Jewish Life August 1961

V IS IT TO SO U TH A F R IC A T R E N D S I N J E W IS H C A M P IN G • S P O R T S I N IS R A E L K IN G A N D F A T H E R • P A R E N T H O O D T H E J E W IS H W ID O W OF C O N ST A N T IN O P L E T H E P U R S U IT OF F U N

ELUL, 5731 AUGUST, 1961

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August, 1961

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JEWISH LIFE

Vol. XXVIII, No. 6/August, 1961/Elul, 5721

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EDITORIALS THE COMING CHALLENGE.................................

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AMERICAN PRINCIPLE AT STAKE ......................

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R.C.A. IN ISR A EL.............................................

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Saul B ernstein , Editor M. M orton Rubenstein R euben E. G ross Rabbi S. J. Sharfman Libby K laperman

Editorial Associates T hea Odem , Editorial Assistant

ARTICLES A VISIT TO SOUTH AFRICA/ Nachum L. Rabinovitch ................................

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KING AND FATHER/Elliot Sam uelson................. 15 TRENDS IN JEWISH CAMPING/Zalman D iskind... 19

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

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

President Benjamin Koenigsberg, Nathan K. Gross, Samuel L. Brennglass, M. Morton Rubenstein, Harold M. Jacobs, Vice Presidents; Edward A. Teplow, Treasurer; Herbert Berman, Secretary; Harold H. Boxer, Financial

Secretary.

Dr. Samson R. Weiss

Executive Vice President

SPORTS IN ISRAEL/Saul Sigelschlffer ............. 28 THE PURSUIT OF FUN/Norman Lam m ............... 45 CAREERS IN THE BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES/ Walter D uckat............................................. 50 THE JEWISH WIDOW OF CONSTANTINOPLE/ Charles Raddock........................... — . . . . 56

FICTION DR. GASTEN’S MINYON/Arnold Blum berg.......... 38

REVIEWS BRAND FROM THE BURNING/Libby M. Klaperman.. 60 FOLK HUMOR FIESTA/Pinchas Stolper ............. 62

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

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HASHKOFAH: PARENTHOOD/Samson R. W e i s s. . . . 36

Saul Bernstein, Administrator D ra w in g s b y A h ro n G e lle s

Second Class postage paid at New York, N . Y .

August, 1961

C o p y rig h t © 1 9 6 1 by U n io n o f O rth o d o x Je w is h C o n g re g a tio n s o f A m eric a

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RABBI NACHUM L. RABINOVITCH is the rabbi of Brith Sholom Beth Israel Congregation, Charleston, South Carolina.

A graduate of Baltimore’s Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Rabbi Rabinovitch is co-editor of Hadorom, the Hebrew scholarly journal published by the Rabbinical Council of America.

ELLIOT SAMUELSON is the pseudonym of a figure promi­ nently identified with orthodox Jewish endeavor.

RABBI NORMAN LAMM is associate rabbi of The Jewish Center, New York City, and editor of “Tradition,” published by the Rabbinical Council of America. Rabbi Lamm received his B.A. degree from Yeshiva College, semichah from Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, and is a candidate for the Ph.D. degree at that institution. His articles have appeared in various Hebrew and English journals, both popular and scholarly.

among our contributors

CHARLES RADDOCK, labor editor and foreign correspond­ ent, has written on Jewish affairs for publications in this country and abroad.

DR. WALTER DUCKAT is supervisor of the Guidance Division of the Federation Employment and Guidance Service and is vocational consultant for Stem College for Women.

RABBI ZALMAN DISKIND is a musmach of Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin. A practicing Jewish educator, Rabbi Diskind is now preparing for his Doctoral degree at Dropsie College.

ARNOLD BLUMBERG is a member of the history depart­ ment at Towson State Teachers College, Baltimore, Maryland.

His work has been published previously in the “Journal of Modem History,” the “Historian,” and “Jewish Horizon.”

DR. SAUL SIGELSCHIFFER is principal of Herman Ridder Junior High School 98, The Bronx, and professor of Education at Yeshiva University. Two articles by Dr. Sigelschiffer on questions dealing with youth in Israel have appeared in pre­ vious issues of Jewish Life.

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The Com ing Challenge HE early occurrence this year of the High Holy Days makes T it appropriate to utilize the present issue to offer our readers and the Jewish community at large greetings for the coming season. With our sincere “Kethivah V’Chatimah Tovah” wishes to all, we express the heartfelt hope that the year 5722 will bring the blessings of the Almighty to the House of Israel and to all the families of mankind.

Amidst the mounting tensions of the international scene, the Jew has been put to new tests during the past year. Mankind has not yet found its way in a revolutionized world and gropes and stumbles in the rapidly changing environment of human civilization. Upheavals anywhere affect Jews everywhere; the prevalent atmosphere of moral and spirital confusion brings unremitting pressure upon the Jew to slip from Jewish moorings.

However many may in fact have yielded, there is encouraging evidence that the core of the Jewish people stands firm, un­ shaken in the conviction that the way of the Torah is the true way today, as in ages past and as it will be evermore. The record of the past year, with constructive work going forward for the strengthening of Jewish religious life, reinforces con­ fidence in the capacity to surmount the problems of our time.

The coming year, by every indication, will subject world society to yet graver strains. We Jews, on our part, must gear ourselves to face new challenges. In coming before the Throne of Glory in the penitence of the High Holy Days season, may we be vouchsafed the strength to fulfill our tasks.

A m erican P rinciple A t Stake MERICAN history offers no parallel to our own Govern­ ment’s acquiescence in discrimination by foreign govern­ ments against one group of American citizens. The present Administration has followed its predecessor in yielding the rights of American citizens to Arab states which bar American Jews from admission to their territories. By the tacit agreement of the U. S. Government, any Americans who are Jews may

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not go even to American installations in these countries. This applies, as the case of Rep. Seymour Halpern has shown, to Jewish members of the national legislature no less than to other American Jews.

With public attention focussed on explosive international issues, the American public has been unduly slow to react to this demeaning of the fundamental basis of American citizenBelated ship. But now Americans in all circles are awakening to the Awakening evil. The public, it appears, is awakening also to the menace of the Arab economic boycott against firms trading with Israel i.»j?r and the banning of Israel-bound shipping from that key inter­ national waterway, the Suez Canal. It is becoming realized on all sides that the United States can never afford to sabotage basic principles and rights, whether for foreign relations con­ siderations or any other. ?

This sentiment has made itself strongly felt in connection with the Foreign Aid Bill now before the Congress. Different versions of the bill have been passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives, both of them containing anti-bias clauses. The Senate version, however, while calling for the “recognition” of the right to travel without “discrimination as to race or religion,” and for freedom of navigation in inter­ national waterways, includes no procedure for implementing these tenets and in fact nullifies their implementation by re­ quiring the Administration “to avoid taking sides in any con­ troversy” with respect to them. The House text, on the other hand, is forthright, specific, and meaningful. It requires that the Foreign Aid Bill be administered to give effect to the prin­ ciples of freedom of navigation in international waterways and of opposition to blockades, boycotts, and other forms of eco­ nomic warfare, and proscribes “any attempt by foreign nations The to create distinctions because of their race or religion among Better American citizens’5' in the granting of any right “otherwise Bill available to U. S. citizens generally.” There is no question but that the House version is the one which comports with Ameri­ can interests and American dignity. Every American should make known his demand that it be passed.

HE House bill, if passed, will delimit but will not entirely efface the mischief that has been done. The most significant pH fab t in the situation is that the Government of the United States ..COuld assume the prerogative of complying with discrimination r, “ depriving an entire group of its citizens of equal status. All too t little cognizance has been taken of this aspect. While many Vi have protested the discrimination and the successive Adminis* n tratiotis’ conformity with it, and have shown that this is in con-

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tradiction to American principle and policy, few seem to have considered the ultimate implications for America itself.

The Ultimate Implications

If the Executive could assume such prerogative once, practically unchallenged, then does it not have the license to do so again? And if under these circumstances, why not in any number of kindred situations—or for that matter in any situation of either foreign or domestic pressure—which could conceivably transpire in the future?

R.C.A. in Israel ABBIS are no novelty in Israel but this past summer one group of rabbis drew special attention there. The group consisted of 150 American orthodox rabbis participating in the Israel Kinus of the Rabbinical Council of America. Their pres­ ence, widely remarked, served to bring to Israelis a new aware­ ness of “native” American Orthodoxy.

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Orthodox Jews, both rabbis and laymen, have always num­ bered largely among American visitors to Israel. Coming as individuals, or in some cases as small groups, their presence has not imprinted a distinctive picture of American Orthodoxy on the Israeli mind. Nor has the Israel press and other literature offered a clear view of this force. Thus most Israelis have been little cognizant of the role of the traditional Jew on the Ameri­ can scene. The R.C.A. phalanx penetrated the blur, and Israel is now digesting the surprising—to many—news that America Penetranurtured a major body of Jews purposefully dedicated to tion Xorah and Mitzvoth. This may well have important conse­ quences.

On their part, the visiting rabbis have been lastingly en­ riched by their collective experience. The Kinus enabled them to view many aspects of Israeli life in all corners of the country and to meet with key figures as well as to mingle with “ordi­ nary” Israelis. Coming as representatives of the American ortho­ dox Rabbinate, their gathering had a depth of meaning even be­ yond that which any visit to Eretz Yisroel necessarily has.

Contact with the thrilling vibrancy of the Jewish State must surely have charged them with new strength. Not least of all, exposure to the surging force of Holy Land religious life, to the Jewish spirit as it springs from the very soil—this will have brought inspiration not to be gained elsewhere. And this too promises important consequences.

August, 1961

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T CAN not too often be said that Israeli and American Jewry are mutually interdependent and that this calls for close relations between them. Especially so does this apply to their respective traditional religious forces. In Israel and in America, Orthodoxy has the raw material of strength—the con­ viction which rises from Torah roots; the loyalties of great numbers, with each individual a force in himself; mahifold fields of fruitful endeavor. But neither in Israel of in Anierica has Orthodoxy achieved the full measure of communal stature which Mutual its inherent strength warrants. In both cases, Orthodoxy is plagued Need by divisions, few of which are justifiable, a painful impediment in the face of external difficulties. A freer interchange of ex­ perience between the traditional forces in each country, a keener awareness of each other’s circumstances, needs, and achieve­ ments, the opening of wider vistas, the development of planned cooperation—these can contribute decisively to the solution of parallel problems and to attainment of parallel goals. The Israel Kinus of the Rabbinical Council of America was a significant step in this direction.

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JEWISH LIFE

A Visit To South Africa

By NACHUM L RABINOVITCH

In a recent journey of several weeks duration which took him to various parts of South Africa, the author had an unusual opportunity to glean am intimate view of Jewish life in that troubled land .

ENTION South Africa to some­ HE Jewish settlement in South M one nowadays and chances are T Africa is younger than that of he will say: “Oh that’s where they America. The first Jews came there in have . .“apartheid”—that’s some kind of race trouble, isn’t it?” A little prompting might result in something like: “Isn’t Johannesburg the place where you can see lions roaming in the wild? It seems like I’ve seen an airline poster somewhere that shows just that.”

Talk about Jews in South Africa and if you’re chatting with a de­ scendant of Litvaks, it may bring to mind something that his grandmother, or was it his mother’s aunt, once told about a “lantsman” who went off to South Africa to get rich and “when he came back to fetch his wife, he brought her a diamond this big! He just picked it up in the dirt there, too.”

Well, of course in Johannesburg, you can see ladies bedecked with diamonds and there are lions there too-—in the zoo, naturally. But there are surprises also. Like when you pick up the phone in your hotel room and the switchboard operator speaks to you in Hebrew (in Israel, it would be Eng­ lish, you know!) And there is an afflu­ ent Jewish community of some sixtythousand souls, and almost as many more in cities and towns throughout the Republic of South Africa.

August, 1961

the eighties of the last century, but large scale immigration came mainly from Lithuania after the first World War. Thus a large segment of the Jewish population consists of immi­ grants and first generation South Africans.

As a whole, South African Jews have done very well for themselves.

They went through the stages, from penniless immigrant through sweat­ shop tailor and itinerant peddler to garment manufacturer and chain store executive, a little more quickly than their American counterparts. And since they never had quotas in their medical schools, there are probably a few more doctors, proportionately, among their sons than we have in America. Interestingly enough, some Jewish doctors have turned their back on lucrative private practice to de­ vote themselves to building hospitals and clinics for natives and one of the finest hospitals for chest and lung diseases in the world is testimony to the initiative of several self-sacrificing Jewish medicos.

But South African Jews are most famous in the Jewish world for their money. Not primarily for the money which they have, although that is not 9

to be sneezed at, but mainly for the money which they give. It is said that, per capita, they give more to Jewish causes than Jews anywhere else. Accurate statistics are, of course, not readily available, and since no one so far has risen to challenge the accuracy of this report, South African Jews proudly advance their claim to the distinction as Jewry’s greatest givers. Certainly they try to live up to this reputation. For besides main­ taining their own manifold institu­ tions—religious, charitable and edu­ cational—their support of Israel is almost legendary. Everywhere in Israel one sees tablets and plaques honoring the generosity of South Africans.

HAT about the state of Yiddishkeit in South Africa besides giv­ ing? Personal observance is certainly no better than in America. Most of the immigrants left Torah and mitzvoth behind in the old country and the second generation did not inherit much. The third generation — the generation of the return—is only now beginning to appear on the scene. The signs of promise are there but much depends on the turn of the political tide which will determine the future of the entire sub-continent.

Jewish consciousness, if not Jewish practice, is quite strong. This ex­ presses itself in the synagogues and an abundance of Jewish organiza­ tions of all types, especially the Zion­ ist movement.

The division in South African life between the English-speaking and the Afrikaner makes for a heightened sense of solidarity among the Jews, too. In many ways, group distinctions are very important in South Africa.

Thus many an Afrikaner will say, when questioned about Afrikaner na­

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tionalism’s racist ideology, “The Eng­ lish have England to go to, the Jews have Israel. But we have nowhere to go. This is our land and we intend to keep it that way!”

Thus the Jewish community tends to turn inward towards its own values and its own institutions. As in Amer­ ica, there are Jewish centers and country clubs which are Jewish by definition only. But there is also a fine Jewish press. Three Jewish week­ lies appear in the English language.

Of these, the South African Jewish Times is an independent newspaper of high calibre. There is also a Yid­ dish weekly. Then there are month­ lies, including an excellent magazine issued by the South African Board of Jewish Deputies, and the Federation Chronicle, which is the organ of the Federation of Synagogues. Most sur­ prising of all though is Barkai, a Hebrew magazine which has been appearing regularly for many years.

When one considers the vicissitudes of Hebrew periodicals in America, one cannot but be impressed by the sheer magnitude of the achievement of bringing out a Hebrew magazine in South Africa.

EBREW is not only read, it is also spoken in Johannesburg.

The Histadruth Ivrith is a vital, liv­ ing body. Its regular meetings draw a loyal audience and special guest lecturers may draw an audience of several hundred. Furthermore, the universities in South Africa have chairs in Hebrew and it may be taken for matriculation in High School.

Incidentally, the matriculation re­ quirements in Hebrew are very impressive.

Who takes Hebrew for matricula­ tion? Since the end of the war, when

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the Jewish day schools arose, they have been providing most of the can­ didates. Every large center now boasts its day school. In Johannesburg, the High School alone counts about 650 pupils, so that there are quite a few prospective telephone switchboard operators. The Jewish Board of Edu­ cation supervises the schools through­ out the country, thus assuring a more or less uniform standard.

As far as housing for their day schools is concerned, they are well ahead of us in America, but their learning achievements are rather meager. While it is true that by the time a student graduates High School he knows Hebrew pretty well, he does not know very much else. Partly re­ sponsible for this lack is governmen­ tal regulations which severely limit the class time which may be devoted to subjects other than those provided for in the state curriculum. Another factor is the great shortage of teach­ ers, especially such as are personally committed to Torah. Some teachers are trained locally in the Teachers Training College, which is the cap­ stone of the school structure of the Board of Education, but there are not enough to fill the ever-growing demand.

There are afternoon Hebrew schools too, and they also succeed in keeping some students through high school, mainly because Hebrew can be written for matriculation.

Something more along American lines is the Yeshiva College in Johan­ nesburg. It was founded only a few years ago, and its magnificent new building is being completed now. It is a high school after the pattern of our yeshivah high schools, with a dormitory for students. The program is quite intensive, but there too, lack of personnel is the great hindrance.

August, 1961

N FACT, all of South African Jewry’s creative endeavors are hampered because enough qualified people are not available. For instance, quite a few large congregations, with fine new synagogues and schools, keep seeking rabbis and ministers to no avail. England, which used to supply most rabbis to South Africa, has her own shortages. Some South African young men went abroad to s tu d y in Israel, England, and America—and a few of them have returned to serve congregations in their homeland. The Ministers Training College has gradu­ ated a few young men. But all that is not enough.

Perhaps a word of explanation is necessary for Americans on the use of the term “ministers.” This derives from England, where it has long been recognized that the indiscriminate use of the title “rabbi” undermines the authority of Torah and makes for confusion and “hefkerus.” So, a minister’s diploma is granted after a prescribed course of study in Bible, Midrash, and Talmud, etc., while semichah is conferred only after ex­ tended training in Halochah. Thus, many congregations are served by ministers who perform all the func­ tions which we usually associate with the rabbi of a synagogue, while the rabbis alone are authorized to rule on questions of Jewish law.

Of course, there have been some men who obtained abroad the kind of half-baked semichah which we know only too well in America, but this has so far been held reasonably in check. There is one American de­ gree, which is the standing joke in rabbinical circles in South Africa. It seems that the minister of the small and quite insignificant Reform con­ gregation needed a rabbinical title to bolster his prestige. Off he went to

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Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio, and after several weeks re­ turned with an announcement that he was the only man ever to get the title of Rabbi conferred by Hebrew Union College honoris causa.

