Festivals, Folklore & Philosophy: A Secularist Revisits Jewish Traditions

By Max Rosenfeld

This collection of his best essays, translations, and educational writing ranges from Jewish holidays to secular Jewish philosophy to the power of Jewish literature (ancient and modern) to explore the human experience. They still provide insight into the issues facing secular Jews in the 21st century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 10, 2019
• ISBN: 9781941718056

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Festivals, folklore & philosophy:

A secularist revisits Jewish traditions

by Max Rosenfeld

Editor: Letta Schatz

Editorial Committee: Letta Schatz, Bea Solomon, Joseph Soffen, Lawrence Schofer, Bess Katz, Jack Rosenfeld.

Cover design by Ruthie Rosenfeld.

Cover photo by Saul Koltnow.

Cover sculpture by Hans Huneke.

We gratefully acknowledge to Jewish Currents their permission to reprint a number of essays that first appeared in that magazine.

Print edition copyright © 1997 by the Sholom Aleichem Club, Philadelphia PA. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages.

Print ISBN: 0-9610870-2-1

eBook ISBN: 978-1-9417180-5-6

E-book edition copyright © 2019 by the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism – North American Section. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages.

E-book ISBN: 978-1-941718-05-6

For

Bob and Leda

Sue and Howie

Table of Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

GLOSSARY AND GENERAL NOTES

A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE

Part I. JEWISH HOLIDAYS REVISITED

INTRODUCTION

PESACH

A PASSOVER CONTROVERSY

THE GOAT IN THE HAGGADAH

JEWISH HEROISM AND LAG B’OMER

THE CHALLENGE OF SHEVUOS

THE TRUE STORY OF SHEVUOS

SHEVUOS AND THE GIVING OF THE TORAH

THE HIGH HOLY DAYS

OBSERVING ROSH HASHONAH AND YOM KIPPUR: A FIRST ATTEMPT

SUKKOS: SERIOUS AND OTHERWISE

CHANUKAH

LATKES AND DREYDLS AND LIGHTS

CHANUKAH AND JEWISH IDENTITY

BOKSER, ECOLOGY AND YOU

PURIM

REMEMBERING VASHTI

MANGER’S PURIMSHPIEL

PURIM AS PROTEST AND DISSENT

PART II: JEWISH FOLKORE AND FOLK HEROES From Biblical Lore to Yiddish Sayings and Tales

INTRODUCTION

FOLKLORE OF THE BIBLE

ENJOYING MYTHOLOGY AS MYTHOLOGY

JEWISH MYTHOLOGY IN YIDDISH LITERATURE

ADAM AND EVE AND THE APPLE

THE TEMPTATIONS OF SATAN

THE TOWER OF BABEL

A PLAGUE UPON THE INNOCENT CHILDREN

MOSES AND THE CUSHITE WOMAN

RICH AS KORAH

ETHICAL SAYINGS FROM THE TALMUD

FOLKLORE: FROM THIS YOU CAN MAKE A LIVING?

CLASSICAL JEWISH FOLKTALES

CHABAD AND THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

WHAT HAPPENED TO CHELM?

