, THE JEWISH NEWS

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Incorporating The Detroit Jewish Chronicle commencing with the issue of July 20, 1951

Copyright r The Jewish News Publishing Co.

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Published every Friday by The Jewish News Publishing Co., 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 20th day of Av, 5743,
the following scriptural selections will be read in our synagogues:

Pentateuchal portion, Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25.
Prophetical portion, Isaiah 49:14-51:3.

Candlelighting, Friday, July 29, 8:35 p.m.

VOL. LXXXIII, No. , 22

Page Four

Friday, July 29, 1983

DEMOCRACY AT WORK

An interesting incident in Israel emerges
as a matter of great importance. The head of he
Neturei Karta in Jerusalem, Rabbi Moshe
Hirsh, who is an American citizen, is being held
in custody for allegedly inciting a riot. A de-
mand has been made that he be deported. The
head of Israel's National Religious Party, Dr.
Yosef Burg, has rejected that proposal. He holds
to the view that every Jew has a right to live in
the Jewish state and he applies to the Neturei
Karta chieftain the same principle he practiced
in the case of the gambler, the late Meyer
Lansky, who gained the right to domicile in
Israel. While the privilege granted Lansky was
on a temporary basis, it was repetitive, al-
though he remained under police watch.
What the Hirsh case indicates is that, al-
though Neturei Karta is one of the most de-
structive elements in Israel, there is a demo-
cratic code which states that even the vilest
elements have a right to life and liberty as long
as police can watch them to prevent the most

malicious acts.
Yet, even in the most malicious incidents,
Israel's basic democratic principles remain in
effect. Israeli critics of the government, some of
them having gone as far as to endorse the PLO,
have traveled freely, from Israel to the United
States and back to Jerusalem, preaching de-
structiveness here and there.
Attorneys motivated by malice who repre-
sent PLO factions in Israel have also traveled to
the U.S. and are benefiting from their govern-
ment's idealism of permitting them to preach
what they want when they wish — on the basis
of upholding the democratic ideal.
That's how it works in Israel, yet there are
those who are politicizing cirticism and thereby
harming Israel. Where such harm is rendered,
the fact about the democratic realism should be
emphasized.
The destructive elements are at work, and
Israel's defenders are under challenge. The lat-
ter must not weaken.

HATRED ROOTED IN LIES

Hatred has no limits. The hoary head of
bigotry and anti-Semitism keeps cropping up,
even from the ashes of the crematoria.
In Moringen, Germany, the town archivist
wrote in an official chronicle the claim that
Jews provoked the Krystallnacht horror of No-
vember 1938. He called it "Jewish provocation."
It is no wonder that it aroused the outrage
of Heinz Galinsky, chairman of the Jewish
community of West Berlin.
This shocking occurrence is part of the
campaign by a few demented people who have
no idea about human decency and who even
pollute the mass graves of the millions who
were murdered by the Nazis after torturing

them as the creators of the Holocaust.

It is no wonder that Galinsky should be
equating an archiver's insane acts with the rise
of anti-Semitism in Germany where only a
handful, some 25,000 Jews, remain.

The condemnation of the new act of insan-
ity, especially about the destruction of Ger-
many's synagogues on the Night of Glass, de-
mands strongest official repudiation. The curse
is more Germany's than world Jewry. The re-
sponsibility is on all peoples — to condemn the
outrageous defamations in relation to the Nazi
horrors so that the lies will never again be re-
peated.

A BITTER FACT OF LIFE

Dr. David Dodge may have a very dramatic
tale to relate about his abduction in Beirut a
year ago. The former acting head of the Ameri-
gan University in Beirut has the blessings of all
Americans on his release from a captivity that
has ended in his safety from attack.

The incident arouses an interest in the
status of the American University that was
under his direction. For many years, even
longer than Israel's sovereignty as the reborn
Jewish state, the Beirut university was the nest
for enemies of Zionism. In spite of the fact that
the Maronites in Lebanon were always Israel's
friends, the American University faculty was in
the main in alliance with the enemies of Israel.
From that source emerged direction for anti-
Israelism.
Perhaps, when the threatened position of
Dr. Dodge while he was in captivity becomes
fully known, there will also be a proper explana-
tion for the manner in which American-
sponsored academicians served as antagonists
to Zionists and Israelis and therefore also to
Jews.

