Philip Roth Eulogizes Local 105-Year-Old Man

Philip Roth Sunday eulogized one of his high school teachers, both in the pages of The New York Times and at a service in Livingston NJ.  Roth described Dr. Robert Lowenstein, 105, lately of West Orange, N.J., as a "friend, teacher, mentor." Lowenstein died in January of this year.

Lowenstein, according to his published obituary, was " a courageous and stalwart progressive whose intellect, warmth, and profound integrity made him an inspiration to his family and generations of students, colleagues, and friends. He was a scholar, teacher, and published poet who helped found the Newark Teachers Union in the 1930s. In 2008, he was among the first group of inductees into the Weequahic High School Hall of Fame, where he was honored for his exemplary teaching and chairmanship of the foreign languages department over a long career."

Roth described Lowenstein as "a formidable man who did not gladly suffer fools." Lowenstein was the model for a "major figure in my novel “I Married a Communist,” a book I published in 1998 recalling the anti-Communist period."

Lowenstein and his wife Zelda lived in West Orange, where Roth visited. Roth further recalls:

"In 1993, when I turned 60, I gave a reading in South Orange, at Seton Hall University, and the reading’s sponsors threw me a little birthday party afterward. Bob and Zelda were there. In fact, my reading that night was introduced by Bob, who, as you recall, lived a mile away from Seton Hall and never missed a poetry reading there...

I had written to ask him to introduce me, and seeing him up at the Seton Hall lectern that night recounting with great wit and sharpness and charm our first acquaintance as pupil and student made me inordinately happy. I believe it made him happy too."