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Common Sense Tonic

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
Fditorial 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
8, 1879.

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

SIDNEY SHMARAK CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ HARVEY ZUCKERBERG

Circulation Manager

Advertising Manager

City Editor

Sabbath Hol Hamoed Sukkot Scriptural Selections
Pentateuchal portions, Ex. 33:12-34:26, Num. 29:17-22. Prophetical portion, Ezek. 38:18-39:16.
Scriptural Selections for Concluding Days of Sukkot
Pentateiichal portions: Shemini Atzeret, Thursday, Debt. 14:22-16:17, Num. 29:35-30:1;
Simhat Torah, Friday, Dent. 33:1-34:1, Gen. 1:1-2:3, Num. 29:35-30:1.
Prophetical portions Thursday, I Kings 8:54-66; Friday, Joshua 1:1-18.

VOL. XXXVIII. No. 6

Page Four

October 7, 1960

The Indestructible Sukkah Rises Anew

Once again, the Sukkah is in evidence
wherever there are Jews.
There are more traditional booths
erected during the observance of the
Sukkot festival than people imagine.
Their emergence symbolizes an ad-
herence to faith, and it offers evidence of
the indestructibility of the Jewish spirit.
The Sukkah is a fragile object. It is a
symbol. of Jewish wanderings in the
desert when our ancestors first were on
the march from slavery to freedom. It
also symbolizes the wanderings of Jews
on the face of the earth.
In the main, these wanderings have

ended. A permanent home has been ac-
quired by Israel, and there is assurance
of greater permanence for those Jews
who reside in the Diaspora — for there
always was and there undoubtedly always
will remain a Diaspora. But the Sukkah
remains a symbol of the Jewish past and
an admonition for retention of faith in a
future that will not again be addicted to
wanderings.
The Sukkah is fragile, but indestructi-
ble. And Sukkot thus becomes part of the
tower of strength of a people that pro-
claims that "I shall not die, but live to
declare the works of the Lord."
A Happy- Sukkot!

I. L. Peretz's Best Stories

`The Book of Fire,' Edited by
United Nations Must Remain Intact Leftwich, an Inspirino Work
Forty-two years ago, a great blunder the United Nations, to attempt either to

was committed when the ideal of a scuttle it, or to remove it from its New
League of Nations was reduced to a York base, or so to weaken it as to
paper organization. The vision of Pres- reduce it entirely to the status of a
ident Wilson was mocked by his oppon- debating society.
If there is to be a platform for ironing
ents. Isolationists of his time undermined
the idea. Had it succeeded, the world out international differences, in the ser-
might have been spared the tragic second ions effort to avoid world wars, the
United Nations must remain intact and
world war.
Now we are blessed with the exist- must be strengthened.
We have gone a long way from the
ence of an organization which provides a
platform for divergent views. The United days that followed World War I, when
Nations enables peoples with differing Thomas Woodrow Wilson was made the
ideas to meet together and to attempt target of our country's reactionaries in
to iron out their conflicts. their opposition to the idea of an inter-
It is true that the United Nations has, national organization that was to be
in a sense, been used as a debating known as the League of Nations. Our
platform for the most fantastic propa- government has helped form the United
ganda schemes and for unbelievable per- Nations. President Harry S. Truman was
formances. When Israel first was admit- one of its creators. President Dwight D.
ted to the United Nations, the representa- Eisenhower has supported it wholeheart-
tives of the Arab states resorted to a edly. The UN found a home in the great
walk-out. When Russia was unable to get New York metropolis.
The UN now is being put to the test.
her way with her fellow-nations in the
great organization, her delegates pouted We pray that peace-loving nations may
succeed in strengthening the United
and acted like children.
The most self-debasing of all perform- Nations, in order that all peoples, in :-
ances in the UN was by Nikita Khrush- eluding those who now refuse to think in
chev, whose desk pounding and inter- terms of international amity, may be
jections hardly depicted a civilized mood. spared the threats of another war, the
These demonstrations were part of a consequences of which can only be
scheme to undermine the existence of catastrophic.
-

Another Appeal in Behalf of USSR Jewry

A fact sheet that accompanied an ap-
peal issued by 17 major American Jewish
organizations, on the eve of Yom Kippur,
urging "men of good-will everywhere"
to strive for the alleviation of the plight
of Jews in Soviet Russia, contains most
disturbing information.
Disabilities suffered by USSR Jewry
as a religious community and as a cul-
tural group are described as "tragic."
The spokesmen for the 17 organizations,
which represent the largest segment of
American Jewry, utter a hope that Soviet
authorities will not "refuse to take note
of the collective concern of mankind."
The statement thus describes "the
plight of Soviet Jewry":

the Supreme Soviet; and only two Jews are
among some 250 members and candidate mem-
bers of the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party.
"Although Soviet ideology proclaims interna-
tional solidarity among peoples and the abolition
of all national and racial discrimination, the acts
outlined constitute clear violation of these prin-
ciples. Moreover, not only have the Soviet author.
ities ceased for many years now to enforce the
penal clause against anti-Semitic incitement, but
the Soviet press has been guided into publishing
a vast. number of scurrilous attacks upon Juda-
ism as a religion and upon individual Jews as
anti-social elements."

