Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Dr. Abram Kanof, 1903-1999

1999; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 87; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ajh.1999.0006

1086-3141

Margaret Kanof Norden,

Psychiatric care and mental health services

Dr. Abram Kanof, 1903–1999 Margaret Kanof Norden Abe Kanof invariably asked guests who lingered at the door “What’s the difference between a Jew and an Englishman?” “An Englishman”, he would chuckle in answer to his own question, “leaves without saying ‘Goodbye’, a Jew says ‘Goodbye’ without leaving.” Although the joke appeared to merely hasten the guest’s smiling departure, Abe had identified a kernel of truth that bespeaks his own life. Born in Dniepropetorsk, Russia, in 1903, Abe, his mother, brothers and sisters, left a land of political unrest to come to America in 1905. Here he was raised in an observant Jewish home in Brooklyn, went to Boys High School, and ultimately studied as a premed in Columbia College. However, he never forgot that this land had welcomed poor refugees from the pogroms of Europe, and allowed them to grow and prosper intellectually and spiritually. At the outbreak of World War II, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy (although exempt from the draft) and served until 1946. While in the military, he developed a cure for “athletes’ foot”, a condition that prevented the troops in the Pacific Arena from wearing shoes, and therefore, from serving. During his Navy tenure, Abe studied to become a pediatrician. After the war, he returned to Brooklyn where he practiced for over 50 years, researched and published material of medical interest, and taught young doctors as Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and the Downstate Medial College. The doctor who returned to civilian life loved and respected his Jewish heritage. He became a member, and, from 1961–1964, President, of the American Jewish Historical Society. Although he had left the Navy behind, he pursued his interests in the service and in Judaism, and published “Uriah Phillips Levy: The Story of a Pugnacious Commodore” in the Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society in 1949. As early at the 1930’s, Abe and his wife, Dr. Frances Pascher, developed a love of culture and the arts. Combining Jewish values with this appreciation was a natural. While serving on the Board of the Jewish Museum of New York, he became aware that today’s practicing Jew wants modern ceremonials. He established the Tobe Pascher Workshop at the Jewish Museum, and brought to this country aspiring artists to create the desired pieces. Noting that “ritual has great psychological importance for the modern Jew... in the performance of an ancient [End Page 95] observance, he reaffirms his relationship with four millenniums of history, “he authored and published Jewish Ceremonial Art and Religious Observance in 1969.” Further study of the relationship between religion and art led him to publish Jewish Symbolic Art in 1990 and to author many articles and presentations. Recognizing his “outstanding contributions to Medicine and Judaica”, the Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center and the Spertus College of Judaica awarded him the Maimonides Award in 1971. The Kanofs retired from the practice of medicine in 1971 and moved to Raleigh, N.C. Having nurtured an abiding interest in Jewish art, they organized a temporary traveling exhibit of Jewish ceremonial objects. This led to the establishment of a permanent Judaica Gallery at the N.C. Museum of Art in 1975. An Associate Curator, trustee, and docent at the Museum, Abe gave tours and lectures until shortly before his death. The Museum acknowledged his many contributions in an elegant celebration in 1998. Ever the pediatrician, educator, and concerned father, Abe religiously read the Megillas Esther to the children of his synagogue on Purim. He wrote to a relative that “the children are very bored with the second seder ...[it is]the same thing over again.” To address this, he developed and had printed in 1998 A Haggadah for the Second Seder that simplified, shortened, and brought a modern twist to the story. As he had noted that the traditional service ignored the women of the Passover story, Abe included references to Yocheved, the mother of Moses, to the Egyptian princess who adopted the baby and to the other notable women. In his review of Abraham Flexner’s autobiography, Abe Kanof described a man who lived on “a highly active plateau of...