Jewish Life Jan-Feb 1964

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TWO MINHOGIM AN D ONE TORAH THE' _%XRCJUE;' S i||^ IX A H ' W HENCE A N D WHITHER? ’ SHTJSHAN iftQ H T • ,|4Y M OTHER’S R E L A T IV E & |3B H JEW ISH FARM COLONIZATION IN ARGENTINA

ANOTHER NEW TORAH TRANSLATION • ■ 'W HO M iS f0 & f .T HE LAND?,-■ " ' flf

; SH EV A T-A D A B 5 7 2 4

19 ©41

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M a ke Y o u r R eservations N o w for the

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

U N IO N O F O R TH O D O X J E W IS H C O N G R E G A T IO N S O F A M E R IC A to beheld iT ’K

Sunday Evening, M ay 3, 1964 at the N E W Y O RK H IL T O N at ROCKEFELLER C EN TER

H A RO LD H . BOXER—

H onor

$60.00 per reservation THE TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF SYNAGOGUE YOUTH WILL BE MARKED ON THIS OCCASION. YOUR PARTICIPATION IN THE DINNER WILL HELP MAKE POSSIBLE THE EXPANSION OF THIS MOVEMENT.

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Vol. XXXI, No. 3/January-February 1964/Shevat-Adar 5724

EDITORIALS INTERMARRIAGE ISN’T THE PROBLEM ......................

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ARTICLES Saul B ernstein , Editor Reuben E. Gross Rabbi S. J. S harfman Libby K laperman Paul H. Baris Editorial Associates Gabrielle Riback Editorial Assistant JEWISH LIFE is published bi­ monthly. Subscription two years $4.00, three years $5.50, four years $7.00. Foreign: Add 25V per year.

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

TWO MINHOGIM AND ONE T O R A H / Rabbi Louis I. Rabinowitz ...................................

6 “WHO SHALL INHERIT THE LAND?”/ Edythe Schindler ......................................................... 11 ANOTHER NEW TORAH TRANSLATION: SOME OBSERVATIONS»/Rabbi Isaac L. S w if t... 17 THE YARCHEY KALLAH— WHENCE AND WHITHER? / Rabbi 0. Feuchtwanger ................... 32 JEWISH FARM COLONIZATION IN ARGENTINA/ Jacob Beller .................................................................. 38

FICTION MY MOTHER’S RELATIVES / Fannie Kreinen .......... 27

ART FEATURE “SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE . . .” / Alan Zwiebel .................................................

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Published by U n io n of O rthodox Jewish Congregations of A merica M oses I. Feuerstein President Benjamin Koenigsberg, Nathan K. Gross, Samuel L. Brennglass, Harold M. Jacbbs, Herbert Ber­ man, Vice Presidents; Rabbi Joseph Karasick, Treasurer; Harold H. Boxer, Secretary; David Politi, Financial Secre­ tary.

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

POETRY SHUSHAN NIGHT / Israel K am in s ky .......................... 15

REVIEWS AN EXERCISE IN “THEOLOGY” / Leo Taubes . . . . 47 TWO VIEWS ON RELIGION AND PUBLIC EDUCATION / Rabbi Howard I. Levine ................. 53 PORTRAIT OF A COMMUNITY / Joakim Isaacs . . . 58

DEPARTMENTS AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS........................................ 1 LETTERS TO THE ED ITO R ............................................... 63 Cover drawing by Moshe L. Z w an g / Inside drawings by Alan H. Zwiebel Copyright 1963 by UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

January-February, 1964

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EDYTHE SCHINDLER, who spent several years in Bat Yam, Israel when her husband was an airline captain for El Al, now lives in Florida and attends the University of Miami. Mrs. Schindler placed in the 1963 Writer’s Digest Short Story Con­ test and won first prize in the 1964 Florida Short Story Contest sponsored by the National League of American Penwomen. Her stories and articles have been published in many magazines.

Born in Antwerp and educated at yeshivoth in Frankfurt, Telshe, Mir, and Kamenitz, RABBI O. FEUCHTWANGER has been spiritual leader of England’s Letchworth Congregation for the past fourteen years. He writes a bi-weekly column “In Memory of Righteous” for the London Jewish Review, and while in Israel, he contributed to the “Encyclopaedia Talmudith” and “Otzar ha-Poskim.”

Although JACOB BELLER writes primarily for the Yiddish Press, he has contributed numerous articles to English-language publications and is well-known to the readers of Jewish Life for his informative studies of exotic Jewish communities.

“Tropical Refuge” (July/Aug. ’63), the penetrating analysis of the Jewish community of Chile (Aug. ’62), and the colorful survey of Argentinian Jewish farm life in this issue are the prod­ ucts of Mr. Beller’s extensive travels in Latin American lands.

RABBI ISAAC L. SWIFT, who is Rav of Congregation Ahavath Torah in Englewood, New Jersey, is a lecturer at the Theodore Herzl Institute and has addressed audiences through­ out the country. A previous contributor to Jewish Life, Rabbi Swift was born and educated in England and held a Rabbinic post in Sydney, Australia before coming to the United States in 1954.

A music teacher at the Ramaz School in New York and a mem­ ber of the faculty of the New York College of Music, DR. FANNIE KREINEN was formerly Music Supervisor of the Schools of Buffalo, N. Y. and was Music Consultant for the Jewish Educational Association of Essex County, N. J. and for the Summer Music Program of the 92nd Street Y. Along with her active career, Dr. Kreinen finds time to pursue her favorite hobby, writing, which provides us with the short story, “My Mothers Relatives.”

RABBI DR. LOUIS I. RABINOWITZ is the author of “Social Life of the Jews of North France in the 12th to 14th Century” as well as many other works. Before moving to Israel, Dr. Rabinowitz was Chief Rabbi of Transvaal, South Africa and Professor of Hebrew and Judaica at Witwatersrand University.

He has written articles for scholarly journals, and he discussed “Religious Progress in South Africa” in the June ’59 issue of

Jewish Life .

A teacher at the Esther Schoenfeld Beth Jacob School and the Elmont Jewish Center, the author of “Shushan Night,” ISRAEL KAMINSKY, successfully combines his profession with his artistic inclinations. His work has appeared in several Anglo-Jewish publications and his fine poem, “The Word” (June ’62), received appreciative response from our readers. Mr. Kaminsky is a graduate of Mesivtath Chaim Berlin and holds a B.A. degree from Brooklyn College.

JEWISH LIFE

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Intermarriage Isn’t the Problem l^ O N C E R N about intermarriage between Jews and non-Jews \_J has risen sharply of late. In some circles a tendency has developed to view this issue as the pivotal Jewish problem of the time. Statistics indicative of a rising incidence of mixed mar­ riages are being much bandied about, not without a note of gloomy relish in some quarters. Prophets of doom proclaim the pending demise of American Jewry. The cry rises: Let’s do something about it!, and troubled figures from the facets of the community most ravaged by intermarriage piece together formulas to rectify the situation. But, the techniques and pro­ grams thus proffered somehow sound neither convinced nor convincing. They are all too patently fabricated of the very ingredients out of which intermarriage has been nurtured. Their sponsors still recoil from the truth that confronts them: namely, that the inevitable end product of spiritual assimilation is physical absorption.

No segment of American Jewry can claim to be quite un­ touched by the specter of marriage out of the Jewish fold. It is Counterpoint beyond question, though, that today as heretofore such tragedies are comparatively rare among traditionally observant families, and that their frequency rises in precise accordance with the distance from Orthodoxy. These facts cannot be explained away by any sociological rationalizations. Nor can such rationalization dispose of another, integrally related fact: While the heterodox movements find bitter contrast between their glittering exterior format and the insoluble draining away within, orthodox Ameri­ can Jewry finds its main difficulty in giving coherent structure to the massive, constantly waxing strength within. While one part of American Jewry, though efficiently organized, can neither retain its constituents nor replenish itself, another, though poorly organized, shows inner strength and natural growth. r p HE currently much-quoted statistics on the frequency of -I- marriage between Jews and non-Jews ought not, of course, to be taken at face value. They are the product of small “samplings” of trends in non-typical locations which, by their nature, include a high proportion of those most prone to inter­ marriage. Such studies are far from being a representative index to the conditions among American Jews at large. Like sam­ plings among such localities as Crown Heights or Borough Park — or many other equivalent communities with a far better claim January-February, 1964

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to representativeness, in terms of numbers of Jewish residents, than those where the current statistics were garnered—would undoubtedly show an opposite result. Actually, truly scientific, comprehensive studies of this subject just do not exist. There is plentiful guesswork, keyed for the most part to flimsy collec­ tions of dubious statistics.

Yet the foregoing does not gainsay what seems evident enough —that among the most assimilated sectors of the American Jew­ ish populace, the rate of intermarriage with Gentiles is men­ acingly high and is increasing.

Intermarriage as such, therefore, cannot be viewed as the core problem of American Jewish life but as the natural consequence Source and of a deeper ailment—deficient Jewishness. And neither symptom Sym ptom nor source is to be defined, with fatalistic resignation or with resort to nostrums, as the irresistible “product of the environ­ ment.” Throughout history, Jews have always had to contend with surrounding conditions adverse to their self-perpetuation.

Mixed marriages are the product of attitudes of compromise.

They are the legacy of the philosophy of self-surrender as opposed to that of self-mastery.

IXED marriages are unfortunately no new phenomenon on M the American Jewish scene. Powerful currents which make for a commingling of the various strands of the American populace have long taken toll of those Jews who are ill-equipped to cope with them. For a time, invisible social barriers, raised in the atmosphere of racial consciousness evoked by the upsurge of organized Jew-hate, slowed the Melting Pot tempo. The rate of intermarriage dropped accordingly, only to rise again now with the former mood receding. When possessed of the desire to marry a non-Jew, those to whom being a Jew has little or no positive meaning now find little obstacle to such a course either within themselves or about them.

Cries of alarm about the rising rate of marriages out of the fold come with ill grace from the spokesmen of heterodox creeds. The atrophy of Jewish conviction and cultivation of ignorant hostility to basic Jewish tenets, the undermining of Cue is Jewish fundamentals and outlook, among a large proportion of Followed American Jews—these are the soil out of which mixed marriages rise, and these, in great measure, are the direct or indirect results of heterodox teachings. “The environment is sovereign; we must adapt to it”—so Conservatism and Reform have taught.

The beneficiaries of their teaching have followed the cue.

So long as Jews are believing Jews, possessed of a belief which transcends all other values, so long as Jews want to be Jews, and rejoice and glory in their Jewishness above all things, their will to a Jewish life must and does surmount temptations 4

JEWISH LIFE

and terrors alike. But subtract or cripple this belief-born will, reduce it to a scheme of involuntary “acceptance” of Judaism, then absorption by the surrounding population—be it friendly or hostile—is but a matter of time.

For the Jew without Torah and for the Jew with a bowdler­ ized and falsified Torah, for the Jew without authentic Jewish Through the foundations, that time is at hand. Appeals for “survival” can no Gates more stop the remorseless process than they could stop the ocean’s waves. Reform, Conservatism, and secularism are gate­ ways to assimilation; once opened, these gates can never close until all who have been lured to them have passed through.

ORUCH HASHEM, there are ever-growing hundreds of thousands of American Jewish families that spurn the lure.

No need to rally them with the plaintive call to “survive”; the banner they follow is that which proclaims the indestructible Jewish will to live, as Jews. Their strength has been tried and tested, and found equal to the challenge. It is with these, the Jews of authentic, living Judaism, the Jews of Torah, the sub­ stance of the American Jewish present, that the future of Ameri­ can Jewry lies, and with them alone.

Not for a moment, though, may the Torah Jew disregard the peril of his non-orthodox brethren. And not only because there are no walls high enough to separate the destiny of one Jew from another, and not only because there can be no ultimate Gather insulation from currents within the Jewish community, but the because, first and last, of Arevuth. Every Jew is co-responsible Strayed for the well-being of his fellow Jew-—this sacred and supreme premise is at the very roots of our faith. Not a single Jew can be spared by us. Every Jew who is lost to us by intermarriage or by defection is a tragedy for all Israel, a personal loss to each of us, and a personal defeat. And every Jew saved from such a fate is a personal gain and achievement. In his epic task of building the American Torah community, the orthodox Jew must embrace within his program the entirety of American Jews. He must reach out, deliberately and with love and under­ standing, to all who have strayed or fallen behind, bring to them his strength and sense of direction, and lead them to safe haven in the tents of Jacob.

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Two Minhogim and One Torah

By LO UIS I. RABINO W ITZ

Th e e p o c h a l t a s k o f f u s in g I s r a e l ’s d iv e r s it y o f t r a n s p l a n t e d J e w r i e s in to a h o m o g e n e o u s c o m m u n i t y fa c e s b a rrie r s o f d iv is iv e n e s s in re lig io u s as w e l l as in s o c ia l l i f e . W h e r e i n lies th e k e y to u n ity ?

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The subject of their conversation had been the Sephardi Chief Rabbi, the Rishon LeZion, Rabbi Yitzchak Nissim. According to their theory, since he was of Bagdadi provenance he could not possibly be considered as a Sephardi, and it was little short of impertinence and even fraud to have him foisted on the Sephardim as their Chief Rabbi and their spiritual head. In answer to my astonished query as to what in their view con­ stituted a Sephardi, they maintained that the only Jews entitled to that appellation were the descendants of the Jews of Spain, and that one of the cogent evidences of that descent was their use of Ladino (Espagnol) as their vernacular. Some of the comments made in support of this view were instructive. “We are always particu­ lar,” said one lady haughtily, “to use the phrase ‘Sephardi and Oriental Communities,’ thus clearly differenti­ ating between the two.” Another in­ terjected heatedly and aggressively, “And would you presume to call the Urphali Jews, and the Bokhara Jews, Sephardim?” When, to their horror,

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JEWISH LIFE

WAS a guest at a reception given by a friend of mine prior to his departure overseas. His wife is a third generation Jerusalem-born “sabra,” and among the guests were a group who could claim a similar distinction, for distinction it is in modern Israel.

They were all sitting together, and as I came within earshot I overheard one of them saying, with the obvious ap­ proval of the others, “How can a Bagdadi Jew be regarded as a Se­ phardi?” Considerably intrigued, I edged myself into the conversation, which became animated and even controversial as I pressed my views.

They were all, without exception, not only Jerusalemites, but scions of the old Sephardi families to whom be­ longed the hegemony of Sephardic life and activity in Jerusalem during the period of Turkish rule. At least three of them could claim to be descended from different Hacham Bashis, the Sephardi Chief Rabbis whose appoint­ ment was recognized and confirmed by the Sublime Porte. In other words they were the Israeli equivalents of the Cabots and the Lodges of Boston!

I answered in the affirmative, they produced their trump card: “And the Yemenites?”

It was time to make my opinion clear. “I have just completed a com­ mission to write an official brochure on Jewish history,” I said. “Let me tell you what I have written there.”

And I gave as nearly verbatim a ver­ sion as possible of the following quo­ tations: “Medieval Jewry identified the name ‘Sepharad’ in verse 20 of Obadiah with Spain, and ‘Ashkenaz’ in Bereshith 10:3 with Germany, with the result that the Jews of Spain were called Sephardim and those of Ger­ many, Ashkenazim. In the course of time, however, these names ceased to have a geographical connotation. The culture and traditions and customs and liturgical forms evolved by Spanish Jewry were adopted by the Jews of the North African littoral and of Oriental countries, those of German Jewry by the Jews of the Christian countries of Europe and of the over­ seas countries in which they settled.

Today therefore these names Repre­ sent the two main divisions into which the Jews of Israel and the world are divided, Ashkenazim generally being the Jews of Western countries and Se­

phardim, Jews of Oriental countries.”

“In limiting the name ‘Sephardim’ to Jews of Spanish descent,” I con­ cluded, “you are putting the clock back 400 years.” One of the most vehement of the group politely told me that such a definition constituted “Amhaaratzuth! ” fT iH E view thus propounded by JL these modern, Jewish Spanish hidalgos represents, of course, the ex­ treme limit of that communal divi­ siveness which is characteristic of modern Israel. It is, however, by no means an isolated example of that phenomenon, and it raises acute prob­ lems in at least two spheres of the life of the country, the national and the religious. In the national sphere it acts as a serious hindrance and obstacle to the colossal task of Mizug Galuyoth, the welding of a homogene­ ous people out of the bewildering variety of disparate elements which constitute the first step, the Kibbutz Galuyoth, the Ingathering of the Exiles. That aspect of divisiveness is not, however, the theme of this article, which confines itself to the effect of this attitude upon the problem of re­ ligious unity.

