Amerkait ( cwish Periodical Center

CLIFTON AVENUE - CINCINNATI 20, OHIO

i .:;.--...........,:

Friday, September 27. 1946

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and The Legal Chronicle

A CONFESSION

By ALFRED SEGAL

This is the season when Jews
confess their faults. There are a
lot of private faults of mine that
I could confess, if I thought my
private life was any concern of
the pt.blic. But I am a liberal
spirit who believes that nobody's
private faults is any other per-
son's business.
When my wife starts to tell me
the latest gossip of some citizen's
delinquency, I stop her. How, I
ask, does Mr. Zilch's departure
from the path of strictest virtue
concern us? That's his own affair
solely and we have no business
sticking our noses in.
Who are we to pass judgment
on Mr. Zilch?
No, I am not confessing any of
my private faults, but an honest
journalist should, in the Rosh
Hashonah time, be willing to make
confession of his public faults. I
am, you might say, a public char-
acter.
In my capacity as columnist I
have no privacy at all. I am like
the gold fish. If I were a strictly
private person I could say, what
the hell? What the hell if I
haven't been walking entirely in
the most righteous paths? Whose
business is It? What if I resisted
my wife that evening when she
wanted to go to the movie and I
would rather stay home?
But I owe it to the public to
confess any public fault that is in
me, especially in this season of
Rosh Hashonah when it is the
practice to confess.
In all honesty I must confess
my public faults to the readers,
some of whom keep on thinking
of me as a kind of sage whom
they read every week. I took up
the matter with my wife who said
No! What will they think if you
confess any fault? Columnists are
supposed to be final authorities on
everything. What will people think
of you if they discover that you
are really human?
Well, I replied, they've got to
take it. Perhaps, in the end, it
will redound to my benefit to be
revealed as a human being who
can be as wrong as anybody.
"Think," she said, "of your good
reputation. All around the coun-

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try there are people who think of
you as the last word on many
subjects. You can't let them down."
I thought it was about time that
the pretensions of columnists
were exposed and how much more
effective such exposure would be
if it were made by one of the
columnists! Some of the citizens
might be encouraged to doubt Mr.
Pegler. (I had just met a man
who said, Thank God for Peg-
ler).

I am not one of those men who
let themselves be led around by
their wives. Though my wife is
pulling me in safer directions I
make my confession in this Rosh
Hashonah season: I am a false
prophet.

Yes, I have misled the public.
In every Rosh Hashonah season
during the war I made bright
prophecies of a better world to
come. I painted the coming scene
in dazzling color In this column.
At every New Year I used to
take my crystal ball in hand, and
my wishful eyes saw a bright
new world breaking out of the
darkness after the war. (Citi-
zens, who have good memories
may remember those Rosh Hasha-
nah prophecies). I asked: Weren't
the young men dying for the sake
of a better world? Wot!Idn't man-
kind learn a great and abiding
lesson from all this suffering?
I said Hitler was but a symp-

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Page Five

ward Jews as if they had never
had any part in the common tra-
vail. The Russians, alas, are be-
having like the Imperialist Czars,
belying the bright banners of
brotherhood they used to carry In
the world. They are an awful dis-
appointment. War's over but
peace isn't here yet and prophets
like myself lie knocked out in dev-
astation.
(Jews keep on dying In Polish
pogroms, Jews lie hopeless in the
old German concentration camps
which have been Improved to
make them more habitable).
Yes, even while I make my
Rosh Hashonah confession as a
false prophet, I take up my crys-
tal ball again. Ho! Ho! here's
something I see! I see the broth-
erhood: A great many people are
climbing up a hill and they are
singing with Isaiah: "How beau-
tiful upon the mountains are the
feet of him that bringeth good
tidings, that publisheth peace, that
bringeth good "tidings of good,

that publisheth salvation."
Yes, these old eyes keep on be-
lieving in the vision, though events
seem to have exposed him as false
prophet, I want to believe in the
bright vision for the sake of my
small grandsons — Jan, Paul and
Richard. They will be soldiers In
another war. For the sake of my
small granddaughters—Ellen, Bet-
ty and Karen. They may be the
mothers of soldiers in another
war.

Rosh Hashonah Greetings
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PROTESTANTS • CATHOLICS • JEWS

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And So We Say --- A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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torn of the sickness of the world
and the war might be the moral
catalyst that was needed. Yes, we
were going to win the war. After
such an agony, mankind could
never again take up hate as an
instrument of national policy;
mankind had seen a great nation
consumed by its hate.
It had seen arrogance brought
down to the dust, in accordance
with the Biblical admonition; the
power of the wicked would be-
come no more than an evil tell to
toll for the instruction of delin-
quent children.
I asked: Could the Poles ever
again despise the Jews with whom
they had drank from the same
bitter cup. No, it would be a
world of people who had known
pain as the common lot, and why
hate the brother who had known
the same pain?
I was all wrong. My error hurts
me as deeply as all other people
feel hurt by the awful conse-
quences of the war. They said,
during the war, it may be all to
the ultimate good. We worry about
our children in the Army and the
Navy but if something better is
going to come out of all this it's
all right with us; if all this pain
is what we have to pay for the
sake of a better world.
Here we are on this second
Rosh Hashonah after the war still
praying for peace. We have come
only to the painful discovery that
the end of a war doesn't mean
peace.
The Poles keep on behaving to-

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