Friday, Ja nuary 3 1, 1964—THE DETROIT JEWISH NEW S-2
Purely Commentary
Is American Jewry Too Complacent? ... Edwin Wolf's
Serious Challenge . . . Solution in Mythical State
Edwin Wolf II, the former president of the Jewish Publica-
tion Society who now heads the National Foundation for Jewish
Culture, is among the most disturbed in American Jewry over
the complacency that seems to dominate Jewish life today. He
has delivered a number of speeches in his home town of Phila-
delphia and in other cities—including Detroit—and was a par-
ticipant in the Dialogue that was conducted in Israel last year
as an American Jewish Congress project. On an such occasions
he indicated a sense of despair over assimilationist tendencies,
the indifference to heritage by our youth and the minimaliza-
tion of Jewish values.
Last week he spoke at the annual meeting of the Chicago
Jewish Federation and he warned of impending dangers. He
made comparisons of conditions during the Nazi era with those
today when there are no scare headlines. He portrayed the growth
of Jewish community structure but admonished: "The Jews of
the United States are disappearing, frighteningly, rapidly and
inexorably. And as they disappear, so disappears the support
you need for your Federation."
In other words, while fund-raising has been a major factor
in Jewish life—and a successful one—that, too, is in danger, be-
cause "American Jewry has not been jolted from its complacency,"
warned Edwin Wolf II. He asserted: "We have more organizations
.. . more children in religious schools . . . we are raising more
money for hospitals, social agencies, community relations pro-
grams, Israel . . we are the richest. most successful, best or-
ganized, greatest Jewry in the world . . . The externals are so
glittering, so reassuring. Our present is so self-satisfying and so
comfortable. Our problem is that with all the growth and all
the success Judaism has been diluted and what it means to be
a Jew minimized. We are faced with the bland appeal of sub-
urban conformity, the acceptance of something less than our
traditional standards . . . we are taking the line of least re-
sistance. We are quietly disappearing into the materialistic civil-
ization of which we are a part. Because it has become easier in the
United States to be a Jew, we are reacting perversely by aban-
doning Jewishness, and abandoning at the same time those values
which have made and have the potential of making great con-
tributions to the world around us . . ."
This is another way of asking—as so many of us have in
the last few years—whether Jews, who can survive persecutions,
also are able to emerge strong in freedom. Are we able to do
that? And if we are beginning to disappear, what is the solu-
tion for those of us who desire to survive as Jews? The ques-
tion is a serious one for all who do, indeed, desire to survive
as Jews. As we indicated . in our discussion of the issue dur-.
ing Hanukah week, it is no problem at all for those who are
unconcerned with Jewish survival.
Let us see how Ed Wolf views the conditions into which the
apparent decline has developed in American Jewish life. He
took into consideration the assignment of communal leadership to
the affluent, the plaque-giving fads, the craving for identification
by some of our youth and their failure to attain it. He said, in
his Chicago speech last week:
"Organized Jewish life in America is far behind the Jewish
intellectuals. far behind its own professionals. It is led by men
who have been successful in business. Only a few of these men
are cultured in a Jewish or a general way. They have not had time
or inclination in their economic struggle to acquire the capacity
to think deeply. They did not make the time as their grandfathers
did to pursue learning. . .
". . . It has been a fortunate thing for American Jewry
that, just as the Jewishly motivated energies of one group have
died down another group, fresh from the vital sources of
European Jewry, has taken its place. The forces which built
our Jewish community have rarely been indigenous or self-
engendered . . . .
"The modern history of American Jewry dates only from
World War II. Hitler and his atrocities and the petty fuhrers of
Yorkville proved to be a concentric force which broke down,
almost instantaneously, the slowly disintegrating barriers be-
tween German and Eastern European Jew, between Reform Jew
and Orthodox, between worker and owner. American Jews in
the spell of a mass psychology rushed toward a manifestation
of Jewish identity. . . .
"Now, a new generation is growing up who knew not
Joseph. Belsen and Auschwitz are names of sites in history.
To the young men and women there is none of the stark im-
mediacy of the horror we felt anymore than we shiver at the
name of Cossack as did our fathers. Israel has become a matter
of fact, something for which they have a vague responsibility,
but which to them is no longer an ineffable miracle. They see the
well-filled seats of Jewish organizational dinners, but they have
no feeling of excitement. Even the ardent Zionists who gave up
a portion of their mystique when they decided to remain Amer-
icans and not be ingathered are now able to live with their
ambivalence and not feel guilty.
