Beginnings
John Updike calls him "the last holy writer," and Herman Hesse once described him as "the uncrowned king of German prose." The usual view of Franz Kafka, the centennial of whose birth is marked this...
...Our thanks to all three...
...Kafka was clearly not optimistic regarding our capacity to complete the task, but his profoundly moral vision forced him to deny us the illusions so often prescribed to soothe our disappointments...
...And also a conversation between the Brothers Dershowitz on affirmative action...
...So, Kafka and the rainbow sign, not meant as a juxtaposition of fantasy and despair, but of hope and sobriety...
...The critics do not romanticize deterrence...
...In our last issue, we published a memoir by George Cureton on what it felt like to grow up black (Negro, back then) in the Jewish neighborhood of Newark...
...The last day, which is also the first of the Messianic era, is for us to reach...
...The answer...
...But there's a level between the kind of breaking news no monthly magazine can cover and the reflective essay, a level of concept that is a necessary ingredient for constructive analysis and understanding...
...Thoughtful criticism of the freeze centers on the proposition that we must depend on deterrence to preserve the peace...
...We've been thinking for a while about how we can best contribute to the general understanding of ongoing events in the Middle East...
...And may your summer be fragrant...
...The convenant it marks is reciprocal...
...Advocates are neither optimists—they do not celebrate this world as-it-is—nor pessimists— they will not settle for it...
...The rainbow sign itself has, thanks to Arthur Waskow (see Howard Bray's article on Jews and the freeze), become a symbol of the Jewish freeze-niks...
...They are, I suppose, messianists...
...Incidentally, Matti Megged's story about Kafka, later in these page, is based on the fact that Kafka actually thought of settling in Palestine and opening a coffeehouse where he would serve as waiter, his wife as cook...
...The usual view of Franz Kafka, the centennial of whose birth is marked this July 3, is that he was peerless at depicting the predicament of modern man, hence the grim-ness of the modern condition...
...Pessimist: "I'm afraid you're right...
...From the Jewish Museum in New York, from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and now, as well, from the Skirball Museum (of the Hebrew Union College) in Los Angeles...
...From nuclear weapons and Middle East tensions and black-Jewish relations to spiceboxes: You may have wondered where we get the photos of spiceboxes that enliven TSB...
...they claim only that it is the best we know how to do...
...Which is not a bad way to bring us one day closer to the last day...
...not until the next day, "the very last," will the Messiah come...
...It holds that we ought to be able to devise a better—less risky, less costly, less ghastly—way to block the threat of nuclear death...
...well, you know the rest: Whether or not neglect of the problem has been benign, it's time to resume—for the sake of the principals, for the sake of principle, for America's sake—our historic concern for coalition building...
...Which brings me to the cover's rainbow sign and the debate over a mutual and verifiable nuclear freeze...
...Instead, he sought the truth, unto its innermost parts, however complex, tragic, frightening...
...It is a delight—and an honor— to welcome him to our pages...
...no more Flood, no more destruction, is not only God's promise, but our own...
...Optimist: "This is the best of all possible worlds...
...And why not...
...In this issue, we continue our somewhat eclectic consideration of the black-Jewish relationship by presenting a recent address on the topic by John Jacob, President of the National Urban League...
...He understood that the end of days, the time of the plowshares and pruning hooks, will happen when (more accurately, //and when) we cause it to happen...
...Actually, their technical argument is that we already have an adequate deterrent, as do the Soviets, and that we ought therefore deny ourselves the "luxury" of pursuing ever higher levels of deterrence, with their attendant ever higher levels of risk...
...As so many other problems these days, it is tempting not to think about it at all, because to think about it is to open yourself to confusion and distress...
...In addition to our regular feature articles on this aspect or that of Israeli culture and society, we have, of course, our periodic essays and interviews by such as Abba Eban and, now and again, my own musings...
...Another day closer...
...In the work at that level, there is likely no one more widely respected by the experts in the field than Professor Nadav Safran, Director of Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies...
...But there was at least one other side to Kafka, whose words appear on our cover this month...
...But the visceral argument goes beyond the intellectual...
...Beginning with this issue, Safran will regularly share with our readers his approach to diverse aspects of the continuing saga...
...Freeze advocates—I am one—argue that we can do better...
Vol. 8 • July 1984 • No. 7
