Jewish Life July 1973

“VOICE OF THE HALOCHAH” NEGATIVISM AND FEMINISM * S K YEARS AND SIX DAYS THUS IS THE REDEMPTION OF ISRAEL TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH FROM AMSTERDAM TO MONTREAL JACKSON AMENDMENT IN CENTER STAGE * MISFITS IN HIGH PLACES JULY 1973 TAMMUZ 5733

ISR A EL SH O W CASE EVERYTHING YOU’VE ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ISRAELI PRODUCTS— BUT DIDNT KNOW WHOM TO ASK Israel Showcase is set to answer all Inquiries about Israeli products and aliyah.

• What Israeli items are imported?

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• Who distributes these items locally?

• Where are Israeli products sold?

• How can you help promote Israeli products?

• How can a group run an Israeli fair? sponsored by: The Joint Aliyah Committee The UOJCA RCA National Conference of Synagogue Youth 116 East 27th Street New York, New York Telephone 725-3434-725-3420

Vol. X L No. 3, July 1973/Tammuz 5733

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lewisli J Up

THE ED ITO R'S V IEW THE JACKSON AMENDMENT IN CENTER S T A G E ......... .................................

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WITH MISFITS IN HIGH PLACES ...........

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A R T IC LES “VOICE OF THE HALOCHAH” Harry F a ie r ...........................................................10

Saul Bernstein, Editor

SIX YEARS AND SIX DAYS Victor Solomon .................................................. .4

Editorial Consultants: Dr. Herbert Goldstein Mrs. Libby Klaperman Dr. Jacob W. Landynski Rabbi Solomon J. Sharfman

NEGATIVISM AND FEMINISM Moshe S p e r o ........................................................ 22

Chairman, Publications Comm.

Lawrence A. Kobrin

THUS IS THE REDEMPTION OF ISRAEL Joseph G oldschm idt......................................... 3 1

Published by Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

FROM AMSTERDAM TO MONTREAL FOR $1.25 Julius P fe iffe r .............................................

Harold M. Jacobs President Joseph Karasick, Chairman o f the Board; Nathan K. Gross, Lawrence A. Kobrin, Julius Berman, Joel Balsam, Eugene Hollander, Marvin Herskowitz, Vice Presidents; Reuben E. G ross, Treasurer; Sheldon Rudoff, Secretary; Bernard Levmore, Financial Secretary; Rabbi Reuven Savitz,National D ir e c to r ; Saul Bernstein, Adm inistrator.

JEWISH LIFE is published quarterly. Subscription two years (8 issues) $5.00, three years $6.50, four years $8.00.

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Edit. & Pub. Office 84 Fifth Ave., N.Y., N.Y. Second Class Postage paid at New York, N.Y.

FICTION TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS A MONTH Abraham Shulman ..................................... .. . .26

POETRY SIGHT AND SOUND Yacov U p sc h u tz .............................................. .3 7

BOOK REVIEW S MESSAGE OF THE RAMBAM Moshe D. T en d ier...............................................50 IT CAN HAPPEN HERE Reuben E. G r o ss................................................. 51

DEPARTM EN TS LETTERS TO THE ED ITO R ..................................... 55 AMONG OUR CONTRIBUTORS ....................., . , .2 Drawings by Naama Kitov

Copyright 1973 by Union o f Orthodox Jewish Congregations o f America. Material from JEWISH LIFE, including illustrations, may not be reproduced except by written permission from this magazine following written request.

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PRO F. H A R R Y F A IE R , a theoretical physicist, views attitudes on Halachic issues with a scientist's eye. Prior to his departure in July to settle in Israel, he served for several years as Editor of Intercom, the publication of the Association of Orthodox Jewish Scientists, and taught at St. John’s University, Brooklyn College, and Touro College. Reared in Montreal, after graduating the Lubavitcher Tomche Tmimim Yeshivah High School there he studied at Sir George Williams University, receiving B.Sc. degree, then pursued postgraduate studies at Northwestern University, receiving Ph.D. degree, and also Talmudic studies under the illustrious Rabbi Chaim Zimmerman. He is the founder and Director of the Nurai Institute for Theoretical Studies, of which a branch is being established in Jerusalem.

A B R A H A M S H U L M A N was introduced to JEW ISH L IF E readersin our previous issue and his present contribution will surely be no less relished than was his “The Singularity of Chelm.” He is a staff member of the Jewish Daily Forward and is the author of three published volumes of essays and several plays. . . M O S H E S P E R O , member of a family of much distinction in the orthodox Jewish world, studies in the Beth Medrash of the Telshe Yeshiva in Wycliffe, Ohio and at Case Western University, where he is majoring in philosophy and psychology. His thinking on the nature of man and woman as seen in the light of both Torah concepts and modern psychology is not likely to be endorsed by Women’s Libbers. ..

JO SE F G O L D S C H M ID T is a member of Israel’s K ’nesseth and is Chairman of the K ’nesseth Committee on the Constitution and Legislation. Prior to his parliamentary role he headed the Division for Religious State Education in the Ministry of Education and Culture. Born in Frankforton-Main, where he attended the Samson Raphael Hirsch School, Mr. continued on page 64

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th e EDITOR'S VIEW THE JACKSO N A M E N D M EN T IN CEN TER STAGE H E lot of Russian Jewry has been in no way lightened, so far, following the recent visit to the United States of Leonid L Brezhnev, the present boss of the Soviet Union. Well substantiated reports confirm that those applying for exit visas are subject to the same persecution as before. Penalties range from loss o f jobs and vindictive harassment in all cases to abundant instances of sentence to prison, hard labor camps, or mental institutions. Under pressure of critical world opinion and with an eye to disarming opposition to trade concessions by the United States, some Jews are permitted to leave, but these are only a fraction of the number seeking freedom.

Anti-Jewish propaganda remains virulent. The measures to extir­ pate Jewish religious life remain as relentless as ever.

These facts bear out the fears that the proposed trade concessions, if not made subject to dependable safeguards, will serve to underwrite the crushing of human rights in the Soviet Union. It is imperative that pending CongresThe Right sional authorization of the granting of mostto favored-nation trade status by the United Leave States to the U.S.S.R. be made conditional upon explicit provision by Soviet authorities of the unimpeded right and opportunity of departure for all desiring to leave the Soviet Union. The amendment sponsored

by Senator Henry M. Jackson requires such provision. To counter the strongly supported Jackson Amendment, the line propagated during the Brezhnev visit hinted of an unwritten understanding that would dispose of the problem. Present actualities and the Krem lin’s long record o f falsification of agreements, however, permit no confidence in the “Y o u ’ll see — everything will be all right” type of assurance.

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Under the circumstances, the Jackson Amendment is crucial and support for its adoption must be maintained to the full. That this measure has the backing of a wide cross-section of the American public is attested by the solid array of Senators and Representatives pledged to its adoption. A s for

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the American Jewish community, all elements stand united in behalf of the Jackson Amendment.

In working for this objective, the Jewish community must be wary of entaglement in the tortuously ravelled skein of domestic and international affairs in which the detente-motiva­ ted trade bill itself is enmeshed. Many axes are being ground these days. The plight of our brethren in Russia and American Jewry’s endeavors in their behalf must not be permitted to be exploited to interested purpose. The cause of Soviet Jewry, an issue of fundamental human right, must not be made a pawn in any game.

O D A Y , all the games converge in the Watergate olympiad.

The unfolding ramifications of this squalid political spec­ tacular have obscured rather than clarified its relation to the main flow of world events. The no-holds-barred ferocity of the Watergate affray nonetheless suggests that considerations per­ taining to key domestic and international interests underly the airing of moral and legal outrage. A s with the Ellsberg Pentagon Papers affair — in which the moral stances taken by the opposing-sides were so notably the reverse of those in the Watergate scandal — the immediate controversy is a facet of a wider struggle for decisive stakes.

Out of the swirling currents on the world scene there have emerged situations of compelling weight in the shaping of national and international policies. The rulers of both Com m u­ nist Russia and Communist China seem to Governing reckon, with good cause, that the Watergate Factors affair will not change the basic factors which condition the direction of American relation­ ship with their own spheres. It may well, however, determine which of the various combinations of domestic forces will command American policy and have best disposition of American resources within this context.

Governing realities of the international configuration evi­ dently dictate detente between the Free World and the Com m u­ nist powers. In seizing upon this formulation with pragmatic acuteness and acting on it with stunning boldness, President Nixon and his security adviser Henry I. Kissinger have not won the affection of sources which have long zealously sought

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accommodation o f the United States to the Kremlin’s expan­ ding sway. To preempt their turf and to thus foreclose the pr|zes in view was effrontery not to be borne. Watergate, in all its brazen flounting of law and principle and in all its monu­ mental crudity, offered a providential opportunity to recoup.

The opportunity is being mined for all it can yield. Brezhnev too, having with his own realpolitik canniness so eagerly responded to the Nixon-Kissinger offerings, has not escaped the displeasure of the same sources. How could he thus reward all that had been done via the mass media campaign for abandon­ ment of Indochina to the “agrarian populists,” the “campus revolution,” the “peace movement,” the calls for a deal on the Middle East, and all the rest? There may be no Watergate in store for the Soviet leader but such manifestations from the same direction as a switch from praise to denunciation of his negotiations with Western Europe and from opposition to support on exploitation of Alaska oil resources are to be taken as putting him on notice that his allies are not to be let down with impunity.

IT H the Nixon forces headed off at Watergate Pass and put into sad disarray, the scenario back on the inter­ national range proceeds, if more haltingly, on its detente course. Moscow and Peking both have clearly much to gain and little if anything to lose by a change from Detente not-so-cold war to not-so-cold-peace. The tally Balance o f benefits for the Kremlin would include a Sheet further weakening of the Western alliance,

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permitting unimpeded consolidation of the Soviet U n ion ’s expanded sway, and the funelling of vast Western financial, technological, and industrial resources to the relief o f its sharply pinched economy and for the major development o f distant areas. Mao Tse Tung and Chou En Lai, straining to hold Soviet pressure at bay while restoring the shattered structure and building anew the industry o f a nation riven by internecine conflict, would gain compelling advantages from a positive relationship with the United States. If in return for these plusses the Communist powers must accept some kind o f accommodation in Indochina, this is a price they can well afford to pay.

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The Jackson Amendment would require of the Soviet rulers another price, one they can less easily afford to pay: the opening of the Soviet Union’s close-guarded gates. For a regime of totalitarian despotism, such a condition is inherently dismay­ ing, fraught with more dangerous possibilities than limitation of territorial outreach. Every guileful resistance is to be expected but if America stands firm, the Kremlin must finally yield.

For America, a reversal of relationships with the Soviet Union and Red China would bring evident immediate benefits but the long-term consequences can be much more question­ able. The Communist powers will obviously gain permanent added strength from the change. The United States will not.

Vis-a-vis the other two, America’s position will be weaker. But the alternative, to remain locked in the present predicament, is untenable. The nightmare Viet Nam War gave grim demonstra­ tion of how potently the Communist forces can foment and wage war in sensitive areas, entrap the United States into choice of either military involvement or standing by helplessly while one land after another falls into Kremlin and/or Peking hands, gain command of world public opinion, and engineer disruption in the United States, The war bringing dismemberment of Pakistan and the accompanying Soviet tightened grip on India left no doubt, if any remained, of the continuity of Moscow ’s policy. This process, more certainly than the long-term conse­ quences of detente, points to a drastic weakening of America’s world position vis-a-vis Communist imperialism.

For the immediate future, the simultaneous revision of relationships with the Soviet Union and China will, in view of the tension between the two Marxist autocracies, mitigate the long-term strategic disadvantages. Whether this will ultimately prove otherwise only the post-Mao and post-Chou future will tell. And certainly the provision of vast new outlets for American capital and industry offers a major boon that can contribute much, for some years to come, to the easing of this contry’s own economic dillemma. Above all,detente offers new hope for peace in a divided world.

H IL E , subject to much continuing jockeying for position, a modus of stabilized relationships seem to be in the making for Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Far East, a great

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question mark hovers over the Middle East. In this, perhaps the most critical of all areas, crossroads o f the Mideast: world and rich in the oil that the world today The Central runs on, the Kremlin undoubtedly sees its Question gateway to world command. Not lightly will Moscow forego so tempting a prize. But not lightly either will it risk losing all in an attempt to capture the prize. Its every capacity for maneuver is at play in the Mideast situation. Washington, on its part, with much more than oil interests at stake, seems to be pursuing a watchful and deliber­ ate course. With wariness on both sides, and with little room for acceptable give and take, there can be no more than an inch by inch groping for a resolution to the Middle East question.

In the very center o f the question stands Israel. It might well be said,'in fact, that were it not for the virile presence of Israel, there would not now be a Middle East question — simply because the entire Middle East by now would either be part of the Soviet empire or the pivot of a world conflagration. Are Arab leaders themselves slowly awakening to the force o f this fact? Oblique indications to this effect are beginning to be seen.

If they prove not to be illusory, the Mideast riddle can be solved and there can be a dawning of real hope for that peace among the nations and peoples and social orders of the world for which the multitudes o f mankind yearn.

The cause o f Soviet Jewry lies athwart the whole complex of focal issues which trigger the politics, the economics, the ideological policy, the diplomacy, and the military stance of many nations. It is affected by all o f them but must not be absorbed by any of them. Human right is not to be bartered as a marketable commodity. The Jackson Amendment must stand.

WITH M ISFITS IN HIGH PLACES H E politicalization of all facets of Israel’s national life has given ever wider sway to the party careerist, at inevitable sacrifice of executive caliber and administrative ability in the broad governmental domain. The consequences are felt beyond as well as within Israel’s domestic bounds, not least of all in Israel’s tourism interests. For obvious reasons, Israel has a great economic

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and public relations stake in the development of its tourist trade.

And with the universal appeal of the Land complemented by the drawing power of the State, it has great natural advantages in this field. Thus the tourism potential is practically boundless. Unfor­ tunately, the heavy hand of the ideology-bound jobholder rather than the perceptive vision of the creative architect has become the hallmark of the program. The number of annual visitors has grown to notable porportions, but rather in spite of this kind of direction than because of it, and the much larger opportunity is bungled.

What occurred at the arrival in Israel of the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth II gave all too clear illustration of the cost of malaprop ideologues in high places. Bearing hundreds of visitors on a strongly publicized venture designed to Self open a new dimension in tourism to Israel, the Discredit shjp had been featured as especially catering on this voyage to Jewish requirements. The arrival was expected to crown the promotional feat. But if enemies of Israel had plotted to turn the arrival occasion to Israel's discomfiture, they could hardly have hoped to achieve that end so effectively as did - two of Israel's cabinet ministers. No adversary could have so drastically defaced Israel s image as did the minister who contrived that the ship dock in Ashdod on the Sabbath. No saboteur could have matched the affront to Israel, to its visitors, and to the Jewish world committed by the minister who formally insisted that he be served terefah food at the official reception aboardship at Haifa.

The trampling of Jewish sanctities by power-vested Israeli secularist politicos is usually apt to be met with only a shrug of the shoulder by those not identified with the Torah cause. In this case, though, the gross stupidity of the desecrations has outraged even the most indifferent and has shocked even the most myopic into realization of the price of shame.

Regardless of differing views as to the place of historic Jewish belief and Torah law in the Jewish State, all must agree that Israel simply cannot afford suchgrobkeit in high places. Nor can it afford to apportion for political reward responsibilities demanding a perceptive sense of the essential meaning of the Land and the State or functions necessitating the ability to grasp and convey the inherent uniqueness of Israel.

