2 Friday, July 27, 1984

.

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

PURELY COMMENTARY

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

End of Undzer Aygn Vort:
adding to the liurban'
for Yiddish publications

Lovers of Yiddish — and they are legion! — must have
learned with deep regret that another Yiddish language
publication is ending its existence.
Announcement by its editor and publisher, Noah
Siegalovsky, that May 1984 was the literary magazine
Undzer Aygn. Vort's last issue adds to the grief over other,
earlier, defections.
To the editor of Undzer Aygn Vort will always go deep
appreciation for devoted labors to give encouragement to
Jewish writers and to provide a platform for them.
As a matter of fact, the concluding issue was dedicated
to the 100th anniversary of the eminent Yiddish poet,
Mane Leib. A number of his poems accompany the tribute.
Siegalovsky is, however, somewhat of an optimist. He
believes that he may yet be in a position to renew publica-
tion of his • interesting magazine. His co-associate editor,
Detroit educator Wolf Snyder, treats this hope with acclaim
for the labors of his fellow editor and a compliment for his
optimism.
Siegalovsky has an impressive record as writer and
publisher, as an author of scores of short stories, some not so
short and approaching designations as novelettes.
While even a minimal decline in the powers that were
previously enjoyed by Yiddishis a cause for sorrow, interest
• in the language is growing. The importance of the Yiddish
department at Bar-Ilan University, the establishment of a
Yiddish teaching cathedra under the sponsorship of De-
troiters Sarah and Moshe Friedman, lend encouragement
that the language will retain much of its glory.
If glory is to be regained, it must also be applied to
translations which have lent so much importance to the
Yiddish literary treasures. It is too much to expect that the
genius of the late Maurice Samuel, both as author, in-
terpreter and translator, can be duplicated too often.
Nevertheless, translators must be cautious and accurate.
Such blunders as were committed recently in news columns
in which Sholom Aleichem was referred to as Mr. Aleichem
are intolerable.
The most serious efforts exerted for the preservation of
Yiddish should be ascribed to the Forward. While the once-
. leading Yiddish daily in the world was compelled by eco-
nomic and circulation reasons to condense into a weekly, its
new product remains commendable. True — to fortify
zi-Interest in it , it has become bilingual. Under the general
managership of Harold Ostroff, the combined English and
Yiddish sections have emerged as an excellent journalistic
product.
Encouragement to all such efforts lends strength to the
movement to retain for Yiddish the well-earned recogni-
tion for literary and linguistic achievements.

• Addendum to Yiddish:
Israel to the rescue

lifetime devotion to the language and his many essays,
short stories and novelettes. Notably, creative labors, even
when they become linguistically challenging and finan-
cially burdensome, cannot be as they must not be, fully
squelched.

Emerging 'gallows kibitz'

It• may not be overly funny, and could, therefore, be
judged as gallows humor, but there is a recollection of a pun
from earlier decades: it was during a recession in this coun-
try, when it was a bit difficult to secure pledges for the
United Jewish Appeal. The punsters joked of a day to come
when Israelis would conduct philanthropic campaigns to
aid American Jewry.
Now, in some measure, the "eschatological" in philan-
thropy becomes a reality with a contribution from Israel
toward redeeming a collapsing American Yiddish publica-
tion. In its performance, it is not a "gallows kibitz." It is a
reality.

`Muscular Judaism' as vital
as the spiritually Jewish

Simultaneous with the spreading idealism glorifying
the Zionist movement, with its development as a political
aspiration, there was a recognition of the need for
strengthening the. Jew physically. Some of it was the an-
swer to anti-Semitic slurs in universities. Jewish students
found it necessary either to respond to duelling or to issue
challenges for duels to Jew-baiters. Theodor Herzl was
involved in a duel. Sigmund Freud was confronted by it.
As the Zionist ideal gained momentum, there was the
growing awareness of the need to straighten the Jewish
backs' that had bent under many pressures. The craving for
physical improvements became known as Muscular
Judaism. As is constantly being indicated, the philosopher
who was most closely associated with Theodor Herzl in the
founding of the political Zionist movement, Dr. Max Nor-
den; was chiefly responsible for coining the term Muscular
Judaism.
With the participation of many hundreds of young
athletes in the Maccabi Youth Games, which will com-
mence in Detroit on Aug. 19, interest is increased in the
physical aspects of growing Jewish concerns with move-
ments which must be provided Jewish communal interests.
The Detroit-hosted Maccabi Youth Games, like the
preceding games which helped establish a tradition for
such athletic tasks, 'owe their inspiration to the United

States Committee Sports for Israel. The current games are
reminders also of a measure of pioneering in behalf of
Sports for Israel and commence the activity so urgent in
assuring worldwide participation in the 12th Maccabiah
Games — the "Jewish Olympics" — to be held in Israel in
July 1985.
The games in Detroit inspire a call to action for the
1985 events, and the major advocates of Sports for Israel
involvements again take the lead to encourage Detroit
involvements in the movement. The previous support given
this important movement has been limited. Hopefully, the
Detroit events will lead to more supporting leadership.
Joining the national leadership of Sports for Israel in
an appeal for financial aid for the movement and the Mac-
cabiad in Israel in 1985, Max Sheldon calls attention to this
statement made more than a decade ago by Israel's first
Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion:
Jews returning to their homeland and those
born there must ... possess (physical stamina),
just as they must possess spiritual and intellectual
vigor and erudition in science and technology;
our existence in our ancestral home requires
physical might no leas than intellectual excel-
lence.
It is the ideal of a 'muscular Judaism that
appeals on a larger scale to the Michigan Jewish com-
munities. Surely, the response will be firm and positive
both for the Maccabi Youth Games in Detroit and the 12th
Maccabiad in Israel.

