4 Friday, September 13, 1985
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CANDLELIGHTING AT 7:26 P.M.
.
VOL. LXXXVIII, NO. 3
A Year For Unity
The eve of Rosh Hashanah is a traditionally appropriate time to
reflect on the past year and look ahead to the next. It is a time when
Jews around the world are drawn together in a spirit of prayer and
repentance to express the common hope that God will grant us a .good and
healthy year, a year of spiritual renewal for ourselves, our families and
the Jewish people. But are we still one people?
There is a lesson here that is timely and significant as we seek to
deal with the frightening prospect of a Jewish peoplehood divided over
ideological differences to the point where we worry if there will indeed be
two distinct Jewish peoples, separate and apart, within decades. The
lesson comes from the way we pray during these days of awe. For though
we pray on the most personal of levels — for our survival, our health, our
well-being — the words of the prayers are always "we " and never "I." We
must be mindful that despite our differences as Orthodox, Conservative,
Reform or Reconstructionist Jews, we are linked by a common history,
language, purpose and God.
Each of us should resolve in the coming year to do whatever possible
to increase the level of understanding and dialogue between the
ideological branches, for the greatest threat to Jewish survival comes not
from outside but from within. On a national level, efforts must be made
to bring together the leaders of the various branches to seek a common
ground and•approach to the difficult problems we can no longer hide.
Here in Detroit, similar approaches should take place because before
there can be solutions there must be sincere attempts to find a common
ground for discussion.
Let the Shofar's call for Jewish solidarity help us transcend our
differences and unite us in our common destiny.
L'shana tova, Happy New Year.
Tragedy And Dilemma
South African tragedies affect all the people in that area, and the
saddening experiences for the Jewish community also are distressing
dilemmas.
The South African Board o•Jewish Deputies has been and remains
on record strongly opposing apartheid. Yet, as often, Jews become chief
targets of attack. Such prejudicial treatments come from both blacks and
whites — whites because of the strong position - adopted by Jewish
spokesmen; blacks because in the process of battling for justice there are
accompanying bOycotts of white-owned business establishments, and Jews
with long records in business ventures emerge the chief sufferers.
Hopefully, the situation will be resolved without calamitous
consequences. Jews have a long record for liberalism in South Africa.
From the time of the settlement there of large numbers of Jews from
Lithuania, which gave the South African Jews the title of the Litvakes,
they were on the best terms with the blacks and with all their neighbors.
Jews being singled out for criticism is a tragedy. Solution must come
soon, realistically, with justice and an end to bigotry and racial
discrimination.
OP-ED
Anti-Apartheid Pressure
Building At Home, Abroad
BY ROBERT E. SEGAL
Something new in efforts to
mend the rift between Jews and
blacks has bobbed up in Jerusalem.
When Zulu Chief Gatsha Buthelezi
met recently with Prime Minister
Shimon Peres, that black leader
urged Mr. Peres to appeal to
President P.W. Botha of South Af-
rica to move towards "a shared fu-
ture for the oppressed."
Surely, when one examines the
lists of individuals and nations now
demanding an end to Pretoria's
brutal reaction to the black uprising,
it is evident that Jewish protests
against the harsh behavior of the
Botha regime are strong and unre-
mitting.
Among the 120,000 Jews now
living in South Africa, many recall
the trek of hundreds who fled to
Johannesburg shortly after the as-
sassination of Czar Alexander II in
1881. A small ethnic group in a
strife-torn nation with a population
of 31 million, South Africa's Jews
include a number who stand on the
ramparts fighting injustice suffered
by the blacks who constitute 73 per-
cent of the nation's people.
Bitter are the recollections of
Prime Minister H.F. Verwoerd
cheering Hitler's victories when the
Nazis were feeding the Holocaust
flames. Never to be forgotten also is
the behavior of Verwoerd's successor,
B.J. Vorster, wartime leader of Die
Ossewabrandwag, the South African
pro-Nazi terrorist group, who viewed
the nation's Christian Nationalism
unit as an ally of Germany's Nazi
Party.
Today the Afrikaner Resistance
Movement's chief, Eugene Terre
Blanche, helps perpetuate anti-
Jewish sentiment by urging his fas-
cist followers to revel in Nazi-like
salutes and display on their leather
coats an emblem remarkably resem-
bling the swastika.
South Africa's Pik Botha:
Facing increasing pressure on apartheid.
Even in Bavaria today, the
Christian Social Union leader, Franz
Josef Strauss, has the temerity to
assert that granting equal voting
rights to South African blacks
"would plunge the nation into
chaos." Too bad he seems unaware of
Emerson's conclusion: "The civility
of no world can be perfect while an-
other race is degraded ... The might
and right are here ... Here is man
... And if you have man, black or
white is an insignificance."
How, then, shall history record
the behavior of America's foreign
policy shapers during South Africa's
firestorm?
Both House and Senate, prior to
the summer recess, voted in favor of
imposing economic sanctions to
South Africa. Washington lawmak-
ers who have read our State De-
partment's 1985 report on human
rights practices the world over
realize that factual summary makes
clear how continuation of South Af-
rica's apartheid polity deepens black