America Yeutisk Periodical Page 4 DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE .Detroit Jewish Chronicle Thursday, February 16, 193 Across the Street The Reader Writes Published by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc. 2827 Cadillac Tower, Detroit 26, Michigan WOodWard 1-1040! SUBSCRIPTION: 53.00 Per Year, Single Copies, 10e; 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 TILCI1IN Publisher EMILY SOMLYO GERHARDT NEUMANN Business Manager Editor Thursday, February 16, 1950 Shebat 29, 5710 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 : - !valuate the idea of brotherhood anew in order to see how much of it can withstand the stress and strain of modern society. k • • -"Pli" ■111res.. . ..4% 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 eir•umstances would not enter their minds, Minorities have to understand i ihe 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. •""`ae. *AVER, Dt Avsso nookout Writer Raps Jews' Lack of Broad-Mindedness PROTESTS BIRON'S DEFENSE OF' MENUIIIN To A theEndut- olr emb : er of the religiou s Zionist movement—Hapoel Harrrr izrachi—I would like to take this opportunity in expressing my personal opinion on the I tide written by Phineas Biron Feb. 2 in connection with Yehudi Menu- hin's playing for the Germans. I must say that I am very much in doubt as to whether Biron had a moral right to protect one who does not claim—that is, be- yond his name—to have any con- nection whatsoever with the Jews as a nation. If Menuhin had any feeling pity and respect for his se 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 institutigins should not have bene- fited from the proceeds of those concerts. Again I want to emphasize that we who are proud of our se. ligious and cultural heritage should not offer our services to a people who have persecuted and desecrated us. GERALD LERER, Director of Public Relations, Hapoel Hainizrachi of East Side, New York, N.Y. By ALFRED SEGAL whom there is no trace of the in• have been getting word lately fection. Sometimes they say, rath- about Jews wrapping them- 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 and refusing to have anything to a sincere expression of their good To the Editor: do with gestures of ood will to- will. Your new department "The What is it that we want? Justice? Tolerance? Shall we be ward their non- On account of them I try to be Chronicle Was There" is most content with an existence that depends on the whims of the Jewish neigh- interesting and fills a lon g -felt majority? a Jew who doesn't hold himself bors, want in Anglo-Jewish journal. apart from non-Jews. He walks There was, as Obviously, we refuse to be tolerated. We feel that minorities gladly with other men who are ism, whet e advance publicity I recall, a recent do not have to apologize for their existence. They have their good : going his way. He isn't thinking usually fills considerably more incident in New and bad traits like any majority, and must be accepted as of "buying good will;" good will space than accounts of events they are. Jersey in which is of his Jewish teaching and he after they have taken place. some of the Jews The only way to a better understanding of the different DAVID GOLDBERG gives it. of the commun- groups which make up our society is an earnest attempt to I am no less the Jew beca use NEED FOR CONSTITUTION ity took public Achieve full cooperation. I walk brotherly with the P ro- IN ISRAEL OVEREMPHASIZEI) steps to have Cooperation is practical and possible because it is the ex- testant and the Catholic and sit To the Editor: t heir children pression of common interests and mutual advantages. The reason with them in their pews on oe- boycott Christ- Segal why it is so difficult to get cooperation is that most people or Simultaneously with the coin. casions. I have had them in the ing into being of the state of mas observance in the pu groups have never really tried to define their common interests blic and areas of agreement, schools. It is creditable to of her temple with me on our holida ys Israel, men of great capacity, feel no religious offense w hen moved by the idea that a new ews of the same community t If Brotherhood Week is to serve any useful purpose it must they publicly protested agai hat they invite me to enjoy th eir country must have a fundamental seek to awaken understanding of the desirability and profitable- this. nst Christmas trees. I receive Chr ist- law, started working on a ness of cooperation. If we would abandon our passion for flowery . von- mas gifts from them and se nd stitution. Now I read some utteran oes them speeches and devote our efforts to cementing human relations, gifts. something worthwhile might be the result. made against the broad-mind Some months ago, the entire Jews of Claremont, N. H. In o ed I Maybe it will be asked, P ut movement subsided, probably be- of the Yiddish papers they ne I what of the ill-willed neighb e r! cause they realized that a con- accused of trying to "buy go are who are s9 many? You can me an stitution can really only consist we should seek them out? of one paragraph-1n all times will" among the Christians. The od. it • S • The South African Jewish Chronicle, Cape Town, quotes alleged offense is that they se nt and in every regard, the major- these words of a British editor who replied to criticism against ity shall rule." Christmas presents to the di s- I IGNORE THEM as individu his paper as follows: This one provision Is so power- abled in a Veterans Hospital; the unfit for decent association; ju als st r ful that it nullifies any "It is time