Jewish Life October 1961 by Jewish Action

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Voi. XXIX, No. 1/October. 1961/Cheshvan, 5722

J e w is h

1 E D IT O R IA LS YOUTH ALIYAH’S RELIGIOUS W ARDS

Saul

Editor

B e r n s t e in ,

M. M o r t o n

R u b e n s t b in

E. G r o s s S. J. S h a r f m a n

Reuben Rabbi

L ib b y

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THE FEDERATION ANOMALY ............................

A R T IC LE S ON TO THE YESHIVAH! AN ISRAELI PHENOMENON/ Aryeh Newman

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K laperm an

Editorial Associates T h e a O d e m , Editorial Assistant

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WANTED: AN AM ERICAN ORTHODOX IMAGE/ Ralph Pelcovltz .........................................

THE ALLIANCE ISRAELITE UNIVERSELLE— A H IS TORICAL EVALUATION/lsacque Graeber

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M ISTAKES ABOUT M IXED SEATING/Leon Taubes 32 MARTYRDOM AND HEROISM/J. Goldschm idt....... 38

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Louis J. Tuchman ..................................

R EV IEW S

J e w is h o f

A m e r ic a

I. F e u e r s t e i n 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 Saul Bernstein, Administrator „ Second Class postage paid at New York, N. Y.

DUBNOW ’S PHILOSOPHY OF HISTORY/ Gersion Appel

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STORY OF A CONVERT/Mollie N. Kolatch...........

A PRESENTATION OF JEWISH PRACTICE/ Abraham N. AvRutick ..... ...........................

DEPARTM ENTS AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS .......................... D r a w in g s

A h ro n

G e li e s

C o p y r ig h t

U n i o n o f O r t h o d o x J e w is h C o n g r e g a t i o n s

OCTOBER, 1961

o f A m e ric a

LEON TAUBES teaches English at Yeshiva University and is a doctoral student at Columbia University. A graduate of Yeshiva College, Mr. Taubes received his M.A. at Columbia.

ARYEH NEWMAN, a contributor to these pages over several years, was born in England, is a graduate of Gateshead Yeshiva, and received an M.A. in English Literature at Cam bridge. Mr. Newman is director of the Jewish Agency’s Re ligious Education Programs for English speaking diasporas and lecturer in the English Department of the Hebrew University.

among our contributors

RABBI RALPH PELCOVITZ is the spiritual leader of Con gregation Knesseth Israel, Far Rockaway, N. Y. A musmach of Mesivta Torah Vodaath, Rabbi Pelcovitz is a former presi dent of the Rabbinical Alliance of America and served as editor of “Perspective,” published by that organization.

DR. ISACQUE GRAEBER has contributed to numerous Jewish, general, and scholarly periodicals and is the author of several books. His forthcoming volume, “Paradise Redis covered,” is a history of the social and religious life of the American Jews, 1660-1960. A graduate of the Chaim Berlin Yeshivah, Dr. Graeber received his Ph.D. in the social sciences.

DR. JOSEPH GOLDSCHMIDT is director of the Department of Religious Education of Israel’s Ministry of Education and Culture.

RABBI LOUIS TUÇHMAN, spiritual leader of Congregation Agudath Achim in Freehold, N. J., is chairman of the Scouting Commission of the Rabbinical Council of America and assistant editor of that organization’s journal “Tradition.” 2

JEWISH LIFE

Y outh A liy ah9s R eligious W ards HE storm aroused by disclosures of wrongful placement of religious children in the current Youth Aliyah program has been allayed by the new commitment made by the Jewish Agency Jerusalem Executive. Henceforth, the agreement pro vides, children coming from religious homes and schools will be settled only in locations of authentically religious character. To insure proper implementation, a special commission has been appointed, consisting of four educators, two of whom rep resent the Chief Rabbinate and the Commission for Religious Youth Aliyah.

Experience indicates that vigilant action must be main tained to see that the commitment is scrupulously observed. Over the years, similar agreements have been repeatedly vio lated. Of the many thousands of children of religious back ground brought to Israel under the successive Youth Aliyah undertakings, only a minority have been settled in places con ducive to the maintenance of their religious heritage. The rest A chievem ent have come under the sway of non-religious forces, to be weaned A ttained away by a sure process from religious belief and observance. This is a shameful blot on the record of Youth Aliyah, other wise a noble achievement. In the past, although incontrovertible proof has again and again been brought forward—on one occasion by an inter-party investigating committee of Israel’s Knesseth—the ugly problem was largely screened from the public eye by a complex web of party maneuvers. In the present case, disclosure of the facts was met by a massive barrage of denial and vituperation. This notwithstanding, the facts, thoroughly established, could not be suppressed. It was plain that several hundred children, reOCTOBER, 1961

ligiously reared, were being steered to a non-religious environ ment and upbringing. Step-by-step examination of the situation showed that a key factor *is the character and role of the madrichim. Under the Youth Aliyah system, the children are placed in the charge of these counselors from their initial assemblage until their final settlement. Once away from their homes and families, the chil dren are psychologically and practically dependent on their The madrichim, who have total influence on their wards. Practically Key all the madrichim have been recruited from non-religious Role groups. Exposed, defenseless, to the irreligious attitude and ex ample of their mentors, the children soon become ripe for “de-religionizing. ” Under these conditions many succumb with in the first few weeks, while in temporary pre-settlement camps. From that stage to “voluntary choice” of a non-religious loca tion for permanent settlement is an easy step. Such, evidence has shown, has been the pattern through the years and such was the pattern in the present case. As for those who did not initially succumb, some were placed in re ligious surroundings, but the rest were assigned, willy-nilly, to non-religious locations — on the grounds, soon proved untrue, that accommodations were not available for them at religious locations. NE might have supposed that when this instance of mass O soul-snatching was brought to light, Jews everywhere, of all shades of opinion, would voice their sense of outrage. True enough, there did rise a storm of protest — but from some quarters the cries were directed not at the scandal exposed but at those who exposed it! Through the organs of public com munication, Jewish and non-Jewish, the chorus echoed and re echoed: “Fanatics”. . .“Extremists” . / ¿ “Religious Zealots”. . . Chorus and the most damning term in the lexicon of the high-minded: of Ultra-Orthodox!” The impassioned cacophony of villification Invective and invective sank to a strange note when the president of Hadassah, in that organization’s periodical, darkly pondered: It is not easy to determine at what point freedom misused be comes a menace.” Evidently “the orthodox” are to be taken in hand: “The determination as to how far they can pursue their mission rests with the society of which they are a part.” And, going even beyond the disclaimers made by Youth Aliyah di rector Moshe Kol, the member-readers are informed, with no trace of equivocation: “The fact is that every orthodox Youth Aliyah ward is placed in an institution which adheres to ortho dox practices and offers orthodox education” and which has met the specifications of the orthodox rabbinate of Israel.”

JEWISH LIFE

The interests of Youth Aliyah wards are ill-served by such tactics. This time, the truth has spoken too clearly to be drowned out. The children have been entrusted to the con science as well as the physical care of the Jewish people. Con science may no longer be blinded to the sacred trust.

The Federation A nom aly HE current twofold campaign of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York for a building fund of $104,365,000 and a maintenance fund of $22,500,000 is a fresh re minder of an extraordinary anomaly. In the case of every other religious denomination on the American scene the financing and direction of communal, philanthropic, and welfare institu tions are in the hands of the denomination’s own authorized, responsible organs. This is in fact taken as a matter of course, and no other method would be entertained. How different is the situation in the American Jewish community! With us, this vital phase of endeavor is a sort of private enterprise — con ducted in the name of the Jewish community, in behalf of the Jewish community, and with the funds of the Jewish commu nity, but completely self-constituted, with no organic relation ship with, and no responsibility to, the agencies of religious life.

In practically every American city where Jews dwell in numbers, federations and community chests have been organ ized to provide consolidated handling of the funds for com munal welfare. With some minor variations, the pattern is Private consistent: the federation is a self-constituted, self-governing Structure, body^ composed of individuals who as a rule are not the official Public representatives of the religious community. The extreme exRole ample is the New York Federation. Directing itself to the wel fare needs of the largest metropolitan body of Jews on earth, the New York Federation functions on a scale that becomes more huge from year to year. Its influence on communal life is profound. Statistically speaking, of every dollar that is con tributed by New York Jews for philanthropic and communal purposes, a major proportion passes through the hands of the Federation. Yet this giant, serving a public role for a Jewish populace exceeding that of the State of Israel, functions as a private organization. It mobilizes, disposes of, and necessarily controls the use of funds larger than the budgets of some na tions — but the organization, not the community, may deter mine its program and policies. OCTOBER, 1961

NDER such a topsy-turvy set-up, it is only to be expected that policies keyed to the views of influential individuals rather than to basic Jewish principles should come to the fore. In the case of other religious denominations, it is held basic that the institutions created to serve their needs must neces sarily fulfill the tenets of their faith. Federation-sponsored in stitutions, to the contrary, are in the majority conducted with little regard for sacred Jewish laws and tenets. As a notorious example, while a few hospitals and other institutions of the Federation chain observe Kashruth, the rest are' Terefah.

Ever since the battle, a few years ago, for Kashruth at the Long Island Jewish Hospital, leaders of the New York Federation have shown increased sensitivity to the sentiments of the religious community. Special personnel has been as signed to the cultivation of better relationships and con siderable efforts have been made to involve both prominent Beyond individuals of the traditional community and the congregational Better sphere as a whole in Federation endeavor. To palliate the Relations stark offense to New York’s hundreds of thousands of ortho dox Jews, supplies of kosher food packages have been made available to patients so requesting. But all such measures have not served and can not serve as a real corrective. So long as the New York Federation, and all the like federations, are constituted as they are, Judaism can never be more than tolerated in the Jewish community’s own welfare institutions.

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On to the Yeshivah! An Israeli Phenomenon By ARYEH NEWMAN

A resurgence of the will of Israeli youth to learn for Torah's sake brings into being a n ew trend on the Israel educational scene.

H O U G H B IA LIK called the Yeshivah “the power-house” of the Jewish people and immortalized the yeshivah-bochur, in his poem Hamathmidy whom he pictured studying the tomes of the Talmud throughout the night in ecstatic chant as if trans posed to another world, it was the nostalgic picture of the past or a fast disappearing present that he created. Little did he imagine, and less did the students of his poetry a decade ago in the State of Israel, that the yeshivah would become the one form of educa tion capable of attracting to its pre cincts the modern disillusioned and skeptic sabra. But that is what is happening in Israel today. And it is worth-while describing the phenomenon and striv ing to go to its roots. Israeli education is passing through a crisis, not so much a bread-andbutter one of buildings, equipment, teachers as a spiritual one. The shtetel, Yiddish culture, Hebrew grammar, the Bible, and Talmud leave the sabra

OCTOBER, 1961

cold. They are just so much material to be mastered sufficiently to pass his ipatriculation examination and gain entrance to the university to pursue his professional career. The rebellion of the maskilim against the East Euro pean “ghetto,” the fight to revive the Hebrew language, is a matter of his tory for him. Because of the break away from Jewish religious observ ance that characterized the founders of his curriculum he is not given any thing uniquely Jewish to derive from his studies of the Bible and Talmud. They are folklore, legendary material, literature, no more inspiring than any other literature. Indeed the fact that he has to spend so many lessons per week on them seems to him out of all proportion, not allowing him to con centrate on the really “useful” sub jects of life. The declared aim of all this tuition, “to present to him the Bible as the product of Jewish genius and its heroes as examples of ethical conduct,” (from the syllabus of the Israel State Primary School) even if 7

emphasized by the teacher, never com municates. HE position has not been quite as acute in the religious high school but even there teachers and rabbis found to their consternation that some of their graduates were so uninspired by their four years of high-schooling as to forsake their religious observ ance once they started on their career. But still they left with some under standing of the historic Jewish way of life and were easily at home in the Jewish milieu in other parts of the world. All this led three years ago to the introduction into the general primary school curriculum of a subject called “Jewish consciousness,” designed to give information about Jewish reli gious norms—-the prayer book, cus toms: “We shall explain to the chil dren the essence of this day [Yom Kippur] . . . the synagogue is not at all disqualified by us and no shame attaches to visiting this place of as sembly which has served the Jewish people as a place of prayer and spirit ual release from time immemorial” (directive of Director General, Israel State Primary School, August 30, 1957). But it was emphasized that “the program is not designed to change the character of the state school as a national school which will not direct education to religion just as it has not and will not direct edu cation against religion” (directive of Director General, November 7, 1958).

T THE same time a revolution was taking place in the field of oiffiodox religious education. Original l y it started not from above by the teachers but by the students. Graduates of the Bnei Akiva youth movement, who had themselves organized the first

A 8

modern yeshivoth in Israel where chalutzim with open-necked shirts studied the Talmud and Jewish ethical works in modern Hebrew with the same fer vor as Bialik’s mathmid, tagged on at their first yeshivah at Kfar Haroeh optional secular studies for the ma triculation in the evening with the permission of their principal. This became the model for the yeshivah tichon or yeshivah-cum-high school which is sweeping Israel at the present moment.* Within three years over a score of such institutions had sprung up all over the country with obligatory secu lar studies in the afternoon, housing some 4,000 students, with half that number again turned away for lack of room. These institutions are of four varieties: primary, vocational, agricul tural, and two-year post-primary. But they have this in common—the traditional yeshivah way of life pro vides the basic, all-pervading frame work within a corporate all-day, allnight, and all-week and Shabboth pro gram. It is the children, not parents, who clamor to be accepted in these schools, and in not a few cases they are 14-year-olds who have never seen *The idea of the yeshivah plus secular studies can be traced to the Beth Talmud of Rabbi Simcha Zissel, one of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter’s leading disciples in the last century. It functioned for about ten years at Chelm and Grobin in Russia between 1876 and 1886. In the after noons a number of hours were devoted to Rus sian, German, mathematics, and geography, but in spite of its having the blessing of Rabbi Yisroel Salanter himself, the experiment could not withstand the attacks levelled against it by rabbinical circles. Details are given in Volume 2 of Tenuath Hamussar by Rabbi Dov Katz. It closed down, but not before producing some gifted spiritual leaders and no doubt providing the germ of the idea of its revival at a , more opportune time. With the failure of the sécondary school plus a little religious study, the suc cessful establishment of a network of yeshivahcum-high schools can be said to be the delayedaction product of Salanter’s Mussar movement germinating in the favorable climate created by the pioneer religious youth movements and the emergence of the Jewish State. JEWISH LIFE

Judaism in their homes or schools, let alone a yeshivah. Indeed no parent could get a child to accept such a program of studies without the latter’s wholehearted cooperation. It involves rising at six followed by prayers, then study of dinim (Jewish religious cus toms), breakfast at eight, a Talmud

studies, in concentrated “cram” doses to keep up with and ahead of the con tinental style matriculation curriculum of high schools in Israel. At six there is supper, followed by another bout of communal Talmud study-preparation for the next day’s lession, till eight o’clock when evening prayers are said.

