Jewish Life Fall 1979

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$2.50

TISHREI 5740/FALL 1979

2 Comments: Yom Kippur and Secularism/The Proliferation of Kashruth Symbols/Cosmic Provincialism /"By Them It Is Always Kosher"/Jewish Journalism — Who Needs It/Refugees, The Boat People — and Jews/A Q u e s t i o n A b o u t t h e S t a d i u m in Yerushalayim/"The Hell-Box" 18 A Memorial That Rebuilds: A Foundation That Lives/Britain-s Chief Rabbi Asks Some Painful Questions and Offers Some Answers.

40 Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish C om m unity/T he P resid ent of Yeshiva University offers a basis upon which the long sought unity can be built.

32 Who is Running Our Yeshivos?/A pioneer yeshiva-builder sets out a proposal for a division o f labor between educators and laymen.

48 The Model Yeshiva: A Dream Awaiting Fulfillment/How do we build a yeshiva for today, retaining the past aspects of yesterday ?

A publication of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America

Volume III Number 3

TISHREI 5740/FALL 1979

.^bs.

Yaakov Jacobs

Associate Editor M rs. Linore W ard

Yaakov Kornreich

and Family

Editor Emeritus

have established the

Saul Bernstein Ip

Editorial Board

Jess Ward M em orial Jewish Life F u n d

J. David Bleich Judith Bleich David Cohen Samuel Cohen Lawrence A. Kobrin David Kranzler George Rohr Simon Wincelberg

to help assure the continued publication o f Jewish Life and to continue the dissemination o f Torah ideology to English-speaking Jew ry A tribute to the sacred m em ory of

Production Assistant

Jess Ward

Shulamis Schwartz

who in his lifetime gave of

Chairman, Publications Commissior UOJCA

his talents and his means to his fellow Jews.

Sheldon Rudoff

We pray that these pages

Published by UNION OF ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS OF AMERICA

shall be a worthy memorial to his comm itted life.

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■ I g I I . ; '■■■

UNION O F ORTHODOX JEWISH CONGREGATIONS O F AMERICA President; JULIUS BERMAN Chairman of the Board: HAROLD M. JACOBS Honorary Presidents: JOSEPH KARASICK MOSES I. FEUERSTEIN M A XJ.ET R A DR. SAMUEL NIRENSTEIN Honorary Chairmen of the Board: SAMUEL C. FEUERSTEIN SAMUEL L. BRENNGLASS Senior Vice Presidents: DR. BERNARD LANDER DAVID POLITI BERNARDW LEVMORE Vice Presidents: NATHAN K. GROSS SHELDON RUDOFF FRED EHRMAN SOLOMON T. SCHARF GEORGE B. FALK DAVID FUND MICHAEL C. WIMPFHEIMER MAX RICHLER DR. DAVID LUCHINS RONALD GREENWALD

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JOEL M. SCHREIBER Metropolitan N.Y.

Secretary: MARCEL WEBER

DR. HESCHEL RASKAS Midwest

Financial Secretary: SIDNEY KWESTEL

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National Associate Vice Presidents: HERMAN HERSKOVIC AL H. THOMAS EMANUEL REICH EARLKORCHAK SANFORD DEUTSCH HARRY BEARMAN

JOSEPH M. RUSSAR Northwest JACK M. NAGEL Pacific Coast

Vice Presidents for Regions:

MARCUS ROSENBERG Southwest

NATHANIEL FUTERAL Atlantic Seaboard HYBERGEL Central Canada DONALD B. BUTLER Central East ALAN I. LAPPING Chicago EDWARD B. WOLKOVE Eastern Canada

LARRY BROWN Southeast

E. DAVID SUBAR Upper New York JULIUS SAMSON Israel RABBI PINCHAS STOLPER Executive Vice President

Volume III Number 3

TISHREI 5740/FALL 1979

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Contents 2 Comments: Yom Kippur and Secularism/The Prolifera­ tion of Kashruth Symbols/Cosmic Provindalism/"By Them It Is Always Kosher"/Jewish Journalism — Who Needs It/Refugees, The Boat People — and Jews/A Ques­ tion About the Stadium in Yerushalayim/Our Editorial Board/"The Hell-Box" 18 A Memorial That Rebuilds: A Foundation That Lives/ Immanuel Jakobovits 32 Who is Running Our Yeshivos?/Alexander Gross 40 Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish Community Norman Lamm 48 The Model Yeshiva: A Dream Awaiting Fulfillment/ Shlomo Riskin 56 Books In Review: Biblical and Talmudic Medicine/Jacob I. Dienstag 58 Letters To The Editor: On Boro Park/Some Non-Letters on Princeton University 62 Poetry: Studying the Talmud B'rachos/Chaim Feinberg

Because of the small staff producing Jewish Life, contributors are asked to send an inquiry before submitting manuscripts, and to be patient in waiting for a response.

We regret any inconvenience we may have caused in this regard, and we trust we will be able to increase our efficiency in the future. ^Copyright 1979 by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America. Mate­ rial from JEWISH LIFE, including illustrations, may not be reproduced except by written permission from this magazine following written request. JEWISH LIFE is published quarterly. Subscription: 1 year—$10.00, 2 years—$18.00, 3 years—$25.00.

Foreign: Add $.50 per year. Single copy $2.50, Editorial & Publication Office: 116 E. 27th St., New York, N.Y. 10016. Second Class Postage Paid New York, N.Y.

The Teshuva Issue (This is not the Teshuva issue we have been promising. Putting it together; writing sections of it, have proven to be a painful experience. I have begun.

Articles are set in type; thoughts are in motion. After many abortive starts, I have begun to write the introduction. It is not complete. But in this issue which ushers in the new year 5740; a time when we must speak of Teshuva, I share with you my beginning. The promise is yet to còme.)

Now Is the Time for All Good Men to Do Teshuva Teshuva: a magic word in the Torah lexicon. It rings bells which reverberate in the Jewish psyche: bringing to mind the Bais Ha'Mikdash where Klal Yisrael found forgiveness for its collective sins. It brings to mind the sorrow of our loss, whose only consolation is a small section of the Temple's surrounding wall: the Kosel Ha'Ma'aravi. It brings to mind our millenial dream of the restoration o f the Bais Ha'Mikdash in time to come. It echoes our prayers for national restoration as the People of G-d, living His Torah in the Land He has given us.

Teshuva: it brings to mind the thundering voices of our prophets calling us back to Israel's mission.

Teshuva: it brings to mind the struggle of every Jew who has lived — and who now lives — struggling against the forces of evil to remain a Jew; to continue to believe when our lives are bitter; to continue to believe when our lives are sweet — to believe when it is hard to believe; to believe when it is too easy to believe. To remain in oneness with the Bo'rai Olom, even as His Creation would tear us away from Him. Teshuva: to choose good when conf ronted by evil; to choose life when death calls us.

Teshuva: those glorious Ten Days when in defiance of human understanding the Almighty is closer to us than He is on all other days.

Teshuva: that awesome day of Yom Kippur, when words, when tears, when abstinence elevate us to the level of the angels on high, washing away our sins and giving us a fresh beginning.

Teshuva: it brings to mind the hundreds of thousands of Jewish souls — dare we admit, millions — who have been deprived in our time of their Divine Heritage as Jews, and who have lived as if les din, vies dayan, as if there were no Law, no Judge.

Teshuva: it brings to mind the handful of young people who have found their way back to Torah and mitzvohs, and whose greatest contribution to Klal Yisrael may prove to be their having forced us to think about Teshuva with greater force, 2

with greater perception, with warmer and more willing hearts. It is they who have prompted us — from the sublime to the mundane — to dedicate a special issue of Jewish Life to ...

Teshuva.

Over the agonizing months that we have been engaged in putting this issue together, certain new insights have emerged. So broad a concept is Teshuva that it encompasses the totality of Jewish Nationhood, and the totality of the life of the individual Jew. To begin to speak of Teshuva in our time, we must set before ourselves the last two hundred years of Jewish experience, with our origins as a People as a backdrop.

We must contemplate Jewish life in Eastern Europe, overcom­ ing the vulgarization of the shtetel by the "Fiddler" syndrome.

We must deal with the liberation of European Jewry; with the Enlightenment which brought a cover of darkness to tradi­ tional Jewish life; with the struggle against Reform, against modernism, against assimilation, and against the false messianism of a return to Zion bereft of Torah. We must deal with Churban Europa, the destruction of European Jewry with its scholars, its saints, and its centers of Torah learning and Torah living. We must deal with the existential fact of the Return to Tzion, and with the emergence of a Jewish State which stubbornly clings to British and Ottoman law, while it has, at the same time, nurtured a renaissance of Torah learn­ ing and Torah living unparalleled in modern times. And we must deal with the arid expanse of the North American conti­ nent turned overnight — in the perspective of Jewish eternity — into an oasis-spotted area of small but vibrant Torah collec­ tives encompassing the Yeshiva University complex; Williamsburgh's yeshivos and Chassidic communities; Lakewood, Spring Valley and Monsey, with its Torah communities and yeshivos; Boro Park — and its complexities; Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, St. Louis, Denver, Atlanta, Memphis, and points South and West. In a word: an examination of the Teshuva experience — and not what I have incorrectly labeled the "Teshuva Movement," requires not a special issue, but an encyclopedic work describing where Klal Yisrael is at as we enter the year 5740, and the eighties of the Common Era. What we can only attempt here is a modest effort to crystalize our own thinking, and to stimulate those who read Jewish Life and those who write for us to deal with the realities of a Klal Yisrael on the verge of Geula, and already experiencing the Chevlai Moshiach — the Pangs of Redemption.

To contemplate Teshuva, we must see it in all its facets: as a national experience molding the destiny of the Jewish People; as the deeply personal continuum which informs the one-toone relationship with G-d; as the return to Yiddishkeit o f those formerly estranged from Torah and Mitzvohs; and as 3

the cosmic process delineated by the late Rav Kook in his master work Oros Ha'Teshuvah, which is the modern day hand­ book of Teshuva and which has influenced several generations of Jews in Eretz Yisrael and throughout the world. Teshuva must also be understood in the light of another Godol B'Yisrael who graces this generation, Rav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, whose Teshuva talks have had a broad effect which has yet to be adequately measured and described, perhaps due to his own reluctance to publish them more widely — a reluctance which one who works with the printed word today can easily appreciate.

Where does one begin in describing what has happened in the last twenty years in America and in Eretz Yisrael?

Athletes and performing artists have limbering up excercises they perform before they present themselves to the pub­ lic. As I was stretching my fingers (trying to take my mind with them), and testing my old Underwood recently made new again by my faithful typewriter artist, I began to type: NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD M EN .. .but to avoid the cliche I continued. . .TO DO TESHUVA. Before I realized what had happened I had added the line: NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL BAD MEN TO DO TESHUVA, TOO. Teshuva is for good people, perennially dissatisfied with their performance. But bad people must also do Teshuva, so my subconscious was apparently sending me a message.

NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL OF US TO DO TESHUVA. In search for an understanding of what is happening, I traveled, to Eretz Yisrael, and spent about ten days visiting what have come to be known as the Teshuva Yeshivos; talking to people at the Kotel; talking to Roshei Yeshivos and to their talmidim — the young men and women who had discovered their Torah heritage. I spent hours talking to a young man from Atlanta, Georgia, who had virtually been drummed out of Israel's army for being over-zealous in teaching Sabra offic­ ers and pilots about "Jewish identity."

I have spent long hours talking to people, contemplating, urging the words to come, to order themselves neatly on pieces of paper. They have started to flow. We have begun.

Yom Kippur and Secularism A popular American novel later a successful film, The Lost Weekend, detailed the woes of an alcoholic writer. One day, in desperate need of some money to "feed his habit/' he wended his way to New York's Bowery, his portable typewriter in hand, to pawn it at one of the many shops on that street, only to find that they were all closed — it was Yom Kippur. Of all Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur has notably not been vulgarized 4

or secularized. In contemplating this fact, there comes to mind the popular misunderstanding of the concepts of the sacred and the secular in Jewish belief. Simply: sacred describes the concept of kodesh, or holy; secular is the counterpart of chol, the wordly, the mundane: that which is different from, but not in opposition to, kodesh. When the Talmud seeks to set the Havdalah statement into the Shmoneh recited at the close of Shabbos, the conclusion is that it should be part of our petition for understanding and wisdom since: havdalah mi’hayin?" — "If there is no wisdom, from whence shall come the ability to distinguish?" The distinction between the sacred and the secular is not between good and evil, but rather the separation of the two spheres in which man — the Jew — must live his life.

When those of us who maintain that Torah is the heart of Jewishness and Jewish Peoplehood bemoan "secularization," we mean or we should mean that we cannot accept any separa­ tion of the secular from the sacred, to the exclusion of the sacred.

Surely Pesach is a holiday of freedom, but it is more than that; surely Succos is an agricultural festival, but it is more than that. To borrow from mathematics, the Queen of Sciences (a practice much abused in modern discourse), the secular is necessary — but not sufficient.

Non-sociologists often scoff at that branch of the social sciences for laboring and bringing forth a truth we already are aware of. But sociologists do contribute to our understanding of how groups of people function in our very complex societies.

A case in point in our context is a work by Elihu Katz and Michael Gurevitch (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1976) titled The Secularization of Leisure, Culture and Communication in Israel. They write in their Preface: Some new nations virtually have to invent symbols of their integration: language, holidays, folklore, the myths of legitimacy. Other new nations, heirs to Great Tradi­ tions, are struggling with problems of orthodoxy vs. modernity. Yet even those most committed to social, eco­ nomic and technical modernization are continually dis­ covering that modernization itself requires the cultivation of a national identity, but at the same time tends to undermine it. Modernization disconnects people from their traditions -r- it secularizes -— and it invites an influx of mass-produced culture from ouside — it homogenizes.

The implications of that statement must be painful to the Torah Jew, and must be dealt with by the Torah-less, the secular Jew. The study should be read by anyone who wishes to confront intelligently the development of Israel as a modern 5

society. Sadly: few people will read it. While it is axiomatic that Jews in America buy more books than any other ethnic group, they buy the wrong books ;— and they don't read all that they buy.

The authors describe in detail how each of the holidays and holy days have been converted into secular, national, and fam­ ily holidays. One day alone has eluded the secularization pattern: .. .The most interesting case is surely that of Yom Kippur. . .the reason seems clear...: this most religious of all the traditional holidays is least easy to fill with familial, seasonal or social meanings. It is based on a dialogue between man and G-d, through the instrumentality of the community. But it is not a day for pichics, or for other family gatherings; it makes no mark on nature. It has a universal message and a moral, but the message and the moral are about soul-searchingand soul­ searing to heal the relationships between man and man, and man and G-d. People who are ideologically anti-religious have seized on Yom Kippur as the symbol of their rejection of the faith (as did Jewish socialists in the early immigrant days in New York City with their infamous "Yom Kippur Balls" — YJ), and some have even tried, defiantly, to picnic on Yom Kippur.

