THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Assad-
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17313 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075.
Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices.
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atlon
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Business Manager
City Editor
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 21st day of Elul, 5731, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentatenchal portion, Dent. 26:1-29:8. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 6:1-22.
Candle lighting, Friday, September 10, 6:32 p.m.
VOL. LIX. No. 26
Page Four
September 10, 1971
USSR Terror—Expose Must Bring Relief
Boris Smolar, in his impressive book "So-
viet Jewry Today and Tomorrow," which has
just been published by Macmillan, states very
clearly that most Jews may not desire to
leave the USSR, but there is a sufficiently
large group that desires to go to Israel.
Enough admiration has been aroused for Is-
rael among Russian Jews to induce an emi-
gration movement.
It would be sheer folly to believe that
most Soviet Jews wish to emigrate. After
all, there has been a period of assimilation
that can not be ignored, and the cessation
of cultural activities among Russian Jews
because of the suppression of these rights
has contributed to an estrangement. But a
new spirit of Jewish identification has arisen,
especially as a result of admiration for Israel,
to create a desire for Jewish affiliation with
their people's past and with the current cre-
ative role that has emerged with statehood.
An eminent British journalist, Edward
Crankshaw, writing in the London Observer,
offered an interesting analysis of conditions
that result from Russian treatment of Jews
and the desire to emigrate that has resulted
in great courage among many Russian Jews.
Mr. Crankshaw wrote in part:
"It is safe to say that of the 3,000,000 or so
Jews left in the Soviet Union a majority have no
desire to go to Israel: they have become more or
less completely assimilated. They have to be for-
mally registered as Jews, but since Stalin's post-war
anti-Semitic drive they have not as a rule had to
suffer for being Jewish, except in certain chronically
anti-Semitic areas.
•"Besides the assimilated Jews, however, there
have always been large numbers of practicing
Jews whose treatment by the authorities has been
very rough indeed. And in recent years these have
been augmented by thousands more who have lately
discovered, or rediscovered, their Jewish identity.
"Before the Kremlin knew what was happening,
it was surprised and shocked by a flood of applica-
tions for permission to emigrate to Israel. There
was no law to forbid such applications, they were
simply unheard of: they were outrageous. In the
words of a Sverdlovsk newspaper, the Ural Worker,
culminating against a small group of Jews who had
dared to ask leave to go to Israel: 'To flee one's
homeland is criminal. Such an action has only one
name—treason.'
"The individual is summoned to a meeting of
his fellow-workers or professionals, ritually de-
nounced as a traitor to the Soviet Union, and sum-
marily expelled from the union or institute govern.
ing his trade or profession. Afterwards he is lucky
if he can find a job as a common laborer: he is
a sort of outlaw.
"One of the saddest cases is that of Madame
Markish, the widow of Perets Markish, the famous
Yiddish poet, a party member in good standing,
who was arrested in 1949 at the height of Stalin's
anti-Semitic campaign and shot in 1952. His widow
(who did not then know that her husband had been
executed) was exiled with his whole family to
Kazajstan and saved only by Stalin's death in 1953.
"Madame Markish decided last December to
apply to go to Israel with her younger son. After
repeated applications she could get no more transla-
tion work. Her son was expelled from his division
of the Writers' Union and now works as a lorry
driver's mate. Madame Markish, now in her 50s,
has appealed in moving terms to the supreme au-
thorities, in vain.
"In a sense, the Jews are lucky. Alone among
Soviet citizens they have somewhere to go, at least
in their dreams. They have friends outside who can
speak for them. Others have nowhere to go and
nobody to speak for them. The many persecuted
religious sects, for example, above all the Baptists,
are unsustained by any hope of salvation this side
of the grave.
"One does not have to be a Ukrainian nationalist
to be sickened by the savage treatment of all mani-
festations of national consciousness in Kiev, Kharkov
and elsewhere.
"Anyone who is inclined to think that we may
be receiving a false impression of current repressive
policies from the Jews is recommended to read a
recently published compilation called 'Ferment in
the Ukraine,' edited by Michael Browne. This book,
through the voices of judges, prosecutors, witnesses
accused, prisoners and martyrs, offers a sad and
moving commentary on what happens when men
and women who pride themselves on .peing Soviet
patriots are brave enough to stand up for the minor-
ity rights guaranteed by the Constitution. National
feeling is not limited to the Ukraine. It is on the
increase in the Central Asian republics and else-
where. Like Jewish consciousness, it refuses to lie
down—worse, it is nourished by the very repression
which seeks to crush it to death."
4.3773-
Byzantine Jewry: 1,000-Year
History Analyzed by Dr. Sharf
Byzantine Jewry's history is replete with many dramatic events.
Research conducted by Prof. Andrew Sharf of Bar-Ilan University
adds immeasurably to knowledge about the people and the events
that left indelible marks over a period of more than 1,000 years.
In "Byzantine Jewry," published by Schocken, Dr. Sharf devotes
his studies to the eras from Justinian to the Fourth Crusade.
Describing the broad terms to which "Byzantine" has been applied,
Dr. Sharf points out that it relates "to the eastern provinces of the
Roman Empire, from the foundation of its capital, Constantinople,
on the site of Greek Byzantium in the year 330, to its capture by
Ottoman Turks in 1433—for the whole. of the thousand years or more
that it took the Roman Empire to fall."
