4 Friday, April 22, 1977
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
THE JEWISH NEWS
'Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue i)f July 20, 1951
nth ANNIVERSARY —YEAROf
MOMENTOUS DECISIONS
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
Editor and Publisher
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
ALAN HITSK 1 . , News Editor . . HEIDI PRESS, Assistant News Editor
Sabbat h.Script ural Selections
This Sabbath, the fifth day of Iyar, 5737, is IsraelindependenceDay, and the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogueS:
.
Pentateuchal portion, Leviticus 12:1-15:33. Prophetical portion, 1ssiah 66:1-24.
Candle lighting. Friday. April
V OL. I,XXI, No. 7
Page Four
22,7:03
. Friday. April 22.1977
Israel at 29: From Agony to Strength
Yom HaAtzmaut is now among the Jewish
festivals. It is a holiday on the Jewish calen-
dar, and rightfully so. It marks the redemption
of Zion. It symbolizes the freedoms to which
Jews in exile aspired and which was attained
with the rebirth of the state of Israel.
How does one celebrate the great day in
this period of many crises, at a time when
idealism has been impeded, when the high
goals of the Zionist movement have been de-
nuded, when an inner struggle among men
seeking power has become a greater danger to
a people's sense of honor and the dignity of a
people's 'independent spirit has been sullied by
the errant?
When statehood was dreamed and Zionists
labored for the great day of national independ-
ence, there were some who admonished that
Jews must not be like other nations. The warn-
ing was clear. There is no room for the unethic-
al in Israel. The highest goals of humanism
must dominate Jewish statehood.
Are matters really so evil that one is to des-
pair, that the Yom HaAtzmaut, the Israel Inde-
pendence Day of 1977 is to be considered mar-
red?
In truth, this is not so. Yom HaAtzmaut re-
mains a great day on the Jewish calendar. It
retains festivity. It generates hopefulness and a
forward look to the day of peace when the Jew-
ish spirit will permeate the entire Middle East
and will serve as a symbol of sanctity for all
mankind.
The sinners are the few. The lawbreakers
have disgraced their own political party and
themselves. The People Israel remains the bul-
wark of decency for the State Israel.
Some have, indeed, become like the other
nations, and for them a Watergate has become
normality. For the people at large there is a
sanctity that defies the sinners and affirms
that the ideals that permeated Jewish history,
Jewish traditions, Jewish teachings, will not be
submerged in selfish motives.
Yom HaAtzmaut now beckons the entire
People Israel to reaffirm unity, to reject the
corruptions as unworthy of the people and the
heritage of Israel.
Israel's economic difficulties are not easily
soluble. Neither are the comparable problems
of inflation and economic declines that affect
many other people subject to speedy solutions.
But Israel emerged as a spiritual-cultural force
for world Jewry and for mankind and in this re-
spect the aspiration to elevate the educational
standards of Israel continue - to be major duties.
• They emerge again as vital factors whenever
Israel's needs and the nation's status are under
review. -
Therefore, on this as on other occasions,
the duty is to retain the high cultural values of
Israel and thereby to make the spiritual values
of an historic nation primary in all consid-
erations of the state's needs and future plan-
ning.
To make this historic fact an indestructible
reality, the observance of the great day of Is-
rael's 29th anniversary must rally all Jews to
the banner of solidarity of the kinsmen who are
fighting for life, who seek peace, who have rea-
firmed the ingathering of Israel that has provid-
ed a refuge for oppressed from many nations.
The many celebrations planned for the Israel
Indendence Day everywhere, the local events,
the Expo festival—all attest to a unity that
makes the 29th Israel birthday filled with a holi-
day spirit.
May this day prove a blessing to Israel and
to world Jewry in the spirit of an undying Is-
rael.
Educational Guilt vis-a-vis Nazism
Educators in Germany are emerging with
guilt over their failure to properly teach the
facts regarding the Holocaust and their counter-
_ parts everywhere else share similarly in thus
tacitly condoning the ignorance about the' Nazi
era.
A 32-year-old Flensburg (West Germany)
teacher, Dieter Bossmann, stated last week
that he was in shock after discovering the ex-
tent of ignorance among the youth of his coun-
try about Adolf Hitler and his crimes. He had
conducted a study among high school students
and of the of 2,004 essays submitted he found
only four to be adequate. In other wor lds,
nearly all of the students who participated in
the study and responded to the questions sub-
mitted to them showed evidence of having
grown up with admiration for Hitler. They
view him as a hero and their lack of knowledge
about the murderous events proved appalling.