But it doesn't work.

There it all is: even the cold objective statement of the sociologists must warm the Jewish blood. On Yom Kippur, every Jew stands alone before his Creator, in the company of all the House of Israel. A modern-day Reb Levi Yitzchak Berditchever might cry out to the Almighty: "Even as they defy You, they manifest their oneness as a People, and Your Oneness as their G-d."

Yom Kippur is said to have 'no meaning for me' by fully 16 percent of the population — because it is incapable of undergo­ ing secular transformation. It is not a day on which one can go out for a picnic, or even celebrate national or social emancipa­ tion. It is a holiday for which Jewish tradition provides no alternative other than personal confrontation with G-d.

The Proliferation K ashruth Symbols

of

(First a caveat: the following comments are not an expres­ sion of the opinions of the Orthodox Union or its Kashrus division, nor have they been written with prior consultation, which is yet not to say that they will necessarily disagree.)

The ® symbol which indicates that a product or service is certified Kosher by the U.O.J.C.A., was the first instance of the use of such a symbol by a not-for-profit communal institu­

tion. This is history. It has never, to my knowledge, ever been suggested that any other type of kashrus supervision, or sym­ bol used to indicate supervision, is ipso facto not to be trusted or relied upon. It is also history that the ® symbol has been, and continues to be, the most widely accepted and respected.

In recent years, new symbols have appeared, all of which haye, in a sense, capitalized on the ® concept. This too, is not, of itself, to be criticized. But, more recently, the prolifera­ tion of Kashrus symbols has been so escalated, that the consu­ mer is often apt to be misled — or at the very least to be confused.

There recently appeared on the market Kosher Home, a pri­ vately published magazine intended for a mass-market, and specifically for those large numbers of Jewish homes which observe Kashrus and want to be aware of what is available in an industry that has grown tremendously. It is not the maga­ zine itself which prompts me to comment at this time. It is highly-professional: good graphics; good writing; good design.

But, in the first issue, which was over a year in the making and which was mailed to — it would appear — hundreds of thou­ sands of Jewish homes, there is a section called "Kosher Pro­ ducts Guide." The editors go the trouble of stating in bold type that "Kosher Home cannot be responsible for the accuracy or halachic reliability of the listings." They then proceed to list the various symbols and their sponsoring rabbis or groups, followed by a listing of food products with their respective supervisors' symbols.

The disclaimer is strange: who indeed would expect a privately-produced publication to be "responsible for halachic reliability?" But, more important: the feigned impartiality is in itself misleading, since it will lead those less, sophisticated about Kashrus — no doubt a large percentage of the kosher market — to accept the listing as a tacit statement of reliability.

These consumers take the attitude — disclaimer notwith­ standing — that "If it's got a rabbi's name on it, it's good enough for me."

Let's face it: Kashrus is big business in this country. It is lucrative for the manufacturers, and it is now becoming more lucrative for private endorsers. And now there is another contender in the field: Kosher Home. What they appear to be doing may be summed up in an old depression-story about a man who told his friend he was opening a new clothing store on Stanton Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. "Ye gotta be crazy," was the response, "the stores already on the street are starving." "Come, I'll show you my store," the entrepeneur said. "Now I know you're crazy," his friend said, noticing that there already was a store on each side of the new 7

one. "But look up," said the proud owner of the new store pointing to a huge sign that read: "MAIN ENTRANCE." Perhaps my analysis is too harsh; perhaps it is unfair. If so, I would like to be told why. Meanwhile, it behooves the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America to tighten ship, and to resume its position of leadership in not-for-profit com­ munal Kashrus endorsement, which alone can save us from the utter chaos in Kashrus which historically gave rise to the concept of communal responsibility.

Cosmic Provincialism One must stand in awe of scientists who dabble in their own minds and in laboratories and discover heretofore secret aspects of the Creation. And it is no wonder that Orthodox Jews are wont to grasp at their discoveries in response to what appears to be some confirmation of Torah belief — and to shudder at one more "proof" that our belief is faulty.

We are, in this context/ uncomfortable about invoking "Revelation" to refute their contentions. After all, have we not been taught in "Philo I" that argumentum ad hominen (KaVyochol) is a recognition of logical failure? — But: Revela­ tion - is what it is all really about.

I had no intention of waxing theological: simply to react to a recent scientific study on the possibility of life in places other than earth — this time done with computers. Much to the surprise of the scientists, the computers "told" them that the statistical chances of life on other planets are extremely small.

Why the surprise? After all, what do we need all that vast expanse out there, — with moons and galaxies, with suns and planets, — for poor little earth and even poorer little sapiens?It is reminiscent of the shtetel Jew who came to a large city in Eastern Europe, and asked about the number of Jews living in the city. The number was small, and when, in answer to his second inquiry about the number of non-Jews — which was large — he asked: "for so few Jews what do you need so many goyim?" It is this kind of provincialism — raised to cosmic proportions and astronomical dimensions — that has blinded scientists and others to the possibility that this world of ours, and we little homo sapiens, are terribly important in the cosmic scheme of things. And that all of that expanse may just be there for us — to admire, to explore if we will, to let it confound us — if we will.

"By Them It Is Always Kosher" It was under that heading that the New York Times Maga­ zine published an article on April 15,1979 concerning Kashrus

supervision. We are not here interested in the content of the article per se: it was garbled and misinformed. After months of delay and agitation, the Times published a letter from the Joint Kashruth Commission of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Con­ gregations of America and the Rabbinical Council of America, which distinguished between communal Kashrus supervision and-supervision as private enterprise.

What was most disturbing was the satiric tone of the article starting with the title itself, and the first line which declared that, "A thousand angels can dance on the head of a pin, but the laws of kashrut — what is kosher or permitted to Jews, accord­ ing to the dietary laws — could hardly fit into the heads of a thousand angels." As a private citizen, I wrote a letter to the editor asking for an apology for what was an insult to every Jew who observes kashrus. After eight weeks, they piled insult upon insult by sending me a form letter thanking me for writing, and explaining that they cannot print all letters, but making no response to my charge that they had been guilty of group libel, if not in a legal sense then in a moral sense. The following is the text of my letter: To the Editor: Your readers would be appalled to read ethnic jokes in The New York Times. The ethnic joke is despicable because it implies the inferiority of all members of a particular group. It is often accompanied by caricatured dialect and a smirk on the face of the narrator.

I have long suffered in reading the feature articles of Israel Shenker who, for reasons I leave to students of the mind, employs one vocabulary and tone for his general reporting, and yet another vocabulary and sing-song for writing about Jews and things Jewish. His latest effort: "With Them, It's Always Strictly Kosher," is no excep­ tion; but for me it was simply too much. It is one long ethnic joke, lacking only the occasional flashes of humor one finds in that genre.

It is there in the very first sentence. "A thousand angels can dance on the head of a pin, but the laws of kashrut — what is kosher or permitted to Jews, according to the dietary laws — could hardly fit into the heads of a thou­ sand angels." The sentence — assuming it is more than an Alice-like string of words — is a strange one for introduc­ ing a subject that touches the sensitivities of Jews com­ mitted to traditional belief and practice. Did you ask Mr. Shenker, when he turned in his manuscript what — if anything — that sentence means. I know a good number 9

of people who have no supernatural powers and yet have mastered the dietary laws. — But it is notout of a concern for clear writing that I address myself to you, but out of outrage that such vulgarities appear in your pages. Would Mr. Shenker write in such tones about other religious or ethnic groups.

Mr. Shenker owes it to his own integrity to stop writing such gibberish, and you owe it to your readers not to print it. Together you owe your Jewish readers an apology for insulting their religious beliefs, and you owe all your readers an apology for insulting their intelligence.

No doubt Mr. Shenker's essay is not libelous in law but as a Jew I feel I have been defamed. I demand an apology.

(We sent a copy of the above to the Editor of the Times Magazine. As they often put it when a person in the news evades a journalist, the New York Times was not available for comment.)

Jewish Journalism — Who Needs It? Americans are preoccupied these days with the problems of journalism and a free press. The Supreme Court has ruled on a number of sensitive matters relating to the confidentiality of reporters' sources and their note books. The press — which unlike other groups in our society has immediate access to the press, has reacted to what it considers an assault on their freedom. It is not surprising that there has been no specific "Jewish response", since there really is no Jewish angle. But what is surprising is that the very sophisticated Jewish com­ m unity— wise in the ways of the world and well-attuned to sharp public relations techniques, is not the least bit troubled that we have no press or journalism at all. None to speak of, that is.

— What prompts these comments is a recent episode involv­ ing the New York Jewish Week, an example — at least p i of what Jewish jounalism might be. In their issue of June 24,1979, the Jewish Week carried an eight-page supplement paid for by a Baltimore-based group called Jews Against Arab Boycott — — you guessed it: JAAB. The supplement, a paid advertise­ ment, swung wildly with lefts and rights against — you guessed it again: "the Jewish establishment." The issues taken up were of some merit, but they were drowned in a sea of obfuscation, with bottles of Pepsi-Cola and Coca-Cola bub­ bling on the surface. The issue was quickly joined. Charges were leveled at The Jewish Week that they had not adequately made it clear to their readers that the supplement was actually

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a paid advertisement, though it had to be obvious to most readers. Unspoken was the charge that The Jewish Week, heavily subsidized by New York Federation interests, was less than prudent in biting the hand that feeds it. A tortured response by veteran Jewish journalist Richard Yaffe, who dou­ bles with the London Jewish Chronicle and other journals, dug into the matter of the Baltimore Jewish Festival which had granted exclusive rights to Pepsi-Cola distributors. "The issue won't be raised this year," Yaffe jubilantly exclaims in JW's issue of July 22. "A Solomonic solution has been found: Both Pepsi and Coke will be sold at the festival, which is only a half victory for JAAB" which had wanted Pepsi excluded entirely because they don't sell Pepsi in Israel. Wrong Mr. Yaffe: Solo­ monic solutions don't result in "half victories". Cutting the baby in half would not have been a "half victory". Yaffe's article was marred by transposed lines, half-spelled words, and lines cut off the bottom of the page. Yaffe, a seasoned reporter, was surely not at his best in this piece, and the composing and press rooms gave him little support.

Yet: the major issue was not adequately joined. Why do dissenters in Jewish life have to buy advertising space to state their positions? What kind of journalism do we tolerate that is inhibited by vested interests and that fails to give its readers objective reporting, at least on the level of the average Ameri­ can newspaper.

Is it the case that all that American Jewry can offer, and all that Jewish readers want, is sheets of newsprint folded together to look like a newspaper, with garbled, biased, unclear accounts of what Big Brother wants us to know and to believe?

Refugees, Boat People — and Jews In the late forties and fifties Jewish writers in America came to the fore and enjoyed a popularity that had previously been the province of Southern writers coming out of their postCivil War doldrums. Critics, scholars, and ordinary people were hard put at the time to explain the sudden popularity of Jews as writers and Jews as characters in works of fiction. It struck me then — and I have had no reason to modify my theory — that it all derived from what had happened to Man­ kind at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The world was covered with the shadow of the mushroom cloud, and a sense of doom prevailed. I was in my first pulpit in Greenwich Village at the time, and the fear of atomic warfare coupled with the Cold War was indeed frightening. I remember one Erev Rosh Hashonah receiving a brown envelope, somberly marked "THE WHITE HOUSE", which contained a message I was asked to share with

11

my congregation on how to build air raid shelters — all this, after the second war "to end all wars." (I vividly recall the different mood we found when we moved to St. Louis to my second pulpit, where the big problem on everyone's lips was — what to do about crab-grass.

What had happened, it appeared, was that the fear of atomic — later nuclear — war, had made Jews of all men. It was no longer the Jew alone who was in exile, fearing what tomorrow might bring; everyone was frightened; everyone was insecure.

And the world began to look around for people who had experience with fear and insecurity, and who knew all this better than the Jew. The Jew became a paradigm for all men.

Hence: the new interest in the Jew. All this came to mind when I read a heavy black headline following the Three-Mile Island nuclear energy plant accident which read: H-BUBBLE IS REDUCED; SOME AREA REFU­ GEES RETURNING TO HOMES. "Refugees" who were not Jews? — This was a jolt for one brought up during World War Two, when the word "refugees" was synonymous with Jews.

Suddenly, men, women, and children from Middle-America had become refugees. And it was not long afterwards that thousands of ethnic Chinese were expelled from Vietnam and placed on boats, and the press, with its penchant for labels, dubbed them "boat people." And memories of thousands of Jews crowded onto boats, struggling to put the nightmare of the Churban Europa behind them and to resettle in the Holy Land, immediately came to mind. To our credit, the lesson was not lost on the Jewish community, and Jews rallied to the support of these new refugees.

A Question About the Stadium in Yerushalayim In the Summer 1977 issue of Jewish Life, we published, among our comments, an open letter to the President of Israel concerning the proposed sports stadium to be built in Yerusha­ layim. The letter read as follows: Mr. President Having been President of Israel for a number of years now has surely affirmed for you what you previously knew: we Jews are a strange people, and a good people.

One strange thing about us, which I used to think was peculiar to the Galut> is that we tend to ape the society in which we live, and we often adopt forms and mores already discarded by the gentiles.

It strikes me that the sports craze in Israel today is of that nature. Your people in Israel seem to be outdoing

their counterparts in Western society: the recent response to the basketball victory is a ready example.

Your Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin had to wait till the end of the game before announcing his resignation, and then few heard him because most of your people were already in the streets shouting themselves hoarse and honking their horns.

But maybe your people need sports. Maybe they are tired of war games and have a need to relax with games that shed no blood. Let's leave that to the social scientists and the moralists. You are a physical scientist, and I am just a journalist — surely they understand the pheno­ menon better.

But Mr. President, there is one thing I trust you will agree no one needs: and that is a monument to Shabbos; a structure made of stone and steel where Jews can gather oh Shabbos in the Holy City of Jerusalem to desecrate the Shabbos together.

A 'monument to Chilul Shabbos?", you may ask. — How else can we characterize your friend Mayor Teddy Kolleck's plan to build a sports stadium in Sanhedria Murkevet to by-pass the restriction against the use of the existing stadium at the Hebrew University on Shabbos.

