THE JEWISH NEWS

Page Two

Purely
Commentary

Hebrew Union College Anniversary

A Declaration by Its Alumni on the Occasion of Its Seventieth
Birthday Celebration

.

By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

By DR. SOLOMON B. FREEHOF

THE NEW YEAR 5706
Another year brings with it new
anxieties.
Until now, for 12 years, every Rosh
Hashanah carried with it the wish that
'we might see the end of Nazism and wars,
and that we might begin to enjoy the
fruits of peace.
Today, we have new anxieties.
Only a million and a quarter Jews
have survived the European reign of
terror.
But peace has not come for the sur-
vivors who remain the most unfortunate
group in Europe.
While returnees to their former homes
are being repatriated, Jews are finding
it difficult to get their property back. As
Jews, they find it almost impossible to
secure jobs.
Anti-Semitism has not declined but is
on the increase in Germany, in France
and in Poland.
What is even worse—in Poland there
were pogroms during the past few weeks
and several Jews were killed.
What, then, shall we wish and pray for
as we welcome the year 5706?

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BACK WHERE WE STARTED
. We are back where we started . during
the first years of Hitler's reign over
Europe.
And in more than one sense our peo-
ple are in a worse position than they
were after the first World War.
Jewry's difficulties are more complex
and more widespread.- There are fewer
countries which offer our people genuine
freedom. There are less Jews left in the
world, and even the small numbers of
the survivors are not sufficient to elimi- -
nate hatred against them.
There are fewer havens of refuge.
The peoples of the world remain uni-
versally deaf to the cries for help and for
justice.
Thus-5706 is _being ushered in on a
note of deep sorrow.

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INTERNAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Our needs and responsibilities are not
all external. They do not all necessarily
involve negotiations with Washington and
London and Berlin.
There are internal duties which are as
important, and in some instances even
more important.
For instance, in dealing with the prob-
lem of anti-Semitism, we must recognize
and admit that we, ourselves, must do
some things in which we have been found
wanting.
Our position can become stronger if we
ourselves are stronger—and WE can be
strong only when our ideals are alive,
when our traditions are unimpeachably
impressive, when we are above reproach.
Without sacrificing any of our rights,
and by retaining the position that we
should, as we must, fight back against
all affronts. we must, nevertheless, retain
that humility which has made Israel a
tower of strength against all adversaries.

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Past President, Central Conference of American Rabbis

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THE FIGHT ON THE HOME FRONT
In the fight on the home front, against
anti-Semites in the U. S. and Canada as
well as those overseas, we must be firm.
We have the right to be emphatic and
insistent in dealing with Lansing in the
State of Michigan, or with Albany in the
State of New York, wherever we are
compelled to present grievances because
hoodlumism raises its head in Nazi
fashion.
And we must be certain that we are
right—and to be right we must adhere
to the highest principles of Israel's teach-
ings. In this respect, our major respon-
sibility is to make certain that our young
people do not fail us, that they do not
grow up in ignorance of Jewish tradi-
tions, that they are as infallible as the
ethics of their people.
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*
WE LIVE ON HOPE
We continue to thrive on HOPE.
But with hope must go courage.
Without courage and determination, we
could not have carried on as long as we
had.
Today, we have some assurances that
leaders in free countries like our own
and Great Britain will not forget our
plight and will not be parties to the
breaking of pledges to Jewry.
May 5706 be a GOOD year to over-
come the evils of the decade that pre-
ceded it.
May it be so for us and for all man-
kind.

.

