In recent years a number of American Jewish writers have returned to an ancient Jewish vocation: prophesying. Having seemingly exhausted all studies of the past and the present, they have turned to the future and the prediction of what it holds for the American Jewish community. With a certain glee, these prognosticators – including sociologists, historians, professors, and novelists (all non-traditional) – have prophesied the demise of Orthodox Judaism. Orthodoxy, they tell us, does not stand a chance. Its following will dwindle down to a few insignificant die-hards who will themselves sooner or later be assimilated by some form of “modernistic” Judaism. Torah and Tradition, they report, have no place in the future. One ought not be dismayed by such reports from non-Orthodox circles. Without a commitment to Torah one cannot, after all, truly know its inner vitality and its uncanny capacity for attracting the hearts of Jews and surviving in all environments. What is disturbing is the underlying pessimism one sometimes detects in some – by no means all – observant and loyal Jews. Are we indeed a vanishing race? Is Israel doomed to remain an alman, deprived of the company of Torah? The question is one of great importance. First, it affects a principal tenet of our faith: the eternal loyalty of Israel to God. Second, there is the question of morale. No one wants to be identified with a lost cause. Third, the answer to that question will determine the policy of Orthodox Jews vis-à-vis the general Jewish community. Our answer to the question is a resounding “No.” Orthodox Judaism is here to stay, and it can and will survive even in the free and democratic atmosphere of modern America. We say not only Ha-shem melekh (the Lord reigns) and Ha-shem malakh (the Lord reigned) but Ha-shem yimlokh (the Lord will reign). It is our sacred duty to believe, and act upon the basis of the belief, that the Torah which survived the persecutions of Hadrian, the interdictions of Antioch…

The prophet Isaiah proclaims, ki mei noah zot li, “for this is as the waters of Noah to me.” Just as I have sworn, says God, not to bring another flood to the world, so will I not punish my people again. But, the Zohar (Lev., 14b) remarks, is this not a strange expression? Should the waters of the flood not be referred to as such, mei mabbul, rather than as mei Noah, the waters of Noah? The answer of the Zohar provides us with a marvelous moral insight. It tells us that when the Almighty wishes to bring destruction upon a world deserving of such cataclysm, He first informs the pious of that generation, hoping that they will intercede for their fellow men before God, and that they will try to arouse their contemporaries to righteousness so that, having changed their ways, God may feel free to change His decree. Thus did Moses plead before God and preach to his fellow men, and thus did the prophets do after him. Noah however, did nothing of the sort. He was concerned only for himself. He did not care about his contemporaries. When God told him that a flood would destroy every existing thing, he built an ark for himself and his family, concerned only for Noah and no one else. Because of this spiritual self-centeredness, because of his religious indifference towards the well-being of his fellow men, he was damned with the eternal stigma of having this flood known as mei Noah, “the waters of Noah.” The devastation, the destruction, the calamity bear his name for eternity.Let us not, in our days, be guilty of the same kind of spiritual egotism in the false guise of not wanting to interfere in the lives of others. We are not interfering when we bring to our fellow-Jews, who have abandoned Jewish marriage law, the message of Torah. We are discharging our responsibility to them and to their children, and to their children’s children, and to generations yet unborn, informing them and cautioning them about the Torah’s law of marriage and legitimacy.Let us discharge our histor…