Jewish Life Sept-Oct 1964

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A N A T O M Y O F A D IA S P O R A —A U S T R A L IA N J E W R Y • IS R A E L -A SECU LA R STA TE? T H E P O R T U G U E S E C O N SU L A N D T H E 1 0 ,0 0 0 JE W S A N E W L O O K A T A N O L D B L U E P R IN T F O R G O O D L IV IN G • THE CHALLENGE S O M E A S P E C T S O F T H E P R E S ID E N T IA L C A M P A IG N TISHRI-GHESHVAN 5725 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1964

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ANNO UNCEMENT

66th Anniversary Biennial N ational Convention OF T H E

Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America will be held

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AT THE Shoreham H otel in W A SH IN G T O N , D.C. on W ednesday, N ovem ber 25—Sunday, Novem ber 29, 1964 Kislev 20 to Kislev 24, 5725 • PLEASE RESERVE THESE DATES

Thanksgiving Week . . . in the Nation*s Capital.

Vol. XXXII, No. 1 / Sept.-Oct. 1964/Tishri-Cheshvan 5725

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EDITORIALS THE TERMS OF JEWISH UNITY ............ ..........

S aul B ernstein , Editor R euben E. G ross R abbi S. J. S harfman L ibby K laperman P aul H. B aris

Editorial Associates

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ARTICLES SOME ASPECTS OF THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN / Marvin Schick ...................... .......... . .......

5 ISRAEL— A SECULAR STATE? / Louis I. Rabinow itz.................................... 12

G abrielle R iback

Editorial Assistant JEWISH U F E is published bi-monthly. Subscription two years $4.50, three years $6.00, four years $7.50. Foreign: Add 25 cents per year.

Editorial and Publication Office: 84 Fifth Avenue New York 10011, N. Y. ALgonquin 5-4100

THE PORTUGUESE CONSUL AND THE 10,000 JEWS / Harry E zra tty.......................

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SUKKAH— AN EVOLVING SYMBOL/ Shubert S p e r o .......................................... 21 THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE AMERICAN JEWISH CONFERENCE / Isacque Graeber : ......

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A NEW LOOK AT AN OLD BLUEPRINT FOR GOOD LIVING / Victor S o lo m o n .............. 46 ANATOMY OF A DIASPORA— AUSTRALIAN JEWRY / Aryeh N ew m an.............................. 54

Published by UNION OF O rthodox Jew ish C ongregations of A merica

FICTION THE CHALLENGE / Gershen M arinbach.............. 41

M oses I. F euerstein

President Benjamin Keenigsberg, Nath­ an K. Gross, Samuel L. Brenn glass, Harold M. Ja­ cobs, Herbert Berman, Vice Presidents; Rabbi Joseph Karasick, Treasurer; Harold H. Boxer, Secretary; David Politi, Financial Secretary.

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

BOOK REVIEWS THE BRANDEIS STORY — HALF TOLD / Nathan Lewin .......................................... 61 MIXED MARRIAGE IN MIXED PERSPECTIVE / Solomon H. G re e n .....................................

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

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Drawing on Page 53 and on Cover by Moshe L. Zwang © Copyright 1964 by UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

Septem ber-October, 1964

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RABBI BERNARD ROSENSWEIG, the distinguished au­ thor of “The Gates of Interfaith” which appeared in our previous issue, will bear with us, we hope, for so be­ latedly introducing him to our readers. The Rav of Con­ gregation Shaarei ^efillah in Toronto, Rabbi Rosensweig has served as Vice President of the National MizrachiHapoel Hamizrachi of Canada. He also lectures on Mental Health to the graduating classes of nurses at Toronto’s hospitals.

HARRY EZRATTY is an attorney who has also written for a variety of publications. His article, “The Portuguese Consul and the 10,000 Jews,” stems from his interest in the efforts of important figures of Spain and Portugal to aid Jews during World War II. MARYIN SCHICK teaches Political Science at Hunter College. A Musmach of Yeshivath Rabbi Jacob Joseph, he will receive his Doctorate in Political Science from New York University in October. Rabbi Schick is active in Agudath Israel and is National Secretary of the Torah Schools for Israel.

among our contributors

The spiritual leader of Congregation Ahavath Achim in Fairfield, Conn., RABBI VICTOR SOLOMON is a mem­ ber of the Executive Committee of the Rabbinical Council of America and Vice President of the Rabbinic Alumni of Yeshiva University. He holds a doctorate in Religious Philosophy from Temple University and is the author of a work in Comparative Religion scheduled for publication this fall.

DR. ISACQUE GRAEBER has contributed many arti­ cles to scholarly journals and among his published books are, “Paradise Rediscovered,” a history of early American Jewry, and “American Jewish Scholarship, 1930 to Date.”

He has served for many years as Director and Special Con­ sultant in the field of Jewish education.

RABBI SHUBERT SPERO has been spiritual leader of the Young Israel of Cleveland since 1950 and is Secretary of the Orthodox Rabbinical Council there. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brooklyn College, he received an M.A. degree from Western Reserve University where he is a Lecturer in Philosophy.

GERSHON MARINBACH is a Certified Public Account­ ant and the writer of the column, “Nu, I Ask You,” which appears in the Young Israel Viewpoint.

RABBI DR. LOUIS I. RABINOWITZ is well-known to our readers for his previous contributions to Jewish Life.

Before moving to Israel, Dr. Rabinowitz was Chief Rabbi of Transvaal, South Africa and Professor of Judaica at Witwatersrand University.

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JEW ISH LIFE

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T h e T erm s o f Jew ish U nity HE continuing upsurge in the precincts of Torah Jewry was evidenced through the past year both by inner develop­ ment and by sharpened pressure on the part of non-orthodox forces. Facing in opposite directions, the differing elements in Jewry are drawn towards opposite poles. The points of junc­ ture are subject to increasing strain, reflected in every situa­ tion with which the Jew is confronted. As the new year unfolds,fcit becomes apparent that this tension conditions the entire agenda of Jewish affairs.

How shall the problem be met?

All considerations must be keyed to recognition of the in­ herent one-ness of the Jewish people. We are all co-responsible for each other; we all share the same collective destiny. Differ­ ences of belief and view, profound, fundamental though they may be, must never be permitted to obscure this truth. But neither may they be themselves obscured. The orthodox Jew, by the very fact of his orthodoxy, is the most conscious of the implications and responsibilities of Jewish peoplehood. He is accordingly the most responsive to the call of unity. It is the orthodox Jew, then, who must take the lead in efforts to re­ verse the process of Jewish fragmentization.

Does this mean that the orthodox Jew must subordinate his tenets and his program to the objective of unity? Does it sig"Wings nify that he “recognize” heterodoxies and secularisms as “wings of of Judaism,” having right of existence in Jewry? The answer Judaism " can only be an unequivocal No. Our beliefs are, of their na­ ture, immutable, as Torah itself is immutable. There is, there can only be, one rightful Jewish allegiance: the authentic Torah faith, orthodox Judaism. What is in order now is the very re­ verse of subordination: to inspire the totality of Jewry with the understanding that the tenets of Torah, the binding herit­ age of all Israel, constitute the only basis for Jewish collectivity, now and in the future, as in the past. Just as the Kosher repast is the only one which all Jews may share and as the orthodox synagogue is the only one in which all Jews may join in wor­ ship, so the community committed to Torah is the only one which, in the true sense, may embrace all Jews. In short, the terms of Jewish unity are the terms of the orthodox Jew.

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AN it be realistically conceived that those who—whether C as individuals or as organized groups— are severed from Torah loyalties can be induced to accept such terms? Does not September-October, 1964

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festering conflict over an5’endless chain of Jewish issues gainsay any such possibility? What is more, is it conceivable that ortho­ dox Jewry, habituated to non-orthodox dominance in Jewish affairs and; Jewish expression, can now command the selfassurance to assume the leadership of the Jewish world?

Not for a moment may the difficulties be minimized. But let us not minimize either— as in this case we are prone to do — the factors which point to affirmative answers. Let us realize, Changed first of all, that the balance of relative strength and weakness Balance as between orthodox and non-orthodox forces has changed drastically in recent years. A quarter-century of creative en­ deavor in basic fields has borne fruit in a phenomenally re­ vitalized Orthodoxy, firmly rooted, well attuned to the environment of our times, growing steadily from its own re­ sources and ideologically conscious as never before. In this same period all the capacities, massive organization, and gran­ diose equipment of the non-orthodox have found their epitome in “the vanishing Jew.” This same vanishing Jew is growing uneasily aware of his own inner weakness, barrenness and tran­ sience— and he is increasingly aware of the potent strength be­ side him. Instinctively, he braces himself to resist that strength, he strikes out against it, he seeks to conquer and command it.

But at the same time, he is driven by hunger for the vitality which that surging strength holds forth.

Therein lies the key to the situation. The Jew without Torah Noa-Orthodox or with an emasculated Torah needs the Torah-true Jew—needs Dependence him indispensibly. The need pervades every facet of Jewish life—alike in community endeavor, in public affairs, in the nurturing of the Jewish mind and the projection of the Jew­ ish presence. The Torah Jew, too, needs the other—but only in the moral sense, not, as in the opposite case, in the physical and spiritual sense. The orthodox Jew can, if necessary, get along on his own; the non-orthodox Jew can not.

HE program of Orthodoxy, freed from the shackles of de­ pendence and compromise, must not now be restricted to the keynote of independence. It must be addressed, in broadest terms, to the achievement of a valid Jewish interdependence; it must affirm and must project Torah as the essential factor in the relation of Jew with Jew and in the voicing of the Jew­ ish message. The opportunity and the obligation alike are at hand. If vision and courage are brought to bear, the achieve­ ment can be beyond measure.

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JEW ISH LIFE

Som e A spects of the Presidential C am p aign

By MARVIN SCHICK

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The 1964 Presidential campaign reflecting major changes in American society brings to the fore the question: Is the future political pattern to be keyed to competing ideologies?

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HE nomination of Senator Gold- fabric of the nation. Unlike 1960, re­ water as Republican candidate for ligion and religious issues do not figure T President has unloosed a spate of fore­ to be important factors in influencing casts concerning the future shape of American political life. As a result of this single event, we are being told that the Republican Party has moved decisively to the right, that the tradi­ tionally Democratic South will be twoparty and perhaps even predominantly Republican in national elections, that the long-discussed (and in many quar­ ters, hoped-for) realignment of the two major parties along liberal and conservative lines is in the offing, and finally, that these new parties will be responsible and disciplined in the pat­ tern of European ideological parties.

Indeed, so profound are these pre­ dicted changes that if they should come to pass, the 1964 election would go down as a major turning point in the history of the United States.

In one important respect, however, this year’s campaign will be neither novel nor productiye of fundamental alterations in the political and social September-October, 1964

voters. The major presidential nom­ inees are Protestant, and besides, the election of John F. Kennedy may have settled for all time the issue of a Cath­ olic President. Furthermore, in place of a debate over Federal aid to paro­ chial schools we likely will have some discussion of what is the proper rple of the central government in the field of education. Senator Goldwater has recorded his opposition to all forms of Federal aid to education. However, he has stated that if Congress approves of such aid, parochial education should be included. Neither he nor President Johnson can be expected to emphasize this aspect of the question.

The Democratic Platform partly satis­ fies the demands of Catholics for aid to parochial schools without offending opponents of such aid. It comes out in support of aid to all levels of edu­ cation “to the extent permitted by the Constitution.”

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This does not mean that there are no religious angles to this election campaign. There are two that merit

comment, although it is necessary to stress that they do not loom large in the context of the election as a whole.

RELIGIOUS A N G LES HE Republican platform pledges that it will not get out of committee. the party’s “support to a constitu­ The Democratic Platform is silent on T tional amendment permitting those in­ this issue.* In short, the candidates ran dividual groups who choose to do so to exercise their religion freely in pub­ lic places, provided religious exercises are not prepared or prescribed by the state or political subdivision thereof and no person’s participation therein is coerced, thus preserving the tradi­ tional separation of Church and State.

Some days before the adoption of the platform, there were definite signs that the Republicans would come out in support of the constitutional amend­ ment offered by Congressman Frank Becker of New York or one of the other proposals to override the Su­ preme Court’s decisions on school prayer and Bible reading. The plank, as phrased, is very weak and is pos­ sibly compatible with the high court’s interpretation of the First Amend­ ment. Apparently, it was the strong opposition of religious leaders and groups that induced the platform writ­ ers to adopt only a general statement on the subject. Earlier, the same op­ position, and some from Roman Cath­ olic sources, was manifested in testi­ mony before the House Judiciary Committee. While it once appeared that the Becker Amendment would pass the House, present prospects are * This article was originally written prior to the Democratic National Convention but con­ tains additional observations written subsequent to that event.—Editdr

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gain little and lose much by raising the issue, and we probably won’t be hearing anything significant on the subject from Senator Goldwater and President Johnson in the coming weeks.

One aspect of the campaign that has religious overtones is the selection by Senator Goldwater of Representative William E. Miller as his running mate.

Miller is a Roman Catholic, and conse­ quently some commentators have sur­ mised that he was given the second spot in order to strengthen the ticket’s, appeal in the Northeast and other in­ dustrial areas with large numbers of Catholics. This explanation seems plausible, but it is not supported by the facts. Goldwater’s strategy for vic­ tory in November is apparently based on his getting the electoral votes of states with the least proportion of Catholics. Some of these states have many voters who refused to vote for Kennedy in 1960 because he was a Roman Catholic. At the same time, Goldwater has all but conceded the Northeast, including Miller’s home state, to Johnson. A more likely view is that Miller is on the ticket because he is an aggressive, hard-hitting cam­ paigner and of the party’s conservative wing. In an election year when ideo­ logical positions are to be stressed, Goldwater plainly did not want a vice^ presidential nominee whose proJEW ISH LIFE

nouncements would be at divergence with his own.

While it is apparent that there were more compelling reasons for Congress­ man Miller’s selection than his Cathol­ icism, Senator Kennedy’s victory may have altered the style of national pol­ itics. Protestant-Catholic ticket balanc­ ing may become part of the presiden­ tial picture in much the same, fashion that we have come to expect ethnic and religious balance in the New York State and New York City elections and numerous others throughout the nation.

Although President Johnson did not choose a Catholic as his running mate, the New York Times reported that he consulted with Catholic leaders and got assurances that they would not object to Senator Hubert Humphrey.

There have also been reports that the President did not select a Catholic, in part, because he thought that such a

choice would probably mean that fu­ ture tickets would have to maintain a Protestant-Catholic balance.

An interesting aspect of the cam­ paign relates to the distribution of the Catholic vote. As is well known, for many years the Catholics were main­ stays of the Democratic Party and a vital chain in the coalition forged by President Roosevelt. In 1952 and 1956 large numbers of Catholics deserted the party. In 1960, many of these— but certainly not all—returned to the fold to support John F. Kennedy.

There has been considerable specula­ tion that the Catholic electorate, con­ servative in its views and in reaction against Negro demands, will form much of the support for Senator Goldwater. But the ) major public opinion polls show that a higher per­ centage of Catholic voters now sup­ ports President Johnson than sup­ ported Kennedy in 1960.

G O LDW ATER A N D THE JEW ISH VOTE INCE the rise of the Roosevelt-led era! as the Democratic vice-presiden­ Democratic majority coalition in tial nominee will appeal to many S 1932, most Jews have been identified Jews. It should be noted that Senator with the Democratic Party. This sup­ port of the Democrats by Jewish voters, which reversed their previous allegiance to the Republican Party, has been soundly reinforced by the New Deal and Fair Deal social wel­ fare programs, the Roosevelt admin­ istration’s opposition to Nazism, and the post-war influx of Jewish immi­ grants. Today, upwards of 80 percent of the Jewish electorate is believed to be Democratic. Senator Goldwater’s prospects of getting much support fr^m Jews are negligible.

The choice of a well-known libSeptember-October, 1964

Humphrey was the sponsor of the Federal Humane Slaughter legislation that was enacted several years ago. Al­ though the Federal Humane Slaugh­ tering Act recognizes Shechitah as a humane method of animal slaughter and provides exemption for Shechitah, nevertheless, many Jews have feared that, as in the case of similar legisla­ tion in other countries, this measure will pave the way for anti-Shechitah legislation. Experience subsequent to the passage of the Federal Act has shown that, among the groups work­ ing for the enactment of state hu7

mane slaughter bills are Antisemitic organizations.

As a reflection of the Republican Party’s traditional weakness with Jews and other ethnic minorities, the party’s platform is generally inade­ quate in most areas that are of con­ cern to the Jewish community. The brief statement on immigration, sup­ porting “legislation seeking to reunite families and continuation of the ‘fairshare’ refugee program,” is virtually meaningless and already a number of national Jewish organizations have conveyed to Senator Goldwater their disappointment with the plank. The much-celebrated civil rights plank is a far cry from the broad and progres­ sive statement of the 1960 platform and is inconsistent with the over­ whelming support given by Republican members of Congress to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unhappily, the 1964 plank included several new pro­ visions that can be fairly described as an appeal to the “white backlash.” For example, opposition is expressed to “federally sponsored ‘inverse discrimi­ nation,’ whether by the shifting of jobs or the abandonment of neighborhood schools for reasons of race.”

On issues of more direct interest to Jewish voters, the Republican plat­ form is more satisfactory. It contains a brief condemnation of the persecu­ tion of Jews and other minorities in Communist countries. A similar state­ ment is included in the Democratic Platform. Another plank reaffirms the pledges of 1960 concerning the Middle East, which were extensive and generally favorable to Israel. How­ ever, the failure of the party to be more explicit this year has evoked protests from some Jewish groups.

There is little to choose from between 8

the two platforms on the subject of Israel.

More important than platform planks are the attitudes and beliefs of the Republican nominee. Relatively few Jews are expected to vote for Goldwater; but there still is a need to come to grips with what his nomina­ tion means to the Jewish community.

HATEVER Jews may think of Senator Goldwater, there is no warrant for the belief that either he or his program is anti-Jewish. Al­ though the son of a meshumad, Sen. Goldwater has more than once taken occasion to express pride in his Jew­ ish ancestry. According to reports, a daughter once considered settling in an Israeli kibbutz. Moreover, there is the possibility that Goldwater as Pres­ ident might pursue policies more fa­ vorable to Israel than has been the case with some recent administrations.

United States policy in the Middle East has long been influenced by the State Department’s conviction that American interests in the area are best promoted by stands that do not anger the Arab countries, especially the United Arab Republic. Goldwater, on the other hand, is strongly antiNasser, although this position is more the product of an aversion to what he believes are Nasser’s Red ties than of an affinity for Israel.

However, a Goldwater administra­ tion could pose some serious prob­ lems. The Republican candidate is committed to enforcement of the civil rights laws and his administration would not be able to substantially re­ verse the economic and social changes of the past few decades, marked by the expanded role of the Federal gov­ ernment. What is disturbing is the likelihood that the style and pro-

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JEW ISH LIFE

nouncement of a Goldwater presi­ dency would further encourage the extreme nationalist organizations that already form much of the backbone of Goldwater’s support. Jews know too well that throughout history calls for chauvinistic patriotism and nation­ al consciousness have frequently pre­ saged and accompanied the harass­ ment and persecution of the Jewish population.

It is disturbing that Goldwater, as part of his campaign strategy, has failed to explicitly repudiate the many radical right organizations that are fomenting hatred of minorities; in fact, he has clandestinely accepted their support. This and his reported liaison with West Germany’s neoNazis betray, at least, a lack of sensi­ tivity to the feelings of ethnic and religious minorities.

Should Senator Goldwater be de­

feated, as seems probable at this time, the concern of the Jewish community over rightist extremism will remain.

Sociological studies indicate that the radical right is largely an outgrowth of the frustrations being experienced by middle class and upper-middle class Americans in such areas as the Cold War and the Negro revolution.

While Goldwater and others call militantly for victory over the Communist powers, it is altogether apparent that there are no easy formulas for crush­ ing these forces or getting out of the Cold War; and while there is wide­ spread recognition of the need for a cooling off of racial tensions, it is certain that the Negro leadership and masses will become more activist and demanding. The frustrations of the right-wing will remain, perhaps fed further by a Goldwater defeat.

