I PURELY COMMENTARY I I HERBALIFE INDEPENDENT DISTRIBUTOR CALL ME FOR PRODUCTS Round Trip Airfare Per Person From Detroit Every Tuesday From HILDA RASKIN 522-2020 O 0 EAcei , en e Fashion or the Ycx x; al Hear! 6919 Orchard Lake Rd. • West Bloomfield, MI 855.5528 8-Days/7-Nights Waikiki Hotel... I Waikiki Sand Villa Malia or Hobron .$200 .$290 per person double occupancy per person double occupancy S 200 From Outrigger 1 Holiday Inn East & West, Waikiki Beach, Holiday Inn- Pacific Beach Mauka Twrs. .350 .$45 0 per person double occupancy -,-- • A Per Person Double Occupancy per person double occupancy YOUR PRIMARY FASHION SHOP FOR '88 , lank Call Your Travel Agent or II M1 Hamilton, Miller, Hudson & Fayne %MOP Travel Corporation riligetK tbelu wellk Warkig (313) 827-4070 or Toll Free 1-800-521-9882 With this handsome leather recliner... R & R is as close as your living room... family room... den... or any room in your home, where you just want to relax and unwind. Possibly the most comfortable recliner you've ever experienced. Designed in the finest top-grain leather. This is just one of the many beautiful leather furnishings that are now sale priced in our Leather Gallery. Pierson I interiors hOMP fii/Winhaitf 4110 Telegraph Road (Just South of Long Lake), Bloomfield Hills, 642-0070 Monday, Thursday & Friday 9:30 AM to 9:00 PM, Tuesday, Wednesday & Saturday 9:30 AM to 5:30 PM 38 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 1988 Russian Jewry Continued from Page 34 Polish territories, it im- mediately started remodel- ing the local population, in- cluding Jews in order to in- tegrate them into the Soviet system. Here the racial aspect also played a considerable role. The new masters tried to convert Jews, Germans, and others to the Slavic culture by en- trusting the administration , to either Russians, Ukrai- nians, or Belo-Russians. One could not evaluate the success of that brief ex- periment, since it was brought to an abrupt end with the German invasion of 1941. However, when the Russians returned during and after the war, their policy of assimilating Jews to Soviet culture continued unabated. It was inten- sified under the Stalinist Terror of the late 1940s and early 1950s, which easily suppressed all overt opposition. At the same time, anti- Semitism, which had for- mally been condemned in the early years of the Soviet Union as a crime against the state, had already become an accep- table weapon in assimi- lating Jews and in gaining approval from the anti- Jewish population by allowing the publication of anti-Semitic books and pamphlets and cultivating anti-Jewish policies in practice. The government did not discourage the populace from treating its Jewish neighbors as scapegoats for the spreading black markets or from frequent- ly complaining about the numerically dispropor- tionate Jewish participa- tion in higher occupations. On their part, the authorities gradually eliminated Jews from government posts .. . ' For example, the number of Jews in the USSR Supreme Soviet was reduc- ed from 47 in 1937 to five in 1950 and three in 1958, though before long Brezh- nev raised the total to six. Membership in the enor- mous Communist Party, generally needed for jobs above the lowest categories, at first included disproportionately many Jews. But the growing availability of educated non-Jews with good train- ing in special occupations reduced Jewish member- ship from 294,724 in January 1976, to less than 260,000 in 1982, or only 1.9 and 1.4 percent of the population respectively. This was less than the Jewish ratio in the population. Simultaneously, the op- ponents to admitting Jews to higher education, higher-ranking jobs, and particularly to positions of power forgot that they were thereby counterac- ting the regime's primary objective of assimilating the Jews away from the Jewish heritage. For this objective, during the entire postwar period, a literature debasing Jewish virtues from antiquity to the present was allowed to sprout not only in the Ukraine, but also in the central Great -Russian areas,_ including Moscow. At the same time, the Jews were deprived of all their schools, press, and literature, except for the Yiddish journal Sovetish Haimland, which printed only materials agreeable to the authorities. Even private instruction in Hebrew was forbidden and could only be obtained surreptitiously . This is an immensely valuable commentary on the historic experiences defining the regulations from the op- pressive Tsarist regimes leading to the ongoing pre- judicial legacies of hatred re- tained by the present rulers of the USSR. The indebtedness to Dr. Baron for a lifetime of notable literary gifts is an indelible record. The 93-year-old scholar continues his scholar- ly labors to a degree that earns for him everlasting gratitude. The new edition of his great work on the numerous centuries of the history and experiences of Russian Jewry multiplies the appreciation and gratitude. It is accompanied by the hope that there will be more to thank him for in the years ahead and that those creative labors will continue and will be endless. '"•••""1 N EWS t"'""'"' Israel Grows Mexican Cukes Rehovot — Israel's Weiz- mann Institute of Science will develop new varieties of cucumbers suitable for cultivation in northern Mex- ico, according to a recent agreement between the Vegetable Growers Associa- tion of Mexico and the Yeda Research and Development Co. Yeda promotes the com- mercial exploitation of Weiz- mann Institute research.