THE JEWISH NEWS

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Incorporating the Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951

GUI LDIN4 INE JEWISH

COMMUNITY IN

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Member American Association of English—Jewish Ne.vspapers, 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 $6 a year. Foreign $7.
Second Class Postage Paid At Detroit, Michigan
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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

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CARM! M. SLOMOVITZ SIDNEY SHMARAK HARVEY ZUCKERBERG

Business Manager

Advertising Manager

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City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the twenty-ninth day of Heshvan, 5724, the following Scriptural selections
Will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion: Gen. 25:19-28.9. Prophetical portion: I Samuel 20:18-42.
Licht Benshen, Friday, Nov. 15, 4:53 p.m.

VOL. XLIV.

No. 12

Page Four

November 15, 1963

An End to Violence in Jerusalem

Israel's Prime Minister Levi Eshkol
deserves commendation for the firmness
with which he has insisted that his gov-
ernment "will not permit violence to rule
in the streets of Jerusalem."
Already working under handicaps be-
cause of the coalition that makes the
religious party a group seriously to be
contended with in Israel, due to cabinet
coalition condition, the Israeli govern-
ment has added problems resulting frOm
the traffic on the Sabbath at the Mandel-
baum Gate on the Jordanian border. Be-
cause it is also on the border of Mea
Shearim where the ultra-religious group
resides in Israel, the issue has become
even more desperately aggravated.
There were suggestions for the reset-
tlement of the 250 families living in that
area, but Rabbi Isaiah Sheinberger, a
leader of the Neturei .Karta, the extreme
element, replied: "The Arabs did not
drive us out and neither will Eshkol. Here
we have lived for five generations and
here we will stay."
In a sense, this is an amazing state-
ment, because the Neturei Karta are so
violently anti-Zionist that they are said
not to have recognized Israel. In that
sense they are like the Arabs.
*
*
*
But much more puzzling is the fact
that a group so religious as the Neturei
Karta, in its objections to the Sabbath
violations, in its own way condoned Sab-
bath-breaking by permitting stone-throw-
ing on the Sabbath at cars traveling
through their area, and by resorting to
violence in the course of registering pro-
tests against tourists and others, many of
whom were foreign emissaries who trav-
eled through the area on to Jordan by
way of the Mandelbaum Gate—the only
entrance to Jordan from Israel.
The Neturei Karta and others who
may have subscribed to their tactics were
not the only ones who created trouble.
There were counter-attacks by stick-carry-
ing demorstrators representing t h e
League for the Abolition of Religious
Coercion, and the Israeli Prime Minister
was correct in his condemnations both of
the extreme orthodox offenders of peace
and the truncheon-swinging abolitionists.

and at public gatherings, the attacks by
the demonstrators on the UJA and on
Zionist leadership, the swastika smearing
outrage, are indications both of a lack of
wisdom on the part of the protesting
groups and a failure on the part of their
leaders to differentiate between common
decency and their blind piety. It is one
thing to plead for sanctity for the Sabbath
and for Jewish traditions, and an entirely
different matter to incite to riot and to
ask Jews to abandon their kinsmen by
hurling false charges against the UJA
and Zionism.
It may become more difficult to com-
plain about young swastika-smearing Ger-
mans when our own deluded youth resort
to such disgraceful tactics. The abuses to
which our American Jewish extremists
resorted to hardly aid their cause. It be-
comes a lost cause for them.
Apparently there were more misguided
zealots in New York than there were in
Jerusalem. In both instances there must
be a return to reason and a resumption
of normal negotiations for amicable liv-
ing. Abnormality as expressed in violence
is harmful to our entire people and must
never be condoned.

The YES Vote

Because we shall no doubt face the
issue again and again, we must take into
account seriously the factors that were
involved in the special election last week
on the school millage tax.
Deplorable obstacles have been placed
in the path of our educators. Restricted
by lack of funds, there has been a reduc-
tion in the standards of our teaching
system and school affairs have been
reduced.
Instead of encouraging our young
people to enter the teaching profes-
sion, the emerging difficulties and the
indifference, that dominated the think-
ing of many of our citizens served to
drive many of them out of our school
system, and a number of veterans on
our teaching staffs left for other
callings.
It is a source of deep regret that our
population had not learned the full sig-
It is most unfortunate that this issue nificance of the call for a voluntary ac-
should have arisen. Extremism is never ceptance of a tax for the advancement of
helpful, and resort to violence does not our school system. It took a great deal of
contribute to amity. Sabbath observance campaigning at last to induce Detroiters
is not elevated to the high degree of to provide a majority vote in favor of the
spirituality it merits by stone-throwing, continuation of the millage.
and defense of the right of those who
Now there are new rumors: "It was
refuse to be coerced does not acquire only the beginning and we'll be asked
dignity by resort to the same tactics as for more and more," the panic-creators
those who may be doing the coercing.
are saying in order to stir up suspicions.
To Israel's credit let it be said that
Let it be understood: once we weaken
there are moderates in all ranks, that re- our school system, we approach suicidal
sponsible religious leaders as well as stages for our communal structure. If
government officials seek a solution there is to be improvement in the rela-
through rational approaches. Apparently tionships among all elements of our
the road to the Mandelbaum Gate can people, it must be attained through a
not be shut, and those residing in that high-leveled scholastic approach. Once . we
area can not be moved. Therefore, what- reduce our schools to the barest minimum
ever the compromise proposed by the of instruction, we strike a blow at our
Sephardic Chief Rabbi, Israel's honor will very security.
not be besmirched much longer. The Is-
So — •let us, while acclaiming the
raelis are on the road to finding a proper proper vote at last week's election, also
solution to a sadly-aggravated problem join in admonishing our people that if
created by instigators of violence who and when there will be need for more
stand condemned no matter what quarter taxes for our schools, it should be consid-
they may hail from.
ered the first and the major obligation
of all serious minded citizens. Good
The extension of protests to New schools can give us good citizens; a weak-
York, the demonstrations that were con- ened educational system will mean a
ducted in front of the Israel Consulate weakening of our democratic standards.