"This is a different breed of American Jew which is growing
up in our land. He is educated. You saw to that. He has intellect-
ual standards. His college gave them to him. He is uneasy, restless,
dissatisfied, brilliant, seeking and alterating between pessimism
and hopefulness. He is not willing to accept the emotional pulls
which motivated his parents because his emotions have not been
touched. He is inclined to look down upon the chase after
wealth, success and power, because the world of the immediate
past which had those goals seems to him so shaky and imperfect.
In what he was taught, in what he reads he senses the import-
ance of conviction and of belief. Yet, as he looks about in Jewish
life, he sees superficiality and conformity . . .
"Parents insist that their children receive what is loosely
called a 'Jewish education,' but while the boy is expected to
study for Hebrew school or Sunday school, father watches the
television. The twist of Jewish life has become a matter of doing
what I say, not what I do. The youth of today are too smart to
be taken in. . . .
"A psychiatrist told me that a significant number of his young
Jewish patients want to be Jewish and do not know how, how,
that is, within the framework of their educational and social
background. They have rejected the matter-of-fact, attendance
Vitality of American
Jewry ... Confusion
on Survival Methods
By Philip
a„,,
wornovitz
at Hadassah meetings, money-raising, committee-work activities
of their parents. They want to know why.
"It is not enough to tell them that helping those in need
of help is good. This has become, in one form or another, good
Americanism. They can point out with justice that the Negro
needs more help today than the Jew. Having experienced little
or no overt anti-Semitism, they cannot feel clannish for self-
protective reasons. Stimulated in their thinking by intellectuals
under whom they have studied or whose works they have read,
they have become anti-establishment, anti-organization. They are
not willing to go down a road because it is pointed out to them;
they want to know why, and why that particular road."
It is in the latter three paragraphs that Ed Wolf espe-
cially touches upon the motivating factors that cause our
troubles and leads us to a consideration of the challenges hurled
at us. It is the lack of understanding by TV-intoxicated parents.
It is the inability of the elders to explain Jewish values to
the youth. It is the emphasis on fund-raising without evaluating
the values that are to be enhanced by the funds raised. (If
there were a better understanding of the objectives for which
we are constantly campaigning to raise large sums of money,
appeals for funds would, in themselves become easier). It is
a major failure — and the large Jewish organizations are pri-
marily guilty in having proved unable to pass on an under-
standing of Jewish legacies by their followers —in our having
proven incapable also of training our youth, which is unfa-
miliar with anti-Semitism, to face the issue in the event it
should arise anew, as it inevitably must on occasions.
No one has a right to pose questions unless he can either
offer an answer or inspire one. Does Ed Wolf have a solution
to the great problem, which he has presented somewhat des-
pairingly? In his Chicago address he said that he had a "personal"
answer, "one paradoxically simple and complicated," and he
offered it as follows:
"If a Jew knows enough about the history, the religious
principles, the traditions and the civilizing contributions of Jews
he will consider it a privilege to be one. There are too many
born Jews, too many I-wish-I-wasn't Jews, and too few convinced
Jews. I am now not speaking about religion, but about a his-
torical culture based on religion, about a culture which gave
monotheism to the world, a people which in prophetic times
spoke of the universal brotherhood of man, a minority which
survived without nationhood because of a belief that the mil-
lenium would come.
"We are proud that our health and welfare agencies set
standards of operation towards which others emulate. We are
proud that in social fields we have pioneering agencies. Yet, we
are hesitant to attribute this to our background or to cultivate
that background. We Jews have had a folk experience of several
millenia, learning how to survive with dignity. This is a lesson
which the world needs, and by drawing upon our past and
combining that with our successful present we may be able to
help others. .
"The questing young generation could well find answers to
questions if they • only knew what it was to be a Jew, not nega-
tively, but positively. The world respects us for our scholarship,
our ethics, our contributions to civilization, and, strangely enough,
for our Jewishness. It does not respect us for our wealth, our
political power or our worldly success.
"If we are to attract the ,loyalty of our successors in Jewish
communal life, we must point out values, not just as milk-and-
water doing-good, but as part of their blood, brain, bone and
spirit. We must encourage the scholar. We must promote Jewish
culture. The emphasis will have to shift from the popular. We
must create an atmosphere in which young men and women can
find both satisfaction and security. From our past people may
learn how the divinity which lies in man can rise above war,
hate, prejudice, gold, power, nationalism and greed to attain
the capabilities which technologically man has and which morally
and spiritually he lacks. It must come from that rich, vicarious
experience which knowledge of the past brings, mixed in the
crucible of the world as it exists. Its indivisible foundations are
knowledge and faith. These we must bring back to the centrality of
Jewish life. To survive American Jewry must attain them."
