From the Cincinnati Reds to the

Moscow Reds The Memoirs of Irwin

Weil 1st Edition Irwin Weil Tony Brown
Tony Brown
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmeta.com/product/from-the-cincinnati-reds-to-the-moscow-reds-the-mem
oirs-of-irwin-weil-1st-edition-irwin-weil-tony-brown-tony-brown/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

The Fall of the Confederation Forgotten Empire 08

Raymond L Weil Julie Weil Thomas

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-fall-of-the-confederation-
forgotten-empire-08-raymond-l-weil-julie-weil-thomas/

The Confederation and The Empire at War Forgotten

Empire 05 Raymond L Weil Julie Weil Thomas

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-confederation-and-the-empire-
at-war-forgotten-empire-05-raymond-l-weil-julie-weil-thomas/

Cannabis Pharmacy The Practical Guide to Medical

Marijuana Michael Backes Andrew Weil

https://ebookmeta.com/product/cannabis-pharmacy-the-practical-
guide-to-medical-marijuana-michael-backes-andrew-weil/

The Star Cross Star Cross Raymond L Weil Et El

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-star-cross-star-cross-raymond-
l-weil-et-el/
Simone Weil for the Twenty First Century 1st Edition
Eric O Springsted

https://ebookmeta.com/product/simone-weil-for-the-twenty-first-
century-1st-edition-eric-o-springsted/

Tales of the Irish Hedgerows 2nd Edition Tony Locke

https://ebookmeta.com/product/tales-of-the-irish-hedgerows-2nd-
edition-tony-locke/

Economics: The Basics, 4th Edition Tony Cleaver

https://ebookmeta.com/product/economics-the-basics-4th-edition-
tony-cleaver/

Elements of the Nature and Properties of Soils Nyle C.

Brady - Raymond R. Weil

https://ebookmeta.com/product/elements-of-the-nature-and-
properties-of-soils-nyle-c-brady-raymond-r-weil/

The Last Days of Tony MacBride 1st Edition Rachel

Amphlett

https://ebookmeta.com/product/the-last-days-of-tony-macbride-1st-
edition-rachel-amphlett/
 FROM THE
CINCINNATI REDS
TO THE MOSCOW
The Memoirs REDS
of Irwin Weil
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy

Series Editor
Maxim D. Shrayer (Boston College)

Editorial Board
Ilya Altman (Russian Holocaust Center and Russian State University for the
Humanities)
Karel Berkhoff (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies)
Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary University of London)
Brian Horowitz (Tulane University)
Luba Jurgenson (Universite Paris IV—Sorbonne)
Roman Katsman (Bar-Ilan University)
Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University)
Vladimir Khazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Mikhail Krutikov (University of Michigan)
Joanna Beata Michlic (Bristol University)
Alice Nakhimovsky (Colgate University)
Antony Polonsky (Brandeis University)
Jonathan D. Sarna (Brandeis University)
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

David Shneer (University of Colorado at Boulder)

Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto)
Leona Toker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Mark Tolts (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 FROM THE
CINCINNATI REDS
TO THE MOSCOW
The Memoirs REDS
of Irwin Weil

Compiled and Edited

by Tony Brown
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Boston 2015

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
A catalog record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress.

Copyright © 2015 Academic Studies Press

All rights reserved

ISBN 978-1-61811-394-8 (hardback)

ISBN 978-1-61811-395-5 (electronic)
ISBN 978-1-61811-396-2 (paperback)

Cover design by Ivan Grave

Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Published by Academic Studies Press in 2015

28 Montfern Avenue
Brighton, MA 02135, USA
[email protected]
www. academicstudiespress.com

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Contents

Preface.........................................................................................................................ix
Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................xi
Editor’s Note..................................................................................................................xii

1. The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil

Ancestry..................................................................................................................1
Sidney Weil............................................................................................................2
Florence Levy.........................................................................................................3
Joining the Army....................................................................................................6
After the War.........................................................................................................7
The Roaring Twenties............................................................................................7
Faith and Family....................................................................................................9
Great Depression.....................................................................................................12
Baseball Players...................................................................................................13
The Move..............................................................................................................14
Life Insurance.......................................................................................................15
Raising Money.....................................................................................................16
Zionists and Education........................................................................................19
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

The Horrors of World War II and Life After........................................................21

Baseball versus Academia......................................................................................24
Rabbi Heller............................................................................................................25
Jewish Traditions....................................................................................................27
Dad’s Greatest Pleasures.........................................................................................29
Later Years of Life................................................................................................31

2. Early Years and Education of Irwin Weil

Introduction.........................................................................................................37
Namesake.............................................................................................................37

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 vi Contents

Growing Up..........................................................................................................38
Early School Years...................................................................................................41
Vivian’s Family Background..................................................................................45
Musical Background............................................................................................49
Adolescent Politics and Experiences....................................................................52
First Impressions of Russia..................................................................................53
Flying....................................................................................................................54
University of Cincinnati.........................................................................................56
University of Chicago...........................................................................................58
Experiences with Russian History and Literature..............................................65
Life in the Theatre...................................................................................................69
Marriage to Vivian..............................................................................................75
Kulischer..............................................................................................................76
Harvard...................................................................................................................83
Brandeis...................................................................................................................89
Northwestern...........................................................................................................90

3. Entry into the Soviet Union

Going to the Soviet Union...................................................................................96
A Welcome to Remember....................................................................................97
KGB......................................................................................................................99
Literary Endeavors.............................................................................................102
Trip to Leningrad...............................................................................................104
Malyshev and Alekseev......................................................................................107
Jewish Father and Son in Leningrad.................................................................108
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Firsthand Learning Experiences..........................................................................110

Aunt Olga...........................................................................................................111
Back in the United States...................................................................................113
Days at Brandeis University..............................................................................115
Returning to the Soviet Union—1963...............................................................118
Vitya, My Roommate and Advisor...................................................................121
The Search for Chukovsky.................................................................................122
Meeting Chukovsky............................................................................................123
Discussions in Chukovsky’s House....................................................................128
Bialik..................................................................................................................134
Additional Thoughts about Gorky....................................................................137

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Contents vii

4. Social and Political Reform in the Soviet Union

Evtushenko............................................................................................................140
Not Discussing Politics.......................................................................................141
Khrushchev........................................................................................................144
Kennedy .............................................................................................................145
Judge Not............................................................................................................146
Ovcharenko........................................................................................................149
Marina Rafailovna Kaul and Rosalia Semyonovna Ginzburg........................154
Being Cautious...................................................................................................155
American Association of Teachers of Slavic and
East EuropeanLanguages (AATSEEL)..............................................................158
American Council of Teachers of Russian (ACTR)..........................................160
Changes in Soviet Politics..................................................................................160
Cold War Rhetoric.............................................................................................162
Prejudices and Privileges...................................................................................165
Favorable Aspects...............................................................................................168
News...................................................................................................................169
Shostakovich......................................................................................................170
Prokofiev............................................................................................................177
Nabokov.............................................................................................................179
Afanasyev...........................................................................................................181
Change...............................................................................................................182

5. Letters from the USSR

Tues. Sept. 6, 1960.............................................................................................184
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Wed. Sept. 7, 1960.............................................................................................189

Thurs. Sept. 8, 1960...........................................................................................200
Tues. Sept. 13, 1960...........................................................................................214

Index........................................................................................................................222

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Preface

A s a young boy in the 1930s, I became fascinated by the Cincinnati

Reds, a team whose ownership rested for five years in the hands of
my father, Sidney Weil. My father grew up in the service of the Weil-Mook
Horse Stables, which provided an important part of local transportation.
He had an unusual strength of personality, a great deal of kindness, and a
gift for concentrated hard work—qualities that assisted him in navigating
many different Midwestern institutions, including baseball, in which he
left an indelible mark.
He was also the father of two girls, but he pinned his hopes on me, his
only son, for carrying on the family business. At that time, he never
dreamed that his offspring would enter academic life and then, as if that
weren’t bad enough, would become involved with the Russian language
and its literary and musical culture.
Such is the unforeseeable nature of Cincinnati life and the events of
the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This book is an attempt to capture
the predominant thoughts and feelings of that time and place by describing
some of the happenings that shaped my experience and enabled me to
affect—let’s hope for the better—other people’s lives in the United States
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

and the Soviet Union/Russia.

The concluding chapter contains four letters sent to my parents
within a week of my return from traveling to the USSR for the first time.
They have all the naiveté of first impressions, in spite of the fact that I had
previously studied the language and culture. They also have some of the
freshness and vitality connected with first impressions.
The reader will notice extensive footnotes throughout. For those who
are specialists in Slavic languages and literature and Jewish studies, such
footnotes will simply present what they already know, whereas for
non-specialists, they will provide helpful details.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 x Preface

The reader also will quickly notice that I have not presented all of the
memories in strict chronological order. Rather, I have organized them
according to my recollection of them over a life of four score plus six years.
From Cincinnati to Moscow, I have participated in many institutions and
have encountered numerous languages and cultures. Not without some
defeats and disappointments, I have been fortunate enough to taste many
of the world’s delights. I hope that the following pages will arouse the
interest and emotional participation of the attentive reader.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Acknowledgments

I could not have produced these memoirs without the loving support of
my beautiful and intelligent wife of sixty-four years and friend for even
longer, Vivian Max Weil.
It is also the case that this book would never have seen the light of day
without the energetic, intelligent prodding, and continual help of my
friend and colleague Tony Brown of Brigham Young University.

-Irwin Weil
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Editor’s Note

I n 2012 I invited Irwin Weil to deliver two guest lectures at Brigham

Young University. His lectures, titled “Pushkin: An Aristocrat of African
Descent whose Reading of Shakespeare in French Profoundly Influenced
His Febrile Imagination” and “Russian Composers and the Clash Over the
Issue of Nationalism” were received enthusiastically by students and
faculty alike. When the auditoriums emptied and we had a chance to talk
in private, I asked Irwin: “You have such a wealth of personal stories
involving cultural figures about whom most of us today can only read.
Have you written down these accounts?” His reply: “Every time I attempt
to write them down, they just don’t come out the same as when I tell
them.” I couldn’t help but propose: “Irwin, how about if you tell your
stories to me and I record and transcribe them? Once they’re on paper, I’ll
go back and edit them for the reader.” I’m pleased to say that he accepted
my proposal, which set in motion the events leading up to this book.
The following summer, I traveled to Chicago and spent several days
interviewing Irwin. While I prepared some general questions in advance,
I mostly tried to clue in on key points that would arise during our discus-
sions and construct questions accordingly. Our conversations resulted in
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

many hours worth of oral recordings, which I subsequently transcribed

with the help of my research assistants, Lydia Roberts and Adam Rodger.
Stitching the transcribed material together into a cohesive narrative
presented a number of challenges, including determining whether to
follow a strict chronological versus topical approach. I think the reader
will find that the resulting manuscript represents a careful blending of the
two. The question of tone also arose, i.e., should the finished product
preserve the spontaneity of the oral interview or adopt a more polished,
academic tone? When considering this question, I recalled Irwin’s words
to me: “Every time I attempt to write them down, they just don’t come out

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Editor’s Note xiii

the same as when I tell them.” Accordingly, I set about editing the text
with the goal in mind of preserving, to the extent possible, Irwin’s masterful
oratorical voice. Ultimately, the reader will have to be the judge as to the
success of such an ambitious and, perhaps, presumptuous endeavor.
After completing a draft manuscript, I highlighted people, places,
and things for which I thought a non-specialist in Slavic and Jewish studies
might appreciate having some background information. In order to ensure
a consistent voice in both the text and footnotes, I brought Irwin to
Brigham Young University where he recorded responses for each of the
highlighted items. Thus, the footnote material that appears in this volume
represents a transcription of the recordings made during his visit.
Transliterations of Russian dialogue follow the Library of Congress
system; however, when transliterating names of persons, places, and
things, I generally favored commonly used transliterations, e.g., Maxim
Gorky versus Maksim Gor’kii, Suzdal versus Suzdal’, and Novoye Russkoye
Slovo versus Novoie Russkoie Slovo.

–Tony Brown
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 Chapter One

The Lives of Sidney

and Florence Weil
Sidney Weil (23 December 1891-14 January 1966)
Florence Levy Weil (November 1891-15 January 1998)

In dealing with tough times, ya gotta use horse sense.

—Sidney Weil

Ancestry

M y father’s great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather both came

to the United States from Surburg, a small town in Alsace—at that
time, in the 1850s, a part of German culture (in France politically). Surburg
is about forty kilometers (about twenty-six miles) north of Strasbourg, the
most important city in the region. Gabriel Weil, my great-great-grandfather,
made his living, like many German-speaking Jews of the time, by selling
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

vegetables along a route between the large city and his small hometown.
After the great European revolutions of 1848,1 the currency collapsed and
the Weils decided to try their industry and their luck in the American
Midwest and South. They came to the banks of the Ohio River in Cincin-
nati, where economic development and commerce were proceeding vigor-
ously. The Ohio proved to be no worse than the Rhine had been. Indeed, the
future proved it a lot better and far less mortal for Jews.

