THE JEWISH NEWS
It Depends on Who Holds the Ax
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 Congress of
March 3, 1879.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Editor and Publisher
Advertising Manager
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Circulation Manager
FRANK SIMONS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the twenty-third day of Ab, 5718, the fallowing Scriptural, selections will
be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion., Ekeb, Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 49:14-
51:3.
Licht Benshen, Friday, August 8, 6.55 p.m.
VOL. XXXIII. No. 23
Page 4
August 8, 1958
Warnings of Anti-Semitism in Israel's Crisis
Invariably, when a crisis strikes the
Middle East, Israel and Jewry are
promptly warned that repercussions
against the Jewish State also will be ac-
companied by a revival of anti-Semitism.
There were several warnings. One
came from Senator Ralph E. Flanders,
the aging Vermont Republican, who is
planning to retire from the U. S. Senate.
In one of a series of speeches that were
openly antagonistic to Israel, Senator
Flanders made the puzzling assertion that
assassinations of pro-Western Arabs will
continue "so long as the Western nations
appear as the champions of Zionism."
In his new attack on Israel, which
was tinctured with venom, the Vermont
Senator said that unless Jews made con-
cessions to the Arabs, "such a wave of
anti-Semitism as the Jewish race has
never faced will sweep not only this
country, but the world."
His views apparently were inspired
by the attempt, in Lebanon, to assassin-
ate Premier Aami el-Solh. Yet, this angry
Senator—the cause of his anger is puz-
zling his constituents—made it a point
to tell the Senate that he was not anti-
Semitic but is "pro-Semitic", an assertion
that is certain to bring the rejoiner:
"thou dost protest too much."
*
*
*
In justice to Senator Flanders, we
present all his arguments. He contended
that Israel is becoming "a loaded time
bomb" which, under a Zionist world pro-
gram, is bent on the "ingathering of the
Jews from all over the earth" into a
territory of only 7,984 square miles.
We could stop right here, in our amaze-
ment at the Senator's lack of knowledge
of the actual attitudes of the Jewries
of the world. "The Jews from all over
the earth" are anxious to be of help
in providing homes in Israel for the
hundreds of thousands of their kinsmen
whose lives are worthless behind the
Iron Curtain and in Moslem countries.
Why is it so difficult for a man who still
has the power of delivering lenghty
speeches in the Senate to understand
this simple fact? Yet, he chooses to ap-
peal to prejudice in his evaluation of the
humanitarian aims of Zionism.
The old Senator's views are all the
more amazing in his assertions that since
the West refused to recognize Arab views
on Israel, any pro-Western Arab leader
is a target for assassination, and as proof
he called attention to the murder of King
Feisal and Premier Nuri es-Said of Iraq.
*
*
*
In the most recent of his series of
anti-Israel speeches, Senator Flanders
stated: "This situation will continue so
long as the Western nations appear as
the champions of Zionism. Any foreign
policy which subjects our friends to
assassination needs revision. Why don't
we revise?"
It is on the strength of such mis-
leading statements, so evidently based
on a lack of information regarding the
true state of affairs in the Middle East,
that Senator. Flanders warns us of "a
wave of anti-Semitism" throughout the
world. Before Zionism, long before this
country showed any interest in that area,
throughout history, assassinations have
been the order of every day's living
among Moslems who battled for hege-
mony and for domination over family
estates. Yet, Senator Flanders seems to be
affected by a deluding idea that Israel's
existence is inspiring assassinations.
*
*
*
But Senator Flanders in not alone in
his views. There have been others who
warned that the Middle East situation
and the need that was found for sending
American troops into Lebanon and Brit-
ish troops into Jordan will instigate a
new anti-Semitic campaign.
In its appeal for a Middle East pro-
gram that will include strong provisions
for the survival of Israel, the New Re-
public this week also saw the possibility
of an anti-Semitic wave as a result of the
current crisis. "If we in the West are
driven entirely from that area, having
failed to come to terms with its peoples,
Israel will suffer greatly; and quite
possibly there could arise a most dis-
turbing wave of anti-Semitism (not just
anti-Zionism) in our own country," the
New Republic stated editorially.
Is there justification for such an at-
titude?
We are inclined to discount it.
We have deeper faith in the intelli-
gence of the average Christian, in this
country and elsewhere, and we have con-
fidence that the Western governments
will explain their positions which com-
pelled them to step into the Middle
Eastern conflict in order to prevent
Communist domination in the Mediter-
ranean area. The major criticism leveled
at President Eisenhower's action in send-
ing troops to Lebanon is that he acted
"too late." But only a completely unin-
formed person could possibly charge that
Zionist influence has motivated the occur-
rences in the Middle East. The Eisen-
hower Administration has been so far
removed from pro-Israelism----especially
since it undertook to nullify Israel's
triumphs in Sinai and on the road to the
Suez and to Cairo in 1956—that any
other interpretation would be simply
ludicrous.
*
*
*
The fact is that biased people have
resorted to warnings of anti-Semitism
when issues involving Jews and their
security entered into diplomatic discus-
sions. This was true when Jews protested
against the Hitler persecutions. There
were men in diplomatic ranks who dared,
in those tragic days, to say to American
Jews that by their protests against Nazi
atrocities they are inspiring an increase
in Hitlerite cruelties. There were similar
warnings when Jews and their libertarian
Christian fellow-Americans undertook a
boycott of German-made goods. Indeed,
there were a few deluded Jews who also
believed that action by Jews in behalf
of their kinsmen would inspire anti-
Semitism. History has proven how wrong
they were.
