THE JEWISH NEWS
Page Four
As the Editor
Views the News - -
The Mighty Seventh
Horrible!
What is the supreme degree of charity spok-
en of by Moses Maimonides, leading Jewish
philosopher?—S.T. -
To give assistance to one who has fallen on
evil times by presenting him with a gift or loan,
or entering into a partnership with him, or pro-
curing him work, thereby helping him to be-
come self-supporting.
* * *
Where in the Bible is the benediction begin-
ning, "The Lord bless thee and keep thee,"
found?—A.B.R.
It can be found in its entirety in Numbers
6:24-26.
Talmudic Tales
By DAVID MORANTZ
(Based upon the ancient legends and'philosophy found in
the Talmud and folklore of the Jewish people dating back
as far as 3,000 years).
TALL STORIES IN THE TALMUD
What About the Mufti?
the head of a great Arab community." Is it
true that the French hope to use the Arab
bandit in diplomatic jockeying for- position
in the Levant?
The French have some explaining to do.
And perhaps the British Tories will be
compelled to make reply to these and other
pertinent questions on the eve of Great
Britain's general election in July.
Novelette With a Moral
-
Walter Winchell's column a few days ago
carried this story under the headline "New
York Novelette":
"A plane flew low and suddenly zoomed
into a dive and disappeared into the Atlantic.
"Local residents of the summer village
gathered about to help search in vain.
"But a wing of the plane was thrown high
on the beach—as were some of the personal
effects of the pilot.
"The locals found some photographs of kin.
"Also a folded bit of paper citing the pilot
for bravery in action in the south Pacific.
"And some one found his wallet—with his
name—Lt. B. E. Goldstein.
It lay a stone's throw from a signpost
which read: 'You are now entering Seaview, a
restricted community'."
-
Similar stories are being repeated time and
again on the home front.
' It ought to be a lesson for the bigots—but
the discriminating signs remain and the -
libels against Jews and our men and women
in uniform continue to spread.
Will the bigots ever learn?
THE JEWISH NEWS
Member of Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Independent
Jewish Press Service, Seven Arts Feature Syndicate,
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Member American Association of English-Jewish News-
papers and Michigan Press Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publish-
lag Co., 2114 Penobscot Bldg., Detroit 26, Mich. Telephone
RAndolph 7956. Subscription rate. $3 a year; foreign
$4 a year. Club subscription of one issue a month,
published every fourth Friday it the month, to all
subscribers to Allied Jewish Campaign of the Jewish
Welfare Federation of Detroit. at 40 cents a club sub-
scription per year.
Entered as second-class matter August 6, 1942. at the
Post Office at Detroit. Michigan, under the Act of
March 3. 1879.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
MAURICE ARONSSON
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
FRED M. BUTZEL
ISIDORE SOBELOFF
THEODORE LEVIN
ABRAHAM SRERE
MAURICE H. SCHWARTZ HENRY WINEMAN
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ, Editor
A. R. BRASCH, Advertising Counsel
VOL. '7—NO. 12
JUNE 8, 1945
The Week's Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the twenty-eighth day of Sivan,,
5705, the following Scriptural selections will
be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion — Num. 13:1-15:41.
Prophetical portion—Joshua 2.
On Monday and Tuesday, Rosh Hodesh Tam-
muz, Num. 28:1-15 will be read.
Facts You Should Know
Answers to Readers
Questions About Jews
American anti-Semites, following the
Nazi line, have resorted to use of casualty.
lists and names of parents of wounded and
killed servicemen to spread their propa-
ganda and especially to blame the Jews for
the war.
Dr. Daniel A. Poling, co-editor of the
Christian Century, deploring for the second
time such misuse of casualty lists by anti- -
Semites, stated in his column in the New
York Post:
"Such use of a casualty list . . . is parti-
cularly callous and un-American. To me
it is significantly more, it is un-Christian."
It is encouraging to know that an out-
standing Christian speaks firmly in con-
demnation of such horrible methods used
by Nazis in our midst. _
Can't our government find some way of
dealing with people who indicate to hatred
and who undermine our internal peace with
their propaganda?
