Forum

FORUM Airplane or Airhead? moment has indeed turned into an airplane—airhead!—magazine. We vati-kim [old-timers] are not Baptist readers of the Biblical Archaeology Review who love-love-love...

...To cite some obvious instances, what disposition has been made of the biblical prohibition against taking interest, or the rabbinid limitation on a seller's profit to one-'sixth above his purchase price...
...He informs us that these two books are "riding the wave of ethical revival" among Orthodox Jews...
...No mention is made of the Conservative and Reform efforts to offer secular Israelis an alternative or two...
...Did you even bother to check on the schools sponsored by ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid) to see what they taught...
...Joseph M Kornfeld, Ph.D...
...By accepting this ad, I think moment is exposing it for what it is...
...ANERA is making a clear—though unwitting—statement as follows: "We Arabs count among our supporters such oil-wealthy nations as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait...
...See 1 Kings 15-16 and 2 Chronicles 14-16.—Ed...
...I find it rather bland now...
...My private "turning" involved the recognition of a paradox: that infertility itself may be a blessing...
...Similarly, Matt Young's letter ("Steinsaltz's Answers to Unasked Questions," Forum, December 1988) concerning Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz betrays the same lack of pluralism...
...Other times, there are flights of fancy much as some commentators allowed themselves...
...To us, they have too much anti-Israel propaganda value as suffering victims to consider the possibility of actually contributing our money and resources to ease their suffering...
...I attended Hebrew and Sunday school at Tifereth Israel (San Diego, California) where hatred of Arabs was definitely taught...
...The bulk of sources that he cites, however, are medieval, the latest being Samson Raphael Hirsch in Germany, and Israel Salanter in Lithuania in the 19th century and Abraham Isaac Kook of Israel in the first half of the 20th, "and certain Chasidic rebbes" (italics mine...
...I was fortunate to be in Israel, on a mission with 100 other Clevelanders, when the pomegranate was first shown to the press and media...
...I Suspect...
...Knowledge of the right is the first and easiest step...
...Please be real...
...Ironically, it was Jung, one of only two goyim in Freud's early circle, who saw the necessity of religious ritual for psychic well-being and for the fulfillment of human potential...
...This is unfortunate because Jungian thought is potentially Judaism's greatest handmaiden in the 21st century...
...Marty was kind enough to loan his copy of the 1950 Weequahic High School yearbook to Farrar, Straus & Giroux for use in designing the jacket for The Facts...
...The t'shuva movement questions these beliefs, and therefore threatens Professor Peli's concepts of what the Jewish religion is...
...He writes, "Neither Conservative nor Reform, I believe, have attempted a systematic exploration of rabbinic business ethics as applied to modern economic life...
...My childlessness has helped me recognize that God does not work by "If...
...Useful as these books may prove, neither volume offers any "adaptation" of traditional Jewish law to our contemporary scene...
...Young should heed the words of Reform rabbi Jack Stern who has written, ' 'The refusal by the Orthodox to accept as Jews either our converts or our patrilineal offspring bears the same logic, according to their principles of religious truth, as the ordination of women and patrilineality bears logic in ours...
...I see the gift of increase as only one of the myriad blessings that the Lord provides, granted in addition to the other blessings, numberless as the stars in heaven, the sands on the seashore ("I will indeed bless you...
...Rabbi Mordecai L Brill Lauderhill, Florida "Highly Unlikely...
...Pelcovits wishes to draw "denominational" distinctions, he should have noted that, of the spate of Jewish religious institutions (yeshivot and other schools) in Brooklyn and elsewhere found to have engaged in tax-evasion schemes and other dishonest practices, none is Conservative or Reform...
...In this age, when only being numero uno counts, and widespread greed, aggression, corruption and fraud are rampant, the old saying has never been truer, ' 'Jews are like other people, only more so...
...If Mr...
...That is, the client and I seize on a passage...
...moment should have sent back the S200 check to Rohr and refused to be party to such an immoral double standard...
...p. 57...
...But then I had a sudden realization: By accepting such an ad, you are helping to let the cat out of the bag...
...Rabbi William Blank Sacramento, California Psychoanalysis As Creating Midrash Peter Gay ("Did Freud Create a Jewish Science...