THE UBIQUITOUS EVIL-EYE

THE WHOLE BOOK OF CURSES

THE DUBNER MAGID

MOSES MAIMONIDES: DER RAMBAM

HIRSH LECKERT: FOLK HERO

SAVED BY A SONG

TWO STORIES ABOUT A POEM

Part III: THE UNFOLDING SECULAR JEWISH IDEA

INTRODUCTION

OUR SECULAR ROOTS ARE DEEP

PHILOSOPHER OF JEWISH SECULARISM—CHAIM ZHITLOVSKY

LEON KOBRIN ON LEFT ASSIMILATIONISM

THE JEWISH SECULAR SCHOOL MOVEMENT IN POLAND

JEWISH CULTURE—A WEAPON FOR SURVIVAL

USING THE TRADITION

MODERN JEWISH IDENTITY

BREAD AND ROSES

SPIRITUALITY IN SECULAR JEWISH LIFE: FACT OR FANTASY

STRENGTHENING A WORLD PEOPLE

FOREWORD

by Letta Schatz

The germ of the idea for this collection of Max Rosenfeld’s writings came in 1993, in the course of preparations for celebrating the Philadelphia Sholom Aleichem Club’s fortieth anniversary. The editor of the Club newsletter, Bea Solomon, was looking through bound volumes of the newsletter, volumes including almost 400 issues covering all of those 40 years. She was struck by nuggets of Max’s writing that she came upon, gems of articles buried in those back issues that had never been published elsewhere. In particular, there were the articles that Max had written occasionally over the years under the title Traditions Revisited, articles presenting information and perspectives for Secular Jews, ways to view and observe specific holidays and traditions, to approach Biblical lore, folklore, the sages, our history and values. What he had written still seemed fresh-minted—informative, thought-provoking, pertinent, worth being disinterred and shared with a wider audience. The newsletter staff recommended that the Sholom Aleichem Club publish a collection of the Traditions Revisited articles.

The question arose: Is there enough material for a book? How does an organization decide? It appoints a committee, of course. That three member committee consisted of Bea Solomon, the newsletter editor and a longtime Sholom Aleichem Club member, Dr. Joseph Soffen, longtime club member and professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, and me, a member of the newsletter staff and a teacher and free-lance writer. As we began rereading Max’s newsletter pieces, we recognized that they represented only a small proportion of Max Rosenfeld’s creative contribution to secular Jewishness: What of all of his columns and other published pieces in Jewish Currents? How about the many substantive papers he had written and presented to various secular groups?

An expanded, more ambitious concept for a book began to emerge. What we proposed was a collection of Max Rosenfeld’s writing that would fully represent his life’s concerns, the exploration of Secular Jewishness. Our committee brought that proposal to the Club’s Book Fund Committee, which has responsibility for any books that the Club publishes and which had already originated and shepherded to publication two collections of Max’s translations of American Yiddish short stories. It was also the guiding hand in the publication and revisions of the Club’s Haggadah, of which Max was a co-author and editor.

Both the Book Fund Committee and the Club’s Board approved the proposal, and our three member committee now found itself accepting responsibility for the expanded concept. From the start, Max Rosenfeld was actively involved: approving the concept, at our request suggesting and locating relevant writings. He unearthed copies of papers, workshop presentations, and even several previously unpublished pieces. As the writings were located, all three of us read every piece. We winnowed out some that seemed narrow in focus or dated. The committee that was formed to decide whether there were materials enough for a book found that they had evolved into an editorial committee.

We then came up with a tentative organization. Each of us took responsibility for careful reading of one (or two) of the sections, for noting articles or portions of articles that seemed redundant or repetitious, for making suggestions for further winnowing, for editing pieces and/or for combining them. At Max’s suggestion, we settled on three sections for this book: Jewish Holidays, Jewish Folklore, and the Unfolding Secular Jewish Idea. Some of the selections could have fit equally well in either of two sections. For instance, "The True Story of Shevuos" could have been included in the Folklore rather than the Holidays section. In several cases, where pieces that we could not bear to omit did not quite fit any section — e. g., Saved by a Song and Two Stories About a Poem — we stretched a bit to consider them as fitting into the Folklore category. We did not feel that categorization was as important as sharing the full range of Max’s writing.

The Book Fund Committee asked me to serve as editor and to help prepare the book for publication. With Max’s help and input, and in conjunction with several other members of the Book Fund Committee, I agreed to help see the job through. Max had the final word on all aspects of the collection: on which selections to include, on editing and revision of selections, on the organization of the book, and on its title (in a few cases, it must be admitted that, given Max’s characteristic modesty, the committee had a part in persuading him to make specific decisions).

Most of the selections in this book are Max Rosenfeld’s original writings, but we have also included some of his translations from the Yiddish as well as several of his adaptations of Yiddish folktales, thus more fully representing the breadth and flavor of his work. Some of the articles in this collection were papers which had been prepared only as oral presentations and had never appeared in print. Max undertook the task of rewriting those papers so as to make them more finished and readable.

Some selections were cut and/or combined to avoid repetition. Since some pieces had been written for the Sholom Aleichem Club newsletter, some for Jewish Currents, and some had been presented orally as papers, and also since the materials had been written over a period of several decades, Max had safely assumed that he could borrow from himself and use the same material, sometimes word-for-word, in more than one piece.

In some instances, we left duplicated portions because they were intrinsic to making or reinforcing different points or to fully expressing an idea. Discerning readers will recognize that there is much overlap between two selections: Our Secular Roots Are Deep and Zhitlovsky: Philosopher of Jewish Secularism. Both give histories of the Jewish Secular philosophy and movements, although the former, a paper written jointly by Max Rosenfeld and Dr. Joseph Soffen, covers the post-World War II period and the latter does not. There is, in fact, not only much similarity between the information in these two articles, but also a fair amount of borrowing from Zhitlovsky in the Rosenfeld-Soffen paper. Max makes no apologies for this. We thought it valuable for English-speaking Jews of our generation to be cognizant of Zhitlovsky’s contributions, and we also wanted the more complete history of Jewish Secularism to be found in the Rosenfeld-Soffen paper.

Preparing the book for publication took many hours of dedicated, loving effort on the part of other Book Fund Committee members. Bess Katz typed all of the manuscripts onto a computer. Jane Schofer helped in evaluating some of the selections and also in the tedious job of proofreading. Larry Schofer took the raw set of manuscript pages and did the layout preparations to ready the book for publication. In fact, Larry helped in every step of the way—evaluating selections, sharing in decisions, proofreading, and more. Jack Rosenfeld was the overall coordinator for every aspect of this publishing project—turning an idea and then a computer manuscript into a published book, taking responsibility for financial and technical arrangements, and for publicity.

Our special thanks to Ruthie Rosenfeld for the cover design. Although she is not a Sholom Aleichem Club member, she generously agreed to design the cover for her Uncle Max’s book.

INTRODUCTION

by Letta Schatz

Why do Jews always answer a question with another question? asks the familiar joke. To which the response, of course, is Why not?

Why begin the introduction to this collection of Max Rosenfeld’s writings with this joke? To which we respond—How else?

Max Rosenfeld was a respected secular Jewish thinker, teacher and writer, for whom questions indeed lead to questions which lead to more questions. He also had an eye for the humorous, ironic, irreverent, or ridiculous and repeatedly demonstrates his belief that learning should be kept light, down to earth, leavened with humor.

He never became the rabbi for which his paternal grandfather had groomed him from his earliest years. But, as many have noted, he became a rebbe in the real meaning of the word: a teacher and leader, respected and loved by literally hundreds of people. He was very much a mentsh: warm, caring, interested in people, accessible, unassuming. Max Rosenfeld was always known simply as Max to everyone—to the children in the Folkshul where he was director and teacher, to the parents and teachers there, to students in his adult classes, to members of the Sholom Aleichem Club and the other organizations in which he has been a member or leader. (I’m Max. Mr. Rosenfeld is my father.)

From the early 1950s, the central driving force of Max Rosenfeld’s life, activities, intellectual interests, pursuits, and writings, the focus of his mind and heart and spirit, was the development of a Jewish lifestyle, a set of values, and a sense of identity for those who see themselves as Secular Jews, or in more recent parlance, as Secular Humanistic Jews. Integrally connected to this concern was his commitment to keeping alive the Yiddish language and the culture embedded in and transmitted by it, as witnessed by the words of the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJO), which honored Max with a special award in 1987: In recognition of his many years of selfless devotion to the advancement of the Yiddish Language and Jewish education in general., and… his numerous contributions to the growth and development of Secular Judaism and the survival of the Jewish people and its culture.

For all of those years, Max asked hard questions, exploring wide-ranging issues of deep significance to American Jews in the second half of the twentieth Century and relevant to the twenty-first century as well. In his inimitable manner, he continued probing, learning, searching and researching: What does it mean to be Jewish? If, as secular Jews we believe that in the beginning was humanity rather than in the beginning was the Word then what are the values that link us as secular Jews to thousands of years of our past and to Jews around the world? What is there in our past that we want to salvage and preserve? What do we take from our history, our cultural heritage, our literature, folklore and folk heroes? How do we observe Jewish holidays? How do we approach the Bible? How do we preserve the Yiddish language and the culture embedded in it in a world where the number of Yiddish speakers continues to decline? What shall we teach our children so that they will know and feel what it means to be Jewish?

