'Real Majority' Views Power of Voters
at Center, Comments on Jewish Attitudes
In their "extraordinary exami-
nation of the American elector-
ate," contained in the sensational
book, "The Real Majority," the co-
authors, Richard M. Scammon and
Ben J. Wattenberg, take into ac-
count Jewish experiences and the
reactions of Jewish voters in the
recent Presidential and other
elections.
The authors of this volume (pub-
lished by Coward McCann) deny
the influences of the right and the
left and they trust the center. They
make a very emphatic declaration
Of noteworthy interest in their
story is the analysis of the cam-
paign for mayor of Los Angeles
between the Negro Tom Bradley
and Sam Yorty. The authors stud-
ied the Jewish reactions and their
voting and they noted:
"Probably no group in Ameri-
can history has voted more con-
sistently "liberal" than Jews. Yet
when confronted with a referen-
dum-type
Social Issue election
(which is what the Los Angeles
election turned out to be), many
Jews defected from the "liberal"
in their concluding words:
candidate (Bradley) to the more
"The authors trust the people. conservative candidate Yorty. Here
We recommend to would-be are the figures for some selected
leaders of the people that they heavily Jewish precincts:
trust the people and listen to the
people before leading the people.
Listen to the center before lead-
ing the center. Those who listen
. best can lead best.
JEWISH VOTING IN LOS
ANGELES, 1968, 1969
(selected precincts)
1968 Ilumohrev 86% Nixon 13%
1969 Bradley 51% Yorty 49%
(The . Wallace vote in 1968 by Jews
The two authors warn politicians
not to be misled by trailing off into was 1 per cent.)
the hinterland and by avoiding the
"Notice that the Jews did go for
center which they view as the dom- Bradley, but not nearly by the
inant element among voters.
same proportions as before. Much
California Farmer Gives
$200,000 to JNF
LOS ANGELES—A pioneer Cali-
fornia farmer who arrived in this
country from Romania 69 years
ago has given a check for S200,000
to the Jewish National Fund for
the creation of an 80,000 tree for-
est in northern Israel.
Benjamin Feldman. who oper-
ated as many as 500 acres of the
San Fernando Valley in produc-
tion at one time pays tribute to
America with the forest: nine
groves of 2,500 trees, each dedicat-
ed to a great American. Eight
were Presidents, the ninth, Mrs.
Eleanor Roosevelt.
The forest, near Kiryat Shmona,
will bear the names of Feldman
and his late wife, Betty.
Friday, September 4, 1970-33
Philipp Feldheim's Publishing Career
'By YAACOV JACOBS
In the dark yearof 1939, Philipp
Feldheim, a Vienna-born Jew who
had come to America, opened a
small Jewish bookshop in Manhat-
tan's Lower East Side, the cultural
center of American Jewry. Now,
Philipp Feldheim, Inc. celebrates
its 30th anniversary as an out-
standing publisher of classic Ju-
daica and Hebraica. .
Philipp Feldheim, coming from
the Frankfurt tradition, recognized
lace in the South in 1968 and that Jewry here was facing a situ-
less so—but still significantly— ation similar to that which faced
among the non-Southern areas. assimilation-ridden German Jewry
It cut deeply against Bradley in in the 19th Century. He envisioned
Los Angeles when it was per- a two-faceted program to cope with
ceived as the major issue in a
referendum-style election, far
more deeply than it hurt Humph.
rey a year earlier. It also cut
deeply against John Lindsay in
New York.
In "The Real Majority" the au-
thors use the term Psephology
and define it: "The study of elec-
tions and voting behavior from the
the news needs of the time.
First, he began to publish En-
glish translations of classic Jewish
texts, making them available to
hundreds of thousands of Jewish
readers—old and young. He began
to commission American rabbinic
scholars to write new works, ex-
pounding in the American idiom
the traditional teachings of classic
Judaism. Philipp Feldheim, Inc. is
today the largest publisher of En-
glish-language Judaica, and with
Order of Prayers for the Whole
Year, with Translation and Com-
mentary" by Sampson Raphael
Hirsch.
