THE JEWISH NEWS
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rom.tP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Pubilsbor
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
liesbesse Masbew
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
DREW LIEBERWITZ
City Seities
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Sabbath Scriptural SelectMas
. This Sabbathithe • 15th day of Adar 1, 5733, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Peniateuchal portion, Esod. 25 - 1-27:19. Prophetical portion, I Kings 5:26-6:13.
Candle lighting, Friday, Feb. IS, rig p.n.
VOL. LX1L No. 23
Page Four
February 16, 1973
For an End to Hatred on the Campus
Danger of Racism Equated With Anti-Semitism
Wayne State University President George
Gullen and his board of governors have indi-
cated a courageous stand in defense of fair
play and truth in the position they have
taken to reprimand editors of the campus
paper for bigotry and appeals to hatred. What
they did, however, was much more than ad-
herence to a position of honor expected from
the academic community. It could result in
a reaffirmation of faith in the -larger com-
munity as well as the youth who comprise the
student body that they will seek amicability
and reliability and that they will reject In-
jection of race prejudice in the ranks of peo-
ple who should live in harmony and should
repudiate suspicions.
What has actually happened on the Wayne
State University campus is that a manifesta-
tion of anti-Semitism—it is not only the swas-
tika intertwined with the Magen David that
was the cause of the trouble, but the untruths
incorporated in the articles thus branded with
Nazism—the anti-Jewish hatred, incited some
of the editors to claim prejudice because they
are black. It is just this type of propaganda
that demands action not so much from the
university officials as from the black com-
munity.
There are Blacks in the judiciary. There
is an eminent jurist on the U. S. Circuit Court
of Appeals in our area. Blacks are serving in
many capacities--in the Legislature, in the
City Councils, in Congress, We would like to
hear their voice also as mitigators of trouble
in the generg_ community, rather than as
silent observers or as joiners in disruption of
amity and good will.
Conditions are grave enough in our coun-
try, in the world, for Jews and Blacks as well
as mankind, without permitting racism to be
injected into human considerations. The is-
sue on the Wayne State University campus
has, tragically, become an issue in which
Blacks are charging that the actions of the
university authorities are the result of Jew-
ish pressures. It is this type of prejudice that
must be averted, and it is in the interest of
all elements of our population that it should
be rejected—and condemned as damaging to
all concerned.
•
■
•
Responsible citizens must look deeply into
the roots of the trouble and must recognize
the shocking emergence of prejudice in a
situation that is becoming humanly intoler-
able. There are basic facts, all of which miti-
gate against the propagators of prejudice, and
the most important one to take into account
is this one:
Jews were attacked, Israel was placed in
a bad light, historic figures were so dis-
torted that it spelled outright anti-Semitism.
There were protests, and the objectors to
what had occurred, to the shocking dissemi-
nation of untruths by a non-Jew, were not
necessarily all Jews. There were, and there
are, Christians among those who have spoken
and are speaking out against the shocking
development on a university campus.
Our contention is that this is not a Jewish
issue, that it is a challenge to the American
spirit of fair play, that it is un-Christian and
contrary to any spiritual value in human re-
lations. A bigot who accuses the Jewish peo-
ple of misrepresenting facts regarding the
Six Million Martyrs, charging us with utiliz-
ing the most tragic experience in our history
for aggrandisement, is unworthy of the role
assigned to him in the religious community.
This is what was said, and on that score
those who gave a platform to a fomenter of
hatred and a spreader of lies were subjected
to criticism. They were thus repudiated be-
cause of sad experiences of past anti-Semitic
acts in the columns of the college paper. Re-
pudiation of such guilt is and should remain
an American and a community responsibility,
and we naturally welcome the action pursued
by the university's authorities.
*
•
•
While judging the issue as being one for
our community and for people of all faiths
to deal with, there must be the insistence up-
on Jews to speak out against anti-Semitism.
What has happened strikes directly at our
postion in the community, as citizens, as hu-
man beings. If we were to be silent under
the developing conditions, we would earn the
rebuke that must be directed at the indiffer-
ent, at the frightened. This is not a time for
fright but for reaffirmation of the ideals
which are at the root of the American way
of life: that of fair play. The injection of a
black-white issue and the incidental anti-
Jewish angle border on the outrageous.