1 In 1848, there were a series of revolutions that broke out across Western and Central
Europe. These revolutions lasted for a year and caused the powers that be great
anxiety; however, they eventually were put down.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 2 Irwin Weil

My father’s father, Isaac (after whom I received my Hebrew name,

Yitzkhak), started peddling vegetables, like his grandfather, in Cincinnati.
An oft-repeated story maintains that he was melodiously hawking his
vegetables one day from a pushcart when a professor from the Cincinnati
Conservatory of Music heard him and insisted on the spot that he study
vocal music. Whatever the attractions of music may have been for Isaac,
he soon gave up both his notes and his vegetables for a partnership in the
main transportation business of the latter part of the nineteenth century—
horse stables run by the Mook family, who had earlier come to the United
States from Bavaria. Thanks to this partnership, Isaac married one of the
Mook daughters, named Minnie, who was a very strong woman of
old-fashioned German-Bavarian-Jewish stock; her personality left an
indelible imprint on the family. Minnie went on to become the mother of
three boys, the oldest of whom was Sidney. Thanks also to this partnership
between my grandfather and the Mook family, Sidney was born into the
business of buying, managing, and selling horses.

Sidney Weil
From almost his earliest days, Dad remembered with pleasure and passion
his time working in the stables and the judging of good, as well as bad,
horseflesh. He took to the tricks of the trade very quickly and ably, much
more so than to those of formal schooling, which he found an utter bore,
and this boredom with schooling continued throughout his life. However,
he deeply believed in formal education, both Jewish and secular, for others
but never for himself. He could read and pray beautifully in Hebrew and
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

in English, but he left school after fourth grade, which he once flunked
and then repeated; he never learned the third person singular of the verb
“to do”—Dad always said, “He don’t.” He also learned a little “Cincinnati
Deutsch.” “Mit a bissel Englisch, das glinkt ja, so wunder schoen” (With a
little bit of English, everything goes so well) is an example of a song in the
Alsacian dialect that he repeated many times in his life. Dad didn’t know
German as well as his mother, Minnie, but attended public schools that
taught in German for part of every day.
In 1914, when Dad was twenty-two years old, World War I started
to kill its European young men in huge numbers in a fight that only

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 3

increased the rapidity with which a social order was tearing itself apart.
Dad was not much interested in European history or politics but he
knew, as most Americans did, that sooner or later the United States
would become involved. He also knew that some of his distant relatives
with the name Weil in Alsace would be affected. By 1917 it was clear
that the United States would enter the war on the side of the Allied
powers. One eventual result of the war was that Alsace was made part of
France instead of remaining part of Germany.
The US government was in the market for large numbers of horses
for training soldiers and military transport. Dad was sent by his beloved
father to Washington, DC to try to negotiate the sale of some fine horse-
flesh. While there in DC, the young fellow also had stern instructions
to find his female cousin at a dance and make sure that her card was
filled up with partners for every set of quadrilles and foxtrots. He
intended to do what he was told until he encountered a lovely and
attractive young woman named Florence Levy. That meeting made him
put his family’s instructions out of consciousness. After learning why
he came to Washington, she primly ordered him to do his duty. He
scampered about the ballroom with his usual energy and force, and
soon a whole list of cavaliers had been assigned to his cousin. When
Florence saw the evidence, she graciously consented to dance with the
Cincinnati bundle of energy.

Florence Levy
My mother was born as the eldest of six children. In 1893 her parents
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

emigrated from a small town in Lithuania called Popilon to Charleston,

West Virginia. With a pack on his back, her father traveled among coal
miners to sell everyday necessary goods. When my mother was in the
sixth grade, her father died. The burden of supporting the family fell upon
her, since her mother spoke Yiddish and was illiterate in English. The
Jewish community tried to set up the young girl with a small store, but its
business turned out to be beyond her capacities to manage. Luckily, a local
scion of an aristocratic Virginia family, Adam Littlepage, recognized in
Mom the energy and intelligence necessary to help him in his practice
of law. He also had empathy for the needs of her fatherless family.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 4 Irwin Weil

After hiring her, he soon came to realize that he had made the right choice;
she gave him the kind of help and support that his growing practice
desperately needed.
Soon the attorney’s little practice in West Virginia was traded for an
office in Washington, DC. Shortly after the beginning of World War I,
Mr. Littlepage ran a successful campaign to enter the US House of Repre-
sentatives. He resisted the attempts of influential people to place one of
their family members in his office, and Mom soon found herself ensconced
as a very young and attractive woman working as chief secretary and
assistant in the office building of the US House of Representatives. Often
when Mr. Littlepage found himself harassed or burdened by a pesky
constituent, he would dictate a very angry letter of response. Mom would
ask him if he really wanted to send it off, and he would reply with a
vigorous—perhaps even mildly profane—affirmative. On the following
day he would come to regret his impulsiveness and say, “I wish I hadn’t
sent the blasted thing.” Florence, after asking him if he really meant that,
would produce the letter that she had put, not in the post office drop box,
but in her desk drawer.
Mr. Littlepage came to depend heavily on the young person he affec-
tionately called “Little One.” Years later, in the midst of a solidly conserva-
tive group of Cincinnati citizens, Mom proudly reminisced about the fact
that she had once danced with Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he was
Secretary of the Navy, some years before he contracted polio. In the midst
of a Republican family, she quietly mused that the man she had danced
with could not be entirely bad!
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

When constituents would come to the Littlepage office, they would

sometimes say to Mom: “We know what a good West Virginia girl likes
best,” and they would produce a delicious sandwich crammed with fine,
West Virginia ham. Florence, who came from a religious Orthodox Jewish
family, would never even think of consuming non-kosher meat. She,
therefore, had the task of diplomacy: With deep thankfulness she accepted
the treyf2 goods and assured the donor that she anticipated a magnificent
lunch. Later, she would give the sandwich to a colleague who was delighted

2 The word treyf in Hebrew is the word for “non-kosher,” that is to say, the kind of food
that should not be consumed by those who are obeying the biblical laws of kosher.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 5

to receive it and who would then consume it with West Virginia

enthusiasm.
There was a dilemma in Mom’s life: to continue working in Mr.
Littlepage’s office so she could send money to her family, or to allow my
father’s courtship to advance. Initially Mom tried to block the horse deal-
er’s advances, including a box of chocolates that he attempted to send her.
She indignantly refused the gesture, which she considered improperly
forward, but she, from an Eastern-European background (her parents had
emigrated from Lithuania, which was part of the Tsar’s Russian Empire),
did not at first appreciate the reality of German stubbornness. Dad would
never let a mere refusal interfere with his well-laid plans. But when he
later popped the vital question, she replied that she couldn’t possibly
consider an acceptance. After all, how would the family survive without
the money she sent them? Dad replied that he would bring the whole gang
to Cincinnati, send her younger brothers to college, and find good,
respectable work for her sisters. (In those days, it wouldn’t have occurred
to Dad that the young women might get a higher education. In later years,
that mindset had changed mightily when he demanded that his own
daughters enroll as students at the University of Cincinnati, whether they
wished to or not.)3
However, there was one more obstacle to the proposal: Mr. Littlepage
was not eager to lose his important assistant. He demanded to see the

3 When my two sisters, both older than I, went to college, the oldest went with great
pleasure. She was both brave and very creative. The second oldest, Margie, loved
fun. “I don’t want to go to college,” she would say, to which my father would reply,
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

“You’re going to go to college if I have to drive you with a whip!” She didn’t have the
nerve to say, “But you quit school!” so she went to college. Conversely, my two aunts
had to go to work. The younger one eventually worked for a bank that was in the
Federal Reserve System. During the war, the men had to go and the boss realized
that my aunt was a woman with some brains. He said, “Look, you should become an
inspector. What you should do is take a couple of courses in statistics at the local
university, and you can become an inspector in the Federal Reserve System.” Soon
thereafter she became (I’m pretty sure) the first woman inspector in the part of the
Federal Reserve System that included Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky. She would go
around inspecting banks. When she came to town, by God, they had to show her the
books, and she did all of the things an inspector does, which was quite remarkable
for a woman in her position who had never received a higher education. And yet,
she was very skillful in this line of work. After retiring, she became a tutor for kids
in the local public school. She lived to be 103 years old.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 6 Irwin Weil

young fellow. Little did the estimable gentleman know that he was facing
the best horse salesman west of the Appalachians. At the end of an hour’s
conversation, Mr. Littlepage emerged from his office and exclaimed:
“What a wonderful young man, Little One. Marry him at once!”

Joining the Army

But marriage would have to wait until after the war. In the army, Dad
served as a quartermaster sergeant and was responsible for feeding the
men around him. His description of those days included quite a few times
when men got a special treat (thanks to supplies that he had wrangled),
often having to do with sweets or ice cream. From the sound of his voice
in reminiscing or singing about those days, I gathered that he loved the
army songs of World War I.
However, he had at least one source of dissatisfaction: Dad tended
not to order bacon for the soldiers’ breakfast since bacon is not kosher.
According to later stories told by my father, the men would grumble
about the absence of bacon. Several replied that Weil was Jewish, didn’t
they know that? How could they expect bacon? Dad’s reply (in his own
words, many years after) was, “What’s the matter? Aren’t you eating well
under me?” The pitch of his voice would go way down—the way it often
did when he suddenly got very serious. The soldiers would reply, “Yes,
but bacon is a good thing, too, you know!” “All right,” Dad retorted.
“From now on you’ll have some bacon.” But you can be sure that this
particular quartermaster sergeant never touched it. Abstention from
non-kosher meat and fish was something Dad continued for his entire
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

life, and all his friends and business associates—Jew and Gentile
alike—knew about it.
Not only was Dad loyal and kind to his troops, he also cared about his
own family in Germany. He tried to look up some of his relatives in Alsace
to see if they had experienced difficulties. After finding out that they were
not in bad straits, he left matters at that. Evidently seeing his relatives was
less important to him than helping them if they had needed his aid. That
was characteristic of him for his entire life: Dad was the one to give help
and support. Simply visiting relatives whom he had never seen, in a
country whose language he knew imperfectly but from whose boundaries

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 7

and customs his own beloved family had come, did not arouse his curi-
osity or strong interest.
Any talk of fighting or killing in the War to End All Wars was never
discussed in our home. It was as if Dad’s spirit was completely separated
from the mass killing and trench warfare of World War I. Politics did not
seem to affect his memories of the war either. When I was much smitten
with French culture, he told me that the impressively clean German houses
he saw after the war appealed to him much more than the less-than-clean
French houses he saw. It was hard for me to accept, especially in view of
the fact that France was our ally in both world wars, but he insisted on
German cleanliness.

After the War

After the end of World War I, Dad was very eager to get back to his busi-
ness in Cincinnati. He sensed that American business would change dras-
tically, and he wanted to jump into the situation with his characteristic
verve and energy. He could not do this as long as he was a soldier, and he
ached for demobilization. Of course he had not forgotten the comely
secretary to Congressman Littlepage. Many letters and telegrams came to
Miss Florence Levy, and she tried as hard as she could to prevail on the US
government to demobilize a soldier from Cincinnati.
My parents were married on 1 July 1919. After Florence added Weil
to her last name, the two of them departed on a honeymoon to the western
states. National parks were important to my parents. Conversation about
the great parks, especially Yellowstone, was staple around the house for all
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

the eighteen years I spent growing up there; it became a kind of folklore

for the family.

