{"id":47604,"date":"2025-09-12T01:17:04","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T08:17:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=47604"},"modified":"2025-09-11T09:19:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-11T16:19:12","slug":"whats-old-is-new-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2025\/09\/12\/whats-old-is-new-again\/","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s old is new again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image<\/a>\u201cAt a time when we are all wishing each other a Happy New Year we may well pause to consider what we mean by happiness and what we shall do to attain it. There is one thing that holds true of all of us: there is nothing that we think so much about, care so much for, aim so much at, as somehow to be happy. Yet happiness remains one of the most elusive objects in the world, and even when we stop chasing it long enough to think about it, we find ourselves confused as to what we mean by being happy, anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us talk friendly with ourselves as we face the New Year,\u201d continues Rabbi Samuel Cass, spiritual leader of Congregation Beth Israel from 1933 to 1941, writing in the Jewish Western Bulletin\u2019s Sept. 26, 1935, Rosh Hashanah edition. \u201cWhat is it that we\u2019re trying to overcome? Why does that call of renewal of vitality come as a refreshing sound to our ears?\u201d<\/p>\n

Cass contends that \u201cmany of us\u201d in that day and age were in a \u201cstate of boredom,\u201d despite the \u201cmany\u00a0<\/span>avenues of excitement that modern civilization has to offer to us for the enjoyment of our leisure hours.\u201d Hours that \u201cancient man\u201d \u2013 who, \u201cwhen he did not toil, he slept\u201d \u2013 did not have.<\/p>\n

\u201cModern man, thanks to a machine civilization with its labor-saving device, enjoys a greater amount of leisure than man had ever enjoyed before, aside from the enforced leisure of unemployment. Yet our leisure hours are the most boring we enjoy. Just an endless round of movies, cards, games.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cass goes on to recount a display at the World\u2019s Fair a couple of summers earlier: \u201cthe electric marvel of our age, Captain Televox, the mechanical man. This electrical mechanism, when addressed in the proper pitch, gives correct information, and executes various commands. It can start a vacuum cleaner, turn on the electric lights, sets the radio at the proper station.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The engineer who created \u201cMr. Televox\u201d predicted \u201cthe day when housewives will be able to be away from the house all day and manage the household duties in absentia, by merely calling up the mechanical man and giving it orders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cass laments that life in the 1930s was \u201creduced to a mechanical existence\u201d with alarm clocks, radios, cars \u2013 even newspapers! \u201cOur music comes from the radio, our dramatic entertainment from the motion picture, our philosophy from newspapers,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n

His solution for happiness?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFind an ideal somewhere and let it life [sic] you above the mechanics of living, let it give you true freedom and stir within you new fountains of personality. We need not seek very far for it. We are living in a world teething with problems, teething with causes that demand to be taken up!\u201d<\/p>\n

He asks readers to \u201cembrace some great human ideal in the New Year, and in it experience the blessedness of a Happy New Year.\u201d<\/p>\n

This Rosh Hashanah message \u2013 and most of those throughout the JWB\/Jewish Independent\u2019s 95-year history \u2013 hold up remarkably to the test of time. The language differs, of course, but the problems are variants on sadly consistent themes: war, economics, technology, assimilation, antisemitism, etc. And the \u201csolutions\u201d are also relatively consistent over the years: the need for Jewish education, a renewed embrace of \u00a0<\/span>Judaism\u2019s ideals, unity, engagement, financial and physical support of community institutions, self-reflection. This year\u2019s missive contains some of these same ideas.<\/p>\n

In addition to holiday-related articles and editorials, Rosh Hashanah papers over the years have featured local and Israel year roundups, games and puzzles for kids, crosswords, recipes, reflective pieces, and more. The front covers generally gave some indication that the New Year\u2019s issue would be special in some way \u2013 another tradition we continue to uphold.<\/p>\n

\"images<\/a>\"images<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cAt a time when we are all wishing each other a Happy New Year we may well pause to consider what we mean by happiness and what we shall do to attain it. There is one thing that holds true of all of us: there is nothing that we think so much about, care so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[5555,547,4242,1276,129,1801,24344],"class_list":["post-47604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-ji","tag-archives","tag-beth-israel","tag-history","tag-jewish-independent","tag-jewish-western-bulletin","tag-rosh-hashanah","tag-samuel-cass"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47604"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47604\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}