Scholarly Essays in New Roth Book Maurice Samuel Highly Commends Grade's 'The Well'
During 40 years as a foremost the Jews of the Middle Ages, most
Jewish historian, Cecil Roth has of the chapters are devoted to the
Contributed hundreds of essays to Jews of Italy and Spain and Por-
a multitude of periodicals and com-
pilations devoted to Jewish schol-
arship.
Some of these essays were writ-
ten as preliminary studies of per-
sonalities and events to be woven
later into the larger fabric of the
author's books. Others were mono-
graphs on some fascinating char-
acter or phenomenon which by
necessity could only get a cursory
treatment in the context of his-
torical narrative. All of them are
"chips from the historian's work-
shop" providing an insight into
his laboratory of research and dis-
covery.
Fifteen of these "learned" es-
says will form the chapters of
"Gleanings: Essays in Jewish His-
tory, Letters and Art," which is
tugal and deal with such diverse
subjects as religious disputations,
persecutions and martyrdom, and
Jewish luminaries and their con-
tributions to the arts and sciences.
The closing chapters. enhanced by
twenty-two magnificient illustra-
tions, are devoted to the famed
medieval illuminated masterpiece,
the Kennicott Bible.
The publication of "Gleanings:
Essays in Jewish History, Letters
and Art" is a joint venture of one
of the oldest and one of the young-
est publishers in America. To be
published by the Hermon Press
(established 1965), it will be dis-
tributed by the Bloch Publishing
Company (established 1854).
Reader Emeritus in Jewish Studies
at the University of Oxford and is
currently Visiting Professor of His-
tory at the City University of New
York.
Commencing with two essays on
"Fodor's Guide to Israel 1967-
68"—a brand new addition to the
Fodor travel guide series and so
far as is known the first travel
guide to Israel that covers the
Israel-Arab war and resulting
changes affecting the prospective
visitor to Israel and the Holy Land
—will be published Aug. 14 by
David McKay Company.
Originally scheduled for publica-
tion this summer, "Fodor's Guide
to Israel" was stopped on press
when war broke out between Israel
and the Arab countries in early
June. Immediately after hostilities
ended in June, Eugene Fodor,
editor of the Fodor series, flew
from New York to Israel to survey
postwar tourist conditions for in-
clusion in the guide.
Fodor was one of the first group
of newspapermen permitted to go
from the West Bank via the Lat-
run Triangle as well as through
the Jerusalem-Ramallah road. He
visited all of Old Jerusalem, Beth-
lehem, and Jericho, and was on
the first test flight of the new
domestic airline, Arkia Airlines,
from Tel Aviv to Kalandia, the In-
ternational Terminal of the ex-
Jordan-held Old Jerusalem.
Fodor then flew on to North
Galilee and visited the old Tiber-
ias-Syrian-held border region,
thence to the Lebanon border and
along the coast to Nahariya, Acre,
Haifa, and Caesarea to Tel Aviv.
Fodor thus was able to see al-
most every point in Israel what
would be of interest to the Ameri-
can tourist.
THE WELL: A novel by Chaim Grade.
Translated by Ruth Wisse from the
Yiddish. Published by Jewish Publica-
tion Society of America.
A Review by MAURICE SAMUEL
The novels of Chaim Grade, the
distinguished Yiddish poet, have
over the years built up into a
mighty panorama of Jewish life in
Lithuania in the first half of this
This is the fable, unfolded with
infinite charm. The background is
a powerful evocation of the inner
life of Vilna Jewry, swarming with
a marvelous diversity of types,
pietists, snobs, scholars, misers,
dreamers, revolutinoaries, set in
the midst of a hostile world, de-
picted at once with wide-ranging
imagination and severe attentive-
ness to historic accuracy, and all
of it drenched in Jewish knowl-
edge.
(Direct JTA Teletype Wire
to The Jewish News)
STUTTGART, West Germany—
Dr. Albert Wittman, a chemist
who was an officer of Hitler's SS
during the war, went on trial here
Tuesday on charges of murder of
Jews and of being the scientist who
had developed the Nazi system of
asphyxiating people in trucks
equipped with gas exhausts.
Wittman, 54, was accused by the
prosecution, as the trial opened,
of being responsible for the crea-
tion of the murder trucks in which,
it was charged, "thousands of
people perished." The court was
told that he had devised the
"speediest" method whereby vic-
tims could be killed by gas ex-
hausts fed into the bodies of the
trucks.
