Jewish Life December 1956 by Jewish Action

ORTHODOX

Kislev — 5717 December — 1956

lljllill

How to feel rich—at the low Ford price! The new kind of Ford is strawberries and cream .. . it's having a butler and a maid . . . it’s the smell of coffee on a fresh morning. It’s also an automobile—the most for your money. The new kind of Ford has the Silver Anniversary V-8 with great new Thunderbird GO;* or, for prime economy, there’s the new Mileage Maker Six. Every nut and bolt is new in the There’s a new kind of fun in the new kind of Ford for 957 *A special 270-hp Thunderbird 312 Super V-8 engine available at extra cost. Also, extra-high-performance Thunderbird 312 Super V-8 engine delivering up to 285 hp.

new kind of Ford. Each inch is new engineering. It has quality in places you’ll never see: bodies are heavily insulated to keep out cold and noise . . . doors close almost by themselves with the smooth precision of a bank vault. Remember—even millionaires can only ride in one Ford at a time. No one can have any more fun in a Ford than you can.

N ovem ber-Decem ber, 1956 Vol. XXIV

K islev, 5717

No. 2

EDITORIALS WHO IS THE AGGRESSOR?. . . . . . . THE TURNING P O IN T ....................... AN UNDERLYING PATTERN ............

S aul B ernstein , Editor

ARTICLES

M. M orton R ubenstein D r. E ric O ffenbacher R euben E. Gross R abbi S. J. S harfman > ; L ibby K laperman

LAST DAYS OF THE JEWISH WRITERS 8 Myron Kolatch JEWS IN A TOTTERING RED EMPIRE 20 HaroltLU. Rlbalow MASTERS OF ISRAELI ART................ 26 Alfred Werner BEHIND ISRAEL'S MILTITARY CAM PAIGN .................................................. 31 I Halevy Levin RELIGIOUS W RITERS.................... 45 Aryeh Newman

Editorial A sso dates M. M ichael K aufman ■_

Assistant Editor

Inside Illustrations by N orman N odel

SHORT STORIES

JE W IS H LIFE is published bi-monthly. Subscription two years $3.00, three years $4.00, four years $5.00.

JACOB AND HIS SONS................ .. . 14 Joseph Halperin THE SHTOOMER.................................. 38 By Gabriel Gersh

A ll rights reserved

POETRY

Editorial and Publication Office : 305 Broadway New York 7, N. Y. BEekman 3-2220

TABLETS OF FAITH.............................. By Gershunl

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION IN AN CIENT ISRAEL, By Eliezer Ebner____ 44 THE SACRIFICE, By Adele Wiseman 48 THE MODERN JEW FACES ETERNAL PROBLEMS, By Aron Barth 49 THE PLAY AND LEARN LIBRARY. . . . 50

Published by

, M oses I. F euerstein

Rabbi H. S. Goldstein, Wil liam Weiss, Samuel Nirenstein, William B. Herlands, Max J. Etra, Honorary Pres idents ; B e n ja m in Koenigsberg, Nathan K. Gross, Samuel L. Brennglass, S. David Leibowitt, Vice Presidents; Edward A. Teplow, Treasurer; Reuben E. Gross, Secretary. Dr. Sam son R. Weiss, Executive. Vice President. Saul Bernstein, A dministrator

BOOKS REVIEWED

U nion of Orthodox J ew ish Congregations of A merica

President

3 5 7

•

ON THE JEWISH RECORD MODZITSER N IG U N IM ..................... 43 By Eric Offenbacher

•

FEATURES 2 AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS____ "BAYOMIN HOHEYM BAZ'MAN HAZEH"....... ................................... 36 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR..................... 52 KASHRUTH DIRECTORY..................... 62 PHOTO CREDITS: Cover (Israeli soldiers pause for prayer), Israel’“Speaks; 13, Jewish Publication Society; 16, American Fund.for Israel Institutions; 25, Classics Illustrated; 27, 28, Sovfoto; 36, Wide World; 37 (topi, Israel Speaks^ 37 (bottom),Israel Office of Information.

DR, ALFRED WERNER is a well-known art critic for a number of literary publications. He is a lecturer in art at Hofstra College in New York. *

anthologist, editor, author and columnist, is a prolific writer whose popular works have been widely published. He is with the Department of.Public Relations of the Israel Bond Organization. HAROLD RIBALOW,

L HALEVY-LEVIN is the Israel correspondent of Jewish Life. He is the editor of the “Israel’Argosy" series of anthologies of the works of leading Israeli writers. *

GERSHUNL represented as a poet in this issue1, is an educator, social scientist and writer whose articles appear frequently in Jewish Life. *

MYRON KOLATCH, an associate editor of The New Leader, is a writer who specializes in Middle Eastern affairs. JOSEPH FREID is a free lance writer who serves as foreign correspondent in Israel for a number of news agencies. GABRIEL GERSH is a New York City college student whose stories have appeared in several Anglo-Jewish publications.

i»

ARYEH NEWMAN is assistant editor of the Torah Education Department of the Jewish Agency. His articles an various facets of Israeli life have appeared in Jewish Life. *

JOSEPH HALPERN, author of Jacob and His Sons, is a resident of Skokie, Illinois. This is his first appearance in J ewish Life.

RABBI ALBERT HOLLANDER DR. LEO JUNG DEBORAH I. OFFENBACHER MOSHE MICHAEL

JEWISH LIFE

WHO IS THE AGGRESSOR? Aggression %Hv a first or unprovoked attack, or act of hostility; the first act of injury or first act leading to a war or controversy. — W ebster’s N ew International Dictionary

J N CONDEMNING Israel’s military action in the Sinai Desert, those at the United Nations General Assembly who charged Israel with aggression ob viously could not have been governed by the definition offered by the above or any other authoritative dictionary. By no stretch of any honest imagination can this military measure be deemed a "first or unprovoked” attack by Israel upon Egypt. The victim of unremitting military and economic warfare by its neigh bors, besieged, blockaded, undergoing murderous attacks upon its civilian populace, bombarded, day in, day out, by threats of bloody destruction, Israel has suffered through eight years of a fake armistice that was but F ake tîe for the relentless aggression of its enemies. Then, faced, A rm istic e as tîe w^°ê ¡p ri4 knows, by a military machine poised to strike its death blow, Israel struck for its very life. The nations of the world, which had stood all but mute while Israel lay under attack through eight years, now found instant voice. It was a voice of harsh and frenzied condemnation—of Israel. ^ E R E THERE any doubts as to the motives which inspired this near-unani mous condemnation, the succeeding events have removed them. In some measure, undoubtedly, the motive was one of fear that Israel’s action would engulf the Middle East in war, leading to a world catastrophe. But such danger lay inherent in the developments which precipitated Israel’s move: the catering to Arab aggression by the Western world, the refusal of the Arab nations to desist from armistice-cloaked war against Israel, the massive arming of Egypt and its confederates by the Soviet Union and capture by the latter of the key position in the Middle East, the resort by the Egyptians to systematic open war in the form of Fedayeen forays, and their massing, under Soviet sponsorship and direction, of troops and material for the all-out attack. Far more conclu sively than Israel’s coup, these developments spelled war. Yet none among the greater or lesser powers were moved to offer any serious deterrent. Why? The answer is plain: because Israel was deemed expendable. Against all the lessons of the past, against all sound judgment of the present, against all the moral considerations that were so piously voiced at the session of the UN General Assembly which discussed Israel’s action, there prevailed the tacit willingness to permit the Arab forces to destroy Israel, in the hope that thereby greater perils might be averted. Amidst the chorus of voices heard at the historic session of the UN Gen eral Assembly, one stood out with the ring of nobility, of utter truth. That was December, 1956

the voice of Israel’s spokesman, Ambassador Abba Eban, who rose at that oc casion to greatness. His words penetrated the shadows of that murky scene, disclosing therein the enmeshed purposes and cross-purposes of—power politics. N ° ONE who bears with sincerity the title of Jew can view the action taken by the State of Israel without deep concern as to the moral considerations involved. But let it be understood that the basis of such concern lies not in the question of the moral fitness of this particular action it lies in the question of the morality of resort to arms under any circumstances. To the Jew, warfare as such, the organized shedding of human blood, is abhorrent. Since early in the history of our people, there have been those who adhered to the principle of pacifism, even in the face of ruthless tyranny. Of these, the original Chassidim, who abjured armed defense even when facing the butchery and sacrilege of Antiochus Epiphanes, stand as an imperishable example. But, in those days, too, there was recognized the moral obligation of self-defense. One may not, by default of action, contribute to his own destruction. Tradition attributes to the Maccabean forces, who rallied Israel to victorious combat against Antiochus Epiphanes, two inseparable slogans: "Who is like unto Thee among the gods, O Lord!” and "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to G-d!” Except it be demanded that the Jewish State refrain from force even to save itself from destruction, Israel’s action in wiping out the nests of its invaders in the Sinai Desert stands above moral censure. Can a similar judgment be applied to Britain and France, in their attempt, immediately following upon Israel’s move, to regain the Suez Canal? Can it be legitimately argued that Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal represented a crucial threat to the existence of these nations? Even some among those who condemned Israel drew a distinction between the circumstances clearly compelling her action and those governing the actions of Britain and France. Unlike Israel, these great powers could take recourse to measures denied to the former; the United Nations, with all its moral stature, had not as yet slammed the door on their faces, had not yet left them, as it had Israel, to face the aggressor naked and alone. But even in this case, the character of the judgment exercised is disclosed by comparison with that exercised in the case of the Soviet Russian aggression against Hungary. All the grave wrongs that can possibly be charged to Britain and France in their attack upon Egypt are to be found in far greater degree in Russia’s simultaneous ghastly attack upon Hungary — plus a great many more. Here was no threat to the lifeline of Russia, or to her economy; here Russian was no v^°âtôn a standing agreement; here was no military A aaression tîreat>no aîance with *a hostile power. Here was only a people demanding the lightening of the Russian yoke. And yet, here was aggression at its most ruthless, and imperialism at its most arrogant. Here was a land invaded by a vast force, here was fraud and deceit, here was not merely, as in the case of the Suez Canal, bombing of airports and armed seizure of strategic points, but butchery of civilians unimaginable, destruction of unarmed areas beyond calculation. Here, in short, was the very apotheosis of all that was charged against those who moved against Egypt, but 4

JEWISH LIFE

many times multiplied and minus any basis of provocation. But Britain and France, together with Israel, for the lesser charge, were forthwith condemned by almost all nations in concert and threatened with capital sanctions, while Soviet Russia, not deigning even to mask its crime, received but hesitant and feeble censure. J J O W REVEALING is the part played by the spokesmen of one great nation, India. Against Israel, Nehru and Menon roared like lions; against Britain and France, human language was scarcely capable of expressing their moral outrage; but against Russia, these lions were but mice; they gave forth with loud silence. India, opponent of armed force (except with respect to Kashmir) and of imperialism (except with respect to its bordering territories) voted in the United Nations General Assembly against the resolution demanding the with drawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. The loss of prestige resulting from this policy was such that India’s spokesmen were later obliged to join in censure of the Soviet action. In the period which has elapsed since the United Nations began discussion on these issues, a good deal of sober second thought has been exercised, especially, it would seem, by our own government. Certain realities force them selves upon the attention of our leaders. Among these is the reality of the Soviet domination of almost the entire East, achieved in part through exploita tion of Arab aggression against Israel and through the failure of the Western world to either compel the Arabs to desist from their aggression or to arm Israel against it. W ith this goes another reality: that the situation is to be met only by rebuilding Western ramparts in the Middle East; that this entails the displacement of Soviet minions in these countries, with no further illusion as to their appeasement; and that the Arab nations must be obliged to make peace with Israel, failing which their warfare will go inevitably forward, strengthening still further the aggressive power of the Soviet Union and making inevitable the Third World War.

THE TURNING POINT jpU TU R E GENERATIONS may look back upon the recent National Biennial Convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America as marking a major turning point in the history of American Jewry. This event exceeded any previous Union conclave in attendance and in the remarkable scope of its program. It was notable for complete participation in every Convention activity and for the intensity of spirit which pervaded the entire four-day gathering. These and other unusual features, however, formed not the criterion for but rather the manifestations of its historic import. The UOJCA National Convention brought to light, as never before, the emergence of orthodox Jewry as a dynamic, coherent, nationally organized force, reaching out with sure purpose to leadership in American Jewish life. The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America has become the vehicle for a trend of revolutionary force. After generations of spiritual attri tion, the American Jew has begun to find himself. Having misinterpreted through long decades his role on the American scene, he now searches for that December, 1956

which is true, real, everlasting. An upsurge of creative activity has developed, a reaching out to the Torah roots of Jewish living. The nuclei of Jewish life, the synagogues, have been the vessels into which these new C o h eren t drives have sought their primary outlet, and on the synagogue S tru ctu re ^ase ^as come ^nt0 being a potent new educational apparatus, the guarantor of a new generation equipped to cope with its tasks. Yet all this rich potential, a spontaneous growth, might have spent itself fruitlessly for lack of coherent structure, of a central focal point and a common spokesman. This need, thanks to Divine Providence, is being met by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. jpR O M THIS perspective, the role of the Orthodox Union can be seen as pivotal. In this light, too, the vastness of its responsibilities can be perceived. The character of the 1956 UOJCA Convention stands testimony to the maturing strength of renascent Torah forces. Equally, it testifies to the capacity of the Union to give form and leadership to a great historic movement. The Committees, Seminars, Workshops and Symposiums held at the Convention, as well as the Plenary Sessions, mirrored the diversity of basic needs and issues to which the forces of Orthodoxy are addressing themselves. Educa tion in its various phases for children, adults and youth, synagogue administra tion, programming, building and fund-raising, Rabbi-congregation relationships, community relations, the expansion of the Unions programs in Youth Activity, Synagogue Service, Kashruth, Publications, the Armed Forces, Israel and Overseas and numerous other fields — all of these topics received concentrated attention. The array of speakers, consultants and panelists presented a cross-section of the pick of qualified thought, experience, training and viewpoints. Such subjects as "The American Synagogue and the Challenge of Torah Standards,” "Atomic Science— its Impact on Society and Religion,” "American Orthodoxy Reaches Out to World Jewry,” "Religion and State in the American Scene” and "Ful filling the Promise of Suburbia,” each in its own way, offered its challenge to engrossed audiences. Significant new steps were charted in the advancement of a program of unlimited potential — the building of a nationwide network of Kehilloth, metropolitan councils systematically embracing the totality of orthodox Jewish effort in accordance with principles of community organization employed through the ages of Jewish history. Representing congregations and communities in all corners of the land, the Convention delegates addressed themselves to their objectives as spokesmen of the largest constituency in American Jewish life. Despite all the spiritual losses which American Jewry has suffered, the Jewish religion, the Torah faith, has remained the creed with which the majority of American Jews are identified. The Convention reckoned realistically with the fact that, neverC/ose theless, there remains, among many, a wide gap between nominal th e Gao an<^ Practical commitment, between Jewish belief and Jewish H observance. The ultimate' message of the UOJCA Convention was: close this gap. To this task of our religious leadership is joined, inseparably, that of recovering for the Synagogue the role which it has yielded to less representative agencies as the voice of American Jewry. 6

JEWISH LIFE

T H E UOJCA Convention demonstrated that our leaders are addressing them* selves to these high goals with effective purpose and that they find in the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America the instrument through which great historic ends shall be served. It is to the credit of those responsible for the administration of the UOJCA that they have accurately appraised, and have dynamically responded, to the need of the time. They have given leadership to leaders. The delegates of Americas orthodox communities set forth, at the past Convention, a program of broad horizons for American Jewry. In re-electing President Moses I. Feuerstein and his colleagues to guide them in the fulfillment of that program the spokesmen of our congregations have made a choice which the entire Torah community will fully endorse.