we should have had brought home to us the invited Christian ministers to th 'as I ignore all other kinds of di additional great mystery of journalism—that all the people who know pulpit of Rabbi Michael Sz eves people. But to insulate myse y ; items. For example, a provision exactly how to conduct a paper are engaged in other occu- of their temple. IfI prohibiting capital punishment pations." from all non-Jews, on their a If these were isolated inciden , count, is to copy the in of th c- would be incompatible with ma- This is quite true. Many a reader feels he could tell the e jority rule if the majority de- they wouldn't be worth mention- anti-Semites 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 without realizing that making a newspaper is an art which It is safe to say that a majority of some Jews who lately have antiaSemitism when I go along requir.3 years of experience, taken up a stiff-neckedness un- with my neighbors. After 2,000 rule provision can never be re- Our South African colleagues, however, are annoyed by pealed because such a vote would becoming to the Jewish ideal, years of it, can see no end o criticism that they are "keeping the public ignorant of matters tantamount to the majority re- •• • • that are important." anti-Semitism in our time, Bu t, f ; be pealing its own powers. e l ,anyway, 1 can respect myself AMONG MEMBERS of th Contrary to the opinion of our Cape Town friends who as l It seems that legislators dis- • toward the purpose fulfill- equally unbending American fulfill- tr ust their successors and so they seem to be inclined to believe that their paper carries a Council for Judaism (anti-Zion ing, within myself, the teaching try to force their_opinions sufficiently large selection of international, national and local on ist) I have heard it said that i = brotherhood that is our pro- them in the form of a constitu. news items, we think the matter is quite serious. t phetic inheritance. all derives from the idea that the We admit quite freely that the news services which serve tion. This is a violation of it Jews are now a nation of their j I shall not be fulfilling it if I other's righ the Jewish press in America are rather whimsical in their rights. The majority own; that nationalistic arrogance join the stiff necks among us. By today cannot bind the majority ) selection of news, unpredictable and often contradictory in their intransigence they are ali- of tomorrow, is bound to spring from this. their reporting. This makes it rather difficult for even the most discerning editor to give his readers a true picture of I don't like to believe this. My enating the good will of neigh- e distrust is unfounded, the the goings-on in the Jewish world. s who want to be friends, You , succ essors of the legislators own experience of Jews is that t have don't keep them by telling them ben( most of them aren't feeling na- The only power that could change the picture is the reader ed by the mistakes of the ' you are against thei hi past iat niadnsare aware of new world tionalistically Jewish because of himself, If 'enough readers insisted on complete and reliable r cldren cond the state of Israel or are behaving having Christmas inschool the s information, our news services might shake off their special because your children happen to that way. interest shackles and start on the road to honest, dependable EMANUEL ROSMAN reporting, following the general pattern of the American The fault for the isolationism be going there, too, or that you tradition. of Jews is not in Jews themselves want no truck with their minis- Until such time however, the reader of any Jewish paper but in anti-Semitism. . the ters in your synagogue. will have to put up with the hunt and peck type of news service way of people to withdraw with which is 'the despair of any serious newspaperman. in themeslves when the neighbor Even on the Gallows is hostile. Thirty-two thousand licenses I confess that I myself have felt ; Nazis Won't Repent that way about non-Jews. With.; PARIS— (JWNS) — "My last now in the hands of Polish Jews, permitting them to sell tobacco, out protest I have listened to Jews wish is to kill 100 Jews at once," A word of wisdom came to us from India. Asked about his salt and alcohols, will be revoked shouted Hans Biner, former Na • saying, well, there is a bit of anti- opinion on the hydrogen bomb, Pandit Nehru, India's prime minister, had this to say: Semitism in all of them. Only commissioner of the Mauthausen and turned over to war invalids afterward have I asked myself concentration camp. after he was and former soldiers, if a law now "If mankind is bad, let the bomb destroy mankind. lf man- are all of them really anti-Semi- sentenced to death for the mass before the Polish Sejm is passed. kind is good, let mankind destroy the bomb." This act will literally take the tic, and I have conscientiously murder of Jews. Admittedly, this is an oversimplification of the problem. bread out of the mouths of ap- I answered No. But we admire the moral courage that is the foundation of • • • The Jewish Chronicle is the proximately 150.000 Jews, since Nehru's convictions: the courage to introduce morals into their only sustenance can be de- THERE ARE THOSE—I can only newspaper that gives com- rived from this form of retailing. plete coverage of Jewish events count them by the .dozen — i n Detroit. (From the Jewish Chronicle, 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. • Having realized this, we should reorient our thoughts accordingly, I A Word About the Jewish. Press Wisdom of the East 1 25 Years Ago, This Was News i