North American Federation of Temple Brotherhoods -- ACHIM Magazine

Article Highlight: THE JEWISH CENTURY (TEXT ONLY)
By Alexander M. Schindler

Impelled by the fact that we stand at the turning point of the century, indeed the millennium, an occasion which bids us look Janus like backward and forward, to the past and to the future, I determined to give you a Jewish retrospective of the 20th century.

It was a century which was one of the most turbulent, tumultuous, for all humanity. A century of sharp and shocking contrasts. The extraordinary advances of science and industry which it brought raised great hopes for humankind. But is was also the most violent century in human history, a century of mayhem and massacres, of wars which claimed 187 million victims, most of them civilians. It was a century which shattered many illusions and ideals.

For the Jewish people the sharp contrasts of good and evil, of hope and despair, that marked this extraordinary century, were nothing short of savage and salvational. Proudly we stood at the heart of its most uplifting achievements: the astounding scientific advances and the social and political and economic betterment. Out list of Jewish Nobel Laureates, artists, social activists and pioneering industrialists and financiers, testify to the contribution we made to the 20th century. But likewise we Jews stand at the heart of the century's most degrading crimes and outrages: In Auschwitz and the gulags and the ghettos and other carnage places to numerous to list.

"God of mercy, choose someone other than the Jews," wrote the Yiddish poet Kadia Molodowsky, in the 1940s. "We are weary of dying, of suffering and tears, We have no more blood, and we have no more prayers."

Molodowsky was responding, of course, to the Shoah which, along with WWII and its fearsome aftermath, serve as this Century's marker in some future time, just as the Black Plague is our marker for the 14th century today.

Indeed, the Plague and the Holocaust might be analogous in terms of sheer percentages of population lost, but for the fact that the Shoah as a historical marker was hewn by human hands, cold human calculation, human brutality and human indifference. Both the G-d of Mercy and the humanistic faith in progress seemed to die in the camps, and we have yet to understand their loss or be certain of their renaissance.

One third of our people, world wide, two thirds of our vibrant European heartland were to turned to smoke and ashes in less that five years. With them died centuries of priceless Jewish scholarship, artistry, language, literature and community - treasures that cannot be recovered through any form of reparation.

The Jewish future was itself massively eviscerated. For among the one and half million Jewish children who perished were mothers and fathers, the rabbis and scholars and theologians, the artists and rebels, the business innovators and political leaders, who would have built Jewish life and lent their talents to the larger world.

The only contribution permitted to these children in the end was the stirring of the world's conscience , also belated.

I refer, of course, to the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel. After two millennia of exile, of repeated expulsions and slaughter, the Jews were permitted to reestablish themselves in their homeland. Alas, it was reentry strewn not with flowers but with bullet casings and blood. Israel was proffered not as a lifeboat, but as a floating piece of wreckage that our poor starved people had to seize and cling to with all their withered strength. Thus we returned to Israel not as G-d had promised to Abraham as "the stars of heaven and the sands on the sea shore", but as detritus, as debris, on the banks of history. Yet out of that wreckage we built a country that now serves as a spiritual, cultural, and religious core of our peoplehood.

This too is an unprecedented event in human history : that as state which had passed out of existence should recreate itself two thousand years later! Who of all the powerful empires that conquered ancient Israel would have ever dreamed their own extinction would be accentuated by the rebirth of the Jewish homeland? Rome fell and remains fallen. Babylon fell and remains fallen. Assyria fell and remains fallen. But, the Jewish people lives and the Jewish State was reborn.

Nevertheless, we believe that Israel's greatest impact will be accounted for in the next century when the peace is at last achieved, and its fruit is harvested. Then the creativity and vibrancy of Israel, relieved from the constant tension, will prove to a balm for the world. Then this young and miraculous land will become known not chiefly for its military prowess and survival skills, but for its incredible intelligence, competence, and compassionate heart. Thus may it be G-d's will.

The third most auspicious Jewish development of the 20th century was the revival of the Jewish identity of Eastern European Jewry. Here were thousand year old Jewish communities alive with both tradition and innovation which were shattered by the twin tragedies of Nazism and Communism. To begin with Hitler's onslaught and systematic extermination, then to Stalin's tortures and betrayals and inquisitions and then a Communist system that systematically extirpated Judaism and even the presumably politically acceptable secular Jewish culture.

But three monstrous dictators and the totalitarian terror they spawned were not enough to snuff out the pintele yid; that spark of Jewishness which continued to flicker in the heart of millions though their bones were crushed. The ashes were spread everywhere, but the embers were not extinguished.

So when a breath of life was breathed into those broken bones, when a woman from Kiev named Golda Meir returned to the place of her birth as the minister of the newly reborn Jewish State. And when that little state won a big war in six short days, those embers flare into one of the great Jewish stirrings of history.

Once the iron grip of the Russian tyrants finally loosened and our people were allowed to leave, which was only a decade ago. Leibel Fein reminded us that in all of Jewish history there have been no more than ten or so dates that will be remembered so long as there are Jews to remember them. "Most generations of Jews have lived and died without ever witnessing the decisive turns of Jewish history ," he wrote, "except through the clouds of memory ...yet within the lifetime of our own generation, those clouds have parted not once but thrice we have seen turning with out own eyes."

First was the Kingdom of Night, then was the Rebirth of the Republic of Hope. And then there was the great reunion, the great homecoming of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Soviet Union.

To his triad of events that will be remembered so long as there are Jews to remember them, I want to add a fourth and that is our own community. The American Jewish community has, during the latter part of this century, attained a might and influence undreamed of in any previous Jewish era.

In two score and ten, a poor and persecuted people rose to be the single wealthiest American subgroup. A people who were helpless to organize even their closet allies to open America's doors to our European brethren in the nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties can in Washington open any and all governmental doors to gain a fair hearing. A people who only forty years ago, were changing their names and noses to disguise themselves can today have streets and theatres named after them. A people who were barred from swank hotels and clubs can today sit as members of the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and even on the board of Fortune 500 Corporations.

I recall my attendance in recent years at one of the annual Holocaust commemoration events held under the dome in our Nation's capitol in Washington. The speaker at that particular occasion was Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who identified himself to the assemblage "as an American and as a Jew." In attendance were all the other Justices including Ruth Bader Ginsberg, of course, and scores of Senators and Representatives and members of the Cabinet. As American soldiers paraded past us, bearing the flags of the regiments that had liberated extermination camps, I could not help but remember how powerless we Jews were but fifty years ago and to feel awe-struck by how we have moved as a community from the fringes to the very center of the world's power.

Best of all we have done so without abandoning our Judaism, our Jewish values, a commitment to community. Louis Brandeis famously proclaimed that the "20th century ideals of America have been the ideals of Jews for 20 centuries."

Our journey to the center of the circle of America has been a journey towards the ideal America; a land where the Jewish ideals of social responsibility and the dignity of each and every human being resonate at the same pitch as the Liberty Bell. In making that journey we have ennobled this land and is has ennobled us. Jewish citizenship has helped to create an America not only of entitlement and privilege, but also of blessing and responsibility. In turn, America, the goldene medinah, the Land of Gold, has provided a safe haven for a new Golden Age of Judaism.

What will the dawning century bring, for us, for all humankind? No one can tell. The future is an opaque mirror, neither transparent, not translucent, but impenetrable. But as Jews, having survived so long and so much, it is not ominous, but a promise.

Our hope reaches forward to distant days, to a future as bright as any the human mind ever conceived.

And so we remember always, and always we hope, even at times and in places that defy all hope.

For when the philosopher postulates, "I think therefore I am," the Jew within us emphatically replies :

ACHIM Magazine is published by the North American Federation of Temple Brotherhoods,
633 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017. Opinions of authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of MRJ or JCS.



	Article Highlight: THE JEWISH CENTURY (TEXT ONLY) By Alexander M. Schindler Impelled by the fact that we stand at the turning point of the century, indeed the millennium, an occasion which bids us look Janus like backward and forward, to the past and to the future, I determined to give you a Jewish retrospective of the 20th century. It was a century which was one of the most turbulent, tumultuous, for all humanity. A century of sharp and shocking contrasts. The extraordinary advances of science and industry which it brought raised great hopes for humankind. But is was also the most violent century in human history, a century of mayhem and massacres, of wars which claimed 187 million victims, most of them civilians. It was a century which shattered many illusions and ideals. For the Jewish people the sharp contrasts of good and evil, of hope and despair, that marked this extraordinary century, were nothing short of savage and salvational. Proudly we stood at the heart of its most uplifting achievements: the astounding scientific advances and the social and political and economic betterment. Out list of Jewish Nobel Laureates, artists, social activists and pioneering industrialists and financiers, testify to the contribution we made to the 20th century. But likewise we Jews stand at the heart of the century's most degrading crimes and outrages: In Auschwitz and the gulags and the ghettos and other carnage places to numerous to list. "God of mercy, choose someone other than the Jews," wrote the Yiddish poet Kadia Molodowsky, in the 1940s. "We are weary of dying, of suffering and tears, We have no more blood, and we have no more prayers." Molodowsky was responding, of course, to the Shoah which, along with WWII and its fearsome aftermath, serve as this Century's marker in some future time, just as the Black Plague is our marker for the 14th century today. Indeed, the Plague and the Holocaust might be analogous in terms of sheer percentages of population lost, but for the fact that the Shoah as a historical marker was hewn by human hands, cold human calculation, human brutality and human indifference. Both the G-d of Mercy and the humanistic faith in progress seemed to die in the camps, and we have yet to understand their loss or be certain of their renaissance. One third of our people, world wide, two thirds of our vibrant European heartland were to turned to smoke and ashes in less that five years. With them died centuries of priceless Jewish scholarship, artistry, language, literature and community - treasures that cannot be recovered through any form of reparation. The Jewish future was itself massively eviscerated. For among the one and half million Jewish children who perished were mothers and fathers, the rabbis and scholars and theologians, the artists and rebels, the business innovators and political leaders, who would have built Jewish life and lent their talents to the larger world. The only contribution permitted to these children in the end was the stirring of the world's conscience , also belated. I refer, of course, to the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel. After two millennia of exile, of repeated expulsions and slaughter, the Jews were permitted to reestablish themselves in their homeland. Alas, it was reentry strewn not with flowers but with bullet casings and blood. Israel was proffered not as a lifeboat, but as a floating piece of wreckage that our poor starved people had to seize and cling to with all their withered strength. Thus we returned to Israel not as G-d had promised to Abraham as "the stars of heaven and the sands on the sea shore", but as detritus, as debris, on the banks of history. Yet out of that wreckage we built a country that now serves as a spiritual, cultural, and religious core of our peoplehood. This too is an unprecedented event in human history : that as state which had passed out of existence should recreate itself two thousand years later! Who of all the powerful empires that conquered ancient Israel would have ever dreamed their own extinction would be accentuated by the rebirth of the Jewish homeland? Rome fell and remains fallen. Babylon fell and remains fallen. Assyria fell and remains fallen. But, the Jewish people lives and the Jewish State was reborn. Nevertheless, we believe that Israel's greatest impact will be accounted for in the next century when the peace is at last achieved, and its fruit is harvested. Then the creativity and vibrancy of Israel, relieved from the constant tension, will prove to a balm for the world. Then this young and miraculous land will become known not chiefly for its military prowess and survival skills, but for its incredible intelligence, competence, and compassionate heart. Thus may it be G-d's will. The third most auspicious Jewish development of the 20th century was the revival of the Jewish identity of Eastern European Jewry. Here were thousand year old Jewish communities alive with both tradition and innovation which were shattered by the twin tragedies of Nazism and Communism. To begin with Hitler's onslaught and systematic extermination, then to Stalin's tortures and betrayals and inquisitions and then a Communist system that systematically extirpated Judaism and even the presumably politically acceptable secular Jewish culture. But three monstrous dictators and the totalitarian terror they spawned were not enough to snuff out the pintele yid; that spark of Jewishness which continued to flicker in the heart of millions though their bones were crushed. The ashes were spread everywhere, but the embers were not extinguished. So when a breath of life was breathed into those broken bones, when a woman from Kiev named Golda Meir returned to the place of her birth as the minister of the newly reborn Jewish State. And when that little state won a big war in six short days, those embers flare into one of the great Jewish stirrings of history. Once the iron grip of the Russian tyrants finally loosened and our people were allowed to leave, which was only a decade ago. Leibel Fein reminded us that in all of Jewish history there have been no more than ten or so dates that will be remembered so long as there are Jews to remember them. "Most generations of Jews have lived and died without ever witnessing the decisive turns of Jewish history ," he wrote, "except through the clouds of memory ...yet within the lifetime of our own generation, those clouds have parted not once but thrice we have seen turning with out own eyes." First was the Kingdom of Night, then was the Rebirth of the Republic of Hope. And then there was the great reunion, the great homecoming of hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Jews from the Soviet Union. To his triad of events that will be remembered so long as there are Jews to remember them, I want to add a fourth and that is our own community. The American Jewish community has, during the latter part of this century, attained a might and influence undreamed of in any previous Jewish era. In two score and ten, a poor and persecuted people rose to be the single wealthiest American subgroup. A people who were helpless to organize even their closet allies to open America's doors to our European brethren in the nineteen thirties and early nineteen forties can in Washington open any and all governmental doors to gain a fair hearing. A people who only forty years ago, were changing their names and noses to disguise themselves can today have streets and theatres named after them. A people who were barred from swank hotels and clubs can today sit as members of the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, and even on the board of Fortune 500 Corporations. I recall my attendance in recent years at one of the annual Holocaust commemoration events held under the dome in our Nation's capitol in Washington. The speaker at that particular occasion was Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who identified himself to the assemblage "as an American and as a Jew." In attendance were all the other Justices including Ruth Bader Ginsberg, of course, and scores of Senators and Representatives and members of the Cabinet. As American soldiers paraded past us, bearing the flags of the regiments that had liberated extermination camps, I could not help but remember how powerless we Jews were but fifty years ago and to feel awe-struck by how we have moved as a community from the fringes to the very center of the world's power. Best of all we have done so without abandoning our Judaism, our Jewish values, a commitment to community. Louis Brandeis famously proclaimed that the "20th century ideals of America have been the ideals of Jews for 20 centuries." Our journey to the center of the circle of America has been a journey towards the ideal America; a land where the Jewish ideals of social responsibility and the dignity of each and every human being resonate at the same pitch as the Liberty Bell. In making that journey we have ennobled this land and is has ennobled us. Jewish citizenship has helped to create an America not only of entitlement and privilege, but also of blessing and responsibility. In turn, America, the goldene medinah, the Land of Gold, has provided a safe haven for a new Golden Age of Judaism. What will the dawning century bring, for us, for all humankind? No one can tell. The future is an opaque mirror, neither transparent, not translucent, but impenetrable. But as Jews, having survived so long and so much, it is not ominous, but a promise. That is our vocation, is it not, to hope We remember and we hope. Our memory goes back to the glory of our beginnings. Our hope reaches forward to distant days, to a future as bright as any the human mind ever conceived. And so we remember always, and always we hope, even at times and in places that defy all hope. Words like hopelessness and doom are not in our vocabulary! And what if reason dictates otherwise? Then reason must be transcended. For when the philosopher postulates, "I think therefore I am," the Jew within us emphatically replies : "We believe, therefore, we live!" Please Contact MRJ with any questions or comments. ACHIM Magazine is published by the North American Federation of Temple Brotherhoods, 633 Third Avenue, New York, NY, 10017. Opinions of authors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of MRJ or JCS.

	Copyright © 2004, North American Federation of Temple Brotherhoods