THE JEWISH NEWS Bookends C\ 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 48235 Mich., VE 8-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign $7. Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit, Michigan PHILIP SLOMOVITZ Editor and Publisher CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ Business Manager SIDNEY SHMARAK Advertising Manager CHARLOTTE RYAMS City Editor Sabbath Scriptural Selections This Sabbath, the twenty - third day of Av, 5724, the following Scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues. Pentateuchal portion: Deut. 7-12-11:35. Prophetical portion: Isaiah 49:14-51-3. Licht benshen, Friday, July 31, 7:34 p.m. VOL. XLV. No. 23 Page Four July 31, 1964 USSR's Most Dangerous Form of Racialism In this era of troubling situations created by racist issues in this country, in South Africa and in Russia, it is especially disturbing to be told by the International Commission of Jurists, who met earlier this month in Geneva, that "anti-Semitism repre- sents the most dangerous form of racialism in the world." Jewish issues generally are being ig- nored at present, when the color problem has become such a vital matter of concern— one that disrupts the thinking of the citizens of this land and creates such serious reper- cussions in South Africa. The jurists, repre- senting many lands, finding it necessary to warn of the dangers that are menacing the Jews in the Soviet Union, calls attention anew to one of the most serious threats to the largest portion of European Jewry. In a lengthy report on "Religion in the Soviet Union," George Bailey, the corre- spondent of Reporter Magazine, had this to say, describing his findings on the situation affecting the Jews of Russia: In some of the recent economic trials, the role of the scapegoat has been refined to a remarkable degree. On the evidence provided by Soviet reporting of the trials, close to sixty per cent of those sentenced to death in the Soviet Union as a whole (ninety per cent in the Ukraine) are Jews. The discrepancy between these percentages and the 1.09 per cent of the total population of the Soviet Union made up of Jews (two per cent in the Ukraine) has caused a considerable stir in the Soviet Union and some concern abroad. Most of the Jewish defendants have been charged with the manufacture of goods without proper authorization. Although in comparatively lowly positions, the Jews were apparently able to entice and enthrall large numbers of key officials ("With the aid of large bribes, they drew unstable and morally decadent people into their criminal orbit"). In singling out the Jew as a prime target, the Soviet press continually stresses his "giving bribes to spiritual brethren," his "characteristic sins," "the well-known fact that Jews will go to any length in order to help their kind." Groups of Jews are identified as "compatriots" or "co-religionists" of defendants and the lot are branded "members of an alien world.' The impression is given that the Soviets have finally managed to isolate and identify the virus of free enterprise in its purest and most dangerous form. The concerted anti-Semitic campaign in the Soviet Union is always —directly or indirectly— connected with the Jew's religion, and the drive against the Jews is the spearhead of the general drive to destroy the Judeo-Christian ethic. Soviet Communists regard the Jew as the religious archetype, Judaism as the primordial religion. For Communists, the concept of race in any discriminatory sense is doctrinally taboo—hence the Soviet government's enraged protest that it cannot be accused of anti-Semitism. But Judaism is the only major religion exclusively identified with a people. The relationship between Judaism, Jewish culture, and even Jewish "consciousness" is integral. The Torah and the Talmud are the canonized ethnic history of the Jews. In short, the Jew's religion is hN identity. For this reason it would be impossible to foster a heresy within Judaism or to control "Soviet Judaism" as a front against the rest of world Jewry. Moscow might conceivably become the New Byzantium but it could never possibly become the New Jerusalem. Consequently, not one Jewish re- ligious official has ever been allowed to travel outside the Soviet Union. In the 1920s and 1930s Jewish institutions were allowed to flourish to a certain degree because Russian Jewry included an intellectual and professional elite essential to the Soviet consolidation effort. But in 1948 the considerable array of Yiddish schools, newspapers, publishing houses, repertory theaters, dramatic schools and research institutes was liquidated at one blow. The only Yiddish publication in the Soviet Union in addition to the magazine Sovietish Heimland is a newspaper called Birobidzhan Shtern which appears thrice weekly and has a circulation of exactly one thousand. These two publications "serve" a community numbering almost half a million native Yiddish speakers and two and a quarter million who voluntarily registered their nationality as Jewish in. the Soviet census of 1959. The Sidi Tal theater group has no theater of its own and is made up of aging Jewish artists who occasionally give "guest performances." There is nothing else. There are now only five officiating rabbis left in the Soviet Union. All are over seventy, one is over eighty. The student body of the only Jewish seminary, the Moscow Yeshiva, which was opened as a sop to foreign public opinion in 1957 and once boasted fourteen students, has been reduced to what was described to me as "one and one half students," the "half student" being so described "because he is only half there." A few years ago eight students were denied resident permits for Moscow. Four other students were simply "dissuaded" from attending the seminary. "This campaign has been carefully calculated by the Soviet authorities." a Jew told me as we walked in a Moscow park. Summarizing his findings, the Reporter correspondent branded the "class enemy" anti-religious campaign in the USSR "a con- cept that fulfills the same function in a Com- munist system as 'race enemy' did for the Nazis." It would be sheer folly to ignore these facts, regardless of the repeated denials made by Soviet spokesmen that there is an organized anti-Semitic movement in the USSR. The fact remains that Jews are dis- criminated against in the Soviet Union, that they are deprived of their cultural rights, that, unlike other groups of Russians, the Jews have been prevented from publishing daily newspapers on a scale comparable to