The Roaring Twenties

During the 1920s, Dad was full of ambition and energy, but he was not
completely ruthless or as aggressive as the famous business tycoons are
often pictured. Dad set out to become a real tycoon: rich, influential,
creative, and helpful to others in need. He realized that his beloved horses
were on the way out and that the new mode of popular transportation
would be automobiles. His experience in buying and selling horses and

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 8 Irwin Weil

providing transportation for the area prepared him admirably for what
would become the commercial vortex of the storm of buying and selling
automobiles. He managed to get involved with the sale of the elder Henry
Ford’s products, and he soon became a general agent for Ford in Cincinnati
in the early 1920s.
The stories about this time when Dad sold cars were legion. It soon
became clear that Dad knew how to control costs and prices in a way to
make the business thrive. It also became clear that he was a person of
unusual directness and honesty. I heard many stories from other people
about how Dad would return money if he got more for a trade-in than he
expected—he would go out of his way to find the person and return the
excess. When I would ask him about this transaction, he would literally
snort and say that of course he did that—it was only good business! His
favorite story was about the loaves that grew after being thrown in the
water: “When you throw loaves of bread upon the water, they come back
to you in greatly increased numbers.”4 He may even have distorted the
story, but his point was the increase this action brought about. “Don’t ask
me how it happens,” he said, “but it happens. I see it happen every time.”
His honesty had a very rough side that offended some people but was
legend among all. If a person came to him with a business proposal, he
said exactly what he thought. If he thought the proposal was nonsense,
sparing the person’s feelings did not occur to him. This often drove my
mother, who was more soft-spoken (but no less tough), to distraction. But
not even she could get him to change his public manners. The insulted
person would often redden with anger and hurt and leave the office. Later,
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

however, that same person would return for more advice because he or
she knew that advice represented Dad’s honest opinion, built on a great
deal of energy and thought. Dad could be wrong, but he would never say
what he did not believe.
A few years later came one of those central episodes that expressed
Dad’s character. Henry Ford learned that my father, the marvelous general

4 This story represents an admixture of Old and New Testament teachings. From the
Old Testament, “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days”
(Eccles. 11:1, Authorized [King James] Version). From the New Testament, the miracle
of “The Feeding of the 5,000,” which appears in all four canonical Gospels: Matt.
14:13–21, Mark 6:31–44, Luke 9:10–17, and John 6:5–15 (AV).

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 9

agent in Cincinnati, was Jewish. Ford then decided that Dad would have to
go. The auto mogul and inventor of both mass production and the assembly
line told Dad in no uncertain terms where he could and should go. Dad told
Ford to take the matter to court and “show the judge” exactly where in the
contract it stated that a Jew could not be a general agent. “If,” said Dad, “the
judge of an American court decides in your favor, I’ll leave immediately and
quietly. If he decides in my favor, I’ll sue the pants off you!” Mr. Ford may
have been a bigot, but he was no fool in business and he backed away.
Dad went right on with his vigorous business dealings and did not
stop with automobiles. In very many of his activities, his brothers were
closely involved. One of his early actions was to buy a piece of real estate
on favorable terms in North Avondale, still far from where Jews lived in
Cincinnati. He wanted to use this house to establish a Jewish part of the
city’s burial business. The result was the beginning of the Weil Brothers
Funeral Home to offer burial services in a completely Jewish way (they
would also do it in a partly Jewish way if the family wanted). The business
became very profitable, and Dad had many reasons later on to be happy
with his initiative. As he became more and more successful during what
came to be called the Roaring Twenties, Dad got bolder and bolder and
considerably more reckless with the investment of his and his brothers’
money. He acquired controlling interest in a bank and helped establish
garages, cleaners, and other business establishments in Cincinnati. He
also joined in the national madness at that time: he bought stock on
margin, paying only for a part of its value, hoping to maximize profits in a
constantly rising market.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Faith and Family

Yet one of the deepest parts of Dad’s life, and certainly the center of his
faith, was his attachment to Judaism and to the Isaac M. Wise Temple in
Cincinnati.5 His personal feelings were attached to traditional, Orthodox
forms of prayer and behavior. Every morning, except on Saturdays (Shabbos6),

5 The Isaac M. Wise Temple is a reformed Jewish temple in Cincinnati, Ohio. It is named
in honor of the major figure who established Reform Judaism in the United States.
6 Shabbat (Hebrew: ‫ש ָבת‬‎
ַ , “cease, rest,” the Ashkenazic pronunciation is Shabbos) is the
word for “Sabbath.” It’s a day that starts at sundown on Friday and continues until

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 10 Irwin Weil

he put on his tefillen, or phylacteries.7 Dad followed tradition: he went

through the traditional prayers in exactly the traditionally prescribed
form. On Friday and Saturday nights, he would make kiddush8 and
havdalah9 with the wondrous spice box and plaited three-wick beeswax
candles, which he made himself, together with our whole family. His deep
voice rendered the prayers in what I can only describe as Dad’s own
personal Cincinnati Hebrew. He made an unforgettable picture and
sound. This was true largely because his feelings were so clearly consonant
with the sounds.
As Orthodox as were his feelings, however, he gave his complete
organizational loyalty to the American Jewish Reform Movement, whose
founding leader, Isaac Meyer Wise, gave his name to the congregation that
Dad made an important part of his life’s work. In Jewish community life,
Dad dealt with many interesting people, including one Rabbi Shmuel Vul,
who was born in the Ukrainian part of the Russian Tsar’s Empire and at
the age of fifteen had exchanged a letter with Leo Tolstoy.10 When the
young man came to the United States, he called himself Samuel Wohl. He

sundown on Saturday. On this day, Jews are not supposed to travel by vehicle or do any
work. Rather they are simply supposed to pray, eat, and study religious works.
7 Tefillin (Hebrew: ‫תפילין‬, the English word is “phylacteries”) are leather straps that
observants use six days a week, excluding the Sabbath. They wind them around their
arms and also around their forehead to fulfill a famous prayer: “And thou shalt bind
them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes”
(Deut. 6:8, King James Version). There is a small box that has the prayer inside of it
that is attached to the leather that you wear between your eyes. The straps on the arms
eventually form Hebrew letters when they get to the hands. These straps are to show
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

that you are aware of the most important divine commandments.

8 Kiddush (Hebrew: ‫קידוש‬‎, “sanctification”) is the blessing for sanctifying wine or the
fruit of the vine before the Sabbath, and the introductory blessing also is recited before
any holiday or season when partaking of the fruit of the vine.
9 Havdalah (Hebrew: ‫ה ְב ָדלָ ה‬,ַ “separation”) is the separation of the holy time that is cele-
brated on the Sabbath and the time that comes after it, which is the week. There is a
famous Havdalah service involving a three-pronged candle that observants light every
Saturday night at sundown when the Sabbath is going out and the secular week is once
again coming in. It’s a division between the sacred and the secular.
10 Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September 1828-20 November 1910) was one of the most
famous writers in the world. He was a Russian novelist who wrote incredibly powerful
novels, the two most famous ones being War and Peace and Anna Karenina. He was a
very important figure, not only in Russian literary life, but in Russian social and polit-
ical life as well.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 11

was as Russian in his temperament as my father was German, and the two
became instant friends. Some of the more hoity-toity members of the
congregation resented his Russian accent when he spoke English, although
after my studies in Russian, I now know it was rather light.
Such attempts at snubbing Rabbi Wohl by certain members of the
congregation infuriated Dad and further inclined him in the Rabbi’s favor.
The fact was that Samuel Wohl was a hardworking, sincerely feeling Rabbi,
who had all kinds of new, reforming ideas that were on the move at the
time. Rabbi Wohl had a very pleasant wife, and soon the two families were
close to one another. Rabbi Wohl felt the helping side of his new friend in
many practical areas of life. He also had an instinctive appreciation of the
rare kind of Jewish spirit in Dad and realized what that energy could do
for Judaism in Cincinnati. Above all, he liked and valued Dad’s passion
and sometimes childlike nature.
Over the span of eight years, my parents had three children. My sister
Carolyn was born in 1920 and Marjorie in 1922. Dad, however, was still
eager to have a son. Finally, after several miscarriages, I was born in 1928.
In that same year of 1928, Dad was organizing a campaign of stock
buying, engendering all kinds of cartoons and gossip in the Cincinnati
newspapers that would end in the spring of 1929 with him as the majority
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Sidney and Florence Weil family. Father Sidney (standing), (left to right) Irwin,
sister Carolyn, maternal grandmother Mary Levy, mother Florence,
and sister Marjorie.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 12 Irwin Weil

stockholder and titular owner of the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds club was
the first professional baseball team in the United States, and Dad was the
first Jew ever to own a major league baseball club. The newspapers were
calling him Mr. Money Bags, and Mom was deeply frightened that
someone might kidnap one of the children for ransom, perhaps because
she was influenced by the famous Lindbergh case.

Great Depression
The spring of 1929 was, alas, all too close to the fall of 1929—the time of
the great stock market crash and the beginning, at least in psychological
terms, of the Great Depression. Like thousands of Americans, Dad was
suddenly stung by a stock market that had previously increased almost
consistently (with only minor downturns) and in which he had increas-
ingly invested on margin. This catastrophic decrease and call in of debt
could not have come at a worse time for him, since he had to expend large
amounts of capital in order to build a good baseball team.
As if that personal economic collapse were not bad enough, his bank
soon collapsed, taking with it other large amounts of capital. From the
material and financial point of view, it could not have been a more
depressing, gloomy time. It was especially difficult for Mom, who winced
every time she read in the newspapers about how a previously wealthy
financial investor, now wiped out, would throw himself out the window of
a high building, seeking death as the solution to his problems. Those were
fervent days for her in prayer in the I. M. Wise Temple.
Dad later told me: “I got greedy, and God punished me for that greed.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Irwin, never work only for money. It’s great stuff to have, but as life’s only
goal, it is the most horrible goal possible. Always work primarily for the
good that work can do. Then, the money will come in a sufficient amount
to support you and your family.”
Yet Dad did not later seem to remember those years as generally
grim. He knew the problems, probably better than most people at that
time, and he certainly made no attempt to hide them, either at the time or
in retrospect. After all, he was dealing with his beloved baseball, his
second religion after Judaism. He had loved it since childhood when he
watched the scores chalked up outside the Cincinnati Beer Steuben.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 13

He loved every minute of the game, which he watched in rapt and concen-
trated silence, drinking in every move.

Baseball Players
Dad got to know closely at least two major and dynamic personalities. The
first of them subsequently played a powerful role in my father’s life and
vice versa. Bill Veeck was a youngster cutting hot dog buns at the Chicago
Cubs stadium where his dad, William Veeck, was the general manager.
Although Dad’s business was with the elder Veeck, he soon became capti-
vated by the exuberant effervescence of the young man, as did most of
America fifteen to twenty years later. Dad and young Bill became close
friends. I will go one step further: I will say that the two very best human
beings in baseball came together at that time. If I am overstating, mea
culpa—Khotonu, avinu L’fonekho! (I have sinned before you, O Father!)11
The second of Dad’s closest friends and peers in those years of club
ownership, and for at least two decades afterward, was Branch Rickey.
Branch was the general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals and, later, the
Brooklyn Dodgers. He was famous for many things, including the signing
of Jackie Robinson, the first of many great black athletes to play in the
major leagues. Branch, the so-called Mahātmā of baseball, was an extraor-
dinarily canny manipulator and trader of players; his reputation for acumen
was sky-high. He was also a very religious Methodist. When Branch’s
mother was on her deathbed, he promised he would never go to a baseball
game on Sunday, the Christian Sabbath. That promise was never broken.
Branch Rickey was almost immediately sympathetic to the former
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

horse trader and very religious man. It made no difference to Branch that
Dad was not a Christian. He correctly perceived that heaven did not
exclude kosher hot dogs and that the temperaments of truly religious
people touched each other. My father kept his World Series bags packed
during the Yom Kippur12 day-long services so he could leave as soon as

11 Bill became Catholic, with a great love for Jews, so he would love that linguistic
connection.
12 Yom Kippur (Hebrew: ‫ )יֹום כִ ּפּור‬means “Day of Atonement.” It comes ten days after the
Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. It’s a day when you’re supposed to fast and try to
make atonement for the sins that you’ve committed during the year—the idea being

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 14 Irwin Weil

N’ilah13 was over. Of course, he didn’t object if some of the prayer readers
kept him abreast of the score and the number of innings completed! No
questions were asked about where such secular and non-repenting
information was obtained.
Above all, Branch Rickey, a gentleman of humor and sensibility, recog-
nized in Dad a man of quality and bedrock integrity. Branch loved to make
jokes with, and sometimes at, his Cincinnati religious friend about precisely
those vices. A putative “letter of recommendation” from Branch hung on
Dad’s wall for over fifteen years; it described him as shiftless and irrespon-
sible, but nevertheless likeable and arid, with a wonderful wife! When
Branch and Dad talked, it was like the backyard of all the basses in the choir
with their Midwest twangs bouncing at each other in a mellifluous lower
register. Branch also sympathized with Dad’s growing financial difficulties
and tried to help him where he could.

