Greeting and Blessing:
I am in receipt of your letter. Since it is customary to remember one in prayer by one’s full Hebrew name and the mother’s Hebrew name, would you please let me know these names when you write to me next time.
With regard to the subject matter of your letter, specifically in reference to your success in defending your thesis, it is not clear why this has left you with a bitter taste, as you indicate. Surely you know that this is the usual thing for a thesis to be criticized; indeed, this is the purpose of every defense. It is not unusual, also, that precisely when the thesis has strong supporters, it will also have strong critics. Finally, surely it should be a source of satisfaction to you that despite the attacks on the thesis, you were able to overcome and successfully defend your work.
With reference to your general question as to whether you have chosen the right course, etc., I trust that you know the basic principle of our Sages, of blessed memory, that the essential thing is the deed (Avot 1:17), that is to say the practical result. Similarly, in your case, whether you have taken the right course or not will depend upon how you utilize your degree; if you do so in the direction of the good and the holy, and use it to help illuminate your environment – it will prove that it was the right course.
On the other hand, if your qualifications and capacities will not be utilized, as above, or utilized in the opposite direction, the inevitable conclusion, with all due respect, will have to be that it was not the right course. For a person must not be a passive observer in his environment and society, not to mention a negative factor; he has a duty to his society to be a positive and active agent to improve his environment. And everyone has the capacity to do so, at least to some degree.
If the above is true of every human being, there is an additional and very essential aspect in your case, as a Jew. Consider: the Jewish people, hence every member of it, has always found itself in the unique situation of being a small minority among the nations, most of whom were not friendly, and very often quite hostile. In these unfavorable circumstances, Jewish survival has always been a problem and a challenge. Consequently, this situation imposes a special and sacred duty on every Jew, man or woman, to do the maximum to strengthen and ensure Jewish survival.
However, a Jew should not view this duty simply as an inevitable obligation, but should see in it his privileged divine mission in this world, through which the Jew attains fulfillment.
Moreover, this is not something which can be left to the Jew’s choice, for his choice lies only in whether he desires, or does not desire, to fulfill his duty; but that this is his sacred duty is not of his choosing, since he was born a Jew. And being born a Jew, he arrives in this world with a rich heritage, which equips him with special capacities, special privileges, and special obligations.
There is no point in his arguing that he had not been consulted, etc., for whether this argument is valid or not, it does not change the reality, in the same way as the reality of every man in that inasmuch as one receives from society a variety of positive benefits, one is obligated to the society to compensate it with his best efforts. To argue that these obligations have been imposed on him without his prior consent, etc., cannot serve as an excuse to shirk these responsibilities.
I am impelled to add yet another essential point. The survival of our Jewish people, and the impact that this matter has upon every Jewish individual, is not something that has as yet to be investigated and experimented with. The Jewish people is one of the oldest in the world, and in its long history as a nation it has gone through various conditions and circumstances, mostly very unfavorable, as mentioned above. If one wishes to know the secret of Jewish survival under circumstances that have obliterated larger and stronger nations, one has but to apply the same scientific method as in other cases.
This letter will Continue in the next issue
