THE JEWISH NEWS

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Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951

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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher

ALAN HITSKY
News Editor

CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager

HEIDI PRESS
Assistant News Editor

DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager

Sabbath Scriptural Selections

This Sabbath, the seventh day of Sivan, 5739, is the second day of Shavuot and the following
scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Deuteronomy 15:19-16:17, Numbers 28:26-31. Prophetical portion, Habbakuk 3:1-19.

Candle lighting, Friday, June 1, 8:43 p.m.

Page Four

VOL. LXXV, No. 13

Friday, June 1, 1979

THE TEN WORDS

Shavuot has a basic message to the festival's
celebrants and to humanity.
As the Festival of the Giving of the Law, it is
dominated by the Decalogue, the Ten Com-
mandments.
Therefore, the message is not for the Jews
alone but for those who now share in having
received the Ten Sacred Words, the Decalogue
which commands people to be human.
Therefore, in the giving there also is the obli-
gation of the taking and accepting.
Perhaps the gravest of problems is in the fail-
ure to achieve the latter.
Human beings have been given a code of laws;
a guide for honorable living, to respect human
values.
The Ten Words carry responsibility to make
people aware of life's values, to respect the dig-
nity of man. They call for a society that abhors

`If God Lets Me Live'

terror and murder. It is in such a society that
anything responsible for the sacrifice of life,
under any circumstances, would be deplored
and could not even be atoned for.
If the laws had not been broken constantly
there might be lesser reason for emphasis on
Shavuot as a major festival for Jews, as a carrier
of a message for moral and human values to
humanity. -
In all these aspects there is the guidance in
the sacred text, the Decalogue, that has become
the property of mankind.
It demands adherence to the human_ and
values that retain the respect of man-
an-
kind.
They were given and there is the expected
acceptance. In the taking lies as much glory as
in the giving.

Ktav-Published 'Perspectives'

Rabbi Wolfe Kelman Honored
by Colleagues in 'Festschrift'