THE LITURGICAL PROFUSION

N addition to the broad divisions of Sephardim and Ashkenazim, and among the latter, of Mithnagdim and Chasidim, the Kibbutz Galuyoth has caused splintering and fragmentation, especially in liturgical usage, which al­ most defies description. An extreme ex­ ample, of which I have close personal knowledge, is provided by the Kurdish Jews. In their mountain fastnesses in Kurdistan, isolated as they were from one another, they developed certain dif-

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ferences of ritual. Slight though these differences are, they are perpetuated by the immigrants from Kurdistan to Israel with an almost fanatical tenac­ ity, with the result that it is a wellknown phenomenon that among them Jews from one village will not join those from another village in prayer.

In Maoz Zion, in the Jerusalem Cor­ ridor, which is largely inhabited by Kurdish Jews, I found during a Sab­ bath which I spent with them, syn7

agogues of the Duhakim, the Akrabim, the Sandorim, and the Ahmedim. That the Persian and Moroccan Jews there, each had their own synagogue goes without saying. And yet all these rituals are, to an Ashkenazi like my­ self, almost indistinguishable from one another, all belonging to “Nusach Sepharad.”

Among Ashkenazim the same phe­ nomenon exhibits itself, if to a lesser degree. The Ashkenazi Community of Jerusalem was established by the dis­ ciples of the Gaon of Vilna, with the result that the standard Minhag Yerusholayim is, or was, with few varia­ tions the meticulous order of service evolved by their master and known as the “Minhag Hagra.” These standards no longer prevail in the capital. Ger­ man Jews organize to pray according to the German usage; where English Jews predominate the English usage prevails, and so on. I spent the Yomim Noroim in K’far Shemaryah. The village and the Minyon (there is, alas, no permanent synagogue yet) were established by a group of German Jews. They are today greatly outnum­ bered by the large influx of new­ comers from England and South Africa. Those in charge of the congre­ gation, however, insisted on adhering rigidly, as they always had done, to the Heidenheim Machzor, copies of which, however, are possessed only by a handful of the oldtimers. They have provided the worshippers with a standard Israeli Machzor which dif­ fers in many material details from theirs. But blissfully ignoring the fact that many of the Selichoth and other prayers which they recite are not even to be found in those Machzorim, the founding group continues to say them.

And yet, when I remonstrated with them, they confessed to me that the rabbi from Germany whom they re8

gard as their spiritual authority had strongly advised them to discard those Machzorim in favour of the standard Israeli one. “We had a meeting and decided not to follow his advice,” they added blandly. rT IH IS phenomenon has had a defiX nite influence upon the develop­ ment of forms of religious life and the erection of synagogues. The Re­ ligious Council of Jerusalem is pre­ pared to give financial assistance to new settlements within the area of its jurisdiction for the erection of synagogues. When, however, they pro­ pose that one synagogue be erected to serve the settlers as a whole, they come up against the determined op­ position of these groups. Each one demands its own conventicle where it can follow its own Minhog. As a result, the characteristic is a number of miserable wooden huts instead of one central and imposing synagogue.

Jerusalem alone has some 400 places of worship, yet the only one which can compare in size with those to which we are accustomed in the Dias­ pora is the Yeshurun Synagogue, and even that was not intended to be the permanent synagogue. The small Min­ yon, instead of the dignified repre­ sentative synagogue, has become the main feature in Israel.

From time to time voices are raised in favour of a “Minhag Achid,” a composite Israeli Minhog. The most determined attempts in this direction have been made by the distinguished Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defence Army, Rabbi S. Goren. He has com­ piled such a Prayer Book for the use of the Army, but as far as I have been able to ascertain it has not yet been put into circulation. In addition, how­ ever, he has been responsible for the JEWISH LIFE

erection of a synagogue in North Tel Aviv, where he resides, in which, it is announced, this Minhog will be in­ troduced. No doubt it is hoped that eventually it will become Minhag Israel. , Personally, I believe that the step is much too premature, and that under existing conditions its effect will be only to add yet one more Minhog to the bewildering variety which already exists. Nor do I see any serious draw­ back in different rituals as long as they are in accordance with the Din, and as long as they do not lead to that fragmentation in small communi­ ties to which reference has been

made. In point of fact there exist but two main different Minhogim, the dif­ ferences between which go back for centuries—some as far back as the period of the Talmud—the Ashkenazi and the Sephardi. All other Minhogim are but various minor modifications of these two main ones, the Chassidic Minhog, of the Ari, being a form of the Sephardi. And I do agree that every effort should be made to evolve two standard rituals. Those respon­ sible for the erection of synagogues in the various communities should re­ sist every effort to establish syna­ gogues for the perpetuation of differ­ ent variants within the same Minhog.

WHY THE DUAL CHIEF RABBINATE?

n p H A T , however, is a very far cry JL from a situation which is com­ monly regarded as being connected with that difference in Minhog, but which actually has not the remotest connection with it: the unique institu­ tion of a dual Chief Rabbinate in Israel, the one Ashkenazi and the other Sephardi. This dualism exists both in the Chief Rabbinate of the country, which is established by law, and in the large cities, like Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa, where it has been established by regulation. There is absolutely no justification for it according to the Halochah. For where there may be different Minhogim, the Din is one. The cogent, palpable truth of that distinction lies in the fact that nowhere in the whole of Israel does one find two parallel Battey Din, one Sephardi and one Ashkenazi. Both in the local Battey Din and in the Su­ preme Beth Din of Jerusalem, which acts as a higher Court of Appeal, the Dayonim consist of both Sephardim January-February, 1964

and Ashkenazim, there being no dif­ ference between them in Halochah.

The perpetuation of the dual Chief Rabbinate brings to mind the sombre and sad statement of the Talmud (Sotah 47b) “When the disciples of Shammai and Hillel who had not served their masters sufficiently multi­ plied, dissensions increased in Israel, and the Torah looked as though it were two Toroth.” One would indeed think that there was a Sephardi Torah and an Ashkenazi Torah, and that just as Protestants and Catholics each have their separate archbishops and bishops because of differences in doctrine, so must the Ashkenazim and the Se­ phardim! And that statement empha­ sizes two things, firstly that the situation of apparently “two Toroth” arises out of ignorance, or rather out of a lack of perceptiveness and under­ standing—that being the meaning of “not serving their masters sufficient­ ly,” “a little knowledge being a dan­ gerous thing,” and secondly, that 9

instead of advancing the cause of Torah, as honest difference of opinion does, it leads only to dissension.

If my blue-blooded Sephardi ac­ quaintances had their way there would be an Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi, a Sephardi, a Yemeni, a Bagdadi and an “Urphali” at least, and it is com­ munal prestige alone which is involved in such an approach.

Y a peculiar coincidence, in prac­ tice there hardly exists a dual Chief Rabbinate in Israel at the time of writing. Since the death of the late Chief Rabbi Isaac Halevi Herzog of blessed memory, Rabbi I. Nissim has worthily fulfilled the functions of Chief Rabbi. In Jerusalem the demise of Rabbi Pesach Zvi Frank “Zatsal” has left the Ashkenazi Chief Rab­ binate of the capital vacant. In Tel Aviv, on the other hand, the death of Rabbi Toledano has left the Ash­ kenazi Chief Rabbi, Rabbi I. J. Unterman, without a colleague. What­ ever the results, the cause of Judaism has not suffered. Whatever progress has been made in the religious life of the country has not been deleteriously affected by the sole occupancy, nor can any failures be attributed to it.

Those who vociferously maintain the need to fill the vacancies are open in their admission that it is the question of the prestige of their various com­ munities which alone is involved.

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HE deplorable intrigues and jockeying for position among the political parties concerned with re­

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gard to the election of an Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi have had a disastrous effect upon the prestige and honour of that high office. Incredible though it may be, the shameful fact must be stated that only political parties within the Government Coalition have a say in the appointment. The secular Mapai “makes a deal” about the regulations with regard to the appointment with the National Religious Party and the Poalei Agudath Israel who are within the Coalition. The Agudath Israel, and pious and observant Jews belonging to the other parties, have no say.

As long as that regrettable state of affairs is allowed to continue the Chief Rabbinate must be relegated to what was called in Lithuania a “Kashoner Rabbi,” a Government-appointed nom­ inee subject to official pressure and influence.

But even when that situation will be changed, as it is fervently hoped it will be, and the Chief Rabbinate will be exalted to stand supreme above all sectional and political influences, emerging as a truly independent spirit­ ual authority, by the very nature of his office the Chief Rabbi will be a representative figure, symbolizing the unity of the Torah and the Jewish people in their approach to their Father in Heaven, rather than a “Posek.” That function will be ful­ filled, as the Halochah demands, by the Battey Din. And in that respect the Talmudic dictum speaks clear, “Let there be one spokesman for the generation, and not two.”

JEWISH LIFE

“ Who Shall Inherit The Land?”

By EDYTHE SC H IN D LER

HE attrition of a meaningful Jewish life is not peculiar to the Jewish suburb in America. I have seen, in many unexpected spots in the world, even in Israel, economically vigorous Jewish communities that fail to create a condition suitable for the perpetuation of their cultural-spiritual inheritance.

An American Embassy man told me that a fragment of refugee Jewish life had taken hold in the town of Sosua in the Dominican Republic. For some twenty-odd years this discon­ nected segment of Jewish life has been prey to local pressures and customs.

Accepted by the Dominican people, their energy has not been diverted by combatting prejudice. But they have been geographically and culturally iso­ lated and have had to accommodate to the trauma of exile.

Sosua was opened for Jewish immi­ gration by Trujillo two years after the Evian Conference. At this conference, called by the United States in 1938 when Jewish refugees from Hitler were beginning to embarrass the world, Trujillo made a grand gesture. When the nations of the world proposed trying to persuade Hitler to stop per­ secuting the Jews, Australia, although in need of settlers, said that they had

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no racial problem and weren’t going to import one. Only Mexico, Peru, and the United States offered to raise their quota limits on refugees slightly.

Trujillo, on the other hand, declared that the Dominican Republic would take one hundred thousand Jews.

Ultimately five hundred Jewish refugees were accepted by Trujillo and settled in Sosua. He permitted the Dominican Republic Settlement Association, in conjunction with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, to purchase some twenty thousand acres of land around Sosua.

This prerequisite for immigration was that the settler be a white Jewish bachelor farmer. Of the first group of forty men who came not one was a farmer, documents to the contrary. n p HE history of the Jewish struggle JL for self preservation has been one of an indomitable talent for adaptabil­ ity. The situation has changed the people as much as the people have changed in order to endure. Still the compelling factor in the dynamics of Jewish life has been a drive to persist as a unique entity. What was the texture of survival in Sosua? What was the pattern of expression in this Jewish scene in the wilderness? tt

To get the answer to these questions I decided to go to Sosua. The trip across the Dominican Republic from Santo Domingo through the cities of Santiago and Puerto Plata is a pro­ gression from sophistication to rural simplicity. Later, when driving along the muddy mountain roads, I was struck by the disparity between the primitive landscape and the composi­ tion of the urban Jewish group that was imposed on it.

As I approached Sosua the land that sloped away from the road began showing signs of taming. It was as if some finicky mathematician had arranged it into squares of precise pasture land. Then the road paralleled the sea and a white beach. Across the water mountains tumbled on one another.

Then I was in the heart of the town where on opposite comers a Post Office and General Store stood in drab disarray. Sosua, huddled self-con­ sciously behind a fringe of mountains, appeared a fledgling town. But the redeeming spirit of the frontier was lacking. There were no buildings under construction, nothing that bespoke faith in the future. All the houses were frame. Although there were curbs, the sidewalks were unpaved.

The dirt roads circled back on each other to meet in the center of the town where the General Store was the focal point. Sosua was a dowdy en­ semble of quiet houses and streets and fenced yards that were tidy but colorless.

I lingered at a comer crossing and a man in a sport shirt and slacks approached the car. His skin was fair, with rosy highlights on the cheek bones.. ‘‘Shalom,” I said. The word sprang to my lips-^induced, no doubt, from an impression of the town and the man. Indeed I felt transported to !12

the town of Bath Yam in Israel where I’d lived among, though not part of, another refugee group attempting to realize its needs and aspirations. “My name is Florsheim,” he said in Ger­ man-tinged English. Then he added, somewhat wistfully, “No relation to the shoe man in the States. But guess where my daughter works. She left Sosua last year.”

“Florsheim Shoe Company,” I said.

Irony formed a bridge. We smiled knowingly at each other. Mr, Flor­ sheim directed me to the Utility Co­ operative of Sosua, where I would meet Mr. Benjamin, the manager.

Mr. Benjamin was not surprised at my visit. Jewish perpetuity has in­ trigued man from time immemorial.

He told me that Sosua was originally a United Fruit Company banana plan­ tation which was abandoned because of crop failure and political problems.

It was fortunate for the settlers that in this case Trujillo had actually bought back the land from United Fruit and was able to pass on a clear title to the land. For since Trujillo’s assassination, the lands he expropriated were being restored to their original owners.

Few Jewish women accompanied the settlers on their flight to the Do­ minican Republic. “Many of the men,” Mr. Benjamin said, “have mar­ ried Dominican women. Their chil­ dren do not live a Jewish life.” He sighed. “ Naturally where there is no Jewish mother there can not be a Jewish home.”

“There is a Rabbi?” I asked.

“We had one,” he replied, “but he left.”

How many times I was to hear the refrain, “he left,” I was yet to discover.

“Come,” he said. “I’ll show you Sosua.”

JEWISH LIFE

With his exiled heart was he, per­ haps, hearkening to that Torah law about the “stranger within thy gates,” UR first visit was to a white frame O building which was the Doctor’s office, hospital, and pharmacy. From the beginning Sosua had a Health Plan under which the settlers receive free medical service, paying only for medicine. Originally they had a Jew­ ish doctor but — he left. Now Dr. Garcia, a lean, purposeful young Do­ minican, proudly showed me the mod­ ern equipment (diathermy machine, electrocardiograph, X-ray machine) and the chickens he raised in the yard.

A competent young blonde was in charge of the well-stocked pharmacy.

“I studied in the United States,” she said. “After graduation I came back to Sosua. But my boyfriend—he left.”

As we drove slowly through the town I thought I should begin to hear the sounds of Sosua, feel its rhythm, sense its gravitation. But Sosua was uncommunicative.

There are no big rivers near Sosua and while the water is good there’s a shortage for sufficient irrigation. Be­ fore the settlers could begin to try to convert the land into good pasture they had to build an aqueduct to bring water from a source twenty-three kilometers away. Mr. Benjamin told me that each settler was allotted seventy acres of land and ten cows.

“We were all city people,” Mr. Benjamin said, “and we had to become cattle men. Try to imagine it. Do you know what happened to the first Hol­ stein bull we bought?” Lost in bitter­ sweet memories, he didn’t wait for my reply. “We slaughtered him. That’s what happened. On its very first day in Sosua he was run through the chute with the cows and was slaugh­ tered. And that bull cost five thousand January-Februray, 1964

dollars. It was a catastrophe. But we learned. We had to. And the man who slaughtered the bull—he left Sosua.

Now he’s a rich cattle rancher in California.”

RIGINALLY each settler’s land was valued at three thousand dollars. Today it is worth ten thou­ sand. The settlers pay back their in­ terest-free loan on the land at the rate of a hundred and twenty dollars a year. Many of the settlers have not only paid off their land but have bought additional farms near the colony.

In 1945 the settlers started a Meat Cooperative. Each farmer bought a twenty-dollar share which is now valued at about nine hundred and fifty dollars. All regular cuts of meat are processed at the plant in addition to smoked sausage and frankfurters.

The settlers also formed a milk cooperative called Cilca Sosua. Each farmer shares in the profits of the plant, while also being paid for his milk, which he delivers daily. The plant produces finest quality cheeses of the Cheddar, Edam, and Gouda types. On the wall in the manager’s office I saw a photograph of a settler churning butter by hand. “That was our beginning,” he said. “We got out of Germany with ten marks in our pockets, a will to survive, and ignor­ ance of farming and what this land would demand of us.” He smiled. “But we learned. We had to.”

O

OSUA is prosperous. Many of the settlers operate local businesses in addition to managing their farms. One settler offers the town a tax service.

Three wives have joined together in operating a general store. There is little for women to occupy themselves with in Sosua once their children have

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grown. Another settler operates a movie theater in the neighboring Do­ minican settlement. The people of Sosua are reluctant to pay the high cost of bringing a good movie to their town. There’s a cafe in Sosua with an interior so stark as to defy merry­ making. I saw not one piece of play­ ground equipment, no ball field, no evidence of community cultural or­ ganization. The colony does not offer educational or recreational oppor­ tunities. The prevailing air of lethargy seems to be relieved only by an anx­ ious concern with this week’s cheese production or the current profit and loss statement.