So far so good —but this is not enough. As long as our
youth "want to know why," we must find the "how," the
approach to a solution, the method of answering their despair-
ing questions—we must find the means wherewith to solve
our quandaries. What Ed Wolf offered has been and is being
spoken at every campaign meeting at which we hear appeals
for Jewish education linked with those for Israel and the civic-
protective movements. Only the Orthodox, who do not shun the
religious issue, as Ed Wolf certainly did—(note the quotation
from his speech wherein he said: "I am not now speaking
about religion, but about a historical culture based on religion"
—and that's begging the issue). But neither did the Orthodox,
while they are firm and are more consistent, find and offer a
solution. Their youth, too, are vanishing. Their sons and daugh-
ters also abandon us the moment they reach the universities.
What, then is the solution? If it were easy, Mr. Wolf would
have had it. But in all its difficulties one factor seems to be
overlooked: anything approaching an answer must begin with the
parents much more than with the teachers; it must start in the
home. It was not so long ago that non-Jews boasted for us that
Jewish family life was so beautiful, so sacred. What has hap-
pened to that sancity, with which was linked respect for our
heritage, a deep interest by parents in their children and their
studies, a deVotion that remains incomparable in all ranks?
We have begun to worry over the rapid rise in intermarriage.
Why aren't we equally as concerned over the rise in divorces
among Jews? Are we as agitated by the all-too-frequent reports
of an increasing rate of delinquency among young Jews? How are
we to account for all these un-Jewish factors In Jewish life?
How easy it is to speak about Jewish education and to decry
the father's inability to remove the glue that keeps him linked
to the television set—or the over-emphasis on the cocktails and
the card games by women—when it is so vital that the sanctity
of the home should be restored.
This ought to be accomplishable among the young married
Jews who should be appealed to for a resactification of their
homes. Can the synagogue accomplish it? If not the rabbis, who
can do it If it has been proven that sermonizing is valid in the
Egyptian Pilot
Folded His Tent
Capt. Hahmoud Hilmi Abbas
Hilmi, 26, U.A.R. air force
pilot sits quietly at an undis-
closed site in Israel as report-
ers ask him about his defec-
tion and request for political
asylum. He flew his Czech-
built Yak II training plane to
an Israeli airstrip with two
Egyptian jet fighters in hot
pursuit.
Jail Ex-Sudan Major
as a Spy for Israel
LONDON (JTA)—A Suda-
nese military court has sen-
tenced a former major, Abbas
Gamal Eldin, to nine years in
prison on charges of spying for
Israel, it was reported here from
Khartum.
The defendant was found
guilty of serving as a link be-
tween spy rings in Cairo and
Asmara, Eritrea which gathered
information about Egypt and
passed it on to Israel.
struggle for survival, will the
theological seminaries concede
that new approaches are needed
to reach the hearts and minds
of our people?
In a UN - sponsored volume
published two years ago to eval-
uate social conditions among
numerous groups, it was pointed
out that Jewry's survival is
ascribable to kashrut and to the
observance of the Sabbath, in
addition to other factors. The
Zionist influences certainly con-
tributed to the group loyalties.
Is it asking too much that there
should be a return to these
basic principles in Judaism?
Those who are not interested in
Jewish survival may laugh at
such suggestions—but appeals
for survival are not addressed
to the totally indifferent who
have determined to abandon us
entirely.
Edwin Wolf and others like
him render a service when they
raise the issue. They must also
find solutions. If the rabbis and
their ineffective sermons are at
fault, if our schools do not in-
fluence the children sufficient-
ly, if greater efforts must be
made to assure better teaching
personnel for our schools — let
there be coordinated thinking
and planning.
Solutions won't come through
despair. They must be attained
by means of confidence and
hope that our youth is not total-
ly lost, that American Jews are
not "disappearing, frightening-
ly, rapidly and inexorably." The
feeling must be with the Psalm-
ist that "lo amut ki ekhyeh"—
"I shall not die but live." In a
spirit of faith, those who strive
for survivalism must succeed..
Let us act pragmatically in
search for a solution of a prob-
lem which does exist but which
must not be viewed as an ap-
proaching death.