Jewish Life March-April 1967

A M E R IC A N P O L IC Y IN T H E N E A R E A S T I h E V O IC E O F T ( M

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S P O T L IG H T O N C H A L IT Z A H IN IS R A E L W E W E R E N O T S L A V E S IN E G Y P T B R A Z IL

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A T H E IS M IN T H E S O V IE T S C l A o L NISANIYAR 5727 MARCH-APRIL 1967

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THE EDITOR’S VIEW

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ARTICLES S aul B ernstein , Editor Rabbi S. J. S harfman L ibby K laperman P aul H. B aris

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 40 cents per year.

AMERICAN POLICY IN THE NEAR EAST/ Julian Landau ..........................................

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SPOTLIGHT ON CHALITZAH IN ISRAEL/ Aryeh Newman ........................

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THE VOICE OF TORAH IN THE BATTLE OF IDEAS/ Norman L a m m .......................................... 23 WE WERE NOT SLAVES IN EGYPT/ Reuben E. Gross ......................................

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ECUMENICISM AND DIALOGUE— 1263 C.E./ Berel Wein ............................................. 35

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ATHEISM IN THE SOVIET SCHOOL/ Harry Loewy ........................................... 48

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THE CAREER WOMAN AND THE ORGANIZATION/Esther Marine .................... 65

U nion of O rthodox J ewish C ongregations of A merica Joseph K arasick

President H arold M. Jacobs

BRAZIL— THE OLDEST JEWISH COMMUNITY IN THE NEW WORLD/ Jacob Beller ..................

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FICTION CHILDREN/lvo Andric

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Chairman of the Board B e n ja m in K o e n ig s b e r g , Nathan K. Gross, David Politi, Dr. Bernard Lander, Harold H. Boxer, Vice Presi­ d e n ts ; M o r r is L. G reen , Treasurer; Dr. A. Abba Walker, Secretary; Michael Kaufman, Financial Secretary.

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March-April 1967

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JULIAN LANDAU is Research Director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which is interested in foreign policy problems in the Near East and which favors measures by our Government to promote economic devel­ opment and peace in the region. He is also a member of the editorial staff of the Near East Report and contributes to overseas news organs. Aside from his professional duties, Mr. Landau is active in Jewish affairs in Washing­ ton, D.C., where he serves as President of the local Coun­ cil of Orthodox Synagogues. He is a graduate of the Talmudical Academy of Brooklyn and of Columbia Univer­ sity, receiving an M.I.A. degree at Columbia’s School of International Affairs.

among our contributors

RABBI NORMAN LAMM, a stimulating figure among contemporary Jewish thinkers, discusses in this issue ap­ plication of the ideology of Torah Judaism in today’s so­ ciety. A frequent contributor to J e w i s h L i f e , he is the author of an article on the Kennedy-Manchester debate (Jan.-Feb. ’67) and “G-d Is Alive” (Mar.-Apr. ’66). Rabbi Lamm currently holds the Jakob and Erna Michael Chair in Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva University and serves as the Chairman of the Advisory Board of Yavneh, the Na­ tional Religious Jewish Students Association. He is Asso­ ciate Rabbi of The Jewish Center in New York City.

REUBEN E. GROSS, an attorney by profession, has varied interests ranging from orthodox Jewish organiza­ tional activity to Biblical studies. He explores—with char­ acteristic independence of view-—the role the Jews played under the Egyptian Pharoahs and concludes that “We Were Not Slaves in Egypt. . . .” Mr. Gross, whose educa­ tional background includes degrees from Yeshiva Univer­ sity and the Harvard Law School, served in the U.S. Army during World War II and subsequently in the Israeli Air Force. He is the National Commander of Nahal, which is composed of American veterans of Israel’s War for Independence.

Born in Leipzig, Germany, HARRY LOEWY attended yeshivoth there, in Frankfort, and in Montreux, Switzer­ land. Active in the Torah Vaavodah movement both in Europe and on this continent, he is the past president of Hapoel Hamizrachi of Pittsburgh. Mr. Loewy holds an M.A. degree from the University of Louisville and cur­ rently serves as principal of the Rochester (N Y.) Hillel Day School.

MRS. ESTHER MARINE is specially qualified to write on “The Career Woman and the Organization.” She is

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a wife and mother; she works in her chosen profession; and she has held leadership roles in various Jewish wo­ men’s groups including Women’s Branch UOJCA, of which she is a past national vice president. Currently Supervisor and Senior Psychiatric Social Worker for the Pittsburgh Child Guidance Center, Mrs. Marine is also a faculty member of the University of Pittsburgh’s Grad­ uate School of Social Work, where she earned her Ph.D. degree.

Seeing the current pressure for “dialogue” between Jews and Christians in historical perspective, RABBI BEREL WEIN, who is the Rav of Beth Israel Congregation in Miami Beach, relates to our readers the course of the debate of the Ramban in Barcelona in the 13th Century.

Rabbi Wein received Semichah at the Hebrew Theological College in Skokie, 111. He also received a law degree, from DePaul University, and was a practicing attorney for ten years prior to entering the active Rabbinate.

The journalistic travels of JACOB BELLER have led him to four continents including all of the Latin American countries. In “Brazil—the Oldest Jewish Community in the New World,” he compares his current findings with those of his previous several visits to that tropical country and provides an illuminating view of life there.

STANLEY FRYE, translator of “The Children,” has had a colorful career during his so-far 47 years. Born in Mich­ igan, he served as interpreter-translator in an Army POW camp then as interpreter in Delta Base Headquarters, working with refugees and displaced persons. After the war he pursued post-graduate studies in Slavic languages, worked as a translator at the Pentagon and most recently taught at an elite private school. He has now retired to his farm in an isolated valley of North Carolina to build what “will be the largest vineyard in the South” and to enjoy his hobby of translating-—his knowledge of lan­ guages includes Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, Yid­ dish, Spanish, French, Italian, Ladino, Greek, Turkish, and Mongolian!

ARYEH NEWMAN is a graduate of England’s Gateshead Yeshivah and holds an M.A. degree in English Literature from Cambridge. He now lives in Jerusalem where he is Director of the English program of the Torah Education Department of the Jewish Agency and Lecturer at the Hebrew University.

March-April 1967

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among our contributors

THE EDITOR’S VIEW

Abortion: The Silent Voice TVff ANY have found it surprising that the voice of the orthodox Jewish community has not yet been publicly heard in the current debate over amendment of abortion laws. This issue so characteristic of modern times is surely not to be considered irrelevant to the concerns of Torah Jewry. Nor, many feel, should it be viewed as a matter on which it would be improper for orthodox Jewry to “give mussar” to the general community.

The question of legalized abortion, it is argued, touches upon the most basic factor in human society—the attitude toward life itself. To an incalculable extent, the moral outlook of the world in which we live will be conditioned by the final outcome of Shape ------ the controversy. Putting aside the pros and cons of whether it or Be Shaped is right to offer daath Torah to the general community on social problems, it seems evident that Jewry cannot be immune to the consequences of either the retention or the change of present abortion laws.

In this issue as in so many others under the tight-meshed interactions of modern society, the Jew has the option to con­ tribute or not, as a Jew, to its resolution, but he does not have the option of detachment from its consequences. He may or may not choose to contribute, as a Jew, to the shaping of the conditions of the surrounding world, but his life, as a Jew, can­ not be independent of These conditions.

It would be well, too, for the orthodox Jewish community to take stock of the fact that the voices of others are being taken as its voice. Non-orthodox groups have spoken, and spoken loud, on the abortion law question. Among them, to the outrage of many, is the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York. Together with other secularly constituted—and sec­ ularist-minded—organizations and Reform and Conservative agencies, this “welfare” body now presumes to put itself for4

JEWISH LIFE

ward as communal spokesman on this question entailing crucial religious principles—-and, to boot, to pronounce a view in con­ flict with Jewish religious tenets. In the absence of authoritative public word to the contrary, the public is led to believe that the views thus expressed are those of the full Jewish community and the Jewish faith. Here again, ironically, there is no option of silent abstention. In effect, Orthodoxy’s ballot has been cast­ or rather miscast—by other hands.

A CCORDINGLY, the general public is quite unaware that, far from sharing the position on abortion pronounced by various non-orthodox groups, orthodox Jewry has a very differ­ ent position. Those who are concerned to be directly informed Torah of the orthodox Jewish view must seek it out from responsible View quarters. These, while refraining from public statement, do not hesitate to respond to such enquiries. Thus, in response to a communication from one non-Jewish source to the Rabbinical Council of America, Rabbi Israel Klavan, Executive Vice Presi­ dent of that organization, stated: With reference to your inquiry regarding the Jewish view on abortion, may I state the following: The unborn child, particularly after the 40th day of conception, has a right to life which cannot be denied him. Even if the foetus is the product of incest or rape, or an abnormality of any kind is foreseen, the right to life is still his.

The only condition under which this right may be denied is when it threatens the life of another, namely the mother. Under the principle which permits taking the life of a human being in defense of another human being attacked by the first, an abortion can be permitted if the mother’s life is endangered.

It is for a competent religious authority, upon consulta­ tion with medical authorities, to determine whether the threat to a mother’s wellbeing is sufficient to warrant an abortion.

V I R I L E communications of this kind may serve to inform ” those who take the trouble to solicit them, the public at large remains under a false impression as to the stand of the Jewish community. In the absence of public statement by Orthodoxy s national Rabbinical leadership and representative communal agencies, rabbis in various local communities have found themselves impelled to speak out. As effective as these individual Rabbinic voices may be, the necessity remains for March-April 1967

5

authoritative public pronouncement by central sources, to make it clear to all that: Statements by secular, Reform, and Conservative groups on abortion and other national, civic, and moral issues do not represent the position of the collective Jewish com­ munity.

The demand for general “liberalization” of abortion laws expressed by such groups does not accord with authentic Jewish religious belief, is not consonant with the interest of religious Jewry ahd does not reflect the view of a major part of the Jewish community. Orthodox Jews stand in opposition to the proposed legislation.

This is not to say that the abortion laws in force in various states are fully satisfactory from an orthodox Jewish viewpoint.

Changes may be in order, but certainly not those of the kind, scope, and effect which are being so passionately advocated. It would be well for traditional Jewish leadership to formulate, in Torah terms, its position and recommendations on this whole question. o

Orthodoxy’s Social Purview N CONTRAST to the situation discussed above, the tradi­ tional Jewish scene is marked by increasing readiness for public expression. The need has been widely recognized to make Orthodoxy’s positions on public issues, especially those of specifically Jewish concern, made known to the public at large. With this awareness has come an appreciation of the importance of effective communication with the surrounding community, and of effective representation in public life. Emerg­ ing too, if less widely favored as yet, is a trend toward con­ tributing Torah-distilled thinking to the shaping of American and world society. As one source has expressed it: “We Jews are bidden to be a light to all mankind; in this era of the open society, let us not fail to exercise the opportunity vouchsafed to us to bring the light of Torah to men everywhere, so that it illumine the problem of all,” Differing The last-mentioned outlook is, however, contested by those Outlooks who hold that, as a people Divinely ordained to be apart from and yet a light to all other families of mankind, it is not the rightful task of Jewry to project itself into the affairs and issues

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JEWISH LIFE

of the world about us. To do so, this school of thought main­ tains, is to turn Jewish minds from Jewish goals and Jewish hearts from Jewish values: “We must build our own world, and within its Torah ramparts testify by the evidence of mitzvahsanctified lives to the Divine Presence, and thus give example and inspiration to all.”

Note should be taken too of the important consideration that the religious obligations binding upon Jews are not to be re­ quired of non-Jews, oth6r than the Noachide laws. With this foremost in mind, yet another school of thought disputes at­ tempts to translate Jewish tenets into social philosophy or legislative enactments, except with regard to the prevention of legislation which would interfere with Jewish religious life.

T N PRACTICAL application, these outlooks are by no means s° conflicting as they would appear to be in principle. In matters directly impinging on Jewish life, such as legislation affecting Shechitah, governmental aid to day school pupils, and immigration, all alike become involved in the political process.

And all alike soon discover that such “Jewish interest” issues are interwoven with a chain of other issues and ultimately with the over-all processes of political and social life, and that in­ volvement in one facet is neither feasible nor meaningful with­ out some degree of involvement with the total pattern.

Once the implications of the foregoing come into perspective, there is bound to follow a change from a defensive to a positive The Emerging approach to the broad social panorama. The psychological barApproach riers to the change are crumbling, but the practical hindrances remain massive. With the centers of Torah learning concentrat­ ing, as they must, on the schooling of B’ney Torah, and with Orthodoxy’s central organizations ever hard pressed to meet the demands of their regular programs, Torah forces have all too little facility to address to broad social objectives. Is the need then to be frustrated by the seeming inability to meet it? While surface realities may indicate that this would be the case, the story of American orthodox Jewry, especially in the recent dec­ ades, has shown that improbabilities and even supposed impos­ sibilities can become actualities of achievement. Hopefully, we may look to the uncharted dynamics of the Torah world to achieve a basic formulation of the role and program of the Jew in contemporary society.

------ S. B. March-April 1967

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A m e r ic a n A n

P o lic y

in t h e

N e a r E ast

A n a ly s is

By JULIAN LANDAU

MERICAN policy in the Near East has undergone radical and positive changes in the past few years.

But it has also taken a widely pub­ licized step backwards in the past few months.

The positive changes began during th e Kennedy Administration. Pre­ viously, President Truman was faced with -a bureaucratic hierarchy whose opposition to Israel could only be overcome on sporadic occasions. Pres­ ident Eisenhower looked towards Eu­ rope and was guided by a Secretary of State who felt that Communism must be contained by a ring of treaties and alliances, within which Israel had lit­ tle or no place.

John F. Kennedy came to the White House against the backdrop of the 1956 Suez disaster, the failure of the Eisenhower Doctrine and our Lebanese intervention in 1958 to hold the West’s position of power, and the growing influence of the Soviet Union.

A strong supporter of nationalism,

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Kennedy sympathized with the Jewish dream of returning to Zion, as well as Arab aspirations, and he sought to reconcile the two.

Quoting the words of King David —“Seek peace and pursue it”—one of the new President’s first steps was a direct appeal to Nasser of Egypt for “an honorable and humanitarian! so­ lution to the Arab-Israel war. But he was vehemently rebuffed.

However, the program enunciated

by President Kennedy had two facets.

And when the olive branch he prof­ fered was spurned by the Arabs, he turned to the deterrent strength of military might to preserve the peace.

RMS have always been a major barometer of American-Israel re­ lations and the underlying reason for Israel’s reluctance to accept the U.S. commitment to her security at face value. Each of Israel’s requests for weapons from the United States and the refusal to fulfill them marked a

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JEWISH LIFE

low point in thi relations between the two countries.

The American arms policy was established in 1948 by the Department of State officials who opposed the establishment of Israel and predicted its speedy defeat by the Arabs. To make their prophecy self-fulfilling and to ensure the goodwill of the “vic­ tors,” the United States, and Britain and France who followed its lead, em­ bargoed the shipment of weapons to the Middle East. But naturally, it was Israel, the country under attack and the sole belligerent without a standing army, which felt the effect of the em­ bargo the most keenly.

Even when Israel won the War of Independence and signed armistice agreements with the Arabs, Washing­ ton was still not convinced of the new state’s stability. And at this point a new factor entered the picture. Cold War tensions were fast reaching the boiling point (Korea was only a few months away) and the U.S. did not want to antagonize the Arabs at a time when it was seeking to isolate Russia and gain allies throughout the world. Thus, when Britain resumed arms shipments to its Arab allies and Israel Foreign Minister Sharett ap­ pealed to America for weapons to counter the Arabs’ new acquisitions, his request was denied. Instead, Brit­ ain, France, and the United States issued the Tripartite Declaration stat­ ing their “unalterable opposition to the use of force or threat of force be­ tween any of the states . . .’’ Words were substituted for deeds, and the effect was not lost on the Arabs or Israelis.

Two years later John Foster Dulles assumed office and decided that a “northern tier” of defense was needed to contain Communism. The Arabs March-April 1967

were wooed even more assiduously.

In 1952 Britain sold Egypt Lancaster and Halifax heavy bombers. The same year the United States sold Egypt two frigates and added hundreds of mil­ itary vehicles the following year. In 1954 Iraq became the first Arab state to sign a military assistance agreement with the U.S. and to receive grant weapon aid. By the end of 1955 the Baghdad Pact was complete and the Arabs, in the words of one critic, had enough military equipment to resist a Soviet attack, but not enough to be a threat to Israel.

Israel was clearly relegated to a back seat in American policy consid­ erations. Her request for a $75 mil­ lion loan was promptly turned down; all U.S. foreign aid was held up, in October 1953, until Israel ceased work on the B’noth Yaakov hydro­ electric plant; Israel was denied admis­ sion to the “regional” Baghdad Pact. n P H E arms race quickened when -i- Egypt’s Nasser, challenged by Western support of his Arab rivals, turned to the East to raise his prestige.

In September 1955 he announced that he had concluded a $250 million arms deal with Czechoslovakia. A few months later, early in 1956, an acci­ dent revealed a shipment of U.S. tanks and planes to Saudi Arabia.

Israel, surrounded by a growing Arab military machine and harassed by increasing guerrilla raids, again turned to Washington for arms—and again was rebuffed. But Nasser’s al­ liance with Russia opened a crack in the wall of the U.S. embargo. The American refusal was moderated by indications that we would not object to other Western nations assisting Israel. Canada was immediately help­ ful. A few months earlier, France, 9

spurred by Egypt’s support of the Al­ gerian rebels, had begun to provide Israel with large quantities of weap­ ons, including the latest Mystere fighters to counter the 11-28 bombers Nasser received from the Commu­ nists.

Israel’s decisive victory in Sinai, which soon followed, restored the mil­ itary balance to her favor and forced the Arabs to postpone their plans for

a ^“second round.” But the blueprint for Israel’s destruction was only de­ ferred, not discarded, and the acquisi­ tion of arms continued. Egypt espec­ ially felt compelled to wipe out the shame of Sinai and replace the weap­ ons Israel had captured or destroyed.

The Arab buildup, however, took time and for the next five years the conflict between Israel and her neigh­ bors was quiescent.

A R M S POLICY RE-ORIENTED

INAI changed more than the mil­ raelis were again worried about the itary situation. Paradoxically, re­ balance of power. In March 1960 S lations between Israel and the U.S. Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion also improved after Israel withdrew came to the United States. He argued her troops from the Gaza Strip and long and hard with President Eisen­ the Sinai Peninsula. American diplo­ hower and State Department officials mats now appreciated the seriousness for a defense against the supersonic with which Israel viewed her secu­ Russian bombers being sent to the rity problems and the lengths it was Arabs. The Administration, however, prepared to go in self-defense. Israel, was preparing for a summit confer­ for its part, realized that it had to ence with the Soviets (which was make greater efforts to explain its po­ torpedoed two months later by Khrushchev’s reaction to our U-2 re­ sition to Washington.

During these years, with the ex­ connaissance flights) and again re­ ception of two clashes with Syria in fused to antagonize the Kremlin or its 1958, the attention of American pol­ Arab friends by openly backing Is­ icy makers was focused on intra-Arab rael. In addition, the Republicans wars and rivalries, while U.S.-Israel faced elections in a few months and relations developed normally. Wash­ were unwilling to lay themselves open ington was preoccupied with the civil to the charge that they were promot­ war in Lebanon, the revolt in Iraq, ing the Middle East arms race.

The new Kennedy Administration the threat to Jordan, the union—and disunion— of Egypt and Syria, and the saw things differently. Offended by dispute between Nasser and Iraq’s Nasser’s reaction to his proposals for Kassem. By comparison, Israel was an peace, and antagonized by the Egypt­ ian backing of the Communist rebels oasis of calm and stability.

But Russian arms steadily accumu­ in the Congo, President Kennedy was lated in Arab arsenals (about $580 sympathetic to the Israel request. The million worth betwen 1955 and |959) last straw came on July 22, the 10th and by the beginning of 1960 the Is­ anniversary of Nasser’s revolution.

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JEW ISH LIFE

Egypt celebrated the occasion with a military parade in Cairo which dis­ played TU-16 jet bombers, supersonic MIG fighters and heavy tanks. Three ground-to-ground Egyptian rockets had been successfully test-fired the day before, each with a range capable of hitting Arab enemies as well as Israel. And that morning the New York Herald Tribune reported that Russia had agreed to send Egypt ground-to-air missiles within the next few weeks.

