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PHILIP SLOMOVITZ
Editor and Publisher
ALAN HITSKY
News Editor
CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ
Business Manager
HEIDI PRESS
Associate News Editor
DREW LIEBERWITZ
Advertising Manager
Sabbath Scriptural Selections
This Sabbath, the 14th day of Tevet, 5742, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Genesis 47:28-50:26. Prophetical portion, I Kings 2:1-12.
Candlelighting, Friday, Jan. 8, 4:59 p.m.
VOL. LXXX, No. 19
Page Four
Friday, January 8, 1982
RESPONSIVE PEOPLEHOOD
All of the responsibilities of the year that has
just ended are renewed as the calendar changes.
The duties that involve human considerations
are unchanging. For the Jewish people, under
pending conditions, the obligations assume
greater proportions.
There is an annual demand for unity in
peoplehood, and it becomes more evident with
time. The philanthropic needs make greater
demands at this time, and in a period when the
economy is less stable the urgency to assure
protection for existing institutions and for the
major causes always in need of assistance is
apparent.
These considerations are especially evident
at this time, as the machinery for the Allied
Jewish Campaign gets into operation. The
needs are immense on the home front. The
domestic duties are most pressing. There are
the national agencies to be supported, and there
are the obligations to Israel, whose hands must
be upheld in time of crisis.
_ This states the situation very simply. In
summary, it is urgent that the educational aims
should not be reduced, that the care for incom-
ing migrants should be continued, that the aged
should not be forgotten.
If the critical times have any meaning, then
the civic-protective movements, the defense
agencies, must be kept in view. These tasks
apply to the national as well as the local scene.
Need it be repeated that the duty to keep
Israel protected is paramount? There are the
social needs in Israel, for the struggling in the
population and the newcomers. The progressive
educational system in the Jewish state, the uni-
versities, must not be abandoned.
Providing for these needs, Israel will be able
more easily to provide for herself militarily.
These are the factors to keep in view during
the Allied Jewish Campaign Sabbath, when a
score of synagogues will dedicate the Friday
night and Sabbath morning services as the AJ-
Campaign Sabbath. They are matters to be
treated as uppermost in Jewry's needs when
Super Sunday is observed on Jan. 17.
This must be treated as a major duty resting
upon every identified Jewish citizen, during the
special days set aside as Allied Jewish Cam-
paign dates and during the entire year when the
services of all Jews are needed to solidify the
forces as an assurance that obligations will be
met.
The duty of assuring success for the current
philanthropic effort must become uppermost for
the entire community.
This is how peoplehood attains respect and
creates dignity and unity so vitally needed for
world Jewry.
THE STACK ED CARDS
Post-Hanuka lessons confirm the emergence
of miracles. Even in the midst of tragedies, it is
miraculous, for example, that Israel emerged
into sovereign statehood, that the nation
survvied in an age and an area of the greatest of
dangers.
As a new year commences, the anticipation is
repetition — recurrence of threats, continuing
dangers, hopeS for miracles in the struggle for
survival in the very process of experiencing the
dangers to the very life of a functioning nation.
Therefore the commencement of a new year
must be treated with realism, 4Pith a recogni-
tion that the dangers have not subsided. Much
more than that: the new year must be recog-
nized as a period during which Israel, world
Jewry and the nations Involved will be witnes-
sing the stacking of cards, the growth into
mountains of dangers to Israel the state and its
citizens.
That which affects the existence of Israel has
its effects on the Jewish people. There is, there-
fore, an urgency that the economic and the de-
fensive, the means for existence, be planned
together.
In the main, however, Israel herself must be
on the alert and must recognize the thickness
into which stacked cards are growing.
The approach of the withdrawal from Sinai
towards the end of April and the resistance to it
by the settlers in communities established there
by Israelis, the results of striving for security on
the Syrian border in the acquired Golan
Heights, the effects of the many operations —
all combine to urge pragmatism in Israel and by
the Israeli officials.
