\
books and men
By BERNARD BASKIN
Tlia ConodSan JewUh Newt, FrMoy May 25rii, 1962' — Paga S
RELIGION AND SCIENCE: DR. PLAUT'S ANSWER TO A PROBLEM
JUDAISM AND THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT. S2 pp. W. GtinHMr Ptoat. Union of American Hebrew Congresotions. $1.7S ,
, The age-old struggle between religion and science depicted so dramatically, for exampie, in Andrew White's
■ classic Avork of about seventy-five years ago "A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom" appears to be
'gradually coming to an end. It is erroneous and misguided /to hold that these two great forces are still locked in deadlj''combat. It was possible for a nineteenth century scientist to crow "Each day science swallows a piece of God" — but this kind of dogmatism is now as rare as it is unseemly. For bewildered, bedevilled twentieth century man, the. threat of atomic devastation a constant fear, science is neither omniscient nor an unalloyed blessing. Despite its manifest miracles in many areas, the disenchanted, frightened citizen of our time is not inclined to deify science or to regard it any longer as a new kind of black magic. Vividly depicting this unhappy dilemma, H. G. Wells once described our culture in terms of an airplane with an ape at the controls. Increasingly, there is the widespread realization that science is ethically neutral and that somehow scientists
must learn how to ; safeguard their discoveries and assure their proper use. Many men of science are willing to agree that to re-strziin barbarism and keep demonic power in check, to define and promote the good life,   morjil  and religious
principles   are necessary,
David Ben Gurion had thi^ldepth, the material is never
in mind when he suggested that the "Tree of knowledge of good and evil must be planted m the soul of every man and first of all in the soul of the man of science — so that this creative activity may be a blessing to mankind.
What is the essential relationship between science and religion today, especially Judaism? Must the teachings of the Bible be in conflict with the scientific outlook? Are scientific facts and proofs immutable and vmassailable? What is Professor Heisenberg's discovery and what are its implications for religion? \Miat is the present status of the theory of evolution? If there is life on other planets will our religion be rendered obsolete? Can religion accept the findings of the social scientists and the teachings of dynzimic psychologj'?
many others of a similar nature, are discussed by Rab^ bi W. Gunther Plaut of Holy Blossom Temple in his re^ cent book 'Judaism and the Scientific Spirit!"
It should be indicated at the outset that this . brief volume with at>out seventy-five pages of text is meaty, thoughtful, infonnative and interesting. Although its size precludes iany discussion in
superficial. To pack so much in so little room, to skillfully cut through the extraneous and arrive at the pith arid core of the material, is
the result of much knowk stated in the Torah."
edge and expert discrimination.
The author begins by emphasizing that Judaism, unlike Christianity, has always been congenial and sympathetic to new ideas and attitudes: "As one looks at the long sweep of Jewish history one. must come.to the conclusion that there existed in most ages, and especially in medieval and modem days, a most fruitful relationship between science and religion. Even when difficulties arose they were solved without suppressing the freedom of scientific inquiry." The examples adduced by Dr. Plaut are apt, but one cannot escape the feeling that it wouldn't be too dif-
dehcies and currents.; Recently, for instance, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, M. M. Schneerson, wo-ote: "I can tell you without fear of contradiction that the theory of evolution has not a shred of' (evidence to sui)port it The' ignorance displayed in this extravagant statement was compoimded when he adhed: "Even if the theprj' oif evolution were substantiated today, and the ^mutation of species iwere proven in laboratory tests, this would still not contradict the possibility of the world having been c r e a t e d as
TORONTONIAN PUBLISHES
These \1tal questions, and ficult to find contrary ten-
OHl Y UTAMERKA
By HARRY GOLDEN
-Of coiurse, science and religion have different areas of competency and interest — religion is concerned with the "why", and science with the "how" and "what" of life and reality. Dr. Plaut insists, nevertheless, that what each has to teach and say must be important and relevant to the other. "Science seeks to discover the laws of concrete being and becoming; religion seeks the dimensions of another order of J reality, that of the unseen