On September 27, 1962 the United States announced that it had agreed to sell Israel the Hawk anti-aircraft missile. Israel now had a defense against the low-flying TU-16s which were capable of wrecking such havoc on its cities. But more important, for the first time since Israel’s establish­ ment our Government made it clear that it was willing to implement its commitment to the Jewish state. Un­ daunted by Arab threats and black­ mail, Kennedy’s decision was as im­ portant psychologically as it was mil­ itarily. It told the Arabs in unmistak­ able terms that America would not al­ low the destruction of Israel. It force­ fully backed the words U.S. officials had spoken over the past decade and a half, with concrete action. And it put the Arabs on notice that their at­ tempt to gain military superiority over Israel was futile. ^TTHE sharp change in American arms policy continued even after President Kennedy’s death, but not without some setbacks. Two years later, when Premier Levi Eshkol re­ quested American tanks to meet the heavily armored vehicles Egypt had been getting from Russia, he was sent to West Germany just as Dulles deMarch-April 1967

toured Ben-Gurion to Canada and France in 1955. However, when Nas­ ser denounced Bonn’s shipment of Patton tanks to Jerusalem and threat­ ened to recognize East Germany, Chancellor Erhard suspended the ship­ ments. At this point, in February 1965, the U.S. secretly agreed to com­ plete the German agreement and sent the remainder of the M-48 tanks to Israel. In February 1966 the Depart­ ment of State made the agreement public. Pressure had been mounting from Congress and the public against the U.S. shipment of tanks to Jordan, which was inadvertently revealed by a USIA publication, and in response the Government decided to make its previous decision public.

The last step in the chain of events which began in 1962 occurred last May. To deter an Arab threat, rather than just repulse it, Israel had re­ quested offensive bombers from the U.S. Its French fighters, Israelis ar­ gued, were sufficient to ward off at­ tacking Soviet planes and the Hawk was able to counter the Russian bomb­ ers. But the complex of weapons ac­ quired by the Arabs was becoming so sophisticated that once war started there would be countless casualties de­ spite all Israel’s defenses. What they really needed was to convince the Arabs that war was impractical be­ cause Israel could carry it to their ter­ ritory as well. Thus, on May 19, 1966 Washington announced that it had agreed to sell Israel Douglas A-4 Skyhawk bombers and American arms policy was completely reversed. From a policy at least subtly dedicated eighteen years ago to a victory by the Arabs, the United States has openly become Israel’s major source of wea­ pons against the Arabs.

II

PEACE IS BACK IN THE LEXICO N

A RMS, however, are only half the xm. story. Traditionally, thè United States has proclaimed its friendship for Israel, while in fact practicing a policy of “evenhandedness” towards both Israel and thè Arabs. Despite our often repeated commitment to the people of Medinath Israel, the basic objective of American policy in the Middle East has been to halt Com­ munist influence, to maintain land, sea, and air communications, and to keep the oil flowing to Western de­ pots. To achieve this end each suc­ cessive administration has tried to pre­ serve the status quo and avoid the po­ larization of the region, with the So­ viet Union on the side of the Arabs and the United States on the other side, backing Israel.

This policy required not only cul­ tivating Arab friendship with eco­ nomic and military assistance, but also abstaining from any initiative for peace which might provoke or upset the Arabs. It has led to an equation of aggressor and victim, with the U.S. insisting that both the Arabs and Isreal are responsible for the turmoil in the Middle East.

It began in 1948. On December 11th of that year the UN General As­ sembly passed a resolution creating the Palestine Conciliation Commis­ sion. The purpose of the PCC was to promote peace. But neither its title nor the resolution itself, which spoke of “the final settlement of all ques­ tions outstanding,” mentioned the word peace. In deference to Arab sen­ sibilities and out of fear of offending them, the UN and the U.S. avoided the ^‘biased” term. The practical re­ sults were soon apparent. Unlike 12

Ralph Bunche who insisted that each Arab state meet with Israel separately to negotiate an armistice, the PCC saw only two equal parties and brought all the Arabs together to face Israel. Under the circumstances no Arab country dared make concessions and all refused to even meet with the Israelis. The talks ended in failure.

In 1957 another opportunity was lost, A formal call for peace and di­ rect negotiations after Sinai probably would have resulted in talks between the chastened Arabs and Israel. In­ stead, American policy makers again avoided the initiative. The U.S. in­ sisted that Israel withdraw from Sinai without any guarantees and without peace. All that it received from Wash­ ington were “assumptions.” A call for peace, it was feared, would only push the Arabs even closer to Moscow, which was already receiving credit for stopping the British and French in­ vasion.

Y 1961 the taboo on the word B peace had become so ingrained ip American thinking that the U.S. delegation to the UN voted against a resolution calling for “direct ArabIsrael peace negotiations.” Sponsored by sixteen African and Latin Ameri­ can nations the proposal was a wel­ come relief from the annual UN tirade on the Arab refugees. Since 1950 the General Assembly has been subjected regularly to vituperative Arab speeches, in the hope that the nations of the world would reverse their de­ cision of 1947, apd legislate Israel out of existence. And while they have not accomplished their full objective, neither have they been totally unsucJEWISH LIFE

cessful. By playing upon the sympathy of the world community the Arabs have managed to turn the refugees into a powerful political pawn. They persuaded the General Assembly to pull a single paragraph out of the UN resolution which established the Pal­ estine Conciliation Commission — Number 11 — which states: “The As­ sembly resolves that the refugees wish­ ing to return to their homes and live in peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practical date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return . , Ignoring the fact that all the Arab states voted against that resolution in 1948, that another paragraph—Num­ ber 5— spoke, albeit indirectly, of peace, and that even Paragraph 11 conditions the refugees’ return on their willingness to live at peace with their neighbors, the Arabs have insisted that this paragraph mystically gives the refugees the “rightf^to return to Israel unconditionally. And they have seized on the debates regarding the fu­ ture of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) as the means of reinforcing that non-existent right by persuading the UN to reaf­ firm paragraph 11 year after year.

Many nations who were tired of the endless debate and sought a realistic approach to the refugee problem wel­ comed the peace initiative. But the United States called it “unrealistic’’ and “counterproductive.” As in the past, it allowed itself to be black­ mailed by the Arabs who had intro­ duced a resolution calling for a UN custodian of Arab property in Israel.

To vote against the Arab proposal and for the peace resolution, the U.S. ar­ gued, would antagonize the Arabs and brand us as the “defenders of Israel.”

March-April 1967

UT in 1964 American policy B changed. In June of that year, for the first time since the establish­ ment of Israel, its Prime Minister was the official guest of the President of the United States. And during the visit the word peace was restored to the vocabulary of American diplomats.

Lyndon Johnson’s record of friend­ ship to Israel goes back to 1957, and, unlike John Kennedy, Johnson had the power to back his words with deeds before he became President.

When Secretary of State Dulles threat­ ened Israel with sanctions if she did not withdraw from the Sinai Peninsu­ la there was an immediate uproar in this country. But what convinced Dulles to withdraw his threat was not public pressure but the firm opposi­ tion of two leading Senators—Lyndon B. Johnson and William F. Knowland —who cabled the Secretary of State that they would lead a fight in the Senate opposing sanctions and would insist on firm guarantees for Israel against raids and blockades if the Sec­ retary attempted to carry out his threat.

Three years later Senator Johnson again added his considerable prestige to a Congressional move to prod the Administration into action on the Arab-Israel conflict. In April 1960 Democratic Representatives Wayne Hays of Ohio and Leonard Farbstein of New York introduced an amend­ ment to the Mutual Security Act which stated Congress’ opposition to boycotts, blockades, and restrictions on the use of international waterways.

The “freedom of the seas” amend­ ment, as it was called, was directed at Nasser’s refusal to allow Israel ships or cargo through the Suez Canal.

But while the amendment passed without difficulty in the House it ran 13

into the opposition of the Administra­ tion and Senator J. W. Fulbright in the Senate. The fight was bitter. Ful­ bright accused his colleagues of “ap­ peasing a minority group.” Johnson, then Majority Floor Leader, backed Senators Paul Douglas and Kenneth Keating who sponsored the bill, and introduced the motion to table Ful­ bright’s nullifying amendments.

It was this background which led President Johnson to invite Premier Eshkol only two months after the tragic events in Dallas. It was this history which brought him to the New York dinner of the American Committee for the Weizmann Insti­ tute, on February 3, 1964, where he dramatically announced a joint U.S.Israel study of the problems of nu­ clear desalting with the words, “water must never be a cause of war; it should always be a force for peace, and peace is first on our agenda.”

And it was this recognition of Israel’s problems which led him a few months later to tell Eshkol: “We know that you want to live in peace with your neighbors, and we believe it not only possible but imperative that those problems be peacefully resolved.”

Once again American policy had been reversed. The Eliminations of the Arab press and their diplomats in Washington were not only ignored, they were specifically rejected by top U.S. officials as unacceptable.

ERHAPS even more important P than the White House actions was the fact that, unlike President Truman, President Johnson was not a voice shouting in the wilderness of the State Department’s opposition.

The career diplomats in Washington and in the capitals of the Near East no longer weigh Israel against the 14

might of its thirteen Arab neighbors.

The myth of a united Arab world has been so shattered that even the De­ partment of State cannot put it back together. As 1967 began the “progres­ sive” Arab states of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Algeria were opposed to the monarchies in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Morocco; the republicans fought the royalists in Yemen, with Nasser and Faisal standing at their respective elbows; the Kurds struggled for auton­ omy in Iraq; the Nasser backed and Shukairy-led Palestine Liberation Or­ ganization dedicated itself to the over­ throw of Hussein; Syria was compet­ ing with Egypt in an ill-concealed bid for Arab leadership; Arab terrorists in Aden killed other Arabs; Syria cut off Iraq’s oil; Lebanon accused Ku­ wait of causing the collapse of one of its major banks, and Premier Bourguiba of Tunisia was at odds with the entire Arab League.

Nor does the State Department still look upon Nasser as “the chosen in­ strument” of American policy in the Near East. It has finally realized that he is not the unquestioned leader of the Arabs, able to threaten and pro­ duce a solid bloc behind him. The les­ son was learned in 1965 when Nasser called on the other twelve Arab states to break diplomatic relations with West Germany because Bonn had rec­ ognized Israel. He used the usual ral­ lying cries of “Israel” and “imperial­ ism,” but only Yemen and Iraq fol­ lowed his lead. The remaining Arab countries felt that their self-interest required the aid and trade they re­ ceived from West Germany. Even the magic phrase “Israel” failed to unite the Arabs, and another myth was dispelled.

In Yemen Nasser has found that he is upable to extricate himself from a JEWISH LIFE

dilemma of his own making. The past three years have proven that he can­ not win the war against the Yemeni tribesmen; that, in fact, he has even lost the allegiance of most of the “re­ publicans,” whose revolution he came to defend. Yet, at the same time, he cannot afford to withdraw from the strategic tip of the Arabian peninsula.

Not only would he lose face—as im­ portant a consideration in the Near East as it is in Asia—but he would also have to relinquish his dream of dominating the oil-rich coast of the Persian Gulf.

Within Egypt Nasser faces even greater problems than those abroad.

His foreign adventures and his tre­ mendous outlays for arms have drained Egypt’s economy. There is not sufficient food to feed the people, and his rapidly growing population faces starvation. Even the much vaunted Aswan Dam will, when it is completed, only allow Egypt to mark time, not leap ahead.

His critics at home have become more brazen. Last year Nasser was forced to jail some 6,000 of his coun­ trymen for their alleged involvement in the Moslem Brotherhood plot to overthrow the regime.

ASHINGTON’S disillusionment was translated into policy. When the three year, $450 million surplus food agreement with Egypt expired in 1965 it was not renewed until Nasser and Faisal signed a Yemen ceasefire and Nasser moderated his criticism of the U.S. The terms of the new agreement—limited to only six months—were much harsher than pre­ viously. Nasser was required to pay for one-quarter of the food in dollars rather than -Egyptian pounds, thus placing an additional drain on his al-

W

March-April 1967

ready tight foreign exchange reserves.

That agreement expired last June 30.

It has not been renewed despite Egypt’s request for a new $150 mil­ lion 12-month program. In the words of former AID Administrator David Bell: “We were not prepared then or now to approve this request” because the United Arab Republic has not moved towards an acceptable solution in Yemen and has not taken adequate self-help measures in its economy.

U.S. officials have also taken steps to curb the Nasser-backed Palestine Liberation Army. Top American spokesmen in Washington and at the UN announced that we would not permit our contributions to UNRWA to be used for the care and feeding of refugees training to destroy Israel.

Parenthetically, it should be noted that this stand led UNRWA Commis­ sioner General Michelmore to pro­ pose a special $150,000 fund to feed the estimated 12,000 PLA members on the UNRWA rolls.

Finally, unlike its past procedure of almost ignoring Congressional action on the Arab war against Israel, the Administration has taken pains to publicize and enforce the WilliamsJavits bill—a measure passed in 1965 to curb the effect of the Arab boycott on American businessmen.

Thus, as 1966 came to an end, American policy in the Near East was more sympathetic to Israel and its problems than at almost any other period since the establishment of the Jewish state: The U.S. stand towards Nasser had hardened; it had agreed to supply Israel with an offensive deter­ rent capability; it refused to permit Arab blackmail threats to dictate U.S. action; and there was even hope for a peace initiative.

15

THE RAID O N ES SA M U

B

briefed accordingly. As a result many American newspapers, even those usually sympathetic to Israel, en­ dorsed the censure as “deserved” (New York Times) or denounced the raid as “incredible stupidity” (De­ troit Free Press) and "‘betraying a rage and recklessness dangerously menacing to the maintenance of peace” (Washington Post).

Ambassador Arthur Goldberg was proof of the sudden change. On No­ vember 14 he deplored both the Israel attack and the terrorist raids which brought it on. Two days later Gold­ berg told the Security Council that Israel’s action “cannot be justified, explained away or excused by the in­ cidents which preceded it, in which the government of Jordan has not been implicated.”

There was a second reason for the U.S. reaction. To Americans the Is­ raelis are “civilized Westerners,” while the Arabs are '‘romantic Bedouin.” Adopted from the British who, during the days they held the mandate for Palestine, expected the Jews to understand, sympathize, and agree with them, this philosophy leads most Western officials to anticipate different behavior from the Israelis than they expect from the Arabs. This double standard of expectation has pervaded U.S. relations with Israel since 1948. The Arabs went to war against Israel, but Israel is expected to make concessions to secure peace.

Israel has absorbed almost one million Jewish refugees, but Arab refugees are kept in camps and supported by the world community. Arab terrorism is mildly rebuked, but Israel’s reaction is harshly condemned. Israel should

16

JEWISH LIFE

UT ON November 13, 1966 Is­ rael attacked the Jordanian vil­ lage of Es Samu after six months of terrorist raids from Jordan territory.

Washington’s reaction was harsh and bitter. It pushed the strongest Security Council resolution ever adopted by the UN. Israel became the first government to be censured by the world community. (All pre­ vious censure votes had been directed against governmental actions rather than the government itself.)

In light of the positive attitude ex­ pressed only a few weeks earlier by the U.S., Israel and her friends were surprised and shocked by the violent American reaction. But, in fact, it was not difficult to understand.

The key to the U.S. attitude was Is­ rael’s choice of target. Since King Hussein terminated his treaty with Great Britain in 1956, America has assumed responsibility for Jordan’s survival. In the eyes of Washington, the kingdom invented by Winston Churchill is the key to peace in the Middle East. The U.S. fears that if Hussein is overthrown Israel will move into the West Bank to prevent a Nasserite regime from controlling the more than 400-mile border. This, in turn, could inflame the entire region and draw the Great Powers into the conflict. Thus, when Shukairy began fomenting riots among the Jordanian Palestinians, the U.S. embassy in Amman panicked and its fears were transmitted to Washington. State De­ partment officials decided that Hus­ sein must be supported at all costs.

The U.S. pressed for a strong UN res­ olution to strengthen Hussein’s hand and Washington correspondents were

turn the other cheek, but Hussein must be supported with more arms. Wash­ ington, and many of the newspaper editors quoted above, believe that Is­

raelis should ^‘know better” than to resort to force. The Arabs, on the other hand, are not expected to “know better.”

THE FUTURE

MERICAN policy thus seems to by American citizens. Just as the A have reverted to the attitude of Administration is prodded by Con­ the 1950s. But only the passage of time can prove whether this retreat is permanent and whether it has wiped out the positive gains since 1962.

In fact, the failure of AmericanIsrael relations, as well as the future of the Middle East does not rest solely in the hands of Israel. Russia, the Cold War, and intra-Arab rela­ tions will affect that future more than any actions of the Jewish state.

But U. S. policy can be influenced

March-April 1967

gress, so members of the Senate and the House are swayed by their con­ stituents. American Jews can ensure that the retreat is only temporary by expressing their views, repeatedly and without hesitation, to their elected representatives. They can bring peace closer by persuading their Govern­ ment that indirection encourages bel­ ligerence and only a strong U.S. and world demand for an end to the Arab war against Israel will bring it about.

17

S p o t lig h t o n

C h a lit z a h

in

Is r a e l

By ARYEH NEWMAN

HE institution of levirate* mar­ tive—the ceremony of Chalitzah by T riage, has a long history. It is to which the brother releases both him­ be found in the Bible as current even self and the widow from the link with before the giving of the Torah on Sinai. The house of David, that spirit­ ual and physical symbol of Jewish sovereignty, was born out of the ap­ plication of the principle of levirate marriage—in which the childless wid­ ow continues to be linked with her husband through a descendant. It was a religious duty devolving not only on the deceased brother but on any of his next of kin. Tamar and Ruth, both Biblical heroines, brought the Davidic dynasty nearer to realization by insist­ ing on the fulfillment of this duty known as yibbum, exemplifying the selfless qualities of protecting the help­ less— as a widow was in those days, more than now—and preserving the memory and individual contribution of the deceased to humanity.

The Torah (Devorim 25:5-10) ac­ tually limits the duty of Yibbum to the brothers and provides an alterna* From Latin levir meaning brother-in-law.

18

the past. This ceremony was essential­ ly humiliating for the yovom—the brother-in-law—in which he was pil­ loried by both the widow and society for refusing to discharge his duty. He could only perform it when he had at­ tained his majority, but without it the widow was “tied” to him and for­ bidden to remarry.

N the course of time, as a result of changes in society and attitudes, the ceremony of Chalitzah became the norm and Yibbum the exception. It was very difficult to find a Yovom who regarded the affair as a religious duty. He was more interested in the widow’s appearance or means or both.

In the days of the Talmud, Chalitzah was regarded more highly than Yib­ bum. What is more, the practice of giving a deathbed divorce was com­ mended, where there were no children, in order to save the widow from the inconvenience and often hardship of

I

JEWISH LIFE

either Yibbum or Chalitzah. Event­ ually by the Middle Ages, the same renowned Rabbenu Gershom who out­ lawed polygamy for European Jewry also outlawed Yibbum. But the insti­ tution still survives in some ArabJewish communities though the Chief Rabbinate has forbidden it for all Jew­ ish citizens of Israel, of whatever com­ munity.

Chalitzah still remains, although in­ dividual cases of modification of the marriage contract have been known which effectively rule out its conting­ ency. A couple may contract before the marriage ceremony that in the event of the husband dying without issue, then the marriage is retroactive­ ly invalidated. Rabbinic authorities, however, are very reluctant to employ such devices generally because of the danger of thereby undermining the sanctity of the marriage institution.

But they have not hesitated to resort to such completely legitimate circum­ ventions in individual cases of hard­ ship.

An interesting case that took place during the second World War related to a young couple in Palestine.* The husband fell victim to an incurable disease which threatened at any mo­ ment to cut short his life. In its last stages it rendered him mentally in­ capacitated. The couple had no chil­ dren but the husband had a brother and the wife a sister in New Zealand.

The problem that preoccupied the family was that of eventual Chalitzah.

It was impossible for the husband to give a divorce on account of his men­ tal state. Because of the distance and war conditions it would be impossible to obtain Chalitzah and the woman * See Principia Talmudica (Kach Darko shel Talmud), 'Prof. Moshe Silberg, Justice of the Supreme Court of Israel, Jerusalem, 1964, He­ brew University Student’s Press, pp. 28-29.

March-April 1967

would be condemned to possibly a long widowhood. But fortunately the Rabbinic sage they applied to had a remedy. He advised them to write to the brother-in-law in New Zealand to go through a form of marriage with the wife’s sister and then immediately divorce her. This was promptly car­ ried out. The widow by this became the sister of his divorced wife who was

by Torah law excluded from the area of Yibbum and Chalitzah.

ECENTLY the institution of Chalitzah figured prominently in two cases in Israel which reached re­ spectively the civil and religious high courts. The vicissitudes of the former forcibly illustrated how vital a force Jewish religious law is even in the secular courts. A mastery of the Tal­ mud and Rabbinic codifiers is a must even for the judge in the Israeli secu­ lar courts. On account of this, a law­ yer’s education in Israel demands a knowledge of Talmudic law. A large proportion of members of the legal profession are ex-yeshivah students, some of them expert scholars. The civil high court always contains at least one outstanding Talmud scholar.

