ELUL, 5731 I SEPTEMBER, 1971 VOLUME 7, NUMBER 8 THE EWISH FIFTY CENTS BS ERV ER THE PACKAGING OF ERETZ YISROEL THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN EXILE: Is the End in Sight? _j ft ~ .~ __ :-, Letters and Answers THE JEWISH OBSERVER In this issue ... ThE JEWISH PEOPLE IN E2GLE' IS THE END IN SIGHT? MORDECHAI MILLER ........................................................... 3 FIVE GRAVES FOR SALE, A POEM BY klendel Weinbach ...... 8 OF DIARIES, DECEPTION, AND DEFAULT, Ralph Pelcovitz ..... 9 THE PACKAGING OF BRETZ YISROEL ............................................ 14 MECHANICS OF JEWISH SURVIVAL ~BOOKS IN REVIEW ........... 20 HARMONY AND DISCORD ................................................ 20 GROWING UP JEWISH .................................................. 21 THE TIME THAT WAS THEN .................................... .. THE JEWISH OBSERVER is published LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ................................................................ 25 monthly, except July and August, by the Agudath Israel of America, 5 Beekman Street, New York, New York 10038. Second class postage paid at New York, N. Y. Subscription: $5.00 per year; Two years, $8.50; Three years, $12.00; outside of the United States, $6.00 per year. Single copy, fifty cents. Printed in the U.S.A. RABBI NISSON WOLPIN Editor As this issue was being closed for the press, we learned of the untimely passing of Editorial Board the great leader of Orthodox Jewry, DR. ERNEST L. BODENHEIMER Chairman RABBI YITZCHAK MEIR LEVIN RABBI NATHAN BULMAN RABBI JOSEPH ELIAS JOSEPH fRIEDENSON RABBI YAAKOV JACOBS RABBI MOSHE SHERER president of the Agudath Israel World Organization. THE JEWISH OBSERVER does not assume responsibility for the In our next issue we will write in greater Kashrus of any product or service length regarding this tragic loss. advertised in its pages. SEPT., 1971 VOL. VII, NO. 8 p,;~,~d io V.S.A. CROSS BROS. PrinMi; Co. foe. GOLUSEDOM The Jewish People in Exile: Is the End in Sight? An analysis of the causes of our current exile, and a search for its termination-based on the writings of Rabbi Eliyahu Eliezer Dessler, n~i~? p•is i'1. Mordechai Miller The Sages of Athens once asked Rabbi aspects of life. The preserving agent of affliction Yehoshua ben Chananya: appea,rs to cause further decay in our ranks rather "If salt decays, with what can it be than preserve us as Jews! As a result, a deeper exile salted (so as to preserve it)'" and a harsher affliction unfortunately become His answer was: "With the afterbirth necessary to expiate the new transgressions caused of a mule." by the golus - and so on, ad infinitum. This, then The Anthenians objected: "Can a was the question: when salt decays, what does one mule have an afterbirth'" Surely a mule salt it with? is a barren animal. To which Rabbi In further clarification, Reh Chaim drew atten­ Y ehoshua replied, "Can sa!t decay?" tion to the sins to which our people succumbed in (Talmud: Bechoros 8b). the various exiles of our history. During our stay in Egypt we were guilty of idolatry, and during the period of our Babylonian exile our people inter­ ABBI CHAIM VOLOZHINER, principal dis­ married. Yet, after a comparatively limited Rciple of the Vilna Gaon, explained this enig· number of years, we were granted salvation. Our matic dialogue 159 years ago in a classic address: current exile, however, finds us in ever increasing The Gemara states: "The word bris, convenant, is alienation from our faith, and we see no end. lh'\i,mentioned in connection with both salt and This variation in the nature and duration of each 'I affliction. Just as salt preserves meat, so affliction golus is related to the status of the sar -- or preserves Israel by atoning for their sins" (Bera· ministering angel - of the nation of our exile. chos: Sa). Exile is brought upon our people to Golus is an indication of the supremacy of the sar, expiate our sins. Yet in practice we see that during and no nation falls until its sar falls first. In our our exile we fall into even greater sin in many own exile in Edom we are forever encouraging and RABBI MILLER, who was one of Rabbi Dessler's closest strengthening the sar, rather than reducing its disciples, is vice-principal of the Jewish Teachers Training College of Gateshead, England, His two volumes of "Shabbos Shiu rim" contain dominion. a collection of essays on hashkafah. This very problem is expressed in the Midrash The Jewish Observer I September, 1971 3 regarding Jacob's famous dream: one regrets any moral aberration leading to too "Do not be afraid, my servant Jacob" (Isaiah, great an indulgence. 