THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS — Friday, July 15, 1960
Purely Commentary
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
A Lesson in Edna Ferber's Recollection of an
Anti-Semitic Episode in Ironwood, Mich., in 1933
Belief in God Is Requirement to Hold
Public Office, Maryland Court Decides;
AJ Congress Appeals to High. Court
but cannot hold the position of
Is belief in God a valid re- have two First Amendments, notary public in Maryland."
One day, in one area - of the world, the issue is that of a
one for those who believe in
quirement
for
public
office?
mass murderer, Adolf Eichmann, that attracts world attention
The American Jewish Con
Yes, the Maryland Court of God and one for those who do gress appeal to the U.S. Su-
anew to the problem of anti-Semitism.
not.
The
late
Supreme
Court
In another sphere, in our nation's capital, it is a psychopathic Appeals has ruled in refusing Justice Robert Jackson was preme Court in Torcaso's be-
self-styled Nazi, George Lincoln Rockwell, who seeks to revive to license a notary public be- eminently right when, in his half will argue that Article 37
cause he will not take an oath
the campaign of hatred against Jewry.
opinion in the Zorach v. Claw- of the Maryland State Consti-
that he believes in God.
tution — the legal basis for de-
But it is such an old problem, and there were times when it
But in a statement asserting son case, he predicted that 'the nying certification to Torcaso
assumed such tragic proportions that it was viewed as "the sin of that religious tests for public day this country ceases to be
Christianity," although Moslems have not been immune from office are an un-Constitutional free for irreligion it will cease — violates the U.S. Constitution.
Article 37 reads: ". . . that no
to be free for religion — except
guilt on that score.
violation of religous freedom
religious test ought ever to be
for
the
sect
that
can
win
In her autobiographical Story, "A Peculiar Treasure," first and separation of church and
required as a qualification for
published in 1938, just reissued by Doubleday in a revised state, the American Jewish political power.'
"The decision of the Mary- any office of profit or trust in
edition, Edna Ferber, one of America's most distinguished Congress announced it would
this State, other than a declara-
novelists, relates an incident that shocked her when it occurred appeal the Maryland decision land Court of Appeals means tion in the existence of God..."
that
an
atheist
can
be
elected
and must have left its mark on her to this day.
to the United States Supreme
President of the United States (Emphasis added.)
Miss Ferber, native of Kalamazoo, returned to her native Court.
state, for a visit to Ironwood, Mich., in December, 1933, "trudging
The opinion is precedent-
knee deep in snow, eating in lumber camps, watching the giant making because the case
pines crashing to their death in the forest slaughter, talking to marks the first time the issue
the paper-mill millionaires, breathing in the dry cold air, of belief in God as a qualifica-
saddened by the sight of the cut-over land with its mileS and
tion for public office has
Oren served in Czechoslovak
miles of rotting stumps where once a glorious forest had stood." ever come up before a State
TEL AVIV, (JTA) — Four
or Federal court.
At this point she makes the comment:
prominent Czechoslovak Zionists prisons from 1951-56 when he
"The Grand Old Boys whose names and faces stood forth
In its unanimous ruling, the who were imprisoned in Prague was finally released. He said
so prominently in the books on Wisconsin and Michigan pioneers court upheld a lower court deci- in 1951 on charges of conspir- on his return from a visit to
and commerce and pOlitics and wealth turned out to be not so sion that Roy T. Torcaso, a 48- ing against the State, have been
grand, after all. Cutting and slashing, grabbing and tricking, year-old avowed atheist, could released from confinement. Europe, that he had learned
they had seized and destroyed millions of acres of forest land not be certified as a notary Five others, convicted along that four of the other defen-
with never a spring replanted; they had diverted and polluted public because he declined to with Mordechai Oren, Israeli dants had been released re-
streams and rivers; had falsely obtained right-of-way on either sign a statement in the oath of journalist, in the same "con- cently.
Oren said that he had raised
side of trumped-up railroads and thereby got control of untold office declaring "that I believe spiracy" are still imprisoned.
mineral wealth as well as woodland, water and farm lands. in the existence of God."
