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DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

Thursday.

Across the Street

The Reader
Writes

Published by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co.,, Inc.
- 2627 Cadillac Tower, Detroit 26, Michigan
WOodward 1-1040
SUBSCRIPTION:
$3.00 Per Year, Single Copies, 10c; Foreign, $5.00 Per Year
Entered as Second-class matter March 3, 1916, at the Post Office at
Detroit, Mich., under the Act of March 3, 1879.

SEYMOUR TILCIIIN
Publisher
EMILY SO1ILY0
GERIIARDT NEUMANN
Business Manager
Editor

Thursday, February 16, 1950

Shebat 29,

sno

Brotherhood Thoughts

Brotherhood Week is here again. Several editorials we read
in recent weeks made us wonder how uncritical many. people
consider this conception which is a typical brainchild of the 18th
century.

We feel it is time to evaluate the idea of brotherhood anew
in order to see how much of it can withstand the stress and strain
of modern society.

We are deluding ourselves by equating words to actions.
The fine speeches, the high-sounding promises and the beautiful
trimmings usually offered at this time are so enticing that we
like to make ourselves believe that every word is meant.

The truth is that we are taking the easy way out. For it is
easy to proclaim high ideals and urge each and everyone to love
his neighbor. From the outset it is tacitly understood that no one
would really make a try.

Minorities are an easy prey to such promises. As the ones
who look fearfully at the majority, hoping against hope that they
could find some kind of disguise in which they would no longer
be recognized as minorities, they are anxious and willing to ac-
cept ideas which under normal circumstances would not enter
their minds.

Minorities have to understand i
khe basic fact they are not
wanted. When this feeling of the majority does not lash out like
a whip, it is latent and, in any case, dangerous. Brotherhood and
love cannot be produced by persuasion. They are rare qualities
to be found only in exceptional individuals,

February 16, 1950

Writer Raps Jews' Lack
of Broad-Mindedness

By ALFRED SEGAL

PROTESTS BIRON'S
DEFENSE OF MENUIIIN
To the Editor:
As a member of the religiou s
Zionist movement—liapoel Hain-
izrachi—I would like to take this
opportunity in expressing my
personal Opinion on the article
written by Phineas Biron Feb. 3
in connection with Yehudi Menu-
hin's playing for the Germans.
I must say that I am very much
in doubt as to whether Bison
had a moral right to protect one
who does not claim—that k, be.
yond his name—to have any con-
nection whatsoever with the Jewo
as a nation.
If Menuhin had any feeling.)
pity and respect for his /4
million slaughtered brethren, he
would not have offered the bene-
fits of his great talents to a
German audience which was in
a large measure responsible for
the uprooting of his people.
Above all, the German musical
institutiOns should not have bene-
fited from the proceeds of those
concerts.
Again I want to emphasize that
we who are proud of our ,_
ligious and cultural heritage
should not offer our services to
a people who have persecuted
and desecrated us.
GERALD LEBER.
Director of Public Relations,
Hapoel Hamizrachi of East Side,
New York, N.Y.

