Jewish Life July-Aug 1965

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T H E S A B B A T IC A L Y E A R IN J E W I S H T H O U G H T H A T H ’ A N D R E L IG IO N

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TH E M YSTERY O F HAYM SA LO M O N

T H E J E W I S H C O N C E P T O F S O C IA L R E S P O N S IB IL IT Y LAND O F A TH O U SA N D H U E S AND C O LO R S B O O K R E V IE W S : MAX M U N K ’S C . B . S H E R M A N ’S 6T H E J E W

E X T R A D IM E N S IO N ’

W IT H IN A M E R IC A N S O C IE T Y ’

A L E X A N D E R C A R L E B A C H ’S ‘A D A S S Y E S H U R U N O F C O L O G N E ’ AV-ELUL 5725 JULY-AUGUST 1965

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Vol. XXXIII, No. 5 / July-August 1965/Av-Elul 5725

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EDITORIALS HIROSHIMA— AND AUSCHWITZ ...................................... 3 ORTHODOXY’S UNFINISHED B U S IN E SS ........................ 4 S aul B ernstein , Editor R abbi S. J. S harfman L ibby K laperman P aul H. B aris

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ARTICLES ‘DATH’ AND RELIGION/Louis I. R ab in o w itz................. 7 THE JEWISH CONCEPT OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY/ Sholom Rivkin ....................................................................12 THE MYSTERY OF HAYM SALOMON/ Leon S. R o sen th al............................................................ 21 THE SABBATICAL YEAR IN JEWISH THOUGHT/ Aryeh Newman ................................................................. 34 LAND OF A THOUSAND HUES AND COLORS/ Jacob B e lle r ........................................................................39

BOOK REVIEWS

U n io n of O rthodox Jewish C ongregations of A merica

DOCUMENT OF GERMAN JEWISH ORTHODOXY/ Eric O ffe n b a ch e r................... ..........................................53

M oses I. F euerstein

JEWISH AMERICANIZATION/Jerome Hochbaum . . . . 5 9

President B e n ja m in K o e n ig s b e r g , Nathan K. Gross, Harold M. Jacobs, Joseph Karasick, Harold H. Boxer, Vice Pres­ idents; J o e l S c h n e ie r s o n , Treasurer; Herzl Rosenson, Secretary; David Politi, Fi­ nancial Secretary.

Dr. Samson R. Weiss Executive Vice President

JEWISH FAITH AND NATURAL SCIENCE/ Markus Elias .................................................................... 62

DEPARTMENTS AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS............ .......................... 2

Saul Bernstein, Administrator Second Class Postage paid at New York, N. Y.

Artwork by Alan Zwiebel

© C o pyright 1965 by UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

July-August, 1965

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among our contributors

LEON S. ROSENTHAL, an attorney by profession, has lectured and written on the intriguing life of Haym Salo­ mon for the past thirty years. He also has authored “This Liberty,” a novel based on the life of this outstanding Jew who played a part in America’s Revolutionary War. Combining interest in early American history with a thorough knowledge of his native Philadelphia, Mr. Rosen­ thal is also the author of “The History of Philadelphia’s University City.” He was educated in Philadelphia schools and is a graduate of Temple University Law School. Mr. Rosenthal is an active member of many professional, com­ munity, and historical organizations.

The Rav of Seattle’s Congregation Bikur Cholim, RABBI SHOLOM RIVKIN treats of social responsibility as an aspect of Torah ethics in this, his first, contribution to JEWISH LIFE. The author’s Halachic essays have ap­ peared many times in Rabbinic journals in Israel and the United States. Rabbi Rivkin is a musmoch of Torah Vodaath and also received Semichah, yoreh-yoreh yodinyodin, from the late revered Rabbi Moshe Binyomin Tomashoff of Brooklyn, formerly of Slutzk. Now completing requirements for a Ph.D. degree, his secular studies in­ clude a concentration in philosophy and education at St. Louis University.

RABBI DR. LOUIS I. RABINOWITZ, who contributes to this issue another of his articles on the Israel scene, currently resides in Jerusalem. He previously served as Chief Rabbi of Transvaal, South Africa and as Professor of Hebrew and Judaica at Witwatersrand University. He is the author of “Social Life of the Jews of North France in the 12th to 14th Century” and has written articles for several scholarly journals.

Director of the English program of the Jewish Agency Torah Education Department in Israel, ARYEH NEW­ MAN has returned to Israel recently from a two-year as­ signment for the Agency which took him to Australia and New Zealand. An appraisal of the life of Australian Jewry, based on his experiences there, appeared in a pre­ vious issue. His current contribution delves into the Hala­ chic basis of the observance of Shemitah, the Sabbatical Year, in Israel. Born in England, Mr. Newman is a gradu­ ate of Gateshead Yeshiva. He also holds an M.A. degree in English Literature from Cambridge and lectures in the English Department at the Hebrew University.

A world-traveling journalist, JACOB BELLER frequently has related the life of Jewish communities throughout the world with pictorial descriptions of the environs. Our readers will remember Mr. Beller’s past recollections of Jews in Italy (November/December 1964), Spain (July/ August 1964), Argentina (January/February 1964), and other countries.

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Hiroshima— and Auschwitz H PH E TWENTIETH anniversary of the dropping of the atom J . bomb on Hiroshima was marked recently by commemora­ tive exercises and political demonstrations far and wide across the globe. As the years pass and as the threat of another, yet more terrible, world conflagration, persists, the annual reminder of the apocalyptic force in man’s trembling grasp takes on in­ creased rather than declining force. The message of Hiroshima reverberates with increasing urgency; it is heard by all and heeded by many.

Men may long be divided over the question of whether the use of the atom bomb on that original occasion can be moral­ ly justified, whether or not the lives it took would otherwise have been exceeded in number by lives expended through other military means. But the conviction is now all but universal that future use of the atom bomb, or of its still more ominous suc­ cessor, the hydrogen bomb, must be effectively barred. Nuclear fission, in its military application, is recognized as the ultimate Golem.

It has become clear to all that in unlocking the secret of nuclear fission, mankind has attained, together with boundless New new potential for material achievement, the capacity for total Dimension self-destruction. And it is realized, more and more, that this new dimension of power, at once so wondrous and so fright­ ful, inevitably dictates a profound change in the relation of nation and in the pattern of human life itself.

This much, then, of hope and encouragement can be gleaned: the message of Hiroshima and of Nagasaki is penetrating deep; even though the world Powers stand pitted against each other, men yet turn to face that message. But—what of the message of Auschwitz?

OES not the story of Auschwitz, of Dachau and Maidenuk and Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen and the rest, too speak D with warning that all men must hear and heed? Does it not cry too of a new dimension of modern life— one of supermechanized death and destruction joined this time to superorganized blood lust, to super-organized hate, to the torturing and exterminating of masses of human beings?

In a sense, Auschwitz even more than Hiroshima points sternly to catastrophic potential in modern civilization. If HiroSpiritual shima warns of the imperative need to channel the powers of Chasm the modern mind, Auschwitz warns of a mortal sickness in the soul of modern man. But, alas, where, except among the

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people which withstood Auschwitz, is its message pondered?

Let us not, however, with this in mind, rest upon a call for a matching of parades, demonstrations, memorial exercises. Such methods no doubt can have effective application in bringing the pressure of public opinion to bear upon political channels, but what is at stake here is the ultimate foundation of moral life.

And here, the decisive factor is in the spiritual realm; the force of the spiritually sanctified life must be engendered and this, in final analysis, cannot be accomplished by demonstrations, pub­ licity, and pressures, nor yet by ecumenical conferences, but by the actual living of such a life.

HE MESSAGE of Auschwitz says: Unless men hold be­ fore them always the Sovereignty of G-d, society, forfend, T must succumb to the reign of hate and be destroyed by it. The message must be proclaimed to the farthest corners of the earth —through all the media of modern idea-dissemination, if you will, but first and last and always by directly engendering a life and society of Divine service. History’s supreme demon­ stration of the unconquerable strength of such a way of life is to be found in the saga of the Torah people. This is the great resource now as always. Today, in this time of humanity endangered, the man of Torah bears the hope of mankind’s future, the community of Torah exemplifies in miniature the character that society, if it is to endure, must assume.

As it is written in the Psalms of David: That Thy way may be known on earth, Thy salvation among all peoples. Those so committed will lead mankind in response to Auschwitz, and to Hiroshima, too.

Orthodoxy’s Unfinished Business r r iH E ROLE of the orthodox Jewish community in the pasJL sage of the Federal Education Act of 1964 illustrates how effectively its voice can be brought to bear in public life— when used the right way at the right time. While there have been other indications of Orthodoxy’s applied strength, such developments stand out in contrast to the situation which ap­ plies in general. For all the advances made in the inner life of traditional Jewry, for all the epochal growth, Orthodoxy still exercises far less influence in Jewish affairs and public life than its numbers and resources warrant. In public position as well Control as in other regards, Orthodoxy in the United States, in Israel, or Subjection and throughout the world continues to suffer heavy penalty be­ cause of its structural incoherence.

The keypoint of orthodox Jewish ideology, as generally agreed, lies in the premise that the Jews’ environment shall be shaped by Torah, and not vice versa. Common sense decrees that to pursue this premise, the orthodox Jew—as such, and not as the tool of the non-orthodox—shall be at the helm of collective Jewish affairs. Thus only can he assure a Torah-com-

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JEWISH LIFE

mitted direction for the overall Jewish community. This applies alike to the community’s inner composition and to its relation with the surrounding world, for the two interpenetrate. Obvious­ ly, a non-Torah-committed direction of Jewish affairs must re­ sult in subjection of the Torah standard to the non-Torah stand­ ard. No less obviously, the capacity of the orthodox Jew to live in accordance with his own Torah terms is thereby crippled.

His efforts, however diligent, are negated by the contrary char­ acter of the environment which he necessarily shares with other Jews.

It is cause for wonderment that Orthodoxy should chronically fail to establish such minimum of rational intra-relationships as its basic interests demand. On the local and national levels in this country and others, and on the world level, overall Jewc . . . ish affairs are under non-orthodox control. So too with the comStacked mumty’s financial resources. So too with communal institutions.

Cards So too with Jewish spokesmanship and representation in public life. Everywhere, the cards are stacked against the Torah Jew -not because other Jewish forces are inherently stronger but because he has not marshalled his own strength.

ITH the increased self-assurance that is born of positive achievement, orthodox Jews have been realizing that this preposterous situation not only should be but can be changed The feeling has been spreading that in matters at least of ex­ ternal relations, the much-sub-divided world of Orthodoxy can apply coordinated thinking and planning so that, in this area sPeak and act as one. It was with this motivation that the National Biennial Convention of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America called, last November for action towards unified spokesmanship for the world orthodox Jewish community and towards a national coordinating agency of American orthodox Jewish organizations. Efforts in this di­ rection have been pursued. Conferences of rabbinic and lav leaders of several countries held within past months in London have^ brought closer possibilities of regular coordination on the world level. On the national American level, tangible progress is yet to be achieved. This crucial facet of orthodox Jewish in­ terest must not be permitted to languish in the docket of per­ petually unfinished business. The price is just too high.

Even the most convinced believers in the importance of or­ thodox Jewish participation in mixed agencies have been forced to recognize that such participation can at best have minimal positive value in present circumstances. Even those most deep. 'Î e convinced that such participation is improper have been Requisiteforced to realize that without the requisite equipment of fullv coordinated, properly equipped channels of orthodox spokesmanship and action, a vacuum exists which will inevitably be filled by other sources.

If Orthodoxy is to be in position to shape the conditions of its own life, it must participate in the councils of Jewish af­ fairs. But, for such participation to accomplish the purpose, it

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must be in the leadership role. It must be in the capacity of initiating and prescribing policy and program and not of voic­ ing assent or dissent; of determining the whole pattern and course, and not of attempting to modify that set by others; of the securing of rights, and not of the receiving of minor favors in exchange for the sacrifice of rights. Such a status can be gained only if Orthodoxy’s participation in the collective proc­ ess rests on mobilized power. And this, in turn, requires a broad­ ly based instrumentality organized and equipped to act in dis­ ciplined fashion on issues of Jewish concern solely in Torah terms of reference. À MERICAN Orthodoxy’s independent and effective role in J \ . the debate over the Federal Education Act has shown what can be done. Other developments on the American and world scenes show how much must be done and leave no room for doubt as to the way to do it. This is the priority item on the crowded agenda of Torah Jewry. It is the duty of leader­ ship echelons to carry it forward to a finish.

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JEWISH LIFE

Doth and Religion

By LOUIS I. RABINOWITZ

T IS a commonplace that the He­ brew language has no exact equiv­ alent for the word “religion.” The nearest approximation to it is the word “Torah,” but the difference be­ tween the conception of Torah and religion is an enormous one. And as there is no word for the noun, so there is no word for its derivative adjective, “religious.” The word “chosid” in its original meaning, and the phrase “y’re shomayim” are per­ haps the nearest equivalents, but again they do not quite convey the same meaning as the word “religious.”

It is not my purpose to go into the reasons for this, or to analyse the different approaches to the question of faith which account for the ap­ parently surprising fact that a people whose outstanding characteristic, and whose main contribution to world civilization has been in the sphere of religion, has no word to express it. The point which I wish to make is that, as in so many other cases with regard to the development of Modern Hebrew as a flexible instru­ ment of communication, a word has been coined, or pressed into service, to convey in Hebrew the same idea as

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July-August, 1965

the word “religion” in English. That word is “Dath” (m) with its adjectiv­ al form “Dati.” It is of no import if etymologically the choice may not be a happy one, or that the original meaning of the word “Dath” is far removed from that of religion.”

The fact remains that it has been accepted as its exact equivalent, with the result that anyone translating the word “religion” from English into Hebrew must, if he wishes to be understood, perforce employ this word and this word only. The Ministry of Religions is Misrad HaDatoth, the National Religious Party is the Miflogah Leumith Datith, and the word has come to stay both in legal parlance and in commonday speech.

It is only on the basis of the justified assumption of the exact equiv­ alence of these two words that the unfortunate meaning which is attached to the word in modern Israel can be appreciated properly and the necessary conclusions drawn from it.

There is, in point of fact, an alter­ native phrase for the adjective “re­ ligious” which is equally current, the phrase “Shomer Mitzvoth,” “an ob­ server of the Commandments.” The

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two terms are synonymous and inter­ changeable. The “Dati” is a “Shomer Mitzvoth” and vice versa.

And it is when we come to qpnsider the connotation which is given in Israel, both by the religious and the nonreligious sections of the com­ munity, to the phrase “Shomer Mitz­ voth” that the wide gap between the English word “religious” and its He­ brew equivalent “Dati” stands out. n P H A T Judaism lays a much greater JL stress on “works” than on “faith,” that it believes that right conduct and right living are induced by the dis­ ciplines of the performance and ob­ servance of the practical command­ ments, is so well attested as to be beyond dispute. Only Judaism could evolve the striking and even daring Midrosh which paraphrases Jeremiah 16:11, and puts into the mouth of the Holy One, Blessed be He, the statement, “Would that they would forsake Me, so long as they keep My commandments, for the illumination of the commandments will cause them to find their way back to Me.” (Echah Rabbah Introd.) The question how­ ever is, what are those commandments which are included in the phrase “ Shomer Mitzvoth” used for the re­ ligious Jew in Israel? Jewish theology knows various divisions of the com­ mandments. It divides them various­ ly into Positive Commandments and Negative Commandments (“thou shalt” and “thou shalt not”), into Commandments between Man and the Omnipresent, i.e. the commandments of ritual and ceremonial observance, and Commandments between Man and his Fellow, which are, in essence, the ethical commandments. It divides them into Chukim, the commandments whose rational basis may not be ap­ 8

parent, and Mishpotim, the “rational” laws, and lastly there is the division immortalized by Bachya ibn Pakuda between the “practical command­ ments’* and those which give the title to his ethical classic, “Duties of the Heart.”

All these represent merely schematic divisions of the traditional 613 Mitz­ voth, and nowhere is there any sug­ gestion that one group is of greater importance or validity than the other.

It should therefore naturally be as­ sumed that the person who is called a “Shomer Mitzvoth” includes in that conception the totality of the com­ mandments of the Torah. And, as has been said, in Israel “Dati” and “Shomer Mitzvoth” ate synonymous terms.

In practice, however, a strange and severely limited connotation is given to the word or the phrase in Israel. That person is regarded as Dati or Shomer Mitzvoth who ad­ heres rigidly to that aspect of Jewish duty which is contained in the “Com­ mandments between Man and his Maker,” i.e. the commandments of outward and ceremonial observance alone. Any Israeli, whether observant or non-observant, will instantly con­ cede that the definition rightly be­ longs to that person who goes with a covered head, wears Tzitzith, dons Tephillin daily, prays thrice daily, and observes the Sabbath and the dietary laws in accordance with the Halochah. That the concept, how­ ever, should include ethical modes of conduct or the laws which regulate the correct relationship between man and his fellow man is not accepted.

To whatever category those desirable commandments may belong, they are not usually included in the concep­ tion of “Shomer Mitzvoth.”

