THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 56 January 23, 1976 Liberty Bell as Bicentennia Boris Smolar's 'Between You ... and Me' Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, JTA (Copyright 1975, JTA, Inc.) The Liberty Bell, Bicentennial Symbol, Preceded Independence "Proclaim liberty throughoat the land into all the inhabi- tants thereof.':—Lev. XXV. 10. By PHILIP SLOMOVITZ (Copyright, 1976, JTA Inc.) For the first. time in 223 years, since the Liberty Bell was cast for the Province of Pennsylvania, it has just been moved to a pavilion across from Philadelphia's Independence Hall to commence the observance of the American Revolution Bicentennial. The Liberty Bell is the symbol of American free- dom, the inspiring instru- ment which bears the in- scription from the Bible: "Proclaim liberty throughout the land into all the inhabitants thereof." — Lev. XXV. 10. It is not generally known, but the Liberty Bell. the symbol of American free- dom, is older than our inde- pendence. In August of 1752, dock- men in Philadelphia un- loaded a crate that arrived from England. In it was a bell, cast by the. Londoner Thomas Lister, 12 feet in circumference at the widest point, and on it was the inscription: "By order of the Assem- bly of the Province ofPenn- sylvania, for the State House in the City of Phila- delphia, 1752." The colony for whom this bell was cast still was under English rule, but the bell itself was to become known as the Liberty Bell, and was to serve as a challenge to op- pressors, for under the above explanation appeared this quotation: "Proclaim Liberty through all the land to all the inhabitants thereof. — Lev. XXV 10." Isaac Norris, a Quaker, was the man chosen to se- lect the quotation for the in- scription on the Bell. He picked the 25th chapter of Leviticus which contains the famous Jubilee proclama- tion: "And ye shall hallow the 50th year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land I f The Bell was not hung in the Pennsylvania State House because, upon un- packing, it cracked after a single stroke of the clapper due to the brittleness of the metal. A little copper was added to the metal in recast- ing by Pass and Stow, the two workingmen to whom was assigned the task of placing the Bell in order. The two craftsmen reversed the two original lines and the inscription on the Bell that was hung in 1753 read: "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the land unto all the Inhabi- tants thereof. Lev. XXV 10. "By order of the ASSEMBLY o f the Province of PENNSYL- VANIA, for the State House in Philada. "Pass and Stow, Philada MDCCLIII" The triumphant an- nouncement of the Declara- tion of Independence was accompanied by sounds that were pealed from the Lib- erty Bell in the Pennsyl- vania State House, on July 8, 1776. But with the threats of war, it became necessary to protect the Bell, and it was taken for safekeeping, in 1777, to Allentown, Pa., and was returned to Philadel- phia after the ousting of the British from the newly proclaimed American re- public. After Pass and Stow had recast the original bell, a second one was sent to Phil- adelphia from London by Thomas Lister. That copy was given to St. Augustine's Church, which was burned in 1844 during rioting by a mob which was incited to vi- olence by bigotry and anti- Catholicism by the hate group of that day — the "Native Americans." The Bell was crushed, but its remains were recast into a symbolic relic to be seen today at Villanova (Pa.) University. The original Liberty Bell cracked on July 8, 1835, ex- actly 59 years after it had pealed the triumphant an- nouncement of the Declara- tion of Independence, when it was rung for the funeral of Chief Justice John Mar- shall. But the Bell retains its power as a symbol of Liberty under the banner that carries the translation of the five Hebrew biblical words: "Ukrosem dror ba-aretz lek- hol yoshveho" — "Proclaim Lib- erty throughout all the Land unto all the inhabitants thereof." Golda Meir Defines Palestinians, Peace Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel, discussed her attitude and feelings toward the Palestinians and peace in a lengthly article in the Jan. 14 New York Times. She repeated her state- ment, "There are no Palesti- nians . . . There are Palesti- nian refugees," and explained that it was ac- tually the Jewish pioneers who should be called the Palestinians. Mrs.Meir states that she expresses her sympathy for the 550,000 Palestinian ref- ugees, but their refugee status can not be main- tained indefinitely. "I repeat again. We dis- possessed no Arabs. Our toil in the deserts and marshes of Palestine created more habitable living space for both Arab and Jew. Until 1948 the Arabs of Palestine multi- plied and flourished as the direct result of Zionist set- tlement. "Whatever subsequent ills befell the Arabs were the in- evitable result of the Arab design to drive us into the sea. Had Israel not repelled her would-be destroyers there would have been no Jewish refugees alive in the Middle East to concern the world." Mrs. Meir continued, "I am not prepared to accede to the easy formula that in the Arab-Israeli conflict we witness two equal con- tending rights that de- mand further "flexibility" from Israel. "Justice was not violated when in the huge territories liberated by the Allies from the Sultan, one percent was set aside for the Jewish homeland on its ancestral site, while in a parallel set- tlement 99 percent of the area was allotted for the establishment of indepen- dent Arab states. "We successively accepted the truncation of Transjor- dan, three-fourths of the area of historic Palestine, and finally the painful com- promise of the 1947 Parti- tion Resolution in the hope for peace. "Yet though Israel arose in only one-fifth of the terri- tory originally assigned for the Jewish homeland, the Arabs invaded the young state. Mrs. Meir asks why the Arabs did not set up a Pa- lestinian state in accord- ance with the UN partition in 1947, and why the Arabs attacked Israel in 1967 when they controlled Gaza, the West Bank, the Sinai and the Old City of Jerusalem. She says these actions show the Arabs want the destruction of Israel, not the founding of a Palestinian state. She also said that Israel is willing to work out a solu- tion with the Palestinians, but the solution