F
Current Threats
to Church-State
Separation
and the Legacies
of James Madison
Commentary, Page 2
VOL. LXXVIII, No. 5
THE JEWISH NEWS
A Weekly Review
JNF's 80th
Anniversary
•
Unforgotten
Balfour
Pledge
Editorials, Page 4
of Jewish Events
17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075
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$15 Per Year: This Issue 35c
October 3, 1980
achinegunning of 5 Jelivish
rnstitutions in Paris Prcdested
Playing for Time' Drama
Didn't Tell Whole Story
By ROCHELLE SAIDEL WOLK
ALBANY, N.Y. (JTA) — "We know .a little something about the
human race that we didn't know before, and it's not good news," Fania
Fenelon says in the CBS-TV production of "Playing for Time," which
was aired Tuesday evening. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency was in-
vited to preview the production without commercial interruptions.
This statement referring to her experience as a member of the
women's orchestra at the Birkenau extermination camp could also
summarize the three-hour dramatization's effect on the viewer.
"Playing for Time" has been surrounded by controversy since last
year when Vanessa Redgrave, an outspoken supporter of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, was cast as Fenelon, a half-Jewish French
musician. "You are an artist. In this place (Birkenau-Auschwitz) you
will have to be an artist and only an artist," orchestra director Alma
Rose tells Fenelon in the film.
Perhaps both Redgrave and her critics should heed this
advice about separating art and politics. Politics aside, as "artist
and only an artist," Redgrave is superb in her role.
The other actors — practically an all-woman cast, including Jane
Alexander, Shirley Knight, Viveca Lindfors; Melony Mayron and
Marisa Berenson — are equally convincing in this powerful story of a
handful of women prisoners struggling for survival at Auschwitz.
No dramatization nor factual description by a survivor can
adequately recreate for others the degradation, the stench, the fear, the
death that encompassed inmates of Nazi extermination camps. Despite
the shaved heads and running sores, the interspersed footage of actual
transport, the production can be criticized for romanticizing and
minimizing Fenelon's situation.
The film, written by Arthur Miller and directed by Daniel
Mann, nevertheless presents the viewer with some information
which has not previously beet] mentioned by American commer-
cial television:
• There were organized underground resistance activities in the
camps. '
(Continued on Page 27)
Caesarea Expedition
PARIS (JTA) — Some 10,000 people marched through the center of Paris Tuesday night to
protest the emergence of neo-Nazi organizations, the spread of racist theories and the lack of
adequate police protection for Jewish institutions, schools and synagogues. The marchers, led by
CRIF President Baron Alain de Rothschild, gathered in front of the Memorial to the Unknown
Jewish Martyr. CRIF is the Representative Council of Jewish Organizations in France.
Exceptionally severe police measures were taken to protect the marchers. Policemen, many
carrying machineguns, were posted at most intersections and army snipers were posted on
adjacent rooftops. No incidents or violence marked the march.
Representatives of all political parties were present with the French presidential elections
only six months away.
The demonstration was called in the wake of the machinegunning of five Jewish
institutions in Paris last week, including two synagogues and two schools. Neo-Nazis
claimed responsibility for the attacks.
French police released neo-Nazi leader Marc Fredriksen from custody Monday on grounds
that they had no evidence to link him to the series of machinegun attacks. Fredriksen and five
other suspects were arrested last Friday night when police raided the offices of the outlawed
Federation of European Nationalist Action (FANE).
On Friday morning, unidep-
tified gunmen sprayed bullets into
the Great Synagogue, a memorial
monument to Jews deported by the
Nazis, a Jewish-run children's home
and the Lucien Hirsh School. The
By WILLIAM SAPHIRE
pre-dawn attacks caused no casual-
Special to the JTA
NEW YORK (JTA) — A privately-commissioned Louis
ties.
Harris poll, just released, shows that Americans favor U.S.
another
Early
'Saturday,
military, economic and political support for Israel by a
synagogue was riddled with bullets.
greater majority than four years ago; that they reject the
Anonymous telephone callers told
proposition that support of Israel should be reduced to
the French news media that the at-
satisfy the demands of the Arab oil-producing states; and
tacks were the work of the European
they regard the Egyptian-Israeli peace process, with U.S.
-
Nationalist Fasces (FNE), a neo-Nazi
participation "as beacons of hope in the Middle East."
group set up by Fredriksen after
The poll, which probed attitudes on virtually every
FANE was banned.
aspect of the Middle East situation, was conducted last July
The attacks were generally be-
among a 1,506 cross section of the American adult public
and a separate 1,030 cross section of Jewish adults nation-
lieved to have been in retaliation
wide. All the respondents were interviewed in person.
for beatings, administered to-
American Support
for Israel Growing
: (Continued on Page 6)
(Continued on Page 11)
Digging Up an Ancient City
By PROFESSOR NORMA GOLDMAN
(Editor's note: Pro;fessor Norma Goldman taught Latin and Roman culture
at Wayne State Univexsity for 31 years. She is the wife of Dr. Bernard Goldman,
executive director of the WSU Press. She joined the Joint Expedition to Caesarea
Maritima this summer, sponsored by the Institute for Archeological Research of
Drew University, Madison, N.J., under the direction of Dr. Robert Bull. This is the
first of two artictes.)
The historiam Josephus writes that Herod, confirmed as king by Caesar Augustus,
built on the Mediterranean coast of Judea a new harbor city named Caesarea in honor of
his patron in ,Ti=tome. He embellished it with the refinements of a Roman town, with a
forum, a temple to Rome and Caesar, streets laid out in a grid of intersecting north-south,
east-west roads behind the wharves and warghouses
It boasted an elaborate
theater overlooking the sea,
a giant hippodrome for
horse races, an amphi-
theater for gladiatorial
gameS (frowned upon by the
Jewish population), baths,
and an ingenious system for
flushing the sewers with sea
water.
With a permit from the
Israeli government, Prof.
Robert Bull of Drew Uni-
versity in Madison, N.J. has
spent nine seasons- from
1971, with the help of crews
of volunteers, digging out
from the sandy soil along
the coast this ancient har-
Ruins along a Byzantine road in the Caesarea Dig.
bor city. In Israel this past summer I picked fragments of Roman lamps, Byzantine
glass and ancient coins out of the sifting box, as one of the 80 volunteers during the second
five-week session with the Joint Expedition to Caesarea Maritima.
What complicates the excavation is the subsequent occupation of the site by
an even larger Byzantine city atop the Roman one. Subsequently an Islamic city
appeared, and in Crusader times, the site became a hotly contested area with the
Crusaders eventually building their fortress atop the old Roman forum area,
employing as fill material the magnificent Roman columns and capitals which
appear as random reinforcements for walls and harbor installations.
The modern Kibutz Sdot Yam (Fields of the Sea) lies next to the excavated Roman
theater, which is used during the summer for concerts and ballet.
From my hilltop sifting box I gazed out over the changing sea, a permanent feature at
Caesarea. The waves wash against the mod-
ern breakwater, but the enormous Herodian
landing stones are still visible inside the
harbor. Along the coast stretching miles in
each direction from the Crusader Fortress
are outcroppings of ancient walls, capitals,
columns, fragments of stone architecture,
and north of town two aqueducts, all of
which testify to a city that once held 125,000
inhabitants, increasing to 250,000 in Byzan-
tine times.
The archeological debris sprawls over
8,000 acres, only three of which have been
excavated. As the terminal end of the cara-
van routes from the Middle East, Caesarea
grew rich from Mediterranean trade in exo-
tic spices, dried fruits and fish, lumber, mar-
ble (all imported), silver, copper, wine, a fish
(Continued on Page 10)