THE JEWISH NEWS
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Welber •4 nerlcan AtatuelolIolish-Jewfau Newspageri,-Michigin Press ASSOCISItiOn, National Editorial Associ-
ation Published every Faidimbk.abt...Jorwiab News - Publishing Co-, 17515 W. Nine Mile. Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075.
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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
CFty Editor
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Hanuka Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, Sabbath Hanuka, 30th day of Kislev and Rosh Hodesh Tevet, the fol-
lowing scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portions, Gen. 41:1-44:17, Num. 28:9-15, 7:42.47. Prophetical portion,
Zechariah 2:14-4:7.
Rosh Hodesh Tevet and seventh day Hanuka Torah readings, Sunday, Num. 28:1-15,
7:48-53. Eighth day Hanuka Torah reading, Monday, Num. 7:54-8:4.
Candle lighting, Friday, Dec. 17, 4:44 p.m.
VOL. LX. No. 14
Page Four
December 17, 1971
Israel-U.S. Friendship Must Not Be Harmed
While sabers were rattling in Cairo, with
reverberations in Amman, Beirut and Da-
mascus, pens in pressrooms were wielding
rumored tales about impending crises and
cables across the ocean were communicating
panic. On the home front, speculative
columnists were judging and prejudging con-
flicts among nations, rancor in diplomatic
ranks—they all but foretold the inevitability
of war.
There is always the possibility—and the
danger—that an international conflagration
can blaze forth, that what might be an in-
significant incident in the Middle East could
develop into a world conflict. We readily
dispense with these conditions in the hope
that the prophets of doom, while sincere in
their approaches, are wrong. We are willing
to retain faith in the negotiating powers of
spokesmen for the various governments in-
volved, especially Israel in relation to the
United States and the Soviet Union as a force
to control the extremists among Egyptian
militarists.
Of concern, however, is the approach to
the issues by American journalists, the man-
ner in which columnists often tackle the
issues as if there were infamy at the root of
Israel's appeals and bigoted prejudice in the
ranks of those who defend Israel.
We are entering upon a Presidential year,
and in the coming months, more than at any
other previous time, there will be many
attempts to prove that Israel influences "a
Jewish vote, that there are secret deals,
that votes are being bartered. It is of great
urgency, therefore, that the facts be set
straight, that the approach to the Middle East
situation should be properly understood and
that there should be an elimination of any
attempt to magnify issues that are non-
existent.
It is necessary for responsible people,
especially in our government and in con-
gressional ranks, to let it be known that
Israel is not a partisan issue. The overwhelm-
ing support for aid to Israel has been and
must remain nonpartisan. The votes have
been bipartisan and on that basis there
should be an end to speculative nonsense.
Either the cause is just or it should not
be supported: this is the basis for action in
relation to Israel. We hold it to be just and
compelling upon every person with a sense
of fairness to go all out to protect the little
state of Israel whose position could be not
only insecure but helpless if the Maccabean
spirit had not created the determined will to
protect life and defend the state's sovereign-
ty; and if the United States more than any
other entity had not aided Israel in time of
need for defensive weapons.
Unless we accept this principle of justice
for an embattled nation surrounded by ene-
mies and constantly threatened with extermi-
nation, we abandon every vestige of decency
in international relations. To link the needs
of the little state, and the support it receives
from kinsmen, with political motivations is
nothing more than a demoniacal search for
sensationalism on the part of newsmen and
columnists who should know better, and we
endorse every condemnation of such an ap-
proach to a major world situation.
It is regrettable that in diplomacy there is
the frequent need to keep some facts from
filtering out of State Department, White
House, British Foreign Office and also Israel
Embassy negotiating rooms. In instances
when newsmen search for facts they often
speculate on what had occurred during dis-
cussions in such diplomatic talks. When they
are distorted into viewing events as if Jews
were manipulating Votes or threatening to
retaliate against political parties money-wise,
they render a disservice. When they search
for facts they serve the public.
We have no intention of abandoning a
basic American right to defend our kinsmen
and those threatened with destruction. We
constantly plead for cooperation in these ef-
forts from our non-Jewish neighbors and
friends. We hope for it in the press. We do
it with an added plea that facts should not
be distorted and that destructive ideas should
not be interjected to harm the American ap-
proach of dealing justly with Israel's posi-
tion in the Middle East. There is the obli-
gation to strengthen American-Israel friend-
ship, and anything that stands in the way of
it should be rejected, condemned, totally re-
pudiated.
Protection for the Few Left to Be Rescued
With fewer than 4,000 Jews left in Syria—
all of them•living under a Damocles Sword—
the obligation grows upon the Jewries in free
countries to mobilize in their defense.
There is the great danger not only of
their being totally robbed of their possessions
and of the right to earn the barest means
of subsistence, but their very lives are en-
dangered.
