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February 10, 1961 - Image 4

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Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1961-02-10

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THE JEWISH NEWS

Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951

Member American Associatiun 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 Office, Detroit, Mich. under act of Congress of March
8, 1879.

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher

SIDNEY SHMARAK CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ HARVEY ZUCKERBERG
City Editor
Business Manager
Advertising Manager

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath—Shabbat Shekalim—the twenty-fifth day of Shevat, 5721, the following Scriptural
selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Mishpatim, Ex. 21:1-24:18, 30:11-16. Prophetical portion, II Kings 12:1-17.

REPDI1T
ON
ANTI-JEWISH
ACTIVMES

Licht Benshen, Friday, Feb. 10, 5:30 p.m.

VOL. XXXVIH. No. 24

Page Four

February 10, 1961

Bar Mitzvah Standards: Progress in Education

Our community owes a debt of grati-
tude to the United Hebrew Schools for its
efforts to advance Jewish educational
standards, by establishing a new code for
Bar - Mitzvahs.
Having secured the endorsements of
nearly all of our congregations in setting
up regulations which will require five
years of advance Hebrew studies prior
to Bar Mitzvah, the United Hebrew
Schools is pioneering in a project that
should serve as a guide for all American
Jewish communities in assuring a
thorough education for our boys before
they become confirmed.
Congregation Shaarey Zedek has gone
a step further,with its requirement of a
seven-year pre-Bar Mitzvah study pro-
gram. There are provisions also for more
extensive study programs for girls, prior
to their consecrations and confirmations,
with requirements for a knowMge of
Hebrew and Jewish history.
The forward step taken by the United
Hebrew Schools and the cooperating con-
gregations comes at a time when national
and world assemblies of Jewish leaders
have expressed anxiety over the educa-
tional status of American Jewry. It is
most deplorable that among those who
have emerged as panicky in evaluating
American Jewry's cultural position are
American Jewish leaders who should be
aware that progress has been made in
our communities, that there is, a spirit of
- despair, that the Jewish communities in
the United States have really just come
of age and have commenced to act ma-

turely when facing the problems that
have arisen with the need for advanced
Jewish educational programs.
We have depended for a number of
decades upon educators who have come
from Eastern Europe or from Israel.
Under presently emerging conditions, we
must conduct our school systems along
lines of high level educational training.
The establishment of schools like the
Midrasha of the United Hebrew Schools,
the formation of adult education pro-
grams and similar undertakings indicate
that we are along a path of realistic
thinking in advancing our educational
media.
The new Bar Mitzvah requirements,
which are to go into effect the coming
September, are a clarion call to our com-
munity to give priority to our educational
needs, to plan to provide the best availa-
ble Jewish education for our children, to
determine to be helpful in the building
of a well-informed Jewish community. .
Only one question now attaches to the
new revolutionary plan: will . all congre-
gations cooperate fully in enforcing the
new Bar Mitzvah regulations, or will the
idea be resolved into mere lip service? If
the signatories to the declaration of the
United Hebrew Schools are sincere in
their assertions—and we have no reason
to doubt their sincerity—then we are on
the road to creating a better Jewish life,
because it will be a high-level cultural
existence, repudiating the panicky obser-
vations that have hitherto been made
about American Jewry.

U.S.8,11

The Blessings of Survival

Sherman's Ethnic Study Shows
Confidence in Jewry s Future

C. Bezalel Sherman, who, as director of cultural and com-
munity relations of the Labor Zionist Organization of America, has
travelled widely and has made a thorough study of the forces that
have shaped the American Jewish community, sums up his "study
in ethnic individuality" in "The Jew Within American Society,"
which has just been issued by the Wayne State University Press.
Financial assistance in making possible the publication of this
book was provided by the Morris and Emma Schaver Publication
Fund for Jewish Studies.

*

Efforts in Journalism
A Detroiter's Pioneering with
Rhodes and his staff on several

Across the first page of his newspaper,
the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle, pub-
lished in Milwaukee, Publisher Irving G.
Rhodes last week has strung a new line
that reads: "Our Fortieth Year of Publi-
cation." He has added this line prepara-
tory to celebrating his 40th anniversary
on Dec. 21, 1961. He has thus heralded an
important day for his Jewish community,
and, judged by past performances, there
is certainty that it augurs a demonstra-
tion of loyalty and affection for the man
who has created a great instrument for his
community and who continues to provide
Milwaukee Jewry with one of the best
Jewish periOdicals in America.
We take special pride in making note
of the occasion of the Wisconsin Jewish
Chronicle's 40th anniversary because its
publisher is , a former Detroiter and be-
cause, during the years of his publishing
career, he has exerted many efforts to
assist in the raising of the standards of
the Jewish press.
In an editorial analysis of the events
that transpired during the 39 years of the
Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle's existence,
our confrere speaks of being "a strange
breed," explaining: "we don't get rich
doing what we do, but we bust (almost)
at the seams out of pride and love for
what we are doing."
As fellow-publishers, having worked