JEWISH LIFE

I would not be misunderstood. 1 but with no causal connection between would not have it thought that I am them. laying myself open to the malicious This severely limited connotation libel that observant Jews in Israel are given to the word “Dati” in Israel lacking in standards of moral con­ has its effect upon its whole religious duct, or that there is a noticeable life, and the contribution which re­ absence of integrity in their relations ligious Jews have to make to its with their fellow men. On the con­ moral atmosphere. trary, it is surely obvious that the very discipline of the “yoke of the URING the four years that 1 Torah” acts as a powerful deterrent have been resident in Israel I against social transgressions or crimin­ have followed carefully every one of al activities, whether it be juvenile the official pronouncements—usually delinquency, or sexual crimes, or made in the form of placards on the offenses against the civil code. Statis­ street hoardings—of the Chief Rab­ tics naturally prove that they are in­ binate, whether of Israel as a whole, finitely less prevalent among the re­ or of the larger cities such as Jeru­ ligious sector than among that which salem and Tel Aviv. I cannot recall has “cast off the yoke of the com­ a single exception to the practice that mandments.” But what I do maintain they deal only with that portion of the is that there is distinction in the minds commandments which is connected of the people between those things with the meaning given to the word which belong to ritual observance and “Dati.” They call attention to breaches those which lie within the sphere of of Sabbath observance, or the need ethics and morals. When, as some­ to exercise care in the observance of times happens, an outwardly observant Kashruth, to the selling of Chometz Jew is found guilty of a transgression before Pesach (placards issued under against the criminal code, or of an the imprint of the Chief Rabbinate absence of ethical conduct, the re­ of Jerusalem indicated “Stations for action is not, “By virtue of that the sale of Chometz”) and so on. action of his he can no longer be All these belong to the legitimate and considered a Shomer Mitzvoth.” It essential duties of the Rabbinate, but expresses itself in the regret that a when their profusion is accompanied Shomer Mitzvoth should be guilty by a complete absence of any pro­ of such an act, since it brings the nouncement or exhortation about the name of religion into ill-repute; and social evils the growth of which is there is a world of psychological disturbing the country, juvenile de­ difference between the two. In the linquency, prostitution, and economic latter case he is still considered a exploitation, it tends to confirm the Shomer Mitzvoth despite the fact already prevalent idea that these that he has transgressed one of the things do not belong to the sphere of most grave of the commandments of religion. the Torah.

In the same way I cannot easily “Dath” and moral conduct are thus think of an instance in which the re­ regarded as belonging to different ligious political parties, whether the spheres of human conduct, each of largest and most powerful, the Nation­ them desirable and worthy in itself, al Religious Party; or the smaller

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Agudath Israel and Poalei Agudath Israel, have ever taken a concerted party line in order to raise a purely moral issue in the Knesseth. They battle with admirable vigour for a National Sabbath Law, for a diminu­ tion—in their failure to achieve a complete prohibition—of pig breed­ ing, but never to my knowledge have they brought up, as a purely religious issue, such questions as the exorbitant rates of interest, the tendency towards discrimination when it occurs, atomic warfare, the spread of the practice of abortion, unfair economic compe­ tition, on all of which Judaism has something to say. They share and reinforce the general conception that the duties of “Dati’im” are confined to the preservation and defence of those aspects of Judaism which are concerned with ritual observance.

Well do I remember the first oc­ casion when this remarkable abdica­ tion from responsibility from ethical questions on the part of the official representatives of religious Jewry, both ecclesiastical and lay, first came to my awareness. It was in 1960 when I was on a visit to Israel prior to my taking up permanent residence there. The “Lavon Affair” had just broken wide open. Allegations and counter-allegations between the main participants in this Affair were being broadcast daily. Every exposure and charge revealed the existence of a spiritual malaise and a moral cor­ ruption in the higher echelons of the administration of the country. There was a growing, creeping miasma which indicated the absence of those standards which the State of Israel is expected to exemplify. As a result, a moving proclamation was issued ap­ pealing for a “Cleansing of the Moral Atmosphere.” It was signed by some 10

100 of the leaders of public opinion in the country, most of them naturally without political ties. It included university professors and other aca­ demicians, poets and writers and thinkers, professionals and business men. I scanned the list carefully, and to my utter distress and dismay found that there was not a single rabbi or religious leader among the signatories.

Whether they had been approached and had found themselves unable to sign, or whether those responsible for organizing this public appeal had not seen fit to include among the moulders of public opinion I did not trouble to inquire, for it was largely immaterial. In either case it was a sufficiently severe ihdictment of an abdication of moral responsibility which was disturbing.

It was so strikingly different from the situation which prevails in the Diaspora, where the Rabbi is regard­ ed as one of the moral forces in the Community. In all such questions he liaturally takes the lead, and where he does ntit, those who do automatically turn to him to associate his name with it, and he gladly does so as part of his spiritual duties. One has only to think of the racial question in South Africa or the United States, the movement for nuclear disarmament, the campaign for Human Rights etc., for the point to be appreciated.

A S a result of this almost complete silence on the part of religious leaders on moral issues, a distorted view of Jewish values prevails. And because of that silence there exists in Israel no forum for the creation of public opinion, no body or group which regards the creation of a healthy moral atmosphere as its func­ tion. Sermons in the synagogue as JEWISH LIFE

part of the service—apart from the address to a Barmitzvah in the more “progressive” synagogues—are hardly known; when they do take place the preacher carefully avoids any refer­ ence to current or topical moral issues, lest he be accused of invading pre­ cincts which do not belong to him, and instead he applies himself to a learned exposition of the Portion of the Week. The official Rabbinate occupies itself almost exclusively with the vexed question arising from marriage and divorce, with promoting Shabboth and Kashruth, with regu­ lations to ensure conformity with the regulation of Terumah and Ma’aser and Orlah, and so on.

The religious parties in the Knesseth similarly occupy themselves with laws affecting the outward observance of the Torah, except that, as in all political parties, avowed principles have sometimes to succumb to the pressure of political expediency and

July-August, 1965

the need for maintaining the cohesion of the coalition in which they are junior partners.

Even in the religious schools the emphasis on religious education is on the need for ritual observance.

Only in the yeshivoth where “Musar,” religious ethics, plays a prominent part is rigid adherence to the observ­ ance side of Judaism combined with the inculcation of moral standards of conduct. But despite encouraging signs to the contrary to which I have given expression in a previous article, the yeshivoth tend to be closed societies cut off from the main stream of daily life.

The end result is that any plea for the emergence of the moral standards of Judaism as one of the expressions of its faith and way of life is like a voice crying in the wilderness, an orphan without father or mother to foster its interests.

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The Jewish Concept of Social Responsibility

By SHOLOM RIVKIN HE classical Jewish concept of tween the norm and the specifics of T social responsibility is an out­ the ethic. A glimpse into the cata­ growth—or rather a part—of Torah logue of any philosophic library can ethics, the uniqueness of the one be­ ing an extension of the uniqueness of the other. To glean an understanding of Judaism’s concept of social respon­ sibility, it is therefore necessary to have a prior look at Jewish ethics, identifying its special character. From this vantage point, we can then better view both the foundation and the specifics of Jewish teaching on man’s responsibility towards his fellow-man.

The unique character of Jewish ethics can be found in two general areas—in their ultimate criterion, that is, their ultimate authority; and, thus, in the specifics which flow therefrom.

Ethical theorists, and philosophers in general, have long discussed what is to be the criterion, the ultimate ap­ peal, of ethics generally, “the science of human character,” to cite one of Webster’s definitions. Why should we be ethical? And—granted that we do wish to be ethical—what standard of judgment shall be our norm? This is not the place to go into details on the point. Suffice it to say that there are many views as to the fundamental norm for ethics,; and as to whether such norm is to be relative or abso­ lute, and the manner of relation be­ 12

give us a good idea of the vast liter­ ature on this subject. Since we here are not discussifig ethics in general, but rather Jewish ethics, it is suffi­ cient that we merely take note of the existence of such a discussion as re­ lates to the ultimate appeal of gen­ eral ethics.

HE special character of Jewish T ethics seems to stem from the fact that, <Jn Judaism, ethics is inseparable from religion. While there are other systems of ethics that are based on some absolute criterion, the absolute is not usually founded exclusively (if at all!) upon religion. In Judaism, on the other hand, the fulfillment of ethics is identical with fulfilling the Divine will. “What are called Jewish ethics,” writes George Foote Moore in his classical work “Judaism,” “are, in substance and form, more exactly described as preceptive morals; they are the morals of a religion, and their obligation lies not in the reason and conscience of men but in the author­ ity of the Sovereign Lawgiver.”

We Jews did not develop ethics as a branch of philosophy, a science of conduct and character ^uch as one JEWISH LIFE

has in mind when speaking, for exam­ ple, of the ethics of the Greeks. Al­ though there were attempts to com­ pare, and to show the similarity be­ tween, Jewish and pagan ethics, these attempts—Moore correctly points out —were not designed to construct a Jewish system of ethics but rather to prove the rational and moral excel­ lence of Jewish ethics, and must therefore be regarded as a chapter of apologetics rather than as a construc­ tive essay in Jewish ethical theory.

Jewish ethical thought, therefore, starts not with self-sufficient nature or reason from which everything re­ lating to human life is to be deduced, but with the Will of G-d. “Right” and “wrong” in Judaism are not defined by the reason and conscience of men, but by the revealed Will of G-d. Ethics is thus not merely central to Jewish re­ ligion; it is, in fact, inseparable from

it as one of its most essential mani­ festations. Long ago, Josephus, who undertook the task of interpreting the Jewish outlook to the Greek world, put the matter succinctly in his “Against Apion”: “Moses,” he said, “did not make religion a part of virtue (i.e., ethics) but he saw and ordained the virtues to be part of reli­ gion . . . for all our actions and all our words have reference to piety to­ ward G-d.” I The animating force of Jewish morality—writes Dr. Samuel Belkin in his “In His Image”—is therefore not the protection of the state or the community in the abstract, or of any mundane form of government. The entire system of Jewish morality and ethics derives from, and is founded upon, the concept of the sovereignty of G-d.

BASIS OF JEW ISH ETHICS INCE the standard of Jewish which underlie the body of Jewish S ethics derives from the Will of practice and of Judaism’s concept of G-d, it follows that the specifics of the ethic can only be known by learn­ ing what is the Will of G-d. Judaism’s specific standards of conduct, there­ fore, flow from Halochah (TalmudicRabbinic Law) in which classical Judaism sees the expression of the Will of G-d. Judaism’s ethics, there­ fore, do not derive from its philos­ ophy; rather, conversely—we can get a clearer insight into Judaism’s phi­ losophy by studying the specifics of the Halochah. Thus, in searching for Judaism’s ethical criteria, it is—writes Dr. Belkin— ‘wasteful . . . to un­ cover or investigate abstract theolog­ ical dogmas. Research ought, rather, seek to uncover the religious motives

July-August, 1965

morality. The philosophy of Judaism is contained largely in the Halochah —in the Jewish judicial system— which concerns itself not with theory but, primarily, with practice. It is in Halochah, therefore, that the phi­ losophy of Judaism is to be sought.”

The fact that the ultimate appeal of Jewish ethics lies in their being the Will of G-d, makes it clear that Judaism considers an offense against one’s fellow human being a sin, also, against G-d. Hence, a famous mishnah (Yoma 85b) states: “For trans­ gressions that are between man and G-d the Day of Atonement effects atonement, but for transgressions that are between man and his fellow man 13

the Day of Atonement effects atone­ ment only if he has appeased his fel­ low man.” Elsewhere, the Talmud states: “No man deals falsely with his neighbor until first he denies G-d.”* Even our love for man is ultimate­ ly dependent upon our love of G-d.

Any wrong done to fellow-man re­ flects our own disregard for the Al­ mighty who graced man with His Own Likeness. Clearly, as Dr. Belkin has pointed out in his above-cited work, the sacredness of the human personality, and the infinite worth of the individual, are deeply imbedded, irremovable, and irreplaceable corner­ stones in the moral and religious structure of Judaism.

T U S T as ethics in Judaism is ulti-

J mately based upon what is^ the

Will of G-d, so is Judaism’s concept of social responsibility (man’s respon­ sibility toward fellow-man), which is one part of ethics, based upon what is the Will of G-d. In bestowing kind­ ness upon fellow-man, therefore, we are actually serving G-d, since kind­ ness to our fellow human beings (even when this kindness is not dic­ tated by practical considerations) is the Will of G-d as expressed in the Torah. When the Prophet Isaiah (56:4), in the name of G-d, speaks of those “that keep My Sabbaths and choose the things that please Me,” the sainted Chofetz Chaim** points out that the things that please G-d are none other than chesed (lovingkind­ ness to fellow-man). As Scriptural proof of this he cites the words of Hosea (6 :6 ): Ki chofatzti chesed v’lo zovach—“For I desire lovingkindness * See “The Faith of Judaism,” by Isidore Ep­ stein (The Soncino Press, London, 1954J, p. 27. ** Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (1838-1933), of Radin, Poland.

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and not sacrifices”; and the words of Micah (7:18): . . . ki chofetz chesed hu— “because He delighteth in loving­ kindness”; and the words of Jeremiah (9:22-23): “Thus saith the Lord, let not the wise man glory in his wis­ dom. . . . But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth Me, that I am the Lord Who exercise lovingkindness (chesed), justice (mishpot), and righteousness (tzedokah) . . . for in these things I delight (chofatzti), saith the Lord.”

So, too, expresses himself one of the great Rabbinic sages of the last cen­ tury: “Besides our obligation to do lovingkindness to our fellow man as a human responsibility, we are obligated to do it as our obedience to the Law of the Torah, (which we are to ob­ serve) even when our human mind does not dictate it.”* Thus, failure <to do kindness to fellow man is a sin against G-d. “Whoever denies (the doing of) lovingkindness, is as if he denied the Root (G -d),” Midrash Koheleth states. The Sages of the Talmud considered the trait of lov­ ingkindness as so essential to one’s good character that they counted gomley chasodim— “doers of loving­ kindness”—as one of the distinguish­ ing characteristics of descendants of Abraham our Patriarch. The Talmud (Betzah 32b) tells of Rabbi Shabethai the son of Rabbi Merinas who visited a certain Jewish community in Babylonia and found that the people there did not practice lovingkindness.

“These people,” said Rabbi Shabethai, “are not descendant^ of Abraham our Patriarch, since they do not have mercy on G-d’s creatures.” * Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehudah Berlin (NeTzIB), head of the great Yeshivah of Volozhin; in his “Commendation” (Haskomah) to the Chofetz Chaim’s Ahavath Chesed.

JEWISH LIFE

THE ELEMENT OF "CHESED HE characteristic of Chesed, lov­ ingkindness, is not merely a good human trait; it is—beyond that—a clue to man’s G-dly character. On the Biblical verse that “man was created in the Image of G-d” the Chofetz Chaim in his Ahavath Chesed (refer­ ring to earlier commentaries) ex­ plains that “G-d gave man the power to be like G-d, doing only kindness to others, since G-d does not need any­ one else, but only bestows kindness on others. Thus, he who walks in this path (of doing kindness to others) carries upon himself G-d’s image, while he who keeps from doing kind­ ness makes himself distant from G-d.”

The practice of lovingkindness makes one worthy of receiving G-d’s special protection and care. “Come and see,” says Midrash Ruth, “the power of those who do tzedokah and gemiluth-chesed; they receive the pro­ tection not merely of the sun or the stars or angels, but, rather, the pro­ tection given to them by He-WhoSaid - and-the - Universe - Came - to-Be (G-d), and it is written (Psalms 36:8) ‘How precious is Thy lovingkindness O G-d, and the children of men take refuge under the shadow of Thy wings.’ ” In another place the Tal­ mud states “He who has mercy on creatures receives mercy from Heaven” (Shaboth 151b).

Since bestowing kindness on others (gemiluth chesed) is what makes one worthy of receiving G-d’s kindness and nearness, the one who gives to the poor is actually receiving more than he is giving, for he is giving a limited material gift, and is receiving, in return, the unlimited protection of the Infinite G-d. Thus—in one of many such texts—the Midrosh says:

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July-August, 1965

“More than the landlord gives to the poor person, the poor person gives to the landlord.”

The matter of lovingkindness to­ ward man is not merely an important concept of Torah; rather, it suffuses all of Torah-teaching and all of Torah fulfillment. The Talmudic Sage Rabbi Simlai points out (Sotah 14a) that “the Torah begins and ends with (in­ stances of) lovingkindness.” The Chofetz Chaim in the introduction to his Ahavath Chesed enumerates chap­ ter after chapter in Scripture, point­ ing out the message of Chesed in every story and every law in the Torah. When reaching the Book of Vayikra, the Chofetz Chaim writes: . . then I reflected that there is really no end to the many instances of Chesed in the Torah. Many, many Mitzvoth, both mandatory and pro­ hibitive, emanate from G-d’s kind­ ness . . . and all, because of His good­ ness and kindness, He commanded us to help our fellow human with what­ ever we can. . . ” To those who, mis­ takenly, hold that the observance of Chesed is merely a matter of extra­ piety, but that it is not an obligation, the Chofetz Chaim in clearest terms points out what a binding, serious, and constant obligation is the matter of doing kindness.

HAT giving Tzedokah (charity; T righteous deed) is not only a mat­ ter of voluntarily bestowing extra kindness, but that it is a serious obli­ gation of every person is underscored by the fact that the Rabbi Mosheh ben Maimon (RaMbaM, Maimonides) in his Code of Law, the Mishneh To­ rah, as also Rabbi Yoseph Karo in the Shulchon Oruch, devoted an im-

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portant section, with a number of chapters, to the details of Hilchoth Tzedokah (Laws of Tzedokah). More­ over, a number of Talmudic texts which we might think are only “sermonic expressions” on the matter of Tzedokah are quoted in the Mishneh Torah and the Shulchon Oruch as Jewish Law : Both the Rambam* and the Shulchon Oruch** state plainly: “No person will ever become poor from giving tzedokah, and nothing bad or damaging can ever result from it,” The Shulchon Oruch also states as law the Talmudic teaching: “He who has mercy on the poor, G-d will have mercy on him.” To which the Ramah (Rabbi Mosheh Isserles’ Gloss) adds with reference to the foregoing: “And each person should reflect how he is always asking for his sustenance from G-d, and just as he prays that G-d should hear his cry, so should he listen to the cry of those in need. He should also reflect how life is a cycle, and that there comes a time when ei­ ther he or his son, or his son’s son, will be needing help, and that if he will have mercy on others, he will merit to receive (G-d’s) mercy.”*** Jewish law as set forth in the above-cited authoritative codes also states that “in every city where there are Jews they are obligated to ap­ point people known and trustworthy * Section Hilchoth Matnaih Aniyim ( “Treatise on Laws of Gifts to the Poor” ). ** Yoreh Deah, chap. 247, sec. 2. *** The Shulchon Oruch is the universally ac­ cepted basic codification of Jewish Law, the Gloss thereto of Rabbi Isserles being likewise of decisive authority for Ashkenazi Jewry. Both Yoseph Karo and Mosheh Isserles lived in the 16th century C.E., the former in Safed, in the Holy Land, the latter to Cracow, Po­ land. Their great work was preceded several centuries earlier by that (among others) of Maimonides, giant figure of Jewish learning and thought (1135-1204 C .E.), who dwelt first in Cordova, Spain, and tjien, after much wander­ ing, in Cairo, Egypt.