From rabbis to cantors: Fortunate­ ly, Israel is not too far away and since knowledge of English is not necessary for a chazzon, South Afri­ can talent scouts search Israel for the finest cantors and quickly spirit them away. Chazzanuth is highly regarded and every synagogue tries to outshine the others by virtue of its cantor and his choir. The standards in this re­ spect are indeed so high that the synagogues attract possibly as many music lovers as worshippers.

OMMUNITY organization is pat­ terned after the British model.

The Board of Deputies represents all of Jewry in most matters of general concern. The congregations are or­ ganized in the Federation of Syna­ gogues, and its Beth Din is the religious authority. The Chief Rabbi, who presides over the Beth Din, is the religious spokesman for the com­ munity and is recognized as such by the government and the public at large. The Federation’s jurisdiction, however, does not extend to Cape Province, with its six or seven thou­ sand Jews, who have a Kehillah of their own.

The Beth Din has complete and exclusive control over Kashruth, mar­ riage and divorce, and other vital areas. Private hechsherim and irre­ sponsible gittin aré unknown. The Beth Din sits every day and many different kinds of cases come before it.

At one session that I witnessed, the rabbis took up two cases of divorce and one of an applicant for conver­

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sion as well as that of a plaintiff seeking redress for an injury. There also appeared, on the summons of the Beth Din, the owner of a mater­ nity hospital who was accused of having misled Jewish patients by tell­ ing them that they were getting kosher food, while in fact there was no supervision by the Beth Din. That the man answered the summons of the rabbis is ample proof of the re­ spect enjoyed by the Beth Din. Al­ though his appearance was, of course, Voluntary, he humbly accepted a tongue-lashing from the Chief Rabbi, when the case against him was proved from the testimony of witnesses.

Need one add that the synagogues in the Federation are all orthodox?

Mixed seating is unheard of, and Conservatism is unknown, although one cannot be sure that attempts will not be made from America to in­ filtrate, especially in view of the ex­ treme shortage of rabbis and ministers.

O an American, the question arises almost unconsciously: How is it that the congregations have been so well organized and the Beth Din’s authority established? Are not these thè same kind of Jews who came to America, where no two could get together except to break away from a third? Surely, it cannot be just because of the tie with Britain.

The answer lies in the history of the growth of South African Jewry and no doubt many helped to bring about such a desirable state of affairs.

However, there can be no question but that one man alone is the domi­ nant force who changed mere pos­ sibility into reality and virtually created the prestige and authority of the Federation of Synagogues. The present Chief Rabbi, Dr. L. Rabinowitz, performed a task of leadership

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which unfortunately has perhaps no equal in the Rabbinic world today.

The Beth Din in its daily sessions, the schools overflowing with pupils, the magnificent synagogue structures in process of building, all these tend to hide from view the deeper currents of fear and insecurity that move through the community, for the gov­ ernment’s oppression of the natives must ultimately end in a violent ex­ plosion. Tension has been rising steadily for the last few years, but people have learned to live with it and accept it.

T a dinner party, the guests were telling about their travelling ex­ periences. One related how his car was stuck some fifteen or more miles out of town around dusk. He was terrified by the prospect of having to stay there alone all night. A virtual miracle happened after some hours when a passing motorist stopped to help and picked him up and took him to the city. The man who stopped turned out to be somebody very spe­ cial. I couldn’t help interrupting to ask what place so near the city was so deserted that nobody passed for several hours—“Oh no, many cars passed! But naturally, no one would stop at night. It is too dangerdus.”

No one thought it unusual that on a well-travelled highway it is ap­ parently so dangerous to stop.

I, too, travelled at night in a car on several occasions. It was during the days when the Republic was pro­ claimed and there was special police vigilance. We were stopped by a police roadblock. A couple of soldiers flashed their lights into the car, look­ ing at the faces of the occupants.

Our windows being closed because of the cold, I said to my companion, “Open the window and ask them what

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happened—what are they looking for?”— “Hush,” he said, “They are not asking you, don’t ask them. The less said the better.”

The guards waved us on and we were away. The chauffeur and my companion saw nothing unusual in what had happened. They had learned to accept this sort of thing and were not bothered by it.

Of course, when a rabbi’s home was searched at two A.M. for possibly seditious sermon tractsf he and his family could not take it so calmly.

But never a ripple seemed to disturb the calm of the community as a whole.

For that matter, it was general knowledge that a number of people of known liberal inclinations had dis­ appeared. While, in several instances, steps were taken to provide for their families during the absence of the breadwinners, it was pretty much taken for granted that they were either in hiding or under arrest and that there was nothing to be par­ ticularly concerned about.

HE more frightened, Jews as well as non-Jews, have been leaving the country in rising, though not large, numbers. Among the young people, however, the emigration is more marked. Some leave to study abroad, but the object is generally to get established elsewhere. For older people with business and professional ties, it is difficult to pick up and leave. But for the young, the world is large while their own country often seems to offer only a hopeless future.

It appears that most people are pretty well resigned to the fact that their problems will certainly not be solved by the government’s methods and the government will not permit

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any other approaches to be tried. In such a situation, one lives from day to day, and the routine concerns of day-to-day living crowd out the deeper anxieties about the long range de­ velopments. Besides, there is the irrational optimism which moves all men, especially Jews. Somehow, things will work out and meanwhile there are needs to be met—individual needs, family needs, community needs —and there is the bowling green and the swimming pool and the tennis court. As long as they are still here, the world cannot be coming to an end, so why worry?

On the other hand, there are thoughtful people for whom the anom­ aly of their situation — a white minority of some three millions dominating and oppressing a black majority of about nine millions, on a continent where the black nations are emerging to positions of strength under the banner of aggressive na­ tionalism—serves to bring into sharp focus the spiritual crisis of our times.

Although as individuals they oppose oppression in all forms, yet they can­ not escape a sense of guilt since they share indirectly in many of the priv­ ileges and economic benefits which accrue to the whites as a result of this policy. Furthermore, many are disturbed deeply by the recognition that, living as they do in a racist society, they are themselves becoming conditioned to think and act in its pattern.

For some too, the uniquely exposed and sensitive position of Jews in the rapidly changing societies of the back­ ward nations—a position fraught with dangers, though unrelated to the “usual” kind of antisemitism—spurs deepened reflection on the significance of Jewish peoplehood and the rele­ vance of Judaism to the problems 14

which beset the individual as well as society at large.

These are the seekers, who are turning to rabbis and exponents of Torah in the hope of finding under­ standing for their bewilderment and guidance out of their perplexities.

Not only will a talk on a Torah sub­ ject attract hundreds of students at the University, but many of them want much more. Thus the B’nei Akiva movement has grown tremen­ dously, bringing to Jewish living young people whose homes were com­ pletely estranged from Jewish obser­ vance. I was greatly impressed on Shovuoth night to find some fifty or sixty young people in the B’nei Akiva shool (housed in the Beth Din) who were spending the entire night in Torah study. The movement has to its credit quite a few young men who have gone on to study at yeshivoth and have become genuine B’nai Torah.

ERHAPS more than anywhere else in this tension-laden world, the time is ripe for a great Torah awakening in South Africa. The help­ lessness of the Jewish community, which is caught as in a vise by forces beyond its control, gives little hope for thé realization of its Jewish po­ tential, though. Is that substantial and flourishing community to be forced into another exile, G-d forbid? Let us pray that it be not. Who are we to deny hope by sadly reading the por­ tents of the future? But it certainly behooves American Jewry, as the largest Jewry in the world, to follow with care and concern developments in that far away land of gold and diamonds. South African Jewry is one of the brightest jewels in the crown of Knesseth Israel.

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JEWISH LIFE

King and Father

By ELLIOT SAMUELSON

NY philosophical evaluation of the universe must note that it contains an element of orderliness and a non-orderly element. The latter aspect is sometimes referred to as chance, or luck, in common parlance.

In science the more impersonal con­ cept of “randomness” is used.

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What is the Torah approach to this problem? The Midrash relates that when the Almighty planned to create the world with middath ha-din, the principle of strict impersonal law, He saw that the world could not sur­ vive and He therefore introduced the middath rachamin, the personal ele­ ment of compassion, to temper the principle of strict law.

These two themes are woven like anti-phonic chords through the entire orchestration of the Torah viewpoint.

The Sabbath, for example, as stated in the Friday evening Sanctification as well as in the Ten Commandments, is in memory of the world’s Creation and also of the Egyptian Exodus. The Creation is the example par excellence of G-d as impersonal Ruler, setting down strict invariant rules for the sun, moon, stars, and seasons, as well as for the flora and fauna that He placed on the earth. The Exodus, however, is the supreme example of G-d as August, 1961

Father exercising personal love, choos­ ing to redeem a small slave-people from the midst of a most powerful empire, contrary to all reasonable, orderly, and natural expectations as to the flow of history.

The Midrash and the liturgy, es­ pecially on Yom Kippur, are replete with expressions and comments on the idea that we approach the Most High as Ovinu and Malkenu, our Father and our King—that when we perform His will, we may regard our­ selves k’bonim, as sons, exempt from the harshness of strict law. Other­ wise we are regarded k’avodim, as servants, subject to a stricter rule.

A most noteworthy example of the interweaving of these themes are the morning and evening prayers, the Shacharith and Ma’ariv services. Both of these services contain the Shema, the Torah’s classic declaration of G-d’s Unity, proclaimed by Israel through­ out the ages.

HE Talmud in Berochoth states that the Shema must be preceded by two blessings. In the morning the first blessing commences with Yotzer Or, “who creates the light,” and ends with Yotzer Ha-meoroth, “who has created the luminaries.” On Shabboth the Kel Odon, “Master of the Uni-

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verse,” is added. In the evening the parallel blessing is the Maariv Arovim, praise to the Most High for ordering the stars in their courses, for altering the seasons and times, causing day and night to follow each other, and for separating day from night. The common thread of these variants is praise to the Creator of the impersonal world that is governed by strict law. The second blessing, however, which is Ahavah Rabah in the morning and Ahavath Olom in the evening, gives thanks for the most exceptional fact in history: the special love for Israel and its selection to be the recipient of Torah.

Having completed the blessings for these two apparently antithetical ele­ ments, the Shema is then recited with its affirmation of monotheism, that Hashem is One; that the Creator of the physical universe and the Guide of Israel’s destiny is the same One. It is noteworthy that the proofs of G-d’s existence partake of this dual­ ism. On the one hand are the proofs that argue from the orderliness of the universe—the emptied ink bottle and the carefully reasoned manuscript: Could the ink have spilled out and accidentally created the manuscript?

The present-day answer to this medi­ eval problem might be, “Yes, if you pour out enough ink bottles.” The mod­ ern version is chimpanzees typing let­ ters at random. Given enough chim­ panzees and millions of years, one of them may very well type out the com­ plete works of Shakespeare since those works are one of the numerous, but finite, combinations of the letters of the alphabet. So life (runs the argu­ ment) may have been created by the random combination of chemicals until protoplasm was formed. [The fallacy should be obvious. While a chimpanzee could conceivably pro­

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duce a Shakespearian sonnet, We must presuppose Shakespeare, a language, letters, and one with capacity to dis­ cern a Shakespearian sonnet, as it comes off the roller. Likewise, though protoplasm may have been produced by randon chemical processes, who set up the situation so that any par­ ticular combination would produce life? Just as chess problems can be solved by laboriously trying every conceivable move (which requires much time and little brains) yet the key move, when found, indicates that there was a composer of the problem!]

On the other hand, there are argu­ ments from disturbance of the natural order — the survival of the Jewish people in the teeth of all normal expectations. and scientists from Aristotle to Einstein read­ ily admit the existence of a Prime Mover, a G-d who governs by law.

It is only the existence of the hashgachah protith, His personal concern for individuals, that they dispute. To them, the world is a machine. If there are unpredictable elements in it, that is only because of our present lack of understanding, they claim. The last three hundred years have given much comfort to those believers in science who have felt that the advance of knowledge would gradually wipe out this area of unpredictability. Man, the most intractable creature of all, has been studied and analyzed. His think­ ing processes have been dissected, his hidden prejudices unearthed, and some of his thought processes dupli­ cated with machines. Moreover, the very field of randomness itself has become an object of serious scientific study. Starting with the work of Pas­ cal and Fermat on the probabilities

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h il o s o p h e r s

JEWISH LIFE

of coins and dice falling in certain ways, it has come to play an im­ portant part in all fields of scientific analysis.

Although the suggestion has been made that the contradiction between these two points of view is only ap­ parent and subjective, being the re­ sult of human limitations, yet without evidence, this has been but an article of faith. However, from the very same advances of scientific thought and scientific results which have pointed up this question, comes evi­ dence that these two viewpoints re­ sult from man’s finite knowledge and finite power. When we say that man’s problem arises because of his finite power and finite wisdom, we mean that he is troubled not only because he is neither completely wise nor completely powerful, but also because he is neither completely ignorant nor completely powerless.

F MAN were virtually ignorant he would be unable to appreciate to any substantial extent the harmony and order of the universe. This, in fact, is the position of the polytheistic savage who regards the forces of na­ ture as so many gods and goddesses.

With the advance of knowledge comes appreciation of the great unity and design pervading the universe. Hence with the increase of knowledge there is a trend in belief as to the control of the universe, from a belief in a personal-unpredictable control to a belief in a determined-predictable con­ trol. Simultaneously, however, the growth of human power resulting from this knowledge creates an op­ posing reaction. Impotent man, rising in the morning to tend his fields or flocks, had his day’s work cut out

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August, 1961

for him before dawn. Even his life’s work was cut out for him ere he was born. In his generation only kings and the few mighty men made de­ cisions. He merely obeyed. The growth of power has brought the necessity for decision-making in use of this power, and the unpredictability of what that decision will be. “Shall I leap to the moon, or shall I throw the bomb that will destroy half of mankind?” With man poised on the brink of such decisions, belief seems hardly tenable in the sleeping god of the philosopher-scientist, who gave the world a twist long ago, to let it roll along its predetermined orbits and grooves. Man himself has now entered the arena to confound all calcula­ tions. Man today, spinning his own orbits, and ready not only to blast to pieces what Aristotle described as the sub-lunar world, but the very moon itself, has already surpassed the god of that Stagirite. Today man is faced with the alternative of wor­ shipping either himself or the G-d who is Ovinu-Malkenu.

The Torah’s concept of man as a compound of predictable, conforming clay and of divine, unpredictable spirit is remarkably confirmed by his research on himself. Even as he pushes forward the realm of the known in the Universe only to give birth to greater unknowns, so does his selfanalysis expand the realms of his po­ tential. Analysis of the hidden springs of human motivation has on the one hand brought the mind into closer re­ semblance to a machine conditioned to external stimulation. On the other hand, this selfsame analysis has the tendency to liberate the mind from the thralldom of these stimuli and to endow it with a greater independence.

Likewise, the analysis of the thinking processes and their duplication on 17

machines, which at first blush seem to rob man of his last treasured uni­ queness, on second thought gives man new distinction as an engineer and creator on a higher level. And as man is now glorified by the splendor of his new creations, should not the Creator of the engineer be even more glorified?

HUS as man is lifted up from ignorance and impotence, this necessity of law and the freedom of potential both take shape in his mind.

What of the other end of the spec­ trum, where omniscience and omni­ potence reside? Though there are humanly unattainable goals, we may reasonably speculate in regard there­ to. Where omnipotence resides there is no law as such. Frail man can govern a small establishment with his personal attention, but when it grows too large for his limited managerial powers he must substitute rules and regulations for his personal attention.

An omnipotent ruler, however, needs

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no such substitutes. He may rule directly. This in a way accords with the latest model of the Universe which science has prof erred. No longer is it assumed that iron-bound laws de­ scribe even the physical properties of matter. Laws of physics are now re­ garded as statistical statements of the most probable behavior. Hence the door is left open for the miracle, for the chance nail that was crucial to the crown in the nursery tale, where the horseshoe depended on the nail, the horse upon the shoe, the rider upon the horse, the battle upon the rider, and the crown upon the battle.

The Ruler of the Universe may appear at times to be guiding His subjects with a rule of iron and at other times with a shepherd’s gentle crook—and at times His rule may seem totally incomprehensible. But the judgment as to the quality of these rules is sole­ ly the subjective reflection of the limited understanding of His subjects, for He is in truth One and His name is One.

JEWISH LIFE

Trends in Jewish Camping

By ZALMAN DISKIND

How do summer camps for Jewish youngsters address themselves to Jewish needs? Seeking the answer the au­ thor made on-the-spot inspections of camps in a variety of categories. His findings, related in this article, bring into focus a broad cross-section of the Jewish camping scene.

T HAS become commonplace to­ day for Jewish educators of all persuasions to talk of a renewed interest in Jewish education and Jew­ ish living. They illustrate this interest by pointing out that in Jewish camps there is a constantly increasing de­ mand for Jewish programming and Jewish living. It was this alleged phe­ nomenon of the renaissance of interest

by American Jewish parents in their children’s Jewish experience in sum­ mer camps that set me off on a fiveday tour of Jewish summer camps in the Catskill and Pocono Mountains areas of New York State and north­ eastern Pennsylvania. Using a rather crude scientific sampling technique, I attempted to reach and to interview the camp directors of the following types of Jewish-sponsored camps: Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Re­ constructionist, Hebraic-Zionist, Jew­ ish Welfare Board regions, and private commercial camps. Since the PoconoCatskill area is the most thickly popu­ lated camp area in the country, it was rather simple for me to locate and visit a number of these various types of camps. It will be up to the reader

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to determine the representativeness of my sample and to determine whether my conclusions about Jewish camping are valid, in view of the facts and quotations that I shall present in this article.

If we were to judge merely on the basis of the summer camp activity of the religious bodies, there would seem to be no doubt that there is indeed a renaissance in Jewish life. All the way from the orthodox Camp Gan Israel, sponsored by the Lubavitcher move­ ment, to the Reform Joseph and Betty Harlam Camp, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Council of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, it was obvious to me that there is a determined effort on the part of all the religious-ideological trends to im­ plant in their children a deeper and more significant appreciation of their tenets. Summer camping has emerged as the strongest vehicle at the com­ mand of these agencies for perpetu­ ating their ideologies among their youth. In the case of the Reform group, it is through five summer camps in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Indiana, California, and Pennsylvania.

