I PURELY COMMENTARY
Whither U.S. Jewry? Views To The Future
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor Emeitus
T
here are many ways of foreseeing
the future that await American
Jewry. There are the faith-
motivated who reject any mention even
of partial doom. There are the
pessimists who can claim privileged
realism. The optimists are not to be
written off. After all, they hold the ban-
ner high. They incite us into valorous
protection of our legacies.
Jacob R. Marcus exemplifies the op-
timists. He is one of our most esteemed
archivists and author of American
Jewish historical chronicles. As
organizer of and to this day one of the
administrative directors of American
Jewish Archives, he keeps adding glory
to our peoplehood. Hopefully, Wayne
State University Press will soon an-
nounce the preparation of his four-
volume history of American Jewry
which he anticipated as his magnum
opus.
Dr. Marcus is the distinguished
scholar who, in an address here at Con-
gregation Shaarey Zedek not too many
years ago, speaking without notes for
nearly an hour, uttered this optimistic
view of our future:
There is no American
melting pot. There is a Jewish
melting pot out of which will
emerge a quintessential type in
the years to come. Today
everything is being poured into
the insatiable maw of that cruci-
ble which we call the American
Jewish community: the young-
unwed Jewish girl who gives
birth to a mulatto child; the
children of fathers who founded
Murder, Inc.; the New York taxi-
cab driver who can solve all the
Jacob Marcus
Howard Simons
problems of the universe — ex-
cept the Long Island traffic —
while he delivers you to the air-
port; the corporation lawyer
who heads a world-wide elec-
tronic enterprise; the Jewish
slum landlord who attends ser-
vices with some regularity, is a
devoted husband and father,
and gives generously to the
United Jewish Appeal .. .
course. Not to suffer history but
to make history — this is the
challenge that confronts the
new historian. Knowledge,
meticulous, painfully accurate,
all-embracing knowledge,
brings with it the power to
create, to mold, to survive.
I would ask at this hour that
we gird our loins and go out in
quest of the new Jew of tomor-
row, that individual who will
somehow embody within
himself the consensus of his
people. Let us with our
sophisticated techniques hold
up the mirror to reality.
Perspective is emancipation.
To see where we are moving is
an invitation to shape our
Self-judgment about the future of
the American Jewish community is, in
the main, less optimistic. Available
statistics point to population declines.
They suggest increased assimilation.
The warnings are about the less-
devotional rather than the ultra-loyalist
trends that are the aim of community-
builders. Therefore, the tendencies like
the concerns in the Jewish Welfare
Federation of Detroit which inspired the
formation of the Commission on Iden-
tity and Affiliation. The study sessions,
that lasted for three years, had for their
aims actions proposing communal com-
mitments toward strengthening the
communal functions and perpetuating
them.
Motivations for conducting such
studies is confronting the survival of
Jewish life in America. It was defined
at the outset as "the need for strong
measures to build a stance of Jewish
identity and affiliation among a con-
cerned Jewish population."
The then Federation President Joel
Tauber introduced the planning pro-
gram by asserting that "to nurture that
Jewish connection, the Jewish com-
munity and its institutions must deal
with the realities of change in family
structures, increased mobility and a
perceived decline in traditional obser-
vance."
The conclusions arrived at in the
three years of assemblies in which some
100 concerned men and women par-
ticipated led to the desired increased in-
terests in the educational systems, with
some emphasis on the day schools, new
strength for the Jewish Community
Center movement, all available means
of increasing devotion and lending
dignity to the family structure.
Current Federation President Dr.
Conrad Giles and study commission
chairman David Page are in the leader-
ship efforts to strengthen the
machinery for putting into action the
spiritual means for solutions. The en-
tire process is a basic result of ex-
periences that have led toward search
for resolving what is definitely
acknowledged as a declining or at best
reducing Jewish communal activity.
The consecration and devotion
tested in the Detroit studies are not
limited to this community. They are
universal. They are large-scale
American. It is, therefore, necessary to
search for experiences by Jews on a na-
Continued on Page 42
Talmudic Sages: Their Enrichment Of Our Legacies
H
istoric Jewish legacies, their
influence upon uninterrupted
Jewish studies and
research,keep influencing the devotion
to learning and to knowledge. There is
a fascination in such studies and it re-
tains an influence upon the scholarship
of our generation.
There is a powerful set of factors in
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Vol. XCIII No. 26
2
August 26, 1988
FRIDAY, AUGUST 26, 1988
a voluminous literary treasure entitled
The Encyclopedia of Talmudic Sages by
Gershom Bader, one of the newly
published works to come from the press
of Jason Aronson. The biographies of
the most famous sages in the Talmud
and scholars of the early times add
value to the knowledge provided. There
is an added factor of the re-introduction
to this generation of the eminent
scholar Gershom Bader, whose
scholastic genius resulted in as im-
mense a work as this one. At the same
time there is another introduction here
to what had been a field of great
newspapers — the Yiddish — which
were the source of Bader's writings.
Memories of Yiddish journalism
share an interest in welcoming this
book as a major gift to the Jewish
bookshelf. Gershom Bader was an
essayist writing for the Yiddish
newspapers in the 1920s through the
1930s. Therefore, the recollection of the
importance of the Yiddish press in the
decades when the Yiddish readers
numbered in the hundreds of
thousands. Those newspapers — now ex-
tinct, with only the weekly bi-lingual
Forward as a reminder of them — were
news disseminating and also served as
magazines. They presented and inter-
preted the news of the world — general,
not only Jewish — and published the
literary works of the most distinguish-
ed writers. They were culturally
treasured, with historical emphases in
prose and poetry.
The anthological three-volume Yid-
dish classic now published as The En-
cyclopedia of Talmudic Sages, appears
in a commendable translation by
Solomon Katz.
The author himself mastered
Jewish historical records, imbedded in
biographical data the famous scholars
who were known only by names, who in-
vited belated recognition in literary
history. Then, Gershom Bader's name
was known for his essays and scholar-
ship and his entire background was
really hidden. Therefore the privilege
to reintroduce him by means of
biographical sketch that appeared in
the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia a
half century ago, as follows:
Bader, Gershom (Gustav;
1868-1953), Hebrew and Yiddish
journalist and writer. Bader,
who was born in Cracow, taught
there after attending rabbinical
seminaries outside Galicia.
From 1893 until 1912 he lived in
Lvov, where in 1904 he founded
the first Yiddish daily in Galicia,
the Togblat (from 1906, Nayes
Lemberger Togblat), and con-
tributed regularly to Ha-Maggid
and other Hebrew papers.
From 1896 to 1912 he publish-
ed and edited the Yidisher
Folkskalendar, a popular Gali-
cian literary almanac. He
translated Genesis into Polish
and published Hebrew
language textbooks.
His anthologies, Leket
Perahim and Zer Perahim
(1895-96), helped to popularize
Hebrew literature and in 1896 he
edited the fifth volume of the
literary miscellany Ozar ha-
Sifrut. From 1896-1912 he pro-
Continued on Page 42