whom there is no trace of the in-
fection. Sometimes they say, rath-
er ineptly, "Some of my best 'CHRONICLE WAS THERE'
selves up in special righteousness friends,' etc., but they say it as FILLS LONG-FELT WANT
Having realized this, we should reorient our thoughts
and refusing to have anything to a sincere expression of their good To the Editor:
accordingly.
Your new department "The
do with gestures of • ood will to will.
Chronicle Was There" is mom
ward their non-
What is it that we want? Justice? Tolerance? Shall we be
On account of them I try to be interesting and fills a long-feft
Je wish neigh-
content with an existence that depends on the whims of the
a Jew who doesn't hold hints elf want in Anglo-Jewish journal.
majority?
bors.
apart from non-Jews. He wai ks ism, where advance publicity
There was, as
gladly with other men who a re usually fills considerably more
Obviously, we refuse to be tolerated. We feel that minorities
I recall, a recent
do not have to apologize for their existence. They have their
going his way. He isn't thinki ng space than accounts of events
incident in New
good ,and bad traits like any majority, and must be accepted as
of "buying good will;" good w ill after they have taken place.
Jersey
in
which
they are.
is of his Jewish teaching and he
DAV
ID GOLDBERG
some of the Jews
gives it.
The only way to a better understanding of the different
of the commun-
groups which make up our society is an earnest attempt to
I ant no less the Jew becau se NEED FOR CONSTITUTION
ity took public
achieve full cooperation,
I walk brotherly with the Pr
IN ISRAEL OVEREMPHASIZED
steps to have
Cooperation is practical and possible because it is the ex-
testant and the Catholic and s it To the Editor:
their children
pression of common interests and mutual advantages. The reason
with them in their pews on oe
Simultaneously with the cons.
boycott Christ-
Segal
why it is so difficult to get cooperation is that most people or
ing into being of the state of
mas observance in the public casions. I have had them in tl
group's have never really tried to define their common interests
Israel, men of great eapacitA,
schools. It is creditable to other temple with me on our holiday
and areas of agreement.
Jews of the same community that I feel no religious offense whe n moved by the idea that a new
If Brotherhood Week is to serve any useful purpose it must
country must have a fundamental
they publicly protested against they invite me to enjoy the
seek to awaken understanding of the desirability and profitable-
Christmas trees. I receive Christ- law, started working on a con-
this.
ness of cooperation. If we would abandon our passion for flowery
mas gifts from them and send stitution.
Now I read some utterances them gifts.
speeches and devote our efforts to cementing human relations,
Some months ago, the entire
made against the broad-minded
something worthwhile might be the result.
Maybe It will be asked, Put movement subsided. probably be-
Jews of Claremont, N. H. In one
of the Yiddish papers they are what of the ill-willed neighbors cause they realized that a con-
accused of trying to "buy good, who are so many? You can't mean stitution can really only consist
we should seek them out?
of one paragraph—"In all tone,
will" among the Christians. Their
shall rue.. regard, the major-
• • •
dineveliy.
The South African Jewish Chronicle, Cape Town, quotes
alleged offense is that they sent
ity
these words of a British editor who replied to criticism against
Christmas presents to the dis-
I IGNORE THEM as individuals
This one provision Is so power-
his paper as follows:
abled in a Veterans Hospital; they unfit for decent association; just
"It is time we should have had brought home to us the
invited Christian ministers to the as I ignore all other kinds of dirty ful that it nullifies any additional
great mystery of journalism—that all the people who know
pulpit of Rabbi Michael Szenes people. But to insulate myself items. For example, a provision
prohibiting capital punishment
exactly how to gonduct a
of their temple.
from all non-Jews, on their ac-
paper are engaged in other occu-
pations."
would be incompatible with ma-
count,
is
to
copy
the
sin
of
the
If these were isolated incidents
jority rule if the majority de-
anti-Semites.
This is quite true. Many a reader feels he could tell the
they wouldn't be worth mention-
sired it.
editor what should or should not have been said or omitted,
ing. They belong to a new pattern
I have no idea of putting down
It is safe to say that a majority
without realizing that making a newspaper is an art which
of some Jews who lately have antieSemitism when I go along rule provision can never be re-
requir.s years of experience.
