To the Editor:
I feel urged to thank you with all my heart for the magnificent article by Will Herberg, “Assimilation in Militant Dress,” which you published in the July issue of COMMENTARY. It expresses in classical words the attitude of traditional, orthodox Judaism towards the nationalistic assimilation raging like an epidemic within the ranks of American Jewry and leading to disastrous consequences for the mind and body of the Jewish people.
Against this spiritual disease, spread by political Zionism, including the Mizrachi wing, the Agudas Israel organization, of which I have the honor to be president, has struggled for the past forty years of Jewish history.
I think that the logical trend of Mr. Herberg’s spiritual development should lead him one day from Marxism beyond the “Conservative” half-truth to genuine traditional Judaism.
Jacob Rosenheim
Agudas Israel World Organization
New York City
To the Editor:
The very interesting but also very misleading article “Assimilation in Militant Dress” by Will Herberg, has persuaded me that his transition “From Marxism to Judaism” is still far from complete. The answer to the subtitle—”Should the Jews be ‘Like Unto the Nations?’“—must be an unqualified and emphatic “yes.” Both Jews and non-Jews, after untold suffering on the part of the Jewish people for well-nigh two thousand years, should be convinced that the only hope for the Jewish people, from the standpoint of self-respect and survival, lies in an independent national life on its ancient soil in Israeland.
Unfortunately, Mr. Herberg, in citing the various instances in which the Jews, either individually or as a group, followed the leadership of such sages as Johanan ben Zakkai, the Pharisaic leaders, and others who sought to emphasize the superiority of the spiritual self of Israel over temporary and useless military endeavor, chose to disregard the nature of the circumstances which caused great Jewish leaders to reject continued opposition to the enemy. Their attitude certainly did not declare or even imply that Israel was to be in eternal exile away from Israeland or in unending submission to the invader and oppressor in Israeland. They wanted the Jewish people to remain loyal to the Torah and all that it represents, while they would wait for the time when God, in his wisdom, would see fit to return them to an independent national life on the soil of their forefathers. They certainly would not agree with Mr. Herberg’s belief that only the spirit of Judaism, and not the physical and future well-being of the Jewish people, is what really matters.
Jewish thinking and aspiration, as expressed in the prayers in the siddur and in the words of the prophets before and during the Babylonian exile, indicate quite unmistakably that the Jewish people never intended to remain forever in exile, nor did it ever look upon this exile as a blessing or something desirable for its spiritual life and well-being.
Rabbi Nathan Wise
Plymouth, Massachusetts
To the Editor:
It is not too late, I hope, for an extended comment on Will Herberg’s article, “Assimilation in Militant Dress,” in which he accused militant political Zionism of being a violation of our religious heritage.
It so happens that I am at present engaged in a study of Rabban Johanan ben Zakkai, of halachic passages where his views are reported or quoted, of haggadic views attributed to him, and of passages where he is remembered, described, praised. While I am still unable neatly to summarize the distinctive originality of his thought, I can say this: it is possible that no one would be as profoundly disturbed by Will Herberg’s paper as he, if he were here to read it. What would pain him is not that his conduct in 68 C.E. (if that indeed was the year) has been misunderstood—after all, the flight from Jerusalem almost invited misunderstanding. No, that action he hoped he would later be able to explain satisfactorily to everybody. Apparently he had already done so to his disciples, who surely had their misgivings. They could not have acted as his accomplices otherwise. (Eliezer was a Shamuti, sympathetic with Shammaite views, and Shammaites were not altogether opposed to the war.)
The flight from Jerusalem, Johanan surely knew, would require defense, perhaps in every age. But what would give him pain is that all his subsequent acts should have failed to make it evident that in his view the Land of Israel still belonged to none but Israel, that the occupation of the land by Rome was a punishment of Israel for neglecting to live the kind of life such a land required, that as far as it lay in his power he would conserve and retain ceremonies and observances formerly limited to Jerusalem so that Israel would not disintegrate and thus lose some future opportunity to recover the Land completely and enjoy independence.
From Ben Hecht, I suppose, the Sages would have expected little; after all, they knew Ben Batiah. But from the rest of us, to whom terror and violence is not the answer which makes sense, the Sages would have expected a fair estimate.
No careful study of Jewish sources can possibly disguise the facts (a) that the Land of Israel is not peripheral to (or, say, a minor theme in) the teachings of Judaism; (b) that Israel is intended by God to occupy that Land and that other powers are there by might; (c) that Israel’s destiny is not to be “abnormal.”
A very attractive word, that word “abnormal.” For Kafka, and for a generation to whom the concept that “there is a goal and no way” is not an insight but a cardinal principle, the word is an incantation. If by abnormal we mean that the prevailing metaphysical double talk (vide Auden and all the minor Kierkegaards) is normal, then Judaism and Israel are truly abnormal and abnormality is an ideal furiously to be cultivated. But if I understand the Jewish sources which I study, it is these manifestations which are abnormal, they are perversions and caricatures. Sin, in fact, as Pedersen once acutely observed of the Hebrew religion, “is, properly speaking, no action, but a caricature.”
