But Boys, It's UN Week!

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 Rosh Hodesh Heshvan Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the first day of Heshvan, 5718, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Isaiah
Pentateuchal portions, Noah, Gen. 6:9-11:32, Num. 28:9-15. Prophetical portion,
66:1-24.
p.m.

•Licht Benshen, Friday, Oct. 25. 5:44

VOL. XXXII, No. 8

Page Four

October 25, 195'7

UN Week: Plea for Justice and Peace

We are now observing annual United
Nations Week. Men and women of all
faiths, who are concerned that we should
live in a world of peace and amity, are
marking this week's observance with
special religious services, and with re-
affirmations of loyalty to the basic ideals
to which the UN is dedicated.
A specially prepared interdenomina-
tional prayer, dedicated to the UN, ap-
peals to the Almighty to "manifest Your
promises among the nations now. Build
them to your designs, shape them, be
their refuge and their salvation. Lighten
their darkness, bend their wills to the
majesty of Your Divine Will, which is
Justice and Peace."
This must be the major hope and as-

piration of all the members of the
United Nations: to strive for and to
make real the Justice and Peace efforts
of people who genuinely seek good will.
An observance such as that of UN
Week calls attention to this aim. It
does not fulfill it. It takes time to make
peace. East still battles West. An un-
fortunate and an unwise antagonism
keeps on fanning flames of warfare in
the Middle East. But as long as the
emphasis is placed on the ideal of Jus-
tice and Peace, so long as people cele-
brate UN week, there remains the hope
of fulfillment of the humanitarian
ideas. That is why we welcome the an- Chicagoan's First Novel
nual United Nations Week as a symbol
of better days to come.
The Midas Touch':

Sputnik—A Challenge to Complacency

Twice within a week—in different
words and by men whose fields of en-
deavor are widely apart—there. was
voiced the thought that Americans are
losing the way in their ability to man-
.age their own affairs.
Both speakers—one a Detroit rabbi,
the other a United States Senator—
referred to the stage we are going
through as the "Age of Sputnik," and
they lamented the fact that now that
we have such a thing as a Sputnik, we
don't know how to use it.
The Senator—Hubert H. Humphrey
—spoke academically of technological
advance followed by social lag. Dr. Leon
Fram, in a sermon at Temple Israel,
said that we must first learn to control
the sphere of the skull before we can
attempt to conquer the sphere of the
world.
Each of these learned gentlemen
was concerned with the tack we have
taken in the course of our every day liv-
ing, a change in direction which has
placed emphasis on the ephemeral pleas-
ures of life which pass so quickly at the
sacrifice of hard work, scholarship, de-
velopment of both the mind and the
body.
And if we examine ourselves closely,
we might well find that in seeking to
make easier our own lives, the lives of
our children and our families, we are
growing soft of flesh, apathetic in spirit,
devoid of substance.

.

This is true in our Jewish commun-
ity, as well as in the general community.
While previously we were willing to
work long, hard hours for causes we
loved, today we are more concerned, as
Sen. Humphrey said, "with coffee breaks
and a four-day week." Instead of giving
of ourselves we give almost exclusively
of our means, wherever possible.
These factors have led to a weaken-
ing of standards which previously gov-
erned our lives. While perhaps we in
America have television and football
games and dances, and while we have
food, clothing and shelter in abundance,
and while we have washing machines
and refrigerators and new cars—it was
Russia who developed Sputnik.
Neither the Rabbi nor the Senator
was advocating a period of austerity, nor
were they asking us to go backward in
our way of living by giving up commodi-
ties we have come to enjoy and which
are time-saving.
What they were seeking, more-or-
less, was a full week's work and not an
easy way out—a Monday work day after
a weekend of rest and relaxation.
They were advocating better schools,
more intense programs, higher salaries
for teachers, more serious attention to
the realities of surviving in the "Age
of Sputnik." For unless we .take serious-
ly the implications of Sputnik, there may
be little of anything left for us to enjoy.

Beth Yehudah Sch ools

There is a growing fraternity in the
American Jewish community which
holds to the belief that the only certain
means of raising a generation of respon-
sive and responsible Jews is through the
all-day school. Admittedly, this view is
not shared by all, but it is frequently
the subject of debate in educational
circles.
Discussion itself of all-day training is
significant, particularly during Jewish
Education Month, which is still fresh in
our minds. From these conversations,
among lay people and educators alike,
comes an awareness of problems and
the beginnings of improvement.
Detroit's Yeshivath Beth Yehudah
Schools, with a growing enrollment of
close to 900 students, has its main head-
quarters in the Daniel A. Laven Bldg.
on Dexter, and uses the facilities of
Young Israel of Northwest Detroit for
• -nifoinitIATI -classes.: It , recently, formed .a

new branch to serve the suburban popu-
lation, known as the Suburban Hebrew
Academy.
The Beth Yehudah Schools enjoys a
fine reputation among similar institu-
tions throughout the nation and the
world. While many of its graduates have
continued their studies at Yeshiva Uni-
versity and other institutions of higher
Jewish education, the local Beth
Yehudah Schools has produced many
leaders who have inspired Detroit Jewry
in its efforts to intensify Jewish life and
knowledge along traditional lines.
It is to raise funds to advance inten-
sive Jewish education that each year the
Beth Yehudah Schools' Synagogue and
Businessmen's Council hold their Din-
ner and Show. This year's program,
being held this Sunday, at the Latin
Quarter, merits community commenda-
tion • and -support,

Story of

Intermarriage, Wealth-Seeking

"The Midas Touch," by Lucille Stern, published by Citadel
Press (222 4th Ave., N.Y. 3), is .a first novel by a Chicagoan who
describes the evolution of a young man who, brought up under
strict Orthodox Jewish rules, acquires a hatred for his heritage,
intermarries,' makes money-making his life's aim, and is finally
brought back to the fold by his half-Jewish daughter who is
more influenced by her keenly Jewish grandfather than by her
wealth-accumulating father.
The story of Barry (Baruch) Sellman and his family is told
well and earns acclaim for the new novelist. Barry is frank in
his assertions that he aims to be rich. He loves his non-Jewish
wife, yet he devotes himself mostly to his business.
When his daughter surprises him at a school function_by
playing a Jewish lullaby as ,a—piano-soltr, he is enraged. He tries
to stop her from shoWing an interest in things Jewish. He is
angered by his Barbara's desire to attend grandfather's Seder.
But his failure to show the proper love for his daughter was
overcome by the grandfather's affections.
His wife, Sigrid, is drawn into the conflict. But her sym-
pathies are with the husband's parents and her daughter, and
when she finally stays away from home, when her husband fails
to come to her own aunt's funeral, and is located by Barry in
his parental home, he realizes his error. For the first time in his
life, he ignores a business call, restores his devotion to his entire
family, and there is a reunion in which the heritage he sought
to abandon triumphs.
"The Midas Touch" is a good study of an angle in inter-
marriage and the reaction of devout parents. It is a rebuke to
men who place business above familial duties. It is a tale well
told. While the reader will find it difficult to understand the
extremism of a man who sought escape from Jewishness, the
theme as developed by Lucille Stern finally gives the story its
aspect of reality.

Evaluate Movement

Volume Honors M. M. Kaplan
Founder of Reconstructionism

"Mordecai M. Kaplan: An Evaluation," edited by Dr. Ira
Eisenstein, his son-in-law, and Dr. Eugene Kohn, is a splendid
tribute to one of American Jewry's most distinguished scholars.
The book was published by the Jewish Reconstructionist Foun-
dation (15 W. 86th, N. Y. 24).
The articles in this book evaluate the movements in which
Prof. Kaplan is deeply interested and to which he had made
noteworthy contributions.
"As Teacher," by Mortimer J. Cohen; "His Teachers," by
Ira Eisenstein; "Peoplehood," by Jack J. Cohen; "Organic Jewish
Community," by Samuel Dinin; "Jewish Social Work," by Sam-
uel C. Kohs; "Jewish Education," by Israel Chipkin; "The Jew-
ish Center Movement," by Louis Kraft, are some of the essays
in this splendid book.
Also: Eugene Kohn wrote on "An Exegete." "Theory of
Religion," by Harold C. Weisberg; "Idea of God," by Henry N.
Wieman; "Jewish Liturgy," by David Polish; "Conservative Juda-
ism," by Alexander J. Burnstein; "Reform Judaism," by Roland
B. Gittelsohn; "Philosophy of Democracy," by Joseph L. Blau,
and "Theory of Soterics," by Harold Shulweis, are the other
articles in this book.
The man honored, Dr. Kaplan himself, contributed an essay,
"The Way I Have Come." In it he declares his philosophy to
be that "the striving of the Jewish people to achieve a place
for itself in the modern world is in keeping with the best in
human nature."
The fact that Reform as well as Conservative rabbis joined
in honoring Dr. Kaplan, in essays in this volume gives the book
special statu .

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