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.