THE JEWISH NEWS

The Bridge

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 36,
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, 187:,

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

SIDNEY SHMARAK

Advertising Manager

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

Circulation Manager

FRANK SIMONS

City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the ninth clay of Tebet, 5719, the following Scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Vayigash, Gen. 44:18-47:27. Prophetical portion, Ezekiel 37:15-28.

Licht Benshen, Friday, Dec. 19, 4:45 p.m.

VOL. XXXIV. No. 16

Page Four

December 19, 1958

Russia's Hostility Towards Israel

Multiplication of tensions between
East and West continues to throw addi-
tional light on the sad status of Russian
Jewry and on the increasing unfriend-
liness on the part of the Communist
rulers towards Israel and the Jewish
State's supporters.
One of the latest manifestations of
hostility on the part of Russia is con-
tained in a new Soviet-published book,
by two authors, one of them Jewish,
under the title "The State of Israel, Its
Position and Its Policy." It is revealed by
Kol Israel, the Israeli radio, that this
book completely disregards the fact that
Russia was among the countries at the
UN which supported the 1947 resolution
calling for the creation of the State of
Israel. Similarly, all mention is omitted
of the Russian declarations during 1947
and 1948 about the moral duty of the
world to provide the remnants of Euro-
pean Jewry with a national home in
Palestine."
*
*
*
This revelation is minor compared
with other reports, from United Nations
and other sources, which indicate that
the anti-Jewish campaign has been inten-
sified in Russia. Marop Rossi, the UN
correspondent of the Christian Science
Monitor, states that "news that Jews in
the USSR were being persecuted could
not be hidden from the outside world";
that the Kremlin has set up a special
propaganda office to deal with the "Jew-
ish question"; that through this new
office the Communist rulers have under-
taken "a vast- campaign at home in order
to destroy Jewish nationalism" and that
this campaign at the moment is aimed at
defaming Israel and disrupting Soviet
Jewry as a people.
Soviet Jewish tourists to Israel were
enlisted, upon their return to Russia, to
address "compulsory mass meetings" at
which they spoke with antagonism of
Israel. According to Rossi, "members of
the Moscow Synagogue were made to sign
spontaneous letters to the Chief Rab-
binate in Jerusalem requesting that
Israeli representatives should not appear
in the synagogue since their behavior is
`unbecoming' and they 'violate the Sab-
bath.' "
While this reveals a grave situation,
some reports state that the new actions
of USSR leaders serve to inspire new
interest in Israel among Russians. But
that's small consolation in view of the
dangers that are being imposed upon
Russian Jews by their masters.
*
*
*
In a signed article in the New York
Times, Harrison E. Salisbury, who, by
virtue of his experiences in Russia as a
correspondent for his n e w s p a p e r, is
looked upon as a well informed person
on occurrences behind the Iron Curtain,
stated that "the Jews are 21 times worse
off in regard to facilities for worship than
the Baptists and 13 times more poorly
provided for than Russian Orthodox
believers. He pointed out that "no He-
brew Bible has been permitted in Russia
since 1917," that "the Jews have been
permitted only to issue a photocopy
edition of a handwritten calendar," that
while Orthodox, Baptists and Moslems
are permitted to have nationwide organ-
izations to represent their religious and
lay communities "similar organization
for the Jews is forbidden."
Such is the status of Jews in Russia
about whom Milt Freudenheim wrote to
the Chicago Daily News from the United
Nations that "a new crisis for the esti-
mated 3,000.000 Jews living in the Soviet

