The Avram Davidson Treasury : a tribute collection

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HE WAS A SMALLISH, rumpled, bearded man who had the look of a rabbi for some down-at-the-heels inner-city Orthodox congregation. He had a rabbi’s arcane erudition, a rabbi’s insight into human foibles, a rabbi’s twinkling avuncular charm, a rabbi’s amiable self-mocking modesty; and, of course, a rabbi’s profound faith in Judaism, at least until, to my amazement if not his own, he gave up all his obsessive observance of the myriad Jewish rules and regulations and converted late in life to an exotic Japanese cult called Tenrikyo. He was also one of the finest short-story writers ever to use the English language, as the fortunate readers of this book are about to discover, or to rediscover, whichever is the case.

I can’t remember when or precisely where I met him, though it had to have been in New York City somewhere between 1956 and 1961. During those years I lived in a spacious and pleasant apartment on the fourth floor of a building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and I distinctly recall Avram’s coming to visit me on a Friday night — the eve of the Jewish Sabbath — when, as I had forgotten at the time, it is forbidden for Orthodox Jews to perform any sort of mechanical labor. The prohibition extends even unto pressing a button to summon an elevator; and so Avram diligently walked up the four flights of stairs to my apartment that evening, and walked down again when he left, which struck me — Jewish also, but not particularly observant — as a charming but bizarre adherence to Talmudic dogma.

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