Covering the events that were marked by the Arab invasions,
the rule of Justinian, the Crusades, Dr. Sharf develops - thoroughly
the mode of life in the Jewish communities, the relationships with
the rulers, the Jewish method of taxation, education and commerce.
He points out that Greek was their language, that in the late 15th
or early 16th Century "there were real difficulties in Hebrew," that
parts of the Pentateuch began to be reproduced in Hebrew and Greek
"explicitly for educational purposes—so that the Hebrew would be
both understood and learnt from the Greek." He states that "it is
clear, from the persistence of transliterations, that it was only spoken
Hebrew which had become familiar—perhaps to the detriment of
written Hebrew." There were conversions, and there were struggles
to attain high government positions. Dr. Sharf states:
"While the opportunities for Byzantine Jews were far greater
than for the Jews of early medieval Europe, they were far less than
under Islam. This difference is crucial: the advantages of the Byzantine
Jewish situation did not, and could not, permit the kind of assimilate
life which was .a commonplace in Muslim countries. Against that
possibility there stood a permanent obstacle—the inveterate hostility
of the Byzantine ruling institution, whether in its ecclesiastical or in its
secular guise."
For close to 700 years, Dr. Sharf indicates, "Byzantine Jews
enjoyed much better conditions than those in western Europe.
True, there were comparable conditions in the Spanish provinces
newly conquered from the Muslims. But there, as everywhere
under their rule, the Muslims had encouraged an urban economy
very similar to the Byzantine one which for the Jews had similar
results. It is the peculiarities of these conditions under Christian
rule which give Byzantine Jewish history its primary interest."
Dr. Sharf also points out the achievements of the Byzantine
Italian communities, in Talmudic and mystical studies, in historio-
graphy and in the composition of liturgical poetry.
SummarLing, the position of the Jews in Byzantium is defined as
follows: "Better off than in the West, worse off than under Islam,
usually secure, occasionally threatened, potentially receptive to the
culture around them but a very long way from assimilation, enjoying
a legal but explicitly inferior status, the Jews in the Byzantium of our
period constituted in various ways and in their various communities
at once a link and a dividing line both between the East and the West
and between the classical and the medieval world—just as, in a dif-
ferent way, did Byzantium itself. And this function of theirs expressed
the fascinating, the unique and the finally unanalyzable Byzantine-
Jewish ambiguity."
We have in these analyses an expose of
facts that indict the present Russian tactics
of dealing with Jews and others in emigra-
tion and the cultural rights of minority
groups in the USSR.
Mr. Crankshaw did not indicate it, but
there is an established United Nations prin-
ciple granting people the right to choose
their place of residence and to emigrate
wherever they may desire.
It is properly related by Mr. Crankshaw
that the oppressions in Russia are not against
Jews alone and that other groups, especially
the Baptists, are undergoing hellish suffer-
ings from Russian persecutions.
It would be criminal to hide the facts,
and both in Mr. Smolar's 'as well as in Mr.
Crankshaw's writings there are factual indi-
cations of conditions which can not be toler-
ated. Therefore every protest against Krem-
lin prejudices is an obligation of liberty-
Sidney Shevitz was a cosmopolitan. Yet loving people.
he was primarily a Jewish personality who
*
*
*
devoted his life to Jewish causes while de-
Nevertheless, protests need not be
voting himself also to the needs of the gen- launched on the basis of hopelessness. There
eral community.
are many indications that there can be a
He will be missed in the ranks of Labor breakthrough, that important Soviet leaders
Zionism and Histadrut. In behalf of Poale can be spoken to, that there is a chance for
Zion, he was one of the most articulate men reconciliation between Israel and the USSR,
in the American Jewish community.
between Communists and Jews.
As president of both the Jewish Com-
Victor Lewis, the Soviet journalist who
munity Council and the Zionist Council, he visited Israel, did not write vitriocally when
Among the 77,297 names of victims of Nazi persecution which ap-
was a spokesman for our people on major he described "Israel in Soviet Eyes" in ar-
pear on the great wall of the Jewish synagogue - in Prague, there is one
causes.
ticles in the New York Times. He was ob- — Alfred Kantor — which does not belong there.
Kantor survived the
Few men in our midst were as ready as jective. Soviet officials in some embassies
hell
of
Terezin,
Auschwitz,
Schwarzheide.
He
lives
in New York, where
he was to appear in defense of human and make efforts to define the Russian position
his visual record of those sinister days' appears under the simple title,
Jewish rights.
with a measure of logic. There is the general The Book of Alfred Kantor," to be published by McGraw-Hill.
As Michigan's first FEPC chairman, and - view that the Kremlin is not a bit anxious
Possibly the most important document of its kind since the Anne
as a member of the Civil Rights Commission, for war to flare up again in the Middle East. Frank Diary, this work, presented in facsimile, consists of 129 water-
Mr. Shevitz left an indelible mark in Mich-
All of which points to the hope we crave colors done by Kantor at the age of 22, immediately after being
igan's tasks for the betterment of the under- for — the hope for amity between Israel and liberated at the end of three years spent in Nazi extermination camps.
privileged.
Jewry and the USSR. Then even the pos- Some of the original sketches done in the camps themselves, and such
He was a man justly revered, and his sibility of an Arab-Israel accord will not ap- heartrending memorabilia as a ticket to Terezin's cafe, a deportation
order alid the official Star of David patch, complete this account of
death is a loss to Jewry and to America.
pear like a mirage.
man's inhumanity to man.
Shevitz:Cosmopolitan
Survivor's Moving Document