.Pute137:C.on me- -origin of Yiddishized"Parve' Scourge of the 'Mosrim' and Their Applicability to the Anti-iv-40s 'laical/it- sit' a (tiara6 a Among. : By Philip Rustiarqews . . Chronicler_ in ,Loacion Jewish Chronicle posed an interesting ques- - Hadassah _sah's -60thanniversa - stimUlatesreview of .104torical developments which led tion about "That Word." He offered a prize for any one who could give him the origin Of the word Parve. Here is how he posed it in to the formation of the women's Zionist organization, The great philanthropic: health agency formed to relieve trachoma sand, eventually LJC issue of Dec. 3: "That indefatigable look out man of mine in Jerusalem quotes a to provide 'hospitalization for Palestinians — -Arabs as well, as Jews - ,-,:also- Avas-intended by its organizer; Henrietta Szold ; to be the women's arm of the Hebrew newspaper columnist concerning efforts to pinpoint the exact semantic origin of 'parve'—which means neither kosher nor trefa, Zionist movement. It served' as such for many years as a but neutral. affiliate of the American ZionisfFederation (asit was known under "It is an East European term and not common to Oriental Jew- the leadership„of. Louis D. Brandeis, Julian M. Mack,* Stephen S. ish communities. Even Ashkenazi kashrut experts in Israel had no Wise)," eveiftlionghTinatirof 'the women preferred being the philan idea where the word came from, and when approached, Prof. Dov thropists rather-than' the ZiOnists. Sadan, the authority on Yiddish at the Hebrew University. claimed Henrietta Szold had been associated with the general Zionist there were 30 interpretations, mostly irrelevant or unfounded. Does any reader know the correct answer? A clue is to read past movement as head of the education department, and one other ablest 'assistants was the then young Emanuel Neumann.-Miss Szold numpers of the especially Ask the Rabbi ! (A 'parve' ice-cream cone is the prize !)" was highly qualified to be the head of an educational department. Yiddishists in Detroit, New York and Jerusalem were confronted She had ,\ prior to her Zionist activities, served as an editor of the with the problem (sic!). It took a landsman of Chronicler to provide Jewish Publication Society and was the translator of many impor- the answer. We asked our London correspondent, Josef Fraenkel, while tant classics from German into English. . Itenriettit :bold we were in Jerusalem together, whether he had any knowledge of Her' biographers emphasized that • she was a ZioniSt before Theodor Herzl appeared the word's origin and he promptly replied: "Of course. It stems from on the scene:lier'first public address was on Zionism, in '1895, before the National =Council the Latin parvus, neutral. Then the fun began. Our proofreader knows Latin and he stopped of Jewish Women, in Baltimore. When she went to Palestine to superviie Hadassali• ac- here with the explanation that parvus means little. It became necessary tivities, she wrote from Jerusalem: "If not Zionism, then nothing." - Out of Miss Szold's dreams emerged the realities of a great movement, which, under to search for additional background material. We turned to one of our ablest authorities, Dr. Jacob R. Marcus. director of the American Jewish the name Hadassah, became a true "healer of our pecifile." The Hadassah achievements, Archives in Cincinnati and one of our leading historians. He thought first in Palestine, for the past 24 years in Israel, are marked by the expansion of hospital parvus had meaning for our parve food term. But he sought additional and health stations, -vocational schools, and with the Hebrew University, the women are information and he has just forwarded to us this note he received from _merged in the tasks of training medical and dental - experts in the colleges - of medicine noted Talmudist Prof. Alexander Guttmann: and dentistry. Dear Jake: Therefore, the 60th anniversary of Hadassah is an occasion for celebration 'by Jews Re your note on the origin of parve. My opinion is that parve comes from the Latin parvus everywhere because the movement renders such valuable services in the field of medicine (parva) which means 'little' and also 'insignificant'. and health care.. And while observing this anniversary, due honors go to the Movement's Halakhically, parve food is insignificant inasmuch as it founder, Henrietta Szold, and the many dedicated women Zionists who putsued her tasks is not subject to restrictions and regulations as are milk with zeal and devotion. * * * and meat—foods. Fondly, An Old Tradition of Passover Relief . . . Mo'os Hitim Still Applicable in Our Time Alex Is it possible that in our