Jewish Life Sept-Oct 1965

M IS S IO N TO S O V IE T J E W R Y M Ö G E N D O V ID

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S T R A S B O U R G : A N A P P R A IS A L

THE NATURE O F REPEN TA N CE

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T H E ‘T Z IU L E N D E R ’

T H E ‘C H A M U S H IM ’ T O R A H A N D S C IE N C E

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TISHRI-CHESHVAN 5726 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1965

IS R A E L A N D A F R IC A

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Vol. XXXIII, No. 1 7 Sept.-Oct. 1965 / Tishri-Cheshvan 5726

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EDITORIALS NEEDED: J E W S .............................................

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ISRAEL’S ELECTORAL V IS T A S ..........................

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Saul Bernstein , Editor

ARTICLES R abbi S. J. Sharfman L ibby K laperman P aul H. Baris Editorial Associates D vora M inder Editorial Assistant JEWISH LIFE is published bi-monthly. Subscription two years $4.50, three years $6.00, four years $7.50. Foreign: Add 25 cents per year.

Editorial and Publication Office: 84 Fifth Avenue New York 10011, N. Y. ALgonquin 5-4100 Published by U nion of Orthodox J ewish C ongregations of A merica

MISSION TO SOVIET JEWRY / Bernard A. Poupko ..

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THE NATURE OF REPENTANCE / Nachum M. B ro n zn ick ...............................

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STRASBOURG: AN APPRAISAL / Joseph Karasick .. 31 TORAH AND SCIENCE: CONFLICT — OR ^ COMPLEMENT? / Nachum L. Rabinovitch

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MÖGEN DOVID / Ettore Da Fano .........

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ISRAEL AND AFRICA / Pinchas E. Lapide ...

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THE ‘CHAMUSHIM’ / Reuben E. G r o s s ......

A MIRACLE OF SURVIVAL / Isaac C. A v ig d o r...............................

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FICTION THE TOLLENDER’ / Gershen M a rin b a ch ........... 39

M oses I. F euerstein 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; H erd Rosenson, Secretary; David Politi, Fi­ nancial ¡Secretary.

Dr. Samson R. Weiss Executive Vice President Saul Bernstein, Administrator

BOOK REVIEWS A BIOGRAPHICAL GRAB-BAG / Philip Zimm erm an.....................................

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

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

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Cover and Inside Drawings by Alan Zwiebel

©Copyright 1965 by UNION

September-Ocfober, 1965

OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

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Making his mark as a lay leader of orthodox Jewry after having originally distinguished himself in the rabbinate, RABBI JOSEPH KARASICK is a vice president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America and national chairman of its Commission on Regions and Councils. He heads a prominent U.S.-Swiss watch com­ pany. A graduate of Yeshiva University and a musmoch of Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Rabbi Karasick served as spiritual leader of the historic Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue of Montreal before entering the business world. Among many communal activities, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Beth Din of the Rabbinical Council of America and is a member of the Vaad Hapoel of the Religious Zionists of America.

among our contributors

DR. NACHUM M. BRONZNICK is assistant professor of Hebraic Studies at Rutgers University and a lecturer at Teachers Institute for Women of Yeshiva University. His educational background includes a B.A. degree from Yeshiva University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Semitics from Columbia University. Dr. Bronznick, who received Semichah from the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theo­ logical Seminary, makes his first appearance in JEWISH LIFE with this issue.

PINCHAS E. LAPIDE, a Canadian by birth, left his home at the age of sixteen to undergo training in England with Youth Aliya. His experiences as coordinator of an Interministerial Committee on Pilgrimage in Jerusalem in­ spired his most recent book, “A Century of U.S. Aliya,” published by the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel. Mr. Lapide’s other works include “The Prophet of San Nicandro,” the story of a group of Italian peasants who converted to Judaism, which has been published in six languages and was awarded a literary prize by the Jew­ ish Book Guild of America. Another novel, “The Pruning Hook,” was. written while Mr. Lapide was on diplomatic service in Brazil.

REUBEN E. GROSS, an attorney by profession, is active in orthodox Jewish affairs on the national level as well as in his home community of Staten Island. A member of the Executive Committee of the UOJCA, he is a graduate of City College of New York and Harvard Law School.

Mr. Gross is a U.S. Army veteran of World War II and also served in the Israeli Air Force during Israel’s War for Liberation. He was recently appointed National Chair­ man of the American Veterans of Israel.

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Bom in northern Italy of a Sephardic Jewish family, in Gorzia, D R . E T T O R E D A F A N O worked extensively with the Italian Zionist Organization before he immigrated to the U.S. during World War II. A fellow of the Amer­ ican Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Institute of Chemists, Dr. Da Fano holds a Ph.D. degree in Science from the University of Zurich.

Since his recent retirement from directing scientific re­ search at a large industrial concern, Dr. Da Fano has de­ voted his time to technical and creative writing, including works on Jewish mysticism.

R A B B I B E R N A R D A . P O U P K O has recently returned from his second trip in fourteen months to his native Russia, this time as part of a Rabbinical Council of Amer­ ica delegation. Views based on his previous visit were contributed by him to the symposium “The Plight of So­ viet Russia,” in the Spring 1965 issue of JEWISH LIFE. The first Russian-speaking American rabbi to have visited the U.S.S.R., Rabbi Poupko has lectured on Soviet Jewry to audiences across the country. He is the spiritual leader of Shaare Torah Congregation in Pittsburgh, a member of the community’s Beth Din and visiting lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh.

G E R S H E N M A R IN B A C H is a certified public account­ ant by profession and the author of a column which ap­ pears in the Young Israel Viewpoint. His previous con­ tribution to JEWISH LIFE was “The Challenge,’ a story.

Which appeared in the September/October 1964 issue of our magazine.

A musmoch of the Ner Israel Rabbinical College of Balti­ more, R A B B I N A C H U M L .R A B I N O V I T C H serves as rabbi of the Clanton Park Synagogue in suburban Toronto.

Rabbi Rabinovitch is also an instructor in Mathematics _at the University of Toronto and associate editor of “Hadarom,” the journal for Research in Rabbinics and Talmud published by the Rabbinical Council of America Among his previous contributions to JEWISH LIFE is the essay “Judaism and Free Enquiry.” (Spring 1965) R A B B I IS A A C C. A V IG D O R is one of the few European rabbis who lived through the Concentration Camps to relate the experience of their post-war days. Author o “Ten for Two,” a book of sermons, and “Six Reasons Why You Should Keep Kosher,” Rabbi Avigdor is currently rabbi of the United Synagogues of Greater Hartford A musmoch of European yeshivoth, he is president of the Rabbinical Council of Connecticut.

S ep te m b e r -O c lo b e r , 1965

among our

contributors

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Needed: Jews ODAY, with the world become so tight-knit, all peoples, nations, and faiths must perforce see themselves as part of world society. This applies not least of all to the Jewish people, dispersed across the globe. Necessarily, Jewish goals are to be defined in relation to the conditions that affect contemporary mankind at large. Thinking Jews, in reappraising the Jewish role at the onset of a new year, seek perception of the forces at play in the world about us.

One reality stands out above all: the overwhelming dominance of materialist drives. More and more, human energies and capacities are concentrated on the exploitation of natural re­ sources in pursuit of wealth and power. All other values have Spiritual become subordinate in this motivation; modern culture is its Lag echo. Science and technology, epitomized in the goal of a moon landing, mark advance after advance. Economic organization, accelerated now by automation, assumes global thrust. Spiritual needs, seen as irrelevant, are left far behind.

When the heavens are explored without vision of Heaven and the wonders of Creation are probed without acknowledgment of the Creator, it becomes apparent that modern civilization is simply not attuned to basic needs of the human spirit. For all the dazzling achievements of our age, a deep unease permeates mankind. The penalties of lopsided progress become daily more marked.

This is a reality to be recognized. We must recognize, too, that preachment and protest will not amend matters. But to see the reality does not mean that we must yield to it, in a this-thingis-too-big-for-us mood of resignation. For us Jews in particular, the dilemma of modern man bears an explicit message: Never perhaps since the days of Avrohom Ovinu have we been needed so much as now. Needed, that is, as Jews.

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'E KNOW that man is bidden to subdue the earth—that earth which is being subdued today as never before. But we know also that the earth and its resources are to be conquered not for self’s sake, not for power’s sake but Vshem Mitzvah, I’shem Shomayim. That is the Torah-revealed key to man’s charThe Real acter and purpose. Without its use the great questions of the Relevance modern world cannot be resolved. One hears much talk of the problem of making Judaism relevant to the modern world. The real problem is the reverse—that of making modern life relevant to Torah truth.

Put in these terms, we see afresh the role of the Jew, in cosmic

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dimension. The program of Jewry must be addressed to its ful­ fillment. It will be asked: can the Torah way, followed by so few among the hosts of mankind, counterbalance the mass weight of present-day social drives? History, as well as timeless belief, provides the answer. Civilizations have risen and crumbled again and again but the Torah way has endured.

But there is a condition to this truth: The Torah way must Service of be personified; not merely preached or professed, not held forth Jewish Life as an abstract ideal, but lived. To live Torah, to be the manifesta­ tion of Torah truth, individually and collectively, is the purpose of Jewish existence. So living, we serve a need indispensible to space-age man as it is to mankind in all the ages.

Israel9s Electoral Vistas OVING into further stages of its development, the 17-yearold State of Israel is now preparing for elections to the M Knesseth. While the electoral campaign will undoubtedly be marked by a full measure of the fervid, dogmatic partisanship characteristic of the Israel scene, none can gainsay that, all things considered, the election represents a creditable demonstration of political democracy. Among the many nations which have achieved self-sovereignty since World War II, few, if any others at all, can present a similar manifestation of the processes ot representative government. Bearing in mind the circumstances of Israel’s birth, together with the dangers that have threatened her ever since and the diverse origins of its multiplied populace, a parliamentary election of this kind is all the more noteworthy.

In the case of any other country, one could rest with the above judgment. But—Israel is Israel. In the case of the Jewish State, born out of ages of fidelity to the Covenant amidst dispersion, the election campaign, as it is emerging, seems curiously out of Missing: focus. Debate wages hot and sharp—over everything except the Great issues great issues that Israeli Jewry must face. Each party cries its appeal, each proclaims its platform—but where, in all the mounting din of partisan rivalry, is the program that comes to grips with the goals and tasks inherent in the very concept of the Jewish State?

Admittedly, the enormous practical problems which have weighed upon Israel without surcease ever since pre-Independence years have permitted little concentration on the overall issues. Ideologically and programatically, circumstances have impelled a process of day-to-day makeshift with regard to def­ inition of the essential character of Israeli society, of the relation of its social, cultural, economic, and spiritual development to its fundamental nature. The primary why-what-how of Israel has In Lieu of largely been bypassed in the pressure of events. In the absence Definitions of such definition, rough and ready accommodations and com­ promises have been arrived at as between diverging concepts of socio-economic policy and—in this regard often more rough than ready— as between opposing views on Israel as a Torah September-October, 1965

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commonwealth. Highly characteristic of the situation is the area of law. Except for a limited sphere of personal status, Israel, proud though it is of its Jewish independence, remains to this day governed by the gentile law of mixed British-Turkish deriva­ tion established by the British Mandatory regime.

T WAS rightfully to be hoped, if not expected, that with Israel settling down to its tasks and taking the measure of itself, an election at this time would be marked by a broader purpose than has heretofore been expressed in the standard, constricted party formulas. What, however, is being offered the Israel elec­ torate is a choice between one or another grouping of political interests: “My party will do more for you than the others.” “My party will protect your interests better than the others.”

Within this stifling format of vested interest, the coming elec­ tion is sure to be hard-fought. The Ben Gurion-engineered split in Mapai, adding the Raff party to the competitive circle, con­ tributes an added element of intensely personal rancor. As fore­ shadowed in the Histadruth elections, the division in Mapai toNew Lineup, gether with the uniting of the Heruth and Liberal parties on a Old Vistas single ticket seems sure to cut down the voting strength of the Mapai-Achduth Avodah combination; the result may well be a government of different composition from that of preceding years. But with no broader vistas being offered, it is unlikely that new approaches to basic questions will be undertaken, what­ ever be the makeup of the next Knesseth and government. Young as Israel is, it can ill afford to so waste this precious moment of : history.

Israel’s Torah parties, the National Religious Party (MizrachiHapoel Hamizrachi), Agudath Israel,," and Poale Agudat Israel, are expected to at least maintain and perhaps to increase their previous proportion of votes. Thus their position in the political constellation may remain much as before. There can be little doubt that a unified ticket by the three religious parties would prove itself far more effective at the polls and, beyond the election purview, would have tonic impact on the public atti­ tude—within and beyond Israel—towards Israel’s organized reli­ gious forces. Explanations for thé absence of electoral collabora­ tion are easier to find than compelling justification. But a larger question than this is to be faced, namely, do the religious parties offer a program for the State of Israel?

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VER on the defensive in the unceasing war waged against them by Israel’s non-religious and anti-religious forces, the Torah parties have been boxed in on all sides. Their very right to existence, no less than their purposes, is under constant chal­ lenge by opposing propaganda. This outpouring of planned derogation saturates the Israel scene and reaches, beyond Israel’s Religious boundaries, to every Jewish community. Even elements of orthoFarties dox Jewry, in Israel and the Golah alike, echo the insidious Boxed in cry: “Religion and politics don’t mix.” Poorly equipped in pub­ lic relations know-how, the religious parties struggle against psy-

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chological and strategic disadvantages. Since—contrary to the impression spread everywhere by anti-religious and anit-orthodox propaganda—the great majority of Israelis adhere to the faith of their fathers, the electoral potential of the religious parties is far larger than what has yet been gained. But so long as these forces permit themselves to be jockeyed and bullied into a minority stance, both the vote potential and the achievement potential cannot be fulfilled.

The time is long overdue for Israel’s Torah parties to shatter the frame in which they are encased and to bring to the full Israeli constituency a fully conceived program for the Jewish Wider State. Elsewhere, it may be true that “religion and politics don’t Goals mix” but in Israel there can be no division between the one and the other; they should and must mix. Such “mixing” is inherent in the Jewish concept of life, and Israel’s sole raison d’etre is to be the vehicle of Jewish life. The problem of the religious parties, as they are now constituted, is not that they have mixed religion with politics, but that the mixing has not been carried far enough.

T IS not only the non-religious and anti-religious parties that are culpable in failing to face the implications of the Jewish­ ness of the Jewish State. The religious parties too are at fault.

They have permitted the issue to be debated in terms of recogni­ tion of Torah as “the established religion” of the State of Israel, whereas the précise opposite is the real issue: recognition of Israel as “the established state” of the Torah people. The sole determinant of Israel’s right and condition of existence is the Torah mandate; unless this is the governing premise of Israeli Program life, Israel’s right of and reason, for existence are forfeited. But for the those upholding this premise have the inescapable obligation not " Established only to battle for defense, of religious rights and to build an State." inner Torah sanctum but to chart a total Torah program for the Jewish State. If Israel is visualized as the established state of thè Torah people, its economy, its social structure, its international relations, the entire pattern of its life must be conceived and planned in Torah terms.

As against their many disadvantages, Israel’s religious parties have one overriding advantage—th e y are religious parties. They, and not their opponents, represent the character and purpose of the State of Israel. The sooner they build broadly and boldly upon their high role, the better for all concerned.

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M ission to Soviet Jewry

By BERNARD A. POUPKO

Why, the world is asking, did Soviet authorities accord such unprecedented attention to the mission this past summer by a delegation of the Rabbinical Council of Am erica? What did the visit of these nine American rabbis mean to the Jews of the Soviet Union? Here a member of the delegation tells the searing story of this experience.

UST two days after receiving noti­ fication that visas to visit the Soviet Union had been granted to our delegation, we gathered at Ken­ nedy International Airport for our departure. We were beset by torment­ ing doubts, and the occasion, joined with gloomy weather, heightened our unease. This was the seventeenth day of Tamuz—Sunday, July 18th in the secular calendar. The long fast day of Shiva Osor B’tamuz, ushering in the Three Weeks of sad reflection upon our national disaster of cen­ turies ago, was appropriately marked by dark, foreboding skies which over­ hung the vast airport, causing a twohour delay in our departure. Rain and lightning echoed our melancholy mood. Each of us, torn by inner questions as to the propriety and prudence of our collective mission, asked himself over and over again: Is our attempt to be emissaries to and for our wronged and isolated brethren in Soviet Russia justifiable and prac­ tical? How much good can be ex­

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pected from this major effort? Con­ versely, is there risk of worsening present conditions by inviting the charge that foreigners are projecting themselves into a seemingly internal problem or policy of the U.S.S.R.?

And to these questions I added another: Should a person such as I, who helped rouse Jewish and nonJewish public opinion about this pain­ ful problem following a previous visit to the U.S.S.R. in April 1964, participate in such a delicate mission?

One of New York’s prominent rabbis who came with a group of our colleagues to bid us farewell made an effort to reassure us by suggesting that sh’luchey mitzvah eynon nizokin —“he who is on a mission to perform a mitzvah, a good deed, will not encounter any misfortune.” I recalled then an incident involving my late father, of blessed memory, the Valizer Rav, Rabbi Eliezer Poupko, which occurred in 1931. These were the very dark days of the Stalin terror and the violent anti-religious propaJE W ISH LIFE

ganda which ruthlessly attacked re­ ligion and its leaders and adherents.

My father headed a delegation to the Kremlin to plead with President Michail Kalinin to alleviate the plight of the Jewish community. Another member of this delegation commented on the risk entailed in taking such a bold step. My father’s reply was:

“Our Torah teaches: ‘Lo thaamod al dam re’echtf—do not remain cal­ lous and indifferent when the blood of one Jew, of one human being, is being shed. How much more so are we obligated not to remain callous when millions of Jews are languishing and suffering under the yoke of the tyrant!”

L E N IN G R A D

N Leningrad we were met at the airport by the representative of Intourist, the official Soviet travel agency. We immediately recognized that he was of the seed of Jacob and he made no effort to deny it.

His charming personality, warmth, and gentleness, coupled with his wide knowledge and pertinent remarks and explanations, were in no small meas­ ure responsible for the useful and fruitful days we spent in Leningrad.

Although a loyal and devoted servant of the Soviet Government and the Communist ideology, the Intourist agent managed somehow to retain the characteristic Jewish sensitivity. As we entered the Baron Ginsburg Syna­ gogue in Leningrad he covered his head with an improvised rain hat which he pulled out from his coat pocket.

On the way back from the truly fabulous Peter’s Palace, some eighteen kilometers from Leningrad, we sang with hearty voice the stirring melodies V’shovu Bonim Lig’vulom—“And the children will return to their heritage,” Utzu Etzah V’sufar— “Form your plot—it shall fail; lay your plan—it shall not prevail,” Ani Maamin—“I believe,” and Hatikvah. As our bus made its way into the enormously

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September-October, 1965

wide Nevski Prospect, the sounds of our Hatikvah were heard even outside our bus. A Jewish engineer whom we met by coincidence and who was a member of the Communist Party was so moved by these songs that he volunteered to sing for us a Yiddish song which his grandmother taught him. The Yiddish was halting, the voice was burdened with deep emotions and his face conveyed a strange but triumphant feeling of one who suddenly discovers himself with­ in a new world.

It is not simple to convey the spon­ taneous joy upon the faces of the elderly Jews who greeted us as we entered the Leningrad Synagogue for the morning services. “Just look, young rabbis from A inerica. . . they came to visit with us and to see us . . . our brothers from America, G-d bless them for not having forgotten u s . . . are there many other young rabbis like you in America?” These wonder­ ful elders with serene faces and tear­ ful eyes were puzzled by the strange phenomenon of men young and yet religious, by the presence in their midst of young rabbis, the average age o f the surviving rabbis in their country being above seventy. It is virtually impossible to describe the 9

fear and apprehension of these peo­ ple when asked $bout their life and conditions. Invariably, their answer is: “We must have faith. . . we must be patient. . . we hope that G-d will not forsake us and that ultimately salvation will be ours.” These and similar remarks were uttered quietly, with resolution and steadfastness— faith and hope from an oppressed heart and a tormented spirit.

While travelling in the Metro-sub­ way we noticed a woman of obviously Jewish appearance and promptly en­ gaged her in conversation. How elated she was when we identified ourselves to her and related to her the purpose of our visit. When I asked her: “How are things around here?” she replied with a bitter smile “Don’t you know, do you have to ask?” Most eloquent was the smile upon the face of the Jewish woman near the railroad sta­ tion who served us glasses of soda from the kiosk which she was tending.

She even insisted on speaking Yid­ dish to us in the presence of her non-Jewish customers. She was so moved with our presence that she momentarily forgot her duties to the other waiting customers. As we left this kiosk and proceeded to our hotel we were greeted with cynical and vulgar remarks by a group of young Russians standing at the corner.

