Newspaper Page Text
DELICIOUS - FRESH - OVEN READY
Recipes and prices on request.
Palmetto Pigeon Plant
Largest Squab Farm in America
Phone 775-1204, write or wire
Box 1585—SUMTER, S. C.
THE PEOPLES BANK
Beaufort, S. C.
Member Federal Reserve System
United States Government Depository
Member Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
FOX JEWELERS
“Gifts of Memory”
BEAUFORT, S. C.
Quality Motors, Inc
Telephone MO. 2-1433
247 N. Irby St.
FLORENCE, S. C.
“Thrill of the Year is Buick”
VARIABLE PITCH DYNAFLOW
“Florence’s Most Popular Motor Court”
Florence. South Carolina
HORNE AUTO CO,
MOhawk 2-5241 173 E. Cheves St.
Ford Cars - Trucks - Complete Service
FLORENCE, S. C.
RABBI MORRIS ADLER
•
move about. Life no longer
proceeds from precedent to
precedent but rather from the
novel to the unprecedented.
Not for our day the admoni
tion, “remember the days of
old. consider the years of ages
past.” Today vve feel no con-
tinuitv with our antecedents
and sense no kinship with the
days ahead, for both the past
and the future are separated
from us bv profound and all-
encompassing changes. The
rabbi, scion of a tradition and
heir of a culture, must now-
function in the midst of a tech
nological setting in which cul
tural differentiations are obli
terated and traditional modes
discounted. After all. com
puters have no particular
identity and reflect no specific
culture. They are neither West
ern nor Eastern. Jewish or
Christian. Hebraic or Hellenic.
The rabbi now- lives with his
congregation in an increasingly
homogenized world, encapsul
ated in the moment, thus denv-
ing history, and. undistinguish
ed in substance and form, thus
negating culture.
Jewish tradition defines the
rabbi as a layman, yet to his
parishoners he is a clergyman
and pastor an<J he has not yet
grown comfortably into the
new role that has been thrust
upon him. A teacher of a tradi
tion, he is now in the service
of an institution; an interpreter
of a history, he has in fact be
come the executive of an agen
cy. By calling and tempera
ment a student, he has been
turned into an official, a
steward, a member of a staff.
Interested in ideas and discip
lined to study in privacy, the
logic of surrounding circum
stances has led him to serve as
an apostle of affability and
conviviality. He knows and is
known by more people than
any other leader in the com
munity (save the political
boss) and yet at the heart of
him there is an unsureness of
self in the midst of the crowd.
Often a consciousness of apart
ness grips him. for which he
quickly compensates with
simulated exuberance. He is a
frequent guest at testimonial
dinners, receptions and the
multiple bizarre festivities
which clog the calendar of
American Jewish life, and yet
in the brief moments when he
is not “socializing" he finds
lumself agonizing over the
question, "What am I doing
here?”
The issues around w-hich his
organized thinking revolves—
God, Torah, moral values,
social goals, the crisis of faith,
theology—are remote to the
people to whom he ministers.
They are good and friendly
men and women who. in mo
ments of his detachment and
introspection, seem to be a
pre-Sinaitic tribe which has
34
The Southern Israelite