' •

We, the graduates of the Hebrew Union College, hail our Alma Mater
on the completion of her 70th year. To each of us this anniversary brings
solemn thoughts and fond recollections.
The professors of Hebrew Union College, the living and the dead, each
in his special field of work, each by his own personality and enthusiasm,
each in his own day and in his own way, was a builder of the Hebrew
Union College. We 'are grateful to them all, that they established in this new
world a center of Jewish learning where ancient Jewish culture could, with
modern scientific discipline, "renew its youth as the eagle."
Itebrew Union College is the pioneer institution of Jewish learning in
the New World. Its influence has added the benediction of ancient Jewish
ideals and knowledge to the learning and spiritual growth of this beloved
republic.
Our College has been primarily a training school for rabbis. Its grad-
uates received ordination "to teach and to judge." _They were sent forth to
maintain Israel's inherited ideals and to ennoble its daily -living. By teaching
and by example they were to continue the Covenant of Sinai and keep Israel
"a people near unto God."- .
We are grateful that our College has maintained the traditional Jewish
unity of ministry and scholarship.
From the very, beginning the Faculty of the College came from. almost
every center of Jewish learning in the Old World. Through the very presence
of our teachers, the College represented to us world-wide Israel, witnesses
to God, priests in His service, destined to suffer and to triumph over suffer-
ing, to sow in tears and to reap in joy, to be persecuted and never to perse-
cute, to be disappointed a thousand times, yet never to lose faith in the
Divine Image inherent in man.
In world Israel, our American Jewry will_ play an increasing part. With
great centers of Old World Jewish learning now destroyed, with innumer-
able synagogues in ruins and their worshippers dead or in exile, awesome
responsibilities rest upon us in this blessed land. Every branch of American
Jewry now has heavier duties. Our Hebrew Union College, the pioneer
institution of Reform Judaism, has a special mission and a magnificent op-
portunity. Old habitual pieties had been disappearing rapidly during the last
two generations; the present world catastrophe has hastened their collapse.
The world situation is too catastrophic . for the leisurely processes of un-
conscious change and slow evolution. As Judaism revives its must quickly
find adjustment to modern life. The forthright decision to modify ritual,
to change texts of worship, to select the essential out of the midst - of the
relatively non-essential, the right and duty to reform Judaism now becomes
an urgent necessity. The influence of the Hebrew Union College, through
the writings of its professors and the leadership of its graduates, has been
nation-wide. It can now become world-wide for blessing.
We count on our Alma Mater, which has served American Jewry so well
in the past, to serve world Israel equally well in the coming days.
With gratitude for the past' and Confident with hope in the future, we
bless the school that taught us as "the days of its years are seventy."

Heard in
The Lobbies

By ARNOLD LEVIN

(Copyright, 1945. Independent Jewish
Press Service, Inc.)

POLITICAL FANTASY
The Peter H. Bergson crowd "predicts"
that within the next two months a move
will get underway. to "draft" author Wil
liam B. Ziff, a frequent speaker for the
Bergsonites and at one time a member of
their committees, for the presidency of
the Zionist Organization of America.
Should . this get beyond the rumor stage,
you will know that the real men behind
the scenes • are the Bergson groups, whose
grandiose dreams include the "capture"
of the ZOA.

INTERRACIAL
Mrs. Wendell Willkie is keeping up her
late husband's good work in interracial
relations. Her latest is campaigning for
the support a Colored Children's Home
• • •
The Amsterdam News, Harlem's
great newspaper, gave a page spread to
an Independent Jewish Press Service
article on Negro-Jewish relations—writ-
ten by Dr. Prince, now of Haiti.

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LONDON CRISIS
Zionist leaders were forewarned on the
eve of their London conference that
Jewish Palestine has lost patience, is no
longer willing to listen to "wisdom" and
is ready to act, regardless of decisions.
The impatient now are the Chalutzim,
whose remarkable self-discipline during
the 1936-9 disturbances, has few paral-
lels. They refuse to respect, pending later
decisions, the White Paper ban on im-
migration and restrictions on the pur-
chase of land. They will not be satisfied
with a lifting of restrictions in one
sphere, and maintenance of restrictions
in another. David ben Gurion, regarded
as their proper spokesman, having been
a Chalutz himself, sees the possibility of
Palestine immediately accommodating a
million Jews, and 40,000 agricultural set-
tlers training these people within the
period of a few months for the back-
breaking task of reclaiming the Negev
wastes . . . Iraq Petroleum corporation
drillings in Palestine are not unimportant
among the factors causing Britain to de-
lay the 'honoring of her pledge to the
Jews . . . Latest rumor: Standard Oil,
self-centered on Iraq oil, is not interested
in the result of the Palestine oil drillings.

Not a Sacrifice

Written Shortly Before His Death in
- The Interests of the N. Y.
United Jewish Appeal

By FRANZ WERFEL

The Jewish people, in the early May
days. of this year, experienced a mighty
act of grace that far transcends the
Biblical reports of the triumphs of Israel
over its persecutors and torturers. Not
the fate of Pharaoh, • of Haman, of Ne-
buchadnezzar or Antiochus can match it-
self with the cataclysmic collapse with
which the world worked the ruin of the
Nazi demons and their mad, swinish, in-
fernal doctrines. And yet, in these days
and weeks of the so bloodily invoked
victory, something happened that suf-
fused us with an even holier emotion
than did the victory itself. There were
but very few Jewish eyes which flashed
transport and triumph. The 8th of May
was not for Israel a hymnic day of victory
and of glorious revelation of divine pun-
ishment but rather a day of strangely
painful emotion. There were many who,
after hour upon hour at the radio, were
amazed that the news which they had
not dared to visualize in their boldest
dreams, faded inexplicably, dull and tone-
less, in their souls. What was it that
happened?
I can disclose what happened The dead
had risen, the millions on millions of the
unnamable who had been cut down, and
camped like an oppressive cloudmass be-
tween us and our joy. There were not
merely the dead of Israel, our brothers
and sisters, the uncounted martyrs of
Maidanek, Oswiecien, Buchenwald and a
hundred other Molock altars; they were
the dead of mankind, our brothers and
sisters, who had to • give their life's blood
that bald blasphemy might not rule on
earth beyond thirteen years. They are
the dead the gray minor of whose
Miserere mingles with the major mode of
victory. They admonish us that the suf-
fering, the sick, the hungry, the thirsty,
the homeless and. shelterless, can be
helped, They sacrificed their entire life.
We have not sacrificed even a part of
our life.
What can we do to thank God that He
has again fulfilled His ancient promise,
that it all happened as it did and not
otherwise? There is but one thing we
can do: Give, give, give! And even if we
give lavishly, it yet will be only pitifully
little. It will yet be not a sacrifice but
merely a ransom, the liquidation of a
sacrifice.

