THE JEWISH NEWS CUSPS 275-5201 Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951 Copyright The Jewish News Publishing Co. Member of American Association of English-Jewish Newspapers, National Editorial Association and National Newspaper Association and its Capital Club. Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite 865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 Postmaster: Send address changes to The Jewish News, 17515 W. Nine Mile, Suite-865, Southfield, Mich. 48075 Second-Class Postage Paid at Southfield, Michigan and Additional Mailing Offices. Subscription $15 a year. CARMI M. SLOMOVITZ PHILIP SLOMOVITZ Business Manager Editor and Publisher ALAN HITSKY News Editor HEIDI PRESS Associate News Editor DREW LIEBERWITZ Advertising Manager Sabbath Scriptural Selections This Sabbath, the 27th day of Shevat, 5742, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues: Pentateuchal portion, Exodus 21:1-24:18, 30:11-16. Prophetical portion, II Kings 12:1-17. Tuesday and Wednesday, Rosh Hodesh Adar, Numbers 28:1-15. Candlelighting, Friday, Feb. 19, 5:52 p.m. VOL. LXXX, No. 25 Page Four Friday, February 19, 1982 A Challenged Generation THE CURRENT DILEMMA A generation of American Jews who have come of age, who have reached a stage of eco- nomic, political and social freedom, now faces most serious challenges. It is confronted by threats from increasing assimilation, mixed marriages, declining cul- tural standards and diffused leadership. Rabbi Max Weine, responding to the pres- sures of the time, yielding to the compulsion to test the issues that affect this generation of American Jews, takes into account the many realities which emerge as problems demanding serious consideration. His "Fifty Years in Retrospect" is an account- ing of experiences which lead up to current ex- periences that are filled with agonized demands for solutions, if the status of American Jewry is to regain the cultural aspirations vital to com- mendable existence. While he views the situation with great con- cern, Rabbi Weine retains an optimistic atti- tude towards solutions which should lead to genuine heights in treating the Jewish legacies with dignity. The negatives that are outlined by him can not be ignored. As the rabbinic authority selected to teach aspiring converts to Judaism he knows and understands the problems created by an in- creasing rate of intermarriage. As a rabbi whose roots are in the highest cultural aspira- tions he has tested all the other issues at stake. Even in his criticism of leadership his ap- proaches render an immense service for all who wish to confront the future with realism. His retrospective analyses offer food for thought, material for study, -challenges de- manding serious consideration of the status of Jewry in this critical period in history. QTZ1 the deals: "The question of which Senators were Jewish was discussed. And in one of the final sessions, a representative of a major corporation rose and told his Business Roundtable colleagues, The children of Israel will stub their toes on this one.' Hunt, however, denies that anti-Semitic comments were made. 'There was not one com- ment made about Jews,' he said. 'I have a lot of respect for the little people.' " This, as indicated, is very, very minor com- pared with the massive pressures and involve- ments. The shock is that the White House should have been a factor in the deals, that some Sena- tors should have yielded to the pressures, even if reluctantly. Considering the campaign still carried on by the Saudis against the Camp David decisions, and the manner in which Saudis glory in the assassination of Anwar Sadat, some calling it an "execution," the basis for concern over the existing situation affecting the Middle East is growing more distressing. REALISM ABOUT UN Cartoonists are a power in the media. They often irritate with sarcasm, more often they ex- pose with realism, as in the case of Larry Wright's Miami News punch line. He chronicled the world's ills confronting the UN: "The Russians Are Occupying Afghanistan, the Polish People Are Suffering Under Martial Law, Civilians Have Been Slaughtered by Gov- ernment Troops in El Salvador, Members of the Bahai Faith Are Being Systematically Exe- cuted by the Iranians, and Fidel Castro Is In- volved in Running Drugs and Exporting Revo- lution. Does anyone have a suggestion?" From the opposite end, portrayed in the car- toon, is a voice: "I move we condemn Israel!" ANNUMMNII4 History of Bund Traced; Translators Are Critical POTENTIAL ASSASSINS Accompanying Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger on his trip to Saudi Arabia, New York Times correspondent Richard Halloran has occasion to interview Saudi Arabians in Bahrain. One of them, unidentified, made a comment not to be ignored. Quoting Halloran's report: "After one conversation, a senior information official was asked whether anything good at all had come from the Camp David effort. 