I don't know who the people were who made that stipulation in contributing the funds to build that sta­ dium. I don't know their motives, but we must all salute them. They knew the sanctity of the Holy City and did not want to have any part in its desecration. They knew that the sanctity of Shabbos and the sanctity of Yerushalayim are one. They knew that Jewish Peoplehood could not be restored by trampling these sanctities. And now, in a time of serious moral crisis for your people in Israel, people are being asked to contribute millions of dollars to build a sports stadium in Yerushalayim which will not only des­ troy the Shabbos rest of inhabitants of the area, but will proclaim to the world that our struggle to recognize Jer­ usalem as the spiritual heart of Israel and its capital is a sham.

Mr. President: in your message to the Jewish People on the 29th Anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, you offered a prayer "for the peace of Jerusalem, for peace in the Land and in the world." I put it to you, Mr. President, that there can be no "peace of Jerusalem," of the Land, or, indeed, of the world if this planned abomina­ tion becomes a reality.

Teddy Kolleck's Sports Stadium will proclaim to the world Israel's religious and spiritual bankruptcy. It is 13

more than an affront to Torah Jews in Israel. By under­ mining our claim to Yerushalayim — and, indeed, to the Land iff based on the Divine Mandate, the proposed sta­ dium is a threat to the "peace of Jerusalem" and the security of Israel.

Two years have passed. Suddenly we hear about the stadium again. At no time was there any indication that the plans had been changed.

QUESTION: Where were we all for the past two years?

Our Editorial Board With this issue we welcome, as the new chairman of the UOJCA Publications Commission, Mr. Sheldon Rudoff, and Mr. George Rohr, who is associated with Newsweek magazine, as a member of our Editorial Board. Dr. David Kranzler of our Editorial Board has just published My Jewish Roots IA Practical Guide to Tracing and Recording Your Genealogy and FamilyHistory

The Hell Box

In the old days, when printed copy was set by a linotype operator, each line emerged from a pot of molten lead which quickly cooled and went into a frame to form a page. When errors were found, the entire line was reset. The lead slug with the error was removed and thrown into a box—called "The Hell-Box"—where it was ultimately thrown back into the pot to be melted and used again.

Each week scores of press releases arrive into the mail, most to be thrown away. Many are saved with the note: "Comments/next issue." Each day stories are clipped from the press and stored in a box marked: "Comments/next issue." And each day besides Shabbos notes are scribbled on 3x5's headed: "Comments/next issue," But when the time finally comes to put the issue "to bed" (even that expression is obsolete) scores of "Comments/next issue" lie helter-skelter, giving rise to the hellish feeling that so much has gone unsaid. So from time to time we will try to empty our hell-box by simply listing the unborn comments.

We have said nothing about Israel's peace negotiations.

Nothing about Andrew Young and Jewish-Black relation­ ships— perhaps that's just as well: Jewish "leaders" have said too much about them already... We've said nothing about the Pope's visit to Poland, and his forthcoming visit to Ireland and the United States. (Just one sentence on that one, Pope John Paul II demonstrated that the religious spirit yet prevails in the 14

hearts of millions under the Soviet yoke; and he came close to answering Stalin's cynical question about how many divisions the Pope h as.).; .What about Jimmy Carter?—What about Jimmy Carter? . . .We've said nothing about the joint religious service held in New York for Christians and Jews, but who takes those things seriously anymore. . . Ordination of women as rabbis?—Why not stop ordaining anyone and go back to the old system where a spiritual leader was chosen on the basis of Torah scholarship and piety? . . .We have a file full of clips, articles, and even a book, on secular Jews who feel left out of the Jewish mainstream and are trying to create an ideological basis for their continued existence. That cries out for com­ ment. .. Ah! Here is a photograph of leaders of the three major faiths (1 to r) Terence Cardinal Cook, Archbishop of the Catholic Archdiocese of New York; Dr. George F. Harkins, General Secretary. Lutheran Council in the U.S.A.; and— Marc H. Tanenbaum. How many divisions does he have?.. .

Two new Jewish weeklies have recently appeared—what about them? One says it will without fear or favor cover the entire spectrum of Orthodox life "from Satmar to the Agudah."—? , . .Bashevis Singer wrote a stupid op-ed piece in the Times about religious belief. Score ten points for those who shuddered at my piece on Singer in the last issue. .. The hell-box seems as full as when I started. . . I had hoped to comment on the entering into the 80's and 40's but that, too, remains undone. O well. . .

In this issue. . .

Being an editor .of a quarterly that comes out less than four times a year has its frustrations. But it has its compensations.

When Dr. Samson R. Weiss sent us from Geneva, where he attended the annual meeting of the Memorial Foundation, the complete text of Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits' address, with authorization to publish it, we knew we had a major ideological statement in hand. I have personally been searching for some clarity on what is wrong with the manner in which Jews have been dealing with the "Holocaust"—one must of course say "the real one," not the film, and therein lies a piece of the problem. Rabbi Jakobovits in his A Memorial That Rebuilds: A Foundation That Lives, has helped me as I know it will help many of our readers. He touches on many of the major dilemmas of modern Jewish life and is bold in his statements.

This writer has also long been troubled by the disunity in Orthodox for virhktf we pay a heavy toll each day, Presidents, governors, and mayors ask which are the true

spokesmen for Orthodoxy. And Orthodox publicity seekers as well as Orthodox political demagogues rush in to fill the vacuum. Rabbi Norman Lamm, president of Yeshiva University, addressed himself to this problem at the last annual meeting of the Rabbinical Council of America, and we are pleased to publish what we believe to be a major—and creative—contribution to the subject. He calls for the "Right" to respect the "Left" and for the "Left" to reciprocate. My friends from the "Right" and my friends from the "Left" may be unhappy with what I must now say. Since Rabbi Lamm spoke, two major leaders of those divergent poles of Orthodoxy passed on. Both were builders; both helped turn the tide of defection from Orthodoxy, although in ways so different. Rabbi Joseph Lookstein built an Orthodox congregation and a Yeshiva at a time when such institutions were considered passe. The late Satmar Rav built a massive community of Chassidic Jews, and yeshivos. He also built a network of Chesed institutions that are largely unknown. (I recently saw the Satmar Bikur Cholim Society bus standing in front of Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, a citadel of the Jewish secular establishment, filled with Chassidic men and women who had come to visit the sick—few of whom were likely Satmar Chassidim.) In Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish Community, Rabbi Lamm outlines ways in which we can all continue to build, each in our own way.

All growth brings with it new problems. And the joy of the growth tends to make us ignore the new realities. My own Rebbe's father, the sainted Reb Dovid Leibowitz, said perhaps fifty years ago, that he looked forward to a time when yeshivos would be called by numbers like l'havdil, public schools. There are hundreds of yeshivos today, but, Who Is Running Our Yeshivos? asks Rabbi Alexander Gross (Sender Gross, as he is better known to those to whom his name is a by-word in yeshiva chinuch.) The answers won't make us all very happy.

When rabbis, educators, and parents get together, a common subject of discussion is, what's wrong with our yeshivos and why aren't they producing the kind of lay people and the kind of leaders we need to survive? In The Model Yeshiva: A Dream Awaiting Fulfillment, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin describes an attempt to answer these questions by the creation of a new yeshiva And he movingly describes his partner in that experiment, who was taken from this life when his work had just begun to produce fruits. We believe the four major articles in this issue raise serious questions, and the solutions proposed will not be universally acclaimed. Our columns are open to a fuller airing of these matters, which will be a further contribution to the growth of Orthodoxy and its continued vitality. Please write.

16

In forthcoming issues: Reb Simcha Zissel of Kelm Jewish Life in M orooco Today The Torah and Secular Studies Synagogue A rchitecture and Five Hundred Years of Jew­ ish H istory W hat Did They Know? The Am erican Jewish Press and the Holocaust The Pom egranate: A Truly Jewish Symbol My Children Reborn New York's Lower East Side: Nostalgia — O r Reality?

In the Teshuva Issue: Alienation: An Ideological Basis for Return (A chapter from The Zionist Revolution by Professor Harold Fisch, by special arrangem ent with St. M artin's Press) The Role of Vidui in the Process of Teshuva R eturn: A Case H istory Is There Dogma in Judaism?

W here Have All the Poets Gone?

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Immanuel Jakobovits

A Memorial That Rebuilds: A Foundation That Lives A Major Ideological Statement I am rather awed by the realization that we are here discuss­ ing a uniquely sacred trust. In any other organization or foun­ dation, you can argue about policies and allocations with the founders or contributors, and if mistakes have been made you can seek their pardon. Not so in respect of the Memorial Foundation. Its assets are not ours. They belong to a martyred world which is no more, and their disposition is rigidly gov­ erned by the rule: Mitzvah Lekayem Divrei Hames. "It is a religious imperative to fulfil the wishes of the dead/' a rule to be multip­ lied by six million and infinitely sanctified by their martyrdom.

The two key words for our exploration might well be the two components of this organization's name: memorial and foundation.

Mindful of the origins and purposes of what was originally the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, we are clearly under a moral obligation to define, perhaps even to circumscribe, all its undertakings by the yardstick of their serving as a "memorial" to the six million. But such a memorial must, of course, be specifically Jewish in concept and orientation.

A personal experience may enable me to indicate what I mean by a specifically Jewish memorial. Nearly two years ago my wife and I visited the Jewish communities in Rumania in what proved to be the most moving week of our lives. Like many of you, we saw there the only vestiges still left in the world of old-style East-European "shtetl" life. Eventually we reached Klausenburg, that once-famous citadel of Jewish life.

As everywhere else, almost the entire communtity turned out to greet us. Before the War, they numbered some 30,000; now they are reduced to a pitiful remnant of about nine hundred souls, all survivors of the Death Camps: the whole community had been deported. We met them in their synagogue, renamed after the war "Synagogue of the Deported" in Rumanian and Bet Haknesset Hazikaron in Hebrew, in memory *of those who perished. It was the week when we read the Portion of Noah.

In my address to the congregation, referring to the name of the synagogue, I mentioned that the first time the word Yizkor occurred in the Bible was in that Portion. At the height of the Flood, Vayizkor Elokim es No'ach, "And G-d remembered Noach."

Rabbi Jakobovits is the Chief Rabbi of Great Britain and a frequent contributor to this journal. His address to the recent annual meeting of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture stirred world-wide interest and debate. We are privileged to present it to our readers in its entirety. We believe it to be a major contribution to the clarification of the position of the Jewish People in this period of Ikv'sah d'Meshicha, the ' footsteps of the Moshiach," which only the most insensitive can fail to hear. D r.

Jakobovits has just published The

Timely and, the Timeless { Valentine, Mitchell & Co. Ltd., London) a series of significant essays, distributed in this country

by Bloch Publishing Company.

19

The whole of humanity had been devastated. There were plenty of dead to remember, but the was not for them.

G-d's remembrance was for the survivors who were now charged to rebuild the world that had been destroyed.

Yizkor occurs again later in the Book of B'raishis. When Rachel had all but despaired in anguish over her barrenness, the eventual fulfilment of her yearning for a child is introduced with the words: Vayizkor Elokim es Rachel, "And G-d remembered Rachel. . . and He opened her womb." Remembrance, once again, is for the generation of new life — not for the dead.

Regeneration - Not Mere Rememberance If the Memorial Foundation is to be a truly Jewish Yizkor, its principal focus must be on the regeneration of Jewish life, not on mere remembrance of the past. Our generation has gone through the most fearful deluge of Jewish history. Yet, real remembrance means to rehabilitate the survivors, to give birth to a new world replacing what has been swept away.

In what I will now say, I speak with some trepidation and after much deliberation. In line with this reasoning, I have some doubts about the sanctification of the Holocaust as a cardinal doctrine in contemporary Jewish thought and teaching. I respect the commonly-held view to the contrary, but I wonder whether it can be accepted as authentically Jewish, or even as conducive to healing the wounds inflicted on the morale and spirit of our people.

Let me explain this by an historical analogy. Previously, the greatest disaster in our annals was the Destruction of the Bais Ha'Mikdosh. It finally sealed the fate of the Jewish State and brought death and captivity to countless Jews. To be sure, we remember this national calamity by extreme forms of mourning, lamentations and fasting to this day. Indeed, no The very word Churban, used nation in the world has such a long and haunting memory of its long-bygone defeats as we have. The very word Churban, used for the destruction of Jerusalem 1 9 0 0 years ago, still evokes tears for the destruction of Jerusalem 1900 years ago, still evokes from the faithful who have never tears from the faithful who have never forgotten what befell forgotten what befell us. But I can­ us.

But I cannot imagine that the survivors at the time, who not imagine that the survivors at established the Academy at Yavneh which assured the the time, who established the Academ y at Yavneh which continuity of Jewish life, would ever have considered assured the continuity of Jewish introducing Churban-studies into their highly-developed life, would ever have considered system of education, nor would they have regarded an introducing Churban-sfmiies emotional identification with the Churban as an essential into their highly-developed system of education, nor would they have ingredient in Jewish consciousness or an indispensable factor regarded an emotional identifica­ in Jewish survival. On the contrary, they secured the tion with the Churban as an essential ingredient in Jewish con­ resuscitation of the Jewish- spirit by insisting on identification sciousness or an indispensable fac­ with events of salvation, not of destruction, when they tor in Jewish survival. demanded regarding Pesach: "Everyone is duty bound to 20

consider himself as if he went out from Egypt". They embellished the Seder Night in which to relate the story of our redemption even in times of affliction, but they never demanded spending Tisha B'Av night telling the story of our agony until everyone would consider himself as if he lived through the Destruction. They wept and mourned all right, and they certainly remembered. But mark this: the object of their mounting was not to recall and denounce the evil of the Romans; their lamentations draw attention to their own fail­ ings and shortcomings, so that the lesson of the past would not be lost on the future.

I am dealing with the Holocaust at some length not because I regard the funds allocated to its commemoration and documentation, which averaged at 13 percent of all disbursements since 1965, as disproportionate, or because the two and a half million dollars so spent would be more significant if channelled to other fields. This is beside the point.

What does concern me here is that this prestigious world organization, born directly out of the Holocaust and set up as a memorial to it, is bound to have a major opportunity and responsibility to determine the place of the Holocaust in Jewish life and thought, possibly for decades to come. And here, I believe, a thorough rethinking is called for.

Of course/ the catastrophe and its victims, together with their historic legacy, must be remembered forever with supreme reverence. I also recognize that the Holocaust will remain a major factor both haunting and galvanizing Jewish life for a long time to come. Indeed, contrary to the opinion of Ben Gurion and others, I believe that the State of Israel would never have emerged when it did were it not for the desperate pressures and superhuman Jewish energies generated by the Holocaust.

