RELY COMMENTARY
Editor Schappes
Continued from Page 2
who almost accidentally
stumbled upon the facts of what
had happened when she was
but a girl of six, and was moved
speedily to set in motion the
process that, after 18 months,
has resulted in the action you
have just taken. It was she who
charged Dr. Stephen Leberstein
to study the record of those
events and prepare the
memorandum of facts that later
became the basis for the
resolution recommended by the
Academic Freedom Committee
and adopted by the Faculty
Senate of the City College and
then by the University Faculty
Senate of the City University of
New York. It is to Dr. Chandler,
Dr. Leberstein and their
associates that we, and also you
members of the Board of
Trustees, owe the impetus to
your formal recognition of the
injustice done to us.
But it is not only for what
your action means to us
individually that we greet and
applaud your resolution. In
these times particularly it is of
no small public significance that
a board as responsible and
distinguished as yours "pledges
diligently to safeguard the
constitutional rights of freedom
of expression, freedom of
association and open intellec-
tual inquiry of the faculty, staff
and students of the City Univer-
sity." I say in these times
because today the rumble of
repression is again heard in our
land. Why, the very New York
State legislature that some 40
years ago spawned the Rapp-
Coudert Committee and its train
of ill-consequence has this year
rejected a bill to repeal the
Feinberg Law, which, although
the Supreme Court of the United
States has declared it
unconstitutional, is still on the
statute books of our state. The
vote on May 21st was 59 to 48
against repeal in the State
Assembly. The reason for such
willful flouting of the
Constitution, as given by one
assemblyman, was that the
Feinberg Law might need to be
reactivated in the future.
Your Board of Trustees,
which only recently had to re-
dress the grievance of those it
had wronged because of the
Feinberg Law, is thus alerted
from Albany on the possibility
of the repetition of this tragic
history, this time as farce. In
these times, therefore, your ac-
tion today, as it becomes known
to academe and to the general
public, will fortify the resolve of
others who cherish the constitu-
tional rights of our country to
the point of being willing to
fight and sacrifice for their
protection.
Finally, while we accept in
good faith your recognition of
the injustice done to us, we
cannot forget the still
unrecorded harm done to us.
Careers were wrecked; families
were disrupted; suffering of all
sorts — economic, academic,
social — was widespread. Even
in the armed forces of our
country in World War II, in
which a goodly number of us
served honorably, the Rapp-
Coudert tag on our names was
a source of suspicion,
harassment and most
distressingly, a barrier to
rendering our country the full
service of which we were
capable. Yet the caliber of these
men and women who 40 years
ago were wrongfully dismissed,
or forced to resign, or not
Hancock Synagogue
Continued from Page 2
Relating the commencement of his
family's pioneering in the Upper
Michigan Copper Country, in the
Houghton, Hancock and Calumet areas
where "copper was king," Cohodas
relates:
"My mother's family settled in
Houghton in about 1880. My grand-
father, Morris Levine, settled in
Baltimore about 1890 from Poland and
returned to Poland after earning means
for it and brought my grandmother and
her two daughters to Baltimore, soon
thereafter settling in Houghton. Four
more daughters were born and my
mother, Lillian Levine Cohodas, was
the oldest of seven girls.
"My mother was a school teacher
and when Temple Jacob was built in
1912, she was one of the religious school
teachers.
"In 1904, my dad's family came to
Marquette from Poland. My dad was
then 13, the oldest of his family of seven
children. There were two older half-
brothers. My grandfather died soon
thereafter and my father and Uncle
40
FRIDAY, JULY 24, 1987
The temple's interior.
Sam Cohodas, who was five years
younger, went to work to support the
family."
That's where more of the legendary
continues in Willard Cohodas' story.
Sam Cohodas commenced to sell apples
and when Grandpa Levine, who by then
became Houghton County deputy
sheriff and met all incoming Houghton
reappointed was such that
many had the resilience to build
second careers, some of them of
high distinction. Nor did we
abandon our social concerns
because of our private woes.
Sometimes it took decades to
break through the barriers set
up by the Rapp-Coudert
Committee — but it was done.
One of us had to change his
name, leave the country, and
then establish such a reputation
as an ancient historian in
England that the Queen
knighted him and he is now Sir
Moses Another, having been
a past president of New York
Academy of Science, recently
became emeritus professor of
astronomy at one of New York
City's eminent private
universities. A third changed his
name and occupation to become
a widely recognized
musicologist. A fourth has
published some 40 books in
American history, is an emeritus
distinguished professor of a
university in Pennsylvania and
is currently a distinguished
visiting professor at a university
in New Jersey.
A fifth, a chemist, won a first
prize of $10,000 for an essay
entitled "We are the Founding
Fathers of the Future" in a
contest sponsored by the
Smithsonian Institution and a
famous bank as part of the
Bicentennial of our American
Revolution. A sixth has just
retired as a professor emeritus
of history at a university in
Maine. A seventh went abroad
to become an M.D. and is now
director of public health
services in a nearby state. An
eighth is about to retire as a
professor of English at one of
our State University of New
trains to "check for undesirables," ask-
ed Dad what he planned to do. The
heavy accent caused Grandpa to ask
Dad in Yiddish if he was Jewish and he
received a positive reply. That's when
the romance began and Willard
Cohodas' Dad married Lillian Levine.
They were married in the new Ibmple
Jacob in 1912.
"My brother Arnold and I were bar
mitzvah there and our sister was con-
firmed there," Cohodas continued to
relate the family story.
Cohodas points out that there are
only 15 families really active in Temple
Jacob now. He calls it "a beautiful old
building, but needs many repairs." He
stated that a group "from around the
country" set up a trust fund with the
income assuring that the building will
always be maintained.
The • personal aspect of this story
should be appreciated. That's how
remote area communities developed.
Some were short-lived. The Hancock,
Mich. temple may remain for all time
as an historic site for the entire state
to remember and for Michigan Jewry to
honor in its record of the history of
pioneering Jews.
York colleges. A ninth heads an
institute in one of the colleges of
our City University. A tenth has
just earned the signal honor of
being selected by the Jewish
Book Annual of the National
Jewish Welfare Board as one of
five American Jewish writers
whose birthdays next year are
worthy of public notice in the
Jewish book world; on this
roster, Barbara Tuchman's 70th
and our Rapp-Coudert victim's
75th birthdays are to be
celebrated. And last, one, a
biologist, had to change his
name, retool and finally became
the president of a sizable
machine tool company in New
Jersey.
Had we not been driven
from our beloved campus of the
City College, these
achievements and others might
well have been effected for the
direct benefit of the City College
community. For every one of us
has been, according to our
varying talents, a useful and
productive citizen of our
republic. Now too, today, we
stand ready to support the City
College and the City University
in "diligently safeguarding the
constitutional rights of freedom
of expression, freedom of
association and open
intellectual inquiry ."
This Schappes statement is one of
the most impressive declarations on
record on the issues dealing with just
rights which reject witchhunts. The pre-
judicial acts in New York in 1940 and
the few years following were introduc-
tory to the McCarthy witchhunts a
decade later on a national scale.
The New York witchhunt conducted
by the Rapp-Coudert Committee was
sensationalized copy in the New York
newspapers. When the City College of-
Harry and Eve Cohodas, with Arnold,
Heather and Willard.
The echo of such a 75-year-old
history-making edifice is an invitation
for statewide honors to a temple that
has grandchildren and great-
grandchildren throughout the land.
None of the Gartner descendants are in
Hancock, yet they create a chain that
makes a remote temple the pride of
peoplehood.