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who are to collect Tzedokah and who are to be in charge of allotting the Tzedokah properly to those in need.”

HEN an obligation is upon a community, individuals in the community often do not feel it as their own specific, personal, and im­ mediate obligation! We are inclined to shift obligations to other times and to people other than ourselves. The Chofetz Chaim, therefore, stresses how “very careful one must be not to omit the fulfillment of Chesed even one day during one's entire lifetime.”

After writing extensively on this point the Chofetz Chaim says: . . I dwelt at length on this in order to uproot the error held by many people who think that if they once did an act of kindness for someone that they ful­ filled the obligation for many weeks even when they can still do more and for others. Man must do kindness every day of his life. Whenever he is confronted with this Mitzvah he is obligated to do it, even a number of times a day.”

Jewish Law defines how much one is obligated to give as Tzedokah. The least one should give is a tenth of one’s (net?) income. Less than that is called “stingy.” Moreover, as the Ramah notes, this amount set aside for Tzedokah must go for the poor, and one may not count into this what one gives, for example, for the Syna­ gogue, or for the Torah-education of one’s children, since these, important though they be, are not in the same category as Tzedokah for the poor. It is interesting also that Jewish law makes it incumbent upon one to give this tenth for Tzedokah also out of an amount one inherits.*

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* Chofetz Chaim in Ahavath Chesed, quoting Eliyahu-Rabbah chap. 156.

JEWISH LIFE

The Chofetz Chaim points out that there is a distinction between one who simply gives Tzedokah at random and one who stipulates that a certain per­ centage of his income is set aside for

Tzedokah. In the latter instance, “G-d become a partner” in man’s business, and—the Chofetz Chaim concludes— “how beautiful is their portion and how pleasant is their lot.”

FULFILLING SO C IA L RESPONSIBILITY HILE the classical Jewish liter­ it clear that “. . . the existence of the ature on responsibility toward human race is dependent upon the W fellow man is beautiful, containing doing of kindness, since at all stages most lofty expressions concerning kindness, the unique greatness of the Jewish concept of social responsibility can be found most beautifully as it has been concretized by historic Juda­ ism through its social institutions and the actual fulfillment of its concept of social responsibility. John Keats once wrote: “Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced. Even a proverb is no proverb to you till your life has illustrated it.” Seen in this way, Juda­ ism’s teachings on social responsibility represent a loftiness and nobility not even approached by any other system of thought.

Social responsibility in Judaism is throughout an inspired religious ideal.

Yet, at the same time, this teaching is so realistically down-to-earth as to be unmistakably clear that it is meant to be actually practiced and fulfilled.

Its specificity keeps the teaching from becoming so distantly ethereal as would, so to speak, cause it to float away into the thin air of some dream world; and its inspired loftiness con­ stantly gives it the G-d-consciousness which is the note of eternity in the Torah life of the Jew. While empha­ sizing throughout the central char­ acter of Tzedokah as the fulfillment of the Will of G-d, the Chofetz Chaim does not hesitate also to make

July-August, 1965

of life man needs his fellow man.”

The Chofetz Chaim goes on to enu­ merate the various Mitzvoth involv­ ing man’s obligation to extend mate­ rial help to his neighbor: the Mitzvah of making a bridegroom and his bride happy at their wedding; the Mitzvah of comforting the mourner; the Mitz­ vah of helping one’s fellow human (and even the beast of one’s fellow human) with a heavy burden; the Mitzvah of extending hospitality; the Mitzvah of visiting the sick; and many more! “In general,” concludes the Chofetz Chaim, “the world would not continue to exist without (the exercise of) this trait (of kindness). There­ fore, the Torah specifies in many places that man shall constantly strengthen within himself the practice of kindness. We can also say that this was the intent of the Talmudic Sages who said that the world stands upon three things: Torah, Worship of G-d, and the doing of lovingkindness” (Pirkey Ovoth 1:2).

HE Halochah, as we saw above, defines the limits of man’s obliga­ tion to do Tzedokah. The Sages of the Talmud have stated (Kethuboth 49b) that “he who wants to be liberal, must not give away more than a fifth (of his possessions for Tzedokah).”

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Yet, one who is very wealthy may writes the Chinuch,* “that the Mitzgive even more than the one-fifth! vah of Tzedokah is only toward the (Tosefoth, ad Bova Kama 9b; see poor who has no bread or garment.

Ahavath Chesed II, 20). Even though But, at times, Tzedokah can be done the giving of one-tenth of one’s even toward the very wealthy. For net income is the passable average for example, a wealthy person who is in Tzedokah, “this is only if there are no a place where people do not know known poor (in the community) who him, and is in need of help . . . (help­ are hungry or in need. But if one ing him) is also without a doubt the knows that there are in the commu­ Mitzvah of Tzedokah.” nity widows, orphans, and others in Lending money to one who is in need who cannot help themselves one need is the highest form of Tzedokah, is obligated by Torah law to give up and is “the strongest and the most to one-fifth his possessions.”* obligatory requirement of the entire So, too, when the matter of saving Mitzvah of Tzedokah,” writes the the lives of people is involved, no Rambam in his Sefer Ha-Mifzvoth, limitations exist as to the amount of since it keeps one from the embarrass­ money one should spend. Even ment of having to ask for a gift. This though the saving of one’s own life Mitzvah of lending is not confined takes priority (when these conflict) only to the lending of money, but ex­ over the saving of one’s fellow man, tends also to the lending of utensils, “we do not find,” says the Chofetz vessels, and other items of need, the Chaim, “that one man’s wealth takes Chofetz Chaim points out. Since the priority over the life of another.” Shulchon Oruch does not specify ex­ Giving Tzedokah shortly before one’s plicitly the amount one is obligated death, where there remains not the to lend, the Chofetz Chaim discusses fear that one will remain a burden this point in some detail, and con­ to the community, is also not limited cludes that the amount of obligation by the “one-fifth” rule. The Talmud varies with the extent of the need of tells about Mar Ukbah who, shortly the borrower, and according to the before his death, counted up the ability of the lender. amount he had given for Tzedokah The Mitzvah of lending money is during his lifetime. Apparently, he not only an obligation upon the was dissatisfied with the amount he lender. The borrower, too, has an ob­ had given, saying, “It is a far trip, ligation: the prompt payment, at the and the provisions are so little.” So proper time, of the debt. “The repay* he gave away his possessions for ment of a debt” says the Talmud Tzedokah.

(Kethuboth 86a), “is a Mitzvah.”

Money that remains unjustly in one’s INCE the giving of Tzedokah is possession—points out the Chofetz directed toward helping a human Chaim— “cannot ultimately be suc­ who is in need, Jewish law makes it cessful.” He also quotes the statement clear that, at times, helping one who of the Talmud. “If you withhold what is otherwise wealthy, but only now in need is also included. “Do not think,” * Mitzvah 479. The Sepher Ha-Chinuch (“The

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* Chofetz Chaim, in the name of the Vilna Gaon.

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Training” ) of Rabbi (Aaron?) Halevy of Barce­ lona (circa 13th century C.E.) is a classical exposition of the 613 Mitzvoth of the Torah.

JEWISH LIFE

is not yours— yours will be taken from you.”

H PH E Mitzvah of Gemiluth Chesed, A bestowing kindness, encompasses more than the Mitzvah of Tzedokah, the Talmud (Sukkah 49b) points out, in three ways: 1. Tzedokah involves only the giving of money or material goods, while Gemiluth Chesed in­ volves also the giving of oneself; 2.

Tzedokah is only to the poor, while Gemiluth Chesed is to all; 3. Tzedo­ kah can only be done toward the liv­ ing, while Gemiluth Chesed is both for the living and for the departed.

In Gemiluth Chesed are included (as mentioned above) such acts as: hospitality to the wayfarer; visiting the sick; helping a bridegroom and his bride in their rejoicing; participating in the funeral, the eulogy, and the proper burial of the departed.

Jewish communities throughout history have had special organizations which occupied themselves with co­ ordinating and fulfilling these various acts of kindness. There was the “Chevrah Gemiluth Chesed,” for do­ ing acts of benevolence and lending money to those in need. There was the “Chevrah Bikur Cholim,” for visiting the sick.* There was the “Hachnosath Orchim,” to extend hos­ pitality to the wayfarer. There was the “Hachnosath Kallah,” to provide a proper wedding for the bride who could not afford it. And a host of other organized charitable endeavors,

such as “Maos Chittim” (to provide Pesach needs for those who cannot provide for themselves), and many, many more.

These endeavors were organized, usually, quite efficiently (as the rec­ ords of various Jewish communities in Europe have shown). Yet, the effi­ ciency did not detract from their per­ sonal relation to those in need when they were serving. (The late President Kennedy, in his little book, “A Na­ tion of Immigrants,” quotes a certain Irish poet—John Boyle O’Reilly— who deprecates “organized charity, scrimped and iced.” This emphatical­ ly has not been the character of or­ ganized Jewish Tzedokah!) Though Tzedokah means righteousness, and was given as duty, rather than as a form of extra piety, it included, al­ ways, Chesed, kindness. Thus, the Talmud states “Tzedokah is only re­ warded according to the amount of Chesed that is in it.” * Jewish Law dwells at length on the manner in which Tzedokah is to be dispensed, so as to spare the feelings of the reci­ pient. Both Maimonides and the Shulchon Oruch, based on Talmudic texts, state the law which tells of the proper manner in which Tzedokah is to be given: The Tzedokah must be given with a pleasant disposition and with a joy­ ous countenance. The giver must show sympathy with the poor person, and must give him also words of comfort and encouragement.**

ETHIC OF L A W A N D LOVE

T UDAISM’S ethic is an ethic of law; but, at the same time, it is an

ethic of love. Thus, one must do kind­ ness not only out of love, but with

* Seattle’s Congregation Bikur Cholim was, for example, originally organized as a society for visiting and helping the sick. Hence, its name.

* Sukkah 49b; see Rashi’s commentary ad loc. ** Bova Bathra 9b; Rambam, Hilchoth Matnath Aniyim X; Shulchon Oruch, Yoreh Deah 249; 3, 5; Vilna Gaon’s Notes ad loc. No. 10.

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July-August, 1965

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the obligation of righteous duty. Yet, this very duty is to be inspired with love. The help we extend to the needy is not called—in Judaism— charity (which means: love), but rather tzedokah—righteousness. We do not help the needy only with extra love, which can sometimes become condescending and, thus, painful to the recipient. We give: Tzedokah, righteousness: it is the right thing to do, and our obliga­ tion to give. But—as quoted above from the Talmud—this Tzedokah, this righteousness, is to be done with Chesed—lovingkindness !

Thus, while Jewish law makes for efficient administration of matters of Tzedokah, the approach to the needy recipient is not made “pragmatically harsh” by this efficiency. In his abovementioned book, “A Nation of Immi­ grants,” the late President Kennedy criticizes the immigration laws, and urges that they be made more hu­ mane. In one place he writes: “The famous words of Emma Lazarus on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty read, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.’ Until 1921 this was an accurate picture of our society. Under present law it would be appropriate to add ‘As long as they come from

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Northern Europe, are not too tired or too poor or slightly ill, never stole a loaf of bread, never joined a ques­ tionable organization, and can docu­ ment their activities for the past two years.’ ” The Tzedokah commanded by the Torah defined by Jewish tradition does not allow for this harsh effi­ ciency.

N studying this subject one dis­ covers, more and more, the de­ gree to which Tzedokah is interwoven with the entire vast Torah literature.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of texts which directly bear upon every facet of our subject. Obviously, it is impossible to quote more than a few of them. So I will have to be satisfied with the thought that what has been written here will at least have whetted appetites—the reader’s and mine—to pursue further this very fascinating topic.

I shall close with a saying in the Talmud which the Rambam para­ phrases. And these are the Rambam’s words: Some of the greatest Sages used to give a coin for Tzedokah before they stood up in prayer, and then they prayed, as it is written (Psalm 17) ‘I shall behold Thy face with right­ eousness.’

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JEWISH LIFE

The Mystery of Haym Salomon

By LEON S. ROSENTHAL

URING the past years the mon, or even knew of his existence.

D shadowy figure of Haym Salo­ If he did, it would only have been mon has imposed itself on the pub­ because Robert Morris may have lic mind as the outstanding Jewish patriot of Revolutionary days. In the same manner as the French-Ameri­ cans venerate Lafayette, the Poles Pulaski and Kosciusko, the Germans von Steuben, and the Irish John Barry, efforts have been made to glorify Salomon as the symbol of Jewish participation in the founding of the American nation. He has been men­ tioned in song and story, organizations have been named for him, ceremonies have been held in his memory, Presi­ dents have eulogized him, and even a cemetery bears his name.

But, despite the adulation, few peo­ ple seem to know exactly what it was Salomon did, or how valuable his services were to the nation. Of those who have any idea at all what part he played in the War for Independ­ ence, most have only some hazy im­ pression that he contributed vast sums of money to support the Revolution­ ary cause. The most extravagant of the tales pictures Salomon as George Washington’s close friend and confi­ dante who contributed some two millions or more of dollars to keep the War alive.

There is no evidence that Washing­ ton ever was acquainted with Salo-

July-August, 1965

spoken to the General of Salomon in connection with the work of the Finance Office.

Similarly,, it is doubtful if Salomon was ever in a financial position to contribute two millions of dollars.

We know that he was a successful broker and had a modest fortune, but it is a dubious conclusion that any­ one in the colonies in those days had two million dollars liquid, includ­ ing such men as John Hancock and Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who were among the wealthiest men in the country. In one of the few of his letters existent Salomon denies he is a rich man.

The report of the Committee on Revolutionary Claims of the Thirtyseventh Congress could compile but $658,007.33 in possible claims against the Government by Salomon’s heirs, of which all but $92,600 is open to question.

A LL of which raises two questions. £ \ . First, exactly what did Haym Salomon do that entitles him to be considered one of the immortals?

Secondly, how was the image of Salomon, an obscure broker, per­ petuated in the public eye while the 21

years were quietly 1 effacing the memory of other, more spectacular, Jewish Revolutionists? For it should not be supposed that we Jews were without our military heroes in the Revolution.

Mordecai Sheftall, of Savannah, was regarded by the British as one of the leaders of the American cause.

David Emmanuel was widely known for his military exploits, and after the War became the first governor of Georgia. David Salesbury Franks, a Canadian, came down to join the Continental Army. He had the mis­ fortune to be on Benedict Arnold’s staff, but a Board of Inquiry rendered such prompt and unequivocal vindica­ tion that the Congress reaffirmed its faith in Franks by directing Mrs. Arnold to be placed in his custody until he could deliver her to the Capital. Haym Salomon’s own brotherin-law, Isaac Franks, at seventeen ran away from home to volunteer.

At the battle of Long Island he was taken prisoner, escaped from the Provost, made his way back to the army, became forage-master of West Point and ended up as a LieutenantColonel on Washington’s staff. Manuel Mordecai Noah, of North Carolina, fought on the staff of Francis Marion and later was an aide to Washington.

Benjamin Nones, “the Jewish Lafa­ yette,” came from France to fight for the Americans, and had a most distinguished career.

Sa l o m o n was born in Lissa, Poland, in 1740. Just when he escaped from the tightlybound ghetto of that town is not certain, but there can be no doubt that he travelled extensively over Europe and had some connection with the banking business. His knowledge aym

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and assessment of banking houses, their methods and policies, the trans­ mutation of various currencies, and appraisal of bills of exchange, was not the consequence of mere good business judgment. Only personal observation, experience, and study could have endowed Salomon with his knowledge of these matters. When he was thirtytwo years of age he emigrated to America and landed in New York City, then a growing commercial center of 14,000 people.

Salomon was alert to the pos­ sibilities for a brokerage and commis­ sion merchant. He opened an office in Broad Street. Apparently he did well from the start. He was energetic, honest, and knowledgeable.

Legend has it that he identified him­ self with the Sons of Liberty, knowing well that the vested interests on whom he depended for patronage looked with disdain (and some fear) at his newly-found affiliation. Hardly the atmosphere for an aspiring young broker to cloak himself in.

Just what he did for the Sons is problematical. He was a slight, under­ sized figure hardly fit for strenuous physical venture. Perhaps he was just a “card-carrying member.” Whatever his activity with the Sons, it was clear that he was steeped in the cause of human liberty. And Salomon was never one to hide his convictions.

Shortly after his arrival he had made the acquaintance of Moses Benjamin Franks, an influential Jew­ ish merchant (the entire Jewish popu­ lation in New York City was about sixty), and he began to court Franks’ daughter, Rachel.

When the outbreak of the Revolu­ tion blew off the top of the boiling Independence volcano, Salomon was still engaged in his growing brokerage JEWISH LIFE

business. He might have continued with this peaceful pursuit, but sudden-

ly New York found itself in the midst of the fighting.

"S O N OF LIBERTY" N September 15, 1776, General With these services came a greater Sir William Howe and his freedom of action. Undoubtedly, the O British legions took possession of the city. Five days later a fire started in one of the drinking dens on lower Broad Street. Fanned by a high wind, the flames destroyed more than four hundred buildings, including Salo­ mon’s little office.

The British immediately laid the blame for the conflagration on the Sons of Liberty. Everyone who was known to be a sympathizer was clap­ ped into jail, Salomon among them.

