A merica 'elvish Periodical Cotter
May 1, 1942
CLIFTON AVENUE • CINCINNATI 20, OHIO
PLAIN TALK
by
111 AL SEGAL
"The Goldfish"
One of the professors in our university writes
to say that, nevertheless, Jews are a problem.
tIn a recent column I wondered in what way
we area problem.) The professor is kind enouga
i He doesn't mean any disparagement.
a bout it.
Ile says that for convenience the grave matter
f the human race is divided into compartmen';s
by the social scientists. So we have the Negro
problem, the proletarian problem—and the J ew-
ish problem.
But, professor, as a self-respecting individual
I must protest against being considered a prob-
l e m, except as my wife considers me one, and
that's an old, old aggravation. All these years
she has been thinking what to do about me:
How to make me stop scattering my pipe ashes
over the rugs, by what means she can prevent
soup from dripping on my neckties, how to train
Inc to be more useful about the house.
From long suffering I have learned to take all
this good-humoredly, as one who knows that a
woman would be at a loss if she didn't have a
problem in the house to worry about. By remain-
ing a problem I provide my wife with all the
entertainment of a cross-word puzzle.
But that is as far as I am willing to go in the
matter of being a problem. Certainly, professor,
I resent being handled as a problem child in the
family of mankind—one of those unfortunate
children about whom the neighbors speak in
whispers and wonder whether he'll be hanged or
electrocuted.
Yet, that's what I, the Jew, have come to.
The professors are troubled about me as if I
were some new and startling element of nature.
Writers get good fees for pieces about me in
the magazines, just as in former times there
was good money in writing about sea serpents.
All this has had a deplorable effect on a
nature once so placid. I am like a goldfish in a
bowl through which many eyes stare to explore
my characteristics. Every once in a while a mis-
chievous child grabs the fish by its tail and
lifts it out of the water to see it squirm.
Some of my friends tell me that if I were
adequately fortified by the saving power of
Jewish life I wouldn't mind this in the least. I
would be a goldfish that could smile ironically at
the rude eyes around my bowl, at the mischiev-
ous boy : "Nu, boy ! What does it get you to be
doing this to me? I am eternal goldfish and this
torture is bUt the infinitesimal fraction of a
moment of my everlasting life."
Yes, it really is a great comfort to a distressed
goldfish to feel prophetic and to think that this,
too, will pass away and the time will yet come
when he will swim in the big broad oceans
with the whales and will lie down in peace with
the sharks.
Still, I hate being made a problem of man-
kind, even though I, myself, beset by so many
prying eyes, at times wonder what really can be
the matter with me. (The harassed problem
child may become a problem to himself.)
So, I fall into psychopathic moods and brood :
Is there something the matter with me, and what
is it? . . . Well, this morning when I awoke it
was still dark because of war time. It was no
j
joyous awakening, for who may awaken joyously
to a new day in these times? A new day isa
new chapter of man's travail. The clammy mist
took hold of my heart.
I thought, well, this may be something good
Detroit Halevy
Names Participants
In Annual Concert
The Detroit Halevy Singing
Society is making final prepara-
tions for its 17th annual con-
ert, which takes place in the
Scottish Rite Cathedral of Ma-
unic Temple on Sunday, May
10, at 8:30 p. m. sharp. The
!natured instrumental artist is
to be Henry Siegl, violinist.
The Halevy chorus will be di-
rected by Dan Frohman, assisted
by William Gayman with Doro-
thy O'Koon and Rebecca Katz-
man Frohman at two pianos.
Other member of the chorus arc
as follows:
Sopranos : Rose Berghoff, Shir-
ley Berghoff, Sonia Bussell, Lena
hafetz, Reva Cohen, Grace Cut-
ler, Florence Figot, Rose Golden,
Betty Greenfield, Gertrude Katz,
Evelyn Krieger, M. Lakritz,
Florence Lutsky, Celia Plofkin,
Edith Reznick, Jeanette Serling,
Ydith Rosberg, Dora Tonkell,
A !Ina Warren, and Sadie Zucker-
man. •
Altos: Sarah Alterman, Anna
Bobbin, Marcia Drucker, Mamie
freeman, Eva Glassgold, Bella
Goldberg, Tillie Hecker, Annette
Hochman, Gertrude Levine, Ger-
trude Matrick, Edith Miller,
Blanche Rosen, Yetta Sternthal,
and Ruth Zauber.
Tenors: Jay Bodzin, Max Coo-
5
DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE and the Legal Chronicle
in the world. This clammy mist envelopes the
hearts of all men of good will . . . like some
chain holding them together in a common pain.
This may be the beginning of brotherhood . . .
hearts held together by one pain. I felt kin to
all the hearts of all of persecuted mankind in
the world.