...a Jewish woman's dealing with infertility), but too often your articles of substance are only about two pages and are dealt with too superficially (while your "fluffy" articles are over five pages long...
...I have read your articles of substance with much interest—your articles on events in Israel and its moral struggles with the intifada, articles on American Jewish life and problems (i.e.: Jewish singles...
...brought to the old moment...
...It is a rich, playful, powerful process, this new kind of mid-rash called therapy...
...Jews from Lithuania pronounce the name "Yosef as "Yaisef...
...Eugene Tozman, D.D S Downview, Ontario Canada Asa, Solomon's great-grandson, was king of Judahfrom 911 to 869 B.C.E...
...Lawrence M Reisman New York, New York Conservative and Reform In Israel The December 1988 issue of moment is superb...
...I regret, however, that I can no longer say this about the magazine...
...Everyone from Mayor Teddy Kollek to the museum archaeologists was very helpful to the media...
...For example, we were told that all Arabs wanted to see Israel swept into the sea...
...We vati-kim [old-timers] are not Baptist readers of the Biblical Archaeology Review who love-love-love Israel because the "2nd Coming" is due any minute...
...then" clauses...
...Gay misses the point of Moses and Monotheism's vilification, however...
...I suggest you have a talented writer, not closely associated with the movements, study and write about Conservative and Reform in Israel...
...Manchester, Connecticut He Doesn't Know King Solomon's Great-Grandson The Al Jolson story in the November 1988 issue ("M-M-M-Mammy's Boy") raised a question for me...
...Freud eventually broke with Jung because Jung perceived a teleology, a perfect design in the universe...
...Under editor Leonard Fein moment had a unique vision—it now is like any other magazine...
...My shift in seeing, my different orientation toward our texts and our traditions, did not come easily to me...
...The Cleveland Jewish News (Friday, September 9, 1988), was one of the few newspapers that did have a feature story on this relic, besides the JTA release...
...Strangely enough, the magazine also used to look great visually...
...Robert Gordis Editor, Judaism New York, New York Jung, Not Freud, Should Be Our Hero Peter Gay's denial of psychoanalysis's Jewishness is a welcome relief...
...Moses and Monotheism argues that the God whom Moses invented gave the Israelites purpose and majesty but He also demanded strict obedience...
...For this reason, Peli's article is incomplete and inadequate...
...The press kits they furnished us with were complete with pictures, slides and details of the discov-continued on page 57 ery of the pomegranate...
...Over 100 members of the Rabbinical Assembly now live in Israel, etc...
...But isn't that what Judaism (Tisrael: "he hath struggled") is about...
...In The Future of an Illusion, Freud reduced all religion to a useful tool in early stages of humankind's cultural evolution which was superseded by the dawning age of science...
...At the very least, however, we have a right to expect ethical behavior on the part of our religious institutions themselves...
...We stick to the text sometimes...
...First, he chastises the sponsors of the advertisement in the Miami Herald [an advertisement that questioned where the Hebrew documents came from] for not including citations to scholarly literature...
...A somewhat similar enterprise, though with loftier motives, is undertaken by Nathan A. Pelcovits in his article, "Insider Trading Is Treif moment, November 1988), a review essay of Meir Tamari's With All Your Possessions and Leo Jung and Aaron Levine's Business Ethics in Jewish Law...
...What about exaggeration and falsehood in advertising both in business and in politics...
...Consequently, I now believe it was made up . . . ." I look forward to additional scholarship...
...in the November 1988 issue...
...I wish I had my copy of that yearbook but years ago I loaned it to an uprooted Czech emigre to whom I was giving a crash course in Americana and he lost it...
...Rohr is of course wrong to assert that no Jewish school teaches hatred of Arabs...
...It had always been such a treat to get...
...December 1988) leaves out one Jewish aspect of Freud, although this aspect is clearly not limited to Freudian psychoanalysis...
...Covering the Pomegranate Hershel Shanks's article "Pomegranate" ("Pomegranate: Sole Relic from Solomon's Temple, Smuggled Out of Israel, Now Recovered," December 1988) was exciting and fascinating to • read—except for the last paragraph...
...As a therapist, I have often thought of what I do as one more way of creating midrash...
...It is ironic that a college professor, committed to inquiry and questioning, reacts negatively to those who question his beliefs...
