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. Foreign $8.
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 21st day of Siran 5729. the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Num. 8:1-12:16. Prophetical portion. Zechariah 2:14-4:7
Candle lighting, Friday, June 6. 7:46 p.m.
POL. LV .
No. 12
Page Four
June 6, 1969
Noted Negro's Social Study of Israel
Upon his return from Israel, where he at-
tended the conference of the American Foun-
dation on Automation and Employment, the
well-known Negro leader, Whitney M. Young,
Jr., director of the New York State Urban
Development Corporation, has some interest-
ing things to say. For example, he said that
tolerance among Israelis toward Arabs sur-
prised him. He wrote in a special article:
"One would think that a nation surrounded by
hostile Arab states whose guerrillas inflict daily
casualties on troops and civilians would develop
deep hatred for the enemy.
"But it is not so, generally. A top Army gen-
eral explained it to me. 'I don't want my children
to hate,' he said. 'If you teach a child to hate
Arabs, you are teaching him to fear them, for the
two are linked, and I don't want my children to
learn fear.' Think of the energies and lives that
are wasted on such fear and hatred here in
America!
"The subject came up again when I met Israel's
brilliant and charming prime minister, Mrs. Golda
Meir. An American suggested to her that Arabs
were lazy and incapable of learning modern tech-
niques—the same lies that many people assert
about Negroes.
"Mrs. Meir was visibly annoyed, but she an-
swered in a very ladylike way that no, you can't
say a people are lazy. It's a matter of opportunity
and education, she said, and she told of the efforts
Israel is making to motivate its Arab population
and open new opportunities for them, In her own
quiet way, she exploded the myths and generaliza-
tions that are part and parcel of racist thought."
Of even greater interest is the comment
Mr. Young made on Israel's agricultural co-
operatives. He drew a lesson from what he
had learned in Israel and said the Israeli ex-
periments "might be used as examples for
solving the problems of the rural South." On
that score he described a visit to a moshav,
the cooperative settlement in which all set-
tlers have a voice, in which each settler is
provided with enough farm land to work on
and a home, and the American Negro evalu-
ated the Israeli lesson by stating:
"As mechanization makes more and more farm
laborers jobless in our rural areas, it might make
sense to consider a similar development here.
Federal land grants, coupled with cooperative or-
ganization. could keep people out of big city slums,
leading productive lives on their own land.
"Israel is also dotted with new cities. Planners
carefully arranged for the settlement of new immi-
grants in new towns. I visited one, Kiryat Gat. on
the edge of the Negev. It's a bustling community,
specially designed to integrate newcomers into
Israeli life.
"If a small country can do this, why can't w e,
with out vast open spaces, plan for new towns to
absorb our growing population? We have more
money, more planners, more industry than Israel
has. But they are experimenting, while we are
stuck in a rut. Why?
"Perhaps the answer lies in the pioneering
spirit, the nation-building spirit of adventure that
was once so strong in America, but now seems
smothered by affluence and social disinterest. If
Israel has anything to teach us, it may be that
this spirit must be recaptured, and that our re-
sources must be used to develop our own human
potentials to create an equal society."
Mr. Young brought back another lesson
from Israel. He belittled the "popular myth
in this country" that there can't be sufficient
funds for education because we spend so
much for our armed forces, and he contrasted
the American policies with Israel's and pre-
sented this view:
"Israel is a small country, a relatively poor one
that has to spend a far greater portion of its na-
tional wealth on defense. Three wars in its 21
years and the constant harassment of hostile
neighbors make the Israelis place a top priority
on defense.
"But while some Americans use defense costs as
an excuse to avoid social expenditures, the Israelis
do not. They spend proportionately more on educa-
tion, housing and subsidies to individuals than we
do . . .
"The Israelis see, as too few Americans do,
that good schools and superior education can erase
social inequalities. So they are taking special steps
to insure that children from poorer families get
special, 'more than equal,' schooling to compen-
sate for their less favored backgrounds . . .
"What the Israelis are doing is to quietly satur-
ate schools in poor neighborhoods with special
services. Students attending such schools start ear-
lier, with compulsory kindergarten, and must stay
in school longer, about two years more than chil-
dren going to other schools.
"They are introducing a longer school day, too,
for poor neighborhoods. They are aware that shut-
ting down the schools at three o'clock as we do,
only sends children back to homes that lack study
facilities. So the kids stay in school and the teach-
ers tutor them.
"The teachers are, of course, paid extra time,
and their union backs the program. Most teachers
accept the fact that they play a key role in this 1
developing society, and they welcome the chance
to develop the talents of their students. They lack
the 'combat' mentality of too many American!
teachers in slum schools.
"There is another side to education in Israel,
the adult education program needed by a nation
that is still absorbing immigrants from all over
the world.
"I visited one center in Jerusalem that was
teaching Hebrew to new immigrants. There were
28 people in the class, from about 20 different
countries ranging from Bolivia and India to
France and Russia. None spoke Hebrew, but the
teacher started with a few Words, and after a
while they were communicating with each other,
and learning.
