Jewish Life March-April 1963

TR O U B LED A L L IE S • F A IT H A N D /O R R E A SO N E A S T A N D W E S T IN IS R A E L W H E N IS A J E W N O T A J E W • M A R K IN G T IM E A R E M N A N T O F A PRO U D COM M UNITY K ID D U S H H A SH E M TH R O U G H IS R A E L ’S R E S P O N S E

N IS A N -IY A R 5 7 2 3 M A R C H -A P R I L 1 9 6 3

M a ke Y o u r Reservations N o w for the

A N N U A L N A T IO N A L D IN N E R of the

UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGA TIONS OF AMERICA to be held

Sunday

E venig,May 5, 1963

at the

AMERICANA HOTEL, NEW YORK CITY • NATHAN K. GROSS—Guest of Honor $60.00 per reservation YO U R P A R T IC IP A T IO N IN T H IS D IN N E R W IL L H E L P MAKE POSSIBLE T H E EXPANSIO N OF T H E V IT A L SERVICES OF T H E U O JCA

For reservations and inform ation, phone or write: H arold J acobs, C hair man

ALgonquin 5-4100 N ational D inner C om m ittee , UOJCA,

84 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Vol. XXX, No, 3/March-April 1963/Nïsan-lyar 5723

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EDITORIALS SOVIET JEWS AND SOVIET DISCLAIM ERS...................

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EUROPEAN JEWRY’S NEW LEADERSHIP ......................

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HOTEL KASHRUTH: TRUSTING PUBLIC VS. PUBLIC TRUST ................

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ARTICLES Saul B ernstein , Editor M. M orton Rubenstein Reuben E. G ross Rabbi S. J. SharFman Libby K laperman

Editorial Associates J udith B en H illel

Editorial Assistant JEWISH LIFE is published bi­ monthly. Subscription two years $4.00, three years $5.50, four years $7.00, Supporter $10.00, Patron $25.00.

Editorial and Publication Office: 84 Fifth Avenue New York 11, N. Y. ALgonquin 5-4100 Published by U n io n of O rthodox J ewish Congregations of A merica M oses I. Feuerstein

President Benjamin Koenigsberg, Nathan K. Gross, Samuel L. Brennglass, Harold M. Jacobs, Herbert Ber­ man, Vice Presidents; Rabbi Joseph Karasick, Treasurer; Harold H. Boxer, Secretary; David Politi, Financial Secre­ tary.

Dr. Samson R. Weiss Executive Vice President Saul Bernstein, Administrator Second Class postage paid at New York, N . Y. March-April, 1963

TROUBLED A LLIES/ Emanuel Muravchik ...............

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WHEN IS A JEW NOT A JEW / Aryeh Newman ..........................

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A REMNANT OF A PROUD COMMUNITY/ S. B. U nsd orfer.......................................

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FAITH AND/OR REASON/ Justin Hofmann ...............

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EAST AND WEST IN ISRAEL/ Pinchas E. Lapide ........

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MARKING TIM E/ Sidney K a t z ...........................................................................

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SHORT STORY THE GREAT MOROR MERCHANT/ Israel PoleyeflF............................................................

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POETRY NEW DIMENSIONS, OR OLD?/ Lillian Ott ......................

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REVIEWS KAUFMANN’S REVERSAL OF HIGHER CRITICISM/ David S. S h a p iro .................................................................... 61 THE TANYA IN ENGLISH/ Gershon Kranzler .......................................

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DEPARTMENTS AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS.............................................

2 LIVING WATERS: Kiddush Hashem Through Israel’s Response/Bertrand G. F i n k ........................ 49 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ..................................................... 69

Drawings by Norman Nodel and Ahron Gelles Copyright 1963 by U N IO N O F O RTH O D O X JEW IS H C O N G R EG A TIO N S

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S. B. UNSDORFER, a previous contributor to Jewish Life, lives in London. He is on the editorial board o f the recentlylaunched “Jewish Tribune” and is editor o f the English youth magazine, “Haderech.” General Secretary of the Agudath Israel ; of Britain, he was born in Bratislava and studied at the Nitra and Pressburg Yeshivoth.

EMANUEL MUR AY CHIK, Director of the Anti-Discrimina­ tion Department of the Jewish Labor Committee, has been deeply involved in the struggle for both Negro and Jewish rights since 1947. He is a graduate of Columbia University s N ew College and has also pursued advanced studies at the New School for Social Research, H e is the author of the chapter “Unions and Minority Discrimination” in the standard textbook House of Labor. For the past two years he has been giving special attention to the problem o f Negro-Jewish relations.

D R. JUSTIN H O FM AN N was ordained at the Hebrew Theo­ logical College o f Chicago. He received his M.A. and Doctorate in Education at the University o f Buffalo, where he currently serves asr director o f the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation.

among our contributors

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PINCHAS E. LAPIDE, a Canadian by birth, left his home at the a g e ® sixteen to undergo training in England with Youth Aliya. He is the author o f “The Prophet o f San Nicandro, ’ which has been published in six languages and was awarded a literary prize by the Jewish Book Guild o f America. He is also the author of “The Pruning Hook,” which he wrote while on diplomatic service in Brazil. Mr. Lapide is at present coordinátor of an Interministerial Committee on ^Pilgrimage. His most recent book is “A Century o f U.S. Aliya,” RABBI SID NEY KATZ, born in Lithuania and reared in South Africa, studied at Jews’ College where he received Semichah, and at the University of London from which he was graduated with honors. He also holds a post-graduate degree in Semitic Languages from the University of Pretoria. He has served, since 1953, as spiritual leader o f the Pretoria United Hebrew Con­ gregation and has been honorary chaplain to the prisons o f the area for the past ten years. ~ I ARYEH NEW M AN, a frequent contributor to Jewish Lefe, was bom in England, is a graduate of the Gateshead Yeshiva, and holds an M.A. in English Literature from Cambridge. He is director o f the Jewish Agency’s Religious Education Pro­ grams for English-speaking countries and lecturer in the English Department of the Hebrew University. Mr. Newman is present­ ly on a two-year assignment for the Agency as the representa­ tive of its Department for Torah Education and Culture, in Australia and N ew Zealand.

RABBI ISRAEL POLÈYEFF is spiritual leader o f Congrega­ tion Tifereth Israel in N ew Castle, Pa. A graduate and musmach o f Yeshiva University, he served as a U.S. Army Chaplain in Japan for two years. His story in this issue is based upon an actual incident experienced by one of his congregants.

LILLIAN OTT, a present Californian and former Chicagoan, has won recognition among leading Jewish writers o f poetry.

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S oviet Jews and S oviet D isclaim ers OUNTING concern on both sides of the Iron Curtain about M the situation of Soviet Jewry has evidently made itself felt on high Soviet levels. Important segments of public opinion within Soviet borders, following expressions by some intellectuals of note, are stirring as awareness spreads of the government’s antirJewish policies and of the tacit encouragement of Jew-hate among the populace. Within the Free World, currents of opinion are strongly moved by the increasingly ominous problem, finding voice in national legislatures and the public press, and, not least important, in the councils of the United Nations. Under this pressure, Soviet authorities, recently including Premier Khru­ shchev himself, have been impelled to voice disclaimers of Anti­ semitism on the part of the Soviet Government. Special sig­ nificance may be found in the fact that the Soviet premier’s dis­ claimer, in the form-of a letter replying to one from Bertrand Russell and in a subsequent public address, received wide pub­ lication in the Soviet press. Such denials heretofore were con­ fined to the press of the non-Communist world. Therein may lie grounds for hope that the combination of internal and external reaction has reached the pitch of imposing a change, or at least a modification, of policy.

As yet, however, there has been no evidence of change. Such minor developments as the appearance of a Yiddish-language magazine and a Yiddish-language theater group—the first and only organs of “Jewish culture” to be permitted for years past —-can in themselves only be considered window-trimming.

The current visit to this country of eighteen leading Soviet churchmen serves as a pointed reminder of the disabilities, and worse, suffered by Soviet Jewry. The clergymen, representing seven Christian denominations, came with the sanction of their Pointed government to confer with the National Council of Churches, in Exam ple pursuance of the goal of Soviet-U.S. church cooperation. Obvi­ ously the Soviet authorities no less than the United States Gov­ ernment favor this purpose. The present visit is the second one

by Soviet Christian leaders, in exchange for similar visits to the Soviet Union by American church leaders. Similar exchanges and other contacts of various kinds are being permitted with Christian sources in other non-Communist lands. Soviet Moslem leaders too have been regularly permitted to make visits to their counterparts in other countries and to maintain contacts with Moslem organs outside the Soviet realm. Christian and Islamic March-April, 1963

groups alike are permitted to maintain central organizations and theological schools and to produce religious requisites. For Soviet Jews, in contrast, all such facilities are banned.

N the mind of every Jew, as he sits at his Seder table, will be the foreboding thought that for his brethren in the Soviet domains, Pharonic oppression is a grim reality of their daily lives. For them Yetziath Mitzrayim is not only the undying memory of the past blit the poignant hope for the future. A handful, perhaps, out of three million will be able to fulfill the mitzvah of partaking of Matzah; for all the rest, even the Bread of Affliction will be foreclosed, bakeries being once again for­ bidden to bake Matzoth because of “insufficient demand.” If a few Soviet Russian Jews have carefully cherished, tattered copies of the Hagodah, it is unlikely that their children can read them, classes in religious instruction being strictly forbidden.

Nor, whether during Yom Tov or year-round, whether on ShabPat fern both or on week-day, may more than a steadily diminishing few of join in congregational worship, since one after another the hand-B Extinction ful of synagogues which had been permitted to survive are being closed amidst a drumfire of propaganda vilification. And those wishing to offer the Service of Israel in private most likely are handicapped by the lack of Siddurim and Chumoshim, which may be neither printed nor imported.

In place of these and of all that the Jew incorporates within his life during Pesach and through the year, the Jew of the Soviet Union has only the knowledge of being singled out within Soviet society for the privilege of special discrimination. He knows that the identification card which designates him “Jew” entitles him to none of the rights or privileges granted to other religious, ethnic, or national groups; that an increasing range of categories of employment, official posts, and educational institutions are barred to him or his children; that amidst public denigrations of religion his own is the subject of special calumny; that he may, at any moment, be arrested under charges of “economic crimes” and put to death.

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HE grim travail of Soviet Jewry occurs in the context of epochal world tensions. Some, therefore, see Soviet antiJewish policies as enmeshed in the complexities of the world Power conflict, with Soviet Jewry placed in the familiar scapegoat role to serve some tactical objective of Russia’s rulers. An abate­ ment of world tensions, they hopefully surmise, will bring in its wake an improvement in the situation of Soviet Jews. It goes without saying that Jews share to the full that longing for an end to the Cold War which moves the hearts of multitudes the world over. As a matter of overriding human need, Jews must

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lend their best efforts to this purpose, entirely apart from any question of Jewish concern as such. But it would be a fatal mistake to view the problem of Soviet Antisemitism as insolu­ ble pending an abatement of the Cold War. A mood of “this thing is too big for us,” an attitude of resignation to the sup­ posedly inevitable, is precisely what Soviet leaders are seeking to foster. It would seal the doom of Soviet Jewry.

Before us, always, rises the remembrance of the destruction of European Jewry. None of us who lived in that day of calamity can ever be free from the tormented doubt: “What could we have done that we did not do, what might I have done that I Musf, failed to do, to help rescue those who were martyred?” With an Can , unshakable determination rising from yesterday^ memory, we Shall. must set out to rescue from silent but no longer bloodless destruc­ tion today’s victims. Not for a moment dare we play with rationalizing diversions from must, can, and shall.

Mighty as is the power of the Soviet leadership, they are not immune to the force of world opinion. However set upon the execution of their purposes, they still must reckon with the realities that confront them. What they face now, within Russia and beyond it, what they increasingly must be confronted with, is the refusal of people of conscience to permit the oppression and extinction of Soviet Jewry. They face, too, the spirit rising among Soviet Jews themselves. Though long cut off from Jewish nurture, though long dwelling in the shadows, their will to a Jewish life has endured and today finds new strength from their very trials. May the Ribbono Shel Olom, He who brought Israel forth from Egypt with miracles and wonders, reach unto them with mighty Hand and outstretched Arm.

European Jew ry9s New Leadership HE election of Admiral Louis Kahn as President of the Consistoire Central, the central organization of French Jewry, following that of Sir Isaac Wolfson as President of London’s United Synagogue, the premier Jewish congregational body in Britain, points to a significant turn in the religious outlook of the Jews of Western Europe. Men of notable personal achieve­ ment, both are known for deep commitment to a positive Torah ideology. In view of the cross-currents which have been at play in both countries during the years since World War II, the choice of these two for key lay leadership posts is a clear indication of where the representative forces among the Jews of France and Britain stand and the direction they are determined to pursue.

Through the past several years, Jews in Western Europe, as

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throughout the world, have been gearing themselves to cope with the upheavals of our time. Cataclysmic experiences, culminating generations of revolutionary change, have shaken the mind and soul of every Jew. Many, the staunch core, have emerged from the experience with clearer understanding, stronger faith, heightN eed ened purpose. Others, spiritually and intellectually adrift, grope far and stumble amidst a world of uncertainty. There is among them, Clear paradoxically, both an inarticulate hunger for Jewish truths and Direction a trepidant shying away from a life built on Jewish foundations.

Enmeshed in the debris of the past and the tangled growth of an unformed new era, they present at once the opportunity to redeem Jews for Judaism and the danger of inundating the Jew­ ish world with the chaotic forces which propel them. In this critical pass, the responsibilities of communal leadership must prove decisive.

ROM the records of Admiral Kahn and Sir Isaac, there is good reason for confidence in their will and capacity to bring to their respective communities the kind of leadership that the time requires. As an outstanding figure in naval science, as a foremost leader in the French Resistance during World War II, Admiral Kahn has proven himself a creative thinker and a man of dauntless purpose. Steeped in Jewish belief from childhood on, his Jewish life has been one with his public career; he has declared that all his past activities have served to intensify his Jewish conviction. Sir Isaac Wolfson, in turn, has risen to fore­ most rank in the business world and to high distinction in the fields of philanthropy and cultural and educational sponsorship while playing a major and notably constructive role in the up­ building of Jewish life. Throughout his life, he has held aloft the banner of orthodox Judaism, with proud dedication to the Tofah way of life.

The two face large and difficult tasks. All who are devoted to the forwarding of Jewish destiny will join in wishing them B’rochah V’hatzlochah in their coming endeavors.

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H otel K ashruth: Trusting P u blic vs. P u blic T rust ITH the resort and travel industries booming phenomenally, an anomaly of the current Jewish scene becomes more striking—and more painful—year by year. The Jewish-oriented facets of these industries are growing apace, notably including those which feature claims of Kashruth observance and, to an increasing extent, of Shemirath Shabboth. Yet only in a rela­ tively few cases are the claims sustained by responsible Hashgochah, resting otherwise solely on management assertions, Ob­ viously, resorts representing themselves as Kosher, not tc> speak

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of those stressing Sabbath observance, base their business on the patronage of religiously observant lews, £u$t as obviously, many who are rightfully insistent upon reliable certification of the foods and products used in their own homes papply no such criterion when on vacation. There can be no justification, for this lapse, which undermines both personal and communal religious standards.

In the resort and travel fields, just as in the case of massdistributed food products, the Jewish market is far larger and more important than the population proportion would indicate.

But the giant American food industry has: found authoritative Kashruth certification the indispensable key to the Jewish conUn fen able sumer’s acceptance, and key elements of the industry have had Double no hesitation in adapting their programs to this requirement. In Standard contrast, the large majority of purportedly Kosher resort estab­ lishments have persistently avoided independent Rabbinic super­ vision, with acquiescent patrons all too apt to take ownership claims on faith. This, of course, flies in the face of common sense and public interest. The circumstances that make responsible Hashgochah imperative at the food processing plant apply mani­ fold in places where entire meals are prepared and served daily, and on a large scale.

At the plant where food or household products are made, a given uniformity of production necessarily is entailed, and the raw materials and ingredients fall within a consistent pattern of specified range. The hotel kitchen (or steamship galley), in con­ tradistinction, produces widely varying meals made manually out of a constantly changing range of primary products and processed commodities, under conditions of individual, fluctu­ ating choice, and often in an atmosphere of high-pressure haste and flurry. This situation, in the absence of a process of authori­ tative, expert Rabbinic supervision, independent of management, creates endless possibilities of infractions of religious laws.

HERE is no valid basis whatsoever for anyone to invest religious trust in the management of unsupervised food­ serving establishments. This is with no disrespect to the private character of the owners or managers of such enterprises. They may be, and no doubt in some instances are, persons of estimable piety and integrity. But in the very nature of the case, expert Rabbinic guidance in meeting innumerable technical questions is necessary and supervision responsible to the Jewish community and not to Ownership is mandatory. In fact, there is every reason why the Kosher resort operator seeking in good faith to properly fulfill religious requirements should of his own volition and in his own best interest want recognized Hashgochah. It provides him with indispensable aid in the fulfillment of his responsibilities and a disinterested attestation which is a proud asset.

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Let no one be misled by any hotel-keeper’s protestations that Hashgochah is unnecessary in his case, he being both dependable All and expert. An hotel-keeper-—any hotel-keeper—is no more N eed qualified to pass on the hundred-and-one questions Qf religious Supervision law which arise than the rabbi of a congregation is to run a hotel. Nor is the situation met by the hotel-keeper assigning an employee as his “mashgiach.”

Blameworthy as hotels (and, let us note also, shipping lines) may be in failing to secure responsible Hashgochah, let there be no misunderstanding as to where the onus really lies. It rests with the Jewish public—above all, with orthodox Jewry, which sets the religious standard and pace in Jewish life. And among these, final responsibility lies with the leadership element. When distinguished rabbis and eminent lay leaders patronize a given establishment, the rank-and-file observant Jew takes this as a public sanction and follows their example. Since hotels catering to the leadership and the rank-and-file of the scrupulously ob­ servant so successfully “get away with it,” others beyond this pace-setting category deem themselves in a like position to “get away with it.” And so on down the line, a line that yields rich earnings out of misplaced and misused confidence. Hence, Kashruth-wise, the Jewish resort and travel industry has become —with a few shining exceptions—a shambles.

HE remedy, like the fault, lies with the religious public. If patronage is extended, as it should be, ohly to places which have proper Hashgochah, and is withheld, as it likewise should be, from establishments lacking such qualification, a change will occur in short order.

This method will be decisive as no other can be. Resort estab­ lishments are business enterprises responsible to the public, not private hobbies subject only to the whims of their owners. Their R em edy: prosperity, their very existence, is conditional upon their ability Patron fs to serve a public need in accordance with public standards. So Choice long as vacationers accept, by the fact of their patronage, a spurious standard, just so long will resort establishments be governed accordingly. No matter how often or how eloquently patrons may urge hotels to secure responsible supervision, their urgings will be without force so long as their patronage continues.

But tince the patronage ceases, the message is registered conclu­ sively. The hotel-keeper needs the vacationer more than the vacatioiier needs him. Once vacationers in numbers exercise their option not to go to unsupervised hotels—an option they are, after all, free to exercise!—the hotel-keeper will be obliged to pursue the one course that will bring his customers back: namely, to seek and qualify for the communally attested Kashruth standard that the interests of all demand.

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Troubled Allies

By EMANUEL MURAVCHIK

An analysis of current developments and underlying trends in relations between Jews and Negroes on the American scene.

OR some time now, there have been Street, a Jew, had rented an adjacent signs of a growing estrangement store to a Jewish restauranteur. The between the Negro and Jewish com­ prospect that this Jewish-owned res­ munities in America. As far back as taurant would compete with a Negro1959, we find a Negro newspaper, The owned establishment only a few doors Courier, provocatively featuring a front away brought a noisy demonstration page story: “Will Negro, Jewish Labor by Negro nationalists outside the thea­ Leaders War Over Civil Rights?” More ter, in which blatant antisemitic signs recently an official of the National As­ and slogans were featured. Thus, we sociation for the Advancement of find signs of Negro disaffection with Colored People (NAACP) made head­ Jews on all levels of the Negro com­ lines by telling a Congressional Sub- munity.