Evidently, looking at our faces and our yarmulkes, they recognized our identity. We ignored this unpleasant encounter and increased our pace towards our destination.

I must not fail to mention how faithfully and usefully the yarmulkes on our heads served our cause. In the lobbies and dining rooms of the hotels, in the university corridors, in the streets and in the parks these 10

yarmulkes attracted the attention of the curious, especially of the Jews, and helped us very much in establish­ ing contact with our Jewish brothers and sisters.

E experienced a memorable in­ cident while on the way to a visit with the sister of an eminent New York Rosh Yeshivah. A young man, tall and handsome, whom I stopped on the street for information about the address, identified himself to us as a Jew. With rare emotion and a face expressing a deep sense of tragedy, he poured out his heart to us.

This twenty-four year-old student who works by day and studies in the evening told us about the antisemitic treatment to which he and his Jewish friends are constantly exposed both in school and in their places of em­ ployment. He told us how his father who works in a shop, is harassed and mistreated because he is a Jew. Then looking around and lowering his voice he started speaking about the State of Israel. And in this moment something happened which none of us will ever forget. Speaking, of course, in Russian, he took my hand in his hands and with a most earnest and penetrating look in his eyes turned to me and said: “Now, you must tell me truthfully, without hid­ ing anything from me, do you and your colleagues sincerely believe that there is a possibility for me and my friends some day to reach the State of Israel and to settle there? Please tell me the truth, don’t hide anything from me. Do you really believe that this is possible?”

Not a single face remained dry and I said to him: “Please believe us when we tell you that it is our JE W ISH LIFE

firm hope and conviction that you and your friends will ultimately reach your desired destination where you will join your brethren. But you must have faith in G-d Almighty and lots of patience. The G-d of Israel will not

forsake you.” We parted from this young man much shaken.

Incidentally, before parting I had asked him: “Would you marry a nonJewish girl?” His reply was firm and without hesitation: -‘Definitely, no!”

THE BETH O L O M SPEAKS

SILENT but meaningful witness of the Jewish past is the cemetery. Jewish communal history and character and features of historic personalities are revealed with brief phrases upon old tombstones. In his effort to obliterate Jews from the world and to erase their history the accursed Hitler ordered the destruc­ tion of the Jewish cemeteries in Ger­ man-occupied territory. He knew and recognized that the cemetery is an enduring link in the golden chain of Jewish consciousness from genera­ tion to generation.

When we entered the grounds of the Leningrad Jewish cemetery, where more than two hundred Jewish funer­ als are held monthly, we noticed that most of the new tombstones were in Russian only. Hebrew or Yiddish inscriptions were difficult to find among the tombstones erected during the last two or three decades. One of the Jewish caretakers of the cemetery (who could hardly chant clearly and accurately the traditional Kel Mole) led us to a mass grave wherein were interred several thousand Jews who died either of starvation or of Nazi bombshells during the eight-hundredday siege of Leningrad, from 1941 to 1943. As we approached this grave our attention was drawn by a tall and imposing granite tombstone upon which the following inscription was

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engraved in Russian: “Eternal glory to the heroes of Leningrad who fell in the struggle for the honor, freedom, and independence of our native land, 1941-1943.” As we looked upon this moving and painful sight I kept on repeating to myself two of the in­ scribed words upon this tombstone: svoboda—freedom; m zavisim oS^-in­ dependence. How long will the world have to wait for the realization of this contradictory tombstone epitaph?

URING our visit to the cemetery we witnessed two Jewish fun­ erals. Engaging in conversation a friend of one of the bereaved families, we learned that he was a surgeon in one of Leningrad’s larger hospitals.

He admitted to us that there are still anti-Jewish feelings and attitudes in his place of employment but as­ sured us that these sentiments are gradually subsiding. He also told us that about eighty percent of the doctors and research staff in bis clinic are Jews. He seemed little con­ cerned about preserving Jewish | g ligion, culture, or language. He told us that his children have prominent positions in medicine and engineering.

Although his appearance was of a man in the late sixties he refuse^ ff answer any question^ in Yiddish and spoke with me in Russian.

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During this visit to the cemetery we learned that the overwhelming majority of Jewish funerals are being held without the benefit of Taharah and Tachrichim. We entered the cemetery synagogue where we wit­ nessed, with anguish, another Jewish funeral. The deceased was laid out in a suit of clothes and polished slippers, in a very modest coffin which was open. The coffin was surrounded by the immediate family and a few friends who came to pay their re­ spects. Two elderly mithaskim—Chevra Kadisha attendants—one of them with a long, white, patriarchal beard, covered the face of the deceased with a simple piece of cloth. Unexpectedly the second of the attendants, who had been dressed until this moment in a long, blue robe, appeared in the improvised pulpit dressed in a cantorial hat and gown and with re­ sounding voice intoned a psalm and the Kel Mole. Watching this vulga­ rized version of the traditional Jewish levaya I could not help but think that in the Soviet Union not only is the Jew denied his rights to live as a Jew but he is not even given the oppor­ tunity to die as a Jew. Now denied additional grounds for a cemetery of their own, Jews in Moscow, Leningrad, and other com­ munities are already being interred in non-sectarian cemeteries. The authorities have so far shown neither

understanding nor sympathy for this reasonable minimum request made by Jewish representatives to the Munici­ pal Government or the Ministry of Cults and, Religions.

ORNING services in the Lenin­ M grad Synagogue begin at dawn and are held in several Botey Midroshim situated within the walls of this enormous edifice and continue until about noontime. We were pleas­ ed to notice that among the worship­ pers at the services several were of middle age or younger, two of whom were guests from the Republic of Georgia. The steadfast faith and the capacity to endure hardship and de­ privation of these people is beyond understanding. Poorly dressed, with meager food for daily sustenance, these loyal sons of Israel are Gibraltarfirm in their steadfast commitment to Torah and their people in a most hostile and alien environment. To be sure, they are truly loyal and law-abid­ ing citizens of that country which de­ prives them of their legitimate rights to live as Jews. They live in con­ stant terror and fear. Tragically, some of their own are collaborators with the authorities, and this is one of the most painful realities of their wretch­ ed existence. Yet, however deprived and frightened, their Jewish loyalty remains strong and their hope most abiding.

M O SCO W

/^ k N Thursday afternoon, July 22, our delegation met with Rabbi Yehuda Leib Levine in the Central Synagogue of Moscow. As we sat around the table one of the “officials,” 12

uninvited, entered the room and sat on the right side of Rabbi Levine.

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were tense, formal, and overwhelming with inner emotions and silent speech.

With few and carefully chosen words, Rabbi Levine spoke of some expected religious concessions from the govern­ ment authorities which in his think­ ing will improve present conditions.

Upon arriving for Minchah at the Tcherkizovaya Synagogue in a slum neighborhood of Moscow, we witnessed a heart-warming scene.

About fifteen elderly men sat around a table with Talmud tomes in their hands, Tractate Bova Metziah, listen­ ing to a truly profound and scholarly shiur given by a middle-aged talmid chochom, a former student of the great Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Isser Zalmon Meltzer. This was a truly remarkable sight. A simple modest table, old broken benches, a Beth Hamidrosh in dire need of painting, old tired, emaciated Jews. . . and a brilliant exposition of a complicated theme in the Talmud.

After the Minchah service the wor­ shippers surrounded us and with eager curiosity inquired about Jewish life in the United States and Israel. The ninety-two year old Rabbi, although tired and weak, shared with us a meaningful interpretation of a Biblical passage. When we made an effort to leave with him, as a gift, some rubles he refused to accept the money and returned it to us.

The synagogue neighborhood re­ minded us of run-down districts in Detroit or Chicago, but of a more primitive kind. The old-style one-story Russian chatkas are supplied with water through a water pump in the street. When we left the synagogue after Maariv we were accompanied to the main street by one of the elder­ ly worshippers who went with us to help us find a cab. As he walked September-October, 1965

with us in the street and one of us raised his voice a little bit he turned to all of us and said: “I beg of you speak as quietly as possible as we do not wish to provoke our neighbors who occasionally indulge in acts of physical violence when we walk in in the streets and speak Yiddish.”

RIDAY morning, July 23, we travelled in the Intourist bus to the well-known Marina-Rostcha Syna­ gogue. It is interesting to note that the “Communist bus” transported us daily, morning and evening, with cordiality and punctuality to the synagogues in Leningrad, Mos­ cow, Kiev, and Tbilisi. Rabbi Alevsky, the Rabbi of the Marina-Rostcha Synagogue, who is over ninety-three years old, was not present at the morning services. The synagogue itself gave the appearance of a well-kept place. We were impressed and even rejoiced with the services and with the worshippers, although they were sparce in numbers. Only one young man was present in the synagogue to recite the Kaddish from a Rus­ sian transliterated text. We were re­ ceived with warmth and friendship by all.

After the service, the “Predsedatel,” the chairman of the synagogue ad­ ministration, dressed in an American suit, hat, and shoes, invited us to the administrative office of the synagogue.

As we sat around the table with him he complained about the “distorted news and dishonest reports about the conditions of Jews in the Soviet Union which are being authored in America through the efforts of some visitors to the U.S.S.R.” The syna­ gogue chairman reached into his inner coat pocket from which he pulled out a long envelope with a photostatic

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13

reproduction of an article which ap­ peared in a B’nai B’rith publication in the O.S.A. It was written by a rabbi who had visited the synagogue and who complained about its appear­ ance and surroundings. Then he turn­ ed to uk and said “Now look at this synagogtie and examine the inside and outside and tell me whether the truth was written in this article?” We ad­ mitted that the synagogue was well kept.

This same Predsedatel, upon his request, spent some two hours with us on Shaboth afternoon in the second floor lobby of the Metropol Hotel in an effort to supply us with “accurate information” : regarding Jewish life in Soviet Russia and especially in Moscow. We asked him numerous questions and sympathized with his painful and strenuous efforts to find answers. Among the questions with which he struggled was one I put: “You appear to be an intelligent and cultured person. May I therefore ask you this: since more than ninety-five percent of the Jewish men and women with whom we and others have spoken are sighing and crying about their bitter conditions here in your country, while you alone tell us that everything is fine and in order— whom, according to elementary rules of logic, should we believe—you, the single individual, or the ninety-five percent?”

S SOON as we entered the mag­ nificent and imposing skyscraper building of the Moscow University, with our yarmulkes upon our heads, we started searching for Jewish faces among the students in the corridors, lobbies, libraries, and lecture halls where some of them were studying for admittance examinations. Fortu­

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14

nately our efforts were not in vain.

One of the Jewish students whom we engaged in conversation admitted that there is antisemitic abuse and dis­ crimination and that it is quite difficult for a Jewish student to gain admit­ tance to the university. He also con­ firmed the fact that quite frequently Jewish students are reminded by other students about their Jewish origin. At the same time this student informed me that there is an impressive pre­ ponderance of Jewish professors and instructors in mathematics and physics at the university. In response to a question as to the seeming contradic­ tion between the discrimination against Jews and the high proportion of Jewish professors in these faculties, he indicated, With a note of pride, that this was because “our minds” excelled in these fields so important to Soviet needs.

Another student, a son of a halfJewish family, whose face disclosed his semi-Jewish origin, spoke with warmth and even pride about the State of Israel. He told us that many students at the university follow with deep interest and personal pride such news as they can gleam about de­ velopments in Israel.

It was superfluous to relate the memorable impression which these Jewish students made upon us.

PON arriving at the Central Syna­ gogue in Moscow for Kabolath Shaboth we found two rows of chairs prepared for us on the left side of the platform near the Oron Hakodesh. The synagogue was halfempty, possibly because of the sum­ mer season which finds quite a few of Moscow’s residents in their datchas, summer resorts. Among the worship-

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JE W IS H LIFE

pers there were several American tourists and a few U.S. Jewish stu­ dents studying at Moscow University.

The chazon chanted the service mean­ ingfully, with grace and musical balance. Rabbi Levine together with his assistant Reb Hershel went out of their way to make us feel as comfortable as possible. The Sabbath meal, although much above regular existing standards in Russia, reflected the acute shortage of kosher meat in Moscow and in the rest of the country. It is interesting to note the food was served by a mother and a daughter and a third woman, all of whom are converts to the Jewish faith. These remarkable people with a fine cultural background embraced the Jewish faith voluntarily, without any ulterior motives. One of these converts said to me: “Please do not be surprised that I have embraced your faith. One should rather be startled by those who have not yet

seen the real light of Judaism and still remain with their old ways and habits.

Viewing human history one cannot escape recognizing the greatest of all miracles which is the existence of the Jewish people. As far as I am con­ cerned do not ask why I came now to the Jewish faith but rather ask me why have I waited so long.”

The glory of Shaboth and the magic atmosphere of the Sabbath table with the Torah remarks of Rabbi Levine and the members of our own group, who incidentally impressed Rabbi Levine and many others most favorably, transformed us from the gloomy and melancholy realities of Russian Jewish life into the world of Jewish splendor and eternity. The truly beautiful Shaboth Z’miroth which were led by Reb Hershel and Reb Israel Noach, the Shamosh, both with pleasant voices and deep feeling, added immeasurably to this memor­ able experience.

A M E R IC A N RABBIS IN A M O S C O W PULPIT

among the worshippers that some of

HABOTH morning on the way from the Metropol Hotel to the them abandoned their seats and start­ S synagogue, as we passed the huge ed moving towards the Bima to verify Sverdlovskaya Ploschad, we met several co-religionists who told us that they were informed of our pres­ ence in Moscow and intended to be present at the Sabbath services in the synagogue. The shool was packed to capacity, including the women’s balcony. Another large Minyon was held in the Beth Hamidrosh.

Our colleagues received Torah honors and aliyoth. Unexpectedly, something rare and thrilling happened. For the first time in many years a Bar Mitzvah boy was called up to the Torah. This event evoked so much astonishment September-Oc+ober, 1965

that they were viewing a real thing and not a mirage. We shall never forget the expressions upon their faces as they whispered to one another “A Bar Mitzvah, really. . . where is he from?. . . who are his parents and what is his name?. . . ” An elderly Jew came over to me and said: “Today I should really invoke the blessings of Shehecheyonu. I haven’t seen a boy become Bar Mitzvah for more than a decade.” We found out that both the father and the older brother of the Bar Mitzvah came to Moscow from out of town.

15

For the second time in fourteen months I received the great honor and I should say z’chuth of being called up for Maftir in the Moscow Synagogue. A complete silence fell over the synagogue when I started reciting the blessings which precede the Haftorah. With an emotion and trepidation that rose from my inner­ most being, I raised my voice as I read the words of the Prophet Jere­ miah: Be not afraid of them: For 1 am with thee to deliver thee, Saith the Lord. And I will utter My judgments against them touching all their wick­ edness. Be not dismayed at them.

For, behold, 1 have made thee this day a fortified city, and an iron pil­ lar, and brazen walls, against the whole land. And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not pre­ vail against thee: for I am with thee, saith the Lord, to deliver thee.

again was evidence of the phenomenal impact of our visit and the hope and joy which was evoked in their lonely hearts. With the emotion of one who meets a close relative whom he had not seen for many years, they pressed our hands and even kissed us. We heard them utter such remarks as: “May G-d bless you for remembering us, your brothers” . . . “Please do come more often” . . . “ Remember us, do not forsake us” . . . “You come from a blessed and free world” . . . “How are our brethren doing in America?” .. . “What is new in the Medinah?” . . .

“Be careful with the mosrim” . . . etc.

It took us well over twenty minutes to return to our seats.

FTER the Torah was replaced in the Ark, Rabbi Levine entered the pulpit and read an elaborate pray­ er for the peace, prosperity, and As long as I shall live I am afraid security of the U.S.S.R. After con­ that I shall never know wherefrom I cluding this prayer there came some­ gathered suddenly the strength to in­ thing unprecedented in a Soviet Rus­ voke so fervently the timely, burning sian synagogue. From this pulpit so words of the Prophet. When I con­ rigidly eyed by Soviet authority, he cluded, quite a few worshippers came greeted us and welcomed us and then over to me and pressing my hands announced to the electrified congre­ said: “We shall never forget this gation that Rabbi Israel Miller, Presi­ Maftir. It gave us new life and new dent of the Rabbinical Council of hope. This, we shall long remember.” America, Rabbi Bernard Bergman, and I would each speak briefly, bring­ During the morning services we ing greetings from the American Jew­ had noticed that one among several ish community. As soon as the talks American tourists and students in ­ began the congregants rose and began discreetly made an attempt to use his moving closer and closer to the Bima. camera during the services. Of course It is difficult to convey the tears and he was stopped. the expressions of elation upon their As we followed Rabbi Levine dur­ ing the Torah procession which took faces as they listened.

Both Rabbi Miller and Rabbi Berg­ us all the way around the Bima through both aisles reaching the rear man stirred the congregants to their door, the worshippers began to move depths. Movingly, meaningfully, they towards us, each one trying to touch spoke of the blessings of Birchath us and say a few words to us. Here Hachodesh, of the days of comfort 16 JE W IS H LIFE

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which follow the three weeks of na­ tional mourning and sadness, of Joseph’s declaration of “I seek my brethren. . In my own remarks I said: “I stand here at this moment in this historic Synagogue with mixed feelings of awe and bewilderment. We, my revered colleagues and I, wish to express our deep gratitude to the Soviet Government for having joined our own beloved country, the United States of America, in voting at the United Nations some eighteen years ago for the establishment of the State of Israel, the holiest and most sig­ nificant event in the history of our people during the last two millennia.”

As soon as I uttered the words “the State of Israel” there was a thunder of applause and shouts of “Bravo” in the synagogue. Rabbi Levine stepped over close to me and pleaded with them to refrain from applause in the synagogue on the Sabbath.

I then continued: “As I face you this Shabbos, I recollect the immortal Rabbi Jacob Mazo, a former Chief Rabbi of Moscow, who courageously defended Jewish pride and honor during the Beilis blood libel trial in 1914. Like a typical Rabbi in Israel, Rabbi Mazo, with the generous bles­ sings of heart and mind, fearlessly and openly defied the tyrannical Czarist government in his effort to defend his people.” As soon as the speeches were concluded, Rabbi Levine entered the pulpit again, reciprocated our greetings and good wishes and turned his face to us and said: “Please convey greetings from the Soviet Union and a sincere wish for world peace, par­ ticularly in Viet Nam.” Neither eloquent words nor polished phrases can ever convey to the Free World the sheer joy, the stirring of heart, which our three messages September-October, 1965

evoked from these tormented anusim.

Diplomats, journalists, and other com­ petent observers assured us that the synagogue had never before witnessed such a scene of excitement, joy, and new hope.

A S we entered the synagogue on i V that afternoon for Minchah we noticed among the elderly people in the Beth Hamidrosh three young men in their late teens, sitting in the rear. We were told that they were students who have shown an interest in the Synagogue and Judaism although they had no Jewish back­ ground or education. When I asked them the reason for their interest in their ancestral faith, with a smile upon their faces they answered: “We are interested in the Jewish religion simply because we are Jews.”

It should be mentioned that well informed and reliable sources had told us that more than twenty thou­ sand Jews, most of them young peo­ ple, gathered in front of the Moscow Synagogue during last Simchath To­ rah. They danced and sang Yiddish and Hebrew melodies. The same thing occurred in front of the Leningrad Synagogue. Police officers fenced off the adjoining streets from traffic and helped maintain order. It was also ex­ plained to us that this annual event serves as a reunion of relatives and friends who have not seen each other during the year.

After Minchah Rabbi Levine invited us to the “Sholosh Seudoth” repast.

The large table was covered with a white tablecloth. Chalah, sardines, and kvas were served. With the ex­ alted mood typical of this moving Sabbath ritual we joined the Rabbi and the shamosh in the singing of Askinu Seudotha and B ‘ney Heychola.

17

For a moment we even forgot the gray, massive wqlls of the Kremlin and the cruel realities of Jewish life in the “Communist paradise” and as with a magic carpet we were suddenly transferred to the world of Jewish mysticism and Shaboth splendor with the words of the melody “Thou art One and Thy name is One; and who is like Thy people Israel unique on earth?”

ABBI Levine’s Torah discourse at the Seudah Sh’lishith table was a homiletical exposition of a verse in the weekly portion Pinchas: “And Moses spoke unto the Lord, saying: ‘Let the Lord the G-d of the spirits of all flesh, set a man over the congre­ gation’.” He cited the midrosh which elaborates upon the word ruchoth: “Thou recognizes the spirit of each and every one of Thy creatures, there­ fore Thou shalt appoint a person who knows how to deal with every human being according to his understanding and conviction.”^ He made an effort to emphasize to us and to the world, through this midrosh, that the leader cannot ignore the storms of life and must realistically recognize certain conditions and adapt himself as best as possible to these challenges. Quite possibly within these words of Rabbi

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Levine there was a direct plea to us and to world Jewry to understand better his difficult position and to be patient and sympathetic with his historic predicament. Will any of us ever find o u t , the raging conflicts and the inner pangs in the heart of this tragic yet dedicated shepherd of his flock in the capital city of Marx’s dialectic materialism? Completely helpless, and against his own will, he is witnessing the spiritual extinction of three million Jews.