...Miller begins his refutation in what I must assume is a scholarly method...
...The Jewish Theological Seminary now ordains native Israelis as rabbis...
...is likely that the community's books were not kept by the university...
...To recognize Reform rabbis as expressing a valid form of Judaism or to accept non-halachic conversions is to deny the basis of Steinsaltz's Judaism...
...Marty, alas, and not I, is the "swell and handsome guy" who is having best wishes bestowed on him by his high school friend Elly, whose picture appears next to mine...
...they all belong to another denomination...
...I have learned to weave the prayerbook with my private midrashim, to read our sacred texts in a more metaphoric way, interpreting God's promise ("and I will multiply your descendants") as a partial blessing...
...You say this was originally Jolson's first name...
...Sid Abrams Editorial Department The Cleveland Jewish News Cleveland, Ohio Exposing AN ERA Several issues ago the moment Forum published some vehement letters, pro and con, regarding an ad by ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid...
...With a tractate of talmudic reasoning, others have suspended a psychoanalytic mountain by a gossamer thread of archetypal Jewishness...
...suspect that they were either ransomed...
...We mine the gold and, like good talmudic commentators, we always find it golden...
...Jeff Levinsky Palo Alto, California The Deeper Vision Of Childlessness Your December 1988 issue contained two articles about infertility and Judaism ("Hannah Cried . . . But I Got Hormone Shots," p. 32, and "Give Me Children or I Shall Die...
...Meanwhile, you actively endorsed Rohr's claim that any Jewish school is more deserving, presumably just because it is Jewish...
...Look at his scholarly language: ''// is highly unlikely that a Jewish community of this size . . . ." "// is doubtful that it would have had such a range of provenances...
...Directly below my picture, in my own high school hand, is my tribute to Marty, who is now a New York psychoanalyst...
...Sharon Flitterman-King, Ph D. Hillsdale, New York...
...No one likes to have his/her sacred saga burlesqued, even by the rich and famous...
...It is also unfortunate that he uses this occasion for a partisan attack on Conservative and Reform Judaism...
...Later, their guilt drove them to canonize Moses and make God even stronger and stricter...
...Rose Ann Chasman Chicago, Illinois Longing for the Old MOMENT For many years, as soon as moment came in the mail, it was usually read completely in a day or two...
...Remember, you have a special responsibility to remain one place where Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, etc., Jews communicate seriously...
...Jung was the son of a Swiss clergyman, and he made a few disparaging remarks about Jews early in his career which he later clarified to the point of recantation...
...Or did you just decide that an Arab school simply cannot be "absolutely" above board...
...He has been inaccurately branded a Nazi because his attempt to help Jews continue to practice psychiatry after they lost their German licenses in the 1930s has been misconstrued as collaboration...
...Many of Jung's early students were also Jews...
...The excitement at the Israel Museum on that night could only be compared to the Super Bowl, Rose Bowl and World Series—all packed into one evening...
...A snip of a dream, a throwa-way phrase, becomes a key to an insight in much the same way that midrash illuminates a seemingly prosaic passage of the Bible...
...It is not being "ignorant of Jewish traditional business ethics," but the willful ignoring of clear elementary principles of right and wrong, of truth and falsehood, that is the root of the moral decay in all sections of our society, business, government, academia, the arts and the sciences...
...It is impressive...
...As a Conservative rabbi, I am familiar with the various programs of the Conservative movement...
...Doubtful...
...We want intellectual stimulation, controversy, examination of painful issues— and that deep sense of torah and spiritual being that Leonard Fein, Harold Schulweis, Richard Israel, etc...
...Rabbi Steinsaltz views the divine origin of the Torah and the primacy of the halacha as the concepts that define Judaism and without which Judaism does not exist...
...Burt Sukhov San Jose, California Congratulations to S. Rohr (Forum, November 1988) for showing how racist moment really is...
...I have learned to value and cherish the blessings that I have, to be more fully present, more attentive as a wife and daughter, sister, friend and teacher...
...MaryC Schwartz, LC S W Chevy Chase, Maryland Who Recognizes Jewish Pluralism...
...I have never encountered "Asa" anywhere else as a Hebrew or Yiddish first name...
