THE JEWISH NEWS

Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue Inly .20, 1951

ililember 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, Southliold, Mich. -1S075.
Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $10 a year.

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor and Publisher

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ

DREW LIEBERWITZ

Business Manager

Advertising 'Manager

tINPNIED!

iNtivitAryoult

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Alan Ilitsky. News Editor . . . Heidi Press. Assistant News Editor

Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the 11th day of T evet, 5737, and the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:

Pentateuchal portion, Genesis 44:18-47:27. Prophetical portion, Ezekiel 37:15-28.

Candle lighting, Friday, Dec. 31, 4:52 p.m.

VOL. LXX, No. 17

Page Four

Friday, December 31, 1976

New Year Eve on the Sabbath

What a glorious night this New Year Eve
of 1977! As the Sabbath provides, all heads
of the Jewish households are Kings and
Queens. The night of joy and celebration is
one of family jubilation and sanctity. No
need to worry about where to celebrate: the
home is the castle and the Sabbath lights
will illuminate the spirit and the welcome to
a new civil year.
No need for horns and peaked hats! The
Sabbath zemirot, the traditional hymns
welcoming the Sabbath Queen, continue as
symbols of a glorious spirit. True, some will
miss the jazzed-up hilarity; some may even
miss the festivity of the Sabbath, but the
traditi9n that is age-old, the Sabbath of our
lives, elevates its glory and its joys for the
peace-seeking and the responsive to sanc-
tity.
If a song is needed as an inspiration for
this special Sabbath that is observed on the
eve of welcoming a New Year, it is in a fas-
cinating poem for children by one of the
most inspired of American Jewish poets, the
late Jessie E. Sampter.

The Sabbath light is burning bright;
Our prettiest cloth is clean and white,
With wine and bread for Friday night.

At set of sun our work is done;
The happy Sabbath has begun;
Now bless us, Father, every one.

0 Sabbath guest, dear Sabbath guest,
Come, share the blessing with the rest,
For all our house tonight is blest.

A score of Sabbath hymns and poems en-
hance a Jewish Publication Society volume
on the "Sabbath" by Rabbi Philip Goodman,
who has just extended his JPS Sabbath and
Holiday Series of books to seven with his
splendid "Hanuka Anthology."
The poems by Miss Sampter, who also left
her mark with notable personal contribu-
tions for the rebirth of the Jewish National
Home in pre-Israel years, are as applicable
for adults as they are for the children for
whom the poet had written expecially dur-
ing years of dedication to Jewish traditions
and scholarship.
This is how we honor the day of rest that
was so admirably introduced for mankind
by our ancestors; the Sabbath that il-
lumines our lives. In this spirit we now wel-
come a New Year on the Sabbath.

Priorities for the Day Schools

Jewish Welfare Federation budgeting
conferences at the outset, 20 years ago and
for several years thereafter, were con-
structed for the purpose of agreeing on for-
mulas for the distribution of funds raised in
the Allied Jewish Campaigns. The earliest
debates over priorities were dominated by
the urgencies involving support for Israel.
The Israel Emergency Fund, supplement-
ing the regular allocations for Israel, ob-
viated the disputes which emerged because
of the great need for Israel's protection and
the variety of local obligations which
needed to be met first in making allocations.
The Israel Emergency Fund provides a
major portion of the funds that are vital in
making the United Jewish Appeal the major
beneficiary in local drives.
The limelight has, therefore, moved
onto the local scene and concerned citizens
are coming forth as pleaders for causes
which must receive greater consideration in
establishing priorities in fund raising. The
current budgeting conference witnessed
the display of dedication by the
communally-minded in several important
causes, chief among them, the day schools,
assistance to the retarded and greater sup-
port for educational tasks among the youth,
especially those on the campuses.
The Day School movement continues to
gain dedicated adherents and the trends in
Federation ranks, nationally as well as loc-
ally, are for an expansion of the program
combining Hebrew with general studies and
assuring for the program the fullest sup-
port.
Thus, in this community, an initial allo-
cation of $39,000 has been increased to
$138,000 and the greatest gain is the gen-
eral agreement that the means now availa-
ble for the day school system are inadequate
and that an increase in financial assistance