Sosua has a school which goes only to the eighth grade. When the children are sent to the United States to com­ plete their education, they are reluc­ tant to return. There are only twelve children under twenty years of age remaining in the colony whose parents are both Jewish. Inevitably the parents follow the children. “Not all,” said Mr. Benjamin. Crowding the disap­ pointment in his eyes was the question: “And who shall inherit the land?”

Disappointment is shaping and con­ taining the colony much as the sea is clamped into a flat basin by the encircling beaches of Sosua. Like some sick comedian it nicknames success, defeat. The exodus of the young people has left the settlement bereft of en­ thusiasm and energy to withstand the encroachment of the surrounding environment.

and I sensed an identity of feeling with the Dominican.

Implicit in the robust economy of Sosua, in the fat land and cattle, is a response to an inherent instinct for life. But the corporate ego of the Jewish people has always been honed on its religious heritage and reverence for intellectual pursuits. Soon Sosua will be just another town in the Dominican Republic. Soon the Jew­ ish refugees from Hitler who embar­ rassed the world will be forgotten.

N Sosua there is little opportunity for Jewish experience either for the children or for the adults. Political well-being and intermarriage have also contributed to the trend toward assimi­ lation with their surroundings. There is conformity of habits and language

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JEWISH LIFE

Shushan Night

By ISRAEL KA M INSKY

Within its silhouette of domes and towers—A silent shape of darkness In brooding communion With the sparkling of destiny above— Shushan sleeps and dreams . . .

(The serenity of night, however, has not yet enveloped the King in his palace bedchamber; an individual of usually oxen disposition, he has now been inexplicably stricken with sleeplessness— Note based on an ancient and holy scroll) Soon the sleeping city Will emerge, sober and gray, From its nocturnal passage, And gradually color With the golden gleam of dawn, Its flickering dreams Fading to transparency and vanishing On morning’s bright threshold; Eyes will contract with the comprehension Of the coming of day; Citizen and stranger will rise To resume the recessed order of their endeavors; Concubines will begin, With groggy gracefulness, The brushing of their sleep-tossed locks; And the bazaar will warm, With the warming of day, To its multi-voiced pursuit Of survival and pleasure .

(There will be a moment’s diversion, occasioned by the appearance of a mounted sage of one of the city’s many religions, dressed in royal garb and led and heralded by none other than the King’s first minister — Second note based on scroll) January-February, 1964

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And if now, in Shushan’s sleep, There passes through its dreaming soul A subtle tremor-intimation Of the sacred touch on High That, within the mist of midnight, Deftly rearranges destiny’s elements— That, like the slight touch Of a hand upon a sail, Sets seeming causality on unpredicted courses— What shadow of its memory will remain In the preening harems And appetite-crude bazaars of day?

What sign, however faint, will there be On the phlegmatic face Of the squatting melon-seed spitter That his soul had trembled With the timbre of night’s silent melody?

(Nevertheless, unto eternity the wise will read, between the lines of our ancient and holy scroll, this writ: He who keepeth Israel, the Lord of Silent Wonders, slumbered not nor slept in Shushan’s night.)

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JEWISH LIFE

Another New Torah Translation: Some Observations

By ISAAC L. SW IFT

HE following passage may not be readily recognized, but it is the rendering of four of the Ten Com­ mandments as given in a new English translation of the Torah that has just appeared: The Eternal has created man in His image. Therefore you shall not destroy His handiwork by murdering a human being.

There shall be no illicit relations between the sexes. Therefore you shall not profane the sacred covenant of marriage.

You shall not steal, cheat, embezzle, | forge, or deceive.

You shall not accept an offer to be a false witness against your fellowman, nor slander, defame, nor misrepresent.

Compare this passage with the fa­ miliar “Thou shalt not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour”; then glance through the new translation and find almost every verse on every

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TORAH Y E SH A R A H , V ol. 1, BREISHIS & SHEM OS, (G enesis and E xodus), Translated and edited by Rabbi Charles Kahane, Torah Yesharah Publication, Solom on Rabinowitz Book Concern, N ew York, 1963. 201 pp. $4.50.

January-February, 1964

page treated similarly, and it cannot be denied that this is a quite extra­ ordinary version of the Torah. To be precise, it is the first volume that is now available, comprising Genesis and Exodus, the remaining Books of the Torah presumably still being prepared for publication.

Translated and edited by Rabbi Charles Kahane, the work bears the title “Torah Yesharah,” with the sub­ title “A Traditional Interpretative Translation of the Five Books of Moses and an Introduction to each Haftorah.” It differs so completely from any pervious English translation of the Bible, that it would merit our study as English-speaking Jews even without the appellation “Traditional” in its subtitle; as it is, it lays a special claim upon the attention of readers of J e w i s h L i f e , the more so as it breathes a spirit of Orthodoxy in its every line, and is informed through­ out by a piety that can be almost felt.

Our reverence for this spirit which animates the work, and for the pal­ pable devoutness of the translator— whom I have not the good fortune to 17

know—must not interfere with our complete objectivity as we examine “Torah Yesharah.” The purpose of the present article is to make such an examination, and to attempt an objective appraisal of the book’s worth to the Jew of to-day, and of the influ­ ence upon him that it may be ex­ pected to exert.

W rp O R A H YESHARAH” appeared JL without fanfare—indeed, with­ out publicity of any kind, so far as I can ascertain. It has made its appear­ ance so unobtrusively that few readers will yet have seen it or have read of its objectives. Let me begin, therefore, by setting these out in Rabbi Kahane’s own words.

“The Talmudic word ‘Targum,’ ” he says in the course of a rather illwritten Preface, “is erroneously ex­ plained by many as ‘translation.’ In reality, this word means: expounding, interpretation, or commenting. Trans­ lation in Hebrew is Ha-atakah. . .

The Talmud translates the word Meforesh as Targum, meaning Perush, interpretation. The Torah cannot and must never be translated literally, without following the Oral interpre­ tation as given to Moses on Sinai.”

And later: “Jewry only accepts that translation which is done by a faithful believer in Revelation.” And again further: “In short, Judaism holds a Bible translation sacred only when it is interpreted according to the spirit of the Talmud which is the Oral Law. This must be the spirit of the devotion and holiness and recognition of the sanctity of the Divine Word. It is in this spirit that the present translationinterpretation has been written.”

This then is Rabbi Kahane’s aim in producing the present version (re­ ferred to throughout the remainder of this article as K )—to furnish a Tar­ gum in English. The subtitle “Inter­ pretative Translation” must be under­ stood in this sense, for only so can we hope to comprehend the remark­ able rendering which results.

THE COMMENTATORS

N his preface, Rabbi Kahane says: “The translator, has probed into the commentaries, ancient and medie­ val* as printed in the Rabbinic Bible, and has culled much from them.

Onkelos, Jonathan ben Uziel, Rashi, Rashbam, Ibn Ezra, Ramban, Sfomo and others speak through these pages; he consulted also the modern com­ mentators: Dr. J. H. Hertz and Rev. Dr. A. Cohen.”

The reference to the last two is more than surprising. As to the lastnamed, it should be pointed out that the commentary here ascribed to Dr. Cohen is not his work at all. It is the

I

“Chumash” volume of the Soncino Books of the Bible of which Dr. Cohen was the Editor but not the annotator. Judging by the volume on the Psalms in that series, which Dr. Cohen did annotate, we may be thank­ ful that the Chumash was handled by others. Genesis and Exodus are ex­ cellently treated in that volume by Dr. Freedman and Dr. Rabinowitz.

Both are faithful to the original plan of the Soncino Press of basing their notes on the identical medieval com­ mentators listed by Rabbi Kahane.

I am therefore at a loss to know why he names Dr. Cohen at all as one of

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JEWISH LIFE

the commentators whom he consulted; he is, I feel sure, too considerable a scholar to require the assistance of Dr. Cohen’s contributors to give him access to the medieval exegetes.

As for Dr. Hertz’s commentary, I must confess my astonishment at Rabbi Kahane’s apparent inconsist­ ency. Some of the comments that he accepts from the Hertz Pentateuch are from Christian sources— and are so acknowledged by Dr. Hertz. One com­ ment embodied in K from the Hertz Pentateuch comes originally from the pen of the leading figure in English Reform Judaism, Dr. C. G. Montefiore—and is likewise so acknowl­ edged by Dr. Hertz. Now the latter says frankly in the Preface to his Pentateuch that he avails himself of what he deems to be true whatever the source, and it is no part of our present purpose to quarrel with that attitude. But Rabbi Kahane insists that interpretations must stem from “a faithful believer in Revelation”— how can be justify the use of this material? He surely knows that in Judaism a minute speck of blood can render a whole egg unfit!

The range of commentators on whom he draws is actually much more extensive than those mentioned in the

Preface, and the moderns are happily not limited to the two named. Malbim, I am glad to say, is used con­ siderably. Samson Raphael Hirsch, to my disappointment, is hardly used at all. No commentary for the western Jew can, as it seems to me, ignore the penetrating discernment of Hirsch, yet he is used only twice in the whole work-—once (on Genesis 13:15), simply reproducing Hertz’s quotation from the great German scholar.

Rabbi Kahane allows himself the legitimate right of offering interpreta­ tions of his own from time to time, and we may say ungrudgingly that many are not without merit. I would instance his rendering of Genesis 27:35 and of Exodus 20:19 (shown as verse 15 in the English) as felici­ tous examples. In the latter instance, by the way, the reader may with ad­ vantage compare the rendering in the Jewish Publication Society’s latest translation.

I may not dwell too long on this aspect of the book, but I cannot leave it without remarking that we surely have a right to be told the identity of those described anonymously in the Index of Sources as “Later Com­ mentators.”

AN APPRAISAL

T must be conceded at once that Rabbi Kahane succeeds in illumin­ ing many a text for those whose understanding has been limited to the light shed for them by the English translations hitherto available.

Let me offer a few examples. In order to make K’s achievement clear, I give with each the translation as rendered in the Jewish Publication

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January-February, 1964

Society’s 1917 version (referred to throughout the remainder of this article as OJ).

Genesis 1:26-27 in OJ reads: “And G-d said: ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over everything that creepeth 19

upon the earth.’ And G-d created man in His own image, in the image of G-d created He him; male and female created He them.”

The theological problems presented by the plural verb “let us make,” used by a G-d Whose unity receives Scrip­ ture’s strongest emphasis, and by the reference to the image of a G-d Whose incorporeality is a cardinal teaching of Judaism; and the textual problem —which has long been grist to the mill of heterodox Bible critics—presented by the reference to male and female here, while in the ensuing chapter woman is fashioned from Adam’s rib: all these are dealt with in K, which reads: “In order to teach mankind humility, that the greater may con­ sult the lesser, the Almighty consulted the angels and said: ‘Let us make man in our image (with the faculty of understanding); after our likeness (having free will); and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth (that he may dig and extract minerals and metals) and over every creeping thing that moves upon the earth.’ And the Almighty created the man in a mold made for him; to be a reflection of the Almighty He created him. Both male and female He created in the same mold which were separated after­ ward.” We may have preferred one of the other traditional solutions to the verses’ problems, but we may not gain­ say that K has shown that these prob­ lems received the serious attention of our commentators which they merited.

Exodus 7:3 in OJ reads: “And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and mul­ tiply My signs and My wonders in the land of Egypt.”

The doctrinal problem of free will raised here and in similar texts in the Exodus account is well known. K 20

seeks to resolve it: “But it is known to Me that Pharaoh cast away his chance to repent. I will, therefore, harden his heart, and I will increase My natural signs and My supernatural wonders in the land of Egypt.” Ramban’s understanding of the classical explanation of Maimonides is admir­ ably conveyed.

Exodus 11:2 in OJ reads: “Speak now in the ears of the people, and let them ask every man of his neigh­ bor, and every woman of her neigh­ bor, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold.”

The moral problem presented by this verse, of asking for articles which would never be returned, has long troubled those who have had no ac­ cess to our Midrashim. K gives the matter in its proper light: “Because they will leave in haste, speak, there­ fore, publicly to the people that every man shall ask of his neighbor, and every woman of her neighbor, articles of silver and articles of gold in ex­ change for the property that they will leave in Egypt.”

HERE are innumerable instances in which K copes, not so much with an actual problem presented by a verse, as with a need for textual clarification, and often succeeds. Here is an example from the prose-poetry of the Torah: Genesis 49:9 in OJ reads: “Judah is a lion’s whelp; From the prey, my son, thou art gone up.

He stooped down, he crouched as a lion, and as a lioness; who shall rouse him up?” What do these words of Jacob to his son mean? K helps: “In the beginning, he will be a leader like a young lion; and at the end, the king­ dom will grow out of the house of Jacob, like an old lion; from all wars you will rise to victory, my son. He will outweigh his enemies, lie down

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to repose as a lion and as a lioness; none will dare to frighten him away.”

And here is an example from the narrative prose of the Torah; one only, chosen almost at random, must suffice: Exodus 1:21 in OJ reads: ‘‘And it came to pass, because the midwives feared G-d, that He made them houses.” K, selecting with fine discrimination among the commenta­ tors, certainly gives the verse more meaning: “Because the midwives re­ vered the Almighty and the plan of the king miscarried, Pharaoh made special houses where the Hebrew women should give birth.”

And one example from the halachic element of the Torah: Exodus 21:29 in OJ reads: “But if the ox was wont to gore in time past, and warning hath been given to its owner, and he hath not kept it in, but it hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” K elaborates: “But if the ox was wont to gore in time past, so that it had gored three times before, and warning had been given to its owner by witnesses, and he did not guard it, and it has killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner will also be punished by death from Heaven.”

Even the unfortunate shufflling of tenses does not obscure the skill with which K distils the essence of the Talmudic interpretation of the law. ’S rendering of Biblical weights and measures into present-day units cannot fail to be helpful to the modern reader. Thus, in Genesis 6:15 the dimensions of Noah’s ark are given, not in the cubits, but in units used today: . . six hundred feet shall be the length of the ark, one hundred feet the breadth of it . . reads K, basing itself on the well-nigh

K

January-February, 1964

unassailable authority of a responsum

by Rabbi Mosheh Feinstein, sustained by the calculations of the Chasam Sopher and the Chazon Ish. Similarly, in the closing chapters of Exodus, the measurements of the Sanctuary and its vessels are given in present-day units. This is altogether excellent. I wonder, though, why in Exodus 25:25 K departs from this practice? “Make for it a rim of a hand’s breadth,” reads K. Why not have converted the Biblical handbreadth into inches?

Surely Maimonides’ authority for the number of handbreadths per cubit in the Sanctuary’s scales of measurement should have satisfied Rabbi Kahane?

His scrupulous care to ensure that accurate equivalents, authoritatively calculated, be used, is to be seen in Exodus 29:40 where both Biblical and modern measures of quantity are given: “For one lamb there shall be a cereal offering of a tenth of an epha (a little less than two quarts) of fine flour, mingled with a fourth part of an hin (a pint and a half) of oil gently pounded in a mortar . . . ” Other examples could be cited of valuable aids towards making the Torah comprehensible to the Englishspeaking Jew, each throwing light on an otherwise obscure passage, or con­ veying the views of the great exegetes of our past.

UT there are cases where K is seriously at fault, and may harm rather than help. Thus, in the Fourth Commandment, OJ renders Exodus 20:9: “Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work.” K reads: “Six days shall you labor in the fields, and do all your work for your physical well­ being.” Why add the words “in the fields?” The source of the interpola­ tion is of course Ramban, but why lean on him here? Does not Rabbi

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Kahane realize that these words added to the original can easily convey to the uninformed—for whom his Pref­ ace tells us he wrote the book—the totally false impression that the Sab­ bath restrictions apply only to agri­ cultural work? We must address to Rabbi Kahane the words of Abtalyon: “Ye sages, be heedful of your words.”

Similarly, K’s rendering of Exodus 13:9 and 16 can do irreparable dam­ age: . . the Tephilin that you wear on your forehead across your eyes . . .” The preposition “across” is not only inaccurate, but could easily mis­ lead the uninformed in the actual practice of the precept.

And let me give but one instance from the Biblical narrative where K is damaging. Genesis 32:29 gives the words of the mysterious assailant over whom Jacob prevailed in the struggle on the banks of the Jabbok. OJ reads: “Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel. . . .” and a foot­ note renders the word Israel, “He who striveth with G-d.” The K version

is devastating: “Your name will no longer be called ‘Jacob,9 which carries the implication of crookedness, but the Eternal will appear to you at Bethel and change your name to ‘Israel,9 meaning ‘superior9 . . .” Rab­ bi Kahane may choose to say, as he does in his Preface: “Jewish tradi­ tion is opposed to translations of the Torah for the purposes of displaying to other nations . . .” But the fact is that other nations do read our Scrip­ tures. What will they, or, for that matter, those of our own people who lack no self-contempt, say of this gratuitous reference to crookedness— especially as the name Jacob con­ tinues to be applied to the patriarch in subsequent Biblical literature? Abtalyon’s warning comes to mind again.

