September 2011 - Jewish Federation of New Mexico

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14 The New Mexico Jewish Link A Se rv i c e o f t h e Je w i S h fe d e r At i o n o f ne w Me x i c o September 2011 Oppenheimer’s Two Great Loves (Part One) Our Pastrami Sandwich is loaded with a half pound of Pastrami! • We slice our authentic pastrami daily • Catering Available Let Us Adopt Your Orphaned Alarm System Alarm Monitoring from $19.45 mo. Why Pay More? We Service Most Brands Mention this ad for a 10% discount Two locations to serve you at 6125 Montgomery NE, Albuquerque 505-730-4507 and Santa Fe at 648 W. Alameda, Santa Fe 505-316-6303 Not valid with any other discounts or promotions 7 Locations to Serve You and Your Loved Ones 4310 Sara Rd. Rio Rancho, NM 87124 892-9920 3113 Carlisle Blvd. NE Albuquerque, NM 87110 884-1188 2400 Southern Blvd. Rio Rancho, NM 87124 891-9192 • Installation Scheduled to Meet Your Needs • Batteries & Parts • 24 Hour UL Listed Monitoring • Security Television – Covert • Access Controls – Fire • Central Vacuum Systems • Intercom Systems Free On-Site Estimates or Visit Our Showroom 881-0001 By Dorothy Corner Amsden The next time you visit Los Alamos, stop by the south side of Fuller Lodge to admire two new statues that were dedicated on May 19. You can’t miss them as you walk along Central Avenue. J. Robert Oppenheimer and General Leslie R. Groves, life size, stand side by side, cast for posterity in bronze, the work of Santa Fe artist and sculptor Susanne Vertel. Together, the two men created an army post and scientific laboratory in Los Alamos to host the topsecret program to end World War II. General Groves was put in command of the entire Manhattan Project, of which Los Alamos was but one of several important sites. He handpicked the controversial physics professor from Berkeley, Robert Oppenheimer, to lead the scientific effort. In turn, Oppenheimer recruited the leading scientists of the time to work on the project. Oppenheimer is as revered today 717 Stover Ave. SW Albuquerque, NM 87102 243-5222 7601 Wyoming Blvd. NE Albuquerque, NM 87109 821-0010 9420 Fourth St. NW Albuquerque, NM 87114 898-3160 1100 Coal Ave. SE Albuquerque, NM 87106 842-8800 Locations also available in Socorro, Gallup and Farmington Dedicated room for Traditional Jewish ritual available at our Wyoming location Free Monitoring Hook-Ups & Switch Overs! www.thealarmstore.com 2712 Carlisle Blvd. NE (Across from Walmart) License # 27136 Bonded & Insured Locally owned since 1987 Showroom Hours: Mon-Fri 9-6 and Sat 10-3 in Los Alamos as he was in 1942, when he led the initiative to develop “the gadget,” as the atom bomb was referred to at the time because of security restrictions. He was a natural leader who commanded respect and allegiance from all who worked with him for his brilliance, his wit, and his humanity. Los Alamos old-timers are unable to forgive Edward Teller, a Hungarian Jew who worked with Oppenheimer in Los Alamos during World War II, for testifying before Congress after the war that Oppenheimer was a security risk, thereby destroying Oppenheimer’s career. Teller was a brilliant scientist in his own right who broke away from Los Alamos after the war to create Lawrence Livermore Scientific Laboratory in California. I remember seeing him once at the Los Alamos airport early one morning in the 1980s, a lonely old man, waiting for a commuter flight to Albuquerque, shunned by the Los Alamos scientists waiting for the same flight. You will find no statues of Teller in Los Alamos. Born in New York on April 22, 1904, to a wealthy, educated family with German-Jewish roots, Robert Oppenheimer’s genius manifested itself early with his interests in mineralogy, poetry, and biology. He and his younger brother Frank attended a private school in New York run by the Ethical Culture Society where Robert studied mathematics, physics, chemistry, history, learned Greek, Latin, and French, and honed his literary interests. He also found an outlet in hiking, rock-collecting, and sailing. The Oppenheimer family made numerous trips to Germany to see family during the years that Robert and Frank were growing up. In 1922, Robert made a summer trip to New Mexico, visiting the family of one of his schoolmates and exploring the Pecos wilderness and the Jémez mountains on horseback. On one trip, they stopped at the Los Alamos Ranch School where twenty-five boys from affluent families studied and roughed it in the ponderosa forests. Oppenheimer returned to New Mexico a number of times and ended up buying property with a cabin in the Pecos where he would return for personal renewal over the years. Socially awkward as an adolescent, sensitive, and insecure in his Jewishness, he found himself accepted among