THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle comm _ encing with issue of July 20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Assoets•
tion. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075.
Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $8 a year. Foreign 1011
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
DREW LIEBERWITZ
City Editor
Advertising Manager
Business Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the third day of lyar, 5733, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Levit. 19:1-20:27. Prophetical portion, Ezekiel 22:1-19.
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Candle lighting, Friday, May 4, 8:16 p.m.
VOL. LXIII. No. 8
Page Four
May 4, 1973
Israel Anniversary: Voice of Emancipation
Israel, at age 25, is a symbol of a people self-emancipated, setting forth basic
principles of a will to live and the desire for peace and harmony as a member of the
international community.
When the Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was read to the
world on the fifth day of Iyar, 5708—then May 14, 1948—there was the
pronouncement of basic ideas for a cooperative existence with neighbors
who waged war against the re-established Jewish community.
The Declaration of Indpendence enunciated appeals to all concerned
—to the world community, to the Arab neighbors and to the Jewish people
throughout the Diaspora who were asked "to rally round the Jews of Eretz
Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in
the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream—the redemption
of Israel."
The principles enunciated in that declaration are today as appealing to the consci-
ence of liberty-loving people everywhere as the American Declaration of Independence
was 177 years earlier.
As libertarians everywhere gather, during the coming week, to mark the historic.
25th anniversary of Israel, it is necessary, for a complete appreciation of the aim of the
redeemed state, to read anew the great document that proclaimed the establishment of
Israel. To quote from that document:
ERETZ YISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jew-
ish people. Here their spiritual, religious and polit-
ical identity was shaped. Here they first attained
statehood, created cultural values of national and
universal significance and gave to the world the
eternal Book of Books.
After being forcibly exiled from their land, the
people kept faith with it throughout their Disper-
sion and never ceased to pray and hope for their
return to it and for the restoration in it of their
political freedom.
Impelled by this historic and traditional attach-
ment, Jews strove in every successive generation
to reestablish themselves in their ancient homeland.
In recent decades they return in their masses.
Pioneers, ma'apilim ("illegal" immigrants) and
defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the
Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and
create' a thriving community, controlling its own
econo-, and culture, loving peace but knowing how
to defy id itself, bringing the blessings of progress
to a] • he country's inhabitants, and aspiring to-
ward ndependent nationhood.
he year 5657 (1897). at the summons of the
spiritual father of the Jewish State. Theodor Herzl,
the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed
the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth
in its own country.
This right was recognized in the Balfour De-
claration of the 2nd November. 1917, and re-af-
firmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations
which, in particular, gave international sanction to
the historic connection between the Jewish people
and Eretz Yisrael and to the right of the Jewish
people to rebuild its National Home.
The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish
people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe
was another clear demonstration of the urgency
of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-
establishing in Eretz Yisrael the Jewish State,
which would open the gates of the homeland wide
to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people
the status of a fully-privileged member of the comity
of nations.
Survivors of the Nazi Holocaust in Europe, as
well as Jews from other parts of the world, con-
tinued to migrate to Eretz Yisrael, undaunted by
difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never
ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity,
freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.
In the Second World War, the Jewish community
of this country contributed its full share to the strug-
gle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against
the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood
of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right
to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the
United Nations.
On the 29th November, 1947, the Unted Na-
tions General Assembly passed a resolution calling
for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz
Yisrael; the General Assembly required the in-
habitants of Eretz Yisrael to take such steps as
were necessary on their part for the implementa-
tion of that resolution. This recognition by the Unit-
ed Nations of the right of the Jewish people to
establish their State is irrevocable.
This right is the natural right of the Jewish
people to be masters of their own fate, like all
other nations, in their own sovereign State.
Accordingly we, members of the People's Coun-
cil, representatives of the Jewish community of
Eretz Yisrael and of the Zionist Movement, are
here assembled on the day of the termination of
the British Mandate over Eretz Yisrael and, by
virtue of our natural and historic right and on the
strength' of the resolution of the United Nations
General Assembly, hereby declare the establish-
ment of a Jewish State in Eretz Yisrael, to be
known as the State of Israel . . .
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jew-
ish immigration and for the Ingathering of the
Exiles; it will foster the development of the coun-
try for the benefit of all inhabitants; it will be
based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged
by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete
equality of social and political rights to all its in-
habitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it
will guarantee freedom of religion, will safeguard the
Holy Places of all religions; will be faithful to the
principles of the Charter of the United Nations.
WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the
Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to
receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.
WE APPEAL—in the very midst of the on-
slaught launched against us now for months—to
the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to pre-
serve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the
State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and
due representation in all its provisional and per-
manent institutions.