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The Conservatives have just estab­ lished their sixth Ramah camp. In contrast to these two denominations, whose camping activities are centrally controlled and directed by their recog­ nized congregational and institutional

bodies, the orthodox do not have a recognized central camping agency.

Thus the orthodox camps are frag­ mentized among a host of sponsors, both private commercial and organi­ zational.

Reform and Conservative Camps

E orthodox Tews are very quick to criticize and to berate Con­ servatism as unauthentic and as being dangerous to the survival of tradi­ tional Judaism. This may well be so, and I will not enter here into this polemic. The fact is, though, based on my personal observation, that certain of the Ramah camps are giving the youngsters in their charge authentic traditional religious experiences. To illustrate, in my visit to the Pocono Ramah I found an eruv around the camp, constructed so as to allow for carrying articles on campus on Shabboth. This most surely leaves an im­ pression on the three hundred and fifty youngsters at this camp. I wit­ nessed a daily morning minyon, with total participation in the full tradi­ tional service by the whole camp. This was inspiring, when I stopped to con­ sider that these youngsters are after­ noon Hebrew school students, not day school students. During the meal, yar. mulkes adorned the heads of all the campers and counselors. On the way into the mess hall for supper I was drafted into a minyon for Minchah on the lawn in front of the mess hall.

I learned that on Tisha B’Av the chil­ dren went barefoot at the services; some children didn’t even wear their leather belts, for they feared trans­ gressing the laws of the fast day. I was told that the camp was given a

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“hetter” this year, for the first time, to use the microphone on Shabboth.

All children attend one and a half hours of study sessions daily.

I asked Dr. Bernard Reznikoff, the executive director of all the Ramah Camps, in what fashion Conservative ideology is presented to the campers.

He replied that this is presented on an “informational” basis. This means that visiting clergy or members of the staff may explain Conservatism to campers and tell how it differs from orthodox Judaism. He stressed, however, that the program at Ramah is Halachic and traditional.

To be sure, there are strong ele­ ments in the Conservative movement, especially amongst its spiritual lead­ ers, who believe that Ramah is too “traditional.” To the left-wingers, par­ ticularly, a traditional Ramah can pose a threat to their future position in the Conservative movement. There can be no doubt that pressure is occa­ sionally brought to bear from these sources, which result in the lowering of religious standards in certain of the Ramah camps. I have heard that the degree of religious observance varies from one Ramah camp to the next.

The Jewish Theological Seminary faculty, which, it seems, exercises su­ pervision over the direction of these camps, apparently favors a policy of a relatively high degree of religious obJEWISH LIFE

servance at Ramah. This is an inter­ esting phenomenon when viewed against the background of Conserva­ tive theology.

DECIDED to visit the pioneer in cultural camping for Jews, Camp Cejwin, in Port Jervis, New York.

Camp Cejwin was founded forty years ago by the Central Jewish Institute of New York, under the direction of Dr. Albert P. Schoolman, as an extension of its Hebrew school for the summer months. It has grown and prospered through the years and now boasts of seven separate camps with a maxi­ mum of a hundred and fifty children in each. The camp director, Dr. Abra­ ham P. Gannes, stated that he has ten people on his staff who are educa­ tional directors in large Hebrew schools and who serve as cultural directors of his various constituent camps during the summer months.

Though there are no formal classes at Cejwin, the whole program “is saturated with Jewish content.” Upon inquiring whether the guiding princi­ ples of the program at Cejwin were those of Reconstructionism, as formu­ lated by Dr. Mordecai Kaplan, the quick retort was: “There is no con­ nection between the Reconstruction­ ist Foundation and Camp Cejwin.

However, the guiding principles are Reconstructionist ideas. This is the concept of K’lal Yisroel, the commu­ nity of Israel. This is not an ideological camp.” What are the qualifications for counselors? “The counselors need positive Jewish identification and some Jewish educational background. He­ brew has no part at all in the program at Cejwin. This is not a study camp.

We believe in informal group Jewish living and experiences. The children at Cejwin are a cross-section of the Jewish community. Ninety-nine per

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August, 1961

cent of the children have some Jewish educational experience.”

Next, I spoke to Dr. Schoolman, one of a group of people who, before the first World War, gathered around Dr. Samson Benderly and thereafter dedicated their lives to the field of professional Jewish education. Dr. Schoolman was very gracious and warm. “We have a total environment of Jewish group living here at Cejwin.

We are Zionistically oriented. We are like Massad and Ramah except for the Hebrew. We can deviate but Ramah cannot. We commemorate Tisha B’Av, we do not observe it.

With the establishment of the State of Israel, observance of Tisha B’Av as a day of mourning is no longer signifi­ cant. . . . We had no fasting here, although those who wanted to were allowed to fast.” I asked whether this was a Reconstructionist camp. “We do not want to label ourselves but our camp is definitely tinged that way. We are Conservative, somewhat left of center.” Dr. Schoolman said that Cejwin wants to strengthen “Jewish consciousness, Jewish values, Jewish self-expression.” There are services every morning for all of the children.

Kashruth is observed. r I ''H E Reform Harlam camp, located JL in the rolling farm country of Pennsylvania, pursues in just as deter­ mined a manner the indoctrination of its campers with its religious philoso­ phy. Of course the religious frame of reference at this camp is utterly strange to one like myself, who was born and reared in an orthodox en­ vironment. Imagine, milk and butter being served with meat at a Jewish “religious” camp. But I got over this initial shock and proceeded to become acquainted with some of the tenets of Reform. To be sure, no pork 21

products are served at Camp Harlam.

To cultivate Jewish ethics and morals, the campers participate in study groups every evening after supper.

Reform spiritual leaders are the lead­ ers of these ethics classes. In addition, the cultural program at Camp Harlam consists of “Hebrew songs, Israeli dances, religious choir, and intensive discussion of the lives of leading Re­ form personalities.” I was told by Dr.

Emanuel Gamoran, form er’ educa­ tional director of the Union of Ameri­ can Hebrew Congregations, who was participating at the time in a Reform retreat at Harlam, that though the Reform group (conducting camps for the past ten years) is the youngest in camping, it is proceeding to take full advantage of this field to com­ pensate for the deficiencies of the year-round environment.

Some Orthodox Camps

MONG orthodox organizations, the Lubavitcher movement seems to be outstandingly aggressive in its commitment to spread Orthodoxy around the globe. Thus, I decided to make my way from the Pocohos to Swan Lake, in the Catskills. This is the site of Camp Gan Yisroel. Rabbi Abraham Shem Tov, the director of the camp, informed me that this was one of seven camps throughout the world that are sponsored by the Merkos Leinyonei Chinuch, the edu­ cational arm of the Lubavitcher move­ ment. “Like all Lubavitcher under­ takings, we intend to spread all overl We have camps in Israel, Australia, Morocco, Brazil, Canada, and Italy.

All are named Gan Yisroel, for Yis­ roel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Chasidism.”

On a bulletin board at the mess hall there was a telegram from the Luba­ vitcher Rebbe, urging the campers and counselors to take care of their physical and spiritual needs and to study and observe our Torah. Inside the mess hall, in a prominent place at the head of the dining room, there was displayed a picture of the Luba-

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vitcher Rebbe. Rabbi Moshe Lazar, the head counselor, told me that “Lubavitch has only one boss; other camps have many bosses. Everybody knows what the Rebbe wants. We want to bring the Creator of the world down to this world.” At this point there was an announcement that the waiters were to go to a shiur in ten minutes. Rabbi Shem Tov added, “In our camp the child practices what he learns in theory at the yeshivah.

It becomes a part of his life. It is not forced on him.” He continued: “Hav­ ing a coed camp, having boys and girls together in a camp, is more difficult even than in a yeshivah. It does much more harm. This is espe­ cially dangerous at the age of the older campers and counselors. If a camp is run in the right way, it can satisfy them so that they don’t have to seek girls and other things. Accord­ ing to our Torah, it is forbidden . . .”

Akin to this program of total Jew­ ish living at Gan Yisroel was the pro­ gram we found several miles away in Ferndale, New York, at Camp Bnos for girls. Bnos is sponsored by the Agudath Israel of America. Despite JEWISH LIFE

the scorching heat on this day, all the girls at Bnos were dressed in skirts and blouses with sleeves! The girls were engaged in a most uriusual color war, based on material culled from the Tanach. One team was called the Ner team, thé Hebrew abbrevia­ tion for “Earlier Prophets.” The other team was the Na team, for the “Later Prophets.” Songs, floats, and murals all had as their theme events and characters of the Books of the Proph­ ets. This was applied Jewish educa­ tion. The camp’s spiritual director, Rabbi Shlomo Ruttenberg, told me, “We cannot have the same activity for boys and girls. Any camp that has boys and girls together is not orthodox even if it keeps kosher.”

HERE ARE, in addition to Gan Yisroel and Bnos, num erous other orthodox camps of this type.

Most of them are found throughout the “borscht belt” of the Catskills.

Just about every yeshivah in New York City runs its own camping operation in the summer months.

These camps form a sort of league and meet each other occasionally for sports competition, Saturday night Melaveh Malkahs, and scholastic com­ petition. This latter form of competi­ tion may take the form of seeing who knows more chapters of the Mishnah by heart. During July and August Liberty and Woodridge, New York, look like Williamsburg and Boro Park in Brooklyn. Educationally and reli­ giously, the summer months are an extension of the winter months for these youngsters. In some of the Chasidic camps that I visited I found an intensive study schedule of up to six hours daily for all of the young­ sters. The melamed who teaches Tal­ mud to these children is one who usually does the same thing during

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the winter months in New York City.

This extreme situation points up how the summer months can be utilized— and are indeed utilized—for the in­ tensification of Jewish learning and living.

Regrettably, time limitations did not permit me to visit a number of ortho­ dox camps of a different type which make a significant contribution to American Jewish camping. I have in mind particularly Camp HiLi at White Lake, New York, sponsored by the Hebrew Institute of Long Island; Camp Moshava at Gelatt, Pennsylvania, sponsored by the Religious Zionists of America, which also conducts an­ other Camp Moshava at Wild Rose, Wisconsin; and Camp Shor at Aurora, Indiana, sponsored by a unit of the Young Israel movement. No doubt their inclusion in this survey would have been of considerable interest and value to the reader in his overall evaluation of the Jewish camping scene. However, since I did not visit these camps, I am not in a position to discuss their programs and contri­ butions. It is widely known, however, that each of these has achieved marked success in the development of pro­ grams combining vibrant religious character with effective camp tech­ niques.

N sharp contrast to the religiously oriented camps which I visited were the secularly oriented camps which, though not numerous, are much larger in terms of the number of campers. The prime example of this type of camp is Camp Wei-Met, sponsored by the Metropolitan (New York City) Section of the National Jewish Welfare Board. Three thou­ sand Jewish children from the borough of Queens and other areas of New

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York City spend their summer in this huge camp. It is safe to estimate that eighty to ninety per cent of these youngsters attend Hebrew schools during the winter months. Yet WeiMet does not have any formal reli­ gious service, even on Friday night, for any of its three thousand young­ sters. Wei-Met purchases non-kosher meat, and makes no pretense at the observance of dietary laws. Friday night is not distinguishable from any other night of the week. There is no white tablecloth bedecking the table, nor are the candles lit ceremoniously or the Kiddush recited. The almost total absence of religious tradition at this Jewish-sponsored camp was ex­ plained to me in the following manner

by Mr. Jack Goldberg, executive di­ rector of the camp: “Our group has no religious needs to fill. Mental hygiene is our concern, and not in a religious way or fashion. Social group work is our basic method of running our camp. Ninety-nine per cent of our counselors are education and social work majors. Ninety-nine per cent of our supervisory staff are trained social workers.” Mr. Goldberg asserted that “there is a definite conflict between the social worker and the clergy.”

As might be expected, Mr. Gold­ berg was initially very hesitant about granting me an interview. His pro­ gram director, Mr. Lou Levitt, refused outright my request for a personal interview concerning the camp pro­ gram. Mr. Goldberg and four others constitute a professional year-round staff for the camp. This is how Mr. Goldberg explains the secular orienta­ tion of his camp: “The expression of our parents is for getting quality serv­ ice. We serve a segment of the com­ munity, namely those who do not need a religious orientation.” As to the evident resurgence of interest by 24

American Jews in religious observ­ ances, Mr. Goldberg had this explana­ tion: “This is an aftermath of the McCarthy era. People go to church or synagogue to prove that they are not communists or atheists. Jews are try­ ing to prove that they belong. An example of this is the insertion in the Pledge of Allegiance of the Name of G-d. There is, however, no real change in values or in morality.”

It is interesting to note a conspicu­ ous contrast. Immediately adjacent to Camp Wei-Met, at Narrowsburg, New York, is the Ten Mile River Camp which, with its twelve thousand acres and three thousand campers, is the largest single camping operation in the United States. It is conducted by the Greater New York Councils of the Boy Scouts of America. Ten Mile River Camp has a full time mashgiach to supervise two kosher camps in which 650 Jewish Boy Scouts from New York City eat kosher meals.

These two kosher divisions have no organized activities on Shabboth. Ten Mile River has beautiful outdoor serv­ ices Friday evening and Shabboth morning for all of the 1,500 Jewish scouts who are in camp at any one time. There is a daily morning minyon arranged for those campers who de­ sire it. This daily minyon is arranged by various scout troops on a rotating basis. In addition to the full time mashgiach, who is orthodox, there are four full time chaplains for the youngsters. Of these, one is orthodox, two are Reform, and one is Conserva­ tive. The first is Rabbi Louis Tuchman, who led 250 Jewish scouts on a cross-country trek to the Boy Scout Jamboree at Colorado Springs last summer and arranged for kosher food for the scouts all along the way (see Jewish Life , June, 1961).

JEWISH LIFE

OW do other Jewish communitysponsored camps fare in respect to Jewish observance? Is Wei-Met typical? Not entirely, it appears. In Milford, Pennsylvania, I visited the New Jersey “Y” Camp, which is spon­ sored by the New Jersey Section of the National Jewish Welfare Board.

This large camp is not as militantly secular as Wei-Met is. Mr. Matthew Elson, the camp’s executive director, whose winter offices are in Newark, stated that he has Friday night services.

“On Saturday there is no pioneer­ ing, and no work tools are allowed.”

How about Kashruth? “We do not mix dairy with meat. We do not buy t’refah cuts. However, we do not salt the meat and we have only one set of dishes. We make no claim to

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dietary laws.” Mr. Elson explained, “The cost of capital operation would be too much for the process of making the camp kosher.” Though Kashruth is a must with caterers and with Jew­ ish community centers, continued Mr. Elson, in camping it is only condi­ tional and depends on one’s “integrity and definition of Kashruth.” The mat­ ter of making the camp kosher had been considered by the board but it has never been acted upon. The camp director ascribed the growth in He­ brew camps to “the aggressive ap­ proach of the religious groups. We at New Jersey jjS§@ have broad Jewish values. Our concern is with happy Jewish identification. The specific dogma is up to the parent and the rabbi,” *

Hebraic-Zionistic Camps

OMEWHERE between the reli­ gious-oriented and the secularoriented camps lie the Hebraicoriented camps. These camps gen­ erally insist on the utilization of the Hebrew language as the medium of expression in all camp activities. They are generally Zionist in orientation, and stress nationalistic elements in all areas of camp activities. The first and foremost camp in this category is Camp Massad. I visited Massad Aleph, in Tannersville, Pennsylvania, several times. It proved to be an impossible task to secure an interview with the director of Massad, Mr. Shlomo Shulsinger. Shlomo, as he is affectionately referred to by both campers and coun­ selors, is constantly shuttling back and forth between Massad Aleph and Massad Bet, in Dingman’s Ferry, a distance of thirty-five miles.

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Massad is sponsored by the Histadruth Ivrith, the Hebrew Culture Foundation. Eighty per cent of the campers at Massad are Hebrew day school students from New York City.

The remaining twenty per cent are Hebrew school students and they come from twnty-six different cities across the country. One of the most inspiring sights that I ever witnessed was the Tisha B’Av service at Massad Aleph. Imagine one thousand young­ sters and counselors seated on the floor of a giant gymnasium, illumi­ nated only by candles, chanting the Megillath Eychah, in subdued and mournful tones, to the rhythm of their bodily movements. (On Tisha B’Av the Israeli flag, which hangs on a flag­ pole, as does the American flag, was at half-mast.)

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I witnessed on a different visit the color war between the Shualim, the “foxes,” and the Z ’evim, the “wolves.”

All of the competition, the songs, marches, and recitations were con­ ducted in Hebrew. The two teams responded with military precision to the whispered instructions of their leaders. At the conclusion of the evening’s activity everybody stood in rapt attention for the singing of the Hatikvah. Then the counselors and the older campers broke into a spirited Horah, first the girls and then the boys.

Strolling across the campus after­ wards, I was surprised to hear most of the young people conversing in English rather than in Hebrew, as the camp requires. The explanation of­ fered me by one of the counselors was that Hebrew was no novelty to most of these youngsters since they use it all year in their respective Hebrew day schools. They instinctively preferred to converse in English, which is their native tongue. In other He­ brew camps, whose youngsters come from less intensive backgrounds, He­ brew is used more frequently and is cherished to a greater degree, even when not under the watchful eye of the camp superiors.

In my visits to Massad, I noticed that many of the children there were

the sons and daughters of prominent orthodox rabbinical and lay leaders, and a large proportion of the coun­ selors were students at orthodox yeshivoth. However, in the opinion of this writer, based on his few visits, the pervading spirit at Camp Massad was not a religious one but rather Hebraic and nationalistic. The secu­ larist tendencies in the Zionist ide­ ology shone forth more brightly than those religious elements that inhere in Zionism. Some of the orthodox coun­ selors told me that every summer Massad imports from Israel counselors whose sole credentials are an intense nationalistic and Hebraic background.