These public expressions of antiCommittee on Discrimination in Em­ ployment that Jewish leaders of the Jewish feeling, or as some call it, International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ “Negro Antisemitism,” have had their Union had more in common with repercussions in the Jewish com­ Jewish employers than with their munity. Those who believe the Jewish Negro and Puerto Rican members. civil rights agencies should stick to During last year’s hospital strike, the so-called “Jewish issues,” such as fight­ Negro press singled out the voluntary ing Antisemitism and discrimination Jewish hospitals for savage attack be­ against Jews in employment and hous­ cause they refused to bargain with ing, have seized on incidents of this their employees. The fact was over­ kind to critcize the agencies for wast­ looked that all voluntary hospitals, ing the community’s time, money, and whatever their religious affiliation, had energy on “Negro” causes. On a dif­ joined in rebuffing the union’s drive ferent level, Jack Rich, editor of the for recognition. And in Harlem several Hatworker Union’s newspaper, writing months ago, the news spread that the in the liberal bi-weekly New Leader, owner of the Apollo Theater on 125th warned the NAACP that it was in

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danger of losing the support of both the labor and liberal communities by its attacks on Jewish labor leaders in particular and organized labor in general.

Given this history of past coopera­ tion, with its real accomplishments, what has gone wrong in Negro-Jewish relationships and, to put it frankly, caused a mutual loss of trust?

HE deterioration in Jewish-Negro relations comes after many decades of close and fruitful cooperation be­ tween Jews and Negroes. Roots of this friendship go as far back as the period when the Negro in slavery identified his plight with the Jewish slaves in Egypt. Note the spiritual “Go Down, Moses,” and the slogan “Let my people go!” From the turn of the century there has been aware­ ness on the part of the more en­ lightened and politically advanced in both groups that they share a common problem as discriminated-against mi­ norities in the United States and in the Western world. There has been signifi­ cant identification of Jews not only with philanthropic assistance to Ne­ groes at an earlier period but even more with the struggle of the Negro for his rights.

From the earliest efforts at fair employment practices legislation on a Federal level, through the successful state and city campaigns for anti-dis­ crimination legislation, Jewish groups and the trade union groups, often act­ ing at the instigation of the Jewish Labor Committee and Jewish labor leaders, have played an active role, and often provided the bulk of the necessary finances, staff, and organized community support.

In the legal proceedings that led up to the Supreme Court’s historic school desegregation decision in 1954, the legal arguments presented by the NAACP’s brilliant general counsel, Thurgood Marshall, were supple­ mented and backed by the brief of the American Jewish Congress.

ET u s repeat the obvious—both Jews and Negroes are part of the American culture. There is ample re­ search showing that many Jews re­ flect in their attitudes the prevalent anti-Negro stereotype, just as many Negroes echo the prevalent anti-Jewish stereotype. While a larger proportion of Jews and Negroes do reject these prejudices, it is not rare for an indi­ vidual Jew or Negro to express preju­ diced attitudes toward the other group and yet to be particularly critical of the members of the other group for having prejudices against his group.

Although Antisemitism offers the Ne­ gro a fleeting and questionable identifi­ cation with the Christian white ma­ jority, it has never become a mass phenomenon because the white Jewhater is also the Negro’s oppressor.

One of the oldest sources of antiJewish resentment among Negroes is the stereotype of the Jew as economic exploiter. In the Negro ghettos of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, the working and lower-income-class Ne­ gro meets the Jew as an employer in the factory or household, as shop­ keeper, landlord, or rent collector, as doctor, dentist, or lawyer. Such rela­ tionships, which are sometimes ex­ ploitative, tend to produce friction.

In h is o p p re s sio n , th e N e g ro as worker, as consumer, as tenant, may look upon all Jews as exploiters. The Negro shopkeeper and businessman sees his Jewish counterparts as compet­ itors, already entrenched in the one place where he feels he has a chance —the Negro neighborhoods.

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HILE such an attitude among lower-income-class urban Ne­ groes is not new, the rapid growth of anti-Jewish feeling among the expand­ ing class of Negro professionals is especially striking. Unsure of their new status, and forced into fierce eco­ nomic competition, they strike out at their closest competitors, those who are already standing on the rung of the profession ladder which they feel it is their right to occupy. From time to time, the Negro newspapers mirror these feelings, or rather, cater to them.

For example, on November 28, 1958, the Amsterdam News, a New York Negro weekly, intimated editorially that “one particular racial group” (Jews) dominated the radiology de­ partments of New York City hospitals, and denounced the Hospital Depart­ ment for denying promotion to a qualified Negro while filling a vacancy with a member from this same group.

A major source of bitterness among Negroes is the resistance and resent­ ment they have encountered when moving into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. The general reaction of Jews has been flight to the suburbs.

And, it must be said, statistics bear this contention out. In New York City, the net out-migration of whites from Manhattan, the Bronx, and Brooklyn was about one million be­ tween 1949 and 1955. Almost half— 505,000—were Jews, though Jews were only about 35% of the white population in 1940.

Middle class Negroes, especially, feel this as a rebuff. Themselves seek­ ing to escape the social disorganiza­ tion of the ghetto slum, they feel that despite the economic and educational status they have achieved, they are also shunned. Moreover, when Ne­ groes try to move into the suburbs and see that builders exclude them

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from new housing developments, they find it particularly exasperating when some of the builders have obviously Jewish names. The crime is com­ pounded in their eyes by acts of social discrimination. There was a tremen­ dous stir in the Negro press when Jackie Robinson was refused member­ ship in a predominantly Jewish club in Stamford, Connecticut. Negroes cannot understand why Jews, them­ selves victims of social exclusion, practice it against another minority.

F course, many of these phenom­ ena do not have their roots in Negro-Jewish relations, but have other causes—economic or social. Thus, the presence of a number of Jews in the capacity of employer of Negroes, or as landlord or storekeeper in colored neighborhoods, is itself a consequence of the pattern of discrimination and economic restriction which has forced Jews into marginal economic activi­ ties. The entrepreneur-minded Jew, ex­ cluded by established business inter­ ests and with small savings as capital, found an outlet in open seasonal, lowwage business enterprises capable of appealing only to the least skilled workers, or in investment in lowestcost housing properties.

Workers and tenants fitting these categories were not in all periods pre­ dominantly Negro. In the earlier dec­ ades they were predominantly Jews.

While not excusing either exploitation or slums, it is important to realize that what we are dealing with is not a Negro-Jewish situation in its roots, but an economic situation.

Similarly, the migration of Jews to the suburbs was not caused merely by the influx of Negroes in their neigh­ borhoods. In their increasing pros­ perity, Jews turned from the struggle for survival to the search for higher

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social status, better living conditions, and greater acceptance in the Ameri­ can middle-class. There is no doubt that where Negroes have moved into formerly all-Jewish neighborhoods, the hostility and fear shown by the Jews has not been different from that shown by other whites in other neighbor­ hoods.

The Negro has been blamed for conditions over which he has no con­ trol—overcrowded housing, deteriora­ tion of the public schools, and a greater incidence of violence. In such neighborhoods, Jews and Negroes have remained strangers. By and large, Jewish and Negro community leaders have not sought each other out and initiated “dialogues” that could lead to greater mutual understanding.

As a result of this fear and hostility, one Jewish leader in the civil rights field has noted a new opposition in the Jewish community to public school integration, fair housing practice acts, and an indifference to Federal civil rights legislation protecting the Ne­ groes’ right to vote. Today, there is a wider gap than before between the informed and conscious leadership of the Jewish community and the rank and file.

OULD we be correct in con­ cluding then, that current antiJewish feelings among Negroes are the cause of the breach between the Negro and Jewish communities and their leaderships? The truth is that “Negro Antisemitism” is an ambigu­ ous creature which is not everything it seems to be. It is first and foremost a sign of the Negro’s frustration and distress. It is secondly anti-white rather than anti-Jewish, in the main.

When the Negro is antagonistic to the Jew, it is primarily as a symbol or

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surrogate. If a Negro chooses the Jew as a symbol of the white society which he feels oppresses him, it is because he has more frequent contact with him. Where more frequent contact has been established with other ethnic groups, as the Italians in New Orleans, it is they who are sometimes singled out for Negro hostility.

A genuine and unique form of Ne­ gro Antisemitism is that of the ex­ treme Negro nationalists. But were their movement to gain currency among the Negro masses, which is very far from the case now, it would only be the sign of an approaching and catastrophic racial conflict be­ tween white and Negro.

To explain the current Negro-Jewish tensions we must look elsewhere: to the profound and complex changes taking place inside the Negro com­ munity. The Northern Negro com­ munity is completely dissatisfied with the pace of the movement toward full equality. For it has now become clear that full equality is not only possible but is in fact destined to be achieved.

It is quite normal that every Negro should feel that he must have his full equality in all areas right now —not tomorrow, but today. He feels it intolerable to be asked to wait through years of judicial litigation and decades of the implementation of vic­ tories presumably already won from legislatures, courts, industrial enter­ prises, and trade unions. He cannot accept that because of the power of traditional procedures, the inertia and unconcern of the vast majority, as well as the antagonism of a small group of racists, each individual new opportunity in each county, in each school house, in each factory, in each skill, in each union, must be opened individually. Furthermore, he can no longer tolerate the limitations which JEWISH LIFF

exist today as the hangover or residue of discriminations of yesterday. He does not wish to have less opportunity today because of the lesser educational training or seniority he was permitted to acquire yesterday. He wishes not only to have equality of opportunity at jobs, at leadership, and in com­ munity standing but compensatory opportunity to make up for that which he is denied today due to discrimina­ tions he was forced to suffer yesterday.

If he does not have full equality now, it must be because of the inade­ quacy of the methods, the lack of militancy of his leadership which had in fact won him what he has already gained, the untrustworthiness or in­ sincerity of those who claim to be his allies. Today there is a pervasive feel­ ing in the Negro community that white, liberal, labor, Jewish allies must be ditched, Negro leaders must be switched, and new “militant” methods must be found.

Possibly the greatest pressure for some unclear, new kind of militant action comes from the cancerous problem of unemployment among Ne­ groes. What good are Supreme Court victories on the admission of Negroes to previously segregated schools, or the breaking of voting barriers in cer­ tain counties in the deep South, when in fact the Negro breadwinner cannot support his family and clothe and feed his children?

The vast majority of Negroes who are unskilled endure a bleak present and face a possibly even bleaker fu­ ture. The gains made in employment during World War II, and the period immediately following, have been wiped out in good part. Today, the rate of unemployment among Negroes is twice that among whites. Negroes who are unemployed are not inter­ ested in the abstractions of social jus­ tice. They may applaud the coura­ geous Negro students in the South, but their pressing need is jobs. They believe it is discrimination in hiring, HIS feeling is a product of com­ and not the depressed economy or the plex and contradictory conditions. spread of automation that keeps them Negroes are aware of their political from employment. They want their power which rests on the sheer weight leaders to act now against discrimina­ of numbers. Nine million Negroes— tion and produce jobs at decent wages half their total number—live outside that will liberate them from bare sub­ the deep South; the largest centers of sistence on unemployment or welfare Negro population are now in the or utterly wretched sub-standard jobs.

North. There are almost one million A great deal of attention has been Negroes in New York City alone, paid to the racist extremism of the more than any other city in the coun­ nationalist Black Muslim movement. try. The half million Negroes in Phila­ But it is just as important to note that, delphia constitute from 20-25% of like all previous Negro nationalist the city’s population; in Newark, they movements in this country which are now one-third. gained any following, this one gives, This concentration of Negroes in or promises to give, its followers the large cities of the North has ac­ something immediate and tangible. celerated and intensified the political The Muslim movement opens shops process inside the Negro commtmity; and enterprises and puts its followers by its sheer weight and mass it exerts to work. This is one of the secrets of a constant pressure on Negro leaders. its attraction for lower-class Negroes

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who feel utterly excluded from society.

On the other hand, the restlessness, bitterness (and Antisemitism) of the new and growing middle-class of pro­ fessionals, businessmen, and educated Negroes is not caused by poverty, but by the desire to be in, to be a part of the Establishment; many of its mem­ bers have attained a measure of mate­ rial success; what they want now is status and recognition; whether they are doctors, would-be community lead­ ers or politicians, they seek a share in the power and privileges that accrue to those who are part of the accepted leadership group in the general com­ munity. This is one of the drives be­ hind the demand of the new “mili­ tants” for an “independent” Negro leadership. And it is clear that it feeds upon and gains its social force from the utterly different economic dissatis­ factions of the Negro mass.

T the leadership level, too, there is one group within the Negro community which experiences great dissatisfaction at this moment. This is that faction whose concern is more for their own position as leaders within the group than it is for the welfare of the group as a whole. The same thing is to be found to some extent in all leadership groups. During the period when the struggle for equal rights for Negroes was a hopeless cry, pursued only by idealistic Negro and white leaders, those who make a profession out of communal leadership neither played a role in these struggles nor felt that the leadership in these struggles was serious competition to their personal goals and aspirations within the community. Some built themselves secure positions within Negro community institutions. Others found themselves placed as the inter­ mediary between the ruling group of

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white society and the Negro people.

Some played both these roles while either giving lip service to the Negro civil rights leadership or actually op­ posing these leaders and serving as apologists for segregation. Today, with the changed picture, these same types, these same elements, sometimes the very same individuals, voice militant criticism of the old Negro civil rights leadership. Now to retain their control as leaders within the group, or their positions as the intermediaries between groups, they must displace the liberal Negro leadership which has carved out the path to equal rights for the Negro people.

It is under the pressure of these complex forces that the Negro civil rights leadership has been driven into conflict with its ‘liberal” allies, among them the Jewish civil rights groups and the organized labor movement.

Attacked by Negro “militants” and racist extremists for its “failures,” Negro leadership is forced to shift the blame to its white, liberal allies for their shortcomings in the struggle for civil rights. It is far simpler to do this than to tell a sorely-beset unemployed Negro that he and the Negro com­ munity must join labor and the liber­ als in a general political struggle for a vigorous government policy of eco­ nomic expansion. And if the Jewish civil rights forces seem to bear the major part of this attack, it is because they have played so important a role in the civil rights struggle; and because it is against them Negro leaders feel they must assert their “independence” in their thrust for leadership.

T should be recognized, then, that a period of mutual irritation and conflict lies ahead for the Jewish and Negro communities. Inevitably, there will be excess, and from some quarters

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JEWISH LIFE

expressions of “Antisemitism.” Re­ sponsible Jewish leadership will be obliged to repel uncalled-for attacks and to state fundamental issues as they see them to be. But they will also understand that at this moment in what has been called the Negro Revo­ lution, some conflict and irritations are to be expected.

The Jewish community and com­ munity relations groups must not overstate the nature and depth of the current conflict. The two communities have too important interests in com­ mon to permit themselves to fall into sterile, intramural warfare. Both re­ main insecure minorities and continue to suffer the indignities and penalties of discrimination (in the United States today, the Negro more, the Jew less).

Both are deeply committed to the same goals of integration in a demo­ cratic society and social justice. They are bound together by a past history of fruitful cooperation from which each has benefited.

What is needed now is understand­ ing on both sides and a practical pro­ gram of enlightenment within each community that will make for a re­ newed and healthier rapprochement.

The responsibility of leadership on both sides is great. The Jewish com­ munity must not lose its broad vision that Jewish interests are tied inevitably to all minority interests and to the total community interests. While the Jewish community and its leadership cannot be held responsible for the abuses of individual slum-landlords, employers, shopkeepers, or profession­ als who happen to be Jewish, it must persist in the fight for better housing enforcement laws, a greater supply of housing, decent minimum wage laws, improved public schools, i.e., for a general improvement in community standards, as well as additional civil Marcfi-April, 1963

rights legislation and more complete enforcement of present legislation.

Within the Jewish community, Jewish leadership must fight the baneful ste­ reotype of the Negro as an inferior.

This can be done through a patient process of education and by encourag­ ing continuing contact between local Negro and Jewish spokesmen on a peer to peer basis—equals to equals.

The Negro community must be shown by our daily deeds that it can look to the Jewish community for under­ standing and support.

N the Negro side, its leadership O must unconditionally reject Anti­ semitism, direct or indirect, as a weap­ on of social struggle in any of its forms. So long as Antisemitism is a phenomenon within Negro life, the leadership has a responsibility to es­ pecially acknowledge the contribution of the Jewish community toward the struggle of the Negro people for equal­ ity. The advanced Negro leader must help to enlighten his community to understand that the source of slums, and exploitation, is to be found in society at large and its institutions.

This leadership must guide the com­ munity towards a wider social and political perspective, to an awareness that the problems faced by Negroes are not just Negro problems and can­ not be resolved solely within the framework of the civil rights struggle.

If this is not done, then the victory of Negro equality will mark the end of the Negro movement as a positive force in society. American history has already seen the examples of other ethnic groups which, when they were discriminated against, fought vigorous­ ly on the side of equal rights, social progress, and liberalism, but after having gained acceptance as ethnic 15

equals, became a bulwark of conserva­ tism or reaction, and in fact a barrier to the equality of other groups. fWe know that none of the serious Negro civil rights leadership today would be happy with this fate, but to achieve this broader outlook the tempered Negro leadership must never permit its followers to forget that the fight for Negro equality and integration is, itself an integral part of the struggle for fuller democracy and a better America.

The Negro’s fight today is just an aspect, although the most important domestic aspect, of the general struggle for equality and freedom in the world.

Alongside of this, the problems which are besetting Negroes and Jews in their relationship to each other at this moment seem like a small incident.

It is only a shadow cast by the for­ ward movement of the Negro com­ munity and its changing relationship to the general community.

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JEWISH LIFE

!

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1 f

When Is a Jew Not a Jew

By ARYEH NEWMAN

Does the recent Israeli Supreme Court Decision in the “ Brother Daniel” case conflict with Halochah?

any readers of Jewish L ife must

some of them puzzled. This puzzle­

Israel when its Supreme Court was called upon to decide, in what may be called “the strange case of Brother Daniel,” as to whether he was entitled to automatic citizenship of the State of Israel under the historic Law of Return— Chok Ha-shevuth. Here was a man who had undoubtedly been born and brought up as a Jew, who had demonstratively left the faith of his forefathers during the Nazi holo­ caust and had become a devoted and we may even say fanatic adherent of the Catholic Church, and now claims a privilege accorded by the reborn Jewish state to all Jews who choose to come back to the land of their forefathers.

The court’s decision by a majority of four to one refusing his application and proclaiming Oswald Rufeisen a “nationless” person and not a Jew under the terms of the Law of Return must have been accepted by readers with a sigh of relief and approval. A closer look must nevertheless have left

where and is one which finds its ex­ pression in the reasoned decision of the learned Judge Silberg, who worded the majority decision of the court.

Judge Silberg noted the paradox that if he had regarded the question to be decided according to Din Torah— Jewish Religious law—he would have had no doubt that there could be only one obvious decision. In Halachic principle, once a Jew always a Jew. No baptism, no apostasy can ever change the personal status of a son of Abraham, in Judge Silberg’s under­ standing of Torah law. But the learned judge took the stand that here was a purely “secular” question. How did the secular law, passed by the Knesseth, known as the “Law of Return” understand the word “Jew”? After much disquisition and heart-searching four of the judges decided that the word “Jew” in the popular non-Halachic sense excluded one who had converted to another religion. One judge, Haim Cohen, dissented and maintained that

have followed with intense in­ ment and note of uneasiness is one M terest the recent cause célèbre in shared by many orthodox Jews every­

March-April, 1963

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purely subjective considerations should apply—a Jew was one who claimed to be one.

HIS takes us back to the famous Who-is-a-Jew controversy of four years ago, which shook the whole Jewish world. At that time the leftwing Israeli Minister of the Interior had wished to register as Jews the chil­ dren of non-Jewish mothers if their parents so wished, without any formal conversion but purely by declaration.

The chief advocate of the legality of this claim was again Mr. Haim Cohen, then the Attorney General, and on that occasion too he was in a minority.

Mr. Ben Gurion, Israel’s Prime Minis­ ter, chose to consult fifty noted Jews in various lands—rabbis, professors, writers, scientists, judges— to define who is a Jew. The overwhelming con­ sensus of opinion was that a Jew can only be defined in Halachic terms— the offspring of a Jewish mother or one formally converted by the tradi­ tional rites of immersion, and, in the case of a male, circumcision.

Judge Silberg and his colleagues have now added another “secular” criterion of “Who is a Jew.” And the immediate cause of their decision was the refusal of the religious Minister of the Interior to register Oswald Rufeisen as a Jew in his identity card.

