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Friday, April 12, 1985

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

NOTEBOOK

You are Cordially Invited
to a
Spring Open House
Celebrating the
Fleischman Residence/
Blumberg Plaza

On Sunday, April 21 , 198
2:00-5:00 p.m.

6710 W. - Maple Road

(On the Maplc-Dralic ,Jcwish
Community Campus)

Light Refreshments

The Fleiscilman Residence/Blumberg Plaza
Unique Residential Community
ffir the Elderly
Offering Three Kosher Meals Per Day,
Personal Care Services,
and a Magnificent Setting for Religious,
Recreational, and Educational Pmgrams.
Rental Fees Individually Arranged
at a Private Interview.

Harvard Conference

Continued from Page 10

Jewish press, that anguish is
getting sharper."
Fenyvesi defended the often-
criticized Washington Post,
asserting that despite charges
of bias from American Jews,
"neither the Post nor its editors
or writers are anti-Semitic or
anti-Israel.
Murray Zuckoff, editor of the
Jewish Telegraphic Agency,
said in his talk that in the past
Jewish leaders demanded and
received reverential treatment
from the Jewish press. "They
sought to saddle editors with
chastity belts around their
cerebrums," he said. But he
believes that gradually Jewish
newspapers have regained their
credibility and that "we crossed
the Rubicon in regards to Opera-
tion Moses," the Israeli airlift
of Ethiopian Jews out of the
Sudan last winter.
During the question-and-
answer session that followed,
Robert Cohn, editor of the St.
Louis Jewish Light and presi-
dent of the American Jewish
Press Association, whose formal
presentation had dealt with the
history of the Jewish press in
this country, described some of
the challenges presented by the
Operation Moses story. Charles
Fenyvesi defended his paper's
role in publicizing the Operation
by asserting that it is govern-
ment action, not news accounts,
that can halt such an airlift. I
responded that there was a long
sequence of mistakes that led to
the halt and that news accounts
such as the Washington Jewish
Week's contributed to the
problem:
The session on the role of the
Israeli press sparked less de-
bate, with each of the three
speakers defending Israel's need
for military censorship and
downplaying the effect such cen-
sorship has on a free press. Wolf
Blitzer, Washington correspon-
dent for the Jerusalem Post (and
the Jews News described the
Israeli press as lively and flour-
ishing. Dan Pattir, former press
secretary to Prime Ministers
Rabin and Begin, strongly de-

fended Israel's freedom of the
press and asserted that "there
has never been an attempt by,
or policy of, the government to
suppress the press." Dov
Tsamir, a visiting scholar at
Harvard from Israel, focused on
the interaction between the
press and government in Israel
leading up to the Six Day War
in 1967.
A final session on "The Jew-
ish Intellectual and The Jewish
Press" featured a wonderful
definition of a Jewish intellec-

We in the field of Jewish
journalism are constantly
striving for respectability
from the established Jew-
ish organizations with
whom we have a love-hate
relationship.

•

tual — someone who would at-
tend a conference at Harvard on
the night of the NCAA basket-
ball finals — and a mixed bag of
presentations. Benjamin Hal-
pern, professor emeritus of Near
East Studies at Brandeis, rem-
inisced about his early days of
involvement with small Jewish
ideological magazines; Milton
Himmelfarb of Commentary
discussed the expanding para-
meters of Jewish intellectual
discussion; and Leonard Fein,
editor of Moment magazine, at-
tacked Jewish newspapers for
their lack of professionalism and
failure to deal with controversial
issues. Unless Jewish news-
papers improve, he concluded,
the Jewish community will be
"defeated, not by Anti-Sem-
itism, but by boredom."
Many -of the arguments set
forth during, the day-long con-
ference were not new, but the
fact that they were given a full
hearing in such a prestigious
setting may prompt the estab-
lishment Jewish community to
take up the implicit challenge
and continue this dialogue on
the future of the American
Jewish press.

Publisher Apologizes
For Pesach Book Snafu

New York (JTA) — Ideals Pub-
lishing Company of Milwaukee
has announced that it will place a
label on remaining inventory of a
children's Passover storybook
stating that the book relates the
Passover story from a inter-
religious view because it includes
Jesus at the Last Supper.
"Any subsequent reprints will
carry this proviso," Ideals
president Donald Gottschalk said
in a prepared statement issued
last week. Ideals "expresses re-
gret to its friends in the Jewish
community for any offense that
the publishing of the book has
caused the community," the
statement said.
The JWB Jewish Book Council
in cooperation with national
Jewish community relations

agencies protested the publica-
tion of The Story of Passover for
Children, a glossy, full-color
paperback marketed by Ideal,
saying it was "misleading."
Marybeth Owens, managing
editor of Ideals, told the Mil-
waukee Sentinel that the book
probably would be retitled in fu-
ture editions with a Christian
emphasis on the Passover.
Following the alert issued by
the JWB and other Jewish organ-
izations, the Barnes and Noble
book chain decided to pull the
book from the shelves and to halt
any further sales. Bookazine, a
major book distributor returned
its unused inventory to Ideals, the
JWB reported. The Walden Books
chain also acted on the JWB re-
quest to halt distribution.

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