THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Friday, November 27, 1970—S3

Skill Practiced in JDC/Malben Shop

Mandelstam's Tragedy: Widow Tells Jewish Aspects

In November 1933 Osip Man-
delstam, the great Russian poet,
wrote a poem on Stalin. Two of
the lines in that poem read:

But where there's so much as
half a conversation
The Kremlin mountaineer will
get his mention.

This poem appears in full in
"Hope Against Hope—A Memoir"
by Mandelstam's widow, Nadezhda
Mandelstam. It has been published
by Atheneum. In the very early
pages of the book there is a foot-
note to the poem stating that "in
the first version, which came into
the hands of the secret police,
these two lines read:

All we hear is the Kremlin
mountaineer,
The murderer and peasant-
slayer

Samuel Silberman, 88, tells visitors about his work in the cob-
bler's shop at Neve Avot, Israel's largest geriatric community, ad-
ministered by JDC/Malben and made possible through funds sup-
plied by the United Jewish Appeal.

Annotations by the publishers,
who point out that Mandelstam
was the friend and associate of
Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pas-
ternak, are worth quoting. They
state:
"In 1934, the year he read to a
few friends 'a poem which de-

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nounced Stalin, Mandelstam was
arrested and banished from Mos-
cow for several years—a punish-
ment that was comparatively mild
because of pleas to Stalin on his
behalf. But during the purges of
1938, Mandelstam was arrested"
again and sentenced to a concen-
tration camp in Eastern Siberia
where he died soon after his arri-
val there. 'Hope Against Hope' is
a memoir of the period from May
1, 1919, to May 1, 1938, that Na-
dezhda Yakovlevna Mandelstam
spent with her husband-19 excep-
tionally filled years."
This book by the widow of the
martyr whose poem on Stalin was
never forgotten by the dictator, for
the first time tells the story of the
poet who was one of Russia's
greatest. It contains a wealth of
information about the Russian
terror of the 1920s and 1930s. In
view of the persecution of her hus-
band, this reference to Jew-baiting
by the widow is of special interest:
"I never hid the fact that I am
Jewish, and I must say that
among the ordinary people I
have yet to encounter any anti-
Semitism. In wcrking-class fami-
lies and among collective farm-
ers I was always treated as one
of them, without the -least hint
of what one found in the univer-
sities after the war—and now
too, for that matter. It is always
among the semi-educated that
fascism, chauvinism and hatred
for the intelligentsia most easily
take root. Anti-intellectual feel-
ings are a greater threat than
crude anti-Semitism as such, and
they're rampant in all the over-
staffed institutions where people
are furiously defending their
right to their ignorance. We gave
them a Stalinist education and
they have Stalinist diplomas.
They naturally want to hang on
to what they feel entitled tc-
where would they go otherwise?"
"Hope Against Hope" is a most
revealing memoir, ably translated
from the Russian by Max Hay-
ward. .
There are numerous references
to Jewish experiences that empha-

size Nadezhda Mandelstam's deep
understanding of the conditions in
Russia and the threats with which
Jews were confronted all too often.
Here's one dating back to the
revolution that's of special interest:
"When the Reds took over,
( Ya kov Grigorievich ) Bliumkin's
wife suddenly came to see me and
gave me a certificate made out in
my name, guaranteeing the safety
of our home and property. 'What's
this for?' I asked in astonishment.
'We have to protect the intelli-
gentsia,' she replied. In the same
way, on Oct. 18, 1905, women from
the 'workers' patrols' had gone dis-
guised as nuns to distribute ikons
to Jewish homes. They hoped that
the pogrom mob would be misled
by this. During the many searches
of our house my father never once
produced this obviou4ly fake cer-
tificate made out to me (I was
then only 18)."
There are numerous other de-
scriptions of the attitudes toward
Jews in the Stalin era that add to
the interest the Mandelstam vol-
ume is arousing.
Clarence Brown, in his introduc-
tion to the memoir, describes
Nadezhda Mandelstam as "a
vinegary, Brechtian, steel-hard
woman of great intelligence, limit-
less courage, no illusions, perma-
nent convictions, and a wild sense
of the absurdity of life . . . She is
everywhere in this memoir of her
husband. Her tone and her spirit
at least are here."
Nadezhda Mandelstam, now a
woman in her 70s, lives in
Moscow, a city she was able to
return to only after Stalin's death
in 1953. She was born in 1899 and
spent her early years in Kiev.
Fluent in several languages, she
collaborated with her husband on
numerous translations and after his
death she lived, virtually in exile,
in provincial cities in various parts
of the Soviet Union, often support-
ing herself by teaching English.
The title of the memoir, "Hope
Against Hope," refers to a phrase
Osip Mandelstam often used and
is also a pun on Nadezhda, which
means "hope."—P.S.