Rabbi Wolfe Kelman, executive director of the Rabbinical As-
sembly, the representative movement of Conservative Judaism, is
honored in an impressive volume, "Perspectives on Jews and
Judaism" (Ktav).
The Conservative leader was accorded special honors at the Rab-
binical Assembly convention in 1975 on the occasion of his 25th
anniversary as directing head of the movement, and the texts of the
major addresses are included in this volume.
Published as a festschrift, the traditional form of recognizing
scholarship, the volume is filled with the writings of some of the most
distinguished religious leaders in America.
will be God, too, who will raise us up again. If we
The volume was edited by Rabbi Arthur A. Chiel and it corn-
bear all this suffering and if there are still Jews mences appropriately with a personal tribute to Rabbi Kelman by the
left, when it is over, then Jews, instead of being
president of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Dr. Gerson
doomed, will be held up as an example. Who
D. Cohen.
Indicative of the scholarly aspects of
knows, it might even be our religion from which
the essays is the one by one of Ameri-
the world and all peoples learn good, and for
can Jewry's most noted scholars, Dr.
that reason and that reason only do we have to
Jacob B. -Agus, on the subject
suffer now. We can never become just Nether-
"Perspectives for the Study of the Book
landers, or just English, or representatives of
of Acts." "Atheism as a Religious
_ any country for that matter, we will always
Phenomenon" by Rabbi Ben-Zion
remain Jews, but we want to, too .. .
Bokser indicates the multifaceted as-
"If God lets me live, I shall attain more than
pects of the studies pursued and
evaluated in this festschrift.
Mummy ever has done, I shall not remain in-
The editor of the volume, Rabbi
significant, I shall work in the world and for
Chiel, also authored the essay "Heb-
mankind!
raic Allusions in Lescarbot."
"And now I know that first and foremost I
Dr. Louis Finkelstein is the author
of the article "The Origin and De-
shall require courage and cheerfulness!"
velopment of the Qedushah."
History will record this, as part of the deeply
Much interest attaches also to the
moving Anne Frank record of courage and faith,
essay "Psychoanalytic Insights That
among the most challenging of documents to the
RABBI KELMAN
Spark Details of the Hasidim" by
conscience of man. It is not merely an expres-
Rabbi
S. Michael Gelber.
sion of faith: it is an indictment of indecency and
Noteworthy also, because he is the son of the late Dr. Louis
injustice, of the threats to human lives by the Ginzberg, who authored the great work, "Legends of the Jews," the
beasts who disgraced the German name and essay by Dr. Eli Ginzberg, "The Seminary Family: A View From My ,
who had turned themselves into beasts.
Parents' Home" will be read with great interest.
Noteworthy also is Dr. Nahum Goldmann's article "Israel's Cul-
They were not only the Germans. The col- tural Mission."
laborating peoples, many of them in Holland,
There is a spirit of universality in this volume in the attention
became allies of the insaned in whom not a given to the works of Yiddish, as expressed in the Yiddish poems by
spark of humanity was left during the era of the eminent Yiddish novelist, Chaim Grade, entitled "Poems." The
mass murders of more than 11,000,000, half of fact that the poems are presented in Yiddish adds significance to the
editorial wisdom in the preparation of this book.
them Jews.
The late Dr. Abraham Joshua Heschel is represented in this
Therefore, that which is a document of faith
voluine
with an essay "Rabbi Pinhas of Kpretz and the History of
also becomes an instrument for justice, a chal-
lenge to the human mind never again to permit Poland." It was translated by Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner.
Elie Wiesel authored the essay "The Tale of a Nigun."
anything like what had happened to Anne
There are essays on Zionism and Conservative Judaism and
Frank to recur.
several detailed accounts about historic personalities and important
It is part of the Holocaust story and it asserts Jewish occurrences.
'
to the beasts who give the appearance of hu-
In its totality, "Perspectives on Jews and Judaism" is an enrich-
mans that what had occurred under the ungodly ment of scholastic research. It is a tribute to Dr. Kelman, to his
will never be permitted recurrence. This is what associates who undertook the task of creating the festschrift and the
stems forth from the Anne Frank message, re- Rabbinical Assembly for having sponsored the publishing of such an
impressive collection of essays.
called on the 50th anniversary of her birth.

ANNE FRANIPS FAITH

Anne Frank would have been 50 on June 12.
The story of this young girl, whose diary is
among the indestructible documents of a young
girl in hiding from the Nazis, continues to move
even the most hard-hearted into deep emotion
about the inhumanity of man to man and the
terror that affected mankind in the 1930s and
1940s.
Born in Germany in 1929, her family moved
to Holland in 1933. When the Germans occupied
Holland, she and her family went into hiding in
an attic in Amsterdam and they survived the
Nazi threat until 1944 when she was taken to
Bergen Belsen and died in that concentration
camp in March 1945.

Her diary, which was found in the rubble of
the attic in Amsterdam after the collapse of the
Nazi regime, was written from 1942 to 1944.
She and the group in hiding with her were
detected and sent to concentration camps in the
latter year. Only her father survived. He found
and gathered for publication his daughter's
dairy which has become historic in the litera-
ture about the period of the Nazi threat to the
world.
"Anne Frank: Diary" includes many memor-
able passages. Among the most moving is this
one, "If God Lets Me Live . ."
"We have been pointedly reminded that we
are in hiding, that we are Jews in chains,
chained to one spot, without any rights, but
with a thousand duties. We Jews mustn't show
out feelings, must be brave and strong, must
accept all inconveniences and not grumble,
must do what is within our power and trust in
God. Sometime this terrible war will be over.
Surely the time will come when we are people
again, and not just Jews.
"Who has inflicted this upon us? Who has
made us Jews different from all other people?
Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up till
now? It is God that has made us as we are, but it

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