Purely Commentary
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
The Evans' "A Dictionary of Contemporary
American Usage": Some Errors, Major Qualities
For those who desire to be correct in their use of English.
for write's. public speakers and all those who desire to be fully
acquainteid with the constant changes that take place in Amen-
can usage of the English language, "A Dictionary of Contempor-
ary American Usage," by the brother and sister team, Bergen
Evans and Cornelia Evans; is invaluable.
The publishers. Random House (457 Madison, N.Y. 22),
; I
describe this "ready-reference guide to the effective use of the
F•-• English language - as an all-new, practical dictionary of word
preferences, grammar style. punctuation, idioms, etc., based on
modern linguistic scholarship. - Some of the items in this book
to which this review will direct itself will prove the validity of
this claim. but this reviewer takes exception to some of the
d•- authors' evaluations.
•
Let us take as a specific example the Evans' item on - Yid-
.
dish: Hebrew," which they describe as follows:
World .Jewish Congress Leaders Confer for
First Time Outside the Iron Curtain with
C0111111 unist, Hungarian Jewish Spokesmen
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to
The Jewish News)
Plans for further and increas-
GENEVA—Plans "relating to of a Communist country met
the future relationship and co- officially with WJC leaders ing contact between Hungarian
operative action" between the outside the Iron Curtain.
Jewry and WJC, previously ap-
World Jewish Congress and
Dr. Nahum Goldmann, presi- proved by the World Congress
organized Hungarian Jewry dent of WJC, and Dr. Israel coordinating committee, were
were discussed here at a con- Goldstein, president of - the laid before the Hungarian dele-
ference between Congress lead- American Jewish Congress, gation and discussed at the
ers and ranking representa- headed the WJC delegation. ' conference which lasted two
tives of the Central Board of Representing Hungarian Jewry days. The Hungarian leaders
Hungarian Jewry.
were Andreas Sos, president of will submit the plans to the
Announcement of the confer- the Hungarian Jewish commu- Central Board of Hungarian
ence was made here by WJC nity; Miklos Zida, vice presi- Jewry in Budapest.
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion's Own
Mapai Followers Oppose His Zionist Stand
"Yiddish is a language used by many Jews, but it is not
linguistically related to the Hebrew language. Yiddish is
i
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire to
The Jewish News)
actually a group of closely similar High German dialects, with
vocabulary admixture from Hebrew and Slavic, written in
TEL AVIV — Disquiet pro-
It Hebrew letters, spoken mainly by Jews in countries east of ' voked by Premier David Ben-
Germany and by Jewish emigrants from these regions, and
Gurion's sharp criticism of the •
now the official language of Biro-Bidjan, an autonomous
Zionist movement had reper-
Jewish region in the southeast part of the Soviet Union in
cussions Tuesday in the ranks
Asia. Hebrew is the name of a Semitic language, the language
of the Premier's own followers
of the ancient Hebrews which although not a vernacular after
in the Mapai party.
I00 B.C. was retained as the scholarly and liturgical language
When the party's executive .
of the Jews and now is used as the language of Israelis."
met, one of its members de-
While this is in the main a correct description of Yiddish —
although the reference to it. and especially to Hebrew. is all-
too-brief — there is one regrettable error in the item. The
authors were misled into believing that there actually is an
autonomous Jewish region called Biro-Bidjan. The myth of this
autonomous region. N.,- hose Jewish population has declined. of
which even the Soviet propagandists have stopped speaking and
writing. has been exposed a number of years_ ago. It was once
propagated. as a deterrent to Zionism, Communist Russia having
persecuted the Hebrew language and the Zionists from the very
inception of the USSR. It is most unfortunate that the able
Evans team should have been "taken in" by this utter falsehood.
In their serious efforts to be correct and fair in their inter-
pretations. the authors have resorted to evaluations, some of
which we are compelled to challenge. Take. as an instance, these
items under the title "Hebrew; Israelite; Israeli; Jew, Semite":
leaders Tuesday. It was the dent. and Hungary's Chief
first time that representatives Rabbi Dr. Imre Benoschovsky.
manded a special meeting to
consider what he described as
Ben-Gurion's disturbing atti-
tude—a reference to the Pre-
mier's speech at the recent
idological conference in Jeru-
salem. in which he lashed out
at Zionists and said he himself
was not a Zionist.
Giora Josephtal, Secretary
General of the Mapai party,
told the meeting that a major-
ity of the Mapai rank and file
did not share Ben-Gurion's
views on Zionism and Ben-
Gurion was aware of that fact.
The Premier's views were not
recent, he pointed out, al-
though their formulation at the
conference had disturbed both
Mapai members in Israel and
Zionists in many parts of the
world.
