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DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE
Detroit Jewish Chronicle
Published by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc.
2805 Barium Tower, Detroit 26, Michigan
WOodward 1-1040
SUBSCRIPTION: $3.00 Per Year, Single Copies, 10c; Foreign, 0.00 Per Year
lIntered as Second-cla• matte: March 3, 1916, at the Post Office at Detroit, Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879
SEYMOUR TILCIIIN, President
Vol. 51, No. 5
GEORGE WEISWASSER, Editor-in-Chief
Friday, February 4, 1949 (Shvat 5, 5709)
DETROIT 26, Mich.
Friday, February 4, 4949
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In Brief . . .
That shrewd, power-hungry man who
rules the Detroit Jewish community—Isi-
dore Sobeloff—outlined his plans to grab
more power at a meeting with the boys the
other day. Sobeloff, at the meeting, was
flushed with importance. He had just re-
turned from the annual conference of the
Council of Federations and Welfare Funds
where the national 20, 30 and 40 thousand
dollar a year welfare boys slapped him on
the back for the good job he has been doing
in usurping most of the civic controls while
the representatives of the people, the lead-
erless and bewildered Jewish Community
Council, sat on their hands doing nothing.
Name almost any branch of community
endeavor—education, health, immigration,
Palestine, and what not—Sobeloff is the
man who really gives the orders. "In 1949",
he told the Detroit Service Group, made up
of Jewish leaders in industry and the pro-
fessions, "you men who give the bulk of
the money should take over more controls
while the community is still grateful for
your big contributions." Where is there
honest and courageous leadership in the
community to challenge this arrogant, un-
American program?
* * *
Seed a Speaker?
Do you need a speaker for your organiza-
tion's next meeting? The Jewish Chronicle,
as a service to the community, will be glad
to provide you with a speaker or suggest
where you can get one without any trouble.
Call the Chronicle at WO. 1-1040, prefer-
ably on Thursdays and Fridays.
* * *
Kosher Meat Prices
New complaints of Detroit housewives
over high Kosher meat prices are again
putting the Jewish Community Council on
the spot. Actually, the Council can do very
little about the whole matter except to
remonstrate with the butchers if their in-
vestigation should determine that they are
indeed to blame for the differential between
Kosher and non-Kosher meat costs. The
Council, as it is today constituted, has little
disciplinary authority. In any case, we pre-
dict that the Council will find, as it did In
its 1947 investigation that high prices are
due to the greed of some of the butchers,
and chiefly to the buying habits of the Jew-
ish homemaker who looks with disdain on
anything in the Kosher meat line that isn't
a steak, chop or beef roast. Butchers should
not be expected to assume losses because
of their customer's finicky habits and de-
mands for special attention and services.
At the same time, it would be wise fog the
butchers to police their own ranks lest the
women be provoked enough to institute a
buyers' strike, which alone would make the
butchers toe the line.
* * *
Labor Wins in Israel •
Results of the first Israeli national elec-
tion show that the Socialist-Labor Party,
Mapai, has received the largest percentage
of votes, 35 percent; the left-wing Labor
Party, Mapam, 15 percent; the Religious
bloc, 12 percent; the Freedom Party, 11 per
cent; General Zionists, 5 percent; Progres-
sive Zionists, 4 percent; the Communist
Party, 3 percent; the Sternists, 1 percent.
The remaining 14 percent was divided
among the other parties. In other words,
the present coalition government, under the
leadership of the Socialist Labor party,
remains in control. This is what has been
generally expected. The Jewish State is not
something that happened accidentally. It is
a growth of more than a generation that
has now ripened into a political body. The
seed from which it grew up was the So-
cialist Labor movement and it was quite
natural that the ripe fruit should be that of
labor. Mapai and its left-wing Mapam to-
gether control more than half of the new
Jewish State numerically and also in spirit.
This is how the Jewish State was conceived
after the World War I and this is how it
has turned out to be.
* * *
Bevin's Brew for Arabs
Divest it of its double-talk, and the state-
ment made by Bevin in Commons last week
on the Palestine issue can be reduced to a
simple equation—Bevin hopes for a renewal
of warfare so that he can maneuver Britain
into succoring the Arab aggressors. When
Bevin said Britain would find it "very diffi-
cult to stand by indifferent or inactive" if
fighting broke out again, he was not trying
so much to impress his Arab friends with
the sanctity of British treaty obligations
as to give them a green light and prod them
into breaking the silence which has been
reigning the past weeks over the Palestine
fronts. His intention was to concoct a brew
for the Arabs, guide them into intoxication
and tran them in his vise. Britain's recog-
nition of Israel does not change the picture.
Another disturbing factor in Bevin's
statement was the claim that if there are
alterations in the partition plan there would
have to be a reciprocal exchange of terri-
tory. The implications of this assertion \are
dangerous, particularly in the light of Presi-
dent Truman's pledge against mutilating
the territorial integrity of Israel. Bevin has
uttered many untruths the past few weeks
and we would not be. surprised if his in-
volvement of the .President is in the same
category. However, we would feel better if
our President publicly disassociated himself
from Bevin's political web and proceeded
with implementing his promise to give full
de jure recognition to Israel after the elec-
tion.
