Jewish Life February 1962

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FEDERATIONS AND THE DAY SCHOOLS WHAT’S IN A NAME? • THE COLLEGE DILEMMA IS A A C H A L E V Y -r A R C H IT E C T O F A G U D A T H I S R A E L T H E B E L I E V E R A N D T H E S C E P T IC T H E A M E R IC A N R A B B I T O D A Y S O N S O F T H E R E L IG IO U S K IB B U T Z

ADAR I, 5723 FEBRUARY, 1962

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Vol. XXX, No. 3/February, 1962/Adar 1 , 5722

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EDITORIALS SAGA OF SEVENTY-FIVE Y EA R S........................

THE STRUGGLE OF ANGLO-JEWRY ...................

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ARTICLES Saul B ernstein , Editor M . M orton R ubenstein Reuben E. G ross Rabbi S. J. Sharfman Libby K laperman

Editorial Associates Rikki Gordon!, Editorial Assistant JEWISH LIFE is published bi­ monthly. Subscription two years $4 .00, three years $5.50, four years $7.00, Supporter $10.00, Patron $25.00.

Editorial and Publication Office: 84 Fifth Avenue New York 11, N . Y. ALgonquin 5-4100

REVIEWS

Published by U n io n

SONS OF THE RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ/ Aryeh Newman .................

7 FEDERATIONS AND THE DAY SCHOOLS/ Reuben E. Gross ........ . .............................. 14 THE AMERICAN RABBI TODAY: A PROFILE/ Theodore L. Adams .................................... 18 “WHAT WILL BECOME OF THEM?”/ Jacob Beller .............................................. 28 THE BELIEVER AND THE SCEPTIC/ Ira Albeck ...................... . ........................ 38 ISAAC HALEVY— ARCHITECT OF AGUDATH ISRAEL/ 0. Asher Reichel ....................................... 41 WHAT’S IN A NAME?/EugeneGreenfield ............. 48 THE COLLEGE DILEMMA/lsrael D.Lerner ........... 54

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O rthodox Jewish C ongregations of A merica M oses I. Feuerstein

President Benjamin Koenigsberg, Nathan K. Gross, Samuel L. Brennglass.

M. Morton Rubenstein, Harold M. Jacobs, Vice Presidents; Edward A. Teplow, Treasurer; Herbert Berman, Secretary; Harold H. Boxer, Financial Secretary.

Dr. Samson R. Weiss Executive Vice President

KIBBUTZ YOUTH/Libby Klaperman ................... 60 THROUGH THE SOCIOLOGIST’S EYE/ Nathalie Schacter ..................................... 61 DEPARTMENTS AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS.......................... 2 HASHKOFAH: ULTIMATE PURPOSE ........ . . . . . . 25 ON THE JEWISH RECORD .............................. 57 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR . . . . . . . ................... 69

Saul Bernstein, Administrator Drawings by Ahron Gelles

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

February,-1962

Copyright © 1962 by Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations

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REUBEN E. GROSS, an attorney by profession, is active in or­ thodox Jewish affairs on the national scene as well as in his home community of Staten Island, where he has taken a leading part in the establishment of the Jewish Foundation School. He is Chairman of the Commission on Regions and Councils of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Mr. Gross served in the U.S. Army during World War II and, during Israel’s War for Liberation, in the Israeli Air Force. His several previous articles in J e w is h L if e have attracted wide attention.

among our contributors

JACOB SELLER is well known in the field of Yiddish Journal­ ism and has contributed a number of articles to J e w is h L i f e .

He has travelled widely in the course of his jounalistie career, including extensive periods in Latin American lands. Mr, fueller makes his home in Canada.

RABBI O. ASHER REICHEL, who is a spiritual leader of the West Side Institutional Synagogue in New York City, studied at Yeshivath Torah Vodaath and Yeshiva University. From the latter institution he received Semichah in 1944, his B.A. degree in 1942 and the D.H.L. in 1960, as well as numerous diplomas and awards. He has done much research on Isaac Halevy and his era, and is preparing a major work on this subject.

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 Cambridge.-Mr. Newman is director of the Jewish Agency’s Religious Education Programs for English speaking diasporas and lecturer in the English Department of the Hebrew University.

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RABBI THEODORE L. ADAMS, spiritual leader of Congre­ gation Ohab Zedek in New York, is a former president of the Rabbinical Council of America and the Synagogue Council of America. Born in Bangor, Maine, he received B.A. and M,S. degrees and rabbinic Semichah at Yeshiva University and has done graduate work in Sociology at Columbia University. Rabbi Adams has served as a member of the President’s People-toPeople Committee and of the President’s Citizens Committee for International Economic Growth, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.

among our

contributors

RABBI ISRAEL LERNER is headmaster of the North Shore Hebrew Academy at Great Neck, N. Y. He studied at Yeshiva University and has completed graduate courses at Dropsie Col­ lege. His articles on rabbinic and educational topics, in Hebrew and English, have appeared in professional journals and popular periodicals.

IRA ALBECK devotes his life to Talmudic study. In college he majored in English and minored in Philosophy. In Philosophy he was a connoisseur of English Empiricism, particularly interested in David Hume. A happy combination of these subjects resulted in his article in this issue.

EUGENE GREENFIELD is a Detroit, Mich., businessman and communal figure who contributes articles from time to time to American Jewish periodicals. Hungarian born, he studied at yeshivoth there and, after coming to the U.S. in 1927, at the College of William and Mary, where he received B.A. and M.A. degrees and also served for five years as Hillel Counsellor.

February, 1962

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Saga Of Seventy-Five Years EVENTY-FIVE years ago, Yeshivath Etz Chaim was born in New York’s Lower East Side. A few years later Yeshivath Rabbenu Isaac Elchanan came into being and absorbed its pred­ ecessor. Out of this nucleus sprang the Yeshiva University of today, which now is celebrating the milestone with appropriate ceremonies. The rise of this great institution is a saga in the grand American tradition. At the same time, the achievement looms large in Jewish history, for Yeshiva University is one of the major forces in Jewish life today.

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The motto of Yeshiva University, “Torah Umadah,” has been its governing concept from the first and is the essence of its con­ tribution to Jewry and to America. Many believe that in this con­ cept, signifying the planned grasp within Torah terms of modern science, scholarship, and culture, lies the key to Jewish life in the modem world.

To a far greater extent than in previous eras, Jews today share in the social environment of the general community. There being no seeming option on the matter, Jews may choose only between a planned or an unplanned relation to surrounding life.

Carrying this to the area of education, traditional Jews must deThe cide between two alternatives. One is the linking of Torah leamA lternatives ing to general studies, applying the values of the former to the latter. The alternate path is to dissociate the two, with the premise that Torah learning must be exclusive and unqualified, yet with tacit awareness that worldly knowledge will be inevitably pursued in a setting and under the impress of non-Jewish values.

Yeshiva University is geared to the first alternative; other great Torah schools have chosen the second.

N the seventy-fifth anniversary perspective of today, however, there are ample grounds to acclaim Yeshiva University for its achievements. First, and always, it has proven that Torah learning can flourish on American soil. It must be remembered that at the birth of Etz Chaim, the American Jewish community was more than two hundred years old, yet prior to this no attempt to estab­ lish a yeshivah had succeeded.

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Apart from this aspect, the institutional achievement is phe­ nomenal. With Yeshivath Rabbenu Isaac Elchanan as its core and 4

JEWISH LIFE

guiding spirit, there has been created a complete university (plus high school) program of tremendous scope and high academic The quality. A complex of seventeen schools at six teaching centers A ch ievem en t provides undergraduate and post-graduate courses in many fields of learning as well as in Torah studies.

The moral value of the accomplishment is beyond measure.

Through the decades, in ever mounting numbers each year, an elite corps of young American Jews has been schooled in the Torah Umadah approach to life. They have taken their places in the Rabbinate, the world of scholarship and education, the pro­ fessions, the arts and sciences, the business world. They have as­ sumed leadership roles in communal endeavor, carrying with them an informed purpose and deep commitment, with profound, cumulative impact on American Jewish life.

A7TSH IV A University has not been immune from the penalties JL usually accompanying rapid growth. Among the institution’s multitude of friends, there are those who fear that the pace might Problem s be too swift to permit effective assimilation of the newer units of Growth and expanded student body and faculty to its essential character.

But these qualms must be weighed in the light of the achieve­ ment as a whole and in the perspective of the massive problems which the path to greatness must encounter. The emerging char­ acter of Yeshiva University must be perceived not in transient aspects but in the flowering of the original seed, whose likeness is sure to be apparent in its product. Let all join in seventyfifth anniversary tribute to Yeshiva University; may it continue to flourish, B’ezrath Hashem, and may it go from strength to strength in service to the cause of Torah and Israel.

The Struggle Of Anglo-Jewry HE Jewish community of Britain, long an exemplar of wellorganized stability and loyalty to historic Judaism, is locked in a struggle which threatens to undermine its very foundations.

The immediate problem is an attempt by deviationist elements to “capture ” the principalship of Jews College. Beneath and beyond this lies a fundamental issue.

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Jews College, British Jewry’s seminary for the training of rabbis and ministers, has had a quiet career through many past years, nurturing religious leaders of a calibre well adapted to the particular needs of its community. The retirement of Rabbi Dr. Isidore Epstein as Principal, after a distinguished term of service, left an opening which provided occasion for the present eruption.

As the recognized arm of a community always committed to orthodox Judaism, Jews College is of course an orthodox instiFebruary, 1962

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tutiohi- It occupies a key role in shaping the religious character of Anglo-Jewish life.

Tn recent years a faction has arisen, small in numbers but with influential resources at its command, which has viewed with discontent the Anglo-Jewish community’s attachment to traditional Judaism. Seeing little prospect for the spread of Reform, which, whether under that name or designated Liberal, has failed to achieve a significant role in the Anglo-Jewish scene, they pinned their hopes on the importation of Conservatism. When AngloJewry declined to give acceptance to this creed, the dissident Familiar faction then undertook a strategy which the history of ConserPaftern vatism has made familiar: a strategy of conquest through infiltra­ tion, dissimulation, and misrepresentation. Representing them­ selves as advocates of the purest of orthodoxies, with modern refinements, they set to work to malign the “establishment,” to tamper with unsuspecting congregations, to sow doubt, distrust, confusion, and dissension on all sides. Seeing in the Jews College vacancy an ideal opportunity, they mobilized all the means at their command to capture this key post.

A circumstance which has lent itself to the purpose of this faction is the candidacy for the principalship of a figure who, though serving until his recent resignation as a tutor at the College, has publicly and unmistakably pronounced his doubts as to some basic tenets of Judaism. Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Dr. Israel H. Brodie, in whose office lies power of decision, has refused to sanction his appointment as Principal. Maintaining tips stand against unceasing pressure, Dr. Brodie has been made the central target of the deviationist group, intent upon shatter­ ing the authority of the Chief Rabbinate. To storm this strong­ hold, pivot of Anglo-Jewish life, the protagonists of Conservatism have unleashed a veritable fury of propaganda in behalf of the controversial candidate and of vinification of the defenders of traditional Judaism. Their campaign has been carried beyond the bounds of the community to the non-Jewish public, with leading British dailies coming into play.

Amidst this unconscionable havoc, British Jewry is being sub­ jected to a critical test. The leading remaining bastion of Jewish Historic strength in Europe, it is a Jewry of character, and of a promise Test all the more precious in the light of the catastrophes of our time.

Will Anglo-Jewry permit a clique to dictate the perversion of its religion, to ravish its sanctities and ravage its communal life? The millions of Torah-loyal Jews throughout the world pray, and are confident, that Britain’s Jews will not allow themselves to be exploited and betrayed. Rather, we believe, they will stand fast by the faith of Israel and emerge from this struggle with new strength and clarified purpose.

JEWISH LIFE

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Sons of the Religious Kibbutz

By ARYEH NEWMAN

Through thirty years, the religious kibbutz has put info practice its unique concept— the collective Torah com­ mune. In this time, a new generation has been reared 5 the product of the religious settlement. What are the characteristics of the second-generation kibbutznick?

Mr. Newman offers a view in close-up and perspective.

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T IS a fact that our Torah works for the reform of society through the individual. Of course there will be social and economic systems which are closer or further removed in their total character from the spiritual standards set by Judaism. But no specific order of society is postulated as a precon­ dition for the Jew. On the contrary, the Torah consecrates life in all its forms. “Even if you are trampling down a lane, the commandments ac­ company you,” exclaimed one of our Talmudic Sages (Midrosh, Devorim Rabbah VI, 3) in commenting on the Biblical text: “When there shall chance on the way before you a bird’s n est. . . you shall surely send away the mother bird” (Devorim 22:6). The Torah pre­ scribes duties for the employer and employee, regulates the exercise of private and public ownership, just as it legislates for all the daily needs of man— leaving its sanctifying impress on his food, clothing and shelter, and domestic life. But it also legislates for those who wish to go further than its own normal demands. It talks of the JSTazirite who forgoes wine and

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February, 1962

strong drink. Whilst Judaism has al­ ways frowned upon abstention for its own sake “One who indulges in fast­ ings is dubbed a sinner” (Taanith, 11a), “man will be called to give account regarding all the things his eyes have seen and abstained from enjoying” (Yerushalmi, end of Kiddushin), it has accepted that certain situations may arise which justify the complete removal of the object which is the source of temptation. Society may have become so corrupt that the only solu­ tion is for the individual to divorce himself from it as much as possible.

There have always been groups of people within the Jewish fold who have dedicated themselves over and above the rest of the community to a particular task, and have for that pur­ pose bound themselves by stricter rules.

It is in such a light that the growth of the religious kibbutz movement must be seen. Some three to four decades ago the collective ideal was adopted by groups of religious young men and women, at first in Germany, but later spreading to Poland and 7

Galicia. This collective ideal was in­ extricably bound up with settlement in Eretz Israel and though undoubt­ edly influenced by the existing kib­ butzim and the socialist and coop­ erative ideas of the century, it was conceived as the highest expression of a Torah life. Admittedly private prop­ erty was permitted by the Torah but the voluntary pooling of individual earnings would lead to a more ideal life. These pioneers did not want to reproduce the evils, the inequalities of their Diaspora experience, but rather to start a new leaf in Jewish history with their community building in the Divine homeland. They felt that they were being truer to the spirit of Juda­ ism than those who lived their lives getting and spending in the town. They would never be guilty of the communist extremes in the field of family and sex life practiced by some of their secular counterparts, since, in the last resort, the Torah was their Authority. Thus the religious kibbutz movement pre­ served intact the family unit from the very beginning, though education of the youth was strictly collective.

ultimately make or break the religious kibbutz. What way are they going?

To answer this question in any defi­ nite manner one would have to be a prophet or simply have patience and wait for another twenty or thirty years.

It is impossible to generalize when the numbers involved are so few and the period of time so short. One can only register certain trends and note down a number of facts without committing oneself to any definite conclusions.

One thing is certain. The kibbutz community is no homogeneous one.

Within the basic collective framework it represents quite a variety of back­ grounds— east and west European, with a sprinkling of “Anglo-Saxons,” yeshivah graduates of both Chassidic and Lithuanian types, and the prod­ ucts of Torah im Derech Eretz. Tem­ peraments of course differ as well. If there are a high proportion of the highly intellectual and ideological-con­ scious, there are also the fellow-travel­ lers who have found security in a society that liberates them from having to take any initiative.

OME thirty years have passed since the constitution of the first collec­ tive group, though the oldest religious kibbutz in Israel is twenty-five years old this year—Tirat Zvi in the Bet Shan valley. The religious kibbutz is a community of some 4,000 souls dis­ tributed through thirteen villages. They represent a select band, whom mass immigration has, for the most part, passed by. Their main recruits have been from the Youth Aliyah groups educated along with their own chil­ dren, the trickle of graduates of their pioneer movements in Israel and the Diaspora. But as they themselves re­ alize— their future is completely bound up with their own children. They will

OW this heterogeneous society with its different levels of edu­ cation, variations on the common them e, has established its own instruments for educating its younger generation. A ll have had to go through the same mill, as it were, the child’s curriculum and way of life not determined by the individual par­ ents but by a larger unity— the com­ munity, and this larger unit is the closed society of the kibbutz, not the general framework of the state. Of course, this phenomenon is not un­ usual in Jewish history. It is in some ways typical of Diaspora life till the dawn of civil emancipation, and has survived in devoutly orthodox religious

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quarters in various parts of the world.

But whereas the latter-mentioned groups do not at all identify them­ selves with the outside, the religious kibbutz does identify itself, apart from its collective commitment, with the state which it helped and made such sacrifice to build. And, as we have noted, the kibbutz members are them­ selves not all made of one pattern as are, shall we say, the inhabitants of Williamsburg in New York or the Batei Hungarn in Jerusalem’s Mea Shearim.

All these factors have found their expression in the character of the young generation and the problems of educating them. There is a general levelling up or down in the end prod­ ucts. The older generation complain of “mediocrity” or “average.” The reality is not like the dream. The founders dreamt of something better than them­ selves— they envisioned the child of Utopia, who had never been faced by the corruption of a capitalist society, of private property, of inequalities of income. This child is different—he knows, on an average, much more Tanach than his parents, he is usually much more hardened and suited to country life, has the practicality and down-to-earthness of the farmer. It is this practicality which suffuses his whole attitude even to the collective ideal. Above all the younger genera­ tion has taught many of the oldsters the most instructive and perhaps the crudest lesson of their lives: T IS still premature to sum up achievements or failures in kibbutz education, but it may be noted that many of the educational methods in­ stituted have been invalidated by re­ ality.

In this connection the following ob­ servations of Yitzhak Asher, veteran

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Kibbutz Hadati educator and principal of Yavne school, are illuminating. They concern the question of introducing the sitting for thé Matriculation exami­ nation in the kibbutz school which as a rule offers pupils twelve years of schooling without any examination at the end of it. “The demand for the matriculation will become more and more vocal on the part of parents and pupdls . . . sincere concern for the educational standards of the second generation on whose shoulders rests the burden of continuing the kibbutz enterprise, will have its effect in quick­ ening this process . . . We cannot ignore reality— painful and disappoint­ ing in itself—that generally no at­ mosphere of learning for its own sake exists. Social and personal problems that crop up at this age are liable to interfere even with the application of the talented and eager students. The defined goal of a matriculation exami­ nation serves as an efficient means of countering the efféct of these rival claims on the pupils’ attention, by acting as an incentive. The realization of this led us some years ago to intro­ duce examinations and reports after hopes of doing without them had been dashed. In other words, the kibbutz child is just like any other, only more so!

The child born and educated in the kibbutz is no angel and is consequently not free from complexes. He is con­ fronted with the problems of “I” and property just the same as the town child even though from different as­ pects. What is more, the town fasci­ nates kibbutz children, since it repre­ sents something different, a place of entertainment, adventure. The social framework too in which the children grow up sobers them and removes all illusions regarding society, its power and ability. The foregoing are the con9

sidered words of a kibbutz educa­ tionalist printed in Amudim, the offi­ cial organ of Kibbutz Hadati.

What sociological jargon calls the “routinization of the charisma” i.e. the results of normalization, has come as a shock to many kibbutzniks. They had not realized something which is the most natural thing in the world and with which every society is faced.

