Beginnings
Summer's over, moment's back. Of course, summer isn't really over, since I am writing these words in July, and it is ninety-plus outside. For that matter, moment hasn't really been gone, not from...
...The Goldmann interview which appears in our pages this month took place before the Israeli elections...
...I think I feel this way in part for some of the same reasons cited by Jacob Neusner in his article later in these pages: the last years have been, for us, a time of consolidation, a time for insuring Jewish survival...
...A kind of "each one reach one" campaign, which is easy to overlook because it seems so trivial but which, in the aggregate, could be enormously important...
...Apart from the oft-repeated suggestion that gifts of moment are especially suitable for people you care for—the more so at this time of the year— I'd like to propose that each person who reads this column take the five minutes or so that may be needed to sign up a new subscriber for us...
...there's no organization that subsidizes us, no bank that finances us, too few advertisers who sustain us...
...The book is an occasion, and we are genuinely delighted to be able to offer a taste of it in our pages...
...One new subscriber, or two, from each of you...
...Israel's decision to legitimize three West Bank settlements, and also to consider the possibility of establishing new settlements in that region, reraise some concerns which were temporarily allayed by the Begin visit...
...In Israel and here, one senses the beginnings of readiness for new chapters, for more ambitious undertakings and more energetic initiatives...
...I can't promise that you'll like it...
...they look sullen and confused), and get him/her to sign on with us...
...So, an omission caused by time...
...That leaves the rest of us, you out there and we here, to do the job...
...What I really want to say is that this is our magazine...
...our consolation is that by being prevented from naming the trees, we can focus more reliably on the forest itself...
...And while we all know our history well enough to understand that our survival is never finally assured, we have, demonstrably, made signal progress over the past decade or so...
...Interesting questions, these, and exciting to have the chance to ponder them...
...How can we not only remember, but also approach, our God...
...For the fact is that, unbeknownst to them, they are, de facto, moment's promotion department...
...How can we not only express, but also intend, our tradition...
...A warped sense of time is an occupational hazard of this enterprise...
...Please...
...The inexorable schedule of the printing press and the inevitable sluggishness of the Postal Service make immediate response to recent events impossible for us...
...A new year is in the offing...
...presumably, he would have thought the question absurd...
...No one else can so ably advertise this magazine, nor, for that matter, do we have the resources to inform the wider world that we exist...
...There's an order form in these pages, and the rest is easy: find a non-subscriber (they're easy to identify...
...Now, therefore, we not only have the opportunity, but also the obligation, to turn our attention to a new set of problems and challenges...
...For that matter, moment hasn't really been gone, not from where we sit, since much of our time this summer has been devoted to planning for the coming year...
...I can only tell you that we love it...
...How can we not only protect, but also enlarge, Jewish consciousness...
...So we turn to you...
...We simply didn't think to ask him how he would feel about a Likud victory...
...When it's apple blossom time in Orange, New Jersey, we're already making applesauce here in Newton, Massachusetts...
...Five minutes of your time...
...It seems to me that we are on the brink of large events, as if, somehow, the days for biding time have ended, and it has come time to move along...
...Which creates, each month, the prospect of considerable embarrassment...
...If the taste whets the appetite, as we hope it does, you will find an easy way to order it—autographed by its author—on page 37 of this issue...
...Why not...
...Begin's return to Israel from his successful visit to this country, problems have appeared...
...How can we not only sustain, but enrich, Jewish life...
...When the galleys to Mark Hel-prin's novel, of which we provide an excerpt in this issue, arrived in our office last month, and were passed from person to person, we found that we were spending large chunks of time reading aloud to one another...
...A more mundane question has, however, been pressing for some time...
...by the time you read these words, we will be thinking Thanksgiving thoughts...
...This time, I do so with a somewhat quickened sense of anticipation...
...Already, shortly after Mr...
...And a commission: our own comments on Begin's first months were written with breath held, wondering whether anything that might happen between the writing of them and their being read would make them inapt...
...How would our readers react to the information that they have been drafted...
...And again, shanah tovah u'metukah—a good year, a year of gladness...
...Goldmann was, presumably, as surprised as the rest of us by the results...
...This is the third time since moment began that I've had the opportunity to extend greetings to our readers at the beginning of a new year...
Vol. 2 • September 1977 • No. 9
