Samuel and Van Doren Dialogues: Noteworthy Conversations Compiled
For eight years, "Dialogues
on the Bible" was among the
most fascinating discourses
conducted on radio. The late
Maurice Samuel and Mark
Van Doren were the discus-
sants. The brilliance of the
two men was sufficient to
lend great significance,
marked by dignity, to an un-
usual weekly program. (Both
passed away in 1972.)
Now the major texts of
these discussions are avail-
able in a noteworthy book,
"In the Beginning, Love,"
(published by John Day).
Adding to the significance of
the collected discussions on
the Bible is its having been
edited by another scholarly
personality, Mr. Samuel's
widow, Edith Samuel, who
since 1959 has been editing
the Jewish youth magazine,
"Keeping Posted."
In an "Epitaph for Maurice
Samuel" written by Van
Doren as a tribute to his col-
league, the eminent Christian
scholar said about his Jewish
friend:
"He was always serious
and he was always humorous
—by which I mean he was al-
ways ready to be either, as
only the greatest persons
have been. For example,
Abraham Lincoln, whose
gravity at times was equaled
by his wit and grace at others.
And for another example,
Shakespeare, the secret of
whose power is precisely that
no door of life was closed to
him, no sound of the world
shut out. Maurice was the
peer of such men as those;
he was perfectly at home
with greatness. Masterpieces
of literature did not intimi-
date him; they were written
for him, he thought, and he
was right. His knowledge of
the Bible was the knowledge
of a poet, of a storyteller, of
a scholar, of a historian, of
a moralist all at once. It was
Alaska Jewish Community Alive
Despite Lack of Rabbi, Shohet
By JOSEPH POLAKOFF
(Copyright 1973, JTA, Inc.)
Alaskan Jewish life is as
fascinating a n d astonishing
as the state is vast, beautiful
and lonely.
In Juneau, Alaska's capital,
John and Barbara O'Hara
were responsible for coor-
dinating the Yom Kippur and
Rosh Hashana services in the
American Legion Hall. The
remarkable catalyst of
Juneau's community of about
100 souls is Roger Harman,
29, the finance off i c e r of
Alaska's department of labor.
He is the husband of a Ya-
kima Indian whom he had
met in Seattle while he was a
University of Washington stu-
dent.
Although Jews have been
prominent in Alaskan public
life, commerce and civic de-
velopment since it became
American 106 years ago,
Alaska's first and only syna-
gogue is eight-year-old Beth
Sholom in Anchorage. This
one-floor wooden structure
combining a place of wor-
ship, a school and social cen-
ter was built in 1965.
Two of the mainstays of
Jewish life in Fairbanks in-
clude a linguistics authority
with a doctorate from Har-
vard and his psychologist
wife, Profs. Michael and
Jane Lowell Krauss, both
formerly of Cleveland and
both Jewish, who are on the
faculty at the University of
Alaska.
But Alaskan Jews have no
rabbi and no ritual slaugh-
terer. U.S. Air Force chap-
lains have been providing
rabbinical services in Anchor-
age and Fairbanks, where
U.S. military posts are lo-
cated. The four families in
Anchorage that maintain
kosher homes import their
foods from the "lower 48"
as the contiguous states are
called. Mixed marrigaes pre-
dominate.
The ratio of Jews to non-
Jews in Alaska is about one
in 550. This compares with
approximately three Jews in
a hundred in the United
States as a whole. Among
Alaska's 350,000 people, live
fewer than 650 who identify
themselves as Jewish.
Anchorage, "home" f o r
138,000 Alaskans, numbers
300 Jews. Of these, 210 at-
tended the last community
seder, 35 of them in uniform.
56—Friday, Nov. 23, 1973
In Fairbanks, 360 miles into
the interior by railroad and
with a population about a
third the size of Anchorage's,
some 85 came to the seder
from among the town's ap-
proximately 200 Jews. In
Juneau, smaller than Fair-
banks, 70 persons joined in
the seder in the Northern
Lights Presbyterian Church. ,
Few Jews live outside these
three centers. Nome, 519
miles northwest of Fairbanks
by air, and Seward, 114 miles
by rail from Anchorage, each
has one Jewish businessman.
Ketchikan, at the extreme
south of the Alaskan pan-
handle, numbers only three
in its population of 12,000 —
a bookeeper, a fish buyer
and an accountant at a lum-
ber mill.
Nevertheless, traces of
Jewishness exist in remote
places in Alaska, according to
Dan Platnick of Juneau, who
with his wife Sandra and
their seven children brighten
the Alaskan Jewish scene
with their Jewishness and
traditional hospitality to the
wayfarer. Stars of David
mark graves in Nome and
also in Moonah, a fishing
village 40 miles west of
Juneau which once had a
large cannery and a trading
post.
