6—THE BULLETIN^-Fridoy, November 23, 1973
B'nof BYith In A€thn!
Founded Oct. 13, 1843, in New York City.
Name means "Sons of the Covenant."
Purpose: To unify Jews over 18, of good moral character.
Activity includes:
District Convention — Vancouver is the host city and Vancouver's 4 men's lodges are sponsoring the July 1974 District Grand Lodge Convention to be help in our downtown Hyatt Hotel. An exciting program of extra activitiy is being planned to include a golf tournament, house hospitality, and scenic tours. Many hundreds of B'nai B'rith delegates and their wives will be attending from B.C., California, Washington and Oregon.
Insurance Prc^rams — The Talmud says, "Peace to a man when he loves his wife as himself, leads his children in the right path and looks to their welfare when he is with them or not." B'nai B'rith has a fine record of offering its members a wide variety of accident, life and sickness insurance at reduced group premium rates. Now B'nai B'rith is proud to sponsor a new insurance concept rooted in love of family.
Its new survivor annuity will pay your wife up to $500 per month and is automatically geared to increases in the cost of living. It is a significant contribution to the community through membership in B'nai B'rith since, to our knowledge, no other organization offers this kind of insurance.
Services to Jewish Youth — In
Vancouver, B'nai B'rith's Hillel on U.B.C. campus offers a wide variety of programs to attract increasing numbers of students. Recent events at Hillel House have included guest noon-hour speakers on such topics as "The Soviet Union and the Mid-East Crisis." Other regular noon-hour classes hold group discussions led by Rabbi Levitan of Seattle, Wash., on the problems of contemporary Jewish identity. Film nights are proving popular as are the regular Bet Cafe lunches. Hillel's monthly free lunch and kibbitz . with traditional food courtesy B'nai B'rith attracts an increasing number of students. A Chanukah party is planned for December.
Make this your year to become involved and support the activities of B'nai B'rith in Vancouver. A warm welcome awaits you at Vancouver's 4 men's lodges and 2 ladies' chapters.
Evergreen Lodge — Pres.Sanford
Cohen Tel. 274-3826. Lion's Gate Lodge — Pres. Sam
Green Tel. 731-8781. Rambam Lodge — Pres. Dr. J.
Bensimon Tel. 733-5600. Vancouver Lodge — Pres. Sol
Shaffer Tel. 266-4573. Lion's Gate B'nai B'rith Women Chapter — Pres. Laura Abramson
Tel. 733-8955. Centennial B'nai B'rith Women Chapter — Pres. Tillie Kositsky
Tel. 266-7820.
ISRAEL: TOTALITY OF JEWISH THOUGHT
ON ZION By Martin Buber East and West Library. $6.
BY CHAIM RAPHAEL
THERE ARE TIMES when a quiet word of faith outweighs all political and practical argument.
Something of this emerges from a slim volume — a book of devotion, in effect — by Martin Buber originally published 20 years ago as "Israel and Palestine: The History of an Idea," but now reissued more appropriately under a title "On Zion" which expresses the sense of mystery embodied in his feeling.
There is a simple clue to understanding the poetry of Buber's concept of the Holy Land and its relation to Jews.
The word "Israel" today stands for the new State that has made a miraculous mark on the world.
Buber looks beyond this.
"Israel," in this book, is <the totality of Jewish thought, teaching and history, and the people that experience them."
The State is a fact of life: "Israel" is a concept of man's spiritual fulfilment that Jews have reached out to, linked to this tiny spot of earth.
The power of this idea has been expressed throughout history.
And even today, with the emphasis on scientific discovery and physical welfare, nothing but the mysterious hold of poetry will explain how the Jews of the world have been harnessed and transformed by devotion to the Holy Land.
Like Isaiah of old, Buber never hesitated in his lifetime to speak his mind on political issues when his spiritual faith seemed to demand it. An example was his controversial attitude to the Arabs.
But in the present book he is above the battle, feeling his way through Jewish history for instances of how the thought of Zion was expressed.
