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The Southern Israelite
Page 9
■■ I
I heard dr. FOSTER KEN
NEDY GIVE A TALK over the radio
Jhe other night and he mentioned the
fac! that the Jews and the Chinese be
muse of their great reverence for
tiu-ir elders had seemed to be able to
survive apparently endlessly through
out the apes. His phraseology I have
forgotten hut in substance the thought
is there. The Jew of today is given
credit for some of the things—the im
portant things—done by the Jew of
yesterday. I fear that too frequently
we take credit for what our fore
fathers did. Certainly the Jewish life
we lead today doesn’t reflect much
,-redit upon the prophets. Yet when
we hear the world saying What a
wonderful contribution the Jews have
made to civilization we accept the
praise without a blush. What is wor
rying me is that we Jews seem to be
losing our religious distinctiveness.
When Jews themselves dismiss as un
important the very idea of a mission,
and when we emphasize the racial and
nationalistic sides of Jewry, then it
looks as if we were something else
again. I hope that the reverence for
the elders that the world speaks of
will be continued but it doesn’t seem
to he quite such a feature among the
.lews as in the former days. Maybe
I’m living too close to today to get
the proper perspective. But I just
want to bring home the point that we
ran’t continue to hitch our future to
a tombstone and get very far.
RABBI ABRAHAM FELDMAN,
OF CONGREGATION BETH Israel,of
Hartford, Conn., sends me an inter
esting letter regarding an unique ex
perience. Recently I had occasion to
mention Rabbi Rosenthal, who was
asked to deliver the benediction at an
Faster service in a Christian church.
But 1 think Rabbi Feldman’s experi
ence is even more unusual. In fact
i? is well worth quoting Dr. Feldman’s
I complete version of the incident:
••April 29th, 1929
hear Mr. Joseph :
One of the Congregational Churches <
Hartford elected a new minister. The proc
dure is this. What is called an Ecclesiastic;
* ' uncil is called on the day of installatioi
< "mposed of representatives of neighborin
t onirrelational Churches—two laymen and tl
minister of each Church. They meet in fo
mai session, at which time the proceedinj
leading to the election of the Clergyman ai
rt-ail under the presidency of a Moderato
l *h" ls elected for this purpose out of the a,
M-mti.y present, and a Scribe, likewise desii
f ror u among those present.
. fr 7. . new minister’s credentials and churc
' ,atl 5 ,ns are read and then the ministt
tailed upon to give his confession of fait
./V " ut ‘* ne his creedal doctrine. Followin
, a . >ta tement comes a formal examinatioi
* "'“leh each member of this Counc
> asked whether he wishes to ask the mini;
... an> , luestion on his doctrinal statemen
1 . inclusion of this session, the ne
il r, * r . la excU8 *d—the Ecclesiastical Coui
uets in Executive Session behind close
*f ■ >. amt they p ass upon the qualifjcatior
(>e ' n *i^ V m * n ' s ter and whether he shoul
*ta'i'."t m ?T to the church and ii
p,,j’,V , . Pon approval a committee is ai
arra „ rom the Ecclesiastical Council 1
an ,t .uL . or , „ e installation of the ministe
P a r ^ft »s foUowcd by installation; but in th
Mi. f 'nstance that I am speaking of,
ral.- * u.-a r r e fi r st P me in history, I, as
if • . formally invited to be a memb«
Pa - - in , cc ^lesiastical Council, and to partic
,n the entire proceeding.”
I i A | !B DER SENDS ME A LONl
. ‘ TER IN WHICH HE SAYS tha
do • e o 1I tS S 1 agree with you, often
^ell, that’s not so. bad. H
takes exception to a Texas reader of
this column who objects to my scolding
the Jews. He commends me for that.
And he amuses me by saying that
since Jews are reading this column
why scold anybody else. That has
given me something to think about.
He is inclined to believe that all the
prejudice is not solely due to the fact
that we are Jews but sometimes be
cause as individuals we are not all
we should be. But the most interest
ing part of his letter deals with a
visit he made to a meeting held by a
Mr. Gordon in New York, who was
giving a series of “Quiet Talks.” He
refers to a notice of this meeting,
which he omitted to enclose. And here
are some of the things Mr. Gordon
said:
"‘He spoke of the Jews being leaders in
whatever they undertake, of our being at
every land but foreigners everywhere; that we
don’t mix because we can’t, no matter how
hard we try; that we do not assimilate in
any country and are always a noun and
never an adjective—American Jews or Eng
lish Jews not Jewish Americans. (He’s right
there but that is due to ignorance or care
lessness and not to intent.) He said the word
Jew means ’throw’ and that no people had
been more thrown at; that we had also done
our share of the throwing.”
HOWEVER, OUT OF ALL THE
NUMEROUS STATEMENTS OF
Mr. Gordon’s, some of which were, of
course, quite inexact, I noticed this.
A Jew in the audience asked him why
the Christians persecuted the Jews
and Mr. Gordon replied that he and
all true Christians were thoroughly
ashamed of the persecution and there
was no excuse for it, but that on the
other hand when the Hebrews were
in power they had persecuted their
neighbors too, although that didn’t
excuse the Christians. Of course this
is what H. L. Mencken would call
tish-tosh. Mr. Gordon may explain, if
he can, why this persecution keeps
up right under his nose, and there is
so much of it, that if there are Chris-
tions such as he mentions, they are
in a pitifully small minority. The
gentleman who writes me the letter
sees in all this friendly conversation
on the part of Mr. Gordon an evi
dence of goodwill on the part of the
Christian toward us and if we only
meet them half way everything will
be just fine.
I AM SORRY, MR. LEVY, TO
DASH YOUR HOPES TO THE
ground. If you had sat in a Jewish
journalist’s chair for twenty-five
years as I have done and have heard
all this, and read all this and a whole
lot more, and would see day by day
less goodwill and more illwill toward
the Jew, you wouldn’t be such an op
timist. What you heard from Mr. Gor
don, well meaning Christian that he
may be, was just conversation that
means exactly nothing, except possi
bly an invitation to the Jews to be
come Christians. In other words, Mr.
Levy, I think that you must have been
listening to a missionary to the Jews,
the first efforts of Christian mis
sionaries should be to get Christians
to follow Jesus. If they do that then
there will be less persecution of the
Jews. Let me whisper it, brother,
(Continued on Page 11)