THE JEWISH NEWS
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20. 1951
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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
Business Manager
ALAN HITSKY
HEIDI PRESS
DREW LJEBERWITZ
News Editor
Assistant News Editor
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 12th day of Sivan, 5738, the following scriptural selections will be rend in our synagogues. -
Penlateischal portion, Numbers 4:21-7:89. Prophetical portion, Judges 13:2-25.
..
Candle lighting, Friday, June 16. 8:52 p.m.
VOL. LXXIII, No. 15
Page Four
Friday, June 16, 1978
An Ultimatum of Despair?
A time table, allegedly for peace, set up by
Egypt's President Anwar Sadat, commenced
with a warning that sounded like a threat. He
was quoted saying that if certain conditions — it
would take a magician to find anything new in
his demands — are not met he might abandon
the agreement for an Egyptian-Israeli Sinai
disengagement. The disengagement agreement
expires in October.
With so many distortions of facts having crept
into the public mind by regrettable failures by
the media to adhere to facts, several questions
must be posed:
Sadat's most positive pledge on his visit to
Jerusalem and in the Knesset was that there
will not be another war with Israel. Does the
new demand adhere to such an assurance?
What would Sadat gain from a new engage-
merit and an abandonment of disengagemeht in
Sinai?
By forcing Israel thereby to restore the occu-
pation of areas she abandoned and by
strengthening her armed forces in the Sinai,
how would that help Egypt, the Middle East and
the peace of that area and the world?
An Israeli official said in reply to Sadat's new
warning — was it a threat? — that his country
will not submit to or be frightened by ul-
timatums. If the Sadat statement was truly an
ultimatum, was it one of despair? With the en-
couragement he has received in Washington
and lobbyists who support him in the White
House, it is to be expected that he would be more
practical in his approaches instead of gambling
with the possibility of renewed warfare if
agreed-upon disengagements which have
gained U.S. support were ever to be abandoned.
Disarmame nt as a Goal
Israel Ambassador Chaim Herzog was merely
reiterating an established Israeli aspiration for
an end to the arms race. He proposed to the
United Nations that Israel and the Arab states
should meet and agree on reduction of arma-
ments. This is the current theme at the United
Nations and, just as little hope is entertained for
an achievement of the human needs on a
worldwide scale, so, also does the Middle East
proposal remain a dream for an uncertain
peaceful future.
The fact is that every time the Arab power
gains momentum, with weapons from Russia,
France and wherever else the deadly weapons
can be secured, Israel must increase the protec-
tive aims. The adoption by the U.S. Senate of
the Carter-sponsored packaged jet sale did not
help in the least. If anything, it added to the
burdens of those seeking peace.
Ambassador Herzog added to the voices in the
wilderness with his appeal that Israel's
neighbors join with her in an end to the arms
race. But in achieving it there would be the
admission of the need to end warfare, terrorism
and attacks on human lives; Since the Arabs
have never subscribed to such aims for amity
and for a more certain approach to peace, the
situation must be viewed as gloomy. Linked
with the arms race in the Middle East is the
generated hatred. Tragically, these hatreds
have not vanished. When bombings continue
within Israel there is cause for suspicion that
Israeli Arabs, who avow a measure of loyalty to
the state in which they enjoy many benefits,
also must be counted as potential enemies. The
tragedy on the bus at Bayit V'Gan in which a
planted time bomb snuffed out the lives of inno-
cent people, could have been the work of inter-
nal enemies. That's an aspect of the tragedy
that is most deplorable. Whence cometh peace?
Cuba's Nefario us M.E. Role
Cuban involvements, as an ally of the USSR,
in providing military forces for the overthrow of
functioning governments, is not limited to Af-
rica. The participation of foreign troops in the
Arab wars against Israel have been traced to
Cuba and the Castro regime has been an active
factor in Third World antagonism to the Jewish
state.
It is difficult to explain that role other than
Castro alignment with the USSR and the Third
World. Jews had enjoyed the most cordial rela-
tions with the people of Cuba for decades. The
Jewish community flourished economically and
culturally-spititually. With the advent of the
Castro regime there were restrictions which led
to Jews leaving Cuba in large numbers, due
primarily to economic pressures.
