• 1, cr• .' 3 20 Friday, December 30, 1977 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS FRANK PAUL The Vanishing Shtetls and Jews of Romania and His ORCHESTRA "Music and entertainment at its Best for Your Guests" DOROHOI, Romania— Emigration has reduced the Jewish population of Ro- mania. perhaps the last 557-7986 JEWISH COMMUNITY CENTER OF METROPOLITAN DETROIT GROUP SERVICES DEPARTMENT The 1978 summer programs of the Jewish Com- munity Center of Metropolitan Detroit proudly announces that we are now accepting applications for supervisors, specialists, counselors, Jr. coun- selors, and counselors-in-training. For more information or applications. please contact Group Services at 661-1000. • country where shtetls like those of Tevye the Milkman and Sholom Aleichem sur- vive intact. According to David Andelman. writing in the New York Times, in 10 years or less, most of the remaining inhabitants of the rural outposts will have gone to Israel. leaving be- hind only small groups of the aging. Before World War II 800,000 Jews lived in Ro- mania. Some 385,000 died at the hands of the Germans during the war. In the last 30 years the- Jewish popu- lation has fallen from per- haps 400,000 to barely a tenth of that. More dramatic have been the changes in the Mold- avian town of Dorohoi and in Suceava, Radauti, Bra- sov, Falticeni and a score of other shtetls where Jews once ran a complex and diverse economy and so- ciety, among the most ad- vanced and learned in East- ern Europe. In Dorohoi, barely 10 miles from the Soviet bor- der, 650 Jews, the last of 8,000 who survived the war are carrying on the shtetl tradition. For them life goes on as always, and if the Jewish community of Ro- mania has its way, it will go on until the last of them can no longer assemble the re- quired 10 adult males for ATTENTION BOWLERS Mr. & Mrs. League Needs 4 or 5 Couples Tues. 9 P.M. Yorba Linda Bowling Lanes call B. Bisgier Evenings 642-2368 5 lbs. of MATZO If I can't Beat Your Best Deal ARNOLD MARGOLIS Margolis Household Furniture 30 YEARS af the Same OLD STAND 6 Mile, 1 Blk. W. of Schaefer SHARPENING the PENCIL On All Name Brands Furniture and Bedding •SCHOOLFIELD •SELIG •SIMMONS •SEALY •SERTA •SPRING AIR •LA-Z- BOY •STIFFEL LAMPS •KROEHLER •AMERICAN •BURLINGTON •BASSETT •BARCALOUNGER •LANE •UNIQUE 13703 W. McNichols 342-5351 Hrs. Mon thru Sat. 9:30 til 5:30 • We Wish The Entire Community A Happy and Joyous NEW YEAR AL STEINBERG a -1*4 jar jrrilli ga SALES and EXPERT SERVICE ART MORAN PONTIAC 29300 TELEGRAPH JUST NORTH Or , E; 353-9000 Children's Forest Project of JNF Here, in Israel Thousands of children in Detroit area and Michigan Jewish schools will partici- pate in the planting of trees in Israel to mark Tu b'Shevat, the New Year of Trees (Israel Arbor Day) Jan. 23, announced Mark E. Schlussel, president of Greater Detroit JNF Coun- cil. This year JNF is launch- ing the Children's Forest in the Galilee. American chil- dren are being offered the opportunity to join hands with pupils in Israel in this innovative project. Each American pupil will be paired with an Israeli stu- dent. Together each pair of students will plant three trees, one for each of the participants, and a third tree in memory of a child who perished in the Holocaust. The JNF office in Jerusa- lem will send letters from Israeli pupils to children in America. These letters will be in the form of bi-lingual double-sided post cards. The American recipients will re- tain one-half and use the other for reply. These re- plies will be going through JNF and must be accom- panied by a contribution of the price of 1 112 trees. The Israeli student will do the same. The replies will be gath- ered together in the JNF Office in Jerusalem, which will distribute them to the students in Israel. Receipt of these replies and contri- butions will be acknowledg- ed by a special JNF stamp. The goal is to plant 1,000,000 trees. For informa- tion, call the JNF,. 