[-HIGH HOLY DAYS
Confronting Morality
Continued from proceding page
A VERY HAPPY
NEW YEAR
From
EVERYONE
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From Everyone At
HERALD
WHOLESALE
Janice and Jerry Katz
Michael and Lori
Marcie and Eric Lipsitt
and Our Entire Staff
tin Buber who, glowing in-
wardly from some mystical
experiences, sat and talked
with him. The man conse-
quently came to a decision
that led to his death. Reflec-
ting afterward, Buber realiz-
ed he had been amiable but
by being so focused on his own
experiences he had not been
totally present to the needs of
his caller. He had failed to res-
pond to the serious need for
counsel; he had not offered
the guidance that could have
turned the young man's deci-
sion in a different direction.
Sometimes people hear the
signals but hesitate to act.
Many a night I have reflected
on a similar experience. At a
reception, I met a friend
whom I had not seen for a
while. He was passing
through town for a week. In
the conversation I detected a
certain disturbance, perhaps
even a bit of despair, so I tried
to cheer him up. Dodging my
efforts, he mocked me a bit.
Several times during the
week I reached for the phone
to ask him to lunch, to talk
things over and to follow up
on a nagging feeling of con-
cern. But I was busy and felt
a bit embarrassed at pushing,
since in the past he had pooh-
poohed my attention or at-
tempts to humor him. The
days sped by; he left town.
Two months later a caller
told me that the friend had
died. In that moment I knew
with crystal clarity what had
happened. A thousand times
since then I have felt moral
revulsion at my self-
indulgence that I had been
too busy and had not taken
my friend's needs seriously
enough. I knew that my ra-
tionalizations at the time
were true, but I know that
■ Ilm ■ mmE
Maimonides' words were also
true—I had not taken them
seriously enough.
No act is too trivial. The
Talmud lists acts "for which
there is no measure," no
minimum or maximum. Cen-
tral among these are "acts of
loving-kindness." Sometimes
an encouraging smile at the
right time can change
another person's life.
The decision to resist evil by
only one pastor in a southern
French town led to an entire
village's hiding and thereby
saving hundreds of Jews from
the Nazi Holocaust. Con-
versely, the shortsighted,
political taking-the-easy-way-
out of a Von Papen in 1933 or
Hindenburg in 1934 paved
the way for the total domina-
tion of Germany and Europe
by a monstrously evil man.
The sound of the shofar dur-
ing the High Holy Days is
meant to cut through the web
of routine, rationalization,
and indulgence; to wake up
people and get them to take 1
themselves and their actions
as seriously as they deserve.
One more cigarette—what dif-
ference does it make? Buckl-
ing a seat belt for a short
trip—why bother? In the
Talmud, Rabbi Eliezer sug-
gests that people should live
every day with the same
moral intensity as they would
if it were their last. Rosh
Hashanah-Yom Kippur teach
that we should perform every
act as if our life depended on
it because, in fact, it does.
❑
From the upcoming book, The
Jewish Way: Living The Holidays,
by Rabbi Irving Greenberg, to be
published in October, 1988 by Sum-
mit Books, New York, New York.
Reprinted with permission of the
Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency
Inc. ©copyright 1988, Irving
Greenberg.
l MEDIA MONITOR I ■ IMENIIIIMII=111111
The PLO Prefers
The Politics Of Likud
tk
•
v-t-ok
Our wish for a
year filled with
happiness, health
and prosperity
110 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1988
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Special to The Jewish News
W
hen Jordan's King
Hussein essentially
handed the West
Bank over to the PLO, he put
both the PLO and Israel on a
new footing. Most observers
maintain that Israeli's more
hard-line Likud Party will
bear the political fruits of
Hussein's move. Even the
PLO, according to the Israeli
newspaper, Ha'aretz, reports
that the PLO is rooting for a
Likud victory in the upcom-
ing Israeli elections.
The PLO, writes Ha'aretz
reporter Ze'ev Schiff, believes
that a Likud triumph will
"acutely polarize" Israeli
society and generate "inter-
nal bickering [which] will
create rifts within Israeli
society which the Jews will
have trouble overcoming."
The PLO also anticipates
that the policies a right-wing
coalition will be forced to
make will increasingly
isolate Israel internationally,
especially with Europe.
The Palestinian leadership
is also betting, says Schiff,
that the Israeli left-wing
would not oppose a political
settlement engineered bet-
ween Likud and the PLO, just
as it did not fight the Israeli-
K-
1