THE W HITE BACKLASH HE passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a great victory for a major segment of organized religion in this country. While the Negro struggle is by definition a moral issue, until recently the largest part of the American clergy remained aloof from the civil rights movement. But not too long ago an important change began to develop and more and more reli­ gious groups and leaders have an­ nounced their commitment to that movement, which many soon trans­ lated into personal participation in demonstrations and lobbying in behalf of the Kennedy-Johnson civil rights

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September-October, 1964

program. This commitment helped to break the Southern filibuster and, as some Southern legislators ruefully charged, without such pressure there would have been no closure and civil rights laws.

Now we are getting daily reports of a white backlash. We are being told that there is a growing anti-Negro sentiment among working-class and lower-middle-class Northern whites who live in the urban industrial cen­ ters and that the effects of this reac­ tion will be felt in November. Apart from the political ramifications, the existence of this backlash would be a 9

sharp setback to the religious commu­ nity. It would mean that on the most important social question of the day, large numbers of church-going Amer­ icans have rejected the counsel and example of their spiritual leaders.

We may, however, inquire whether there is in fact a white backlash that is more than a passing vocal reaction to newsworthy events such as Negro riots in New York City and elsewhere.

How meaningful are the samplings of public opinion that show that a cer­ tain percent of Northern whites do not like Negroes? Conceivably, the en­ tire phenomenon may be in large part the product of all the publicity about it. The more speculation about the white attitude, the more people believe that it exists. After all, not too long ago, the bombings and police dogs of Birmingham produced an anti-South reaction that contributed to the agita­ tion for new civil rights legislation.

By the time this article is published, public school integration shall have had its first tests in Mississippi. Will hard-core, violent Southern resistance to six-year-old Negroes dissipate this white backlash that we have been hearing of?

HILE it is still too early to assess the durability of this phenom­ enon, I think that it is important to distinguish between two forms of antiNegro sentiment, although for the Negro they often amount to the same thing. The first is the expected increase in racial tensions that occurs wherever there are increased contacts between Negro and white, especially in the fields of housing, public school educa­ tion, and employment. In these situa­ tions, the white person who has at­ tained a reasonable level of comfort

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and security, often after some years of struggle, fears that his position is jeopardized by the^ Negro and ex­ presses these fears in anti-Negro terms. But this person,' in attempting to retain his preferred position against a supposed danger, does not reject the civil rights movement and probably will admit that the Negro has a moral and legal right to an improved lot. His anti-Negro expressions will not outlive the termination of the challenge to his position and will not affect his conduct in the voting booth.

The second form of anti-Negro sen­ timent is a denial of the moral and civil rights of the Negro, who, it is said, has no right to make demands for better housing and education and improved job opportunities. This atti­ tude exists independent of the prox­ imity of Negroes to the prejudiced white and does find expression at the ballot box.

The coming election will shed light on whether this backlash, seen by many observers in the Wallace show­ ing in the Wisconsin, Indiana, and Maryland primaries, is of the first or second type. Senator Goldwaters campaign is in a position to capitalize on the white discontent. He talks of making the growing crime rate of the cities a major issue, a not too subtle reference to the Negro. Should he win the election or come close (at the time of writing this article, the major pub­ lic opinion polls have Johnson win­ ning the popular election by between fourteen and twenty million votes) we will know that in the North there is a widespread and enduring reaction against the Negro revolution. But should Johnson win in a landslide we will know that while many Northern whites still do not accept the Negro demands that affect them, they have JEW ISH LIFE

not rejected the civil rights move­ ment.

In a sense the election will also be a test for the religious community— any evidence of a white backlash vote must be interpreted as a repudiation of the commitment made by the clergy to the civil rights movement. The ef­

forts of the clergymen-demonstrators, many of whom have been beaten anil jailed, will have had little effect on the attitudes of the nation’s church-goers, and the ministers might have done more for civil rights by staying home and trying to educate their congre­ gants*

C H A N G E S IN STORE THE opening words of this arti­ must be regarded as a conservative we briefly listed four momen­ president. And when, after twenty ItousNclechanges in the American political years of political drought, the Repub­ system that have been predicted as a result of the nomination of Senator Goldwater. The odds are overwhelm­ ingly against these changes coming to pass. The forces in American society that make for our decentralized twoparty system are many and deeply rooted and are unlikely to be upset by one election campaign. Our major parties are decentralized and not ideo­ logically oriented because, of neces­ sity, they are coalitions of groups that represent divergent sections and inter­ ests. As long as our society is pluralis­ tic we must expect that our parties will compete close to the center of the political spectrum and will reject extremes. A generation ago an Amer­ ican president effected a major social and economic revolution. But as some of our most eminent historians point out, Franklin D. Roosevelt chose to work his reforms within the existing framework of government and hence

S 3ptember-October, 1964

licans regained the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower reconfirmed and solidi­ fied this conservative New Deal rev­ olution, as Senator Goldwater used to point out.

This does not mean that the 1964 presidential election will leave things exactly as they were before San Fran­ cisco. To be sure, the center of gravity of the Republican Party has shifted to the right and this opens up new opportunities for Republicans in the South. Furthermore, the related social phenomena that were discussed earlier, the radical right and the white backlash, inject an element of unpre­ dictability into the campaign. If the election results confirm the strength of the radical right and the intensity of the anti-Negro sentiment, we may be undergoing a polarization of Amer­ ican society and we may be well on the road toward centralized and ideo­ logical political parties.

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Israel—A Secular Sta te ?

By LOUIS I. RABINO WITZ

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piece of paper and passed it on to me, and when I saw it, it gave me a shock.

It was the Hebrew for the word “col­ ored,” which is the word used in South Africa for those of mixed racial de­ scent, white and black.

That rabbi, as a result of his long stay in South Africa, had acquired that almost sixth sense which is shared by many Afrikaners, of being able to detect the “touch of the tar brush” in people who, to the ordinary person, appear to be completely white. When I taxed him about it he said vaguely that one could tell from their finger­ nails and from the back of their ears, and he had detected it in this young lady. With their fanatical adherence to the doctrine of “apartheid,” the Government had recently passed a most inaptly-named law, the “Immo­ rality Act” which made marriage be­ tween people of two racial groups a criminal offence. Moreover, in view of a suspicion which they entertained that certain ministers of religion were closing their eyes to this most unre­ ligious aspect of “immorality,” they included among the “criminals” the officiating minister, placing upon him the onus of proving that bride and groom were both of the same race.

Were it proved after the ceremony

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JEW ISH LIFE

HE incident which I am about to relate was painful. It occurred during the period that I was Chief Rabbi in South Africa, and Ab Beth Din in Johannesburg. A young lady had registered her forthcoming mar­ riage in a local synagogue and the rabbi had properly referred her to the Beth Din in view of the circumstances.

The circumstances were that she was not of Jewish birth and had been con­ verted to Judaism by a Beth Din oth­ er than the local one. That being so, her certificate of conversion had to be confirmed by us. She duly appeared and produced her conversion certifi­ cate. It was from a recognized Beth Din in Israel, and as her prospective husband was not a Kohen there was no impediment in Jewish law to her marriage.

I was about to ask the Secretary of the Beth Din to come in, in order to instruct him to issue the necessary authorization, when the senior Dayan, who had been in South Africa for over thirty years, asked me to wait.

He peered closely at the young lady and then said casually to her, “Where were you born?,” to which, after a perceptible hesitation, she answered, “In St. Helena.”

The Dayan scribbled a word on a

that this was not so, the minister would be guilty of a criminal act with the prescribed penalties.

To complete the picture, it was laid down, in order to avoid complicated investigations, that all the inhabitants of the island of St. Helena were to be deemed “colored,” in view of the ex­ tensive intermarriage which had taken place there over the centuries.

HE dilemma in which I found my­ self can therefore be imagined.

T Here was a young lady who accord­ ing to Jewish law was Jewish, and permitted to marry any eligible Jew provided he was not a Kohen. On the other hand, any rabbi performing this marriage would commit a punishable breach of the laws of the country. We could not declare that her conversion was not valid, neither could we au­ thorize the marriage. I told the un­ fortunate girl that we would commu­ nicate with the rabbi who had been asked to perform the ceremony. He was asked to attend a session of the Beth Din, where I addressed him as follows: “We as a Beth Din hereby declare that there is no impediment in Jewish law to your performing this marriage. But at the same time we deem it our duty to inform you that if you do perform it, we cannot hold ourselves responsible for any conse­ quences which may ensue as a result of a breach of the laws of South Afri­ ca.” He fully realized the position, and of course did not perform that marriage. (In this instance, the only one of its kind to come before me in South Africa, I am glad to say that the couple went to another country, married and settled there, and are, ac­ cording to my latest information, liv­ ing there happily.)

September-October, 1964

HE foregoing was a striking ex­ ample of a phenomenon which, in less spectacular fashion, is charac­ teristic of the limitations imposed on a Beth Din, or on the religious au­ thorities, in the Diaspora. The laws of the state in which the Jew lives are not the laws of the Torah, and as a loyal citizen of his country he is bound to obey its laws. Insofar as the laws of marriage are concerned, the rights and limitations of the religious author­ ities can be expressed simply. He can refuse to officiate at a wedding which is not in accordance with the regula­ tions of the Torah, but he is forbidden to celebrate a marriage which may be in accordance with the laws of the Torah if the laws of the country do not permit it (e.g. the marriage of an uncle and niece in most countries.)

That is the position with regard to the Jew as part of, and living in, a non-Jewish civilization. What about the Jewish State of Israel, however?

The sad fact must be stated that the law of the State of Israel is not the law of the Torah. It is a bewildering hybrid of old Ottoman Law, British Law, Emergency Regulations passed by the Mandatory Government and never repealed, and laws passed by the State since its inception, without ref­ erence to the Torah. This being the fact, it would appear that the Jewish religious law bears the same relation­ ship to the law of Israel as it bears to that of any non-Jewish state. The parallel, however, is not exact. The possibility of a head-on collision be­ tween Jewish religious law and secu­ lar law was avoided by making all questions of personal status, which in­ cludes marriage, divorce, legitimacy, etc. the exclusive domain of the Rab­ binical courts, ensuring that they would be in accordance with the To-

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rah and thus preserving the unity* of the Jewish people. In some matters of personal status, such as inheritance and maintenance, -the Rabbinical courts have concurrent jurisdiction with the District Courts, the choice depending upon the parties concerned.

Although in principle, therefore, the laws of the Torah are as valid and binding, let us say, in the sphere of commercial law as they are in the laws of marriage, and a breach of a law in Choshen Mishpot in a matter concerning the relationship between landlord and tenant is no less an “averah” than a breach of a law of Even Haezer, there was a tacit understand­ ing that the State was free to legis­ late in the former according to its man-made laws, leaving all questions of marriage and divorce the exclusive domain of the Rabbinate. The best that can be said about it was that it worked in practice, and that the law of Dina D’Malchutha Dina, which ap­ plies in civil law in a non-Jewish State, was regarded as applying to the Jew­ ish State.

HERE was, however, one point in which the civil law of Medinath Israel could come into conflict with Jewish law. According to State law, bigamy is a criminal offence. Al­ though, as will be seen, it was also incorporated in the religious law of the State, there are circumstances in which, according to Jewish religious law, the Rabbinic authorities may per­ mit a man who already has a wife to marry a second one. The classic ex­ ample is where the wife is incurably insane. Since according to Jewish law an insane person cannot accept a di­ vorce, the Cherem of Rabbenu Gershon, which instituted monogamy, was relaxed and permission was given to

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the husband, on the authority of a hundred rabbis from three countries, to take a second wife.

The Cherem of Rabbenu Gershon was binding only on Ashkenazi Jews.

In a remarkable series of regulations put forward by the then Chief Rabbis of Israel, Rabbis I. Herzog and Benzion Uziel of blessed memory, and unanimously adopted by a National Conference of Rabbis held in Jeru­ salem on Shevat 18-21, 5710 (1950),* monogamy was made binding upon all the Jews of Israel, with the proviso: “except where a marriage permit is issued signed by the Chief Rabbis of Israel.” (The Chief Rabbis thus appar­ ently were given the authority pre­ viously vested in a hundred rabbis from three countries.)

Might not then a case occur where the Rabbinical courts would permit technical bigamy, which would never­ theless be a criminal offence accord­ ing to the laws of the State? The an­ swer is that this possibility was fore­ seen even before the State was estab­ lished, and it was assumed that the possibility of a clash was prevented by giving the Rabbinate not only exclu­ sive, but also unfettered jurisdiction in this matter.

N view of the latest developments, it is necessary to state the solid grounds upon which this assumption was based. In 1947, before the State was established, the Mandatory Gov­ ernment made an exception to bigamy where “a final decree of the Rabbini­ cal Court of the Jewish Community,

I

* This document, published on pp. 51/52 of “Hechal Yitzchok” (Responsa of the late Chief Rabbi Herzog, Jerusalem, 1960), deserves to be much better known than it is as an ex­ ample of the flexibility of the Halochah and the power of the Takkonah in Jewish law.

JEW ISH LIFE

ratified by the two Chief Rabbis of Palestine and giving permission for the subsequent marriage, had been ob­ tained prior to the subsequent mar­ riage.”

The statement made by Mr. Justice Silberg, commenting on this clause, in an important case* is of particular interest:

Doris Lankin (Feb. 1961)** it is clear­ ly stated, “The law against polygamy does, however, allow for second mar­ riages when, in the case of Jews, a heter (dispensation) has been given by the rabbinical authorities . . . on the grounds that the spouse of the first marriage is unable, because of insan­ ity, to agree to its dissolution . . . or has been missing without trace for at least seven years.”

All that has now apparently been swept by the board through a unani­ mous decision of five judges of the Supreme Court of Israel, with results which may be grave and far-reaching.

It would be insufferable if there were a contradiction between the civil “per­ mission” to commit bigamy and the criminal prohibition of bigamy, and if these two conceptions did not co­ incide. The legislature, therefore, laid it down as a general rule that if the civil laws—that is to say the “reli­ gious law” in accordance with which civil questions relating to the mar­ riage of the offender are to be deter­ mined—permit him to have more than one wife, the legislature, does not wish to prohibit him from doing so from the point of view of the crim­ inal law . . . Here, however, the legis­ lature was confronted with a difficulty . . . that Jewish religious law in fact recognizes the validity of bigamous marriages . . . subject to many reser­ vations and conditions. . . Who would decide if the particular person who married more than one wife was in fact permitted by Jewish law to marry a second wife? . . . What therefore did the legislature do? It established special machinery, namely the Rab­ binical Courts of the Jewish Commu­ nity, together with the two Chief Rabbis of Palestine, and it transferred to them, and to them alone, the pow­ er of deciding the question whether a second marriage on the part of the husband could be permitted—result­ ing naturally in his exemption from punishment, or not.

ly afterwards separated. Their dispute came before the Rabbinical Courts which, after lengthy and prolonged hearings, instructed the wife to accept a Get, failing which, they would issue a permit allowing the husband to take a second wife. In accordance with the above-quoted regulations, they duly appealed to the Chief Rabbis for their signature to this permit, which was granted. The wife appealed to the Su­ preme Court and was granted a con­ ditional order calling upon the Chief Rabbis, the Rabbinical Court, and the Religious Council of Tel Aviv to de­ sist from issuing this permit.

That conditional order has now been made absolute in a decision handed down by five judges of the Su­ preme Court. The decision not only annuls the permit to marry, but or­ ders the Chief Rabbis to refrain from permitting such a marriage. A breach

Surely nothing could be clearer than that, and in point of fact, in the bro­ chure “The Legal System of Israel” by

* Gad Ben Itzhak Yosef of versus the Attor­ ney General, in Selected Judgments of the Supreme Court of Justice, Vol. 1, 1948-53, pp.

199/200. ** In the Series “Israel Today” No. 19.

September-October, 1964

JEWISH couple, married by civ­ A il law in Rumania in 1925, im­ migrated to Israel in 1948, and short­

15

of this decision will entail the offence of contempt of court with the atten­ dant penalties.

It was with no easy, heart that the judges came to their decision. Even Mr. Justice Haim Cohen, once a strict­ ly orthodox Jew belonging to the Agudah Israel, and now almost the no­ torious opponent of Torah Judaism, said that it was an established fact and a custom entrenched from old that the Supreme Court does not sit in appeal against the decisions of the Rabbinical courts. Mr. Justice Silberg, a profound Talmudic scholar and an observant Jew, based his decision on the in­ triguing fact that the exception to the Cherem of Rabbenu Gershon was de­ signed to permit a man who already

had a wife, to take another. Since in this case, however, the court had de­ clared that the first marriage, per­ formed according to civil rites, was not valid in Jewish law, from the point of view of Jewish law he was to be considered a bachelor, and in this case the exception could not apply.

But whatever reasons were adduced, the Supreme Court has thus asserted its right to impose its decision on the Chief Rabbis. The jurisdiction of the Chief Rabbis in matters of personal status may be exclusive, but it is not unfettered and is subject to the over­ riding authority of the secular High Court. It seems finally to establish Is­ rael as a Secular State in all things.

HE foregoing was written before the fateful decision of the Su­ preme Court of Israel in another mat­ ter on August 11th. Consequent upon the refusal of the Chief Rabbinate to grant a nation-wide Kashruth certifi­ cate to the Marbek abbattoir, the abbattoir authorities applied to the High Court for a decree nisi against the Chief Rabbinate and others, calling on them to show cause to justify their refusal, which order was granted. The Chief Rabbinate refused to appear on the due date, contending that since the issue was purely one of Halochah, the High Court was not competent to deal with it. On August 11th a five-man bench of the Supreme Court unani­ mously ruled that it possessed such competence, but postponed giving a

decision on the actual case until Sept.

1st.

Considerable tension has developed as a result of this ruling, and unless the Chief Rabbinate comes to an agreement with Marbek before that date, which will result in a withdrawal of the order, a religious crisis of the first magnitude, involving a head-on collision between the secular and the religious juridical authorities, may de­ velop. There seems little likelihood of such an agreement, since the religious community is forming its ranks to stand foursquare behind the Chief Rabbinate in support of the principle of the religious autonomy of the Chief Rabbinate. But the thesis which is the subject of this article, that Israel is essentially a secular state has been fully vindicated.

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JEW ISH LIFE

The Portuguese Consul and the 1 0 ,0 0 0 Jews

By HARRY EZRATTY Amidst terror and despairt there came forward a man of conscience,.,,

N 1940 there was a race to see which would come to Paris first— summer or the army of Nazi Ger­ many; the army won by a week. On June 10th, Paris was emptied by her government. On the 14th the German 18th Army, led by General von Kuechler, raised its swastika over the roof­ tops of Paris. In that brief time France had two premiers and three capital cities.

The French moved their govern­ ment from Paris to Tours, then farther south to Bordeaux. Organiza­ tions which live on the government process tagged along. Close behind came a great army of refugees made up of European royalty and heads of fallen governments, intellectuals, pro­ fessors, writers, anti-Nazis, together with Jews and other “non-aryans” who were unacceptable to the Nazis. They were the designees for the ovens and gas chambers. And they knew it.

They spilled out over the country­ side and flooded the roads. The warm air was heavy with the dialects of Europe. For a time before her fall, France had become the new home for many Jews. They had come from Poland, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, and Holland. Now they were

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Sepfember-October, 1964

part of the confused crowd of the hungry, the weary, the harassed.

Thousands of them jammed the roads.

Movement was slow— a yard at a time —by foot, cart, bicycle, automobile.

As the refugees approached Bordeaux they saw roads lined with abandoned cars. Gasoline was for military use.

It did not exist for civilians. The closer one moved to Bordeaux the more the roads took on the appearance of a huge junk yard.

HIRTY thousand of these refugees gathered in the town of Bordeaux.

A third of them were Jewish. There was only one escape route: over the Pyrenees to Spain and Portugal. The Mediterranean was closed, with Brit­ ish warships patrolling the area to pre­ vent Jewish migration to Palestine.

The Franco-German Armistice had sealed Marseilles against any possible passage from that port. It became quickly apparent that Portuguese visas would be needed to get to Lisbon— a neutral port. But word had passed among the refugees that Portugal would not grant Jews asylum. (Portu­ gal had in fact previously been grant­ ing visas, with much delay. On May 10, 1940, the government ceased an-

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swering all correspondence—relative were Jewish. Now Mendes sat in his to visas—that came from Bordeaux. office. It was no longer a question of a All legal travel to Spain had therefore few people. There were thousands in stopped, creating a great backlog of trouble. He could see them from his escapees who were now awaiting de­ window. They were waiting for some termination of the Portuguese Govern­ word. Waiting for the hope that only ment’s position on their status.) The he could arrange.

