THE JEWISH NEWS iusps2755201 Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951 SWORD OF DAMOCLES Member American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, Michigan Press Association, National Editorial Association Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 Postmaster: Send address changes to The Jewish News, 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $15 a year. 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."