2 Friday, December 11, 1981
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
Purely Commentary
Newest Biography of Stephen Wise Recalls Era of Yahudim
and the Existence of the Sha-Sha Jews . . . Distortions in Media
Deplored . . . When Anti-Semites Were Rampant in Congress
Is there a Replica of the Sha-Sha
Jews in the Present Generation?
Is Oil-Soaked Oman Teaching
Our Government Proper Lesson?
Prof. Melvin Urofsky revives an interest in' a rather
old, seldom reiterated, attitude of Jews when confronted
with serious anti-Semitic threats, in "A Voice That Spoke
for Justice" (N.Y.U. Press, Albany).
In this account of the life and times of Stephen S. Wise,
there is a reconstruction of the reference to German and
Spanish-Portuguese Jews as Yahudim.
It was also a descriptive term for Reform Jews who
were at the time chiefly constituted by congregants from
the German Jewish ranks.
At that time the counterparts were the Galician
(Galitzianer), Litvakes, Russische, Polish. Now these di-
visions are extinct, therefore the term Yahudim, which was
not strange to Stephen Wise, Louis D. Brandeis and their
associates as an applicable moniker.
There is another aspect of Jewish responsiveness to
challenges from anti-Semitic ranks to the security of Jews
wherever they may live and to those who protested vehe-
mently and unhesitatingly to discrimination and attempts
to deny justice to the Jew. The term that was applied to
those who hesitated to speak out for Jewish rights and in
defense of Jews was Sha-Sha Jews.
That was some decades ago. The panicking aggravated
Stephen Wise, Louis Brandeis, Julian Mack, Louis Lipsky,
Joseph Barondes and the scores of Jewish leaders. For them
the fearful were the Sha-Sha Jews.
Because this term is no longer heard, it doesn't mean
that Sha-Sha Jews do not exist. They are in evidence and it
would do them good to read Urofsky's "A Voice That Spoke
for Justice."
A brief news item carries with it a serious lesson for
White House and State Department as well:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia and the
other Persian Gulf Arab states have offered the
sultanate of Oman $1.2 billion in aid if it will can-
cel an agreement allowing the United States ac-
cess to its military facilities.
The offer, disclosed by a high Saudi govern-
ment official during a recent interview, came dur-
ing a meeting last month in Riyadh of the newly
formed Persian Gulf Cooperation Council. The
offer would provide Oman with the equvalent of
what it reportedly hopes to obtain in military and
economic assistance from Washington.
The inspirer of this proposal is none other than the
Saudi government whose friendship is flirted for by the
Reagan Administration. These are the people our govern-
ment will soon be providing strategic arms and massive
military hardware.
Is anyone blushing in the White House and the State
Department upon reading the above news item?
Bingay's Tribute to JWV, Drawn
From His Shocks at Dachau
Assuming leadership in the campaign for $50,000 to
wipe out the mortgage on the Jewish War Veterans build-
ing in Southfield, Samuel J. Rhodes who is identified with
the JWV for half-a-century, drew upon the views of the late
Malcolm W. Bingay to inspire the support he seeks.
Undoubtedly, there are many who remember the Bin-
There Is Due Cause for Voices
gay column in the Detroit Free Press which appeared daily
to Reject New Animosities
under the title "Good Morning." In the column dated Nov.
That which is grouped as duty to be vigilant is never 1, 1951, which RhOdes retained in his files, Bingay drew
absent. There is need for protest against both prejudice and upon his tragic experiences at Dachau after the Nazi hor-
distortion. There is much of both. There is also evident the rors in World War II. Bingay described the shock at the
delusion among Jews themselves which frequently adds to Nazi death camp and contrasted it with a tribute to the
Jewish War Veterans when he attended the dedication
anguish.
An example is provided by the Nation, which has reception at the JWV Memorial Home on West Davison,
grouped an essay of self-criticism by an Israeli correspon- Detroit, which preceded the one now functioning on 12 Mile
dent with an anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian article by an Arab Road in Southfield. He wrote in his "Good Morning" col-
who is teaching at Columbia University and has emerged umn:
The inspiring thing to me was the contrast be-
as the chief propagandist for the so-called Palestinian
tween the ravished Europe I saw and the tone of
cause.
the Memorial Home. Here there is no hate, only a
The entire series of articles in the current issue may be
great love for all mankind of every race and creed.
cause for curiosity why the more positive approach to Is-
In honoring the young Americans of their faith
rael's predicament is not-alluded to.
who died in the crusade for liberty, the whole
The Jewish viewpoint is filled with abstractions, with
motif is tenderness and understanding.
claims that the basis applied to Zionist ideology is filled
In the center of the main hall there is a magnifi-
with failures, that the support from American Jews en-
cent mural, painted by the brilliant young Detroit
courages annexations of territory, thereby negating the
artist, Marvin Beerbohm. The theme is from the
very purpose of the philanthropic aims.
Song of Isaiah. In front of Isaiah there is the cen-
This is not the exact terminology of the Jewish self-
tral figure of a young soldier, discarding his gun
deception, but it is a bit of evidence of a bitterness in Israeli
At war's end with a great light of hope in eyes that
ranks that negates the Oneness of the Jewish People which
haunt you.
has been acclaimed as a necessity in American Jewish
The symbolism is the gradual fulfillment of the
support for the Jewish state.
spirit of Isaiah's prophecy:
The Current Situation:
"He shall judge among the nations and shall
decide
for many peoples; and they shall beat their
A Lessening of Anti-Semitism
swords into plowshares and their spears into
There is this to be said about the current situation and
pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword
the existence of anti-Semitism. The prejudice exists in
against nation, neither shall they,learn war any-
many areas. It has not disappeared. It has undoubtedly
more."
increased in the past decade. But it is not as violent as it
Each room has been named for one of the mar-
was 40 years ago.
tyred dead. For example the exquisitely ap-
At that time there was a Clare Hoffman in the Michi-
pointed library is named after Lt. Raymond
gan delegation in the U.S. House of Representatives. There
Zussman, awarded the Congressional Medal of
was a John Rankin and a number of their cohorts who
Honor for leading his men beyond call of duty.
soiled the pages of the Congressional. Record with their
Later he was killed in another action. A life-sized
advocacy of the vilest in prejudice. Now there are few who
oil painting of him is on the wall and no matter
act as spokesmen for the PLO. But they are fewer, less
where you move his searching eyes seem to be
inhuman, they are legislators who attempt to present their
upon you.
views on an ideological basis.