Nor is it sufficient for Rabbi Kahane to point to Esau’s translation of the name Jacob as “trickery” in Genesis 27:36; he might as easily have pointed to his own rendering of the word Jacob in Genesis 25:26 as “victorious in the end.”

THE LANGUAGE OF THE TRANSLATION

of space forbid the presentation of further examples which abound, and I must turn now to another feature of the work which is of some importance. I refer to the language in which K is written.

Coming as it does on the heels of the new Torah translation issued in 1962 by the Jewish Publication Soci­ ety (referred to throughout the re­ mainder of this article as N J) there is an understandable impulse to com­ pare the two. The latter, it will be remembered, caused a vast stir when it was published by the Society to supersede OJ, and ripples of applause

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im it a t io n s

and rumbles of disapproval are still heard on many hands when NJ is discussed.

Not the least striking feature of NJ was its radical departure from the language and style of OJ. Whereas OJ had taken the King James Version of the Christian Church as its literary model, preserving the sonorous elo­ quence of that matchless classic of English prose, NJ looked rather to­ wards Moffatt, and outdid even him in the pursuit of simple modem dic­ tion stripped of every archaic word and idiom.

K too claims to pursue the same JEWISH LIFE

end: “The English used in the trans­ lation is of modern usage so that it should1 flow smoothly,” says Rabbi Kahane somewhat ungrammatically in his Preface.

There, to all intents and purposes, similarity between the two ends, ex­ cept that in a limited few verses both offer like renderings. Actually, there is no comparison between them, only contrast. NJ is edited by a Board all but one of whom are heterodox; K by a man of unimpeachable ortho­ doxy. NJ readily accepts the tradi­ tional rendering when its Editorial Board see fit, but abandons it with equal readiness when their critical judgment prompts them; K’s whole motivation is the preservation of tradition. NJ offers only translation; K strives for interpretation. And as to language and style—NJ is terse, K is prolix; NJ has a staccato trim­ ness, K a clumsy verbosity; NJ is grammatical throughout, K has re­ grettable lapses.

It is true that both have abandoned the archaic “thou,” “thee,” “thy,” in favour of “you” and “your”; but NJ remains accurate in the process, while K is occasionally guilty of mistrans­ lation. I must content myself with but one example of such mistranslation, and that a serious one. Mention has already been made in Jewish L ife (May 1963, Page 24) of the loss in­ curred by the substitution of “you” for “thou”; namely, that we cannot tell from the former whether in the original Hebrew the second person is being addressed in the singular or the plural. This is a defect of some con­ sequence, since many doctrinal, halachic, and homiletic conclusions depend upon this factor—aside altogether from the need for accuracy for its own sake. Exodus 20:4 (the Second January-February, 1964

Commandment) is in the singular in the original Hebrew, and is rendered in O J: “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image . .

Clearly the individual is being addressed. NJ reads: “You shall not make for your­ self . . .” The pronoun has been changed, but the prohibition is still clearly addressed to the individual. K renders the verse: “You shall not make for yourselves . . .” It is the plural that is here addressed, and major halachic implications of the verse have been changed. This is a grave charge to lay at the door of an orthodox expositor-—but duty to the Torah bids us lay it.

HERE are other objections to K’s language. There is frequently poor punctuation. There is inconsistency; for example, why, in the generations between Adam and Noah (Genesis, Chapter 5) and again in those be­ tween Noah and Abraham (Genesis, Chapter 11) is the word vayoled sometimes translated “fathered” and sometimes “bore,” when it is re­ peatedly used in absolutely the iden­ tical sense in each instance?

And there is sometimes sheer bad translating. For example, K’s render­ ing of Genesis 7:2 reads: “. . . from among your domestic animals that are not kosher, and not fit for sacrifice . . . ” The phrase “not kosher” is worse than bad translating of Hebrew—it is not translating at all. I shall say noth­ ing here of the other grounds of vexation which the rendering of this verse abundantly furnishes.

Nor shall I say anything of the rendering of the Divine names, be­ yond remarking that Rabbi Kahane’s statement in the Preface is not borne out by his text. “The Tetragram-

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maton,” he says, “is translated ‘The Eternal’ throughout, since it is derived from the Hebrew words meaning: He was, He is, He will be.” We may or may not agree with this assertion, but his version departs from it in many places. In Genesis 7:1, for instance, the rendering is “The Merciful Eter­ nal”;^ and in Exodus 34:5 it is “the attribute of the Eternal of Mercy”— the capital letters are to be noted.

These are all relatively minor faults which can as easily be corrected as they could have been avoided. But the principal objection to the style and language of “Torah Yesharah” is their clumsy inelegance. The Bible is not only our most sacred spiritual heritage; it is also our most glorious literary monument. It is written in language of soaring nobility. Its trans­ lators into every language— and cer­ tainly English is no exception—have striven to convey some of that glory into their vernaculars. Even NJ is clothed in a garment that is by no means devoid of literary grace. K is not. To read a page of it for the aesthetic pleasure of reading great language, is to encounter disappoint­ ment; it is graceless in its diction; the Bride-—to whom the Torah is com­ pared in Talmud and Midrash—is presented to us in no bridal raiment, but in pedestrian and, sometimes, even unattractive attire.

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T must be recorded with candor that in its production the book

shows many irritating shortcomings which a little more thought and care would have obviated. There are many misprints generously sprinkled through the translation and the Index of Sources; the whole of verse 23 is miss­ ing from the English of Exodus, Chapter 34; the English verse num­ bers do not correspond with the Hebrew in the closing section of Exodus, Chapter 20; in several places the translation of a passage lies a page or more beyond its Hebrew original, to the confusion and annoyance of the reader; the transliteration is erratic and inconsistent-Bwitness the changes which the aspirated thav undergoes in the Sidra titles, sometimes appear­ ing as the sibilant S and sometimes as the dental TH; or witness the changes wrought in the letter cheth, which in some places is transliterated H and in others CH. The section on the Haphtorahs is altogether wretched. For reasons of economy, no doubt, a photographic offset of the Hebrew Chumosh with Haphtorahs has been used— and not a particularly good edition at that-A in which the Haphtorah verses are unnumbered. Of what possible use is it for Rabbi Kahane to direct the reader, as he does at the end of each Haphtorah Introduction, to study specified numbered verses from such an edition? And of what value are the Introductions themselves, considering that each is separated by many pages from its corresponding Haphtorah?

AN ENGLISH TARGUM

HESE, too, are relatively minor matters that are easily susceptible to correction. But what of the book as a whole? Its basic purpose and manner cannot be altered by proof-

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reading, or amending an occasional word, or correcting an offending pas­ sage. Its purpose and manner will determine whether it will stand or fall —whether it will exercise an influence JEWISH LIFE

at all commensurate with the wealth of zeal- and devotion which Rabbi Kahane has manifestly lavished on it, or whether it will prove to be at best little more than an exegetical curio or an exercise in futility.

The author’s purpose is clear enough: to produce, as we have learned from his Preface, a Targum in English; and for him a Targum is a combination of translation and com­ mentary in one. In fact, he has given us something which has ceased to be a translation and has not begun to be a commentary.

The statement on the jacket of the book: “This compilation is based on the style of Onkelos,” does scant jus­ tice to that greatest of our ancient translators. For Onkelos was primarily a translator, not an interpreter. It is perfectly true that from time to time he departs from strictly literal trans­ lation. He does this sometimes to avoid an anthropomorphism. Thus, to take one example of many, in Genesis 28:13 Jacob dreams that “the Lord stood beside him” according to OJ. Onkelos, however, renders the phrase: “the glory of the Lord hovered over him.” It is equally true that he occa­ sionally avails himself of the Midrashic manner. But he does this only when he has a textual problem to overcome. Thus, for example, his celebrated reference to the Messiah in his rendering of Genesis 49:10 sur­ mounted for him the serious difficulty presented by the reference to Shiloh in the verse.

This is all true. But these aje rela­ tively rare departures by Onkelos from what is otherwise a scrupulously faith­ ful literal translation. K is a far cry indeed from this, or from anything remotely resembling “the style of Onkelos,” as any cursory glance at “Torah Yesharah” reveals.

January-February, 1964

The reference to Jonathan Ben Uziel on the jacket is somewhat nearer the mark, for his is indeed a discursive Targum much given to elaborating the original text. Yet K’s manner and purpose cannot be likened to those of Targum Jonathan, which was in reality a vehicle for the trans­ mission of homilies and Midrashim of great antiquity “to point a moral and adorn a tale.” Targum Jonathan essen­ tially seeks to moralize and uplift; K does not—it is at pains rather to clarify the meaning of Scripture as it is under­ stood in the Oral Tradition, than to transmit the homilies and sermons of days gone by.

F the four modes of Bible exegesis that go by the name Pardes — Peshat, Remez, Derush, and Sod—it is the first which K seems very prop­ erly to set as its goal. If so, K goes too far; for Peshat is the simple una­ dorned meaning of the Bible text.

Rabbi Kahane has too often ignored the dictum made famous by Rashi: Eyn mikra yotze midey peshuto—that a verse is first and foremost to be understood and taught in its simple, literal sense. Rashi’s grandson, Rashbarn, has preserved for us a significant remark made to him by his illustrious grandfather—that, had he but the time, he would re-write his Commen­ tary so as to cleave more closely to Peshat. We may well rejoice that Rashi’s Commentary has come down to us in its present form, for other­ wise we should have lost some of the most priceless jewels in our exege­ tical literature. Nevertheless, Rashi’s words to his grandson remain perti­ nent, and come irresistibly to mind as we read K. It too often forsakes Peshat or distorts it in the effort to give us more than the text wishes to offer. Rabbi Kahane will not have

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forgotten the words of Rabbi Judah (Kiddushin 49a), in which the trans­ lator who adds to a verse is more severely condemned than the transla­

tor who is too rigidly literal. What­ ever else Rabbi Judah meant, his words are an admonition to the would-be Meturgeman.

A DISSERVICE TO ORTHODOXY

UT there is an even more serious objection to K from the stand­ point of the American orthodox Jew: its cumulative effect conveys a false picture of Orthodoxy—the picture of an orthodox manner that is not in keeping with the twentieth-century American Jew. Amid so much from which to choose, and with so much elasticity and range as he allowed himself, Rabbi Kahane could as easily have given us a version of Torah which, in its philosophical, narrative, and halachic elements, would speak the Oral tradition to the western Jew of our day, and not the tradition as it was presented in the Teitsch-Chumosh to our grandmothers of another age and another civilization.

I hope that I shall not be misunder­ stood in saying this. Our grand­ mothers, and their age, and their Teitsch-Chumosh, all had their glories, and must all receive our grateful reverence. But the supreme glory of the Torah is that it is relevant to every age and to every environment.

Its narrative, its philosophical impli­ cations, and its halachic requirements, are all pertinent to our time and milieu, and must be made to speak to us in the language of our time.

The Oral tradition contains within itself the ingredients by which this can be accomplished; but Rabbi Kahane has failed to do this. Instead, he has given us an anachronism, and

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has given it to us with literary grace­ lessness. I intend, of course, no form of absurd and contemptible snobbery when I say that his work speaks with “a foreign accent.”

It has pained me considerably to say these things, for “Torah Yesharah” bears the marks of a stainless devo­ tion to what we reverence most in Orthodoxy. But is it precisely because of its claim to Orthodoxy that I com­ ment as I do. Orthodoxy in the English-speaking world has too long been equated in the minds of too many with the outlandish, with the outdated, with “a foreign accent.”

The time is surely much overdue when Orthodoxy must present its holiest claims in forms that do not expose our viewpoint to the disadvantage of un­ favorable comparison. The orthodox Jew should be at least as immaculate as the heterodox; his Synagogue should be at least as attractive; his worship as decorous; his Bible translation as elegant; and the profoundest teachings of his Torah as intelligently and in­ telligibly presented.

Asked why he published “Torah Yesharah,” Rabbi Kahane might well give the answer which Jonathan Ben Uziel gave (Megillah 3a)—that he did it not for his own honor but for his Maker’s. He can give that answer with perfect sincerity. But the road to a good translation must be paved with more than good intentions.

26

JEWISH LIFE

A. Story

My Mother’s Relatives

By FA N N IE KR EINEN

S soon as we had settled ourselves at the Holyland Hotel in the out­ skirts of Jerusalem, my mother said, “Now, I will find my relatives.”

“What relatives?” I asked thinking the sun had affected her.

“Mine, of course. Everyone I know has relatives in Israel. Why shouldn’t I?” From a secret compartment in her bag, my mother deftly extracted a blue envelope. It was addressed to a Mrs. R. Denberg in Boston, Massa­ chusetts. The return address indi­ cated that the letter had been sent by Leib Rasis of Kfar Aviv.

“Here it is,” my mother said cheer­ fully. “Rasis. That’s us.”

“Rasis, Rasis,” I began.

“So you never heard of Rasis, you will tell me,” my mother interrupted.

“In America we are the Rosen family, but did you ever hear of a Rosen in Stepin? Tell me.”

I could see that my mother was be­ coming annoyed at my ignorance.

Nevertheless I ventured, “And Den­ berg?”

“And Denberg? That’s my cousin Rivka. You know the one I haven’t seen for twenty years since she moved from Brooklyn to Boston and became rich. But a cousin is a cousin and when she heard somehow that I was

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January-February, 1964

going to Israel, she sent me this letter.”

The letter in Yiddish addressed to an unknown cousin in Boston who also happened to be my mother’s cousin was a note expressing thanks to the Denberg family for writing and inviting them to visit Israel.

“Well, this doesn’t tell much,” I said quietly.

“Never mind what it says. You just find a map and look up how to get to Kfar Aviv from Jerusalem. Who knows where it is? But we’ll go.”

IVE days had past and no word had as yet arrived from any Rasis of Kfar Aviv. I had convinced my mother that it would be wise to let our relatives know we were in Israel before we barged in on them.

“You must have written the wrong address,” said my mother. “That my relatives shouldn’t want to see me is an unheard of thing. I will go to see them anyway.”

The next day my mother took the Holyland bus into Jerusalem. When she returned several hours later there was a look of triumph on her face.

“I sent a letter the right way—special delivery, registered, with return ad­ dress^—from the post office.”

By this time it was already Erev Tisha B’Av. I wanted to climb Mount

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Zion together with the thousands of other tourists and native^.

“You stay at the Hotel, mom, just in case a special delivery comes from your relatives,” I teased.

But my mother was already lacing her walking shoes. “I didn’t come to Israel to wait for letters.”

My mother had turned seventy-one on her last birthday. People had ex­ pressed surprise when I told them I was taking my mother on a trip to Israel.

“She won’t be able to keep up with you. You’ll find it difficult to get around having her tag after you,” good friends admonished Now half-way up Mt. Zion, my mother suddenly stops as though to catch her breath. “Don’t move,” she orders in a strange voice. “Stay here until 1 am out of sight. Then follow!”

“What for,” I ask, exasperated by her unusual behavior.

But she is already out of sight and with hundreds of people milling around, I think, “Well, she is lost.

Now what?”

Imagine my relief then when after minutes of steady climbing, I found her waiting at the top of the mountain waving her kerchief and calling, “Here, here l am.”

“What’s the big idea?” I ask, “Play­ ing games at your age.”

“What games? I just want to be able to tell your friends when I get home that 1 climbed Mt. Zion and that you had to tag after me,” she smiled.

HE next day being Tisha B’Av, a fast day, we decided to spend the day lolling on the terrace outside our room. With shades drawn in semi­ darkness, we rested. “It is a good thing we are resting before going to Beersheva,” my mother said.

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I didn’t have the strength to answer.

I had no intention of going anywhere for a week except down to the Holyland swimming pool. About four in the afternoon the phone rang. It was the front desk.

“A young man by the name of Rasis keeps insisting that you are his relative and that I must permit him to go up to your room at once.” The voice was full of anguish.

“Send him up right away,” says my mother. “Of course he is my relative.”

“In ten minutes,” I chime in before the click—reminding my mother with a gesture that we ought to get into some clothes.

“How can he be your relative if he is a young man?”

“I was sixteen when I left Stepin.

Let’s say he was two years old, and fifty-five years I am already in Amer­ ica so he is fifty-seven, and I am seventy-one—so he’s young, no?”

The man who stepped gingerly into our hotel room with a half smile on his face said in Yiddish, “Hello, here I am, very anxious to meet you.”

At these words my mother stretched out her hand, drew him close and kissed him resoundingly. “I can see,” she said, “You are not my Uncle Leib.”

“That was my father—may his soul rest in peace—who died before I was born. I am named after him.”

Then came a torrent of inquiries aft< r all the uncles, aunts, cousins, of the prolific Rasis family who made up the majority of Stepin’s population.

“All dead, that is all except the three of us who are now in Israel— Yoneh, Uncle Berel’s son; Motel, Uncle Shmerel’s son; and myself.”

My mother was silent. All dead.

“Tell me,” she begged in a small, small voice, “Did they die peacefully or . . B JEWISH LIFE

“Ach! Who escaped? Only Tante Blume—ollah hasholom—died a nat­ ural death. All the others . . .”

ERE as though in a trance Leib Rasis began to recite the story so well known now of the annihila­ tion of the Jewish community of Stepin. “Only our Uncle Yukel de­ nounced the Germans. When they came to the big synagogue to take everyone away, he resisted. ‘You can’t make me leave this place,’ he had cried, waving a fist in the face of the surprised Nazi.

“A bullet through the head silenced him. After the war had ended, I found his grave where he had been buried by a friendly villager,” Leib Rasis mused almost silently. “ ‘Eighty-eight years old,’ said the villager, ‘but strong, stronger than all the others. I had promised to bury him according to his instructions.

Come. I’ll show you where.’

“As in a dream I followed the vil­ lager. I slept in the cemetery that night on Uncle Yukel’s unmarked grave. The next morning, I left Stepin and its ghostly memories forever.

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January-February, 1964

Ach! that beautiful little town.”

The three of us then began to weep for the little beautiful town and for all the little beautiful towns that were no more.

“I remained alive. How? Ach! hav­ ing been born an orphan, G-d had to take care of me. Yes, you will come to Kfar Aviv and I will show you how G-d has taken good care of me.”

Suddenly Leib Rasis put his hand in his shirt pocket and took out the registered letter that my mother had sent him.

“See, it says Holyland Hotel, room 212, but the desk clerk refused to let me in. You know,” he continued sheepishly, “This is the third time I have come to Jerusalem looking for you. Everyone in Kfar Aviv said I was going on a wild goose chase, but I said that everyone in the Kfar has some relatives in America. Why shouldn’t I?” When my mother heard her own words echoing from the mouth of this man, her sadness vanished. Now she was certain that this meeting had been predestined from the beginning of time.

29

“ SOME OF M r BEST FRIENDS M E ...”

FOUR V R M I W *

fy

K6AP 5TRBEr,a3

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JEWISH LIFE

January-February, 1964

31

The Yarchey Kallah — Whence and Whither?

By 0 . FEUCHTW ANGER

The c o n te m p o ra ry r e v iv a l o f a fo c a l in s titu tio n o f th e p a s t o ffe rs a v is ta o f d e e p e r s p ir itu a l d im e n s io n s .

HE annual Torah study assem­ held at the Telshe Yeshivah in Wickblages called the “Yarchey Kal­ liffe, Ohio, near Cleveland, beginning lah** were originally conducted by next summer.

Babylonian Jewry for a period pos­ All this prompts obvious questions sibly well exceeding a thousand years, —What are “Yarchey Kallah,” how up to the close of the period of the did they originate, and what is their Geonim at the end of the 10th Cen­ underlying meaning? tury C.E. For nearly another thou­ sand years, until less than twenty years ago, this institution was remembered E know as a historical fact that only as a piece of rather vague history. only a fraction of the Jews who Since then the Yarchey Kallah has had been exiled to Babylon by Ne­ been revived as a recognized feature buchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E. returned of life in Eretz Yisrael. The main to Eretz Yisrael seventy years later center for this re-born institution is in response to Cyrus’ Charter. The the great Ponevez Yeshivah in B’ney majority of the exiles stayed on in Brak, thanks to the vision of its far Babylon, which remained the main sighted founder, the revered Rabbi center of Jewish settlement. For over Joseph Kahaneman, while smaller and f a milennium and a half, i.e. until be­ shorter gatherings are at the same yond half-way through the Middle time held in other places. The sum­ Ages, Babylonian Jewry maintained mer of 5723 saw a Yarchey Kallah uninterrupted existence. Exact details rivival in Great Britain, during the of early Babylonian Jewish history are second half of the month of Av, when very scarce but certain known facts such an assemblage took place in will only make sense on the strength Gateshead, the Torah fortress of of a background we must assume and Anglo-Jewry. In the United States postulate. On one hand we know that Yarchey Kallah are planned to be Babylon was a center of Hellenistic

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culture. On the other, we find Babylon producing a scholar like Hillel the Elder, who was called upon to pro­ vide the intellectual stamina for Torah culture in Eretz Yisrael, so that the latter could successfully withstand the inroads of Hellenism. Hillel, who was anything but controversial, thus testi­ fies by the place he occupies in Jewish history and by the principles he stood for as to the nature of the environ­ ment he had sprung from. There must have been a vigorous and self-con­ tained Torah life in Babylon for cen­ turies, which was immune to the cor­ roding and bebasing influences of Hellenism.

We further know that Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi’s chief disciples saw in

Babylon their natural refuge from the insecurity prevailing in Eretz Yisrael with the decline of the Roman Empire. In a brief space of time they succeeded in establishing there a net­ work of yeshivoth, whose quality has never been matched in Jewish History.

It is clear therefore that Torah knowl­ edge must have been on a very high level. Yet full-time yeshivoth ap­ parently were an innovation. We are thus compelled to assume that the vast body of Jewish Law, which then was allowed to be transmitted only, orally, was taught at certain fixed times during the year and this is how knowledge of the Torah was kept alive. These specific periods came to be called Yarchey Kallah.

THE COMPELLING MOTIVE

HE correct translation of this name poses a problem. A Geonic source takes the world Kallah, origi­ nally spelled with an aleph at the end, as one half-year. Thus, the Yarchey Kallah are the months of the halfyear. In fact, each Adar and Elul-— i.e. twice a year—people everywhere in Babylon left their homes and fa­ milies, their professions or possessions, in order to devote themselves in a small number of centers exclusively to Torah studies for one month. Therljf. is good reason to believe that together with the Beth Hakneseth, the Syna­ gogue, which as an official institution also originated in Babylon during the Exile, the Yarchey Kallah were es­ tablished as one of its chief functions besides the purely devotional one.

This would explain why we find those who attended Yarchey Kallah sub-

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divided in groups of ten, the number required for a minyon in Synagogue.

Thus, originally Beth Hakneseth and Beth Hamidrosh functioned jointly in close association.

The choice of the above-mentioned two months shows that the intervals between the sowing and reaping sea­ sons were deliberately chosen, so as to ensure maximum participation. But there must have been an exceedingly strong motive which made people give up their home comforts twice a year and travel sometimes for a longer time than their actual stay would occupy.

This can only have been the realiza­ tion that their survival as Jews would have been at stake had they not attended but instead remained satis­ fied to study in their home towns dur­ ing their holidays, or even to have depended on the studies which they 33

undertook regularly after working hours the whole year round. The uni­ formity of the Oral Torah, which was the sole bond capable of holding Jewry together, could only be safe­ guarded by concentrating the largest possible number of participants in a very small number of well integrated centers, under the guidance of about five or six scholars of renown, who worked in full harmony.

mitted to them, as a means of testing their halachic judgement. Penalties such as fines .were imposed, and will­ ingly submitted to, if any negligence in studies manifested itself. The Mishnah contains about sixty Tractates, and therefore it took a man who never missed any of the Yarchey Kallah some thirty years to complete the whole body of the Oral Law.

What we have just said explains something we find taken for granted NE concern of these great scholars appears to have been to in the Talmud as a natural feature. ensure that the Tractate, the Talmud The Talmud uses the expression scheduled to be studied at home and “Tanna” not only for the Teachers during the next Yarchey Kallah, was whose opinions are incorporated in well prepared in advance by local the Mishnah, but also for those who groups and learned by heart. At the in Talmudic times—i.e. after the pe­ conclusion of each Kallah assemblage, riod of the Tannoim proper—were each participant was tested as to used as living reference sources in whether he had successfully managed order to establish the correctness of the whole Tractate. He was then Tannaitic texts such as Mishnah and prompted to repeat any passages in Boraitha. Even in Talmudic times which he was found to be weak until these were still mainly taught from he was fully familiar with them by memory. Those later Tannoim whose names are never mentioned may have heart.

It goes without saying that memory­ obtained their training in the Kallah improving techniques were used. Be­ gatherings and made, so to speak, sides, explanations of difficult points professional use of their memorized and clauses were given, and it is knowledge. They were probably their likely the tutors spent much of their questioners’ seniors and had already time during the rest of the year in gone through and mastered by heart preparing these explanations and a number of Tractates during earlier checking their accuracy. Thus, owing Yarchey Kallah, which younger peo­ to their pre-occupation with safe­ ple could not have attended yet. guarding and elucidating the existing True, individuals were allowed to Halochah, they had little chance of make written notes for their exclusive themselves producing and transmitting private use, in order to remind them­ new and hitherto unrecorded halachic selves periodically of what had been ruling. We must not wonder therefore committed to their memory, but that hardly any such are quoted by teaching and initial learning had to pupils in the name of scholars we be from memory only. In the Geonic know to have been in charge of Yar­ period, when the text of the Talmud chey Kallah. had been written down and could be The participants were normally in­ taught from manuscripts, the Kallah vited by the tutor to state their opin­ assemblages were no longer occupied ions on questions which had been sub- mainly with memorizing, so that now

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there was time to discuss and decide queries submitted to the Geonim from all over the world. Probably some of

these were brought in by participants and the agreed reply was then taken home by same.

FORCE FOR CHARACTER TRAINING

FTER all we have said, it may sound almost a truism if we call the Yarchey Kallah the first known scheme in world history of universal adult education. They were obviously much more than that. They generated the spiritual energy required to create and maintain Torah-guided personali­ ties and institutions. Many partici­ pants thus became responsible for religious life in their home communi­ ties and the teaching of the children who could not yet attend the Yar­ chey Kallah. But mere intellectual ac­ tivity would never have been enough to produce the type of Jew desired by the Torah. Our Rabbis said: Derech eretz korcha Vtorah—char­ acter training has to come before the study of the Torah and is a prere­ quisite for its proper observance; and they held that “without the fear of G-d there can be no wisdom.” Char­ acter training is usually based on what the accumulated experience of genera­ tions has shown to be vital for the conscious and unconscious self, if that self is to be fully and construc­ tively integrated into society at large.

This experience was amply available at the centers where the Kallah as­ semblages were held, but hardly any­ where else.

It is therefore only natural to find that many sayings from Massecheth Derech Eretz, a special Tractate deal­ ing with character training, are quoted in the Talmud by those Amoraim (Teachers of the Talmud), who were in charge of Yarchey Kallah. They

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had to be more familiar with them than other scholars. It is probably reasonable to assume that this Trac­ tate was a compilation of maxims and rules formulated and laid down largely for the benefit of the Kallah assemblages. These teachings helped to mould the Jews of Babylonia into people who lived up to the ideal image presented and demanded by the Torah.

Similarly the Yarchey Kallah tutors never ceased stressing the primary im­ portance of Yirath Shomayim, the fear of Heaven. We have mentioned above that in Babylonia there had been no struggle between Jewish cul­ ture and pagan Greek civilization.

Had the Jews not felt a strong and unquestioning attachment to the Torah in accordance with their genuine and deep-seated fear of G-d, as inculcated by the annual Kallah semesters, a Kulturkampf would have been in­ evitable. On the strength of all this we can very well understand the case of the scholar who had to “journey three months to be able to attend the Kallah for one day only,” and who then had to travel back home for three months again before recommencing his circuit. He simply felt his life as a devout Jew would have been in dire jeopardy but for his benefiting from the Kallah to however small an extent. And benefit he did, for he had a chance to attend at least one of the twelve or so one- to-three-day sessions into which the Yarchey Kallah were subdivided, each one of them dealing 35

independently with a specific subject.

In order to achieve the best possible result, the time of all participants was fully occupied to the extent that they were officially freed from the statutory private reading of the He­ brew and Aramaic version of the

weekly portion of the Torah during their attendance. They had, however, to make up for this omission later.

They could similarly not be sum­ moned to appear as defendants in civil cases either. All meals were of course taken in great haste, too.

SPIRITUAL REGENERATION

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OW, having outlined the nature and possible origin of the Yarchey Kallah, something should be said about the concept which lay be­ hind this institution. Judaism demands Kedushah—holiness. Physical and ma­ terial life, however, normally opposes Kedushah. The aim is of course to overcome this resistance. But in order to be able to achieve this it is neces­ sary to have a clear vision of the actual Kedushah which we desire to superimpose on life. That is why the Torah has given forth the idea of a Mikdosh, sanctuary. Entering it en­ ables us to be alone with ourselves for a while, released from the down­ ward pull of the uncontrolled power of nature. By concentrating on our duties and facing our Creator we may thus gain a true picture of what we would like ourselves and our sur­ roundings to grow into. Without these periodic retreats resulting in spiritual regeneration, our aims would soon become indistinct.

The Tent of Meeting in the Wilder­ ness and later in Eretz Israel, the two Battey Hamikdosh, the Holy Temples, were sanctuaries in space, serving the purpose described. Since the destruc­ tion of the Temple we have been left largely with sanctuaries in time, the chief one being Shabboth, of which a marked characteristic is, we all know, the Neshomah Yetherah, the 36

added dimension of the Jewish soul, its awareness of and participation in higher things and spheres. This weekly experience charges those who observe the Sabbath with spiritual energy suffi­ cient to govern their emotions and ac­ tions for the whole of the ensuing week. However, one day’s concentra­ tion is not enough for the intellect.

Emotions and actions may be shaped by unconscious momentary influences emanating from the sanctuary in time, even when it covers only one day, but it takes the conscious intellect much longer to respond fully to the un­ adulterated truth it is faced with while in the sanctuary. The Yarchey Kallah were thus considered by their founders well over 2,000 years ago as long­ term sanctuaries in time, capable of leaving a lasting impression of holi­ ness even on the intellect, because these periods were planned and used to absorb all the energies of the in­ tellect in the quest for the purest and highest knowledge.

It follows that the recent revival of the Yarchey Kallah is a right step in the direction of the fervently desired restoration of the Beth Hamikdosh.

It should help to spread and extend the sphere of holiness in our people.

It is particularly gratifying to see that this time-hallowed institution, which has done so much to preserve the true character of Jewry, has now once JEWISH LIFE

again come into its own as an instru­ ment for sanctifying the Jewish people.

E may now understand better the value and importance for every Jewish young man of devoting himself to concentrated study in a yeshivah for a number of years. This period will ’forever remain to him the sanctuary of his life and his source of spiritual energy. But now, when leav­ ing this sanctuary, he has the chance of re-entering it periodically by taking part in the Yarchey Kallah and thus regenerating and refreshing his spirit­ ual resources. Today, of course, a

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rich and concentrated fare of pro­ found study of the Talmud, as carried on in all yeshivoth the whole year round, is presented to the participants.

Those, who have never before been in a yeshivah are also well catered for. The re-established Yarchey Kal­ lah show, thank G-d, that our People has an innate tendency to create focal points of Kedushah, which are our duty to maintain powerful, to keep continuously active and to make in­ creasingly beneficial. May all con­ nected with this latest manifestation of creating such focal points go from strength to strength!

37

Jewish Farm Colonization in Argentina

By JACOB BELLER

T h e le g a c y lof B a ro n c fe H irs c h , in th e p e rs p e c tiv e o f th r e e -q u a r te r s o f a c e n tu ry o f p a m p a s -t illin g e n d e a v o r.

N a short time, the Jewish com­ munity of Argentina will mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of Jewish agricultural colonization in that coun­ try—a unique chapter in the history of Jewish wanderings. The occasion brings to new expression the heroic struggle which the pioneers of Jewish colonization in Argentina carried on in a strange, uninhabited milieu, ex­ posed to the cruel caprice of nature and half-savage inhabitants. It brings reminder of the toil, sweat, and blood expended by these pioneers in trans­ forming swamps and barrens into flourishing and prosperous fields, and of how the Argentine people even­ tually came to appreciate the labor and production of the Jewish pioneers.

Actually the beginning of Jewish farm settlement in Argentina was a by-product of the Jewish love and yearning for the land of Israel. It is a fact that in July, 1889, before Baron de Hirsch began his plan for a mass colonization in Argentina an attempt had already been made by a group of Jews who left the city of KamenetzPodolsk to make their way to the Land of Israel to become farm work­ ers there. The 130 families comprising this group became marooned in Ger-

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many en route, without means and without any way of making their way further. The Alliance Israelite Universelle took an interest in them but in­ stead of sending them on to Palestine they were diverted to Argentina.