JEW ISH L IF E

E D E S T R IA N at best, Israel’s tourism development program reflects in concept and technique the caliber of direction at its source. Typical is the 25th anniversary campaign whose flight of promotional imagination was marked by a “Stars for Israel” theme. Quote from a prideful Israel Government Tourist Office release: “Liza Minnelli: ‘If you think “Cabaret” is fu n .. .see Israel’.” With the vista of government officialdom on this level, the tourist industry, travel magazines, and guidebook publishers follow suit. Brochures and guidebooks present Israel’s attractions in mechanical replica of the promotional handouts of the commercialized resorts, even in instances to the point of featuring a bikini-clad girl on the cover. Airline advertisements are in like style, while articles in travel magazines feature tips on how to have “a good time” in the Land. The supreme appeal o f Israel is all but submerged under a viscuous coating of vulgar, trite commercialism.

Since the kind of “good time” successfully offered by any number of foreign and domestic locales cannot 11 praise be — be matched by Israel, this concept of tourist attraction is futile as well as repugnant. If, failing the faculty of creative originality, the Jewish State’s tourism authorities feel bound to The follow a well-proven approach to mass tourism, Authentic there are far better ones to draw upon. For Approach outstanding example, the policies which bring

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millions yearly to the national parks of the United States and Canada, including increasing numbers from abroad. Here are no offerings of swinging night clubs, no “Broadway entertainment,” no flashy allures — just ungarnished surroundings of sublime, soul-stirring beauty, the grandeur and the glory of the Divine handiwork. And if there be doubts as to whether the national parks thus so uncommercially “packaged” can maintain their popular appeal, it must be noted that the biggest problem burdening the U.S. National Park Service is not how to maintain or increase the flow of visitors but how to hold back the constantly growing influx to a manageable level.

Let the appeal of Eretz Israel be rightfully envisioned in its intrinsic terms and let its meaning be creatively presented so that the magnet quality draws to the full. Then will tourism to the H oly Land surely rise to braodest horizons.

JU LY 1973

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by H A R R Y FA IER I A T E L Y there has been much L a n g r y d isc u ssio n of certain Halachic issues and decisions. These decisions, heavily laden with “human interest” consequences, have over­ flowed the “four ells” of the Halachic experts*, and have become the public and passionate focus of debate of everyone and anyone. Notwithstand­ ing the fact that Halachic decisions are technical matters, the proverbial man on the street has insisted that he, too, be heard - and that he too is “for” or “against.”

The result has been divisiveness, confusion - and very \\U\q kovod haTorah. The layman in Halochah, not being equipped or inclined to separate the narrow technical issues from their implications and human consequences,

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often has dragged the whole universe into the debate. Sentimentality, life philosophies, slogans, logic and illogic, the human condition, the personal loves and hatreds — all were mixed to­ gether. A cauldron of written and spoken chaos was generated wherein the “voice o f the Halochah” itself was often drowned.

The following remarks are offerred by a physicist in the hope of driving home the point that the appli­ cation o f the Halochah to derive deci­ sions in particular instances is, like the application of the laws of physics to the design o f a bridge, an objective and technical matter. Such decisions, in principle, are independent o f attitudes, sentiments, and philosophies.

Consider a physicist who is con-

JEW ISH L IF E

vinced that Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity is universally correct. Per­ haps he has this conviction because, as a theoretical physicist of many years standing, he has become enamoured of its mathematical elegance, its beauty of structure, its panoramic sweep. Or, perhaps, because the truth of the con-' elusions reached in his own researches are dependent upon Einstein’s theory being correct. In a word, whatever the reasons, this theorist’s “intuition” tells him that General Relativity is true uni­ versally.

One day, an experimentalist of great inventive capacity comes along.

He designs a new experiment to test a prediction of Einstein’s theory. The conclusion he arrives at is that this pre­ diction, too, is vindicated. The experi­ mentalist is indifferent to the fact that the test proved positive rather than negative. The theorist, on his part, is ecstatic.

The experimentalist checks and double-checks that his experiment contained no systematic errors — and that the conclusions are unambiguous.

Once he is sure of the accuracy of his experimental procedures and conclu­ sions — he is content at having faith­ fully recorded the “voice of Nature.”

His happiness would have been just as great if the conclusion had been that Relativity is wrong. The theorist, how­ ever, would have considered it a per­ sonal tragedy.

The experimentalist was indiffer­ ent to the convictions, predispositions, and intuition of the theorist regarding

JU LY 1973

General Relativity. He may or may not have had an intuition of his own about its correctness, but that was very secondary to his interest in asking Nature herself for her opinion on the matter. The theorist’s intuition would not have changed the answer that N a tu re provided — one way or another. It is of course nice — in human terms — that the experimental­ ist’s conclusion pleased the theorist. It is heartwaring to see the theorist’s joy; the fact that he had not “wasted” his years o f research; that he will now live out hjs remaining years.with a.sense of completeness and “well done!” And if he is a true scientist and a noble human being, the theorist will be grateful to the experimentalist for vin­ dicating his intuitive expectations.

And if the experiment had led to a negative conclusion — if the theor­ ists’s intuition had been proven faulty — the theorist as scientist would have accepted the verdict, bitter though it be. Unless, of course, he found a way to challenge it — on scientific grounds: either by pointing out flaws in the experimental procedures or conclu­ sions, or by confronting this verdict w ith contrary verdicts derived by other experimentalists. It would never occur to him to claim and to insist that his intuition and his prior expec­ tations and wishes have any relevance in establishing the results of that experiment.

The central point is that the story of the theorist’s initial intuition, its final vindication, the “human

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element” — all would make wonderful copy for a biography or a drama or an epic poem on “the scientist as human being.” It is totally irrelevant to the technical-scientific question of ‘What does Nature say?”

U ST as Nature- is “given,” so is the Halochah “given” — and by the same “Giver.” Each domain has its “ experimental physicist” who has been equipped with the relevant tools for determining the respective «“true voice.” In both instances there is a method of investigation, and criteria for accepting a particular voice as be­ ing the “true voice.” Thus, only results obtained by the scientific method, so called, are considered to be scientific facts -B in a formal sense. And if one man were to claim that there had been revealed to him in a dream a particular new item of knowledge about Nature ^ I t would not be accepted as scien­ tific fact unless and until that fact was verified by the scientific method. The same goes for “facts” in the Halachic domain — as the Talmud dramatically illustrates in the case of Rabbi Eliezer, whose “voice from Heaven” verdict was not accepted by his colleagues who had arrived at a different verdict on the basis of recognized criteria for making Halachic determinations.

In a genuine sense, then, the Halochah is a science in its own right; and the scientist-in-Halochah — the posek - asks only: “What does the Halochah say?” He arrives at his deter­ mination of what it says — at thep ’sak

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- on technical grounds alone. That p 'sak is not influenced by external-toHalochah measures and considerations, by “current attitudes,” the “human factor,” and so on — except insofar as these find reflection in the legal struc­ ture o f the Halochah itself. And since it is fundamental that the Torah is a “Living Torah,” it is axiomatic that the Halochah is, in principle, equipped to handle every conceivable situation in which man finds himself just as every conceivable circumstances occur­ ring in Nature is, in principle, explain­ able in terms of the laws of nature.

The posek proceeds on this premise — in every generation.

T follows that only those who are equipped to separate the s t r ic t ly technical-Halachic aspects fro m all other considerations and measures, are in a position to address the issues raised; to make determina­ tions of the “voice o f the Halochah.”

This parallels the case in the scientific domain: to determine the true voice of Nature one needs the ability to dis­ tinguish it from all the background noise. But whereas in the case of Nature this is recognized as a matter of course — even by the man on the street f ^ i n the realm of Halochah there is often no such corresponding recognition. A s a result, all the “back­ ground noise” ~ the pet convictions o f the man on the street, his attitudes to the world and to the Torah, his frus­ trations and past experiences ^ enter the discussion. The result is, more

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often than not, only divisive passion.

Those who find themselves de­ lighted by a given p 'sak are in the same category as our very human theoretical p h y s ic is t . He was delighted that Nature bore out his intuitive expecta­ tions — and they might relish the fact that the Halochah vindicated their opinions on a particular matter. But in both instances, the determination of “the true voice” did not hinge upon the degree o f human pleasure it might provoke.

Likewise, in regard to those who may find it difficult to reconcile their feejings and intuitions with either a fact in Nature and life or with an objective fact in Halochah. T o live in consonance with reality ¡i| in either instance trimay require re-education of the intuition, difficult though this may sometimes be.

There is nothing in Nature or in Halochah that is, in itself, pro or con anyone in particular. Taken together, they define the objective universe within which the Torah expects man to live || and to live harmoniously. A

particular human being may find him­ self responding to this universe with pleasure, or with anguish. But such re­ sponses do not modify that objective universe. Thus, whether one sunbathes or is killed by a sunstroke — it is the same sun. The human response of a sister of the deceased to the sun's existence will be quite different, how­ ever, to that of the sunbather. Like­ wise, whether the Halochah condemns an accused murderer, or whether it spares him — the Halachic criteria for a verdict of guilty are fixed. A sister of the accused will respond quite differ­ ently to “guilty” and to “not guilty.”

Her attitude to the existence of the Halochah would be different, too.

But such responses — one way or the other — do not define the physical universe and they do not define the Halochah. T o imagine otherwise is to confuse what is objective with what is subjective, and what is circumstantial with what are the eternal laws of exis­ tence imposed upon the Jew by the A u t h o r o f both Nature and the Halochah.

IN A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T To the Gaon in Torah Reb Chaim Zimmerman, shlita>who drove home the point again and again that, “You d o n 't pasken a Sha'alah with drush — just like y o u d o n 't build a bridge with philosophy and sentiment, but with Eu clid 's geom etry!''

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Sii Years And Sii Days: Cyclone in Sinai

by VICTO R SOLOMON " Thy right hand\ O Lord, is glorious in power, Thy right hand, O Lord, dasheth in pieces the enem y.”

(Sh fm oth 15:6) N May 26, 1967, the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser declared: “.. .our basic objec­ tive will be to destroy Israel.” Ten days earlier, on May 16 at 10 p.m.

General Mohammed Fauzy, chief of staff of the Egyptian army, had ^for­ mally demanded withdrawal of United Nations troops standing between Egyptian and Israel forces.

Cairo Radio carried Nasser’s ringing words to an attentive Israeli radio audience.-“We face you in battle and are burning with desire to start in

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order to obtain revenge. This will make the world realize what the Arabs are and what the Jews are.”

A t 8 a.m. Israel time on that fateful day June 5, an alert flashed to Israeli airfields: “ Battle Order of the Officer Commanding Israeli A ir Force.

Urgent to all Units: Soldiers o f the A ir Force, the Egyptian army is moving against us to annihilate our people...

Fly on, attack the enemy, pursue him to ruination, draw his fangs, scatter him in the wilderness, so that the people of Israel may live in peace in

JEW ISH L IF E

our land, and the future generations be secured/1 What followed was the devasta­ tion of Egypt’s armed forces in a lightning war that will exercise the imagination of generations of military experts yet unborn.

N the perspective of Israel’s 25th anniversary, the Six-Day War stands out as a climactic turning point in the brief history of the reborn Jewish State. The flow of events since the Six-Day War has little dimmed the sense of wonder at what transpired in those few short days in June of 1967.

In my own case, the imprint of this moment of history remains etched deep in my mind as I recall again and again scenes witnessed as one of an international group of journalists who fo llo w e d the wake of Israel’s victorious forces on the Sinai battle­ fields.

M y diary dated several days after the Six-Day War reads: El Quantra on the Suez Canal is now a ghost town. The few remaining Arabs try to stay out of sight. Wild, abandoned hungry dogs wander about in search of food. Doorways are smeared with blue paint, used by Arabs to ward off evil spirits.

We round a corner. A large home-made sign announces: “S T E L L A D A S G RÖ SSTE B IE R B A R IN K A N T A R A Ü ! ” Israel G.l. front-line humor. A second sign decorates the deserted street: “N IG H T C L U B .’’

Israeli troops are billeted in a big

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sleepy house. The only signs o f life are hardy Bedouin goats, recruited as pets

by Israeli soldiers in this broiling, dead town astride the Suez Canal.

M y company o f journalists visits the famous canal. Then we turn south­ ward along the littered road running parallel to the shimmering blue man­ made waterway which has been linked with so much grief in our time. We follow the Suez to the famous Firdan Bridge near Ismailiya. First, one of the stranded ships comes into view. A few moments later three more vessels appear.

We travel the route o f Brig. Gen. T al’s warriors. Widespread devastation bears mute testimony to the ferocity of embattled Israel. Once T al’s offen­ sive got underway, it could not be stopped. Synthesizing and adapting the tactics of Patton, Rommel, Wingate, and Montgomery and the military genius of Israel’s modern strategists, he directed an offensive without parallel in the annals of desert warfare.

His major thrust towards the Suez Canal and the escape hatch at El Qantara brushed aside pockets, of Egyptian resistance around El Arish and other defensive positions along the coast. They were isolated, sealed off, and bypassed. The Egyptians re­ grouped and made a desperate stand at El Jiradi down the road. They were crushed by an Israeli w allop.. .

And the victorious Jewish army of North Sinai rolled on, one tank force splitting off towards El Arish

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airport which was taken after a pitched tank battle. A few hours later Israeli jets were already roaring to the attack from its excellent runways.

T a l ’s s o u t h w a r d th ru st continued until his forces linked up with those of Brig. Gen. Joffe’s central dive. Together they smashed the defenses of Bir Lachfan, a key to the developing victory.

At this point Joffe, commander of the central front, threw in his reserves for a fierce assault which carried them past the positions of Jebel Libni to the southwest, piercing an Egyptian second line of defense.

Israeli forces rolled on to the strategic position of Bir Gafgafa to seal the second of three escape routes, thereby damming up the tidal wave of fleeing Egyptians rolling towards the Suez.

Egyptians, having abandoned tanks, guns, and shoes were pouring towards the three natural escape routes to Egypt - El Qantara, Bir Gafgafa, and the Mitla Pass. All were now sealed by Israeli armor. The Sinai desert had become an enormous tomb of fire for Nasser’s proud army.

When Tal’s coastal columns entered Romani, twenty miles from the Suez Canal, his southern force was simultaneously approaching Bir Gaf­ gafa, smashing Egyptian armor em gaged in a futile rear-guard maneuver to postpone the ultimate debacle.

O M E Monday morning quarter­ backs would like to believe that the Egyptian army was a pushover. I

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am witness to evidence of the colossal battles that were fought by armored forces, among the biggest ever asserm bled on a battlefield. A s one Israeli tank commander told me: “The Egyptians fought well.”

“But not well enough,” my friend, a Japanese correspondent from T o k y o ’s AsahLSim bun, beside me sug­ gested.

“No,” he corrected,* “not well enough for us.

A n Egyptian column, supported by tanks and jets, tried to break the Israeli blockade of the escape route with a thrust from the southwest. The counter-offensive was smashed and an entire Egyptian mechanized brigade was annihilated.

That night they tried desperately to break through from the other side.

Tank reinforcements aboard ferries crossed the Canal. Planes were com­ mitted. But the Egyptian army re­ mained trapped between the hammer and anvil of ferocious Israeli forces and a cruel desolate desert. The sun and the desert joined forces with Israel to punish her foe.

A s we journeyed along the Canal, I continued to see the now familiar wreckage of Egyptian armor.

Then I noticed something new. Large green or black canteens. The shimmer­ ing desert heat played optical tricks.

Dozens.. .thousands. Miles of green or black canteens littered the desert floor.

What could this mean? Then it dawned on me. Fleeing Egyptian soldiers had dropped their precious

JEW ISH L IF E

canteens as they neared the canal and home. Safe at last! But they were in for a cruel surprise. What greeted these unfortunate remnants of Nasser’s erst* while desert forces was a welcome of hot lead — a hail of Egyptian bullets from Nasser’s side of the Canal.

Why did the Egyptians merci­ lessly gun down their countrymen? No one could answer this bloody paradox.

Israeli forces did not take any prisoners beyond Bir Gafgafa. They were simply not prepared to care for such a vast army of captives. Did they follow the familiar practice of liquidat­ ing their burden of unwanted POW ’s?

