THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Our Nobel Laureates
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 twenty-second day of Heshvan, 5727, the following Scriptural
selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Gen. 23:1-25:18. Prophetical portion, I Kings 1:1-31.
Licht bcnshen, Friday, Nov. 4, 5:05 p.m.
VOL. L. No. 11
Page Four
November 4, 1968
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Book Fair: Soul and Legacy of Jewry
So much is being said about the need for
increased educational programs and for
greater cultural efforts in behalf of our youth,
in order to assure survival, that every effort
• in the direction of increased knowledge in
our ranks must be viewed as a contribution
towards the positive aspects of Jewish life.
Chief among these constructive aspects of
Jewish communal activities is the preserva-
tion of our written records and of the con-
tinuing process of producing scholarly works
that, in their totality, form our Scriptures,
our Commentaries, Bible and Talmud and the
evaluative writings based ,upon the great con-
tributions made by Jewry to the world. Col-
lectively, these writings represent the Books
that have made up the sacred library of our
people.
It is about the sanctity of Books that the
Sefer Hasidim has admonished us: "If you
drop gold and books, pick up first the books
and then the gold."
That is why any book fair emerges in great
significance, and our community's Book Fair,
sponsored by the Jewish Community Center
in cooperation with a number of important
organizations in the city, retains special sig-
nificance because of the interest it has
aroused and the support it has gained in many
quarters.
*
* *
There is cause for genuine satisfaction in
the knowledge that the Detroit Jewish Book
Fair has inspired reading, has encouraged
book buying, has brought large audiences to
gatherings that are addressed by prominent
writers whose appearances here have cement-
ed kinship between authors and readers, link-
ing homes with libraries, the printed words
with the minds of people who thereby rise
to human heights.
This year's Book Fair will bring to our
!city a number of people of great eminence
in the literary world. It is well that they will
be here — not because their readers will learn
to know them, but because readers will there-
by gain new incentives to become acquainted
with the contents of their works and with
other literary efforts that will be brought to
light during the Book Fair sessions.
Book Fair will, in the course of its activi-
ties, take note of the Jewish Publication
Society of America, whose_ editor, Dr. Chaim
Potok, will be one of the distinguished guests
at one of the early sessions of the Festival of
Books. The very inclusion of the JPS in this
year's program is a recognition of the need to
increase interest in books and book publish-
ing and to inspire the building of home
libraries so that people of all ages in our
midst should acquire the habit of studying,
of continuing to learn, of being properly in-
formed about our past and our present and
about the legacies our people have inherited.
As in many other cultural matters, there
is a sad state of affairs in the response to
JPS projects. Its membership should number
in the many tens of thousands, yet it is a small
army of faithfuls who assure the existence of
one of the very vital factors in the field of
cultural media of American Jewry. There are
at least° a million and a half Jewish families
in this country, yet the JPS membership is
about the same size numerically today as it
was 50 years ago. In spite of the increase of
the American Jewish population by 150 per
cent in half a century, the JPS enrollment
has remained static.
This is in itself an indictment of our
people. They are offered literary treasures
at a small cost and they have not learned
how to take advantage of a great opportunity.
But this failure parallels other, similar
shortcomings, in the literary and other cul-
tural areas, and if the presentation of the
JPS case before a large Book Fair audience
here, and at similar gatherings in commu-
nities throughout the land, can lead to im-
proved attitudes, the Book Fairs will more
than prove their values.
They already have proven to be of great
value and the Detroit Book Fair has estab-
lished a tradition for creative efforts that have
elevated this annual event into a status of
supremacy over most other cultural events in
our community. With due credit for what has
already been attained, we greet the current
Book Fair with a renewed hope that even
greater results will be attained this year and
that out of it will emerge our people's
strengthened support for authors and pub-
lishers, causing the Jewish Book Shelf once
again to become the most vital part of every
Jewish home, attesting to the Book as the soul
and the legacy of the Jewish people.
* *
*
Nobel Prize Winners
Jewish Book Fair this year is greatly en-
hanced by the award of the Nobel Prize in
Literature to two Jewish authors, S. Y. Agnon
and Nelly Sachs.
The two selectees are eminent in two
specific fields of fiction—Agnon as a dis-
tinguished Hebraist, Miss Sachs as the ac-
cuser of the guilty for the holocaust; Agnon
as the interpreter of the Israeli way of life,
Miss Sachs as the exposer of the crimes that
were committed in our age; and both have
the distinction of striving to elevate the
human element as pleaders for highest ideals
of social justice.
The Jewish list of Nobel Prize winners
is very long, but this is the first time that
writers of eminence have been chosen from
our literary ranks. Hitherto they were Jewish
scientists who were so honored.