The civil case involved an inherit­ ance dispute between a stepmother and her stepchildren over the father’s estate worth some $70,000. The sons disputed the widow’s right to a part in the estate on the grounds that she had married their father without benefit of Chalitzah. This fact had not heen known to the rabbinate when her sec­ ond marriage was registered. Accord­ ingly, the children claimed that her marriage had been invalid and she had no right to the estate. Though the case was heard by the civil courts as a purely secular issue, to be determined by the secular law, the determining of 19

the women’s statué is the prerogative of the Rabbinic cdurt. There was no alternative .but for the civil court to engage in what dne evening paper termed “a Talmud shiur.” Was the lady in question married to the de­ ceased or not, The Talmud shiur was indeed a long one, since the case was heard four times; twice by the lower courts and twice by the high court.

In the latter instance a special tribunal consisting of five instead of the usual three judges handed down final judg­ ment written by the presiding judge, Moshe Silberg, widely renowned au­ thority on Talmudic law who was known in his younger days as the Slobodker illuy.

At the first hearing the judges de­ cided that the wife was sufficiently “married” to the deceased to legitimize her claim to the estate. But a ruling of the rabbinic court sitting at the same time revoked the widow’s orig­ inal marriage license; this led the civil court to reverse its decision and find in favor of the children. On appeal to the high court the decision was again reversed and the widow’s claim up­ held. It was reasoned that since the widow required a get, a bill of divorce, in order to remarry, a marital link had been established with the deceased suf­ ficient to warrant her title to the estate. For in Israel even a commonlaw wife who lived with her husband as a wife without legal registration is entitled to inheritance and pension rights.

A further appeal resulted in the final judgment df a five-man high court of appeal. Judge Moshe Silberg wrote the judgment and carefully an­ alysed the status of a marriage with­ out benefit of Chalitzah. The source of the problem is in the Talmud Yevomoth 92a which discusses the inter­ 20

pretation of Devorim 25:5: “When brothers dwell together and one of them dies and leaves no son, the wife of the deceased shall not be married to a stranger, -outside the family.”

Does it invalidate a marriage so per­ formed (outside the family), or mere­ ly prescribe a religious prohibition, the violation of which is itself repre­ hensible (like the marriage of a di­ vorcee to a Kohen) but which does not affect the validity of the marriage*} The Codifiers accept the ruling of the teacher Samuel that the interpretation is in doubt. What is the status of this doubtful marriage? Judge Silberg sur­ veyed the whole canvas of doubtful marriage in Jewish law from the Tal­ mud down to the latest authorities and concluded: “The vast majority of au­ thorities concur that the remarriage of a woman without benefit of Chalitzah constitutes sophek kiddushin min hatorah and not merely a stringency de­ manded by the rabbinic authorities (chumra derabbanan) T h e secular authorities were therefore entitled to view her as the legal wife in respect to the estate especially since the doubt existing about the validity of the mar­ riage was such as could never be re­ solved in any court of law.

O MUCH for the role played by Chalitzah in the secular high court S of Israel. A case which involved greater heartsearchings was one heard by the supreme Rabbinic court of Is­ rael in Jerusalem. Before reaching their decision the learned and pious judges fasted. This underlines the sense of responsibility to the past, present, and future with which the au­ thentic Jewish judge views his task.

Before the Jerusalem sages Rabbis Yeshaya Goldschmidt, Yoseph Eliashiv, and Betzalel Zolti came the JEWISH LIFE

heartbreaking case of a girl widowed by the suicide of her husband who would have to wait eight years before her deceased husband’s brother would attain his majority and be able to give her Chalitzah. The husband had proved to be impotent and it was this that had led to his suicide. During their brief marriage the wife had actually filed a divorce suit which was pending when the catastrophe happened. Her lawyer requested the annulment of the marriage on the grounds of breach of contract. As we have had cause to mention in our introduction, Jewish law is very loathe to resort to annul­ ment of marriage, but the discretion remains in the hands of the Rabbinate.

Although no condition had been ex­ plicitly made before the marriage, could the fact of impotence be held to imply a breach of contract? The matter is actually much more compli­ cated than this, since even an explicit condition does not rule out the prob­ ability of the partners waiving it as a result of the act of living together.

The three sages after much delibera­ tion and consultation of authorities de­ cided they could annul the marriage in order to save the girl’s future, but stip­ ulated that a leading world authority should share the responsibility. This sage was Rabbi Moshe Feinstein of New York, who gave the decision his blessing. To stress the ad hoc nature of the judgment, the Rabbinate de­ cided not to publish the detailed judgment. It was an individual one­ time decision. Any future case of a similar nature would bo judged on its merits. all ages Rabbinic authorities have ItheNexercised their discretion within limits of the law to alleviate the hardships that the realities of human March-April 1967

existence have given rise to. It was only the greatest and saintliest of scholars who found the courage to make the delicate decisions that were called for, ready to defend them against all critics once the dispensa­ tion had gone forth. They usually called on colleagues in other commu­ nities to share in the responsibility and search for further grounds for their decisions. Only recently the pub­ lication of the response of the late Gaon Yehiel Weinberg of Montreux* revealed that the late Chief Rabbi Herzog had authorized the supreme Rabbinic court to write bills of di­ vorce on behalf of fpur husbands who had embraced Mohammedanism re­ maining in Yemen whilst their young brides came to Israel in the “magic carpet” operation in 1950. This was done because it proved quite impos­ sible to trace the husbands and receive from them any instructions. The four brides would have thus remained agunoth— deserted wives—all their lives.

Rabbi Herzog appealed to Rabbi Weinberg to add his grounds for re­ leasing them.

It is interesting to note that Rabbi Weinberg’s last will and testament to orthodox Rabbinic authorities all over the world* * was for them serious­ ly to consider the question of circum­ venting by a general enactment (takkonah) the hardships arising out of the breakdown of Jewish family life— the increase of civil marriage and di­ vorce often caused by the inability of obtaining redress in Rabbinic courts (mental disturbance of the husband and arbitrary refusal of one of the * Seridey Eish, Mossad Harav Kook, Jeru­ salem, 1966, vol. 3, pp. ff. ** In his introduction to Tenay Benissuin Uveget (Conditional Marriage and Divorce) by Rabbi Eliezer Berkowitz, Mossad Harav Kook, Jerusalem, 1966.

21

parties to a religious divorce, etc.) This issue is however outside the scope of any lay or non-professional article.

One thing is clear: Jewish law is ca­ pable of dealing with any situation, is flexible and dynamic. But these ad­

22

vantages can only be enjoyed if they are informed by deep knowledge, scrupulous adherence to the principles of Rabbinic jurisprudence, the most delicate sensitivity to human problems, and intense Jewish religious faith.

JEWISH LIFE

T h e V o ic e o f T o r a h In t h e

B a t t le o f Id e a s

A Program for Orthodoxy*

By NORMAN LAMM

r I THIS is an exciting period for a ■1thinking Orthodox Jew. It is a dan­ gerous time too—when faith threatens to be swept away in the wildly whirl­ ing intellectual currents of the times.

But the danger enhances the excite­ ment and highlights the opportunities.

Rarely before have we been faced with such an array of challenging, stimulating, and provoking ideas. And yet, rarely before have we reacted to such stimuli so passively, so defen­ sively, so apprehensively, so uncreatively.

What does the Torah have to say about the great issues that confront modern man and the modern Jew? Unfortunately, I do not know. My training has left me largely unpre­ pared for them. I have even had to overcome powerful inhibitions in or­ der to reach the stage where I am not suspicious of the very question.

Assuming that by the “battle of ideas” we mean something that transcends * Based upon an address to the National Con­ vention of the UOJCA in Washington, D.C. on November 25, 1966.

March-April 1967

the petty concerns of institutional riv­ alry, all I can say is that—to borrow a phrase from the Zohar—the Voice of Torah today is kol beli dibbur, it is inchoate: a voice without words, a general cry not yet reduced to clear speech. In an age which stresses the importance of communication, we have not yet developed clear guide­ lines, not yet formulated convincing approaches, not yet spoken lucidly, to the cardinal issues of our century. I have faith that there are clear views and answers within Torah; but we have largely failed to express the kol Torah in dibbur, to articulate the vision of Torah, to spell out the im­ plications of our tradition. Too often we have even refused to acknowledge the existence or the validity of the questions. I am therefore dispirited and vexed by our apparent unwilling­ ness to engage in the Battle of Ideas, but optimistic as to the ultimate out­ come if we finally do begin searching out the judgment of Torah and com­ municating it effectively.

23

HE RANGE of4intellectual prob­ lems that today confronts a think­ ing Jew—especially a young one—is quite impressive. What is the meaning of chosenness in the modern world?

How can I reconcile true emunah with my right to question and even doubt? What is unique in the message of Torah that cannot be found else­ where? What about Biblical criticism?

What of the “moral problems” in Torah that bother so many students?

What does Torah tell us about the uniqueness of man in an age of gene­ tic engineering and psychological manipulation? How does man encoun­ ter G-d in a world which has yielded more and more of its secrets to sciem tific inquiry? How are we to advocate Halachah for the community as a whole, when those who accept Hala­ chah are in a minority and when reli­ gion in general is becoming more marginal in society?

That Torah does offer guidance on these and all other issues is evident from the fact that some efforts have been made to spell out authentic Jew­ ish views—here and there an article, a monograph, a book. In every gen­

T

eration »attempts were made to grapple^ with questions that disturbed people’s minds and hearts. But our generation has not yet done so, at least not ade­ quately. Perhaps we were too busy with the exigencies of everyday life and with assuring our material and financial survival. But now survival will be determined by the quality of our ideas, and we must begin to make up for lost time. More students in Yeshivoth will not solve the problem, not even bigger institutions of learn­ ing. The size of our schools will be meaningful only if the content of our teaching is germane to the life of our students, only if we succeed in re­ lating our classical literature to life as it is lived today.

Because we barely have begun on meeting these challenges, it may be wiser for us to concentrate not on specific responses of Judaism to in­ dividual problems, but on a general strategy for its campaigns in the battle of ideas and ideals and ideologies.

A battle plan calls, before all else, for defining our attitudes—towards our “enemies,” towards other Jews, and towards our fellow Orthodox Jews.

IDENTIFYING THE PROBLEM

The “enemy” hovers in the perva­ IRST it is necessary to identify F the enemy in this battle. I submit sive intellectual climate of the whole that the enemy is not an institution Western world. It is the view that and not a movement—not even Re­ form or Conservatism. The polemics and counter-polemics against them— and they have almost become a kind of required loyalty oath to Orthodoxy —are, for the most part, vain and fruitless. They would be amusing if they did not involve such a tremen­ dous cost of time and talent and of good will in the community at large.

24

religion has been bypassed in our time, a view implicit in the philoso­ phies, both explicit and assumed, of secularism and naturalism, and the values of hedonism and amorality which they bring in their wake. It is not a single, well-defined ideology, but a hodge-podge of ideas of varying subtlety and depth. The adversary of Judaism, and of its endeavor to sancJEWISH LIFE

tify all of life through the Mitzvoth, is the combination of attitudes—so in­ digenous to modern society that its members are shocked when its validity is questioned-—that religion is purely a matter of private conscience; that it is a collection of sacred symbols and ecclesiastical rituals, to be per­ formed at certain times and in special places, wedded to a general and vague system of ethical values; that, as a vital force in daily existence and in public affairs, it is virtually non­ existent; that its conception of G-d is a mythical “grandfather” image, and its cosmogony, taken literally, is based on an outdated world-view and is therefore totally unscientific; that it must be suffered as a historic relic by a Jewish community which is the most Westernized of all, and indulged as the sentimental whim of some oldtimers and die-hards. This potpourri, in its very heterogeneity, is sympto­ matic of the noxious confusions of the secularist Jew, who cannot see beyond his naturalist nose.

If there is any institutionalization of this unhealthy spiritual mood, it is in the powerful Jewish secular agen­ cies that control the finances and the public relations of the Jewish com­ munity. I find more peril for Judaism in the American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee and the various welfare organizations and “Y”s than I do in the Conservative and Reform groups. The spiritual bankruptcy combined with the pecuni­ ary and political power of the former represents a far greater threat than the sanctification of a truncated Tprah by the latter. Ten, twenty, or thirty years ago there was a certain cogency to the identification of the various heterodox “Judaisms” as the most pernicious rivals to the authentic JewMarch-April 1967

ish tradition. There was substance, then, to the quest in our ranks for erecting the greatest possible barriers between Orthodoxy and the other “in­ terpretations.” Let our positions be firmly marked, we argued, and better a Reformer of the American Council for Judaism type than a right-wing Conservative. Let Jews see the alterna­ tives clearly, and let us do away with the confusions that blur the dividing lines.

I am no longer so sure that this is a valid and effective approach. The conditions of American Jewish life have changed, and yesterday’s tactics may be outmoded today. Once, the ranks of Conservatism were replenish­ ed by defecting Orthodox Jews, and the Jewish Theological Seminary drew its students, to a large extent, from the dropouts from our Yeshivoth. I do not believe that is true any longer, at least not to the same extent. The Conservative movement has accom­ plished much with its youth organiza­ tion, especially its Ramah camps, and its theological students now are usu­ ally those who are on their way in rather than on their way out. One does not treat such people as rene­ gades; one welcomes them and regrets only that they have stopped short of the true goal. In a more limited way, one may say the same of the Reform.

Their young leadership is not cut of the same cloth as was the old one which considered flirtation with Chris­ tianity as far more important than pondering its sorry lack of fidelity to the Jewish tradition.

ODAY we are all of us— all who assent to the idea that the Jewish people is more than an ethnic group with certain ethical pretensions and the pioneers of “democracy” and

T

25

“Americanism,” but a people dedi­ cated to a transcendent religious vision—threatened by extinction. Be­ tween intermarriage and a depressed birth-rate, both of which are approved or at least condoned by the inner logic of Jewish secularism, the existence of the entire community is threatened.

At a time of this sort we are using the wrong weapons against the wrong enemies if we continue to consider Conservatism and Reform as the sole or even the major threats to Torah.

This by no means implies a “Jew­ ish ecumenicism” for our times. We are not now—and should never be —ready to give the seal of approval to “kosher-style” Judaisms. It does mean that we must concentrate our energies and talents in those areas which are today most significant and most in need of attention. It means that we must encourage any and every sign of Jewishness and Torahconsciousness, no matter how primi­ tive and truncated, wherever we find it.

Shall we, then, apply the same means we once used against Reform and Conservatism to the various secu­ lar agencies and federations? No, decidedly not. The methods we em­ ployed in the past have not proven so successful as to be worthy of emula­ tion in new situations. Moreover, ! repeat that it is not an institution that threatens us, but a climate, a mood, a spirit of the age. This “enemy” is not as clearly identifiable as is an organization or a movement.

It infiltrates our own ranks too, and attacks the vitals of Orthodoxy and its institutions from within.

Because this mood, so inimical to our highest interests, is not a single theory, this “enemy” is not necessarily “bad” in the sense of well defined 26

theories antagonistic to Judaism. It is, to some extent, a collection of honest doubts, a mood of individual auton­ omy rather than submission to author­ ity, a bewilderment in the face of evil of the dimensions of the Age of Auschwitz. It is such that constitutes the spirit of an age that makes it un­ usually difficult for Torah to prevail, as we should like to see it prevail.

HEN the enemy is a pervasive intellectual mood, bolstered by W profound perplexities of people who are not illiterate but cultured and in­ telligent and honest, you cannot beat it into submission by belligerence and invective. That just does not work, especially in a democratic society.

Condemnation, d e n u n c i a t i o n , and issurim will not convince people to return to Torah. Nor can we simply ignore problems. In a society with in­ stantaneous communication and al­ most universal higher education, everyone is aware of the ideological problems even if we refuse to con­ sider them. There is only one effec­ tive attitude to take: analysis, under­ standing, intelligent persuasion, ethical example, and—yes!—sympathy with and respect for opponents who often would like to believe if only we could convince them.

The right attitude towards other Jews means not to despair of our ulti­ mate victory. It means to recognize the good inherent in the masses of non-observant Jews, a goodness that is waiting to be redeemed, that invites us to save it. The early Chasidic Tzaddik, R. Elimelech of Lizensk, inter­ preted the words of David: “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me (yirdefuni) all the days of my life and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23). Yirdefuni JEWISH LIFE

means “will pursue me” more than “follow me.” David is not asking merely for his personal “goodness and mercy.” He is telling us that the Jew who possesses innate goodness and performs acts of mercy is such that this goodness and mercy will pursue him until they drive him back to the Source of all goodness and mercy; “and I shall dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”

MERICAN JEWS have a tremen­ dous reservpir of “goodness” and A of “mercy.” They have given muni­ ficently to Israel, to refugees, even to Yeshivoth, to charities of all kinds; they have contributed strength to the cause of the racially and financially oppressed throughout the world. This goodness, if harnessed by us intelli­ gently, can lead them to return to the House of the Lord, to the fold of Torah Judaism. If we fail to exploit this goodness for the sake of Torah, we are foolish. If all we can do is excoriate and villify Jews—we are worse. To reproach an erring Jew is a Biblical commandment. But to do so in a manner which will further

alienate him is to compound obvious ineffectiveness with criminal stupidity.

Then, our attitude towards our fel­ low Orthodox Jews must be re­ examined. What the times cry out for is—-mutual respect. I emphasize re­ spect—not submission. The Left must acknowledge the authenticity of the Right as a fulcrum of Torah learning and living and as a restraint upon those who might otherwise be cast adrift. And the Right must stop look­ ing with suspicion on those who read the facts of American Jewish life dif­ ferently, on those who are impatient with our patent paralysis in addressing ourselves to the bulk of American Jewry. We must restrain the hotheads among us from posing as the exclu­ sive Defenders of the Faith. One inane ad in the New York Times can do more to undo the effectiveness and attractiveness of Torah in this coun­ try than what the Yeshivoth have ac­ complished in the last five or ten years. Insults lead only to a profana­ tion of The Divine Name. Public recrimination means the fouling of our own nest. We are not strong enough to afford such dubious luxu­ ries.

THE M ESSA G E A N D THE M EDIUM

IVEN these attitudes towards the must search out those themes which adversary, towards the general address themselves most directly to G Jewish community, and towards those in our own camp, what must we do that has not yet been done in order to triumph in the Battle of Ideas?

I submit that we must reorient our­ selves—in our thinking, our scholar­ ship, our teaching, our public posture, our curricula—so that we become relevant to man, and Jew, in this last third of the twentieth century. We March-April 1967

modern man’s yearnings, his fears, his loneliness, his desperate inner void, his magnificent technological achieve­ ments, and we must do so in an idiom which he understands, which he re­ spects, and to which he responds.

In every age, the Sages of Israel presented the view of Torah in a man­ ner which their contemporaries under­ stood and which dealt with their most 27

vital concerns. The Sephardic Sages expressed Torah in a rationalist idiom, because it was Greek philosophy that bothered their, people. R. Yehudah heChasid spoke in a different tongue in addressing medieval German Jewry — and struck a responsive chord. ‘‘Both these and those are the words of the Living G-d.” They were making thé same Torah relevant to different communities. The Kabba­ lah, especially after its popularization; Musar in Lithuania; Chasidism in the rest of Eastern Europe—all produced great literatures, each highlighting a different aspect of the “seventy faces of Torah.” Hirsch in Germany and Kook in Palestine did the same—they talked to the hearts and the minds of their contemporaries. The same truth of the same Torah must be presented differently for each age and each cul­ tural climate. Let it be clearly under­ stood—I absolutely do not, Heaven forbid, speak of changing the Halachah or any of the principles of Juda­ ism. I speak only of making them relevant. Relevance does not mean compromise or submission to the pre­ suppositions of Western civilization; it does imply meaningfulness and in­ telligibility. It means “reden tzu der zach.” Forms may differ in response to new needs, while contents remain unchanged. The Torah is, to use the Kabbalistic metaphor, poshet tzurah ve’lovesh tzurah.

It is for this reason that I believe that if we are to keep our own genera­ tion attuned to the Divine Will, we must change the form of our response in a manner germane to our genera­ tion. It may not be completely true that, as Marshal Macluhan has put it, “the medium is the message.” But certainly the quality of the medium can either enhance or frustrate the 28

message. I do not believe, for instance, that such classics of Musar as the Shevet Musar or Kav Hayashar will win over Jews to Yiddishkeit in our times as they did in the days they were composed. Neither will specula­ tive metaphysics, nor Ghasidic machshavahr and certainly hot the antihashkafahhashkafah of many Lithu­ anian Yeshivoth. Nor, for that matter, will any successful method we develop now be very effective 200 years hence.

Insights can be salvaged, but they must be recast and paraphrased, not just translated. No t\$o prophets, said the Rabbis, prophesied in the same style; yet they offered the same mes­ sage, but applied it to differing cir­ cumstances. There are chiddushim (novellae) in Halachah-—and it re­ mains the same Halachah. So there can be—no, must be-—different styles and even chiddushim. in Jewish thought without doing violence to its integrity and its continuity.