With the growth of the publish-
ing industry in Israel, Yaakov
Feldheim, son of the founder, has
established Feldheim Publications,
Ltd. in the Holy Land. The Israeli
branch has added to the Feldheim
list, concentrating on additional
titles in the "Torah Classics Li-
brary — English translations of
Jewish classics.
While the firm has grown as a
publishing enterprise, the head-
quarters of Feldheim, occupying
an entire building on New York's
East Broadway, still houses one of
the most complete Jewish book-
shops in the world.
Visitors to New York City find
it a 'must' to spend at least part
of one day at Feldheim's browsing
among the stacks and finding
works—ancient and modern—in-
dispensable to their work. One may
stumble on an original edition of
a printed work several hundred
Greek psephos or pebble. The deri-
years old, copies of Judaica pub-
vation comes from the Greek cus-
lished in pre-War Germany in mint
tom of dropping colored pebbles
into the equivalent of our ballot each passing day their list of trans- condition, still in their slip cases,
box."
lations and original works grows. and esoteric works from Middle
For the delight of our readers, General readers, teachers and stu- East scholars virtually unknown
in the Western World.
Gallup Poll does not normally car- here are some of the pebbles from dents turn to Feldheim to meet
ry cross tabulations by religion the psephological grab-bag in "The their needs, and writers and schol-
THOMAS HENDRY will leave
Real
Majority":
ars turn to Feldheim to publish
other than by Protestant and Cath-
his post as literary manager of
—There are few grouns as elector- their new works.
olic, it can be seen that Jews, like
ally weak as young people. In fact, the
the Stratford Festival Dec. 31, to
Mexican-Americans — and every- frenzied support of young activists can
The second aspect of the Feld-
one else in America — are respon- actually be the "kiss of death' to a heim publishing program was mak- devote his complete attention to a
number of writing projects.
candidate who wishes to appeal to the
sive to the law-and-order issue."
real majority — the "unyoung, un- ing available to the English-lan-
guage reader the works of Rabbi
Scammon and Wattenberg ap- poor, and unblack."
—The only extreme that is attrac- Samson Raphael Hirsch, originally
Have An .Affair to Remember
pended a footnote here, stating:
tive to the large majority of American
If Yorty was able to cash in voters is the extreme center. If the published in German. Rabbi Hirsch
Repcblicans continue to hold the cen- was a great rabbinic scholar in
on the Social Issue among Mexi- ter while Democrats Commit suicide in
can-Americans and Jews against left field, we may well see Republican 19th Century Germany who
And Orchestra
Presidents for a generation.
the same sort of liberal Jewish de-
fection can be detected in the Lind-
say election in New York in 1969
—another election where the Social
Issue was paramount. So, while the
I
Bradley, why wasn't Nixon able
similarly to cash in against
Humphrey, who was also being
hurt by the Social Issue? Several
reasons. The Presidential race
was Democrat versus Republi-
'Bagel Power' — Set of Dayenu
Jewish Cartoons in One Book
Readers of The Jewish News who enjoyed the Dayenu cartoons for
a number of years will have their pleasures revived by seeing many
of them collected in a single volume entitled "Bagel Power," published
by Crown.
Here is a sample of the cartoons which appeared in our columns:
- &WINO
can; the LA mayoralty race
was a "nonpartisan race. (Yorty
and Bradley are both Democrats,
although Yorty Is a strange kind
of Democrat.) The Mexican-
Americans and Jews in 1968 were
voting more Democratic than
Social Issue. They were voting
economics and history. The So-
cial Issue, like everything else
in politics, is a question of de-
gree and a question of location.
It cut deeply for Nixon and Wal-
THE DETROIT JEWISH HEWS
BY HENRY LEONARD
436
"Shabbas in Slabotke was never like this!"