In another room there is the ginning face of a
There is still the urgency to prevent the re-emergence
glorious boy who could not have been more than
of the Sha-Sha Jew. There remains the duty for eternal • 18. He, too, had gone to his death and here I heard
vigilance, and it rejects silence no matter how minute a
the loveliest story of all. When she learned that
danger.
her son was to have a room named in his honor,
Perhaps it is not surprising that the Nation should
his mother brought in a beautiful vine, explain-
have thus approached the issue, that it should have en-
ing:
couraged the negation of Zionism. This has been a policy in
"This was his. He planted the seed and watched
Nation columns. There were predecessors to the present
over it until he was called to war. It belongs here."
editorial staff who, in their liberalism which added many
Now they are all worrying for fear that it, too,
Jews to their supporting readership, were tolerant toward
will die. But the best of our horticulturists say that
the Zionist idea. This could be said for Oswald Garrison
it Will not die, that it can be preserved and live on,
Villard. His successor, Frieda Kirchwey, may have been
as did the acacia of Solomon's Temple, symbol of
among the friendliest fo Zionism.
everlasting life.
The Nation, like many more in the ranks of.the media,
There is no room that does not reflect a deep
is a case in point. They often bend backwards not to utter a
spiritual note. The Jewish War Veterans and their
friendly word for the Jewish state that has emerged from
Gold Star Mothers have contributed something
Zionism. They don't even acknowledge, as the Israeli cor-
fine toward peace and understanding in our
respondent writing in the Nation totally failed to indi-
community life.
cate the dignity attained by the Jew from the state of
That column by Bingay had the special merit of having
Israel in being master of his own destiny. Will a deluded expressed the horror over the Nazi crimes and the mass
writer insist on making it a debatable subject?
murders.
By Philip
Slomovitz
What Bingay wrote in 1951 is especially significant at
this time, when imitators of the beasts arise to deny the
reality of the Holocaust. Bingay related the facts, stating in
his 1951 column:
Toward the close of the war in Europe when I
was with a group of 18 newspapermen who, at
Gen. Eisenhower's request, inspected Hitler's
horrible hells of slave camps and mass murder
factories, we tarried awhile at Munich, after
spending a day at Dachau. There in -the basement
of the beer garden from which Hitler launched the
most terrible crusade of hate the world has ever
known, I found a large-sized Nazi battle flag
carried it back to Detroit.
"I asked you to
, -
come here." the Gen-
eral explained to us,
"so that you can tell
the people the unbe-
lievable stories of
bestiality and utter
madness which has
destroyed Europe. I
want you to testify
that these accounts
have not been exagg-
erated."
These are not
exaggerated. Horror
upon horror slashed
at our eyes and sea-
MALCOLM BINGAY
red our souls.
S'ome years later, Gen. Eisenhower asked me if I
had been able to eradicate from my mind the
scenes of Buchenwald and Dachau. I assured him
I could not and he agreed that he was in the same
state of mind. "I sometimes awaken at night, as
though coming out of a nightmare," he said and I
can still smell the stench of those torture cham-
bers."
When I presented the flag to the Jewish Vete-
rans I dwelt on this: that hate is a pathological
poison. As the apotheosis of the Ku Klux Klan
spirit, Hitler gave to history a study of what hate
can do. First it was the Jews, then the Roman
Catholics — especially the priests — then the Ma-
sons and on and on into every denomination and
race.
Hate is like a terrible forest fire that sweeps all
before it.
Bingay earned appreciation for his views, for his sen-
timents on the Nazi crimes, for his encouragement to the
Jewish War Veterans. Posthumously, again, there is this
expression of thanks to him, especially by this Commen-
tator to his first editorial boss in Detroit.
The Bingay statements will surely aid the JWV in
their fund-raising under the chairmanship of Sam Rhodes.
.
New Jerusalem Video Team
World Zionist Press Service
JERUSALEM
—
Jerusalem Renaissance Inc.
was founded last year by
young religious olim (im-
migrants) — mostly from
America — all of whom
happen to hold outstanding
credentials in their respec-
tive fields. In many cases,
the traditional kippot and
tzitzit are relatively recent
additions by those who ar-
rived only lately at their
Jewish identity.
- The company is involved
in co-production of cable
television programs for the
U.S. and Israeli markets
and uses some of the most
advanced equipment and
technololy in the video
field.
Jerusalem Renaissance
has an agreement with Is-
rael's Gesher educational
institution to co-produce a
$2 million project, geared
for both Israeli and Ameri-
can cable TV, of high-
quality programming of a
Jewish nature.
The first pilot for the
series is a half-hour presen-
tation of Shabat, geared
for the early teen market. It
utilizes comedy skits, inter-
views, some animated seg-
ments prepared on Madison
Ave. and a host-audience
format.
The idea is to produce in-
formative, even inspi'
material in a medium vka
young, sometimes quite as-
similated teens can relate
to.
Technicians discuss a script in one of the studios
of Jewish Renaissance Inc.