affluent society there is an element that urgently needs We had our fun and now have many claimants to the relief, that there are people who depend upon public funds for necessities to enable them parve ice cream cones. • • • to observe the Passover properly, traditionally? , The Pressure of Russian Anti - Zionist Propaganda An endless number of special features and news releases from the USSR's Novosti Press Agency aims to prove that Russian Jews are horrified by "propaganda" to compel emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union. Many 01 the stories contain-the-names and the protesting groups who insist that they are local Russians and that the "Zionist" aims—as they use the term in quotation marks in the hope of injecting horror at the mere mention of it in the hearts of the readers of these stoles—are misleading, disrupting, reactionary, dis- honest; append any insulting term and it'll fit into the Communist vocabulary applied to Zionism and Israel. All of the statements could have been validly endorsed—just as it has been true that "chief rabbis" in Russia and Moslem countries had spoken out against Jews who demanded what they believed to be a necessity: just rights for the persecuted in those countries. There are always the officially recognized spokesmen, just as there are some who disagree with the trend to secure justice for Jews in Russia and in Moslem lands. Those who seek exit visas from Russia to go to Israel are not necessarily anti-Soviet. Some have inherited affections for the Com- munist idea. But they have the preferred love for a heritage they refuse to abandon. They make their demands on grounds established by international law—that a person has a right to settle wherever he pleases. For the Russian Jews there is, fortunately, a redeemed Israel that is ready to welccrne them. The Jews who serve as tools for the Russian propaganda machine in issuing anti-Israel and anti-Zionist propaganda are a sad lot-Tliex. are a pathetic element that is compelled by government and circum- stances to speak out against liberty-seeking - people who object to suppression of cultural rights. The emigrants concede that they are not oppressed economically, but they seek Jewish involvement, they wish to learn Hebrew the normal way, not in secrecy as most do. There is no doubt that there was a handful of Russian Jews—they could have been counted on the fingers of both hands—who were disil- lusioned with Israel and wanted to go back to Russia. That's a normal right. There are people who are dissatisfied with the United States, and they go to Australia. But they are not the rule: they are the excep- tion and they can not be used as proof to negate the Israel appeal. The pity is that there is rancor rather than cooperation in solving a serious problem. In an amicable fashion, Russia could accept the inevitable and permit the emigration of those desiring to leave. But under such amicability the Communist regime could also remove restric- tions within Russia on Jewish religious and cultural rights. Apparently adherence to restrictive regulations has become a necessity for the Kremlin in dealing with all religious groups on an atheistic basis. Since the Jews of Russia also have the added voice of the American Jewish protesters, the compulsion to remain oppressive has become all the more adamant. Therefore the unending battle in defense of Jewish rights in Russia and the justice of the cause of the tens—perhaps hundreds—of thousands who clamor for visas to go to Israel. Are There 'Mosrim' Among Moscow Jews? There are more such families than appears on the surface in a community-like ours. Not so long ago, a study made by the Jewish Family and Children's Service, supple- mented by the Mo'os Hitim_gommitteerindicated that a large number of Detroiters are in a iieg-RPVerty- state-and - are dependent on some help from the community. This is especially true at Passover time. We are obligated, if we are sincere in our Hagada reading that "kol dihfin ye-se ve'yehol," all who are hungry should come and eat, to provide the necessities for the less affluent, for those who are unable to secure all, the food, all the matzot, the wine, for the Passover seder. With so few days remaining before Passover, it is urgent that the Mo'os appeal should receive a generous response. New 'Let My People Go' Hagada NEW YORK—Stating that since and you *all live unharmed and its first printing in 1543, the unscathed.' " Passover Hagada has been pub- Traditional protests seem not to lished in no fewer than 2,713 have had any appreciable effect editions, a New York publishing on the Kremlin, Bikel suggests. house