Did they use the rationalizations that worked wonders for the Germans, Russians, and other “civilized” armies confronted with a similar problem in the past?

Not Israel! The Egyptians who surrendered were disarmed, given fivegallon canteens, filled with water, and directed to make their way to the Canal. Time and again, passing Israeli troops in pursuit of the tattered rem­ nants of Nasser’s army paused to refill the canteens of the disarmed Egyp­ tians with fresh water.

How pitiful that the end of their parched trail should be a watery grave in the Suez Canal where they were massacred b y their own countrym en!

The most plausible explanation for this senseless slaughter is that Nasser was afraid of his own defeated army. He may have been petrified by the fear that the facts of the Sinai defeat might set off a revolution. This

JULY 1973

is the fate of dictators...

W hate ve r the explanation, Egyptians that first day were killed by their own brothers on their own threshold. Only a few days earlier they had been toasted by a bellicose Nasser.

Now, roasted by the desert, they were shot without mercy at the behest of a humbled Nasser. An explanation may be read in the fact that subsequent waves of returning remnants of Egypt’s defeated army were spirited away to “detention” camps near Cairo where they languished as prisoners in their own native land.

ITH the Canal behind us we traveled in the opposite direc­ tion towards Bir Gafgafa. Everywhere, wreckage, litter, and the recurrent scenes of war’s aftermath. Then, the desolation of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Never in my life have I seen such utter ruin and destruction. It was an eerie sight, this graveyard of Nasser’s own powerful Armored Division, the pride of Egyptian military might.

As far as the eye could see, on a complete sweep of the horizon, all 360 degrees of it, there was nothing but wreckage... and a pervasive, nauseat­ ing stench of death... rotting corpses of countless Egyptian soldiers pinned under wrecked trucks, burned half­ trucks, charred jeeps and smashed tanks.Several journalists gagged.. .

It was a ghostly, ghastly sight.

All guns, thousands of them, pointed heavenward. Anti-aircraft guns, can­ nons, even anti-tank guns and machine

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guns looked upward in futile helpless­ ness, as though the very heavens had dealt the massive blow. The Goliath of Egyptian armored might trapped be­ tween hills in a treacherous stretch of sand and dunes was utterly destroyed

by David's flying pebbles, the avenging air force o f the tiny state.

The view was stunning. One could see where tanks had made it half-way up a hill before they were stopped in their tracks by a jet's cannon. Some had dug in. Others were on the run when they were hit.

A n Israeli officer, one o f our silent host-guards, shook his head sadly. All that shambles, he said. What a pity. What a waste. What a shame. It could have paid for schools, teachers, h ou se s, h o sp ita ls. Instead, the machines of war aimed at Tel Aviv became incinerators for the poor felaheen. It happened in 1956. It was even more devastating in 1967. What next? Will the Arabs ever grow up to accept Israel and learn to live in peace?

He was really talking to himself more than to me.

He shook his head sadly as he turned to examine the contents of a box o f high explosives. I picked up a stick of “something" with Arabic m arkings. It looked suspiciously familiar in my hand. It w as.. . a stick of dynamite! Nearby lay an open box with more dynamite sticks. The battle­ field was alive with explosives!

I lowered myself through the turret of a disabled Egyptian tank. The pungent odor o f burnt flesh turned my

18

stomach and sickened my soul. Yet, the interior of the tank was surpris­ ingly intact. Shells, neatly stacked, seemed ready for action. But the gunners were dead!

“Cleopatra" cigarette wrapper on the flo o r... a shoe... package of pills... scattered .30 calibre machine gun bullets... a gunny sack... inside, a pastel green live hand grenade... scattered letters ready for the post­ man. .. wonder who is waiting for them ... would it be a mitzvah to mail them for the poor chap.. . sort of a chivalrous gesture to a fallen war­ rior?. .. But n o . .. what would mother, wife, or sweetheart think o f a letter from her desert hero bearing a postm ark... from Israel? On the other hand, it might confirm Cairo Radio's blustering claims! But a Hebrew post­ mark! Some Egyptians already had N a s s e r 's commemorative Victory Stamp which the U.A.R. post office, sure o f victory, released prematurely. I reflected for a moment inside that Egyptian Russian-made Stalin tank stuck in the dune where it was stopped in its tracks by an Israeli shell a few days before.

How callous these Arab leaders, I mused. Will they ever learn? If I had had any doubts about how a victorious Nasser would have treated a defeated Israel, they were dispelled by the visible proof of how he “cared" for his own people. He had taken peasants from their land and sent them into the broiling desert for which the Egyptian has always had a congenital aversion.

JEW ISH L IF E

When they were humbled and forced to retreat, they were slaugh­ tered within sight of home for “practi­ cal” reasons. And those who died in the desert — 12,000 by Nasser's own admission, perhaps twice or three times that number according to unoffi­ cial estimates — were left in the desert to rot. American G.I.'s have risked their lives countless times to reclaim fallen comrades. Egypt never has re­ quested the return of her dead for honorable burial.

For that matter, Israel had a tough time trying to “unload” the thousands o f live Egyptian prisoners of war who were taken during the earlier phases of the campaign. 5,000 officers and men, including eight generals, sat it out for eight months in Israel's Athlit P.O.W. camp, while the U A R procrastinated before accepting them in return for the eleven Israelis held in Egypt! Stranger yet, in view of America's concern for its P.O.W.'s in Vietnam.

Israelis shrug their shoulders in amazement. They cannot understand — nor can I — the Egyptian attitude towards human life... and death. No Israeli soldier, dead or wounded, is ever abandoned on the field. This attitude is one of the crucial criteria by which I rate the moral calibre o f a people. Treatment of the vanquished foe is another test in my book.

A t length, fearful of an epidemic I saw swarming armies of desert bugs at work Israelis called in bulldozers to dig enormous graves,

JU LY 1973

which became the final resting place of Nasser's unclaimed, forgotten armies of Sinai.

Forgotten? Not quite. Israelis are faithful viewers of Egyptian T V shows. Israeli television was a reluctant late-comer. (One Israeli cab driver complained, I am told, that during the war all his favorite American films were replaced by Nasser's deluge of propaganda. He missed all those good shows with Arabic titles and English dialogue... and he is still sore about the whole thing.)

What did the propagandists show? The answer is tragicomic. The viewers were shown, among other things, endless parades of Egyptian troops and armor. Marching across the screen on old newsreels were the proud soldiers I saw rotting in those massive desert graves or floating in the Suez Canal, riddled by Egyptian bul­ lets. And the tanks still parading on T V tubes were the shambles all around me at the m om ent... including the one in which I was thinking all these dreadful thoughts. They were not exactly forgotten as long as they could serve as grist for Nasser's propaganda m ill...

I took a few more moments and climbed out of the ta n k.., just in time.

The convoy was about to leave with­ out me. Imagine me spending a night in that giant Egyptian cemetery with all those unburied corpses pinned under wreckage and locked under jammed turrets! “What happened?” my friend, the correspondent from

19

T okyo inquired. ‘‘Nothing important.”

I answered, “I was just thinking.” He smiled. “That could be a dangerous pastime,” he said.

H E Egyptians trapped at Bir Gafgaga and unable to break the blockade from the northeast had summoned help from the southwest.

Meanwhile, Egyptian Intelligence had monitored an Israeli emergency call for supplies. The Israeli armored bri­ gade, as the commander, Colonel “Shmuel” explained to me later that evening, had pressed the attack relent­ lessly. They fought until the last shell and the final drop of fuel. The men had been fighting without food, sleep, or rest for three days and two nights. “ Israeli soldiers could take it,” a Sabra Israeli told me, “but not tanks.” They refuse to move without fuel or shoot without ammunition.

The Egyptian commander was pleased to learn of the Israeli predica­ ment. He ordered his retreating forces to turn around and destroy the stalled Israeli brigade.

It was now a race between fastpaced Egyptian armor and a speeding Israeli supply column. The supplies made it first. They reached the Israelis in time for them to give the Egyptians a “hot” reception. It was in this battle that the cream of Egypt’s armor was decisively beaten.

Farther up the road to Bir Gafgafa we stop at another massive field of smashed armor. I see among the twisted metal something fluttering in

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the desert breeze. It is a notebook filled with writing from a neat hand.

I leaf through the pages...

A rabic... geometry hom ew ork... a fallen Egyptian soldier’s correspon­ dence course... poor fellow ... he wjll never graduate. I feel genuinely sorry for this son of the Nile. Strange how numbers lose meaning. 20,000 Egyp­ tians killed in action in the futile effort to fulfill the ambition of a self-deluded dictator. Six million Jews exterminated by the Nazis to fulfill the blood-lust of another dictator.

Num bers.. . figures... abstract sym bols...

One Egyptian private dies before completing a correspondence course in geometry... I look at his homework through moist eyes.... and he was doing so well to o ... excellent marks red-penciled by his instructor.

Then I remember the four Israeli soldiers killed and mutilated in a ritual of grotesque obscenity by Egyptian soldiers. These were U A R stragglers, men who had been captured, released with a water canteen, and told to go home. Instead, they surprised four Israeli boys that night, killed them and mutilated their bodies in an obscene and gruesome way. A n y description of the details would be pornographic.

Was the geometry student among the mutilators? Or his comrades?

W AS weary of war and death.

Tired of all the geopolitical non­ sense that turned farmers and factory workers into soldiers, and set man

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JEW ISH L IF E

against man, brother against brother, Ishmael and Isaac against each other. I found myself grieving for the Egyptian geometry student who will never

graduate and the four Israeli boys whose dignity was not respected even in death. War is wasteful as it is brutal.

We move on to Bir Gafgafa...

Y E S H IV A T D V A R Y E R U S H A L A Y IM 18 Rechov Harav Blau Sanhedria, Jerusalem O FFERS TO U N D E R G R A D U A T E S A N D G R A D U A T E S with limited Judaic background An introduction to Jewish Studies Language o f Instruction English — advancing to Hebrew Program: Course of studies includes: Bible — Prophets — Prayer: its deeper meaning — Mishna — Talmud — Mussar — Chassidut — Judaism's appraoch to modern problems. Duration: One year or more.

Sessions begin in September, Ulpan starts July. No previous knowledge of Judaism required. Applicants must show serious interest, be receptive to Jewish religious / ethical ideals and be disposed to Torah commitment W Shmirat Hamitzvot.

Tuition and living cost: Approximately $1000 per year plus trans­ portation.

Dean: Rabbi B. Horovitz Administrative Director: Rabbi Maurice Rose Apply direct to the Yeshiva or to the Torah Education Department 515 Park Avenue New York, New York

J U L Y 1973

21

by MOSHE SPERO V E R Y morning the Jewish male pronounces the following bles­ sing: “Blessed art Thou, Lord ourG-d, King of the universe, Who hast not made me a woman.“ The negative form of this blessing has perplexed Jewish thinkers for quite some time in that there are two problems that emerge from the syntax as well as from the meaning of this doxology.

The first and most obvious problem is: why did the Rabbis feel the necessity for praising the phenomenon of M an­ hood at the expense of Womanhood?

Surely, any attempt to promote A by degrading B will be met by great pro­ test from B. Let the blessing simply state the positive form of the same idea: “Blessed... who has made me a man.“

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Secondly, if the man must, for some reason, bless G-d with a negative sentence then why did the Rabbis not formulate a similar phraseology for the woman, e.g., “Blessed art Thou, Lord our G-d, King of the universe, Who hast not made me a man.“ rather than th e e x i s t i n g n e u t ra l phrase: “Blessed. .. who hast made me accord­ ing to T h y w ill“?

N an attempt to explain this blessing, many varied interpre­ tations have been offered. Let us briefly review some o f them.

The most elementary response to our question of why the man gives thanks for not being a woman rather than for being a man is as follows. The Rabbis intended to state a fact in that

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JEW ISH L IF E

the male has more precepts to perform than does the female and, therefore, he has the potential for greater reward upon their completion. If this is the case, then man thanks G-d that he is not a woman i.e., not deprived of the extra precepts. The woman, we might infer from this, would not be apprecia­ tive for being made a woman since she has fewer precepts to perform.

There are two problems that are almost immediately born from this explanation. The first is that it still does not explain why man has to be thankful for what he is not rather than for what he is. Indeed, it would seem from this account that man should be thankful that he has a full complement of six hundred and thirteen precepts.

The second problem is that a woman might feel very denigrated by the last inference that we drew. By making women praise G-d in the form of a humble submission to their lot — one that is less worthy than the man’s — the Rabbis might promote the de­ velopment of a race of despondent females.

To prevent this from occuring, Samson Raphael Hirsch offers the following consolation: .. .and if the woman has a smaller number o f precepts to fulfill than man, they know that the tasks that they m ust perform as free Jewish Women are no less in accordance with the Will and Desire o f G-d than are those o f their brothers.

The dilemma that we now encounter,

JU LY 1973

however, is that Rabbi Hirsch has just given women a very good basis for blessing “. . .who hast made me a woman” and not “.. .who hast made me according to T h y will.”

In sum, the exposition that man is thanking G-d for his plethora of pre­ cepts is ridden with two flaws: 1)it does not explain the negative sentence structure of the man’s blessing, and 2 ) it does not amply explain the strange formulation of the woman’s blessing.

S E C O N D solution has been tendered. The Talmud in Eruvin 13b mentions that for two and onehalf years the great Sages Hillel and Shammai pondered the question of whether it was better for man to have been created or not to have been created. The Talmud concludes: .. .it was discussed and decided: better for man not to have been created.. . once he is created, let him contemplate his, actions.

Some commentators have expounded this further: . . .once he is created, thank G-d not as a heathen, not as a slave, and not as a woman.

The Rabbis, they would hold, did nothing more than reward the senti­ ments of the Talmud in the form of the negative blessings — one of which happens to be “.. .who hast not made me a woman.”

There are, again, two problems with this theory. If we inquire of this explanation as to why man, once he

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was created, should be thankful that he is not a woman, we might be told that a woman has fewer precepts to perform. In this case, we are face with the difficulties previously discussed.

Secondly, this theory does not explain the formulation of the woman’s bless­ ing.

N view of all this, I would like to offer the following analysis of the blessing. Careful studies of em­ bryology indicate that all mammalian embryos are morphologically female until about the sixth week of their development. A t this time, the poten­ tial female embryo develops autono­ mously while in the potential male embryo, the hormone androgen sud­ denly stimulates the necessary changes in the (former female) new male embryo.* Dr. M.J. Shefrey, in her recent study of the evolution of female de­ velopment, concludes from this well known evidence that .. .it is the male o f the species who must overcome his innate fem ale an a to m y a n d p s y ­ chology. .. male development can be seen as a deviation from the basic female pattern.

It is this thought that I feel was the motivating thesis in the Rabbis’ minds. The male of the species, as a

I

*Cf. the Mishnah in Tohoroth 3:1 which seems to indicate that the Rabbis were also aware of this developmental fact.

24

re sult o f h is embryological and physiological development, may tend to have latent feminine characteristics — excess tenderness, for example — as an integral part of his male persona­ lity. Obviously, the Rabbis felt, these feminine aspects are not desirable in a male personality.

The blessing, as a result, serves to forcefully negate these latent incon­ sistent feminine aspects in the Jewish male’s personality. Man does not need to praise what he is as much as he needs to supress what he should not be. No slur was ever intended to the female sex qua the females of the world the blessing only refers to those feminine attributes that are only undesirable in the male.

This solution also justifies the wording of the woman’s blessing. The women do not need to negate any latent masculine traits that would be due to embryological development since, as we explained, the female embryo does not undergo any change.

She, therefore, need only thank G-d for being a stable creation of His will.

F C O U R S E , this theory is based on scientific observation alone.

W hat we may further inquire is whether we can find a Biblical refer­ ence to this concept of latent bi­ sexuality in man.

