20 Friday, August 12, 1977THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS BUY NOW! New '77 RIVIERA '77 CENTURY $3979 NEW '77 SKYLARK $3379 '16 OPEL $6146 $2995 OkDER NOM Stock No. 004 New '77 ELECTRA New '77 REGAL $5762 $5076 4 Dr. — ORDER NOW! OVER 170 BUICKS IN STOCK! MORRIS BUICK 14500 W. 7 MILE RD. AT THE LODGE X-WAY OVER 50,000 SATISFIED CUSTOMERS 342-7100 Days of Lamentation: Fated Symbo (Continued from Page 1) In the mid-1930's anti- Semitism was introduced as a conscious element in offi- cial policy, coinciding with Stalin's persistent effort to cultivate Hitler. A vast "anti-Zionist" propaganda campaign was mounted and a wholesale assault was launched against Jewish cul- ture in which most of the Yiddish institutions wer shut down and many Jew- ish writers and teachers were arrested, imprisoned, executed on such grounds as "Jewish bourgeois nation- alistic activities," "nation- alistic diversionism," "Zion- ist affillations" in short, for being too Jewish. With the Soviet-Nazi pact of 1939, Jews began to be excluded from every in- WORRIED ?? stitution that dealt with for- nalists and artists were eign affairs and national plurged from their jobs in security. The war years the midst of hysterical, hu- miliating anti-Jewish propa- saw a temporary hiatus in the liquidation of Jewish cul- ganda. At the same time, Stalin ture, but with Stalin's in- ! itiation of the Cold War the organized a massive purge anti -Semitic policy moved of the Communist lead- into high gear, culminating ership of the new East Eu- in what Soviet Jews grimly ropean satellites and "anti Zionism" was its leitmotif. called "the Black Year" Thus, in November 1952, the, last five years of the at one of the most anti Sem- dictator's life, 1948-53. The macabre era opened itic trials of the centruy, Ru- with the secret police mur- dolf Slansky and the entire leadership of the Czech der of Shloime the most distinguished So- party—slavish Stalinists viet Jewish figure, in Janu- all—were condemned and executed for having been Zi- ary 1948. Later, the few re- maining Jewish cultural in- onist spies all their lives. It was in the midst of stitutions were liquidated and thousands of Soviet these atrocities that the Jewish writers were ar- massacre of Aug. 12 oc- curred. The uniqueness of rested, imprisoned, de- ported to slave labor the Jewish tragedy is not camps. It was the con- that countless individuals clusion of the policy begun were liquidated, as was the a decade and more earlier. case with many other na- The atmosphere was fur- tional groups in the USSR, ther envenomed for the but that the entire culture was annihilated—and the Jews by the notorious "anti cosmopolitan" campaign of policy persists to this day. The case of Soviet Jewry 1949-51, in which thousands of Jewish academics, jour- is quite simple. The Soviet Jewish community has a basic human right to perpet- uate its existence as a seg- ment of world Jewry; indi- vidual Jews have the basic human right to live as Jews inside the USSR or to leave the country for Israel or anywhere else. Four things are required for this: the establishment of authentic Jewish cultur- al, religious and education- al institutions ; the cessa- tion of anti-Semitic propa- ganda; the elimination of discriminaiton against Jews in higher education and em- ployment; and the free op- portunity to leave the USSR. There is a fateful struggle going on for the soul of Rus- sian Jewry. Jews in the West can do no other than to engage full force in the battle. (Editor's Note: This article was written for the Nation- al Conference on Soviet Jewry by Dr. Moshe Dec- tor, noted authority on the situation in the USSR.) `Pressure Without Sanctions' Book Studies Israel-Diaspora Relations How you're going to say . To your family and friends? There's no need to buy cards, stamps, envelopes and get tired addressing them. JUST FILL OUT THE BLANK BELOW AND YOUR GREETING WILL APPEAR IN OUR HOLIDAY ISSUE SEPT. 9th The Jewish News 17515 W. 9 Mile Rd., Suite 865 Southfield, Michigan 48075 .Gentlemen: Please insert my New Year Greeting Mr. and Mrs and family Address City State Check Enclosed (circle one) $5 -- $10 — $15 — more — IINM.