THE JEWISH NEWS
A Festive Purim
to
Everyone
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspaper. Michigan Press Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 36. Mich., VE. 8-93414
Subscription 94. A year. foreign 115.
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. XXV. No. 2
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
March 19, 1954
Page 4
Sabbath (Shushan Purim) Scriptural Selections
this Sabbath, the fifteenth day of Adar Sheri, :5714; the following Scriptural selections will
be read in our Synagogues:
Pentcrteuchal portion, Lev. 6:1-8:36. Prophetical portion, Jer. 7:21-8:3; 9:22, 23.
Licht fienshen, Friday, March
.
19,
6:27
p.m.
Time to Make Passover'Mo'os Hitim Gifts
Today is Purim—the traditional day for
Shalach Monos—for an exchange of gifts and
also for doing good deeds for the less for-
tunate in our midst and among our kinsmen
everywhere.
Purim also reminds us of the approach
of Passover and of the obligation that rests
upon us to aid the needy with necessities for
the Sedorim and for the observance of the
Festival of Freedom.
Detroit's Mo'os Hitim Committee, under
the chairmanship of Harry Cohen, has is-
sued an urgent appeal to the community to
assist the traditional Passover relief efforts
with funds necessary to assure the vital ne-
-
cessities of the festival for needy Detroit
families.
In allocating Purim Shalach Monos, the
Mo'os Hitim fund should be made a must
and a priority in our budgets.
No one can possibly feel free unless all
are free, and no one can rest satiated and
well pleased with Passover's observance un-
less his neighbors, his kinsmen, his fellow
Jews, are equally provided with the neces-
sities for Passover's observance.
Therefore, on Purini, or immediately
thereafter, make your contribution to the
Mo'os Hitim fund. There is no better way
of assuring a pleasant Purim and a truly
joyous Passover.
•
Important Dates on Community Calendar
/IP It adds,
Allied Jewish Campaign officials this
week made known the important dates for
the 1954 drive which is expected to produce
a $5,000,000 sum for the support of Israel's
basic economic needs in the resettlement . of
refugees who have been rescued from lands
of oppression, for other overseas relief ef-
forts and for the important local and na-
tional causes financed by this all-important
fund-raising activity.
These are dates to be reserved for the
collective tasks of our entire community.
The vast importance of these funds in this
crucial stage of American Jewry's efforts
for the protection of the hemmed-in little
state of Israel, as well as for the advance-
ment of our educational, health and public
service agencies, calls for interruption of
other functions that may involve fund-rais-
ing.
It is not too much to ask that the entire
community should join hands in this great
effort. The total Detroit Jewry raises an-
nually and. is expected to gather in the com-
ing ten weeks is so large and so all-embrac-
ing that it must look for common interest
and support if it is not to be reduced by
interfering appeals for funds.
The urgency of this year's campaign is
evident in the daily reports from the United
Nations and from Middle Eastern sectors
where Israel's enemies are literally "gang-
ing up" on the small area inhabited by the
reborn Jewish state. Evaluating a similar
drive now in progress in England, the Lon-
don Jewish Observer and Middle East Re-
view has called attention to the following
hopes - of the Arabs who await Israel's col-
lapse:
"The idea that Israel may yet be forced to
her knees without the need of another war has
gradually taken hold of the imagination of the
Arab world. From the first, emotional de-
mands for the economic boycott of Israel
voiced on the morrow of the Arab defeat in
Palestine there has now emerged a new theory
and an entire strategy based on the economic
boycott and blockade of Israel. The purpose is
frankly declared. It is to make life so hard
in Israel that emigration will replace immi-
gration, that foreign traders will refuse to
do business with Israel for fear of Arab re-
prisals.
"Egypt demands as her price the best part
of the Negev. Syria claims the whole of Gali-
lee as hers. Jordan claims Mount Scopus and
Iraq makes no bones of her wish to see the
Jews driven from the soil of Palestine.
"During the past year Arab hopes of
achieving these objectives have risen with
every new or imaginary encouragement: the
changes in American policy, the prospect of
the British withdrawal from E g y p t, the
promise of American military aid and the pro-
vision of German technical help and indus-
trial equipment.
"One other aspect has still further roused
Arab faith in the efficacy of the blockade and
boycott. Has not Egypt refused port service
to 99 black-listed ships in the Suez Canal and
confiscated the Israel-bound cargoes of a
number of others while there were 80,000 Bri-
tish troops stationed on the banks of the
Canal?
Did not Egypt ignore successfully the ex-
plicit orders of the Security Council, and none
of the Powers complained or took issue with
her?"
The London periodical, posing the ques-
tion. "why then should the .Arabs not be
hopeful that their boycott and blockade
(
'The Coasts of the
Earth'
Livingston's.- Novel of American
policy was producing dividends?
however: "There was only one argument
that militated against the Arab case: the Volunteers Who Flew For Israel
real situation in. Israel and the continued
The Coasts of the Earth'' may or may not offer the complete
backing for her efforts by World Jewry." It story back of the experiences of "American volunteers who flew
for Israel," but it certainly introduces data that will lead to a
adds:
"Thus Israel has survived this virtual eco-
better understanding of the relationship between Israel and
nomic siege for over five years. She has be-
come more populous, and militarily stronger,
and now in the face of the blockade she is
determined to win her economic independence.
"For direct assistance to attain this invalu-
able objective Israel looks to the Jews of Bri-
tain and the United States in particular. For
this year the progress of the Joint Palestine
Appeal in this country will be watched not
only in Jerusalem but also in Baghdad, Cairo
and Damascus. For the measure of the success
of the Joint Palestine Appeal will also spell
the degree of the Arab failure to boycott and
blockade Israel."
