Yuval Levin on the Remarkable Legacy of Gertrude Himmelfarb

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6 • 620 Ratings

🗓️ 8 January 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When Gertrude Himmelfarb passed away on December 30, 2019, a great Jewish voice was lost. An eminent historian of Victorian Britain, Professor Himmelfarb—or, as she was known to her friends, Bea Kristol—analyzed and defended the moral and political virtues necessary for a healthy democratic society. She was interested in how the Victorians consciously built up England’s moral capital and civic confidence when they were in short supply. And drawing from her meticulous historical research, she brought her conclusions to bear on the United States, arguing that Americans too can accomplish what the Victorians did, if we can only learn from their achievements. She also wrote numerous essays on Jewish topics, and especially on the novelist George Eliot's ideas about Jews and Judaism.

To discuss the legacy of this great historian and theorist of American remoralization, we are joined on this week’s podcast by Yuval Levin, director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and editor-in-chief of National Affairs.

Musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim and performed by the ARC Ensemble, as well as “We Are Your Friends” by Mocha Music.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Gertrude Himmelfarb was an eminent American historian of Victorian manners,
0:12.8	a defender of the virtues necessary to sustain democratic government,
0:16.9	and known to her friends as B. Crystal, the wife of the editor and essayist Irving Crystal.
0:22.2	Their marriage lasted nearly seven decades.
0:25.4	Gertrude Himmelfar published more than a dozen books of history and commentary, and near
0:30.2	the end of her life focused her final two books on Jewish subjects.
0:34.6	She died on December 30th, 2019, and when she did, the Jewish people and the West
0:39.9	lost one of our wisest voices. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver.
0:46.8	On today's episode, we celebrate the life and legacy of Gertrude Himmelfarb by thinking about
0:51.7	the ideas that she cherished. She often spoke about Victorian virtues,
0:56.6	prudence, temperance, industriousness, decency, responsibility, and these, she would say,
1:03.3	were thoroughly pedestrian. They depended, she said, on no special breeding, talent, sensibility,
1:10.2	or even money. They were, and now it's me saying
1:13.6	so, not her, democratic virtues, accessible to all of us, as opposed to the aristocratic virtues,
1:21.0	then one could see on display in the pages of Homer or Plato or Plutarch. Upon reading the many
1:27.2	wonderful reflections on her life,
1:29.6	reflections by Adam Kuyper and David Brooks, John Pudhoritz, and Yuval Levin,
1:34.9	one thing stands out to me. This wise historian and social critic was a guardian of those
1:41.1	Victorian democratic virtues, but she was able to articulate them and see
1:45.8	their importance, precisely because she herself possessed more than democratic virtues.
1:51.7	Her writing and her career were accented with the older aristocratic virtues of courage
1:57.3	and generosity and wisdom. May her memory be a blessing. On this week's show,
	...

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