"Soviet Jews suffer disabilities both as an
ethnic-cultural and religious group and as indi-
viduals.
"Like all other ethnic groups in the Soviet
Union, Jews are specifically recognized as a
`nationality,' but they constitute the only such
group deprived by official policy from any of the
attendant privileges granted to all other nationali-
ties in the Soviet Union.
"Unlike other religious groups—Pravoslays,
Baptists and Moslems—Jews are prevented from
having a federation of religious communities.
"As individuals, Jews have been removed in
large numbers from positions of major govern-
mental responsibility. Only three Jews remain
among some 1,300 deputies of the two houses of

"The granting of fullcultural and religious
group rights and instituti
ons in Yiddish and
Hebrew to Soviet Jews;
"Permission to Soviet Jews to emigrate, in
accordance with the principles of the Human
Rights Declaration, for purposes such as the
reunion of dispersed families; and
"Resumption of organizational contact between
Soviet Jews and Jewish groups elsewhere."

The statement of the American Jewish
organizations asks for a change in the
policies towards Soviet Jewry, requiring:

Will Russia respond to the newest
appeal from American Jewry in behalf
of our kinsmen in Russia? Would that we
could be more hopeful. Khrushchev's
actions certainly do not portend good
tidings.

Emerging as one of the important books to be issued this year
is the series of stories by I. L. Peretz, translated from the Yiddish
by the distinguished Anglo-Jewish author and authority on Yiddish
literature, Joseph Leftwich, under the title "The Book of Fire,"
just published by Thomas Yoseloff (11
E. 36th, N.Y. 16).
Incorporated in this valuable an-
thology are 54 of Peretz's outstanding
short stories. Enhancing the book is
the scholarly introduction by the emi-
nent writer. In a 45-page essay, Left-
wich describes all earlier translations
of Peretz's works and evaluates the
stories he has included in this book.
nSJ Referring to "The Tailor's Story,*
for example, he declares that "one
finds in Peretz over and over again
the old Yiddish moralistic literature."
The Hassidic era and the Has-
kalah movement 'receive significant
treatment in the review of Peretz's
contributions to literature.
•
Leftwich makes this interesting
observation: "Peretz became no Agu-
I. L. Peretz
dist, as Dr. Nathan Birnbaum, his colleague at the Czernowitz
Yiddish Conference in 1908 that started the Yiddishist movement,
did. But it is in the spirit of Peretz's 'Back to the Synagogue' cry
when the Agudist paper in London wrote recently: 'Our answer
to all "modern" problems' is 'Back to the Chedar,' to the Chedar
which makes its pupils learn to enjoy and respect the Jewish way
of life."
Unlike Birnbaum, Peretz did not go back all the way. Again,
Peretz 'is quoted: " 'Back to the Bible' does not mean standing still
at the Bible. Judaism is rio stagnant pool, no swamp. The Torah
is 'living water.' We must have open eyes to see that blind religious
practice and the ignorant approach to good deeds and to sin is
frozen. Judaism."
The reader learns how Peretz idealized the Baal Shem, the
founder of the Haisidic movement. We are told that "Peretz did
not spare the hypocrite and the sanctimonious ghoul, as in that
terrible story 'An Exchange of Letters'."
There were, of cote se, critics, and their antagonism to Peretz
also is analyzed for a thorough understanding of his literary genius.
Peretz, as a founder of the modern Yiddishist movement,
"was not a Yiddishist in any party sense. . . Yiddish, he said,
was the folk tongue, and Hebrew the national language."
Leftwich calls attention to the fact that "Peretz, like Mendele
and like Shalom Aleichem was also a Hebrew writer of importance,
as Bialik and Shneour, the great Hebrew writers, were also impor-
tant writers in Yiddish."
"A great thing in Peretz," we are told, "was the way he was
able to assemble young Yiddish writers around him, and influence
them. Sholem Asch, Nomberg, Reisen, Shneour, and others came
out of the Peretz school."
Peretz took a deep interest in the young writers. He had
praised Asch and many of his other disciples. Through them and
with them he continued his interest in Yiddish and at the Czerno-
witz conference he declared:
"Yiddish is not German. Jews don't know German. And
Germans don't know Yiddish. That Yiddish was once a German
tongue doesn't matter. It did not remain German. It became Yid-
dish, the vernacular of 90 per cent of the Jewish people. The
Jewish people do not understand the term 'jargon'."
Scores of other matters in which Peretz was interested and
which affected his activities are evaluated in the scholarly intro-
duction.
Coupled with the excellent selection of Peretz stories that
comprise this book, Leftwich has made a distinct contribution to
Jewish •bookland with "The Book of Fire."