The children of pioneers are never pioneers in the same way as their parents. What the latter struggled to obtain is taken for granted by their children. The kibbutz is not something they have achieved but something they were born into. Their evaluation of collective life is bound to be con­ ditioned by that factor, however much ideological conviction they, may de­ velop about it. They see it. stripped of all romanticism. “I prefer the kibbutz way of life because I was born to it.

It is my village and I saw no Reason to try and make my life elsewhere.”

Thus spoke one young married man to me. “I see nothing, superior in its way of life. It just happens to be my home,” he added.

OT that there aren’t young people who extol the virtues of kibbutz life per se. I encountered one who explained how superior for him the kibbutz was to the town. It offered security and was free from the in­ equalities outside. But again the ap­ proach was pragmatic. Without wish­ ing to generalize I should like to point out that it turned out afterwards there were usually other reasons, family background, personal;difficulties, etc. which accounted for, a particularly favorable or unfavorable view of kib­ butz life. Indeed the most surprising general impression is how individual is the younger generation despite its uniform education and upbringing.

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The years they have spent in the com­ mon children’s house have by no means erased that.

The reason for this is not far to seek. In a religious kibbutz family ties are stronger than in their secular counterparts; each family continuing the religious attitudes and traditions of its past. But even when we consider the much vaunted collective living away from the family, it transpires that on the kibbutz parents may very well see more of their children than a hard­ working professional or manual la­ borer may in the town. At the end of a day’s work they spend some time with them and on Shabboth and the festivals considerable time, which is certainly not less than a town worker who may even come home late and go to bed without seeing his children.

Thus to a great extent the new gen­ eration reproduces the traditions and attitudes of the parents, and reacts as much to the kind of life experienced within the smaller family circle as it does to the normalization of having been born into a collective. Reasons for leaving a kibbutz may be the re­ sult of some narrower domestic con­ sideration; rather than a repudiation of the education received or the kibbutz ideology, though some kibbutz vet­ erans take such departures to heart as if it indicated their own failure and that of the kibbutz educational system.

When some of the first graduates of the kibbutz left, the adults were per­ turbed. They did not see those that remained but only those that had left.

VER the years the majority have stayed on and of those that have left, women have predominated and one of the main reasons is— marriage.

A marriage partner must normally be found outside the community and the kibbutzim as a whole are too small in

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compass to solve this problem. Some­ times a partner can be found in the Youth Aliy ah groups that come to stay or the graduates of the religious pio­ neer movements in the towns— in B’nei Akivah and Ezra— of Hapoel Hamizrachi and Polaei Agudah respectively.

This problem is well reflected in Chofetz Chayim— the veteran kibbutz of Polei Agudah which does not have the large youth movement both in Israel and abroad that its Hapoel Hamizrachi counterpart has. There, for instance, of some twenty-five grad­ uates of their kibbutz, ten, mainly women, left to marry partners to live on the kibbutz. In this kibbutz as a whole the girls were decidedly less favorable to the kibbutz way of life than the men. They mostly wished to be good Jewish “balabostes” with their own kitchen to fuss around in and they disliked having their present or future determined for them by a meeting of the kibbutz committee. It was difficult to explain to them that even in town girls couldn’t just do as they liked and often found their future dictated by grim economic realities.

The founders of Kibbutz Chofetz Chayim seemed to be good humoredly resigned to a certain proportion of de­ partures from their midst, satisfied with the numbers that have remained, and in particular with those who have persuaded their town partners to come and live with them. With an average of five to a family and many families with more, and still growing, their problem is chiefly economic— making ends meet. But the situation or at least the feeling is somewhat different on the Hapoel Hamizrachi kibbutzim where the birth rate is much lower— an average of three to a family. The question of who is to continue and take the place of the founders as they age is foremost amongst their discusFebruary, 1962

sions. Only recently a resolution was passed urging that the younger gen­ eration be directed as far as posssible to remain on the home kibbutz in preference even to another kibbutz, not to speak of leaving the kibbutz environment altogether. It may be said: What was to stop the founding members of Kibbutz Hadati from having large families of ten or twelve children, in the first place? This brings us to the topic of religious norms and observance.

Religiously speaking the Kibbutz Hadati is formfed of a larger propor­ tion of persons whose lives were gov­ erned by the values of western Europe and who had left the uncompromising religious framework distinctive to life in parts of eastern Europe. The prac­ tice of family planning is just one of the hallmarks of this “modernity.”

The larger the group the more likely variations in religious practice. There has always' been a certain amount of tension ih Kibbutz Hadati between the individual maximalists in respect of religious observance and the less me­ ticulous public. It is in the light of this that the religious observance of the younger1 generation must be viewed. Much has been made of the “laxity” o f the younger generation, of their routine performance of religious duties and o f! the introduction of yeshivah ¿dhc^tion to stop the rot.

What is the truth?

HE truth in this field corresponds to what has been said about other spheres of activity. Religious attitudes of children vary, first, of all, according to parental background. This is true even of Chofetz' Chayim, where the old standards are1much more strictly adhered to. The Chassidic father will have a ChassieUp son, the Yekke (as the German Jews are called) a like-

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minded one, and not all sabra habits will completely disguise it. How much more true is this of Kibbutz Hadati, on a relatively large kibbutz like Yavne or Tirat Zvi where religious variations can be greater. All those considera­ tions which in the town have brought about the revolution in the attitude to yeshivah education in western educated circles worked with even greater force within the closed kibbutz society.* The latter school system, in terms of formal demands—the number of hours spent on Talmud, or the way it was learnt and the relationship between “secular” and “sacred” subjects— closely paralleled that of the Mizrachi school system as it functioned in the town. Just as there it had proved in­ adequate to produce a generation of Torah-true sabras and prevent them succumbing to the temptations of the predominant non-observant milieu— particularly under the stress of army life— so it proved inadequate to steel the kibbutz graduate. Just as the town family has turned to the yeshivah and yeshivah high school, so has the kib­ butz. And those coming back from the yeshivah to their home kibbutz are demanding higher and higher stand­ ards of religious life.

The problem is more complicated in the case of the kibbutz, since in addi­ tion, there is the issue of collective living added to that of religious ob­ servance. And as some kibbutz edu­ cationalists are never tired of pointing out—the yeshivah is not designed to produce respect for the kibbutz way of life. On the contrary, it may work against the kibbutz since the teachers and rabbis who indoctrinated the youthful kibbutznik have no particular sympathy fpr this, ,t;yp? of society. But

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* See the sam© m itep> arti$le “Qn tp the .“ Ye­ shivah!” in the Cheshvan/October, 1961 Jewish Life.

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the matter is still the subject of con­ troversy, some period of yeshivah life now being the rule in all religious kib­ butzim. The oldsters are on the whole delighted with the improvement in the quality of their children’s religious con­ victions and observance, indeed, just as is the case in many town families.

Actually, the complaints of kibbutz parents about the inadequacies in their children can be paralleled by the com­ plaints of parents everywhere. The children fail to follow in their parents’ footsteps, do not take over responsible tasks as eagerly and quickly as they would like them to; they are too matter-of-fact about things their par­ ents regard as sacrosanct. But whilst all such disappointments are dissipated throughout individual families in the private sector, it is all concentrated within the kibbutz which is like one large family in respect of the question of continuity.

E shall try as cautiously as pos­ sible to sum up the picture of the kibbutz sabra that emerges from our tentative encounter with it. He is first of all a sabra, with all the character­ istics of that breed, the generation that has not known the taste of exile. He is secondly a village sabra, born and bred on the land. His world is the com­ munity he was born into, his interests, building up that community, using all the techniques he has learnt about. He is on the whole not academically in­ clined but wishes to make a good job of the things he has been trained to do, a better job technically than his par­ ents. The latest “know-how” absorbs him and he wishes to apply it to his “firm” which is the Kibbutz. He is the opposite of the luftmenfsh. Fine points of ideology do not usuqjly iqteresjl; him.

He mqy w$x enthusiastic Qyfr the children’si hqwsje as an institution because

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as a young father it saves him sleepless nights just as his wife may eternally damn the institution because it de­ prives her of indulging in her maternal affections. Religiously speaking, he is what his parents and the kibbutz have put into him. The complete failures in this respect, I am sure, are fewer than in the private sector, but that is no consolation to the kibbutz com­ munity as a whole, which feels very keenly the defection of even one mem­ ber.

The influence of trends in the gen­ eral community on the kibbutz youth is greater than is perhaps supposed.

With all the insulation of the kibbutz, the wider community impinges upon it at every step and turn. In educa­ tional institutions, in the army, the kibbutznik rubs shoulders with the “other” side and to him it very often does not represent anything funda­ mentally foreign and repelling. He lives in his kibbutz; the other fellow happens to live somewhere else; it could have been the other way round.

In his case it won’t be because he is anchored in his home. This thing is the crux of the matter. To that extent the kibbutz has succeeded in rearing a generation that takes its way of life for granted and is basically loyal to it,

February, 1962

though not for the same reasons which inspired kibbutz founders.

HE latter, like many parents, par­ ticularly Jewish parents, are not satisfied with their end product. As idealists dedicated to the setting up of a perfectionist society where there would be none of the evils of the ac­ quisitive society, they murmur and find fault and prescribe remedies. What does the more distant future hold?

Will the sons keep the kibbutz going and hand it on intact to a third gen­ eration? There are many unknown factors. If the sabra is much more elastic and practical in his attitude to the sancta of the kibbutz, and there is no doubt of that, there are always town-bred girls and boys for whom the religious collective spells the purity and perfection they are seeking. And then the very practicality of the kib­ butz sabra may convince him that any radical modification of the communal framework in the direction of an in­ dividualistic structure (such as in the moshav shitufi*) spells the doom of the kibbutz and from that he will recoil.

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*A kibbutz which has retained the collective discipline in the economic field but allows each family to live on its own within a fixed allow­ ance allocated according to the number of per­ sons in the family.

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Federations and The Day Schools

By REUBEN E. GROSS General recognition of the crucial role of the day schools has brought awareness that their maintenance is a communal obligation. Now comes the issue, treated in this article: Through what channels shall the obligation be fulfilled?

UPPORTERS of the Day School movement are undoubtedly happy at the first signs of the thaw that seems to be breaking the “Federation freeze” against the day schools. Over the years, support of day schools by the various federated Jewish funds has been conspicious by its absence. With the great growth of the day schools, evidencing their pivotal role in the perpetuation of Jewish life, pressure has been building up for recognition of communal responsibility for their maintenance. At the National Assem­ bly of the Council of Jewish Federa­ tions and Welfare Funds held in Dallas, Texas last November, the issue of federation allocations to day schools was aired, appearing on the agenda for the first time in the Council’s his­ tory. A motion was passed calling for study of the question. Whatever may be the immediate result of this action, it is apparent that in the coming years the thaw is bound to gain momentum.

Increasing recognition of the position achieved by the Yeshivah Ketanah is coming.

Some protagonists of the Day School Movement tend to welcome

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the prospect of ties with the Jewish community federations and welfare funds. They see in this development both a just measure of public recog­ nition and the solution of painful financial problems. It is the view of the present writer, however, that the prospective cure may be worse than the disease.

If the new trend is interpreted as a sign that federation leaders and offi­ cials, hitherto predominantly secular­ ist, are now becoming baaley teshuvah and are becoming interested in the Day School for its intrinsic worth as a Torah institution, we are misreading the signs of the times. Let us review some salient factors.

NTIL the end of World War II, federation giving was largely a matter of supporting hospitals, orphan asylums, old-age homes, and similar fields of welfare— gemilath chassodim.

With the rise of the State of Israel, and the short-sighted refusal by Feder­ ation leaders to make adequate grants to the United Palestine Appeal, the United Jewish Appeal was formed.

With the drama and dynamism pre-

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sented by the reestablished Medinath Israel as a background, the UJA sur­ passed the expectations of the most optimistic fund-raisers. Most secular organizations then found themselves enjoying six and seven figure budgets by adopting the expedient of riding on the coat-tails of the UJA, some as part of the national campaign, others as part of local UJA campaigns.

To-day, the appeal of gemilath chessed work is rapidly diminishing by reason of governmental aid, Blue Cross, and similiar health and hospital insurance plan*. Secretary Ribicoff re­ cently pointed out that at present, the medical needs of the rich and the poor are somehow or other cared for. Soon­ er or later the entire area of old-age needs will be covered by a compre­ hensive governmental plan. Private philanthropy is being pushed to seek new fields. Simultaneously, the State of Israel’s dramatic punch is waning as a spur to giving for domestic causes. The realization that outright gifts are a crutch to a State capable of walking, in contradistinction to the need and opportunity for investment by foreign capital, may soon cut sharply into UJA’s popularity.

Fund-raisers need saleable images.

What has more dramatic interest than the picture of the heroic rise of the Day School movement? It is in tune with the growing concern of the masses for religious values. It har­ monizes with the increasing awareness of the need to raise educational stand­ ards on the elementary school level and to integrate secular and religious training without involving the State in religious matters. Morever, it is giving, not for overseas, but for domestic needs— a deft, built-in touch of selfinterest. In brief, the Day School movement in America today offers the February, 1962

ideal image of which the high-level fund-raiser dreams.

HEN these realizations dawn upon Federation leaders, a* is sooner or later likely to occur, the Day Schools will no longer be shunned.

Instead, they will be courted with offers to do their sorely needed fund­ raising on a massive scale. We can anticipate that allotments out of exist­ ing funds will be offered— but with a “catch,” innocent-appearing at first, but capable of developing into a fatal “hook.”

The welfare fund professionals L^ve developed over the years a series of scientific techniques for swaying the direction, development, and content of the agencies and institutions under their aegis. Also they have perfected given administrative procedures for the control of fiscal operation. Ac­ cordingly, the first requirement from the day school in exchange for com­ munal support will be for a copy of the budget— an innocent and reason­ able demand. The next demand will be for efficiency in business procedures.

Who in America today will support business inefficiency? And some re­ ligious practices can be very “ineffi­ cient,” like the maintenance of two sets of dishes.

However, the first point of attack will probably never be so blatant. Help will rather be offered in standardi­ zation of procedures and practices.

Licensing by an “impartial” body, such as the Jewish Education Com­ mittee, will likely be proposed. Those schools following the “wise” course of adopting these suggestions, having thereby engaged staff satisfactory to welfare fund officials, will find their budgetary problems eased. The stub­ born ones, on the other hand, will no doubt find their allotments cut. By

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such gentle but steady pressures, the Day Schools may soon find themselves dominated by secularist staffs.

Any illusions as to the probable im­ pact of the Federations on the Day School scene should be dispelled by the recent publication of an authorita­ tive study of the movement by a man who has held the position of Executive Director of the Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds for two decades. In “A Heritage Affirmed”

by Harry Lurie, (Jewish Publication Society, 1961) that author says in re­ gard to “the relatively recent area of federation responsibility” in the field of Jewish education: “The gradual evolution of basic prin­ ciples of federation’s responsibility for Jewish education has left unresolved many questions concerning the char­ acter and content of the courses of study and their aims”’ Clearly, this language does not reflect the thinking of a movement whose responsibility would stop with the giv­ ing of money, which would refrain from intermeddling with Day School curricula as a matter of principle.

Now that federations have come to view Jewish education as their “re­ sponsibility,” an orbit which may soon include the Day Schools, the “char­ acter and content” of Day School in­ struction is not likely to escape feder­ ation vigilance.

MONG the bundle of federation . techniques which Lurie mentions is to . . . ; “use(d) the federation office as a central address in the community for referring client and group problems and for receiving criticisms and complaints of the work of the beneficiary agencies.

Through these contracts with individ­ uals in the community federation was to become in time the central planning as well as the central fund raising in­

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strument for communal welfare serv­ ices.”

Proponents of federation ties among the Day School movement would be well advised to ponder the implications of the above. One can visualize day school deans and principals— already subject to pressures of many kinds aiming to dilute the purity of their standards— being called on the federa­ tion carpet to justify school policy and procedure. Classes the last week of the year?— impractical! Procure­ ment of luncheon foods from great distances for no better reason than reliability of Kashruth— uneconomic!

Hebrew classes in the morning and relegation of English classes to the afternoon? — inadequate preparation for citizenship! Start a drive for a high school?— Not in accord with central planning. And so on. . . .

In recent debate over Federal Aid to religious schools the cry was heard that with such aid will come control and that the day schools should rather look to Jewish federation funds. How misleading is such advice! While such control as may be annexed to Federal grants would be benign and neutral as between religions, and completely in­ different to intra-religious differences, no such indifference can be expected from federations and welfare funds.

The conclusion cannot be avoided that the Torah-true traditional standards of the founders of the Jewish day schools would be eroded in less than a generation if they permitted them­ selves to be dependent on funds whose distribution is largely in the hands of secularists.

We must face reality with honesty.

The secularist professionals regard the Day School as a return to medieval obscurantism. To ask these people to cooperate with us because we are an important part of the Jewish comJEWISH LIFE

mumty makes as much sense as asking Khrushchev to aid American atomic and rocket research on the ground that America and Russia are both part of the human race. r r iH E answer to the problem is obJL vious. The cards are in the hands of the traditional forces which have created and m aintained the day schools. Why do we need unsympa­ thetic “kibitzers” to play them for us?

Traditional Jewry can and should or­ ganize its own national fund raising program— a National Torah Appeal of comprehensive scope and scientifically planned method. The program would bring teams of professional fund­ raising experts into each town and city having a Day School, working on

February, 1962

properly planned lines to guide and assist local volunteers. Local needs should be a first lien against the funds raised. Thereafter, national Torah or­ ganizations and institutions should share. Subsequently, parallel teams could go into the unorganized towns in the name of the national Torah insti­ tutions, simultaneously creating local schools and building up local Torah forces.

Pidyon Sh’vuyim and Talmud Torah are the two highest forms of Tzedokah.

American Jewry has already responded to the former with an open-handedness unexampled in all history. Do we not commit an injustice against them by assuming they will be less than gener­ ous to the latter?

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The American Rabbi Today A Profile

By THEODORE L. ADAMS

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This article is based on material gathered by the author for his doctoral thesis, as yet unpublished, on “ The Role of the American Rabbi.“

PECTACULAR indeed are some of the changes and developments which have taken place in the affairs of the Jewish community. The de­ mand for rabbis, we are reliably in­ formed by recent researchers, is greater than the supply. Three decades ago, only fifty-six percent of the then 2,948 Jewish congregations of all de­ nominations employed rabbis or other spiritual leaders while the remainder were in no position to do so. Also illustrative of that era had been the almost constant retreat of all six semi­ naries which were then preparing their students for service in the orthodox Jewish community and the Reform and Conservative movements. Semi­ naries seemed helpless to place their graduates in the hard-pressed congre­ gations whose members ceased to pay dues. Little remained but an undig­ nified struggle for the few openings in the competitive spirit of survival.

We now have twice as many Jewish seminaries, but their supply of or­ dained graduates has not met the demand. It is this arresting fact which

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has moved President Belkin of Yeshiva University to devise incentives in the form of scholarships and subsidies with which to induce a larger number of students to enter the Rabbinate. In the language of the economist whose concern is with the law of “demand” and “supply,” this is a unique, un­ precedented opportunity and “place” (meaning need for status) for the Rabbi and the Rabbinate. Rabbinical “jobs” go abegging, with few candi­ dates to accept the offers.

