--11111F;-
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
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Circulation Manager
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the fifteenth day of Adar, 5717, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Ki Tissah, Parah, Ex. 30:11-34:35; Num.. 19:1-22. Prophetical portion,
Ezekiel 36:16-38.
Licht Benshen, Friday, Feb. 15, 5:47 p.m.
VOL. XXX. No. 24
Page Four
February 15, 1957
The Togetherness of Brotherhood Week
Annual Brotherhood Week, to be ob-
served this year from Feb. 17 to 24, strives
anew to cement the best relations among
all the people of this great land and to
eliminate strife based on religious or racial
hatreds. •
To the cred-
it of the Na-
tional Confer-
ence of Chris-
tians and
Jews, spon-
sors of Broth-
erhood. Week,
it must be
said that its
leaders strive
to make the
objectives o f
the Week part
of a working program for the entire year.
In our own community, the local arm of
the interfaith Conference, the Detroit
Round Table, sets its goals high to attain
the maximum goal in human relations.
Much remains to be done. But the key-
note messages sounded during Brother-
hood Week go a long way in arousing keen
appreciation of the aims of a period set
aside for the creation of good will.
President Xisenhower, as honorary
chairman of Brotherhood Week, has sound-
ed this note in a message calling upon all
our people to work for amity:
"From many, one—E. Pluribus Unum—pis
on the Great Seal of the United States of
America and should be written in the hearts
of our citizens.
"We are a people of many races, colors
and creeds, but we are one nation, one country.
"America is a great and dynamic expression
of equality among men. But America must
forever seek a stouter unity among its people,
a sharper understanding that none of us can
George Washington .
stand alone; that working together all of us
Feb. 2.Z
1732-1799
shall pros-per in the human goods of body and
mind and spirit."
Three 'Heroes of God'
Americans are working together m
shops, in factories, in schools. They must
learn to act together also after working
hours, as social human beings, thereby
creating a strong democratic society. By
strengthening our inner democracy, we
hope to be able to reach a point of better
understanding also of our foreign relations
programs, thereby also strengthening de-
mocracies throughout the world.
Brotherhood Week approaches such to-
getherness. Let us strive to make it an in-
destructible reality.
Midrasha's Vitally Needed Middle East Institute
This community owes wholehearted
encouragement to the Midrasha-sponsored
Middle East Institute, the purpose of
which is to provide our community's lead-
ers with all the basic facts relating to the
crisis created for the State of Israel by her
saber-rattling neighbors.
Israel's problem has become the major
issue for all the democratic nations in the
world, by virtue of the threat to the Mid-
dle East from the Soviet orbit and because
of the control on the world's oil supplies
imposed by the will of monarchical poten-
tates and Nasser's dictatorship. Israel, as
the only true democracy in that entire
area, is the symbol of the freedoms which
must be protected in the Middle East.
This problem is primarily world Jew-.
ry's problem. There are 1,900,000 Israelis,
1,700,000 of whom are Jews, most of whom
have found a haven of refuge in the new
State with the help of American and other
free Jewries in the world. Nearly a mil-
lion of the Israelis are the survivors from
the crematoria of the Nazis and the purga-
tories that threatened the lives of Jews in
Moslem countries. More than 350,000 Jews
found refuge from Arab persecutions in
Israel. The Israelis, whose number is ex-
pected to reach the 2,000,000 mark by the
end of this year as a result of the new
exodus from Egypt, are in Israel to stay
as an entity. Their security must be
assured. They have no other place to turn
to, and they will defy all dangers to their
lives and will reject all threats to drive
them into the sea.
We must assist them in the battle for
their lives, and in the struggle for justice
we must be prepared to meet every chal-
lenge and reply to every libel that may
be uttered against an embattled people.
That is the purpose of the Middle East
Institute.
A disturbing factor in the present
situation has been an apparent weakness
in some of our public relations efforts.
Fortunately, the American press is treat-
ing the issues fairly. Brig. Gen. S. L. A.
Marshall and W. K. Kelsey, of the Detroit
News, have symbolically .upheld principles
of fair play in their evaluations of Israel's
position. Our community leaders must be
equally prepared to reply to misrepresen-
tations of facts.
This is where the Midrasha's Middle
East Institute can serve an important pur-
pose: of enlightening the community and
of making the facts available; providing
that the leadership for whom the Institute
is intended participates in it.
It is intended as a leadership Institute,
and it is urgent that board members of all
Zionist groups, of the Community Council,
the Welfare Federation, the Bnai Brith
and its Anti-Defamation League, the
major women's organizations and of youth
groups, should enroll in the planned ses-
sions. Let them acquire knowledge about
the issues facing Israel, so that they may
serve as defenders of the truth. They will
thereby help protect a people whose very
existence is in danger, and they will there-
by, also, be the defenders of the basic
libertarian principles inherent in true
Americanism.
