Busting Nasser's In,vincibility Balloon

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, 1952, at Post Office, Detroit, Mich., under Act of March 3, 1879.

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

FRANK SIMONS

SIDNEY SHMARAK

City Editor

Advertising Manager

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Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the thirteenth day of Kislev,, 5717, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Hosea 11:7-12:12.
Pen.tateuchal portion, Vayishlah, Gen. 32:4-36:43. Prophetical portion ,

Licht Benshen, Friday, Nov. 16, 4:52 p.m.

Vol. XXX—No. 11

Page Four

November 16, 1956

The Jewish Book: Our Annual Book Fair

Among the notable accomplishments of
our community's educational agencies are
the impressive Annual Book Fairs, ar-
rangements for which are made by the
Jewish Community Center and scores of
cooperating local organizations.

In past years, the Book Fairs have
drawn large attendances. Noted scholars
inspired those attending the book exhibits
to enroll as members of the Jewish Publi-
cation Society, to purchase books and to
enroll in book review seminars.
This year, again under the chairman-
ship of Dr. Norman. Drachler, the annual
Jewish Book Fair will be held Nov. 17 to
19, at the Jewish Center. Again, as in past
years, there will be displays of important
books, addresses by authorities on Jewish
literary subjects and book review semi-
nars.
The Book Fair serves as the suitable
occasion for discussion of the place of the
book in the Jewish home and the Jewish
community; the value we place on Jewish
books and the scholars who produce them.
In an essay written as a contribution to
a "Reader" issued by Schocken Press, on
"The Jewish Book in America," the late
Dr. Ludwig Lewisohn. stated:

"When we have written or spoken these
words: the Jewish book in America, we have
touched our deepest wound and have uttered
our most anguished aspiration. Never before,
our most anguished aspiration.
"Two circumstances have brought our nu-
merous and powerful American community to
this pass—the lateness of its arrival on these
shores and the vast centrifugal forces which at
once met these immigrants. Work needed to
be done and the freedom toward that work
existed. Several generations intoxicated them-
selves with this freedom toward work and its
fruits, toward civic and professional status,
toward an almost frenzied enjoyment of that
emancipation which, in older and mature com-
munities in other lands, was already seen to
show fatal cracks and tragic inadequacies.
"To this easy and expansive life there were
no counterpressures. There was no densitS, of
cultural atmosphere in America and no de-
mands were made upon the immigrant of any
origin. There was little or no linguistic. culture
among the older groups, for instance. The
frontier tradition that learning was effeminate
and that cultural preoccupations discredited the
practical man and active citizen persists among
the folk masses of America to this day. Hence
the immigrant had no encouragement toward
either preserving his own tradition of the cre-
ative word or of allying himself with another
of which—and this is of central import—his
children's children might have found their way
back to their ancestral one.
"Despite these desperate circumstances Jew-

Annual Balfour Event

In the current trying times for Israel
and the Jewish people, it is necessary to
recall the names of the men and women,
Jews and Christians, whose recognition
of the justice of Jewish aspirations in the
Holy Land had led them to support the
Zionist cause.
This year, the name of Arthur' James
Balfour, author of the historic Balfour
Declaration, was overlooked on Balfour
Day, Nov. 2.
But Detroit Jewry never forgets him.
Lord Balfour's name is memorialized and
honored by means of our annual' Balfour
Celebration, which this year will take the
form of a concert, sponsored by the Zion-
ist Organization of Detroit, on Nov. 24,
at the Masonic Temple, featuring the
world's greatest cellist, Gregor Piatigor-
sky.
The event itself is significant enough
to be honored. It assumes added value by

the visit here of the great musician. It is
sincerely to be hoped that Detroit Jewry's
cooperation in the sponsorship of this cele-
bration will assure the raising of a, suf-
ficiently large fund to. provide 'for local
Zionist needs and for Detroit Zionists' ade-
quate share in national ZOA activities,

ish books were written in America. A small
hard core of Jewish intellectual activity sur-
vived the busy founding of organizations and
the building of synagogues. Almost precisely
twenty-five years ago that old, small core
began to vibrate and expand. Jewish writers
appeared on the American scene who wrote of
a profoundly Jewish consciousness in an Eng-
lish both elegant and powerful, and for a few
years we seemed to be on the edge of an at
least minor rebirth of the creative word among
us. But, although that original small group con-
tinued to create and although younger men of
equal gifts sought to ally themselves with it
and despite, above all, those hammer blows of
destiny which hurtled down upon, the Jewish
people, the creative word was uttered with
.ever more cruel difficulty. The books were
written; they were not read:
"Today — precisely today — another change
is on our spiritual horizon. Stirred by the trag-
edy of fate, bathed in the radiance that goes
out from the Yishuv in Eretz YisraeI, the
youngest generation of American Jews is be-
ginning to express itself. A bachur from a
metropolitan Yeshivah turns out to be an Eng-
lish poet of true distinction; boys and girls in
an academic Zionist society think and write
People have motorcars and electric refrigerators
"If American Jewry, despite its power and
wealth and material generosity, is not to be-
come a withered branch upon the tree of our
people's life, an audience for the Jewish book,
the Jewish creative word, must be created.
people have motorcars and electric refrigerators
and smart empty houses—empty of the book
and the spirit. Are there men in America,
Rabbis and laymen, older and younger -men and
women, who know of our great barrenness' and
our great need and who must go to this dark
people, who must go, if need be, from house to
house and from soul to soul—seeing that our
way of life is not otherwise communicated
among men—with the Jewish book, the Jewish
creative word, and persuade these people that
they must from time to time cease from their
busy multiplication of goods and pleading of
causes and even the healing of the sick for the
incomparably more needed healing of the soul
of American Jewry by its absorption in the
past and in the present of the Jewish word, the
Jewish book."

