With no other option he became a stately rabbi, without the priestly manner of course. He was a rabbi who could learn, a well educated man; he was a rabbi, a good, consistent Jew.

But a life of peace and comfort does not work for someone who is a provocateur, for a picky person; this he was unable to endure. Something about the congregation bothered him, some immaterial irritation, the sort that most men experience repeatedly every day but then ignore. Not Dr. Salkind.

From this small irritation he stirred up a huge conflict and, from this conflict, there emerged a schism large enough that he slid into an ideology to which he had never before in his life had the least connection, an ideology from which, his whole life, he had been as far as East is from West.

During the First World War he was bothered by the efforts of the English government to mobilize Russian citizens.

In short, he moved away from the rabbinate and became an anarchist. He began to work in the anarchist press. He was capable and pugnacious, and became a brilliant anarchist writer. Slowly, however, his indignation cooled until finally it abated. With the abatement of his indignation his tendency to provoke others also weakened; he turned away from anarchism, settled in the land of Israel, and died there.

During this short period, he developed a love for Yiddish that he carried with him into his old age. Though in his youth he had nothing to do with Yiddish; then, he fought Yiddish.

The Jewish student fencing corporation in Bern, which was called “Kadimah,” was Hebrew-Orthodox.

No longer a young man, he took it upon himself to translate the Talmud into Yiddish.

He was only able to translate the tractate of Brakhot and the order of Zerayim. ^{7 7} In fact, Zalkind translated the first four tractates of the order of Zerayim. It is a good translation and he was a talmudic expert. He studied talmud assiduously and this certainly qualified him for the great task.

In the land of Israel he did not distinguish himself by his activity. There, he was no more than a peripheral figure.

He died on the sidelines.

The stubborn, provocative, quarrelsome man, the man of great ability for which he was never able to find the right use, died somewhat secluded. ^{8 8} This is not true. Pauline Wengrover, whom he eventually married, accompanied him to Palestine, started a business there, and outlived him. They also had children together, though their son eventually immigrated to the United States.

Dr. Jacob Meir Salkind was, fundamentally, a deeply honest man, a man who knew nothing of compromises, a man who knew nothing of saying “half for me and half for you.” A fighter by nature, for some psychological reason he became a mere provocateur. ^{9 9} Here, the author uses the term “ifkhamistabranik,” an interesting combination of two Aramaic words, ifkha (opposite) and mistabra (reasoning or thinking) with a slavic suffix, -nik (indicating exemplification, endorsement, or association). So, an ifkhamistabranik is one who thinks differently. In principle, it might be better translated as “iconoclast” or “contrarian,” but in context the author wishes to emphasize not Zalkind’s ideas, but his way of relating to people.

He could have been a systematic combatant. By temperament, in his stubbornness and in the whole of his being, this is what he was.

Indeed, even in the height of his provocations, he managed to be productive in his provocations.

II.

Dr. Jacob Salkind was a true genius who threw himself into contrasts and extremes. But in every such extreme, in every such contrast, he was creative and productive. I met him in Bern as an aggressively Orthodox Jew, a piously Orthodox Jew, a Jew who observed the dietary laws with the greatest care. The Jewish student group Kadimah, which he organized and led, was Orthodox in character; they kept the dietary laws and adopted an aggressively Orthodox stance.

He was a true genius. He left many creative works unfinished. He was a philologist and a philosopher. He is said to have spoken thirty languages; though Yiddish and Hebrew were his mother tongues, he wrote in German, English, and other languages.

He wrote philosophical and historical works.

He wrote social-political works and edited anarchist writings and newspapers during his anarchist period.

He wrote children’s plays in Yiddish and Hebrew.

He wrote polemical anarchist brochures.

He wrote Zionist propaganda brochures.

He did dozens of things, each contradicting the other.

He wrote dozens of books and each seems to have been written to spite the last.

As I said, he allegedly spoke thirty languages, but Yiddish and Hebrew always played off against each other. He has been both an uncompromising Hebraist and also a Yiddishist.

He sharply changed his ideologies; the one ideology being a complete contradiction of the other.

He was fervently Orthodox when I first met him in Bern, but he became an anarchist and an anarchistic writer.

He was always honest, openhearted, and straightforward, regardless of his later ideological shifts.

But his honesty was somewhat caustic, biting, and also provocative—[he would say] since you are all false and lying, I will be captious, bitterly truthful, and fiercely honest.

Even with his beard, his tangled, wild-growing beard, he meant to provoke people.

