To the Editor:
The wise and perceptive commentary that one finds in Evelyn N. Rossman’s “Judaism in Northrup” (November) leads this reader to wonder about the wisdom and perception of the “Jewish leaders” in these new suburban communities that are not “Jewish” in character and structure, yet boast of an over-active and multi-disciplined arena of Jewish organizations.
To the author, and the many other anonymous and public critics of suburban Judaism, I pose several basic questions.
- Don’t you expect too much in the way of understanding, participation, and dedication from these people who have either never known or fled the influences and moral ties of Jewish family and community life?
- Why should we assume that the completely restyled and reassessed Jewish institutions, ideas, and ceremonials of the Northrups—in the guise of sophistication, modernism, and superficiality—should satisfy the basic yearnings of man for purpose, direction, and meaning?
- Should we expect anything but confusion, apathy, and frustration from these people whose rabbis and synagogues have been too preoccupied with trivia to serve as beacons in the direction of basic Jewish truths and values?
- Is it not true that a major factor in the influencing of the Jews of another generation toward communal responsibility was their genuine desire to prepare for the next generation and perpetuate their own network of beliefs, customs, and values? What is it that Northrupians wish to perpetuate, their social insecurity, their hybrid Judaism, their frustrations?
The history of our people has answers to these questions, and it has shown that Jewish community life per se, and indeed the very essence of Jewish family life, is bankrupt and meaningless when divorced from the basic “motifs” and fundaments of Judaism. The person who acknowledges and accepts the premises of our time-honored Torah-approach to life finds meaning and purpose and fulfillment in his personal, family, and community affairs.
A sad commentary on 20th-century Jews is that, lacking this “aleph basis of Yiddishkeit,” they try the intricate and deceptive short-cuts of forums, lectures, seminars, and institutional involvement and hope to find the meaning, warmth, identity, and pride evident in the Judaism of their mothers and fathers.
(Rabbi) Samuel I. Cohen
Long Island Zionist Youth Commission
Kew Gardens, N. Y.
_____________
To the Editor:
I enjoyed Mrs. Rossman’s comments on suburban living. Perhaps my reactions to eight years of rural life might help her crystallize her own vague yearnings toward Judaism.
Western New York (my home) is a predominately Anglo-Saxon Protestant society. The section I live in has barely enough Jews for the required minyan, and kashruth is merely a dream. Here, too, anti-Semitism seems to be merely a dictionary term. Despite this, I find my own Judaism strengthened rather than weakened.
First, we must agree, that we Jews have profited greatly from America’s many virtues. The material things of life are readily available to us, we are pogrom-free, our children attend secular schools and join interdenominational organizations. But, I think, we have also suffered from “Americanization.” We have the same need to “conform” and “adjust” that our neighbors do, we share the same unease in the presence of an “egghead,” we are eager to accept our religion on a “happy-pill” basis, and we are hungry for material success.
None of these philosophies squares with Judaism. Conform? To what? Adjust? Where? Is the Jewish religion with its stern emphasis on ethics a “happy” one? Has our history been a successful one? What of our traditional love for learning, our disregard of material failures?
Let us keep our discontent, I say. Let us conform to our ancient heritage, remember our past. Where else can the Western world find a greater reservoir of fortitude in the face of overwhelming odds than among us? And a purer love of intellectualism than in us?
As Jews we can help our country face its greatest test. By our differences, we can help the majority, reeling under apparent American failure. We know the right will triumph—but at the price of great personal sacrifice and hard work. We must make our voices heard. We must show our neighbors that love of learning can be a good thing, individual protest a great catalyst in a too complacent society.
Clara Wishner
Helmuth, New York
_____________
To the Editor:
Mrs. Rossman’s “Judaism in Northrup” poses the question which I have been asking myself for some years. I am afraid that I too have not the courage to say “no.” My job—and, more important, my family support—now commit me to being a “professional Jew.” I can’t quit; I am too old to start in some other line of work and have no training for such a changed occupation.
There must be thousands of Jews who do read books and who do reflect and who feel, as I do, that religion—any religion, not just Judaism—is a kind of poetic guide to life, that “God” is a profound but rather vague metaphor, and that Jewish customs represent folkways which may be convenient or dear to us for various reasons but which are, fundamentally, merely fixed dietary and social prejudices of varying importance.
At one time, I was active in Reform Judaism, lectured, and wrote for Jewish periodicals. Now I just “glide along.” Reform Judaism seemed to promise an “out” by developing in the direction of adaptation of age-old Jewish ways to scientific and artistic modes of living and thinking. Now it has swung back to aping folk-ritual and catering to the mores of largely uncritical masses of well-to-do middle class mixers.
When all is said and done, of course, I admit that if I were even twenty years younger and not tied to a job and responsible for a family, I might not say “no” to Judaism. Perhaps what I would do would be simply to forget about it—a feat not hard to accomplish even now since Judaism-as-religion is already so inconsequential in my life that protest seems not worth the effort.
