In Hometown America
THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20. 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapaxs, Michigan Press Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 36. Mich., VE. 8-9384
Subscription S4. 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
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath.. the second day of Tammuz., 5714, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Num. 19:1-22:1. Prophetical portion, Judges .11:1-23.
Licht Benshen, Friday, July 2, - 8:11 p.m.
VOL. XXV, No. 17
Page 4
July 2, 1954
World Jewry Starts 'From the Very Beginning'
In an analysis of Jewry's educational
problems, Dr. Jacob Lestchinsky calls atten-
tion to the significant fact that—
"One of the oldest peopleS in the world,
the Jewish people, has become 'young' in
the last 100 years—young in the sense that
all of the largest Jeivish settlements and
communities are not even 100 years old."
In his explanation, Dr. Lestchinsky points
out that 100 years ago there were less than
50,000 Jews on the American continent, rep-
resenting 1 per cent of the Jewish people, and
in Eretz Israel there were then less than 10,-
000 Jews. Fifty years ago, there were 35,000
Jews in the Holy Land and a million Jews in
all American countries. Today, the 6,000,000
Jews on the American continent constitute
more than half of the entire Jewish people
and the 1,500,000 Jews in Israel are 12 per
cent of Jewry.
Thus, world Jewry is today in the process
of adjusting to new conditions—"new cli-
matically, politically, economically and cul-
turally," as Dr. Lestchinsky indicates. As this
eminent student of Jewish affairs views the
situation, "it is necessary to start from the
very beginning: to build elementary social as-
sistance institutions, make provision for Jew-
ish schools and teachers, care for the exist-
ence of our people and-.for its continuity, for
the coming generations.
It is clear, from these self-evident facts,
that the planning in our communities as-
sumes new roles. Jews are, perhaps for the
first time in our people's history, a young
people wherever they are. We are less than
a hundred years old in nearly every country
in the world. The large Jewries of the past
have either been wiped out—as in Germany
and in Poland—or are lost for all practical
purposes, as in Russia.
In this country and in Israel, we do, in-
deed, "start from the beginning." While we
are, already, a strong community in Ameri-
ca, our approaches to a variety of problems
are basically new. And the most serious chal-
lenge to our communal organization is in the
area of education.
Viewing the cultural status of our people
in this country, Dr. Lestchinsky offers us the
following evaluation:
"Education is the most elementary task of
every normal society and the foundation of
every national aspiration; it is the main guar-
antee of national existence and continuity.
The Jewish groups who emigrated from East-
ern Europe by the millions took with them not
only the old-fashioned heder and yeshiva, but
also many years of experience with the Tar-
but schools, which, before the catastrophe, were
attended by about 50,000 Jewish children, and
no less experience with the schools of CYSHO
and Shul-Kult, which were also attended by
tens of thousands of Jewish children in Poland,
Lithuania, and Latvia. -
"One might therefore have expected that,
in the new, freer political conditions and in
the more favorable economic circumstances
these two types of schools would thrive and
grow in breadth and depth.
"No less a man than the famous historian
Simon Dubnow painted some 50 years ago a
bright and promising picture of how in the free
American conditions Jewish social and cultural
activity would flourish and Kehillot, thorough-
ly democratic and national, would be formed
and Jewish schools with Yiddish and Hebrew as
the language of instruction would be establish-
ed by the hundreds and the thousands.
Now one of the best authorities on the state
of Jewish education in America, Yudel Mark,
casts up the sum total of more than 40 years of
activity: 'The saddest thing in the history of
Jewish education in this country consists in
this, that there are always so many beginnings
and so few follow-ups. It is not true that our
community- does not care about continuity or
has no conception of education. The care exists,
the concern is present, and attempts to trans-
plant values have been made. However, all this
comes in ships. All this is imported. But how
much takes root? How many of the imported
seeds are turned into plants on the American
soil? And does the fault lie in. the soil or in
the planters? (Kulture un Derziung, New York,
March, 1954.)'
"Think of it! The free political air of Amer-
ica did not agree with Jewish education! The
enormously improved Jewish economic lot stif-
led the high ideals of the Yiddish and Hebrew
schools! The unbound and freed Jewish hands
were in no hurry to form Kehillot, national
and democratic! Quite the contrary: they often.
established anti-national organizations and
anti-Jewish
ewish schools."
This is the challenge: that the free politi-
cal air of this great land does not inspire the
expansion of Jewish cultural activities and
the enlargement of our educational efforts.
Dr. Lestchinsky finds comfort in the
"spiritual revolution . . . national resurrec-
tion of the dead" in the poor state Of Israel
where a nation is being_ diligently forged
from broken shards and disjointed members."
He paid tribute to Israel by stating that "it
.is nothing less than resurrection of the dead
to place on one school bench children from
Germany and Yemen, from Austria and Mor-
occo, from Poland and Algeria, from Lithu-
ania and India; from Russia and Iraq.. And
now tens of thousands of them are going
home from school, jumping and dancing and
shouting and singing in one language, in one
medium of expression!"
On the other hand, he maintains that—
"While the work of blending, the process
of welding, the sacred task of binding and
joining together what the Diaspora has torn
asunder and alienated, is going on over there,
in the Jewish homeland, a new process of
sundering, a . new peril of alienation, has
started in the Diaspora.
The Jewish children of New York can
no longer converse with the Jewish children
of Argentina; 'and the Jewish children of
Uruguay, where Spanish is spoken, can no
longer communicate with those of neighbor-
ing Brazil, where Portuguese is spoken; and
the Jewish children of Paris can no longer be
understood by the children of the same peo-
ple, but of a different Diaspora country.
"And in these days the gulf between the
Jews of one Galut country and those of an-
other very soon grows wide and deep, well-
nigh unbridgeable. For the high religious wall
which for centuries hermetically shut out the
Gentile world .and so intimately and closely
bound together the Jews of all the countries
of the world, has all but toppled over. And
the former ANI YEHUDI CI am a Jew'), which
so easily used to bring together two unac-
quainted Jewish hearts, can no longer be so
easily uttered by a Jew who is deeply im-.
mersed in English or French culture.
"There are wiseacres among us — and very
good Jews, at that—who raise the .cry that by
the revival of Hebrew in Eretz Israel, a dan-
gerous split has been created in the Jewish
national soul. The people of Israel are, for-
sooth, being sundered from the Diaspora peo-
ple, from the Yiddish-speaking people. As
though Yiddish were the living, growing, and
creative language of today's growing Dias-
pora Jewry! As though the Jewish creative
forces, the potential, future forces, the prom-
ising and propulsive Jewish cultural forces in
the Diaspora were concentrated in Yiddish!"
Era of 'Villains Gallore'
l 'No Prejudice in Story-Paper World'
Students of journalism and of the development of the Ameri-
can newspapers will be keenly interested in Mary Noel's "Villains
Galore," (Macmillan), sub-titled "The Heyday of the Popular
Story Weekly." Interest in this book is not limited, however, to
journalism, Miss Noel offers data regarding many sociological ap-
proaches in the era of the story-paper and makes the interesting
observation that there was no discrimination at that time. Her
special references to the attitudes towards Jews are incorporated
in the following:
"If- authors could not dispense with opportunity, circulation
managers could not dispense with equality. There was no dis-
crimination in story-paper world. Hatreds that civil war had
bred n5ere obliterated almost as rapidly as railway express serv-
ice was restored to Southern news agents. Races and nation-
alities were represented in story-paper fiction in proportion to
population. Editorials pleading for tolerance of the Jews were
not infrequent; and occasionally a story bore such a title as
`Eleanor, the Jewess of Heidelberg.' in deference to the re-
ligion of its beautiful heroine. The New York Weekly hoped to
placate two groups at once when it featured a story by 'Rose
Ashleigh of South Carolina' entitled 'The Condemned Wife, or
The Fatal Secret, a Story of Jew and Gentile.' As the editors
were 'pleased to state':
"'The author has introduced, with her peculiar vividness of
portraiture, some Hebrew characters that must awaken the
mind of the reader to consciousness of a fact not generally
recognized in the Gentile Mind—that to then towering intel-
lect, as well _as to the earnest devotion of the Jew, the earth
owes many of its noblest possessions.
