THE JEWISH NEWS

Incorporating Tha Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July 20, 1951
of English-Jewish Newspapers. Michigap Press Awsociation, National Editorial Associa-
Member American Association

THEWItotiq DIET

tion. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co 17515 W Nine Mile. Suite 885. Southfield, Mich. 48075
Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield. Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $8 a year. Foreign $9

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and

Publish,

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

CHARLOTTE DUBIN

City Editor

Business Manager

DREW LIEBERWITZ

5)SIV ■ l_

Advertising Manager

-
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 24th day of Nisan, 5732, the following scriptural selections
well be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Lecit. 91111:47. Prophetical portion, II Samuel 6:1.7:17.
Torah reading, for Rosh Hodesh lyar, Friday, Num. 28:1-15.

crc

Candle lighting. Friday, April 7, 6,96 p.m.

VOL. LXI. No. 4

Page Four

.^ April 7, 1972

Proposal for.Social Actions Commission

Preparedness Needed to Meet Crises

One must never lose faith in the com-
munity. Crises arise constantly, and nothing
functions without problems. In the course of
human events, nature's inadequacies become
adjusted. Emotionalism, whenever difficulties
arise, is understandable. While experiencing
them, we should anticiu,te adjustments to
normalities.
In our own larger community that em-
braces Detroit and the suburbs, numerous is-
sues have arisen that caused anxiety. There
was—and remains—the problem of the aging
members of our community. There is the
problem of the children and their adjust-
ments to family and neighbors. There is the
school problem.
When the Home for the Aged problem
arose some months ago, there were impas-
sioned condemnations of Establishment. It
was difficult to counteract some of the com-
plaints, yet that problem is resolved and
there is hope that the elderly in our midst
will never be abandoned. There is need for
additional facilities, there is hope that the
Federation Apartments that serve as supple-
mentary aid for the aging who can provide
for themselves will be increased and that ad-
ditional facilities will supplement the task
of strenthening the ranks of all who are able
to care for themselves providing there are
proper housing facilities for them. •
Then there is the problem involving the
schools, the changing conditions resulting
from an increase in the number of children
attending our congregational schools and the
drastic reduction in enrollments in what still
is described as the communal school system.
It is inevitable that the Jewish Community
('enter should soon be affected by new devel-
opments, and the need for new quarters, the
obligations that will be imposed upon the
community financially, the planning that
must be made in advance, all call for proper
preparatory steps in order that we shall not
blunder ginto impracticable decisions.
Many of the issues that afflicted us were
the results of changing neighborhoods, the
flight to the suburbs, the adjustments to new
conditions. We have not solved all of the in-
conveniences that have arisen. We must
strive, often with greater patience than most
'of us possess in time of anxiety, to work har-
moniously toward the resolving of prob-
lematic conditions.
In areas involving education, care for the
aged, providing social centers for young and
old, the challenges may remain endless. But
they will never be solved when there is a
spirit of anger and animosity. There must be
established an attitude of concern that should
invite cooperative skills toward adjustments.
This is neither philosophy nor specula-,
tion in touching .upon community problems.
It is an introduction to an urgent advocacy
for the creation of a community body com-
posed of authoritative personnel to deal with
the issues and to be prepared to study them
with an aim toward finding solutions to
emerging needs:
While we have confidence that our com-
munity will adequately provide for the aged
—in the established Home and by means of
housing already being financed by the Jew-
ish Welfare Federation—and while we en-
tertain the hope that branches in our school
system will be retained as- long as possible.
it is our conviction that new problems are
in the offing: that the aged will need in-
creased attention, that the schools will have
to be assured proper guidance, the recrea-
tional centers will have to be protected.

