Sholem Aleichem, Everybody!'
THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of hay 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.
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
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 eighteenth day of Adar II, 5719, Shabbat Parah, the following
Scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentatenchal portion, Zav, Lev. 6:1-8:36 NUM,. 19:1-22. Prophetical portion, Ezek.
36:16-38.
Licht Benshen. Friday, March 27, 6:34 p. m.
VOL. XXXV. No. 4
Page Four
March 27, 1959
Sholem Aleichem: Healer Through Laughter
Nearly every organized Jewish com-
munity in the world is currently marking
the 100th anniversary of the birth of one
of the greatest of the world's humorists,
Sholem Aleichem.
Jewries in Israel, Great Britain, the
United States and in Europe—behind as
well as outside the Iron Curtain—either
have held or are planning to hold appro-
priate celebrations.
There are programs throughout this
country, and a number of Detroit organi-
zations already have Sholem Aleichem
observances on their calendars.
Israel has issued a special Sholem
Aleichem Postage Stamp, with the photo-
graph and signature of the great writer.
Only five other distinguished names have
hitherto been honored with special Israel
Stamps—Dr. Chaim Weizmann, Dr. Theo-
dor Herzl, Maimonides, Baron Edmond
de Rothschild and Dr. Albert Einstein.
Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabino-
witz), who was born March 2, 1859, in the
Ukraine and died in New York in 1916,
first wrote in Russian and in Hebrew and
then turned to Yiddish, in order to reach
the masses of the Jewish people and to
lighten their sad lot in the Russian Pale
of Settlement with his humor and with
his encouraging messages to them.
Soon, his works of art reached the
world outside the ghettos of Russia. Not
only Jewish readers, but non-Jews ac-
claimed him as one of the great writers
of all time. Mark Twain befriended him
when he came to this country and ac-
knowledged him as his equal.
Russia is capitalizing on his name
and has published a volume of his col-
lected works. Tragically enough, the
country where he exerted his energies in
order to raise the spirits of his suffering
kinsmen had not made his works avail-
able in Yiddish in the past decade. Sho-
lem Aleichem was procurable in Russian
translations, but not in the original in
which it was written. That was one of the
evidences of Communist bigotry imposed
on the Soviet's Jewish citizens. Even now
we are not certain whether the Yiddish
volume of Sholem Aleichem that Russian
publishers are making available to pub-
lishers in the United States and in Israel
will be on sale in Russia.
Sholem Aleichem left us a great le-
gacy—the record of an interesting era in
"Babylon and the Old Testament," by Andre Parrot, Curator-
Jewish history in the days of pogroms,
economic impoverishment, internal strug- in-Chief of the French National Museums and professor at the
du Louvre, Paris, is an archaeological study.
gles in efforts to raise the standards of Ecole This
interestingly illustrated book, translated from the
life among Jews in Russia.
French by Beatrice Hooke, published by Philosophical Library
There is pathos and humor in his (15 E. 40th, N.Y. 16), provides an historical analysis of Babylon
tales, and in their over-all status they and
the Old Testament and describes the explorations in Babylon.
contributed towards the straightening of
Quoting from Jeremiah (50:13), "Everyone who passes by
the bent backs, towards inculcating pride Babylon shall be appalled and shall hiss because of all the blows
in Jewish living, and especially in under- which she has suffered; she shall be wholly desolate," Prof.
standing the trials and tribulations that Parrot states, in describing the view in Babyon today:
"The fulfillment was complete: solitude and mounds of
had beset Jewry.
To this very day, a Sholem Aleichem ruins. As a final irony, the Baghdad to Bassorah railway was
a few feet from the hill 'Baba'. A wooden placard
story draws a tear as well as a smile and laid only
an inscription in English and Arabic: 'Babylon Halt.
links this generation with the preceding bears
stop here to pick up passengers'. Not even a station,
one in its appreciation of the difficulties Trains
merely a halt! After stopping to pick up passengers — often
our parents and grandparents had to hur- there are none — the train goes on again and only its whistling
dle in order to acquire the stamina breaks the silence."
they needed for mere physical existence.
On all his visits in Babylon, the author states, the impression
We recall the name of Sholem Alei- made on him always was "one of desolation."
His historical analysis of Babylon is a fine contribution to
chem with pride. We pay tribute to his
great name and we join once again in scholarship. Babylon's struggles in ancient times, the domin-
over the little kingdom of Judah, the prophecies of Jere-
subscribing to the great ideas he taught ation
who warned against Judea's alignment with Egypt, and
our people: that with laughter, even when miah,
accompanying events, are given thorough scrutiny.
it is mixed with gall, we are better able
The fall of Jerusalem and the comparative chronicles of
to overcome the difficulties a Jew often the occurrence in the Babylonian text and the Old Testament
encounters. Sholem Aleichem was a liter- version, provide "confirmation of the Biblical narrative which
ary physician: he prescribed humor for does not conceal the severity of the defeat." Prof. Parrot reviews
the ills of a people. In that role he was the events that marked the deportation of Judeans into Babylon,
the trek of the refugees, the presence among them of the prophet
our great national healer.
