A matter of survival

Letters

Editor: When I was first made aware of Ilan Saragosti's critique of my lecture in Kitsilano (Bulletin, Nov. 16), I was actually pleased. Someone from White Rock was sufficiently provoked to disagree passionately and articulately with my point of view. It was not only evidence of concern about Jewish identity, but was a great compliment - something for which all teachers yearn, namely a listener who pays attention and gets it nearly right!

I wanted to call Ilan privately and invite him to our home in Beersheva to continue the dialogue and perhaps share with us a Shabbat or holiday when we could not just "speak" about Judaism but rather experience together some of its "beauty and celebration," the kind he mentions was missing form my dreary data and pessimistic predictions. But I was informed that his article stimulated some "fall-out." Moreover, I was disturbed to read that some listeners were angry and felt insulted. His comments became more than a simple matter of intellectual disagreement, to which I am accustomed. Thus I feel obliged to clarify briefly what I said and request permission to do so through the medium of your publication.

First, if I have insulted anyone, I sincerely apologize and beg forgiveness. I assure you it was absolutely not my intention to hurt anyone's feelings by anything I said or how I said it. Second, I never have claimed, and certainly did not claim in Kitsilano, that I was a "better" Jew, "more" Jewish or any different, quantitatively or qualitatively, than any other Jew. I don't believe I am; I don't accept such comparisons from anyone else; I think such word games are both juvenile and odious and have no place in any conversation.

With regard to the actual lecture, Ilan was correct and I stand guilty as accused. The demographic data do demonstrate significant population losses in the Jewish world since the Holocaust and do generate fear. The gradual weakening of Jewish identity and commitment in the secular Jewish world continues to threaten survival. I suggested that these phenomena will rank with (or even outrank) the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel as the significant events of the past century and their long-term impact on the future.

But I did not blame "modernism" and "Western culture" for the tribulations of contemporary Jewish society. Instead, I proposed that the real villain was the deliberate, albeit gradual, secularization of Jewish life that started about 150 years ago in eastern Europe and continues to this day all over the world.

The ultimate result has been to effectively remove God from His intimate and universal presence in the daily existence of the Jewish people (and, at times, even from institutionalized religion). It has transformed the Torah into an inspired and poetic source of legends, morals, poetry and history - anything but the Divine instruction of God to man. This was my point. The question about how to put God and Torah back was left as an open question. I really hesitate to advocate panaceas like "Orthodoxy," whatever that means, or a return to the shtetl. But the statistical probability of your grandchildren and mine remaining proud and knowledgeable Jews depends on the solution you and I select. Res ipse loquitor.

About the invitation? It still stands - for Ilan and anyone else who shared that Kitsilano Shabbaton. Just call or write first to be sure we are at home: 972-8-641-8992 or [email protected].

Velvl Greene
Beersheva, Israel^TOP