24 Friday, November 3, 1978 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS Passion Play, Anti-Semitism Topic of W. German Meeting We Make Our Own-Glasses- rwel...4r HEADQUARTERS FOR - „...0.1 LATEST DOMESTIC AND IMPORTED FRAME FASHIONS • PRESCRIPTIONS FOR GLASSES ACCURATELY FILLED • DESIGNER FRAMES • Immediate Repair • Reasonably Priced ROSEN OPTICAL SERVICE 13720 W. 9 MILE nr. COOLIDGE LI 7-5068 OAK PARK, MICH. Sat. 'til 5 Mon.-Fri. 9:30-6 Closed Wednesday CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — A Catholic academic in- stitution in Bavaria, West Germany, will sponsor a symposium of Catholic and Jewish scholars in Munich on the relationship of the Oberammergau Passion Play to the development of anti-Semitism in Germany and in Christian culture. The symposium, which will be held Nov. 19, will be sponsored by the Catholic Academy of Bavaria in cooperation with the Harry Kenworthy, Community Relations Manager, Ann Arbor, offers you this telephone tip: "How can you tell if the person at your door is really a Michigan Bell Employee?" As you may have noticed, our employees do not wear uniforms. They dress in the way they think, is most appropriate to get their jobs done. While this permits them to look like the individuals they are, it really doesn't help you identify them as Bell employees. But, there is a way. Every Michigan Bell employee is required to carry a Michigan Bell identification card giving his or her name, photograph, and signature. For your protection, be sure to see this card before you admit them into your home. They'll be happy to show it to you. • Michigan Bell Employees people who enjoy serving people. Michigan Bell American Jewish Commit- tee's Interreligious Affairs Department. Announcement of the symposium was made by Detroiter Miles Jaffe, chairman of the AJC's Interreligious Affairs Commission, at the annual meeting of the AJC's Na- tional Executive Council. The AJC. has long been concerned with the effect of the Oberammergau Passion Play, and deriva- tive Passion Plays given in other parts of the world, on Jewish- Christian-relationships, Jaffe explained. Last July, Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum, AJC's na- tional director of inter- religious affairs, and William S. Trosten, AJC director of develop/tient, met with Dr. Franz Hen- rich, president of the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, on the Oberammergau Passion Play issue. At that time, the AJC leaders suggested that a dialogue among Catholic and Jewish scholars on the historical and theological issues represented in the Passion Play could prove helpful, and the Academy subsequently decided to sponsor a symposium on the subject. Rabbi Tanenbaum will present one of the major papers at the symposium. He has also been invited to speak in the village of Oberammergau following the symposium On the reli- gious and historical factors that have contributed to anti-Semitism in Germany. Integrity. Professional Skills. Hard Work. (and some saichel, too.) Franklin Village • Bingham Farms • Southfield • Beverly Hills • Lathrup Village • Jessica cooper for 46th District Judge paid for and authorized by Citizens To Elect Jessica Cooper District Judge 15651 W. 14 Mile Rd., Birmingham, Michigan 48009 Boris Smolar's ` Between You . . and Me' Editor-in-Chief Emeritus, JTA (Copyright 1978, JTA, Inc.) . TRIUMPH OF YIDDISH: The recognition accorded to Yiddish by awarding the 1978 Nobel Prize for Literature to the prominent Yiddish author Isaac Bashevis Singer opens a new turn for intensification of interest in Yiddish. Bashevis Singer, whose works have translated in many languages, including Japanese, writes in Yiddish only, al- though he has mastered the English language sufficiently well to write his work in English. All his writings are first published in the Jewish Daily Forward, the largest Yiddish newspaper in the world, on the staff of which he has been since he came to the U.S. more than 40 years ago. He is the first Yiddish writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Some years ago a suggestion was made in influential non-Jewish circles to place the name of Sholem Asch, the noted Yiddish novelist, on the list of candidates for the Nobel Prize for Literature. This the Swedish Academy of Arts refused to consider, not because it doubted Asch's literary talent — he too has been translated in many lan- guages — but because of a tradition not to award the Nobel Prize for Literature to authors of nations who have no land of their own. With Bashevis Singer this tradition was broken. Without the latter's knowledge, the Yiddish PEN Club in New York — through its. chairman S.L. Schneiderman, himself a well-known Yiddish writer — suggested to the International PEN club — the world organization of novelists, poets and essayists — that it take a hand in the situation. As a result, Bashevis Singer was surprised to learn that he had been voted the recipient of the Nobel Prize, which will be presented to him on Dec. 10. It is no coincidence that Saul Bellow, the prominent American author — who himself won the Nobel Prize for Literature last year — was the one to "discover" Bashevis Singer and to bring his talent out to the world by translat- ing from Yiddish into English one of his short stories, "Gimpel the Fool: way back in 1952. Since then Bashevis Singer's popularity in the literary world grew higher and higher. YIDDISH IN THE U.S.: Yiddish is now being taught in about 40 colleges and universities in this country. The interest of American-born Jews in Yiddish — espe- cially among the educated youth — received a boost with the successful play "Fiddler on the Roof," based on Sholom Aleichem's works. Greater interest will certainly be stimu- lated in Yiddish by the Nobel award to Bashevis Singer. Growing interest in Yiddish language and literature among American Jews with higher general education is best reflected in YIVO's "Max Weinreich Center for Ad- vanced Jewish Studies" from which the graduates receive diplomas. Some of them are now holding positions as pro- fessors of Yiddish subjects. Among the 50,000 Jewish professors in American col- leges and universities, there is a group of professors who display a special interest in Yiddish. The group, known as "Association for Jewish Studies," devotes part of its annual and regional conferences to Yiddish. Its executive includes professors from Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Princeton, _ UCLA and other well-known universities. Queens College in New York, which has thousands of Jewish students, published a -very impressive quarterly journal "Yiddish" devoted to the Yiddish language and literature. Those who claim that Yiddish is a dying language will be interested to "discover" that the last U.S. census, taken in 1970, brought out the fact that nearly 750,000 Jewish resi- dents of New York State alone consider Yiddish to be their mother tongue. This total includes 543,000 New York City residents, of whom 354,000 are American-born. YIDDISH AND ARAMAIC: For the pessimists over the fate of Yiddish it is worth pointing out here that Yid dish is still a strongly living language even in Israel. Or- thodox Jews consider Yiddish as their language at home and in the street. Hebrew to them is "loshn Koidesh" — a "holy language" to be used only in prayers and on holidays. In Mea Shearim, the very Orthodox section of Jerusalem, you can hear Yiddish spoken fluently in business and in the streets by fourth-generation Jews born in Israel. Those in America who are inclined to say "Kadish" after Yiddish may not know that the Kadish we say now for the dead is not in Hebrew but in Aramaic — a kind of "Yiddish" which Jews used for many generations — more than 1,000 years — in Babylonia, and other Middle East lands, includ- ing ancient Palestine. Aramaic is still alive today not only in studying the Talmud. It is also a part of major traditional prayers. Kadish is not the only prayer recited in Aramaic; even Kol Nidre, the holiest Yom Kippur prayer, is in Aramaic. The Haggada opens with an invitation to the Seder in Aramaic ("Ho Lachmo Anyo") and concludes with "Chad Gadya," a jolly Jewish song in Aramaic. Marriage certificates (ketubot) are still written by rabbis today not in Hebrew but in Aramaic. So are divorces. The language left its mark in Jewish continuity no matter where Jews live.