THE JEWISH NEWS
Let's Smoke It Out!
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1952
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35, Mich., VE. 8-9364.
Subscription $4. a year, foreign $5.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1942, at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of• March 3, 1879
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
VOL. XXIII, No. 25
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
August 28, 1953
Page 4
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the eighteenth clay of Elul, 5713, the following Scriptural selections will be read
in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Deut. 26:1-29:8. Prophetical portion, Is. 60.
Licht Benshen, Friday, Aug. 28, 6:15 p.m.
Back to School: Our Annual Education Month
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in .a . teachers and textbooks, the need for ade-
.statement outlining the status of American quate quarters, the desirability for constant-
schools, made some pointed remarks regard- ly improving curricula...
ing this country's educational needs. The
Our communal needs are being re-evalu-
President said:
ated annually at this time of the year, on the
eve of our children's return to their classes.
"We must encourage the alleviation of the
We are about to launch another Education
critical shortage of schools. We must provide
Month. On this occasion, the American As-
better trained and better paid teachers .
sociation for Jewish Education has issued
"We must endeavor constantly to raise the
another call for action, stating in part:
standard of health among school children . .
"The academic range must involve the en-
tire material, intellectual, and spiritual as-
pects of life .
"The American public school is the prin-
cipal training ground for informed American
citizenship. What is taught in the classroom
today shapes the sort of country we shall
have decades hence.
"To neglect our school system would be a
crime against the future. Such neglect could
well be more disastrous to all our freedoms
than the most formidable armed assault on
our physical defenses ...
"In. the critical problem of adequate edu-
cation, we must now undertake to help needy
states build schools. Such help should be ex-
tended only where a state is doing its utmost
but, because of inadequate resources or spe-
cial burdens, is unable to do the job on its
own.
"In such a program, the cost of mainte-
nance of administration and of the actual
business of teaching should be borne by the
localities and the states themselves. That is
their responsibility. That is the American an-;
swer to federal compulsion. It is an American_
defense against federal control .
"Where our schools are concerned, no ex-
ternal threat (of war) can excuse negligence.
No menace can justify a halt to progress .
"In school, from books, from teachers, from: :
fellow students, you can get a view of the
whole of America, how it started, what is it,
what it means . ."
Many of the points listed by the President
are applicable with even greater force to the
Jewish schools. The spiritual influence of
our Hebraic heritage, which is perpetuated
in our communal and religious schools, is
vital to American living. Our Jewish • schools
suffer from many of the wants against
which the President warns: shortage of
"Many Jews came to America poor in ma-
terial things, but they did not come empty-
handed. They brought a great spiritual treas-
ure: a tradition unbroken through the cen-
turies and a commitment to the ideals of jus-
tice and freedom proclaimed by the prophets
of ancient Israel.
"From the few settlers of 1654 we have be-
come a community of 5,000,000—the greatest
Jewish community in history. Today, JewS
throughout the world look to us as a source
of strength and inspiration in meeting their
own needs or in united effort on behalf of
Israel.
"Rejoicing in our growth, numbers Ad
vigor, we must yet recognize the harsh truth
that our progress in Jewish spirit, knowledge
and culture has not kept pace with our.num-
bers or with our other, more material accom-
plishments.
"As we prepare to celebrate 300 -years of
achievement, we must therefore resolve that
we shall provide the spiritual foundation for
yet greater achievements in the centuries to
come. Only through a consistent, dedicated and
effective community-wide effort on behalf of
Jewish education for all., can we insure our
spiritual strength, now and for the future."
In the past few years we have made: real
progress. in the field of Jewish education.
Attendance has increased in the community
schools, the congregational schools are show-
ing vigor in promoting daily Hebrew classes,
the community is keenly interested in an
increase in our cultural activities.
As we approach the beginning of another
school year, we hope for an even greater in-
terest in our educational system. We join in
calling upon all parents to consider the en-
rollment of their -children in Jewish schools
a major obligation to their families and
their community.
'Sickness Plays No Favorite: Jewry's Health Project
Detroit Jewry, whose sponsorship of Sinai
Hospital, one of the most modern health in-
stitutions created in recent years, has at-
tracted wide attention, will no doubt be in-
terested in similar activities in other com-
munities and the manner in which they are
being welcomed by their non-Jewish neigh-
bors.
This editorial, which appeared in the
Montreal Financial Post under the heading
"Sickness Plays No Favorite," speaks for
itself:
"Next Tuesday will be a proud day for
Toronto's Jewish community. The new Mount
Sinai Hospital will be officially opened. Twelve
stories high, it joins 'Hospital Row' on .Toron-
to's University Avenue.
"Total cost is $7.3 millions, of which over
$5 millions came from public contributions.
"The Jewish community dug deepest. But
significant is the large number of donations
from non-Jewish businesses and individuals.
Estimates put it as high as $750,000.
"Old barriers are breaking down. The Jew-
ish residents of Toronto sponsored Mount
Sinai. But it is not a Jewish hospital alone.
It is a Toronto hospital. It is a Canadian hos-
pital. And it's ready to trample ill-health-
anybody's ill-health. Sickness plays no favor-
ite."