One account says that he was lodged in the British prison on Liberty Street known as the Old Sugar House. This dilapidated building had no roof, and the autumnal rains ran down from floor to floor soaking the overcrowded prisoners, so that they lived in dank sogginess.

It is during this period of imprison­ ment that Salomon is supposed to have contracted the pulmonary weak­ ness that undermined his health and eventually killed him.

In some manner his abilities as a linguist came to the attention of the British authorities. Besides English he was fluent in French, Polish, Rus­ sian, Italian, and German.

It was the latter which interested the British. They had among their legions the thousands of Hessian mercenaries under the command of General Heister, and Heister had great need for an interpreter. Soon Salomon was translating the British orders of the day to the Hessian high command.

July-Augusf, 1965

interpreter became friendly with offi­ cers and soldiers in key spots. By the end of the year he was on parole, free to go and come, provided he rendered his interpretive services.

N January 2, 1777, Haym Salo­ mon married Rachel Franks, and O

by November of that year he was actively engaging in business, again establishing his office in Broad Street.

To one who was privy to the daily maneuverings of the British forces, who had undoubtedly fostered warm relations with British and Hessian personnel, it was not too difficult to arrange for the escape of American prisoners.

No doubt many of the British dayby-day plans and orders were relayed

by Salomon to the network of under­ cover agents that had been set up in the city by General Alexander MacDougall, in charge of the Continental troops harassing the British lines about New York City.

There is also a hint that Salomon induced disaffected Hessians to desert and make for the sylvan lands in Pennsylvania, so like their native soil.

Things were going well for Salo­ mon. His business was prospering, he had the run of the city, including the military installations, he was aid­ ing the Cause, and his wife had just given birth to a son Ezekial.

Then disaster struck!

Sir Henry Clinton had succeeded Lord Howe as British commander.

23

Rumor had it that Washington’s agents in New York were planning to set fire to the wharves and ware­ houses. Sir Henry was taking no chances. Every known colonial sym­ pathizer in the city was arrested and thrown into the Provost, that ex­ ecrable prison whose prisoners were set apart for the firing squad. And Haym Salomon was among them.

We have no record of how Salo­ mon was delivered from these straits.

No doubt the man who knew how to effect the escape of others was alert to the proper channels for his own deliverance. At all events, by August 25, 1778 we find him in Philadelphia memorializing Congress.

It is indicative of the man that though he complained to Congress that he had lost his business and his fortune of five or six thousand pounds, sterling, and had been forced to leave behind in New York his wife and infant son, he used much of his me­ morial to plead for the exchange of a fellow-prisoner who had incurred the British wrath.

Of course, the Congress bedevilled with a thousand other perplexities, gave him no relief. Inevitably the young escapee found his way to the Mikveh Israel Congregation, which in those days worshipped on the second floor of the home of Joseph Caufman in Sterling Alley. There he met with his co-religionists (there were about two hundred of them in Philadelphia), many of whom were in business and had connections with Salomon’s father-in-law in New York.

Before long he was set up in business in an office in Front Street between Market and Arch and adver­ tised that he was prepared to deal in bills of exchange and other securi­ ties.

24

ILLS of exchange formed the life­ blood of commerce in those B days. Yet there was great hazard in dealing with them. The solvency of their issuers, the value of their rate of exchange, the dangers of their transportation, all presented a risk that could be ruinous to the unwary purchaser.

Salomon, with his intimate knowl­ edge of foreign banking houses, trade methods, conditions, and currency, his command of many languages, and his aptness at calculation, held an easy superiority over most brokers. From the beginning he did well. Apparently his integrity and honesty, as well as his shrewdness, contributed to his success.

He was able to bring his wife and child to Philadelphia and establish a home.

One of the most absurd sides of the War for Independence was its finances. Not only was there no real authority in the Congress to raise money, but as Sumner says, “Con­ gress had no understanding of the meaning of credit.” For years the War was financed in beggarly fashion by the most naive and haphazard fiscal methods.

Rolling Continental dollars off the printing press was one naive method, in which the British joyously joined.

When these dollars became worthless Loan Office certificates were issued, which were only Continental currency in another form.

When finally the financial squeeze seemed to be eased by loans from France and Holland, the Congress found itself in further turmoil. The bulk of the loans was in the form of bills of exchange on foreign banks, and the bewildered Congress found JEWISH LIFE

itself thrown right into the midst of the treacherous bill market.

It was not until May 1781, with the financial situation in virtual col­ lapse, and with creditors and petition­ ers harassing it on every side, that the Congress finally decided to hand the whole mess to one agency. It created the Finance Office, with

Robert Morris as its Superintendent.

Morris was reluctant to take the position. He insisted on many con­ ditions, including a salary of $6,000, the largest then paid to any man in the public service. From the begin­ ning he noted every move in a Diary from which we get much of the information of Salomon’s value to the Finance Office.

"O U R MR. S A L O M O N " HEN the French loan came expressed by the terse entry in his filtering in it was in the form Diary that he was visited by “Mr. W of bills of exchange, mainly on the Haym Salomon, the Jew broker.” banking firm of Le Couteulx et Cie of Paris. But there were now about six thousand French troops in America whose paymasters were also supplied with bills on the Paris banks. The considerable amount of such bills circulating began to depress the market. Brokers, sensing a windfall, began to undersell, dragging the price of bills down to ruinous levels.

Morris found that not only were his bills being disposed of at a price far below the par, but he was not beginning to raise the cash he needed.

He would require the services of a broker to battle the market.

About this time the French author­ ities, also seeking a competent broker to handle their bills, chose Salomon, undoubtedly influenced by his ability in the French and English languages and his familiarity with French bank­ ing practices. Salomon, seeing the possibilities of boosting the sagging market if all French bills were chan­ nelled from one source, approached Morris with a view to handling the Finance Office bills.

Morris’ reluctance to have Salomon represent the Finance Office is best

July-August, 1965

Perhaps someone other than a “Jew broker” could handle the business.

Morris did employ brokers, but they proved unsatisfactory. He had “violent altercations” with them. Ap­ parently they were looking out for their own interests, rather than that of the unsteady government. Finally, he resorted to “the Jew broker” to assist him. The prevailing brokerage rates were from 2V2% to 5%. Salo­ mon, it appears, offered to handle government bills for Va of 1%.

By devious means known only to one skillful in the market, Salomon disposed of Morris’ bills at a decent price. Gradually Morris began to gain confidence in Salomon and to appreci­ ate his skill and advice. The Super­ intendent consulted with the broker on many matters. Adroitly the two of them maneuvered the slim finances of the struggling state.

ALOMON sold not only bills of exchange. He peddled a few casks S of pearl ashes and some dry hides that the Government had acquired somehow. Morris kept fending off the hordes of supplicants and distrib-

25

uted his few coins where they did the most good. He instituted economies.

He saved $140 a year by*giving up one office and moving into a cheaper one.

He had an ingenious method for fending off insistent creditors. He “offered them paper,” that is, he offer­ ed to pay them in Colonial dollars.

Being legal tender, the creditors could hardly refuse to accept pay­ ment, but since their value was about two cents on a dollar, they agreed to wait for their money. That was all Morris wanted to hear.

On one occasion Lafayette applied for money but, wrote Morris, “he not speaking my language nor I his, ap­ pointed him to call tomorrow morn­ ing.” Probably when Salomon would be on hand to argue the Marquis out of his demands.

Just as Morris’ original desire not to deal with Salomon may be inferred from the tone of his words in his journal, so may his reliance and faith in the little broker be read into his increasing notations regarding Salomon. Gradually one finds more and more mention of the Front Street financier. No longer is there entry of “the Jew broker,” with its distasteful connotation. Now it becomes “Mr. Salomon, the Broker,” or “Haym Salomon” with an aura of “our Mr. Salomon.”

Day after day now appear the entries 'T sent for Mr. Haym Salo­ mon,” “Haym Salomon called this day to inform me,” “Haym Salomon proposed to me. .. . ” Eventually came the definite proof of the confidence Morris reposed in his broker.

“Haym Salomon came respecting Bill &c,” he inscribes on July 12, 1782. “This Broker has been useful 26

to the public Interest and requests leave to Publish himself as Broker to the Office, to which I have con­ sented as I do not see that any disad­ vantage can possibly arise to the public service but the Reverse and he expects individual Benefits there­ from.”

Thereafter Salomon’s advertise­ ments in the newspapers carried the proud headline: HAYM SALOMON Broker to the Office of Finance, to the Consul-General of France and to the Treasurer of the French Army.

NE of Morris’ pet remedies for stabilizing American money O value was the establishment of a national bank. For a long time Con­ gress resisted the idea, but eventually agreed. In January 1782 the National Bank of North America opened its doors and one of its first sponsors was Haym Salomon, who subscribed not only for himself, but for several of his clients. He became the most active depositor in the Bank.

At last there was a semblance of substance in the banking methods of the Office of Finance. Salomon would sell bills, deposit the funds in his account in the Bank, and the next day draw a draft to the credit of the Office of Finance. Sometimes, it appears, if Morris was in desperate need of funds, Salomon’s draft would go into the government account in anticipation of the sale of the bills.

Such advances led the Committee of the Thirty-sixth Congress to conclude “it is also proven by the original checks and vouchers that Haym Salo­ mon advanced in specie (to the Super­ intendent)— $211,678.”

In some instances Salomon would sign or endorse a note, the proceeds JEWISH LIFE

of which would go to the United States, the obligation later paid by the broker. As late as 1860, a Com­ mittee of the Senate found six prom­ issory notes totaling $92,600.00, made

by Salomon to Michael Hillegas, the Continental Treasurer, the money used by Hillegas for the government.

No evidence was found of any repay­

ment by the government to Salomon.

Salomon adherents will probably insist that this is evidence of their hero’s open-handedness. More practi­ cal researchers will point to the whole picture and declare it to be a method of providing Morris with funds pend­ ing the sale of securities by the broker.

SOURCE OF A LEGEND HIS design of frenzied finance at a par of $110,233.63, but actually T undoubtedly was the genesis of worth $6,238; $8,166 in Virginia the legend of Salomon’s financing of the Revolution.

Sometimes the situation boomeranged, as it did in April of 1783 when an advertisement in the papers prom­ ised reimbursement to all who had purchased certain bills which seemed to have failed of payment. Or when Messrs. Brassine and de Mars de­ faulted on term payments for bills Salomon had sold them. What losses the broker suffered as a result of such unfortunate transactions cannot be calculated.

It is unlikely that Morris, who was a meticulous accountant, would not have reimbursed Salomon for every penny the broker advanced, or would have stood by and permitted his valued associate to suffer financially as a consequence of his manipula­ tions.

What depleted Salomon’s fortune, aside from his giving more attention to government business than his own, were his losses in investments in government securities and his openhandedness in loaning money.

As shown by the inventory of his estate after his death among his assets were found: Fifty-eight Loan Office certificates

July-August, 1965

State certificates worth $2,041; $199,215.45 in Continental dollars, which brought $4,980.32 and about $36,000 worth of Commissioner’s and Treasury certificates of dubious value.

Salomon’s generosity in the person­ al loan business undoubtedly claimed a good portion of his dwindling fortune. It is quite likely that many of those whom Morris had to turn away were directed by that worthy to Salomon’s door to make a personal loan until government funds could be supplied. The list of these borrow­ ers is long and distinguished. Some of them must have repaid their loans; many no doubt did not. The interest the broker charged was always low, and the more important a bor­ rower was to the Cause, the less interest he paid.

Baron von Steuben, General St. Clair, James Wilson (who, regardless of the relationship, insisted on charg­ ing Salomon fifteen half-joes (about $100.00) as a fee in a case, a sum which both Salomon and Morris thought exorbitant), Joseph Reed, Edmund Randolph, Arthur Lee, Thomas Mifflin, and many others are supposed to have been the beneficiar­ ies of his bounty.

27

ERHAPS his most important cli­ were more in demand than ever.

P ent in terms of future greatness With the lend of hostilities, trading was James Madison. The Virginian began to fall into normal channels. was one of the bright spots in a medi­ ocre Congress. Never a wealthy man, he found living in Philadelphia far beyond his means. In some way he found himself at the office on Front Street.

That the future President, like Mor­ ris* was initially not too happy at be­ ing obligated to Salomon, is read into an excerpt from a letter to a friend in Virginia: I cannot in any way make you more sensible to the importance of your kind attention to pecuniary remit­ tances for me than by informing you that I have for some time been a pensioner on the favor of Haym Salomon, a Jew broker.

Again the “Jew broker.*’ And again the patience, the forebearance, and the considerateness of the “Jew broker” dissipated whatever prejudice there had been. A short while later Madison wrote: The kindness of our little friend on Front Street near the Coffee House is a fund that will prevent me from extremities, but I never resort to it without great mortification, as he ob­ stinately rejects all recompense. The price of money is so usurious that he thinks it ought to be extorted from none but those that aim at a profitable speculation. To a necessitous delegate he gratuitously spares a supply out of his private stock.

Since so much of his attention had been given to the government business, Salomon’s own affairs had suffered. Although the War had come to an end the Office of Finance was still deeply involved in the battle to raise funds, and its broker’s services 28

Trading in foreign bills slowed down, and their prices plummetted. A new bank was organized to offer competi­ tion to the one Morris had organized.

ALOMON now found Philadelphia S a difficult place in which to do business. A temporary partnership with Benjamin Nones foundered. He began to make arrangements to move back to New York City. The Front Street establishment was offered for sale. A lengthy advertisement in the newspapers announced the advent of new offices in Wall Street. But Salomon was never able to open the new firm.

Along with his failing business his health had begun to decline. The old cough he had contracted in his prison days had never left him, and now grew steadily ^worse. He seems to have had a progressive case of either asthma or tuberculosis.

The year 1785 was only six days old when he died at his Front Street home.

He left a wife and four children (the youngest, Haym M., born two weeks before his death), facing virtu­ al penury.

The securities in Salomon’s estate had an inventory value of $353,729.33, but when liquidated actually realized only $44,732. Since Salo­ mon’s indebtedness totaled $45,292 the estate was insolvent. All that was left to the widow with which to face the world were the household and personal effects inventoried at $1,426.

Thus ends the story of a humble, modest freedom-lover who sacrificed much, but who made no headlines.

JEWISH LIFE

ECAUSE Salomon was so selfeffacing and because his part in the financial crises of the Revolu­ tion, important as it was, is hidden beneath the commonplace commercial transactions of the business world, little factual material about him or his operations is extant. Even the exact location of his grave is un­ certain.

The unpublished Diary of Robert Morris, detailing his service as Super­ intendent of Finance, gives some idea of Salomon’s value to his country.

Jared Sparks, the great historian of the Revolutionary period, had col­ lected some material for the purpose of writing a biography. But this was in 1841 and most of the informa­ tion was supplied by Haym M. Salo­ mon. Sparks never got around to writing the book and for half a century his papers lay untouched.

Then Professor Herbert B. Adams of Johns Hopkins University began to compile Spark’s lifetime collection preparatory to writing his “Life and Writings of Jared Sparks.” He found that much of the notes on Salomon had been lost or destroyed.

These and a few original letters and records are about all the source material we have. Various writers on American Jewish history have in­ cluded short biographical notes in their books, based on the sparse in­ formation mentioned above.

Which brings us to consider the question of how the legend of Haym Salomon persisted throughout the years, with only those few fragmented and inadequate glimpses to sustain it.

Continued public exposure of Salo­ mon’s endeavors on behalf of the In­ dependence cause seem to have been initiated by the efforts of his youngest

B

July-August, 1965

son, Haym M. Solomon. The younger Salomon never knew his father and, of course, any information that he had of his father’s exploits would have been obtained by hearsay.

Ezekial, the older brother, died in New Orleans while yet a young man.

The two sisters apparently married and faded from the picture, although since they were both children when their father died, anything they might have narrated would hardly be cred­ ible.

Most of the information, therefore, we have about Haym Salomon prior to his coming to Philadelphia in 1778 is unproven and, therefore, unreliable. m . Sa l o m o n appears not to have been so moved by his father’s patriotism as by a desire to have the government repay to his father’s estate a huge sum which he was convinced his father had advanc­ ed to the Cause.

He gathered together a great mass of documents, commercial data and other proof in support of his claim, and spent the remainder of his life in trying to persuade the Government of the validity of his suit.

Committees of no less than seven Congresses considered the claims and aired the details of Haym Salomon’s transactions, but as late as 1864 nothing more concrete was done.

Haym M. Salomon died at the age of 78 without ever having received a penny of his claims. Over the years much of the original documentary material which he had gathered seems to have been lost or destroyed. Some of it was supposed to have been burn­ ed when the British fired the public buildings in the War of 1812.

But the spectre of Salomon’s aid to his country would not fade away aym

H

29

from public view. In 1893 his heirs again raised the claim before the Fifty-second Congress, not seeking compensation, merely official recogni­ tion of their ancestor’s services.

Nothing came of this request.

In 1911 a movement was started to create a Haym Salomon University, somewhat, perhaps, in the fashion that Brandeis University was later founded. President Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Louis Marshall, and others endorsed the plan. The project died, but again the Salomon patriotism was recounted to the nation.

In 1925 a bill was introduced in Congress to appropriate funds to erect a statute of Haym Salomon in Wash­ ington. The bill failed. The next year Senator McKellar moved to make a public document of the investigations of the Thirty-eighth Congress, and of some other Salomon biographical material contributed by Professor Adams.

All this gave little material gratifi­ cation to the Salomon heirs, but it served to revive public interest in the Salomon story.

RE-DISCOVERY OF S A LO M O N

I

generation, having stabilized them­ selves in their adopted country, sought to attack the social citadels hereto­ fore exclusively occupied by their Ger­ man-stock brethren. This, of course, involved many facets besides those of wealth, education; and culture. There was, for instance, the need to empha­ size a sense of “belonging” to Ameri­ ca, a quality inherent in the German Jews after four or five generations on American soil.

To the great delight of the Polish contingent they now discovered Haym Salomon to have been a native of Poland. This was hailed as proof that the Polish Jews were not mere late arrivals, but had actually participated in the birth of the American nation.