universe. To discover these, A ToronIonian has just both use terms appropriate | published a Yiddish book to their own domain. One j \vhich may soon become one
do not understand the Biblical text correctly, this, in fact, amounts to a postponement of judgrilent, until better knowledge in either sphere is available. The liberal proceeds differently. The actual text is of secondary importance, for it is humanly composed and transmitted... the liberal has a free approach to the Bible. He is committed neither to rigid motions of textual literalness, nor to changing scientific propositions. He takes the Book in hand and, in reverence, finds it in his fathers' meeting with God. As he studies the^record, he too, may, in his way, reach up and be reached by Him:" Scientific concepts are subject to constant flux and change. The certainties of one period become the discarded ideas of another. For
example, it was once regarded as a prime achievement of science to replace the old universe of the haphazard and magical by an ordered cosmos in which universal and exact conditions controlled every detail. Now, as a result of much evidence from many fields it is recognized that such exactitude is unobtainable. In scientific terms knowledge can only be understood as a summary of statistical averages. This is accurate enough in general, but is not universally and precisely valid. Dr. Plaut puts it this way: "The phrasing of physical laws in our time is done through statistical averages, which — and this is the crux of the matter — considers the unusual not an exception, but a small, even infinitesimal
statistical _possibiUty."
Rejecting the concept of a universe df immutable law ^ in which God is powerless' to operate when and how he wishes, as well as a imiverse of blind chance, the author is forced to the conclusion that miracles should be viewed seriously. "Yesterday's scientist was sure that miracles did not and could not exist. Today's scientist can neither affirm nor deny this, for he knows no cer-tamties but only prohabili-ties." This is a theologically courageous position, but it raises as many questions as it settles.
Finally, it should be understood by more people that the assumptions and hypotheses of the scientist, so necessary if an imaginative and workable foundation is to be established for his labors, are not too different
By OSCAR BERSON
YIDDISH OPUS MAGNUM
And The Earth Did Not Cover The Blood, By Amnon Ajzensztadt. Toronto, 1962.
speaks in the prose of measurement, the other in the poetry of devotion, one commits only the mind, the other involves the heart as well. One is dispassionate,
of the best sellers on the Jewish publishing market. Amnon Aj2:ensztadt's, "And The Earth Did Not Cover The Blood," is beyond doubt one of the most moving ac-
Joe Bernstein And Tom Watson
The name Joe -Bernstein meant a lot to the immigrants on the lower East Side in the beginning of the century. Joe Bernstein was probably the first Jew who gained popularity an4^_promin-ence as a prize fighter.
"The New York World" was the status symbol then. If you were reading the World, it meant you were looking for a job. Few papers today have the number of classified advertisements the World had then. There were pages and pages of classifieds.
The World was a great paper andJts editor, p, PranJc Cobb, probably one of the greatest editors #,.i;i^Arilerica ever~had. He was one of Woodrow Wilson's closest friends and advisers and if'I am not mistaken Mr. Cobb was with Wilson the day Wilson was elected and was closeted with Wilson during the last few minutes of Wilson's second term.
In 1904, the Populists nominated Thomas E. Watson as the party candidate for President. The nomination of Watson was a protest against the Democratic nominee. Judge Alton B. Parker, a solid conserv'ative.
William Randolph Hearst supported Watson. He printed all of Watson's speeches in toto, but
nevertheless stUl urged on his editorisd page, •^ote the straight Democratic ticket."
When Watson spoke on the Lower East Side, at the Cooper Union on 8th Street, the hall was filled with hundreds of enthusiastic Jews. "Popu-lism" meant socialism or Uberalisrti and some measui« of hope for better housing and better working conditions and all the other promises that were finally realized with the New Deal of Frarik-lin D. Roosevelt.
A few years later, however, Watson turned into one of the most bitter anti-Semites ever to disgrace American "history. In sonw ways he was as bitter an anti-Semite as Julius Streicher, the Nazi who was hanged at Nuremberg.
