Crazy for Culture

The town erudite Nochum Berman

"The only problem is to be able to pick out the good from the very many mediocre, and, often, tasteless, books," Šeduva resident Nochum Berman once wrote. His friend, or perhaps more accurately his beloved Hinda Zarkey, who lived in faraway America, received this letter along with many others. While living in this house, Berman asked her about America and told her about Šeduva. But usually, he wrote about books. Almost always about books, devotedly.

Have a listen: "I’m reading Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther now. I spend the evening hours reading. I read whatever I can lay my hands on. In my free time, I train my brain with books on economics. I came upon them by chance, so I have to study all of them." And so on.

The correspondence between Šeduva and Cleveland carried on for three years. In their letters, Berman didn't find room to mention their final passionate farewell kisses that he lavished upon Hinda one day in 1937. He never asked about their missed date, when Hinda never showed up because of the rain. It wasn't mentioned even once. He always wrote about the books that he read fervently in Yiddish, Lithuanian, English, Russian, and German – because he couldn't live without them.

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