Friday, March 19, 1948

DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE

Page Four

Happy Purim

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

Published Weekly by Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc., 548 Woodward, Detroit 26, Mich., CA. 1040

SUBSCRIPTION: $3.00 Per Year, Single Copies, 10c; Foreign, $5.00 Per Year
Bettered as Second-class matter March 3. 1916, at the Post Office at Detroit, Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879

SEYMOUR TILCHIN, President

Vol. 50, No. 9

GEORGE WEISWASSER, Editor-in-Chief

Friday, March 19, 1948 (Aaar II 8, 5108)

DETROIT 26, MICH.

Community Council Periled

Haganah, Irgun Unite

In an open letter last week to Julian
Krolik, president of the Jewish Welfare
Federation, we pointed to the thi. eat to the
democratic processes of our community or-
ganization implicit in the Federation's new
by-laws.
We said that the arrogation to itself of
all authority over every conceivable func-
tion or activity of the community was a
challenge to the very existence of the Jew-
ish Community Council.
We further pointed out that the Federa-
tion could cripple or successfully throttle
the Community Council by withholding
funds to keep it from functioning properly.
• • a
We showed where the Federation could
refuse permission to constituent organiza-
tions to hold any affair or chart a project
to increase its income.
Yeshivath Beth Yehudah, for example,
which is allotted only about $25 a year
to educate each of its 550 students, half
of them all-day pupils, could be ordered
peremptorily to refrain from holding its
revenue-producing annual patrons dinner or
any other fund-raising activity. This
would mean that the Yeshivah would have
to close its doors.
We also showed where the Federation
election machinery is so devised as to per-
petuate a certain group in office and that
this group is not a democratic body nor
representative of the diverse elements of
the community.
In particular, we mentioned the new by-
laws' provision that nominations for the
board of governors of the Federation may
not be made from the floor but that they
must be made 10 days in advance of an
election and bear 25 signatures, certainly
a device to forewarn the Federation officers
of projected opposition.
a a , *
These and other faults of the by-laws
were clearly outlined by the Chronicle as a
public duty. It can by itself do no more.
It is now up to civic groups and indi-
viduals to file amendments in writing and
properly seconded to revise or remove the
grasping, undemocratic provisions.
WE CALL UPON THE OFFICERS AND

The agreement between llaganah and
Irgun for a merger of their military forces
is the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak
situation.
The consolidation of the two armies
will immeasurably strengthen the fighting
arm of the Yishuv. Though Irgun will
retain its identity, it will act as a military
force only under the direction of the Ha-
ganah command.
This will bring an end to duplication
and rivalry and certainly bolster morale.
The threat of civil strife at a time when
the enemy is within the gates weakened
the Yishuv's fighting potential and may
be responsible, along with British sabotage
and a lack of heavy armor, for Jewish
failure to clean out nests of Arab guerillas
in Jerusalem and near some settlements.
The merger with Irgun brings some of
the Yishuv's most courageous fighting men
under the direction of the better-trained
Haganah officers. This is a time for in
trepidity and sacrifice and, say what you
may, it is the Irgun that has contributed
most of the battle's most dauntless fighters.
With the two forces united, there will
also be a diminution of so-called terrorist
activity, and the bad effect that it has had
on world opinion will decline.
With reports that the Sternists may be
brought within the fold and their gangster
methods curbed, there is hope that the
complete unity of arms that will ensue will
mould the Jewish units into a homogeneous
entity for the real fighting that may yet
be in the offing.

DELEGATES TO THE JEWISH COMMUN-

ITY COUNCIL TO TAKE SUCH ACTION

AT ITS DELEGATES MEETING TUES-

DAY NIGHT IN THE WORKMEN'S

CIRCLE AUDITORIUM.
These by-laws are the first official act
in the well-known program of the Federa-
tion administrators to put the Community
Council out of business.
We do not think the Community Coun-
cil should take this challenge lying down!

Congratulations, Beth Shumel

With orthodox leaders and the full De-
troit Rabbinate in attendance, the corner-
stone for Congregation Beth Shmuel's new
Synagogue building will be laid with tra-
ditional ceremonies next Sunday.
Beth Shmuel, now at Pingree and
Twelfth streets, expects to occupy its mod-
ern, new home at Dexter boulevard and
Buena Vista avenue before the High Holy
Days in October.
We are certain that we speak for • all
. who are devoted to the perpetuation of
traditional Judaism in offering felicitations
to Beth Shmuel on this momentous occa-
sion.
Beth Shmuel's new building will rise as
a tribute to the kindly personality and able
leadership of its revered spiritual head
Rabbi Joseph Rabinowitz, son and grand-
son of illustrious Chassidic Rabbis rnd in
his own right a notable scholar and a gentle
and sympathetic spiritual guide.
May he and his congregation find joy
in their new undertaking.

The Visiting E itor

•

Morals Versus Politics

Jews of Cincinnati
Beam Over Glueck

(Continued from Page 3)
young men came to it to learn
for the Rabbinate, to grow up
in the prophetic image of Dr.
Wise.
At first they were mainly boys
from Reform Jewish families. In
the more recent years most of
them have come out of Ortho-
doxy. They have clothed Reform
in some of the lovelier cere-
monial apparel which it had
dropped on the way.
They have touched Reform
with the mellower tints of their
own Orthodox inheritance.