The Move
After five years of ownership of the Reds, the bank foreclosed on Dad’s
debt, thus forcing him into total bankruptcy, including the funds he had
managed for his younger brothers. He remembered that as a very, very
dark day, and he swore he would never set foot in that bank again.
(I believe he kept that vow.) Mom again worried deeply, remembering the
suicides of the early Depression years.
Dad struggled hard for several years after this event, which played
such a somber role in the family’s collective memory. He had lost his
capital, his business, his house; in a material sense, he had lost everything.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

He had formerly been the seemingly all-powerful senior advisor to his

brothers. Now they and a few close and loyal friends were giving him
money so his family would not be in total penury and so he could get
started again. The family lost the house in North Avondale, which had
become the most desirable section of the Cincinnati Jewish community in

that you first concentrate on past sins and then hope to commit fewer such sins in
the future.
13 N’ilah is the last part of Yom Kippur day. In the ten days since the New Year, God’s
book of life has been open and inscription is available for all genuine repentance.
At the service’s end, the book is closed.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 15

the 1920s and ’30s. Members of my family often reflected on those years
as a lost, golden paradise. For decades after, Dad pointed out our old
neighborhood with nostalgia and longing memories as we drove past.
On the other hand, the move was not entirely negative by any means.
We moved into a modest but comfortable apartment in a different part of
the Jewish community on one of the major north-south US routes at that
time, Nos. 25 and 42, Reading Road. The building was right next to the
apartment of my mother’s mother and her two single sisters and single
brother. All of them had played a large part in our lives, as Dad had in
theirs. They were tremendously supportive in everyday ways, and I am
sure all of these things were crucial in helping Dad to weather the 1930s.
Dad tried very hard to reestablish himself in the business world of the
Depression. He went back to the automobile business, this time with
General Motors. We kids used to love to watch the gaudily painted adver-
tising automobiles in which he would sometimes drive home. But the ’30s
were not a time for gaudiness; most business people were in a somber,
money-clenching mood, and they were not easy customers for such major,
expensive merchandise as automobiles. Dad himself had become very
conservative in the use and investment of money, although he never lost
his impulse for generosity toward those in dire need, and he shuddered at
the very mention of debt or buying stocks on margin. The financial burn
he had suffered went deep within him.
Within a few years, Dad had to admit that the selling and buying of
automobiles was no longer a viable occupation for him. He then experi-
mented in the mid-1930s with various schemes of buying and selling
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

goods. This experiment gave only indifferent results. Several of his

friends tried to tempt him with the business of commercial real estate.
However, Dad was cautious; he had learned a lesson he couldn’t forget.
He told me later, “I would have become a millionaire, but I couldn’t see it
for myself.”

Life Insurance
Then in 1937-38, a real career break came for Dad. Sam Sturm, a business
friend, convinced the man who still loved baseball and had a world of
friends that he could do very well in the world of life insurance. Dad loved

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 16 Irwin Weil

to help people. Others knew this quality about Dad and trusted him. You
could say that persistence and doggedness were his middle names. Sam
was sure that life insurance was just right for him. Dad was not so sure; he
and Mom visualized insurance salesmen as inveterate pests who pulled a
signing pen on you just as you thought a personal friendship was starting.
But Sam was no less stubborn and convincing than Dad, and the latter sat
down to something new for him: studying for exams, whose successful
passing was necessary to receive a license to sell insurance. This remark-
able graduate of the fourth grade (twice repeated), fortified by his exten-
sive life careers, began his exam with this statement: “I am answering
these questions not so much on the basis of what I know from books as on
the basis of thirty years of experience in many different parts of the world
of business.” He passed the exam and received his license.
The rest is insurance company history. Shortly thereafter Dad
became the national leader in sales for his company for quite a few years.
He also became a member of the euphemistically named “Million Dollar
Round Table”—those who sold over a million dollars in life insurance at
a time when the dollar was not yet devalued by inflation, as it was from
the mid-1950s to the present. It is important to repeat here: He cared
deeply about the money but not as an end in itself. He was happy to be
in a position to be generous on a larger scale. Countless numbers of
people came to him for help, and he rarely refused. He would not sell life
insurance to people who in his opinion couldn’t afford it. One prospec-
tive buyer, Bill Veeck, called Dad “the only insurance man to refuse to
sell me a policy. He said I shouldn’t do it. If I insisted, I’d have to buy it
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

from someone else.”

Raising Money
Perhaps the best indication of his attitude toward the use of money
appeared in the literally thousands of hours he spent on charitable fund-
raising. He always aggressively fought to feed financially the I. M. Wise
Temple and the local and national Jewish charities. His greatest praise was
for his friend who “made fifty thousand dollars a year (a huge sum in those
days) and gave away fifty-two thousand.” On the other hand, I can’t even
begin to count the ways he knew how to curse the “cheap bastards” (a mild

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 17

rebuke, under those circumstances, in Dad’s mouth). By his definition a

cheap bastard was one who could afford a nice Florida vacation for himself
and his family but only gave a paltry sum, in Dad’s eyes, to charity. A few
years later, during World War II, when Midwestern American Jews were
vaguely beginning to sense the reality of Hitler’s horrors—full knowledge
came later, in 1946—the moral and mortal significance of giving grew
stronger.
On the basis of his fund-raising reputation, Dad was made chairman
of the All-Cincinnati Community Chest. Suddenly, dismayed Christian
businessmen were being solicited by their best customers. The Christian
business executives had never experienced this kind of pressure before;
they had not, thank God, gone through the agony of losing eighty percent
of their European community. It seemed to them the fund-raising had
gotten out of hand! No less a personage than Neil McElroy, president of
Procter and Gamble and later Secretary of Defense under Eisenhower,
called Dad and tried to urge diplomacy tactfully: “Please, Mr. Weil, we
don’t want to antagonize people, even for a good cause.” I can almost
picture Mom’s relief when she heard those political words of common
sense. Yet Dad did not heed them. He said, with some characteristic
choler, that they should decide whether they wanted to raise money for
good, charitable causes and help people in real need or whether they
wanted to spare the feelings of a few no-good, cheap bastards. Dad was
soon removed as chairman of the All-Cincinnati Community Chest.
Dad saw what he considered an ideal chance to pay off the mortgage
on the I. M. Wise Temple building. Right after World War II, new automo-
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

biles were scarce because production of civilian cars had been drastically
curtailed during the war. Through his automobile dealer connection, he
obtained a rare, new automobile. He ordered the dealer to put it on display
in front of the temple with a sign that told people to buy chances on a
lottery. The proceeds would go to pay the mortgage on the temple building,
and one lucky person would win a new car. The dealer filled the order and
Dad walked off, proud and satisfied.
Shortly thereafter, Rabbi Wohl came by the temple and experienced
horror and mortification at the sight of a grubby raffle right in front of the
holy sanctuary. Indignant at the idea of a market in such an inappropriate

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 18 Irwin Weil

place, he angrily called the dealer and demanded immediate withdrawal

of the disgraceful vehicle. Such was the prestige of the Cincinnati clergy in
those days that the dealer saluted and complied posthaste. Dad later came
by and discovered only thin air where an example of Detroit’s finest auto-
mobile had rested earlier. Angry at the contravention of his benevolent
scheme, he called the dealer and asked what idiot or thief had taken the
vehicle. The dealer stuttered but eventually replied that the idiot was Dad’s
close friend and coreligionist, the eminent Rabbi Samuel Wohl.
Dad’s reply has not been recorded for the ages, happily for the gentility
of our American English language. But the fact of the matter is that he did
not countermand the Rabbi’s order. In his opinion, the Rabbi was a holy
man and must reign in the temple. This doesn’t mean that at home Dad
didn’t grumble and mumble in his best bass voice about business ignora-
muses who were destroying the financial possibilities for the temple.
At that point I piped up with the wisdom of adolescence, “But Dad, he was
right. It’s not nice to sell things in front of the temple.” The reader can
perhaps imagine how this sage remark was received. Dad replied, “Well,
so what if he is right? What does that prove?”
By the 1950s and ’60s, an increasingly larger amount of life insur-
ance was being provided in large corporate pension plans run by new
corporate bureaucrats who were more technologically sophisticated.
They were referred to as “brain trusters” by the new breed of men who
ran the agency (I heard this term from them myself, and they explicitly
excluded my father from this category). Of course, they still valued
Dad’s tremendous prestige among individual clients who were growing
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

older, and they were not so blind as to ignore his remarkable warmth
and colorful personality.
I have a picture of my father standing with two of these bureaucrats,
and the difference is clear at first glance. He is dressed in an older, rumpled
suit with a vest; they are spruced up in what look like tailored suits. They are
holding drinks in their hands (Dad almost never drank alcohol, except wine
for Jewish prayers). They fit immediately into any corporate bureaucracy
whereas he, with his sore back, braced himself against the wall in an individ-
ualistic stance. These corporate bureaucrats were mid-twentieth-century
products; Dad, a nineteenth-century product.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 19

Zionists and Education

In the pre-1948 days, my father and almost my whole family, like many
Midwestern Reform Jews, were anti-Zionist. Midwestern Reform Jews
believed that Jews formed a religion, not a nation, and they were unmoved
by the prospect of a Jewish national state in what they called “Palestine.”
Of course my parents were almost completely ignorant of East European
Jewish history. Conversely, both rabbis in the I. M. Wise Temple—unlike
Isaac M. Wise himself—were passionate, fervent partisans of Zionism.
Rabbi Wohl, who had stuck by Dad through thick and thin and who was
so loved and respected by Dad, loved the doctrine of Theodor Herzl14 and
Ahad Ha’am15 with all the power of Wohl’s essentially Russian soul. In the
immediate post-World War II years, he lived and breathed for
Zion—Ahavas Zion! (The love of Zion!)
I found Rabbi Wohl’s enthusiasm contagious, and soon I got deeply
involved in the Zionist network of youth organizations: Socialists, schmo-
cialists, capitalists, schmapitalists—it was all the same to me. But there
were great songs, lots of poetry and drama, and intelligent and beautiful
young women—enthusiasm! It never occurred to me that there could be
really complex political problems; it seemed simple and straightforward
to a naïve Cincinnati Jewish teenager. When my dad saw some examples
of my ardent new faith, he was repulsed by its inexperience and what he
regarded as stupidity. As usual, he minced no words and told me just how
stupidly the Zionist youth leaders and I were behaving. He didn’t quite

14 Theodor Herzl (2 May 1860-3 July 1904) was an Austrian Jew who was the founder of
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

political Zionism. As a correspondent for an Austrian newspaper, he went to Paris to

attend the Dreyfus trial where a Jewish officer was unjustly condemned for something
that another man had actually done, and when Herzl saw the anti-Semitic outburst
that happened in France at that time, he decided that the only solution to anti-Semi-
tism was for Jews to have a country of their own just like everyone else had. In those
days, that country was called Palestine, and now it is called Israel. His book, The Jewish
State, together with his actions played an essential role in the eventual establishment
of the State of Israel a half-century later.
15 Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg (18 August 1856-2 January 1927) took on the pseudonym
Ahad Ha’am, which literally means “one of the people.” He was contemporary with
Theodor Herzl and with the upsurge of Zionism that took place at the end of the nine-
teenth century. His idea was that if Zionism was only political and not cultural that it
would do something terrible to Jewish culture. Instead, he envisioned a revitalization
of Jewish culture.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 20 Irwin Weil

dare to oppose Rabbi Wohl openly, however, and he never tried to stop me
from joining the Zionist youth groups and expressing my enthusiasm.
Perhaps some part of him admired my spunk!
Rabbi Wohl could be rigorous and emotionally pressing when it was
a matter that touched his heart, grounded in love for the Jewish tradition,
yet he was also a pioneer in social and ritual reform. He was very strongly
in favor of educating all young people, and my wife will testify to his
heartfelt encouragement for young women to study and learn—not only
Jewish subjects, but also education in any field. Throughout my young life,
all the way through college and beyond, Rabbi Wohl was concerned that I
get a good education and make connections with the widest assortment of
ideas and experiences, including what he considered the most interesting
new books in my field of Russian literature. He had a genuine feeling for
the beauties of Russian literature and music, and he combined this with a
deep and genuine love for the people in the Wise Center Temple. My wife
and I owe him a great deal for his communication of profound human
feeling and sensitivity.
In general, Dad began to understand that his son was beginning to
look at a somewhat larger world with considerably different eyes than
those usually produced in Cincinnati in the 1940s. In the spring of
1946, Harvard University unceremoniously told me I was not the
proper raw material for its delicate New England maw (causing some
squawks at my high school, which had encouraged me to apply). Dad
was half disappointed and half relieved that I would not become a
“Hahvahd” man, although he tried unsuccessfully to pull strings at
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Princeton later. It was one of the few times when his stubborn attempts
at manipulation failed.
After being turned away by Harvard, I enrolled at the University of
Cincinnati. But when Dad heard my disappointment at learning in the
same city where I grew up, in the fall of 1946 he offered to support me in
any way necessary to get what I thought was a good education. He deeply
believed in its importance, and he implicitly trusted the judgment of the
same kid whose ideas he had considered naïve and stupid. I am almost
sure he was unaware of the paradox. When my friend Howard Schuman

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 21

(later to become an eminent sociologist at the University of Michigan)

showed me an article on R. M. Hutchins’ highly regarded plan for the
University of Chicago, I decided that program was for me. Dad immedi-
ately set out to help me get in, and he rejoiced when I was accepted for
January of 1947. I will never forget his face as he took me to the train at
beautiful art deco Union Terminal in Cincinnati. He was ashen-faced,
barely containing the tears that would veil his sight of the kid going off to
learn how to be a Chicago intellectual—light-years away from baseball, as
Dad knew it, and from the experience that had produced the remarkable
character of Sidney Weil.