"I couldn't help thinking that in Israel it is
accepted that you can take 28 people from differ-
ent cultures, all speaking different languages, and
teach them. Here in America it takes an immense
effort simply to convince people that middle class
white children and poor black children can be
taught in the same classroom . ."
The impressions just quoted are those of
an eminent student of social needs and a re-
sponsible observer of events relating to his
people and to his fellow citizens—and to his 1
fellow men everywhere. What he had to say
serves as a lesson for Americans. They are a
lesson also for Israel's Moslem neighbors. '
Would that all who seek justice would stop
searching for causes for warfare and instead
turn to the peaceful examples for the ad-
vancement of mankind that emanate from
Israel!
Panic-Spreading is Contemptible
There is enough panic in the large cities,
and any addition to the spread of fear is
deplorable.
From the ranks of the Chabad movement
have come some very sound statements in
recent years. But the latest statement by
one of its spokesmen, advising parents to ship
their children off to camps in the summer
time because "the city is a jungle in sum-
mertime and our children can't help but
suffer morally and physically if they have
to stay in this poisonous atmosphere," lacks
the wisdom we would expect from the Luba-
vitcher ranks.
If this .....
is a gimmick to get children off
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4 .`
The Link to the Synagogue
'Prayer in Judaism' Thoroughly
Reviewed by Rabbi Martin
In "Prayer in Judaism. - published by Basic Books. Rabbi Bernard
Martin, chairman of the Case Western Reserve University department
of religion, undertook to make religion understood by its forms of
devotion. He seeks. at the same time, to emphasiz.? that "traditional
prayers of Judaism are devotional classics of universal value."
He succeeds in both efforts, and his book
combination of the spiritual contents of prayers
presentative of them in splendid translations.
is a most impressive
and of an evaluative
The layman for whom this volume is intended gains an inter-
esting insight into the manner in which Jewish prayers developed.
The beginnings are traced to the period of the Babylonian Exile-.
597.539 BCE. The author states: "It was at this time, many scholars
theorize, that the exiled Jews, now separated from the Temple,
the one legitimate center for the offering of sacrifices. would gather
informally on Sabbaths and festivals under the leadership of proph-
ets such as Ezekiel, as well as other teachers, for prayer and
reading and the exposition of the Scripture. Once permitted to go
back to Palestine by the Persian emperor Cyrus, those Jews who
remained in Babylonia continued the practice of holding such reli-
gious assemblies and those who returned to Palestine established
them on the ancestral soil. Even though the Temple was restored
in Jerusalem and every Jew was obliged under Biblical law to visit
it three times annually on the pilgrim festivals, local gatherings
for worship and study of Scripture continued--probably, however,
not on a regular basis."
The emergence of the prayer book, its links to the synagogue
which, as an institution has. as Rabbi Martin states, "been firmly
grounded on the principle of 'the priesthood of all believers,'" is
ranked in importance with Bible and Talmud "among Judaism's great
contributions to the world."
The piyyutim or synagogue hymns are elaborately dealt with, and
the reader gains access to the origin of the tefillot, the prayers used
according to Minhag Ashkenaz and Minhag Sepharad, the rise of the
Reform movement in Germany• the revision of the traditional prayer
book and the reinterpretations by Conservative and Reconstructionist
scholars.
Prayers themselves are subdivided in this practical book into
these sections: Psalms, Daily and Sabbath Prayers, Prayers in the
Days of Awe and Prayers of Our Time,
It is evident that the subdivisions provide for a thorough account
of the major hymns and prayers, and the last department provides
for a review of the supplementary prayers used at services on various
occasions, such as "An Elegy for the Six Million" by Rabbi David
Polish which has been included in the Reconstructionist Prayer Book;
"A Prayer for the Community of Israel on Yom Kippur" from the
Union Prayer Book; and a number of others for special occasions.
For many readers some of the prayers described here provide re-
vealing data regarding supplications that have been popularized in the
past but have long been discarded. For instance, there is the "Ha-
mavdil" for the conclusion of the Sabbath that had its origin in the
13th Century as is ascribed to the Talmudist Mordecai ben Hi leL It
had been translated into Yiddish, and women from Eastern Europe
uttered: "Gott fun Svrohom, Yitzhok un Yaakov . . As der Reber
Shabbos Kodesh geht avek ..."
Vastly annotated, referring to sources, translations, commentaries,
the texts of prayers as well as explanatory statements by the author.
prayers and traditional practices emerge greatly clarified in this vain,.
to certain camps. then the move is inexcus-
able and deserving of severest condemnation.
If the city's atmosphere is "poisonous"
in the summer, what'll make it pure in the
winter time if the children stray off in fear
before they resume normal activities? Will
they be under constant, vigilant police care?
Will that remove the moral suffering?
able collection of prayers.
Resort to this type of fear-spreading
Martin frequently refers also to hazanut, to the cantonal
creates a revolting condition which will not arts, Rabbi
as well as the ageless resort to some prayers applicable for
only be resented by citizens who strive for festivals and Sabbath and serious as well as happy occasions. He has
peace in our communities, but will be met made. a worthy, contribution towards a better understanding of the
with bitter condemnation. This is what' it synagogue's role in addition to offeriOg' in good translations the prayers
chanted in the house of worship. ".;
deserves.