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DETROIT JEWISH

Page 4

CHRONICLE

Repairs in the Field

Detroit Jewish Chronicle

Published Weekly by the Jewish Chronicle Publishing Co., Inc.
WOodward 1-1040
900 Lawyers' Building, Detroit 26, Michigan
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 TILCHIN
Publisher
GERHARDT NEUMANN
NORMAN KOLIN
Editor
Advertising' Manager
I Adar 24, 5711
Friday, March 2, 1951

Britain Sees the Light .

The visit last week of Lt. Gen. Sir Brian Robertson,
commander of the Middle East area for Great Britain,
to Israel portends a reversal of American and especially
British thinking about that part of the world.
Robertson's purpose was clearly to sound out Israel
on a defensive alliance against possible Russian aggres-
sion in the oil-rich bridgeway to Africa and the Suez
Canal. For some time it has been clear that the British
position has been critically weakened by the rise of Arab
nationalism as well as its disasterous role in the birth of
Israel.
With the Egyptians angling to oust them from the
Suez region arid .the Sudan, the British face the proposi-
tion of being confined to a few islands in the eastern
Mediterranean, eastern Africa and Transjordan.
The United States having tied its trailer to the British
chariot faces the same situation. Unlike the British, how-
ever, we have not fully committed ourselves to the fan-
tastic idea that the corrupt and tottering Arab world can
be built up into a bulwark of strength in the Middle East.
We have had the good sense to confine our military
overtures
to Turkey and Iran, the former of which at least
•
can be relied upon not to , sell us out for a handful of
gold, as did many of the Arab nations during the last war.
If any sense.is to be injected into the Middle East picture
strategically, it seems clear that Israel and Turkey must
be the bases upon which - we can build.
The visit of Gen. Robertson therefore would seem to
indicate that the British at long last are learning from
experience and are seeking (perhaps in our name also)
to reach a military agreement with Israel.
It is axiomatic, of course, that no nation is stronger
than its economy in modern warfare and this is certainly
true of Israel. That country cannot hope to contribute to
a collective Middle East defense arrangement without a
substantial increase in capital goods along with its in-
creasing population. It goes without saying that ship-
ments of heavy armaments' must be made from Britain

and the United States.

In other words, we must do for Israel the very same
thing we have done for western. Europe and other free
nations the world over. This aid combined with Israel's
high morale will be invaluable in case of a global
showndown.

The Jewish Gift to the World

If Judaism had given the world nothing else than
the Sabbath, it would have won an immortal place in the
history of civilization.
"Six days shall work be done," we read in this week's
portion of the Bible (Exodus 35:2), "but on the seventh
day there shall be to you an holy day, a Sabbath of rest
to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put
to death."
Later Jewish tradition has softened the harshness of
the penalty, but the idea of the Sabbath has survived and
has conquered the world. The Sabbath—the "greatest of
Jewish inventions," as Will Durant calls it in his monu-
mental book, "The Age of Faith"—has become a social
institution for the civilized world.
. The five-day work week is a direct offshoot of the*
Sabbath idea. Whether or not people are making a wise
use of their leisure time is another question. In Judaism,
the Sabbath was always considered a day of worship and
study.
In any case, the Sabbath idea is one of the few great
thoughts in man's history which cannot be erased. In
whatever form it appears, it will always be recognized as
Israel's greatest gift to the world.

The Nazis Go Free

As we reported in last week's issue, the World Jewish
Congress has denounced the action of the American au-
thorities who were responsible for commuting the sent-
ences of the convicted Nazi war criminals.
Generally, in this country and abroad, Jews felt de-
jected when they learned of the surprise move by John
McCloy, U. S. High Commissioner, and Gen. Thomas
Handy, U. S. commander.
Among those released were nine German doctors
who performed their infamous experiments on concentra-
tion camp inmates, a number of generals and diplomats
(many of whom had a hand in the slaughter of Jtws) as
well as Alfred von Krupp, the arms king of Germany.
On the other hand, seven of the worst war criminals
will be executed,among them Gen. Oswald Pohl, who was
responsible for the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto
and the construction of the Auschwitz gas chambers; Paul
Blobel, who ordered the killing of 33,000 Jews' in Kiev,
and others.
Of course, there were political reasons for this action.
The Jewish people feel that the greatest crime ever com-
mitted against the will go unpunished, and the Germans
may even emerge from this period with the theory that
they acted in self-defense. It will take a long time until

justice triumphs.