Reb Israel Noach’s chanting of the Havdolah with its timely and comforting words had the effect of a soothing balm in the partially illumi­ nated Moscow Beth Hamidrosh. With his sweet, stirring voice he invoked the memorable words: “Behold, G-d is my deliverance; I will trust, and will not be afraid; truly the Lord is my strength and my song; he has delivered me indeed. Joyfully shall you draw upon the fountains of deliverance. It is for the Lord to bring help. . .” When he began singing the words: “The Jews had light and joy, gladness^ and honor” the Jews surrounding the Bima and we ex­ claimed with extraordinary emphasis: “So be it with us!” What majesty and vitality the Havdolah words convey in the foreboding shadows of the Kremlin!

E M B A SSY O F ISRAEL

S expected, the Israeli diplomats were confined during the Sab­ bath morning services in the fencedoff balcony designed for them. It seems to be Israel’s destiny to be exposed to the Arab boycott in trade and to the Moscow Synagogue boy­ cott of aliyoth. None of the Israeli

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diplomats, including the Ambassador are given aliyoth by the gaboyim of the synagogue. Yet one can scarcely over-estimate the far-reaching spiritual lift and impact which their presence has upon the patience and the hope of their Soviet co-religionists. How strong was the sense of poetic justice JE W IS H LIFE

and Jewish pride which we felt during our Saturday evening visit in the imposing mansion on No. 16 Vesnianskay Street which is occupied by the Israeli Embassy. As one whose grand­ father and father had once hidden from the N.K.V.D. agents in some basements of Moscow, it was a mag­ nificent thrill to enter the Israeli Embassy, the symbol of Jewish re­ naissance in the land which has a notorious history of Jewish pogroms, persecution, and repression. The memorable evening with the brilliant members of the Israeli mission to Israel was initiated with the traditional Havdolah and the singing of “Hamavdil.”

Sunday morning as we parted from the Synagogue and Rabbi Levine, Rabbi Israel Miller once again ex­ tended to the Moscow Rabbi an offi­ cial and a personal invitation to visit the United States as a guest of the Rabbinical Council of America. Rabbi Levine’s answer to this invitation was reluctant and halting. He said: “Well, this is a matter of the future and it will depend very much upon my health, who knows how a person may feel in the fu tu re..

He expressed satisfaction with the

Rabbinical Council of America dele­ gation’s request to the Intourist agency for kosher meals facilities. During this request, which was made by Rab­ bi Miller and a sub-committee which accompanied him to the Intourist office, emphasis was made upon the ever-growing number of Jewish vi­ sitors to the U.S.S.R. who were travelling to the Soviet Union to see their relatives, or for business pur­ poses. The Intourist Commissar listened attentively to the Rabbinical Council of America spokesman and even showed some interest in this matter. Only the future will tell the results of this negotiation.

We told Rabbi Levine how happy and appreciative we were with the good news of the planned re-opening of the Yeshivath Kol Yaakov with permission ;reportedly granted for some twenty out-of-town students to establish residence and to enroll in this yeshivah, the promised publica­ tion of ten thousand new Siddurim, and the permit for unlimited baking of matzoth in Moscow. Rabbi Levine likewise expressed satisfaction with these new concessions of the govern­ ment and permitted us to share the news with our brethren in America^

W E D D IN G S

T IS difficult to believe that Mos­ cow, with a Jewish population exceeding five hundred thousand, has only some one hundred registered Jewish religious weddings and a very limited number of circumcisions. The reasons for this deplorable situation are the economic, social, and other sanctions which are imposed upon those who openly participate in these religious ceremonies. Thus we were

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September-Ocfober, 1965

curious to witness a wedding, Com­ munist-style.

Upon entering Moscow’s famed Wedding Palace we noticed that it was filled to capacity with brides and grooms attired in wedding dress, to­ gether with their parents and friends who waited impatiently for their turn. The Chief Commissar of this Wedding Palace, who gave the im­ pression of a well-mannered and re19

fined individual, received us with a and the desk. The music was silenced. warm smile upon his face in his small The Commissar and the woman rose and modest office. This Communist from their seats and the former made bureaucrat answered many of our the following declaration to bride and questions and informed us that family groom: “In the name of the Soviet life in Soviet Russia was much more Government and in the name of the stable than in the United States of Municipal Soviet Government of Mos­ America. According to his statistics cow, it is my pleasant duty to join America has more than twice as many you officially as husband and wife. divorces in proportion to population I sincerely hope that you understand than the Soviet Union. He also told the high moral standards of our Soviet us that one must wait more than society and our family life. I hope six months for a divorce and that that you will be decent and loyal bride and groom must be at least to one another for the rest of your eighteen years of age. When I asked lives and that you will build and him as to how many wedding cere­ establish a family according to Soviet monies are being held annually in the ideology and Communist principles. churches of Moscow he replied that In this very happy moment of your last year close to two hundred such lives you should also resolve to re­ church weddings were registered with member and appreciate your parents his office. who have done so much for you.”

After this conversation the Chief Then he summoned them to the table Commissar invited us to witness a to sign the marriage document. He wedding ceremony. We entered a asked them whether it was their large room where a recording ma­ free and personal decision to become chine played a Tchaikovsky melody. husband and wife and told the groom The only piece of furniture in this to place the wedding band on the room was a small office desk at which finger of the bride, symbolizing this sat a woman and the Commissar. ceremony, and told them to congra­ Suddenly the doors opened wide and tulate each other. The ceremony was bride and groom accompanied by over and the wedding entourage left their friends entered and remained for the adjoining room where refresh­ standing half-way between the door ments were served.

T BILISI

HTHE lively and attractive city of JL Tbilisi, founded some fifteen cen­ turies ago, is the capital of Georgia.

Out of a general population of some 768,000, thirty thousand are Jewish.

This Caucasian city, only sixty kilo­ meters from Stalin’s birthplace, offered to us a memorable contrast of Jewish life and religious commitment.

20

On an ordinary Monday morning we found in the Sephardic Synagogue several hundred people, young, old, and even children in the Beth Hamidrosh and close to two hundred more people on the second floor of the edifice in the main sanctuary. The decorative, ornamental walls of the synagogue are typically oriental, both JE W IS H LIFE

in shape and in color. It was a refreshing sight to see youngsters of nine, eleven, or fourteen years of age recite by heart K’riath Sh’ma and even Sh’moneh Esrey. What a thrill it was to witness the simple piety, deep devotion, and spiritual ecstasy of these wonderful Jews whose an­ cestors settled in the Caucasian moun­ tains perhaps some twenty-five cen­ turies ago. We communicated with them in Hebrew and in Russian.

Impressive as was the morning attendance, that at the Minchah services Cwas much larger. Between Minchah and Maariv we met the gentle and saintly Hacham Emanuel ben David, who discussed with us some aspects of their religious life in the presence of the Predsedatel, an old Bukhari Jew. We were told of the friendly relations between the Jews and the Georgians. This was really evident as we left the synagogue after the morning services. Men, women, and children carried openly on the main street freshly slaughtered poul­ try, and left and entered the Syna­ gogue in a comparatively relaxed manner, so different from the attitude in Moscow or Leningrad. The shochet, a young man with a long black beard, led us to the Mikveh which is kept in excellent order and also to the Beth Hashechitah.

A large crowd of men, women, and children gathered on the syna­ gogue lawn and virtually surrounded us with curiosity, smiles, and good wishes. Two policemen stood outside, watched the scene, and even offered a salute to us as we entered the Intourist bus. The impression which this moving scene made upon us will long linger in our hearts and minds.

September-October, 1965

ONDITIONS were somewhat dif­ C ferent in the Ashkenazic com­ munity. The synagogue is situated in some remote and foresaken corner of a side street. It has few worshippers and its interior is sorely neglected.

Here too the Predsedatel spoke to us with carefully chosen words in an effort to hide the obvious truth. In contrast, the Sephardic Jews of Tbilisi, Kulash, Tashkent, Samarkand, and Bukhara are passionately dedicated to their religion and tradition. We were even informed that in one of these communities when the authori­ ties sent the bulldozers to raze a synagogue in order to build a road, these Georgian Jews successfully de­ fied the government by prostrating themselves in front of the synagogue and challenging the workers to drive those huge machines over their bodies.

Their courageous existence served as an example and as a lesson for neighboring Jewish communities.

As we returned in the evening to our hotel the editor of Georgia’s leading daily newspaper, a prominent Communist leader of this Republic, awaited us at the entrance of the hotel.

Introducing himself to us in Russian, he asked for an interview. As we sat around a table in one of the adjoining rooms of the hotel lobby he confronted us with a number of questions about our impressions of the Soviet Union and especially of the Republic of Georgia. Rabbi Miller spoke for the entire group and I trans­ lated his answers into Russian and the editor’s questions into English. The editor reminded us of the kindness which the Georgians had shown to their Jewish neighbors during the Nazi holocaust and he expressed deep con­ cern about Viet Nam. He said to us, 21

“You are rabbis and you shape public opinion. When you go back to the U.S.A., you should do everything you can to influence your people to help maintain the peace of the world.”

When he was asked why the Soviet government does not permit schools of religious instruction his reply was, “Our young people are very busy studying and preparing for a career.”

We challenged his answer by telling him that we, the members of the delegation, were not only rabbis but also former students and graduates of leading universities in the U.S.A., indicating that if there is a sincere desire there is really time to do both and even successfully. Our conversa­ tion ended on a friendly tone and we

even extended an invitation to him to visit us in the States.

A notable highlight of our visit to Tbilisi was the singing of “Hovah Nogilah” by a handsome, dark-com­ plexioned Georgian who conducted the orchestra in the hotel dining room.

The Hebrew pronunciation of this non-Jewish singer was almost perfect and the feeling and emotions he ex­ pressed as he rendered this song were truly remarkable. In fact his orches­ tra, which had two Jewish musicians, played for us a few other Jewish melodies. And not the least interesting thing about this experience is that he approached us asking us whether we had any preference for some song or melody.

KIEV

IEV, Russia’s third largest city, Yar, which the celebrated Soviet poet K now has a Jewish population of Evgeny Evtuchenko brought to the 154,000. On two occasions as we crossed the Dnieper River, our guide, a very serious and well informed Communist bearing Ilya Ehrenburg’s biography in his hand, pointed out to us that outstanding Jewish architects designed these bridges. He mentioned their names and told us that they are both recipients of Russia’s highest honor, the Order of Lenin.

We were deeply impressed with the prompt and excellent medical care which was given to one of our col­ leagues who suddenly became very ill in the airplane on the way to Kiev. Three doctors, one at the air­ port and two at the Dnieper Hotel, gave much of their time and effort to help the patient who returned to normalcy at the end of the day.

Our first visit in Kiev was to Babi

22

attention of the world with his stirr­ ing poem in 1961. In lines that have reverberated around the globe, he made known that the 80,000 Jews who were slaughtered and buried there by the Nazis remained without me­ morial, without so much as a tomb­ stone. When our Intourist bus arrived at this ravine we became instantly speechless, frozen. We looked at the site, invoked the Kel Mole, read a few psalms, and were completely over­ whelmed by a disaster and a tragedy which has scarcely a parallel in human suffering. Our guide told us how the Nazis who occupied Kiev in 1941 spread the rumor among the Jews of Kiev that they would be sent to Palestine. The Jews were ordered to bring their belongings to this ravine.

As soon as all were gathered there JE W IS H LIFE

the Nazi machine guns opened fire and the bodies fell into the long ditches which the victims were ordered to dig prior to their death.

Facing Babi Yar, some two hundred meters away, is a new housing de­ velopment with five- or six-story apart­ ment houses. Our guide assured us that the mass grave will not be touched and that a memorial plaque or monu­ ment will be built in the near future.

It is most difficult to explain the reason for the Soviet Government’s delay of this minimum act of decency towards these victims of Nazi besti­ ality. o

intimidations many of these tortured souls followed us with farewell wishes to our Intourist bus.

The motives and the incentives for the harsh attitude of these govern­ ment-appointed gaboyim are not easily explained. Moved beyond words as we were in seeing with our own eyes the disaster which has overtaken our helpless brethren in the Soviet Union, it was all the more painful for us to look at the despicable yet tragic face of the Jewish informer.

It seems that forty-eight years of Communist pressure and terror have deeply corroded the souls of some who have abandoned faith and hope.

/ " \ U R efforts to see the aged Rabbi Abraham Panitch were in Vain, HUS, with aching heart I ap­ as the resourceful and over-zealous proached the Omud, upon the gaboyim refused with meaningless request of these gaboyim, and led subterfuges to give us his address. It in the Maariv service. I drew new was obvious that terror surrounded strength and courage from the timeless the Kiev Synagogue, which we words: “Thou createst day and night; visited for Minchah and Maariv thou rollest away light before dark­ services. The attitude of the synagogue ness, and darkness before light. . . , ” administration was hostile and arro­ “It is he, our King, who redeemed gant. In fact as soon as we entered us from the power of despots, de­ the Kiev Synagogue the chief collabo­ livered us from the grasp of all the rator greeted us with an angry face tyrants . . “remove the adversary and told us not to mingle with the from before us and from behind people. All my efforts to get some us. . . .” We left the Synagogue with information about my wife’s family tormented minds, tears upon our were hampered by these gaboyim. faces, wondering whether during this When an elderly man approached me decade or the next their salvation will to tell me that he was a descendant of be achieved. a well-known Jewish family he was We encountered another painful brutally pushed away from me. experience in Kiev when our guide Yet, members of our delegation did pointed out to us the imposing monu­ succeed in talking to some of the ment to the notorious Ukrainian people and even to some youngsters Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnicki, who stood outside the synagogue. who organized and led the Ukrainian The plight of the Jews in the Kiev Synagogue, the terror written on massacres of 1648—1649 in which their faces, surpassed anything we had three hundred thousand Jews, men, seen in the other communities. How­ women, and children, were tortured ever, in spite of all interferences and and slain. With what feelings we view-

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September-October, 1965

23

ed the monument of this notorious mass murderer, shown seated on a horse, surrounded by elaborate beds of flowers in Kiev’s prominent Chmielnicki Square! While not even a simple

monument or ordinary inscription marks the graves of the eighty thou­ sand Jewish martyrs at Babi Yar, a notorious Cossack criminal is being accorded high honor and recognition.

BUDAPEST

"ORE-W AR Hungary had some 800,-T 000 Jews. The Nazis destroyed some 600,000. The present Jewish population of Hungary is close to one hundred thousand with more than sixty thousand concentrated in Budapest. After the horrible experi­ ence in Kiev it was refreshing to find in Communist Budapest a kosher restaurant, a Jewish hospital with two hundred twenty beds which has an exclusively kosher kitchen, several competent and scholarly rabbis, a Talmud Torah with some one hund­ red and thirty children and even a yeshivah with some twenty-five pu­ pils. We were deeply impressed with the Jewish Kehillah buildings and its complex which includes the Kozintza Synagogue, the kosher butcher shop and the residences of their rabbis and shoch’tim. Even more surprising was the fact that these are partially subsidized by the government. We found a number of youngsters in the synagogue Thursday evening and Friday morning, and even more on Saturday. This is all the more striking in view of the apparent fact that the overwhelming majority of the com­ munity is made up of middle-aged and older people.

Rabbi Bergman and I were invited

by Rabbi Moshe Weiss to address the community on Saturday morning.

Attendance was impressive and their 24

appreciation for our effort was most moving. At the Seudah ShTishith Rabbi Shlomo Bergman, son of Rabbi Bernard Bergman, a student of the Beth Hatalmud in Brooklyn, held the congregation spellbound with a Torah pilpul. The lomdim of the community were surprised to discover that Amer­ ica is producing outstanding young Torah scholars.

Although the leaders of the com­ munity were not tod optimistic about the future, yet it was a significant revelation for us to see with our own eyes that co-existence of an active Jewish community is possible with a sympathetic satellite state.

A S I sat in the plane which took -l m . me from Budapest to Prague and then to Amsterdam I could not help but think of the mystical pathos of Jewish life and destiny. Fortyseven years after the Communist revolution which unleashed in its wake an unprecedented wave of anti-religious propaganda, repression, and persecution, there are still even young people, who although born in an atheistic community, have a flame of loyalty and a sense of be­ longing to a heritage which has weathered the tempestuous storms of world history. Viewing Jewish life behind the Iron Curtain one is temptJE W ISH LIFE

ed to agree with Bialik’s memorable opening lines in his “The Mathmid”: There are abandoned corners of our exile, Remote, forgotten cities of disper-

.

Where still in secret burns our an­ cient light, Where G-d has saved a remnant from disaster.

There, brands that glimmer in a ruin of ashes, Pent and unhappy souls maintain the vigil— Spirits grown old beyond the count of time.

This light ahd flame can and will be­ come brighter as we Jews of the Free World dedicate ourselves to the simple proposition that not a single day must pass by without some prudent and judicious efforts on be­ half of these martyrs. Quite true though it may be that Soviet Jewry, constituting only a little more than 1.1 percent of the country’s populace, furnishes 14.7 percent of the coun­ try’s doctors, 10.4 percent of the lawyers and judges, 10 percent of

September-October, 1965

the scientists and perhaps even 15 percent of the intellectuals, yet we cannot overlook the fact that re­ ligiously and culturally they remain the most mistreated ethnic group in the U.S.S.R. We must demand that within the general pattern of Soviet law and policy Jews be accorded the same religious and cultural privileges which are given to their other religious minorities. Our protests and pleas of course must be prudent and tactful, without exaggerations and unjustified accusations. We must detach the Jewish problem in Russia and our righteous concern about it from the total pattern of the~Cold War. The Soviet authorities can and must be convinced that the granting of these rights to its Jewish minority will in no way interfere with their social experiment. Until these rights are granted to our brethren in Russia not a single stone must be left un­ turned and not a single day must pass without some meaningful effort and tangible deed on their behalf in the Free World.

25

The Nature of Repentance

By NACHUM M. BRONZNICK

T HAS been noted by Rabbi Yitzchok Arama, in his famous work Akedath Yitzchok, that it is the calendar, with its Shaboth and vari­ ous holidays, which gives faithful and concrete expression to the ikkorim, the basic tenets of Judaism. This idea has been re-echoed, in modern times, by Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch in his memorable statement: “The catechism of the Jew is his calendar.*’ As a result, Arama, of all medieval Jewish thinkers with the notable ex­ ception of Crescas, comes to the startling but logical conclusion that the concept of Teshuvah, repentance, represented by the holy day of Yom Kippur, constitutes an ikkor in Juda­ ism. Treating repentance as an Ikkor needs no elaborate justification. In view of the innumerable sayings of our Sages proclaiming the uniqueness and supremacy of repentance, it could hardly be otherwise.

Considering the nature of repen­ tance, we find opinions varying as to what are its constituent elements.

It is true that the Sages in the Talmud assert that a mere hirhur teshuvah (a repenting thought) is sufficient to transform an evildoer into a tzadik. Strikingly enough, this view holds true even in the rigors of the Halochah. If a man, for example, con­ tracted marriage on the representa­ tion that he is righteous, the marriage is validated even though he may be known to be an evildoer because he

I

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may have had a repenting thought at that moment.

This assertion, however, has ref­ erence only to a sinner’s standing in the present and future. But insofar as the sinner’s past is concerned, it cannot be rectified by such a rudi­ mentary form of repentance. Such a repentant sinner will still remain subject to punishment for his past mis­ deeds even though his status has changed to that of a tzadik. Only a fully constituted Teshuvah, consist­ ing of all the necessary elements of re­ pentance, is able to change the past standing of a sinner and thereby re­ move all liability due to past sins.

HAT are, then, the necessary elements that go into the mak­ ing of repentance? As indicated, there are various views, differing both as to number and as to proper sequence.

They range from a mere two to an impressive array of twenty in number as enumerated and described by Rabbi Bachya Ibn Pakuda in his Chovoth Ha-levovoth, or as differently de­ scribed by Rabbi Yonah Gerondi in his Sha’arey Teshuvah, It is, however, the consensus of opinion that repen­ tance is basically composed of four elements: (1) charotah (regret), (2) azivath ha-chet (abandonment of sin), (3) kabolah (pledging oneself), and (4) vidui (confession).