Appeals in behalf of the remaining Jews
in Syria drew vitriolic condemnations at the
United Nations from the Soviet and Arab
blocs, so that it became necessary for the
American representative to deplore such
tactics. Apparently there is little of the hu-
man spark left when nations with barbaric
tendencies are set upon policies of destroying
those they disagree with or minorities they
dislike.
It becomes obligatory upon Jewish com-
munities not to be silent.
The outcry against discrimination in Rus-
sia has been echoed in so many quarters that
the Syrian Jews seem to have been forgotten.
Certainly, they are ignored to a degree. The
protests against Russian tactics and the ap-
peals for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate
must continue. But others who are under the
domination of brutal regimes must not be
ignored.
A serious effort should be instituted in
defense of the surviving Syrian Jews. The
one-time prosperous Jewish community there
virtually has been destroyed. Those who sur•
vive—as one escapee from that terror reports
—are being beaten, harassed, imprisoned.
They are segregated. The description "Jew"
appears on both front and back of their
identification cards in red ink. They have no
escape. They have no friends. They are pre-
vented from emigrating.
The civilized- world must speak out for
them. It is true that the India-Pakistan trage-
dy is now overshadowing many other crucial
world issues. All the more reason for Jews
everywhere to speak out, so that there should
not be total forgetfullness of the tragedy of a
small Jewish community in the atmosphere
of hatred for all Jews because of the defeats
the barbaric land suffered at the hands of
Israel.
Judeo -Spanish Ballads Defined
in Volume on Music from Bosnia
Students of folk music and of Jewish dialects will find great
interest in "Judeo-Spanish Ballads from Bosnia," published by Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press.
Edited by Samuel G. Armistead and Joseph H. Silverman, with
Biljana Sljivic-Simsic as collaborator, this volume contains texts of
Ladino songs, music of selected ballads and explanations of the texts
that provide valuable information on the emergence of Judeo-Spanish
music and the areas where it was popularized.
The major subjects dealt with in this volume are: Five 18th
Century Bosnian Ballads, Halmi Baruch's "Spanish Ballads of
the Bosnian Jews," Ballads of the Bosnian Sephardic.
Valuable addenda, to simplify the contents for the non-Spanish
and non-Ladino reader, are a glossary, English abstracts and notes, a
biblio gr aphy, indices and plates of the songs under discussion.
References to Bosnian Jewish history, the settlement of Jews in
Bosnia add significantly to an understanding of the subject so ably
handled in this volume.
With regard to the Spanish-Jewish ballads, the authors' intro-
ductory essay makes these comments:
"The most striking features of the Bosnian Sephardic tradi-
tion, considered in its entirety, is its almost completely novelesqne
character in this regard. Bosnian balladry seems strangely mod-
ern . . . The Bosnian tradition has preserved some remarkable
legendary themes . . . Notable is the absence of ballads on
biblical matter."
Presented as "purely documentary in character," this work addi-
tionally offers an opportunity for research into the Ladino role among
Jewish dialects. The study of the works of Kalmi Baruch and Baruch's
essay on "Spanish Ballads of Bosnian Jews" are important in such
research efforts. Baruch discusses the romance tradition among
Sephardic Jews and he draws upon the "atithoritative work by the
Spanish scholar Menendez Pidal" who "classified about 150 romances
from areas where the Sephardic Jews lived, indicating relationships
and differences between these ballads and those printed in earlier
collections or still sung in Spain."
Baruch further points out: "As to the age of the Jewish romances,
it is evident that the Jews, exiled from Spain in 1492, took with them
a large ballad repertoire. Travel diaries indicate that, in their new
surroundings in the East, the Jews managed to maintain contacts with
their brethren in the Iberian Peninsula.
Baruch does indicate that of the romances known among the
Sephardic are those "mostly of biblical inspiration and, conse-
n." The preservation
quently, derive from the living Jewish tradition:"
of this theme is noted in the author's comment that, naturally,
contacts between Jewish centers and Spain were not very close
after 1492 ... Baruch additionally indicates that the Jewish theme
was preserved in ceremonials, at various festivities like weddings
and circumcisions, and that "a Hebrew passage cited by Abraham
Danon bears witness to the fact that a romance melody was even
used in a Hebrew synagogual hymn written. by the poem Israel
Nagiara. In 1600 this religions poet published in Venice a book
entitled `Zemirot Jisrael,' in which he used the initial verses of
to which
various romances
thelle
Hebrew
to
werric
toare sung."
Baruch
Baruch states that "of all the Hispano-Jewish communities, the
romance is best preserved in Morocco."
English translations of the ballads incorporated in this volume and
the explanatory notes assist the readers - in gaining an appreciation of
the interesting subject covered so well in "Judeo-Spanish Ballads."
This volume bases much of its text on the 21 'ballads that were
printed in 1939-1940 in Jevrejski Glas—Jewish Voice—of Sarajevo-
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