Page Two;: .

THE JEWISH NEWS

Friday, September 10, 1943

EVERY BOND YOU BUY BRINGS VICTORY CLOSER

a

Strictly
Confidential

(Copyright, 1943, Seven Arts Feature
Syndicate)

REPORTAGE
We didn't collect much gossip for you
at the American Jewish Conference at
the Waldorf-Astoria last week . . . We
were too busy listening to the speakers
at the public sessions . . . Rabbi Abba.
Hillel Silver's speech on Aug. 30 unques-
tionably was, in content and form, the
best and most impressive of the lot . . .
David K. Niles, one of the six special as-
sistants to President Roosevelt, attended
several sessions .of the Conference .- .
There, too, we bumped into Bernard G.
Richards, now : fully recovered from his
long siege of-illness . . . To Meyer Weis-
gal, one of the chief secretaries of the
Conference, belongs the record of not
having left the hotel for even one .min-
ute . . Orchids are due to Judge Anna
M. Kross for championing the case of
such organizations • as the I. W. 0., the
Jewish People's. Committee and others
for full representation in the Conference.
. . . Even though she failed she demon-
strated the vitality of the principles of
democracy in Jewish life.
'- NEWS FOR YOU
Rabbi Barnett . R.. Brickner of Cleve-
land will be wearing a - colonel's uniform
in the near future, .and ..will visit, in the
capacity of a sort of super-chaplain, U. S.
_ Expeditionary Forces in Egypt, - Pales-
' tine, Africa and other area's.... . His will
, be a most extensive and important mis-
sion.
Congratulations to Captain Edward
Ellsberg of the U. S. NOW, who has just
been awarded the.Legion of Merit for his
salvage operations in the Mediterranean
war zone, of which we told you quite
some time ago.
THIS AND THAT
. .
Attention, budding composers (andies-
tablished ones too): The RCA VictOr Di-
vision of the Radio Corporation of Amer-
:Aca is offering a $1,000 prize for the best
string quartet composition submitted by
an American or Canadian citizen in a
;:. contest sponsored by the Chamber Music
' Guild of Washington . . . A similar
- award is being offered a Latin American
composer also.
A magician in shirtslee%es is Dr. Abra 7
. ham Hurwitz of New York, 'a playgrciund
director who discovered that teaching
youngsters how to perform feats of pre-
': stidigitation is one wayl . of keeping them
out of mischief . .. Dr. Hurwitz puts on
;magic shows in the city's playgrounds,
'' . and then coaches some of the older kids
, in
i how to do the tricks.
::. .WEEKLY GIGGLE
One of the best tales to reach-us over
the ether in recent weeks . is Patsy Flick's
report of how Heinrich Himmler, the
!- Gestapo chief, fell ill and :needed blood
transfusion . . . The neWs 'spread 'around
.Berlin like an RAF fire, and a baboon in
'the zoo, hearing about it, escaped from
'-;its cage and rushed •
he hospital . . .
:'There he told the dum, . nded rectlition-
:: ist that he had come to offer !is blood
for Himler . . . "Take blood from you, a
• baboon?" shrieked the horrified nurse
. . . "And why:not?" .. . ... asked' the °ba-
'boon . . . "In, these parlous times us :
"'Aryans gotta stick together."
STAGE AND SCREEN
Alex ohen, the youthful Broadway
:producewho only 4 few months ago
.inarched off to the wars, is back on the
Main Stem again, discharged by his
!Uncle Sam because of a leg injury, and
;already in the midst of production of a
: new musical, "Bright Lights."
,. It looks as if BroadWaY, - • will have a
;. ;c
hance
to see Hedy Lamarr behind the
f footlights this season . . . If she does come
i:East for a legitimate stage chore, she'll
probably share honors with her husband,
[;John Leder, who would co-star with her
S' yin the same play.
ABOUT PEOPLE
-* '
1'1atthew M. Levy, who may land on
;the New York Supreme Court bench as
a result of the elimination of Judge Au-
•relio, the leading candidate, in Manhat-
•tan's latest political. explosion, has been
interested in legal presses since early

4

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BASS-LUCKOFF, Inc.

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Quotation of the Week

By PHINEAS J. BIRON..

.

TrA
CK
/
A

"In Palestine. Jewish nationhood must be clear and untrammeled.
Minority status for the Jews in Palestine would be a miscarriage of
ju.$ice.
"The Zionist movement has advanced the claim of a Jewish Com-
monwealth in postwar Palestine, and there can be little doubt that
that was the intent of the Balfour Declaration (1917) and of the Pal-
estine Mandate.
"A Jewish national homeland in Palestine — a real one, not a'
White Paper one—would lift the veil of anonymity from the Jewish
people. Its name would appear not only in the liturgy of protests
against persecution, but also in the roster of peoples who fight for
freedom, and who share in the building of a better world. Only a
homeland in Palestine would assure equality to the Jewish people."

