HE JEWISH NEWS
Chief on 1967
Agenda:
Achieving
Speedy End of
War in Vietnam
MICHIG.Af.1
1:=) '7' F2 c)i-r I A I
o f Jewish Events
A Weekly Review
Commentary
Page 2
The New Year
and Its
Challenges
German Issue
Far From
Resolved
Editorials
Page 4
Michigan's Only English-Jewish Newspaper — Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle
1 7100 W. 7 Mile Rd.—VE 8-9364—Detroit 48235—Dec. 30, 1966
Vol. L, No. 19
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401- 0 $6.00 Per Year; This Issue 20c
Bitter Recriminations Link Israel,
Jordan in New Threat by Arabs;
Eshkol Sees End to Infiltrations
Israel's Prime. Minister Levi Eshkol this week expressed the view that
incursions of Arab saboteurs virtually ceased since the attack on Jordan
six weeks ago. From Arab quarters, however, came renewed threats to
both Israel and Jordan, and both countries were linked in threats by the
head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Ahmed Shukairy. King
Hussein of Jordan was denounced as "the tyrant of Amman who has
betrayed God, the Prophet and Palestine," and U.S. aid to Jordan, which
is aimed at protecting Hussein's rule over his country, was condemned
in no uncertain terms.
Recriminations among Arabs themselves and dissension that has
spread since the split in Yemeni ranks and UAR President Nasser's attempt
to take control of Yemen, as well as Hussein's consistent effort to keep
Shukairy's PLO forces out of Jordan, intensified the bitter inner struggle
among Arab rulers. Shukairy's charges, made in an embittered Cairo Radio
address on 'Tuesday, contended that Israel's successful attack on the
Jordanian village of El Samu on Nov. 13 was aimed "to defend King
Hussein and his throne, but not to defend the people against Israeli
aggression."
(Direct JTA Teletype Wires to The Jewish News)
JERUSALEM Premier Levi Eshkol declared here Monday
night.
in a reference to United States' criticism of Israel's Nov. 13 raid into
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Jordan, that. Israel would not accept United States views on such issues if
those views clashed with Israel's vital interests. He stressed that generally
the two governments had a good understanding.
Addressing a gathering of 70 university professors, the premier said
Five Writers Receive
Awards; Czech Film
Voted Best of 1966
(Direct' JTA Teletype Wires to The Jewish News)
MEXICO CITY—Four Yiddish and Hebrew writers
were voted the 20th annual Zvi Kessel Literary Awards for
1966. it was announced Wednesday by the cultural com-
mission of the Central Committee of Jews in Mexico
which administers the grants. The awards were established
here in 1947 by Zvi Kessel, prominent Mexican indus-
trialist.
The winners were Jacob Glatstein. Yiddish poet.
of New York; Yefim Yeshurin. bibliographer; Simba
Rubinstein, Hebrew author and M. M. Shafir, Yiddish
poet.
Glatstein and Yeshurin received the full prize. each
getting $400. Rubinstein and Shafir were voted $200 each.
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NEW YORK (JTA)—Isaac Bashevis Singer, the noted
Yiddish writer, many of whose works have been translated
into English, has been voted a stipend of $10,000 by the
National Council of the Arts. The award was given
Singer to enable him to complete a novel on which
be is currently at work.
The National Council of the Arts is a body created by
Congress to encourage all the arts in the United States.
Last week, the Council voted awards totaling $1,300,000.
Among the grants were fiive of $10;000 each to writers, to
aid them to complete works in progress. Mr. Singer was
one of those five.
The New York Film Critics on Tuesday chose "The
Shop on Main Street" as the best foreign-language film
of 1966. The Czech-made film drama, dealing with the
liquidation of the Jevirs in a Czech city under the Nazi
Occupation, was -the first film from Czechoslovakia to
Vat such an award from the New York film critics.
that President Johnson had been angered by the raid but that this was
one of those things that could not be helped.
Since the raid, he said, the tide of the security situation had started
to turn for the better. He remarked that King Hussein was still reipiing
in Jordan, that foreign Arab troops had not entered Jordan and that
incursions into Israel by Arab saboteurs had virtually ceased. He hinted
that the Soviets might be credited for the suspension of guerrilla raids in
that they might have impressed on the Soviet regime that it was to its
advantage not to provoke Israel.
