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Friday, February 8, 1985
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
THE JEWISH NEWS
Serving Detroit's Metropolitan Jewish Community
with distinction for four decades.
Editorial and Sales offices at 20300 Civic Center Dr.,
Suite 240, Southfield, Michigan 48076
Telephone (313) 354-6060
OP-ED
A Student Remains Seated
For Pledge Of Allegiance
BY ROBERT E. SEGAL
Special To The Jewish News
PUBLISHER: Charles A. Buerger
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c..) 1985 by The Detroit Jewish News (US PS 275-520)
Second Class postage paid at Southfield, Michigan and additional mailing offices. Sub?cription $18 a year.
CANDLELIGHTING AT 5:38 P.M.
VOL. LXXXVI, NO. 24
Soviet Blackmail
According to a secret U.S. government report that was leaked to the New
York Times, a Soviet official recently told members of an American trade
delegation in Moscow that emigration of Jews from the U.S.S.R. would be
accelerated if relations betvv- eenthe two countries improved. According to the
report, Vladimir S. Alkhimi, chairman of the State Bank, said If good
conditions were restored with the United States, 50,000 Jewish emigres
would be 'No problem'."
Never before has the Soviet's attitude toward the Jews of their country
been so blatant and transparent. Many people have charged that Soviet Jews
are being held hostage in the land that Marx wrought. Many people have said
that, in Soviet eyes, the Jews are commodities, something to be sold like
tractors or grain. It is now obvious — and on the record — that the Kremlin is
practicing blackmail with its Jews. "The West wants the Jews?" schemes the
Soviets. "Fine, give us consumer goods. The West wants the Jews? Give us
computers and trade seminars and petroleum drilling equipment."
The Soviet Union's disregard for human rights and human feelings is
legion. Now, it is irrefutable. .
Program For USSR
When skepticism gains ground where there must be conviction that
tyranny must not gain ground, there often seeps in unnecessary doubt,
mixing with suspicion.
This in a sense affects the concern over the East-West struggle and the
agonies over the USSR attitudes on many scores. There is the serious concern
over the status of Russian Jewry. Will the Kremlin listen to appeals for
justice and humanism involving the Jews in the Soviet Union?
An important proposal to the USSR is contained in a statement framed
by Morris Abram, the eminent American who has held important positions in
leading Jewish ranks. In his statement he lists these suggestions for action:
• Let them cease punishing the dedicated men and women who teach
Hebrew to those who wish to learn.
• Let them release Anatoly Shcharansky and Yosef Begun and
other prisoners of Zion.
• Let them cease the brutal treatment of refuseniks.
• Let them halt the state-controlled, obscene, eurti-Semitic libels
against Jews as Nazis and Hitlerites (Imagine!). -
• Let those who want to leave do so.
Such steps are no more than minimally required by normal
human-rights standrads. But if taken by the Soviet Union, they would
generate a dramatic change in the atmospherics for great agreements and
their ratification."
Whatever has been proposed until now has fallen on deaf ears. Is this also
the fate of the Morris Abram plan for human and diplomatically-rational
action?
If hope is to continue as an eternal possibility, it should be applied to the
approaching conference with USSR leaders by Edgar Bronfman, president of
the World Jewish Congress. Perhaps solutions, which appeared remote, are
in the realm of possibilities.
Maybe we should just forget about
a recent incident in which a Randolph,
Mass., high school senior, Susan Shap-
iro, insisted on not rising for the pledge
of allegiance.
Randolph has a thriving subur-
ban population of 35,000; and some say
35 percent of the folks in the Boston
suburb are Jewish.
Susan's "rebellion" threw the
town into a nasty fuss about patriot-
ism in the Veteran Day season, about
anti-Semitism (actual or imagined),
and about abusive threats, name-
calling, harassment, and the young
student's judgment.
Catching much of the fire along
with Susan were her supportive par-
ents, Susan's teacher, some Jews who
supported Susan, many Jews who
were critical of the youngster, and
some students who belittled her.
Jean Noblin, the teacher of 30
years' experience, had apparently
gone out of her way to visit Dachau as
a sincere gesture of friendship for
Jewish students and townspeople, but
seemed in this instance to have let her
exasperation and swell of patriotism
get the upper hand. If reports are accu-
rate, that fall from grace occurred
when Susan said the flag was only a
symbol and Mrs. Noblin replied: "Yes
it's a symbol, but so is the cross and the
Star of David; you are spitting on the
flag." The wound deepened when
Susan claimed her teacher added:
"How would you feel if someone spit on
the cross or the Star of David?" — an
assertion- Mrs. Noblin, a one-time
WAC and_also the daughter of a
'brigadier general, denied.
Informed of these developments,
should we really forget this drama? Or
don't we owe it to our nation and to the
more thoughtful angels within us to
think hard on the matter, to consider
anew what Wordsworth called "the
impetuous blood of youth," to wonder if
Susan's family receives 50 to 100
phone calls and letters, some violently
anti-Semitic, whether bigotry can be
ignored; to ponder the snide crack by a
Boston Globe columnist that Susan
needs a good spanking more than she
needs a lecture in patriotism; above
all, to make the clear distinction be-
tween patriotism and the new, alarm-
ing American brand of chauvinism.
The Pledge of Allegiance
says there is justice for all;
we strive for that ideal, but
have yet to attain it.
Susan may have been obstinate,
but she knew her rights. No law man-
dates participation in the pledge of
allegiance, an exercise first used in
1892 to add glamour to the 400th an-
niversary of the discovery of America.
Someone has said oaths are "the fossils
of piety." The oath Susan was asked to
affirm refers to the United States as a
republic, which it is not. It says our
nation is indivisible, which was not
true during the Civil War, nor is the
claim valid if we continue the cleavage
between blacks and "whites." It says
there is justice for all; we strive for
that ideal, but have yet to attain it.
Children of the Jehovah's Witness
faith refuse to salute the flag because
that sect frowns upon idol worship. In
1940, the Supreme Court ruled
against the Witnesses, but reversed
the decision in 1943. For the majority,
Mr. Justice Jackson wrote: "If there is
any fixed star in our constitutional
constellation, it is that no official, high
or petty, can prescribe what shall be
orthodox in politics, nationalism, reli-
gion, or other matters of opinion or
force citizens to confess by word or act
their faith therein."
In a sense, that historic pro-