Similarly, within the same week, the New
York Herald Tribune published this editorial
under the heading "Mount Sinai Goes
Ahead":
"The reopening of Mount Sinai Hospital's
. Private Pavillion on Sept. 9 will mark another
stage in the institution's remarkable expan-
sion -program. The new Klingenstein Maternity
Pavillion, which was put into service late last
summer, added over 150 beds to the hospital's
resources, but meanwhile the facilities of the
Private Pavillion, which has been closed for
needed improvements for more than a year,
have been seriously missed. On its reopening,
the hospital will have a total capacity of 1,074,
including 521 beds for free and part-free pa-
tients.
"The improvements embrace new facilities
for intercommunication between patients and
nurses, room panels for piping in oxygen, a
pneumatic tube network for speeding orders
and prescriptions, a new suite for post-opera-
tive patients and certain rearrangements of
existing r0077ZIS. These forward steps are in
keeping with an institution which has grown
since 1852 from one building to twenty-one
and which now treats more than forty thou-
sand patients a year. The expenses of such a
program are very great, as the hospital an-
nual deficits indicate, but the services that it
renders to the city are beyond price."
Y. H. Levin's 'Miriam Comes Home'
Entertaining and Informative
Israel Book for Our Children
An Exclusive American Jewish Press Feature
Already famed as war correspondent, as author of the story
of the battle of Jerusalem, of which he was an eye-witness during
Israel's war for liberation, and now as Counsellor of the Israel
Embassy in Washington, Yehuda Harry Levin now has to his
credit another achievement: an un-
usually fine children's book about
Israel, published by L. C. Page & Co.
53 Beacon St., Boston) under the
title "Miriam Comes Home."
The mere fact that the conserva-
tive Boston publishing house included
this book among its very important
children's stories is in itself a tribute
to the author. The Page Co., as pub-
lishers of the Pollyanna books and
"Anne of Green Gables," view with
great pride their varied titles. "Mir-
iam Comes Home," the "story of our
Israel cousins," is a worthy addition
to the best in children's narratives.
Y. H. Levin
Mr. Levin has caught the spirit of Israel's children. His
Miriam Story is akin to Blandford's "The Juggler," which
describes the difficulties of a newcomer to Israel who, in search
of his lost wife, is maladjusted and troublesome until he
learns that the Israelis are his friends and desire to have him, -
as a brother,
In "Miriam Comes Home" there are maladjusted children. The
horrors they experienced made them suspicious of their new en-
vironment. Instead of fitting in promptly into the environment
of Na'ava, as the author chose to call his mythical village, they,
became destructive. Their leader set the barn on fire and fled the
scene.
But in the course of time the young ohnt—the refugee youths—.
recognized the importance of cooperation. They accepted their
benefactors with better grace, began to organize their own efforts
and to become integrated in Israel's economy and cultural life.
Mr. Levin's book is remarkable from many points of views
in addition, to the value it has as a story. In the course of his
narrative, he describes Israel's growth, he reviews the Jewish
state's battle for existence and presents an interesting picture
of the settlers and their problems.
As he -takes the children on a tour of the land, he introduces
them to Dagania, and the reader incidentally learns about
Dagania and her settlers' defeat of the Syrian army; about Jeru-
salem and the manner in which the brave fighters for freedoni
built the Freedom Road which brought aid from Tel Aviv to the
embattled Jerusalemites who were surrounded by their enemies;-
about Shevuot and the harvest in Israel.
Miriam -is the heroine who did not fit in at first. She was
troubled by the inability to find her brother whom she expected
to find in Israel. But when the Na'ava settlers learned of her plight
they led her to the right officers and from there to her brother.
Reunion with her brother did not solve her problem. She them
began. to yearn for Na'ava and the life she learned to love, and
only when she returned there as a happy settler does the story
end—happily—through complete readjustment, through realiza-
tion of the values inherent in Israel.
The author's wife, Ruth Levin, illustrated the book with the
attractive drawings in colors and in black and white. The book
receives a great tribute in the foreword, written by Earl J. Mc-
Grath, the former United States Commissioner of Education. Mr.
McGrath pays honor to the author, praises his book, and acclaims
the state of Israel. Speaking of Israel's significance to U. S. el*.
These two specific events — involving zens, he declares:
Toronto's and New York's hospitals, point
"Israel has many national ideals and aspirations in cont-
also to outstanding achievements by Jewish mon with us as this story so vividly shows ... Both our na-
hospitals throughout the land. They augur tions have the same love of liberty and belief in the worth
Well for our own hospital. They indicate the of the individual, and Israel, like our land in its early years,
good work of Jewish communities everywhere is being built up by a process of rugged pioneering. Those 2vho
in the field of health. They show the amount read this book will see how these ideals and hopes are being
of good that can be done without favoritism. infused into the everyday life of the new state, and at the same
And they seem to say that if it is unneces- time they will enjoy an entertaining story."
sary to play favorites 1Then health is in-
This is exactly how we evaluate "Miriam Comes Home"; it it
volved, why not apply it also to the spirit, to a very interesting story, and it also is an informative book, the
social service, to schools, to every human facts of which blend so well into narrative. Mr. Levin has made
zeal contribution to our children's bookshelves with his "Miriam"
'
endeavor.,