The Phoenix Jewish news., 1955-09-16
The next HUNDRED YEARS

grandchildren and great-grandchll-
dren will have none of the ghetto
characteristics of their forefatherS.
They will be tall and broad-ShOul-
dered, even blond, keen of mind,
and what is more important, emo
tionally secure. They will not be
afraid or ashamed of being Jews,
for they will be deeply rooted in
America. This is the land for which
their fathers died. And these new
American Jews will have a hunger
to know more about their religion
and to transmit it to their children.
look for American Jewry to de-
velop a Golden Age of learning
and religious culture that should
outStrip even that of Babylon and
Spain No soil has ever been so
favorable as America for this pur-
pose. Here we have a tradition of
sympathy and understanding for
religious differences that has never
been known in the world before.
L FORESEE THE emergence of
a new Judaism - an American
Judaism, which will not be Ortho-
doX, Conservative or Reform in the
patterns that we now know them,
but a fusion of the best in all of
them. Rationalism and progressive
liberalism will predominate; yet 1T
will be warmed and enriched by
the feVor and color of traditional
Judaism.
This new Judaism is being accel-
Grated by the movement to the
suburbs. 1t has been estimated that
zoo, 900 Americans move to the
suburbs every year, and a very
significant part of our young Jew
ish population is represented in the
40 million who now live there.
The whole of Jewish life is in
evitably being affected by suburb
an living. The young people are not
able to maintain three different
types of religion" and they will
have to settle on the synagogue
which will suit the majority. They
are, for the most part, college-bred
and liberal in their thinking, free
from the fanaticism of their i'm
migrant forebears. They are reli-
gious trail-blaZers, striking out on
their own.
THE FUTURE synagogue wi
be small, consisting of several hum
dred families instead of thousands.
This will enable the rabbi and con-
gregant to have an intimate and
personal relationship. He will be
Al frrfn
moral guide, their counselor, and
personal friend as well as COM
munal leader.
l predict that the synagogue of
the future will be a teaching syna-
gogue, a Jewish academy, where
the emphasis will not be so much
on mOraliZing as on instruction.
There will be a great expansion OF
Jewish education for adults as we'll
as for children, which will give our
religiously lost generation chance
to catch up with the content and
meaning of Judaism.
/ FORESEE THE synagogue re-
stored to it's former centrality; ev-
erything Jewish will take place
within its confines. 1t will again
become the tri-part house it once
was: the Beth Tefilah (the house
of prayer), the Beth Hamidrash
(house of study, and the Beth Am
(meeting-house), patterned
much like the old New England
Westinghouse of Colonial days.
1 foresee a closer, more friendly
relationship between the Syna-
gogue and the Church. Today they
are different, each going its own
way. Tomorrow, though still differ
ent, they will walk and work to-
gether in mutual understanding,
with the heightened purpose that
together they must combat the
breakdown in private and public
morals and the anti-God philoso-
phies.
AS FOR 'ANTI-SENIITISM, I pre-
dict that it will abate in this coun-
try. 1t may never disappear, be-
cause Illustration, jealousy, suspi-
cion, the dislike of the different