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THE JEWISH NEWS (USPS
275 020
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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
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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 16th day of Elul, 5742, the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:
Pentateuchal portion, Deuteronomy 26:1-29:8. Prophetical portion, Isaiah 60:1-22.
Candlelighting, Friday, Sept. 3, 7:43 p.m.
VOL. LXXXII, No. 1
Page Four
Friday.
- Sept. 3, 1982
DISCIPLINED RECKONING
An approach to a new year inevitably calls for
an accounting of events that happened and
things to come. Especially in the instance of a
spiritual period, emphasized by Days of Awe,
there is a compulsion to a reckoning in quest of
elimination of the unpleasant and planning for
the realistic and such actions as will obviate
painful errors.
This is a time to mobilize for a collective
strength that will provide the inner feeling for
individuals that in communicating with fellow
citizens, in striving for mutual understanding,
there will be an aim to have truth predominate,
people of good will striving to prevent any injec-
tion of bias that leads to destruction and bitter-
ness.
These are not idle words, at a time when
people's judgments are gauged by the media,
when the universe has been reduced to such
proximities that distance no longer counts, that
people in Iran and Lebanon are as accessible to
Detroit as if they were in Dearborn.
Such proximity is fully recognizable. Yet the
hope for One World remains a mere symbol in-
applicable to human approaches. There is the
divisiveness that enflames prejudices and
fences keep appearing wherever there are
human beings who must be good neighbors. The
very proximity of human to human is to invite
destruction.
Such are the conditions which transport the •
hatreds from neighborhood to neighborhood,
from continent to continent. Out of it all
emerges the great fear, the basis of a panic that
affects the pleaders for amity and peace.
How are these conditions to be confronted
when they strike at so many doors, no matter
how distant the cause for horror? It is the Big
Lie that causes the Big Fear, and the lie is the
one that had birth under a terrorism which was
guided by the advice that the lie, often repeated,
has_a chance of being accepted as truth.
The duty, therefore, is to the inevitable truth,
toward the exposure of the lie, with an aim
towards establishing facts so that spewing of
hatreds should be impermissible in human
ranks.
That which divides the world has reached
many communities. That is why there is so
much talk about the weakness of public rela-
tions programming, the failures in the efforts to
arouse public opinion to an understanding of
the basics of pragmatism and the urgency of
people reaching understanding without waving
flags of dispute, bigotry and hatred.
Too many evidences of bias have intruded on
the Jewish scene, on the American environ-
ment, on world public opinion that is guided by
the media. Therefore the justification of appeals
for better public relations, for an educative way
of life that will not make an entire world func-
■ •41X1
tion, in a critical period like the present, as if
mankind were reviving mediavalism.
There is a duty to lead the world, hopefully
also through the media, towards the paths of
truth. To that end it is necessary for the Jew, as
the chief scapegoat in the current crisis, to be
Midrash stems from the Hebrew word darash. It means search-
among the leaders in such efforts and for his
ing, investigating.
neighbor, Christian or even Moslem, to contrib-
Dr. Henry L. Feingold, professor of history at Baruch College of
ute towards an understanding of the facts.
the City University of- New York, who is also associated with the
Especially urgent, therefore, is the mobiliza-
Institute for Advanced Studies of the Humanities at the Jewish
tion of the best minds to guide communities and
Theological Seminary, is a masterful adherent to the principles of
individuals towards knowledgeability. The Big
research in a remarkable book, "A Midrash on American Jewish
History" (University of New York Press, Albany).
Lie must be confronted.. Several prominent
Prof. Feingold renders an immense service for the student of
Christians sounded their voices to that end in
history and the chief institutions which make up the total American
these columns. Jewish leadership has a deter-
Jewish community.
mination to assure such a mobilization. There
His Midrash goes to the root of all the Jewish ideological con-
remains the need for proper confronting of the
cepts, taking into account the Orthodox, Reform and Conservative
spreaders of hatred so that the Big Lie should
agencies. They are detailed with such clarity that his studies provide
not become the guideline for the masses who the proper approaches to an understanding of Jewish devotional con-
listen to talk shows and are led to the paths of cepts, to the roots of the movements, their differing attitudes, the
bigotry.
ideals which motivate Jewish life.
