IYAR 5728 / APRIL 1968 VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2 THE FIFTY CENTS The Halachic Status of the Swordfish A Ieshuva With an Epilogue To Picket... Or ~l"'o Pray? The Pursuit of Mishna Citadels of Torah A Graphic Report THE JEWISH QBSERVER In this issue ... To PICKET ... OR To PRAY?, Yaakov Jacobs.................................... 3 NEEDED: AN ARCHIVE FOR TORAH JEWRY, David Kranzler 7 CITADELS OF TORAH, A Graphic Report 10 THE HA LA CHIC ST ATVS OF THE SWORDFISH-A TESHUVA, Moshe Tend/er ........................... 13 THE SWORDFISH AND THE SWORD OF KING CHEZKIYAHU, AN EPILOGUE ............... ..... ................ ................................................. 16 THE JEWISH OBSERVER is published RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED ..., Ruth Finkelstein . monthly, except July and Aug?st, 18 by the Agudath Israel of Amenca, THE PURSRIT OF MISHNA, A vrohom Davis 5 Beekman Street, New York, 20 N. Y. 10038 Second class postage paid at New York, N. Y. Subscription: $5.00 per year; Canada and overseas: $6.00; single copy: 50¢. Printed in the U.S.A. features: FROM TllE PAGES OF HISTORY / Editorial Board THE CHOFETZ CHAIM REACTS TO A LETTER TO THE DR. ERNST L. BODENHl',IMER EDITOR 22 Chairman RABBI NATHAN BuJ,MAN RARBI JOSEPH ELIAS BOOKS REVIEWED: JOSEPH f'RIEDENSON The Jews of Austria RABBI MOSHE SHERER Advertising Manager The Jews of Hamburg RABBI SYSHE HESCHEL Managing Editor SECOND LOOKS AT THE JEWISH SCENE: RABBI YAAKOV JACOBS B'nai Brith and T efilin 27 THE JEWISH OBSERVER does not Looking For a Tenth Man at assume responsibility for the _The International Synagogue 28 Kashrus of any product or service advertised in its pages. The Wearing of the Green 29 'The Most Sanitary Method" 29 APRIL, 1968 VOL. V, No. 2 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR ............................................ @)«~ 30 CORRECTIONS In The Varieties of Redemption, by Rabbi David G-d is not established, thankful though we may be at Bleich, in our March issue, a typographical error in our physical deliverance, our emotions must be re­ the first column of page 8 changed the meaning of a strained and we dare not recite Hallel until such time crucial sentence. The word "not'' was dropped. as our deliverance is complete. The sentence should read: • But akatei avdei Achashverosh anan-so long as we The reply to Rabbi Spcro's letter in our March issue are servants of Ahasuerus, so long as the Kingdom of was written by RABBI MOSHE EISEMANN. Yaakov Jacobs To Picket ... Or 1~o Pray? How do new ideas filter into Jewish communal life? Can Judaism survive without being "relevant"? How is the Social Gospel faring on the American scene? ls "relevance" relevant to traditional Judaism? The human mind is no longer the private domain that And no body of law demands of those it governs, as it used to be. Technology has not yet devised a tech­ does the Torah Law, that each man hold up before the nique to read our thoughts, but methods abound for light of Law every idea, every belief which finds its injecting thoughts into the human mind. The nation way into his mind, that he may thereby determine was shocked several years ago, when the advertising where this idea came from: Will it enhance his life, industry experimented with sub-liminal advertising. A will it strengthen him-or will it gnaw away at his life, message was flashed on a screen for a fraction of a and ultimately destroy him? second, too fast for the eye to see it. But it was found It could be no other way: only a Law given hy the that the message did enter the mind-by-passing con­ Creator of man's mind can know the full impact of an sciousness, and rooting itse~f firmly in the brain. There idea on man's behavior, on his every action. Only such was a roar of protest and predictions of dire conse­ a Law can legislate what a man must think, what he quences, and the experiment was abandoned. must believe. And in a world of sub-liminal indoctrina­ tion-only in its grossest form has it been outlatt,1etl, IT HAS NEVER BEEN easy to trace the development of and how can we be sure?