Come in and Share
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, 1942 at Post 0 ffic,, Detroit, Mich. under act of Congress of March
•
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 fourth day of Adar II, 5719, the following Scriptural selections will
be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Pekude, Ex. 38:21-40:38. Prophetical portion, I Kings 7:40-50.
Licht Benshen, Friday, March 13, 6:18 p.m.
VOL. XXXV. No. 2
Page Four
March 13, 1959
Propaganda Mills Grind Messages of Hatred:
World Jewry Must Pursue Humanitarian Aims
For fully a decade, Jews who had re-
sided in Moslem countries were on the
run. Escaping from persecution, their
very lives endangered, robbed of their
possessions, they were forced to abandon
their homes and their properties. Their
ancestors had lived in the lands they be-
lieved to be their motherlands for a
thousand years, but they suddenly were
deprived of all semblance of security.
The Moslem rulers encouraged their
flight. They were to be rid of at all costs,
their possessions were to be acquired by
the despots from whom the dispossessed
Jews sought escape, and the exodus was
on so large a scale that Jews from Mos-
lem lands who now reside in Israel num-
ber at least 400,000.
But when a new phase of Jewish emi-
gration began last October from another
area of unhappiness for Jews, from Com-
munist-dominated Romania, Arab rulers
began to protest. They exaggerated and
sought to give their downtrodden masses
the impression that a million Jews were
massing to get to Israel. They protested
to Soviet Russia, to Romania and even
to the United States.
*
*
*
While the influx of immigrants from
Romania into Israel continues, there are
recurring rumors that it may yet be cur-
tailed, possibly as a result of Soviet Rus-
sian policies to prevent the exodus of
Jews from behind the Iron Curtain. Rom-
anian authorities already have linked the
migration of Jews to Israel to "imperi-
alist sources"—a common term frequent-
ly used by Communists when they refer
to Zionists — and the charge has been
made that Israel is seeking to inspire
rifts between the Communist bloc and
the United Arab Republic.
Linking Israel's Prime Minister David
Ben-Gurion to "dirty and dishonest"
propaganda methods, the official Roman-
ian press agency Agerpress has accused
Israel of having made the claim that
300,000 Romanian Jews had registered
for settlement in Israel, and as a counter-
charge the Romanian official statement
declares that at the last public Romanian
census only 146,262 persons had register-
ed as Jews and that only a small number
had declared their desire to settle in
Israel.
*
*
*
What are the facts? There were 850,-
000 Jews in Romania before the Nazis
took control of the country. When Hitler
was ousted from there in 1944, 400,000
of them had perished at the hands of the
Nazis. Of the remaining 450,000, 100,-
000 went to Palestine immediately after
the end of the war and another 100,000
settled in Israel during the years 1949
and 1950, when their emigration was per-
mitted by Romania. But the doors were
shut to possible exit for the remaining
quarter of a million Jews by Romania's
orders of 1951. It was not until Septem-
ber 1958 that the sudden reversal of pol-
icy made it possible for Romanian Jews
to apply for and to be granted exit visas.
Thus, the new exodus began. As of
now, more than 25,000 Romanian Jews
already have settled in Israel in the new
wave of emigration from that unhappy
land, and only the cruel interference on
the part of Soviet Russia and the protests
from Nasser and his associates may stand
in the way of continued emigration.
The fact is that the Jewish Agency,
which is supervising the settlement of
the Romanian Jews after they land either
in Austria or Yugoslavia, upon their de-
parture from Romania, has claimed only
a figure of 100,000 for those who are ex-
pected to settle in Israel-this year. Some
Israelis have contended that 150,000
Romanian Jews may eventually be moved
from behind the Iron Curtain. This in no
sense corresponds with the officially un-
derestimated Romanian Jewish popula-
tion figure of 146,262 or with the exag-
gerated Nasser figure of a million Jews
massing to get to the Jewish State.
*
*
*
But the propaganda mill is grinding
and the Soviet obstacles to Jewish emi-
gration, erected as means of strengthen-
ing the Khrushchev-Nasser a l l i a n c e,
emerges as a mighty threat to Jewish
hopes for liberation. The Soviet and Arab
radios are thundering attacks on Zionism,
and every means at the disposal of the
enemies of Israel is being utilized to in-
terfere with the rescue efforts.
All sorts of charges are being leveled
at Israel and at Jewry. The accusations
are made that the new migration move-
ment is a military scheme to strenghten
Israel. While Romanians have claimed
that the permission granted to Jews to
leave their country was motivated on
"humanitarian grounds" — to facilitate
the reunion of Romanian Jews with their
relatives in Israel — the fact remains
that there is not a scintilla of compassion
for the • unfortunate people whose posi-
tion has been made so difficult under
communism and who communists seek to
oust from their society in order to ac-
quire their jobs, their homes, the posses-
sions they had retained in spite of all
handicaps through the years of despair
and struggle during and after the tragic
war, first under the Nazis and then under
the equally discriminating communists.