The Horrors of World War II and Life After

My parents’ reaction to the horrors of Nazism that occurred around World
War II would eventually lead them to the Zionist cause. Dad and Mom
were aware of them. I can well remember the frightened pallor in their
usually rosy and confident faces when they would listen behind closed
doors and curtained windows to the ugly radio broadcasts of Father
Coughlin, the American Fascist and Hitlerite. They also listened to the
increasingly agonized sermons of Rabbi Wohl, who watched with infuri-
ated impotence while Nazi butchers mangled European Jewry, especially
those from his childhood world of the Ukraine. Whatever political and
temperamental differences my father had with the man were utterly
drowned by the Rabbi’s deep and obviously true feelings for the perishing
of Jews and European Judaism.
My father had extraordinary successes in fund-raising. He often
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

repeated his favorite slogan: “A Jew has to have a heart” (strange how that
parallels the oft-expressed idea of Christian charity, caritas). His efforts
were obviously connected with feelings of solidarity with Jews suffering
under Nazi barbarism. At about the same time, however, he saw to it that
people in the Cincinnati Jewish old folks’ home got the same gourmet
dinner that he and his family ate on the day of his thirty-fifth wedding
anniversary. He never told anyone about this publicly—empathy simply
came naturally to him. But the feelings of solidarity for Jews in Europe
became welded on one unforgettable day in 1946 when the whole

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 22 Irwin Weil

neighborhood received leaflets with an article by the well-known jour-

nalist Dorothy Thompson16 about the Nazi death camps.
For the first time in our Cincinnati lives, the names Dachau, Auschwitz
(Polish: Oświęcim), and others became engraved in our minds. My parents
had heard, in general, about the Nazis and their program to make Europe
Judenrein.17 But here was specific evidence, details that have since become
common knowledge but which, at the time, produced a very deep trauma.
In many important ways, no one conscious at that time ever outlived that
trauma.
These events were a major factor in changing my family’s and our
community’s views toward Zionism. After the State of Israel was declared
and established in 1948, all of these groups gave it enormous psychological
and material support. The old anti-Zionist slogans were quickly forgotten.
In Dad’s view, who could oppose a homeland and state for the remnants
of the people who went through the Nazi Holocaust? Just as they had
been ignorant of East European Jewish history before, now they were
equally ignorant of the history of the Middle East, of Islam, of the Arab
peoples, and of all the incredible complications of politics and human
feelings in that part of the world.
When all this information was coming forward in the year 1948, my
father suffered his first major heart attack. I was still a student at the
University of Chicago when I heard my mother’s frightened and shocked
voice over the telephone, and, within a few days, I heard Dad’s uncharac-
teristically weak and fuzzy (but still deep in the bass register) voice. He
was obviously determined to fight his way back to strength and life.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Despite my father’s heart attack, he continued to work with full force.

With no small amount of courage, he determinedly continued his life in
the world of business, of Jewish affairs, and of baseball (last but not least!).

16 Dorothy Thompson (9 July 1893-30 January 1961) was a very popular American
columnist back in the days of World War II. It was her columns right after the war that
played an enormous role in arousing peoples’ consciousness of the hideous things that
had happened under the Nazis.
17 Judenrein is a German expression, meaning literally a territory completely free of Jews.
It was a slogan of the Nazis who intended to make Germany Judenrein; they either
threw them out of the country or executed them. The term is connected with one of
the terrible, tragic chapters in Jewish history.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 23

When Bill Veeck, Branch Rickey, the head of the Mutual Benefit Life
Insurance Company in Newark, New Jersey, or the head of the Union of
American Hebrew Congregations in Cincinnati and later in New York
City (there was a battle royal over the move, with Dad championing his
beloved hometown) heard the phone ring at seven o’clock in the morning,
they immediately knew who was calling. Dad was famous for his love of
the telephone and of the early morning hours when he was raring to go!
His office had all the latest (for the 1950s) telephone equipment and he
loved to talk directly into the loudspeaker, without using his hands for the
phone. He was one of the first to use a car phone, and God knows how
many accidents he barely avoided while fiddling with the damned thing.
Although Dad loved his car phone, Mom was not a fan. Mom, after
enduring many a call from his business friends in his car, who were oohing
and ahhing over the new toy, finally issued the only threat she knew always
worked with him: “Choose! It’s either me or the phone, not both!” The
phone was yanked out of the car, and traffic safety in Cincinnati improved
dramatically. To my knowledge, Mom used this tactic on only one other
occasion: Bill Veeck tempted Dad to come back into baseball with him in
the 1940s or ’50s. Mom remembered the dark days when a misplayed ball
or an unexpected rainstorm could mean financial catastrophe. “Choose!
It’s either me or baseball.” The world of insurance could rest easy in the
knowledge that its star would remain stable in its firmament.
I used to visit Dad’s office on the thirty-fifth floor of Cincinnati’s
highest building, the art deco Carew Tower. Out the window, one could
see the Ohio River snaking its way around the many curves its course
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

made in the landscape. Dad loved it there, right in the heart of the busi-
ness district of Cincinnati, not far from the house where he was born. His
office was absolutely clean and neat with the small file of potential clients
at his elbow. He had a humorous photograph on the wall, showing him
sleeping, feet on the desk: the opposite of reality.
In the summer of 1949 I used his office, at his invitation, to study the
Russian text of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. During that time, I learned some-
thing about his working milieu. His work pace did not surprise me, but
what did surprise me was the jealousy some of the other salesmen felt
toward him. I was accustomed to hearing grateful words from the national

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 24 Irwin Weil

administrators of the insurance company. In my naiveté and inexperience,

I hadn’t considered how this would play with other salesmen. Dad made
no attempts, as far as I know, to socialize or even chat with them, and they
considered him cold and distant. This was a dissonant picture compared
to what I knew of him, and I didn’t let it get close to my consciousness.

Baseball versus Academia

One time in Chicago, Dad tried to introduce me to Bill Veeck, no doubt
remembering how William Veeck Sr. had once introduced the young,
hot-dog-bun-cutting Bill Jr. to Dad. Alas, the introduction didn’t take! Bill
was far too upset and absorbed; at that moment he was going through a
divorce and selling his interest in the Cleveland baseball team, which he had
brought to championship competition. He was very much interested in
helping young men with an academic bent, but at that instant, he just could
not concentrate on extraneous people or issues. Dad was disappointed but
knew how to bide his time, in spite of his normal impatient attitude.
Some years later, in 1955, my father sent his then Washington-based
son to visit Bill Veeck in eastern Maryland where the baseball maverick
chose to live in temporary, self-imposed exile. Bill greeted me with words
of welcome: “You must be hungry.” He signaled to his daughter, and she
automatically brought ham and bread to the table. Bill quietly said,
“Honey, I think the man likes turkey.” He immediately remembered that
my father kept kosher, and he had no idea whether or not I did the same.
He simply showed his sensitivity to my father’s custom.
Bill’s sensitivity along these lines came out a few years later in the late
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

1950s when Dad invited me, by that time a Harvard graduate student, to
come to a Yankees World Series game in New York City. As usual, Dad’s
friends and clients—numbering in the hundreds—were pressing him for
hard-to-get tickets. Dad deeply loved this time of year, and the wheeling
and dealing around the tickets satisfied him at a profound level of his soul.
One man in particular was angry about not getting a ticket, and Dad could
only throw up his hands and explain that he had no more.
I worried about his heart condition and the strain and said, “Dad, let
him have my ticket.” This man immediately refused: “Good heavens, no! I
wouldn’t think of taking your son’s ticket. I’m not that kind of person,

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 25

please! Don’t think badly of me!” I replied, “It’s all right. There’s a Soviet
film in town, and I would rather see it than go to the World Series.” When
those words came out of my blasphemous mouth, Dad gave a look that
combined the agony of Prometheus bound to the rock (with a bird pecking
at his liver) with the anger of Achilles after the death of Patroclus. Then he
sighed and said, “Go ahead, take the ticket; that young idiot really would
prefer to see the goddamned Russian film.”
That evening, Bill Veeck invited everyone to a party. Word had gotten
around that Dad really did have one weirdo of a son. Only Bill Veeck
understood my non-baseball passion, and he asked in an utterly straight
tone of voice, “Irwin, how was the film? Was the plot suspenseful?” (In a
Soviet film, yet!) “Did the action play well?” He was quite willing to admit
the theoretical possibility that a Soviet Russian film might be just as
absorbing as a Yankees World Series baseball game. Dad knew that such a
possibility simply didn’t exist.
During the 1950s, when I was in Washington, DC, and then in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, I had to watch and learn about my father from
a distance—not only geographically but also psychologically. I was already
a young man, developing along very different lines from those in my father’s
life and experience. Yet we both valued our contact, and he went to great
lengths to keep our relationship strong: he always wrote twice a week,
although all too often with haste and about trivial matters. He was some-
times puzzled, sometimes bemused, by the fact that his son, for whom he
had foreseen a glorious career in the insurance business, was becoming a
specialist in, of all things, Russian studies. Still, Russian and Soviet politics
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

would burst out in public view from time to time, and he once cut through
the usual trivia in his letters when Beria, former head of the dreaded Soviet
secret police, was suddenly convicted of what they called “treason” and
quickly murdered. My father wrote to me that I, as a specialist, “had of
course long seen this coming.” His letter crossed one of mine in the mail, in
which I had written: “I was never so surprised in my life.”

Rabbi Heller
About this time my father went through an episode that I would call one of
his shining hours. The other rabbi at the I. M. Wise Temple was a publicly

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 26 Irwin Weil

revered figure, Rabbi James G. Heller. A large, imposing figure, often in a

robe with PhD bars on it, a real connoisseur of classical music, he spoke in
well-organized sentences and in stentorian tones (unlike Rabbi Wohl’s
meandering talks). His voice was deep, and his language sounded to my
young, inexperienced ears like the Oxonian English of a British aristocrat.
I often heard him thunder, “The congregation is in apostasy!” Aside from
my realization that it was something bad, probably not listening to enough
of his sermons, I hadn’t the foggiest notion what the congregation was in,
nor do I suspect did ninety-nine percent of the good Cincinnati Jewish
burghers sitting around me and nodding their heads.
Dad, closely allied with Rabbi Wohl, was temperamentally unable to
understand Rabbi Heller with sympathy. Perhaps that was his fault; his
intellect never reached those high spheres so knowingly embraced by
Rabbi Heller, especially in realms of music. Eventually, there came to be a
kind of suppressed dislike, or coolness, between my father and Rabbi
Heller, although they both were willing to work for the good of the congre-
gation and Judaism. The most prominent people in the congregation
admired Rabbi Heller and considered him an ornament to all Cincinnati
Jews, a jewel in their collective crown, so to say.
Then in the 1950s, Rabbi Heller announced that he was divorcing his
wife of many years, the mother of his beloved daughters about whom he
always spoke with eloquent pride, to marry the wife of a prominent
congregant, one of his longtime supporters and partisans. In the relatively
small and compact bourgeois Cincinnati Jewish community of the 1950s,
the news fell with almost the impact of a bomb. Almost all of Rabbi
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Heller’s earlier supporters quickly distanced themselves from the unhappy

man. They became even more furious when he indicated that he would go
to New York and position himself among the powerful politicians in the
American-Israeli establishment, unlike the provincial Cincinnati milieu
he had previously served.
After this shocking news from Rabbi Heller, the congregation gath-
ered to prepare their response. Almost all of them wanted to cut Rabbi
Heller off from the congregation without a dime. Although my father had
fought with Rabbi Heller for close to thirty years, he stood before the mob
thirsting for Rabbi Heller’s livelihood and reputation, held up his arm, and

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 27

said, “Stop! You are acting like a lynch mob! Are you Jews? Shame on
you!” Dad, the inarticulate man who barely finished fourth grade, told
them in his raspy, ungrammatical bass articulation, that “He don’t [sic]
leave here without a full pension and a decent settlement for the innocent
children who still need an education. This man served the congregation
honorably for decades. If you try to do anything else, you’ll do it only over
my dead body.” To this day I can imagine the “ponim fun dizer yehudim”
[the faces of these Jews] at the sound of Dad’s words spoken for the benefit
and welfare of this man.