968-0820. the daily minyan for prayer. Downtown there are mod- em office buildings, facto- ries and apartments where the 20,000 non-Jews who have moved in from the countryside work and live. Up the sides of the hill, winding around the last re- maining synagogue, are the long, low lines of the wat- tled shtetl houses, their win- dows canting at crazy an- gles in the fading yellow walls. The people have assem- bled on a subzero day in the unheated wooden synagogue on the cobblestoned main square. They have been waiting, many of them, since 3 a.m. having traveled from shtetls miles away for the visit of Romania's Chief Rabbi, Moses Rosen, on his annual pilgrimage to all of his scattered community. In the Hebrew school half a dozen youngsters are as- sembled, too, waiting to recite their lessons for the chief rabbi. They wear fur hats instead of yarmulkes because it is freezing in the tiny room with its two dozen small desks. Only 22, the last children left in the village, are en- rolled. Most said that they were learning their lessons well because Hebrew is the language of Israel, where most w),11 go eventually. There is a ritual butchei who arrives regularly to su- pervise the slaughter of kosher meat. There are two homes for the elderly. where the men assemble each morning for prayer. The synagogue dates from the early 19th Century and has long, warped pews and neatly polished lamps com- memorating noted dead and community milestones. There are two dangers that face the Jewish com- munity today—your com- munity, our community," Rabbi Rosen said, warming to the occasion, stroking his beard, sweeping his arms. his large abdomen heaving with emotion. "And those two dangers are physical extermination and spiritual extermination. Hitler tried to exterminate us physically and failed. But for us what is most important is spirit- ual extermination. In 10 years, in 20 years, there will still be a community here. But how much of a commu- nity? Ah, that is the ques- tion. "For the government there is no more Jewish — Histadrut to Cite Union President NEW YORK—The Hista- drut Humanitarian Award will be presented to Sol C. Chaikin, president of the In- ternational Ladies' Gar- ment Workers' Union, at a testimonial dinner Jan. 24 in New York. Under Chaikin's lead- ership, the garment work- ers union has helped finance the medical, vocational training and social welfare programs of Histadrut in Israel, that encompass some 70 percent of the popu- lation. problem in Romania," Rab- bi Rosen said. "Over the years we arrived at another kind of relationship, not of clash but of mutual interest. The history of our people has shown that in any struggle with a government we are the losers. "The result—over 300,000 Jews have gone from Ro- mania to Israel in the last 30 years, without protests, without scandals, without clashes. And not one Jew still here in even the most remote shtetl can tell you he wants to be a Jew and has not all the facilities." The mutual interests are twofold. For one thing the Communist government has sought, for diplomatic and economic reasons, to main- tain close ties with Israel in defiance of the Soviet Union and unlike the rest of East- ern Europe. For another, with serious ethnic problems involving other minorities, particu- larly the Hungarians and Germans, it wanted to avoid a third problem area. The Jews have never been central to the economy or the society of Romania," said a Western diplomat who has made a study of minority problems here. In terms of dominance, he con- tinued, they controlled the economy solely in a remote and underdeveloped seg- ment, largely agrarian, that is only now being industrial- ized. As the Jews have left the shtetls, other Romanians have moved in en masse. Shtetls at Falticeni, Su- ceava and other places in the northeast are being torn down, to be replaced by high-rise apartment blocks. Jobs once held by Jews, in outlying areas and in Buch- arest as well, are being snapped up by other Roma- nians, contributing to the desire among the Jews to leave as quickly and quietly as possible. "There are five years un- til my retirement" said an engineer at the synagogue in Falticeni. "By then my children will have finished their education. Then we will start a new life. "Most of my friends are gone. The rest of my family is in Israel. My children's friends are gone. There is little left for us here except this." He indicated the con- gregation, old men and women clapping their hands to the beat of the folk song "Hava Nagila." Sadat, Hussein Coordinating? CAIRO (ZINS)—Although King Hussein of Jordan has declined to attend the Cairo peace conference, there are reports that Hussein and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat are coordinating their demands for an Israeli pull-out from the occupied territories. Reportedly, Hussein has been assured by Sadat that they have Saudi Arabian backing for the peace initiatives.