If WXYZ programming is loaded with talk
In the process of his deep-rooted studies he takes into account the
influence of Zionist guidelines, as well as the changes that have taken
shows on which spewing of hatred is permissi-
ble, there must be a preparedness to face up to- place in the movement.
It will be well for Zionists to take into account this comment in
them and to be ready with -responses.
this
splendid
Midrash:
When editorial writers show their bias, the
"An outstanding difference between the Conservative movement
concerned must respond.
and the other two wings developed originally over the question of
When efforts are made to divide people on Zionism. We have noted that the original classic Reform position was
racial bases, leadership in contending ranks anti-Zionist. (That' has not been true for a long time. Today the
must be activated to prevent separateness that Reform branch maintains a full program for its students and adhe-
spells anguish in true Americanism.
rents in Israel.) Anti-Zionism also prevailed in the Orthodox wing.
- Does American Jewry have proper leadership
"Adherents of ultra-Orthodoxy associated with Agudath Israel
to create a proper vigilance to refute the de- • continue to believe that Zionism and the state of Israel are abomina-
structive in the media?
tions. However, that view has become a minority view in the obser-
Are there too many vested interests in civic vant community. In fact, a disproportionately high number of the
protective ranks which prevent u _ nified action small trickle of olim (immigrants to Israel) from America are Or-
thodox Jews.
in time of crisis?
"But the most comfortable home for Zionism in America, espe-
Is the Jewish community strong and firm in cially
cultural manifestations, has been the Conservative move-
the confrontation with the inhuman and un- ment. its
If one considers the commonality of Jewish people-hood,
civilized whose aim is to destroy good will?
Zionism is in a sense a kind of secular equivalent of Conservatism.
This is a time for mobilization, for truth and `Catholic Israel' and Jewish peoplehood, which is contained in Zionist
action in the proper and desirable direction. It ideology, are opposite sides of the same coin. It is thus no accident that
dare not be delayed.
American Zionism did not receive initial legitimation until Solomon
Feingold Midrash Enriches
Jewish History Studies
UGLY IND ICTMENTS
With all due respect to journalistic desires to
be evenhanded and to uncover all facts relating
to world occurrences, as well as to the obligation
of free peoples to speak out on all issues and to
have their views known, the manner in which
exaggerations are being multiplied, as they
were in Monday's Detroit Free Press.
What the Free Press did, and what some other
newspapers do likewise, in an effort to resort to
indictments of Israel, without ascertaining the
facts, represents an ugliness unmatched any-
where except for an echoing of what had been
presented in the Stuermer-Nazi days.
The portrayal of Israel as a mass murderer
represents a submission to the basest of Arab
propaganda, failing to indicate that Israel's
ousting of the PLO from Lebanon spelled libera-
tion of that country from a seven-year-long
brutal occupation of that land.
President-elect Bashir Gameyel would have
been the first to condemn Israel's leadership in
freeing his country. He and the Christian as
well as many Moslem Lebanese leaders did not,
could not, subscribe to the indictments that are
assuming a gutter-like anti-Israel campaign.
Newspapers resorting to the type of journalism
protested here could have waited for the true
facts rather than utilize photographs displaying
such an outrageous one-sidedness that there is
cause_ for resentment. It is inexcusable.
Schechter gave strong support to the kind of redemption it held out for
secular Jews."
Dr. Feingold adds that "American Zionism is today no longer the
lodestar for American Jewry that it once was," because "it may have
reached its middle age and thus loses its popular drawing power."
These views as well as those relating to the major religious
movements are not treated supercritically but as means of attaining
an understanding of changes that were inevitable since Zionism has
attained its goals in statehood.
Perhaps the secularists will find special comfort in the Feingold
studies when he states: ". . . for those willing to see, something new is
coming to life in American Jewry, too: secular, highly individuated,
superbly educated persons, who relate to their Jewishness by sensing
that they are members of the Jewish people and that this people
possesses a special elan which differentiates them from others.'
"A Midrash on American Jewish History" requires extensive
study, something that cannot be provided in a mere book review. This
Midrash could well serve as a textbook.
Dr. Feingold enriches the literature devoted to such studies with
his excitingly-challenging Midrash.