Peace on a low level,
when mosquitoes sting
King Hussein of Jordan

There is a measure of peace on the Israel-Jordan bor-
der, when fisheries are affected and there are specific needs
to contend with.
There are numerous cooperative tasks between the two
countries that are nominally at war. But whatever creates
what some newspapers call a "de facto peace" is adminis-
tered on a low level of officialdom.
This became evident when King Hussein of Jordan was
stung by mosquitoes while visiting the Port of Akaba, Re-
portedly, he was displeased to learn that low-level officials
are working with Israelis to eliminate the mosquito nui-
sance from both Akaba and the neighboring Israeli Port of
Eilat.
If only the potentates could learn how to make peace
from low-level officials. They would soon know that 'de
facto" could become "dejure."

Israel-German projects at Weizmann Institute
mark long-term reparations for Holocaust guilt

•

A fascinatingly-exciting lesson for Diaspora Jewry is
provided in thg reaction to the Undzer Aygn Vort pub-
lisher's announcement that he was interrupting publica-
tion of his magazine. Yitzhak Korn, chairman of the World
Bureau for Yiddish which was established on a global scale
to assure continuity of interest in Yiddish and the perpetu-
ation of the language, wrote promptly to Noah Siegalovsky
to express his shock. In his capacity to assure progress for
Yiddish, he could not permit the demise of a magazine that
played a role in advancing Yiddish literary devotions. He
therefore offered help from Israel in the form of a check for
$300 to aid the Undzer Aygn Vort publisher and editor to
continue issuing his magazine. -
So meager a sum from Tel Aviv is a great gesture in
support of a great linguistic need. It may not help rescue a
collapsing magazine, even though it has assumed a position
of creativity for Yiddish. What the Yitzhak Korn appeal for
financial aid, and its appeal for others .to provide similar
help, indicates is that support for Yiddish may come from
Israel. While Hebrew is the language of the land and its
revival is one df the great achievements of the Zionist ideal.
Yiddish is no longer suppressed. There is an Orthodox
element that recognizes only Yiddish, even in Israel. In the
Jewish state there are Yiddish publications, Yiddish theat-
ricals and a strong nostalgia for the language. Israel is,
indeed, coming to the rescue of 'Yiddish.'
In appreciation' for the labors of. Noah Siegalovsky, it
should be noted that his announcement that he may stop
publishing his magazine had caused deep sorrow among
the leading upholders of the treasures imbedded in - Yid-
dish. Detroiter Wolf Snyder spoke of the interruption of
Undzer Aygn Vort as a great loss to general Yiddish cul-
tural efforts. The YiddishAlgemeiner Journal published a
long article in its last issue reviewing Siegalovsky's

.

Impressive cooperation in research projects at the
Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, Con-
ducted by Jewish and German scientists, is assuming great
significance. Recognition of the vastness of programs and
achievements at the Israel science center and an apparent
desire to restore in Germany the pre-Hitler academic re-
spect for Jewish scientists emerge as reasonable judgments
of the new occurrences.
Plans for the broadening of cooperation in scientific
research between Israel and the German Federal Republic
were announced by German Minister of Research and
'Technology Heinze Riesenhuber while in Tel Aviv at the
canclusion of a six-day visit in Israel. Joining in issuing this
important statement was Yuval Ne'eman, the German
spokesman's Israeli counterpart.
The joint statement was made on the occasion of the
observance of the 50th anniversary of the Weizmann Insti-
•
tute. It spotlighted
current joint research efforts, in
biotechnology, geneticengineering, medicine and particle
physics. They also discussed the financing of symposiums,
university chairs and academic exchanges.
Extension of bilateral cooperation to the areas of com-
puter and space science were also discussed by Riesenhuber
and Ne'eman.
Such commendable research planning in behalf of two
nations should be treated as normalcy among civilized
peoples, and henceforth it is to be assumed that such will be
the continuing new situation in an atmosphere of justice
and mutual respect. Therefore, why even consider that
what has developed is a measure of reparation approaching
an academic apology? An explanation is provided in an
important atonement-sounding article by Rosemarie Stein,
in ; the German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine
Zeitung. It was republished in an English translation in the
German Tribune of Hamburg under the title "Mediocrity, a
legacy of the Jewish exodus."

These are the revealing admissions of guilt, if such a
designation can be applied to the Rosemarie Stein article,
which declares:
.The mediocrity of intellectual and scientific
life in the Federal Republic is much-lamented. We
are gradually tending to forget one of the reasons
for it.
It, is the expulsion of the Jews during the
Third Reich, an intellectual community who
made a major contribution toward artistic life in
Germany.
Since their exodus, wit and acumen, percep-
tive thought and delight in discussion have been
scarce commodities in Germany.
"The expulsion of the .Jews from German in-
tellectual life marked a revocation of much of the
Enlightenment," Friedrich Cramer, from Got-
tingen, said at the German ceremony to mark the
50th anniversary, of the establishment of the
Weizmann Institute of Science.
The institute, in Rehovot, Israel, is one of the
world's foremost centers of scientific research.
Cramer said he could imagine no finer objec-
tive for academic life in Germany than to regain
this lost Enlightenment.
He feels the exodus 50 years ago still accounts
for the shortcomings of German research. Shor-
tage of funds, for example, is not to blame.
He recalled' that. no fewer than 25 Nobel
prize-winners were forced to emigrate from Nazi
Germany. The people Germany today lacked
were to be found working as research scientists in
places such as Oxford and Cambridge, Princeton
and Rehovot. -
The Weizmann Institute has specialists in

