Cognitive Shift  

Rabbi Abba Goldman never spoke about his past. He never talked about his childhood in Newark, New Jersey, or his years as a college student, a researcher, and then a professor. He never mentioned his father’s secular achievements and medical discoveries. Really, he never did.

As his son in-law, I think I fell into a unique space where I felt neither the filial deference of the sons nor the propriety of the talmidim, and toward the end of his life, when it was clear the days for asking questions were dwindling, I began to ask.

I already had some basic information, but it was incomplete. I had known, for instance, that my father in-law had studied philosophy, but not that he was fluent in French, German, and Greek and had learned from original texts.

I knew that my father-in-law’s father, Dr. Lester Goldman, had discovered the relationship of nonmatching blood types between mother and baby, and the treatment for it (used to this day in about 15% of all childbirths) — but not that he had declined both the Nobel Prize and the cover of Time magazine, preferring to work quietly making people better. I knew he had met Einstein, but not that it was for the purpose of creating job visas to get Jews out of Europe during the Holocaust.