THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with issue of July
20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Associa-
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 $9
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Sditor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
CHARLOTTE DUBIN
Business Manager
City Editor
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the seventh day of Tamuz, 5733, the following scriptural selections
will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Num. 19:1-22:1. Prophetical portion, Judges 11:1-33.
Candle lighting, Friday, July 6. 8:51 p.m.
VOL. LXIII. No. 17
Page Four
July 6, 1973
Communal Generosity, Growing Activism
Many months of study were devoted to
evaluating the needs of many social service
and educational agencies for the support of
which the Jewish Welfare Federation has
allocated the record sum of $2,399,000.
A concerned constituency can learn a
great deal from the judgments rendered by
the functioning groups which had decided
upon the amounts vitally needed for_health,
welfare, vocational, recreational and educa-
tional agencies which combine to emphasize
the totality of communal services.
So vast is the communal program in many
spheres, involving every conceivable aspect
of the constituency's involvements, that the
importance of Federation as the over-all con-
trolling force in Detroit Jewry emerges in
ever-growing proportions.
The newest aspect of Federation concern is
the added support that has been voted for
the three day schools, and while the amounts
apportioned may in no way satisfy the grow-
ing needs, the reality of a newly-developing
situation which begins to give priority to the
extended educational programs is a new
trend that will no doubt grow with time.
An added feature of great significance is
the large sum of $9,500,000 that will go from
Allied Jewish Campaign funds for Israel and
overseas needs. This is the policy that has
emerged through the years, resulting from
the Jewish state's struggles for security.
Old prejudices thus are vanishing. There
was a time when assimilationist forces fought
stubbornly to truncate every effort at in-
creasing educational obligations from mere
Sunday schools to afternoon schools, and the
old guard fought bitterly against every Zion-
ist aspect of American Jewish life. Now we
have an acknowledgment of supremacy in
fund-raising for educational needs and an
agreement on the most serious efforts in
Israel's behalf.
While the progress attained marks an
end to assimilatory tactics, there remains
much to be accomplished. Israel's needs will
grow, and the priority given to cultural proj-
ects will gain in demands from the maximal-
ists in cultural programing. We can be pre-
pared for such campaigns for increased in-
terests, both in Israel and in spiritual-cultural
functions even at a time when we applaud
what has been achieved until now, as em-
phasized in the allocations just made by the
Detroit Jewish Welfare Federation.
Truth Courage in USSR Jewry s Struggles
.47
,
Leonid Brezhnev unquestionably misled
many people with his sanctimony. He is a
clever Russian. He has shown that he has the
skill of making others dance to his tunes and
his shrewd bear-taming could well have hin-
dered the congressional tasks of preventing
increased discrimination against USSR Jew-
ish citizens. But his facts and figures have
been challenged. Senator Henry M. Jackson
was the first to evidence courage in refusing
to swallow the Soviet claims, and if there
will be difficulty in the struggle for an end
to Russian obstacles to freedom at least there
will be the evidence to offset the bias. The
tools for the establishment of truth are at
hand.
Brezhnev's claims were fantastic. He clev-
erly diminished the Jewish ranks, referring
to 2,100,000 of our kinsmen as against the
actual 3,000,000. It has even been believed
that there were 3,500,000 Jews in the Soviet
Union. He referred to the comparatively small
number of Jews who had been given the
right to emigrate as if they represented 95
per cent of the applicants, whereas twice as
many as have left are seeking emigration
rights.
The facts are at hand and the difficulty
will be in reaching the misled now that the
Communist chief has displayed the trick of
blinding public opinion with the magic of
what was, indeed, a method of charm.
Perhaps more challenging than the Brezh-
nev diplomatic confounding is the comment
on the Brezhnev-Nixon talks by the New
York Times columnist James Reston who had
this to say:
"Even personal freedom, which seems to
terrify the Communists more than atomic weap-
ons, is making a little slow progress as a result
of these talks. The freedom of the Soviet Jews
to emigrate to Israel has not been solved, but
mainly as a result of pressure from here, Mr.
Brezhnev has made some concessions and has
tolerated American interference with his inter-
nal laws more than any American president
would have tolerated similar interference from
the Soviet Union."
Reston is one of the best informed men
on foreign affairs in journalistic circles, yet
he has failed to take into account the frequent
reminders about the experience of the past
70 years on this very subject. There was the
breaking of diplomatic relations with Czarist
Russia by President Howard Taft in 1911; our
government had occasion to protest against
the Romanian mistreatment of Jews in the
early part of this century by Secretary of
State John Hay; even if reluctantly, our gov-
ernment protested the Nazi terrors during
Franklin D. Roosevelt's regime. There are, on
record, protests against many acts of discrim-
ination by foreign governments, involving
other races and creeds.