What has happened? Why has it happened? N o simple or single answer can be given. But these questions are not without answers. Here I shall merely attempt to answer rather briefly the reasons for the increased “need” for the rabbi, and discuss the more important subject— the identity and character of the contemporary Ameri­ can Rabbi— the so-called Rabbinicus Novus, genre, 1962.

URNING first to the problem of the causes of the increased need for the rabbi, there is little doubt

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that this new need is not unconnected with the religious “revival” in Amer­ ica, as well as the changing furictions of the rabbi. American Jewish religious revival is real. It is visible in increas­ ing synagogue membership, which has taken place to a large degree in the new social setting created by the multi­ tude of new suburban communities, and by the corresponding occupational shifts resulting from World War II. This phenomenon has been the subject of several sociological studies. For ex­ ample, Morris R. Werb, investigating Jewish suburbia in 1959,* found con­ siderable growth in synagogue mem­ bership and “religious identification” in suburban life, as compared with such membership in previous resi­ dences in non-suburban areas.

While it may be argued, and some do so assert, that synagogue attendance and religious identification do not in themselves indicate a revival of Jewish religious life, it can also be argued that both are expressions of a desire for group survival and open identification with the Jewish group. People do not just “survive.” In preserving their dis­ tinctive existence, they create condi­ tions that under favorable circum­ stances allow them to fulfill their char­ acter at a different level. Given the stimulus and the present sociological climate favoring religion, people pull themselves up religiously by their own bootstraps. I should be surprised if the widespread current interest in re­ ligion, with all its ramifying roots in genuine human need, did not lead our “passive” brethren back to affirmative religious participation if properly channelized by religious leadership.

Repeated assertions that membership and identification with a synagogue * “Jewish Suburbia—An Historical and Com­ parative Study of Jewish Communities in Three New Jersey Suburbs.” New York Uni­ versity, 1959.

February, 1962

merely serve as methods of “accultura­ tion and adjustment of the Jews to ¡the American social milieu” in 1961 lead one to wonder whether our Jewish sociologists who have preoccupied themselves with “acculturation and ad­ justment,” have not applied to these complex processes of the “later im­ migrants the criteria of postwar World War I vintage.

HE authentic motif of the Jews in America, of the second, third, and fourth, or even fifth generation, is not “assimilation,” “acculturation,” and “adjustment,” but the compelling uniqueness of the timeless Jewish re­ ligious experience, which has taken root in the American environment.

This current in American Jewish life was bound sooner or later to bear dis­ tinctive gifts not only on the personal religious plane, but in the qualitative rise and achievement of traditional Jewry as a conscious force.

These developments, begun in the twenties, came to a sudden halt in the thirties. After marking time for a de­ cade, Orthodoxy then moved to re­ capture lost time. Coming to grips with fundamentals, traditional Jewry focussed after World War II on the major development of its educational program. Institutions of higher Torah learning multiplied and waxed, and Yeshiva College flowered into Yeshiva University. The day school movement, on the elementary and high school levels, took on remarkable volition.

In 1942 there were but thirty-three Jewish day schools. Between 1942 and 1961 Orthodoxy increased the net­ work of all-day schools to 274, with an enrollment of over 50,000.

Within the same period, many other manifestations of orthodox creativity emerged. Not least significant of these has been the flowering of media of

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expression, effectively keyed to an American audience. J e w i s h L i f e ap­ peared, for example, demonstrating to a surprised public that the orthodox Jew could master the technique of the modern magazine. There has subse­ quently appeared the “Journal of Or­ thodox Jewish Thought,” Tradition, a semi-annual, vigorously expounding the ideological issues of the contempo­ rary world in Halachic terms. Numer­ ous books bespeaking the traditional view to today’s world have appeared and have won popular acceptance.

The spontaneous character of this trend can no longer be disputed. No longer can the theory be seriously maintained that it is “cyclical,” as Nathan Glazer* would have it. The traditional Jewish upsurge pre-dates the general American “revival,” since it had already begun in the mid or late thirties. It was in 1940 that these two religious “revivals” converged. It is interesting to observe that from this time on America is referred to more and more as a religious rather than a secular community, and as a religious pluralism rather than a cultural plural­ ism. This trend served to put more importance and responsibility on the religious dimension and through it on the religious leaders, in ever increasing phases of public, civic, and communal life.

HUS, viewing the American scene as a whole, there can be no question as to the radically enhanced role of religions and religious observance in the social pattern. The evidence, as cited in the paper “Religion in Ameri­ can Society” appearing in the Annals of the American Academy of Social and Political Science, N ovem ber, 1960, is overwhelming: Church and synagogue memberships have reached

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* “The American Jewish Community’

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an all time high for Americans of all religions. 63.6 percent of the total populace, 109,557,741 persons, were affiliated with the religious bodies in 1957. (From 1957 to 1960, the num­ ber had already grown to 114,449,217, recent statistics show). The proportion of advance of religious affiliation has exceeded that of the rate of growth of the population. Churches and syna­ gogues and the relative percentages of Americans affiliated with both are in­ creasing daily. From 1940 to 1957 church and synagogue membership in the United States made most impres­ sive gains, from 50.7 percent to 63.6 percent, resulting in proportionate visible growths also in memberships of Jewish congregations, orthodox, Con­ servative and Reform.

Today the membership of religious bodies in the United States, according to this source, exceeds 110 million.

Of course, there are those who view this mass trend as motivated by social and emotional, rather than authen­ tically religious, impulses. They deem it the product, not of positive commit­ ments to religious creeds, but of the desire for a secure place in the social scheme, blended with the urge for a haven from the intellectual and spirit­ ual confusions of modern life. There is much room for doubt as to the validity of this position in general, but certainly the evidence indicates that it has but limited application to the forces at play on the Jewish— and par­ ticularly the traditional Jewish— scene.

The religious awakening and a long­ term trend towards religious intensifi­ cation are fundamental factors in American Jewish life today.

AVING related, in brief, the sets of forces and developments which gave rise to new religious activi­ ties in Jewish Suburbia and the non-

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suburban middle class, which in turn created new “demand” and “places” for the religious leader, let us turn our gaze at the rabbi’s personality and roles. For it is his bundle of roles and leadership which is tied up directly with the religious life of the com­ munity An accurate portrait of the orthodox rabbi and his non-orthodox colleagues, constituting highly special­ ized groups of people estimated to total over 3,500, may prove useful. I believe that at this time, when scarce­ ly any feature of human society and of the Jewish community does not interact with religion, the existence of this special group is one of the most important factors in the preservation and enrichment of American Jewish life.

What is the true identity of the American Rabbi?

The first determining characteristic of the contemporary rabbi is that he is native born, a shift especially marked since 1920, a turning point in the history of immigration to the United States. The increase in the pro­ portion of native-born rabbis and the decrease in the proportion of foreignborn rabbis has been proceeding for some time before 1920, and continued thereafter. This rising fact of the pre­ dominance of the native rabbi is likely to have a more fundamental influence on the Jewish way of life in America than it had heretofore. A second de­ termining factor is the relatively low age of the rabbi. Close to one-half range below the age of forty, and less than a third of our national sample is between forty and forty-nine. How­ ever, age plays a diminishing role in the rabbinate, prevailing opinion to the contrary notwithstanding. The dif­ ficulty of finding posts for those over forty, of which much has recently been heard, does not apply to the February, 1962

rabbi; nor does it apply to other pro­ fessionals and specialists. But there is among the Jewish religious leaders of all ages and affiliations a common economic denominator which sets them apart from their non-Jewish counterparts. The rising fact is that the Jewish clergyman earns much more than his non-Jewish colleague.

Our estimates, based on reliable in­ come figures, reveal that the average yearly salary of the clergy of orthodox Jewish, Reform, and Conservative con­ gregations is $8,600 compared with $5,216 for the non-Jewish clergymen.

The largest proportion of those serv­ ing congregations find themselves in the $7,000 to $10,000 annual bracket.

A G E , of course, is a factor in earnJ \ . ing capacity, as is length of service in the present employment. Although the younger ones, those under forty, are earning between $7,000 and $10,000, the steady progression of men with advanced degrees from $10,000 to $15,000 after ten years of service seems good. This income pat­ tern applies to orthodox rabbis as well as to their Reform and Conservative compeers, although the latter two are somewhat more favored in the $10,000 to $15,000 bracket. There are more Conservative men earning an annual reward of $10,000 to $15,000 than there are Reform and orthodox, the former outranking the latter by a small margin. This discovery that the ortho­ dox rabbi’s salary levels are about as good as those of the Reform and Con­ servative groups is one of the signifi­ cant findings of this author. Similarly, the figure well above $15,000 after fifteen years of service in the present employment for clergy of all three colorations is one of the most con­ vincing proofs that learning and ad­ vanced studies provide the Rabbinate 21

with a means of climbing the economic ladder, more so than applies to the members of the academic community.

My own studies reveal that there are more orthodox Rabbis earning $15,000 and over than there are Conservative, but not so Reform, the latter outrank­ ing the orthodox by two to one.

T the same time it is worth stating . that at least twenty percent of those in the active pulpit, especially those under thirty and under forty and those who had only short experience in the pulpit, pass the line of $7,000.

These include all denominations of Jews. The fact is that only eight per­ cent earn under $5,000; another five percent pass the line of $6,000 and ten percent earn $7,000. Although re­ cruited in increasing numbers to meet the religious demands of the rapidly expanding suburban populations, the Jewish clergy and their respective asso­ ciations have never had the bargaining power and protection of unions nor the quasi-monopoly controls over en­ trance into the profession so consist­ ently exercised by other professions.

The fact is that salary levels of the orthodox Rabbinate, as well as those of the non-orthodox, compare favor­ ably with other professional callings re­ quiring equivalent amounts of profes­ sional and academic training. The overwhelming majority of the working rabbis had spent a minimum of eight years at institutions of higher learn­ ing, four at the Rabbinical seminary and four years at a college or uni­ versity. The number of those who have Masters and Doctor of Philosophy de­ grees (or D.H.L.) requiring one to three years of additional advanced studies in a Jewish area of concen­ tration, is impressive. In spite of the fact that a significant number have succumbed to the way of the “other

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directed” who devote so much time to non-religious or religious activities and roles which dry up their inner life, one out of each three seeks to attend a graduate institution of higher learning and earn his Doctor of Phi­ losophy degree.

Since the sociological climate favors religion and religious behavior, we should not be surprised to find the rabbi of today receiving a good pres­ tige rating in the “triangular” relations between members, children, and the community. One of the most acute dilemmas which faces a substantial part of the American Rabbinate has been, in the words of David Riesman, reported in “The Lonely Crowd: A Study of the Changing American Character,” the invasion of “salesman­ ship” upon the personality and calling of the religious leader. The char­ acteristically “innerdirected” rabbi of another day never thought of “selling himself” or of adjusting himself to different environments. Now, he has been made acutely aware of the prob­ lem of “selling himself.” He is all things to all men and his personality and roles depend largely on the group around him; he devotes so much atten­ tion to his vocational roles that he cannot “be himself,” because his “self” cannot be or because he doesn’t have any “self” left to “be.” This malaise of the “organizational revolution” has affected the major procedures of the synagogues, and as synagogues have increased in complexity, a large num­ ber of problems of finance, internal coordination, planning, public and community relations, pressures from governing boards and the membership, and the like create further pressures for assumption of new responsibilities of non-religious nature. As a result the American orthodox rabbi has moved to a large extent from the JEWISH LIFE

idea-pattern of a community of schol­ ars and the wise, to the functional roles which have long been assumed by the non-orthodox clergy.

T almost seems that the diversifica­ tion and fragmentization of the rabbi’s calling which characterize the “outer-directed” personality may com­ mit him to perpetual dissatisfaction and frustration. The Rabbinicus Novus of today is one of the most fragmented and diversified higher-ranking profes­ sional specialists in the Jewish commu­ nity. It is by sheer force of magic that he can function effectively as a religious mentor and creative leader. When we look at him closely as I have, we see him resisting the pressures that are depriving him of his highly selected roles and manifest goal— the transmis­ sion and creation of Jewish knowledge — and a share in the real management of the Jewish community, from which he has been excluded since the early part of the century when Dr. Henry Berkowitz battled the secularists; a battle which was continued in the second decade of this century by the orthodox, with dismal results.

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The rabbi of our own day thus con­ tinues his struggle between diversifi­ cation and fragmentization of roles and the conception of his manifest aim.

Although the American rabbi is de­ pendent upon a salary within a defi­ nite synagogue, and hence does not operate with the complete autonomy of the professional, he is far from being an employee. For the rabbi is a spiritual leader doing work of a high order and complexity, and within his special field it is unlikely that per­ sons “above him” are competent to judge him. The rabbi’s functional basis for individual autonomy is reinforced February, 1962

by a long tradition, extending back to Rabbi Hai in Geonic times.

Nevertheless, my data have estab­ lished that the rabbi of today performs fourteen major functions and many additional ones not specified herein.

He is spiritual mentor. He is the authority on Jewish law and practice.

He is a preacher— a role which most have found to be considered their fore­ most function. He gives sheurim and conducts adult education. He engages in pastoral work. He makes visitations to members of congregations. He visits the sick. Looming high in importance and statistically, is counselling on per­ sonal problems. He is concerned with all phases of congregational develop­ ment, moral and practical. He coop­ erates in membership solicitation. He spearheads building campaigns and programs of the synagogue. Fre­ quently, he functions as principal of the congregational school and often acts as teacher too. He is involved in budgeting, in fiscal affairs of the syna­ gogue, in organizational and com­ munity work.

The rabbi deals with ultimate values— religious beliefs. He interprets and expounds the tenets of Judaism and the culture of the larger com­ munity. He interprets the crucial and sometimes vulnerable symbols. He touches the congregation and the com­ munity at the most sensitive fringes of the basis of our social order. He transmits beliefs and values to the rela­ tively uninformed and to the betterinformed, engaging in the very heart of the Jewish community process and making himself the object of special concern.

The rabbi touches the community at its most sensitive spots, when he functions as the ambassador of good will to the non-Jewish community.

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This function looms fifth statistically in the contemporary Rabbinate. He is vested with supreme authority over the education of the youth, but is also called upon to guide preparation for Bar Mitzvah, a ceremony with a firm hold on the “religious” horizon of the American Jew. The actual administra­ tion, supervision, and organization of the educational apparatus of the syna­ gogue, on the young peoples’ and adult levels, is a first-ranking function of a significant number of orthodox rabbis.

He must officiate at funerals but must also attend social functions of the con­ gregations and those of the commu­ nity; attend innumerable and “unend­ ing” meetings of the ritual committee and educational committee, offer “in­ vocations” and “benedictions,” give messages, addresses, and lectures.

Clearly a grueling minimum 12-18 hours a day leaves little time to ponder and reflect. He simply cannot afford to lapse into communal inactivity. And the rabbi begins to wonder how very different are his views of the Rabbinate from those he held when he was first launched on his career. What moti­ vated this Rabbinicus Novus to enter the Rabbinate?

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My own studies clearly establish that he considers the Rabbinic calling one of the most important factors in the preservation of the Jewish way of life and the desire to contribute to basic Jewish needs is what motivated his choice of the Rabbinate. The weight of my studies clearly indicates that the rabbi seeks through the acquisition of higher Jewish learning to prove him­ self an instrument of practical Jewish living. My results indicate that the basic goal of those who entered the Rabbinate is far more than the attain­ ment of limited objectives. The un­ limited extension in the rabbinical functions could not continue to multi­ ply indefinitely without making the Rabbinate a man-killing task and de­ prive the Jewish community of future religious leaders; nor are the Rabbi’s rewards commensurate with the roles and functions he performs. Diversi­ fication has already defeated itself. It has lowered the quality and calling of the Rabbinate, as well as the spirit­ ual level of the synagogue. Is it any wonder that so few idealistic American Jewish college graduates are attracted to the Rabbinate, need or no need.

JEWISH LIFE

Bashkofah Ultimate Purpose

By SAMSON R. WEISS

Rabbi Berachyah opened hisdiscourse on Megillath Esther as fo Who wrought and accomplished it? The one who calls the generation from the beginning, I the Almighty, who is the first and with the last, too, I am He ” (Isaiah, 41:4). From the beginning of creation the Holy One, blessed be He prepared for everyone what befits him. Adam was the first of the creatures; Cam y e fi™t of the murderers; Abel the first of the victims; . . . Aaron the first of the Priests; Mosheh the first of the prophets; . . . David the first of the singers; Sh lomo the first of the builders; Nebuchadnezar the first of the first of the sellers; and Haman the first of the buyers.

(Midrash Megillath Esther, Pethichah).

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MONG the great Jewish thinkers there is a division of opinion whether or not the purpose of creation is ascertainable by man. In his “Moreh Nevuchim,” Maimonides expresses the view that this purpose is inaccessible to the human mind. Like the knowl­ edge of the true reality of the Creator, known only to the Creator Himself, the knowledge of the Creator’s true intent is also beyond human ken. Since the limitations of finite man preclude his perception of the all-embracing universal purpose, the very inquiry into the Divine intent is both idle and arrogant. All that man can know are his duties within this Creation and his own purpose among the multiplicities of existences. These duties and this purpose were revealed to him on Sinai.

Other thinkers disagree. The Kabbalists, for instance, find in the Divine attribute of goodness the purpose of Creation. “The ultimate purpose of the good is to do good.” Therefore, Rabbi Chaim Moshe Luzzato states, the Almighty created the world to be a receptacle of his goodness. Among

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all creatures, it is man who is the most fitting recipient of this Divine goodness because, being endowed with the fac­ ulty of intellect and possessed of the freedom of choice, he is the only one who can earn G-d’s friendship and closeness— the highest bliss in both worlds rather than simply receiving it as a gift. It is man, therefore, for whose sake all was called into being and continues to be. In him is found the ultimate purpose and all that is, though we may lack in wisdom to understand how, serves directly or in­ directly this purpose.

By postulating the superiority of earning reward to receiving undeserved gifts, the existence of evil in this world and of the evil impulse of man falls into place. To overcome the evil and to choose to do good, makes man the “owner,” as Luzzato terms it, of the Divine recompense. Otherwise,^ he would be the recipient of humiliating alms and eat the “bread of shame.”

Were man insensitive to this qualitative distinction and thus be spared this shame, he would no longer be the 25

image of the Almighty Who is the owner and apex of all quality. Hence, evil exists in this world and is indeed necessary for the purpose of the good and is no contradiction whatsoever to the goodness of the Creator.

Similarly, this distinction makes in­ telligible why man was placed first in this world rather than in the Hereafter, though only in the World to Come will he experience the true delight in the “Splendor of the Shechinah.” There would be no joy in the meal to which our Sages compare the delight of the righteous in the World to Come, were one to partake in it without having earned one’s portion, without having tilled the soil and watered the gardens which grew the pleasant fruits served at this meal. It is this world in which man prepares the table at which he shall be seated in the Hereafter. Thus, in fact, everyone creates, so to speak, his own “Olam Habah.” In another parable of our Sages, this world is compared to the Erev Shabboth and whosoever does not utilize the time and opportunity apportioned to him in his lifespan— “what shall he eat on the Shabboth?” Not by punishment but as a conesquence of his own failure he has excluded himself from the meal.

The burning shame of such isolation from the company of the righteous— these are the purifying fires of the Gehinom.