This is a bitter fact of life.
Will the new developments in Lebanon,
with the obligations to assure American dedica-
tion to efforts to assure Lebanese sovereignty
correct an earlier uglier situation? Once again,
it is in the destiny of time.

HOLOCAUST CENTER
This community's Holocaust Memorial
Center is nearing completion. The aim of per-
petuating the-memory of the victims of Nazism
in the spirit of the determination that "Never
Again" will be the resort to such barbarities
being tolerated is nearing realization.
Detroit may serve as an example in aiming
for the type of memorial that will be both a
declaration of faith as well as the means of keep-
ing alive the knowledge of what had occurred by
teaching it as a guide for the prevention of
cruelties.
The dream of a few is emerging as a reality
for the many in the establishment of such a
Holocaust Memorial Center, and therefore
commits the entire community to its existence.

-

Sephardic Songs and Proverbs

Ladino-Judezmo Revival
Status in Definitive Essay

A poetic revivalism is provided in a small book of only 20 pages
whose contents nevertheless provide the basic information regarding
the Ladino treasures. In it, under the title "Many Hands," Stephen
Levy has incorporated Sephardic songs and proverbs. This Firefly
Press product is especially valuable for the background analysis in
both Judezmo (Ladino) and English, with transliterations.
Ladino-Judezmo has a declining role in current Jewish history.
Like Yiddish, whose adherents may now be inspiring a renewed
interest in the language, the Spanish-Jewish dialect is commencing a
come-back through the inspiration of admiring, scholarly students.
Thus, the introduction by Levy is a valuable chapter in Jewish
linguistic records:
"The Sephardim advanced the rich tradition of Judezmo ballads
(called romansas), proverbs (riflanes), folktales (konsezas), and reli-
gious and secular songs (piyutim, pizmonim, kantigas) that they
brought over from Spain, with each succeeding post-expulsion gener-
ation making its own contributions to the repertoire."
Here is an example of the poetic songs incorporated in "Many
Hands":

Don't Anyone Tell Me

Don't anyone tell me how well-off I am —
in my father's house I had it better.
Around my father's house I planted large
and flowery lemon trees in the month of Adar.

Don't anyone tell me how well-off I am—
in my father's house I had it better.
In my father's house I dressed up, put on shoes,
in my husband's house I make babies and raise them.

This text is, of course, accompanied by the Ladino original.
Of major significance is the descriptive introduction by Levy in
which he defines Ladino and traces its historical development. He
states in part:
"Judezmo — these days often called `Ladino,' Judeo-Spanish' or
`Spanyol' — is the traditional language of Eastern Sephardic Jewry.
(The word also means `Yidishkayt,' Judaism in its broadest sense.)
Born in medieval Spain (or Sepharad) as a fusion of Hispanic,
Hebrew-Aramaic and Arabic elements, Judezmo was retained in the
lands of the Ottoman Empire and in parts of North Africa by the Jews
banished from Spain in 1492.
"In their new homes, the Sephardim of what are present-day
Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Romania, Israel and Morocco
persisted in speaking their old language — the Moroccan Sephardim
calling it xaketia — into which they gradually absorbed linguistic
elements from their non-Jewish neighbors: Turks, Greeks and, to a
lesser extent, Bulgarians, Serbs, Croats, Austrians, Romanians and
Armenians in the Ottoman lands, Arabs and Berbers in North Africa.
"Commercial dealings and, from the mid-19th into the 20th Cen-
tury, secular education put the Eastern Sephardim in contact with
French and Italian. The massive impact these two languages had on
Judezmo is still very much evident in the Judezmo spoken by Sephar-
dim in Turkey and the Balkans, and by Sephardic immigrants in
Israel and the United States.
"More recently, the Sephardim in the latter two countries have
even begun to incorporate Israeli Hebrew, English and Yiddish ex-
pressions in their everyday Judezmo."

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