Fear on Both
Sides of the Border::
Major Obstacle to
Israel-Arab Peace
HE JEWS E S
A Weekly Review
of Jewish Events
Read CoMmenta tor's
Column on Page 2
In the Czech
Jungle: Akin
To Pogroms Under
Czarism
Michigan's Only English-Jewish Newspaper—Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle
VOLUME 22—No. 13
The Witch-Hunt
708 David Stott Bldg.-7,7-Phone WO. 5-1155 Detroit, Michigan, December 5, 1952
7
Editorial, Page 4
$4.00 Per Year; Single Copy, 10c
USS Bloc Opens Anti-Jewis
Campaign To Divert Discontent
By The Jewish Telegraphic Agency
Aim to Enroll 2,500 Volunteer
Workers for BIG Day Dec. 14
Sidney Shevitz,.Grand Marshal of BIG (Bonds of the Israel
Government) Day, to be observed throughout the country in
more than 800 communities on Sunday, Dec. 14, to boost the sale
of Israel bonds, stated this week that the aim of the local or-
ganization is to enroll 2,500 volunteers on that day.
With more than 500 men and women already signed up as
workers for that day, Mr. Shevitz said there are heartening indi-
cations that many more will support the effort to make Israel
economically secure through bond investments.
Occurring during the week of Hanukah, BIG Day is being
utilized to encourage the giving of Israel bonds as gifts.
In a message of encouragement addressed to . Mr. Shevitz,
Israel's Minister of Finance Levi Eshkol stated: "Israel's bonds
are the bonds of friendship and the basis of a living partnership
between America and Israel."
Minister of Industry and Commerce Dov Joseph wrote Mr.
Shevitz that Israel seeks ."faith, not favors" in carrying on the
battle for economic freedom.
Scores of leading national Jewish organizations have called on
their memberships to participate in BI G Among them are:
American Jewish Congress, Bnai Brith, Farband — Labor
Zionist Order, Labor Zionist Organization of America—Poale
Zion, Mizrachi Organization of America, Rabbinical Council of
America, Synagogue Council of America, Women's Branch of
Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, Pioneer
Women, Hapoel Hamizrachi of America, National Council of
Jewish Women, Young Israel, Zionist Organization of America,
Grand Lodge of Brith Abraham, Union of Orthodox Jewish Con-
gregations of America, Central Conference of American Rabbis.
Detailed Story, Page 5; Editorial, Page 4
The Soviet leadership has thrown the hundreds of thousands of Jews in Eastern
Europe to the wolves. It has offered them up as scapegoats to divert mounting dissatis-
faction and unrest in the countries behind the Iron Curtain and it has served notice
on the world that these Jews are to be sacrificed for the support and allegiance of the
Arab States in the Soviet struggle against the West.
These are the implications of the "treason trials" concluded last week at Prague
with the imposition of the death penalty on 11 men, including nine Jews, and the im-
prisonment of three others, including two J ews for life terms.
(See Editorial Page 4)
In the biggest "purge" action since the end of the war, the Communists singled out
the Jews prominent in the Czechoslovak Communist Party for trial in a move to con-
vince the general population that the Jews were to blame for their hardships and
troubles. At the same time, by making Zionism an anti-state crime and by mounting a
vicious attack against the State of Israel, th e Communists made their strongest bid to
date for the alignment of the Arabs with them against the Western Alliance.
Ironically, the Jewish victims of the purge, Communists all, were, in the main,
men who had spent years in a bitter struggle against the Zionist movement and who
had been in large part responsible for barriers against Jewish migration from Eastern
Europe to Israel. That they persecuted the Jews in Czechoslovakia, with considerable
vigor, restricted Jewish communal life an d sought to destroy all traces of Zionism
there, was not expected to have any effect in reducing anti-Jewish feeling engendered
by the anti-Semitic nature of the trial.
Although the central Communist organ in Prague, Rude Pravo, in one of a series of
vicious articles against Israel and the Zion ist movement, asserted that the Communists
were not anti-Semitic but had to "destroy Zionism," observers who studied transcripts
of the trial broadcasts expressed amazement at the extent to which the prosecution
went in creating an anti-Jewish atmosphere.
They pointed to the manner in which the prosecutor, in demanding the death pen-
alty, stressed that "it is no accident that of the fourteen accused eleven are the product
of Zionism 'organizations. The danger of Zionism has increased with the foundation of
the State of Islael by the Americans. Zionism and Jewish bourgeois nationalism are
two sides of the same coin, which was minted in Wall Street."
Continued on Last Page
The Sabbath
Technical civilization is man's conquest of space.
