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 Mlle Road, Detroit, Mich. 48235,
VE 11-9364. Subscription 47 a year. Foreign gil.
Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit, Michigan
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Business Manager
Advertising Manager
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the ninth day of Kislev, 5729, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Gen. 28:10-32:3. Prophetical portion, Hosea 12:13-14:10.
Candle lighting, Friday, Nov. 29, 4:43 p.m.
VOL. LIV. No. 11
November 29, 1968
Page Four
Economic Crisis Confronting Jewish Academicians
A crisis affecting our school system—the
issues revolving around community controls,
decentralization and union involvement — is
so vast in its effects upon this nation that
unless the conflicting elements come to terms,
the very foundation of the public school sys-
tem may be undermined.
Injected into the issue is a serious prob-
lem involving the Jewish community and the
large number of Jews who had turned to
teaching as a profession.
The ultra-radical Ramparts magazine, in
its current issue, discusses the teacher prob-
lem, and Sol Stern, in an article entitled
"'Scab' Teachers," touches upon the Jewish
issue in the current New York strike, turns
to the shocking factor of anti-Semitism and
introduces the issue as follows:
After the strike at a Brooklyn school, even
the youngest black children had to walk a gaunt-
let of police nightsticks to get into their school,
and a black parent outside the line of police and
picketers denounced what she termed the "Jewish
Mafia," which she said was responsible for. such
conditions. She was refz•rring to the UniiiprFed-
eration of Teachers (UFT), 55,000 strong and
probably the most powerful white-collar union in
the country. The ethnic makeup of the teachers
union, which is two-thirds Jewish, has led to an
exaggerated perception in the black community
of it's being simply a "Jewish union." And co-
operating with the union during the strike was the
Council of Supervisory Associations, which repre-
sents all principals and assistant principals. It is
also predominantly Jewish.
In a school system where over 55 per cent of
the children are non-white, it is little wonder that
there is a sense of inequity, and that black and
Puerto Rican parents and activists are trying to
get a little more say about their kids' educations.
in the same way that the Jews of 30 Years ago
had to confront the resistance of the Irish who
then dominated the school system. Now the high
proportion of JeWish names among the organiza-
tions in 4Iirect conflict with the black community
has heated what is basically a black-white dispute
into even uglier racial overtones. And to its dis-
credit, the teachers union, particularly its presi-
dent, Albert Shanker, fanned the flames by
sensationalizing the issue of anti-Semitism in
order to solidify and rally support from the pow-
erful New York Jewish community.
This calls for analysis and thorough study
of the facts, but before turning to that let us
read Stern's conclusion to his article on
"'Scab' Teachers." He declares:
The issue is power—not due process and vigil-
antism, or anti-Semitism. Who shall exercise
power in the schools, who shall make educational
policy: the community through its elected repre-
sentatives, or the union hiding behind the facade
of "professionalism"? Obviously there will be
dangers of violations of , the civil liberties of
teachers. Obviously there is anti-Semitism in the
ghetto, and some of it is directed at teachers. But
a community can't be made sensitive to those
concerns by Sat or by police power. Had the union
fought for strong decentralization, with adequate
legal safeguards for the rights of teachers, had
they cooperated with the local governing board
at Ocean Hill-Brownsville in making decentraliza-
tion work, they would be in a better position
today to protect their members in the ghetto. As
it is, the union's behavior has undoubtedly in-
creased anti-Semitism in the ghetto and increased
the black community's contempt for the average
union teacher.
The emergence of an anti-Semitic issue
can not be shaken off so easily. It exists. It
has been driven into the school controversy
with such force that even after the strike in
New York has been settled and all differences
are resolved, the tensions that have arisen as
a result of anti.Jewish hatreds will not be
eliminated tee quickly.
•
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IF
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In contrast with the views expressed in
Ramparts, another ideology was expressed
recently by an ultra-conservative, the colum-
nist William Buckley, who, discussing the
New York strike, advanced these points.:
The Jews of New York are inflamed by what
is happening, but their anger is only one part
justified. It is altogether justified by the arrant
anti-Semitism of the black militants who are cul-
tivating genocidal passions. Consider an excerpt
from a single leaflet widely distributed in Brook-
lyn:
"It is impossible for the Middle East murder-
ers of colored people to possibly bring to this
important task the insight, the concern, the ex-
posing of the truth that is a must if the years of
brainwashing and self-hatred that has been taught
to our black children by those blood-sucldng ex-
ploiters and murderers is to be overcome."
Any race, any religion, is entitled to protection
against such as that. But the Jewish cause in
New York suffers from its identification with the
altogether materialist concerns of the United
Rabbi Albert H. Friedlander pays tribute due to a very great man
Federation of Teachers, whose leader Albert
Shanker thought nothing a year ago of striking in "Leo Baeck—Teacher of Theresienstadt," published by Holt, Rine-
hart
and Winston (383 Madison, NY17).
down the entire city school system illegally in
It is a deeply moving volume in which the author ably reviews
order to extract from the city a wage raise.
Volume Pays Tribute to Baeck,
'Teacher of Theresienstadt'
It is irrelevant to maintain that the teachers
deserved the raise. The salient consideration is
that a union of teachers which now deplores dis-
order and the unlawful behavior of the adminis-
trators of the Ocean Hill school, should have so
insouciantly struck first a year ago, and again
now.
