The Panic Over
Moral Majority
and the Negators
of Basic Principles
of Church-State
Separation

THE JEWISH NEWS

A, Weekly Review

Editorial, Page 4

of Jewish Events

Raoul Wallenberg
Reminiscences
by His Closest
Associate in
Swedish Foreign
Service Ranks
in Budapest

Review on Page 80

Copyright © The Jewish News Publishing Co.

VOL. LXXIX, No. 5

17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 424-8833

$15 Per Year: This Issue 35c

April 3, 1981

Assassin's Nazi, Anti-Semitic
ssociations Shock the U.S.

NCCJ Honors ABC
`Masada' Production

By WILLIAM SAPHIRE

NEW YORK (JTA) — John Hinckley Jr., charged with the attempted assassination of President
Reagan on Monday, has been linked to the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of America and to "Posse
Comitatus," a far right para-military organization that circulates anti-Semitic propaganda in several
states and trains with weapons.
No official confirmation of his association with either group has emerged from the interrogation of
Hinckley conducted by federal authorities. But Michael Allen, president-elect of the American Nazi Party,
was quoted in various press reports as saying that Hinckley was a member of that group for less than a year
and was expelled in November 1979 because he "wanted to shoot people and blow things up." Allen said he
met Hinckley at a neo-Nazi rally in St. Louis in March 1978 and regarded him as a "nut."
Harold Covington, incumbent leader of the American Nazis, was quoted as saying that
Hinckley quit the organization in 1979 because it was insufficiently "militant."
The 25-year-old college drop-out who fired six shots wounding Reagan, Presidential Press Secretary
James Brady, a Secret Service man and a Washington police officer, was apparently an admirer of Hitler.
Prof. Otto Nelson of Texas Tech University told news media that Hinckley once submitted a book report on
Hitler's "Mein Kampf." According to Nelson, It was the first time any student of mine had ever tried to
read Mein Kampf."
5:30 A.M. Wednesday
His reputed membership in "Posge Corn-.
itatus," which means "Power to. the
County," was indicated in media inter-
views with some of his acquaintances but
could not be immediately confirmed. Ac-
cording to the Anti-Defamation League of
Bnai Brith, "Posse Comitatus" was
On Wednesday, Jews in Detroit and around the world will
founded in 1974 by Hem.y.Beach of Port-
arise early and gather for a religious observance that occurs only
once every 28 years. The occasion is the Mitzva of Birchat Hak-
land, Ore. and has been active mainly in
hamma, the Blessing of the Sun.
Colorado, California and Wisconsin and
According to the Torah tradition of Genesis, God placed the
has a membership of several thousand.
sun in the sky on the eve of the fourth day, which was Tuesday
Beach was a member of William Dudley
night at 6 p.m. Because a solar year is actually 365 days plus six
Pelley's
Silver Shirts, a virulently anti-
hours, it is only once in 28 years that the sun is in the exact
Semitic
organization
in the 1930s.
position in the sky that it started from at Creation. Since the sun
The group was started as the "Citizens
is not clearly visible in the evening, the occasion is commemo-
rated early Wednesday morning.
Law Enforcement and Research Commit-
The Torah sages recognized that the routine and con-
tee," the ADL said. According to Terry
tinuity of nature is in itself a magnificent Divine miracle,
Oaks, described as the leader of its Los
but we tend to take it for granted. Therefore, every 28 years
Angeles chapter, its basic tenet is that
when the sun returns to the position of Creation, Jews
power lies at the county level and with
gather to look at the sun and make the special blessing,
"the people" who can resort to arms to
"Blessed are you, God, King of the Universe, who does the
enforce the law if the authorities fail. Oaks
work of Creation."
reportedly boasted that the group can ob-
In Detroit, the Council of Orthodox Rabbis, in conjunction
tain "mortars, machine guns, anthing."
with schools and synagogue-s throughout the city, are planning
The ADL informed the Jewish Tele-
joint services for the entire community 5:30 a.m. Wednesday at
Cong. Dovid Ben Nuchim. Men, women and children are
graphic Agency that "Posse Corn-

Community Service
Will Bless the Sun

Dr. David Hyatt, left, presents the NCCJ's Mass
Media Gold Brotherhood Award to ABC-TV
President Brandon Stoddard.

NEW YORK — Dr. David Hyatt, president of the Na-
tional Conference of Christians and Jews, has presented his
organization's National Mass Media Gold Brotherhood
Award to ABC-TV Motion Pictures for their television
novel "Masada."
The NCCJ award was given to ABC Television Net-
work and Universal Television "for outstanding contribu-
tions to better human relations and the cause of brother-
hood."
The television drama will be aired for four consecutive
nights beginning Sunday. Masada is the fortress mountain
in Judea (now Israel) where a band of 960 freedom fighters
made a final stand against the Tenth Legion of 5,000
Roman soldiers. The determination of the Judeans not to
submit to slavery has remained a symbol of freedom for
2,000 years.
In its presentation of Masada, the NCCJ said, "ABC
has turned this historical and courageous stand against
tyranny into a statment to the contemporary world of the
moral power of the few against the many."

encouraged to attend. Breakfast refreshment will be served after
services.

(Continued on Page 11)

Dr. Trude Weiss-Rosmarin Renews Old Charge That
the Traitor Josephus Invented Masada Suicide Story'

(Editor's Note: The ABC dramatization of the Masada story, in
an eight-hour, four-night program beginning Sunday, revives an
interest in the role of Flavius Josephus who is responsible for what
has been accepted as an historic occurrence. In the Oct. 31, 1969
issue of The Jewish News, Dr. Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, editor of the
Jewish Spectator in California, was quoted charging that the histo-
rian Josephus invented the suicide of 960 Judeans on Masada. Dr.
Weiss-Rosmarin renews her charge in the following article in which
she points out that Josephus was a traitor. She also states that the
noted archeologist who was Israel's army chief of staff in the early _
1950s, Yigael Yadin, who excavated Masada, misinterpreted the
true facts.)

By DR. TRUDE WEISS-ROSMARIN

Josephus' history of "The Jewish War" is the only source of what we
know about Masada, the last_ outpost of Jewish resistance against Rome
after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple (70 CE). But
Josephus was "the traitor of Jerusalem," as historian Cecil Roth referred
to him. There is general agreement among scholars that as G.A.
Williamson writes in the introduction of his Penguin Classics translation

of "The Jewish War," Joesphus "gives irreconcilable accounts of events .. .
he is perverting the truth and perverting it for a purpose . . . He obviously
draws freely on a vivid imagination for events that he did not witness,
such as the mass suicide on Masada." -
While the Masada guerrillas (referred to by Josephus as Sicarti, that
is, "men of the dagger," held the Romans at bay for some three years,
Josephus was comfortably settled in Rome, where he enjoyed the fruits of
his treason by having joined the Romans as "the traitor of Jerusalem." In
Rome, he described the last hours of the Masada freedom fighters, and
their alleged suicide, "with a vivid imagination," alleging that an eye-
witness account was provided by one of the two women who, together with
three children, were hiding while the mass suicide took place.
According to Josephus, the Masada freedom fighters were finally
outmaneuvered by the Romans who had built a battering ram on a raised
assault rampart, and thus had breached the wall of Masada. Although the
Sicarti had plugged the breach and had built a second inner wall at the
breach, the Romans, helped by a wind which fanned the fire they had
managed to set to the wall, had finally come to the point where they could
(Continued on Page 5)

DR. WEISS-ROSMARIN

