Page Two

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Legal Chronicle

Friday April 19, 1946

THE BIRTHDAY OF A NATION--- By Mordecai S. Chertoff

One of the pleasanter of our
human failings is our penchant
to sing of ourselves and celebrate
ourselves at the slightest provo
cation. With every minor success
we indulge in a party, or in some
trifle we had long coveted but
just couldn't see ourselves buying
without a good "excuse." Grasp
ing, as we do, every possible op
portunity for something of a good
Lime, it is hardly likely that we
should neglect what we consider
he most important day of our
lives, our birthday. After all, it is
the one simcha we can rely upon
to recur as long as we are around
to enjoy it.
And we do enjoy it, at least os
tensibly. Some of us observe I.
gladly, joyfully, some grimly, des-
perately squeezing out a few
drops of pleasure to make the
hard dryness of our daily lives
more palatable.
too, observe their
Nations,
"birthdays," and we Americans
mark it as befits a young and
lusty nation: with noise and
laughter which have practically
become synonymous with the
phrase "Fourth of July." For on
that day the American people
won its independence from Eng-
land and became the American
Nation. That day serves as our
national Irresponsibility Day, and
woe indeed to him who is serious
and solemn and so disturbs the
hilarity of the national Birthday
Party.
We Jews, too, celebrate our
transformation from a downtrod-
den people to a free nation. But
our celebration is that of an old
people, it reflects the antiquity
of our nation; the confused and
hilarious birthday party has giv-
en way to the banquet, the for
mal dinner with the songs and
the after-dinner speeches. Ant:
we "go formal" not in tuxedo or
tails, which is a Western custom.
but in our own formal Kittel, the
linen garment which once upon a
time was trimmed with gold and
silver. To this day the Arabs in
the east wear a somewhat nonde-
script variation of it. In the East,
too, one does not sit in chairs at

a banquet, but reclines as grace-
fully as possible on couches' or
divans. We've been away from
the East for a long time, and we
relax rather awkwardly on our
pillows at the Passover Seder
but then formal is formal, and we
mustn't offend our own 'very ear-
ly Emily Post.

At the usual banquet the festive
dinner is followed by the usual
tiresome after-dinner 'speeches,
and for the umptieth time we
hear of the guest-of-honor's rise
from rags to riches. Then comes
the inevitable "for he's a jolly
good fellow." At our national ban-
quet, the Jewish People is the
honored guest, and so we must
vary the procedurot.. somewhat,
since all of us at the banquet
are ''honored guests", who, then,
is to tell us "how good" we are,
and repeat our success story?
And then again, is there any out-
sider who would say the required
"nice thingsh about us? Each of
us could, and would like to have
the honor, but the choice of any
one speaker would leave every-
body else silent—and frustrated
In a manner befitting a mature
nation, we compromise; we all
tell the story. For the Haggada,
which we read together, or in
some places take turns reading
tells our national story. It tells
of our rise from an•enslaved mass
of toiling strangers to a free na-
tion, it tells of our transition
from the flesh-pots of Egypt
through the rigors of desert life
to the Altar, high and pure, in
the Temple of Jerusalem, the
highest expression of our religious
and social ethics.

While we read the Haggada to.
day before dinner (what comes
after the meal is not properly a
part of the Haggada) it is only
another modern innovation, per-
haps simply a way of insuring
that reading and avoiding the
usual after-dinner lassitude and
Inattention to speeches. The din-
ner itself, of course, approxi
mates our ancient national dishes.
There was no need to explain
their significance then, just as no
American today need be told the
why and wherefore of Boston
baked-beans, and even the King
of England understood the role
of the hot-dog in the American
scene. Years ago that visiting
monarch was introduced to the
hot-dog at the White House—
could any other place have been
so eminently appropriate for the
presentation of that distinctly
American institution?
It's been a long time since we
ate our national meal, since the
destruction of the Temple we've
retained only some aspects of it,
only some of its characteristics,
'and so at our birthday banquet

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tense, maternally gentle and sod-
denly awakening, that even those
Jews who have long forsaken the
faith of their fathers and put.
sued foreign joys and honors are
moved to the depths of thel
hearts when the old, familiar
sounds of the Passover (Seder)
happen to strike their ears."
Isn't It shameful, then, how so
many of us shy away from these
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us. We only taste it at the begin-
ning of the Seder, and then we
read the Haggada. When the for-
mal part of the banquet is over
we face the reality of our west-
ern life—and eat a satisfying
western meal.
Heinrich Heine, who remained
essentially Jewish, his conversion
notwithstanding, summed up the
atmosphere and spirit of the Se-
der in his own way: "At this fa-
ble, the head of the house then
sits down with all the relatives
and friends, and reads from a
very curious book called the Hag-
gada, the contents of which is a
strange mixture of ancestral leg-
ends, miraculous tales of Egypt,
odd n a r r a t i v e s, disputations,
prayers and festive songs . .
This nocturnal festival is melan-
cholically gay in character, grave-
ly playful, and mysterious as a
fairy tale. And the traditional
sing-song in which the Haggada
is read by the head of the house,
and now and then repeated by
the listeners in chorus, sounds at

Passover Greeting,

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we have that meal explained to the same time so awesomely in.

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NATE LEVENBERG

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254 LAFAYETTE — at Wayne

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Paddock Bar

Corner Elizabeth and Park