Jewish Traditions
My father joyously participated in all of the many religious ceremonials
during the Jewish year. Perhaps his most joyous time was during Hakko-
fos,18 around the autumn holiday of Sukkos19 when all of the Torahs from
the largest to the smallest (perhaps fifteen or twenty of them) were
carried around the congregation of the lovely Plum Street Temple in
Cincinnati, one of the real American gems of synagogue architecture. In
the midst of those wonderful, deep colors and the complicated arch
work and beam work that made up the interior—and the lusty singing of
the choir—men and boys would carry the Torah to signify the exaltation
of having completed a year of reading through the complete Hebrew
scrolls of the Pentateuch and of starting a new year’s cycle of again
reading the same Hebrew scrolls. It represented the wonderful, compul-
sive, book-drenched essence of the conventionally defined Jewish soul.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

18 Hakkofos is the joyous procession with the carrying of many Torah scrolls around the
synagogue. The holiday calls for the construction of open-roofed booths decorated
with fruits of the harvest (Abraham Lincoln formalized Thanksgiving on the basis of
his biblical reading about Sukkos). The holiday also involves a palm branch with sprigs
of willow and myrtle—all together called a lulav (Hebrew: ‫לולב‬‎). It is held together
with an esrog (Hebrew: ‫—)א ְתרֹוג‬a
ֶ lemon-like fruit with fragrance, but no flavor. The
whole unit is shaken while reciting a Hebrew blessing—an invocation for favorable
weather and a symbol of the whole human personality: willow for humility, upright
palm branch for righteous pride, and esrog for fragrance of moral decency.
19 Sukkos (Hebrew: ‫סּכֹות‬,ֻ “Feast of Booths, Feast of Tabernacles”) is a weeklong Jewish
holiday celebrating the harvest and the annual end of reading passages of the Torah
(first five books of the Old Testament). It also is the time to start again with the reading
of the world’s beginning in Genesis.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 28 Irwin Weil

My father and Rabbi Wohl saw to it that I was included among the
Torah carriers, especially the smaller Torahs. At that point father and son
felt very close together, and Dad liked that. At the end of the procession, a
few Torahs were placed on stands on the bimah, the raised space in
front of the congregation. Of course, people tried to be careful, but there
was a tremendous atmosphere of excitement that could—and sometimes
did—lead to clumsiness. Lo and behold, on one of those occasions in the
1930s, Dad’s hands slipped and the Torah, instead of slipping into its
stand, fell on to the floor with a great clatter, followed by an almost imme-
diate “ooh, ahh” from the congregation. Dad immediately picked it up,
kissed it, and finally put it in its stand. Everyone started buzzing because
there is a well-known Jewish tradition that he who drops a Sefer Torah20
must fast for thirty days. Everyone was as sure as I was that he would not
do that. The event proved us correct. Dad assiduously went about his cere-
monial duties, as if to apologize for the accidental insult to the Torah, but
that was the end of it.
Dad was accepting of all Jews. On Rosh Hashanah21 and Yom Kippur,
Dad spent many hours in the I. M. Wise Temple, a place of Reform
Judaism. But he also spent many hours among his friends in the Conser-
vative and Orthodox synagogues. His own traditions and memories were
very close to the way they practiced davening,22 and he felt very much at
home among them. He was truly a person who, at the emotional level,
could easily transcend the divisions among Jews: Orthodox versus Reform,
German Jews versus Polish and Russian Jews, skullcap wearers versus
non-skullcap wearers, Hebrew language prayers versus English language
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

prayers, etc. On the other hand, whenever he ran into Orthodox

20 Sefer Torah (Hebrew: ‫ספר תורה‬‎) is literally the “Book of Torah.” The Torah, together
with the extensive commentary of the Talmud, forms the basis of Jewish law. The
Torah scroll is carefully inscribed by hand following detailed rules of procedure and its
completion calls for a special celebration.
21 Rosh Hashanah (Hebrew: ‫ראש השנה‬‎, “Head of the Year”) is a celebration of the New
Year according to the Jewish lunar year. The Bible calls it the first day of the seventh
month. The ancient celebration of the first month (in spring) celebrated the birth of
new lambs for nomadic people. When Jews turned from being nomads to farmers, the
seventh month (in autumn) celebrated the harvest.
22 Davening (Yiddish ‫דאוונען‬ַ davnen, “to pray”) is the Jewish form of prayer chanting. It is
a beautiful sound when done by a person who can carry a tune.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 29

condescension or sneering at Reform custom, he became extremely angry.

There was something inside of him at an emotional level that simply could
not abide snobbery. To me, that consideration of others was perhaps his
most endearing and admirable trait.
Although Dad was very accepting of all Jewish divisions, he had little
sympathy with the Yiddish language and its culture, much to my sorrow.
Whether it was a vestige of the old Germanic prejudice—or perhaps his
resentment of some Jews who insisted on trying to force it on him at
public meetings—he kept it out of his life and consciousness. It was not
from him that I learned to respect and love Yiddish and even teach its
culture later on. I can still hear the resentment in his voice when he told
me, “They asked if they could speak Yiddish. Of course there are always
loudmouths who will yell in such a situation, and they did so. The result
was that I couldn’t understand a thing.”

Dad’s Greatest Pleasures

One of the congregational customs he liked most—it could hardly have
been called a traditional ceremony—was the annual fathers and sons
dinner. He liked it for the idea it represented: he adored the memory of his
own father and always carried my grandfather’s photo inside a large
pocket watch. He hoped for a similar relationship with me even though
we couldn’t work together in the horse business, as life had permitted in
the 1890s.
Dad liked the evening because he was able to bring baseball players
over to talk after dinner. To people at that time and place, few things could
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

have been more exciting than to meet the Cincinnati Reds baseball players
who were in the center of civic attention and emulation. Many of these
men had spent evenings at our house when I was young, and I shared the
general feeling. A few of them were even interesting gentlemen.
I remember Bill McKechny, the astute manager, and Frank McCormick,
a fine gentleman married to the daughter of the official hunter of the
Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg dynasty. Bill Veeck also was an extraordi-
nary individual and a fine speaker. Somehow the Jewish fathers and sons
assembled there felt that nobility rubbed off on them, a little bit, and Dad
always felt proud and happy at these events.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 30 Irwin Weil

There were hundreds of times when he saw to it that groups of people

could attend baseball games. Whether it was orphanages, religious groups
of any persuasion, schoolchildren, scholars, rabbis, or any other configu-
ration of individuals who came to his attention—Dad knew that their
proper pre-taste of paradise lay in the baseball park. I can hardly count the
number of people, some of them very far from your usual association with
baseball watchers, who came away—numbly or otherwise—entranced
with new concepts of a curve ball, park attendance numbers, managerial
slyness, foot position for outfielders, Branch Rickey’s coup, etc. All this
went on with a steady stream of purchases from the food vendors who
always experienced joy passing Dad’s box. I wonder how the hot dog and
ice cream manufacturers are doing now?
Dad was also a welcome visitor to the Cincinnati Reds dugout before
the games. The players and managers knew him as a source not only of
information about the game, based on years of hard-earned experience,
which they respected, but also as an advisor on family and financial prob-
lems. They would often take him off to a corner of the dugout or along the
walkway to the players’ showers and lockers and engage him in obviously
earnest conversation. He always seemed to give them a positive word, or
at least they looked relieved after talking with him. As in many places, he
took an obvious relish in being among them and being part of their
ongoing lives.
My father got his greatest pleasure from the late 1940s onward in
his grandchildren. Marjorie and her husband, Orren, had three; Carolyn
and her husband, Victor, had two; and my wife, Vivian, and I had three.
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

Whenever Dad came into a room where the grandchildren were, he would
immediately stimulate them to louder and more boisterous play, and they
would respond to him with lots of real joy. As far as I know, that was true
when the grandchildren were small. They seemed to sense immediately in
him the directness and emotional honesty of a small child.
I shall never forget his visit to Cambridge, Massachusetts, when my
oldest son, Martin, was about four or five years old. Dad gave himself
completely to the desires of Martin, who was thrilled with streetcars,
buses, and subway trains. The two of them went all over Boston, taking
enormous numbers of public vehicles. Dad came home pale and exhausted

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
 The Lives of Sidney and Florence Weil 31

but deeply satisfied with himself. Martin was in seventh heaven, barely
satisfied with the first dent he had made in trying out the public transpor-
tation system and was eager for more.
Later on, as the grandchildren grew up, I think it was harder for my
father. For all of his wonderful childlike spirit, he could not help but
look at the radically changing 1960s as a fantastically different time and
society from what he knew of the 1890s and first decade of the twentieth
century. He tried very hard not to let his feelings of alienation show—he
really felt the old family love—but his every statement to the young
people betrayed his old-fashioned ways of evaluating business and
family life.
I remember his amazement at how my own kids opened presents
that he purchased for them. He wanted them to open the presents swiftly,
agog at the abundance that he loved. Instead, Martin and his sister Alice
opened each one slowly, determined to play with and master each, before
turning to the next. Indeed, they didn’t even suspect there would be a
“next.” Dad found this baffling and even incomprehensible. His childish
impulsiveness was more powerful than theirs!

Later Years of Life

In the late 1950s or early 1960s, Dad had a sudden onset of very unchar-
acteristic, long-lasting depression—for at least six months, maybe longer.
He suddenly became listless, uninterested in work or activity, and very
sad. The only times I could remember that were in any way similar were
the early mornings in the 1940s when he would drive me to school at a
Copyright © 2015. Academic Studies Press. All rights reserved.

quarter to seven on his way to work. He would bite his nails to the quick,
wordlessly, with groans and sighs. I had assumed this just reflected the
high tension and stress of his daily work. But the longtime depression was
very upsetting to everyone around him. We all tried to buck him up.
I wrote several long letters in which I told him what he already knew: how
much he always meant to me and how much I wanted to see his old, ener-
getic self come back. He thanked me for very good desires, but he indi-
cated that he still felt listless and limp. Whether or not this had anything
to do with his perception of the changed ways of the generation of the
1960s, I don’t know. I can only speculate.

From the Cincinnati Reds to the Moscow Reds : The Memoirs of Irwin Weil, Academic Studies Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central,
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 57. Dentur omnes decimae primariae ecclesiae ad quam
parochia pertinet. All tithes must be paid to the Mother
Church to which the parish belongs.
This was a law of King Edgar, prior to which every man paid his
tithe to whatever church or parish he thought fit. (See Steph. Comm.
15th ed. Vol. I. p. 71.)

58. Descendit jus quasi ponderosum quid, cadens

deorsum recta linea; et nunquam reascendit ea via qua
descendit. The right of inheritance descends like a heavy body,
falling in a straight line; and it never ascends by the same line
that it came down.
This was one of the old laws of descent, under which the lineal
ancestor himself was always excluded, although his issue, being the
collateral heirs of the deceased, might inherit the latter’s land. Now,
however, by the Inheritance Act, 1833, 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 106, on
failure of the issue of the purchaser, the inheritance descends to the
nearest lineal ancestor in the preferable line, provided that no issue
of a nearer deceased ancestor in that line exists. (See Steph. Comm.
Vol. I. p. 257 et seq., and Max. No. 102.)

59. Deus solus haeredem facere potest, non homo. God

alone is able to make an heir and not man.
(See Max. No. 165.)

60. Dies Dominicus non est juridicus. Sunday is not a day

for judicial proceedings.
61. Dolosus versatur in generalibus. A deceiver deals in
generalities—i.e., uses ambiguous terms.
One of the reasons for the decision in Twine’s Case, 1 Sm. L. C.
11th ed. p. 1, was “That the gift had the signs and marks of fraud,
because it was general, without exception even of his apparel or
anything of necessity, for it is commonly said ‘quod dolosus versatur
in generalibus.’” (See Maxs. Nos. 31 and 63.)
 * 62. Domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium. To every
man his own house is the safest refuge—i.e., Every man’s house
is his castle—“Nemo de domo sua extrahi potest.”
It has been decided, however, that the sheriff may lawfully break
into the house of a defendant in the following cases:—where the
house is recovered by any real action, or by ejectment in pursuance
of the writ “habere facias possessionem,” also where the king is a
party. The house of one man is a privilege or castle for himself only,
and not for one who flies to him for protection. (Semayne’s Case, 1
Sm. L. C. 121. See Max. 162.)

63. Dona clandestina sunt semper suspiciosa. Clandestine

gifts are always suspicious.
The gift in Twyne’s Case, 1 Sm. L. C. 11th ed. p. 1, was made in
secret. (See Maxs. Nos. 31 and 61.)

64. Donatio non praesumitur. A gift is not presumed.

The law with reference to gifts is most stringent, and strict proof is
usually required.

* 65. Donationes sint stricti juris, ne quis plus donasse

praesumatur quam in donatione expressit. Gifts are to be
construed strictly according to law, lest any one be presumed to
have given more than he may actually have set forth in the gift
or grant.
See Stat. De Donis Conditionalibus, 13 Ed. I. c. 1, which by its
enactments laid the foundation of our present Estates Tail.
The word “heirs” was formerly necessary in order to create by deed
an estate in fee simple, or in tail; if land were given to a man for ever,
or to him and his assigns for ever, he would take only an estate for
life. By the Conveyancing Act the use of the word “heirs” is no longer
necessary, the words “in fee simple,” or “in fee tail,” being sufficient,
as the case may be.
 66. Duces tecum. You must bring with you.
A form of subpœna when production of documents is required.