Because all the other students appeared without a beard, he wore one.

But later on, I saw a photograph of him without a beard.

His beard was the first victim to fall to the anarchism to which he had by then converted.

The genius knew everything and undertook everything.

He began publishing in 1900. He wrote belletristic and political articles, plays, translations, and so on.

He published his creations in the following languages: Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Russian, English, French, and Spanish.

In 1916, during the war, he edited a paper called the Yidishe shtime, a sharp anti-militarist weekly.

However, only thirteen issues of this paper appeared.

Aside from being anti-militarist, this weekly was both left-wing and nationalist [in orientation]. ^{10 10} The phrase Salkind uses is “national-radical.” What he meant is that the paper was broadly affiliated with the left but not with any particular ideology. That is, it was neither an anarchist nor a socialist organ, but one that supported ideas which would be welcomed by both. This, Salkind made clear in several editorials published in the Shtime.

He was the editor of the anarcho-communist weekly Der arbeter fraynd for three years. Among his various endeavors he also took it upon himself to write an important scientific book—of which we have seen only the first three chapters—entitled On the History of Jewish Printing, in which he also planned to deal with the history of Jewish booksellers and Jewish libraries.

He also produced a prayer book for schools with historical and grammatical notes together with a preface covering the history of the prayer book. ^{11 11} I have not found record of this publication.

He also translated Molière’s The Miser from the French and authored a booklet entitled The Philosophy of Anarchism. ^{12 12} This was not in fact authored by Salkind. It was a Yiddish translation of Kropotkin’s Philosophy of Anarchism, which was published by the Arbeter Fraynd Ferlag in 1922 as Di Anarkhistishe Philosofiya (see “Bikher Oysfarkoyf,” Arbeter Fraynd, Thursday November 10, 1922: 8).

He also wrote a History of the Censorship of Jewish Books by the Church and the Inquisition.

This work he wrote on the basis of a manuscript he discovered in the Paris library written by an old censor, a Jew from Safed, a student of a great kabbalist, and later an apostate. In that text, the apostate indicates which lines in which books ought to be erased.

His greatest achievement was the translation of the tractate Berakhot and the order of Zerayim, the last of which has yet to be printed.

This translation is undoubtedly competent and learned; however, his Yiddish is impoverished and blasé.

He is more of a Hebraist than a Yiddishist.

And perhaps he was not even a writer at all, but what can a genius not do?

A Jewish genius is a renaissance man; he knows everything and can do everything.

But he died in the land of Israel.

In all his zigzagging, in all his passages from one extreme to the other, he was faithful to and held out in one thing. For most of his life, he was a Zionist and he died a Zionist in the land of Israel.

Of all the geniuses I have known, Dr. was the truest and therefore the most unhappy.

The true genius is uneasy, a man who finds no place in life, who often changes his place, his beliefs, his occupations, and his sympathies. He can do everything and can actually do nothing.

He knows everything and actually knows next to nothing.

When I came to Bern, Jacob Meir Salkind was already an old student; yet, I still managed to meet with him, to speak to him and discuss with him, to get to know him as far as possible.

He was a true genius; that is, an outstandingly able person. His mind absorbed everything and his memory retained everything permanently—or at least for a long time.

However, as with every true genius for whom everything is easy and accomplishable without great effort, he was unable to settle on any particular scientific or literary path.

But the main thing: he had great abilities and no talent. It is talent that holds a person to a particular path in science or art.

The genius becomes attached to no particular path; in the end, he is able to do all but nothing exactly, he knows everything but is connected to nothing.

The true genius is a tragic personality who is blessed with great ability but cursed with a lack of connections and with faithlessness to everything.

Jacob Meir Salkind was able to connect himself with some ideology, to some literary path, but never for very long; it was never enough to constitute his path in life, his life-ideal.

Like a true genius, he suffered from eternal restlessness.

This restlessness of his dragged him from one extreme to another.

Yet, he always retained one character trait: honesty.

He did nothing in which he did not believe.

He had to believe something to do anything.

He often changed his beliefs and his ideologies, but never in his life was he without one.

Without a belief, he would have been lost; his restlessness would have dragged him into the proverbial “mountains of darkness.”

Jacob Meir Salkind was the first curious character who interested me in Bern, in the city in which the best and brightest Jewish-Russian youth were to be found. Almost everybody is distinguished by something and stands out in some way.

Dr. J.M. Salkind was the first person to interest me because he caught my attention more than anyone else, being the greatest provocateur in the already colorful student colony.