Portuguese Consulate was located on RISTEDES de Sousa Mendes had Quai Louis XVIII. Great crowds of given his house over to the ref­ unkempt, pitiful refugees waited si­ lently in the street, hoping for a visa ugees. They sat in his waiting room, occupied his bedrooms, sprawled out to escape the advancing Nazis.

Inside the Consulate sat a remark­ exhausted along the staircase leading able man who was to make deci­ to the second floor. Mendes and his sions that would force a change family ate in the kitchen, for his dining in the policies of his government room was being used to feed and house — and ruin his own career. He was the aged and sick. But within all this the Portuguese consul-general to chaos there was some order. No ref­ France, Aristedes de Sousa Mendes. ugee would leave his place in line for The Mendes family were descendants fear that he would have to go to the of Jews who had been forcibly con­ end of the line—thousands of people verted to Christianity in 1497, when away. Many had not eaten for days.

“Where is the consul? Where is the all Jews who had not similarly been converted by force were driven from Portuguese consul?” someone scream­ Portugal. Aristedes Mendes himself ed from the street. Mendes was sitting was a faithful Catholic. He was a law­ in his office looking at the instructions yer who, with his twin brother, carved that he had finally received from Lis­ a distinguished career in the Foreign bon. They read: “No refugees are to Service. He was a man who could be given any visas unless they can not help but be touched by the misery establish bona fide residence in Portu­ and suffering of others. Before France gal. No Jews are to be admitted un­ had fallen he had helped individual der any circumstances.”

There were thirty thousand people refugees with visas and money. Men­ des even issued passports that had no out there. Each one feared for his life. legal validity, but looked valid on their Ten thousand were Jews—stateless, face. One such beneficiary was Mosco with nowhere to turn. Mendes walked Galimir, the leader of the Sephardic into the hall of the Consulate, took his community of Vienna, and his daugh­ wife by the arm and walked to the ter (now Mrs. Marguerite Rollins), steps. Those among the crowd who who had been living in Biarritz. So knew him were shocked by what they skillful had been de Sousa’s deception saw; his hair had turned white and that even after the Vichy Government, dark rings were etched beneath his together with the Germans, occupied eyes. But he stood erect, and everyone the town, these two— as Mrs. Rollins knew the long wait was over. The told this writer in a recent interview— words he uttered are recorded imperwere never molested. This, even ishably in the memory of survivors, though the authorities knew that they and in the memory of his nephew,

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JEW ISH LIFE

Cesar Mendes, who was there and who subsequently related them to me.

“My government has denied all appli­ cations for visas to any refugee,” he said sadly. “But I cannot allow these people to die. Many are Jews and our Constitution says that the religion or the politics of a foreigner shall not be used to deny him refuge in Portu­ gal. I have decided to follow this prin­ ciple. I am going to issue a visa to anyone who asks for it—regardless of whether or not he can pay.” He turn­ ed to his wife. “I know that Mrs. de Sousa Mendes agrees with me. Even if I am discharged, I can only act as a Christian, as my conscience tells me.” He called to a police officer standing by the door. “You are no longer to prevent these people from seeing me. You are to merely main­ tain order.”

When the news reached the street it was greeted with a vast outburst of cheers. The long line of refugees be­ gan to pour through the Chancellery.

Mendes set a low coffee table before a couch in his office. He hunched over it and began to prepare visas. He worked here for three days, assisted by his sons Jose and Pedro, stopping only to sleep and eat. He never took money for his visas. More than once he had been offered a fortune in gold which he rejected. In the end he saved 10,000 Jews* who would have fed the fires of Hitler’s ovens. On the third day when the door closed on the last applicant, Mendes got up to go to his desk. He collapsed to the floor, ex­ hausted and sick. He was put to bed where he remained several days. * This is the figure cited to the writer by IIj a DeJour, who at that time was a representative of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in Lisbon and assisted the refugees who crossed the border.

September-October, 1964

Word of the refugees reached Lis­ bon. Two officials were sent from Portugal to bring de Sousa Mendes back. He packed his things for the long motor trip. As they headed to­ ward Spain the car passed through Bayonne. Another crowd such as had gathered at Bordeaux assembled be­ fore the Consulate here. Mendes and his party pushed through it and into the office of the vice-consul. His daughter, Joana, and his nephew, who were present, recently related to me what then transpired. “Why don’t you help these people?” he demanded of the vice-consul. The latter retorted: “I have received instructions from Lisbon not to grant any visas; especially to Jews. I am carrying out my superior’s instructions.” Mendes became enraged.

“I have not yet been removed from my position. I am still your superior.”

With this he walked to the vice-con­ sul’s desk and began to assemble the necessary seals and rubber stamps for the visas. No one could stop him; not even the two officials from Lisbon.

“Go tell these people to come to the Chancellery. I am going to give them visas.” They were unique: visas such as these had never been issued before.

They were slips of paper with the Con­ sulate seal and the following inscrip­ tion: “The Portuguese Government re­ quests the Spanish Government the courtesy of allowing the bearer to pass freely through Spain. He is a refugee from the European conflict and en route to Portugal.” How simple to save their lives!

A full day was spent issuing visas.

The next morning de Sousa Mendes and his family, with the two officials, resumed their travel. By night they reached Hendaye, a Spanish border town. Spain’s frontier was closed in concert with Portugal. It seemed as 19

though all the work and agony of the past days were for nothing. Mendes walked over to the large square where the hopefuls were waiting. “Just fol­ low me,” he said simply. Mendes had reasoned that the Spanish authorities would expect the refugees to cross at Hendaye and that only that point would be alerted. He was right. He drove further down the road to the next town. The officials there were ignorant of the whole affair. Mendes flashed his credentials. The people passed through. It was over . . . and now Mendes would have to explain his conduct to Lisbon.

At a hearing Arista de Sousa Men­ des was dismissed from the Foreign Service for disobeying orders. He fought for reinstatement but without success. With heavy family responsibilities-—Mendes was the father of fourteen children — he was without means. Soon he lost the family home in Cabanas de Viriato, a border vil­ lage. When Jewish groups in Lisbon began to set up rescue organizations, he was given a position which he held only a short while. Mendes lost every­ thing that he had. He prepared an appeal which he gave to his daughter Joana to present to the government.

The appeal was never read. It is a model of logic for the respect and assistance that should be given to

20

foreigners, regardless of their beliefs.

Slowly his children began to leave Portugal. Several of them are in the United States. HIAS, in gratitude for the help that he hadr given so many Jews, sponsored the emigration of two of de Sousa Mendes’s daughters.

Aristedes de Sousa Mendes died in Portugal in 1954. Forgotten and im­ poverished, he had never regretted his actions. To the end he was con­ vinced that his sacrifice was the only way he could face G-d. He had saved the lives of thousands. He had forced his government to change its policies of asylum. Many Jews were to escape from Europe after 1940. The 10,000 were a nucleus that grew. The Jews who escaped later owe Aristedes de Sousa Mendes as much as those who were saved the summer of 1940.

On February 21, 1961, the Govern­ ment of Israel planted twenty trees in the Martyr’s Forest in honor of De Sousa Mendes. It is fitting that he should have living things to his memory. But those Jews who still live today because of his sacrifice are a tribute to his noble deeds. If each one remembers the man who gave him succor and lives a life inspired by Aristedes de Sousa Mendes’s prin­ ciples, he will have accomplished even more than Mendes dreamed.

JEW ISH LIFE

S u k k a h — A n Evolving Sym bol

By SHUBERT SPERO

HE Yom Tov of Sukkoth affords a most graphic illustration of the baffling Rabbinic response to seem­ ingly irreconcilable viewpoints found in the Talmud: “Both these and these are the words of the living G-d.”

It is true that the Torah itself is quite explicit as to the reason for the Mitzvah of the Sukkah: “In sukkoth shall ye dwell seven days, that your generation may know that I caused the children of Israel to dwell in sukkoth when I brought them forth out of the land of Egypt.” (Vayikra 23:42, 43) There is a difference of opinion, however, among our Sages as to the nature of the Sukkah in which the Almighty caused our forefathers to dwell during their trek through the wilderness. Rabbi Akiva holds that the sukkoth were Clouds of Glory, while Rabbi Eliezer maintains that they were actual huts or booths.

Undoubtedly, the primary principle which the Mitzvah of Sukkah is de­ signed to convey is the fundamental article of Jewish faith that the Al­ mighty cares for and provides for the physical sustenance of His people when they are worthy. The Torah re­ peats time and again the vital impli­ cations of the wilderness experience: “And thou shalt remember all the way

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which the Lord thy G-d hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness. . . in order to prove thee. And He gave them manna to e a t . . . in order that He might make thee know that not by bread alone doth man live but by everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.”

(D’vorim 8:2,3) And again: “And I have led you forty years in the wilder­ ness, your clothes did not fall worn out from off you and your shoes did not fall worn out from thy feet.”

(D’vorim 29:4) Thus, just as the manna, a specific item of Providence, was remembered by keeping some of it preserved in the Tabernacle (Sh’moth 16:33), so too is the overall notion of G-d’s benign shelter impressed on the collective consciousness of the Jewish people each year through the symbol of the Sukkah. However, just as the manna is associated in the Torah with the Sabbath and in effect says to the Jew in every generation: Do not fear to observe the Sabbath. The Almighty will provide during the workday week enough for the Sabbath even as He sent two portions of manna on Fri­ day for our forefathers in the wilder­ ness. So too is the Yom Tov of Suk­ koth associated by our Torah with the 21

N considering the relationship be­ tween the harvest season and the principle of Hashgochah and Bitochon symbolized by the Sukkah, we gain an insight into the different emphases between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Eliezer. For, in reality, their respective points of view are not mutually ex­ clusive. There is no good reason why the Lord could not have provided both that Clouds of Glory give pro­ tection from enemies like Amalek and storms and the heat of day, and that actual huts be constructed to provide shelter from the desert cold at night and for purposes of privacy. What is the issue then between the two Rabbis?

The answer must be sought in a dif­ ference in emphasis brought about by a differing judgment as to whether the “haves” or the “have nots” constitute the graver religious problem.

Clearly, the experience of harvest time is not the same for- all people.

For one person the harvest may have been successful. With his drops safely under roof, this one may suppose, with relief, that he is now indepen­ dent of the elements. Self-confidence, pride, and a sense of self-sufficiency may fill his heart and he may even begin to feel independent of Him who controls the elements. Says the Torah to the successful Jew: Leave your com­ fortable home and dwell ih the fragile

Sukkah. Behold you are once again subject to the wind and the rain. Very little stands between you and the sky.

Realize that this is your true condition always. Your entire existence is always exposed and precarious and at every moment, for each breath you draw, you are dependent upon the Almighty.

The heart of the Sukkoth teaching, says Rabbi Eliezer, is in the actual Sukkah, in all of its fragility and tem­ porary character.

But what if the harvest was poor and did not yield enough for the com­ ing winter? The one suffering this ex­ perience is fearful and most appre­ hensive about that which lies ahead.

Envy, bitterness, and the temptation to unlawful actions may overcome him. To this Jew the Torah says: Leave your anxious abode and dwell for seven days in the Sukkah, rem­ iniscent of the shelters our forefathers dwelt in during their forty-year odys­ sey in the Midbar. Remember, materi­ ally speaking, they had nothing better.

Yet the Almighty sustained His peo­ ple with Clouds of Glory and has been doing so ever since, through two thou­ sand years of exile. Place your trust in G-d and He will provide. There­ fore, Rabbi Akiva sees the concept of Clouds of Glory as central to the Suk­ koth lesson.

To put both concepts together is to perceive the Sukkah as symbolic of human existence itself—materially fragile and temporary, but, in the light of Divine love and care, secure with possibilities of eternity.

HERE is another pdlar concept which is in constant tension with the principle of Bitochon—placing

one’s trust in the Lord— and that is the notion of Hishtadluth, making ef­ forts on one’s own behalf. Ample evi-

harvest season for purposes of appli­ cation: “When you have gathered to­ gether the fruit of the land shall you celebrate the Feast of the Lord.” (Va> yikra 23:39)

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dence can be adduced from all areas of Torah to show that Judaism re­ quires the Jew to be an activist; he must never resign himself to his con­ dition sp long as some action, some effort, some move, no matter how puny, remains to be done. Providence works in and through human action (including one’s own) or alone, after one has done all he can. Confronted by sickness, the Jew prays and calls the doctor. Confronted in exile by per­ secution, the Jew fasts and sends del­ egations and uses political influence.

Confronted by hostile armies on his borders, the Jew says Tehilim and goes out to engage in combat. Bitôchon, yes, but also Hishtadluth. The boundary line between the two, how­ ever, is a constantly shifting one. Sci­ entific and technological progress keeps expanding the area of human action and initiative, while exclusive emphasis on Bitochon will slowly cor­ rode the motive force of Hishtadluth.

This polar relationship between Bi­ tochon and its opposite, Hishtadluth, is reflected in the Halochah of the Sukkah. This can best be seen by con­ trasting Sukkoth in this respect with Pesach. It is a Mitzvah to eat matzoth on Pesach. Its “opposite,” chometz, is forbidden the entire Pesach, absolutely, in any place, in any quan­ tity, for any reason. It is a Mitzvah to eat, and generally to dwell, in the Sukkah during Sukkoth. Its “oppo­ site,” eating in the house, is forbid­ den during Sukkoth—-yet not abso­ lutely. Should it rain or some other condition of discomfort be created, one may return to the house. Aside from the Halaçhic motivation, this difference corresponds to the respec­ tive conceptual symbolism of the two festivals. Chometz represents the “leavening of evil” in man and thus September-October, 1964

must be rooted out completely. There can be no compromise with evil. The Sukkah, on the other hand symbolizes, as we have seen, the principle of Bito­ chon. Here, there can be no absolute rejection of its opposite. Human ini­ tiative and self help are also needed.

Hence, under prescribed conditions the Jew eats under his own roof on Sukkoth.

E considered earlier the view of Rabbi Eliezer that the essential thrust of the Sukkoth symbolism is to direct our attention to the actual booths that our forefathers lived in during their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness. Clearly, the huts were those built by the Israelites, them­ selves. The point, as indicated earlier, is that G-d provided them with pro­ tection in spite of the poor physical resources of the areas in which they sojourned. So conceived, this view seems to point up a praiseworthy trait in the character of the Jewish people.

Indeed, this is another recognized con­ cept of the wilderness experience. As the Prophet Jeremiah says to Israel in the name of the Lord: “I remem­ ber the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, to go after me in a wilderness, in a land that was not sown.” Israel showed great deter­ mination, dedication, and faith in set­ ting forth on a course which, regarded only in its natural setting, promised living under most primitive conditions while travelling through a barren and desolate land.

It may therefore be said that the Sukkah is not merely a Goluth sym­ bol, teaching the Jew that when he is compelled to live in a Sukkah he should do so with faith that the Clouds of Glory are overhead (Bito­ chon), but it also becomes a norma-

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tive symbol of redemption urging that the Jew be prepared at the propitious historical moment to voluntarily take upon himself the rigors of a Sukkoth living, in order to bring about the re­ demption (Hishtadluth).

Thus the Chasam Sofer, with bril­ liant insight, interprets the actual Suk­ koth of Rabbi Eliezer as referring to bivouac huts built by the Israelites in their military campaigns against the countries of Sichon and Og. What has taken place here is in effect a sort of evolution of the Sukkah from a sym­ bol of passive faith to one of active faith; from a hardship externally im­ posed to one deliberately undertaken.

With this in mind, a most difficult passage in the Book of Nehemiah be­ comes quite understandable. In relat­ ing the return of the Babylonian ex­ iles, the Book describes how the group prepared for and observed the Festi­ val of Sukkoth. It then goes on to say: “And they dwelt in sukkoth. For the B’ney Yisroel had not done so from the days of Yehoshua Ben Nun until that d a y . . . ” (Neh. 8). On the face of it, this passage is incredible!

Can it be that the Israelites did not observe Sukkoth all those years!

In the light of the Chasam Sofer’s interpretation, however, all is clear.

Of course sukkoth were built and dwelt in and the Festival observed through all the years of the Judges and the Prophets and the Kings. How­ ever, this active aspect of Sukkoth, this dynamic element of Hishtadluth in which the Sukkah is observed by a generation that gives up the com­ forts of its own home, that relin­ quishes the fleshpots of Goluth and takes up the rigors of Sukkah-living in order to regain and redeem the land, this did not happen since the days of Joshua son of Nun. In this 24

manner the Festival of Sukkoth had not been observed since then. But it was now being repeated by the loyal group of some 40,000 souls who left Babylon to return to the Holy Land.

For a brief moment in history the pen­ dulum had started to swing towards the pole of Hishtadluth.

HIS relationship between the BitoT chon-Hishtadluth tension inherent in the Sukkah symbol and the up­ building of the Holy Land is further developed by a beautiful but cryptic Midrosh which speaks of the origin of the name of Yerusholayim.

Avrohom called it Yireh and Shem, the son of Noah, called it Shalem.

The Almighty blessed be He said: If I call it Yireh, Shem will be offended.

I will therefore combine the two names and call the city Yerushalem.

While it was Shalem, the Almighty made for Himself there a Sukkah and prayed therein—May it be acceptable that I shall see the construction of My Temple. (Midrash Rabah) Mount Moriah, the site of Abra­ ham’s greatest trial, is identified by tradition with the Temple mount in Jerusalem. The instruction to him, however, was to take his son, Yitzchok . . . “To the land of Moriah . . . on one of the hills that I will tell you.”

(B’reshith 22:2) Hence, in locating the sanctified area, Abraham waited for it to be pointed out to him by G-d.

Thus the name, Yireh, i.e., “will see” or “will show” (Bitochon).

Shem, the son of Noah, however, who is identified with the Biblical Malki Tzedek, King of Shalem (Sal­ em), set up residence and a sanctuary on that site, presumably on his own initiative. Having received traditions that this was the area that witnessed the early offerings of Cain and Abel JEW ISH LIFE

and his own father, Noah (see Rambam in Hilchoth Beth Hab’chirah) and other acts of devotion between one man and his brother, Shem concluded that it is the human deed that makes the place holy and that men should take the initiative in making and up­ holding its sanctity. Hence the name Shalem—i.e., its perfection is already known or manifest.

HE Almighty combines the two names, these two approaches. That is to say, essentially the sanctity of the Temple area and the Holy Land is based on the sheer fact of G-d’s choice — “ . . . the place which the Lord Thy G-d will choose to let His name dwell there.” No other qualifications are given or are needed. Yet, although the location is known, it is left to human initiative as to the precise moment of its possession and occupation. This is the Mitzvah of “Unto His habitation shall ye seek and thither shalt thou come.” According to Nachmanides, the Temple could have been built long before the time of Solomon, had Is­ rael shown a sincere desire and con­ cern for its erection.

This, then, is the meaning of the strange postscript in the Midrosh.

While the city was still called Shalem, emphasizing its element of human

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initiative, the Almighty built there a Sukkah, symbol of active faith, of readiness to return to austere living in order to rebuild the land. And therein (if the Midrosh did not say it, it would be blasphemous to write it) the Almighty prays—meaning that in this the Lord waits on human initia­ tive: “may it be acceptable,” may My people find it acceptable to take the lead themselves to regain the Holy Land, populate it, and create the re­ ligious conditions wherein: “I will see the construction of My Temple.”

Why does the Almighty have to pray and to whom does He pray when He is omniscient? The only possible an­ swer is that in regard to the Land and the Temple, the Almighty waits for His people to act.

UR generation, like that of Jo­ shua Ben Nun and of Ezra and Nehemiah, now has an opportunity to observe the Mitzvah of Sukkah as it has never been celebrated for ages before. For us it can be a symbol not only of passive resignation in faith but as an impetus for active sacrifice in even greater faith.

Our Sukkoth in exile are beginning to resemble Clouds of Glory. Who is willing to be Oleh and live in actual Sukkoth?