—DR. OSCAR I. JANOWSKY, Professor of History
in College of City of New York, in Article "Jew-
ish Rights in the Postwar World," in September
Issue of Survey Graphic.

Heard in
The. Lobbies

By DAVID DEUTSCH

(Copyright, 1943, Independent
Jewish Press Service)

IT DOESN'T HAPPEN HERE? • •
More than 50 graves were recently
desecrated in the Jewish cemetery of
Glenwild, New York . . . Only the Jewish
Daily Forward reported . the fact . . .
Tombstones were removed from their lo-
cations and scattered all over the ground
and many graves were dug up . . . Glen-
wild is located in the Catskill mountains
in the vicinity of several Jewish commu-
nitits . . . Thus far the culprits have not
been apprehended . . . $300 is the reward
offered for information leading to the ar-
: st of the culprits . . . It's time for an-
her burst of publicity from one of the
Christian - Jewish good will bodies to
show contributors how much good their
work does.
. BREVITIES
Some really important literature will
appear in the forthceming 'American
Jewish HistOrical- Society volume called
Publications. It consists entirely of
American diplomatic correspondence
dealing with the fate of Jews every-
where.
Some statistician ought to add up the
ages of the folk who signed the blast for
the American Council against Judaism.
Seventy and retirement seemed to be the
minimum . passwords. But powerful Less-
ing 'Rosenwald must have been pretty
proud of the signature of his only non-
agenarian, 94-year-old Mrs. Josiah. Co- .
hen of Pittsburgh, a ioVely woman and' .
hardly a match for the Svengali of Phil-
adelphia who has perfected the knack of
being able. to tell JeWs hoW to act with-
out paying for the privilege.
. In connection with that rumor that
Ibri . Satid. or' his sore willsoon; be - 1 14 the
U. S. A:, they say that the State Depart-
ment (no offense meant—we really think
it is a wonderful department;... Hull is
great; Berle is great; Breckenridge Long
is terribly great; Wallace Murray is sim-
ply wonderful. After all who am I to be
put in the class of Samuel Grafton and
Drew Pearson by intimating that the
foregoing are anything but refugees
from Heaven?) asked Zionist leaders if
, they would be "good 'spells" and , Create
, no disturbance while- the Saudi Arabian
finger 1 cutter Offer.. (that's what •Life
magazine's interviewer said—not me) is
in the U. S. A. Believe it or not, those
asked had the . nerve to say that if the
Arabian gentleman would just be good
enough to keep his. shut ,on.,,Zionism
`the Zionist's 'would find it easy not to
embarrass the sacrosanct, holy, simply
divine State Department.

Childhood .
In. fact, he ,used' to Play s
hookey from school down in Savannah,
Ga., in order to attend sessions of the
local courts.
Brentano's latest offering was "The
;IVIerry Widow" . . Which reni:inds us
that Maxims Patis';': the restaurant in
which the •stely of "The' Merry Widow"
is laid, now sports a sign reading "This
Restaurant Is Reserved for Aryans."
Proud owner of an autographed photo
j2f. Lieut.-Gen. Patton is David ratton
T4-.-arfield, infant son of .the screen's - John
Garfield.

Purely
Commentary

By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

A STUDY IN LEADERSHIP
The American Jewish Conference ses-
sions in New York last week provided an
opportunity for studying various types of
Jewish leadership. Nearly every impor-
tant Jewish figure in America passed in
review before the delegates, and those
who were in action as guides of Jewish
destinies at this historic Conference nat-
urally ran the risk of comparison and ap-
praisal.
Justice - Joseph : M. Proskauer; - head of
the- American .. Jewish CoMmittee,. gave a
good , account. of :himself. Dr. Stephen S.
Wise, Louis Lipsky, Baruch • Zuckerman,
Dr. James G. Heller and a score of others
made good showings.
But there were two young . ,meri who
took away all the honors. Watch them,
for it is to them that we shall all have to
look for leadership in the decades to
come.
*
*
*
MONSKY AND SILVER
Henry Monsky . and Abba Hillel Silver
are the men we refer to. They were
among the youngest men in position of
leadership at the Waldorf-Astoria meet-
ings in New York.
Mr. Monsky won the hearts of the vast
audience with his first address and with
his fair handling the-. gavel.
His keynote addreSs w as a splendid es-
say, and it was well delivered. In his
early fifties, Mr. Monsky is excellent ma-
terial for leadership. -
But the man who has the most mag-
netic hold on the Jew_s of this country is
Abba Hillel .Silver.. -
*
*
*
SILVER THE ALCHEMIST
At ,a luncheon . .-in
Silver's honor
during the Conference, Dr. Harry Freid-
enwald, the dean of American Zionists,
Said something nice about Silver.
"He is an alchemist," said Prof. Fried-
enwald. "His name is silver, but his
words are gold."
It is no exaggeration, because no other
man in America can capture the imagi-
nation as does Rabbi Silver.
Those who backed him: for . leadership
of the .Zionist movement were Vindicated
at the sessions of the American Jewish
Conference. For, even if he had not been
chosen the spokesmen for Zionism, he is
that just the same. His genius compels
his recognition as the outstanding per-
sonality in Jewish life.
. *
*
ANOTHER PREDICTION
Last March we proposed Imo. Silver for
the presidency of the American Zionist
Movement. Although his rank is to be
that of chairman of the executive com-
mittee and as co-chairman of the Zionist
Emergency Committee, our proposal
turned out to be a prediction of
Here is another prediction:
an
American should ever head the '.World
Zionist Organization — and we 'believe
this to be inevitable—Abba Hillel Silver
will be the man for the job. Such a
choice may not be too pleasant for the
anti-Zionists and for the anti-Semites,
but we suggest. it.., as most practical for
the good of Israel and Eretz Israel.

