THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English—Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Associations, National
Editorial Association
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mile Road, Detroit 35,
Mich., VE 8-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign $7.
Second Class Postage Paid At Detroit, Michigan
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
Illegillah's Lesson Eternal
Now it came to pass in the Z)o.ss of Ahasuerus-
scox Of CMER)
SIDNEY SHMARAK CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ HARVEY ZUCKERBERG
Advertising Manager
Business Manager
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the thirteenth day of Adar, the following Scriptural selections will be read in
our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion; Tezawweh, Zakhor; Exod. 27:20-30:10, Deut. 25:17-19. Prophetical
portion, I Samuel 15:2-34, I Samuel 15:1-34.
Licht benshen, Friday, March 8, 6:12 p.m.
VOL. XLIII No. 2
Page Four
March 8, 1963
Happy Purim --- Festival's Lessons
Masquerading and revelry, home and
synagogue parties, are on this week-end's
agenda for Jews throughout the world.
Purim offers an opportunity for hilar-
ity, and this happy festival is the only
occasion on which the synagogue sanctu-
aries are used for children and adults to
let loose their innermost emotions for
expressions of their Jewish pride in an
accounting of an historical period during
which anti-Semitism was conquered.
While the story of Esther and of Mor-
decai and their defiance of Haman,
whose evil decrees for the destruction of
the Jewish community of Persia was
thwarted, has turned the festival into a
great demonstration by children, it also
has inspired their elders who have gained
courage from it to carry on the constantly
recurring struggles against anti-Semitism.
There is considerable talk right now
about the i n c r ease of anti-Semitism,
especially on our own continent. While
taking the admonitions against the re-
currence of anti-Semitism most seriously,
we gain confidence from the lesson of
Purim that the hatreds on which bigots
bask will be overcome and their threats
will be defied.
Persia is a typical example of Jewish
defiance of dangers from anti-Semitism.
It was in the land Persia that Ahasuerus
was induced to reverse an earlier ruling,
secured by the anti-Semite Haman, to
destroy the Jews. Now, in the midst of a
most regrettable struggle between Israel
and her Arab neighbors, Persia—modern
Iran— is one of two states in the Middle
East to thwart the combined Arabic
pressures to continue friendly relations
with the Jewish State. A third, Cyprus,
now is following their example.
Part of the lesson of Purim is never
to lose faith in the ultimate triumph of A Thought-Provoking Book
justice and decency. That • is why this
festival provides so much joy in our com-
munity. That is why there will be a whole
"lelayim" this week-end — on the one
festival on our calendar when the bars are
down, when toasts are made and when the
synagogue shares in revelry.
Goodman's 'The Community of
Scholars' Challenges College
System of the Current Time
School Millage Plan Must Be Supported
No other problem facing the Ameri-
can people in the present era of turmoil
and uncertainties is as serious as that
involving our school system. The need
for more and better-trained teachers, for
adequate school buildings and for well-
planned curricula - is so vast that it must
be viewed as the first on the agenda of
improving community functions.
One would imagine, in view of the
great obligations we owe our children,
that any plan for the improvement of our
schools, no matter how large the expense
to be incurred, would be accepted and
encouraged. Yet, the grumbling that is
heard over an involved tax increase in
the proposals for a new school millage
and the fear that is entertained in some
quarters because the passing of the pro-
posed school recommendations at the
April 1 election will involve new finan-
cial obligations to the voters, is little less
than frightening.
When the welfare of the country is
involved, in the preparation of our youth
for good citizenship, there ought to be no
hesitation in assuming duties to our
schools. It is imperative, therefore, that
between now and April 1 a tireless cam-
paign should be conducted to educate
the Detroit voters to their duties to their
school system.
The School Tax Limitation Proposi-
tion to be placed on the April 1 ballot
calls for an increase in taxes to be levied
for a five-year period, 1964-1968, by 1.28
per cent—boosting the tax, per thousand
property valuation, from $7.50 to $12.80.
This will include:
1. Continued op e r at i on of the
school system at the present level;
2. Provision for a conservative
estimate of school enrollment;
3. Salary commitments;
4. An annual 2 percent increase in
cost of services;
5. Improvements in educational
services.
These are minimal requirements and
should be viewed as such, and therefore
should be accepted as elementary duties
of citizens to their communities.
The April 1 millage proposal does
not include provision of funds for build-
ing construction, and therefore there will
be on the ballot a bonding proposition for
a $90,000,000 building expenditure for
buildingS and sites. This, too, is urgent
and should be adopted without hesitation.