It is interesting to note, points o u t Rabbi J.B. Soleveitchik, that Adam, in the story of Creation, is not deemed a complete functioning organisim until the creation of Eve from his

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JEW ISH L IF E

own body. The Midrosh comments on the passage “.. .male and female He created him ” that Adam was originally formed as a bisexual unity. Yet, G-d ordained that it would be better for man to have a separate partner. That is to say, there would be two distinct sexes: male and female.

We can see in this the idea of the necessity for two distinct personalities — each particular to its respective sex.

It seems paradoxical, therefore, at first glance to see that man is not really able to function in life until he is to­ gether with woman again... after G-d had “gone through the trouble“ to separate bisexual Adam into two dis­ tinct entities. If reproduction were the sole purpose of the two sexes, Adam could have functioned in that capacity

as he was originally created. Yet, upon deeper consideration we can see that the Bible is telling us exactly what I believe the Rabbis had anticipated in this blessing. That is: for optimum psychological balance, the male must keep any dormant feminine character­ istics under check. There are the two unique roles of Fatherhood — the pro­ vider of Torah education but the more e m otion ally detached parent, and Motherhood <# the guide for emotional development and well-being. Although these roles may and should unite in the upbringing of a child, they must rem ain separate in the particular parent. We thank G-d, therefore, that He made man and woman: separate but equal.

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JU LY 1973

25

byAVRAM SHU LM AN New Y ork weekly carried a call to anybody who wished to make ten thousand dollars a month. The advertisement was in the form of a question: “Would you like to make a minimum o f ten thousand dollars a m onth?” This was followed by a laconic text: “You don't have to in­ vest any capital. Send us your address and include a one-dollar bill, you will receive instructions by return mail. Re­ sults will be immediate and guaran­ teed.”

I mailed the dollar bill on Tuesday and the reply came three days later. I was a little disappointed by the sight of the envelope — a sloppy, creased bit of brown wrapping paper.

But there is a wise Talmudic saying, “do not judge things by their form,

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look into the content.” The envelope contained two stenciled pages. I read them with care and became thrilled.

The prospect of making ten thousand dollars seemed real.

Page one had no date. It started with “Dear S ir” and began with a com­ pliment: “We wish to thank you for your prompt response to our advertise­ ment. It shows that you, Sir, are a man of brisk decision. We can assure you that possessing this quality you cannot fail to achieve the fullest success. All you have to do now is to follow our instructions. “ Form a company with an ap­ propriate name, for example, ‘Hector C o r p o r a t io n , ' ‘H ector Promoting A g e n c y , ' ‘Hector Association,' or simply, ‘Hector Limited.' The name

JEW ISH L IF E

‘Hector* is just an example. After selecting the name you will need a few hand-written or typed contracts. (You will find a sample at the back of this sheet.) Take three filled-out copies, staple them together (or tie them to­ gether with a string), put them neatly in a briefcase and go to the nearest barber shop. Present yourself as the General Manager of ‘Hector Limited,* ask for the proprietor and tell him that you can supply him with an unlimited number o f customers. All he has to do is to give a free hair grooming, with oil, to each customer you recommend.

To this he will readily agree, for the cost o f a few drops o f oil is practically nil. A sk him to sign the three copies of the contract, countersign in his pre­ sence. Leave one with him, take the other one with you and keep the third for the files.

“Y ou are now in the possession of a company and of your first con­ tract. The next thing is to find the customers. This is the easiest part of the whole deal. Y ou simply sit at the telephone and begin calling people who live in the neighborhood. Present yourself as the Executive Director of ‘Hector Limited.* Tell them that if they will take their haircuts at the bar­ ber shop in question, they will get a free oil hairgrooming which normally costs between twenty-five and fifty cents. But in order to receive the free hairgrooming, he must first procure from ‘Hector Limited* a booklet with a hundred coupons, for the price of two dollars, this means that a single

J U L Y 1973

hairgrooming will cost him no more than two cents, a net saving of be­ tween twenty-three and forty eight cents. It goes without saying that everybody will jump at it and thus you will have, after the first telephone call, a profit o f two dollars.

“There is actually no limit to the possibilities. One customer will give you two dollars, ten customers twenty dollars, a hundred customers twro hundred dollars, If you succeed in securing five thousand customers a month, you have already made the promised ten thousand dollars. The transaction,** concluded the last para­ graph of the letter, “is profitable for everyone concerned: the barber who gets a huge number of customers, the customer who gets a hairgrooming for two cents, and you, who without in­ vesting a nickel, come away with ten thousand dollars every month.** I read the instructions four times. The first time with suspicion, but the next three times with a grow­ ing fever. I looked for a hidden trick or for a mathematical mistake — there was none. Everything was on the level.

I decided to proceed right away ac­ cording to the instructions.

H E easiest thing was to find the name. Because of my attach­ m ent to the Bible, I called my company “Achashveyrosh Promotion Limited.** I typed out a few dozen contracts and tied every three of them together with a red piece of cotton (red against an evil eye). I had no

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trouble in finding a barber, for I chose my own barber, a young Italian by the name of Giuseppe, who for lack of customers was spending most of the day studying comics. I walked in and greeted him more cordially than ever before. He reluctantly closed the magazine and pointed to one of his two barber chairs. I told him that I hadn't come for a haircut, but to talk business.

"Guiseppe," I said, “I am not only your customer, I am also your neighbor, and as a neighbor I happen to pass your store several times a day." " I know ," he said, " I can see you through the window."

"T he reason," I said, "that you can see me through the window is that you are not very busy with customers.

You spend most of your time reading magazines."

"T h e magazines," he said, "p ro ­ vide me with an education."

"B u t they don't provide you with income."

"T hat is true," said Giuseppe.

"T h is is where I come in. I came to make you a suggestion."

He looked up and his moustache moved with the alacrity of a rabbit. " I am in a position," I said, "to send you every day a great number of customers. All you have to do is give each of them a few drops of oil — free.

That's all."

"Where is the gim m ick?" he asked.

‘T h e re is no gimmick. You promise to give them each a helping of

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oil and I'll keep sending them in fan­ tastic numbers."

"W hat will you get from th is?" he asked with Mediterranean suspi­ cion.

I was ready for this question and I developed the whole scheme before him. 1 told him that as soon as he signed the contract, I would go home and start calling the inhabitants of the neighborhood within the perimeter of two miles. I would sell each one of them a booklet o f a hundred coupons for the price of two dollars. This would give each man the right to a hundred free oil groomings which normally cost between twenty-five and fifty cents. Thus each would save be­ tween twenty-three and forty-eight cents on every haircut.

Giuseppe listened calmly. "H o w much do you expect to get our o f this business?"

I saw no reason to conceal any­ thing.

"Ten thousand dollars a month.

The calculation is simple: one cus­ tomer — two dollars, ten customers — twenty dollars, a hundred customers f* two hundred dollars. Five thousand customers a month will bring me the round sum often thousand smackers." " A m o n th ?" " A month."

Guiseppe thought for a moment and said, "A h e m ." Never had I sus­ pected this fellow who came from a village near Domodossola o f having the mind of a computer. He shook his head and I asked, "W hat's wrong? M y

JEW ISH LIF E

multiplication?”

“Y o u r multiplication is good.”

“Why did you say 'A h e m ? ” “If you are going to make ten thousand smackers a month, then I must give half a million haircuts in four weeks.

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“Also a parking lot for three thousand cars. The size of Madison Square Garden.”

I nodded.

“We come now to the main thing. Fifty customers a minute means a second and a quarter per customer.

I to ld him , “ Forget about With a speed like this I am not going Domodossola. Here, in this country, to be responsible for the haircut. I am you have to think big.” also quite likely going to chop off some of their ears, cut off noses, run E reached for a pencil and began the razor into cheeks, temples, throats, to fill in the empty spaces on the and chins. I may also, in some cases, foldout. chop off whole heads.” “ I ’m working, he said, “in this I shuddered. joint twenty-five days a month, eight “By the end of the day the floor hours a day. Which means two hun­ of this barbershop will be covered with dred hours a month.” blood. It will also be covered with a I nodded. mountain o f ears, noses, chins, and “I take an hour for lunch. This maybe complete skulls.” leaves me with a hundred and seventyI shuddered again. five hours for work. R igh t?”

“A t the end o f every day we are I nodded again. going to need a few sanitation trucks “ In the hundred seventy-five to take away the ears, noses, and heads hours I ’m going to give half a million to a municipal disposal depot. O r may­ haircuts. Three thousand an hour. be you want to sell them to a Fifty a minute.” hospital?”

I couldn’t stop nodding.

I shuddered.

“This is going to create a lot of “We must also keep in mind that problems.” ambulances and police cars will be “Such as?” g o in g and co m in g all day with “Number one: three thousand wounded and dead customers.” customers an hour will require a gigan­ “Horrible.” tic waiting room.”

“The best thing would be to “Why gigantic?” build our own surgery and funeral “Customers don’t come every parlor. A lso a morgue. It could in­ second on the second. We must pre­ crease the profits. But you said that pare a waiting room as big as Radio you would be satisfied with the ten City for three thousand guys.” thousand smackers?”

“W ell... Approximately.”

I nodded.

JU LY 1973

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“We must also not forget the families of the wounded, crippled and slain. They are going to ask for damages.”

I nodded.

“We shall have to open our own office with lawyers. Some o f the cases we are going to win, but others we may lose. It may happen one of these days that the judge will send us both to the cooler for the rest of our lives.”

I reached for the contract, ready to tear it to pieces.

“D o n ’t do it,” he said. “You cannot perhaps make the. whole ten thousand bucks a month, but the idea of ‘A c h a s h v e y r o s h P ro m o t io n Limited’ is still a workable idea.”

“H ow ’s that?”

“I cannot give a haircut in a second and a quarter, but I can easily give three haircuts an hour. Which brings us to twenty haircuts a day.”

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I nodded.

“Twenty haircuts a day means four hundred a month.”

I nodded again.

“Instead of cutting ears and noses and killing or maiming five hundred people a day, you can go and find me four hundred customers a month.”

“How much profit will it bring me?”

“It’s very easy to calculate. Four hundred haircuts at two cents a piece will bring you eight smackers.”

He added: “This, of course, is a long, way from ten thousand, but it will be a steady and peaceful income.”

E sighed all three copies of the c o n tra ct and invited me to countersign them. I did. I usually just tell him “goodbye,” but this time I shook his hand. “Arriyederci,” I said.

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by JOSEF GO LDSCHM IDT It so happened that one day the great Rabbi Chiya and Rabbi Sh im ’on ben Haiaphta, as they were walking at dawn in the plain ofArbei, saw the first light o f the m orning breaking through the clouds o f the sky. Said the great Rabbi Chiya to Rabbi Shim ’on ben Haiaphta: 'Oh, Mastery thus is the redemption o f Israel - at first Jt comes little b y little, and then it shines all over.’

[S h ir Hashirim Rabbah] T A L L began some six weeks before Pessach, when Uri M. spotted me at the convention. “Hey, you have not been at Ramath Magshimim for ever so long. Come and be with us at the Seder.“ Now it is very hard to refuse Uri anything that he suggests in his straightforward, win­ ning manner, after driving down at breakneck speed from the Golan Heights, whirling from one office to

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another and from one meeting to another, and as likely as not driving back at night to his yet tiny moshavshittufr Ramath Magshimim on the Golan Heights, just a mile from the always ominous Syrian border. “ It's a deal“ he decides for me before I have had time to weigh the pros and cons, and he strides away, showing only very little o f the heavy accident he had on one of his urgent night journeys, or of

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the other time when his jeep hit a land mine on the road to Kuneitra.

And so on Monday, 14th of Nissan, at 11 a.m., after having de­ stroyed the last bits of chometz, I start my car to drive from Jerusalem to the “far North.” Now, it is well to remem­ ber that just six years ago what was then the North was not so far, and in order to get there you had to go down to the coastal plain and to turn from there to north east. Now I turn east right away, pass through between the Har Ha-Bayith (the Temple Mount) and the Har Hazeithim (the Mount of Olives) and take the beautiful road to Jericho. Down and down we go through the Judean Desert. There is the sign that reads “Sea Level,” and I know that I have descended some 2,400 feet, and I have to make another 1,200 feet downward to the Plain of Jericho. I pick up two soldiers who also want to get to Jericho, and there is the town with its hotels and restaur­ ants set in lush, blooming orchards, with Elisha’s Well gushing forth cool, fresh water, with the beautiful mosaic floors of ancient synagogues and the excavated huge Persian palace. But, it is Erev Pessach, and there is no time to waste. I just recall that there is not, as yet, any Jewish settlement at Jericho, and I wonder what the position of Halochah may be: Joshua’s oath (Joshua 6:26) is still there, and the words of the Tossephta (Sanhedrin 14:2) pass through my mind — . .that one must not build the town (of Jericho) and call it by a different

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name, or build a different town and give it the name ofjericho.”

E R E V P E S SA C H W O R R IE S Well, if there are no. Jews there today, and I should have engine trouble, what could I do? But there is no room for wbtry. Jerusalem is still near, and you can always hire a car back. But now, leaving Jericho behind, this changes. The road winds right and left and up and down in sharp curves, and I am making my accounts in case of an emergency: Some fifteen miles from here there is the B ’nei Akiva settlement of Massua; another fifteen miles beyond there is the moshav Mehola of Hapoel Hamizrachi; and still another ten miles from there you come to the cluster of four religious kibbutzim || Tirath Tzvi, S ’dey Eliyahu, Eyn Ha-Netziv and S h ’luchoth. There will be a Seder fit for the strictest standards at every one of those places, and I shall not be stranded. But before I get there the twelve o ’clock news broadcast of “Kol Israel” informs me that at the offices of the Religious Council at Tel Aviv, the chometz of the whole Medinath Israel has been sold to a Druze soldier, who made a down payment of IL 100.

The announcer warned the listeners, however, that the whole deal might fall through, if the buyer should fail to come up with the remaining part of the price by next Monday evening.

Now my mind is set at rest about the problem of the State’s chometz, and I drive on through Beth She’an. There

JEW ISH L IF E

are grand ruins o f a Roman theatre at Beth She'an. It was the Romans who destroyed the Second Temple — but, where are they today? Their theater has been buried underground for cen­ turies, but here we are, the sons of the vanquished o f then, hurrying to the Seder past their historic remains, to relive the redemption from Egypt, and steel ourselves for the trials of the redemption to come, whose initial phases we experience every day, and whose signposts we are passing on our journey through the land today.

V IS A V IS AN EN EM Y L L the way driving up the Jordan Valley the mountain wall of Trans-Jordan accompanies us on the east, now very near, now receding a little, and this continues along the eastern shore of Yam Kinnereth, the Lake of Gallilee, and farther north, but now it is Syria instead of the Kingdom of Jordan. Politically this does not make much of a difference: All Israeli settlements and roads opposite the mountain wall and at its foot are exposed to wanton attack at all times — and “shelter” signs offer refuge to the wayfarer all along the road. But as I rise above the Lake, driving over the glorious scenic road past Eyn Gev, I realize that the Syrian danger for this area is gone — since Uri lives at Ramath Magshimin, and other chalutzim like him live in a dozen or so new settlements scattered over the Golan Heights. The Lake of Gallilee is

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still some 750 feet below sea level, and Ramath Magshimim is some 1,200 feet above sea level. Thus I have a 2,000 foot rise before I can rejoice in the view of the wide expanse of the ‘Heights*, which are considerably higher in the north, near Kuneitra, where they are topped by old volca­ noes, which stand out dark but bec­ koning against the azure sky.

And there is Ramath Magshi­ mim, where I spent a Rosh Hashonah and Sukkoth two-and-a-half years ago.

The place used to be a Syrian army officers camp, and the houses not too much damaged in the fighting in 1967 had then been adjusted for the young families. Now new houses have been built for every family, modest but comfortable — and with maximum security: every house has a shelter, fitted with wireless communication.

