THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issne rat Jnly,20, 1951
Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Associailon.
Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 \V. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield. Mich. -18075.
Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription SI2 a ;ear.
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Editor and Publisher
Business Manager
Advertising Manager
ALAN H1TSKY. News Editor...HEIDI PRESS. Assistant News Editor
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 10th day of Heshvan, 5738, the following scriptural selections will be read
in our synagogues: Pentateuchal portion, Genesis 12:1-17:27. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 40:27-41:16.
Candle lighting, Friday, Oct. 21, 6;24 p.m,
VOL LXXII, No. 7
Page Four
Friday, October 21,1977
Brutality in Diplomacy?
Harsh words were reportedly spoken when
the six-hour Carter-Vance-Dayan negotiations
took place in New York two weeks ago.
If the exchange approached a "brutal" stage,
how would the White House explain the state-
ment by President Carter that he would rather
commit political suicide than hurt Israel? Can't
there be softness rather than harshness and cor-
diality rather than suspicion in diplomacy?
While the term "brutal" is under dispute,
whatever the synonym it designates a conflict.
A big question mark hangs over the White
House in the present attitude towards Israel.
The New Hillel Center
The Bnai Brith-sponsored Hillel Foundation at
Wayne State University exercised good judg-
ment and the wisdom of recognizing the neces-
sity of establishing new quarters for student
enrollees in the area where use of the founda-
tion's facilities will be available to more young
people not only from the WSU enrollment but
from the community and neighboring colleges.
Hillel is the educational facet serving as the
inspiration for Jewish student identification
with their immediate needs and with the com-
munity at large. While Hillel activities have
their approaches to students on the campus
itself, it is understandable that they could be
limited-to daytime functions. Programming eve-
nings become difficult on the campus that is
somewhat distant from the homes of students.
The new Hillel Center in the Oak Park area
thus assumes special significance as a vital fac-
tor to attract students for sociability, for cul-
s
aural programs, for studies and exchanges of
views among students and between students and
faculty as well as community representatives.
The new Hillel Center should, as it must, cre-
ate added inspiration for the advancement of
many efforts that will assure knowledgeability
about the challenges inherent in the Jewish
heritage. _
An added facility for interchange of views as
well as acquisition of information about the
many issues confronting Jewry, young and old,
is vital to the current programming to assure
the dedication of youth to their people.
Hillel foundations are vital in the planning
that must be conducted in making youth the
forceful element in Jewish life. The newly
expanded home for such activities merits both,
the interest and the support of the Greater
Detroit Jewish community.
PHD Degrees in Judaism at U-M
Thanks to the cooperation and financial
assistance provided by the Jewish Welfare Fed-
eration of Detroit, great strides are being made
by the Judaic Studies Program inaugurated at
the University of Michigan with the cooperation
of the Hillel Foundation and the university.
The subsidy from the Detroit Federation has
enabled the university to bring to the program
noted scholars and to encourage studies focus-
ing on Jewish history, the Hebrew language and
related topics.
Compensating the sponsors of the program is
the assurances that graduate doctoral degrees
in Jewish studies will be offered to those spe-
cializing in subjects in this program.
This elevates the program at the University of
Michigan to a high level and the encouragement
thus instilled, in young people to pursue Jewish
studies . in a most heartening development in
educational planning in the American Jewish
community.
Thanks to the effectiveness of the U-M Judaic
Studies Program, other functions are planned,
including symposia on contemporary Israeli lit-
erature. Several of Israel's distinguished schol-
ars will participate in one such program Nov. 6-
7, at the Hillel Foundation in Ann Arbor. The
sponsorship of the symposium' by interested
Detroiters adds links between communities and
their leaderships in giving substance to cultural
aspirations in Jewish ranks.
These developments indicate progress in plan-
ning to encourage youth to become closely iden-
tified with their communities.
The introduction of departments in Jewish
studies has been heartening and in more than
one sense served as correctives. The new trend
speaks well for the new generations of academi-
cians whose emphasis is on the historic and
leans towards fair treatment of basic needs that
lead not only towards notable contributions to
Jewish learning but also add immensely
towards inter-faith respectability.
