THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 28 Friday, October 9, 1981 Israel, America Jewry Nazi Sentenced in E. Germany Mack Pitt and his NEU YORK — An East German court this week sentenced Karl Jaeger, 69, to life in prison for the mur- der of 280 Jewish adults and children in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War Orchestra plus Disco Music just for you 358-3642 ••• • OOOOOOOOOOOOO • • ••••• • • TUNE IN ON • • ° • THE LATEST: • Remote Control • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • THE NEW KV-1945RS TRINITRON • • • WITH 19 - SCREEN (measured diagonally) • • • • • • WITH ADVANCED 10-KEY EXPRESS P TUNING SYSTEM • • SONY 2-\ NoW • • • • \\2' THE ONE AND ONLY • : SEIKO • QUARTZ WATCHES • 40°/ OFF NI 0 S.99 Nov 10 • CROSS PENS • 40% 0 _NI • Nov 10 OFF svo • BIG DISCOUNTS SONY SMITH-CORONA: WALKMAN $ 67" KITCHEN AID MIXERS CAMERAS ELECTRIC • TYPEWRITERS • EUREKA VACS • TELEPHONE ANSWERING MACHINES :OSCAR BRAUN'S: • • • • LINCOLN TOWERS, SUITE 111 15075 W Lincoln (10 1 2 Mile) One Block East of Greeofield Mon. this Sat. 10-4 • • • By VICTOR M. BIENSTOCK When President Reagan warned Israel during the storm in Washington-over the Saudi Arabian arms deal that "it is not the busi- ness of other nations to make American foreign pol- icy," he was, intentionally or not, aligning himself with the belief of many Is- raelis and most anti- Semites that the first loy- alty of the American Jew is to the state of Israel, not to the country of his birth or acquired citizenship. We accept this concept of dual loyalty from the anti- Semites as a manifestation of their malevolence. We recognize it among some American politicians as their failure to recognize the Americanism of the American Jew. We recognize it among the Israelis as a confirma- tion of their continuing ig- norance of America and of the American Jew and of their failure to have created for themselves as philosophical, psychological and historical association with the Diaspora in an era in which there is once again a Jewish state in the ancest- ral homeland. The fact is, as President Reagan well knows, as most American political leaders understand and as few Israelis do, that while Israel has a certain amount of sympathy in Washington and the country generally, be- cause of its religious con- notations as the land of the People of the Book, an appreciation of Is- rael's potential strategic value to the United States in a critical quarter of the globe, a limited moral hold based on a feeling of responsibility because of America's role in the es- tablishment of the Jewish state and a feeling of relationship between two democracies, Israel's strength in the United States resides in the ar- ticulate element of its six million Jews — a tiny element, indeed. Presenting the DE LOREAN at 0 1 Display Now 28585 Telegraph Rd. across from Tel-12 Mall Southfield, Mich. 353-1300 TamaRoFF TamaRoFF Buick-DMC-Honda But without that tiny ar- ticulate element, Israel would probably be regarded in the capital as just another supplicant state. There are no dependable figures— I doubt that there are even fairly accurate pro- jections — as to the propor- tion of American Jews who belong to the organized Jewish community in one way or another. Possibly one-third of the American Jewish population has a re- ligious affiliation ranging in intensity from regular at- tendance at a house of wor- ship and participation in congregational activities to the Yom Kippur Jew reluc- tantly responsive to the an- cestral call. There are no mass mem- bership organizations other than Hadassah and Bnai Brith which can claim membership in the hun- dreds of thousands and probably no more than 10 percent of American Jews belong to Jewish organiza- tions other than the synagogue or temple. The strongest cohesive force for the Jews — and this must be faced, un- palatable as it may be — is the prejudice and dis- crimination that sur- rounds them in varying degree and keeps them Jewish. Whenever and wherever these forces weaken, there is a drifting away, as wit- ness the startling rising rate of intermarriages. It is not religion, although we are told there is a discerni- ble trend among American Jews towards a return to the synagogue, and it is not Zionism that binds the Jews together; it is the pressure from without that holds them together. David Ben-Gurion, that intensely pragmatic realist who sparked the proclama- tion of statehood in 1948, strongly believed that the place of the Zionist was in the land of Israel — nowhere else — and no one was a Zionist who was not personally committed to re- turn to the Jewish state. Jews abroad were, in his estimation, non-Zionists. They were, he said, privileged to help Israel but they were not Zionists if they did not have the moral compulsion to live there. He was convinced that a Jewish state in Palestine was the last hope and refuge for the Jews of the world. I called on the old lion once in 1943 in his Tel Aviv apartment the day after the Hebrew press reported a "pogrom" in Boston (which, on check- ing with my New York of- fice, I learned was one of the then frequent racial gang clashes over "turf" in Scollay