The Unspoken Word

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, National Editorial
Association.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35. Mich.,
VE. 8-9364. Subscription $5 a year Foreign $6.
Entered as second class matter Aug. 6, 1942, at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of March 3, 1879

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

SIDNEY SHMARAK

FRANK SIMONS

Editor and Publisher

Advertising Manager

City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the fourteenth day of Tammuz, 5716, the follOWing Scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Balak, Num. 22:2-25:9. Prophetical portion, Micah 5:6-6:8.

7NE VDRY
Aivrt 3V11 rid P)LTS
46,4#/$7-
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#16

Licht Benshen, Friday, June 22, 7:52 p.m.

VOL. XXIX. No. 16

Page Four

June 22, 1956

Adult Learning: Intellectual Emancipation

Adult education recently was evaluated
by a distinguished educator not as "a
hodgepodge of activities to occupy the
idle" but as a vital need in American life.
Arthur P. Crabtree, head of citizenship
education in the New York State Educa-
tion Department and vice-president of the
Adult Education Association of the U.S.A.,
in an important article in the New York
Times, on "What Adult Education Is—
And Is Not," reached this very interesting
conclusion:
"Those who are charged with the
leadership of the adult education move-
ment in this country must face their
task with a new dimension of purpose.
The old philosophy of give-them-what-
they-want has no kinship with genuine
modern leadership. Education must
point the way to ever higher and more
spiritual values. If we are content to
give the adults of our generation merely
what they want, we have far too many
who will choose the bric-a-brac of adult
education. Give some merely what they
want and they will prefer segregation in
a society dedicated to the dignity of
man. Give others only what they want
and our human engineering will con-
tinue to lag a century behind our
architecture of steel and stone. We who
plan the programs for the consumers of
adult education can no longer escape
the responsibility of offering them the
best we have.
"It is our task to see that America
does as much to raise her standard of
thinking as she has done to raise her
standard of living."
We were intrigued by these statements
because they are so aptly applicable to
Jewish educational activities and to our
organizational programming. Whenever
the crude elements enter into planning
for programs, we are told, inevitably:
that's what the people want; give them
what they want, else there will be no
audience. And those who clamor for the
higher standards are shouting to deaf ears
when they plead that it is better to have
smaller audiences than to lower the
dignity of our communal life.
We bring this to the attention of our
community in order that those who are
planning our educational programS should
be admonished to remain aware of the
high principles that must guide our com-
munal life; so that programming should
be raised to the highest level of construc-
tiveness; so that arrangements for enter-
tainment should not be at the sacrifice
of basic Jewish ideas.
*
*
*
There will be a need for early planning
for community programs for the coming
year. The commencement – of the Holy
Days immediately after Labor Day will
impose additional obligations upon the
various movements that make up Jewish
life to arrange their programs earlier than
usual and to make every -effort to avoid
-duplication of efforts in the weeks of
activity that will crowd upon us after the
holidays.
In their planning, our congregations
already have shown a keen concern to
pool activities, to present the best avail-
able scholars and thinkers in adult educa-
tion programs, to appeal to as large an
audience as possible whom they seek to
interest in adult education programs.
Similar efforts should be made by
other groups. They should strive to en-
lighten their constituencies, by bringing
to them not burlesque but information.
They should, whenever possible, seek to
combine forces in order to eliminate
duplication of effort. In that way, educa-
tion will "point the way to ever higher
and more spiritual values."

At this point, we must also call atten-
tion to problems relating to the education
of our children. At the recent conventions
of educators, it was reported that 420,000
children-52 per cent of the total_ Jewish
child population in this country—now are
receiving some sort of Jewish education.
But nearly half of this number, 201,000,
are enrolled in Sunday Schools and attend
only once a week. The tendency; in all
spheres; is to enlarge upon the minimal
programs, to set up additional week-day
classes for those attending Sunday
Schools, to establish Hebrew classes in all
schools.
There are encouraging factors in our
educational areas. But there also are
serious handicaps. The shortage of
teachers is one of the roots of the troubles
there is need for 5,000 new teachers for
our Jewish schools for the coming decade
and that indications are that less than 20
per cent of this number will become avail-
able. Our communities therefore face a
real challenge in setting up educational
standards. What we need is not the chaff,
but the wheat; what is required is a' pro-
fession of teachers who are loyally de-
voted to the training of our youth, not
"extras" who make teaching in Jewish
schools the means of earning income addi-
tional to other work.
*
*
*
The problem is too serious to be solved
by off-hand solutions. Naturally, our corn-
munities must offer good salaries to our
teachers. We must assure them, in addi-
tion to a living wage, pensions, old-age
retirement guarantees and the benefits
that are given to factory workers. And
we must establish the proper schools for
the training of teachers.
We feel certain that American Jewry
is fully aware of its responsibilities to our
children and our schools. Our communi-
ties are allocating vastly increased sums
to educational needs. In the long run,
while the local needs have cut into Israel's
income from this country, a well-trained
Jewry surely will be better prepares- to
labor in defense of Israel. Therefore, the
striving for highest educational accom-
plishments must be made a top priority-
in our community planning.
Higher educational standards, digni-
fied programming and cooperation among
all our exisiting movements should go
hand in hand. They will help in the for-
mation of better communities and a more
wholesome Jewish life.