Signed contracts were obtained for them from an Argentine estate owner who sold them certain stretches of land.

On their arrival in Argentina, how­ ever, they found themselves bitterly disappointed. The agent had deceived them. They were stranded there in destitution and in hunger amidst bare fields. More than sixty children died of exposure and hunger during that first season.

N the ensuing months, alarm went up throughout the Jewish world Iabout this tragedy. Rabbi Zadoc Cohen, Chief Rabbi of the Jewish community of Paris, appealed to his community and interested Baron de Hirsch in their fate. In this way Baron de Hirsch found the opportunity of fulfilling his plan for large-scale Jew­ ish colonization, a plan he had already been thinking of. He immediately convened a special meeting of coloni­ zation experts and at this historic JEWISH LIFE

session there was announced the or­ ganization of “ICA,” the Jewish Col­ onization Association, which under­ took a program to assist Jews in emigrating from Russia into countries where they could develop themselves freely and become productive persons, earning their livelihood through labor on the land.

A special delegation left for Argen­ tina and there the first ICA-sponsored colony was organized. It was named Mauricio Hirsch, in honor of the Baron. The earlier pioneers had by this time, in the face of all adversity already founded a colony of their own which they called “Moisesville” after the Biblical Moses. To this day Moisesville is referred to as the “Jeru­ salem of Argentina.” These earlier colonists met with the delegation at a historic occasion in the house of their first rabbi, Aaron Goldman, (grandfather of the present leader of the World Jewish Congress in Argen­ tina, Dr. Moshe Goldman). They had a prayer meeting and prayed for the welfare and the health of their noble benefactor, Baron de Hirsch. The representatives of the ICA then pro­ posed that they transfer to the new colony, Mauricio Hirsch. However, the pioneers did not want to part with

the cemetery and leave untended the graves of those who had perished of hunger, frost, and destitution. Baron de Hirsch then arranged to have the lands around about the Moisesville section bought up and it was from this area that arose the familiar and popular Jewish “shtetel” of Moisesville.

From this time on, there began the upward climb of Jewish agricultural colonization in Argentina. The Jewish Colonization Association purchased large stretches of land in the Argen­ tine provinces and established a whole network of Jewish colonies. One was called Clara in honour of the Baron’s wife. Other characteristic names were “Avigdor,” “Narcisse Levine,” and “Lucienville,” (the name of the Baron’s son who died as a child). After the tragic death of his only son, the Baron said, “my only heir was taken from me—mankind is now my heir.” Five years after the founding of the Jewish Colonization Association in the year 1896, this noble personality died, leaving after him as an enduring monument the Jewish colonies of Argentina. In the province of Entre Rios, where most of the Jewish col­ onies were concentrated, there were colonies at that time with names like “Rosh Pinah,” “Rachel,” etc.

FROM SHTETEL TO FARM

T was not an easy process for these untrained pioneers, emerging from the shtetel environment, to become agrarian workers. The capricious, un­ predictable climate, the barren wastes and lonely atmosphere—all these trials and tribulations had to be over­ come by the colonists. Added to all this was a new plague, worse than

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January-February, 1964

all the others : the half-savage gauchos —the native Argentine vagabonds, used to a lawless life on the steppes— began to perpetrate robberies, stealing cattle and horses and the colonist’s last morsels of food. The robberies soon extended to murders. The police watches were altogether inadequate to prevent mass attacks on the col39

onists. Moreover, sometimes tjie police themselves were partners and accom­ plices in the raids and looked the other way. Sometimes when the culprits were caught they were let off, even in cases of murder, with light sentences.

The situation came to a climax when, on the 26th of March, 1898, a cold-blooded murder took place which sent a shudder through the entire dis­ trict of the Clara colony. Outlaws stabbed to death a colonist and his two children aged 14 and 12. Before he died, the victim, recognizing his assailant, struggled for his life with the murderer.

The news reached the Argentine capital, and the newspaper La Nation sent a special correspondent there to get the details of the murder and in general to find out what was going on.

Because of this tragic event the coun­ try at large finally became aware of the accomplishments of the Jewish colonists, who in the short span of five years, under the most difficult of conditions, had changed the barren Argentine steppes into fertile fields.

In his reports the correspondent of La Nation, Venesia Gallan, gave the details of the brutalities, crimes, and murders a id demanded that the gov­ ernment give more protection to the colonists. He had strong praise for the achievements of the “Rusos” : “In the district,” he wrote, “there are more than 5,000 Rusos (on another occasion he refers to them as a “Judaic section of the Russians”) and their cultural level is extremely high; in the Clara colony there are eleven schools where classes are given in Spanish and Russian (what he meant was Yiddish) under experienced ped­ agogues.” Gallan pointed out that the schools all contained portraits of the Argentine national heroes along with pictures of Baron de Hirsch and 40

that every colony had a doctor who treated all who came to him without discrimination whether they be Jews or criolles. This, however, did not prevent murder attempts even being made upon the doctor. He mentioned that the colony had a school for learn­ ing trades such as tailoring, conducted by a skilled woman from Paris, and its own steam mill. The colonists, Gal­ lan reported, had their own cultural association and had established a library. He was present at a play where the younger colonists per­ formed a drama about peasant life in Russia and also Moliere’s comedy “Le Malade Imaginaire,” which the young farmers, themselves, had trans­ lated from the French. Revenue from the performance was to go towards the purchase of a battleship for the Argentine navy and for the same pur­ pose a collection was taken up in the colony, with very good results. He pointed out that the sponsors of the colony were Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Americans who sought to avoid fanaticism because of what their peo­ ple had suffered in Russia.

It was from this report that the Argentine people learned of the con­ tributions the Jews had made to their country, the sacrifices they had brought to wrest a livelihood from the swamps. After this, on many oc­ casions the Jewish colonists and their contributions were mentioned with praise and respect. It was remembered that they had fled from the despotism of the Russian Czar, who had perse­ cuted them for their religion and race, to freedom-loving Argentina, where, as industrious settlers, they had found a haven and home.

EARS ago, I was a teacher in a X ICA school in one of the Jewish colonies on the pampas, and I well JEWISH LIFE

remember a scene when the then President of Argentina, Senor Alevar, passed through that area. The col­ onists turned out en masse to greet their honored visitor, and the Jewish children paraded with Argentine and Jewish flags, singing the Argentine anthem with genuine enthusiasm.

Senor Alevar paid warm tribute to

Argentina’s Jewish farmers and de­ clared that in Argentina they were able to achieve their full potential.

What were the colonies like in those days? Here I must glance backward forty years to a time when a piece of the East European Jewish way of life was transplanted bodily to the pampas of Argentina.

AT HOME ON THE PAMPAS

ARVEST time in an Argentinan Jewish colony of that era was one of the most beautiful and inspiring scenes one could wish to see. From the long row of neat little houses still lit by kerosene lamps emerged the figures of Jewish peasants, harnessing the horses to the wagons, looking after the well, with its high tower where the cattle were to drink, setting out on tractors or tending machines. When the sun shone full over the fields one could see the athletic, broad-shoul­ dered sons of the colonists, with their bronzed skins, working feverishly. In the evening when cool winds blew from the pampas, one could hear the sound of Yiddish folk songs mingling with the creaking of large carts filled with grain. When night fell young girls, like their ancestors in Biblical times, stood at the wells waiting for their sweethearts, while from some­ where the eyes of vigilant mothers watched. The heavy gallop of the horse came nearer and nearer and the young heart beat stronger: “Buenos noches, Rosita!” (Good evening Rose!)

“Como le va Jose.? (How are you Joseph!)

And soft voices were heard among the trees. “. . . Mother, father, you must talk to father.” “What?” came

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January-February, 1964

the young man’s angry voice. “He does not approve of me as a son-inlaw? Is it a city compadre (sport) he prefers? My mother is more sen­ sible. She wants you to come and bake bread at our house tomorrow. . . ” AR away from the whitewashed houses, grouped in clumps of three or four over a long distance, was the school where the children were taught Spanish and Yiddish.

Twice a day little dots appeared on the horizon—first one, then another —children wrapped in white guardopolvos (dust mantles) riding on horse­ back, two or three together, coming to school over the flat fields. There was a large garden at the school where the horses awaited their little riders until school was over. The Jew­ ish children in the Argentine pampas grew up with the horses and three or four-year-olds often rode spirited horses, holding onto the back of their older brothers or sisters.

As a teacher in a Jewish school in the colony Narcisse Levine I was at the same time the pupil of my pupils in the art of riding a horse. The brown, speckled horse, a present from one of the colonists, which I used to ride, was nicknamed Methuselah by the children after the famous story

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by Sholom Aleichem.

One day, as I rode with several pupils over the field, we suddenly noticed black spots on the sun and the children began to shout “Pam­ pero! Pampero!” They jumped off the horses and placed them in a semi­ circle, putting the smaller children down inside it. In a moment it became pitch dark and a lashing rain began pouring down on us from all sides.

The wind raged and howled louder and louder, and on all sides there flew over our heads broken pieces of wooden posts, of wheels and other articles carried by the wind.

HE finest and merriest season of the year in the Jewish colony fol­ lowed the harvest. If the harvest had not been spoiled by drought or lo­ custs, the colony was decked out in festive array. The small towns in the vicinity did a thriving business. The storekeepers collected old debts.

Agents came from Buenos Aires to sell subscriptions to Jewish newspapers or to collect the fees. Representatives of organizations came to raise funds and musicians came to play at wed­ dings. The girls, grown like mush-

T

rooms after a rain, were sunburned and hardened by work. The boys, young men, garbed in new red silk shirts with the ends down like gauchos, exchanged the old saddles for new ones, and each one made for a group where a thick wooden post stood at the door, apparently meant for horses, but in reality intended as a hint that in that house there is a girl ready to be spoken for . . | The young man remains standing in the door, claps his hands a few times to signify that a stranger is asking per­ mission to come in. The host comes forward and greets the guest, who re­ moves his knife and revolver, handing them to the hostess to keep during his visit. Father and mother withdraw to the kitchen while the girl remains with the young man to treat him with “mate” (the national Argentine beverage, made from herbs) and pastry of her own making. A marriage is negoti­ ated; the girl gets a few oxen or a patch of field as her dowry, or if the father is poor, not even that. The parents, as a rule, preferred that their daughters marry a young man from the city. But the young people pre­ ferred otherwise.

IDEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS ATTITUDES A T the edge of every Jewish colony

there was a strip of land which even the non-Jews of the area identi­ fied as “Palestine.” It was the custom for every colonist to contribute a strip of his own land for the Jewish National Fund. The harvesting of this “Pales­ tine strip” was carried on with great zeal and ceremony. All the colonists would gather together, dressed in their holiday clothing, young and old. More than once I happened to be present with my pupils at such a celebration.

One impression which was left in­ 42

delibly in my memory was a picture of the colonists’ faces, toughened and bronzed by the sun and wind, dressed in their coarse peasant clothing, clear­ ing the black earth with their primi­ tive ploughs. The ploughs were deco­ rated with the blue and white flag and the children accompanied their parents singing the Hatikvah. A sharp pampa wind was blowing sand in everyone’s eyes but it carried out into the fields the words and the tune of “Od-lo ovda tikvothenu.”

JEWISH LIFE

N the initial years of settlement, the religious life of the colonists reflected to an extent that of the shtelel of Russia and Bessarabia. Each colony, upon its establishment, would build a shool, and services would be held each Shabboth and Yom Tov with most of the colonists attending as a matter of course. In some of the settlements weekday minyonim were also customary, except during harvest time. Shabboth and Kashruth were observed, and the general pattern of life had a traditionally religious color­ ing. In each colony, the schools es­ tablished by the Jewish Colonization Association, under the name “Cursos Religiosos,” included traditional re­ ligious instruction in the curriculum.

I recollect—and indeed will always remember—davening on Yom Kippur, some forty years ago, in a primitive little shool in the far wilderness of the Pampa. The shool was built by the colonists themselves, from wood and clay, in the style of a “rancho.”

The chazon was an aged colonist, en­ robed in a shabby yellowish talith.

His Kol Nidrey melody stirred me more and penetrated deeper into my soul than that of any of the noted cantors, accompanied by choir, whom I have had the opportunity to hear in famed synagogues of Berlin, Amster­ dam, and London.

However, religious life in the Argen­ tine colonies slowly but steadily de­ clined. The remoteness of these settle­ ments from main centers of Jewish life was a primary factor, and a lack of deeply-felt religious zeal and mo­ tivation was another. Beyond this, the colonists were influenced by the at­ titudes which developed among the Argentinan Jewish city dwellers.

Among these, a secularized kind of Jewishness prevailed, based on the Yid­ dish language and Yiddishist culture.

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January-February, 1964

The builders of the Argentine Jew­ ish community were not primarily interested in religious Judaism. As Jewish communal life developed, its leadership fell largely into the hands of men for whom religion had little, if any, part to play. Some of them in fact had the same hostility to re­ ligion in general, and the Jewish re­ ligion in particular, as those radicals of former years in New York who made it a practice to hold Yom Kippur “balls” and public anti-Yom Tov demonstrations. The outlook nur­ tured in the larger centers penetrated to the distant farm settlements, where the Yiddishist cult too, struck root.

UT today, new hope is to be found for a renascence of religious life among the Jews of Argentina. No longer do the community leaders— though largely secularist still—look upon religion as an “opiate.” They are warm, national-minded Jews with a positive attitude towards, and re­ spect for, religious Jewishness. The emphasis on traditional Judaism in North America is nowadays finding an echo in Argentina, and “Nusach America” tends to displace “Nusach Argentina” as the communal model.

In present-day Buenos Aires, there flourish such Torah institutions as Machon L’Yahaduth, Yeshivath Yitzchok Elchanon, Yeshivath Chazon Ish, the Beth Yaakov School for Girls, and others. And one can find among their students the children and grand­ children of the Yiddishist radicals of yore. Though still imprisoned in their secularist mold, these parents and grandparents have learned that Yid­ dish of itself does not have the power to enable Jews to withstand the ex­ ternal pressures of conformity and assimilation in a Catholic country.

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This new trend, too, is reflected in the Jewish agricultural communities.

In my last visit to Moisesville I found a Hebrew Teachers Seminary, under the name of “Yahaduth,” organized and subsidized by the Vaad Hakehil-

loth of Buenos Aires; the Beth Midrosh Hagodol; the Baron Hirsch Con­ gregation; the Beth Knesseth Ash­ kenazi, also called the Litvishe Shool; and even a synagogue of Baaley Melochah (artisans and workmen).

THE PRESENT-DAY VIEW

HAT is it like now, after more than seventy-five years of Jewish colonization in Argentina? What has become of the legacy of Baron de Hirsch?

At the time when the 75th anni­ versary of the founding of the col­ onies was being planned in Argentina I happened to be again in that country and attended a conference of the Jew­ ish colonists. The delegates to this conference were the sons and grand­ sons of the pioneers of early Argen­ tine farm settlement. They represented the heritage of the noble idea of Baron de Hirsch to change Jews from urban city dwellers to farm people and to show the world that Jews too can undertake productive labor.

For one who remembers the farm colonists’ conferences of the old days the assembly last year was somewhat of a disappointment. It lacked the broadboned Jewish farm proletarians with their gnarled peasant hands who would give you a hearty sholom aleichem! accompanied by an equally hearty smack on the back. The broad Bessarabian-accented Yiddish was also lacking. The speakers and the resolu­ tions were all in the Spanish language.

The sessions were conducted in true parliamentary and formal fashion, far more reminiscent of the city than of the farm.

However, when I studied more care­ fully the faces of those present I did feel a certain closeness to them. Here

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and there I saw faces browned by sun and wind as of old. These Jews were villagers and farmers even though they were wearing starched shirts and pressed ties instead of the primitive kerchiefs of their grandfathers and fathers. There was still the feel and the smell of the farm about them.

The language was a different one but the content was still akin to that of former years. They spoke about Jew­ ish fields which Jews should make sure they still work and occupy and not permit them to fall into the hands of others. They discussed the strengthen­ ing and improvement of the Jewish cooperatives. They talked about pre­ paring and producing a film that would give a picture of the story of Jewish colonization in Argentina.

EWISH colonization in Argentina since its formation has experienced warmth and frost. Under the most severe conditions, the colonists tamed the wilderness, suffered under the mis­ chances of theft, and of murder. Two Jewish writers in Spanish, Alberto Gerchunow and Jose Liberman, both sons of colonists, have described the tribulations and achievements of the Jewish colonists; the former, whose father was murdered by a gaucho in the colony of Rachel, in his book “Los Gauchos Judios” (The Jewish Gauchos) which has now been pub­ lished in an English translation, and the second in his book “Tierra

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JEWISH LIFE

Sonada” (Blessed Earth). Alberto Gerchunow became famous in Argen­ tina as a columnist for the wellesteemed Argentine liberal newspaper La Nacion. The country named a rail­ way station after him in the province of Entre Rios which, as was men­ tioned, is the province where a great many colonies were located.