The n ew m ain acad e m ic b u ild in g of Y eshivath H adorom in Rechovoth. This yesh iv ah , sponsored b y the R ab b in ical C ouncil of A m erica, com bines Jew ish a n d sec u la r stu d ies on the h ig h school level.

lesson for two hours from 8:30 to 10:30, a short break, and then selfstudy with a partner until one P.M. in the common study hall. This resounds in the traditional, age-old yeshivah manner with the ecstatic chanting of hundreds of boys over their Talmud tones. Afternoon prayer is followed by four hours of ordinary high school OCTOBER, 1961

A work of mussar (edification, such as Bahya’s “Duties of the Heart” or other medieval Jedish philosophicalethical works) is then studied. From 8:30 to 10:30 the high school home work is done and then, lights out. But there are still to be found boys following the path of Bialik’s Hamathmid, studying far into the night. 9

HAT is the secret of the attrac tion of this exacting program? Joseph Bentwich, the veteran Israeli educator and former principal of the Reali School in Haifa, Israel’s fore most high school, has penned a mas terly and as yet unique book on “Education in the State of Israel.” In his chapter on yeshivoth, after noting that fifteen per cent of Israel’s high school students choose either a yeshivah high school or a full-fledged yeshivah without any sort of secular studies and that the percentage rises as high as twenty-five per cent when we reach the over-eighteens, he states (in his book): The yeshivoth evidently possess an inner vitality [the italics are its au thor’s]. What is its origin? . . . perhaps in the content of study, in the Torah

itself, particularly the mussar method (stress on practical ethics, the holy life)? Or perhaps the methods of study, the intellectual challenge of sharpening the wits and Talmudic dia lectic (pilpul)? Or the teachers, most of them inspiring and utterly devoted, or the educational influence of corpo rate living in residence, or the sense of mission set against the rising material ism of the surrounding society? At any rate, when you enter one of the yeshi voth you cannot but be impressed by the concentration, and in most cases enthusiasm too, of the pupils (in spite of the methods of tuition that violate all the canons of modern pedagogics)! It should be borne in mind that this popularity applies not only to the yeshivah high school, with its admix ture of secular studies, but also to the

The Ponovez Y eshivah in Bnai Brak, w hose p rogram of stu d y follows th a t of the classic Y eshivah, is the la rg e st in Israel a n d one of the m ost renow ned. The various sections of its v ast, m odern b u ild in g h o u se study, ad m in istrativ e, a n d dorm itory facilities. 10

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yeshivah proper. These institutions are similarly overcrowded. The largest of them, Ponovezh, has increased its student population over the last three years from 300 to 500 and now to over a thousand and still has to turn away many for lack of room. The yeshivah high school sends its own graduates pouring not into the uni versities but into the higher yeshivoth before they finally embark on a pro fessional career. f I THIS phenomenon has not gone JL unnoticed in Israel and articles have appeared in leading newspapers. Haaretz devoted a series to the ye shivoth in Israel written by a non religious sabra, who on this occasion saw the inside of the institutions he described for the first time. He de scribed them with a sympathy border ing on enthusiasm and missionary fervor. He felt they gave something which he had lacked and he fully concurred with Bentwich’s assertion th at yeshivoth rem ained the only places in Israel which gave an edu cation, as opposed to the mere instill ing of information and facts for examination purposes. The mass circulation evening paper Yedioth Acharonoth devoted a twopage article headlined “Disillusion ment with Secular Education Causes Astonishing Process” and concluded that with commensurate financial sup port for buildings and staff the yeshi voth could take in many scores of thousands of pupils in place of the ten thousand at present studying within their walls. The Histadruth, Israel’s Labor Federation, has shown its own evaluation of the situation by financ ing a new yeshivah high school in Jerusalem that started functioning this year. OCTOBER, 1961

The eagerness to enter the yeshivah high school is even more impressive when the heavy financial sacrifice in volved is taken into consideration. The board and lodging, the long teaching hours, means a heavy bill per child which someone has to foot. A means test is applied to the prospective stu dent who pays heavily if his family is comfortable but no one is turned away if he passes the extremely com petitive entrance examination. Only the fittest survive it. And yet there is no lack of candidates. G. K. Chesterton’s remarks on the importance of orthodoxy in his book “Heretics” are being remarkably borne out by the behavior of the sabra in the yeshivah context. He said: “The vice of the modern notion of mental prog ress is that it is always something concerned with the breaking of bonds . . . the casting away of dogmas. But if there be such a thing as mental growth it must mean the growth into more and more definite convictions, into more and more dogmas. The human brain is a -machine for com ing to conclusions; if it cannot, it is rusty . . . when in his own imagina tion he sits as G-d holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant ani mals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broadminded.” n p H E Israeli school has tried to be J- broadminded, to be neutral and uncommitted. But the sabras, like all human beings, seek a philosophy of life, convictions, and a vision, and some of them are finding what they seek—a Jewish vision, Jewish convic tions—in the yeshivah. 11

Wanted: An American Orthodox Image By RALPH PELCOVITZ

OR MANY YEARS, far too many years, American orthodox Jewry suffered from the threefold scourge of inadequacy, insecurity, and inferi ority. One need not belabor this his toric tragic “troika.” A few paragraphs of explanation and elucidation will suffice. We will then address ourselves to the far brighter present and more hopeful future. The huge wave of Jewish immigra tion to the United States, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth cen turies, came from that fortress and bastion of orthodox Judaism—eastern Europe. These hardy souls found America a bewildering and alien land where Torah observance was fraught with difficulties and nigh insurmount able obstacles. Eking out a living was of paramount importance. Security and social adjustment were the great challenges to be confronted and con quered—at any price. Unfortunately, the price was very high. Abandon ment of Jewish practices and tradi tions, of Torah education and adher ence to mitzvoth—this was the cruel medium of exchange, the coin of the realm—or so it seemed. The majority were willing to pay the price and the tenacious orthodox practicing minority were beleaguered, bewildered, and beaten.

The means to combat this spiritual decline, this rapidly encroaching Jew ish erosion, this dissolution of au thentic, historic Judaism, were woe fully inadequate. This inadequacy in turn resulted in a painful sense of inferiority and insecurity in the Torahtrue camp. The few fading champions of Orthodoxy reluctantly admitted they were fighting a losing battle, where all their cherished hallowed practices and principles were rapidly being van quished, and a new, modern, liberal “Judaism” was emerging victorious. The optimists were but few and limited in number, and even if they saw a light where it didn’t exist there were far more pessimists who insisted upon rushing in to blow it out. To the delight, however, of these eternal incurable optimists, and to the dismay of our incorrigible pessimists, the orthodox Jewish community refused to acknowledge their oft-issued death certificates, and, like that famous A m erican hum orist, dem onstrated with time that their heralded demise was a gross exaggeration. HE present-day scene, though far from being one of all light and no shadows, is nonetheless a most heartening one. The years of faithful

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plantings in the Torah chinuch field are finally bearing fruit. Americanborn and -educated men and women have become the proud, vigorous standard bearers of Torah Judaism. The bleak winter of our disenchant ment has given way to a new spring of hope and the voice of commit ment to the traditional law is once again heard in the land. Inadequacy has been replaced by adequate leadership, facilities, insti tutions, and organization. A sense of status, prestige, and even fierce pride as Torah-oriented Jews has negated the sense of inferiority. The deep roots of happy, total Jewish living, without conflicts in the American community, have driven out the spectre of inse curity. There are many who represent this new look in American Orthodoxy and we salute them, honor them, and welcome them. Let us pause, however, to consider this emerging American Jewish com munity of ours. Let us with frankness, clarity, and objectivity analyze the new Torah-centered community. For these are changing times, not only in the welcome sense of a positive re vival and renaissance of orthodox Jewry, but also in the new challenges and responsibilities facing us because, not in spite of, our accomplishments and rediscovered strength. There are tasks to be performed, battles to be joined and fought through to victory. The kochoth may be here, with more arriving, but as it is true in inter national politics so it is in community affairs: it is not power but the will to use it that really counts. One senses a strange lack of the adventurous spirit in Torah ranks. There is to be detected a disquieting spirit of com placency, of caution and even com promise, which may have its points, OCTOBER, 1961

but one must learn to distinguish be tween compromise and stalemate. At times it seems we have become too gentle, genteel, and gentile! Too soon have we become comfortable and sat isfied—which may satisfy and comfort our deviationist brethren but should cause concern and apprehension in orthodox circles. We are in danger of losing our unique talent for being irritating, instructive, and inspiring; somewhere along the line we failed to project our “image”; we have some how lost our sense of purpose and direction. N SPITE of all our progress, our image is not clear—it is blurred, hazy, and confusing. We can ill afford the luxury of growing like Topsy— undisciplined, without plan, purpose, or goal. Like the captain who, when asked how long it would take him to stop his ship replied that he could rqanage in three miles, adding, “When you command such a ship you have to think miles ahead”—so must the cap tains of this vehicle called American Orthodoxy “think years ahead.” This failure of a sharp, clear image to emerge can be traced to a number of causes. The results are also unfortu nately quite discernible, real, and dis turbing. Let us enumerate a few and then examine them a bit more closely. Some time ago, in the bleak, im potent days of American Orthodoxy, there was an understandable readiness to permit secular-oriented organiza tions and mixed rabbinic and syna gogue bodies to represent the total Jewish community. The mere presence of orthodox representatives in these groups did not serve to project the voice of Torah to the Jewish and nonJewish community. At times this Torah voice was muted and silenced—not

overtly but through submersion and loss of identity, and at times through lack of a vehicle which could or would articulate the stand and view point of Orthodoxy. There are many errors which, once adopted, become principles and tlm “blended Judaism” is a prime example. The quiet resignation of American Orthodoxy in accepting a pittance from Welfare Funds and Federations for Torah-oriented institutions and organizations, while huge sums are allocated to deviationist seminaries and questionable Jewish culture and research activities, is a glaring illus tration of our continued impotence and inefficacy as an influence-wielding force on the American Jewish scene. The failure to communicate the special, unique needs of Torah-observ ant Jewry to the Jewish and nonJewish powers that be is another fla grant example of our inability to present our case, clearly, vigorously, and effectively. We refer to such areas as Kashruth in Jewish hospitals and like institutions, Kashruth and Shabboth observance in the armed forces of the United States; the harassment of Sabbath observers who conduct their businesses on Sunday; antiShechitah legislation and aid to edu cation. In the area of Kashruth and Shabboth there is a crying need to present our demands as rights and not as a matter of sufferance or tolerant indulgence. In the vital area of govern ment and legislation, as it affects orthodox Jews, our stand, our voice, too often encumbered by other spokes men, have not been presented with unequivocal clarity. The case for Sab bath, Shechitah and other similar fundamental principles of Jewish re ligious practice has been made by those who are vulnerable, since they themselves are representative of the 14

non-observant whose active disdain for these sacred principles is. well known to the very officials to whom they turn for assistance and sympa thetic understanding. N SUM, we have been unsuccessful in projecting our needs and our image both internally, to the Jewish community at large, and externally, to the non-Jewish agencies, bodies, and powers. We have not adequately told our story, our voice has not been clearly heard, and most are unaware not only of our needs but of our growth, our convictions, and our vital ity. There is a crucial need for com munication, education, and enlighten ment. Let us now define and delineate these areas of failure and submit some suggestions for strengthening our cause and advancing our program of Torah hashkofah in the American com munity. The inequities present in public funds distribution in this country, where orthodox institutions are grossly downgraded and deprived of their rightful subventions and allocations, are by now common knowledge. The reason for this disparity is not entirely one of “anti-Orthodoxy,” or antago nism to Torah as some, too conven iently, claim. To a great extent the fault is ours. The Torah community is guilty, for it has not communicated. We have failed to tell our story—an exciting, dynamic, thrilling one—to the American public. Certainly we have not done so dramatically and graphically. The average finance committee or board member of a Welfare Fund or Federation in any given United States Jewish community has a very sketchy idea of orthodox institutions in this country, or in Israel. He may have

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some hazy, quite incomplete, knowl edge of Yeshiva University but he has rarely any concept of yeshivoth named Torah Vodaath, Chaim Berlin, Tifereth Jerusalem, and all the other out standing citadels of Torah. These are but strange, alien sounding names to him. What knows he of Torah Umesorah, or any Kolel; of Chinuch Atzmai, P’eylim, or B’nei Akiva? The picture of Torah’s progress, developed and sharp as it may appear to its friends, is either totally negative or blurred and distorted to those who control the purse strings of huge Jew ish public funds. Certainly, we cannot look to the usually hostile executive director or administrative vice-presi dent of the Welfare Funds and Fed erations to enlighten their employers as to the myriad flourishing, dynamic orthodox institutions here and in Israel. The tragic result of this (at times innocent) discrimination practiced by central fund agencies is the desperate financial straits of so many Torah institutions. They in turn are reduced —nay, forced—to resort to distasteful and even degrading means to meet their budgets. This then serves to per petuate the unhappy image of Ortho doxy as “schnorrish” and undignified, which makes Torah causes low-manon-the-totem-pole the next time allo cations are made—and so the vicious cycle is set in motion once again. A well planned, organized, con certed, united effort is critically needed —financed and directed by and for all our Torah institutions—to educate, inform, and enlighten the men who guide the destiny of huge amounts of public money—much of it contrib uted by Jews who are themselves orthodox, or certainly sympathetic to Torah ideals. Unfortunately, these OCTOBER, 1961

donors are mute, timid, and/or naive. This is one area where unified action is imperative—including all orthodox rabbinic and lay groups—without any fear of marginal conflicts of ideology or philosophies of orthodox Judaism. Perhaps it is in this area that what we need more than spokesmen—is men! PEAKING of spokesmen, let us now direct our attention to that peculiar, oft-disquieting and alarming personage known quaintly as the “American Jewish spokesman.” His natural habitat is in the august cham bers of governors, legislators, mayors, and similar representatives of the peo ple. His announcements and pro nouncements receive prominent play in the press. His area of activity and province of expert knowledge are awe inspiring, covering a wide range of vital topics. These include Jewish civil rights, Jewish education, Israel, Sab bath laws, Kashruth, significance of Jewish holidays, and similar areas of vital Jewish interest and concern. This spokesman, representing all of us, this symbol of the total Jewish community, is apt to be either a secular Jew or a deviationist clergyman. The authentic voice of Judaism and Jewry—the voice of Torah—is rarely heard and the case for principles sacred to the orthodox Jew is presented and pleaded by those who are not personally af fected. How much sincerity, for ex ample, can shine through in pleading the shelving of anti-Shechitah legisla tion by those who themselves eat tarfuth? How much passion can there be in fighting ^Sunday blue laws which cause critical hardship to shomrey Shabboth, by those who violate the Sabbath openly and brazenly? How emphatic can be the request for Kash-

ruth facilities on Army bases by spokesmen who are themselves stran gers to the dietary laws? The nonJewish government official, legislator, or commanding officer can readily sense whether the Jewish spokesman before him arguing the case for Shabboth, Kashruth, Shechitah feels it deeply and sincerely in its own terms or whether he is just championing the rights of a minority—defending an aspect of civil liberties. The story is told that in Czarist Russia the Jews were once threatened with the issuance of a decree prohibit ing them from wearing their tradi tional garb and the growing of peyoth. When the rabbis took counsel as to the counter-measures necessary to re voke this harsh decree, one of them suggested that a prominent Jewish ad vocate, an enlightened Jew, a maskil, be retained to plead the case in the royal palace. This suggestion, how ever, was vetoed by one of the g’dolim who wisely observed that though he did not question the honesty or com petence of the proposed spokesman, nonetheless since he, clean-shaven and modern-garbed, was not personally in volved, he could not argue the case with complete devotion, fervor, and passion. The rabbi then interpreted the phrase in Psalms, “Trust not in princes, in man in whom there is no help,” in this manner: “Put not your trust in a man who himself does not need the help!” Not until a completely authentic, unadulterated voice is raised—a voice which will be recognized and respected by the non-Jew as being a consistent voice—will we succeed in these areas of vital legislation and the protection of our religious practices—as our right and not as sufferance. 16

LL that we have submitted to this point leads us inexorably .to a burning issue of our day. The problem of orthodox membership in mixed rab binic and synagogue bodies has been subjected by now to far more heat than light. It is certainly not our inten tion to fan the flames of this still smoldering fire. In all frankness, the stand of the writer is unequivocal in support of the issur of the Roshey Hayeshivoth. However, our argument against continued participation of orthodox rabbis and laymen in such organizations as the New York Board of Rabbis and the Synagogue Council of America is divorced from all inter dictions and questions of Halochah. It is based upon reason and realpolitik. Our contention is a simple one. By submerging ourselves we lose our identity, we sacrifice our unique voice, we forfeit our opportunity to project our viewpoint in a clear, decisive un equivocal manner. There is, as a result of this blending, a mixed, hesitant voice— unrecognizable, tim id, and pareve-—instead of the strong, proud, consistent voice of Torah Judaism through the medium of an orthodox Board and Council. It would doubt less benefit Orthodoxy if the zeal ex pended in behalf of agencies for “inter-denominational” cooperation be channeled toward the development of similar vehicles for the orthodox Rab binate and laity.

History may well ask, at some future date, why the clear, dynamic voice of an awakened Orthodoxy was so muted—for the dubious privilege of becoming a “wing” of American Jewry, a “denomination,” rather than the historic, immortal voice of Torah. To take a stand alone may be difficult, but certainly the hope of achievement JEWISH LIFE

should far outweigh the fear of dis aster. The call is obviously for unity within Orthodoxy, but if it is to be realistic and successful, it must not be for uniformity. The merging of ortho dox rabbinic groups and orthodox lay organizations is apparently not the practical approach, in view of the re alities of the situation, nor is it necessarily the desirable one. There is much to be said in favor of “organi zational pluralism”—especially in a country which has prospered and thrived on “cultural pluralism.” Let us note, however, that the exist ence in the United States of a multi tude of parties, societies, and organi zations does not preclude that clearly recognized and accepted single voice and will of the American people throughout the world, when circum stances so demand. There can also be one clearly identified and recognized T orah voice and position, when needed, without a single orthodox group sacrificing one iota of its au tonomy. What is required is simply that all who believe in Torah, and abide by the teachings and law of Torah and cherish her sacred honor stand aside—together—alone—not in glorious isolation, but in responsible, courageous conviction—and articulate to the American public our beliefs, principles, purpose, and united will. We now have the strength to do it, but as we have already stated, “what counts is not the power but the will to use it.” Let us make one important dis tinction at this point. Unity there can be among those to whom the fourth “R”—religion—incorporates the three “R’s—revelation, reverence, and rele vance. Orthodox Jewry, disparate and divergent as its component elements may appear in form, different as they OCTOBER, 1961

may be from each other in approach, emphasis, and even degree of observ ance—is committed to these funda mentals and united in loyalty to them. Revelation to the orthodox Jew means Torah min hashomayim, with out embarrassment or qualifying ex planatory, tortured apologia. There is reverence for Torah, written and oral, for Halochah and custom, and for the posek—the Torah authority. As a result of this faith and respect there is a sincere, profound affirmation of Torah’s relevance to man and society at all times under all conditions. To those who so believe and live, though there be differences in approach and emphases, these divergent opinions function within a common framework of acts, deeds, observances, and sacred beliefs. This is not true of otir deviationist brethren, whose fourth “R” contains little or none of these three “R’s”. We must therefore, lamentably, until they return to this framework, exclude them in religious matters from this “unity in diversification.” HERE is an abundance of tired, trite, hackneyed, lazy thinking in our midst, its only claim to attention being its hoary inflexibility and an tique respectability. It is time that we took a fresh, frank, honest look at ourselves and find the courage for an agonizing reappraisal. We must do so, for we deal only in the truth of Torah, which demands honesty from us, the guardians of the Torah. We must find the strength to do so, for that is our destiny and lot. We are the remnant of the keepers of the truth—and that is our power. And we shall be heard, for the truth of Torah is such that ignorance may deride it, malice distort it, comfort resent it, but there it is—for this is certain, none can ignore it.