There is greater realism in an ap-
proach like that of the well known for-
eign correspondent, Cyrus L. Sulzberger,
who urged in the New York Times that
Israel, Iran and other nations involved
in the crisis should be given added se-
curity guarantees.
But it is evidently so much easier to
make a scapegoat of Israel. The search
for a scapegoat is what undoubtedly has
motivated the thinking and the actions
of Flanders, Macmillan and their cohorts.
It is not necessary for history to prove
the misguidedness of attitudes like Sena-
tor Flanders'. In the meantime, however,
he is rendering a great disservice not
alone to Israel and to the Jewish people,
but to the democracies of the world in
their aims to remove from the world
scene the cancerous growth of Nasser ism.
Prof. Sheldon H. Blank's Study:
'Prophetic Faith in Isaiah'
Dr. Sheldon H. Blank, professor of Bible at Hebrew Union
College, Cincinnati, has set out to find meaning in parts of the
Book of Isaiah. The result is an outstandingly scholarly work,
"Prophetic Faith in Isaiah," published by Harper.
The first and later Isaiahs are taken into consideration in
this book. The comparisons are effective:
"The first Isaiah denied that Israel had a convenant hold
on God. The later Isaiahs saw the covenant renewed and trans-
formed into a divine commitment.
"The first Isaiah knew nothing of a chosen people. A later
Isaiah called Israel God's chosen servant.
"The first Isaiah spoke of doom, the later Isaiahs of
salvation.
"The first Isaiah looked to a day when God would be
exalted though his people perish. Later Isaiahs looked to a
day when God and Zion together would triumph."
Prof. Blank prefers "to consider independently the faith of
each" Isaiah. He begins his study with the "the Isaiah of legend
and the seventh chapter," with the Sennacherib crisis of 701 B. C.,
and points out that he had failed as a predicter but was not
forgotten. He describes major discrepencies and ommissions. He
views here an Isaiah of legend.
The author proceeds to analyze the historical Isaiah, who
"recognized a relationship between a returning or repenting and
survival . .. An erring people, which had strayed from the path
or abandoned its God, must either turn back or else go on to
perdition—this thought he shared with many in the Bible."
Thus "from the second Isaiah's attitude of expentancy there
grew a whole new religion of hope."
Dr. Blank declares that while "the people were not a hetero-
genous unit," "ideally conceived the people of Israel were the
custodians of the prophetic tradition." In his review of the second
Isaiah's position, Dr. Blank states that "the prophet's univer-
salism throughout is combined with the contention that between
Israel and the one God a special relationship exists. . . . It is
Israel's God Yahveh . . . not the god addressed by any other
people, who is God—as the second Isaiah proves to his complete
satisfaction with his argument from prophecy to monotheism.
Israel's God is God."
The high privilege the Second Isaiah conferred upon
Israel is "people of prophets." "If Israel's God is God, Israel
is his prophet," Dr. Blank concludes.
A chapter of special merit is the one in which the author
analyzes the Biblical origins of "The Mission of Israel." Behind
the idea of such a mission, he states. is "the idea of one world
God." He places emphasis here on the thoughts expressed by
Isaiah, "Near at hand is my zedek, my salvation has gone forth,
and My zedakah will not fail."
"The mission idea in the Bible," Prof. Blank writes,
"displays many facets but the glowing fire of the idea is the
thought of the Second Isaiah that Israel is God's chosen people;
prophets, destined to serve as a light to the nations, that his
salvation may reach to the ends of the earth."
The Isaiahs, we learn, moved "between these poles: sur-
render and effort, receiving and giving. supine expectancy and
learned repose. The Isaiah of legend "believes." Then there is
"Isaiah the messianist": "Israel's active role, noble ideal of the
Second Isaiah; the service done by God's servant Israel, witness
to God's divinity; the mission undertaken by a prophet-people- --
that is human effort; that is purposeful divinity along with
God; that is the bolstering of hope with doing."
Dr. Blank states that "the affirmation of hope, which is
prayer" and the "human effort, as an aspect of faith," represent
the two poles which are the extremes in the meanings of faith
as they emerge in the Book of Isaiah.
Monumental Work on Prejudice
A Review by Boris Smolar
When the first edition of "Racial and Cultural Minorities,"
by George Simpson and J. Milton Yinger, (Harper) appeared
five years ago. I termed it "a monumental work on prejudice and
discrimination." I predicted that the volume would rank as a
major contribution to social science, because it had no equal
in scholarly studies on bias. Today the book is being used as a
textbook on racial and ethnic relations in about 200 universities
throughout the country. However, many changes have taken
place during the past five years with regard to racial and relig-
ious problems in the United States. The acclaim with which the
first edition of the book was received will no doubt be matched
by the new second edition. They have made the book even more
valuable as a fund of up-to-date, well-documented information
on all aspects of majority-minority issues. Two chapters in the
book are devoted to anti-Semitism. Jewish readers will find
also other chapters of direct interest to them. These include
intermarriage, family patterns of national minorities in the U.S.,
minorities in our economy, and others.