Although there undeniably exists a measure of overlapping among these tt

JE W ISH LIFE

constituent elements, there is no dupli­ cation. Each one is independent of the others and is there to serve a distinct and separate purpose. It may appear on the surface that when a man has decided to cease committing a certain sin, it presupposes that he is remorseful of having done it in the past. But this is not always so in reality. All too often do we meet an upright person who, in talking about his school years, will boast with a good deal of glee and zest about the mischief he perpetrated in the class­ room which “drove the teacher crazy,” Certainly, Miis individual would not dream o r behaving now in such an objectionable manner, yet he will not experience the least bit of contri­ tion for the wrongs he has done. Here we have a glaring example of aban­ donment of sin without entailing any regret of the past. This is, in fact, a commonplace occurrence. Growing old, many persons will break with their sinful past, but will nevertheless, relish, secretly or even openly, the thought of the so-called “good times” and “fun” which they had in their younger days.

Hence abandonment of sin alone cannot have a retroactive effect and will not purge the sinner of the poison which his past sins introduced into his inner spiritual system. Only by means of Charotah—genuine regret for one’s past wrongdoing—can the deleterious after effects of sins long past be effectively cleansed. Thus, a change of attitude with regard to the past is called for and not merely a change of action in the present alone.

Conversely, even a state of true remorse and shame for past sin does not imply that abandonment of sin will necessarily follow in due course. How frequently does one September-October, 1965

experience shame and contrition for his misdeeds, but nevertheless fail to summon sufficient courage and to marshal the necessary strength to convert one’s feelings into action and change bad ways. Regret alone may bring about, at most, a dampening of the dubious pleasure from the sins which will be committed subsequent­ ly. This may lessen the severity of the sins, but it is of limited benefit and is by itself wholly inadequate.

That is why repentance, in addition to the element of regret, calls for the abandonment of sin in the present as well.

HIS brings us to the third con­ stituent element of repentance, namely, Kabolah, pledging oneself never to repeat a particular sin. Upon closer analysis, we will discover that Kabolah serves a dual purpose in the process and reality of repentance.

It is the natural tendency of the average sinner to seek excuses and to fix the blame for his wrongdoing partly, if not wholly, on circumstances much beyond his control. Without fully realizing it, the sinner thus cir­ cumscribes and minimizes the opera­ tion of the principle of free will. By making free will inapplicable to many deeds and situations, he is, in effect, denying the belief in free will. How­ ever, through Kabolah, with its solemn promise never to repeat a particular sin, no matter what the circumstances will happen to be, the sinner palpably reaffirms his belief that man is a free agent, that it is within his power to control his actions. Without an avowal that man is the master of his moral destiny, as represented by Kabolah, repentance would become an exercise in futility.

Kabolah serves yet another purpose.

T

27

According to a widely-known view of the Sages, each individual Jew is under oath to obey every command­ ment of the Torah by virtue of the fact that the soul of every Jew, born and yet to be born, was present at Sinai where G-d made a covenant with the Jewish people. By wilful sin­ ning, however, a Jew, in a sense, abrogates the covenant and rescinds his oath not to sin. Consequently, there is a need, upon repentance, to re-establish the broken covenant with regard to the particular command­ ment in question and to reaffirm one’s Sinaitic oath. This is accomplished through the element of Kabolah, as Kabolah is indeed the term usually employed to denote the acceptance of the obligations of a covenant.

INALLY, we come to Vidui, con­ fession. Vidui is essentially a verbal declaration in which the sinner acknowledges before G-d his guilt in having sinned. It must also include, according to the regnant opinion, a plea to G-d for forgiveness. Confes­ sion, with its seeking of Divine re­ conciliation, is crucial to repentance because thereby man avows that sin is a wrong committed against G-d’s will and His order. For it is quite possible for a man to be truly sorry for his past sin, to renounce those sins and to vow in all earnestness to avoid them in the future without relating all these feelings to G-d. A man may undergo the effects of the three elements of repentance for pure­ ly selfish motives by considering his misdeeds merely as inherent wrongs; or he may do so for the sake of ulterior or utilitarian reasons. Only through confession is repentance ele­ vated from a mere monologue to the level of a dialogue, from a man

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28

talking to himself to a man relating to his Creator.

Since sin is evil because it is con­ trary to the Divine Will, repentance cannot by itself automatically produce atonement. It is G-d who must ulti­ mately accept the repentance and re­ spond with His pardon. It thus is analogous to a crime committed against a fellow man, which cannot be removed by any kind of repentance without asking and obtaining the forgiveness of the aggrieved. Similarly, confession, in addition to its being an admission of guilt, must contain a prayer beseeching God’s forgiveness.

HERE is also another considera­ tion which will fully explain why a petition for atonement constitutes an integral part of confession. That repentance is able to have a retro­ active effect, in undoing one’s past status, is nothing but a miracle per­ formed by the grace of G-d. For only G-d, in his inscrutable omnipotence, is able to undo a fact and reconstitute the past.

This is what is indicated in a wellknown illuminating passage wherein the rabbis assert that repentance as a remedy for sin stands outside the categories of Torah, Prophets, and Writings. Repentance was given to man by G-d Himself as the remedy for all sin. It had to be given by a unique Divine gift because its power defies all the concepts which are characteristic of the three aspects of the Holy Scriptures.

Because repentance is a Divine gift, working in a miraculous way, atonement cannot follow of its own accord. Only that which forms part of the natural order operates auto­ matically, by cause and effect. But the power of repentance to undo a

T

JE W IS H LIFE

past condition retroactively, being a phenomenon contrary to the laws of nature, must be repeatedly reasserted

by Divine fiat. That is why atone­ ment must be granted each time anew.

Consequently, the repentant sinner must include a prayer to this effect as part of his confession, thereby ac­ knowledging that atonement comes about by Divine grace and does not belong to him as his natural right.

HUS we see that repentance fun­ damentally consists of a three­ pronged, a tridirectional, attack. It directs itself to one’s past through “re­ gret,” to the present thought “aban­ donment of sin,” and to the future through “pledging oneself.” If left at that, however, repentance will reduce itself to a mere psychological phenom­ enon of an attempt to engage in a self-corrective endeavor. In order to broaden the dimensions of repentance and uplift it to a spiritual level, it must be related to G-d by means of “confession,” which will charge it with a new vitality.

In the light of the last remark we

^

may be in a position to explain Maimonides’ failure to list Teshuvah as a mitzvath assey, a positive com­ mandment, listing Vidui instead— a difficulty which has generated a variety of solutions by his com­ mentators. What prompted Rambam to do so may be the fact that Vidui is not only a component part of repentance but it also serves, as said, to transmute the entire character of Teshuvah from a mere human attempt at self-improvement to a spiritual experience of a reconciliation with G-d. Vidui is thus the soul which gives life and meaning to the body of repentance. Viewed from this van­ tage point, Maimonides is well justi­ fied in classifying the mitzvah of re­ pentance under the heading of Vidui.

In the final analysis, it is Vidui which transforms repentance into what it was intended to be— a complete re­ turn to G-d by re-establishing the lines of communications with Him, which will bring about ultimate re­ conciliation between a man who has estranged himself from G-d and his G-d who has been waiting all the time to receive Him*

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By Dr. Moses Tendler W H A T DO ES JE W ISH Y O U TH REALLY W A N T ?

By Rabbi Pinchas Stolper THE D IV O R C E PROBLEM

By Rabbi Melech Schachter THE JE W IS H -C H R IST IA N D IA LO G U E: A N O T H E R L O O K

By Rabbi Norman Lamm THE PRESIDENT'S ED U C A T IO N BILL: A JE W IS H AP P RA ISA L

By Dr. Marvin Schick J U D A IS M A N D FREE EN Q U IR Y

By Rabbi Nachum L. Rabinovitch THE PROBLEM O F C O N V E R S IO N TO D A Y

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30

JE W ISH LIFE

Strasbourg: A n Appraisal

By JOSEPH KARASICK

After a generation of effort keyed to outer Jewish defense, the World Jewish Congress now discovers that the challenge to Jewish existence lies within. Viewing the recent Strasbourg assemblagef an orthodox Jewish leader assays attempts to re-orient the W JC to counter "the suicide of the soul."

w r r HE World Jewish Congress is JL the Jewish parliament of the Diaspora,” said Dr. Nahum Goldmann to me, during one of the dis­ cussions which we had in Strasbourg at the recent meeting of the World Executive of the WJC. This organi­ zation, he continued, remains today the only medium through which representatives of all shades of opinion from Jewish communities throughout the entire world can communicate with each other, exchange ideas, and, most important, let one another know that they are not alone.

The Strasbourg meeting demons­ trated that Dr. Goldmann’s claim is not without basis. With representa­ tives of Jewish communities of many lands attending, and with spokesmen for a wide cross-section of Jewish ideologies participating, the compre­ hensive character of the World Jew­ ish Congress was evident. One is tempted to say that the existence of the organization is justified for this reason alone. But one cannot disSeptember-October, 1965

pose of the raison d’etre of the WJC so simply, tacitly approving its ex­ istence and purposes. The fact must be dealt with that here is an agency of wide influence, an entity whose impact on Jewish affairs and life, already substantial, may well take on greater proportions in coming years.

Its claim to be representative of world Jewry may well gain increas­ ing recognition through coming years.

Considerable financial resources are at its disposal. And yet—not only are certain prominent organizations not affiliated with WJC but the central agencies of orthodox Jewry too are not within the World Jewish Congress “umbrella.” To this extent, the “Jewish parliament” concept falls short of fulfillment.

Let me hasten to say that the World Jewish Congress does include im­ portant orthodox Jewish bodies, name­ ly the world organizations of Mizrachi-Hapoel Hamizrachi and Poalei Agudath Israel. These, however, being particular movements within Ortho31

doxy, do not have such representa* tive communal character as pertains to the congregational and rabbinic bodies. Undoubtedly the two afore­ mentioned groups play a significant role within the WJC and so also do the individual orthodox Jewish figures associated with other consti­ tuents of the Congress. But the fact remains that Orthodoxy, as Ortho­ doxy, the core of the Jewish world, is not definitively part of the World Jewish Congress process.

N taking stock of the World Jew­ ish Congress with these factors in mind, one must not fail to take into consideration the complex per­ sonality of its founder, leader, and dominating figure, Dr. Nahum Goldmann. One must view the role which he-it (for it is impossible at times to distinguish one from the other) has played in recent Jewish history.

One must assay the trends shaping the organization’s future, and, in the light of the various factors, examine the question whether orthodox Jewry, through its representative organs, can have a direct or indirect relation­ ship with the Congress.

My own presence at the Stras­ bourg conference was in the capacity

I

of an “observer” in behalf of the Committee on Scope and International Affairs of the Conference of Presi­ dents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Recently, the abovementioned Committee recommended that the Presidents Conference en­ large its frame of reference to in­ clude international areas of concern in addition to Israel, heretofore the main field of interest. The recom­ mendation was approved. There fol­ lowed a proposal to consider pos­ sible affiliation of the Presidents Con­ ference with “international Jewish bodies,” and thereafter came an invi­ tation from Dr. Goldmann, duly ac­ cepted, to designate two observers to the forthcoming Strasbourg meet­ ing of the World Jewish Congress Executive.

It need hardly be said that while there, I also wore the yarmulke, literally, of my office with the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Availing myself of the opportunity to confer with other orthodox participants, I took par­ ticular care to explore their views and was thus in an advantageous po­ sition to appraise the World Jewish Congress from a traditional Jewish vantage point.

F R O M N E A R A N D FAR

T J RESENT at the Conference, as - t indicated above, were delegates from all over the world—many of them top names in their respective communities. Among them it is in­ teresting to note the following: the president of the Associated Jewish Organizations of Argentina—the DAJA; the secretary of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry; the pres32

ident of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Austria; the vice president of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Brazil; the chairman of the National Executive Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress; the president of the Central African Jew­ ish Board of Deputies; the president of the Consistoire Central des Israé­ lites de France, the main Jewith repJE W IS H LIFE

resentative body of France; the sec­ retary general of the Central Council of Jews of Germany; officers of the British Board of Deputies; represen­ tatives of all shades from Israel— from Mapai to Poale Agudath Israel; the president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities; the Chief Rabbi of Rumania; leaders of communities of Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, United States, Yugoslavia, India, etc. In all, communal bodies of over forty countries were represented.

Dominating every session which he attended, and constantly the center of interest, was Dr. Nahum Goldmann. He is truly the “last of the Mohicans,” who more than any one leader living today represents the transition from the generation of outstanding figures—and rugged in­ dividualists—of yesteryear to the new type of “organization men” we have today. With his restless, agile, and creative mind and untiring persis­ tence, Goldmann has made an extra­ ordinary impact on Jewish affairs, de­ veloping a network of key positions in world Zionism, the WJC, German reparations, CO JO, President’s Con­ ference^and a variety of other chan­ nels.

N evaluating, against the back­ drop of Jewish life today, the work of the WJC in the years since its creation in 1936, one must realize that the human mind is short on memory and long on supposition.

Too few of us think back to a world without the Jewish state of Israel, and certainly most of us have forgot­ ten those sad, bewildering days of the middle 30’s and 40’s. Nahum Goldmann gathered around him in Geneva in 1936 the remnants of the Committee of Delegates, which had

I

September-Ocfober, 1965

been originally formed at the close of World War I to present the prob­ lems of the Jewish minority rights in Europe to the Versailles Peace Con­ ference, in an attempt to organize and represent the Jews of the world.

In a world which made up a mourn­ ful symphony of depression, a world marked by terror and Hitler in Ger­ many—and Father Coughlin in Amer­ ica; by the unending succession of perfidious “White Papers” from the British Foreign Office; the despair and Blum in France; Peron in Argen­ tina; the treacherous Mufti in the Middle East; Mussolini strutting in Italy; Stalin glowering in the Kremlin; in the midst of all this the World Jewish Congress ambitiously pro­ claimed that it was organized to assure the survival and foster the unity of the Jewish people. To that end it would coordinate the efforts of its affiliated organizations with respect to the political, social, and economic problems of the Jewish people; secure the rights, status, and interests of Jews and Jewish com­ munities and defend them wherever they are denied, violated, or imperiled; encourage and assist the creative de­ velopment of Jewish social and cultural life throughout the world; and represent and act on behalf of its affiliated organizations before gov­ ernmental, inter-governmental, and other international authorities with respect to matters which concern the Jewish people as a whole.

And come into being it did—with the result that sixty-one representa­ tive Jewish organizations, large and small, did become affiliated with the WJC. During dark, difficult years the Congress gave communities through­ out the world, if nothing more, an address to write and turn to.

33

How much WJC actiially has ac­ complished during its 29 year-long existence is hard to say at this point, but there is no denying that during this time it informed, advised, cajol­ ed, threatened, and warned Jew and non-Jew alike of the happenings to the Jewish community in the Di­ aspora. Its various headquarters in London, Geneva, Paris and Rome formed a sensitive radar attuned to the status of the Jew the world over. The guiding hand and spirit were those of Nahum Goldmann, and like a computer he absorbed all the information coming into headquarters, simultaneously issuing the corre­ sponding directives.

FTER the war the establishment A of the State of Israel did not foreclose the activities of the World Jewish Congress, but on the contrary, where Israel embassies and legations could not act without compromising the State of Israel, the various repre­ sentatives of the WJC throughout the world could, and did, act freely, and many contacts were made by Gold­ mann and his key men which stood them in good stead in later years.

Nevertheless, with the achievement and reality of the Jewish State, the role of the World Jewish Congress was far overshadowed and it began to languish, with much more head than body. A like development over­ took the world Zionist movement,

with Israeli leaders dominating the center of the Jewish stage to the min­ imization of even so dominant a figure of Diaspora Zionism as Dr. Nahum Goldmann. It was at this point of his career that Dr. Goldmann achieved his most decisive accomplishment, a veritable tour de force—the success­ ful negotiation, practically singlehanded, of Jewish material claims against Germany.

This was a task from which others shrank. To negotiate with the suc­ cessor government to that which had set itself to extirpate the Jewish peo­ ple, which had brought unimaginable suffering and death to millions of Jewish men, women, and children, to deal with a German government at all, not to speak of treating with them in terms of material, monetary loss—this was something abhorrent to all. It was, no doubt, fully as abhor­ rent to Goldmann, yet he knew that if the culprits were not to remain with their stolen wealth, the job must be done. He did it.

Establishing the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Ger­ many as his instrument for the pur­ pose, Goldmann secured the restora­ tion by the government of West Ger­ many of over $5,000,000,000 to indi­ vidual Jewish survivors of the Nazi holocaust, and to the State of Israel and various Jewish institutions as moral heirs to the heirless.

CH ANG ED GOALS

ITH this achievement Dr. Goldmann’s career took on fresh volition and the enterprises in which he was engaged, particularly the

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34

World Jewish Congress, assumed new substance. His key position with re­ gard to the reparations funds was nat­ urally not to the disadvantage of his JE W IS H LIFE

various undertakings. The World Jewish Congress blossomed with re­ newed activity; but soon it became apparent that there were grave ills in the Jewish world which the ac­ customed type of activity was in­ herently incapable of solving.

Mention should be made at this point of the formation in 1958 of the Conference of Jewish Organiza­ tions—COJO. Another of Dr. Goldmann’s creations, COJO represented a renewed attack on the problem of Jewish unity by bringing B’nai B’rith together with the forces grouped in the World Jewish Congress. Whether or not it was Dr. Goldmann’s aspi­ ration to enlist the participation in COJO also of the American Jewish Committee and of its French and British counterparts, the Alliance Israelite Universelle and the AngloJewish Association, such participa­ tion did not materialize, the latter three organizations remaining group­ ed in a unit of their own, the Con­ sultative Council of Jewish Organi­ zations (CCJO). On the other hand, the participation in COJO of the representative organizations of Ortho­ doxy was not solicited.

With these limitations, COJO main­ tained an ad hoc status* serving as an advisory or consultative body rather than as a functioning organi­ zation. Its primary role has been to demonstrate the importance of hav­ ing a Jewish world body which could speak responsibly for world Jewry— something that even the State of Israel could not, and perhaps should not, do; and something that, by the fact of the establishment of COJO, the World Jewish Congress itself ap­ parently then felt it could not do— as yet. Perhaps the most important September-October, 1965

action of COJO was to terminate its formal existence early this year, re­ constituting itself into what may yet be Dr. Goldmann’s most ambitious and far-reaching program, the Me­ morial Foundation for Jewish Cul­ ture.

EFORE discussing this new undertaking, let us return to Stras­ bourg for a few moments, to better understand both the significance of the Foundation and its relationship to the World Jewish Congress.

Since the WJC is organized into four basic commissions—Budget and Finance Commission, Organizational Commission, International Affairs Commission, and Cultural Commis­ sion—the Strasbourg agenda naturally revolved about debates on these four topics.

The deliberations of the Budget and Finance Commission are not germane to our present discussion.

The general political debate of the International Affairs Commission in­ cluded discussions on human rights, West Germany’s statute of limitations on the prosecution of Nazi criminals, Soviet Jewry, and antisemitism. One was very impressed with the calibre of speakers from all over the world, who carried on the debate at a high level, and whose discussions were both informative and sophisticated.

The session devoted to organiza­ tional problems concerned itself with the particular issues facing the WJC itself, and was routine up to the point when a “bombshell was ex­ ploded.” One of the most important executives of the Congress made the statement (doubtless with the knowl­ edge of Dr. Goldmann and other leaders) that the WJC cannot con-

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munities which are in physical and material danger as a mother protects her child. But, it was made plain, there is a deeper apprehension and discon­ tent—the fear that “before we shall be successful in destroying the antisemite, assimilation will destroy us.”

Said delegate after delegate: We speak of antisemitism in Russia, but simultaneously we fear for a com­ munity in danger of being spiritually destroyed within one or two gene­ rations. We speak of the defense of the corpus Judaica, and we fear the suicide of the soul.

And one speaker after another— from India, from Rhodesia, from Australia, from Israel, from Rumania, from Argentina—pleads with the Ex­ ecutive: “Help us; send us teachers; send us rabbis; send us shoch’tim and mohalim!” Those without yarmulkes speak of the danger to Jew­ ish “culture;” those with, of the danger to Yiddishkeit. And I listen in wonder and ask, are these then the old secularists of the WJC, who would run the other way at the mere mention of the word “religion?”

And when Goldmann takes the floor and makes the by-now famous state­ ment: “I find myself coming closer and closer to the Orthodox point of view—and this worries me;” and PEAKER after speaker thereafter speaks of the greater importance of intoned one central theme: There synagogues than Yiddish in Soviet is no question about the WJC’s con­ Russia; and announces his intention to tinuing deep interest in, and practical consult with Roshey Yeshivah as well concern for, problems of Jewish de­ as college professors; and speaks with fense—whether these apply to anti­ reverence of such a person as Rabbi semitism in Germany, the difficult life Joseph B. Soloveitchik; then one sees of Jews in Russia, anti-Jewish feelings quite clearly that we have a Con­ in Argentina, or any other such situ­ gress that is operating under a set of ation. The WJC, all insisted, still must guidelines much different from those stand ready to alert and protect com­ of heretofore.

tinue to remain in the shadow of “individuals and persbnalities” (sic Goldmann), but must look ahead and reflect the complete evolvement of democratic structure, and must pro­ vide for future leadership! The under­ lying fear of “after Goldmann, what?” was expressed, with the view that the WJC should start providing for that day when their central figure would no longer be around, and with inti­ mation that it would be wise to pre­ pare for that eventuality as quickly as possible. I was told that this was the first time that such “heresy” was expressed.