For the families may have to go into hiding at a moment’s notice, whenever the Syrians start bombarding the area, and there is no telling how many hours they may have to stay there. During such time there must be the possibility for passing on information and instruc­ tions. The amazing thing is that not only young men like Uri and his friends choose this way of life, but that their young spouses go along with it all, have their babies and raise their children just there.

L IF E A T R A M A T M A G S H IM IM Now it is time to go to shook Where is it? We go to the center of the

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settlement, where there is a public shelter. About twenty-five steps below ground is the large shelter room, con­ structed and equipped for every con­ ceivable emergency. And there we daven. You do not have to worry about “kavvonah” when you usher in the festival o f our freedom in a setting like this. Here we are rebuilding a new freedom , though surrounded by enemies, standing amid our sacred Torah scrolls and the book shelves stocked with Shass and Poskim, which are used by the settlers and by the B ’ney Akiva Yeshivah recently estab­ lished there. Y ou are overcome by the greatness of the time we live in, and saying the whole of Halle! comes very naturally to you.

Will this shelter always serve as shool? There is a little story to this.

Ramath Magshimim could have had a donation sufficient for building a brand new synagogue, but the donor insisted on his name being given to the building. But Ramath Magshimim felt they had deeper obligations: Nearly three years ago Binyamin, one of the group, but in fact their spiritual leader, fell victim, together with four others, to a mine planted by Syrians in one of their fields. The synagogue and Beth Midrash of Magshimim must bear the name of Binyamin and of no one else!

So they wait for another opportunity, certain that a “mikdosh me’at” worthy of their leader will yet be constructed one day.

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THE HO LY A N D THE SEC U LA R N a place like Ramath Magshi­ mim you do not really know where the sphere of holiness ends and the sphere of the secular begins. We have just finished prayers, when Uri shares our the night watches: at least one hour for the young man, until 6 a.m. Is keeping watch over a place like this — secular? The night watch assign­ ments have been allocated, but still the Seder does not start. Where is Uri? It turns out that there is trouble with the electric motor that operates the food distribution in each of the huge turkey-runs. Ramath Magshimim pro­ duces some 200 tons of turkey a year, and this is the mainstay of its economy. The holiday has only just started, and you cannot let some 4,000 of those big creatures starve for twenty-five hours, with probably dis­ astrous results. But, none of the boys may operate a switch or check the motor because of Yom Tov. A s luck would have it though, there are some reserve Druze soldiers on the spot, and they know to operate the mechanism by hand. So Uri appears half an hour late for commencing the Seder, but relieved (and so are we all) that aw ay has been found, and the laws of the Torah have been observed. The next day I have a look at the situation. It works somehow. Anyway, the turkeys do not seem to mind the interference of the Druze, just as they are quite

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h a p p y with the special Kosher L'Pessach food-mix (without wheat and barley), to which the manager has switched over about a week ago.

The Yom Tov hardly over, with all the prayers in the shelter-shool and the beginning of Omer counting con­ cluded, when Uri announces he has to drive to an army camp some ten miles north, direction of Kuneitra. What is wrong now? Oh, the water of that army camp at R. is provided by a pump which also serves Ramath Magshimim, and the Mekoroth Water Company has entrusted the operation *of the pump to Uri M. personally. It is a dark night, the road runs one mile from the border, and the pump house is even nearer to the border. This is not too pleasant, but you cannot leave the soldiers without water. I offer Uri my car, but he declines: “You never know what happens, and I would rather it was not a private car that got damaged,“ says he. But I decide to come along with him. It is pitch dark and the closeness of the unseen, ever­ present enemy makes the ride un­ canny. But there we are at the army camp of R. Should we rather get a jeep with armed soldiers to come with us from the camp to the pump house, just in case? Yes, you'd better. While we wait for the party to get ready I ask one of the soldiers — did they have any Sedef? Why, of course! For days the camp kitchen was prepared for Pessacb, and then the army chaplain sent someone to conduct the Seder, and they all had a grand time. They

JU LY 1973

are not all religious — but one and all were determined to have their Seder, and they got it, right under the noses of the Syrians. And so — to the pump-house and back to the camp, and then home to Ramath Magshimim without mishap, and another little job has been done. Is this all in the sphere of holiness or of the secular — the night watches, the turkey-feeding problem on Yom Tov, and the water supply for our soldiers out there in the dangerous darkness? It is not for me to tell.

THE FRAN KFO RT SHO FAR A N D T H E FO O TSTEPS O F M O S H IA C H H IS was my Pessach journey this year. But I had been to Ramath Magshimim before — over Rosh Hashonah, and I want to relate just one episode of that first visit. A s I was about to leave my house then, on Erev Rosh Hashonah, it occurred to me that I might take my shofor along. You never know how you may need a shofor on Rosh Hashonah. Not that I myself know to use it, but this same shofor had served my late father for thirty years (about 1899 till 1930) at the great synagogue o f the Israelitische Religions Gesellschaft (“Breuer's”) at Frankfort-on-Main and to this day I have often to identify myself as the son of that admired and unfailing Ba'al Tokea. When I came to Ramath Mag­ shimim it turned out that they had invited a young man, a Moroccan immigrant, to act as Ba’al Tokea.

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When I showed him my shoforand he had tried it once, he decided to use only this one on both days of Rosh Hashonah. And so it was that the shofor that had served the orthodox, anti-Zionist congregation of Frankfort-on-Main seventy years before, when not one of the thousand or more worshippers in the synagogue would even dream of living in Eretz Yisroel, this same shofor, blown by a young Jew from Morocco, served the second and third generation of those Frank­

fort Jews in a remote corner of the Holy Land, only recently redeemed with blood and tears, and now being built up as a home for another ortho­ dox community, with the Shulchon Oruch as their guide. Can there be a more vivid expression of the signifi­ cance of our times for the fate of our people and the direction in which events run?

Thus is the Redemption o f Israel...

HD DlNlV/

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JEW ISH L IF E

by YA CO V LIPSCHUTZ Is y o u r b o o k o p en , lam p still lit D o y o u think this era f i t and w aiting f o r ancien t ideas C ro w n ed w ith suffering, je w e le d w ith tears O L D JEW T a ttered beaten abused w ith scorn M u st y o u trudge a b o u t fa ce unshorn G ather up y o u r scrolls, lay them aside D o y o u r p ro p h e ts bring y o u w ealth and p rid e O L D JEW E x te n d y o u r hand, fo rg e t the p a st C om e jo in in talk, p ea ce a t last Change y o u r garb, y o u r p ra y e r and th ou gh t Change the ta b lets from a w ilderness brou gh t O L D JEW Then y o u r fa ith to oth ers bring R u le the m asses, lead the king O r is it y o u r souls desire F orever to be p illa g ed in p a g a n }s fire O L D JEW A blin d man sees a w o rld Where thoughts are colors A n d the m in d p a in ts scenes A ll w ith in him b len ded He can hear and fe e l Touch and sm ell A n d those w h o have no vision j A re tru ly blind

JU LY 1973

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by JULIUS PFEIFFER O not expect a report of a charter flight at bargain rates.

Actually, the trip was not as cheap as it sounds. I had to pay, in addition to the $ 1 .2 5 , w ith twenty-nine months loss of m y freedom.

M y travelogue starts on May 10th, 1940 in Amsterdam and enters its Canadian part on July 15th of the same year when I as a member of a group of 650 suspected fifth colum­ nists landed in the harbor of Quebec City. A s we were repeatedly told by the officer in charge of our convoy — con sistin g of four destroyers and three passenger ships — there was a war going on and consequently we were not as fortunate as the recent im m ig ra n ts c o m in g to Canadian shores from Uganda to be officially

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welcomed by representatives from Ottawa. O ur welcome consisted o f a very brief speech by the officer in charge of our debarkation, to obey all orders immediately and not to escape as this could lead to very re gre ttab le incidents. With these words he pointed to his revolver and to the g u a rd s w ith their fixed bayonets surrounding us.

O u r b o a t w a s t h e S .S .

Sobietzky, originally a Polish pleasure boat, which we boarded with our p re d o m in an tly Jewish group near Glasgow in Scotland.

O W d id I get there? Until March, 1933 I had led a comp a ra tiv e ly p ea ce fu l existence in Duesseldorf on the Rhine in Ger-

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many, known for its famous son H e in ric h Heine, the poet. I had passed the Bar examination with high distinction and was Judge of the Superior Court of my home city.

Then it started to happen: the Reich­ stag burned, Hitler was appointed Reichskanzler, and it was plain that things were heading for an explosion.

After I had a dispute in my court room with a lawyer who had entered it with a swastika — he had to remove it at my request — I decided to ask for leave for studies abroad.

So on March 15th, 1933, I left my home city ^ not realizing that it was forever. I became a refugee.

Am sterdam became my new home. I stayed with relatives and worked briefly in the newly created Refugee Committee as a volunteer.

Then after the famous boycott Shabboth, the first of April, the waves of refugees descended on the Nether­ lands. Another member of the Com ­ m ittee w as Hans Goslar, a well known German Mizrachi leader, who had been dismissed from a leading position in the Prussian Ministry of Interior. We both discontinued our work very soon, when we learned that our instructions were to tell our visitors tg return to Germany and to give them tickets which were paid for by the Committee.

The official opinion was that the H itle r regime would collapse within six months. I waited patiently w ith tens of thousands of other German refugees for the end of the

JU LY 1973

“Tausendjaehrige Reich,” meanwhile listening to the comments of my Dutch friends that Hitler would never have grown without the help of German Jews, and that nothing could ever happen to Holland and to its Jews.

IS T O R Y took its course. The peaceful life in Holland got a shock with the news of the German in v a sio n in to the Scand inavian countries in April, 1940. While we all were still trying to digest the meaning of this event I woke up at four o ’clock one morning — it was the fateful day of the 10th of May, 1940 I I to the sounds o f distant shooting. I switched the radio on and soon heard the bad news: the German invasion into the Low Countries wa$ in full swing. It was very soon evident that the Dutch resistance was weak. The German A rm y came closer and closer and in the evening of the 14th of May Radio Hilversum announced the sur­ render of the fortress Amsterdam.

The population was asked to cooper­ ate and to offer no resistance. The announcement closed with the Dutch n a tio n a l anthem, “Wilhelmus van Nassau.” It was the last time for many years. Radio Hilversum went off the air. A world had collapsed for me.

Nobody suspected that the new masters would molest elderly people, women, or children, and so it was decided that I should go alone in search of a haven for all of us. I left

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my parents, my wife, my two small boys, two and three years old, and my father-in-law, the former Rabbi of the orthodox Kehillah of Duesseldorf.

Taking my bicycle, my German pass­ port with the lètter “J” for “Jewish” and the additional first name of “Israel” on it, and my Tefillin, I left Amsterdam late at night in the direc­ tion of the harbor of Ymuiden trying to get across the Channel to England.

None of my friends was willing to join me. Nothing, they felt sure, coüld happen in Holland. Furthermore the Jewish Community Center had advised not to leave Amsterdam and not to try to go to Ymuiden since no boats were permitted to leave the harbour anyhow.

S U C C E E D E D in re a ch in g Ymuiden on my bicycle. It was not easy to find the way through the darkness. Lights were officially not permitted but the petroleum tanks situated in the harbor of Amsterdam were on fire and supplied sufficient light, not to*mention heat and smell.

The harbor of Ymuiden was in a tu rm o il. Thousands of people, mostly Jews, were gathered there, trying, like I was, to leave. Later, the harbor police intervened and prac­ tically forced everybody to leave the harbor zone and return to Amster­ dam . T h o s e who were fortunate enough to leave Holland on that morning did so against the will and the instructions of the authorities in charge. I was lucky enough to board

40

a sm all boat named the “Jonge Jochem” which was filled to capacity with forty persons. The two owners of the department store “Bijenkorf,” Mr. Goldschmidt and Mr. Kaufmann, had paid for the boat and refused to ta ke any money from the many people who had joined their trip.

A t five in the morning, on a cloudless day, we were heading for the open sea. The main entrance of the harbor was blocked by the “Jan P ie te rz o n C o e n , ” a large ocean steamer which had been sunk by the Dutch Navy in order to prevent Ger­ man U-boats from entering. We left the harbor by a second exit, one of three boats to leave on that morning and only much later did I find out that ours was the only boat to arrive safely. A second boat was captured by the Germans and all its passengers were brought to a concentration camp, the third boat went on a mine, no survivors... .

A t the very last moment a good friend of mine, Max Adler, formerly of Frankfurt and today living in Lon­ don, England, joined me on the boat.

We teamed up very well. He had a S id d u r including Ma'amodoth and TehilJim. While I was standing near the bow and looking for mines, he was sitting near the stern reciting Tehillim. To this day I am not sure which one's task was the more impor­ tant.

JEW ISH L IF E

O R T L Y after we left we were sighted by a German Stucka, which dived down and tried to hit our boat without avail. Hours and hours passed, sometimes our motor slowed down — we were crossing a mine field. Early in the afternoon we again saw airplanes circling high over us but this time we noticed the bluewhite-red circle of the Royal Air Force. We had made it, but we still could not believe it!

In the evening, at nine, we ar­ rived at the small fishing village o f Lowestoft near Ipswich, and were welcomed officially by the mayor of the village. Then fate caught up with me and a few others who were in possession of German or Austrian passports. We were segregated from the rest of the passengers and arrived on Friday afternoon just before Shabboth at Pentonville Prison in London.

While this was strictly against the rules of the Hague Convention regula­ ting the treatment of civilian inter­ nees during war times, we were told that owing to the war there was no other way to deal with us. Thus my conclusion was that apparently war­ time regulations shall be applied only in peace-time.

I stayed in Pentonville a full week. When I asked to be given kosher food the Governor told me that “the Chief Rabbi had given dis­ pensation0 and that for this reason I was permitted to eat everything. One of the guards arranged for me later on to get unpeeled potatoes in a

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special new aluminum pot. few days later I was visited at my request by the rabbi who w as the Jewish Chaplain of the prison, a Captain Morin. His first question was to ask me why I wanted a rabbi since I was listed as a Catho­ lic on the prison records. His amaze­ ment grew considerably when I asked him to get my Tefillin which had been taken away. Obviously one with Tefillin is not a Catholic and most definitely not if he wants a “Tanach” and a “Bova Kamma”.

There were quite a few refugees from Holland and Belgium arriving daily in Pentonville. To compensate us for the illegality of our peniten­ tary confinement we had about half an hour daily “open door,0 where we were allowed to talk to each other.

M y Tefillin having arrived, I passed them a lo n g each m orning after d ave n in g to my “shipmate0 Max Adler whose cell was next to mine.

This was observed by a young man occupying a cell in the same wing but on the opposite side and one floor lower. He called immediately “can I have your Tefillin?0 In order to com­ ply with his wish I had to cast my Tefillin quite a distance across the hall. They landed safely and came back the same way. The young man, Gus Bauer, became my daily Tefillin customer. He is living today, happily married, in Montreal and we love to discuss “The Case of the Flying Tefil­ lin0 and our common imprisonment

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in London before people who had never suspected that they were in the company of former jailbirds.

It was in the days of Dunkirk and obviously everybqdy in England was fearful. I had a cousin living in London, Professor Eugen Mittwoch, formerly a lecturer at the Hildesheimer Seminary in Berlin and also Ordinarius for Semitic languages at the University of Berlin. I soon found out that Rabbi Morin knew him very well but my request to tell my cousin of my safe arrival in Engalnd received a negative answer. Military orders did not permit him to convey messages of any kind. It did not help that I quoted the Megillah: “ For if you be altogether silent at this tim e.. . ” And so it took more than three months for my wife and my parents to find out that I was alive and well.

N Lag-Baomer I got my statu­ tory haircut from an inmate of Pentonville who coming from White­ chapel was familiar with my wish of not using a razor. He proudly re­ ported that he was in for four years for arson and was very much disap­ pointed that I had never read in any Dutch newspaper of his famous case.

After a week we were trans­ ported to Kempton Park near Lon ­ don, joining other groups of civilian internees there. On the second day of Shovuoth we were on our way to the Isle of Man. And a few weeks later I volunteered to join a transport going overseas. Without knowing the des­

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tination at that time I was on my way to Canada on board of S.S. S o b ie t z k y . T h e crossing seemed uneventful. A t one time we were told that the convoy was trying out depth charges and not to get alarmed. Later on we were told that it had been the real thing and not an exercise and that a German U-boat following our convoy had been sunk. Only much later we heard that during the same time the “A tric” carrying refugeeinternees had been sunk by a German U-boat. There were no survivors.

On our boat we rhet a different group of internees: German sailors.

Since our group of around 650 per­ sons was 9 0 % Jewish we soon had arguments and thereafter were strictly separated by our captain.

After our landing in Quebec the Kitchener Camp group left us. They were sent to lie aus Noix near M ont­ real and we were to join them there a year later. We were put on a train and arrived after a few hours in Three Rivers. There we were marched to a stadium in the outskirts of the city and found there on our arrival the German sailors receiving us with the infamous song: “Wenn’s Judenblut vom Messer spritzt” — “when J e w ish b lo o d d ro p s fro m the knife.. . ” E remained in Three Rivers for one month. It sounds as in­ credible today as it sounded to us in 1940, to find that we as Jews o f Ger­ man or Austrian descent who had

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fled our home countries could even for one minute only be suspected to be fifth columnists or enemy aliens!

It took the Canadian Government over two years to realize this. We tried immediately. We drew up peti­ tions setting forth our past, stating our aversion against Nazism, citing our race, declaring our 'intention to go immediately to the United States where nearly everybody of our group had close relatives.

There were close to 350 of us.

About 130 were orthodox of whom over thirty-five came from yeshivoth in England, mostly from Gateshead.

All these bachurim had beards and peyoth, and what could convince a n on -Je w m ore o f the anti-Nazi quality of a prisoner of war — this was now our official trademark — than beard and peyoth, especially during the Three Weeks? So I decided to act on a day when an inspection

by General Panet of Military District No. 4 was announced. In our naive minds the main purpose of such an inspection was the wellbeing of the prisoners, their health, their spirit, and last though not least their free­ dom.

A t the right and the left o f the entrance we placed two large tables w ith G e m o ro th and Mishnayoth, whatever we had, the bigger the bet­ ter, and around these two tables we seated all the bachurim, each with beard and peyoth, ready for action.

The entrance door opened, the ser­ geant yelled m Tenshun! ” Everyone

JU LY 1973

rose, the b a c h u rim c o n t in u in g “shuckling” while standing. General Panet entered, red stripes on his pants, a red band around his cap, fol­ lowed by a minyon of sergeants, cor­ porals, and other dignitaries. The General stopped immediately, looked and looked again, continued, stopped, looked back. Obviously we had made a big hit; I was in heaven surely our release was now only a question of days! A few days later we had the answer. A parcel arrived, sent by Arm y Headquarters No. 4, and the parcel was addressed to the “O rtho­ dox Group, Camp Three Rivers.” The parcel contained one thousand razor blades, first quality.

H IS was not the only time orthodox Jewish thinking and military administration misunderstood each other. Already in the Huyton internment camp near Liverpool we were confronted with the problem of “ Reshuth Horabim” and “ Reshuth Hayochid,” public and private pre­ mises. The dining room was in one section of the internment camp and the kosher kitchen in another corner.

Since the camp was owned by the British Government and this was not Reshuth Hayochid, was it permitted to carry the meals from one building to the other on Shabboth? What should we do? Rabbi Ephrayim Carlebach, one of our internees, had the solution. There ought to be one single private ownership of the com­ pound and consequently he arranged

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on Erev Shabboth a conference with the commandant and asked him to sell the camp with all appurtenances to him. 6ut before our good rabbi had the chance to point out the Halachic intricacies of his request as dis­ cussed at length in Gemora Shabboth he was already outside the comman­ dant’s office. I do not recall how the problem of the Eruv Chatzeroth was finally solved.

A s was to be expected we had problems with the kosher meat. We were too short a time in Three Rivers to arrange for the Canadian Jewish Congress to supply us. From Three Rivers we went to Camp B near Fredericton, New Brunswick, and in September we got our first meat from the shechitah of Fredericton.

Once in a while it happened that the meat came too late and was “ovar” and we never were able to explain satisfactorily to the commandant how and w hy kosher meat suddenly be­ came “t’reifah.”

S h o r t ly b e fo re the Yom im Noroim our ‘‘prisoner of war” F., a talmid of the Gateshead Yeshivah and today a well known rabbi of the Lubavitcher Yeshiva in Montreal, was called to Major Razey’s — the C om ­ m a n d a n t s ’s — office. The Major looked very serious: “Y ou are intending to flee,” the conversation opened. “This is a very serious offence, you may be moved to another camp for punish­ ment.” ‘‘I?,” F. answered, ‘‘Impossible,

44

I did not do anything against the rules.” ‘‘D o n ’t try denying, we have proof. See here the letter you wrote, let’s see, to a Brooklyn cover address very likely.”

And the Commandant read: “ ‘Dear Friend, do not wait any longer, send me a chauffeur.’ See here you have it very clear, you asked for a ‘chauffeur’.”

Thereupon in contrast to the seriousness of the charge, prisoner of war F. smiled broadly: ‘‘But Major, you read it wrong, we have the High Holy Days in a few weeks and I asked for a ‘shofar’ and not a ‘chauffeur.’ Sir, you read it wrong.”

• And it took the intervention of the Vaad Hoir in Montreal and the confirmation of the leaders of the orthodox group to convince Major R a z e y that a ‘‘shofar” is not a ‘‘chauffeur.” A week later our friend F. w ro te to his ‘‘cover address” T o m c h e y T ’m im im in Brooklyn, asking for ‘‘Arba M inim ” and his let­ ter passed the censorship without any hindrance.

Yesh ivah bochar F. and his g ro u p enjoyed a very important privilege in the camp. They were entrusted with the potato peeling and ‘‘Klaubdienst.” They had to screen beans, peas, lentils, and salads for unclean and t’reifah matters. One th in g am azed me: regardless of whether we got from the A rm y provi­ sions store lots of food subject to

JEW ISH L IF E

“klaubing” or little, their time re­ quirement was always the same i p three hours a week, the time required weekly from each internee. One day, w hen b y accident I entered the kitchen, I found out the truth: the boys were sitting there, each with a little hill of beans on the table and on the knees of each hidden under the table, a Gemora 4 those swind­ lers. . ..

Yisroel in Frankfurt he must wear civilian» clothing on Shabboth. No oneg shabbos without civilian clo­ thing. How can you sing “Livshi Bigdey Sifartech A m i” with kavonah while dressed as a prisoner? Conse­ quently at the roll call on the next S h a b b o th m o rn in g he appeared dressed in mufti and promptly was asked to change his clothing or to go to jail. He chose the second alterna­ Looking back, I have the im­ tive and went to jail, in his hand, as pression that “klaubing” and potato a good Frankfurter Hirsch’s “Chorev” peeling were a good preparation for and the Hirsch Chumosh. We brought the North American way of life. A him his lunch and his supper, finally good number of those “boys” are at ten minutes past nine in the today leading figures of the Montreal evening the sergeant in charge re­ Lu b avitch e r Yeshiva. One of our p orte d to the commandant that worst potato peelers, Rabbi Joseph prisoner H.H. had changed his mind Elias, is today the principal o f the and was willing to dress properly as Rika Breuer Teachers Seminary in His Majesty’s prisoner of war.

New Y o rk City. M ay they all con­ In the beginning we had one tinue “peeling potatoes” ad meyah big minyon only, Minhag Ashkenaz, v'esrim shonah. but later oh a separate Sefardic min­ yon was formed. Since we had only PON arrival we were given the one Sefer Torah it was agreed that usual prisoner of war clothing, the Ashkenazim would leyn first, be­ heavy denim material in blue color fore the roll call, and the Sefardim with very visible red stripes on our after the roll call. Everything went pants and red circles on the back of according to schedule until one Shab­ the jackets, all this in case somebody both morning the unavoidable did should try to escape. We welcomed happen': the B a ’al Tefillah had this clothing, as it gave us a chance finished Shemoneh Esrey, Kaddish to preserve our civilian clothing for was said, and the congregatioa started the distant days of our liberation. singing the well known Frankfurt Naturally, we had a conscientious tune o f “Vayehi B in ’soa.” The cantor objector. O ur co-prisoner and par- c e re m o n io u s ly opened the Oron ness o f the Ashkenasic minyon, H.H., Hakodesh to take the Sefer, and what formerly of Frankfurt, felt that as a did we see, or rather, what did we former leading member of the Agudas not see? The ark was empty and our

U

JU LY 1973

45

good friend and parnes Herr H.H. miFrankfurt yelled and it could be heard afar: “The Sefardim stole our Sefer Torah!” We took the incident as a good joke and leyned after the roll call.

our first Pesach behind barbed wires approached he asked the comman­ dant to lift the ten o'clock curfew for the Seder nights. The comma­ ndant gracefully agreed to permit us “one” evening and we extended on o u r o w n this exemption to two evenings and nothing happened to us.

A t one time we were happy ^ or unhappy — to have a Jewish medi­ cal o ffic e r, Captain Lewis, who immediately told us that we should have to get used to work on Shabboth if we wanted to be released in Canada. “First of all,” he said, “there is a war going on and everybody has to do his best, and secondly, every modern Canadian Jew is working the full week, and you will have to as­ similate if you want to be freed.”

Henry Biberfeld, today living in Montreal and known for his book “David, King of Israel,” contradicted him. We had a very lively discussion and I do not think that Captain Lewis made any gain for this new “emunah.”

O D A Y in my memory I still see the b ig S u k k a h which the orthodox group built in Camp B situated in the center of the dense forests of N e w ’ Brunswick. The S u k ­ kah, made of lumber from trees cut in the s u r r o u n d in g w o o d s and covered with dense bushes, provided seats for at least 150 persons. Every­ th in g went according to schedule e xce p t the weather, and on the second day of the Yom Tov we had five inches of snow piled up on the tables. I still see one of our lumber­ men and co-prisoners of war, Rabbi C a rle b a c h , carrying alone a very heavy tree branch through the camp.

I take th is opportunity of thanking after more than thirty years all “lumberjacks” who gave their time and energy to this beautiful Sukkah: R ab b i Ephrayim Carlebach (M ont­ e n e r a l l y s p e a k i n g , re­ real), Prof. Dr. Albert Schild (Unive­ lig io u s q u e s t io n s were not rsity of Pennsylvania), Prof. Dr. Willy important for all the internees. 200 L o w (H e b re w University), Rabbi or so of Camp tie aux N o ix's 330 Erwin Schild, Rabbi W. Pappenheim inmates were Jewish but disinterested and Mr. Kurt Rothschild (Toronto), in religious matters. We had two and Rabbi Nelken (Montreal). kitchens, a kosher and a t’reyfah one.

R a b b i Carlebach, mentioned A problem arose on occasions when before as the would-be buyer of the members of the t'reyfah section ob­ camp compound in Huyton, repre­ served a Yahrzeit and, as chiyuvim , sented the orthodox group on a few were at their request called up to the occasions in religious matters. When Torah. We felt strange pangs when

T

G

46

JEW ISH L IF E

h e a rin g the Berochah “Venothan Lonu Eth Torah” recited by someone whose daily flouting of Torah tenets was all too visible in our confined situation.

There were contrasts other than the religious ones. We had the young ones who were just sixteen years old when interned and were at that time seventeen or eighteen years old, and older persons, some approaching the sixties and seventies, who felt that it was their right to see freedom first.

But strangely enough the youth got their release first under the student scheme and the older ones came later. Too, we had the intellectuals and workingmen. The latter got their release as factory workers and farm­ ers, especially with the help of the training school, financed in our camp

by O RT . Quite a few of the intellec­ tuals achieved distinguished careers after their release. There can be found today numerous professors in Canadian and American universities w h o c a m e o v e r on o u r S .S .

Sobietzky, labelled as prisoners of war.

W H EN I mention in this con­ nection the help of Canadian Jewry I have to say with Sallust ‘‘difficile est satyram non scribere” — it is hard not to be ironical. We were concerned in the first instance to hear about efforts made for our re­ lease. T h e ir first and permanent answer to our repeated requests was th at they were busy helping the JU LY 1973

refugees stranded in Southern France and Spain to come to Canada. I do not have the exact figures of how many did come over but it is hard to imagine that the Canadian Jewish Congress could possibly not work on two cases at the same time. The situation in Montreal has always re­ m ind ed me . o f the situation in Amsterdam in M ay 1940 when the German Arm y was closing in and all the officials of the Dutch Jewish Congress were completely paralysed and needed help instead of offering help.

The help that did come from the C.J.C. officials was in the form of a beautiful Chesterfield set for the reading room where from thirty to fo rty daily, weekly, and monthly papers were available. Unfortunately for our spirits they felt compelled to write to us, who were hoping to be released within weeks, that they had paid for those subscriptions for “two years.”

What the camp and especially the reading room did need was good light. The electric power on lie aux Noix was very poor, the light bulbs were very small and fixed directly below the very high ceiling. I re­ peatedly asked The C.J.C. to send us wiring so that the light bulbs could be lowered a few feet. The answer was that they could not get this wiring on account of the war. Three days after my release I bought at my personal expense for two or three dollars electrical wiring at. Pascal's

47

H a rd w are store in Montreal and mailed the stuff to the camp. Anyone who has spent a few years in a camp will understand how important it is to sit down at night after the work and have sufficient light to read a book and to write a letter.

Fall, 1942 came. It was on Yom Kippur during the repetition of the Musaph Amidah. M y thoughts turned to the past, to my wife, my two young sons, my parents j# were th e y still alive? The leaves were fa llin g , it was the third autumn behind barbed wires, and nothing during those years reminded me more of the passing time and the passing years than the fall season with the colored leaves whirling down from the trees. Suddenly a friend woke me from my thoughts and said: “A mes­ sage from the Commandant's office, you are wanted there, your release came through now ." I jumped up and at the same moment I heard the voice of the chazon: . .someych n o flim , ro p h e y cholim U M A T IR A SSU R / M ___ | A few minutes later I was officially informed of my release and on Erev Sukkoth a guard brought me to the railway station in St. John, Quebec. I paid the $1.25 for the ticket to Montreal and one hour .later J was in Montreal at Bonaventure station welcomed by my brother-inlaw, Professor Dr. Shalom Weyl, today at the City College of New York, and his wife’, accompanied by her cousin Leo Brahm, who had done

48

the im po ssible — as far as the Canadian Jewish Congress was con­ c e r n e d ^ and had obtained my re­ lease.

OW the second stage started for me: Where was my family?

Were they still in Amsterdam? Were they still alive? What could I do to locate them and get them over to Canada? Who would help me and who would help them?

Two-and-a-half years later I had the answer to my prayers when a c a b l e arri ved: “ T W O Y E A R S BER G EN -BELSEN SU R V IV ED , B A C K IN A M S T E R D A M Y O U R W I F E . " O n the twelfth day of F e b r u a r y , 1946 all three arrived h a p p i l y at W i n d s o r St at io n in Montreal, making history as the first post-war immigrants into Canada. We were united again after nearly six years of separation, but our simchah was not complete. M y parents and my father-in-law were not with us anymore, Hashem yinkom dommom.

N

* * * H IR T Y years have passed since my arrival in Montreal on Erev Sukkoth, 1942, to begin a new life and to enter upon a new career, as an accountancy student. Today, as a Chartered Accountant, I am preparing my personal "Balance Sheet." Here is the listing of my Assets: M y Eysheth Chayyil and our three sons, three daughters-in-law,

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aEWISH LIFE

one granddaughter, and nine grandsons ip unberufen.