The ideas embodied are providing ex-
cellent material for discussion by partici-
pants in Book Fairs and in book review
seminars. They offer food - for thought for
those who, by their participation in the
Annual Jewish Book Month events, show
an interest in Jewish cultural projects.
On the occasion of the current celebra-
tion of Annual Book Month and the Book
Fair of our community, we again urge that
Jewish book shelves be introduced in all
-Jewish homes; that membership enroll-
ment in the Jewish Publication Society of
America should be one of the major duties
of all our people who recognize the im-
portance of spreading Jewish knowledge;
that the purchase of books should be made
a habit to be passed on from generation to
generation; that we purchase books as gifts
for relatives and friends,- and that we as-
sist, by our gifts, in setting up Jewish
book shelves in public libraries, in our
synagogues and in our schools.
The Book Fair has justifiably become
one of the outstanding events on our com-
munity calendar. Those who have helped
advance its significance have earned our
gratitude. They have truly contributed
nobly to our cultural values.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving occurs in a troubled age
this year.
We offer thanks that we live in a great
land—in a land of plenty and of peace.
But our own peace is affected by the
conditions that affect the world at large.
Can we overcome the war threats?
Will the ideals which motivate the
craving for peace or the American people

reach the hearts of the zest - of mankind?
As we prepare to give thanks on
Thanksgiving for our bounties, we shall
also pray for peace and for amity for all
peoples everywhere.

Great Ages and Ideas

Schwarz's Anthology Spans
Time Space in Jewish History

,

Hadassah is to be congratulated for its encouragement to
Leo W. Schwarz, eminent anthologist and author of a number
of important Jewish books, and to his publishers, Random
House (457 Madison, NY 22), which enabled him to produce
"Great Ages and Ideas of the Jewish People."

This, too, is an anthology. It covers the Biblical, Hellenistic,
Talmudic, European and Modern Ages in Jewish history. The
numerous subjects are covered by distinguished scholars: Prof.
Yehezkel Kaufman, of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Prof.
Ralph Marcus, University of Chicago; Gerson D. Cohen, of
Columbia University; Dr. Abraham S. Halkin, of New York
City College; Dr. Cecil_Roth, of Oxford University, and Dr. Salo
W. Haron, of Columbia University.
This volume has special value for its realistic apprOach to
an undei-standing of Jewish history. The compiler's view is
that "knowledge of history is in actuality liberation from the
straight jackets of time and ignorance." It is through such an
approach, as outlined in Schwarz's introduction, that the reader
is able to attain a proper •perspective of the eras outlined in
this book.
Analyzing the unique features of Jewish history ; Mr.
Schwarz states that "no history is simple, and Jewish history
in particular is so varied and so complex that it has baffled •
even the ablest historians." He then points to two modern
writers of universal history, the anti-Jewish Spengler and
Toynbee, who, he states, "could not fit this history into their
theories and brushed aside quite unhistorically what they
regarded as a 'deviation.' "
He then proceeds• to show that "one source of puzzlement is
the time depth of Jewish history." In the calendar year 5717
in which this is published, he asserts, Jews in the United States
celebrate Passover and Hanukah, events that occurred thou-
sands of years ago.
"Even if you discard the legendary calendar date," he adds,
"this book itself encompasses at least 3,500 years . . . Indeed,
Dubnow attempted to prove that the Jewish people and their
culture are 'coextensive with the whole of history. - While
this claim does not hold up under factual scrutiny, it is safe
to say that the Jews have an endurance record in the arena
of history. The time depth of Jewish history invites one to
think not only in terms of decades and generations, but of
centuries and milennia."
Then Mr. Schwarz deals with the second unique Jewish
historical feature, "the geographical span." He comments that
the "global dispersion imposes upon the student the huge but
exhiliarating obligation of becoming acquainted with world
geography throughout the ages."
The main interest of the book being more than chronology
and geography, the compiler has chosen dates and places "directly
related to the origin, growth, and migration of ideas of enduring
values." Language elements are seriously considered. Intellectual
currents are studied. Indeed, in the pages of "Great Ages and
Iddas of the JeWish People" the participating writers have
evolved "a cluster of values that are uniquely Jewish and that
remain significant for modern men and women.
Distinguished scholars have united to evaluate Jewish
thoughts and the result is a magnificent work.

`The Real Case Against Nasser'

With a word, Nasser could have stopped the "anti-Semitic
campaign under official Egyptian 'auspices," Edmond Taylor states
in a pamphlet, "The Real Case Against Nasser," distributed by
Lillie Schultz and George Barnes for Kenmore Associates, 120 E.
56th, N.Y. 22.
. shy away
The pamphlet declares that "educated Arabs
from the mongrel pattern of Nasser's leadership" and that "the
fellah and the desert nomad care nothing for Nasser one way or
the other." But "to the gutter-barbarians . . . and to the uprooted
. . . inferiority-obsessed young Arab intellectuals Nasser . . . has
become the perfect, irreproachable, untouchable champion of
Arabism against the world."