— While the Social Issue is the major
issue today, its importance can be
quickly wiped out if the economy
goes sour.
—Polls show that voters under 30
are more hawkish than the over-fifty
generation.
—With the voting age reduced to 18,
the average American voter is still
well over 40.
iIn the 1968 New Hampshire pri-
maries, more hawks than doves voted
for McCarthy. Why? Say Scammon and
Wattenberg: they were not voting for
or against the war, as was thought at
the time, but rather for or against the
Johnson administration.
— Black people are just another part
of white middle-America when it
comes to the issues of crime, drugs
and violent dissent.
—The results of a 1969 Gallup poll
show that 89 per cent of voters aged
21-29 would like to see college admin-
istrators take a stronger stand on stu-
dent disorders.
—Richard Nixon would probably
have
won even without his much-
touted "packaging." "newness," or
strategies. He won simply because he
was more closely attuned to the tem-
per of a larger segment of the elec-
torate than was his opposition.
—Agnewisrd, as a social thought,
did much to help Nixon win the elec-
tion In '68, while Agnew the individual
almost lost it for him.
—There Is no such thing as the big-
city vote, the Intellectual vote, farm
vote, black vote, poor vote, young vote,
Southern vote. or any other attudinal
coalition on the Social Issue.
—John Lindsay won in New York
by a fluke. With only 42 per cent of
the vote Lindsay benefited from the
old axiom, "Happiness is a divided op-
position." Polls in February, 1969, in-
dicated than 74 per cent of the voters
disanoroved of his administration.
—"Kooky" California Is one of the
most barometric states in America.
and consistently votes like the nation
as a whole.
—After the 1968 Democratic conven-
tion, two out of three Americans told
pollsters that they thought the police
had acted correctly.
—Despite the legend about John Ken-
nedy's "appeal to women voters," he
would have lost the 1960 election had
only women voted. Women voted 51-
49 per cent for Nixon.
VALTER POOLE led his last
concert with the Detroit Symphony
Orchestra Saturday evening, prior
to his retirement as asso-
ciate conductor of the Symphony.
The concert was held on the Rack-
ham 'Building steps as part of the
Detroit Discovery Festival. Dur-
ing intermission Councilman David
Two men created these cartoons—Rabbi Henry Rabin, the execu- Eberhard presented Poole with a
tive director of the Los Angeles Hillel Council, who was the idea man, resolution from Detroit's Common
and Leonard Pritikin, the artist who drew the cartoons, who is a Cali- Council commending him for his
many years of musical service to
fornia advertising executive.
Jointly, they signed the fun picture "Henry Leonard" and their the Detroit community. On behalf
of the Orchestra's Board of Direc-
product appeared in more than 60 English-Jewish newspapers.
Now, in book form, they offer their product, depicting Jewish life, tors Symphony President Robert
B. Semple presented Poole with
the home, the synagogue, the rabbis.
There is fun on every page of "Bagel Power" and the book inspires an English lantern clock and
the frequent reproduction of these cartoons for which there has been praised him for his long associa-
tion with the orchestra.
such a great demand among Jewish readers.
Copr. 1968, Doy•nu Procluctlont
MORI LITTLE
organized and led the famed
Frankfurt Kehila, and with amaz-
ing success turned the tide against
assimilation, creating a vibrant
traditional Judaism. Rabbi Hirsch,
sensing the need for Torah litera-
ture in the vernacular, wrote such
classics as "The Nineteen Letters
of Ben Uziel," commentaries on
the Siddur, the Chumash, the
Psalms, and other works. When
the Samson Raphael Hirsch Pub-
lications Society in America set
out to translate and disseminate
the Hirschian literature, they nat-
urally turned to Philipp Feldheim
as their publisher. Today these
monumental works are available
in-, excellent translations in the En-
glish language, the most recent be-
ing the famed "Hirsch Siddur, The
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