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THE ONLY JEWISH NEWSPAPER PRINTED IN MICHIGAN
Section
DETROIT, MICHIGAN, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1926
VOL. XXXI, NO. I
Two
THE SESQUICENTENNIAL AND THE AMERICAN JEWS
By RABBI LEON N. FRAM, Temple Beth El.
upon the authority of the Nov Testa-
queens come to his mansion to pay rounded the house in which lived the
able of the shofar and his son. You him homage. All the school children humble son of the shofar. The people ment. 'the English autocrats tried to
were very much disturbed. They exploit the piety of their subjects as a
are of course acquainted with the of America long to see him, and when
looked as though they were worried device by which to manacle and en-
shofar. It is his hoarse voice you hear they see him they want to kiss him.
about something. They seemed to slave them. It is paradoxical that in
in the temple every Rosh Hashanah,
They say that the son of the shofar need some word, some message to give the record of the gentle ministry of
or New Year. Now, the shofar, as once had a much sweeter voice than
them courage. The son of the shofar Jesus who disdained all the kingdoms
every one knows, is a native Palls- his father's. They say that people
remembered that before he left home of the earth and groped dreamily after
tinian, hut—did you know this?—he used to love to listen to his singing,
his old father had hung an ornament
kingdom of heaven, it is strange that
has a son who resides in America. but now his voice is cracked, and he
about his neck on which were inscribed in such a story prideful m o narchs
Yes, the aged Palestinian Shofar has doesn't use it any more.
certain words. "These words," father should have found sanction for their
a son who lives in Philadelphia. The
It all happened in this way. When had said to son, "are the only wealth very earthly ambitions. Yet certain
son of the shofar occupies a magnifi- the son of the shofar first came to your poor father can give you." As
passages in the New Testament did
cent mansion in the very heart of the
Philadelphia he was poor and un- he looked down upon the perturbed Tend themselves to the support of the
city of Philadelphia, and he is even
known, so he lived high up in a garret anxious crowd, the son of the shofar claim that kings ruled by "divine
more famous than his father. From and he made his living by singing to thought that his father's words were
right." There was the saying of
all the four corners of the earth peo-
the people on the street. One day in just the message that these people Jesus, "Render unto Caesar the things
ple come to Philadelphia just to see
July a great crowd of people sur- needed to hear. So he raised his clear that are Caesar's and unto Gal the
the son of the shofar. Princes and
sweet voice and sang them out.
things that are God's." This was in-
"Proclaim liberty throughout the terpreted to confer absolute power up-
land unto all the inhabitants thereof." on the Caesar, the kaiser, the czar or
These words electrified the people. the king. There was the statement of
All the worry and indecision were Paul in his letter to the Romans, "Let
gone from their faces. Instead their every soul be in subjection to the
eyes flashed with enthusiasm and they higher powers for there is no power
began to cheer for liberty. Yes, the but of God; and the powers that be
message of the shofar was just what are ordained of God. Therefore he
these people needed. Delighted to see that resisteth the power withstandeth
his father's words so heartily received, the ordinance of God." Confronted
the son of the shofar kept singing with this supposedly Christian sanc-
them over and over again, while the tion for a barbaric despotism, they
crowd kept on cheering. In his ex- that smarted under oppression in Eng-
citement he did not realize that he was land and America were at first be-
straining his voice too hard. All of a wildered and undecided. For the
sudden it cracked and he could sing lenders of the rebellion in England
no more, and he never sang again. But and America were not atheists like the
what did it matter? In the singing revolutionaries of France. They were
of one song his voice had inspired men deeply religious men and they believed
to the greatest achievement in the his- in the authority of the Bible. Then,
tory of the world. With the voice of guided, no doubt, by an unconscious
the son of the shofar in their ears, the impulse they began turning the pages
people marched forth from Phila- of the Old Testament and there they
delphia and did not come back until saw things that they had never noticed
they had won the battle for liberty. in the Bible before. In the Books of
And when they returned victorious to Judges, Samuel, and Kings they read
Philadelphia their first thought was how time after time the prophets of
to express their gratitude to the dis- Israel defied its kings and priests,
abled singer who had s.r strangely in- challenged the powers that me, and
spired America with a sweet song stirred the people to rebellion. And in
from Palestine. They took him out of the Book of Samuel they found a won-
his humble garret and placed him in derful chapter which tells how the
the magnificent mansion in which he tribes of Israel demand that Samuel,
now resides, and to which at this very their judge and priest, provide them a
time people are thronging to give him king, how Samuel resists their de-
birthday greetings.
