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
sasociation.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17100 West Seven Mlle Road, Detroit, Mich. 48235
WE 8-9364. Subscription $6 a year. Foreign fri.
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 eighth day of Heshvan, 5728, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Gen. 12:1-17:27. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 40:27-41:16.

Candle Lighting, Friday, Nov. 16, 4:57 p.m.

Page Four

VOL. LII No. 8

November 10, 1967

Book Fair: Glorious Community Tradition

A community can be judged by its li-
braries and bookshelves. The status of any
group of people can be evaluated by the
bookseller who services them with his wares.
The interior of a home reveals its the spirit
of its inhabitants
by the books it
contains, by the
OOKS ofial-N. -
bookcases that
thIMitaitisn
- ralaTal
may be in evi-
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thY=NBEIVIP=MIF
dence.
can te
r .
In Jewish life
this is especially
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symbolic. Is it
N7_3==lianal
4FEAZiEithOCME
any wonder that,
year in and year
out, on the oc-
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.
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casion of a spe-
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cial month des-
ignated as Jewish
Book Month,
many of us are in
the habit of turn-
ing back the
pages of literary history to read the instruc-
tions that were given in a final testament ad-
dressed to his son by the 12th Century
Hebraic scholar Judah Ibn Tibbon who wrote:
"My son, make thy books thy companions.
Let thy cases and shelves be thy pleasure
grounds and gardens. Bask in their paradise;
gather their fruit; pluck their roses; take their
spices and their myrrh. If thy soul be satiate
and weary, change from garden to garden,
from furrow to furrow, from prospect to
prospect. Then will thy desire renew itself
and thy soul be filled with delight.
"Never refuse to lend books to anyone
who has not the means to purchase books
for himself, but only act thus to those who
can be trusted to return the volumes.
"Take particular care of thy books. Cover

,

;21,21

B

.

the bookcases with rugs of fine quality and
preserve them from damp, mice, from all
manner of injury, for thy books are thy good
treasure. If thou lendest a volume, make a
memorandum before it leaves thy house, and
when it is returned, draw thy pen over the
entry, and every Passover and Tabernacles
call in all books out on loan."
What this did was to encourage the read-
ing of books, to urge their purchase, to glorify
possessing them.
This is the combined aim of Jewish Book
Fair that is sponsored annually by the Jewish
Community Center and is co-sponsored by
community- and culturally-minded organiza-
tions.
With the inauguration of another Jewish
Book Fair, this week-end, the Jewish Center
and the associated groups are emphasizing
the continuity of Jewish traditional observ-
ances. They are carrying out a sacred obliga-
tion to make books among the valued pos-
sessions, and to emphasize that by reading
them we help prepare well informed con-
stituents in our midst, for without knowledge
we are endangered by an ignorance that
destroys peoples and relegates them to an
animal status.
Jewish Book Fair is marked by speeches
and by exhibitions — talks about books and
displays of books. During the days ahead
there will be opportunities to hear experts
in their fields speak about the written and
printed words. Those attending the Book Fair
— there should be many thousands of our
interested fellow citizens at this observance!
— will be able to select for their libraries
books of all descriptions. A united community
should join to make a notable success of Book
Fair, assuring the continuity of interest in
books by the People of the Book.

Vital Needs for Higher Education

With the educational programing al-
ready generally accepted as the major respon-
sibility of American and world Jewries, it is
encouraging to know that the expansion of
higher studies has progress, that our high
schools are receiving the cooperation and sup-
port that is so urgently needed and that proj-
ects like our Midrasha—the college of higher
studies—is gaining in popularity.
Nevertheless, there are handicaps. There
is hope that through cooperative efforts be-
tween American and Israeli Jewries both
communities may benefit from an exchange
of teachers. The teacher shortage is not
unique to ourselves. It is general, and both
we here and the Israel school systems needs
more professional Jewish teachers.
This problem can, in the course of time,
be solved, provided the scheduled higher
studies will not lag.
From present indications, the changing
neighborhoods problem is seriously affecting
the program of higher studies. Travel from
distant neighborhoods becomes difficult and
there is presently a lack of facilities.
It is of the utmost importance, therefore,
that communally-minded people who recog-
nize the problem should assist in providing
such facilities, that the structure that is need-
ed for a high school and the Midrasha should
be made available. -
Our community can feel greatly heartened
by the report that the high school of the
United Hebrew Schools has an enrollment of
310 and that the Midrasha student body now
exceeds 80. This is a vast improvement over
previous enrollments, yet in both areas they
must be viewed as mere beginnings. If we are
to have an enrollment of young men and
women in classes for the. training of teachers
and those who, in their adult life, should be
able to lead their communities with a full

understanding of Jewish conditions, needs
and aspirations, then we must be assured of
an element that is determined to share in
Jewish learning and later if possible to devote
itself to teaching.
Without facilities such a program could be
foredoomed to failure, and it is urgent that
all possible aid and encouragement should be
given to the aspired need for a building for
our high school and Midrasha.
There is need for added facilities for the
elementary Hebrew school classes. A com-
bined effort must be made to provide for
these needs. They are strongly linked with
our current status and with the prospects for
a good future.