"'Foremost among the fine characters presented in. this
story is one that. must arouse the deepest interest, for the
author, with her usual fine tact and discrimination, makes the
world-renowned advocate
• JUDAH P. BENJAMIN
appear as counsel for the defense of the heroine, an innocent
and beautiful young Gentile, on trial for a heinous felony at
the time when Mr. Benjamin was the light of the legal firma-
ment in the South before the war.' "
Mary Noel, born in Upper Montclair, N. J., was graduated
from Radcliffe College and took her M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia
University. Although Miss Noel's chief interest is in historical re-
search, her career has included many entirely unrelated jobs,
even unskilled factory work. She spent three years as a manage-
Thus, while posing a problem, Dr. Lest- ment assistant for the New York City Housing Authority and since
chinsky also demolishes the false cry of those 1944 has been employed at the New York Public Library, generally
who would have us believe that adherence to on a part-time basis. She devotes the rest of her time to research
Yiddish might solve the issue. There is need and writing. "Villains Galore" is Miss Noel's first book.
Concerning "Villains Galore" •Miss Noel writes: "This book
for realism—and the practical person, recog-
nizing the truth—that Yiddish is no longer, deals with some 40 low-priced weeklies, specializing in sensational
the spoken and printed language of large fiction on the installment plan and forming the most conspicuous
masses of Jews—must turn in other direc- element of the newsstand literature of America from the 1840's
the 1880's. It shows how the story-weeklies developed out
tions for solution of the grave problems that through
of the mild semi-literary family newspapers of the 1830's and how
face us.
they first made the writing of light. fiction a regular business."
Dr. Lestchinsky's study merely poses a
In an early chapter Miss Noel describes the life of the. literate
problem: it provides no answer to the needs millions in that period: "Sunup to sundown was the working day
of our time. This is a matter for deep study for the farmer; a day of thirteen hours was common for the
and an even more thorough .evaluation.
factory worker. As for the housewife, she had a large family to
American Jewry must especially devote care for, and no household conveniences. She had open fireplaces
itself to this issue. It is not enough to shout to tend, candles to make, firewood to CI -lop, the cow to milk, but-
hurray in a Tercentenary Year. We shall_ ter to churn, and the kitchen garden to cultivate. She, like her
have observed the 300th anniversary of husband and her older children, had little time to read anything
American Jewry most properly if we manage except the Bible and a local newspaper, or a weekly sent from
to re-dedicate ourselves to Jewry's needs, to the nearest large city—from Boston, New York or Philadelphia . <
our heritage, to the ideals which have kept Fifty years of showmanship, of advertising and fanfare, were
before the modern newsstand became an established
an old people young. Now we are like infants necessary
institution in every little village of the United States. To the rise
in new environments. We have acquired many of this showmanship, no single class of publication contributed
languages and are in danger of abandoning so much as did the so-called literary newspaper and its successor,
the Sacred Tongue. We must be on guard the family story paper."
against becoming even more impoverished
In her concluding chapter Miss Noel writes: " 'Escape' was
culturally. The challenge is great, but a frankly and unabashingly provided by the story papers .. They
young people should—as previous generations were the first to provide it cheaply and in quantity. To Millions
have—solve the problem with dignity and I of poor, hard-working, monotony-ridden lives, the story papers
\:,ere a wide new world of adventure, sentiment and mystery.."
with honor.