THE EDWIN WRIGHT CASE A mented from a high source, according to a recent article in the National Jewish Post. The article cites an address, containing aspersions against orthodox Jewry, given at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D. C. by Edwin Wright, Assistant Dean of the Foreign Service Institute of the U. S. State Department. The State Department official^ is quoted as stating that orthodox Jews confine themselves to ghettos, contribute nothing to the advances of the modern world and are "interested only in their Talmudic books and phylacteries; that no Jewish scientists are orthodox; that Maimonides was excommunicated and driven out of Spain for being too liberal;” and that "the Jewish religion does not allow people to think, so the Jews accept the dictates of their leaders on faith.” Were these falsifications and distortions to have emanated from a private individual, they could well be dismissed with the contempt they merit. The case of Mr. Wright, however, warrants special attention. As a high-ranking, influential official of the United States Government, his public statements have an entirely different status from that of any private individual. Accordingly, upon publication of the report, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America sent an official communication to Mr. Wright, asking him to either verify or deny the statements attributed to him. No reply—not even a formal acknowledgment—has yet been received. The New York Post, however, has reported in its columns that in two telephone interviews Mr. W right did not deny the correctness of the quotations. An official investigation of the matter is therefore very much in order. If, as presently appears to be the case, the State Department official has been guilty of the slander reported, appropriate corrective action should be taken. Concern is heightened by the fact that Mr. Wright, who apparently ranks as an expert on Near East affairs, has the responsibility of briefing foreign service officials and clerical personnel of the State Department. In this capacity, he is in a position to influence those who help shape State Department thinking. To what extent this situation has contributed to the State Department’s attitude with respect to Israel and Near East policy can only be a matter of conjecture. It is imperative that investigation be directed not only to the W right incident as an immediate question but also to its wider ramifications. December, 1956

Last Days of The Jewish Writers By M Y R O N KOLATCH

The Shocking Story of the Fate of Russia's Leading Jewish Artists

##TF YOU EVER meet Ilya Ehrenburg, ask him in our names to place flowers on the unknown graves of the innocent people he helped murder.” From the man who received this bitter request has come one of the most detailed and dramatic accounts of Soviet anti-Semitism yet to be told. Bernard Turner was Moscow cor respondent for Israel’s largest news paper, the Histadruth daily Davar, and the London Daily Herald from 1941 to 1943, when he was sentenced to ten years at slave labor. Stalin’s death brought his release, but it was only after a great deal of difficulty that he succeeded in getting to Israel. At present, Turner is in Tel Aviv writing a book about his ordeals as a slave laborer. His report on the 8

Kremlin’s anti-Jewish campaign, which is part of the forthcoming volume, appeared in The Golden Chain, a. Tel Aviv quarterly that is also published by the Histadruth. It was in March, 1949, that Turner was taken from the Zayarsk camp, on the Angara River, to an assembly point where a noisy, impatient crowd of some 2,000 prisoners stood waiting. Then the long trek began. For four days, at a pace of 25 miles a day, they moved through dense, snow-covered forests under the watchful eyes of guards with drawn weapons and pant ing dogs. On the fifth day, the almost numb and exhausted prisoners arrived at their destination—a camp near the Siberian town of Bratsk. JEWISH LIFE

This photo, token at a m eeting oi rep resen tatives of Soviet Jewry in M oscow 15 yea rs a g o , sh o w L-R, Jew ish poet, Peretz Markish; Jew ish n ovelist, D avid Bergelson; Jewish professor and actor, Shlomo M ikhoels, and "People's Artist of the U.S.S.R.", Jew ish writer a n d Soviet p ropagandist Ilya Ehrenburg.

Ten-foot-high wooden walls, rimmed Turner: "Not far from the water faucet, by 14 rungs of barbed wire sealed off its 800-yard area. Outside at all four right near the door, I noticed an old corners, guards with machine-guns man sitting on a stool, a Jew. His stood watch atop forbidding towers. condition was already such that he Inside, 36 barracks and eight military was no longer fit for ordinary work, units were scattered throughout the and therefore, it seemed, he had been made barracks orderly. . . . I did not grounds. On his arrival, Turner was thrown take my eyes off him. Our glances together with 500 other men in a bar met. His penetrating look and intel racks designed to hold 96. Every ligent face made him stand out and nationality in Russia was represented aroused feelings of sympathy. "I went over to him and asked if in this huge illogical mass, which in cluded "politicals” as well as the lowest he could show me where I might rest type of common criminals, murderers my tired bones. The old man turned and thieves. On wooden shelves that to a semi-reclining figure nearby: extended from the walls, "crumpled 'Friend Feffer,’ he said, 'be so good as bodies lay entangled like* discarded to move over a bit to let this man rags”. The dirt floor was completely lie down/ The name and sight of covered with human forms. Writes the man shocked me . . . I recognized December, 1956

him instantly. This was the wellknown Yiddish poet and Red Army Colonel, Itzik Feffer. "In 1943, I had met Feffer and the famous actor Shlomo Mikhoels at the Grand Hotel in Kuibyshev on the eve of his depar ture for America as a delegate of the Jewish AntiF ascist Commit tee. Now he was thin and emaci ated — skin and bones and a bun dle of nerves. His entire body trembled, he bit his blue lips nervously, and with empty eyes he looked around and mumbled to himself. . . . Itzik Feffer, the prominent Soviet Jewish man of letters, was rolling in dust and dirt a few steps from the parasha (receptacle that served as the barracks toilet). "He was dressed in rags, his pants held up with a rope from which hung a metal military identification tag. His spectacles, the famous Feffer spectacles, were broken and tied with string. I later found out that the old man, the barracks orderly, was David Bergelson, the great Soviet Jewish novelist.” T U R N E R SPENT a week with his * two new friends, talking to them as much as possible. Thus, he learned that another outstanding Soviet Jewish writer, Peretz Markish, had also been in the same camp. Here, in fact, he wrote a long, tragic epic poem—which he crowded into six or seven note books— entitled The Third Rome. While he was revising it, however, the NKVD discovered the manuscript and sent it on to Moscow. Soon an order came back committing Markish to solitary confinement at Camp Turme. 10

He sent Bergelson a letter from there, telling him that he was being re processed. After that, Markish dis appeared. As for their own arrests, Feffer and Bergelson related a long series of events that began in 1944, when they first became aware of the Antis emitic line adopted by the Communist party and the Government. That year, the Soviet Foreign Ministry complained of increasing pressure on the diplomatic corps, made particularly acute by broad ened contacts with the West. To help alleviate the situation, an advanced diplomatic school was set up in Moscow under the direction of Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir G. Dekanozov—and a strict quota for Jewish students was introduced. Bergelson and Feffer brought this up at a closed meeting attended by A. L. Lozovsky, a Deputy Foreign Minister; A. Stern, a former Soviet Ambassador to Rome and one-time professor at the diplomatic school; Ilya Ehrenburg, leading Soviet writer and propagandist," and Shlomo Mikhoels. Lozovsky then attempted to use his influence with Dekanozov (who was purged in 1953 with his friend Lavrenti P. Beria), but could accomplish nothing. Later, he conferred with Foreign Minister Andrei Y. Vishinsky, who denied that any discrimination existed. Politburo member Lazar Kaganovich refused to discuss the matter altogether. Shortly afterward, Bergelson ob tained conclusive information that the Antisemitic line was wholeheartedly sanctioned by Stalin and the Politburo. And in Jewish Communist quarters it became known that the Central Com mittee had ^issued a secret order restrict ing enlistment of Jews, including Communists, in the Polish and Czech national armies formed in the Soviet JEWISH LIFE

Union by Colonel Zygmunt Berling and General Ludwig Svoboda. The order stated emphatically that every Jew with a "typical” Jewish ap pearance must be kept out of the Polish Free Army, the Red Army and the NKVD attached to the Polish forces. Jews whose appearances did not betray them could remain in the Polish Army, but they had to assume pure Polish names and discard all traces of Judaism.

Lozovsky also reported to Bergelson that Wanda Wassilewska—at the time a member of the Suprême Soviet and wife of Deputy Foreign Minister Alex ander Korneichuk—who had entree to Stalin himself, played an important role in establishing the anti-Jewish policy. Outraged by these develop ments, Bergelson, Feffer and other Jewish writers and intellectuals held heated discussions of the new situation, with Ilya Ehrenburg, one of the par ticipants.

Ehrenburg Accuses W H IL E THESE TALKS were going on, the Antisemitic policy was brought into the open, as a series of carefully planned arrests took place, mainly of Jews who were not Soviet citizens. Simultaneously, the members of the wartime Jewish Anti-Fascist December. 1956

Committee were taken into custody, marking the beginning of a total war against Jews and Jewish culture in the Soviet Union. The main witness against those ar rested, who were charged with being Jewish nationalists and Zionists, was 11

Ehrenburg. He also had a hand in the arrest of many other Jews, includ ing his own relatives. He even turned over Lozovsky, his closest friend, to the NKVD. Prefabricated crimes and brutal torture were basic ingredients of the anti-Jewish campaign. In his case, Feffer recalled, a story was concocted which had him associating with Bundist (Polish Jewish Socialist) leaders Erlich and Alter when they were in Kuibyshev, even though he was in Tashkent at the time. In addi tion, he was accused of working with

Zionists and Bundists during his visit to New York. In the Lubianka prison, he met Lozovsky, who had a broken arm and a face that was so badly beaten and discolored it looked like one large wound. Official rumors had been started that Lozovsky attempted suicide after being seized, but Feffer noted that it was impossible for anyone to take his life in Lubianka because prisoners were carefully watched and stripped of everything that might serve as a lethal weapon. Bergelson himself told how, among many other tortures, he was subjected to the two-legged stool treatment. He was forced to sit on this stool for 20 hours a day. Unable to keep his balance, he would fall to the stone floor, suffer ing painful injuries, then have to begin the routine all over again. This went on for days and weeks, with many a stool splintering to pieces in the process. Finally, an unbreakable ma terial was discovered for the stools. While Turner was discussing his hopes of leaving Bratsk, Feffer and Bergelson—whose deaths have since been reported—gave him their mes sage: "If you ever meet Ilya Ehrenburg, ask him in our names to place flowers on the unknown graves of the innocent people he helped murder.” Turner did not forget it: "Six years later, in October, 1955, I had the satis faction of fulfilling the last wish of Bergelson and Feffer. This occurred at the Vienna airport. In the presence of the presiding officer of the Soviet Writers' Congress, Nikolai Tikhonov, I delivered the last request of his literary comrades word for word. "Ehrenburg turned white as milk. His lips quivered and he actually foamed at the mouth. Dazedly, he moved away from me and disappeared.” JEWISH LIFE

By GERSHUN1

JpROM THE realm of eternity Down to the height of the mountain, Eraught with the wisdom of G-d, Pass the Tablets of Faith. Shattering

thunder

and

light-

The world breaks asunder, Revealing the force of Creation. Fire and water, opposed by nature, Mix in awed suppression, Shocked by the sledge Of His molding. The Creator Descends to the creature, To forge the pattern of Peace for His children. "I am” and "Thou shalt not” Are strands of the pattern, The weave of the worlds to Bide the plan of His biding. As Israel emerges, Mankind is cast anew To the tenfold command Of the Master.

gLO W LY , YET majestically, the aged man gazed at the group as sembled before him. In each he saw himself and the generations to come for he was one who had walked with G-d. Jacob ben Isaac they called him in his young years, and G-d himself had called him Israel after that night in the desert. The group of men around him were men of majestic mien. Men built in the mold of their father, men of prophetic vision, fathers of nations, yet men with a grave de cision to make. They had come to discuss their brother Joseph’s offer to settle in Goshen in the Land of Egypt. Slowly Jacob spoke, 'M y sons, I have summoned ye from your fields to hear your councils on your brother Joseph’s request that we settle in the land of Goshen. I do not have many years more to live and to you I must leave the decision on whether to stay, in the land promised to us by the Lord or settle in the Land of the Pharaohs. I yearn for the sight of my son Joseph and I would see him before I die. You are his brothers but your duty lies to your own children. Of the visions con cerning the future I cannot speak to you, although ye are also men of prophetic nature. I do not wish to command you to leave the land of your Fathers nor do I wish you to stay in a land that is undergoing an ordained travail. Ye are men and as men must make decisions. Together ye shall be as the stars in the skies, divided ye shall be as the driven sheep of the fields. Reuben, you are my eldest born. Come let us hear your words of council.” Reuben spoke loud and clear as befitted the eldest of his brothers. ”1 am for one to take up our brother Joseph’s offer. Here in the land of Canaan the rivers run dry, the hills are 14