his new friends in New Mexico and began to develop social skills that would serve him well later in his professional career. In the fall of 1922, Oppenheimer enrolled at Harvard where he studied chemistry, physics, and literature and formed a few deep friendships. That fall, the university decided to restrict the number of Jewish students that it admitted, which at the time was 21% of the student body. He graduated summa cum laude in June 1925 with a degree in chemistry, then spent August in New Mexico. Physics was really what he wanted to study with Ernest Rutherford at Cambridge University in England, but he was rejected. Instead, he went to Cavendish Laboratory to study with J. J. Thomson, who had won the 1906 Novel Prize in physics. His year in England would introduce him to some of the top names in physics but prove a difficult experience for the still immature 21-year-old, who became more and more depressed. A vacation in Corsica with friends the next summer helped pull him out of his depression. He returned to Cambridge but despaired of ever being an experimentalist. One day, he met Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist, in Rutherford’s office. Bohr’s mother came from a Jewish banking family. Nineteen years older than Oppenheimer, Bohr became a role model and inspired Oppenheimer to become a theoretical physicist. In 1922, Bohr won the Nobel Prize for a theoretical model of atomic structure that was a breakthrough in early quantum mechanics. He would be spirited out of Denmark during World War II and work under Oppenheimer’s direction in Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project. In the spring of 1926, Oppenheimer went to study at the University of Göttingen, the European center of theoretical physics. There he met some of the leading scientists of the day, some who would work with him during the Manhattan Project, others who would serve German interests. Fluent in German, he found his stride in his studies and social life. He was regarded highly by his professors and fellow students. He still made time to read French literature and write poetry. A year later, he was awarded a doctorate. Homesick, he returned to Harvard for a one-semester post-doctoral fellowship, then accepted a teaching position at the California Institute of Technology in January 1927. In 1928, he took a year off to improve his mathematics in the Netherlands and Switzerland, where he studied with some of the top scientists of his day, including Isidor Rabi, who became a close friend. Oppenheimer’s health was never robust. He smoked incessantly and suffered all his life from colitis. He had a mild case of tuberculosis while he was in Switzerland and had to rest from his frantic pace for six weeks before he could return to his studies. Oppenheimer left Zurich in June 1929 for America. He spent a good part of that summer at his ranch in New Mexico with family and friends hiking and riding horseback. He wrote to a friend: “My two great loves are physics and New Mexico. It’s a pity they can’t be combined” [American Prometheus, p. 81]. In mid-August, Oppenheimer drove to the University of California at Berkeley, where he had accepted a double appointment with Caltech. He had prepared lectures for graduate students; instead he found himself facing undergraduates who had little grasp of quantum theory. It took a few years, but eventually he became a skilled lecturer who patiently helped his students understand the difficult material. His Berkeley students came to call him Oppie. Before long, Berkeley, which had only offered applied physics courses, became the Mecca of theoretical physics. Graduate students from all over the country came to study with Oppenheimer and the experimental physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who would go on to invent the cyclotron, a proton accelerator. The two men became close friends. Oppenheimer’s work was insightful. He was at the forefront of his field, leaving his colleagues to work out the details of his calculations. Some of his most original work was done in the late 1930s on neutron stars and black holes, which would only be taken up years later when technical advances made their study possible. Brilliant though he was, he never won a Nobel Prize, yet his command of physics was extraordinary. His social life blossomed at Berkeley. He learned to charm his acquaintances with his conversation and wit, his appearance, voice, and manners. He had many friends among the professors and students, some of whom were members of the Communist Party. Indeed, his wife Kitty was a member. Although Oppenheimer never joined the organization, his friendships would later come back to bite him during the McCarthy Era in the mid-1950s. … to be continued next month.