It is little wonder then that many were unable to survive and endure the sufferings and difficulties and a trend back to the city began. Some of the historians of the Argentine Jewish colonies want to attribute this drang to the city to the fact that a number of the ICA officials, as as­ similated Jews, did not understand the mentality of Jews from Eastern Europe and had neither sympathy nor appreciation for the idealistic goal of the ICA, treating the colonies in a purely materialistic and commercial manner without any regard for senti­ ment. Another reason given is that the ICA planned the colonies at long distances from each other for the pur­ pose of avoiding the creation of Jew­ ish towns and cities which, it was feared, might tempt the colonists to revert to urban occupations and live­ lihoods. Paradoxically, this had the opposite result, for some colonists could not bear the loneliness and es­ caped back to the city.

The fact is, however, that a portion of the youth when they grew up left on their own initiative and went into the city to seek a future, and in many cases the parents followed.

The blame, therefore, for the move to the city cannot be laid exclusively at the foot of the ICA personnel. One ICA administrator, of Eastern Euro­ pean background, Ben Zion Mezhibowski, has indicated that it was when the colonists began to prosper that the movement to the city began. It January-February, 1964

was at the very moment when the prices for their farms and for their produce began to rise that the urge to go the city became greater. This urge, therefore, had nothing to do with the pressure of poverty or with the atti­ tude of The ICA bureaucrats. When the youth left for the town and the cultural and community life abated, the parents felt their loneliness more keenly and for this reason part of them left the colonies.

HUS, the colonization in Argentina never reached a mass level. But de­ spite the movement into the cities the Jewish colonies to this day have re­ mained the special pride of the Argen­ tine Jewish community. It can be said that the majority of the cultural and community leaders of the Argentine communities are sons and grandsons of the colonists. The education, train­ ing, and environment they received in the fields of the colonies imbued them with a sound and healthy spirit. They brought with them to the cities new blood and a valuable contribution to Jewish community life. They occupy important and creditable roles in the liberal professions, in Argentine litera­ ture and press, in the leadership of Jewish communal and cultural insti­ tutions. To this day the men and women nurtured by the farm colonies are the backbone of Argentine Jewry.

At present there are still more than 2,000 Jewish families in Argentina’s Jewish farm colonies, cultivating half a million hectares of land. Ninetynine percent of them own their own land, and the inventory of their farms extends in the millions. The legacy of Baron de Hirsch is still quite visible and tangible today.

The cooperatives still occupy an important place in Argentina. Sixty

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years ago the first Jewish cooperative was established; it was called the Sociedad Agricola Lucienville. The initiative came from two pioneers, the finest figures of Jewish colonization in Argentina, Noah Jarchi and his brother-in-law, Miguel Sacharow, who was crowned with the name of “the grandfather of the Jewish colonies,” This cooperative movement grew and expanded until it embraced most of the colonies. Its aim is more than selling the products of the colonies and purchasing materials and goods for its members. It occupies itself as well with the cultural and community needs of its members, organizing li­ braries, schools, and hospitals. The Argentine press has often cited with approval the achievements of the Jewish agricultural cooperatives and their vital contributions to the co­ operative movement in Argentina.

The above-mentioned cooperatives publish their own journal called “The Colonist Cooperator,” printed in Spanish and Yiddish. They have their own agrarian bank which gives loans to the colonists. Its main purpose is to preserve the integrity of Jewish colonization, to stand on the alert and see that Jewish colonies and farms do not fall into the hands of others and to encourage everyone in the colonies to stay on the farm and not to seek urban livelihoods.

O summarize, it can be said that though for a number of reasons there was no really mass-scale Jewish colonization in Argentina, neverthe­ less, a valuable heritage was left by Baron de Hirsch. The epic of Jewish agricultural colonization in Argentina has served a vital and positive role, a contribution to Jewish life in general and a credit to the Argentine com­ munity in particular.

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JEWISH LIFE

Book Bevietvs An E xercise in “T heology”

By LEO TAUBES

TH E N A T U R A L AND THE SUPERNATURAL JEW , by A rthur A. Cohen, Pantheon, New York, 1963.

326 pp. $6.00.

UDAISM, as so many are pointing out today, is in a state of crisis.

The assertion hardly seems contro­ vertible, and yet the way it is formu­ lated indicates one of the important sources of the problem. For it is not, in fact, Judaism which is in crisis, but the individual Jew whose rela­ tionship with his religion is difficult, just as it is not the modern world which is diseased, but the people in it. As happens so frequently, a figure of speech has become a habit of thought—men believe that the world will be perfected by external, physical transformations, instead of a trans­ formation in the heart of man. And some Jews think that Judaism must be changed, rather than the heart of the Jew. But no remedy can be effec-

J

LEO T A U B E S teaches E nglish a t Y eshiva U n i­ versity. A graduate o f Y eshiva College, he re­ ceived his M .A. from Columbia, w here he is a t present a doctoral student.

January-February, 1964

tive if administered to the wrong pa­ tient; all the treatments and trans­ fusions, and even the major opera­ tions performed upon the body of Judaism, have left the real patient, the individual Jew, still suffering from his disease.

The curious thing is that in the case of physical illness the patient immediately calls his doctor, whereas those who begin to realize that they are suffering from a spiritual disease mistrust the doctors of the past and prefer to minister to themselves. Selfexamination is the watchword of the new theologians—every man his own doctor. Self-examination, up to a point, is certainly healthy, but a mor­ bid self-fascination, an intense search for disease and new remedies is in itself a disease—it is hypochondria.

And much contemporary would-be theology, with its self-consciousness, its scrutiny of mental minutiae, its exaggeration of every symptom of thought, is a form of spiritual hypo­ chondria.

Judaism has generally been averse to theology, and the proliferation of Jewish “theologians” in recent times 47

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and scholars on the Continent as a work of outstanding ac­ curacy and clarity.

Now anyone, scholar or lay­ man, Hebrew-reading or not, can feast upon the fascinat­ ing discussions of laws, mor­ als, affairs of the body, soul and mind, business, religion, social duties, intimate family life, rituals — the whole gam­ ut of life from the cradle to the grave. A richly reward­ ing addition to any library.

7’ Volume set, with fully vowelled Hebrew text, modern English translation, explanatory notes and references, introductions, supplements, glossaries, diagrams, maps, appendices and indexes. 4035 pages.

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JEWISH LIFE

is not a particularly encouraging sign for the future. Although Arthur A. Cohen considers himself a theologian, he is in the Jewish tradition to the extent that his book is not so much a work of formal theology as a sort of spiritual biography. In discussing the existential dogmas with which he introduces his book, he says that the crucial thing about them is not their validity but their usefulness in help­ ing him to clarify his understanding.

“What I say here I must believe, because without it there is nothing I consider ultimately relevant or mean­ ingful to believe.” He is not, in other words, concerned particularly with developing a system, a coherent and objective view of religion. Instead, the book is a self-examination, a descrip­ tion of the processes of thought that led to his present conceptions of Juda­ ism. The word present needs to be stressed,. for the whole undertaking is, in Cohen’s own eyes, only tentative.

In his preface he writes that the book is not a culmination, not a fulfillment, but “the beginning of many others which will undoubtedly modify and perhaps repudiate what is set forth here.”

T IS obviously rather difficult to re­ gard a work such as this with com­ plete seriousness. For all the reader knows, Cohen is at this moment busy disburdening himself of his most re­ cent introspective efforts, which may move in an entirely different direction.

The existential concern with the great Here and Now, with the immediate moment and what it holds for the individual, is not calculated to offer solid support to philosophical or theo­ logical notions th at pretend to deal with the permanent. It is true that the author disclaims interest in the

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January-February, 1964

mere formulation of airtight theories, (“If theory does not result in life . it is but a tiresome exercise”) but what else does he offer his reader?

His personal development has led to a personal theology, a theology, how­ ever, which is presented in the guise of the universal and must therefore be judged, not in terms of personal relevance but of universal validity.

In these terms, the reader has the right to ask from a theologian more than intellectual process, more than self development, more than possi­ bility. Self-examination may be a pre­ requisite for theology, but it cannot be theology.

Cohen’s refusal, or inability* to fashion a concrete and complete theo­ logical system is the more regrettable in view of his clear understanding of the situation of the many modern Jews who have some religious senti­ ments but no real religion. Ours is an age not of disbelief or wrong be­ lief, but of lack of concern about be­ lief. It is an age not of doubt but of indifference. What the modern Jew needs most is clarity, concreteness, a fixed path, a firm guiding hand. The sphere of the spiritual, of the super­ natural, is largely lost to him. Cohen attempts to bring about a renewal of contact with the supernatural for the “vast majority of Jews [who] do not make conscious and articulate de­ cisions,” but who drift along indiffer­ ent to religion. The question is whether his method and his ideas can accomplish such a task. Instead of displaying clarity his work abounds in vagueness, instead of firmness there is diffidence.

The bulk of the book is devoted to an examination of some prominent, and for Cohen representative, Jewish thinkers of the past two centuries— Mendelssohn, Zunz, Hess, Dubnow, 49

Hermann Cohen,* Rosenzweig, Buber, Kaplan, Heschel, Herberg, and others.

Of course, to the orthodox Jew such a list seems fa r from representative; it is in fact composed mainly of men who were outside the mainstream of Judaism. They are prominent because they wrote in the vernacular, because they caught the eyes of the non-Jewish world, because they represented de­ partures from tradition. But they do not represent Judaism, although they may claim to. What is more, they are not really great men or major think­ ers. In certain restricted fields they have made some contributions, but when one thinks of the great theolo­ gians of the major religions, men who devised vast and novel and com­ plex systems embracing everything and entering into the lives of millions, then the concerns of the men analyzed

by Cohen look pale indeed. No, this is not the sphere where contemporary Jewry shows its greatest strength, nor can there come from this sphere a renewed strength for the Jews. The fact th at Cohen’s theology derives from agreement with or reaction to this group places him as fa r from the center of Judaism as they were.

A S a method of convincing the uncommitted multitude of the values of supernaturalism, Cohen’s approach certainly leaves much to be desired. This is not to say that his analyses are not perceptive or his critiques not interesting. They often are, although there is little start­ lingly new except for the atrocious theological jargon. But there is an air of irrelevance about the whole procedure—it is so far removed from what is really vital; the issues are so often peripheral, the solutions un­ real, the theories ethereal, and the 50

language opaque. It is a book for the intellectual who can derive aesthetic satisfaction from the play of mind and from theological configurations, for the specialist who likes to sniff and peck at little, scraps of ideology.

But what can that “vast majority of Jews” do with it?

What can they get from the the­ ology that is the result of Arthur Cohen’s intellectual wrestling? For there is a portion of the book devoted to an elaboration of the author’s own ideas. It is a modest portion, and the ideas are correspondingly modest: the Jew is a creature both natural and supernatural, th at is, he is situated in time and space and yet beyond them, chosen by G-d for the final re­ demption of humanity, but at the same time participating in the world and criticising it till the time of the “eschatological consummation.” This is perhaps a somewhat bald presenta­ tion, and Cohen certainly embellishes, explicates, and elaborates the ideas, to the extent that much becomes vague and much is opened to criti­ cism. The disjunction of natural and supernatural is clearly suspicious, the distinction between history and “a possible” metahistory smacks of casu­ istry, the emphasis on eschatology is false—in fact, there is a great deal of exaggeration, and th at is simply a distortion of traditional propor­ tions. Thus, from the fact th at the Bible records the words of the Proph­ ets there has been manufactured prophetism, and from a belief, always rather vague and undefined, in a Messiah, there has arisen a very sub­ stantial messianism. These isms, like so many others, are dangerous pre­ cisely because they are founded on something real. But aside from spe­ cific criticism, the question still reJEWISH LIFE

hypochondria described earlier. The book exudes an almost painful seri­ ousness and solemnity, a sincerity and concern nearly melodramatic; it The Jews whom Arthur A. Cohen is obvious that the author is trying is purportedly addressing are surely very hard to reach the Highest Spir­ not going to renew their “super­ itual Levels. Unfortunately he often natural vocation” (if they read the comes close to pretentiousness and book) after being exposed to the posturing; there is something ludi­ vagaries of existential theology. How crous in the attempt to force G-d to can theory arouse life, “richer and reveal Himself; there is immodesty more prescient life” if it takes such in the submissive waiting with out­ forms as this: “ [Theology] sets itself stretched hands for the great moment but one task: to apprehend and in­ of truth; there is false pride in the terpret the presence of G-d in time belief that the paltry scribblings of and history.” And a few pages later: some theologians can affect the uni­ “The representation of G-d in history verse (Theology “should leave open is not pure actuality but actuality to sacred history the possibility of committeed to the unfulfilled possi­ new creation and new revelation”). bility of history.” The mind boggles Cohen takes himself terribly seriously at this. If the last phrase has any —for which no one can blame him— meaning at all, th at meaning can be but it is not easy for the reader to expressed in the word potentiality, follow his lead, especially since the and we end up with the idea that great moral earnestness is frequently theology seeks G-d in history, though transfigured into pomposity, and the he is not there actually but only po­ high speculation becomes bombast. tentially. This is not only dubious On the whole “The Natural and the theology, but it is hardly likely to inspire the masses and to solve the Supernatural Jew” does not rise to the level of significance. It is, how­ problems of Judaism. ever, a symptomatic work. The new breed of young Jewish “theologians” OHEN is involved in a difficulty have a common desire to turn which confronts many contempo­ Judaism into something new. Like rary intellectuals. Dissatisfied with Nietzsche, who taught that man is secular philosophies and ideologies, something to be surpassed, they are recognizing the need for religion and preaching that Judaism is something its intellectual values, he is yet un­ to be surpassed. The constant com­ able to enter fully and naturally into plaint, based on an incorrect view of traditional religious life. As a result, Orthodoxy, is that traditional Juda­ he is impelled to introduce change, ism is just not enough; Jewish to accommodate religion to himself practice, the fulfillment of the com­ instead of accommodating himself to mandments, coupled with a sincere religion. This is not done light- faith, all this is not enough. There mindedly. On the contrary, one of the must be something more. And in a most distressing features of the book rather curious way, incomprehensible is an almost adolescent quality of in­ to mere logic, the insufficiency is sup­ tensity and self-consciousness — the plied by removing the observance and

mains what value these little and limited theological interpretations have.

C

january-February, 1964

51

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JEWISH LIFE

the commandment. By way of sub­ stitute we are led through the dark forests of verbiage or up into the high clouds of misty theorizing, where religion is replaced by theology. And

not even solid and comprehensive theology, but diffident and tentative thought, spinning its pretty and fragile webs that may catch flies but not men. It is a sorry substitution.

Two Views on R eligion and Public Education

By HOWARD I. LEVINE RELIGION AND THE SCHOOLS— THE GREAT CONTROVERSY, by Paul Blanshard, Beacon Press, Bos­ ton, 1963. 265 pp. $4.95.

RELIGION, THE COURTS, AND PUBLIC POLICY, by Robert G. Drinan S.J., McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New York, 1963. 261 pp. $5.95. the recent Supreme Court decisions bar­ ring Bible reading and prayer recita­ tions in the public schools, the issues at stake have by no means been re­ solved. The controversy regarding religion in the public schools still rages on. So, too, the controversy on Federal Aid to “church-related” schools continues to seethe. Intelli­ gent and sincere attempts to solve the problems put forth by the op­ posing factions have not met with substantial success. The opposing factions seem to despair of finding a

N

o t w it h s t a n d in g

R A BB I HOW ARD L E V IN E , w ho has w ritten m any articles for A nglo-Jew ish publications, teaches a t Stern College fo r W omen and the Teachers Institute o f Y eshiva U niversity.

January-February, 1964

middle ground or of convincing their opponents.- Each side feels that it is a battle for ultimate principles based on ultimate differences in basic out­ look.

Thus we find appearing on the cover of Paul Blanshard’s “Religion and the Schools—The Great Contro­ versy” the following quotation from the book: “The controversy is eternal be­ cause the issues are eternal. They will continue to plague and in­ spire men as long as they dis­ agree about the best method of bringing moral and spiritual ideas to their children.”

Mr. Blanshard, well known to the reading public for his controversial book “American Freedom and Catho­ lic Power,” takes his stand in no un­ certain terms. He is clearly and vigorously opposed to any breach in Jefferson’s wall of separation between Church and State. Despite the au­ thor’s strong views on the subject, he has succeeded in writing a book that will prove to be valuable to persons 53

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JEWISH LIFE

of any opinion in this controversy.