Friday, September 7, 1945

Strictly
Confidential

,By PHINEAS J. BIRON

Copyright, 1945, Seven Arts
Features Syndicat-e, Inc.

FLASH
Foreign correspondents in Germany
apparently lack the necessary background
to properly evaluate political trends in
occupied zones • . . Not one of them com-
mented on the Bavarian government ap-
pointed by Col. Charles Keegan of New
York . . We are reliably informed by
Albert Norden the editor of "Germany
Today" (a newsletter)- that _this recently
appointed administration in the region
that was formerly Hitler's preferred
stamping ground is composed largely of
anti-Semites . . . The Bavarian People's
Party's political platform features anti-
Semitism . . . It was therefore inex-
cusable for Col. Keegan to select lead-
ers of that party as keymen of Bavaria's
post-war government . . • That kind of
"democracy" 'for Germany is surely not
in the spirit of the Potsdam agreement
. . . and the very same criticism can be
made of the appointment of Hans Ritter
Von Scisser as Munich's Commissioner
of Police by the Allied Military govern-
ment of that city.
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ABOUT PERSONS
The feud between various Zionist lead-
ers patched up before the London Con-
ference Will be renewed in the very near
future. .
The Jewish Theological Seminary will
confer an honorary degree on A. S.
Rosenbach, America's most famous book
collector. •
Franz Werfel, who just died, never left
the Jewish fold. although the Vatican
considered him one of its most effective
press agents.
Pierre van. Paassen was just advised
that the Mayor of Gorcum, Holland, his
home town, has placed a plaque on the
house he Was - born in . . The plaque
pays tribute to van Paassen as Holland's
most illustrious.anti-Fascist :fighter.
_
4.1 *. ,:.*•
PELL-MELL
-
Hats off to Judge'-.T. Cullen of the .Fed-
eral Court-in Philadelphia . ...• The judge
refused American citizenship - to Frank
Martin Eckelrnan, a U-boat commander
in World War I, because the former Ger-
man warrior heartily approved of Hitler's
persecution : of the JeWs. . . . Which re-
minds us that the Philadelphia judge - Who
whitewashed the Philadelphia policemen
in the : Anmuth. case will be asked to re-
sign . . A committee of clergymen is
now studying this .miscarriage of justice
and is preparing a public statement on it.
To a reader from Pittsburgh: No we do
not know the record of Brig. Gen. A. F.
Lorenzen (Ret.) and cannot tell you
whether his work for "Appreciate Amer-
ica, Inc." is a paid job . . . Why don't you
inquire f r om. the Anti-Defamation
League?
The rumors that Henry Morgenthau is
trying to buy a newspaper and radio
station are being circulated by political
opponents of the former secretary of the
treasury . . . Morgenthau has no ambition
in that field.
The Jewish Black Book issued by the
World- Jewish Congress, the National
Council of Palestine, the 'Jewish anti-
Fascist Committee of Moscow and the
American Committee of Jewish Writers,
Artists and Scientists is ready for the
printer . . . Albert Einstein, honorary
sponsor of the book is represented in the
Black Book by an important letter giving
his personal views on the Jewish problem.
Joe Brainin's "War Diary of A Home
Fronter" will be published by Dial Press.
Arline Meyer, assistant secretary of
the Pan-American : Jewish Committee, is
writing a novel on—Brooklyn . . She
got the inspiration while in Mexico.

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Ploughman
in the Rain

By MOSHE TABENKIN

(Member of. Ein 1-larod Settlement in Palestine
whose first book of verse appeared last year;
Poem translated by Dov Vardi)
(Copyright, 1945, JPS)

The sky is grey. The rainfall, wild;
Spouting, rushes and quaffs.
A ploughman stops in the field,
Halting mid-field, stands,
And laughs.
Heavenward slowly turning his face,
His open palms benedictions spill
Down his hair rain-waters race—
So a ploughman stands mid-field,
With a smile.
As fathers forgive their mischievous
child,
Mothers, a babe at the breast,
A ploughman stopping, halts mid-field,
Watches his clothes dripping fast—
And laughs..