issued the 2,714th—and "These activities range from the possibly most radical—version of irrational,. _boorish and violent this Hebrew Passover classic. (and therefore unproductive) to Titled "Let My People Go: A the soft-pedaling and velvet glove Hagada," this new edition features approach' (equally unproductive)." the complete and traditional He- More positive means are required, brew and English text, but instead he suggests,. and this book may be Updated to 1972 have remained as relevant today as when they were first set down, I attempted to create illustrations as relevant as the text—a text that asserts 'in every generation each Jew must regard himself as though he personally were de- livered from Egypt' " The new Hagada has been en- dorsed by National Conference on Soviet Jewry, American Jewish Congress, - .VA T, - theut-'Sffident Struggle for Soviet Jewry, and As Dr. Podwal sees it, there is others. a compelling need to make the The original art created for Hagada continually meaningful to "Let My People Go" Hagada is the contemporary Jew. He states: exhibited at Brentano's Gallery in "Since the words of the Hagada Manhasset, Long Island, N.Y. 1:Wieling the bondage in and one of -than. flight from Egypt in the 13th Century BCE, the book's graphics updates the exodus to the Soviet Union in the year 1972. Explains the artist, a 26-year- old New York doctor named Mark Podwal: "The reader is advised to substitute Aleksei Kosygin and Leonid Breshnev for Pharaohs Ramses II and Mernephta." (From the files of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Inc.) Dr. Podwal, a resident phy- 40 Years Ago •This Week: 1932 sician at Brooklyn's Kings County The Jews of Germany breathed more freely following the announce- Hospital, is already well-known ment of the election results, which make the reelection of President for his scathing political posters Paul von Hindenburg a virtual certainty on the second ballot on. April and cartoons in- the underground 10 . . . The vote polled by Hitler was far beneath the expectations of and New Left press. Last year, his followers. Darien House, Inc.—the same Benjamin N. Cardozo was sworn in as a U.S. Supreme Court firm bringing out this new Hagada Justice. —published a collection of Pod- A storage house near Vienna was found to be a 600-year-old wal's political art titled "The De- synagogue. cline and Fall of the American - 10 Years Ago This Week: 1962 Empire." Premier Ben-Gurion said the danger of war had "greatly receded" The new 128-page Hagada has just been published in both hard- in live years, but that there was "no guarantee that the present quiet will continue." cover and soft-cover form. United Hiss Service urged an increase in the annual U.S. im- Folksinger and actor Theodore Bikel, in an introduction to this new migration quota from 156,000 to 250,000, plus other revisions "to Hagada, points out that the book reflect American democratic concepts concerning the dignity and is actually a weapon in the world- worth of the individual." West German President Heinrich Luebke expressed "gratitude" to wide Jewish community's cold war with the Politburo over the Krem- Israel for its "defense against all totalitarian danger." Both he and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer pledged to help "redeem the wrong done lin's persecution of Soviet Jews. What makes this program more against the Jews." Sen. Kenneth Keating (R., N.Y.) asked the government• to ban insidious than others in the past, aid to Egypt until she "comes together at the conference table instead Bikel notes, is that '"this oppres- sion centers not on the body but of spewing forth threats and propaganda." There is nothing more contemptible in Jewish terminology than the term "moser"—informer. When a Jew informs libelously on his people—for example, there have been converts who lied about the Talmud—he is considered the worst of criminals. A report from Moscow by New York Times correspondent Hedrick Smith states that 14 Kiev Jews issued a statement accusing the lead- ers of their synagogue of having collaborated witb the Soviet police in anti-Jewish measures. The synagogue leaders are charged with having forced older men in the congregation to sign anti-Israel decla- rations. There were other charges which would well justify the charge of "megrim" against collaborators with the KGB. Doesn't this partially explain why there is an inevitable minority that differs with Jews who seek haven in Israel and demand exit visas from the USSR? the lout 'Give up your Jewish soul , This Week in Jewish History 2-friday, Mardi 10, 1172 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS