Purely
ommentary
C
Was It a Mere Insurrection?
Unless political capital will be made of the shocking
events that took place in Los Angeles, officialdom, on a
national and states' basis, must study the issue seriously
to prevent recurrence of the horrors that have created
fright in the hearts of Americans.
The Negroes who rioted, who pillaged and plundered,
who shot to kill and whose losses are far greater morally
than those whose stores were attacked, are our fellow-
Americans. We must look upon their youth who were
crazed by a desire to acquire possessions that are not
theirs (it couldn't have been the heat alone that drove
them to their insane actions), and their elders, as de-
luded members of our communities who have temporarily
entered on careers of crime.
The hope of the people of this country — of all of
us — is that this craze not only will subside, but that
the insaned will be cured.
Yet, there are aspects in the events of last week
that horrify, and it may take a much longer period to
remove the fear of the law-abiding lest crime should
persist than it will to heal the vast numbers of the sick
tolored folks who seem to. have been bent upon crime.
Los Angeles was not the first community thus to suffer:
there were Harlem, and Chicago„ and scores of other
communities. thus to be inflamed; there_ were scores of
other communities far removed from the Southern
sources of civil rights disabilities, who were affected; and
if such indiginities are to be heaped upon the whites in
areas where all efforts are being made to remove the
stigma of race hatred, there is danger of an undoing of
all the historic accomplishments of the last few years.
The race hate issue has many tributaries. Among
them is anti-Semitism. It was in evidence in Williamsburg
and in Harlem. It cropped up in Los Angeles. Dick
Schaap of the New York Herald Tribune reported from
Los Angeles that the police chief, William Parker, had
said it was not a race riot but "at least race hatred."
And then Schaap stated in his report:
"The man in there," a 21-year-old Negro had been
saying earlier, "he get a chance to kill you, mister, he
gonna kill you. Go dodge bullets, mister. It's time to
die. We been dying for you, for . the Jews and the
whites, now it's time for you. This is the land of milk
and honey if you got the blue eyes. We're tired of being
stepped on, mister. I mean Whitey get out of sight,
mister."
Where did these insane youngsters learn to link Jews
with their hatred, to speak about a milk-and-honeyed
land reserved for the blue-eyed while they order Whitey
around?
No other group has rendered as much service to the
cause of the Negro and in assuring our colored fellow-
-citizens their just rights. Yet, whenever and wherever
there is a riot, the looting is often in Jewish stores and
hatred is directed at Jews.
What's causing it? How can the problem be solved
and tragedy averted? A serious responsibility rests on
American leadership — and the major duty involves upon
Negro leaders themselves to find a way out of a situation
that has run out of hand. Dr. Martin Luther King will •
have justified his having received the Nobel Prize when
he and his associates succeed in taming the angry, in
teaching their young that you do not kill and rob fellow-
citizens. That's just the point: we are fellow-Americans
and there must never again recur any semblance of
gangsterism on the part of citizens against citizens.
It is heartening to know that there really was no
overt anti-Semitism in the Los Angeles riots, but the
looted stores were mainly Jewish-owned, and the fre-
quent taunts at Jews there do not entirely eliminate the
anti-Semitic angle.
President Johnson hit at the root of the problem when
he declared that we must "strike at the unjust conditions
from which disorder largely flows." A beginning has
been made. Civil rights laws are in effect. Now the
standards of the unfortunate masses of the Negroes must
be raised. They should be assured better housing, their
children should be trained for productive pursuits. In
the course of such progressive efforts, anything akin to
law-breaking should be condemned primarily by the
Negroes themselves. as their responsible leaders already
have done. In view of the experienced horrors, it is so
tragic that the Negro cause has been hurt by hoodlums in
their midst whose acts can never be condoned either by
whites or by Negroes. And it is additionally saddening that
what has happened in several American cities has given
anti-American ammunition to the Communist countries.
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A Problem of Derekh Eretz: Israel's More Than Ours
The first essential in good living is etiquette, the
possession of good manners. There is a great Jewish
tradition for the proper way of living and of dealing with
one's neighbors and fellow-men. It is called derekh eretz.
It is a principle related to established customs on the
highest levels and has been considered so important that
a tractate of the Talmud has been named Derekh Eretz.
Wherever a Jew may live, he is expected to display
derekh eretz. Yet. of all places, in Israel there has been
a show of a lack of such good manners.
The role of Tevye in the Hebrew version of "Fiddler
on the Roof," now being staged in Tel Aviv, is portrayed
by Bomba J. Zur. While the play has attracted wide in-
terest, it is reported that it has failed to become a triumph
because it lacks good taste and especially because the
man who portrays Tevye, the Sholom Aleichem character,
lacks inner feeling as a Jew, or at least as Jewishness
has been interpreted traditionally by the older generation
of Jews.
