“There is no escape from the grim reality of the possibility of a nuclear war which would really end all wars and all life.”

World tensions were indeed high on October 22, 1961, when this sermon hit the air. The Berlin Wall was under construction. The Soviet Union conducted its first underground nuclear test on October 11. That same day President Kennedy increased the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam. Then, on October 17, Premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union was preparing to explode a 50 megaton bomb. With the Doomsday clock standing at seven minutes to midnight, Rabbi Olan invited his listeners to “consider the war which is said to be both final and imminent.” This post is your opportunity to do the same.

“There is no moral victory possible in an immoral world armed with nuclear bombs of a hundred megaton power.”

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