THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating
The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July
STILL. TIME- TO 11./ KIR &VI(
20, 1951
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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI k4 St Ok4OVITZ
Business Manager
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
DREW LIEBERWITZ
City Editor
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
18th day of Ar, 5732, the following
This Sabbath, the
scriptural selections
tell? be read In our synagogues
Pentateuchal portion, Deut. 7 . 1211:25. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 49:14 51.3.
Candle lighting, Friday, July 28, 7 - 16 p rn.
Y01.. I.XI. No. 20
Page Four
July 28, 1972
Jerusalem: Unblemished by Untruths
There has been great anxiety among Is-
rael's enemies to make Jerusalem the major
bone of contention in the Middle East crisis.
The sanctity of the Holy City has been
utilized as means of attacking the govern-
ment of Israel with charges that Israelis are
defiling holy places, that Moslems and Chris-
tians are being driven out of the city that
is as holy to them as to Jews, that housing
being constructed is robbing the city of its
traditional beauty.
But there is an evident change in atti-
tude, and hope now is entertained that the
obstacle to peace represented by the situa-
tion in Jerusalem will be removed. An ele-
ment of proof is contained in the most re-
cent issues of the Catholic organ, the Tablet,
published in London, which, discussing the
issue related to "Israel and the Holy City,"
stated: "There are signs that relationships
b-tween the Vatican and the governmtnt of
Israel are becoming less distant than they
were."
The Tablet stated in its editorial com-
ment: "No one on either side wants to see it
fJerusaleml divided again, nor is it realistic
to suppose that it could flourish under some
international administration, owing allegiance
to no one. Stateless es cannot thrive any
more than stateless persons. What might per-
haps one day be possible, in the context of
a permanent settlement, is a measure of inter-
national accountability by the administering
state. an obligation which Israel would as-
some. -
Perhaps the Arabs are the most serious
witnesses for Israel and the state's most ef-
fective defenders vis-a-vis Jerusalem. Jerusa-
lem Arabs may wish political autonomy, but
they would not change the economic and
social freedom they possess under Israel's
administration for any other system. Any stu-
dent of Middle East affairs, all visitors in the
united Holy City, attest to it.
The problem of keeping the Jerusalem
issue unabused remains, however, in all its
seriousness. - A typical example of misrepre-
sentation of facts was in evidence in Detroit
some week ago when a group of churchmen,
visitors from Jordan. painted a picture they
described as one of horror inmosed upon
.lerusalem by Jews and by Israel. A spokes-
man for the Zionist Organization of Detroit
was prompt in refuting the unfounded charges
that had been made to the Archdiocese of
Detroit. The reply was sent to the local news-
paper which had published the Jordanian
Christians' charges, but the refutation was
not made public.
The same group of Jordanians made the
same charges in Cleveland. and there an emi-
nent churchman, the Rt. Rev. John H. Burt
of the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio, who had
just returned from Israel, replied to the ac-
cusations, point by point. Dr. Burt stated in
his refutations of the proffered charges:
1. They charge that the Israeli occupation of
Jerusalem and the West Bsnk has the effect of driv-
ing out Christians and Moslems in great numbers.
As a result, they say, the holy places will soon be
museums for tourists; and the living faith embodied
in neople will have disappelred.
Now ('hristian holy places may indeed become
museums—in fact they have such an appearance
now in many w7ys. But statistics simply do not sup.
port their claims of decreasing numbers.
Some 14.000 Christians left the city during the
period of Jordanian dominance. Since the Six-Day
War and Israeli occupation. Christians have held
their own. Moreover, since the creation of the state
of Israel, the ('hristian and Moslem population in
Israel has more than doubled.
2. They charge that Israel is making Jerusalem
a Jewish city. But the fact is that for the last 200
years, Jews have been the largest community - in
Jerusalem. You can hardly create what already - is!
What they really mean is that Jews may now
walk in the streets of and take up residence in East
Jerusalem after 19 years of exclusion by the Arabs.
And they resent this. They really want Jerusalem to
be Arab.
Today the population is about 300,000, about
three-fourths of whom are Jews. Since the Six-Day
War they have been permitted to live once again in
the traditionally Jewish Quarter of the Old City
(from which they were driven by the Arabs in
1948) and in new apartments adjacent to the Mount
Scopus campus of Hebrew University. These struc-
tures are handsome and do not destroy the charac-
ter of the Old City.
Slowly, Jerusalem, for the first time since 1948,
is becoming a city in which Jews and Arabs are liv-
ing together in peace and mingle in their thousands
in the daily pursuit of their lives. There are fewer
police observable on the street than in our major
American cities,
3. They speak of Arabs being evicted from their
homes without reason and without proper compen-
sation and without proper notice. And certainly there
have been individual instances of this.
But it bec^me clear to me in our conversations
that these instances are summarized from the last
four years of war and military occupancy. Many of
them occurred in the immediate aftermath of hos-
tilities.
The 110 Arab families displaced were provided
new housing far more expeditiously than I have seen
poor Blacks relocated in Cleveland.
In the Old City, 112 dunams (28 acres) were
reclaimed in order to resettle Jewish families in
property that the Jordanian Arab Legion had exprop-
riated in 1948.
Some 3,000 Arab families have been compen-
sated, I am told, and relocated in superior apart-
ments to those they occupy in the Jewish Quarter—
an area in which Jews had lived for 700 years!
