| Leonard Fein These days, these deafening days of bombs and of babble, of roulette wheels and refugees, are very far from the day of God's "Here I am." In fact, it is hard, very hard, even to hear the question, to know that we are asked, relentlessly, "Where are you?" Judaism - the Judaism that rivets, that obsesses me - is an elaborate attempt to ensure that none who is Jewish will ever not hear the question, no matter the noise level, the Babel. We are first a people that is commanded to listen. The central enjoinder of our faith begins with the command, Shma! - simply, "Hear!" And Judaism is also a set of exploratory answers. "I'm sorry, I've been busy" is not an acceptable answer. Nor is "In Las Vegas," nor, "Can I put you on hold while I finish another call?" The only right answer is, "Here I am." But "here" covers much territory, and it is plain from looking at the Jewish experience that it embraces many different "heres," all the way from studying Talmud to marching with the lettuce workers, from being Isaac Stem to being Barbara Myerhoff.... Is it, then, a surprise that on the morrow of the Holocaust and Israel's rebirth our ways of saying "Here I am" have become somewhat confused? Is it any wonder that we have lost our balance, we who have trembled in the ravine and exulted at the mountain's top? And if it takes another hundred years or more before we settle on three, four persuasive and compelling ways of life - for a way of life is a way of saying "Here is where I am, where we are," is a response - wherefore is that unreasonable? Indeed, why even expect of this generation that it will understand life as response rather than, say, life as revenge - or as resignation? Why insist that it hear a holy question when its eardrums have been punctured, again and again, by the rattle of death? |
Leonard Fein, a writer and educator, has written
extensively on contemporary Jewish Life in Moment, The New Republic, The New York Times,
and many other publications.
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Leonard Fein (part 2) ...there is no time to waste. The normal rituals of mourning, which might plausibly occupy us for the next seven-to-the-seventh-power days, are an unacceptable indulgence, the celebrations of achievement an impermissible diversion. For the challenge of power, of the uses to which we in America and our kinfolk in Israel put our power, awaits. We use our power foolishly, meanly, huntingly, and a generation of Jews will vanish in boredom or anger, disillusioned with all the pretty words about clothing the naked and feeding the hungry; use it well, use it wisely, use it generously, and the stories live; a generation and more will be inspired by them to refresh the Jewish commitment, and thereby help mend the world. from Where Are We? |
One who studies the Torah but
lives without doing acts of righteousness is as one who has no God. -Talmud, Avodah Zarah 17b |
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