America,' ,fewish Periodical Cotter

CLIFTON AVENUE - CINCINNATI 20, OHIO

5

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and the Legal Chronicle

April i7, 1942

PLAIN TALK

■

AL aGAL

"Of Human Beings"

There has been a lot written lately in the
Saturday Evening Post and elsewhere on what's
the matter with Jews. It seems to be taken for
granted by all the writers that there is some-
thing special the matter with us because so
many people don't like us.
The fact is, though, that what's the matter
with us is the same as is the matter with all the
rest of the human-kind. We are no worse and
no better.
There is a flattering theory that anti-Semites
don't like us because in us they see the protago-
nists of the Ten Commandments and in us they
see also the kinsmen of Jesus who gave the Ser-
mon on the Mount. They are afraid of and hate
such decencies as the Ten Commandments and
the Sermon on the Mount and so they fear and
hate the Jews from whom these documents sprang.
I have another theory which may be as ten-
able: They dislike us not so much for the virtues
which they discover in us but rather because of
their own faults which they see repeated in us
as human beings.
We have been used as a kind of mirror in
which mankind sees himself and all his defects
and, child-like, throws stones at his image; he
hates himself for all his shortcomings and takes
his hatred out on the reflection of himself that
he finds in other human beings called Jews. It
is a vicarious atonement that we suffer, like the
he-goat of Holy Writ upon whose back all the
sins of the community were placed; he was then
driven into the wilderness.
I believe the psychologists have a word or two
for this aberration of the human mind.
It is hard otherwise to explain people like
Nazis whose indictment of Jews is a catalog of
all their own sins: Their own greed, their arro-
gance, their acquisitiveness, their aggression, their
ruthless purpose to take over the world.
Mentally-warped, mean little Jew-baiters in
America look at Jews and with expectorating
contempt ascribe to them all their own mean-
nesses.
It is no use to tell them that it is really them-
selves they are despising. I have a dog named
Lem that barks furiously at his own image in
the mirror. I might as well attempt to speak to
Lem: "Lem, this is yourself you are barking at
in the mirror. Yourself with your low, mongrel
breed, your ugly unkempt black hair, your fleas."
Lem would keep on barking at himself and
Jew-baiters will keep on barking at themselves
as they look at Jews and their human faults.
Lem, however, does display a certain intelligence
lacking in anti-Semites. He doesn't keep up a
campaign of barking at his image in the mirror
through days, nights, months and years. He
doesn't try to smash the mirror in order to de-
stroy the reflection of himself. He barks a few
barks and then turns away with a growl and
retires to philosophical enjoyment of life.
He settles himself on a splotch of sunlight on
the living room floor and half closes his eyes
in dreamy meditation: "Aw, after all, we are

Capt. Hack Heads
Special Services

Sium of Kidushin to
Be Held Saturday
At Local Yeshivah

Local and Visiting Rabbis
and Laymen to Participate
in Hadron Program

Rabbi Isaac Stollman announces
all dogs together." Or he devotes himself assidu the completion exercises (Slum)
ously to scratching his fleas, flea by flea: "Why of the Gmoro Kidutir, will take
should we dogs bark at each other when there place Saturday night, April 18,
is this common enemy, the flea, to fight in order 9 o'clock in the new Yeshivah
that we may make this a more comfortable world Bldg., Dexter and Cortland Ave.
for us all." Such is the superior intelligence of
The rabbis Ind laymen of the
Lem.
city as well as out-of-town guests
If, finally, there are no Jews left, mankind may
take up Patagonians or Eskimos at whom to
bark as hateful images of mankind's own faults.
* * *
All this suggests that the faults and frailties
of Jews are just the same as of other people.
The only special fault one can find in Jews is
that they aren't better people than they are,
considering their history and their spiritual
inheritance.
Many of them behave as if they were people
who were born only yesterday, rather than as
men and women who have lived a very long
time and have suffered a great experience of
life and should by now know how to distinguish
between what's precious and what's phony. •
They behave like the children who didn't know
their inheritance of the golden mountain and
played at making little hills out of mud. They
have prophets who showed them the way to go
up the mountain toward the stars but they
have gone along with all the other errant pil-
grims to follow mirages in the desert.
They have the magnificence of great spiritual
riches to abide with them in their houses but
they prefer the gaudy toys of their home—the
RABBI I. STOLLMAN
red, white and blue chips at the whirring roulette
wheel, the speed of the twinkling car, the artifi- will participate in the Hadron
cial moonlight of the night club, the gay kaleido- and program. An appropriate
scope of swift living.
Mlaveh Malke is being prepared
(Again, in these preoccupations they are al- by the ladies of the Yeshivah
together like the most of mankind.)
Beth Yehudah of which Mrs. Rot-
They are the discoverers of the one infinite tenberg is president.
God but they serve at the altars of the more
The institution of the Daf
popular false gods who are holding bankrupt Yomi (to study two consecutive
mankind in receivership.
pages in the Talmud each day)
They have been given a look at God and to was founded and organized by
know Him but their eyes go searching for pen- the late Goen of Yeshivath Cha-
nies with all the blind of the world which is to chme Lublin, Rabbi Meyer Sha-
say, practically all the human-kind.
piro. It has been accepted
Yes, one can feel impatient with Jews when throughout the Jewish scholarly
he considers what they might be if they learned and Talmudical world; tens of
the lessons of their great experience of life. thousands of Jews observe the
What majestic people! Their heads as high as the Daf Yomi everyday under all cir-
stars! Walking with God! But then, in a more cumstances. It was the greatest
charitable mood, one sighs, ah, well, they're only stimulus to study and to bring
human and it takes so long for human beings to oneself back to Torah.
learn and even millions of Gentiles aren't Chris-
Several months ago an effort
tians after 2000 years in the churches, and was made by Rabbi Stollman to
in such places as Germany there are Gentiles who form such a group here in De-
are still savages, though it's a millenium since troit, and which resulted in quite
they came out of the woods. Human beings are a great following consisting of a
hundred members who study the
funny people.
For the Saturday Evening Post to specialize portion of the Talmud each day
on Jews and their faults is like running a series of the week.
This Sium of a public character
of articles on "Why Jews Have Colds." Some
of the more discriminating readers of the Satur- is the third since the formation
day Evening Post might say this doesn't seem of the respective group of Daf
Yomi. Many similar gatherings
to make sense. Don't we all have colds?
and meetings of a Torah character
were arranged with great results.
A very elaborated program is pre-
pared. The public is invited.