UN's Impotence

As time progresses, the situation at the
United Nations becomes all the more ag-
gravating.
When the strong adherents to the UN
principles and to the hope for international
law and cooperation as means of solving the
world's problems express anger when UN is
criticized, their position is understandable.
Nevertheless there are realities we can not
overlook. The UN has been unable to tackle
major issues. It is as helpless in the Middle
East as it is in Vietnam. It threatens more
in the former than it would dare in the
latter. But in the main the UN's role in the
present crisis is futile, hopeless, very dis-
couraging.
If UN's authority could induce the na-
tions involved in the Midle East crisis to sit
together and talk peace terms, it would as-
sume a new role of effectiveness. Unable or
unwilling to pursue such a course, the UN re-
mains impotent.

Dr. Rahv Evalutes Noted Author's
Jewishness in 'Malamud Reader'

"A Malamud Reader" issued by Farrar, Straus and Giroux con-
tains the most interesting of the narratives of Bernard Malamud. With
"The Assistant" presented in its entirety, containing 10 stories from
"The Magic Barrel" and "Idiots First," his anthology includes selec-
tions from "The Fixer," "A New Life" and "The Natural."

From Malamud's latest work, "The Fixer," are included two selec-
tions—one, under the heading for a group of three stories, "To Kiev,"
and the second, grouped in "In Love and Prison," as "Yakov Bok
in Prison."
The other stories in this volume are: "To Chicago" from "The
Natural," "To the Coast" and "S. Levin" from "A New Life" and:
"The Mourners," "Idiots First," "The First Seven Years," "Take Pity,"
"The Maid's Shoes," "Black Is My Favorite Color," "The Jewbird,"
"The Magic Barrel," "The German Refugee" and "The Last Mohican."

Of very special interest in this collection of stories by one
of the outstanding novelists and short story writers of our time
is the introduction by Prof. Philip Rahv of Brandeis University.
Dr. Rahv notes that Malamud is more positive in his "Jewishness"
than other writers, that his "Jewishness" is connected with a
certain stylization of language we find in his fiction, a deliberate
linguistic effort at once trenchantly and humorously adapting
the cool Wasp idiom of English to the quicker heartbeats and
greater openness to emotion in his Jewish characters; and it is
particularly in the turns and twists of their dialogue that this
effort is most apparent and most successfuL"

Describing Malamud as "one of the few writers of stature to
emerge on our literary scene since the last war," Dr. Rahv states that
Malamud "sometimes has been appraised as a special sort of genre-
writer, dealing with the 'laughter through tears,' the habits of life,
exotic to outsiders, of immigrant Jews, an ethnic group considered to
stand in a marginal relation to American society at large."

While indicating that "generally speaking, he has been assimilated
all too readily to the crowd of American-Jewish writers who have
lately made their way into print," Dr. Rahv states about Malamud in
relation to other writers:
"The truth is that many writers are Jewish in descent without
being in any appreciable way 'Jewish' in feeling and sensibility; and
I am noting this not in criticism of anyone in particular but simply
by way of stating an obvious fact us ually overlooked both by those
who 'celebrate' the arrival of American Jews on the literary scene
and by those who deplore it. It is one thing to speak factually of a
writer's Jewish extraction and it is something else again to speak
of his 'Jewishness,' which is a very elusive quality and rather difficult
to define. In this respect Norman Mailer may well serve as a con-
spicuous example. Mailer's consciousness of himself as a Jew is,
I would say, quite unimportant to him as a writer, if not wholly
negative . . . Other American-Jewish writers either back away from
their Jewishness or adopt an attitude towards it which is empty of
cultural value; it is only in their bent for comic turns that they call
to mind some vestigial qualities of their ethnic background. In any
case, what is mostly to be observed among these writers is ambivalence
about Jewishness rather than pride or even simple acceptance. Mala-
mud differs, however, from such literary types in that he fills his
'Jewishness' with a positive content. I mean that 'Jewishness,' as be
understands and above all feels it, is one of the principal sources of
value in his work as it affects both his conception of experience in
general and his conception of imaginative writing in particular."

Among the "Jewish" traits in Malamud's writings indicated
by Prof. Rahv is "his feeling for human suffering on the one hand
and for a life of value, order and dignity on the other." He notes
that "Malamud transcends all sectarian understanding of suffer-
ing, seeing it as the fate of the whole of mankind, which can only
be migrated when all men assume responsibility for each other."

There are numerous references to and quotations from Malamud's
stories in the Rahv introduction. The Brandeis professor finds that
"of all Malamud's stories, surely the most masterful is 'The Magic
Barrel,' perhaps the best story produced by an American writer in
recent decades."

In "A Malamud Reader" are presented, therefore, not only the
works of an eminent writer, but a thorough study of Jewish. writers
and their "Jewishness," and Dr. Rahv's introduction enriches an
enriching work.