“This place used to be more religious before the Israelis came here,” I was told. “When they first came here, they were given special orientation sessions to teach them the meaning and importance of prayer. But the camps need these counselors. They can instill the Israeli spirit.” And per­ taining to the religious needs of the overwhelming number of orthodox children at Massad, he added: “We would like to do away with the swim­ ming on Shabboth. We would like to see a mechitzah at the religious serv­ ices. And we would rather that the campers and counselors did not come to services in shorts.”

Private Commercial Camps

HE overwhelmingly majority of American Jewish youngsters at­ tend private commercial camps. A good number of upper middle class private Jewish camps are located in the Pocono Mountains area. I visited several large and representative camps of this type in order to determine the prevailing climate with regard to

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Kashruth and Jewish programming.

The great majority of the children who attend these camps go to Hebrew schools. I found to my surprise a considerable number of day school students from some of the smaller Jewish communities at these camps.

Many have “modified” dietary observ­ ances. This may mean no milk served JEWISH LIFE

with meat; or two sets of dishes; or the purchase of kosher meat.

These camps usually have a short Friday night service, occasionally also on Shabboth morning. Some of the camps provide Bar Mitzvah instruc­ tion as an accommodation for the concerned parent, whose child’s Bar Mitzvah falls shortly after the sum­ mer months. Though there are no ob­ jections on principle to Kashruth and Jewish programming, the camp direc­ tors feel no great compulsion for these elements in the camp program. A typical statement was: “No parent ever asked me if the camp is kosher.

I could eliminate Kashruth and no one would care. If I would play up the Kashruth I would chase away my Reform customers. And the parents are not in the least demanding Jewish programming. The parents are simply not interested.” This is the prevailing sentiment that I found among the scores of owners and directors of pri­ vate commercial camps which cater to the overwhelming mass of Ameri­ can Jewish youngsters.

The private commercial camps are banded together in the Association of Private Camps, whose membership is ninety-eight per cent Jewish. Their camp programs, however, evidence only a very minute and superficial concern with a program that can be called Jewish in its fullest sense.

T WAS my intention to visit as many Jewish camps of various types as would give me a valid base for judging the extent of a supposed renewed awareness of distinctly Jew­ ish values in summer camping. Be­ cause of space limitations, I was not able to relate all of my experiences and interviews in all of the different

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types of camps which I had visited.

I have described the seemingly fever­ ish camping activities of the religioideological trends. Likewise we have seen some very powerful forces in the Jewish camping field which are openly antagonistic to most organized Jewish religion. Still others are at best apathetic to Jewish religious observ­ ances and practices. The vast ma­ jority of American Jewish youngsters are attending private commercial camps, whose Jewish programs and observances are extremely meager and inconsequential. It would be unwar­ ranted to assume that any significant dent in the overall picture of Jewish ignorance and Jewish indifference is as yet being made by the American Jewish camping enterprise. To be sure, small inroads are being made here and there, specifically by the religious trends and some HebraicZionist organizations. However, the great opportunity to salvage a whole generation of youngsters from a fate which befell their fathers—religious indifference and apathy—is being lost.

Would that some great national body, such as the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, would embark on a massive educa­ tional program to introduce Kashruth, Shabboth, and Jewish programming into the great void which now exists in this regard in camping; then we would have cause for optimism. As it is, summer camping has failed to emerge as that potent weapon with which to fight Jewish illiteracy and indifference. We must, for the sake of a whole generation of potentially knowledgeable and self-respecting Jews, mobilize that potential for cre­ ative Jewish living which lies dormant in Jewish camping in America.

27

Sports in Israel

By SAUL SIGELSCHIFFER

As Israel's enthusiasm for sports waxes , new issues arise and old problems take on new facets.

HERE is not much level ground for playing games in Ein Hod. This artists’ village is built on a hill facing the bright blue Mediterranean halfway between Natanya and Haifa on the ruins of an ancient Arab settle­ ment.

There are not many children in Ein Hod either. But a group of four small boys were busy kicking a soccer ball around, trying to get it past another youngster who was guarding an im­ provised goal marked out by two stones a few feet apart. Every time the goalkeeper made a “save,” he yelled out a word that did not sound like Hebrew to me. At first I could not make it out, but finally I caught it. It was “Chodorov”—the name of the goalkeeper of the Israeli soccer team. In his shouts of triumph, the boy was paying his tribute to a sports hero just as our youngsters in the United States do in the case of Mickey Mantle.

Soccer, or football as it is called in Israel, is the country’s most popular sport. The government has gone to great lengths to promote it. Foreign

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coaches have been brought in over the years to develop a top team.

Under the leadership of the present coach, Gula Mandy, a Hungarian, the Israeli team has won a number of striking victories in international com­ petition. No wonder that the team’s goalie was the idol of the youth.

The popularity of soccer is attested by the fact that it is played wherever there is available open space. Except for crowded areas in old city sections, almost every school, religious or non­ religious, has a big playing field.

Youngsters, with and without yarmulkes, can always be found kicking a ball around. The same is true in the kibbutzim, though the non-religious kibbutzim place more emphasis on sports than do their religious counter­ parts. The sport clubs, like Maccabi and Hapoel, have their own playing areas. Otherwise empty lots in unde­ veloped areas are used.

A NOTHER sport which has great popularity and is promoted strongly by the government is basket­ ball. Unlike soccer-football, which is a JEWISH LIFE

major sport in countries outside of the United States and was brought to Israel by the European settlers, basket­ ball had to be specially imported. The first coach, who naturally came from the United States, Was the famous Nat Holman. After him there was a suc­ cession of other well-known American coaches.

Over the years, the game caught on. Every playing field in the parks, the schools, the sports clubs, and the kibbutzim has its backboards and baskets. The progress in proficiency and skill has been truly remarkable.

Many times I stopped, fascinated, to watch youngsters in their play drib­ ble, feint, and shoot American-style as though they had done nothing else all their lives. Even the girls are good at it. Once when I passed by the Maccabi Club in Tel Aviv I was amazed to see that the girls were play­ ing the boys’ instead of the girls’ ver­ sion of the game— so expert were they. It seems that basketball holds almost as honored a place in Israel as in the United States.

The most recent coach was sent over early in 1960 through the good offices of the American Government.

He was Mickey Fisher of New York City, whose Boy’s High School quin­ tets had gone undefeated and had won the New York City scholastic title for several seasons. His chief job, in addition to giving basketball in­ struction throughout the country, was to prepare an Israeli team for the Olympic competition. Because of the lack of tall men, even Fisher’s skill was not expected to accomplish much.

Players at least six feet five inches high are essential for success in the court game, There are few such giants in Israel, and none to compete with the six feet eight inches to seven feet stars of the United States and Russia.

August, 1961

However, Fisher did a magician’s job with the available material, and in the elimination trials at Bologna, Italy, the Israelis caused a good deal of eyebrow-raising by winning over fav­ ored teams. As a result, they unex­ pectedly finished second in their sec­ tion. Better luck in the draw might have catapulted them as winner into the final competition among the top twelve teams at Rome. And so, in­ stead of suffering the fate of the eliminated, and returning home, the Israelis were invited as runners-up to view the games at Rome as guests of the Olympic Committee.

LL of this presents a glowing sports picture for a young coun­ try which has taken its place only recently in the society of nations. Add to it the colorful Maccabiad games held every three years which draw Jewish athletes from all parts of the world, and such events as the giant Hapoel Sports Rallies, which attract non-Jewish as well as Jewish athletes from many countries to compete in every conceivable type of sports con­ test, and you have some idea of the growing sports-consciousness of the Israeli public.

The Israel government has taken an active part in the development of this sports consciousness. As indicated above, it has helped bring over coaches, it has granted subsidies, it has provided for physical education in the schools. In order to develop and train a corps of instructors for the school program, the Wingate Institute of Physical Education was recently constructed. Located a short distance south of the town of Natanya, this institute is housed in very attractive modern buildings and pursues an ad­ vanced curriculum. The athletic pro­ gram of the country has advanced so

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far that a separate autonomous sports division was set up a few months ago under the Ministry of Education headed by Reuven Dafni, a leading figure in the world of Israeli sports.

The governm ent’s interest is* prompted mainly by two considera­ tions: the importance of physical fit­ ness for the defense program and proficiency in sports as an effective way of keeping Israel in the inter­ national limelight. Athletic events at­ tract as much attention in the press of the world as political affairs, and are of greater news value in many cases than cultural events, such as music recitals or artistic exhibitions.

WO FACTORS, however, mar this otherwise glowing picture.

The first involves a matter of empha­ sis. Israel has been concentrating on team, to the neglect of individual sports. Thus soccer and basketball re­ ceive primary attention, while such sports as tennis and swimming are relegated to the unimportant and in­ consequential.

From the point of view of national physical fitness for defense and in­ dustrial growth, this is a serious mis­ take. Soccer and basketball, because of the violent exertion involved, are games for the young only, while ten­ nis and swimming can be pursued strenuously by the young, moderately by the middle-aged and the old, and equally well by women as by men.

Without a program of individual sports which can benefit people of all ages and of both sexes, the values of the present sports program with its emphasis on group activity cease for its participants when they are still in their twenties.

In my talks with government offi­ cials involved in the sports program, I became aware of the fact that the

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implications of the present policy are not fully appreciated. Their bias for team sports seems to be based on an undefined feeling that in a country which must weld a motley population into a cohesive entity, team play is the best way to build concepts of working together, of sacrificing for the com­ mon good, and of advancing to a common goal, while it accomplishes at the same time the aims of physical development. They seem to be un­ aware that such values are present in all athletic activities, including those which emphasize individual achieve­ ment. Tennis teams and swimming teams, just like track teams where individual performance is stressed, call for group spirit and group morale.

All the members of a squad take pride in the individual accomplishment of each member.

As for the nation as a whole, it could take as much pride in a Yemen­ ite or a Moroccan who has developed into a great tennis player or a great swimmer as it does in a Chodorov.

From the point of view of according status and recognition to under-privi­ leged segments of the population, in­ dividual rather than group sports seem to present the greater opportunities.

Tennis was formerly considered a rich man’s game, but among the great names recently have been Pancho Gonzales, Pancho Segura, and Althea Gibson* the Negro star. They were reared in poverty or in very modest circumstances, and rose to promi­ nence through the opportunities af­ forded by this now widely-popular sport.

N the matter of winning inter­ national publicity through sports, the present policy is also short-sighted.

It is obviously more difficult for a very small than for a larger nation to

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JEWISH LIFE

muster the players for a top-calibre team whether it consist of eleven or of five men. One outstanding player alone will not insure a winning soccer or basketball combination. To achieve that, all players must be of nearly equal excellence, a possibility that can be realized only when there is a large population to draw from.

On the other hand, the small nation suffers practically no disadvantage in the individual sports. This is best illus­ trated in the case of Australia. For years Australian tennis players and swimmers have held the international limelight. The sports history of this country of but ten million populace has been a succession of world cham­ pionships and Davis Cup victories.

This is no accident. It is the result of national policy. Climatic factors favorable to all-year-round participa­ tion are at the basis of the emphasis on and cultivation of these sports. It is no wonder, therefore, that tennis has become to Australia what baseball is to the United States—the national sport.

The same possibilities are open to Israel. The climate permits play around the calendar, and is therefore ideal for concentration on such sports. Yet the government has not responded to the opportunity. The few tennis courts that exist in Israel are operated by private clubs, like the Maccabi. There are no publicly-owned courts. With the exception of Tel Aviv and Natanya, and one or two other places, the same is true of outdoor swimming pools. Of indoor swimming pools there are none. Even the beautiful Wingate Institute of Physical Educa­ tion has no tennis court or swimming pool, both of which one would expect to find in an institution designed to train instructors and coaches.

Not only has the government failed August, 1961

to encourage these sports, but it has even played an obstructionist role.

About three years ago the Israel Lawn Tennis Association, a small organiza­ tion composed of devotees of the sport, induced some South Africans to donate used tennis racquets and other sorely needed equipment to be used for young people unable to af­ ford them. What did the government do? It put so high a duty on the ship­ ment that it could not be admitted into the country.

HIS short-sightedness on the part of the authorities has been re­ flected in another instance which could have been the occasion for excellent publicity for Israel. The country possesses one player of poten­ tial top-flight calibre who has been ignored or whose existence is un­ known to the powers in control. This player should have been sent abroad to compete in important foreign tourna­ ments. This is the usual policy fol­ lowed by most countries who wish to develop their stars. However, Israel did not do this in spite of the fact that it is much easier and more eco­ nomical to send one or two players abroad to compete over a period of several weeks than to send an entire soccer team to play one game. The publicity is also more continuous and the resulting foreign contacts more beneficial and lasting.

The Israeli Lawn Tennis Associa­ tion has endeavored to do something about this. In recent years it has sent two or three youngsters to Miami to compete in the boys’ and junior divi­ sions of the Orange Bowl tournament.

But even this modest effort has been too much for its purse. The association is too small and too weak to develop tennis to the point of general interest and popularity.

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Government aid is needed. If it wishes to encourage physical fitness for all elements of the population, and attain pre-eminence internation­ ally, the government should devise a program to make tennis and swim­ ming the nation’s chief sports. A good, but economical, start could be made by building hard-top tennis courts in public parks and on the grounds of a number of public schools. The heavy import duties on equipment, especially on gift items, should be removed. But more important, the program should be incorporated into the physical edu­ cation curriculum of the schools.

C om petent instructors should be trained and, as in the case of soccer and basketball, foreign coaches should be invited to aid in the instruction.

Fortunately, Israel has some excellent tennis coaches of its own, at present unrecognized and unappreciated, who could move such a program along rapidly if government encouragement were forthcoming. In a modified way a start could be made to develop swimming as a competitive sport.

HERE is good authority for the initiation of such a program. In America, there has always been a trend toward individual as opposed to team sports, and the emphasis on it today is greater than ever. Charles “Bud” Wilkinson, famed coach of Oklahoma football teams, who was recently picked by President Kennedy to head the National Youth Fitness Program, has stated that a boy should not concentrate entirely on team sports, but should take up a “leisure skill” sport which will keep him in physical shape for the rest of his life.

He also views competition as essen­ tial for attaining maximum fitness.

This is the approach he intends to

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follow in setting up his program for the American nation.

While the example or the United States provides strong proof of the validity of such a program, we have a precedent of our own from the Tal­ mud which states that every child should learn to swim. The kind of life led in ancient times undoubtedly kept people physically fit without the need of swimming or other special exercise, so swimming served a utilitarian rather than an athletic purpose. The Tal­ mudic injunction evidently was di­ rected to thè saving of life. However, in this industrial age, where machines replace men for labor, the maxim of the Talmud is still apt and even more applicable.

O FAR I have discussed sports without touching on their reli­ gious implications. At the outset, how­ ever, it should be understood that there need be no conflict between sports and religion. No essential human activity—and sports as a recre­ ational or health activity may be considered essential—is frowned upon by our religion. What is required is that the activity be pursued in accord­ ance with our traditions. Judaism has never been divorced from life. Its restrictions are designed to enrich and ennoble life, and to avoid its degra­ dation from the appeal to the grosser instincts of man. For example, bull­ fighting is inconceivable as a sport to be engaged in or followed by Jews.

From the religious point of view, the chief danger as regards sports in Israel is disregard of the Sabbath through official countenancing of pub­ lic exhibitions, such as soccer matches.

This is in conflict with other instances of official upholding of the Sabbath through the closing of stores and busi-

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nesses, and the cessation of public transportation by bus, rail, and air.

To appreciate this point, the dis­ tinction between private and public violation of the Sabbath should be kept clearly in mind. The individual Jew is notoriously free to observe religious practices or not as he wishes.

Respect for the Sabbath is instilled by education and training. Inculcation of a love for Jewish belief and tra­ dition, rather than coercion, lies be­ hind the upholding of Jewish observ­ ances. The “laying of tefillin” or the maintenance of Kashruth comes es­ sentially from inner desire and not from fear of official punishment re­ sulting from transgression of a law.

The private life of each individual is not subject to state scrutiny. The strength and endurance of the Jewish religion are rooted in the voluntary dedication of its adherents. If a Jew wishes to ride or smoke or play ball on the Sabbath, there is nothing but his own conscience} to prevent him.

Such private acts, however, must be distinguished from activities which are invested with a public function or which invite public participation. For example, it would be worse than in­ congruous for a Jewish state to per­ mit its transportation lines to operate on the Sabbath, or to serve a state banquet which was not kosher. While the state cannot and must not force conformity upon the individual in his everyday acts, it must guard against public practices which desecrate the faith that gives the state the premise of its existence and whose aspirations made its re-establishment possible after two millenia. The Jewish state must not countenance situations which encourage individuals to violate the sacred traditions of the Jewish people.

In this category are the soccer matches and other athletic competiAugust, 1961

tions held on the Sabbath in Israel.

It is a shocking experience to see the crowds streaming to the stadium at Ramat Gan by car and bicycle.

Nor is it edifying to hear the roars of the crowd and the shouts of food vendors, and to view the excitement and tumult which are in gross con­ tradiction to the spirit of the Sabbath.

The argument most frequently heard in favor of such contests on the Sabbath isip“At what other time can you hold them? There is no other day when people are free to watch athletic contests, or for that matter to visit or to take a trip.” This is true.

But something can be done about it and should be.

Some years ago a law was proposed in the Knesseth making Wednesday a half workday. Its purpose was to give Israel a five-and-half day work week, with the extra half-day to serve as a time for unrestricted recreation and travel. However, the proposal was defeated. One of the arguments ad­ vanced against it was that the strug­ gling economy of Israel could not afford a five-and-a-half day week.

This was sheer nonsense, of course, in view of the experience of proven benefits in increased productivity re­ sulting from a shorter work week in industrial societies. But what really defeated the bill was the opposition of the non-religious deputies who frankly stated that such a measure would be a triumph for the religious element, and would be a defeat for their policy against religious “controls,” HIS measure should be revived.