In 1906, when Hearst ran for Mayor of New York, an election which he probably won but which wais snatched from him by a fraudulent count, the famous publisher had dozens of workers can\-assing the Lower East Side. Hearst knew that Tammany Hall was giving a dollar or two to voters so he countered this by having these canvassers tell each family, "If Hearst Is elected, he will take over the gas company and you will save $5 every month on your gas bUL*
the other cdmpassior/ate.. counts of the Nazi horrors The functions of'both disci-.in Poland. The author, son plines are different and they j of a Hasidic rebbe, miracul-cannot be substituted one j ously escaped the gas cham-
Lillian RusseU And The Trolley
i was a messenger boy for the Postal Telegraph Company in the "Pimes Square section of New York in the year 1916. In those days, we received two cents for every telegram we delivered, a method of payment the telegraph companies discontinued along about 1920. The reason they discontinued it w£is because the messenger boys made too much money that way.
I remember going into an office and got- one message to be sent to several hundred organizations. This was called a "book" of messages which meant two cents for every single address in the book. You can see now why telegraph companies changed. I believe the Post Office used to pay the sjwcial delivery fellows the same way.
There were times, however, when delivering a single riiessage took much time and was hardly worth the two cents: we received. One message I delivered represented an experience that never left me. It was a telegram addressed to an important man who was dining at Brown*s restaurant that noon. ' .
Brown's was on .Broadway opposite the Metropolitan Opera House. I entered the restaurant and the headwaifer gestured to the man's table. There were six or seven people around it and when I handed the message to him I saw that one of the ladies was Lillian Riissell. She nodded toward me
while I waited for the man to Sgn the receipt.
In our more sophisticated and cynical world of today, no headwaiter would ever direct a messenger boy to an important man for the waiter would never understand that the 25K«nt tip might be important to the kid. H there are such things as headwaiters today, his Immediate re^nse to a messenger *)oy is "Git!"
To become a cop an Irish Immigrant had to pay a few hundred dollars to the local political boss. A flock of.relatives would help him get up this "fee." Many young men, however, put In an apprenticeship as a streetcar conductor to help get up this fee.'
The Iiish were the first to learn about the virtues of running a strieet car. By the time the Jews, Poles, Germans, and Italians got wise to it. the Irish had skimmed all the. cream off the top. The street-car conductor, always, made himself an extra three dollars a day in spare nickels. Like a commission. The company knew he took it but as long as he kept the car in running order and got the people to where they were going, they were content to pay it.
"There were occiasional conductors, however, who were greedy and the standard Joke about them was: ''He didn't even bring the trolley back."
for the other. A science which aims to supplant relig- i ion ceases to be scientific. A religion which makes pronouncements on science ceases to be on religious grounds... if a man desires a full perspective he needs the knowledge wliich science provides, as well as the values and goals which his faith supplies."
How the Bible is regarded — as the literal "once and for air revealed word of God, or as the divinely inspired work of man, fashioned over a long period of time — is of paramount importance in religion's confrontation with the discoveries of science. As a liberal religionist, the author discerns a host of problems of an intellectual nature for i those who cling to the idea: of the Torah as the revealed,'. unchanging and unchangeable truth. He points out "Fundamentalism is constantly faced with a task ot reinterpreting certain portions of the Torah in the light of new scientific insights, to "reconcile" the two. Where such reconciliation is unsuccessful, the fundamentalist is driven to one of two conclusions: either the current scientific "truth" is not truth, or we
bers. He had been hiding un-
AMNON AJZENSZTADT
derground during the war years, fighting tlie sub-ter-ranean battle against the Germans. Thus he remained alive. After the war he settled in Canada.
Somehow the nightmare of the Nazi jjeriod never gave him peace. He selected for his book the famous verse of Job: "O Earth, Cover Not
My Blood____" This verse is
the leitmotiv of his work as it seems to be the raison d'etre of the author's very life in his new country.
