The Maccabaean

TO THE MACCABÆAN :

It is folly to try to answer a sneer. But when a sneer masquerades under the guise of a critical expression of opinion, it is in order to uncover the pseudo-critique and show the grimace in its naked ugliness.

In the July issue of THE MACCABÆAN there appeared an article by Louis Lipsky on “Jewish Education, a Criticism of Its Aim and Other Things,” in which its author saw fit to speak contemptuously of The Jewish Chautauqua Society, and in the September number appeared a slurring reference to the Seventh Summer Assembly of the society; this latter also would seem to have been written by, or at least to have received its publication right from, Mr. Lipsky, who is named in the magazine as the acting editor. Neither article gives facts, though at least it would seem to be desirable in “A Monthly Record of Jewish Progress” (under which column the September article was included), that something more than a particular man’s opinion of that record should be given; the facts should be set out to speak for themselves. If this is not done it were better to give the column a truer name, such as “Jewish Progress as Seen Through the Eyes of the Staff of THE MACCABÆAN.”

The first article is, briefly, the usual tearful howl over Jewish education in America. Everything is bad, though the author very incidentally mentions near the close of his article that there are "many meritorious sides of our many Jewish educational organizations," but he does not take the trouble to mention which meet his distinguished approval, because "full praise has already been given to these institutions in many places," etc. It is apparent, then, that the article only intends to give one side of the story and the other side is calmly brushed aside. Is this "criticism?" Save the mark; most men would call this "fault-finding" of a cheap sort. A review which ignores or suppresses the good points so as to leave without relief and to over-emphasize what the "Critic"

thinks are the bad points of the thing reviewed is sailing under false colors when it labels itself "criticism"; at best it is caricature, and like caricature sacrifices truth to the opportunity of being smart or extreme.

This one-eyed view is clearly shown throughout the article and is well illustrated in the reference to the Summer Assembly. It is a "dilettante method of education," it "does not educate the masses" from whom "it is as distant as are some of our uptown temples." Please, please, Mr. Critic, get a new weapon. This "dilettante" charge, which formerly made as "superficiality," was something the Society had to meet at the beginning of its history, and has often been answered, but it grows musty. The "critics" then had similar agonized convulsions at the thought that Jewish knowledge might be given out in small doses to the people who had largely through conditions lost a taste for it; no, no, knowledge must be for the scholars, and all the people must accordingly become scholars or do without Jewish knowledge. The Society thought otherwise, that it was difficult, useless, to butt against the stone wall of conditions, that it was worth while to make easy the thorny path of knowledge, and that a beginning had to be made, that it would even be proper to seek the people in their homes through study courses, in their communal organizations through study circles, in their vacations through the Summer Assembly, and, gradually, in a little way at first, to revive the feeling latent in American Jews, bet never wholly dead, that there was something in Jewish knowledge worth knowing, in Jewish culture worth having, and in Jewish life worth living. Will anybody but a Luft-muensch quarrel with this programme? The man who ignores the conditions will keep on insisting that the people shall go to school and equip themselves by life-long study and practice in Jewish learning and life—or nothing. But the people cannot, or will not, whichever you please. To overcome this inability, or inertia, as the case