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The Birth and D eath of the A m erican Jewish Conference

By ISACQUE GRAEBER

ST the twentieth century annals of which consigned it to paralysis and the organized Jewish community in death.

1 This article has a four-fold object­ America, the American Jewish Con­ ference bears the unique distinction of succumbing to a mysterious, silent death. In its brief career the Amer­ ican Jewish Conference embraced— for the first and only time in Amer­ ican Jewish history—practically every element of American Jewry. The de­ mise of this enterprise, sudden and without forewarning, occurred on a cold, wintry morning, on December 2, 1947, at 2 a.m., in the city or Chicago, to be precise. No mournful hesped was pronounced at its burial.

In fact, under a plan which had been set forth to perpetuate the American Jewish Conference, a session had been scheduled for December 31, 1948. A $300,000 budget needed to maintain the activities of the Con­ ference had also been designated. We know of no other instance in modern Jewish history wherein an organiza­ tion has voluntarily consigned itself to oblivion.

In the subsequent years, no formal diagnosis was made of the collapse of the American Jewish Conference.

Nor is there on record a description of the conditions and circumstances 26

ive. It aims to relate the genesis and objectives of the American Jewish Conference and the circumstances which thrust it into being; to identify the forces and personalities which gave it life wand meaning, and also those which/ thwarted its career; to describe the conditions and weak­ nesses which culminated in its death; and finally, to pursue the question : are there any lessons that we can learn from its history?

HE idea for an American Jewish T Conference originated with Henry Monsky, then the president of B’nai B’rith. Gravely concerned with the “critical period of our people,” Mqjnsky could contain himself no longer and broadcast a call for a preliminary meeting of Jewish organizations. The meeting was to be held in Pittsburgh, on January 6, 1943.

In his letter of invitation, Henry Monsky indicated that the purpose of the Pittsburgh meeting was to reach an agreement among various organ­ ized bodies in thè American Jewish community with regard to their reJEW ISH LIFE

sponsibilities in representing Jewish demands at the future Peace Table.

“American Jewry,” he wrote, “which will be required in large measure to assume the responsibility of repre­ senting the interests of our people at the Victory Peace Table, must be ready to voice the judgment of Amer­ ican Jewry, along with other Jewish communities of the free countries, with respect to the postwar status of Jews and the upbuilding of Palestine.

The purpose of the conference is to bring together the representatives of major national Jewish membership organizations, in order that they may consider what steps should be taken to bring some agreement on the part of the American Jewish community.”

Of the thirty-four organizations that were invited, thirty-two responded lavorably and sent to the Pittsburgh meeting from one to three representa­ tives each, making a total of seventyeight men and women in attendance.

Represented at that Conference, ac­ cording to the official Proceedings of the First Session (1943), were: Agudath Israel of America, Ameri­ can Jewish Congress and its Women’s Division, B’nai B’rith and its Wom­ en’s Council, Central Conference of American Rabbis, Free Sons of Is­ rael, Independent Order of Brith Abraham, Hadassah, Independent Or­ der of Brith Shalom and its Balti­ more unit, Jewish National Worker’s Alliance, Jewish War Veterans and its Ladies Auxiliary, League for Labor Palestine, Mizrachi Organization of America, Mizrachi Women’s Organ­ ization of America, National Council of Jewish Women, Order Sons of Zion; Pioneer Women’s Organization of America, Progressive Order of the West, Rabbinical Assembly of Amer­ ica, Union of American Hebrew ConSeptember-October, 1964

gregations and its National Federa­ tions of Temple Sisterhoods and Temple Brotherhoods, Union of Or­ thodox Jewish Congregations of America, Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the U.S. and Canada, United Rumanian Jews of America, United Synagogue of America and its Na­ tional Women’s League, Poale Zion, and the Zionist Organization of Amer­ ica. It was decided at this meeting to convene the Conference at the same Pittsburgh location on the fol­ lowing January 23-24, and to invite the participation of additional organ­ izations.

The American Jewish Committee, which was invited to send three dele­ gates to the Conference, brusquely rejected the invitation, as did the Jewish Labor Committee. The former, as reported by Morris D. Waldman in his book, “Nor By Power” (In­ ternational. University Press, 1953) rebuked Mr. Monsky for having called the meeting without first con­ sulting the American Jewish Commit­ tee. Although the Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith had a functional association of common fund-raising, the Commit­ tee privately disputed the author­ ity of Miv Monsky, the latter having iftfrin|ed upon the “strong position” of the Committee. Acceptance of the invitation would tend to reduce the Committee to the “position of follower and not leader,” argued the Adminis­ trative Committee of the American Jewish Committee. This claim of a monopoly of enterprise, initiative, and leadership has more often than not been the source of conflict be­ tween the American Jewish Commit­ tee and other Jewish organizations.

There were, of course, other issues, but these were mainly of a doctrinaire 27

character, reference to which will be made below.

In the meantime, wooing Judge Joseph Proskauer, president of the American Jewish Committee, became a full-time project of Mr. Henry Mon­ sky and Dr. Stephen S. Wise, both highly persuasive gentlemen. And while both succeeded in aligning Judge Proskauer, compromise also be­ came inevitable. It was a compromise and an adjustment which undermined the strength of the Conference. The agreement was established upon a highef common ground. It defined

the frame of reference of the Confer­ ence, and delimited its scope and func­ tions as well as determining the rules of procedure.

Judge Proskauer joined the praesi­ dium of the Conference, which con­ sisted of Henry Monsky, Stephen S. Wise, Leon Gellman, Israel Goldstein, Hayim Greenberg, Herman Hoffman, Edgar Kaufman, Louis E. Levinthal, Louis J. Moss, Mrs. David de Sola Pool, Adolph Rosenberg, and Carl Sherman. Mr. Adolph Held of the Jewish Labor Committee also agreed to serve on the Praesidium.

RESPONSE TO C A LA M IT Y HE American Jewish Conference came into being as an emergency measure “in response to the almost incredible European Jewish tragedy which from the beginning was closely linked with the problem of Palestine and directly related to the British White paper of 1939.” Addressing the Pittsburgh Conference on January 23, 1943, Mr. Monsky actually formu­ lated the initial policy upon which the Conference placed its seal of ap­ proval. As reported in the Proceedings of the First Session, Monsky said:

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The tragic plight of the Jewish peo­ ple in Europe is unprecedented in the annals of our history. We have a vital stake in the peace that is to come. Not only have we suffered ap­ palling destruction of Jewish life, but much of that which we achieved af­ ter the First World War in respect to the position of the Jew in the af­ flicted lands, has been lost.. . . The right of the Jewish people to rebuild their homeland in Palestine has now again become the subject of contro­ versy. That right may have to be re28

affirmed under conditions which will enable Palestine to serve as one of the important factors in the amelio­ ration, if not the solution, of the Jew­ ish problem.. . . Dissenting statements have been issued by rabbinic and lay leadership, some opposing, others de­ fending the political aspirations of Zionism. Meanwhile, Jews and nonJews are so confused, so discouraged, and so frightened by the spectacle of conflict as to deem necessary to with­ draw their support from all programs devoted to the welfare of our people.

Cooperation will be replaced by dis­ sension. Or the result will be irrepar­ able injury to our whole fabric of Jewish life and activity. The chal­ lenge to those of us charged with leadership cannot be ignored.

From its very inception, the Con­ ference was envisioned not as a par­ liamentary organization, nor even as a representative structure, but rather as a sort of “government by talk and discussion” on limited objectives. Ini­ tially, these were three-fold in pur­ pose: JEW ISH LIFE

1. To consider and recommend ac­ tion upon problems relating to the rights and status of the Jews in the postwar world.

2. To consider and recommend ac­ tion upon matters looking to the implementation of rights of the Jewish people with respect to Pal­ estine.

3. To elect a delegation to carry out the program of the American Jew­ ish Conference (or Assembly) in cooperation with the only duly accredited representative of Jews throughout the world.

It was somewhat later, as a result of the emergency in the face of crisis, that the program of the American Jewish Conference was enlarged so as to include the problems of rescue and reconstruction.

HREE Commissions were insti­ tuted by the fifty-two-member In­ T terim Committee to deal with the three fields of Conference work.

There was the Commission on Rescue, which was headed by Dr. Israel Gold­ stein, with Henry Monsky and Dr. Stephen S. Wise as provisional cochairmen and Rabbi Irving Miller as executive vice-chairman. Dr. Abba Hillel Silver headed the Commission on Palestine. Co-chairmen of the Com­ mission on Post-war Reconstruction were Dr. Maurice Eisendrath and Dr. Hayim Greenberg.

The Commission on Rescue was in frequent contact with the State De­ partment and other appropriate gov­ ernmental officials, It addressed an offer of its service to the UNRRA. This Commission also stimulated the creation of the War Refugee Board, and urged government financing of the Board’s work. It urged diplomatic action to provide Jews with exit and transit visas and places of destinaSeptember-October, 1964

tion or temporary asylum to make possible the evacuation of the Jews from Rumania, Bulgaria, and Transistra, by the way of Turkey. It proposed that the International Red Cross be enabled to supply food, clothing, and medical attention for persons in the occupied territories, and that they be provided with boats designed for rescue purposes. The Conference, through this Commission, proposed that the International Red Cross make representation to the German govern­ ment to release the Jewish remnant in Poland, especially women and chil­ dren. It pressed for a renewal of warnings to the Nazi government and the German people, in view of reports that the Nazi propaganda machine had been assuring the people of Eu­ rope that the Allied nations did not care about the Jews in Nazi-occupied countries, even in the case of Allied victory. As co-chairman of the Com­ mission on Rescue, Dr. Stephen S. Wise testified before the House Com­ mittee on Foreign Affairs. Discussing specific rescue measures, Wise as­ serted that he favored a proposed Res­ olution to reaffirm U.S. interest in implementation of the Jewish National Home, but he insisted that there could be no decent settlement for the Jews unless those who wished to were permitted to enter the Jewish National Home. Wise was sharply critical of Assistant Secretary of State Breckenridge Long’s testimony, which had anti-Jewish overtones. He contra­ dicted Long’s statement that 580,000 Jews were admitted into the U.S., whereas in fact, only 163,000 were so admitted.

HE Commission on Rescue was confronted with the outright re­ fusal of the United States and Great

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Britain to adopt those “unusual and extraordinary” measures which alone could result in the rescue of Jews from Nazi-occupied lands. To press the government and our ally, the Commission summoned all Jewish or­ ganizations for the purpose of ar­ ranging a mass-demonstration to give expression to the horror of the Jewish community of the U.S. and to submit suggestions for rescue measures. The demonstration took place July 31, 1944. The participants joined in a demand that the United States and the United Nations move swiftly for the implementation of the offer of Ad­ miral Horthy, premier of Hungary, to release Jewish children under ten as well as adults with Palestine visas.

The Commission also attempted to stimulate a favorable public in this country for the need of more effective rescue measures by establishing, on January 31, 1944, the National Com­ mittee Against the Nazi Persecution of Jews, headed by Supreme Court Justice Frank Murphy.

The Commission on Postwar Re­ construction prepared thoughtful state­ ments drafted by Dr. Maurice Eisendrath and Dr. Joshua Trachtenberg, the consequences of which were of immeasurable benefit to the Jews after the War. This Commission called “for a joint working body designed to coordinate and, as far as possible, to combine the representations of postwar Jewish needs before international conferences, councils, and agencies of the United Nations.”

To guarantee against a recurrence of the events of the preceding four decades and to give fullest substance to the concepts of democracy and freedom, the Commission on Postwar Reconstruction submitted its statement 30

on the International Bill of Rights, the UN’s credo. This statement, which was submitted to Secretary of State Edward R. Stettinus, emphasized the necessity of guaranteeing “the inali­ enable rights of all religious, ethnic, and cultural groups to maintain and foster their respective group identi­ ties on the basis of equality.” The Commission called for the restoration of rights to Jews in Europe. It de­ manded the abrogration of all dis­ criminatory laws and measures enacted against the Jewish population; the restoration of citizenship, and of communal religious and cultural in­ stitutions in former German-occupied territories; and the establishment of new precedents even as the crimes the Germans committed had estab­ lished new and unheard-of precedents.

It demanded, further, reparations for the ihassacres and murders of the Jews, and restitution to Jews for the losses/they had suffered.

NDOUBTEDLY, the Jewish ca­ U tastrophe did much to unify and arouse the organized Jewish commu­ nity, and the formation of the Amer­ ican Jewish Conference made it ap­ pear that coordinated planning and effort would now become a feasible undertaking. The times and circum­ stances demanded that Jews act in unison to meet the problems con­ fronting all, to prepare for rehabili­ tation and reconstruction, to succor starving and maimed brethren, and to set the shattered remnants on the road to renewed life and strength in the Land of Israel.

For the first time in the history of the American Jewish community, all groupings, representative of prac­ tically all views and orientations— religious, social, fraternal, political, JEW ISH LIFE

economic—were joined in common to a national conference.

Elections of delegates to the Con­ ference took place in seventy-eight communities and fifty-eight regions, covering every state in the Union and the District of Columbia. Thus, there were 379 delegates who were elected by 22,500 electors representing 8,486 local groups. Since each group was entitled to one elector for the first fifty members and one for each addi­

tional seventy-five members, the total number of members represented by the electors was one and a-half mil­ lion. However, for every two mem­ bers of each organization there was at least one non-member who was a silent partner to the vote. It may therefore be stated that at least 2,250,000 Jews participated directly and indirectly in the local elections of delegates to the American Jewish Conference.

THE C O M M O N W E A L T H ISSUE HIS was in June of 1944, in the first flush of the American Jewish Conference. Ironically, this was also the time when the strident pronounce­ ments of the American Jewish Com­ mittee against the resolutions calling “for the reconstruction of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth,” literally shook the already weak foundation of the Conference. Seldom in the twenti­ eth century has an issue evoked so much dissension in American Jewry as the question of a “Jewish Com­ monwealth” did at that time.

Viewing the conflict in retrospect, we can see it as the focus of a deep struggle between rival ideologies and attitudes. The vast majority of Jews, profoundly shaken by the frightful calamity which had befallen European Jewry—the extent of which was now becoming apparent to all—turned by deepest instinct to the call of Jewish rebirth in the Land of Israel. The term “Jewish Commonwealth,” how­ ever, was used by those clinging to assimilationism to camouflage a re­ fusal to acknowledge Jewish claims upon them, except those which they

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might freely accept from time to time for purposes of expediency. Many in non-Zionist ranks may, no doubt, have been in genuine ignorance of the ac­ tual significance of the Jewish Com­ monwealth concept. Does the advo­ cacy of a Jewish Commonwealth imply dual allegiance on the part of the Jews in America and elsewhere?, some queried. Is a demand for a Jew­ ish Commonwealth merely a matter of Zionist ideology? Is it advisable to make demands for a Jewish Common­ wealth during the war? Will such a demand injure the Allied cause in the Middle East? Will the non-Zionists who want to help in the upbuilding of Palestine be able to “continue their cooperation with the Zionists of the Conference?” Will the Arabs acqui­ esce? What is Judaism? Are the Jews a people? Should unanimity be reached or should majority opinion prevail?

The issue, as can be seen from the official Proceedings of the Second Session (1945), gave rise to wide divergencies of opinion, outlook, and policy on the question of “Jewish Rights to Palestine.” Reverberations 31

of the struggle continued until the Conference’s dying day.

HE clash came to a head about a year and a half after the birth of the Conference. At that time the Commission on Palestine, headed by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, called for an end of the White Paper. It demanded that the gates of Palestine be opened to Jewish immigration. The Commis­ sion also demanded that the Jewish Agency be entrusted with control over immigrants, and a Jewish Palestine was envisaged as an integral part of the new democratic world order. It also furthered resolutions for the “re­ constituting of Palestine as a Jewish Commonwealth,” in both Houses of Congress.

Dr. Silver presented the argument before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while Dr. Israel Gold­ stein, co-chairman of the Interim Committee of the Conference, read the Conference on Palestine resolu­ tion into the record of the hearing, adding: “If there are among Ameri­ can Jews some voices of dissent, be they ever so loud or so often repeated, emanating from men of wealth and high social position, they must always be evaluated in their true proportion, as representing less than ten percent of American Jewry.”

The immovable met the irresistable.

The moving spirits of the opposition, led by Judge Joseph Proskauer, Jacob Blaustein, and their political kin, were apprehensive. “It would be dangerous to promote a Common­ wealth resolution. The nature of this Conference,” insisted Judge Pros­ kauer, “is such as to allow any or­ ganization joining it to remain a free

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agent and not be bound by its deci­ sion.” He cited the American Jewish Committee as being on record for an international trusteeship responsible to the UN for immigration, fundamental rights, and safeguarding of the holy places. Judge Proskauer warned that “The maximalist demand would arouse a revulsion of feeling among thousands of Jews whom I cannot control.” (Proceedings of the Second Session.)

Judge Proskauer had reference here to the newly-created American Coun­ cil for Judaism, whose statement on Palestine, bitterly opposing estab­ lishment of the Jewish Common­ wealth, made page four of the New York Times of August 31, 1943. The statement was a disingenuous, doc­ trinaire, irrelevant polemic against non-assimilationist concepts of Juda­ ism and the Jewish people. Henry Monsky scored the Council as “reprehensibly impertinent.” Numerically the Council represented an enrolled membership of thirty-two ultra-Reform ministers and eighty-two laymen, but hardly the thousands claimed for it by Proskauer. Actually, this was a prelude to the Judge’s bolt from the American Jewish Conference.

“Why,” asked Dr. Silver, “has there arisen among us this mortal fear of the term ‘Jewish Common­ wealth,’ which both British and Amer­ ican statesmen took in their stride, as it were, and which our own fellowJews of both camps endorsed twentyfive years ago. The Jewish Common­ wealth is not a matter of ideology . . . the hope of national restoration among our people for nineteen hundred years was not motivated by an ide­ ology, but by the hard cruel facts of existence.”

JEW ISH LIFE

A J C W IT H D R A W A L f-:: ' OPING to conciliate the dele­ then served in the Office of Strategic gates from the American Jew­ Services (OSS) in the Middle East. ish Committee and their political kin Answering Goldman were Dr. David in Reform circles, Dr. Maurice Eisen- W. Pearlman and Ezra Shapiro. “We drath introduced a somewhat modified cannot postpone our demand for this resolution in behalf of the Reform Commonwealth because of a longgroup which he represented. The reso­ range point-of-view, as advocated by lution included the following language: Goldman.”

Finally, Judge Proskauer spoke up, Because o f the fact that Jews have setting the stage for the climatic act been bound by historic and spiritual of bolting from the American Jewish ties to the H oly Land and because Conference. He used every tactic at o f the legal right w hich the Balfour his command on and off the conven­ D eclaration and M andate gave to the tion stage. His frontal attack against Jews to establish a H om eland in P al­ estine, the A m erican Jew ish C onfer­ the “Jewish Commonwealth” failing, ence solem nly declares that the tim e Judge Proskauer utilized other tactics. has com e for all Jews, irrespective o f The same question on the Jewish ideological differences, to unite their Commonwealth came in many differ­ efforts towards the establishm ent o f ent guises. One concerned an ambi­ such a H om eland in Palestine . . . guous claim of State Department pres­ A last minute attempt to retain sure, White House opposition, and American Jewish Committee partici­ others. Few were moved. Proskauer pation in the American Jewish Con­ then introduced the following resolu­ ference was made by Robert P. Gold­ tion: man, second in rank in the B’nai R esolved that in view o f the critical B’rith and a dedicated leader of the war situation at present existing and Conference. Morris D. Waldman, in o f the changing conditions that lie his above-mentioned book, quotes ahead and o f the desirability o f fur­ Goldman’s pleas for “statesmanlike ther effort to reach com plete accord, compromise.*’ He declared, “The im­ the action o f this C onference with mediate problem is the rescue of the respect to Palestine be deferred un­ Jews and the key to it is Palestine. til a future session to be called by the Praesidium, and that m eanw hile But I have it on very good authority the Palestine C om m ission be con ­ that the adoption by the Conference tinued to exist. of a program for a Jewish Common­ wealth will do more to bring about This resolution was seconded by the coalescing of an Arab federation, Mr. Jacob Blaustein of the Committee. which is otherwise impossible of co­ Upon a vote, the resolution was de­ alescing, than any other thing we can feated. Two votes were recorded in do.” its favor. Eisendrath and Goldman A close inspection of the records absented themselves. The “Jewish reveals that this piece of political in­ formation was conveyed to Mr. Gold­ Commonwealth” resolution was then man by the American Jewish Com- adopted by an overwhelming major­ mittee and Dr. Nelson Glueck, who ity, with only four dissenting votes.