Mr. Moshe Shapiro, the Minister in question, was willing to consider his application for Israeli citizenship on the same basis as other non-Jewish residents of Israel, but not on the basis applicable to Jews. In other words, a religious Minister who accepted the authority of the orthodox Rabbinate found himself forced to repudiate the Jewish status of a person who could be deemed a Jew in terms of Halochah, and applied to the secular court to give a ruling on who is a Jew!

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HUS we see one of the paradoxes of the Israeli situation. On the one hand we have the clear, exclusive juris­ diction of the Rabbinate in matters of marriage or divorce which, have to be regulated in accordance with Din Torah, No non-ecclesiastic body may intervene. It is the Beth Din which decides whether a person is a Jew for the purposes of marriage or divorce.

They cannot, as Judge Silberg did, examine the history and conscience of the Jewish people and decide that the latter could not stomach the idea of an apostate being recognized as a Jew. The Beth Din must consult the Shulchon Oruch and decide exclusively in objective Halachic terms.

On the other hand, we have laws legislated by the Knesseth—by a ma­ jority of its members— applying to “Jews.” The classic instance is the Law of Return. Now, how are we to interpret the word “Jew” in this con­ text? According to Din Torah as in the case of personal status elsewhere?

Or according to another criterion?

Jurists have a great reluctance to ac­ cept the idea of one term having dif­ ferent connotations. At the same time a believing Jew can have only one criterion for Jewishness—the Halachic one; and yet a mumar—the Hebrew word for apostate—is certainly not entitled to privileges accorded to Jews.

Judge Silberg who is an expert on matters of personal status, saw no other way to solve the problem of Rufeisen’s personal status than by lay­ ing down two mutually exclusive cri­ teria for Jewishness—one “secular,” one “religious.” He refused to accept the argument advanced by the Attor­ ney General to the effect that in many cases Rabbinic law does not regard a mumar as a Jew. Marshalling an im­ pressive list of cases from the Re-

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JEWISH LIFE

sponsa on the subject, Judge Silberg, this former Slobodka iluy, showed that the mumar was definitely a Jew even if he was denied certain privi­ leges, and the question before him was whether Rufeisen could be entered as Jew in the space reserved for “nation­ ality” in the Israeli identity card. The Jewish people would not recognize a Catholic as a Jew and therefore that space must be left empty.

HERE have been many letters in the Israeli press from rabbis and laymen contesting Silberg’s analysis and quoting chapter and verse where a mumar is equated with an idolator and cut off from the Jewish people, and it has been suggested that the Rabbinate be consulted for an au­ thoritative opinion. But it would per­ haps be enlightening for readers to remember the classification of our Torah legislators from Rambam on­ wards on this subject. The question of personal status is clearly separated in Rambam’s famous Code “Mishneh Torah” from the treatment to be meted out to “heretics and apostates.” Per­ sonal status is dealt with in the Laws of Forbidden Relations (Issurey Bi’a) where it is clearly laid down who is a Jew and who not a Jew and how one may become a Jew. Under those terms it seems clear that one born of a Jewish mother remains a Jew—even though he turns apostate.

But if the title “Jew” which Rufeisen so stoutly claims is his according to the Torah he has repudiated, this itself qualifies him for the most abhorrent epithet that can be applied to a Jew. By his own actions and declarations he belongs with those defectors from Judaism enumerated in Rambam’s Laws of Idolators and Repentance.

They include: the A pikoros—one who

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denies Prophecy, repudiates the mes­ sage of Moses, and maintains that G-d does not know of the doings of men; the Min—one who denies existence of G-d and of a ruler of the world or maintains that there are two supreme forces (Dualism) or maintains the corporeality of G-d, or who worships Him through a mediator; the Massi— the misleader of others into idolatry; the Mumar—one who deliberately and consistently violates a specific precept of the Torah or who accepts another religion for reasons of convenience.

For all these see Rambam Code, Teshuvah 3, 6 to the end of the chap­ ter. Though our greatest scholars of today, such as the late Chazon Ish and Rabbi Kook, have doubted whether there exists today the category of apikoros, as it did in the days of the Talmud, there can be little doubt that a self-styled missionary such as Brother Daniel who avowedly spends his time weaning his fellow Jews away from their ancestral faith is “to be regarded as an idolator in every respect and is not to be regarded as belonging to Israel for any positive purposes and we do not accept their repentance.”

(Hilchoth Akum 2:5) In other words his status is not affected, but he forfeits all the privi­ leges accorded to Jews. In actual fact we have a well-known contradiction pointed out to the Rambam in his life­ time and answered by him regarding the treatment of apostates. In his Laws of Repentance he states: “All apos­ tates and the wicked and the like, once they have repented whether pub­ licly or privately are accepted, as it is stated: ‘Return ye backsliding chil­ dren.’—though they are still in the category of ‘backsliding’ they are ac­ cepted.” The answer he gives is that the community can never treat an 19

apostate as a sincere repentant but must always view him with suspicion.

Yet, he who is redeemed from apos­ tasy can be reconciled to G-d who knows the inmost recesses of a person’s heart. But what G-d can do the com­ munity can never do. Rufeisen is a Jew who has cut himself off from the community but can never release him­ self from the obligation to mend his ways. But what about the writing of the word “Jew” in that all-important space in the Israeli identity card?

T is here that we have the crux of the whole problem. The identity card with its separate space for “reli­ gion” and “nationality” is foreign to Judaism. It is indeed a secular docu­ ment and this classification is anoma­ lous to Judaism, in which nationality cannot be separated from religion. No Rabbinate can accept this separation and the filling in of the space “nationity” with the word “Jew” and the “religion” space with the word “Cath­ olic,” or “Moslem” for that matter, could not affect the norms of Halochah.

The Law of Return is indeed a privilege and as such is naturally forfeited by the Jew who has cut himself off from his people. We may draw a parallel from the law of inheritance. The apos­

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tate as a Jew is entitled to inherit his father’s estate but in actual fact for­ feits such right. Many of our authori­ ties take the view that mi-din Torah he does inherit but the rabbis have penalized him and confiscated the estate, exercising their right to con­ fiscate any form of property or goods.

Similarly the Law of Return in­ volves all kind of privileges that go with automatic citizenship but the State denies them to the apostate or renegade Jew in self-protection with­ out in any way denying that ultimately the person involved is a Jew. In actual fact Jewish religious law enjoins us to expel apostates from the Holy Land and not to harbor them.

Anomalies will continue to face the Jewish people both in Israel and the Diaspora, legal puzzles will constantly surprise and sometimes shock us so long as there are realms and persons who do not accept the oneness of Jewish life, who distinguish between secular and sacred. But whatever anomalous form the present decision was couched in, it nevertheless affirms in practice the withholding of the privileges of the Jewish state from him who has embraced another reli­ gion, and repudiated all that is sacred to the Jew.

JEWISH LIFE

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A Remnant of a Proud Community

By S. B. UNSDORFER L ondon

HE visit to London in January of an official delegation representing the Board of Deputies of Jews in Hun­ gary brought back to mind a people who were once a powerful and proud part of Europe: Hungarian Jewry.

The highlight of the ten-day stay of the Hungarian leaders was their addresses from the platform of the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Apart from Board members, leaders of all Anglo-Jewish organizations and communal establishments were invited to attend the meeting and participate in a reception which followed.

The visitors certainly made a very brave effort to convince their listeners of the existence of a free and unre­ stricted Jewish life in Hungary today.

Yet, one couldn’t but shrink back in pity as one heard Dr. Geza Seifert (Vice-President of the Central Coun­ cil of Hungarian Jewry and one of Hungary’s foremost criminologists) de­ clare in his Yiddish address: “After the Almighty, our thanks must go to the glorious Red Army for having liberated us from the hands of the Nazi oppressors.”

One felt that these words were not really intended for the leaders of Anglo-Jewry but were meant for the

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March-April, 1963

high officials of the Hungarian Em­ bassy who were also present at the invitation of the Board.

The same applied to the statement

by Dr. Endre Sos (leader of the dele­ gation and a renowned journalist who is on the staff of a leading national newspaper) who declared: “For the first time in a thousand years, the Jews of Hungary have both religious free­ dom and complete civic equality.”

One certainly does not want to of­ fend these people, who must obviously be subject to great mental strain when addressing an English audience on matters of free speech and equality.

But, again one felt that the words by the President of the Central Council were carefully styled to be fit for re­ export into Hungary.

ET, it would be wrong if I were Y to create the impression that the visitors appeared to be completely un­ der “text book” orders. It would be more true to say that, after all these years of life under the hammer and sickle, they have readjusted their way of thinking to such an extent that statements like the ones quoted above are uttered as a matter of course.

21

Exterior view of the D ohany S treet S y n ag o g u e. Built in I860, it h o u ses the h e a d ­ q u arters of H ungary 's Jew ish com m unity. A Jew ish cultural center a n d m useum w a s a d d e d in 1910.

Indeed, at a Breakfast with the Ex­ ecutive of the British Agudath Israel one morning, there was a completely open and frank discussion about the closure of a vast number of synagogues all over Hungary. But both Dr. Sos and Dr. Seifert reassured their hosts that the only, though very tragic, rea­ son for these closures is the absence of worshippers. The synagogues, they explained, stand empty and disused, particularly in the provinces, and their maintenance has become a burden for the community. It was therefore the decision of the Jewish community, arid not of the Government, to sell these houses of worship and to use the proceeds for the charitable and social programs of the community. Obvi­ ously, synagogues which were origi­ nally intended to cater to over 800,000 Jews, cannot possibly be made full use of by a population that has shrunk to 22

less than 100,000— and of these only a small percentage are actually syn­ agogue-goers.

Unlike the Soviet Union, where there is an obvious demand for the synagogues which are reportedly being shut all over the country, Hungary no longer has sufficient Jews for its syna­ gogues. The visitors were at pains to assure the Agudah leaders that wher­ ever a minyon of Jews reside, a syna­ gogue is maintained and stands at their disposal.

Yes, today Hungary’s synagogues lie desolate, empty . . . bereft of the multitudes who once made the very name of Hungarian Jewry synonymous with vibrant, fervent Jewishness.

HE term “Hungarian Jew,” as used in the world today, is broad­ ly inclusive of the Jews of the pre-

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1918 Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. At that time “Hungarian Jewry” num­ bered well over one million and in­ cluded those of Austria, Czechoslo­ vakia, parts of Yugoslavia and Rumania, and of course, Hungary. It was a Jewry which, beginning about 150 years ago, developed a new and rather unique pattern of orthodox communal life under the leadership of the saintly Chasam Sofer, his succes­ sors, and his disciples.

The real Hungarian Jew, however, is the Magyar, the native of Hungary itself. And the present generation of Magyar Jews went through a period of “double trouble”^ over the past twenty-five years. The fact that in 1963 an official delegation of the Hungarian Jewish community is visit­ ing London testifies in itself to the continued vitality of that Jewry, after all the tragic vicissitudes of these past years. In Hungary itself, it is a rem­ nant of a remnant that has survived.

The rest of the Hungarian Shearith Hap’leytah is scattered over the globe.

ODAY one finds pre- and post­ war Hungarian refugees in every single country of Jewish settlement.

In many lands, particularly the United States and Britain, they have enriched organized Jewish life by their vitality and enthusiastic enterprise, by their fidelity to Jewish customs and tradi­ tion, by their warm and deep-rooted Jewishness, Of course they will never manage to shake off completely their Hun­ garian origin. Though most of them are well established in their new lands and have settled down in commerce, industry, and the professions, the very moment they say “Hello,” you are struck by that strong accent that so unmistakably, and lastingly, marks the Hungarian. Not that the Hungarian Jew is troubled about his Magyar ac­ cent— quite the contrary, in fact. He takes pride in being immediately iden­ tifiable as one of a distinctive element within the Jewish spectrum. He is con­ sciously proud of the record of Hun­ garian Jewry—a Jewry that served our

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In the dining h all of the B u dapest Jew ish Home for the A ged, w hich is su b sid ized by the H u n g arian governm ent.

March-April, 1963

23

as German Jews gave blood and life for the German fatherland. Yes, they gave their lives for the countries which twenty-five years later threw their chil­ dren out to be murdered in Auschwitz.

In the 1870’s—otherwise an era of peace and prosperity—a bitter intercommunal battle broke out within the Jewish community. The wind of change from Germany had blown the air of modern “Progressive Judaism” into the country and the “new spirit” EWS are known to have lived in declared its challenge to the traditions Hungary nearly a thousand years. of old. The battles were fought not Their history has been typical of the only within the walls of communal “popular mixture” of Jewish life in buildings but before the Government Exile. Through the centuries, and and Parliament. Eventually, both sides down to the present day, their for­ emerged with a partial victory. The tunes and misfortunes have fluctuated State granted recognition to two in accordance with the mood of the official Jewish communities and Hun­ regime in power, on the reading of garian Jewry was divided into “Ortho­ the mercury of the century’s economy, dox” and “Neolog” camps. and the ebb and flow of religious, ideological, and political tensions.

HEN the Eichmann Commandos Thus when revolution shattered the occupied Hungary in the Spring country in 1848, Jewish blood flowed of 1944, they found nearly a million freely on the grounds that the Jews Jews living uneasily in their homes were not sufficiently patriotic. When throughout the land. The Nazis did Czarist Russia helped to crush that not have much time at their disposal. revolution years later, Jewish blood German fronts were collapsing East flowed again—this time for being too and West, and the Eichmanns made a patriotic. There was nothing that the record “clearance” of the entire Hun­ Jews themselves could do about it. garian provincial Jewish population Every revolution needs a scapegoat in a matter of a few months. They and so does every defeat, and who is were shipped to Auschwitz at the rate easier at hand than the Jew? of 13,000 per day. Only the Jews of The same was true during World Budapest managed to escape mass de­ War I. There were those who blamed portation by the historic fact that the the Jew for being too loyal to the Hungarian ruler, Admiral Horthy, Monarchy and there were others who called out the army to oppose the accused them of being too sympathetic mass extermination of nearly 150,000 towards the enemy. Jewish homes and Jews who were estimated to have businesses were looted, set on fire, de­ sought refuge in the capital. But thou­ stroyed. And whilst all this confusion sands of them had nevertheless been went on inside the country, Jewish dragged to Auschwitz by sudden S.S. soldiers battled bravely on the war swoops on synagogues, kosher restau­ fronts, giving their blood and life for rants, and other places of Jewish the Hungarian mother-country, just assembly. Countless other Jews had Jewish heritage loyally and with de­ votion for many centuries, that over the years produced men of name and fame in the fields of Torah-learning, scholarship, medicine, literature, music, and the arts. Indeed, a Jewry that even after all the terrible mis­ fortunes which befell it in recent his­ tory, still conducts the finest and best organized Jewish communal life in the whole of Eastern Europe.

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JEWISH LIFE

Survivors of H u n g a ria n Jew ry w itn ess trib u te to the m em ory of those w ho p erish ed in concentration cam p s a t the site of w h a t w a s the w all of the B u dapest ghetto in 1944-5.

been lined up along the Danube and machine-gunned into the river under the cover of a nightly blackout.

The war over, the Jews of Hungary —those who survived in Budapest and those who were repatriated from the camps—began the difficult task of re­ building. Imbued with that deep sense of communal cohesiveness which they inherited from their ancestors, they produced within a very short period a new, lively, and pulsating Jewish communal life in Budapest and in a number of other cities. Jewish shops re-opened; small-holders re-took pos­ session of the land which had been in their families for generations; syna­ gogues, communal kitchens, schools, and all the rest were restored and things in general began to take shape and form, and there was more than a March-April, 1963

good chance for the building of a bright new future on the pyres of the old.

And just when everything was in bloom, in 1949, came the Stalinist total clamp-down of the Iron Curtain and the bright lights of hope were lost in the grey shadows of absolute Com­ munism. The shops were again taken away, so too were the farms and fac­ tories. Jews were ordered out of Buda­ pest into small provincial villages and all contact with the outside world was cut off.

This situation persisted for seven years until the sudden uprising in 1956. Again caught between opposing forces, those who could fled in search of freedom and a new life. The re­ mainder, after grim trials, managed to piece together once more the frag­ ments of Jewish life.

25

ODAY Hungary’s Jews are united under one central roof organiza­ tion which is predominantly in the hands of the less orthodox leaders, namely the men who visited London, Dr. Sos, Dr. Beneshofsky, and Dr. Seifert—though there is still an auton­ omous orthodox section which works in harmony with the rest of the com­ munity. The entire Jewish populace is now estimated to be between 80,000 and 90,000— a sad, sad remnant of the one million of 1943-4.

In Budapest there are today four kosher butcher shops, with three Shoch’tim and four Mashgichim re­ sponsible for Shechitah and Kashruth.

They, in turn, stand under the juris­

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diction of a full Beth Din over which Rabbi Moshe Weiss presides. In addi­ tion, there is a national Vaad Harabonim under the chairmanship of Rabbi Moshe Nathan Schueck who, incidentally, paid a private visit to London in December 1962. There is also a Talmud Torah with some 300 children; a junior Yeshivah attended by twenty-seven students; and fifteen large and small synagogues open for daily services in various parts of the capital. The community publishes its fortnightly Jewish newspaper entitled Uj Elet (New Life). Although all communal officials are State-paid civil servants, the community itself has an additional income from the butcher

A T alm ud lesson in th e T alm udical A cad em y on Dob Street. L ocated in B u d ap est's oldest Jew ish neighborhood, the school h a s less th a n tw en ty stu d e n ts a g e d eig h t to tw elve.

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JEWISH LIFE

A k in d erg arten class b e in g co nducted in a recen tly e sta b lish e d B ud ap est Jew ish D ay School.

shops and the considerable export of “Shel Pesach” groceries and liqueurs which are very popular in the Western world. f HE Hungarian delegation to Lon­ don did its best to leave AngloJewry convinced that the picture of their brethren in Hungary today was bright and full of promise. “The Gov­ ernment knows that we Jews live by the Shema Yisroel,” Dr. Seifert stated, “and they know that this ideology does not harmonize with that of Com­ munism, but they have made friends with the idea and they do not interfere with our internal Jewish communal work. A kind of co-existence!”

So there it is—co-existence again.

We in the West may not like the word or its implications. The fact remains, however, that it is this which makes the great Powers test their H-bombs inside their own territories rather than

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on each other. It is this co-existence which, for the first time since the Iron Curtain was clamped down, allowed an official delegation of Hungarian Jewry to shake hands with its brothers in the bourgeois West. It is this co­ existence which caused London’s lead­ ing Sunday newspaper, The Observer, to predict that the delegation’s visit may lead to less restricted emigration of Hungarian Jews to Israel.

Perhaps this co-existence will yet be made sufficiently flexible to allow brotherly and personal contact with the nearly three million of our people in the Soviet Union.

Perhaps this visit of the representa­ tives of the sad, sad remnant of what was once a mighty and powerful Hun­ garian Jewry has greater significance and meaning than we Jews, hard-tried and oft-disappointed as we are, dare hope for. Perhaps—and pray G-d soon . . .

27

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28

JEWISH LIFE

Faith And/Or Reason

By JUSTIN HOFMANN

T is of the very essence of Jewish A reading of the Torah text itself religious belief that Judaism is does not disclose any attempt to Ibased on Divine Revelation. The su­ demonstrate the validity of the prin­ preme source of Judaism is the written Torah, the Sacred Scriptures, as in­ terpreted by the oral Torah, carried forward from generation to generation through oral transmission until it too took written form in the Talmud. Both the Written and the Oral Torah are conceived as originating on Mount Sinai.

Having said this, however, there arises the further question as to the nature of this Revelation. Is it to be accepted on faith or can its teachings be attained by rational thought? If the latter, then why was there a need for a Revelation in the first place? Even without a Torah—in such case—the truths of Judaism would have been discovered by rational means. If, on the other hand, the truths of Judaism must be accepted on faith, we still need to determine whether they are irrational, i.e., against reason, or nonrational, i.e,, not opposed to reason, but neither to be proven true by reason.

March-April, 1963

ciples of Judaism by rational means.

In vain one would search for a ra­ tional proof for the existence of G-d.

