Beginnings

There are two Jewish histories. The one is a lurching sequence of unpredictable events, most often traumatic: PLO horrors, Nazi marches, injuries and insults and uglinesses that defy all...

...In this issue, we offer some suggestions that may enrich the experience of watching it...
...I write these words in the aftermath of the PLO massacre of thirty-five Israeli Jews, an injury to which has been added the insult of silence by many so-called moderates—silence, or, indeed, praise for the foul deed...
...My concern just now is with the personal response, with the question of how Jews, as individuals, can deal with such outrage, can still hold tight to their commitment, can still enter Judaism eagerly...
...As I write, I glance through the contents of the issue, and wish that our readers might have the sense of both unity and diversity that knowing April's authors occasions for me...
...And the calendar, the other Jewish history, provides the answer...
...Perhaps, as some have suggested, if we were to give up the history we have chosen we would be freed from the history we have been made to endure...
...This space has come to be our corner for apologies...
...Last month, we published three poems by Linda Pastan from which some words of identification were inadvertently omitted...
...No matter how much the events of the day intrude, the seasons of the year return, reminding, relieving, redeeming...
...The other Jewish history is framed by our calendar and by our work...
...But here they all are, teaching, arguing, amusing, caring...
...spring is in the air, and Pesach just over the horizon...
...They are the occasion for our anguish as parents when, as must happen, our children turn to us and ask, innocently, "Why...
...We live not only from trauma to trauma, but from Shab-bat to Shabbat, from festival to festival, according to a precise and inevitable timetable...
...E pluribus, MOMENT...
...And, please, take a moment to read our message on page 8. (^C^h...
...But in the meanwhile, even at the worst of times, it is also, recurrently, inevitably, predictably, the best of times...
...Linda Pastan has published several volumes of poems, the most recent of which is The Five Stages of Grief, published by W. W. Norton in March...
...Until next month—Israel's thirtieth anniversary, our next apology, and an assortment of other wonders— enjoy spring, the holiday, and whatever else there is to enjoy...
...Why do people do these things to Jews...
...This April is an especially crowded month...
...Yet there are times—too often—when the price of our steadfastness seems unbearably high...
...The week we usually devote to Pesach preparation and anticipation will be distorted by the nine-hour long NBC special "Holocaust...
...These interruptions to our lives and to our dreams are the source of that peculiar tension which causes us to awake each morning with a measure of apprehension, wondering what new offense has been visited upon us during our sleep...
...Among others...
...Long before that, we may hope that secular time will offer more delight...
...Instead, we have hewed to our chosen path, and done what we could to blunt the edge of the oppressor's sword...
...We have seen the previews, and highly recommend the program...
...There's usually more than we think...
...The one is a lurching sequence of unpredictable events, most often traumatic: PLO horrors, Nazi marches, injuries and insults and uglinesses that defy all understanding...
...The political and military responses will be what they will be...
...The ambassador excepted, the group is not united by its politics (I count three doves, two hawks, one pigeon, one ostrich, and two UFO's), nor by its religious orientation (two Orthodox, two Conservatives, one Karaite, one Reform, a closet Reconstruc-tionist, a sprinkling of agnostics), nor by its mother-tongue (three Yiddish, one Hebrew, one Russian, several English, though be it noted that all but one speak Hebrew...
...Happily, that is not the way that most of us have preferred—nor, for that matter, is there much evidence that it really works for those who have preferred it...
...This, of course, is the history we prefer, the history we have chosen...
...I have met all but one of them, and they are as disparate a group of people as one can find—an Orthodox rabbi from Brooklyn, an Israeli socialist, an American who lives in Israel and is a connoisseur of art and an American who lived in Israel and is a connoisseur of food—and, of all things, the Syrian ambassador to the United States...
...Some day—at the end of days—sacred time and secular time will merge...
...It is mid-March...
...And we have no answer...

Vol. 3 • April 1978 • No. 5


 
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