Beginnings
I've frequently remarked here on the temporal dislocation that inheres in doing a monthly magazine. When by you it's April, by us it's June. Which means that when by you-and by just about everybody...
...whose article in this issue is the longest single article we've ever published...
...But this month is different...
...the article-well, the fact that we've devoted to it the space we have speaks for itself...
...Our veteran readers already know Klein Halevi's work...
...he's been a contributing editor for quite some time now...
...Here's a journalist, a reporter, who sketches for us the familiar details of a place-and suddenly turns that place on its side, so we see it from a new angle, see not only its shapes and its colors, but also its yearnings and terrors, its sorrows and ironies...
...We've never started an article on our cover before...
...For the next month, we will wrap ourselves in moment-i.e., Pesach-time...
...So curl up, read, learn, enjoy...
...Yes, the very same Y.K.H...
...Think of it: just a week and a day (humankind's natural limit) of matzah, but five or six weeks of contemplating the Exodus and celebrating freedom...
...These are busy times in Jewish life...
...I fervently hope something may come of it-it's up to you-and that by next Pesach, as the article suggests, we may share the satisfaction of knowing that we have made of the words "Let all who are hungry enter and eat" a new and redemptive reality...
...In one of those nice coincidences that brightens an editor's day-and, he hopes, a reader's-Klein Halevi's article on Hebron, one of the original cities of sanctuary, happens in the same issue as Joseph Weizenbaum's article on sanctuary in our own time-and in an issue in which, by inference, we are reminded of our own recent and futile need for places to which to flee, for cities of sanctuary...
...Such groups are, the scholars say, a clear violation of Jewish law...
...The film is a gem...
...may this one be rich and nourishing to all...
...People are taking control back from "circumstances...
...Neat...
...Most of the time, what I call temporal dislocation does what you'd expect it to: it temporally dislocates...
...The response of those with whom we've shared the idea for the project it describes has been wonderfully enthusiastic...
...Our new readers-whose numbers have grown considerably of late (but better of late than of never)-need only know that Klein Halevi moved to Israel a couple of years back, and lives there in a mystical state of suspended ambiguity, his pen evoking the drama of a reality that would otherwise elude most of us...
...outside those gates, the avenging family was permitted to kill him...
...Which means that when by you-and by just about everybody else-it's the end of February, it's already early April here...
...And, speaking of books, there's a movie you'll want to see if it comes your way...
...Kaddish is the story of Yossi Klein-now Yossi Klein Halevi-and his father...
...If contemplating the Exodus is what you're up for, do read Michael Walzer's wonderfully intelligent, wise and charming Exodus and Revolution...
...It is already exceedingly difficult to sustain serious debate across denominational boundaries, since the fundamental assumptions of the several groups are so profoundly diverse...
...Which is, indeed, what's happening just now, as I write to welcome you to this issue and to say some things about Passover and related timely topics...
...So long as he remained within its gates, he was safe...
...The welcome decision by the Rabbinical Assembly-the association of Conservative rabbis-to accept ordained women as members was greeted by Orthodox circles with contempt...
...We are rapidly approaching a situation in which a full-blown schism within the Jewish people becomes a very real possibility...
...Anything that extends the Pesach season is welcome, whenever...
...In Israel, a new government has helped provide a calmer tone to the ongoing political debate, and there is a new sense of promise on virtually every important front...
...Their courage in resisting the exclusivist claims of that tiny group of men who insist that Jewish authenticity is theirs alone will largely determine whether the essential unity of our people is to be preserved...
...The burden and pain of the matter must be felt with particular urgency by those elements within the Orthodox community that cannot accept the tyranny of either the law or its loudest interpreters...
...What could be better...
...And then we'll move, for the joyous week itself, into "normal" time...
...In the Bible, we are told of cities of sanctuary-places to which an accidental murderer could flee from the avenging family of his victim...
...And now we learn that a formal responsum by five talmudic scholars at Yeshiva University condemns, without qualification, women's prayer groups...
...At the same time, our religious debate-here and in Israel-becomes ever more absurd, damaging, distressing...
...It will enrich your season considerably...
...Even in August, surely in February...
...In the meantime, one Pesach at a time...
...The movement from peril to safety, from slavery to freedom, continues...
Vol. 10 • April 1985 • No. 4