G-d’s existence is taken for granted in the Bible. He confronts us as the Creator of heaven and earth in the Genesis account. No explanation is offered as to how a spiritual being can create a material world or why G-d willed to create such a world in the first place. Man, we are informed, is a physical body into which G-d breathed a “living soul.” No rational proof is presented, however, of the existence of this soul nor is there an explanation of its nature other than that man was created in the “image of G-d.” We further read about G-d addressing Himself to the Patriarchs, involving Himself in the shaping of historical events, and making His will known to Moses and to the other prophets. But no rational arguments are drawn upon to prove the veracity of these claims. It may be retorted, of course, that the origin of the Bible 29

lies in the pre-philosophical era; that it antedates the development of philo­ sophical thinking by the Greeks and that for this reason the spiritual in­ sights of the Bible are not presented in philosophical form. This may well be a feasible explanation. It does not alter the fact, however, that the Bib­ lical appeal seems to be to human faith rather than to human reason.

HERE are some Jewish scholars who point to verses such as, “The heavens declare the glory of G-d and the firmament shows His handiwork” (Psalms 19:2) as rational proofs for the existence of G-d. They discern in these and similar statements a Biblical form of the “argument from design.”

But equally credible is the counter­ claim that no attempt to establish the truths of Judaism by rational means is involved here; that it rather repre­ sents the pious exclamation of a man of faith intent on singing his praises to the Almighty. Nor is there any con­ clusive evidence for a position of rea­ son from the verse, “The fool says in his heart there is no G-d” (Psalms 14:1), the views of some scholars not­ withstanding. The verse does not logi­ cally imply that a wise man would reason that there is a G-d. It may rather mean that a rational position does not admit of either the affirma­ tion or the denial of G-d’s existence.

As we enter upon the medieval period a somewhat modified attitude emerges. Faith alone is no longer con­ sidered a completely satisfactory ap­ proach to Judaism. Jewish thinkers are now faced with the challenges posed by Greek philosophy. Reason is the supreme value of Greek thought.

Plato’s coachman—reason—guides the two horses representing will and ap­ petite in the Republic and the phi­ losopher-king is considered the ideal

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ruler. Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover is “thinking about thinking” and man is defined as a rational animal. In the face of this rationalism, Jewish think­ ers wondered whether or not Judaism could be shown to be a rational doc­ trine. Furthermore, and related to the previous question, could the insights of Judaism be harmonized with the conclusions of the Greek philosophers?

The position taken by Saadia Gaon is that the Torah is a rational docu­ ment. But human reason, according to Saadia, is fallible, hence the need for revelation. In short, even with Saadia, the rationalist, faith is the funda­ mental approach to the Torah.

This, essentially, is also the position taken by Bachya ibn Pekuda. “Reason cannot enjoin them all,” Bachya main­ tains, “it nevertheless does not reject any of them.” (Introduction to Chovoth ha-Levovoth) . In other words, while the teachings of Judaism are never irrational, neither can they in every case be established by reason.

Thus there remains the need for ac­ cepting the Torah on faith.

HE tradition of Saadia and Bachya is continued by Maimonides. “The object of this treatise,” Rambam writes in the introduction to his Guide of the Perplexed, “is to enlighten a religious man who has been trained in the truth of our holy Torah, who conscienti­ ously fulfills his moral and religious duties, and who at the same time has been successful in his philosophical studies.” In other words, Maimonides considers his task to be that of mak­ ing rationally intelligible the truths to which the Jew has already, committed himself on the basis of faith. It is a position reminiscent of that of Anselm of Canterbury who is said to have implored G-d prior to his discovery of the “ontological argument,” to show

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him the way to a genuine proof. A similar standpoint is expressed by Rambam in the Mishneh Torah. There it is formulated as a legally binding admonition. “And I say,” Maimonides writes, “that only he whose stomach is filled with bread and meat is fit to walk in the Pardes (i.e., to occupy himself with difficult theological ques­ tions). And by bread and meat is meant to know that which is forbid­ den and that which is permitted and to have similar knowledge about other commandments.” In short, Maimon­ ides insists that the commitment of faith shall precede the consideration of the speculative teachings of theol­ ogy. It is a clear reflection of Maimon­ ides’ view that the primary path to Judaism is the path of faith and that reason plays a secondary role in this quest.

HE notion of the limited capacity of human reason and, hence, the need for relying on faith may be found even in the writings of some contemporary non-orthodox thinkers.

“I would suggest,” writes Mr. Will Herberg, “that the purpose of liberal education is to give us a more pro­ found insight into the human situ­ ation, into man’s creaturely existence in the world (in his alienation from the need for G-d), and in this way en­ hance our understanding of, and sensi­ tivity to, the condition and need of our neighbor as well as our own. His­ tory, philosophy, literature, and art may all be seen as contributing to this end, and thus find a place in an edu­ cation that sees the actualization of man’s ‘humanness’ as the achievement of a right relation to G-d and one’s fellowmen.” What Herberg asserts is that while the liberal arts (reason) do not teach us anything about G-d, they teach us a great deal about man. But

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by helping us to understand the truth about human existence they make us aware of the need for a “leap of faith.”

Only by means of such a “leap of faith” can man hope to cross the “abyss” that separates him from G-d.

There thus appears to be a general consensus that faith rather than reason is the ultimate way to the truths of Judaism. And even if we were to claim that certain propositions of Judaism, e.g., the existence of G-d, can be estab­ lished by reason, Rabbi Isadore Ep­ stein points out, the need for faith would not thereby be obviated. Like Pascal we would still have to wear an amulet with the inscription: “I be­ lieve in the G-d of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and not in the god of the philosophers.” While insisting on the primacy of faith, however, Judaism does not share the Tertullian dictum: Credo quia absurdum (“I believe be­ cause it is absurd”). Judaism would rather subscribe to the proposition: Credibile quia non intellectum est (“I believe because it is beyond the under­ standing”). This position of the pri­ macy of faith is itself rationally de­ fended by many calling attention to the ultimate reliance on faith even of the work of science.

INCE, as has been concluded, the teachings of Judaism are ulti­ mately propositions of faith, the prob­ lem of what to do in case of a conflict of faith and reason remains to be dealt with. The one principle that is upheld in all traditional attempts at a recon­ ciliation of faith with reason is that the principles of faith must not be reasoned away in the process. It is the principle that sharply divides the tra­ ditional from the non-traditional ap­ proach to the problem. As formulated

by Samson Raphael Hirsch, it states that there are two revelations of truth

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—the nature and the Torah. In the case of the study of nature, i.e., in sci­ ence, it would be unthinkable to retain a theory that is contradicted by the facts of observation. It is equally un­ tenable to retain an interpretation of the Torah that contradicts the facts of the Torah. In short, a reconciliation of faith and reason at the expense of faith is excluded by Hirsch from the outset.

Hirsch’s proposal for harmonizing faith and reason is summarized in his well-known formula, Torah im derech eretz (“Torah together with general culture”). According to this concep­ tion, the truths of culture (reason) are to be evaluated in terms of the teachings of Torah (faith). Only those propositions of reason are to be ac­ cepted that do not contradict the teachings of faith. Conflicting teach­ ings are to be rejected on the ground that they represent imperfect expres­ sions of reason, which still need to be refined and perfected in the future.

At the foundation of Hirsch’s view lies the conviction that “truth, like its ulti­ mate source, namely the one and only G-d, is undivided, and hence its recog­ nition, the recognition of truth, can also be only a unified, undivided one.”

It is a view reiterated by Professor Eliezer Berkovitz who writes, “In the realm of truth there can be no distinc­ tion between the secular and the sacred.”

Another approach to the problem of harmonizing faith with reason is suggested by the work of Philo of Alexandria, Jewish philosopher of the first century C.E. While insisting that the Torah is the absolute truth, Philo used the method of allegorical inter­ pretation to reconcile with Torah the teachings of philosophy that were generally accepted in his time. The method proved especially well suited 32

to reinterpreting the anthropomor­ phisms of the Bible which were easy targets for the critics of Philo’s day.

It also was applied successfully to cer­ tain phases of the Bible such as the account of Adam and Eve. In using this method Philo did not feel that he was compromising the truths of Juda­ ism. On the contrary, he felt that he was penetrating beneath the surface of the Biblical text to its more pro­ found meaning; N approach to the reconciliation of faith and reason not based on the A concept of the unity of all truth is con­ tained in the suggestion of Professor Samuel H. Bergman. Professor Berg­ man distinguishes between a discourse of faith represented by the Bible and discourse of reason represented by sci­ ence. Science, he notes, is an analysis of experience in terms of causal rela­ tionships. Faith, on the other hand, is a personal commitment. To have faith, Bergman says, “is to ‘entrust’ oneself to G-d and to feel secure in this trust.” Thus, faith and reason do not contradict each other, Professor Bergman states. They belong to two different universes of discourse. The Bible, he asserts, is not a book of geology. It is not intended to answer scientific questions.

The differing relationships to the reality represented by faith and reason are illustrated by Bergman with a reference to miracles. From the point of view of science, miracles cannot happen, because they defy explanation in terms of causality. Faith, on the other hand, claims that miracles have happened in the past and may happen again the future, Bergman notes.

Professor Bergman’s meaning may be clarified with a reference to the establishment of the State o f Israel.

From the point of view of the hisJEWISH LIFE

torian, a rational explanation of this event is certainly not difficult to sug­ gest. A causal connection between certain social and political forces that prevailed in the period immediately following the conclusion of World War II and what occurred on May 14, 1948, may readily be established. And, yet, as we contemplate this momentous happening in a subjective mood, we cannot help but sense the miraculous character of this event.

Professor Bergman is, of course, not unaware of the difficulties inherent in his suggestion. Faith and reason, he notes, are different methods and have different concerns. “Their separation,

however, cannot be the last word.

Their methods may differ, but the man who applies them is the same,” Pro­ fessor Bergman asserts. “Despite the proper and necessary distinctions be­ tween faith and reason, there still re­ mains the ideal of a world view which embodies the insights of reason yet is grounded in faith,” Bergman con­ cludes.

HE problem of harmonizing faith T with reason thus still awaits a satisfactory solution. In the view of Professor Berkovitz this task is the foremost intellectual challenge con­ fronting our generation.

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33

Story

v\ The Great Moror Merchant

By ISRAEL POLEYEFF

OU would have done the same. casually. The Seder was fine, he wrote, If you were in my place that year pleasant and inspiring. One thing, Y of 1932, you also would not have been though, marred the ceremony: a short­ able to read my father’s letter from Eretz Yisroel and not do something about it.

It had to do with the Pesach Seder.

Not one Seder, mind you, but the Seder in each and every home in each and every city and town in Palestine, as it was known then. I saw a chance to do something to help the people in the Holy Land observe the Seder properly, according to Jewish Law. Now if such an opportunity came to you, wouldn’t you get down to busi­ ness right away?

How could I help every Jew in Eretz Yisroel at Pesach time, you ask?

Well, it’s all a matter of agriculture.

Palestine before the state was estab­ lished was, as everyone knows, almost one big desert. The land was in ter­ rible shape and poorly cared for. As a result, farm products, especially vege­ tables, were hard to get.

Now, right after Pesach in 1932, I received a letter from my father. He was in Eretz Yisroel getting everything ready for the rest of the family to join him. The part of that letter that in­ terested me was mentioned ever so 34

age of chrein, horseradish, for the Moror!

HAT’S when the idea came to me, as I’m sure you must be thinking of it now. Palestine may be short of vegetables, but Smilsk in Poland most certainly was not. I could easily purchase enough chrein in our area and ship the whole works to Palestine before next Pesach. The Jews of Eretz Yisroel would have enough Moror, I would certainly be deserving of a Mitzvah, and I might even make a slight profit.

My plan was simplicity itself: the horseradish harvest was in the Fall.

Come that season I would buy as much as I could and send it off to Palestine in more than enough time for Pesach.

In the meantime, I arranged all the necessary forms and papers. This was rather easy: export licenses, import permits, shipping forms; all were com­ pleted in less than a month. Now I only had to wait for October and November and I was in business.

And a good business it was. My reluctant brother (I pressed hitn into service though he didn’t care for the

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whole idea) and I bought up every hadn’t expected: there was no more sandy piece on the farmers’ stalls each horseradish in the entire county—we market day. Each time we pushed our had bought them out clean! way through shoving, swearing crowds Y brother had that I-told-you-so to each stall and bought all they had. look on, and who could blame The farmers looked at us with a curi­ ous eye, but they were happy to sell him. I must admit my usual stream to us, and, in the process, raise their of ideas looked like it was running prices. We didn’t complain too much, dry. But then the obvious came to me. the s’char mitzvah would more than Why not make it a two-year proposi­ amply take care of that. Our supply tion? I had half a carload. I’d get the grew until it filled the entire shed be­ other half next year! I could store hind our house. When every square what I had in the cold ground just as inch of the shed was jammed we well as the farmers (this was their moved into the cellar. We had built practice in storing many vegetables). up a hoard that looked as if it could It would require work, to be sure, supply all of Poland as well as Pales­ but it would be worth it. Thus der tine. But when we went to ship it, we cided, thus done, though I never real­ found that it would only fill one-fifth ized just how much backbreaking of a railroad boxcar, and the shipping work it did require to bury that much company would ship no less than a horseradish. I now sat tight.

The government of Poland, how­ FULL boxcar. You’ll never know how big those boxcars are until you try ever, did not. I was a reserve officer in the Engineers and they deliberately filling one with horseradish.

So we returned to the markets and called me into the service at this time set out to buy still more chrein. The to frustrate my plans. Right in the farmers now didn’t bother to spread middle of that winter for a period of their goods on the stands and wait for no less than two years! It looked like us to come by. On their way to the the end of my project: who would market place they stopped at our want horseradish kept in the ground house and unloaded their horseradish for three years? Even my morale hit at our door. Every farmer in the coun­ a new low.

One night, though, another new try must have come by, and it was not an unusual sight to see ten or twelve thought bubbled to the surface just in rickety wagons, pulled by lifeless time to save the chrein from some horses, lined up at one time in front rash act on my part. Couldn’t I save of our house, waiting impatiently to up all my leave time until next fall, unload their store of horseradish and and then with one great burst of energy, buy up what I still needed move on.

This was fine for us—look at the and ship it? Since everything was in time and energy it saved us—and we readiness but for the extra chrein, I had little to worry about until the could wind up the whole project in wagons slackened to a miserly trickle a week or two. My project could still and then stopped altogether. One look be saved. With this in mind, I left for at the cellar and it was obvious that we the service with the confidence of a still didn’t have a full carload. Quickly man who had a goal in life and would we made the rounds of the farmers at pursue that goal to the bitter (how the market place. What we heard we appropriate) end.

M

March-April, 1963

35

EVERAL months later—it was shortly after Purim—-I received an urgent letter from my brother. This was unusual. As an engineer, my brother drew, rarely wrote. But the picture was clear enough for me. It seems that some sort of hasty revolt was brewing in normally peaceful Smilsk, and who was the cause of it but /. My brother drew the diagram clearer: When we bought the chrein back in November we had tried, as I said, to fill a boxcar, without success. How­ ever, we bought so much, in fact, that we had bought up the entire harvest of Smilsk and vicinity. Every last eyesmarting piece of it. It was now just before Pesach, and our Jewish com­ munity was busily preparing all that was needed for the holiday. They found to their surprise that there was nary a piece of chrein to be had. The horrible prospect of a chrein-less Seder loomed up before their unbelieving eyes.

Their worry soon turned into a mild rage when they discovered that one person had brought upon them this eleventh plague. I knew that person quite well. They suspected me of some sort of plot (it seems I had some such reputation from way back). They were quite prepared for physical vio­ lence if I failed to come up with a satisfactory explanation of all this.

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Now, this is a spot I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The best idea of your life half-way to success, and in a twinkling the whole works on the verge of collapse. There appeared no way out as long as I valued life and limb (they would wait for me to return, and I had no plans of making the Army a career). jotted off a note to my brother like a Rothschild: “Sell!” and inincluded a crude map to show him where it was all buried. With that I sat back, the shattered pieces of my collapsed project all about me.

Sell my brother did, in less than two days’ time. Noisy, milling crowds gathered in front of our house from early morning to late at night. By sunset the second day we were sold out.

Our fellow Jews had their chrein, my family was without their worries, and I was without my project. One con­ solation, though, we did manage to come up with a profit.

I came home on leave for the two S’dorim. Everything was all prepared and in order. The house was scrubbed and the table was set. Only one sign remained to indicate anything of the activities of Smilsk’s chief chrein mer­ chant: in his haste to sell all the horse­ radish, my brother had sold every piece.

We were left with none ourselves.

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JEWISH LIFE

X

X

Vv/V

East and West in Israel

By PINCHAS E. LAPIDE Realities and implications of the changing population makeup of the Jewish state.

Jerusalem

U r p iH E State of Israel has no fuJL ture if it becomes a Levantine State, nor will it be able to withstand its enemies. This is the greatest danger facing us which we can avoid only by maximum efforts towards educating the young generation—especially the children from poor and large families.

They must be trained to take their places as leaders in the Army, public institutions, and at the head of new settlements throughout the country.”

This dire warning by Prime Minis­ ter David Ben-Gurion was prompted by two documents which reached his desk on the same day, a few weeks ago—the “Shuraky Survey” and the “Southern Report.”

The Shuraky Survey, so named after its author, Dr. Andre Shuraky, the Premier’s chief advisor on immi­ gration problems, drily pointed out a few irrefutable facts of demography.

Africa and Asia, which, prior to the State’s foundation in 1948, supplied less than 8% of all Jewish immigra­ tion, have provided since 1955 over 60% of the total influx. As a result, Israel, whose Jewish populace had been predominantly occidental in origin March-April, 1963

and outlook ever since the beginning of the Zionist movement in the eighties of the last century, has today an orien­ tal population of 54%. Whilst in 1951 56% of all Israeli babies were born to “Ashkenazi” Westerners, their pro­ portion had declined by 1961 to 21%. During the same decade the “Sephardi” Afro-Asian group’s births had soared from 32% to 60%. More­ over, the non-Jewish population is now growing faster than all the rest, with an annual increase of 40 per 1000 (against a world average of 18/1000!).

Arabs and Druzes, who represent only one-tenth of Israel’s present popula­ tion of 2,250,000 people, produced one-fifth of all babies born last year.

The inescapable conclusion: by 1977 the Arab minorities will make up at least 20% of the population whilst three out of every four Israeli Jews will be of Afro-Asian origin. ctually,

the population of Israel today has to be divided into three distinct sections, not two: The first group is composed of the so-called Western Jews and numbers some 700,000 souls (33% ). Half of

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them are over 45 years old, and all have a notoriously low birth rate.

The second group comprises the Jews from oriental countries: some 580,000 in number (30% ). More than half are under 28 years of age and famous for their large families.

The third group—the largest and most significant—are the Israeli-born “Sabras.” Of their total of 740,000 (37% ), over 500,000 are today of oriental parentage.

As the last two groups will make up the preponderant majority of the fu­ ture Israel, let us have a brief glance at the antecedents of the Oriental Jewish communities in their countries of origin.

HE history of the Jews in the Arab countries was a record of degrada­ tion and insecurity. For hundreds of years the Jews living there were treated as second-class citizens. Their lives and property were assured to them only on the payment of a poll tax ( jizyah) . Any political change or dis­ turbance in the country of their resi­ dence was liable to aggravate their precarious condition.

In the less advanced Arab countries, the status of the Jewish populace was one of marked inferiority. In Yemen, a Jew was not permitted to walk on the pavement or ride a horse. In the courts, his evidence was not accepted against that of a Moslem. The most distressing of the anti-Jewish practices was that providing for the compulsory conversion of Jewish orphans to Islam; anyone who helped such chil­ dren to escape did so at the risk of his life. For a time all emigration of Jews was rigorously forbidden. Short­ age of food subsequently induced a relaxation of the ban, but the govern­ ment confiscated the property of all those who left the country.

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The Jews had hoped that the post­ war era would bring them social and political emancipation, but in the struggle for independence a chauvinis­ tic Arab nationalism emerged, which, fused with the old religious fanaticism, produced new forms of intolerance and oppression. The Jews were gradu­ ally driven out of their principal occu­ pations in trade, handicraft, and the liberal professions. State-controlled banks and industries employed only Moslems; government posts were closed to Jews. Worst of all, in the secondary schools and universities an unofficial numerus clausus was intro­ duced. Their defenseless position ren­ dered them an ever ready target of administrative and social discrimina­ tion and, in times of political tension, of physical attack.