J acob His By JOSEPH

parched and the valleys brown with the desert sands. In Goshen we will have fields to roam without end, the rivers are wide and deep and thè hills are large and high. This land given to our fathers is good but we are a people destined to be a nation. Here we are confined by the tribes in all directions, here our children will be come Caanitih in the ways. In Goshen we can multiply and spread over the land. Our brother Joseph is like an Egyptian god to the people. His word is law. I say, let us go to Egypt.” Gad spoke angrily. "Our brother Joseph is a god now?” Reuben with fist clenched, shouted, "To the Egyptians who worship the beasts in the field he is as a god. For us there is but one G-d.” Jacob, thrusting himself forward, broke in upon the scowling brothers, "Gad! Reuben! Must the ancient quarrels come out even in the family councils? Here we meet as men, not as children. Simeon, my second born, what is your decision?” Simeon spoke, haltingly. "My father, I too seek the distant fields. The fields allotted to me are small and barren. True, I have not JEWISH LIFE

and Sons HALPERIN

diligently tilled them, but nevertheless, here we must bear constant vigil lest the desert sands reclaim their heritage. Joseph’s offer is a good one. I choose as Reuben chooses.” Gad, the ever-turbulent, again vio lently shouted, "You too are bought off with an acre of dirt.” Simeon raised his hand and retorted, "Another word from you and the beasts of the fields will pick your bones.” Jacob the father, visibly affected by the quarrels between his sons, pounded the table. "Silence!” The blazing eyes of the patriarch cut through the shadows like a beam of sunlight. "I see that my sons are now determined to slay each other. Surely no father has been tried with his children as I have. Levi, come give us your opinion, but I warn you my sons, cease your quarreling here in my presence. We seek council now, not recriminations.” Levi stood silent for a few moments, then spoke half to himself, and half to his brothers. "I choose to stay. My brother Joseph’s offer is a good one and from the goodness of his heart forgives us our sins and transgressions against him, December, 1956

but here is a land consecrated to us. This is our own. W e have seen the wonders of Egypt and of her great riches, but Joseph will not live forever. There will be a Pharaoh who will not know Joseph and there will be Egyptians who will not remember Joseph. Our children will become slaves in a land that a slave preserved for their enslavers. The signs foretell evil. Should we leave the land of our fathers we shall surely rue the day of our leaving. Nay, my council is to decline our brother’s offer.” I>EUBEN, HIS FACE like a hewn a rock in the soft glow cast by the fire, spoke sharply. "So the pious Levi clings to his heritage.” Gad, quick as before, took up the challenge. "And you, Reuben, trade yours for Joseph’s gold.” "Joseph’s food also, Gad. You ate as the rest. Did you scorn a drop?” Jacob the ever-tolerant, chided them softly as if he had wearied of the wrangling. "My sons.” At the sound of their father, the sons all relaxed and looked at him waiting for his next utterance. The voice that had spoken to G-d had the infinite beauty to calm the most in furiated of men. "Judah, my son, come let us hear your counsel.” Judah, he who was destined to found a mighty nation and whose arms had more than once been raised in defense of the Lord, raised his eyes to the distant fields and spoke, each word like a bell. "My father and brothers. My heart says to stay here in the land promised to us by the Lord. My eyes have seen the glories of the land of the Pharaohs. It comes to me as a tale of my youth when our grandfather Isaac told us 15

of when his father too traveled in Egypt. There were glories then too, and he forsake them for the land that was his own. This land is ours. Once we leave, our journeys through time will have begun and the road back is not an easy one. In Goshen we shall strive for greatness midst the heathens and in the end they shall enslave us. But the ways of the Lord are mighty and His voice has commanded me to cast my vote with Reuben. My strength I pledge to the choice of my brethren.” Jacob raised his hand after they had heard Judah. "My sons. You have heard Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah. They are your brothers and each in his own council has spoken words of wisdom. In the days to come our children shall remem ber our words here and it shall be for them a living heritage and a legacy to the nation they shall inherit. Let us oroceed my sons. Zebulun, let us hear from you.” Zebulun, the silent, the one brother who was seldom heard, even in council, spoke. "The sea is my heritage. A harbor and a ship decide my voice. Here in this land there is enough for my por tion. I choose to stay and my decision bides with Levi.” Jacob again called for another of his sons. "Issachar, what say you?” Issachar the humble, the obedient servant of G-d, spoke. His speech was as of his nature, soft, tender, and halting. "My father, I do not plague thee with words nor have I ever questioned thy teachings and biddings. Here in the fields allotted to me I have been blessed and the Lord has seen to in crease my possessions in the Land ot my Fathers. I long not for the gold 16

of the heathen, I yearn not for the fertile fields of Goshen, and I care not for the fleshpots of Egypt. The Lord has provided for me here and I am content. I choose to stay.” §j Simeon, on hearing the words of his younger brother, could not contain himself. "My brother Issachar, although you have chosen contrary to my decision, yet my love for you fias not diminished one bit. Yours is a voice from the heart and spoken like a man who walks in the ways of the Lord.” Jacob the father, his heart gladdened by this show of affection between his sons spoke, his voice visibly affected. "Simeon, my son, may your days be blessed for the love you bear your brother. Dan, give us your words.” Dan spoke as the son of a king should speak, proud and with raised head. "My father and noble brothers. I choose the Land of the Egyptians. The Lord has promised us a goodly heritage and our sojourn in Egypt has been foretold. Yet it is hard to judge for our children and their unborn children. The choice is ever so difficult, but my trust is in the Lord and he shall not fail us.” Dan’s speech left a silence broken by Levi’s voice. "And Dan too takes up his brother Joseph’s offer.” The retort was quick. "My council was asked, and I chose.” But Levi, not wanting to drop the point, was quick to answer back. "With purity in your heart or anger in your soul?” Dan, rising, his hand clenched, ''Who are you to speak of purity? Your hand is as bloody as mine.” Judah, his blood boiling by now, leaped forward. JEWISH LIFE

"Reuben is right. Joseph has his heritage here and is entitled to vote." Levi, not to be outdone, his voice again raised in opposition, joined in. "Reuben has no right to judge. Come, let our father decide on the is§ue." Jacob, hoping to achieve harmony between his sons, raised his hands for the quarreling to stop. "My sons, the right to council is ACOB, HOLDING his temper in the privilege of free men and should check, bade Naphtali to speak. be guarded jealously. W hen men at Naphtali the shepherd who felt tend not to their rights themselves and more at ease among his flocks stood leave to others the decision, then must up to speak. freedom perish by the wayside. Re *T am a shepherd and of sheep I member this well, my sons, and teach know more than of affairs of state. your children thereof. Joseph’s voice In Egypt the animal-worshipping does not count in the council matter heathens fill my heart with foreboding. before us now. Gad, my son, your W hat we consider simple and natural voice is to be heard from." is to them filled with supernatural Gad, his turbulent nature uncooled meaning. W e trust the Lord. They by his father’s presence, his voice shrill have put faith into the idols of every and penetrating, spoke. nature. True, the fields are barren "I will not become as a hypocrite and the flocks must go ever further at a time like this. I care not for in their search for food. Yet I re Joseph’s gold nor his lands nor his member the green fields and this period offerings. His tale bearing has stirred of parched fields will end and the my heart to anger before, and I fear hills shall be green, the fields fertile, for the future. Now. . .." the crops full and the flocks fat again. Judah cut in abruptly, "We didn’t I choose with my brothers Levi, Zebu- ask your opinions of our brother,, we lun, and Issachar.” asked your choice.” Reuben, noting the pause that came "My choice is bound to my opinion." at the end of Naphtali’s speech, rose "Then stay or go!" and addressed his remarks to the as "I stay!” sembled group. "Enter Gad's voice on the council "My brothers, we are evenly matched records lest he take a dislike to us in our decision. I wish to add Joseph's also." voice to the council and cast his vote". "My heart speaks what my mind Zebulun jumped in to meet the thinks." challenge. "One is as black as the other." "Joseph’s voice must remain silent. * "Quiet!" the voice of Jacob rang He has invited us. His vote is precast." out. "Gad, you were asked for vote Simeon, who favored his oldest not opinion. You try a father sorely, brother among all, took up Reuben’s and you in turn shall be tried likewise. Asher your vote is next.” part.

"Quiet! W e all are guilty if not by deed then by thought. W ho amongst us has not sinned? Leave off our transgressions toward Joseph for Joseph forgave us. Our father Jacob has done likewise, and you should re member that our grandfather Isaac knew of what we did. Dan has cast his choice to abide in Goshen and I pledge my arm to his choice."

December, 1956

Asher the farmer spoke. As a man as before. These be but the foolish of the soil he spoke simply yet from pratings of a bedeviled servant, and yet these children so fettered are oft the heart. "I say to Egypt. The fields and their close to the Lord. I too have seen crops are my calling. The food at the glories of the Pharaohs and of the the tables and the dainty morsels for kingly stature our brother has risen to. the noble born are given unto my lands I too long for the distant fields. My by the Lord. But my lands lie buried father, I would fain not leave the final under the desert sands, my husband resting place of my mother Rachel, men idle away their time, and my nor the land of my fathers, but this handmaidens have become as barren longing for Joseph is too great to en as the sheaves they harvest. In Goshen dure. My choice is to take Joseph’s the soil is rich and fertile, the over offer.” Silence fell and each of the brothers flowing Nile nourishes the lands and the crops reflect the glories of the now realized that the time had come for action as a group, but it remained land. I choose Egypt.” for their father to enjoin them in T H E BROTHERS stood silent as action. As Jacob rose they rose in Asher finished. They knew that silence. Old as he was, Jacob was taller even in their small group there was than his sons who were considered tall disunity in purpose but unity in action. even among Egyptians. His voice in The deciding vote was to be cast by majestic tones spoke, each word en the youngest. He who had been but graving itself in the hearts and minds a baby when they were men and of his sons. founders of nations. Yet he, too, was "My sons, ye have chosen as men, of the lineage of Jacob. He too, was and as men ye shall go to the Land a prophet, the son of prophets. In him of the Pharaohs. Remember your too the voice of G-d was revealed. The heritage that you are men of noble Benjamin the youngest rose. For birth and need not bow to Egyptians. him had Jacob filled the valley with Of the visions of time there is not tears, first at the death of a wife, and now the time to speak, but the Lord then at the ruse of Joseph in Egypt. shall bless thee and make of thee a mighty nation. Come, Reuben, fetch Benjamin faced the group. “My father and brothers. To decide us Shem the scribe and let us prepare in this moment is not an easy task. greetings to Joseph and to the King Joseph is of my mother Rachel and of Egypt.” my heart yearns to abide with him, and As Jacob and Reuben walked out of yet I am filled with forebodings of the tent, the brothers slowly followed. the future. A curious thing has be Tonight they had made the first step fallen unto my servant Shelea. She is toward a long journey. How long they of strange birth and reputed to be each knew, for to them was given the versed in the stars. She has foretold gift of prophecy. But the journey was of a great journey to a Land of Sorrow and of the falling of twelve stars into ordained, and as sons they must fol the Valley of Unknown and lo, the low their father down to Egypt until twelve stars were brought to their the time when they would return not place in the firmaments and they shone twelve brothers, but twelve tribes. December, 1956

y j I T H THE DEATH of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and his subse quent downgrading by his erstwhile lackeys, the Russian satellite empire was shaken to its very foundations — and the cracks have recently gaped wide open. Thus we have been able to see deeper than previously into the Communist world, which had been held together so tenuously by a hand ful of despots. The successors of Stalin, from Georgi Malenkov to Nikita Khrush chev, have been, in turn, harsh and placating; cruel and polite — but in the end, they have been unable to maintain Stalin’s own iron* grip: Ex cept for Tito of Yugoslavia, who twisted out of the hands of Stalin and defied him successfully, none of the other Communist leaders in the Iron Curtain lands even attempted to escape Russian domination. Today, history has taken a startling turn. Riots in Poznan foreshadowed trouble. Then the Poles, still under a

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JEWISH LIFE

Jews In A Tottering Red Empire

The remnant is small; they have suffered during the past decade from Communist harshness and they have not been allowed to leave their lands. W hat is in store for them today?

T H E HISTORY of Hungarian Anti semitism, while perhaps slightly less violent than that of a handful of other Eastern European lands, does not encourage confidence. There are conflicting reports on the Jewish population of Hungary. The American Jewish Year Book veers By HAROLD U. RIB ALO W from 140,000 to 120,000 while Euro pean Jewry Ten Years After the War, issued by the Institute of Jewish Af Communist leader, established a fairs of the World Jewish Congress, greater degree of independence than points out that the present population ever before. Hungary stood by, is 100,000, a decrease of nearly 30 per watched, and made its ill-destined cent from the 140,000 figure in 1945. break. Other stirrings were heard. There are 150 congregations in Hun Tito, who had challenged Stalin and gary, according to Government fig had lived to accept an invitation to ures, and less than half as many (70) return on a triumphant visit to Mos if the World Jewish Congress statis cow, observed and must have told him tics are accurate. Even so, this is a self that he was the pioneer Cohimu- terrible decline, for as recently as nist to make the break. He survived. 1949, there were as many as 253 It is now not unlikely that other in congregations. dependently-minded Communists can While previous administrations per shake their fists at Russia — and live mitted religious freedom to the Jews (with heavy attendance as synagogue to boast about it. Yet, to Jews all over the world, the services), the financial state of the unrest in Eastern Europe has brought synagogues was low. The economic some anxious moments. W hat will status of the Jews was equally bad. happen to the Jews trapped in Com The World Jewish Congress report munist lands? Are the ever-increasing states that while Antisemitism had rebellions bound to help or harm abated somewhat, "grass-roots Jewthem? There are 2,000,000 Jews in hatred, although suppressed by the the Soviet Union alone (according to authorities, is still strong”. Meanwhile, the American Jewish Year Book), less than 15,000 Jews were permitted with 140,000 more in Hungary and to emigrate to Israel since the estab with 45,000 in Poland. These statistics lishment of the Jewish State. This, for Hungary and Poland are grim in too, is indicative of the failure of the deed compared with pre-war Hungary Hungarians to allow Jews to settle in with 725,000 and Poland with, 3,250,- Israel, for no less than 108,500 Tews 000 in 1939, when Hitler started expressed a desire to settle in the Jew ish republic. World W ar II. December. 1956

The tragedy of Poland need not be underscored at this late date in his tory. Until the advent of Hitler, the more than three million Polish Jews constituted the richest — spiritually — Jewish center in the world. As the World Jewish Congress survey stresses, according to the 1931 census, nearly 90 per cent of the Jews of Poland gave Yiddish and Hebrew as their mother tongue; Jewish religious and secular schools had an enrollment of 226,000, or 50 per cent of the children. Most attended the religious schools and it has been calculated that be tween 85 per cent and 90 per cent of the Jewish boys studied in these schools. There were — in the 1930s — 30 Yiddish dailies in Poland, 112 Yiddish weeklies and 137 other Yiddish periodi cals, 5 Polish-language Jewish dailies, 14 such weeklies and 55 other such publications. There were also four Hebrew weeklies and 24 other Hebrew journals. W hat a repository of Jewish

learning! And today, these 3,250,000 Jews are down to less than 50,000 by most sources! The tragedy can scarcely be encompassed, and the books, studies, poems, novels and articles that have been written about this obliteration can fill a library. Religious life in the land has diminished so that it can hardly be seen. Correspondents who visited W ar saw on major Jewish holidays re cently observed few Jews in the sole synagogue holding services. Earlier, an Israeli reporter counted but 14 Jews at a regular Sabbath service. There was not a single yeshivah, Talmud Torah or religious school in Poland for several years. Cultural clubs, which do exist, pay attention to dramatics and Communist propaganda, through various art forms. There is a Yiddish theatre of sorts, but it can safely be stated that Poland, as a center of Jew ish life, is gone forever, and whatever freedom the Poles win from Russia will affect a comparative handful of Jews.

