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From: sms@eisx.UUCP (Samuel Saal)
Newsgroups: net.religion.jewish
Subject: RE: Re: Heat and light over a menorah
Message-ID: <834@eisx.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 17-Dec-84 15:28:54 EST
Article-I.D.: eisx.834
Posted: Mon Dec 17 15:28:54 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Dec-84 07:01:50 EST
Organization: AT&T Info. Sys. Labs, South Plainfield NJ
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> 
> The following is the major part of an article which appeared in    
> the S.F. Chronicle and which I am posting for the most part without
> any comment.
> 
> The article concerns the efforts of a Lubavitcher Rabbi (Eli Cohen) to
> put a giant menorah near the entrance to the Golden Gate Bridge.
> The article was written by a non-Jew, Warren Hinkle.
> 
> ***************************************************************
> 
>  Comments?
> 
> 					     bill peter

Last year I joined a Bnai Brith Singles group in my area. I had
believed that the pluralism which had existed in the Hillel in
the school I went to would exist in other BB groups. Pluralism
has its pros and cons. It is good because it allows *all* Jews to
identify with Judaism without any guilt even if they did not
practice their Judaism. This allows at least a connection with
other Jews. From that connection further education may occur
leading to bringing these less committed Jews closer to Judaism.
If you don't come to class, you can't learn and pluralism would
seem to bring people to the classroom.  The negative aspect is
that pluralism leads to at least grudging acceptence of groups at
the farthest fringes of Judaism and legitimizes some groups which
could be harmful to Judism as a whole. The most extreme case I've
seen was a fundamentalist Christian who claimed that since she
followed "all" of Judaism's laws (and then some) she should be
considered a Jewess. In this example I see an entry for some
cults such as the Jews for Jesus. Fortunately, thisdid not occur
in the case I mentioned. The majority of my experiences were
positive and tended towards the first case. The point of this
lengthy introduction is that I expected BB to maintain this
policy beyond "the college experience". In fact, they do not. I
have been on their mailing list for the last year or so and I
have found that their "pluralism" extends from "center" to "left"
only. There does not appear to be any room for the Orthodox view
and only very little for any type of traditional view. To be
sure, they pay lip service to Jewish Education, but it is obvious
from the discussions of christmas on the net that those Jewish
children who have the most jealousy of their peers' holidays are
those who don't have the strong Jewish educational backgrounds.
They see their peers (usually in public school) participating in
their celebrations.  This forces their parents to elevate the
level of Chanukah from a minor (read: post Biblical) holiday to a
major one (read: as if of Biblical origin). In the various BB
publications I've read I've seen a lot of
     cultural Judaism
     Zionism and
     political activity within the  US
However, the most positive RELIGIOUS (read practice) expression
was to wish everyone a happy new year in the Sept/Oct issues and
to print a Menorah on the cover of the Dec issue of the national
magazine. This is the priority of holidays which the Christians
see in the Jewish calender (actually, since I am not a Christian
I don't know that it is not reversed :-)). They know of very few
other holidays in the Jewish calendar.  With all of this, I am
not surprised that BB lead in the fight *agaionst* the Menorah in
San Francisco.  If they can't exhibit a positive view of the
mitzvot in their own (internal) publications, I would not expect
them to support the public display of a mitzvah.


Sam Saal
..!ihnp4!eisx!sms

The opinions expressed in this essay have very little bearing on
reality and may be nothing more than a good way of blowing off
steam for the author.