And my Liabilities?

L e fich o ch anachnu chayovim le h o d o th , le h a lle l, leshabeyach, levoreych, u l’r om em .. Jem i sheosa

JU LY 1973

eth k o l hanissim letoeru th... hallelukah...

I p ray that thi s “ Balance S h e e t ’’ will balance to the last fraction.

49

B o o k R e v ie w s M ESSAG E OF THE RA M BA M

by MOSHE D. T EN D LER A M A IM O N ID E S R E A D E R , Edited with Introduction and Notes by Isadore Twersky, New York: Behrman House, Inc. 1972,482 ppgs. $12.00.

R. IS A D O R E T W E R S K Y , Professor of Hebrew Literature and Philosophy at Harvard University, has earned for him­ self an enviable reputation as the best known teacher of the works of the Rambam on a secular university campus. His strategic position on the Harvard campus, where some of the best of our youth spend their formative years, is particularly fortunate. It is on this campus and on the other campuses throughout the United States and Canada that the battle for survival of North American Jewry is being waged. Our enemy is the abysmal ignorance of what Judaism is and what Judaism says about the great issues that concern man. Our weapons are the truths of Judaism as promulgated in the vast Torah literature so masterfully codified in the Mishneh Torah of Maimonides (Rambam).

The “Maimonides Reader“ presents judiciously selected excerpts from the great works of the Rambam: the Mishneh Torah, Guide of the Perplexed, Introductions to the Mishneh Commentary, and some of the most famous and historically significant letters. There is no claim to originality in R A B B I T E N D L E R is Rosh Yeshivah in the Semicah Program of the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, Professor of Biology at Yeshiva College, and Rav of the Community Synagogue in Monsey,New York.

50

these translations, most of which are credi­ ted to others. However, Dr. Tw ersky’s per­ sonal mastery of the material presented is readily seen in his insightful Preface and Introduction. How significant for the error­ less transmission of Torah truths from generation to generation, is the following quote found on page 13 of the introduc­ tion: Only the prophecy of Moses was legislative — and therefore unique; all subsequent prophecy was exhortatory, based on moral persuasion , and could not create new laws.

Prof. Twersky points out the distinc­ tive characteristics of Maimonides’ greatest work — the Mishneh Torah. They include the use of Mishnaic Hebrew rather than the Aramaic language of the Talmud, a new topical-pedagogical arrangement and classifi­ cation, the precise codificatory form, the attempt to fuse Halochah and philosophy, and the all inclusive scope of the work with the equal emphasis on practical and theore­ tical laws. The brilliance of the Guide of the Perplexed is clearly portrayed by the careful selection of passages to introduce the reader to the great themes that illustrate the impact of philosophy on religion.

He college campus is the “happy hunting ground” of Christian mission­ aries and devotees of oriental cults. Our social order is in transition. Our youth experience the chaos, but are ill equipped, because of their sorely neglected Torah education, to evaluate and compare. The

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JEW ISH L IF E

alien ideology on philosophy with the best funding and the most professionally com­ petent recruitment staff becomes the “ inthing.“ A barrage of pamphlets and lectures pervert and deceive the soul hungry, per­ plexed, and confused. If they could all but read the miniscule Torah summary repre­ sented by this “ Reader“ they would surely have enough information to question the lies and begin a search for the truth.

On page 226, Dr. Twersky presents ¡a closing paragraph of chapter X I of the Book of Kings. This paragraph was deleted from most extant editions of the Rambam by Christian censors. It is required reading for every Jew during this sad period of feverish missionary activity directed at our Jewish youth. Maimonides speaks of those who claim that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. I quote: For has there ever been a greater stum bling than this? AH the prophets affirmed that the Messiah would re­ deem Israel, save them, gather their dispersed, and confirm the com m and­ ments. But he caused Israel to be

destroyed by the sword, their remnant to be dispersed and humiliated. He was instrumental in changing the Torah and causing the world to err and serve another besides G -d... They [non-Jew s]... say Those com m and­ ments were: true, but have lost their validity and are no longer binding;* others declare that they had an eso teric meaning and were not intended to be taken literally; that the Messiah has already comei and revealed their occult significance. But when the true King Messiah will appear and suc­ ceed. .. they will forthwith recant and realize that they have inherited nought but lies from their fathers, that their prophets and forebears led them astray.

Prof. Twersky is to be complimented for preparing this text. It can do much to guide the perplexed out of the mire of ignorance and redirect them toward the truths of our Torah which is the inheritance of all Israel.

IT CAN HAPPEN H ERE?

by REUBEN E. GROSS T IM E T O G O H O M E, by Meir Kahane; Los Angeles, Nash Publishing, 1973, 207 ppgs., $7.95.

A B B I M E IR K A H A N E of Brooklyn and Jerusalem, founder of the Jewish Defense League and author of “ Never Again,“ has written a.new book which will stir ever more tempestuously the storms

R

R E U B E N E. G R O SS, lawyer and writer, currently holds office as Treasurer of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.

JU LY 1973

that have followed this controversial figure.

“Time To Go Home“ is a plea for Aliyah.

But it is not another of the usual pieces of Zionist propaganda. It is a stark statement: “ It can happen here -r and most probably will happen.“ The very idea will cause many to recoil and denounce the author as an alarmist and charlatan. However, those who have the fortitude to read what he has to say, although they may put the book down with various degrees of scepticism, will certainly be deeply concerned and troubled about the future of the American Jewish community.

51

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JEWISH LIFE

Considerable patience is not required to read this book. Rabbi Kahane’s writing combines first-rate journalistic fluency with a touch of rabbinic rhetoric and well-organ­ ized forensic persuasiveness. His hashkofah, rabbinical background, and knowledge of history are unimpeachable. His perceptive understanding of political movements and mass psychology is deep. The evidence of his sincerity is there for all who are willing to admit it. However, many will not or cannot concede it. “Time To Go Home,“ therefore, will be further evidence that Meir Kahane is either a fanatic or a prophet.

There is no middle ground.

In the first of the book’s four parts, “The Reality of Jew-Hatred,” the author adverts to many traces of antisemitism in American history. Part II, “Crises in America: Ingredients for Tragedy,“ contains the gist of his case. He points firstly to the psychological crisis *£that America’s great strength was derived not from its material resources but from its optimism and confi­ dence in the democratic virtues. That strength has been mortally weakened. A masochistic self-hate has replaced patriot­ ism. Secondly, in politics an irreversible polarization of liberalism versus conserva­ tism has set in. This is aggravated by the centrifugal forces of the racial crises. Started by the blacks, it will engender Slavic, Italian, Chicano, and other ethnic move­ ments as they see how violence pays off.

Above these crises hover the clouds of social and economic disaster. All the traditional social values have been overturned. “The simple, unsophisticated, religious, consen­ sus-prone, accepting, patriotic American passed away forever... Discipline, will power, restraint, and the thought of putting off the enjoyment of pleasure, were rele­ gated to the junk heap of historical antiquity... (the) race toward pleasure (has) been elevated to a principle of

JU LY 1973

living... women reject motherhood, men their duties as fathers and husbands...

People no longer want to w ork ... (they’ve) become captive of (their) own needs and desires.” Economically, America’s desires are growing insatiably but its ability to satisfy that hunger is diminishing. Our infla­ tionary, debt-ridden economy cannot sus­ tain a single set-back without a catastropic collapse. The over-all comparison to the Weimar Republic is frighteningly similar.

The operative forces appear to be the same.

P A R T III, “The Haters,” contains quotations from the hate-literature still making the rounds. Rabbi Kahane finds this material technically improved and gaining increased acceptability now that the trauma of Auschwitz is wearing off. His conclusion, therefore, is that it is Time T o Go Home. the outcry his book is bound to stir, Rabbi Kahane points out not only that Jeremiah was thrown in the pit for telling the unpleasant truth, but that closer to our time, Jabotinsky was damned as a perverse fool for crying out in the 3 0 ’s Jews, get moving. There is no time. A fire is burning, get out. Liquidate the exile before the exile liquidates you.

Whether Meir Kahane is right or wrong, he is entitled to a hearing instead of the shameful abuse that is heaped upon him here and in Israel by a so-called Jewish leadership of which he says, .. .American Jewry suffers from a massive lack of greatness, from a deplorable and tragic absence of talented leaders. Never in Jewish history has so large a com m unity suffered from such an awesome m ediocrity o f leadership, it must pay for that. American Jews will survive if they /earn to perceive and expose that m ediocrity ...

A

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53

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JEW ISH L IF E

L etters to th e E d ito r P E O P L E H O O D P E R S P E C T IV E Bartlesville, Okla.

Brooklyn, N.Y.

To the Editor: In regards to your editorial on the program Key 73, in the January 1973 issue of JEW ISH L IF E , I would like to suggest an alternative to any “qualms” on the part of the Jewish community concerning an evangelical thrust. You are right in assessing the difference in which Jewish and Christian communities are situated. Most Protestant churches at least in America have very little common cultural and ethnic background on which to support themselves. Since they lack a sense of peoplehood in their own teaching, they are often almost totally ignorant of the Jewish perspective. It is here that the Torah-oriented society can respond.

The Protestant Sunday school system does not allow for church history let alone post-Biblical history of the Jews. Therefore a large abyss often exists in their thinking from the time of Paul to the present.

Perhaps thoughtful Jews could recognize this and seek to close the gap when they are confronted by what appears to be an im­ pingement on their values. Here Torah becomes a living reality and witness.

With great appreciation for your fine articles, Mrs. Phillip Mitchell

JU LY 1973

Y O U T H A N D T H E JEW ISH PO O R

In reading Leonard Weiner’s article, “ Jewish College Vouth and the War Against Poverty,” (April, 1973) one is left with a general impression that there are no student groups “dedicated to improving the condi­ tions of their own community’s poor.”

While there is agreement that the problem is immense, and that there is a need for more innovative programs as well as additional personnel when dealing with the problems of the aged, we should be aware that there are two college student projects in operation in New York City, to which we point with pride: the E Z R A Program on the East Side and S U S T A IN (Student Unit Service to the Aged in Neighborhoods) in Brownsville and East New York. In addi­ tion, we can applaud the efforts of a high school students’ project in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

The E Z R A project was initiated by dedicated young men and women who were interested in reaching out to the aged shut-ins residing on the Lower East Side of New York. Its members, both undergradu­ ates and graduates, visit the impaired and semi-impaired on a regular basis. They do their shopping, take them for walks and, when necessary, help them traverse the maze of governmental red tape when filing for Old Age Assistance, Medicare, Medicaid, etc. While this is an independent student

55

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project, it is funded through JA C Y, a subvention of Federation of Jewish Philan­ thropies, with Jewish Association for Services for the Aged available for consultation.

The S U S T A IN project, with which I am intimately acquainted, is an integral part of the JA SA program. During the past year, fourteen college students, under the leader­ ship of a professional social worker, have serviced a few hundred aged men and women who still reside in Brownsville and East New York. By prior appointments, and with the use of a mini-bus, the students have visited shut-in “isolates.” They have bought them food, when it was found to have been necessary, and have taken them to clinics or doctors’ offices. In reality, these young people have become the concerned “children” of their charges.

In Williamsburg, through the efforts of a Chassidic woman who is a member of the JA SA staff, high school girls have been called upon to do chore activities for the aged shut-ins. The program is considered an integral part of their Torah education. I am heartened when I observe the young girls going out in pairs, always “ L ’shem Mitzvah,” and later learn of their visits to homes of shut-ins, and how they put on aprons and began dusting and cleaning.

They also pick up prescriptions and return with the medicines. In general, these dedi­ cated youngsters bring the youthful spirit to homes which are permeated by an atmos­ phere of rejection and dejection.

Yes, much can be done by high school and college youth. If only these student projects were multiplied ten-fold.

In any event, I applaud Leonard Weiner’s focusing on the problem; perhaps additional student projects will be initiated by concerned youth.

Rabbi Jerome Fishman Borough Director, JA SA

A U T H O R ’S C O M M E N T Rabbi Fishman rightfully points out

JU LY 1973

that there are some small groups of Jewish youth dedicated to improving the condition of the Jewish poor in New York City and I laud their efforts and accomplishments. The readers should bear in mind, however, that these groups represent a very minute seg­ ment of the Jewish youth in America, the vast majority of whom have been and still are (although there are signs as of late of a slowly growing Jewish consciousness), total­ ly apathetic to the needs of the Jewish poor, and to the call for a Jewish ethnic concern in general.

Leonard Weiner

H O M E E C O N O M IC S Flushing, New York In regard to Ms. Doris B ryk’s letter concerning Home Economics (April issue), I would like to bring to the attention of such schools’ directors the following information.

Home Economics is not just “cooking and sewing,” and the subject is not “just for girls.” It is also good nutrition: how to make the best selection of available foods whether you are a student away at college or a homemaker faced with a myriad of commercially canned, frozen, preserved, and pre-cooked foods. It is also Health educa­ tion -H and those who observe Kashruth might be glad to hear that they are one step ahead of the “cholesterol” game. It is also Consumer Education which includes dealing with installment buying, credit, leases and other such complications of our modern society. It is also child care and child development, which I hope is of concern to future Jewish fathers. It is also housing and home management, social etiquette and family life, and much more.

Exposure to Home Economics should bring greater confidence to the student, as he or she becomes better able to make choices in daily living. As one learns that the

57

“most expensive“ is not necessarily “ the best,“ the person with the knowledge be­ hind a wise choice will not be concerned about what others think.

Perhaps for too long the term “Home Economics“ has been associated with women, giving it low status. A step in the right direction might be to use the phrase now used by Cornell University: Human Ecology.

How was the information about the converts gathered and what criterion was used to measure their orthodoxy or un­ orthodoxy? I say this since I could not determine from reading the article the status of the black community who were con­ verted en masse.

Were the 60 Rabbis using hearsay evidence or were they using first-hand infor­ mation to measure the observance and commitment of the Converts to orthodox Ms. Sfandra M. Lechner Judaism?

Queens College A s mentioned previously, out of a sample of 822 converts, 404 are unaccoun­ ted for. I got the impression that these people were considered lost to Judaism even though there is a possibility that they all are “C O N V E R T S ”: C O N C L U S IO N S closely identified with an orthodox syna­ D IS P U T E D gogue and are truly observant Jews. O f the 418 remaining converts who could be New York, N.Y. accounted for, only three (less than 1%) are known to have returned to their former I don’t feel that the conclusions non-Jewish status, a fact which to me says reached by Rabbi Irwin S. Borvick in hjs an awful lot about the positive conviction of article “What Has Happened to the C on ­ the other 415 Converts. verts?” (January 1973) were validly sup­ With regard to 60 rabbis in the ported by the statistics shown in the article. sample, it was interesting to note that less I say this especially since about half (404) than 7% of the rabbis converted over half or or 49.13% of this sample of converts could 51.6% of all the converts in the sample. not be accounted for.

From this, I don’t feel that any inferences There are other problems with the about the converts would be valid due to statistics that concern me, they are: the lack of a more even distribution among 1. Who are these 60 Orthodox all the rabbis in the sample. I also don’t feel Rabbis? How were they chosen and where that the statistics support orthodox Jewry’s are they from? Were they a truly random supposed staunch opposition to conversion. sample chosen with accepted statistical Rabbi Borvick’s statement, “The one who sampling techniques? If not, then there is a seeks conversion for marriage or other question of this sample being biased. ulterior purpose will not, with the rarest 2. How were the Rabbis and converts exceptions, become truly a Jew,” is certain­ interviewed? If Rabbi Borvick interviewed ly not borne out by these statistics. the Rabbis or converts personally, then I In addition, I don’t feel that Rabbi feel that the results may be biased and Borvick can say that the orthodox stand is therefore unreliable since Rabbi Borvick unequivocally against conversion for the could have interjected his own biases and sake of marriage. There are good orthodox prejudices. If the survey was taken by a authorities who see positive value in such questionnaire, then I feel that a sample conversions under various circumstances. questionnaire should have been attached for Am ong them would be Rabbi Benzion our review.