Over all those decades, Max raised such questions and sought answers with and for others. He was among the founding members of the Sholom Aleichem Club in his native Philadelphia, one of the first of the English-speaking Secular Jewish organizations that emerged in the aftermath of World War II. From the beginning, this largely self-taught scholar with his inquiring and creative intellect, his love of learning, his gentle and unassuming manner, his ready yet understated humor, and his passionate commitment to Jewish survival, played a seminal role in that organization as one of its first presidents, as a cultural leader, as a teacher, and as an unofficial scholar-in-residence. He served as director and also as a teacher at the Philadelphia Jewish Children’s Folkshul for 12 years, from 1963 to 1975, and his perspectives, innovations, and philosophy left a permanent imprint on that school. He was a contributor to Jewish Currents beginning in 1953, edited a column — Our Secular Jewish Heritage — in that magazine for 25 years, and served on its editorial board from 1981 to 1993. He participated in the formation of the CSJO and took an active role at most of its 25 annual conferences, presenting two keynote addresses, leading workshops, presenting papers, acting as a discussant. He was honored by awards from the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews, the CSJO, and Jewish Currents. He was invited by a number of secular Jewish schools and organizations in the United States and Canada to give lectures or to lead seminars or workshops.

Max, a prolific and sought-after translator into and from the Yiddish language, was open to every translating challenge. He published 26 books of translations, all commissioned: novels, poetry, memoirs, philosophy, history, a play, and even an opera. Two collections of short stories by American Yiddish writers, selected and translated by Max Rosenfeld, were commissioned and published by the Sholom Aleichem Club — Pushcarts and Dreamers in 1967 (at first entitled A Union for Shabbos and now in its fourth printing) and New Yorkish and Other American Yiddish Stories in 1995 (the latter in conjunction with the CSJO). With Elsie Levitan and Bess Katz, he co-authored and edited the first edition of Haggadah for a Secular Celebration of Pesach. That haggadah, first published by the Sholom Aleichem Club in 1975 sold more than twenty thousand copies in the United States, Canada, and in a number of foreign countries.

Max’s strong sense of Jewish identity and his love of learning and of scholarly pursuits can be traced to the diverse influences in his family where his grandparents’ traditional, observant orthodoxy and his parents’ more secular Jewish viewpoint, lifestyle, and commitment all played a part in his childhood and adolescence. The differing approaches to Jewishness in his family are epitomized by the fact that his Grandfather Rosenfeld helped to found a synagogue in South Philadelphia, while Max’s father became an active member of the Workmen’s Circle and helped to found one of that organization’s secular schools, also in South Philadelphia. Max’s mother, a dressmaker, vocally expressed her skepticism of religion. Although they didn’t eat "goyish [non-Jewish] foods" in Max’s home, neither did they observe the rules of kashruth, so his strictly observant grandparents never ate there.

Kosher or not, theirs was a very Jewish home. Yiddish was the language spoken; Max never learned English until he entered public school at age six. All three of the children — Max and his two younger siblings, Bess and Jack — received a thoroughgoing Jewish education extending well into their teens. Max’s father was an avid reader of The Daily Forward, and its news and views were constantly shared, discussed and argued. Theirs was a music loving family, and Yiddish songs were part of family celebrations. The strength of the sense of Jewish identity and commitment as an influence in the Rosenfeld family is demonstrated by the fact that not only Max but also both of his siblings have played such an important role in the Secular Jewish movement. Both his sister, Bess Katz, and his brother, Jack Rosenfeld, have served as officers and leaders in the Sholom Aleichem Club, the CSJO, and the International Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism.

Despite his own secular viewpoint, Max’s father allowed his strictly Orthodox father to take charge of the Jewish education of his eldest grandson, Max. One of Grandfather Rosenfeld’s sons, an uncle only 10 years Max’s senior, was already on the road to becoming a rabbi, and his grandfather’s intentions were for young Max to follow that same path. Grandfather Rosenfeld arranged for Max to attend the cheder [school, lit. room] of a highly esteemed rebbe [rabbi/teacher], whom Max remembers as an imposing man, but more significantly as a genuine Talmud scholar and gifted teacher. Max not only prepared for his Bar Mitzvah with this scholarly rebbe but continued to study with him for all of the time that he was in high school, moving on from the Torah to the study of the Talmud. Max’s parents had a small mom-and-pop store in a non-Jewish neighborhood. The store was open seven days a week with no time off for Shabbos. However, for all of his school years, Max spent every Shabbos and Jewish holiday with his grandparents/attending synagogue, observing all of the rituals and traditions. That too was part of his zayde’s [grandfather’s] education of his grandson. When Max graduated from Central High School in 1929, Grandfather Rosenfeld proposed sending him to a yeshiva in New York where one of his sons had studied for the rabbinate. At that point, Max’s mother put her foot down. She effectively opposed any plan of sending her teenage son off to school in New York City. Thus, his grandfather’s dream for Max to become a rabbi was permanently sidetracked.

Max began Temple University but attended for just one year. That was his only year of university education. It was the beginning of the Depression, and Max needed to go to work to help support his family. However, he sought and found another way to continue his education. At the suggestion of his young uncle (the rabbi), Max applied to Gratz College, a training school for Hebrew School teachers. Before he could be admitted to Gratz, however, he had to take summer courses to overcome an unanticipated deficiency in his Jewish education. To meet Gratz’s entrance requirements, he now had to become familiar with the Bible in English. All of Max’s previous Bible study had been in Yiddish; his learned rebbe had translated the Torah for him from Hebrew to Yiddish.

Classes at Gratz College met two evenings a week plus Sunday morning; it was possible to work while being a fully enrolled student in the four-year course. At Gratz, a very different Jewish education opened up to Max, one much more liberal, broad, and modern than what Max had experienced before. He studied some Talmud, but there were also courses in Jewish history, in Jewish customs and traditions and culture, and in Hebrew. Here for the first time he met students with radical, socialist, secular views, and he traces his first secularist thinking to their influence.

At Gratz College he met his future wife, Rose, who was also a student there. Depression or not, they were married in 1934 and were deeply bonded, sharing and loving partners ever since. They raised two children, have been proud devoted grandparents, and recently delighted in the birth of their first great-grandchild. Both Rose and Max worked to support their family. Rose continued to be employed as a secretary and office manager. Over the years, Max found a variety of ways to earn a living. He worked in department stores and then went to business school, where he took a number of commercial courses, and then became office manager in a commercial laundry. During World War II, to make a contribution to the war effort, he worked as a riveter in a defense plant. After the war, he apprenticed to a printer and with his brother Jack operated a small printing shop for 20 years. For the next 30 years, he was a freelance writer and translator and part-time teacher. Although Max Rosenfeld’s formal education ended when he finished Gratz College, he was a life-long learner.

Max’s ongoing self-education, inquiry, and research and his development as a scholar were intertwined with his organizational activities. That self-teaching had its start when he became active and a leader in neighborhood anti-Fascist organizations in the years preceding World War II. He felt that as Jews were being attacked, he needed to know more, and that as a leader he needed to be better informed: about why such things were happening, about what could be done, about Jewishness in general. His sense of that need became much stronger after the war. With the destruction of the Jews and the Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, Max became convinced that, for those who had survived the Holocaust, If there was anything to be saved, we were going to have to save it.

He felt an intense sense of responsibility for preserving Jewish culture and the Yiddish language and concomitantly a deep intellectual and emotional conviction that it was now much more necessary to define oneself as a Jew. Since he was not religious but had such strong feelings about Jewishness, the progression to de-fining himself as a secular Jew seemed a natural one. The other twenty-plus families who joined together to create the Sholom Aleichem Club in 1953 shared similar needs and convictions. The article in which Max explains that club’s beginnings is titled, significantly: Jewish Culture—A Weapon for Survival.

