seems to have borne some resemblancernto the Jewish neoconservatives of a laterrnera in his lack of interest in religion. Ofrncourse, J Shot An Elephant is not meantrnto be a theological treatise or statementrnof belief, but rather the story of an influentialrnpopular writer in a time whenrnconservatives still had some say in thernnation’s cultural institutions. Ryskind isrna great storyteller, and his autobiographyrnis filled with accounts of his encountersrnwith Ira and George Gershwin,rnthe Marx Brothers, and other notables ofrnthe stage and screen. After some earlyrnsuccesses at publishing light verse inrnFrancis P. Adams’ famous Herald column,rn”The Conning Tower,” and an uncompletedrnstint at the Columbia Schoolrnof Journalism, Ryskind made his life as arnhumorist and won the Pulitzer Prize inrn1931 for the musical Of Thee 1 Sing.rnRyskind left Hollywood in 1948 afterrntestifying for the House Un-AmericanrnActivities Committee against the “HollywoodrnTen,” finding his services in thernincreasingly left-leaning industry nornlonger in demand. He began a new careerrnas a political columnist and fulltimernsupporter of Republican causes,rnstarting with Taft in 1948 and continuingrnthrough 1980; indeed, the book closesrnwith the visit the newly elected RonaldrnReagan paid Ryskind just before his inauguration.rnRyskind seems always tornhave been in the know, and as a result wernget his observations on the politicalrnevents and personalities of the last halfcentury,rnall suffused with a sharp wit andrna ready appreciation for the ironies ofrnlife.rnFrom Neusner, as befits a scholar, wernget less wit than wisdom. His essays arernwritten with an understanding eye towardrnthe past, and it is clear that his faithrnis the lens through which he views thernworld. In one of his most penetrating essaysrn—”Can Humanity Forget What ItrnKnows?”—Neusner reflects on the veryrnreal possibility that even our advancedrnindustrial society can lose whole realmsrnof knowledge for no other reason thanrnneglect and loss of purpose. As a counterpointrnto our present methods of transmittingrnknowledge, Neusner presents thernTalmud, a relatively compact guide tornlife that is centered around the discoveryrnof truth and its passage from one generationrnto the next. We in the West havernforgotten how to teach, and so our learningrnhas become gradually irrelevantrnwhile the skills and knowledge painfullyrnacquired over the centuries recede intornan inaccessible past. The primary purposernof the institutions entrusted withrnteaching is to preserve and convey knowledgernalready gained to the next generation,rnnot to generate “knowledge” thatrncannot be readily integrated into the existingrncultural context.rnNeusner, Feder, and Ryskind are threernproud Americans who do not think thatrnbeing a “real” Jew involves a disdain forrntheir country and a preference for Israel.rnAs Feder and Neusner point out, Americarnhas been good to the Jews—perhapsrntoo good, since the soft tyranny of Americanrnconsumerism threatens to commodifyrnevery aspect of Jewish culture capablernof being transformed into profitrnand to discard the rest.rnGerald Russello writes from New York.rnBack to the Futurernby Christine HaynesrnDestinations Past: Traveling throughrnHistory with John Lukacsrnby ]ohn LukacsrnColumbia: University ofrnMissouri Press;rn248 pp., $26.95rnAndrew Lytic, in his family memoirrnA Wake for the Living, compares thernpast to a foreign country. “If we dismissrnthe past as dead,” he writes, “and not asrna country of the living which our eyes arernunable to see, as we cannot see a foreignrncountry but know it is there, then wernare likely to become servile.” The valuernof Destinations Past lies in its author’srnability to make both the past and thernforeign come alive. The historian inrnJohn Lukacs leads him to recognize thatrn”we travel in time as well as in space.”rnHis voyages—whether to England inrn1965 for Winston Churchill’s funeral, tornAustria in 1989 for Adolf Hitler’s 100thrnbirthday, or to Hungary in 1990 for thernfirst meeting of a new, freely elected parliamentrn—are more than adventures;rnthey are “contacts with history.”rnA collection of 21 essays published inrnvarious places (including Chronicles)rnover the last 40 years. Destinations Pastrnfollows Lukacs’s train of thought as hernjourneys—literally or, as in the essayrn”Cook’s Continental Timetable,” onlyrnfiguratively—from his home in easternrnPennsylvania to various spots in Europe:rnVenice, Austria, Switzerland, Andorra,rnLondon, Greece, Warsaw, Transylvania,rnDresden, Budapest, and Scandinavia. Itrnis a memoir not only of the placesrnLukacs has seen and the moments hernhas witnessed but of the feelings he hasrnexperienced as a Hungarian-born Americanrnrevisiting the Old World. Lukacsrnwas a young adult when he left Hungaryrnto come to the United States in 1946,rnand his character had already beenrnformed by the social and cultural structuresrnof interbellum bourgeois Europe.rnBut it was not until he had lived in thernUnited States that he discovered his Europeanrnidentity. Reflecting on his exilernstatus in the preface to this volume,rnLukacs writes: ” [I]t was in America thatrn1 learned much about Europe, and it wasrnnot until I had lived for some time inrnAmerica that I found myself to be a European.”rnExiles (as Lloyd Kramerrndemonstrates in Threshold of a NewrnWorld: Intellectuals and the Exile Experiencernin Paris, 1830-1848) gain a uniquernperspective on both their home countryrnand their adopted one by uprootingrnthemselves from familiar surroundings.rnLukacs’s dual identity has certainlyrnheightened his sensitivity to cultural differencesrnand positioned him to elucidaternhistorical trends on both sides ofrnthe Atlantic.rnHis evocative language and astute observationsrnrecall great travel writers likernHenry James, M.F.K. Fisher, Ford MadoxrnFord, and W. Somerset Maugham—rnall expatriates themselves at one time orrnanother. His descriptive passages equalrnthose of our best novelists. As example,rnthe first essay in this collection, “EnteringrnVenice” (1954), is reminiscent ofrnErnest Hemingway’s Across the River andrnInto the Trees in its depiction of thernmarshy city. And his analysis ofrnChurchill’s name in “Three Days inrnLondon” (1965) is as perceptive as it isrndelightful:rnChurchill. How the very soundrnand shape of his name fitted him.rnPouting, aristocratic, flecked byrnsunlight. The round and juicyrnsound of the first syllable, formedrnby lips curling to speak just as his,rnthe air filling up the cheeks of arnseventeenth-century boy with arnyoung and churchy sound.. .. Thernpout merges, in a genial way, intornSEPTEMBER 1994/33rnrnrn