• • •

ZIONISTS TARE OVER
THE LIBERAL MIND of Dr.
Wise, who was militantly non-
Zionist, would not resent the
fact that out of his school, Zion-
ist leaders have come—Abba Hil-
lel Silver, James Heller, Samuel
Wohl—the latter two of whom

By NATHAN ZIPRIN
The time is rapidly drawing close when
Great Britain is to relinquish her Palestine
mandate and, though the international body
has been grappling with the problem for
months now, there is no indication that the
would-be-shapers of world destiny are to
summon the moral courage essential to the
solution of the Palestine problem.
For let there be no mistake. If the
United Nations fails to take the proper
action to effectuate the decision reached
(Continued from Page 3)
by its General Assembly it will have ad-
mitted moral bankruptcy at the most cru- The editor of the Sentinel
cial point in its young but turbulent his- wrote a beaut, analyzing the
philosophy which animates the
tory.
actions of the American Jew-
A promise, an international promise has ish Committee. Both weeklies
been made to the Jews in Palestine and to gave telling evidence of the in-
the harried survivors of Hitlerdom who dependence and maturity of
have been living in hope that the • triumph Anglo-Jewish journalism.
• • •
of international justice, as dramatically
epitomized by the partition decision, would YES, THERE IS a Kibbutz
release them from the soil drenched in the Buchenwald. It's located on the
blood of six million Jews.
a
a •
There is no denying the political and
other factors which are rendering the so-
lution of the Palestine issue so difficult, so
(Continued from Page 3)
tragic. But a people which has lost six the fore. And the Arabs—as dis-
million souls in the death chambers of closed this week by the usually
Europe has a right to demand that the ap- well informed columnists Joseph
proach to its problems be based on con- and Stewart Alsop—have, as we
siderations transcending political motives. predicted, intimated willingness
The survivors must not be permitted' to to lay down arms for a period of
reconsideration.
perish by hopelessness.
The Truman administration,
There was admirable unity among the playing
fiddle to the tune of the
Great Powers when the partition solution British foreign
office, has virtually
was before the Assembly. That unity was abandoned partition. There is
heralded at the time by the press of the talk in informed Washington cir-
world as a good omen for the peace of the cles that U.S. will advocate call-
world and the success of the United Na- ing of a special session of the
tions. Unfortunately, it seems that unity General Assembly with a view to
of purpose has vanished the moment the reconsidering the partition deci-
time came for translating the decision into sion.
• • •
action.
THE SITUATION is gloomy.
, *
But the "I-do-and-I-don't" Pres-
It is said the Security Council is Mired ident can be assured he will yet
in the morass of legality. We say if the hear from his own party about
United Nations fails to enforce the As- his betrayal of Jewish hopes.
sembly's decision it will only have been due We hear leading members of
to its inability to rise to the moral heights the Democratic National Commit-
tee are planning to talk "tough"
required in a crisis.

are the current Rabbis in Dr.
Wise's historic pulpit.
When Dr. Wise died his place
in the presidency of the Hebrew.
Union College was taken by an-
other Rabbi who had come out
of Germany—Kauffmann Koh-
ler.
Dr. Wise's ' ideal of an all-
American Rabbinate came to
happy fulfillment in 1921 when,
upon the retirement of Dr. Koh-
ler, the Illinois-born Julian Mor-
genstern succeeded him.
Now the president is Dr.
Glueck, who was born in our
own West End and who in the
presidency of the Hebrew Union
College flatters us with the con-
sciousness that we are the in-
habitants of one of the few
centers of abundant Jewish life
left in the world. It's fertile
enough to grow inspired Jewish
leaders.

Asks Quiz of Rumors
on Relief Agencies

site of the former death camp,
at Goeringshof.
It has a membership :of 100,
and is open to all. Jews who
wish to train for life on the soil
of Palestine. In one of the wood-
sheds there is an inscription
left by a group of Zionists who
lived there before they were
sent to their death by the Nazis.
The inscription reads: "Many
times will you ponder our fate."

(A 1Vorld Newt' t11•rvIce Feature)

Revolt May Be Last Resort' )

(Seven Arts Feature)

to their -chief this week.

A Congressional movement is
afoot to have both houses pass a
resolution reiterating America's
traditional stand on the 'Palestine
issue . . .

• • •

IN THE TRAGIC death of Jan
Masaryk the world has lost a
great democrat and the Jews a
great friend. He has always
identified himself with Jewish
aspirations everywhere, particu-
larly in Palestine.
When the Nazis still ruled his
country he said he would never
return to his native land as long
as Jews could not enter it. He
has been credited with saving at
least 5,000 Czechoslovakian Jews
by smuggling.
The American Jewish com-
munity will remember him as a
true "chasid umoth ha'olem" who
never shirked duty when called
upon to sponsor a Jewish cause.
His death has left a painful void
in Jewish hearts everywhere.