'Babylon and Old Testament':
Vital Archaeological Study
Vote on April 6: Support School Propositions
All public-spirited citizens who are con- sideration the serious warning that
cerned over the welfare of our own corn- there will be heavy losses in school in-
munity and of the entire nation should come unless both propositions are adopt-
recognize their duty to vote on April ed: that we are threatened with larger
6 and to support the two propositions classes, with lowered teaching standards,
in behalf of the school. building 'program. with reduced educational services and the
of shoftened school years.
The need of the hour has been de- possibility
These
dangers
must be averted. It is
scribed as "the children's crisis of 1959." urgent, therefore,
that all citizens
The 18-month study conducted by 270 should vote • on April
6 and that they
civic leaders has definitely established
the facts the Detroit has 68 buildings should support both school propositions.
dating back prior to 1912 when the
safety code was adopted; that 32 school
buildings are between 60 and 85 years
Sir Oswald Mosley, generally con-
old; that one building dates back to the sidered
not only as the leader of the
administration of President Grant.
fascists in England but also as the chief
Besides, there is the fact that our British anti-Semite, has made the state-
schools are overcrowded, that thousands ment that he has "never been an anti-
of additional pupils will be enrolled this Semite". He had merely opposed the
year and that there will be approxithately war with Germany, he said, and com-
20,000 more children in school by 1963. mented: "Some Jews, for reasons which
Action' is needed to fulfill our re- were quite comprehensible, had had a
sponsibilities towards improving o u r great quarrel with the German govern-
school system, to provide the means for ment. I regarded it as a Jewish quarrel
the improvement of present structures and not as a British quarrel. It is now
and for the erection of new buildings.
a dead issue."
In addition to living up to our duties
But it isn't a dead issue, since a
as citizens to vote for the judgeships to world war is branded as merely "a Jew-
be filled in the election on April 6, there ish quarrel." Such assertions breed the
is the major obligation to support the type of anti-Semitism that was fostered
two school propositions. One of them by Nazism.
Was the murder of six million Jews
calls for approval of the proposed $60,-
000,000 bond issue to round out the five- a mere quarrel? The Jews in Germany
year school building construction pro- were the ones who made all sorts of con-
gram. The other provides for an increase cessions to Hitler. But Hitlerism had
in assessed property evaluations from doomed them at the very outset. Now a
4.5 mills per $1,000 to 7.5 per $1,000. British fascist calls the tragedy a"Jew-
Compared with the immense needs, ish quarrel." The seeds of bigotry still
the cost is minor. We must take into con- germinate in fields of hate and ignorance.
Quarrel' or Murder?
Ezekiel.
Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem, the captivity and the
destruction are described historically and on the strength of find-
ings during explorations. Judah's King Jehoichin and his family
were among those deported. "The Biblical record," Prof. Parrot
writes, "has nothing to say about what happened in Palestine
and in Babylon after the assassination of Gedaliah, at least
during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar," but Babylonian records are
referred to for fill-in facts. Jehoichin's name appears in several
records. He was well treated and the records refer to him by
his title.
With the death of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon declined again.
It met defeat at the hands of Cyrus of Persia, who authorized
the return of the Jews to Jerusalem. But many of them, having
prospered, and as a result of the liberal treatment accorded them,
chose to remain in Babylon.
We are told in this interesting book that "with the fall of
Jerusalem in 586 the character of the prophetic utterances
changes abruptly: Ezekiel's theme is now return and restoration
. . . In the thought and the actions of Ezekiel there are obvious
signs of the 'influence of the art, the myths and the customs
of Babylonia, the place where he was living;' and this is abund-
antly illustrated and emphasized by the discoveries of archaeolo-
gists."
The fall of Nineveh, the deportation of Ezekiel, interpreta-
tions of various passages from Ezekiel in the light of Assyrian
documentation, are described by Prof. Parrott in his evaluation
of Ezekiel's vision of the new Jerusalem and the Temple. His
book is a valuable aidition to archaeological research and Bibli-
cal studies.
Wayne State University Issues
Texts of Franklin Lectures
The seventh in the series of Leo M. Franklin Lectures,
annual Wayne State University presentations, is incorporated in
a new volume published by Wayne State University Press under
the title "The Nature of Being Human."
Edited by Prof. Marie I. Rasey, who held the Franklin WSU
Lectureship for 1956-57, this volume contains a preface by
J. Wilmer Menge and the texts of Prof. Rasey's lecture and the
lectures by Drs. Ralph D. Rabinovitch, Edmund W. Sinnott,
William H. Brown and Ashley Montagu.
Wayne State University Press also has just published "The
Fearful Choice — A Debate on Nuclear Policy," conducted by
Philip Toynbee and participated in by 20 noted scholars.