A Soulful Journey

T his article was written in 1899 when anti-Semitism was widespread in the United States. Large companies did not hire Jews, Universities either didn't admit Jews or limited their numbers with strict quotas. "Respectable" people like Ford and Edison expressed their anti-Jewish feelings openly. Mark Twain had an answer: Written by Mark Twain in Harper's Magazine, September 1899 If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of stardust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world's list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and obtuse learning are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He ...

  The late Pinchas Peli told a story about two Lubavitch Hasidim discussing the Jewish community and its future.     One said to the other, “The whole world is divided between ‘them’ and ‘us.’     No point in talking about ‘them.’     Let’s talk about us.     Among us, the Jewish world is divided between Ashkenazim and Sephardim.     No point in talking about the Sephardim.     Among the Ashkenazim, there are Misnagdim and Hasidim.     No point in talking about the Misnagdim.     Amon the Hasidim, there are Lubavitch and Satmer.     No point in talking about the Satmer.     Among the Lubavitch, there are Farbrengung and Maskilim.     No pint in talking about the Farbregung Lubavitch.     Among the Maskilim, there are only you and me, and you know how little   you  know.” Myopia is not an admirable quality. It is better to be open to everyone.

"Their [the Jews] destiny is too imbued with the “metaphysical” to be explained either by material or positive historical terms… Its survival is a mysterious and wonderful phenomenon demonstrating that the life of this people is governed by special predetermination… The survival of the Jews, their resistance to destruction, their endurance under absolutely peculiar conditions and the fateful role played by them in history; all these point to the particular and mysterious foundations of their destiny…" ~ Nicholai Berdyaev    I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation…They are the most glorious nation to ever inhabit this earth…They have given religion to three quarters of the Globe and have influenced the affairs of Mankind, more and more happily than any other nation, ancient or modern.   ~ John Adams This is your heritage.

If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one percent of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of smoke lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning, are also way out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all ages: and has done it with his hands tied behind him.   All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?     ~ Mark Twain

“… I was once privileged to hear from my father (the previous Lbavitcher Rebbe) that his father, Rabbi Shalom Dover, of saintly memory, was once asked, ‘What is a Chabad-Lubavitch chassid?’ He replied, a chassid is like a street lamp lighter. In olden days, there was a person in every town who would light the streetlamps with a light he carried at the end of a long pole.  On the street corners, the lamps were there in readiness, waiting to be lit; sometimes, however, the lamps are not as easily accessible. There are lamps in forsaken places, in deserts or at sea. There must be someone to light even those lamps, so that they may fulfill their purpose and light up the paths of others. It is written, ‘The soul of man is the candle of G-d.’ It is also written, ‘A mitzvah is a candle, and the Torah is light.’ A chassid is one who puts his personal affairs aside and sets out to light up the souls of Jews with the light of Torah and mitzvot. Jewish souls are ready and waiting to b...

"The Jew knows that the great commandment is to live." - Rabbi Leo Baeck What doe this mean for your life choices?

“God, you Jews are truly exotic!”   “Exotic? She should only know the Greenblatts.” – Woody Allen “Jews somehow think it’s Jewish if it has class. Why do you think that in Miami everybody is named Horowitz, but every building they live in is called the “Condominium of la tres de la mer?”   -Jackie Mason

“It must be clear to everybody …that the new century does not open under very favorable auspices for Judaism… Our scriptures are the constant object of attack, our history is questioned, and its morality is declared to be an inferior sort. Worst of all is that attitude of the younger generation, who if not directly hostile, are by dint of mere ignorance sadly indifferent to everything Jewish, and in capable of taking the place of their parents in the synagogue… They are bound to end in that cold critical attitude toward Judaism in terminating and drifting away from it all together.”  - Solomon Schechter, Studies in Judaism , 1901 The more things change the more they remain the same.  And after all this time, we are still here.

  A scene just 45 Years ago, board a train in Brooklyn: Poland had been invaded by Hitler in September of 1939, five months earlier. A 12 year old youngster is shouting above the din and the rattle of the train, appealing for funds for the  Va’ad Hatzalah to save Polish Jews. He approached a middle-aged, obviously Jewish man who snarls at him and says, “I don’t care about Polish Jews.  I’m a Belgian Jew…”  - the boy was Norman Lamm When we finally come to the realization that we have a mandate, a  full responsibility to care for one another, the Mashiah will know it is time for him to come.

