September 6, 2008



Dear Ellis,

On this truly special occasion celebrating your 90th Birthday, Steffi and I want to
wish you not only a happy and wonderful birthday for today, but also continued
health and strength, nourished by the love and friendship that you feel today, for
many, many days and years to come. May you and Zelda live and flourish till at
least the traditional 120 years and be able to enjoy the blessings of each one of
them with your eyes undimmed and your natural strength unabated.

Ellis, your wisdom has always encouraged us to take the long view of all things,
and to be especially attentive to how things come together in novel ways to make
real differences in the way events, institutions, historical processes, and people’s
lives unfold thereafter. For today, I can only reflect, as both your student and
colleague on the latter.

Even before I had the opportunity to meet you in person, your reputation for
genius and wit preceded you. And when, at last, the opportunity to meet you
came about, I found that what I was told was all true, but matched by a loving
and playful congeniality that attend you wherever you go. I recall, for example,
when I first sat in your class, you took attendance in accordance with the
standard procedure. You asked each of us to respond to your calling out our
names by raising our hands and saying, “Here” or “Present”, indicating that if
we did so, you would be “eternally grateful”. Then you paused, and in a moment
of enthused realization and delight, you added, “Oh my, I guess that commits me
to immortality.” There was instant laughter all around. But I suspect there may
have been more to it than just a light moment to get things off to a good start,
because we soon learned that you placed great emphasis on relating events and
historical processes to ideas, which always have a kind of eternal vitality of their
own. From that time forward, whether in the classroom or your study, in long
walks up and down Clifton Avenue or in quiet conversations in your living room,
I and many others as well, have had the pleasure of learning from you directly.
And when those hours were supported and supplemented by carefully reading
your articles, books, and The Globalist Newsletter, the pleasure turned into
illumination and delight. Whether the topic was “the Unity Principle” in Jewish
history or the internal city and the two-fold Law of the Pharisees, the birth of the
synagogue, the hidden dynamics of Saadia’s conflict with the Exilarch, or the
Maimonidean controversy, we quickly discovered that you were frying to bring
us to an understanding of the enduring, or at least, the recurring processes of
history, because we, too, would experience them, albeit in novel, initially
unfamiliar, but never totally unrecognizable form. Because of you, we could
never be lost in a sea of events, because you made a point of getting us to see and
become familiar with their underlying currents.

What is more, you taught us to look for telling details as well, not just broad
generalities, and encouraged us to pay attention to the relations between them.
Here, too, you exemplified what you taught. No wonder, then, that it was from
you that we learned about global capitalism and its struggles with both
traditional societies and nation-state capitalism, almost twenty—five years before
our political leaders and the mainstream media began to talk about a global
economy and what it entailed. The Globalist Newsletter will surely be a
testament to your innovative and attentive insights.

But underlying and complementing all of your remarkable insights and genius in
reading events in novel and illuminating ways, I remember that inimitable
congeniality and good humor that you have always displayed. That is why
merely having a conversation with you is never an invitation to intellectual one-
upmanship, but to a kind of loving repartee’ that leads one to think again and
again about the many dimensions of wit and wisdom that you incorporate in even
the briefest communications. These qualities, together with the warm hospitality
which you and Zelda have always extended to Steffi and me, and even our
children, makes the word “celebration” the only appropriate word ~4 deed for
today and for any other time that we have together with you.

Henry Adams is rightly famous for noting that, “A teacher affects eternity; he
can never tell where his influence stops.” (The Education of Henry Adams, ch.
20)	While his observation was intended to include all teachers, there is
nonetheless reason to suppose that it may also apply to some more richly than
others. Ellis, you are surely a paradigm for the kind of teacher he must have had
in mind. May the Source of all that is good, and true, and loving, and indeed of
eternity itself, be as kind to you as you have been kind in exemplifying its ways
and grant you many more years of health and strength and love and life.

Affectionately yours,

Barri and Steffi Kogan