Downtown Theaters

"Watch on Rhine"
To Be Subject of
Rabbi Fram's Sermon

FOX — Starting Friday the
Fox Theater will present as
timely and thrilling a motion
picture as you'd ever want to
Rabbi Leon Fram of Temple
see—"To the Shores of Trip- Israel will make the play "Watcn
oli", in Technicolor and starring on the Rhine" the theme of his
Capt. Morton Hack has taken John Payne, Maureen O'Hara sermon in the Lecture Hall of
over the reins of the special ser- and Randolph Scott.
the Detroit Institute of Arts,
vices branch to guide field ath-
next Friday night, April 24, at
MICHIGAN
—
James
Cagney
letics and recreational activities.
8:30 o'clock.
As squadron commander of the and the Royal Canadian Air
In connection with this play,
• 08th, Captain Hack was vitally Force in the thrilling "Captains Rabbi Fram will discuss other
interested in morale work, fos- of the Clouds" in Technicolor current literary works and re-
tering and providing suadron en- will remain for a second week ports on the anti-Nazi "under-
tertainment and athletic competi- on the Michigan Theater screen. ground" movement in Europe,
tion.
Heading the supporting cast are including John Steinbeck's novel,
Before his call to active duty Brenda Marshall, Dennis Mor- "The Moon Is Down".
and his arrival at Sheppard Field, gan, Alan Halo and Reginald
The Young People's Club of
Nov. 12, Captain Hack was presi- Gardiner. Much of the action Temple Israel especially invites
dent of the Michigan Chiropody of the picture was filmed in all people who will have seen
Association and lived with his Canada, with thrilling flying "The Watch on the Rhine" to
wife and two children in Detroit, shots furnishing a stunning cli- the symposium on the play and
Mich. He was commissioned in max. On the same program is on the rabbi's interpretation of
1929.
an unusual film "The Remark- it which will be held in the Lec-
Captain Hack assumes the du- able Andrew" from the best- ture Hall after the Sabbath Eve
ties of Capt. Archie Sorenson, selling book of the same name service.
who has taken command of the and starring Brian Donlevy, with
The Sisterhood of Temple Is-
108th Technical School Squadron. William Holden and Ellen Drew. rael invites all who come to the
Captain Morton Hack, special
services for a social hour in the
-ervices officer, has been listed in
UNITED ARTISTS — The Romanesque Hall of the Detroit
recent supplement of the "Who's film version of "Kings Row", one Institute of Arts, following the
Who in America." Captain Hack's of the most popular novels of worship and preceding the dis-
invention of a shoe sterilizer for this decade, will arrive at the cussion period.
army shoes led to his recognition. United Artists on Thursday as
one of the big bookings of the
KALVARIER AID SOCIETY
current season. Ann Sheridan Molly Segal Auxiliary
A $100 check from the Sarah as "Randy," Robert Cummings To Give Donor Luncheon
Freedman Mo'os Chitim Fund of as "Parris," Ronald Reagan as
Molly Segal Auxiliary of the
Kalvarier Aid Society has been "Drake" and Betty Fields, the
'nailed by Rose Lewis, treasurer, ill-fated "Cassie" head one of Jewish Consumptive Relief So-
to the Joint Distribution Com- the most distinguished casts ever ciety held a meeting April 14.
mittee, in New York, for Lithu- assembled in one motion pic- The discussion concerned the
anian Jews in Russia. The con- ture. On the same program is 10th annual $5.00 donor lunch-
tributions were made by mem - the hilarious comedy romance eon to be held at the Shaarey
bers and friends as follows: Mr. "The Body Disappears," star- Zedek on June 3 at 12:30. The
David Freedman, $25; Mr. and ring Jeffrey Lynn, Jane Wyman Auxiliary appeals to all mem-
Mrs. Louis Gibbs, $10; Louis and Edward Everett Horton.
bers and their friends to coop-
Radner, $5; $5 was given to
erate so that the luncheon will
Charles Smith in Detroit.
be a success. For particulars
Latest recruit to the ranks of
In February $25 was given to
call Mrs. H. Gold, president, Ty.
the American Red Cross and $25 good-will-creators in the Latin 4-7802, or Mrs. Adela Green-
to Beth Jehuda, whose president American countries is symphony field, chairman of tickets, To.
Is Mrs. L. Stolinsky and Mrs. J. orchestra conductor Otto Klemp-
6-5895.
erer, with a tour of Mexico.
Freed is secretary.

Listed in "Who's Who
in America" for Shoe
Sterilizer Invention

YOUNG WOMEN'S
BICUR CHOLEM

A meeting of the Young Wo-
men's Bicur Cholem Organiza-
tion was held at the home of
Mrs. J. Shifman of 2963 Cort-
land Avenue, on April 13, and
was presided over by the presi-
dent, Mrs. George Brown. A
nominating committee was ap-
pointed by the president for the
election of new officers to be
held in May. Sandwiches were
donated for the USO and taken
down to the Hammond Bldg.

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