-only such a Law can be ideas in a human mind. Many are put there by educa­ trusted. And the Jew who in any measure rejects the tion whose purpose it is to implant ideas in the mind Law, leaves his mind and his heart and his body ex­ at that stage in a child's development when they will posed like a fertile field for the wildest of seeds to sink take root and stand a good chance of survival. Man's into every aspect of his being, and to make of him an history demonstrates that good ideas and evil ideas can automaton whose mechanism is so constructed as to each be as easily planted-educational techniques are make him 'think' he is 'thinking.' amoral: they serve their master without regard for the morality of his purposes. JEWS ARE TODAY locked in civil war; we contend with And it is equally true that education for good or each other as to who is more authentically Jewish. We evil can fail; untaught ideas can find their way into the arc rough on each other, rougher, often, than we are minds of child and man, as wild seeds dig into the with the non-Jew; but brothers have always been that earth and sprout alongside the planted seed-and with way. One factor can save us-bring us closer to each as much success. other: a wi1lingness to examine our ideas, knowing There is an old myth that has it that Judaism is con­ full well the seriousness for our survival* of the ideas cerned with the deed to the exclusion of dogma-that which move us; willing at all times to search out their beJ'.µefs are only of secondary importance in the religious origin, and examine their validity in the light of Jewish life of the Jew. And myths, unlike living creatures, tradition and experience. grow stronger as they grow older-stronger, and more dignified. Yet in truth, no body of law manifests more IN THE MINDS OF MANY JEWS, as has been here noted strongly than Torah Law, an awareness of the impact in the past, unless Judaism can be shown to be relevant of ideas-of dogma, if we must-on man's bchaviOur. to modern man, it has outlived its usefulness; it has And the Torah invests ideas and mental activity with ceased to be ... to be relevant. As we look back into the power of deeds. "Remember ..." the Torah de­ the history of our people, this cry for "relevance" mands over and again, as a mitzvas asai, a comn1mand­ appears to be unique to our time. Where did it come ment to be worked at. "Know the G-d of your fathers," the Torah thunders. And the Sages make similar de­ '~ Perhaps we would do better to speak of Jewish 'eternity• mands of the Jew: "Know from whence you came." -survival seems so "vegetable" a term. The Jewish Ohserver / April. 1968 3 from? We have already agreed how difficult it is to ism.* From there it moves slowly into Conservatism. trace the birth of ideas, but this certainly does not Usually, by this time, the idea has been worked to preclude an attempt. Read these words: death, and the goyim are bored with it, and giving it up ... and then ... some Orthodox congregations will If our theology is silent on social salvation, we pick it up. Take Sunday School-the churches are compel college men and women, working 1nen disillusioned with its effect, Reform and Conservatism and theological students to choose between an are seriously questioning its efficacy; yet Orthodox con­ unsocial system of theology and an irreligious gregations in many American communities are still system of social salvation. It is not hard to predict sponsoring Sunday Schools. the outcome. If lve seek to keep ... doctrine un­ changed, we shall insure its abandonment. This ls 1885 ! ! What the man is saying is as simple as it is familiar: young people want religion to say something, to do It did not take long for the social gospel to gravitate something about the ills that plague man today; if into Reform Judaism. In 1885 Reform leaders met in religion doesn't do this for them, they will turn else­ Pittsburgh and created the "Pittsburgh Platform," a where. If religion doesn't adjust doctrines to the needs declaration of their new creed. While rejecting all of today, young people will abandon religion in droves "Mosaic and Rabbinical laws as regulate diet, priestly for social ideologies and movements which will give purity, and dress, originated in ages and under the them what they want. influences of ideas altogether foreign to our present [1885] mental and spiritual stage, they go on to say: The words quoted above were not written by a Jew­ ish leader, but they might have been. They read as ... In full accordanec with the spirit of Mosaic though they appeared in a contemporary journal or legislation, which strives to regulate the relation newspaper-they did not. They are the words of between rich and poor, we deem it our duty to Walter Rauschenbusch, a nineteenth-century Christian participate in the great task of modern times, to theologian. solve, on the basis of justice and righteousness, the problems presented by the contrasts and evils of the present organization of society ... The Social Gospel Paradoxically, while it was the extremism of the Ranschenbusch's ideas-they came to be known as Pittsburgh Platform which served as an impetus to the "social gospel"-came at an ideal time.