PURELY COMMENTARY
Testing
Continued from Page 2
tional intrigues that are be-
ing plotted against Israel,
will there be loud enough
voices in Jewish ranks to
speak out defensively?
There is need to avert
panic, the Arab outcry for
Israel's destruction, the
shocking proposals for a
Palestine limited to the
Jews who were there
before, spell out a warning
that man's inhumanity to
man is again on the agen-
da of the heartless who
would not hesitate to rein-
troduce the Holocaust.
Israel's rebirth meant not
only the acquisition of a
national address for the
Jewish people. It spelled
firmly the rejection of any
other attempt to make
Jewish life valueless .. .
In many instances
there is the
necessity not to
provide comfort to
Israel's
antagonists.
The enemies of Israel
and Jewry are already ful-
ly mobilized. The claims in
the name of Palestinians
have already misrepre-
sented truth and the im-
pression is given that
millions of Arbs have been
driven out of Israel when
the state was born. It is be-
ing forgotten that less than
half a million Arabs fled
the country; they were not
expelled. They could have
shared life with Jews in the
redeemed Israel, as the
nearly 140,000 Arabs who
remained did and doing in
even larger numbers.
Are Israel and world
Jewry properly protected
against fabled distortions
of truth? Where are our
academicians, why is the
intellectual Jewish com-
munity slumbering? Will
ey awaken in time to pre-
vent calamity?
This is a time for
awakening!
We have the experience. We
have lessons to learn from.
We have commitments to
adhere to.
The analysis drawn from
the experiences of the past en-
courages the vigilance
desired, the avoidance of fears
and the assumption of
necessary action to assure
dignified and courageous
responses to indignities.
The tested generations
- that the venom is never
From us, the threatened,
52
FRIDAYJNOVEMBER$2:i1990-)
there is the reply that there
is the Eternal Jew in each of
us.
It is the indomitable spirit
that admonishes mankind
about the never say die in
Jewish commitment. ❑
Museum
Continued from Page 2
feel relieved without it. Or
at least, if Israel insists on
persisting, let it at least
have the good grace to be,
again like the Jews
historically, a victim.
If only some Jews had
been killed in the recent
tragic events in Jerusalem!
Then we could be sure that
the chancelleries of the
world would have pulled
from their files the form let-
ter they dispatched when
Jews were murdered by
various Arab terrorists, ex-
pressing their
condolences.
If only Israel had lost the
1967 Six Day War to Egypt,
Syria, Jordan, Lebanon
and Iraq. Then the
memory of Israel might
subsequently have been
recalled in some places,
and schoolchildren might
have been taught about
those courageous people
who fought like tigers
before being thrown into
the sea:
If only Israel had lost the
1973 Yom Kippur War!
Then the United Nations
would surely have created
a new refugee agency to
relocate the Jewish sur-
vivors elsewhere.
Three days after the ap-
pearance of the Meir Rosenne
article, the first page of the
Travel Section of the Sunday
Oct. 21 New York Times
featured another distinguish-
ed Jewish personality. It an-
nounced details of a feature
article by one of the most
distinguished foreign cor-
respondents and an author of
major works on Israel, the
United Nations, the
Holocaust and a score of
related topics. The feature
was announced as follows:
"The Relics of Jewish Poland
— Ruined Synagogues and
Cemeteries — Not the Coun-
try" by Ruth E. Gruber.
Ruth Gruber was outraged
by inerasable tragic
memories.
In that article on Poland,
Ruth Gruber listed among
other details, these distress-
ing facts:
Some 3.5 million Jews liv-
ed in more than 3,000
separate Jewish com-
munities in Poland before
World War II, making it the
richest center of Jewish life
in Europe. Jews made up
about 10 percent of the
population; one-third of
the population of Warsaw.
In many small towns, like
Dzialoszyce, Jews made up
the great majority of
inhabitants.
All this was wiped out in
the Holocaust; today only a
few thousand Polish
citizens consider
themselves to be Jewish.
The intense Jewish culture
as described in the familiar
works of Isaac Bashevis
Singer and other writers,
or documented in the
many photographs that
have survived from that
time, are history.
Throughout Poland,
however, stand mute and
often overwhelmingly
poignant memorials to the
once flourishing life that
was for centuries an in-
timate part of Polish
development: scores of
synagogues that no longer
serve congregations; aban-
doned cemeteries with no
one to tend the graves.
They are places where
ghosts walk and memories
whisper; visiting them is
an act of homage as well as
discovery.