Cuba's nefarious role in the Middle East has
been especially menacing. It is an established
fact that Cuba had military forces in Arab ranks
during the wars against Israel. Ambassadors
Chaim Herzog and Simha Dinitz had already
exposed it publicly. A statement addressed to
and published by the New York Times by Mrs.
Charlotte Jacobson, chairman of the American
section of the World Zionist Organization, out-
lined the facts regarding Cuba's role in the Mid-
dle East. Mrs. Jacobson pointed out:
"Cubans manned Syrian artillery and tanks
in the Israeli/Syrian war of attrition in 1974
and there are some 200 Cubans still serving in
Syria today, but neither the Administration nor
Saudi Arabia seems concerned over this Cuban
presence. Indeed, Saudi Arabia maintains its
support of Syria, despite that Cuban presence
and despite the very close relationships bet-
ween Syria and the Soviet Union."
There is little if anything that can be done to
prevent such an involvement by a foreign
country in Middle East conflicts, just as there is
no way of counteracting the Russian incursions
in Middle East affairs. But, as in the instance of
the USSR, the facts at least should be known
both about the Kremlin and the antagonism
inspired by Castro. Israel, Jewry and the world
must know who Israel's enemies are.
Jewish Law and Life
UAHC Introduces Series
of Responsa on Jewish Life
"Jewish Law and Jewish Life: Selected Rabbinical Response" (Un-
ion of American Hebrew Congregations), compiled by Jacob Bazak, is
the first in a series of paperbacks to be issued in eight compendia,
eventually to be reissued in a single volume.
This is an innovation in the publication of Response literature. It
was translated from the Hebrew by Stephen M. Passamaneck.
Dr. Bazak, an Israeli judge, is on the criminology faculty of Bar-Ila n
University. Dr. Passamaneck teaches Rabbinics at the Los Angeles
school of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
"Jewish Law and Jewish Life" first appeared in Hebrew under the
title "Mishpat Vehalakha." Cases of law up to the year 1500 are
covered in this volume.
The Responsa defined in this volume are applicable to modern
times. They deal with loans, real estate, sales and related matters.
The first beak concerns itself with the judiciary, attorneys and their
ethics, civil and criminal procedures and civil rights.
Forthcoming volumes will deal with partnerships, commercial fac-
tors, employer-employee relations, landlord-tenant and neighbor re-
sponsibilities, usury, creditor-debtor, communal regulations and en-
forcements, blasphemy, homicide, theft, domestic relations and in-
heritance.
Translator Passamaneck's prefatorial notes provide explanation of
the first of the volumes. He states:
"Prof. Bazak's anthology is carefully selected from just those areas
of Jewish law which have, in the past 200 - odd years, ceased to be
observed. This choice of material, excluding as it does the purely
ritual law and the marriage law, important as those areas are, subtly
affirms a traditional attitude toward the study of the law. Rabbi
Ishmael, a Second Century jurist, observed that true expertise in
Jewish law develops from a painstaking study of the laws dealing
with property and finance (M. Bava Bathra 10:8).
"Apart from the fact that the rules in this area of the law are in
themselves both legion and difficult, the study of them leads the
student willy-nilly to the teeming marketplace where the prescrip-
tions of the law and the requirements of earning a livelihood jostle
each other for preeminence in the daily dealings of ordinary people.
"Traditionally, a student ofTalmud began his studies with chapters
from the civil and commercial law. Such an introduction no doubt
impressed the youngster with the difficulty of the discipline and
technique of talmudic debate; but, perhaps without even knowing it,
he learned a subtler lesson: Law is intimately engaged with life; the
law, if it is to have meaning in society, must function in the heat and
press of the marketplace, the shop, the hiring hall, and wherever men
strive and strain to earn a livelihood.
"The Talmud did not greet the novice with a delicate web of abstrac-
tions; it rather ushered him into a clamorous world of real people who
were not strangers to human foibles and faults. So the student learned
early that law and life could not be easily sundered. No matter how far
the student went in his studies, and no matter how theoretical those
studies became ( and advanced talmudic learning is a challenge to the
subtlest minds and the most skilled abstract thinkers), the first les-
sons from the laws of business and commerce were never forgotten.
The law, at bottom, meant involvement with the commonplace prob-
lems and controversies that characterize human endeavor."