Colonial Secretary Oliver Stanley told the
British House of Commons that the former
Jerusalem Mufti, Haj Amin el Husseini, is
now in the hands of the French.
But he declared: "I have no statement to
make at present" when asked 'what the
Churchill government proposes to do with
him.
Is it possible that the British authorities
are forgetting that the Mufti was an accom-
plice of Hitler and Mussolini and that he in-
stigated Arabs to fight not only the Jews but
also British, French and Americans?
Will the British ignore the charge made in
San Francisco by Paul Boncour, chairman of
the French UNCIO delegation, that followers
of the Mufti and "elements outside the Arab
world" have fomented the trouble in Syria?
At the same time, will the French please
explain the report from Paris that the ex-
Mufti is living luxuriously under their su-
pervision, receiving "special treatment" be-
cause "custom demands such treatment for
Friday, June 8, 1945
The Fight on Domestic Nazism
Mr. Malcolm W. Bingay, editorial director of the Detroit
Free Press, is rendering a great service to the cause of world
peace and to humanitarianism with his expose of Nazi in-
fluences in' this country.
His personal observations in Germany, where he saw the
evidence of Nazi brutality, have led Mr. Bingay to place
emphasis on the need for eradicating the causes that lead to
Nazism and to prevent its spread in this country.
The emphasis he places on the continued existence of
One can find everything in the Talmud, even
what are commonly called "tall stories" and they
prove to be a welcome change after one has been
struggling with intricate passages of "halachah."
"Jack and the Beanstalk" is a favorite fairy
tale and few would connect it with the Talmud
but we read in Kethuboth of R. Simeon B. Tahlifa
who told about a cabbage that was so enormous
that a ladder had to be used to climb up its stalk
to gather its leaves.
There was also a famous turnip in which a
fox made its nest and when the remainder of the
vegetable was weighed it was found to be 60
pounds in the pound weight of Sepphoris.
Another tells of a gigantic peach weighing
one and two thirds bushels and R. Jacob B. Dostai
related: "From Lod to Ono is a distance of about
three miles. Once I rose up early in the morning
and waded all that way up to my ankles in honey
of the figs."
All these wonders, we are assured, are noth-
ing to what we shall see in the days of the
Messiah!
(Copyright by r avid Norwitz)
For a handsome 195 page, autographed gift volume con-
taining 128 of these tales and 500 Pearls of Wisdom, send
$1.50 to David Morantz, care of The Jewish News, or
phone PLaza 1048.
domestic Nazism should be taken to heart, if we are to avoid
another outburst of intolerance everywhere.
Mr. Bingay is not an alarmist. On the contrary, he is a
realist who recognizes that evil forces are still at work in
the United States and in the entire western hemisphere.
Dear Boys and Girls:
*
*
*
There are many stories in Jewish folklore de-
picting the Jewish ideal of charity.
Let us take Detroit as an immediate example.
In this column I am printing one of them: the
It is true that we have not suffered from incidents which story
of the Prophet Elijah and the widow.
have dragged cities like Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland,
I hope you are all helping your elders keep
Chicago, New Orleans and others into medievalism. There the lawns looking attractive and planting victory
have been no mass attacks upon Jews here. But only recently gardens.
A pleasant Sabbath to you all.
there were individual attacks on Jews which should have
UNCLE DANIEL.
caused all decent Americans to feel ashamed over the in-
* * *
•
fluence of Nazism upon some young Americans.
ELIJAH AND THE WIDOW
If the hurdling of a middle-aged Jew through a restau-
rant window by five young rowdies, to whom the Jewish
At one time, in the land of Palestine where the
victim dared to appeal against their anti-Semitic talk, is an Prophet Elijah lived, there was a famine. There
been no rain in the country for a long time,
indication of what we mean, then Mr. Bingay's warnings are had
and the rivers and the brooks and the wells were
based on the existence of a horrible internal condition mir- almost dry. And the grass and the trees and the
grain did not grow, because there was no rain.
roring Germanic barbarism.
