To the Editor:
Before commenting on Pearl Buck’s interesting article in the April COMMENTARY, let me commend you for the series as a whole. I believe that the “Crisis of the Individual” is both well named and thus far has been well treated. I find only one thing missing in the series (perhaps you plan to remedy it): that is a bold treatment of the conflict of the individual arising from the competition between the amounts and quality of freedom available to him with some insecurity in the Western democracies, in contrast to the alleged security but absence of freedom in the countries under the influence of Russian totalitarianism.
Now to turn to Miss Buck’s article. I see it pretty much as a commentary on two themes which recur throughout all humanistic literature and which may be summed up perhaps in the Socratic “Know thyself” and the Goethean “To be thyself one must slay oneself.” These, as Miss Buck quite rightly indicates, are not polarized ideas. Rather they cohere as the two sides of a coin. She gives one amazing illustration of her thesis which we might well think about: namely, that because the Jews have suffered more than any other group in humanity, their plea today ought to be not “help us,” but “let us lead the way to help all others.”
I find myself in complete agreement with that view not because of the position of leadership that it might theoretically afford Jews, but because it represents sound learning processes in that those who have gone through the experience can perhaps interpret it even to those who haven’t, although of course experience is its own best teacher! Think for a moment if the current drive for one hundred million dollars was launched not for the UJA but for a UPA, i.e., “United People’s Association.” I think that is what Miss Buck means and in that sense I would say great as the need is for Jewish relief, greater still would be the spiritual and ethical motivation, the human fulfilment if that need were translated into a drive for all the downtrodden, all the afflicted, all the poverty-stricken. Isn’t that what “mitzvoth” really means?
Frank N. Trager
New York City