Beginnings
For a while, I thought I might add a page to our interview with Secretary of State Shultz, listing there the umpteen other questions I'd have liked to ask, and would have but for the constraint of...
...moment really does get mailed on time...
...His article is adapted from his speech last month at the 92nd Street Y, their annual lectureship on "The State of the Jewish World...
...Now— I hesitate to say this, but the truth will out—the Bible is not everybody's cup of tea...
...Note, for example, that the last Hebrew Bible published in the Soviet Union was printed in 1917...
...A final introductory note: Bill Aron has been with this magazine for many years...
...His photographs have graced many of our issues...
...In the long run, who is to say that the world of culture is not more enduring, and even more important, than the world of politics...
...Well, that's not quite right...
...The USPS is at it again...
...they'll still be fresh...
...And as if Secretary Shultz and Professor Orlinsky don't provide sufficient weight for this issue, there's also Gerson Cohen, Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America...
...Some readers may recall that Abba Eban inaugurated that series a couple of years back, and his lecture also subsequently appeared in these pages...
...Maybe it is everybody's cup of tea, and it's just that a good number of people aren't tea-drinkers...
...I write this introduction to the December issue while the November issue is still wending its way through the mails...
...The other interview this month is with Professor Harry M. Orlinsky, a towering scholar of the Bible...
...We have a pleasant working relationship with the 92nd, and it's a delight, therefore, once again to acknowledge our appreciation for their good work...
...Who ever thought, back then, that we'd one day be able to toss off a time frame such as that...
...Klein has appeared in our pages before, to great praise from our readers, and we here all look forward to his thoughtful reporting from his new home...
...Actually, the Orlinsky/Shultz interviews offer us an illustration of one of Chancellor Cohen's major points—to wit, that while we are still, as a people, trying to figure out what being "normal" means, trying to figure out how to enter into the world, we are, at the same time, doing remarkably important work in the private arena, in the arena of Jewish culture as such...
...For a while, I thought I might add a page to our interview with Secretary of State Shultz, listing there the umpteen other questions I'd have liked to ask, and would have but for the constraint of time...
...And in that spirit, we offer a special section later in these pages, our contribution to the celebration of Jewish Book Month...
...Wending" is a nice way of putting it...
...compare this with the proliferation of Bible editions and the spirit of Bible debate described in the Orlinsky interview...
...The Secretary was as I had been led to believe he would be— thoughtful, courteous, candid...
...it's been ten days now, and while we've heard from readers here and there who've received their magazines, my own home copy has yet to show up—and the bloody thing is mailed just down the street...
...I promise you'll enjoy it...
...Which is all a very roundabout way of saying that if our best wishes for a very happy Chanu-kah arrive after the holiday has departed, stash them away and use them next year...
...they require no written comment, save our continuing gratitude to Bill...
...So, just in case—heaven forfend!—any of our readers might be inclined to skip an article on how and why Bible translations happen, a word of caution: You'd be making a very serious mistake...
...Since I cannot bring myself to believe that this is an instance of selective discrimination, I assume that others of our readers are suffering as well...
...Read the interview with HMO...
...What can I say...
...Their power and their poignancy are particularly marked when contrasted to the Jewish vitality described and illustrated elsewhere in this issue...
...I take it as a compliment to moment's readers that he made himself available for the conversation herein reported...
...But the photographs speak more eloquently for themselves than I can...
...Chag sameach...
...I don't want to slight any of this month's authors, but I must make special mention here of Yossi Klein, who has made aliyah and who will be writing for us periodically from Israel...
...But I don't think we've ever been as moved—"blown away" was the word around the office—as the day his photos from the Soviet Union arrived...
Vol. 8 • December 1982 • No. 1
