Allied Jewish Campaign Opens Wednesday; Detroit
Jewry Summoned to Assure Solidarity With Israel
The Greater Detroit Jewish community will be summoned this week again to express solidarity with Israel and to
assure traditional generosity towards the Allied Jewish Campaign which is merged with the Israel Emergency Fund in
the most dramatic philanthropic fund-raising effort.
The current drive opens formally with a dinner, Wednesday evening, at Adas Shalom Synagogue. The national
chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, Frank Lautenberg, will be the'guest speaker.
Pre-campaign results will be announced at the dinner, and the 3,000 volunteer workers will proceed to enroll
more than 12,000 potential contributors who are yet to be reached as participants in the supreme efforts for the UJA,
the major campaign beneficiary, and scores of local and national causes.
Volunteers for the drive and contributors are urged to join the great effort by contacting the Campaign office,
(Detailed story on Page 8)
WO 5-3939.
Christian
Committee's
Commendable Honor
for Lowdermilk,
Noted Philo-Semite
THE JEWISH NEWS
Generosity:
Allied Drive's
Communal
Commitments
Commentary
Page 2
VOL. LXVII, No. 4
Urgent Call for
A Weekly Review
of Jewish Events
9 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 424-8833
'
$10.00 Per Year ; This Issue 30c
Editorial
Page 4
April 4, 1975
U.S. Mideast Review Continues
Amid Reports of Blaming Israel
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Ford Administration appears to be mounting
a concerted but discreet campaign to convince other governments that Israel had
been intransigent during the latest effort by Secretary of State Henry A. Kissin-
ger to help achieve a second-stage accord between Egypt and Israel, and to urge
other governments to pursue Israel to adopt a more flexible position.
This campaign, according to sources, emerged Tuesday after a meeting be-
tween Kissinger and Allan J. Maceachen, the Canadian secretary of state for
external affairs. Kissinger reportedly urged Maceachen to use his influence to
urge Israel to adopt greater flexibility in the negotiating process. In addition,
according to sources, the view that Israel was less than flexible during Kissin-
ger's latest shuttle effort was also transmitted through administration channels
to the governments of West Germany and Holland. The State Department de-
nied this report.
Publically, Kissinger has refused to blame either Egypt or Israel for the
breakdown of the latest talks. Privately, however, he is known to have expressed
some bitterness over what he c'onsiders to be a hard stand by Israel.
President Ford expressed anger with Israel publicly, most notably in a
March 24 interview in Hearst newspapers in which he blamed Israeli intran-
sigence for the failure of Kissinger's latest effort.
Exclusive To The Jewish News
Pity The Two Hundred!
Meanwhile, Kissinger met Tuesday with a group of prominent public figures
for ideas on how to advance Mideast negotiations following the breakdown of his
mediation efforts.
Participants in the private three-hour session included George W. Ball, for-
mer undersecretary of state; George P. Shultz, former treasury secretary; David
Rockefeller, chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank; Dean Rusk, former secretary
of state; Defense Secretary James Schlessinger and David K. E. Bruce, presently
assigned to NATO.
The meeting was seen as part of the administration's current reassessment
of U. S. policy in the Middle East. There was no immediate information as to the
specifics discussed during the meeting for whether any decisions were taken.
A similar meeting was held Thursday before Kissinger flew to Palm
Springs, Calif., to consult with Ford on the Mideast and Indochina. None of
those present at Tuesday's meeting are considered Mideast experts although
many of them have dealt with that area in public discussions.
The meetings are part of a series Kissinger had held with officials and public
figures to discuss the Mideast situation. Kissinger has reportedly indicated that
he now believes, in the aftermath of the breakdown of the latest talks, that a
permanent solution of the crisis in the Mideast can only be solved at a reconvened
(Continued on Page 48)
Israel's Fatalism: "It'll Get Better
Because It Can't Get Any Worse'
CAIRO — Before Israel became a state Egypt had approximately 100,000
s. (No two authorities agree on the precise figure. Some say 80,000; others
it as high as 150,000.) Fifteen years ago, when I was last here, although
rigypt had twice gone to war against the Jewish state there were still a great
many Jews left and many of the twenty Cairo synagogues were still functioning.
Today there are two hundred Jews left in Cairo and about the same number in
Alexandria. (This figure, also, is not precise, for there are some Egyptian Jews
who for years have not identified and have gradually vanished into the polyglot
population, just as has happened in New York and other large cities.)
About the synagogues .. .
As everyone knows who has been to the Soviet Union in the past decade, the
USSR apparently feels it has so successfully created a godless society that it can
afford to appropriate considerable money to repair and refurbish many of its old
churches and synagogues, as tourist attractions. There are signs that Egypt, now
that its Jewish population has been practically obliterated, might start doing the
same, if it had the money to spare from military and other expenditures.
Travel brochures issued by the Egyptian Government list the Synagogue
Ben Ezra in the area called Old Cairo as one of the ten or twenty most impor-
tant sites for tourists to visit. Surrounded by twenty Coptic churches and twen-
ty-nine mosques and close beside the great Coptic Museum, it is the only one of
Cario's synagogues now in presentable condition. Christian and
By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
TEL AVIV—History is a training ground for mankind: for Israel it is also
a battleground and a constant reminder never to forget the past. Because the Jew
has a past with many admonitions he can be the philosophizing victim of many
circumstances.
That's how one acquires a sense of relief from many torments. He has added
a new chapter in the testing to which he is constantly subjected during the agoniz-
ing weeks of peace-seeking under the direction of U.S. Secretary of State Henry
A. Kissinger. He might have had to submit to uncertainties, to a gambler's hope
that abandonment of a valuable card might lead to regaining a valuable position
in a test for security. The result of collapsed negotiations became obvious. The
Secretary abandoned his mission with tears.
Suddenly — and simultaneously with the Kissinger demissionizing—the
basic lesson of history became paramount. Israel turned again to the Psalmist
to be comforted in the realism of the warning "al tivtekhu b'nedivim" place not
your trust in princes. And with it came relief: relief in the knowledge that failure
for the diplomat was triumph for the afflicted.
Seldom has relief from impending danger been as extensive, and near-
unanimous. So much had been offered to the enemy in Israel's behalf, so
little was to be expected in return, that the sense of relief was immense.
The new experience was summed up briefly, pointedly. It came in response
to the question "Mah Yi-yeh" what'll happen next, and the answer was "Yi-yeh
toy," it'll be good. The explanation: "It can't be worse, therefore now it must get
much better."
Reviewing a history of many agonies, the people of this embattled nation
seem to have regained new faith and new strength from the tutelage of Henry
(Continued on Page 48)
(Continued on Page 13)
By ROBERT ST. JOHN
Second in a series of articles by the eminent author
who just returned from a trip to Egypt with his wife Ruth.