Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 2 September 1966 — Page 3

TO FACE TODArS STUDENT Orthodox Rabbis Seen As Poorly - Equipped

Facing Common Problems Israel, Egypt Rapprochement?

LONDON — A new and less antagonistic approach to Nasser by Israel is being fashioned, the knowledgeable Jewish Observer and Middle East Review reports from its special correspondent

in Israel.

“The fact is that men like Eban, Dayan, Peres — and also Premier Eshkol — have always had a sneaking admiration for President Nasser as a statesman and leader, though not for his policies.” The account added that “Lately this appreciation of Nasser as an Arab leader has become more openly pronounced.” , ANALYZING THIS new view, the article asserts that “For one tiling, there is greater sympathy for some of his domestic policies; the Israeli leaders are mostly socialists and they view Nasser’s attempts at socializing Egypt’s economy and social structure with considerable sym-

pathy.”

But the account goes on, “there is more to this than merely a liking for the man; serious long range calculations are involved in this Israeli attitude. No serious and sociolog-ically-minded Israeli politician imagines for one moment that a new order in the Middle East can be achieved by the Saudi Arabians or by King Hussein, much as he is personally re-

spected.”

THE ANALYSIS BY the writer portrays Egypt as faced with domination either by Russia, a road which she is currently travelling but with many reservations, or falling into the sphere of American influence. A third road, that of cooperation with the European Common

All Israel Aids Blind Lovers To Happiness

Market might possibly be an answer for Egypt and “there might be greater hope of the European Community acting as a protective umbrella under which Israeli and Arab differences could be gradually and undramatically hammered out, instead of being inflamed.’' THE ARTICLE CONCLUDES that “this would present a delicate and difficult situation for both sides. But they seem to be approaching it with their eyes open. It will require patience and, above all, leadership and statesmanship in Jerusalem and Cairo; and, more than anything else, the political courage to grapple with realities rather than shadows.” Honduras Leaves Convention After Threat On Jews NAIROBI — An indiscreet antiJewish assertion by students from Honduras attending the International Students' Conference here has led to the withdrawal of the

world body.

Eddie Kaufmann, leader of the Israel students delegation, announced at a press conference that he had been told by students from Honduras that they supported the military dictatorship in their country and “that they will kill all the Jews when they come

to power.”

The Honduras delegation withdrew after Israel, Paraguay and Costa Rica accused them of believing in the elimination of the

Jews.

Despair HAIFA — The final fillip which made the happiness of blind AUza Nizri, 23, complete following her marriage to Shlomo Levi, 25, who also is blind, was the generosity of warm-hearted citizens who provided a trousseau and outfitted a home for the

couple.

It was the last chapter of a tale of rehabilitation by social institutions and individual wellwishers that had lifted Aliza from the depths of misery and

despair.

ALIZA CONTRACTED eye disease as an infant in Morocco, where the condition was treated by removing her eyes. She was invalid and utterly neglected when the social workers of the Haifa Municipality took her to the

Migdalor Institute at Kiryat Hayim. She learned weaving and other crafts and within a- year became one of the best trainees there. The Rothschild city hospital's Eye Department performed a series of laborious plastic operations on Aliza to restore her appearance as best they could. But her family never visited her and she remained deeply depressed. The Hospital Service Volunteers, a women’s organization, was called in, and a woman who prefers to remain anonymous adopted her. She took her to her Mt. Carmel home, burned her rags, gave her new clothes, a hah cut and hew hope. WHEN SHLOMO LEVI turned up as a suitor, Aliza had been

NEW YORK — The failure of the Orthodox rabbinate to communicate with the young Jewish student is laid directly at the door of the rabbinate in an article in the current issue of Tradition, quarterly publication of the Rabbinical Council of America (Orthodox). In an article, mercilessly frank, Rabbi Joseph Grunblatt, of Montreal, quotes one Yavneh — the Orthodox campus organization — student as saying: “The rabbis come to address us as if we were a sisterhood.” GRUNBLATT THEN proceeds to assert that “The rabbi becomes so involved in the overall popularity contest that he cannot respond to the deeper need of the students, which is not a ‘good story,' a joke, or the popular science and psychology which go over so well with the average synagogue member.” Continuing, Grunblatt states that the “Student does not want to hear the talks that glorify Judaism, flay assimilation, and discuss the art of living — the kind of material in which sermon manuals abound. I dare submit that too many rabbis are neither intellectually nor emotionally equipped to cope with the contemporary student — even the Orthodox student.” THE ARTICLE, entitled, “The Great Estrangement,” praises Yavneh as “a potent spiritual force on the American scene largely ignored by non-tradition-al leaders and exasperatingly incomprehensible to many Orthodox leaders. Yet, in its groping and often immature ways it

transformed from a derelict waif whom her parents kept out of sight for two years into a poised and pleasant-looking young woman. The Mt. Carmel “mother” says she found a “fantastic fund of sympathy and generosity” when she began a one-man campaign to round-up a trousseau for the bride. “Men and women helped. A bed manufacturer I had never seen before gave me the best double bed and foam rubber mattress he had.” A refrigerator and an oven, furniture and curtains, kitchen utensils and cash turned up.” Shlomo is employed by an icecream company and does not earn enough to save for a heme. The Welfare Ministry is giving the couple e flat.

