Rabbis' Report

Leaders of both Orthodox and Reform Judaism in the U.S. held their annual conventions within the past two weeks, reported on their faith's current condition. P: In Fallsburg, N.Y., 500 Orthodox leaders gathered for the 23rd annual convention of the Rabbinical Council of America, heard that Orthodoxy was on the upsurge "both quantitatively and qualitatively." Council President Rabbi Emmanuel Rack-man of Far Rockaway, N.Y. even called for a return to Jewish fundamentalism. Though fundamentalists may have once been "guilty of excesses," he admitted, "time has proved that they were no more guilty of going to extremes than their critics who replaced them in many temples and synagogues. Our convention is dedicated to fundamentalists." P: In Bretton Woods, N.H., the 500 leaders of Reform Judaism who gathered for the 70th annual convention of the Central Conference of American Rabbis heard virtually the opposite message--a warning that the trend back to ritualism is getting out of hand, notably in the matter of the bar mitzvah (literally, "Son of the Commandment"), which is a Jewish boy's spiritual coming of age. At 13 a boy marks the completion of his training in the Torah by delivering a discourse on the Law before his elders which is followed by a family feast. The feast, said Rabbi Joshua Trachtenberg of Temple Emeth in Teaneck, N.J., has a tendency to swallow up the ceremony. Ritualism is mostly nothing but a disguise for sentimentality, "a wish to give nachas [pride] to doting grandparents, whose interest is restricted to the brief, spotlighted appearance of grandsons in the pulpit, in a formal, usually empty ceremonial, and to the party afterward, which enables them ... to display the conspicuous waste which is the hallmark of such celebrations."

The 1959 edition of the American Jewish Year Book announced last week that there are now 5,260,000 Jews in the U.S. --80% native born. In 1899, two-thirds of the U.S. Jews were immigrants, and since then, the number of congregations --Orthodox, Conservative and Reform--has grown from 600 to more than 4,000.

The Jewish population of the world is estimated by the Year Book at more than 12 million. There are 680,000 in Latin America, 3,500,000 in Europe, 1,800,000 in Israel, 135,000 in Asia, 56,000 in Africa, 65,000 in Australia and New Zealand.

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