It is true that some Arab dwellings which had
been constructed against the Western Wall of the
Temple Mount were removed quickly after the Six-
Day War. Perhaps there was too much haste.
But this Wall of the Temple Mount is for the
Jew the holiest of holy places, and in defiance of
Article VIII of the 1949 armistice, Jord^n forbade
Jews access to it for 19 years. One can understand
the impatience that led Israel to uncover the Wall
and open it tap quickly to devotion.
4. Another charge leveled by the Jordanian
religious delegation was that the holy places have
been desecrated during Israel occupation.
Since this charge runs counter to what I ob-
served during my eight-day visit. I pressed for
"chapter and verse." Unfortunately I was able to
elicit no "specifics."
My personal experience, attested to by everyone
I had met 'M Jerusalem, wsa that free access to all
tv:ly places is not only a promise but a reality un-
der Israeli authority.
The real thre^t to the sacredness of Christian
shrines does not come from Jews. but from Chris-
tians who, alas, often fight about which church owns
what and about the time and location of their so-v.
ices.
I ventured to remind the three visiting Christian
bishops—Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Roman
Ca'holic—that they. not the Jews, barred me from
conducting a religious service either on the spot
where Christ was bcrn or where he rose from the
dead.
Not once did this Jordanian delegation vol.,n-
teer any sensitivity that Jews have been victims of
Christian persecution. When I spoke of the fact that
for 19 years Jews had been barred from the Wailing
1%4:1, they blamed it on Ben-Gurion's obstinateness.
When I referred to the fact that 11 out of 12
synagogues in the Old City were destroyed in the
aftermath of the 1948 war (and offered to show them
photographs) they said this was one of the inevitable
unhappy aspects of war,
Perhaps Israel's present relations with Jor-
danwill continue to be non-belligerent thanks
to such new evidences of fair treatment of a
subject that was the cause for much bitter-
ness. Surely, the clarification of fact, base"?
on the amicability that marks the rife of all
who reside in Jerusalem, regardless of their
religious affiliations. will contribute toward
the peace for which all crave so much.
Rebellion of Oppressed in Ancient Times
Eisenstadt Study of Prophetic
Teachings from Socialist View
Prophetic teachings and the prophetic movement was "a product
socio-economic development of the Jewish people . . a protest
against the social contradictions of the time, against the corruption of
the rural classes . . . It welcomed and provided an ideological base
for the rebellion of oppressed peoples and classes against their
oppressors . .."
of the
Prof. Shmuel Eisenstadt expressed this view in his introduction to
"The Prophets—Their Times and Social Ideas," when it first was
written in Yiddish, in Vilna, in 192G, the introduction from which this
is quoted having been written in Moscow.
His work has been translated from the Yiddish by Max Rosenfeld
and has just appeared in an English edition published by Yiddisher
Kultur Farband (Ykun. In an introduction to the second edition, Prof.
Eisenstadt writes, this time
Tel Aviv, after additional studies on the
subject:
in
"After all my studies and comparative investigations I am fully
convinced that only the approach to Prophecy as an ideological social
movement and the consistent application of the historical-dialectical
method of investigation can lead to a correct evaluation of the
prophetic literature and its character, and serve as a correct his-
torical key to the rich world of ideas in which the Prophets worked."
Prof. Eisenstadt's emphasis on the social aspects of prophetic
teachings was contained in this rejection of Christian approaches to
prophetic teachings, embodied in the 1926 introduction to "The
Prophets" when the volume first appeared in Yiddish:
"The Prophets, those social thinkers of ancient Israel, and the
prophetic literature, which includes a multiplicity of social and political
problems, today remain outside the realm of sociological investigation.
Every scholarly work which concerns itself with the social history of
the ancient world generally begins with the Greeks and Romans and
leaves the literature and history of ancient Israel to the theologians,
who feel particularly at home here.
"They see in this remarkable period of social thought and struggle
no MOT:` than a tong prologue to Christianity, which really did not have
the slightest relationship to the essential social content of prophecy.
It is precisely this social content which they have overlooked. They
have separated the Prophet from the human community in which he
lived and which he influenced, they have torn him out of his national
and economic milieu, out of his historical period, and viewed him
only in the context of religion.
"They have failed utterly to grasp the fact that the Prophet was
inextricably bound to the life of the masses, and that he preached his
ideas for and among these masses. They have overlooked the fact that
the Prophet wanted nothing whatever to do with 'mortification of the
flesh' or with fasting, and that he speaks nowhere either of resurrection
of the dead or of life after death, that he stood with both feet firmly
in the reality of his time and place. The only aims for which he strove
were the well being of the people, and for justice in human relationships.
Religion was for him only a theme, a medium for his social ideas. To
see the essence of the prophetic ideas only in conjuction with religion
is like looking for the taste and quality cf a fruit not in its meat but
in its skin."
Because he had dealt—briefly but impressively—with all of the
Prophets, as well as their influence on other Apocryphal writings, Dr.
Eisenstadt's study remains greatly significant in the study of prophetic
teachings.
Having dealt with the religious aspects of prophetic lore, from the
point of view of socialistic reactions to the Bible, it is interesting to
note Dr. Eisenstadt's comment: "One should remember and evaluate
positively the fact that it :s only thanks to the religious covering that
the prophetic ideas were accepted and disseminated by the Jewish.
Christian and Muslim faLlis and that they were thus preserved to our
own time in all the languages of the world." As a study of the Prophets
front the standpoint of nonreligious scholarship. the Eisenstadt book
adds valuably to scriptural analyses.