F COURSE, this idea can be taken to an extreme; and I fear O that some of my colleagues may be doing just that. We cannot make rele­ vance the test o f validity of the Jewish tradition and we cannot expect that every item in the catalogue of Jewish belief and practice should be expli­ cated in a manner directly relevant to every individual. That is absurd, and can lead to tragic results.

Thus, we may view the Sab­ bath as a way of addressing man on the creative use of new-found leisure, and “Family Purity” as de­ lineating the views of Judaism on the dignity of woman and the significance of erotic love in life. But we can never make their practice dependent upon such interpretation, nor can we expect every detail to fit into the JEWISH LIFE

scheme. We have i|$ pn the authority of Maimonides, qojnean expositor of relevance, that whoever expects and attempts this is mishtageia shigaon aroch— is exceedingly mad. Unfor­ tunately, some of us have occasionally succumbed to this madness, and the result has been an extravagance of expression that borders on the sen­ sational and reflects both immaturity and irresponsibility. We must remem­ ber that, paradoxically,^ a certain amount of irrelevance is always rele­ vant in religion.

But this floes not excuse us from the task at hand.

Usually, unfortunately, we seem dreadfully irrelevant and appear to confirm the impression that we have simply been bypassed. The finest re­ search of Orthodox Jewish scholars in history and in the editing of texts is usually done in esoteric areas of con­ cern to their few colleagues only.

Many of the Kollelim produce experts in Kodoshim when there are burning contemporary halachic questions that require immediate attention ^ and pesak is sometimes disdained as a kind of halachic technology beneath the dignity of a scholar lishmah. Our popular literature is often incredibly childish; it sometimes seems to be directed to backward grade school children of exceptional naivete. Our Yeshivoth shy away from the teach­ ing of hashkafah, perhaps fearing the doubts it may arouse, and what they do teach of it has preciously little to do with life outside the Yeshivah. In­ deed, our contemporary “Yeshivah circles’,’ have tended to become so centripetal, so ingrown, that they of­ ten show no awareness of a Jewish world that might well accept its teach­ ings if only it spoke out. And both the Yeshivah “world” and the “outMarch-April 1967

side world” are the poorer for this abyss that separates them.

Our finest thinkers have not yet come to grips with the great issues of the times. Do we have a valid over­ view on the Population Explosion?— not a halachic decision of Yes, or No. or Maybe, but a genuinely religious approach which sympathizes with the new dimensions of the problem? Here is an instance where we can speak to the rest of mankind without our own vital interests intruding, for Jewry is under-populated, and our judgment, in this case, specifically excludes Jews and other such small communities.

Or, take the question of peace. We, the descendants of Isaiah and Micah, have left the spiritual judgments on the issue of World Peace to heterodox Jews, and worse, to Christians—whose concern for shalom is written over all the continent of Europe in Jewish blood. We ought not merely react to the opinions of others on Viet Nam, either repudiating United States policy because other religious groups do, or supporting it because our religion is different. We must, rather, provide an answer that is authentically Jewish; and if we find no answer, or discover that the situation is too complicated for us—let us have the courage of silence. Similarly, despite growing numbers of Orthodox Jewish scientists, our confrontation with issues raised by natural science is about 100 years behind the times—many of us are still fighting Darwin. To the challenge of the various social sciences—which may ultimately prove more consequen­ tial than the problems raised by bio­ logy and geology—we have not yet begun to respond. That is why the Voice of Torah is a kol beli dibbur.

We have too often made a virtue, even a dogma, of irrelevance.

29

SU G G ESTIO N S FOR A STRATEGY

HAT must be done in order to must begin to teach hashkafah as an encourage an awareness of the integral part of talmud torah, and not Torah’s relevance to life today? 1 treat it as if it were a subtle kind of would enumerate briefly, the follow­ bittul torah. And the hashkafah itself ing considerations in developing a must concern youngsters living here strategy for the attainment of our and now—not in Lithuania in the goals: nineteenth century.

1.

Nothing in Judaism can have 5. We must attempt to reach out valid relevance unless it is based on to all Jews with the teachings of authentic Jewish sources. Hence—the Torah. We must never allow ourselves primacy of Torah and the study of the parochial satisfaction of believing Torah: Talmud and Pos’kim. that Torah was meant only for the Or­ 2.

We must take a positive, non- thodox, and that “the others” may be apologetic attitude to secular educa­ scolded but need not be taught. A con­ tion, and not accept it begrudgingly tinuing retrenchment will harm the as a vocational necessity. Continuing general Jewish community and prove the debate on Yes-College or No- self-defeating for Orthodoxy.

College is no longer meaningful in an 6. Our popular and semi-popular age where the vast majority of Jews literature and journalism must do we want to speak to are college away with or at least minimize po­ graduates. lemics and counter polemics, and con­ 3.

Our best and most creative think­centrate instead on relaying the rele­ ers must undertake the sacred task vant teachings of Torah to all Jews, of the relevant exposition of Orthodox with respect for their intelligence and Judaism. That means that they must #integrity. first acquaint themselves with both the 7. We must willingly concede that problematica and the vocabulary of we do not have all the answers to modern man. This exposition must be every new problem yet. Even in Halaexpressed in an idiom that will be re­ chah there are unanswered questions; spected in the academic world. This in hashkafah even more so. This open­ does not imply an exaggerated rever­ ness will spare us the embarrassing dilence for “intellectuals”; it implies only letantism that often characterizes intel­ that this is the most effective way of lectual improvisation. reaching most impressionable, think­ 8. Above all, we must be receptive ing Jews. to new ideas, to honest questions, and 4.

We must rethink the curricula ofto novel situations. We must examine our Yeshivoth so that what our stu­ them objectively and not react with dents learn is geared to preparing them automatic hostility. We must, as Rav for life in the “outside world” of Kook taught us, build the armon habusiness and the professions and not torah, the castle of Torah, around proceed, as is done now, on the un­ every challenge, whether of modern spoken assumption that they will re­ science or philosophy, see if we can main in the Yeshivah forever. The absorb it, reflect on it patiently and choice of mesichtoth must be done then, if we find it inimical to the spirit with this in mind. Most important, we of Torah, reject it and fight against it.

W

30

JEWISH LIFE

And then our battle must be forceful, vigorous, and courageous.

scholar—the personification of the an­ tagonists of Torah in the Battle of Ideas. In the battle, it is Jacob who is injured, not the angel. Yet we con­ sider Jacob the victor. Why so? Be­ UCH, to my mind is the grand cause, answers R. Abraham, the son strategy we ought adopt in order of the Rambam, Jacob did not give to make the voice of Torah not only up that good fight even after he was audible and articulate but also tri­ injured! He held on to the angel until umphant in the Battle of Ideas. We he prevailed; and this special heroic most certainly must do it; for if we quality of Jacob is an omen, for his do not, Heaven forbid, no one else will descendants, of a powerful persistence or can. I may be unhappy with what and sustaining strength in times of has been done—or not done—by us crisis. so far towards this end. But I know Let us proceed, with the courage that if our faith in the Almighty and born of such a tradition, to the great His Torah will outweigh our fear of battles ahead of us. We may sustain the modern world we can accomplish some losses, and the injuries will hurt; our historic task, and succeed splen­ but: ki alah ha-shachar, dawn is about didly. to break on a new day for Torah, for I conclude, then, on a more opti­ Orthodoxy. And, if we act wisely and mistic note. We Jews have remarkable patiently and heroically, we can yet staying pbwer—both physically and say to our adversary as Jacob did to spiritually. We can sustain losses and his: Lo ashaleichacha ki im berachyet rebound miraculously. Our Father tani, we shall not let you go until you Jacob grappled with his mysterious as­ have blessed us. sailant, whom our tradition identified For we have come not to conquer as the angel of Esau in the guise of a you, but to convince you.

S

March-April 1967

31

W e

W e re

Not

S l a v e s in

Egypt

By REUBEN E. GROSS

I

a term of years, this distinction was very real to the Anglican and Puritan divines who worked on the Author­ ized Version. The word eved as used in the Torah covers both kinds of service, the “Eved Canaani,” a true slave and the “Eved Ivri,” an inden­ tured servant. The slave was the low­ est man on the social totem pole. The Code of Justinian, which under the impact of Christianity greatly allevi­ ated the lot of slaves and was one of the most enlightened ancient codes, nevertheless stated: “A slave has no civil rights.” The slave was generally deemed a chattel under the control of a master who had the right of life and death over him. The Torah was exceptional among ancient codes in demanding freedom for a slave who was permanently maimed. A slave had no fixed quota of work. He had no family life. The children under all codes, except the Mohammedan, followed the status of their slave mother and remained the property of the mother’s master — like his cows

32

JEWISH LIFE

T SOUNDS almost heretical. The translation of all the Haggadahs distinctly say in the response to the Mah Nishtanah, “We were slaves to Pharoah in Egypt,” Every Jewish child who ever sat at a seder has etched in his memory, “We were slaves . . .

The vaunted new trans­ lation of the Torah by the Jewish Publication Society of America which is “illuminated by the insights of con­ temporary scholarship” also translates the “Avodim hoyinu I’Pharo” as ‘“We were slaves to Pharoah.” The old J. P. S. Bible, following the King James version, which fortunately lacked contemporary illumination, correctly translated this clause as, “We were Pharoah’s bondsmen . . . .”

Nowadays, with slavery and inden­ tured service outmoded, the distinc­ tion between slavery and bondage may not seem significant. However, in 1611 when slavers from Africa plowed the high seas, and Englishmen were brought to the New World under indentures binding them to service for

and horses. Needless to say, slaves had no right of collective bargaining nor the right to be organized socially.

Any appearance of an attempt to or­ ganize, would be interpreted as re­ bellion, with dire consequences. brief examination of Jewish his­ A tory in Egypt will show that the status of the Children of Israel was quite different from slavery. The Israelites traced their descent through their fathers. Their lineage from the Ovoth was carefully preserved. In fact, the Hebrew name for the Book of Exodus is Shemoth — meaning “the names of the Children of Israel” — to point up that their lineage which is recounted upon their entry to Egypt at the opening of the Second Book was the same as upon their exit there­ from.

The work which the Jews were re­ quired to perform in Egypt had a fixed quota (Shemoth 5:14). In fact, the original imposition of business upon the Israelites was in the form of a tax. The sorey misim (Shemoth 1:11) were really taxmasters rather than taskmasters. That imposition was a form of tax that has been forgotten today. It existed in France for many years, right down to their Revolution.

There it was known as corvée. This required the peasants to contribute so many days of road work or other labor per calendar period. Apparently Pharoah kept increasing this kind of labor tax on the Jews until a de facto state of slavery was but one step away. However, it is clear that a de jure state of freeman existed right down to the period of the plagues. At first Pharoah had to re­ sort to clandestine schemes with the midwives in order to contrive the degtth of Jewish children. At the time March-April 1967

of the birth of Moses, a royal act was necessary to decree the destruction of male children. Thus, Jews were still under protection of Egyptian law for what it was worth. Pharoah was un­ der more restraints than a Hitler or an Eichmann. He did not have the rights of arbitrary life and death over the Jews, which an ordinary slavemaster had, although the Mechilta points out — and this is very signi­ ficant as to the Jews’ status — that they were all Pharoah’s servants and not servants of the Egyptians.

NLIKE slaves, the B’ney Yisroel in Egypt maintained their own social organization, for we read that when Mosheh returned from Midian, which is virtually at the end of the era of subjection . . . he and Aharon gathered together the “Zekenim” — the Jewish Senate (Shemoth 4:29).

That Pharoah gave an audience to Mosheh and Aharon and accepted them as spokesmen of the Jews at the outset of their mission indicates that the Jews were not only organized but that Pharoah recognized the fact.

Moreover, the actual workers were not under the direct supervision of Egyptians but under Jewish “Shotrim” who shielded them by receiving on their own backs the brunt of Egyptian wrath.

That Egypt was a land of law and order and not an arbitrary tyranny appears from several passages. For example, when Mosheh demands reli­ gious freedom for the Jews saying, “Thus saith the Lord the G-d of Israel, send forth my people that they may feast before me in the wilderness,” Pharoah answers “Who is the Lord that I should listen to his voice . . .”

We are informed that the prevailing theology in Egypt was henotheism —

U

33

the belief that every people has its own god — and that when Pharoah checked his Encyclopedia of Religions he found no listing for the Jews and their G-d. The implication of all this seems to be that if the Israelites were believed to have had a previous na­ tional history and a recognized deity, Mosheh’s plea would have been con­ sidered well founded and would possi­ bly have been granted.

Pharoah’s statement made at the commencement of the subjection, “Hova nithchochma lo” — “Let us deal wisely with them,” indicates that the legal position of the Jews at that time was sufficiently secure that even Pharoah and his cabinet could not attack it directly, but had to resort to guile. The Aggadah amplifies this thought in several ways. One instance is in punning on the word perech which literally means “rigor.” The Torah says that the Children of Israel were compelled to work with perech — which can be divided into the two words peh rack, meaning “soft talk.’’

Pharoah is pictured as hanging a brick

34

about his neck and shaming the B’ney Yisroel into working by going about and working himself, as a common laborer, and coaxing the Jews to join him. The last step of the subjection, the denial of straw for the brickmakings, shows that the whole process, from beginning to end, was the gradual turning of ra screw rather than the hammering of a nail.

Thus, we see the Jews in Egypt had sunk almost to the bottom under bone-crushing labor demands — but not quite to the bottom. They still had a measure of personal freedom.

Their family life was still inviolate.

Their servitude was national, not per­ sonal. Hence their lot was bondage, but not slavery. *

*

*

Thus a mistranslation of one word, abetted by “contemporary illumina­ tion” has significantly distorted the picture of an entire era, and has led to unfounded comparisons and ana­ logies to Jewish history, which always has been, and continues to be, unique.

JEWISH LIFE

Ecumenicism and Dialogue— 1263 C E

By BEREL WEIN

r p H E winds of change that Vatican A II unloosed into the Christian world are beginning to be felt. And even though the position of the Catholic Church vis-a-vis Jews and Judaism has yet to show any substan­ tive, meaningful change, the new methodology of the Church regard­ ing the treatment of the problem of the people of Israel has begun to emerge. The main bridge that the Church hopes to use in expanding a positive relationship with the Jewish people, particularly in the United States, is that of the open forum or dialogue. The Church is now much interested to foster open public dis­ cussion between Jews and Christians of the differences and similarities of the two major religions of Western man. In so doing, the Church has struck a responsive chord in certain Jewish circles, once again particularly here in the United States. Unlike orthodox Jewry, the agencies repre­ senting the Conservative, Reform and secular wings of Jewry have com­ mitted themselves to participation in this dialogue. (The exception of March-April 1967

Orthodoxy is notable for two reasons.

First, it is one of the few policy de­ cisions that all of Orthodoxy is in accord with. Secondly, Orthodoxy’s position is disturbing to both the Christian and non-orthodox Jewish participants; not to have the coopera­ tion and blessing of the traditional Jew, whose participation all feel, would give such an exchange real sub­ stance, lends a certain quality of hol­ lowness to the dialogue.)

OWEVER, the idea of a “dia­ logue” between Jews and Chris­ H tians, is not a 20th Century thought but was already explored centuries ago, albeit in a different environment and under other circumstances.

The most famous example of an exchange of this order is the debate that took place in the city of Bar­ celona, Spain, in the year 1263.

James I of Aragon sat on the throne of northern Spain, and the spirit of Christian dominance of the civilized world was wafted in the air. Seven hundred and four years have passed since then, but in the record of that 35

dialogue written by Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman (commonly called the Ramban, and in the non-Jewish world, Nachmanides), and preserved by both Jewish and non-Jewish sources, one senses yet the grandeur and terror of that moment in Bar­ celona and a feeling of immediacy and relevancy overtakes the reader of that record. For here are our modernday problems, differences, disputes, and bitterness poured out on an an­

cient canvas and curiously, the posi­ tions of the antagonists have changed very little in the seven centuries that have since swept by. It will be the attempt of this article to reflect some of the thoughts and words of this debate and thereby emphasize that the cascading dash to dialogue may perhaps be merely the foolish pursuit of an unattainable and ephemeral illusion.

THE H ISTO R ICA L B A C K G R O U N D

AMES I, who was destined to reign 63 years over the province of Aragon, was, as medieval monarchs went, a friend of the Jews. During the period of his reconquest of Cata­ lonia and Aragon from the Moors, he consistently displayed a tolerance and sympathy towards the Jewish residents of those countries. He en­ couraged Jewish emigration to those lands, appointed Jews to vital govern­ mental positions, and generally did nothing to interfere with the Jews’ ability to practice and worship in the tradition of their fathers.* However, then as now changes were being felt in the structure of the Roman Catholic Church, particularly in Spain. The reforms in the church initiated by Innocent III and con­ tinued by Gregory IX reached Spain and rested in the province of Aragon, where the ‘‘Holy Office” of the In­ quisition was to reach dominance.

The Dominican cdnfessor to James I, Raymond de Penaforte, was noted for his zeal to punish^ persecute, and/or

J

* Yitzhak Baer, “A History of the Jews in Christian Spain,” Volurtie I, pp. 138-147.

36

convert the Jews in Aragon, and his influence over the king was notable.

From 1228 to 1250, a series of anti-Jewish economic edicts were is­ sued by the king which helped foster a climate, of anti-Jewish feeling in the land. In 1254, the famous trial of the Talmud in Paris occurred, and the Talmud was found guilty of stating calumnies against Christianity and cartloads of Talmudic manuscripts were burned by the Order of Louis IX of France. When this coercion had little or no effect on the Jews or on their reverence for the Talmud, the Dominican friars of Spain, benefitting by the lesson of their French colleagues, changed their strategy.

No longer was the Talmud criti­ cized, it was rather extolled. The Midrosh now became an accepted source book of accurate portrayals, and Jewish scholarship was no longer publicly reviled. The reason for this was ingeniously simple — the truth of Christianity would now be proven, not from Christian or other nonJewish sources, but rather from the Talmud and the Milrosh themselves!

JEWISH LIFE

It was their obstructionism that pre­ vented the Jews from seeing the light of Christianity emanating from their own holy books. This new approach was spearheaded by an apostate Jew who had become a leader in the Catholic church of Aragon, Pablo Christiani. Because of his zeal to con­ vert his fellow Jews, he goaded Ray­ mond, the king’s confessor, to con­ vince James to order a public debate regarding the proofs from the Talmud as to the veracity of Christianity. The

burden of defending the Talmud and the Jews fell upop the venerable shoulders of one of the greatest of all Talmudists, Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman. On the 20th of July in 1263, at the Court; of James I of Aragon, this dialogue began. It was to last until the 31st of July, though actual debating sessions occupied only four days of this time. The shock of this debate was to leave scars on the memories of both protagonists which have lasted to this day*

THE DEBATE

r I "'HE record of the debate that -i- forms the basis for this article is one written by one of the protagon­ ists himself — the Ramban.* Written in a clear and lucid Hebrew style, it presents a picture of the debate and a record of the polemics as seen and heard by the Ramban.

At the outset, Mosheh ben Nach­ man insisted that he be granted the right of free speech throughout the debate. This right was guaranteed to him by the king, and because of this right, the Ramban at all times spoke boldly, incisively, and openly. It was the presence of this guarantee that made this medieval debate in reality a modern one wherein both sides speak their minds without intimida­ tion. Such an open debate was a rarity in Christian Europe until our own times. Later events proved to the Ramban how costly the exercise of * Vikuach Haramban—Found in Otzar Hav~ ikuchim by J. D. Eisenstein, Hebrew Publishing Society, 1915 and Kithvey Haramban by Rabbi Charles D. Chavel, Mosad Horav Kook, 1963.

March-April 1967

this freedom would prove to him per­ sonally, I would presume to state that this freedom of expression is what uniquely characterizes and ennobles this discussion an<l precludes any comparison with thq earlier debate of Rabbi Yechiel of Paris* or the later encounter at Tortpssa.* For here, perhaps for the only time in the an­ nals pf medieval Christian European history, Jew meets Gentile as equal, and for the majority of the debate is not the defendant pr apologist but rather presses home his criticism and disbelief of Christian concepts and principles.

Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman sum­ marized one main historical argument against the acceptance of Christianity * Rabbi Yechiel of Paris, one of the leaders of the school of the Tosafists, defended the Tal­ mud against the accusations of Nicholas Donin, a Jewish apostate, before Louis IX of Paris in 1254. Tortossa was the locale of a series of de­ bates carried on by many Jewish Rabbis, fore­ most among them being Rabbi Yoseph Albo, against Dominican Theologians and a Jewish apostate, Joshua Halorki, in the years 14131414, which ended in disaster for the Jewish cause.

37

by the Jews of Aragon and, in so doing, he attempted to entirely avoid the necessity of debating Talmudic or Midrashic references to Jesus. “It has been proposed to me that the wise men of the Talmud themselves believed that Jesus was the Messiah, and that he was a man and a god, and not merely a mortal man alone.