For me, their impact is
even more powerful than
that of the museums and
monuments at Auschwitz
and other death camps,
where the vastness of the
crimes can almost be too
much, and too impersonal,
for the mind to grasp. At
the very least, Poland's
Jewish relics serve as an
important complement to
the churches, castles and
historic buildings normal-
ly seen on tourist routes.
Most synagogues and
other Jewish buildings —
including all the famous
Polish wooden syna-
gogues, unique to the area
— were destroyed by the
Nazis, but about 250 syna-
gogues still exist, in one
form or another.
More than 350 cemeteries
remain, many with stones
featuring intricately in-
scribed ritual designs.
Several dozen have stones
dating before 1800; the
oldest grave, in Wroclaw, in
southwestern Poland,
dates to 1203. Some
cemeteries, such as those
at Rymanow, Bobowa and
Lezajsk (Litzhensk in Yid-
dish), in southern Poland,
Lublin in southeast Poland
and Gora Kawaria (Ger in
Yiddish), 20 miles south of
Warsaw, are revered for
their tombs of great sages
or famous Chasidic rabbis.
In addition, besides the
well-known museums or
monuments at Auschwitz-
Birkenau, Majdanek,
Treblinka and other Nazi
death camps, many towns
and cities, including War-
saw, Cracow, Lodz,
Bialystok, Lublin,
Kazimierz Dolny and
elsewhere have their own
Holocaust monuments.
Combining selections from
Mr. Rosenne and Ms. Gruber
serves to indicate that if the
Jewish sufferings that
resulted in the Holocaust and
the threats to Jewish ex-
istence in Israel were to con-
tinue, we would indeed be
relegated to a museum.
That's where our rejection of
bitter judgments emerges as
an indictment of mankind's
inhumanities.
Can you imagine how Jews
would have been treated if
they were memorialized in a
museum! We would be adored
as People of the Book, as the
Nation of Prophets and Seers,
as the Founders of Religions,
as the inspirers of Christiani-
ty and Islam.
Imagine the jubilation with
which Jews could be admired
if they were to vanish into a
museum! But the eternal Jew
decides to control his own
destiny on that score.
The bitterness that caused
the Meir Rosenne indictment
of the hateful judgements was
from an earlier admonition by
Chaim Weizmann. Reporting
some of his speeches during
the agonized suffering in the
Nazi era, I quoted him when
he told a gathering:
"Our would-be destroyers,
claiming a final solution,
would love the memory of us
if they could embalm us in a
museum."
Mr. Weizmann then pro-
ceeded with the mobilization
of whatever was available for
self-help and self-redemption.
A result of Mr. Weizmann's
labors is that Israel's rebirth
is the rejection of
museumhood. That's the con-
tinuing commitment of the
eternal Jew today. ❑
Cheers For
JARC Objectives
ongressman William
Broomfield added his
commendations for
JARC — Jewish Association
for Residential Care — when
he hosted the Sam Frankel
JARC group and its ad-
ministrative staff in his
Washington office Oct. 25.
The social service aspects of
the movement were taken in-
to account by Congressman-
C
Rep. Broomfield
Broomfield. He commended
the Jewish Vocational Service
and Workshop as an impor-
tant factor in the programm-
ing of the Jewish community.
Congressman Broomfield
told the JARC delegation
that whatever he extends to
them applies to all of the
movement's 13 homes and to
the community that in-
augurated the cause. "I wish
especially to commend
volunteering that makes your
important tasks possible," he
told his guests.
❑
lawl
LOCAL NEWS
limm
Keshet Chapter
For Handicapped
Keshet, an organization of
Jewish parents with han-
dicapped children, is forming
a Detroit-area chapter.
Keshet, headquartered in
Chicago, Ill., is based on the
belief that every Jewish child
should be able to participate
as fully as possible in the
mainstream of Jewish life,
regardless of disability.
The organization is open to
Jewish families of all
denominations whose chil-
dren have any type of han-
dicap, including learning
disabilities, physical handi-
caps and developmental dis-
abilities.
The program offers parent
and sibling support groups,
educational programs, special
holiday celebrations, a state-
accredited day school, a Sun-
day school, a family retreat
and Camp Keshet, a summer
camping program for han-
dicapped children.
The Detroit-area Keshet
chapter will offer programs
and services based on the
needs of its member families
and the community. Plans in-
cluding sharing and coor-
dinating resources and infor-
mation.
For membership informa-
tion, call Ronelle Grier,
661-6905.