The Alliance Israelite Universelle — A Historical Evaluation By ISACQUE GRAEBER V iew ed in historical perspective, the century-long career of the first organized m ovem ent for defense of Jewish civil rights and aid to em battled com m uni ties sh ed $ light on concepts and goals once held param ount but today under challenge.

HE s t o r y of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, now one century old, mirrors the history of the Jews in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its rise, growth, and decline re flects the whole network of interna tional politics as well as the social and economic fluctuations of the Western world. Actually, the Alliance Israelite Universelle issued from the impact of the French Revolution up on Jewish life. It was brought into being by men who were animated by the ideas of equality, human rights, and democracy and the universal dis semination of the “new philosophy” with its battle-cry of reason, libera tion, and humanity which had led to the Revolution itself. One of the fruits of this new faith was Jewish Eman cipation. A people of mèteques (for eigners) and, as such, tolerated but status-less, “in a precarious, dishonor ing position,” had suddenly beheld a beckoning light. They had a country for which they were “willing to die,

aye even unto death.” They belonged. To the Jews of France, the Dec laration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens in the Constituent As sembly, September 7, 1791, marked the arrival of the millenium. Jewish teachers led their pupils with the re sounding toast, “To the Mountain of 1791,” comparing the principles of the French Constitution with the Torah given on Mount Sinai and urg ing them to hasten the advances to wards a happier, freer, and more equal society. For the first time in the history of the Diaspora, Jews en joyed the fullest opportunity freely to participate in the economic, political, and cultural life of their country. Cer tainly non-Jews experienced nothing comparable to the mental reorienta tion which was involved in the change. The first results of Emancipation in France, and later in England and in Germany, led to the assimilation of large numbers of Jews to the nonJewish populations of the countries JEWISH LIFE

in which they were living. Through out the greater part of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth large and influential sections of Jewish opinion viewed Jewish tra ditionalism and nationalism with trep idation* apprehension, lest Emanci pation be jeopardized or retarded. In the synagogue, movements of reform manifested themselves. In Germany, particularly, many Jews revised the manner of their lives and reformu lated the doctrines of their faith in keeping with the promises of liberty, equality, and fraternity. H EN the year 1840 came around, a momentous year for world Jewry, the Alliance Israelite Universelle was not yet in being, but events foreshadowed its birth. France was going through a series of social turmoils, insurrectionist outbreaks, strengthening of the “Church Mili tant,” intrigues between Great Brit ain and France on the international chessboard, and competing claims in the erection of “fortresses of inter ests” in the Ottoman Empire, marked by France’s special claim as protec tor of Christianity in the Levant. On February 5, 1840 a Capuchin friar, Father Thomas, a French sub ject, disappeared shortly after a quarrel with a Turkish muleteer. The Capuchins spread the rumor that he had been slain by the Jews of the town, who were going to use his blood for the baking of matzah. The French consul, Count Ratti-Menton, insisted that the governor, Sherif Pasha, investigate these charges. Thereupon a number of Jews were arrested and tortured; sixty Jewish children were shut up in cells to force a confession from their parents. Mob violence raged against the Jewish in-

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habitants, synagogues were demol ished, and some Jews were fatally beaten. One died under his suffering, and one apostatized. To make mat ters worse, the consul of France in volved himself in the affair by sup porting the Catholic monks, for France under Guizot as foreign min ister, and subsequently in defiance of Great Britain, was interested in act ing as protector of the Church. The Damascus Affair quickly be came an international cause celebre. There were protest meetings all over the Western world, Great Britain in tervened, as did Austria, which had her own political considerations, mounting guard over the route to Salonica. Even Russia, protector of Armenians and Slavs in the Ottoman Empire, took the Jewish side in this instance. The United States vigor ously condemned the anti-Jewish ex cesses and instructed its consul in Alexandria to see “that justice and humanity may be extended to these persecuted people, whose cry of dis tress has reached our shores.” In France itself, Adolphe Cremieux, distinguished lawyer who was vice-president of that country’s Cen tral Jewish Consistory, raised his elo quent voice against the crime being commited with the aid and the po litical expediency of his motherland. But its bid for exclusive control of the Near East, bolstered by its claimed role as “protector of the Church,” kept France from doing anything to right the wrong com mitted in its name. Cremieux and three other outstanding Jews of the period, Professor Salomon Murik, distinguished Orientalist, Sir Moses Montefiore, and Dr. Louis Loewe, later successor to Ernst Renan at the College of France, went to Egynt to intercede with Mehemet Ali, Pasha

of Egypt. Although pro-French at the time, the pasha responded by issuing a firman (order) freeing the pris oners; moreover, Cremieux and Montefiore received a pledge from the ruling authorities that the Jews would be protected against further accusa tions of that kind. HE Damascus Affair was a turn ing point in modern Jewish his tory. It was the first time that west ern Jews and their leaders ventured forth to protect Jewish interests all ovér the world; nay, they sought to influence the collective intervention of European states in favor of Jews within non-Christian lands. There can be no doubt that the goodwill and support which Cremieux and Montefiore obtained from the great Powers, except France, coincided with the exigencies of conflicting power poli tics and spheres of influence vis-a-vis the “Sick Man of Europe,” Turkey. A year later, in 1841» France joined the other great Powers in signing the Straits Convention, refusing to go to war to preserve Syria for Mehemet Ali. Twenty years later, when the Eu ropean political chessboard had a different complexion, a somewhat

similar episode, much nearer home, gave the Jews of Europe aaother shock. A servant-girl, in the employ of the Mortara family of Bologna, in Italy, informed a priest that four years previously, when the child Ed gar Mortara was very ill, she had secretly baptized him so as to “save his soul if he should die.” The priest reported the matter to Rome, and the Inquisition issued orders that the child be taken from his parents and reared as a Christian. One June 25, 1858, at ten o’clock at night, the Mor tara home was invaded by papal sol diers who seized the six-year-old boy. The parents tried to prove that the child had never been seriously ill and that the nurse acted out of spite. Again protests were made all over the civilized world. Emperor Franz Josef made private representations, Napoleon III interceded, as did Ger many, but to no avail. Edgar was brought up a Catholic, became an Augustine monk, and adopted a new name in honor of Pius IX. It is believed that the Mortara in cident contributed in a measure to the downfall of the Papal States and that Pius IX had this in mind when he told the young priest: “I have bought thee, my son, for the Church at a very high price.”

ENTER THE ALLIANCE ISRAELITE UNIVERSELLE HIS fresh cause celebre which had startled all sections of Eu ropean Jewry was the immediate cause for the creation of the Alliance Israelite Universelle, whose declared aim it was: “L*union de tous les Israelites litres pour emanciper tous les Israelites opprimes dans le monde.” (to organize a union of all free Is-

2(J

raelites to emancipate all the op pressed Israelites throughout the world). Internal conditions in France were now more favorable for the birth of the Alliance. This was the “liberal period” of Napoleon III. He gave workingmen the right to form unions. The Church no longer enjoyed the JEWISH LIFE

freedom of action it had formerly and state-education made progress under the direction of a man who was appointed by the emperor. The year 1860 marked a turning point also in the economic policy of France. A commercial treaty with Great Britain, followed by like agree ments with Belgium, Italy, Switzer land, and Prussia, bolstered France’s international trade. A large, affluent middle class now extended its pre eminence in every sphere of French l i f e e c o n o m i c , commercial, politi cal, and in the liberal professions: law, medicine, the press, and litera ture. The role played by the Jews in the economic and cultural devel opment of French society grew greatly. France had acquired a colonial em pire* the second in size in the world, completing the pacification of Al geria in 1857. There was also great activity in the Levant; the Emperor’s troops occupied Syria, reaffirming France’s interests in the Near East. But Russia intervened by demanding that Turkey grant her a virtual pro tectorate over all Orthodox Chris tians. To Britain and France, this Russian claim was intolerable. Both had long taken the same view of the Eastern Question, and held that the balance of power and their own Medi terranean interests required that Con stantinople and the Straits should be kept out of Russian hands. Finally, this was the new era of exploration and exploitation which, after one hundred years, is now nearing its end. This was also the prelude to the great “scramble” for Africa and other lands outside Eu rope in the last quarter of the nine teenth century. OCTOBER, 1961

HIS was the background against which the Alliance set out to slay the centuries-old dragon of Jewhatred in the West and to improve the appalling conditions of the Jews in the Moslem world. The organiza tion’s record of political intervention and tireless forays into international diplomacy, even intrigue, alone con stitutes a major chapter in the his tory of the emancipation movement. Its techniques, principles, and ex ample inspired the Anglo-Jewish As sociation, the Vienna Alliance, the Society for the Spread of Enlighten ment in Russia, the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, and the American Jewish Committee. Its program of education, reconstruction, and wel fare reached out to hundreds of com munities in the Levant, North Africa, and Eastern Europe, thus ending the aloofness and isolation of Jews of the West from non-emancipated Jewry in Europe and the Moslem world. The principle of fraternal responsibility, which had receded under the on slaught of assimilation, was assumed once again and openly. The prime movers and founding fathers of the Alliance consisted of a group of seventeen men, who shared a vivid sense of their pur pose and their function in this move ment. Among them were rabbis, in tellectuals in the liberal professions, a judge of the Court of Appeals, university teachers, an editor, phy sicians, an engineer, an industrialist, a merchant, and a poet-teacher who abandoned poetry for politics. It was in the mid-year of 1860 that a pre amble was adopted, whose concern was: 1. To work everywhere for the emancipation and spiritual progress of the Jews. 2. To lend effective aid to those

A d o lp h e C re m ie u x

who suffer because they are Jews. 3. To encourage all publications likely to lead to this result. This preamble was signed by Elie A. Astruc, Chief Rabbi of Paris, Isidore Cohen, managing editor of Archives Israelites, Jules Carvallo, an engineer, Narcisse Leven, Judge of the Court of Appeals, Charles Netter, a rabbi turned merchant, and Eu gene Manuel, poet, supervisor of secondary instruction, and writer of the preamble. Behind the Alliance stood Adolphe Cremieux, who reached highest political standing in France as Minister of Justice in 1848 and as a member of the fa mous Government of National De fense which ruled the country in the fateful days of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. Cremieux became president of the Alliance in 1863, three years after its founding. As his meticulous biog rapher S. Posener observes, the fail ure to elect Cremieux to the presi dency in 1860 lay in the memory of 22

his children’s conversion; his election, it was suggested, might cause .pro tests. But as president of the Alli ance for seventeen years, Cremieux’s demarches before the European chan cellories were at once militant, stra tegic, and successful because he was a former member of the French government, a lawyer of distinction, and a journalist with many connec tions in authoritative circles and the world of politics. Cremieux was un yielding in his battle for Jewish equality, as he was in his passionate devotion to “Judaism and the Rev olution,” to quote Eugene Manuel, writer of the Alliance’s preamble. He drew upon both for his ideas in his ceaseless diplomatic correspondence throughout the world. REMIEUX and his associates had an almost mystical faith in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, and an unshakable be lief that the Alliance had a mission to work and fight for the release and emancipation of the Jews all over the world. For the implementation of this belief, the Alliance Israelite Universelle was obviously impelled to seek the “good will, sympathy,” sup port, and political and diplomatic in tervention of France. Then ranking as the second great est power in the world, France’s role; with Britain as a rival, was de cisive in Europe, in the Ottoman Empire, and in North Africa, where lived approximately one-seventh of Jewry in the “Dark Ages.” France was the one major Power that neither wavered nor vacillated in political and diplomatic support of the Alliance’s program for the Jews. This policy was by no means entirely altruistic. Subtly interwoven were France’s own

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unavoidable strategic needs and in terests in the Levant and her expand ing empire in North Africa, in both of which areas the Jews were utilized to the economic and cultural ad vantage of France. In Algeria the Jews served the role of the classical m iddlem an in w hat was a semifeudal economy. There was also France’s pride and her profound faith in the “invincibility of French culture”; the educational institutions which the Alliance planted and nur tured in France’s fortresses of inter ests brought pro-French orientation as well as a heightening of morale to the Jews of the Near East. In the Western world of that era, France was the power with which a public conscience could be associated.

Finally, the Alliance’s prestige, ac quired through its president and its Central Committee, whose member ship consisted of the most distin guished French-Jewish rabbis, intel lectuals, renowned scholars, teachers, leaders in international finance, in dustry, and commerce, was not a negligible factor in its favor. Britain of that era, the power primus inter pares in Europe and in the world, was reluctant to use that power in favor of the Jews. To be sure, it took a number of actions favoring the Jews at the representa tion of Sir Moses Montefiore, the Goldsmids, and the Rothschilds. But not until the seventies of the century did Britain decide to take parallel action with France.

THE STRUGGLE FOR JEWISH RIGHTS HROUGH the years 1860-1871 the Alliance Israelite Universelle was the only knight-errant in the world courageously fighting the of fensive for Jewish rights, now in the unstable, tense Balkans, now in equally tense Czarist Russia, in Switz erland, in the Moslem world, in the French protectorates, and in Persia. After 1871, the organization’s work was reinforced by parallel political and diplomatic action of the AngloJewish Association when the “posi tion of the Alliance was threatened by the Franco-Prussian War.” At that time (1870), the Alliance thought it advisable, for political reasons, to found in London the Anglo-Jewish Association to work as an English branch of the parent agency. How ever, both carried on separate ex istances, applied the parallel weapons

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of diplomacy, politics, and education, and each lobbied its own govern m ent.The ;political and diplomatic activi ties of the Alliance were strategically planned and executed. Its experts and agents were scholars and linguists, quite a few of whom were members of the French Academy. Their sur veys and reports on the state of the “Israelites” in the entire Orient and the Balkans had evolved into a li brary? of vital information and sta tistics. : ■ . HE Alliance utilized all the weap ons; it could summon, from moral suasion to political lobbying in the chancellories, to broad attacks on the legal -fronts. Its tireless and feverish activities: of nearly twenty years in

behalf of the Jews of Rumania, backed by Napoleon III, and subse quently at the Treaty of Berlin (1878), in which Rumania was obliged to promise protection to the Jews under Article XLIV, regret tably came to no avail. The Ru manian government had no inten tion of living up to its solemnly given word or to its constitutional promise. Recurrent interventions on the part of the signatories to the Treaty of Berlin were treated with contempt, and antisemitism became rampant. The position of the Jews in Ser bia and Bulgaria, two new states given independence by the Congress of Berlin and obliged to guarantee equality of rights “sans distinction de religion ” was for a time somewhat better, though precarious. Both coun tries continued to reassure the Alli ance of their intent to enforce article 34 of the Treaty of Berlin. How ever, social and economic tensions, political upheavals, and traditional antisemitism soon nullified “the prin ciples of equality which these two countries proclaimed before the civil ized world.” The Alliance’s demarches to Czarist Russia in 1862, 1864, and again in 1868 resulted in the commutation of the death sentence of a Minsk Jew to lift imprisonment. Nothing more happened. The courteous, beseeching memoranda, penned by Adolphe Cremieux himself, were discourteously ignored. It “could not penetrate Rus sia,” helplessly admitted the Alliance after years of crusading and battling all over Europe. It distributed 60,000 bulletins to popularize and broadcast its message all over the world, but none reached the Russian Empire. 24

FTER twenty-five years of knight-errantry fighting for the ideas of equality, rights, and democ racy for the Jews, with its battlecry of liberation and humanity, the Alliance could claim two victories: emancipation of the Jews en masse in Algeria (1870), effective protec tion for French Jews in Switzerland (1867), and the right to carry on commerce for Swiss Jews. Other po litical activities, such as the protesta tions in Hungary, and against the in terrelated antisemitic movement in Europe, brought no tangible results. Actually, the lack of greater suc cess was not because of anything the Alliance and its leaders failed to do. Both were products of the French Revolution and, like the philosophers of the Revolution, the ideologists of the Alliance were hopeful of man himself and of the human race. To them, it could scarcely be doubted that there would be progress in prin ciples of conduct and in practical morality. As long as freedom and knowledge spread these could be ex tended by democracy, economic re form, and education. It did not occur to them that antisemitism in the coun tries of eastern and southeastern Eu rope were “normal” features of the social and economic life of these lands. Nor did it occur to them that the social and political structures of these countries were quite different from those of the West. No more did they reckon with the fact that the late comers into the family of nations were addicted to a most exclusive xenophobic nationalism, which in creasingly inflamed and strained na tional feelings and hastened the Jew ish catastrophe. Moreover, the bulk of the Jews who lived in the East and Southeast led an intense life of their own. There was in these areas

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no possibility of, nor temptation to, acculturation on a larger scale. The masses of the people around were an illiterate peasantry with whom inte gration was out of the question. On top was a landed aristocracy, ac culturation With whom was precluded for different reasons. Where integra tion did occur, it was confined to the upper grades of the social scale and left the masses unaffected. HROUGH the long, dreary, op pressive eras of the 1860’s, 1880’s, and 1904-5 the leaders of the Alli ance, pursuing their philosophy of hope, opposed mass emigration of the Jews from eastern and southwestern Europe. Their program, however, was now not confined to political action but was extended to welfare and vocational rehabilitation, with em phasis on agriculture. This work did not go beyond the range of pallia tives. For the destitute, homeless, and orphaned children (1867), and for the eight thousand to twelve thou

sand tired, harassed Jews who es caped to Brody (1880’s), it meant immediate, sympathetic aid, which the Alliance and its local commit tees willingly and readily offered. But what of the hundreds of thousands of the destitute and oppressed Jews who sought freedom and economic sal vation through emigration from Rus sia, Rumania, Galicia? The agricultural colonies which the Alliance established in the 1880’s in Minnesota, the Dakotas, Oregon, Kansas, Washington, Colorado, and Arkansas, in which an estimated one thousand families were settled, yrere not the answer. The leaders of the American and British Jewish com munities were even cool to a planned immigration of Jews to America and did everything they could to both discourage Jews from immigrating there. This, at the very time when more Englishmen, Scots, Welshmen, and Irish came to America during these twenty-five years than had come during the entire preceding one hun dred and fifty years.