•••• ■ •=115 Zip Code 1 By ALLEN A. WARSEN Charles S. Liebman's "Pressure Without Sanc- tions," subtitled "The In- fluence of World Jewry on Israel Policy" (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press) is the first complete study that deals with the relationships between Israel and Diaspora Jewry. The study is factual, analytical and the result of extensive research. The author commences the study by defining the terms "Israel," "Diaspora" and "political relation- ships," and raises these quintessential questions: 'What is Israel-'s impor- World Jewry? tance. t is the significance *Wa of World Jewry to Israel? According to the author Israel is important to the Diaspora because Israel pro- vides security to the Jewish people who live "under con- ditions of stress." It contrib- utes to Jewish identity and education. "It is the pre- eminent Jewish symbol." Milton Himmelfarb ex- pressed this thus: "If — which God forbid — Israel should cease to exist, do we not know in our bones, that the Jews would cease to exist? We have not in us the stuff of our `galut' an- cestors, and what they were able to do in the ab- sence of a Jewish state we and our descendants will be unable to do; for we are ba- rely able to do it in the pres- ence of a Jewish state." In like manner, Liebman discusses the importance of the Diaspora to Israel. He states that the Diaspora is a source of aliya. It assists Israel economically, politi- cally and psychologically. And most of all, it is Is- rael's only genuine ally 'as Israel is the only country in the world "without any nat- ural cultural, historical, reli- gious, or ethnic ties to at least one other state." Is the Diaspora's in- fluence on Israel in propor- tion to its importance? To answer this question, the author probed cases that caused controversy and even conflict between certain segments of Dia- spora Jews and Israel. Such a case was the con- troversy over the revised 1949 National Service Law for Women. The 1949 stat- ute provided that girls who objected to military service on religious grounds "be exempted from any obliga- tion to serve." But the re- vised act of 1953 required religious girls to serve in a National Labor Service for two years.. The opposition to the re- vised law by the ultra-Or- thodox Jews in Israel and in the United States was so intense that the government decided not to enforce it Another case the author studied to ascertain the Dia- spora's influence on the gov- &mot of Israel was the controversy caused by the Law t of Return. It provided tha ( a person born of a Jew- ish mother or converted to Judaism be considered by the government as Jewish and at his request is auto- matically a citizen of Is- rael. The Orthodox Jews ob- jected to the Jaw, and de- manded that it be revised to provide that a person who was born of a Jewish mother or converted "in ac- cordance with Jewish law" be considered as Jewish . The government refused. Had it yielded, the con- versions performed by Con- servative and Reform rabbis would have been in- valid in Israel. Based on his numerous case - studies, the author ar- rived at these conclusions: • Diaspora Jewry exer- cises limited influence on the government of Israel. • It is "not organized for the expression of its politi- cal interests within Israel." • With the exception of American Orthodoxy, it has no regular channel within Israel to transmit its inter- ests and demands. In the final section of the . book the author expresses his personal view about the relationship that ought to exist between Diaspora Jewry and Israel. He con- eludes that in Diaspora-Is- raeli relations, the most ap- prdpriate political role for World Jewry would be "a judgemental or critical role." "Pressure Without Sanc- tions" is an effective study of Israeli-Diaspora relation- ships. It is fully annotated, contains a comprehensive bibliography and is well-in- dexed. Dr. Charles S. Liebman serves as professor at the Bar-Ilan University and is the author of four books, in- cluding "The Ambivalent Jew: PolitiCs, Religion and Family in American Jewish Life." Religious Soul Will Lead to a Healthy Heart TEL AVIV (JTA)—Reli- gious men are less likely to suffer from a heart attack than the non-religious, ac- cording to a study con- ducted at the Tel Hashomer Medical Center in Tel Aviv: The finding was revealed in a paper by Dr. Mitchell, Sneider of the Bar-Ilan Uni- 1 versity Computer Center which was read to the fifth Israel Conference of the As- sociation of Orthodox Jew- ish Scientists which opened Tuesday in Jerusalem. The Tel Hashomer study, conducted by Prof. Henry Neufeld and Dr. Jack Med- alie, was made of 10,000 Is- raeli males over 40 years old during the last five years. Sneider fed the infor- mation into the ,Bar-Ilan computer and got the sur- prising results. The study also found in addition to age, obesity, blood pressure, high choles- terol, smoking and certain diseases, heart trouble was also influenced by blood type, country of origin, and love for one's wife.