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33

HREE months following the bout, avoid embarrassing our country’s war T the American Jewish Committee efforts and iri response to pressure withdrew from the American Jewish conveyed from the White House and Conference. The Committee, in agree­ ing to join the Conference, had done so on the condition that its “Price of Liberty” was to be reserved at all times, and the fateful necessity of holding and acting together even un­ der so dominant a threat as that pro­ vided by the tragic and catastrophic events of the 1940’s was obscured.

On the more ideological plane, the American Jewish Committee refused “to be a tail to the Zionist kite.” The Committee aimed to stress its eman­ cipationist position as distinguished from nationalist ideology, proclaiming that “Palestine is not the be-all and end-all of Jewish life.” It maintained that “efforts should be made to cre­ ate opportunities for settlement in countries other than Palestine for Eu­ ropean Jews who desire to emigrate over the 100,000 we have been de­ manding for Palestine.” Also, the Committee endorsed, on given condi­ tions, the partition of Palestine. Fi­ nally, according to Waldman, “the de­ cision on the part of the American Jewish Committee to withdraw from the American Jewish Conference had been largely governed by the desire to

the State Department. ^ r . Waldman writes: “Our refusal to vote for the resolution was gov­ erned, also, by the wishes conveyed to us as coming from the White House and the State Department in repeated and excited telephone conversations from Washington with Proskauer and others in one of our suites at the Wal­ dorf Astoria during the final twentyfour tense hours of the week’s session of the Conference, to the effect that should the resolution be adopted in the “plenum,” we should “walk right out of the Conference/’ There was no end to hard words that were soon followed by inevitable bit­ terness and strife. “The withdrawal of the American Jewish Committee from the Conference created greater excite­ ment in the Jewish community than any domestic event in my recollec­ tion,” reports Mr. Waldman. “Our ac­ tion,” he continues, “was hailed with a storm of criticism and invective on the part of virtually the entire Jew­ ish press. The rumbling thunder of that storm was heard in all countries throughout the world where Jews dw elt.. . . ”

NEW EFFORTS HIS widened rift between the policies of the Committee, as well as T American Jewish Conference and of other groups. The Jewish catas­ the American Jewish Committee more trophe in Europe seemed to have in­ than emphasized the fragile character of the Conference. It also emphasized the key fact that the claim to special privilege, based on laissez faire rela­ tions and individualistic traditions, continued to shape the behavior and 34

duced a considerable degree of unity among all groups and orientations, but that unity was a superficial one.

What in fact prolonged the life of the American Jewish Conference for a period of three years, counting JEW ISH LIFE

from 1944, was its imaginative and dynamic leadership. “Leaders must be responsible to the yearnings, the aspi­ rations and the hopes of those for whom they presume to speak,” thun­ dered Monsky, calling for greater courage, planning, and coordination of effort. Joining him was an impres­ sive, representative group of leaders who were prepared to support the movement which held forth the pro­ mise of planning for the general and Jewish welfare over the whole range of activities. There was Louis Lipsky, whose scope and breadth of under­ standing far outweighed his Zionist partisanship. There were Frank Gold­ man, Maurice Bisgyer, Edgar Kauf­ man, Adolph Rosenberg, Isidore Nagler, Herman Shulman, Harold Gold­ berg, Stanley Meyers, Judges Louis Levinthal, Simon Sobeloff, Simon Rifkin, and Harry M. Fisher, Ralph Wechsler, Hayim Greenberg, Samuel Rothstein, and Bernard Bernstein.

Most conspicuous was the representa­ tion of the clergy. Vigorous leadership was furnished by such leading figures as Abba Hillel Silver, Israel Goldstein, William Drazin, Emanuel Rackman, Maurice Eisendrath, James Heller, Irving Miller, Robert Gordis, Aaron M. Ashinsky, Solomon B. Freehof, Joseph H. Lookstein, Solomon Gold­ man, Bernard Bernstein. Rabbi Eliezer Silver cooperated. What is particularly interesting about this movement is that it represented the impact of the Jew­ ish crisis and an epoch on thinking and articulate minds.

To recoup its losses as well as re­ tain the representative character of the Conference, the Interim Commit­ tee now consisted of nine Blocs: The American Jewish Congress, the B’nai B’rith, the Conservative Group, the Independents, the General Zionists, September-Octobér, 1964

the Labor Zionists, the “Non-Parti­ san” Bloc, the Reform Group, and the National Religious Bloc (Ortho­ dox).

The last mentioned included: the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congrega­ tions of America and its Woman’s Branch, the Rabbinical Council of America, the National Council of Young Israel, Mizrachi Organization of America and Mizrachi Women’s Organization, and Hapoel Hamizrachi of America.

The sum of $250,000 which was made available to the American Jewish Conference for the year 1945 repre­ sented an increase of $150,000 over the years 1943 and 1944, respectively. $50,000 was designated for research; $50,000 was allocated for adminis­ trative expense and travel expense of community leaders, and $100,000 was distributed among the nine Blocs. The funds were derived from the consti­ tuent organizations and from local communities and welfare funds, plus $50,000 from the United Jewish Ap­ peal. This, in brief, was the revised structure out of which the material and ideological equipment for a uni­ fied organization was to be fashioned.

UT soon the American Jewish Conference began to run into B the “iron laws” of the unfavorable­ ness of the environment, brought on by the constant pressure of some delegates to expand and even to su­ pervise some of the functions of the constituent organizations.

The subject at issue which first created difficulties and conflicts was: “The American Scene.” A significant number of delegates and their orga­ nizations felt the need for the crea­ tion of an overall representative Jew­ ish body that would discuss problems 35

affecting the American Jewish com­ munity. These advocated the need for a consultative body, a great sounding board and clearing house of American Jewish thought on all vital Jewish problems, where these could be per­ iodically discussed, analyzed, and ap­ praised and at which conflict could be worked out by discussion within, rather than be flattened by the vic­ tory of one point of view or another.

Others, however, sought a very dif­ ferent role for the Conference. They urged the setting up of a permanent organization vested with authority and power to supervise, review, and even direct activities (when conditions might so warrant) in areas which were presently the sole prerogative and responsibility of the constituent organizations.

These two movements for the re­ fashioning of the American Jewish Conference produced a chain reac­ tion, the impact of which resulted in the mute collapse and death of the Conference. Having fallen, it never rose again. The first conflict in this phase, as appears from the Proceed­ ings of the Fourth Session (1947), re­ volved around the problem of the the scope and “jurisdiction” of the Conference; more specifically whether or not to include in its agenda the “American Scene”, and such other matters as related to the “future pur­ pose and function of the Conference.”

This difficulty was resolved, despite the inflexibility, apathy, and indiffer­ ence of many. Here the central role was played by Louis Lipsky, who in­ troduced a political process which was in essence Jewish and political demo­ cracy. Said h e | “Those who advocate an overall organization for American Jews should first find out how Jews in this country are organized and what 36

would be the basis on which various groups might be willing or able to join an overall body.. . . We want thenk to know that we are going to appoint a commission of qualified men, authorities in their fields who will look into the question, and if there is any way for the American Jewish Conference to satisfy that need, it will be done.” The Interim Commit­ tee thus proceeded to appoint a SubCommittee on Basic Policy whose task it was “to conduct within the next three months in all American Jewish communities a referendum among the electors of the delegates to the Ameri­ can Jewish Conference” on the follow­ ing questions: T. W hether

the A m erican Jewish C onference should include in its agenda and program activities re­ lating to the w elfare o f A m erican Jewry.

2. W hether the Am erican Jewish /Conference as the central body should coordinate and supervise all A m erican Jewish institutions and agencies Jthat are w illing to function as bodies subject to the direction o f A m erican Jewish pub­ lic opinion.

3. That the results o f the referendum be published not later than July 15, 1945.

The Sufi-Committee consisted of Eisendrath, Goldstein, Edgar J. Kauf­ man, Monsky, Rothstein, Alex F. Stanton, Wise and David Wertheim.

To carry out that part of the man­ date, the Sub-Committee held public hearings all over the country and con­ ferred with the various national or­ ganizations, and otherwise maintained contact with living realities, while studying the ways and means for bringing such a body into existence.

For the first time in the history of the JEWISH LIFE

American Jewish community, realistic social analysis was employed as a

vital tool for action rather than as a rigid prédéterminant of policy.

THE FINAL STAGE UT of this study came a new or­ O ganizational plan, cited in the Proceedings of the Fourth Session.

The plan envisioned the establishment of “an organization, democratic in structure and representative of the American Jewish community . . . to se­ cure and protect rights and to pro­ mote the general Jewish welfare, here and abroad, and to enhance the con­ tribution of the Jewish community to American democracy.” In the field of international affairs, it was proposed that the organization “shall act for American Jewry in all representation before the U.S. Government and de­ partments, inter-governmental agen­ cies, and the UN, and in all public re­ lations connected therewith, the orga­ nization shall endeavor to cooperate with the organized Jewish communi­ ties in other countries and with such international Jewish agencies as are or may be established.”

The plan further proposed: In the defense o f Jewish rights in the U .S. and in opposing all anti­ dem ocratic forces and tendencies in A m erican life and in com batting anti­ sem itism in all its form s, the organi­ zation shall act through recognized Jew ish agencies, affiliated with the or­ ganization operating in these fields, w ithout affecting their autonom y, it being understood that such agencies shall be invited to report to the or­ ganization periodically in order that the organization m ay be in a position to consider their policies and work, and recom m end proposals to prom ote their objectives. In the field o f over-

September-October, 1964

seas relief and rehabilitation, the or­ ganization shall act through recog­ nized Jewish agencies [affiliated with the organization] operating in these fields, w ithout affecting their auton­ om y. It being understood that such agencies shall be invited to report to the organization periodically in order that the organization m ay be in a p o­ sition to consider their policies and wprk and recom m end proposals to prom ote their objectives.

ONFLICTS and clashes arose C when the Jewish organizations and their leaders broke up into two camps, each pressing and insisting on its own position regarding the future Plan of the Conference; Camp One, led by Frank Goldman and Philip M. Klutznick of B’nai B’rith and the lead­ ers of the Reform group, insisted on operating within a laiMez faire co­ ordinating organization on the basis of purely voluntary contractual rela­ tions, without internal Controls, with­ out external sanctions, except those which they might freely accept as oc­ casion arose and so long as they would be free to renounce what they had previously accepted, should the volun­ tary relations no longer suit their pur­ pose.

Camp Two, represented by Louis Lipsky and Louis Segal, a LaborZionist, countered by insisting that since Jewish organizations had not been moved to restrain their “collec­ tive individualism and independent ac­ tions” as a result of threatening ex­ ternal pressures, there must be other forces of communal cohesion to at37

tain a common ground. Therefore, ar­ gued these leaders, to insure the con­ tinued existence of the Conference, laissez faire, voluntary relations must be restrained through the application of formal discipline, internal control, sanctions, and coercive power.

These two conflicting and contrast­ ing viewpoints on the future plan of the Conference became the major vil­ lains of the drama that was enacted and reenacted at three successive sit­ tings of the Conference.

Derisively and with dramatic elo­ quence, Louis Lipsky stated: “This Plan, as it stands, gives to the new organization no power except that of being a rubber stamp and of choosing the ink with which it will rubber stamp the activities of the existing organiza­ tions. . . . All we ask for is the power to do something in case it becomes impossible to act through existing agencies. To leave out such a provi­ sion is to say that we must work through the existing agencies, even though it is impossible.”

Dr. Maurice Eisendrath, author of

the Plan, counseled caution against the breakup of the Conference: “that we essay to build a unified American Jewry on the only foundation upon which our Jewish Faith has rested— that of moral authority.” Eisendrath rejected as un-Jewish the claim of those who demanded that this future organization have “power from the outset and that it exercise that discip­ linary power.”

Thereafter, understanding became increasingly difficult. Eisendrath’s last appeal on December i , 1947, chal­ lenging the delegates to accept his Plan, postulated on “moral authority,” went unheard.

Acrimony, bitterness, and strife were soon followed by deprecation and belligerence. The barriers between the two diminishing Camps were drawn.

The yawning gulf deepened. In its depths lay an abandoned four-year old fledgling , . . the American Jewish Conference. December 31, 1948, the time set for a forthcoming meeting, came and went, but the session never took place.

THE LESSON OF EXPERIENCE E have seen that the problem of purely voluntary relations ver­ sus historically conditioned relations was the chief bone of contention be­ tween American Jewish organizations.

It has dominated their behavior and thinking and made the building of a unified community impossible—then as before and since. It prevented broader interaction of interests. It generated conflicts, heated quarels, bolts, and resentments of all kinds. Today, twenty years later, dup­

W

lication, waste, competition, diffusions and confusion continue to dominate the American Jewish scene. It is a picture in Dadaism.

We have seen also that Jewish or­ ganizations were not held together on the basis of purely voluntary rela­ tions, even in 8 times of crisis. The ultimate reason is clear: The only basis on which restraint to independ­ ent action by individual organizations can be established is a wide-scale ad­ herence to pommon values, common JEW ISH LIFE

ideals, common experiences, and a common religious belief.

This brings us to the question: Have American Jews preserved the historic, basic values of Judaism? I will be so bold as to answer, Yes. It is my hypo­ thesis that despite the variations in values which can be found to exist among sectors of American Jewry, the basic, characteristic value-beliefs of Judaism command the inner allegi­ ance of American Jews at large. The fact that the conflicting religious or ideological tenets of various move­ ments and organizations seem to con­ tradict this assumption is not necessa­ rily to be taken as disproof. In a great many — perhaps the majority — of cases, the constituents of these groups have little or no understanding of the actual doctrines associated with them; spiritually and intellectually confused, they ascribe to these movements the same ultimate allegiance to historic Jewish belief to which they them­ selves inwardly, though not in actual practice, subscribe. In large measure, the non- and anti-traditional organiza­ tions misrepresent rather than repre­ sent the deepest religious sentiments of their constituents. This inner con­ tradiction is certainly one source at least of the fluctuating attitudes to­ wards traditional tenets among some Jewish movements.

The fact must of course be faced that disparity of values and beliefs be­ tween the different organizations of American Jewry inhibits possibilities of comprehensive, disciplined unity.

Until such time as this disparity may be resolved there can be no fundamen­ tal change in the communal structure.

The maximum that can be hoped for is a process of practical coordination applicable to limited areas of com­ mon interest.

Sepfember-Ocfober, 1964

UT beyond this, the problem to B be faced is: Is even adherence to common values and ideals in a purely voluntary community a firm enough foundation on which to create cohe­ sion and harmony against self-interestel and independent actions?

This writer wishes to offer a few observations on Jewish voluntary or­ ganizations which should stand as the opinion of one student of the Ameri­ can Jewish scene.

Jewish voluntary organizations can be said to be inherently closer to the Judaic ideas and ideals of social jus­ tice than either political or economic organizations. But what is left out of account in such a formulation is the factor of “self-interest.” This factor naturally tends to obscure the larger interests of the Jewish community and in given circumstances is in direct op­ position to them. This is so despite the capacity of men and organizations to consider communal needs and in­ terests.

To be sure, the most ideal Jewish organization is obviously the one in which men work harmoniously to­ gether, coordinate immensely diverse activities without restraint, fear, or coercion of any kind. This requires a harmony created by mutual forbear­ ance and consideration. But this ideal is not easily achieved. The family, among all human communities, comes closer to this ideal; but even in the family some coercion is used to pre­ serve order and harmony against recal­ citrant tendencies. The more complex the human organization, the more it is subject to tension and frustration arising from conflicting and competing interests.

Unless one is a complete anarchist, one must admit the historical necessi­ ty of certain coercive elements in so3?

cial life. Virtually all social organiza­ tions rely on a mixture of attraction and coercion to insure their continu­ ing existence. If the force of self-in­ terest of individual Jewish organiza­ tions is fully measured as a factor in the achievement of harmony and or­ der, the attitude toward coercion and discipline must inevitably be less nega­ tive and critical than is presently the case among Jewish organizations and their leaders. It is a fact that the modern jungle of Jewish organizations seems to be a cockpit of warring in­ terests. Such a proliferation has in­ deed avoided the perils of coercion, but at what cost!

Although our organizational “fecun­ dity” is a characteristic product of America’s pluralistic religious history, we are now entering a time when the exigencies of life impose greater in­ teraction upon us. The confusion has crept into the minds of many—that the principle of laissez faire econo­ mics, of unfettered freedom of enter­ prise which has given the business world its great thrust and admirable results— apply no less to húman rela­ tions and the problem of human to­ getherness. This is a dangerous error.

Actually, most human relations, from those of the family to those of an in­ choate community, have a greater de­ gree of “destiny” and a smaller degree

of revocable choice than those of the business community. In these human relations, organizations and the com­ munity are bound together in such a way that it may not be desirable to “contract out” the relation if it proves vexatious. Therefore, more attention must be given to various strategies for preserving the good order and a toler­ able harmony between the various or­ ganizations by whatever measures prove most effective and least injurious to freedom.

The problem to be resolved, there­ fore, lies in the fact that the logical way to bring about stability and bet­ ter planning in the Jewish community involves the use of forms of restraint in which consent and coercion are compounded. Organizational freedom must be restrained and disciplined through the spread of the ideals of responsibility or through an accepted machinery of control.

From the standpoint of traditional Jewish interest at least, we must con­ struct some kind of organization which will hold together in large-scale co­ operation all structures sharing that interest. The achievement of such in­ teraction must be regarded as an ap­ proximation of an ideal Jewish com­ munity. It is merely an approxima­ tion under difficult conditions.

Effective this issue of JE W ISH LIFE ou r Subscription rates are Single C o p y ..... .50^ 2 years............$4.50 3 years........ $6.00 4 years........ $7.50 40

JEW ISH LIFE

A S to ry The Challenge

By GERSHEN MARINBACH

EADS of perspiration dotted the the membership, including some of his B old, wrinkled forehead of the strong opponents, Fishel Zarinsky had president of the First Benevolent Pod- remained the unchallenged president visoker Society. As he banged the gavel and declared, “Nominations closed!” he knew that he had lost any chance for being re-elected. Ever since he had become a member some fifty years ago, Fishel Zarinsky had been a dominant and controversial figure in the Chevra. At one time or another he had held every office, and what’s more, he had been president many more times than any other member.

To be sure, he had had his opposition; Fishel Zarinsky was a man who liked to give orders and to receive none. Of strong will and determination, and possessing a sharp mind and a dexter­ ity of speech, he was able to maneuver the membership into voting his way on issues which at the outset they had opposed. However, when the members would feel that they had had enough they would clip his wings and relegate him to the back benches where he would cool his heels until another op­ portunity would restore him to power.

Time having thinned the ranks of September-October, 1964

of the Podvisoker Society for the past five years. Despite his own age, Fishel still had plenty of fight left in him, al­ though most of the membership dis­ played the weakness of their declining years. Fishel looked like a fighting man. He was of large frame, reaching six feet, and corpulent. His head was bald except for a garland of white fuzz. His eyes were small and piercing, and the lines on his face dropped downward. Retired, living on a small income from some real estate prop­ erty supplemented by social security benefits, he now had but one interest in life—his shool, The First Benevo­ lent Podvisoker Society.

With no pretender to the crown, Fishel Zarinsky reigned and ruled. He selected the cantor, suggested the ser­ mons to the rabbi, distributed the honors to the worshippers, assigned graves for the deceased, contracted for major repairs to the synagogue and cemetery grounds— all these without consulting the membership. If some41

one still, darecr to voice an objection he was immediately declared out of order.

The First Benevolent Podvisoker So­ ciety had been organized in the eight­ een-nineties by a handful of landsleit.

A stoop apartment was converted into a synagogue and there the fellow Pod­ visoker met daily and Shabboth for services. Business meetings were held every other Saturday night. It was a close and intimate group. They cele­ brated their joyful occasions and Yahrtzeits by a Shabboth morning Kiddush, gathered each Shabboth af­ ternoon to learn Mishnah and Gemora, for Minchah services and for a modest communal “Sholosh Seudoth.”

In the dimmed synagogue their voices would rise in the singing of z’miroth.

The melodies were sad and slow, for Podvisoker was a White Russian city where life itself was bitter and hard.

ONIGHT the shool was brightly T lit in honor of the elections.

Whereas on the other meeting nights only a corner of the synagogue would be illuminated, tonight, due to the importance of the business at hand, every switch in the control box was in the “on” position. Thirty or so members were revealed occupying the front seats of a synagogue which had a seating capacity of fifteen hundred.

The Podvisoker Society, you see, had not remained very long at its small stoop quarters. A large influx of immi­ grants made it imperative for the so­ ciety to seek larger quarters and a church was bought and converted into a synagogue, which had become one of the most important on the lower east side. You could get a minyoii at the Podvisoker Shool at almost any time of the day. Morning services be­ gan at daybreak and minyon followed 42

minyon until eleven o’clock. After­ noon services began at two and ran into evening services until nine.

Mourners who had to say Kaddish found the synagogue most convenient.

The Podvisoker landsleit were very proud of their synagogue. In fact, they were a proud lot altogether; very de­ voted to each other and strongly at­ tached in sentiment and in deed to their town, Podvisok. In 1905, when a po­ grom broke out in Podvisok during which fifteen Jews were killed, they organized a relief committee, sent over large sums to rehabilitate the surviv­ ing victims, and provided transporta­ tion for those who wished to come to America. After World War I they even sent a committee across to or­ ganize relief for the town, and chan­ nelled more immigrants to the shores of the United States. One of the im­ migrants, a talented young man, achieved prominence on Second Avenue and even wrote a sentimental song about the home town and his longing for it. He called it, “Mein Liebe Podvisok.” It was a “must” in every Yiddish singer’s repertoire, and could be heard repeatedly on Yiddish radio programs.

ISHEL ZARINSKY was despond­ F ent. There was no use in fighting.

Might as well save his strength. His opponent, Maurice Fenster was a man of forty, an attorney, ambitious. He was the American-born son-in-law of a member and had joined the organi­ zation immediately upon his being ad­ mitted to the bar. The members, tired of Fishel’s strong rule, had approached the younger man to lead, their battered forces against the president. Counsel­ lor Fenster, as the members addressed him, was more than willing. Being president of the First Benevolent PodJEW ISH LIFE

visoker Society would add to the list of organizations in which he was an officer. Not only was it good for busi­ ness, but the Counsellor had political ambitions as well, and the presidency of this still-important synagogue would do him no harm.

Fishel Zarinsky’s eyes wandered from his opponent’s face to the peeledoff paint on the ceiling and to the fungus-covered spots on the walls. So much money was needed for necessary repairs and so little was coming in.

There was a time when money was no problem. There had been enough to pay off and burn the mortgage, enough to decorate the synagogue with expen­ sive murals depicting the “mazoloth” and Biblical scenes. There had been enough to import the most renowned cantors of the world—Pineh Manekofsky, Gershon Serota, Razumneh, Kwartin— and to maintain the worldfamous scholar, orator, and author, Anshel Freilich, as Rav. But those had been the days of glory. Since then the neighborhood had greatly changed.

Thè well-to-do members and worship­ pers moved to the Bronx, Boro Park, and Crown Heights. Those who re­ mained did the best they could. But it was a tough battle. Time took its toll among the people and left its scars upon the edifice.

At this moment Fishel, too was tired.

For all the time and energy that he had put into the shool, he, himself had received little appreciation from the members. True, he was respected and feared, but not loved. He had no one whom he could call a friend, although a person would feel honored if Fishel would spèak to him. Ah! If only, he could iive his life over again he would follow a different course—not the pur­ suit of power, which he had;" but a more humble reaching out for love September-October, 1964

from his friends and family. He had so much talent, so much to offer but that one attribute which would make him be loved, that he lacked most.

ISHEL ZARINSKY had come to F this country immediately after the 1905 pogrom. He had risen at the first meeting, after he was voted in as a member, to thank his landsleit for their aid in bringing him and his family to America, and for the honor of mem­ bership that they bestowed upon him.

He took the membership by storm. He was a master of words, and with all the colorful Yiddish at his command he painted a picture of the old coun­ try-units suffering and its frustrations —which brought tears to his listeners.

He sang the praises of his new coun­ try, expressing the hope that all the Jews of Podvisok would be trans­ planted here in America. The Podvisoker immediately recognized in Fishel Zarinsky the quality of leader­ ship. At the very next election the con­ gregation chose him gabbai. He per­ formed his duties efficiently, and in­ novated well-needed reforms that brought radical improvement of the school’s finances; but he undertook the changes with enough tactlessness to gain for him a number of antagonists.

The following year he was chosen vice-president, with some opposition, but not before he had maneuvered one of his loyal followers into the presidency. Though second in com­ mand, Fishel was actually the power behind the throne. Nothing was done which did not have his stamp of ap­ proval, and if the synagogue managed tq pass a motion opposed by him, that motion was sure to die because of the failure of its execution by the admin­ istration. At the next election Fishel Zarinsky made his first bid for the 43

presidency, and was defeated after a stormy caimpaign during which he was labeled “Czar Nikolai,” by his enemies.

For the next two years Zarinsky maintained a stubborn silence in the affairs of the organization. The third year the Congregation came to beg him to take over. The synagogue had accumulated a tremendous deficit, the mortgage installment could not be met, the rabbi had not been paid for six months, and the cantor had quit and had instituted suit. Fishel Zarinsky permitted himself the luxury of refus­ ing to run and finally consented if he would be drafted to the presidency by a unanimous vote. In this way he got his revenge.

Immediately after his election, Fishel rolled up his sleeves and went to work. He collected every outstand­ ing dollar, imposed a membership tax, reduced benefit payments, organized a fund-raising campaign, made stirring appeals for money and pressured the wealthy members for large donations.

At the end of that year all expenses were paid, and a surplus of five thou­ sand dollars remained.

CHAIRMAN, may I have

IT JL the floor?,” demanded Counsel­ lor Fenster as he rose to his feet. He was short and growing into the pot­ belly stage. A skull-cap was sitting un­ comfortably upon his plastered-down black hair and a Charlie Chaplin mus­ tache performed acrobatics with every twitch of his over-solicitous smile. Out of respect to the members he took out of his mouth the half-chewed and halfsmoked cigar and threw it gracefully into the spittoon. Then, in the accus­ tomed manner of addressing a jury he removed his horn-rimmed glasses and pointed them at the membership.

44

“Brother members,” began Counsel­ lor Fenster, “I have been a member of this synagogue for the past fifteen years and though I admit I have at­ tended only a few of the meetings, I have been sending in my dues prompt­ ly. I am proud to be a member of this synagogue.” (Applause) “Though it has seen better days, it still is the most important synagogue on the East Side,” (Applause) “Gentlemen, I have never sought actively to be an officer of the organization but a number of the members have approached me to take over the reins of the presidency, in the hope that some of the an­ cient glory be restored to our shook” (Applause) “I fully appreciate what motivated them to ask me. Fishel Za­ rinsky is a good man and has devoted many years of his life to the welfare of our shook” (Pause;—silence) “But what I feel is needed is a closer touch with modern living. We must attract the youth of our community to our synagogue.” (Applause) “To this I solemnly pledge myself if elected.”

(Applause and nods of approval) “If elected I will work with all my effort to convert this shool into a modern Jewish Center with a recreation hall and a swimming pool. It will be the pride of our community.” (Applause) “Furthermore, the first thing that I intend to do is to change the outland­ ish name of the First Benevolent Podvisoker Society into the Jewish Center of the East Side.” The heads that had been nodding suddenly remained still; the hands that were outstretched ready to applaud the next comment dropped down to their sides; ^ the promoters who sat alongside of their champion squirmed uncomfortably, and he, the challenger, remained drowning in a sea of silence. His face reddened, his JEW ISH LIFE

voice stammered towards an explana­ tion and gave up, and finally he sat down, aware of his fatal blunder.

OR a few seconds Fishel Zarinsky F remained seated. As Samson of old he suddenly felt the ebbing strength return to his sinews, and as he slowly rose to his feet, he knew that he was again the master of the situation.

He looked directly at Maurice Fen­ ster with a cynical smile, and in a lowered voice said, “Young man, as I was sitting here and listening to your remarks, my mind travelled to the years when I was young and when I put the synagogue in touch with the modern times of yesterday. I decided that at the conclusion of your address I would decline my nomination in your favor. But now I am more than ever convinced that while I have con­ fidence in your ability I am sorry to say that I have no confidence in the spirit in which you plan to undertake your reforms. You ask us to forego the name of the First Benevolent Podvisoker Society. You are not a Podvisoker. To you it is a grotesque and comical name. We cannot expect you to feel any other way about it. But to us Podvisoker^we can never forget it, and as long as we live we want to perpetuate its name.

“Podvisok,” he turned to the landsleit, “that little Russian hamlet with

September-October, 1964

its narrow crooked streets and its thatched-roofed huts; the town where we were born and where we spent the days of our youth. Can we ever erase from our minds the cheder we at­ tended? Plenty of blows did we re­ ceive from the rebbe, but the mischief we carried on during recess, the game of hide-and-go-seek and especially the chizuk given us, they are now our nos­ talgic dreams of our younger days. Do you remember the swimming hole in the woods near Feodor’s farm? Do you recall the L’ag Bomer hikes and the Tisha B’av fights with “berelach” for ammunition? It is too much of our past to forget. Do you want to forget the pogroms, the fifteen Jews massacred by the frenzied peasants?

Shall their memory be obliterated to­ gether with the destruction of their graves by the Nazis?

“Young man,” again he directed his gaze toward Maurice Fenster, “we want a Jewish Center, we want to at­ tract youth, but we do not want to be rejected, especially now in our old age.”

ALLOTS were distributed, mark­ ed, collected and tabulated. Za­ B rinsky, Zarinsky, Fishel, Fishel Zarin­ sky, F. Zarinsky, “Czar Nikolai,” Za­ rinsky. It stood thirty-three for Fishel Zarinsky and two for Counsellor Mau­ rice Fenster.

45

A New Look a t an O ld Blueprint for Good Living The Rediscovery of Isaac Aboab's Ethical Treatise: Menorath Hamaor

By VICTOR SOLOMON MERICA crossing the threshold permitted a religionized America or A of the space age, is cultivating an “The Religion of Democracy” to expanding gap between religion and emerge, a fact which has proved dis­ practice, between religious commit­ ment and ‘‘interest” in religion. The space between the two poles is grow­ ing ever larger in spite of the widely noted religious “revival” which has be­ come the marvel of our age.

Martin E. Marty,* who may prove to be the Gibbon of American religion, is among those who see reli­ gion in this country as fallen into a sad state. There has been no revival of religion, he declares. On the con­ trary, he testifies to a dangerous proc­ ess of erosion which has robbed the various religious persuasions of par­ ticularism and meaningful substance and has blurred the lines of distinctic n.

The result has been the emergence of a fourth level of religion, or what he calls “religion-in-general,” which is a substitute faith and has no connection with the historic religions. The fertile soil of America, which offered free­ dom and tolerance to all creeds, has * Martin E. Marty, “The New Shape of Amer­ ican Religion,” (Harper and Brothers), New York, 1959.

46

astrous to the integrity of religion-in­ particular and all it represents in terms of spiritual content and moral au^ thority.

This situation, far from solving old problems* has accentuated the already complex dilemma of “post-modern man.” In this age, ultimate problems have become proximate crises and the confrontation is brutal in its reality.

The old-established idols of Science and Reason, upon whose strength gen­ erations of thinking moderns have re­ lied for support, are beginning to totter on their clay feet. The gap be­ tween the nebulous, sentimental, spine­ less “religion-in-general” and the pur­ poseful, specific, -virile “religion-in­ particular” becomes the horrifying abyss before which mankind stands.

Left morally stranded by science, man’s nervous finger hesitates between the buttons wired to atomic progress and atomic annihilation while impotent Reason stands by the side wringing her scrawny hands in despair. Relativ­ ism has brought us to this unhappy JEW ISH LIFE

predicament and in the darkness of despair, most of us are groping for a line anchored in the absolute, the eternal, the immovable.

T WAS Martin Buber who observed, “The man who thinks existentially (is) the man who stakes his life on his thinking.’’* The mildness of this state­ ment betrays its dated vintage. Existen­ tial thinking in this sense is no longer an heroic gamble. Today there is no alternative to confrontation with stark reality, save a nihilism of the most suicidal kind. He who refuses to rec­ ognize man’s frailty, limitations of rea­ son, and dependence on a greater Power for his very existence is simply refusing to face reality. The facts of life compel us to seek salvation in the most earnest way because our very existence is at stake. Isaac Aboab joins the chorus of voices calling to us through the winding corridors of his­ tory to rekindle his “Candelabrum”

I

and use its illuminating rays as a guide out of the dark despair of our post-modern dilemma, step by step.

His work “Menorath Hamaor,” once the moral guide and ethical handbook of every professing Jew, recently re­ published in Israel, needs to be res­ cued from the oblivion of polite for­ getfulness, to become once again tha roadmap of the Jew on his journey through life.

- “Menorath Hamaor,” meaning “Candelabrum of Light,” is a compila­ tion of aggadic literature and homiletic teachings which emphasize the ethics of Judaism. The date of its origir is uncertain, but most scholars place it in the 14th century C.E. Universally popular in the original Hebrew, it ap­ peared also through the centuries in Spanish, Ladino, German, and Yid­ dish translations, and now, as men­ tioned, has been republished in He­ brew, in Israel.

LEAP OF A C T IO N HE first step of the laborious pil­ grimage charted by Aboab calls for the cultivation of a self-effacing, self-abnegating spirit of humility with the power to obliterate the modern idolatries of “self” deification. Aboab, like Maimonides before him, counsels humility of the most extreme kind.

Although they advise the golden mean in all matters, both go to great pains to exempt humility from this requirement. For humility is more than an ethical virtue. It is the supreme virtue, the antidote which alone can save mankind from the idolatry of

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* Martin Buber, “I and Thou,” (T. and T. Clark), Edinburgh, 1937.

September-October, 1964

“self”-exaltation — a familiar vice which finds eloquent fulfillment in the assertion of Protagoras that “man is the measure of all things.”

With humility must come a realis­ tic appraisal of the role of sin in our present predicament. Even Will Herberg, who is representative of a schod of philosophy lamentably distant from the spirit of Torah, was compelled to admit (in his “Judaism and Modern Man”) : “Sin has been a word repug­ nant to a certain type of modern mind, more concerned with evading respon­ sibility for the horrors of the world than facing the facts of life. The re­ sult of the recognition of sin will lead 47

to a revitalizatipn of the atrophied faculty for the realization of guilt.”

This introduces us to the next step, that of Teshuvah, which is conven­ tionally translated as “repentance,” but means much more than what is im­ plied by that term. Teshuvah should be translated, “return,” return to G-d.

It represents the highest point in the crescendo of the Great Dialogue be­ tween G-d and man: “Turn Thou us unto Thee O Lord and We shall be turned.” (Lamentations 5, 21. Isaac Leeser’s version: “Cause us to return, O Lord, unto thee, and we will re­ turn.”) A Divine hand reaches across the abyss to lead man out of his di­ lemma; thus prayer has a divine re­ sponse.

T THIS point Aboab parts com­ pany with the existentialist who A speaks of a “leap of faith.” Aboab prescribes what is more correctly de­ scribed as “a leap of action”—the performance of Mitzvoth, Divine com­ mands. Aboab urges that a mitzvah should be observed even out of an ulterior motive—when no better one can be summoned—because it will lead to good intentions; for Mitzvah is the key to the gates of faith. We obtain faith through Mitzvoth, not be­ cause of them. Right living is the path to right thinking. The teaching of our Sages that one Mitzvah leads to an­ other may be restated in terms of the impact of the Mitzvoth on the ob­ server’s character and personality. Of intrinsic and cosmic significance in itself, Mitzvah is significant likewise as a molder of character. Judaism calls for commitment in action, through deeds as a prerequisite for understand­ ing. (It is sufficiently optimistic to be­ lieve that the performance of Mitzvoth for ulterior purposes or in a mechan48

ical way will ultimately lead to per­ formance with ideal intention, sincer­ ity, and devotion. However, this ap­ plies only where there is an absence of formal good and not evil intent, e.g., the performance of a good deed out of habit, or in answer to the call of conscience—charity given in re­ sponse to pity, rather than out of obe­ dience to G-d.)

The Mitzvoth constitute a discipline which calls for the employment of the will, and which demands that we re­ veal the heart in deeds. (This puts the Talmudic adage “The Merciful One desires the heart” in its proper con­ text.) The deed is the sparkplug which sets in motion the wheels of potential eventuality. Fulfillment of a Mitzvah creates an inseparable relationship be­ tween doer, deed, and being. Going beyond the Kantian question “What ought I do?” to what others call the meta-ethical question, “By what right do we act at all?”, the Mitzvoth invest every action with the dignity of re­ sponse to a Divine imperative. In this light, our Sages considered the eating of food without offering praise like stealing what is His. HE performance of a Mitzvah is an act of communion, linking man to G-d. Mitzvoth are Divine ways, as well as Divine laws; the two are co­ extensive. And the observance of Mitzvoth is more than what the the­ ologians call Imitatio Dei, an imita­ tion of G-d. They are of His very essence. To fulfill Mitzvoth, to obey G-d’s commands, is to strive for the very essence of G-dliness, as intimated by our Sages with respect to the Torah’s words: “Just as I am holy, so shall ye be holy. . . .” In this spirit, Aboab rejects a disembodied inward­ ness, so frequently associated with

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profound piety. The basic problem of man is right living, which combines action and intention and comes in re­ sponse to demand, not dogma, to com-/ mitment, not feeling.

It cannot be over-emphasized that Aboab rejects action without Kavo­ nah (true intention) except as a means of binding the doer to the hope of future Kavonah—or sanctified ac­ tion. Kavonah is essential for the deed because Judaism identifies doing with being. Aboab never tires of exhorting us to let all our acts be “L ’shem Shomayim”— for the (sake of the) Name of Heaven. Aboab makes it abundantly clear that law and love are coextensive in Judaism and as such are equally essential to Torah ethics.

EEDLESS to say, Aboab’s “MenoN rath Hamaor” is centered on Torah and treats of ethics in terms of Mitzvoth. Mitzvoth are designed to make man always aware of G-d, and since ethics is integral with religion in Jewish belief, it follows that anything which enhances man’s perception of the Divine Presence increases the power of ethics in the life of man.

Aboab’s approach to ethics is pano­ ramic and all-encompassing, as has al­ ready become obvious. We have limit­ ed ourselves, however, to several se­ lected areas in which to point out the contemporary relevance of his ethical message. Post-modern man is in a platitudinous quagmire of emasculated ideals, slogans, and catchwords; he is religiously unsustained in his despair because he has permitted vital, elo­ quent religions to degenerate into an at­ tenuated “religion-in-general,” deprived of authority, robbed of virility, devoid of counsel. Aboab’s chief presupposi­ tions are the existence of a personal G-d, Revelation, and the reality of a September-October, 1964

vigorous, normative Torah life. His call is for unqualified commitment, not approval, decision for G-d, not “faithin-faith.” The following examples are offered to demonstrate the contempo­ raneity of Aboab’s message: says Aboab, must rediscover MAN, the awe and trembling which characterized his forebears’ attitude to G-d. He must first shed the humanistic conception of G-d portrayed as the “Nice-Old-Man-Upstairs” who hopes for the best and accepts whatever we have the time or inclination to produce in our religious life and ethical behav­ ior. Aboab calls upon us to rediscover the doctrine of the Hereafter, the pow­ er and inevitability of G-d’s justice, the indispensability of a thoroughgoing humility before Him and before His revealed Word, the need to face the fact of sin, acknowledge guilt, and re­ open with repentance his channel to the Lord. We need to counterbalance the current vapid, sentimental view with a réintroduction of the concept of a Lord of Retribution. (The most desirable state would also include the concept of love. However, the pres­ ent situation, which is a partial result of the misuse and abuse of this con­ cept in the creation of the “Nice-OldMan-Upstairs” attitude, calls for a dis­ tinct re-emphasis of the Lord of Ret­ ribution concept to correct the bal­ ance.) observations about the MARTY’S eroded plight of American Prot­ estantism are just as valid in describ­ ing the state of much of American Jewry. Everyone professes belief in G-d and allegiance to the Faith. No one would dare expose himself to the possible accusation of being an atheist.