Commenting on the tragic lack of proper
educational approaches to the Hitler era,
Friedo Sachser, editor of the Allgemeine week-
ly of Dusseldorf, declared: "The sons of negli-
gence, in failing to give the young generation
adequate political and historical insights, are
bound to have negative effect on democratic
structures and society in our country."
The fact, as the latest study reveals, that Ger-
many's youth begin to learn about the
Holocaust only in their 12th high school year is
another cause for great concern.
The compositions gathered by Bossmann
were on the subject "What I Learned About Hit-
ler," and the knowledge that was acquired, as
shown in the quotations reported in the gath-
ered results, do, indeed, emerge as an in-
dictment of the German educational ap-
proaches to the most criminal period in world
history for which the students who wrote the
2,004 compositions failed to recognize the guilt
of their fathers.
The German guilt unfortunately is shared
by educators throughout the world. Little is
taught in truth about World War II in this coun-
try, and the tragedy is that Jews, whose kin-
smen died in the gas chambers, are equally ig-
norant about the Holocaust.
Bossmann is publishing the findings result-
ing from his study in a book that will appear
soon. It should serve as a rebuke to the world's
educators and should cause, at least in Jewish
schools, new approaches to truth about Naz-
ism.
‘77711
Post al-Koppman Trilogy
`American Jewish Landmarks'
Serves as U.S. History Guide
Bernard Postal is the expert and Lionel Koppman is his able col-
laborator in compiling data for Jewish travel guides in this country.
They have pursued this specialized task before and they have
reached a notable high achievement with a trilogy, a three-volume
work which promises to emerge as one of the outstanding travel
guides ever compiled in this country.
Volume I, devoted to the Northeast, in the series "American Jew-
ish Landmarks," has just been issued by Fleet Press Corp.
- The subtitle, "A Travel Guide and History," is not an exagger-
ation. This volume is devoted to the Northeastern states and to the
District of Columbia. There is nothing missing for the traveler to be
guided by and it is, indeed, history splendidly compiled.
Therefore this work is encyclopedic. The guidelines to each state
and to the nation's capital are preceded by historical data about
each area and in planning visits to historic Jewish spots the traveler
is well fortified with information about every detail marking the Jew-
ish interest in the area.
A Jewishly-interested traveler, wherever he may go, usually
visits the synagogues and asks for the important Jewish structures
and historical sites. The Postal-Koppman guide provides the desired
information about Jewish houses of worship, agencies, federated
movements.
Naturally, as experts, the authors have gathered information
about restaurants and whatever else may be desired in the states to
be visited.
In the process, the reader is able to get an idea about Jewish
leadership, about the personalities who predominate, because, as his-
tory, volumes like "American Jewish Landmarks" do not ignore the
leadership, just as they fulfill the tasks of directing the limelight to
the structures that house Jewish activities.
Volume II in this series will deal with the South and Southwest
and Volume III with the West and Middle West.
The authors appended to the first volume an interesting chapter,
"Around the Jewish Calendar," which provides information on the
many celebrations, festivals and other events, that mark the Jewish
festive occasions.
"American Jewish Landmarks" has won the recommendation of
the noted historian, Dr. Jacob R. Marcus, who, in a preface to the
first volume, states-.
"It is worth bearing in mind that this book is more than a man-
ual for the tourist; it is an important book for students of American
Jewish history. America's present-day Jewish community is the larg-
est the world has yet known. Jewish Palestine at her zenith could
probably never have boasted more than two million or three million
Jews; today America shelters a Jewish population of nearly six mil-
lion. This is a Jewry of some 5,000 to 10,000 Jewish clubs, societies,
synagogues, and organizations, a community which has sprung up in
the memory of men and women still living, for in 1880 there were
only some 250,000 Jews in the United States.
"This is not only the largest Jewry in the Diaspora, it is the
most affluent, the most generous, the most cultured, the most ad-
vanced in the arts and sciences. It is obvious, therefore, why histo-
rians, both Jews and Gentiles, will want to know more about a com-
munity which has made such a great career for itself in the last two
generations. 'American Jewish Landmarks' supplies the information
people seek. Because it is a ready reference hook, adequately in-
dexed, replete with an infinity of important detail, the student will
keep it on his desk next to his Jewish encyclopedias."