Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 August 1963 — Page 8

Precursor of the Messiah The fact that our three leading national Jewish organizations were able to get together in a response to the Soviet charge of widespread anti-Semitism in the United States is more important than the act which was carried out. Hardly anyone will take notice of this historic occasion. For 45 years efforts have been made to get the three organizations to even talk to each other on the telephone much less issue a declaration to the public which meant they recognized that the other organizations could be on their level. The American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and the B’nai B’rith teamed up to charge the USSR with “shocking distortions” about anti-Semitism in the U.S., which the three Jewish organizations claimed was at “its lowest level in American history”. This is an indication of the coming of the Messiah, rnd no one should forget that.

Eliminating Abuses > The rabbinate of the U.S. — not merely the Orthodox rabbinate — will be most pleased at the agreement worked out with the Jewish Funeral Directors of America (P-O, July 5) which will elii linate aspects of Jewish funerals which have crept in because of the aping of non-Jewish practices. The agreement did not come about because of the concern of the funeral directors with Jewish practices or because of the concern of Jews — excepting perhaps the very Orthodox — with the gradual disappearance of the traditional Jewish funeral, marked as it is supposed to be by extreme simplicity. Nor was the acceptance of the agreement by the funeral directors a willing process. The Orthodox group had an option to buy a $1,000,000 plot of land in New York to set up its own cemetery as a last resort. The lesson here is clear. If the Jewish community wishes to eliminate from American Jewish life some of the worst abuses, it must take a firm stand. The caterers, who have made a mockery of Jewish religious practices, should be the next group to be brought into line. Either we abdicate our right to determine Jewish living, or we use whatever legitimate means are available to us to see that abuses on the part of commercial interests are not permitted to drag Jewish practices down to the lowest level. We pay our respects to the good judgment of the Jewish Funeral Directors of America and to the tenacity and insistence of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, who conducted the lengthy negotiations with the funeral directors.

We Doff Our Hats We doff our hat to the National Community Relations Advisory Council and other Jewish civic protective agencies for the fine work in connection with the recent Supreme Court decision outlawing prayers in the public schools. What was expected to be a major eruption in the general community, turned out to be a fizzle. Why? Because of the advance indoctrination of the leadership and those controlling the means of communication, plus agreements with the heads of various religious bodies calling for support of the Supreme Court, there was no uncontrolled excited public outcry. The lesson learned here can be invaluable. There are many explosive issues which separate various segments of the community. But where there is underlying good will, it is possible to minimize the reaction when the issue comes to the attention of the public. We should say that Jewish community relations agencies have now come of age.

^ EDITOR'S CHAIR...

Richard Cohen, of the American Jewish Congress, has sent us the full text of the address of Edwin Wolf, II, delivered at the “Dialogue in Israel”. He sent this to us because in our editorial of July 5 we challenged what seemed to us a non* sequitur — blaming the Jewish intellectuals for not participating in Jewish life while at the same time describing that Jewish life as not only non-intellec-tual but dominated by everything the intellectual abhors, status-seeking, worship of money, and ostentation. The full text shows precisely what we gathered from the short report sent out by the American Jewish Congress, the sponsor of these dialogues. Wolf blamed both the intellectuals and the worship of the dollar in American Jewish living. More precisely, he charged the intellectual with not looking beneath the surface to marvel at the pure gold of Jewish values. What Mr. Wolf failed to consider .s that if these pure values have so little influence on the way of life of the American Jewish community why should the intellectual regard them as other than the same kind of professions of morality as we get from the Communist world or from any kind of totalitarians. If Mr. Wolf failed to make any suggestions for changing the situation, we don’t blame him. For one thing, he was speaking to an Israeli audience, and for another, it suffices for a person to point up the evil for often this is the foundation for the development which brings about correctives. Yet the American Jewish leadership — the rabbis, our national Jewish organizations —cannot assume for themselves the same alibis. The Hillel Foundations of B’nai B’rith have recently launched a program aimed at winning the Jewish faculty members back to a recognition of Jewish values — ard this incidentally could lead in a roundabout way to the revitalization of the Hillel Foundations. Except for this you hear no word from any place, whether from the rabbinical organizations, or the hundreds of our national Jewish organizations.

der’s Jewish enterprise, are superficial in their analysis. For B’nai B’rith swung the U.S. Jewish community towards Zionism in the critical days and today leads our national Jewish bodies in constructive areas of Jewish work.

