THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
14—Friday, April 23, 1971

Hillel Students
Set Day of Fast
for Soviet Jewry

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Students
from Bnai Brith Hillel Foundations
at campuses throughout the coun-
try have proclaimed Tuesday, May
11, as a National Day of Solidar-
ity and Fast for Soviet Jewry.
In his call for support from all
university students, Frank Nie-
haus, Hillel Soviet Jewry chair-
man at UCLA, declared that
"students must continue to protest
until every Soviet Jew has a free
choice in deciding where he wants
to live. Jewish students will not
remain silent!"
Although the programs for the
fast day will vary from campus
to campus, there will be extensive
use of teach-ins, petitions, mock
trials, and other dramatic devices
to demonstrate student unity with
with Jews of Russia.
This national demonstration of
campus solidarity comes as the
climax to a semester, of intensive
student activity on behalf of Soviet
Jewry. The world-wide protests
against the Leningrad show trials
generated an extensive program of
action and education by Hillel
groups at scores of universities and
colleges.
At some schools the concerts of
the Omsk singers and dancers
sparked major student responses.
At the University of Illinois Hillel
students distributed mock program
notes to concert-goers which
stated: "We hope you enjoy the
performance—But . . . there is
another side to Soviet reality, a
side seldom seen by the outside
world. - To be a Jew in the Soviet
Union is to be subjected to singu-
larly repressive treatment. Special
prohibitions are placed upon
Jewish culture, education and re-
ligious observance . . ."

Warsaw Meeting Told
Anti-Semitism Rampant

LONDON (JTA) — Simon Fris-
ner, chairman of the Association
of Polish Jewish ex-Servicemen,
Was charged that although "the
generation of the Holocaust is still
alive, anti-Semitism is still ram-
pant in many countries."
Speaking to more than 709 peo-
ple attending the 28th comme-
moration of the Warsaw Ghetto
uprising, Fr i s n e r declared:
"The danger comes now not only
from the Right but even more
from the old and new Left. The
Polish Communist regime has
accomplished what Hitler did
not achieve, and today Poland is
almost free of Jews."
At the conclusion of his address,
he issued an appeal to the world
asking that "the Holocaust not
perish with the generation that
witnessed it," and noted that those
at tho commemoration must "re-
dedicate themselves to the strug-
gle for Soviet Jewry."
A Christian leader who deliver-
ed the keynote address paid trib-
ute to the Six Million and also
"the millions who escaped with
their lives."
Lord Janner, chairman of the
Board- of Deputies, observed that
just as "Israel was the goal of tens
of thousands of Polish Jews in the
years preceding and following its
independence, so too, today, Soviet
Jews seek refuge in the ancient
and restored Jewish homeland."
He added, "On this solemn
day, too, our hearts go out to
the Jews of Iraq, the victims of
continued discrimination and op-
pression.
Lord Janner also issued an ap-
peal "to governments and men
and women of good will through-
out the world to secure the release
of Jews held in (Iraqi) prisons
on trumped-up charges and the
complete emigration of this small
community to lands of freedom."

Birmingham's The Grandees': Values, Shortcomings

Wheri Stephen Birmingham
wrote "Our Crowd" he created a
sensation. There were revelations
about many of the American Jew-
ish pioneers (the Ashkenazim) and
there were stories about the van-
ished — the intermarried, those
who could be
traced to Jews
and who had
left, and even
those who were
about to d i s a p-
pear.
"0 u r Crowd"
created so many
mixed feelings
that one of the
members of a
very famous
American Jewish
family labelled
the book "Kosher
Nostra."
Now comes Birmingham
the long-promised new Birming-
ham book about the Sephardic
I Jews. He pursues his descriptive
work on famous American Jews

REBECCA GRATZ

"A particularly close friend of Re-
becca Gratz's was Matilda Hoffman. It
was in the office of Matilda's father,
Judge Ogden Hoffman, that Washing-
ton Irving studied law, and presently
Miss Hoffman and Washington Irving
became engaged. But before the pair
could marry, Miss Hoffman became ill
with `wasting disease,' a common af-
fliction of the day, and Rebecca went
to live at the Hoffmans' to help nurse
her friend. Rebecca was there to close
Matilda's eyes at the end.
"This devotion of one young woman
to another impressed Irving. When he
went to England to try to forget his
sweetheart's death, Rebecca Gratz and
her kindness to Matilda became almost
an obsession with him. He could talk
of little else but the Jewess' service
to her Christian friend. One of the
people he told the story to was Sir
Walter Scott, and from this the legend
has descended that Scott—who never
met Rebecca Gratz, used her as his
model for the character Rebecca in
`Ivanhoe.' It is probably true, but the
evidence is not as clear-cut as it might
be. It has been said, for example, that
when 'Ivanhoe' was published, Scott
sent Irving a first edition inscribed:
'How does my Rebecca compare with
yours?' Actually, Scott wrote Irving a
letter saying, in somewhat different
words: 'How do you like your Rebecca?
Does the Rebecca I have pictured com-
pare well with the pattern given?'—a
small, possibly insignificant, difference.
"Rebecca Gratz, meanwhile, was
clearly pleased to think that she and
Rebecca in 'Ivanhoe' were the same
person. She read the novel in 1820 and
immediately wrote to her sister-in-law:
`Have you received "Ivanhoe?" When
you read it tell me what you think of
my namesake Rebecca.' A few weeks
later she wrote again:
" 'I am glad you admire Rebecca, for
she is just such a representation of a
good girl as I think human nature can
reach. Ivanhoe's insensibility to her,
you must recollect, may be accounted
to his previous attachment. His preju-
dice was a characteristic of the age he
lived in—he fought for Rebecca, though
he despised her race—the veil that is
drawn over his feelings was necessary
to the fable, and the beautiful sensi-
bility of hers, so regulated yet so in-
tense, might show the triumph of faith
over - huma.n affection. I have dwelt on
this character as we sometimes do on
an exquisite painting until the canvas
seems to breathe" and we believe it is
life.'
"In later years, when asked—and she
frequently-.4rewhether she was Re-
becca of -S-entt's romance, she would
merely smire frirnly and. change the
subject.
"One aspect of:-Tabecca-Gratz's story
that must have appealed to Scott's
sentimental nature—so much -so-that he
may easily have been tempted to bor-
row it for his tale—was that Reliecca,
in life, like Rebecca in fiction, had had
an unhappy love affair with a Chris-
tian . . .

