For Paul Lippmann

Writing something about Paul Lippmann is a complicated thing because he was a complicated guy. It’s easy to say that he was warm, kind, brilliant, and a pleasure to be around, because all of that is true and anyone who met him knew that instantly. Paul, I think, would want me to call him “menschliche” because, to me, he was the very embodiment of that word. Quoting from an article in the Jewish Chronicle (thejc.com), a mensch is “a person who can be relied on to act with honor and integrity” but also “is driven by an innate decency, motivated perhaps by a sense of values to live up to but not out of regard for recognition. They will act as a mensch at times when it may be hard to be one.” That was him.

But I’m pretty sure that Paul would not want us to stop there (and I’ve been thinking a lot since he died, not just about how much I miss him but about what he would have wanted us to think, feel, and say now that he is gone.) Paul was also edgy, aggressive, irreverent, provocative, and an inveterate troublemaker. I think I loved and miss Paul for these characteristics even more than for the other ones. When Donald Trump was elected, Paul said to a room full of progressive psychoanalysts who had gathered in Stockbridge to share their anger and fear, that there was “a Trump in all of us.” I think that is and was a terrifying thought, but it’s true and since then I’ve thought about it more than all the other comments on the election put together.

Paul loved a lot of people—his family most of all—but a lot of people who he encountered, not because he got anything back from loving them but because he was generous and enjoyed engaging with people in all their complexities. He hated phoniness, cruelty, and anything that

reeked of the arbitrary use of power. He loved psychoanalysis becau