But is it not a well known fact that the incidents arid events of Jesus oc­ curred at the time of the Second Temple and that he was born and died before the destruction of that Temple? (70 C.E.) And the Rabbis of the Talmud, such as Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues, tried after the destruction of the Temple . . . and the editor of the Talmud, Rav Ashi, lived almost 400 years after the Temple’s destruction. If it would be true that the wise men of the Talmud believed in Jesus and in the truth of his religion, how then did they them­ selves remain faithful to the religion and practices of the Jews? For they lived and died as Jews, they and their children and their disciples unto this very day. And they are the ones who have taught us the faith of Judaism, for we are all Talmudic Jews . . . .

And if they believed in Jesus, as you are trying to impute from their words, why did they not behave as Friar Paul (Pablo Christiani), who evi­ dently understands their words better than they (and themselves convert)?”

His argument resounds through the halls of time — the classic answer of Jewish tradition: “If our fore­ fathers, who witnessed Jesus, saw his works, and knew him, did not hearken unto him, how should we accept the word of our king (James I), who himself has no first-hand knowledge of Jesus, and was not his 38

countryman as were our forefathers?”

Here the Ramban puts into awful clarity the basic point of contention between Jews and Christians. The stub­ bornness o f the Jew stems not from his “perfidy” but rather from the fact that he is convinced of the truth of his own belief and not the slightest convinced of the truth of Christian belief. The current Vatican schema on the Jews remains unclear as to whether Christianity has yet come to grips with this fact. For it does not yet specify the cause of the Jew’s affirmation of the one and denial of the other -j** it merely hopes through better social relations to soften, if not to reverse, that affirmation and denial.

HE Dominicans were not de­ toured from their purpose by the Ramban’s onslaught. They brought numerous passages from Talmudic and Midrashic literature to prove the truth of their faith. The Ramban stated that he did not consider him­ self bound by the “agadoth” of the Talmud,* and therefore no proofs could be deduced from them. How­ ever, he said, that, even if he granted their accuracy, they in no way agreed with Christian thought or belief. His strength in swimming in the sea of the Talmud easily refuted his an­ tagonists who were not nearly as erudite in the subject matter as he.

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* The Agadoth—literally, Tales—are the par­ ables and traditional legends of the Talmud— usually with a moral or ethical message woven in to their fabric. The term “Agadah” is used in contradistinction to “Halochah” which is the law or legal system of Torah.

Whether or not the Ramban’s point in this connection was actually his belief, or was merely a tactic used for this discussion, has been a matter of conjecture among Jewish scholars for considerable time.

JEWISH LIFE

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7

And he used every opportunity to return to the offensive against his opponents. “Does not the prophet say regarding the Messiah ‘that he shall reign from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of earth’ (Psalms 72:8) — and has not your empire (the Roman empire), declined since it accepted Christianity? Do not your enemies, the Moslems, rule over a greater empire than yours? And does not the prophet also say that at the time of Messiah ‘they shall not teach their friends war, etc’? XJeremiah 31:33) and is it not written (Isaiah 11:9) that then ‘the world shall be full of knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea’ . . . ? And from the days of Jesus till now, the entire world is full of robbery and pillaging, and the Christians have spilled more blood than any of the other nations, and they are also sexually immoral.

How hard it would be for you, my great King, and for your knights, to survive if there would be an end to warfare!”

This indictment of the status of the Christian, or, as we call it today, the Western world, is even sharper in our time when over fifty million people have been destroyed by war in the past century alone, and when all of the economies of the great powers of the world rest on a foundation of de­ fense spending and war preparation.

The Ramban further stated that the basic dispute between Christianity and Judaism is not regarding the messianic mission of Jesus himself as much as it is regarding the entire Christian concept of Divinity and belief. “Listen to me, my master, my king,” said the Ramban, “Our contention and judg­ ment with you is not primarily conMarch-April 1967

cerning the Messiah,* for you are more valuable to me than the Mes­ siah. You are a king and he is a king. You are a Gentile king and he is a king of Israel, for the Messiah will only be flesh and blood as you are. When I serve my Creator under your sovereign rule, in exile, poverty, oppression and humiliated by the na­ tions that constantly insult us, my reward for this service is indeed great: For I bring forth a voluntary sacrifice to G-d of my own being, and through this shall I merit a greater portion of the world to come. How­ ever, when there will be a king of Israel, abiding by my Torah, who shall rule over all the nations, then I shall be involuntarily compelled to retain my faith in the Torah of the Jews, and therefore my reward shall not be as great (as it is now). How­ ever, the main dispute and disagree­ ment between the Christians and the Jews is in that you have some very sorry beliefs regarding the essence of Divinity itself.” Thus did the Ramban emphasize clearly that the funda­ mental differences between Judaism and Christianity are not those of de­ tail and history but rather those of definition and understanding of the nature of Divinity and His relation to man. * See Rabbi Chavel’s note in his Kithvey Ramban, wherein he quotes the statement of the Ramban in the Sefer Hageulah, that “even if we admit to ourselves that our sins and those of our fathers are so enormous that all hope of comforting us be lost, and that our exile will last till eternity—all of this will still not damage our belief in the fundamental precepts (of our Torah), for the ultimate reward to which we look forward is only in the world to come—the pleasure of our soul in Paradise, and our sal­ vation from Hell; yet we still believe in our redemption (the Messiah) , because it is a wellknown truth among those of great stature in Torah and prophecy.”

39

HE question of Original Sin was also touched upon in this debate.

Both Pablo and King James asserted that all men had been condemned to Hell because of the original sin of Adam, but that the advent of and belief in Jesus had released man from this state of eternal damnation. To this the Ramban retorted with bitter irony: “In our province we have a saying — He who wishes to lie, should be sure that the witnesses to the trans­ action are far away. There are many punishments mentioned in regard to Adam and Eve — the earth was cursed, thorns and thistles shall grow therefrom, man shall earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, that man shall return to the dust, and that woman shall suffer the pain and tra­ vail of childbirth. All of these condi­ tions yet exist to this day, and any­ thing tangible that can be evidenced, as to the alleviation of any of these conditions, has yet to appear, even since the advent of your messiah. But the curse of damnation to Hell, which Scripture nowhere records, this is the punishment which you say was re­ lieved (by Jesus’ coming), for this is the one matter which no one can disprove. Send from your midst some­ one, and let him return and report to us! G-d forbid that the righteous should be punished in Hell for the sin of the first man, Adam. For my soul is as equally related to the soul of the wicked Pharoah as to the soul of my father, and I shall not be punished by the damnation of my soul because of the sins of that Pharoah. The punishments that ac­ crue to mankind because of the sin of Adam were physical, bodily pun­ ishments. My body is given to me by my father and mother, and therefore

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if it was ordered that they be mortal and die, so will their children forever be mortal and die, for such is the law of nature.” But he stated, the soul of man, which is given to him by the Eternal Creator, is not damned be­ cause of the sins of others, even of his ancestors themselves, unless he himself continues in their evil ways.

The Ramban thereupon entered into a theological disputation regard­ ing the theories of the Virgin Birth and the Trinity. He proved them not to be Jewish in origin and that there­ fore “the mind of no Jew could un­ derstand or accept them.” He stated that “your words (regarding the Tal­ mud and the Messiah) are therefore for naught, because this is the kernel of our disagreement, but if you wish to discuss the concept of Messiah, I will bow to your wishes.” He told the king that “you believe this bitter thing regarding divinity (the virgin birth and the concept of the trinity) because you are born a Christian, the son of Christian parents, and you have been indoctrinated your entire life by priests who have filled your mind and marrow with this belief, and you now accept its truth, by basis of habit alone.” His criticism of these tenets of the Roman Catholic faith placed in sharp focus the reason for the Jew’s refusal to accept Christian­ ity from its very onset. Its notion of G-d was, and is, foreign to Jewish tradition and logic. Nothing has yet occurred to change this status either for the Jew or the Christian.

HE DEBATE ended rather ab­ T ruptly. It was never formally closed, but the king recessed it, ap­ parently out of fear of rioting by fanatical mobs stirred up by emotional JEW ISH LIFE

sermons of certain Dominican friars.* The king himself took an active part in the debate and one is struck by the fairness and tolerance of James I. It was only the deceitful Rabbis who distorted the teachings of the Talmud.

He is quoted by the Ramban as hav­ ing told him that “I have yet to see such a man as you, who though be­ ing wrong, has yet made an excellent presentation of his position.”** The Ramban also notes that he received a gift of three hundred coins from James, evidently as ! reimbursement for his expenses. The Ramban states that “1 departed from! [the king] with great affection.” Mosiieh ben Nach­ man remained in Barcelona for over a week, and Was present for a sermon

in the Synagogue on the following Sabbath delivered by I a Dominican priest, in the presence bf King James, calling on the assembled Jbws to con­ vert to Christianity.*# The Dominicans, angered by the Ramban’s successful defense, turned their wrath against him personally. He was sentenced to temporary exile from Aragon and to pay a fine for speaking blasphemy. In his old age, broken by the ordeal of his persecu­ tion and by a vision Of the sorrows that would yet befall the Jews in Spain, Rabbi Mosheh ben Nachman emigrated to the Land bf Israel in the year 1267 and on its holy soil he expired shortly thereafter.

C O N C L U S IO N

HE importance Of this encounter between the Jews and the Chris­ tian world is not to be mimimized.

It would be many centuries before Jews dared to speak so openly to their Christian fellow countrymen about the fundamental differences that sep­ arate them. To our very day, no other Jewish religious leader of the caliber of the Ramban, responsible and re­ sponsive to his faith and tradition, has ever presented our case. Those who presume to speak for Judaism in to-

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* Baer, History of the Jews in Christian Spain, Vol. I, p. 153. Also see the Vikuach Haramban where the Ramban himself makes mention of the “preachers who stir up the mob and bring terror to the world, and of many great priests and knights of the king’s court, who have advised me not to speak evil against their religion. Also the Jews of this sector re­ ported that they were told to warn me not to continue to do so.”

March-April 1967

day’s dialogues would do well to read the record of this dialogué seven cen­ turies ago. I do not beliëve that the case for Jews and Judaism can be better stated, with as -much candor, compassion and truth, than the man­ ner in which it is rêflected in the words of Rabbi Mosheh ben Nach­ man. Both Jew and Christian would profit by a study df that record from Barcelona before plimging head­ long into any new dillbgue or ecu­ menical discussion. Thé issues and the world itself has changèd little from ** An alternative reading this statement in the Hebrew original is: “I hâfè yet to see such a man as you, who though hot being a legal advocate, has yet made an Scellent presenta­ tion of his position.” * * * The Ramban himself delivered a sermonlecture in rebuttal, entitled, “The Torah of G-d Is Perfect,” a copy of whichl is printed in the Kithvey Haramban mentioned in note 2 above.

41

the days of James I of Aragon. Neither has the people of Israel.

The mountain of His holiness, His Holy Temple standing on the heights of eternal

mm

That is Sinai, the glory of G-d that dwelled upon it, thrills, Let the nations proclaim His majesty and awe,

42

The voice of the Red Sea, neverending, where His flock saw, All of His wonders, miracles, beauty, Cleanse yourselves, O ye nations and states Raise up your song, give glory and honor to the Lord!*. * The last stanza of a poem “From Thy Hand, Lord, Give Forth Honor,” written by the Ramban in honor of the Pesach festival.

JEWISH LIFE

A S to ry

Children

By IVO ANDRIC Translated from the Serbo-Croatian by Stanley Frye

In the literary life of modern Yugoslavia, Ivo Andric holds a position equivalent to that of Agnon in contemporary Hebrew writing. He too received the Nobel Prize for Lit­ erature, in 1961. The following is one of only two of Andric's many short stories which have Jews as their theme. This is the first time it has been published in English translation. our friend, the grey-haired engineer, told us this story; ONEItfromwasEVENING his childhood. [the Christian] Holy Week. Children dislike this time of year when the ground is still bare and there are neither snow nor flowers nor fruit nor winter games nor swimming. On such days, climbing on the neighbors’ fences and blinking in the March sunshine, these little people invent new, often strange and cruel games.

The leaders of the gang on our street were Mile and Palika. Mile was the baker’s son and had a pale, intense f^ce too developed for his age. Palika was fat and red, Hungarian on his father’s side, and although he had been born on the same street as the rest of us, his speech was foreign. He mumbled and drew out his words as though his mouth were full of dough. The two of them carried on bitter warfare with the gang leader from the neighboring quarter, a certain Stjepo Coro, also our age, who had already succeeded in losing an eye. The rest of us were the army, unstable and undisciplined, but vociferous and full of fight. As in all armies, there was devotion and courage, hesitation and treachery, tears, blood, oaths, and betrayals.

Almost every evening while we sat beside the stone fountain one of the leaders would approach one of us, take him aside, and ask in a serious, mysterious voice: “Are you on my side?”

March-April 1967

43

N one of those spring evenings (it was Holy Thursday), Mile and O Palika took me aside and informed me that the next day we were going to beat up the Jews. Expeditions into the Jewish quarter were made only several times a year, usually during the Christian or the Jewish holidays. For me, who had never before participated in these feats, this was a signal honor.

The next morning I ate breakfast hurriedly and with excitement. We started immediately after breakfast. Before we slid down the bank and crossed the river we stopped at a crossing. We sat down on a smooth stone slab and Mile and Palika inspected our weapons with great care. Palika carried a hunter’s staff which he had sharpened at the end and filled with nails. Mile had a special weapon of his own making. It was a rubber hose the end of which he had filled with lead. A string was attached to the other end by which it hung from his wrist. He was proud of this lead and rubber weapon and called it “wild man.” Cool and keen as always, he was now bent over his weapon making some improvements on it with a knife.

They gave me a broken lath which had lately been removed from a fence and still bore the nail which had secured it to the rail. I was ashamed of the weapon because it seemed to me crude and inefficient. Mile took it from me, expertly whittled a handle, and swung it around several times so that it whistled in the air. I immediately did the same, but the whistling sound was not the same.

We walked down into the street where the Jewish children were usually to be found.

“It’s their holiday today and they’ll be around the fountain,” Palika said with authority, looking around like a hunter.

But the Jews were not there. Angrily Mile proposed that we go to the market. But in the next street Palika stopped and said quietly: “There the Kike kids are.” j Indeed, at the bottom of the street, playing around the stone fountain, were four children in holiday dress.

Mile looked at him with disgust aqd motioned for us to follow him and do as he did. He hid his rubber hose behind his back and began to walk slowly ahead, pretending to look at the stores and houses. We drew near the fountain. But whether our appearance betrayed us or whether thé Jewish children were accustomed to such visits, they became alarmed like deer in a forest clearing and hid behind the fountain. My heart beat wildly. I looked fixedly at the back of Palika’s neck.

To deceive the enemy, Mile pretended that he was going to the other side of the street, but when he was only a few paces from them, let out a roar and attacked. At first I thought that the children were going to defend themselves, but when he struck the first child on the arm with his hose and when they saw that we had run up, there was a wild rush of escape in every direction.

S the children ran I watched not so much them as the sudden move­ ment with which Mile became suddenly transformed into something A new and unknown. Separated from him, I heard his blows and his shouts.

44

JEWISH LIFE

|

A 1

'

l

1

I felt them as though they had struck itte, as though they were the first knowledge of the, to me, great, unknown* >?exciting, terrible world in which hides are taken to market, in which blows are dealt and received, in which one hates and rejoices, falls and is victorious; a world into which I had only glimpses of great* unknown risks and great, victorious moments.

Mile and Palika ran after the childfèn and I after them. Three of the children made it to the gates of their dwn or other houses from which came the shouts and curses of the Jewish women hurled against us. The fourth, the largest, child, ran blindly from street to street until he disap­ peared behind a white wall. When I arriyéd, Mile and Palika were searching for him, like hounds, in a large, damp courtyard.

We were in a fallen-down, abandoned Moslem school. We went through the main hall and down several rotten steps into a small, rectangular court­ yard. On all four sides were high walls. Beside the door through which we had entered there was a small gate, long ago nailed up, in the opposite wall.

In a corner, leaning against the wall, were a few green boards, the remainder of the roof, their lower ends placed on a beam. In the space between the beam/and the ground, about the width of a hand, 1 saw two shoes, motion­ less and convulsively pressed together. Excited by the wild hunt, I motioned to Mile and proudly pointed to my ¡discovery. Without looking at me, looking fixedly at the shoes, he whispered to me to stand in the entrance and not let the child escape. He and Palika went down the last step into the courtyard. At a sign from Mile, Palika went to the small, locked gate and stood there, his legs wide apart* fais club raised. Immediately I took up the same position in the entrance. ■ Striding like a soldier, Mile walked over to the pile of boards, never taking his eyes from his target. His i|ulet walk and steady gaze seemed more terrible and exciting to me thaft the running and the beating. But before he reached him, the Jewish boy pew from his hiding place like a bird out of a wheatfield, and ran through thé courtyard.

Palika, who had tried the small gâte to make sure it was locked, also came down into the courtyard. A twisting and turning began in which the boy ran first upon Palika’s club, then tipon Mile’s rubber hose. They struck him on the back and shoulders, on hfs arms and legs, but were not once able to strike his head. Palika did riipst of the running while Mile stood like a peasant on a threshing floor, waiting to strike the victim when Palika chased him in his direction. They all dame closer to me.

;*

TVTOW I could see the boy more closely. He was short and fat and dressed 1^1 in a new, cheap suit that was wet and muddy from hiding under the boards. He had no cap on his kinky hair. His movements, as compared with those of Mile, were not wild nor exciting, but quick and sudden, and he seemed to fly, as though shot from a gun.

Suddenly, when Palika had closed in on him and was going to strike him on the head, the Jewish boy unexpectedly bent and with his entire weight struck Palika in the chest and avoided the blow. Mile jumped. There wâs March-Àprîl 1967

45

a struggle. The boy broke away, ran up the steps and suddenly found him­ self face to face with me. For one second I saw him before me, his arms raised, one of his palms covered with blood, his head thrown back like that of a corpse. It was then that I first saw his face. His mouth was half open, his lips were white, his eyes expressionless, as fluid as water. Now was the time to strike.

What happened? How many times I’ve asked myself that question, then and in later years. I have never been able to find the answer.

From what I can remember, the boy bent slightly (the same movement of defense he had used a moment before with Palika), pushed me back by touching me with his one good hand on the side, moved me like the frailest curtain, and like lightning ran in front of me who stood motionless, my club raised with its big nail protruding, down the corridor.

CAME to myself only as Mile and Palika rushed past me, pushing me to one side roughly and derisively. I remained where I was and heard their steps echoing down the corridor. Then I slowly went out, carrying my club like a heavy load. At the end of the street I saw Mile and Palika running. The Jewish boy had escaped. They ran for a little way, then stopped; first one, then the other. They said something to each other, then started back home the same way we had come. I caught up with them before they reached the bridge and walked behind them, but they ignored me. This troubled me. I stopped to say something to them.

“Shut up!’’ Palika interrupted me.

And to all my attempts to say something, to try to justify myself, he coldly and angrily answered: “Shut up!”

Mile’s silence tortured me more than Palika’s rough language. We crossed the bridge and entered our own quarter. I walked two steps behind them, aware of how stupid and funny I looked. I kept wondering what I could say to explain myself. Perhaps I spoke some of my thoughts aloud. Mile stopped suddenly, turned, and before I could say a word, spat, covering me with saliva. I probably would have been less confused if he had struck me with his rubber hose and probably more able to retaliate, but I stood in the middle of the street and only wiped my face with my sleeve while the two of them disappeared quickly. It seemed to me that time stood still.

I

HE little people that we call “children” have their sorrows and suffer­ ings which later, as wise adults, as people, they forget. Actually, they lose sight of them. But if we could again return to childhood as to the school bench on which we long ago sat, we could understand them again. Down there, at that level, pains and sorrows are as real as any other reality.

Today, after so many years and so many events, it is hard, in fact impossible, with the criterion of our present experience, to tell what those first nightmares in life, the first tortures and the first doubts in the face of Mile’s and Palika’s disdain, and the derision of all the children in the neighbor­ hood, really were.

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46

JEWISH LIFE

Every attempt to explain the affair proved a disadvantage to me, made me more alone, and made my position worse. Palika told everyone of my disgrace and caricatured me in the middle of the street, miming how I had let the Jewish boy escape, while the children around him roared with laughter and made jokes at my expense. Mile remained silent and refused to look at me or listen to my name. They pointed me out to the children from the other parts of the town. And I lowered my eyes, hid in the toilet during recess, and returned home by side streets like a criminal. At home I could tell no one anything nor could I seek protection or comfort. It seems to me that even then I sensed what I would later clearly understand: that our parents can help us but little in our deepest spiritual struggles, little, or not at all.