Ajzensztadt does not want to forget, Moreoxer he wants us to remember. It was this sentiment which prompted him last yi5ar to'return.to Poland to spend the most joyous of the holidays — the festival of■ P^s-soxer — in the morbid surroundings ot what is left of the Warsaw Ghetto. From there he continued to his native towTi, Saiidomierz. He wanted to trace the paths to his murdered brethren. Every-where he found Jewish ghost towns and cities — in his fantasy
he saw. the blood which he hopes will never be covered.
Despite the subject in this sad narrative, the writer created a unique, fascinating style in which to render the storj'. It is a great book. As Chaim Leiberman, the fam-r ous Yiddish writer says in his preface:
"... The Almighty has endowed him with a feeling heart, a perceptive eye and a profound understanding so that he might comprehend the awe-inspiring destruction."
This book ought to be translated into English. For Ajzensztadt, in telling the
story of one community, one town, has presented an all-embracing, moving and true picture of the destruction of Polish Jewr>'.
Robbi W. Gnnriier Plaut
In nature from the formulations and projections of the Intelligent religious believer. Even mathematics, the basis of all science must accept axioms on faith. These so-called "self-evident truths" cannot be proved, but must be accepted on trust. Perhaps the last word belongs to Albert Einstein who ob-ser\'ed "There comes a point where man takes the leap — call it intuition or what you will — and goes on to a (Continued on Page 8)
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Pocket Billiards And Women
"Proflciency at billiards," wrote Herbert Spen-. cer, the English philosopher, "is indicative of nothing but a misspent youth." This statement Is probably one of the mo^ judicious, ever made about human nature. But despite Mr. Spencer's wry: view, billiards and pocket-billiards are the most niaiigned of all sporting endeavors.
Billiards; a game played on a slate table covered with a green cloth numbers three bails, one fed, two white. The objea of the game is for one shooter to cue one white ball'so it hits first the_ red ball Snd then after caroming-off the sides of'' the table the second white ball. This is'called 'ahree-raii; billiards.'^ This game deteriorated or was magnified, depending upon how you look at it into pockeft. billiards. The game of pocket billiards, is played with one white cue-ball and ; 15 numbered colored balls and the object is to sink tlie colored balls one at a time Into six pockets of the table.
In his musiciU, "The Music Main," Meredith Willson ha* his hero. Harcild Hill, declare, "That game with the 15 numbered balls is the devil'g ;tpol.",
Mr. Frank M.Blunk of the "New York Times'" explains that .the game pool derived its name originally . because pocket-billiard tables were placed in rooms where men could maJcebets--ln horse racing pools.      ■; ;        . ^ -''"■-x;^
. Yet, for all that, the g^fne, will lastv Any gamp tiiat lends its nomenclature to' the. language is-here to stay. When a yo^g girl says to a. your)g '
boy she doesnt warrt to plaiy serorid-fiddle we know concert orchestras are permanent aiid when a young boy isays to a young girl he can't get to first-base we know baseball Is America's favorite game. ■'■
similarly, the expression "calling your shots" is a pool-room iexpresision as the player wlio fondles his cue stick calls.out to his opponent in which ^pocket he will sink wliich bail.
But the real complainers against the game are proof of itsJ virtues. The people who. don't like pool happen>tp;be women,. particularly mothers and sweiethearts.. And they don't like pool not because a boy will be exjwed to begging but because it is an activity which does not admit women to its fraternity of happy men. .
The day may come when women will pass freely into the Harvard club but no woman eypr Is comfortable In a pilace whei« spittoons line the walls. Moireover they can't dioot.pool,, aiijy more than they can play polo. .
I imderstand from a doctor friend of mine ^ ordhiarily 1 wouldn't take tWs qiiack's word for anything but this seems.^reasonable epough — It's because' their collarbones are a little bit longer than men's and ithey. don't get that free swing. Moreover, you can't lean acnws the table to put that six ball in the corner pocket wearing skirts or even slacks. At least you can't look decorous doing it. Pool is still a man's domain. Let us hope the women never invade the l)ool robm'ias'they have invaded the bowling alley. ;
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