Friday, March 2, 1951

Commentary
on Proverbs
Fills a Gap

By RABBI SAMUEL II. PRERO
Director, -Young Israel of Detroit

PROVERBS WITH COM-
MENTARY by Julius IL Green-
stone (Jewish Publication So-
ciety of America, Philadelphia,
398 pp., 53.50).
The use of pithy, balanced,
well-turned sentences to express
universal truths and judgmenli
has been the intellectual sport
of wise men ever since man
learned to express his thoughts
in words. The sayings of the
wisest of all men, King Solo-
mon, have been translated to us
via one of the books of the Holy
Writ.
repairs
on
his
tractor.
The
mechaniza-
As is the case with all of scrip-
makes
An Israeli farmer
tion of Israel's agriculture is one of the goals of $500,000,000 Is- ture the precise thoughts and
rael government bond issue which will begin in the United lofty concepts contained therein
are but always intelligible to the
States on May 1.
casual reader. They necessitated
interpretation and the commen-
tary of our sages.
The well-known Jewish schol-
ar, Dr. Juilus H. Greenstone, has
done an admirable piece of work
in collating many of the exist-
ing commentaries on the Book
of Proverbs, adding where nec-
By BERNARD SINGER
essary his own comments and in- •
(From the London Jewish Chronicle)
terpretations in order to make
T WAS JUNE, 1934, eight years after the first foundations of the this portion of the Bible more
new. Jewish State had been laid. In the neighboring Far Eastern
accessible to the American Jew-
provinces there were already large brickwork settlements.
In Biro-Bidjan everything was There one was reminded of the ish public.
Now, the worn commentary is
reminiscent of the Jewish vil- descriptions of the first settle-
lages in the Ukraine and Bye- ments on the Amazon: forests among those that have an omi-
The same wooden and the wide Amur river, and nous sound for the modern read-
lorussia.
houses, the same wooden pave- hosts of mosquitoes, from which er. It leads him to think of
ments being rotted by moisture. one had to protect oneself with something dry, dull and schol-
The dirty wooden fences, where special masks. Jews were sent astic. -
Yet the most famous com-
the authorities put up their to clear the forests and to sup-
posters, left you with the im- plement their work on the land mentary to the Bible in Jewish
tradition, that of Rashi, is any-
pression that the small Jewish with hunting.
thing but that. And Dr. Green-
towns had been transplanted in
The Jews brought culture to
all their poverty and ugliness. this wilderness. Together with stone has quite obviously mod-
The theater was also used for them came the teacher. They eled himself upon Rashi rather
meetings, and for the more im- also brought with them tractors than upon most of his verbose
portant trials. The day I arrived and combine harvesters, sent successors.
Much of the material in the
a Jewish baker was being sued. from the United States by the
Proverbs presents diffi-
He was accused of having spok- Friends of Biro-Bidjan. Friend- Book of which
make this com-
en contemptuously of his Rus- ship grew betwen the neighbor- culties
sion fellow baker. The Jew ing Cossacks and the'newcomers. mentary essential. Hebrew in
general is a compact language,
pleaded that he had no evil in-
Regiments of the Red Army
tentions, while the Attorney- and the Cossacks cleared the and maxims require even great-
General accused him of having forests and drained the marshes, er terseness.
Besides, the social conditions
brought all the bad habits and while the young Jews drove the
prejudices from his small town. tractors, with the Cossacks look- presupposed in many of the max-
ims are vastly different from
We heard a long Yiddish ing on in admiration.
ours. Dr. Greehstone's comments
• . .
speech on Tsardom, and on the
THE YOUNG JEWS got on are brief, clear and to the point.
evils of anti-Semitism. The Jew
was found guilty: he was order- well with the Cossacks, but the With them before him, the reader
ed to pay 20 per cent of his older people Were depressed. A should find the individual pro-
salary for the next three months. letter took months to arrive. verbs interesting to the point of
being delightful.
This was not the only court. The doctor came only rarely.
This alone would justify the
A two-story wooden house con- The older Jews were not keen publication of Proverbs with
on
the
company
of
the
Cossacks;
tained the judical department.
commentaries. The modern Jew