It is the experience during the Hitler era
that should teach us a great lesson. Senator
Jackson uttered reminders of it several times
when, tackling the charge that we may be
interfering in the internal affairs of a foreign
government when too much is demanded of
the USSR, he pointed to the Nazi period:
Hitler also made that claim, he reminded his
audiences, and the crime was not in the pro-
tests but in the failures to protest suffici-
ently; else a few more lives might have been
saved.
Individuals and nations forget quickly, and
the Brezhnevs are cleverer than most who are
affected. But the truth refutes the claims, the
courageous who are in the waiting lines de-
manding permission to leave the Soviet Union
are not silent, right will not be negated by
tyranny, and libertarians speak out firmly.
Jews are not alone in registering their
protests against what is happening in the
Soviet Union. Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvi-
ans and others also are demanding freedoms
now denied to them. These peoples do not
have the advantages of Jews who can turn
to Israel for refuge. They may not all enjoy
the Israeli environment, but they have a her-
itage to sustain their dignity. It is in defense
of their just rights and in support of their
heritage that the struggle continues.
There will be no confusing of the love for
liberty as long as there is access to truth—
and the realities support the unending strug-
gle never to abandon the oppressed. In the
present instance it is the Brezhnev cover-up
that must unify the tasks of the defenders of
the liberties we demand for Russian Jewry.
Prof. Naamani Views Israel
Role as a Mutualist Society
Prof. Israeli T. Naamani of the University of Louisville's depart-
ment of political science views the Jewish state as an interesting study
in economics and in :ideologies. In his "Israel" whch he presents as
"a profile," published by Praeger, he discusses the role of Zionism,
and the labor aspects of the dominant Histadrut movement. He makes
historical research an important factor in his study which is unique
in many respects.
He emphasizes Zionism's "nonmaterialistic" aspects, and in his
view of the early stages of the movement he indicates its "emphasis
on pioneering, self-sacrifice and collectivism."
He refers to the fears that were expressed by Prof. M. Gross of
Wayne State University and the Israel researcher, Itzhak Galmoor,
that "Israel, moving into the industrial world, will take the. 'professors'
and the `econometricians' too seriously, emulating the complex systems
of the more 'advanced' countries and relying almost entirely on statis-
tics and projections to the exclusion of ideological principles and in-
stinctive reaction to t!'e complicated problems."
Commenting on sup ,-:11 fears, Prof. Naamani states:
"Recalling that IFrael, per capita, was the third-largest user of
computers in 1970.71, there was some basis for this fear. There was
also the dread that Israel might cease to experiment and fall into the
trap into which other new states found themselves—putting all its
economic eggs into oak- basket. The strength of the state has been
that it accommodatex; various ideologies--those of the collectives and
those of the private (s, ector—so that the failure of any one of them
posed no fatal risks to the country as a whole. Such accommodation
may have brought occasional recessions or ,even reverses, such as
those of 1962-65, but Israel was able to recover from them because
of its diversified and flexible system."
There is an optimistic note in Prof. Naamani's concluding decla-
ration in which he states:
"The uniqueness of Israel is that its 'glorious revolution,' unlike
so many other revolutions, has not come at the expense of the masses
or at the expense of the capitalists. Hence the labor movement—the
workers' parties with a majority in the parliament—which still pos-
sesses the power to impose socialist patterns on the entire country,
has never used this potential. While it has fostered and developed its
own ideological design, it has also encouraged the private sector to
nurture its life style as a complement to what one may call a mutualist
society.or state."
Coupled with the review of the rise of political Zionism and the
ingathering of Jews into Israel from many lands, in this valuable - tvidy
of Israel's -present role, the author 'provides the reader with a so.,
account of Israel's political parties, the nation's cultural self-deter-
mination, the quest for security.
He deals with the perils as well as the advantage, the promises
as well as the struggles, and he portrays the people of the land in
their various complexities, based on his descriptions of the lands
whence the vast migrations stemmed.
Prof. Naamani did not ignore the religious conflicts, and the
numerous religions and their roles are outlined in this study. He
describes Israel not only as a .political entity -but also as "a spiritual
and cultural center of Judaism." He recognizes the difficult challenge
that faces Israel's Jewry and he declares that "it must learn--and
it is learning—to consummate art of being a responsible majority,
of so interpreting the idea of a Jewish state that it acknowledges that
the participation of Israel's non-Jewish citizens is also signficant in
the moral flowering of the country."
Taking into account the internal Jewish differences, describing
the various religious parties, he refers to the debates that were
instituted by David Ben-Gurion on the question "Who Is a Jew?"
and on the score of various claims, of the moderates battling with
the extremes, he asserts:
"One goal of religious moderates was to consolidate the various
'tribes of Israel,' Western and Eastern, nito a community of faith.
Another was to return to Mosaic theophany and its moral and re-
ligious imperatives, making them a fundamental pant of Israel society
without impairing the rights of the individual to freedom of conscience
and personal behavior."