THE,
JEWISH
NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish
Chronicle commencing with issue
of July 20, 19.51.
American Jewish Press
Member
Association, Michigan Press Associa-
tions. 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
NT : ch 8, 1879.
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•
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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
HARVEY ZUCKERBERG
City Editor
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Passover Scriptural Selections
On the first two days of Pass-
over, the following Scriptural se-
lections trill be read in our
syniigogues:
Pentateuchal portions: Thurs-
day, Er. 12:21-.51, .Vurn. 28:16-25;
Friday, Lev. 22:26-23:24, Nun.
28:16-25. -
Prophetical portions, Thurscury,
Josh. 5:2-6:1; Friday, II Kings
23:1.9, 21.25.
On the Sahhath, Hol Hamoed
Passorer, the serenteenth of Nis-
san, the following Scriptural se-
lections will he read:
Pentateuchal portion, Ex.
33:12-34:26. Prophetical portion,
Ezek. 36:37-37.14.
Licht Itenchen,
April 20,
7 p.m.
Page Four
Vol. X1.1. No. 8
April 20, 1962
The Festival of Passover and the Essence of Israel
• "In every generation every man must regard himself as if he
and Yochebed the midwife, boast of having erected a monument
more enduring than brass."
personally were redeemed from Egypt."
This transformation, this monumental creativity is part of the story
It is this admonition. repeated by us every year, as we recite the
Seder Haggadah, that contains the very essence of the great Festival of Passover, and Moses was the great architect in the emergence of the
of Freedom. It is a reminder that every generation must reassert its
People Israel in the era when freedom was proclaimed in so revolu-
libertarian principles, that each one of us must repeat the desire to be tionary a manner as represented in the Pesach festival. Even more
free, and in reiterating this wish and hope we give strength to the great impressive than Heine's was the tribute to Moses the Leader, and
moral force that is inherent in the craving for freedom for all mankind. through him to Hebraic idealism, by Henry George, who wrote:
Passover contains, therefore, its self-liberating elements. It is a
"The striking differences between Egyptian and Hebrew polity
constant reminder of the immorality of slavery, of the indecency of
are not of form but of essence. The tendency of the one is to sub-
persecution, of the obligation that rests upon all mankind to strive
ordination and oppression, of the other, to individual freedom.
for justice for themselves and fore their neighbors if they are not to be
Strangest of recorded births! from out the strongest and most splen-
individually submerged in oppression and enslavement.
did despotism of antiquity comes the freest republic. From between
the paws of the rock-hewn Sphinx rises the genius of human liberty,
Even apostates recognized the genius of Israel and the importance
and the trumpets of the Exodus throb with the defiant proclamation
of the Passover lesson to Israel and to mankind. Heinrich Heine, who
of the rights of man . . .
became a Christian but who remained nostalgically a Jew, writing about
"Moses the Artist," thus paid tribute to the genius of Israel and the
"This task, surpassingly great though it was, is not the measure
importance of Passover as expressed in the work of the great architect
of the greatness of the leader of the Exodus. It is not in the deliver-
of moral law, the Lawgiver Moses, who headed the cast of characters
ance from Egypt, it is in the constructive statesmanship that laid
in the glorious story of Passover:
the foundations of the Hebrew commonwealth that the superlative
grandeur of that leadership looms up. As we cannot imagine the
"Formerly I -felt little affection for Moses, probably because
Exodus without the great leader, neither can we account for the
the hellenic spirit was dominant within me, and I could not pardon
Hebrew polity without the great statesman—not merely intellectually
the Jewish Lawgiver for his intolerance of images, and every sort
great, but morally great — a statesman aglow with the unselfish
of plastic representation. I failed to see that -despite his hostile
patriotism that refuses to grasp a scepter or found a dynasty!'
attitude to art, Moses was himself a great artist, gifted with the
true artist's spirit. Only in him, as in his Egyptian neighbors, the
Such, indeed, are the great factors in the Passover, as it was
artistic spirit was exercised solely upon the colossal and the inde-
influenced by the Lawgiver Moses—that it represented an act of states-
manship out of Which emerged an independent Jewish nation, and out
structible. But, unlike the Egyptians, he did not shape his works
out of bricks and granite. His pyramids were built of men, his obe-
of which, more significantly, was created the great moral force
lisks hewn out of human material. A feeble race of shepherds he
symbolized by the Festival of Freedom, and the unselfish lesson it
transformed into a people bidding defiance to the centuries—a
contained for all mankind: that freedom is not for an individual but
great, eternal, holy people, God's people, an exemplar to all other
for the group, not for one people alone but for all mankind.
peoples, the prototype of mankind; he created Israel. With greater
This is the gift to mankind symbolized by Passover. In adherence
justice than the Roman poet could this artist, the son of Amram
to its majesty, we again extend greetings to all for a Happy Passover.
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