THE JEWISH NEWS

Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue qt*July 20, 1951

Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association.
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 $10 a year.

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

DREW LIEBERWITZ

Editor and Publisher

Business Manager

Advertising Manager

Alan Hitskv, News Editor . . . Heidi Press. Assistant \4 s Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the 16th day of Elul, 5736, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:

Pentateuchal portion, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 60:1-22.

Candle lighting, Friday, Sept. 10, 7:33 p.m.

VOL. LXX, No. 1

Page Four

Friday, September 10, 1976

Candidates Confront Jewish Voters

This is an exciting political week-end for
representative bodies of Jewish voters.
Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter are ad-
dressing the Bnai Brith convention and
U.S. Senators Robert Dole and Walter
Mondale are scheduled to speak at the ses-
sions of the Zionist Organization of America
in New York.
From the sessions of two of the major
Jewish movements in the land the messages
of the candidates for President and Vice
President will - be disseminated to American
Jewry for study of the positions of the
standard bearers of the two major political
parties on matters of general concern to the
people of the land. The occasions are usually
utilized by candidates to express their
views on matters of special concern to Jews.
It may well be that the minds of many in
the American constituency have already
been made up. The polls show the ratings of
those who assert themselves periodically
and there are judgements to be awaited.
The heartening factor in the solicita-
tion of votes by the candidates for the major
positions in our government is that the ap-
peals to be sounded this week-end are in
behalf of two parties. As long as ours is a
government of more than one party we have
a right to boast about our great American
heritage as a republic of merit.
Another candidate, Eugene McCarthy,
has introduced another angle into the dis-
cussion of the merits of the American Presi-

dency. He is dissatisfied with two parties.
He advocates a third party. His proposal is
not debatable: it should be viewed as accept-
able, and a suggestion for a fourth party
also would not be out of place. As long as we
are a government of more than one party,
we stay fairly secure in the quest for highest
deinocratic and humane goals. If it were
otherwise Washington would be trans-
formed into a Moscow or a Cairo or a
Damascus.
It'll be a hot campaign, and in the back-
ground sits the specially privileged: the Si-
lent Voter. The majority of the American
people, regretfully, do not cast their ballots.
If they did, the pollsters would be greatly
outnumbered because the ranks of the Si-
lent Voter would be vastly increased. Tie is
the privileged and in his hands lies the fate
of the two major candidates.
A study may show that those to be ad-
dressed this week-end in Washington and
New York by the candidates for President
and Vice President may also be speaking to
the Silent Voter ranks. The Jewish voters
are in no sense different from their Ameri-
can counterparts. Their interests are alike.
Which makes the campaign all the more in-
teresting and the sessions of Bnai Brith and
the Zionist Organization media for judg-
ment by those who are charged with the
duty to act wisely on the first Tuesday in
November.

Nazi Virus in Latin America

Nazi poisons have infiltrated so drasti-
cally into Latin American countries that
the Jewish communities in many of them
live in fear caused by the spreading anti-
Semitism.
The situation in Argentina is cause for
special concern to Jews everywhere. The
urgency of assuring security for Jewish
communities, wherever they may be, em-
phvizes the anxieties when anti-Semitism
becomes evident in areas that had enjoyed a
measure of freedom and where the govern-
ments had been 'on the alert against the
spread of bigotry.
Brazil has been described as the only
country in the South American regions
where fear over their freedoms has van-
ished among Jews. Even there, however, it
is admitted that the assumption of power by
either of the extremes, the right or the left,
could cause a reversal in the protections
presently enjoyed by Jews. But in Chile and
in Argentina new dangers have arisen and
in the latter the spread of anti-Semitism
seems to encircle the Jews so menacingly
that heads of the major Jewish groups in the
United States already are seeking ways of
reac,hing Argentinian authorities in the
hope of averting a critical situation.
The Nazi virus has been a factor in in-
jecting the hatreds that have been fo-
mented in Argentina, and now a new
movement aimed at branding Jews as
Communists has additionally aggravated
an already poisoned atmosphere.
A tragic aspect in the anti-Semitism
that has bezun to raise its head more au-