HE difference between Maimonides and the Kabbalists is not as great as it might, appear. Rambam, too, sees every man creating his own portion in the World to Come and sees in punish­ ment the natural consequence of fail­ ure. There is unanimity in authentic Jewish thought on the purpose of evil in a world emanating from a benevo­ lent Creator. There is also no dispute on the fact that the essential quality

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and greatness of man emerges precisely from his ability to judge and to choose.

Rambam rejects only the notion that the completeness of the Divine Will can be encompassed within man’s com­ prehension. To identify our notion of the Divine intent with its true reality would constitute, so it appears from Rambam, forfend, a limitation of the Almighty and a “definition” of his essence.

There is another confluence of Jew­ ish thought inherent in the common acceptance of the “good” purpose of evil in this world and of its non­ contradictory character to the allpervading benevolence of the Creator.

Though man may choose to do evil, against the will and command of the Almighty, he is unable to escape from or to contradict the supremacy of the Divine intent. Man’s sovereignty is severely bound and essentially reflec­ tive only upon himself. His use of the world for his evil purposes does not deter its unfolding pre-ordained des­ tiny.* The palace erected by the tyrant may contribute to this destiny by sheltering in its ruins, hundreds of years later, a Tzaddik. (Rambam, In­ troduction to his Mishnah Commen­ tary).

This is a world of murderers and victims; it is also a world of priests and prophets. This is a world of de­ stroyers; it is also a world of builders.

This is a world in which whole na­ tions are on the market, with sellers and buyers eager for their profits; it is also a world in which a small people endures as a living testimony to the supremacy of the Divine Will over all human infamy.

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E are a people whose history is replete with the evidences of

* See also Hashkofah “Trust in Divine Provi­ dence” Teveth 5722—December 1961.

JEWISH LIFE

this supremacy. Sold by Ahasveros and bought by Haman, both intent upon our destruction, we witness a salva­ tion to which they themselves unwit­ tingly contribute. The advice Haman gives to the King, self-servingly aim­ ing at his own glory, brings about the elevation of Mordecai. The gallows Haman erects to avenge his hurt pride on the stubborn Jew who refuses to bow before him, become the symbol

February, 1962

of the triumph of the Jews over their enemies. The people that were to be the prey of every vulture, emerge to new heights, purified in the crucible of persecution. The Purim story is a vignette characterizing the unfolding of the entire Jewish history.

When Adar enters, we begin to re­ joice as befits a people whose history reflects the invincibility of those who walk with G-d.

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“ What Will Become of Them?”

By JACOB BELLER

This is the second of two articles (the first appeared in our Kislev/December issue) giving a revealing picm ture of Jewish life in remote, isolated corners of Latin America.

ELEM is a far-away corner of Brazil in the province of Para in the Amazon delta and in the most tropical part of the country. A mere 200 miles away there can be found to this day cannibal tribes of Indians who have never laid eyes on a white man.

I was to fly over northern Brazil in a Constellation— a flying fortress which makes the trip non-stop in six hours’ time. When I arrived at the air­ port at flight time I soon had a chance to observe the calma Brazil—the Bra­ zilian verson of manana. I was first told that the plane would be six hours late; the six soon grew to seven and then eight. Finally we were told that a bus would take us to where the plane was. Among the passengers I noticed a man with an odd gait and sun­ burned yellow face with restless Jewish eyes that kept looking at me.

“Are you a Jew?” I asked him un­ certainly.

“What else?” he replied, “A Gen­ tile?”— and quickly added: “Where are you going?”

“To Belem,” I answered.

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“In that case let’s go together,” he said. We sat in the bus until we got to the airfield and then shared seats on the giant plane.

“My name,” he said, “is Chaim Zalman Leibov. But in Brazil I’m known as Zalman of Belem.”

On the plane he talked further. He had been in Brazil many years, had lived in all its provinces. He was now in the crocodile hides business in Belem, which is the main source of this product. His voice was drowned out under the roar of the engine. He drew closer and whispered confiden­ tially: “You know it’s not good for us Jews here— that is, in these small far-off communities. Cut off and iso­ lated from other Jews, what can one do? You make a living, such as it is, as much as one needs. . . .”

I sensed a yearning and a deep long­ ing in his voice and tone. I looked at this wanderer whom the waves had tossed up on this tropical shore.

“What do you think I was just doing in Rio de Janeiro? A couple took a child from a poor family and raised JEWISH LIFE

her. Later the poor family decided to move to Israel and wanted the child back. The girl had come to love her foster parents and wouldn’t leave them; they too loved the child as their own.”

As he was from Belem he was asked to come and be the intermediary.

“What became of the child?” I asked.

“Don’t ask,” he replied, “It was a tragedy,” BLUE streak of daylight was cut­ ting through the darkness when we landed at Belem. Zalman Leibov advised me to stay at the same place as he, the Hotel Avenida. There was another hotel more fashionable and luxurious but this hotel had a coffee shop where the local Jews congre­ gated. I took this advice and registered at the Avenida.

Stepping out of the hotel in the morning I felt as though I was sud­ denly gripped by vast waves of heat which tugged at my throat, threaten­ ing to choke me. Though this was the winter season my clothes were drenched in sweat. In the meantime Zalman Leibov had assembled all ten Jewish families, mostly refugees from East Europe, and introduced me.

Wearing pants of light fabric and summer shirts, they sat at the tables drinking their “cafecitas,” demi-tasses, eager to hear from me. After the tra­ ditional greetings and exchanges, there followed their complaints . . . to the Jews of the world, “What will become of us here?” asked a middle-aged Jew with a complexion that was a blend of blotched pale and yellow.

“It takes a week to get here by boat from Rio,” said another, “we’re utterly isolated from other Jewish communi­ ties. Why do we always get emissaries and fund raisers but no teachers or rabbis?”"

“Why don’t we Jews follow the ex-

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ample of the Catholic Church, which sends missionaries here? You’ll meet them at every step. When our children grow up they become strangers to us.

What will become of them?”

When their spokesman said this they all turned to me to see if I had the answer, or perhaps at least some ad­ vice, some place for them to turn to?

Most of them were klappers (door knockers, i.e. pedlars), the common beginning of most immigrant Jews in Latin America which for some was the springboard to fortune. It is no easy trade. All day long they knock at doors offering goods on credit. Often they get what they call “tzvekkis” i.e. dead­ beats, customers who won’t pay up.

They have a folklore of their own, these pedlars who tell stories of their trade— witticisms and tales that should be collected. This is a piece of Latin American Jewish history covering suf­ fering and sorrow equal to the North American sweat shops of long ago.

UT not all “knockers” succeed in striking it rich. This particular province is the hottest in all Brazil and it is only possible to work a few hours each day— at the time when the sun does not burn quite so fiercely.

In Belem, as in many other remote parts of Latin America, I found traces of a Jewish past. There were Jewish communities in Recife (Pernambuco) made up of escaped Marranos at the time of the rebellion against Portugal.

When the Portuguese regained Recife the Jews scattered to all parts of the old “Spanish Main,” to Surinam, Bar­ bados, and Bridgetown. I was led to an old cemetery with crumbling tomb­ stones in the centre of town surrounded by an iron railing. In Manaus, in the Amazon area, I saw such old vestiges.

Today there is a Sephardic community there with a synagogue whose mem-

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bers are well-to-do traders in tropical products.

Late at night when the flagstones were cooling off in the evening air and the Panamerican Air Line plane was to take me to Surinam, the hotel porter woke me. As I walked out in the light of the hotel lantern I saw standing in front of me Zalman of Belem with the peculiar gait, his widebrimmed sombrero pushed back be­ hind his ears. He had arisen in the middle of the night to escort me.

“Goodbye,” he said, offering me his hand, “and don’t forget to bring the great Jewish world outside a greeting from this forgotten group of Jewish wanderers.”

II HEN the train brought me to Resistencia at the Paraguayan border I had to pinch myself to be sure that my body and limbs were still in order. The Pullman had tossed and turned all night as though it were in convulsions. The railway gauge is a very narrow one here and the coach didn’t seem to fit it. Besides, the rails had not been repaired or maintained in years and they were overgrown with weeds and moss. The coaches lurch and shake as though in a drunken stupor and at every moment you feel as though you will be catapulted out of the window to lie in some sandy desert plain.

I took a room in a hotel and wanted to rest for whatever was left of the night but hère too I had no luck. In the patio someone was playing a har­ monica with others blaring away in song. The audience of onlookers were shouting viva! appreciatively— I had arrived in Resistencia at fiesta time!

In the morning when I took a walk through the town I found finely paved

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streets, still smelling of sand, wellendowed with modern parks, shop windows well stocked with merchan­ dise, and up to date houses next to primitive hovels. The people in the street were a melange of all shades and colors dressed in modern and semi­ modern costume. Out of doors it was cool, as this was winter in the Chaco.

People walked about in panchos of various colours which resemble the Arabic abbayas.

Resistencia was built by immigrants from various lands who flooded into the Chaco in the search for gold just as happened in the California gold rush. Coming to this wilderness, they cast off the troubles of the city and lived close to nature, buying animal skins from the half-civilized criollos and selling them brass clocks, trousers, ties, and shirts. Others tilled the green soil that the government granted them and large farms and ranches grew up which today adorn the remaining bar­ ren, untilled stretches.

MONG those who had come here l and accepted the Argentine gov­ ernment’s bid to help open up the Chaco were the Jewish colonists who had left the Jewish Colonization Asso­ ciation farms dissatisfied with their bureaucratic management. The only one I found of this group was a former neighbor of mine, Yudel Mariash, who was from the Narcisse Levin colony where I had been a teacher years ago.

However, he was no longer a farmer but had an urban livelihood. I was told there were still a few families of that group in Ville Angeles but they are now wealthy estate owners and hire men to work their lands.

But there was now a new and dif­ ferent Jewish community which had grown up in the Gran Chaco. Jews who had not “made it” in the capital

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came, and opened small shops and trading posts in the most isolated spots among semi-savages. The province even today has remained primitive.

Maintenance and overhead costs are negligible, profits are correspondingly high, and the newcomers expanded their businesses rapidly. A second post would be opened in another corner and gradually a shop would be estab­ lished in Resistencia which would be the headquarters for all the branches.

All had one goal in mind: to make a tuler in the shortest possible time (the Argentine Jew uses the term tuler: Yiddish from thaler, dollar, for the peso) and to return to Buenos Aires to live among Jews. Only a few have managed this. The others, while constantly planning the return trip, gradually adjusted to the environ­ ment, to the peculiar climate, and even to the plague of mosquitoes. They struck root and started to establish a Jewish life of sorts in this remote spot.

They built a salon (the name for a Jewish center), a Talmud Torah, brought in a teacher from the capital and had the rudiments of Jewish com­ munal society. There are today about 300 Jewish families in Resistencia, a composite of Jews from every quar­ ter: Litvaks, Poles, Galicians, Bessa­ rabians, even Austrians (i.e. Jews from Austria proper). This was no influx of lantsleit or family groups. N o one brought over anyone else— it was a movement of individuals who came to seek their own fortune in the “wild west.” It did happen occasionally that some of them brought in a friend or relative— but from within Argentine, not from the “old country.”

N order to prove to me that they too follow Jewish tradition, how­ ever badly this tradition is faring there, the Resistencia Jews boasted

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that they maintained a shochet. Noone however would tell me where he lived. It took a long time before I managed to locate him (he has left since) in a broken-down house that was a sad sight. I found him with his wife and children in a distressing state of want. The children were shoeless and in tatters. The scene was in stark contrast to the community leaders who sat in comfortable armchairs and de­ plored the unlettered state of the younger generation. The shochet was a relative of Dr. Moshe Goldman of Mosesville, president of the Latin American Jewish Congress section.

Rather than ask me into his unfur­ nished home, he invited me into the synagogue which was in the same building as the kehillah and the school.

The Shool looked quite disorderly and neglected, with prayer books lying on the seats and floor. Apparently it was in use only during the High Holy Days.

After our chat the shochet stool aside to davven Maariv, solo, as though to pour his bitter heart out to the Almighty.

The state of Jewishness in Resis­ tencia is lamentable. Of 340 Jewish families, there are 100 mixed mar­ riages and the children of these unions are increasing. Even children with two Jewish parents know little of Judaism or Jewishness aside from a few broken Yiddish phrases or Hebrew words which they have learned and repeat by rote.

HIS process, it can be said, is prevalent throughout all the pro­ vincial areas of Argentina. These com­ munities have become totally devoid of traditional Jewishness. There are cities that contain as many as four or five hundred Jewish families which possess no religious functionary of any kind. In the whole province of Entre

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Rios where the bulk of the Jewish colonies are located there is pot a single mohel or shochet. In cases where a mohel is needed parents send to Buenos Aires, that is if they are at all interested in having their child circumcized.

At a conference of the Vaad Hakehiloth (central organization of com­ munal representatives) in Buenos Aires, the delegates from the isolated provincial centers pictured their sad state, pointing to the rising tide of mixed marriages and the threat of total disintegration that confronts them. In my presence a Jew of San Juan, a city of 300 Jewish families, walked into the office of a Yiddish newspaper with tears in his eyes and told about a grandchild who had called him a “Christ-killer.”

This condition applies not merely to the distant areas. I happened to be two hours from the capital during Pesach and visited towns of about forty to 100 Jewish families where there was no sign of Jewishness or Jewish life.

Rabbi Gliksberg of Buenos Aires told me that the city of Concepcion del Uruguay, a community of 300 Jewish families, never had a shochet even in the “good days.”

N Resistencia, as is usual when Jews hailing from different lands with varying customs, mentalities, and ways come together under one roof, the local Jews are prone to dispute. They quarrel, make up . . . and quarrel again. Even this might not have been so bad were it not for a bedevilling factor—the presence of the “Yevsektizia”— the Jewish Communists. They got their foot into the communal door in Resistencia and embroiled the local Jews in their own “revolution.”

Like most Argentine Jewish com­ m unities, R esistencia’s is Zionist-

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minded. Throughout Argentine, in fact, Resistencia was known as a Zion­ ist stronghold. The leadership of the kehillah had always lain in the hands of loyal, Jewish-minded men. Yet at one election the small group of Com­ munists defeated the Zionists by a series of sharp political manoeuvres and leadership was taken over by sev­ eral of these “Yevseks” who proceeded to wreak havoc with Jewish life. Just as they had done in other Argentine centers in order to deceive the naive, unsophisticated populace, these com­ munists donned taleisim and attended shod on Rosh Hashonah and Yom Kippur, as much as to say: “Look and see, what kind of Communists are we?”

To heighten the illusion of piety and respectability they even made a point of eating kosher-slaughtered meat.

“What kind of Communist could I be?” I was asked by a dyed-in-the-wool Sovieteer with an expression of G-dfearing innocence on his face. “Why, we even contribute to the Keren Kayemeth collection.”

When I was there the conflict was at its peak. Statements and charges were flying back and forth and I was exposed to both sides of the argument and as always occurs each side had an airtight “irrefutable” case. *

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With few exceptions the Jews of the distant provinces have acquired the mentality of their neighbors, among whom hospitality is generally confined to a cafecita black coffee at the cafe; the beverage has an appropriately bitter taste. The Argentine Jew, like his fel­ low countryman will seldom invite you to his home.

In Resistencia I sat over so many interminable cups of coffee listening to the Left-Right dispute that my stomach rebelled and rather than de­ liver a verdict I abandoned Resistencia.

JEWISH LIFE

I took the first boat and sailed on the Parana river to Corrientes.

Ill A S soon as you cross the River J \ . Parana— a nine-mile trip lasting fifteen to twenty minutes— you feel the very air to be different. Corrientes is an old Argentine city dating back to Colonial days. It has Spanish colonialstyle buildings going back many years, among them an ancient church with the Deity’s Name, the Shem, carved on it. The streets are not as modern and attractive as Resistencia’s but you sense solidity and the weight of tradi­ tion. The parks and government build­ ings add to this impression.

Here too the Jews fall into the sur­ rounding pattern. Corrientes has about the same number of Jews as Resis­ tencia. However, for one thing it is not blessed with the “comrades.”

Secondly it possesses a tradition of good schools and teachers. Among these is the late veteran Jewish author of Argentine, Michel Hacohen Sinai.

The Jewish community of Corrientes has a history of half a century. The present Sephardic synagogue is fifty years old. The settlement was not aimed at quick fortune-making as in Resis­ tencia but was a more planned affair and on a family basis. Families and lantsleit came in groups and as a result the community is more homogeneous in make-up, mainly Litvak with some Bessarabians, the most recent comers being former ICA colonists who left the farms for urban occupations. Find­ ing no opportunities in the capital, they “discovered” new towns and villages in the distant areas where a fresh begin­ ning could be made.

HE climate here is by no means comfortable. The heat bears down mercilessly. Not all European immi-

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grants1 can endure it and some are compelled to leave.

For those born there the climate is taken as natural. They seem to be born with bronzed faces like the aborigines.

When I visited the schools I saw scores of little Jewish boys and girls with flashing dark eyes raising their hands eagerly to answer my questions: “Who was Moses; Who is the president of Israel?” Their voices would chime out “Yo se!” ( I know). Virtually none speak Yiddish, though a large number have some understanding of the lan­ guage. These would be in the main those who still have grandparents who address them in Yiddish. An Israeli visitor once correctly observed that here Yiddish is no longer a “mother tongue” but a “grandmother” tongue.

Most parents— even those of middle age— speak Spanish among themselves, especially in the provincial areas, though it often may be a corrupt and broken version of that language.

While I was in Corrientes I was unable to avoid a Din Torah (religious arbitration) at the home of my host Markus Apter, a Jew who stems from the part of Hungary which was a fort­ ress of Jewish piety. The president of the Sephardic community came to me with a complaint which no doubt was justified. “We -Sephardim,” he said, “have a synagogue which could be­ come a center and haven for all the Jews here. Why then are the others spending money and effort to build a new salon (Jewish Center)? It would be more worthwhile to use the money to bring a shochet in from Buenos Aires than to raise funds for a salon.

For any meetings communal or social the existing building is perfectly suit­ able.”

At his invitation I visited the syna­ gogue. It is a handsome massive build­ ing with Torah scrolls covered with 33

expensive hangings. In the middle is an almemar decorated on the side with paintings and excerpts from the pray­ ers. On the wall at the entrance is the portrait of the former Israeli Am­ bassador to Argentina, Yaacov Tsur, in the company of the local commun­ ity leaders as they met at the airport.

I then met with the Sephardic spirit­ ual leader, who inherited his function from his father. I found that I was unable to exchange any words of sacred or even worldly content with him. Beyond a “Shalom Aleichem” and a few Hebrew words he seemed to be bereft of Jewish knowledge. I now understood why his president wanted all the other Jews to come together and send for a shochet.

IV ORMOSA is the last large town on the road that leads from Argen­ tina to Paraguay. From it a primitive road leads to Clorinda, which is the last border village between the two countries. In Formosa one has to count on being lucky with the weather. If the sky is clear and cloudless you can hire a taxi or a “Sulke” (a small vehicle for two) and you drive over to Clorinda. If there is the slightest bit of cloud visible to the eye then you must take a room in the hotel and wait for the rain to come and pass, and for the road to be dry, before you make any further move.

A rain in that remote tropical corner is not merely a rainfall. Nature in­ dulges in her full share of caprice and there is a downpour for three solid days without interruption. At this point the primitive roads all turn to mud and it is risking being buried alive to set out on these roads when they are in this state.