Yet genuine commitment to the de49

mands of normative Judaism is absent.

Many Jews have for sometime felt an urge to legitimatize the “fourth level” of religion for American Jewry and yet to preserve the cultural, ethnic, and social, extra-religious aspects of Judaism, without which the “fourth level” of religion would spell suicide.

In spite of this demand, Orthodoxy has staunchly refused to capitulate to alien environmental pressures, but those Jews whose personal Judaism had suffered in the general process of erosion were moved to invent syncretistic varieties of an eroded Jewish Faith, which came to be known as “Conservatism” and “Reform.” These new accommodations (as the Jewish counterparts of Marty’s work testify*) reinterpreted Judaism, some in uncon­ scious practice and others in elaborate theory, in surrender to the require­

ments of the new age.

One wing of the Conservative group, calling itself “Reconstruction­ ist,” has sought to “reconstruct” Juda­ ism as a “religious civilization” with­ out a personal G-d! This group feels that modern man has outgrown the need for supernaturalism in this age of science. This is erosion with a vengeance — with philosophical pre­ meditation!

The- common denominator of the “denominations” is a benevolent hu­ manism in Jewish garb. They advocate the practice of an anemic religion-ofthe-heart which demands very little in terms of commitment or practice, and rationalizes what little they do de­ mand on utilitarian grounds (e.g., Jew­ ish survival, peace of mind, social good). Their ethics are, by necessity, man-centered and inner-directed.

CO N TEM PO RAR Y RELEVANCE BOAB directs a message to Sub­ of the Prophet Isaiah, Holy, Holy, A urbia and its new cults when he Holy, is the Lord of Hosts: the whole underpins his entire system of ethics earth is full of His glory. with the unequivocal acceptance of a personal, omnipotent G-d who is the Lord of all Creation and the source of all ethics. Ethics which are not anchored in an Absolute are disem­ bodied vagaries without ultimate au­ thority. Utilitarian ethics, even when defined in pietistic idiom, are subject to the whims of a precocious relativ­ ism, which Aboab rejects. He inscribes this belief on the very structure of his system which identifies religion with ethics and proclaims with the certainty * Marshall SMare, “Conservative Judaism,” (The Free Press), Glencoe, 111., 1955; and Albert Gordon, “Jews in Suburbia,” (Beacon Hill Press), Boston, 1959.

50

The Sabbath, as an affirmation of G-d the Creator, and consequently Lord over all, must be re-emphasized in keeping with the revitalized religion advocated by Aboab. At the same time man must be assured of the ready availability of the Divine re­ sponse of forigveness, which even the casual student of Torah must rec­ ognize as the sine que non of our his­ toric faith.

The uncompromising Biblical oppo­ sition to idolatry, which Aboab re­ states and re-emphasizes, must be fear­ lessly reinterpreted to include the modern substitute faiths which are the most serious of all idolatries, for goJEW ISH LIFE

ing beyond the paganism of old, they have laid claim to the totality of our allegiance, modes of living, and ex­ pressions of personality.

ONESTY and integrity have been relegated to certain formal areas, H making it possible for a variety of “mild” breaches of ethics to receive popular approval. The alarming rise of the rate of white-collar crimes among the 4<better element” of our population—that part which has been most affected by the current religious “revival”4i-should give us cause for concern. Aboab calls for clean politics and pure political motives—surely a challenge to our age, in which things have become synonymous with cynixism and unbridled corruption. He condemns all forms of bribery, includ­ ing that of the verbal kind, all manner of deceit, false measures and weights; he considers theft worse than robbery and compares the withholding of wages to bloodshed and murder. His concept of business ethics would prob­ ably precipitate an international eco­ nomic crisis, but it might be worth­ while if recognition of the absolute nature of honesty would come in its train. Oaths are sacred, he tells us.

What a condemnation of the insincer­ ity and levity which characterized the administratioti of oaths by our courts of justice.* The seal of G-d is Truth!

Aboab calls for a reaffirmation of the dignity of the individual and the sanctity and inviolability of his per­ sonality. Shaming a person in public is tantamount to shedding his blood.

Our fellows should be judged with * A judge who was once queried by this writer about the contents of an oath, revealed an abysmal ignorance concerning the contents of the very Bible he used. He did not even know whether it was ap “Old Testament” or a “New

Septem ber-October, 1964

charity and beyond the measure of the law (Lifnim Mishurath Ha-Din).

What is Aboab’s concern with the practice of hospitality but a logical ex­ tension of this concept of human dig­ nity? To the depersonalized perpetra­ tors of genocide, who plead innocence on the ground that they were the vic­ tims of coercion from above, Aboab cries: “Martyrdom rather than mur­ der!” (i.e., do not obey the command to kill even if disobedience means your own death).

BOAB has much to say on the A subject of facing the hard facts of daily living, which could be of in­ estimable value to modern man. He advises control of bad habits before they become masters. (He thus has a message for all smokers, alcoholics, and addicts of every degree— a con­ siderable part of our population.) He urges a valiant effort in behalf of domestic tranquility and puts charac­ ter above beauty in the selection of a mate. He is opposed to excessive griev­ ing in adversity or tragedy, as well as to too much hilarity in time of joy. He advises moderation in everything (ex­ cept humility); his recommendation is to avoid ostentation (funeral directors take note!) jealousy, and an unrelent­ ing attitude to those who inflict pain on others. He points to covetousness as the root of all sin. He addresses himself, in effect, to modern parents whose names are legion, who have ab­ dicated their parental responsibilities to nurses, baby sitters, and profession­ al teachers. He calls for peace and good-will in our daily activities, and a Testament.” Moreover, he did not hesitate to administer oaths to two litigants whose testi­ monies were in utter contradiction, one of which was outright perjury.

51

pleasant disposition to all. He even denounces “shades” of slander to which many of us have become insen­ sitive and upon which some of us per­ mit our own egos to feast.

HASTITY is one of the few things C which everyone affirms but few cultivate. Theater, motion pictures, television, popular literature, and the daily press have conspired to write it off the books. Nor have our colleges and universities, which tolerate drink­ ing parties and dormitory raids and even, in some cases, outright promiscu­ ity, done much to help. Hollywood sets the pace, and thrice divorced movie stars and adulteresses are the idols of impressionable teenagers. It is little wonder that sexual promiscuity is so rampant among American youth in *

and out of school. A survey on the sexual (e.g., “switch party”) practices of some young middle-class couples would undoubtedly reveal the most re­ pulsive form of adultery (by mutual consent) on a scale which would stag­ ger the imagination. Most ancient forms of idolatry were associated with sexual license. Indeed, ;Aboab sub­ scribes to a keen Talmudic observa­ tion that idolatry was no more than a pretext for unchastity. Are the mod­ ern idolatries serving the same ends?

Aboab is unequivocal about the only attitude a G-d-fearing man may profess on the subject of chastity. The sanctity of the home, the modesty of the boudoir, the holiness of the mar­ riage bond . . . must be respected. The first fissures in a decaying civilization make their appearance in this area. *

ENTRALITY of Torah and schol­ adulthood, the mass of them feel no C arship is the crux of Aboab’s need for spiritual edification through message. After the initial “leap of ac­ reading or study. Aboab not only urges tion” must come a lifetime of practice and observance. The word of G-d must be obeyed. But first, the word of G-d must be learned. Post-modern man is faced with the prospect of sub­ merging religious education in favor of scientific training, especially since our competitors for space have dem­ onstrated the scope of their accom­ plishments. Today, more than ever be­ fore, we must stand guard at the entrance to our schools of learning, lest they become the training centers for a new idolatrous priesthood dedi­ cated to the cult of “scientism.” Amer­ ican children are being fed on a starva­ tion diet of Sunday School crumbs, and when they cross the threshold of 52

us to make religious learning on all levels more than an avocation; he pleads with us to give it the centrality it requires, just as he has done in the formal arrangement of his Candela­ brum. And he calls upon us to honor scholars as well as scholarship.

Aboab’s Menorath Hamaor does in­ deed have an urgent message for our time. It is the message of Torah ethics, and Aboab is content to deliver it without taking credit for originality.

Much of what he tells us is certainly not new. But it is warm, sincere, com­ pelling, vibrant, and is presented with great skill. It has substance as well as form, old ideas infused with new life.

JEW ISH LIFE

The creader is always conscious of fidelity to rhythm and systematic sym­ metry. All of these factors combine to give the Candelabrum unique worth

September-October, 1964

today. If Aboab’s message could reach the ears of Nuclear-Age man and lead him out of his dilemma, his purpose would find fulfillment.

53

A n a to m y of a D iasp ora— A u stra lia n Jewry

By ARYEH NEWMAN With one-third of its children now attending day schools, a revitalized, far-away Jewish community comes to grips with basic problems.

EWISH tradition insists that there not made of the stuff of those looking are no good Diasporas. As the for a place to create Jewish life away Chasam Sofer pointedly remarked in from the shadow of persecution. They reaction to the granting of equal rights did not belong to the caliber of those to Jews, nothing can compensate for who came to a new land to found a the intrinsic evil of being what he new life in accordance with their re­ termed “Exiled from their Father’s ligious principles, untrammelled by the Table.” Nevertheless there are Dias­ conformist demands of an established poras and Diasporas, some like Baby­ Church. They were adventurers who lon and Spain that have been the seat had largely drifted far from Jewish of creative and immortal Jewish learn­ norms before they made the journey. ing, and others which have not had Some of them indeed made historic contributions to the building of the that saving grace.

Our history stresses the importance new country in all fields, other than of the individual, the gifted, the elite Jewish. It was only as the number of who were chosen because they chose. Jews grew and life became more or­ Admittedly, climate, geography, and ganized that a few, probably faced by circumstance play their part, but our the choice of continuing some kind faith teaches that they can all be of Jewish identification or embracing subjugated to the human will. Out­ the Christian norms surrounding them, standing scholars from the Babylo­ formed a community for such basic nian Yeshivoth are credited with religious services as marriage, burial, having planted the seeds that be­ and worship. A Jewish day school came the Jewish centers of Spain, flourished in those early days largely North Africa, and France. Australia because education was conducted on did not have that luck. The first strictly denominational lines. As soon Jews to arrive here with the white set­ as the State system emerged and aid tlers a century and a half ago were was withdrawn, the school disinte-

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JEW ISH LIFE

toria in the 1860’s, there was little ex­ pansion, either qualitatively and quan­ titatively, until the first refugees be­ gan to arrive from Hitler’s persecu­ tion. Sydney was the first organized Jewish community and maintained its supremacy in spiritual leadership un­ til the mass immigration into Mel­ bourne after the second World War. . The first opportunity for strength­ HE dominant pattern of Judaism in Australia was set by the Moth­ ening the community was missed, er country from whence the first when little help and much discourage­ stream of settlers came. It was to the ment was forthcoming, when the small Chief Rabbinate of Britain which Australian Jewish community faced those Jews sufficiently concerned ap­ the possibility of bringing in many of plied for advice and help in obtaining the victims of the Tzarist persecution personnel. Later on, a rabbi sent over­ in Russia, in the latter part of the 19th seas to the East Melbourne Syna­ century. When rumor had it that gogue, Dr. Israel Brodie, became Chief Baron Hirsch wished to send half a Rabbi of the British Commonwealth. million Russian Jews to Australia, the As in some other Diasporas the main newspapers cast doubts on the loyalty problem was intermarriage and the of Russian Jews because of their Zion­ resultant demand for “conversions.” ist sympathies. But there was the mem­ Thus a Mikvah was constructed more ber of the Legislative Assembly who for the purpose of “baptism” of prose­ pointed out that Australian Jews were lytes than as a necessary concomitant entirely different from Russian Jews.

There can be no doubt that the ab­ for traditional Jewish married life.

The development of Jewish com­ sence of this mass immmigration munities followed that of the general which came to western Europe, Brit­ population. Jews followed in the wake ain, America, and South Africa is re­ of the gold rushes to such romantic­ sponsible for Australian Jewry’s lack sounding place names as Ballarat and of development. The few that did Bendigo, in the 1850’s, when Austra­ come to Australia from the intense lia became literally the “Goldener sources of Jewish vitality in Europe Medina.” But it was only in the main made their influence immediately felt. towns of Sydney and Melbourne that A framework was given to the devel­ the Jews consolidated and expanded opment of Jewish institutions by the sufficiently to provide the nuclei for pattern of Anglo-Jewry’s religious the major communities of 29,000 and norms being centralized in the Chief 35,000, respectively, that exist there Rabbinate of Britain and assuming the today. Ballarat, for instance, has ap­ more leisurely and polite form of Jud­ pealed today for funds to preserve its aism perpetuated in Anglo-Jewish cir­ synagogue more as a monument of the cles by the products of the London past than for the needs of the present. seminary, Jews College. Judaism con­ But though there were congregations sisted of periodic but infrequent par­ and several thousand Jews in the ticipation in Divine service, and edu­ states of New South Wales and Vic- cation meant a Sunday School where

grated. There was the added difficulty of Australia’s remoteness and the ex­ pense and difficulty involved in finding someone who would be willing to act as spiritual leader, shochet, and teacher. There were too many open­ ings nearer civilization for anyone of caliber to choose such a career.

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September-October, 1964

55

some rudiments of religion and me­ chanical prayer reading were incor­ porated.

MMEDIATELY preceding and dur­ ing the First World War, some of the Russian Zion-lovers of whom both the Jewish and non-Jewish leaders of a previous generation had been so ap­ prehensive, found their way to Aus­ tralia after having undergone inde­ scribable hardships, climaxed by ex­ pulsion, under the Turks in Palestine.

Perth was their first stopping station, this being the most westerly part of Australia facing the Middle East.

Many of the rebuilders of the Gali­ lean village of Safed resettled in there.

Sprinklings of others came to Sydney and Melbourne. One particular family determined to continue the agricultu­ ral pioneering tradition that had orig­ inally prompted it to build up the northern-most Zionist colony of Metuleh on the Syrian border. This was the Feiglin family which, with several other Jewish families, settled in Shepparton, a country village in the state of Victoria. The Feiglin family led a life of warm and strict ortho­ doxy, with their one teacher and shochet to assist in ensuring the continua­ tion of Jewish tradition. From Shep­ parton the Feiglins eventually found their way to Melbourne and did much for Jewish life there. After the second World War, the Melbourne Jewish community quickly outpaced its older rival, Sydney, in both quantity and quality. Another wave of immigrants which contributed to the spiritual standards, although small in numbers, was the internees, German Jewish ref­ ugees evacuated from Britain to Aus­ tralia during the Second World War. The post-war mass immigration from Poland gave the sorely-needed impe-

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56

tus to the more Jewish nucleus that al­ ready existed in Melbourne, and the great revolution in Australian Jewish life took place.

HE focal point shifted from the Minister - congregation relation­ ship (that occurred on progressively decreasing occasions) to the Jewish Day School. There was a welcome and revitalizing change of emphasis from burial ground to nursery. The first Jewish day school was launched on a wide communal basis but grounded on traditional norms. The original cen­ tralizing but hitherto more-or-less pa­ per British-type framework of com­ munal structure took on flesh and blood. The Jewish communities of the State of Victoria, had, like Brit­ ish Jewry, their representative coun­ cil, the Board of Deputies, comprising synagogues and other Jewish institu­ tions. This body furthered the estab­ lishment of the Mt. Scopus Jewish School, which today is widely re­ nowned. Again the official traditional facade of Anglo-Jewish communal life prevailed. The post-holocaust and birth-of-Israel atmosphere and the wave of Polish Jewish immigration were just the ingredients which the school needed to prosper. But it suc­ ceeded beyond the founders’ wildest dreams. The school grew in a decade or so to an enrollment of 1,500 chil­ dren between the ages of 5 to 15 and was equipped with every facility that communal funds could buy. It must be admitted that the school’s Hebrew department is not at as high a level as could be desired; many American Jewish day schools devote much more time to Hebrew studies. Its broad communal structure, too, prevented maximum Judaism from being incor­ porated in the day-to-day life of the

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school. However, minimum Jewishness was brought to the homes of hundreds of parents who were ignorant of or had ignored Jewish knowledge and observance. But just as Australia had never produced its own rabbis, so it had no teachers. These had to be brought from Israel and this further strengthened the spiritual lifelines of the community. The Israeli pronuncia­ tion of Hebrew is now taken for granted in most Australian educational Jewish institutions. But Mt. Scopus was only the beginning. It was fol­ lowed by the Lubavitch Foundation’s Yeshivah School for boys and Beth Rivkah School for girls, which pro­ vided the intense enthusiasm and sat­ urated Jewishness of that movement.

Here again the Lubavitcher Rebbe found fertile soil in the Feiglin family, whose Torah spark he had re-kindled.

Some more recent immigrants of Ger­ man and eastern European origin too were inspired to dedicate themselves to education of the young. To clinch matters, the Rebbe sent his own emis­ sary from New York who is still here today. The Jewish future of several hundred boys and girls was ensured in the way that no other institutions could achieve.

Several hundred more children were attracted to new Jewish schools that sprung up. Among these must be men­ tioned Moriah College, founded by a dedicated educationalist who left a fashionable but empty pulpit to build a day school to be distinguished for quality Jewish education by the latest pedagogical methods. It is related that his resolution to build a day school and leave the pulpit was finally settled when one of his congregants sent his near-thirteen-year-old boy knocking at his door with the message: “My mother wants you to Barmitzvah me.”

September-October, 1964

Today Moriah College has some 200 pupils who are taught to read the Torah as soon as they begin to read in the first classes of school. By the time they are of barmitzvah age they understand Hebrew, are familiar with the whole of the Chumosh in its original, and have, as well, a good knowledge of all aspects of Judaism.

This development was followed by the founding by the Mizrachi Organi­ zation, with the help of the Jewish Agency Torah Education Department, of Yavneh College, and finally by the establishment of the non-religious sec­ ular Jewish school, Bialik College. To­ gether with the Adass Day Schools of the Satmar-oriented Hungarian Jew­ ish community, there are some 2,000 Jewish children in Jewish day schools, comprising well over one-third of the Jewish school population. Many of the rest attend “Sunday” schools. One of these attempts, on a once-a-week basis, to inculcate Yiddish culture. For Mel­ bourne is one of the last strongholds of Yiddish and of the Jewish socialist movement, the Bund. All the Jewish newspapers of Australia contain a Yid­ dish supplement, but the constantly decreasing number of borrowers at the Yiddish library of the Bialystoker Center emphasizes the process of at­ tenuation.

It is a significant fact that the Day School movement is in Australia, as elsewhere, the work of orthodox leaders.

ERHAPS some measure of the achievement can be gauged by P contrasting Melbourne with Sydney, a city of hardly smaller Jewish popula­ tion where there is only one well-es­ tablished Jewish day school—Moriah College with 200 pupils— and a strug­ gling new one, the King David, with 57

some fifty pupils. These two schools thus serve a minor proportion of Syd­ ney’s Jewish school population, and then, only in the primary stage. But so small a community as that of Perth, in Western Australia, with 1,700 Jews, runs its own day school of 160 pupils.

All of the schools look to Israel for help in the way of personnel, but few of these have been recruited from among the several thousand Israelis who have come to Australia of their own accord within the past few years.

These were not, for the main part, the kind that contributed anything specifically Jewish to the community.

They were those who found life in Israel too demanding or who had gone there merely as a temporary stopping point.

Australia, however, has been fortu­ nate in the activities pioneered by the Jewish Agency Torah Education De­ partment. This unit has set high stand­ ards of teaching and has sent teachers to man the schools who are scrupu­ lously true to the Torah traditions that bind us all.

Adults have responded to the efforts invested in the children. For example, this summer witnessed the holding of the first country-wide Hebrew Sem­ inar, conducted by myself, in the cap­ ital city of Canberra. Over 100 Jewish men, women, and children participated in eleven days of intense study and Jewish living combined with holiday, organized by the Jewish Agency Torah Education Department and the Zion­ ist Federation. The Australian Jewish community as a whole is combining to build a Jewish community center in the capital city, where a small but growing Jewish community is begin­ ning to emerge. Some of the younger generation are beginning to identify

58

themselves with things Jewish and the Seminar gave an impetus to that proc­ ess. Recently traditional forces scored a victory in a controversy over the character of the new center, when it was decided by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry not to permit Reform (in Australia designated “Lib­ eral”) participation in this institution.