already ex- ists — in Jordan. "The ma- jority of the refugees never left Palestine; they are set- tled on the West Bank and in Jordan, the majority of whose population is Palesti- nian." HEBREW AND THE BICENTENNIAL: The influ- ence of Hebrew in America is much older than the 200 years since the American Revolution. It goes back to the Colonial time. It came over with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower. Pro- testant ministers were expected to know Hebrew so that they could read the Bible in the original. In any college cur- riculum Hebrew was a required language on a par with Latin and Greek. The texts used were the books of the Old Testament written in Hebrew. Harvard, the first college established in America, as- sumed leadership in the early study of Hebrew. For over a century and a half the commencement exercises included an oration in Hebrew. Yale, established in 1701, at first felt that Hebrew -cvL, a province for advanced students, but later introduced He- brew also for students of the first year. Its president, Ezra Stiles, was an ardent Hebraist and philo-semite during his entire lifetime. He made the knowledge of Hebrew an inte- gral part of a scholar's liberal education and a requisite for a minister. The seal of the Yale University carries the He- brew words "Urirn V'Tumim" — words that had been en- graved on the breastplates of the priests in the Temple in Jerusalem. Today, there are about 800 colleges, universities and theological schools in the country accepting Hebrew as meeting their language requirements. Some of them have modern Hebrew courses and a number have established chairs in Hebrew culture and education. YIDDISH AND THE BICENTENNIAL: The rise of Yiddish in this country started only about 100 years ago when Jews began to immigrate in large masses from East- ern European countries where Yiddish was their mother tongue. It was these immigrants who inspired the great Ameri- can Jewish poet Emma Lazarus to write her classic poem "The New Colossus" which is enshrined on the Statue of Liberty at Ellis Island._ Today the most known of the Yiddish writers in this country — whose works are translated into English and other language — is Isaac Bashevis Singer. He 4, is an outstanding figure in American literature F., although he writes his works originally in Yid- dish and publishes them first in the Jewish ')76-19-/6 Daily Forward, the largest Yiddish newspaper. Before his time, it was Sholem Asch — who also wrote his works originally in Yiddish and published them first in the Forward — who was the most gifted novelist accepted into American literature through translation. He was men- tioned as candidate for the Nobel Prize shortly before his death. The Jewish world celebrates now the 100th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Reizen, the classic Yiddish poet and short-story writer who emigrated from Czarist Russia to this country and became a leading figure in the world of Jewish poetry. He too made his "home" in the Jewish Daily Forward, but many of his sensitive poems found their way into American literary publications, translated in English. Yiddish playwrights too have made their impact on American culture. S. Ansky's "The Dybbuk," Sholem Asch's "God of Vengeance," Peretz Hirschbein's "The Green Pastures," were translated into English and successfully produced on Broadway and in cities other than New York. "Fiddler on the Roof," based on Sholem Aleichem's writings in Yiddish, has made history on the American stage by run- ning years longer than any play ever written by. any Ameri- can playwright. JEWISH IMPACT: American Jews also contributed to American literature gifted writers who wrote their works in English. "The Rise of David Levinsky," a novel re- flecting the life of Jewish immigrants, written about a half a century ago in English by Abraham Cahan, the great edi- tor of the Jewish Daily Forward, is still being reprinted to- day in new editions. , Soviet Anti-Semitism Drive Seen as Heinous as Ever By JONATHAN SCHENKER Public Information Officer, National Conference on Soviet Jewry NEW YORK — Anti- Semitic propaganda in -;:he Soviet press has developed over a number of decades. According to recent re- ports reaching the N,-..ional Conference on Soviet Jewry, many of the items now deal- ing with Israel in the Soviet press and radio have placed heavy emphasis on the UN General Assembly resolu- tion equating Zionism with racism. The articles and broad- casts justified the UN deci- sion by charging that Zion- ism is not only a racist theory because it claims that Jews are an "exclusive and superior race," but that the state of Israel which is the embodiment of Zionism, is a country in which racist practices are directed against Arabs and non-Jews, as well as some of the Jews themselves. S. Astakhov wrote in So- vietskaya Kultura in No- vember, 1975, "A pathol- ogical hatred for the Arab peoples, a policy of geno- cide — that is what in- spires Zionists and they speak about this openly without shame . . . And the Zionists 'build' their own 'civilization,' their own 'Greater Israel,' us- ing for this the experience of their ideological teach- ers — the Hitlerite Nazis — they are building this Israel on the bones and blood of the neighboring Arab peoples . . . " With the defeat of the Ar- abs in the Six-Day War, the Soviet government began a full-fledged propaganda campaign against "inter- national Zionism." The So- viet media created countless conspiracies between "Zionists" with every type of totalitarian regime, blam- ing the Jews for the Czarist pogroms as well as Nazi genocide. By the early 1970s official Soviet publications were equating Zionism as the new Nazism, that the "progressive world was threatened by this Hitlerite Zionism." The October War was the signal for a new Soviet cam- paign of anti-Semitism dis- guised as anti-Zionism. As in the past, such campaigns have had a multiple pur pose. First, they play a part in the Soviet Union's pro- Arab Mideast policy with the avowed purpose. of un- dermining the survival of the Jewish state. Secondly, such a campaign serves as a threat toward Soviet Jews regarding their continued struggle for immigration to Israel. Thirdly, it is part of the overall switchboard ac- tivities of the USSR by which anti-Semitism is kept alive worldwide.