They immediately organized a “Fede­ ration of Polish Jews in America” and proceeded to laud the glories of Salomon. In 1925 they organized a campaign to erect a statue of Salo­ mon in New York City and lined up a committee with many prominent names to push the project.

This undertaking immediately

30

JEWISH LIFE

N 1931 an internal contention among American Jewry regarding Salomon arose and further beclouded the validity of his story.

It is one of the phenomena of mass migration that the earlier immigrants or their descendants consider them­ selves superior to later arrivals. This is true even among identical ethnic groups, and it was true of the Jews who had come to America in masses during the nineteenth century to es­ cape the prejudice and oppressions of shifting European political winds.

In the early part of the century large numbers of German Jews mi­ grated to American shores. They were well established and adjusted by the latter part of the century when a wave of Jews from central and eastern Europe began to flow in. The new arrivals, mostly from Poland, Lithu­ ania, and Russia, were looked upon by their German-descended co-religion­ ists with a definite amount of condecension, to say the least.

In the early decades of the twentieth century the latecomers and their first

aroused the antipathy of the American Jewish Historical Society, partially because this organization had been quietly conducting studies of its own on the Salomon story, and partly, it would seem, because the Society at that juncture consisted mainly of descendants of German Jews, who looked with disdain on the Jews of Eastern European background. In 1925 this attitude—which has not altogether disappeared even now— was still rife.

At all events, the program of the Federation continued and applica­ tion was made to the Municipal Arts Commission of New York City to assign a site for the monument in Madison Square. The Commission sought an opinion of an estimate of Haym Salomon’s services to the coun­ try to judge whether he deserved the honor. It was referred to one Worth­ ington C. Ford, of Boston, a leading spirit of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Mr. Ford seems to have made but a cursory investigation, waved aside as useless such valuable evidence as the Morris Diaries, and in terms of apparent bias dismissed all claims of Haym Salomon to fame.

Both factions of American Jewry took offense at Mr. Ford’s attitude and for a time there was an uneasy liaison between them as they sought to discredit what they considered an affront to a Jewish patriot.

T H H E American Jewish Historical Society continued to work un­ obtrusively by intensifying its re­ searches into the historical records.

The Federation, however, decided on the more positive action of having a biographer prepare a full-scale life

July-Augusi, 1965

of Salomon. Whether the Federation actually commissioned the work, as the Historical Society charged, or whether the idea was merely suggested to the author is not clear, but the book was written by Charles Edward Rus­ sell, a well-known historian and jour­ nalist.

Russell had little to go on except the Morris Diaries, the findings of the various Congressional Committees, the results of the American Jewish Historical Society’s researches, some original Salomon letters and docu­ ments, and the fragmented Sparks manuscript. This latter was mainly dependent on information furnished

by Haym M. Salomon, and, as indi­ cated before, was probably based on well-embroidered family recollections.

Drawing on these resources, Rus­ sel wrote the book entitled “Haym Salomon and the Revolution.” He padded his pages with much ex­ traneous narrative to explain the urgency of the times. Too, he tried by suggestion to connect Salomon with many events both here and in Poland, without basis in fact. But when Russell got down to solid ground where there was real evidence of Salomon’s financial transactions for the government, he used the material fairly and warmly. If he fell into any error it is one that is com­ mon with biographers, a tendency to glamorize his hero’s exploits.

All this, however, was too much for the Historical Society. In an open letter addressed to Congressman Em­ manuel Celler, Max Kohler, vice president of the Society, castigated the Federation, accused it of using Haym Salomon’s memory for its own ends in boosting the national involve­ ment of Polish Jews, tore Mr. Rus­ sell’s book to shreds by pointing out

31

alleged inaccuracies and hypotheses, practically accused Haym M. Salomon of attempting to defraud the govern­ ment, and concluded by interpreting the Salomon records in a manner almost consistent with Mr. Ford’s findings.

Thirty-four years later the whole controversy seems frenetic, immature, and unnecessary! Eventually the

furor died down. The Federation seems to have been dissolved, the monument was never erected. Mr. Russell’s book gathers dust on the shelf, the American Jewish Historical Society returned to its usual quiet, conservative practices, and the Salo­ mon legend continued on its way through the years, gathering durability and inaccuracy in its progress.

HIS HISTORIC CO NTRIBUTIO N HORN of all the legend and gla­ even fraud in his conduct of the mour with which Haym M. Salo­ Finance Office. His only pretension S mon and Charles Edward Russell to acclaim as a patriot is his tre­ clothed the story, there is no doubt that Haym Salomon was a confidante, advisor, and broker for Robert Mor­ ris, and that in a hard-pressed market he raised cash at a critical period to keep the young nation afloat. That this was done at great self-sacrifice can be inferred from the gradual failure of his own once-prosperous business, his dwindling assets, and his declining health.

The country recognizes Robert Morris as a true patriot. Yet Morris was always under a cloud of suspi­ cion. In the early days of the War, Willing & Morris, his firm, was ac­ cused of making exorbitant profits out of government contracts. Indeed there were those who hinted the firm had contractual relations with the British Army. Morris, himself, was reluctant to become part of the new government, and in Congress he refused to vote for the Independence resolution, although he later signed the Declaration. He drove Congress into a hard bargain before he accepted the Superintendency, and later he was charged with high-handedness and

32

mendous effort to stabilize and finance the impoverished nation in the latter days of the Revolution. If we regard Morris’ efforts deserving of national remembrance for his contributions to the country’s founding, then we cannot say that Haym Salomon is not worthy of the same consideration.

The French, Dutch and Spanish bills of exchange, the drafts and loan certificates contributed by the States, even the load of pearl ashes that materialized from somewhere, were valueless as instruments of war unless they were transmitted into cold hard specie. In a market where this was a scarce and not readily obtainable commodity Salomon wrought miracles in producing it for the harried Super­ intendent of Finance.

If we were merely to consider Salo­ mon’s loans and gifts, which enabled many prominent figures to remain on the public scene, as testified to by James Madison, that alone would suffice to qualify him to symbolize Jewish patriotism in those trying times.

And if the bare facts have attracted JEWISH LIFE

a patina of romanticism, it but fol­ lows the American pattern. Our he­ roes through the years shed the mundaneness of their daily existence, their human faults and shortcomings, and fit into the mold of idealism that we fashion for them. That is as it should be, for Americans as a peo­ ple, or for any of this country’s com­ ponent ethnic groups.

IXON WECTER says in his “He­ roes in America” : “Hero wor­ ship, satisfying a hunger of the human heart, is always an inspiration to good if its object is good. Scarcely

July-August, 1965

any man is so poor in spirit that he has no heroes, that he finds nothing to stir his blood in the memories of his race and nation, or the acts of his fellows.”

How shall we measure patriotism?

Are we to judge it by the abundance of heroic adventure, the dangers in­ volved, or the amount of blood spil­ led? Or are we to appraise it by the value of the sacrifice to the Cause?

If the latter, then Haym Salomon has every reason to take his place among those whom we revere as Founding Fathers.

33

The Sabbatical Year in Jewish Thought

By ARYEH NEWMAN

n p H E R E is perhaps no more comJL prehensive institution in Judaism, affecting the whole social and econo­ mic structure, than the Sabbatical Year and Jubilee. The Torah calls for no­ thing less than the relinquishing in Eretz Israel, the Holy Land, of all private ownership over the basic means of production—the soil and the complete cessation from the principle labors associated with making a liveli­ hood from that soil, sowing and reap­ ing. The only observance that can in any way be compared with it for com­ prehensiveness is the Sabbath. Indeed no other Mitzvah consecrating the dimension of time in any way—not even Yom Kippur—is described by the simple but eloquent term “a Sab­ bath of the Lord” (Vayikra 25:4). The Seventh Year, the year of the Shemitah, release, is proclaimed in the To­ rah as a Sabbath of the Land and a Sabbath of the Lord. Its only parallel, both philosophically and practically speaking is, indeed, the weekly Sab­ bath. Man and beast are required to rest on that holy day. “The land should by rights also rest on that day, and not produce its fruit on the Sab­ bath, but the world will go its way and nature will take its course. The Almighty therefore decreed the release of the soil once every seven years to

34

make up through them the Sabbath, it had lost during the six years” (Malbim).

Rabbi Jonathan Eyebeschutz, in his Tifereth Yehonathan, gives this idea a numerological basis. The Sab­ batical year constitutes the literal mathematical equivalent of all the ac­ cumulated Sabbaths of the six “week­ day” years preceding. Every year has its seven days off rest ordained by the Torah in addition to the Sabbaths, namely, one day Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, the first and last days of Sukkoth and Pesach and the one day of Shovuoth. In six years we have forty-two such days. Add to them the 312 Sabbaths that occur in the course of six consecutive Hebrew calendar years, making a total of 354— the number of days in a complete lunar year. n p H E truths symbolized in the Sabj L bath are thus transmitted in a more intensive and indelible form by the institution of a Sabbath year culminat­ ing in the most complete Sabbath of all—the Jubilee. The philosophic pa­ rallel is underlined by many of our commentators, most forcefully in the Sefer Ha-Chinuch and by Abravanel.

The former states: JEWISH LIFE

This commandment is designed to im­ press on us the notion of creatio ex nihilo—that ‘in six days the Lord made heaven and earth and on the seventh He rested.’

The latter expands this idea in his commentary to Pirkey Ovoth: Just as the Jewish people give expres­ sion to the idea of Divine Creation in their resting on the Sabbath, so does the Chosen Land bear witness to that same principle by lying fallow in the Seventh Year.

The land is harnessed to testifying to the" same overriding principle of Divine purpose in human existence.

But it is only in relation to the people that such a purpose and meaning could be demonstrated. Ramban (Nachmanides) in his commentary to the Torah adds a mystical, millenial dimension to the significance of Shemitah and Jubilee. The Seventh Year represented the seventh millenium— quoting the dictum given in Mishnah Tomid: “The Psalm the Levites sang on the Seventh day—the Psalm, a song of the Sabbath day in Time to Come, for the day which will be wholly a Sabbath and one of ever­ lasting rest.” The institution thus re­ presented in his eyes a foretaste of the consummate spiritual perfection that was according to G-d’s will the aspiration of mankind, to be realized in the seventh millenium.

Besides the transcendent spiritual implications of the Sabbatical year outlined above, the more practical and immediate educative, social, and even agricultural motivations suggested may seem petty. But they too constitute part of the Divine master plan for bringing that other-worldly perfection to fruition.

First and foremost there is the ex-

July-Augusi, 1965

plicit purpose outlined by the Torah itself “that the needy of thy people may eat.” All classes from servant and stranger to cattle and beast had equal title to the produce. The relin­ quishment of private ownership of the land was paralleled by the writing off of monetary debts— also the in­ terest of the have-nots as can be seen from the Torah’s warning: “Beware lest you harbour the unworthy thought, saying, the seventh year, the year of release, is approaching and thine eye begrudge not thy needy brother and thou refusest to give him. . . . ” (Devorim 15:9) The Torah forbids here not only the letter of the law—to collect a debt that the Seventh Year has abrogated, but what is uni­ que—legislates that its spirit be not violated by any unworthy stratagem.

A similarly significant rider is added to the regulations prescribing a Sab­ bath for the land: “If you shall say: ‘What shall we eat in the seventh year?’ behold, we may not sow, nor gather in our produce?” (Vayikra 25:20) It is the answer to this perfect­ ly natural question that speaks vol­ umes regarding the underlying reli­ gious purpose of the Mitzvah: “Then I will command My blessing upon you in the sixth year and it shall bring forth produce for three years.” The humanistic answer would have been— store up in the previous years and pre­ pare for the seventh year. But the Torah’s answer is that the Almighty will provide for us by sending us a treble harvest precisely in the year when the soil is most exhausted—the sixth year.* The farmer’s inactivity in * Abravanel in his commentary to the Torah ad loc adduces this as an objective to Rambam’s argument that one of the objects of the Shemitah was to increase the fertility of the soil.

35

the Sabbatical year demands absolute faith in the Creator, complete divorce­ ment from man-centerdness to total G-d-centerdness. Man is certainly in­ genious enough to find ways and means of observing a complete cessation from agricultural work during the seventh year and yet being able to subsist by a carefully, scientifically prepared long-term plan. But whatever prepara­ tions may legitimately be made, the cessation from work had to reflect complete faith in G-d’s bounty. As the Children of Israel had waited for the double portion of manna in the wilderness on the Sabbath eve so would their descendants await the blessing of superabundant harvests to tide them over the Sabbatical year.

That this was regarded as an acid test of faith is already evident in both the Torah and Prophets. Thus Jere­ miah foretells (17:4) even as already spelled out in the Torah that “veshomateta—thou shalt cease to retain thy heritage” — measure for measure as the use of the root shomat indicates.

Because you failed to observe the land’s Shemitah release or rest—-you shall be banished (shomateta) from it.

The Prophet continues: “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man” to which Rashi adds: “In his ploughing and his reaping, saying, I shall sow in the Sabbatical year and eat.” Rashi con­ tinues to refer this text to the man of little faith who ignores the Shemitah.

On the next phrase: “and whose heart departeth from the Lord,” he com­ ments: “Who promised him ‘Then I have commanded My blessing upon y o u .. .* So I have heard.” Presumably this was an interpretation emanating from Midrashic sources which Rashi himself was not able to trace.

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III

BSERVANCE of Shemitah is thus an act of faith in G-d, neglect O of it, treason and rebellion against Him. The Torah itself states in justi­ fication of the Shemitah: “For the land is Mine, for you are strangers and settlers with Me.” The penalty for abusing that trust and behaving as lords of the soil, of ignoring its true owner, was naturally expulsion from the land by its Divine landlord. “Then shall the land enjoy its Sabbaths” (Vayikra 26:34) thunders the text in the chapter of Reproof, “all the days of its desolation, shall it rest the time it did not rest in your Sabbaths, when you dwelt therein.” _ In Pirkey Ovoth we find that ne­ glect of the Sabbatical year figures among the capital crimes against the world order such as incest and murder for which the penalty is exile. The inner logic of the connection between exile and violation of the Shemitah is unmistakeably demonstrated in the ancient rabbinic commentary TorathKohanim to Vayikra. It represents the way the sacred text was taught in the house of study in the very earliest times: I told you to sow for six years and let it rest for Me for one year to impress upon you that the land is Mine, But you failed to do so. Get up and be exiled therefrom so that the soil will earn the rest due to it on account of all the Sabbatical years it owes Me. This is again merely an expansion of an idea already found in the Bibli­ cal text itself. Similarly the aspect of the Sabbatical year which has been universally applied—a year devoted to self-improvement and study—can also be traced to the text itself, though it has been developed more explicitly by commentators from the earliest JEWISH LIFE

times. The end of the seventh year was marked by an assembly of all the people—men, women, and children— to a public reading of the Torah “in order that they may learn how they are to fear the Lord your G-d” (Devorim 31:10-13). lbn Ezra comments that the pre­ scribed “learning” was meant “for throughout the year,” the assembly being merely the climax of a year of study. Nearly a thousand years ear­ lier the mystic, recluse, and national hero Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai had observed: If a man continually ploughs at the ploughing season, sows at the sowing season, reaps at the harvest season, threshes during the threshing season, and winnows when the wind blows, what will become of the Torah? (Berochoth 35b) ^ B u t as Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer points out in his Sefer Ha-b’rith, dur­ ing the Shemitah the farmer will no longer be preoccupied with the tilling of the soil and would be free for the space of a year to devote himself to the study of Torah and wisdom.

OTH the individual and society B are educated by the spirit cul­ tivated by the Shemitah: Sefer Ha-chinuch notes the individual character training: One who makes it his business to give away and abandon ownership of all his crops and ancestral inheritance once every seven years and becomes used to doing so throughout his life will never suffer from miserliness or lack of trust in G-d.

K ’li Yokor underlines the socal as­ pect: The Shemitah promotes a sense of fellowship and peace through the sus^-

July-August, 1965

pension of cultivation even by the poorest. No one is allowed to exercise the right of private ownership over any produce of the Seventh Year. This is undoubtedly an overriding factor in promoting peace, since all dissension is provoked by the attitude of ‘Mine is mine,’ each person claiming ‘It’s all mine.’ But in the Seventh Year all are equal and this is the mainspring of peace.

Rambam in his Guide of the Per­ plexed characteristically stresses the immediate human benefits accruing from the Sabbatical Year. He writes: All the commandments we have en­ umerated in the Laws of Shemitah and Jubilee are either inspired by compassion for mankind and the gen­ eral wellbeing of all men . . . or relief to slaves and the poor as in the case of the annulment of debts and release of slaves.

The Sabbatical institution thus bears out the RambamY general contention about the twofold purpose of the To­ rah—to perfect the body and the soul, to ensure our material and spiritual wellbeing. The sanctity of the Seventh Year expressed in the relinquishing of the ownership of soil and the rever­ ence we pay to its fruit provide the spiritual sustenance for nourishing the truths and teachings of Judaism about G-d. The practical relief its measures afford to man, to beast, and to soil is designed to increase the material happiness of humanity, which in Rambam’s view is a precondition for attaining a spiritual equilibrium.

ABBI KOOK, in the introduction to his monumental work on this subject, Shabbath Ha-Oretz (“The Sabbath of the Land”) blends all the

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currents of thought on this theme. The religious and social motives fuse into one mystery and their content distil into a majestic flow of poetry, the song of the people, the people of the Lord in their Land, the Land of the Lord: During this year the character of the nation manifests itself in the fulness of its majesty, in the spirit of its Divine source. This illumination which accom­ panies every seventh year brings in its train ripples of Divine idealism which by their gradual impact on the individual souls earn for themselves a place in the scheme of life. The weekday existence does not allow the national genius and the Divine goodness residing within it, with all its spiritual aspirations to justice and righteousness, tranquility and peace, to be fully realized. The bustle and con­ fusion of everyday affairs stifles the spiri­ tual majesty of the Divine soul residing in the nation, and the brightness of its light is prevented from illuminating the predominant material reality. The quality of life can only be improved through the affording of a breathing space from the bustle of everyday affairs. The individual recovers from the influence of the mun­ dane at frequent intervals, every Sabbath day.

