Rabbi Sees Orthodox Jewish Canadian Communities Paradoxy

“Canadian Orthodoxy is a paradoxy,” declared Rabbi Harry J. Stern of Temple Emanu-El, Montreal, in an interview here on the completion of a tour which he had made of the Western Canadian provinces for the purpose of intensive study of its Jewish communities. “I say that they are a paradoxy, because for the most part they have broken with the Shulkan Arukh and they haven’t found for themselves any liberal interpretations of Judaism. The old pattern does not work in the New World, and so we have Jews cleaving to Orthodoxy who observe the dietary laws only in the breach and who appear twice a year at the High Holy Days in the House of God.”

That the older generation of Western Canadian Jewry were trying to perpetuate “ghettoism” and not Judaism is the contention of Rabbi Stern, who said that they have well established Talmud Torahs and Yiddish folk schools, but that they over-emphasize language study and fail to explain the beauties and ethics and history of Judaism. According to him, they go to an extreme just as the Sunday school went at first to the other extreme in belittling the value of the Hebrew language.

In the communities that Rabbi Stern visited, he found that Judaism to many had but one purpose, that of collecting funds. “In fact, many of the audiences to whom I spoke seemed to miss something because I made no appeal for funds for any of the million things for which they are so often called upon. A visiting speaker who was trying to give them something instead of asking for something was unheard of,” he said.

Rabbi Stern credits the B’nai Brith with doing splendid work in trying to stimulate Jewish thought. He feels that the large religious organizations of the East are failing in their duty to send out regular speakers on Jewish cultural and religious subjects.

“I do not see Orthodox Judaism being perpetuated,” declared Rabbi Stern. “Would that it might live, but it is losing its young people, because it is unable to interpret Judaism in the vernacular. The spiritual, ethical and cultural sides have been completely ignored. Young people have not been given that interpretation which will enable them to live with dignity and pride among non-Jews.”