THE JEWISH NEWS iusps2755201
Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951
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CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
Editor and Publisher
ALAN HITSKY
News Editor
HEIDI PRESS
Associate News Editor
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 27th day of Heshvan, 5740, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Genesis 23:1-25:18. Prophetical portion, 1 Kings 1:1-31.
Tuesday and Wednesday, Rosh Hodesh Kislev, Numbers 28:1-15
Candle lighting, Friday, Nov. 16, 4:52 p.m.
VOL. LXXVI, No. 11
Page Four
Friday, November 16, 1979
PRIORITIES FOR YOUTH• WORK
An annual event, sponsored by the Bnai Brith
Foundation, merits special attention at this
time, when the emphasis in Jewish communal
planning is on youth identification.
The annual function, at which a distin-
guished industrialist, Excello President Ed-
ward Giblin will be the honoree, aims at widest
possible enrollment of supporters of the Bnai
Brith youth movement.
Many responsibilities are fulfilled with the
means secured for youth work by the Bnai
Brith Foundation. Dependence on youth for fu-
ture leadership assumes notable 'interest in the
funds to be secured from these annual functions.
The fact is that youth leadership leads to in-
volvement not only in Jewish affairs but relates
also to the identifications with the general
community, with aims at solidifying the inter-
racial and inter-religious duties which are so
vital in establishing assurance of closest rela-
tions among all elements in American society.
The Jewish gains from such programs are
immense. They must encourage knowl-
edgeability and must induce the youth to be
more closely associated with community and
history. It is the knowledge the young people
are encouraged to attain that is of significance
in all tasks for youth enrollment.
Bnai Brith Foundation activities have earned
support and it is heartening to know that it is
granted on the large scale assured by events
like the one to be held here next week.
The tasks to which the community is commit-
ted represent an obligation towards the assur-
ance that the human values of the social
structures will not be debilitated. To ignorance
can be ascribed the evils which have caused a
deterioration in the best relations between
many elements who now are subjected to fears
and to suspicions, to hatreds and to a lessened
appreciation of the gifts that can be enjoyed
from experience gained from many progressive
attainments. Understanding is gained from
knowledge yet there is much to be desired in the
status of educational progressivism.
In Jewish ranks especially there is, the dire
need for advancement in learning. It is this need
for more thorough knowledge that becomes a
factor in striving for a positive program for
youth in the American and Jewish environ-
ment.
PRAGMATISM IN DECISIONS
An accumulation of problems affecting world
Jewry has piled up on the American Jewish
desk. The challenges to Israel emerging from
the peace planning as well as the continuing
war-threatening elements in many areas, the
ridiculously, exaggerated black-Jewish issue,
the factors relating to the approaching
Presidential election and the warnings of an
erosion in the friendly, official American atti-
tudes toward Isarel — these and many more
issues call for pragmatism and for proper ap-
proaches to the inter-related matters by Ameri-
can Jewry's leadership.
They cannot and fortunately are not ignored.
The concern in the threatening situations was
evidenced in Miami at the Pan-American
Zionist Conference last month. Their considera-
tion continues presently at the, sessions of the
General Assembly of the Council of Jewish Fed-
erations now in progress in Montreal.
Surely, they will not be overlooked when re-
sponsible representatives of many Jewish
communities meet in New York next month to
inaugurate another year of United Jewish Ap-
peal solicitations.
viewed with disrespect. In the CJF General As-
sembly in Montreal the voices for justice are
already loudly sounded.
There also are many domestic problems to be
resolved. At the UJA sessions in New York
there will surely be spokesmanship to define the
issues affecting self-rule for Arabs under Is-
rael's administration, greater clarity regarding
settlements, and the active leadership will be
called upon to explain the status of Project Re-
newal, if it is to continue with dignity,
realistically.
There is a heartening factor in the knowledge
that national assemblies convene to debate the
issues. For proper action and firmness in meet-
ing the accumulating challenges, the Jewish
constituency must exert proper influence. A
knowledgeable Jewish populace is vital in
exerting influence upon leadership. Out of such
a totality must emerge a proud American
Jewry, aiming to correct errors in judgment
where they exist,. assuring solidarity where
needed to create the unified force of am ehad,
one people striving for and attaining justice.
