THE JEWISH NEWS
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, Mich. 48235.
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 HYAMS
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the sixth day of Av, 5726, the following scriptural selections will
be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Deut. 1:1-3:22; Prophetical portion, Isaiah 1:1-27.
Licht Benshen, Friday, July 22, 7:43 p.m.
VOL. XLIX No. 22
Page 4
July 22, 1966
U. S. Jewry's Teaching Shortage Problem
An important statement made recently
by Dr. Alvin I. Schiff, associate professor of
the department of religious education at the
Ferkauf Graduate School of Education of
Yeshiva University in New York, pointed to
the need annually of 900 new teachers in
American Jewish schools and to the difficul-
ties to enlist interested trainees for such
positions.
The need for Jewish teachers is so press-
ing, the problem is so urgently in need of
solution, that Dr. Schiff's views must be
viewed with great concern.
It was pointed out by the Yeshiva Univer-
sity professor that while, during the past
decade, colleges that are training Hebrew
teachers have graduated yearly between 100
and 150 young people who qualify for certi-
fication by the National Board of License,
or by recognized local certification agencies,
only between 10 to 15 per cent of the gradu-
ates have become career teachers.
Taking into account the 150 or 200 or-
dained rabbis from yeshivot gedolot — the
Orthodox rabbinical seminaries — many of
whom go into teaching — Dr. Schiff stated:
"Simple arithmetic shows that, according to
the most optimistic estimate, there is an
annual deficit of at least 500 teachers."
A survey that was conducted by Dr. Alex-
ander Dushkin estimated that there are
approximately 19,000 Jewish teaching posts
in this country — of these 6,500 being in
afternoon schools and 3,000 in Hebrew Day
Schools. But a statement that had been made
by the American Association for Jewish Edu-
cation to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that
there are 13,000 licensed and unlicensed
Jewish teachers in the United States and
Canada was called an "educated guess" by
Prof. Schiff.
Identifying the variety of "recruits" for
teaching posts - in Jewish schools, Dr. Schiff
listed the following categories:
(a) the American version of the lo yutzlah
(Hebrew for unsuccessful);
(b) the enterprising young person with some
Judaic knowledge eager to supplement his income;
(c) public school teachers with varying degrees
of Jewish education;
(d) young people with Hebrew background
desiring a modest income while they prepare for
more lucrative and more intellectually satisfy-
ing experiences;
(e) young girls with some Hebraic knowl-
edge biding their time before marriage; and
(f) young religious men with intensive emo-
tional attachments to Judaism and equally strong
traditional Jewish background, who are not pro-
fessionally trained to do anything else, and to
whom teaching is a kind of "path of least voca-
tional resistance."
Because of this mounting problem, prin-
cipals of Jewish schools have been sent to
Israel to engage teachers for brief periods,
blit Dr. Schiff states that "this procedure
accounts for 20 teachers a year."
It may even be questionable whether
Israeli teachers always fit into an American
Jewish school environment, and the fact must
also be taken into account that Israel, too,
suffers from a teacher shortage.
The Yeshiva University educator main-
tains that the reason for the lack of success
in enrolling trainees for Jewish teaching
roles is "the shortage of inspired young
people in the Hebrew high schools" and a
similar shortage of "inspired students in the
teacher training schools. ' He maintains that
the vast drop-out rate in Hebrew teacher
colleges — given as 30 to 43 per cent in
1957-58 by the American Association for
Jewish Education's national committee on
teacher education and welfare — "is a rather
conservative estimate."
Is there a solution to this problem? Dr.
Schiff suggests a "crash program to reclaim
the unqualified" — the recruiting of young
people for retraining; the broadening of the
base of teacher recruitment; "in-service"
courses to be conducted with the cooperation
As the chief spokesman for the United States in the annals of
of national religious movements and the the nations
of the world, Arthur J. Goldberg has gained a place of
Jewish Agen6y, - together with local bureaus, glory, and his utterances are of great value in the consideration of the
"supported by. a special fund set up for this happenings that affect all mankind.
purpose." Dr. Schiff emphasized:
He is already on record as -having expressed views on world con-
'Defenses of Freedom' Contains
Arthur Goldberg's Public Papers
What is needed are drastic, shocking changes
in the attractiveness of the Hebrew teaching pro-
- fession—a long-range national program for the
enhancing of teacher status and for the raising
and equalizing of teacher salaries.
If a measure of success can be achieved,
nothing can possibly be too drastic, and it is
immaterial whether it is shocking. Dr. Schiff
is right in stating that "any recommendations
will remain academic unless firm measures
are taken to implement them." He is no doubt
right in asserting that "the Hebrew teacher
college must become a professional school."
His advice that teacher colleges produce
"teacher-scholars" also must be taken ser-
iously.
Defining the role of teacher training
schools, Dr. Schiff maintains:
If the Hebrew Teachers Colleges are to as-
sume a new leadership role in the Jewish educa-
tional community—and they must assume leader-
ship responsibility for the theory and practice of
Jewish education—then they must be equipped to
do so. The first stop in this direction is the estab-
lishment of full-scale departments of education
manned by full-time educational professionals in
each of our teacher training establishments. In
cities which have such schools, in-service programs
should be their responsibility and under their
sponsorship with the assistance and support of the
bureaus.
