4 Friday, March 16, 1984 1,HE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS THE JEWISH NEWS Serving Detroit's Metropolitan Jewish Community with distinction for four decades. Editorial and Sales offices at 17515 West Nine Mile Road, Suite 865 Southfield, Michigan 48075-4491 TELEPHONE 424-8833 PUBLISHER: Charles A. Buerger EDITOR EMERITUS: Philip Slomovitz EDITOR: Gary Rosenblatt BUSINESS MANAGER: Carmi M. Slomovitz ART DIRECTOR: Kim Muller-Thym NEWS EDITOR: Alan Hitsky LOCAL NEWS EDITOR: Heidi Press OFFICE STAFF: Marlene Miller Dharlene Norris Tedd Schneider Phyllis Tyner Pauline Weiss Ellen Wolfe ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES: Drew Lieberwitz Rick Nessel Danny Raskin Seymour Schwartz PRODUCTION: Donald Cheshure Cathy Ciccone Curtis Deloye Ralph Orme © 1984 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520) Second Class postage paid at Southfield, Michigan and additional mailing offices. Subscription $18 a year. CANDLELIGHTING AT 6:20 P.M. VOL. LXXXV. NO. 3 A De-Pressing Trend There has always been a potential for conflict between a community • Jewish newspaper and a local federation of Jewish charities, but until recently such differences were generally more ideological than financial. Now, with the news this week that the Jewish Federation Council of Los Angeles will publish its Jewish Community Bulletin on a weekly basis rather than twice a month, there have been bitter complaints from the two privately-owned newspapers in Los Angeles that the federation is trying to wipe them out and control the news. More than half of the country's 125 or so Jewish newspapers are now published either directly by federations or are heavily subsidized by them. This trend is disturbing to advocates of a free and open Jewish press in America who worry about the one-sided and narrow coverage of news presented in many federation newspapers. In Los Angeles, Rabbi Yale Butler, executive editor of the independent Bnai Brith Messenger, asserted that "There is a concerted attempt to crush and destroy the independent Jewish press. You are getting a Big Brother concept, the idea that there shall be only one voice in the Jewish community, which comes from the public relations people of the federation." Jerome Lippman, president of the American Jewish Press Association, said: "Los Angeles is the battleground now, but it is a national battle." Lippman's own Long Island Jewish World is locked in a fierce battle for advertising revenue with the federation-supported Jewish Week of New York. He and other critics charge that federation newspapers are intended to maximize contributions, and that they ignore the flaws of large contributors or constituent agencies as well as suppress critical reporting about Israel and controversies within the American Jewish community. Of course, the issue here is not all black and white, and the fact is that there are as many high-quality federation-controlled newspapers as there are sub-standard independents. But the notion of a federation expanding its house organ to compete directly with an existing independent newspaper — and with the added advantage of large subsidies and a built-in mailing list of every campaign contributor — is disturbing and ultimately dangerous. When will federations learn that a subsidy cannot buy credibility? When will they understand that if would-be journalists become cheerleaders for a cause, no matter how noble, they cease being journalists? The fact remains that a community's interests can only be served when it is fully informed. It is altogether fitting to note then, in light of the sale this week of The Jewish News, that this .newspaper has been and will continue to be an independent voice — dedicated to its original ideals of pursuing the truth and serving the Jewish community. For only in pursuing the truth can the community truly be served. Reckless Patriotism Take into account an episode like this: In a school in . . . let's label it Capitol City USA . . . the teacher calls the class to order with a command to pray. In the process, John and Christina do not do it silently. They implore the names of the founding fathers of Christianity. Whereupon Isaac the Jew acts as Defender of the Faith and walks out, contrary to school regulations. Thereupon, several in the class accompany the Jewish lad's exit with slurs, "The Jew . . . the Jew . . .! This is not totally imaginary. There is a similarity in it to what had occurred in the past when permission was either granted or authority was assumed for a democratically-socialized environment to be turned into a church, and it might also have been a mosque or a synagogue. The New York Times labeled the President's religious fervor as recklessness. It stated in an editorial entitled "Divided in Prayer": "America is a religious nation. But one great mark of its religiosity has always been its tolerance of, indeed insistence on diversity. The instrument of that tolerance has been the firm distinction between matters of state and matters of conscience. Contending Protestant sects have all flourished in the United States. So have Catholics, Jews, Moslems, all believers and, to a remarkable extent, also non-believers. How these groups have refrained from imposing their faiths on each other, and have been constitutionally restrained whenever they lost their restraint, have made America the envy of every other society .. . "The Supreme Court has been the faithful custodian of this essential freedom. In the often difficult effort to find the line between state and faith, it has rightly prevented the government-paid schoolmaster from pressing children who are conscripted to attend classesto pray or read the Bible there. For Congress to stand by the principle in no way demeans religious practice anywhere else. "President Reagan has been reckless in arguing otherwise, probably only for political gain. He of course has every citizen's First Amendment right to speak and to pray. But as head of government, he is sworn to be neutral concerning religion. He should not be sermonizing on this and other issues in language that exalts Protestant faiths over others. And he should not be irresponsibly confusing the difference between pushing religion at impresionable children and having adults pray or otherwise register a religious deference in some public forums. U.S. Senator Lowell P. Weicker, who is writing his name into history as a leader in the Jefferson-Madisonian ranks as a defender of the Separation ideal, expressed concern that the oncoming national election may be decided on the basis of religious disputations. Anne Frank's 'Tales' "Anne Frank's Diary" remains a symbol of the inerasable memories of the great tragedy that is engraved in history as the Holocaust. The story of the young girl who had recorded the agonies of hiding, in an Amsterdam attic with her family, from Nazis who are searching for Jews to be sent to death camps, remains memorable. On stage and screen, the story is being retold and remains one of the great documentaries of the Hit- ler era. Her "Diary" was not the only le- gacy she left. Anne was writing essays, stories, impressions of the bitter world around her. She incorporated it into a ledger into which she rewrote the pieces to suit her emotions. Her father, Otto Frank, made them available for post- erity and they are now available in the new Doubleday edi- tion "Anne Frank's Tales From the Secret Annex." The deeply mov- ing stories and essays in this new book were written at the same time as the "Diary" that gained fame worldwide and was translated into nearly every langauge in the Western world. In a translation by Ralph Man- heim and Michel Mok, the new edition is a complete collection and contains the works that first appeared in Dutch. The sentimentality, the im- pressionistic quality of the writings, the effect the outside and threatening world had on the young author is so deeply moving in the contents of this book. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the publishers should have placed spe- cial emphasis on this quotation from her essay entitled "Fear" to indicate the maturity of a youth and the horror of the time and the conditions under which she wrote: It 'was a terrible time through which I was living. The war raged about us, and nobody.knew whether or not he would be alive the next hour .. . By day the sound of cannon and rifle shots was almost continuous, and the nights were mysteriously filled with sparks and sudden explosions that seemed to come from some unknown depth. "I cannot describe it; I don't re- member that tumult quite clearly, but I do know that all day long I was in the grip of fear."