Friday, October 26, 1984 67

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

LOCAL NEWS

Histadrut testimonial dinner proceeds
to create Rabbi Hertz youth center in Israel

NEW HOME

BY HEIDI PRESS

Local News Editor

"Israel would have solved all of
its economic problems if we had
received all the royalties from the
Bible," Israel Ambassador to the
U.S. Meir Rosenne jokingly told
more than 200 dinner guests
Wednesday at a testimonial
dinner honoring Rabbi Richard C.
Hertz, rabbi emeritus of Temple
Beth Et:
Speaking at the Sheraton
Southfield Hotel, where members
of Temple Beth El, the clergy and
the community joined to pay trib-
ute to Hertz by establishing the
Rabbi Richard C. Hertz Youth
Center in Safed, Israel, Rosenne
said that "Israel could solve its
economic problems easily in a
matter of 24 hours had we decided
to cut the military strength of Is-
rael." But he said, "a weak Israel
is not only a detriment to the state
of Israel but to the free world."
Rosenne said that Israel's cur-
rent economic crisis came from
what he called mistakes of the

past,- citing the Yom Kippur War,
which cost the country $8 billion,
and the Lebanese invasion, esti-
mated at. $3 billion.
He also attributed Israel's fi-
nancial problems to "one peace,"
that signed with Egypt. He
enumerated the losses suffered by
the agreement with Egypt, among
them oil revenues and airfields,
but added that "one life is more
important than billions of dol-
lars."
Rosenne asked rhetorically,
"What does Israel give in return
to the U.S." for grants and loans.
He answered his own question:
"The U.S. has a reliable democ-
racy n the Mideast. All the
racy
technological data transferred by
Israel concerning Russian
weapon systems, the missiles .. .
SAMs, MiGs . . . all this has saved
the U.S. and the free world bil-
lions of dollars and years of re-
search and development."
On the topic of Mideast peace,

Rosenne said that "if an Arab
state will sit down with us with no
preconditions, we can reach an
agreement." He said, however,
that the problem is that there is
no partner with whom to
negotiate peace.
Two conditions which must be
met for achieving peace, accord-
ing to Rosenne, are that Israel
must be strong, not only militar-
ily but in its "national fabric," and
that the link between Israel and
its friends remains "as strong as
ever."
Eliezer Rafaeli, executive vice
president of the National Com-
mittee for Labor Israel, made the
presentation to Rabbi Hertz. In
his remarks, he lauded the role
Histadrut played in the develop-
ment of the State of Israel.
Rafaeli said that if the Histad-
rut were removed "there is no
kibbutz . . . 25 percent of industry
(high tech) is no more . . . the pride
of achievements of agriculture in

OPINION

Disadvantaged label: mixed blessing

BY IRVING GREENBERG

Special To The Jewish News

What do the following have in
common? Blacks, Puerto Ricans,
Spanish-speaking Americans,
American Indians, Eskimos,
Aleuts and Chasidim.
The answer is that the members
of all the above groups and Asian
Pacific Americana have been
designated by the President or the
Secretary of Commerce to be so-
cially and economically disadvan-
taged people. Thereby hangs a
tale, an instructive lesson, and a
fascinating question for the fu-
ture of American Jews.
Especially since the Great
Society program of the 1960s, the
United States has sought to over-
come poverty by special help to
disadvantaged groups. In the con-
text of the 1960s, many assumed
that unfair exclusion was the
primary cause of poverty and that
such exclusion wsa inflicted by
whites on racial and ethnic
minorities distinguishable in
some way by the color of their
skin. Chasidim were not included
in the initial groups designated as
disadvantaged. The general im-
age, then, even on the part of the
Jewish establishment, was that
Jews were all white and well-to-
do.
In the past decade, Jewish uni-
versalism gave way to a more
realistic awareness of Jewish par-
ticular needs. The Jewish poor
were discovered. However, most
Jews were individual rights and
welfare oriented. Even those who
took advantage of government
help focused on individuals,
families, or adventitious groups
such as the elderly poor and shut-
ins, rather than on the Jews as a
group. Most Jews remain opposed
to quotas and some object to af-