When I came to Formosa from Re-

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sistencia my luck did not hold out. The sky was quite cloudy and on my driver’s advice I had no choice but to take a room at the hotel and wait.

When I signed the register I noticed that the woman at the desk avoided my glance. It often occurs in these lands that if your name doesn’t sound like that of a criollo, let’s say Juan Fernandez or Salvador Corte, you are met with some coolness, especially in my case when the name was Jacabo, the Jewish name par excellence as is Abram in Soviet Russia or Israel was in Hitler Germany.

It was only later, after I had met the tiny Jewish community of the town, that I learned that my hostess was . . . Jewish, and the widow of a local shochet. At the death of the shochet she took to herself a mou­ stachioed husband of old Argentine lineage and since then has avoided Jews like the plague.

n p HE town, which has beautiful

JL parks criss-crossing like floral wreaths, contains ten Jewish families.

This literal minyon of Jews built a small synagogue that serves as a com­ munity center. They brought a teacher from Buenos Aires to give their chil­ dren a Jewish education. This was not due to any conscious idealism on their part so much as the fact that even children of mixed marriages here are considered as Judios (Jews) and do not have a place in Gentile society.

A leader of the small circle of Jews in Formosa, a strong Labor Zionist, married to a Paraguayan woman, in­ vited me to his home. Downstairs in the living room hung sacred Catholic images, upstairs in his study where he entertained me there were portraits of Weizmann, Ben Gurion, Herzl, and Baer Borochov. I did not get to see his wife and two daughters. He played JEWISH LIFE

cantorial music on his record player with Yossele Rosenblatt chanting his “Umip’ney Chato’enu” ( “And for our sins Thou hast dispersed us . . .”) while from downstairs we heard Christmas carols coming out of the radio. My host sat glued to his chair and when I caught his eye he dropped a tear, broke the painful silence with a choked sob: “These prayer melodies awaken memories, memories of long ago. . . .”

The local Jews told me that some itinerant Yiddish actors had once passed by on the way to Paraguay.

They gave a performance in the cafe and among those in attendance was the chief of police, who was a Jew. As the performance was in the cafe and open to all who were present there were a few outsiders looking on, one of whom mocked the Yiddish songs.

The police officer instantly ordered him out. But the police chief’s own wife— also a Paraguayan— walked out, protesting his order. The whole epi­ sode left a distressing impression.

V N the edge of the river separating Argentina and Paraguay is the primitive settlement of Clorinda, the last border town between the two countries. From there you cross the river on a quaint old fashioned raftferry which looks like my grand­ mother’s kneading trough. After this you mount a high farm wagon where the passengers are tossed among bun­ dles of hay and you come to another river which looks like a canal. Here a Paraguayan boat equipped with an ancient motor takes you over the river and brings you to Asuncion, the capi­ tal city.

Clorinda has a few hotels which look like pauper’s shelters. The streets

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are narrow, unpaved, and muddy. Ex­ cept for a few stone structures all the houses are of wood and look like hovels. In Buenos Aires I had been given the name and address of a well known personality of Clorinda, one Zalman “Kishka.” I asked the first criollo I met where the address was and he pointed out a store in a lowbuilt clapboard cottage. Stepping into the primitive-looking, earthen-floored store. Zalman Kishka gave me his hand with a cordial “Sholom Aleichem, fun van-unt kummt a yid?” and quickly added: “Which night do you want to choose to ‘become a rabbit’?” When I replied that my papers were in order and I planned to travel in broad day­ light and in full legal status, he shrugged his shoulders saying: “Then why did you come to me?”

I explained that I was interested in meeting him and other Jews in this far away corner. When he learned where I had come from his eyes opened wide: “You came all the way from New York to this G-d-forsaken comer!” He offered me a wooden bench, asked if I wanted a glass of the best Paraguayan liquor or would I prefer a cola. Then he sat down to tell me about the Jews thereabouts: There were six Jewish families living there. The large, fashionable shops on the only decent-looking avenida were all Jewish-owned and the Jews were the town’s main businessmen. A Jew from Lithuania is the president of the local Jockey Club, the city’s only ap­ proximation to a big city “club.” Jews are the middlemen, the exporters and importers between both countries, and business had gone quite well. There had been mom of them here but a number had left for Buenos Aires— their children were growing up and they feared they might lose them.

Zalman Kishka did not want to 3S

leave me after he shut his shop whose wares consisted of dried tropical fruits, Paraguayan liquors, and colored cloth fabrics for women. By the light of an old-fashioned oil lamp he too began to tell me of his wanderings and tribu­ lations before he came to Argentina and how he arrived at this remote corner of the country.

“Believe me,” he assured me, “for the few pesos I have put away I could establish myself quite well in Buenos Aires, but how can I abandon the Jews whose safety and salvation lies through Clorinda, who need to get into this country from G-d knows where, and sometimes,” here he paused seriously, “even from Argentina to Paraguay?” And he told me of scores of such cases where he was the one who led the whole crew across the border, speaking in his Yiddish dialect of the Polish town of Ostrowtze.

Later at night I took my leave of Zalman Kishka. Quite early in the morning when the sky was beginning to turn blue, an Indian carried my luggage to the boat that was to take me across the oddly named river Pilco de Maya. I had a good look at this river across which Zalman “Kishka” had led to safety so many hundreds of homeless Jews in the dead of night.

VI HE story is told somewhere of a Jewish traveller who was hurrying to get home for Shabboth, and lost his way in- the forest. Candle-lighting time was fast approaching when sud­ denly, he saw a beautiful palace spring up from the ground before his eyes.

On entering, he saw a room where the best of everything was prepared. The Sabbath lights were shining with their radiating flame. Sabbath foods with

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Kiddush wine were arranged there for the Sabbath meal.

In a second large room, which had the appearance of a beth midrash, Jews were receiving the Sabbath with prayer and rejoicing. Following the prayers, Kiddush was recited, Sabbath songs were sung, and a meal consisting of royal delicacies was served. This went on for the entire Sabbath. After Havdolah, the palace vanished, and the wanderer was again in the forest, making his way homewards.

When I arrived at the Hotel La Boya at Las Toscas, in the Uruguayan forests, on seeing the sparkling white tablecloths gracing the tables which were arranged in honor of the Sab­ bath, with shining Sabbath lights, and hearing at the same time the Friday evening services replete with holy de­ votion, I reminded myself of that tale of the Jewish wanderer in the forest.

Here, too, it was in the midst of the woods, with tall trees diffusing their sweet fragrance, and here, too, there was a palace, and devout worshippers.

The difference was solely that here the palace and the worshippers did not disappear after Havdolah.

HEN I entered the Hotel La Boya and the flames of the Sab­ bath candles twinkled at me . . . and the sweet melody of a homelike “Lechu Neranonah” was intoned in a Chassidic style, amidst the surrounding early evening tranquility, the picture immersed me in memories of days gone by, days long since past. Mem­ ories of a world that had met its destruction. The picture of a Shabbos in my Galician town of Grodzisk flashed in me to the accompaniment of great nostalgia.

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Sabbath, during the services, thè baaley tefillah of Las Toscas avail themselves of a blend of Chassidic styles. Now it seems to be the Ropshitzer style which is being used, then the Belzer, then the Strettiner.

Little boys, scarcely weaned, shake with devotion in their prayers. I ap­ proach one of the boys and ask him: Posk li psukoch— what is the sidrah of the week?” Like a sound of silver bells comes the quick response: “Bo.” He rushes to tell me the entire content of the sidrah in a juicy, homelike Yiddish.

An older youth, who reminds the writer of his own days spent at the Risher Yeshivah, reports that he is learning Gemora and Yoreh Deah at the Yeshiva on Maldonado.

I ask him: “Do you envisage ever going to Israel?”

“Certainly,” is his quick response.

February, 1962

“Are you a Satmarer chosid?”

He hesitates somewhat to bring out his answer. The answer is: a Vishnitzer.

Who are those children who recall sweet days long since past as vividly as do the pleasant melodies of the baaley tefillah? And what brings them here, to the gray emptiness of amhaaretz-dom, to a region whose inhabi­ tants have never seen Vishnitz or Belz or Satmar?

I am told that pious Jews hailing from pre-war Hungary had established a community of their own in the Uru­ guayan capital of Montevideo, some of whom subsequently came to Las Toscas, and that these are the children of those parents who have stood up with rocklike fortitude against the deluge raging outside, which is con­ stantly severing pieces of our Jewish body. Will they succeed?

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The Believer and the Sceptic

By IRA ALBECK

I The Chofetz Chaim has the answer to David Hume.

T IS no wonder that Biblical man was a believer. The Almighty spoke to him. The Children of Israel had faith, for they witnessed manifest miracles. The days of the chariot are over. Modern man rides in an auto­ mobile and train. He flies— nearer to heaven than ever before, but believes less. He sees no miracles; he hears not the Divine voice. The word of Heaven is no longer an everyday item.

He is a religious sceptic.

Many a pious man is a sceptic in matters of the world. Reading a news­ paper, hearing a story, encountering a fact, he expresses incredulity. His favorite sayings are, “Seeing is believ­ ing,” and, “I’m from Missouri.” This doubter boasts no domed palace, shaded academy, podium— or arm chair. The small-time sceptic is not an after-dinner speaker. He sits near a crackerbarrel and stove, bursting the balloons of the believing. The scepti­ cism is of a mild sort, rendering little harm; merely frustrating and annoying the man who believes everything he reads. Socrates frequented the market place rather than the country store.

The philosophic sceptic is in a stranger category. He may believe in G-d, but doubts that the sun will rise tomorrow.

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The religious man worries about this world and the next. Fear of heaven helps guide his conduct. Belief is a way of life. He has been trained to believe, and has the approach of faith. Uneasy, perturbed, wrestling with his conscience, answering ques­ tions, reconciling contradictions and discrepancies, he is, withall, a thinking individual.

The sceptic follows an easier road, albeit a worldly, material one. It is all cobbles and concrete, with an occa­ sional gust of wind. But no spirit. He possesses a doubting mind, and— it is to be hoped— a code of ethics. Thus the believer and sceptic represent two dissimilar character-types and person­ alities as well as two unlike minds.

HERE are no two ideologies as different from one another as Judaism and Scepticism. Appended to the morning service are the “Thirteen Principles of Faith,” each beginning with the words, “I b elieve.” The sceptic says, “I doubt.” Nevertheless, Judaism and philosophic scepticism do sometimes agree.

The first sceptic was the first man: Adam. Every sceptic, whether or not he believes in the Scriptures, makes use of the first Biblical character to demon-

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strate his theories. The reason is sim­ ple. Adam possessed an attribute mak­ ing him the bane of every employment agency and the darling of all the sceptics: no experience.

David Hume, the English philoso­ pher, states in “An Enquiry Concern­ ing Human U nderstanding,” that “Adam . . . could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him.” For “there is nothing in any object, considered in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it.”

An everyday example comes to mind. Seeing a ripe, golden pear in the garden of Eden for the first time, Adam could not have observed, “The fruit will soften, rot, and turn an un­ sightly brown.” How could he have known? Only after having observed the decaying process— experience— could he have arrived at the conclu­ sion. Similarly, a newborn babe in the night, possessing perfect rational facul­ ties, does not know that day and beneficent light will follow. Only after experiencing the night-day sequence can the child arrive at this conclusion.

In this light a midrashic section of the Talmud becomes clear.

“The Rabbis learned: Upon the day that Adam was created, and the sun set upon him, he said, ‘Woe is me! Be­ cause I sinned the world is darkened for me, and the world will return to be waste and void. And this is the death that was decreed upon me from Heaven.’ He sat and fasted, and cried the whole night, and Eve cried oppo­ site him. When the morning star rose, he said, ‘It is the way of the world.’ ” (Avodah Zorah, 8a.)

UT Adam was not the perfect sceptic. In “The Treatise of Hu­ man Nature,” David Hume (the per-

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feet sceptic) states a brief “Sceptic’s Credo” consisting of two principles: “That there is nothing in any object, consider’d in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; and that even after the ob­ servation of the frequent conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.”

In other words, as is explained in “An Enquiry Concerning Human Un­ derstanding,” the following statement is unjustified: “I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I foresee that other objects which are in appearance similar will be attended with similar effects.”

Two men stand vigil in the night.

Each has lived through many evenings followed by the bright rays of dawn.

“The sun will rise tomorrow,” says one to the other.

Out of the darkness is heard the sceptic’s voice. “I doubt.”

It is the voice of David Hume. As the philosopher affirms in “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”: That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise.”

In the book, “Chofetz Chayim on the Torah,” the Chofetz Chayim as­ sumes the position of philosophic scep­ ticism in expounding Bereshith 8:22: “While the earth remaineth, seed­ time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease.”

In his “sceptical” explanation, inter­ esting enough, the Chofetz Chayim paraphrases the opening words of the “Thirteen Principles of Faith:” “And behold, we all believe with perfect faith, that tomorrow in the 39

morning the sun will rise and there will be light. There is an apparent wonder: Whence do we know this?

Just because the sun rose today, must it rise tomorrow, also?”

The Chofetz Chayim accepts the Divine promise: “Since the matter is explicit in the Torah, ‘day and night shall not cease,’ is there any greater surety than this?”

Here were Judaism and Scepticism in one. The twain can meet.

ITH this exegesis, The Chofetz Chayim takes an honored place beside Immanuel Kant and the Scottish philosophers of the eighteenth century.

Kant answered Hume with an original a priori system. The Scottish thinkers refuted the sceptic with “common sense.” The Chofetz Chayim replies to scepticism with a Scriptural verse.

True, Hume has never been an­ swered in his own empirical terms.

But his anti-intellectualism is not the world of the common man. Men think in plain, day-to-day terms, employing practical categories embodied in com­ mon sense. The sun will rise to­ morrow! People do not merely think along these lines; they live this way.

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Calendars, alarm clocks, appointment books, all attest to man’s faith in the morning. The bivouac of life belongs to the anti-sceptics. This world is their triumph. Scepticism is virtually con­ fined to the cloistered academy, the mind, and the mental life.

The most scientific of men, astrono­ mers, scoff at the scoffer, Hume, and aver that the sun will indeed rise to­ morrow. The greatest opponents of scepticism are the physicists. A phi­ losophy teacher informs his class, “There will be a test on Hume tomor­ row morning.” Teacher, scientist, and man-on-the-street believe— much as the Chofetz Chayim^-in the regularity and constancy of the solar system.

As for religious scepticism, every synagogue and worshiper represents a victory of faith. The greatest best-seller of all time is the Bible. (Hume’s first book, it is noteworthy, was a dismal failure, and “fell still-born from the presses.”) Perhaps, indeed, religion is for this world, and Hume will have his recompense in the world to come.

Hume’s sceptical volume is buried beneath an avalanche of calendars, prayer books, Bibles, and appointment pads. Humble men say bedtime pray­ ers, and watch for the morning.

JEWISH LIFE

Isaac Halevy Architect of Agudath Israel By 0. ASHER REICHEL Famed as a Jewish scholar, Isaac Halevy is less known for his contributions to the shaping of the modern Jewish scene. Here he is revealed in this role.

This article, based on unpublished letters ond other original sources, brings to light some heretoforeobscured facets of recent history.

HIS year is the fiftieth year since the founding of the Agudath Israel organization. For it was in 5672/1912 that orthodox rabbinic and lay lumina­ ries of Eastern and Western Europe assembled in the town of Kattowitz, located on the upper Silesian border between Germany and Austria, to form a world religious movement.

While it is generally known that Isaac Halevy spearheaded the defense of orthodox Jewish scholarship through his monumental work on Jewish his­ tory, the D oroth Horishonim, the time has come to bring to public record the less familiar fact that Halevy was like­ wise the master architect of the Agu­ dath Israel idea and the self-effacing pioneer in its early development.

Isaac Halevy, whose family name was Rabinowitz, was born in 1847 in Russia. A Talmudic prodigy in his youth, he became a leading rabbinic personality in Vilna. In the 1870’s and 1880’s he contributed forceful articles for the cause of Orthodoxy in the Hebrew journal, Halevanon. In this

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same period, he was one of the four Gabboim of the famed Volozhin Yeshivah.

Unfortunate personal circumstances forced Isaac Halevy (which was the name he customarily used thereafter) to leave Russia in 1895. After several years of wandering, he accepted a call in 1902 to become a “Klaus-Rabbiner” in Hamburg, Germany. In that posi­ tion he was able once again to devote all his time to historical research and to varied communal interests.

NE of the movements that at­ tracted Halevy a short time after he settled in Germany was the Freie

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Vereinigung fur die Interessen des orthodoxen Judentums (Free Associa­

tion for the Interests of Orthodox Judaism ). This organization was formed by Samson Raphael Hirsch in 1885 in Frankfurt in order to strength­ en the slender structure of Orthodoxy in his day and so enable it to rise to prominence in Jewish and non-Jewish circles.

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At the end of 1907 the Freie Vereinigung was reorganized to embrace the interests of orthodox Jews of all Germany. Joining the Frankfurt forces were such personalities as Dr. Meier Hildesheimer of the Berlin Seminary, Dr. Isaac Auerbach of Halberstadt, and Hermann Gumpertz, the renowned communal leader of Hamburg.

Jacob Rosenheim served as the ex­ ecutive vice-president of the revitalized Freie Vereinigung. He invited Halevy to join its Commission on Eretz Yisroel and also appointed him as chair­ man of a committee to promote reli­ gious education in the colonies in the Holy Land.

T t should be noted that at the turn -- of the century there were networks of schools in the Holy Land, spon­ sored by the Alliance Israelite Univer­ selle and the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden. However, in these schools pref­ erence was given to secular subjects.

Even the language of instruction (un­ til 1910) was French and German, respectively. Jewish subjects were held down to a bare minimum. To counter­ act this situation a network of Talmud Torahs was organized by the Shomrey Torah Society in the Holy Land. This educational system concentrated on a religious program. The initial educa­ tional activities of the Freie Vereini­ gung in the Holy Land was in connec­ tion with the Shomrey Torah Society.

In Elul, 1908 Halevy wrote to the “Rabbinic Heads of the Shomrey Torah Society” that he had received two let­ ters from Haifa requesting help for their Talmud Torah. In one of these letters there was a confirmation of these needs by Rabbi Chaim Berlin.

Halevy related that he had responded immediately, affirming that the Freie Vereinigung would make up the deficit providing they would arrange for a 42

good instructor in Talmud, and that provisions would be made for all who wished to attend. He also informed the Haifa groups that the donors had made the condition that children over the age of nine should be taught the “language of the land,” Arabic or Turkish, whichever was needed there.

Halevy emphasized that the Arabic in­ structor should be a religious Jew, and if that would not be possible, a nonJew. It is interesting to find that the rab­ bis of Jerusalem went along with the provision to permit the study of “the language of the land” in the schools.

During this period Halevy entered into an extensive correspondence with Rabbi Abraham I. Kook, who then resided in Haifa, concerned primarily with problems of education and the rabbinate of the Jewish colonies in Eretz Yisroel. Rabbi Kook encouraged Halevy to continue his activities on be­ half of Eretz Yisroel.

Halevy was also in favor of cooper­ ating with Paul Nathan of the Hilfs­ verein in sponsoring schools in Eretz Yisroel on the condition that the Freie Vereinigung would appoint and pay the teachers. He wrote to the rabbis of Jerusalem and Jaffa asking that all their negotiations with Paul Nathan, who was then en route to the Holy Land, should be cleared with the Freie Vereinigung. Thus Halevy would be able to keep abreast of all the arrange­ ments.

