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February 06, 1987 - Image 26

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1987-02-06

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

PURELY COMMENTARY

Cardinal In Limelight

Continued from Page 2

tion of recognition, that it first re-
solve its differences with
neighbors and others. Coming
from an institution whose past is
stained with anti-Semitism, this
demand cannot fail to be seen as
an indefensible anachronism.
Then there is the positive factor. The
reminder of the Vatican's denial of recog-
nition of Jerusalem as the capital of Is-
rael gave new strength to the all-Jewish
demand for acceptance of the fact of
Jerusalem as the capital city of the
Jewish State. Now the demand for a re-
versal of the U.S. negative attitude on the
Israeli-established status of Jerusalem
will be conducted with fuller force.
The Cardinal helped in this respect
by reviving the issue. Otherwise, there
would not have been an opportunity for
the prominent columnist George Will to
tackle that issue in no uncertain terms.
In a widely-circulated column he took up
the cudgels, criticizing the Vatican prej-
udice, and made this demand in support
of Jerusalem, the capital city of Israel:

tempt to dictate to redeemed Israel that
Psalm 137 be erased from the Psalms of
David?
That's how the conscience of those
who are inconsistent in their reciting of
the Psalms created a challenge for them-
selves when John Cardinal O'Connor
found himself in a world-watched
limelight. This is the score on which his
chiefs at the Vatican must retrace their
steps and begin to recite with us, in a
passionate voice to be heard by all man-
kind that the inseparable role of Jewry
and Jerusalem must never be tampered
with. If there is a conscience, the sinners,
whether in Washington or at the Vatican,
will end the tampering while pronounc-
ing an atonement.

Brotherhood

they claim godliness and then commence
to persecute and advocate prejudice.
Therefore, the hope that those who teach
faithfulness and godliness will ask their
worshipers never to forget the admoni-
tion in Genesis 4:9: "Am I my brother's
keeper?"
The Psalms are the most often
quoted in prayers, and those who recite
them must never ignore Psalm 133: "Be-
hold, how good and how pleasant it is for
brethren. to dwell together in unity."
Coupled with the words of the Prophet
Malachi (2:10), "Have we not all one
Father? Has not one God created us?," the
obligations never to offend a fellow citi-
zen are apparent.
The duty to make "brotherhood"
workable does not need further defining.
Hopefully, the current Brotherhood
Week will inspire the desired humanism
among all our fellow citizens.

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Continued from Page 2

Frank Barcus

Continued from Page 2

O'Connor says he does not
know what the church did or did
not do during the Holocaust. He
has a duty to know. The most
charitable description of what
the church did is damning
enough: The Vatican thought it
could husband its moral
authority by remaining neutral,
which meant keeping quiet. But
Vatican power in politics inheres
in words and gestures. Regarding
Israel, Vatican gestures are
loudly wrong.
It is an American scandal
that the U.S. Embassy is not in
Jerusalem. Today the U.S. gov-
ernment stands convicted of cr-
inging appeasement of Iran, a na-
tion implacably hostile to Ameri-
can values. Now would be a.good
time for the U.S. government to
stop appeasing Arab opinion
about Jerusalem. It is time to
move the U.S. Embassy not just to
Jerusalem but to the eastern por-
tion that was liberated in 1967
and has now been well-governed
by Israel longer than it was occu-
pied by Jordan. Moving the em-
bassy would end the pretense
that the unity of Israel's capital is
negotiable, and would under-
score the perversity of Vatican
policy.
George Will's limelighting of the
Vatican-Cardinal-Israel-Jerusalem af-
fair doesn't end there, even on so positive
a note. It has another aspect. There is a
role also for the Psalms of David. The
entire world shares the Psalms with us.
They are recited as much in churches as
in synagogues. Yet some of the principles
they affirm are ignored too often. Is it
possible that the Vatican and its
ecclesiasts are forgetting Psalm 137
which has been and remains the Jewish
people's inerasable "Never Forget" his-
torical liturgy?
In the recitation of that pledge there
is the affirmation, "If I forget thee, 0
Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its
cunning . . . if I do not elevate thee,
Jerusalem above all my joys." Reciting it
for three millenia, as a pledge for all gen-
erations, should Jews be asked to aban-
don this legacy? And if, all faiths, when
sharing the Psalms with us, declare that
our Scriptures also are their legacies, do
their leaders have the conscience to at-

