PURELY COMMENTARY

To Israel On Her 40th: With Heads High And In Faith

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

Editor Emeritus

W

ith heads high, faithfully, we
participate in the hearty
greeting to Israel on her 40th

birthday.
Forty years are like a mere "watch
in the night" for a people tested by
many experiences, often so menacing
that there was endlessnesss to the de-
mand for courage. It is the faith that ac-
companied the obstacles that made
courage both a compulsion and a
necessity.
Out of that testing there emerged in
Israel a powerful spirit and an inspired
confidence. The young state was never
without threats. They continue to this
day. Yet the genius of peoplehood is
stronger than danger. It is to a very
great and highly-progressive communi-
ty that our greetings go forth at this
time.
That greeting to a nation with great
universities, with research for the bet-
terment of all mankind, with people
engaged in productive pursuits; to a na-
tion with high calibered schools, with
classes for high learning where Arabs
are as welcome as Jews; a nation whose

greeting is Shalom — Peace — ap-
plicable to all occasions — and its mean-
ing — Peace — will ever be a challenge
to the world as much as it is a duty for
every Jew.
Such is the reality of the Peoplehood
of Israel that united Israel with
Diaspora.
The Detroit Acclaim
There is a unity in Jewry that is evi-
dent in what is acknowledged as a cur-
rent crisis.
The frightened, in a state of panic,
are injecting curiosity as to whether
American Jewry is split in reaction to
Israel's experiences. The Detroit Jewish
community is among those who gives
an answer. An Allied Jewish Campaign
just concluded. Its purpose is support for
the local and national Jewish needs,
and with a major share for Israel's
cultural, spiritual and social causes.
The new record set here philan-
thropically, the energetic interest
shown in the urgency to keep Israel
humanly strong, the generosity that ac-
companied it, were a combination that
spelled unity.
Recognition must be given to
leadership as well as fellowship. The
fact is that they combined to spell

Holocaust Memories

T

he community commitments
that have been given priority
in retaining the memories of the
tragedies that became the Holocaust
should not be tampered with.
Every opportunity should be uti-
lized to make the memorial of the years
of horror an occasion to know the facts
and to reiterate the duty to pledge the
non-repetition of what happened to
Jewry and to the world.
There was great satisfaction in the
announcement of a month ago that
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel
was to deliver a series of lectures as part
of the Holocaust program at Northern
Michigan University in Marquette.
Such educational programs are espe-
cially vital at a time when prejudiced
minds are spreading a gospel of hatred
by denying there ever was an organized
Nazi campaign to annihilate the Jewish
people.
What a pity, therefore, that the
Wiesel lectures were cancelled because
some measure of support to Northern
Michigan University programs were

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
(US PS 275-520) is published every Friday
with additional supplements the fourth
week of March, the fourth week of August
and the second week of November at
20300 Civic Center Drive, Southfield,
Michigan.

Second class postage paid at Southfield,
Michigan and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send changes to:
DETROIT JEWISH NEWS, 20300 Civic
Center Drive, Suite 240, Southfield,
Michigan 48076

$26 per year
$29 per year out of state
60' single copy

Vol. XCIII No. 8

2

FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1988

April 22, 1988

united peoplehood. There could be no
more effective salute to Israel — the
message that the people Israel has faith
and will always be dedicated to the
security and continuing progress of the
State of Israel.
The Protective Duty
Israel's is an unending role. While
adhering to the highest standards in a
civilized society, life must be protected.
Suffering from violence is not new to
the Jewish people. Neither is the com-
mitment to protect the security of the
state and the life of its citizens.
If this is the way to carry on, it is
a must for all with the will to live. The
warning to Israel's enemies is that
there will not and can not be a submis-
sion to anything spelling destruction.
There will be no semblance of suicide.
If defense of life means holding high the
people's code of ethics in one hand and
a defensive weapon in the other, then
that has to be a continuity for a time.
But with continuity is the endless hope
and prayer for peace. That prayer is for
Moslem and Christian as well as Jew.
Such is the duty and commitment.
Civilized society will surely respect it
and share in it.
It's pitiful that Israel's antagonists
compel resort to such admonitions.
They are not of Israel's making. They
are the compulsions in the quest for life.
The civilized in human ranks will
surely endorse and adhere to these
duties.
The Creative Factors
Meanwhile, the spiritual-cultural-
creative efforts in and for Israel and by
Israel's friends go on and on and on.
they never interrupt. Poems are writ-
ten, books are published. The morality
of life is pursued.
A prominent Detroiter has a role in
these tasks. Prominent bibliophile Ir-

