10 DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and the Legal Chronicle SILVER (Continued from Page 8) A Joyous Pesach to All CONTINENTAL BAKING CO. 2915 GRAND RIVER CHERRY 2330 Sincere Holiday Greetings NAJOR'S MARKET 8902 SECOND BLVD. TR. 2-9824 2943 West Grand Blvd. TR. 2-9153 We Deliver A day did, in terms of a steady, horizontal advance, an unbroken march forward, rather than in terms of a succession of cyclical movements which, over and again, come full again and which re- sult only in a slight net advance for mankind. There were ample warnings all around them, por- tents which less romantic eyes did appraise more realistically— signs of an irreconcilable opposi- tion, an indurate racial, cultural, economic and religious hostility which had not and would not accept the humanistic and demo- cratic synthesis which a revolu- tionary middle-class capitalism had popularized in the ninenteenth century, and which was destined sooner or later to disintegrate. This many-sided and variously motivated anti-Semitism gained momentum at the same time and almost at the same pace as Jew- ish political emancipation. It was not a reaction. It was a parallel development just as the Inquisi- Joyous Pesach Tov ou. William Hordes and Associates INSURANCE 605 FOX THEATRE BLDG. CHERRY 6780 A JOYOUS PESACH TO ALL REICHHOLD CHEMICALS INCORPORATED SYNTHETIC RESIN - INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS DETROIT, MICHIGAN PASSOVER GREETINGS TO ALL PHILCO DISTRIBUTORS, INC. 1627 W. Fort St. CAdillac 8810 A JOYOUS PESACH TO ALL PEARLMAN CARTAGE CO. GENERAL TRUCKING By the Hour, Day or Contract, 1 TO 734 TON STAKE TRUCKS We Service and Install ELECTRICAL APPLIANCES, WASHING MACHINES, STOVES, OIL HEATERS & RADIOS 655 E. LAFAYETTE RAndolph 4196 A JOYOUS PESACH TO ALL QUEEN QUALITY LAUNDRY 2835 BAGLEY AVE. LAFAYETTE 4020 28 Years of Quality Service Con and the Ghetto paralleled the Renaissance and the Reformation. This is the tragic fact which seems to escape so many students of anti-Semitism. The story of Jewish emancipation in Europe from the day after the French Revolution to the day before the Nazi Revolution is the story of political positions captured in the face of stubborn and sullen oppo- sition, which left the emancipated minority encamped within an un- beaten and unreconciled opposi- tio. At the slightest provocation, and as soon as things go out of order, the opposition returned to the attack and inflicted grievous wounds. In our day, stirred by the great politico-economic strug- gles which were tearing nations apart, this never-failing, never- reconciled opposition swept over the Jewish political and economic positions in Europe and com- pletely demolished them. There is an electric chord which connects the era of Fichte in Germany with its feral cry of "hep-hep", and the era of Hitler and its cry "Jude verrecke". And so for the rest of Europe. The Damas- cus affair of 1840 links up with the widespread reaction after the Revolution of 1848, the Mortara Affair in Italy, the Christian So- cialist movement in the era of Bismarck, the Tisza-Ezlar Affair in Hungary, the revival of the blood accusation in Bohemia, the pogroms in the eighties in Rus- sia, La France Juive and the Dreyfus Affair in France. The First World War, which made the world "safe for democ- racy" and granted the Jews of Central Europe not only the rights of citizenship but even minority rights, brought also in its wake the most thorough-going brutal and annihilationist anti-Semitism that Israel has ever experienced. And now again, in the Second World War, many Jews are hop- ing to achieve through an Allied victory what an Allied victory failed to give them after the last war, what a whole century of enlightenment, liberaism and intellectual progress failed to give them—peace and security. They are again confusing formal politi- cal equality with immunity from economic and social pressures. Yes, much has changed in the last one hundred years, but much more has resisted change. The immemorial problem of our na- tional homelessness, the principle source of our millenial tragedy, remains as stark and as menac- ing as ever. Yet Jews, especially those of our persuasion, are again trying to circumvent it with wishful thinking, with day-dream- ing about an Atlantic Charter or the Four Freedoms, with clever homiletics, or are hoping to lay it to rest with patriotic charms and incantations—just as they did a hundred years ago, and through all the intervening years. Why should we celebrate cen- tennials of religious institutions? What seek we among the forms and faces of things long since dead? What shall we bring back from the frontiers of distant years? Not