As part of his work, it was al-
leged, he had conducted experi-
ments in Minsk and Moghilev,
areas occupied by the German
army in Russia in 1941, using
persons deemed insane. In these
experiments, the prosecutor said,
at least 20 persons were killed in
Minsk and five in Moghilev. Witt-
man has been held in bail of
200,000 marks pending trial. The
trial is expected to last about five Agudath Israel Appeals
or six weeks.
to Eshkol to Prevent
Israel to Play Host
for Olympic Games
of Wheelchair Victims
BY JESSE SILVER
(Copyright 1967. JTA Inc.)
Israel has been chosen to play
host to the 1968 Para-Olympic
Games. The Para-Olympics, ori-
ginated by Dr. Ludwig Guttmann,
the former head of the Spinal In-
juries Center, Stoke-Mandeville,
England, is a sports competition
for people confined to wheelchairs.
The competition is held the same
year as the Olympic Games, and
usually in the same countiy. This
time however, Mexico refused to
hold the games, so Israel was
selected instead.
Preparations are already under
way for the Maccabia Games
which will be held in Israel in
summer 1969. A meeting of the
International Maccabia Games
Committee was held in London
recently under the chairmanship
of Pierre Gildesgame, chairman
Of the Maccabi World Union.
United States representatives
to the meeting were Haskell Co-
hen, president of the U.S. Commit-
tee Sports for Israel, Robert Rosen-
berg and Harold Zinman, vice
presidents of the committee, and
Henry Nesselroth, chairman of
the Maccabi Athletic Club of New
York.
`Profanation of Wall'
NEW YORK—A strongly worded
appeal to Premier Levi Eshkol to
"prevent the shattering of the un-
paralleled Jewish unity forged by
Israel's war crisis which would
inevitably result if the Kosel
Ma'aravi (Western Wall) were
converted from a holy religious
site into a secular historic shrine."
was issued by Agudath Israel of
America, national Orthodox Jewish
movement.
The appeal from the national
executive board of Agudath Israel
to Eshkol points out that Orthodox
Jews in America are "profoundly
dismayed by reports that the Israel
government may bow to the pres-
sure of anti-religious extremists
objecting to religious supervision
of the Kosel Ma'aravi and to the
traditional separation of the sexes
at the wall where prayers are
continuously offered." "These re-
ports were given credence by your
statement in an interview last
week disassociating yourself from
the traditional customs now ob-
served at the Western Wall," the
message declared.
The Agudath Israel message
concludes by urging Premier Esh-
kol "at the very least" to grant
Israel's rabbinate the same exclu-
sive jurisdiction over the Western
Wall enjoyed by the Christian and
Moslem religious leaders over their
holy sites.
DAN NY
RASKIN
UN. 4-6 8 68
10235 W. 6 MILE
HASE:
I New Fodor Guide
to Israel Notes
volume will reflect the wide range
Post-War
Results
of interests of the author, who is
scheduled to be published in Sep-
tember.
The essays to be included in this
Hitler SS Officer
on Trial in Stuttgart
for Murder of Jews
I read the original with breath-
less interest several years ago. I
cannot too highly recommend the
translation to the English reading
public.
LUXURIOUS WOOL PLUSH...
CHAIM GRADE
century, comparable as a literary
achievement with Balzac's Comedie
Humaine and the works of Dickens
in their respective fields. Now the
first of the novels, "The Well"
(Der Shulhoyf in the original) has
appeared in English, to be followed
soon, it is to be hoped, by the
remainder.
"The Well" is a fascinating blend'
of fantasy and realism. The story
tells how two simple Jews took it
upon themselves to repair the half-
ruined well in the courtyard of the
Vilna Goan's synagogue. One of ,
them was the almost illiterate and
saintly simpleton, Mende the water-
carrier; the other was old Reb
Bunim, pious, melancholy, haunted
by the memory of his lost four
children, determined to withdraw
from life into the seclusion of the
beth ha-Midrash. Under the ob- ,
stinate goading of the water-car-
rier, with whom the well has be-
come an obsession, he returns to
his wife and his wretched little
china store, so that he may from
the pitiful earnings contribute to
the expense of repairing the well.
Between them, laboriously, hope-
fully, ingeniusly, Mende and Reb
Bunim draw others — some of
them the most unlikely charac-
ters—into the charitable enterprise,
and carry it to a successful con-
clusion.
ONLY
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