Two Reports RECENTLY, there were two author itative reports from different sources, separated by the Atlantic Ocean, which reflect on the situation not only in Poland but in other Russian-held lands. The New York Times in New York, receiving a report from W ar saw, said that it is believed that de portations to Siberia have begun in Poland and what used to be Lithu ania. And, as is usually the case, Jews are heavily involved. Jews in Lvov and in Vilna, once huge Jewish centers, are being shipped to Birobidzhan, the area once set aside by the Soviets as a Jewish State. The Times printed 22

pathetic letters which were really cries for help from the Jews, but such cries by Middle European victims —which have also been heard in Hun gary ® | fall on ears that can do little but listen. These deportations, however, have led the Times to report once again that Khrushchev had attacked Roman Zambrowski, the only Jewish member of the new Polish Politburo, when he said, "I should think that the Polish United Workers party would insist on having Polish names in its leader ship”. The Times does not clarify the reasons why the Russian opposed JEWISH LIFE

Zambrowski, apart from his Judaism, although the Jewish Observer and Middle East Review, in London goes far more deeply into the whole matter of the Poles, Krushchev and the Jews. Here is more of the background in Poland, as reported in the London Zionist journal. On October 25, the Central Com mittee of the Polish United W orkers Party, completely under the control of its new, rebellious leader Wladyslaw Gomulka, issued a resolution which damned Antisemitism. It was a strong statement and the Jewish Observer re marked that "The new Politburo still contains one Jew, Roman Zambrow ski, but it can be safely assumed that his influence was not strong enough to have this resolution passed. There

can be no doubt that Gomulka him self was behind the resolution. Mar ried to a Jewess, he did all he could during the war to help Jewish re sistance and to save Jewish lives . . . he is genuinely convinced of the dan ger of Antisemitism to the future of Socialism”. The analysis continues: "He realizes that the Stalinist tactics of winning support of the savagely Antisemitic Polish masses for Communism through channelling their anti-Soviet feelings into the time-honored channels of Antisemitism are, to say the least, a double-edged weapon. He knows that during the Poznan riots any policeman or soldier firing on the rioters was accused of being a Russian or a Jew.”

The Future i^-pROM a Jewish point of view,” the Observer states, "the meaning of the latest events in Poland is clear. The fact that Antisemitism is still an issue in a country which before the war had 3,250,000 Jews and today has no more than 45,000, once and for all disposes of the illusions cherished by Jewish Communists that a Jewish community can survive in the country. Had civil war broken out in Poland . . . the Jews would have suffered severely.”’ The other lands in the area, Bul garia, Czechoslovakia and Rumania, fit into somewhat the same pattern, al though rebellion has not, as of this writing, broken out. And the recent visits to Soviet Russia by two groups of rabbis indicate that life for the Jews there has eased somewhat after the death of Stalin, although the cur tailment of Jewish life as we under stand it is so successful that the tales we read are harrowing in their finality. December, 1956

Here and there one finds a religious Jew, or a scholarly Jew, or an isolated congregation. But nearly all Jews with any kind of Jewish education are of the older generations. The youth have been turned away from their Jewish past. There seems to be little future for the Jews as Jews, even though it is possible that their plight as human beings may yet improve. W hat will happen should revolu tion erupt in Russia proper remains to be ^ seen. W e cannot foretell the future in Eastern Europe, just as we are constantly and continually sur prised by changing events in other parts of the world. One can only de voutly pray that there may come a day when those who have managed to survive as Jews will once again be able to take up their Jewish lives in this part of the world freely and fruitfully. 23

TELEGRAM OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES RECEIVED AT THE NATIONAL BIENNIAL CONVENTION OF THE UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

“To the National Biennial Convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Con gregations of America, I send greetings. As soon as your delegates and guests from all parts of the United States and Canada gather in the spirit of your first President, Dr. H. Pereira Mendes, and in the tradi tion of your first Congregation, Shearith Israel you will be strengthened in your faith. For over three hundred years, Judaism has contributed to the religious life of America. Your membership continues to take a lead ing part in building those moral and spiritual values that have made our nation great. Best wishes to each one of you. I* am sure you will return to your home congrega tions with new vigor and inspiration.”

JEWISH LIFE

MEMO TO: THE READERS OF JEWISH LIFE FROM: Rabbi Joel Schneierson, Nat'l Chairman, O.U.A. SUB JECT : ORTHODOX UNION ASSOCIATION 1. The President's congratulatory wire, on the opposite page, speaks of the Union's first congregation, Shearith Israel. In the 58 years since the estab lishment of our organization, many hun dreds of synagogues have followed the lead of America's oldest congregation. 2. The goal of the Orthodox Union Associa tion, the individual membership arm of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congrega tions of America, is the preservation of our Jewish ideals and the perpetuation of our faith and way of life. 3. It is essential that every loyal Jew participate in this national, vibrant, traditional Jewish movement. O.U.A mem bership identifies you personally with our great program of religious resurgence. 4. As an O.U.A. member you will receive: a. JEWISH LIFE. b. Holiday Pamphlet Service bringing in to your home informative and authentic booklets and pamphlets on Jewish holidays, beliefs and practices, c. Kashruth Bulletins - keeping you posted on new © developments. 5. The annual membership fee of O.U.A. is $10. 6. I urge you to join now by filling out and mailing the application below.

Union of Orthodox Jewish Cong, of America 305 Broadway New York 7, New York Please enroll me as a member of the Ortho dox Union Association. I understand that I shall receive JEWISH LIFE, Holiday Pam phlets, & © Kashruth bulletins. NAME._________________________ ADDRESS.-----------------------ç jt v T -• ■ - .STATE— ------—jj— □ Check for $10 is enclosed. □ Please bill me.

By ALFRED W ERNER

^ M O N G THE RANKING artists of Israel are'three who, working in a more or less realist vein, are infatuated with the Jewish motif, and whose achievement should be better known in this country. Take a man like Jacob Steinhardt: with a half century of ar tistic endeavor behind him, he is rather unknown beyond the artistic groups of Israel where he is now living, working and teaching, except for a few Central Europeans who may remember him from his pre-Hitler days. Yet American Jews interested in the arts can offer no excuse for not being acquainted with his name. Steinhardt made the woodcut mural, "Four Thou sand Years of the Hebrew Alphabet” for the Palestine Pavilion of the New York World’s Fair of 1939-40. Simul taneously, he had a very successful oneman show at New York’s Society for the Advancement of Judaism. In 1951, he visited this country^ to exhibit a number of polychrome woodcuts at the Kennedy Gallery, New York. While his prints are not very ex pensive, art lovers unable to afford them can obtain excellent samples of this work by acquiring The Book of Jonah, a 1953 Jewish Publication Society volume, and a high point in American book production. In its creation, Mr. Steinhardt and the cal ligrapher Franziska Baruch joined 26

MASTERS OF forces. In order to integrate Steinhardt’s illustrations and the words, the text — in Hebrew and English — was not typeset but lithographed by Miss Baruch. Some of Steinhardt’s sixteen dynamic woodcuts fill entire pages, others are mounted in the text. They are haunting metaphysical messages. Steinhardt was born in 1887 in a small town of Eastern Germany, near the Russian frontier, and was educated in Berlin. Curiously, he owes his in terest in Jewish themes largely to an officer’s whim. At the beginning of the first World War, Steinhardt’s su perior officer learned that the young soldier was a professional painter and thereupon decided to use him as a photographer in the Eastern theater of war. Steinhardt knew nothing about photography, but the officer had a fixed idea that anyone who could make pic tures could learn how to take pictures. Traveling as a soldier-photographer through the German occupied parts of tsarist Russia, Steinhardt came upon the frightened, humble and deeply re ligious ghetto-dwellers of the East who, unlike the German Jews, remained isolated from the bulk of the popula tion. He did not look upon them with detachment as picturesque and exotic creatures, but made himself at home in their dark houses of worship and their JEWISH LIFE

ISRAELI ART wretched, poverty-stricken living quar ters. Rituals and prayers that he had learned as a child came back to him. In these surroundings, legends became reality and superstitions no longer seemed absurd. Jt FTER THE armistice, Steinhardt re■ turned to his art, but he never for got the tear-reddened eyes of the East ern European ghetto-dwellers. These eyes are prominent in the illustrations he made for a German edition of stories by I. L. Peretz and for a cycle of poems by Arno Nadel, as well as in such port folios of etchings and woodcuts as Lithuanian Jews and The T en Plagues. As one of Steinhardt’s biographers put it: "Always the same face, ten times, twenty times; frightened, indignant, full of resignation to the will of G-d.” It is no coincidence that Steinhardt, concentrating on themes of this kind, accomplished most when he chose the woodcut as his medium. Liko other Expressionists, he felt that a spiritual message should be presented like a piece of writing, in black and white, to avoid distortion by the impact of glar ing colors. The medium imposed cer tain limitations upon the artist but it also- permitted great emotional tensions through a direct and simple statement. He used the medium to illustrate one December, 1956

A Steinhardt w oodcut from The Book of Jonah.

of the most remarkable Haggadoth of modern times; the text was litho graphed by the aforementioned calli grapher Baruch. This history-making Haggadah was published in Berlin in 1923. A decade later Steinhardt left Ger many for Palestine, a refugee from Nazi oppression (he had visited the Holy Land briefly in 1925). He and his wife settled in Jerusalem, and they took over a large house originally oc cupied by the sculptor Boris Schatz, of Bezalel fame. The artist fell in love with the Old City where the buff, sun-baked old houses are separated by velvety narrow lanes. As a maker of woodcuts, he enjoyed these contrasts without, how ever, overlooking the shades and gra dations between them. Few artists in black and white make us realize as fully as Steinhardt does that white can be a stark, cruel color, or a tender and lyrical one, and that black can be either 27

Painters, with one eye, or perhaps even both eyes, on the American trade, turned out, with little real feeling, scenes of Cabalists and synagogues, indulged unduly in what the critic Haim Gamzu called "the exotics of local color”. Many of us can recall, with a shud der, paintings of Safed that are as unselective as an amateur’s color-film shots. Description with great care for minute detail does not produce real art, if the artist does not attempt to express his own emotions. This is what Mr. Gamzu had in mind when he con demned works of a purely narrative or descriptive type that so often find buy ers among artistically illiterate tourists: "Far more than all this panoply of exoticism do we value some indication of what is going forward in the soul of the artist and his approach to the mysteries of life . . . The essential point . . . is that not the subject matter should be the essential thing in his picture, but what is concealed within that subject matter; the personal truth which the artist experiences in relation to it, his interpretation of it and his manner of execution.” Certainly Frenkel’s "personal truth” is not identical with that of Rubin, Castel, Gutmann or Holzmann, all of Y H O U G H ITZCHAK FRENKEL* whom have painted Safed, each in his is thirteen years younger than Stein- * own idiom. Frenkel presents the town hardt — he was born in Odessa, Russia, as the stage setting for a medieval in 1900 — he is as much addicted to mystery play. Yet, as competent as the scenes and faces from the past. His Frenkel may be as a craftsman, he residence is not in Jerusalem, but in always approaches his subject with awe, Safed, the Holy City, which he discov with a feeling of humility which he ered many years before it had become once described in a preface to an ex an artistic fad to extol this enchanted hibition catalogue: place. For the past decade, Safed has "I wish it were given to me to pos been most fashionable as a motif. sess the innocence of a child, to grasp the invisible and the wisdom o f the * Frenkel is currently living in Paris, a city which has a substantial colony of ancients, to transcribe, the mystery of things hidden from all.” Israeli artists. soft or dramatic, either deep or brittle. As the head of the graphic arts de partment of the Bezalel School, he is respected and loved. Aesthetically, the younger artists of Israel follow differ ent paths, veering more and more to wards the abstract. Those who do remain in the realm of Realism, often prefer to depict husky, sun-browned pioneers rather than the old scholars in fur caps, broad-brimmed hats and long gabardines who are Steinhardt’s fa vorites. His heroes are, not Herzl or Weismann, but Moses, Jeremiah, and Jonah. His is the world of the past — in a country where past, present and future are inextricably intertwined in a skein from which not a single thread can be removed without destroying the divine unity. While Steinhardt’s art offers no sur prises, thematically or otherwise, it is the solid creation of a superb craftsman and idealistic dreamer. A modest man, he has often given praise to achieve ments of Israeli artists whose ap proaches and tendencies are different from his own. On the other hand, he confessed to this writer his worry about the overstressing of experiment, about cerebral activity without sufficient stress on emotion and intuition.

JEWISH LIFE

Whereas Steinhardt relies on the strength of his line, and on the contrast of black and white masses, Frenkel is a colorist who, in oils and aquarelles, plunges the unchanged city of Joseph Caro and Yitzchok Luria into a mael strom of glowing, if rather melancholy, hues, revealing, not so much the top ography as the mood of the place, its meditations and yearnings, its sadness and comfort, all its varied experiences, joyous or distressful, firmly interwoven into a romantic tapestry that transports the beholder from the drab present into the realm of legend. Safed and its environs loom as a background even in his pictures on Biblical subjects. Noahs ark is seen resting, not on Ararat, but on Mount Atzmon; Lot is seen escaping, not from S’dom, but from the erstwhile Arab quarter of Safed; it is in the middle of Galilee that Jacob wrestles with the

angel, or that Ruth and Boaz meet. Windswept and stormy, or s u n drenched and laden by the heat of the summer, the vistas of the Cabalists’ center are always present. Frenkel is the less known of the better Israeli painters. He was not among the privileged "seven” whose work was exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum, and in many other American museums in 1953; he has never visited nor had a show here. On the other hand, he is the only Israeli artist hon ored by inclusion in the monumental Encyclopedia of Painting, published here last year. His biography can be compressed into a few lines: he went to Palestine at the age of nineteen; soon after he returned to Europe for a six-years’ stay in Paris where he studied at the Academie des BeauxArts under several masters, and in 1926 he settled in Palestine for good.