Generally, there was no short- on the contrary, they feared that will hardly know where to locate
age of offices and bureaucrats. their children might intermarry. Proverbs in the Bible, let alone
Sixteen years have elapsed
Fifty per cent of the 15,000 in-
habitants were civil servants, since then. Foreign correspon- be attracted to read the closely-
dents are not admitted to Biro- printed page.
teachers, and party organizers.
The book under review is of
The industry of the capital, Bidjan. The Soviet Jewish press
the
usual size, the fourth in a
wrote
in
1941
that
big
factories
about which so much has been
series
of Bible commentaries
had
been
built
in
the
Little
written in the Soviet press, was
not impressive. The "tailoring Khingan mountains and in the published by The Jewish Publica-
tion Society; the Biblical text in
factory" was a shop employing capital.
In the settlement of Birokan English is in large well-spaced
30 people who had brought
their own sewing machines with (when I was there it was a type so. that its reading should
them. The same applied' to the small village) a big paper mill prove effortless.
As stated by the author in the
had presently been established.
carpentry and shoe "factories."
There was talk of huge textile preface, it is unfortunate that the
AT FIRST SIGHT the artisans and shoe concerns. In the cap- publishers were unable to carry
should have been contented. ital, we were told, there are out the original intention of in-
There was plenty of work, and 132 schools, 14 hospitals, a li- eluding the Hebrew text. Green-
stone's scholarly work should
the piece-rates were much high- brary with 110,000 books.
From these reports it might prove to be a worthy supplement
er than in Central Russia. The
army was an ever-ready market appear that the dreams of the to the library of every American
al-
and didnot bargain about prices. first pioneers have been ful- Jew and even those who are
acquainted
with
the
older
ready
filled.
Yet
all
these
descriptions
Yet one could not see any sign
of satisfaction among the work- have not, appagently, tempted commentaries will find much
ers. Though they were not too the Jews, since, despite the re- spiritual food for thought in his
talkative about their past, it cent compulsory Jewish trans- book.
It is regrettable, however, that
soon became clear that many ports from the Ukraine and
had come to Biro-Bidian to es- Byelorusia, there are still fewer the author in his attempt to be
than 100,000 Jews in Biro-Bid- "scienficially accurate" in his in-
cape prosecution.
The journey to Biro-Bidjan jan, and there is certainly not a troduction, lends more weight to
was the price of suspension. sufficient Jewish population there the position taken by the modern
Even among the bureaucrats to proclaim an autonomous re- Bible critics who strive to secu-
larize scripture as opposed to the
there were many with a "past," public.
(According to official statistics, age-old traditions supported by
who had to make up for Trots-
kyist or other politicial devia- the population of Biro-Bidjan in Talmudic and rabbinic state-
1939 was 108.719; about 25 per mots. Dr. Greenstone is one of
tions.
cent
were Jews. In 1928, there the foremost Jewish scholars in
The inhabitants of the capital
feared most the possibility of were 34,000 people in the area.) the United States and his com-
Cossacks and Koreans have mentary to the Book of Proverbs
being sent to a new settlement.
Here, at least, they had a thea- now disappeared. The first presi- is even more thorough than the
dent in the state, N. Libenberg, established Soncino edition edit-
ter, a cultural society. In the
settlements they would be com- was purged as "a nationalist on ed by Dr. A. Cohen of England.
He was fore many years in-
the Palestine - Zionist model."
pletely cut off.
In winter the capital could Many other pioneers, accused of structor in Religion and Talmud
still be reached in reindeer collaborating with the Japanese at Gratz College, of which in-
principal
sledges on thic,k icy roads, but in secret service, have disappeared. stitution he was the Among
his
summer there was only the cir- The state founded in 1934 does from 1934 to 1946.
numerous scholarly works is a
die,
but
neither
can
not
dare
to
cuitous route via the Amur
it live and develop as a real commentary Wad Book of Num-
river.
bers (1939).
I visited the nevt 'settlements. Jewish state.

Writer Reveals Failure
of State in Biro-Bidjan

I

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