THE METEOR JEWISII NEWS
lb—Friday, Jay 17, MO
Weekly Quiz
By RABBI SAMUEL J. FOX
(Cecnrricfn Ma, JTA - lac.)
Why is it that we special party
is made to celebrate the bath of
a girt like we does for a boy?
Actually, Sephardic communities
are known to have a special party
on Saturday either after the serv-
ices or in the afternoon in honor
of a new girl who is bora. This
usually takes place on the Sab-
bath morning or afternoon during
which the father of the new girl
is called to the Torah to offer the
benedictions and to have his new
daughter named. It is possible
that the reason this kind of party
did not seem to have been as pop-
ular amongst the Occidental Jews
is because severe episodes like
the Crusades may have taken their
toll and saddened the lives of Jew-
ish fr milies so that many occas-
ions of festivity may have been
passed over and almost forgotten.
The reason that the circumcision
feast remains was that the ritual
of circumcision is one of the prin-
cipal rituals of the Jewish faith.
It is also to be noted that in mod-
ern times many families do not
make any sort of meal or parts
after the circumcision of a boy. ,
Why is it a bay Jewish tradi-
tion to invite guests to one's
house?
This tradition is mentioned
under the term of "flakhnossas
Orkhim" (the reception of visitors).
Tae Mishna (Peah) regards this
as one of those acts of grace
which have boundless rewards. Toe
tradition is traced in the episode
in the Book of Genesis (18:8)
where Abraham welcomed the dis-
guised Angels as travelers of the
human race and invited them to
eat with him. The Talmud tells
us that one should not sit down
any important meal unless he has
invited some guests to share the
meal with him. Also, it was a
custom to tarry in order to pro-
long the duration of the meal in
case visitors or poor people came
to share the meal. The respected
people of Jerusalem were known
to have spread some symbol bite
a cloth in the doorway as a signal
to invite passers - by who , were
hungry to come in and share a :
meal with them. (Baba Bathra
93:B).
The busy bee has no time for
sorrow.—William Blake
od
yssey of African Jews in Montreal
By MICHAEL SOLOMON
(C....fright IWO, JTA. it.c.)
A Jewish community which de-
scended in part from residents of
the Phoenician city of Carthage
has been transplanted after more
than 20 centuries from its North
African home to startling new liv-
ing circumstances in the city of
MontreaL Fleeing political develop-
ments in North Africa, some 5,000
of them have moved from the heat
of the northern rim of the Sahara
to the varied climatic and even
more extreme socio-political condi-
tions of French-Canada.
The French-speaking Jews have
found themselves with one foot in
each of Montreal's worlds. On the
one hand, their language links
them with the Roman-Catholic
French-Canadian. But their reli-
gion gives them traditional and
emotional ties with the Jewish
community.
The Jewish community of Mont-
real, united under the co-ordinating
direction of Allied Jewish Commu-
nity Services, has been locked
since the first North African im-
migrant arrived in 1957 in a strug-
gle to understand and meet his
social, cultural and religious needs.
The program now involves a mas-
sive professional and volunteer
effort to adjust the newcomer to
this new world and at a cost of
hundreds of thousands of dollars
annually, according to Boris G.
Levine, president of AJCS.
The movements towards na-
tional independence in Morocco,
Tunisia and Algeria — coupled
with Arab hostility toward Israel
—started the Jews in motion
after, is some cases, more than
70 generations of citizenship.
Twenty years ago, an estimated
40,000 Jews lived in Morocco,
Tunisia and Algeria. That num-
ber has declined to about 100,000.
They chose Canada for many
reasons—but strongly because they
looked on this country as a
"French-speaking nation."
Between 1957 and 1965 alone,
Montreal welcomed and worked to
absorb about 3,800 newcomers
from North Africa—most of them
from Morocco. Other French-
speaking Jewish immigrants ar-
rived from Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Tur-
key, France and other nations.
Most of them settled in Montreal.
Representatives of Jewish Immi-
grant Aid Services meet the North
African newcomers at Montreal
International Airport using bi-
lingual (English and French) or
Tree Planting Spans the Generations
multilingual personnel to welcome
them and introduce them to the
community.
Many of these French-speaking
Jews face monumental problems
on arrival, states Dr. Joseph Kage,
executive vice-president of JIAS.
They must look for a home, a job
and require assistance for food,
shelter and clothing until they can
make their own way. They must
adjust, at work and in society, to
the North American way of life.
Language barriers may prevent
them from finding employment
suitable to their educational or
vocational levels. The degree cx
degrees they hold may not be
acceptable in Canada without ad-
ditional training. Their skills may
not be in demand here and they
may have to undergo retraining.
At home, the wife has to contend
with a strange new life-style. In
Morocco, the husband was unques-
tionably master; the grandmother
ran the household. Suddenly, in
Mcntreal, the wife is a lonely
figure—clinging partly to her old
style of living but compelled to
adjust with painful reluctance to
the Montreal of the 1970s. The fact
that children adjust with much
more ease only serves to divide the
family.