The Israel economy has improved sufficiently to destroy the shallow argument against a five-and-a-half day week. But more important, the argu­ ment against religious “controls” has

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no point. Rather is it the other way on the part of the religious commu­ round. By limiting the playing of nity to place greater emphasis on matches to the only non-work day sports. Hapoel and Maccabi, the non­ which is the Sabbath, the non-reli­ religious sports organizations, have gious controls discriminate against the more extensive programs and better religious participant and the religious facilities, as well as a wider appeal, spectator. The resultant harm to than Elitzur, the sports organization Israeli sports is very great. A policy of the religious wing. The non-reli­ which excludes approximately half gious kibbutzim also excel over the the population from representation on religious kibbutzim in these respects. national teams reduces the possibility The sports programs of the religious of Israeli eminence in international groups should be expanded in clubs, schools, and kibbutzim through an sports.

Athletic potential is not limited to increase of physical and coaching the non-religious any more than are facilities. the fighting qualities of the soldiers of the Israeli army, which is composed T IS important that the religious of the religious and non-religious influence be more strongly felt in alike. To carry the comparison fur­ sports for another reason. There is ther, the army’s kitchens are kosher. danger that, regarded as the province In all aspects of Jewish life, where exclusively of the non-religious groups, religious and non-religious people as­ serious harm may eventually result to sociate for a common purpose, a the nation. For instance, there is al­ common denominator is found which ready talk of making Caesarea one respects traditional scruples, whether of the world’s great resort centers by it be the Sabbath or Kashruth. The building a track for horse racing ad­ same should be true of the nation’s jacent to the recently-opened half­ physical fitness program which is de­ million dollar golf course. signed for all elements of the popu­ This information was brought back lation, and not for one segment only. from Israel by the eminent syndicated However, as things are now, the out­ sports writer, Joe Williams, who had standing soccer, basketball, or tennis been invited to the official opening of player who is religiously observant the golf course, a Baron Rothschild faces too many obstacles to permit venture. In an article appearing in the him to play on an Israeli team. The New York World-Telegram and Sun loss is greater to the nation than to on January 12, 1961, Williams re­ the individual. ferred to the possibility of “conferring The development of large numbers the boon of horse racing on the of outstanding religious athletes would Israelis.” His article was based on help to solve the problem of Sabbath conversations with persons prominent competitions. If Israeli teams which in sports and civic affairs, including engage in international competition a government official. The latter, ac­ were composed of many religiously- cording to Williams, confessed that observant athletes, it would obviously “racing won’t be easy to sell to our be impossible to play games or hold people” because it is “a delicate matter and the approach must be exhibitions on the Sabbath.

It would therefore be a wise move sure-footed.” He went on to say,

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JEWISH LIFE

however; “I rather think we will have racing in time. Say in five years or so.”

The reason for this? Joe Williams summed it up: “If, as every one seems to expect, the golf course greatly stimulated tourist trade and thereby enriches the general economy, racing as still another tourist lure would win greater support in official circles.”

In other words, the attraction of Israel for tourists, both Jews and Christians, would no longer be the fantastic rebuilding of the Holy Land by its ingathered people in accordance with Biblical prophecy, nor the new significance of its holy places, but rather racing and golf and a revived Caesarea, the sports mecca of the Middle East. The tourist will take his choice, for there will be something for everyone’s palate. Holy or pro­ fane—it would make no difference, just so long as the money rolls in.

This complete lack of understand­ ing of the place of Israel among the nations and the moral bankruptcy in­ volved are reflected in the words of Hershell Benjamin, who is mentioned in Williams’ article as secretary of the golf course and a leader in civic affairs. Says Williams: “Standing on the balcony of the clubhouse, and pointing to the south,

August, 1961

he (Benjamin) said, ‘You can see it from here. The ruins of the hippo­ drome Herod built 2,000 years ago.

That was where the first racing in this part of the world was run. What a wonderfully appropriate site it would make for a twentieth century track.’ ” THLETICS and sports are vital to the health and preservation of the nation of Israel, but pursued with­ out restrictions in slavish imitation of the western nations there is danger of perverting the historic goals of the Jewish people. As pointed out in my previous article, “Juvenile Delin­ quency in Israel,” (June, 1961) in this area as in the area of crime and its prevention, the unique genius of the Jewish people must be allowed to function for the purpose of elevating the every-day pursuits and activities of men to higher levels. In order to accomplish this, the religious groups must heighten their identification with sports and must develop the finest athletes in Israel. Through a success­ ful program, they will be able to demonstrate that sports can splendidly fulfill the needs of the nation at the same time that the traditions and his­ toric practices of the people are maintained.

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H a sh k a fa h Parenthood

By SAMSON R. WEISS A nd He spoke: “1 am the G-d of your father, the G -d o f Abraham, the G -d of Isaac, and the G-d of Jacob” (Shemoth 3:6).

Said Rabbi Yehoshu Hakohen bar Nechemiah: “When the H oly One Blessed be He, revealed Himself to Mosheh, he was a novice in prophecy.

Said the A lm ighty: (If I appear to him with a strong voice, I would frighten him; if with low voice, he might become contemptuous of p r o p h e c y W h a t did He do? He revealed H imself to Mosheh in the voice o f his father Amram .

Spoke Mosheh: ‘Here am I. What does my father wish?1 Spoke the H oly One Blessed be He: 7 am not yo u r father, but the G -d of your father. In disguise I came to you lest you be frightened . . .’

“Mosheh rejoiced and said: ‘Behold my father is counted with the Patri­ archs’. . .”

■ «Jfei (Midrash Rabbah, Shemoth 3:1)

stinctively realizes escape from death.

AN overcomes the limitations of his physical life span, reaching He shares with all other creatures the M out beyond it into the future, by the ability to procreate, the miraculous transmission of his intellectual and moral Attainments to coming genera­ tions. The ways of such transmittal are manifold. They range from his be­ ing the object of observation, teach­ ing by the example of his conduct, to the articulation of his thoughts and emotions in word and writ specifically intended for those who are likely to survive him. The chosen few may achieve the climactic grandeur of the parting hour in which fathers utter their last injunctions to their children and masters and leaders proffer their final instructions to their disciples and their entire people. Our Torah, our sacred literature, and the annals of our people are replete with the re­ count of our great whose corporeal existences ended in this crescendo of the human spirit.

Man experiences in his progeny the physical continuance in which he in36

endowment bestowed by the Creator upon all living organisms. But unlike any one of them, he alone is also granted in the child a depository of all his experiences and cognitions, of all his judgments and conclusions.

Compared to this unspeakably more precious intellectual and spiritual con­ tinuity vouchsafed him in his seed, the physical immortality represented by the child pales to insignificance.

It is in fact this continuity which hallows the physical vessel and en­ dows it with the sanctity ascribed by Torah to the human body. It is the parental duty to teach, to impart wis­ dom and goodness to one’s child, and not the duty to provide food and shelter, which is stressed by the Torah, for therein is found the essence of parenthood. This is also why the rav, the teacher, is compared to the father and the talmid, the pupil, to JEWISH LIFE

the son. “Whosoever teaches Torah to the son of his fellow man is as if he had begotten him.”

UR SAGES note that while envy of the other’s higher intellectual and moral level is an ever-present temptation, no father so envies his child and no rav so envies his talmid.

The very purpose and fulfillment of the transfer of values is found in the addition by the recipient of another stone to the structure, of another awareness and comprehension to the past volume of cognitions, in the en­ largement of scope and horizon. A father wants his child to stretch out even higher toward the ideal of per­ fection and to achieve even more than he was able to accomplish. He wants not only to live on in the child, he wants his own ascent continued. He does not desire to be merely repeated, but to be bettered, not merely to be maintained, but to be elevated by be­ ing improved upon.

Conversely, man at every stage— the child, the adolescent, and even more so the mature person—is for­ ever in need of a father, a teacher whose greater knowledge and virtue constantly propel him to the conquest of new horizons and to whom he can return to gain new inner strength for the difficult climb to the next rung on the infinite ladder of the human potential. Were he to begin always anew, he would waste the heritage awaiting him and spoil his own sub­ stance. He is the prism which must receive the cumulative light of the past, difracting it in the uniqueness of his own and irreplaceable person­ ality and shedding its intensity upon his own time and beaming it into the distances ahead. Within his circum­ ference he must find place for all that was before him and in his vision he must encompass all that shall be after

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him. In his existence are linked the heritage and the hope. He is at once the bridge and the vehicle, transport­ ing the treasures entrusted to him into the future, on the way adding to the precious load nothing less than his very self.

HIS is the meaning of mesorah, one of the untranslatable Hebrew terms connoting receiving, adding, and handing on, a core concept of the Jewish pattern. By mesorah the re­ cipient becomes the link, the disciple emerges as tomorrow’s teacher, and the father enters the life of the son in an intimacy and identification un­ paralleled in the vast array of human relationships. The Almighty gave the Torah; Mosheh our Teacher received it, u’mosrah—and so initiated the eternal chain of the Jewish Mesorah which stretches unbroken from Sinai on into the distant future. The carrier par excellence of this Mesorah is the Jewish parent.

The first of the Tablets of the Cove­ nant contains those five command­ ments of the Decalogue which speak of man’s relation to his Maker. In­ scribed on this tablet is the command­ ment to honor father and mother. For the Jewish parent, who lives and teaches as Torah expects him, opens to the child all gates of insight and all portals of true piety. The “Onochi Hashem,” the voice of the Almighty spanning all generations, becomes truly intelligible to man—without shattering him by its force and yet without losing its majesty and its splendor—first through the father.

How great is he who represents to his child the living link with the Fathers of our people, those who chose G-d and who were chosen by Him. How great is he through whose voice the Almighty is revealed to his generations.

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A Story

Dr. Gasten’s Minyon

By ARNOLD BLUMBERG

H E narrow , broken, anciently paved road wound through the loveliest country on our good green earth. The scattered houses, solidly stone and mortar, seemed rooted in the earth like the old village on the barbery hedgerows. A slowly circling hawk seeking an unwary mouse or fledgling bird lent even the sky a sort of unity with the ageless scene below.

David Fortin enjoyed his walk on Old Ireland Road. There was a sort of enchantment in the still air. The ring­ ing of a distant church bell was a worthy accompaniment to the pas­ torale; a sort of harpsichord in na­ ture’s own salon.

Somehow, to David Fortin this countryside, old when Washington had marched past, was familiar. It seemed to matter little that the For­ tins, David, Louise, and their eight month son Benjy, had never seen the road until a brief month before. The litter-strewn city in which the Fortins had grown to adulthood seemed little related to the unspoiled country newly laid before them. Still, David had the odd, dreamlike sensation of having

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seen this place before. Perhaps, he mused, it lay in the smell of little honeysuckle gardens upon which he had chanced so often in his boyhood meanderings through forgotten alleys in the oldest part of town. There, too, he had sensed that something fragile and fair had slumbered, untouched, through two hundred years of salu­ tary neglect. This countryside, if it was older, was nonetheless a fragment of grace in a world which prized utility. Certainly it had been that early meeting with the living past which had breathed into both the Fortins a love of history; which had eventually made both of them teachers in public schools of their city.

T A TURN in the road David saw his home. It burst upon him suddenly. In the month during which he had daily 'gazed upon it, he had never lost the thrill of seeing it. For the Fortins the experience of home ownership was, in its way, spiritual.

They saw the neat little home and the land around it as intensely a part of themselves. They saw themselves to­ gether, through the happy years to

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come, molding the earth and hearth to the shape of their own personalities.

They saw their son growing up on the green lawn; they laughed together, half hopefully, at the joyous prophecy of the coming of hopeful suitors, en­ amored of their unborn daughters.

Louise had quit teaching the June before Benjy came. Her income had been a great help in buying the house, but now Dave felt able to carry the burden alone. Their little car, five years out of date, mud-spattered and dented, stayed home with Louise most of the week. Parking was impossible near City High School, public trans­ portation was cheaper, and Louise needed the car for those fast shop­ ping trips that seemed always popping up now that the baby was here.

Furthermore, there was always that wonderful walk on Old Ireland Road.

The builder had advertised these . homes with the motto, “Healthful country living with the convenience of city life.” Tenniston Park seemed far indeed from the great city in the corporate boundaries of which it was located. Instead, the new little com­ munity seemed more like an addition to the little village of Tenniston, which had drowsed forgotten during the hun­ dred years since the hungry city had swallowed it. It was a community which resisted change stubbornly; which had fought the building of a new hardware store because the archi­ tecture seemed too daringly modern.

Few in the rest of the metropolis knew that Tenniston was in the city and fewer still suspected that milk cattle grazed unmolested and drank highly antiseptic chlorinated water within their borders.

AVID turned into City Avenue toward his house. He knew that soon the great maws of the city they

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had fled would swallow Tenniston.

Already, twelve miles away, in mid­ town, the leather hands of bureau­ cracy were reaching out. The first casualty had been Tenniston Road, renamed City Avenue. A corps of city engineers, a troupe of politicians from city hall, and an army of laborers had cut, slashed, paved, and polished until a modest byway had become the first link in a great boulevard which would one day be the city’s main entry point.

For the Fortins, though, city hall was far away, City Avenue was still a dead-end street, and the cattle grazing by Old Ireland Road seemed guarantors of a future much like the present. School was nearly over and they were looking forward with a certain impatience to a summer in which, for the first time, they could enjoy a vacation together; a vacation in their own home. During the sum­ mer the bookkeeping accounts which filled Dave’s afternoons during the school year seemed so much less burdensome. Rattling like a few dried peas in a silver bowl, they scarcely counted as interruptions to leisure.

Turning into the path to his own house, Dave half ran to the door. The new drapes and the sofa peeping through the picture window excited him to a pride of possession he had never known before. The bedroom drapes had been made by Louise; Dave’s admiration for the girl he mar­ ried was boundless. How many could have done a professional job like that without experience? She returned his kiss with her usual warmth. The baby was in the carriage laughing at an unheard joke. Louise kept the car­ riage in the kitchen while she cooked so that the baby would be amused.

The dinner tasted unusually good.

The talk veered over a dozen sub39

jects, the sort of conversation which goes with special food; nothing serioue but nothing silly, either. The baby was kicking his bare feet against the metal carriage; too small for him already. The violence with which he banged his small feet against hard surface worried Dave, but Louise kept up the talk and the baby seemed giddily happy about something.

66 r | THEY’RE planning a synagogue JL for this neighborhood,” Louise said casually. Dave paused for an imperceptible moment, then said, “That so?” “Yes,” continued Louise, “some fellow down the block; we don’t know him. There’s a meeting tonight; want to go?”

Dave disliked the man “down the block” instinctively without having met him. He knew these “organizers” from school. A set of egotists who wanted the whole world to go their way. The usual result of their efforts was merely extra hours of work for Everyone else and very little in the way of accomplishment.

Furthermore, religion was a private matter to Dave. The idea of discussing the Almighty as though He were a personal friend embarrassed him. He was no atheist. For Dave Fortin the positive denials of the godless seemed as fettéring as the positive assertions of the religious. Nor was he an ag­ nostic, for he believed, in a vague sort of way, that some power stronger than chance had a role in the affairs of men. Dave wanted his son to grow up knowing he was a Jew and pre­ pared to face the pressure of Jewish life in a country wherein Christian religious principle had been erected by law and custom into a force affect­ ing everyone. In the thirty-one years of his life he had never felt any con­ flict between his need to be a Jew and 40

his reluctance to involve himself'emo­ tionally in Judaism.

To Louise, Judaism was a relic tenderly given by her mother, used on occasion, but held affectionately in her heart always. Taken out of its hiding place, the relic glittered in a subdued way, then was replaced before it could prove troubling for Dave or a burden for her. Thus Sabbath and Yom Tov saw candles on white tablecloth, and Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur saw the Fortins in synagogue. Milk and meat were strangers to one another but the ribsteak had parted from the sirloin on the counters of the same supermarket. For David, the idea of organizing a synagogue was disturbing because, in one way or the other, it involved a sacrifice of freedom. Facing the situation honestly, Dave realized that the only emotion which stirred him strongly at the prospect of organ­ ized Jewish living was fear. He knew that attendance at a meeting that night could be only a sort of masochism, yet he was sure that he would go.

Louise smiled. “The baby sitter can be here at eight.” Louise had known that they would want to go to such a meeting. Dave smiled back at her.

She understood. Both were attracted to this meeting even while its purpose repelled them. Dave promised to be a good boy and not get excited. They finished their dinner in silence. Only the baby still laughed.

HE evening was cool. The house was just a half block away. Its living room was already filled with people. The dress of the women was elegant but informal. Their bare shoul­ ders and an occasional leotard made Dave feel as though he had intruded upon a Wednesday afternoon bridge party. The laughter of the men down­ stairs and the faint smell of cigar

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smoke were only a backdrop for the tinkle of feminine conversation. A cool evening like this after several very hot nights revived everyone and a certain gaiety pervaded the house. The great mirror, covering half the wall, re­ flected, in its generous frame,-lithe F rench provincial furniture, the drapes undulating in a gentle breeze, and the people absorbed in casual conversation. The hostess offered ginger ale in glasses clearly the by­ product of repeated purchases of sour cream. A faint odor of perfume accompanied the drink.

Dave remembered the neighborhood in which he had grown to manhood.

It was a quarter after eight. The pushcarts were going to their stable homes. The old women clustered near the white stone steps of their houses.

It was nearly sunset and so very cool.

At the shool the old shammos waited by the door for the tenth man to make a minyon. In a few minutes he would have to go and fetch one if Minchah was to be said. The Fortins had felt so trapped there. The dirt, the routine conformity, the monotony of side­ walk and brick were no future for Benjy.

OUISE took Dave’s arm. The ges­ ture was natural and affectionate.

The meeting was about to begin. In the recreation room downstairs a wide company of unmatched chairs formed rude rows. Elegant fauteuils from the living room elbowed plebeian lawn furniture and bourgeois folding chairs.

The Fortins took seats in the rear.

The room was crowded. The high basement windows sucked at the blue cigarette smoke. Dave looked around him. The faces were American; Dave amused himself by looking for a Nazi’s caricature of a Jew. He could not find it. Still there was something

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here that defied analysis; a sense of being a part of this group. He heard a Yiddish phrase. It sounded forced and cold; not the hot gutturals which had sputtered in his ears in the old home.

The hostess rattled a spoon in a glass. She introduced the chairman.

Dr. Gasten, whom rumor had de­ scribed as a non-practicing physician, proved to be a Ph.D., an assistant pro­ fessor of English at State College.

Mrs. Gasten sat by her husband tak­ ing notes. Jerry and Ruth Gasten both had the faintest hint of New England or upstate New York in their accent.

Dr. Gasten’s speech was slow and deliberate.

Every word was laid carefully be­ fore the men and women in the hushed room. He was thirty-fiveish.

She was younger. Both lent an im­ pression of serious intentness. Her hair, brushed back severely, gave an appearance of coldness which her large blue eyes and soft, even features belied. The chairman himself was somewhat stout and his round face offered an unimpressive focus for the group’s attention. Only his voice, clear and firm, possessed a trip-hammer sort of compelling interest.

Did Tenniston Park want a syna­ gogue? What did the members expect in such a congregation? As a teacher, Dave felt a grudging admiration for Jerry Gasten’s question-answer tech­ nique. He was engaged in that most difficult of all feats, getting adults to tell the truth about their personal ambitions. One by one, middle-aged businessmen, young matrons, all ages, all interests, hesitantly expressed them­ selves. A Hebrew School for the chil­ dren, a place where youngsters could meet Jewish boys and girls socially, a center for adult dances and parties; such were the aims proposed. The 41

chairman added that prayer might also play a healthy role in the syna­ gogue. A ripple of amusement went through the crowd. “Sure,” said the man whose main concern had been the founding of a Men’s Club, “we want the right kind of service on the High Holy Days.” A lady in red slacks rose to say that she kept a good kosher home and that she and her children would come to late Fri­ day night services if Dr. Gasten would organize them. The chairman suggested that perhaps Saturday morn­ ing services in private homes might be possible as well. The lady in red slacks informed the chair that every­ one’s business was open on Saturday morning. In a show of hands, two men, and a woman, beside the Gastens, avowed an interest in late Friday night services. Adult education courses attracted a larger number. Louise Fortin’s hand went up, much to Dave’s surprise. The meeting ended in an aura of good will, pretzels, and ginger ale. Dr. and Mrs. Gasten sat alone at the far end of the room.

N the weeks that followed, meet­ ings became an exciting and pleas­ urably anticipated experience for the Jewish community of Tenniston Park.

Every Tuesday night, the recreation room of a different home witnessed the orderly concourse of chairs and a growing panoply of cigarettes, pipes, slacks, sportshirts, sour cream glasses, and pretzels.

For David Fortin, those weeks were a gripping and not altogether painless expeience, however passive a role he and Louise played in them. Dave ad­ mired, even as he cordially disliked, Jerry Gasten. The Gastens, husband and wife, were smug, seemingly selfcontained, confident, and authori­ tarian. Both seemed to be driving

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toward a goal which they were deter­ mined to reach. From the moment when Jerry Gasten called for order until the moment when the meeting closed, an absolute discipline seemed to possess everyone in the room. The adults, chastened like unruly school boys, watched fascinated as the chair­ man pressed with a strange sort of energy toward the goal of determin­ ing the philosophy of the Tenniston congregation.

It had been clear from the begin­ ning that when the Gastens spoke of tradition, they referred only to Ortho­ doxy. To the people of Tenniston Park, Orthodoxy was a part of the city they had fled. It was the dark cheders, the one-room schools in which most of the men had received their education for Bar Mitzvah. It was a foreign faith in which one poorly understood tongue, Yiddish, was used to explain an utterly incom­ prehensible one, Hebrew. The burgh­ ers of Tenniston Park had a pride in their American birth which only the children of foreigners could know. Not for them the dark synagogues and the curtained galleries of their childhood.

No old men would ever shame their sons as they had been shamed for losing their place in the prayer book.

Their busy parents, harassed by the need for earning a living, had alter­ nately cajoled and threatened these strange American offspring of theirs into a surface adherence to the forms of Jewish living. The foreign first generation had neither the time nor the inclination to grasp the American idiom and to explain the rationale for a faith they understood too poorly themselves.

Dave Fortin watched the growing anger of his neighbors with fascination as their resentment against the Gastens JEWISH LIFE

rose. It was the more terrible because it was expressed in explosive out­ bursts. The artful school master re­ mained to the end in full control of the trembling steam valves; pressure crashed out through the boiler seams.

PEAKERS came to the meetings from outside the neighborhood; representatives of the fashionable de­ nominations of the day. They said little of the faith they professed. They talked grandly of the aid they were prepared to lend to a new group affiliated with their national organi­ zation. Their pride was in the size of the schools they supported, the thou­ sands of congregants they counted, and the astronomic cost of the struc­ tures they built. At the end of each talk one of the Gastens would ask a question; always about the sort of Judaism represented by the schools, congregants, and buildings. For David Fortin these questions were the key to the evening. To the slacks and sportshirts the questions were dull endings to a diverting evening. Jerry Gasten himself seemed blind to what was happening. He seemed blithely certain that the most important ques­ tion for Tenniston Park Jewry was whether or not Moses had received the Torah at Mount Sinai. Dave For­ tin was amazed at the pedantic naivete of the chairman.

In the end the inevitable occurred.

Everyone saw it but the Gastens. The group wanted a community center. A community center is what they would have. They wanted a building. In the erection of a structure they craved a substitute for G-d. The women wanted a cause for which they could work, as they would have labored for any so­ cially acceptable cause in which they could find harmless social conflict, relief from boredom, and a sense of

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accomplishment. The men wanted to dominate through communal brick and stone as they never could domi­ nate in their own homes. Above all they wanted no affront to their con­ sciences. They wanted no rabbi to thunder the genius of Sinai from the pulpit. This stiff-necked people wanted their Moses very meek.

They voted for Conservative affili­ ation because it represented modera­ tion. Their decision was in no way motivated by a vague understanding of the positions taken by Solomon Schechter, Mordecai Kaplan, or Louis Finkelstein. That night Gasten re­ signed. That rigidly arrogant man had begged people who prayed three times a year to let him lead them to a renaissance of Jewish tradition. Now at the end their fury broke forth against him. A woman who had denied the need for Sabbath services because she, like so many others, could come to shool only thrice yearly, threw G asten’s Orthodoxy in his teeth.

Never, she said, would she enter a synagogue where she and her husband could not worship side by side. Her husband, seated across the room, smiled.

YEAR passed. Dave Fortin still walked Old Ireland Road. Gangs of laborers drilled there daily now, laying sewer pipes and telephone lines.

Summer was coming again and a slowly circling hawk sought food in the green fields. Tenniston Park slumbered drowsily in the heat. The drone of a power mower signalled some husband, home early, was rend­ ering his lawn the same uniform height as that of his neighbors. On their green terraces, the matrons of Tenniston whispered and laughed.

Every home displayed the same newly bought accoutrements; patio for patio,

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tion on it. The Center was a reality.

The affable president of the congre­ gation was a successful businessman.

He hated people just enough to smile at them constantly. He was loved and hated in return. In the year that had passed, the new families arriving in Tenniston believed that he was the founder of the “shool.” He did noth­ ing to change their impression. The new land was to be dedicated on Memorial Day. A state senator wielded a gilded trowel. The president wept, just a little. The religious chairman received a small token of the congre­ gation’s esteem for his outstanding work. Dr. Gasten, standing in the rear of the crowd, reddened imper­ ceptibly and cleared his throat. Ruth Gasten squeezed his hand.

Dave Fortin walked up the path to the Gasten house. The lawn was a trifle overgrown and weeds, banished from other Tenniston gardens, raised their heads. For Dave Fortin, the be­ lief was growing that Jerry Gasten, with his religious faith, was more of an individualist than all the gray flannel free men in neat, green Ten­ niston. What was it they said on Pesach? These people were like babies who couldn’t ask questions. Dave’s grudging admiration for the Gastens grew. Every moment of their life was defiance hurled at the crushing mech­ anized sameness of their century.

Dave entered the Gasten house. He had never been there before. Jerry Gasten was visibly happy to see some­ one come uninvited to the service.

They shook hands. Looking out the window they could see the land the builder had given. The freshly turned N MAY the builder of Tenniston earth was visible; red in the sunlight.

Park had surprised everyone with Around them the lawns were fair and a generous donation of land having an green, but Jerry Gasten had a long old farm house in fairly good condi­ wait for his minyon. ,

awning for awning, garage for garage, tree for tree. Dave Fortin turned into the path to his house. Louise met him, pecking him affectionately on the cheek. They walked together to the garage. The lawnmower waited to do its duty. Woe to the house which did not match in every way the indi­ vidualized expression of its neighbor’s personality. Dave Fortin remembered some lines from Gray’s Elegy: “Each in his narrow cell forever laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.”

The Tenniston Park Center was growing. A Sunday school with volun­ teer teachers had been started. The school committee seriously considered appointing a paid Hebrew teacher to prepare boys for Bar Mitzvah. Friday night services were held weekly, led by a personable young man with an infectious smile and willingness to please. As chairman of the Religious Committee he demeaned himself as a Moses meek indeed. Each housewife in Tenniston outdid herself preparing refreshments for the “Oneg Shabbath” when it was her turn to be hostess.

Afterwards the congregants and their religious chairman repaired to the laden table where, in a haze of ciga­ rette smoke, laughter and light con­ versation struggled for dominion with a televized prize fight in the living room. The Gastens were markedly absent; everyone was relieved. Jerry Gasten’s Sabbath morning services were the community joke. He gath­ ered a minyon weekly by phone; an unwilling congregation of retired old­ sters, grumbling high school boys, and a few of his friends.

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JEWISH LIFE

The Pursuit of Fun

By NORMAN LAMM

HEN the Founding Fathers of America wrote the Declaration of Independence, they included one new phrase which was to have wide repercussions later in the history of this country. That phrase is, “the pur­ suit of happiness.”

The idea of happiness is, of course, nothing new. Americans did not in­ vent it. It has been known in a hun­ dred languages and experienced uni­ versally for millennia. Our own Torah dedicates three entire sections as parashath moadim, the description of the major holidays on which we are commanded ve’somachta bechagecha, “thou shalt be happy in thy festivals.”

What was new in the formulation of the Founding Fathers was the em­ phasis on happiness as something to pursue.

Serious thinkers have not always looked with favor on this phrase. Not that there is anything wrong with be­ ing happy—their outlook is not jaun­ diced—but they have two reservations: first, is happiness really to be the highest goal of man? Is it subordinate to or more important than, let us say, the idea of duty, or respect for others, or faithfulness, or honor? And

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second, can happiness really be ac­ quired by pursuing it? Is it not really a rather elusive prize which you can win only indirectly by living in a cer­ tain way, and not by a direct chase?

But all these debates are really academic. Today we accept happiness as terribly important; for many it is the highest value that life has to offer.

And we no longer ask questions about the wisdom of pursuing it in order to attain it. We do not simply pursue it; we are relentless, fanatic, singleminded in our hot chase of happiness.

Also, we have changed the word “happiness” to “fun,” and with it has come a change of the content of our aspirations. Happiness, at least, im­ plies an ordered, harmonious way of life which offers deep satisfactions.

Fun is nothing of the sort. It is es­ cape, pure and simple. It is a matter of losing yourself consciously in a world where all tensions are released and inhibitions loosened. And the pur­ suit of fun has become America’s chief avocation.

N ESSENCE, there is nothing wrong with occasionally having fun, provided it is decent, clean, con-

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trolled, and harmless. There is no Mitzvah to be a humorless bore. Some diversion or escape is always neces­ sary and welcome. My concern is, however, with that great number of Americans — and American Jews — who have unconsciously transformed fun from entertainment to Weltan­ schauung, from casual distraction to consuming passion, from occasional release to total immersion in escape from the challenges to which life summons us. Perhaps life in this com­ plicated, dangerous world is too deadly serious for most people; but that is an explanation, not an excuse for avoiding its problems.

Consider how the original concept of “the pursuit of happiness” has de­ generated into the “fun for all” disease that affects every part of our society. At Cape Canaveral not long ago a human being was shot into space. Fortunately he returned safely; G-d was good to him, his wife and children, and the injured prestige of his country. The days and hours be­ fore the firing were tense ones. They should have been, as they were for many, a time for prayer, and the sobriety that comes from knowing that a man’s life is at stake. Yet one reporter told of the carryings-on at the entertainment spots surrounding the missile area: large crowds over­ flowing, drinking, joking, and dancing in anticipation of the firing. Com­ mander Shepard hovers between im­ mortality and eternity — and Cape Canaveral turns into a carnival. A man faces the terrible loneliness of outer space, and his fellow men clutter up whatever inner space they possess with the kind of inconsiderate nonsense which degrades their stature as humans.

Here is a Second example. A cer­ tain Jew who lives in the South has 46

made a great success as a humorist by drawing upon immigrant Jewish experience in the Lower East Side.

He has painted funny verbal pictures with “Only in America,” and ad­ monished us to “Enjoy, Enjoy.” Some of us may like his brand of humor, others may not. That is irrelevant.

But what does one say in response to a supposedly funny piece in which he writes a kindly, good-humored de­ scription of a Jewish girl taking her vows as a Roman Catholic nun?

When a prominent Yiddish writer took him to task for it, Harry Golden insulted his critic and replied that he takes such conversions in stride—with gentility, kindliness, and a sense of humor! Is this not carrying the idola­ try of fun a bit too far? Jews know that on occasions of this sort you tear keriah and sit shiv ah— and the apostle of good humor has fun!

HE word “fun,” according to Webster, comes from the Middle English fonnen , which means: to be foolish, to fool someone. Too much concentration on “having fun” is indeed the epitome of foolishness.

And if you spend your life in that nervous, anxious, guilt-laden pursuit of fun, then you fool no one but yourself. No, this is not happiness.

And it certainly is not simchah.

I recently chanced upon something known as “Chase’s Calendar of An­ nual Events,” which is a compendium of eight hundred occasions of cele­ bration, fun, and festivity observed in the United States. We are, a read­ ing of this book reveals, a holidayridden people. There is scarcely a single day in the year when some citizens in some part of this great country will not be celebrating some­ thing or other. We have every con­ ceivable kind of holiday, from weeks

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dedicated to the peanut and girl scouts to months celebrating children’s art, and the egg, to days hailing mothers, fathers-in-law, buzzards, and bache­ lors. For everything there is a parade and the occasion for some group just ■‘to have fun.” Amazing: a complete luach dedicated to the principle that every day is a time for fun! And yet, no one will disagree, there is not a day that passes but what more and more people become more and more miserable. Fun is, evidently, a failure.

UR OWN Jewish calendar is one that presents us with a number of chagim u’m oad im , holidays and festivals. They are days of happiness, of sim chah. Do our chagim u’m o a d im bear any resemblance to the fun-fare that we have been describing? As­ suredly not—yet sometimes it seems that we have so assimilated to the funculture of contemporary America, that we have failed to appreciate the vast abyss that separates them. That is why only a few years ago one of our “defense organizations” published a book purporting to acquaint our nonJewish neighbors with the essentials of Jewish belief and practice. Al­ though a fairly good book, a remark­ able picture emerges from it: Jewish life is a merry-go-round of joy upon joy, a breathless round of celebrations, all smiling faces and wine-drinking and feasting. Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur are primarily happy times filled with laughter and fun.

Even Tisha B’Av “has lost much of its tragic overtones.” The Jews, we are told, “are overjoyed that freedom is flourishing in so many parts of the world.” Of course, the remnants of Eichmann’s victims and the Jews in Morocco and behind the Iron Curtain are not aware of this—but then, they do not appreciate that the Jewish

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calendar is like the American calen­ dar, and that both are dedicated to the proposition that the pursuit of fun is the noblest goal of man created in the image of G-d.

Real sim ch ah is, of course, nothing of the sort. True joy, in the Jewish sense, is not an escape from life but an intensification of its loftiest fea­ tures. Sim chah is the elation of man, the elevation of his soul that comes with the realization that he stands in the presence of G-d—that he is not alone on the face of the earth. That is why sim ch ah is the special charac­ teristic of the three pilgrim festivals, the sholosh regolim , for then the Israelite would ascend to the Temple to “be seen before the Lord.” To en­ joy the companionship of G-d and His gifts, that is the gist of happiness.

Sim chah does not come from avoiding the knowledge that there is evil in the world, from blinding oneself to the enormous threats of pain and death.

It comes from an appreciation that in this kind of world, despite evil and sickness and pain, there is a G-d Who watches over us, that we d o have the opportunity to vanquish evil, that there is a vibrant, active principle of holiness and purity and goodness. We do not use the historical origin of our holidays as an excuse just to pursue happiness or have fun. The holidays are themselves expressions of joy when man faces the world with open eyes and open heart, and each holiday has its own character and its own joyousness.

T WOULD be too much to try to exhaust the meaning of each of the y o m im to vim . A Jewish holiday is like a human personality: it has a thousand different facets, each more intriguing and fascinating than the next. Let us, rather, examine only one

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facet of each as a source of sim chah, as interpreted by the Chasidic sage and saint, the author of Sefath E m eth .

He points out that in Vayikra the parashath M o a d im follows immediate­ ly upon the Mitzvah of Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of G-d’s Name. “And I shall be sanctified amongst the Children of Israel,” was interpreted by our Rabbis to mean that a Jew must submit to martyrdom rather than violate any of the three major sins known to Judaism: idola­ try, unchastity, and murder. The three major festivals of Pesach, Shovuoth, and Sukkoth, the Sefath E m eth main­ tains, come to preserve and enhance each of these three principles for which we must be ready to give our lives in Kiddush Hashem.

A man must give up his life if ordered to take the life of another, for homicide is an unforgivable sin.

The positive principle is celebrated in Pesach when we recall that G-d took us out of the land of slaves where life was cheap and man worthless, where babies were tossed into the Nile.