has shown greater creativity and vitality than some highsounding, headlining organizations.” Rabbi Grunblatt sees the situation as one involving the difference between profession of principles and compromise with life. And it has resulted, he declares in “an almost unanimous disdain for the institutions and personages of organized Orthodox society.” THE “OUGHT,” the author states, “of the synagogue is to educate, to honor the learned, give strength to the pious, charity to the poor and succor to the downtrodden.” The student though “is appalled at the vulgarization of the synagogue and kindred organization, and at the sycophancy towards heavy but sometimes unworthy contributors. They are mercilessly critical of leaders who are a far cry, in learning and personal conduct, from the principles expounded by these organizations. The student cringes when he reads in synagogue bulletins of vaudeville shows and a plethora of. social events totally unrelated and often inimical to the ideals of the institution.” EVEN THE RABBI “does not fare much better in this scathing criticism. The student's ‘ought image’ of the rabbi is the prophetic figure, the scholar, the courageous ‘knight of faith’ who teaches, admonishes, and battles. The ‘is’ rabbi to the student is the compromiser par excellence, the adept ‘eye-closer.’ He sits inanely at tasteless Bar Mitzvah banquets and he invokes God’s blessing on godless events, but is silent in the face of injustice.” The inability of the rabbi to cope with the contemporary student is blamed “to a great extent” on “the yeshiva world in which the contemporary rabbi was raised. The yeshivah has persisted in its anachronistic attitude towards the non-ob-servant Jew and his intellectual problems. Its curriculum is geared to produce the traditional lamdam (scholar) and not the possek (legal authority) and intellectual leader, the man of thought and vision required in American life.” THE YESHIVAH student of yesterday is portrayed as evading reality, and retreating to the “security of yeshiva life.” The Montreal rabbi asserted that “many become habituated in their schizophrenic alternation between two worlds, without a true dialect between them. One of the results of this ambivalence is the relative infedundity and lack of initiative displayed by the Association of

Orthodox Scientists — an organization which ought to play a much more creat\e and articulate role in American Jewish leadership.” Today’s yeshiva student “who attends university is more eager than his predecessor to integrate into the western world. He is interested not only in receiving its benefits but also in sharing the thought processes and institutions that created them. He wishes to enter into a dialectical relationship with chakhmat edom and hopes to achieve at least a meaningful state of coexistence between the Yeshivah and the University. It is in Yavneh where this confrontation can take place.” WHAT IS REQUIRED of the rabbi who would communicate with these young people is an intellectual and emotional preparation “to engage in crucial contemporary issues. Just as one must risk one’s life in times of war in order to secure victory, so, in a sense, one must risk one’s Orthodoxy in times of conflict of ideas and intellectual uncertainty. One cannot ‘guide the perplexed’ unless one has faced up to the perplexities, just as the psychoanalyst does not enter his profession without being psychoanalyzed himself. One cannot hope to inspire those who question without aving existentially experienced the problems of the twentieth century Jew and grappled with them out of the depths of one’s Torah knowledge and commitment.” Rabbi Grunblatt then lists the areas of concern of the student. FIRST HE LISTS the spirit of scientism which he declares “is a pose, an ontological attitude towards reality which still predominates on the campus in spite of all the uncertainties of science and its inability to cope with man’s moral problems.” The second “disturbing” area is Biblical criticism. “Orthodox scholarship has not paid sufficient attention to Bible criticism, as well as to what Louis Jacobs calls the ‘moral difficulties’ of the Bible.” The next area is “the tension in Judaism between its universalism and its occasionally virtulent particularism.” ANOTHER “TROUBLE spot,” listed by the author “is the ancient problem of good and evil.” “At times,” he said, “the problem is brought intj relief as the main feature of human concern, and no reference to its antiquity can assuage man’s anger at his fate.” The holocaust, Rabbi Grunblatt asserts “was more cruel and absurd than the burning of the Temple in 70 C.E., or any adversity thereafter. In (Continued on Next Page)

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