The New York Times May 27, 2006. By DAN BARRY .Stubborn as His Kultur, the Old Man Lives. On the eighth floor of an ancient office building in the Flatiron district, a fixture is missing. Knock on Room 820, and a young woman says her company has been there for just a couple of months; try the next door. Knock on Room 816, and nothing. Peer through the mailslot, emptiness.But around the corner, a maintenance man reading a Spanish news paper in the utility closet has news of that missing fixture: "The old man,he not here anymore."That's right: The old man, Itche Goldberg, not here anymore. For decades, he toiled on this floor, in an office crammed with books andideas, to produce what was once a premier Yiddish literary journal,Yidishe Kultur. It was published monthly, then every other month,then a few times a year, and then, finally, once, in 2004.Mr. Goldberg would take an Access-A-Ride van to the office, where he wrote, read manuscripts, maintained correspondences and tried to raise money to keep the periodical going. But just as the desire for sophisticated criticism of Yiddish literature gradually waned, so too did his ability to get to an office five days a week.Understandable, given that he is 102.A few weeks ago, the office of Yidishe Kultur was closed, but only inthe physical sense. It continues to live within Mr. Goldberg, who clings to the belief that support will come, money will materialize,and his beloved Yiddish culture, to which he dedicated a longlifetime, will thrive."It isn't easy," he says. He says this often, but to hear him say it,you detect more hope than despair.Mr. Goldberg sits in his West Side apartment's crammed study,white-haired and small, fiddling with the translucent hose feedingoxygen to his nose. A portrait of him, much younger, hangs on thewall. Papers spill from shopping bags. Pipes he has not smoked in aquarter-century gather dust. And surrounding him, books, books,books, almost all in Yiddish.LOOK at these walls, I beg you," he says. "If I couldn't have these writers..." He banishes the thought, then adds: "With all this I became part of a culture. And it kept us going quite a while."For many who care about highbrow Yiddish culture, Mr. Goldberg is a keeper of the flickering flame. "A titan," says Thomas E. Bird, aprofessor of East European languages and literature at QueensCollege. "A brilliant scholar of literature. A master teacher of generations."But how does one succinctly sum up 102 years?Born in 1904 in what is now Poland, suffered deprivation andprejudice, demonstrated scholarly aptitude, moved to Toronto, began teaching Yiddish, married a social worker named Jennie who turned 100 in December got involved in communist Yiddish culture, helped to establish Yiddish schools across the country, published a children'smagazine.Wrote and edited, all to further a language left for dead by theNazis. Raised two children, Susan and David. Feared the knock on the door during the McCarthy era. Lived through the bitter quarrels within the Yiddish left. Taught, lectured, wrote, edited, survived.Mr. Goldberg skips over this point and stops at that one, pausinghere to recall the Marxist scholar Morris Schappes and there toemphasize that being a secular Jew does not mean he is anti-religious. He delivers a brief lecture about Yiddish labor poetry, then asks, not for the only time, "Are you aware of this?"His longtime editorial assistant, Shoshana Balaban-Wolkowitz,materializes to check on his visitor. "You want something to drink?"she asks. "Almost cold ginger ale? Very bad coffee?"Mr. Goldberg continues his lecture, speaking with a nimble wit thatseeks to nurse humor from language whenever possible. When he stepson his air line, for example, he mimics a telephone operator's flatvoice: "Line 1."Unable at one point to immediately summon his whereabouts in 1930, heconfides, "By the way, things slip for me.""That's O.K.," he is reassured."No, it's not O.K.," he answers quickly, then returns to emphasizingthe importance of Yiddish as a central means of expression for Jewish culture. Fixing his gaze on his visitor, he says, "I hope what emerges is a certain stubbornness, a certain belief, a certain creativity that we cherish."Mr. Goldberg gently indicates that he has better things to do than totalk more about himself. But yes, he still reads, with the assistance of a magnifying lamp on his desk that enlarges print.As a matter of fact, he says, he is re-reading his own latest book,"Essayen Tsvey" ("Essays Two"), the recent publication of which"surely makes him the oldest writer ever to have published a newbook," according to The London Times Literary Supplement.The 467-page book contains more than two dozen essays by this erudite Yiddish fixture. Among them is one called, simply, "The Story of My 100 Years."E-mail: dabarry@nytimes.com