Union is expected in a few weeks when
the first Soviet census since 1939 is
slated," and he adds: "Soviet Jews have
been required to state their nationality as
Jewish on identity cards which (since
1948) have singled them out for dis-
crimination in jobs, schools and the Corn-
munist party."
Communist tactics on the world scene
are disturbing enough to make the demo-
cratic world suspicious of everything that
emanates from the Kremlin. But the Rus-
sian anti-Semitic tactics are much more
shocking. They represent a reversion to Does U.S. Jewry Feel Insecure?
medievalism and are indications of an
inheritance from Czarism that even many
extreme leftists have been unable to shake
off.
What the Russian Communists are
doing today is merely a re-enactment of
Nazi tactics. Russian identity cards carried
"Minorities in the New World," by Charles Wagley and
by Jews must carry the designation Marvin Harris, published by Columbia University Press (2960
"Yevrei" — "Jew." That is how the clock B'way, N.Y. 27), makes the striking assertion that—
is being turned back and the yellow badge
"It should not be taken for granted that the present
is being reinstituted in another form.
position of the Jews in the United States represents a secure
a study made by Moshe Decter for or stable adjustment. During a period of economic expan-
the ADL of the position of Soviet Jews sion, the middle-class position of a minority can be of con-
under Khrushchev, we learned that ac- siderable use in controlling and deflecting the hostility
complishments by Jews were kept from the directed against its members. During a political or eco-
record of the Soviet regime's achieve- nomic crisis, however, such a position in the social hierarchy
ments in the past 40 years, and that there may actually increase the danger to the lives and welfare
was "deliberate concealment" of facts of the entire minority group. Despite (or even because of)
middle-class affiliation in Germany, the Nazis found
about Jewish attainments. One of the re- their Jews
to be convenient scapegoats for the seething dis-
vealing facts is that in listing the publi- the
content of the German masses. With the democratic basis of
cations "in 124 languages of the peoples German society destroyed, and with all power concentrated
of the Soviet Union as well as of foreign in the hands of a rabid anti-Semite, the Jews derived no
countries," Yiddish was omitted and "was advantages from their relatively high position within the old
not considered even as deserving as 'Tat,' socio-economic hierarchy. Perhaps it is for this reason that
the language of a small Daghestan tribe, the Jews in the United States, despite their current relative
which boasted the publication of a single material prosperity and their civil and political freedoms,
item in 1956 with a circulation of 1,000 tend to feel insecure and to be extremely sensitive to even
copies. Of course, no Yiddish work has purely verbal expressions of hostility."
been published in the USSR since 1948.
This undoubtedly will prove a shocking revelation to many
But in 1913, literally hundreds of Jewish Jews in this country. Is it true that Jews feel insecure? We
publications appeared in Yiddish (and are sensitive to hostility, but it is doubtful whether a very
Hebrew), for it was the springtide of the large segment of American Jews feels endangered by a
G. L. K. Smith or by the distribution of anti-Semitic litera-
Jewish cultural renascence in Russia."
It is a matter of record that in the ture during a political campaign.
The authors, in this interesting book, indicate that this
early days of Bolshevism, and even now,
country stands out as having rejected anti-Semitism officially.
some Jewish writers, especially Sholem This
holds to a view he has expressed time and time
Aleichem and J. L. Peretz, were among again reviewer
that official anti-Semitism will be frowned upon and
the heroes in the Russian literary spheres, shunned in this country. As long as that persists, as we be-
and Yiddish was encouraged. But Yiddish lieve it will, there is no cause for insecurity. And as long as
newspapers now are banned, anything there is no reason for insecurity, there will be only sensi-
related to Jews and to Jewry is taboo, tivity—and sensitivity leads libertarians to eternal vigilance.
and the only explanation for the newest
"Minorities in the New World" deals with six case studies
action is: anti-Semitism.
and reviews the positions of the American Indian (in Brazil
*
*
*
and in Mexico), the Negro in the Americas • (in the Mar-
Evidence of Soviet anti-Semitism is tinique and in the United States), and the European immi-
mounting. Decter reveals the existence of grants (French Canadians and Jews in the U.S.).
An illuminating chapter on "The Jews in the United
"a tacit quota system for Jewish students
in Soviet universities and advanced tech- States" reviews the Jewish position, deals with the problem
nical and academic institutes." Also, "for of intermarriage and describes the fight against anti-Semitisin.
more than a year now, official Soviet news- On this score, too, while asserting that "whatever may be the
extent of anti-Semitism in the United States today,
papers and periodicals have been regularly actual
there has never been a time or place where the Jews were in a
publishing fictionalized articles of an better
position to defend themselves," the authors contend:
unmistakable anti-Semitic nature."
"Yet anti-Semitism has only been suppressed rather than elimi-
What better proof of the latter point nated. Its roots still lie firmly embedded in the hostile stereo-
than the missionary and self-hating ex- types harbored by millions of Americans."
pressions in the Nobel Prize winning
Zionism is viewed by the authors as secessionist and the
novel "Doctor Zhivago," by its author, Jews in this country are described as being of various factions
Boris Pasternak, a Jew who was converted as to their ultimate objectives: "some are pluralistic, some are
to the Greek Orthodox faith — Boris assimilationist, and even a few might be said to be • secession-
Pasternak, who now is himself the victim ist . . . It might be argued that the traditional stated goal of
the Jews in the United States has been pluralism, yet there
of Soviet persecution?
This is an almost insoluble problem is a marked trend toward assimilation in their actions."
In the general statement of their anthropological views,
—for the present, at least—in the midst
of a world crisis which has not yet the authors state that "pluralistic minority groups engender
and conflict, yet assimilation may sometimes run
reached its peak. As long as the world hostility
counter to the vested interest of the dominant group, which
East-West tensions continue — and the often
has something to gain by maintaining a minority as a
West Berlin situation points to a pro- discrete and subordinate group. Conflict must be recognized
longation rather than a speedy solution as an inevitable and often necessary aspect of our social life.
of the problem — the position of Russian Only through some measure of conflict will the disabilities of
Jewry, and the issues emanating from minority groups be removed."
Soviet hostility towards Israel, will re-
There is much in this volume to incite interest in the
main very grave. All of it is part of the subject and to create discussion on the authors' conclusions.
threat to the peace of the world, for On the Jewish issue, there is much with which we can differ
which the USSR must be held responsible. with them. —P. S.

Reviewer Differs With Authors
of 'Minorities in New World