He read magazines, periodicals and books that friends and acquaintances lent to him, bought books, spent innumerable evenings and week-ends at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. He read widely and critically. If something interested him, he persisted in pursuing that interest, following where it led him. Many books that were not secular in viewpoint nonetheless provided him with material and perspectives that were thought-provoking, significant, and useful. He had many discussions with friends with differing backgrounds and points of view. He conducted a probing intellectual correspondence with his rabbi uncle in New York, inquiring about interpretations, facts, or traditions, making use of his uncle’s responses, albeit often with a secular spin.

His love of the Yiddish language led to his unquenchable appetite for reading in Yiddish. In the years immediately following WWII, he began to read whatever he could lay his hands on—newspapers, magazines, books. As this became known, friends and fellow organization members began to bring him copies of Yiddish periodicals, including collections of back-issues, and books, both old and new. He began to haunt used bookstores, and again libraries, particularly Gratz College library. He read and studied the writings of the earlier generations of Yiddish-speaking secularists, became familiar with their movements, ideologies, controversies, and contributions. His ever-expanding knowledge of these primary sources and his ability to share what he learned with English-speaking Jews made a valuable contribution to Secular Jewish thought in the United States. His knowledge of Yiddish writers, thinkers, and literature kept growing, as did his mastery of the Yiddish language. He had grown up speaking everyday Yiddish; he had learned Torah Yiddish, but now he was becoming a student of literary and scholarly Yiddish.

He often read aloud to his wife Rose in Yiddish; Sholom Aleichem’s stories were among their favorites. He was invited to do a Yiddish reading for a secular Jewish women’s group to which Rose belonged, and before he knew it he was receiving many requests to read aloud to Yiddish speaking groups. For relaxation, as a hobby, he began doing translations from the Yiddish—stories, poems, articles, songs, sayings—whatever appealed to him, or seemed of special interest, or fit some need of the Sholom Aleichem Club or of his teaching. That hobby began to consume more of his time, to assume more and more importance, to bring him recognition and income, and finally to evolve into a profession.

His very first submission to Jewish Currents in 1953 was a translation of a story by Sholom Aleichem—fittingly, a humorous dialog between a writer and publisher. Although the editors were surprised to receive this unsolicited manuscript from some completely unknown writer in Philadelphia, they published that story—A Proposal of Marriage (the opening selection in this collection). From that time on, the unknown from Philadelphia became a steady contributor. In the early years, it was only as a translator. Thus, between 1953 and 1958, more than 30 of Max Rosenfeld’s translations—stories, poems, folksongs and articles—appeared in Jewish Currents. He began to be sought out as a translator, commissions for translating books followed, and over time Max earned international renown as a Yiddish scholar.

Preserving Yiddish and perpetuating and promoting the Yiddish language and culture was a driving passion, and Max found many varied ways to pursue it. He taught courses in Yiddish language and in Yiddish literature at a number of quite diverse locations. In the literature courses, his aim has been to make that rich body of writing accessible to the many who can understand the Yiddish language but cannot read it. He also wants the students to have the opportunity to hear and savor the selections in the full flavor of the original Yiddish. Thus, it is his practice to read the literature aloud in Yiddish, to provide the students with an English translation of every selection and also to give some explanations of Yiddish terms and idioms.

In the Philadelphia area, Max Rosenfeld developed a reputation not only as a Yiddish scholar but also as a wit and a raconteur, a talented reader and teller of stories and jokes, both in Yiddish and in translations from the Yiddish. He has presented many programs of Jewish humor—mainly readings from Yiddish writers such as Sholom Aleichem and Moishe Nadir and Itzik Manger, but also jokes, folktales, and folk sayings. Longtime Sholom Aleichem Club members nostalgically recall the Herring and Potatoes evenings during the ‘60s, where Max’s humorous presentations and those two simple foods were the main ingredients of enjoyable social gatherings. As Max’s reputation spread, he was invited to present similar programs to other area Jewish groups.

During the 1950s Max developed another kind of presentation—a musical lecture—in which he played recordings of Yiddish songs. He gave those songs a context, elaborated on them, and provided translations to make them accessible to those who spoke little or no Yiddish. This