Page Six

THE JEWISH NEWS

Friday, January 15, 1943

Abba Hillel Silver at 50

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A Portrait of a Jewish Leader

By SOLOMON B. FREEHOF

A figure of international eminence who has been
a dominant personality in Jewish affairs for over a
quarter of a century, Dr. Abba Hillel Silver has only
reached the age of fifty. His birthday will be cele-
. brated in Cleveland next week and by friends else-
where. Dr. Solomon B. Freehof, noted scholar and

T

HEY must have • aged more quickly in
ancient Palestine. The Mishna describes
the ages of man as : "thirty for vigor, forty
for understanding, fifty for counsel." They
evidently visualized a man of fifty as having
used up most of his energy, as having be-
come philosophical, and now useful 'chiefly
in giving counsel to a younger and more ener-
getic generation. This description may still
be true of most men, but is is certainly not
yet true of Abba Hillel Silver. While he has
a wealth of understanding and, indeed, had
it at forty, his courage and his ability to
work are at full tide. He is not yet ready at
fifty, not yet by a long stretch of time, merely
to sit back and give advice to a younger
generation of leaders.

It is, in fact, difficult to think of Abba
Hillel Silver as being fifty, even though in
modern times fifty is still considered young.
He gives the impression of youth. His method
of work, his reaction to problems, his fight-
ing spirit all are young. It is not merely my
own impression, the impression of a class-
mate and a contemporary who himself likes
to feel young, but it is the impression which
he gives to all who meet him. His impact
upon American Jewish life is the impact of
youth.

Retains His Blessed
Endowment

for Palestine, for modern Hebrew literature,
is part of his very personality. He did not
adopt Zionism; he grew up in it. He helped
build an appreciation of Zionism and He-
brew culture among his colleagues in the re-
form rabbinate. He helped integrate Zion-
ism into American life. This was perhaps his
greatest achievement and one that will be
appreciated more and more as the years go
by. He was in a unique position to do this.
As rabbi of an old-time midwest reform con-
gregation, he learned to appreciate and love
the American Jews of Western European ori-
gin who formed the backbone of the historic
reform congregation of America. He under-
stood them as human beings with a definite
point of view, with a 'definite emotional reac-
tion to their American environment. Under-
standing them, he knew better than anyone
before him how to bring the cause of Zionism
to the average. American Jew. That is why
he was so outstandingly successful with the
United Palestine Appeal, helping to blend
it into a United Jewish Appeal and to teach
more Jews in America than ever before to
participate in the upbuilding of Palestine.

In all his activities Abba Hillel Silver is
Rabbi Silver. His rabbinate is not merely his
profession or the convenient opportunity of
a platform from which he can advocate
matters that some might consider of greater
import. To him his rabbinate is his life. It
is as a rabbi that he can best be understood.
He possesses the classic characteristics of a
rabbi to a noble and unique degree.

His Scholarship and Warm
Mysticism

Abba Hillel Silver has influenced Ameri-
can life in many ways. He has been a leader
of thought in American education, pointing
out the road of social idealism and intellect-
ual progress to a whole generation of public •
school teachers. His magnificent addresses
at the various state conventions of public and
high school teachers all over the country
have left a lasting impression upon his hear-
ers and have undoubtedly had their effect
upon the course of American education.

By definition a rabbi is a scholar. His very
title, which means teacher, and the long tra-
dition which has created his profession, re-
quires of him the knowledge and the under-
stanaing of one of the most extensive and
multifarious literatures in the world of hu-
man culture. This professional standard has
unfortunately become somewhat theoretical.
A rabbi in the present disorganized state of
the world and, in fact, for a geheration or
two in the disorganized state of immigrant
Jewish life, is so busy a man and has so
many outer duties which drag him away
from his books that the knowledge with
which he was provided when he entered the
rabbinate and which was meant indeed to
be only a beginning of his intellectual self-
development, generally becomes all the clas-
sic Jewish knowledge which- he possesses
and even that modicum tends to dry up and
evaporate from neglect and disuse. So it is
noteworthy that Rabbi Silver, in spite of the
fact that his activities involve constant travel
all over the country, innumerable private
negotiations with representatives of various
groups and public meetings, although he is
busier than most of his colleagues, has never-
theless managed not only to maintain his
Jewish learning but constantly to extend it
in many fields. He is at home in traditional
and modern Hebrew literature to say noth-
ing of the wide fields of general human
culture. He is well aware of the urgent im-
portance of the tasks which take him away
from his books but by determined effort he
has always managed to return to them. lie
has never permitted the "life ,9f the hour"
to destroy the "life of eternity," the life of
culture and learning ; or to use his own
phrase, he never permitted "the timely" to
erase "the timeless."