* * *
Proskauer Resigns
Montor Dispute Grows
in Factional Wrangling
By WILLIAM ZUKERMAN
(Jewish World News Service
NEW YORK—The storm rag-
ing within the UPA har -not
abated this week. If anything,
it has increased in force and is
rapidly approaching the stage of
a hurricane. The trouble still
revolves around Henry Montor,
although it now takes the form
of a fight around Henry Morg-
enthau's chairmanship of the
UJA.
Morgenthau, it now appears,
has laid down the reinstate-
ment of Montor as head of the
UPA as a condition for his ac-
ceptance of the chairmanship.
This has incensed the leaders
of the ZOA who see it an out-
rage of the democratic principle
and an attempt by non-Zionists
to foist upon them as director a
person who many of them have
come to dislike intensely and
with whom they could no
longer work because of emo-
tional reasons, even if they
agreed to do so for rational
reasons.
The American Jewish Committee has
changed presidents, but not programs or
leadership. Judge Joseph Proskauer has
withdrawn from the presidency and Jacob
Blaustein has been elected to take his place.
The new and the retiring presidents belong
to the same social and financial brackets of
Jewish society and both reflect the mind
and trends of the Jewish higher middle-
• • •
class in the United States. That class, like THE ENTIRE executive com-
most others of Jewish society, has recently mittee of the Palestine section
become more conscious of its Jewishness, of the Jewish Agency of Pales-
although its definition of that term is very tine has traveled from Jerus-
vague and indefinite. It strongly supports alem to New York to try to
the Jewish State in words and deeds, but settle the controversy before it
insists that its members are first of all ruins the 1999 campaign of the
American Jews and their homeland is the UJA.
United States. This is the stand also of The ZOA leaders object to
American Zionism as formulated by Dr. the action of the Palestine sec-
Emanuel Neumann. The difference between tion of the Jewish Agency in-
in purely American
the AJC and the ZOA is now only one of terferring
Zionist affairs. On the other
emphasis, not of principle. The new presi- hand, the Labor Zionists dis-
dent of the AJC has promised to follow in agree with the ZOA leadership
the footsteps of the old.
on this point.
* * *
`Double Loyalty'
The question of double loyalty has been
raised again by the American Council for
Judaism through a speech by the Rev.
Henry Sloan Coffin, a prominent liberal
Protestant theologian and a great friend' of
the Jews, delivered at a luncheon meeting
of the council. The speech had a note of
alarm in it which does not seem to be justi-
fied at the present moment. "I beg of you,
as Americans and as representatives of a
great spiritual community, to keep your
heads and stand fast on the America pat-
tern. This is your homeland and not over-
seas somewhere", Dr. Coffin warned. In
view of the declaration of the American
Jewish Committee of this week and of the
stand of the ZOA, the alarm seems to be
over-emphasized, at least now. The fact is
that the emergence of Israel seems to have
clarified the question of double loyalty more
than it has ever been, and because of this,
the danger of it is smaller than ever before.
Baruch Zuckerman, the pres-
ident of the Labor Zionist Or-
ganization, stated his position
on the controversy at a press
conference. The gist of it was
that he and the Labor Zionists
do not like working with Montor
any more than do Neumann and
Dr. Silver, but the interests of
the UJA campaign are above
personal likes and dislikes.
Without Montor, there is no
Morgenthau; without Morgan-
thau, the UJA campaign will
be a failure, wherefore the Labor
Zionists are for the reinstate-
ment of Montor.
• • •
FACTIONAL BATTLE
THIS VIEW IS shared also by
a number of leading General
Zionists high in counsels of
the Israeli government, who do
not belong to the "dissident"
group, but who claim that the
Jewish Agency for Palestine Is
the highest authority in the
world Zionist movement and that
the American Zionists, therefore,
must abide by'its decisions whe-
ther they like them or not.
To an average non-party Am-
erican Jew, the entire affair
seems incomprehensible despite
the profound emotions that it
seems to evoke.
How loyal Zionists, who have
devoted their lives for their
cause, should, at the last and
most critical moment of its ca-
reer, choose to jeopardize its
chances for success because oif
an internecine struggle which
has all the earmarks of a per-
sonal or party struggle for pow-
er and position, seems almost in-
credible.
Nevertheless, this is the case.
What is going on in the WA
now is a struggle not between
Zionists and non-Zionists, but be-
tween parties within the Zion-
ist movement itself.
I
Curb on Anti-Social Jews
Advocated by Chicago Rabbi
I
CHICAGO — The American
Jewish community should apply
sanctions on those Jews who be-
have in a way to reflect dis-
credit on it, a Chicago conserv-
ative Rabbi suggested, the Jew-
ish National Post said.
"Jews who misbehave offer
ready-made ammunition to anti-
Semitism," Rabbi Henry Fisher
of Bnai Zion Synagogue, told
his congregation. "It is inevitable
that any minority group depends
for its survival upon the good-
will of the majority.
Rabbi Fisher said that Jewish
history supplies precedents for
Jewish communal punishment of
anti-social behavior by Jews. Ile
maintained that even without re-
sorting to excommunication, Rab-
bis always wielded enough pow-
er to induce individulas to co-
operate with the community.
The implementation of his pro-
gram would require a new code
of conduct said Rabbi Fisher,
who is treasurer of the Chicago
Rabbinical Association. Such a
code, he proposed, would explain
what constitutes punishable mis-
conduct and would provide meth-
ods of dealing with it.
He suggested that active anti-
Zionists and fund dodgers, should
feel the wrath of the community.