OWARDS the end of 1908 plans were already under way by Halevy and Rosenheim for expanding the Freie Vereinigung’s activities in Ekron, Rechovoth, Rishon Lezion, and Petach Tikvah through the Shomrey Torah schools.

By the spring of 1909, however, the Shomrey Torah Society no longer func-

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tioned. The school system to which the society had given birth was by this time entirely supported by the Freie Vereinigung, and was now named— at the instance of Halevy—Netzach Yisroel. Later on this system also em­ braced the Sephardic Talmud Torah “Doresh Letzion” in Jerusalem. Halevy likewise was interested in establishing Talmud Torahs in the agricultural settlements.

A year after Isaac Halevy had be­ come affiliated with the Freie Vereini­ gung he projected the idea, in a letter to his bosom friend Dr. Heihiann Kottek, Rabbi of Bad Homburg, that the work of the Eretz Yisroel Commission called for wider sponsorship. The time had come, he urged, to launch an international orthodox organization which would undertake settlement projects in the Holy Land along with the educational activities of the Freie Vereinigung. It was Halevy who sug­ gested that this new movement be named Agudath Israel. Many persua­ sive letters from Halevy were required to convince Rosenheim of the merit of this idea.

REPORT of a conference of the Eretz Yisroel Commission held on December 28, 1908 reflected the increasingly significant relationship be­ tween the Freie Vereinigung and the Holy Land, out of which clearly emerged the idea of the Agudath Israel.

Some nine months prior to this con­ ference, Halevy had already worked out plans for the formation of a world Agudah movement with some of the distinguished rabbis of Russia.

In a letter to Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzensky, a leader of the Russian rabbinate, he noted that he was happy to learn that the Agudah idea was al­ ready popular in Russia. In this letter, Halevy outlined immediate steps to

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launch the Agudah movement. He pro­ posed that committees be established in all the large Jewish communities, such as Vilna, Pinsk, Vitepsk, and Moholov, so that the movement would assume an organized structure, and that representatives be sent to organize such committees in cities where there were no local personalities capable of doing so.

Russian Jews, he observed, were im­ pressed only with deeds. Thus a move­ ment offering a practical program, led by the religious leaders of Russia, was necessary to counteract the prevalent negative forces in Jewish life. He cited the successful reorganization of the Freie Vereinigung in Germany as an example of the gains which followed unity in religious life. The tragedy of Orthodoxy in Russia at the time, Halevy pointed out, was that although the religious elements were the electors, it was the free-thinkers who held the reins in communal affairs, and, whilst the religious elements were the readers, the writers were the free-thinkers.

Halevy wanted to see the thirty to forty writers who made up the current popular Hebrew press replaced by a cluster of religiously orientated writers.

Counteracting this situation was among the main objectives of the new organization that Halevy had in mind.

He was fully aware that this resuscita­ tion which he envisioned would take some time. The realization of the prob­ lem was to him more than half of the solution. Halevy believed that Rabbi Grodzensky’s successful mission in Russia would be a blessing for the Jews and the world.

N O TH ER developm ent taking place in Russia at that time helped towards the realization of the Agudah idea. Under the leadership of the Chasidic rebbes of Ger and Czortkov,

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a rapprochement with the nascent Agudah movement had begun within the strongholds of Chassidism.

It should be noted that the Mizrachi, which was founded in 1902, “as a religious party, though a distinct and separate faction within the Zionist movement,” was not in the good graces of numerous of the leading, influential rabbis of Russia because of its political Zionist affiliation. The Mizrachi move­ ment, nonetheless, had achieved strong following in the lands of eastern Europe.

Halevy’s thought on Zionism and the Mizrachi appeared in two letters* which he wrote in 1904 (the year Herzl died) in response to queries of Chief Rabbi Moritz Gudemann of Vienna and of Dr. Joseph Samuel Bloch of Vienna. He analyzed the non­ religious elements in the nationalism of Herzl’s ideology and noted sadly that some rabbis were also following the Herzlian Zionism.

At the above-mentioned conference of the Freie Vereinigung in December 1908, Halevy was appointed to arrange the organizational meeting of the Agudath Israel movement and to invite the outstanding rabbis of Russia to partici­ pate in it.

This conference “with the rabbis of Russia” was to have taken place after Shovuoth in 1909. The Russian gov­ ernment, however, had permitted one rabbinic conference in Vilna that year on the 13th of Iyar. Another confer­ ence so close to this date was out of the question, even if it were to be held in Germany. Accordingly, Halevy, with the approval of Rabbi Salomon Breuer, who was to preside, decided to sched­ ule the assemblage for the week of Shabbath Nahamu. * These two letters appear in Mosheh C. E. Bloch’s M i N othon Limeshisah Yaakov Veyisroel Labozezim, New York, 5717, pp. 163-172.

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During his days in Vilna and Volozhin, Halevy had been associated with most of the important rabbis of Russia.

Thus when Jacob Rosenheim informed Halevy about the difficulty of interest­ ing Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, the Brisker Rav, in their plans, Halevy advised Rosenheim that he and Rabbi Soloveitchik had been “as brothers” during their Volozhin days and that he would communicate with him per­ sonally.

It should be noted that besides such personalities as Rabbi Chaim Soloveit­ chik of Brisk, Eliezer Rabinowitz of Minsk, Eliezer Gordon of Telshe, Abraham M. Alter of Gur, Chaim Ozer Grodzensky of Vilna and repre­ sentatives of Rabbis David Friedman of Karlin and Sholom Duber Schneer­ son of Lubavich, the Bad Homburg conference brought together many dis­ tinguished laymen from St. Petersburg, Warsaw, Vilna, Minsk, Lodz, Riga, and Adolf Frankel, the president of the Federation of Religious Communi­ ties of Hungary.

ALEVY did not stand on too much ceremony with such per­ sonalities as Rabbi Grodzensky, with whom he had been friendly from his Vilna days. It was another story, how­ ever, when he dealt with others Such as Rabbi Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, who did not know him per­ sonally. It was then that Halevy’s diplomacy came to the fore. A copy of a letter to Rabbi Schneerson illus­ trates Halevy’s strategy in inviting cer­ tain of the luminaries of the rabbinic world to the Bad Homburg confer­ ence. Halevy at first arranged for Rosenheim to discuss this convocation with Rabbi Schneerson. Upon receiv­ ing a favorable report, Halevy wrote to Rabbi Schneerson that Rabbi Grod­ zensky had also agreed to attend the

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Isaac Halevy from a rare photograph.

conference and gave a compelling ex­ planation of its purpose and timing.

We can see in the Halevy corre­ spondence to what extent Rosenheim relied upon Halevy’s guidance as the date of the Bad Homburg conference was drawing near. Difficult problems were continuously brought to his atten­ tion. A solution would always be forth­ coming in masterful replies.

Since Rabbi Salomon Breuer, who was President of the Freie Vereinigung, played a very important role in the proceedings which led to the Bad Homburg conference, the prob­ February, 1962

lem of Rabbi Marcus Horovitz’s rela­ tionship to this conference (Dr. Horo­ vitz’s kehillah was ostracized by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and by his successor, Rabbi Breuer) was one that was of deep concern to Rosenheim.

Whilst Halevy was very friendly with Rabbi Horovitz he felt that his ideology would not be in harmony with the program of the Agudah. In one of Halevy’s letters to Rosenheim preceding the Bad Homburg Confer­ ence, Halevy observed that Rabbi Horovitz and his followers beheld re­ ligious Jewry as a “minority,” entitled 45

to the same personal rights within the Jewish community as any other mi­ nority. Halevy posited the Agudah ideology that Torah-observing Jews constitute fundamental Jewry, refer­ ring to the dictum in the Zohar that “G-d, Torah, and Israel are one.” The formal organization of orthodox Jews would bring about the realization of this concept and enhance Orthodoxy accordingly.

Halevy had in mind the stature of an orthodox movement which would also be able to counteract the Alliance and the Hilfsverein in their overall influence. Halevy observed that an or­ ganization of international scope, which would not be tolerated in Russia by the Czarist government, could find its ideal birthplace in Germany (Bad Homburg), which was close enough to Russia to effect practical coopera­ tion.

HE Bad Homburg Conference, which lasted over two weeks, did not produce the meeting of minds that was hoped for. In addition, the internal situation in Russia retarded the cor­ respondence amongst its rabbis. Grad­ ually the activities of the Planning Committee slowed down to almost a standstill.

An unexpected impetus in spurring on the organizational aspects of the Agudah, was the 10th Zionist Congress in Basle. At that Congress, which took place in August, 1911, the Mizrachi Federation was engaged in a fruitless struggle against the cultural and edu­ cational policy of the Zionist Organi­ zation. Upon defeat of the Mizrachi, an article appeared in Der Israelii, written by Rabbi Dr. Arthur Cohn of Basle, in which the author called upon Torah-true Jewry to respond to the needs of the hour and to unite in form­ ing a world organization. A number

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resigned from the Zionist Organiza­ tion. Some of these, who were leaders of the Mizrachi Federation of Frank­ furt, joined the leaders of the Freie Vereinigung in forming a “Provisional Committee for the Founding of an Agudath Israel.” This committee was entrusted with the task of undertaking the preliminary work for the first meeting.

HUS came about a special gather­ ing of fifty-five representatives of orthodox Jewry in Frankfurt in Octo­ ber, 1911, to plan the organizational conference of the Agudah which would be held in Kattowitz the next year. A resolution for founding the Agudath Israel organization was passed at this conference on October 29, 1911. Ha­ levy was appointed to the provisional committee, of which Jacob Rosenheim was one of the vice-chairmen.

Halevy’s sense of organizational responsibility was unusual for one who was primarily a scholarly person. Prior to the Kattowitz Conference he wrote Rosenheim that it was vital for the Agudah to have a dynamic paid staff and “bureau” in order for it to expand as a world organization. He felt that the expense of a well organized head­ quarters would not only pay for itself in a short time, but that it would make the difference between a vibrant move­ ment and a contained effort. It was at this time also that Halevy began to im­ press Rosenheim with the thought that he was destined for even more eminent posts than those of publisher of Derlsraelit and administrator of the Freie Vereinigung. The idea of having Rosen­ heim assume the leadership of Agudath Israel was likewise Halevy’s sugges­ tion.

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ference, which began on May 27th, 1912. The invitations that were sent to a limited number of distinguished personalities included Halevy’s name among the four German members of the temporary Rabbinical Council.

(The others were Dr. Salomon Breuer, Dr. Wolf Feilchenfeld, and Dr. David Hoffmann.) Since JIalevy’s name was rarely in the spotlight in such matters, it appears that he was signatory simply because this name would be of special significance to the rabbis of the Rus­ sian domains.

It was evident that those times were ripe for an Agudah movement. Even in the Mizrachi circles of that day the idea of the new movement was wel­ comed. It was felt that if a strong or­ thodox world movement would be established, the Zionists would have to recognize this movement and respect its wishes based on religious principles.

Rabbi Meir Berlin, the well-known Mizrachi leader, likewise mentioned that the idea of a strong world organi­ zation of religious Jews was considered in many circles as a necessity at that time even by those who were until then concerned primarily with matters close to the local scene. Following the Conference Rabbi Berlin wrote an article in the weekly Haivri, published in Berlin, in which he stated that Zion­ ism should really be but one aspect of Jewish life and that the Agudah ide­ ology represents the historic concept of “K’lal Yisroel” based on the holy Torah, In the post-Kattowitz days we like­ wise see Halevy’s intense interest and activity embracing all aspects of the Agudah organization. He even solic­ ited criticism of the Agudah, as a source of guidance for improving the movement’s development. In one of his very frequent letters to Jacob Ros­ enheim, president of the Agudah, February, 1962

Halevy remarked that he was prepared to bear any burden for the Agudath Israel. He kept his word to his dying day.

WO events with critical impact on the Agudah movement occurred in 1914. First (chronologically) was the passing of Isaac Halevy on May 15th. The second was the outbreak of World War I, which disrupted Jewish communal life on the Continent.

The subsequent course of events con­ firms that more than poetic language .was being spoken when Halevy was eulogised as the “soul” of the Agu­ dath Israel at the time he passed away.

It is evident that Halevy’s sudden departure from the Agudath Israel scene in its formative years was indeed a misfortune that this movement could ill sustain.

For a time, the movement seemed to have lost much of its impetus.

Following the War, however, tempo was regained and the Agudah attracted an impressive following throughout the world. Its Kenessioth Gedoloth (world convocations), which were con­ vened in Vienna (1923 and 1929), Marienbad (1937), and Jerusalem (1954), were major landmarks.

Halevy’s primary concern in launch­ ing this movement was essentially the same as in his polemical writings on Jewish history— to bring into proper focus the eternal element of our holy mesorah heritage and to infuse into the modern orthodox scene a dynamic, creative spirit. His ideas have endured as a moving force in the development of the Agudah approach to Jewish needs and goals. Halevy’s selfless dedi­ cation to this cause has deeply influ­ enced Jewish life; his spirit and outlook will be a fount of inspiration for gener­ ations to come.

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What’s In a Name?

By EUGENE GREENFIELD

First names, second names all of them.

66TV TH A T’s in a name? That which W we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” So said Shakespeare. Nevertheless, a name conjures up in our mind the shape, the color, the feel, the size, and even the fragrance of the object we talk about. The name of a person carries with it the individuality of its owner.

According to the Midrosh a person has three names; the one given him by his father and mother; a nickname, given him by his fellow men; and finally a name that a person acquires for him­ self. This last is the name that uniquely describes a person who has fully de­ veloped his powers and talents.

For example if one should mention the name Elijah Ben Solomon it would hardly arouse any interest. But if he should say Elijah of Vilno, the famous Gaon of Vilno would immediately come to one’s mind. For that is the name that he acquired for himself. It uniquely describes the great scholar.

The name Rabbi Shlomo ben Yitzchok means nothing, but mention of the name RASHI evokes memories of the 48

—there's a Jewish story in

great Commentator, companion of all students of Jewish lore.

In this article, however, we are not going to discuss outstanding names or personalities. Instead we are going to delve into Jewish names in general and how they came into usage. In tracing the development of Jewish names we will travel from country to country and from continent to con­ tinent, for each place where Jews once lived made its contribution to the de­ velopment of Jewish names.

For a very long time people had only one name, the first or personal name. Second or family names came into usage much later when society became more complex. So we will deal with personal names to begin with, and later we shall discuss family names.

N earliest days described to us in the Torah, parents gave their chil­ dren names that marked a certain event or circumstance at birth. Yitz­ chok (Isaac) was so named because the announcement of his birth caused

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JEWISH LIFE

laughter. Yaakov (Jacob) held on to the heel of his twin brother Esov, Esau, and since the Hebrew word for heel is ekev, he was named Yaakov.

Yoseph (Joseph) m eans^‘May G-d add another son” a prayer by Rachel.

Mosheh was so named because he was pulled out of the water.

Many Biblical names incorporate a prayer. Thus Eliezer, son of Moses, means “G-d was my helper.” Elitzur— “G-d is my Rock.” Pedahtzur— “my Rock redeemeth.” Nathanel-^“G-d gave.” Yonothan means the same.

Refoel (Raphael)— “G-d healeth.”

Michael— “who is like unto G-d?”

There are hundreds of Hebrew names in which the name of G-d is incorpo­ rated. Many of these names are still in use to this day among Jews.

But as Jews came in contact with neighboring people and with their cul­ ture, we find a gradual change from pure Hebrew names to those with Aramaic flavor as well as names that are fully Aramaic. Names ending in “ai” such as Zakai, Shamai, Nitai, begin to appear in the Book of Ezra.

But we also find such names as Meshezavel (G-d saves) Zebina (A sale), Charif (sharp). These are completely Aramaic in language, though still carrying to some extent the Jewish idea of incorporating the name of G-d.

At this time we even begin to find that Jews in Babylonia began to show a Goluth complex by using double names. Hadassah was better known as Esther, which is a non-Jewish Baby­ lonian name. Daniel had a Babylonian name Belshezzar, while his three friends Chananyah, Mishael, and Azaryah had such full bodied Aramaic names as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abad Nego—-subjects of a well known and popular Negro spiritual. Mordecai also had a Hebrew name, Bilshon, re­ February, 1962

ferred to in the Book of Ezra (11:2) and Nehemiah (VII:7 ). Even after the return to Eretz Israel and the re­ building of the second Temple, Jews remained in Babylonia. They estab­ lished important Jewish communities and eventually developed the Talmud Bavli, the Babylonian Talmud. In the Talmud we find a host of Aramaic and Persian names. But about these later.

N important change in Jewish life I and in the use of Jewish names came when Jews came in contact with the Greeks after the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great about the year 332 B.C.E. The Jews’ great admiration for the might displayed by Alexander and for the Hellenic culture left its mark on Jewish life and thought. This fact is especially ap­ parent in the speed with which Jews adopted Greek and Hellenized names.

Yosiphon mentions that in recognition of the fact that Alexander did no harm to Jerusalem and did not— as other conquerors— despoil the Temple treasury, all boys born that year were named Alexander in his honor.

At this period we find even among distinguished scholars such Greek names as Antigonus, Avtalyon, Tryphon (Tarphon), Hyrkanus, Boitus, Zoma, Nikodemon, Tradyon and Dosa.

Among the Jewish ruling classes names commonly found were Aristobulus, Arkelus, Jason, Menelaus, Theodorus, Herod, Antioater, and Lysimachus.

Yosef soon became Josephus or Yosei, Yehoshua turns into Jason. Yehonothan became Theodorus or Theodotus.

Yehudah became Judas Maccabeus . . .

Salome takes the place of Shulamith, and Miriam is known as Mariamne or just Maria. The name Helena also originated with Jews at this period.

Elisheva is hellenized and becomes

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Elisabeth and later Elizabeth.

Next the Jews came under the domination of the Romans and their Latin culture. From this contract we have names such as Agrippa, Aquilus (Onkelos), and Antininus. It is rather interesting and significant to note that many more Greek than Roman names are found among Jews of this era. The reason for this might be the contempt Jews had for the brutal and barbaric Romans as against the refined culture of the Greeks.

F it is true that Jews took few names from the Romans, they took even rewer names from the Christians after they gained the upper hand and Jews came under their domination.

Instead, Jews continued the use of Hebrew and Aramaic names. They even added a few new Hebrew names such as Chayim, Yom Tov, Nisim, Zemach. Names acquired in Babylonia abound in the Talmud. Well known among thèse are Abaya, Rava, Resh Lakish, Ula, Huna, Chisda, Sheshes Papa, Chalafta, Ravina, Ashi, and Asi. Zutra, Chanina, and Kahana. We find in the Talmud the name Isak— which may be the Aramaic form of Yitzchak.

One may speculate on the fact that none of the above names were carried over to other countries. And hardly any are in use today among Jews.

The Arabs also made their contri­ bution to the store of Jewish names.

Jews living among the Arabs used such names as Abdallah, Abd al Karim, Abd al Rachman, Abd al Kadar, Has­ san and Yachtay. The most notable Arabic contribution to Jewish names is the introduction of the term Ibn or Ebn, which means “the son of.” This was used largely among the Jews dur­ ing the Spanish period, when Jews were well versed in Arabic as well as in Jewish lore. Ibn Gabirol, Iban Ezra,

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Ibn Shaprut, and Ibn Tibbon are but a few of such names.