is an urgency.
The three Detroit day schools, .Hillel,
Akiva and Yeshivath Beth Yehudah, have,
singly and as a movement, guaranteed
maximum Jewish studies for the youth.
They began under great difficulties. The
right to separation from the public school
system was questioned.
Something indisputable has been
achieved by the advocates of the day school
movement. The need is no longer debatable.
The basic principle has become rooted in
communal programming. In some Ameri-
can cities the federations have accepted the
day schools into the total framework of the
Jewish school system, thus obviating the
worries over the indebtedness created by a
lack of funds.
It is clear that increased support must
be provided locally for the three day school
arteries. Possibly these schools will eventu-
ally be merged into the community school
system. It is also to be assumed that a work-
able day school system will have its impact
upon the afternoon schools, that the stan-
dards will be kept high and raised even
higher in the afternoon classes. Perhaps the
day schools will inspire the educators and
those who support the schools to return to
an older system of five afternoons of studies
in the afternoon school systems rather than
the present two or three afternoons of li-
mited studies.
The growing interest 'in advancing
Jewish studies are most heartening. They
point to an increased spirit of dedication to
Jewish needs and Jewish values. The day
schools are becoming the pivots for a
strengthened school system which is fast
becoming the centrality of Jewish life, and it
is safe to assume that the appeals for grea-
ter financial support for the growing day
school movement will not fall on deaf ears.

Noren's 'Camera of My Family'

Extraordinary Album Depicts
German Jewish Family Record

In simple terms, in a text that emerges as a most impressive
document that symbolizes a deeply moving experience ex-
tended over an entire century, Catherine Hanf Noren recon-
structs the life of a German-Jewish family under the title "The
Camera of My Family (Knopf).
Photographically superb, the work of the master of her
craft, this impressive collection of 300 photographs is a 100-year
album. It traces the author-photographer's family tree in joy
and in sorrow, takes its members through many trying periods,
while portraying a continuity of charm in the Jewish practices
of the generations, and takes the reader up to and through the
Nazi period.
It was, indeed, an endless series of events from the middle
19th through the 20th Century.
Some have called this album a haunting book. In many
respects that describes it. But from the point of view of a sym-
bolic family whose experiences echo those of an entire people, it
is also history, and a brilliant photographer, who ably defines
her pictures, has given emphasis to a valuable theme.
Grandfather had a large wooden camera and his photo-
graphs are among the many that include snapshots with more
modern equipment. Since the author is a professional photo-
grapher, the merging totality of the collected works assumes an
unusual professional role. -
While these collected works are a family album, there is
historic significance to the work because the author has in-
cluded the collected letters and documents that have accumu-
lated in her family's records.
The totality is of historic significance because it recaptures
many forms — life in Munich, picnics in the Alps, travels from
Germany to nearby countries for visits and an interchange of
experiences with neighbors, friends, relatives.
After a century of such interchanges the Nazi era crushed
the German spirit, ending the album as a German photographic
record. Thus, the end of an era also reflects the tragic aspect of a
history related as tracing the lives of a single family. At that
point the family aspect becomes part of the global Jewish inter-
est, of a relationship with the worst of Jewish tragedies, the
Holocaust.
The photographic captions are skillfully applied, as also are
the experiences relating to the Hitler crimes. The author's uncle
relates how his father was held captive in the Munich Beer Hall
Putsch and his arrest during the Crystal Night barbarism when
the German synagogues were destroyed, plate glass windows
Jewish business houses smashed and Jewish lives threatened:
While the volume is a pictorial triumph it also includes one
of the strongest indictments of the Nazi crimes. The diary of the
author's cousin describing the horrors and the mass murders in
Auschwitz, the crimes and tortures in Mauthausen and other
German areas, is one of the most moving accounts of what
actually occurred recorded by an eyewitness.
The family survives and carries on — in this country, in the
Netherlands, in England, Canada, Belgium and Israel.
In their Connecticut home the resettled family takes pride
in the 93-year-old grandmother Motta Strauss Wallace.
Shortly after Mrs. Noren's birth in 1938, her family fled to
Australia, later coming to the U.S. where the author was edu-
cated. She is now a professional photographer and her works
have been exhibited in the Jewish Museum in New York and
elsewhere.
Also See Commentary, Page 2

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