...of child-longing to trust God in His wisdom, to truly cherish blessings, to value the manifold wonders of my everydays...
...That is to say, the core of their rift was over the significance of religious experience...
...That is an expression of^genuine pluralism...
...Putting them together, he wrote a piece describing a major crime wave in the city, and it became the sensation of the day...
...It cuts to the quick of who we are...
...None of these articles was particularly significant—and with so many major moving events going on in the world today impacting Jews so strongly...
...If you are good, then I will bless you...
...By appealing for outside aid, we are not only announcing but underscoring and stressing the fact that, with all our wealth, we would rather let these people wallow and rot in their misery than lift a finger to help them financially...
...Actually, the Tamari volume recapitulates the provisions of ancient and medieval halacha, while the Jung-Levine volume is more hortatory in character...
...Young's letter implies that Rabbi Steinsaltz has no right to believe as he does without being accused of sowing disunity among the Jewish people...
...As a 42-year-old woman—Jewish and childless—I have lived the struggle that they speak of...
...As a graphic artist myself, I enjoyed moment's graphics and overall layout...
...It has challenged me to a deeper faith, one which looks beyond the desperate, ever-present "Why me...
...Professor Pinchas Peli ("A Religious Renaissance—Can It Happen in Israel...
...Jung studied the kabbalah and felt that it was a most underrated element in the historic unfolding of Western thought...
...Does pluralism mean the right to disagree only where the issue is not important...
...If anything, however, my nine-year struggle to create a family has given me a keener, deeper vision of what Judaism is...
...Teaching this to young children, who may lack the maturity to handle the fear such an image creates, and without giving them an opportunity to hear opposing views, is racism in my book...
...I have noted that three of the last few issues have had as their cover stories articles devoted to rather "fluffy" content, such as Houdini, Al Jolson and Freud...
...Pelcovits has rendered these two volumes a disservice by making unjustified claims on their behalf...
...I hope the quality improves...
...I am struck by his intense scholarship...
...I have missed the depth and vision of the old moment...
...However, I must express my frustration at reading Pinchas Peli's article, "A Religious Renaissance—Can It Happen in Israel...
...Joan Lite Miller Seattle, Washington Elly Didn't Say Philip Roth Was Swell For any of your readers who may be collectors of trivial information, I'd like to explain that the picture of an "entry from Philip Roth's high school yearbook" that you published along with my autobiographical piece about Buck-nell University ("Philip Roth Enters the Gentile World," December 1988), was, in fact, from the high school yearbook of my great boyhood friend, Marty Weich...
...At first I thought I would oppose your acceptance of such an ad...
...We go at it with an enthusiasm that is reminiscent of the way the rabbis explored biblical passages...
...Far more difficult is the process of striving for the right...
...The Israelites' rebelliousness was so strong that it led them to kill Moses, thus reenact-ing the Oedipal drama on a national-mythologic level...
...I Now Believe___" I am barely halfway through Philip Miller's article, "Theirs or Ours...
...Even more important is his attempt to push under the rug the essence of the moral crisis in our day...
...December 1988) has certain beliefs that to him are sacred: Zionism, acceptance of the modern secular world, and unquestioning acceptance of secular learning...
...On that basis, I wrote an article in The Cleveland Jewish News...
...Although Freud was an ethnically self-identified Jew, Freud's thought is anti-religious...
...It can be a dream, a sentence, an image, a word...
...I sorely miss the excitement I used to feel as I read moment...
...Unfortunately, no group has a monopoly on thieves and cheats...
...While Freud has become arguably the most important intellectual figure of this century, Jung is mostly relegated to a footnote or two...
...He hit upon the idea of looking at the police blotter in one of the precincts listing various reports of crimes that had been committed in the area...
...Is it possible that Al Jolson, alav hashalom, was really Yosef Yoelson, and that "Asa" was a diminutive or nickname...
...Then Mr...
...Philip Roth Cornwall Bridge, Connecticut Jewish Ethics—Orthodox, Conservative and Reform In his classic Autobiography, Lincoln Steffens has a chapter entitled, "I Make a Crime Wave...
...Describing his life as a reporter in New York City in the early decades of the 20th century, Steffens tells that one day there was a dearth of news...

Vol. 14 • March 1989 • No. 2


 
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