win "Toby" Holtzman has become the
symbol of encouragement to writers
and readers of highly-acclaimed literary
creativity and on Israel's current an-
niversary he adds a journal of his own
in a veritably encyclopedic assembling
of the literary treasures that have earn-
ed notable status by writers of
eminence. His newest project is so vast-
ly impressive that it is to be admired as
a personal journal.
Under the title, A Check List of
Israeli Literature, 1948 to 1988, in
English," it contains the treasures of
Israeli literature. There is the indica-
tion that all translations are from the
Hebrew, with some exceptions.
The eight sections in this collective
effort are: prose, poetry, drama, an-
thologies, children's books, criticism,
periodicals and bibliography.
The journal was prepared at the
Learning Resources Center Library of
Congregation Shaarey Zedek, in
cooperation with the Archives of Israeli
Literature at the Israel National and
Hebrew University Library in Givat
Ram, Jerusalem.
Thus we have a Detroit link with
Israel and Irwin "Toby" Holtzman is
the creator of a notably-effective effort
to enrich the literary contributions of
the famous in Israel.
The massive listing of authors and
their works is certainly a richly-
evidenced recognition of an Israeli con-
tribution to Israel and world Jewry and
to mankind.

Continued on Page 50

Radicalism Scrutinized

I

Die Wiesel
provided by a person who favors apar-
theid in South Africa.
It is regrettable that a sacred cause
was polluted with a reference to pre-
judices in South Africa. The abandon-
ment of a vitally-needed program is
cause for deep regret. Perhaps Elie
Wiesel, the most effective pleader for
the cause of justice in the "Never
Again" commitment negating whatever
is linked to the Holocaust memories can
be induced, with NMU's consent, to
renew the arrangements for the plann-
ed lectures.
NMU President Appleby supports
and encourages the Holocaust pro-
grams which have been instituted by
the Cohodas family, under the leader-
ship of the late Sam Cohodas and his
nephew Willard Cohodas. A sacred task
must not be abandoned.

n the founding of the UAW, in the
people for justice in American
early years of the protests against
society.
unemployment and in the struggles
One of the first labor lawyers
for unionism 50 years ago, Maurice
in the United States, Sugar
Sugar was a leading factor with high
spent the years immediately
leadership qualities. He was a con-
following his graduation from
troversial figure in the years when
the University of Michigan law
there were witchhunts as a result of an
School in 1913 battling against
emerging, even if shortlived, Socialists
injunctions and antipicketing
movement. The Sugar story is the in-
laws for Detroit American
teresting biographical account by
Federation of labor (AFL)
Wayne State University Professor of
unions. Sugar and his wife, Jane
History Christopher H. Johnson in
Mayer, joined the leadership of
Maurice Sugar: Law, Labor, and the Left
the Michigan Socialist party.
in Detroit 1912-1950 (WSU Press).
although classified as a
An introductory recollection of
"yellow," an anti-Bolshevik,
Sugar's activities is like a summary of
Sugar was among the handful of
his early life. Prof. Johnson makes this
Michiganders who went to jail
comment on Sugar's early years:
for their refusal to register for
the draft. This experience,
Sugar's active life presents a
copiously documented, en-
remarkable journey along the
couraged
his shift from yellow
intertwining paths of the Left
to red, although he did not join
and the labor movement. He
the Community party, which
seemed to be continually on the
was organized in September
frontier — at first in the literal
1919.
sense, born in a timber boom-
town near Sault Ste. Marie and
Prof. Johnson provides us with a
then at many of the critical junc-
history of the UAW and its struggling
tures in the struggle of working
Continued on Page 50

