Jake Zeitlin

None of the lovely tributes to the late Jake Zeitlin, the book-seller’s bookseller, touched on his passionate politics.

In the gloomiest days of the McCarthy era, I served with Jake on the Democratic County Central Committee. Some timid committee members tried to purge a Democratic club because some of its members hadn’t always been Democrats. Jake, as always, fighting political as well as literary litmus tests joined a tiny group of us who stood off the image-conscious worry birds. With Jake as the sweet voice of reason, we prevailed and the purge did not occur.

Jake understood that constitutional liberty and the First Amendment especially must not be whittled to suit temporary prejudice.

We are all in his debt.

JERRY PACHT

Los Angeles