The Caravan Moves On

A sweeping social crisis dominates the West today; it has stormed the family and battered its foundations alarmingly, until it has become the talk of the social reformers, for all the divergence of their opinions and theories. Some of them hold that this upheaval in the conduct of youth — and it has reached its most violent pitch in Europe and America — is at bottom a natural development of the way of life followed there, and of the educational outlook they adopted after the First World War, which grants young people absolute freedom as one of their natural rights.

A second group considers this social upheaval the inevitable result of the world wars, which make the family lose its balance and force it to adapt itself to the prevailing circumstances.

And the years do their work: they alter the notion of values in the mentality of peoples, and the new conditions become things taken for granted, for whose sake justifications are invented...

This matter would be of no importance to us if we were out of its reach; but a drenching spray of it strikes our social fabric and leaves ugly stains upon its core, which our tastes reject and recoil from. What, one wonders, is the reason for this? Is there a fundamental difference between us and them in our acceptance of the present state of affairs? Otherwise, why do we see them accepting it contentedly, while we reject it in revolt?..

In my opinion, the difference at bottom goes back to the meaning of the word "honor." For them, honor means uprightness in dealing, truthfulness in speech, and faithfulness in work.

For us it has a different meaning, confined almost entirely to the relation of the one sex to the other. The stricter and more reserved one of our people is, the more society receives him with satisfaction and approval; and any mixing or contact between the sexes is spontaneously ascribed to some want of honor!

This conception, strange as it is, is part of our traditions, rooted deep in our minds across generation after generation, and it is not easy to disown it and turn it upside down. Were we to attempt that, we should expose ourselves to an extremist revolution, dragging us into moral calamities incompatible with the moral ideals we were reared on — ideals which mean everything to us and mean hardly anything to the Westerner..

And whoever claims, at the same time, that we are able to cling to our position and shield our traditions from the social upheavals is mistaken, because evolution is the law of the growing universe, and for any society to stop growing and evolving is the sign of its death and its collapse — and that is not what we want for our country and our society!.. We want for it the life of dignity, together with the conscious, guided development this age requires, by which we keep pace with the advanced nations — on condition of avoiding extremism and of exercising deliberation and moderation.

There have seeped in to us, along with the other newfangled customs of the West that have seeped in, all the arts of dancing, swimming, and physical sports, accompanied one and all by the modern educational outlook which recommends the mixing of the sexes, especially at the kindergarten, elementary, and university stages. The secondary stage alone remained in doubt, and it was thought preferable to spare adolescents direct contact at that sensitive period.

It was natural that this change should be accompanied by an alteration in the pattern of living and of dress; whereupon an uproar arose from the rigid reactionaries who cling to an old outlook and see in every departure from it an unpardonable sin!

And the newspapers raced one another to snatch social lapses from their lairs and set them in a coarse frame, aiming thereby — so they claim — at reform and the general good... What escapes these people is that lapses of this kind attend every society, conservative or emancipated, now and at every time; and that pointing to their existence in our midst today does not disprove their existence ever since Adam... and Eve!

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I have said that evolution is the law of every society. It is the sign of its growth. It is therefore futile to try to stem this current by negative means — criticism, vilification, the cataloguing of scandals... I am certain that all this will avail nothing, and will not keep our children from yielding to it and preferring it to the rigid old ways. For the rising generation, which has drunk of this spring, with our consent or without it, together with its schooling and what it sees on the screen or reads in books, has come to have its own outlook, which it finds agreeable, and our resistance to it will not deter it from that. Nor should we deny the far-reaching effect these manifestations have in building the children's characters, accustoming them to self-reliance, and building their selves on independent lines.

For all these reasons, it has become incumbent on us, as mothers and as fathers, to be very wise the moment we face some problem within the circle of our family. Instead of following the old ways — domineering, scolding, imposing our will — which repel the children and raise an impassable barrier between us and them — instead of all this, let us be positive, and draw our children close to us by way of familiarity and mutual understanding. Let our discussion with them be on the purely scientific plane, as we try to understand their psychology, win their trust, and preserve their precious love and respect. Then it becomes easy to give them the balanced guidance that respects our traditions and our moral values, while granting them the sufficient freedom for which all the young yearn in every age.

The caravan moves on, and its march is ever forward; it is folly to stand in its way in order to turn a handful of the flock in the opposite direction. All we can do is guard the caravan with a wakeful, watchful eye, and protect it from the ravening wolves and the fury of the storms; perhaps its young stock will then grow strong, so that it stands alone with courage and chooses for itself whatever road it will.