67. Duo non possunt in solido unam rem possidere. Two

cannot possess the whole of one thing in its entirety.
68. Ea quae raro accidunt, non temere in agendis negotiis
computantur. Such things as seldom occur, are not rashly to
be taken into account in business transactions.
* 69. Ei incumbit probatio qui affirmat, non qui negat;
cum per rerum naturam factum negantis probatio nulla
sit. He must prove a thing who says it, not he who denies it,
since by the nature of things he who denies a fact cannot
produce any proof; i.e., the proof lies upon him who affirms,
and not upon him who denies.
It is a general rule that in the trial of all actions the plaintiff should
begin. (See Maxs. Nos. 24 and 252.)

* 70. Equality is Equity.

Persons making purchases for a joint undertaking are held tenants
in common in equity, although at law they are joint tenants. (See
Lake v. Gibson and Lake v. Craddock, 2 Wh. and Tud. L. C. Eq. 8th
ed. 973.) Equity, where possible, always favours a tenancy in
common as opposed to a joint tenancy.

* 71. Equity acts in personam: i.e., against the person.

Judgments of Courts of Law were always enforced in rem, by writ
of fieri facias, &c., but the decrees of the Court of Chancery could
always be enforced in personam, by attachment. (See Penn v. Lord
Baltimore, 1 Wh. and Tud. L. C. 8th ed. p. 800.)

* 72. Equity imputes an intention to fulfil an obligation. (If

the thing actually done might have been done with an intention
to fulfil an obligation.)
 The equitable doctrines of satisfaction (see Talbot v. Duke of
Shrewsbury and Chancey’s Case, 2 Wh. & Tud. L. C. Eq. 8th ed. pp.
378–9) and performance (see Wilcocks v. Wilcocks, and Blandy v.
Widmore, 2 Wh. and Tud. L. C. Eq. 8th ed. pp. 413–14 respectively),
have recourse to this maxim, and the principle upon which they are
founded is the one therein contained.

73. Equity never wants a trustee.

Where a valid trust exists, equity will impose on the person in
whom the legal estate is vested the duty and obligation of carrying
out such trust.

* 74. Equity regards the spirit and not the letter.

Equity looks at the intention of the parties, and not at the actual
words employed in any transaction. Equity always regarded a
mortgage as an instrument to secure the repayment of money, and
allowed the mortgagor to redeem at any time, but at Common Law,
unless the mortgagor paid back the money by the day named in the
mortgage deed, his right of redemption was gone. (See Maxs. Nos. 11
and 196.)

75. Erant omnia communia et indivisa omnibus, veluti

unum cunctis patrimonium esset. All things were common
and undivided to all people, as if there were one property for
all.
See Justin I. 43, c. 1. While there were yet few inhabitants on the
face of the globe, it seems probable and reasonable that all things
were in common among them, and that each took from the public
stock what he might require for immediate purposes, and that the
right of possession was coexistent only with actual possession. (See
Steph. Comm. Vol. I. Book II.)

76. Esse optime constitutam rempublican, quae ex tribus

generibus illis, regali (monarchy), optimo (aristocracy), et
 populari (democracy), sit modice confusa. That State is the
best constituted which is made up in moderation of the three
classes, royalty, nobility, and commons.
The truth of this is generally admitted—our own country, which
comprises the three above essentials, being universally
acknowledged the best governed kingdom in the world.

77. Est boni judicis ampliare jurisdictionem (et

justitiam). It is the duty of a good judge to enlarge his
jurisdiction and also justice itself; i.e., to extend the remedies of
the law, and without usurping jurisdiction, to apply its rules to
the advancement of justice.
Where a case comes before a court of law, in which it has hitherto
been the practice to refuse relief to the plaintiff or defendant, as the
case may be, and consequently to drive such party to seek redress in
the Court of Chancery, it is expedient for all parties and the public at
large, that such court of law, and its judge, should act in a liberal and
uncramped manner, and if possible apply the necessary remedy. (See
Collins v. Blantern, 1 Smith, L. C. 11th ed. p. 369.) By the Judicature
Acts, “law” and “equity” are to be concurrently administered in all
Courts, but the true spirit of this maxim must ever stand good.

* 78. Ex antecedentibus et consequentibus fit optima

interpretatio. From what goes before and what follows, the
best interpretation is arrived at.
The context must be most thoroughly looked into before a correct
interpretation can be obtained. This maxim is one of the most
important rules for the construction of contracts, which in all cases
are to be favourably construed according to their object, and the
whole of their terms. (See Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. p. 100, and
Maxs. Nos. 26, 177, 214 and 272.)

79. Ex diuturnitate temporis omnia praesumuntur rite

esse acta. After a length of time all things are presumed to
have been properly done.
 The Prescription Act, 2 & 3 Will. IV. c. 71, is in point upon this
maxim.

* 80. Ex dolo malo non oritur actio. An action does not arise
from a fraud.
(See Maxs. Nos. 82, 182 and 234.)

* 81. Ex nudo pacto non oritur actio. An action does not arise
from a nude contract.
Every simple contract must be supported by a valuable
consideration, as money, marriage, or the like. A good consideration
(i.e., relationship, or natural love and affection) will not support an
assumpsit. Chitty lays down the rule “that a sufficient consideration
or recompense for making, or motive or inducement to make, the
promise upon which a party is charged, is of the very essence of a
contract not under seal, both at law and in equity; and that such
consideration must exist, or the promise will be void and no action
be maintainable thereon.” Such consideration may be either
executed, executory, concurrent or continuing.

* 82. Ex turpi causâ non oritur actio. No action arises from

an immoral cause (or base consideration).
Contracts founded on a consideration which is contra bonos
mores are void. See also Merryweather v. Nixan, 2 Smith, L. C. 398,
where it was decided that there is no right of contribution between
joint tort-feasors. (See Maxs. Nos. 80, 182 and 232.)

83. Exceptio probat regulam. Exception proves the rule.

(See Max. No. 174.)

84. Executio juris non habet injuriam. The execution of the

law works no injury. Actus legis neminem est damnosum.
The act of the law is hurtful to none.
 * 85. Expressio coram quae tacitè insunt, nihil operatur.
The express mention of those things which are tacitly implied,
has no effect.
A voluntary courtesy is insufficient to support a subsequent
promise, unless there has been an antecedent request, and such
request must be proved at the trial, except where the consideration,
though executed, is of such a nature that it must necessarily have
been moved by a previous request, and in which case therefore, such
a statement becomes merely “expressio eorum quae tacitè insunt,”
and is consequently unnecessary. (Lampleigh v. Braithwait, 1 Smith,
L. C. 11th ed. p. 141.)

86. Expressio unius est exclusio alterius. The express

mention of one thing causes the exclusion of another.
Where in a mortgage of several properties the following general
words were used, “together with all grates, boilers, &c., and other
fixtures in and about the said two dwelling-houses and the
brewhouse thereunto belonging,” it was ruled that the fixtures in the
other mortgaged property did not pass to the mortgagee, although
without these words they would have done. By particularising one or
more members of a class, an intention may be inferred to exclude the
rest.

* 87. Expressum facit cessare tacitum. What is expressed

makes what is implied to cease.
The word “demise” in a lease implies a covenant for quiet
enjoyment, but if such covenant be inserted, then the maxim will not
apply. Implied contracts in law exist only where there is no express
promise between the parties. (See Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. pp.
47 and 385.)

* 88. Falsa demonstratio non nocet. An erroneous

description does not vitiate.
Where in the former part of an instrument there is to be found a
sufficiently clear and certain description, it will not be vitiated by a
subsequent erroneous addition. (See Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. p.
104, and Maxs. Nos. 89 and 274.)

89. Falsa orthographia, sive falsa grammatica, non vitiat

concessionem. Incorrect spelling or ungrammatical
expressions do not mar a gift.
(See Maxs. Nos. 88 and 146.)

90. Falsus in uno falsus in omnibus. False in one thing false

in all.
It will always be found best, “honeste vivere, alterum non laedere,
sua cuique tribuere.” Honesty is the best policy; once a knave always
a knave.

91. Fatetur facinus qui judicium fugit. He who flies from

justice acknowledges himself a criminal.
Under such circumstances the presumption is one of guilt.

* 92. Fides est obligatio conscientiae alicujus ad

intentionem alterius. A trust is the obligation of one’s
conscience to fulfil the intention of another.
A trust is also defined as a beneficial interest in, or ownership of,
real or personal property, unattended with the legal ownership
thereof. (Snell’s Eq. 16th ed. Part II.)

93. Fieri non debuit, sed factum valet. It ought not to have
been done, but having been done is valid.
A marriage by persons under the age of twenty-one years without
the consent of their father is valid, although by 4 Geo. IV. c. 76, s. 16,
such consent is made requisite. (See Max. No. 228.)

94. Foreclose down, redeem up.

 A mortgagee can only foreclose those claiming an interest in the
mortgaged property after himself; but a mortgagor must redeem
every mortgage, and any mortgagee, in order to obtain the rights of a
first mortgagee, must redeem all mortgages prior to his own. (See
Snell’s Eq. 16th ed. Chap. XVI.)

95. Fractionem diei non recipit lex. The law takes no note of
a fraction of a day.
When an act has to be done on a certain day, the whole of that day
is allowed in which to do it. This rule has exceptions, however, for in
case of documents registered on the same day, priority of registration
may be shown by the numbers, and this becomes, at times, of the
utmost importance.

96. Frater fratri sine legitimo haerede defuncto, in

beneficio quod eorum patris fuit, succedat; sin autem
unus e fratribus a domino feudum acceperit, eo
defuncto sine legitimo haerede, frater ejus in feudum
non succedit. A brother may succeed a brother who has died
without lawful heir in the benefice which belonged to their
father; but if one brother shall have received a feud from a lord,
if he dies without a lawful heir, his brother does not succeed to
the feud.
This is one of the old laws of inheritance, which are still of
importance as leading to a perfect understanding of the Act of 1833.
Formerly no one could succeed to an inheritance unless he was not
only of the blood of the purchaser, but also his lineal issue,
consequently one brother could not succeed to another brother’s
inheritance, of which the latter was the purchaser, because he could
not be his brother’s lineal issue, but where the inheritance had
originally descended from an ancestor, one brother could succeed
another, as he might be the lineal issue of such ancestor. (See Steph.
Comm. I. 15th ed. p. 257 et seq., also next Maxim and No. 203.)
 97. Frater fratri uterino non succedat in haereditate
paternâ. A brother shall not succeed a brother of the half blood
in the father’s estate.
Another old law of inheritance, under which the half-blood were
totally excluded, the land escheating to the lord of the manor rather
than go to a kinsman bearing this relationship to the person from
whom descent was to be traced. Now, however, since the Inheritance
Act, s. 9, it is otherwise, the place in which any such relation by the
half-blood stands in the order of inheritance being next after any
relative in the same degree of the whole blood, and his issue, where
the common ancestor is a male, and next after the common ancestor,
where such common ancestor is a female. (See Steph. Comm. I. 15th
ed. p. 257 et seq., also last Maxim and No. 203.)

98. Fraus est celare fraudem. He who conceals a fraud

perpetrates one himself.
This illustrates the doctrine of constructive frauds. Where a man
designedly produces a false impression on another, and the latter
consequently commits some act, or enters into some contract,
injurious to himself and his own interests, the former is guilty of
fraud. (See Max. No. 260.)

99. Frustrâ fit per plura, quod fieri potest perpauciora.

That is unnecessarily done by many (words), which is capable
of being done by fewer.
That the force of this maxim has been appreciated by our
legislature is shown and evidenced by most of the recent Acts of
Parliament, and especially so by the Conveyancing and Law of
Property Act, 1881, which has considerably curtailed the length of
many legal documents. Accuracy and precision are ever to be
commended in preference to verbosity. Short titles are now given to
all important statutes.

100. Furiosus solo furore punitur. Let a madman be

punished by his madness alone.
 Thus, in general, idiots and lunatics are not liable on contracts,
and bear a certain analogy to infants. (Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed.
pp. 158–61.)

101. Generalis regula generaliter est intelligenda. A

general rule must be generally understood.
102. Haereditas nunquam ascendit. Inheritance never
ascends.
This rule was exploded by 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 106, s. 6, by which, on
failure of issue of the purchaser, the inheritance goes to the nearest
lineal ancestor. Bracton and Lord Coke compared the descent of an
inheritance to that of a falling body, which never went upwards in its
course. “Descendit jus quasi ponderosum quid, cadens deorsum
rectâ lineâ: et nunquam reascendit eâ viâ quâ descendit.” (See Max.
No. 58.)