HE days passed and there was never a moment when I was not aware of T my shame. My whole childish world had collapsed and lay at my feet in pieces. Helpless, I stood over the pieces, understanding nothing and aware of but one thing: that I suffered. I stood there and did not know where under heaven I could go. I was ashamed, subject to mockery, and alone. How could I ever re-establish relations with Mile, Palika, and the other children with whom I wanted to be equals, how could I attack and beat the Jewish chil­ dren—which seemed the necessary thing to do?

Finally, it all passed. But I have never been able to find answers to those questions. Gradually I made peace with my friends. They forgave me; or did they simply forget? I no longer remember. But I was never again taken on such adventures. For long I remembered the entire event and some­ times even dreamed of it. In my dreams I always saw the same thing: the Jewish child with the face of a martyr running in front of me, escaping as easily as an angel, and I allowing him to pass without a blow, although I knew in advance what awaited me. Or I was standing in the middle of the street beneath the merciless light of midday, spat upon and alone, while time stood still and my friends suddenly disappeared. Only later did the years com­ pletely erase the image from my consciousness and from my dreams. But that was forgetfulness, the death of childhood.

March-April 1967

47

A t h e is m

in t h e

S o v ie t S c h o o l

By HARRY LOEWY S A G E o nce re m a rk e d , “O ur condescension. If one would merely enemies pursue the sheker as if substitute the word “religion” every it were the emeth. Let us learn from time “atheism” is mentioned, the re­ them.” The thought struck me when sults would be a classic epistle on the I came across the English translation teaching of religion. Still, Netylko’s of a scholarly article in the Russian article serves as an eye-opener in more educational journal Sovetskaia Peda- than one way. First and foremost, gogika, 1963, No. 3, entitled “Con­ there is the most startling, and to us, cerning an Individual Approach in the heartwarming, discovery that Soviet Atheistic Upbringing of Pupils” by A. Russia is,rafter fifty years of the most total and all-inclusive indoctrination, M. Netylko.

Despite the fact that the gates of still moved by the necessity of ap­ Soviet Russia have been thrown open plying atheistic teachings to its school to Western tourists (as long as they children. follow the carefully prepared Intour­ A PPARENTLY the equivalent does ist itinerary), our knowledge of the inner workings of Soviet society has Jl\ not hold true in our anti-atheistic remained most spotty. If this were not society. In America G-d and religion so, that article would hardly have may be mentioned on the coinage and caught my eye. But what are we to say on postage stamps. Yet, in the area of if we read black-on-white that Soviet public education it becomes taboo as educators in the sixties are as deeply a menace to the hallowed institution concerned about weaning Russian of the American public school system. children away from G-d as we are Religion, we are told, is the rightful about the opposite— and perhaps they province of the church/synagogue or home. It has no place in the school. are more so.

The article makes interesting read­ The Communists, in their tireless quest ing. Its tenor is entirely scientific, to implant atheism, have not been as scholarly, cool, detached. It lacks all generous. To them the home has not the elements one might expect to find proven to be a reliable factor in under that topic, namely heretical dog­ spreading their “religion.” Atheism matism, cynicism, blasphemy, and will not abandon the school. To illus-

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JEWISH LIFE

trate his point, Netylko cites the fol­ lowing case history: From a talk with 9th-grade pupil Valya G., her grade teacher learned that the girl’s relations with her mother, who was religious and had brought her daughter up in the same spirit from early childhood, were very strained. When the girl was of pre­ school and primary school age, she obediently did everything her mother demanded: she wore a cross, said her prayers, and observed the religious holidays. However, her piety was purely superficial. The school and Valya’s friends exerted a greater in­ fluence on her than her mother. Val­ ya joined the Komsomol in the 8th grade and flatly refused to take part in religious rites.

Soviet educators have clearly assessed that a child’s personality is moulded in three distinct dimensions: Home, School, and Friends. Consequently they have concentrated their attack on religion on the two seemingly most fertile battlegrounds: school and so­ cial milieti. We, apparently, can afford the luxury of negating those areas.

The Soviet educator realizes the delicate character of any attempts to drive a wedge between the child and his home. He, nevertheless, will resort to brutal frankness if the situation warrants decisive action on behalf of the establishment: There are cases in which a father and mother are deprived of their pa­ rental rights by special decision of a court because they prevent their chil­ dren from attending school and force them to observe religious rites.

In most instances, however, there is no need to resort to such radical measures. The Communists agree that all avenues ought to be explored in order to find the family’s consent in instilling atheism in the youngster.

March-April 1967

The school should conduct all work connected with atheistic upbringing in close contact with the family. This is necessary not only to ensure unity in the pedagogical influence of the family and the school, but also because the source of the children’s religiosity is, as a rule, the family. If the school does not conduct appropriate work with the parents, its efforts often prove futile. An individual approach to the pupils necessarily implies indi­ vidual work with the parents, whose religiosity and superstition sometimes come close to fanaticism. It is very difficult to re-educate such parents quickly. In these cases the teachers must direct their efforts towards show­ ing the parents what harm they are causing their children by rearing them in a religious spirit. It is necessary to convince the parents that they are crippling their children, that they are instilling hypocrisy, deceitfulness, and slavish morals, and that they are im­ peding their children’s learning.

In other words: Parent Education.

Imagine the hapless American public school teacher who would make an attempt to influence parents towards a religiously more positive home envi­ ronment! By the same token, even the conscientious teacher in many an American Jewish religious school would be quite loath to talk to parents about a child’s degree of home ob­ servance. In most instances the irate parent would thank him to mind his own business. This is the price we have to pay for living in a free so­ ciety. Soviet teachers have it much easier, apparently.

F COURSE, we are quite cog­ nizant of the original motives O which led to the separation between state and church (or better in this in­ stance, between school and religion).

The objectives were entirely laudable; 49

to forestall the same kinds of religious conflicts and fraternal wars which have plagued Europe. But, alas, we have poured out the child with the bath. The teaching of religious values to the American child in his most formative and impressive years cannot be a legitimate part of the public school curriculum. Yet, some subter­ fuge religious trends still seem to be commonplace there, to witness the in­ cessant harping about school prayers, Scripture readings, and Xmas-cumChanukah celebrations. As an aside, it appears to be rather strange that those Jewish circles which profess their deep commitment to interfaith are usually also the most vociferous ones to challenge the majority’s choice to maintain some sort of religious aura in the classroom. The other alterna­ tive, to have Jewish Day Schools for Jewish children, is still vigorously re­ jected by these same circles.

The Russian Communists, on the other hand, insist that the school is the rightful place to teach their form of “religion”— atheism: We can speak frankly to some about their attitude toward religion, con­ vince them of the absurdity of believ­ ing in the supernatural, and suggest that they read a number of books.

With others, on the contrary, we must be extremely careful. We must first win them over, get them to be friends with good comrades, interest them in public, athletic, and out-of-class activ­ ities, and draw them into the life of the collective. Whenever problems of atheistic upbringing must be solved, it is important to get the pupil to have faith in the teacher, the teaching staff as a whole, and in his comrades. . . .

Religiosity in children is rooted either in weakness of will or in their being isolated from the life of the class and the school.

50

In their determination to promote atheism, the Russian educators have correctly acknowledged that oppres­ sive measures will not bring about the desirecLresults. One of the early Rus­ sian revolutionaries remarked once in the Twenties, “Religion is like a nail driven into a wall. The harder one hits it, the firmer it becomes embed­ ded.” The modern Russian teacher is admonished to be tactful in his deal­ ings with pupils who still have some religious leanings: Much is said in the press and over the radio about the reactionary role of the church and the need to combat religious ideology. If not enough athe­ istic work is conducted, school chil­ dren sometimes begin to ridicule and criticize children of their age who are religiously inclined. The teachers cannot assume a neutral position in such cases. They must constantly at­ tend to the relations between the pupils and not permit anyone to be rude or tactless with those children who have come under religious influ­ ence.

This paragraph is somewhat cryptic, perhaps because of a faulty transla­ tion. Why would inadequate atheistic indoctrination cause youngsters to be more hostile towards their religious classmates? And why would the teacher have to abandon neutralism in order to protect these religious pupils? Could it be that the Commu­ nists became entangled in their own dialectical materialism?

OMETIMES the Soviet school is stumped in its dealings with reli­ S gious students. In such cases it enlists the help of youth clubs outside the school precincts, viz, the Komsomol (the Soviet youth organization). This is illustrated by Netylko in another case history: JEWISH LIFE

It became known that Alik Kh., an upper-grade pupil and a member of the Komsomol, went to church and performed religious rites. He was a passive and weak-willed youth with a weak character. . . . The teacher, tak­ ing into consideration Alik’s specifictraits, set the Komsomol organization the task of helping him to overcome his religious prejudices. The Komso­ mol group was told to be tactful in its attitude towards the comrade, not to offend his religious feelings, and to try to draw him into the social life of the school. It is important to note that, having given this important task to the Komsomol, the teachers kept a constant eye on what it did, and the latter, in turn, regularly informed the teachers of the work it had done and turned to them for advice. . . . Alik became increasingly interested in pub­ lic activities, which occupied his free f time and attention. The affairs of the collective became so important for him that in the end he broke with religion.

This approach is very important. It deserves to be given much thought by us. Recognizing the inherent weakness in the spiritual fabric of most homes,

March-April 1967

more attention should be paid to the effectiveness of the school and the youth movement in moulding the re­ ligious personality of the youngster.

Even the best educational system will fail if the community permits it to operate in a social vacuum. Israeli and European educators have long ac­ knowledged this. More power should be given to the National Conference of Synagogue Youth, B’nei Akiva, and similar organizations but, even more important, the stress on youth work ought to be shifted from the “dogooder” and adult-patronizing often practiced by Synagogue Youth Com­ mittees to granting more self-expres­ sion and autonomy to the youngsters themselves.

E ARE, of course, passionately opposed to the goals expounded by the author of the article under dis­ cussion. However, when we substitute the word “religion” for “atheism,” we find much to be admired here. We might even learn a great deal from our foes.

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51

B r a z il— T h e O ld e s t J e w is h C o m m u n it y In t h e

New

W o r ld

By JACOB BELLER

T

spread through the length and breadth of the city.

On my third and fourth trips I saw Rio from the Sky descending in the plane along the long chain of moun­ tains and streams which surround the city like a garland of flowers. When I left Rio de Janeiro at daybreak the city appeared like a bride at her wed­ ding. As the aircraft rose, my eyes began to distinguish pow upon row of mountain and upon them castles strewn about throughout the whole city and high above, the sunken treetops of the palms. From the plane they all look like separate towns. The mountains seem to trace out a human profile—a giant nose carved by a gift­ ed sculptor* At that hour of the morning—just before dawn—the outstretched figure seems to be a giant at sleep. Through the airplane window you see the giant Sugar Mountain (Pao de Azucar) and the Canabera Bay which cuts deep into the land for some miles and which narrows as ft approaches the Pao de Azucar.

52

JEWISH LIFE

HE first time I saw Brazil was forty years ago on board the Regio as she slid into the harbor of Rio de Janeiro, a harbor which at night looks lilfe an illuminated, enchanted palace, with thousands of lights shimmering .and sparkling in the darkness. When I revisited Brazil some years later the capital revealed itself to me in all its glitter and splendor; a light blue sky was spread above the picturesque houses which extend outward in long rows from the point you leave the port. When you take your first walk on the Avenida de Rio Branco the outlook is even more breathtaking: a broad sweep of avenues lined on either side with statuesque palm trees, the sidewalks in mosaic tile as though Persian carpets had been laid out for the feet of the pedestrian, and historic monuments as far as the eye can reach. The Brazilian will tell you that when the first king entered Brazil and planted the first palm tree he gave orders that any seed that might fall from the tree be destroyed. But there were daring souls who disobeyed the order and thus it was that palm trees

The fate of the last two Brazilian RAZIL is a nation of eighty mil­ lion inhabitants, with an area of presidents is well worth our attention: B more than three million square miles these are Janio Quadros and his viceand with great mineral wealth—but it has been unfortunate in its rulers.

Some have squandered great fortunes and have been involved in scandals.

Like other Latin American countries Brazil still suffers from the legacy of the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores. A great part of the soil and the mineral wealth belongs to a small elite of the descendants of these conquistadores and these have helped ruin the economy of the country.

They have accumulated millions, they sit in their luxurious villas in Madrid or Lisbon and invest large slices of their income abroad. This has created the recurring crises and the galloping inflation from which Brazil has been suffering.

Brazil has had presidents of all kinds — dictators, generals, socialists, even parlor Communists, but its people are still suffering. For a quarter of a cen­ tury Getulio Vargas was president— he was virtually dictator. In 1945 the military deposed him. This is a fre­ quent occurrence in Latin American countries: in a dictatorship of the right or of the left the military take a hand and carry out a putsch. The people are powerless and in many countries it leads to a military regime.

Getulio Vargas returned to power but this time as a democrat. In 1954 because of a threatening scandal he committed suicide. He was followed in the presidency by Juscelino Kubitschek, a liberal and a socialist. He strove with all his might to lead the country out of economic crisis, tried to expand production, transport and electrical power but despite all his ef­ forts he could not stem the flood of inflation.

Mareh-April 1967

president Joao Goulart who became president in turn. This writer happened to be visiting Brazil at the time Jaqio Quadros was carrying on his election campaign. He could be described as Brazil’s most tragicomic president. As a demagogue he championed all causes however mutually inconsistent they were. He directed most of his demogogic propaganda towards the lower classes and the impoverished.

Dressed in a shabby suit and old wofnout shoes, Quadros arose at five o’clock every morning and had breakfast with the working men in the cheap cafes, holding a broom in his hand— a sym­ bol of how he would sweep corrup­ tion from the land. His main appeal was that he would not sell out Brazil to the U.S.A. He paid visits to the Pope, and the Emperor of Japan, to Khrushchev, who had been waiting for an invitation to visit Brazil, even to Ben Gurion. The one ruler he chose not to visit was President Eisenhower.

Just before the elections he visited Fidel Castro and had himself photo­ graphed in his company. Naturally the Brazilian people hoped that this was their messianic deliverer who would redeem them of all their troubles and they gave him their votes.

When Adolph Berle, President Ken­ nedy’s emissary, visited Quadros and proffered a loan of a hundred million dollars, he received him quite coolly and, of course, rejected the offer. He tried to form a neutral Latin AmerL can bloc and came out in opposition to those Latin American states who were against Fidel Castro’s Commu­ nist policies. He imposed censorship on the press which had criticized him and shut down the radio network.

53

“Where is he leading the Brazilian people?”, demanded O Globa, an im­ portant newspaper.

Janio Quadras’ fate parallels that of Getulio Vargas up to a point. A former friend, Carlos Lacedra, the governor of Sao Paulo, threatened to expose him publicly in a scandal—this was the same person who had pre­ viously uncovered the scandal involv­ ing Getulio Vargas, the dictator-demo­ crat. In a series of articles he warned that he would expose scandals involv­ ing high placed government officials —going as high as the country’s pres­ ident Janio Quadras^'This forced the latter’s resignation which, of course, he conveniently blamed on the United States.

Constitutionally, of course, the man in line for the presidency was Joao Gpulart but his leftism and his direct links with the Communists made him suspect. Himself one of the country’s three leading capitalists (his landed property is three times the size of all Belgium), he would regularly make anti-capitalist speeches, he travelled to Red China and spoke in admiration of how happily its people live now that they have been freed from exploi­ tation. Immediately after this visit, however, he came to North America where Washington rolled out the red carpet for him and saluted him with a twenty-cannon volley. He had a friendly talk with President Kennedy and returned to Brazil with a loan of $144 million at the expense of the Al­ liance for Progress. Now it may be clear why the Alliance for Progress has not fulfilled its plans. One of its basic requirements is land reform; how can someone who owns such vast land estates undertake reform in land ownership?

54

ll/l'U C H the same situation applies to IT J. other Latin American countries.

A large proportion of the legislators are themselves latifundists who have inherited vast estates of millions of acres. Because they own so much, a large section of it is left uncultivated and for this reason those who do work on the sections farmed get a pitifully small payment. This accounts for the striking contrast between the luxurious wealth and the degrading misery and neglect. Even more striking is the con­ trast with the naturally endowed beauty of Rio de Janeiro. The poorest section of the city is located on the slope of the beautiful mountain in this wonder city; the higher one ascends the more shocking is the poverty. I visited these favelas, as the misery huts are called, in the company of a Brazilian colleague who is a regular visitor and is well-received as one of their own. The huts are made of tin crates put together with lime and brick. The sewage runs through in an open stream. The dwellings contain neither table nor bed for furpiture.

My companion advised me not to en­ ter the other favelas which are much worse and whose unfortunate dwellers would feel insulted if strangers looked at them. Roundabout run ragged, un­ dernourished children with sad faces.

Should there be a heavy rainfall, the shanties are washed out with human casualties.

The story of those who live in these favelas perched on the mountains is best told by Caroline Mario de Jesus in the book Quarto de Despejo. This “Diary of a Hungry Woman” de­ scribes the dismal life of those living in this misery and squalor and who seek a crust of bread to ease their hunger. A reporter who was visiting the favelas came across these notes JEWISH LIFE

and brought them to his newspaper Soon after they appeared in the news­ paper the diaries were published in book form. The book soon became a best seller, appeared in several edi­ tion^ and was translated into Spanish and English.

The writer is a woman with three children:; she is not ashamed to reveal that each child has a different father.

Only the youngest of the three—a daughter—knows who her father is.

He |s a wealthy Brazilian who has no close attachment to the child but, wishing ^to avoid a scandal, comes to the house several times a year and brings a pair of shoes or a dress. This, she writes, jjs how life proceeds. Who can think of morality in these circum­ stances? The book is a powerful pro­ test and a cry of pain and distress against the injustice suffered by those whom life has aggrieved and dealt With so shamefully. She mentions Jewp in her book. It is September now and the Jews are observing Easter (she meant Sukkoth). Moses saw that his people were barefoot and unclad and he asked the G-d of the Jews to give them riches. This is why they are now wealthy. The Blacks, she writes, have no prophet to pray for them.

Governmepts in the past have done little to solye the problem. Some time ago an effort was made for the lowest strafa of the poor. In the very center of the city the favelas were demolished and a John F. Kennedy housing pro­ ject was constructed with U.S. money.

This provided decent living conditions for some fraction of the slum-dwellers.

HE BRAZILIAN in general has iio aggressive ambitions for him­ self. He takes his poverty and distress as a normal phenomenon he has in­ herited from past generations. The ex-

a

March-April 1967

pression Calma Brasil!—“don’t rush, take it easy, you won’t be late!” is appropriate to the country’s mood and mentality. Despite the galloping infla­ tion the Brazilian is a kind of merry pauper. This is best seen at the time of the annual carnival which has been described by dozens of writers, has been put on film, and is known for its exotic flavor. The “Carioca” (as the inhabitant of Rio de Janeiro is called) is a romantic for all his poverty and for months prior to the carnival he saves his pennies to buy the best pos­ sible costume and be as good as the next man. He parades in the finest dis­ tricts of the city and revels at the aristocratic Copacabana Beach. The carnival lasts eight days during which Heinrich Heine’s line is very apt: “JJnd da wird der Schnorrer zum Prinzen verwandelt.” He waits for the festival all year and is then released from his troubles and sorrows. He lets himself go, free of all control and self•'dis­ cipline . . . after this carnival the birth rate increases tenfold.

The present regime of Marshal Humberto Castelo Branco, which de­ posed the armchair Communist Joao Goularh cannot be described as a strict military dictatorship. As was to be revealed later, it was a necessity to keep Brazil from being betrayed to Communism. Not long ago a Brazilian newspaper published a story that the leader of Brazil’s Communist party Luiz Carlos Prestes had reported to his party presidium that the party take-over was under way and that his friend Joao Goulart was not opposed to it. It is commonly believed that Luiz Carlos Prestes maintained quite amiable relations with the deposed president. The present head of state has started a campaign against cor55

ruption and has undertaken to carry out the land reform that no previous government has succeeded in accom-

plishing, though all expended much talk on the subject—mainly for foreign consumption.

THE H ISTO R ICA L BA C K G R O U N D

RAZIL’S Jewish community is the daring. In order to be as far as pos­ B oldest in the Western Hemisphere. sible from the watchful eyes of the Jews played an important role in its Inquisition and to be able to carry on discovery and later in its growth and development. When Brazil’s discoverer Pedro Alvarez Cabral landed there, among his most trusted advisors was the Narrano Gaspar de Gama of Gra­ nada. A year later in 1506 there ar­ rived in Brazil a large group of “Marrano” crypto-Jews under the leader­ ship of Fernando do Noronha who had signed a contract with King Man­ ual I of Portugal for full exemption from taxes for one year, for land of more than 1,000 quintales which they would cultivate. In the second year they would be liable for only onesixth of the normal tax.

Brazilian history is rich with docu­ mentary material on the influx of these Anusim. Dozens of books have been written on that period and more ma­ terial continues to be uncovered. The Inquisition pursued them from Portu­ gal and they showed true courage and heroism in maintaining their Judaism in secret even after they were discov­ ered by the bloodhounds of the In­ quisition and deported to Portugal to face the auto da fe. Under the worst tortures they showed remarkable firm­ ness and pride and did not yield.