WE EXTEND our hand to all neighboring states
and their peoples in an offer of peace and good
neighborliness and appeal to them to establish bonds
of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign
Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of
Israel is prepared to do its share in common ef-
fort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.
It is clear that the appeal was to mankind, it was not only to the Jewish people
and to Jewry's friends everywhere: It was to the Arab nations, and especially to the Arab
fellow-citizens of the Israelis.
It was an historic document that evaluated the r it of the Jewish
people to a national existence, to a restoration of political freedom, to
cooperation from the nations of the world.
It was a striving for peace and a hope for amity with the neigh-
boring nations, to the Arabs within the new Israel to help in the pres-
ervation of peace.
On Israel's 25th anniversary, the hopes of Jews everywhere in
consort with their Israeli brethren is to achieve the peace that is so
vital for that entire area.
May the present anniversary serve as an encouragement for renewed efforts for
peace, on the basis of a cooperative spirit so vital for humanitarian realizations. It it with
such hopes that we join in saluting Israel in this historic period in our history.
4
Twersky's 'Maimonides Reader'
Covers Rambam's Major Works el
Dr. Isadore Twersky, Nathan Littauer Professor of Hebrew Liter-
ature and Philosophy at Harvard, in the opening sentence of his
preface to "A Maimonides Reader," states:
"Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, known in Hebrew literature as the
Rambam and in Western culture since the Renaissance as Maimonides,
in unquestionably one of the outstanding figures of Jewish history—
a figure, moreover, whose commanding influence has been widely
recognized by non-Jews as well as Jews. As early as the 14th cen-
tury, a rabbinic scholar applied to
Maimonides the phrase (adapted
from Malahi 1:11), 'his name is
great among the nations.' And the
17th century English humanist Jere-
my Taylor called him, in a simple,
suggestive phrase, that 'famous Jew'
par excellence. As , a result, even
those generally unacquainted with
or uninterested in the basic pheno-
mena and major trends of Jewish
history react to the name of this
`famous Jew.' "
While these are generally known
facts for the knowledgeable Jew,
they nevertheless emphasize the im-
portance of the valued work produced
by Prof. Twersky, published by Behr-
man House and available through
the Jewish Publication Society.
Prof. Twersky's 29-page in-
troductory essay is in itself an
Traditional Portrait of
Moses Maimonides
impressive contribution to Jew-
with Facsimile of His Signature
ish scholarship. It offers a thor-
ough review of the material selected for this volume and it serves
as a guide to the reader in utilizing the commentaries and the
interpretive works, as well as the analyses of Jewish laws.
In addition to the works dealing with many Jewish concepts, the
Maimonides selections chosen for "The Maimonides Reader" include
the famous "Epistle of Yemen" and a variety of letters — to Obadiah
the Proselyte, to Hasdai Ha-Levi and others.
The major works of Maimonides are drawn upon and, of course,
a special section is devoted to "Guide to the Perplexed." The compiler
of this "Reader" points to "certain pre-eminent traits common to all
of Maimonides' writing" which "should be boldly underscored." He
refers to his "great care and precision, that his ideas were rigorously
reasoned, his balanced sentences were meticulously formulated, and
thoroughly organized." Prof Twersky also states:
"The compliment which the French encyclopedist Diderot
paid to the German philosopher Leibniz is applicable to Maimo-
nides: 'He combined two great qualities which are almost in-
compatible with one another—the spirit of discovery and that of
method.' His writings are marked not only by ordered
ligibility and terse summation but also by creativity and k
inality. Sometimes he himself called attention to the 'spirit of
discovery which permeated his work, as when he declared the
Mishneh Torah to be a work of unprecedented scope and arrange-
ment, for not since R. Judah the Prince redacted the Mishnah
had anyone undertaken to rework and reformulate the entire
halakhah. In the introduction to the Guide he claims to write
about topics 'which have not been treated by any of our scholars
. . . since the times of our captivity.' He did not engage in
popularization in any conventional sense; he was a molder and
architect of ideas.
"Another outstanding feature of Maimonides was his intel-
lectual honesty and courage, unintimidated by pressure, dis-
satisfaction, or potential censure. In his Commentary on the
Mishnah he addressed himself to a certain problem even though
he knew that his views would be uncongenial to most—or even
all—of the great scholars; he proceeded 'oblivious of predecessors
or contemporaries.' Elsewhere in that work he repudiates the
method of R. Saadyah Gaon who used obviously fallacious argu-
ments, which he himself did not accept, just for the purpose
of vanquishing his opponents."
A notable contribution to scholarly efforts has been made by Dr.
Twersky with his "Maimonides Reader."
4