5700 New Year Edition
[H]
September, 1939
NEW YEAR GREETINGS TO OUR MANY JEWISH FRIENDS
Canadiati Window Bakeries Ltd.
stores All Over the City
HARRY KOVISH
of the
IDEAL DELIVERY SYSTEM
72S Nelson Street EXTENDS SINCBREST NEW YEAR GREETINGS TO HIS MANY PATRONS AND FRIENDS
New Year's Greetings to My Many Jewish Friends
E. R. FLEWWELLING
MANUFACTURING JEWELLER
Diamond Setting and Engraving
Tliird Floor, 18 West Hastings Street
Phone SEymour 2661
MR. and MRS. A. SWARTZ
of the
Swattz Kosher Meat Market
Wish Their Relatives, Friends and Patrons A Very Happy New Year
656 W. Broadway
FAir. 5641
NEW YEAR GREETINGS OF
Consumers Tire Co. Ltd.
1190 Seymour St. SEy. 6210
NEW YEAR GREETINGS OF
THE BELMONT HOTEL
SOBEBT SWANSON, Manager 1006 GnmviUe St. Vancouver, B.C.
NEW YEAR GREETINGS OF
Macaulay, Nicolls, Maitland & Co. Ltd.
INSURANCE, FINANCIAL AND ESTATE AGENTS
435 Howe St. - Sey. 3540
PLAIN TALK
By AL SEGAL
AN AMERICAN OF MOSAIC PERSUASION
I have been glad to observe the revival of Jewish religion that is being attempted.
I am quite tired of being run In circles hunting security in a Jewish state, or in a separate Jewish culture or in other devices by which Jews might seclude themselves as in a shell.
In these eflforts Jews have succeeded only in convincing those who don't nice us anyway that we are a separate people of alien spirit for whom there must be separate treatment.
I, like many another Jews, have no feeling of beUig Palestinian, of being of a separate nationality and of hav-lijg a separate culture. Were there ever a Jewish state I should resent being considered an emigre from the state just as I now resent the false position in which I am put by those who so loudly lament the fall of the Jewish state they had in their dreams.
(I am quite aware that for saying this I am going to be set aside by those who still harbor delusions of Jewish national grandeur. I am comforted to know, however, that a great many other Jews will applaud and say, yes. it is time somebody said this.)
I am a Jew because of the religious community in which I was born. Searching far afield for security, Jews have gone a long way from home which is the Jewish religious community. That being a Jew Is fundamentally a religious identiyhas been almost forgotten by those who have been bemused by the dream of a Jewish nation. They have regarded patronizingly, as a backward people, those who cling to the religious concept of Jewish life.
I want to be considered a man who belongs to a certain religious group and nothing else. I, with many another Jew, have nothing in common wilh the politicians of Israel who are even now heard giving out declamations summoning Jews to fight for the Jewish state.
I will not raise a finger in behalf of a Jewish state. I will give, as I have in the past, to the fund to make Palestine a fruitful habitation for homeless Jews; I will also contribute to other promising places of refuge.
For me Jewish life is centred in America which contains many more Jews than could ever inhabit Palestine my more immediate concern is the Jewish life in which I live in the community of which I am a member.
My interest in Jewish life has to do with religion in the sense that by the application of their religious prin-
ciples Jews may become more respected and effective in their general communities.
It has become the practice to regard with gentle scorn the old-timers among Jews who considered themselves simply as Americans or Englishmen or Germans of the Mosaic persuasion. Well, that's what I am— an American of the Mosaic persua.s-ion and nothing more. The nationalistic philosophers have attempted to make a complex of many elements; I am content to be simply a man of one of the religious faiths.
In this identity I can walk with men of all other faiths who are going in the same direction; I am no stranger to them. I am no wanderer wrapped in my own purposes, seeking goals in other lands. I am one who is understood, since my heart is seen to be striving toward the same good ends that summon other men. my hands labor to build with them a more Just and lovely world for all men.
If, as a Jew, I possess a separate cultiwe, I am not going to wrap it up to keep for my own exclusive enjoyment; it is the inreritance of mankind. Nor am I a Jew who regards himself as one endowed by inheritance with some special essence; I am one of the democracy of mankind. All this has to do with essentials of Jewish religion as I know it.
To emphasize the religious identity of the Jew is the purpose of a revival, as it may be called, that has been started by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. It seems to bt a movement to lead Jews back home and it is about time we regained our bearings. We have been so busy playing nation.
Of course, there are those who are asking. Segal, do you tlilnk that, as a Jew you will be any the safer for being just a man of the Mosaic persuasion? How safe were the Jews ^vho liked to speak of themselves as Germans of the Mosaic persusion?
I am not thinking of being safe; I am thinking of what Jews can do io fulfill themselves as Jews and as members of the community of man. They are not fulfilling themselves in the role of a separate people of a separate nationality. They are certainly not strengthening their security by setting themselves apart in this and ether countries as people of another nationality.
I have in mind a revival of Jewish religion that shall not be self-serving in the synagogue, not a religious cafeteria for dues-paying members, not a service of rabbis speaking to God for Jews on Yom Kippur. (I guess the religion of the Germans of Mosaic persuasion was scarcely anything more than that.)
I think of a dynamic religion that shall march out of the synagogue and join with all other faiths that are concerned to bring God down to earth; a,religion that is not interested so much in saving Jews for earthly Immortality as In making the earth good for all men; a religion, still worshipping in the synagogue in its own way. but cherishing more the common altar at which mankind is (Continued on Page 24