Even secular Zionism was never, to him, a natural reflection of nineteenth-century nationalism. It was "a restatement of an age-old religious reality: the matrimony of a 'holy' people with a 'holy' land." "This land was at no time simply the property of the people; it was always at the same time a challenge to make of it what God intended to have made of it." In this spirit, Buber examines the ancient ceremonies as expounded in the Bible and Talmud.
MARTIN BUBER . . .finds poetic spirit
The prayer said with the offering of first-fruits (Deuteronomy 26, 2) is the most intense expression of faith: "I as an individual feel and profess myself as one who has come into the land: and every time that I offer its first-fruits I declare this anew."
, The obsession with rain — developed at length in the Talmud treatise 'Taanit' — reflects more
than the need for crops: rain is a symbol of resurrection: "A day of rain is like the day on which heaven and earth were created: The preservation of the world. . . is an ever-renewed divine action."
Wherever Buber turns, he sees the same magic.
A chapter on Judah Halevi's 'Kuzari' presents the rabbi in that debate less concerned to discuss the nature of God, than God's activity in the history of Israel: "but it is a history of the deeds of God, history experienced as some thing that takes place between heaven and earth."
Coming to more modern precursors of the Return, Buber finds the same poetic spirit in Rabbi Low ben Bezalel of Prague, in Moses Hess, and in Aharon David Gordon, the pioneer who saw his union with Jewish history in terms of "the right and perfect relationship to Nature.":
"Israel will restore the wholeness of human nature through the work of its people in the natural world of the countryside."
It is refreshing to turn back t from the daily preoccupations of politics to these thoughts of Zion at the source.
JONS.
The People of the Book observe Jewish Book Month
Unknown Jews in unknown lands
UNKNOWN JEWS IN UNKNOWN LANDS The Travels of Rabbi David D'Beth Hillel (1824-1832). Edited by Walter Fischel Ktav, New York, 1973
BY LIONEL KOCHAN
IT IS SAD to think that this will be the last book to appear from the pen of the late Walter Fischel.
Yet it is a worthy conclusion to his life's work in making known the culture and history of the Jews of the Middle and Far East, Lebanon, Syria, India, Iraq, Persia, ^ Kurdistan and Afghanistan.
Rabbi David d'Beth Hillel of Vilna undertook a journey to much of this area in the years 1824-1832. It is his travelogue of the journey that Professor Fischel has made available in an English version, together with an introduction and explanatory notes.
It is a fascinating document that takes the reader from Palestine to Mesopotamia. At the time of Rabbi David's visit this vast area formed part of the Turkish domains ruled by Sultan Mahmed II, through a number of pashas.
The travelogue shows that the pashas in many cases used
Christians and Jews, but particularly the latter, in an administrative and financial capacity.
The Jews served the pashas in such major centres as Damascus, Baghdad and Basra, as comptrollers, treasurers and tax -farmers, and these positions of responsibility enabled the Jews concerned to secure a large degree of protection for their co-religionists. (But notinPersia where Moslem extremism made the Jews "untouchables.")
It seems that in most of this area a threefold economic struc-
flowing with milk and. honey," comments the rabbi.
Finally, there was a small wealthy merchant class in the larger' cities such as Aleppo, Baghdad and Basra. In the latter, Jewish merchants had a considerable share in the pearl industry on the island of Bahrain, whose
products were exported to Persia, India and Yemen.
Rabbi David's travelogue has all the exoticism of the Orient.
In addition, it is a most entertaining venture into the now-vanished Jewish Diaspora in the lands of Arabia.
JCNS.
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ture prevailed among the Jewish communities.
There were artisans, — weavers, dyers, goldsmiths, cobblers, tailors, etc. Second, there was a stratum of farmers and agriculturists.
Jews appear as owners of vineyards, fields, livestock, cattle, the sheep and goats.
Rabbi David describes a village in Iraqi Kurdistan almost exclusively inhabited by prosperous Jewish farmers — "indeed a land
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