He is best known in Jewish life as a leader
in the Zionist movement. His Zionist achieve-
ments have been unique. Brought, up from
childhood in a Zionist atmosphere, his love

It is to be presumed that every rabbi is a
religious man. He is the protagonist of a
religious philosopsy which must be not only
his reasoned conviction but his normal life.

He entered public life as a brilliant young
man and that youthful brilliance has re-
mained with him as a blessed endowment.
His type of oratory was that of a talented
youth. It was heroic in concept, powerful in
dynamic sweep and lavishly, warmly emo-
tional. , He had from the beginning that
grand characteristic of young men at their
best, the ability to take a situation deeply to
heart, to be aroused emotionally, and to con-
vey that warm-hearted concern to an in-
tently listening audience.

I thought as, I listened to him years ago

- hnd was carried away by the flood of his

emotion, that this vast tempestuousness could
not possibly endure. It would inevitably slow
down. But it has not slowed down. He still
has the capacity in full measure of arousing
himself and stirring his audience. The years
have subtracted nothing; they have only ad-
ded understanding, knowledge and depth. He
is...still the heart-warming young speaker and
so, we hope, he will remain for many, many
years.

.

spiritual leader, who has watched Dr. Silver's de-
velopment from the time they went to school to-
gether, here provides, through the Independent
Jewish Press Service, an exclusive portarit of this
multifaceted leader.
—THE EDITOR.

There are, however, degrees of religiosity
and various attitudes to religion. Rabbi Sil-
ver's religion, though he is a man of great
energy, is not primarily activist but mystic.
His sense of , the in-dwelling of God, his
awareness of the Divine Presence in the in-
ner as well as in the outer world, is a per:
manent reality and a vivid awareness. This
warm mysticism breathes through his public
speech and finds reflection in the favorite
subject of his scholarship. His writings on
Messianism and mysticism reveal not only
the historian's learning but the mystic's fel-
low feeling. He understands not only what
books and what ideas were expressed by the
writers whom he studies, but he appreciates
why they felt as they did and what emotions
moved them.

Insists on Dignity of Rabbinic
Off ice

Every sensitive rabbi is occasionally dis-
couraged. He is depressed by the limitations
forced upon him by the very state of present-
day Jewish culture. Rabbis and preachers
three or four generations ago spoke to people
of Jewish knowledge. The average man read
at least the Bible and perhaps a commentary
regularly every week of his life. He had
listened to the words of Moses, of Isaiah,
Jeremiah and Rashi during the week. He
came to the synagogue already as a product
of Jewish culture and the rabbi or preacher
added or amplified or heightened the know-
ledge which the auditor already possessed.
The modern rabbi every now and then is
shocked by the awareness that he is speaking
to people of almost no historic Jewish know-
ledge at all. That is as true in New York as
in. Cleveland, in orthodox as in reform, in
Europe as in America. People who some-
times complain of the inadequacy of the rab-
binate should remember the tragic inade-
quacy of the modern Jewish audience. The
rabbi, particularly if he tries to embody and
voice the historic Jewish culture, often feels
that he has very little Jewish companionship
and that he is a voice calling in the wilder-
ness.

This culture-solitude explains one of thein-
teresting characteristics of Rabbi Silver, his
staunch, almost stern insistence upon the
status and the dignity of the rabbinical office.
He has a deep sense of respect for his pro-
. fession and insists upon maintaining it. He
never permitted himself. the over-easy . Ro-
tarian jollity which tends to lower the learn-
ed to the level of the unlearned. He has
never permitted the purse-proud to confuse
their knowledge of the stock market with a
right to pass judgment on Jewish culture and
idealism. He has done much to enhance the
dignity and status of the office of the rabbi
in the chaotic disorder of the American
scene.

Public speech is an art and Rabbi Silver
is an artist. All that he thinks and feels can
be judged from his public utterance. That
is his mode of expression. His profound
Jewish knowledge, which reveals itself in
his original and creative use of classic
phrases, his wide world-view reveals the
problems of the. Jews and humanity in large
perspective, the dynamic energy which
sweeps his thoughts forward in a torrent of
feeling manifest the youthfulness which he
has brought with him unimpaired to the age
of fifty and which we pray will go on at least
to the age which the rabbis describe as
`eighty for power.'

Copyright, 1943, by Independent Jewish Press
Service, Inc.

