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Challenge & Paradox. For many Jews this will be a hard teaching. God has chosen them for a special purpose, but seemingly the price of God's election has been a bitter portion. Exile, humiliation and persecution have dogged them through history, from Babylon to Buchenwald. Persecution has driven the Jews in upon themselves; they have sometimes set up barriers against the world simply in order to survive. But of what use is their survival, asks Louis Finkelstein, if their mission is forgotten?
The essence of that mission is a challenging paradox: to be a people set apart —and yet not apart. Louis Finkelstein calls on the withdrawn Jew to serve his old persecutors, his brothers, to join the human race; and calls on the assimilated Jew to take up his heritage.
In modern times, millions of men & women of Jewish origin have renounced Judaism as their spiritual country. Such men & women think (or say they think) that the word "Jew" should be on a par with "Baptist," "Congregationalist" or "Catholic"—and should apply only to the Jews who have elected to be, or to remain, Jews. Rabbi Finkelstein's Torah teaches him that the covenant God made with Israel is an inescapable covenant. "The choosing by God," says he, "was like Selective Service." It is binding on all Jews, to the last generation on earth.
Yom Kippur in this year 5712 was drawing to a close. In the synagogues of the world the chant went up: Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Three times Rabbi Finkelstein and the congregation repeated: Blessed be His name, whose glorious Kingdom is for ever and ever. Seven times the shout arose: The Lord, he is God.
And the shofar of joy and hope sang in the ears of Israel its hoarse, triumphant cry.
*An enemy of the Jews whose story is told in the Book of Esther. † There is no agreement about the exact number of Orthodox, Reform and Conservative Jews. Best current estimates: about 175,000 "families" enrolled in U.S. Orthodox congregations, 140,000 in Reform congregations, 150,000 in Conservative congregations. But each group claims a large additional number of unenrolled worshipers. *Among them: U.S. Senator Herbert H. Lehman. *A Jewish woman, at this point in her morning prayers, humbly thanks God that He has created her according to His will. *Oldest and biggest: Hebrew Union College (Reform) in Cincinnati. * E.g., Isaiah 53:3-5: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised; and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows; yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed."