THE JEWISH NEWS
A 1.0T OF US MAY MOT GET AMY
MORE HELP BECAUSE THERE'S no
MORE MONEY LEFT IN
incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of Ju420. 1951
Mensoer American Association of English•Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 36, Mich., VE.
4ubscription $4. a year. foreign $5.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6. 1942, at Post Office, Detroit. Mich., under Act of March :I, 1879
siomovirz
PHILIP
Editor and Publisher
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
8-0364
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath,' the twenty-second day of Ab, 5714, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Dent. 7:12-11:25. Prop phetical portion, Is. 49:14-51:3.
THE MARCH OF DIMES !
1
YEAH .-THAT'S BECAUSE
THOUSANDS OF us cror
VACCINE AND GAMMA
GLOBULIN SHOTS
THIS YEAR
Licht Benshen, Friday, Aug. 20, 7:27 p.m.)
VOL. XXV, No. 24
Page Four
August 20, 1954
Tamarack Important Camping Project
Tamarack—the name given our Jewish
community's new camping site — currently
symbolizes an important development in
both camping and Jewish Center programs.
Established as a children's camp to sup-
plement the facilities at Fresh Air Camp,
Tamarack assumes significance because of
the place it will hold as a winterized-year-
round-meeting place for people of all ages.
It will serve as a center for work shops, for
conferences and retreats.
Prior to the current camping season,
Tamarack already served an important pur-
pose — by providing camping facilities for
older people who thereby had an oppor-
tunity for vacations. In the months and
years to come, there will be . conferences and
study meetings which rebound to the entire
community's benefit.
This is an indication of the vision, dis-
played by our community's leaders who are
not narrowing their views in the various
fields of communal planning. By combining
camping programs with winter study ses-
sions, Tamarack becomes a vital communal
instrument for future planning and for lead-
ership training. Similarly, our Jewish Cen-
ter movement, by combining its facilities
with the United Hebrew Schools, is render-
ing great service to Detroit Jewry.
The present planning programs call for
the establishment of a series of new Centers
whose facilities are to be shared for youth
and adult recreatidn programs as well as
for classes for the United Hebrew Schools.
The new Center-UFIS building on Schaefer,
the proposal to build, during the coming
months, a Center and Hebrew school in the
Oak Park area and the plan extending the
facilities of the Davison Jewish Center, augur
well for our community program.
Tamarack's dedication of three . new
buildings, at ceremonies next Wednesday,
therefore deserves to be classed among the
very important developments for Detroit
Jewry. It may well be considered a most
significant occasion in - American Jewry's
-
The publishers of "The Drama of Albert Einstein" by Antonina
Tercentenary _Year during which U.S. Jewry
is advancing its status and is strengthening Vallentin (Doubleday, 575 Madison, NY22). describe the book as
its position as a community that has come "an intimate portrait of the man whose work has changed the
world." It is the intimacy of this interesting book, by a woman -
of age.
who knows the great scientist and has befriended the family in
Germany and in this country, that makes her biography stand out
as an exceedingly important work.
Einstein the Man emerges here as colorful,
some scholars and teachers that earlier Jew-
courageous, wise, human. His humanity and cour-
ish communities in various parts of the world
age are his outstanding qualities. This great man,
perished because of ignorance and assimila-
who helped release knowledge That led to the
tion are based on lack of knowledge or faulty
possession of atomic power, is presented here by
his admiring biographer in all his simplicity and
interpretation of the facts. Dr. Baron said
in all his genius.
that the strong and influential Alexandrian
In many respects he is childlikeunassuming,
Jewish community of the early Christian era,
loyal, devoted and unafraid.
so often regarded as an instance of death by
He possesses and continues to display an '014-
assimilation, was destroyed, by revolutions
bounded strength of will which causes him to
Within and without, not by Greek or Egyptian
tower above all men as a person of very great
culture; that, in fact, sympathetic participa-
courage. That which he knew to be correct he
Einstein
tion in the rebellions of the Palestinian Jew- uttered without hesitation. This was as true of his presentation to
ish community was the greatest single factor a skeptical world of his Theory of Relativity as it was of la.s• defi-
ance of the assimilationist tendencies of his fellow Jews in Ger-
in the downfall of Alexandrian Jewry.