The rise of the Zionist movement provided the anti-Jewish agitation with political slogans. Although Arab lead­ ers frequently emphasized that their opposition was directed only against Zionism, and not against Jews in gen­ eral, the anti-Jewish riots which broke out during periods of internal political unrest in Middle Eastern countries and the economic and social disabili­ ties imposed on the Jews by the new nationalist regimes disproved these specious pleas.

1 The advent of the Nazi regime and the establishment of the Arab League in 1945 led to an intensification of anti-Jewish propaganda in the Arab world. During the Second World War serious anti-Jewish outbreaks occurred in Baghdad, in which over a hundred Jews were killed. After the war, there were similar disturbances in Egypt and in Lybia.

HEN the State of Israel was es­ tablished in 1948, the position of the Jews in the countries of file

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JEWISH LIFE

Arab Middle East and North Africa worsened. During the debates in the United Nations General Assembly in 1947, the head of the Egyptian dele­ gation did not hesitate to warn that international body that “the lives of a million Jews in Moslem countries will be jeopardized by the establish­ ment of the Jewish State.” Jamal alHusseini, Chairman of the Palestine Arab Higher Executive (who had visited Eichmann in Berlin during World War II), spoke in a similar vein. “If a Jewish State were estab­ lished in Palestine,” he said, “the posi­ tion of the Jews in the Arab countries would become very precarious,” add­ ing the ominous warning that “Gov­ ernments have always been unable to prevent mob excitement and violence.”

Mob violence became a certainty when it was deliberately fomented by the Arab governments following the Par-

March-April, 1963

B oatloads of e a g e r a n d hopeful im m i­ g ra n ts arriving from Morocco a n d other North A frican countries, docking a t Haifa.

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tition Resolution of the United Nations of the 29 November, 1947. The threats which had been uttered by the Arab leaders in the General Assembly were carried out to the letter. The Jews in the Arab countries of the Middle East became practically outlawed.

As a result, Israel “absorbed” 90% of the Jews who lived in Syria, 89% of the Jews in Egypt, 97 % of the Jews of Iraq, 93% of Lybian Jewry, and 98% of those of Yemen—all in all over 550,000 immigrants.

Speaking of his own country of birth, Algeria, Dr. Shuraky added that virtually all of her wealthy and intel­ lectual Jews emigrated to France and America—Paris alone has today ninety-five Algerian Jewish professors —whilst only the poor and unschooled went to Israel. As a result, the educa­ tional and cultural institutions which had served a relatively “elite” com­ munity of 650,000 were suddenly swamped by a tidal wave. The new­ comers brought little knowledge of modern Hebrew, a confused medley of local dialects, a broad variety of cultural levels and social backgrounds —and an appalling mass of poverty, sickness, and even illiteracy; the heri­ tage of a violent history and a back­ ward environment.

MALL wonder then, that although children from Oriental homes make up 55% of all pupils in the first form of Israeli elementary schools, their number dwindles to 27% by the time they reach the eighth form. Over half generally drop out. Out of a mil­ lion Oriental Jews only three hundred reached the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (whose total student body exceeds 7,000) and of these all but forty-three failed to complete their studies. Out of 1,726 graduates in

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1962,A only fifty-one were Oriental Jews.

The disparity is also reflected in the living conditions of the two communi­ ties. According to the last census, taken in 1961, some 450,000 Oriental Jews live more than three* persons to a room—45% of their total. Among Western Jews the proportion is ex­ actly eight percent.

Every enlightened Israeli abhors the concept that any person is doomed, by reason of birth or lack of opportunity, to be forever a “hewer of wood or drawer of water.” In principle, most of the country is passionately egalitar­ ian and distinctions of any kind on the grounds of race, color, or creed are repugnant to Jews. Yet, if one buys a newspaper in the streets of Tel Aviv, the young vendor is almost always a child from North Africa or Asia, while practically all doctors, lawyers, and writers are of Western “Ash­ kenazi” origin.

It is this state of affairs which gave rise to the term of “The Two Israels.” r r i H E idea of “Two Israels” took JL root during the last five years of massive Middle Eastern immigration.

Like other phrases of popular soci­ ology it neatly sums up some complex social realities.

The reality is the division of Israeli society into two cultural camps. One Israel stands for the early generations of European immigrants—the Israel of pioneering visions and their aftermath, the veteran kibbutzim, fashion­ able North Tel Aviv and Jerusalem’s elite Rechavia. This Israel, EuropeanAmerican in culture, dreams of all the isms of the Western World. The other Israel is the more recent, and its ori­ gins are in Moslem lands; it is the Israel of Yemenite villages and Mo­ roccan development-area towns, Tel JEWISH LIFE

Aviv slums, and the old Kurdish quar­ ter of Jerusalem. Its dreams are of steady jobs, social acceptance, and a better life for the young. Within each of the “Two Israels” there is of course any number of sub-groupings; but the popular splitting of the society into two major parts reflects something both real and ominous.

“Would you like your daughter to marry a Yemenite?” used to be a joke, but of late has been asked in many quarters with an undertone of seriousness. However, nobody would dare put this question to the Foreign Minister, Russian-born, Americanreared Golda Meir; her only daughter is happily married to a Yemenite kib­ butz member in the Negev—a fact she is rightly proud of as an exemplary exception, but not the rule.

For practically all Oriental Jews, settling in Israel meant an abrupt transplantation from a basically static, rural, tradition-bound milieu into a dynamic, competitive, and industrial­ ized society. In their own countries many of them had been engaged as small craftsmen, peddlers, and shopkeepers; in Israel, to keep pace with the rapid demands of their new en­ vironment, they were expected to per­ form manual labor—which their sense of social values despised—or move up to semi-professional work—for which they lacked the skills.

The characteristic family pattern of the Orient is still a patriarchal one.

The father is the provider, the center of attention and the master whose say is final in all family matters. Upon immigration to Israel he often lost his ability to be the provider; to make up, as it were, for this deficiency, he was the more anxious to uphold his status of supremacy. His children, quick to sense his new inadequacy, at first sufMarch-April, 1963

fered from the lack of paternal sup­ port and security, just when it was most essential to them. Unable to find these at home, their desire to be ac­ cepted, to be equal, drove them into the streets. Here they quickly picked up the new language, a new sense of values—which ridiculed their home­ grown ones—and ravenous appetite for all the newfangled ways, which they felt was the key to their future.

The values of the “Oriental Home” soon clashed violently with those of the “Western Street”; loss of parental control often coincided with malad­ justment of the children, the elders put the blame on the seductions of the “those G-dless Ashkenazis”—and the stage is set for a full-fledged con­ flict of cultures.

UT of these frustrations the “Ye­ O menite Party” coalesced in 1949 and in the early fifties a “United Sephardi Party” tried to translate emo­ tions into political capital, but since neither one drew more than a few thousand votes at the polls, both folded within a year. Since then no ethnic grouping ever tried to form a political organization, but all major parties included prominent Sephardi personalities in their lists of candidates —close to the tail-end of the list.

With only two out of Israel’s four­ teen Cabinet Ministers—holding the secondary portfolios of Police and Posts—and seven out of the 120 seats in the Knesseth, the number of Sephardis in positions of national leader­ ship is pitifully small and utterly in­ adequate compared with their ma­ jority position in the population.

“It is unjust, undemocratic and irra­ tional for 25% of the population (the reference is to 1970) to provide all the nation’s leaders and people in high 41

Israeli y o u n g sters w orking to g eth er a t K'far B atya, a child ren 's v illag e of the M izrachi W om en's O rganization.

position” said Mr. Eliahu Sasson, the Damascus-born Minister of Posts at a recent press conference.

However, since experienced parlia­ mentarians, erudite professors, and clever party leaders cannot be pro­ duced overnight, but must be taught and schooled, the focus of Israel’s public attention shifted to the educa­ tional front.

Whatever may have been wrong in economics or politics, Israel has al­ ways been proud of its achievements in the field of education. Quite recent­ ly, in fact, a UNESCO mission con­ cluded that Israeli secondary school pupils are on an intellectual par with their contemporaries in Great Britain, France, Holland, Belgium, and Scan­ dinavia. During the academic year which began in September, over 650,000 young people enrolled in thou­ 42

sands of kindergartens, schools, and colleges—a third of the nation is now at school. Secondary and technical school attendance has almost doubled during the last three years.

And then, like an angry bolt out of the blue, there exploded, some five weeks ago, the so-called “Southern Report.”

T was a slim, innocent-looking fold­ er, containing some twenty type­ Iwritten pages, but as soon as Abba Eban, the Minister of Education, had read it, he took it personally to Prime Minister Ben Gurion. Two days later he read its gist to a down-cast Knesseth.

The significance of the report, sub­ mitted by the Chief Inspector of the Southern Region, covering the Negev area between Beersheba and Elath, isv JEWISH LIFE

that the population is preponderantly drawn from new immigrants, mostly from Moslem lands. What is true there, probably applies to most young Oriental newcomers in Israel.

The essence of the Report is that 30% of the children in the area reach the end of their elementary school at the age of fourteen, unable to read a newspaper, to write a legible letter, or to carry out basic arithmetical cal­ culations. They have only a vague idea about Israel, the Jewish people, and the world surrounding them. Most of them leave school, plunged in apathy and bitterness.

This is the position amongst a third of a population sector which is itself half of the nation and increasing rapidly.

Worse still, the Southern half has little, if any, social contact with the North, i.e. the “Western” half of Israel.

In the light of the UNESCO con­ clusions, the “Southern Report” seems to prove that “the two Israels” are not being integrated at all—except in the Defense forces. They are drifting fur­ ther apart. And the gap between the Orient and Occident grows wider as one moves up the educational and social ladder.

Four thousand years of history have taught Israel that weak nations are those divided within themselves, whilst others become strong by achieving social co-existence, permeated by a community of ideals and values.

It was therefore vitally urgent—the Cabinet and the entire Knesseth were for once unanimous—to correct the “gap,” to correct it in an upward direction, to heal it rapidly, before the social walls had time to harden.

But what was the remedy?

One medicine had already been March-April, 1963

tried out, and discarded as harmful.

In the mid-fifties “the merging of the exiles” was declared Israel’s supreme goal and its achievement became at once a national crusade. School chil­ dren from Morocco were made to listen to Eastern European synagogue chants; Iraqi mothers were encouraged to give their infants modern Hebrew names; immigrants from Rumania, Indo-China, and Persia were settled in the same village in the hope that by tossing them together into abrasive proximity, they would be made to lose their old traits and adopt new ones.

It took several bloody fist-fights and two whole-scale departures of “clans” who simply packed up ready to return to Kurdistan, before it dawned upon the average settlement authorities that a “melting pot” was never meant to be a “pressure cooker.”

So now the government was look­ ing for softer, less impatient methods of unifying the nation. After all, said Abba Eban, a problem created over five centuries, cannot be solved in a year or two.

One and all agreed that the best ladle to stir the melting pot was Israel’s foremost school for citizen­ ship: the Armed Defense Forces. is in “Zahal,” as the Defense is called for short, that the ItrueTArmy meaning of the integration and mixing of the various communities is found. Bed beside bed for a period of two and a half years, there may be a boy from Yemen with boys from Morocco, Persia, Iraq, Poland, Ru­ mania, and a sabra from Petach Tikva or Ein Harod—all sharing one roof.

They will live together, will learn the same army slang and will eat the same army food, do the same exercises and be punished by the same code; their 43

R ecent im m igrants—now soldiers in the Israeli Army—le a rn H ebrew in a c lass con­ d u cted a t one of the Army cam ps.

(Zionist Archives)

common fate in new and sometimes difficult surroundings will bring them together. In time, estrangement and suspicion will disappear and, as a re­ sult of developing a mutual under­ standing, they almost always come to like each other. In the army there can be no class distinctions or favoritism.

The sole standard of judging a man is an objective appraisal of his personal achievements, ability, and talents.

Even though within the army frame­ work the atmosphere is most condu­ cive to civic re-education, it would be a mistake to assume that these prob­ lems can be left to their own solution.

This is the reason why in Zahal there is the categorical demand for a rela­ tionship of sympathy, understanding, and respect between the officers and their men, who mix freely and only 44

salute each other whilst on duty. The old way of armies of the world “break­ ing in the civilian” is unacceptable in Zahal and its way is to “produce a good citizen” prepared for army and civilian life.

This is of vital importance, as most of the “new immigrant” soldiers can under no circumstances be termed “citizens” in the full sense of the word.

Their experience of life, often under conditions of deprivation, illiteracy, poverty, and bitterness, and their diffi­ culties in adapting themselves to the new life in Israel, have certainly done little to make good citizens of them or to instill in them a feeling of per­ sonal obligation, or social solidarity.

There can be no “breaking in” of a civilian when these soldiers do not even remotely live up to the definition JEWISH LIFE

of what a civilian really is. This led Zahal to its decisive educational sys­ tem: to build instead of to break, to instill qualities of good citizenship in each soldier, to form his character and personality; for “a good citizen is a good soldier.”

This is substantiated by research on modern warfare and examination of new developments in military tactics.

Modern warfare will be conducted with forces dispersed over wide areas and in the heat of battle the distance between one soldier and the next will seem like an eternity. At times, the soldier will be called upon to act in small patrols and sometimes even to penetrate alone beyond enemy lines, against the pres­ sure of the latest weapons. Only a soldier who has a firm belief in his national and social way of life will have a source of moral courage to draw upon and will try to fulfill his duty. law has also been passed recently making completion of elementary schooling compulsory in the army and this affects quite a number of recruits for whom concentrated courses and special evening classes are provided.

At the end of their studies, usually coinciding with their term of army service, each of these soldiers receives a certificate, recognized by the De­ partment of Education, stating that he has completed the State’s elemen­ tary school courses. The army like­ wise enables the soldiers to acquire a variety of trades, and they can also pursue one of the sixteen vocational courses available for them on demo­ bilization. These courses are organized by the Ministry of Defense in conjunc­ tion with the Ministry of Labor.

The only trouble with the Armed Forces program is that they get the

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March-April, 1963

children of new immigrants only at the age of eighteen, by which time most characters are already formed and complexes have hardened into habits.

In order to close the “gap” up­ wards, treatment had to commence in infancy. For this purpose, the Minis­ try of Education put into immediate operation the following six measures: 1. A longer school-day in devel­ opment areas (to include the recrea­ tional hours in the afternoon); 2. Free kindergarten before the compulsory age of five; 3. Special reductions in the size of classes in these areas; 4. “Homework clubs” to rescue the pupils from squalid, crowded homes; 5. Free boarding secondary schools for the gifted children of Oriental communities to make sure that the best out of those who finish well in the elementary phase be en­ abled to continue their studies.

6. An increase in stipends and scholarships to enable needy chil­ dren to have secondary education which is still expensive.

To coordinate all these steps the Minister of Education last week cre­ ated the Institution for the Advance­ ment of Education in Israel, which is soon to dispose of a sizeable budget.

HILST the new body is formu­ lating its first long-term plans, voices are being heard in the land, of optimistic prophets who now at long last have discovered the silver lining of the “Levantinization” of which Prime Minister Ben Gurion is so much afraid. They point to the fact that the influx of hundreds of Jewish intellectuals from Iraq, Syria, and Egypt has helped spark a revival of

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Arabic literature in Israel. At least three of those newcomers have made a name for themselves in modern poetry, written in Israel’s second offi­ cial language—Arabic. A group of Iraqi Jews, in partnership with several wealthy Arabs from Nazareth, have recently founded the Arab-Israel Bank Ltd. At least a score of similar joint enterprises have sprung up since 1957, thanks to Sephardi enterprise and the confidence their knowledge of Arabic inspires in Israel’s minorities.

If in ten to fifteen years three-quar­ ters of Israel’s population will be bilingual and well versed in Arab ways, customs, and thinking, will that not best disprove the Arab League’s contention that Israel is an “intruder,”

46

“a bridgehead of Western Imperial­ ism,” etc., in the Middle East?

If we belong in the Middle East, as all our ideologues and politicians claim, then let us truly integrate—not by westernizing the Orientals, but rather by orientating our acculturation policy toward the golden mean.

After all—these prophets conclude —the Middle East has always been a bridgeland between three continents and civilizations, and the Land of Israel, since the days of Abraham, has been its center-piece. Israel’s old-new mission of bridging the chasm between East and West may be facilitated by adding a little more oriental spice to the ethnic mixture in her melting pot.

JEWISH LIFE

New Dimensions, or Old?

By LILLAN OTT

W h a t gods now Shall I in my faith enshrine, Flag? Atom? Nation Or a science that renders might divine?

Shall my worship, now.

Invoke but a slogan cry And shall I prostrate my soul Before altars that would my soul deny?

Should I accept a missile, now, For my staff of life And proscribe the tranquility of peace In deference to the glory of strife?

S h o u l d i divest, now, My mind of a remembered moral age And allow all memories of humanity To perish in this new brutish rage?

Or should contemn the fury That with fury contends And reinvest my trust In Sinai’s imperishable Commands?

March-April, 1963

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fo r an unequ alled e x p e rie n c e in T o ra h living— w e invite te e n a g e rs to a tte n d an e x citin g an d u n fo rg ettab le co n v en tio n w e e k e n d a t th e ten th an n u al

N A T IO N A L C O N V E N T IO N A N D L E A D E R ’S S E M IN A R OF THE

NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SYNAGOGUE YOUTH OF THE UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

NATIONAL CONVENTION — Thursday, June 2 0 through Sunday June 23 1963

LEADER’S SEMINAR

$45.00

— Sunday, June 23 through Tuesday June 2 5 , 1963

$23.00

at the Pine V iew H otel, Fallsburg, N ew Y ork

AN EXCITING RELIGIOUS, SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE FOR SELECT TEENAGERS. AN OPPOR­ TUNITY TO MAKE NEW FRIENDS. THE PROGRAM INCLUDES TORAH SEMINARS, WORKSHOPS AND DIS­ CUSSIONS, NCSY BUSINESS AND ELECTIONS, ISRAELI SINGING AND DANCING, TALENT SHOW, PROMINENT GUESTS, YOUTH SERVICES, SOCIAL AND RECREATIONAL ACTIVITIES, OUTSTANDING INSTRUMEN­ TALISTS AND ENTERTAINMENT, AWARDS, CONTESTS, SWIMMING, LEADERSHIP AND SKILL SESSIONS. THE FEE INCLUDES ALL EVENTS, TOP ® HOTEL FACILITIES, MEALS, GRATUITIES, AND MATERIALS.

\

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FOR APPLICATIONS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION WRITE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SYNAGOGUE YOUTH EIGHTY-FOUR FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK 7 7 , NEW YORK 4

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JEWISH LIFE

We introduce here a new feature of Jewish L if e , devoted to expositions of Jewish observances, laws, and concepts. Each article in the series will be contributed by a different author.

The present article is based on the writer's “D’var Torah” present tation at the National Convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, held in Washington, D.C. last November.

Kiddush Hashem Through Israel's Response

By BERTRAND G. FINK HE Talmud recounts a beautiful episode emblazoning the profound im­ portance of Kiddush Shem Shomayim, sanctification of the Almighty, emanating from the supreme doxology around which the Kaddish prayer is con­ structed—“Omen, Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba M’vorach L’olom Ul’olmey Olmaya.”

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It relates that Rabbi Jose once entered one of the ruins of Jerusalem to pray.

When he had concluded, the Prophet Eliyahu who had waited for hirn at the entrance, approached him and asked: “What did you hear in this ruin? Rabbi Jose answered: “I heard a voice crying mournfully like a dove: ‘Woe unto my children for whose transgressions I destroyed my House and burned my Temple, and exiled them among the nations.’ ” Then Eliyahu said: My son! By your life! Whenever Israel enters its synagogues and houses of Torah study and pro­ claims the Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba, He, as it were, nods His head and says: ‘Happy is the king who is thus praised in his house.’ ” (B’rochoth, 3a) This vivid illus­ tration underscores the principle that since the destruction of the Sanctuary, the pristine House of G-d’s glory, the supreme expression of universal recognition of the Almighty is the Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba, the overwhelming praise emanating from our houses of worship.

Since the Omen preceding Y’hey Shmey Rabba is the affirmation inspiring the doxology and forms an integral part of this fervent proclamation, it behooves us first to trace briefly the essence of this affirmation, the most repeated and cardinal word in our liturgy.