daciously in Latin American countries is
the encouragement the haterS have re-
ceived from churchmen. While a Vatican
formula, stemming from Pope Pius XI, con-
tinues to refer to the hatred of Jews as "the
sin of anti-Semitism," the sin was trans-
formed into a blessing by diehard religious
leaders who can not erase the old venoms
from their systems.
It is clear that the spreading hatred can
not remain the concern of Latin American
Jewries alone. Their kinsmen everywhere
may be called upon to direct their appeals to
the governments of nations where the anc-
ient hatreds of Jews had been prevented --
from gaining influence in official circles and
where the Church was a factor in cementing
friendships between religious faiths and
had discouraged bigotries.
The Catholic Church protest in Argen-
tina against Nazi literature rejects the
venom within Church ranks.
In times of crises, during the Beilis
ritual murder case in Russia, at the time of
the ritual murder libel, during the Dreyfus
Case, when the Russians were condoning
pogoms and in an earlier period during the
Damacus blood libel, the protests from
justice-seeking peoples everywhere
brought relief in times of tensions. It is to be
hoped that it will not be necessary to
mobilize such pressures at this time and the
governments involved will themselves act
firmly to prevent more synagogue burnings
and to prevent the spread of anti-Semitism
that poisons mankind.

Major Jewish Philosophers
Critiqued in New Volume

William E. Kaufman's "Contemporary' Jewish Philosophies" is
more than just an overview of some of the leading Jewish thinkers of
the 20th Century. Published by the Reconstructionist Press and Behr-
man House, "Contemporary Jewish Philosophies", in the author's
words, is a systematic critique.
Kaufman divides his volume into three sections "The Challenge of
Contemporary Jewish Thought," subdivided into "The Crisis of Mean-
ing" and "Toward a Return to Clarity;" and sections on existentialism
and transcendence.
With emphasis on the various trends of thought encompassed by
the philosophers he covers, Kaufman includes chapters on Franz Ro-
senzweig, Martin Buber, Richard L. Rubenstein, Eugene Borowitz and
Emil Fackenheim under "Worlds of Jewish Existentialism."
Leo Baeck, Abraham Heschel, Mordecai Kaplan, Arthur Cohen
and Jacob Agus are included under the heading "Toward a Conception
of Transcedence."
Kaufman's major criteria for selection of philosophers covered
the major theological options open to the contemporary Jew during
the 20th Century. Each philosopher is analyzed and critiqued, utiliz-
ing a uniform criteria which focuses the key concerns and commentar-
ies of each in relation to the broader field of thought.
According to Ira Eisenstein, president of the Jewish Reconstruc-
tionist Foundation "unlike the generation . before the Holocaust, the
generation following it has produced a series of thoughtful and schol-
arly writers, who have turned their attention to the fundamentals of
human existence. Jewish life, prior to that time, we observed, had
generated organizations and institutions, and had developed individu-
als whose major concerns had been _philanthropy, the upbuilding of
Zion, resisting anti-Semitism, and perfecting the art of 'community
relations.' But an uneasy feeling prevailed.
"Despite- frenetic activity, Jews experience emptiness, purpose-
lessness; they had lost the will to be Jews and, in some 'tragic in-
stances, the will to live at all. Surely the Holocaust was the great
watershed, and subsequent to it, writers like Richard Rubenstein,
Emil Fackenheim and Arthur A. Cohen emerged to cope with the spir-
itual consequences of the monstrous tragedy. Adumbrating this spir-
itual crisis, men like Franz Rosenweig, Leo Baeck, Martin Buber, a
Mordecai Kaplan had opened new vistas of Jewish thought; but it tou-
the Holocaust to engage the attention of the new generation.
"The outpouring of theological and philosophical writing was, in-
deed, unprecedented. Book after book appeared, and some were widely
read. But — and this is the crux of our discussion — it appeared as
though each writer took no cognizance of any other. With few excep-
tions, there seemed to be little intellectual intercourse between a phi-
losopher and his colleagues. Each one set forth his own views; and the
reader was unaware of any common framework in which all of them
were functioning. The reader was offered a variety of views (see my
Varieties of Jewish Belief, and The Condition of Jewish Belief, edited
by Milton Himmelfarb), but there was no apparent exchange between
any two.
"What was lacking, we concluded, was a critique of all the major
expressions, from Rosenzweig to the latest contributors to the subject,
by a single writer who would establish an intelligible framework
within which to explicate and to evaluate what was available to this
generation of concerned persons.
"Hence, the present volurne."
The author, Dr. William E. Kaufman, is a rabbi in Woonsocket,
R.I., and holds a doctorate in philosophy from Boston University. He
has authored many articles on Jewish philosophy and theology.