THE PROGRAM FOR ORIENTAL JEWRY T was in the Orient — Turkey, Iraq, Yemen, Persia, Morocco, Tunisia, Tripolitania, and Egypt — that plans for a large-scale political, educational, and welfare program be gan to unfold. Here a significant segment of Jewry, after centuries of poverty, misery, forced labor, ruthless plunder, bribery, humiliation, even murder and arson, had been reduced to the most deplorable physical and intellectual depression. Here almost all Jewish vitality was extinguished and all as-

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pirations died. A fatal resignation filled their souls. And they had been alone until the gallant knight-errant of British Jewry, Sir Moses Montefiore, arrived to plead their cause in 1839. In him they had found a for midable champion, who won for the Jews and other non-Moslems in the Turkish Empire “assurances” of com plete equality of rights. That these assurances were unfulfilled was in dicated when Cremieux, in May, 1865,,^ summarizing the helplessness and state of nadir to which an esti25

cipals, and traveling agents did their share in consulting with the British and French authorities on local con ditions and notifying them of any mis carriage of justice. O activity of the Alliance stirred the Jews of the Near East quite as much as its huge educational pro gram, which aimed at reducing Jew ish illiteracy, raising the educational level of the Jewish youth, and pro viding vocational training. In 1862, when the Alliance announced its edu cational crusade, almost eighty per cent of the Jews of the eastern lands were unable to read and write. Five years later, the Alliance had founded eight schools in Tangiers, Volo, Baghdad, Soffi (Spanish Morocco), Adrianople, Jaffa, and Aleppo, with an enrollment of 1,300 children and a budget of 30,000 francs. At the turn of the century, it had a unified educational apparatus consisting of 118 schools, 1,129 teachers, inclusive of principals, an enrollment of 31,000, and a budget of 1,440,000 francs. By 1934 the Alliance record for edu cation outstripped the work done in this field by the central educational agencies in New York in ratio to its school population. Since that time the Alliance has suffered a serious set back in its educational work as it did in all its activities in highly in flamed North Africa, where the free dom in the name of a xenophobic nationalism differed little from that of east and southeast Europe four decades before. To a large extent this network of schools bore the characteristics of day schools, combining general and Hebrew studies in their curriculum. The trained schoolmaster had drawn on his experiences and training in Paris, where, after four years at

S ir M o s e s M on te fio re

mated 810,000 Jews had been re duced in the Orient and North Africa, cited this cry: “We are the laughing stock of our enemies, who see us deprived of all protection, and who can dispose of us at pleasure . . . Our life, our future, our honor is de livered over to an odious outrage worse than slavery. A Muslim who kills an Israelite is not called to ac count.” In 1867, when France established her fortress of interest, she under took to intercede in behalf of the Jews, supported by the Alliance. In 1874 and 1878 the decree obtained by Montefiore’s efforts was again confirmed through the intercession of the British government. Certain it is that both great Powers were deterrent to cruel practices. Moreover the Jews in the Orient and North Africa were no longer without protectors. Con sular agents of both great Powers were instructed to apprise themselves of the conditions of the Jews. The Alliance’s swarm of teachers, prin26

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the French-accredited Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale, plus teacher-train ing at the Consistorial schools, su pervised by the Chief Rabbi of Paris, and a four-year course of in tensive Jewish studies, graduated as a certified schoolmaster. All were natives of the Orient and North Africa. The schoolmaster not only admin istered (or organized) the Alliance school, but taught general subjects as well, inclusive of Jewish history. The religious subjects were instructed by local teachers. The syllabus was com posed of the classic Siddur and the Bible and commentaries, all taught by rote, the Hebrew language and grammar. The schoolmaster had to cope with the most arduous tasks imaginable. He conducted cleanliness and hygiene campaigns in the dis eased Mellah of Teheran. He went to the “protecting powers” to seek protection against the arsonists in Morocco and the pillagers in Salon ika. As a French national, he pro tected the Jewish communities in tension-ridden Fez and Marrakesh. He helped nourish and clothe the poor children, as well as organized elaborate programs of vocational training and apprenticeship. He

fought against marriages of children aged eight to ten, and prevailed up on the rabbis not to perform such marriages. In Tunis he denouced, with good effect, the practice of bastonading the Jews. The women teach ers performed similar thankless tasks. The Alliance developed its own his tory textbooks and methods to serve their indigenous school population. OR three quarters of a century, from 1862 until the World War II conflagration, the Alliance’s educa tional program planted the seeds of Western enlightenment, regenerated morale, and was a guide to creative self-expression to an estimated 100,000 Jewish children of the Orient and North Africa. Not the least among its educa tional institutions was the Ecole Nor male Israelite Orientale (established 1865), the earliest Jewish teacher training school in the world to have been recognized in the heyday of France’s greatness. It was this normal school that continued to furnish men and women teachers who guided the Alliance’s educational enterprise, as well as providing the leadership for the work of the Jewish Colonization Association.

EASTERN EUROPE: LESSONS IGNORED HROUGH the closing decades of the nineteenth century and there after, the Alliance leaders, encour aged by the success of their program in the Moslem countries, developed no fresh insight into the problems of the Jews of eastern and south eastern Europe. There events were pointing inexorably to Jewish catas trophe. Increasingly, the urge for Jew ish resettlement in the Land of Israel

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were finding both ideological and practical expression. The Alliance viewed this trend with no less hos tility than it did mass emigration to the New World. There were no powers sponsoring Zion in a world in which a whole network of intrigue, bluff, fears, and threats dominated international poli tics. The Franco-Prussian War weak ened France and she ceased being 27

a serious contender to England in the Middle East; after 1870 her relation to Britain in this region was that of a secondary rival. Thereupon, France chose to push her cultural institu tions in the Middle East. There was little doubt, however, that British im perial interests in that region had been challenged by the Russians and the rising power of Germany. A Ger man syndicate received a concession for a railway to Anatolia and in 1903 the concession was extended east ward. German commercial interests were now preponderant in Turkey, forcing England and France into an Entente Cordiale. Russia ostensibly continued with her missionary activi ties. From that moment the question of Palestine became surrounded by unexpected difficulties “owing to the important political European ques tions arising out of the European im broglio, and the prohibition issued by the Porte against colonization of Palestine.” As for the Jews in western Eu rope, Zionism was under a dark cloud. Certainly it was a mirage as far as they were concerned. A large and influential section of the half-million Jews viewed it with apprehension lest an excess of Jewish nationalism should jeopardize the movement of full civic rights. But these fears were replaced by a vague expectancy after World War I, when Zionism gained measurably in status as a result of the “war for democracy” and Brit ish imperial needs and strategic in terests. HE melancholy events that fol lowed World War I still brought no new approach to the Alliance leadership. The Alliance opposed “minority rights” for the Jews in newly created countries, but soon

thereafter (1920) appealed to the fledgling and impotent League of .Na tions “to undertake . . . this formid able task {meaning emigration of the Jews from the Vistula to the Black Sea} . . . since the problem is fundamentally an international one.” Nothing happened. The “open fron tier countries” shrank to an absolute minimum and the “open spaces” were no longer available in the third dec ade of this century. The French Revolutionary tradi tion of liberty, equality, and fra ternity, ever the cardinal doctrine of the Alliance, ruled out Zionism and Palestine. It was “political messianism of a dangerous sort.” The logic of this theory led it to continue to rule out mass migration. Narcisse Leven, dedicated president of the Alliance and secretary of the Jewish Coloniza tion Association, criticized Zionism but was certainly not the one to un derestimate it. “A great deal could be accomplished if we could only combine the resources of the Jewish Colonization Association with the prestige of the Alliance and the ad herents of the Zionist movement,” he declared. The Alliance’s leaders were par ticularly perturbed over the “excesses of agitation that could arouse the legitimate suspicions of the Ottoman government.” They firmly rejected the theory “that the Jew must resign himself to isolation and cease to search for life and freedom among the free nations.” The Alliance viewed Zionism as “a desperate reaction to the continu ing oppression on the part of certain countries and their war against Juda ism . . . The idea of Zionism haunts several superficial spirits, both Jewish and Protestant. No sensible person JEWISH LIFE

can believe that these dreams can be realized. But those who are in the habit of seeing these problems in cold reality, have sincere considera tion for the security of the Jews in Turkey, and are concerned with the future of Oriental Judaism, will dis approve such dangerous mysticism.” N today’s perspective, the achieve ments of the Alliance as effective shtadlan during several decades of its history must be weighed against its fundamental failure to grasp the les sons of modern history, which nulli fied much of its efforts to aid the Jews of eastern and southeastern Eu rope. As distinguished from these phases of the organization’s work, the vast educational program of the Alli ance Israelite Universelle in the Mos lem countries must be viewed in a different light. Yet here, too, cer tain tendencies have been challenged. Partisans of all kinds — propo nents of traditional Judaism as well as German Reform leaders, Zionists, and Hebraists — have charged the leaders of the Alliance with impos ing their own brand of pro-Gallic Jewishness upon the school teachers as well as upon the pupils. Cremieux (who, be it noted, left a legacy of 68,660 francs for “the erection of schools in Palestine”; a similar legacy was left by Charles Netter, another ideologue of the Alliance) explained the goals of the Alliance schools in these terms: “If we are called upon to ex plain the doctrines which we are going to carry into these schools, it would suffice for us to reply that we are the continuators of the tradition of Judaism holding religion and science indivisibly united.”

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There is no doubt that a conscious effort to implement this goal was made by the leaders of the Alliance and its French-trained school teach ers. There is no doubt also that this educational crusade in the Orient and North Africa would have come to a halt had it not been for the protec tion and diplomatic support it re ceived at the hands of French con sular officials and diplomatic agents of ambassadorial rank. Nor, however, should British influence be under estimated in the British spheres of dominance. T was to be expected that the Al liance’s attitude towards Zionism should be reflected in its educational program. Thus it is not surprising that protagonists of Zionism should find grounds for criticism of the in fluence of the Alliance schools upon the outlook of their teachers and pupils. On the other hand, charges made by German Jewish sources — in the era of Franco-German rivalry in the Near East — that the Alli ance’s educational program was proGallic to the point of neglect of Jewish studies was obviously polit ically motivated. In point of fact the German critics, themselves of assimilationist stamp, were as pro-Ger man and pro-Kaiser as were the French Alliance leaders pro-French. It is not without interest here to point out that Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer, the famed author of D ’rishath Tzion, emphasized the significance of joining the movement of the Alli ance, as did Nahum Sokolow subse quently. With respect to the criticism of the Alliance schools emanating from or thodox religious circles, advocates of these schools assert that no compari-

son should properly be drawn be tween the quality and objectives of Jewish religious education in eastern Europe, where the Yeshivah predom inated, and those of the Alliance. In fact the latter had for a time sub sidized isolated existing yeshivoth in Tunis and Constantinople, although otherwise its efforts have been focused on schools of a very different type. The Alliance schools may be com pared with the day schools conducted by Jews in the United States in the era 1850-1870, after which time the public school system arose and over whelmed the few Jewish day schools. N the main, the objectives and phil osophy which have guided these schools were: to “occidentalize the Jews in the retarded lands of the Near East and the Mediterranean basin through the medium of the French language and culture and thus hasten the civil emancipation of the op pressed Jews”; to “rediscover the for gotten Jewish treasures and resuscitate our heritage” and regenerate the Jew ish spirit which in the Moslem world had lain in a state of somnolence for more than three centuries; and to ex pand the occupational and vocational opportunities of the Jewish youth, both male and female.

The leaders and ideologists of the Alliance’s network of schools shied away from the doctrinal struggles of Reform and Orthodoxy. Indeed, there was and is to this day no basis for extending the locale of this struggle to the Jewish communities of the Levantine world, among which tradi tional, orthodox Judaism alone pre vails. Insofar as religious teaching was concerned, as has previously been noted, the texts and method were 30

those characteristic of the religious traditions of these communities. While this is an indisputable fact, and while it is likewise a fact that a generous portion of classroom time was devoted to religious instruction, the total cli mate of the Alliance schools was un doubtedly attuned to an outlook dif fering from that of orthodox Jewish education. The key values of the Alli ance schools were those of French culture and of the ideology of the French Revolution, rather than of the Torah. Thus, as seen by orthodox critics of the Alliance schools, the products of these institutions have not been im bued with a Torah-oriented outlook on life and have not become a posi tive force for traditional Judaism, either in their personal lives or in the lives of their communities. UBJECT to this factor, the Alliance schools produced graduates with an exceptionally high degree of attain ment and occupational mobility. This applies particularly to those who grad uated from the Ecole Nórmale Israel ite Oriéntale. Not all graduates joined the Alliance’s system as teachers but all achieved improvement in occupa tional status. A considerable propor tion devoted themselves to fields of Jewish communal endeavor, whether in professional capacities in social and settlement work or as volunteer com munal leaders while in occupational specializations and the professions. At least thirteen of the graduates dedi cated their careers to the Jewish Colonization Association in Argen tina. Among a number who became writers and journalists were several who penned important Jewish his torical works and sociological studies. Most conspicuous is the relatively

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large number of academic honors con ferred upon graduates of the Alliance’s Ecole Normale Israelite. Quite a few* became members of the French Acad emy, the Legion of Honor, and the Turkish Academy (Nichan Iftikha); others became full professors at the lycee and university level. One ad ministered the Turkish school system, one taught at the University of A1 Azhar. One graduate became presi dent of the Cairo stock exchange, another a member of the Board of the Banque Imperiale Ottoman, an other school inspector of the govern ment schools of Egypt. To be sure, times have changed since the birth of the Alliance a cen tury ago. The destruction of great Jewish centers in eastern and south eastern Europe, the rise of a numeri cally powerful American Jewish com munity, the resurrection of the Jewish State of Israel, have changed the face of Jewish life. Moreover, the eco nomic position of the world’s Jews— excepting those in the Levant—is now infinitely better. In this transformed setting the Alliance, weakened considerably, had chosen to move along parallel lines with the American Jewish Committee, on which it draws quite heavily, feel ing that it would replenish some strength thereby, although the latter had been a faithful pupil of the for mer. The Alliance still remains an educational force in Moslem coun tries, with a network of 135 schools, 47,736 pupils, and 1,584 men and women teachers from Morocco to Iran. The philosophy of its educa tional program is little changed from that of previous years, nor does it appear that the Alliance is at grips with the prospect that in the not dis tant future the greater part of its OCTOBER, 1961

educational establishment will be over whelmed, if not drowned, by the on coming and onrushing ocean of Mos lem nationalism. A number of Alli ance schools in Morocco have already been taken over by that country’s government. Today hopes of the Alli ance are symbolized in Israel by its recently built Lycee in Tel Aviv, a reminder of the fact that it had founded during its earliest years the first scientific agricultural colony in Palestine, Mikveh Israel. And now, in another new undertaking, the Alli ance will provide its concept of higher Jewish learning for future physicians, engineers, jurists, and writers at its Normal School in Paris. Apparently the century-old organization aspires to “re-Judaize,” through this project, a part of the Jewish intelligentsia in France. A HUNDRED years ago, when France’s prestige was high, the Alliance Israelite Universelle luxuri ated in its glory, battling courageously for the civil emancipation of Jewry over much of the world. In the present setting of intolerant nationalism, it is clear that France is unable to recap ture its past glory. Dovetailing with France’s decline is the position of the Alliance, its role and activities in North Africa: Its golden age is gone. This doughty pioneer, which for one hundred years protected and defended the Jews in the Levant and throughout the world, today is in decline, over whelmed by the drunken nationalism of the twentieth century. Will the on coming fury of North African na tionalism move the American Jewish defense agencies, now ascendant, to articulate a realistic program toward the salvaging of the Jews in North Africa? 31