Past Century o Women's ORT
Meeting in Israel to mark the 50th anniver-
sary of the organization, Women's ORT deser-
vedly receives acclaim for the excellence of its
work.
Scholarships, counseling, student enrollments
have greatly enhanced the activities of the
women in behalf of the thousands of young
people who acquire training as technicians and
as experts in a variety of productive fields.
As an inspirer of the men with whom they
share the responsibilities for ORT's worldwide
program, with emphasis on achievements in the
vast chain of laboratories and workshops in
Israel, Women's ORT makes a definite contribu-
tion to a vital economic undertaking in behalf of
those seeking productive pursuits to overcome
the challenges they must meet in their daily
lives.
Women's ORT gives strength to the entire
ORT organization and therefore merits the
global recognition given it on its 50th
anniversary.
4
SYRIA
E G YPT
4 w1Inv
A
Alistair CookelsAmerica':
Immigrants Are the Builders
A nation was held spellbound when Alistair Cooke appeared in a
series of television programs interpreting America and tracing the
history of his adopted country. The native of England was so fascinat-
ing that his programs registered an indelible mark on interpretive
history. What he had accomplished on TV is now a matter of record in
a volume so impressive that it will undoubtedly be perpetuated as a
textbook for generations to come because it assures such a deep
understanding of this country's historic development.
In "Alistair Cooke's America" (Knopf) are traced the beginnings of
pioneering, the significance of the role of frontiersmen, the struggles
and the triumphs of the nation when it was in its infancy.
Inevitably, there is the tracing of the story of the Jew in America,
the immigrant who became a great builder and an industrial
developer.
It is a natural for the historian to refer to Emma Lazarus' poem
engraved on the Statue of Liberty portraying this land'as the haven
for the oppressed.
Cooke's review of the Jewish migration to this country covers every
aspect of that historial experience. Worth quoting are these references
to that impressive emergence of a great American Jewish
community :
So late as 1880, there were only a quarter of a million Jews in the
United States. By 1924 there were four and half million, the product of
a westward movement that started in the early nineteenth century
with their exodus from the ghettos of eastern Europe into the new
factories of western Europe. They had moved in that direction earlier
throughout the Thirty Years War and then after the later Cossack
massacres and peasant revolts. But the factory system provided them
with a legal right to flee from their inferior citizenship in Germany
and from pogroms in Russia, Poland, and Romania. In the last quar-
ter of the nineteenth century, both city and rural Jews were the will-
ing quarry of emigration agents from America carrying glowing
broadsides from house to house about the high wages, good clothes,
abundant food, and civil liberties available in the New World. The
sweet talk of these promoters might be sensibly discounted, but not
the bags of mail containing "America letters" from relatives who had
made the voyage and whose more practical accounts of an attainable
decent life were read aloud in cottages, markets, and factories.
The word spread beyond the factories and the ghettos to the farmers
of southern and central Europe. And whereas before 1890 the immi-
grant stream had flowed out of Scandinavia, Germany, Ireland, Er -
land, and Canada, in the next thirty years the mass of immigrai
came from Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, and again and always
Ireland.
All told, in the first two decades of this century, an unbelievable
fourteen and a half million immigrants arrived. They were mostly the
persecuted and the poor, "the wretched refuse of your teeming shore"
apostrophized by Emma Lazarus, a wealthy and scholarly young lady
whose poetic dramas and translations of Heine are forgotten in the
thunder of five lines inscribed on the Statue of Liberty.
Cooke takes the reader, as he had taken the TV viewer, to the East
Side of New York for additional explanatory aspects. There are com-
ments on the political preferences, on Jews once strong in Republican
ranks turned Democrats, on those who were in the Labor ranks and
leaned to Socialism.
Cooke's "America" is a book as immense as the land described.
Extensively and impressively illustrated it guides the reader to a
proud affiliation with fellow Americans resulting from a deep under-
standing of the country inculcated by a brilliant historical interpreter.