What the Sabbath achieves in its im­ pact on the individual, the Shemitah achieves in its impact on the nation as a whole. The nation as a whole has a special need of periodically expressing the revelation of its own Divine light, at its fullest brightness, not stifled by the cares and toils of everyday life.

The unfeelingness that is bound to ac­ company the routine order of public ex­ istence leads to a blunting of moral standards. The constant conflict between

38

obedience to the ideals of kindness and truth, compassion and mercy, on the one hand, and oppression and compulsion as well as the pressure of the insistence on property rights, on the other, leads to withdrawal of the Divine light latent in the national spirit. The temporary sus­ pension of the normal social routine raises the spiritual and moral life of the nation and crowns it with perfection. A year of solemn rest is essential for both nation and land, a year of peace and quiet without oppressor or tyrant. ‘He shall not oppress his neighbor and his, brother, for a Shemitah has been pro­ claimed to the Lord.’ There is no private property and no punctilious privilege but the peace of the Lord reigns over all in which is the breath of life. ‘It shall be a Sabbath of the land to you for food, for your manservant and maidservant and hired man and the settler who sojourns with you, and for your cattle and the animals in your land, all its produce shall be for food.’

Sanctity shall not be profaned by the exercise of private acquisitiveness over all the year’s produce and the covetousness of wealth aroused by commerce shall be forgotten. ‘ “For food’^-but not for com­ merce,’ commented our Sages; generosity and gratitude for the blessing of G-d over the fruits of the earth. ‘ “For food” —but not for waste.’

Man returns to his pristine nature be­ fore he required drugs to combat disease which is largely the result of upsetting the equilibrium of life and is symptoma­ tic of his divorcement from nature, in its spiritual and material aspects. “ ‘For food” and not for drugs; “for food” and not for making an emetic.’ Shed a spirit of sanctity and nobility over all things!

‘It shall be a solemn Sabbath for the land, a Sabbath of the Lord.’

JEWISH LIFE

Land of A Thousand Hues and Colors

By JACOB BELLER O MANY hues and colors and Ecuador has many resemblances to breath-taking vistas as you find Bolivia. Peru and Colombia have S ill Ecuador are rarely encountered in taken territories from her, and their the other Latin American countries.

Everlastingly snow-capped mountains rising in height to twenty thousand feet above sea level, active volcanoes spitting hot lava, luxuriant landscapes, rich variety of flowers, islands where it is dark and raining for months on end. Ecuador has sixteen such islands, including Galapagos, where Darwin spent five years. At every step your eye meets the most wonderful scenery painted by Nature herself. The great American film companies, when they want to produce a picture of Latin American life in the most beautiful natural surroundings, come to Ecua­ dor.

Ecuador is the smallest country in the South Pacific part of Latin Amer­ ica. It has an area of 171,500 square miles—half the size of a single Amer­ ican state, Texas. The Ecuadorian will tell you his country is much larger and has at least another hundred thousand square miles, but this is denied by Ecuador’s neighbors, who have taken away whole stretches of territory that Ecuador refuses to re­ nounce.

July-August, 1965

appetites are not appeased. Only ten percent of her population of three million are white, about twenty-five percent are Mestizoes (mixed Indianwhite) and the rest are Indians, living in the same primitive conditions as they did centuries back. They speak their own languages, Quechua and Aymara. The capital, Quito, with over 200,000 inhabitants — founded in 1534 by Diego de Almagro, one of Pizarro’s lieutenants—is situated only fifteen miles south from the border of Colombia. It makes a great im­ pression on the visitor with its air of quiet and peace. When you arrive there by plane from Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, it is as if you had dropped into a different world, though the language is the same, and the bronze faces are the same.

HE Ecuadorian, unlike the Vene­ zuelan with his turbulent tempera­ ment, is calm and restrained. He hates getting excited. He tries to keep his composure even when there is a revolution going on in the country.

And revolutions occur quite frequent­ ly. More presidents have been de-

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posed in Ecuador than have retired on completing their terms of office.

Thirteen new constitutions and more than twenty presidents in a very short period.

The Ecuadorian doesn’t take rev­ olutions as seriously as the people in the neighboring countries, where every revolution brings victims and bloodshed. A revolution—as the man in the street knows—is the concern of the army. The beginning and end of every fresh revolution in Ecuador is the same—the tramp of army boots through the main streets, and of win­ dows being smashed in the Presiden­ tial Palace. Sometimes there is a shot

or two fired. Sometimes there is not even that.

The deposed president slips away to Argentina or Chile or some other Latin American country. And his family goes with him. A new man takes his place as president. The fol­ lowing day the press reports the ac­ complished Revolution. The Ecua­ dorian reads about it in his paper at his cafesina in the cafe and doesn’t even think it worth a “Viva el Presidente,” as though it had nothing to do with him. He knows that the new revolution and the new president will do nothing for him.

LAND OF CONTRASTS HE western part of Ecuador, be reached by plane or train. The Sierra, and the eastern part, Por­ flight is a fairly short one. It takes T teño, are so different from each other much longer by train, yet my friends that they might be two different coun­ tries. The inhabitants of the Sierra live in the hills and jungles that cut deep into the Amazon. Though nature here is very beautiful, the life of the people is hard. If you speak to one of them he will tell you that this lovely scenery is only for the tourists.

He himself goes to the town to find a crust of bread to still his hunger.

You will meet him on a cold night carrying a heavy load twice his own size, made fast to his body with a leather strap. The more fortunate Sierra Indian works for a master, who owns a fertile piece of land. In return for his labor he gets a mud hut to live in, a bit of poor land where, after his day’s work for his master, he can grow a little corn and beans for him­ self.

The country’s second town, Guaya­ quil, in the part called Porteño, can 40

in Quito advised me to go by train.

It is one of the loveliest train jour­ ney! in the world. The line cost more than twenty million dollars to build and took forty years and half a dozen revolutions. After each revolution the building of the railway stopped . . . until the new president felt secure in his position.

The railway was built by American engineers, and still uses Americanbuilt Baldwin engines. The line starts at a thousand feet above sea level, and climbs steadily higher till it reaches a height of eleven thousand feet. There are eighty-eight tunnels and bridges on the line, which runs through an area rich in agriculture.

Beginning with Rio Bamba you meet at every station Indians and their wives, wearing red ponchos, offering home-made foodstuffs for sale.

You pass mountains whose tops JEWISH LIFE

are ice-covered. You can hardly be­ lieve it that this is actually at the equator. When the train has climbed up the mountain Nariz del Diablo you are at the highest point of the journey— 11,840 feet above sea level.

Here many passengers get attacks of mountain sicknesss.

UAYAQUIL is a different world.

This town, which about fifty years ago was infested with malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical dis­ eases, is entirely free from them now, thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation.

The climate here is subtropical, and stifling all the year round, even in the rainy season. The heat chokes you; it is difficult to breathe. The only means of relief is to get a boat and go out to catch the cool breeze. You find more people out in boats than in the streets of Guayaquil.

Many of the boats belong to Indians who live in the forests by the river Guayas and the Gulf of Guayaquil, which runs into the Pacific. Their huts are made of plaited palm leaves, bam­ boo, and mud that dries quickly in the tropical sun. They live more on the water than in their huts. They bring their goods into the town. The most important of these goods is balsa wood, which grows only in Ecuador.

Very soft and very light—much lighter than cork—balsa wood is es­ pecially valuable for its heat- and sound-insulating properties. The balsa trees are tall, like poplars, but instead of taking years to grow, as do poplars, the balsa tree reaches a height of twenty feet in months. When the tree is felled it is so light that one man can carry it easily. Balsa wood is exported to the United States, where it is in great demand by American airplane

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July-August, 1965

makers. The Indian boats here are made of balsa wood.

The Indians also bring to town the skins of wild beasts they catch in the jungle, which sell very cheaply.

You can buy a jaguar or leopard skin for a song. The “panama” hats worn in the United States and Europe are mostly made in Ecuador. The center of the panama hat manufacture is the town of Cuenca, where they are plaited, washed, and pressed. So day after day you see long lines of boats on the water laden with all sorts of goods, trading busily. The sun is blazing hot and the air is terribly humid.

But the people take life easily. I once saw a fire in Guayaquil. Together with the fire brigade came a band, and while the firemen were fighting the flames the band played to give them courage. When the fire was put out the band played the national anthem, and the crowd joined in, singing.

A WAY from the big towns the peoA pie shuffle lazily through the streets, in primitive dress, with purple ponchos and strange hats—the women wearing small cloth hats. The man goes first and the woman follows.

She watches his every move with dog-like submissiveness. And she is happy when he doesn’t suddenly ex­ plode at her angrily. Behind them comes a string of a dozen or more children, with a little girl of twelve carrying her two baby brothers or sisters wrapped in a shawl. I have seen a girl of no more than eight bent double under the weight of one of her small brothers on her back, her thin, muddy, bare legs unable to sup­ port the weight, so that she had to

41

keep stopping every now and then to steady herself.

You see these scenes there day after day. When there is a fair or a market day Indians come from various tribes, all dressed in different colors.

The women’s hats are all of different kinds. Some wear red ponchos, others brown or some other color. Some wear long, flowing blue ponchos and hats like great big bonnets, and long coats reaching right down covering

their bare, unwashed feet. A rainbow of colors. You see a whole family driving a skinny cow to the fair, miles away, to sell, or an Indian couple, with a pair of fowls to sell. They drink chicha with soda water. They buy a little kerosene, a comb, a needle, sometimes too a pair of scissors— something quite out of the usual, a luxury for the Indians. Then they go to church, and offer their last cent there.

BETWEEN FIESTAS A N D SIESTAS CUADOR’S intellectuals believe them is chosen for the great honor that three things are responsible of being host and paying for the E for the dire poverty of the Indians liv­ Fiesta. Rich or poor, he never refuses, ing in thousands in the remote parts even if he has to borrow and mortgage of South America— drink, the Church, himself for years. After the Fiesta and the influence of the old Spanish they lie around in a drunken stupor power, which has left its mark still. for days. Life passes between fiestas Their drink is chicha, a spirit which and siestas, without any time left to they make at home of corn. It’s think. poisonous stuff. And the Church and There is too a savage Indian tribe, the priests—priests at every turn. which often attacks the officials and Wherever you go in the South Ameri­ workers of the Shell Oil Company. can countries you run into priests, Some time ago they cut off the young and old and striplings in priests’ employees of the Shell Oil concession, robes. The Indians are devout Cath­ and for three days bombarded them olics. with poisoned arrows and blocks of I once saw a procession of hundreds a particularly hard wood found in of Indians taking gifts to the priest. those parts which is heavier than In front went the band, with their stones and can kill a man. Three primitive instruments—barefoot Indi­ employees were killed before air­ ans playing Indian tunes, nostalgic planes drove them off. and sad. Behind came hundreds of Indians with their children, ragged H TH E Indian tribes who live there and barefoot, and they were carrying A are all warlike and fight among a huge wooden cross hung all over themselves. They are different from with fowls, turkeys, ducks, rabbits, each other not only in dress but also in piglets. They were taking it all as looks. Some are bronze in color, others a gift to the priest. They have a party are black, with long hair right down when thev get there. They drink chica over their ears. They speak the native in gallons. Such a Fiesta sometimes Indian tongue Quechua. Those living lasts a whole week—seven or eight full in the area of the Shell Oil Company days. Food and drink galore. One of concession are concentrated mainly in

42

JEWISH LIFE

what is called Santo Domingo de los Colorados. They have a reddish skin and they dress differently from the other tribes. The most savage of the tribes, the Jivaro, lives there. They inhabit the long stretch that runs right up to the Amazon. It is they who sell zanzas, which are human heads shrunk to the size of a small orange. The heads are those of their enemies cut off in battle.

Tourists like to take zanzas back home with them to show as evidence of their visit to Ecuador. So the head-hunters do a brisk trade. The price of such a shrunken head is between a hundred and two hundred dollars. The Ecuador Government passed a law directed against this trade in zanzas. The result was to send up the price. The black market was suddenly flooded with zanzas. An investigation ordered by the Govern­ ment found that they were not human heads but the heads of donkeys doc­ tored to deceive buyers into thinking them human. Then there was another flood of zanzas, and this time the investigation showed that they were human heads, but not Indian. The heads had been taken from vagrants

who had died on the road. The bodies had been stolen from the mortuaries.

The black market dealers also went to relatives of people who had died and persuaded them that as the soul goes to heaven anyway the body doesn’t matter, so they might as well make a little money by selling the heads. Some people who hadn’t enough money to pay for the burial were glad to dispose of the body and get some money for it as well.

I visited another part of Ecuador in which is located the town called Banios (Baths), so called because of the numerous mineral springs gush­ ing out of the ground. There are sev­ eral Indian tribes living in this region.

I was very much interested in the way their young men and girls match. The girls go to the well carrying earthen­ ware pitchers on their heads, as in Biblical days. The young men stand a little way off, watching. If one of them is attracted by a girl he drops a stone into her pitcher of water. If she doesn’t throw the stone out it means she likes him. He then accom­ panies her home, where her mother presents him with four eggs, and he stays there for eight days. The mar­ riage then takes place.

JEW ISH SETTLEMENT HE Jewish settlement in Ecuador is one of the youngest in the South American continent. Until 1903 no non-Catholics were allowed to live there—not even Christian Protes­ tants. But a year later there was already a small group of Sephardic Jews from Arab countries living in Ecuador. It is nevertheless possible to say with certainty that there were Jews in Ecuador, as there were in the other Latin American countries,

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July-August, 1965

much earlier than that. There are still traces of that older Jewish past. For instance, the name of the man who founded the Opera House in Guaya­ quil was Isaac Abouab, which was the name of one of the first rabbis on the American continent, Isaac Abouab da Fonseca, a son of Marranos, who came to Brazil in the sixteenth century as Rabbi in Pernambuco.

The official date for the beginning of Jewish immigration to Ecuador

43

can be reckoned as 1910, when a Jewish engineer from Austria named Robert Levi settled in Guayaquil.

He soon assimilated and took a Chris­ tian name, Castillejo. His son returned to Judaism and was for a time presi­ dent of the Jewish community there.

Jewish immigrants from neighboring countries started coming to Ecuador in the early 1930’s. But when the Government prohibited peddling they lost their means of livelihood and returned to the neighboring coun­ tries from which they had come.

Around 1936, when the Hitler re­ gime was driving Jews in Germany to consider possible places of massimmigration, Ecuador was one of the countries suggested. Samuel Zhitlovsky, brother of Dr. Chaim Zhit­ lovsky, was sent there by a committee in New York and Paris to conclude an agreement with the Government of Ecuador for a large-scale Jewish co­ lonization project covering an area of 500,000 hectares. Hicem, the Jewish emigration association, sent a dele­ gation led by Benjamin Medjichovsky, for many years an administrator of the Jewish Colonization Association (lea) and an expert in colonization matters.

This is how he reported on the plan in the “Shriften” of the Argentine Yivo (Yiddish Scientific Institute): I met there Samuel Zhitlovsky and Boni, who had already accepted the Government’s proposal, and had even settled a few families there. I stayed about six weeks in Ecuador to make a thorough investigation of the plan.

I found that these few families had not been settled on the land which had been offered. I was able to see only part of this offered land with my own eyes. It was impossible to get to it. There were no roads and no communication and no means of

44

transport. Some places could be reached only with mules.

He came to the conclusion in his report that colonization there would be dangerous even for people who had escaped from Nazi hell. They would soon succumb to disease and to wild beasts and poisonous snakes. He re­ commended that Hicem should with­ draw from the whole project. He claimed that the reports by Zhitlovsky and Boni were in many respects not in accordance with the facts. He was asked to come to Paris to present his report to the Committee there, with the result that the colonization plan was abandoned and delegates were recalled.

HIS did not prevent a Jewish organization which is engaged in T search for territories for Jews from proclaiming Ecuador a suitable place for Jewish colonization. Some U.S. war veterans who had been settled there found the conditions so hopeless that they begged the United States consul to remove them. The American press carried stories about this “coloni­ zation scandal.”

As Hitlerism strengthened its hold in central and then in eastern Europe, five thousand Jews from Germany and elsewhere found refuge in Ecu­ ador. They were mostly businessmen and professionals. The Joint Distribu­ tion Committee and the Hicem tried to find opportunities for them on the land, by starting poultry farms. Sixty such farms were established, but owing to climatic and other difficulties they were a complete failure. Then they opened small factories in the towns. In a country like Ecuador where less than ten percent of the population of three million are con­ sumers, it was difficult to make the JEWISH LIFE

factories pay their way. But Jewish initiative overcame the difficulties. At first the small factories were only workshops in the homes of the manu­ facturers. They experimented and found that balsa wood makes excel­ lent furniture. Then they started pro­ ducing iron and steel furniture, which was previously unknown there.

Next came factories for textiles, clothing, knitted goods, underwear.

And shoe factories. Even a matzoth factory. Ecuadorians started eating matzoth. Jewish women discovered that the belts the Indians weave can be used as a fabric for handbags, lamp-shades, women’s hats. A shop was opened in Quito, employing a dozen Ecuadorians. Now these articles are being copied all over Latin Ameri­ ca. Jewish refugees started laundries and dry-cleaning establishments. Next came shops selling ready-made clothing. Doctors secured posts in government hospitals. Women who knew languages got employment with firms engaged in foreign trade. Former hotel owners and managers took charge of the leading hotels. The Windsor, Ambassador, and Savoy Hotels were transformed. They are to­ day the equal of the best hotels in Europe, and are frequented by thè leading families.

