that when all the fulfillment of the world to come is of-fered him as a reward, he can only ask for a ghetto favor.

I do not propose that in reasserting our messianic obliga-tion through political action we should attach ultimate hope to given candidates or causes. My realism makes plain that politics is not religion and democratic action, for all its worth, is not a substitute for God's redemptive acts. The evil inclination is as unrelenting as the rabbis said and with all our resources of culture, means, psychi-atry and body-sensitivity — not to mention Torah and mitzvot — we shall be lucky to keep from transgression. Last year was hardly proof that man is naturally good. I only affirm that despite and, in fact, because of, the evil around us, we must do what we can to improve the world. As bad as things are, they would be worse if we let our messianism turn passive and abandoned society to the evil inclination. Self-defeat is a particularly pre-sumptuous sin in an age conscious of human autonomy. By contrast, Jewish hope is so extraordinary a human phenomenon because it has been asserted, again and again, despite the experience of the most terrible vicious-ness. Last Yom Kippur brought us close to the edge of despair once again. Yet somehow we reasserted our hope despite our fears. And we must continue in that spirit. Hope without realism would be illusion. Realism without hope would mean despair. But brought together by the alchemy of Jewish faith, realism and hope produce mes-sianic devotion, endurance and action. For us, then, the new year must mean the dedication of a significant part of our energy to the betterment of our society.

Creation and havdalah Harold M. Schulweis

The celebration of the creation of the universe and of man — despite the claims of Rosh Hashanah ticket hold-ers — occurs once a week. At Havdalah, each of the three benedictions over wine, spices and fire employs the verb boray (creates). The blessings of creation are followed by acknowledgement of the divine separation of holiness and neutrality, light and darkness, Israel and the nations, Sabbath and the weekdays. What has creation to do with separation?

The connection may be grounded in the Biblical treat-ment of creation, in which God is described not as pro-ducing something out of nothing, but as separating dark-ness from light, upper from lower waters, day from night. No fewer than five times in the opening chapter of Genesis, the Bible uses forms of the same verb (vayavdel) to describe God's dividing and ordering the elements out of chaos. Nine times in the same first chapter, the Bible

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uses the untranslated preposition bain (between), from which is derived the term binah, the discerning intelli-gence. And it is for the gift of binah that praise is of-fered to God in the paragraph of the silent meditation recited at the conclusion of the Sabbath. "Thou endowv est man with knowledge and teachest man discernment (binah)." The world and man are created unfinished. Man, who shares a promised partnership with God in the creation of the world, must make a world for himself. As God has ordered cosmos out of chaos, by separating, dividing and distinguishing its forces, man must create his olam• ; (world) out of the undifferentiated givenness into whicl he is born. Indispensable for such world construction ass) the discriminatory intelligence.

Holding the differences together |:

Not to distinguish is from ought, self from other, is to •

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level the universe flat and to accept with either cosmic joy or cosmic sadness the world as is. The torch of Havdalah is a reminder of the moral blindness which will see no evil because it will not make distinctions. "Woe unto those who call evil good and good evil, who change darkness into light and light into darkness, who change bitter into sweet and sweet into bitter." (Isaiah 5)

But woe equally to those who turn distinction into op-position, who change dualities into dualisms, who con-vert polarities into polarizations. Havdalah-v/isdom does not divide the universe into irreconcilable forces so that we. are compelled to choose either/or: Either sacred or secular, either light or darkness, either Israel or the na-tions, either mine or yours, either them or us. Some have twisted the Havdalah into hard disjunctives, forgetting that the distinctions need each other for mean-ing. The Sabbath needs the weekday, the Holy, the secu-lar, and Israel the nations of the world. To ignore the other side, to choose only one side of the Havdalah dis-tinctions, turns us into either manic Pollyannas or depres-sive Cassandras.

To see life through one issue, one interest, one ideology, held close to the eyeball, fashions a myopic unity of God's world. The wisdom of Havdalah as an instrument of creation is in the discernment of differences which are to be held together in delicate balance, so as to construct an olam worthy of God's blessing.

On Rosh Hashanah we do more than offer assent to God's creativity. We resolve to emulate divine wisdom by order-ing the chaotic powers within us and our environment; by distinguishing the energies of life not to create warring bi-furcations but to harmonize them into a whole world. God separated and divided the energies and saw every-thing that He had made, and behold it was very good.

The new piety and the old politics Richard A. Davis

We Jews seem to have a congenital, continual imbalance between our politics and our piety. In every era, one was dominant; the other, by and large was neglected. For ex-ample, 200 years ago in Eastern Europe, Jewish life, though protected, was oppressed. We have romanticized that life as a simple one in which piety was all pervasive. So etchings of old and learned rabbis stooped over the pages of tattered books decorate our homes. "Fiddler on the Roof" ran on Broadway and in the movie houses for years. A Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court even de* scribed Tevye's Shabbat celebration as an example of the American way. And the novels of Isaac Bashevis Singer

have become best sellers. But that is the romantic image. Life may have been simple in the villages. But the reign of the persecutors, the tyranny of pogroms and the limi-tations of discriminatory economic policies are needed to give a more accurate picture. The reality was one of harsh oppression, though the romance is one of piety and sim-plicity. There was necessarily more political activity in shtetl life than we usually acknowledge. Nonetheless, piety remained dominant, for piety is the politics of a powerless people.

A new image for the Jew Our great grandfathers were painfully aware of the in-adequacies of their "court Jews" and their community leaders. They knew the fate of their oppressed people would not substantially be changed by political ma-neuvering. They relied, instead, on the ineffable and in-visible Master of the Universe, God. They concentrated on the holy irrelevances of piety so as to survive periods of political impotence. At the turn of the century, the scene of Jewish history switched to a different stage: to Western Europe, America and Palestine. Emancipation gave rise to auto-emancipation. Political rights gradually engendered the sort of self-respect which makes possible healthy self-assertion. The Jew could act. No one, not even God, could do his work for him. The Zionist Move-ment was created, and national fervor gave the Jew the bravado to tell the world, "We are a People." Folksy Yiddish was shed for assertive Hebrew. The Jew became a pioneer, a worker, a ruler. Provisional governments struggled and, finally, a State was established. As a result of the Six Day War an image of Jewish power prevailed.

In America, during this time, if our people were not busy with Zionism (or anti-Zionism) then they were fighting the anti-Semites. Civil rights and human welfare, educa-tion, housing, medical care all enlisted Jewish energies. Jewish ethics meant social action and that, in turn, meant political activism. We had created a new way of living as a Jew. The modern Jew no longer bore the self-image of ghetto powerlessness. We saw ourselves as a power — and so we became political — but also impious. Piety is for a powerless people. Politics is the way of a powerful people.

Does piety mean powerlessness? But the Yom Kippur War shattered our illusions. We realized that our power is severely limited. The State of Israel depends upon the nations. Hence, even the State of Israel is in Galut. How much the more so, America. The Yom Kippur War was a religious signal. During it, the scenario was written for an era of powerlessness.

There is abundant evidence in our synagogues, schools

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