At no time did Israel’s Sages make a fetish of abnormality, M. Maritain notwithstanding. What Israel’s Sages prayed for was the normalization of this universe so that Israel too might lead a normal life.
To be sure, the categories of Western history do not do justice to Israel, a people older than the Western world with a tradition developed in a different universe of discourse from ours. But whatever the modern equivalent for umah or am, the elements of what we call nationality are strongly emphasized. George Foote Moore was certainly not blind to the universality of Israel’s faith; and he says plainly when speaking of the character of nationality, “This is the corner stone of the religion of Israel both in the popular apprehension and in the explicit affirmation of the religious leaders in all periods.” (The italics are mine, but they are not intended as a denial of an equally emphatic universal character; there is ambivalence enough, as every student knows.) Would Judah Halevi (since he too has been summoned) have undertaken his journey to the Holy Land if he had felt that because Israel is more than a nation therefore it ought not pursue activities which are generally expressions of national life pure and simple? Who called Israel outside the Holy Land asirayich (thy slaves) if not the author of the Kuzari?
One would have to be ignorant (or Hecht) to deny that Israel’s nationality has a purpose transcending mere existence, security, minimum survival, or the elimination of anti-Semitism. Israel is in truth chosen to exemplify and publish the imperatives of the Torah. But is this to say we are not of the “normal” world, only in it? That Israel voluntarily resigns from its historic attachments? There is a whole order of the Mishna, Zeraim, to remind us how earthy and earthly these attachments are.
Much too easily, it seems to me, a confusion has developed in certain circles. For the pious man a tension is eternal because, regardless of the measure of his diligence and obedience, he knows how far he is from perfect submission to the will of God. But this tension is not the same as the strain that enters the world in the relations of men to each other because they are unjust and unmerciful to each other. Israel even in the Holy Land is under obligation to live a life which is not exhausted by the boundaries of Dan and Beer Sheba or Hamath and the Brook of Arabah. But this does not mean that therefore efforts to recover that promised locale and to rehabilitate Israel are in opposition to that life. Whatever I recall from Jewish literature cries out to the contrary. We are in danger of becoming a Torah-less people today because Zion is not ours. Do you remember what Schechter said? For all “its nightmares” Zionism was a “most cherished dream” because it redeemed his beloved Catholic Israel from all “the incessantly assailing forces of assimilation.”
What does it all come to? That we are still, in the contemporary Western idiom, unable properly to describe the peculiar people Israel, that Israel dare not reduce its nationality or peoplehood (choose what term you will) to political terms only (God forbid to militaristic terms at all!), that the restoration of the Holy Land to the Holy People is as central an insistence of Jewish tradition as is the realization that Israel’s uniqueness depends upon the commitment to Torah, that the world as it should be, this world if you please, is the place where Israel’s normalcy is finally to be enacted, that the normalcy of the world will not, from the standpoint of Judaism, be established until the normalcy of Israel is established. Until the world recognizes that the Jew is of this universe even as the Jew has always insisted that the demonstration of our love of God must be in this universe and amongst its inhabitants, abnormality will reign, “Whirl is King.”
I write this criticism of Herberg (who is absolutely right in many of his emphases and warnings, and whose profound reflections spring from love for Israel) not because I seek to defend the Sicarii, ancient or modern. Theirs is not the way. But their way—for which the nations, now indulging in exclamations of moral indignation, are in good part responsible—must not be equated with the authentic fervor to restore Israel, to recover what is hers, to provide her with the opportunity in concentration and peace to create that light by which all men must see.
Rabbi Judah Goldin
State University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
To the Editor:
With regard to “Assimilation in Militant Dress” by Will Herberg. Mr. Herberg speaks of “Johanan ben Zakkai, the Pharisaic Ab Bet Din of the Sanhedrin.” This statement is untrue, since Johanan ben Zakkai was not an Ab Bet Din.
Similarly, in the very same paragraph, the author makes the following inaccurate remark: “Johanan, with his great disciples, Joshua ben Hananya and Eliezer ben Hyrkanos, appeared before the Roman commander. . . .” No source whatsoever exists to indicate that Joshua ben Hananya and Eliezer ben Hyrkanos made such an appearance.
On the same page Mr. Herberg says: “A few months later, the Zealot leader Eleazar ben Jair. . . .” Eleazar ben Jair was not a Zealot but a Sicarii who followed the Fourth Philosophy. There was a vast difference between the principles of the Zealots and those of the Sicarii. I consider this a glaring and inexcusable error.
Solomon Zritlin
The Jewish Quarterly Review
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
To the Editor:
I have come to expect illuminating and interesting analyses from Mr. Herberg, and his latest, “Assimilation in Militant Dress,” is no exception. He makes a heroic proposal which it seems to me, no one has a tight to ask of another people; but when a man proposes it for his own people, one can only give it profound appreciation and respect.
I find the entire magazine very interesting.
Roger L. Shinn
Union Theological Seminary
New York City
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