Josephthal pointed out that
some of the concern had been
caused by the unusual method
Ben-Gurion had used to ex-
press himself. Instead of af-
firming I-17s own Zionism and
attacking -the others as not be-
-
-
lc J ews. and anti-Semites. The conscious Jews and the Christians
who are rationally objective always have treated Jew with the
incomparable dignity spoken of by the Evanses. The "immeasur-
able scorn" and avoidance of the "indecent. shameful, embar-
rassing or dangerous" application must be applied to the bigotry
of anti-Semitism.
Proof of this contention is contained in the authors' as-
sertion that "the guidance of the 'correct' use of- the noun
does not lie in any dictionary but in the heart and mind of
the user."
Nearly three columns are devoted in "Dictionary of Con-
temporary Usage" to an evaluation of "Biblical English."
A lengthly• item deals with "Moses, as meek as," about which
the authors say that "conservative force of alliteration still
keeps it alive." They continue to state:
"The phrase is a cliche and seemingly a contradiction. We
are assured in Numbers 12:3 that the man Moses was very meek,
above all . the men which were upon the face of the earth. But
his actions hardly bear this out. He killed the Egyptian task-
master, he destroyed Pharaoh's host. he smashed the tablets
of the Ten Commandments, he literally forced the golden calf
down the throats of the backsliders, he instigated the slaying
of above three thousand Israelites as a disciplinary measure
and smote the rock which God had commanded him merely to
speak to."
After further analysis, the authors point out: "The Cam-
Sharett. • former Premier, and
other Jewish thinkers argued
that there was a role and
purpose for the Zionist move-
ment outside of Israel, and
pleaded for cooperation be-
tween Israel and the Zionist
movement abroad.
Anti-Semitic Whispering Campaign Reported to Be
a Major Factor in Coining Bonn Elections
BONN. (JTA) — West Ger- Party in Aachen against Erich
many goes to the polls on Sep- Rademacher of the CDU. The
tember 15 to elect a new Bunde- public prosecutor indicted Rade-
stag, the Lower House of the macher for insulting Dr. 011en-
German Parliament. and the ex- hauer. Prior to the opening of
pectations today were that the the proceedings, however, the
Christian Democratic Union defendant on instructions from
(CDU) headed by Chancellor national C D U headquarters.
Konrad Adenauer, and the • proferred an apology and the
Social Democratic Party (SDP) ' Social Democrats deferred
would attract more than three- • pressing t le criminal complaint
fourths of the entire vote. Hence pending fprmal repudiation by
the electoral struggle is being CDU of the anti-Semitic innuen-
fought with mounting heat and . dos. This was forthcoming with
reports from various sections Dr. Heck's, letter to Dr. 011en-
of the country indicated that at- hauer.
tempts were being made to
In the Bundestag elections
create opposition to the Social four years ago, Dr. 011enhauer
Democrats by falsely labelling was constrained to prove his
Erich 011enhauer, leader of the "Aryan" origin. In the 1953
party. as a Jew. A word-of-
mouth campaign stressed that
"good Germans - could not sup-
port a party which might nom-
inate a Jew as Chancellor.
In the first court case involv-
re to
(Di rect
ing this whispering campaign.
The Jewish New s )
an official of Chancellor Aden-
JERUSALEM — Ambassador
auer's partly offered a formal Abba EbIsT, accompanied by
apology for having represented Foreign Minister Golda Meir,
Dr. 011enhauer as a Jew and the appeared Tuesday before the
national executive manager of Israel parliamentary committee
the party followed this up by on security and foreign affairs
expressing regrets to the Social and reported on the status of
Democratic leader for "the ludi- American-Israel relations and
crous and stupid asservation."
on United States policy in the
These apologies followed ac- . Middle East. Also present at
the session was Reuven Shi-
There were. indeed. times when the term Jew carried with tion by the Social Democratic
sensitive implications. But. since the authors also offer an
explanation of anti-Semitism and Judenhetze, it would have been bridge Bible sought to resolve the difficulty by suggesting that
better to draw the distinction between the acceptance of the term meek was here to be understood in the sense of 'pious,' though
Jew by philo-Semites. those among Christians who are friendly they admitted that the suggestion offered 'serious difficulty.'
1
A Hebrew is a member of that branch of the Semitic
race descended from Abraham, an Israelite, a Jew. Hebrew
is a Semitic language, the language of the ancient Hebrews,
which althOugh not vernacular after 100 B.C., was retained as •
the scholarly and liturgical language of Jews and is now used
as the language of Israelis. When the word is used of a person .
in the United States today it is usually employed as a euphem-
ism to avoid Jew and while the euphemism is, no doubt, well •
intended, it carries to the sensitive ear the implication that
the speaker regards the word he is seeking to avoid as indecent,
shameful, embarrassing or dangerous.
"An Israelite is a descendant of Jacob or Israel. In current
American usage the word is confined to Biblical references.
An Israeli is a native or inhabitant of the state of Israel, 1
To define the connotations of the word Jew would require
many harrowing volumes. It is the everyday. working word. It
is a word of incomparable dignity and immeasurable scorn and i
everything in between. It used to be a word of great comic
range but that, at least, is fading. Its colloquial uses as an
adjective or a verb are all offensive. The guidance of the
'correct' use of the noun does not lie in any dictionary but in
the heart and mind of the user.
"Semite is properly a linguistic term and means a member
of a speech family which comprises the Hebrews, Arabs, Assyr-
ians, and others. The noun with its adjective is rarely em-
ployed today except by linguists and anthropologists. The
compound anti-Semitism is, however, widely used as a term
for hostility to Jews. The term is no longer accepted openly,
as it was in France in the nineteenth century, by those who
practice it, but is used almost exclusively by those who dis-
approve of it. It is a somewhat scholarly word and usually
describes those attitudes and degrees of hostility that stop
short of the violence to which they incite others. The English
term Jew-baiting la closer translation of the German Juden-
hetze than anti-Semitism) is not much used in America where,
happily, the more violent expressions of hostility to Jews are
comparatively rare."
ing Zionists. he pointed out,
Ben-Gurion had said that if
the others were Zionists he was
not.
The furor arose over the
debate in the ideological con-
ference over the role and sta-
tus of Zionism, with the Pre-
mier holding the .position that
to be a Zionist meant to .settle
in Israel. Dr. Nahum Gold-
mann. president of the World
Zionist Organization: Moshe
elections. the anti-Semitic ap-
peal was restricted to provin-
cial areas but took forms which
this
lent themselves to reply.
election. however, the anti-
Semitic theme has been carried
by word-of-mouth and has been
most difficult to check.
A paradox in the situation
has been that the only reply
has been to sue on the grounds
that a statement that a man is
a Jew is libelous and insulting.
But the Social Democratic cam-
paign directors are aware that
to ignore the whispering -cam-
paign and not reply to charges
that their leader is Jewish
would cost them heavily r in
votes.
Eban and Israeli Statesmen View
U.S.-Israel Relations, M. E. Issues
loah. former; Israeli Minist.ry at
the Washington Embassy who
recently returned to this coun-
try after completion of his tour
of duty.
Top Foreign
Ministry offir
'
cials and leading Knesset mem-
bers were reported Tuesday to
have begun discussions on the
problems expected to be raised
, at the twelfth regular UN Gen-
eral Assembly session which
opens in New York Sept. 17.
They also are said to have re-
viewed general Middle East
problems.
The Foreign Ministry men
not the least of which was that no dictionary recognized any laid particular stress on the
such sense. Then in 1941, speaking before the annual meeting Middle East issues which they
of the Oriental Society, Prof. 0. R. Sellers, Professor of Old expect to be in the UN lime-
Testament at the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Chicago. light, including the Arab refu-
pointed out that meek was a mistranslation of the Hebrew gee problem, continuation of
word that would be better rendered as vexed, put out or irrit- the UN Emergency Force and
able."
possibly questions dealing with
The Grossman-Sachs Hebrew-English dictionary gives the North African developments.
translation for. the Hebrew word onov—which is translated as
The discussion of develop-
:meek in the Numbers 12:3 reference to Moses — as "humble, ments in the region, particu-
lowly. meek, poor and afflicted." Gentleness and condescension, larly Syria's drift leftward,
the translations given for onovo, could hardly be substitutes for consisted chiefly of an exchange
being vexed or irritable. But the commentary is most interesting of information and opinions,
' and it indicates the deep study made in their compilation by without the reaching of, any
Bergen and Cornelia Evans.
conclusions or an attempt to
As a total effort to assure the proper use of the English hammer out an Israeli line. It
language the Evans' effort is an admirable one. It justifies the is considered certain that no
opening contention in their preface to their dictionary: "When Israeli position will be solidi-
we speak or write we want to be understood and respected. We fied until the United States
want to convey our meaning and we want to do it in a way policy on Syria becomes known.
that will command admiration." Their 570-page book justifies
their attempt "to list the questions that most people ask, or
Bernard Smolar is on va-
should ask, about what is now good practice and to give the
cation. His "Between You
best answers available."
With the exceptions noted, "A Dictionary of Contemporary and Me" Column will be
resumed next week.
American Usage" is a valuable and most commendable work.
rr.