12 Friday, December 15, 1918 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS New Art Classic: A Collection of the Beautiful Works of Famour Caricaturist, Water Colorist David Levine David Levine is one of the very great caricaturists of all time. He is also an out- standing water colorist. The volume containing his col- lected works, "The Arts of David Levine" (Knopf) pro- ves it. This is a volume of great magnitude. Included are 155 caricatures, 61 city- scapes, landscapes and por- traits in full color. The ingathering of these works by Levine, for the first time, into a single vol- ume, is an important event for art lovers. Levine's art works have appeared in the New York Times, Esquire, New York Review of Books and on the covers of Time and News- week. Included in the notables caricatured and included in "The Arts of David Levine" are Menahem Begin, Moshe Dayan, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Lillian Hellman, Henry Kissinger, Norman Mailer, Golda Meir, Arthur Rubenstein, Arnold Schenberg, Ger- trude Stein and many of the world famous. Emile Zola of the "J'Ac- cuse" fame in the Affaire DAVID LEVINE Dreyfus, President Carter, Eleanor Roosevelt and scores of others are in the collected caricatures in this volume. In the list of impressive paintings, the reader and admirer of this collection will be impressed by "Oisgeshprete," "Conversa- tion," "Shmate Ladled," "Coney Shwesters," and others. Buchner, Thomas president of Steuben Glass and former director of the Brooklyn Museum, wrote the foreword to this volume, stating in part: "He once drew Adolf Hil- ter with no trace of exagg- eration. His explanation was that you can't make a monster out of a monster: the reality is the symbol. His seriousness is evident in the fact that he will not draw other people's points of view. When his work ap- pears on the cover of Time or Newsweek, the comment the caricatures make is his own. "Indisputably and discon- certingly, David Levine is his own man. Who else would attack the bastions of capitalist materialism in the style of the illustrator of Alice in Wonderland? Who else would say of the con- temporary international aesthetic sweeping-up from the Impressionists through all the history-making ex- citement of recent years: 'In what has been abandoned there is great pickings.' "He is also very funny and being funny is important to him (and probably always has been). He reacts to tragedy with unintentional smiles and covers shyness with quipping bravado. He happily argues either side of any question and is so out- rageously provacative that the most serious adversary is soon helpless with laugh- ter. "A master of mimicry — especially of himself as the eternal innocent — he loves an audience and always de- serves one. Consistently paradoxical, he is also very serious. He finds nothing funny in prejudice and is himself extremely tolerant, except for those in authority. Mistrusting all establishments, especially governments. he can be de- pended upon to support whoever opposes them. "He has the courage of his convictions and refuses even to make personally beneficial investments for fear that his money might be used to support activity which he opposes. His spirit of independence comes through a remark he once made on being Jewish: 'To the degree that there is anti-Semitism in the world, I acknowledge being Jewish; in the same sense, when cartooning is ridiculed, I confess to being a cartoonist." "There was a time — and it lasted into the 1960s — when painting and caricaturing were two dis- tinctly different arts as practiced by Levine. Paint- that epitomize, that drive to ing was almost an homage the essence of the artist's to the old masters — interest in the subject be- Rembrandt-like family pm- fore him, and in caricatures traits, Eakins-like inter- that ennoble, that suggest iors, chiaroscuro the draughtsmanship of In- panoramas of Coney Island gres rather than of Nast as and English-style the ultimate goal." "The Art of David Levine" watercolors of English-style is a genuine treasure. It will landscapes. "Caricaturing was full of not only be loved by art col- cartooning, of making fun, lectors but will make art of making a living. The in- collectors even of amateurs teraction of these two arts — so impressive are its has resulted in paintings contents. —P.S. * * * From David Levine's art collection: Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. British Jewry's Orthodox United Synagogue Losing Battle Against Assimilation, Decline in the Number of Its Rabbis By MAURICE SAMUELSON LONDON (JTA) — The old joke that "being a rabbi is no job for a Jewish boy" has become a not-so-funny reality for many congrega' tions of the United Synagogue, Anglo Jewry's biggest grouping of synagogues. Four of its major pulpits in London alone are without a minister or soon will be. They include Hampstead Garden suburb and Saint John's Wood, the capital's wealthiest communities. Cries of help are also heard from important provincial centers like Glasgow, Hull and Sheffield. United Meanwhile, Synagogue membership is declining as assimilation, Reform and Progressive movements take their toll. It is not helped either by a resurgence of militant Or- thodoxy among some Jewish youngsters. For al- though yeshivot