Between
You and Me

By BORIS SMOLAR

(Copyright, 1943, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, Inc.)

EYES ON WASHINGTON
What happened to Rabbi S. S. Wise's
suggestion that the American Jewish
Conference send a delegation to Presi-
dent Roosevelt while still in session? .. .
Many delegates asked this question, but
received no answer . . . The answer is
that important leaders of the Conference
found this suggestion harmful . . . They
feared that if a delegation visited Presi-
dent Roosevelt while the Conference was
still in session, the President might ask
them to - abstain from' adopting certain
resolutions . • . The President's wish
would, of course, have to be complied
with, . and - the Conference might have,
thus, reached a different cliniax . . .
There were also many who feared that
the President might not have received
the delegation just when the conference
was in session, for the reason that he is
now busy with Churchill in Washington.
. . . A refusal by the President to receive
a delegation of the Conference—no mat-
ter what the reason would have been a
the delegation just when the Conference
. . . From every angle it was, therefore,
found more practical that a delegation
should be sent to the President after the
conference concluded and not during the
sessions.
CONGRESS VS. CONFERENCE
While there was complete unanimity
between all Zionist delegates on the Jew-
ish Commonwealth issue, there was a. se-
rious split. among them on the question
of whether the American Jewish Confer-
ence should remain a permanent institu-
tion . . . Opposing the permanency of the
American • Jewish . Conference were the
Zionists who are interested in the Amer-
ican Jewish Congress . . They fear that
should the American Jewish Conference
become a permanent organization, the
AmeriCan Jewish Congress will have to
dissolve itself . . . This explains why a
presidium, and not a president, was
elected at the Conference .. . Naturally,
the Ainerican Jewish Congress group is
not the only one which does' not want
the American Jewish Conference to re-
main 'as a permanent organization . .
On the other hand there are people
withi4 the Congress who would 'be ready
to sacrifice the existence of _the Congress
and replace it by the Conference as a
permanent institution . . . Some,. of these
people even went so far as to .introduce a
resolution asking that the American Jew-
ish Conference take over the functions of
the Joint Distribution .Committee, the
Hias and other ., relief organizations in
America . . This resolution was defeat-
ed in one of the committees, but there is
no doUbt that should. the American Jew-
ish Conference become a permanent or-
ganization, it will at later sessions claim
a monopoly on all Jewish activities in
America as a democratically elected body
in which all groups of American Jews
are represented.
POST-WAR FREEDOM
When James Marshall, son of the great
Jewish leader, Louis Marshall; was a
boy, he had a penny bank with a globe
of the. world on top of it ... Every time
a penny was dropped in, the globe spun
around . . . Beneath was the motto
"Money makes the world go round" . . .
But does it? . . The - answer to this
questiori, James Marshall points out,
must be decided by one's attitude' . .
His own attitude Marshall outlines ,clear-
ly and powerfully in his book "The Free-
dom to Be Free" published by John Day
Co. . ..•. He does not belieVe that it is im-
portant to 'make the werld"go:roUnd or
that it is money that makes it go round
. . . He believeS that people mist 'be
helped to free therriselveS from those
anxieties which produce paternalism, de-
ny equality, and 'drive peOple to- compe-
tition and aggression and to seek domin-
ion over others . . . Marshall makes no
secret' in his book of the fact that he is
againSt a Jewish Commonwealth in Pal-
estine-. . . The organiiation of a new lit-
tle, national state, he says, runs counter
to the needs' of world security . • •

