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. 412a3.
VE 8-9364 S•ibscription 16 a year. Foreign 17.
Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit, Michigan

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

Business Manager

SIDNEY SHMARAK

Advertising Manager

CHARLOTTE DUBIN

City Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the serenth clay of Taniuz, 5727, the following scriptural selections

will be read in our synagogues:

Pentateuchal portion, Num. 22:2 - 25:9. Prophetical portion, Micah 5:6-6:8.

Candle lighting, Friday, July 14, 8:43 p.m.

Page Four

VOL. LI. No. 17

July 14, 1967

ZOA's 70th Anniversary Convention

Conventions are routine and while their
deliberations often are of great significance
they are seldom history-making. This is not
the case with the annual convention of the
Zionist Organization of America which opens
in Israel next Wednesday.
That conclave is an especially vital one.
In the first place, it marks the 70th anniver-
sary of the founding of a great movement.
Under the leadership of Prof. Richard Got-
theil of Columbia University and Dr. Stephen
S. Wise, who served, respectively, as presi-
dent and secretary of what was then known
as the Zionist Federation of America — as
a branch of the World Zionist Organization
that was founded and inspired by Theodor
Herzl — a movement began on a small scale
but was destined to play a great role in the
liberation of an oppressed people.
Besides, the convention takes place soon
after a war — the briefest world conflict on
record — Brig. Gen. S. L. A. Marshall calls
it "the three-hour war" because the decisive
act was in the first three hours of Israel air
attack on its enemies — a war that should.
if all libertarian forces stand firm in defense
of justice, put an end to the threats to an-
nihilate the Jewish people.
*
The ZOA convention should serve once
again to call the world's attention to a basic
truth: that the movement was founded to
end Jewish homelessness, to challenge the
indignities that were imposed upon our peo-
ple by an untold number of nations who
turned Jews into pariahs, who hounded and
molested them, who deprived them of basic
human rights.
These basic rights were attained by sur-
vivors from a horrible holocaust, thanks to
the groundwork of the Zionist movement in
Palestine, as a result of pioneering efforts
that resulted in the restoration of life to a
land that had been turned into a desert by
peoples who devastated it during 1,900
years of neglect, indifference, contempt for
civilized needs in an ancient land.
Now the land has begun to flourish again.
The 2,500,000 Jews settled there — most
of them survivors from Nazism and from
the persecutions in Moslem countries — are
dedicated to the proposition that peoples of
all faiths can live together in harmony. This
is a Zionist aim and the ZOA will undoubted-
ly emphasize it during its historic convention
in Israel.
*
The convention has a major task: to re-
enroll worldwide Jewish devotion to its cause
and to indicate to the non-Jewish world the
validity of a cause that was aimed at and
continues to strive for justice for the People
Israel for whom The Land of Israel is a
fulfillment of prophecy, a realization of an
historic 2,000-year-old dream and a return
to land that was and is the land of Israel —
Eretz Israel.
Non-Jews enter into the discussion as a
basis for renewed clarification because there
has been so much abuse of the term Zion-
ism, resulting from two sources: the Arabic
effort to divert the world's attention from
the justice of the Jewish cause by speaking
of Zionists as if they were culprits in a world
plot. differentiating them untruthfully and
unrealistically from Jews; and the anti-
Semites' attacks on world Jewry under the
implication that Zionists and Communists
form a single combine to threaten the world.
The ZOA convention should expose the
double lie.
• •
There is ample reason for taking seriously
the non-Jewish confusion over the status of
Zionism. Seventy years after the founding
of the Zionist movement, after seven decades

•

during which it was to have been expected
that a world freed from religious and racial
animosities would know how to respect a
libertarian cause, a writer in the otherwise
liberal Catholic weekly Commonweal, Wil-
liam V. Shannon', discussing "Futility in the
Middle East," took occasion to state:

On the economic side, Israel has not yet
proved that it is viable. The Doty of remit-
tances from American Jews has been impor-
tant in keeping the economy from a serious
balance-of-payments crisis. Israel would un-
doubtedly be viable if its neighbors would
trade and cooperate with her. Indeed, if the
Arabs were capable of making and acting upon
a rational assessment of their own self-interest,
they would welcome Israeli help. Where else
in the Middle East is there such a valuable
concentration of European-trained technicians
and professional people as in Israel? Viewed
unemotionally, this treasure house of talent de-
posited in their midst is as much a beneficence
for the Arabs as the oil that flows beneath the
sand. But, of course, the Arabs are, like most
human beings, incapable of this kind of de-
tachment. They will probably never turn to the
Israelis for help in modernization.
On account of these adverse political, mili-
tary, and economic circumstances, the long-
term outlook for Israel is depressing. To my
mind, it calls in doubt the wisdom of the Zion-
ist solution for the difficulties of the Jewish
people. How much better it would have been
if Britain and the United States had absorbed
all of these Jewish refugees after World War H.
If the Jews had been admitted, Britain today
would not be worrying about the "brain drain,"
and the United States would not be concerned
by the shortage of doctors and other trained
people. The Jews themselves and their des-
cendants, would be safer living in Britain and
the United States than they are now and prob-
ably will be in the future isolated in Israel and
ultimately dependent on American military
power for their permanent survival.