44). Rabbi Nachman said, "This refers to Jacob's On the other hand, lust for personal pride, dream: And he dreamed and behold there was a prestige, and power, which is abstract in nature, is ladder standing on the ground" (Bereishis, 28). never satisfied. If, for exam pie, one lusts for Rav Shmuel bar Nachman said, "These are the money in order to buy some specific object - be it ministering angels of the nations of the world. The a house, a car, or a bottle of whisky - this lust will Almighty showed Jacob the angel of Babylon have a limit commensurate with the cost of the ascending 70 rungs, of Medea 52 rungs, and of article. But, as Isaiah says, "There is no end to the Greece 180 rungs. The angel of Edom continued treasury." There is no limit to the lust for money without stop. Jacob became afraid, saying, 'Will of a person who is obsessed with the possession of their angel never fall?' The Almighty said to him, money -- the power of purchase that money gives, 'Do not fear, my servant Jacob. Even if he rises to rather than an actual purchase. A moral aberration sit next to me, I should cause him to descend.' This in search of power or prestige can therefore never is written in Obadiah, 'If you rise like the eagle and lead to a situation where the pursuer feels he has make your nest amongst the stars, I shall bring you had enough and regrets the aberration. Regret and down from there. ' " penitence are not the natural consequences of the aberration. Each Nation and Its "Sar" As we stated, exile is brought upon us to expiate a moral shortcoming. But the type of exile must be XACTL Y WHAT IS A NATION'S sar? Each one which can lead us to correct our moral E nation has its particular characteristics and deficiency. Therefore, the country of exile must also its particular ideology - its spiritual signifi­ have as its characteristic or ideology that very cance. In Rabbinical terminology the sar is the weakness from which Israel suffered, the cause of personification of the specific ideology of a nation, the exile. the ideal which it admires. Whenever the ideology In the Babylonian exile, for example, we were of any nation is held in esteem, its sar is on a dispersed among a people who were notorious for pedestal. The sar falls only when the ideal of the their immorality, and for appropriate reason: nation is discredited by the world at large - but Although at the end of the period of the first especially by the Jewish nation. Temple our People were guilty of the three Ideologies either deal directly with midas - cardinal sins - idolatory, immorality, and mur­ human virtues and vices - or reflect values regard­ der - the root cause of these was, in fact, sexual ing them. These midas can be divided into two immorality. They had shifted their belief to a cult main categories - those of physical lust and those which could enable them to be permissive in their of pride - perhaps the libido and the ego in own lives without suffering from a guilty con­ psychological terms. The Vilna Gaon associated the science - similar to those who choose Liberal characteristics of pride with the vice of anger. Judaism today, to permit a laxity in observance Rabbi Dessler considered the common point in the without suffering pangs of conscience. Whenever two to be the lust for power and personal the root cause of any sin is physical lust, this type aggrandizement - the feeling that"! must rule and of moral weakness eventually reaches a saturation be recognised as ruler, and the very existence of point and the culture of such a nation where this is another independent of me incurs my wrath." the characteristic soon comes to be despised by There is a deep distinction between the effects those who have over-indulged. When the ideology of physical lusts, on the one hand, and the of a country - in this case Babylon - is looked non-physical desires such as pride and power, on down upon, its sar has fallen. The lesson of the the other. All the physical desires have a saturation exile in that nation has been learned, the exile need point when the object of one's desire becomes not continue, and the nation will fall. This is why abhorrent; as King Solomon said in Proverbs: "If Jacob could discern the fall of the attendant angel you find honey, eat only sufficient lest you reach of each nation among whom Israel was to be the saturation point and you vomit it out" (25, exiled .... Each exile was to correct a fault of life 16). The more grossly physical the desire, the in the service of physical desire, and it would in the lower the saturation point and the more quickly nature of things come to an end. 4 The Jewish Observer I September, 1971 saturation point, no limit, no natura1 end. It is worthy of note that in each Since we are in Golus Edom, the question put country of exile where our People have by the Athenian sages becomes relevant: If the salt been driven, their type of Yiddishkeit decays, if the exile is one which does not bring one has always followed the characteristics to see the fall of the ideology - since it is of a of that country.