The book is highly informative, com­ prehensive, factual, well documented, and clearly written. The full texts of the Regent’s Prayer decision (Engel Versus Vitale) and the Bible-reading decision (Abington Versus Schempp) of the United States Supreme Court are appended to the text. On the whole, the author displays a fair and respectful attitude towards the oppo­ nents of strict separation of Church and State.

If anything, he seems too resigned to his religious opposition. He seems to feel that religionists, as a conse­ quence of their point of view, must press for integration of religious ele­ ments into general education. Thus he writes: “As long as religion endures and is considered vital by men, some continuing controversy about its re­ lation to the schools is as certain as the rising and setting of the sun.”

This attitude is most damaging to the good name of the Jewish com­ munity. If, as Blanshard implies, the religious position necessarily favors the breach of the wall of separation of Church and State, and the Jewish community firmly supports the wall of separation, does it riot follow that the Jewish position is a non-religious or irreligious position? This implica­ tion is heightened when Blanshard in discussion of the national reaction to the prayer decision lists under sepa­ rate headings “The Religious Re­ sponse,” “Protestant Reactions,” and “Secularists and Jews.”

T is equally unfortunate th at a book written from a completely different point of view, also sees the controversy in the same light, i.e., as a controversy of religion vs. secular­ ism, with the Jewish community on the secular side. Robert F. Drinan, a

I

January-February, 1964

Jesuit legal scholar, Dean of Boston College Law School, covers the same issues as Paul Blanshard and more in his book “Religion, the Courts and Public Policy.” He discusses not only the problem of religion in public education but also numerous other Church-State relationships, among them the Sunday Blue Laws, from a Roman Catholic point of view, con­ siderably bolstered by legal erudition.

This book is less factual, less direct, and in certain aspects more sophisti­ cated and complex than Blanshard’s book. Numerous questions are raised and left unanswered, much casuistry is displayed, and many of the au­ thor’s conclusions are communicated by innuendo rather than by direct explication. Dean Drinan makes a genuine effort to be fair to all parties involved in the controversy. Never­ theless he cannot escape the convic­ tion that the opponents of religion in the public schools are espousing a secularist point of view and are in fact opponents of a religious outlook, inasmuch as the Constitution does not really require the strict separation of Church and State now embodied in law. He also feels that the Jewish community, in largely favoring the Church-State separation philosophy, is aligning itself with the secularist point of view and thus is taking a stand against religion.

In certain respects Dean Drinan’s position is puzzling and strikes the reader as being inconsistent with other Catholic positions which he maintains. On the one hand, he is deeply critical of the secularist out­ look inherent in the Supreme Court’s decision on the Regent’s Prayer and sees in it the spiritual bankruptcy of our public schools and government encroachment in favor of secularism.

On the other hand, he sees the 55

“danger inherent in permitting a governmentally written prayer” (p. 111).

As a Roman Catholic, he is also op­ posed to Protestant denominational prayers or even to readings in the King James version of the Bible.

Doubtless he cannot insist on the adoption of Catholic prayers for other religious groups in the public school system.

The sum result of all of these posi­ tions is that Dean Drinan cannot logically favor the introduction of any prayers or Bible reading in the pub­ lic schools, notwithstanding his deepseated religious convictions and as­ pirations. It follows clearly that an opposition to these practices in the schools is not necessarily based on an irreligious or secularist outlook. Why not then allow the truth that the prayer decision is not intended as a blow against religion? As Mr. Justice Black states in the Regent's Prayer decision: “It has been argued that to apply to the Constitution in such a way as to prohibit state laws re­ specting an establishment of religious services in public schools is to indi­ cate a hostility towards prayer or towards religion. Nothing, of course, could be more wrong. The history of man is inseparable from the history of religion. . . . It is neither sacriligious nor anti-religious to say that each separate government in this country should stay out of the busi­ ness of writing or sanctioning official prayers and leave that purely reli­ gious sanction to the people them­ selves and to those the people choose to look to for religious guidance.”

IMILARLY, why not allow that the position favored by most Jews is not at all based on a secular outlook but on a concept of democracy

S 56

which has the very purpose of safeguarding religion and not of stifling it? It is highly unfortunate that both books are guilty of the error of falsely equating the secularists' position with the position of strict separation of Church and State, and the religious position with the loose separation outlook. If we would rid ourselves of these simplistic notions, we would be in a fa r better position to reach be­ yond the present impasse. It betrays poverty of thought on both sides to reduce the problem of Church-State relations to basic religious and secu­ larist outlooks which are irreconcil­ able.

Rather let us work on the assump­ tion that Church and State are not oppposing realms but different realms which at times impinge on each other.

When this occurs it behooves us to work out a formula which will pro­ tect the legimate interest of both of these spheres. It seems to this re­ viewer th at in order to protect the rights and freedoms of both religious and non-religious citizens, it is abso­ lutely necessary that religion should not be introduced in our public schools. For all practical purposes there is no such thing as non-sectar­ ian religion. Hence in a democratic pluralistic society such as ours it is totally impossible to impose religion on our public school system without violating the basic freedom of some groups.

On the other hand, religionists have a very strong argument against the absolute separation of Church and State. As Mr. Justice Stewart states in his dissent to the Bible reading decision: “It might also be argued that parents who want their children exposed to religious influences can adequately fulfill that wish off school property and outside school time.”

JEWISH LIFE

discussions in both books under re­ view make it abundantly clear that the key issue is that of public policy and not of Constitutional interpreta­ tion, which lends itself very often to a flexible approach. Precedents for such aid already exist in the auxiliary services extended to religion-sponsored schools, special grants for science projects, and the recent legislation providing for federal aid to colleges including those which are churchrelated.

It is also true that such aid would ANY Jewish religious leaders somewhat weaken the public school staunchly maintain that the af­ as an institution and strengthen the ternoon religious schools, by and parochial school. It is not, however, large, are not equal to the task of the proper task of government to transm itting our religious heritage to oppose the increase of strength of religious education and to maintain the next generation. the status quo position of the public It is my own view that to rectify school at all costs to religion. Were this imbalance, and at the same time this the case, logic would demand the to safeguard the public schools from actual prohibition of religion-spon­ sectarian religious influences, the sored schools—an aim espoused by most promising solution is th at of aid almost none of the secularists. What to religious schools by the Federal is desired is a balance of interest— Government. The issues of religion in not violating the rights of any and the public school and Federal Aid to satisfying the legitimate needs of the religious education are usually wedded many. together, but this union is neither Admittedly this approach has many necessary nor advisable. Whereas the difficulties to confront, but it has the former issue involves infringement to advantage of providing some “middle the liberty of persons, the latter issue way” solution to an extremely vexing involves no such danger, but only the problem whose intensity increases question of money. with time. It is not too much to hope It is true that financial support of that this approach, carried out with religious institutions is contrary to a intelligence and high purpose, can narrow construction of the establish­ point the way to a solution providing ment clause in the Constitution, but the greatest good for the greatest this difficulty is not insuperable. The number.

With all its surface persuasiveness, however, this argument seriously mis­ conceives the basic Constitutional jus­ tification for permitting the exercises at issue in these cases. For a com­ pulsory state educational system so structures a child1s life that if re­ ligious exercises are held to be an impermissible activity in schools, re­ ligion is placed at an artificial statecheated disadvantage.” (Emphasis supplied.)

M

January-Fébruary, 1964

57

Portrait of A Community

By JOAKIM ISAACS

THE HISTORY OF THE JEW S OF MILWAUKEE, by Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd P. Gartner. The Jewish P ublication Society, P hiladelphia, 1963. 533 pp. $6.00. rp iH IS study of a midwestern JewX ish community is a meaningful contribution to the knowledge of American Jewish history. Some critics will point out th at Milwaukee is a rather unimportant Jewish center compared to such ancient centers as Sura and Alexandria, or even such modern metropoli as New York or Boston. Yet, contemporary historians trying to reconstruct Jewish life in Babylonia or Egypt wish th at they had studies of the smaller Jewish settlements of these lands, and simi­ larly historians in the future trying to understand American Jewish life will find a work of this kind valuable.

The authors have* for the most part, avoided the pitfalls of basing the early p art of the work around a few of the first settlers who hap­ pen to have Jewish sounding names, and then speculating on their Jewish­ ness. A similar method of approachJOAKIM ISA A C S, a graduate o f Farleigh D ickinson U niversity, is w orking for his Ph.D . in A m erican H istory a t th e U n iversity of W isconsin. H is m ajor in terest is in th e history of th e Press.

58

ing Persian history would certainly exclude Mordecai and Esther from the study because of their Persian names. Instead, the authors have con­ cerned themselves with the Jewish identification of the early Jews, their communal activities, and their rela­ tionship with the larger Gentile com­ munity. Their treatment of the com­ munity is exhaustive and presents a clear, concise, and unbiased picture of the early Milwaukee Jewish commu­ nity in all its varied aspects.

It is unfortunate that the promise of the first part of the book is not fulfilled in the second half. A work of this nature, to serve its purpose, must maintain objectivity and be free of editorializing or partisan bias.

This, the authors have completely failed to do. The fact that this work originated at the Jewish Theological Seminary, and that it is strongly slanted in favor of Conservatism, is all too evident. fX IH E lack of objectivity is comX pounded by the confusing stand­ ard of chronology employed in the book. The authors state that their study ends in 1950, which in itself is unfortunate because it leaves the story of more than a decade of current history untold. Inconsistently howJEWISH LIFE

ever, the authors have in certain notable sections made exceptions to this date restriction. Thus a section of Louis J. Swichkow’s own syna­ gogue, which was dedicated in Sep­ tember of 1951, is mentioned in the text and is shown in a photo illustra­ tion. A 1954 picture of the Jewish Community Center likewise appears in the book and its dedication in 1955 is mentioned. Again, the appendix contains a list of many organizations and their leaders up to and including 1962.

Thus the book tends to present a confusing and misleading picture of contemporary Milwaukee Jewry.

Among numerous examples of bias which might be cited, Jewish Ortho­ doxy in Milwaukee is protrayed as “a tenuous affair” whose synagogues “. . . remained fast in the old neigh­ borhood where Jews were fewer each year and orthodox worshippers at an exiguous minimum.” To buttress this doleful picture the reader finds op­ posite page 140 photographs of three orthodox shools, each as it looked in the early 1900,s. Poor photography makes them look even older! Thus one gets the picture of the total decay of Orthodoxy. Such a view could have been corrected by showing at least one of the fine new synagogues which orthodox^ Jews have erected in the new neighborhoods of Jewish settle­ ment. It is true that such buildings were constructed after 1950 but as has been noted, other pictures from the later period were included in the volume.

A further example can be seen in the area of Jewish education. The authors make brief mention of the existence of a Jewish all day school in Milwaukee in 1948 and the opposi­ tion to it. The book correctly states that the school failed, but, by not January-February, 1964

giving any reason for its failure, implies that its demise was due to a general non-acceptance by the com­ munity. The truth of the matter is that the school failed for totally dif­ ferent reasons. No mention is made even in a footnote, of the re-establishment of the school in 1960. While this again is outside the scope of the book, the authors do not even cite the Hillel Academy (as the school is known) in the appendix which covers the period up to 1962. Further, the writers, while admitting the vigor of Rabbi David Shapiro, state that his efforts in the community had been futile. Yet Rabbi Shapiro was most instrumental in bringing about the establishment and growth of the Hillel Academy, among his many other contributions to Milwaukee Jewry. The authors assert that the present status of Milwaukee Ortho­ doxy is tenuous, and that the future lies only with Conservatism and Re­ form. But surely they that “sow in tears shall reap in joy,” and Mil­ waukee already can see the future fruit that will come from a Hillel Academy which today boasts four grades and nearly 60 students—a fact which must appear amazing to readers of “The History of the Jews of Milwuakee” who gain the impres­ sion of the dead ghost of Orthodoxy wandering through empty shools in the old section of the city. f 13HHE last section of the book is X also weak in its treatment of the Hitler era in Milwaukee. Although it is well known that Milwaukee was a center of German settlement and a city where the notorious GermanAmerican Bund as well as other Antisemitic organizations were active, little space in the book is devoted to Jewish response to these threats.

59

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JEWISH LIFE

While one must commend the au­ thors for the exhaustive use of avail­ able sources, it is surprising that no mention is made of the Joseph Baron collection as well as several other smaller collections, among the list of the holdings of the Wisconsin State Historical Society in Madison.

These are essential for any scholar wishing to do further research into

January-February, 1964

the history of Milwaukee or Wiscon­ sin Jewry.

Thus, “The History of the Jews of Milwaukee” does not carry out the promise of its earlier chapters and one must hope that in the future the history of the city will be completed from 1925 to the present with the scope, detail, and most important, the objectivity necessary for such a study.

61

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JEWISH LIFE

Letters to the Editor ONCE MORE TH E TE R A P H IM New York, N. Y. The rejoinder of Ben Amittay in the last issue of J ewish Life requires a short reply. Nowhere did I state that Rachel believed in the Teraphim.

I only pointed to the undeniable fact that she took them along instead of destroying or hiding them as she should have done. She would have deviated from the laws of the Torah also when, as Ben Amittay suggests, she had intended to retain them as objects of a rt or to return them to her father after he had convinced himself of their impotency. (See Devorim 7:25, 26).

Rabbi P hilip B iberfeld

J. L. ON POST Port Campbell, Kentucky Let me express my gratitude for your prompt attention to my request for copies of J ewish L ife for the use of Jewish military personnel and their families at Fort Campbell. What to you may seem a small contribution toward our combined effort, is indeed a large pillar in the spiritual lives of many individuals.

Let me give you some statistics through which you can see the work you are helping here: at the moment, we are exactly twenty-three young Jewish families at Fort Campbell and five of these families observe KashJanuary-February, 1964

ruth, taking meat from the same butcher I do in Louisville over 200 miles away. I hope to increase this number by four more families shortly.

Our adult education program has a weekly attendance of fourteen and is on a steady increase. Eight people now read Hebrew who never did so before and have developed a keen in­ terest in the perpetuation of our tra ­ ditional faith. At our services, we have replaced the J.W.B. Prayer Book with the Birnbaum Siddur. By Chanu­ kah, our goal was set for at least eight­ een homes with candles lit in their front windows. Happily, we achieved it. For last Sukkoth, aside from myself, there was another set of Daled Minim on post. There were also those who for the first time in their lives benched Ethrog and Lulov and made a B’rochah in a Sukkah. We also have a small Hebrew school of four children, which I teach myself, and the parents of these children now also attend the adult class and weekly Shabboth services.

This information may help you to realize the impact that J ewish L ife and the UOJCA literature are mak­ ing in the lives of these people. Many of them had no Jewish education, and came from backgrounds where expo­ sure to traditional Judaism is prac­ tically nil.

We here have the golden oppor­ tunity to teach these people the beauty 63

of our faith. I confidently hope that when these people return to their civilian lives they will become the staunch supporters of the orthodox tradition and ideals.

Rabbi Rafael S affra, C h aplain

TH E EC UM ENICA L CO UNCIL Brooklyn, N. Y. I wish to congratulate both J ewish Life and Rabbi Norman Lamm on his stirring article, “The Jews and the Ecumenical Council,” which ap­ peared in the Kislev-Teveth issue.

This article is a public exposition of inherent Jewish pride, and a cour­ ageous piece of writing. It would be­ hoove us all, as Jews, members of the Priestly Kingdom, to acquire some of the “gaivah” manifest in Rav Kook’s declaration as quoted in the article.

It would be a great public service if J ewish Life were to reprint this article, and see that copies of it are made available in every synagogue in this country. Any “Yiddishe neshomah,” even one which has strayed from the path of Torah, will immedi­ ately recognize the truth of what the

Mm

THE

author is saying, and benefit thereby.

N. J. Kramer [Reprints of the articles on the Ecu­ menical Council by Rabbi Lamm and Dr. Hoffmann are now available at 15^ per copy for less than 50 copies; 10 ^ per copy for orders of 5ft or more copies.—Editor] Staten Island, N. Y. A brief footnote to the article by Rabbi Lamm on the Ecumenical Coun­ cil. When a condemned prisoner thanks the court for a suspended, or a com­ muted sentence or some other mild punishment, he thereby admits his guilt by implying that he merited a stronger punishment and is therefore grateful for the lighter penalty.

Gratitude for a commutation of the sentence imposed on Jewry upon the charge of deicide contains within it the seeds of an admission that the original charge is true! Accordingly, such expressions are not merely im­ politic and undignified (as Rabbi Lamm correctly charges) but are actual kefirah.

Reuben E. Gross

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