fronts, especially in attempts to establish
new idealistic approaches in Jewish news-
paper publishing, we can attest to the
validity of this claim. It is more effective
than its modesty. Irving Rhodes, who has
won his spurs in many endeavors—it was
thanks to his genius, for example that Mil-
waukee Jewry became a million-dollar an-
nual contributor to the United Jewish Ap-
peal when he was his city's campaign
chairman—especially distinguished him
self as a newspaperman. He understands
journalistic needs and he strives to fulfill
them. He knows that his community will
be helpless and uninformed unless he
keeps it aware of what is happening in
Jewish ,life, and he strives to attain the
proper goals through his splendid news-
paper.
Because he knows the needs and rec-
ognizes his duties, he has secured, in
Edwarde F. Perlson, an able managing
editor.
He has been one of the men who has
upheld the hands of the directors of the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency in assuring
the uninterrupted flow of news from all
parts of the globe.
Irving Rhodes is a credit to his pro-
fession. More power to him as he pre-
pares to mark the 40th anniversary of
his great newspaper.

,

Ben-Gurion s Resignat ion: Temporary Crisis

While the resignation of David Ben-
Gurion as Israel's Prime Minister creates
worldwide anxieties, the developments in
the Jewish State must be viewed realis-
tically.
Israel has progressed so admirably
that she is able to replace her pioneer
statesmen with well trained substitutes.
There is a good staff of diplomats in
Israel's services, and there need be no
fear as to her future.

The tragedy is not in Ben-Gurion's
resignation, which may prove to be very
temporary, but in the incident that
caused it. Israelis are chagrined that a
matter involving the State's security
should have been turned into a public
scandal. That's the cause for regret. It
is to be hoped that it will be a lesson
for Israel's leaders—to avert the recur-
rence of such errors in the future.

Sherman expresses the view that, "originally fragmented in
their cultural views and communal activities and subsequently
achieving a high degree of acculturation in a short period of time,
the Jews, had they fitted into the general patterns of integration,
should have reached a state of near-dissolution as a community by
the third generation." But the opposite occurred, the contradiction
consisting "in the growth and solidification of the Jewish community
coming about partly because of American assimilatory trends and
partly in spite of them. Inner forces of cohesion within the Jewish
group have turned acculturation itself into an instrument to develop
and to strengthen ethnic individuality. The persistent majority
attitudes peculiar to America resisted the complete assimilation
even of those wavering Jews who may have actually desired to
leave the Jewish fold. Utilitarianism, pragmatism and democracy
have been transformed into factors of Jewish ethnic consolidation."

Sherman tells of having watched "the changing panorama of
American Jewish life" as it unfolded itself in all its dimensions,
by attending major conventions of American and international
organizations. He declares:
"Neither America nor the Jew has been wholly on the
receiving end or wholly on the giving end in the casting of the
Jewish community as an integral part of the American nation
and as a segment of the Jewish people. There has been a dynamic
give and take; and reciprocal influences have been constantly at
play in the process, This is what makes the evolution of the Jewish
settlement in this country so significant and fascinating a page in
the annals of both the United States and the Jewish people."
"The Jew Within American Society" has special merit because
of the thorough study made by the author of the role of East Eur-
opean immigrants in this country, the economic mobility of the
American Jew, the inner solidification of the American Jewish
community; and other factors in American Jewish life.

Suniming up his conclusions on the American Jew's ethnic
individuality, Sherman writes:
"We find it deviating from the course which the other ethnic
groups have followed in the process of integrating themselves
into the larger American society. Those groups, in contradistinc-
tion to the settlers who built a new civilization on the basis of an
old culture, have discarded their old cultures in order to adapt
themselves to the new civilization dominated by the Anglo-Saxon
elements. The greater the distance a group has covered on t h e
road to adaptation, the farther it has moved away from its own
ethnic moorings. The Jews have proved to be an exception to
this rule, and herein lies their uniqueness as an ethnic com-
munity."
Thus, the author of this book contends that "the disappearance
of the Jews as a separate group is not in sight as long as prevailing
social conditions in the United States and the existent world situa-
tion of the Jewish people continue." He adds that "only as a corn ,
munity the Jews can best and most effectively inject their tone into
the American symphony." He comments that if Jews "were to
retain their ethnic identity solely - because the majority refuses to
absorb them, then their existence would be marked by frustration
and bitterness. . . If, on the other hand, their group identity is
founded on their will to live and to enrich America with whatever
creative originality they possess—they will be able to make of their
exceptional status a joy to themselves and a blessing to the United
States."

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