It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an
essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In
technical civilization, we extend time to gain space.
To enhance our power in the world of space is our
main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be
more. The power we attain in the world of space
terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But
time is the heart of existence.
To gain control of the world of space is certainly
one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining
power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations
in the realm of time. There is a realm of time where
the goal is not to have but to be, not to own but to
give, not to control but to share, not to subdue but
to be in accord. Life goes wrong when the control of
space, the acquisition of things of space, becomes
our sole concern.
The meaning of the Sabbath is to celebrate time
rather than space. Six days a week we live under the
tyranny of things of space; on the Sabbath we try to
become attuned to holiness in time. It is a day on
which we are called upon to share in what is eternal
in time, to turn from the results of creation to the
mystery of creation; from the world of creation to the
creation of the world.
•
He who wants to enter the holiness of the day
must first lay down the profanity of clattering com-
merce, of beino- yoked to toil. He must go away from
the screech of b dissonant days, from the nervousness
and fury of acquisitiveness and the betrayal in em-
' bezzling his own life. He must say farewell to man-
ual work and learn to understand that the world has
already been created and will survive without the
help of man. Six days a week we wrestle with the
world, wringing profit from the earth; on the Sab-
bath we especially care for the seed of eternity plant-
ed in the soul. The world has our hands, but our soul
belongs to Someone Else. Six days a week we seek to
dominate the world, on the seventh day we try to
dominate the self.
Three acts of God denoted the seventh day: He
rested, He blessed and He hallowed the seventh day
(Genesis 2:2-3). To the prohibition of labor is, there-
fore, added • the blessing of delight and the accent of
sanctity. Not only the hands of man celebrate the day,
Its Meaning for
By DR. ABRAHAM
Modern Man
J. HESCHEL
the tongue and the soul keep the Sabbath. One does
not talk on it in the same manner in which one talks
on other days. In the Middle Ages, the "underlying
principle was that love should always be absolute, and
that the lover's every thought and act should on all
occasions correspond with the most extreme feelings
or sentiments or fancies possible for a lover."
There is a word that is seldom said, a word for an
emotion almost too deep to be expressed: the love of
the Sabbath. The word is rarely found in our litera-
ture, yet for more than two thousand years the emo-
4 ?
Liao
elln
/:// /I/ I I
Copyright 1951 by Abraham J. Heschel. Published by Farrar. Straus
& Young, Inc., New York, in cooperation with the United Synagogue
of America. Reproduced by .American Jewish Press, News and
-Feature Service of the American Association of English-Jewish
Newspapers, in conjunction with the National Sabbath Observance
Effort as a public service of the United Synagogue of America:
tion filled our songs and moods. It was as if a whole
people were in love with the seventh day. Much of
its spirit can only be understood as an example of
love carried to the extreme. As in the chivalric poetry
on weekdays. Even thinking of business or labor
should be avoided.
•
What is so luminous about a day? What is so pre-
cious to captivate the hearts? It is because the seventh
day is a mine where spirit's precious metal can be
found with which to construct the palace in time, a
dimension in which the human is at home with the
divine; a dimension in which man aspires to approach
the likeness of the divine.
For where shall the likeness of God be found?
There is no quality that space has in common with the
essence of God. There is not enough freedom on the
top of the mountain; there is not enough glory in the
silence of the sea. Yet the likeness of God can be
found in time, which is eternity in disguise.
For all the idealization, there is no danger of the
idea of the Sabbath becoming a fairy-tale. With all
the romantic idealization, the Sabbath remains a con-
crete fact, a legal institution and a social order. ,There
is no danger of its becoming a disembodied spirit, for
the spirit of the Sabbath must always be in accord
with actual deeds, with definite actions and absten-
tions. The real and the spiritual are one, like body
and soul in a living man. It is for the law to clear the
path; it is for the soul to sense the spirit.
To observe the Sabbath is to celebrate the corona-
tion of a day in the spiritual wonderland of time,
the air of which we inhale when we "call it a delight."
Unlike the Day of Atonement, the Sabbath is not
dedicated exclusively to spiritual goals. It is a day of
the soul as well as of the body; comfort and pleasure
are an integral part of the Sabbath observance. Mau
in his entirety, all his faculties must share its bless-
ing.
A prince was once sent into captivity and com-
pelled to live anonymously among rude and illiterate
people. Years passed by, and he languished with long-
ing for his royal father, for his native land. One day
a secret communication reached him in which his
father' promised to bring him back to the palace,
urging him not to unlearn his princely manner.
Continued on Last Page