"New Objectivity In 1933 when Nazi artists made iy jIR O N SIMA, two years younger than Frenkel, is also a native of him a target for their wrath because Russia. He lived through the pogroms he, a foreigner, had been awarded a waged by the hordes of Petlura. As prize by the city of Dresden, Sima was a young man he emigrated to Germany, forced to emigrate to Palestine. But where he studied at the Academy of he did not find it difficult to become Dresden. There, Sima joined the move acclimated in the Holy Land. ( He had ment known as "New Objectivity,” visited his family there in 1925. His which combined exact realistic state brother, Chaim Sima, is an outstanding m ent” with deep emotional intensity. architect in Tel Aviv.) The country-side stirred him to re Like all followers of New Objec tivity, Sima was deeply stirred by the examine and expand his artistic vocab misery of mankind. Just as the pacifist ulary. He captured, in reddish tones, Dix indicted the madness of warfare the cataclysm wrought upon a resiin a series of etchings, Sima produced dental area by the hot, turbulent wind woodcuts that keep alive the awful known as chamsin— a scene that would memory of the Petlura riots. He also have been a challenge for a Van Gogh. But he was even more moved by the painted many pictures of workers and their families, accentuating their hu people than by the landscape. In 1940, manity through meticulously lucid when the last frantic efforts were made by Jews to break out of Hitler’s Europe, drawing. December. 1956

and the seas were crowded with "swim ming coffins” carrying victims of the New Order to the Holy Land, Sima conceived his huge composition in oil called Refugees: a cluster of skinny and ragged humans ("heaps of con vulsion, diagrams of suffering,” to use Simas own words) emerge on a raft like ghosts from the violent darkness of a crazy sea. On a leave of absence from Hadassah’s Fashion Institute at Jerusalem (where he has been teaching painting and drawing for a number of years), Sima came to America in 1952. His work was seen at the John Heller Gallery in New York, and then in Boston where he had a one-man show at the Doll and Richards Gallery. It was there that he exhibited for the first time a portfolio of woodcuts, Old City of Jerusalem. One is struck to note how perfectly Sima captured the mood of Old Jerusalem and its colorful in habitants— the curious thing being that these prints were created far from the scene, in Boston, from mental notes.

" S y n a g o g u e in Saied" b y Miron Sima.

While Steinhardt concentrated on the stillness and quiet grandeur of the quarter drowsing in the midday heat, Sima was particularly fascinated *by the denizens of the Old Town, recording the ecstatic movements of Chasidic worshippers and dancers. Combining great simplicity with dramatic force, he achieved an unforgettable vibrance, by cutting short parallel strokes into the wood like so many rhythmic accents in a synagogal song. W ith all the current tendency to wards abstraction, not all Israeli artists have entirely abandoned the fascina tion of subject matter so prevalent fifty and more years ago. Among them, there is a deep-felt and increasing need to link the nation’s present with yes terday’s spiritual heritage. Yet it is absurd to entitle a complete abstraction Kol Nidre Service or Chasidic Dance when any other title would serve as well. To capture the spirit of the Jewish faith, to record the habits and features of our people, the artist has to retain a minimum of the visual stimuli. The artist’s mind is, of course, not the lens of a camera: he selects, simplifies, suggests, even "distorts” for purely aesthetic reasons. He gives to nature what nature lacks — the soul of man. He portrays humans not as automatons mechanically moving their limbs, but as the inspired carriers of the Divine spark. This is what men like Steinhardt, Frenkel and Sima are doing, thereby offering us a glimpse into a world, hidden beneath the skin, beneath the drab cover that the naturalistic painter never manages to penetrate, a world visible only to those endowed with the magic of dream, with the power of Faith. JEWISH LIFE

B eli ilici Israel s M ilita ry C am p aig n By 1. HALEVY-LEV1N

TT IS A MATTER of choice and definition whether the Sinai cam paign must be regarded as an invasion of Egyptian territory or a retaliatory action on a more massive scale than those which preceded it over the past three years. W hat any fair-minded observer must concede however, is that it was a defensive operation, pro voked by eight years of unceasing guerilla warfare waged upon Israel since the signing of the armistice agreements. Neither Israel’s careful timing.of this punitive expedition, nor even, for that matter, Franco-British collaboration before or after the fact in any way detracts from its defensive character. The most recent phase of this war of attrition, the proclaimed object of which was to wipe Israel off the face of the earth — to quote one member of the Egyptian Government — began in the late summer of 1955, when Gamal Abdul Nasser concluded a three hundred million dollar arms deal with Soviet Russia. Israel’s apprehen sions at this sudden upset of the pre carious balance of armaments in the Middle East, which in any case had already been seriously disturbed by large Western arms shipments to vari ous Arab countries, were completely December, 1956

Jerusalem: disregarded by the Powers. Indeed Egypt’s argument that Israel’s reprisal raids into the Gaza Strip were the immediate reason for this colossal transaction was generally accepted. Backed by promises of Russian friendship and encouraged by the in sipid reaction of the Western powers to his warlike designs, 'Nasser set about surrounding Israel with a series of military pacts. Combined EgyptianSyrian and Egyptian - Saudi Arabian military commands, both under Gen eral Abdul Hakim Amer, Egyptian Chief-of-Staff, were established. To complete the ring it was essential, to conclude a similar pact with Jordan. Bribery and subversion succeeded in weaning her frivolous young King Hussein away from his Iraqi kinsmen and his British allies. Overnight, General Glubb Pasha, the real ruler of Jordan for twenty years, was ignominously expelled and replaced by an ambitious pro-Egyptian junior officer, Ali Abu Nuwar. W ith Glubb went a large number of British officers who had held key commands in the Arab Legion. It is interesting to recall that Dag Hammarskjöld, Sec retary General of the United Nations, whose visit to this region immediately followed these developments and co31

incided with a new series of Fedayeen murder raids into Israel, expressed himself satisfied with the peaceable intentions of all the Middle Eastern countries. The conditions of near-anarchy which followed the departure of Glubb were ideal for Egyptian efforts to se cure control of the desert Kingdom. Intoxicated by an unbroken run of success, Nasser took time off to cock a snoot at the Western Powers and to curry favor with his new Soviet friends by recognizing Communist China. When the United States re taliated by refusing to finance the billion dollar Aswan Dam project, he replied with the nationalization of the Suez Canal. Preoccupied with the international crisis which followed, and also with the Algerian rebellion against France, which he was actively supporting, ^there was a lull on-Israel’s border with Egypt. But not for long. W ith the collaboration and collusion

of Jordan, Fedayeen thugs began to operate from that territory. Meanwhile, Egyptian influence in Jordan had increased to such an extent that without waiting for the outcome of the impending general elections in which in any case the victory of the pro-Egyptian faction was a fore gone conclusion — a jo in t. military command between Jordan, Egypt and Syria, also under the Egyptian Chief of-Staff was established. Both Hussein and Abdul Nasser openly declared that this triple pact was aimed against Israel. There was some talk of getting Lebanon to join, which she had hitherto refused to do. But to all in tents and purposes the iron band of en circlement was complete. Nasser* now had the military and political instru ment he required for his purpose. Even the sea, Israel’s only friendly border, was threatened by Egypt’s eight Soviet-supplied submarines.

Preparations

INISRAEL no delusions were enter

tained about Egypt’s intentions, the hope still held in some circles that it might yet be possible to come to terms with the Arabs had been dispelled by the Russo-Egyptian arms deal. All aspects of national policy were hence forth subordinated to the exigencies of defense. The policy of reprisal for every attack on Israel’s borders was confirmed as a means of gaining time for preparations for the clash ahead. Nasser’s involvement in the Suez dis pute prolonged the breathing space. Fuel, footstuffs and strategic materials were stockpiled. Frantic efforts were made to redress, to some extent at least, Egypt’s overwhelming superiority in arms, especially in airpower. 32

Diplomatic activity continued far afield. The prospect of Russian inter vention which, whatever its ostensible purpose, would probably be directed against Israel, and the possibility of a blockade of the country’s coasts, to which she is particularly vulnerable, could not be ignored. W ithin the Israeli Government, after the resigna tion of Moshe Sharett from the For eign Ministry, Ben Gurion’s thesis that Israel must strike before being struck at gained more general accept ance. At the meeting of the cabinet ,at which the fateful decision was taken, only Mapam, the left-wing United Workers Party, maintained a half hearted opposition to Israeli initiative. The inevitability of the coming conJEWISH LIFE

flict—in the absence of any restrain ing influences among the Big Four and the United Nations — once as sumed, it became merely a question of time and place, of when and where to act. In its efforts to break out of the isolation into which the support given by the Western Powers, the Soviet Bloc, and the African-Asian Bloc to Abdul Nasser had forced her, Israel realized that its most promising pros pect was France. There was growing hostility between the latter and the

Arab countries as a result of the re volt in North Africa and the seizure of the five leaders of the Algerian re bellion which culminated in wide spread anti-French riots. This, plus accumulating evidence of Nasser’s moral, financial and military support of the rebels, and French ambitions to return to the Middle East, all combined to bring the two countries together. In the past year France was the first, and for many months, the only country to actually supply Israel with all-im portant jet military aircraft.

Britain's Attitude J7RANCE, it is clear, was *also the intermediary in securing the new working agreement between Israel and Britain. The British volte face is still a mystery to which no satisfactory ex planation has so far been offered. A short time ago she was threatening Israel with war if the latter refused to consent to the entry of Iraqi troops into Jordan — which would have con stituted, incidentally, a flagrant viola tion of the Israel-Jordan Armistice Agreement. Only recently, Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd publicly wel comed Iraqui Premier Nuri as Said’s proposal to force Israel to accept a settlement of her dispute with the Arabs on the basis of the United N a tions partition plan of 1947. Only on the night of October 28th, scarcely twenty-four hours before the Israeli columns marched across the frontier, Adna at Shark, the British-owned and operated Near East Arab Broadcasting Station in Cyprus, was pouring forth its daily dose of incitement against Israel. December, 1956

On the following day all had changed. Addressing the House of Commons Sir Anthony Eden evinced a new understanding of Israel’s posi tion, of "the apprehensions which the actions and statements of the Egyptian Government had further aggravated,” and reminded the assembled Members of Parliament that "the establishment of a joint military command between Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the renewed raids by guerillas, culminating in the incursions of Egyptian commandos . ... have created a serious situation”. And while Sir Anthony was still speaking Adna al Shark became the "Voice of Britain” and the exhortations to the Arabs of the Middle East to remember that Israel and not the West was their enemy suddenly ceased. I In the timing of her retaliatory ac tion Israel could rely on two other facr tors. The United States was absorbed in the last lap of the race for the Presidency, while the revolt of the Russian satellites had eliminated Rus sia— momentarily perhaps—ras an 33

active factor in the Middle Eastern arena. Finally Israel felt that she could not rely on the traditional division and disunity among the Arabs. (This as sumption was proved wrong by the subsequent events; she could.) She could not but regard the new joint

Jordan-Egyptian-Syrian command as in the most serious light. It was equally clear that once the Suez question was settled to Nasser’s satisfaction, as, in view of the American attitude, there seemed every chance of it being, Israel would be the next target on his march towards Empire.

Israel's Aims Israels peace aims, now that the campaign in Sinai has been victoriously concluded, are simple. Paradoxical as it may sound, it is nevertheless a plain statement of fact that Israel fought in the Peninsula to secure a durable peace. The system of armistice agreements, never conceived as more than a transi tional stage leading to a treaty of peace, has long been proved bankrupt and today lies in ruins. Israel, while never accepting the argument that its policy of armed reprisals was futile— what police action has ever been com pletely successful in rooting out crime? — always regarded it with distaste as a necessary evil. Israel’s neighbors must now be made to recognize the need for a negotiated peace. 'In the long run Israel regards the Sinai cam paign as less costly in blood and human welfare — for all parties — than the unending sub-war along her frontiers. Israel’s experience over the past eight years entitle her to more tangible guarantees of quiet and security than either the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization or the 1950 Tripartite Agreement can give. Sinai and Gaza must cease to be bases of aggression against Israel, and Israel must receive positive guarantees that these areas will not be used again as a spring-board for attack. 34

It is reported that Ben Gurion has given Sir Anthony Eden an undertak ing not to attack Jordan if she keeps the peace. But Jordan-occupied Pales tine has consistently served in the past and is serving in the present as a basis for Fedayeen incursions into Israel. The desert kingdom is an artificial creation, hastily put together by the British 35 years ago as a sop to the frustrated Hashemites. It occupies Trans-Jordan territory contrary to the United Nations decision of 1947. It is in a state of anarchy and disintegra tion; by its own admission it is in no position to prevent marauding gangs from crossing the frontiers. It is a constant threat to her neighbors. The peace settlement must put an end to the economic war against Israel. The Arabs are at liberty to re fuse to trade with Israel if they do not wish to, but their blockade of Suez and Elath is an infraction of in ternational law and of the armistice agreements. Finally the trading in the misery of the Arab refugees must cease. Nowhere has the incompetence of the Western Powers and the United Nations in tackling Middle Eastern problems been so glaringly exposed as in their ap proach to the displaced refugees. If the Great Powers are sincere — now at JEWISH LIFE

least after the second round of the Middle Eastern conflict — in their pro testations that they seek a pacific set tlement of the question, it is here that they can make their contribution. Now, after the conclusion of hostili ties, the major task of Israeli diplo macy must be to regain the sympathy and goodwill of the United States. After the first shock of the military campaign passed, American public opinion, as reflected in the press, seemed to show a greater appreciation of the circumstances compelling Israel to act in her own self-defense. It has shown less patience with the motives

behind Franco-British operations and suspected collusion. After the security of her frontiers and her citizens, nothing is more im portant for this country than Ameri can friendship. It would be a major disaster for Israel if because of pique or the guilt imputed to others America turned her back upon her. The defeat of Nasser means more than the fall of a leader or a country. It has exposed the sham of a whole system. The regimes in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria all depended to a large extent on the friendship and support of Abdul Nasser. A new deal is essential in the Middle East.

A True Peace *£HE FIVE-DAY Sinai campaign has firmly established Israel’s military reputation. Egypt has suffered a crush ing humiliation, but it is the welldeserved humiliation of a bully who threatened world peace. Whether this is the final stage of the Israel-Arab conflict, heralding a new era of more cordial relations depends at least as much upon the Big Four as upon the nations immediately concerned. For Israel — and for her neighbors no less — it can mean the removal of the crippling burden of military ex penditure, with more funds for de-

velopment and welfare. Free passage through the Suez Canal and the Gulf of Elath — secured by Israeli occupa tion of the tiny Island of Tiran at the mouth of the Gulf — means access to the vast sources of supply and markets of Africa and Asia. Major development projects are under consideration in this region — significantly enough with French cooperation — including an Elath-Mediterranean oil pipeline and a Beersheba-Elath railroad, that can prove of immense benefit to Israel and the world — if only peace is se cured.

THE THREE CRITERIA A m an's character is recogn ized b y the w a y h e conducts him self in three circum stances: The w a y h e drinks, the w a y h e conducts b u sin ess, the w a y h e controls his temper.

December, 1956

Bayomim Honey In those d a y s In this time"

"The Torah promotes h ea v en and on earth, Sanhedrin, 99b.

"W e fight for our liv e s an d our la w s." A pocryp h a, I M a cca b ees 3.21.

"They fought w ith g la d n ess the battle of Israel." A pocry p h a, I M a cca b ees 3.2.