firmative action for the very rea-
son that group membership is the
basis of aid.
There were many poor
Chasidim. However, the more
modern Jews were ignorant of the
Chasidic plight or hostile to their
exclusiveness and religious dif-
ferences. In time, the philan-
thropic acculturated Jews re-
sponded more and more to the
needs of their traditionalist
brethren. Initially, they resisted
the idea of special government
help for Chasidim; eventually,
`mainline' Jews did accept that
need for special help.
Most American Jews consider
the Chasidim to be old-fashioned
and insufficiently acculturated to
America. However, the hasidim
— especially those with able,
imaginative leadership — such as
the Lubavitcher and Satmar
groups and the 'other ultra-
Orthodox — quickly caught on to
the rules of the game in America.
They learned that where they
were concentrated as a group,
they could wield political power
with their voting. Unabashedly
particularist in their social views,
the hasidim had no hangup about
asking for government aid — as a
group or as individuals.
Here they ran into an obstacle.
Administrators — and sometimes
even the law itself — tended to
define need and eligibility for help
to groups or areas marked by4ie-
teriorating housing, broken
families, drugs, high crime, etc.
These features were not char-
acteristic of Chasidic culture de-
spite the presence of poverty, not
did the hasidim have skin of a
different hue. It took years of
political lobbying, with the sup-

port of such mainline Jewish
organizations as the Jewish
Community Relations Council of
New York, until Chasidic Jews
were finally added to the list of
disadvantaged groups.
In the latest regulations from
the Department of Commerce, the
criteria for special help for
businesses owned by disadvan-
taged include persons "subjected
to racial or ethnic prejudice or cul-
tural bias because of their iden-
tity as members of a group with-
out regard to their individual
qualities." (Cultural bias is the
code word for Chasidim.) Evi-
dence of eligibility for help also
includes lower income in the
group (as compared to Americans
in general) on average, and di-
minished capital and credit op-
portunities.
There has been some criticism
of the designation of Chasidim as
disadvantaged. Some social wel-
fare experts argue that the desig-
nation is intended to help groups
with social pathology which the
Chasidim do not have. Some reli-
gious Jews — including some
Chasidim — have deplored the re-
sort to government aid which vio-
lates the generally conservative,
self-help ethic of the Chasidim.
Commerce Department regula-
tions state that the disadvantage
must be "chronic, longstanding
and substantial." Some argue
that hasidim do not suffer con-
tinuing discrimination. The
chairman of the U.S. Human
Rights Commission alleged that
the recognition of Chasidim was a
political pdyoff by the Reagan
Administration to a group
deemed likely to vote conserva-
tive.

Israel would not be . . . 85 percent
of the people of Israel will have no
health care at all . . . there would
be almost no organized care to
those you call senior citizens .. .
110 Amal vocational schools for
youth will be no more . . . we shall
not have the only Afro-Asian In-
stitute, the only training place for
democratic leadership in the
Third World . . . 70 percent of Is-
rael's physical education would be
no more . . . and try to imagine a
country with 500 percent infla-
tion lacking a strong system of
labor . . . the largest system of
Jewish-Arab cooperation would
be no more . . . the only real link to
American labor will be lost."
Rafaeli said that in Israel "we
educate people to identify them-
selves in times of problems. In the
time of problems, Histadrut iden-
tifies itself."
Dinner General Chairman
Stanley Winkelman, who wel-
comed the guests, substituted for
Max Fisher who was to introduce
Rosenne. In his welcoming re-
marks, Winkelman paid tribute
to Rabbi Hertz by saying, "We
have come to honor a man who is a
grand rabbi in his own right."
The dinner opened with the
singing of the anthems led by
John Redfield, accompanied by
Prof. Jason Tickton. The invoca-
tion was recited by Fr. Robert A.
Mitchell, president of the Univer-
sity of Detroit. Rabbi Hertz re-
cited Hamotzi and the benedic-
tion.

Greetings were brought by
Morris Lieberman, chairman of
the Israel Histadrut Campaign of
Metropolitan Detroit, and Flora
Winton, president of Temple Beth
El. The dais was completed by
Pearl Lieberman, Peggy Win-
kelman, Goldie Eskin, Frank
Winton and Renda Hertz.

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