The ten men and women were the fate of the nine people who
were his fellow-prisoners dur-
They, in the North, were only Wisconsin-Michigan reproductions
Wrote Maryland Court of Ap- arrested in 1951 during the ing discussions with European
of their brothers in the East--the Astors, the Vanderbilts, the peals Justice Henderson:
period of intense anti-Zionist,
socialist leaders. He expressed
Goulds, the Harrimans, the Morgans, the Fisks, the Rockefellers
"It seems clear that under anti-Jewish Communist activity
—oil, railroads, land, forests, waterways; and in the West had our Constitution disbelief in a which culminated in the Mos- belief that the release of the
been the Huntingtons, the Hopkinses, the Hills, all solemnly Supreme Being, and the denial cow Doctors' Trials in the So- four now might have been the
embalmed now in libraries and museums and hotels and boule- of any moral accountability for viet Union and the trial and result of their intervention. He
vards. The Robber Barons, plunderers of a vast rich continent. conduct, not only renders a execution of Josef Slansky, said he would continue efforts
And I marveled that, since we Jews have such a name for person incompetent to hold Communist Party boss in to secure the release of the
remaining five prisoners.
. shrewdness and acquisitiveness, there was never the name of a public office, but to give testi- Czechoslovakia.
single Jew among these despoilers of America."
mony, or to serve as a juror.
And from among the despoilers came the deep wound that The historical record makes it
was then inflicted upon her, as she recorded it in the following clear that religious toleration,
paragraph that immediately follows the above:
in which this State has taken
"In my search for information I had a rather nasty pride, was never thought to en-
By NATHAN ZIPRIN
experience in the home of an American German-born lumber compass the ungodly."
Editor, Seven Arts Feature Syndicate
The role of the American
baron who lived in- a fine house north of Ironwood, in the
heart of the devastated pine-forest country. This was so Jewish Congress in serving as
counsel to Torcaso in the Mary- The Baal Shem Toy
recently after the coming of Hitler to power in Germany that
Last Shavuot marked the 200th anniversary of the death
I hadn't yet grasped the spread of his poisonous doctrine in land courts and in deciding to
America. The man was a real power in the community, he take an appeal to the United 'of Israel Baal Shem Tov, an event that merited wider attention
lorded it over vast tracts of land, he possessed a fortune, the States Supreme Court was than it received in the Jewish communities of the world, Israel
place was a maze of colored-tile bathrooms, phonographs,,,, described by Leo Pfeffer, as- excepted.
radios, stuffed birds and animals, high-powered cars—and sociate general counsel of the
Israel Baal Shem Tov's life was a scroll of legend and
never a book from cellar to attic. Not one. At the bountiful American Jewish Congress and tale, yet his impact was fantastically real. No other man in
dinner table I was shocked to hear this gentleman announce author of "Church, State and post-Talmudic history revolutionized Jewish religious life as did
Freedom," who said:
(with the immediate concurrence of the assembled company)
this mystic.
that all the bankers in the world were Jews, that Jews
"The same Bill of Rights
A man alone with God, he nevertheless could speak to the
potsessed all the money in the world, that they were scheming
that protects Catholics, Jews Jewish grassroots, more by example than by word,, by parable
to obtain control of the world—in short, I heard the incredible
and other religious minorities
rather than by pronouncement, by hinting rather than teaching.
balderdash and vicious drool with which the German fanatic
from discrimination in the
His age was one of material poverty and spiritual disturbance
had fed his enslaved people. When I announced, quietly,
holding of public office by
for Jewry in Poland and the Ukraine. Yet he rose above the
I hope, that I was a Jew, there fell a malevolent silence, and
reason of their beliefs also tumult and the fear by a faith that followed writ and ritual but
as I looked at their faces I saw such hatred as I never before
protects the non-theist and with a variation in trope. Learning was essential in the fulfill-
in
have seen on human countenances, except, perhaps,
the non-believer.
ment of Jewish life, but its lack was not fatal to the redemptive
photographs of the toadlike Goebbels. There was no rising
"Our Constitution does not hopes of the individual who had no head for it or no opportunity
grandly and leaving the house" that night. I was forty miles
to acquire it. Reaching out to the heavens was not a quality
from a railroad. I am a little embarrassed to confess that
peculiar only to the learned and the erudite. • The quiet of
Israel Minister, 81,
I locked my bedroom door that night and put a chair-back
tongue
and the ignorant of language can reach out to God in
snugly under the doorknob. In the morning they did not speak
Weds
Woman
of
30
their own unique ways. God hearkens to all tongues. He receives
to me. Also, they tried to prevent me from completing arrange-
word and silence with equal tenderness from supplicant and
(Special JTA Teletype Wire to
ments which I had made the day before for a tour of inspection
The Jewish News)
beggar and worshipper. An improvised prayer is no less receptive
near-by
lumber
camp.
