Same River Twice

This post comes from Zemin Zhang, at the blog The Daily Newarker:

Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow.

– Heraclitus

Last Sunday, I went to the Grove Street Cemetery to look for the resting place of Louis Danzig. With a cemetery administrator’s instructions, I found only five, perhaps unrelated, Danzig’s. However, I was captured by the aura of hundreds of past Jewish lives, with downtown Newark in the distance under the dim winter sun. I could hear Louis Danzig (“Lou” to his friends), a visionary who died in 1982, telling his dreams, sorrows, and regrets in his life-long battle for Newark’s revitalization.

In 1911, Harry and Rebecca Danzig brought three-year-old Louis to Newark from Lithuania. Starting from Oriental Street at the northern edge of the thriving city, America was a dream of democratic socialism for the Danzig family and thousands of Jews who escaped from the oppressive Tsar and the Old World discrimination. Their countryman Abraham Cahan founded Forward, the most popular Yiddish newspaper newspaper with the motto: Workers all Over the World Unite. Graduating from Central High and New Jersey Law School, Louis started  his legal practice in 1930. In the evenings, he went to Columbia and NYU to study housing issues, his life-long passion. More