Further afield, the ceme-
tery in Dawson Creek, in the
fabled Yukon, has a dozen
Jewish graves dating back to
the Gold Rush days in the
Klondike 70 to 75 years ago.
Norman S. Chamberlist of
White Horse, the territorial
counselor for health, welfare
and rehabilitation of the Yu-
kon Territory since 1960 and
who is Jewish, said that he
was arranging with a local
Anglican priest to care for
the graves which he said are
marked by wooden slabs
bearing Jewish names. Most
of the dead were from
Seattle, he believes.
Chamberlist, an electrical
engineer who had emigrated
with his wife Mickey from
Britain to Ontario in 1948, in-
dicated some Jews in isolated
communities do not reveal
their origin even though
anti-Semitism is non-existent
in the Yukon.
Many Jews head south to
retire. Retired Alaskan sen-
ator and governor Ernest
Gruening, now 82, now makes
his home in Washington.
his favorite book, and he read
it as Lincoln did, naturally
and happily. He was at home
in it everywhere; his memory
of it was immense. What I
learned of it through him I
shall never be able to mea-
sure.
"He was at home in the
Bible because he was one of
its people. No man, I think,
ever enjoyed being a Jew
more than Maurice did. And
I mean by enjoyment every-
thing it is capable of mean-
ing: dedication and delight,
fear and trembling, awe and
simple pleasure, wrath , and
loving-kindness, woe a n d
merriment intermixed. What
I learned from him finally
was that there is nothing so
wonderful as loving what one
does — and what one is —
with all one's heart, and with
all one's soul, and with all
one's might."
In her editorial note on
the conversations she had
compiled, Edith Samuel as-
serts:
"F if teen conversations
about love, human and Di-
vine, do not, of course, ex-
haust the enormous and im-
portant theme, nor are they
presented here with any such
claim. They are conversa-
tions: evocative. often con-
troversial probing s, ex-
changes of knowledge, experi-
ence and opinion. As he fol-
lows these dialogues, the
reader is invited — alone or
in company; silently, aloud
or in marginal jottings — to
MAURICE SAMUEL
challenge the participants,
pose his own questions, sup-
ply new points, and extend
the conversations far beyond
the covers of this book."
The excellence of Mrs.
Samuel's judgment in select-
ing the 15 conversations is
evident and impressive.
Among the best examples is
the discussion that took
place on translations. It is
worth re-reading and quot-
ing. Here is a portion of that
conversation:
SAMUEL (laughing): Gen-
ius! To maul that phrase into
this piece of pedantry is also
a kind of genius!
VAN DOREN: Your expla-
nation of the Hebrew con-
firmed my belief that the
original did mean something
that the genius of the King
James translators carried
over into "terrible as an army
with 'banners." When the
phrase is repeated a second
time, this translator changes
it a 'bit more, and makes it
even worse!
SAMUEL: Worse? That's
very difficult to do!
VAN DOREN: A little
worse! Just see if it isn't!
Are you sure, by the way,
that the Hebrew phrase is
exactly the same both times?
SAMUEL: Oh, yes! Ayumah
ka-nidgalot appears without
any change whatsoever, so
that he has no excuse.
VAN DOREN: All right.
Now here is our translator—
I say in vanity—changing it
a bit:
Who is she that breaks
forth like the dawn,—
As beautiful as the moon,
As bright as the sun,
As august as the most
distinguished?
(laughter)
VAN DOREN: I can't help
laughing! "As august as the
most distinguished!" Listen
to all the s's, the t's, and sh's
—it sounds like, well, no poet
at all, not even a good prose
writer!
SAMUEL: Some people, I
suppose, are tired of the
standard translations out of
the past. Great as the King
James translation is, and
good as some translations are
for modern times, the fact is
that we haven't got a transla-
tion that is in harmony with
the language today — by
which I don't mean a collo-
quial translation. One of the
reasons is something we've
deplored — the neglect of
the Bible. Possibly "neglect"
is not quite the right word. _
The Bible is read, it is known,
but I don't think it's enjoyed.
I don't think that it forms a
part in people's lives, as it
has done among certain
groups in the past, and fewer
in the present. Is it, do you
think, that there isn't a trans
lation which corresp. to
times today?
VAN DOREN: The Bible is
not lived with as it once was.
Why? To me, this is a ter-
ribly interesting question. I
am not one of those who
think that no new translation.
of the Bible should be made.
You know, there are those
who hold up their hands in
horror if one syllable of the
King James Version is
changed. I am not one of
those at all, because I 'believe
that this book is so living a
thing that it must remain
alive — and alive in the lan-
guage, as Wordsworth said,
that men use. There is every
reason why we should be
careful to keep it current, to
keep it as "our book," and
not as an antique.
A remarkable book in its
entirety, "In the Beginning,
Love" serves to pay honor t
two great men.