The slogan "Never again!", now so popular, is a poor substitute for purposeful Jewish living as a potent driving force to. promote Jewish vitality. We exist not in order to prevent our own destruc­ tion, but to advance our special assignment, embodying the ageless values which are our national rai­ son d'etre. We must shift the cur­ rent emphasis on the survival of Jews to the survival of Judaism.

Breeding A Holocaust Mentality But at the same time, we must beware against breeding a Holocaust mentality of morose despondency among our people, especially our youth. Would it not be a catastrophic perversion of the Jewish spirit if brooding over the Holocaust were to become a substantial element in the Jewish purpose, and if the anxiety to prevent another holocaust were to be relied upon as an essential incentive to Jewish activity? I fear that this mood is already widespread, in our propaganda as well as in our philosophy. Should we not rather replace negative by positive factors to vindicate our claim to survival? The slogan "Never again!", now so popular, is a poor substitute for purposeful Jewish living as a potent driving force to promote Jewish vitality. We exist not in order to prevent our own destruction, but to advance our special assignment, embodying 21

To be a true memorial in the Jew­ ish sense, all our energies and resources must be harnessed to con­ structive ends: the reclamation of Jews to the Jewish national pur­ pose through the striving for spir­ itual and moral excellence. This can only be sustained by hope and not by fear; by struggling for ideals and not merely by fighting against manifest perils, as cur­ rently induced by the Holocaust complex so sedulously fostered in many quarters.

the ageless Values which are our national raison d'etre. We must shift the current emphasis on the survival of Jews to the survival of Judaism. For without Judaism, Jewish survival is both questionable and meaningless, as I will proceed to show.

After four thousand years of continuous existence, having already exceeded the life-span of all other nations, we might as well bow out gracefully without noisily alarming the world community and burdening it with such heavy demands and sacrifices for our survival, if we have nothing further to offer as Jews to the enrichment of the human society in our historic purpose as moral pioneers and religious path-finders. This is a brutal world in which millions die of starvation and violence without being mourned or missed. Our extinction as a people would occasion few laments if we did not make ourselves indispensable to human progress by seeking to create a model society in Israel and to raise Jews exemplary for their virtues by dint of their incomparable teachings and ideals.

This is the one fundamental premise on which I base my call for a redirection of our national affairs in general and of the Memorial Foundation's philosophy in particualr. To be a true memorial in the Jewish sense, all our energies and resources must be harnessed to constructive ends: the reclamation of Jews to the Jewish national purpose through the striving for spiritual and moral excellence. This can only be sustained by hope and not by fear; by struggling for ideals and not merely by fighting against manifest perils, as currently induced by the Holocaust complex so sedulously fostered in many quarters.

And I believe the Memorial Foundation has a crucial role to play in helping to achieve this re-orientation.

Now I turn from "memorial" to "foundation." As the only Jewish international organization of its kind to be completely non-political, without any vested institutional interests, and not limited by any narrow terms of reference, the Memorial Foundation can and should be more objective and more free in its choice of interests than any other organization. It is uniquely qualified to take a global view of Jewish needs, to identify areas of the highest priority, and to apply its precious resources to the most vital essentials only, especially in areas which would otherwise lack adequate or any communal sponsorship. In other words, it alone is in a position to concentrate on laying the real "foundations" for the edifice which will shelter the Jewish people and make it safe from the spiritual and physical buffettings to which it is now exposed on a colossal scale.

Before such foundations can be laid, it is essential to find, measure and prepare the proper sites — to discover the spheres where the needs are greatest and the investments

22

yield the highest return in terms of Jewish reconstruction and security.

This preparatory work itself is a major undertaking which cannot be carried out by any other agency. What is needed is a global survey of the Jewish condition, quantifying and qualifying our Jewish national and communal assets and liabilities in the widest sense. Even for so highly an organized community as Anglo-Jewry, we have so far no comprehensive picture of how our communal resources are distributed in support of Israel and domestic requirements (like religious facilities, education, welfare and youth), let alone on how we ought to plan dividing the cake of our communal budget by some rational system of priorities and comparative need. Nor have we studied how best to deploy, recruit and train our human resources to assure at least a minimal supply of rabbis, teachers, youth leaders, communal and social workers where they are most needed. Multiply this lack of basic information and elementary planning by the number of major communities in the world, and you may find that the wastage or misdeployment of our precariously limited resources is astronomical. By commissioning a global survey to fill this important void, the Memorial Foundation might render a valuable service for the more effective investment of our existing resources and for clearing the ground for the foundation of future projects.

Far more critical is our ignorance or uncertainty on the major trends, perils and advances in the Jewish world at large.

The Little-Known Perils Confronting Us Today A few, to my mind startling, facts will suffice both to illustrate some utterly anomalous features of Jewish life today and to indicate how unaware we are of them. For instance, if I were to ask which is the only European Jewish community today to grow in numbers, how many of you would know that the answer is — German Jewry? Or which to this day is per capita the wealthiest Jewish community in the world, how many would think of Iran as the correct answer? I could not think of two more disturbing indications of the tragic abnormalities characterizing the contemporary Jewish scene.

These two facts are, of course, only two random straws in the wind, in themselves of little significance, except to reveal some absurdities in our condition.

The wind itself is rather more ominous. It now blows perilously, in some places at gale force, against half of world Jewry. Once again, I wonder how widely it is realized that out of the present fourteen million Jews, some seven million face a more or less direct threat to their physical security or to their 23

freedom to live as Jews. There are three million under Soviet domination, another three million in Israel still threatened by war and terror, and hundreds of thousands more in a state of grave instability, stretching from Iran and the Arab countries across Southern Africa on to several South American countries. These perils are already at hand. One shudders to contemplate the virulent anti-Semitism which could engulf all Jews if the Arab oil blackmail were to lead to a major breakdown of the industrial world in a true version of the "Protocols of the Elders of Arabia " — a conspiracy not merely to dominate but to strangle the world unless the Jewish People reverts to medieval status.

This grim tally brutally exposes the fallacy of secular Zionism which, before and since the first Zionist Congress some eighty years ago, had led our people to believe that if we only had a state of our own we could normalize the Jewish condition, solve the Jewish problem, eliminate antisemitism and be accepted as equals among the nations. That part of the Zionist dream is now shattered, idle as it always was for traditional Jews whose love of Zion was not generated by persecution or the desire for normalcy.

One might have thought that after the Holocaust which wiped out one third of our people, the present threat to onehalf, not to forget the looming danger to the rest, would be conclusive enough to compel a radical change of direction in Jewish national aspirations. But not so. The vast majority of our people still cling to the illusion which anyone with am understanding for the mystique of the Jewish experience could have recognized as futile from the beginning. The prophetic vision of a Jewish State serving as a model society to present and to exemplify the uniqueness of the Jewish purpose simply cannot be replaced, hard as we may try, by a national enterprise serving the very opposite end, to remove our distinctiveness by the process of conformity and lose our singular status by acceptance as equals. Yes, of course we seek The only antecedent for an historic equality of rights and treatment, but this cannot be the raison delusion of such magnitude I can d'etre of a Jewish State. find is the early German Reform Even the short-lived aberration of the Shabbetai Zvi episode Movement of the 19th century which sought to achieve equality — which convulsed much of the Jewish world in the 17th for the Jew through individual century, raising high hopes of imminent redemption only to assimilation, convinced that the have them dashed in a fearful disillusionment — cannot be Jewish problem would be solved if compared to the pseudo-Messianism of our times. The only only we would surrender what makes us different — the hope for antecedent for an historic delusion of such magnitude I can our return to Zion, our prayers in\ find is the early German Reform Movement of the 19th Hebrew, our peculiar diet, and our century which sought to achieve equality for the Jew through other Jewish observances. A nd individual assimilation, convinced that the Jewish problem this perverse doctrine came to infi­ nite grief in the very country where would be solved if only we would surrender what makes us it was to bring us salvation. different — the hope for our return to Zion, our prayers in Hebrew, our peculiar diet, and our other Jewish observances.

24

And this perverse doctrine came to infinite grief in the very country where it was to bring us salvation. Let us beware lest trust in the false promise of salvation by national assimilation would lead, Heaven forfend, to a debacle of like proportions!

However, this is only half, and perhaps the lesser half, of our predicament. Other expectations, too, have been belied.

The restoration of Jewish sovereignty also promised to arrest the erosion of Jewish identity. By creating a national bastion of Jewish life, the Zionist idea was to fortify the ramparts of Jewish pride and belonging against the tide of drift and defection. Nothing like this.happened. We now sustain more casualties by assimilation and intermarriage in the Free World than through persecution, war or terror in the whole world. As many of you must have read in Midstream, an eminent sociologist has calculated that within the next century American Jewry will be reduced from the present six million to a mere ten thousand, if the present demographic trends are maintained. The omens of disintegration are little different in other free countries, including Israel where the Yeridah and Neshira rates, combined with an abnormally low birth-rate and a phenomenally high abortion-rate, project a similar writing on the wall — all because we defy the dictates of Jewish ethics and idealism.

O ur fundamental error was that in our national concerns and poli­ cies, we have shifted the emphasis from the survival of Judaism to the survival of Jews, thus ever enlarg­ ing the gap between the two.

The Survival of Judaism Versus The Survival of Jews Our fundamental error was that in our national concerns and policies, we have shifted the emphasis from the survival of Judaism to the survival of Jews, thus ever enlarging the gap between the two. Instead of making and holding up Israel as the only country in the world where one can live a fully Jewish life, our propaganda — whether for fund-raising or aliyah — has projected it not as a sanctuary, attracting Jews by its holiness, but primarily as an asylum for the homeless, a haven of security for Jews in danger. And once it can no longer offer this security, the attraction is vitiated and the supporters are liable to be disenchanted.

Soviet Jewry provides another illustration of the price we are now paying for confusing the end of preserving Judaism with the means of preserving Jews. I well recall the abuse which greeted me when, on returning from Russia, I advocated adding "Let My People Live" to the slogan "Let My People Go", convinced that if we did not work hard at the regeneration of some Jewish life inside Russia, and among the emigrants as soon as they left Russia, the wells of Soviet aliyah would dry up for lack of Jewish idealism. Now, with seventy percent or more of Russian emigrants opting for settlement in other countries because they were not induced to seek a Jewish life, the abuse 25

1 well recall the abuse which greeted me when, on returning from Russia, I advocated adding "Let M y People Live" to the slogan "Let M y People Go", convinced that if we did not work hard at the regeneration of some Jewish life inside Russia, and among the emi­ grants as soon as they left Russia, the wells of Soviet aliyah would dry up for lack of Jewish idealism.

has given way to consternation. The bitter irony is.that so long as they were in Russia they ail at least knew that they were Jews, even if they could not give meaningful expression to their Jewish identity. Now, the bulk of them—dispersed from America to New Zealand, and with little motivation to identify with the host communities — risk forgetting that they are Jews altogether, making a mockery of our entire Soviet Jewry campaign so intensely pursued throughout the world for the avowed purpose of enabling them to live as Jews. What have we achieved by bringing them out if, as a result, they will be even less conscious of being Jews than they were before?

So far the debit side. Happily, some staggering mis­ calculations or unanticipated developments have also gone in our favor. I recollect predictions in Britain thirty years ago that by the 1970's Anglo-Jewry would have disintegrated to the point of virtual disappearance as a vibrant community . Similar prophecies of doom appeared to seal the fate of numerous other communities, from what was left of Jewish life in Europe, right down-under to Australia. No one expected or foresaw the astounding resurgence of the most intensely com­ mitted sections of our people, energized by an educational revolution probaby without parallel in Jewish history.

The Astounding Resurgence of Committed Judaism

Yet it is this hardest-hit element which is now by fa r the most crea­ tive and the most prolific. Fortified by a vast network of flourishing schools and academies, it has transplanted from the ruins of Eastern Europe to what had been, by comparison, spiritual waste­ lands like Israel, America and Britain, Torah learning and liv­ ing of an intensity never pre­ viously known there, at least not in modern times. In Israel, for instance, there are already more students at yeshivos and parallel girls' seminaries than at the universities.

To appreciate this phenomenon, we must remember that, after all, this element had suffered the worst blow in the Holocaust. Among our people at large, we had lost one-third.

But of our leading yeshivos and Torah scholars, our strongholds of Chassidism and old-time shtetl life, the toll of destruction may have been as high as ninety percent, and all but total annihilation of the mighty and massive reservoir that had once sustained Jewish leadership and life the world over.

Yet it is this hardest-hit element which is now by far the most creative and the most prolific. Fortified by a vast network of flourishing schools and academies, it has transplanted, from the ruins of Eastern Europe to what had been, by comparison, spiritual wastelands like Israel, America and Britain, Torah learning and living of an intensity never previously known there, at least not in modern times. In Israel, for instance, there are already more students at yeshivos and parallel girls' seminaries than at the universities. Chassidic communities are once again’"strongly ascendant in most parts of the world.

Orthodox scientists, a breed almost extinct thirty years ago, are today organized in active associations counting thousands of members. In tens of thousands of homes there are now daily sessions of Talmud studies, often by young men whose fathers never knew the fascination or the skill of advanced Jewish learning. Their literary output, too, is quite prodigious.

26

These groups, confined as they may still be numerically as well as ideologically, now breathe new life into countless communities otherwise blighted by assimilation. By virtue of an exceedingly high birth-rate combined with significant recruitment from the ranks of the non-committed and the virtual absence of any drop-outs, they now enjoy a steep growth rate where all other groups are sharply declining. In but one or two generations, this stark disproportion is bound to lead to dramatic changes in the demography and composition of our people.

Two Overriding Objectives This spiritual rebirth is not the sort of stuff of which newspaper headlines are made by our sensation-hungry press, nor is it grist to our milling international organizations industry. Hence, I suspect that these facts and trends, which will determine the shape of Jewish life to come, are largely unknown, and even less used for planning ahead. As an instrument to lay the foundations for the future, I therefore see a principal task of the Memorial Foundation as supplying the drive and resources for two overriding objectives: First, to have a hard new look at the contemporary Jewish scene. What is wanted is a thorough study of the kind of factors I have mentioned, conducted both locally in major communities and on a global scale, with a view to high-lighting and widely publicizing our liabilities and our assets, the distribution of our resources, the deployment of our manpower, the major trends in Jewish life and the direction or misdirection of our national policies and campaigns.

To put this suggestion in more concrete terms, I would like to see the assembly and analysis of data which might eventually be presented to the public in the same supremely effective manner with which the fascinating Bet Hatefutsot exhibits the history of world Jewry. Bet Hatefutsot is unfortunately very sparse on the contemporarty dimension.