'Only the death of Sadat,' he replied." This shock would be easier to absorb had it not been for renewed and continuing revela- tions that the campaign that had been con- ducted for approval of the AWACS sale to Saudi Arabia was conducted on a massive scale under pressure from industrialists and big business with a resort to blackmail and marked by an anti-Semitic un-American trend. Most revealing of the exposing facts indicat- ing the pressures upon firms seeking Saudi dol- lars in exchange for action to influence votes in support of the Saudi demands for the AWACS is the series in the New Republic in which Ste- ven Emerson, former member of the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declares that "the best-kept secret of the sale of AWACS reconaissance planes to Saudi Arabia is that it was saved from defeat in the U.S. Senate by a massive and unprecedented corporate lobbying campaign." The facts and figures exposed by Emerson are staggering. Hundreds of millions of dollars in business deals were involved, with American firms threatened to lose Saudi business unless they acted to line up votes. Was there also anti-Semitism involved in the propaganda conducted against Israel? Here is one comparatively minor incident reported by Emerson with respect to the role of Steven Hunt, director of government relations for N.L. ,Industries, one of the major firms involved in ak• Effects of Socialism on Jewish experiences, the migration trends and the extremism that was introduced by the Marxists were vital in Jewish life in the first decades of this century. Playing a major role in these aspects of social and political thinking was the Bund. Its history and the attitudes of the founders are importantly introduced in a volume that must be regarded as of historic significance in dealing with these matters. "A Socialist Perspective on Jews, America and Immigration" (Ktav) assumes significance thanks to two able trans- lators of the descriptive texts from the Yiddish. The introduction to this small (109 pages) but impressive volume is in its contents as well as the translated documents dealing with the history and philosophy of the Bund. The authoritative translators from the Yiddish are Profs. Uri D. Herscher and Stanley F. Chyet, both of the history department of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Los Angeles. They define the Bund: "The Jewish Bund — a composite of different East European Jewish Socialist bodies organized in 1897 as the General Jewish Workers Bund (or League) in Lithuania, Poland and Russia — consti- tuted a major bloc in the Russian delegation to the International Socialist Congress held at Paris in 1900." The texts Herscher and Chyet translated provide the devinitive on the Socialist thinking of the founders. Primary in thd contents of this volume are the writings in Yid- dish on Boris Markovitch Frumkin, pen name of B. Gornberg, and Shimon Ginzburg, pen name of Yevgeni Gieser. About Frumkin's views, the translators say, "His view of Ameri- can economic life was wholly ideological; capitalism in the United States was virtually without a redeeming feature, and labor spokes- men given toy less censorious anti-capitalist outlook than his own had scarcely more to recommend them. He had only scorn for the likes of Hi (Morris) Hillquit and (Samuel) Gompers. The success they had known in establishing the basis for a muscular American labor movement counted for little against their ideological failure . . ." The same views were shared by Ginzburg (Gieser). The Frumkin-Ginzburg reports were submitted to the Interna- tional Socialist Congress in 1907. Special attention is given in Socialist movements to matters dealing with immigration and emigration. The resolution adopted by the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart in 1907 began with the statement: _ "The Congress declares: "Immigration and emigration of workers are phenomena closely bound up with the essence of capitalism, exactly as are unemploy- ment, overproduction and the underconsumption of labor. They are often a means of reducing the worker's share in the fruits of his labor, and are at times abnormally increased by political, religic - - nd national persecutions. "The Congress cannot agree that any political or economic exclu- sion laws whatsoever are a valid means of dealing with the dangers to the workers which might ensue from immigration and emigration." It is indicated that these Bundist founders seemed to have no interest in the developing interests of Jews who migrated to the U.S., in the Yiddish theater or any other cultural aspect. Thus it was the idealism generated by Socialist and the Marxist views in capitalism that was primary in their thinking and actions. Of interest is the indication of a mutuality by Frumkin and Ginzburg with Werner Sombart, the German Social Democrat and future Nazi sympathizer. They were alike in their views as to how little the American labor movement was attracted to Socialism. Charts showing the immieation statistics for the years 1880 to 1905 appear as appendices to this volume and add to its importance.