September 2011 A Service of the Jewish Federation of New Mexico The New Mexico Jewish Link 15 You Are What You Are: A Yiddish Parable Retold by Rich Lieberman Many, many years ago, my grandmother told me this story. Of course, it was part in Yiddish, and part English. However back then everyone’s grandparents, and/or parents were from Europe, so, Yiddish it was. I had to ask my mother, who was very fluent in Yiddish to help me with some of the rough spots. Every story has a moral and this one was no exception. The deadline for submissions to the October issue of the Link is September 15 In a small shtetl, somewhere in the Pale of Russia....there was a village, populated mostly with Jews. This was typical for the times. At one time in history, the king of the province, declared that, “all Jews must abandon their religion, their ways, and customs, and switch to the King’s way of living, religion and doings.” He ordered the Rabbi and the elders to his council, and told them of his intent. The Rabbi and his group were in shock. They told him that they would have to go back to their village, and talk to their people, knowing full well what the answer would be; needless to say, they were grief stricken. Within two days, they were summoned back to the King’s chambers. The King demanded their answer, and when they told him no, they were all imprisoned in a dungeon, and were told they would remain there until they changed their minds. So, there they sat, the Rabbi, and his group of pious Jews. The townspeople tried to visit them and bring food, but they were turned back, and went home with great fear. As time went on, the Rabbi and his group kept praying to God for a solution to their problem. The Rabbi had a drop of snuff left in his snuff box - it would be his last dip and he tried to enjoy it, but could not. When he finished, he put the empty box in his vest pocket, as was his habit. The group discussed all the ways of getting themselves out of this predicament. As the Rabbi kept praying and thinking, he noticed a small mouse running around the floor, and several times the mouse jumped up on him. He kept shooing it away, however the more he did, the more the mouse kept jumping on him. Finally, after many times, the Rabbi grabbed it and put it in his snuff box. He felt this must be a sign from God. He closed the box and put it back in his pocket. Over the next couple of days, he would feed the mouse some crumbs, from his own meager food ration. As time went by, he lost track of the mouse’s significance, but kept feeding him. Day after day, the King would talk to the Rabbi, trying to make him see his point. The Rabbi refused to bargain with him. He told the King, time and time again, that they could not do what was asked of them. A message was sent to the dungeon that the Rabbi and his group were to come to dinner that very evening to dine with the King and his close ones. The Rabbi was confused by the offering, and began to wonder what plan the King had in store for them. The banquet hall was set up with one very long table, with the finest of plates, bowls and silver. They entered the room and were amazed at the richness that was laid out before them. They were escorted to their seats. The King made some brief remarks, but it always came back to the reason that they were all there: “Make the Jews change.” Stop believing in their God, disavow the Torah, close their Shul, abandon their ways. The Rabbi was asked to state his case. He rose to his feet, and said that there was no way that he or his people could change anything about their lives. This was their covenant with the Almighty. The King was very annoyed by his statement, and said he would make them understand what he wanted. And with that, the King ordered dinner to be served. However from the Board and Staff of the JCC! Wishing the Jewish Community a Happy New Year! before the meal was served, again the King stood, and said, if the Rabbi could show him, or tell him, why the Jews could not conform and abide by the new ways, perhaps he would lift the decree. The Rabbi and his group looked at each other, and knew this was it; if they didn’t do the convincing, their fate was sealed. Then, with great bravado, the doors swung open, and out came the food, served on silver platters. The servers, however, were cats dressed in tuxedos, walking upright on their hind legs. They started to serve soup and rolls, very proper like, with skilled style. The King rose to his feet, and said to the Rabbi, “See Rabbi, their whole lifestyle has been changed, and I trained them. What do you have to say now? Your freedom and that of your people are at hand.” The Rabbi looked at his fellow Jews and they all had fear in their eyes, knowing that this was impossible to get around, and soon they would have to face the fact that life would never be the same. As the cats continued to serve the food, and doing a great job of it, the WHOPPORTUNITY! 10400 San Antonio Dr NE Albuquerque, NM 87122 Attention home-based artists, entrepreneurs, telecommuters, or those needing accessory living quarters with handicapped access! Separate 595 sf studio/casita/ guest house. Prominent location in affluent area! 5 bedrooms, 2 full baths, 2 three quarter baths, bright open floorplan with views, oversized 3 car garage on fenced .55 acre lot. Well priced @ $499,500 MLS# 713536 VIRTUAL TOUR ONLINE Rabbi stood up to speak to the King, and just as he was about to talk, he thought of the mouse in his snuff box. He reached into his pocket and took it out, and opened the lid. He took the mouse out, and started to yell, “CATS! CATS! CATS!” and with that, he put the mouse on the floor, and cats threw their trays and food up in the air, and went from their hind legs, down to all fours, chasing the mouse all over the dining hall. It was the sign that they had prayed for, God answered their prayers. The Rabbi looked toward the King, and without saying a word, the King looked at the Rabbi, and said “Rabbi, I respect you, as a man of God, and I now see what you have meant. You are what you are, and I understand now you are what you are, and I also see now, how your people have lasted so long. You have my word to you, that you and your people will now have your religion, and your house of worship and all that you need. You have taught me a lesson, Rabbi. You are all free, go with my blessings.” The Rabbi and the King shook hands, and they both went their separate ways. As you can see, you are what you are…and nothing can change that. This story has stayed with me all these years, and it is still a very valued one. Thank you for allowing me to share this with you! TEMPLE BETH EL OF LAS CRUCES OURS IS A DIVERSE AND GROWING JEWISH COMMUNITY L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem from all of us at Temple Beth-El Check our website for our High Holiday Services schedule WWW.TBELC.ORG 3980 SONOMA SPRINGS AVE. 575-524-3380 RABBI LAWRENCE P. KAROL MEMBER OF UNION FOR REFORM JUDAISM
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September 2011 - Jewish Federation of New Mexico

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