Since several rabbis will probably write, if this should be printed, to remind me that “others” won’t let me forget my Jewishness, let me stress here that I am not now concerned, nor will be in the future, with what “others” think about my faith or the lack of it.
Anonymous
_____________
To the Editor:
Here are some thoughts inspired by Mrs. Rossman’s article:
Her community seems typical of the mushrooming of latter-day Jewish institutionalization in the United States. Everywhere this seems to be largely composed of “fallen away” Jews who have banded together again to provide Jewish education for their children and to seek identity and meaning in their own tradition. Their practice varies all the way from merely paying temple dues and sending children to Sunday school to keeping kosher and refusing to ride on Saturday (although the latter probably never did really “fall away”). In between are an infinite combination of different religious practices. For example, some will eat ham in restaurants but not at home, some will eat bacon but not fresh pork, some will give Christmas presents but not have a Christmas tree, some will have a tree but no wreath on the door, and so on, ad infinitum.
Why should members of the congregation feel discomfort or guilt over this, when the rabbis, from Reform to Orthodox, are in complete disagreement over what constitutes approved ritual behavior? Yet it is all Judaism, and some of it wonderful Judaism, in spite of this.
Personally, I am grateful in the extreme to have moved from a complete repudiation of Judaism and all religion in my adolescence to a profound reverence for the Jewish tradition in my middle age. Its changes and variations, both past and present, disturb me not at all. As a people we have been and still are magnificent, and we will persist for a long time to come whether we keep the Sabbath holy or work in our gardens.
As a religion, Judaism to my mind leaves something to be desired. History and myth are stressed to the detriment of the personal relationship of the individual to God. We read and repeat endlessly that Moses and the other ancient prophets spoke with God. But thousands of years ago is far too remote for conversations with God to be truly vital today. Are there not those, rabbis and laymen alike, who speak with God today? Can we not hear about them in our synagogues and religious writings? Or has Judaism totally relegated revelation to the category of myth? I have this feeling, and yet the direct religious experience, the kind that William James describes, is as overwhelming in its magnificence today as it was three thousand years ago. God speaks to man through himself and He should not speak in the same language in the light of present-day knowledge and experience as that in which He spoke to the ancient believers in miracles; yet speak He must, else He is not a living God but merely an ancient myth, however wise and beautiful were His words in days gone by, however much of the wisdom is still applicable today.
Perhaps it is presumptuous of a comparative religious illiterate like myself to write this way. Yet I have sat through all kinds of Jewish services, and in recent years even been moved by them. I have praised God and supplicated God; yet He has remained remote—the God of Abraham, Jacob, Isaac, and Moses. His eye has not been on this sparrow—me—not during services or through any experience of Judaism. On the very rare occasions when He has conversed with me, it has been an intensely private experience with no relation to a religious atmosphere. Judaism in precept and practice is the “good” life—this I firmly believe. If one lives according to its teachings, whether Orthodox or Reform, one will be a kindly, moral, courageous individual. But one will not necessarily feel the presence of God within oneself: the infinitely comforting and joyous conviction that oneself as an individual is of the utmost importance—not just to one’s nearest beloved—but to the very pattern of life—to God. This, it seems to me, is the most essential thing religion should give, and this by their own admission is what Judaism has failed to give great numbers of its adherents in the U.S., 1957.
I have wandered far afield, but I think Mrs. Rossman’s uncertainties and dissatisfactions with her Jewish community stem largely from this lack and not from the tug of war between individuals, organizations, and varieties of religious practice. Perhaps there are many, many Jews who feel this closeness with God; if so, I am either not fortunate enough to know them or they do not talk to me about it. On the other hand, I know very many of them who keep a tenuous hold on their religion because somehow it seems the thing to do, but are either agnostic or religious in so vague a way that it holds no significance for their daily living.
Jane K. Schwartz
Washington, D. C.
_____________
Mrs. Rossman writes:
For me, Jewishness refers to values, even more than to religion. I imagine that these values that I’m conscious of are a product of Jewish upbringing and history. It may be that this is an illusion, that I’m simply the product of particular parents and grandparents and environment, but I doubt it. It’s difficult to describe what I mean by values, because so often the difference between Jewish and other values are quantitative as well as qualitative. Yet I think that Judaism at its best can make life possible and desirable. It can lead to maturity rather than a lifetime of childhood; to responsibility rather than apathy; and to great pleasures (nachus, fargenigen) in place of “fun.” There are surely other ways to develop “values,” but it would seem that no tremendous success has so far been achieved in doing so in America or anywhere else, as far as I know.
If Jewishness can continue to foster understanding and a serious (ultimately religious) attitude toward life, then it’s worth the time and work it demands. If it cannot, then it will not be missed.
_____________