ti
, • MAY • BE • FOR•THE •T1ME -TO rm

George Washington

issued a call for adherence to the
Brotherhood Week Ideal with a salute
again, this February of 1987, to the mem-
ory of George Washington and the ideals
he and the fathers of this nation stimu-
lated.
This year's Brotherhood Week ob-
servance becomes especially compelling
because the racism that was to have been
greatly reduced by the good will princi-
ples enunciated by the National Confer-
ence of Christians and Jews has not at-
tained the desired triumph. There is a
general realization and a tragic admis-
sion that race hatred remains a serious
problem for our nation and has not van-
ished. It has made gains among the
hate-mongers. It reached a new ugly
stage as was demonstrated in the Forsyth
County area in Georgia.
It is true that the bigots in the For-.
syth demonstration of hate were greatly
outnumbered by the champions of justice
and fairness. There is cause for pride in
the knowledge that many thousands of
adherents to the brotherhood ideal pro-
vided hope that the good will cause will
triumph in the end. But even the few who
demonstrated for hatred represent a re-
newed challenge. The decent people must
mobilize against intolerance and in de-
fense of the basic American principles of
decency and justice for all.
The tragic aspect of the problem con-
fronting the pursuers of justice is trace-
able to the inconsistencies permitted in
the claims for religiosity by many who
are motivated by hatred. The bigoted
often come out of houses of worship where

the hurricane's nightmarish
whims. Frank Barcus has woven
together tales of endurance that
pit human fortitude against na-
ture's deadliest expression of
maritime caprice.
This classic of Great Lakes
lore, reissued during Michigan's
Sesquicentennial, testifies to the
intimate connection between
Michigan history and her great
freshwater lakes. A passionate
chronicler of Great Lakes his-
tory, Frank Aaron Barcus
jumped at the chance to sail with
the crews of the mighty freighters
that plied Michigan's waterways.
"As a boy," he recalled, "I practi-
cally lived in a twenty-foot canoe
and paddled on all the Great
Lakes and their tributaries."
My father was born within
sight of Lake Michigan in 1895
and moved to Detroit three years
later. He studied architecture at
the Beaux Arts Architectural
Society of New York, the Chicago
Art Institute, and the University
of Michigan as a young man. A
charter member of the Engineer-
ing Society of Detroit and found-
ing member of the Detroit Histor-
ical Society, he was a registered
architect and longtime staff
member of the Detroit City Plan
Commission. He contributed to
the design of the Fisher Building
and to many other buildings
throughout the state and became
an expert on the landmarks and
monuments. of Michigan.
Also known as a skillful car-
tographer and illustrator, as
readers of Freshwater Fury can
see, his full-color map of historic
Michigan graces the foyer of
many an office, including that of
the Detroit Historical Society. His

All Around Detroit: Leaves from an
Artist's Notebook has been used

extensively by local schools.
My father loved being on the
local lecture circuit. I recall the
neat rows of color slides and the
seemingly vast collection of maps
and sketches of museums, ar-
chitectural settings, and people
that he produced over the years
of his travels. Frank Barcus was

working on yet another saga of
Great Lakes lore, the sinking of
the Edmund Fitzgerald, at the time
K
of his death in 1961. On this
twenty-fifth anniversary of his
death, perhaps a new generation
of readers can share in his love of
the Great Lakes.
(Dr. Rachelle Barcus Warren
is a social psychologist. She well
remembers spending many hours
on docks as a small girl, waiting
to wave Frank Barcus off or to
welcome him back from one of his
innumerable trips on the Great
Lakes. To her great sorrow, no
women, not even very little ones,
were allowed on the freighters in
those days.)
Would that space permitted reprint-
ing some of the Frank Barcus stories
about that storm. Suffice it that the recol-
lections about the author retain his
status in Michigan memories.
There is a personal recollection not to
be ignored. Your commentator was
among Frank Barcus' admirers. We col-
laborated in some communal matters. He K
offered a personal gesture of friendship
and he created my book plate.
The Frank Barcus artistic book plate
has for some years been included in the
published works that assembled the
noteworthy in such artistic Jewish
endeavors.
Another recollection Tits in here.
Frank Barcus' brother, Harvey Barcus,
was associate sports editor of the Detroit
News when we were both on that news-
paper's staff. We played tennis on the roof
of the Detroit News building on Lafayette
Street. We could not afford the loss of a
tennis ball and often had to run down the
three flights of stairs into Lafayette
Street to retrieve a ball.
Now about the daughter: Dr.
Rachelle Barcus Warren, who earned her
doctorate at the University of Michigan,
is a social psychologist who is active in
Ann Arbor where she resides with her
husband, Oakland University Professor
of Sociology Donald Warren. (Her hus-
band is now completing an important
book on Father Coughlin and the anti-
Semitic occurrences of the 1930s and
1940s). She was a Mumford High School
graduate and earned her B.A. degree at
Wayne State University. She is now gain-
ing recognition with The Pasadena Opera
Company in Ann Arbor, her creation
which has become a labor of love. She
supervises the operas, production of
which has become an acclaimed part of
artistic life in Ann Arbor.

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