taken up a stiff-neckedness un- with my neighbors. After 2,000 pealed because such
a vote would
Our South African colleagues, however, are annoyed by
years of it, I can see no end of
becoming to the Jewish ideal.
.
be tantamount to the majority re-
criticism that they are "keeping the public ignorant of matters
• . • 4.
anti-Semitism in our time . But, pealing its own powers.
that are important."
It seems that legislators dis-
AMONG MEMBERS of the anyway, I can respect myself as
Contrary to the opinion of our Cape Town friends who
equally
unbending American a Jew toward the purpose fulfill- trust their successors and so they
seem to be inclined to believe that their paper carries
ing,
within
myself,
the
teaching
try
to force their__ opinions on
Council for Judaism (anti-Zion=
sufficiently large selection of international, national and local
of brotherhood that is our pro - them in the form of a constitu•
ist)
I
have
heard
it
said
that
it
news items, we think the matter is quite serious.
phetic inheritance.
tion. This is a violation of
all derives from the idea that the
We admit quite freely that the news services which serve
I shall not be fulfilling it if I o
Jews are now a nation of their
rights. The majority
the Jewish press in America are rather whimsical in their
own; that nationalistic arrogance join the stiff necks among us. By o to f daytannot
tomorrow.. bind the majority
selection of news, unpredictable and often contradictory in
their intransigence they are ali-
is bound to spring from this.
their reporting. This makes it rather difficult for even the
enating the good will of neigh-
The distrust is unfounded, the
I
don't
like
to
believe
this.
My
most discerning editor to give his readers a true picture of
own experience of Jews is that I bors who want to be friends. You successors of the legislators have
the goings-on in the Jewish world.
don't
keep
them
by
telling
them
benefited by the mistakes of the
most of them aren't feeling na-1
The only power that could change the picture is the reader
tionalistically Jewish because of 1 you are against their children past and are aware of new world
himself. If 'enough readers insisted on complete and reliable
the state of Israel or are behaving having Christmas in the school conditions.
information, our news services might shake off their special
because your children happen to
EMANUEL ROSMAN
that way.
interest shackles and start on the road to honest, dependable
be going there, too, or that you
The fault for the isolationism want no truck with their
reporting, following the general pattern of the American
tradition.
. nis-
of Jews is not in Jews themselves ;t ers in your synagogue.
but in anti-Semitism. It is the 1
Until such time, however, the reader of any Jewish paper
way of people to withdraw With
will have to put up with the hunt and peck type of news service
in themeslves when the neighbor
which is'the despair of any serious newspaperman.
is hostile,
1
Thirty-two thousand licenses
I confess that I myself have felt
now in the hands of Polish Jews,
PARIS — (JWNS) — "My last permitting them to sell tobacco,
that way about non-Jews. With-'
out protest /have listened to Jews wish is to kill 100 Jews at once," salt and alcohols, will be revoked
A word of wisdom came to us from India. Asked about his
saying, well, there is a bit of anti- shouted Hans Hiner, former Nazi and turned over to war invalids
opinion on the hydrogen bomb, Pandit Nehru, India's prime
Sernitism in all of them, Only commissioner of the Mauthausen and former soldiers, if a law now
minister, had this to say:
afterward have I asked myself concentration camp, after he was before the Polish Sejm is passed.
"If mankind is bad, let the bomb destroy mankind. If man-
are
all of them really anti-Semi- sentenced to death for the mass
This act will literally take the
kind is good, let mankind destroy the bomb."
tic, and I have conscientiously murder of Jews.
bread out of the mouths of ap-
Admittedly, this is an ovessimplification of the problem.
answered No.
proximately 150,000 Jews, since
But we admirc the moral courage that is the foundation of
The Jewish Chronicle is the
• • •
their only sustenance can be de-
Nehru's convictions: the courage to introduce morals into
only newspaper that gives com-
THERE ARE THOSE—I can
polities.
plete coverage of Jewish events rived from this form of retailing.
count them by the dozen —
(From the Jewish Chronicle,
De troit,
Feb. 13, 1925)

The great ideals of mankind are at best the guiding stars In
whose direction we move, but they cannot easily be translated
into dynamic action.

have been getting word latel y
I about
Jews wrapping them-

it

A Word About the Jewish. Press

Wisdom of the East

Even on the Gallows
Nazis Won't Repent

•

25 Years Ago,
This Was News