Beginnings

K I wish I knew more about how people read magazines—this magazine, at least. Do they curl up with a magazine and read it from cover to cover at one curling? Do they keep it on their night table...

...Biblical references and understandings are central to this sense...
...But the words and the ideas are words and ideas that have informed both Israel and America since each was established...
...Many of you have, apparently, agreed with us that there are few gifts that are as meaningful as a year's subscription to moment...
...In the month it has been operating, over 600 gift subscriptions have been entered...
...But better such dreams and such goals, even with the disappointment, than no dreams, no disappointments, no risks, no meaning, no triumph, the chance to be, but never to flourish...
...If we keep its terms, we shall flourish...
...Reading the final galleys of my article this morning, the day after President Carter's much anticipated speech on energy, confidence, national purpose and the like, I am struck by the fact that both the article and the speech share a perception of deep malaise...
...Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind...
...Last month, I reached for the typewriter upon my return from Israel, and the result of that reaching appears in this issue...
...In any event, we've now caught up with ourselves once again, and will continue to try to reach your mailbox no later than the tenth of the month of publication...
...On more mundane issues: Our 800 number, whereby subscribers can call in their gift subscriptions toll-free (see pp...
...Do they keep it on their night table for when they have a headache...
...The voice that spoke those words was the voice of Lyndon Baines Johnson, on the occasion of his inaugural address...
...But either way, Jimmy Carter's ten days at Camp David seem to have brought him (energy aside) to some of the same conclusions that my ten days in Israel brought me (Eilon Moreh aside...
...We hope that those of you who have already discovered the ease of the system will use it again and again, and that many, many more of you will decide to take advantage of this new feature...
...We use the time to try to catch up with our publishing schedule, which seems to fall a few days behind each month...
...Most nations in the world, it seems to me, have no history of missionary purpose...
...They made a covenant with this land...
...The President called it "a crisis of confidence...
...I have called it a crisis of meaning...
...At this rate, we will exceed our goal, and that would be an exciting achievement...
...So far, we have added about 1,400...
...Our goal—announced last month—is to add 4,000 new subscribers to our rolls in the period between June 1 and year's end...
...They came here—the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened—to find a place where a man could be his own man...
...May your dog days of summer be pedigreed...
...The overwhelming majority of America's 220 million people and of Israel's nearly four million deeply desire to "keep the terms" of the covenant, and the malaise they share today is a consequence of that lofty aspiration...
...The next issue—September—is scheduled off press on August 31, and, thenceforward, we hope to be in the mail on or about the first of the month...
...Twice a year, we double up on our months—there's one issue in July/August, and then again in January/February...
...What makes the coincidence curious—and, perhaps, instructive—is that these two nations share as well a sense of mission, of higher purpose...
...Do they read it while the television is meowing away about cat food...
...On the theory that one can either read or write— no one can do both—I reach for the typewriter, rather than for a book— or magazine—when there's free time...
...What happens once the Postal Service takes over is anybody's guess...
...Both the United States and Israel were the product of dreams, of the desire to do things in a new way, a way that was supposed to bring happiness to the citizen and light unto the nations...
...It is curious, I think, that America and Israel should be joined these days by a sense of discontent...
...and it binds us still...
...I can't very well generalize from my own experience...
...There is resonance in those words, nobility in those ideas—as, also, there is danger...
...4-5), is a huge success...
...So do continue to keep moment in mind when there's occasion for a gift...

Vol. 4 • July 1979 • No. 7


 
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