The most important sessions—and here I come to the crux of this article —were the debates of the Cultural Commission. The debate was started by a distinguished orthodox Jew, Prof.

Andre Neher, professor at the Uni­ versity of Strasbourg and head of the French Section of the WJC. A bril­ liant personality, this striking fullbearded and yarmulka-capped figure set the tone for the debate which followed. (Considered one of the leading Jewish intellectuals in the world, Prof. Neher will, I feel, certain­ ly be heard from more and more in the days to come.)

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JE W IS H LIFE

}

FIELD FO R O R T H O D O X A C T IO N ?

7

H P H E orthodox figures present, with JL whom I discussed these expres­ sions, corroborated my own observa­ tions. This leading to the question of participation in WJC by forces of Orthodoxy, they explained their own association with the WJC as motivat­ ed by the feeling that thereby they can bring a Torah-committed influence to bear on its direction. Furthermore, they maintained, their association with the Congress lends more weight to their own activities. According to these orthodox leaders, WJC will now place primary accent on cultural, religious, and educational activities.

Whereas the Congress previously functioned as a political organization geared to external Jewish defense, it is now evolving into a movement of in­ ternal Jewish life, addressed to Jewish perpetuation. And whereas the threat facing world Jewry at the time of the four days of the WJC was primarily antisemitism, it is now felt in WJC circles that antisemitism today is more a nuisance than a danger, and that the real problem now is that of Jewish culture and education. The Congress, they said, is deeply con­ cerned with the fact that while we Jews possess a wealth of intellect and talent, there is a shocking disinterest in Jewish affairs and ignorance of the Jewish heritage among the “in­ telligentsia.”

These exponents of Orthodoxy in the WJC and advocates of the WJC in Orthodoxy urged me to convey to the leaders and rank and file of American orthodox Jewry the need to take active leadership in such col­ lective Jewish agencies as the WJC. Among all Jewish circles* they noted, it is becoming recognized that the September-October, 1965

orthodox Jew alone has the answers to the problems which are plaguing world Jewry today. It is the ranks of orthodox Jewry which have remained steadfast in the face of assimilation.

It is the orthodox who can supply the leadership personnel which are so desparately needed the Jewish world over.

And, they maintained, an instru­ ment such as the World Jewish Con­ gress can serve incomparably for the strengthening of world Jewish life on Torah foundations—if orthodox Jewry awakens to the opportunity.

Dr. Goldmann, himself, bade ortho­ dox Jews to come out from within their “fortresses of isolation and join forces with their fellow Jews.” (Dr. Goldmann’s outlook has not yet ripen­ ed to the point of calling upon the non-orthodox to come out from with­ in their fortresses of separation from the fundamentals of Jewishness and join forces with the ranks of ortho­ dox Jewry.)

N HIS memorable closing address to the Conference, Goldmann laid out the guidelines of what may be his last, and greatest, contribution to world Jewry. Having run the ga­ mut from minority rights to Zionism to German reparations to Jewish poli­ tical unity, Dr. Nahum Goldmann is now embarking on the capstone of his long career—a major offensive against Jewish indifference and ignor­ ance. Through his newly formed Jewish Memorial Foundation, he is working to establish a central instru­ ment “for clearing the great problems of Jewish survival.” After a lifetime of effort concentrated on the problems of the Jew in relation to the sur-

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37

rounding world, he has been com­ pelled to realize that, in the mean­ while, the inner life of a great portion of the Jewish people has been drained of Jewish content. He is appalled by the indifference of Jews to their heri­ tage, to Jewish existence itself. He is concerned, too, by the complete lack of understanding about Judaism and Jewish history among non-Jews, even the most intelligent.

The key to the problem, Dr. Goldmann has belatedly concluded—and with him many others who have gone through a like evolution—is Jewish

education. So, a vast frontal attack is to be made through the medium of education at all levels. To this end the Foundation—with several millions of dollars of material claims funds as its initial basis—will spare neither effort nor expense. An international advisory group consisting of the out­ standing contemporary Jewish think­ ers and leaders is projected, to guide the program of the Foundation. To be included in this group, it is Dr. Goldmann’s hope, will be Roshey Yeshivoth and leading figures in ortho­ dox Jewish affairs.

*

HAT shall be the response of orthodox Jewish leadership to this project? Is it a case, as some see it, of an opportunity unique m our time for traditional forces to secure a ■—perhaps the—key role in a decisive theater of world Jewish endeavor? Or is it, as others may fear, a case of giving a hechsher to yet another enter­ prise for the siphoning of Torah strength into non-Torah channels?

The answer will not be easy to find. And it will not be found until there will have been determined just wliat is th&.f foundation” of the Jew­ ish Memorial Foundation. Education, all may now agree* is the key to Jewish need-—but ?o|i what must Jew­ ish education rest,If it. is to be truly Jewish many mil­ lions, after all, have been expended on Jewish education in recent de­ cades throughout the world. But the only Jewish education 'that has borne meaningful results has been Torah education — education of, with, and for Torah belief and commitment.

Let no one compound this great Jew­ ish error of our time by pouring yet

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*

more millions, yet more elaborately organized effort, down the drain.

Dr. Goldmann and the forces led by him in the World Jewish Congress and the Jewish Memorial Foundation are undoubtedly motivated by a sense of profound Jewish need. Groping with sincere purpose for an answer to the Jewish dilemma—a dilemma which all their efforts heretofore have only made all the more stark— they have envisioned a program which seems aimed in the right direction.

But the right direction is not good enough; a miss, in this case, is as good as a mile; the program must be aimed at and reach the precise target if it is to really work. Torah Judaism and Torah Jews must be included to make it work.

HE plans of Dr. Goldmann, then, depend upon to a great extent orthodox Jewry if they are to achieve their purpose. But orthodox Jewry, in its turn, must view with clear understanding the potential in these plans for Torah achievement. It would be well for both sides to ponder the matter, and ponder it very deeply.

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JE W IS H LIFE

A Story The 'Tzillender'

By GERSHEN MARINBACH

ALMAN MELNICK stood in he opened a small store on Grand Z front of the hat store on Delancey Street, on the lower East Side of Man­ Street and gazed at its display. There hattan, and soon managed to earn a were soft fedoras with turned-down brims; proud homburgs, stiff and for­ mal; round black derbies, elegant and charming; and then, to the right, standing proudly above them all, was the majestic “tzillender,” the high silk “top hat,” king of the entire window.

Melnick would never pass the store by without stopping to gaze at the display and to cast an envious glance at the top hat. This time, however, he walked into the store and asked that a top hat be shown to him. He fitted one for size, regarded himself in the mirror, tipped it a bit to the side, and ordered the salesman to pack it up.

A You see, Zalman Melnick had just been elected gabbay of the Beth Knesseth Haelyon, popularly referred to as the “Big Shool,” and it was custom­ ary for the officers of the synagogue to wear a “Prince Albert” and a “tzillender” at services.

It was in 1923 that Zalman Melnick, his wife, and his two boys had come to the United States. They were among the last to be permitted to leave So­ viet Russia. A watchmaker by trade, September-October, 1965

comfortable living. Pondering a choice of synagogues among the many in the area, Zalman selected as0his place of worship the biggest and most impor­ tant within his vicinity, one that had a prominent rabbi, a well-known can­ tor, and a choir. This step represented the materialization of a dream that Melnick had harbored in his breast since those early years when he had been an apprentice in Odessa, a city renowned for its beautiful shools. It had been his greatest pleasure, from week to week, to sit in the synagogue and to open the gatei^ of his 'Soul td the sacred words-arid ihiisibfilling the sanctuary. A lthough'he returned to his native city after having mastered his trade, had married and pursued his occupation, the spirit of the syna­ gogues of Odessa never left him. from the very day he A LMOST joined the Big Shool, Zalman be­ gan to take an active, part in the syn­ agogue’s affairs. He started with dis­ tributing and collecting Siddurim and Chumoshim and advanced to passing around the snuff box while the chazon 39

was chanting the repetition of the Tefillah. During the reading of the Torah, he was put in charge of record­ ing the pledges of the honored ones in the specially devised card file oper­ ated by a system of alphabetical tapes.

He was there to open the synagogue in the morning, even before the shamosh arrived, and saw that the place was adequately ventilated and heated according to the season. In a thousand ways Zalman Melnick made himself useful, and with a love that sprang from his soul.

Melnick’s devotion to the synagogue was greatly appreciated by his fellow congregants, and at the next election meeting they honored him with the position of gabbay. His elevation to this office of warden was an unex­ pected surprise to Melnick. He sat there stunned for the moment, feeling the glow of pleasure spreading from the chambers of his heart throughout every part of his body to the thinnest capillaries of his fingers and toes. A beautiful blanket of peace and con­ tentment enveloped him; it was the realization of a secret dream that he had never dared to expand upon, even in his fantasies. Limply, he received the congratulations of his fellow mem­ bers and walked home slowly in a sweet, mellow haze, reaching his house only by instinct.

He entered his apartment, sat down with his coat on, and said to his wife softly, “Malkeh, they made me a gabbay,” and his eyes glistened while his lips turned upward into a sweet smile.

It was on the next day that Zalman Melnick went to his friend, Aaron Cans, on Stanton Street, a custom tailor, and ordered his “Prince Albert,” and bought his “tzillender” on Delancey Street.

40

ND it was that on Sabbath mornings Zalman would don his M cutaway and striped trousers, carefully so

place the high hat at an angle on top of his head and march proudly to the synagogue, holding his two sons by the hand. His wife, Malkeh, would follow later on and would look down from the ladies’ gallery to cover him with glances of pride.

Zalman’s new position elevated his status in the community. As he walked to and from shool, with his head held high, as befitting the dignity of the “tzillender,” the people would greet him with a special ring in the “Gut Shabbos,” and he, in turn, responded warmly, and yet with a reserve com­ mensurate with his standing.

Ah! If time could only stand still at that moment of our greatest triumph and remain so frozen forever. But, no, such is not to be decreed. It may re­ main so only in our imagination; but in reality the change begins to operate almost at once. We may not be con­ scious of it at the moment, but when we look back after an interval of time, it is no longer the same. And so it was for Zalman Melnick. The years slipped by, bringing with them their changes. The East Side no longer re­ mained the center of Jewish life. The more affluent members moved out to better neighborhoods; the buildings looked as if they were ready to crum­ ble, and the synagogue itself, once an edifice of beauty and strength, took on a dejected air, mourning for its lost yesterdays. Zalman, however, re­ mained the same. Of course, the years did not leave him unscathed. His wellcombed black beard was now white, his frame a little stooped, and his walk more measured. However, on Shaboth he walked erect with head JE W ISH LIFE

still held high, bearing the “tzillender”.

If Zalman noted the changes, he never showed it. The people who remained, although they still greeted him with a broad “Gut Shabbos,” smiled behind his back as he passed, and commented to one another, “There he goes with his ‘tzillender’.” Zalman Melnick had become a symbol, though unaware of it. His children, married and living in the suburbs, hinted to him on several occasions when they spent a Sabbath at his home, that perhaps it would be a good idea to replace the “tzil­ lender” with a black homburg, but Zalman ignored their veiled sugges­ tions and continued as before. f |^ H E responsibility of maintaining J- the synagogue fell more and more upon Zalman’s shoulders. Lacking ad­ equate janitorial help, Zalman would at times roll up his sleeves and dust the benches. When finances were low, he would run around to raise funds and would dig deeply into his own pockets to make up the balance. The building, as if conscious of its declined prestige, demanded a great deal more of attention. One time the boiler had to be replaced, another time leaks developed in the roof, and this was followed by an outbreak of vandalism that destroyed some of the beautiful, stained glass windows. But at all times, Zalman managed to hold the syna­ gogue together.

Then there came the time when the City took over the Big Shool to de­ molish it, together with its surround­ ing buildings, and to erect on the site a low-income housing project. This was the greatest blow to Zalman Mel­ nick. Though the synagogue had made greater and greater demands on his ebbing strength, Zalman had loved it September-October, 1965

more and more, and when it was taken away from him, it was as if his soul was torn from his body. During the last week of the synagogue’s func­ tioning, Zalman himself removed the Torahs and other holy articles to a neighboring synagogue. On the last day, he stood before the Oron Hakodesh buried his face in the porocheth, and cried into its plush folds. He then removed the plush curtain with its fiery-tongued lions and left the syna­ gogue. During the period of demoli­ tion, Zalman avoided the street.

Zalman joined the other synagogue and transferred his activities there, as if there were no change. Each Shaboth he would continue to don his “Prince Albert” and his “tzillender” as hereto­ fore and walk to shool as if nothing had happened.

NE Sabbath, on his way back from the synagogue, Zalman was taunted by a group of boys who were sp^wled on a stoop in front of a tenement house. A bold lad of ten or so followed him, mimicking his walk, and to further exhibit his audacity, he seized a stick and swung it at the “tzillender,” knocking it into the gutter. Zalman stood there, bewil­ dered, as he saw his precious top hat crushed under the wheels of a passing truck. He retrieved the hat, and with tenderness tried to straighten it. But to no avail. He wore it back home, and after the Sabbath was over he continued to work Oil the injured hat in a desperate attempt to put it back into some presentable shape. It be­ came clear to him, after an hour of work, that the “tzillender” could never be worn again. Carefully, he put his old companion back into its box and sat down by the window, staring into space.

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41

Zalman’s children, having heard of the accident and of its effect upon their father, offered to buy him an­ other “tzillender.”

“Look, Papa,” they said, “the old ‘tzillender’ Was really a bit shabby anyway. It’s no use crying over the old thing. Come, we’ll take you to Fifth Avenue and buy you a new one,”

42

Zalman shook his head. “No, chil­ dren,^ he said. “Thank you, but IT1 never wear a “tzillender” again.”

And he didn’t. The following Shaboth morning he walked to shool with a new black homburg. But from that day on, his head began to stoop slight­ ly, and with each succeeding Sabbath it stooped lower, and lower, and lower.

JE W ISH LIFE

Torah and Science Conflict—Or Complement?

By NACHUM E RABINOVITCH EWISH attitudes towards the “con­ placed in separate compartments? flict” between science and religion Torah is not just an historical doctrine, exemplify the tendency for Jews to nor is it just an article of faith. Cer­ foljow the pattern set by the surround­ tainly it is not only a ritual nor yet ing world. A study of the history of even a moral code. Torah is a com­ the conflict shows clearly that Juda­ plete way of life; unless it frames ism is hardly a principal in the strug­ our thoughts as well as our acts, gle. Yet it has been widely assumed our beliefs as well as our question­ that, in posing a challenge to Christi­ ings, we are not Jews in the full sense. anity, science likewise represented a Yet, these developments need not challenge to Judaism. The gratuitous have been. The assumption of a basic borrowing of this premise has borne conflict with science, however valid painful consequences. as far as any other religion may be For many, there resulted an attempt concerned, has no such validity with at complete isolation from the mighty respect to Judaism. We Jews just torrent of scientific discovery in failed to see that Torah had the modern times. Others who climbed advantage in regard to the issue at over the barriers and devoted them­ stake. selves to scientific endeavor assumed N his Terry Lectures at Yale that the Judaism of their fathers was (“Revelation through Reasop,” inconsistent with a disinterested and Yale University Press, 1958), Errol E. objective pursuit of Truth. The one severed himself from science, the oth­ Harris points out that the whole doc­ er from Judaism. In some western trinal position of the Church is steep­ countries a third, unique type devel­ ed in obsolete and incredible myth­ oped: the Jew who, while maintaining ology traceable to pagan sources, as, his religious observance, permitted for example, the mystery religions of his mind to be divided into airtight Greece and the Ancient East. And compartments, so that science and re­ C. F. Roven has written: While the Christian, religion, as pro­ ligion would not mix. While follow­ fessed by the Churches, still clings ing the prescriptions of the Shulchon restrictively to a Weltauschaung that Oruch in practice, his intellectual is demonstrably unscientific, to super­ moorings were elsewhere. stitions that violate the intelligence But can Judaism and science be and to conduct that shocks the moral­ either isolated from each other or ity of modern man, no such consis-

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September-Ocfober, 1965

43

tency (between science and religion) as is essential can be expected. . .

To ask men to live in two such irreconcilable worlds is to imperil the possibility of the wholeness of life which is our need.

The judgement on Christianity need not concern us here. But we would do well to investigate what is meant by saying that a given view is “demonstrably unscientific” and why that is a verdict of doom.

Every scientific discipline, of course, has its own postulates and assump­ tions upon which the entire structure of its system is erected. However, it is the merit of the scientific method that these are subject to constant change. For as the search for truth

pushes on, old theories give way to new ones. There is probably no single scientific theory which has not under­ gone drastic and radical change within this century, and many of the proud­ est attainments of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been swept away.

But the scientific attitude itself, in all its manifestations, is based upon just a few fundamental assumptions.

The scientific revolution which usher­ ed in the modern era began with the assertion of these axioms, and the prolonged struggle between Church and Science, although greatly compli­ cated by many other factors, resulted in the ascendancy of these principles, including those that were in conflict with the teachings of the Church.

M A N A N D THE UNIVERSE

HAT are the basic ideas that perform no deliberately chosen ac­ W characterize the scientific ap­ tion and could not live any kind of proach? First is an assumption of intelligible life.” fact, namely that the universe is in­ telligible and unitary. While there have been attempts to attribute these qualities to epistemology, the working scientist does not for a moment doubt that external reality leads itself to rational investigation. Einstein re­ marked many times how amazing it is that the universe exhibits precisely those qualities which our mind can comprehend. The labors of the sci­ entist are directed to the discovery of “pre-established harmony.”

While, of course, philosophically one could make out a case for com­ plete skepticism, in fact it is a scienti­ fic article of faith that we can find the rational patterns of the physical world. “The genuine skeptic could 44

While Judaism has had its mystical tendencies, there can be no question that the intelligible and unitary cha­ racter of the universe has always been almost taken for granted. In the words of Tehilim echoed and re­ echoed through Scripture and the rabbinic writings, How great are Thy Works, O Lord, In wisdom hast Thou made them all.

If this were all that the scientific world-view seeks to assert, there would not have been a great struggle even with Christianity. There are, how­ ever, three important value judge­ ments which underlie the attitude of the scientist.

The material world is worthwhile JE W IS H LIFE

and significant. While the cataclysms of the past generation have shaken even our natural Jewish optimism to the very foundations, yet it is almost an ingrained part of our way of think­ ing, that this life is to be lived and the world is good. For is it not written: “The Lord saw all that He had made and behold it is very good”?

Of course, the scientist does not even require that it be good. It is sufficient that it be morally neutral as long as it is not “evil” and certainly not “illusory,” as long as it be a worth­ while object for serious investigation for its own sake. Yet for a long time and even still now, the Church was not willing to concede an interest in this world.

VEN more important is a corol­ E lary from the assumption of the intrinsic worth of this world. It is that man can learn about himself and can apply to himself the same methods of mastery that can be applied to nature. On the one hand this leads to the belief in the perfectibility of man which gave use to “scientific” movements for social progress; and on the other hand it provided the “materialist” tools for fashioning the terrifying totalitarianisms which plague our century.

While the evil consequences of the mis-application of scientific method to the areas of human relations and propaganda are plentifully abundant, we must not be blind to the progress that has been made—certainly in the democratic countries—through uni­ versal education and the applied social sciences.

The Torah goes much farther. The foundation upon which the Torah rests is that man is endowed with free will, and we proclaim daily in our September-Ocfober, 1965

prayers: “The soul Thou has given me is pure.” The Torah commands us “choose good” because we can choose good, and while we recog­ nize that flesh is often weak, its glory is that it can also be strong.

But this is a view which radically distinguishes Judaism from Christian­ ity, which sees man as inescapably burdened with original sin, and no effort on his own part can ever free him from it.

The scientific revolution also brought with it a complete re-evalu­ ation of man and his role in Creation.

To a Church which taught that a man was god-incarnate, man could not be other than the measure of the Universe. The realization that man is after all not the pole about which all of existence rotates shattered many a citadel of the traditional faiths.

WAS certainly natural in the preIsiderTCopernican age for man to con­ himself not only the crown of earthly creatures but also the ultimate purpose for all that is. It is all the more remarkable therefore, that Juda­ ism was never committed to this judgment. In fact very powerful voices were raised against it long before the geocentric conception was even threatened. Unequivocal are the words of Rambam: Know that the major source of confusion in the search for the pur­ pose of the universe as a whole, or even of its parts, is rooted in man’s error about himself and his sup­ posing that all of existence is for his sake alone.

