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 Office, Detroit, Mich. under act of Congress of March
8, 1879.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
SIDNEY SHMARAK CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ HARVEY ZUCKERBERG
Business Manager
Advertising Manager
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the eleventh day of FThshvan, 5722, the following Scriptural selections will be read
in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Lekh Lekha, Gen. 12:1-1 7:27. Prophetical portion, Is. 40:27-41:16.
Licht Benshen, Friday, Oct. 20, 5:25 p.m.
VOL. XL. No. 8
Page Four
October 20, 1961
'Ritual Murder' Libel Sprouting of Bigotry
From Regensburg, West Germany,
came the shocking news last week of the
revival of the "ritual murder" libel which
had been used by anti-Semites in back-
ward lands for generations as means of
inciting to rioting, plundering and murder
in Jewish quarters.
It was on order of the Vatican that
the libel, which was spread among Cath-
olic church worshippers at the Deggen-
dorf church, was put to an end. The
shocking re-introduction of the great lie
was by means of the display of medieval
anti-Jewish captions on "ritual murder"
pictures, the captions on which depicted
the subsequent slaughter of Deggendorf
Jews as a "God-willed act."
The action of the Vatican in calling
a halt to the Deggendorf libel recalls
earlier actions by Catholic dignitaries
who repudiated the "ritual murder"
propagandists. The most effective con-
demnation of the great lie was made
nearly 200 years ago in an encyclical
that was issued by Cardinal Lorenzo
Ganganelli just before he became Pope
Clement XIV. In his book, "The Ritual
Murder Libel and the Jew," published in
1937, Dr. Cecil Roth stated:
"To its lasting credit, the Catholic
Church (even when the night of mediev-
alism was at its darkest) never gave the
slightest countenance to the calumny.
Immediately the Holy See first became
cognizant of it, in the thirteenth century,
its remonstrances began: and they con-
tinued afterward in unbroken sequence. It
is noteworthy that some of the most
vehement protests emanated from the
Pointiffs who otherwise showed them-
selves least sympathetic toward the
Jews, their objectivity thus being all the
more obvious. Never was the libel raised
under official auspices in the States of
the Church—a statement applicable to
few other parts of Europe. On almost
every occasion, the Papacy resolutely
refused to set the seal of official ap-
proval upon the beatification of supposi-
tious victims demanded by the ignorant.
In no respect does the policy of the
Holy See toward the Jew, essentially
humane according to the standard of the
age even when it could not be benevo-
lent, appear in a nobler light."
It was in 1758 that Cardinal Ganga-
nelli was chosen to report on the truth
or falsehood of charges that were leveled
against Jews in Poland. The Polish Jews
had chosen Jacob Selig as an emissary
to Rome to solicit protection. Pope
Benedict XIV, who preceded Ganganelli
who became Pope Clement XIV, selected
the Cardinal who was to be his successor
to write the encyclical, and Ganganelli
demolished the "ritual murder" false-
hood and even refused to accept the
testimony of converted Jews against
their former co-religionists, stating in
his report: "In these neophytes from
Judaism there is wont to occur a certain
transport against their own nation, by
reason of which they not seldom go
beyond the limits of truth."
In spite of these rejections of false-
hoods, the "ritual murder" libels have
been repeated time and again, and even
in this enlightened age. Less than a year
ago it was revived by a Dagestan,
U.S.S.R., newspaper and was made an
issue in the Soviet Union. The "Blood
Accusation" became an international
issue in the infamous Mendel Beilis
case in. Russia in 1913. The Kishinev
pogrom in Russia started with a "blood
accusation." T h o m a s Masaryk, the
founder of the later ill-fated Czecho-
slovak Republic, became famous as the
defender of the Jews in the Tisza-Eszlar
case in 1882.
But in spite of the stupidity of the
charge, it has been repeated scores of
times. Streicher and his Nazi cohorts
used it in their attacks on German
Jewry. "Ritual Murder" books were
circulated in Egypt and other Arab
countries as part of the anti-Israel cam-
paign. The Polish underground WIN
organization instructed its members to
spread the "ritual murder" libel against
the Jews in 1947. Resort to the libel by
the organ of the Communist Party of the
Daghestan SoViet Socialist Republic,
which is predominantly Moslem, came
as a shock, since the libel was rarely
resorted to in Moslem lands.
In 1954 it became necessary for the
Austrian League for Human Rights to
initiate a campaign against the observ-
ance of festivals based on the "ritual
murder" theme at Rinn in the Austrian
province of Tyrol. Scores of other inci-
dents in our own enlightened age point-
ed to the perpetuation of the libel.
Now it has emerged in a West Ger-
man community, and ,the Vatican again
has stepped in to demolish the false-
hood. While there is satisfaction in the
knowledge that there is enough fair-
mindedness to reject the shocking accu-
sation, it is a deplorable fact that Jews
must, even in the twentieth century,
continue to battle against the spread of
libels and must be prepared to challenge
the spread of untruths. Anyone who is
over-confident in the matter of the
world's having attained m a t u r it y in
human relations becomes disillusioned
upon hearing about the revival of the
worst libel ever leveled against the Jews
in Russia, Poland, Germany and among
Moslems. We have a long way to go to
attain sanity in human relations.
A Crack in the Arab Boycott Campaign?
