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Page 10
The Southern Israelite
Food Prices
Today And
A Year Ago
What consumers save
over last year’s cost
A&P is advertising prices of
food today compared with
prices a year ago. The dif
ferences in the lists generally
show substantial reductions.
The idea is to bring home
to the housewife how much
less her food is costing her
than it cost last year at this
time. In these figures she sees
actual facts, not theories. To
her they have a high practical
news value.
They are important in an
other way. They illustrate in
dollars and cents AftP's policy
—the policy of passing on to
the consumer the savings that
come from lower food prices.
By A&P’s new low prices
customers can measure the de
cline in the cost of the raw
materials that enter into what
they eat.
GREAT ATLANTIC & PACIFIC T &
The Jewish Conscious,
By SAMUEL HIRSHBERG
Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El-B’ne Jeshurun, Milwaukee Wl
Much has been written in the present
discussion with respect to a Jewish con
sciousness. Just what is to be under
stood by this term?
There is a sense in which birth does
put its ineradicable impress upon us as
members of the particular family of man
to which we belong, and I would not
gainsay my Zionist brethren herein. There
is a sense—it is not to be denied—in
which we are born distinctively Jews,
just as there is a sense in which other
folk are born distinctively Christian.
There is a definite Christian conscious
ness, and there is a definite Jewish con
sciousness. But, let it be remarked, I do
not mean anything here of racial and,
least of all, of a nationalistic conscious
ness. Just as there is a Christian con
sciousness that cuts across and transcends
all divisions of race and nationality, as is
it with this that we term the Jewish
consciousness.
A certain common history, extending
through a long period of generations and
ages, a certain community in thoup'
beliefs, ideas, purposes, traditions, experi
ences, observances, practices, has gener
ated and developed a certain attitude of
mind, a certain point of view, a certain
state of feeling and emotion—an entire
definite psychology and philosophy of life
which we recognize, on the one hand, as
peculiarly Christian; and he then who is
of Christian parentage, inevitably and in
escapably inherits this Christian psychol
ogy with its especial mode of outlook
upon and reaction towards life. And
similarly, the like common history, the
like community in beliefs, traditons, ex
periences and observances, extended
through an even much longer period of
generations and ages, has begotten and de
veloped, on the other hand, a distinctive
Jewish psychology and philosophy of life,
and he then who is of Jewish parentage
inevitably and inescapably inherits this.
There may be liberal Christians—Uni
tarians, for instance—who in their the
ology are much more akin to Jews than
they are to their fellow Christians, just
as there are Jews who theologically are
much nearer akin to members of other
liberal faiths than they are to their Or
thodox brethren, yet when it comes to the
basic elements of the inner beings of
both, the one thinks and feels himself
essentially, fundamentally and inextri
cably Christian, undetachably part and
parcel of the great solidarity of Christian
fellowship, and the other feels himself
equally as essentially, fundamentally and
inextricably Jewish, undetachibly still
part and parcel of the great solidarity of
Jewish fellowship. The ancestral history
and heritage of each have so informed
and colored their inner nature, the
thought and emotional life of each, as to
imbue and infuse each with an inseparable
consciousness of his own.
But though this be so, though like ante
cedents and heritages have had their part
and no small part at that in determining
such a consciousness of ourselv . as j
still is there one factor whiG, rcnia l
ever of first and most essent
Rabbi Samuel Hirshberg
here. Fundamental and in lispcnsahle t
the whole of this consciousness at>u
which I have been remarking, withou
which it would be but as suspended in tl
insubstantial air, is the underlying reli
gious consciousness, the sense of certain
common ideas of God and the humai
relationship to Him, certain coninv
ideas of man, his intrinsic worth, h
duties and relations to his fellows, whic
in the last analysis form the sole distb
tive reason for the being of the Jews.
It has been his religion which has 1
the great sustaining force for the Jew
the force which has kept him alive a
given him the one all-sufficing justifi«
give him such justification and purpoM
for persistence in the future, for, with
out a distinctive religion of his c
without a definite culture of his own
solely in the realm of the moral and lh<
spiritual, especially to mark him as it h 35
ever in all previous time, I can see
sound reason for the Jew to continue
the times ahead. Divested of his religi° n
the spiritual and ethical ideas and id
for which Judaism has stood historically
and distinctively ever before the wor
the sooner the Jew would abnegate <
other particularistic identity he mig 1
have and merge and lose himself, > ea -
“assimilate” himself utterly—for the tenT
has no terrors for me—with ' -
ality of folk about him, '
There is no good warrant, no rhymed-
reason in the Jew being presen
religion abandoned. The Jew, n
religion, is but a sorry anac ™ sin '
spectral survival before the
The Jew is Jew then pre-em
11 t £• -> virtruc
pre-essentially, before all else, .
of his religion. Without this, L e ^ j
any definiteness of consci
might want to preserve, is as