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.