Pesach fills us with joy as we appre­ ciate the transcendent value of life in a world where people usually speak of the destruction of millions of peo­ ple in the impersonal terms of cold statistics. We do not just “have fun”; we are instead suffused with happiness that life was granted to us, and that we were entrusted with its safe­ keeping.

The principles of morality or chas­ tity must not be violated even under pain of death, for so is G-d made holy in Israel. And the festival of Sukkoth reaffirms that concept by emphasiz­ ing the importance of the home. For an immoral act is in essence an offense against the family. In the presence of immorality husband and wife can have no love for each other 48

and children and parents at worst do not know each other, and at best despise each other. Sukkoth is the time we remember how our G-d took us out of Egypt with its lust and fleshpots, its incest, its sexual degeneracy, and led us through the desert in order that for forty years we learn to dwell in sukkoth, each family protecting the wholeness of its home and its sacred integrity. On Sukkoth we are joyous that every Jewish family can hold aloft the banner of tzen iu th , that we can learn to respect the personality of another human being and not treat another as merely an animate object of our desire. We are happy that we can preserve the family and home even in a world filled with gilui a ro yo th , a world where obscenity more and more becomes legally ac­ cepted and morally respected, where degeneracy receives the sanction of literature and the blessing of art, and where home after home falls apart.

INALLY, and perhaps most im­ portant, a Jew must perform Kiddush Hashem and relinquish life itself rather than submit to idolatry.

Shovuoth, which commemorates the giving of Torah at Sinai, affirms the Jewish appreciation of Divinity it­ self. We are happy that in a civiliza­ tion which has silenced the voice of G-d by denying that He is concerned with man, and set up the idols of money and science instead, we Jews are the recipients of His Torah and can to this day partake in the super­ natural experience of Revelation by studying the Torah. When we study Torah we know that G-d is not silent, that He speaks through its pages, that He has let us know how to live without loneliness, without despair, without emptiness. What a source of joy!

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Here, then, is an example of how Jewish joy differs from secular “fun,” of how the Jewish calendar, based upon sim chah, is different from the ordinary calendar. Unlike fun, which is a form of escape by being blind to life’s dangers and evils, Judaism’s m oa d im provide sim chah by a direct confrontation with them. Unlike fun which is amoral, and often immoral, sim chah is eminently moral and ethi­ cal and spiritual. It shows you the face of a murder-bent world and tells you to revere life: the ethics of sim ­

August, 1961

chah. It reveals to you a society cor­ rupt with unchastity and commands you to respect the integrity of every home and family: the morality of sim chah. It bares before you a civil­ ization that has forgotten G-d and reminds you of His ever-loving pres­ ence: the spirituality of sim chah.

A sh reyn u , m ah to v chelkeynu, u’m ah na’im goroleyn u , u’m ah yafah yeru sh o th eyn u . '“Happy are we!—for

how good is our destiny, how pleasant our lot, how beautiful or heritage!”

49

Careers in the Biological Sciences

By WALTER DUCKAT

Continuing his “ careers” series, Dr. Duckat appraises an­ other area of scientific endeavor with an eye to opportu­ nities for the observant Jew.

HE biological sciences comprise one of the most important divi­ sions of science. The area covered is so vast that it is divided into many specialties.

Biological sciences include the study of all living beings. This may be huge whales, enormous sequoia trees, or the tiniest organisms, invisible to the naked eye. Biologists also engage in a relentless battle with the microbes which cause decay and disease in men, animals, and plants.

Biologists have also contributed to the production of many useful indus­ trial products such as nylon, plastics, fire- and water-proof wood substitutes made from cotton. They have also helped to develop new breeds of live­ stock and poultry which have set new food production records.

Because of this staggering diversity and complexity, biologists usually spe­ cialize in one subject. Some, for ex­ ample, spend their entire lives study­ ing one plant or animal. Others devote themselves to the study of body func­ tions such as the nervous system. They study the nature and function of heredity, the effect of environment, radiation, changes in climate and how they influence or may influence man now and in the future.

Depending on their specialty, all

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biologists may be divided into three major groups: botanists, who deal with plants; zoologists, who study animals; and microbiologists, who probe the tiniest organisms. Each of these major divisions has many sub-divisions.

Some biologists engage in basic re­ search, where they seek to increase man’s knowledge of living things re­ gardless of whether this information has immediate practical value. Others choose to apply this knowledge to practical problems in medicine, for­ estry, agriculture, and other areas.

S IN many areas of science, Jews have also been prominent in the biological sciences. Their interest in this area dates back to ancient times.

While scientific botany originated with the Greeks, it spread to the Jews who enriched our knowledge of it.

The rich flora and fertility of Pal­ estine were praised both in the Bible and in the Talmud. Some knowledge of botany was necessary for Jewish farmers in their daily activity such as in their religious performance of tithes, the priestly portion of “challah,” the laws forbidding the mixture of different plants, the laws for the Sab­ batical year, and the prohibition against consuming fruit during the first three years of the tree’s growth.

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Other laws requiring some knowledge Marion Eiger, a scion of the dis­ of botany were the various grains per­ tinguished family of Talmudic schol­ missible for the making of matzah, ars, discovered the electric nerve cell the salads allowed for the Passover in the heart, now called the Eiger cell. roast, the festal garland for the SukN Israel, too, the boundaries of sci­ kah tabernacle and its covering, sac­ entific knowledge have been ex­ rifices made from the plant work, the tended by a number of biological ingredients of incense, and the laws of Levitical impurity relating to plants. scientists. Aaron Aronson, for exam­ ple, discovered wild wheat, while Otto In modern times, the roster of Jew­ Warburg, a former German university ish contributors to the advancement professor and later of the Hebrew of biological sciences is long and dis­ tinguished. The following are only a University, made important contribu­ tions to scientific agriculture. few of these outstanding scientists.

In the United States, too, a num­ Judah Henle (1809-1888) was a Ger­ ber of Jews have enriched our knowl­ man university professor and out­ standing anatomist who enriched our edge of scientific agriculture. Jacob J. Taubenhaus discovered a sulphur knowledge of the optic nerve, the spray which led to the saving of mil­ cornea, blood vessels, intestinal cells, lions of dollars of crops. Jacob G. and kidneys. Gabriel G. Valentine, an­ Lipman, former dean of Rutgers Uni­ other German-born scientist, won an versity Agricultural School, made award for his studies in experimental physiology. He wrote standard text many outstanding studies in soil bac­ teriology and related subjects. Selman books on anatomy and physiology.

Waksman, the discoverer of strepto­ One of the greatest physiologists of mycin, is generally considered the his day was Herman Munk, who was greatest microbiologist of modern born in Posen in 1839. He increased times. David D. Macht made basic our understanding of cerebral cortex contributions to pharmacology and and nerve stimulations. A m on g the discovered a test and treatment for first experiments in electrotherapy was pemphigus. conducted by Isador Rosenthal, also a In genetics, another branch of the German Jew, who was an expert on the biological sciences, we also find illus­ physiology of nerves and muscles. trations of Jewish names such as Otto Meyerhoff was a biochemist Jacques Loeb, who had among his and physiologist whose studies on the credits original contributions in biol­ chemistry of muscles helped to ex­ ogy, chemistry, physiology, and espe­ plain the origin of fatigue, which won cially in genetics. Herbert J. Muller, him the Nobel Prize in medicine along a Nobel Prize winner, made significant with A. B. Hill. Forced to flee Nazi advances in the study of mutations persecution, Meyerhoff later joined the and shed new light on chromosomes. medical faculty of the University of Among distinguished Russian Jew­ Pennsylvania. ish scientists was Waldemar Haffkine, A giant among pathologists and whose discovery of inoculation with immunologists was Karl Landsteiner, attenuated virus against cholera saved who discovered four blood groups millions of lives. Although reared with­ which made blood transfusions a rela­ out any religious training, Haffkine tively safe matter and which has saved became an orthodox Jew late in his millions of lives. life. Thereafter he devoted much time August, 1961 51

I

to the cause of orthodox Judaism and when he died, left a large sum for yeshivoth.

Other distinguished names were Paul Ehrlich, the discoverer of the cure for syphilis, and August Wasserman, who discovered the blood test now routinely administered to anyone undergoing a thorough hospital ex­ amination.

The American Jew, Joseph Goldberger, helped to check the scourge of pellagra while Bela Schick devised the test for diphtheria which bears his name. Also noteworthy was another Nobel Prize winner, Boris Chain, co­ discoverer of penicillin. The afore­ going constitutes only a selected list of eminent Jewish biological scientists.

HATEVER his specialty, the bi­ ological scientist is usually en­ gaged in some kind of research. He may work in a laboratory or outside, in a university or in a remote part of the world. The botanist may study a glacial area in the frozen arctic, while the zoologist may trudge the equa­ torial jungles for new specimens of animals or fish.

One important biological scientist is the agronomist. His activities may profoundly affect the welfare of the farmer. He may experiment with crop plants, grow seeds under controlled conditions, study how various strains withstand pests and different changes in soil and climate. Some agronomists work at state agricultural experimen­ tal stations, while others work at one of the many field stations run by the United States Department of Agricul­ ture both here and abroad.

A related scientist is the soil bac­ teriologist, who studies samples of various soils to find bacteria, molds, protozoa, algae, and other microor­ ganisms and analyzes their relation­ ship to soil fertility, to plant diseases,

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to growth, processing, and to -the storage of crops.

The physiologist employs the meth­ ods of chemistry and physics to learn how cells use the energy of food for muscular coordination, how the hard­ ening of the arteries occurs, or how the impulse of the nervous system af­ fects the response of muscles.

Another important specialist is the entomologist who studies the number and distribution of insects, the rea­ sons for their growth and how to control them. Others work in labora­ tories testing the effectiveness of vari­ ous chemical insecticides and their possible danger to human and animal life.

IGNIFICANT too is the work of the biochemists. These specialists study the chemical reactions in plant and animal tissues and the influence of chemistry on life processes. The battle against stubborn infectious dis­ eases such as influenza, rheumatic fe­ ver, the common cold, etc. is being waged by the microbiologist. This sci­ entist cultures viruses and studies their behavior. He usually works in a lab where conditions may be controlled.

His equipment generally consists of test tubes, microscopes, cultures, etc.

His studies are among the most dra­ matic in all of science since the breakthrough of our most dreaded diseases may come through his efforts and those of his colleagues.

The biophysicist is another special­ ist. He uses an electron microscope to examine the tiniest tissues, the molecules. He may use nuclear reac­ tors, X-ray machines, microscopes and other equipment to study how high energy radiations affect cell divisioii in lower forms of animal or insect life.

The geneticist is another member of the biological scientific family, who stakes out his claim in the field of

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heredity. Using fruit flies, guinea pigs, and other animals and plants which reproduce themselves quickly, he studies how heredity works.

Some biological scientists experi­ ment with rats, guinea pigs, monkeys and other animals. They are our phar­ macologists. These specialists study the effect of drugs, gases,, dusts, poi­ sons, and chemicals on living tissues.

In all of these types of research, the biologist employs biological and chem­ ical techniques in making and strain­ ing sections and in classifying and identifying specimens.

About one third of the biological scientists teach in colleges and uni­ versities where most combine inde­ pendent research with teaching. In some universities, the faculty spends most of its time in research. More than ten per cent of biological scien­ tists engage in management and ad­ ministrative work. They may work for industrial firms, non-profit or govern­ mental laboratories, in research and testing of foods, drugs, insecticides, and other products.

HILE we discussed the work of the soil bacteriologist, the gen­ W eral bacteriologist covers a broader area. He studies the biology of bac­ teria and other microorganisms. He probes their form, how they repro­ duce, the result of their chemical ac­ tivity and other important aspects of their behavior and how they affect human, animal, or plant life.

The industrial bacteriologist, apply­ ing his skills to the needs of industry, conducts studies for the development of food preservatives and changes m the raw material of products. Simi­ larly his suggestions are valuable in canning, drying, freezing, and pick­ ling and salting. His skills are enlisted in the production of dairy products, August, 1961

bread, alcohol, beer, and wine, in the processing of flax and hemp, by leath­ er tanners and by tobacco growers.

The role of the bacteriologist is also important in the preparation of biologicals such as anti-serums, antigen and anti-bodies, vaccines, toxins, tox­ oids, which are used to diagnose, pre­ vent, or treat disease and to produce enzymes and certain vitamins.

Their knowledge is also employed in the treatment of wood products, electrical equipm ent, ophthalm ic equipment, photographic emulsions and metals which corrode due to bac­ terial action.

The work of the medical bacteriol­ ogist is basic to medicine. He studies the disease-breeding microorganisms and how they may be controlled.

Hospitals, public health and private laboratories study bacteria in speci­ mens of blood and other body fluids and tissues.

The veterinary bacteriologist em­ ploys the same methods as the physi­ cian in studying the causes of infectious diseases in wild and domesticated ani­ mals and birds and how they may be controlled. Other specialists are the virologist who specializes in viruses which produce disease in man, ani­ mals, and plants; the immunologist and serologist who study the mecha­ nisms by which the body defends it­ self against infection and how it strengthens these defenses. Various serums and anti-toxins are commer­ cially prepared to help diagnose, pre­ vent, or treat disease.

Another important biological scien­ tist is the public health bacteriologist, who applies his knowledge to the en­ tire community and who is generally supervised by various governmental agencies. His work usually involves diagnostic laboratory procedure in bacteriology and serology, sanitary 53

control of milk, water, shellfish, and other foods. He probes for evidence of pollution in order to safeguard sat­ isfactory standards of quality, methods of sewage disposal, as well as methods of control and prevention of conta­ gious diseases.

ORE than twenty thousand bi­ M ologists work in administrative posts supervising courses, while others teach specialized advanced courses.

Many also engage in research. A sub­ stantial number of biologists work in administrative posts supervising for­ ests, parks, arboretums, and experi­ mental stations. Others engage in inspectional work such as inspecting agricultural products to make sure that they conform to specified stand­ ards. They may also work in diversi­ fied fields such as plant disease con­ trol, museums, agencies of the Federal government, the World Health Organi­ zation, various scientific foundations, large industrial firms, and for overseas work on technical aid missions.

There are believed to be about fifty thousand biological scientists in the United States, of whom some twenty thousand are agricultural scientists, fifteen thousand are animal scientists, and 6,500 are plant scientists. About four to five thousand are believed to work in the remaining specialized branches of biology.

Most jobs for biologists in the Fed­ eral government are with the United States Department of Agriculture.

Most states also hire specialists in the animal and agricultural sciences. On the city and county levels, most jobs for biological scientists are for micro­ biologists and bacteriologists.

Almost a half of the biological scientists possess the Doctor of Phi­ losophy degree. About six hundred colleges and universities offer a bache­ 54

lor’s degree in biological sciences, with 150 offering a Ph.D. The bachelor’s degree in botany is granted by about 110 institutions, thirty offer Ph.D.’s in zoology, 125 offer bachelor degrees.

Working conditions for biological scientists vary with each specialty.

They are, however, usually satisfac­ tory and similar to those of other scientists. They typically work a fiveday, forty-hour week. Sometimes overtime is necessary for experiments to be observed or worked on aroundthe-clock basis. This may sometimes pose a problem for the Shomer Shabboth but the difficulties are not insur­ mountable.

HE minimum educational require­ ment for the biological sciences is a B.S. degree with courses in biology, chemistry, physics, and bacteriology.

Those who possess only the B.S. degree, however, engage mainly in routine diagnostic tests in hospitals and public health and other labora­ tories, where they usually work under supervision. With experience, they may work alone. To teach this subject in college, the master of arts degree is the necessary minimum, with a Ph.D. preferable. The medium-size and large university is generally the best training facility for bacteriologists because their facilities are usually greater.

Salaries vary in different parts of the country. They are usually highest, however, in Civil Service and in in­ dustrial labs. Earnings of holders of a B.S. degree range from about $4,000 to $5,000 per year. The master of science degreee fetches from $5,000 to about $6,500 a year, and a Ph.D. from about $7,500 to $17,000 a year.

The latter are usually highly respon­ sible jobs, earned by some microbi­ ologists.

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Demand is strong in the biological sciences and is expected to continue for well trained persons in all branches of bacteriology. Opportunities are open for men and women. There are many openings in Civil Service jobs throughout the country. The Society of American Bacteriologists, Mt. Royal and Guilford Avenues, Balti­ more, Maryland, conducts its own employment bureau for both bacteri­ ologists and employers.

Biochemists come from diverse backgrounds, such as organic chem­ istry, physical chemistry, botany, zo­ ology, physiology, etc., but all have acquired training in chemistry.

Desirable, too, are courses in inor­ ganic, organic, analytical, and physi­ cal chemistry, mathematics, calculus, and some physics. The well qualified biochemist usually embraces several disciplines: chemistry, physics, and the biological sciences. Graduate training in some phase of biological or physical science is essential in bio­ chemical work, especially in large hospitals and medical centers where the specialist supervises the operation of chemical laboratories and engages in research.

Biochemists also teach and engage in research in medical schools, chem­ istry departments, or in departments of biochemistry in schools of agricul­ ture. They also work in government or privately endowed laboratories.

Many work in the food, beverage, and pharmaceutical industries. Some work in national and other forests.

Women, who constitute more than ten per cent of all biological scien­ tists and over twenty per cent of all

August, 1961

microbiologists, enjoy excellent oppor­ tunities in the biological sciences.

They are accepted as equals and have played an important role in the pro­ fession. The need for personnel has consistently increased. There are many fellowships or graduate assistantships available. r r i HOSE who plan to enter this field JL should possess inquiring minds, be energetic and thorough, judicious and independent. Those who possess a bachelor’s degree will find openings more abundant in production and operations, technical sales, service and routine applied research. Holders of more advanced degrees may antici­ pate more challenging, diversified, and lucrative work. The need and oppor­ tunities for research are virtually limitless.

The biological sciences constitute a steadily growing field which will re­ quire personnel for a continuing period. While salaries are generally not high, they are rising and compare sat­ isfactorily with those of comparable work. There are many opportunities to teach at college and to continue one’s research. Opportunity for ad­ vancement is good in either private or public employment.