We suggested here before that every rabbi in the U.S. and Canada set himself a goal of a minyan — ten — whom they will seek to enlist from among the intellectuals to wdn them back to an appreciation of Jewish values. This kind of work is something that the rabbis would relish and the rewards are self-evident.

As this program expands, and with the knowledge attained by experimentation, we may learn how to transfer Jewish values over the several lost generations which now control Jewish life.

Which rabbi will write to us first accepting the challenge?

We can think of no greater heartbreak than that which seemed to be the lot of a prominent Southern Jewish banker, if we read his obituary correctly.

He was president of his Orthodox synagogue, president of his bank, and prominent enough in the civic life of his community so that his obituary was featured together with his picture in the daily paper. But each of his children used the maiden name of their mother, who was not Jewish. His two sons and his daughter seemed not to want to carry the name of their father, and what greater tragedy is there than this? • We never stopped to think of it before, but when we use the word “christened” in connection with the launching of a new boat we are really using a religious term. Ben Azai, who writes a light column for The Jewish Chronicle of London, calls attention to the irony of using the term “*.hristening” when Mrs. David Ben Gurion launched the new 22,000 ton Israeli liner, “Shalom.”

In its Adult Education Commission, the B’nai B’rith faces the problem squarely, and we’ve said before that those critics of B’nai B’rith, who use the bowling leagues as the standard of the Or-

Jews no longer use AD or BC, preferring BCE or ACE, before and after the common era. Who’ll come up with a term suitable for the blessing when an Israeli ship first rolls down the ways.

New Kind of TV Appearance Makes Rabbi Tense

By RABBI MAURICE DAVIS I have been on more television programs than I have reason or desire to count. Over the years the lights, the cameras, t h e microphones have become instruments to be t a k e n for granted. I have long since ceased to s t a n d in Rabbi Davis awe of them, or to be tense in their presence. Yesterday was different, however. The television program in which I participated contained a format that was unique. We were videotaping a show that is scheduled for the fall, the cast of which consisted of two people. I was one of the two people. The other half of the cast was an interviewer who questioned me for one solid hour concerning my attitudes, my evaluations, my points of view, and my beliefs. Often he challenged my statements, and in the dialogue that ensued, the conversation was spirited. What made the show unique, however, and what contributed to my tension had not to do with the questions, or with the answers. It had to do with the questioner. He is a well-known artist, and all the time he was interviewing me, he was busy sketching my portrait! He sat opposite me with a huge writing board on his lap, and by

his side a box filled with a strange variety of pencils and crayons. He asked me questions, and as I answered he stared unblinkingly at me, while making furious motions with pencils. Over his shoulder one of the cameras eavesdropped shamelessly. It recorded his progress by switching from my face to the likeness of my face on his drawing board. I was acutely conscious not of the camera, but of him. Every time he sketched, 1 wondered what he saw. Every time he erased, I wondered what I had don^wrong, At last the program was ended, and the portrait completed. I expressed pleasure at his artistry,

but my overriding emotion was one of relief. As I left the studio I realized that I had been under great tension. I have been watched, and looked at often enough. This tftne I had been stared at for sixty minutes, and l felt the strain. The artist had been picking my mind with his questions, and recording my answers with his drawing. The cameras had been on me as well, but this was of small concern. A camera merely records. An artist penetrates. The camera is a masterpiece of man’s inventive genius, but the two eyes of a man are far more magnificent. Not what man makes, but what man is, continues to fill me with awe.

thjS^ewish Po*+ / O plNIOf *

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