A curious departure in the applica­ tion of Jewish names came into usage during the same Spanish period. There was a tendency to create abbreviations.

Best known of these are Rashi and Rambam. But there were a great many more. The custom, however, seems to have been limited to outstanding schol­ ars. The Tosefoth and the Rishonim are replete with such abbreviated names. Any person with a yeshivah background easily remembers such names as Rashaa, Rosh, Rashbam, Ritva, Riff, Ramban, Maharam, Maharshaa and a host of others. In later years reaching down to our own days scholars were named and became bet­ ter known by the title of the books they published. Thus, the Beth Yosef, the Taz, the Shach, the P’nei Yehoshua, the Chofetz Chayim, the Chazon Ish, to mention some of the contempo­ raries. This application best expresses the Midrashic idea mentioned above, the importance of the name that one acquires for himself. i | U I T E a few of the names we use today were picked up by our forefathers in Spain, Germany, and France. When they later emigrated to Poland and Russia they took these names along and changed them to suit the Yiddish tongue better. Let us take a name like Yente. Today this name has a somewhat ludicrous connotation.

But some 500 years ago when a Jewish father and mother looked at their new­ born daughter and noted her gentle features, they named her Gentle or Gentille. When generations later the name was transported to Poland it was not Gentille any longer but Yentle.

When Yentle grew up she became plain Yente. Or imagine the parents whose every hope was their newborn JEWISH LIFE

daughter. So they named her Espe­ ranza, which in Spanish means Hope.

Being expelled from Spain, Esperanza settled in Holland. Her son traveled far and may have gone to Poland on business. He may have settled there and married the local Jewish belle, who spoke the Germanic tongue which became Yiddish. In the meantime his mother had died, and when a daughter was born to them they naturally named her Esperanza. But Esperanza’s play­ mates could speak no Spanish, and even her mother had difficulty in pro­ nouncing the name correctly. So they called her ‘Speranza. Later she became Shprenza or Shprintza. Thus was born a fragrant Jewish name which many a Jewish mother and grandmother bore with pride. Another girl child was hopefully named Belle Beauty, which later became Beile or Sheindel or Sheine. A man who in Spain or Italy was known as Senior became in Ger­ many or in Poland Shniur or ShneurZalman.

One could go on and on specu­ lating about names in use today. Let us take the name Shraga Feivel. The origin may have been Phoebus, which means a bright light. Phoebus became Feivus or Feivish in Jewish and added to it was the name Shraga which means a light.

UT the time has come to say something about second names and how these came into Jewish life.

The general use of second or family names among Jews is of comparatively recent origin. Just when the use of second names began is difficult to trace.

Early in the Torah we find Yehoshua bin Nun— Joshua son of Nun. On the other hand we find allusion to family origin in the mention of Chevaer Hakeni, Haman the Agagite. Among the Tanoim we find the designation of

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February, 1962

a person more often by the addition of his father’s name. For example Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai, Shimon ben Shetach, Shimon ben Yochai, Shimon ben Gamliel. But most of these serve the purpose of distinguish­ ing one Tana from another by the same name. Some Tanoim are known by their occupation, such as Yochanan Hasandlar (sandal maker) Yehoshua Hapahmi (charcoal burner or black­ smith) Yitzchok Nafcha (blacksmith).

Others are designated by their place of origin, Antigonus ish Socho, Nitai Haarbeli, Nachum ish Gamzo. Again these seem to have served a particular purpose at the time. But the use of second names was not at all general.

Much later during the Spanish period Jews were known by family names in addition to those we men­ tioned before where the word Ibn was added to the first name. Examples are, Isaac Abarbanel and Joseph Karo, as well as patronymics such as Maimonides (ben Maimon) and names from place of origin such as Alfasi (of F ez).

But there were a great many Jews who adopted the sonorous Spanish names used by their non-Jewish contempo­ raries. Benevenisto, Rodrerigez, Villanova, Santangel, Caballeria, are some of the names found in the annals of Spanish Jews. Louis de Torres was in Columbus’ expedition. Pereira, Peixotto, Mendoza, Lopez, and Touro are some of the names that came to America via the Spanish and Portu­ guese Jews.

JT iH E general use of family names A by Jews of France and Germany came much later. To be sure, many outstanding Jews were known by their place of birth or the place where they lived. Maharam Rothenberg, Gluckel of Hameln, Gershon of Mayence are well known names. But it was the edict 51

of Emperor Joseph II of Austria in 1787 that gave the impetus to the adoption of second names by Jews.

According to that edict, Jews were to select and adopt family names within a given time. Napoleon too ordered Jews to adopt family names. There must have been a scurry after names and to register before the deadline. He who failed to register a name of his choice was given one by the officials, who were none too sympathetic to Jews. It is a matter of record that Jews were given such derogatory names as Eselkopf, Dummkopf, Wanzenknicker, Singmirwass, Kloppholtz, etc.

Jews with little imagination selected names of their particular trade. Thus we get Schneider, Schuster, Drucker, Weber, Becker, Apteker, and Schreiber. Other Jews were impressed by color of hair or eyes, and selected such names as Braun, Blau, Schwartz, Roth, Gelb, etc. The size of people may have suggested such names as Gross, Klein, Langer, Kurtzer, Fettman, Schweiger, Hochman, Mittelman, etc. And why not call oneself by some metal that possessed such strength and beauty, and in which he may have dealt? Thus we got the names Kupfer, Silber, Gold, Eisen, Shtahl, and all the variations.

The more thoughtful and imagina­ tive individuals may have been im­ pressed by the majesty of nature, the beautiful Alps, the rolling hills, the colorful meadows, and the inspiring beauty of trees. When they selected a name by which their families would be known for generations to come, they turned to the wonders of nature.

Thus we get the Rosenbergs, the Rosenbaums, Rosenfelds, Rosenwalds, the Greenbaums, Greenbergs, Greenfelds, Greenwalds, and all their vari­ ations. Himmelfarb, Blitz, and Gershtenkorn also belong to this category.

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UCH easier it was to simply adopt one’s father’s name, which was M good Jewish tradition anyway. So we have the Jacobsons, Mendelsohns, Abramson, Davidson, Isaacs, Jacobs, and Abrams. The mother and her name also came in handy when choos­ ing a family name. Among Jews of Russia it was popular to call young­ sters by their mother’s name. Jews were known as Moshe Leib Soro’s, or Herschel Chaye-Beile’s, Avrom Yakov Sheine-Sheindel’s. This could easily be­ come a family name and we get such names as Soroskin (Soro’s kind), Chaykin, Belkin, Fradkin, Libkin, and Frumkin.

Again in Russia or Poland when a person wanted to use his father’s name he merely added to it the ending “witch” or “vitz” and thus evolved Davidowitz or Jacobovitz and Abramovitz. Leib became Leibke, and his son became Lebkovitz or Lefkovitz. In Roumania the ending was “vici.”

Too, the “K’ley Kodesh,” the syna­ gogue officials, gave us some of the family names we use today. Cantor, Shochet, Chazan, Shamash, Singer, Klausner, Rabinovitz are some of these names.

As Jews were taking full advantage of the opportunities that emancipation had given them, they became selfconscious about the “foreignness” of their Jewish-sounding names and began to adopt non-Jewish names, or to assimilate their names to the language of the country. This was particularly prevalent in Hungary, where Weiss became Vazsonyi, Feldman or Fried­ man became Fabian. Schwartz was translated into Fekete, Klein turned into Kiss. To a lesser degree this was also the case in France and England.

In America too Jews took on Englishsounding names. But here it was not JEWISH LIFE

so much to escape one’s Jewisnness as> to make it easier to get along in busi­ ness or on the job. A person who came here with a name like Tabachnik, Kamenetzky, Drevnovsky, or Kaganovitch soon became tired of the everrecurring question: “How do you spell it?”

The most recent and most pleasing name changes that occurred in our days took place of course in Israel.

With the rise of the Zionist movement and the establishment of the Jewish State, Berlin became Bar Ilan, Breenbaum became Ben Gurion, Torczyner turned into Tur-Sinai (a particularly fine turn), Friedman is translated into Ish-Shalom, Gold or Goldman is Zahavi, Eisenman became Barzilai, Wolf turns into Ze’ev.

the Nazis recognized the value of names. They stripped Jews of their names and tattooed numbers on their arms. Once a Jew lost his name he lost his identity as a human being. He became a mere digit to be erased. It took extraordinary courage and deter­ mination to maintain one’s identity and humanity in the concentration camp. Those who were able to do it had a better chance of survival. A name means a human being, a family name spells belonging.

The Torah cries out against the dehumanization of man. For man was created in the image of G-d. He must not lose this identity, the Tzelem Elokim, his Sichliyuth, his individu­ ality. The Mishnah says: Chayov odom lomar bishvili nivra h a o la m ^ 'A man must proclaim that the world was LL this leads us to think about created ‘for my sake.’ ” This is what Lour names, how they were de­ our rabbis thought of the value of the rived, what they signify now, and whatindividual. Elsewhere the Midrosh says will be their meaning as the years go that Israel was redeemed from Egypt by. A well established family name because of three things, one of them means a great deal. In a sense a family being shelo shinu eth shemom, they name establishes a tradition and is did not change their names. Those of us who do not want to be lost in the able to transmit that tradition. “A good name is better than precious oil.” crowd or turn into a digit in a filing Our age of electronic computers cabinet must make a redoubled effort poses the threat that soon men will to make our Jewish names meaningful. be reduced to mere digits and thereby In that way we can make a telling become dehumanized. In their dia­ contribution to the bringing of the bolical plan to exterminate the Jews Geulah.

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53

The College Dilemma

By ISRAEL D. LERNER American Jewry is awakening to the implications of a fact of our time: most of our young people go on to college. Herewith are presented some cogent thoughts on a twofold issue: What will college do for Jewish students . . . and, what will college do to them?

IS not easy to be a parent of a question: is the sacrifice worth it? Let senior high school student. For a us say that he has resolved his Jewish parent it is twice as difficult as “Halachic” doubts. He has studied the for others. four-hundred-and-nineteenth mitzvah The whole problem of college looms according to the “Chinuch,” and he is as a formidable one. We worry along convinced that he has fulfilled his with the student facing a welter of parental obligation in the realm of applications and tests, to say nothing Torah education. It is the turn of the of erratic decisions of admissions of­ secular studies on the college level. ficials. Then there is the ever-increas­ Wisdom is the handmaiden of Torah. ing financial burden. Of course, there Let us say he is aware fully that in is much advice on coping with all this. business, industry, and the professions, The newspaper columns are fine, and in all the varied aspects of our eco­ the books incorporate a great deal of nomic life, the college degree is an information. The recent “How an Ivy asset. Is the sacrifice worth it, reli­ League College Decides on Admis­ giously and spiritually speaking? sions” by Katherine T. Kinkhead (Norton, 1961) is but one of several.

HICH mentors will be guiding However, with the colleges pursuing the Jewish student? In “Changing independent policies, Harvard and Patterns of Jewish Life on the Campus” Princeton need not follow Yale. And issued by B’nai B’rith, we see that the even Yale, which is evaluated in the expanding facilities and activities of aforementioned book, need not be Hillel require more programming in bound in 1962 by its 1961 policies. depth, and in any case have not In brief, these writings can at best be reached a vast number of the smaller only quasi-authoritative and of passing colleges. Yavneh, the student organi­ interest. zation with a true religious orientation, The Jewish parent is further is a fledgling as yet, limited primarily troubled, and rightfully so, by the to the metropolitan areas. The Torah

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JEWISH LIFE

Tour program of the Rabbinical Coun­ cil of America and Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, ex­ cellent as it is, still is hampered by lack of funds and time of the bur­ dened volunteer rabbi.

With the big scramble for a uni­ versity education, many of our Jewish students are bound to be shunted to the smaller institutions of higher edu­ cation. There, openings exist. But there too, in the church-founded colleges, a seminar session in philosophy is not always removed from a seminary lec­ ture in theology. In a recent survey of fifty such colleges, over forty were found to be still under the direct con­ trol of the founding church. Our stu­ dents, who were never exposed to Bachya, do get exposed to a Kierke­ gaard. Protestant philosophers and theologians have been in vogue for some time. Serious young people are apt to talk to each other on questions of belief. The flippant atheistic attitude of a by-gone era is no longer. Man is in search of G-d.

At least the college student is in search of values. In the process he may over-value his college courses, which were difficult to come by in the first place. Opinions passed on by pro­ fessors in the humanities are accepted, very often, uncritically. A good pro­ fessor’s intellectual superiority in one field tends to be confused with oracular prowess in other fields. Facts are facts and theories are theories, and not al­ ways do the twain meet. But not every student discerns this. One has to wait until one gets to the graduate level to realize how much pettiness, back­ biting, and downgrading of other pro­ fessors’ books and scholarship exist inside our higher institutions of learn­ ing. This is indeed a poor foundation on which to build a way of life. A student seeks a bedrock of faith, and February, 1962

is merely offered shifting grains of sand.

HE scholars themselves are con­ fused indeed on this issue of re­ ligion and scholarship. The Princeton University Press issued a volume very recently, “The Shaping of American Religion” (Princeton, N. J. 1961).

The Protestant movement in the United States is described by a professor of Theology from Yale University’s Di­ vinity School. A Cathedral College scholar writes on Catholicism. But for Judaism, the editors chose a professor of secular history from Harvard Uni­ versity. Now, no one questions the abilities of that particular gentleman.

One just wonders at the choice, just as one wonders at that gentleman’s choice of writing and mentioning the Hebrew Union College, the Jewish Institute of Religion, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, but nary a word on Yeshiva University or Torah Vadaath, Chaim Berlin, Telz, Ner Israel, Hebrew Theological and the rest of the great roster of Torah schools.

It isn’t only the oracular professor who is of concern to us. What of the fellow students, the peer group, who under the guise of a veneer of intellectualism project their own dis­ torted moral views upon others? A recent Ford Foundation study showed that dating and social acceptance are the chief problems in the processs of the new student’s adjustment to col­ lege life. The pressure exerted by the social group can be powerful indeed.

Professor William Barrett of New York University notes the increasing bravado of a certain type of talker on campus. Moral inhibitions become equated with psychological blocks, and the relinquishment of standards with self-expression. There may be a con­ servative wind blowing, but it is in the

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political-economic field, not in the moral one.

HIS is not to gainsay the idea of college. For an approach to re­ search, pre-professional training, and exposure to the vast array of literature constituting our Western heritage, for all this and more, a college education is well-nigh indispensable. But truly valuable knowledge is not to be con­ fused with knowledge of true values.

Parents and students must realize this.

Character must be formed beforehand, and must be allowed to flourish and mature in a conducive atmosphere, in a proper setting. Surely this calls for more work on the part of the college and university town rabbi, for closer ties between home, synagogue, and the student away on campus. It calls for support of all organizations endeavor­ ing to bring traditionalism, Jewish experience, and Jewish living to our intellectually hungry young men and women.

However, the parent is the one upon whom the real responsibility should devolve. His “investment” is too large to permit careless handling. As with

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all good investments, it should be made early enough, and added to, and watched carefully through the years.

He might start with a Jewish day school education, follow ed by a yeshivah high school, and then, last but certainly not least, the right kind of a college. If it is not Yeshiva Uni­ versity in New York, or Jewish Uni­ versity of America at the Skokie campus in Illinois, it should at least have access to centers of Jewish learn­ ing and living.

University life must be seen in the proper perspective, not through the befogged lenses of overeager parents, and social-pressured students. If one desires guidance, maybe he should turn to Maimonides’ “Guide” which states (in Chapter V ) : “A man should not endeavor to take by storm a noble idea. . . . He should purify his actions much, and suppress his base desires, and know ways of guarding oneself from misleading properties of mind, and then he should accord priority to deep study, and not decide hastily in accordance with the capricious dictates of his heart, but modestly in reticence and awe. . . .”

JEWISH LIFE

On T h e Jew ish R ecord Nigunim That Stir the Soul

By A. Abba Walker

T TNLESS one is blessed with the 1 J talent of appreciating the finest of the “fine arts,” it takes years of sensory cultivation and perhaps actual study to eventually appreciate the spiritual beauty of a musical or art masterpiece. An art novice may or may not enjoy the simple beauty of a chef d’oeuvre of Rembrandt, Picasso, Michelangelo, etc., but the true con­ noisseur and art patron will surely penetrate the simple beauty to the core of its intricate although manifest genius.

In music, too, it does not require years of study and aural cultivation to enjoy the lovely lyricism of a Tchaikowsky Ballet Suite or the lilt­ ing quality of a Strauss waltz. The average music lover will no doubt enjoy the moving beauty of a Bee­ thoven symphony or the towering majesty of his “Emperor” Piano Con­ certo, and will find himself whistling the unforgettable introspective theme of the third movement of Brahms’ 3rd Symphony. It will take, however, years of musical development to apDR. A. ABBA W ALKER, who has long been devoted to the study of classical and liturgical music, has previously contributed to Jewish Life and other publications.

February, 1962

predate the profound genius embedded within the Beethoven “Late” String Quartets, composed under the handi­ cap of deafness, Mozart’s Piano Trios or String Quintets, and Dvorak’s Piano and String Quintet; or any composi­ tion of chamber music, Classical, Ro­ mantic or Modern.

In view of the foregoing introduc­ tory remarks, it was quite difficult for this critic:—who openly admits his abounding love for chamber music— to review a Chasidic record. To do so, it was necessary to listen to the record many times, thereby inducing a grad­ ual regression to the late adolescent years, when I was introduced to Cha­ sidic singing in actual prayer in the shtibel of my father’s Rebbe (both of blessed memory). It was now possible to establish a more pertinent and ap­ propriate criterion for the analysis and appraisal of: CHABAD N IG U N IM (Vol. 2) Performed by a group of Lubavitcher Chasidim Produced by “Nichoach” Directed by Rabbi Samuel Zalmanoff with Seymour Silbermintz as Music Consultant and Reuven Kosakoff—Associate One L.P. M onoaural record N-5721 Price

N one of the many interesting and enlightening notes found on the record’s “jacket,” the annotator ex-

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plains the origin and purpose of the Nichoach Society. Nichoach (Niguney Chasidey Chabad—the melodies of the Chabad Chasidim) was founded by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph Yitzchok, of blessed memory, in 1944.

“Chabad” is derived from three He­ brew words, which reflect the basic philosophy of the Lubavitcher Chasidic Movement—Chochmah (wisdom), Binah (understanding), Daath (knowl­ edge). The purpose of the Nichoach Society was to “collect Chabad Nigunim from various sources, determine their authentic versions, have the melodies notated, and preserve them by publication in the book form and eventually in recording.” The first record of Chabad Nigunium was pro­ duced and released by Stampler’s Col­ lector’s Guild in 1960, and the second was produced and released by Nicho­ ach several months ago.

Volume II, the record under review, is a collection of thirteen songs, six are with words taken from liturgical, Biblical, and Talmudic texts. The re­ maining seven are actual nigunim, songs without words, which can be categorized as niguney siwchah— songs of joy, and ninguney d'vekiith, songs of devotion. All songs are per­ formed by a non-professional group of Chabad Chasidim with or without a soloist, accompanied by a musical ensemble, comprised of a piano, violin, clarinet, drum, and one or two addi­ tional instruments.