At that time there was active com­ petition between Spain and Portugal to gain new territories and for this effort they both needed not only money but research, initiative, and 56

unmolested as Jews, the Marranos seized these opportunities for distant travel and settlement. The JeW Abra­ ham Zacuto had discovered the means of enabling regular transoceanic trips; the Jewish mathematician, Pedro Nunez, helped considerably in the plans of the expedition. All the cosmographers and geographers at the Portuguese court were Jews. Jafurda Cresques, a Jew, was the first to pro­ pose a marine school in Portugal, an institution which was to assist greatly later in the discovery and exploration of new continents. Portuguese Mar­ ranos were the first to cultivate sugar and to this day an island 300 miles from Belem bears the name of Fer­ nando Noronha who started this in­ dustry.

There are proofs that there were Jews in Brazil even before the coun­ try’s official discovery. According to the Brazilian Jewish historian Moshe Cohen, the founder of Sao Paulo Joso Ramalho was a crypto-Jew. A careful research was carried out on the per­ sonal signature of this semi-legendary figure and it was found that it was always written in the shape of a horse­ shoe revealing the two Hebrew letters K uf and Tzadey, the initials of the Hebrew words: Kohen Tzedek, one of the appellations of priestly descent.

JEWISH LIFE

N the year 1902 the Historic and pf the Inquisition. In 1602 the Bishop Iconducted Geographic Institute of Sao Paulo of Brazil warned against admitting an investigation and came any more Marranos to the priesthood. to the conclusion that Joana Ramalho was a Jew, who had fled from Por­ tugal for fear of the Inquisition, or who with other capable and highplaced Marranos had been commis­ sioned by the King of Portugal to carry out a project in the newly dis­ covered territories of the Western Hemisphere. This conclusion was signed by all members of the research committee except one. Dr. Horacio de Carvalho wrote a monograph on Joano Ramalho in the Revista de In­ stitute wherein he comes to the con­ clusion that Ramalho’s signature is a secret clue to his Jewishness.

The same historian has shown that the first Governor General of Brazil, Some de Souza, whose mission it was to found the town of Salvador (now Bahia) was the son of a Jewish mother and on his father’s side had a Jewish grandmother.. The first two physiciahs who were sent by the Por­ tuguese king to Brazil were later ar­ rested by the Inquisition for practicing Judaism.

Santos Licurgo Philo in his book “The History of Medicine in Brazil” demonstrates that all physicians, sur­ geons, and pharmacists whom the Portuguese Crown contracted to send to Brazil in the sixteenth century were Marranos. Arthur Hehl Neiva, the former advisor on immigration to the Brazilian government, is of the firm conviction that all Brazilians of Por­ tuguese origin have some Jewish an­ cestry. In the years 1573-76 the in­ flux of Marranos to Brazil was so great that the churches were filled with Marrano priests—for Marranos to have a priest in the family was the best way to avert the persecution March-April 1967

The Brazilian historian Rudolpho Garcia writes that Bento Teixeria Pinto, the father of Brazilian poetry, was a Marrano from Oporto. In the year 1579 when the operations of the Inquisition were intensified in Brazil and the Bishop of Salvador was ap­ pointed Chief Inquisitor of Brazil, the Marranos began to seek new lands to escape the Inquisition and continue their secret life as Jews. The Inquisi­ tion had its commissars in all the countries of the New World and is­ sued strict instructions that all unbe­ lievers not faithful to the Catholic Church must not be admitted without the express permission of the author­ ities. The historian cites three such warnings in his book.

Agents of the Inquisition received these orders in Argentina, Paraguay, Chile, and Peru. According to the same historian private correspondence that fell into the hands of the author­ ities revealed that the secret syna­ gogues of the “New Christians” main­ tained close touch with the Jews of Holland who would send them prayerbooks and other necessities. Accord­ ing to a tradition related by Felipe Cavalcanti, the Florentine traveler, the Marranos had secret worship places in various towns. He tells of coming across such a secret place in Camaragibi conducted by Benito Diaz de Santiago, a royal tax official and owner of a sugar factory.

The clandestine synagogue was actu­ ally inside the sugar factory. The sex­ ton of the synagogue on certain days would tie a rag to his foot and walk through the town—this was the signal for the Jews to assemble and worship.

Though the synagogues were surrepti57

tious and secret, in some cases the authorities knew of their existence and took bribes to look the other way.

HEN the Dutch* seized North Brazil in 1624 a new era began for the Jews of this area. A flourish­ ing Jewish community sprang up in Pernambuco; communities sprang up in Tamarica, Itamarca, and Paraiba.

In one year 600 Jews came to Recife from Amsterdam accompanied by Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, who organ­ ized the community under the name of Kehillah Kedoshah Tzur Yisroel (Rock of Israel), and a second scholar Moisés Rafael de Aguilar who acted as reader or hazzon. The community possessed a Talmud Torah and even a yeshivah entitled Etz Hayim for the older students and a whole number of functionaries. The community was so well regarded that the famed scholar Menasse ben Israel of Amster­ dam who visited it, dedicated one of his scholarly works to its leaders.

Jews played an important role in the conquest of Pernambuco and later in its defense. According to the his­ torian Cecil Roth it occurred that Marrano was pitched against Marrano — an eternal Jewish tragedy of invol­ untary fratricide in the fighting that went on between Portugal and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands there was a large community of ex-Marranos who under Dutch tolerance had openly declared themselves as Jews.

These established contact with Anusim in other countries and sought to help them. David Peixotto organized a fleet of eighteen ships for the cap­ ture of Pernambuco. He even con­ ceived the plan, while he was en route, of assaulting and burning the head­ quarters of the Inquisition in Por­ tugal. Jewish officers shared in the

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58

capture of Bahia in 1663. The tactic for the battle was planned by Mosheh Kohen (whose Marrano name in Por­ tuguese was Vaez Henriques Anto­ nio).

When the turn came for the Portu­ guese to regain these two towns, the Marranos living there fought for the Dutch and imposed a tax upon them­ selves for the defense. Rabbi Isaac Aboab de Fonseca proclaimed a fast and from the synagogue pulpit urged the Jews to help defend the city. They fought bravely. When it seemed that they had fought off the Portuguese they held a day of prayer and thanks­ giving led by their rabbi. However, a second attack by the Portuguese forced the city’s capitulation. There were Marranos from Portugal among the invading forces who had a decisive role in forcing this surrender. Joao (John II), King of Portugal, had somewhat eased the state of his Mar­ ranos and made concessions to those found practicing Judaism. In recog­ nition of this leniency a number of Portuguese Marranos organized a ship company called Companhia da Bolsa which contributed manpower and ships to the siege of Pernambuco. It was led by the Marrano Duarte da Silva and played no small part in the fall of Pernambuco.

A FTER Portugal regained Northern Brazil in 1654 a renewed perse­ cution began by way of retaliation against the “New Christians” who had collaborated with the enemy and for their impudence in publicly returning to Judaism. The Marranos fled the country, using all possible avenues of escape. Not all, however, were success­ ful in getting out in time. The now enraged Inquisition made all efforts to cut off escape, spreading its net out JEW ISH LIFE

to all the nearby countries to which the Marranos had headed; many fell into its hands.

Some succeeded in reaching other lands and dispersed throughout the Caribbean islands. Some managed to get on to Dutch ships that were evacu­ ating the vanquished Dutch army.

One such vessel was detained in Ja­ maica by the Spaniards who wanted to hand them over to the Inquisition.

However, a French ship brought them to the Low Countries at the request of the Netherlands Government.

Among those who admitted Jews at the time were the Caribbean islands of Barbados, and Curacao and the colony of Surinam. It was a group of twenty-four Jews fleeing Brazil who landed in New Amsterdam (the pres­ ent New York). Others fled deeper into the interior where in the course of years they mixed with and were absorbed by the surrounding popula­ tion. The entire industry of sugar plan­ tation which Jews had introduced, was ruined. A reminder of that era is an island located 100 miles from Bahia which bears the name of its founder.

There persist today broken old streets in Pernambuco such as “Street of the Cross” which was once the Jewish quarter. A whole literature survives of documents and archival material which historians study for background on the period.

Only in 1822 when Brazil achieved independence and when persecutions stopped, did Jews begin to re-enter the country. This was the country’s second Jewish settlement. The first in­ habitants were Sephardim who occu­ pied the most remote areas of north­ ern Brazil and founded communities on the banks of the Amazon; the first synagogue Shaarey Shomayim was in Manaus and the second in Belem. It March-April 1967

was not until 1901 that a synagogue was erected in Rio de Janeiro. Its members were probably English and German Jews who had come as tech­ nicians in the service of foreign firms.

Later, as a result of the Czarist pog­ roms, the Baron de Hirsch fund in ad­ dition to its colonization schemes in Argentina and Canada also started two Jewish farm colonies in Brazil: the first in 1903 in an area it named Philipson and the second at Quatro Irmaos (Four Brothers). Both were located in the Province of Rio Grande do Sul. HE THIRD PERIOD of Jewish settlement in Brazil took place between the two World Wars. The first to come in this period were Bessarabian Jews for whom Brazil became a sort of America all by it­ self. They would emigrate there for the purpose of staying a few years, saving some money returning home, perhaps to come out again. This went on until the uneasy years after World War I. The political situation became more tense, the regimes changed swiftly in the Central and East Euro­ pean countries and pretty soon there was no stable home to return to. The emigrants began to think in terms of settling down in Brazil.

As in all Latin American countries' the initial Jewish livelihood was what is called Clientel’chik, that is, carry­ ing a pack on one’s back, knocking on doors, and offering a world of goods to the Brazilian housewife. The Brazil­ ians, by nature friendly people, re­ ceived the Jewish door-knockers ami­ ably and bought the merchandise on credit.

Eventually the itinerant door­ knockers developed and expanded into businesses which extended throughout

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59

the whole country. Men who were car­ penters in their home in the Ukraine or Bessarabia became furniture manu­ facturers; former tailors became tex­ tile industrialists. The erstwhile immigrants are also well represented in the paper and leather industries and in the diamond field, which is_ factually in Jewish hands. Jews are also prominent in the import and ex­ port trade and because of their con­ nections are also representatives of important American enterprises.

The Jewish population of Brazil can be estimated at 160,000. Of these 65,000 are in Sao Paulo and 50,000 in Rio de Janeiro. There are 12,000 in Port Alegre and below this are simaller communities such as Curitiba, Bella Horizonte, Recife (Pernam­ buco), Bahia, and beyond this a series of even sjp^Jler settlements scattered throughout the land from the Argen­ tine border to the far north.

Brazil’s Jewry has undergone the same testing and trials that the other Jewish communities in the continent have experienced. From a tiny relief

committee called Achi Ezer (“Brothers in Aid”) and a small prayer house called Beth Ya’akov Tifereth Tzion there has developed an entire com­ munity apparatus with all the appro­ priate and necessary institutions. The credit cooperative established in a modest office in the beginning by the Jews of Sao Paulo for the purpose of assisting immigrants with small loans has now grown to an institution housed in a large modern building with a staff of dozens at the service of Jewish businessmen—the sanie who used to tread the hot burning streets to knock on doors and who are now manufac­ turers and importers. The old Jewish district near the Plaza once where there was a cafe by the same name which was a focal point for the immi­ grants where they came for a coffee and a relieving chat after a hard day’s work, is no more. Only barely recog­ nizable traces survive. The former immigrants have abandoned it for the wealthy areas near Copacabana or other more comfortable sections of the beautifully endowed former capital.

YESTERDAY A N D TO DAY

HAVE visited Brazil five times since the first time I lived in South America and on each visit I have noticed the changes that have come over Jewish life in general, ^nd in particular the economic upswing. The sons and grandsons of the peddlers and even of my former pupils in the Jewish school at Santa Maria—near the old Jewish farm colony of Philipson—of Curitiba and Port Alegre, are now physicians, lawyers, engineers, architects, even army officers. An odd incident occurred as I was talking

I

to an audience in a Jewish center in a small town between Port Alegre and Santa Maria. In the middle of my address the door opened and the chief of police walked in . . . I was somewhat astonished and apprehen­ sive as in these countries one nevei knows what to expect. But the chief walked over to me in full official regalia, and extended his hand to me with a “Shalom Aleichem, professor/' It was one of my former pupils who even recalled my name, (teachers are addressed as “professor”^ in these

60

JEWISH LIFE

countries) and hugged me with a true Brazilian embrazo.

During one of my visits to Sao Paulo, 120 physicians undertook to erect a hospital, bearing the name of Albert Einstein, as a Jewish institu­ tion. These were the sons and daugh­ ters of peddlers. Each year, the number of Jewish professionals— doc­ tors, attorneys, engineers, and chem­ ists-—is increasing. The second and third generations are assuming promi­ nent positions in the country’s public life. One of the leading Brazilian playwrites is Pedro Bloch. Professor Fritz Feigl, former president of the Jewish Confederation, is an internationally renowned chemist. Professor Arthur Moses is President of the Brazilian Academy of Art. Jews are well repre­ sented in the journalistic profession, in films and in television.

They are assuming a noticeable role in the political life of the country, and in the Brazilian Parliament there are a number of Jewish members.

There is also a Jewish Senator, Mauricio Steinbruch^ a son of one of the early Jewish farm settlers in the Province of Rio Grande do Sul. For a long time Horacio Lafer was Fi­ nance Minister and Secretary of State.

In the Army, there are 15 Jewish colonels, and four Jewish generals.

One of these, Levi Cardozo, is an intimate adviser of the Brazilian President, Marshall Castello Branco.

A second general, Rafael Zipin of Porto Alegre, is active in Jewish com­ munity life. In Rio de Janeiro, there are streets named after Theodore Herzl and Ludwig Zamenhoff, the in­ ventor of Esperanto. Two squares in the finest part of the city are named after David Ben Gurion and Chaim Weizmann. One public school is named Estado do Israel, and another March-April 1967

is named for Anne Frank. At the United Nations, the Brazilian delega­ tion joined the American one in spon­ soring a resolution condemning anti­ semitism.

HEN I pass through Rio de Janeiro my heart beats faster at the memory of the days when I was an habitué of the Jewish literary cafe thirty-nine years ago. Other regu­ lars of that day were Eduard Horovitz, the poet Jacob Nachbin who died in the Spanish Civil War, the writer J, L, Korkushansky, Nathan Becker who was a devotee of the doctrines of Chaim Zhitlowsky, and Naftali Yaffe. At that time writers’ gossip and malice were not yet in style and we were content to read each other our songs, stories, and poems, and dream of seeing them in print some day. When I am in Rio I always hail a taxi to take me to Plaza Once, and each time I leave it with a feeling of sadness. Plaza Once is no longer what it was, the cafe is not there. Little remains of its charm and attraction.

On my last visit I found instead a Schneider’s restaurant on Santa Anna where Jews from the richer suburbs come in their automobiles to enjoy the taste of knishes and gefilte fish.

However, in the other metropolis of Sao Paulo, the Jewish quarter on the Bom Retiro has remained Jewish in character. There too Jews have moved away to roomier and more comfortable quarters but in the main they continue to maintain their busi­ nesses in the Jewish area. In Sao Paulo Jewish life is more concentrated than in Rio and for that reason is better organized. The element that is best organized are the German Jews. These brought with them the talent for or­ ganization and efficiency and possess

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child is instructed in both general and Jewish studies. There are thirty such day schools in Brazil, of which thir­ teen are in Rio de Janeiro, ten in Sao Paulo and the others in the provincial communities such as Porto Alegre, Curitiba, etc. Brazil has two teachers’ seminaries, youth clubs named Heb­ raica, Mount Sinai, Maccabee, etc., but despite all this the picture it re­ veals is not impressive. Only 7,000 children attend the Jewish day schools.

In a total Jewish population of 160,000 this is a tragically small propor­ tion!

Part of the blame for this can be placed on the fact that starting years ago Brazilian Jewry followed the ex­ ample of its larger neighbor the Jew­ ish community of Argentina and concentrated its efforts on Yiddishsecular education—a form of training which was alien to the second and third generations. When I attended a conference of Jewish youth in Jerusa­ lem, Abraham Hamavi, delegate of the United Jewish Youth organization of Brazil, mentioned that no less than 75%' of Jewish students in Brazil stated they were quite ready to marry non-Jews. In the light of this finding, the Jewish Agency took steps to pro­ vide teachers from Israel for the Jew­ ish schools of Brazil and has arranged td bring Brazilian Jewish young peo­ ple to Israel to expand their Jewish knowledge and return to Brazil to act as youth leaders and teachers.

Recently, with the influx of more traditionalist immigrants, some change has taken place. Jewish religious life has gradually taken form and has %W7HAT about Jewish education in established itself in Brazil and other Tv Brazil? Most Jewish schools in Latin American countries. Jewish edu­ Brazil are all-day institutions where the cation also has begun to lay stress on

a kehillah with all necessary function­ aries. The Jews from eastern Europe are somewhat backward in this re­ spect. Jewish organizations abound, social, philanthropic, and religious, there is a network of schools, a home for the aged, and all the other institu­ tions required in a community, but the essential— an organized central body—is missing.

The absence of a central communal body is a product of the influence exerted by the radicals on local Jewish life on the model of Buenos Aires where religious Jewishness was re­ sisted and where the stress was placed on the Yiddish language alone, di­ vorced from Yiddishkeit. When I lived in Brazil from 1926 to 1928 JCA (the Jewish Colonization Association) sent an emissary to the late Rabbi Isaiah Raffalovitch of Liverpool to invite him to Brazil. He accepted, and upon arriving in Brazil set about establish­ ing a central Kehillah. The radicals who then were in the hegemony in Jewish circles initiated a campaign against the undertaking complaining that a kehillah meant fanaticism, meant restoring the meat tax of Mendele Mocher Sforim’s bitter satire, and using various other demagogic approaches. Shortly after, because of this concerted opposition Rabbi Raffalovitch left Brazil and the plan for a central community organization was abandoned as it still is despite the tenfold increase in numbers. What has come about is that with the influx of West European Jews a sort of Con­ federation of Brazilian Jewish bodies has been formed which is associated with the World Jewish Congress.

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JEWISH LIFE

Judaism and to create a kind of South American style or nusach America. A leader of the Agudath Israel, the late Benjamin Citron, took the initiative in establishing a Beth Hayeled which now has an enrollment of 500 chil­ dren and a staff of teachers brought from Israel. A second Jew—Feish Moscowitz from Brooklyn — estab­ lished a Beth Yaakov religious school

for girls. While this has not yet as­ sumed the proportion of a mass trend, it is a satisfying and significant start.

In addition, the Lubavitcher Rebbe has interested himself in Jewish edu­ cation in Brazil. He has organized a Yeshivah and Talmud Torah staffed

by Brazilian-born teachers who were themselves trained in the Lubavitcher Yeshivah in Brooklyn.

W H A T ABOUT ANTISEMITISM IN BRAZIL?

OR a country in the South Ameri­ they were called, who created con­ F can continent to be totally free siderable mischief for the Jews of that of the plague of antisemitism is vir­ country. All Zionist activities were tually impossible. The Brazilian makes no distinction between brown, yellow, black or white, and in this respect thefe is no exception. However, there are large numbers of Germans in Brazil. There are certain provinces such as Rio Grande and Santa Cata­ rina where entire districts are popu­ lated by Germans, colonies where German is the current language, where schools and newspapers are all Ger­ man. For a while after World War I the rumor spread that Kaiser Wil­ helm II would be coming to Blumenau —a German colony in Brazil. A joke used to make the rounds among these Germans: “We have been here almost a century and the Brazilians have not yet learned to speak German!’' At that time they were pro-Kaiser Wil­ helm and carried on a type of anti­ semitism in their press. When Nazism emerged and began its anti-Jewish campaign, they acclaimed its ideas and spread Jew-hatred among the friendly and peaceful Brazilians. In the dictatorship of Getulio Vargas a kind of Brazilian Nazi party was set up—the green-shirted Integralists, as March-April 1967

banned, the Yiddish press was shut down, Jewish public meetings were forbidden. Only after Brazil entered the war on the side of the Allies did the situation change.

When the selfsame Getulio Vargas returned to power once more, this time as a democrat, the Jews breathed more easily. The Yiddish press was restored and the other restrictions were dropped.

Antisemitism in Brazil as in the other Latin American lands is a kind of “seasonal” phenomenon. Sometimes those in power are anxious to please “capital” (which in their view is in Jewish hands, of course) so they de­ clare their affection for the people of Israel, and other times they do the opposite for since American capital has undertaken to rule the world and since it is certainly in Jewish hands, Jews become the scapegoat.

The Jewish people will always re­ member the former Brazilian foreign secretary Oswaldo Aranha, who was chairman of the United Nations As­ sembly when the fate of the Jewish people was decided, for his role in 63

recognition of the independence of the Jewish state. Quite aside from this he has always shown a warmth to Jews.

