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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)