We are a generous community that usual-
ly provides the funds necessary for the op-
eration of our existing institutions.. We re-
spond nobly to Israel's needs. We must be
equally on the alert to planning processes to
protect our vitally needed agencies that are
engaged in education, social services, reha-
bilitation, schooling.
There is need for a well-functioning study
commission to take into consideration the ap-
proaching responsibilities for the transfer of
the Jewish Center to an area more densely
inhabited by members of the Jewish com-
munity. We shall be challenged properly to
adjust the location of our schools and fully
to integrate the children in their proper
classes, in neighborhoods that should assure
continuity with as few difficulties as possible.
Neighborhood changes have not entirely
ended our problematic conditions.
The urgency of proper planning is em-
phasized by the latest occurrence in our
midst—the differing view over retention of
a branch of our communal school system
that is suffering drastic itstudent enrollment
changes, due to the common ailment of
neighborhood changes. It was our conviction
that a community of 100 families must be
protected as long as possible, and that for at
least a year the Borman branch of the United
HebreW Schools should be kept operating for
the benefit of the 100 children. But the de-
cision that came after the igniting of some
passion was in itself incomplete: such action
must be accompanied by future planning. It
is only through properly functioning plan-
ning that a community can and should decide
under what conditions a school should con-
tinue operating when the reduction in the
number of students makes such operations
prohibitive. Borman branch should remain
open for another year, but what about the
year after? Decisions that are based on heated
arguments disrupt rather than construct, and
only when fellow citizens can view existing
conditions dispassionately will there be hope
for a wholesome community.
Not to be overlooked in communal plan-
ning is the democratic process of free ex-
pression and access to be granted to citizens
to procedural processes in the course of which
major decisions are reached affecting the
fate of existing agencies.
In view of new approache to our edu-
cational needs, because of th approaching
possibility of drastic chang n the element-
ary as related to higher grades in the estab-
lished system of Jewish schooling, and be-
cause the congregational schools may become
the dominant factors in providing for educa-
tional needs of the children in Greater De-
troit's Jewish schools, these are obligations
not to be overlooked and should not be ig-
nored. Parents, and supporters, of our school
systems surely will not be denied their share
in planning our educational programs.
We urge the formation of a study com-
mission, under auspices of the Jewish Wel-
fare Federation, to make the necessary stud ,
ies of our special needs, as they confront cur
educational and recreational agencies and 'the
provisions for our aged, in order, we repeat,
not to be caught napping in time of crisis.
Since crises are, in our view, repetitive,
we must draw upon the skills of our ableM
social scientists to help resolve these prob-
lems. There should be a sufficient number of
such qualified men and women who should
serve as a volunteer force to assure prepared-
ness for our community's obligations. The
time for such action is NOW.

—am

'Sephardic Tradition' Adds
to Renewed. Interest in Ladino

Ladino is derived from latinus which was used for the vernacular
by Jews in countries that spoke the Romance languages—those in
France, Italy and the Iberian countries. It is the Judeo-Spanish
equivalent of Yiddish, except that that Spanish substitutes for the
German and the language is written in Hebrew letters.
Unlike Yiddish, it began to decline much earlier. Its last news-
papers ceased publishing, in this country and in Turkey. during the
1950s and 1960s. Only in Israel is a Ladino periodical still being
circulated.
The Spanish-Jewish dialect still is spoken by Spanish-origin Jews,
some in Detroit.
Like Yiddish, however, although on a much smaller scale, there
is a new interest in the Ladino language, literature, its music. A
Penguin Book, "The Jewish Poets in Spain, 900-1250," was reviewed
in The Jewish News on Feb. 25,,,, University of Pennsylvania Press
recently published a collection of Ladino songs.
The Hebrew University in Jerusalem is a major center for Span-
ish literary research and for Ladino.

The newest of the I,adino literary works has just been issued
by W. W. Norton Co. In "The Sephardic Tradition." Prof. Moshe
Lazar of the Hebrew University has compiled Ladini.• Spanish-
Jewish literary gems. - The texts for Dr. Lazar's collected works
were translated by David Herman. Included in this book are
the traditional Romances, poems, legends, sayings and a note-
worthy play.

The texts utilized by Dr. Lazar are mainly secular. In his intro-
duction, he reviews the various steps in the literary attainments by
Jews in Spain, with analyses of creative efforts before and after the
expulsion.. Ile describes the secular and religious texts and points
out that "it is the Judeo-Spanish romancero that occupies the most
prominent place in the literature and everyday life of oriental
Sephardim."

Explaining "Ladino as a Language," Prof. Lazar states that
the claim that Ladino taiginated in the early 13th or 14th Century
lacks proof. He remarks: 'Without -doubt Jews did intersperse
their dialects with Hebrew words and expressions, particularly
terms and concepts connected with religion and ethics, and they
did tend to preserve archaic words and obsolete forms longer
than most other people."

He explains further: "It was only after the Expulsion of 1492 that
Ladino began to be a specifically Jewish language. Although the Jews
had been ejected from the Iberian Peninsula and thus cut off from
the Spanish language while it was still in the process of evolution,
they preserved the Hispanic dialects that had been spoken and writ-
ten before Cervantes and the Golden Age, and which basically re-
flected the phonetics, morphology and syntax of the 14th and 15th
centuries."
Dr. Lazar writes that 200,000 people still speak and understand
Ladino and that the largest Ladino-speaking population is in Israel.
The language also has been spoken at various times in Egypt, North
Africa, France, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, as
well as in the United States, Great Britain and Latin America.
The romances in the Lazar-edited volume are defined as tradi-
tional, some dating back to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
There is a place name after each one in this volume indicating its
origin—Salonica, Balkans, Adrainople, Tetuan, Tangiers, Morocco,
among the many places.
Of interest here is- the lengthy "Poem on Joseph" which has
308 stanzas.
Numerous legends, the sayings and proverbs in Ladino and trans-
lations and immeasurably to the book's importance.
A good portion of the book is devoted to the "Morality Play" by
Miguel (Daniel Levi) de Barrior.
This work is a definite contribution to the study of literatures
that would otherwise be forgotten. It is a meritorious addendum to
the study of Jewish dialects and the literature that they inspired.

