1. You keep mentioning the "non-religious". What are the basic principles of the non-religious Jew?
2. What is the non-religious Jewish way of life?
3. Who are the spiritual leaders of the non-religious Jew of our generation?
4. What is the fabric that binds non religious Jews the world over?
5. For how many generations has this fabric withstood the stress and strain of assimilation?
6. Why is Christian education preferable to Jewish education?

Have Jews come to Israel for the purpose of being in their own Land without the necessity of following Jewish law or carrying out Jewish traditions? or Have the Jews come to Israel to live a completely Jewish life in the Jewish homeland?

Would it not be useful to refocus the discussion purely to an analysis of the Jewish religion and its role in the history of the survival of the people and the educative function inherent for the making of a Jewish Israeli in our day.
I searched the lead article of Sept. 12th for the "Love of Religion".
I didn't find it.

Where was the idea of Jewish continuation presented or even suggested as a goal? I didn't see it!

Shouldn't we be concerned about the 1500 Jewish children in missionary schools in this country as admitted to by the department of education or 3000 as suggested by the "Peilim" as the more accurate figure.

Are these numbers dangerous?

Do you recognize no claim on a Jew beyond what he happens to like and no claim to his past or his future. Has a Jew no obligation or allegiance to his religion, or to his people?

Do you believe that an Israeli has no obligation to be loyal to Israel but has the right to join the enemy camp and he and his children to become non members of the Jewish people.

What is your reaction to Jews who leave Israel to "greener" fields abroad?
Do you recognize the right of a nation to demand of its members allegiance above their own private likes and that they have duties and obligations to their country.
Is it not true that some things cannot be legislated.
Is an ultra orthodox Jew more intransigent than an orthodox Christian?.
What is the difference between the non-orthodox and those extremely poor Jews who don't send their children to missionary schools?
Why is a Christian missionary trying to convert Jews any more acceptable than Jewish fanatics bent on retaining their own diminished (by Christians) numbers?
What should the goals of Israeli education be?

You are very careless with words. "Organized hooliganism" is a contradiction of terms for as soon as it is organized it no longer is hooliganism.
That groups of Jews should see the efforts of the missions to pervert the minds of Jewish children, to divert them from their own history and future is not surprising.
The wonder is not that there are memories of the inquisitions of the church and of the nazi holocaust but that there are Jews who seem able to forget it!
Isn't it odd that no irreligious group found it imperative to act against a mission threat? Can it be doubted that the church looks upon Israel as a fertile field for conversion?

Do you think that no effort should be taken by Jews to avert such a calamity?
I deem the missions a danger to the continuation of the Jewish people and do not think that my tolerance has to be so taxed that I should allow this usurpation of my duty and my right to educate my own children for Jewish living. Between the fanatics of freedom and the fanatics of religion there is little choice. However, I see less threat to the continuation of the Jew in the establishment of Yeshivot than in the establishment of mission schools. The Yeshiva can lead to a rebirth of Jewish learning and living.
The history of conversion among those popes is a history of those popes who had converted and had augmented evil for the Jewish people. Must one be reminded of Savonarola who was so incredibly cruel to the Jews.

Are not our children too precious to jeopardize by not giving them a deeper appreciation of their past and a deeper understanding of the forces against them..
As Heine said, We no longer have the courage to wear a beard, to fast, to hate, to suffer. What is the motive of the reformation? Those who have received their enlightenment from those who wish to give Judaism new meanings ignore the continued struggle of the Jewish people to maintain itself. Others desire evangelical Christianity under Jewish names...

Let us be honest. We do not like missionaries. Though some monasteries saved some Jews from Hitler's holocaust and we must be thankful for that. They were those who were touched by the Christian ideal based on the Jewish Halachah, i.e. Whatever is left in our care shall be returned unharmed or changed..

No social organization that stands beyond geographical limits and depends on philosophical, biological and metaphysical sources can allow itself to have parts of itself torn off without protest.
We cannot afford to lose any Jew, not by compulsion nor defection - a kind of traitorousness that any body politic must condemn. No country allows traitors in the name of freedom of thought. To Persons born in America, loyalty is expected and demanded.

By what went on at the Ecumenical congress can be seen that the church itself recognizes its teachings as a source of anti-Semitic feelings among its adherents and to its credit has tried to eradicate these teachings.
But they are not eradicated. Should we be so stupid as not to see it ourselves, not to recognize this virus and not to base our national respect on our right and duty to protect our own children from the virus of the hate of the Jew.

Our national self respect lies in the knowledge of our history and the identification of oneself with it to the point where one's behavior is directed towards enhancing its name, glorifying its past and its present behavior making this time a glorious past for future generations. It is owed to them. Having gotten our own land, for the security of the future, we must we must be more careful , more protective, more anxious about every little square in the mosaic of their character, about the security of their future. Having gotten the land for their own, for their own way of life, they must always be cognizant of their duty to future generations and hold the key to that Jewish future jealously in their hands and be ever on the watch for trespassers, for inroads, and like a porcupine when threatened even distantly ,we must raise our defenses and let nothing approach.