Faulty Rabbinic Scholarship Called 'Menace to Judaism'
Dr. Levey, whose article
was published in a recent is-
sue of "Judaism," a publica-
tion of the American Jewish
Congress, is a Reform rabbi
and educator who served as
president of the Board of
Rabbis of Southern Califor-
nia. He ,is professor of rab-
binics at Hebrew Union Col-
lege—Jewish Institute of Re-
ligion in Los Angeles, and
teaches at the graduate
school of religion at the Uni-
versity of Southern Califor-
nia.
Dr. Zeitlin charged Dr.
Levey's article "is simply a
distortion of historical facts,"
adding that, "after great hes-
itation," he felt it was his
duty to refute the article.
"Most of the books written in
the field of rabbinics by some
professors show that they
have no guidance in the Tal-
mud; most of them use trans-
lations," declared Dr. Zeit-
lin. "Apparently they are un-
able to use originals. As a
student of rabbinics, I con-
sidered it my duty to expose
such books without bias or
favor."
Dr. Zeitlin also finds fault
with those who teach the re-
ligious philosophy of the late
Martin Buber instead of his-
torical Judaism. "In some
universities," he said, "pro-
fessors of religion instead of
teaching the theology of Mai-
monides, Judah Halevi, Cres-
cas and others, concentrate
on the theology called Bu-
berism. Buber's theology is
deluded; it's neither Jewish
nor Christian theology."
"It is no wonder that on
some campuses signs were
hoisted with 'the inscription
`Jesus is kosher.' The profes-
sors of religion with their
Ben Zoma, a contempora- teaching Jewish religion not
ary of Rabbi Akiba during only delude the students but
the second century after the they are making them a
destruction of the Temple ready prey for the Key 73
in Jerusalem, was one of the movement that has set out to
venerable Jewish sages who evangelize."
While he feels certain Ju-
contributed to the writing of
daism will endure faulty
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS the Talmud.
PHILADELPHIA — Call-
ing attention to errors in fact
in an article on Ben Zoma by
a noted West Coast rabbi and
educator, Dr. Solomon Zeit-
lin, distinguished professor
of post-biblical literature and
institutions at Dropsie Uni-
versity and world-renowned
Bible scholar, author and
educator, charged that some
professors who now teach
Jewish religion at many
American universities and
colleges are "not only biased
against Judaism but definite-
ly unqualified to teach."
Some Jewish scholars
whose teaching efforts are
characterized by Dr. Zeit-
lin as "a plague upon Ju-
daism," are called "a men-
ace to Judaism because they
delude the students on the
campuses whd are already
under the sway of Evangel-
ists, "'Jews for Jesus'."
Dr. Zeitlin takes Jewish
scholarship to task in the
Jewish Quarterly Review,
foremost scholarly journal
in the field of Hebrew and
cognate learning. He is chair-
man of the publication's edi-
torial board of the "Quar-
terly," a publication of Drop-
sic University.
In the lead article, which
Dr. Zeitlin titles "The Plague
of Pseudo-Rabbinic Scholar-
ship," he takes Dr. Samson
H. Levey to task for "faulty
imaginary assumptions" and
for "betraying his lack of un-
derstanding of' the Talmud"
in making "bold statements
that Ben Zoma was a Chris-
tian and that his formal adop-
tion of Christianity was "the
best kept secret of the rab-
binic tradition."
teachings of certain profes-
sors of Judaism, some harm
will be sustained on some
campuses because "Jewish
students of traditional Jewish
homes were caught in the net
by the evangelists and ac-
cepted Christianity."
Dr Zeitlin scores the pres-
ent status of the American
Academy of Jewish Research
for not living up to the
"ideas and the ideals of the
founders."
As the only surviving mem-
ber of the original group of
scholars who founded the
academy more than 50 years
ago "to serve as a guardian
of Jewish scholarship in
America," Dr. Zeitlin felt
that he has the "right" to
criticize.
He noted that there are now
academy fellows who never
published scholarly works,
while some books were pub-
lished by fellows do not rep-
resent a contribution to schol-
arship.
"On the contrary," Dr.
Zeitlin said, "they reveal the
inadequacy of the authors.
On the other hand, some
young men, whose publica-
tions are marked by original-
ity and scholarship, wel=l_
never nominated as fel-
lows."
Even some of the papers
published in the academy's
own publication are below
standard, charged Dr. Zeitlin
in calling for the academy to
be "completely reorganized. --
"A Jewish academy," said
Dr. Zeitlin, "in the full sens_
of the word in order to en-
hance scholarship and be .a
guardian of true learning, is
a paramount need now, even
more than it was in 1920."
Sen Keating Visits His Forest
One of the first Israeli missions of U.S. Ambassath
Kenneth B. Keating was to visit the site of the forest plantec
in his honor by the Jewish National Fund several years age
The Keating Forest is located in the Judean Hills southwest
of Jerusalem.