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THE JEWISH OBSERVER Is Published Monthly, Except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, a LETTER from ISRAEL

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THE JEWISH OBSERVER Is Published Monthly, Except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, a LETTER from ISRAEL ii/~~"'~211;N~'T~;~3;!;'1;i;;s~"'~fc NOVEM~~~ 19~/KISl.EV S, ... FIFTY CENTS THE 1~·1.1 _>::t~'l-~ The Vatican Counc~,~~ and the Jew • Hatred Comes Forth From Zion • Agudath Israel In. the U.N. • Assimilation - Two Sides of the '-'U'fii,!'.i' THE JEWISH QBSERVER contents articles THE VATICAN COUNCIL AND THE JEW, Yaakov Jacobs··············· 3 HATRED COMES FORTH FROM ZION ......................................................... 6 Ass1MILATION-TW0 SIDES OF THE CoJN, Shubert Spero ......... 9 AGUDATH IsRAEL IN THE UNITED NATIONS, An Interview...... 12 THE JEWISH OBSERVER is published monthly, except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, A LETTER FROM ISRAEL .................................................................................... 15 5 Beekman Street, New York, N. Y. 10038. Second class postage paid at New York, N. Y. THREE MISSING WORDS, Yaakov Jacobs................................................ 16 Subscription: $5.00 per year; single copy: 50¢. Printed in the U.S.A. Editorial Board DR. ERNST L. BODENHFJMER Chainnan features RABBI NATHAN BULMAN RABBI JOSEPH ELIAS TRANSLATIONS OF TORAH CLASSICS ............................................................ 18 JOSEPH FRIEDENSON RABBI MORRIS SHERER SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH ON CHANUKAH ............................................. 20 Art Editor BERNARD MERLING SECOND LOOKS AT THE JEWISH SCENE ...................................................... Advertising Manager 24 RABBI SYSHE HESCHEL Managing Editor LETTERS TO THE EDITOR .................................................................................... 29 RABBI Y AA KOY JACOBS THE JEWISH OBSERVER does not assume responsibility for the Kashrus of any product or service advertised in its ·pages. the c:over Nov. 1964 VoL. II, No. 2 A section of the Arch of Titus, in Rome, portraying Roman troops carrying ~@) the Menorah removed from the Bais Hamikdosh. (See SAMSON RAPHAEL HIRSCH ON CHANUKAH, page 20.) Yaakov Jacobs The Vatican Council and the Jew Is ecumenicism as jrkndly as it appetrrs to be? T WOULD BE DIFFICULT to find a single word describe certain conclaves, during at least the last that has had a greater impact on religion in recent century, the Ecumenical Movement as such has been I times, than the word ecumenicism. It catapulted an exclusively Protestant force, even looked askance to fame an "interim pope" of the Church; it has shaken at by the Roman Church. old-line theologians in Rome beyond their wildest Protestantism has Jong been sensitive to its division nightmares; it has caused an upheaval in world Protes­ in this country into over 200 separate sects. (Some tantism; and finally it has betrayed the weakness and of these sects originally started as a movement to unify lack of common purpose of a Jewish society without other groups only to end up adding to the list of Torah. denominations themselves.) The embarrassment how­ Until only a few years ago, the word in any of its ever went beyond divisiveness itself; Protestantism was forms was unknown to most Americans, few could waking up to the realization that the growth of Ca­ even pronounce it if they saw it iu print. Today it is tholicism in the world was creating a competitive on everyone's lips; it excercises a magnetic hold on religious force that could hardly be adequately met Christian thought and it continues to cast confusion by a mass of splinter groups. and chaos whenever it intrudes into the crazy-quilt The adoption by the Catholic Church of the ecu­ patterns of the American Jewish community. menical theme was a counter-thrust (a counter-reform­ What is this magical word; where did it come from, ation of sorts) at Protestantism's attempts to create seemingly so suddenly; and how has it been used with a universal Christian church. such effectiveness? In essence, the Catholic Church has served notice These questions need be answered if some sensible on the Christian world, that if there is going to be Jewish posture in regard to ecumenicism is to be any consolidation in Christianity, it is Rome that will arrived at; if we are to preserve the dignity and the do the consolidating, as the true universal church. integrity of the Jewish people. Failure to react intelli­ gently and from the well-spring of Jewish tradition, Intra-Church Power Struggle may, as we shall see, prove to be the greatest threat to Jewish survival since World War II. What emerges from this brief look at ecumenicism, Websters New World Dictionary tells us that the is that there now rages a power struggle for the control word ecumenical is from the Greek, oikoumenikos, of Christianity, a struggle in which the Jew clearly meaning: of or from the whole world; universal; especi­ has no place. The aborted attempt to send a 'Jewish ally, of the Christian church as a whole. The dictionary observer' to the first Vatican Council was simply definition, revealing though it be, does not offer the another manifestation of a Torah-less Jewish society clue we seek. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Reli­ trying to ape in every way possible the non-Jewish gions (E. Royston Pike, The Meridian .Library /New world. So weak-egoed is the secular and non-Orthodox York/1958) writes, under the heading, ECUMENICAL leadership, that they feel defeated and compromised if MOVEMENT: there is any area in which they can not participate as A movement, chiefly among Protestants of the equals, be it the exclusive and restricted country club evangelical tradition, aiming at the establishment or a drive for Christian uuity. of as large a measure as possible of Christian The much-discussed schema on the Jews can be unity. Since the end of the last century some viewed only against the background of the intra-Christ­ success has been achieved in the union of some ian power struggle. PriortotheconveningoftheVatican churches. Council, the World Council of Churches (Protestant) Having come to think of the ecumenical movement as met in India and approved a statement declaring anti­ synonymous with the Catholic Church the above ref­ semitism to be un-Christian. This placed the onus on erence may come as a surprise. Actually, while the Rome to make a similar declaration on the Jews .or to Catholic Church has used the word ecumenical to be open to the charge of official Church anti-Semitism. NOVEMBER 1964 - 3 As it turned out, this was not to be so easily accom­ scriptural prophecies," he musters sufficient citations plished, with opposition developing from old-line con­ which indicate that the question, at best, is still an servatives concerned with theology and Arab-country open one. bishops concerned with politics. Here are some of his citations from ancient ~nd The Church's historic desire to submerge the Jewish modern sources: people and wean them from their faith to Christianity [A 19th-century theologian advised] the Jews not has taken many forms. For centuries the sword won to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, not to reorganize forced conversions; the threat of torture and death as a people, for the moment that they succeeded, 'the was the Christian reply to Jewish stubborness. Another Catholic Church will have been slain . .' till the aspect of this approach was the forced debates on last judgment they will be without a country of their comparative theology where the single ground rule was: own, without a fixed abode, without prince, without If you win-you lose. sacrifice ... the Jews bore the curse which Moses uttered against all who break the law of God ... St. The New Missionary Look Augustine too, was convinced that the Jews suffered lasting exile for their rejection of J ... [and from the In recent times we have become accustomed to the New Testament itself.] ... They (the Jews) will fall crudely-written and crudely-printed pamphlet with the by the edge of the sword, and will be led away as face of a mythical 'rabbi' on the cover who had "seen captives to all nations. And Jerusalem will be trodden the light." (In Israel, the Church has applied the down by the Gentiles, until the times of the nations technique which in China, for example, succeeded in be fulfilled. winning many "rice-Christians," offering food, housing and repatriation to South America and jobs to poor Strange Bed-fellows immigrants from Arab countries.) Turning to the "realities of the State of Israel" Today the crude pamphlet is being replaced by Flannery finds consolation, and a softening of the scholarly works and overtures for Christian-Jewish blow of Israel's continued existence ,in the secular "dialogue" on a highly intellectual level, without overt nature of the State and many of its citizens, who have tones of Shmad, but rather " .... in the name of the "an almost religious respect for the tractor or the one God; (to) seek a meeting of Jews and Christians." frigidaire." Taking delight in the tension between Headquarters of this new look in Shmad is the religious and nonreligious Jews in Israel, he quotes Institute of J udaeo-Christian Studies at Seton Hall another Catholic writer who takes up the line of the University in Newark, New Jersey. The Institute is secularists and fighters for "religious freedom in Israel": headed by Rev. John M. Oesterreicher, himself a "By making ritual food obligatory in the army, in Meshumad, who is editor of The Bridge, a yearbook hospitals and in government canteens, by bringing of Judaeo-Christian Studies and has played a leading public transportation to a standstill, by ordering the role in framing the schema on the Jews presented to <'losing of nel-Vsstands, restaurants, and motion picture the Vatican Council. He has been the ideological guide theaters on the Sabbath, by considerably extending of the so-called liberal wing of the Church which has the power of the rabbinate, the religious parties think pressured for a "liberal" statement in opposition to the they have deserved well of religion, without realizing conservative Roman curia.
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