There is a duty to confront the challenges to
Jewry without hesitation. This adherence to
such a role in leadership is becoming apparent.
It is evidenced in the rejection of silence when
the Jewish role in America and the status of
[srael in the world are affected by misrepresen-
cations of the truth relating to human aspects in
what have become international attitudes
owards a people battling for life and security.
Many existing factors call for evaluation,
11 that has been muddied in the disputing
_liosphere remains to be defined. At the
(iami Beach conference of Zionists from many
American countries, the United States
anada, it was apparent that silence will be
Does a civilized society really exist?
If it does, what is the explanation for every
international calamity being labeled as "due to
oil?"
Why does society yield to the domination of
the possessors of oil power?
Would the Iranian crisis have arisen had it
not been for the threat that oil would be de-
prived from those not yielding to the energe
threat.
Even the atrocious black-Jewish issue per-
mitted the outrageous ascription of oil needs to
an unnecessary dispute.
Oh Oil, what crimes are being committed in
Thy Title!
4-
--
'DUE TO OIL'
r-
`Portraits of Yiddish Writers'
Notably Defined, Annotated
Yitzhak Kahn, a native of Poland who now lives in Australia, has
an enviable record for analytical - works on world literature, with
emphasis on Yiddish. In "Portraits of Yiddish Writers" (Vantage
Press) he covers a vast field meriting an increased interest in Yiddish
and the rich literature of the language.
This volume gives due attention to the biographical data about
Yiddish writers. It concerns itself especially, however, with the atti-
tudes, the viewpoints of the distinguished Yiddish authors.
Quoting extensively from the works of the writers under consid-
eration, Kahn provides an encyclopedic review of authors and their
views.
Kahn devotes his studies to the famous of the late 19th and early
20th Centuries, such as Mendele Moher Seforim, I.L. Peretz, Sholom
Aleichem and Abraham Reisen.
His work is devoted to David Bergelson, Joseph Opotoshu, H.
Leivick, Chaim Grade, Abraham Sutzkever, The Song Bird Manger,
Jacob Glatstein, Chava Rosenfarb, Rochel Korn, J.I. Trunk, Mendel
Mann, Leib Feinberg, Eliezer Greenberg, Israel Stern, M.Z. Tkatch,
Jacob Friedman, Joseph Papiernikov and Arye Shamri.
Of special interest is the scholarly introductory essay by Prof. Sol
Liptzin. The eminent authority on Jewish literature provides an
appreciation of the great writers so splendidly defined in the volume
by Yitzhak Kahn:
"This is the first volume of Kahn's essays to be made available in
English. Though writing in Australia, he reaches out to readers on all
continents and his literary judgments are exerting a growing influ-
ence.
"Kahn is both an intellectual critic and an impressionistic critic.
In the essays included in the present volume, he is not primarily
interested in the facts of a poet's terrestrial existence, facts which can
be gleaned from various reference sources and memoirs of contem-
poraries.
"He is far more interested in the ideas embedded in the published
books of verse under his scrutiny and in attutudes toward eternal
problems, as well as in the particular mood or atmosphere about each
poet.
"Let us not put on an apothecary's scales and weigh the I. _
atmosphere of each line in a poem separately, but make our judgment
according to the poet's mood and emotion as we feel it in reading the
poem, the flutter and the loftiness to which we are lifted by the poetic
experience, when it can convert things and appearances in life into
poetic images.'
"Kahn follows this credo in all his essays. There is no harshness in
his evaluations. Though aware of bad stanzas and dull lines, absurd
imagety, and infelicitous word combinations, he prefers to dwell not
on the weak aspects of a poetic work but on the finer aspects.
"Therin he reveals himself as a lover of beauty, who rejoices in
the discovery of golden poetic grains, and as a moral personality in
search of the inner nobility of each creative writer that he brings to
our attention. He is an able continuator of the great literary critics of
our century.
"This century began with the intellectual interpretations of Baal
Machshoves and the impressionistic interpretations of Abraham
Coralnik. It reached a peak of excellence in Shmuel Niger, the
undisputed arbiter of literary taste between the two world wars. The
mass audiences of the early decades of the century, the Yiddish
readers numbering in the hundreds of thousands, are no more, but the
love of Yiddish still burns within the hearts of the many thousands for
whom Kahn has been writing."