12
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS -
Friday, June 8, 1919
Federal Appeals Court Will Rule on Yule in Schools
LENNY
LIEBERMAN
By BEN GALLOB
NEW YORK (JTA) — An
American Jewish Congress
attorney said last week that
a Federal Appeals Court
test of the constitutionality
of Christmas observance
guidelines for a public
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Louis court of the case was
based on concern that
adherence to standard court
procedures might bring a
ruling too late to affect ap-
plication of the guidelines
for the coming Yule season.
The AJCongress brief was
prepared by Stern and
Nathan Z. Dershowitz, di-
rector of the agency's com-
mission on law and social
action.
The brief declared that
religious holiday obser-
vance in the public
schools violated the First
Amendment's church-
state separation guaran-
tee, as well as hurting
Jewish children in such
schools. The case,
"Florey vs. Sioux Falls
School District," deals
with guidelines adopted
by the Sioux Falls, S.D.
school board for the pub-
lic schools under its
jurisdiction.
A joint friend of the court
brief also has been filed
with the St. Louis appeals
court by the National
Jewish Commission on Law
and Public Affairs (COLPA)
and the Anti-Defamation
League of Bnai Brith. Mar-
tin Cowan, COLPA secre-
tary, and Richard Weiss of
the ADL wrote the brief. It
pointed out that the Sioux
Falls school board rules
provide not only for Christ-
mas and Easter pageants in
the public schools but for
the display of religious
Egypt Project Renewal Needed
for Cairo's Huge City of Dead
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school district, an obser-
vance which the AJCon-
gress told the court hurts
Jewish children, appeared
to be the firsttime the issue
had reached the Federal
Appeals Court level.
Marc Stern, AJCongress
counsel, who helped write a
friend-of-the-court brief
filed with the Eighth Cir-
cuit Court of Appeals in St.
Louis, said the agency
hoped the regional counsel
for the American. Civil
Liberties Union, Steven
Pevar, counsel for the plain-
tiffs, would file a request
with the St. Louis court to
expedite its hearings on the
case.
Stern said the hope for an
expedited hearing by the St.
1915
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(Editor's note: Joseph
Polakoff was one of the
correspondents accom-
panying President Car-
ter in his historic peace
mission to Egypt and Is-
rael last March. What fol-
lows is an exclusive re-
port based on Polakoff's
visit to Cairo.)
CAIRO (JTA) — On the
southernmost outskirts of
Cairo, where sprawling
urban slums mixed with
middle-class apartment
buildings meet the desert in
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the area known as Basan-
tine, is "The City of the
Dead." It represents at once
the poverty of Egyptian
masses and, in part, the
animosity towards Jews in
the generations of warfare
and hate that followed _the
rebirth of Israel.
The "city" spreads over a
series of Moslem, Christian
and Jewish burial grounds
in Basantine but the "most
dilapidated," according to
an official U.S. report, is the
Jewish cemetery with its
uncounted thousands of
graves — above ground in
mausoleums and sar-
cophagi and below ground
in family plots and indi-
vidual sites.
In the Jewish cemetery,
as in the others, the "city"
population consists of
families of squatters who
live with their livestock —
donkeys, goats, dogs and
chickens — in vandalized
mausoleums and among
toppled and demolished
tombstones. Where once
Jewish Egyptians were laid
to rest, excreta and garbage
foul the atmosphere and de-
spoil graves. Yet, curiously,
some imposing sarcophagi
and 'gravestones remain
undamaged in those unwal-
led, unfenced burial
grounds.
Without electricity,
sanitation, privacy or
adequate water, human
beings try to survive in
those areas set aside for
the dead. The U.S. report
says that perhaps a quar-
ter of a million people
have moved into this nec-
ropolis and its environs
as a result of Cairo's
acute housing shortage.
In the Jewish cemetery
the stench of waterless,
sewerless people and
their livestock is literally
overpowering.
During President Car-
ter's peace-making mission
to Egypt in March, this re-
porter visited Basantine
with Clifford Evans, the
RKO General Broadcast-
ing's White- House corre-
spondent. The night before,
in downtown Cairo at the
beautiful, 80-year-old Shar
Shamayim Synagogue with
its pathetically tiny congre-
gation, the JTA reporter
was cautioned. "Don't go to
Basantine alone," a woman
advised. "It's dangerous.
You are a foreigner and
well-dressed. Be careful."
However, with the taxi
that brought the two re-
porters to the cemetery
never far from them, the
visit passed with no sign of
possible crime or violence.
In the current period of
developing official
friendliness between Is-
rael and Egypt, it was
suggested that a mark of
binational cooperation
could be the restoration,
as a joint venture, of the
Jewish cemetery.
While other needs in
Egypt hold much higher
priorities, a symbol of the
"new" Middle East could be
the eradication of "The City
of the Dead," resettlement
of squatters in decent
dwellings, and the restora-
tion of the cemetery to the
honor of both countries and
peoples.
symbols, such as the cross
and nativity creches in the
classrooms.
Others joining in the brief
are Agudath Israel of
America, the National
Council of Young Israel, the
Rabbinical Council of
America and the Union of
Orthodox Jewish Congrega-
tions of America, according
to COLPA and the ADL.
The guidelines were' ,
challenged in 1978 by a
group of students, par-
ents and taxpayers, who
sought to enjoin their
promulgation on
grounds they were in
conflict with the First
Amendment. The local
district court upheld the
school board and the
case was appealed to the
Circuit Court of Appeals.
The brief argued that the
guidelines were unconstitu-
tional because, first, they
have a religious purpose;
second, they have the direct
effect of advancing religion;
and third, they excessively
entangle the government in
religion. Stern said this is
the three-part test used by
the Supreme Court in such
cases.
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