Reporting on the developments vis-a-vis the Tevye
2—Friday, August 20, 1965 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Terror in the Hearts of Men . . . Sabras
Problem for U. S. Jews . . • Myth
By Philip
Slomovitz
..,,.......Create
of Gold and the Rothschild
role, in last Sunday's New York Times, the well known
correspondent, Moshe Brilliant, quotes Zur as having
made the comment: "My Tevye doesn't groan, weep, wail
and sigh like a miserable Jew in the Diaspora. ..." Which,
although it is an irritating viewpoint, would not be so
bad if Zur had not made the additional statement in de-
fense of his interpretative skill, that, "Frankly, I have
more in common with the Arabs than with them." Who
are the them, these East European Jews? Brilliant's
report from Tel Aviv explains:
"Mr. Zur's interpretation of the part illustrates the
casualness of a typical Sabra to his Jewishness. It is
something he takes for granted; he feels no need to join
a temple or to perform any rituals to assert his identity.
By :kir. Zur's own account, he became conscious of his
Jewishness the first time in his life only a few years ago,
when he went to London to study drama.
"His breed of Israelis feels a strong emotional dis-
taste for bearded, black-hatted, kaftan-clad Jews who
cling grimly to the customs and costumes of the East
European ghettoes and who strive to preserve the com-
plexes and characteristics that Jews developed as an
oppressed minority in Russian, Polish or Slavic worlds.
Those outlandish figures are reminders of a period when
Jews were despised and humiliated. The generation
reared in happier, freer and more normal milieu feels
no affinity with them." •
Is that why a Zur or any other Sabra would have
more in common with Arabs than with their own flesh
and blood? It isn't the viewpoint on how Tevye is to be
interpreted that is at issue: that part of the controversy
could be settled. But it is the avowed dislike for the
East European background, the refusal on the part of
Israelis—we are grateful that it is only by some Israelis
—to take the slightest interest in past Jewish history,
especially that which relates to the ghetto, that causes
concern.
What these indifferent Israelis fail to realize is that
there was great heroism among the kaftan-clad, that they
often fought battles to protect their and their families'—
and their people's—honor. And by clinging to their faith
they will be recorded in mankind's history as having
displayed superb courage. They were among the uphold-
ers of. dignity, the defenders of their heritage, the pro-
tectors of the honor of the People Israel. They should
be treated with respect. But they aren't.
In his report to the New York Times, Moshe Brilliant
refers to Dr. Elimelech Rimalt, chairman of Israel's par-
liamentary education committee, who deplored the in-
difference of young Israelis about their East European
antecedents and told of efforts to encourage sabras to
be conscious of their historic roots. He said: "We must
do it to preserve an identification between Israelis and
Jews in the Diaspora. But we haven't found a solution."
There IS a way: by giving proper emphasis to the
history of our people in days of martyrdom as well as
those of heroism. This is a State duty. The govern-
ment's ministry of education must see to it that the
story of the People Israel should be all-inclusive. We
cannot, in one breath, protest against Germany's failure
to teach the new generation of Germans the history of
the Nazi era of horror and at the same time condone
the elimination of the vitally important historical eras
in Jewry from Israel's and world Jewry curricula. Per-
haps the Israeli teachers are yet to prove that they
are fully qualified to treat these historical facts prop-
erly. We must not judge Israel's children until such
requirements are put to the test.
Why hasn't the solution been found? American and
British and other Jewries go to extreme to assure defense
for Israel—economically, in diplomatic and other spheres.
Jewries everywhere would be ashamed to be intolerant
of fellow-Jews who year different garb, who pray in their
established fashion, who have their own customs—as long
as they are honest, God-fearing, self-respecting people.
That's just the point: before one can acquire respect
from others he must have self-respect. And what has
happened in Israel, as recorded in the Zur-Tevye inci-
dent, shows a lack of self-respect. It portrays bad man-
ners. It is a lack of derekh eretz. It undermines the spirit
of the partnership between Israel and world Jewries. A
duty devolves upon Israeli leadership much more than
on those in the Diaspora to exert all powers in its pos-
session to cure this illness which becomes another symp-
tom of self-hatred. Unless this problem is solved speedily,
the greatest good achieved through Israel's rebirth in
Landing Day Commemoration
of First U.S. Jews Planned
Dr. Leon J. Obermayer, president of the American
Jewish Historical Society, announced the celebration of
"Landing Day" on Thursday, Sept. 9. The occasion marks
the arrival of 23 Jews from Brazil to New Amsterdam
in early September, 1654, to establish the first permanent
Jewish settlement in the United States of America.
The clay will be marked by commemorative exercises
at the East Coast Memorial in Battery Park, New York, at
11:30 a.m. Addresses will be delivered by. Mayor Robert
F. Wagner, and by Dr. Miriam Freund, historian and
former president of Hadassah. Dr. Philip D. Sang of Chi-
cago, chairman of the society's executive council, will
preside and Dr. Max Schenk, president of the New York
Board of Rabbis, will deliver the invocation.
The exercises will be followed by a wreath-laying
ceremony at the flag-pole in Peter Minuit Plaza by Mrs.
Rudolph Baer, a descendant of the patriot minister of
of Cong. Shearith Israel of New York, the Rev. Gershom
Mendes Seixas; and a recently arrived "New American"
child.