If the continued emphasis of anti-Semites on the stupid There was hardly any food to eat, and very little
to drink in the whoTe land.
charge that this is a "Jewish war" means anything at all, it water
Elijah was going on a journey. He had not
proves that dangers created by foreign propagandists con- eaten anything all day, and he was hot and
tired and thirsty. He thought of all the other
tinue to plague this land.
Children's Corner
*
*
*
people who were as hungry and thirsty as he was.
He felt sorry for them and he prayed to God to
What is to be done about it?
send rain.
Unless anti-Semitism is outlawed by international de-
On and on he walked along the hot and dusty
crees, the situation remains grave—for Jewry and for the road. Finally he came to a little cottage by the
world, since non-Jews never escape the effects of bigotry roadside where a widow and her son lived. The
even if it is directed at the outset only at minority groups
like the Jews, the Negroes and other scapegoats.
Mr. Bingay is serving the cause of democracy with his
warnings, but it is doubtful whether America is prepared
to take the drastic step of calling a spade a spade and of
making race, religious and national hatreds national crimes.
When the time arrives for the realization of such an ideal,
we shall believe that the entire world is ready to adopt rules
of conduct which should be basic in humanitarianism but
which too many people continue to consider millenial.
Power Politics and the UNCIO
It is clear that power politics affects the charter of the is
proposed new international organization, that Palestine
included in the issues at stake, that mankind must continue
to hope for the recognition of moral values as means of put-
ting an end to wars and national strife.
There was a moment during the San Francisco United
Nations Conference on International Organization during
which we had hoped that it would be possible to set up a
new order under which peace could be dictated in spite of
the greed and the lust for blood and power of some of the
nations of the world. It was a passing moment.
Today, the best that can be hoped for is some semblance
of reason which will at least prevent major conflicts in the
world. -
The best that we can hope for today is that the world's
statesmen will refuse to break their promises and that they
will at least honor a pledge to the Jewish people for the
creation of the Jewish National Home.
The best we can hope for is that the foundations for
world peace will include recognition of the right of peoples,
includina our own, to homes, to security, to liberty.
The b best we can hope for is that hope will not be aban-
doned and that as time goes on even the present weak struc-
ture for a world organization will become a powerful instru-
ment for good for all mankind.
widow' was in the yard picking up sticks. Elijah
stopped, and said to her, "Fetch me, I pray you,
a little water that I may drink."
The widow looked up at Elijah and she saw
that he was hot and dusty and tired. Although
she had very little water left herself, she was
sorry for Elijah and wanted to help him. So she,
went into the house and brought him a drink
of water.
Elijah drank and felt much refreshed. Then
he said to the widow, "That tasted good. I thank
you. Will you give me, I pray you, a piece of
bread, that I may eat?"
And the woman answered, "I have no bread
in the house, only a handful of flour and a little
oil. And I am gathering these sticks to make a
fire, by which to bake a small loaf for me and
my son. But you are welcome to share it with
us."
So she asked Elijah into the house. She made
the fire, then scraped the flour out of the barrel,
made a loaf of bread out of it, and baked it.
Elijah ate and thanked her. Then he made
ready to continue his journey. But before he
went, he said to the widow, "Because you
helped me when I was hungry and thirsty,
although you yourself had almost nothing, God
will help you: and you and your son shall not
want until the rain comes again, and there is
plenty to eat."
The widow thanked Elijah for his good wishes,
but she did not dream that his words would
come true.
But the very next day a wonderful thinc , hap-
pened. You could never guess what it was! '' When
she went to the flour barrel, which she thought
was empty, she found enough flour in it to make
another loaf as big as the one she had shared
with Elijah!
And the next day she thought, "Surely, now
the barrel is empty."
But when she looked into it, sure enough,
there was exactly the same amount of flour in
it again!
And that happened every day until the rain
came again, and things grew and there was
plenty to eat for everybody.
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