What it does not display are maps, graphs, and artifacts graphically illustrating the present state of our people, our spiritually depressed areas contrasting with other areas of high growth and productivity, globes or tabloids showing at a glance the proportion of children attending Jewish day schools in different communities; or the ratio of the communal budget spent on Jewish regeneration; or pinpointing congregations lacking rabbis and teachers; or showing the various rates of divorce and intermarriage; or surveying the production and sales of Jewish books; or indicating our students' responses to different approaches; or featuring some successful enterprise in one community for emulation in others.

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For collecting, presenting and popularising this vast material, our best available talents should be harnessed, and I would suggest that the bulk o f the scholarship grants, instead of being dissipated on abstruse studies of merely academic interest should be invested to promote such a scheme. This in turn should serve as a basis to excite fresh thinking and new approaches among our opinion and policy-makers.

Second, once the seminal corn has been sifted from the chaff through such an enterprise, the Memorial Foundation should concentrate on planting seed programs where they are likely to produce the greatest yield and where they are most needed, the overriding criterion being the stabilization and inten­ sification of Jewish life and commitment. For instance, a Jewish marriage counselling agency where none exists, designed to halt the alarming erosion of Jewish family life, should be as eligible for support, or even sponsorship, by the Foundation as the setting up of an educational resource center, or an imaginative educational pilot scheme, or a fund for incentive bonuses to highly-qualified Jewish teachers where recruit­ ment and performance would otherwise suffer from under­ payment. Other ventures worthy of promotion by the Foundation might include Jewish book clubs to reduce the appalling rate of Jewish illiteracy, the provision of speciallytrained roving rabbis and teachers to serve in small communities, and the organization of top communal leadership seminars to ensure that those charged with Jewish affairs are not totally ignorant of Judaism, as so often happens.

The Foundation should put a premium on successful innovations, encouraging and publicizing them, perhaps by public competitions and awards. The whole thrust should be geared to cultural and spiritual productivity, especially in disaster-zones of Jewish decay. Again, consonant with the Jewish concept of "memorial," the focus must invariably be on building the future rather than commemorating the past.

Of course, there must be a well-devised system.of priorities.

Any enterprise designed to enhance commitment should be rated far higher than schemes to promote mere knowledge or research in the educational scale of values. To produce a Jewish child who will one day be immune to the allurements of opting out or marrying out is worth infinitely more to Jewish survival, than the finest Jewish scholar who has no communal attachment.

Here I must add a further critical note. I see little justification for diverting our scarce resources to Jewish studies programs at universities unless such programs are specifically linked either to the training of personnel for community service or to research in community related fields, or else specifically directed at Jewish students. Conditions may vary in different countries. My British experience is that such programs, when

Here I must add a further critical note. I see little justification for diverting our scarce resources to Jewish studies programs at uni­ versities unless such programs are specifically linked either to the training of personnel for commun­ ity service or to research in com­ munity related fields, or use specifically directed at Jewish stu­ dents. Conditions may vary in dif­ ferent countries,

28

established without communal consultation and control, often attract the very students who could otherwise be induced to pursue such studies in institutions under Jewish auspices which might motivate them towards a deeper Jewish intellectual and communal commitment than is likely to be stimulated in the spiritually neutral atmosphere of a university. I have read the very thoughtful Report submitted to your meeting in 1974 by the Commission on Formal Jewish Universities Studies Programs under the chairmanship of P rofessor M ilton Konvitz. But I believe th at its recommendations merit priority among the Foundation's projects only insofar as they meet thèse specifications I have mentioned in the light of the on-going crisis of Jewish identity and continuity which must be our primary concern.

Summary Let me then sum up my main conclusions: 1. The Memorial Foundation, with its unique mandate and endowments, should strive to add an invaluable new dimension to contemporary Jewish thinking, planning and reconstruction. Instead of merely serving generally to support existing institutions, scholars and publica­ tions, or to initiate new projects, however worthy, covering almost the entire gamut of Jewish culture and education, it should look upon itself as a pioneering agency dedicated to providing a new vision and dynamic for the revitalisation of Jewish life on a global as well as local scale.

2. To this end, the Foundation should engage the finest brains and expertise we command for a comprehensive study in depth of the contemporary Jewish condition the world over, paying special attention to the mass defections from Judaism which have now reached disaster proportions.

3. Such a study should be designed to highlight successes and failures in Jewish policies and enterprises, to examine the prudent investment of our human and material resources, to explain why and how some groups prosper spiritually as well as demographically while others decay, and to analyse such other factors as have a bearing on the quality of Jewish life and the commitment to its values.

4. The findings and their lesson should be given the widest publicity , by exhibitions, contests, awards, and any other means to excite concern and interest among Jewish leaders and the public at large, thus seeking to exert the maximum influence on the shaping of policies and on public opinion to support them.

5. More specifically, I suggest that the Memorial

Foundation should help to redirect Jewish energies and attention, in terms of relative importance, a. from saving Jews to saving Judaism; b. from the preoccupation with the Holocaust which has passed, to alarm over the present erosion of Jewish life which threatens the future; c. from Zionism as an instrument of Jewish normalization and self-defense, to the creation of a state exemplifying the noblest Jewish virtues in the prophetic tradition; d. from concentrating national and communal attention on external perils, to the imperatives of Jewish living and learning as the life-line to Jewish survival and e. from a negative image of Jews as protesters and demonstrators to a positive projection of their role in the betterment of society.

6. Among practical projects, the highest priority should be given, whether by supporting existing institutions or initiating new enterprises, to schemes likely to make a significant contribution to raising the number and intensity of committed Jews by making them assimi­ lation proof and by encouraging their spiritual and natural growth.

7. In the selection of projects to be initiated or supported by the Foundation, the following guidelines should be considered: a. All proposals should be judged by their value in contributing to the stability, improvement, exten­ sion and vitality of genuinely Jewish life and activity. b. The cultivation of intense Jewish loyalties is more crucial to Jewish survival and revival than the promotion of academic scholarship. By the same token, it is more important to encourage Jews to read Jewish books than to write them. c. Allocations for pilot projects and strategic key appointments should be viewed with special favor, particularly if they fill a patent void among existing facilities. d. Other preferred criteria should include origin­ ality, imaginativeness, m ass-effectiveness and popular appeal as well as proven success. e. Priority should be given to schemes concerned with the training (and subsidy where necessary) of community-service personnel, the improvement and popularization of Jewish education, the consolida­ tion of Jewish family life, the exploration of the rele­ vance of Jewish teachings to modern thought.

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science and society, and above all the rehabilitation of spiritually deprived Jews, whether they be alie­ nated students on campuses, Jewishly destitute emi­ grants from Russia and Iran, or affluent children robbed of their birthright to the Jewish heritage.

In asserting our claim to the Holy Land, the echo of the slogan "The Bible is our Mandate" has reverberated over the greater part of this century from the lips of traditionalists and secularists alike. The slogan is a hollow hypocrisy if it Is used only to demand rights from others, and not to impose duties on ourselves equally mandated by the Torah. After all, the Convenant between G-d and our People was mutual and condi­ tional. Its basic terms were that if we would take care of the survival of His Torah, He would take care of our survival. For thousands of years, the agreement has worked, and we are here to prove it. But now the roles ha^e been reversed; we worry about the survival of Jews, and let G-d worry about the survival of Judaism. This cannot work, as proved by the shrin­ kage of Jews today, especially under conditions of unprece­ dented freedom, affluence and opportunity. We had better bestir ourselves before the survival of the fittest has reduced our numbers, and correspondingly our security, by a higher toll than was inflicted by any Holocaust, any massacre or any war.

There is no group of Jews summoned more urgently to this task than those appointed to set up a "memorial" for millions who lived as Jews and who died with the words Am Ma'amin on their lips, Jews whose faith in future salvation we are challenged to vindicate.

I n assortin g m r claim to ik e H o ly La nd, ik e echo o f ik e sloga n " T h e B ib le is o u r M a n d a t e " h a s r ev er­ berated o v er ik e g r e a te r p a r i o f ih is cen tu ry fro m th e Ups o f tra d itio n ­ alists a n d secularists a lik e. T h e sloga n is a hollow h y pocrisy i f it is u sed o n ly to d e m a n d rig h ts fro m others* a n d not to im pose du ties on ou rselves eq u a lly m a n d a ted b y the T o ra h .

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Alexander S. Gross

Who Is Running Our Yeshivos?

What a frightening query! Such a question could never have been raised -- even hesitantly — thirty years ago. Prior to the national passion for accountability, born of a more recent, cynical age, the American yeshiva principal was the primary and often, the sole authority, whose advise was sought regard­ ing any problem affecting the school. The Board of Directors consulted him on all aspects pertaining to the yeshiva: curricu­ lum, administration, budget, physical plant, recruitment, and community relations.

During recent years, we have witnessed a radical erosion of the principal's role, and a marked decline in the responsibilities and authority Vested in the educational leader of the yeshiva.

Various governing boards and committees commonly infringe upon areas that once were, primarily, the functions of the principal. Granted, these boards are typically comprised of dedicated men, distinguished in their professions and busi­ nesses: men who freely tender their expertise and services to the school. Nevertheless, they may inadvertently thwart the true purpose of a yeshiva: the development of a total, welleducated, wholesome Torah personality.

Who Shapes The School?

To explain that statement, let us here make a clear distinc­ tion between the purpose of the public school in American society, and the purpose of the yeshiva in Jewish life. Public schools are concerned primarily with the teaching of basic skills, and with the development of knowledgeable, productive citizens who are adequately prepared to take their place in our secular society. Since these schools are the products of society, it follows that their programs of study are shaped largely by the parents, who make up the segment of the community most concerned with the public school.

By contrast, the yeshiva is a religious institution, a Torah center, governed solely by Halacha, as clearly defined through generations of Jewish tradition. How can matters of religious policy be decided by the wishes or votés of parents? Can we have parents and board members make decisions on religious studies, on the teaching of Chumash and Talmud, on the wearing of tzitzis, or on the observance of other mitzvos? These are matters that should fall within the exclusive province of the principal, who is rightfully the standard setter of religious studies and role model in a yeshiva. However the thinking of the typical "modern" men, and professionals who typically

Can we have parents and board members make decisions on reli­ gious studies, on the teaching of Chumash and Talmud, on the wearing of tzitzis, or on the observance of other mitzvos?

Rabbi Gross is a pioneer of the yeshiva day-school movement in America, having served with Torah Umesorah in its earliest days. He has led the Hebrew Academy of Greater M iam i for over a quarter of a century, and has been instrumental in the growth of that day school and the M iam i Jewish community into a major Torah center in the South.

make up today's yeshiva boards of education might be stated as follows: Weno longer believe in princip tation.

If we are asked to be involved into everyaspect of that school Wt demand periodic a the evaluating of teachers, of educational programs and periodic reassessment of the school's philosophy. One-man rule is over. We question the omnis­ cience of the educational leader, his credibility, and his Principals feel harassed by the harsh demands of board members who try to challenge and limit their authority. Princi­ pals maintain that their responsibility covers the entire educa­ tional spectrum and the totality of the student's experience.

Supervising admissions, policies, tuition fees, bus schedules and dietary programs is as vital to the principal's role as deter­ mining how to teach Chumash, or the number of pages to be covered in Talmud. But the "hands-off" policy, promulgated by many boards frustrates experienced, qualified educators.

The Yeshiva Brain Drain The result of such "board thinking" is that our yeshivos are losing many of their most competent, and dedicated educators.

Principals of long experience are leaving their posts to enter other fields, totally disillusioned with yeshiva education, fo r many competent and experienced teachers as well, the class­ room is losing its fascination. They, too, feel unwarranted pressure from the lay boards.

At a recent principals'convocation, a young teacher despair­ ingly said, "I've had if! My rebbi got me to go into Chinuch. I would be saving Yiddisheneshomos, he assured me. But 1find that I'm losing my own. . .I'm getting out. The atmosphere in our school is tense. Teachers can't function only in a tense environ­ ment, they need a spirit of camaraderie and singleness of purpose. We feel we're under constant surveillance; excessive paperwork; unfair interference; just too much!"

The news from yeshivos training teachers across the counB r i g h t prospective tea ch ers a r t M stry is even more distressing. Bright prospective teachers are co u ra g ed fro m e n terin g the field o f discouraged from entering the field of Jewish education. After Jew ish education . leaving his post, an administrator of one of the largest East Coast day-schools said: "The word accountability hovered over my head, threatening me constantly. My idealism is being interfered with, and counteracted by the computer orientation and mechanical mentality of our school hoard. Constant pres­ sure and loads of paperwork make my position untenable. We are too confined, limited to narrowly-defined curriculum areas."

Another respected educator of a prestigious California dayschool admitted, "We've brought about our own downfall. We went after these board members — astute business executives 34

and professionals, have been courted and encouraged to take positions of status in our schools. Trying to use their profes­ sional acumen, we exposed them to educational programs, which they are totally untrained to deal with. We're now paying the price."

Opposing Positions Is it still possible to reconcile these apparently opposing positions and make for a symbiotic relationship? This must happen if our yeshivos are to survive, if they are to progress, if they are to exist as the spiritual laboratories for the develop­ ment of the Jewish saints and scholars of the future.

It is axiomatic that Jewish educational leaders must be knowledgeable in their field: Torah and general studies. But, today they also need a basic orientation in the areas of busi­ ness, finance and fiscal matters. Like it or not, yeshiva educa­ tion on even a modest scale is a complex and massive business, and no one person, no matter how talented, can possibly assume effective and prudent management of all its facets.

Thus, boards must be set up, with specific assignments in the diverse areas of school management, in order to allow the principal to concentrate the bulk of his energy on his basic responsibility: Torah education. The direction and administra­ tion of the school, the control of the program of instruction and the curriculum, the dismissal and selection of personnel are primarily his functions and fall directly within his domain.

He is directly accountable for these areas, and they should be considered "off limits" to lay boards.

On the other hand principals must accept the fact that expenditures connected with the physical maintenance of the school require business and managerial expertise. These func­ tions should be assigned by the educational leader to expe­ rienced business men, and professionals. But the educator and the layman must understand in advance the limits of the authority granted to the board. The purpose of any board is to serve the large goals and policies of the yeshiva, as determined by the principal and his administration. The attitude of the lay boards should be that they serve as the "elongated arm" of the principal. They are his helping arm —not a striking arm. Yeshivos are not commercial ventures. The danger of adapting business criteria to education is that, if not controlled, they can over­ shadow the fundamental purpose of the yeshiva.

The Children Of The Poor The businessman's tendency to look at a balance shed instead of a balanced mind; the priority shown a paying child over a praying child, can make boards o í admissions seem, at times, to be boards 35

Like it or not, yeshiva education on even a modest scale is a complex and massive business.

The educator and the layman must understand in advance the limits of the authority granted to the board.

Confidence in the principal and respect for his judgement must derive from his record of achieve­ ment, his total dedication to, and concern for his students, and his cordial relationship with parents, hoard, and community.

of rejection. It is the totality of the child that should be consi­ dered by the boards of admissions. Preference must be given to the child who has the potential, the child who is able, though his family be poor. Our Sages, long ago, exhorted: 'Take heed of the children of the poor, for from them shall come the Torah scholars." For boards of admissions to turn away any serious applicant without taking all these facts into consideration is an unpardonable sin.

History and the Beis Din Shel Maalah will judge harshly those boards of admissions who have rejected students of great potential for lack of tuition fees. Therefore, the suggestions, instincts, and recommendations of principals are crucial in the area of recruitment. It is the principal who has the keenest insight into the young neshomo, and who can best determine the creative energy that can be developed and explored in a Jewish child. It is an area which calls for the closest co-operation — and greatest delicacy and discretion — between principal and laymen.

The most difficult question is, how does one go about creat­ ing an effective working unit, where educational and lay lead­ ers work in unison for the welfare of the Jewish student for the development of a wholesome, vigorous, aggressive Torah per­ sonality? Creating this harmony is the newest and most demanding responsibility of the educational leader, the chie£ executive of the yeshiva.

The day-school principal must have talents and abilities that embrace every facet of the educational picture, from bus sche­ dules to balance sheets. But he must also realize that he cannot do it all alone. It is, therefore, vital for the principal to clearly define, in advance, the roles, functions, and responsibilites of each organ of the school's body, as well as his own professional prerogatives.

How can the principal command the necessary degree of trust and confidence from the community to be granted the authority to make these decisions? Through the strength of his character and the depth of his dedication as much as his educational ability and experience. Confidence in the principal and respect for his judgement must derive from his record of achievement, his total dedication to, and concern for his stu­ dents, and his cordial relationship with parents, board, and community. Mutual respect and understanding, constant com­ munication, open discussion, and good rapport among the administrators, students, parents, and boards are indispensa­ ble ingredients to the long term success of any school or principal, and it is the principal's responsibility to maintain that climate for success.

The wise educator knows well the people who make up the boards and the parent body and command their respect. The 36

men and women volunteering their services to our yeshivos are well-meaning and dedicated, with the genuine interests of the yeshiva at heart. Certainly, they want what is best for their children. But their good will and enthusiasm requires the guidance and control of the principal. Periodic seminars and P.T.A. meetings on religious and educational issues make excellent platforms from which the principal may present his views, philosophy and goals for the yeshiva. These meetings of minds ran go a long way towards delineating the respective roles and responsibilities of the principal and the lay bodies in the minds of the members of his constituency.

The Need For National Standards It is an accepted practice in the secular world for professional organizations to establish ethics committees, whose task it is to review possible infractions of professional standards. Torah Umesorah/ the mother of the day-school movement, has never developed formal standards of minimum competence, or guidelines for behavioral practices by principals. Nor has it ever clarified the duties and standards expected of its yeshivos' teachers, administrators and governing boards. It is a difficult and delicate job, but now it must be faced, for the good of yeshivos and communities. Much unpleasantness, bitterness and hostility could be avoided if Torah Umesorah would estab­ lish such basic guidelines, for use by principals and communi­ ties alike.

Furthermore, it is the responsibility of Torah Umesorah to convene annual leadership conferences for governing boards of the day-schools throughout the country, in order that they too may exchange ideas, offer recommendations, delineate specific functions and define the duties of each governing body within the overall framework of the yeshiva day-school.

The difficult task of establishing community respect and rapport would remain for the principal of each yeshiva. But, at least, then both he and his constituency would have the benefit of a clear standard of reference, and a general framework within which they can work constructively for the benefit of the yeshiva.

In assessing the position of each contributor to public ser­ vice, Reb Shimon Ben Lokish said: "The people of Israel is likened to a vine. Its branches are the aristocracy, its clusters the scholars, its leaves its dedicated servants, its twigs those in Israel that are void of learning." Our Sages made the exalted position of the dedicated layman explicit when they said, "Let the clusters pray for the leaves, for were it not for the leaves, the clusters could not exist."

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It is a diff icult and delicate job, but now it must be faced, for the good of yeshivos and communities.

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39

Norman Lamm

Pluralism and Unity in the Orthodox Jewish Community For many years we have been discussing the problem of unity in our ever more heterogenous Jewish community, beset by religious, political, and social tensions. For reasons that will become apparent, it is no simple matter to relate directly all that has been said about the larger Jewish community to the Orthodox community and its inner dynamics.

The question of diversity within Orthodoxy theoretically admits of three different solutions. a) "Anything Goes." This is the position of maximum inclu­ siveness, one which makes up in liberalism what it forfeits in discipline. Essentially, it opts for the freedom for self­ definition of what and who is a bona fide Orthodox Jew. As a voluntary community, anyone may enter as freely as anyone may leave it. There are no objective standards for "membership," nor should there be any. The claim to be an Orthodox Je^ is self-validating.

I do not advocate this position and I know very few who do, and shall therefore not refer to it any further. b) "Only One Way." Unity, a great desideratum, is defined as uniformity. It is asserted that Halacha, by definition, has one answer to every question — the halachic answer.

Hence, diversity is essentially inimical to Orthodoxy. This view, which makes up in consistency for what it lacks in communal conscience, is the working assumption of a large part of the Opthodox community. Because of its espousal of homogeneity, it naturally leads to the estab­ lishment of clear lines of authority, since there must be some arbiters to enforce uniformity and settle disputes. c) A dialectic of discipline and diversity, a finite pluralism.

Because I accept the third approach, let me elaborate upon it by citing an interpretation by Rav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of what was then Palestine, of the talmudic passage (Beraishis 64a) that "scholars of the Torah increase peace in the world."

There are those who, in their quest for peace and harmony, are impatient with scholars. The latter, in exercising their autonomous intelligence, usually come to different conclu­ sions from each other. This leads to disputes, controversies, and arguments, and is thus inhospitable to peace.

But this is a fallacy. Shalom really means not uniformity, a monotonous or monochromatic condition, but the harmony of a complex of elements in which each retains its own singularity and cherishes its differentness. Even if some seem superfluous 41

Shalom really means not unifor­ mity, a monotonous o r,monochro­ matic condition, but the harmony of a complex of elements in which each retains its own singularity and cherishes its differentness.

Norman Lamm is the President of Yeshiva University and a frequent contributor to the pages of Jewish Life.

or mutually exclusive, they contribute to the whole. Like a physical building, the structure of peace requires a variety of different parts with disparate functions. This, and not same­ ness, is the essence of shalom, peace. Hence, "Scholars of the Torah increase peace in the world." (v. Olat Re'iyah, I, 330-331 in greater detail.) This accords with the general holism or harmonistic philosophy characteristic of Rav Kook which derives, in large measure, from his Kabbalistic background.

What we have here is a homiletical exposition of pluralism and unity in the Orthodox Jewish community (as well as in society at large). It is a rejection of the idea that Halacha is unequivocal and univocal in its decisions. It affirms both the complexity and hence the dynamism in Halacha — and, by extension, of meta-halachic or philosophic judgments. Under the proper conditions, all can coexist within one framework, even if occasionally the differences amongst them appear to be mutually exclusive.

My approach to the problem, then, is to proceed from an examination of the nature of halachic decisions, and then to draw the consequences for our social-communal problem.

Because we are dealing with a community that has, as its distinctive feature, the commitment to Halacha, I believe this method is valid.

Is, then, Halacha monistic or pluralistic? Does it give one and only one solution to every problem, such that all other answers are false; or does it permit a multiplicity of valid answers?

Time does not permit me to elaborate on this in great detail. I shall only make a few brief remarks and refer those who may be interested in a more extensive analysis to my article in the forthcoming issue (the first ever) of the Cardozo Law Review.

Essentially, there are some medieval Talmudists (Rishonim) who incline to a monistic view of Halacha; there is only one correct decision, and the laws of the Halacha are intrinsic and ontological. The author of the Chinnuch and Rav Yehuda Halevi may be included in this group.

A far larger number of Rishonim, however, hold a pluralistic view of Halacha: it is possible to have more than a single valid solution; "halachic truth" is not necessarily identical with abso­ lute divine truth; and Halacha is therefore extrinsic and exis­ tential. The locus classicus for this view is a well known Talmudic passage , which relates that the Sages can, by majority vote, establish a halachah against the "divine voice." Similarly, Rav held that membership in the Sanhedrin required of a candidate to demonstrate in 150 different ways that a sheretz — a "crawling thing" which is explicitly considered "unclean" in the Torah — is clean or pure. This implies more than intellec­ tual agility, but an awareness of the nominalist character of the Halacha, and its basic pluralism. Later authority for such a point of view includes such luminaries as Reb Shlomo Luria, 42

Reb Aryeh Cohen (author of Ketzos ha-Choshen), and our own Rabbi Moshe Feinstein. This is a form of legal positivism that has a long chain of support by a majority of talmudic sages throughout the ages.

The essential pluralism in the very heart of Halacha is reflected in the realm of theology. One need not indulge in demonstrative knowledgeability to prove that there existed, all throughout Jewish history, a large variety of philosophical attitudes about whom Jewish history itself proclaimed, "both these and these are the words of the living G-d." The thoughtpatterns, as well as life styles, of Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the Kabbalists and the philosophers, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, all showed a rich diversity at the same time that they were linked in an unquestioned unity. The two — unity and diver­ sity — are obviously not mutually exclusive terms, even though there were those contemporaries to these differences who may have considered them as such.

With this background, I now move back to our own arena, that of our present-day Orthodox Jewish community.

A pluralistic yet unified Orthodox Jewish community is one in which all its members, personal and institutional, accept Torah, especially in its halachic commitment, and yet respect each other's singularity and differences in interpretation and style. It means that the halachic principle predominates, and yet one may be Agudah or Mizrachi; Satmar or Skver or Lubavitch; Lakewood Yeshiva or Yeshivat Hesder or Yeshiva University; Hasid or Mitnaged or Hirschian or Kookian. It means that a sense of mutual respect, tolerance, and friendship must prevail — without blurring differences or diluting strongly held views.

Unfortunately, such a communal Paradise does not exist.

Maybe by the nature of things it cannot and has not ever existed as fully as I described it. I am pleased that, to some extent, a microcosm of such a viable pluralistic community exists at the school which I head. While the majority of stu­ dents may incline in one direction, there is a commendable openness to competing points of view and styles and manners.

But I fear that with Orthodoxy's well-publicized move to the Right — which I hail, admire, and applaud insofar as it presages more thorough study, greater commitment to piety, and more punctilious observance of both ritual and ethical laws ^ there have emerged concomitant phenomena that are negative and disturbing and even destructive. The pressure for a monolithic Orthodox community is greater than ever. And it is not healthy.

I hesitate to engage in a recitation of the instances of bigotry and shallow-mindedness that afflict us. We all know of them either by hearing about them or by actually experiencing them — and our heart aches. Little self-contained clumps of self-

There existed, all throughout Jew ­ ish history, a large variety of phi­ losophical attitudes about whom Jewish history itself proclaimed, "both these and these are the words of the living G-d."

The pressure for a monolithic Orthodox community is greater than ever. And it is not healthy.

43

There are even those who have set themselves up as censors of the Rishonim: Ibn Ezra is nonKosher; Seforno usually unaccep­ table; Maimonides - sometimes good, often dangerous; Abarbanel - usable, except where he may cor­ rupt young, innocent minds!

This constant constriction of the community is clearly catastrophic.

It is like peeling an o n ion — you discard layer after layer until you are left with nothing.

44

righteous super-piety come into being, each specializing in condemning and attacking some phantasmagoric heretic: those who celebrate Yom Ha'atzma'ut; those who build an Eruv in Manhattan or Brooklyn or wherever; those who may not eat "glatt" meat or drink Halav Yisrael; and certainly, those who take anything but a grudging attitude to higher secular education. There are even those whd have set themselves up as censors of the Rishonim: Ibn Ezra is non-Kosher; Seforno usu­ ally unacceptable; Maimonides -sometimes good, often dan­ gerous; Abarbanel - usable, except where he may corrupt young, innocent minds!

I refuse to accept that such totalitarian, authoritarian nar­ rowness is the proper way of Torah, the Torah "whose ways are the ways of pleasantness." I refuse to accept the proposi­ tion that piety can flourish only in closed minds, and that Judaism, to be authentic, must be intolerant. Were that true, then we should have to concede that the late Professor Arnold Toynbee was right in his fulminations against Judaism.

But I do not believe any of us is ready to make such conces­ sions. More devoutness — certainly; more bigotry — certainly not. Aggressiveness — yes; offensiveness — no.

As we keep on reading people out of the Orthodox commun­ ity, we will weaken it to the point of destruction. No one is immune from this ir» not the Rabbinical Council of America or Yeshiva University; not the Iggud Harabbanim or Agudas Harabbanim; not Lubavitch or Lakewood; not even Satmar.

This constant constriction of the community is clearly catas­ trophic. It is like peeling an onion — you discard layer after layer until you are left with nothing. After you exclude those who are pro-secular education and pro-Israel and pro-Eruv and pro-Agudah, and even pro-Satmar — what is left?

However, I would not want my words to be construed as an appeal for the kind of pluralism which would benefit only one end of the religious spectrum. Not so. We must never underes­ timate the significance and value of those to the right or the left of us, no matter where we stand as individuals. Before we condemn and read out of the camp anyone to our Left, or denigrate anyone to our Right as fanatic, remember that the same appelation and process can be applied to us by those on either side of us.

However, we must yet answer one basic question with regard to my major thesis, that a pluralistic Orthodox com­ munity, embracing both the principles of unity and diversity, is possible. The question is: How? What is to determine who is within and who is without the pale? How can we prevent a tolerant attitude from deteriorating into a spineless indisci­ pline whereby legitimacy is conferred upon people or groups simply by the act of self-definition as Orthodox? Unless plural-

ism is misconstrued as chaos, as simple lack of structure, we must seek some principle of selection by which to establish communal coherence.

In response, I urge that we not identify issues, but rather process. Precedent for this is the view of Raavad (Rav Abraham Ibn Daud) in his critique of Maimonides (Code, Hilchos Teshuvah, ch. 3). When the latter classifies as a (heretic) the corporealist, the former comments that gedolim ve'tovim mimenu ("greater and better than he") subscribed to the view that the Creator possesses physical attributes. This has always been a troublesome passage, for obvious reasons: Even Maimonides' severest critic can hardly be expected to indulge in such hostile hyperbole as to consider primitive corporealists "greater and better than he!" Many have attempted to soften the blow. The Hazon Ish emends mimenu to read me'amenu, "from our people:" Rav Meir Simhah of Dvinsk translates mimenu as "from amongst us" rather than as "than him." The head of Jews' College in London, Rabbi Nachum Rabinowitch, has disco­ vered a manuscript in which the offending word mimenu is missing.