The premier also described efforts to improve relations with the Soviet
Union, with no favorable response so -far. He also said he had tried very
hard for a new approach to Israel's defense problems but that in his three
years as premier he had found that the correct course was that followed in
the prior 15 years. David Ben-Gurion was premier for most of that period.
Eshkol warned earlier that Israel reserves the right to freedom of
action, should there be any changes in the status quo in neighboring
Jordan. He voiced his warning following an official announcement by the
Amman radio in Jordan, reporting the resignation of the Jordanian cabinet.
The premier said that the Middle East regional balance of power
was unstable because of continuous arms supplies to the Arab states,
and that it was Israel's duty to maintain the balance. He noted that. in
recent years, Israel has had "significant success in this field and even the
future is not without hope, should the balance again deteriorate."
He defended Israel's Nov. 13 retaliation raid on Jordan as "successful,
justified and moral. both in the defensive and deterring character it had."
(Continued cn Page 5)
Cardinal Cushing Appeals for Russian Jewry s
Religions Freedo- zsa in i ■ lassaelauselis Synagogue
BOSTON (JTA)—Richard Cardinal Cushing. Catholic Archbishop of Boston and one of America's leading
churchmen, appealect to the Soviet government to permit the Jews in the Soviet Union to practice their religion
without any restrictions. He emphasized that Jewish religion and culture are being suppressed in the Soviet Union.
Cardinal Cushing spoke at a meeting held at Temple Ohabei Shalom. in Brookline, Mass.. under auspices of
the American Jewish Conference on Soviet Jewry. Declaring that it is fitting for Christian neighbors 'to join with
their Jewish friends "in seeking the freedom of the oppressed Jewish community in the Soviet Union." he said:
man's
Wherever freedom is deprived. all of us are deprived in some measure:• wherever the expression of
slow and
religious spirit is forcefully curtailed, there all religion suffers. For two decades we have witnessed the
steady erosion of the religious and cultural institutions that should be at the service of millions of Jews in the USSR,
and this process has been initiated and encouraged by official Soviet policy. aimed at the death of the traditional
Jewish community in that. land.
"Many national and ethnic groups have cultural and religious traditions closely intertwined; none more so
than the children of Abraham so that an assault on one becomes, in effect, an assault on the other. The second
largest Jewish community in the world is within the borders of the Soviet Union; it consists of a people whose
cultural achievements in times past were a wonder to the world, a people. too, whose deep spiritual qualities mere
widely manifest and universally admired."
Emphasizing that one repressive law after another in the Soviet Union has closed Jewish theaters. suppressed
schools, forbidden the publication of books. and attacked the Jewish culture at its very roots. and that Jewish
houses of worship have been closed. ritual necessities denied. and the training of new rabbis made impossible,
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Cardinal Cushing declared:
"Three million Jews have been suffering and struggling against odds that are overwhelming. • But Judaism
did not die. In spite of all that has happened. evidence appears again and again that. even in the most difficult
circumstances, faith and hope have not merely survived but have shown increased vigor and enduring life. The
young people, so long alienated from religion by their environment. have turned again in impressive numbers
to the spiritual origins of their fathers. As so often in the history of man's faith in God. the persecutions of the world
have given new strength to religious commitment. new intensity to humanity's deepest yearnings.
"In the case of the Soviet Union. we raise . our voices today asking them only to be faithful to what is
their own declared policy for the peoples of their country. For decades they have boasted that there is no persecution
of religion in their land: let them be true merely to what they hare claimed for themselves. They acknowledge also
that they recognize the just claims of nationalities to their own cultural life in the .Soviet state. They have, however,
made Jews the exception to the rule in these last years.
"So here again we ask of them no more than what they have claimed for themselves. Surely. this is not an
or ideology. The Soviet state has begun
extravagant appeal, nor one that can be cast aside by reasons of politics
to show some leniency in small things: we urge them in the name of God and humanity to extend..it to its widest
limits."
Speaking from the same platform on the Soviet policy against Jewish cultural and religi6n were also Dr.
Forrest L. Knapp, general secretary of the Massachusetts Council of Churches. and Rabbi • Manuel Saltzman,
chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis.
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