You say that the people of Israel are in no danger of being swallowed up.
"No danger', I heard in Frankfort, in 1932 when my brother was beaten up by a gang of Nazi hoodlums and when he complained to the American embassy, they were helpless and told him to go home to the safe U,S.

"No danger" I was told in Vienna in 1938, 3 days after the Anschluss.
"No danger' I heard in Warsaw in 1939.
"No danger" I heard in Holland, in Belgium, in France.
By then I was a bit deaf to "no danger"
We are an optimistic people. We like the sound of "No danger". But history has proved again and again that there is danger. Why ignore it?

Why allow our children to be exposed to an alien religion? Put positively, Jewish children should be educated in Jewish institutes of learning in order to mold loyal citizens, willing to sacrifice time, money and life itself for its welfare. In our case, where history and religion are inextricably intermingled, it is impossible to have contempt for the one alone without the other.
"We Jews have a right to Israel because we were evicted by the sword but never gave up our claim although we were dispersed throughout the world.

Between missionary education and Jewish education there is no choice. Little as we might like to admit it, it is the ultra-orthodox who are the most ardent watchdogs of Judaism and are ready to sacrifice their freedom, their very selves for even a letter of Jewish law as they understand it. We keep silent when I feel the very heart of Jewish living maligned and mutilated by the flamboyant desecration of Yom Kippur by bathing suited youths roaring past the synagogue on motor cycles on Yom Kippur? There are those who deliberately negate the refreshment of the soul of the Sabbath through meditation and prayer and quiet pursuits. Do they really have the right to boisterous, noisy hooliganism on days of quiet?.

What is the meaning of the rights of the non-religious?
Religious requirements are of no interest to the irreligious!
By what principles does he live? It would seem that the principle is "I have the right to do what I like to disregard the legal and religious law of the Jewish people through the ages, saying "It doesn't apply to me"; I have the right to cut myself off from any of the forms and customs, worship and way of life; I am not bound. I am as good a Jew as you are. I live in Israel!"

You perhaps do not see that an absence of principle is absurd. There is no such thing as a right to nothing.
There must be something! Now if this something is your right to cut yourself off, it is a clear contradiction to the whole philosophy and direction of Jewish life. Every Jew is responsible for every other Jew is a principle!

Eating kosher has meaning for a Jew, eating ham is destructive. Untold Jews have died rather than negate their Jewishness by eating ham and if for that reason alone kashrut has become more than a question of belief. It has become an impelling method of Jewish identity.

Being secular has reached such proportions in this country that Jews can not be differentiated from "goyim".
What is the non-religious concept? Where is its Jewishness? What is it hoping to contribute? What positive force does it represent? On what historic premise does it stand? What does it mean?
Some Jews came to Israel thinking that in Israel history and the moral of the past and can be thrown off and can begin again, born anew, as it were. This feeling is not a principle.

There are Jews who came to Israel to be able to carry out all the rules and regulations of Judaism in peace in their own land undisturbed by strange people who cannot be expected to understand. What can be more paradoxical than an Israel, the land of the Jews, where a Jew cannot practice his religion as completely as he is capable of. Is there really too much interference in our private lives? There is no Jewish life where there is a "right" to eat treife, to desecrate the Sabbath, or to sleep with your neighbor's wife.

Have the non-religious been deeply alienated from the religious or have the religious been alienated by the non-religious?. Has respect for one's past and love of one's customs and ceremonies ceased to mean anything? Is this all only a matter of taste? Taste is hardly a reason to break down the fabric of law and custom that has maintained the Jewish people for generations.
The history of the Jewish people has nurtured family life and given it a special flavor.

I find many things "distasteful", having to license my car every year, to pay taxes, to pay rent, the white dress of the bride who is known to no longer be virgin. Many rules and regulations are distasteful but we assent to them because we understand their necessity.
Some word, "distasteful"! If a young couple are serious about entering into marriage they should be glad that someone takes a serious view about it and takes more interest than just the wedding cake.

The ideas of inconvenience and distaste are hardly fitting. The laws objected to are not some new fangled notions but are part and parcel of our old and venerable religion. Every system of law throws hardship on some people.
Judges may be fallible, may even be dishonest, two human weaknesses that do not cause us to disregard the system of law that controls the judicial.

What is the value of these religious rules. What is their meaning to Jewish history. How can new meanings be promulgated?
The objection to treife meat is not that it revolts anyone but that it symbolizes a complete disregard of the tradition and laws of a people, perhaps from the time of Moses.

The antagonism between the religious and the anti religious reduces itself to two different ideas of "What is a Jew?" One says "I am a Jew whose only obligation to the past or future is to live in Israel, and the one who says," I am one whose obligation is to maintain the laws that were handed down from our forefathers to be bequeathed to our children and their children.

Non-religious Jew is a contradiction of terms and until the irreligious recognize themselves as a link in the chain of Jewish living there can be no peace!