But a completely different version of the Raavad's gloss is cited in the Ikkarim of Rav Joseph Albo. And it is that methodo­ logical principle which I would like to apply to our theme.

According to this version of the Raavad, the term Min is germane to one who arrives at his heterodox conclusion by appealing to sources outside of Torah. If one is influenced by Greek philosophy or paganism or Gnosticism or Christianity or whatever, and accepts that view over and against a clearly enunciated view of Torah, that indeed is halachically definable as heresy. But if one is led to his erroneous conclusion by his interpretation of Scripture, by having misread a verse or mis­ interpreted a passage of the Talmud, such a person may be in error, but he may by no means be condemned as a heretic and he may not be excluded from the community of the House of Israel. The issue per seis secondary to the process.

I submit that this principle may be used to determine the parameters of a pluralistic Orthodox Jewish community.

If one were to seek to advance an anti-halachic position, and legitimate it by invoking either science or psychology or the Zeitgeist, such a person is, in this open and democratic society, free to advocate his position. But he is not morally at liberty to If there are those who validate their claim membership in the Orthodox Jewish community, those positions by appealing to the sacred loyal to the tradition in its wholeness. But if there are those sources of the Torah tradition, who validate their positions by appealing to the sacred sources then no matter how much we may of the Torah tradition, then no matter how much we may disagree with the conclusions we have no moral right to exclude such disagree with the conclusions we have no moral right to persons from the community of exclude such persons from the community of Halachic Jewry. Halachic Jewry.

45

W e sh a ll have to proceed, above all, by a ffo rd in g the sam e courtesy to others that we d em a n d fo r o u r ­ selves,

by

p ra cticin g

w hat

we

preach, at the sa m e tim e that we assert o u r view rigo ro u sly .

This is not, of course, a fool-proof method; what is? But it is, I believe, a valuable means of containing the unity-diversity tension and of establishing what constitutes a proper pluralis­ tic Orthodox community.

For a variety of reasons, it is those associated with Yeshiva University, Rabbinical Council of America, the Orthodox Union, and similar organizations, who have most often been the targets for those whose vision of the community is much more restrictive and monistic. We know full well that we will not gain acceptability by defensiveness or self-denigration. We must have the courage of our convictions, the moral strength to proclaim our point of view with integrity, secure in the knowledge that we represent at least one of the "seventy facets of Torah," no less valid or legitimate than the other sixty-nine.

Without this self-confidence, we are bound to fade away, and with it will disappear any hope for a rational, dedicated, vital, pluralistic Orthodoxy.

The Secretary of Transportation, Brock Adams, recently exhorted the auto-moguls of Detroit, "re-invent the automo­ bile!" If we want the kind of society I have described, we must, in a manner of speaking, "re-invent" the Orthodox Jewish community — and if not the community, then at least our relationship to it.

We must be articulate, firm, and cogent in advancing our own views and perceptions as Orthodox Jews — whether they concern our relationship with Israel, with the academic world, with the wider Jewish community, with society at large. We must not be intimidated. But we shall have to proceed, above all, by affording the same courtesy to others that we demand for ourselves, by practicing what we preach, at the same time that we assert our view rigorously. Without in the least yield­ ing, we must answer calumny with kindness, denunciation with decorousness, denigration with dignity. "The soft answer turneth away wrath," as Proverbs taught.

I do not think that this is a pollyanish dream. There cores of sane, clear, broad-minded outlook in the rest of the com­ munity. If we persist in the manner I suggested, we will encourage them. I was most heartened by a recent (May 23) JTA report that one of our eminent Geiolim, Rabbi Yaakov Kaminetzky, enunciated essentially the same position that I have been advocating: that "we must respect our differences with each other"; that "Orthodoxy is not a monolith"; and that "diversity is the strength of Orthodoxy." I fully subscribe to his remarks that "our efficacy lies in our unity under the Torah," and that "the various shades of our backgrounds and our life-styles are only as meaningful as is our allegiance to Torah." That this policy was proclaimed in an address at a convention of Agudath Israel is a salutary sign.

46

It is not too late to begin. For if we cannot learn to respect each other, and our differences, within the Orthodox com­ munity, how can we expect to do so within the larger Jewish community? And if we Jews, such a tiny minority of mankind, cannot achieve a modicum of harmony, what hope is there for mankind?

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Shlomo Riskin

The Model Yeshiva: A Dream Awaiting Fulfillment Seven years have passed since Pinchos Bak and I spent a day cruising on a boat from Vancouver to Victoria, British Colum­ bia, formulating the image of a secondary school, a Mesivta, which we hoped would make a significant contribution to Jewish education. We spoke intensely, quickly, with the excite­ ment of two people who had been thinking about an idea independently for many years and finally had the opportunity of expressing in words what until now had been locked in our minds. We often broke into each other's statements, surprised and elated that we could think so alike, that our separate dreams were really one dream, that an opportunity to realize that dream was at last beckoning.

Five years have passed since we opened a school of twenty students — twelve freshmen and eight sophomores — with a Shacharis service at the Riverdale Jewish Center. We smiled at each other tremulously, in happiness and trepidation, pleased that idea had shaped reality, dream had become vision, yet fully aware of the awesome challenge and responsibility these twenty Jewish souls placed before us.

And two years have passed since that fateful Purim night when we danced together to the music of our Mesivta band with more than one hundred students. I looked into RavBak's eyes as he surveyed his dancing talmidim, as he reflected upon how many had become Bnai Torah and how many had a way to go to develop their potential intellectually and religiously. He constantly strove to discover the right combination which would unlock the unique spiritual resources present in each student. He had enormous respect for each one's personal capacity/ and he yearned to develop concepts and expressions of menschlichkeit even as he desired to nurture ability to concep­ tualize a dispute between the Rambam and the Ra'avad. He saw no fundamental conflict between the religious and secular: all of knowledge reflects Divine wisdom, and all of one's actions must be for the sake of Heaven., He himself gave a gemara shiur in the morning and a course in contemporary English literature in the afternoon, with a quick round of football with the bochrim during lunch, and an after-school photography session for those working on our first year-book.

No human pursuit was alien to him, and every student was significant to him, each having a legitimate area in which to excel.

Every student was significant to him, each one feeling he had a legitimate area in which to excel

Rabbi Shlomo Rislcin, of M anhat­ tan s Lincoln Square Synagogue, is one of the most renowned and successful educators and leaders of the American Orthodox com­ munity, having brought large numbers of Jewish youth back to the fold of Torah and Klal Yisroel.

49

He was much loved, respected, emulated; and he had good reason to be pleased with his disciples. It was, after all, his charisma, vitality, and effervescent spirit with which the Mesivta pulsated, especially on Purim night; reflected in the turbulence of the Purim mood was the turbulence of adoles­ cence; in the upward jumping movement of the Purim dance was the idealistic striving, the inestimable potential of the adolescent youth; in the fervent words of the Purim song was the love of Torah and Israel.

And suddenly everything came to an abrupt halt. Songs of joy turned into cries of anguish, joyous laughter became agonized fear, "You shall rejoice in your festival" was transformed into "From the depths do I call unto G-d," and one-hundred youngsters were changed to mature, sober adults, as Rav Bak fell to the floor of the Beis Midrash, and an era came to a close in the history of Mesivta Ohr Torah.

What were the unique curricular elements which Rav Bak strove to inculcate within the Mesivta which caused it to attain almost instantaneous institutional success within the Ameri­ can Jewish scene? What was the special educational philo­ sophy upon which Mesivta Ohr Torah was founded, the dream we dreamed together from Vancouver to Riverdale?

Talmud, Torah Sheba al Peh, is the foundation of a Jewish studies curriculum. It is the T almud, after all, which expresses the uniquely Jewish institutions which mark our singular life­ style, from the Shabbos and Yom Tov to employer-employee relationships. Since we are the heirs of Rabbinic Judaism, a proper understanding of Judaism is only possible if one attains the ability to swim easily in the sea of Talmud. But rarely is the student actually taught proper methodology by receiving the necessary linguistic and analytic tools to enable him to study a blatt Gemara and its commentaries by himself. Many a Rosh Mesivta tends to give a highly original shiur above the heads of his students, and, as a consequence, the rebbe is generally answering his questions in the text rather than those of his students. The yeshiva curriculum does not provide a logical and orderly system by means of which the student would gradually develop from skill to skill, and generally the student does not learn to trace a Halachah from the Talmud backwards to the Chumash and forward to the Shulchan Aruch. Thus the fact that the Talmud is the bridge between revelation and contem­ porary practice is never made clear, and the student is often confused as to the significance of his studies.

The ethical and religious principles underlying the vigorous analysis of our Sages, the philosophy behind the ritual which emanates from the Tractate Shabbos, the concepts of human sensitivity and sexual morality which are the basis o f Kiddushin, the concern for the rights of the individual and the importance

Thus the fact that the Talmud is the bridge between revelation and contemporary practice is never made clear , and the student is often confused as to the significance of his studies.

50

of fair business practices which are the underlying assump­ tions of Baba Metzia — are rarely, if ever, expressed in the classroom. Most important of all, Talmud study is hardly ever taught as a search for closeness to G-d and an understanding of His Will. If, indeed, Torah is the revealed wisdom of the Almighty, and the Ineffable one and His wisdom are indissolu­ ble, then all of Torah learning is an intellectual embrace of the Divine. Only by emphasizing each of these elements, and training rabbeim to impart these principles with skill, sensitiv­ ity, and understanding, can we inspire our students with the excitement and significance of Gemara learning.

And Talmud — although crucial for a proper understanding of the development of normative Judaism and the most effec­ tive key to continued self-study throughout one's life — is not the only significant branch of Torah study. Mishnah provides the breadth and scope of knowledge which is necessary back­ ground for more profound learning of Gemara and commentar­ ies. The Chumash, especially with the commentaries of Rashi and Ramban, adds the intellectual and theological matrix from which all other learning as well as religious attitudes must develop. And the proper study of Rashi and Ramban requires as much training in methodology as does the study of Tosafos and other Rishonim.

Moreover, many of our young people are disappointed and frustrated by the parochial vision in many Yeshivos. Our most creative and poetic souls are defecting from the ranks because they do not discover in our yeshiva curriculum a proper vehicle for their emotional and religious expression. The Messianic sweep of Isaiah, the Divine love of Song of Songs, the moral indignation of Amos, the intellectual frustration and even skepticism of Koheles, the pageantry and homiletic wisdom of the Agadah, are all closed books to most of our students. Indeed, to some, the Prophet Micah sounds like a Reform rabbi. A proper exposure to the Written Torah would provide a univer­ sal dimension as well as balm to the searching souls of many of our students. An understanding of the forces in Jewish history which gave rise to significant movements, a proper study of great Jewish personalities from Reb Yochanan ben Zakkai to the Chofetz Chaim, would give religious inspiration as well as intellectual understanding the the "finger of G-d" which directs the destiny of our people in each generation. Courses which expose the student to texts of Mussar and Chassidus, and to the poetry of religious ecstasy, will enable the student to glimpse the rich panoply of concerns which has comprised the traditional world of Torah throughout the generations.

And if the intellectual scope of the student is to be broadened and deepened, secular studies must be viewed as an extension of Torah learning, as a valid means of sharpening one's grasp

Talmud study is hardly ever taught as a search for closeness to G-d and an understanding of His W ill.

O ur most creative and poetic souls are defecting from the ranks because they do not discover in our yeshiva curriculum a proper vehi­ cle for their emotional and reli­ gious expression.

51

The Yeshiva High School — even those which legitimately boast of winning contests in Torah and M erit Scholarships in scholastic competitions — imparts informa­ tion but often fails to communicate values.

of the Divine. The two blessings preceding the Shema — the acceptance of the yoke of Heavenly Kingship — prepare the individual by reminding him of the two accessible revelations: the natural world and the living Torah. Biology ought rein­ force for the student the muscle of creation, and physics con­ firm the unity behind the universe. Meaningful literature which deals with the problem of the adolescent — especially the adolescent Jew — in contemporary American society ought be part of the English curriculum; and an advanced Biology elective which deals with problems relating to abortion, Tay Sacks, DNA, time of death, etc. would open a student's eyes to the interpenetration of science and Halachah. Despite the ten­ sion which may often be discerned between the Torah and secular worlds — and this should not be glibly disposed of with easy cliches — the student must be gi^en the wherewithal to utilize his secular learning in the service of Torah wherever possible and to discard those secular values which are inimical to the Torah weltanschaung.

The most crucial element in the Yeshiva High School, how­ ever, goes beyond the area of curriculum. The crisis in secular education, so cogently expressed by contemporary educators, may be defined as the absence of purposeful direction despite academic attainment. If Viktor Frankel is correct in stating that the "will to meaning" is a far deeper drive in man than either the "will to pleasure" or the "will to power," then proper Torah education must provide purpose for a generation in search of meaning. Instead, the Yeshiva High School — even those which legitimately boast of winning contests in Torah and Merit Scholarships in scholastic competitions — imparts information but often fails to communicate values; emphas­ izes subject but sometimes neglects our religious goals and life-style; attempts to teach but rarely touch. Hence many of our graduates, when faced with the blandishments of an athe­ istic, hedonistic society either at a university or in a profes­ sional social milieu, are not quite certain, at best, why they ought maintain their religious commitment, and, at worst, become antagonistic and cynical towards it.

Ideally, the Yeshiva must be not only a center for learning but a center for living, as well. At this crucial stage in the youngster's development, when he is growing from child to adult, when he is searching for relationships outside of his family, each rebbe must serve as an additional parent to each student. Students, faculty and administration must form a cohesive community of Torah and mitzvos. They must pray together; and spend an occasional Shabbos and Yom Tov together with Zemiros, and words of Torah which can give a spiritual uplift to student and rebbe alike. Sharing each other's joys and sorrows in halachic perspective; praying, learning, socializing

52

and questing together creates the atmosphere crucial to proper intellectual, religious and emotional development. A new niggun after davening or as part of a religious celebration can penetrate to the soul of many adolescents, and small chavrusos which work on individual personality traits can under­ sore the message of religious concern for sensitive ethical conduct. The family of each student must be made to feel a part of this process through special programs, inviting parents to study with their children and their children's educators topics of mutual and universal concern. In sum, the Yeshiva High School must become an extended family, an oasis of sanctity for each student, which will confirm and strengthen, by its unique intensity, the ideals he receives at home.

