THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Associnton of Englsh-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075.
Phone 356-8400
Subscription 57 a year. Foreign 58.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
City Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the sixth day of Av, 5730, the following scriptural selections will be
read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion Deut. 1:1.3:22. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 1:1-27.
Tish b'Av Scriptural Selections, Tuesday
Pentateuchal portion: Morning, Deut. 4:25-40, afternoon, Exod. 32:11-14. 34:1-10.
Lamen-
Prophetical portions: Morning, Jeremiah 8:13-9:23, afternoon, Isaiah 55:6-56:8.
tations will be read Monday night.
Candle lighting. Friday, Aug. 7, 7:26 p.m.
VOL. LVII. No. 21
Page Four
August 7, 1970
Awaiting Messianic Time for Middle East
Peace-seeking and peace-making are not
always complementary and are never too
easy to hope for and to attain. In the Middle
East we are confronted by an ancient caul-
dron that has never been without difficulties
or bloodshed, all of which have reached their
peak in the past two decades. Now that area
has assumed a challenging role that beckons
mankind for solution of a problem which is
too seriously affected by dangers to the peace
of the entire world. Unless the disputes are
settled promptly there is the menacing dan-
ger of another world war out of which none
of the great powers can possibly emerge safe
from utter destruction.
All the talk of peace, and of negotiations
between Arabs and Jews—we need not be
fooled: Jewry is as involved in it as the
Israelis—is related to the peace of the world.
The Middle East, a battleground for many
centuries in the periods of the• Crusaders and
the struggles between Moslem and Christian
forces, once again assumes an aspect of Jew-
ish participation, of the presence of the Peo-
ple Israel in the Land of Israel. Inerasable
from history, this fact is undeniable, and the
sooner Israel's neighbors acknowledge it the
better for all concerned.
It has been too easy for Israel's and
Jewry's antagonists to charge a Zionist pres-
ence with guilt for what has happened and
what is transpiring now. The fact is that Jew-
ish presence in the Middle East is historically
factual and that Israel the people can not
be separated from Israel the land. Therefore
whatever peace moves are made must be
rooted in this basic fact and the moment it is
ascertained and acknowledged there will be
an end to war there and hopefully an end to
warfare in the entire world.
We may now be closer to peace than at
any other time in the history of mankind.
Dreamers spoke of Jerusalem as the center
for planning the peace of the world. It is the
City of Peace—Ir Shalom—and it need not
be otherwise, whether for Jew, Moslem or
Christian.
There is no chauvinism in the consistent
claim that Jews and Israelis have been clam-
oring for peace and have emphasized it un-
selfishly. Whatever steps had been taken by
means of the sword—militarily on land and
sea and in the air—was for the defense of a
people now firmly established as a nation
reborn in its ancient homeland. To attempt
to destroy it would be an invitation to a con-
tinuing conflict that can well drag in all the
peoples of the earth.
If Russia sensibly and sincerely cooperated
in the American plan for peace there will be
hope for negotiations on other fronts—per-
haps also in Southeast Asia. The spokesmen
for the world's powers who must have a
share in efforts to attain peace in the Middle
East dare not overlook the fact that another
power, Red China, supplies weapons to ter-
rorists who are undermining the peace aims.
If and when we have cooperative labors on
the part of the world's powers to end the
conflict in the Middle East through the pro-
posed negotiations, there will enter a new
hope of ending also the role of an Asian
power that gives comfort and military aid to
guerrillas who undermine amity. Perhaps we
shall then attain the hope that the Red Chi-
nese Asian intercession will be halted and
in the course of it there will be a closer rela-
tionship of amity between the powers that
are now divided in the world struggle, through
an understanding with the extreme Commu
nists in Asia.
Any approach to peace is in the experi-
ence of mankind initially in a stage of dream-
ing. But the great accomplishments of Man
always begin as a dream. Our duty is to
transform it into reality.
President Nixon has assumed an import-
ant role for peace in the Middle East. It is
true that American interests are seriously in-
volved in the entire crisis. The East-West con-
flict, the American-Russian differences in the
Mediterranean and that entire area, the strug-
gle between powers, must, as it can, be re-
solved peacefully. An end to the Arab-Israel
war can and should lead to that end.
Confidence expressed in President Nixon's
approaches by many of his advisers, notably
Max M. Fisher of Detroit, are beginning to
prove realistic and practical. Now we await
hopefully some firm action that will direct
heads of nations who have been motivated by
hatreds to abandon animosities in the best in-
terests of their peoples. There is need in the
Middle East—as Israel Foreign Minister Abba
Eban has stated time and again—for free
ways between Israel and her neighbors, for
cooperative commercial ventures, for inter-
change of visitors to travel freely from coun-
try to country. One of the miracles of Israel
is that tourism to that country has increased
in spite of threats from her neighbors. At the
same time all of the Arab states have wit-
nessed a total cessation of tourism. This can
end, just as all strife can end, just as commer-
cial and other relations can make Israel the
friend of Egypt and Jordan and Lebanon and
even Syria and Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.