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OME authorities hold that Omen is a contraction of the words: K el Melech iVe’emon, the starkly poignant declaration of G-d’s absolute and immutable faithfulness and reliability. (Shabboth, 119b) Its very composition, therefore, bespeaks our trust in the Almighty’s beneficence, which in turn is the heart of emunqih, the term for “belief” or “faith” in G-d. Interestingly, Omen is also derivéd from the same root as emunah; for belief means little or nothing if it doe^ not include complete trust in His all-pervading justice and goodness. In this light, we can readily understand the statement of our Rabbis: “Nothing is greater before G-d than the Omen that Israel proclaims.” (Midrash Rabbah, Ki Thovo) Indeed, the Sages ingeniously demonstrate the crucial importance of Omen as the verbalization of emunah, when they note that in the verse “Bonim lo eymun bom,” eymun.is written as omen (i.e. defectively). “ [The Significance of this is that] when the Prophets were blessing them not one of them answered Omen. (Introduction to Ruth Rabbah, chapter IV) We are therefore to read the verse, “Bonim lo omen bom,” “Children who do not have the declaration ‘Omen’ in them,” this being the signal indication of their lack of emunah.

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The Midrash very clearly indicates that the declaration Omen has, in dif­ ferent contexts, different significance. The Rabbis enumerate three distinct functions: a) an oath—Sh’vuah; b) indication of our acceptance—Kabbolah; c) expression of the belief that that which has been cited will materialize— Amonah. (Midrash Rabbah, Ki Thovo) l i m e case of Sotah, where the woman is expressly commanded to swear to her fidelity by answering “Omen” to the oath administered, and in numerous other instances, declaring Omen is tantamount to swearing. Often the Omen denotes our acceptance of the statement previously made as, for instance, in all the B’rochoth recited on various occasions and all the thanksgiving benedic­ tions, where the Omen affirms our acceptance of the previous declaration, as for example, that G-d is the Creator of the fruit of the vine. The Omen in this case is like averring: “It is true.” This applies to many blessings of the liturgy (such as the Birchoth Hashachar, the B’rochah of Boruch Sheomar, Yishtabach, Yotzer Or, Ahavah Rabbah, and Mogen Avrahom and many of the other bene­ dictions of the Sh’moneh Esrey).

The third category of Omen, expressing the fervent conviction that the prayer will come true, is also found often in the liturgy as, for example, M’chayey Hamethim; Goel Yisrael; Boneh Yerusholayim; Hamachazir Sh’chinotho L’tzion; the Omen of the Kaddish; in which case Omen expresses the belief “So shall it be.” Often, of course, the Omen encompasses two of the above func­ tions, such as in Rofey Choley Amo Yisroel; M’vorech Hashonim; Shomeah T ’filah; where the pronouncement combines acceptance and the belief that the statement will be actualized in the future. It is perhaps with reference to the fact that the Omen frequently combines acceptance with the belief in the future fulfillment that our Sages have taught: “Whoever answers Omen in this world merits to answer Omen in the world to come.” (Midrash Rabbah, Ki Thovo, chapter VII, 1) 4 50

JEWISH LIFE

THE KADDISH AND ITS DOXOLO GY

HE term “Kaddish” apparently stems from the fact that its opening words, “Yithgadal V’yithkadash Shmey Rabba,’^form a call to the congregation to “Sanctify the Name.” To this call the congregation responds “Y’hey Shmey Rabba,. . — “May His great Name be blessed forever and through all eternity.”

In the same manner, the call of “Borchu . . .” is an invocation to the congre­ gation to elicit their response, “Boruch Hashem Ham’vorach L’olom Voed.”

Since this response is the epitome of sanctification, the term Kaddish (sancti­ fication) applied to the prayer is readily understandable.

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This incidentally, also elucidates the reason this supreme doxology can only be recited in the presence of a minyon, since every act of sanctification requires a quorum of ten. (Eliezer Levi, Torath Hatefilah, p. 146, based on B’rochoth 21b) This principle itself is derived in the Talmud from the Biblical verse “And I shall be sanctified in the midst of the children of Israel.” (Vayikra XXII, 32) With this introduction we can readily perceive the reason the Kaddish became popular as a prayer for mourners in Talmudic times. Rabbi A. L. Rubinstein (“Companion to the Machzor,” p. 21) writes: The recital of it by the mourner express his faith in Divine justice; even in the presence of the severest tragedy, when his nearest or dearest is lowered into the grave, he resigns himself to G-d’s inscrutable will and declares—‘Magnified and sanctified be His Name.’ . . . The Kaddish is not a prayer that the child offers on behalf of his departed parent. Its main importance lies in the fact that, by reciting it in the presence of the congregation, he enables the worshippers to respond with ‘Omen’ and with the verse, ‘Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba’ and it is the fact that a parent has left someone who not only proclaims the sanctity of G-d in the congregation, but causes others to do so, that ensures for the parent divine reward . . . and . . . brings honor to his memory. . . .

HEN Job was cruelly afflicted he cried out from the depths of his agony: “G-d has given and G-d has taken away; may the Name of G-d be blessed.” The latter phrase, translated in Aramaic, forms the basis of Kaddish doxology. In the words of the late Dr. J. H. Hertz: The Kaddish is but an amplification of these words of Job . . . When the dark grave swallows what was dearest to us on earth, it is then that Judaism bids us say: ‘It was G-d who gave this joy unto us; it is G-d who hath taken it from us to Himself. We will not wail, nor murmur, nor complain. We will exclaim: “Blessed be the Name of the Lord.” ’ Can any faith be higher than this? Can we conceive a fuller submission to the will of G-d? Such faith, such submission to G-d’s eternal will, is ours when during the months of mourning we recite before the congregation: ‘Magnified and hallowed be the great Name of G-d.’

Many express wonder that the Kaddish is in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.

The Tur claims that Aramaic, being the vernacular of the masses, was naturally utilized in such a touching ode of praise, as it was customary to recite the Kaddish after a public lecture on the Torah at which the majority of people in attendance understood only Aramaic. (Cf. Tosphoth, B’rochoth 3a) Rabbi

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Munk, however, in his brilliant work, “The World of Prayer” (p. 185), quotes the Zohar which advances a profound reason for the recitation of the Kaddish in Aramaic.

We employ a secular language, to indicate that the secular has to be inter­ penetrated by the Holy in order to attain the supreme goal . . . ‘that His Great Name be magnified and sanctified on earth.’ Thus the Kaddish becomes a posi­ tive and creative act of sanctification. Its designation too as ‘Kaddish’—the Aramaic translation of the masculine adjective ‘Kodosh’—expresses the identical idea. Here the masculine form, symbolizing active forming . . . prevails; whereas the ‘Kedushah’ by its femine form . . . is but the echo of the celestial chorus, perceived by Israel and returned heavenwards with renewed fervor.

Rabbi Munk’s analysis of the Kaddish may help to elucidate a halochah propounded by the Mogen Avroham and the Mishnah B’rurah which states: “Omen, Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba is more important than Kedushah. Therefore in the large congregations where there are several minyonim, one should an­ swer Omen, Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba rather than Kedushah, if he hears both prayers simultaneously.” (Mishnah B’rurah, 56, 6) It is superfluous to add that since the Kaddish takes precedence even over the sanctity of the Kedushah, we must zealously guard against any conversation or distraction during Kaddish. This point must be underscored in view of the fact that the Kaddish is recited at the end of the daily prayers when distractions are, unfortunately, all too fre­ quent.

HE Talmud elucidates a possible reason for the declaration, preceding Kaddish, “And now may the strength of G-d be magnified . . .” when it declares “The gates of Gan Eden are opened for him who utters the Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba with full strength.” (Shabboth, 119b) In order to stress the vital importance of responding with “full strength” we preface the Kaddish with the declaration, “May the strength of G-d be magnified.” (Munk, p. 186) Rabbi Munk, however, with his customary brilliance, advances a most ingenious in­ terpretation, the basis for which is evident in Halachic sources. He points out that the numerical equivalent of the Hebrew word for “strength” (Koach) is 28. Twenty-eight or “Koach” is the symbol of “full strength” as is typified by the 28 days of the moon’s complete cycle. Twenty-eight is the number obtained by the seven-fold increase of the four-lettered name of G-d (YKVK), and, accordingly, the supreme doxology Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba is comprised of seven words and there are seven expressions of praise (from “V’Yishtabach to V’Yithallal) following it. The seven words and seven expressions, respectively, represent the magnification of G-d’s ineffable four-lettered name by seven, giv­ ing us “Koach” or the full force symbolized by 28. Therefore, the Talmud insists, they must be spoken “with full strength.” This is apparent too, in the fact that the sentence Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba contains 28 letters, again Koach.

It is further stressed by the 28 words from Y’hey Sh mey Rabba through D’amiron B’olma. The fact that the last observation is not mere coincidence or numerical gymnastics is borne out by the Halachic requirement To preserve the 28-word symbolism; hence, during the Ten Days of Penitence when the additional word uVeyla is added to the Kaddish the words min kol are contracted to one word— mikol—in order to maintain the required 28 words. (Munk,

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186) The writer would add that there are also 28 words from the commence­ ment of the Kaddish through Olmaya, the culmination of the doxology.

How convincingly we see the depth of Rabbinic thought hidden in the care­ fully measured words of the Kaddish! No wonder they exclaim: “Whoever answers Omen, Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba is assured of a place in the world to come.”

(Boreythah, B’rochoth, 57a) HE Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba is, then, the zenith of sanctification, expressing the hope that the recognition of His Great Name be spread through all eternity and brought to full realization on earth. When supreme sanctification is combined with the most excellent of Mitzvoth, the study of Torah, we have the basis for all human existence—the study of His Torah and the sanctification of His Name. Therefore the Rabbis taught: “Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba of Agadah is one of the foundations upon which the world is maintained.” (Sotah, 49a) Rashi explains: Y’hey Sh’mey Rabba was answered [in the Kaddish recited] after studying Agadah . . . so there is here [in one place] Torah-study and Sanctification of His Name.”

We can do our share in bringing nearer His redemption by the performance of this easy Mitzvah. By concentrating all our inner resources to respond with all our might in this epitome of sanctification, we can bring closer the fulfill­ ment of the prophecy of Ezekiel: “And I shall be magnified and I shall be sanctified and I shall be revealed before many nations.” (XXXVIII, 23)

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RABBI BERTRAND G. FINK, a musmach of the Hebrew Theological College of Chicago, received his B.A. degree and his M.A. in Philosophy from Roosevelt University. He served as a Youth Director in Chicago and as assistant Jewish Chaplain at the Great Lakes Naval V.A. Hospital.

He now serves as rabbi of the Beth Israel Synagogue in Edmonton, Alberta. Rabbi Fink has also been appointed Hillel counselor of the University of Alberta Hillel Foundation. He has authored several articles for Jewish and general periodicals.

March-April, 1963

53

A

Marking Time

By SIDNEY KATZ

HEN I was first appointed as Jewish Chaplain to the prisons in the area in which I live, I viewed the job with misgivings, and rather re­ gretted that fate had sent me to a con­ gregation near the largest, and by repute the toughest, prison in South Africa. I had never met a convict before. I imagined that prisons housed rough, crude men with close-cropped hair and striped uniforms, and so I wondered how I should approach my new congregants.

But I need not have worried. I very soon discovered that most of the con­ victs I was to visit were ordinary folk, very human and certainly not lacking in humour. I also found out that a man in prison seldom recognizes that he has committed a real offense. He thinks he has either been framed or led on by bad company; in any case he is not in the same class as common or garden criminals and should have been given a suspended sentence had the judge not been biased. Rarely does the Jewish criminal blame his misfor­ tune on his own doings. He always looks for a scapegoat and must blame his imprisonment on someone or something. Often it is his wife, or his

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partner, who has let him down. Or else it is the poverty in which he was brought up, or the fatherless or motherless home. Frequently Anti­ semitism is blamed, which gives him an excellent excuse for the predica­ ment in which he finds himself. These excuses, while not exactly justifying his actions, can to some extent con­ done them.

The snobbery that exists behind the bars is remarkable. Sam, for example, had been convicted of a large scale fraud and, because he still owned a big house and motor car, and regarded his imprisonment as a temporary in­ convenience, felt that he was infinitely superior to Archie, who was serving a term of eighteen months for house­ breaking. One day I was discussing some of Archie’s problems with him, and Sam felt that he deserved more of my attention. He called me aside and whispered with fine superiority “What are you talking to him for?

You know he is a ‘ganif’!”

ATHER more tragic in his supe­ riority is a very intelligent and well-educated fellow called Maurice, who has spent most of his life apply-

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ing his abilities in the wrong direction.

Maurice seems unable to cope with life as he finds it. He needs to be a leader and organizer, but lacks some­ thing in his personality that would enable him to assume this role in the society in which he lives. And so, to boost himself, he embarked several years ago on a career of forgery and fraud, which has kept him behind bars for twenty of his forty-five years.

Maurice is the ideal prisoner. He helps the wardens; he organizes sports and entertainments for the prisoners; he organizes the Jewish convicts and when I visit them regards himself as their spokesman and their liaison offi­ cer between them and me. He has es­ tablished a prison magazine which he has named, most appropriately “Time Tells.” He is the very able editor of this magazine, and in one number passed on this advice to his fellow convicts: Arnold Bennett once wrote ‘Time is the inexplicable raw material of everything.

With it all is possible. Without it noth­ ing.’ Remember that the most precious possession you have when you are in prison is Time. Everything else has been taken from you. Do not think of ‘kill­ ing time’ because you are ‘doing time,’ but when you wake up each morning, remember that you have twenty-four hours. Use them well. Take a magazine and read it; take a book and study it; and so equip yourself for the life that awaits you outside. Time tells, my friends, time tells.

Yet Maurice, an idealist in prison, cannot fit into normal society, and is continually returning to the one place where he is superior, where his opin­ ion is valued, and where he can use his “time” well. When he was last re­ leased at the end of an indeterminate sentence, I saw him for the first time as a free man, and was surprised how different he appeared in normal surMarch-April, 1963

roundings. Completely sure of himself and at ease in prison, he was quite at a loss to know how to behave over a cup of tea in an ordinary home, and he was so ill at ease that I began to feel uncomfortable. When I reminded myself that it was several years since he had seen an armchair, a telephone, a picture on a wall, and that he had almost forgotten how to drink out of a cup or how to use a cake-fork, I realized how tragically lost this man was in normal society—this man who had for many years been almost the “head boy” of the prison. He was go­ ing to a job and was determined that at last he would start afresh and leave behind him his sordid life of crime.

He promised that he would write to me, that he would work hard, and that he would do everything in his power to rehabilitate himself as a self-repecting man. Less than a year later I met Maurice again—back in the prison and once again wearing the distinctive jacket of a convict serving an indeter­ minate sentence.

OT all my “prison congregants” are recidivists. Little Ernest, I am N sure, will never come back to jail. He was a wizened little man, a poor tailor, and not very good at his trade. He had divorced his extravagant wife, after much, heartache over his domestic problems, and was quite unable to pay the maintenance which the court had ordered. In desperation he had fled from his job and town; but his wife was hard and the law was stem, and Ernest had been removed forcibly from his make-believe obscurity to a law court and then to prison for a six-weeks’ sojourn. The only thing about his imprisonment that seemed to upset him was the fact that he was put to work in the shoemakers’ shop.

55

He was hurt that they had chosen to disregard the very existence of his trade. In his simplicity, Ernest had principles. When I asked him about his troubles, he refused to say a word against his ex-wife, and only after a long time did he explain to me that he was no longer married and he was not a man to speak ill of strange women!

By far the most unusual and the most interesting man I have ever met is a man of international repute called Pierre. Where Pierre originates from, nobody knows, but it is common knowledge among prisoners and war­ dens that he has been in prison in practically every country in the world.

To call him an “international crook” is no exaggeration. He speaks several languages fluently, including Hebrew.

In front of the prison guards he pre­ tended his English was not so good and conversed with me in Yiddish.

He has been incarcerated in France, in Mexico, in Australia, was extra­ dited from Mauritius for his present sentence, and awaits a free trip to Paris or London—depending on which country has precedence in the matter of extradition—with a trial at the end of it, when his present sentence is over.

ITH a vast prison experience be­ hind him, Pierre compares and W contrasts conditions in penal institu­ tions in different parts of the world.

Of course he speaks with authority, and his reminiscences are heard with awe by his fellow inmates. Pierre is extremely smooth, in fact he is most charming. He has a shrewd insight into people and their ways, and as a chess player of championship class he can slyly anticipate one’s thoughts. He has certainly not lost his humour in 56

his life of crime. The first time I met him, he told me his opinion of his fel­ low inmates. “Every morning when I wake up,” he said, “I count my fingers to make sure that none of them has been pinched.” The only man he trusted, he told me, was farmer Van der Merwe. Then he went on to ex­ plain that farmer Van der Merwe was the original owner of the farm on whose ground the prison was built, and that his grave was a few yards outside the wall surrounding the prison!

I knew that Pierre was of foreign birth and that he had no family or friends in the country. It was therefore with surprise that I learnt from him one day that he was expecting a visit.

Curiosity prompted me to enquire who the visitor was. “Oh, the same as last year” was his reply. '‘And they will be round to see me again next time.

It is only the Prison Board.”

On one occasion Pierre asked me for the Hebrew date. When I supplied him with the information, tears came to his eyes and he explained that that day was the Yahrtzeit for his late father. There were eight other Jewish convicts, and with me there was a minyon. With complete self-assurance Pierre proceeded to conduct the serv­ ice and to recite the Kaddish perfect­ ly, completely by heart and without the use of a prayer book.

A man who can laugh at his fate like Pierre does, is not very much up­ set by being imprisoned. Some, how­ ever, become bitter, some very de­ pressed, especially during the first few months of imprisonment, and some don a self-made martyr’s crown and expect everybody to be kind and con­ siderate and provide every possible comfort for them in their unfortunate state, as though it were something JEWISH LIFE

thrust upon them and in no way con­ nected with their own schemes and machinations. One convict writes to me regularly, in the tone one would expect from a most unfortunate Pris­ oner of War being very unfairly treated, begging that some kind per­ son help in some very small way to make life bearable for him. But it was not exactly “small” help that his last letter requested. Apart from an urgent request for money, his letter might have been an order for his tobacconist.

He asked me to send him a lighter, a couple of pounds each of two dif­ ferent brands of tobacco, tooth paste, face cream, the best toilet soap, ciga­ rette papers, and a pipe with a small bowl and a straight stem.

HEREAS outside prison Jews frequently attempt with varying W degrees of success to hide or conceal their Jewish identity, there is no such “snobbery” in the prison. Generally speaking, the Jewish convict becomes aware of himself as a Jew and is quite conscious of his Jewishness during the first few weeks of his imprisonment.

Probably at no time of his life was he as aware of his religion or his Jew­ ishness as he is during the period he is doing his time. Every non-Jewish prisoner would like to be a Jew. Not that he is suddenly in love wth Juda­ ism, its religion or way of life. It is the privileges that he is after, the food parcels before Pesach and the High Holy Days. For this reason, on one occasion half the prison population of one large institution claimed to be Jewish, which was quite obviously not the case. The authorities then asked me to draw up a comprehensive ques­ tionnaire through which we could easily establish the bona fides of any convict claiming Jewish affiliation.

March-April, 1963

Thé result is, in the words of one con­ vict, that “it is more difficult to be­ come a Jew in prison than outside!”

During the past ten years, the prison population in South Africa has almost doubled itself. In 1952, the daily aver­ age number of prisoners in prisons all over the country was 31,903.4. In the 1961-1962 year, the figure almost doubled itself to 62,769. It must be borne in mind that the majority are non-whites or Africans. The number of whites in 1961-1962 was approxi­ mately 3,500. Of these, less than fifty were Jewish. The increase in crime is a general trend in the Western world, and the Jewish figures have also pro­ portionately increased, though the number of Jewish convicts in South African prisons is proportionately very much smaller than the overall population.

HE relatively small incidence of crime amongst Jews is a tribute to the organization of the Jewish com­ munity and to the high moral and ethical values taught by Judaism.

Above all, the Jewish home, which is the centre of the Jewish way of life, translated the underlying philosophy of moral ethical values into reality. In the traditional Jewish conception, life is sacred as is also the human per­ sonality, be it Jew or non-Jew. There­ fore, no injury or insult may be in­ flicted on any human being irrespec­ tive of race or religion. To covet is a cardinal sin, forbidden by the Ten Commandments, to lust is to demoral­ ize oneself. Property rights of others must be respected. To steal is abomin­ able. The system of religious educa­ tion throughout the ages not only taught and elaborated these command­ ments as part of the Jewish legal sys­ tem, but also saw to it that they were

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engraved in the heart of the individual Jew and on the collective Jewish mind.