are crow- ded, their students tend to shun the mainstream of Or- t')odoxy represented by the Ur jted Synagogue. Al one despairing minister sees it, the yeshiva students are like rabbis who prefer to wear a fur coat than to light a fire which will also warm others. Although the shortage of rabbis has developed over many years, its full gravity was brought home by last month's shock announce- ment that the rabbi of Saint John's Wood Synagogue was leaving after less than two years. Rabbi Menahem Fink came from Holland where he was principal minister at The Hague. He is now going to Israel, where his father is head of the Haifa Beth Din (rabbinical court). at vacancy The Hampstead Garden suburb follows the departure of its rabbi, Irish-born Isaac Bernstein, for the United States. Blame for the crisis is fre- quently directed at Jews College, the rabbinical sem- inary founded in 1855 to train English-speaking ministers and laymen. From 1971 to 1976 it did not produce a single rabbinical graduate. Of last year's 11 graduates, only two entered the Anglo- Jewish ministry and a third became a cantor. Others became lecturers and one an accountant. The college hopes to pro- duce four more ministers in the next couple of years. It hotly denies, however, that these sad figures are caused by any lack of facilities, and attributes them to the lack of incen- tives for potential rabbis, which in turn reflects the community's own priorities. The laymen who run the United Synagogue are blamed for not making the ministry more attractive in terms of prestige and salary and for giving congrega- tions too little say over hir- ing rabbis. The issue came close to flashpoint recently over the appointment of a rabbi at the important Golders Green Synagogue in North-West London, whose previous full-time incum- bent died nearly two years ago. The synagogue issued a "call" to 30-year-old Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a gifted Cambridge- trained philosopher who was a lecturer at Jews College. Sacks accepted The synagogue's honor- known: they include better ary officers then threatened and more flexible salary to resign en bloc and suc- scales and less interference" cessfully appealed to the by the United Synagogue in Chief Rabbi, Dr. Immanuel its constituent congrega- college principal also Jakobovits, who is also hon- tions. But they are long- orary principal of Jews Col- term measures and will not agreed to this. results im- lege. Sacks' appointment produce However, S.S. Levin, the was confirmed and has pro- mediately. The only other step is for Synagogue ved so successful that a con- United president, took the view gregation which seemed the United Synagogue to that Sacks should not fill doomed is showing marked raise the statutory retire- both positions, and Sacks signs of revival and is the ment age of ministers, and to ask some who are already indicated that he would envy of others. But this is an exceptional pensioned off to fill the forego the Golders Green job rather than lose his lecture- case. Remedies for the shor- empty pulpits until new tage of rabbis are well men arrive. ship. the "call" and the synagogue agreed to his request that he should be allowed to retain his Jews College post. The New Toland Volume of Photos Describes Adolf Hitler's Life John Toland adds im- designations is a series of Documentary of His Life," is a companion to the earlier measurably to the extent of photos appearing under his collective works on Hit- the title "Horrors of the work, and also stands on its own as a riveting photo- ler and the Nazi era with Final Solution Re- documentary of Hitler's "Hitler: the Pictorial vealed." In this grouping Documentary of His Life" appear the following: personal and public life. German Civilians Are The over-sized volume (Doubleday). contains rare and prey- As the author of a biog- Forced to See the Pris- iously unpublished photos, raphy of Hitler and "The oner Dead at Buchen- including shots from the wald, German Girl Last 100 Days" he has al- personal picture albums of Forced to Watch Exhu- ready provided the basic Hitler's mistress, Eva material dealing with the mation of Bodies at Nam- Braun, the private c_ollec- ering, Slave Laborers at Nazi Fuehrer and the period tions of Goering and of destruction of the Jewish Buchenwald, Hungarian communities and of the mil- Skeleton, Crematoriums Joachim von Ribbentrop lions of peoples from other in German Concentra- and the files of the U.S. Sig- nal Corps. tion Camp at Weimar, lands. Arranged chronologi- In the pictorial documen- J'Accuse!: A Freed Slave tary Toland has gathered Laborer Points Out a cally, each chapter con- 465 photographs depicting Nazi Guard Who Brutally tains an introduction, running text and ex- the various stages in Hit- Beat Prisoners. tended photo captions by ler's life, the formation of Toland is a Pulitzer the Nazi party, his rise to Prize-winning historian Toland. power, the many war activi- whose biography, "Adolph Toland was awarded the ties, the dictator's personal Hitler" became an interne- Pulitzer Prize for his prev- life, his loves and his hat- tional bestseller. ious title, "The Rising Sun: reds. Toland's new volume, The Decline and Fall of the Included in the various "Hitler: The Pictorial Japanese Empire."