In Detroit, and in all American Jewish
communities, this is the significance of our
current driVes for the United Jewish Appeal
—the major beneficiary of the Allied Jewish
Campaign. The chief weapons against Arab
aims of destruction are in our hands. The
support we give to Israel through the UJA,
the encouragement we give the young state's
economic planners. through the purchase of
Israel bonds and through private invest-
ments, are the militating elements against
false aims to destroy a small state that seeks
to build up the lives of its settlers and, event-
ually, through peace, to help build a better
life for all in the Middle East. Further argu-
ments in support of the current Allied Jew-
ish Campaign are unnecessary.
Yeshiva University
The testimonial dinner planned by the
Detroit orthodox community in honor of
the 10th anniversary of Dr. Samuel Bel-
kin's services as president Of Yeshiva Uni-
versity will make it possible for the grad-
uates of the famous New York theological
seminary to secure assistance- from Detroit
Jews for their alma mater.
Support has been given in generous
measure by Detroit Jews to the Conserva-
tive and Reform theological seminaries, and
the current appeal for Yeshiva University
is the first in a number of years in behalf
of the first American university under Jew-
ish auspices whose entrance into American
Jewish religious-cultural services was as the
Isaac Elchanan Yeshiva.
Dr. Belkin, who is to be honored here
at the dinner on March 30, is a noted rab-
binic scholar who received his academic de-
grees at Brown and Harvard Universities
and who had earned Phi Beta Kappa honors
in his student days. He has risen to great
heights as head of Yeshiva University and
he has earned the honors being accorded
him in recognition of the numerous college
departments he has established, including
the organization of the medical school.
The support Detroiters are certain to
give to Yeshiva University, on the occasion
of the honors being extended here to Dr.
Belkin,. will be highly deserving. It will add
to the commendable beneficiaries from. De-
troit Jewry the great orthodox theological
seminary and its subsidiary departments,
each, of . which is rendering important , serv-
ices to Jewry, to America and to humanity.
Americans in the war the former conducted for her independence,
Harold E. Livingston, the author of this novel, was among the
first Americans to fly for Israel. Prior to that he was with the
U. S. Army Air Force, in World Wax II, and he again served with
the U. S. Air Force on the Korean Air Lift in 1950. He first wrote
his story as a non-fiction account, but for proper perspective he
changed it into a novel under the title The Coasts of the Earth."
For it, he has received the Literary Fellowship from his publish-
ers, Houghton Mifflin Co. (2 Park, Boston) who have issued it in
hard covers as a $3 edition. It is in circulation as a 35c paper-
bound edition by Ballantine Books (404 5th Ave., NY18).
'It is a powerful story about Americans and Canadians who
stepped in, at the crucial moment, when Israel was lacking in the
know-how about airlifts, to transport armaments and planes from
Czechoslovakia into Israel. Not all came out . alive. There were
casualties. But the major- casualty was the threatened rift between
the volunteers in the cause of freedom and the Israelis, when the
latter were compelled to assert their rights as rulers of a state.
Non-Jews as well as Jews were enlisted as volunteer liber-
tarians. Tony Nevins, the non-Jew, who fell in love with an Isw
raeli girl, stuck it through to the last—losing his life in a mis-
sion in which he had tried to enlist his Jewish pal, Norman
Becker, whb refused to submit to Israeli decisions and insisted
upon returning to his country. As he was leaving Israel, to go
back to the U. S., Norman saw the remains of Tony's plane.
The conflict nearly resolved itself into a mutiny, the volun-
teers refusing to submit to the transfer of their Air Transport
Command into the Israel force, thus losing its civilian character.
It might have meant a declaration of loyalty to Israel. But to Is
it meant assertion of- authority,•gained by statehood. Loss of
such authority might also have meant loss of power in other
areas, and Israel could not yield on this point. The revolt petered.
out. there were apologies which only Becker refused to sign as he
left the country for whose liberties he endangered his life.
The reader is left with the impression that there was no other
way out for Israel but to insist on its authority. While the volun-
teers' argument sounded reasonable at the outset, Israel's logic
emerges victorious in Livingston's story. It is a record, while in the
form of a novel, with fictitious names, that will be counted among
the history books about the new state of Israel.
.
-
Dr. Waxman's 'Handbook of Judaism'
What is Judaism and what are the institutions of our faith?
Dr. Meyer Waxman, professor of Bible and Jewish philosophy
at the Chicago Hebrew Theological Seminary, offers the answers
the revised addition of his "A Hand-:
iook of Judaism As Professed and Prat- .
iced Through the Ages." (Bloch).
Few men are better equipped than
iabbi Waxman to outline this guide to
acts about Jewish laws. This eminent .
scholar offers profound explanations of
the Sabbath, dietary laws, the festivals,
irayers, Jewish ethics and social ideals.
In his opening thesis on the meaning ,
If Judaism, he shows that "Judaism, in
spite of its fundamental belief that it is
of a divinely revealed character . . is'
simultaneously a religion of life and of
an essentially practical nature." He adds:
"As a result the line of demarcation be-.
tween religion and secular life in its
Dr. Waxman manifold aspects was obliterated, and we.
can no longer distinguish between the elements which we usually
label as distinctly religious and those we subsume under the
name of national culture."
Of additional interest is Dr. Waxman's comment: "With the
rise of political life in Palestine and changed economic condi-
tions, modifications in laws may become necessary and the posi-
tion of the elements in Judaism may change, but the fundam
mental character of the all-embraciveness of Judaism will re-
main even if that character will only be the share of a part
the Jews."
His interpretations of the dogmas of Judaism, his explana
tions of the holidays, the valuable glossary, make Dr. Waxma0j,
bOok stand out among volumes of this nature.
.
at