The Syrians and Cubans who had run the hotel trade before felt the pinch of competition and started an

anti-Jewish campaign. A shoe manu­ facturer told me he had applied for a permit to open his shoe factory and the Minister of Economic Affairs had turned down the application. He had managed to get an interview with him, and he suggested to the Minister that in a country where eighty percent of the population goes barefoot it seemed unreasonable to refuse a permit for producing shoes.

He got his permit.

But the anti-Jewish agitation w ork^ ed, as it did in the other Latin American countries. Prompted by envy of the successful whites and egged on by the Germans who live in Ecuador in large numbers, a feeling grew up that moved the Government in 1938 to order the expulsion of the small Jewish community in Ecuador.

The order was withdrawn after inter­ vention by the World Jewish Congress.

The following year the Chamber of Commerce launched a press campaign against the Jewish immigrants, on the charge that they were not work­ ing in agriculture, though they had been admitted on condition that they would. In March 1952, a government order was issued requiring all aliens to produce evidence that they were working in the occupation entered in their papers when they were admitt­ ed as immigrants. On intervention by the World Jewish Congress this order was shelved.

C O M M U N IT Y O R G A N IZ A T IO N EWISH LIFE in Ecuador centers round the organized Jewish Com­ munity, the Beneficencia Israelita, which embraces the entire Jewish population. The German Jews are in the majority. Next come the East

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July-August, 1965

European Jews, and then the Seph­ ardim. The Community building is in the center of Quito. When you enter it you get the impression that you might be in a Viennese or a Berlin cafe—tables with clean white

45

cloths, newspapers on holders on the members are encouraged to spend at walls—among them“ the New York least one year in Israel and many do Aufbrau” and the Community’s own so. paper, which bears the name “Bene­ ficencia” and reports local Jewish life.

You read there about the local theatre HE Jewish immigrants brought group, you find an advertisement for much experience from Europe a partner in a good-going factory, an in the field of social and intellectual advertisement of a private “dinner activities, and this has won them the table,” the announcement of the respect of their neighbors, and especi­ engagement of Miss So and So, and ally of the intellectuals, counteract­ an advertisement of a Chanukah Ball. ing to some extent the antisemitic The Beneficencia is a well-organiz­ propaganda of the Germans in the ed body, including various organiza­ country. tions-—the Zionist Federation, Wizo, One of the things the Jews did B’nai B’rith, the Jewish Loan and was to organize Bible Exhibitions in Savings Bank. The synagogue is in Quito and Guayaquil. The idea was the building, and the mikvah. There put forward by Dr. Karger, who had is a hall for concerts and plays. And been a member of the Executive of the the classrooms of the Jewish school Jewish Community of Berlin. He are there. Till recently children were submitted his plan to the archbishop, flown in to Quito from Guayaquil by and got the Church’s approval. The plane. But now Guayaquil has its own exhibits were arranged to trace Bible Jewish school, with a teacher from history from the earliest periods to the Israel. days of the later Prophets. There was Guayaquil has its own community also a Torah Scroll, with its mantle, house, a synagogue and a Jewish a curtain for the Ark of the Law, club. There are several Jewish families reproductions of the Dead Sea Scrolls, too in the remoter small towns like a bridal canopy, a table laid for the Pesach Seder, a Kiddush cup, a Bambo, Cuenca and Banios.

Chanukah lamp, Tallith and Tephilin.

As in all South American commu­ More than 30,000 visitors came to the nities, there are a few families which are scrupulous in religious observance, Exhibition in Quito. In Guayaquil the rest being more lax. Both syna­ the Bible Exhibition was held in the gogues are orthodox. In Quito ap­ Cathedral by permission of the arch­ bishop. proximately fifty to sixty people reg­ ularly attend Shabboth services, more UT the Jewish population of attending on Yomim To vim and of Ecuador is diminishing in num­ course on the High Holy Days the synagogues are filled. Every Jewish bers, both in Quito and in Guayaquil. boy has B’rith Milah even though Jews have gone and are going to now the mohel must be flown in from Israel, or to the United States, or to one of the other Latin American neighboring Colombia. countries where there are more Jews For the young people there is a and more active Jewish life.

Zionist youth movement, nonreligious, There is no question in Ecuador with a madrich from Israel, The of assimilation in the sense of merging

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46

JEWISH LIFE

and being lost in the general popula­ tion, as happened centuries ago with the first Jewish immigrants, the Mar­ ranos, who were watched and spied on by the Inquisition. Being absorbed and lost in the general population was a means of escaping persecu­ tion. The second Jewish immigra­ tion to those parts, in the 19th century, was also, with exceptions like Guate­ mala and San Salvador, assimilated and absorbed. The immigrants were mostly German Jews, who had been assimilationists already in Germany.

They had no great Jewish baggage with them when they came to South America, to help them to resist as­ similation to their new surroundings.

It is quite different now, even with the German Jews, who are the great

majority of the Jewish immigrants in Ecuador. Too many things have hap­ pened in the interval. Hitlerism did not spare the assimilated Jews, not even those who had apostacized— not even their children and grand­ children who were born Christians.

The creation of the State of Israel also played its part. There is too the exclusiveness of the upper strata of society in these strictly Catholic coun­ tries, to which no Jew would be admitted unless he underwent a pub­ lic conversion, to which few Jews will yield. And the lower classes are terribly poor, illiterate, backward, and offer no inducement for assimila­ tion with them. Which leaves two alternatives — organizing a Jewish cultural life on the spot, or emigra­ tion.

"JU D IO S " A N D "ISRAELIS" HAVE often encountered in these countries a dislike of the Jews who live there, coupled in contrast with a feeling of friendship for the State of Israel. I found this in Ecuador and also in Bolivia; in both countries the mass of the people are quite unable to understand what are “Judios” and what are “Israelis.” The State of Israel has given both coun­ tries technical aid in the develop­ ment of a number of projects in fields in which Israel has special experience.

People don’t really know why they cried one day Viva los Israelis! and the next day Matar los Judios! (Kill the Jews!).

It so happens that Ecuador has from the beginning been a good friend of Israel. Its representative at the United Nations, Antonia Quedo, pro-

1

July-Augusf, 1965

posed there in 1946 that the Jewish Agency should be recognized as the Jewish Government-in-Exile. And during the Hitler regime it was the President of Ecuador, Velasco Ibarro, who called on the Latin American countries to declare war against Germany because of what it was doing to the Jews. In his book “The Rights of Nations” he con­ demned Britain for not carrying out the Mandate to establish the Jewish National Home in Palestine.

There are certainly people in Ecuador of liberal views and with a good understanding of world affairs who know that Judios are of the same people of which the State of Israel is composed, and they take a positive attitude to both. But there are also others who know it too,

47

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JEWISH LIFE

but they are friendly to the State of Israel and unfriendly, even hostile, to the Jews in their own country. I once raised this question with a high official in the Department of Immigra­

tion and he said he was all in favor of the Jewish State in Israel, but why when there is this State of Israel do Jews stay in Ecuador? Why don’t they go and live in Israel?

T TPHILL, in the center of the capital, Quito, stands the Palacio Nacional, the Presidential Palace, where the President of the Republic receives his visitors. The building, a mixture of old Colonial style and mod­ ern architecture, stands out among the other buildings, which are all low, because of the frequent earthquakes.

There is a bronze plaque on the front of the Palace recording that Simon Bolivar came to this place for the first time on June 16th, 1822. The list of names on the plaque of those who gave their lives for the liberation of the country, its founders, includes several names that sound Jewish. The view over this mountainous city seen from the steps of the Presidential Palace is breath­ taking. The city lies three thousand meters above sea level. This view confronted me one morning when, on a visit to Ecuador three years ago, I arrived at the Palace for an inter­ view with the then President of Ecuador, Velasco Ibarra.

Ten o’clock in the morning, the sun hangs clear over Quito, but it gives no warmth. Though this is sum­ mer in Ecuador you must wear a coat. It is the hour for my appoint­ ment with the President. I had asked him to receive me as a representa­ tive of the Jewish press, of a Yiddish paper. And the letter from the Presi­ dent’s secretary fixing the appoint­ ment said specifically that the inter-

view was for the Jewish press, for a Yiddish paper.

There are several people on the long balcony of the Palace, among them members of the Government and high ranking officers, waiting their turn to see the President. But this is the time for my appointment. The President’s secretary is on the balcony looking out for me. He takes me into a large hall, handsomely furnished, with luxurious carpets and oil paint­ ings on the walls. Here too there are people waiting for an audience with the President—two priests, a peasant woman with a torn dress, a workman who from his appearance works on a hacienda in the country, two young nuns. A young adjutant calls my name, and I find myself in the President’s study. The President receives me with a friendly smile and a warm handshake, and waves me to a seat. He stands. My first impression of the President is that he might easily be a university profes­ sor. He is no formal, aloof dignitary, like the general run of South Amer­ ican statesmen.

“Mr. President,” I say, “you are, I think, aware that I am the corres­ pondent of a Jewish paper, a Yiddish paper.”

“Yes, I know,” he answers with a smile. “You may tell the Jews and the whole world through your paper that I am a sincere Triend of the Jews, buen amigo del pueblo Israel.

July-August, 1965

49

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By Dr, Moses Tendler CAN WE NEGLECT THE TALMUD TORAH?

By Zalman Diskind W HA T DOES JEWISH YOUTH REALLY WANT?

By Rabbi Pinchas Stolper THE DIVORCE PROBLEM

By Rabbi Melech Schachter THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE: ANOTHER LOOK

By Rabbi Norman Lamm THE PRESIDENT'S EDUCATION BILL: A JEWISH APPRAISAL

By Dr. Marvin Schick JUDAISM AND FREE ENQUIRY

By Rabbi Nachum L. Rabinovitch THE PLIGHT OF SOVIET JEWRY— H O W SHALL WE RESPOND?

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JEWISH LIFE

My teacher in France, where I studied law, was that great Frenchman and noble Jew, Victor Basch. I know the Jewish people not only from the Bible. In my book on the rights of nations I gave a lot of space to the Jewish question. I am a friend of all who are oppressed, and who today is more oppressed than the Jews?”

I wrote this down in my notebook.

The President stood silently watching me write.

“You are writing Hebrew?” he asked me.

“No, Yiddish.”

“Isn’t it the same?”

So I had to explain briefly to the President of Ecuador, who listened attentively, the difference between Hebrew and Yiddish. Then I asked the President what he thought of the attitude of the British Government when it had refused to allow Jews to immigrate to Palestine.

“Palestine was proclaimed the Jewish National Home,” the President answered, “and Jews have every right to go to live there. That is why I instructed my representative at the San Francisco Conference to vote for Palestine as a Jewish State. I believe the whole democratic world owes a debt to the Jews. Ecuador is doing her bit by admitting Jewish im­ migrants.”

“Does that mean,” I asked, “that your country is open for Jewish im­ migration?”

“Yes,” he said. “Ecuador has no restrictions against Jewish immigra­ tion. Our Consulates everywhere

July-August, 1965

abroad have instructions to issue visas to Jewish immigrants who wish to settle in Ecuador. It is, of course, im­ portant that Jewish immigrants to Ecuador should bring some money with them, not to become a burden on our State in the early days. It is also desirable that the immigrants who come here should be able to adapt themselves to agriculture. Our country is large and has possibilities.”

“That means,” I suggested, “that you want an immigration of specially selected people, who are fitted for agriculture.”

“Ecuador,” he took me up im­ mediately, “has also good opportun­ ities for people who can develop new industries here. I know of the con­ tribution which Jewish immigrants have made in recent years to the small industry of our country, and I value their services.”

Then the President spoke of the great services of the Jews to world civilization, culture, and progress. He spoke particularly of the achievements of German Jews in science, art, litera­ ture, industry, and commerce. The Jews gave so much to Germany, he said, and Germany treated them abominably.

“At the cost of six million Jewish lives,” I added.

The President pressed his bell and told the secretary who came in to get me a copy of his book. He auto­ graphed it and gave it to me with a smile and a handshake, and my inter­ view with Velasco Ibarra, the Pre­ sident of Ecuador, was at an end.

51

SO STRANGE MY PATH

By ABRAHAM CARMEL The fascinating story of a most unusual conversion.

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52

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B ooh R eview s Document of German Jewish Orthodoxy

By ERIC OFFENBACHER

prelude to all physical annihilation. Lest we forget! And forget, indeed, we do.. . .

It is to the credit of Alexander Carle­ bach (now Rabbi of Belfast and North­ ern Ireland), a scion of a distinguished family of German orthodox rabbis, to HIS well-written work, recounting the have saved from oblivion that part of many-centuries-long history of a recent Jewish history which concerns one noted German Jewish kehillah, gives es­ of Germany’s foremost and respected pecially evocative and illuminating por­ communities. Going beyond the narrow trayal of its later phases, of its life—and confines of a local historical account, he its death. Of this last we read: succeeds in relating the story of Cologne Jewry with a minimum of nostalgia, lift­ By and large, the Christian popula­ ing thdpevents out of their parochial tion stood by and watched. There partisanship. He places them instead were, no doubt, many acts of indivi­ within the wider perspective of commu­ dual kindness, expressions of disgust nal and political occurrences throughout and sympathy, as long as no one was Germany and abroad. A case in point is in sight. But no finger was raised, no voice of protest was heard either in the extensive chapter entitled “War In­ the law courts or in the universities terlude 1914-1918,” which deals entirely or anywhere else when all this lega­ with the activities of the “Koelner Rav,” lised crime was committed against Rabbi Emanuel Carlebach (the author’s men who but yesterday were respected father), in Poland while on a leave of absence from his congregation. colleagues or even friends.

The Germans, having conquered Thus the author’s accusing voice strikes Poland during the First World War, at the spiritual core of the death blow needed outstanding Jewish leaders as dealt all Jewish life in Germany—col­ advisers to bring the fruits of Western lective and individual—with the advent civilization and “enlightenment” to a Jew­ of the Nazi regime. It was to be but the ish citizenry nurtured on and influenced

by Chasidic traditions. Dr. Carlebach Dr. Eric Offenbacher, who is well-known to our observes: readers for his reviews of Jewish music rec­ ords, was educated in his native Germany and With the memory of Hitler’s Germany in this country. A dentist by profession, Dr. still fresh in our minds, it is perhaps Offenbacher is active in orthodox Jewish causes.

ADASS YESHURUN OF COLOGNE. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF A KEHILLA, by Alexander Carlebach.

William Mullan & Son, Ltd., Belfast, 1964,, 180 pp.

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July-August, 1965

53

The Holocaust Kingdom A MEMOIR

By Alexander Donat 361 pp. — $5.95

T h is unique m em oir of a Polish-Jewish fam ily which survived the Warsaw G hetto and H itler's death camps reaches beyond the story of a man to tell the saga of a doomed people.

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I predict that in 1948 . . . doctoral candidates will be using The Holocaust Kingdom as basic source material for dissertations on the Nazi era.”—Louis L. S n y d e r , Saturday Review. “. . . remarkable memoir, meticulously correct, scrupulously accurate . . . It is a powerful ‘J’accuse’ . . . Out of “The Holocaust Kingdom” there echoes a cry of agony which rings as a warning against the ‘New Germany’.”—D r . H ille l S e id m a n , Jewish Life.

“The book tells us in a chilling way precisely how the virus of anti-Semitism was spread (most effectively perhaps in the name of Jesus, at the very heart of perverted prayer and worship). . . . Here the Warsaw ghetto and concentration camp take on a terrible personal meaning for us. In a highly personal way we care about what happens to this particular individual, his wife and his s on . . . against the background of apocalyptic events. . . . Incredible dignity and almost impenetrable courage mark the Jewish martyrs whom we read about in these pagesá^MALCOLM B o yd , The Christian Century.

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JEWISH LIFE

difficult to visualise the basically to observe how the development of strict­ humane and sympathetic spirit in ly orthodox Kehilloth during the middle which the Germans approached the and end of the last century follows a Jewish problem in Poland . . . Voices familiar pattern. The general Jewish had not been lacking which advised community, having introduced a number of “reforms,” finds that some of its dis­ the Germans to liquidate Chasidism satisfied and traditionally minded mem­ as a primitive and obscurantist way bers form their own separatist Minyon of life and to bring to Polish Jewry out of which grows a new and indepen­ the good tidings of European enlight­ dent orthodox congregation. Frankfurt, enment in its German form.. . . They Berlin, and other German cities having were, therefore, highly appreciative of set the example, Cologne, helped by the the help and advice they received in establishment of an important Jewish this task from their German-Jewish Teachers Seminary, followed suit. How­ advisors who alone were able to act ever, the famous “Austritt” question— the secession from the Reform-dominated as interpreters for the religious aspira­ general Jewish community (which in tions of Chasidic Jewry.

Cologne had, meanwhile, organized its The two men designated to fulfill this own orthodox components—satisfying diplomatic task were two rabbis, Ema­ their religious requirements) did not be­ nuel Carlebach of Cologne and Dr. Pin- come acute until some time later. When chas Kohn of Ansbach. Their labors the problem does arise in Adass Yeshuover a three-years period seem to have run, it is significant how the author borne fruit. Contrary to the popular adage describes his father’s hesitancy to re­ regarding East and West, the twain ap­ commend the “Austritt.” With the dis­ parently in this instance did meet, and pute between Rabbi S. R. Hirsch of the author concludes (with tongue in Frankfurt and S. B. Bamberger of cheek): “In the end Carlebach and Wuerzburg still fresh in everyone’s mind, Kohn carried with them the large majori­ the Rav of Cologne appears to have ty of the rabbinate in their communal opted for Bamberger—although strangely enough, Emanuel Carlebach had been a and educational work.” student of Salomon Breuer (S. R. HE history of the Cologne Jewish Hirsch’s son-in-law) at the latter’s yeshicommunity dates back to Roman vah in Frankfurt. For American Jews times. In 321, the Roman emperor Con­ it is difficult to fathom the Halachic and stantine cancelled the Jewish exemption communal complexities with which this from membership in the City Council notorious subject matter is interwoven— which was responsible for taxation. This in view of the non-existence of organized is the earliest documentary evidence for Kehillah entities in the United States. the existence of an organized Jewish com­ In Germany, from the standpoint of the munity in Germany. Carlebach traces individual, many strictly orthodox mem­ historical data through the period when bers—uncompromising as shomrey mitzno Jews were allowed to live in Cologne voth-—nevertheless conscientuously ob­ (1424-1798) up to modern times and the jected to a separation from a unifying eventual organization of the Adass Ye- community of Jews, with achduth as shurun. In this context it is interesting their main reasoning. This reviewer re-

®

July-August, 1965

55

members, for example, that even among the leading officers of the “Israelitische Religionsgesellschaft” in Frankfurt, up to the end, there were those who main­ tained dual membership and never se­ ceded from the “Grossgemeinde.” Alex­ ander Carlebach puts it this way: “When S. R. Hirsch, in 1876, declared secession a religious duty and remaining in the main community an lssur, thus investing his decision with all the rabbinic authori­ ty at his disposal, less than one-fifth of his congregation bowed to his dictum.”