Every fool imagines that all of existence is for his sake. . . but if man examines the universe and under­ stands it, he knows how small a part of it he is.

45

Rambam goes much farther: The truth is that all mankind and certainly all other species of living things are as naught in comparison with , all of continuing existence.

Rabbi Hisdai Creqas (1340-1410) sees it as possible that there exist sev­ eral or even infinitely many universes —not just planets or stars, but com­ pletely independent universes— each a self-contained system. Thus, even as­ suming that the earth is at the center of our universe, it is certainly not tne pole about which all of existence re­ volves. All this—-long before Galileo.

Of course, that is not all that Judaism has to say about man’s place in the scheme of things. For the scientific view, it was sufficient to discredit the artificial superiority of man. But the Torah’s major concern is to tell us that in spite of man’s

46

limitations he yet has worth in the sight of G-d. Because puny though he is, man has been endowed with free will by virtue of which he can, in turn, endow other things with value.

Man’s worth thus is something he creates himself and is not merely the gift of G-d’s grace alone.

What is man that Thou shouldst remember him? . . .

Yet has thou made him but little lower than the angels.

(Psalms 8:5, 6) INALLY, all scientific progress depends upon the tacit assump­ tion that truth is good. This is for science only a pragmatic doctrine, in the sense that if an observer falsifies experimental data or wilfully disre­ gards contrary evidence, what he produces is not science at all. Intel­ lectual honesty is a sine qua non of

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JE W IS H LIFE

valid science. In religion, of course, truth is an ethical and even a meta­ physical desideratum. In Judaism, G-d Himself is identified with truth.

In fact, an important consideration for both religion and science, which, being sometimes overlooked, has often aggravated the conflict between the two, is that if truth is supreme, we must be careful not to overstep the bounds of sure knowledge into mere speculation, without clearly dis­ tinguishing the one from the other.

Clearly a doctrine which contra­ venes any of the above “axioms of science” is “demonstrably unscienti­ fic.^ It is also, however, abundantly clear that Judaism not only has no quarrel with these principles, but in fact goes far beyond them. Moreover, the Torah sets forth additional value

judgements as well as postulates of fact not subject to observation. These have their source in the supra-rational or Revelation. Nonetheless though, they cannot be anti-rational. Through the Talmud and the classical Jewish thinkers to our own times, Judaism has insisted upon the inadmissi­ bility of the anti-rational. In this too, Judaism has often differed fundamentally from other faiths. It has of course always been recognized that to comprehend the totality of existence is beyond possibility, and that in attempting even to comtemplate this totality, we come up against mystery and paradox. But what man can know and conceive of, although it is of necessity but partial knowl­ edge, must be rational in nature.

D IV ISIO N , N O T C O N T R A D IC T IO N

S THE conflict between science and religion, then, to be so easily dismissed, at least as far as Juda­ ism is concerned? Are there not spe­ cific issues upon which the lines of division were clearly between scienti­ fic opinion on the one hand and Jew­ ish opinion on the other?

Indeed there were and probably still are. But as we shall see, the cleavage does not really involve a contradiction between the axiology of science and that of religion at all.

In science, we use the results of experiment and observation to infer theoretical explanations of the ob­ served phenomena and to forecast others. ‘Theories are extrapolations from known facts to the unknown, and their unlimited application is conjecture. It is an essential aspect

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September-October, 1965

of the scientific method to make these conjectures in order that they may be confirmed or disproved by further experiment.

Sometimes, the success of a theory is so great that its essentially con­ jectural nature is forgotten, and scien­ tists, human beings that they are, tend to accept all its implications as true even before they are proved by observation. Furthermore, even when certain theoretical propositions are proved, it must be borne in mind that a theory is not a description of what reality actually is. Rather, it correlates certain quantitative aspects of experience. Its claim to actual truth is only at selected points where reality impinges upon our senses in quantitative terms. “ . . . in the sci­ ences we have to do . . . predominantly 47

with theories which do not reproduce the actual state of affairs completely, but represent a simplifying idealization of the state, of affairs and have their meaning therein” In the light of this, let us see how one area of conflict between Torah and Science is to be understood. We have seen that freedom of will is a cardinal principle of our faith. In fact the entire Torah stands or falls with this postulate. by the glorious triumphs of Newtonian physics, many scientists projected a mecha­ nistic interpretation of the universe that left no room for freedom of will. While the problem itself was certainly not new, the seeming author­ ity of science behind the determi­ nistic point of view made it par­ ticularly devastating. However, the completely mechanistic view, even in its heyday, was only a conjecture and in discarding much of it, the new physics is only doing what science does again and again—broaden and change its concepts as new discoveries warrant.

Today scientists are much more humble, and the dividing line between fact and educated guess is more carefully delineated. As for the ques­ tion of freedom of will itself, in his presidential address, (1963) Hudson Hoagland of the American Associa­ tion for the Advancement of Science had this to say: m boldened

E

Empirically, I cannot see how a

48

modern society. . . can function un­ less the individuals believe they are free and responsible for their actions . . . certainly our deepest convictions tell us we are free to make choices.

The creation and advancement of civilizations appear to require this assumption.

Of course, sometimes misunder­ standings arise from the religious side as well. Many are the arguments engendered by the problem of begin­ nings, for example, which a little humility on both sides would quickly clear up. There are many differing interpretations, with widely diverse conclusions, of the Creation story in the Torah. Above all though one must bear in mind Rambam’s admonition quoted from the Midrosh: “To explain the work of crea­ tion to flesh and blood is not possible.

Therefore, Scripture concealed it thus: ‘In the beginning G-d created, etc.’ ” Before we propose contradictions between the cosmogony of science and that of the Bible, we must remind ourselves that the Bible record is really a concealment and the “scienti­ fic” theories may be brilliant but not necessarily more than that.

HE faithful Jew knows that the universe in all its grandeur and the Torah in its profundity are both the work of the one G-d. With humi­ lity and dedication, therefore, he will seek to learn of both as much as he can.

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JE W IS H LIFE

M ögen Dovid

By ETTORE DA FANO

Why did this particular symbol command such universal Jewish appeal? Searching for the deeper meaning of the Mogen Dovid, the author offers an unusual answer.

OWEVER wide may be the dif­ ferences of attitude, thought, and practice among Jews, practically all segments of Jewry have accepted the “Mogen Dovid” or “Shield of David” as their symbol and insignia. It seems indeed to be a unifying symbol, the expression of something every Jew feels down deep in his heart. But, strangely enough, if you ask any Jew about the origin, history, and meaning of these two interlaced triangles, he will be at a loss for an answer. The chances^are that he has never given a minute’s thought to the matter. But the chances are, also, that when the question is asked of him, he will be intrigued to find a satisfactory expla­ nation.

If one consults various sources of Jewish history, he is in for a disap­ pointment. He will conclude that the Mogen Dovid symbol is, no doubt, of ancient origin but that while it was known to the Egyptians, Hindus, Chinese, and Peruvians, there is no

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Septem ber-October, 1965

evidence that it was used by the Jews before the Dispersion. It cannot be de­ finitely stated just when and why it became the acknowledged symbol of Judaism.* The title “Mogen Dovid” appears first in a document of about 1148 C.E., in connection with esoteric teachings metaphysics, and astrology.

The symbol begins to appear frequent­ ly on synagogues from the 16th cen­ tury on, when the influence of the Kabalist Isaac Luria was spreading.

It appears side by side with the Menorah*; ;which it gradually displaced in synagogues and religious objects. The matter is dismissed by the historians with the* statement that the Mogen Dovid was a Kabalistic symbol which had an esoteric meaning to the Kabalists, and that only in comparatively * The reader is referred to Rabbi Jacob Cohen’s article “The Symbol of the Mogen Dovid,” in the Av 5719/August 1959 issue of J ewish L ife , on the question of the historical background and Jewish roots of the Mogen Dovid—Editor

49

recent times was it generally adopted

by Jews as an emblem which is simply an artistic design bearing no particular symbolic message.

It may be true that the Mogen Dovid was not set as a sign for the explicit purpose of reminding us, by association, of some commandment of the Torah or some significant event in our history. It has no such status as the Mezuzah on the doorposts, the Tzitzith on the four corners of gar­ ments, the symbols on the Seder table, the Ner Tomid in the synagogues, or the Chanukah lamp. But this does not mean that, since no tag with an easy explanation was placed on the Mogen Dovid, we should seek no further and stop at the conclusion that our em­ blem is accepted as a conventional symbol of Judaism simply because we have associated it with Judaism since our early childhood, and that such habituation would have caused us to have the same feelings toward any other geometrical design of a pleasing shape.

RECISELY where and when the design originated is relatively un­ important. But what made this par­ ticular design stand out was the fact that, once disseminated, it must have exerted an appeal on our people. They adopted it as their own because in­ stinctively they related it to some in­ ner feelings and motivations as in­ dividuals and as Jews. And it must have expressed these feelings so well that it came to be associated with the great King David himself, and by silent, spontaneous agreement adopted as the emblem of Judaism, beyond the external divisions and disagreements which may exist among Jews.

Life is more than a sequence of 50

purely rational and noncommittant thoughts. It consists of deeply felt ex­ periences in which we are involved with the whole being. Pure reasoning can be carried by words, but feelings need another medium. So we may understand a symbol without being able to express its meaning in words; for, if we could, we would not need a symbol. True symbols are messen­ gers from the depths of the human mind, which are nearer to soul and G-d, and they bring deeper truths to our realization, if we only dare in­ quire into them. What we shall find depends on our attitude and our pro­ ficiency in asking questions. Like the four sons of the Hagodah, some of us are wise, some simpleminded, some negative in attitude, and some unable to ask questions. Most of us are sim­ pleminded and ask “Mah zoth?” We want a simple and precise answer which disposes of the question once and for all. The wise will not try to dismiss a question the easy way, but he will sink his consciousness ever more deeply into his inner mind. On his way he will find not one, but many successive answers and learn many lessons. He will then come to under­ stand that the more his horizon keeps expanding, the vaster grows the fron­ tier between the known and what re­ mains to be explored. The symbol was sent to him as food for thought and source of inspiration to last him for life. The interpretation of a symbol is, therefore, a partially rationalized feel­ ing which can be only imperfectly communicated to others. All we can expect from another person are some demonstrations or examples of his personal interpretations, which may offer us some clues in our effort to develop our own thoughts.

JE W IS H LIFE

JUNCTURE OF T W O W O R LD S

EFORE considering the two trian­ gles together, let us examine them singly. A special preference exists for certain numbers, three and seven be­ ing favorites. They seem to have mean­ ing to us although we may find it difficult to explain. Three has been called a perfect number, and some­ how it suggests perfection, comple­ tion, fulfillment. Rituals invariably make use of three steps. We have three Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In the Shema we are told to love our G-d with all our heart, soul, and might. The Pirkey Ovoth tells us that the world rests on three things: Torah, Divine service, and acts of mercy. Mathematically, it takes three points to define a plane or a circle.

Trigonometry and surveying are based on triangulations. There are three basic colors. Stereoscopic vision is tridimensional. And so we could go on and on piling up examples.

One thing at least is certain: if the upright triangle means something, the inverted triangle must mean its op­ posite or counterpart, and the two triangles together express the union of two opposing trends. The one tri­ angle may suggest the branching out of the one into two, such as a road forking out, or one branch gipwing two twigs, the opening up or evolving.

The other triangle then suggests the unification of two into one, such as two roads converging, 6r the union of father and mother for the concep­ tion of the child.

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r I THE two interlaced triangles could -I demonstrate a fundamental law of life: Two elements, fatherly and motherly, must unite for a new living September-October, 1965

thing to come to life. Man’s early ancestors were few in number but now several billion humans inhabit the globe as their direct descendants. The lines of descendance mark a huge and ever growing triangle, the point at the top being the first man, and the everlengthening base line being the ever­ growing number of men living at pre­ sent.

If every man were the offspring of only one parent, the lines of descen­ dance would have diverged, and pro­ gressive mutation would have pro­ duced a great variety of human species—different and alien. Any ves­ tige of unity would have completely disappeared.

Each person now living is thus at the lower point of another triangle, the upper side of which comprises all men and women who ever lived and had offspring. Actually, we must ima­ gine the lines of ascendance and de­ scendance as weaving a stupendous fabric, linking and cross-linking into meshes of triangular shape; triangles with points upward alternating and crossing with triangles with points downward.

At each conception, the father cell and the mother cell uniting combine their genes, those wondrous molecules which are the carriers of all heredity.

So, life’s wise arrangement divides and reshuffles, each experiencing individu­ ally, but returning his personal and unique experience to the common pool. Humanity, which was one at the beginning, progresses and yet remains one, true to itself forever.

Thus the flesh of every man bears the mark and memory of all humanity.

Nobility and sordid baseness, ecstasy and despair, wealth and poverty, royal­ ty and slavery, sanctity and perver51

sity; these ¿re potentially within each man, so that even as he strives for the highest, he can understand de­ privation and misery.

N THE symbol, certain principles of a general significance can be recognized. First of all, the expres­ sion of a phase of life which is within us: involution (all experience wrapped in a seed or germ) and evolution (the germ sprouting and bursting into a new cycle of life). This may explain why one of the names given to the symbol by the Kabalists was Etz Chayirrijj Tree of Life. Secondly, there is an expression of unity or unification.

Whatever interpretation is given to the Mogen Dovid, it will invariably turn out to be the longing of the soul for unification with that from which it has become separated. It will reflect our seeking for internal unity in a world of external contrasts, divisions, and conflicts.

Man seems to dwell at the threshold between two worlds and to have part in both: two worlds represented by two triangles. The triangle with the point upward is the world of material realities—finite, limited, transient, and mortal. It is the world of disconnected things. The base line represents the material basis; the point upward man’s aspirations, ideals* and devotion. The inverted triangle represents the spiritu­ al world, the world of higher realities, of which man’s soul is a part. It is in­ finite, above time and space and any dimension. Not limited, it is undivided and is the innermost connection, the deeper sense of everything. From this world, man receives the life impulse and his inspiration. The lower point represents the Shechinah, or G-d’s immanence.

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Here is the duality of Maalah and Matah, the above and the below, the spiritual and the material, the divine and the mundane. This duality does not imply a real separation between these two worlds or aspects of being.

The separation is the arch-error that initiates all errors; the arch-sin that begets all sins; the cause of all trouble and pain in the life of the individual and of mankind. Whatever loses its connection with its true source and purpose is bound to become vitiated and perverted.

O N E A N D THE O T H ER

N Jewish practice the ritual of the Havdolah, which means distinc­ tion^ is beautifully dramatized at the close of the Sabbath. In it G-d is praised for making a distinction be­ tween light and darkness, the sacred and the profane, Israel and the na­ tions, the Sabbath and the days of work. Distinctions should be made, but not for the purpose of dividing.

Perhaps distinctions should be called differentiations, for on them the pro­ cess of evolution is based. The dark chaos that existed before Creation differentiated into light and darkness, into space and matter, and increasing differentiations brought about the nebulae, the galaxies, the universe.

From a tiny seed cell of a plant, pro­ gressive differentiation brings about the roots, the branches, the lèaves, the blossoms. All thè organs of a liv­ ing thing differentiated not for the purpose of separating, but in order that each might develop a special talent and ability to be utilized for the com­ mon good. All are synchronized, in­ tegrated, and work together for the fulfillment of one purpose.

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JE W IS H LIFE

All is dual in nature, and so the world is full of contrasts. If things contrast, it does not mean they must conflict, that one should eliminate the other. It is not a matter of one or the other, but of one and the other.

They are two points, to be combined and synthesized to a harmonious unit, the third point. If existing distinctions are used to separate; if the various contrasts of the world are not in­ tegratedL the result will be disintegra­ tion, the constant threat and chronic ailment of the world throughout re­ corded history. It is the present mor­ tal danger of the world, the danger history and current events point out more strongly every day.

F we were now to express with one sentence the highest ideal of Juda­ ism, we could say that it consists in deepening the awareness of the con­ nection between the Divine and the mundane, or the integration of man with G-d. For many centuries the tra­ ditional Jew has endeavored to achieve this awareness by connecting every act and every enjoyment with a spiri­ tual thought of praise, expressed by a blessing. On arising in the morning, the traditional Jew salutes the day with a beautiful invocation restating the purity, divinity, and immortality of the soul. Then, with the Shema he pledges himself to love his G-d with all his heart, soul, and powers and to extend his love to all created things.

He touches no morsel of bread or any other food, nor does he partake of any drink, without acknowledging them first as precious gifts, to be en­ joyed in moderation. When he sees the rainbow, the first flowering shrub of the year, or any beautiful thing in nature, he acknowledges that all beau-

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ty comes from the Eternal Source.

The so-called dietary laws are not mere laws of hygiene, but laws of sanctity and purity, of hygiene of the spirit as well as of the body. The killing of animals for food is considered by the Torah as a concession, and if an ani­ mal must be killed, it is to be done with a specified rite. Every act should be performed by the understanding Jew with the awareness that G-d had sanctified him by His commandments and ordained him to perform it. Thus we stand true to the idea behind our timeless tradition that no thought nor action can possibly be outside the Di­ vine scheme.

For the Jew, integration with his G-d is not achieved by a private and personal experience only, or in an escape from the world’s cares and re­ sponsibilities. Moses ascended alone the mystic mountain of Sinai, but he came down to teach the people a way of life; for, in the world of man G-d works through man. Nor do we try to understand G-d by studying His nature. G-d’s will, His Torah, as far as we can understand it, is more im­ portant to us than speculation as to His nature.

ET US look again at the Shield of David. We live in a world of time; all motion is understood to be taking place in time. One triangle then may point toward the past and the other toward the future. Long, long ago, according to Scripture and tradi­ tion, men believed in the one G-d.

Unable to understand the simple uni­ ty, they began to analyze it. They tore the simple concept into many fragments. These fragments, or men­ tal images, turned to idols or material images. Separate gods were conceived,

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gods which contrasted, which con­ flicted with one another, which were continuously in war against one an­ other, as the people themselves.

One family among the families of mankind kept the original and indi­ visible singleness of Kel Ely on in their hearts and minds, preserved its integ­ rity in a disintegrating world. Refus­ ing to digress from the one path into the many by-paths of the other nations and to follow the many streams, the people of Israel were always in some­ body’s way, open to attack and per­ secution. In our long history we have experienced all the pains and tortures which man in his cruelty has ever in­ flicted upon man. And it is not all remote history, for wherever a handful of Jews come together, you’ll find survivors who wear the scars of the most recent, the most cruel and whole­ sale persecution. But thoughts of re­ tribution have not dominated our hearts. Not for a moment did we doubt that man was created in the image of G-d, and not for a moment did we lose faith in man. Man makes one triangle diverge into many evil paths. But the same man, perhaps by a slow process of evolution and selec­ tion, by virtue of divine attributes of his inner being, will make the lines of the other triangle reconverge. So, in the ghettos and liquidation camps of Nazi-dominated Europe, the mar­ tyrs lifted their voices in a song, re­ peated the same words other martyrs had pronounced many generations ago: “1 believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah!

And thou he tarry, none the less do 1 believe” This, I believe, explains why the 54

symbol was called the Shield of David, and why it was taken by the Kabalists as a messianic symbol. Da­ vid was the king who united Israel in one land and under one rule, and this not for his personal vainglory.

But for many centuries we have called the son of David also the Messiah who will reunite Israel from the four corners of the earth, marking a new cycle in the history of mankind. *

*

*

HE Kingdom of Heaven will not come to an undeserving world. It will come through your work and mine and that of all men of good will. The two triangles are shaped like arrow­ heads, and therefore they mean ac­ tion. One may believe and yet be pas­ sive, but faith implies action. Those who were about to enter the gas cham­ bers and crematory ovens could only passively believe. But their surviving sons and brothers can keep their faith to them only by action directed toward redemption of this confused world.

We Jews, because of our suffering, have grown to be sensitive instruments, keenly aware of where the many paths and by-paths lead. Our scars react to every breath of air so that we can tell which wind is good and which is evil.

This keener perception implies a sacred obligation on our part.

The victims of the great holocaust, intended to wipe out once and fpr all the whole Jewish people and what it stands for, were forced to wear the Mogen Dovid as a badge. The sign thus acquired the historical meaning it was believed to be lacking. But, more important, it was sanctified by the Kidush Hashem, and should be borne by us with humility.

®

JE W IS H LIFE

Israel and Africa

By PINCHAS E. LAPIDE

HE years 1960-65 have been called the Years of Africa by statesmen and journalists, just as the preceding ten years were the decade of Asia, a decade characterized in both continents by the revival of very old countries on the one hand and the creation of new states on the other.

Peoples of ancient civilizations, but with little experience of modem technology and without adequate po­ litical and scientific preparation, have to face political realities which de­ mand an intense effort in the scienti­ fic and, above all, the technical do­ main, if they are to invest their facade of sovereignty with the substance of true self-rule.