S k oom er By GABRIEL GERSH

"She is so clever," the marriage broker said, "nobody knows". ^ys^y^y^y^ys^y^yg^y^yg^ys^ys^ys^ys^ys^ys^y^ys^y^ys^ys^ys^ys^y^ys^yss^ys^ys^y^ys^^)

Q N

THE SABBATH before Passover the elder Rabinowitz said to his wife as follows: "Our Jacob, how old is he? He is turned thirty, no?” "Well,” replied his wife defensively, "and if?” "If Jacob is turned thirty, why is he not married—tell me that?” Mrs. Rabinowitz bit her lips be cause she knew that her Jacob had never said two words to a gifl since he was fourteen. As though she was answering an accusation^ "Then where are you?” she returned. "You’re his father.” Among us, the unemancipated, the procedure whereby a marriage is ar ranged is always and everywhere the same. You go to Schwartz, who keeps 38

the delicatessen store on the corner, and while buying a pickled herring you ask him that question which one Jew always asks another on meeting: "Well, and how’s things?” And Schwartz looks at you with his beautiful, sad black eyes, and shakes his fine white head, and says: "So—so; mustn’t grumble.” Following this ritual, Rabinowitz went to Schwartz’s store one day ask ing for a pickled herring. There fol lowed the usual lengthy exchange concerning the quality of the herring, the price, the health of the two men and their spouses and the latest news about their grandchildren. Then, while they were still standing over the open herring barrel, Rabinowitz changed JEWISH LIFE

the dripping herring to his other hand mouth.” That evening the Rabinowitz’s sat at and went on in a different tone. "There is an important and intimate Schwartz’s table. "I have tasted cakes,” says Rabino matter I wished to discuss with you.” Now these affairs are conducted with witz, anxious to show his appreciation, "She is so clever, nobody knows.” the utmost delicacy, and the marriageSo they conversed for the best part broker, who not only immediately understood what this intimate and im of the evening, speaking of this and portant matter might be, but also that; of the row in Cohen’s dry goods whom and what it involved, changed store over the price of curtains; of the the subject with an adroitness befitting sermon given by the new rabbi last week in the synagogue; of a hundred a man of his position. "My daughter Sarah bakes cakes,” and one public matters of common in he exclaimed in a joyous voice, "such terest. But never a word did they speak as you never tasted! Til tell you what, of that intimate and important matter which they had met expressly to dis come to supper tonight.” As soon as Rabinowitz had left the cuss, and of which each was intensely shop, Schwartz began pacing up and aware. At last Mrs. Rabinowitz mentioned down behind his counter, muttering to himself. "My Annie is married. My quite casually, as if in passing: "This Gertrude is married and has two morning Jacob was turning the leg children already, bless them! Miriam of a chair when—what do you think? is engaged. But Sarah—she is a dis The blade slipped and made a nasty grace to my name! People expect me gash in his hand. But do you think to earn a living, but if my own he told me? Not a word!” Jacob’s silence was proverbial. At daughter is a spinster, who can have confidence in me? Things are bad any gathering he would sit like a stone, neither laughing at jokes nor utter enough as it is.” And so he kept walking up and ing a word. They called him the down, working himself into a rage "Shtoomer”—the Silent One. "Have you anyone in mind for over this educated daughter of his who refused to marry, and was thereby him?” her husband asked the marriageundermining his business. Sarah was broker. "Only my Sarah.” a school teacher—and everyone knows At this husband and wife turned to what a school teacher is. She teaches in a school. She reads books. She each other, and between them there belongs to the emancipated. She is in passed an almost imperceptible move a class apart. Nor was Sarah herself ment of the mouth, which, after a life unaware of this distinction. As her time of marriage, conveyed surprise, Uncle Samuel used to say: "She pro approval, pleasure, satisfaction—all at nounces 'John Steinbuck’ with a small the same time. 39 December, 1956

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The Marriage Broker Ignited a Spark in Jacob — But Would It Consume Him?

■JHE following morning Mr. Schwartz took a walk down to the Shtoomer’s workshop, which was situated behind the slaughterhouses. The stench was overpowering. Jacob was on his knees putting screws into an oak chest. And looking at the back of Jacob’s neck, Mr. Schwartz asked him that only other question which one Jew asks another on meeting: "Nu, Jacob, and how’s business?” W ithout looking up the Shtoomer muttered: "So— so!” "Jacob,” went on the visitor in a loud, clear voice,” have you ever thought of getting married?” The Shtoomer did not answer, and merely shrugged his shoulders. But this shrug signified volumes. It signi fied that not only had Jacob never con sidered the question, but he was per fectly happy as he was, and did not even intend to consider it. "I can see you are young still and know nothing of life. You think that turning legs of chairs is life? For instance, do you know what it is to be in love? And here the marriage broker’s voice became low and soft and caressing,, and he looked at Jacob’s neck as if he was going to tell him a secret. "It is quite different from all other experiences. You walk about as if there are springs in your shoes— so light you feel. You look at a tree, and you ask yourself why that tree is pink, not brown, because it really looks pink. You thank G-d, and ask Him for 40

what unselfish deed He has blessed you with this reward, that you are so full of joy and exultation. Each menial task you perform takes on a new" sig nificance and becomes a sacred act, because now all life is sacred. And the very ground beneath your feet is holy ground, such as Adam stood on before the Fall.” All this time the Shtoomer uttered no word as was his custom, but Mr. Schwartz noticed that his neck had become red, and that he had stopped screwing with his screwdriver. Schwartz was aware that he was doing wrong, but now he could not help himself; besides, a man must earn a living. . . . So he went on to speak of the joys of marriage, of the pleasures of parenthood and the touch of baby fingers on your face. He painted, too, the dry sterility of bachelorhood; the bitter loneliness and desolation of old age; and Jacob shook his head because he was deeply moved. At last he could bear no more, and he jumped up, and cried: "Tell me, who is she?” "My daughter Sarah!” Jacob dropped his screwdriver. "You don’t mean . . . your daughter Sarah?” "No other!” "And she loves me? ’ Schwartz hesitated; then he said: "Who else should know if not her own father?” He went on: "Next week is Passover. Come to my house after synagogue. You will get better ac quainted.” And he put his fine white JEWISH LIFE

head on a side and winked one black, beautiful eye. ALL THAT week Jacob walked about * * as if in a dream -— a beautiful dream remote from all thought and association. One morning he brushed against Sarah in the street; his heart began to beat violently, and his breath came as if he had been running up a long, steep hill. He nearly fainted from excess emotion. While his mother, looking at his untouched plate, nagged her husband: 'Took what you have done! W hat do you want of him? You’ve made him ill with your interfering.,, In the meantime, Schwartz too was nervous. He knew from past experi ence what his daughter Sarah thought of the eligible young men who were

December, 1956

his clients and despite his promise to Rabinowitz, he could not muster the courage to mention the matter to her. "Nu,” he sighed to himself, "what can I lose?” But he was still afraid. On the first evening of Passover when they left the synagogue, Jacob followed the marriage-broker to the delicatessen store. In the parlor the candles were alight. When Sarah walked by the table it seemed to Jacob that they bowed their golden heads of flame to her as she passed. Schwartz recited the Kiddush; they opened the street door for the angel of Elijah to enter and sip the cup of wine prepared for him. Jacob even fancied that something actually touched him, and that the wine in the cup had diminished just a little bit. If on other occasions the Shtoomer

was quiet, then tonight he was posi tively dumb. They could not get a word out of him. It was either "Yes” or "No,” or "Yes, please,” and "No, thank you,” all the evening. All the evening he sat and looked at Sarah with a solemn, ecstatic^ expression on his face, and all he could see were two red cheeks, and two beautiful black eyes and jet black hair, as black as her father's was white. His silence depressed them both and the evening dragged on. At last Sarah said: "I think I’ll turn in. Excuse me father. Good-night, Mr. Rabinowitz!” And she rose from the table. "Don’t go!” said Jacob, speaking for the first time that evening. And in the same breath he asked her if she knew what it was to be in love? "Do you mean me?” "Who else?” returned the Shtoomer. "Who else has occupied my days and nights that I can neither eat nor sleep nor speak? W ith whom else do I dream of sharing that veritable Eden that opens even now before my eyes, where you and I shall live like Adam and Eve in Paradise; where at night there is the scent of forbidden fruit blooming in the darkness; while by day the sun shines; and though it shines on a million people it seems as if it shines on me alone?” ^HTHAT DICTION! W hat pronuncia tion! W hat articulation! Had the angel himself come in just then he would not have been more astonished than at the flow and torrent of words that poured from the breast of the Shtoomer after so many years of silence. His pale, unhappy face was flushed, and there was a queer light in his eyes. "Up to now I thought % had lived, but I did not know the meaning of life until I learned you loved me— ” 42

"What nonsense!” Sarah declared, going crimson. He appeared not to hear, not to understand. "I want . . . I beg of you . . . marry me!” "You must be mad!” And she walked out of the room. This time he heard, this time he understood. It was - as though somebody had taken both his fists and punched him full in the face. He actually staggered as if from a blow. W ithout another word Jacob went to the street door, but instead of going into the street he found himself in a stockroom full of barrels and jars of pickled herring. There was a lost, bewildered look on his face, and he appeared to have for gotten his way. J^OW ADAYS Jacob speaks less than ever. Sometimes his mother comes down to his little workshop behind the slaughterhouses where in the hot weather the stench is terrible, and with tears in her eyes, she says: "Be of good cheer, Jakie mine, we will find you another, yes?” But the Shtoomer does not answer; neither "yes” nor "no.” He doesn’t even look up. He just goes on screwing with his screwdriver, and his mother, looking at him, sees that he is far away. And he is far, far away in that terrestial Paradise that once opened in a vision before his eyes, in that holy Eden where the grass is so thick that you think there are springs in your shoes; where flowers of every variety grow among the splendid trees—cedars, spruce-and pine, that are not brown but pink; where at night comes the scent of forbidden fruit blooming in the darkness. And his mother goes out into the baking sunshine; and she knows that though the sun shines on a million people, it never, never shines on him. JEWISH LIFE

ON THE JEWISH RECORD

Modzitzer JNigumm By

ERIC

OFFENBACHER

W O U L D YOU CARE to visit the ■ followers of a famous Chassidic dynasty and sit in on their celebration of a traditional Melave Malke? A unique and exquisite musical treat is offered the Jewish record collector by the release of a new ten-inch long-play ing record, called "Modzitzer Melave Malke Melodies,” a collection of nine z’miroth for Motzoey Shabboth. Never before, to the knowledge of this re viewer, have the tunes of one Chassidic '‘court” been preserved with such orig inality and altruistic purpose. Who are these Modzitzer Chassidim, and what entitles them to musical fame? Let us go back a bit in Jewish his tory. Ever since the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chassidism, dispatched his disciples to propagate his teachings, N ’ginab (melody) served as a staple in their equipment. Some claim that the master himself composed music. In any event, prayer and song seemed to supplement each other to such a degree that to communicate full mean ing of the former meant close contact with the latter. Thus, by imbuing it with prayer, Chassidism instilled a new spirit into the traditional Jewish song. Joy in the Divine presence, as ex pressed in a tune, together with the religious fervor of prayer, often macte

a text quite unnecessary. Therefore, we find many Chassidic melodies today which are simply hummed or sung without words. Chemjo Vinaver, in his recently published "Anthology of Jewish Music” (reviewed in the Tishri 5716 issue of J e w i s h L i f e ) , remarks: "Songs without words were capable in Chassidic interpretation of convey ing the subtlest and most comprehen sive meanings. Indeed, when Chassid im would gather to hear the profound sayings . . . of their Rabbis . . ., they felt they truly understood the deep and mystical intent only when tjie group began to sing the Rabbi’s nigun.’ ” One dynasty that traces its origin to the first Chassidic leaders are the Rabbis of Modzitz, a town in the prov ince of Lublin in Poland. Three gen erations, Rabbi Israel Taub, the first Modzitzer Rabbi (1848-1920), Rabbi Saul Taub (1886-1947), and the pres ent Modzitzer Rabbi, 50 years old and since 1938 a member of the Chief Rabbinate of Tel Aviv, were all com posers of note. Their nigunim sur vived primarily through perpetuation among their disciples. Some notation was undertaken over the years, but only a small amount has so far been published.

Modzitzer Melave Malke Melodies. 3 0 minutes of recorded music. 9 Chassidic melodies, by Modzitzer Chorus. Ben Zion ShenkerI soloist. Neginah Rec ords, 1613 President Street, Brooklyn, New York. $4.00.

T H E RECORD under review, the first * o f a series of Modzitzer Melodies, shows how this little known aspect of Jewish music is deserving of much wider recognition. A half-hour of varied entertainment comprises medi43

December, 1956

tative selections like V’yiten L’cha and new addition to the family "repertoire.” Omar Hashem Uyaakov (twenty-two Quite appropriately, it ends with the passages from the Bible mentioning traditional greeting, Gut Voch. Jacob), as well as the deeply felt EliA word about the remarkable yahu Hanovi which ends with such Chorus. The disciplined voices belong an affirmative full-chorus statement as to a group of nine devoted Chassidim to stir the most indifferent soul. who are non-professionals as far as Then there are the joyous numbers, music is concerned, and who pursue the Aramaic Askinu Seudosa, the business careers that range from man rhythmic , V’heyshiv and the cheerful ufacturing sweaters to dealing in dairy Rikud, the latter sung without words products. Their zeal and dedication, as an accompaniment to a festive which find full expression on this dance. The outstanding features of the truly "Jewish” record, are directed record are the major selections, Be- towards raising funds for the estab motzoey, a "chazonish” piece which lishment of a Modzitzer Yeshivah in. projects the attractive solo voice to Tel Aviv. For this purpose they good advantage, and, finally, the en thought up the recording idea. There chanting Hamavdil, composed by one is no commercial motive involved and of the Modzitzer Chassidim himself, all proceeds go to this holy cause. It Ben Zion Shenker, who is also the is, therefore, an undivided pleasure soloist of the group. This Hamavdil, for this reviewer to recommend this on repeated hearing, should find its record for both its high artistic stand way into many a Jewish home as a ard and its charitable intent.