Square.) He was still excited by the news and exclaimed to me: "You mark my words! The day will come when you American Jews will get down on your knees and thank God there's a Jewish na- tional home here to give you refuge!" Separate Entities For him, the Jewish state was 'all in all and he could not conceive of Jews living outside it: Chaim Weiz- mann, without whom Israel would never have seen the light, saw it otherwise. To him, Zionism was "a force for life and creativity resid- ing in the Jewish masses. It was not simply the blind need of an exiled-people for a home of its own," he wrote in his autobiography. He envisaged the reborn Jewish state as a center of religion, culture and creativity and the spiritual home for Jews all over the world. I spoke with him for the last time when he re- turned to Israel to assume his role as head of the new state. He talked then of the centrality of the Jewish homeland for all Jews and his vision of the Jewish state as a center of know- ledge and culture for the world. Nahum Goldmann, the most cosmopolitan of all the Zionist leaders, believes that the majority of the Jews will continue to live outside Israel throughout the world. The challenge to Israel, he wrote in his au- tobiography, was "creating a new awareness of unity that would bring together in one great community the Jews who lived 'normally' in their own country and the scattered minorities in the Diaspora." That,the state of Israel has not yet ac- complished. The Zionist belief that the Jews must have a na- tional home of their own never penetrated deeply into the American Jewish masses nor even into the leadership, very proba- bly because the Ameri- can Jew never thought he had to find another home. Our interest has been religious-inspired ("next year in Jerusalem") and philanthropically moti- vated. We have seen man- dated Palestine and then the state of Israel as a home for the persecuted and the homeless survivors of the Holocaust, a refugee for Jews unwanted elsewhere and a place where the Jewish genius could flourish to our pride and satisfaction. But it was not for us. We had the satisfac- tion of knowing that we had done good for others who needed our help. We were able to take pride in Israel's achieve- ments — the amazing skill of the Israeli pilots, the courage and daring of En- tebbe, the cultural and sci- entific accomplishments of the great institutions we built there. We have to admit it: our interests are fraternal, so- cial and philanthropic; they are not based on a complete identity with the land. If they were, we would be in Israel today, not here in the - United States. For the American Jew, the United States is his home and his country, the object of his primary allegiance. That does not inhibit his love and sup- port of Israel which does not diminish in any way his loyalty to America. The anti - Semite doesn't want to understand this; some of our politicians don't see it and too many Israelis simply cannot comprehend it. I happen to hold with Ben-Gtirion that the place for a Zionist is in the Jewish state. One can love and as- sist Israel without subsrib- ing to a concept that the Jew can be at home only in his own homeland. Truly there is a need for the Israel government to reassess its relations with the Diaspora; it should rec- ognize obligations to them as well as to expect them, as a matter of course, to pro- vide financial and political assistance. But American Jews cannot leap to atten- tion, salute and carry out orders the prime minister of Israel may see fit to issue. The American Jewish community is not an Israeli colony. At the same time, our political leaders in Washington should recog- nize that Israel and Ameri- can Jewry are not synonymous terms and cease attempts to browbeat American Jews into silence on issues on which they feel strongly and have every right to speak. Czech Jews Get New Prayerbook NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Arthur Schneier, head of the Appeal of Con- science Foundation, dis- closed he had received a let- ter of thanks from officials of the Council ofJewish Re- ligious Communities in the Czech Socialist Republic for 2,000 copies of a rare Hebrew-Czech prayerbook. He said he had discovered the rare prayerbook in 1979 when he headed a founda- tion delegation to Prague. He said he negotiated with Dr. Karl Hruza, president of the State Council for Religi- ous Affairs, and received permission to take the rare prayerbook back to New York and to send copies to Czech Jews. He said the 2,000 copies were made by facsimile and sent to the Council of Jewish Religious Com- munities in time for use during the current High Holy Days. He said the negotiations for permission to print and to arrange for distribution of the facsimile copies lasted two years. The facsimile edition was financed by the foundation. Moscow Invites French Rabbi PARIS (JTA) — France's Chief Rabbi Rene Sirat has received an official invita- tion to visit Moscow next year at the head of a French rabbinical delegation. A member of the Soviet Embassy in Paris called on Sirat on Rosh Hashana eve, to deliver the invitation from Moscow's Chief Rabbi Joseph Fiahmann.