Most of the parents, while French
speaking, react to the greater eco-
nomic opportunities on the English
side of the linguistic barrier by
opting for English-language edu-
cation for their children. Thus.
their offspring begin to drift away
from their parents—both in lan-
guage and in the new interests they
quickly find.
The Jewish community, keenly
aware of these problems , helps
by providing guidance, financial
I assistance, health services, citi-
zenship and language courses,
scholarships, etc. The :ask is so
complex that Allied Jewish r3m-
munity Services has had to bring
into play many of its 20 agencies
to assist the North African, The
titles of the agencies generally
indicate the role they play: Jew-
ish Immigrant Aid Services;
Jewish Vocational Services;
Jewish General Hospital; Herd
Health Center; the Baron de
Hirsch Institute (for welfare as-
sistance) and the YM-YWHA and
Neighborhood House Services.
Recently, to assess its programs
and to provide "even more effec-
tive services to immigrants," AJCS
—as the planning, coordinating and
budgeting body for Jewish com-
munity services in Montreal —
formed a Study Committee under
the chairmanship of lawyer Max
are expected to map a coordi-
nated program of assistance to
newcomers."
The North African Jews them-
selves have organized various
groups through the difficult 13
years since they began to arrive
to look after their interests. The
Association Sephara de Franco-
phone, for example, organized pri-
marily by expatriate Moroccan
Jews has worked with AJCS to
organize the group's own religious
congregations and come to grips
with special problems of the
French-speaking Jewish element.
Language is a vital aspect of the
problem. The Francophone Jews,
oriented towards French culture.
are as determined as any French-
language Canadian to retain their
distinctiveness. Jews join their
French-Canadian brethren in cul-
tural programs and organize their
own distinctive productions — in-
cluding plays and poetry.
Immigrants have organized their
own French-language Jewish school
with the assistance of the Mont-
real Catholic School Commission.
AJCS helped organize a scholar-
ship program primarily for the
benefit of immigrant studies who
are not eligible for regular govern.
ment assistance. The Bnai Brith
Hillel Foundation, another AJCA
agency, organized a French-lan-
guage group at the Universite de
Montreal.
Inch by inch, in a process which
obviously will take years, the North
African Jews are blending with
the Jewish community of Montreal.
Former SS Officer Gets
Reduced Sentence
KIEL (JTA) — Former SS Of-
ficer Franz Josef Mueller has been
sentenced to 12 years imprison-
ment after a retrial by a Kiel Jury
Court for his part in the mass
murder of more than 6,000 Jews
in the Polish g he tto city of
Rochniz.
Mueller had been sentenced to
two terms of life imprisonment in
1968 but had successfully appealed
to the German High Court in
Karlsruhe and obtained a retrial.
Some foreign, observers viewed
the reduced sentence as "a slap
in the face for German justice."
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MAYOR
OR
FORBES
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for
STATE REPRESENTATIVE
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Bergen-Belsen Survivors
Give Award to Jerusalem
Harlan and Andrea Jill Berman of Buffalo admire the certificate
for 100 trees planted by the Jewish National Fund in honor of
their great-grandmother Leak Leers 100Kii birthday. More than 100
family members and friends joined Mrs. Leet at the celebration
held last Sunday at Yong Israel Of Oak-Woods. Mrs. Leet, a for-
mer Detroiter, who will be III on Aug. 4, has six children, 21 grand-
children, 41 great-grandchildren and 11 great-great-grandchildren.
With few exceptions, ben entire family was present at the event,
to be followed by another Aug. 2 is Buffalo, where Mrs. Leet re-
sides. The family red/Bested that gifts be &reefed through the
JNF for the plagiiavg of trees M IsraeL In adintion to the garden
planted by the JNF, nearly 2111 trees were dedicated to Mrs. Leet
by family and friends. The family's goal is a 1,000 - tree grove in
Israel in honor of Mrs. Led.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Premier
Golda Meir was the guest of honor
at a festive dinner here given by
the World Federation of Bergen-
Belsen Survivors Associations.
The federation's remembrance
award was given to the city of
Jerusalem and was accepted by
Mayor Teddy Kollek.
Federation president Joseph
Rosensaft said, "We come now
from a visit to the graves of the
Belsen martyrs and we are truly
entitled to ask ourselves: Have we
learned the lesson of the past?"
The writer Elie Wiesel said, "We
live in a world which seems to us
entirely demented. One asks one-
self: Does Israel in this day and
age have to justify herself?"
Democrat-67th Dist.
Mayor — Oak Park 6 Years
Councilman — Oak Park 7 Years
President of Michigan Conference of Mayors
Chairman Urban Affairs Committee — Michigan Municipal League
Resolutions Committee — United States Conference of Mayors
Executive Board of Southeastern Michigan Council of Governments
Oakland County Board of Supervisors 7 Years
Transportation Committee — National League of Cities
Jewish War Veterans — National Deputy Office
Bnai Brith — Maurice C. Zeiger Lodge 1725
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