That is why, in our concern for amity
among all citizens, regardless of race or creed,
we deplore intercession the fomenters of anti-
Semitism received from 10 black legislators
who could not have studied the facts, else
they would not have become partners in a
situation so unjustified; else they might have
sat down with the guilty ones to learn of
their injustices and to set them straight.
Other factors enter into the existing situa-
tion. Some have audaciously spread the word
that what has happened on the Wayne State
University campus may cost the university
much money—some foolishly spoke in terms
of millions!—from Jewish contributors toward
the college needs. This is an outrageously in-
decent factor that would have been rejected
quickly by the DeRoys, the Shaperos, the
Cohns, the Grosbergs, the scores of other
Jewish benefactors who made generous gifts
to the school. It is an aspect that smacks of
the Russian approach to a ransom from
emigres. It has nothing to do with responsibil-
ities of citizens to their state, to their schools,
to their fellow citizens.
•
•
•
--arm
Cosmopolitanism, Universalism
Seen as Dangers to U.S. Jewry
Prof. Charles S. Liebman, currently head of the department of
political studies at Bar-Ilan University, recognizes the dangers that
must be faced by Jewry in the struggle for survival and he believes
that "Jewish survival requires a turning against the integrationist
response." He offers interesting views in "The Ambivalent American
Jew," a new Jewish Publication Society volume, In which he deals with
the elements related to "politics, religion and family in American
Jewish life."
While the Liebman book is devoted to analyses of integration prob-
lems, studies of rabbinic positions and youth attitudes, it is in the final
portion of it that the author provides an interesting opinion on the
future of American Jewry.
He is concerned In the main with the peoplehood of the Jews, and
he declares that "a community is not Jewish if its members do not
sense a special feeling of unity with and responsibility for the physical
and cultural welfare of all other Jews, wherever they are or whatever
else they may be .. .
Then he defined Judaism as Torah: "I understand Torah, at its
least, to mean that a Jew must submit himself to a set of laws and
practices which exist objectively or in a reality which is not of its
construction. Torah is outside of us and calls upon us for an affirma-
tion to which we must respond." And Dr. Liebman also offers as his
definition of Judaism "as the study of Torah and sacred texts."
Dr. Liebman warns: "Jewish peoplehood Is threatened by cos-
mopolitanism and universalism, by the vision of an undifferentiated
and diffuse love and the desire to destroy all that separates men. It
Is hard to argue against unity and love, hard to maintain the belief
that more lasting unity and love may come through each commimity's
fulfilling the best In its own tradition, rather than through cutting
itself off from its roots."
There is pessimism in his assertion that "There is no room for a
tradition of study when modern culture finds the very term sacred to
be anachronistic and affirms the value of activity, as against the value
of study, the relativism of all laws and values, and the Individual as
the final arbiter of right and wrong."
There is an added concern in his statement that "the values of
integration and survival are contradictory" and his assertion that:
"Fewer and fewer areas today are even neutral to Jewish values.
Literature, theater, art, scholarship, politics—all seem to undermine
what I consider to be the essentials of Judaism."
Non-Jews have already indict
that it is
their problem tr(uch more than that of their -
Jewish fellow-Americans. One Christian group
reportedly has secured more than 5,000 sig-
natures on a petition against the prejudicial
position of college editors and in support of
the administration that does not tolerate the
bigotries that spell hatred toward a sizeable
citizenry. This does not mean that Jews will
be silent and will let Christian John do it.
Orthodoxy's role as contrasted with Reform and Conservative views
are outlined by the author. In his warning of the dangers of assim-
milation he asserts that "surival of American Judaism is dependent
upon the biological continuity of the present Jewish community." To
assure an increase in the Jewish population he even proposes "positive
efforts" in the direction of proselytization. It is what he terms meaning-
ful survival that he advocates in relation to the Torah Judaism for
which he pleads for a strong and surviving American Jewry.
There are always the frightened and the
meek, the self-hating and the panic-stricken,
who may betray their fellow Jews. We are
dealing here with an American situation. In
the interest of fair play we are grateful that
Americans do not hide when there is a chal-
lenge to their ideals. And in the interest of
retaining our basic ideals we appeal again to
our black fellow citizens to be the first to
denounce prejudice, not to align themselves
with anti-Semites and to strive with us for a
restoration of fair play and good will on the
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