This is how the cards stack up at this
point. It is difficult enough for Israel to
tighten its economic belt in order to be
able to absorb the persecuted masses. It
is challenging enough for world Jewry
to be placed in the position of providing
hundreds of millions of dollars that are
so vitally needed to provide for the emi-
gration of large masses of our kinsmen
who are virtually being forced out of
their homelands, each with a limited
amount of poundage of personal posses-
sions. On top of it all, there are the inter-
ferences from men of ill-will, from the
political opportunists for whom Jewish
lives are cheap pawns in the struggle for
world power.
*
*
*
Fortunately, the people of Israel are
undaunted by what is transpiring in the
propaganda factories. Fortunately, also,
world Jewry recognizes its responsibility
and we expect that the response to the
needs of the Romanian Jews and to all
others who may seek exit from the com-
munist and other infernos will be com-
mensurate with the needs of the afflicted
people.
Israel carries on and is ready to re-
ceive tens of thousands of new arrivals.
Our answer to those who are playing the
inhuman game of the Moslem and com-
munist propagandists must be that we
are determined to support the emigrants
and to uphold the hands of the builders
and defenders of Israel, at all costs.
Many Laughs Provided in 2-Volume
`Bumper Crop' by Bennett_ Cerf
Tall tales and tongue twisters, stories about farmers and
politicians, puns about Hollywoodians and people in all walks
of life, provide a thousand laughs in Bennett Cerf's "Bumper
Crop," published by Doubleday.
It is a two-volume hilarious collection of anecdotes about
famous people and the man on the street, about the psychiatrist
and every conceivable practitioner of any imaginable art.
Incorporated into these two volumes are Cerf's five best
sellers—"Shake Well Before - Using," "Try and Stop Me,"
"Laughter Incorporated," "Good for a Laugh" and "The Life
of the Party."
*
*
There is a laugh in store for the reader on every page.
Many of the stories have been heard before: after all, they
already have been told by Cerf, in his books and in his published
columns. Nevertheless, most of them continue to draw chuckles.
Cerf is such an excellent storyteller that even in repeating
his tales he arouses mirth.
For instance, there is the story about Heifetz:
"Rumor is that a pedestrian on 57th Street, Manhattan,
stopped Jascha Heifetz and inquired, 'Could you tell me how
to get to Carnegie Hall?" 'Yes,' said Heifetz. 'Practice.' "
Or this one about a noted Yiddish actor:
"Robert Harris, known to millions for his TV characterization
on 'the Goldbergs,' once played a season in support of the
Yiddish star, Maurice Schwartz. Harris played the part of
Schwartz's . attorney. One scene called for him to sit. down at a
table and breathe a heavy sigh. Opening night he sighed so
heavily he blew out eight candles on the table. As the curtain
dropped, Schwartz whispered angrily, 'Stop padding your part!' "
The George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart stories are among
the amusing portions
of the collection that
contains so , much ma-
terial that a review of
"Bumper Crop," no
matter how long,
could not possibly give
the reader an indica-
tion of the wealth of
the books' contents.
The best known
authors, scientists, ar-
tists, athletes, barbers,
soldiers, musicians, edi-
tors, columists a n d
cartoonists pass in re-
view in the pages of
the Cerf volumes.
Mark Twain is well
represented here. So
is Albert Einstein. So
also are well - known
politicians. Cerf re-
lates:
"Somebody once
asked the late Huey
Long if he thought we
would ever have facism
Bennett Cerf
in the United States,
`Sure we will,' predicted Long, 'only we'll call it anti-facism!'"
*
There is a lesson for the reader in not taking offense at
certain approaches to storytelling, as in this one:
"A raconteur in Haifa began a funny story at a dinner party
with the standard introduction, 'It seems there were two Jewish
gentlemen . . . ' A sensitive guest objected. 'Why,' he demanded,
`do so many stories begin "once there were two Irishmen," or
"Once there were two Jews"?' Okay,' soothed' the raconteur,
`I cetrainly intended no offense. Let's say there were two
Chinese, named Ling Pu and Fo Wang. So, Pu and Wang were
hustling over to the synagogue for a bar-mitzvah ceremony .
Bennett Cerf advises how not to tell a story, and the reader
may thereby acquire the art of how to tell one properly.
Packed-full of humor about authors is the lengthy "book
review" section in the second volume.
Sholem Aleichem's "The Old Country" is quoted, as well
as the advice given by the great Jewish humorist to a lovesick
Lothario: "Remember, my boy, you can marry more money in
five minutes than you can make in a lifetime."
There are 1,465 pages in these two volumes, and there are
nearly as many laughs packed into them as there are pages.