Mistakes About Mixed Seating By LEON TAUBES With the marked change in the climate of Jewish life, awareness of the binding authority of Halochah is penetrating to ever-widening circles. Anti-Halachic trends such as “mixed seating” at synagogue services are being reversed, with more and m ore synagogues once victimized by the trend re-instituting or newly instituting Mechitzoth. In the better perspec tive of today, as this article shows, we can see why fallacies held sway. LTHOUGH in recent years there has been a reaction against mixed seating in the synagogue, the issue has long been the occasion of acrimonious argument and rebuttal, of accusation and defense. The terms of the debate, however, have not generally been those of Halochah; the question here is quite clear and there is no doubt that mixed seating is not in accordance with Jew ish law. The problem has only become a problem due to a modern tendency to see Halochah in general as the con vention of an age, subject to change like any social practice. And while it is true that some observances have undergone change during the course of history, this does not mean that change is the essential characteristic of Halochah. Broadly speaking, Halochah applies norms of Jewish standards to the given conditions of life. These conditions include the relationship between men and their Creator, the affairs of men in society and in private; in other words, those aspects of life which are fundamental to humanity and which, while finding different expressions, are the unchanging and outstanding char-

acteristics of mankind. For the Jew, these factors are stable and eternal not only in themselves but in their concrete mode of expression. Man has the same duties and privileges wher ever and whenever he lives, because the essential human responsibilities and activities do not change with time —their manifestations therefore need not change. Halochah is equal to the demands of all changes in external conditions. Within its own terms and rules, changes can be made to mold the new circumstances to the require ments of Halochah, and the resultant form will acquire a new permanence. Thus it is an eternal duty of man to worship G-d; at the time of the Temple this duty was primarily ful filled in the form of sacrifices; when the Temple was destroyed and the sacrifices ceased, prayers then assumed the primary role. The body of Halo chah concerned with prayer is now the permanent guide to Jewish practice in this one aspect of the unchanging re lationship between man and G-d. HERE is no question of a change from a “primitive” culture to an advanced one, of a more spiritual

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man taking the place of a barbaric ancestor in a natural process of human refinement. Historical evidence is not conducive to the belief that mankind has advanced, that it has become bet ter in the things that are finally of real importance. Halachic changes are concerned with new conditions, with hitherto unknown circumstances—they do not alter or modify the vital activi ties of life which are the same in each generation. Halochah is a permanent stronghold of sanity from which the swirling forces of changing societies can be calmly evaluated and from which there derive, as circumstances require, new applications of Jewish practice. This idea of permanence and sta bility is not highly esteemed by the modern mind. The contention today is that adaptability rather than stability is the test of strength and wholesome ness. The implication of such a view point, in connection with Halochah, is that the latter is good only to the ex tent that it can be brought into con formity with the latest ideas and insti tutions of society. But this is surely a very curious assumption. It is axio matic in the study of the social sciences that change is the normal condition in the social order. The flux of events and practices demonstrates the ele ment of impermanence in human af fairs. Is it reasonable then that mutable systems and ideologies be taken as the final standards by which to judge the relevance of Halochah which con cerns unchanging human ideals? Why, if our current philosophies and cus toms are so unstable and liable to be outmoded in a few years or decades, should we insist so zealously on bring ing religion up to date? The rational way, and the one true to the Jewish spirit, is to determine the moral stand ard and validity of modern ideas and OCTOBER, 1961

conditions in the light of Halochah. The prophetic ideal is not to scramble after every flighty fad, but to pursue the eternal. HE current casual attitude towards Halochah as a whole is the reason T that the question of mixed seating became so disproportionately impor tant in modern Jewish life. Not that the average synagogue member has formulated the position from a clearly worked out philosophical point of view. But there is a prevalent tacit understanding that the “old laws” are no longer really relevant and can be changed at will, kept in token fashion for sentimental reasons, or even ig nored entirely. When Halochah clashes with a fact of modern life it is re garded as old-fashioned and ripe for discarding. The particular fact of modern life with which Halochah is in conflict in this case is the belief in the equality of men and women. It is on this basis that separate seating has frequently been attacked, and it is this same basis, strangely enough, which so often provides materials for the de fense. Apologists accept the notion of equality and proceed to prove it from the sources. There is no need here to go into the numerous instances in his tory which are usually cited to demon strate the high position of women in Jewish life and the regard and esteem in which they have always been held. Their importance and worth, indi vidually as well as socially, has never been minimized. But let us examine the question a little more closely in order to determine with what justi fication the concept of equality chal lenges the authority of Halochah. The idea that men and women are equal is comparatively recent in West ern civilization. A history of the rise 33

assumption that men and women func tion similarly and are therefore to be treated alike in every respect. Equality has become identical with sameness. The point is not merely whether men and women, different creatures, can arrive at the same heights in different ways or at separate goals on the same level. The question has become whether, aside from certain physio logical distinctions, there are any es sential differences at all. No overwhelming body of evidence exists to indicate that men and women, as human personalities, function in thè same manner. There is no doubt that they may be equally clever, but they are not clever in the same way; they may be equally good, but they express their goodness differently. Even in the societies which anthro pologists are so fond of citing, in which women have not been subject to social restraint, the differences exist. No man in a matriarchy would claim to be the equal of a woman. And yet this type of society is frequently brought as an example to illustrate potential equality. It is obvious, how ever, that in a situation where men, HERE does the belief come for one reason or another, do not from ? Those scientists who assume the leading role, this task will busied themselves with it discovered devolve on women. In these infre certain interesting facts, but facts quent circumstances the more usual which, if anything, go to prove the state has merely been reversed by superiority of women rather than their necessity. Biologists who keep remind equality. Thus it was found that ing us that we are animals point out women can expect to live longer, that that in numerous species the sexes they are stronger constitutionally, their are distinguished not only by appear powers of endurance are greater, that ance but by a form of behavior, by a they are perhaps better typists, etc. personality difference. Why should it But all this is hardly to the point. If be assumed that this diversity does the question of equality has any im not exist among men and women? portance at all it must be in the realm Physical variations are not accidental, of moral and spiritual actions, it must physiological distinctions do not exist concern the factors of intellect and in a vacuum—surely it is reasonable personality. Yet these areas are gen to expect related spiritual dissimilari erally taken for granted in the blanket ties. It is often said, half apologeti-

of women would doubtlessly produce various tokens and signs centuries ago, but it is only in the last fifty years or so that the suggestion has become a potent social force. The popularity of this credo is clearly demonstrated by the fact that it is accepted almost without question, which is a sure indi cation of widespread appeal. But it is curious that in this scientific age which subjects every unchallenged notion to close scrutiny the question of male and female equality should not have been thoroughly explored. It is some thing which is taken for granted, but few have asked on what grounds. As a matter of fact, the equality of men and women is merely a mod ern opinion, entirely unsupported by scientific facts, logical proof, historical evidence, or even social necessity, although the last is subject to debate. It is an assumption which has some how crept into modern thought— probably on the coattails of a general and vague feeling about human equal ity—but which has never been clearly defined and certainly not clearly proven.

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cally, that women differ from men only by virtue of the fact that they have been endowed with the functions of child-bearing and child-rearing. As if this were a minor and insignificant detail! It is like saying that the corner grocer differs from the President of the United States only insofar as the President has greater responsibilities. There’s something to it, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. T CAN, of course, be argued that there was originally or potentially a state of equality which was sub verted by social conventions, and that this true and natural state should be restored. But here again we move in the realm of theory without the solid support of facts. There is nothing in history to suggest that such a hypo thetical condition was at one time reality. And even if there were, the subsequent development, though an erroneous one, has not been entirely without consequences. The whale may at one time have been a land animal, but surely no one will suggest that his mistaken descent to the ocean should be rectified by a movement to return him to solid ground. For one thing, the effect on whales would be dis astrous. All this is not to imply that women cannot become like men. The ques tion is only whether it would be a normal and desirable aim in life. We have all been aware that education and propaganda can produce power ful results. W omen today occupy themselves with jobs they would have considered undignified years ago; they join armies and work in factories, they become technicians and w restlers. There is no doubt that they can be trained to do the same things men do, and with the same success. But is this what anyone really wants? Is a woman

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equal to a man when she wears over alls and works a machine* and not when she wears a dress and washes dishes? Must we believe that women become more fully themselves the closer they approach to manhood? A rose is not a better flower when it smells like a carnation. It might prove momentarily interesting, but only as a sport. If equality is a serious conten tion, however, it must be more than just a game. And no one has yet thought it desirable to carry the con cept of equality to its final sober con clusions. We are still unequal enough to refrain from sending women to the front lines. We do not urge them to join the sanitation department or the fire brigade. We encourage them to remain young and beautiful with the aid of countless cosmetics and house hold appliances. We occasionally hold doors open for them or escort them home at night. And no one wishes it any other way. It is only when we begin to take the idea of equality too earnestly that it becomes possible to find high school boys sitting in a crowded bus while grey-haired grand mothers hang from the straps. F the notion of equality is examined closely, it will be seen that it is based on a profound disrespect and lack of appreciation for the role of women. The underlying assumption is that the woman’s functions in society are negligible compared with those of the man. Only to the extent that she divorces herself from female activities is she granted her status of equality. But equality on those terms is a dis guised admission of a basic inequality, a tacit implication of male superiority. On the other hand, the idea that men and women are unequal awakens a feeling not of superiority but of height ened responsibility. Being responsible

is not an easy position, nor an envi able one if taken seriously. When men take on certain unpleasant or burden some tasks it is to save women from the unpleasantness involved. We are still outraged when we read of women slaving in coal mines during the early Industrial Revolution, because we feel that this is not fitting work for a woman. Not that she is not good enough to work, but because the work is not good enough for her. Why then all this insistence on making men and women equal? It is the factor of in equality that gives rise to politeness, to kindness, to the assumption of re sponsibility and the bearing of conse quences. Only when these things cease to be important, when duties and obli gations are disregarded or neglected, can there be a glib and jocular de mand for equality. To paraphrase Voltaire, if inequality did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. What about the issue of equality in its larger sense? In the final analysis do men and women have the same spirit ual stature, are they of equal worth in the eyes of G-d? It should be men tioned here that the answer to this question, whatever it may be, is not relevant in any way to the previous discussion. T any rate, the point remains that the suppositions of the equality of men and women is not based on concrete foundations. In addition, even if the idea rested on purely rational arguments it is not at all sure that it would be desirable. Yet this is the notion that is used as a weapon with which to combat the Halochah governing mixed seating in syna gogues. It appears eminently unrea sonable that an unsound, unproven presumption should take precedence over a law which has, at the very

least, a venerable tradition and cen turies of practice behind it. There might perhaps be excuse for re-ex: amining the law of separate seating if the equality of men and women were a high principle of clearly demon strated moral value. But this is not the case. The issue of equality is not an overriding one, and the entire ques tion can have no bearing whatsoever on the problem of mixed seating. It ought not even to enter the discussion. Men and women have their respective duties and obligations in the world, and they are bound by certain regu lations. Men have the duty of prayer which is circumscribed by specific rules. Women too may pray if they choose, but once they make the choice they are also subject to the rules. It is only here that the true idea of equality enters. Men and women are equally bound to observe the regulations gov erning prayer in the synagogue, in cluding the rule of separate seating. What has happened is that people have misinterpreted the prohibition against mixed seating as an offense to women. It has been felt that women were being discriminated against, that they were being segregated. A mis directed drive towards democracy has made it seem imperative to seat men and women together in the name of equality. But we have, after all, not yet attained to a level of equality with G-d. If He is at all involved in our prayers it is just possible that He might insist on our observing certain conditions. Of course, the idea that G-d participates actively in this world is not very popular today. But if He is not involved then there is certainly no reason for mixed seating in the synagogue—or for synagogues.

F we look at the separation of men and women from a slightly difJEWISH LIFE

ferent aspect, however, it will be seen th at in feriority or discrim ination against women plays no role in the matter. Actually it is the men who are being discriminated against; they are being segregated from women. Al though other factors like ritual im purity enter the question, it is the strong influence of women over the minds of men that made it important and necessary to insulate male weak ness from female charm during the time of prayer. In order that they might give their hearts to G-d men were temporarily deprived of the com pany of their wives. Far from being an offense to women, separate seating is the highest tribute to their pervasive femininity. There is a further con sideration which affects the issue. Prayer, though a public action, is a private, even a confidential affair. We are normally hesitant about demon strating deep-seated emotions to the public gaze, and there are intimate matters which even man and wife do not share. Separate seating can only seem senseless when these realistic factors are not taken into considera tion. In this connection the disparage ment of separate seating is bound up with another important circumstance. Mixed seating, besides being an imita tion of Christian custom, is the result of a degradation of the philosophy of prayer, again due to the influence of

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certain contemporary notions. If the idea of prayer becomes meaningless, if it becomes merely an idea, then it obviously m akes little difference whether men can be easily distracted or not. When the worship of G-d is a matter of hollow holiness or cold monotony, then it is quite sensible for families to sit together in order to enjoy at least a small spark of familial warmth. But prayer rightly understood is a vital thing. It is not a mere exer cise in “togetherness” or a sociologi cally approved method of keeping families united. It is not a casual affair or a social obligation. As a profound and holy human action it deserves respect, not the respect of worshipful silence but of obedience to the regu lations that accompany it. It deserves, in other words, to be taken seriously. Only when prayer is taken lightly do all the rules concerning it become so much nonsense. But it should not be forgotten that these rules were formu lated by men who understood the true nature and depths of prayer. They knew that it required concentration and absorption, whole-heartedness and devotion. They were not swayed in their thinking by considerations of the moment; they sought to distill the eternal. Those to whom prayer is still a vital matter cannot simply discard the age-old rules under the pressure of modern misconceptions and falla cies.