Sanctions
Those who have become frightened by
the threats of possible sanctions against
Israel, proposed by the Afro-Asian bloc in
the United Nations, and discussed last
week in Washington, should keep in view
the truth that, in a sense, sanctions already
are being practiced by our administration:
by the freezing of all aid to Israel and by
the ban that has been placed on travel to
Israel.
Israel already is severely handicapped.
She has temporarily lost American sup-
port. She has lost income from tourists.
The 1,900,000 Israelis — 200,000 of them
Christians and Moslems — are suffering
and are facing dangers.
We challenge the morality of such ac-
tions, which place an entire people in
jeopardy.
Our admonition to our kinsmen is not
to fear: sanctions that are intended for
the destruction of an entire nation can
only be interrupted as genocide, and our
Government surely will not be a party
to the cruelty of subjecting all the Israelis
to murderous threats.
. Nevertheless, we appeal to our Gov-
ernment to put an end to such fears. We
view sanctions against Israel as un-Amer-
ican. We protest against the very men-
tion of such punishments. We call upon
our President to bury such bugaboos and
ghosts, so that the good name of America
should never be sullied even in the im-
agination of our citizens and the free
world.
Elijah, Deborah and Amos
The YMCA's Association Press (291 B'way, NY 7) has
issued an interesting "Heroes of God Series" in which are
included Old and New Testament characters.
Three of the volumes in this series, published recently,
deserve special mention. They deal with Amos, Deborah and
Elijah.
Juanita Jones and James B. McKendry co-authored "Deborah:
the Woman Who Saved Israel." The two authors caught the
spirit of the Biblical story. Tracing the life of Deborah to her
early childhood, they present her as an inspired woman who
sought freedom for her people from the oppression of the
Canaanites. The final battle brings liberty, but Deborah does not
ask for personal reward. All she wants is the chance to go back
to her family. Her story ends in the song from Judges 5:3-31:
"Deborah arose as a mother in Israel . . ."
Then there is the story of "Amos, Prophet of Justice," the
shepherd who was sold into slavery, who learned of poverty and
injustice, who pleaded—
"Seek good, and not evil, that ye may Live . . .
Hate the evil, and love the good,
and establish judgment in the gate . .
Freed and given a chance to plead the cause of justice,
Amos travels the length and breadth of the land, preaching
justice and repentance. Miss Jenkins, an able biographer, wrote
an interesting epilogue to her "Amos," stating:
"To the people of Israel, Amos preached that the supreme
command of God was for justice on earth ... Only by righteous-
ness in daily dealings and in respect for others could men fulfill
the commandments of God. It is to Amos, who lived 25 centuries
ago, that we owe the great modern concepts of the goodness of
God, and today's knowledge that it is his will that we act with
justice toward all our fellow men."
The emiiient Jewish story-teller, Elma Ehrlieh Levinger, is
the author of "Elijah, Prophet of the One God." The entire era
during which Elijah lived is portrayed in her well-told story.
The idol-worshippers and the false prophets of Baal are exposed
in all their falsehoods. -
Elijah is the leader in the struggle for the purification Of,
the land of the filth and disgrace brought upon it by the false
prophets. The Elisha story is traced, in accordance with the
Biblical story, unto the day when the great Prophet, who has
become the hero of Jewry, and the most welcome guest at the
Passover Seder, leaves on a chariot for the Great Beyond. Elisha,
who succeeds. him, accompanies him to Mt. Nebo, leaving him
there to enter the fiery chariot.
Mrs. Levinger's story is told with deep feeling.
All three "Heroes of God" tales assume much significance
because of their pursuance of the factual records as recorded
Biblically.
Mrs. Freehof's Bible Legend Book
Two of Lillian S. Freehof's Bible legend books have been
accepted with acclaim by Jewish youth. Her husband, Dr. Solo=
mon B. Freehof, encouraged her to study Jewish legendary'
material and to produce another such fine book for children.
The result is her "Third Bible Legend Book," published by the
Union of American Hebrew Congregations.
This volume has 21 tales, based on Midrashic stories. In a
prefatory note to her readers, Mrs. Freehof explains: "The writers
of the Midrash, like the writers of the folklore of all peoples,
made free play of their imagination and spoke of witches and
demons and human beings turned into beasts."
Describing similarities in folklore, she makes the interesting
point that the same stories often will appear from Norway to
India, Scotland to Israel, Italy to Japan and adds that the story
akin to Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle," • found in her
volume under the title "Ebedmelech's Reward," dates back to
olden times.
Samuel is the hero of the first story, "The Boy Prophet' .
"Five Gold Mice" deals with the period of Eli the Priest. Other
stories have as their heroes and major characters King Cyrus,
Daniel, the cast in the story of Purim, Nebuchadnezzar, Hezekiah,
Jeremiah, the Kings Saul, David and Solomon, Elijah, Jonah
and many others from Jewish history and folklore.
Mrs. Freehof tells her stories well and her narratives are
certain to capture the imagination of young readers, and of their
elders who will join them in getting into the spirit of these folk-
tales.