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Jewish Population
- Abstract
To the Editor:
. . . In response to Edward Norden’s “Counting the Jews” [October 1991], let me say that there is only one reason that . . . compels one to be a Jew and makes being a member of the Jewish people a thing of greatness and destiny. . . . There is a God, Who is the God of history, Who created the world, . . . Who appeared before an entire people and declared, “Now, therefore, if you will keep My covenant then shall you be a special treasure unto Me above all the nations.”. . .
It is this law, this Torah, that created the Jews as a nation and as a nation with a reason to be different. If not for this, the Jew becomes as anachronistic as the Bulgarian or the Canadian or the Frenchman, as absurd and as dangerous a propagator of nationalism as any of the others. . . . If not for this, why not melt and indeed dissolve? If not for this, what need for the pathetic, illogical, and costly suburban temple and its services at which we Jews raise high the scroll of Moses and cry out “This is the Law that Moses set before the Children of Israel, by the word of God,” and don’t believe a word of it? . . . Moses would not recognize the Judaism of the suburban temples; he would descend the mountain again and smash the golden calves from Miami Beach to Malibu. . . .
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