Rabbi David of Lelov once heard a simple man who was praying say the name of God after every verse. The reason he did this was that there are two dots, one above the other, at the close of every verse. The man took each to be the tiny letter “yud” (in Yiddish it is pronounced as “yid” which also means “Jew”) and since the name of God is sometimes abbreviated in the form of two “yuds,” he thought that what he saw at the end of every verse was the name of God. The tzaddik instructed him: “Wherever you find two Yids (Jews) side-by-side and on a par, there is the name of God. But whenever it looks to you as if only one Yid (Jew) is standing above the other, then they are not Yids (Jews)  it is and it is not the name of God.” –Martin Buber,  Late Masters We a re here with, and for, one another.

"Godfrey Cambridge told me once -the black, he died.   He was a wonderful man -he said to me in an interview, "Do you know what blacks need? The Jewish PR league. ..I didn't hear that polio was cured, I heard a Jewish doctor cured polio today." - Larry King Teach pride in oneself.

WHAT IS A JEW? This question is not as strange as it may seem at first glance. Let’s examine this free creature that was insulated and oppressed, trampled on and pursued, burned and drowned by all the rulers and the nations, but is nevertheless living and thriving in spite of the whole world. What is a Jew that did not succumb to any worldly temptations offered by his oppressors and persecutors so that he would renounce his religion and abandon the faith of his fathers? A Jew is a sacred being who procured an eternal fire from the heavens and with it illuminated the earth and those who live on it. He is the spring and the source from which the rest of the nations drew their religions and beliefs. A Jew is a pioneer of culture. From time immemorial, ignorance was impossible in the Holy Land, even more so than nowadays in civilized Europe. Moreover, at the time when the life and death of a human being was worth nothing, Rabbi Akiva spoke against the death penalty which is now co...

The following essay was first published in Harpers Magazine by Mark Twain in September 1899:  "If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one quarter of one percent of the human race.  It suggests a nebulous puff of star dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way.  Properly, the Jew ought hardly to be heard of, but he is heard of, has always been heard of.  He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine and abstruse learning are also very out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers.  He has made a marvelous fight in this world in all ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be vain of himself and be excused for it.  The Egyptians, the Babylonians and the Persians rose, filled the planet with sound and splendor, then faded ...

King Frederick the great once asked a Lutheran pastor to give him proof of God’s existence. The pastor replied, “ The Jews.”

ITEM: “I was always an unbeliever, raised without religion….And I always tried to suppress nationalistic ardor…as something pernicious and unjust,” Sigmund Freud wrote in 1926.  But when publication of his shocking views on human sexuality in the 1890’s led to his ostracism by Viennese society, Freud joined the Vienna lodge of B’nai Brith, the international Jewish fraternal order, to find people who would “receive me with friendliness.”   Despite his rejection of Jewish religious and ethnic particularism, he told the members in a speech written for the seventieth-birthday celebration of the lodge, “there remained enough other things to make the attraction of Judaism and Jews irresistible – many dark emotional forces, all the more potent for being so hard to grasp in word, as well as the clear consciousness of an inner identity, the intimacy that comes from the same psychic structure.” – Charles Silberman

“Now, as always, Jews are intimately linked to one another. Shout here and will be heard and Kiev. Shout in Kiev and you and you will be heard in Paris. When Jews are saddened in Jerusalem, Jews everywhere reflect their sadness. Thus, a Jew lives in more than one place, in more than one era, on more than one level.   To be Jewish is to be possessed of a historical consciousness that transcends individual consciousness….”   -Elie Wiesel We are one.

"The costumes of the  rabbis the celebration  of chief  fea sts , especially the  Sabbath, on   other  dates other  than   those of the Christian  culture: regarding  diet; the façades of synagogues--all m ark the Jew  out." - 1942 study by JS  Brown, chief  researcher for the Menninger C linic.  H e  believed the Jews need to do more to abandon their religion  and blend in, in a book called "T he O rigin of the anti-Se mi tic A ttitude."   For former  generatio ns  this, by and large was the attitude by Jews and gentiles alike.  Blend it.  Do not stand out.  Do not speak  too  loudly.     Unfortunately this left a generation ignorant of their heritage.

"A sage once said that he longed for he day when Jews who are great will become great Jews."  -Rabbi Michael Rosen

“We Jews have been burdened with a twofold task: we have to cope with the problem of a double confrontation.    We think of ourselves as human beings, sharing the destiny of Adam in his general encounter with nature, and as members of a covenantal community which has preserved its identity under most unfavorable conditions, confronted by another faith community.    We believe we are the bearers of a double charismatic load, that of the dignity of man and that of the sanctity of the covenantal community.    In this difficult role, we are summoned by God, who revealed himself at both the level of universal creation and that of the private covenant, to undertake a double mission – the universal human and the exclusive covenantal confrontation.”    Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik

“I share the traditional view that even if we [Israelis] wish to be a nation like all the nations, we will not succeed.   And if we succeed – that will be the end of us.” – Gershom Scholem