ealogical chart of American Sep-
hardic families shows. It is an
appended list 44 inches long,
eight inches deep. It traces the
Sephardics from the Franks
families to our own time — to
David deSola Pool — to the Per-
eiro Mendeses and others. The
sources are Malcolm H. Stern's
"Americans of Jewish Descent"
and L. A. Goldstone's genealogi-
cal manuscript.

"The Grandees" will be read
with interest — but it needed less
gossip and better documentation.

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in "The Grandees—America's Sep-
14501 W. :EVEN MILE RD. • 477.2059
hardic Elite," published by Harper
& Row, and once again there is
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a a
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Birmingham provides a record
much interest in the studies con-
ducted by the •eminent non-Jew- of such families as the Cardozo's
ish writer.
and he relates how the great Su- *
preme Court Justice Benjamin *
As in his earlier book, there Cardozo was atoning for a sin of *
will be many mixed feelings his father, who also was a judge *
about "The Grandees." When- and who had committed an indis-
*
ever he could, Birmingham dug
cretion.
*
up something akin to scandal.
It is natural that Birmingham *
The author doesn't pull any should reconstruct the record of
punches, doesn't shield anyone, the Inquisition whose victims
goes to all available sources to settled in this country. Therefore,
. _
get data for a most fascinating there also are tales about the Mar-
subject.
I ranos.

Many of the Sephardic Jews, like
the other early American Jews,
either disappeared or are disap-
pearing. These facts deserve at-
tention in "The Grandees."
The Touro family and other
famous names appear in this
story as famous personalities in
American history. The Haym
Salomon record is presented and
some exaggerations in his role
are properly noted.
Birmingham notes: "The Levan-
tine Sephardim who came to
America in important numbers in
the 1920s and 1930s may have
been poor and uneducated and
believers in the evil eye. - But like
other immigrants of Other -eras,
they have largely succeeded in
pulling themselves out of poverty
and educating themselves out of
ignorance and parochialism and
on the whole they can claim as
good a record in the United States
as any other group."
This is a generalizatibil but a
factual one, in the up-rto-6e-min-
ute characterizations_ of the Sep-
hardics. The "evil -eye" reference
may also be an exaggeration—un-
He does well with the Rebecca less it, too, is used as a general-
Gratz story and its relationship ization, since "evil eye" beliefs are
to Sir Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe." common among many folk.
Birmingham could have done
Scott's Rebecca is believed to
have been patterned on the story better in evaluating Ladino. The
the author of "Ivanhoe" heard jargon of the Spanish-speaking
from Washington Irving about Jews could and should have had
Rebecca Gratz of Philadelphia. a better report. There was a
Ladino newspaper in this country
It is one of the longer stories until 1950 and he apparently failed
in the book — about the famous to get the background of that
Gratz family and their activities. literary effort.
Because Rebecca Gratz had judged
There is no doubt that Birm-
All philosophies, if you ride them Sir Walter Scott as biased toward
ingham researched a lot and
home, are nonsense.
Jews, a portion of, this, story
searched for traces of many
—Samuel Butler worth reading. Birmingham writes: Sephardic families, as the gen-

Has he gone far enough? Too
far in some instances, not far
enough in most. He resorts to
anecdotal tactics and often his
material is irrelevant. And on
some major subjects he falls short
of the good coverage his readers,
based on their previous experi-
ences with him, expect.
For example, on the subject of
Emma Lazarus he is entirely in
adequate. It is not enough to say
about her that she is like a sur-
prising number of women of her
time who wrote poetry. And he
is wrong about her affection for
Washington Nathan. Emma Laz-
arus was in love with a non-Jew
and because she would not inter-
marry she remained single.
Then there is the Benjamin
Nathan murder story. The details
into which he has gone cause one
to ask whether it was totally jus-
tified. To resort to so much gos-
sip, confusion, etc., when there
is so much more to be written,
makes one wonder about this sort
of judgment from one who is
writing as an historian.

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