As
I
drove
back
to
my
hotel
in
JERUSALEM.—The bride
in a
than the orderly alignment if its wellspring is the heart, human
Ironwood, I realized that a poison, virulent and dreadful, was
of several days of Israel's
depth. Prayers can be said in word, in song and in silence.
being fed into the veins of the free American people, and
Minister for Religious Af-
The
prayer book alone is not the only source of communicating
that unless an antitoxin was soon administered to counteract
fairs, 81-year-old Rabbi Yaa-
with God. There is seriousness in human purpose, yet it is
it the most dreadful convulsions might soon rack the whole
cov Toledano, is about 30
with dancing joy that we must meet God in prayer and in our
body of the land."
years of age, it was disclosed
daily lives. Sadness denigrates divine purpose.
It was, indeed, a nasty experince. Fortunately, antitoxins
Tuesday in the Israel press.
Here was a way to God that was within the grasp and
have been injected into the veins of Americans, so that Hitlerism
The afternoon daily Maariv
attainment of the simple folk. Here was a fascinatingly new rod.
did not flourish in our land. But there are all-too-frequent
had reported Monday that
a way
And the Jewish masses seized -upon it hungrily. Here was
demonstrations of bigotry, as evidenced by the Rockwell ravings.
the bride was 18 years old.
that brought dignity to their lives and meaningfulness to
Tuesday's pr e s s reports
Since they are part of a pattern, it would be unwise completely
their praying. Men now could rise above their hovels. They were
identified Mrs. Toledano as
to ignore them. You can't let a maniac rave on unabashedly
now in the eyes of God the equals of the learned. Heaven's
the daughter of Rabbi Y.
when he advocates your destruction and when he manages to
and the
gates were now open to all, except to the scoffers with
grant living in a village in
enroll associates to co-sponsor his crimes, even if there is only
God.
a dialogue
unseeing.
Prayer
could
open
it,
but
so
could
the
Jerusalem
corridor.
The
a handful of them.
marriage
ceremony,
which
And
a
new
world
opened
up
to
the
people,
sesame-like,
like
Miss Ferber has incorporated in her revised edition of
took place last week in Je-
"A Peculiar Treasure" two letters she received. The rational
a vision to prophet and artist.
rusalem, was performed by
and complimentary letter was over the name and the address of
There was fear at first that the Baal Shem Tov's religious
Rabbi Abu Hatzira of Ram-
the writer. The other, an anti-Semitic missive, ungrammatical,
path presaged perhaps another spurious messianic movement.
leh.
The memory of the tragedy that was the Sabbatai Zvi promise
full of hatred, was unsigned.
had not yet evaporated. False messiahs were still in the land
In Rockwell's case, it should be said that he, at least, does
and what way was there to choose the pure from the spurious?
not hide behind some one else's cloak. He is a convinced Nazi New Israel Ambassador
But Israel Baal Shem Tov was no messiah, nor messianic
and he says so, and it is as much that he is being exposed to Arrives in Washington
pretender. He was of the humble who can rise to the greatest
the light of day and repudiated by those who refuse to remain
WASHINGTON, (JTA) — heights and carry the unwinged with them.
silent when a bigot spouts hatred.
Mordechai Gazit, recently ap-
In "Felix Frankfurter Reminisces," the distinguished United pointed minister, has arrived at
Two hundreds years after his death, the Baal Shem Toy
States Supreme Court Justice refers to the late Mr. Justice the Israel Embassy here to as- remains as one of the most radiant figures in Jewish history
McReynolds, the bigot who mistreated Supreme Court Justices sume his new duties. He suc- and hassidism as a monument to the capacity of the Jewish heart
Brandeis and Cardozo. Frankfurter gives McReynolds credit for ceeds Yaacov Herzog who has to rise above crisis and wall at all times.
consistency—for honestly pursuing his policies of hatred, without been named Israel ambassador
The impact of hassidism on Jewish life has not yet been
deviating from them. The example given is that McReynolds
properly essayed by our historians and sociologists. Had not
to
Canada.
would not sign a letter of good wishes to Brandeis, when the
Gazit's prior post was that of the six million perished, observance of the 200th yahrzeit of
latter left the high court, because it would be a negation of
the Baal Shem Toy would have been a solemn occasion in their
McReynolds' true feelings. So—an anti-Semite in the U.S. director of the Foreign Minis- lives—for Israel Baal Shem Toy was the bearer of a torch that
ter's
Office
at
the
Ministry
for
Supreme Court was an honest anti-Semite! (So is Rockwell an Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem.
lit the Jewish path to God and man.
honest anti-Semite!) What a consolation!
Report Four Pro minent Czech
Zionists Released from Prague Jail
On the Record