In the case of the Adass Yeshurun, the decision to secede was taken unanimously at a general meeting on June 17, 1906.

Jewish brethren who had previously emigrated To the United States were called upon fifteen years later to come to the rescue of the Nazi-persecuted Western Jews with affidavits and visas in order to bring them to the land of safety. Mida k’neged mida?)

Another important aspect of the book deals with the Jewish organizational af­ filiations of the Jews of Germany. While in Cologne—as in the other “Austritts” congregations throughout the land—the right-wing orientation brought with it almost exclusive membership in Agudath Israel as well as the Ezra Youth group and the V. J. A. orthodox Jewish Stu­ dents Society, certain leanings towards the religious wing of Zionism became generally apparent. This reviewer is a lit­ tle hard put to judge the objectivity of the author in evaluating the tremendous role the Agudah did play in Germany in the years following World War I:

A MONG other illuminating highlights of this fascinating little volume is a description of the appearance of the “Ostjuden” in Germany. In the aftermath of World War I and the ravages it left in Russia and Poland, eastern European Jews flocked in great numbers To the image of a modern, secular into the countries of the West. The in­ nation propagated by Zionism, the transigent treatment accorded the unfor­ Agudah opposed itself as the Torahtunate refugees by the (then) arrogant nation in being. At the same time it and well-situated German Jews will be proclaimed as its programme ‘the recorded with everlasting shame in the solution of all problems of the Jew­ annals of the history of that time. The ish people in the spirit of the Torah.’ author depicts the situation characteris­ Whatever truth or otherwise there was tically: in the Agudist ideology—and some Not only were the new arrivals dif­ truth there certainly was—the Agudah ferent and less accomplished and fasti­ largely failed in its declared policy dious in their social habits and busi­ of rallying all orthodox Jews. It cer­ ness methods, not to mention the lan­ tainly did not solve ‘all Jewish prob­ guage difficulty, but the German or­ lems’ in any spirit whatever. It did thodox Jew often disliked even their succeed in creating one more religi­ religious habits, their lack of order, ous political party which, wherever decorum, and punctuality in commu­ and whenever active, made its con­ nal worship, their different pronun­ tribution towards the defence of ciation of Hebrew, and their lack of Jewish values and institutions. attention to some religious niceties which he considered particularly im­ There follows an enumeration of the portant.

Beth Jacob movement, Keren Hatorah, (Ironically, many “despised” Eastern Keren Hayishuv, etc. He then continues:

56

JEWISH LIFE

In any event, the Agudah’s true aim and significance lay in its ideological protest against Zionism as a secular nationalist and largely Socialist-Marxist movement. Being therefore essen­ tially defensive and reactionary, it could never hope to compete effective­ ly with the dynamic and revolutionary appeal of Zionism for a Jewish na­ tional renaissance. The surest hope for Torah and a truly Jewish spiritual renaissance, the need for which Agudism never recognised, lay with religous Zionism combining the best of both worlds, the old and the new.

Without becoming polemic (and the author’s excursions into troubled politi­ cal waters makes it almost compulsive), one may question the validity of (at least) this last statement, especially in view of religious Zionism’s meager in­ fluence in today’s “spiritual renaissance” in Israel (the “surest hope for Torah?”).

One must also refute the allegation that Agudism was never more than “defen­ sive and reactionary” and that its “true aim” lay in its protests against Zionism.

The historical facts of Agudah’s total commitment to and rescue of Torahtrue Jewry and its Yeshivoth (in Eastern Europe, for example, as described in this very volume), and the recognition of its work by the G’doley Hatorah who gov­ ern its organizational destinies the world over, speak for themselves.

HE most pungent part of the nar­ rative is reached when the author approaches the events leading up to the Nazi regime. One amazing revelation, previously unknown to this reviewer as it must be to most people, concerns a memorandum submitted to Hitler as the new Chancellor of the Third Reich in October, 1933 by the two leading or­ thodox rabbinic and congregational bo-

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July-August, 1965

dies, the “Freie Vereiningung” and the “Halberstaedter Verband.” In this “coura­ geous and dignified” document “which can be understood and judged only by those who have lived in the suffocating, nauseating atmosphere that pervaded Germany in the Nazi era,” a futile at­ tempt was made to convince the Nazi authorities of the love and devotion felt for their country by Germany’s Jews.

The document emphatically endorsed op­ position to Marxism and Communism, especially to the atheistic philosophy of the latter. Noting the names of the mo^t outstanding Jewish leaders of that time as signatories to this desperate document, it seems to have been a pitiful, lastminute, effort to turn the “roah hag’zerah.”

The reader whose birthplace is the Cologne of old and who might have spent some of the best years of his life in the beautiful Rhineland metropolis, will find in this book many reminiscences of the exemplary educational institutions, such as the aforementioned Teachers Seminary and the excellent Yavne School.

The fruitful activities of Rabbi Emanuel Carlebach and prominent communal leaders abound throughout. After Rabbi Carlebach’s death, his son David in­ herited the mantle of this pivotal rab­ binic position. David, reared in Eastern yeshivoth, took slowly to his father’s dif­ ficult post which required the talents of a statesman as well as a scholar. Turn­ ing to religious Zionism, he ended his days at a young age in Israel, never hav­ ing attained there the stature his erudi­ tion deserved.

Objectively, often touchingly, revealed, enriched by many valuable illustrations, this historical tome bearing the saga of the Jews of Cologne, will take its place of importance among the documents of German Jewish Orthodoxy.

57

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JEWISH LIFE

Jewish Americanization

By JEROME HOCHBAUM

THE JEW WITHIN AMERICAN SO­ CIETY: A STUDY IN ETHNIC INDI­ VIDUALITY, by C. Bezalel Sherman.

Wayne University Press, Detroit, 1965, 260 pp. $2.50.

HERMAN’S book, originally pub­ S lished in 1961 and now re-issued in a paperback edition, merits the attention of all serious observers of the American Jewish scene because it is a comprehen­ sive description of the changing profile of the Jew within American society. In it, Sherman has assembled a great mass of statistical and survey data, and his interpretation of these findings and his general impressions, based on many years of studying and participating in Jewish communal life, are perceptive, insightful, and often stimulating.

Sherman’s central thesis deals with the accommodation and survival of the Jews in American society, a process singularly unique among ethnic groups in this coun­ try. Unlike other immigrant groups, the Jews were remarkable in being able to discern quickly the economic and social direction of American society and be­ came very rapidly amalgamated econom­ ically and integrated socially. Never­ theless, external pressures and internal forces prevented the full assimilation of the Jews, the type of development that Dr. Jerome Hochbaum recently received a Ph.D. degree in Sociology from New York University and is currently an Assistant Professor at Yeshiva University. He is also a musmach ©f Rabbi Isaac Elchanon Theological Seminary.

July-August, 1965

had occurred among other ethnic groups who had achieved a similar social status and attained a comparable level of ac­ culturation. Indeed, according to Sher­ man, the paradox is that acculturation to American life, instead of destroying Jewish communal life, has actually solidi­ fied it.

The accommodation the Jewish com­ munity achieved in America was made exceedingly difficult because the Jews, un­ like other immigrants, were dispersed over three waves of immigration widely spread over time. In addition, each of the three waves, Sephardic, German, and East European, was radically differen­ tiated economically, socially, culturally, religiously, and even linguistically. The East European immigration itself was diversified and heterogeneous. The im­ pact of these differences wrought disunity and fragmentation in the Jewish com­ munity.

NLY with the Jew’s acculturation to American life and his social and economic mobility do these differences begin to become minimized and disap­ pear. For example, the variety of lan­ guages present in the various Jewish im­ migrant communities has been almost en­ tirely replaced by English. Equally im­ portant has been the growing consolida­ tion of various national and local or­ ganizations, most notably those dealing with philanthropy and social service.

From serving the needs of particular Jewish groups or communities, these or­ ganizations have developed into impor-

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tant agencies for communal cohesion.

Thus, Sherman argues, accommodation to American life has helped restore and strengthen the institutions of the Ameri­ can-Jewish community and made pos­ sible their growing integration.

According to Sherman, the most strik­ ing illustration of assimilatory forces bolstering group cohesiveness is the growth of synagogüe membership. It reflects “the established pattern of Ameri­ can respectability in which affiliation with institutionalized religion is an im­ portant part.” However, more than Sher­ man himself recognizes, religion and the synagogue have become the major vehi­ cles for the growing ethnic solidarity that he describes. Around the synagogue Jews have established their socio-religious community because religion provides a legitimate location and status for sub­ groups within American society. No wonder then that synagogues resemble each other more and more in their struc­ tures and programs, despite their dif­ ferent sectarian labels. As Sklare, Glazer, and Herberg have shown, most synago­ gues are engaged in the sociological func­ tion of increasing commitment to the group, supporting “Jewishness” more than Judaism.

Sherman’s description of the emer­ gence and accommodation of the Jewish community within the United States re­ quires qualification in one important re­ spect—the projection of future trends from his data and assumptions. Firstly, he underestimates the rate of intermar­ riage among American Jews. Sherman cites numerous community surveys and the Bureau of the Census study of 1957 and concludes that the rate of intermar­ riage falls between seven and ten per­ cent. His statistics deflate the actual rate of intermarriage because the populations surveyed are composed of large propor-

July-Augusl, 1965

tions of first and second generation Jews who intermarry less frequently than members of the third generation. When we exclude all but third generation Jews, the rate jumps significantly, as Rosenthal has shown, particularly among collegeeducated and professionals. In his book Sherman does not adequately consider the pronounced assimilatory tendencies among third and fourth generation American Jews. Granted the Jewish com­ munity has accommodated itself to our open, egalitarian society and will persist and survive, however Sherman fails to take sufficient heed of the accelerated process of assimilation occurring simul­ taneously among segments of the Jewish community who will disappear from Jewish life.

Secondly, the growing solidarity that Sherman perceives is almost entirely so­ cial and communal, not normative. Jews are structurally, but not culturally, seg­ regated from American society. In the latter respect, they are becoming increas­ ingly amalgamated into the mainstream of American life. From Sherman’s per­ spective, a cohesive social or quasi­ ethnic community is all that can be ex­ pected or desired in American life. How­ ever, the absence of a moral community in the Durkheimian sense poses a severe threat to the full flowering of Jewish life in this country. For a long time major Jewish institutions in this country have minimized or befuddled their ideological posture to gain and maintain their place in the socially fluid Jewish community.

Historically, however, the Jewish com­ munity has not been able to endure in its unique form without keeping its tradi­ tional normative system intact. Without a more firm normative foundation, more Jewish in essence, acculturation and as­ similation will grow and increase. New forms and forces beginning to develop

61

in Jewish life, notably the upsurge in Orthodoxy which represents a normative thrust in the Jewish community, are evidence of this awareness. The Jewish

community is essentially a religious, not a sociological, entity, and until it fully becomes one again its status in American society remains uncertain.

Jewish Faith and Natural Science

By MARKUS ELIAS EXTRA DIMENSION, A New Approach to Torah, by Max Munk, with Foreword

by Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung. Rubin Mass, Jerusalem, 1964—Sifrei Israel, New York, 75 pp. $1.50.

tists. It has been pointed out that scien­ tific research provides us with more clues for reasserting than for disputing reli­ gious ideologies.

Among recent attempts to deal with this problem from the point of view of HE problem of supporting, let alone Torah-true Judaism, we find a book— of strengthening, the belief in the small in size but rich in content—written truth of our oral and written tradition in by an orthodox Jewish scientist who is the face of opposing statements of scien­ equally familiar with the literature and tists and philosophers has been dealt tenets of traditional Judaism and with the with for many centuries by the greatest methods and principals of modern sci­ thinkers and scholars of traditional Juda­ ence. The author, Max Munk, who for­ ism from the days of Saadia Gaon up merly taught mathematics and science at to our time. Our atomic age has made the Samson Raphael Hirsch High Schools us even more aware of the necessity to in Germany and later at secondary face this problem, what with the astound­ schools in England, and is a frequent ing progress of natural science and its contributor to periodicals in Israel, calls widely propagated claim of its ability to his book “Extra Dimension.” Out of a solve the ultimate questions concerning life on earth and the nature of the uni­ feeling that the available literature on verse. On the other hand, we find that the problem mentioned above does not the new science has evoked many at­ satisfy those in quest of a synthesis be­ tempts by religious writers to meet the tween our Jewish faith and scientific stu­ danger to religious believing and living dies, Munk seeks to show that we can from the opposing conclusions of scien- embrace religion without jeopardizing our G-d-given intellectual abilities. We Educated at universities in Europe and the United States, Dr. Markus Elias served as prin­ need not abandon the theory of the per­ cipal of the Samson Raphael Hirsch High ception, he postulates, if we consider the School and Lycee in Frankfurt. When this noted school was re-established in New York, he again limitations of this theory and do not see served5 as its principal until his retirement in 1946. Dr. Elias has contributed many articles in it the only way of arriving at the to German, Hebrew, and English books and truth. periodicals.

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JEWISH LIFE

^ R IT IC A L antagonism to Biblical V>4 doctrines and commandments has its cause in the opinion that only that which human beings can experience and comprehend by their senses and intel­ ligence is acceptable as reality and poten­ tiality. Against this fallacious proposi­ tion, the author cites examples of gen­ erally accepted axioms not based on ex­ perience. On the other hand he demon­ strates convincingly that no religious problem can be approached otherwise than on the assumption of a transcenden­ tal reality. Such an approach does not require a denial of what our perception suggests. Not only the Torah, but also our great scholars use expressions, based on perception, seemingly strange to our way of thinking without objective inter­ pretation. It is only the different concep­ tion of space which stands in the way of human ability to comprehend miracles and “Chukim”—the positive and prohibi­ tive commandments whose reason is not given—let alone certain doctrines, but, as the author points out, there is in fact no Biblical command without an element of “Chok” which is beyond human un­ derstanding.

Our conception of space rests on our experience of three dimensions (apart from the category of time). We are used to move and to think in three dimen­ sions. But let us, says the author, “just for the sake of comprehension, consider shadowbeings, such as those envisaged

by Felix Auerbach* in a different con­ text! ‘Lacking experience in anything that takes place outside their stretch of sur­ face, they cannot imagine a third dimen­ sion. To them it does not exist, because their own form of existence is two-dimen­ sional.’ ” The implication is that the world, as we perceive it, is not absolute. * “Die Bergriffe der Modernen Naturlehre” ( “Conceptions of Modern Natural Science” ),

by Felix Auerbach, B. G. Teubner, Leipsig.

July-Augusf, 1965

Human science operates only according to human experience in natural science; it knows only of three dimensions and ignores other processes not observed within the framework of the three dimen­ sions where our senses, measures, and weights are applicable.

Although our physical nature does not enable us to comprehend quantities and qualities of one or more dimensions beyond our three-dimensional experience, there is in every creature an element, and in every man an awareness, of something supernatural emanating from original Creation and from dimensions beyond those of our sensual experience.

Dreams, prophetic presentiment, and many other phenomena of the psyche which cannot be explained as results of an individual’s experience bear witness to the existence of dimensions beyond those within which we move. Miracles, Divine commandments, prophetic teach­ ings such as the Bible sets forth, are messages intent to draw us nearer to those supernatural dimensions.

ITH this in mind, the author ap­ proaches also philosophical ques­ tions, such as the freedom of choice (notwithstanding the ruling of an om­ nipotent and omniscient Creator), the existence of evil in the world of a benign Deity, the interrelationship of body and mind, and many more of such problems as occupy the minds of philosophers and psychologists.

Facts which bear out the existence of an authentic religious function in the human mind are also responsible for the effect of Divinely inspired actions, at­ titudes, and restrictions as commanded in Biblical, Talmudic, and Kabalistic literature with which the author is indeed very familiar. Far from suggesting me­ chanical and “ceremonial” acts, they tend

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63

to remind ms that our body as well as our mind is part of a Divine creation^ and instrumental in restoring the original Man as he emerged from the hand of the Creator.

In contrast to the common belief that mankind’s history and development rep­ resent a progress from animalistic ex­ istence to an intellectually and morally higher way of life, Munk does not hesi­ tate to state that our history of culture and civilization demonstrates as a whole a descent rather than an ascent, com­ pared with the first man (Odom Koma) before his sin. Were it not for the re­ velation to the Jewish people as a whole and to great men—Jewish and non-Jewish—ready to live up to the ideal of original Creation, as expressed in the

words “b’tzalmenu kidmuthenu,” mankind would have gone down irrevocably from the highest possible purpose of freedom to the lowest depth of vegetative ex­ istence.

The author of “Extra Dimension,” who has devoted considerable time and effort to his aim to bring Jewish religious faith and the accounts and precepts of the Torah closer to the heart and intellect of our generation, has indeed made a great contribution to the understanding of traditional Judaism at a time of confu­ sion and distortion. This contribution is all the more valuable in that the author has taken pains to summarize the content of his book in an impressive epilogue and in adding an index of the rich source material for each page and chapter.

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JEWISH LIFE

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