This new development in Jewish literary
activities provides a new angle in Book
Fair's celebration in that it draws renewed
interest in Hebrew literature and in the
works of those who have emerged as the
prophetic pleaders for justice in an age that
followed the hurban.
Agnon's genius expresses itself in many
ways. He has been quoted as saying: "I made
a contract with the Almighty that for every
language I did not learn he would give me a
few words of Hebrew." Thus he emerged as
the great master of the Hebrew tongue.
Now, to be sure, the works of both Agnon
and Sachs will appear in many languages —
just as many of them already are available in
many translations — and the two Nobel Prize
winners henceforth will belong to the world
as well as to Jewry.
Dr. Nahum N Glatzer's Classic:
W arr of Response : Martin Buber'
A vast library has been built based on the philosophic writings
of ,Dr. Martin Buber, on the Hasidic legends and interpretations that
are embodied in the collected works of the man who had earned the
title of being the foremost Jewish thinker of our time. Now this Buber
Library is enriched by selections from his writings edited by a very
distinguished scholar, Prof. Nahum Glatzer of Brandeis University,
whose "The Way of Response: Martin Buber," just issued by Schoeken
Books, is so enriching, it is such a great inspiration for laymen, that
the Buber name emerges anew as one of the spiritually exciting
teachers of all time.
Dr. Glatzer has selected for this work gems from "I and Thou,"
from works dealing with man and God, with faith and Israel, with
"Creation — Revelation — Redemption."
Like a number of Prof. Glatzer's previous works, the items in-
corporated in this volume are brief. The great value of this new book
is that any one seeking inspiration can turn to a variety of titles and
acquire knowledge, gain encouragement, reach new spiritual heights.
There is, for instance, that brief item on "Peace" in the section
"Israel: Jewish_Existence": "We make peace, we help bring about
world peace, if we can make peace wherever we are destined and
summoned to do so: in the active life of one's own community and
in that aspect of it which can actively help determine its relation-
ship with another community. The prophecy of peace addressed
to Israel is not valid only for the days of the coining of the Mes-
siah .. . Fulfilment in a 'then' is inextricably bound up with ful-
filment in the `now'."
As a result of Dr. Glatzer's anthological work, Buber is better
understood. The preface to this volume states:
"Buber is a master of the concise, epigrammatic statement, es-
pecially when the argument or discourse or address reaches the point
when what matters most is about to be uttered."
Dr. Glatzer adds: "To whom does Buber speak? . . . Not to the
philosopher as philosopher, not to the theolo gi an as theologian, but
to the human person in both and to everyone. Not to those who
argue well and master the art of intellectual debate, but to those
who in speech and answer are able to establish communion. To the
simple: the farmer, the laborer, the searching student, the naively
pious, the sincerely unbelieving. In dealing with the immense Hasidic
literature, Buber disregarded its intricate theology and concentrate
on the folk tales and legends where the heart speaks, where the L
sophisticated but serious questioner is satisfied with the pointed b
simple answer that faith can provide."
"The Way of Response" proves the validity of this definitio
of Buber's works. In one of the very first items in his book, Dr.
Glatzer presents Buber's "Response:" "This fragile life between life
and death can nevertheless be a fulfilment — if it is a dialogue —
For the most part we do not listen to the address, or we break
into it with chatter: But if the word comes to us and the answer
proceeds from us then human life exists, though brokenly, in the
world . . ." :41
There is this magnificent Buber brevity on "Freedom": "Freedoni
— I love its flashing face: it flashes forth from the darkness and
dies away, but it has made the heart invulnerable. I am devoted
to it, I am always ready to join in the fight for it: for the sake of
the appearance of the flash, which lasts no longer than the eye
is able to endure it. I give my left hand to the rebel and my right
to the heretic: forward! But I do not trust them. They know how to
die, but that is not enough. I love freedom, but I do not believe in it."
Dr. Glatzer thus describes his first impression of Prof. Buber:
high-forehead; a long beard, surrounding a pale, wise, saintly fate;
mild, wide-open eyes; small, graceful, expressive hands. That is how
the prophets of old must have looked, I thought." Later, when he was
designated by Buber as his successor in the lectureship in Jewish relig-
ious history at the University of Frankfurt, he said "the image of the
prophet gave way to a more human likeness. I discovered his fondness
for good food, his quick, folksy language (so greatly at variance with
his literary style), his wholly unprophetic acumen for the business
aspect of his activities."
There is philosophy, challenge, guidance to the road to dialogue
in the newly collected essays. There is enrichment in the Buber
wisdom. Dr. Glatzer has added invaluably to the Buber and the entire
Jewish library with this book.