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. • • • PHILIP SLOMOVITZ Editor and Publisher CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ Business Manager SIDNEY SHMARAK Advertising Manager HARVEY ZUCKERBERG City Editor • • • 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. jl