Another important factor contribut­ ing to the small incidence of crime amongst Jews is the strong sense of group solidarity within the Jewish community. Law-breakers of the Jew­ ish faith are not only a disgrace to themselves and their families, but the shame is also keenly felt by the Jewish community as a whole.

Yet in spite of all this there were Jewish law-breakers at all times from earliest times, and as one Jewish con­ vict once put it to me, “Wherever there are Jews and wherever there are pris­ ons you can be sure that some Jews will be found in those prisons.” Those who find themselves there are insig­ nificant in number in comparison with the general prison population. Yet they are there. Like the rest of us, they are human beings with hopes and aspirations, with strong and weak points, with love and with hate. Some have wives and children who feel the disgrace more than their loved ones in prison. In one important respect they differ from the rest of us, they broke the law and they were found out.

HAT is the social background of some of these Jewish crimi­ nals? How strong were their Jewish loyalties prior to their coming to pris­ on? What is the main reason for their breaking the law? Is it the environ­ ment, the home, or the synagogue which is to blame?

In ten years of prison chaplaincy work, I have found that the majority of Jewish convicts were not closely affiliated to the Jewish community before they came to prison. In fact many of them had married out of the faith. I believe that had they had a

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better Jewish background with a knowledge of Jewish values, some of them at least would not have turned to crime. The respect for the Torah and the fear of G-d has been a deter­ rent to crime within the Jewish community.

It is generally supposed that Jews commit only book offenses, frauds or petty forgeries. It is the tendency in everyday life for Jews to work with their brains rather than their hands, to have the white collar jobs rather than trades. The same is true of Jews’ crimes. The majority of Jews in jail are there for frauds, breaches of the insolvency and company acts, for­ geries, and other forms of financial manipulations. There are few Jewish convicts who have committed robbery, housebreaking, rape, or murder. In fact, it surprises many to know that I once had a Jewish murderer in the condemned cell.

O have been locked up in the con­ demned cell of a prison and then released again to breathe the free air outside, is a “right” that only a chap­ lain can experience. The unfortunate lad concerned had been sentenced to death for the murder of a fellow-con­ vict while he was serving a sentence for a lesser offense. What is so inter­ esting about this case is that it was one of the very few that would be recognized as murder punishable by death in Jewish law. It was premedi­ tated—a warning had been given to the murderer that what he was about to do was murder and carried the death penalty. Yet he went ahead and committed the crime in the presence of a number of witnesses, including those who had warned him of the seriousness of his intended action. It is impossible to forget the mentajly

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strenuous period, lasting about six months, during which I visited the condemned cell almost daily, a cell overshadowed with gloom, not so much because of its dark-coloured walls as the knowledge that it is next door to the gallows.

My interviews with this young man were confined mainly to his reminis­ cences. Usually I was alone with him, locked up in the cell, and I was amazed as he unfolded before me a picture of his life of crime. It was in­ credible to me that one so young should have been through so much evil. Frequently he questioned me about life after death and about re­ ligious explanations of reward and punishment, but rarely did he ask me to pray with or for him. He never appeared to regret what he had done, and he did not at any time break down, neither at his trial nor through all the months of waiting to die.

When he was warned that his ex­ ecution was about to take place, it was a painful duty to arrange for the funeral of a man who was still alive, and it was a shuddering experience to visit him and know that even as I was speaking to him, his grave was being dug. At the last moment, the execu­ tion was postponed pending a special appeal, and so that awful period of waiting was extended. When the end finally came, I was spared the horror of having to minister to him in his last moments, as a few days before he was executed he suddenly decided to change his faith. Whether he did this because he really believed that he was doing the right thing, or merely for sensation, or whether he was

March-April, 1963

grasping at anything to occupy his mind in those last few horrible days, or whether he had a subconscious feel­ ing that this would enable him to enter the next world in a new faith and ab­ solved of his sins, nobody will ever know. No action of his was ever easily understood.

One of his last acts was to write to me a letter which I received when he was already dead. The letter was as extraordinary as the boy’s whole per­ sonality. Here he was, literally in the shadow of the gallows, knowing that he had less than twenty-four hours left to live, and yet he sat down and in an unfaltering hand wrote: “Just a few lines to express my wish that there will be no hard feelings about my changing my religion. . . At first my family were rather upset by the whole thing, but they have now be­ come reconciled to the fact, so I don’t think any real harm has been done.”

LL convicts do inexplicable things.

If all their actions were account­ able, they would not commit fraud, forgery, robbery, rape, manslaughter, and murder. But they are the unfor­ tunate few whose peculiarities land them in trouble, and we, who look after their welfare while they are pay­ ing for their sins, can help them by remembering that they are very real, very human, and often very pleasant individuals, and by letting them retain their individuality and their humour.

For a period spent in prison is bound to leave an indelible mark on a man.

Nobody knew this better than Maurice when he wrote “Time tells, my friends, time tells!”

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59

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JEWISH LIFE

Be

Book

Kaufm ann’s Reversal o f Higher Criticism

By DAVID S. SH A P IR O

THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL, FROM ITS BEGINNINGS TO THE BABY­ LONIAN EXILE, by Yehezkel Kaufmann, translated and abridged by Moshe Greenberg. The University of Chicago Press, 1960. viii+486 pp.

EBREW tradition regards Mono­ theism as the pristine religion of H mankind. According to the Biblical account, humanity strayed from the pure, primeval faith of the early patriarchs and fell victim to the lure of strange gods. To restore mankind to the true faith, G-d chose Abraham and his seed so that through them all na­ tions of the earth would be blessed. By followers of the monotheistic faiths, the Bible has been regarded as the self-disclosure of G-d to the people of Israel, through whom His message was RABBI DAVID S. SHAPIRO teaches the His­ tory of Jewish Civilization and Hebrew Litera­ ture at the University of Wisconsin. He is a musmach of the Hebrew Theological College of Chicago, where he serves on the graduate facul­ ty. He is spiritual leader of Congregation Anshe Sfard in Milwaukee.

March-April, 1963

brought to the whole world. According to this record, Moses brought down from Sinai the Torah to his people.

When the people departed from the teachings of Moses, G-d sent the prophets to call them to repentance.

The prophets neither added to nor de­ tracted from the original Law pre­ sented by the original lawgiver. Their task was to bring about a return of Israel to their Heavenly Father and the Torah that He gave them. For about two thousand years this broad outline of the historic relationship of Israel and its G-d was accepted as authentic. No one dared to question the role that Moses and his Law played in the early history of Israel, nor did anyone conceive of the Prophets of Israel in terms other than that of preachers and teachers who received a Divine call to transform the hearts of men to love the Lord and to obey his commandments.

In the middle of the seventeenth cen­ tury, the daring and powerful mind of 61

Baruch Spinoza had undertaken the task of thoroughly demolishing the Biblical-Philonic synthesis which had been achieved and perfected after a millenium and a half of gigantic intel­ lectual efforts (as pointed out by Prof.

Harry A. Wolfson). This searching mind, relentlessly seeking its goal of transvaluation of values, also directed its weapons upon what had been thought to be the impregnable fortress of Biblical tradition. Building upon stray remarks of early Jewish com­ mentators, Spinoza erected his own structure of Biblical scholarship in which everything was turned topsy­ turvy. Moses was no longer the trans­ mitter of the Torah. It was Ezra, who lived a thousand years later, who gathered various documents which he compiled into one work that became known as the Mosaic Law. Not until a century after Spinoza did his work begin to bear its bitter fruit. With the rise of new methods of historical study and the emergence of the evolutionary approach in various fields of research, a wholly new school of Biblical criti­ cism arose which carried Spinoza’s theories to extreme conclusions, often­ times to reductio ad absurdum. By this time, the very existence of the early figures of Hebrew history had been dismissed as primitive myths. A novel interpretation of the history of the Hebrew faith was now being pro­ pounded. In line with the doctrines of dynamic evolutionism, Biblical Mono­ theism came to be regarded by “Higher Criticism” as the product of a long process of historical develop­ ment, and not until the supposed Sec­ ond Isaiah, it was maintained, did Bib­ lical Monotheism, after going through the stages of fetishism, polytheism, henotheism, and monolatry, flower forth in all its glory. The Mosaic writ­ ings were reduced by the critical 62

school to a collection of documents, recognizable by different names used for the Deity or by a disparity of style. The various schools of Biblical research, the most famous of which is the Graf-Wellhausen school, wreaked havoc upon the Biblical texts which were out of harmony with the Docu­ mentary Hypothesis, as it was called, and were characterized by a haughty disregard of the living heirs of the Book whose claim to an unbroken tradition concerning the origin and growth of the Scriptures deserves more serious consideration. By the early decades of the twentieth century, no self-respecting intellectual, whether Jewish or non-Jewish, dared question the validity of the bizarre, sometimes conflicting and contradictory, conclu­ sions of the so-called science of Bib­ lical criticism, whose professors mani­ fested so little of that humility which is characteristic of true men of science.

Needless to say, the triumphs of Biblical criticism created great intel­ lectual confusion. More than questions of historical truth or intellectual curi­ osity were involved. The very souls of men were being tested. The apparent demolition of the seemingly uncon­ querable fortress of Biblical authen­ ticity was undoubtedly a tremendous blow to many a sensitive soul.

UT theories come and theories go.

A new science had made its ap­ B pearance synchronously with Biblical criticism. Archeology at first was re­ garded as an ally of the newly emerg­ ing hypotheses of Biblical history.

Later it turned into a support of the traditional orientation. The evidence of rich and advanced civilizations dur­ ing the Patriarchal period more and more confirmed the historical reality of early Biblical personages. That adJEWISH LIFE

vanced ethical and religious ideas need not be relegated necessarily to later periods in history was proved by literary documents of great antiquity which had been discovered in the ruins of the Nile and the Tigris-Euphrates valley. If some kind of solar mono­ theism could have briefly emerged in Egypt in the early Biblical period, the a priori grounds for rejecting the antiquity of Biblical Monotheism were no longer valid. The doctrine of evolu­ tion itself had to be supplemented by a mutational and emergent theory in the history of man’s spiritual develop­ ment. The role of genius, flash of in­ sight, and intuition had to be accorded recognition.

While the name of Wellhausen dom­ inated the field of critical Biblical re­ search in the nineteenth century, the twentieth century has produced a scholar, Yehezkel Kaufmann, whose work may in the long run prove the turning of the tide towards the re­ establishment of the authenticity of the traditional point of view. Although not a traditionalist, this great savant and thinker, who served for many years as professor of Bible at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has, more than any other student, brought about a complete reversal of the major theses of critical Biblical scholarship.

Although himself not committed to the acceptance of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, he has restored the authenticity of the broad outlines of Biblical history as traditionally con­ ceived.

is based on the original Hebrew “Toldoth Ha-Emunah Ha-Yisraelith”) the author has pointed out that paganism in the Bible is identified with fetishism and there appears to be no true com­ prehension of the mythological essence of paganism by the Scriptural writers.

This puzzling phenomenon, Kaufmann maintains, can be understood only as the result of the very early triumph in Israel of the Monotheistic idea which had uprooted the last vestiges of the mythological-magical outlook and made it well-nigh incomprehensible to the teachers and leaders as well as to the people at large. The struggle in Israel against paganism was not waged on the ideological or mythological level, but rather was directed against the popular idolatry which consisted of a superstitious indulgence in a magical, fetishistic, non-mythological worship of images, while the belief in the One G-d was firmly maintained. The tri­ umph over cultic idolatry became pos­ sible only because mythology in Israel had been dead for a long time.

The basic distinction between the pagan idea and the Israelitish concep­ tion is defined by Kaufmann in terms of their relationship to the realm of the metadivine. Paganism is based on the assumption that all reality, consist­ ing of both gods and men, is grounded in a “realm of being prior to the gods and above them, upon which the gods depend, and whose decrees they must obey” (p. 21). This primordial realm is transcendent to the gods, and from it proceed both theogony and cosmogony.

The Israelitish idea, on the other hand, AUFMANN has, above all, of­ is that G-d is supreme over all, that fered a re-evaluation of Biblical He is free, unshackled, unbound, the Monotheism and has demonstrated its source of all being and the creator of originality and uniqueness in a master­ all existents. The first gives rise to ful manner. He has also confirmed its mythology and magic. The latter re­ origin in the patriarchal-Mosaic pe­ jects all mythology and magic. “The riod. In the “Religion of Israel” (which, Biblical religious idea . . . is of a su-

K

March-April, 1963

63

pernal G-d, above every cosmic law, fate, and compulsion; unborn, unbeget­ ting, knowing no desire, independent of m atter and its forces; a G-d who does not fight other divinities or pow­ ers of impurity; who does not sacri­ fice, divine, prophesy, or practice sor­ cery; who does not sin and needs no expiation; a G-d who does not cele­ brate festivals of His life” (p. 121).

It is this character of Israel’s G-d that is the distinguishing feature of Israel’s religion and that “sets it apart from all the religions of the earth” (ibid.).

The nature of Prophecy and the character of the Prophets also are con­ tingent, according to Kaufmann, on the unique conception of G-d that ob­ tained in Israel. The Biblical Prophet is not, like his pagan counterparts, an embodiment of a divine power that is grounded in his divine origin. He is merely a messenger who is sent to bring G-d’s word to his people and ful­ fill a divinely-designated mission. “His function is not to answer men’s in­ quiries, like the pagan prophet and diviner, but to do and say only that required by G-d” (p. 213).

AUFMANN’S “Toldoth Ha-Emunah Ha-Yisraelith” is a monu­ K mental attempt to reconstruct fully the spiritual history of Israel during Biblical times in the light of these fundamental insights. There is no doubt that this work is one of the most significant achievements of Jewish scholarship in modern times. While thè traditional Jew will find much in

64

Kaufmann’s work that is unaccept­ able as well as objectionable, he will, at the same time, learn much from it that will deepen his understanding and enhance his appreciation of the Sacred Scriptures. The work is the product of vast erudition, deep thought, and also great love for the Book of Books.

Kaufmann’s work is not yet too wellknown in non-Jewish circles. The ex­ cellent translation and abridgement of the “Toldoth Ha-Emunah Ha-Yis­ raelith” by Professor Moshe Green­ berg of the University of Pennsylvania (who has also included sections which are adapted from the author’s great work “Golah Ve-Nechar”) , 1prepared with the approval of the author, will undoubtedly be welcomed by serious students of the Bible who will find its fresh insights exhilarating, even as critical students will find its point of view disturbing to their conventional prejudices. Unlike great anti-critical writings of traditional scholars (such as Hoffman, Jawitz, and Halevi) which have generally been ignored, Kauf­ mann’s work, itself a product of the critical school, cannot be brushed aside by the protagonists of this school. For those who are committed to faith in the divinity of the Torah, the old prin­ ciple of Rabbi Meir will have to apply —to eat the inside of the pomegranate and throw away its peeling. A thor­ ough analysis of the “Toldoth HaEmunah Ha-Yisraelith” from the point of view of Torah is an urgent desideratum, but such an undertaking is, of course, beyond the scope of this brief review.

JEWISH LIFE

The Tanya in English

By GERSHON KRANZLER

LIQQUTEI AMARIM (TANYA), By Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. Trans­ lated by Dr. Nissan Mindel, Kehot Publication Society, New York, N. Y., 1962. xxix + 369 pp. $5.50.

HOSE who are vitally interested in the basic literature of Jewish religious thought have long awaited a translation of one of the most impor­ tant creations of Jewish religious phi­ losophy, the famous Tanya or Liqqutei Amarim of Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi. This so-called “Written Torah” of Chabad Chassidism by its illustri­ ous founder, one of the most original contributions of all times, gives a com­ pendial presentation of the Torah Uni­ verse and of man's function in it, as it is contained in the exoteric Talmudic literature, as well as in the esoteric sources of the Kabbalah, on which Chassiduth is based.

Only someone trained in the ter­ minology of the “living waters” of Chassiduth could exhaust this truly inexhaustible sourcebook of Jewish philosophy. In 1958, the Otzar Hachassidim Lubavitch, together with Kehot Publications, brought out an excellent Yiddish translation of the Tanya by the late, great religious writer and journalist, Rabbi Uriel Zimmer, of

T

RABBI GERSHON KRANZLER has authored several Jewish textbooks and numerous articles, short stories, and poems on Jewish themes. He is principal of the Talmudical Academy of Balti­ more and is on the staff of Baltimore Junior College.

March-April, 1963

blessed memory. Now, four years later, Kehot Publications has published the first of two volumes of the monumen­ tal English translation of the Tanya in flawless English, by the editor of the English publications of the Merkos L'Inyoney Chinuch, Dr. Nissan Min­ del. Only one who has done some work in the difficult realm of translations, especially from the complex Hebrew philosophical literature, can gauge the great effort, care, and difficulty that has been involved in making the Tanya a modern Chassidic Guide of the Per­ plexed, available to the English reader.

In his beautiful preface to the trans­ lation, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson stresses the great difficulties involved in trying to render into English a work such as the Tanya, which can be understood on the simple level, as well as on the deep­ est level accessible only to the initiated, and he calls Dr. Mindel’s work a con­ tribution “of lasting credit.”

At the same time the Lubavitcher Rebbe answers those critics who might view as ill-advised the rendition of a partially esoteric work, steeped in the Kabbalistic tradition of the Ari as in­ terpreted by the Baal Shem Tov. Such literature, these critics might assert, should be limited to those who can master its original language, which can never really and fully be trans­ lated. Rabbi Schneerson quotes the au­ thor of the Tanya, the Alter Rav, as saying in one of his works that “any 65

of the ‘seventy tongues/ when used as an instrument to disseminate the To­ rah and Mitzvoth, is itself ‘elevated’ thereby from its earthly domain into the sphere of holiness while at the same time serving as a vehicle to draw the Torah and Mitzvoth from above down­ ward, to those who read and under­ stand this language.”

The importance of making the Tan­ ya available to the English-reading Jew is indicated by the fact that this great work has been published moire than fifty times since its first edition appeared in 1796. The Tanya has taught and inspired the broad ranks of Chabad Chassidism and beyond it, of the orthodox Jewish world, and has become a basic text for young yeshivah students as well as for mature scholars who have looked for a total Weltan­ schauung of the Torah in the Chassidic vernacular. Representing the fruits of twenty years of labor, the Tanya was Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s response to the queries of students and scholars who turned to him for guidance from near and far. Prepared in a systematic way, in a language in which every word, nay letter, is weighed and counted, it is accessible to the less scholarly, as well as to the scholar who approaches it with the tools of the highest intellectual order.

Essentially, as Dr. Mindel points out in his excellent and highly informative introduction to his translation, Rabbi Shneur Zalman’s Guide is both mystic and rational in character, while the Moreh of the Rambam uses only the intellectual tools and terms of the ra ­ tional philosopher for the “man whose perplexity derived from his desire to retain his traditional beliefs, despite apparent contradictions between tra ­ dition and philosophy.” Rabbi Shneur Zalman, in whose times there was no such conflict between the worlds of the 66

Torah and of science, in the closed and deeply orthodox atmosphere of Eastern Europe, “addresses himself to those who are ‘in pursuit of righteousness and seek the Lord . . . whose intelli­ gence and mind are confused and wander about in the darkness in the service of G-d, unable to perceive the beneficial light that is buried in books.’

In other words, he writes for those whose beliefs have not been troubled by doubts, but who merely seek the right path to G-d.” The Tanya is there­ fore essentially a work on Jewish reli­ gious ethics, rather than on Jewish philosophy, yet its author’s univer­ sal perspective illuminates the major areas of Jewish philosophical and theo­ logical concern. Combining the vast Talmudic scholarship with Kabbalistic thought, as formulated by his Chas­ sidic masters, the Baal Shem Tov, the Magid of Messeritsh and his son, the Mal’och, the Baal Hatanya creates a unified universe for his reader, out of the external polarity of things, that reflects the unity of the Creator. Thus it is his “ultimate aim to bring out the unity of the microcosm and the macro­ cosm, as they merge within the mystic unity of the ‘En Sof,’ the Infinite.”