Martyrdom and Heroism By J. GOLDSCHMIDT

OMING at the time that it did— fifteen to twenty years after the events with which it deals—the Eichmann trial has made a notable con tribution to the necessary revolt against human forgetfulness, much of which was clearly intentional. The desire to erase remembrance was clearly intentional on the part of the tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of actual participants in those crimes, who could not be sure that there was safety in numbers and would prefer to have the whole affair erased from the consciousness of their own generation; it was international, though to a lesser degree, on the part of the anonymous millions in many countries within the Nazi regime who knew what was going on, and, some bewildered, some apathetic, let it go on; it Was certainly intentional on the part of those nations which had fought Hitler with all their might for their own ends, but had scarcely done all they could to fight and prevent one of the greatest crimes of all history. They all wished to forget and to make others forget—at least for a genera tion or two. The oblivion found in our own Jewish midst was certainly of a different nature. Whoever followed even from afar the evidence brought to court by the prosecution in the Eichmann trial will concede that to many who lived through that bottom-

less pit forgetting was the only path to normal life. But the Jewish people was not allowed to forget, nor to let the world forget. It is only natural and politi cally inevitable that Israel took the lead in discharging this historic re sponsibility. The trial came almost at the last moment; a few more years, and the last chance to obtain first hand, indisputable evidence would have gone forever. F the many things that must not be forgotten but should be re membered, and remembered well, is the way in which those millions of our people who were caught in the storm stood up to its trials. The title of a publication in that area. “. . . Not Like the Lamb That is Led to be Slaughtered . . .” is indicative of the problem. Barely twenty years have passed, and already we hear ourselves, our sons and daughters, ask: How could all this happen? How can you herd together hundreds, thousands, nay, tens of thousands of men and women and put them to death: and not one group on one day, but many groups over years; and not in one place and one country alone, but in many places and many countries— how could this happen? They could not all have been surprised all those years, and if not, where was their

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power of resistance, where was their instinct of preservation, where was their leadership . . .? From there to the assertion, “It could not have hap pened to us,” is not very far, and it is understandable that some of Israel’s youth are particularly prone to fall into that error, as some surveys con ducted in Israel have shown. But there is indeed a vital interest involved in fighting that erroneous notion. The implied answer to those questions is obviously that the Jewish people in the European diaspora showed a complete, a fatal lack of vitality, a colossal failure of the most essential natural instincts, to a degree that makes it almost deserving of its fate, since any organism so devoid of the basic responses of powers of adjustment is doomed to extinction. These questions were also heard at the trial and much, though not enough, has been done to answer them and to counteract the poison that they spread. There is not only bur duty to the victims, although it may well be said to be a holy duty of the first order to clear their name and proclaim their fullest and unim paired human and Jewish dignity, but the attitude of this and coming gen erations of Jews to two thousand years of Jewish history is at stake. For so much of that history is stained with blood and soaked with tears that anyone who disavows these last twenty years may soon take the next step and disavow most of our historic existence as a people. The battle is on for our loyalty to ourselves and our history, for our loyalty to our people and the values the Jew has stood for and has created. N reviewing the arguments in that great discussion we are entitled to look for evidence for the part en-

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dured by the observant religious Jew in those trials. While there is no way to ascertain the number of religious Jews among the persecuted and the victims, they must have been a very considerable proportion of the popu lation in Central and Eastern Europe. With their way of life so different, their habits of thought and their scale of values shaped to such a large ex tent by the teachings of Judaism and Jewish religious tradition, it is perti nent to ask how they reacted to those unheard of situations. Did they take part in the conduct of communal affairs as long and wherever it was possible? How did those men, wom en, and children who had arranged and conducted their lives in accord ance with the laws of the Torah because they believed in their Divine origin—how did they face the dis aster? Did it create for them conflicts and trials of conscience peculiar to their group? Are we right to assume that a man to whom faith in G-d is the main directive force in life will have to contribute a tone to the choir of human voices that rose from those provinces of inhuman suffering? All too little is known about this, it seems to us, and that little is scattered here and there in collections of documents and memoirs. Within the scope of this article only a very partial answer can be given to these questions, and a comprehensive treatment of these as pects of the history of the holocaust is a holy duty to religious Jewry, which, we hope, will find its re deemer. Yet, let us hear what some of the sources tell us. HE Yad Vashem Martyrs and Heroes Memorial Authority of Israel has just published, as the third volume of publications from its archives, a documentary history,

“The Destruction of Slovakian Jewry,” prepared by Livia Rotkirchen. Slo vakian Jewry was not very numerous. Before the deportations began their number is given as 89,000. Slovakia became an independent state only in 1939, and its first prime minister, later president, was the Catholic priest Msgr. Dr. J. Tiso. He was approached at least twice with the request to stop the deportation of the Jews, once by the organization of congregations, and once by the organization of Slovak rabbis. Here follows part of the latter document (No. 53 in the volume m entioned): In our deep distress, we, the under signed rabbis of Jewish congrega tions in Slovakia, turn to you, our President, the High Judge and su preme legislator in this country. We have heard terrible tidings, though not yet officially confirmed, to say that the authorities concerned intend to expel the Jews from Slovakia, separating the men from the women, to the Eastern districts. This action may be called by what ever name and be defended by what ever quasi-legal arguments, but this does not alter the fact that under existing circumstances it is identical with the physical extermination of the Jews of Slovakia. In our despair we call out to you, the President of our Republic, su preme judge of the State, full of con fidence that your honor believes in the most high Judge who is above him. As servants of the Lord we beg you most humbly in our deepest an guish to listen to the voice of G-d and help us in our inexpressible sor row. Has not One G-d made us all, and before One G-d we all have to give account of our deeds. Oh, do have pity for our families, men and women, old people and children, all of whom ask G-d for help, with prayer and tears. In their hope for His mercy they give over their lot 40

into your hands . . . (Signed: A. Frieder, for the Rabbis of Slovakia, Bratislava, March 6, 1942). The president merely wrote “ad acta’* on the letter and had the application filed away. HILE the foregoing showed a rabbinic organization at work, arguing with a Catholic priest in the most convincing fashion, we shall find in the next two documents an orthodox rabbi active as one of a small group of underground workers. Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandel* belonged to the “work group” which was formed within the official Jewish organization called “UZ” and de voted itself to the planning and execu tion of rescue work for Slovakian Jewry. They tried to make contact with Jewish organizations in neutral countries to obtain information about the fate of those deported to the East and to spread it inside their country and abroad in order to fight the ignorance and illusions that, as they clearly saw, were a major hindrance to useful and urgent action, from whatever quarter that might come. Let us first read part of a letter Rabbi Weissmandel wrote in 1943 to the Hechalutz Center, Geneva: Peace and blessings to all it may concern. We informed you in two letters that with the help of money it will be possible to save: (a) thousands of souls here from deportation to be slaughtered; (b) hundreds of thou sands from being slaughtered in the land of persecution (Poland); (c) to

*Rabbi M. D. Weissmandel in 1944 succeeded in jumping from the death train that trans ported him with all his family to Auschwitz. After the war he reached the United States via Switzerland. He died there of a heart attack in 1957. His book Min Hametzar was published posthumously in 1961. The quotations are taken from documents 100 and 101 of the abovementioned book on the destruction of Slovak Jewry. JEWISH LIFE

find a legal way openly to send par cels and money to those who have already been deported; (d) to make the above possible by illegal ways. All this can be bought by money, merely by money, and only by money as set forth in our previous let ters. We cannot understand how you eat and drink, how you can sleep in your beds, how you can stroll in the streets (and I assume that you do all this) while that responsibility is weighing on you, and for months we have been crying out to you, and you have done nothing. Please, forgive me these angry words, but how can we remain calm in the face of that horrible neglect fulness. I am sure that if the help of the Almighty will come soon — you will accuse yourself, seeing that you had the possibility to save — and you have done nothing to save us. Oh, be good to yourselves, and spare yourselves those thoughts of re morse, over which you will surely eat your hearts out — for Israel is a holy people. We want action, deeds; not great deeds, nor deeds of the ultimate sacrifice [mesirath nefesh], only the sacrifice of money — and thousands, tens of thousands, hun dreds of thousands are dependent on that money. If there will be little money — hundreds of souls, and if much money — hundred thousand souls, money to redeem lives, today . . . take this to your hearts and ac quire that great merit — and for your brothers, their children and babes, life and rescue among their people Israel. May the Almighty grant us our daily prayer that our people Israel may not be dependent on one an other and not on any other nation and send us His true help soon — this is the prayer of just a man in the street, one of the multitude of Israel. (Signed) Michael Dov. OCTOBER, 1961

E have given this letter in full because it shows so clearly the man of action although he expresses himself in the traditional style. In the following letter, which was written in May 1944 in a cave near Lvov, also to the Hechalutz Center at Geneva, the urgency of the situation becomes even clearer, and the means of res cue and intervention recommended are of a different nature, which few would expect of an orthodox rabbi. Of this letter we can cite here some parts. We send you herewith a special message to let you know that yester day (i.e. May 15, 1944) they be gan to deport from Hungary the Jews who live east of the river Theiss . . . and this is the beginning of the deportation of all Jews from Hun gary; this first phase affects 320,000 souls may G-d protect them. Every day 12,000 people are thus deported, in each wagon 65-70 per sons, standing up, without bread and water, no sanitation, locked up, win dows closed. Four trains of 45 wagons each leave every day, thus that in 25 or 26 days this first phase of the de portation will be completed. After a journey of two or three days, without food or drink, stand ing, pressed together so that many die on the way before they reach Auschwitz. Those who are still alive are undressed, led into large halls under the treacherous pretext of go ing to a bath, and there they are killed by cyanogen, two thousand people in each hall every day. . . This is Auschwitz, where every day since yesterday twelve thousand peo ple are carried, men and women, children and old people, invalids and healthy persons, day after day, in or der to be suffocated, burned and then to fertilize the fields — and you, our brethren of Israel in the free coun-

tries, and you ministers and rulers in all lands how can you look on in silence on this mass murder of more than six million Jews, and tens of thousands more every day. In their utter despair these Jews cry out to you and cry out their accusation that you are cruel murderers because of your cruel silence and because of your apathy, because you could still arrest what is going on. Therefore, with the blood of millions and the tears of millions we beg and im plore and demand of you to go into action at once: The governments of all countries, whether fighting or neutral, are to warn the German and the Hungarian peoples in the most distinct way that they have full knowledge of all that is going on . . . The Pope should warn most severely the Hungarian people . . The International Red Cross should threaten to expel Ger many unless full right of inspection is granted at once of the camps at Auschwitz, Birkenau. . . The death camps at Auschwitz should be bombed from the air . . . More im portant still, all the roads and com munications from eastern Hungary to Poland should be bombed and de stroyed, also the roads to Germany, and especially the road from T. via Kashau . . . to dynamite and bomb systematically all the bridges and railway stations of Carpatho-Russia and especially Kashau . . . because these serve for huge military trans ports from Poland to Rumania and back . . . Now, in all you may undertake use utmost caution not to mention the namè of any Jew as the source of your information . . . nor mention from which country those informants came . . . G-d forbid that you neglect this and indicate how you got those details; we have already paid dearly for mistakes of this kind . . . We have only one excuse for you (until now)—that you do not know 42

the situation, and this is possible, for even here the great majority does not know. They believe that they are being sent for work. Those devils do their work with such cunning and in such secrecy that only very few have the knowledge, and those few cannot speak to the rest because they can only come in contact with individuals. The fiend orders those few who stay alive in the camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Lublin, etc. to write home that they live in plenty of everything, and thus he fools the Jews here, and they go to the deporation trains . . . Rabbi Weissmandel is by no means the only one who thus turned under ground worker, organizer of resist ance, planner of actions of many dif ferent kinds. But, when you compare his language, his arguments, his em phasis on the moral aspect for every one, Jew or non-Jew, in whose power it is to help, with the other documents which deal with the same situation, you feel the whole depth, warmth, and richness of heart which is full of faith in G-d, nurtured by the holy sources of the Torah. Even his utter despair never wrings from him a word of rebellion against his Crea tor, not a shadow of doubt that this is still G-d’s world crosses his mind . . . and you feel that it is this faith that alone sustains him in his des perate efforts to reach the ear, the hearts of the free outside world. HE first place has been given here to this evidence of the re action of religious leaders who were still fulfilling official functions. But we know how little all their devo tion availed, and that uncounted mul titudes met their cruel fate at the hands of their tormentors. How did they live as individual religious Jews under the Nazi rule, in the ghettos,

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the camps, when death threatened them every day for the slightest in fringement of rules or for no reason whatsoever? Did they shed their ad herence to religious law as a useless garment, as a burden that might even bring down disaster on their heads? Or did they cling to it even in their most desperate straits as a precious possession which alone held the prom ise of some warmth and comfort? Here is some general note about this topic (Yav Vashem publications, for the Memorial Day 1959/Nissan 5719): Now let us devote a few words to the representatives of religious Jewry. According to the faith of the religious Jew, he has to put all his trust in G-d who will avenge the sufferings of His people, for He alone may avenge or take satisfaction. Most leaders of the religious Jews remained with their con gregations to comfort and encourage them; to render assistance and to pre serve, under the most trying provoca tions, their human dignity. The lot of the orthodox Jews was difficult seven fold under those terrible conditions, because of their traditional garb, their looks, and their appearance. Those attracted in an even larger measure the wrath of the German hooligans . . . The desecration of Jewish holy places, the burning of synagogues, vicious attacks on rabbis and others who wore their traditional dress were among the first deeds of the Germans, long before they began to destroy masses. Therefore we find already in the first period of the persecutions by the Germans shining figures of re ligious Jews and great examples of pride and dignity and civil courage. In the ghettos the living legend of Shlomo Zelichowsky suddenly spread. This was a simple Jew, a Chosid of the Misronska-Wolla line. When he was led away to be hanged he strode with his head raised high and com forted the Jews who were forced to OCTOBER, 1961

attend the execution. And those who were led to their death together with him he encouraged lest they be de pressed, but rather give their lives gladly for the sanctity of His Holy Name. UT we are not dependent on legend alone or on the general B appraisal contained in the lines just quoted. In the book of responsa, Mekadshey Hashem, by Rabbi Z. H. Meislisch, the author describes in some detail the almost incredible story of how he strove and managed to observe the commandments of the Sukkoth festival in Auschwitz Death Camp. This is his story: It goes without saying that under the eyes of the Nazis no Mitzvah could be observed that required any outwardly noticeable activity. To be caught in such an act might mean immediate death. One can imagine, therefore, how difficult it was to ob serve the Mitzvah of lulov and ethrog on the Sukkoth festival, and how much devoted spirit of sacrifice this de manded. There was a double difficulty first of all, it seempd quite impossible to obtain the “four kinds” of plants [arba minim] under the conditions obtaining at the camp; second, if by some miracle one could procure them, it would still be very difficult to observe the Mitzvah without the S.S. becoming aware of it. But with the help of the Almighty I once succeeded to obtain before Sukkoth an old lulov and ethrog from the year before, which the Jews from Lodz, who were then brought to Auschwitz, had brought with them. Thus I had three of the four kinds—lulov, ethrog, and the willows, which I had collected at the brook that passed near the camp. These three kinds I passed on cautiously to several other Jews, and there was no end to their joy to be able to observe this commandment even in their miserable state. We did, 43

indeed, do so with a desperate cour age and heroism . . . At that time I also ‘ succeeded in observing the Mitzvah of Sukkah. It so happened that in one corner of the camp several Jews were working on making beds and benches, and after I had begged from them a few boards, which I tied together and covered with some greens, I had a sukkah for ourselves. Of course it was most dangerous to sit in it. For the S.S. men were about the place all the time to supervise the work of the Jews. And since it was strictly forbidden to be in that area except on duty, anybody caught there sitting and eating would be beaten up. Thus they once found my son, of blessed memory, eating a bite [in the original, ke-zayith], and it is a sheer miracle that he survived their terrible blows. From all this one can get a notion of the utter devotion of the Jews to the observance of the Torah even in those terrible death camps, and how they were ever ready to sacrifice themselves in His honor when and where a Mitzvah offered itself to them. HILE in the previous passage the moving spirit is a rabbi, a man of learning and of a position recognized by his fellow prisoners as one of religious leadership, we shall find in the next passage a group of anonymous young people, with no ap parent claim to such a role, young men from Holland, and yet they cling to the one treasure that is still with them — the Torah, the word of G-d. No leader appears here, none to urge them on, but the opposite: Wellmeaning friends who lacked the back ground of studying and loving the Torah and could, at first, not under stand how those youths could throw away their lives for reading a few lines of the Tanach and advised them

to desist — until in the end they came to envy them for the richness and^ the light, for the uprightness and the strength of character, for the posses sion of an adherence to a scale of values which they found in them. The passage is taken from the book by Mordechai Striegler, Neroth She’uklu (Candles That Were Con sumed), translated from Yiddish by Benjamin Tenenbaum. The Dutch Jews had with them a priceless treasure: tiny Torah scrolls. The Dutch Jews had arrived by the tens of thousands, but now only some hundred remained. But these clung to their tradition with stubbornness— even at Maidanek camp. I shall never forget that fair-haired youth from Holland who could not acquiesce to the regulation at the camp to go bareheaded. He somehow obtained a tiny cap and wore it on his head. At the most excruciating exercises he tied his cap to his ears with thin threads. Sometimes the guard discovered this, and the blows fell on him. Most Jews from this coun try behaved alike. It is hard to write with equanimity about the two Hollanders who se cured, G-d knows how, a copy of the Bible, and every day, on their way to work, they pushed into the inner rows of the column and, while walk ing, read quietly from the book. I was told that those youths found some such books in the incinerator and hid them in a place known only to them selves. The “block leaders” got tired of beating them up for their stiff neckedness and turned a blind eye when they noticed one of them ab sorbed, by the light of the tiny lamp in the room, in those little pages, gathering up every faded word. More than once did I try to talk to them, to point out the danger of what they were doing, but they lis tened in silence, suspiciously, and turned away without a word. Their JEWISH LIFE

number diminished, but those who remained doggedly accepted all kinds of suffering in order to be able to read a chapter in the Bible. How enviable they appeared in my eyes, those young men who knew that their days were running out and who, for this very reason, did not allow their raving hunger to tear their last human feelings from their hearts and to deter them from making their prep arations for their appearance before the throne of G-d on the day of their judgment. EFERENCE was made in a pre vious paragraph to the legendary Shlomo Zelichowsky and his way of facing his last hour. His was no unique case, but there are many re ports about the exemplary fortitude of believing Jews, of scholars and deans of yeshivoth in facing death. We let follow here a brief record of the last trial of the Jews of Chelm, Lithuania, which was brought back to the Kovno Ghetto by a yeshivah student who escaped from Chelm. Chelm, it will be known to many readers, was the seat of a most fa mous Mussar yeshivah which devel oped a special approach to the service of G-d and man under the guidance of Rabbi Simcha Zissel, a prominent disciple of Rabbi Israel Salanter, the founder of the Mussar movement. It appears that that gen eration of Chelm Jews and their rabbi did not shame their illustrious pred ecessors. The event is reported in a forthcoming book to be published by Yad Vashem. The following happened when the Jews of the Lithuanian town of Chelm were put to death. When the Jews were already standing on the edge of the trenches opposite the machine guns that were trained on them, the rabbi of the town, Rabbi Daniel Mor-

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showitz, asked the German who was in charge for permission to say a few words to his community. The German allowed him to do so briefly. The rabbi began quietly and without any show of emotion to speak of the sanctification of the Name of G-d, just as if he were talking under ordinary circumstances to his students. When he went on a little longer the German shouted for him to finish. Then the rabbi turned to the Jews who were standing next to the trenches and said: “Thus we stand here now in the very state of which I was speaking a mo ment ago—Kiddush Hashem. There fore, do not be upset. We have to ac cept quietly the fate that has been laid upon us.” Then, addressing the Ger man, he said: “I have finished; you may begin now.”

