» Torah
por tion
continued from page 31
in our political life there is a void
because we are not communicating a
sense of destiny that does not make us
better than anyone else, but gives us the
greatest of all privileges, the opportunity
to be the servants of mankind.
Is this not true about Jewish life?
There was a time when to be a Jew was
to be filled with content, when a Jew had
a perspective that stretched from the
earliest paganism to the end of the days
of brotherhood and peace the prophets
foresaw.
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32 March 17 • 2016
THE PRIVILEGE OF JUDAISM
We had large horizons … We were a
people that walked in light in the midst
of darkness. We held up the torch of
learning. We guarded our faith against
deterioration into superstition. Being a
Jew was to be called … How small and
trivial were the discriminations and the
burdens alongside the great and enlarg-
ing privilege of being called.
I do not wish to shut anyone out of
Judaism, but I feel that unless the sense
of purpose comes back to Jewish life, the
call that does not set us above or apart,
but gives us a specific assignment in the
pattern of our tradition — that tradition
will disappear.
Soon we will be sitting down to the
seder to talk about freedom. In common
with all of our freedom-loving friends,
we shall enunciate once again our loyalty
to that concept.
But there will be symbols on that
table indicating that freedom for us is
no abstract concept. It is not an idea
one of our philosophers consciously
cogitated. It was born of sweat, tears
and blood of bondage. We have scars
left over from the struggles from which
our understanding of freedom sprang.
There ought to be some intensity in our
loyalty to it.
“And the Lord called.” He is always
calling; and the future is calling; and
man’s spirit is calling.
Perhaps we live in the midst of too
much noise to hear the subtle call that
comes to us; yet if each of us does not
hear the call and does not make his life
an answer to that call, the world will be
governed by those who hear nothing
higher than the call of their own pas-
sions and hostilities. Evil people take
over when good people no longer hear
the call.
What a suggestive word it is with
which we begin our reading of the third
book and which will be in our minds for
10 weeks to come as we read Leviticus,
called Vayikra — “He called.”
He continues to call. He does not limit
his calls to one age, one time. His is a
call that comes to each of us. Will we
hear, and how shall we answer?
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