When the student begins to develop a sense of religious self-awareness and a relationship to his own Torah commun­ ity, he can begin to reach-out to the larger community sur­ rounding the yeshiva. Chesed must be an integral aspect of every Jew's religious development. And there is no greater antidote to cynicism than inculcating a desire to share one's commitment and bounty with others who are less fortunate.

Thus every student must be involved in a personal chesed pro­ ject: a weekly visit to a hospital or nursing home; leading an NCSY or local synagogue youth group for the non committed; tutoring a peer or an elementary school student; or setting up for the next meal at the yeshiva. School projects involving problems of the Jewish poor and aged; local standards of kashrus, the community mikveh and chevra kadishak, and work for Soviet Jewry can all add a practical dimension to academic studies. More important: it will inculcate within the conscious­ ness of the student a s6nse of communal responsibility and religious activism which has been the glory of our tradition throughout the ages. Only such an educational philosophy and program can inspire the kind of religious leadership for the next generation which is so sorely lacking in our own.

And finally, the Yeshiva High School student must develop ties with Eretz Yisrael, and the Torah institutions within it.

After a two-thousand year long diaspora, and from the very depths of Auschwitz and Treblinka, a Jewish State has been reborn pregnant with the promise of Divine Redemption. The heroism and commitment displayed by the students — con­ temporaries of many of our High School seniors — of Yeshivot Hesder; the anti-materialism of the religious kibbutzim; the rich variety and unprecedented growth of Israeli yeshivos catering to developing Torah scholars as well as baalei-tshuvah, can only serve to enhance the potential idealism in our students.

Exposing students to Judaism outside of New York and throughout America and the budding Torah institutions

When the student begins to develop a sense of religious self-awareness and a relationship to his own Torah community, he can begin to reach-out to the larger community.

53

developing in such unlikely places as Santa Clara, California and Phoenix, Arizona; taking students to the once great Jew­ ish Centers of Europe and showing them visually the destruc­ tion wrought; planning a visit to the Soviet Union where heroic acts of self sacrifice are daily occurences for countless Jews; spending a summmer in Israel with learning, working and guided touring, can all be creative alternatives to the humdrum, non-productive summer camp excursion which has become so commonplace for the average yeshiva high school student. Such summer experiences can significantly contribute to the intellectual and religious growth of the indi­ vidual students, and may help ignite the spark which will commit him to Torah and Israel for the rest of his life. In sum, we must plumb the depths of our creative resources, in order to develop inspired young people who are committed to Torah study and the future of the Jewish people. It is they who hold the key to the quality of our survival.

Such was the dream, the purpose for the creation of Mesivta Ohr Torah. As yet, it is only an ideal, and the vision has yet to be realized. And perhaps the essence of any ideal in this world of imperfection is the very striving for fulfillment, the attempt to overcome each obstacle. But despite the hardships — and the most tragic hardship of all, the loss of the great architect of the dream "who is not, for he was taken by the Lord" — Rav Bak's greatest legacy remains the large number of students who were touched, and students who will be touched, by his educational vision.

4 O rthodox couples tell their stories about living in Israel.

54

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55

Biblical And Talmudic Medicine

Julius Preuss,

Biblical And Talmudic Medicine Translated and edited by Fred Rosner, M.D., Sanhed­ rin Press (a division of Hebrew Publishing Co.), New York and London,

1978, 652 pp. $35.00.

56

Unlike medieval Christian Canon Law, Judaism held the medical profession in great esteem. Whereas the medieval clergy were often forbidden to practice medicine or surgery, we find a long line of rabbi-physicians from Talmudic times till long after the Middle Ages. Maimonides, for instance, dedi­ cated a special section to hygiene and preventive medicine in his code, the Mishneh Torah ( ilchD H eos, chapter IV Despite the vast literature on the various aspects of the history of Jewish medicine written during the last three cen­ turies, it must be pointed out that most of these contributions were either written by scholars who were not physicians, or by physicians who lacked the linguistic background indispen­ sable for a knowledge of Talmudic literature. The world of scholarship, therefore, welcomed Julius Preuss' BiblischTalmudische Medizin as an event of historic magnitude. An accomplished practicing physician by profession, Julius Preuss (1861-1913), an Orthodox Jew, who received a thorough training in Talmudic literature and classical philology, was most equipped to undertake this most ambitious task.

The original German edition of this work, which went through five editions (1911, 1921, 1923, 1969, 1971), became the standard reference work on Bible and Talmudic medicine and is still unsurpassed for its lucid style, comprehensiveness in scope and critical approach. This work is arranged under eighteen main subject headings of the medical art: the physi­ cian and other personnel; the parts of the body and their functions (anatomy and physiology); illness and its healing (general pathology and therapy); sicknesses and their treat­ ment (special pathology and therapy); injuries and malforma­ tions (surgery); diseases of the eyes (opthamology); dentistry; diseases of the ears (otology); disorders of the nose; neurologi­ cal disorders; mental disorders; skin diseases; gynecology; obstetrics; materia medica; legal medicine; regimen of health; dietetics. A fourteen page bibliography on Biblical and Tal­ mudic medicine closes this exhaustive work.

One is startled by the erudition of the author, as displayed by the over 7,770 footnotes which accompany this work.

During the last four decades, Jewish scholarship shifted from the German to the English language. We, therefore, welcome Dr. Rosner's gigantic feat, which made available Preuss' classic work to the scholarly world. A physician by practice, Dr. Rosner, a native of Berlin (1935) who received his Jewish and general education in the United States upon his emigration to these shores, has dedicated his life to the history of Jewish medicine, in general, and Maimonidean medicine, in particular. His translation into English of Maimonides' medi-

Ceil 3nd other works is 3 tribute to his indcfstigsblc commitment to Jewish scholarship. Both he and the publisher are to be congratulated for making available Preuss'immortal heritage to the English speaking world in a most attractive appearance.

the librarian of the University.

Jacob I. Dienstag

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57

Library ofY eshiva

On Borough Park To the Editor: As a former Borough Park resident now living in Flatbush, I read with great interest Dr. Schick's thumbnail sketch of my former, and to an increasing extent — current — neighbor­ hood. While his article reflects his usual perspicacity and good sense, his Ahavas Yisrael may have kept him from taking on a question which he, as a social scientist, might have been expected to.

He remarks: The influence of class is evident in dress and housing patternsEven while doing the ordinary chores, such as shopping, Chassidic women wear their finest clothing — to the amusement of some. The snickerers do not appre­ ciate that there are few overt ways for middle-class Chassidim to enjoy the benefits of their class positionThe emphasis on expensive home furnishing is, once more, an aspect of middle-class behavior. For them 'conspicuous consumption' is determined by parochial and insular standards — not by the norms and styles of the larger society.

But this is the crux of the matter. For these "norms and styles," however distorted, reflect a vision of American upper middle-class values to which these middle-class Chassidim (and not only them!) aspire. This pattern, known both to sociological and historical Jewish experience, is expressed by the pithy Yiddish saying: viy skriselt zich, azoy yidelt es zich (Jews ape Gentiles). Dr. Schick does not mention the large sums spent on catering "affairs", perhaps because this is a community-wide disease, (but so, too, is the breakfront and chandelier syndrome); this, too, is symptomatic of the same pattern, which is a variant of the nouveau riche life-style found elsewhere in American society. But it is more to be deplored when found among Jews who ought to know better. I need not deliver a homily on the undesireable aspects of this conspicu­ ous consumption, since others more qualified have done so. It is Jewish tradition which should guard us against conforming to "the almost inviolable rules of class behavior which govern so much of modern life."

Yaakov Elman Brooklyn, N.Y.

As this issue is being prepared for the press, Dr. Schick is on a visit to Eretz Yisrael. Should he care to comment on Mr. Elman's letter, his response will appear in a future issue.

58

Princeton University: Non-Letters To The Editor Our plea in our Winter 1979 issue for letters to the editor went largely unheeded. There was however, a strong negative response to Rabbi Greenes' response to a letter from a Prin­ ceton University alumnus advising prospective students on how to hide their Jewish identity in order to be admitted to his own alma mater. We had angry telephone calls, and less angry to but highly critical letters, from people associated with Prin­ ceton — none of whom would speak or write for publication.

The callers and writers made this point in common: Yes it was true that Princeton had been one of the worst offenders in denying admission to Jewish applicants, but this was no longer the case, and for the past decade, the University had made a special effort to recruit Jewish students. It was forcefully argued that our re-printing the letter written by Arthur Cooper, Princeton '74, was a set-back to efforts to attract more Jewish students to Princeton, and I was reminded that there is a Kosher Dining Club at the University, and that the University has been making a special effort to inform the Jewish community of its desire to enroll Jewish students. As a member of the Orthodox community, I need hardly be reminded of Princeton's Kosher Dining Club: it has been quite well publicized — and rightly so. But as an editor, bombarded each day by piles of releases vying for press coverage, Princet­ on's out-reach for Jewish students came as news to me. (It may be that they preferred word-of-mouth publicity, but, in any case, the news did not reach me.)

While contemplating all of the above, I became aware of a book recently published called the Half-Opened Door / Discrimina­ tion and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 by Marcia Graham Synnott (Greenwood Press/Westport, Con­ necticut, 1979/$23.95). The author, a professor of History at the University of South Carolina, devotes an entire section to Princeton's efforts to first exclude Jews from admission, and, when they were admitted, to exclude them from the dining clubs which were an integral part of the social fabric of the college campus. Professor Synnott dispassionately dismisses the "insistent denial" by a Princeton dean of a charge that "Princeton maintains a tight Jewish quota of less than 4 per­ cent of its enrollment," when he categorically declared in 1948 that "We've never had a quota system, we don't have a quota system, we never will have a quota system." "More Jews did begin to enroll in 1948," Synnott writes, and "by 1963 there were 'nearly 400 Jewish students — a commonly accepted figure — on the campus,' or about 100 per class. In spite of this 59

increase, Princeton, if no longer considered overtly antiSemitic, was still held in suspicion by some Jewish students. To overcome its past reputation, Princeton opened a kosher kit­ chen in 1971, and began its first classes in modern Hebrew, with outside funding provided for five years by the "Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture," an ironic twist, since the Foundation itself is being funded by German reparation pay­ ments to Jews.

In a foot-note to the above-quoted passage Professor Synnott observes: A university s once deserved anti-Semitic reputation may persist years after the institution has begun to change. In 1972 and 1973, Arthur B. Cooper '74 formally complained to B'nai Brith, the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights, the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and the University Council Judicial Committee about the massive institutional Jew-hatred which infests Princeton. College Dean Neil L. Rudenstine's denial of the existence of any restrictive Jewish quota was sustained by both the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith and the New Jersey Division of Civil Rights I am now told that there are 1,000 Jewish students at Prin­ ceton. When I inquired as to what happens to the Jewish student who applies for admission after 1,000 have already been admitted, I received what I can only characterize as a garbled response.

All this being said, what prompted Rabbi Greenes to write as he did — and what prompted the editor to print it — was not dealt with in the several responses. What is the price a Jew pays for admission to an institution which resents his presence — and is it worth the price? Obviously, those who have gained admission to Princeton have a different answer to those ques­ tions than my own, and our pages are open for those who wish to differ. I have solicited letters or an article which would state that case.

For the sake of Truth, which should be the common pursuit of those dedicated to Torah and those dedicated to higher education, there is yet another question. Put the case that "the half-opened door" is now completely open, and that, in theory, the Princeton University student body can become twenty percent Jewish, fifty percent — and yet more: What could this mean to Princeton University?

I do not take lightly the charge that our failure to note editorially that the climate at Princeton has changed for the better, caused pain to those who have been working to make such changes. We should have checked the date of the letter we published, and we regret not having done so. Nevertheless, much of history can be painful, as academics must surely understand. But no one has proposed that history not be written if it causes pain. I refer the indignant callers and 60

writers to Professor Synnott, who has re-opened the ques­ tion, but I urge that they be more reserved and more tactful in stating their complaints.

We look forward to calmly reasoned letters on the subject.

Yaakov Jacobs

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61

Chaim Feinberg

Studying The Talmud B'rachos In Honor of Rabbi Shelomoh Danziger

Far into the star-crowned night I walk the Talmud's royal gardens.

"All beauty shines out of Zion", the Talmud teaches.

The Talmud is a diamond unravelling the innermost secret of light.

Rich spices fill the night air; leaning from this page of B'rachos ever-young jasmine trees open their ageless petals,# delicate as a child's eyelids: the jasmine trees of Rabbi Giddal teach us thankfulness, how to praise the Lord for spring fragrance.

Far past midnight's signpost I decipher the serpentine paths of wisdom.

Kings, mountains, stars, all roads come together here.

Slowly I become acquainted with creation, a bride who shyly unfolds.

Is it spring outside?

Is the moon pouring its amber?

The watch hands whirling forward or back?

One thing I do know: this white surf of pages is the measureless edge of something far deeper than sea.

JEWISH LIFE A Statem ent of Purposes ... In the pages of Jewish Life we will share with you insights into the Jewish past as they clarify the Jewish present, and as they help us to see into the future. We will examine the Jewish present in the light of the past, and in the light of what must be our future aspirations. We will look into the future, not with any mystical powers—there are few Jews today who lay claim to such powers—but with the techniques made available to us by the Jewish mind and the Jewish heart refined by Torah learning and historical Jewish experience . ... Jewish Life will continue to be a platform for the expression of diverse points of view in the American Torah commun­ ity. Here these criteria alone will gain admittance to the minds of our readers: a commitment to Jewish values, and an articulate expression of a point of view on matters of interest and deep concern to other committed Jews. Surely not all readers will agree |with our application of these criteria—and we earnestly look forward to hearing from them. Writing is a mystique I hope to explore in these pages, particularly as it relates to the articulation and in­ terpretation of Torah values and concepts. And reading too is a mystique: but the two can function only in unison... ... Most people who read are aware of the difficulties of trans­ lating from one language into another. When a judge an­ grily said to a Yiddish interpreter that there must be an English word that means "shofar," the reply was "it's a horn." When asked why he didn't say so to begin with, the interpreter shrugged his shoulders and said, "Because it's not a horn!" But few readers realize that all writing is in a sense "translation/' particularly when we try to express Torah concepts in any language other than Hebrew.

All such attempts must, therefore, by definition, fall short of their mark. It shall here be our objective to come as close to the mark as we can in stretching the English language to accommodate Torah categories and Torah concepts as Jews have in the past used other foreign tongues.

In these difficult tasks we solicit your help, your under­ standing, your patience—and your prayers.

Yaakov Jacobs

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