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. 48235.
VE 8-9364. Subscription $7 a year. Fa* eign $8.
Second Class Postage Paid at Detroit. Michigan
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
Editor and Publisher
SIDNEY SHMARAK
Advertising Manager
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the third day of Nisan, 5729. the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion. Lecit 1:1-5:26. Prophetical portion. Isaiah 43:21-44:24.
Candle lighting. Friday. March 21. 6:26 p.m.
Page Four
VOL. LV . No. 1
March 21, 1969
A Campaign. of Compelling Urgency
Community That Does Not Shirk Its Duties
Matching the challenges of May and June
of 1967, the appeals for assistance to Israel in
the current struggle for the survival of an
entire people assumes vast proportions. The
current Allied Jewish Campaign-Israel Emer-
gency Fund is so vital that only a great tri-
umph by American Jewry philanthropically
will be able to provide for the basic needs in
that embattled area.
Let it be understood:
Our contributions are not gien for military
purposes. The dollars we give are not for
guns. Israel's tax dollars provide for the coun-
try's defense—at a great sacrifice, it is true,
but as an obligation of the Israelis' citizenship.
Furthermore, Israel does not ask for Ameri-
can or any soldiers to come to her defense.
Without being deprived of the means for self-
defense the Israelis will do their own job of
protecting life and limb and the country's
borders. But Israel has health, education, in-
tegration of immigrants and housing and in-
dustrial problems to meet„ and in behalf of
our kinsmen we must provide for these needs.
There are factors not to be overlooked in
uI
the current needs which
obligations. Immigrant absorption—and that
spells a duty to those who are being rescued
from lands of oppression—involves the vast
duty of contributing towards a budget of
nearly S500.000,000 for the health, education
and social needs of Israel. The Jewish Agency
must contribute $250,000,000 towards that
budget and unless we do our utmost to meet
that need we will instead share in the guilt of
a recession that must not be permitted in a
time of great crises. The people of Israel will
be providing rnote than half of the large half-
billion sum needed for these purposes, and we
must not shirk responsibility in upholding the
hands of the defenders of Zion.
There are the problems of the immigrants
who must have jobs, for whom housing must
be provided, whose health needs protection.
Dare we abandon our role as participants in
the -great struggle of saving lives and of as-
suring for the soci needs of these new-
comers to the land that offers haven for the
dispossessed and the distressed?
Indeed, there are the great problems in-
volving absorption. To that end we must
emerge again as the rahamanim bnai rahama-
nim—the merciful sons of a merciful people.
There are the universities in Israel in
whose behalf we must exert ourselves with
greater generosity than ever. Unless we pro-
duce the scholarship that retains our heritage,
unless we create a creative and scientifically
trained aristocracy, it will be the entire Jew-
ish people that will suffer, not Israel alone.
While the campaign provides for the
United Jewish Appeal agencies (Joint Distri-
bution Committee. United Israel Appeal,
ORT and New Association for New Ameri-
cans; as well as America-Israel Cultural
Foundation, Hebrew University. Technion,
United Hias Service and JTA, there are the
compelling obligations involving the local
services. In a drive as significant as the pres-
ent one we must not overlook the domestic
services, and it is vital that every Detroit Jew
who is being approached for the drive should
know that in the Detroit sphere are the
following beneficiaries of the campaign:
Federation Apartments, Fresh Air Society, He-
brew Free Loan Association, House of Shelter. Jew-
ish Community Center. Jewish Community Council.
Jewish Family and Children's Service, Jewish Home
for Aged, Jewish Vocational Service — Community
Workshop, Midrasha, Resettlement Service, Sinai
Hospital and its Shiffm .an Clinic, Tamarack Hills
Authority, United Hebrew Schools and affiliated
schools—Combined Jewish Schools of Sholem Alei-
chem, Arbeiter Ring and Hayim Greenberg, Yeshi-
vath Beth Yehudah Afternoon School.
•
A combination of racial issues, the confu-
sions created by the New Left over the
situation in Israel and mounting anti-Semitic
propaganda are in evidence in academic
quarters. and the prejudices that have been
uttered in recent months in our universities
have caused concern of a type that contributes
towards divisiveness in American society.
Because bias, often based on ignorance,
frequently caused by misunderstandings,
serves to interfere with the vitally needed
unity among Americans on basic issues involv-
ing justice and truth, happenings in our
universities must not be ignored and must be
treated with the utmost seriousness.
Intone university in our midst there is an
unending campaign that could well stir up
hatred evolving out of attacks on the Jewish
community upon whom there has been heaped
an avalanche of bitterness emerging' from
charges of "racism," into which has been
merged a neatly-developed campaign against
Zionism.. The campaign at Wayne State Uni-
versity had escalated and unfortunately be-
came vastly magnified. It is still a matter
marked by grave danger to the cause of truth.
Verhaps it is a matter of time when the WSU
4.114X -
"A Letter From Israel by Papas" is a large book for young readers,
beautifully illustrated, written as a communication that begins with the
salutation -Shalom. Peta," and in the course of addressing Peta also
offers so much information that it results in a descriptive narrative.