Many of these newly-sovereign peo­ ples see in Israel a good laboratory in which to learn how to set the foun­ dations of a modern society. Quite a few of them prefer Israel’s aid to that of the great powers, not only because Israel is too small and far away for neo-imperialist suspicions and has no colonial past, but also because over the last sixteen years she has had to face very much their own problems. An international congress which took place in Israel in 1960— the Rechovoth Conference on the

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Role of Science in the Development of New States— attempted to find the best methods of applying the fruits of scientific progress to the immediate needs of developing nations. Scientists, statesmen, and civil servants from thirty-four countries took part, and there is reason to feel that the Con­ ference has contributed to a real im­ provement in the socio-economics of emerging statehoods in Africa and Asia. At a time when some five hundred Israeli experts work on tech­ nical aid in thirty-nine countries and close to 2,000 Afro-Asian students undergo training in Israel, it is in­ teresting to note that this idea of helping in the expansion of new nations can be traced back to long be­ fore the rebirth of Israel.

A LMOST seventy years ago, in -l j L 1896, at a time, when the idea of a Jewish state was still a pipedream, Theodore Herzl, who founded the Zionist movement, wrote in his diary: “In our country we shall set up a medical faculty, to which stu­ dents will come from Africa and Asia. Thus we shall help bring health to the E ast.. . . ” Later, in his novel “Old-Newland,” he worked out his project in more 55

detail. The two characters in the novel, who arrive in Haifa in 1923, (the equivalent of 1990 in a Utopia written today) learn that the Jewish state has been set up and that in Jerusalem there exists “the biggest eye-hospital in the world. This hospi­ tal, which has already saved or re­ stored the sight of many a sufferer, has been of immense benefit to the whole Orient. Patients come to it from the whole of Asia and Africa.

Its fame has spread far and wide and has won us more friends than all our technical and industrial progress... ¡¡S (Chapter II) Before the twentieth century was born, Herzl had already grasped the importance of science in solving the world’s social problems. The creation of a Jewish state seemed to him pos­ sible only as part of this technological progress which the future Israel would gladly share with others: “We have not created anything new. We have learnt much from all the other na­ tions, and we arc happy that younger countries come to learn from us here” are his prophetic words.

The development of Africa had a vital role in Herzl’s forecasts. One of the heroes in his novel is working in a bacteriological institute in Tiberias, trying to discover a cure for malaria, “one of the scourges of Africa.” The credo of this scientist, Prof. Steineck, which is of course Herzl’s, is as mod­

ern as it is lofty in its essence: Here is the key-passage from the book: The professor then conducts his guests through the laboratories of the Institute to his own room: ‘This is where I work,’ he said. ‘And may we ask you what at?’ — ‘At develop­ ing Africa.’ The visitors thought they had not heard aright. Kingscourt re­ peated with an equivical wink ‘De­ veloping Africa, you said?’ — ‘Ex­ actly, Mr. Kingscourt,’ their host re­ peated. ‘More precisely, I hope to find a cure for malaria. Here in Israel we are adequately protected against malaria, thanks to our sani­ tation and drainage works and our eucalyptus plantations. But in Africa things are quite different. Africa will not be able to develop as long as the ravages of malaria continue___There remains then the question , of the Negroes. Doesn’t it make your hair stand on end to think of the barba­ rous slave traffic. Men, for they are men in spite of their color, captured, transported, and sold! Their children grow up in exile, hated and despised, because they have colored skins. I am not ashamed to say it, even at the risk of appearing ridiculous: I myself, having witnessed the Return of the Jews, would like to help in the Return of Negroes also. . . . That is why I am working for the develop­ ment of Africa. Everyone should have a country of his own. Men will be­ come better, treat each other better, when all are free for only then they will love and understand each other at long last. . . .’

T W O ENCOUNTERS

EFORE Herzl’s great vision was to come true, as-yet-unborn Is­ rael had two more encounters with the neighboring continent. Impressed by the efforts of the early Zionist pio­

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neers, the British government offered Herzl in 1903 a stretch of territory in British East Africa for coloniza­ tion. “The Uganda Scheme,” as it was soon called, threatened to split the JE W ISH LIFE

fourth Zionist Congress into “Territorialists”—who wanted to accept the offer; and unshakable “Zionists” for whom there was no alternative to the Land of Israel. After long and acrimonious discussions, the offer was declined, since it soon became patent­ ly clear that no land could possibly have the same appeal in the eyes of the Jewish masses as that of their forefathers. “Uganda,” nevertheless, helped to demonstrate to the world — and Great Britain in particular— that Zionism was a factor to be reckoned with.

Late during the Second World War, East Africa almost did what it failed to do forty years before: it became the compulsory home of a group of ardent Zionists. The British authorities deported the leaders of the “Irgun” underground movement to internment camps in Kenya, where several of them became friends of Jomo Kenyatta’s Freedom Movement.

These friendly ties blossomed forth into full-scale diplomatic visits, some twenty years later, when Israel and Kenya established diplomatic rela­ tions and signed several bilateral treaties.

When Israel erupted into state­ hood at long last in 1948, not only geography and economics were against her but also arithmetic. First seven, later nine, then thirteen Arab states confronted her—and every potential friend of the Jewish re­ public—with the unbeatable political formula of thirteen to one.

It was either friendship with the entire Arab League, Cairo told every new delegation entering the UN in New York—or with tiny, isolated, and orphaned Israel. What helped make this dilemma a little less of a foregone conclusion was the fact that Arabs still enjoy an almost proverbial reputation throughout Black Africa. f<If you don’t eat your porridge,” mothers tell their children from Freetown to Mombassa, “the Arab will come and get you!” While the Arab, to the African, is still very much the slave-trader of yesteryear, most Afri­ cans, on the other hand, have known little of the spiritual and political history of the Jewish people. They also knew little of the tragic story of the Jews since their dispersion, as most of it was enacted far from their lands. Thus it was easy for Arab propaganda to paint Israel as an alien intruder and an aggressive agent of “Western imperialism.”

This propaganda reaped its harvest at the Afro-Asian Conference held in Bandung in 1954. Since then, how­ ever, a significant change has taken place. The first of the new states to establish closer relations with Israel was Burma. These relations have found expression in an ever-expand­ ing cooperation in various fields of economic and cultural effort. Burma’s example has been followed by other states of Southeast Asia — Ceylon, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and the Philippines— and subsequently of Central and West Africa—Ghana, Liberia, Guinea, Ethiopia.

P R O G R A M OF C O O P ER A T IO N

OOPERATION with these states, particularly in the sphere of

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social and economic development, has assumed three forms. First, Israel 57

has placed at the disposal of the governments of these countries the services of technicians, scientists, and specialists in various fields. Secondly, students and civil servants from these countries have come to Israel to obtain theoretical and practical train­ ing in numerous subjects. Finally, a number of economic enterprises have been set up jointly by Israel and several of these states. To give a few typical examples: Two cooperative stores were open­ ed in Kenya with the aid of Israel’s Wholesale Cooperative Society, Hamashbir Hamerkazi, and a joint Israel-Kenya Contracting Company was established a few weeks later.

Radio men from Dahomey, Niger, and Togo have just begun a threemonth course at Kol Israel, the na­ tional broadcasting station. More will come soon from the Ivory Coast.

The course will give the students both a theoretical and a practical back­ ground.

Solel Boneh, the construction com­ pany of the Histadruth (Israel’s Labor Federation), and an Israeli architect have won a $600,000 contract, in the face of international competition, to build large bath-houses in Addis Aba­ ba.

Police officers and paratroopers from Israel and Tanzania, both wear­ ing the khaki uniform and blue caps of the Israel Force, stood side by side on the parade-ground of a train­ ing depot in the north of Israel recently during the passing-out pa­ rade of the first international officers’ course there.

Ghana has appointed two lecturers of the Haifa Institute of Technology to teach at the Kumasi College of Technology, one of them as head of the School of Engineering. She has 58

also engaged Israeli experts for her public health, statistical, and econo­ mic services, financial advisers to assist in the establishment of her cooperative bank, instructors in me­ chanical farming, statisticians, and public health engineers. Other Israel experts have rendered service in Ni­ geria, the Sudanese Republic, Liberia, India, South Vietnam, Ceylon, and the Philippines.

Over a hundred prominent states­ men from developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America are meeting some of the world’s leading economists this summer in Israel’s Third Rechovot Conference to discuss what is perhaps the basic issue for all new nations: How to break the vicious circle of poverty and ignorance, and to self-finance at least part of their economic and social development. The first Rechovot Con­ ference in 1960 brought leaders of the emergent world together with scien­ tists in an endeavor to tell science on what practical problems of post­ independence it might usefully con­ centrate; the one in 1963 was devoted to rural planning. The 1965 con­ ference may well become a milestone in the campaign for bridging the widening gap between the poor and the rich nations on earth. r r iH E second form of this cooperaJ . tion has been the training in Israel of African students and civil servants. A notable effort in this sphere was the organization of a three months’ seminar on cooperativism held in Tel Aviv three times a year since the winter of 1958—59 under the auspices of the Israel Feder­ ation of Labor. Many of the par­ ticipants, who hailed form Mali, Ni­ geria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Liberia, Chad, JE W ISH LIFE

and the Republic of Sudan were graduates of French, British, and American universities and colleges.

Most of them possessed practical ex­ perience in government services or in agricultural enterprises. Theoretical lectures and seminars on the various aspects of cooperativism were fol­ lowed by visits to various types of agricultural settlements and coopera­ tive enterprises in industry, build­ ing, marketing, transport, and health services.

In addition to these two special groups, a considerable number of students and trainees from Asia and Africa have visited Israel, ranging from Japanese scientists doing advanc­ ed research at the Weizmann Institute of Science to research fellows in Jewish and Oriental history and re­ ligion at the Hebrew University, post­ graduate students of mathematics, me­ dicine, architecture, and economics, as well as veterinary surgeons, poultry farmers, and village instructors.

All in all, over 5,200 African stu­ dents have received on-the-job train­ ing in Israel so far and 926 Israeli experts have served in thirty-six new African states by the end of July 1965. At present Israel maintains some 700 experts in thirty-two coun­ tries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. In addition, ap­ proximately 3,000 trainees from these countries—with Africa supplying the lion’s share—will attend study courses of varying durations in Israel during 1965. To enter into such fruitful re­ lations with Israel, most African countries have to stand up to heavy Arab pressure, frequently including public vilification at international meetings. At a recent meeting of UNO’s Political Committee, for in­ stance, a prominent Arab ambassador September-October, 1965

bluntly accused the delegate from a certain African state of “having been bought by the Israelis.” Exercising his right of reply, the African rose at once to his feet and said in polite French: “The honorable representa­ tive from Saudi Arabia is no doubt an expert on buying and selling people, since his compatriots still engage in the slave trade among the poorer tribes of my own country. However, I shall not brook such vile allegations on the floor of a building dedicated to world peace.” When he sat down, there was protracted applause and Israel’s envoy had visible trouble to hide a grin.

HE third form of cooperation be­ tween Israel and some of the new states of Africa has been the establish­ ment of joint economic enterprises.

Among the more important of these are the “Black Star Line,” an IsraelGhana shipping company, established in 1957 by the Government of Ghapa in association with ZIM, Israel’s principal shipping company, and the Ghana National Construction Com­ pany, a Ghanaian firm of civil engi­ neers and general contractors, found­ ed in cooperation with Solel-Boneh, Israel’s leading construction and con­ tracting company. In both enterprises the majority of the shares is held by Ghanaian interests. In both, one of the principal objects is the training of Ghanaian personnel which gradual­ ly took over the functions of the technicians lent by the Israel compan­ ies of this kind in the canning and pharmaceutical branches, in the lum­ ber trade, and in other commercial enterprises.

In the wake of the Black Star suc­ cess, more than a dozen partnerships have been set up by Israeli con-

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struction and water companies in nine countries, which give the local African governments the majority sharehold­ ing and specifically provide that the Israeli partner will train local person­

nel on the technical and administra­ tive side so as to enable them to take over after the expiration of the contract period (usually a minimum of five years) .

ISRAEL'S IM PO R T AN CE TO A F R IC A

HE basic motive which has led these new states to seek advice and help from Israel is their urgent need for technical, economic and edu­ cational development. They are all deeply concerned, as one of their spokesmen put it, “to make their new­ ly-gained political sovereignty real and valid by the attainment of economic independence.” The example of Israel is of special interest to them for a number of reasons. Israel is a small country with limited economic re­ sources, but possessing a significant reservoir of skill and experience, such as is generally to be found only in more highly developed and powerr ful states. Israel has to struggle with climatic, physical, economic, and de­ mographic problems, which are to some extent similar to theirs. Associa­ tion with Israel does not expose them to the danger of falling under the sway of some great power, an ever-present fear in the minds of these newly-emancipated nations.

Israel’s small dimensions are more akin to their own. They require the superior techniques of the highly developed states of the West to be translated for them into smaller coin which they can handle. To quote Kermit Lansner, General Editor of News­ week, in that magazine’s issue of March 23rd, 1959:

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Frightened by the ruthless planning of a Soviet society, bewildered by the prodigal improvisation of many Western countries, a growing number of Afro-Asians are quietly exploring a middle way to a planned democrat­ ic life— the way of Israel. The direc­ tor of South Vietnam’s Public Works Department, Pham M inh Dvong, put it like this: T spent two months in the United States on a study tour. I went to many towns. A t the end they asked me what I thought of America and I answered that it was Wonder­ ful ! Fabulous ! F antastic ! Then they asked me what I had learned and I said: Nothing! You see, America is too big for us. The smallest project I saw cost millions. Israel is closer to the problems we’re up against.’

Equally important to the African and Asian leaders! is the high intel­ lectual standard prevailing in Israel’s farming communities which is often better than the urban level of educa­ tion. Most African countries today are trying to stem the flight of talent and labor from villages to town.

This was why one African prime minister, upon his recent return from Israel, told his people on the radio that he had spent the previous week­ end at a kibbutz where his lunch was served to him by the Speaker of the Israel Parliament. He appreciated the fact that cabinet ministers, top gov­ ernment officials and ambassadors are JE W ISH LIFE

drawn from among the farming com­ munity, retaining their membership of the kibbutz or village during their term of office, to return to work in vineyards, workshops, or children’s houses when their government service ends.

Israel is for them a “pilot plant,” an instructive example in the art of improvisation. Israel is moreover, an intensely democratic community which has shown that technical and social problems can be solved even under present-day conditions without sacri­ ficing personal freedom and political liberty. Again to quote Mr. Lansner, reporting what he was told by an African official from Senegal in 1963: Naturally many of us are overawed by the Soviet experiment. It’s a very tempting road to rapid moderniza­ tion for an under-developed country.

But we couldn’t stomach the forced labor that goes with it. We don’t think parliamentary democracy as it is practised in certain Western coun­ tries can work in Africa, yet most of us are anxious to retain the basic principles of a democratic society.

In Israel we see a whole nation working hard for the same goals under a democratic system of govern­ ment.

An African participant in the Tel Aviv seminar on cooperativism put the same idea in slightly different language. He explained that these new countries “could not trust the colonialist Powers who had only recently left them.” On the other hand, they were afraid of following the Russian model. In this situation, they had found in Israel an alternative —“the only valid alternative for us” —as he put it: “You have achieved,” he said, “outstanding social and tech­ nical progress without sacrificing human values.”

September-October, 1965

At a meeting of experts on technical assistance which took place this spring in Washington, it transpired that Israel gets more than twice as much mileage out of its international co­ operation dollar as the United States.

Only ten million Israeli Pounds were budgeted for all this year’s interna­ tional development projects which now range over eighty-one fields of study and specialization on three continents, but the amount of assistance— and goodwill—generated is worth four or five times this amount. The reason is that in practically all its bi-national schemes, Israel insists on a “Dutch treat”—which makes cooperation cheaper as well as truly a matter of “give and take.” Another reason is that Israelis who go abroad to help and advise, or to play host at home for visiting students from Africa, feel that it is indeed a privilege to help others.

If any proof was needed of the resultant rise in prestige a recent footnote to a report from Israel’s Embassy in Nigeria supplied it. Isra­ el’s First Secretary, on his way back to Lagos from a business trip to Enugu, had a flat tire—in the middle of nowhere. After some three hours a boy on a bicycle at long last appear­ ed. Asked by the Israeli to help him change the punctured tire, the Afri­ can youngster first of all wanted to know who he was. On hearing that the driver came from Israel, he clapped his hands with joy: “I’ll fix the tire myself,” he eagerly said, “but please explain to me the difference between your kibbutz and your moshav.” *

*

*

f ■ 1HE question is often asked why A Israel is making this nation-to61

nation effort. The reason is both politi­ cal and psychological: political in that Israel, surrounded by hostile Arab countries, has to seek her friends fur­ ther afield; psychological, in that many of the problems faced by developing

62

countries are also faced here. In Af­ rica, Israel can contribute rather than receive aid.

And this, for the classical minority of history, is the ultimate hallmark of political equality and independence.

JE W IS H LIFE

The 'Chamushim'

By REUBEN E. GROSS

ROM Yetziath Mitzrayim to the say: these matters pertain to the days Churbon of the Second Beth Ha- of our ancient glory, may they speedily mikdosh, Jews enjoyed self-sovereign- return. ty in various degrees over long periods.

The re-creation in our time, how­ Among the emblements of this sover­ ever, of a Jewish, Hebrew-speaking eignty were military forces and milita­ army and navy has sent scholars back ry leaders of distinguished ability. The to our sacred writings with the quick­ logistics involved in the Exodus would ened realization that there is described make a Hannibal stand in awe. Yet, therein not misty symbolic mannikins, we hardly think of Moses as a mili­ but flesh and blood soldiers, with of­ tary leader, but rather as a teacher. ficers and men in their respective eche­ David’s martial accomplishments were lons, marching orders, tables of or­ great by any standard. Nevertheless, ganization and of equipment, and all we remember him as a Psalmist, a the other paraphenalia that makes up devoted king, and as the founder of a an organized fighting force. The dynasty from which the Moshiach will names of the officers in the Israeli arise. The military heroism of the armed forces are largely taken from Hasmoneans is probably better recog­ the Bible. A colonel is an “aluf” (Benized by non-Jewish writers than by reshith 36). An army captain is a our own. As we recite the A1 Hanisim “katzin” (Judges 11:6); but a naval or Hallel on Chanukah, or as we light captain is a “rav hovel” (Jonah 1:6). the lamps, we can feel the tug of our For a lieutenant, known as a “segan,” Sages towards a de-emphasis of the resort was made to Mishnaic Hebrew. military glories which we then com­ In the belief that Tanach is an ac­ memorate. Our teachers truly recog­ curate and objective description and nized the dangerous intoxication of a literally true account of the events martial prowess and guarded against it describes, we feel that a re-awakened it. In the last two millenia, the Goluth interest in its military events is in presented only a small danger of such order and may produce new light and intoxication. Military matters are hard­ insights. ly touched upon in rabbinic writings, With this in mind, some tentative and when they are discussed as in suggestions are offered here as to the connection with the Eruv and the meaning of certain verses whose literal military camp, it is with a vague the­ meaning has not been definitively oretical, almost wistful note, as if to settled.

F

September-October, 1965

63

NE of the troublesome words for the Bible translator is the word chamushim at Shemoth 13:18. The great weight of opinion among the commentators (Rashi, Sforno, Baal Haturim, Ibn Ezra, Rashbam, et al.) is that the word means “armed.” An­ other shade of meaning which is caught by other commentators (Onkelos, Rashi, Ramban) is that it means “zealously, proudly, smart-stepping.”

However, the relationship of the cha­ mushim to chamishah (meaning “five^’) or chamishim (fifty) seems to trouble many of the commentators. The Baal Haturim relates the word to the five types of armament then extant. Rashi gives as an alternate explanation that one out of five left Egypt, the other eighty percent having died during the three days of darkness.

We here suggest “parade formation” or “marching formation,” as a more precise translation of the word cha­ mushim. It includes the idea of being armed as well as the idea of a smartly stepping, prideful parade. Literally, it probably means “fifty-wise” or “by fifties.” For reasons which will be set forth below, it is our belief that the standard marching formation in an­ cient times, in areas under Egyptian influence, was a column five abreast by ten deep.

Egypt, being the originator of the decimal system, most naturally would be expected to organize its army on the basis of ten and one hundred.

The Israelites would naturally tend to copy the Egyptians in military matters, this being an area not involving reli­ gion or their particular Jewish prac­ tices. And this is precisely what we find to be the case. Although the Is­ raelites seem to show a preference for

®

64

the duo-decimal system of Babylonian origin in their tribal organization— counting Manasheh and Ephraim as separate tribes when Levi is not in­ cluded, but counting them as one when Levi is included—the military organization appears to be patterned on the Egyptian model. The units be­ low the tribe are the thousand, the hundred, the fifty, and the ten. (Devorim 1:15) Moreover, the source of the suggestion for this pattern of or­ ganization is none other than Yithro (Shemoth 18:21). Though a Midianite by race, Yithro was an Egyptian by culture. Accordingly, to go “chamu­ shim,” or by the fifties, meant to pa­ rade in military style, armed, stepping proudly with zest and snappy cadence.