Argentina Community Seeking to Win
Its Youth Back to Jewish Interests

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NEW YORK—Argentina's Jew-
ish community is suffering from
the detachment of its youth from
Jewish life, according to Mrs. Rosa
Perla Resnick, past director of the
Jewish Leadership and Communal
Service Training School, Buenos
Aires. Mrs. Resnick is in the U.S.
as a doctoral candidate at Yeshiva
University's Wurzweiler School of
Social Work.
"In Argentina," Mrs. Resnick
said, "The half-million members
of the Jewish community are grap-
pling with the problem of how to
reach the youth, how to get them
closer to Jewish life. A great num-
ber of youth remains detached
from the community, not caring
to participate in Jewish cultural
activities."
She said that about 20,000 stu-
dents are enrolled in Jewish
schools, with about 80 per cent
of the total attending schools in
Buenos Aires and surrounding
areas .
The great majority of school-age
children however, receive no edu-
cation in spite of great efforts
made by the kehila of Buenos
Aires (Association Mutual Israelita
Argentina), the central Ashkenazi
communal body, and by the Vaad
Hahinukh (board of education) to
promote Jewish education. Half
of the budget of the kehila is used
for this purpose at the elementary
and high school levels and for
support of rabbinical seminaries,
a seminary for Hebrew teachers
and Midrasha Haivrit, the only
institute for higher Jewish studies
in the community.
To stimulate the youth's interest
in the Jewish community through
training, of youth leaders, the
School for Jewish Leadership
Training was established in 1965,
sponsored by the kehila of Buenos
Aires, the Sociedad Hebraica Ar-
gentina, the largest Jewish com-

munity center in Latin America;
and the youth department of the
Jewish Agency through the Argen-
tinian Jewish Youth Confederation.
Mrs.Resnick served as director of
the school from 1965 through 1968,
when she came to the United
States, with her husband, Solomon
Helfgot, on assignment as cor-
respondent and journalist.
To date, the school has grad-
uated more than 40 students
who now serve the Jewish com-
munity, both in Argentina and
Israel.
Postgraduate training of Jewish
social workers has been an im-
portant contribution of the school.
For years, social work services
were performed by volunteer lay
people. Now, there are some 50
Jewish professional social workers
who serve in hospitals, youth cent-
ers, old age homes and numerous
agencies.

Day Schools' Society
Plans for Decade

NEW YORK (JTA)—Dr. Joseph
Kaminetsky, national director of
Torah Umesorah, the National So-
ciety for Hebrew Day Schools, has
announced the initiation of an in-
tensive 10-year "crash" program
to provide the Jewish communities
in the U.S. and Canada with an
additional 200 Hebrew day schools.
As the first step, Torah Ume-
sorah will attempt to raise $300,-
000 in 1971.
For the next decade it projects
125 new elementary schools and
75 high schools, and the establish-
ment of a central educational
agency.
He said that future partners-in-
aid in his agency's massive effort
would probably be the federal and
state governments as well as the
communal funds of the Jewish
community.