Efforts for implementation of such a pro-
gram are being made in some communities,
including Detroit's Midrasha. Whether or not
they are proving successful should be ascer-
tained by proper research into the results of
the courses offered in various communities,
and all means should be taken to assure the
success of teacher training programs. The
teacher shortage, as well as the inadequacies,
are too challenging to be left untapped. No
matter what the cost, American Jewish com-
munities should set out to solve this grave
problem.
Birchers Adopt the Anti-Semitic Patterns
Robert Welch and his associates in the
John Birch Society have repeatedly main-
tained that their movement is not anti-
'•Semitic. But at a three-day rally in Boston,
at which- the vilest anti-Semitic speeches were
delivered by leaders in the society, Welch
himself, the founder of the society which is
among the major factors in the rightist move-
ment, was present.
There were shocking diatribes against
Jews and a spokesman for the John Birch
Society even reiterated the Nazi defense that
"it is a lie that the Nazis killed 6,000,000
Jews."
This is how history is being distorted, and
the appeal to hatred seems to be growing
rather than diminishing.
Another shocking, even if ridiculous
charge, made by the Birchers' spokesman was
that political activity on American university
campuses is caused by the use of the drug
LSD "which is imported from Israel." It
would undoubtedly be useless to argue with
the anti-Semites and to prove to them that
LSD is a native American product and that
the only country whence it is being otherwise
imported is Italy._
Is it possible that the anti-Jewish venom
is increasing in this country? It certainly is
not diminishing, and the spread of it in Har-
lem and Watts, as part of the Negro anti-
Semitism, certainly adds to the anxieties that
are occasioned by the growth of hatreds in
this country.
ditions that affect the destinies of nations. And he had authored briefs
influencing the law of our land, during his service as a member of the
United States Supreme Court, that will go down on record as profound
declarations in matters like civil rights, separation of church and state,
education for freedom, labor and law and other issues involved in
human rights.
In "The Defenses of Freedom—The Public Papers of Arthur J.
Goldberg," edited by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, published by Harper
and Row, the major expressions by the chief U. S. delegate to the
United Nations have been gathered with skill and with a deep apprecia-
tion of the eminent statesman's views on scores of challenging issues.
,
"In his career Arthur Goldberg has been first of all a lawyer,
only thereafter an advocate," Moynihan states in his introduction
in which he shows that in the contents of this collection of Gold-
berg's declarations "certain themes continually appear: the neces-
sity for laws, the importance of procedure, the demands of justice,
the quest for equality, the interdependence of public and private
effort."
Goldberg's speech on "Peace in Freedom," in the section "Freedom
Under Law," delivered before the Overseas Press Club last September,
is an appropriate commencing public utterance with which the editor
starts the collected papers.
It is followed by the text of the address on "Human Rights and
Social Pressures" he delivered in New York at a meeting of the
American Jewish Committee; another on "Coercion of Freedom," at
Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, and
a third also in New York, before the American Jewish Congress, on
"The Achievement of Equality."
Regrettably, two major Jewish addresses by Goldberg are 7
part of this volue. One was delivered on the occasion of the pub*
tion of the revised translation of the Torah, at a dinner given -
New York by the Jewish Publication Society of America; the ott- -
was a Zionist Organization of America convention session at wht
Goldberg wholeheartedly adopted the Zionist views of the bit
Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis.
Major among the papers in this volume is the address he delivered
in 1961 before the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, in
Washington, on the subject "The Moral Basis of Social Action." In it
he paid tribute to Stephen Wise, condemned religious intolerance,
pleaded for "the light that illuminates a real democratic political
system."
There is real power in Goldberg's utterances on the question - of
civil rights, in his pleadings for social justice.
Especially noteworthy are the rulings concurred in by Goldberg,
during his service on the Supreme Court, on matters relating to the
First Amendment and Bible reading in the schools and in the Aptheker
case in which the court's majority concurred with Goldberg that a
sweeping ban on passports imposed too great a burden on fundamental
liberties to travel.
"The Negro Revolution" is an important section in the book, con-
taining Goldberg's views on the basic rights of the Negro.
-
Appropriately, the volume commences with autobiographical notes,
containing Goldberg's statements when he appeared at Senate con-
firmation hearings when he accepted the positions as a member of
President Kennedy's Cabinet, as a Supreme Court Justice and as the
U. S. delegate to the UN. When he was questioned for confirmation
for the Supreme Court, he had said: "I have been a member of many
organizations identified with the Jewish faith . . . "
The editor of this volume, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was an
assistant Secretary of Labor and co-authored with Nathan Glazer
"Beyond the Melting Pot," is vice chairman of the President's Com-
mission on Pennsylvania Avenue, an enterprise that originated in the
Department of Labor during Arthur Goldberg's tenure as Secretary
of Labor. Moynihan leas produced a most valuable book.