A Fruitful Shevuot THE_ JEWISH NEWS Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20. 1951 Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 708-10 David Stott Bldg., Detroit 26. Mich., WO. 5-1155. 14abscription $4 a year, foreign $5. E ntered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1942, at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of March 3, 1819 PHILIP SLOMOVITZ Editor and Publisher SIDNEY SHMARAK Advertising Manager Page 4 VOL. XXIII, No. 10 FRANK SIMONS City Edito• May 15, 1953 Sabbath Scriptural Selections be read This Sabbath. the second day of Sivan. 5713, the following Scriptural selections will in our synagogues: Pentateuchal portion—Num. 1:1-4:20. Prophetical portion—Hos. 2 :1-22. Shevuot Scriptural Selections Pentateuchal portions: Wednesday, Ex. 19:1-20:23, NI/171.. 28:26-.?1; Thursday, Dent. 15:19- .16-17. Num. 28:26-31. Prophetical portions: Wednesday, Ezek. 1:1-28. 3:12: Thursday. Hab. 3:1-10. Licht Benshen, Friday, May 15, 6:46 p.m. Unwarranted Perplexity Over Educational Needs "If we work upon marble. it will perish: if on brass, time will efface it; if we rear upon immortal minds, and imbue them temples, they Will crumble into dust: but if we work and love of our fellow - men, we engrave on those with principles, with the just fear of God —Daniel Webster tablets something that. will brighten. to all eternity." A recent review on this page of a dis- tices which have given us stamina and which sertation on Jewish education aroused dis- remain weapons in the process of existence cussion relative to Jewish educational needs and survival. These ideas are being recorded ''out of in American communities. Once again; as if new discoveries had been made, . some season." It has become a practice to speak readers .asked. questions: why the traditional of Jewish education during the special Ed- Patai's 'Israel Between East, West' trend, some asked; others naively inquired ucation Month observed annually by our why "progressive" ideas could not be intro- community. If that was an error, let it be Called Best Study of the Jewish State duced into our system of training our youth. corrected now. The time to .speak of Jewish ISRAEL BETWEEN EAST AND WEST. BY Raphael Patai, Philadelphia, Pa., The We turned to Daniel Webster for inspira- education is whenever we mention communi- Jewish Publication Society of America, 1953. 360 pages. Illustrated. $4.50. tion—in the above quotation—and we re- ty planning, every time we think of the A Review by BEN B. SELIGMAN ceived encouragement from a famous saying training of the Jewish child, on every occa- Raphael Patai, a renowned anthropologist who has made the by Horace Mann, (1796-1859), the great sion when we seek the continuation of Jew- problem of cultural diversity in the Near East his specialty, gives ish living. If we do that, we shall be less American educator who once said: us in this fully documented volume that is without qualification confused by appeals for "progressivism" and the best study of Israel published in recent years. Leaving politic- "Education is our only political safety: out- for the easy-way-out. , If we judge our po- al analysis, economic forecasting and journalistic gossip to others, side of this ark all is deluge." Apply this to Jewry and, by eliminating sition realistically we will recognize that he has focused on the fundamentals of Israeli life. These, he the word "political" and using it in all areas "progressive" ideas, already introduced in discovered, were located in the inescapable clashes between the and in all occurrences, you have a warning most of our schools, fit in well with our tra- Sephardic and Oriental cultures of the Near East Jew and that that without education in our ranks you ditions. Jewish lore and practice always have of the European Jew. The Ashkenazic or European Jew of the early migrations to have deluge. been able to absorb modern trends without who came seeking a new dignity in his conception of Granted that we understand this admo- sacrificing heritage. We can continue to do Palestine, self-labor on communal farms, quarrelled with the British, fought nition, there remains the question, in an age that and at the same time provide our youth Arab marauders and finally created a new political state, also brought with him a seemingly strange standard of life. Based . on in which traditions often - are flouted, "what a proud existence. . The alternative to the perpetuation of a cultural pattern. taken from mass production technology, with IS Jewish education?" accepted principles has been an interpre- its steam and electricity, its universal suffrage, compulsory -edu- * * tation of Jewish mores by means of "far- cation, hygienic devices, scientific agriculture and complex com- The mere posing of the question is an in- munication systems, it baffled the Eastern Jew. What was even fel" shows, the substitution of "borsht dication of deluge and the existence of un- more puzzling to the latter was the omission of those religious and "lokshen" for Torah. Such deviations warranted perplexity. In reality, the answer and esthetic values without which he felt there could be no true and avoided. They are abandoned must be life-enhancing activity. The East's greater emphasis on religious is a simple one. Either we accept the need the results of too many concessions. We ritual and morality and its ability to look away from the purely for thorough Jewish training of • our children, can prevent them through realistic ap- material met with a sympathetic response only from the small their preparation for a future which will find proaches to Jewish educational needs. number of devoutly orthodox. Europeans: it is this headlong them informed on their. heritage, their back- * * * collision of cultures, says the author, that underlies the difficult ground, their traditions; or we abandon af- We are making advances in the field of course of events in Israel today. no filiation with kith and kin. There can be Dr. Patai does a brilliant job in outlining with a minimum of special privileges on this score and we can • Jewish education. Our community schools jargon and with a maximum of hard common sense ill afford concessions which result in the are recording a growth in attendance. New sociological essential characteristics of the various migrations from both be erected soon to make pro- .b the whittling down of the basic idea which calls schools will East and West; he shows what each brought to the land and what for a thorough understanding of Jewish life visions