The firmaments are darkening. The friends of
Israel are vanishing. The ranks of the
friendliest among the non-Jewish citizens of Is-
rael are experiencing bitterness that borders
upon hatred for the state in which the Druze
have acquired citizenship. The eroding aspects
of the U.S.-Israel friendship also leads to a de-
mand for caution in confronting the dangers.
Isn't this a time for a unified government in
Israel for abandonment of other conflicts?
Shouldn't the stacking of cards against Israel be
treated with the seriousness required in dealing
with the Arab neighbors, with Arabs within
Israel, with the autonomy proposals, with the
demonstrations against Israel that have incur-
red violence and rejection of the neighborlinea
that is so vital to a nation's existence?
At the moment, aba4doiliment of party differ-
ences, resort to unity and to a coalition that
should assure realistic approaches towards de-
aling with the enemies without and the split
ranks within, must be viewed as an urgency in
the hours of danger. Israel's sovereignty should
not rule out such a proposal from without. It is a
matter so urgent as to be treated with the ut-
most seriousness.
EASY TO HATE?
In the very first days of the New Year, it is
already evident that the old haters are unable to
erase venom.
It's the old story: while PLO re-defines the
aim to destroy Israel, the would-be wiseacres
continue to portray Israel's prime minister as
the villain. Tragically, those who should judge
well from historic lessons fail to see the light.
Even some Jews are misled into the hatred that
has become anti-Began-ism.
Response to Holocaust
,
Post-Auschwitz Catholic'
Indicts Christians' Lethargy
Some 60 photographs in "The Christian Response to the
Holocaust" (Stonehenge Books, Denver) compiled by 'Harry James
Cargas, serve as a massive indictment of the Nazi crimes. They do not
provide comfort for the reader. They are a reminder of the bestialties
— the photos of the tortured, life in the camps, the outraged and the
guilty who performed the crimes.
Cargas describes himself as a post-Auschwitz Catholic. He gives
due credit to the Christians who dared to condemn the outrages, but
they are recorded as few in number. The book assails the rank and file
of Christianity who failed to act during the critical and murderous
years.
Silence is condemned by the author. He traces the history of
discriminations by Christians and brands the guilty.
Then comes his indictment of the indifferent during Nazism and
he advocates recognition of the manner in which prejudices were
inflicted, advocating "reconciliation" with Jews, toward which he
makes 14 proposals:
"The Catholic Church should excommunicate Adolf Hitler.
"The Christian liturgical calendar(s) should include an annual
memorial service for Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
"We Christians must publicly and officially admit the errors of
our teachers where they were wrong concerning Jews.
"The Christian Church must insist on the essential Jewishness of
Christianity.
"Jesus should be recognized as a link between Jews and Chris-
tians.
"The church's teachings on the subject of evil need to be re-
evaluated.
"Traditional Christian theologies of history must be re-
examined.
"The Vatican historical archives for the 20th Century need to be
opened to historians.
"Chairs of Judaic studies ought to be established at more Chris-
tian colleges and universities.
"We might look to see if a redefinition of the notion of inspiration
in Christian scripture is appropriate.
"Christians must find new terminology for what we now desig-
nate as the Old Testament and the New Testament.
. "Catholics must demand an encyclical letter which deals specifi-
cally with the sins of anti-Judaism and with the sins of Christians in
their actions toward Jews.
"The heavy Christian emphasis on missionizing should be
rected toward perfecting individual Christian lives.
"We Christians need to get on our knees and repent our sins
against Jewish people."
An introduction to Cargas' confessionals is especially damning.
In it, Elie Wiesel also lists the guilty, shows how Poles, Ukrainians
and others collaborated with the Nazis and added to the agonies
suffered by Jews on Hitler's orders.
Cargas' is a revealing work. It calls attention to the indifference
in Christian ranks. Obviating it was a necessity in reducing the
sufferings and possibly rescuing millions from the terror.
The current situation in Poland serves as an additional reminder
of Auschwitz and Treblinka. The volume becomes commemorative of
the spirit of the concerned who resisted the barbarism, just as it
condemns the brutalities of the mass murderers.