This suggestion has the virtue that it ties together the apparently disparate interpretations of the various commen­ tators. Moreovef7 it seems to be espe­ cially apt in meaning at the one other place where we find the word chamu­ shim (Joshua 1:14) where Joshua says to Reubenites, Gadites and the halftribei of Manasheh, “You shall pass chamushim before your brothers.” To translate this as meaning to parade in martial review catches the full spirit.

All this must be understood in the light of the problem created by the two and a-half tribes. Joshua had a serious morale problem on his hands.

The unity of the people was threatened by the fact that the two and a-half tribes had no stake in the future con­ flicts. A half-hearted procession of the men from these tribes bearing arms would only aggravate the potential suspicions that they were really “pull­ ing out.” But a military parade—flags flying, horns blowing, commands echo­ ing—that is different; and unless hu­ man nature has changed, the passage JE W IS H LIFE

of these men “chamushim” before their brothers must have quickened the blood and thrilled the hearts of the onlookers. ^T^HE Roman army, too, appears to A have built around the hundred or the century as a basic unit. The commander of such unit continued to be known as a centurion even after those units ceased to be an exact hundred. Noteworthy is the fact that under the centurion stood a decurion, a commander of ten.

That the marching order for the infantry consisted of five men abreast is related to the width of public roads or “king’s highways” as they were built in ancient times. The Talmud gives sixteen cubits as the width of a public road (Shaboth 99a). This allows every man two cubits for himself and his baggage (being the width of a man with elbows outspread) plus a shared margin of one cubit between each man and a cubit between the exterior men and the edge of the road. Hence each man had the traditional four cubits to swing his arms (arms outstretched from finger tip to finger tip being four cubits). The officer of the ten would, therefore, appear to be a sort of corporal who stood at the head or the rear of each column, while the officer of the fifty was a sergeant in charge of the five columns. That the fifty-man group, or half-company, was the basic infantry working unit ap­ pears from various sources. In II Kings 1:2-14 Ahaziah is described as sending three task forces to Eliyohu, each one consisting of fifty men, with an officer of fifty over them. Note­ worthy, too, is the fact that the census figures given in B’midbor 2:4-31 are all rounded out to the nearest fifty, September-October, 1965

indicating that the Torah is primarily dealing with a census of military units, the head count of individuals being rounded off to the nearest fifty. In the light of these considerations other verses in the Torah take on a different emphasis. Thus when the Torah says (Vayikra 26:8) that “five of you will rout a hundred, and a hundred of you will put ten thousand to rout,” it is not snatching numbers out of the air.

What is really being said is that a half-column or one row of men will put a company to rout, and a single company will pursue a full division.

Likewise, when Yaakov’s scouts reported that Esav was coming with four hundred men, the next verse says Yaakov was exceedingly afraid (Bereshith 32:8). The Ramban, for ex­ ample, is troubled as to why and sug­ gests that perhaps the deputies of Yaakov were not received properly

by Esav. If we translate that Esav was coming with “fqur companies of infantry” there is no problem. More­ over, the nature of the gifts which Yaakov gave Esav are more readily explicable. It suggests that Esav’s four companies were divided into two kinds of weapons (archers and swordsmen) because of the two kinds of gifts; two hundred goats and two hundred sheep which were obviously meant to appease the infantry privates; the twenty he-goats and twenty rams were for their corporals. The thirty camels were for an auxiliary mounted unit —as we shall show, thirty was the basic mounted unit. Today in Saudi Arabia, the camel is still a battle-ani­ mal. The other gifts were for Esav himself, but Yaakov knew that unless Esav’s men, who were mustered in the hope of capturing booty, were adequately bought off with gifts. Esav 65

himself would have difficulty calling them off, at the risk of his own safety.

A PPLYING these principles to i V cavalry formations and assum­ ing four cubits for the width of a horse or chariot, we note that the standard highway of sixteen cubits ac­ commodates exactly three cavalrymen abreast, again allowing one cubit mar­ gin between each soldier and the edge of the road. If the decimal rule is applied, we should expect to find a half-troop of thirty horses, three ab­ reast by ten deep, analogous to the half company of the infantry. A full troop would then consist of sixty horses and a squadron consisting of ten such units would have six hundred horses. This is precisely the size of the cavalry units mentioned in the Torah. At the Red Sea, Pharoah’s charges were a crack unit of six hund­ red horses. (Shemoth 14:7) Sisera’s had three half-squadrons of iron chari­ ots, being nine hundred in number.

(Judges 4:13) The Philistines are described in I Samuel 13:5 as having assembled thir­ ty thousand chariots and six thousand horsemen, which reinforces our belief that horse-borne troops were organized in multiples of three hundred and six hundred. Another reference to armed chariots is II Chronicles 14:8 where Zerah, the Cushite, fought against Asa with three hundred chariots in addi­ tion to a thousand of infantry.* Shishak, the Pharoah who attacked Reheboam, used twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horses. * The Hebrew is elef alofim, which I would translate as “a thousand battalions.” I think this verse is strong evidence that the elef, used in a military sense, was a military unit, not a number. If the Scribe wanted to say “a million,” he would have used the more usual meah r’bey—a hundred ten-thousands.

66

(II Chronicles 12:3) Although there are some contrary indications such as King Solomon’s fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses (II Chronicles 1:14 and I Kings 10: 26), the extra two hundred chariots may have been spares because this reference is not to an actual battle formation.

An interesting sidelight is Yoir, the Gileadite who judged the Israelites for twenty-two years. He was wont to travel with thirty “bonim” (sons or aides) mounted on ass-colts, (Judges 10:4) somewhat like Adoniyahu and the fifty men that ran before him. (I Kings 1:5) This may indicate that the basic mounted unit, analogous to the fifty of the infantry, is the thirty. How­ ever, another judge, Avidop ben Hillel, was wont to travel with forty “bo­ nim” (sons or aides) and thirty “b’ney bonim” (grandsons; subdeputies) on seventy ass-colts. (Judges 12:14) As we have also observed in regard to the infantry, the early Roman caval­ ry formation appear to be based on the ¿ame type of units.v The earliest record of their numbers records a primitive force of 3,000 foot soldiers and 300 riders. In the Republican era Polybius indicates that a legion con­ sisted of 3,000 heavy infantry, 1,200 light infantry called velites and 300 horses.

Thus, it is a fair inference that the basic cavalry or chariot unit was a troop three abreast by ten deep, which unit was re-grouped into a squadron of ten or twenty such units.

T T H E conclusion, if valid, brings up M for consideration the meaning of the word sholish, mentioned numerous times in the Tanach, notably at She­ moth 14:7 where it is related that JE W IS H LIFE

Pharoah pursued the Jews with six hundred select chariots with “sholishim on all of them.” One thing is clear from all the usages and com­ mentaries, that a sholish was some kind of cavalry officer. However, whether he was on the level of a cor­ poral or a general is not clear. Onkelos and others translate the word incotìclusively as “gibbor,” a mighty man. Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel in the Mechilta relates the word to being “third” in the chariot, saying that un­ til that time only two were in the charibt but Pharoah added a third to hasten the pursuit after the Israelites.

Rabbi Yehudah noted that Antoninus, thè Roman, added a fourth man to the chariot.

If we accept the conclusion that the sholish rode in every chariot, it would indicate that he was an officer on a corporal’s level. Rabbenu Chananel (many centuries later) related the title sholish to “third echelon” counting down from the kings and the viceroy, thus making of the sholish a very high general officer of the military, stand­ ing between the civilian and military authority. This may have been sug­ gested by I Kings 9:22 where Shelomo’s servants are mentioned in de­ scending rank as his ministers, “sholishov,” and officers of his chariots and horsemen. This reference indicates that the sholish was higher than a single chariot officer. On the other hand, the reference to Amishai (I Chronicles 12:19) as the head of the sholishim, he being merely a “g’dud” commander under Yoav (or whoever was David’s field marshal at that time), suggests that a sholish is a third-eche­ lon military commander, counting down from the first echelon general commander to the second echelon September-October, 1965

“g’dud” command. Thus Yoav would have been the commander-in-chief, Amishai the commander of all the cavalry, and the sholishim his field of­ ficers. The sholish, therefore, seems to be in command of a group of sixty horse or the thirty horse half-troop.

His name “tertiary” bears a striking resemblance to a modern near-equi­ valent: second lieutenant (lieutenant, meaning a “secondary” or “holder in place of”); a second lieuteant, there­ fore, being the third rank counting downward.

How can these conclusions be squared with the fact that sholishim were in each chariot at the Red Sea? If we compare the size of the cavalry in Pharoah Shishak’s army and the force used by the Pharoah of the Ex­ odus, a striking fact appears. Shishak possessed twelve hundred chariots and sixty thousand horses. To command their troops he necessarily had well over a thousand troop commanders or sholishim. How is it that the Pharoah of the Exodus mounted only six hun­ dred chariots to pursue six hundred thousand men? All indications are that he felt the urgency of this mission. He used his best chariots. He harnessed his own horse. Yet he mustered only one squadron. The answer is to be found in the plagues, especially the pestilence and the hail, which deci­ mated the horses to an infinitesimal part of their normal strength, so that merely six hundred were left. The officers corps, however, was not hit so badly. Hence Pharoah was able to use the “best of his chariots”—i.e. command chariots, capable of holding a third person, an officer. Whereas, normally every thirtieth chariot would be such a chariot, this time Pharoah 67

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JEWISH LIFE

used only command-type chariots. The six hundred horses represented all that Pharoah had left (Shemoth 14:9, 23).

Hence there were enough sholishim so that chosen ones could be placed in charge of a chariot—an unusual event. For that reason, the Torah makes special note of the significant fact.

HUS, all the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place. What appears problematic in one instance is actual-

T

September-October, 1965

ly the solution to what appears proble­ matic in another place, thus under­ scoring again the accuracy of histori­ cal details contained in the Torah, despite the assaults of modern critics upon this phase of it.

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JE W ISH LIFE

A Miracle of Survival

By RABBI ISAAC C. AVIGDOR

Memories from a diary written a few days after liberation, while hospitalized in Wells, Austria.

T WAS early morning on May 5th, 1945 in the forest of Gunskirchen, a branch bf the notorious Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

After many days of constant rain, the sky was finally clearing up. The spring sun was breaking through the heavy clouds which were hanging low over the Alpine peaks.

Though it was just another day, like any other of the past few weeks, yet somehow the air seemed to be filled with an extraordinary, heavy tension weighted with both suspense and anxiety.

From somewhere nearby we heard the rattle of machine gun fire. Spo­ radically a cannon roared in the dis­ tance, but the noise didn’t bother us at all.

Having lived so long in a world of sheer horror, we and all the people around us suffering from inde­ scribable cruelty, from heat and cold, from hunger, privation, and the de­ lirium of pain and disease; having seen death burst upon us from all di­ rections, and raining down from air­ planes, nothing could possibly scare us anymore. The sensation of fright had by now been completely elimi­ nated from our beings.

I

September-October, 1965

The sound and the rhythm of the firing sounded like a Hymn of Death to my ears.

Hope, purpose, were gone. In the stupefaction of my lethargy, I had lost the elemental lust for life and was actually awaiting death. This, all of use knew, was definitely the last stop of the trail. It was a dead-end from which we could not possibly extricate ourselves by our own means. Our limbs were swollen from hunger and completely numb. Just a short while before we were still struggling to hold on to the last glimmer of life, but now most of u^ were resigned to the in­ evitable and had completely sur­ rendered to it.

Lying amidst dead or near-dead bodies, we realized the unique co­ existence of life and death. Until now, the two opposite forces were racing against one another, but at this stage, amazingly, they both were in a stale­ mate; neither life nor death, just a state of being and not-being.

OW conscious thought had left me. I escaped somewhere into the secret sanctum of my inner world which so sealed me off that no panic or fear could penetrate my being. It

N

71

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72

JE W IS H LIFE

was here that I was usually able to find refuge from all my hostile sur­ roundings. It was to this retreat that I turned for peace and comfort. Be­ fore long I was able to calm my inner unrest and settle down, prepared for a deep dream. I felt content and actually satisfied. . . . Let the whole world turn upside down! I wouldn’t budge . . . come what may.

And suddenly it came . . . a mov­ ing thing, massive, r coming closer penetrating my torpor . . . part of my death-shadow dream w orld... ?

It was no dream at all. It was a silhouette of a real tank, an American tank. The khaki-colored autonomon broke through the fences. Its cannon was directed right at our barracks.

Smoke was still fuming from the cannon’s mouth. It must have been shooting its way through the battlefront.

I tried to get up, but I couldn’t.

With someone’s help, I managed to stand up. I don’t know, nor will I ever understand, by what power I was able to drag myself over to the steel body of the tank. I guess it was the force of the determination to convince my­ self that what I saw was not some kind of an illusion. It was definitely the insignia of the American .armed forces! I touched the wall of the tank with my hands in reassurance. I leaned over and embraced it, stood mute for a while and then weakly slid to the ground. Around me people were screaming— “Americans—liber­ ation!”— “we are all free,” free. . . .

Some stronger prisoners were dis­ arming the German guards. Others were filling their pockets with what­ ever they could find, giving vent to wild revenge and hate. They were let­ ting themselves out of the stockade, outside the wired fences within which September-October, 1965

they had been incarcerated for years.

How did I feel? What thoughts came to my mind as my first reaction to sudden liberty? They were many and I will remember them all as long as I live. a s i c a l l y , i felt as Noah of old

B

might have felt when he left the Ark after the flood, realizing that every living thing had died and that he alone had been saved. Was it a blessing or a curse?

Was I to consider myself privileged to be chosen, the one of a thousand to survive, or was it a punishment of the worst kind to go on living with everlasting memories of a holocaust which could never be obliterated?

Now, more than ever before, I ap­ preciated the controversial opinions of the Rabbis regarding Noah’s charac­ ter. According to one, he was pious, according to another, he was not.

It seemed inconceivable for me to believe that I was saved because I was more worthy than those who had per­ ished. I knew that such thoughts were unjust and untrue. It couldn’t be any­ thing else, I reasoned with myself, but a providential punishment rather than a reward. I was doomed to live . . . and for quite a while I envied the dead.

Actually I felt worse than Noah could have ever felt. Before Noah’s eyes a colorful rainbow was suspended across the horizon, everlastingly to at­ test to G-d’s pledge. What solace this sight must have been to Noah and his family. But what did I see before me on that May 5th?

It was true that G-d has not de­ stroyed the world since the Deluge.

People did it themselves more cruelly, f-in a Flood of Blood!

As mankind progressed, the power 73

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and capacity for self-annihilation grew and deepened, the methods of killing multiplied a thousand-fold.

Tyranny dwelt in the colleges, laboratories, and hospitals as part of the rage of Nazi Germany. The bar­ barian of today is not necessarily rec­ ognized by his bearskin and axe. The image of the modern savage is dis­ guised in the garb of culture and civilization and is thus far more dan­ gerous than the vilfain of old.

I had lost hope in mankind. From my inner soul rose the mood of pes­ simism. I asked myself: “Will man forever remain the essence of the wilderness in human form? Will there never come a time when a rainbow of harmonious colors will span an arch of friendship between the peo­

Sep+ember-Ocfober, 1965

ples of the earth? Will we always have wars and bloodshed and cruelty? Will mankind forever symbolize only evil and nothing but evil?

Almighty G-d, I prayed, if man is savage in every generation, please save my children from the kind of suffering with which I was punished.

If it is true that the Jewish people were always the ones upon whose heads symbolically were pLaced the sins of others, then let me bear the blame and the sufferings of my own dear ones. But spare my children from any such experiences! May I be both their redeemer and their scapegoat!

Suddenly tears streamed from my eyes. For years I hadn’t cried and I thought the well was dry. I still won­ der whether these were tears of joy or of sorrow.

75

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76

JE W ISH LIFE

B ooh R eview s A Biographical Grab-Bag

By PHILIP ZIMMERMAN GIANTS OF FAITH, GREAT AMERICAN RABBIS, by Alex J. Goldman, The Citadel Press, New York, 1964, 349 pp. $6.95.

HE Hebrew word lehavdil—to make a division—must be classed with those very few words which are irreplaceable.

Without the use of this word it would be all but impossible to properly review the volume “Giants of Faith, Great Amer­ ican Rabbis,” by Rabbi Alex J. Gold­ man. The author has attempted to cover “Giants” from all the “wings” of Jewry, in one volume without the use of even internal mechitzoth to separate these personalities. Wide indeed is the spectrum covered—from such authentic Torah greats as Reb Aaron Kotler and Dr. Bernard Revel, to, lehavdil, Max Lilienthal and Kaufmann Kohler. Each of the eighteen personalities treated in this facile volume is given a brief biography and evaluation. While the author re­ alizes that they are “as right as Aaron Kotler, as left as (lehavdil) David Einhorn,” he tries to find and make com­ mon ground between individuals and outlooks which are totally irreconcil­ able.

T

PHILIP ZIMMERMAN is the Chief Chemist for a pharmaceuticals firm, as well as the author of many published articles and an abridgement of George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda.”

September-October, 1965

The author has a positive ability to level out all concepts and to blur what should be inherent lines of dis­ tinction. Here then is the main objec­ tion to Goldman’s work—not, as he claims, that the reader may find “some discomfort when reading about men whose views sharply diverge from his own.” Indeed, aside from the theological question involved, there is a fine point of Torah ethics involved in such a grouping. One is reminded that the great Chosom Sofer for many years refused to allow the volumes of two departed geonim who had quarreled in this world to be placed next to each other on his bookshelves—until one day he announced that they had now made peace in their heavenly abode. If so with authentic participants in the Torah tradition, how much more so with those almost totally severed from the chain of Sinai! The error in approach which typifies this work is even more important than those factual errors and omissions which will be pointed out shortly.

After this general criticism of the plan and approach of the work, it must be said that some of the specific bi­ ographies are done quite well. The por­ trait of Reb Aaron Kotler in particular must be considered a good example of its type—again were it not for the setting 77

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in which it is found. The short sketch of this great man, written with deep kovod and great understanding, would seem to show that While the pens of American Orthodoxy were stilled in the period of mourning for Reb Aaron— “another has preceded us in mercy.”

ERTAIN factual errors and omis­ sions deserve to be noted. Thus, in C the article on Solomon Schechter, the author gives him sole credit for the discovery of the famous Genizah of Cairo. It is not generally known that, while Schechter exploited and publicized the discovery, several orthodox scholars preceded him in working on this proj­ ect. The chief of these was Rabbi Solo­ mon Aaron Wertheimer, who, as Rabbi A. B. Shurin points out in his Hebrew volume Keseth Giborim (1964), deserves the title of the discoverer of the Genizah.

Another similar omission occurs in the picture given of the rescud work of the World War II era, where the muchpublicized Stephen S. Wise is shown as the chief worker in this field. Fairness would have called for mention of the work of the authentic Torah greats in this field, especially the work of such a man as Rabbi Abraham Kalmanowitz. The volume “Letters and Docu­ ments” recently published by the Mirrer Yeshiva provides a gold-mine for the potential biographer of Rabbi Kalmanowitz, who consistently sought results rather than headlines.

Of a much more serious nature than these omissions are the distortions con­

September-October, 1965

tained in the picture of the activities of Max Lilienthal in the Russia of the 1840’s. To speak of the “gentle spirit of zeal” of this man, as Goldman does, is given the lie by the fact that Lilienthal denounced the Tzemach Tzedek—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—in the presence of the Russian secret police.

To tell us that Lilienthal “persuaded” Rabbi Isaac of Volozhin and Rabbi Schneerson to attend a meeting with the authorities shows a complete misunder­ standing of the state of affairs under the Czarist tyranny. A mere glance at the excellent volume, “The Tzemach Tzedek and the Haskala Movement” (1962), by the former Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Joseph I. Schneerson, will show a true picture of Lilienthal’s work. Here again Goldman’s penchant for obliterating valid distinctions comes to the fore, and he would have us believe that the great leaders of Jewry of that period were in unity with Lilienthal!

The Torah tradition has never failed to produce gedolim in every generation —men of greatness in scholarship and midoth. Many, if not most, of these men of recent times are all but un­ known to the English-speaking Jewish lay public. With the exception of the valuable series of Rabbi Dr. Leo Jung, one is hard-pressed to point to any works which show the continuing validity of the Torah outlook as exemplified in contemporary personalities. The need for such works is great, and unfortu­ nately Goldman’s book, due to the lack of proper distinctions, cannot be placed on such a list.

79

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