To appreciate the niguney simchah, one does not require a Chasidic back­ ground or the spiritually rewarding experience of having “davened” in a Chasidic shtibel, or of having observed Chasidim at prayer with devotional fervor in song. These de­ lightful, lively, happy and carefree melodies, ebullient with rhythmic, dance-like qualities, truly reflect the 58

optimistic outlook of the average Chosid. One can easily visualize a group of Chasidim dancing in ecstasy —at services on Simchath Torah— clapping their hands or snapping their fingers to these joyous rhythms with a vigorous acceleration of tempo in “A to V'chartonu”—which leaves them al­ most breathless and exhausted. A trace of the hora can be detected in the song “Emosai Ko-osi Mar,” when one hears the familiar uru achim b’lev sameiach, from the popular He­ brew song “Hova Nogilah.” No doubt the influence of the Lubavitcher in Israel.

On the other hand, it would seem to this reviewer that one must be able to identify himself with the profound Chasidic spirit and its yearning for Divine fulfillment, in order to be able to appreciate the beautiful niguney dfvekuth found in this recording.

These are soul-stirring, introspective, melancholic, and emotion-provoking melodies that may somehow leave one sad and mournful yet spiritually ex­ hilarated. Most people shy away from these sensations, preferring the more stimulating joyful tunes. Nevertheless, to me, songs like “Podoh V’Sholom Nafshi,’* “Kol Dodi,” and “Rebbe Michele’s Nigun” are the best of the nigunim on the disc. rTIHE quality of the recording is JL good, the melodies singable, but the musical aspect just fair. Not much can be expected from a group of untrained, non-professional Chasidic singers, soloists included. More, how­ ever, should be forthcoming from an ensemble of supposed professional mu­ sicians and instrumentalists. Perhaps, by design, the orchestral arrangement was meant to evoke the loud, amateur­ ish European Kapel-ye effect. If so, the effect was fully realized. Devoid JEWISH LIFE

often of musical harmony and contra­ puntal effect, the ensemble occasionally pursues the chorus in poor timing and co-ordination, and at times, seems uncertain of itself as in the M itteler Rebbe’s Kapel-ye.

The effect of Chasidic authenticity was realized by the non-harmonizing singers who sing well in unison, al­ though the young alto voices seemed to be shouting. The rapport between the respective soloists and the chorus in responsive singing was good. In general, the soloists conveyed the in­ spiring meaning of the nigunim, albeit with strained vocal renditions, from time to time. The typical genuine Chasidic vocal kvetch was brought

February, 1962

out by the soloist in “Kol Dodi” and “Essen est Zich.” This natural, au­ thentic setting is one of the finer qualities of the disc.

The Nichoach Society deserves a hearty Yasher Kochachem for its meri­ torious service in having produced this record. Its noble efforts to preserve these nigunim on the unbreakable disc should be appreciated by anyone inter­ ested in this small aspect of Jewry’s cultural heritage. The record has a definite place in one’s music library and its melodies will surely enrich our musical repertoire. We look forward to Vol. I ll of Chabad Nigunim and hope that, B’ezrath Hashem, it will be forthcoming in the near future.

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Kibbutz Youth

By LIBBY KLAPERMAN

YOUTH ALIY AH IN A RELIGIOUS KIBBUTZ, by Meir Tamari. Jeru­ salem: Children and Youth Aliyah Department of the Jewish Agency, 1960. 122 pp.

HE recent news headlines on the placem ent or m isplacem ent of Youth Aliyah children in kibbutzim in Israel makes this monograph par­ ticularly interesting even though the book emphasizes not so much the placement of youth as their education and integration into the framework of the religious kibbutz. The problems of American education, too, make this book valuable for the added insight we as Americans are given into the innovations in the educational world of Israel, and for our world as well.

The kibbutz under discussion is Shluchot, so chosen because it is pri­ marily a Youth Aliyah kibbutz where the unusual situation exists of Youth Aliyah graduates educating Youth Aliyah wards. Shluchot is a thirteenyear-old religious kibbutz situated in the Beisan Valley which in its very

T

LIBBY M. KLAPERMAN is the author of many stories for Jewish children, and co-author with her husband, Rabbi Gilbert Klaperman, of works on Jewish history. She also serves as educa­ tional director of Women’s Branch of UOJCA.

60

make-up reflects the varying tasks performed by Youth Aliyah and the stages of its development during the pre-State years. Its original founders were comprised of four distinct groups —the youth of pre-war Germany, those snatched from Europe before the Nazi terror broke in all its fury, the remnants of a world destroyed by crematoria and gas ovens, and finally, Israeli-born children eager to live a life of productivity and service to their people. Each of these groups caused Youth Aliyah to adapt its edu­ cational methods to their different needs. The author makes use of case histories, diaries, and letters, but at the same time he develops a composite picture which avoids sentimentality or propaganda. We see how the Madrichim inculcate the settlement with the values of the dignity of labor, of co­ operation, of social justice, and of service to the community. These values are strengthened by the fact that they are not theoretically inculcated by an educational institution and imposed on the young people from without, but are absorbed by them in a day by day relationship and from a living society.

We can see clearly how the religious kibbutz presents its solution to social JEWISH LIFE

and economic problems, how young people living among adults who are religious and yet fulfill and perform all the accepted tasks of a regular community, strengthen their own re­ ligious beliefs as religion becomes a normal way of life. Education in the religious kibbutz stresses the impor­ tance of knowledge as a basis of Judaism and shows how there can be a clear synthesis between the secular world and religious. That is not to say that no problems exist. Shluchot has the many problems that reflect in miniature the problems of religion in Israel today. But we see an integra­ tion of youth into the adult commun­ ity, the learning of real values as the young people participate with the general kibbutz in all of its problems —from problems in farming and agri­ culture to the Sinai Campaign.

HE curriculum studied by the young people is threefold. One area, entitled Judaism, encompasses Chumosh, Talmud, and commentaries

T

as well as Jewish religious law and philosophy including Saadia Gaon, Maimonides, and Yehudah Halevi. The Humanities includes Jewish and Gen­ eral History, Israeli and World geog­ raphy, Hebrew literature and English, and Science includes arithmetic, math­ em atics, biology, botany, physics, chemistry, anatomy and a scientific study of agriculture. All this in addi­ tion to a regular work program, folk dancing, sports, hiking, and tours.

Illuminating, too, are the general edu­ cational problems which are discussed at the close of the book—as for ex­ ample, the fact that the overwhelming majority of the religious settlements and their educators are Ashkenazim while the children being educated are usually Sephardim.

The entire book is an intelligent and balanced evaluation of a vital and significant area in the develop­ ment of the Jewish state. It brings into sharp focus, too, the many prob­ lems we have in training our own re­ ligious youth here in America.

Through The Sociologist’s Eye

By NATHALIE SCHACTER THE RELIGIOUS FACTOR: A Sociological Study of Religion’s Impact on Politics, Economics and Family Life. By Gerhard Lenski. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday & Co., 1961.

3§1 pp. $5.95.

CHILDREN OF THE GILDED GHETTO: Conflict Resolutions of Three Generations of American Jews.

By Judith R. Kramer and Seymour Leventman. N ew i; Haven: Yal&d Uni­ versity Press, 1961. 228 pp. $5.00.

February., 1962

ELIGIOUS institutions in Ameri­ can life have been relatively ne­ glected by the sociologist as a subject of scientific inquiry. The past several years, however, as indicated by the growing body of literature in this area, have been marked by a revival of interest in the sociology of religion.

Dr. Gerhard Lenski’s excellent book “The Religious Factor,” represents a significant contribution to this here­ tofore overneglected discipline in

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American social science. The question to which Lenski addresses himself is a most pertinent one, namely, what influence does religion have on indi­ vidual behavior in the non-religious sphere of life? In other words, does one’s religious affiliation affect his economic values, his political ideals, his patterns of rearing his children, his attitudes toward civil rights and liberties %<In the tradition of the pio­ neer sociologist, Max Weber, Lenski hypothesizes that “. . . religious groups develop their own distinctive orien­ tations toward all aspects of life and these orientations profoundly influ­ ence the daily actions of their adher­ ents and hence the institutional struc­ ture of society.”

Lenski questioned a carefully se­ lected sample of the Detroit popula­ tion, (the bulk of his data are derived from the Detroit Area Study of 1958 —a project of the Sociology Depart­ ment of the University of Michigan).

Of his 656 respondents 41% were white Protestants, 35% (white) Cath­ olics, 15% Negro Protestants, and 4% Jews.

HIS, of course, is a very small sampling upon which to project supposedly scientific conclusions of any kind. However scientific may have been the method of selection, and however scrupulous the method of analysis, it would be unwise, to say the least, to assume that Dr. Lenski’s research yields definitive indications as to group characteristics. They do suggest cer­ tain tendencies and to this extent the data support Lenski’s hypothesis in a fairly impresive manner. In the spheres of political, economic, and

T

NATHALIE (MRS. DANIEL) SCHACTER is instructor of Sociology at Stem College for Women. She has authored numerous mono­ graphs on sociological themes.

February, 1962

family life he found consistent dif­ ferences among the four socio-religious groups. For example : Jewish and white Protestant busi­ nessmen tend to enjoy their work more and to have higher economic aspirations than do Catholics.

Jews and Catholics are more in­ clined than are white Protestants to support the Democratic Party and wel­ fare legislation.

Jews and white Protestants tend to train their children to be independa ent to a greater extent than do Catholics.

Catholics are more likely to drop out of school or college than are Jews and white Protestants.

It would hardly be adequate, how­ ever, simple to cross-tabulate religious affiliation with various behavior pat* terns and attitudes; Acutely aware of the danger of spurious relationships, Lenski continually introduces test variables in order to determine wheth­ er the original relationships are valid. For example, will a middle class Protestant behave differently from a working-class Protestant? Or, will an active Catholic develop different po­ litical and economic values from those of a non-participating Catholic?

Perhaps the most meaningful dis­ tinction which Lenski makes in dealing with the problem of how to measure the degree of religious in­ volvement of his respondents is that between associational involvement (measured by the frequency of attend­ ance at religious services) and com­ munal involvement (measured by the extent to which an individual’s pri­ mary relationships are limited to his own religious group). He found that the four groups differed substantially with regard to these types of involve­ ment. Associational ties among Detroit Jews are weak although communal 63

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ties are very strong; the reverse holds for Catholics; among white Protes­ tants both types of involvement are relatively weak; while for Negro Prot­ estants both associational and com­ munal ties are quite strong. rp lH IS distinction between associaJL tional and communal involvement brought to light many interesting dif­ ferences within each socio-religious group. Lenski found, for example, that Catholics with strong church (associ­ ational) ties veer toward the Republi­ can party, while Catholics with strong communal ties are overwhelmingly drawn by the egalitarian spirit of the Democratic party.

In general, communal ties are found

by Lenski to exert greater influence upon attitudes and behavior than associational ties. This finding sug­ gests that people are more influenced in their every-day decision and activ­ ities by those with whom they enjoy primary relations than by the religious indoctrination to which they are ex­ posed in their churches and syna­ gogues. It is very possible, however, (and this is one avenue which Lenski does not explore) that these communal influences are more than religious. A Catholic may be influenced more by the fact that he is a member of the Irish rather than the Italian com­ munity, than by the fact that his close relationships are confined to other Catholics rather than to Protestants or Jews.

As indicated above, the most severe limitations of Dr. Lenski’s study is the fact that once each of the socio­ religious groups has been subdivided by class, by degree of religious in­ volvement, and by several other vari­ ables which Lenski uses as controls, the number of cases upon which the analysis is based is so small in many February, 1962

instances that the conclusions must be viewed with extreme caution. It is especially Unfortunate that the small number of Jews in the sample (27) makes it impossible to learn more about differences in behavior patterns among various types of Jews.

Despite these limitations, Dr. Len­ ski’s book represents for the sociolo­ gist a significant and fascinating land­ mark in the study of religion in Ameri­ can life. For the layman it provides many insights into the maner in which a man's religious commitments can influence his secular behavior.

LESS significant contribution to the sociology of religion, although perhaps of greater interest to the Jewish reader, is the study by Judith Kramer and Seymour Leventman of three generations of American Jews in a small midwestern city, “Children of the Gilded Ghetto.”

Most of the Jews populating today’s suburban communities are the grand­ children of those who came to the United States in the 1880’s and 90’s in the great migration from eastern Europe. The resemblance of these third-generation Jews to their immi­ grant grandparents is very slight— most of the former have succesfully adjusted to the majority society and have lost many of those characteristics which had set the older generation apart as a minority group. But this adjustment was a gradual one and in­ volved a considerable conflict of values.

The authors attempt to explain this evolution of Jewish society from gen­ eration to generation by interviewing selected respondents from the second and third generations, while the de­ scription of the first or immigrant generation was drawn from the his­ torical records of the city’s Jewish community.

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] In brief, the authors find very little which most sociologists and .most Jews have not been aware of. The story is the old familiar one of the orthodox immigrant generation settling in a ghettoized urban section of town and adhering strictly to the religious heri­ tage of its ancestors. Its sons, however, facing the problem of achieving status in a gentile world, reject in large measure the “tribal” customs of their fathers and in their gilded suburban ghettos find status within their own group through economic success.

Their children, the third generation, less concerned with gaining an eco­ nomic foothold, seek status and pres­ tige through acceptance in the wider gentile community. They maintain communal ties within the group, but their religious identification is pri­ marily a means of socializing their children: “rituals are somehow ‘good’ for children . . . have ‘survival value’ . . . teach children what it means to be Jewish . . .” The third generation lives and works in a gentile world, takes on the values of the major society, and aspires for complete acceptance by and security among its non-Jewish neighbors and co-workers.

HE stu^y^is fan interesting one an|h welldbcum^uted statistically; Its primary limitation, «however, i^ that its*- findings can not M applied to the American Jewish community as a whole, and it is even questionable as to whether the ^"sample adequately represents the local community from which it was drawn. The absence of representation from the orthodox Jewish community is immediately apparent. Although a few respondents in the second generation, and even fewer in the third, retained the tradi­ tional practice of buying only kosher meat, none of them fully observed Kashruth, as indicated by the fact that none keeps two sets of dishes, etc. It is hardly likely that there is no orthodox community in this city, since the authors do mention that a yeshivah day school had been founded several years before.

“Children of the Gilded Ghetto” is typical of those studies which lay the sociologist open to the criticism that many of his findings represent either just plain “common-sense” knowledge, or else are totally inapplicable to any but the sample investigated. This study is culpable on both counts.

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JEWISH LIFE

Letters te the Editor Brooklyn, N. Y. I was deeply impressed with the stir­ ring and courageous editorials which appeared in the October issue of J e w i s h L i f e . Your wonderful maga­ zine is a vital and constructive force in American Jewish Life.

Your outspoken editorial on Youth Aliyah however, leaves me puzzled.

You state in this editorial that over the years thousands of Youth Aliyah wards, of religious background, have been placed in non-religious settle­ ments, “to be weaned away by a sure process from religious belief and ob­ servance.” This is a shocking indict­ ment of Israel leaders. The question puzzling me is: where was the voice of the major orthodox organizations in this country while these scandals were taking place? Why have they remained silent while, as you state, only a minority of the many thou­ sands of children of religious back­ ground had been settled in religious environments? Perhaps if these or­ ganizations had been more vocal in the past during the mass immigration from the Arabic countries to Israel, tens of thousands of these youngsters who were “weaned away,” would be religious today.

In another forthright editorial you discuss the anomaly of Federation which while claiming to represent the entire Jewish community, functions as a private organization . . . discrimi­ nating against Yeshivas and orthodox February, 1962

institutions. This I would imagine has been going on for many years and I still do not hear any great outcry by any of the major orthodox groups in this country.

In an earlier issue in an article on Jewish camping, the writer stated that Camp Wei Met, sponsored by the Jewish Welfare Board, almost com­ pletely neglects Shabbath and other basic Jewish practices. We insist on more basic Jewish values for such camps not because of the few orthodox children who may be enrolled but be­ cause orthodox Judaism is the histori­ cal character of the Jewish people. The question remains: will anything be done about this before next summer?

Is there any organization which will attempt to bring pressure to bear or will Orthodoxy continue to remain silent in the face of these flagrant abuses? I fully agree with Rabbi Ralph Pelcovitz’s article in the same issue that Orthodoxy has kept quiet far too long. This can only have the tragic result of abandoning the voice in Jew­ ish affairs which demands to be heard.

I can only hope that the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, which has only recently be­ gun to speak up, will fulfill this basic responsibility which the orthodox Jew­ ish community has thrust upon it.

In conclusion let me applaud your wonderful magazine for its many con­ structive and illuminating articles.

Abraham Frank 69

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I have read with interest the article of Rabbi Ralph Pelcovitz entitled “Wanted an American Orthodox Image,” in your October issue, where­ in he says in part: “In sum, we have been unsuccessful in projecting our needs and our images both internally, to the Jewish com­ munity at large, and externally to the non-Jewish agencies, bodies, and powers.”

In this same issue, you write in your editorial: “So long as the New York Federa­ tions and all like federations are con­ stituted as they are, Judaism can never be more than tolerated in the Jewish community’s own welfare insti­ tutions,” That the evil in Jewish philanthropy is great in the injustice wrought upon orthodox institutions is beyond doubt.

The question is, what is the correc­ tive?

After years of observation and struggle with the problem in my own community, I have come to some con­ clusions which I think apply to all communities which have federations or welfare funds.

First: The injustice of inadequate representation or allotment cannot be corrected by internal pleading. These institutions are run by heterodox Jews to whom and to whose religious schools Orthodoxy and its maximist schools are an implied criticism or reproach.

For, if their minimal standards are sufficient, why our maximum stand­ ards? Little good will it do to tell them of the good we do or the volume of our needs. Our heterodox friends don’t want to know. In this they are but­ tressed by Jewish Education Bureaus which seek to devolve control of Jew­ ish education on secularist lay profes­ sionals and since this ^ is directly February, 1962

opposed to the orthodox ideal of rab­ binical control, neither the Federa­ tions nor their professionals can be relied upon for any justice to ortho­ dox institutions.

Years ago in Germany, orthodox Jews fought this problem out with heterodoxy and received permission from the Kaiser’s government to di­ vorce from communities which had fallen into heterodox control and do their own taxing. Of course, your readers will remember that religious communities in the Germany of that day were permitted to tax their con­ stituents for limited purposes. The battle of the orthodox Jew was to convince the German Reichstag that he could obtain no justice from hetero­ dox bodies, and German orthodox Jewry after bitter struggles won its battle.

In the United States, where fund raising by the Jewish community for local needs has been centralized in community federations and welfare funds, in many cases annexed to the United Jewish Appeal, orthodox Jews must take their issue to the public in militant manner. The first duty of every right-thinking orthodox Jew is to refuse to donate to the local wel­ fare fund and to divert such dona­ tions as previously given to it to other Jewish causes. And his second duty is to announce it belligerently.

It makes Tittle difference how large or small is the individual donation of each orthodox Jew. The basic founda­ tion of Welfare Funds is their claim to represent all substantial segments of Jewry. To destroy this claim by a boycott should be the aim of every Jew who loves justice and is intoler­ ant of wrong. It can be done no other way.

Charles Albom 71

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