Our Good Credit

The record-setting loan of $2,750,000,
secured by the Jewish community of De-
troit from local banks, is a tribute to the
generosity of our people and to the confi-
dence all of us have that it will continue
without interruption.
This large loan, granted to the Jewish
Welfare Federation and to the Allied Jew-
ish Campaign, has made possible the re-
payment of the $1,200,000 due the banks
on a previous loan and to advance to the
United Jewish Appeal an additional sum
of $1,550,000 against collections on out-
standing pledges made here in the last
drive.
The new loan is a compliment to the
25,000 men, women and children who have
given well in the last campaign and who
may well be viewed as a continuing strong
backbone in a good community. It honors
those who are standing behind the little
State of Israel, and thereby expresses
admiration for the Israelis who are fight-
ing for liberty and justice. The loan,
therefore, is a tribute to libertarians and

the liberty they aim to protect.

Respect for Differences

Dr. Sandmel Advocates Jewish
New Testament Understanding

Because "American Jews, by and large, know the New
Testament today only from oblique and random contacts," and
because "still other American Jews, whose number makes them
average, have neither preconceptions nor biases about the New
Testament which they have not read, but only a thoughtful
curiosity and an earnest desire for information," Dr. Samuel
Sandmel has written "A Jewish Understanding of the New
Testament," to fill the void.
This . enlightening work has been published by Hebrew
Union College Press, Cincinnati 20, 0. It is a scholarly study,
resulting from deep research. It contains evaluations of all
the books of the New Testament
and the approach to it, from the
viewpoint of an historian, is ex-
plained by Rabbi Sandmel as being
that of a literature that, "although
it is not ours, is closer to us than
any other sacred literature which
is now our own."
Asserting that Judaism and
Christianity overlap in part "as in
the heritage of the Old Testament
and its moral law" and diverge in
part, Dr. Sandmel writes that
"religious understanding ,s h o u 1 . d
never presuppose identity,
rather a respect for acknowledged
Dr. Sandmel
differences."
Rabbi Sandmel has not over-
looked the anti-Jewish sentiments that are found in the New
Testament. "Jewish life in the Middle Ages was largely one
persecutiori after another," he concedes. "Yet," he adds, "it-
would be unreasonable for modern American Jews to regard
our American Christian neighbors as the perpetrators of those
medieval misfortunes."
He also makes this point: "When Judaism and Christianity
are compared with each other, the sense of their diversity from
each other is a natural conclusion. It is as if they were on
opposite sides of the fence. Yet when they are seen in the light
of a third element, such as Nazism or Communism, the
impression changes quickly, and Judaism and Christianity are
seen rather as being on the same side of the fence."
Rabbi Sandmel emphasizes that "without the Old Testament,
the New Testament is like a blueprint for individual rooms and
halls, __which omits the plans for the completed structure."
In his reference to the anti-Semitism of portions of the

New Testament, Rabbi Sandmel declares that "the presence
of the pronounced anti-Jewish motif in the New Testament
ought not to blind a . Jew who wants to appraise Christianity
in the same way that it has often blinded Christians about
Judaism. Jews may possibly be aware that there exists a
growing, but already large literature in which modern
Christians both deplore the intrusion of anti-Jewish sentiment
in the New Testament, and describe it as no longer tenable.
The 'anti-Semitism' in the New Testament or derivable from
it is certainly Less than the primary motif of the New
Testament."

We are admonished that "to understand the New Testament
as it was understood in its own time, the historian must
understand the circumstances and . concerns of that time, as
well as the language which voiced its history."
The approach of Dr. Sandmel to a subject that not so
long ago was considered anathema in most Jewish ranks will
prove valuable to Christians, for their understanding of the
Jewish position, as well as Jews, who are urged to know and
understand the New Testament by the able author of "A Jewish
Understanding of the New Testament."