For the Reform-Orthodox split is pres­ ent here, as well as all the features so familiar in other Jewish communities of the English-speaking world. In the case of some Australian Jews, the main practical difference between those of them who are attached to orthodox Judaism and those of Libera1 affiliation is in the attitude to inter­ marriage. A large proportion of the Liberal congregants are partners in mixed marriages. However, the per­ sonal practice of some Orthodox con­ gregants is otherwise hardly distin­ guishable from that of the Liberals.

N SPITE of the tremendous im­ petus given to Jewish life in Aus­ tralia by the constant immigration in the last thirty years, bringing the country’s Jewish population from some 20,000 to nearly 70,000 since about 1956, there has been a steep decline in the number of marriages celebrated with Chuppah Ukedushin. Again, it is only a small circle of stalwarts who are behind every activity of a Jewish nature whether it be welfare, Zionist, B’nai B’rith, or congregational. They fight for a future for their own chil­ dren and in doing so create the facil­ ities for saving others as well. The Australian Diaspora is even less equip­ ped than others to provide the means of its own spiritual continuance and is even more dependent on outside in­ spiration, particularly from Israel.

My own two years of experience in

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JEW ISH LIFE

Australia, devoted to furthering Jew­ ish education at all levels from kinder­ garten to adult, confirms my view that with the existence of such a compara­ tively intense and full Jewish life in Israel, there is really little justification for the fully committed Jew to try to live out his life outside that pulsating center. But so long as Jews continue to live where they do, everything must

A

be done to help them maintain their identity. In that struggle the weaker will be aided by the stronger and all by the strongest, which is today, by the Grace of G-d, the State of Israel.

More than ever before the State will be burdened not only with the integra­ tion of its own citizens but with the obligation to help underprivileged communities of the Dispersion.

B O O K O F J E W IS H

CO NCEPTS

by DR. P H IL IP BIRNBAUM This encyclopedic and yet concise volum e lists, defines and eluci­ dates over sixteen h u n d red Jew ish concepts and ideas. A rranged alphabetically, like a dictionary, this is th e perfect book for everybody who seeks authentic inform ation and inspiring in te r­ p retations of th e idea content of th e Bible, th e Talm ud, the M idrash, th e Jew ish codes of law and ethics, and th e teachings of th e Jew ish Sages and philosophers. This dictionary of Judaism belongs in every Jew ish hom e. I t is th e one reference book w hich is a m ust fo r every p u p il in all Jew ish schools.

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JEW ISH LIFE

B ooh R e v iew s The Brandéis Story—Half-Told

By NATHAN LEWIN

JUSTICE ON TRIAL: THE CASE OF LOUIS D. BRANDEIS, by A. L. Todd, McGraw-Hill Co., New York, 1964. 275 pp. $6.50.

BOUT two-thirds of the way through A. L. Todd’s “Justice on Trial,” the reader is informed that while the Senate was considering in 1916 whether of not to confirm President Wilson’s ap­ pointment of Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court, the Harvard Club of New York turned down a prospective Jewish member who had been proposed

by Brandeis. Perhaps, the author sug­ gests, the admissions committee resented the candidate because he was “aggres­ sively Jewish”; he was actively engaged in “the advancement of Jewish culture and ideals.” Mr. Todd reserves for a postscript the rejected candidate’s obser­ vation in 1962 that Brandeis—who im­ mediately, albeit reluctantly, agreed to withdraw his name—“had let him down.”

One wonders whether, in sorting out the fruit of his research, Mr. Todd might not have wisely discarded this anec­ dote as totally irrelevant or, at best, as far too trivial to deserve mention in

A

Nathan Lewin, a graduate of Yeshiva Uni­ versity and Harvard Law School, is Assistant to the Solicitor General of the United States.

September-October, 1964

a work of about 250 pages. It has with­ stood the pruning shears, I suspect, sim­ ply because the author has made a most obvious effort to convey some of the Antisemitic innuendo which flavored the opposition to Brandeis’s confirmation.

The vapidity of this particular story il­ lustrates how unsuccessful his attempt has been.

It is commonly accepted today that much of the resistance to Brandeis’s con­ firmation was attributable to his being the first Jew nominated for the Supreme Court. His Jewishness, to be sure, was more racial than religious; almost his sole identification with Judaism was his birth to Jewish parents and his active sympathy—first expressed publicly in his late fifties—for the Zionist movement.

But this was enough to earn him the life-long scorn of one of his colleagues in the Supreme Court—a hatred so ir­ reconcilable that on Brandeis’s retirement, his Brother on the Bench, Justice McReynolds, even refused to sign the tradi­ tional farewell letter which the remain­ ing Supreme Court Justices tender to their departing associate. What McReynolds felt was doubtless shared, though less virulently, by other elements of the population and by at least some mem­ bers of the United States Senate. A read­ er might hope to find an analysis of this 61

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JEW ISH LIFE

attitude and its effect on the Brandéis confirmation in “Justice on Trial.” H e would hope in vain.

H E om ission is n ot ill-intentioned, nor is it the result o f sloppy re­ search. It is attributable to the author’s unfortunate technique o f adhering m e­ ticulously to the printed record o f Sen­ ate hearings and debate, supplemented by such other docum entary material in the form o f letters and m em oranda as were accessible to him . Consequently, Mr. Todd has produced a tiresom e ex ­ position o f the accusations rebutted by the true facts regarding the few breaches o f ethical conduct with w hich Brandéis was publicly charged. H e seldom pierces the veil w hich the opposition so artfully designed to conceal its real m otives. The result is a quote-studded, unim aginative narrative o f the m ock battle over the Brandéis nom ination.

For, as Mr. Todd m ight have expected, there w as little, if any, explicit reference by his opponents, during the debate in Senate com m ittees or on the floor o f C on­ gress, to Brandeis’s Jewishness, or even to those o f his progressive econom ic ideas w hich his opponents found reprehensi­ ble. The recorded matter— w hether it be in private correspondence or public pro­ nouncements— repudiates prejudice and focuses on Brandeis’s alleged reputation for unethical behavior. O nly by calling on his ow n innate skepticism w ill a reader question Senator H enry Cabot Lodge’s disclaim er o f racial and religious bias and his plaintive counter-accusation o f bigotry-in-reverse: “I f it were not that Brandéis is a Jew, and a G erm an Jew, he w ould never have been appoint­ ed. . . .” Mr. T odd briefly questions the Senator’s bona fides by suggesting that his resistance to the nom ination o f a citizen o f his ow n state m ight have its source in his expressed fear o f im m i-

T

September-October, 1964

gration and its effect on “the quality o f our race and citizenship through the w holesale infusion o f races. . . .” But not even a passing word is offered to explain the m otives o f President A . Lawrence Lowell o f Harvard, w ho fiercely resisted a nom ination w hich m ight disinterest­ edly be thought to have brought only pride and glory to the Boston and H ar­ vard com m unities. M ight it not have been relevant to know that during his tenure L ow ell advocated the im position o f a numerus clausus on Jewish students at Harvard? M ight this not have intel­ ligently reflected on why he so vigorously fought the confrontation o f one o f Harvard Law S ch ool’s outstanding grad­ uates and fo e o f B oston’s nationally re­ now ned lawyers?

H IS is n ot to suggest that “Justice on Trial” should have been written in muckraking style, or that accuracy should have been com prom ised in favor o f snappy insinuations or unsubstanti­ ated charges. H ow ever, there com es a point w here slavish devotion to authori­ tative sources obscures the real over-all historical picture. It w ould be naive, for exam ple, to discuss the delay in the Senate’s recent confirm ations o f N egro judges such as T hurgood M arshall in N e w Y ork and Spottisw ood R obinson in W ashington in terms o f the public pro­ nouncem ents m ade by Senator Eastland.

There w ere, o f course considerations other than his Jewishness w hich Troubled those w ho opposed Brandeis in 1946, and m any o f these are reflected faithfully in the public record and private corres­ pondence w hich Mr. Todd exhaustively surveyed. But “Justice on Trial” con­ tains n ot a single w orthw hile insight re­ garding the effect that Brandeis’s religion or race had on the public furor caused by his appointm ent. One or another o f the b ook ’s m any quotations from private

T

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JEW ISH LIFE

correspondence m ay glancingly touch on the subject; the m ost plentiful source appears to be a Jew ish journalist w ith w hom W illiam H ow ard T aft kept a steady correspondence. O nly tw o letters — one to Lodge and the other to T aft— contain any remarks that m ight be con ­ sidered offensive to Jews. E ach remark is alm ost casual and their context renders them innocuous. A lthough he m ay have acted w ith the best o f m otives, Mr. T odd’s reluctance to speculate has severe­ ly handicapped his product by lending

an air o f naivete that renders it less credible.

M aybe an effort to probe the biases o f Brandeis’s leading opponents w ould have been inconclusive. M aybe som e o f them , ex-President T aft being a notable illustration, m ight have em erged as totally free o f religious prejudice. N o n e ­ theless, the effort w as needed to round out the picture o f the national battle over Brandeis. T he fu ll story, w ith re­ sponsible and inform ed interpretative analysis, awaits another day.

M ixed Marriage in M ixed Perspective

By SOLOMON H. GREEN

IN T E R M A R R IA G E : IN T E R F A IT H , IN T E R R A C IA L , IN T E R E T H N IC , X III,

by A lbert I. G ordon, B eacon Press, Boston, 1964. 4 20 pp. $10.00.

A S the Jew becom es m ore and m ore involved in the attainm ent o f the open society w hich is the A m erican dream, he confronts him self ‘‘com ing and going”; “com ing into his ow n as an equal w ith other citizens and “going” on in search o f m eans to m aintain his particularity w ithin the general com ­ munity.

It is w ell know n that Jews have been in the forefront o f all struggles for the Solomon H. Green is an assistant professor at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of So­ cial Work. For many years he has been ac­ tively engaged in camping and other areas of group work with youth.

September-October, 1964

rights o f m an and, it seem ed, during the early days o f our involvem ent on the A m erican scene, that to be for equality and integration and brother­ hood also m eant that the Jew had to divest h im self o f his separateness, o f all that m ade him a Jew. Since the N a zi holocaust and W orld W ar II, this m ove toward am algam ation by our Jewish young p eople has been stem m ed. Even the so-called “alienated Jew ” w ants to be counted am ong those num bered as the p eople o f Israel. Y et the dilem m a exists! W ith the upsurge o f Jew ish con­ sciousness, the A m erican Jew, young and old, nevertheless often seem s hard put to rationalize w hy he should retain his uniqueness as a Jew, even w hile it seem s less difficult to be Jew ish in our day.

Like T evyah’s daughter, som e o f our young people have intermarried as a

65

Reprints

N ow Available

Our readers will appreciate knowing that reprints are now available of the following articles and editorials from previous issues of JEW ISH LIFE. THE M ISSIO N A R Y M EN A C E IN ISRAEL ( Editorial) THE JEWS A N D THE EC U M EN IC A L C O U N C IL

By Rabbi Norman Lamm THE E C U M EN IC A L C O U N C IL: THEIR PROBLEMS A N D OURS

By Dr. Justin Hofmann THE JEW ISH ATTITUDE TOW ARD FAMILY P LA N N IN G

By Dr. Moses Tendier C A N W E NEGLECT THE TALMUD TO RAH ?

By Zalman Diskind W H A T DOES JEW ISH YOUTH REALLY W AN T?

By Rabbi Pinchas Stolper PRAYER IN PUBLIC S C H O O L S* ( Editorial) JEW ISH IDENTIFICATION A N D THE SUPREME COURT D E C ISIO N *

By Reuben E. Gross C H U R C H — STATE: REEVALUATION O R RATIO NALIZATIO N ?*

By Herbert Berman THE DIVO RCE PROBLEM

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JEW ISH LIFE

concrete, albeit misguided expression of their idealism. In recent years reports have been dwelling on the increase of intermarriage in the Jewish communities of the United States and Canada.

Among the first authors to compile much of the available opinion and re­ search on intermarriage is Dr. Albert I. Gordon, a Conservative minister who also has a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology.

Dr. Gordon, in his “Intermarriage: In­ terfaith, Interracial, Interethnic,” has compiled a series of surveys, interviews, and opinions which highlight the diffi­ culty experienced by some Jews in valu­ ing their Jewishness when assuming closer relationships with the non-Jewish world on the university campus, in em­ ployment, in civic life, and in social re­ lations.

He writes in response to recent find­ ings which indicate an alarming increase in mixed marriages amongst Jewish young people. In this well-written book, the author clearly presents his “facts,” derived from studies he himself has done and from the research of other social scientists. He presents interesting interviews with intermarried couples which highlight the difficulties which arise between man and wife when their differences are ignored in courtship, only to arise again for resolution in the course of married life. The author rightly states that these “personal histories cannot tell us all there is to know about the per­ sons who intermarry. . . .”

This book is also enriched by the presentations of the Catholic and Prot­ estant positions on intermarriage. It be­ comes clear that this is not a problem confined only to the Jewish community.

We are inclined to agree with the pub­ lisher that this work by Gordon is “the most complete survey available . . on intermarriage. The appendix, with “A Note on Method,” its section of September-October, 1964

“Notes,” brief index, thirty-nine tables, plus numerous citations, gives this work its standing as the product of a so­ cial scientist.

T IS evident that while aware of the dangers to the Jewish community from the conditions making for mixed marriage, Gordon feels we must not withdraw from confrontation with the dilemma: how to live in this open so­ ciety without abandoning our Jewish particularity? However, while he de­ plores intermarriage, his study and ex­ perience with the problem leads him to support the forecast that mixed mar­ riages will be more prevalent as more and more Jews attend the universities, and as they are increasingly able to move freely in our open society. Gordon expresses his conviction that when Jews lack a commitment to Judaism because of their meager Jewish education, inter­ marriage will become even more pre­ valent.

This reviewer would have preferred that the author separate his findings from his “point of view.” Since they are blended together throughout his book, we find a developing confusion between the values of his religious vocation and those of the social scientist. Over and over again he reiterates the pitfalls of any kind of intermarriage, that the per­ centage of failures in marriage seems higher, that the children suffer, that husband and wife find tensions increase between them, and that with their ways of life which are so different, there is bound to be conflict. This leads Gordon to seem to neglect all that the social sciences know about the effect our at­ titudes and emotions have upon how we behave. There is too great an em­ phasis on the rational and too little recognition given to the effect of im­ pulse on much of human behavior. One

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finds a note o f condescension towards young people and a questioning o f their maturity o f judgm ent when they make what Dr. G ordon and this reviewer w ould feel to be the wrong choice. L ife is too real and people are too real for G ordon to put so m uch em phasis upon the ideal o f “happiness,” for the individ­ ual or for the couple, even to use this as a deterrent and as an argument against intermarriage. The m aking o f a wrong choice, by intermarrying, is to the Jew m ore than the problem o f keep­ ing or losing his individual happiness, precisely because o f those fundam ents which, as a Jewish clergym an, G ordon should have em phasized. Pragm atically, intermarriage m ay conceivably bring “happiness,” ¡but Jewishly it is tragedy.

M arriage with a non-Jew is forbidden b y our religion, not sim ply because it leads to unhappiness, but because it is w rong per se.

The religionist and the social scientist alm ost cancel each other out in parts o f this book, so that we are left with w ell-m eaning advice w hich the m an on the street m ight have provided. F or ex ­ ample, w hile Dr. G ordon affirms that “the loss o f a single adherent to the faith is a loss to religion,” yet, when he goes on to suggest w hat parents m ight or m ight not do w hen confronted by intermarriage plans o f their children, he is ready, for the sake o f “happiness” to urge conversion to another faith.

H e advises that parents should “try lovingly and persuasively to dissuade the young people from intermarrying.

T o do m ore, to coerce, to threaten or to use force only hastens the likelihood o f intermarriage. Further, there is every chance that, by this approach, w e m ay drive our children from us forever.”

Then he goes on to say; “If the couple insists on marriage, then every effort ought to be m ade to get both young

September-October, 1964

people to agree to the form al conversion o f the less dom inant to the religion o f the other.” This, despite the fact that G ordon declares in a previous chapter that w hile a happier (m y em phasis) marriage often requires the price o f “form al conversion to the faith o f the dom inant m arriage partner,” yet, “ . . . it m ust be remem bered, this does not guarantee a successful m arriage.” Let us consider w hat one o f G ordon’s cor­ respondents has written: “Jews are a m inority and Judaism is exposed to trem endous disintegrating forces from the non-Jew ish environm ent”; w hile Jew­ ish young people “are no longer re­ luctant to affirm their Jewishness . . . in m ost instances they are ignorant o f what they affirm . . . Our central prob­ lem today is no longer that Jew ish stu­ dents try to escape their Judaism. The problem is that Judaism is escaping them .” Therefore, it is n ot difficult to assess the depressing consequences en­ tailed in follow in g G ordon’s advice, a Jew ish clergym an’s advice!

HIS reviewer is glad that Dr. Em ily H . M udd, the noted marriage coun­ sellor and social worker, is quoted, but G ordon overlooks the depth o f her ob­ servation that, w hile “religion . . . usu­ ally presents m ore o f an em otional problem than differences in such matters as age or education,” nevertheless, “peo­ ple's attitudes (m y em phasis) alone de­ term ine w hether all differences can be resolved or w ill becom e acute.” This latter observation from her long experi­ ence is m ore to the point o f hum an be­ havior than are the lists o f “factors” or “com ponents” m aking for m arital bliss, w hich G ordon quotes. This dubious use o f studies in m arital com patibility to deal w ith intermarriage appears to re­ sult from the author’s desire to ham ­ mer hom e his point: if you w ant to

T

69

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Dr. Gordon’s chapter on “What of the Children?”' is basically a sermon based on his point of view reinforced by information from the social sciences.

His concern for the emotional well be­ ing of the children of intermarried cou­ ples does not reflect enough of the in­ dividuality that children do manifest under the most adverse family condi­ tions, or of the fact that children are not always total victims of their situ­ ations, that choice and decision do re­ main theirs if they but will it. Gordon does, however, recognize the problem of his overgeneralization, and he adds that not all such children will “demonstrate emotional insecurity . . . but case his­ tories and personal experience provide evidence . . .” that it is more prevalent where parents differ in religion. One hesitates to add that others may, no doubt, be able to bring contrary evidence from their own case histories and from their own personal experience. Some evi­ dence exists, but it is far from con­ clusive.

This is not to disagree with his thesis that young people who intermarry often do not anticipate problems their chil­ dren may face as a result of their mixed parentage. It seems to us that when a Jewish couple decides to rear their children as Torah Jews, they also may not anticipate the “shver-tzu-zein-a-yid” problems their children will encounter— yet we would not shirk from this devo­ tion to our faith or to our people. While perhaps appropriate for a minister, for a social scientist this chapter stretches its point and would make devoted Jew­

Sepfember-October, 1964

ish parents into mere child worshippers.

Our Sages admonished parents to be strong and to reserve for themselves what they needed when they advised that “The Torah is preserved only by parents who can be as unsparing towards their children as the raven is to hers.”

Gordon cannot be firm, and perhaps his temperate approach is related to the climate of opinion that an open society creates, in which (as he reports) “only fourteen percent of the students strongly disapprove [of their sibling marrying out­ side . . . their faith]. There appears to be no strong opposition to the interfaith marriage . . .”

NTERMARRIAGE is a serious prob­ lem for the Jewish community and it need not accept any forecast about its increase as foreordained. The surest preventive is a sound Jewish education— not in “customs and ceremonies,” but in mitzvoth, not in “Jewish culture,” but in Torah. Gordon also makes this point in a way, but, with due regard for the fact that his book is addressed to the general public, with inadequate em­ phasis.

Those who desire to understand how the future of the Jewish community might be guided were it to base its ap­ proach to Jewish living on a foundation of social science research should read this book. This “Way” can only lead to instability and sterility. This is the important lesson of Gordon’s work.

The reviewer believes the book is over­ priced at ten dollars, but it does have value as a compact source of much of the social research that has been done on intermarriage and related questions of concern to the Jewish community.

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