Page Two
JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
Friday, July 12,1
Quiet in the Jewish Community
From The Reconstructioiiist Bi-lVeekly Joumai of Jewish Opinion
BY HENRY LEONARD
UNFORTUNATELY recent events demonstrate—at least to the satisfaction of the rioters and the sit-ins—^that they get results from civil disobedience, rarely from reasonable and peaceful appeals.
Men in power, who refuse even to discuss a reordering of affairs with those who wish to share some of that power, are responsible for the resort to disobedience.
This does not mean that there are not some who deliberately incite to violence in order to create revolutionary conditions and advance their own undeclared purposes; but one should not blind oneself to the unpleasant fact that hundreds of otherwise peaceful students at Columbia University and in Paris would not have behaved as they did if the authorities had not set the scene for such behavior.
OONOmONS IN THE GENERAL community are often paralleled by conditions within the Jewish community. How strange it is that there are no riots, no sit-ins, no picketing, no demonstrations at Jewish institutions—synagogues, temples, seminaries, social agencies!
Does this mean that in the Jewish community democracy reigns? Are there no ivory tower scholars who stand aloof from the daily concerns of the Jewish people? Are students entirely happy with the administration of their schools? Are members of congregations uniformly pleased with their rabbis> their presidents and boards of trustees? Are the contributors to Fed-
MOSHE SHAREH
erations and Welfare Funds satisfied with .' the way their contributions are being dis- i tributed? Do they feel that they are prop-; erly represented in those, bodies which make ' the vital decisions in Jewish life?
WE ARE INCLINED to believe that all i is not so well in the Jewish commuiiity; yet Jews, like the youth in the 50s, are "submissive, hedor(istic, and practical-minded. Generally, they have accepted the leadership of their (leaders), not uncritically, but passively."
Is this because Jews are, by and large, "passive?" Chalilah! Jews are among the leaders of the revolt on the Columbia campus and elsewhere.
What then is the reason? Obviously, they do not care. And this is the sad fact about contemporary Jewish life, that the overwhelming number of Jews, even those who are, so-to-speak, "involved" and "committed", acquiesce in the* status qua. At best, they would like to make changes, but
are concerned lest they "rock the boat". This CtlSh%hfi^l^ JoUUL
means that they have little faith in the faith- ' ^ -r-T- •J^ 7 fulness of their fellow^Jews, and believe that any open criticism wilt offer their friends an excuse for not giving money.
We are not, let us add, suggesting that Jews duplicate in their communal institutions precisely what occurred on Momingside Heights. But we must confess that we look
wistfully at the burning zeal of the students, I horrified nation, and the world, and wish that some of it would make its watches the explosion of the cit-
TrMES TO TRY OUR SOULS
From The Intennountain Jewish News Denver, Colorado
THESE ARE TIMES to try
men's (and women's) souls. A
appearance within Jewish ranks.
Oct. 15,1894-July 7,1965
Jerusalem/ My First
From Speech by Moshe Sharett, Sept. % 1964, when the Freedom of the City of Jerusalem was conferred upon him.
WHEN I WAS A SMALL CHHiD at Kaherson, a town in southern Russia, the first geo^ graphical map to be placed before me was the map of Eretz Israel, and the first town that I learned to point to with my small finger, was Jerusalem. Even before I understood what a map is, even before I grasped what a town on a map means, I knew that a picture so depicted is a picture of our own country and that that small dot in the middle of that picture is our city of Jerusalem.
In my conception of this city, t legend and reality, dream and f day-to-day actuality were mixed. Of course I learned that this is the Holy City, that it has been the Capital of Israel from time immemorial and that it will return to become our Capital.
At the same time, I knew from the man who told me all that before I was old enough to hear any czf the stories of childhood^ before I learned to recognize the form of a letter of the alphabet, everything that it was possible to tell a child about the history of the Jews. And I knew that that man had been there, that he had been there in person and not in dream or legend. He had lived there, he had walked its streets, he liad worked there, he had spent the years of his youth there and that all this was real, alive, pulsating, that it could be sensed with the fingers and was alive before one's eyes.
MY FATHER JACOB SHER-TOE, a native of Pinsk, a student at the Technological Institute at Warsaw, when about to join the Russian Revolutionary Movement, saw with his own eyes in the year 1881 how Jews were being killed in the pogroms that spread throughout the Jewish Pale of residence in Russia. This happened after the revolutionaries had assassinated the Czar Alexander II, and Alexander III
cension was marked in our history by a wave of pogroms and slaughter.
Our father told us when we were children, without fear of hurting our feelings, how he walked about in the street in his student's^ uniform, so that it was impossible to discern his Jewish-
ies and towns of South Viet Nam. A nervous nation awaiits uneasily summer, fearing another ''long hot summer" in our cities. Which city is next is the fearsome question hi the bottom of our consciousness.
But our doughty women are unperturbed. They forge ahead, in their own determined^ dedicated way, to try to' light a little candle and make life brighter in a small way, as much as ihey-can. Such a hopeful and laudable endeavor is the participation of Council of Jewish Women members in joint white-black volunteer interracial programs around the country for poor people.
THE "COUNCHi WOMAN"
publication tells of the achievements and the headaches aiid heartaches stemming from this project.
Until Council of Jewish Women organized their community minded members to do volunteer yeshiva, who had frequented I work in these interracial projects, the Cheder only during his child- many Jewish women would have hood, who had graduated from to admit that the only person ; a government secondary school, to person contact they had with i who had gone to study in an in- Negro women was . with their I stitution of higher learning and colored maid or cleaning woman, j who was wholly steeped in Rus- And vice versa, the previous role sian culture even though he re- | of the Negro volunteer might
Eretz Israel to become a tiller of the soil.
IT WAS THEN THAT HE sent a letter to his father in Pinsk which began with the Hebrew words "My dear and honored father" and continued in Yiddish, "Oh, my father, I am your son but you don't know who I am—^I am a Jew."
This was the declaration of a young Jew about his return to his people—a yoimg Jew who had not been brought up in a
; membered teachings of his child-\ hood. It was from this man that i his father had heard the declara-! tion: "I am a Jew."
And he came to Eretz Israel as a member of the Bilu group and together with his comrades worked in the fields of Mikve Israel.
MOSHE SHARETT
ness, when suddenly a heavy bundle fell to his feet and a roar of laughter was heard from the balcony of the third story above him. He looked at the bimdle and saw that it was a baby whose head had been shattered against the pavement at his feet, and he saw the blood and the brain matter spill on the stones. He would tell us when we were children of five, six, and seven that it was this sight that led him back to [lis people, that it was this sight hat drew him from his school of had ascended the throne. His as- higher learning and sent him to
Endorsathas GrmUi
Medical Aid To Israel
Tea —_______________________Aug. 14
Meii's Chai
Campaign ....Aug. 15-Sept. 15
have been, either in actuality or in her concept, of a servant.
Now, under the Wqjnan in Community Services interracial activities, white and Negro women work together on an equal I basis. But the attainment of equality in practice is not as easy as stating the goals of equality.
TAKE A NEGRO WOMAN who is enlisted on a committee
with white women, incl Jewish community worke; Chances are the Negro w< never worked in voltmteer tivities or organizations. Jewish women, especially, ar past masters of organization work and know-how to get thin done. The natural tendency the Jewish women is to take o the chairmanships and exer their skillful know-how an energetic leadership. But if th do^vthat^i^ev ^Ife^^ .coniniil members are. hack in their chological depression of b subservient and second-class par ticipants.
It takes a lot of restraint an humility for Jewish organiza tional women to hold themselv back and to push their Negro col leagues delicately and diploma ically into chairmanships positions of responsibility so the; feel equal in practice as we ar in lip service.
But the Negro Women are r luctant to take responsibility because they have not had the experience and the know-how o; their Jewish colleagues, and the are not sure they can perfo: like the dynamic Jewish wome perform.
WELL, THIS IS JUST an inki ling of what goes on, and the in-| tricate problems involved in the beginning of a new interracial dialogue of action, not talk. There aire some successes and some failures, some meeting of minds and some misunderstanding. !
This is a tough area. It was; easier to talk about doing some-' thing for brotherhood than to do it. And we appreciate the diffi-, cult task that our women under-1 take in this field where angels fear to tread.
JEWISH CALENDAR (LUACH)
Candle Lighting
JULY 12, 8:57
1968
Tisha B'Ab ......Jiug. 9
Rosh Hai^ona .. ...Sept23
Yom Kippur ....._________Oct 2
Succot ________„._...........Oct 7
Simchat Torah ____Oct 15
Chanuka ____________________Dec. 16
All holidays begin the praccding ev» at sundown.
THE jmiSH
mmmi Buiism
Official Organ of tho Jowlsh Community of British Columbia
Friday, July 12, 1968
Published weekly every Friday at S2t5 Heather Street, Vancouver 9, British Columbia.
SAM KAPLAN
Editor and Publisher
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