Buckley is quoted here because he intro-
duces the current anti-Jewish argument that
is linked a la New Leftism with the anti-Is-
rael approach that has fused together such
forces as the Communists, the black extrem-
ists and the anti-Semites from many ranks of
bigotry. Thus this issue is not a simple one.
It is complicated, and he who will provide a
solution will indeed prove to be a miracle
man.
What is overlooked in the main is a point
alluded to in the Stern article in Ramparts.
It is the fact about the predominance of Jews
in the teaching profession. The dedication of
Jews to study and the adoption of teaching
as a profession was not a routine matter of
seeking a way to make a living. It is part of
the Jewish way of life. It is the result of a
legacy that is at the same time a devotion
marked by a great love. Young Jews turned
away from their parents' clothing industry,
they even abandoned Hollywood, pursuing
educational pursuits, entering a profession
that does not pay too well but provides a
sense of great satisfaction.
Now the profession of these idealistic
young Jews is in great jeopardy. They are
being hounded in New York, and they live in
fear of the morrow because neighborhoods
change, school districts are decentralized,
people in whose behalf they struggled in the
name of justice and civil rights seek to drive
them into a corner or out of their classrooms
altogether.
major works by Baeck, supplements his -
analyses with biographical data about the
eminent German leader, the distinguished
rabbi who suffered with other victims of
Nazism in Terezin — "Theresienstadt, the
Germans called it"— and he tells about
Christians as well as Jews who came to
Baeck "to be instructed and comforted by
him." The Christians, too, "called him
rabbi,"—"and out of Terezin there came
the word of Tora."
Rabbi Friedlander poses questions in the
first chapter of this book, in the essay en-
titled "Prelude to Terezin." He asks: "What
did the inmates learn? And were there
seeds which survived the flames and left a
harvest for the days which followed, for
our own times?" And at this point we read
in this magnificent volume of tribute to a
very great theologian and humanitarian:
Dr. Leo Baeck
Wild beasts in uniforms roamed the streets of Terezin, guarded
its gates, tried to stamp out the humanity still flickering in the
thin gray faces of the prisoners. They could not succeed. For late
at night, crowded together tightly in a small barrack hall which
could not contain them all, the prisoners sacrificed vital hours of
rest in order to listen to Leo Baeck and others who lectured to
them on Plato, Aristotle, on Greek and Roman philosophy. Using
his fantastic memory, Baeck recalled page after page of the
writings of famous historians, of Thucydides and Herodotus. Dark-
ness covered the camp, the room. Only his voice was heard, weak,
melodic, low but very clear, evoking other times and places. And
there must have been many present who wondered: Why are we
listening to this? Why not to prayers? Why not to words of
rebellion? Why listen at all?
"And yet they knew. In the warm barracks of the guards,
the Nazis were mocking them for what they were doing: dead men,
listening to dead things. But in the crowded prison hall, there
existed the awareness that the very act of listening constituted a
rebellion, an uprising against the inhumanity of their captors, an
assertion of their own humanity. This was 710 mere gesture, an
attempt to maintain one's dignity — a British lord at tea among
savages, French nobility dancing minuet or gavotte while waiting
their turn for the guillotine. The time for gestures was over,
dignity impossible to maintain where guards would break up the
lines leading to the toilets in order to see old people befoul them-
selves. One merely existed, lived for the next day and the day
after that. But as long as one knew that there was an inner core
to that existence, that at the very moment of extinction the finite
reaches out byond its boundaries, defeat had been kept at bay.
And so they listened to Leo Baeck; not because he was a scholar
g
e ja isbhl e it d zg .,, them to pose as civilized people,
but because he was their
rabbi who taught them that their humanity need not be extin-
-
Are we exaggerating when we state that a
new problem faces a vital sphere on the
American scene, that a profession which has
It is, inevitably, a very sad book, because of the tragedy that
been adopted by many Jews now becomes a
marked the life of the eminent teacher, but it inspires the satisfaction
threat to their very existence?
that goes with appreciation of a martyr's -role in defying the wicked
g a tn
h i e tan ri e a en disf m
or . learning, for adherence to the highest
The settlement of the New York teachers' parnidnceipnlceosuroafghinum
strike partially resolves an agonizing situa-
All of the teachings of Leo Baeck are reviewed and explained
tion, but the developing conditions in many
Rabbi Friedlander. The reader is led to a deep understanding of the
communities including those in the great Christian-Jewish
Germ a n J.ewish leader
dialogue.
is defined. Theof Judaism as envisioned by the
metropolis indicate that the solutions may be
c
teach ings
which
i c
w
only temporary, and unless there is a cure on
in a eu l ogy i n which
a national basis the tragic effects we have surmounted the nights of Terezin is indicated inin
lead men thr011gh
indicated carry with them menacing omens. author of this work declares: "It may well serve
the flames of the Atomic Age. For as the dimensions of man are en-
A new economic problem faces young larged to the point where the
mystery can be discerned, man
American Jews, and we would be as blind as also comes to the knowledge divine
of his fellow man. Mystery and com-
bats if we ignored the truth of such a mandment are joined
here: 'Thou sliait love thy.neighbor as thyself-
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