'Time of Arrival'

Essays by Dan Jacobson

Dan Jacobson is one of the most brilliant of the South African
young Jewish writers, most of whom have settled in England,
especially since the increase in racial tensions there and the
resulting battles over apartheid.
Jacobson's "The Price of Diamonds," "The Evidence of Love,"
"A Dance in the Sun" and other works have attracted wide atten-
tion. His newest work, a collection of essays, has just been pub-
lished by Macmillan under the title "Time of Arrival." There is
such a wide variety of material in this collection, devoted to the
race issue, to Israel and Zionism, to writers and writing, that
"Time of Arrival" emerges at once as one of Jacobson's truly
impressive works.

Four of the essays deal with the South African problem,
and there is an additional article, "James Baldwin and the
American Negro," dedicated to the race issue.

The young author is confident. "Whatever way the country
goes," he writes about his native South Africa, "it will not, in
the end, go the way the Afrikaner Nationalists want it to go.
People hear much of the crises in South Africa; they do not hear
of the indifference there is in South Africa, the lethargy, the
greed. But as surely as the forces of enlightenment, compassion
and justice, these human failings or weaknesses, too, are working
against the goverrunent. And this should cause us no surprise.
To deny full humanity to others is to make the attempt to deny
it—in all its strengths and weaknesses—to oneself. Proudly,
boastfully, the attempt is being made in South Africa, as it has
been made a thousand times before in a thousand different places;
miserably, squalidly, painfully, it is going to fail, as it always
failed before."
In relation to the Jews in South Africa, Jacobson asserts that
"successive Nationalist Governments, including Dr. Verwoerd's,
have tried to be scrupulously correct in their attitude towards the
South African Jewish community."
. There is an interesting evaluation of the minds of the Afri•
kaner Nationalists who, according to Jacobson, "compared with
the Nazis of Germany, or the Stalinists of Russia . . . are mere
beginners, bunglers, lazybones, lovers of the easy life . . ."

One of Jacobson's essays is devoted to "The Great man:
A Memoir of Jabotinsky," in which the Revisionist Zionist
leader, Vladimir Jabotinsky visited in his parents' home in
Kimberley. It is an interesting character study in which
Jacobson points out that "the worst that Jabotinsky had
prophesied for Europe had come about; the wars he had
anticipated in Palestine had been fought—and won. The
State, for whose realization he had expended his life, was in
existence . . ."

His description of the Zion he revisited is, in the main, a
tribute to Israel and to the Israelis about whom he declares: 'The
wonder is not merely that in spite of the population having tripled
within the last ten years living conditions are now so much less
harsh than they were; nor merely that in spite of the unabated
hostility of the Arab world there is much greater confidence
than ever before that Israel will survive, and survive in strength;
nor merely that as a result of the greater physical comfort and
greater security, the manners of the people have so much im-
proved, have become so much more relaxed and casual that it is
compartively (though not absolutely) pleasurable to drive in a
car down Allenby Street—the wonder is something of which these
are all parts, and yet that is greater than any single one of them.
What most arouses one's wonder is the sense one has of a constant,
unending struggle in Israel to keep up standards, and even more,
to find out what the best standards for the country really are."
The essay on Franz Kafka ("A Voice from the Burrow") and
Kafka's "Jewishness" is among the especially interesting portions
of this book. The essays about novels and writers are impressive.
There is a personal note in the opening essay, "Time of Arrival":•
"In England, it became clear to me that, through England,
I wanted to escape from the ironies, ambiguities and humiliations
of my own position as a Jew, as a white South African, as a
`colonial,' as a young man who didn't know what to do with his
life."
The positive attainment in his aspirations is evident, but
the background is never overlooked or forgotten, as in the des-
cription of the Mosleyites' demonstrations against Jews in London,
the evaluation of the London East End, the Yiddish language and
the merchandising of ceremonial objects.
"Time of Arrival" enhances Jacobson's works. It is a creditable
collection of essays.