These are the good tidings in the offing
with peace. The sooner that is a reality, the
better for all the peoples involved, the quick-
er the standards of living among the oppress-
ed in many of the lands that are Israel's
enemies now can be uplifted.
We await hopefully, prayerfully, the com-
ing of that good day for Israel, for her neigh-
bors and for mankind.
American Jewry on the Alert
A crisis anywhere on earth that affects
any Jewish community inevitably—tradition-
ally—affects all other Jewish communities.
This has been the case in our entire his-
tory. When there was a fire in one little
village in Russia, neighboring villages and
Jews in other lands collected funds to re-
establish the homeless. When there was a
pogrom in one city Jews elsewhere gathered
means of relieving want.
During the world wars, vast relief funds
were collected to assist the sufferers.
The situation involving Israel is akin to
tradition. Israelis are self-sustaining but they
need our cooperation politically, sentimen-
tally as well as philanthropically. We must
provide • for newcomers to Israel, to relieve
that nation's pressures for military needs.
But wherever Jews are we must also exert
influence to secure justice for the embattled
people that needs aid as an assurance that
its hegemony will not be destroyed.
As the clouds disappear and peace be-
comes a possibility, there will be greater
need than ever for America's interest in
Israel's welfare, and this is where we, the
Jews of America, must be on the alert, never
to let our kinsmen down in time of need.
This is the time to alert Jewish communi-
ties everywhere that we must be readied for
extraordinary action; that to protect a com-
munity in search of peace and of harmony
with its neighbors it is essential that our gifts
to the United Jewish Appeal should be in-
creased enormously and that our investments,
in Israel Bonds and through other methods
should be on a vast scale. Then we shall have
the unity in support of amity for Israel, her
neighbors and the entire free world.
—093.
Moral Teachings Analyzed
Dr. Silver's 'Judaism and Ethics'
Attitudes of Jewish and non-Jewish scholars on the ethical codes
applied to our time are presented in the collection of essays that appear
in a volume edited by Rabbi Daniel Jeremy Silver of Cleveland.
Publishd by Ktav, this volume, entitled "Judaism and Ethics,"
reviews ethical teachings contrasted in the
Judeo-Christian tradition, social actions and
their Jewish backgrounds, the mission of
Israel and related topics.
In his introductory essay Dr. Silver
makes the frank admission of Reform
Judaism having freed itself of the con-
cept of halakha and his contention is:
"Modern man may be groping toward a
new awareness of revelation, one not
based on a static, once upon a time, con-
versation on Sinai, but on the claim of
these commandments upon his genera-
tion." Thus the Reform approach is in
evidence.
Dr. Silver, in addition to having written
the introduction, also is author of an essay,
"Beyond the Apologetics of Mission," which
concludes the volume's 20 articles. The
Cleveland rabbi, son of the eminent Dr.
Dr. Silver
Abba Hillel Silver, expresses confidence in positive responses from
Jewish youth. Calling for an awakening of the communities, he offers
this personal note:
"I am a Jew because my home was palpably Jewish. I am a Jew
because as a child I visited the threatened communities of Europe with
my parents, and shivered in the cold light of impaneing martyrdom;
and because I was taken to visit grandparents who were part of the
beleagured yishuv, and took my first lesson in courage from the daring
of a people willing to lay siege to history . .."
Many Jewish issues are reviewed in the course of the analyses
offered here of the ethical codes. Jewry's will to live, Israel's role,
Zionism's aspects are among the matters incidentally accounted
for.
Current trends as well as numerous historical backgrounds are
viewed realistically by the prominent writers included in this work.
Noted scholars—Dr. Samuel Sandmel, Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut, Dr.
Arthur Gilbert—are in the list of authoritative discussants who are
included in this notable work.
'Judaism and Community' Cover
Variety of Current Jewish Topics
How does Judaism relate to the community? What is the role of
philanthropy in Jewish life? Is there an answer to the problem of inter-
marriage?
These and many other questions are tackled in "Judaism and the
Community" by Dr. Jacob Freid of the Jewish Braille Institute of
America, published by Thomas Yoseloff.
The volume contains a series of essays by eminent personalities
and authoroties on the various fields covered by them.
Intermarriage is dealt with in analytical essays by Dr. Ira
Eisensteln, Werner J. Cahnman and Solomon Z. Weiss.
Rabbis Edward T. Sandrow and Isaac N. Trainin and Dr. Isadore
Twersky are authors of essays evaluating Judaism and philanthropy
related to the synagogue, defining Tzedaka and the attitude toward the
welfare state.
There are two symposia—one on Judaism and mental health and
another on residential treatment of emotionally disturbed and the Jew-
ish component in-residential treatment.
The Black Jewish community and aspects of family desertion are
among the other topics under discussion.
These and other essays dealing with the role of Hasidim and their
use of the Jewish centers, the "Y" and the synagogue and other topics
are interestingly analyzed.