for children in newly-populated Jew- still needs to be done to "absorb" the newcomer. Moreover, he and Jewish problems, of the challenges ish districts in our community. Our syna- successfully fuses the host of scattered demographic data on - which face us in an environment in which gogues are equally as active in planning ex- Israel's ethnic groups. These facts lead him to the disturbing Jewish learning is relegated to a place of Pansion of present facilities, Congregation conclusion that "the Ashkenazic element will become relatively secondary importance in the training of chit- Shaarey Zedek's new school building in the smaller while the Oriental element will go on increasing." The dren. northwest area serving as a typical example European Jewish group, the- author predicts, while small, will of the wide-awakeness of our schools and dominate the professional and managerial classes and the Oriental At of best, we make concessions. The full synagogues. This trend is the best answer Jews will become mere hewers of wood. week study of many years back, except Yet it is not impossible to achieve a meaningful merger of for the very* limited number attending Day to the perplexities of those who are at a loss Schools, already had been reduced to 12 in their search for .solution for their chil- outlooks, says Dr. Patai. He cites the moving experience of the community of Deit Dagon, about five miles south of Tel Aviv. hours; it now is limited to less than 10 hours &errs educational problems. The means for Abandoned by the Arabs in the post-mandate fighting, the village and in some instances—forgetting for the solving their perplexities are here. Let them was soon occupied by Poles, Bulgarians, Turks, Romanians and moment the one-day-a-week Sunday .School whose make policies use of the school systems Yemenites, with a sprinkling of several other Jewish groups. The are existing rooted in indestructible —the of study cut to six or Jewish traditions. Let them use the facilities people began to set up little establishments, took to chicken farm- seven hours a week. Under have such been circumstances, ing and vegetable gardening and despite the kind of daily bicker- which is apt to afflict any group of -humans attempting to which are difficult to battle, the Jewish ed- of the five-day-a-week school, let them teach ing ucator must find a way of infusing into the their children the meaning of Jewish life, the rediscover life, there soon grew up a remarkable rapport which sanctity of our faith, the beauty of the He- makes Deit Dagon a fine - example of cultural fusion. school program a spirit necessary to leave There is much more in the book. worth noting: only the ex- with an emphasis on Israel, language, an indelible mark upon the child. We ask for brew without whose inspiration and kinship we can igencies of space enforce the omission of comment on the superb on the Yemenites or those on the non-Jewish minorities a big order, but we would like to have it at- not survive. That is the way for the perpetu- chapters and religious issues. These problems are treated with . the kind - tamed—and we believe it to be attainable. We believe it is possible to create a love for ation of Jewishness. , That, also, is the way of insight that comes only with years of close study, and with a sympathetic perception coupled, a dispassionateness seldom Jewish traditions, a devotion to our heritage, in which the Jewish parents will make peace themselves and their consciences and seen in such books. Israel, Dr. Pt ai tells us, is in both a physical an understanding of the gifts to mankind will,' at the same time, rebuild the happiness and philosophical sense a meeting place fOr East and West: here made by our Sages whose teachings we the two cultures, coming together for the first time on equal foot- * . strive to pass on .to our children and to oir of the Jewish home. * * ing, can demonstrate whether synthesis instead of domination of grandchildren. Shevuot, which we are to observe next one by the other will be the outcome. Dr. Patai's book cannot week, and the season of confirmations, but help us Understand that urgent question. Our confidence in the indestructibility of consecrations and graduations, is an ideal Lion Feuchtwanger Novel Dramatizes our heritage is based on the belief that such time to review the subject of Jewish edu- strength can be derived only from adherence cation. This is the time to invoke the wis- The Life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau .to tradition. Survival is possible only by re- dom of .Proverbs (22.6): Startling love stories, attempts to steal the unpublished tention of inherited characteristics. The mo- "Train up a child in the way he should go, documents of the famous French nature philosopher Jean-Jacques ment we abandon our Personality Distinc- And even when he is old he will not depart Rousseau, the noted writer's mysterious death and the many delu- tiveness, we become imitators, and as imi- sions that marked his life are incorporated in Lion Feuchtwanger'* from it." tators we perish. To retain our unique po- latest novel, "'Tis Folly to Be Wise," published by Julian Messner The lesson is self-evident. If we abandon sition as the inheritors of the legacy of be- (8 W. 40th, NY18). ing "a nation of priests and a holy people," the child to unplanned community program- While. there will be many disputations over the historical it is essential that we strengthen the Syna- ming, we invite the danger of losing the next accuracy of some of the points advanced by the eminent novelist generation. We have an opportunity to as- and historian, readers will be fascinated by his writing and his gogue, that we continue to make Hebrew .a Living Tongue, that we encourage not only sure for ourselves a well-informed Jewry by approach to the career of the French visionary who emerges as • the education of the youth but also that of reducing concessions, by adhering to and having lived the life of a wise fool. Feuchtwanger, lived a deluded as he is presented by the adolescent and of the adult. And in the strengthening traditions, by standing firm life. Rousseau, He was a cuckolded husband, his wife's paramour is painted training of the children we gain strength in our loyalty to our spiritual heritage. Any him were involved in from symbolisms, from religious observ- other Message would be invalid at Shevuot as his murderer and those who surrounded lintrikues. Rousseau's "Confessions" are the !oasis for this novel. antes, from the retention of ideals and prac- time.