Beginnings
Last week, I finished reading Doris Reams' remarkable study of Lyndon Johnson. The book is fascinating. It is also, in a peculiar way, disconcerting. Johnson was just yesterday, was he not? Or he...
...It is not that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step...
...Abraham and all his descendents, our more proximate ancestors, have happened since 11:59:50...
...Sagan compresses all of time, since the beginning of the universe, into the equivalent of a one year calendar...
...Our next anniversary will be an even happier occasion if you'll take the time to check our "house ad" on page 7. There's a new and very attractive way to order moment, and we're still hoping that each of our readers will want to introduce at least one other person to our family...
...This month, we present the responses of ten experts to this question...
...But two years is not, after all, a very long time, as I was reminded when I recently read Carl Sagan's delightful new book, The Dragons of Eden...
...Except, of course, it isn't so...
...Those of us who remember waiting out the roll-call vote will never forget the ecstasy we felt upon its conclusion...
...Some people are humbled by such information...
...Eban on what today and tomorrow are about...
...Some part of what we felt is captured by our selection, this month, from Abba Eban's forthcoming autobiography, and we print it in order to remind ourselves what yesterday was like...
...It is now the first second of New Year's Day, just one year since the beginning...
...There is, or so it seems, no end to the time one might spend...
...I know how easy it is for people who are genuinely interested in getting their feet wet—and their minds massaged—by Jewish learning to be frightened by the vastness of our libraries...
...Speaking of time, and of anniversaries, this is Volume 3, Number 1 of moment...
...If the Big Bang with which the universe opened for business took place on January 1, at the stroke of midnight, then man showed up for the first time the following December 31, at about 10:30 p.m...
...For that reason, I did not get to thank a wonderful new friend (and old subscriber) whose help was invaluable in fleshing out our article on the National Lawyers Guild...
...Last month, my ruminations in this space were displaced by the telling of our adventure as rebutter of a New York Times ad that had been placed by the Arab Information Center...
...no single life is enough to master all there is to know...
...And this is Jewish Book Month, too...
...I am happy to thank him publicly...
...It is that a single step can in and of itself be wonderfully rewarding...
...It seems to me the more appropriate reaction is extravagant pride in how much has been accomplished in the last minute, and a feeling of far greater nearness to those who came before—a few seconds ago in cosmic time...
...Thanks...
...We have purposely sought to avoid intimidating beginners with long bibliographies...
...Born yesterday" becomes an impossibility...
...When was the Great Society, when was Vietnam, when was the Tet Offensive...
...So it is that the UN Partition Resolution, whose 30th anniversary we celebrate this month, now becomes part of some dimly remembered pre-history, a thing that happened back when the Mandate and the First Zionist Congress and other such long-ago and very far-away things were happening...
...he was eager to be helpful, and helpful he was, sending us a very detailed description of the doings there...
...What needs to be said, and repeated, is that while there may be no end, there is a beginning, and the fact that the adult beginner will almost surely not end up a learned scholar does not mean that he cannot aspire to basic literacy...
...tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day" becomes a literal truth, because tomorrow, on the Sagan time scale, will take about 40 million years...
...We started more than three hundred articles (and almost that many cash flow crises) ago, and it is a good feeling to be at it still, more than two years later...
...Or he was a lifetime ago...
...Next month's moment features an exclusive—and most interesting—interview with Mr...
...Any of us who engages in teaching other Jews is often asked to recommend a "basic book" list for people who know nothing, or nearly nothing...
...Leonard Schroeter (who this month becomes a moment author, but nonetheless remains a friend) is a distinguished member of the Seattle bar—and of the Jewish community—who didn't have to be pressed into service to cover the Guild's national convention, which took place in Seattle...
...One's sense of time gets confused these days, as events tumble one upon the other...
...And (see page 44) chag sameach...
Vol. 3 • November 1977 • No. 1
