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May 26, 1956

Far Away (1956)

Behaalotcha Combating Assimilation
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Speech

Banquet Address - U.O.J.C.A. Pacific Region (1965)

I am pleased to meet so many wonderful people. I’ve learned to like you so much that I will not speak too long – I no longer give long speeches because of my throat; once, listeners threatened to cut it short for me. The essence of my message is this: we must accept a sense of responsibility – אחריות. The origin of the word is a puzzle to philologists. The Geonic scholar R. Nathan of Rome (author of the Arukh) explained it as follows. In halakhah, there is a distinction between real estate and chattel: real estate is considered property which has אחריות, whereas chattel does not. This means that debts incurred before the sale of real estate can still be collected from that property, even if it has been sold or gifted, whereas the same is not true for movable property. אחריות, then, is rooted in permanence – because real estate endures, it can serve as a source of responsibility; chattel, being temporary, cannot. The relationship between אחריות and אחרית (future or outcome) works both ways – we are able to exercise responsibility when we believe in the endurance of our commitments, and we create endurance when we exercise responsibility. The question, then, is how are we to fulfill our אחריות to the great heritage of Judaism entrusted to us? First, we must have faith in the אחרית of Orthodox Judaism. The past always seems better than it was – there is a tendency to over-romanticize. We have always been a minority: Moses and the Levites, the prophets surrounded by idolatrous contemporaries, the Pharisees as one of twenty-four sects, the Geonim – queried whether tefillin must be worn by non-rabbis – R. Tam, who delayed affixing a mezuzah for ten years, Maimonides’ letters to the Sages of Lunel, the Netziv's pessimism about his generation. American Orthodoxy thirty years ago was deceptive – much of it was inherited habit, sentiment, and nostalgia from Eastern Europe. Had those Jews lived today, most might not have remained Orthodox. By contrast, the present American-bo…
Combating Assimilation

Article

Conference on Jewish Identity Here and Now (1967)

I am beginning to see, as a result of my experience with individuals in the community and on college campuses, that the young people Rabbi Israel has talked about do not have time to worry about the problem of their Jewishness, that is, Jewishness is not their problem. Here I agree, that the problem of the survival of Judaism – the crisis – lies with the Establishment. What does the Establishment have to offer these young people who have come home, trained and culturally conditioned by Yale? How can we get them to identify with the Jewish community? The problem will be easier to grapple with if we realize, first of all, that we are dealing with three different types of individuals, not just one. First, there are the young people who come into the community wishing to identify themselves with the community. They quickly affiliate and participate. Second, there is the larger group which I would call the neutral group, that is those who are neither here nor there. These people can be influenced. The third group, a smaller one, moves out of the community and does not wish to be spoken with.I think that it is important for the Establishment to take a good look at the needs of the first two groups. There is a new client in the Jewish community and this client no longer is the person who needs social-welfare assistance. For the client is actually the community itself. We must pay attention to this fact. When I talk about this “we,” I am talking about all of us who are involved in institutions within the community. We must begin to look at the service or the substance of what we have to offer. I think that there are areas that can be developed through the modification of existing institutions or the creation of new ones that will be at- tractive to this young group returning home from college. We must keep in mind that the colleges of today have given them some kind of underpinning — a set of values to which they would like to respond. If we are to reach them we have to be…
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Speech

Public Address on The Sources of Responsibility (1968)

The fact of our attendance here this evening is nothing else. The very fact that we have come to listen to something about Yahadus, to take counsel together about any aspect relating to our Jewishness means that we want to remain Jews within the context of Western society, where for the very first time in the history of our people it is possible to opt out of the Jewish people without the stigma of conversion and betrayal. Never before was it possible for a Jew simply to vanish from his Jewishness without shmad – that free ticket of admission into higher Gentile society. When therefore we gather – and whenever we gather – to declare that we want to remain Jews and we are not choosing the option of disappearing and vanishing, we reveal a sense of responsibility for our Jewish heritage. It is that term and that concept that I should like to speak about this evening. Responsibility – what does it mean, what are its sources, and how is it discharged? First let me say something which may appear to be rather self-evident – and that is that responsibility means the ability to respond or to answer. The prerequisite for responsibility is the awareness that we are being questioned. Jewish responsibility is the response to a summons, to a challenge, to an interrogation. Jewish life lived responsibly is a reaction to a questioning G-d. We live under a question mark that comes at us – from Above. Ever since the first Divine question was directed at our first forefather and the Ribono Shel Olam said to Adam HaRishon, “Ayekah? Where are you? What are you going to do with your life?” – that question became enshrined in mankind’s conscience. And when man decides to answer that question, or at least to entertain it, at that point we have achieved responsibility. Chazal in the Midrash maintain that the word “Ayekah” – aleph, yud, chaf, heh – by rearranging its vowels, reads “Eichah.” And it tells us that when man fails to entertain the Divine question – “Ayekah? Where are you? What …
Combating Assimilation Europe