N many of the documents the name of the Land of Israel turns up. Relief work, the organization of the resistance movement, the under ground connection with other coun tries — many of these were in the hands of devoted Zionists. Many are the expressions of their feeling, how the hope that our people would soon rebuild their homeland, gave them strength and courage to seek a way out of the disaster. Few can be more moving than the loving and longing dreams of the Land of Israel which the fifteen-year-old Moshe Flinker wrote in his diary, when he was still concealed by his family somewhere in Belgium. This, too, is Zionism in purest form, a Zionism reared on a love of everything the Torah puts before us and a deep and unques tionable faith in the ultimate salvatiqn of Israel in its own land. (From Hana’ar Moshe, The Diary of Moshe Flinker, published by Yad Vashem, Jerusalem.)

Entry of 2nd Adar B, 5703. Only now do I feel how much we need a homeland, a land in which we may dwell in peace, quietude, and rest just like any other nation. Oh, how do I love my own homeland, how my soul goes out to it. Each time I stand in prayer to say the Sh’moneh Esrey I concentrate all my senses and all my feelings on it, my beloved one, and I see it truly before my eyes. I behold the coast line, I see Tel Aviv, Jaffa, and Haifa. And deeper inland I see Jerusalem, and next to it the Mount of Olives rises. And, beyond, I see the Jordan run its course from the Lebanon down to the Dead Sea. And even the lands beyond the Jor dan do I see—all of it do I have before me in my thoughts when I stand in prayer. When I pray, how ever, and cannot see my lovely coun try before my eyes, I feel that my prayer has been rejected, as if I had spoken to the wall in front of me. I so love it all. All and everything, my people and my land do not leave my mind for a moment. In these days I have become aware as never before how cherished my people Israel is to me, and how lovely my country, the land of Israel. Several times I caught myself asking if I may hope to stand on its hallowed ground; if our merciful G-d will allow me to stand and walk about on it. Oh, how my soul longs for thee, my fatherland, and how my eyes search for thee, my land—Eretz Israel.

NE cannot repeat often enough that the brief excerpts from the sources brought together here are but a small fraction of the galaxy of brightly shining points in that terri ble darkness that enveloped the earth. More, much more is known and can be found in the sources that are becoming available, and it should be known to every one of us. But

even what could be brought here throws light on the attitudes and the actual behavior of believing and ob serving Jews when they stood op posite the enemy. They recognized him as the enemy of their body and of their soul, as the power of evil that negates all that is pure and holy in the sight of G-d and of men. They saw and knew that the power of evil scorns and condemns the love of one man for another, the love of the mother for her children, and the love of the child for his mother and his father, that there is no room in its world for the mercy of the strong with the weak, or for any human feeling whatsoever. And, behold, before the onslaught of the powers of evil on everything holy and pure in this world believ ing Jews and observers of His Torah stood upright in their full stature, knowing that these foul waves can not reach and not contaminate them. They knew that their dignity as ser vants of the Creator of this world, Who is the one Source of all that is pure and holy, that is good and beau tiful on this earth — that this, their dignity, is beyond the grasp of their enemies and above the possibility of being impaired by them. Just after those enemies had stripped them o f ev e ry b o n d w ith th e material world, when they had left behind, with hopeless finality, their home, their property, their beloved ones, when it was overwhelmingly clear to them that all deceptive pass ing values to which man is apt to attach himself had gone out of their lives — precisely then, there poured forth out of the depth of their very selves their infinite and absolute re liance on their Father in Heaven, to Whom they took flight from the ter rors of this earth. JEWISH LIFE

Chanukah-O r “Jewish Christmas” By LOUIS M. TUCHMAN

A g a in , the q u e s tio n o f J e w is h v a lu e s c h a lle n g e d b y the stresses o f the m ajority e n v iro n m e n t c o m e s to the fore. A p le a for J e w is h stability a m id s t the s e a s o n a l furore.

OON Jews throughout the world will celebrate the Festival of Chanukah. The celebration will of course be marked in every syna gogue, yeshivah, and Hebrew school, and in every home where Judaism is observed or Jewish tradition honored. But nowadays Chanukah — unlike some yet greater occasions of the Jewish year such as Sukkoth and Shovuoth — will be celebrated in many homes in which Jewish reli gious observance otherwise, sad to say, finds little or no expression. In addi tion, in order to give “non-sectarian” warrant for the widely prevalent Christmas exercises in American pub lic schools, Chanukah songs, plays, or even pageants will be presented in some of these schools, side-stepping Constitutional requirements as to Church-State separation. The extent to which celebration of Chanukah has grown, and the strange forms which its observance has assumed in some Quarters, testify to the extraordinary interest which has been built up in the minds of both Jews and nonJews with regard to this festival. There are many questions which

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cross our minds. Is the sense of Juda ism, as reflected in the Festival of Chanukah, stronger today in the hearts and minds of Jewish children than it was several years ago? Is the message of Chanukah, the message of belief and faith and trust, strongly embedded in the minds of the cele brants of this festival, or will the en tire festival be completely forgotten at the close of the eight-day period of celebration until the next year? N former years, when children were asked, “What is Chanukah?” they would invariably respond, as did our Sages, with a description of the strug gle of our ancestors under the leader ship of the Maccabees to preserve their faith against the might of pagan oppressors, the recapture of the Tem ple and its cleansing, and of the miraculous discovery of the cruse of oil which burned brightly for eight days. For many of our children, this is still their answer. But for many other of our children, in many com munities throughout the land, their reply to the same question may likely be: “It is the season of gift-giving

and exchange of gifts which lasts for eight days. It is the season of joy and merrymaking. It is the period of winter vacation from Jewish studies.” And some of them will even say: “Chanukah is the Jewish Christmas.” Of course one can not minimize for one moment the successes Jewish educators and leaders have been hav ing in interesting untold numbers of Jewish families in the celebration, or perhaps in the mere recognition and acceptance in some measure of their own Festival of Chanukah rather than the major festival of their non-Jewish neighbors, which occurs at about the same time of the year. This has been well accomplished through emphasis in the Hebrew schools, pronounce ments from the pulpit, messages by rabbis, and by the intense campaigns waged on the part of synagogue and center leaders, who labor relentlessly each year in an effort to stress the importance of this national festival. The revitalization of the Maccabean spirit through achievement of the State of Israel has served to give notable impetus and momentum to the Chanukah celebration. And, no doubt, if there is anything that would further help kindle the desire for a more meaningful Chanukah, it should be the many and varied commercial materials which have of late come upon the Jewish scene. Yet despite these supporting fac tors, and despite the efforts to com bat the “Christmas spirit” so preva lent in our society, there still loom before us the questions: Will we ul timately “get through” to our chil dren and to our adults? Will our people learn to recognize the basic values of this holiday? Or, will Chan ukah be reduced to another juicy plum on the American Jewish com mercial scene? 48

T first glance, one would be in clined to answer the above op timistically. Among the traditionally* religious elements of American Jewry, the events of our time have imprinted with fresh clarity the true meaning of Chanukah. This awareness, flower ing within the context of knowledge and observance of Jewish tenets, is being transmitted to a significant de gree to others who are only on the periphery of the Jewish pattern of living. But yet, when the situation is viewed in its entirety, when the full range of Jewish communities in the United States is considered, especially the smaller communities, we find that the concept of a “Jewish Christmas” is strong indeed. Rather than under scoring the important Jewish message of these days, with its emphasis upon faith and belief in G-d, the “spirit of gift-giving and merrymaking” is given greatest emphasis. What may have been started as a novelty now becomes, unfortunately, the principal purpose for the celebration of the Fes tival of Chanukah. Why have these forceful campaigns for a meaningful Chanukah so largely failed? Why does it appear that they will continue to fail, year after year? Basically, the cause must be found in the very fact of the overemphasis on Chanukah in contradistinction to the major Jewish festivals, the Sab bath, the realm of Jewish sanctities as a whole. The process of treating Chanukah, directly or by implication, as the pivotal event of the Jewish calendar is inherently spurious and mischievous. It serves inevitably to minimize all other facets of Jewish belief and observance and thus weak ens the foundation on which a true understanding of Chanukah must rest, draining its observance of real Jewish

JEWISH LIFE

motivation. Between the publicized stress on Chanukah on the one hand and the pressure of the Christmas at mosphere on the other, the vacuum is immediately filled by the assimila tion of the one to the other. HAT role is being played in this situation by the numerous nov elties, cards, display materials, and by the endless variety of menorahs — bubbling menorahs, plastic menorahs for indoor and outdoor use, decora tive menorahs, musical menorahs, and

asked about Christmas gifts, “What is your Christmas called?” And, quite innocently and unhesitatingly, as if well rehearsed for the response, the youngster invariably answers, “Chan ukah.” Others have so completely transplanted the Christmas idea to the celebration of Chanukah as to give currency to familiar—painfully famil iar and painfully unfunny—quips about the “Chanukah man” and “Chanukah bush” as symbols of our holiday. In fact, one young lady boastfully replied to her friends that

so on and on which are being fea tured on the American Jewish mar ket? It is all too apparent that these items, which properly should serve as effective visual aids and reminders, have been in large measure mere replicas of their Christmas counter parts, which are so elaborately dis played on dealers’ shelves at this same time of the year. The copies are, in some instances, so exact that, were it not for the fact that “Happy Chanukah,” or a menorah, or a Mogen Dovid were printed on the wrap pings or cards, one could have easily mistaken them for the holidays and novelties of our non-Jewish neigh bors. It is little wonder, then, that many parents are overheard angrily reprimanding their children, when OCTOBER, 1961

in her home . . the presents were piled so high around the menorah in the living room . . .” that there was scarcely room to move about. Here again is the carry-over of the Christ mas manner of celebration. EVERAL years ago one only visualized, whereas today there really exist, homes wherein the men orah is placed in a prominent spot in the house, with multi-colored rib bons attached to the candelabra lead ing to gifts about it r— to be opened only on the night when that partic ular candle is lit. In this particular instance, it is the sense of surprise and anticipation which surrounds the “don’t open until . . .” and captures the minds and imagination of the

family involved with regard to the Festival of Chanukah. Little did the rabbi of a Midwestern congregation, writing in his monthly bulletin several years ago, realize how true to life was his concept of the little boy who dreamt of the flying menorah, led by Yehudah Maccabee calling out: “On Shammas! On Blintze! . . .” This is another in stance of the complete carry-over of the Christmas idea to our Festival of Chanukah. Is it any wonder now that Chanukah is not meaningful to our youth? Can one question the strong association between Chanukah and Christmas that grows in the child’s mind when we read of such practices? Are we not aware of the fact that we must combat this dual ChristmasChanukah concept which is beginning to pervade even the public schools of our nation? This is not the way. Our leaders and educators are themselves respon sible in large measure for the delin quency which exists with regard to the holiday of Chanukah. In their attempt to “combat the Christmas spirit,” they adopt and adapt for their own use those ideas and elements of the celebration which are completely foreign to Chanukah. By overempha sizing the gift-giving concept they completely overlook the essence and the important message of the festival they are supposed to observe. As a result, Jewish children are too often heard taunting their non-Jewish friends with the remark that their holiday brings them eight gifts on eight successive nights, not only on one particular night. GREAT task awaits rabbis and educators in the years to come. If they fail, this important religious and national festival will, as a result,

lose its real religious and national significance, even as has the Christ mas of our neighbors. Still worse than this, the falsification of Chanukah will increasingly undermine the scale of Jewish values among those with least defense against de-Judaizing forces of the environment. If the desire to in still in Jewish youth the love for his religious heritage is not to founder on delusions, the present course must be altered. There are many positive values that can be stressed in order not to re duce Chanukah to a businessman’s dream, or to have it degenerate into a gift-giving fiasco. There are many instrinsic values which can aid in ex alting this festival of our people. The approach must be more positive and direct. Gift-giving and greetings, al though fine gestures, must be mini mized, while the important lessons of dedication and religious freedom, the lesson of faith and trust in G-d, as well as the joyous aspects of the fes tival should be stressed. This should be an occasion for family gatherings, for songs, for all sorts of joyful mo ments that each family can really bring about within its own midst. The Slate of Israel and the struggle which preceded its day of independence, as well as conditions as they exist to day, can serve to illustrate the true Maccabean spirit. But above all, the celebration of Chanukah must be as an arrow pointing directly to the whole of Judaism. Then, and then alone, will our youth proudly speak of Chanukah as the festival of their heritage, recall ing the Maccabean struggle, the vic tory of the few over the many, and the complete dedication to the service of G-d. Then, too, will there be a stronger affinity towards Israel and fellow-Jews throughout the world on JEWISH LIFE

the part of our youth who have been left with so little understanding of the situation. In addition, it will serve as a constant reminder of this very at tempt on the part of our people to guarantee religious freedom for them selves at all times, thereby “sounding the shot” which was to be echoed and re-echoed around the world. Then, and then only, will there be no fear on the part of the Jewish leaders and

OCTOBER, 1961

educators that children in the public schools will find themselves com pletely overshadowed by Christmas celebrations. If this can be accomplished in the future, we can look forward to greater understanding, increased and dedicated faith, and a stronger attach ment of our youth and people to the ideals and values of Judaism.

B o o k B o f i otrs Dubnow’s Philosophy of History By GERSION APPEL

NATIONALISM AND HISTORY, by Simon Dubnow, Edited with an introductory essay by Koppel S. Pin son. Meridian Books and the Jewish Publication Society, 385 pp., $1.65. IMON DUBNOW, famous his torian and social philosopher, is known for his works “The History of the Jews in Russia and Poland” (available in English translation in three volumes from the Jewish Pub lication Society) and the ten-volume “World History of the Jewish People.” This timely book is a fine paper back edition of a new translation of Dubnow’s essays on the philosophy of Jewish history published by J. P. S. in 1958. Since these essays were first written over half a century ago, man kind has witnessed the destruction of the Jewish centers in Eastern Europe and the creation of the State of Israel, profound historic events which have totally reshaped Jewish history in our times. It is in this light that these essays must be studied and evaluated. It is a tragic irony of history, to which Professor Pinson alludes in his Introduction, that Dubnow, who was

RABBI GERSION APPEL is the rabbi of the Kew Gardens (N. Y.) Synagogue Adath Yeshurun.

the first Jewish historian to rebel against viewing Jewish history as a history of martyrdom, later termed by Professor Salo Baron as “lachry mose historiography,” was destined to suffer the fate of millions of his martyred brethren. On the night of December 8, 1941 the aged historian was shot to death by a drunken Nazi in the streets of Riga. (We may add another note of irony. It was none other than Professor Baron, the mod ern rebel against “lachrymose histori ography,” who was summoned recently to testify to the martyrdom of the Jewish people in our day at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem.) Dubnow writes with deep percep tion about Jewish survival, the historic enigma of the Jewish people. Dubnow’s concern with the secret of survival is for us not merely reflective history. It is a sad fact of life, in the second half of the twentieth century, thirteen years after the establishment of the State of Israel, that the Jewish people is still grappling with the problem of survival. His ideas on this question and their relevance are therefore of prime import. HAT is the law of survival? “As a political nation,” states Dubnow, “Israel is constantly influ-

JEWISH LIFE

enced by its environment, or even subjugated by the powerful empires growing and decaying in this environ ment. In its spiritual development, Israel, from the beginning, forges ahead on its beaten path . . . a unique historical creation arises before us: a people th at is small and weak in its political structure, but great in its spiritual form. It stands amidst a raging sea and struggles for sur vival.” Jewish “ethicism,” representing truth and justice, struggles with Greek “estheticism” which extolls power and beauty. In the Land of Israel the former prevails and the national culture is preserved in pu rity. But the political center in Judea and the Temple are destroyed. How does Israel then survive? Here, Dubnow answers clearly. By subjecting itself to a regime of religious and national laws, by “fencing itself in,” the people wins its struggle of sur vival. “The Talmud is the arsenal for the camp of Israel.” Israel’s “law of survival” then, is: arming the nation with spiritual weapons, isolation from the environ ment internal self-rule, and adaptation to all ways of life while preserving its national form and its specific cul tural possessions. This Dubnow terms “autonomism.” All this, however, is threatened by emancipation, when the Jew breaks out of his national and religious “fences,” when he leaves the camp and enters the alien environ ment and absorbs alien principles into his spirit, when he exchanges his “national” freedom for “civic” free dom. “Thus emancipation liberates the Jew from both his bondage and his Judaism at one and the same time,” and there follow assimilation and conversion. What is the solution? Dubnow again OCTOBER, 1961

answers clearly: faith in the survival of Judaism, an understanding of the law of survival, and action based upon this knowledge and faith. But here Dubnow stops short, and fails to draw the final conclusions of his own thesis. HERE is a “thread of eternity” woven through Jewish history, says Dubnow. Israel is indestructible because it has a “second soul.” This transferral of the concept of neshomah yetheyrah, which Jewish tradition as cribes to the Jew as an individual, and which Dubnow ascribes to the Jewish people as a whole, demonstrates his brilliance of perception into the es sence of the soul of Israel. However, the neshomah yetheyrah comes to the Jew under conditions of kedushah, when the holy light of the Sabbath envelops his life. What are the ele ments of kedushah that will assure Israel of, its neshomah yetheyrah and future survival amongst the nations? Dubnow calls for a faith in sur vival ties to action, to “practical com mandments,” but he hastens to add, “Not those derived from the Shulhan Arukh.” But, what else if not the practical commandments of the Shulchon Oruch formed the very heart of the “law of survival” in the past? Dubnow advocates communal auton omy, national education, a develop ment of the national languages and the vernacular languages developed in the Diaspora. We now possess all of these. Is this the powerful arsenal for the camp of Israel? Are we, thus, assured of survival? Dubnow perceived full well the myopia of the advocates of Zion who persist in a negation of the Diaspora, despairing of its will to survive. “If the source of the will in the Diaspora

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is destroyed, where will the revival come from? And if you say: ‘We are satisfied with a partial ingathering of the exiled, while the rest perish in the desert of the nations,’ are you not decreeing the destruction of the ma jority of the Jewish people? If our ancestors had entertained such no tions, Israel would already have ceased to exist. Your error stems from the fact that you base your conclusions on a theoretical and not on a histor ical analogy.” It is precisely this error which

Story of

Dubnow himself commits, namely a failure to follow through on conclu sions demanded by the very historical analogy which he himself drew with such clarity and conviction. Jewish history, to whose study Dubnow de voted his life, teaches one paramount lesson : The spiritual fate and the national survival of the Jewish people, in the Diaspora and in its ancient homeland, are bound up with its total commitment to the national ideals and the Torah laws which constitute the heritage of Israel.