103. Haeres legitimus est quam nuptiae demonstrant. He

is the legitimate heir whom marriage declares.
* 104. He who comes into equity must come with clean
hands.
An infant, although not generally liable on his contracts, cannot
make use of his own fraudulent acts as a means whereby to benefit
himself.

* 105. He who seeks equity must do equity.

It is in pursuance of this maxim that the right of the wife’s equity
to a settlement is enforced. (Snell’s Eq. 16th ed. p. 13.)

106. Hoc quidem perquam durum est, sed ita lex scripta
est. This indeed is hard, but it is the written law.
Although, in some cases, equity mitigated the rigours of the law,
yet in others it was quite incapable of so doing; as, for example, many
of the old laws of inheritance were certainly hard and unjust, yet
equity gave no relief, the legislature having to intervene with the Act
3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 106.

107. Ibi esse poenam ubi et noxa est. The punishment should
be in the same place as the guilt.
This is so according to the dictates of common sense and fairness.

* 108. Id certum est quod certum reddi potest. That is

certain which can be reduced to a certainty.
This maxim is alike a rule of logic as of law. Customs must not be
optional, but compulsory, reasonable, definite, &c.

109. Idem est non esse et non apparere. Not to be and not to
legally prove are the same thing.
According to the laws of evidence, where he, on whom the onus of
proving the affirmative lies, fails in such proof, the contrary is
presumed, though there be no evidence in support of such
presumption.

* 110. Ignorantia facti excusat, ignorantia juris (quod

quisque tenetur scire) neminem excusat. Ignorance of
fact excuses, ignorance of the law (which every one is presumed
to know) excuses no one.
Applicable only to the general laws of the country “quod quisque
tenetur scire.” No action can be maintained to recover money paid
under process of law. (See Marriot v. Hampton, 2 Sm. L. C. 421, and
Snell’s Eq. 16th ed. p. 393, and Max. No. 176.)

111. In consimili casu, consimile debet esse remedium. In

similar cases, the remedy should be similar.
(See Max. No. 265.)
 * 112. In contractu tacite insunt quæ sunt moris et
consuetudinis. Those things which are customary and of
general usage are tacitly implied in a contract.
As a general rule, the law of the country in which a contract is
entered into presumably governs its interpretation in the absence of
a contrary and express intention of the parties. (Jacob v. Crédit
Lyonnaise, 12 Q. B. D. p. 600.)

113. In criminalibus probationes debent esse luce

clariones. In all criminal charges the proofs should be as clear
as day.
An accused person is always entitled to receive the benefit of the
doubt if any such exists on the evidence.

114. In judicio non creditur nisi juratis. In a trial only sworn

witnesses are believed.
This has been modified of late years, especially by 17 & 18 Vict. c.
125, which, inter alia, provides that any person called as a witness,
who shall refuse or be unwilling to be sworn from conscientious
motives, may make affirmation instead. (As to the form of such
affirmation, see 31 & 32 Vict. c. 72.)

* 115. In jure, non remota, sed proxima spectantur. The

law has regard to things near at hand, and not to those remote.
Especially applicable in questions of damages, with reference to
which one of the most important rules is, that they must not be too
remote, but must be the natural and probable result of the
defendant’s wrongful act. Mayne on Damages says: “Damage is said
to be too remote when, although arising out of the cause of action, it
does not so immediately and necessarily flow from it, as that the
offending party can be made responsible for it.” (See also hereon
Hadley v. Baxendale, 9 Ex. 343, and Kelly v. Partington, 5 B. & A.
645.)
 116. In maleficiis voluntas spectatur non exitus. In
criminal acts the intention is to be sought or examined rather
than the result.
A bad or criminal intention must be shown in all such cases. (See
Maxs. Nos. 9 and 285.)

* 117. In pari delicto potior est conditio defendentis. In

case of equal fault the position of the defendant is the better.
Where an immoral contract has been executed, and both parties
are equally in fault, the maxim applies, and the contract will not be
set aside. In divorce actions, a wife guilty herself of adultery is not
entitled to a decree nisi for which she may petition as against an
offending husband. (See Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. p. 695, and
next Max.)

118. In pari delicto potior est conditio possidentis. In case

of equal guilt, the condition of the possessor is the better.
Where a marine policy is void, ab initio, from a cause not
amounting to any fraud or breach of law on the part of the assured,
the insurer is bound to return the premium paid; yet, when such
policy is void by reason of fraud on the assured’s part, the latter
cannot then reclaim the premium, and the rule applies. (See Steph.
Comm. II. pp. 88–9, and last Max.)

119. In presumptione juris semper æquitas existit. Equity

is always to be found in a presumption of law.
Where the object of such presumption is satisfied, and there is no
equity in continuing it, it should cease. (See Colborne v. Patmore, 4
Tyrwh. 677; C. M. & R. 73.)

120. In re communi potior est conditio prohibentis. In a

partnership the condition of one who forbids is the more
favourable.
 When partners are equally divided, those who forbid any change or
other alteration have the better right.

121. In societatis contractibus fides exuberet. The strictest

good faith must be exercised in partnership transactions.
The highest standard of honour is requisite from every member of
a partnership towards every other member of the firm.

122. In testamentus plenius testatoris intentionem

scrutamur. In wills we seek more especially for the testator’s
intention.
This intention must be agreeable to law, and the intent must be
collected from the actual words of the will. (See Maxs. Nos. 123, 273,
and 275.)

123. In testamentis plenius voluntates testantium

interpretantur. In wills the wishes of testators are more
liberally expounded.
Thus Broom says: “A will should receive a more liberal
construction than its strict meaning, if alone considered, would
permit.” (See Maxs. Nos. 122, 273, and 275.)

124. In traditionibus chartarum non quod dictum sed

quod factum est inspicitur. In the delivery of deeds, not
what was said at the time, but what was done, must be looked
at.
A document under seal may be delivered to a third person only, to
be delivered by him to the grantee, when the latter has performed
certain specified conditions. Such documents are known as escrows,
and do not acquire the force of a deed until the conditions precedent
have been fulfilled and delivery thereupon made to the grantee. (See
Steph. Comm. I. Cap. XVII., and Max. No. 264.)
 125. Incertam et caducam haereditatem relevant. They
take up again a doubtful and lapsed inheritance.
Upon the succession to a feud, on the death of the last tenant, the
heir formerly succeeded thereto not as of right, but only by the
favour of the lord of the manor, to whom a fine, called a relief, was
paid—this relief continued payable even after feuds became
hereditary, although the reason for its being claimed had ceased.
(See Steph. Comm. Vol. I. Cap. II.)

126. Injuria non excusat injuriam. One wrong does not

justify another. Or to use a colloquial expression, Two wrongs
will not make a right.
127. Interest reipublicae, ut sit finis litium. It is to the
advantage of the State that there should be a limit to lawsuits.
The Statutes of Limitations have been passed with a view to limit
the time within which actions may be brought. But for these Statutes,
a plaintiff might delay bringing his action until the defendant had
lost, by casualty or otherwise, the evidence on which his case rested.
(See Steph. Comm. III. Cap. XIII., and Max. No. 282.)

128. Invito beneficium non datur. A benefit is not conferred

upon an unwilling recipient.
No one can be compelled to accept a gift against his wish. A legatee
may refuse a gift, an executor may renounce probate, and a trustee
may disclaim his office.

129. Judices non tenetur exprimere causam sententiae

suae. Judges are not compelled to give reason for their
opinions; i.e., judgments or sentences.
It is the general opinion that judges not only ought not to be
compelled to explain, but also that they should not do so voluntarily.
Recent years have witnessed a few instances in which an explanation
has been vouchsafed; but it has been almost universally disapproved
of by members of the legal profession.
 130. Judicis est judicare secundum allegata et probata. It
is the duty of a judge to decide according to facts alleged and
proved.
In every action a litigant should be prepared to adduce proof of all
facts upon which his case depends.

131. Judicis est jus dicere non dare. It is for the judge to
administer, not to make the law.
Unwilling magistrates frequently shield themselves behind this, at
times, very convenient rule.

132. Jura publica anteferenda privatis. Public rights are to

be preferred to private ones.
133. Juris praecepta sunt haec: honeste vivere, alterum
non laedere, suum cuique tribuere. The maxims (or
requirements) of the law are: To live honourably. To injure no
one. To render to every one his due.
* 134. Jus accrescendi inter mercatores locum non habet,
pro beneficio commercii. The right of survivorship has no
existence among merchants, for the encouragement of trade.
* 135. Jus accrescendi praefertur oneribus ac ultimae
voluntati. The right of survivorship is preferred to
encumbrances and to the last will.
This has reference to, and forms one of, the principal rules
affecting joint tenancies. Dower and courtesy do not apply to joint
estates.

136. Jus respicit aequitatem. Law has regard to equity.

(See Jud. Act, 1873, sec. 25, ss. 11, and Max. No. 141.)

137. Leges posteriores priores abrogant. Subsequent laws

repeal former ones.
 Statutes may repeal prior ones, either by express provision or by
implication. Every statute impliedly repeals an earlier one, so far as
the latter is contrary thereto. Unless otherwise expressed, a statute
must be construed as prospective in its operation. (See Steph. Comm.
I. p. 43, and Max. No. 233.)

138. Leges solâ memoriâ et usu retinebant. Laws were only

preserved by memory and custom.
Among the primitive Saxons, owing to the small skill in writing
that generally obtained, all laws were traditional, being handed down
from one generation to another solely by word of mouth. Our
“unwritten” or Common Law of the present day, however, is not
merely oral, but is to be sought in the records of the various Courts
and in the reports of judicial decisions. (See Steph. Comm. I. sec.
III.)

139. Lex non cogit ad impossibilia. The law does not force to
impossibilities.
This rule does not apply where a thing is impossible on account
only of the defendant’s personal inability to perform a contract. (See
Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. pp. 763–4, and Max. 170.)

140. Lex prospicit non respicit. The law looks forward, not
backward.
It is but seldom that statutes are made retrospective.

141. Lex respicit aequitatem. The law has regard to equity.

The provisions of the Judicature Acts are a good illustration. (See
Max. No. 136.)

142. Linea recta semper praefertur transversali. The right

line is always preferred to the collateral.
 By 3 & 4 Will. IV. c. 106, “The lineal descendants in infinitum of
any persons deceased shall represent their ancestor; that is, shall
stand in the same place as the person himself would have done had
he been living.” The eldest male alone inherits where two or more are
in equal degree of consanguinity to the purchaser; females inherit
altogether. (See Williams on Real Property, 20th ed. Cap. IX.)

143. Littera scripta manet, vox emissa volat. What is

written endures, things spoken speed away.
The distinction of damages in actions for libel and slander form a
good illustration of what is meant by this maxim. (See Max. No.
286.)

144. Locus regit actum. The place governs the act.

The law of the place where a legal transaction was entered into—
Lex loci contractus—usually governs its validity.

* 145. Magis de bono quam de malo lex intendit. The law is

in favour rather of a good than of a bad construction (or
intention).
If in a contract the words used are capable of two constructions,
the one in conformity with, and the other against the law, the former
is adopted. Every accused person is presumed in the law to be
innocent until he be proved guilty. (See Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed.
p. 97, and Max. No. 169.)

146. Mala grammatica non vitiat chartam. Bad grammar

does not vitiate a deed or document.
(See Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. p. 112, and Max. No. 89.)

147. Malus usus est abolendus. An evil custom ought to be

abolished.
 148. Melior est justicia vere praeveniens quam severe
puniens. Justice is better when it prevents rather than
punishes with severity.
149. Melius est petere fontes quam sectari rivulos. It is
better to go to the fountain head than to follow rivulets.
All students will find this advice the best and safest to follow. (See
Preface to this edition.)

150. Minatur innocentibus qui parcit nocentibus. He who

spares the guilty threatens the innocent.
151. Minimè mutanda sunt quae certam habet
interpretationem. Such things as have a clear interpretation
ought to be changed but little.
This maxim is well illustrated by many of the old-fashioned
technical terms used in conveyancing, and which by long usage have
obtained a well-defined meaning, and one that cannot be well met by
the use of any other word or expression, as the case may be.

* 152. Mobilia sequuntur personam. Movables follow the

person.
On an intestacy, personal chattels are distributed according to the
law of the country where deceased was domiciled at the time of
death, and not according to the law of the place where they happen
to be located.

* 153. Modus et conventio vincunt legem. Custom and

agreement override the law.
This is one of the leading principles relative to the law of contracts.
The exceptions to the rule here laid down are in cases against public
policy, morality, &c. (See the case of Richardson v. Langridge,
Tudor’s L. C. Convey. 4th ed. p. 4; Chitty on Contracts, 16th ed. p.
592, and Maxs. Nos. 37 and 197.)