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.