mand and tries to dissuade them from
I have told you, my friends, the it. Ile tells them that to ask for a
parable of the shofar and his son. You
have already guessed it a application,
The Liberty Bell, which rang forth
from the belfry of a meeting-hall in
Philadelphia, when the Declaration of
Independence was signed 150 years
ago—the Liberty Bell is the child of
the shofar.
The words which are inscribed on
the bell are the very words in which
CHERRY
5040
the Bible defines the function of the
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shofar: to "proclaim liberty through-
EUCLID 2973
out the land and unto all the inhabi-
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tants thereof," to emancipate all who
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
were held in bondage, to give justice
to all who had been wronged. And
we shall see that the very document
of the American Declaration of Inde-
pendence, the signing of which was
signalized by the ringing of that bell,
had its source in that earlier th•ument
of bunion freedom—the Hebrew Bible.
Let me tell you, my friends, the par-
1
OSWALD LEITERT
Painting and Decorating
they turned to the story of the instru-
king means to reject God. Oliver characters of the Book of the Old
ment which used to call the tribes of
Cromwell's Puritan soldiers read this World. The people of New England
Israel together or democratic as-
chapter around their campfire and it called themselves the Israelites of sembly. The story of the shofar: "Ye
is
has
nothing
to
do,
of
rendered their attack upon the armies America. (
shall cause the sound of the shofar to
Washing- course, with the "Israelites' of Renton pass through the land, and ye shall
of Charles I irresistible.
ton's men read it in the snow-bound Harbor.) And they renamed Ohl 1:m1c- proclaim liberty throughout the land
ent:imminent at Valley Forge, and de- land, Egypt, the House of Bondage,
to all the inhabitants thereof."
terminal not to give up until the and the Atlantic Ocean which they had (Leviticus XX1-10). Yes, it was the
mules of George III. had been swept crossed safely in their flight from aged voice of the shofar that taught
from the land, The Bible was a tan- England they identified as the Red the Liberty Bell ring for the ages.
genius book for monarchs. We shall Sea George III was the pursuing
Hellenism vs. Hebraism.
never be able fully to estimate the Pharaoh panting to recover his slaves,
contagion which the revolutionary and America was the Canaan, the
Is it not strange that all this is not
spirit of the prophets of Israel, spring- Promised Land which God had given found in the history texts of ur school-
ing out of the pages of the Jewish to those who had the hardihood to en- children? Is it not strange that these
Bible, exerted upon the English-speak- dure the trials of the wilderness. And well-established facts of American his-
ing peoples of the seventeenth and this is how it happened that when tory shall sound new even to men and
eighteenth centuries. Nowhere else they built a college, these Bible-intox- women who have made a considerable
in human history do we find any liter- icated men made Urim Ve Turmin its study of American history? We must
ture affecting human beings so im- motto, and when they sketched a de- not commit the error of attributing
mediately and so vitally as the liter- sign fur the seal of their new-born these omissions to prejudice. The
ature of the Old Testament affected country, they drew a picture of the blame belongs to what might be
the English and American revolution- Exodus, and when they organized a termed pedagogic inertia. First of
ists. The story of Samuel resisting curriculum for their schools and col- all, the writers of historical text books
the institution of a monarchy, the leges they made Hebrew the chief have not yet learned to take account
story of Gideon being offered a crown study, and when they wanted consti- of the most obvious fact of history,
and declining it, the story of the tutions and codes of law: for their set- the subtle ifluence of literature upon
prophet Nathan pointing the finger of tlements, they adopted the Torah or human events. If they mention liter-
And when they ature at all, it is merely as an orna-
accusation at the powerful King David the Law of MOWN.