Recently in the Brazilian paper Coreo de Manha in Sao Paulo, he attacked the governor of that province, himself a liberal, for appointing as minister of education a former fascist, a leader of the Integralists who during the war had to flee the country because of his pro-Hitler sympathies. And recently the Estado de Sao Paulo, a newspaper known for its sympathy to Israel and for its opposition to antisemitism, complained that Jews try to carry on a separate cultural life in the country and sharply criticized Nahum Goldmann of the World Jewish Congress for his demand of Latin America’s Jews that they resist assimilation.

Here is another case that indicates that the germ of international Nazism has infected the peaceful Brazilian with its bacilli: in Recife (Pernam­ buco) an article appeared in a news­ paper which of all things accused Jewish youth of . . . Nazism! The security police, it is reported,“ have uncovered a document proving that Jewish Zionist youth had been carry­ ing on a conspiratorial Nazi racist

64

movement in favor of the interests of a foreign state. The document refers to Jewish education in the spirit of Jewish tradition, aid to Israel and aliyah. When the local Jewish com­ munity and the national Confedera­ tion of Jewish communities lodged a protest, the newspaper replied that the article was imposed by order of one of the city’s head police officials.

These are, of course, individual and sporadic cases for which the Brazilian people cannot be held responsible and certainly not the present regime. There has also been some swastika daubing on Jewish and non-Jewish buildings, even on the palace of Justice and the Portuguese Sports Club. Indica­ tions are that this is not the work of Brazilians but of the combined ArabNazi international which has been active in other countries.

The present regime of Marshall Castello Branco is free of any antiJewish bias. The Brazilian President has taken occasion to stress that the Jews of Brazil are equal citizens with all others and that no discrimination based on race or religion will be countenanced.

JEWISH LIFE

T h e C are e r W o m a n and

th e O r g a n iz a t io n

By ESTHER MARINE

EWISH women have played a was in my mother’s day. For the mar­ prominent role in religious politi­ ried orthodox Jewish woman particu­ cal, communal, and philanthropic or­larly, the only outlet outside of her ganizations. They have supported the home, a generation ago, was participa­ synagogue, worked for Zionist organ­ tion in community affairs, through the izations, and have given time and ef­ sisterhood, yeshivah organization, or fort to help the sick and needy. But philanthropic group. These activities the picture seems to be gradually provided her with many of the satis­ changing and worried presidents have factions found on the job, and others been heard to question “What is hap­ besides—companionship, the opportu­ pening to our career women? They nity to participate in the community used to be so active, they used to hold effort, to accomplish a useful end, and leadership positions, but now that they the opportunity to achieve excellence, are working we rarely hear from distinction, and sometimes even power.

To-day it is possible to combine a them.” The problem of the non-par­ ticipating career woman must be look­ home and a career. Naturally there ed at from the point of view of the has to be collaboration at home, and career woman and from the stand of husband cannot feel that his wife’s career is a threat to his masculinity. the organization itself.

Let us try to understand the career But as more women work this bogy woman. Each person travels through has been faced, met, and vanquished well known stages in the life cycle many times. Indeed the young wife’s from infancy to old age. It is during income is often used as the sole finan­ the last years of high school that the cial support of the family when the girl defines whether she will go on husband is completing graduate school. for an academic career or enter the HEN the first child arrives, most commercial field. College requires an wives stop working. They de­ investment on the part of parents and the student, which in most cases vote their major time to the care of brings psychological and monetary re­ the young infants. It is during this turns. Today a choice need not be period that the organization has a very made between home and career as it important role to play. For the young

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March-April 1967

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mother desperately needs to keep up for anyone else; she is always there her contacts with the world outside and expected to be there—picking up, her kitchen window. She needs outside pushing and shlepping. Her mothering inspiration, adult associations, and in­ becomes smothering for all to see. She teresting activities, which break up the lives through her children—their pleas­ often dull routine of home-making. ures are her pleasures, their home­ Sisterhood projects provide contact work her homework, and their pains via the, telephone, meetings of Zionist are her pains; only she experiences or other Jewish organizations bring them more deeply. She complains to her up-to-date on world affairs, and her husband that the children are often philanthropic luncheons give her an ungrateful. They don’t listen. They are opportunity to relax and buy a new often sassy. The children for their part hat, which is often a very important resent mother breathing down their stimulant needed to blow away house­ necks, taking away their autonomy and wife blues. involving herself in their affairs. Mama Time passes quickly, the babies be­ unconsciously perceives this and be­ come toddlers and the toddlers school comes a martyr, In that role she can children and off they go. Mother is a increase her control and the family’s “lady” and the children are off her guilt. Some readers may feel that Mrs. hands. But what does mother do now? Homemaker is a fictional character, After the first thrill of free time, she but caseloads of family agencies and may become depressed, and begin to child guidance centers frequently in­ wonder if she is really needed now. clude the particular problem of the The solution of her problem is most smothering Jewish mother. It is this often accomplished in one of three kind of personality who resolves her ways. Mother can: problem of free time by keeping her 1. Be a full time homemaker and children infantile and dependent too long, who makes all the decisions in chauffeur. the family and who does all the par­ 2. Use her spare time for organiza­ enting. tion activity.

What of Mrs. Homemaker-organiza­ 3. Prepare herself for a career and tion—our second lady? She is the work within her chosen field. backbone of Women’s groups. She provides the leadership in sisterhood, T ET US look at Mrs. Homemaker. the know-how in local women’s units -1-J She is busy all day long. Instead of major Jewish organizations, and of changing sheets once a week she the devotion in orthodox Jewish phil­ changes them three times a week. She anthropic undertakings. Many women looks for and succeeds in finding dust receive much satisfaction from these in all the corners. She truly earns the responsibilities. They enjoy doing reputation of being an excellent house­ work for the community. keeper, and work expands to fill her It must not be forgotten that people time. She is there at the beck and call only work for an organization as long of father and children, happy with the as they gain satisfaction from it. Sat­ dependency of her family. She knows isfaction may be in the form of an that everyone depends on Mama. No active social life, increased status in child can do anything for himself or the group, a feeling of doing an im-

66

JEWISH LIFE

portant task in the community or even enhancing the husband’s career. Many women have learned through organ­ izations how to prepare and give a speech in public, how to write a re­ port, how to organize for social ac­ tion, and last but not least how to make up a budget. Who knows but that working in these areas may have given some women a yen to do the work professionally?

O we come to our third woman— S Mrs. Homemaker and Career Woman. Often the question is asked: why do women who are good mothers and excellent leaders in organizations desire to work? For some it is an eco­ nomic necessity. Many will in the near future face the expense of sending chil­ dren through college and we all know what a financial strain that can be. A mother’s monetary contribution may be the only way a child can receive a professional education. For other women, working at a career means ful­ fillment of themselves as people. To work in a chosen field is now a very important aspect of mother’s life. Pre­ viously she had felt unfulfilled because she knew that she had much to give and the professional training would en­ hance her giving. To decide on a pro­ fessional career is not an easy decision when one has family responsibilities, but to use Herzl’s immortal words “If you will it, it is no dream.” Age is not a deterrent to learning, in fact in some fields life experience is a de­ cided asset. Professional training does, however, require motivation and ded­ ication. It often means a loss of free time, friends, and associations; but when it is completed one adds the sci­ ence to the art that was very often learned in organizations.

Perhaps the most important task of March-April 1967

the person who goes back for pro­ fessional training is the ability to sift important from trivial tasks, to use short cuts, to organize efficiently and effectively. Most career mothers try hard to see that their families do not suffer and current research is now proving that in most cases they are successful. Yet the mother who works even part time has more than a full time job. Even though, like some teachers, she may leave school at 3:30 p.m. she is not through for the day.

Her first job, home-making, is just beginning and this may not end be­ fore four or five hours have passed.

Eli Ginsberg, professor of econom­ ics at Columbia University, published in 1966 a very interesting research project called “The Life Styles of Ed­ ucated Women.” He questioned wo­ men who had undergone graduate training at Columbia University be­ tween the years 1945 and 1951. He found that despite the fact that the study showed that educated women gave some time to one organization or another, these activities provided only limited satisfaction for them. In­ deed only a small minority of edu­ cated women found home-making and child rearing, even when supplemented by organizational activity, completely satisfying. Two out of three of these women who had worked for organiza­ tions commented on why they felt neg­ atively about them.

The professional women complained of the terrible hours, e.g. calling a meeting for 8:30 p.m., beginning at 9:30 p.m., and going on until mid­ night or after. Holding meetings in the afternoon when they were working was another point of complaint. They were distressed, too, by the in-fighting, the personality coddling, the nudniks, 67

A m o n g other things, IB M com puters are helping scholars to find w hat the poet Shelley learned from the w orks o f M ilto n — h e lp ing scientists to track the erratic flight paths of the w h o op in g crane^^ ^ f r ^ ^ ^

— helping

historians to deduce precise shades of m eaning in the D ead Sea S c r o l l ^ ^ ^ ^ —helping astronom ers gfet close-up pictures o f the eerie face o f M ars

— and helping a physicist in his efforts

to detect secret cham bers that m ay have been lying hidden for centuries, deep w ith in the G reat Pyram id o f ancient Egyp t’s K in g ^ ijflfe Cheops,

W hen p e o p le a re seek in g in fo rm a tio n , i t ’s a m a z in g h ow o fte n IB M co m p u ters can h e lp .

IBM

and the pressure of extraneous detail.

Perhaps what was most upsetting was not being accepted as a professional with special knowledge and therefore working below one’s training and ex­ perience.

Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, were able to add new goals and go on as strong and as vital as before. A study of the American Red Cross found that it had made successive ad­ justments to changes in its social en­ vironment. Its first objective was to ET US now consider the organiza­ hold itself in readiness to inaugurate tion. Talcott Parsons, the sociolo­ practical measures for the relief of gist defines organizations as social suffering in the event of war or na­ units which are predominantly ori­ tional disaster. After World War I the ented to the attainment of specific American Red Cross adopted a new goals, while the Barnard-Simon theory program, the preservation and im­ of organizational equilibrium states provement of public health. Later it that: added the national blood donor pro­ 1.

Each member or participant re­ gram, as the core of its peacetime ac­ ceives from the organization induce­ tivities. ments in return for which he makes HAT can orthodox Jewish or­ contributions to the organization. ganizations learn from the ex­ 2.

Each participant will continue his participation in the organization perience of others? What does organ­ only so long as the inducements of­ izational theory teach us that is rele­ fered him are as great as, or greater vant for our use? Firstly, it makes us than, the contributions he is asked to look at our goals and purposes and asks us to evaluate how far we are make.

In simple terms this means that or­ attaining these ends. Maybe the fol­ ganizations exist for the purpose of lowing questions would be valuable to working for particular goals or pur­ enable us to see where we are going. poses. Members who participate in or­ 1. What are our goals? ganizations give of their time and ef­ 2. Whom are we trying to attrabt? fort and in return receive satisfactions.

3.

Are different age groups in­ Members will remain active only so volved? long as the satisfactions they receive 4.

Are different interest groups are equal to or greater than their con­ involved? tributions in terms of time and effort.

5.

Are the projects, meetings, affairs Measurement will always be in terms etc. geared to meet the needs of the of the members’ own scale of values various interest groups in terms of and in terms of what other competing timing?

6.

Are the projects, meetings, af­ alternatives are open to him.

All organizations are concerned fairs etc. geared to meet the needs of when they lose members, or when the the various interest groups in terms social climate changes and their goals of content?

7.

Are secondary goals taking are fulfilled. Important studies have been published about large national precedence over primary stated goals?; organizations showing that certain or­ e.g. is fund raising the only real goal ganizations died when their goals were while education is given low priority?

It appears that we have to be realismet; others, notably the National

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March-April 1967

69

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JEWISH LIFE

tic when we set out to attract career women. By that I do not mean just dues-paying members, but active par­ ticipants in traditional Jewish organi­ zations. The career woman will want changes. She will not be satisfied wi h the status quo. She may begin by want-

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JEWISH LIFE

B ook R eview s T w o Boards, O n e P a w n

By ARNOLD BLUMBERG BLOOD A C C U SA TIO N : THE S T R A N G E H I S T O R Y OF THE BEILISS CASE. By Maurice Samuel.

Alfred A. Knopf, N ew York, 1966, xv and 286 pp. $5.95.

THE FIXER. By Bernard Malamud.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1966, 335 pp. $5.75.

Y coincidence, two authors have chosen simultaneously to revisit the almost forgotten scenes of the trial of Mendel Beiliss more than fifty-five years ago. One of them, Maurice Samuel, has attempted to reconstruct an historical event. The other, Bernard Malamud, has taken the historical figure Beiliss, re­ named him Yakov Shepsovitch Bok and used his agony in prison as a fictional

B

D r. A rnold B lumberg, whose articles have ap­ peared in historical journals and in Jewish lit­ erary magazines, is Professor of Modern Euro­ pean History at Towson State College in Balti­ more.

March-April 1967

vehicle for a dissertation on human des­ tiny. Neither has succeeded completely, yet each has created a work worthy of the attention of intelligent readers.

The Beiliss case itself is scarcely re­ called today. Briefly, it involved an in­ credible plot to implicate not only the simple employee of a brick yard, but the entire Jewish people, in the crime of having murdered a Christian child with the design of using his blood to make matzoh. Of course, what shocks the modern reader is that this particular rit­ ual murder libel was not the work of some medieval obscurantist, but the de­ liberate fabrication of the Imperial Rus­ sian Government in the years 1911-1913.

The anachronism of this diseased aber­ ration in those years when the airplane, automobile, telephone, and cable had al­ ready revolutionized the technology of communication, may pass unnoticed by those of us who witnessed the systematic murder of six million Jews by the most

73

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technologically advanced people in Eu­ rope. Maurice Samuel poses the question well when he asks his reader why we should concern ourselves with so small a pain when our generation has endured the greater torture of the Hitlerite and current Russian persecutions. He answers his own question dramatically. We are reminded that in 1913, the younger gen­ eration assumed that liberalism was the wave of the future and that antisemitism, “like slavery and the divine right of kings,” was no longer a genuine issue.

The Beiliss Case was regarded as “the last convulsion of an ancient tyranny, never dreaming that it was a hint of un­ imaginable tyrannies yet to come.”

reader who never once glances at the scholarly impedimenta, the text will prove to be an absorbing and complete account, in itself.

For the greater part of the narrative, Samuel is almost painfully objective. He identifies and describes the motivation of Beiliss’s liberal Christian allies and even attempts to offer psychological justifica­ tion for Beiliss’s foes, from Czar Nicho­ las II down to the mean cutthroats who actually committed the murder charged to the Jew. Precisely because he is rigidly fair, he builds a damning case against a bureaucracy which could attempt to de­ stroy a man and a people without attach­ ing personal responsibility to any of the Eichmann-like cogs in the murderous wheel. Only occasionally does the au­ N ow well on in years, the century and thor’s emotion show. He is human I soberly assess the record. Our ‘final­ enough to allow himself an epilogue in ly accepted principle’ is still fighting which he offers a somewhat angry and for its life. Our complacency of fifty very personal arraignment of antisem­ years ago proved almost fatal; and if itism old and new. The tone of the book the principle still has a chance of as a whole, however, has the factual pre­ commanding the future, it is because ciseness of a laboratory report. The chess we are no longer complacent. habitué will find it an intellectual exercise In a very real sense then, Samuel’s in­ moving toward a dramatic climax. The troduction offers a rationale for the at­ amateur of detective stories will enjoy the logical reconstruction of crimes at tention which either Malamud or Samuel asks us to give this dusty and half for­ several different levels of comprehension.

The latter may complain that Samuel gotten legal chronicle. teases his reader by departing frequently from chronological order and offering AURICE SAM UEL devoted over three years of research to his glimpses of the trial and denouement, book. He rests his narrative on a solid long before poor Beiliss is even indicted. foundation of primary sources, including Nevertheless, such is the author’s skill stenographic reports of the Beiliss trial that he never really gives away his se­ and Russian government reports available crets. We read hungrily and with un­ abated interest to the last page. since the Revolution o f 1917. He took the trouble to become familiar with Rus­ e r n a r d m a l a m u d ’s novel is sian medical terminology and worked related only superficially to Sam­ closely with scholars who were involved in the Russian legal system before the uel’s historical study. For Samuel, Beiliss advent of the U.S.S.R. Some historians is a relatively minor figure, moving like will quibble about his rather unman­ a helpless pawn through a game played ageable footnotes, placed in the rear of by bigger men. For Malamud, Yakov the book. Nevertheless, the documenta­ Bok is a giant, dominating the scene, tion is there for that asmall— but very though he too is ultimately dwarfed by important— number of . . . readers . . . it. Bok is a shlimazel, a classic Jewish interested in the notes.” For the general folk figure. By trade, he is a “fixer,” a

M

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March-April 1967

75

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JEWISH LIFE

handyman whose modest pack of tools gives him an entry where carpentry or window repair are required. Bok is a resi­ dent of a provincial small town near Kiev. His childless and unloved wife has just deserted him to pursue an abandoned and promiscuous existence. We first meet him when, in despair and loneliness, he is about to flee the shtetel and seek a new life in Kiev. His arrival in Kiev* his attempt to suppress his Jewish identity, his momentary success in the employ of an overt anti-semite and his final pro­ longed nightmare in prison are the sub­ stance of the story. A ll of this, of course, bears slight resemblance to the Beiliss described by Samuel. The historical Beiliss was a normal family man, some­ what alienated from but not hostile to orthodox Judaism, employed in a brick yard by a wealthy Jew whose father had employed Beiliss’s father in the previous generation.

Yakov Bok is not intended to be Beiliss, or Dreyfus, or Sacco and Vanzetti. He is Malamud’s concept of Man himself. Bok is a village intellectual; not learned enough to be called A pikorus yet too learned to be an A m -H a-aretz.

Bok has read Spinoza superficially and has made a depersonalized deity out of nature. He calls himself a freethinker yet he is plainly searching for a religious ex­ perience more satisfying than frosty deism. Bok, when we first meet him is a snivelling complainer who curses his fate and denies the existence of divine justice.

Malamud anticipates our references to the patience of Job by having Bok casti­ gate that Biblical figure as well.

Yet in prison, “The Fixer” begins to grow in stature. He stops snivelling. He towers in manly defiance of his tormenters. Slowly and painfully, however, the author hammers home his point upon his reader. Life is not only vain, but futile.

N ot a single victory is achieved by the prisoner without its leading to the de­ struction of one of his friends. In the end even Bok’s motivation for fighting

March-April 1967

seems meaningless. H e is no closer to finding G-d and he is a great deal far­ ther from finding Man. It is here that Malamud disappoints us. Bok’s courage becomes a mere per­ verse stubbornness. We are asked to understand and sympathize with a “hero” who does not love G-d, Man or himself.

We are even denied the satisfaction of admiring the courage of an existential-! ist who believes that he cannot win against arbitrary fate but who feels that his humanity requires him to play a role and do his best. This reviewer, at least, could not understand what was supposed to give Bok the courage to refuse a par­ don on any other terms than the proc­ lamation of his innocence.

Bok’s brief flirtations with insanity are also unconvincing, for the author chooses to make a madman’s reveries the vehicle for learned disquisitions on Russian Jew­ ish history including precise dates. TJie reader is not prepared finally to be com­ pletely credulous when Bok says: One thing I’ve learned . . . there’s no such thing as an unpolitical man, especially a Jew. You can’t be one without the other, that’s clear enough.

You can’t sit still and see yourself de­ stroyed.

In the end, Malamud plays his last little joke on the reader for he never reaches the court room and the trial of Yakov Bok. It is sufficient for his thesis that the last scene features “The Fixer” en route to the courthouse, conveyed by carriage through the crowded streets of Kiev. An assassin determines to mur­ der Bok and assure his punishment for ritual murder. Instead, the bomb maims one of Bok’s guards. “As they carried him past the carriage his [the Cossack guard’s] eyes opened and he looked in horror and anguish at Yakov as though to say, lWhat has my foot got to do with it?’ ”

77

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HE reader will find his time well spent in reading both books once he accepts the literary premises upon which each one rests. Both are beauti­ fully printed and the publishers have done everything possible to make read­ ing pleasant. Errata are few. Samuel on page 4 refers to a Damascus ritual murder case of 1860. The reviewer as­ sumes that he meant 1840. Malamud refers to the use of a rabbit in preparing a broth for the treatment of Mrs. Bok’s barrenness. If this seems incredible in a woman who was supposed to be deeply concerned with Kashruth, we may attri­ bute it to literary license and agree that her desperation may have driven her to many evidences of inconsistent behavior before her final break with Judaism. We also note on page 212 the strange state­ ment that Nicholas I was the father of Nicholas II. Both authors are masterful craftsmen.

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We value highly the ® seal of approval of THE UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA, which appears on so many Heinz labels. We proudly advertise our Kashruth endorsement extensively right through the year.

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