I had no idea of being a separate person in
the world, wasn't thinking of being Jewish. My
brother was the Chinese who was trying to hold
the line in Burma. He was the Australian at
the ramparts of Darwin. He was the Indian who
trembles at the thunderous approach of the
marching Jap and whose philosophy doesn't know
whether to lie unresisting under his feet or to
kill him is the better way. My brother was the
Jew in all the lands of affliction.
Yes, I was mankind getting up for another
tortured day. I wasn't separate. I felt sure of
being included in the common denominator of
mankind when I got on the bus and started
conversation with my old friend and neighbor
Halloran. We spoke of our grandchildren.
His Patricia has five teeth, he said. I told
him that new words simply are pouring out of
my Ellen's mouth day by day. Only yesterday
she said Jim Roudebush. (Mr. Roudebush is the
contractor who has just built a new house for
Ellen.)
"Yes," Halloran said, "it's more fun to be a
grandfather than a father."
"You said it," I replied. "No diapers to change.
It's like starting all over again with none of
the trouble."
I was kin to Halloran in all things that really
matter . . . in this worshipful affection of our
grandchildren, in faithful service to our duties
as citizens, though he is a Republican, in solemn
purpose to bring up our children right and .do
our jobs well, in religion, for that matter. Hal-
loran says there's one God and what's the differ-
ence in what church he is worshipped? He goes
to St. Andrew's.
In the evening I came home in the bus where
we were all packed together, like herring in a
barrel, all tired of the common load of toil,
thinking of our laws which needed tending be-
cause of the way spring had come on with a
rush.
Yes, professor, that's me and my neighbors,
that's millions of other Jews who in their char-
acters and preoccupations, in homeliness and pul-
chritude, in stupidity and intelligence, in being
greedy and being unselfish, in their anxieties and
their hopes are not peculiar in separate compart-
ments. They are jammed together with all other
people in the same bus and with all others hope
the bus won't go over the cliff in the awful
darkness. That's all there is to us.
We are a problem only as a certain dumbell
made a problem of the question : How much are
two and two? He was all night trying to solve it
and finally said : "I give up. It's a hard problem."
What I mean to say is that Jews are a prob-
lem only because we are made a problem by
the stupid and the ignorant and, incredibly, the
professors accept the dictum of the stupid and
the ignorant in this. If ignorance persists that
the earth is flat do the geographers say, "What
can be the matter with the earth? It should be
round. We should do something about the earth."
Rather they would look into the heads of the
ignorant to put some light in them.
perman, Hyman Horowitz, Eu-
gene Franzblau, Nathan Mogill,
Nathaniel Raskin, Jack Rosberg,
Manus Schane, Joe Siegel, Max
Teitel, and M. Weiner.
Basses : Fred Alterman, Sam-
uel Btschin, Julius Chafetz, Ben-
jamin Dolgin, David Goldberg,
Joshua Joyrich, Ben Levitt, Mar-
vin Lopatin, Sam Lutchansky,
Harry Resnick, and Irving Ro-
sengard.
PONTIAC NOTES
The Temple Sisterhood will
sponsor a Mother and Daughter
luncheon Saturday, May 9, at
the Temple. The religious com-
mittee, with Mrs. Jack Weinger,
chairman, and Mrs. Saul J. Birn-
krant, co-chairman, will have
charge of arrangements.
The adult study group con-
tinues to meet every Thursday
morning under the leadership of
Rabbi Eric Friedland at the Tem-
ple. "Current Events" is the us-
ual tonic of discussion.
At the Friday evening services,
Rabbi Eric Friedland spoke on
the subject "Proposed Paths to
Happiness." Edith Zlotnick as-
sisted with organ responses. A
social hour followed.
Nazi Doctor Tries to
Minimize Typhus in
Ghettos of Poland
ZURICH (WNS)—The dreaded
typhus epidemics, which took
thousands of lives in Jewish
ghettos in Poland and the Baltic
countries last winter, were dis-
missed as unimportant by Dr.
Conty, highest ranking medical
officer in the Nazi army, who
stated in an article in the "Voel-
kischer Beobachter" that only
3,200 Jews had died during the
year as a result of the epidemics.
Apparently, the article was
written to minimize the extent
of the epidemics and to justify
the Nazi refusal to take steps
to combat the epidemics. All
through the winter Nazi author-
ities in Poland and elsewhere had
rejected pleas by Jewish doc-
tors and Red Cross officials to
allow shipment of medical sup-
plies into the ghettos.