and saying "Thou art the man!", the wanted an inspiring very' to place ment or luxury of life and not as one
story of the prophet Elijah saying to upon a bell which was to call them
(Turn to Page Six)
the pompous King Ahab "Thou hest together for democratic assemblies,
robbed and also murdered!"—these
are not merely stories from the He-
brew Bible, they are facts of English
and American history, so real were
they in their influence upon the men
who made English and American his-
tory. That great historian, Lecky,
says in the second volume of his work,
"The History of Rationalism in Eur-
ope": "It is an historical fact that the
defenders of civil liberty derived their
political principles chiefly from the
Old Testament and the defenders of
despotism from the New."
East •s. West.
The Old Bible responded to Young
America's cry of need. The Prophets
of the East poured their holy spirit
upon the pioneers of the West, And
rending this book when they rose and
when they lay down, when they sat at
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home and when they walked by the
way, the builders of the New World
learned to identify themselves with the
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Politics and the Bible.
To forsake parables and to begin an
investigation into realities, how did
those words from the Book of Leviti-
cus, one of the most obscure and dif-
ficult books of the Bible, happen to
be engraved upon a hell suspended
above the roof of a meeting-hall in
Philadelphia? I might answer for the
same reason that Yale College adopt-
ed as the motto of its seal two Hebrew
words from the Book of Exodus, Urim
ve Turmim, "I,ight and Truth," or for
the same reason that Benjamin
Franklin and Thomas Jefferson pro-
posed as a design for the seal of the
Thirteen Colonies the scene of the
children of Israel crossing the Red
Sea, with Moses lending them and
Phareah in hot pursuit, or I might
say for the same reason that the Ile
brew language was the chief subject
taught in the public schools of New
England and in its colleges, particu-
larly Harvard and Yale. Or I might
say for the same reason that sonar
half-dozen American colonies regard-
ed the Torah or the Law of Moses as
their constitution. In a word, the
reason that a verse from the Hebrew
Bible found it way so naturally upon
a meeting-house hell in Philadelphia is
that the people of the American col-
onies were in love with the Hebrew
Bible. They read the Old Testament
more than any other book, they read
it over and over again. From it they
drew all their ideas, and its scenes
and stories colored all their thoughts.
It is true, of course, that a senti-
mental attachment to the Bible Liter-
ature is characteristic of all English-
speaking people. Someone has said
"The English people have the Bible in
their blood." The greatest writings in
English letters, Shakespeare and
Milton, for example, are fundamental-
ly influenced by the Bible. Teachers
of English will tell you that a knowl-
edge of the Bible is an indispensable
introduction to the classics of English
literature. It is, indeed, no exaggera•
lion to say that the English language
which we speak today was created by
the Bible. England was a confusion
of dialects until the King James
Translation of the Bible unified it into
one common tongue. For all English-
men, reading the Bible daily and pray-
ing from it constantly, began to speak
in the words and phrases of that
translation. It would be easy to pick
at random any paragraph from the
daily newspaper and show you how
the expressions of our every day con-
versation are drawn directly from the
peculiar idioms of the Hebrew
Yet even this remarkable predilec-
tion for the Bible which has charac-
terized the English people as a whole
does not altogether explain why the
American colonists were so passion-
ately devoted to the Old Testament or
the specifically Jewish Bible that they
came near neglecting the New Testa-
ment or purely Christian Bible. It wan
out of a special and terrible need that
the English Puritans and the Pilgrim
Fathers and the embattled colonists
directed their minds upon the lore and
the law of the Jew. They needed the
Old Testament because the English
tyrant whether he was James I 01
Charles. I er George III invariahlj
based his claims of absolute power
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