Blackout: How Long, O Lord, How Long?
This chapter presents a sermon by Maurice N. Eisendrath, delivered on the third Rosh Hashanah of the war. The situation of Canadian rabbis was precariously positioned between those of American preachers to the south and British preachers to the east. Canada, as part of the British Commonwealth, had long been part of the war effort, so the debate over whether or not to enter the war was not an issue, as it still was for colleagues in the United States. On the other hand, Canada was not directly affected by the war as was Britain, where one year earlier London had suffered a sustained air attack unprecedented in its devastation (a situation that certainly affected the mood in Toronto on the previous Rosh Hashanah, as the preacher reminds his listeners). Now, although the battles on the recently opened Eastern Front were of almost unimaginable ferocity, to many Canadians the war seemed distant; life at home seemed almost normal, as it did to many in the United States. This was precisely the mindset that Eisendrath set out to censure.