This may not be as consoling as it sounds. many whom he opposed in his affirmation of Zionism.
When he was advised to sever connections with Jewry in order
It should serve as warning against "revolu- to secure
an appointment at the German University in Prague, he
tions within and without"- that may occur in defied the shameful idea by registering: "Religion—Israelite."
our own midst. Guided by past experiences,
The author relates the famous story about Einstein who, when
we should be able to overcome the challenges interviewed about the Relativity Theory, said:
"Today, I am considered in Germany as a German scientist
that destroyed Alexandrian Jewry. It is con-
fidence in the availability of such weapons for and- in England as a Swiss Jew, but if one day I become persona
survival, mainly from spiritual sources, that non grata I would be a Swiss Jew for the Germans and a German
for the English."
encourages us to believe that assimilation scientist
• Having discovered in Germany "a latent anti-Semitism, espe-.
will fail in its attack on American Jewry. cially in the universities, which were and remained, in contrast.
GIVE TO THEANEMENCY/MARCH OF DIMES-NOW!
Intimate Portrait of Einstein
The Jewish Community of the Future
Bnai Brith Institute of Judaism, at Star-
light, Pa., last week heard differing opinions
on the future Jewish community.
Dr. Robert Gordis, the distinguished pro-
fessor of Bible at the Jewish Theological
Seminary of America, envisioned a com-
munity steeped in spiritual rather than secu-
lar ideas; whereas Dr. Israel Chipkin, of the
New York Jewish Education Committee, ex-
pressed the belief that the Jewish commu-
nity of the future will concern itself with
education.
It is difficult to understand a position that
differentiates the two spheres. The educa-
tional aspects of a Jewish community would
be diluted without the spiritual influence.
There can be no effective educational pro-
gram without the Biblical flavor. A secular-
ized Jewish life must lead to assimilation and
therefore to a speedy death. Perhaps the
weaknesses in our community structures are
traceable to the failure of educators to
understand the value of spiritual emphases
In Jewish studies.
It is becoming increasingly more clear
that American Jewry will overcome assimila-
tionist tendencies, in spite of an increase in
intermarriage and the need for more effec-
tive means of combatting indifference to Jew-
ish needs in Jewish ranks, through a spiritual-
educational program. We are inclined to
agree with Dr. Salo Baron, noted Columbia
University Bible scholar, who told the Bnai
Brith Institute that American Jewry will sur-
vive even if it did not desire it and that the
gloomy assimilationist prophecies of 30 years
ago will not materialize.
Of special interest in Dr. Baron's address
was his comment that conclusions drawn by
Sad Berlin Report
In his report of "A Day in Germany,"
writing for his syndicated column from Ber-
lin, Leonard Lyons told the following:
"We attended the Sabbath services in
the one large synagogue there. - There are
only 6,000 Jews in all of Berlin and 800
are left in the East Sector. The sexton
showed us where the SS men rode their
horses into the house of worship, firing
away as they trampled over the pews
and those at prayer. There were only 70
men and women there during our visit,
people who had survived one terror and
now faced another.
"They were elderly people, for the
young ones are gone and soon that whiCh
Menahem Beigin, as the leader of the
once was Hitler's dream German art,
Irgun Zvai Leumi, had been a trouble-make•.
culture, trade, government and life, with-
As leader of the Herut (Freedom) Party,
out Jews—will become a reality. Dr.
successor to the Irgun, he continues to fo-
Hans Hirschfeld, press secretary to the
ment unnecessary anger in Israel.