BOOKS

V’limad’tem Osom By ALBERT HOLLANDER Elementary Education in A n cient Israel During the Tannaitic Period ( 10-220CE) by Eliezer Ebner. 128 pp. N ew York. Bloch Publishing Company. $3.00 H A B B I ELIEZER EBNER of Congre gation Brothers of Israel, Long Branch, New Jersey has penned a work which all researchers in the history of Jewish education will perforce have to consult. Those involved in some form of contemporary Jewish educa tion will also find interesting contrasts in "Elementary Education in Ancient Israel”. 44

Originally presented as a dissertation for a doctorate at Dropsie College, the book contains full scholarly apparatus. Its dry-as-dust pedantic style is usually dissertatious. Scrupulously historical in treatment, sermonic extravagances and apologetic claims are significantly ab sent. Nevertheless, the general reader will be attracted by the subject and by the fascinating facts which Rabbi Ebner has succeeded in collecting. The book should be found in the library of every rabbi, educator and layman concerned with Jewish educa tion. JEWISH LIFE

IN THE WORLD OF BOOKS

Religious W riters By A R Y E H N E W M A N

TH R OUG HOUT THE ages Jewish A sages have not scorned to utilize their artistic gifts in producing great poetry and prose, following the ex ample of their inspired predecessors, the Prophets and Psalmists. The Apo cryphal books, the Talmudic homilies (Aggada and Midrash), litu r g ic a l poetry or piyyut, Chasidic tales, the parables of the Dubnow Maggid and even the pilpulistic exercises of the yeshivah genius — admittedly designed for a highly select circle—-all consti tute literature belonging to the cate gory of instructive or innocent enter tainment. The art of the spoken and written word has been used to com municate the message of Judaism. Emunim. Anthology of Poetry, Edited by Pinch as Peli. Mo sad Harav Kook. Jerusalem. ( He brew) Emunim. Collection of Fifty Short Stories. Edited by Pinchas Peli. Mo sad Harav Kook. Jerusa lem, ( Hebrew) December, 1956

The advent of mass printing and publishing, daily papers, the ubiqui tousness of the Jewish unbeliever and even anti-semite lampooning his own faith and the faithful, has called for a re-appraisal of the situation by Jewish religious circles. On the one hand, lit erature penned by the enemies of traditional Judaism can hardly be con sidered the most appropriate fare by the devout for the Jewish school and home. On the other, the devotional literature of a bygone era is scarcely adequate to meet the realities of the contemporary scene, and enable the modern Jew to develop his artistic taste and judgment and powers of ex pression to convey to him the time less message of his faith in the lan guage of contemporary man. That even the most "orthodox” circles in Judaism realize this is indi cated in the production of daily papers in Israel, for instance, by the organs of religious opinion — witness Hakol and Hamodia of Agudath Israel, which in common with the Mizrachi daily Hatzofe, contain book reviews, short 45

stories, poems, essays and serials de signed for the most devout of readers. The instinct of the founders of these journals, Rabbi Meir Bar Ilan of Hatzofe. and Rabbi Moshe Blau of Hakol, was a healthy one and a real istic and fundamentally Jewish answer to the needs of the times. It is only a pity that these journals do not always stand on a technical level equal to their secular counterparts. Just as the great est artist stands to ruin his work by stooping to the level of a decadent public, so the most well-intentioned, scholarly and pious religious writer will fail to communicate if he has no lit erary flair and technique. ^ H E R E IS NO DOUBT, however, that those writers who combine nat ural gifts with a profound familiarity with and appreciation of the past tra ditions of their people are the best equipped to produce lasting and val uable works of art. The appearances of two anthologies in Israel, one of poetry and the most recent of short stories, by religious authors under the auspices of Mosad Harav Kook, the World Mizrachi publishing house, is, therefore, particularly welcome. Both of them are edited by Mr. Pinchas Peli, himself a distinguished young religious writer and poet. The contributors are drawn from religious circles, from all walks of life including Rabbis (and a Rebbitzin!) farmers, tinkers and tradesmen, both Diaspora- and Israel-born, and their work reflects all facets of Jewish life, its joys and sorrows, triumphs and tragedies, the old and the new. In fact, both publications have a general appeal and have evoked a favorable reception in all circles. The publication of the short story anthology symptomizes the popularity 46

of this form of literature. Short stories find a ready market in dailies, week end supplements and journals. The hurry-scurry of modern life, the coun ter-attractions of the radio, motion picture and television, are largely re sponsible for the rapid development of the short story, which concentrates on a significant episode or even mental state, portrait or character sketch. A really good short story calls for a strict economy of phrase and powers of artistic sélection of a high order in order to preclude it from degenerating into a formless, insignificant exercise of the pen. In the fifty short stories selected there are, needless to say, ex amples of this. But there are also some literary gems, unforgettable etchings of Jewish life under the Nazi and Soviet nightmare, coming under the category of fulfilling the mitzvah of Lo Tisbkach (Bemidbor 25 : 19, 'Thou shalt not forget”). The mystic and the macabre merge in Moshe Prager’s "Dance of Agonies” (Mechol shel Yissurim) and David Zaretzki’s "Dog of the Jews” ( Kelev Hayehudim). In the former, the tale is told of the last Jews of Lublin being herded together to perform a dance and sing for the sport of a twisted Nazi tyrant. It took time before the unfortunate Jews could be persuaded to sing. But when they at last burst forth it was not the song the com mander wanted to hear. It went "Mir vellen zei iberleben, iberleben, ovinu shebashomayim” ("W e shall outlive th em , o u r F a th e r w h ich a rt in Heaven . . .”). And the singing and dancing Jews were caught up in the force of their song and went on with their dance in the ecstasy of their chant. The theme of the éternal spirit of Israel, epitomized in that Rabbinic JEWISH LIFE

dictum that on the day the Temple was destroyed the Messiah was born, con tinually recurs, as does the theme of the triumph of the spirit over the body — the keynote of the '"holocaust stories.” Take the "Marrano’s Sabbath” of Moshe Prager, where we find our selves in the tailor workshop of the ghetto where the Jews are forced to turn out clothes for their Nazi task masters on Sabbaths as well as week days and witness their subterfuges to adhere to the spirit if not the letter of the sacred day. "When the Nazi commandant is out, work stops and when "Haman comes” all turn the wheels of their machines and pretend to work: "Shabbos! Sha-bbos! — went the wheels of the sewing machines as they whirled round to the beat of a Sabbath tune. . . .”

tales and an arresting study of the famous Nawardok musar school. The pilgrim’s progress of a Jewish Paul Bunyan, under the influence of the character-training techniques of this exacting Torah discipline, is traced from the "Valley of Despair” to "Grace Abounding”. Life in the new Israel, the War of Independence, and the vicissitudes of settlement and absorption are well represented in stories penned by those who have themselves tasted these ex periences. The "Diary of an Unem ployed” by Yehiel Granatstein graphi cally records the despair that is the lot of too many newcomers to the country and reminds the reader that there "but for the Grace of G-d go I”, The personal tragedies and sacrifices of the War of Independence are mir rored in "The Mother” (Ha-eym) of Even Hen, recalling the last stand of SOMEWHAT less usual theme is the Etzion block: "The Hands” (Yotreated by Gershuni in his "Kid- daim) of Pinchas Peli painting the dush Hashem”, which is the saga of agonies of Jerusalem during the siege, the indomitable yeshivah student in his and "The Battle Eve” (Beterem Krav) struggle with the Russian NKVD to of Meir Or depicting the preparedness keep the banner of Torah study flying. of the Beth Sh’an religious kibbutz It is reminiscent of the heroic attempts ready to repulse the awaited Arab of the sainted Rabbi Akiva in conven attack. ing assemblies for Torah study in de Could there be any more accom fiance of the Hadrianic edicts. plished and potent championship of The tragic irony of this twentieth Jewish minhog and the niceties of century counterpart is the fact that it liturgical variants than Agnon’s "Velo is not a struggle between heathen and Nikashel” (That W e Stumble Not) Jew, but between Jew and Jew, be where these two Hebrew words in tween a rabid apostate in the guise of serted, according to some rites, in the the NKVD and the loyal Torah scholar. Grace after Meals save a Jewish girl All the familiar stock-in-trade of the from eternal damnation and estrange Soviet propaganda and investigating ment from her people? The old and machine are here including the brain the new are skillfully interwoven in washing and breaking of the human this story, the future in the land reborn being built on the pillars of the past. will. There are a number of stories nostal After the manner of the Talmudic gically recreating the Jewish life that preacher Agonon closes his story with was -— "before the Deluge”, Chassidic the moral: 47 December, 1956

How great are the words of the Sages who stated, "At all times let a man carefully observe the cus toms of his ancestors”.1 If on ac count of two words one Jewish soul was saved and its Jewishness pre served, how many Jewish souls would have been saved from apostacy and destruction, had all Israel been careful to observe their ances

tral customs! Here is art "larger than life”, "more truthful than truth”. Let us hope, that the springs of Jewish literature will continue to enrich our experience and deepen our sensibilities to appreciate the good and the valuable in human life by drawing their inspiration from the sources of our eternal traditions.

FICTION

Jewish Sacrifice By MOSHE MICHAEL The Sacrifice. By 'Adele Wise man. 346 pp. Viking. $3.95 J O STEADFAST sons of the Cov enant, the tribulations and suffering constantly undergone by the Jewish people constitute more than just D i vine punishment for Jewish straying from the "Derech HaShem”. In their eyes these sacrifices have become trials before the Almighty — trials wherein the future of the Jewish people is being judged by their reaction to G-d’s often inscrutable and unfathom able ways. This much, at least, is sensed by Miss Adele Wiseman in her extraor dinarily well-written first novel, "The Sacrifice”, a story about a modern-day cross between Abraham, Job and Saul, and his trials and tribulations. Unfor tunately, Miss Wiseman seems not to have grasped that it is these self-same sacrifices and wounds that have not only served as a tributary to the con tinued existence of Judaism, but has deeded to the Jewish people a resilient vibrance that has enabled them to re bound from each "setback” seemingly 48

stronger in their faith than before the "tests”. An unusually good craftsman, Miss Wiseman, the daughter of a Winnipeg tailor and dressmaker, has woven a tale of three generations of an East Euro pean immigrant family in a Winnipeglike city into an exemplary work of fiction, and has emerged in the process as a mature writer of extraordinary depth and perception. Abraham, a middle-aged, bearded butcher, comes to the new world with his wife, Sarah, an erneseh eyshes chayil, and his son, Isaac, following the murder of his two other sons in a Russian pogrom. Isaac, a product of the intensive tra ditional educational process of the East European ghetto, emerges from his contact with Jewish irreligiosity in his newly-adopted city as a hot stoker after its plunge into ice cold water. His sizzling is caused by an admixture of the instinctive righteousness of his tra ditions and the atheistic nature of the intellectual environment of the twenties and thirties. Isaac marries and he makes Abraham a grandfather. Soon JEWISH LIFE

after, Sarah dies. Then Isaac passes on him. I carried his kicking, scream ing body to the bed, and I held him. away. It is in the cause of Isaac’s death that I laid my head against his heart and the sardonic nature of Miss Wiseman’s heard the tumult within him, and I approach to Jewish '‘sacrifice” is be prayed. I prayed that You should for trayed. Upon Isaac’s dash into a burn give my great error. I wept! I cried ing synagogue to rescue a Sefer Torah, that you should not take from me the he contracts wounds which later prove gift that I had seen too late . . . All fatal. It is here that Abraham becomes night I held him [and} I prayed . . . less like his Biblical namesake and loses Toward morning there was a miracle. all of his Jobian likenesses in his trans He opened his eyes and called me figuration into a troubled Saul. Under 'Father* ”. W hat makes this story compelling Miss Wiseman’s skillful pen the in evitable tragic climax comes as an al reading for all its sardonic approach to Judaism, is the human warmth most expected result. which enriches all of its actors. They PREPA RA TIO N for Abraham’s even are as alive as the delightful smells in tual demise was laid by the authoress the nearby market — from the nosy, early in the novel, when she related gossipy kochlefel, Mrs. Plopler, to his raging reaction towards G-d upon Chaim Knopp, the Milquetoastian the murder of his two sons. But when shochet, and Abraham’s close friend. Abraham’s last son, Isaac caught the For all his debauchery, Polsky, the typhus during their travels through butcher, Abraham’s employer is so Europe to America and he almost died, expertly characterized that he could be the guy next door in any community. he underwent a sudden about face. "The Sacrifice” marks the publica In a memorable passage, he relates: "It was then that I knew, my G-d, tion of a novel of the first-order by a that You had left me one son. And young lady of real talent. It is a pity he was leaving me. You were tearing that with all her knowledge of Jewish him from me! How fiercely I loved life she was unable to underscore one him, I who had almost forgotten him important all-pervasive aspect of it — in my selfishness! I fought with You that without Judaism "Jewish life” is that night. I clung to him. I breathed not Jewish.

JEWISH THOUGHT

Eternal Problems By LEO JUNG The Modern Jew Faces Eternal Problems. By Dr. Aron Barth. Translated from the Hebrew by Haim Shachter. English edition prepared by Aryei Fishman. 288 pp. Jerusalem. Religious Section of the Youth and Hechalutz DeDecember, 1956

partment of the Zionist Organiza tion. $3.00 T H IS IS AN utterly unusual book: modern in the best sense of the word, academic in horizon and ap proach, learned without being heavy, charming without levity, Torah-true 49

in tone and spirit. The author, Dr. Aron Barth—a banker and lawyer—is learned in our holy law, at home in the world of science and philosophy, and is an authority on economic and political problems. As a rule it is the professional theologian or college teacher who would assay its composition and per chance frighten prospective readers away because of the shadow of poly syllabic verbiage. Dr. Barths book is amazingly free of such handicaps. Placed in the hands of worthwhile high schools seniors and serious col lege students, it will instruct, enlighten and please them immensely. In its twenty-six chapters and two appen dixes ( aided by an ample glossary and a fine index), he marshals every question about our faith and law that has ever bothered them and offers solutions, sage, well-documented and simple enough to hold their attention, satisfy their minds and become inte grated in their Weltanschaung. I recommend the book most warmly also to sisterhoods, to alert men’s clubs, to youth organizations, to Young Israel and Hapoel Hamizrachi chapters, to Agudists and Lubavitchers. They all would benefit greatly from a steady study of "The Modern Jew Faces Eternal Problems”. They could ar range a fascinating one year's pro gram, reading, debating, digesting this precious pabulum.

The tone of the book is blissfully non-apologetic. Neither is there pe dantry or toothless vituperation to be found in its fine, brief essays. The author draws on his thorough and in timate knowledge of the classic texts of Judaism and of Western culture. His decisive role in the development of Israel adds greatly not only to his stature, but to the dynamic quality of the volume. For he throws fascinat ing light upon the wonders and ten sions of the W ar of Liberation in particular, and upon the finger of G-d in Jewish history in general. It took three generations of West Europeans Jewry on the highest level to produce Aron Barth. His book is the fruit of forty years of sustained study, broad and deep, and the experience of a life full of inspiration, dedicated service and seasoned courage — in the glory and tragedy of our people’s re cent history. The volume has been a best seller in Hebrew and English, its French edition is being lavishly praised, whilst Dutch, Italian and German ones are in preparation. Some printer’s devils and transla tor’s imperfections (P. 107, 278) could be removed in the next edition. A cordial yasher koach is due author, publisher, and the Youth and Hechalutz Department of the World Zion ist Organization for making this im portant book available in English.

CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Play and Learn By DEBORAH I. OFFENBACHER T H E FOUR little volumes in the Play-and-Learn Library sponsored by the UOJCA’s Women’s Branch 50

are an attractive and most welcome addition to the Jewish child’s bookshelf. Presented in the format of the JEWISH LIFE

popular Little Golden Books and in little volumes, however, manage to tended for about the same age group convey the impression that holidays (2-5), their simple text and lively, and visits to the synagogue are one colorful illustrations present a warm more opportunity to share a feeling picture of Jewish family life, holidays of closeness and joy which is the and ceremonies which will awaken a essence of a well-rounded family life. quick response in the young reader. A pleasant departure from the W hat this reviewer appreciates limited range of topics to which most especially is the fact that Jerry and Jewish juvenile literature restricts it Judy of the Play-and-Learn Library self is "Jeremy and Judy Say the are real children and not just props Sh'ma” by Libby Klaperman. In this for an object lesson in Jewish history little story, the. Jewish theme is per and customs. For them as for any fectly integrated with the routines and other healthy youngster, Shabboth is delaying tactics which mark bed-time not only a day for chaloth and candle in any home, and the idea of G-d and sticks, but a time when little girls prayer becomes part of the recounting wear their best dresses, "the one with of the day's happy events and small the big bow”, and little boys have "a excitements which children love so white shirt and a suit just like Daddy”. well. There must be many other short For too long, Jewish children's prayers and b'rochoth as well as cere stories have moved in a kind of self- monies in the everyday life of a Jewish imposed ghetto where the normal child which could be treated in the concerns and pleasures of childhood same delightful way. are dwarfed by rigid patterns of cere In view of the relatively limited monials. The authors of these four market for Jewish children's books — as compared to the outlets open to general publishers — the Play-andT H E P L A Y - A N D - L E A R N L I Learn Library offers its well designed B R A R Y , sponsored by the Women’s and attractively printed books at a Branch of UOJCA, published in surprisingly low cost. The Orthodox coperation with Behrman House, Union's Women’s Branch is to be New York ........................50^ each congratulated for this finé and imagi native contribution to living Judaism, Jeremy’s and Judy’s Hanukah. Story and it is to be hoped that the four by Lillian S. Abramson. Illustrations little volumes now before us will only by Laszlo Matulay. be the beginning of a long series of Sabbath Is Special. Story by Mollie similar publications. The Play-and-Learn Library will be Kolatch. Illustrations by Evelyn distributed through bookstores as well Urbanowich. as directly through the UOJCA’s W o Jeremy and Judy Say The Sh’ma. Story men's Branch, 305 Broadway, New by Libby M. Klaperman. Illustra York City. tions by Patricia Villemain. Jeremy, and the Torah. Story by Libby M. Klaperman. Illustrations by Erika Weihs. December, 1956

SWEE-TOUCH-NEE TEA IS GOOD TEA 51

1 ^ » k, ' --- = 5 1 ^ «US w W — 91 mlm MSfiJr Letters to the Erlitnr / pa 3 l M w1 i 1

—

DEFENDS REFORM INTENTIONS

New York, N. Y. The editorial in the October issue of your magazine entitled "Thin Edge, Thick Wedge” has been called to my attention, and I have read it care fully, with great interest and, I must add,* with great dismay. The editorial is guilty of certain errors of fact which, l am sure, so important and responsible a publication as yours would not wish to leave uncorrected. At a time when bridges are being built within many of the secular and religious groups for a strengthened and more vital American Jewish com munity, I feel the timing and the tone of your editorial are most unfortunate. The Reform movement has not acted "following the failure of several attempts to secure a foothold in Israel” as the editorial states. Thus far no effort has ever been made by Ameri can Reform in Israel. Nor is our move ment "eschewing further claim to an Israeli following” any more than we are "demanding the right to establish a Reform temple”. In both instances your editorialist is in error. It is true that our Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is establishing a graduate school for archeological and Biblical studies in Israel. As you well know, we would no more think of establishing a branch 52

of one of our seminaries without facilities for prayer than would your people. Surely you would not deny our students, travelling to Israel from America, the right to worship G-d as has been their custom. The tiny chapel which this school will contain will not be the source of a congregation nor will it be used to entice Israelis or "im pose upon Israeli Jewry a cult”. Dr. Nelson Glueck has stated that though visitors will not be barred, the chapel is for the students alone and will not be used by the public. It is unfortunate that so much has been made of that tiny chapel which, at most, will accommodate only a handful of people. Those who have played it up have done a disservice to all concerned. But surely your edi torialist does not believe that so small a vehicle as that chapel will sweep aside the vast and deeply entrenched superstructure of Israeli Orthodoxy! This is not to say that Reform Judaism has no role to play in Israel or cherishes no aspirations for making its own unique and essential contri bution. The UAHC, in cooperation with our World Union, is sending a young Reform rabbi to Israel. Dr. Maurice N. Eisendrath, President of the UAHC, which is the parent-body of Reform Judaism, has already made this known. This, our major effort, JEWISH LIFE

OriLyVIceroy has 2Q000 Filters

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December, 1956

will have no connection with our school whatsoever. In fairness to us, your readers should understand that no attempt ‘ will be made to bring American Reform Judaism to Israel. An effort will be made to stir Israelis themselves, par ticularly those who are unaffiliated with and largely antagonistic to the synagogue, to reconsider their atti tudes toward religion and to seek to create an Israeli pattern of Judaism more liberal than the forms currently available to them, which have been proven unsuccessful in stimulating or satisfying or even activating their spiritual needs through me synagogue. Are there any among you who would say: Better no synagogue at all than a careful re-evaluation of Judaism and a recasting of the Israeli synagogue into a form acceptable and fulfilling to the great masses of Israeli Jews who, unfortunately, are now so al ienated from both synagogue and Ju daism? One cannot but feel that the edi torialist was guilty of the most in excusable ignorance or sheer sophistry when he wrote of "a century of effort of Reform to expunge Zion from the hearts of Jewry”. This is shocking! Who among your readers, let alone your writers, does not know that the opposition, to Zionism, which char acterized 19th century Reform has long since been stricken from the pro gram and official platform of Reform Judaism and from the hearts of the overwhelming majority of Reform Jews? Not a single rabbi in the Cen tral Conference of American Rabbis, the all-inclusive Reform rabbinical body, actively serving a (Reform) Union congregation, is a member of the miniscule anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism. 54

One might expect your editorialist to disagree with Reforms aspirations to see, one day, the introduction by Israelis of i a more liberal form of Judaism than one presently obtains in Israel. But such disagreement should, in all justice, be based on the true areas of difference rather than on an in accurate presentation of what has transpired and what is contemplated. Such disagreement need not be based on an attempt to brand con temporary Reform with an ideology outgrown several generations ago, nor on the pretense that Reform is an anti-Zionist movement, nor on the allegation that Reform espouses as similation, which you know it abomi nates, nor by acusing Dr. Glueck of writing from a Christological point of view, nor by contending that Reform seeks to transplant into Israel that which it readily agrees would be a dis service, namely, the American form of Reform — which meets the unique needs only of American Jews. Yet all these your editorialist used as the fac tual basis of his statement. No good purpose is served by obfus cating the facts. Emotions run hot; understanding melts into malice and a rift is driven in k’lal Yisroel which dishonors us all. W e are still fellow Jews, bound by the same ties, inspired by the same faith and devotion to G-d. There are enough malefactors who would besmirch our name and divide our ranks; we need not add fuel to their fires. Earl Morse # # # THE EDITOR REPLIES

The literature of the Reform move ment during the past few years gives ample evidence of its attempts to se cure a foothold in Israel. Be it noted that, although our editorial did not JEWISH LIFE

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point to these as undertakings by “American Reform”, such in fact was their source. The Yearbook of the Central Conference of American (Re form) Rabbis for each year beginning with 1951 may be particularly referred to in this connection. The same source reveals the failure of several of these projects. The changed strategy now being pursued indicates clearly enough that the claim of an Israeli following for Reform has been dropped. The right of anyone to personally worship in Israel as he pleases has not been disputed. The fundamentally dif ferent point at issue is: Shall nonIsraelis be permitted to import into the Holy Land an instrument of organ ized heterodoxy? The initial size, phys ical character or designation of the instrument are irrelevant. Nothing is altered by calling the undertaking a “chapel”. Just as a place or congrega tion or Jewish worship is designated “synagogue” or “shool,” regardless of its physical setting, so is a place or congregation of Reform worship to be designated a “temple”. The potential menace to Israeli reli gious life undoubtedly remains large regardless of however miniscule the “chapel” may be. A virus of infinites imal size can infect the largest-and healthiest of organisms. All the more can this be the case under present con ditions of Israel development, when so many factors adverse to the up building of a spiritually integrated and socially unified society are at play. Mr. Morse’s reference to the role which Reform seeks in Israel in itself substantiates our editorial. Both the temple and the missionary project, however distinct from each other, point to a pattern of planned infiltra tion, of propagating in Israel a cult “more liberal” than the Torah faith of 56

Israel, a pattern conceived by Reform, and re-tailored for adaptation to the Israel scene. “W hat will suit you?”, Reform invites the Israeli, “Whatever it be, we will manufacture it for you!” The rhetorical question put by Mr. Morse, “Better no synagogue at all, etc.”, derives from an untrue premise and offers a spurious alternative. That the large majority of Israelis are loyal to “both synagogue and Judaism” is attested to by the innumerable syna gogues everywhere in the land, with attendance at all services far surpassing that of almost any other religious com munity anywhere in the world and new synagogues being built as fast as facili ties permit; by the general observance of Jewish religious practice—of which the over 90% registration for Kosher meat is but one manifestation; and by the very character of the Yishuv as a whole, whose existence derives from the Jewish religion and cannot pos sibly have any life without it. It is also true that many Israelis are lax in their religious observance, that many are in spiritual confusion, that a significant minority are indifferent to Judaism and that some are actually hostile to religion. This is a situation, whose historical causes are well known, calling for earnest, constructive effort. Does this effort call for the deforming of Judaism to bring it down to the level of those ignorant of its sacred truths, or does it rather call for the reforming, enlightenment and redeem ing of Jews, so that they may reach their rightful* place in the Jewish spiritual realm? Our editorial referred to the Reform disavowal of Zion, of the peoplehood of Israel and of the belief in the re birth of the Jewish nation in its own land, as made explicit in the Reform “Pittsburgh Platform” promulgated in JEWISH LIFE

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1885. Opposition to Zionism as such characterized the official program and doctrine of the American Reform movement not only in the 19th century but well into the 20th century too. It was not until 1937 that a revised policy towards Zionism was officially introduced. In the volume '’Reform Judaism”, published in 1949 by the Hebrew Union College Press, Reform Rabbi David H. Wice states: "Not until 1943 was there a resolution (of the Reform clerical body) denying that Reform and Zionism are incompat ible”. Our editorial took note of this turnabout, which we viewed as an ac comodation to political and social reali ties of our time. It will be instructive to cite the following passage from an address by Reform Rabbi Charles E. Shulman appearing in the CCAR Yearbook of 1950: "The Council of Judaism was born in the ranks of the Ameri can Reform rabbinate and the rabbis associated with this move ment are exclusively Reform. Thus Reform Judaism has not been able to free itself from the association of elements implac ably hostile to Zionist ideology. It must astonish the people of Israel to learn of Reform Juda ism’s concern about religion in a state which Reform Judaism has never completely supported.” The change with respect to Zionism, however, has not been made contin gent upon affirmation of Zion as a spiritual reality of all time, and for all Jews. It is a sorry fact that the central motif of Reform from its birth, the denial of Zion as the crux of Jewish

belief, has colored the movement ever since, despite all creedal revisions. The prayer "Vethechezenah eyneynu b’shuv’chah l’tzion b’rachamim” remains banished from the Reform prayerbook, and with it the entirety of the concept which this prayer bespeaks. Much as one would like to take at its face value Mr. Morse’s assertion that Reform abominates assimilation, the believing Jew can but judge that Reform, by virtue of its character and premises, by its most distinctive mani festations in theory, practice and his tory, is assimilation. Reference to Dr. Glueck’s "The River Jordan”, which is still widely available, will permit no other conclu sion than that it is written from a Christological point of view. The book is devoted in large part to allusions to persons central to the Christian reli gion, and to lengthy quotations from sources sacred to Christians, all pre sented in a manner not merely defer ential but actually devotional. The founder of Christianity is referred to, not merely in quotation but in direct reference, in the manner and by the messianic appellation customary among Christians. The "Index of Biblical Cita tions” lists under that heading, without differentiation, citations from both Tanach and, lehavdil, the Christian New Testament. W e must agree that no good pur pose is served by obfuscating the facts. If we are indeed "inspired by the same faith”, then let us equally give our loyalty to that faith, adhere to its tenets and fulfill its mandates. Let us, at the very least, take every care that it be not undermined, perverted and betrayed in the very land which is the Home and Sanctuary of our faith.

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Beverly Hills, Calif. I was deeply distressed by the dread ful aspersion cast on Rabbi Shliffer of Moscow, by the article in your recent issue, entitled, "My Visit To Moscow”. I can assure the author that his dis closing publicly that he "could not trust him (Rabbi Shliffer) implicity in matters of Kashruth” is far greater a sin than the "sofek issur” of what he might have eaten. The very audacity of a layman to question the religious practice of a Rabbi in Israel whom your photo reveals to be vener able and of the "old school”, is a sin. Does the author believe himself to be less "malbin pnei chavero borabim”, by stating that "Rabbi Shliffer un doubtedly has a good Talmudic back ground”, and then proceeding to Cast aspersions on his knowledge or sin cerity? Rabbi Simon A. Dolgin # # # MR. NEUBURGER REPLIES

A generation ago a great Gaon was asked by a Polish government official why he graduated so many students from a yeshivah every year when ac tually only a few rabbinical positions were to be filled in congregations throughout the country. The answer was that the aim was not primarily to graduate professional Rabbis but rather baale batim who would be qualified to select and appreciate a proper rab binical leader. S’micha does not as such grant im munity or set a Jew above the law. As to Rabbi Shliffer, no meaningful report can be made today on the Moscow Jewish Community without writing about him. Nothing was or is further from me than to question his knowledge or sincerity. One can, however, sometimes be just as guilty 60

of deceit and falsification by silence as by a n untruthful statement. The factual difference in religious practice was mentioned in my article not lightly or accidentally but after careful consideration and discussion. Next summer there will be hundreds of American Jews visiting in Moscow and by that time the kashruth system, to which reference was made, may be partly set up and this is one of the several reasons for this modest form of calling attention to the existing situation. Knowing Rabbi Shliffer as I do, I do not doubt for a moment that he considers the practice in question as perfectly permissible, for if he did not he would change it. The fact that this has certain consequences, and that American rabbis have a different halachic opinion on this matter, does not imply in any sense any reference to or judgment of character. In this context I wonder whether the learned rabbi from California towers so far above his brethren that he can pronounce such a grave accusa tion and summary condemnation via long distance without possibly know ing all the facts or even inquiring about them and without any trial. Does Hillers injunction, not to judge thy neighbor "until you reach his place”, apply only to "laymen”? ; Gottfried Neuburger

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