The celebration of Landing Day is sponsored by the
American Jewish Historical Society.
Families
behalf of a unified Jewish people might be destroyed due
to poor taste and bad manners.
Some sabras have created a problem by their attitude
on the past as it relates to the ghetto. The Eichmann txial
Marked a temporary change in interests and sentiments.
We pray that it won't be necessary to experience other
trials to assure pragmatism in internal Jewish relations.
Whatever the situation may be, the strong links between
American and Israeli Jewries can not and will not be
severed because of the lack of realism on the part of
some vociferous few in Israel who lack derekh eretz.
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Names and Ideas . . . Rotchschilds and Gold
The late H. L. Mencken compiled an entire en-
cyclopedic work to show how foreign words have been
incorporated into the English languages. He wrote ex-
tensively to show how Yiddish and Hebrew words be-
came part of our common tongue, like meshuga, mezuma,
shlemihl, kibbitzing.
There are new approaches to the borrowing scheme.
Some are reasonable, some puzzling. For instance,
a local New University Thought magazine, in Its
current issue, carries an article entitled "Vietnam:
Bar Mitzvah of American intellectuals." The article
nothing to do either with a confirmation or - a Jewis.,
consecration or with anything Jewish. But if Bar Mitzvah
attracts, why not use the term?
When dealing with ideas and people, Jews are even
more in the limelight. Indeed, Jews always seem to be
news. So, a local analyst, in one of our daily newspapers,
describing the world gold situation and the setting of
the price on gold, entitled his article: "The RothschildS
and Gold." The article commenced: "Even more anxiously
than usual, the world has been watching lately the part-
ners' dining room of N. M. Rothschild and Sons in the
old city of London in the shadow of St. Paul's Cathedral."
The Rothschilds are not the only ones who participate
in setting the price of gold, but in the shadow of St. Paul's
Cathedral it is the Rothschild dining room that is em-
phasized in this story. Their role might be insignificant,
but they are in the limelight in our local newspaper.
Very often, all one needs to say is the "Rothschilds
and gold" to arouse suspicions, to create hatred, to fan
the flames of prejudice.
Historically, much could be linked with the name
Rothschild. It could well be said that the Rothschilds and
humanitarianism, the Rothschilds and science, the Roth-
schilds and art, etc., etc., portray the roles of the
Rothschild family in several lands. There have been
Rothschilds who were bird lovers. The Rothschilds aS-
sisted the needy. The Rothschilds did many things. They
were the financiers who enabled Great Britain to control
the Suez Canal until Nasser took over. They were able
to do these and many other things because of the wealth
they acquired as bankers.
But even as bankers they were not villains. They
were benefactors of many good causes.
The emphasis on gold inevitably creates a negative
feeling. The headline referred to over the otherwise
innocuous article may have been the work of a copy-
reader and the author of the analysis of the gold situation
may have had nothing to do with it. Either way, analyst
and copyreader were struck by the Rothschilds. What a
powerful name! And how many crimes and hatreds were
inspired by judging it! Because so often it is linked with
the battlecry "rich communist Zionist Jews." Such clever
connotations have been used by anti-Semites, by extrem-
ists involved in the race hate innuendos, by the propa-
gators of bigotry on many fronts.
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The Rabbi Who Seeks Political Office
New York is agog over the controversy created by a
Bronx rabbi who announced his candidacy for the State
Senatorship.
Calling politics "a duty," the rabbi justifies his cam-
paign by asserting his right "to serve our people."
Actually, the debate over this campaign arose be-
cause the rabbi will oppose the incumbent who is one
of his parishioners Apparently, there is an internal battle
involving the bosses.
Now the rabbi is the subject of animated discussions
in his neighborhood. There have been resignations from
his congregation in protest and the rabbi finally has said
that if elected he would give up his rabbinic post.
The issue at hand is whether a rabbi should becorne___L,
active in politics. The answer to which is, we believe, thr
if he has something to offer, if he is qualified, he shoe"
be acceptable. But he must prove that he possesses
necessary qualifications to hold public office. If his ca" - -----
didacy is based not on a spirit that motivated a Stephen
S. Wise to conduct public campaigns for or against
candidates who were either worthy or menacing, but
rather by selfishness, then he should be repudiated. - -
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Rabbi Stollman in an Aliyah Role
Rabbi Isaac Stollman is not a member of Ben-Gurion's
party, yet he has advocated Aliyah to Israel by those in
position to settle in the developing Jewish State. He has
not only advocated Aliyah: he practices it, as evidenced
his impending departure for settlement in the Holy
Land.
Rabbi Stollman will be missed here, but his exaMPT6
will inspire his many followers here who respect his senti-
ments and admire the courage with which he advocateS
traditional Jewish observance and adherence to the
Zionist cause.
All of us wish him well in his new role as a resident
of Israel. We shall no doubt have the benefit of his In-
spiring messages when he visits us again—as he surely
will—and Israel will certainly gain by acquiring so emin-
ent a settler.