IEWING the magnitude and scope of the Tanya, one has all the more V admiration for the contribution of Dr. Mindel, who in his own background combines the learning of the Eastern European Yeshivoth, with the academ­ ic training of British and American universities, and with a thorough grounding in Chassiduth. He has suc­ ceeded in transm itting the full content of the work, unadulterated yet lucid in language and structure. He has had the invaluable aid of the leaders of the Chabad movement, with whom he has worked for more than twenty years, and has been able to utilize numerous JEWISH LIFE

commentaries, annotations, and eluci­ dations, many of which are solely available in manuscript form. His translation is thus more than the re­ flection of technical, linguistic skill. It is the work of love of a superb crafts­ man, who masters his material and presents it as a reflection of his years of labor and artistic inspiration.

Externally, too, the English trans­ lation of the Tanya is commendable, presenting good typography, excellent binding, and above all, the full treat­ ment of a scientific approach, so im­ portant to the perusal of a master work of classic stature. One must con­ gratulate the Kehot Publication So­ ciety for making this classic available to the English-speaking Jew and for sparing neither effort nor expense in its technical presentation.

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Letters te the Editer “SECULAR” AGENCIES New York/N. Y. The insidious nature of the secular­ ist organizations is well illustrated by Paul Vishny’s apology for them (A View of the “Secular” Agencies, J ew ­ ish L ife , Jan.-Feb. 1963). Here we have an intelligent, articulate lawyer with semichah from an orthodox semi­ nary writing of these organizations from the self-same topsy-turvy van­ tage point that they have so shrewdly foisted on American Jewry. For thirtyfive centuries Torah was the center of Jewish life. As one receded from Torah, he receded to the periphery of Jewish life. The greater one’s learning was in Torah, the higher was his standing on the ladder of leadership.

Today, however, the secular organiza­ tions have turned these values upside down. They have persuaded most American Jews that they are “general organizations embracing Jews of all religious views.” In other words, Torah is a “special” interest in Jewish affairs nowadays, no longer its source of defi­ nition. They claim that since Jewish organizations must be democratic, we cannot coerce others into accepting Torah values. Hence the smaller the commitment to Torah, the more gen­ erally Jewish is an organization now considered to be. Mr. Vishny appar­ ently has accepted this inverted scale of values. After conceding that “Or-, March-April, 1963

thodox Jews will, and must, continue to maintain separate organizations . . . ” (We are the separatists!) he urges, “there must be a place, not on the pe­ riphery of Jewish life [under Torah?] where all Jews come together for all those purposes which a people share.

The ‘secular’ Jewish organizations can be such a place.”

One hundred years ago the maskil recognized that he was less Jewish than the yeshivah bochur. Both could accept a Reb Yitzchak Elchanan as a leader and come together to public meetings at a synagogue. Today the secularist will not meet at the syna­ gogue. The orthodox Jew must go to a secularist center or under the banner of some secularist group to meet him.

Why? The answer is this: The secu­ larist is not a simple neutralist in re­ gard to Torah. He is actually antiTorah. Hence his refusal to enter a shool or to cooperate under the aegis of Torah. Yet Mr. Vishny tells us that if we don’t join a secularist organiza­ tion, we are guilty of “a withdrawal from the total community.” I have al­ ways been under the impression that the Reformers and the Secularists withdrew from the authentic Jewish community. Moreover, I am far from convinced that the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Com­ mittee, B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Wel69

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fare Board and others of their ilk are the “total community.” I am aware that heterodox clergymen and secular­ ist leaders often speak as if orthodox intransigence is responsible for the rift between orthodoxy and heterodoxy.

Presumably we created secularism and Reform just to be different! But when an orthodox Jew of Mr. Vishny’s in­ telligence and learning uncritically ac­ cepts such a point of view, and urges that unless we follow the secularists in their flight from Judaism, we are guilty of “an escape,” I fear that someone has been brainwashed.

Elliot Samuelson P R A Y E R C A S E : CA N A D IA N V IEW

Montreal, Quebec The articles and editorial which have appeared in J ewish Life dealing with the Supreme Court decision in the Regents’ Prayer case (Prayer in the Public Schools, Editorial, Aug. 1962/ Av 5722 ; Jewish Identification and the Supreme Court Decision, Church— State: Réévaluation or Rationaliza­ tion?, October 1962/Tishri 5723) ap­ proach this issue from varying points of view. Permit me to offer some addi­ tional thoughts on the question, w rit­ ten from a Canadian vantage point.

The Supreme Court decision is of course philosophically based on the deep-rooted principle of separation of Church and State which is a prime motif in the American experience.

Omitting the legalistic aspects of the case, however, one could raise a serious objection: Does separation of Church and State extend to separation of G-d and State? This challenge was implicit in the criticism raised by the opponents to the decision. There are many facets of American official life which cor­ roborate this distinction. The founding March-April, 1963

fathers did not fear the influence of G-d but were wary of coercion by pow­ erful and dominant denominations. In fact John Locke, intellectual father of the American constitution, great phil­ osopher of the English revolution, and ardent champion of the separation of Church and State, excluded atheists from the right to hold public office since no oath could be administered to them. Locke’s reasoning is obvious.

Why is an oath administered above and beyond the solemn promise? What is the increment of veracity that an oath gives to the promise made? It is the fact that it is made in the name of G-d. The atheist who cannot reinforce his promise through the association with the Divine must remain solely with his own conscience. Were we to accept the atheist on his conscience and administer an oath to the believer we would be placed in the absurd position that an atheist is more credible than he who believes in G-d.

The furor aroused by the expurga­ tion of twenty-odd words from the order of the day seems to me gro­ tesquely out of proportion considering the true problem which exists in twen­ tieth century education—the fact that the expulsion of G-d has long since been effected in the letter and the spirit of the modern curriculum. I sub­ mit that the modern curriculum from Grade One through High School, while not positively negating the concept of G-d, expresses a mechanistic, natural­ istic in te rp re ta tio n of existence couched in cause and effect terminology of pre-twentieth century science. G-d is not even given the courtesy of being an alternate hypothesis. The child is given highly speculative cosmogonies as explanations for the origins of ex­ istence, the unproven hypothesis of evolution is taught as a matter of fact, theories which tax our credulity to a 71

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much greater extent than the simple and direct story of Genesis. The entire panorama of human history and of social problems is unfolded entirely in political, economical and power terms.

The unsophisticated mind of the child cannot pierce through this seem­ ingly secure, self-confident, and au­ thoritative description of reality and seeks meaning and values beneath this facade of orderliness. From nine in the morning until three-thirty in the afternoon the child is perfectly content without G-d, with full confidence in his all-knowing teacher and the infallible textbook. In his fertile imagination the child can amplify the elementary knowledge he has acquired and visual­ ize himself in outer space in a fabulous rocket which he hopes to construct himself. After all the excitement over the miracles of science how much psy­ chological room is there left from four p.m. to six p.m., two or three times in the week, to get excited about G-d’s miracles and religious purpose? How unrelated it becomes to the child. Will stories about Abraham and Isaac en­ able him to build a better rocket? Will some ancient ceremony enhance his career? Will he make more money by mastering the skill of “tefillin”? How can the Hebrew teacher, no matter how capable and well meaning he may be, counteract the consequences of the secularistic education? The child can­ not help but view his after-school Hebrew classes as a burden which he must bear under duress, and as an in­ trusion upon his precious playing time.

I am not advocating the teaching of religion in the public school. This is impossible as well as undesirable in a democratic system. But, I do contend that in our age, when concepts of causation, determinacy, and certainty have changed so radically, when huMarch-April, 1963

man thought is turning more and more to the extra-sensory and inner per­ sonality experiences, the curriculum should at least create an awareness in the child of an area unexplored by the simplified text. The child should be given the susceptibility for under­ standing and appreciating a spiritual and purposeful interpretation of real­ ity. Educators and sociologists are concerned about the despair and cyni­ cism of our youth. The reason they lack faith is not always because there is a dearth of ideas to have faith in, but rather because their souls are not attuned to this wave length of the human personality. By the time our youngsters are transformed from grop­ ing teenagers into pseudo-intellectual freshmen or sophomores any spark of religion that might have been kindled in their souls is extinguished upon ex­ posure to the scathing invective of the Freuds, Huxleys, and Russells.

From this point of view the Yeshivah and Day School can be seen in a new dimension of importance. The impor­ tance of these schools lies not only in the fact that the child will become more knowledgeable of Judaism and its traditions. The day school becomes the only educational institution at its level in which “G-d is given a chance.”

Through an integrated program the child is exposed to the idea of G-d and in general to ideals, values, and con­ cepts. In my experience with young­ sters I have observed that there is a vast difference in the ability to concep­ tualize, or to sense the reality of ideas and values, between the average paro­ chial school student and the average secular school student.

There are, fortunately, many par­ ents who realize this instinctively.

Particularly in large metropolitan areas which are afflicted with a greater frequency in juvenile delinquency, 73

parents who may be apathetic to Juda­ ism otherwise will send their children to day school. I t could be that their motivation is merely to lessen the ex­ posure to a statistically higher rate of delinquency. I would like to think that this preference reflects more than a statistical comparison. Delinquency is being recognized not merely as a result of social and economic ills but, as a basic lack of purpose and meaningful­ ness, a spiritual void that is being filled with the excitement of anti­ social, aggressive behavior. The prob­ ability of developing a sense of purpose and meaningfulness is so much greater in the parochial school in which the self of the child is related to a higher norm—-“by giving G-d a chance!”

Rabbi Joseph Grunblatt PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY Youngstown, Ohio J ewish Life is to be commended and congratulated on the timely article en­ titled “Shall Parents Be Punished for the Deeds of Their Children?” (J ew ­ ish Life , Jan.-Feb. 1963/Shevat-Adar 5723).

I am constantly amazed by the con­ sistency between our Jewish law, tradi­ tion, and practice and what we, as social workers, know to be good social practice. Is there a connection here with the lower delinquency and crime rates among Jews?

Ohio already has a parental respon­ sibility law and, at least locally, ex­ perience has shown it to be virtually unenforceable. It adds an additional and unnecessary strain on the already weakened family ties of the delinquent family. Delinquency, as a social as well as a psychological problem, must be treated as an integral part of our society’s pathology and cannot be 74

“solved” on a fragmented basis. Our goal must be treatment and rehabilita­ tion rather than vengeance and retri­ bution.

Meyer E. Pollack, ACSW Assistant Director, Jewish Family and Children’s Service BEYOND THE PAM CASE Staten Island, N. Y. You are obviously annoyed at what appears to you to be the intransigence of “key figures of the Roman Catholic leadership” in blocking the passage of a F air Sabbath Law in New York (Beyond the P clw, Case, Jan.-Feb. 1963 Editorial). However, if you took the pains to diagnose the causes for their opposition, you might be on the way toward a solution of this festering problem. You complain that “the op­ ponents carefully avoid taking issue with the inherent merits of such a law.” Perhaps this is because you have failed to discern the real issue. You complain that “all efforts at suasion . . . had not had the slightest effect.”

Does this not indicate that such efforts may have been misdirected? If you read what Catholics have to say on the subject or at least what the Amer­ ican Jewish Congress has digested of their viewpoint, you would know that they are opposed to any modification of Sunday laws because they regard all such modifications as part of a campaign to secularize American life.

Until recently the struggle for alle­ viation of the plight of the Sabbath observer from Blue Laws was exclu­ sively in the hands of the American Jewish Congress. Their briefs, press releases and commercial approach used the Sabbath observer as a pawn in an all-out attack on Sunday as a day of JEWISH LIFE

rest. It is not the sanctity of Shabboth that moves them, but the desire to secularize Sunday. Since the American Jewish community permitted Congress to act as its advocate, is it any wonder that we have to face Catholic intransi­ gence? Have we not found it necessary to adopt a similar tactic in regard to Shechitah? When it becomes apparent that certain antisemitic elements had infiltrated the Humane Slaughter movement, did not the unwisdom of further negotiations become clear to us? One does not negotiate the cession of a beach-head. If that is your battle cry as you fight for those to whom Saturday is sacred, don’t weep if you are opposed by those to whom Sunday is holy time. Mr. Pam and Mr. Braunfeld (Braunfeld vs. Brown 366 U.S. 599) have been “used” by secularists.

It is high timè th at religious Jews did their own thinking and acting in this area, too.

Reuben E. Gross (Editor’s reply :) The supposition that Catholic lead­ ership is opposed to any modification of discriminatory Sunday laws because of fear of secularization is difficult to reconcile with their unyielding opposi­ tion to bills which would limit exemp­ tion only to Shomer Shabboth stores in overwhelmingly Jewish populated neighborhoods of the largest cities.

Such bills could scarcely be consid­ ered, in good faith, as lowering the bars to secularization, but certainly can be considered as reducing legal penalties for religious observance. Nor can Mr. Gross’s premise be harmo­ nized with the fact that Catholic leadership has raised no objection to innumerable exceptions to the Sunday Closing laws for many categories of business. One can buy—quite legally —many types of merchandise on SunMarch-April, 1963

days in New York, Massachusetts, and other states with religiously-discriminatory Sunday Laws; and one can see a flourishing trade being done in these wares in the immediate vicinity of Catholic churches any Sunday; also saloons are busily open on Sundays, as are sports enterprises, theaters, and other places of entertainment.

Most or all of these types of business enterprises were originally barred by the Sunday laws, amendments in their favor having been passed without Catholic opposition. Yet if grounds for secularizing influence be sought, surely it can be found in its rawest state in the commercialization in­ dicated.

The efforts at suasion cited in our editorial took the form, on more than one occasion, of private, unofficial dis­ cussions on this issue between some éminent figures of orthodox Jewry and high leaders of the Roman Catho­ lic Church. They proved fruitless, cer­ tainly, but nothing leads to the conclusion that such efforts were “mis­ directed” because of the secularization problem.

It is surprising to hear from Mr. Gross—long distinguished in activity for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America—the asser­ tion that the struggle against the religiously-discriminatory aspects of the Sunday laws was “until recently . . . exclusively in the hands of the Ameri­ can Jewish Congress.” This struggle was never exclusively in those hands; fa r from it. The Orthodox Union pio­ neered this struggle long years ago, led in it through the years, and has continuously been forwarding it, to the present day, as have other ortho­ dox Jewish organizations. “Catholic intransigence” long antedates the en­ tree of the American Jewish Congress into active work in this area, and ap-

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plied no less when the effort was solely or largely in religious hands. If this intransigence has become more open latterly, it is because the Protestant groups which formerly carried the burden of opposition changed their stand, behind which Catholic opposi­ tion can no longer be shielded from the public eye.

It is altogether unjustifiable to ex­ tenuate the stand of the Roman Cath­ olic leadership in order to press the case against the American Jewish Congress. We must not permit the Fair Sabbath Law cause to fall be­ tween the hierarchal hammer and the secularist anvil. The American Jewish Congress would be more rightfully the subject of Mr. Gross’s criticism if it failed to lend its efforts to the Fair Sabbath Law campaign, rather than because of its support thereof, what­ ever be the motivating philosophy.

And the Roman Catholic leadership would be more appropriately the bene­ ficiary of Mr. Gross’s solicitude if it supported this campaign against dis­ criminatory hindrance to religious ob­ servance rather than by its solo opposition, whatever be the excuse therefor.

BIBLE IN ISRAEL Brooklyn, New York I was surprised to read an article entitled “The Influence of the Bible in the State of Israel” by Dr. Shaul Colbi, Head of the Christian Division of Israel’s Ministry of Religion.

Would this gentleman have written about the Christian influence in the State of Israel or the Bible influence or New Testament influence in India, I would have appreciated his paper.

But to write about Bible influence, or rather, Bible Culture in Israel is most March-April, 1963

deplorable. I fail to understand how such an article under the misleading name was permitted to be published in an organ dedicated to true Judaism.

Dr. Colbi distinctly separates be­ tween Torah observance and Bible Culture. Let me quote: “The aim of this article is not to consider the effects deriving from Torah precepts and teachings, but to mark some of the manifestations of the indirect in­ fluence of the Bible in the State of Israel.”

What are these manifestations?

The Society for Bible Research which meets at the private residence of Mr. Ben Gurion, which Dr. Colbi so proudly cites, is ju st one classical manifestation of K ’fira B ’elokey Yisroel—Torah which is subject to private interpretation amounts to Christianity. Just recall the storm of protest to one such interpretation by Israel’s Prime Minister about the number of yotzey Mitzrayim.

And one more “manifestation,” for which I quote: “Next in line to the interest shown to, the* Bible comes archaeology.” This notorious interest had its manifestation by the desecra­ tion of the graves of Tzadikey Olom, which was halted by vigorous protest and actual physical resistance of ■Shomrey Torah.

Allow me to correct a historical fact: The Bible was not the compel­ ling reason for the Zionists’ decision to return to Zion. Dr. Herzl considered Uganda as a national home for the Jews. It was only after objections by Ussishkin that Uganda would not have an appeal to the broad masses in Eastern Europe that the plan was cancelled.

Finally, I fail to understand the pride Dr. Colbi takes in the time given by radio and schools to the ?Bible. After all, the Bible is our 77

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JEWISH LIFE

I enumerate a series of examples of the impact of the Bible in Israeli modern life. For instance, I quote the Bible Research Circle, which meets at the private residence of Mr. Ben Gurion. To condemn this circle Life . because of some heterodox private Dr. Felix Willman remarks of Mr. Ben Gurion is totally wrong; one should bear in mind that (Dr, Colbi replies:) I think that Dr. Felix Willman, in among its members are some whose his comments to the article “The orthodoxy is unquestioned, including Influence of the Bible in the State of lecturers at the Bar-Ilan University.

Israel,” was misled by the fact that Neither should one identify archae­ its author is the Head of the Christian ology with desecration because of Division of the Ministry of Religious some unfortunate marginal occur­ Affairs, implying th at this may de­ rences.

Dr. Willman’s indictment of Zionism tract from his Jewish loyalties. In fact—I am an observant Jew, a because of the Uganda plan, is ridicu­ quality expected of all the divisional lous! Was not Ussishkin, the success­ ful opponent of this plan, a fervent Directors of this Ministry.

The aim of my article—as remarked Zionist?

Finally, I would like to add a note

by Dr. William—was to consider some manifestations of the indirect influence of agreement: Dr. Willman is right in saying that of the Bible in the State of Israel.

But, he should have noted that at the the Bible is our classical literature, end of the article I stress that Juda­ and it is exact that it should occupy ism bases itself not only on the writ­ a prominent place in the curriculum ten Law of the Torah, but also on of schools and radio. I only fail to the Oral Torah, as codified in the understand why Dr. Felix Willman Talmud, from which the Jew should resents my taking pride in it.

Dr. Shaul Colbi not prescind.

“classical literature” and we cannot adopt Shakespeare or Schiller.

Torah Judaism is suffering from these modern Mithyavnim, and their hashkofah has no place in J ewish

March-April, 1963

79

^ tv d b y P h a r ^ ,

Illustration by Paul Gustaves .

Dore, the great French artist, from his most famous work, The Bible, Illustrated, originally published in 1866.

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JEWISH LIFE

with a millionaire It’s simple. Just take any EL AL flight from New York to London or Paris or Rome.

How does the millionaire get into the picture?

Relax. He’ll be there. Right in the pilot's seat. ‘‘Millionaire” happens to be airline trade talk for a pilot who’s flown a million miles or more.

And we have cockpits full of them.

But our pilots are too busy flying to give you the real feeling of the airline.

It's mostly up to you.

You have to hear the ‘‘Shalom” for yourself as you come aboard.

You have to remember that the whole idea of an international Israeli airline was only a dream not too many years ago.

(It's even possible that you yourself helped make the dream a reality.)

Now there are countless landings and take-offs behind us; we fly with the giants.

But we still get a tremendous kick when we hear the airport announcer say, ‘‘EL AL Flight 212 is now departing for London, Rome and Tel Aviv.”

It’s a kick we think you’ll want to share with us.

And with our millionaires.

Your travel agent will be happy to tell you how.

ELA L

On April 8 , 9 ,10,11,12,13,14,15,16, Heinz © Kosher Varieties will not be Kosher.

Why? Because April 8 to April 16 are the days of Passover. And the @ Seal* of Kashruth on so many Heinz labels does not in­ clude Passover. The @ is your guarantee that Heinz Varieties are strictly Kosher for year-round use. But not for Passover. As always, while publishing this yearly re­ minder, may we also wish you, your family and your friends a most happy Passover. *(u)/s the Seal of Approval of THE UNION OF ORTHODOX JEW ISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA.