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March 30, 1957

Talking Without Walking (1957)

Parshat Hachodesh
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Ours is an age characterized by an insatiable appetite for the new; we literally live by the news. We jump with glee at the latest headlines, the newest models, the most recent designs, and the most up-to-date fashions. We abhor the old and the tried, and we treat with studied contempt the set and the stable. We speak derisively of the “same old thing” – it is so uninteresting! – and we greet the word “brand new” with the eager delight of a five-year-old embracing a new toy. No wonder that our childish penchant for novelty is exploited by industry for profit, so that, no matter what the true facts are, the word of the manufacturer cometh forth from Detroit every year blaring, “new, new, new!” No wonder that our cities are becoming progressively uglier, and as those immense boxes with the shiny tinsel-like facades go up, they displace old historic landmarks, which are wrecked indiscriminately, thus destroying whatever charm and character our new cities have. Even in religion, we are given the kind of spiritual adolescence which condemns all that is old to obsolescence, so that Jewish modernist deviationism, for instance, has substituted vacuous new ceremonies and empty and artificial rituals for the landmarks of kashruth and Shabbat and family purity which have been thoughtlessly destroyed. We who are Orthodox Jews, however, take exception to this fawning worship of the new. We are committed to tradition, to a sense of reverence for the glories and the sancta of the past. We do not believe that the truth and values and holiness should be treated in a fickle manner as the style of hats. Yet it would be wrong to let the matter rest there. For, after all, does not our tradition too speak lovingly of the new? The Psalmist proclaims: שירו לה’ שיר חדש, “sing ye to the Lord a new song.” In the Haggadah, in several weeks we shall say: ונאמר לפניו שירה חדשה “and may we recite before Him a new song.” And every day we pray: אור חדש על ציון תאיר, “may You cause a new light to …
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