotes not only to give you a sense
of the personality
of the man who is in some important
respects synonymous with American Jewry and who is responsible for conceiving
of some
of its major institutions, from the once liberal orthodoxy
of the Young Israel movement, to the Reconstructionist movement in Judaism, to the very structure
of the American synagogue, which he called a synagogue center, to my own institution, The University
of Judaism.
Respected French journalist Julian Laurens
recounted a story on the Totally Football Show podcast this week about Ben Arfa's time at Hull and what he made
of the players he was working with.