The most recent analyses of school
needs and rising obligations have been
given in reports to the Detroit Board of
Education as follows:
1. Enrollments can be expected to
increase. The least amount of increase
might be up to 295,500, if out-migration
is at 2%, and other conditions remain
as at present. Out-migration is slowing
down. The new requirement to add
"trainable" pupils under a new State
law will increase enrollment. Drop-
outs are decreasing. Enrollment may
well exceed the 204,400 projected if
out-migration and in-migration bal-
ance, in which case the estimates are
too low.
2. Taxable valuation is anticipated
to level off at about $5 billion, and
State aid funds to continue under the
present formula.
3. Allowance is needed for contin-
uing present salary schedule commit-
ments, for an annual amount for re-
placing boilers, roofs, lighting, other
equipment and adding to inadequate
sites, and the 2% recognized by the
Citizens Advisory Committee as a reas-
onable annual expected cost increase.
4. To carry forward approved ma-
jor recommendations of the Citizens
Advisory Committees for improvement
of the Detroit schools as has been esti-
mated would require in the neighbor-
hood of $26 million annually.
There are, in our community, many
who are being misled by the effects a
very slight increase in expenses may have
on their personal financial status to in-
duce them to oppose the schools' pro-
posals. There are others who, being
childless, do not recognize the fact that
an improved school system is vital not
for parents and their children alone but
for the community as a whole.
All the estimates presented by the
Detroit Board of Education, both on school
needs and the requirements for new
buildings, are conservative. It is impera-
tive that a degree of understanding of
the seriousness of the existing situation
should be attained, and a duty revolves
upon every citizen to enlighten his neigh-
bor relative to the pressing needs, so that
all may go to the polls on April 1, over-
whelmingly to adopt the schools' millage
and building propositions.
Paul Goodman, the peer among America's social critics, has
made a most profound study of American colleges in "The Com-
munity of Scholars," published by Random House. It is a critique
that challenges the educational leaders of our time.
This study delves into every aspect of college education —
curricula, management, academic personalities; the pay of profes-
sors, and various other matters related to the serious issue so
well tackled by the brilliant analyst. •
"The university, the studium generale," Goodman declares,
"is the appropriable city . . . A city culture is a mixture of
clashing influences, foreigners from all parts. The objective culture
that we have inherited is by now total confusion; and certainly
there is too much of it for anybody to cope with. As if this were
not bad enough, the young are kept from learning, by rules, task-
work, and extraneous distractions. They have no conversation and
they meet no veterans. Nevertheless, there is no other way for
them to grow up to be free citizens, to commence, except by
discovering, in an earnest moment, that some portion of the
objective culture is after all natively their own; it is usable by
them; it is humane, comprehensible and practicable, and it com-
municates with everything else. The discovery flashes with spirit."
*
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*
Goodman emphasizes that "education can be regarded as
socialization, to make the young conform harmoniously to society
— and this can be a base or noble purpose, depending on the
quality of society. Or it may be regarded as the effort to perfect
people as such, perhaps giving them defenses against the existing,
or any, society, in the interest of liberty. But the Western univer-
sity rather regards society itself as a drama of persons, in which
the educated understand the play and so can invent a new play.
Liberty is, essentially, the exercise of initiative in a mixed City."
Commenting on how "the growing social animals become free
citizens . . grow into a way rational to themselves . . . have
taken on the civilization; are responsible for it . . . are no longer
simple social animals confronting God and the other people," Good-
man, in a footnote, repeats this anecdote of Buber's:
"An Eastern sage and a Western sage are climbing a
mountain. But the Western sage is carrying a heavy box, drops
it, falls backward, shoUlders it again, struggles on. The Easterner
easily races ahead to the top and is soon on his way down.
`Why don't you throw away that box?' he says to the other,
`then you could easily get up.' But what,' says the Westerner,
`if I have to get to the top just with My box? Otherwise it is
nothing to me'."
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*
Goodman further comments: "By and large, we have to say
that the city culture of the West is both moral and technical,
personal and collective." Yet, he adds, , "the principle of the
studium generale is that civilization has been a continual gift of
the Creator Spirit; it consists of inventions, discoveries, insights,
art works, highly theorized institutions, methods of workmanship.
All of this has vastly accumulated over the ages and become very
unwieldy, yet, in the spirit, it is always appropriable. . . It is by
losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft,
that a man becomes something. It is as if a man 'makes himself,'
but of course it is the spirit that makes him. On the other hand,
he need not be submerged in the civilization that he inherits, that
others made, for if he studies it he will surely find himself there;
it is his."
Thus, the challenge to the college educators, nay, to the com-
munity. Goodman's is thought-provoking book. It should stir
debate and result in social advancement. It is a work- that adds
glory to an already glorious name of an eminent thinker and
scholar.