The Nazi army doctor's fig-
ures appeared ridiclous here in
view of the fact that even the
Nazi newspapers, which were un-
willing to publish the true fig-
ures, had reported considerably
higher estimates. At one time
the Nazi press estimated that at
least 1,600 Jews had died of
typhus in one month in the War-
saw ghetto alone. At this rate,
the number of Jews who suc-
Mrs. Joseph Cohen of Chicago
is spending the week at the
home of her parents, Mr. and
Mrs. Louis Solomon of Ogemaw cumbed would be closer to 100,-
000 than to 3,200.
Road.
Mr. and Mrs. Kulka
New Directors of
Camp Chelsea
Downtown Theaters
FOX THEATER—
Alexandre Dumas' most amaz-
adventure romance, "The
Corsican Brothers" starring Dou-
glas Fairbanks, Jr., with Ruth
Warrick and Akim Tamiroff, J.
Carrol Naish, H. B. Warner and
Henry Wilcoxen, opens on the
Michigan Theatre screen Friday.
On the same program is the hot-
as-headlines thriller "Pacific
Blackout" with Robert Preston,
Philip Merivale, Martha O'Dris-
coll.
ing
Men may accompany their
families to Camp Chelsea, the
camp for mothers and children,
near Chelsea, Mich., during
opening week, from June 28
through July 5, which includes
the July 4 week-end. Camp
Chelsea will be open through
August 22.
At all other times Camp Chel- UNITED ARTISTS THEATER—
sea is restricted to mothers
Detroit theatergoers have de-
alone, or mothers and children manded the holding for another
from 3 to 7 years of age.
week the film version of "Kings
In making the above an- Row," one of the most widely
nouncement, Mrs. Sidney J. read novels in this decade. Ann
Allen of the board of directors Sheridan as "Randy," Robert
of the Jewish Community Cen- Cummings as "Parris," Ronald
ter, who serves as chairman of Regan as "Drake" and Betty
the advisory board of the Moth- Fields as "Cassie" head a cast
ers' Clubs, also called attention which vividly brings to life this
to the camp improvements that powerful story of young people
will be completed before the hemmed in by the stifling inhi-
1942 season begins.
bitions and taboos of a small
An outdoor screened pavilion midwestern town in the early
is being built for the comfort years of this century. Continuing
of the campers; as is a chil- on the same program is the riot-
dren's playhouse, usable in all ous comedy romance "The Body
kinds of weather. New furni- Disappears" starring Jeffrey
ture has been purchased for the Lynn, Jane Wyman and Edward
recreation hall, and new garden Everett Horton.
furniture has been selected for
use on the camp grounds.
MAY MEETING OF
New Directors
The new directors for Camp
Chelsea are Mr. and Mrs. Sig-
mund Kulka. Mrs. Kulka, who
is taking her graduate work in
social service at Wayne Uni-
versity, has had many years of
experience in local Jewish so-
cial service agencies. She is the
former Helen Aronson, daugh-
ter of Mr. and Mrs. Louis A.
Aronson.
A former camp counsellor,
Mr. Kulka has had administra-
tive camping experience as well
as engineering experience.
AESCULAPIANS MAY 13
AT CENTER
The May meeting of the Aescu-
lapian Pharmaceutical Association
will contribute to your supply of
information regarding civilian
life in war-torn communities.
There will be a movie showing
pictures of actual bombing scenes
—this is a part of the educational
work being sponsored by the
United States Government.
The meeting will be at the
Jewish Community Center at 8:30
p. in. on Wednesday, May 13.
All Aesculapians and their wives
Camp Rates
A strictly kosher kitchen will and friends are urgde to attend.
be maintained at Camp Chelsea,
and an excellent kitchen staff
has already been employed. The
camp program includes dramatics,
music, arts and crafts, dancing,
swimming, Red Cross knitting,
and hosts of other delightful
and entertaining summer time
Co
activities.
Camp rates are as follows:
WINDOW SHADES
$13 per week for adult Jewish
MADE TO ORDER
Community Center members;
Cleaned and Repaired
$15 per week for adult non-
members. Rates for children are
LINOLEUM
$8.50 per week for children of
Inlaid
and Battleship
Center members; $10 per week
Rugs and Furniture
for children of non-members.
Registrations for Camp Chel-
VENETIAN BLINDS
sea will be taken at the Jewish
Drapery Hardware
Community Center. Mrs. Sally
Grant is serving as registrar.
00 Our Prices and Save
Free Estimates Furnished
Assisting Mrs. Sidney J. Al-
len on the advisory board of the
8625 LINWOOD
Center Mothers' Clubs in de-
CALL TYLER 5-1230
tailing the plans for Camp Chel-
sea is Mrs. Joseph B. Gaylord.
LASALLE
Window Shade
FOR A QUARTER CENTURY
—DETROIT'S FINEST FOOD
The utmost care is exercised in planning our
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most exacting taste.
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