This charming book, published by Frederick Watts 1575 Lexington,
NY22), covers so much ground that it is as much a travelogue as it is
•a letter.
Every aspect of Israeli life is reported upon. Nearly every area Is
covered. The reader meets Arabs as well as Jews, young and old, takes
the tourist to Masada and tells the story of the heroes who held out
against the Romans.
-
The kibutz and the cafe, the camel, the ship with immigrants
coming to the land; Jerusalem.1 Tel Aviv, Nazareth, the Wailing
Wall, the Mount Olives, the 'Garden Gethsemane—every con-
ceivable nook and corner is on view here. And the multicolored
pictures by Papas are as superb as his narrative.
It becomes evident at once that this is a book for people of all
faiths, for young especially and the older who will derive as much
There are also the numerous national pleasure from it.
William Papas. the author Illustrator, introduces the people. of
agencies that benefit from the campaign, and
many faiths, from many lands, and the children, and it is evident that
in that list are included the following causes he
has as much fun telling the story as his readers will reap from his
that share from the campaign's allocations: hook
. .
-
American Association for Jewish Education.
Peta, to whom the letter is addressed, is Papas' daughter. .4s
American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Con-
he relates to her the experiences in Israel he writes: "There is
gress, Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, Bnai
something else I must tell you about this country. Besides having
Brith National Youth Service Appeal, Council of
the oldest city, the lowest sea, the loveliest desert, I feel I can give
Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds. Dropsie
Israel one more award. It has the most hitch-hikers in the world."
College, Histadrut Ivrit, Jewish Labor Committee.
And as the reader climbs mountains with the author, meets Bedou-
Jewish Occupational Council, Jewish 'Publication
Society. Jewish Teachers Seminary. Jewish War in , . rides on a camel. glories in the Negev, a great experiunce• is
Veterans, National Community Relations Advisory shared. making this a most delightful book.
Service, National Foundation for Jewish Culture.
National Jewish Welfare Board, Synagogue Council
of America, YIVO (Institute for Jewish Research).
Waks"Grief Is _My Song'
Depicts Holocaust Agonies
There is so much that is compelling in the
Campaign, once again linked with the obliga-
tion inherent in the continuing Israel Emer-
There is an expression of anguish against injustice and the experi-
gency Fund, that the duty evolving from the ences
in concentration camps in a volume of poems, most of them in
drive is self-evident. May the response be Yiddish.
some in English. that have just been published in Los Angeles.
worthy of a great community that never
In - Grief Is My Song," Shammai Waks, who had gone through the
shirks responsibility.
horror , of Nazism, offers, in deeply moving verses, his recollections of
wnat had occurred, shouting forth protests against the indecencies of
Eternal Vigilance and American Fair Play
•
Delightful 'Letter From Israel
Fine Narrative by William Papas
administration will exert sufficient influence
to assure rational approaches and to guarantee
freedom of the press based on truth and not
on the fanning of hatreds. The adminisration
of the university is faced with the duty of
giving proper assurance that right-mindedness
will supervise publications on the campus and
not the form resorted to until now of incite-
ment to suspicions, hatreds, disunity.
There was misdirection at Oakland Univer-
sity where a series of lectures was regrettably
marred by the injection of antagonism to
Israel and, incidentally, to American Jewry.
But the sincere intentions of the adminisra-
tion at that university became apparent when
there was prompt action to counteract the
indignity that was resorted to, and Prof. Wil-
liam Haber, one of world Jewry's most dis-
tinguished personalities was invited to
interpret Israel's role in the Middle East.
It is apparent that in order to offset what-
ever menacing situations may arise, it will
always be necessary to be on guard. Guard-
ianship must be linked with confidence that
the American sense of fair play will triumph
the Hitler era.
In a preface, the author poses questions: "Why cry over the pastes
when there is hardly hope for tomorrow. And how can there be hope for
tomorrow—when counting the dead has become a pastime for today?"
He proceeds to describe how his family perished at the hands of the
Nazis "while the Allies, for reasons of expediency, refrained from inter-
vention. - He gives vent to his feelings:
I walk in the shadows
Of my grief,
Deep and vast
As the fathomless sea;
For I am forsaken
And lost
And grief
Is my host.
His poems are a memoriam to the Six Million victims of the Hitler
massacres. The themes are vast and stirring — both in the Yiddish aid
English texts. They relate the experiences in the camps, the attempts
at gaining courage, the few celebrations, the efforts not to despair, but
the horrors that predominated are exposed in all their realism. The
poet cries out:
Gone is the sun,
Grey is the sky.
And the evenings chill,
And the clouds in their sun,
Descend upon the mountains,
Rest on the hills.
One of the poems is in Polish. "Kamien Grobowy" is a Polish tram-
bb
lation of his Yiddish poem "Headstone," There is a photograph
sister who was murdered in Treblinka. The book is another sad atilt.
to the literature about the Holocaust.
over whatever elements of bigotry may at- tion "Grief
Is My Song" is available from the author, Shammal 11749.
tempt to raise their voice in shouting hate. 1 2054 N. Dracena Dr., Los Angeles 90027.