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Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 27th day of Elul, 5737, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Deuteronomy 29:9-30:20. Prophet ical portion, Isaiah 61:10-63:9.
Rosh Ilashana Scriptural Seleetions
Tuesday, Pentateuchal portion, Genesis 21:1-34, Numbers 29:1-6. Prophetical portion, 1 Samuel 1:1-2:10.
Wednesday, Pentateuchal portion, Genesis 22:1-24, Numbers 20:1-6. Prophetical portion, Jeremiah 31:2-20.
Thursday. Fast of Gedaliah
Pentateuchal portion, Exodus 32:11 - 14, 34:1 - 10. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 5.5:6 - 56:8 (afternoon only).
Candle lighting. Friday. Sept. 9. 7:35 p.m.
VOL. LXXII, No. 1
Page Four
Friday, September 9, 1977
For the Year Ahead
The Faith That Sustains
Experience providing the best teaching, 5738 may not be vastly differ-
ent from other years on the history-laden Jewish calendar. Perhaps the
challenges will be greater because the tensions that are anticipated may
be so oppressive. Yet the historically repetitive aspects of even the most
serious expectations offer the same inevitable cure for all illnesses: reten-
tion of faith in the ultimate triumph of that which is just.
In nearly every aspect of Jewish life there are symptoms both of
clouded spheres as well as assurances that whatever obstacles there are
there will be Jewish continuity and the obstacles will be hurdled with dig-
nity.
The two major matters of Jewish concern involving the global consid-
erations relate to security, to a term often used but meriting resentment:
that of survival. For those who have fears of survivalism there is only the
designation of defeatism. There is an indestructibility in Jewish existence
that defies the fear of disappearance. The form Jewish life assumes in
the people's attitudes is the element of importance. It is always in a spirit
- of life everlasting.
Rejecting fears of survivalism, the Jew, wherever he may be, is con-
fronted by the threats that stem from hatreds, from anti-Semitism, and
that security of Israel makes very great demands upon the Jewish
people.
It would be like burying one's head in the sand if the resurgence of ha-
tred were not to be taken into serious consideration. Anti-Semitism is in-
creasing. It is in evidence wherever there are Jews. It is rampant in the
Soviet Union, it has retained a foothold in Islamic countries. It is the
source of bigotry even among the Jew's fellow Semites, the Arabs. It
often raises its ugly head in free countries like the United States, Great
Britain, France and the Scandinavian lands.
How else is one to judge the reappearance of the notorious forgeries,
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as machinations of Arabs, Commun-
ists, the bigoted in the ranks of those who would revive the Jew as a
ghost and as a scapegoat? How else is one to explain the occasional re-
version by the viciously prejudiced to such libelous accusations as the rit-
ual murder lie ? Why, are such assumptions incorrect, in view of the beat-
ings of Jews in public places in England?
The questions can be carried much farther. Why is there such an exten-
sive anti-Jewish feeling among the students in British universities? Why -
have the British university students yielded to Arab pressures to mobilize
anti-Israel seminars which inevitably transform themselves into anti-
Semitic cells?
Perhaps the answer is a simple one : bigotry is not easily erased from
the minds and hearts of people; crackpots, once they gain a platform,
find their way into the minds of many who so easily yield to hatred and
suspicion.
Could it be that the jealousies engendered by the triumphs of Israel .and
the venom inspired by oil and the panic caused by fears over an energy
crisis be ascribable to the anti-Semitism that is now rampant? It is in-
deed, possible, and because of it the obligation to give all the necessary
support to Israel grows with time. It is as applied to Israel that the term
survival has relevance. One who has faith must retain an assurance that
Israel, like Jewry, is not destructible. In the most tragic years of Jewish
homelessness, during the-centuries of Exile, there were always Jews in
the Land of Israel, there were always Jews in Jerusalem and in Safed.
Now there is a danger that is linked with an unfortunate greed on the
part of Islam which would banish Judaism from its homeland. It can't
materialize, it won't work and those who would not sacrifice justice will
not condemn Israel to the gallows or to the statelessness that would make
pariahs of Jews.
Both aspects of Jewish concern are matters that will surely have the
fate of the centuries. The Jewish aspiration for national redemption will
never be negated again. The threat of the anti-Semite can not, by the
very nature of anything smacking of the genocidal, succeed. Therefore,
the Jew carries on and says when confronting the two most menacing ele-
ments that are linked with hatred that he has faith and in faith he lives
on with pride, with dignity, with courage. Can there be a more heartening
message on the New Year?
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Wide-Open Arms to New Generation
The Youth and Identification
Youth is not conscripted into Jewish communal life: it must identify.
This is a process of confrontation, perhaps the most serious to be concerned with
in the stock-taking that is on the New Year agenda.
An accepted dogma about "vie es christelt sich... ", that as Christians react so do
Jews, is, of course, applicable to the youth of all faiths. The minds of young people
are affected by environment as well as by heredity, and while the home is the very
vital factor in planting the most ideal' desires in human relations there is no denying
the effects that the street and the school have onyoung people.
Yet, the Jewish demands are different. The hope for inalienable identifications by
the elders as well as youth with the Jewish community embrace many interests.
There is the urgency of not forgetting the kinfolk everywhere. When there were pogr-
oms in Russia, attacks on Jews in Poland and other lands, public opinion needed
to be aroused in protests and in demands for succor, and it these had not beglin with
Jews making the appeals for justice the interest in the oppressed might never have
been aroused.
Even during the Holocaust, and in the era of Nazi bestialities, the Jewish voice
was needed to arouse public opinion. When Great Britain shut the doors of Palestine
to Jews and boatloads of escapees from Nazism perished on the high seas, it was
the voice of the Jew that was needed in exposing the wrongs of Perfidious Albion.
This is only one example of the diffi!rences that exist between Jewish duties and
those of their neighbors. All peoples have a responsibility to avoid the immorality of
crimes and violence and to strive for the raising of the cultural and spiritual stand-
ards of the nation. In the instance of the Jew it also involves protection for a legacy
that is incomparable in drawing contrasts with other people.
Indeed, the legacy is vital in the consideration of the goals to which Jewv -must
aspire, and therein lies the great need for devoted identification by the yout 'his
is where home :and school step in to assure that the treasures that have been handed
down from a sanctified past shall not be abandoned.
Perhaps the young people are less to be blamed when indifference becomes evi-
dent because they are not alone in such transgres4ag. Are - their elders better in-
formed and more dedicated? Is it possible that Cie response of youth is com-
mensurate with that of their elders ?
The concerns about youth reactions can not be delimited when the growing rate of
mixed marriages is taken into consideration, when the decline in their participation
in synagogue life is considered, when the abandonment of Jewish studies after Bar
and Bat Mitzva is viewed realistically.
These are problems never to be ignored. They are lessened when the growing
measure of responsiveness is taken into account. Israel attracts many youths, even if
only for summers of sharing life with the cooperative settlements in the Jewish
state. The religious factor often regains priorities. Courses in higher learning in Jew-
ish-oriented departments in universities now are marked by enlarged enrollments.
There are problems, and there are many consoling evidences. The negatives must
not be ignored while the positive achievements must be given greater consideration
in the efforts to multiply the labors for an assurance of identifications by youth. The
obstacles are many, the inspirations that stern from the spiritual legacies are their
match. With a new year comes the great obligation to give special consideration to
the latter.
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