Mayor of West Berlin, had received us
in the Bathaus whose Liberty Bell peels
Last week, Beigin, addressing several
its note of hope to those in the East.
thousand people in Jerusalem, advocated
`There is no more anti-Semitism here,'
war on the Arab nations neighboring on
he assured us. 'Nor here,' the sexton
Israel, as a way to prevent .future wars.
now said. 'No more.' "
Once again he has gone off on a dangerous
This is the simple story of the triumph
tangent.
The only road to lasting peace is by pro- of anti-Semitism: where there are no more
pagating and seeking peace, not by calling Jews, there is no more anti-Semitism. That
is how the anti-Semite seeks to achieve his
for war.
Even if he speaks for all the eight mem- end. That is how Hitlerism may have at-
bers of the Herut Party in the Israel Knes- tained its goal in Germany.
The anti-Semite's triumph, however, is
set, it is certain that they stand alone as
limited to Germany—and even there, as in
war-mongers. Yet their war cries will harm
Israel's status in the world because the Spain where the Inquisition once had similar
Arabs are quick to quote his irrational ap- designs, Jewish. life may thrive again in the
peals and to ascribe them to _ all. Israel. future under happy circumstances. What
the anti-Semite fails to take into account
Therefore he must be. repudiated—in and
out of Israel—as a person . who speaks only - is the inspiration inherited by Jewry from
the Psalmist's declaration: "I shall not die
for himself and whose party remains a re-
but live, to declare the works of the Lord."
pudiated minority in a peace-loving state.
Beigin Stands Alone
to educational institutions in other countries, the principal fortress
of reaction, the hotbeds of prejudice," Prof. Einstein said, ex-
plaining his Zionism: "It was when I came to Germany, 15 years
ago, that I discovered I was a Jew and I owe this discovery more
to non-Jews than to Jews." And he did not hesitate to condemn
those Jews whose "pretenseS" caused them to cringe. We learn
from his able biographer that he especially resented the slurs by
German Jews on their East European brethren.
Dr. Einstein's family relationships, his craving for a peaceful
I world, his humanitarianism are described by facts, by stories and
anecdotes which fill this book. In his youth a University of
Cracow professor said about him: "A new Copernicus has been
born." The truth of it becomes evident in this fine biography.
Vile Attacks on Jewish Leaders in
Ben Hecht's 'A Child of the Century'
Ben Hecht has written a big book. His latest. "A Child of the
Century," published by Simon and Schuster (1230 Sixth Ave.; ,1\TY20),
will be read with a great deal of interest for its revelations about
many American personalities, for the stories he tells—undoubtedly
also for the accumulation of sexual smut.
Jews who will read his book may wonder whether our people
really are as bad a lot as he paints us. As already indicated in
a previous comment in our columns, he has rendered great harm
to Jewry with his misrepresentations of the Zionist issue and of
the events which marked the rise of Israel. He is insulting to
Stephen Wise, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion. He
would leave the impression that only he, the Irgun, his pals Berg-
son, Merlin and Beigin, really accomplished anything for Israel.
Readers must be warned against being misled by Hecht. He
has produced a vulgar work in which he acts more brazenly anti-
Jewish than an anti-Semite—although he argues that the reason
for his having associated with the Irgun was his desire to satisfy
his newly-won pride as a Jew. He does not act proudly and his
insults to Jewish leaders are appaling.
There is no denying the brilliance of his writing. He is a
genius at story-telling. But his vulgarity drags him down exactly
to the spots which attract him: the gutters.
At one point he had us deeply moved--when he spoke of his
attachment to his family, his high regard for his uncles and aunts.
But he proved nothing at all on the score of dignity in the pages
that followed. The family sketches are interesting but his general
dealings—his tricky production of a Life of Jesus for the•Baptists,
his faked Chicago earthquake, the Florida property hoax—de-
stroyed whatever good he may have had in view. His outrageous
misrepresentations of the Zionist position nullify his good inten-
tions. An able writer has gone wrong.