Uziel, Mispete! Uziel, Eben Ha'Ezer, No. 58

JE W ISH L IF E

18,20; Rabbi Judah Leib Zirlsohn of Kishinev, Atsey Ha/evonon, No. 63: Rabbi David Hoffman, Melamed L e h o ’H, Y.D. No. 82; Rabbi Isaac Halevy Herzog, Hecha/ Yitzchok, 1, No. 21 ; Rabbi Shelomo Kluger, Tow T a ’am Veda’at, Hilchoth Gerim, 230 and others.

One point that Rabbi Borvick over­ looks is that even if a convert isn’t com­ pletely observant, the conversion may very well be beneficial to — and Judaism will benefit from — the children of the convert because they will identify fully as Jews.

It is all too simple and short-sighted to rule out conversions for the sake of mar­ riage. Although conversions should not be done recklessly, we must have the vision and compassion to recognize the plight of chil­ dren from an inter-married family and to im bue them with Torah conviction, practice, and values.

Joseph I. Tarica

R A B B I B O R V IC K R E S P O N D S : T h e sixty orthodox rabbis Mr. Joseph Tarica questions me about are all pulpit rabbis and are all members of a highly respected rabbinical organization. I did not initiate the study by choosing the rabbis because of any bias or preconceived notion of theirs or mine pertaining to intermarriage and conversion. In order to assure a statistical sampling, I made sure there were representatives from every geo­ graphical section of the United States.

A s I stated in the paper, the study was made as a result of interviews with the rabbis and not with the converts. The rabbis were assured complete anonymity and the interviews were conducted in a purely objective and impersonal manner.

Mr. Tarica would find upon consultation with social scientists that printed question­ naires are most often filed in the waste paper basket, never to be returned.

The questionnaire is embodied in the article. But if Mr. Tarcia has failed to find

JU LY 1973

it, the following are the questions which I asked the rabbis: A. 1. G eneral population of your community?

2. Jewish population?

3. Geographic location?

4. Num ber of families in your Synagogue?

B. How many conversions have you per­ form ed during__________ years in the Rabbinate?

C. Can you tell me the motivation of the converts when they came to you?

D. What has happened to them over the years?

E. 1. Are they today Sabbath observers?

2. Do they keep a kosher home today?

3. D o they ob se rve Taharath Hamishpochah?

F. Are they affiliated with an orthodox, Conservative, or Reform Congregation?

1. W h a t is th e ir syn a g o g u e attendance?

G. Have you had an ongoing relation­ ship with them over the years and do you have a relationship with them today?

The rabbis interviewed were not util­ izing hearsay evidence, but first hand infor­ mation, to answer Mr. Tarica’s query.

A s to the 404 converts that the rabbis know little about, Mr. Tarica muses in his letter that “there is a possibility that they are closely identified with an ortho­ dox synagogue and are truly observant

59

Jews.” Surely the rabbis who converted Hilchoth Issurey Biah, Chap. 14, Law 8, them would most definitely have had this “even if he (the would-be convert) accept information, if this were true. On the all of the laws of the Torah except for one other hand, the rabbis spoke to me of iota, we do not accept him.” From this we these 404 not merely as unaccountable but derive that the Halochah demands com­ as individuals who have sought purposely plete commitment from the would-be con­ to “disappear” from the rabbi’s purview. vert. The Halochah is not interested in While they may not have reverted to their converts v/ho are not completely ob­ former faith, neither did they truly convert servant, contrary to Mr. Tarica’s under­ to an active form of Judaism. standing.

Mr. Tarica rejoices that less than 1%, Mr. Tarica would also do well to three converts, are known to have returned study the Responsa by Rabbi Chaim Ozer to their former non-Jewish identity. Again, Grodzinsky in Achiezer, Vol. 3, No. 27 the fact that so many others did not do and the Responsa of the Kovner Rav, likewise does not tell us too much of the Rabbi Abraham Duber Shapiro, Dvar positive convictions of these 415 converts. Avraliam, Vol. 3, No. 28.

I am sure Mr. Tarica is aware of how Mr. Tarica, in restudying his own convenient it is to live in limbo in our sources, would also discover that none of contemporary society without any commit­ the rabbis whom he cited would ever con­ ment to any religious group whatsoever. tend that conversion without total commit­ Mr. Tarica fails to understand that if ment and observance of the Mitzvoth is over a period of 35 years, 23 out of 54 valid. The distortion of Rabbinic sources rabbis converted fewer than five converts to support his bias is not acceptable evi­ each, and six converted none at all, this is dence. The “good Orthodox authorities” indicative that they interviewed few wouldhe cited would certainly resent his misuse be converts who had a sincere desire to of their Responsa. become Jews. And what of the rabbis who In discussing the children of the converted many converts? I would refer converts, I fail to understand Mr. Tarica’s Mr. Tarica to the rabbi who converted 45 claim that the children of such non-obser­ converts, none of whom turned out to be vant homes are expected to “ identify fully observant to any degree. The rabbi stated as Jews.” And further, what is the “benefit that he would never conduct another con­ to Judaism” Mr. Tarica is promising? Half­ version. This sad refrain was heard again hearted conversions can only lead to half­ and again from those who converted hearted identification and the further relatively large numbers. erosion of an already weakened American Mr. Tarica cites authorities “who see Jewry. Mr. Tarica calls for compassion for positive values in such* conversions.” I the children of intermarried families. Per­ would suggest to him that he begin his haps it is time for all to have compassion study again with Yoreh Deah, Vol. 3, for the whole body of the Jewish people Chap. 268, sub-chap. 12, where the law and for the sorry state American Jewry specifically states that if a man desires to finds itself in today. Intermarriage is the be converted, we are to investigate if he final glaring symptom as well as a con­ has any interest in a Jewish woman and if tributing cause of the over-all problem. this is so, his conversion is not accepted.

Quality rather than quantity has We derive from this that there can be no always been the hallmark of the Jewish ulterior motive on the part of the would- people both by choice and by circum­ be convert. I also suggest that he study stance. If the circumstances of a weakened M a im o n id e s ’ C o d e , Mishneh Torah Am erican Jewry are diminishing our

60

JEW ISH L IF E

numbers today then orthodox Jewry’s response will be to build up from within to assure the continuity of the Jewish people, according to the principles of the Torah.

“H IC K T O W N ” : S E N D S H E L IC H IM New York, N.Y. The melancholy expressed in and be­ tween Rabbi Kestenbaum’s words, in his t h o u g h t -p r o v o k in g (J a n u a ry issue) “Judaism: Hicktown, U.S.A.“ is understand­ able. One thing he did not mention is the sad fact (certainly known to, and seen by, the author) that the “evolution“ from tradition to Conservatism, Reform, Recon­ structionism leads more than ever to interm arriage and loss of a young generation.

Prescriptions, medications? Apart from the deplorable trend away from Torah and Mitzvah to “ new paths,“ the forgotten, neglected rural or small-town Jewish communities may have (partly) to do with the un-structure of the whole Jewish com­ munity where hardly any official or unof­ ficial lines of communication connect the central, focal seats of all “branches“ with those outposts. T o send shelichim as Rabbi K e ste n b a u m su gge sts, almost a la Lubavitcher “missionaries,“ is one way, a good inspiring way. It may bring nissim now and then.

B ’ezrath Ha-Shem the Orthodox Union, JEW ISH L IF E , and light emanating from the centers of Yiddishkeit may suc­ ceed in overcoming the obstacles of the almost impossible.

Karl D. Darmstader

JU LY 1973

B E L L E R ’S B O N E R S Amsterdam, Holland Through the courtesy of the late Mr. Ivan Salomon I became a regular reader of JEW ISH L IF E . In fact the moment the copies arrive I immediately read them, as happened when your January 1973 issue reached me.

A s you will easily understand, the article “The Jewish Community in Holland“

by Jacob Beller attracted my special atten­ tion. However, I found many mistakes in that article. A s one of a Dutch Jewish family that has resided in this city as far back as 1719, I cannot refrain from com­ menting on these mistakes and therefore take the liberty of listing my remarks on some of them, as follows: 1. “Amsterdam is distinguished by her own special characteristics §M her canals, dykes, windmills etc.“ The City of Amsterdam has not one single “dyke“ (in Dutch dijk ). As for wind­ mills there are only two, one in the eastern outskirts of the cjty and one in the western outskirts, activately outside the City.

2. “After World War II Queen Juliana issued a call to Dutch Jews to return to Holland just as her mother Queen Wilhelmina did after World War I.” A t that time Juliana was only the Crown-Princess. It was not until August 31st, 1948 that she became the queen, when her mother, Queen Wilhelmina, retired.

After World War II also Queen Wilhelmina did not issue any such all because it was completely unnecessary to do so: re­ maining Jews came by themselves and did not need any call whatsoever.

After World War I of course, Queen Wilhelmina did not issue a call to the Dutch Jews to return, because the Dutch Jews never left, since Holland was “Neutral“ during World War I. 3. “The Dutch Chief Rabbi Aaron Schuster.“ He was only the Amsterdam

61

Chief Rabbi; there has never been a “ Dutch from SS Headquarters near the Hilton Hotel Chief Rabbi.” but also here (and I checked this also today) 4. “The Dutch Minister of Cultural there is no sign of the words which your Affairs Sidney van den Berg,” at that time writer mentions. the one referred to was not Minister of 7. “The most important monument of Cultural Affairs at all but the very first Jew all however, which tells the world of the to become Minister for the National Defense brutality of the Herrenvolk... Anne Frank (War Department).

House.” T o call the Anne Frank House the 5. “.. . in a garden suburb of most important monument is simply not Amsterdam a new Ashkenazic synagogue true. It is even that unimportant, that when and cultural center was erected with govern­ it was openedj the Parnassim of the ment aid for the 2,500 young couples living Ashkenazic Community of Amsterdam (at there” In the whole of Amsterdam there do that time I myself was one, as Treasurer) not live 2,500 couples, of course not 2,500 refused to attend the ceremony. The whole young couples. I estimate the number of thing was meant to be used as a kind of young couples in the said suburb, called publicity for the so called Liberal Com m u­ B U IT E N V E L D E R T , 200 or perhaps 225 at nity which needed some kind of attention. the very utmost.

8. “... the portrait of Esther De Boor 6. “ .. . a wall plaque bearing the van Deek.” She was really called E S T H E R names of three young Jewish fighters, DE B O E R V A N R IIK . members of the Dutch underground.”

9. No street was named after Josef The writer is completely wrong. The Israels, only Josef Israels Kade. statue (not the wall plaque) showing three 10. “ Royal Dutch Museum” The insti­ young men has nothing to do with Jews at tution to which the writer referred is called all. They are a symbol for the three non- R IJ K S M U S E U M .

Jewish Dutch Underground fighters who 11. ”. .. in the province of Geldern.” were taken as hostages by the enemy.

Does not exist. In Germany there is a small On October 13, 1944 an SS man was town called Geldern: Here we have the shot and the enemy thought he was shot by province of G E L D E R L A N D . the Underground forces. Therefore on 12. “It was after the Peace of Utrecht October 14 the three hostages were taken of 1759 when Jews were given civil and out of the prison at Weteringschans, religious rights” etc... Completely mis­ Amsterdam, and shot at the spot at taken. These rights were only given during Apollolaan where this statue now stands. the Napoleonic Occupation (1795-1811).

The whole thing has nothing whatsoever to For example, until 1789 Jews were do with Jews. not allowed to remain within the bounds of After the execution it was found that the City of Utrecht during the nights. They the SS man had been killed by SS men had to stay outside in a small village by the probably a matter of homosexual trouble. name of Maarssen. In 1789 Prince William V The reference “Our good friends” etc. allowed them to stay at night within the exists only in the imagination of the writer City of Utrecht, although the bishop because on the statue of the three hostages (Roman Catholic) of that city was strongly (and I checked this for good order’s sake opposed. this very morning) it only reads: “ 14 13. The East European Jews of October 1944” - and that is all.

Holland, etc.

I think the writer may have confused It seems to me that the writer does the above incident with one in which two not like the idea of Mukdon Ume-uchor.

German Jews were executed not far away What he writes here is past history. T o give

62

JEW ISH L IF E

you an idea of what really happened is the following.

A s stated above, Holland was not involved in World War I, so when Belgium was overrun by the German forces many Belgians, amongst whom also Jews, fled to Holland and were received by the Govern­ ment in a so-called refugee camp near Amersfoort (Province of Utrecht).

Because this happened during the month of August 1914 and the season being over there were many empty villas around Scheveningen in which the Jewish refugees (most of them from Antwerp) managed to settle. The very moment World War I was over (November 1918) they all returned to their homes in Antwerp. During the period 1914-1918 in fact some diamond-trading was done at Scheveningen. In 1914 there was only one very small Shul and there did not exist either a Mikveh or Bottey Medrosh. During their stay in 1914— 1918 the Galitzianer Jews had their own Minyon etc. and kept strictly separated from the Dutch Jews.

Nowadays, there is only one Shul (no Minyan during weekdays, except in summer­

time) no Bottey Midrosh and of course no Mikveh (the nearest being in The Hague.)

Scheveningen 1914— 1918 never be­ came that important that it could be called a supplementary outpost of the Amsterdam diamond exchange, and of course today (as a matter of fact since 1918) there is no trading of diamonds at Scheveaingen.

14. “ Not long after the libera­ tion. . .

Why “not long“? Only after the death of the well known Hacham Rodrigues Pereira, the Sephardic Community in Amsterdam during the year 1969 named the Rev. Barend Drukarch (not Drukarz) as their Dayan, whereas a couple of years earlier a young Rabbi of the Sephardic Community of Amsterdam, also by the name of Rodrigues Pereira, was appointed as a Dayan by the Amsterdam Ashkenazim.

15. There is no street called ‘‘Vesperstraat.** (There is a W E E S P E R S T R A A T , named after a village in the neighborhood of Amsterdam called W EESP. A. H. Veder

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continued from page 2

Goldschmidt has lived in Israel since 1953. Am ong several of his articles which have appeared in our pages was “Educational Reform in Israel/’ in the A v 5729/July 1969 issue... R A B B I Y A K O V L IP S C H U T Z combines poetic gifts with lomduth — a combination much more rarely found today than it was in bygone centuries. A native of Fall River, Massachusetts, he received Semichah at Beth Medrash Elyon and also from Rabbi Dr. Joseph Breuer. Prior to his present post as Rabbinic Coordinator of the U O JC A Kashruth Division, he served as Rosh Yeshivah at Mesivta Rabbi Samson Raphael H irsch.. . R A B B I V IC T O R S O L O M O N , who is now Director of Field Operations for the Commission on Jewish Chaplaincy, was serving as a special correspondent for the Bridgeport Post during “those hectic days in June ‘6 7 ” of which he relates in this issue, when he “breathed desert dust, ate canned sardines, drank gallons of Jaffa orange juice, and marvelled at the great miracle of Israel’s victory.” His career has included rabbinic posts in Philadelphia, Pa. and Bridgeport, Conn, and service, for which he volunteered, in Japan as the only Jewish military chaplain attached to the U.S. A ir Force for the entire region. Rabbi Solomon was the first chaplain of any faith to be awarded Japan’s Zenkorai Scroll of Honor. His article “Tallith and Tephillin Over Japan” appeared in the Kislev 5730/November 1969 JEW ISH L IF E and he is the author of several published works. ... J U L IU S P F E IF F E R is an active figure in Montreal’s orthodox Jewish community, with special focus on Agudist interests. Thus he maintains the tradition of community service which marked several generations of his family in his native Dueseldorf in Germany and which his sons - one of whom is president of Pirchey Agudas Yisroel in Montreal — continue.

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