It is to be hoped that the halt called
by the Brown & Williamson Corporation,
the subsidiary of the British-American
Tobacco Co., to the ban on sales of its
cigarette- products to Israel will be
expanded to other fields where Arab
pressures have resulted in extended
economic boycotts of Israel.
There has been great resentment in
this country against the practices of the
British-American Tobacco Co., to which
the Brown & Williamson Corporation had
to yield for five years. It was a direct
result of Arab demands that Israel
should be boycotted.
Many other firms still continue to
yield to such Arab pressures, and the
Arab boycott has been directed not only
against Israel but also against many
Jewish firms throughout the world,
including American Jewish industries.
The Jewish War Veterans and the
Anti-Defamation League consistently
battled against the cigarette boycott.
The help given to their campaign by
Congressman Alfred E. Santangelo of
New York, who threatened with a
counter-boycott by Atherican Italians,
has helped to bring the issue to a head,
with the result that the ban on cigarette
sales to Israel has been abandoned.
If the Brown & Williamson act repre-
sents a crack in the Arab boycott of Israel,
then much more good is to be expected
in other areas, in the best interests of
international amity. Perhaps it even
augurs the end of the unsavory Arab
boycott of Israel.
Isaac Bashevis Singer's Stories
*
'S
pinoza of Market Street '
There is a combination of romance, fascination, imagination
and genuine entertainment in the new collection of short stories
by Isaac Bashevis Singer.
Published under the title of the first story in the book,
"The Spinoza of Market Street," by Farrar, Straus and Cudahy
(19 Union Sq., W., N. Y. 3), the 11 stories in this book contain
a variety of plots, based on experiences in the Old World, in
the pre-Hitler days when the ghettos of Poland still contained
functioning Jewish communities in which lived people of faith
and those who abandoned faith, Jews who had to acclimate
themselves to life among hostile Christian neighbors and scores
of other interesting characters.
Singer, whose father and both grandfathers were rabbis,
himself a native of Poland, has a background that equips him
admirably for the writing of these ghetto life stories. He
began to write in Hebrew, turned to Yiddish, and came to this
Country in 1935, when his "Satan in Goray" was published. He
has been on the staff of the Jewish Daily Forward since he
came to this country.
"The Spinoza of Market Street" is a story about a Jewish
philosopher who lived in want, on a grant from the German-Jewish
community, and labored on a book about Spinoza. He emulated
Spinoza in his bachelorhood, lost favor with the Jewish com-
munity where he held a librarian's post and was shunned by
his neighbors.
He became ill and an ugly old maid who lived on the same
floor With him in the rooming house began to take care of
him. It resulted in their marriage, and in the sick philosopher's
miraculously acquiring physical strength on his nuptial night.
It was the end of his emulation of Spinoza, and as he awoke,
next to his bride who awakened bewitching nature's feelings
in him, on the first morning after his marriage, he murmured:
"Divine Spinoza, forgive me. I have become a fool."
"The Black Wedding" is about a marriage of an orphaned
daughter of a Hasidic rabbi to a widowed Hasidic rabbi of
another dynasty who had five children. There was resistance in
the girl, who was imbued with fear of demons. She died in
childbirth. The - tragedy superstition is evidenced in this tale.
Other aspects of witchcraft and superstitious beliefs are
related in "The Shadow of a Crib," in which a Christian doctor
consents to marry a maiden in his town against his wishes to
remain a bachelor. He decides, however, to escape, and he
does. But the night before he had glanced into the window of
the aged rabbi who, after midnight, was studying while drinking
tea from a samovar. The rabbi's wife arose quietly to make
certain that the fire was burning in the samovar, without disturb-
her husband in his studies. The rabbi merely gave a glance
of gratitude, and in these motions the unfaithful doctor saw
evidence of true. love. This "scene of love" brought the souls
of the sufferers in the doctor's tragedy back to the old abodes,
until the site where the experiences were enacted—the doctor's
and the girl's homes and the rabbi's study—were demolished.
There is an interesting lesson in this story of lack of faith con-
trasted with deep-rooted love between rabbi and his wife.
Many similar Old World experiences are incorporated in
the other stories in this most delightful book, in "A Tale of
Two Liars," "Caricature," "The Destruction of Kreshev," "The
Beggar Said So," "Shiddah and Kuziba," "The Man Who Came
Back," "A Piece of Advice" and "In the Poorhouse."
The splendid narrations gain in significance from the excel-
lent translations by Martha Glicklich, Ceceil Hemley, June Ruth
Flaum, Elaine Gottlieb, Elizabeth Pollet, S'hulamith Charney,
Gertrude Hirschler, Mirra Ginsburg, * Joel Blocker.
"The Spinoza of Market Street" also will be issued in a
Jewish Publication Society edition.
Comparative Religious Studies
The eminent Biblical scholar, Joachim Wach, completed his
subsequently widely acclaimed book, "The Comparative Study
of Religions," before he died in Switzerland in 1955.
This volume, which contains Dr. Wach's lectures on the
history of religions sponsored by the American Council of
Learned Societies, has been edited by Joseph M. Kitagawa.
It is now available in a paperback, published by Columbia Uni-
versity Press.
A lengthy introductory essay by Dr. Kitagawa evaluates
"The Life and Thought of Joachim Wach."
Dr. Wach's work contains studies of the nature of religious
experience, expression of such experience in thought, action and
fellowship, with considerable emphasis on the elements in Juda-
ism related to such studies.