MDMD Washington & Gershom

[Dave Monroe]

Okay, whilst preparing for next week ...

--- Doug Millison <millison at online-journalist.com>
wrote:

> That " *Yarmulke* on the Peruke on the slave" may be
> " a curious display of black on white *on black*,
> but, in the context of the Vegas-style jokes, it
> made me think of the rather famous black convert to
> Judaism, Sammy Davis, Jr.

I thought that Transit of Venus allusion ingenious,
myself, but SDJr. was my first impression as well. 
Inevitable, if yr talking black Jewish comedians ...

> It's also worth mentioning -- if nobody has done so
> already --  that the slave's name is that of a
> French Jewish mathematician, philosopher,
> astronomer, and Talmudic scholar .  The connection
> to the kabbalist mysticism of GR seems obvious to
me.
> 
> From Tim Ware's index to M&D:
> Gershom
> 
> Submitted by Brad Carroll, Dept. Physics, Weber
> State University
> 
> Could the name of George Washington's slave Gershom
> refer to Levi ben Gershom? ...

But don't forget the American Jewish kabbalah scholar,
Gershom Scholem ...

http://www.bartleby.com/65/sc/Scholem.html

http://www.digiserve.com/mystic/Jewish/Scholem_1/

I suspect that Scholem's Major Trends in Jewish
Mysticism (NY: Schocken, 1941) might well have been a
source for Pynchon ca. GR (and then some), perhaps his
On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism (trans. Ralph
Mannheim, NY: Schocken, 1965) as well.  See also
Kaballah (NY: Quadrangle, 1974) ...

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