pre-Stalinist days, a n d Hebrew has been branded with Zionism as a foreign ideology. The fact remains also that Khrushchev's policies have encouraged anti-Jewish propa- gandists in Arab countries. When N. S. Khrushchev spoke in Cairo, addressing: "Dear Friend, President Gamal Abdel Nas- ser: Esteemed President of the National Assembly Anwar Sadat: Esteemed Depu- ties, Friends" (this is taken from official Soviet Documents, abridged by Novosti Press Agency, issued to all Soviet papers, May 12, 1964), his only reference to Israel was in this paragraph: "The Soviet Union supports the just demands M the Arab countries and the entire Arab people on the need for Israel to fulfill the United Nations resolution regarding Arab Palestinian refugees. We support the just demands of the Arab states in connection with the imperialist plans of Israel to use the waters of the River Jordan to the detriment of the rights of the Arabs using these waters." The facts regarding these accusations have been definitely established, both at the UN and in Washington. Yet this brief in- citement against Israel was the most widely circulated portion of Khrushchev's Cairo speech. It is an indication of the readiness of Khrushchev to be used as a tool against Jewry and the eagerness of Nasser and his cohorts to utilize every manifestation of anti-Semitism for their purposes. The official Soviet document containing the joint Khrushchev-Nasser statement on their conferences in Cairo contains a para- graph somewhat longer than the one just quoted, but including the similar assertions regarding Israel. While there now are re- ports of a "disenchantment between the USSR-UAR leaders, their attitudes remain menacing and they especially tend to under- mine efforts for peace in the Middle East. That's how the Russian scheme works— within Russia, among the Arabs, wherever propaganda can be utilized. And the em- phasis, often out of context, is placed as an onus upon Jewry. It is from the Kremlin's rulers that the troubles emanate today, and it is a source of great concern that "anti-Semitism repre- sents the most dangerous form of racialism in the world." 01A Friedman's Critical Critical Anthology: i 'The Worlds of Existent alism' Seldom has existentialism been as clearly defined and as well illustrated as in the new critical reader, "The Worlds of Existentialism," edited by the eminent authority on Martin Buber's works, Dr. Maurice Friedman, professor of philosophy at Sarah Lawrence College. This monumental work, published by Random House, contains an anthology rep- resenting many fields in which existential- ism is reflected. Religion and psychoan- alysis, philosophy and the social sciences are drawn upon, and the authors upon whom the editor has drawn are from all ages, all nations. At the outset, in his scholarly intro- duction, Prof. Friedman explains that exist- entialism "is not a philosophy but a mood embracing a number of disparate philoso- phies" and that "the differences among them are more basic than the temper which unites them." He describes the tem- Prof. Friedman per as "a reaction against the static, the abstract, the purely rational, the merely irrational, in favor of the dynamic and the concrete, personal involvement and 'engagement,' action, choice and commitment, the distinction between 'authentic' and 'inauthentic' existence, and the actual situation of the existential subject as the starting point of thought." Prof. Friedman views as only a half truth the contention of Walter Kaufman that "religion has always been existentialist," and he maintains: "Religion has never been simply a detached observation of reality for its own sake. Rather it has always been a way of life, a way of man. It has always stood in need, therefore, of existential verification in the lived life of man." He explains: "The root of 'existentialism' is, of course, 'existence.' That might seem to include just about everything, and by the same token to say nothing, were it not for the traditions in the history of religion and the history of philosophy which have tended to look away from the 'passing flux' of existence to a - realmof true 'Being,' unchanging and eternal, a world of ideal essences or a formless absolute beyond these essences, in comparison with which the particulars of our earthly life are seen as merely phenomena The forerunners in Prof. Friedman's sources are the Old Ti" . ment, the Psalms, the Prophets, as well as the New Testament. Dr. Friedman makes much use of Hasidism, of Hasidic sayings and fables, and quoting from the Masters he resorts to the wisdom of Rabbi Hanokh, Rabbi Uri, Rabbi Yitzhak Eisik, Rabbi Zusya and others. For example, on the subject of "Give and Take," we read: "Rabbi Yitzhak Eisik said, 'The motto of life is "Give and take." Everyone must be both a giver and a receiver. He who is not both is as a barren tree.' " The scholars and philosophers in this anthology include Paul Tillich, Franz Kafka, Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, Karl Marx, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche and many others. In his conclusions Dr. Friedman evaluates some of the quoted works, probes into the relation of an ex-Nazi like Martin Heidegger to the philosophy he expounded and his later thought about Being. "What concerns us here," Dr. Friedman states, "is not the ques- tion of whether Heidegger was an active Nazi—a fact established and well-known, if not always understood in its full range—but whether Heidegger's political activities have no bearing on the meaning and value of his philosophy . . We are not concerned with Heidegger's Nazi activities in themselves but whether there is any integral relation between them and his philosophy which casts further light on the meaning and implications of that philosophy." The works of the other quoted philosphers are analyzed in the study of the issues, and the noted editor and compiler of this work states: Despite all confusions and impreciseness ... existentialism has an, important continuing place in the philosophy and culture of our time. It offers modern man methods and subjects of 'existential illumination' which are notably absent in those schools of modern philsophy that have from the outset excluded existential knowledge and the whole- ness of man from their concern." The evaluations of a former Nazi, the works of Buber, the views of philosophers of all ages are vital factors of this valuable collection which has been edited and commented upon so knowledgeably by the distinguished editor. C- - Nk