Because of the importance of the biological sciences to our health and to our economy, this work will prob­ ably assume greater public stature and will offer more income and prestige to its practitioners. For the qualified Shomer Shabboth, there are few ob­ stacles in the way of employment.

What counts most in these specialties is competence, ability to work with others, and an interest in the work.

55

The Jewish Widow of Constantinople

By CHARLES RADDOCK

EWISH history is full of “grand old ladies,” women of outstand­ ing achievement and leadership, some­ times outshining the menfolk. One such case is Lisbon-born Beatrice de Luna, or “Donna Gracia Mendesia,” as she came to be known. Following her dramatic career, I could not help thinking that if she were alive today President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic would think twice before he closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping. Almost singlehandedly Gracia led a counter-attack in her day that—for a while, at least -^-took decisive effect. Her counter­ offensive becomes all the more strik­ ing when you stop to consider that communications media were non-exist­ ent in her day and transportation certainly not atomic then, nor even steam-propelled.

It all started one day in 1555: She was forty-five, living peacefully in Constantinople, when the news reached her that the 79-year-old Gio­ vanni Pietro Caraffa was elected to the papacy and, as Paul IV, promptly slapped a levy on every synagogue in the papal states, following with an order that Jews be shut up in ghettos.

The tax was earmarked for the bap­

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tism of the “children of Abraham,” as he liked'to refer to the Jews. He forbade them to have intercourse with Christians. To make sure that his orders were carried out, he de­ creed a green cap for Jewish men and a green veil for Jewish women.

He limited Jewish trading to old clothes, ordered Jewish property own­ ers to get rid of their properties within six months, and all Jewish physicians to confine their medical treatment to members of their own faith.

S IN our own time, Jews who could afford it got out as fast as possible, moving to port cities where they could find local protection.

One of the most successful seaport towns at the time was Ancona, on the Adriatic, about 130 miles north­ east of Rome, where many refugees had found a home and where much of the export and import business was in Jewish hands. These refugees were in the main escapees from the Inquisition. Quite a number of them were Turkish Jews, whose ships flew the sultan’s flag.

This, however, did not seem to pre­ vent the pope from ordering all Jew-

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ish refugees imprisoned, including those who had the protection of the sultan. But that was his first mistake.

When Gracia got the news, she ap­ pealed to Suleiman the Magnificent to demand the release of his Jewish subjects. And Paul IV buckled when the Ottoman monarch threatened to imprison all Catholics residing in his empire.

Without getting involved in the diplomatic relations of Suleiman and Paul, suffice it to say that after the latter found out that the sultan’s threat had been instigated by a Lis­ bon-born rich Jewish widow living in the Turkish capital, he decreed bap­ tism for all Jewish refugees in An­ cona—or the stake! Checking up on Gracia, he further discovered that she had been born in Catholic terri­ tory to one of the wealthiest Jewish families in Portugal, that until she 'managed to escape to Constantinople she had been leading a dual life, out­ wardly pretending to be a practicing Christian, like other Jewish victims of the Inquisition, but secretly cling­ ing to her ancestral faith. Widowed at twenty-fiVe, with a baby daughter on her hands, she had wandered f6r sixteen years—to Venice, Antwerp, Ferrara—pursued always, imprisoned from time to time, but always man­ aging to elude her papal pursuers until she settled in Constantinpole, where she became a figurehead in the Jewish community. In short, Paul realized that the long hand of the Inquisition could not reach Gracia Mendesia so he got back at her by taking it out on the Anconian refu­ gees!

ITHIN days after his arrival in Ancona, the Piazzi della Mostra—the main street of that sea­ port town—was turned into an am-

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phitheatre with towering gallows, a huge pyre, and a large estrade fac­ ing endless tiers—the estrade a kind of dais for the big brass of the In­ quisition. The proclamation he issued was the usual form, to wit: “The Holy Office of the Inquisition of this seaport city will celebrate an Auto da Fe on the second Monday in April, Anno Domini 1556, in the Piazzi della Mostra. All those who shall contrib­ ute to the furtherance of and be present at said Auto da Fe of April thirteenth will be made partakers of all the spiritual graces granted by the Roman Pontiff His Holiness Paul IV .

Gracia got the news after it was all over. Jewish messengers could not cross the seven hundred miles of land and water from Ancona to Constan­ tinople in less than weeks even in good weather, surely not in early spring when the Adriatic Waters blow up. But they did finally get to her.

She found out, for instance, that on the night of April twelfth at least eighty-seven Jewish men and women had been dragged from their cells for the “preparations”; that they had been given special dress consisting of black, white-striped vest, a pair of trousers of similar design, and a yellow cotton sanbenito painted on breast and back with a red St. An­ drew cross; that barefoot, carrying wax tapers, they had followed the banner of the Inquisition with its inscription of Justitia et Miseracordia (“Justice and Mercy”), and behind it monks carrying the crucifix, officers of the Inquisition carrying other sa­ cred emblems, and a “godfather” had even volunteered as an act of faith to carry the Jewish remains after it was all over. . . . All night long, Gracia was told, a Catholic commis­ sion sat up waiting for the victims 57

to renounce their faith. Sixty-three of them, in fact, did yield. But twentyfour remained adamant, murmuring Sh’ma Yisrael till the next morning, when from the giant estrade they looked down on thousands of Chris­ tian farmers, on Dutch, French, and German sailors who had come to watch the spectacle. A frenzied roar of “Heresia! Heresia!” broke out from the mob, and the first five vic­ tims were set on fire that day, one woman among them. Two days later, two more. The following Shabboth, six more. Two months later, eight more. Five days later, at least three. . . .

HE report Gracia held in her hands was all too familiar—the usual story of Catholic persecution of devout Jews. But attached to it was an unusual request from the Jews remaining in Ancona who had formally “adopted” the Christian faith. It read in part, as follows: Let us proclaim an execution for an execution . . . that the flourish­ ing seaport of Ancona should waste away in desolation . . . No Israelite should dwell nor sojourn there for monetary purposes—let your eyes not be tempted by monetary gain even to the fraction of a p’rutah— let that harbor become a chamber of refuse . . . cursed be he who crosses its path. . . . Let the in­ habitants of the universe know there is a G-d for Israel and that we are all of one progeny . . . that their blood is no redder than ours . . . let them glare . . . let them hang their heads in shame . . . for damned and accursed is the earth because of their lik e.. . .

Jews in Portugal, Italy, and Tur­ key proclaimed a special fast day

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in memoriany and special prayers were offered up to commemorate the martyrdom of the twenty-four. But the “Grand Widow of Constantino­ ple,” as she was known, pious though she was, would not consider the in­ cident closed with mere fasting and prayer. For her the request of the Anconian community was more than hollow anathema wrung from the heart of Jews missing their loved ones. Member of a banking family with connections in most countries of the Inquisition, she was well aware of what the seaport commerce of Ancona meant for the Vatican treas­ ury.

She got in touch with Jewish ship­ pers in the Italian port of Pesaro, about thirty miles from Ancona.

There Jews had found some protec­ tion from the local authorities, who promised them financial aid if they would succeed in diverting Ancona’s shipping to their port. Even Chris­ tian authorities in Pesaro, it seems, themselves had no fondness for Paul IV. And they too promised support— for reasons of their own, of course.

The port of Ancona soon began to feel the pinch. For Gracia had man­ aged to persuade Jewish merchants throughout the Ottoman Empire, and even where the Inquisition itself pene­ trated, to steer their cargoes to Pesaro. Finally, spices, rugs, and Levantine fabrics that used to pass through the hands of Ancona steve­ dores were no longer familiar sights there. Finally, too, the pope’s revenue collectors passed the word to him that there was a substantial falloff in papal collections from that part of the country.

OR a while, indeed, the boycott seemed to be successful. Then suddenly, the Jewish Merchants’

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Guild of Salonica informed Gracia that unless all Jewish shippers and merchants in Constantinople, Adrianople, and Broussa would join in there was no point in keeping it up.

They had suffered considerable losses in the process. Besides, they said, Paul was threatening to avenge him­ self on what was left of the Jewish community of Ancona. Soon, too, the rabbis joined the fray, citing chapter and verse for both policies—for the policy and program of Gracia and for the conditions presented by the Salonican Jewish merchants’ guild.

Gracia then appealed to the great rabbis of Safed—Joseph Karo and Moses ben Joseph di Trani, the fore­ most rabbis of the day. Karo and di Trani upheld her, even going so far as to impose a formal religious ban on the port of Ancona. This accom­ plished, she then offered to reimburse all Jewish merchants who could prove monetary loss for boycotting Ancona.

In fact, Gracia laid out 40,000 scudi for the purpose, the equivalent of $22,000— a huge sum in those days.

But it was too late. The news reached her that the Duke of Pesaro, disappointed when his port could not compete with Ancona’s, after all, decided to get rid of the Jews in his territory. In fact, he banished them altogether.

Despite her efforts, the boycott of Ancona lasted only eight months.

O this day, Ancona Jews recite a eulogy composed by Jacob di Fano, native rabbi and poet who im­ mortalized the tragedy of his twentyfour townsmen.

As for Pope Paul IV’s anti-Jewish policy, it was revoked after his death.

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The town even became a center of Jewish learning, nicknamed “Little Jerusalem.” In nearby Monte Giorgio the Jews later plied their trade in linseed, hemp, and tanning. The syn­ agogue, incidentally, built in 1579— ten years after Gracia’s death—was finally demolished in our own day to make room for the present Stamira Road. In 1933, in fact, its historic scrolls and other sacred articles were removed to a nearby synagogue. No more than about four hundred Jews reside in Ancona today, in the area of Sinigallia-Pesaro-Urbino and the borough of Macerata. But the illustri­ ous name of the Grand Widow of Constantinople figures still in its syn­ agogue ritual when the sixteenth century prayer is recited.

We do not know where Gracia died. Many believe it was in Palestine, where her son-in-law tried to start a Jewish colony. But wherever she spent her remaining years, history tells us, her salon was a rendezvous for Jewish scholars and refugees.

She gave generously to every Jewish cause, and her name appeared on the flyleaves of sacred Hebrew books printed under her sponsorship.

Particularly in the Ottoman Empire her fame was sung by gifted Hebrew poets and liturgists. Only a footnote in Jewish history, perhaps, but Bea­ trice de Luna will never be read out of it.

At the Cluny Museum in Paris* a fifteenth century abbey now a na­ tional institution containing medieval and Renaissance art objects, you may still see a medallion of Gracia, ex­ ecuted when she was eighteen, by Pastorino, a prominent portrait medallist of her troubled era.

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B ook

Be Brand from the Burning

By LIBBY M. KLAPERMAN

THE YELLOW STAR, S. B. Unsdorfer, Thomas Yoseloff, Inc., New York, 202 pp. $3.95.

HE unfortunate millions who suffered and perished at the hands of the Nazi murderers begin to assume reality and greater per­ sonal meaning only when we read their individual chronicles. The figure “6,000,000” seems vague and unreal, but the story of each one of the 6,000,000 is like a burning brand which leaves its mark forever on our souls. “The Yellow Star” is the trag­ ically moving tale of an ud mutzal me’esh—a brand that was plucked from the raging fires. Mr. Unsdorfer, the son of an important and well known Czechoslovakian rabbi, de­ scribes the bitter days between Au­ gust, 1944 and the day of liberation in April, 1945—ten months during which, as a young man of nineteen, he experienced such horrors as only the depraved and maniacal Nazi minds could conceive. His tale begins when his family finds temporary shel-

T

LIBBY M. K LA PE R M A N is the author o f many stories for Jewish children. She also serves as educational director o f W om en’s Branch of UOJCA.

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ter in a Bratislavian castle with the false security of forged Argentinian papers. There they were discovered and deported to Auschwitz, where the author witnessed the contemptuous “selection” of his parents for exter­ mination while he was chosen to live.

From Auschwitz to Nieder-Orschel and from there to Buchenwald, the story of bestiality and spiralling madness grows in crescendo and vol­ ume, leaving the reader emotionally drained. Of the eight hundred Slovak­ ian Jews who arrived in Auschwitz with the author, only a “few score” returned to life. The rest perished in such indignities as no pen can de­ scribe.

And yet, this is not a despairing book, but the seared faith of an ortho­ dox and believing Jew. His spiritual strength, though taxed as were his physical powers, survived the test of fire. When liberation finally came at Buchenwald, Unsdorfer momentarily doubted whether anyone would turn to that religion “which had seemed to do so little for us . . .” but at the first religious service held by the American chaplain to mark the fes­ tival of Shovuoth, Unsdorfer saw: JEWISH LIFE

n s D i mm MAHZOR. HA-SHALEM Nusach AshkenazIn Two Volumes Translated and Annotated

By Philip Birnbaum In Dr. Birnbaum’s translation, the original meaning of the prayers comes through with a new clarity, so that the worshipper can appreciate and understand the prayerbook for what it really is— a source of wisdom and inspiration for every age, If ever you have found other translations difficult to read or understand, you w ill cherish Dr. Birnbaum’s editions of the Mahzor, which are richly furnished with succinct footnotes.

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L’SHANAH TOVAH TIKOSEVU! TO O U R M A N Y F R I E N D S . . . . . . And sen d

to J e w i s h

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C h o c o l a t e D r in k

S E A L T E S T F O O D S August, 1961

61

“How Buchenwald staged a fantastic demonstration of faith and loyalty to G-d. Thousands upon thousands of liberated Jews crowded into the spe­ cially vacated block for the first post­ war Jewish religious service to be held on the soil of defeated Germany.

The Muselmaenner, the cripples, the injured and the weak came to demon­ strate to the world that the last ounce of their strength, the last drop of their blood, and the last breath of their lives belonged to G-d, to Torah and to the Jewish religion.”

“As Chaplain Schacter intoned the evening prayers, all the inmates in and outside the block stood in silence reaccepting the Torah whose people, message and purpose Hitler’s Ger­ many had attempted to destroy. Jew­ ish history repeated itself. Just as our forefathers who were liberated from Egypt accepted the Law in the

desert, so did we, the liberated Jews of Buchenwald, reaccept the same Law in the concentration camps of Germany.”

NSDORFER closes his book with a question: Will the West offer him the faith in humanity, the faith in the individual, the faith in man’s innate goodness that he so sorely needs?

The question hangs in the balance.

We, each of us, fervently pray that the answer will be a strong, affirma­ tive one. At any rate, “The Yellow Star” is truly the “gold star” of courage, of faith, of soul-searching honesty. Our Sages tell us that “words that come from the heart are bound to enter the heart.” The words in this slim volume enter the heart with piercing and lasting quality.

U

Folk Humor Fiesta

By PINCHAS STOLPER

FILLED WITH LAUGHTER: A Fiesta of Jewish Folk Humor, by Rufus Learsi. Thomas Yoseloff, 351 pp. $5.95.

EWISH humor has long been a subject of analysis by psycholo­ gists. Humor is caricature in words; in it a people reveals inner emotions generally hidden from public view.

A people, tormented and persecuted, isolated and defenseless, seeks release in the satire and absurdity of humor.

Making sport of oneself restores men­

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tal balance, provides perspective, and displays a deep-seated security in a situation far from secure.

In “Filled With Laughter,” by Rufus Learsi, we are treated to a full parade of Jewish humorous notables: we meet the Wise Men of Chelm, Motke Chabad, Herschele Ostropolyar, and others. Here, marshalled in a sort of Purim parade, we meet all the characters who made up the colorRABBI PINCHAS STOLPER is director of the UOJCA Youth Department and of the National Conference of Synagogue Youth. He is a musmach of Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin.

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ful drama of East European Jewish life. A fascinating assortment of in­ dividuals come to life on the pages of this entertaining book: jolly beggars, luckless paupers, scheming shadchonim, and vile antisemites; gluttons, renegades, givirim, sultans, monkeys and guzzlers. Each provides his meas­ ure of laughs; sometimes we laugh at him, sometimes with him, other times the laughter is tempered with sym­ pathy or pain. We are given a glimpse into tragic and pathetic lives and are rewarded with an appreciation of the squalor, poverty, and bitterness of East European life.

The volume is undoubtedly skill­ fully and well written, each story sends you on for more and more. If you like to laugh and can’t resist a good story, this is the place to come.

Although it is common knowledge that a book of bons mots and witty stories is not a book of history or a source of information, a word of cau­ tion is here in place.

Jewish humor in recent generations has not only been analyzed on the psychologist’s couch, but became a dangerous weapon of propaganda in the hands of rebellious and disillu­ sioned “idealists” who sought to top­ ple the foundations of Torah-true life. There were those who special­ ized in circulating vile and murky improbable stories designed to under­ mine sacred institutions by directing at them “innocent” smut and mire.

Stories which poked fun at Shabboth and Kashruth, at the Torah student,

64

and at the practices of Taharath Hamishpochah. Even today, be’avonotheynu horabim, in the compromised and sinful state of masses of our people, information concerning some of the above-mentioned facets of Jewish life is available sometimes ex­ clusively through a repelling story, a warped “Yiddish” record, or a twisted and perverted ditty.

And so in recommending J ewish humor a great deal of caution is suggested.

OW—Mr. Learsi is most circum­ spect in not repeating the type of repellent stories mentioned above.

Still, humor by its very nature dis­ torts reality, and when that reality is, as are so many of the stories in this volume, embroidered around fig­ ures representative of time-honored institutions—the rabbi, the yeshivah student, the shadchon, etc.—one who is not equipped with a balanced pic­ ture of Jewish life is liable to emerge with a distorted view of the very foundations of the Torah way. These stories may entertain and amuse; they certainly don’t inspire.

An anthology of Jewish Humor— better, of humor that is uniquely Jewish—remains to be written. The rich and meaty sichath chullin (light talk) of rabbis and sages, redolent with wit and wisdom, with sharp in­ sights which are inspiring and uplift­ ing, is not to be found in the volume under review.

But don’t permit my word of cau­ tion to spoil your fun—enjoy!

N

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