see •;141 28 -13‘ii:, Friday, February 15, 1985 ( i.EC THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS . We Will Beat Your Best Price GLASS & MIRROR BI-FOLD SUPER SPECIAL ANALYSIS Brothers and Keepers Existing Doors Continued from preceding page 4 ft. openings 5 ft. openings $123.99 Installed $128.99 Installed $145.99 Installed 6 ft. openings NEW MIRRORED BI-FOLD DOORS—FINEST QUALITY Slim Fold° 4 ft. openings $190.00 Installed $200.00 Installed $250.00 Installed 5 ft. openings 6 ft. openings Lowest Prices On All Types of Mirrored Walls, Furniture, Bars, Cubes, Etc. Heavy Glass Table Tops, Shelving, Beveled O. G . Edges. Shower and Tub Enclosures, Replacement Windows. MIRRORED WALL SPECIAL - 12'x8' High $425.00 Call today for free estimates: 552-0088 Atlas Glass & Mirror PERFECTION IS OUR REFLECTION Where quality work, discount prices and you the customer make us #1 552-0088 11•1•11•111•11 ■ _ How to get the sofa you want... in the style you want .. . A * * * * 4 4 1 4 • „ * Timmamid `' 4 ► /111111111p0111111$1111111111111 AMIN* cns 'mamma? 111 in the fabric you wan at the price you wan ... in about 30 days You don't believe us. Over 800 fabrics. You're used to the typical way of buying living room furniture. You shop several stores and hope they have something you like. You've had to compromise ... on style ... on fabric ... on price. And you've had to wait ... and wait ... and wait ... Not here. Sample our sample books. Match your favorite color or pattern or weave to your favorite style. You be the decorator. And regardless of whether you pick a classic cut velvet, a bright cotton print, or a handsome textured weave, we warranty the fabric for two years and the frame for a life-time. Custom furniture at non-custom prices. How we do At Newton Furniture, you select the style and fabric you want. You can put contemporary prints on traditional styles. Or have a rugged corduroy on a country sleeper. And you don't pay extra. 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You can get a custom made sofa sale priced from $499 to $1,100. • 800 fabrics to choose from • 400 styles of sofas, sleepers, and chairs • Guaranteed 30 day delivery on special orders Livonia 15950 Middlebelt Betw. 5 & 6 Mile Rds. 525-0030 Sterling Heights 38200 Van Dyke Betw. 16 & 17 Mile Rds. 264-3400 Novi At Twelve Oaks On Service Drive Across From Hudsons 349-4600 Mon. thru Sat. 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sundays Noon to 5 p.m. Convenient Terms Available • Master Card & Visa Accepted it is not true for all the Jews in the world. Zionism is dead only for the Jews who do not need it. For the Jews of Ethiopia, or the Soviet Union, or Syria, Zionism is alive, alas. Operation Moses has had the effect of clarifying a classical meaning of Zionism: there must exist a state for which Jews need no visas. (The corol- laries are that the state must be secure, and that there must be a Jewish majority, so that no impediment from within the state is ever put before Jews seeking refuge.) The obituaries for Zionism, in other words, are one of the great luxuries of Jewish his- tory. They tell most about those Jews who make them, about the safety they enjoy in Israel and the democratic na- tions of the West. The Israeli rescue clarifies something else as well: the na- ture of the Jewish identity fashioned by Zionism. It has been said (rather eloquently by William Safire) that Opera- tion Moses is a. demonstration that the fact of religion exer- cises Jews more than the fact of race. This is only half right. The fact of race certainly counts for nothing; the color blindness of Jewish nationalism has been estab- lished. But it was not religion that drew the Israelis to the Falashas. What little we know of the religion of the Falashas shows a Judaism that is old and odd, that has only the most attenuated relationship to the precepts and the prac- tices of the rest of the Jewish world. Indeed, the fascination of the Falashas for the student of Judaism lies precisely in their dramatic religious dis- tinction. They are the last sur- vivals of a fundamentalism that the rabbis since the early Middle Ages feared most: they are Jews without a Talmud. All they share with the Jewish culture that is absorbing them is the Torah, the five books of Moses, which they interpret quite literally in their rituals, and some of the other books of the Hebrew Bible. Wolf Les- nau, an intrepid scholar who visited the Falashas in the late 1940s, describes these Jews slaughtering animals for sac- rifices. The Torah that the Falashas possess, moreover, is not in Hebrew, but in Gez (old Ethiopic). They know almost no Hebrew. The little they do know, however, holds the key to the bond between the an- cient villagers and their mod- em saviors. Lesnau discovered the Falashas in command of only seven Hebrew words — five names for God, Torah and goyim. Goyim, in the bush! This Hebrew word for non- Jews is not a term of abuse, and never was; it is simply an expression of a collective feel- ing of difference, of the senti- ment of a people apart. Lesnau also discovered Falasha schoolchildren in Ambworo singing Hatikvah, the na- tional anthem of Israel. Five- to 13-year-old Amharic- speaking urchins intoned ("their intonation was pecul- iar") the high Hebrew rhymes to the tune more or less stolen from Smetana. Suprising enough. But this was in 1947, a full year before the song be- came the anthem! Still, it had reached them. They were barely Jews, then; but they were, in a raw and rudimen- tary way, Zionists. It was not religion that in- spired Operation Moses. It was a strenuous sense of people- hood. They called themselves Jews and they longed for Zion: that sufficed. For such people the Jews of Israel would take --/ / "Zionism is dead only for the Jews who do not need it. For the Jews of Ethiopia, Zionism is alive." \ Ma rriam Crame r Ring 2;