the evidences of change. They are of little moment and there is little consolation in them. But rather the evidences of changelessness and continuity. In that knowledge there is both pride and humility and the strength which belongs to mature men. Judaism is concernel with the unchanging needs of man and of society, the needs which take on new forms in new settings but which remain fundamentally the same—the basic and perennial con- flicts and adjustments in individ- ual and collective lives. From Abraham and Moses to the last of the great and wise teachers of our faith there stretches an unbroken chain of spiritual con- tinuity, changeless principles in mutable forms which were the fixed points of reference for each generation. Each generation faced the same problems: how achieve freedom under the sovereignty of God, justice under the mandate of His law and dignity in kinship with Him; how knowledge was to be made whole through the fear of God, and courage heightened through trust in Him; how broth- erhood and peace could be cove- nanted in the sight of Him who is Father of all men and all na- tions. Judaism has offered men the faith and the code sufficient and adequate to every age. Men have not heeded it. Jews have not heeded it. Theirs was the inade- quacy, theirs the insufficiency. Many believed that mankind could dispense with Israel's faith and code and peace without reference, to God and the techniques of reli- gion. But they achieved only dic- tatornhip, slavery, littleness of stature, fear, hate and war. They put their hope not in spiritual con- March 2 - , 194, vversion, not in moral regenera- tion but in a precipitous scien- tific and intellectual progress which has now hurled rider, horse and chariot alike into one bloody and ruinous tangle. The leaders of Reform Judaism, too, were encouraged to expect the quick advent of a universal religion of peace and good will, not because of any religious re- vivalism which was transpiring in the world in their day—there was none—but because of that same breath-taking scientific ad- vance. They drew unwarranted conclusions from irrelevant prem- ises. There is never any forward movement in society without an inward movement in man. The pioneer reformers and their dicsiples after them were good and loyal Jews but they were too zeal- ous to "modernize" Judaism, and too self-conscious about modernity. There was too much emphasis in their thought and speech upon "reform", "change," progress," too little upon "rebirth," "return," "tracing back to God." Nothing is so shallow and and ephemeral as modernity. The very word sug- gests a mode, a fashion, an im- provised and passing version which has its practical utility, to be sure, spiritual essence, to its eadurin distinctiveness through al! time and ages, to that which like th flowing current moves and ehang s and yet remains the sain. , , Qui t consciously they are me' cinent of "return" to marvelous And d5 cisive beginnings so as t.. reek ture an ageless truth. The:: neve set out to adjust men to dal, political or economie envil onment. They aim to tea!' they free from their environmeti• The demand of them surrende!•. sell denial, renunciation of \voil a o co ffie u r fo it.thse nd i nt e e orm es p tsn e , and the the sati•.as o spiritual blessings and peace. Th greatest religions were those whie made the greatest demand. upo their followers and which calk for the most rigorous disc I 1.Iine but which must not be confused with that which is of the essence and of the eternal. They were too eager to accommodate, to facili- tate, and, strange as it may seem, to conofrm — not to tradition, of course, but to the most recent thought and practice of their day, the tradition of recency. They were sufficiently intellectual in their critique, but religious re- formation is achieved only by mys- tics who are concerned not with the recency of their doctrines but with the immediacy of their reli- gious experiences. Great spiritual movements break not only with the past but with the present as well. They never attempt to "modernize" religion but to restore it to its timeless Passover Greetings DIBBLE COLOR CO. PRATT & LAMBERT PAINT AND VARNISH • 1497 East Grand Blvd. at Canton PLaza 1520 TO MY JEWISH FRIENDS: SINCERE GOOD WISHES FOR A JOYOUS PASSOVER! P. H. HARRISON A JOYOUS PESACH TO ALL! Keystone Engineering Co., Inc. ALEX G. MARION, Pres. 100 E. Cicotte Ecorse, Mich. Phone VI. 1-8656 We extend sincere good wishes for a Passover filled with happiness and blessed with full measure of prosperity and may these wishes continue to find fulfillment into the many years beyond. CHARLES H. LOTT Manager DETROIT-LELMID -HOTEL DETROIT. MICHIGAN CASS—BAGLEY