Beginnings
Veteran readers will recall that I occasionally use this space to remark on the peculiar calendric distortions that go with doing a monthly magazine. I write these words on August 13; the magazine...
...And it seems to me that as we enter, inevitably, a time of retrospective assessment, and—more important—a new phase in the relationship between Israel and its neighbors, we should engage in the needed debate with as much thoughtfulness as we can...
...The delight has helped lift the spirits of an otherwise especially dispirited summer...
...But everything evens out: While you're doing Shavuot, we're doing Tisha B'Av...
...We'd like to tell you, but we're sworn to secrecy...
...You will receive your copy some time between August 30 and September 7. By the time you do, God willing, the violence in Lebanon will be over, and our thoughts will have begun their annual turning towards the New Year, the Days of Awe, Yom Kippur...
...In the meantime, there are the apples and the honey—and, as our cover suggests, even plums—to get to...
...Whatever one's political assessment of the events in Lebanon, the human response—from hawks and doves alike—is anguish...
...They tell me that outside the trees are heavy with late-summer green...
...Soon, you who live in the past will be beating your breasts...
...Danny Siegel delves into the new meanings of old words in modern Israel, and Marc Gellman interprets the old meanings of one old word in ancient Israel...
...the magazine goes to the printer on the 16, and into the mails on the 25...
...But back here at the ranch, we are well into October...
...I derive no heavy conclusions from all this, save to note in passing that being slightly out of step with general perceptions is not a new experience for me...
...Here we have the great Yiddish writer, Chaim Grade, recreating in exquisite detail the life of Jews in Vilna at the turn of the century—and Lawrence Bush describing that peculiar time in our own experience we call "the '60s...
...When I look at a moment such as this, I marvel at the breadth of the Jewish experience...
...we here will be eating latkes...
...frankly, I don't find unity a particularly interesting goal, this for at least three reasons: First, being Jewish means living with stress as a chronic condition...
...All 1 can say is that it could be worse...
...second, I hardly think it likely that so contentious a people as we can develop genuine unity on so controversial a topic as this...
...A great deal is made of the importance of Jewish unity in times of stress...
...I look out, and it's autumn I see...
...May your year be sweet and tangy, may it be a year of health for all of us, and— most fervently—of peace for all humankind...
...There's Nathan Perlmutter grappling with modem anti-Semitism—and Frederic Grunfeld introducing us to a Jewish master artist in 15th century Spain...
...You will have realized, of course, that our schedule means we already know something of how the New Year will turn out, and we're sure you'd like to know...
...And so forth, much richness, much delight...
...It is, I think, arrogant to imagine that we can, in this respect, be like God...
...third, unity, according to our belief and tradition, is an attribute of God, not of His creatures...
...So I'll settle for thoughtfulness, and civility...
...if there's to be unity, let it be a product of discussion rather than of discipline...
...The holidays are long gone, and we've already started thinking about Thanksgiving...
Vol. 7 • September 1982 • No. 8