How could any one who has a sense of
history and reality possibly say this now?
Even if Jews could be rehabilitated else-
where they will not leave the ancient Prom-
ised Land. Jews have traveled in many lands,
have been expelled time and again, have
found a home. Can any one possibly imagine
that they will ever leave their ancestral
home again?
*
*
*
It is no secret that ships bound for many
ports were turned away when they roamed
the high seas in search of havens of refuge,
that Great Britain resorted to military force
to prevent Jews from entering what was
then Palestine while failing to assist in inter-
national efforts to rescue the millions who
were doomed to death under Nazism, that
the strict immigration laws of this country
prevented the Nazi victims from escaping
their Nazi-planned destiny.
Now there still are hundreds of thou-
sands to be rescued, there are 100,000 Jews
in Moslem countries who are in jeopardy,
Jews behind the Iron Curtain need to be
taken out of areas in which they can not
live in peace.
How unrealistic! No one wanted Jews!
Millions could have been rescued during the
Holocaust. Neither the United States, nor
Great Britain, nor any other land wanted
the Jews who were threatened with an-
nihilation. That's why Six Million perished!
To speak, now, of resettlement is an act of
blindness, broaching upon cruelty, insulting
to libertarianism, abusive of reality, blind
to historic facts!
The Zionists, the ZOA convention, face
many issues. They can be solved only if
Jews generally will once again come forth
with encouragement to the Zionist cause.
The convention in Israel will have its historic
moments. We greet it as an occasion linked
with the immensity of a great period in
Jewish history.

'Dictionary of Bible': General
and Christological Approaches

Bible students will be greatly aided by "Dictionary of the Bible"
by John J. McKenzie, S.J., published by the Bruce Publishing Co.,
Milwaukee.
Major biblical themes, persons, events, are recorded and defined,
and while the volume has a Christological approach—an inevitable
factor in such a work by a Jesuit Father—there is an impartiality
in dealing with Old Testament as well as New Testament subjects
that is most commendable.
The author has referred to some Jewish sources but he did not
have a Jewish adviser in collating his work.
He commences with Aaron and concludes with Zorab (a town
of Dan) and Zur (Beth Zur, a town of Judah ).
Much research has gone into this work. An example of Fr.
McKenzie's scrupulous efforts will be found in this paragraph
explaining a biblical term: "Shibboleth (Hebrew sibbolet, •ear of
grain'), the word used as a test after Jephtha's defeat of the
Ephraimites to catch the fugitives of Ephraim at the fords of
the Jordan. The passage shows a dialectical difference between the
speech of Gilead and the speech of Ephraim; the men of Ephraim
could not sound the consonant Shin. In a few rare instances in
biblical Hebrew there is a variation between Shin- and Samech
or Sin."
The term Crucifixion does not appear in this volume, but the
references to the subject are incorporated in other subject matter.
There is, of course, a long, a five-page, article on Jesus Christ. It is
followed, with only Jethro in-between, by a page and a half explana-
tion of the term Jew as it appears, primarily, in the New Testament.
It concludes with the paragraph: "The Jerusalem community fled to
Pella when the Romans came to suppress the Jewish rebellion; after
AD 70 its numbers and influence were diminished to very little. The
Fathers mention some obscure sects such as the Nazareans and the
Ebionites which were later degenerations of Jewish Christianity."
This is an indication of incompleteness of the references to mat-
ters of specific Jewish or Judaeo-Christian subjects. Why not more
about the Ebionites—the Evyonim—meaning the poor—who were
a sect in Christianity among Jews, in Rome? (Maurice Samuel wrote
a novel on the subject of the Ebionites under the title "The Second
Crucifixion").
There is a lengthy, two-page article on Circumcision, refer-
ring to mention of it in both the Old and the New Testaments,
divided into separate portions. The second part speaks of the
rite as performed for the Christian characters: "Jesus Himself
was eircumcized on the 8th day of His birth (Luke 2:21). Paul
mentions his own circumcision to show that he is fully an Israelite
(Philippians 3:5), and Paul had Timothy circumcized after he
had reached adult years because he was the son of a Jewish
mother (Acts 16:3), although Titus, whose parents were Gen-
tiles, did not have to undergo circumcision (Galatians 2:3) . .
etc. (The capitalizations are out of respect to the author and his
faith.) The article concludes with: "Circumcision is the work of
human hands (Ephesiaus 2:11), but the initiation of Christians
into Christ is effected by Christ Himself through baptism (Colos•
sians 2:11)."
Here the Christological aspect is fully evident, and it is ex-
plained, of course, by the direct quotations and references.
There are scores of examples that could be quoted to indicate
the unprejudiced approach of the author who, writing as a Christian,
naturally followed his Christian inclinations. Nevertheless, the general
values of "Dictionary of the Bible" are equally fully evident, making
Fr. McKenzie's work valuable for Jews as well as Christians.

'Pathways Through Holidays' -

Sulamith Ish-Kisbor is an expert as a short story writer on Jewish
themes and as author of descriptive essays on the Jewish holidays. She
has recorded a new high mark with her latest book, "Pathways
Through the Jewish Holidays," published by Ktav (120 E. B'dway,
NY 2).
Edited by Benjamin Efron, the book's design and art supervision
'
by Ezekiel Schloss, chapter drawings by Stuart Diamond, this volume
has the special merit of a vast number of illustrations that depict not
only holiday customs but also include many historic manuscripts re-
lated to the festivals.
The added significance of the volume, which begins with a review
of the year's American festivals, are the glossaries. Each chapter cov-
ering a festival or fast day or the Sabbath is supplemented with a
series of related Hebrew words and their translations. Included in
the festive days is a Yom Hazikaron—Day of Remembrance—in tribute
to the victims who died during the Holocaust.