I spent a night in Canada last week and the experience must be shared for it highlighted the hopelessness and hope represented by Jewish youth in these days, the twilight of Jewish greatness in the golden lands of the West.
The occasion was a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation television show, known as “Under Attack.” The show, designed to bring controversial subjects before Canadian citizens had decreed that the Jewish Defense League had sufficiently grown to become a major controversy and a fit target for attack.
The most fascinating aspect of the show is the fact that it broadcasts from Canadian college campuses with a panel of student questioners and a whole bevy of young lions in the audience, prepared to intellectually devour the guest with immutable questions.
The location for this particular telecast was Waterloo Lutheran College located in the twin cities of Waterloo-Kitchener, not too far from Toronto. In the midst of the Lutherans and Anglicans and Roman Catholics – as always – there were the Jewish students and they are the ones of which we speak.
The television show itself was not the highlight of the evening. The questions that were asked were the same that have been heard a thousand times at a thousand other college appearances. All was the same – the Jews who denounced JDL for violence while cheering the pacific Black Panthers; the attacks on the State of Israel for being a tool of United States imperialism; the long-haired alienation from everything Jewish and the beautiful hope that remains for these Jewish youngsters.
Hope? Is this not a contradiction? Hardly. For each of their questions, delivered with rebellious force, was answered – not with weaselly, condescending replies such as those which the Liberal Establishment babbles forth but with equal force and equal passion and with equal pride in ideal – but this time JEWISH ideal. And the surprised students, unused to hearing a Jew in public stand straight and tall and unapologetic, listened in amazement at phrases like “Jewish power” and “the Zionist dream” and “Jewish might.” They listened in surprise and a new world opened before them and when the show was over they did not go home. They remained and asked to discuss this strange Jewishness more and more and more. And not till 4:00 A.M. did they leave the home of Rabbi Rosenzweig of Waterloo where we sat (G-d bless his understanding wife) till late and talked of Jews and Jewishness.
They sat on chairs and on the floor, their long hippy hair and unkempt beards and assimilation and alienation there for all to see but contradicted with every passing moment by their wide eyes and eager faces thirsting for the Jewish words that they were hearing for the first time.
Can these Jews be saved? I do not know. I do not know if the sins of their parents which have doomed them to bitter reaction against their heritage can be overcome. I do not know if we are too late to feed them the life-giving elixir of Jewish pride they never were allowed to taste. I do not know if the harm done them by fearful and timid Jewish leadership can be undone.
But hope there is. For these are good and decent and intelligent youngsters who want to be Jewish and know that the JDL preaches a philosophy that strikes some instinctive response in them. Can the belated message of proud and strong Jewishness save a lost generation? Who knows? Prophecy in our time has been given over to the fools and the young. I only know that I saw a glimpse of beauty in Canada last week and a glimmer of hope. To the Jewish youngsters whom I met and with whom I sat till early into the morning I can only say: Thank you for the experience. You will yet be better than your elders and your timid leaders.
Stand tall and say – NEVER AGAIN.
28 Tishri 5730 – October 10, 1969