Convert By MOLLIE N. KOLATCH

SO STRANGE MY PATH, by Abraham | | Carmel. MBY Foundation, 14 E. 60th St., New York, N. Y. $4.50. U Q O ST R A N G E MY P A T H ,” which relates the religious odys sey of a convert to Judaism, bears the descriptive by-line, “Revelations of a Former Catholic Priest.” This would lead the reader to expect a lurid, true-confession type of writing. It is to the credit of the author that he rises above this sensational device, and instead his “revelations” consist of a lucid, restrained, factual report of one man’s search for an ultimately satisfying religious belief which, for him,, led to the discovery of Judaism. For Abraham Carmel, the path to Judaism was an arduous journey re quiring endurance and conviction. MOLLIE (Mrs. Ephraim S.) KOLATCH is vice-president of Women’s Branch of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and editor of the Women’s Branch Newsletter. OCTOBER, 1961

This was in part due to Judaism’s traditionally discouraging attitude to ward converts and the “trial by test” of Britain’s Beth Din, that country’s central Jewish authority, which al lowed five years to elapse before accepting Mr. Carmel into the Jewish fold. In view of Mr. Carmel’s unusual background, the skepticism of that august rabbinic body is understand able. Abraham Carmel began life as Kenneth Charles Cox, a Scot and Anglican. He was, in his own words, a “precociously religious-minded child,” whose early ambition it was to enter the clergy. Mr. Carmel does not dwell upon the more personal aspects of his life, which, for this reviewer, is a welcome respite from the current vogue of uninhibited public selfanalysis. However, one can discern three concurrent strands of thought that weave through the narrative: a 55

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mystic, indefinable sense of affinity toward the Jews; the advice of a headmaster to “aim at the stars arid nothing lower” ; and the relentless search for an authority “which could and would tell me clearly what to believe.” Mr. Carmel relates that from earli est childhood, whenever he saw a Jew he felt a strong desire to become ac quainted with him. He himself attrib utes this emotional identification to his realization that Jesus had been a Jew and had practiced the Jewish religion.

gogue in London, but decided that it differed little from the liberal forms of Christianity, such as Unitarianism. Unaware of the great theological and ideological gulf between Reform and orthodox Judaism, he ventured no further in his investigation of the Jewish faith. It was not until many years later, when he was to resume his anguished search, that he learned of the pristine authenticity of ortho dox Judaism.

At this earlier critical juncture of his life, however, he was finally in fluenced and won over by the Catholic HE TWO PEOPLE who molded Church. In retrospect he writes: “I and gave direction to his early realized more and more clearly how spiritual inclinations were his deeply carefully the Roman Church looks religious grandfather and the Rev. after its converts, and how completely Mr. Head, the Church of England foolproof is the system whereby they rector of the local parish. However, are conveyed from one stage of their the “aim at the stars and nothing journey to the next. A through ticket lower” motif transmitted by a head to the gates of Paradise is issued; master of his childhood schooldays and provided you do not lose your became a challenging refrain that ticket, stamped ‘F aith/ then through echoed through the long years of his the gates you’ll safely go. The pilot spiritual search until its attainment is infallible, the machinery guaranteed against any possibility of breakdown. in Judaism. It was during the troubled period No wonder Rome can count 10,000 of his adolescence that he became converts in Britain alone each year.” There followed four years of study painfully aware of the many factions and splinter groups within the Protes at a Catholic college in preparation for tant camp with their conflicting doc the priesthood. During these years, trines of faith. Yearning for a firm, Mr. Carmel wryly comments, “reason clear-cut authority, a faith that would was suspended” as the price for peace be a bulwark of strength, Mr. Carmel, of mind and spirit. The newly or then Kenneth Cox, made a conscien dained priest found satisfaction in his tious study of the whole spectrum of parochial duties with the simple work religious faiths, covering Hinduism, ing folk of his parish. It was in the Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and area of youth work, however, that the other, less-known doctrines. He lis erstwhile Father Cox showed his tened to, and was impressed by some greatest aptitude. He possessed a sympathetic understanding of young of the great preachers of his day. Interestingly, it was during this people and their problems, and was period of “search for a faith” that thei; responsible for the “Open Door” move future Abraham Carmel found his ment, a successful non-sectarian youth way into the Liberal Jewish Syna-! club in post-war England*

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Ironically, it was this cherished youth work that led to his severance with the priesthood. The ecclesiastical hierarchy, represented in the person of the Archbishop, disapproved of their zealous young priest laboring to help “outsiders” without so much as an attempt to convert the youths under his aegis. The final blow was a letter arbitrarily suspending him from all duties without the opportunity to state his case or defend his actions. Although Mr. Carmel is under standably bitter concerning the injus tices of the ecclesiastical powers that be, he carefully refrains from rancor or recrimination. It is perhaps to his credit that after a “cooling off” period in which he allowed his critical facul ties to resume function, bringing to the surface of his consciousness all repressed misgivings concerning the Catholic dogmas, he nevertheless ap plied for readmission to the priest hood. . If he was to break with this faith it must be on the basis of ra tional thinking rather than through emotional bias caused by his humili ating experience. It was an uncertain young man filled with misgivings, however, who returned to London to take up his ecclesiastical duties. The performance of the mass, the confessionals, the veneration of statues of innumerable saints, all constituted a growing night mare in which he moved as an un willing participant. Emotionally he had already broken with the Church and was slowly finding his way to ward the “world of the Old Testa ment.” It was a m atter of brief time before he was to separate himself ir revocably from Catholicism and all of Christian belief. Then began the long and difficult journey toward Judaism. OCTOBER, 1961

N THE serene atmosphere of an English boarding school where he found employment as a teacher, Mr. Carmel began, on his own initiative and without assistance, an intensive study of Judaism. He movingly evalu ates the comparative merits of Ca tholicism and Judaism which should firmly establish, for any reader who may have doubt, the infinite worth and majesty of Judaism. Concomi tant with his intellectual awareness, an inner transition was taking place. He writes: “Coincidentally with the increasing direction of all my fervour to G-d Himself, I became aware of a knitting together of my personality so to speak, and the assumption of an inner unity and power such as I had never previously known.” It would hardly be fair to reveal the many levels of development that the narrative now takes. American Jews who are accustomed to witness quick and easy “conversions for con venience” into the Jewish fold, would indeed be startled at the intense or deal through which Mr. Carmel was required to pass in order to prove his sincere intent and conviction. The author himself acknowledges the premise for Judaism’s discouragement of proselytism; that ours is not a “missionary” faith but proclaims that the righteous of all religions in herit the world to come. However, Mr. Carmel understandably feels that the path could be made less harsh for the sincere convert. It is in thei latter part of the book that, as a complete Jew, Mr. Carmel writes with greatest eloquence. He expresses enthusiasm fot the intrin sic qualities of Judaism: i.e., the responsibility of the individual Jew in his .relation to man and G-d, with out benefit of an intermediary; the

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expression of Judaism as a complete way of life; the worth and beauty of the Jewish Sabbath. All are extolled with the delight of one who has dis covered for himself a splendid jewel, as indeed Mr. Carmel has! Lauding the rational and practical approach of the Jewish religion, Mr. Carmel tends to gloss over the “re vealed” and supernatural essence of Judaism. These lie at the heart of Judaism and to approach it requires a “leap of faith.” Perhaps after Catholicism the “leap” to Judaism became for Mr. Carmel merely a “hop”. The latter is not intended as facetious criticism. Mr. Carmel is fast establishing a reputation as a lecturer. As an exponent of Ortho doxy, he must be prepared to con front the question of Revelation and adequately answer the critical intellectualism of Jewish youth, for whom he shows a special concern. The problem of antisemitism oc cupies Mr. Carmel’s attention, but he sheds no new light on its many mani festations. His recommended “cure” is too facile: that “knowledge” and appreciation of the true facts” will dissipate this age-old affliction. Surely the market is flooded with literature about Jews and Judaism; surely our anti-defamation leagues have been busily dispensing information about the “true facts”; and our inter-faith movements have been early propo nents of “better relations and under standing” with self-admitted failure. Knowledge is an effective weapon where one communicates with people amenable to reason. Racial hatreds, unfortunately, find their seat in the emotional and in the irrational na ture of man.

reactions among the Jews whom he has encountered. As a figure who courts public attention through his book and public appearances', com bined with his unusual background, Mr. Carmel should anticipate a mixed response. A type of reaction which Mr. Carmel labels as rooted in the “ghetto mentality” is, I believe, unfounded. He describes i t : “where by the Jew by some atavistic process seems to imagine that if once in a decade, or even once in a century, a Christian joins the ranks of Jewry, the Church will send them all to the stake, is nothing short of amazing in the twentieth century. There are in numerable Jews who could not be more scared for their skins if the Inquisition were still in active exist ence.” Abraham Carmel is no doubt wellqualified to describe Jewish reaction to a convert. But perhaps his rela tively short sojourn in our midst has led him to misjudge skepticism for fearfulness, and reluctance to em brace him as a long-lost brother for unfriendliness. As he well knows, we are a vulnerable minority and our historical experience has made us wary and reticent. Too many have been the “false Messiahs” who led us to the brink of catastrophe; too many of our own co-religionists who turned against us to become our worst perse cutors; and too many were there who embraced us while inflicting the thrust of the sword. If we appear suspicious, it is in our “Jewish bones.” In the course of time and by his actions, Mr. Carmel will no doubt gain the confidence and affection of his fellow-Jews.

R. CARMEL’S conversion to Judaism has evoked a variety of

Gaining prominence as a lecturer in this country, in Britain and in Is rael, he has earmarked all net pro-

OCTOBER, 1961

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ceeds toward a private charitable foundation dedicated to Jewish edu cational projects. Mr. Carmel brings to his new faith an invaluable back ground of experience with youth work and an equal ardor to win back Jewish youth to religious values. When he writes, “A very high per centage of our young people are adrift from Jewish life. The great army of unattached youth is march ing from apathy to apostasy! The process will be complete in another ten or twenty years, unless we act quickly . . . Both in New York and London, even in Jerusalem, there is

an ever-widening gap between our young Jews and their grandparents,” we must heartily concur. By employ ing his experience and will to action, he can perhaps make his greatest contribution in this vital area. Mr. Carmel profoundly believes in the role of the Jews as a people with a mission and links his own destiny with that mission. His path, so strange indeed, continues to be forged each day. We hope it will lead to spiritual fulfillment in loving union with the people whom he has chosen as his own.

A Presentation of Jewish Practice By

THE CYCLE OF THE JEW ISH YEAR, by Yaakov Vainstein. World Zionist Organization, Department for Torah Education and Culture in the Diaspora; Jerusalem, 1961, $2.25. HE great theologians of our peo ple, Saadia, Bahyah, Maimonides, Albo, and others wrote much on the philosophy and practices of our reli gion. The object of their metaphysical essays, however, was to firmly estab lish certain truths for “thinkers whose studies have brought them into col lision with religion,” as Maimonides put it. The treatises were composed for those who “have studied philoso phy and have acquired sound knowl edge,” and though “firm in religious matters” find themselves “perplexed and bewildered” when combating the views of opponent theologians and

RABBI ABRAHAM N . AvRUTICK is the rabbi of Congregation Agudas Achim, Hartford, Conn., and vice-president of the Rabbinical Council of America. OCTOBER, 1961

ABRAHAM N. AvRUTICK

philosophers. Such works were written for the information of the scholar rather than for the instruction of the multitude. And often the philosophical “Guides” fail to enlighten those who seek enlightenment with regard to religious duties and Jewish practices. Almost all the Jewish classical works on theology are now available in English translation. But no teacher would recommend to the student seek ing inform ation about Judaism Saadia’s “The Book of Beliefs and Opinions,” Maimonides’ “Guide for the Perplexed,” or Albo’s “Book of Roots.” The student must first be pro vided with a succinct statement of the traditional pattern of Jewish life and thought. He must first know what Judaism practices, how the practices are observed, and where the sources for these practices can be found. “The Cycle of the Jewish Year” by Dr. Yaakov Vainstein does fulfill the 63

above purposes. Regrettably the book is limited to a study of the festivals, fasts, and a selection from Jewish liturgy only. It is, however, an excel lent presentation of the rabbinic, his toric, and ethical background for many of the prayers found in the Siddur and Machzor, and gives a fine discussion of all the feasts and fasts observed during the cycle of the Jew ish year. The chapter on Shabboth deserves special attention. It is writ ten with warmth, understanding, and conviction. The author quotes a bon mot of the saintly Chofetz Chaim, who compares the Sabbath, which the Torah calls oth, a sign, “with the notice on a shop which bears the name of the shopkeeper and indicates the type of business he conducts. So long as the sign is there, it shows that the business continues even if the shop keeper is absent. If the notice is re moved it denotes the closing down of the establishment. The same applies to the Sabbath. It is the Israelite’s sign that he believes in G-d. And although it may happen that one transgresses some law of the Torah, yet as long as one keeps the Sabbath, the sign is there to testify that this man still belongs to the house of Israel, that the holiness of G-d is still in his heart.” R. VAINSTEIN also includes Yom Haatzma’uth, Israel Inde^ pendence Day, in the chapter on Feasts and Fasts, and presents the various' religious minhogim that are emerging in Israel in connection with this thanksgiving festival. He even indicates how the A-T B-A-S-H sys tem may be applied to Yom HaatzmaV uth. A y in (atzma’uth) will always occur on the same day of the week as does zayin (seventh day) Pesach.

The chapter devoted to sélections from the liturgy should make an ex cellent complement to Dr. Elie Munk’s * “The World of P rayer/' Both Dr. Munk and Dr. Vainstein attempt to interpret for us the place which prayer occupies in Jewish thought and existence. The former emphasizes the “mystical absorption in prayer,” the latter the historic and evolutionary process of prayers. “The Siddur,” says Dr. Vainstein, “is ever fresh and perennial in its message and content. In fact, it is ever open for authorita tive additions that may have to be made when times demand it, such as have been included since the establish ment of the State of Israel : the Prayer for the Peace of the State; Memorial for the Martyrs of the Holocaust and the Dead of the War of Liberation; as well as specifically Israeli prayers, such as the Prayer Before Entering Battle, Prayer of Parachutists, Prayer of the Tree Planters, Prayer for World Peace, and others.” “The Cycle of the Jewish Year” is a result of a series of weekly talks by the author in the English broad casts of Kol Zion La-Golah, the radio station of the World Zionist Organi zation in Jerusalem, and presented by the Department for Torah Education and Culture. Dr. Vainstein wisely cautions the reader that what has been endeavoredj in the book “was to deal with each subject as fully as pos sible, but [it] is by no means exhaus tive,” and it is hoped that the book will “stimulate readers to consult the Shulchon Oruch and other sources for additional information.” May there speedily come forth a similar volume on other practices of our religion to magnify the Mitzvoth and make known their glory. JEWISH LIFE

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