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Tolstoy - and the Jews
By WILLIAM C. BLAINE
In view of the apparent plight of some 2 million Jews
within the Soviet Union today, we believe it is in place to
point out that not all Russians have been and are anti-
Semitic. In the following, William C. Blaine, 32-degree
Mason and vice president of Mt. Zion Temple, St. Paul,
Minnesota, presents Leo Tolstoy’s view as to “What is a
Jew.”
—The Editor.
In the writings of Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist and
thinker, is found a highly exalted definition of the Jew.
“The Jew,” he said, “Is that sacred being who has brought down
from heaven the everlasting fire, and has illuminated with it the entire
world. He is the religious source, spring and fountain out of which all
the rest of the people have drawn their beliefs and religions.
The Jew is the pioneer of liberty. Even in those olden days when
the people were divided into but two distinct classes, slaves and
masters—even so long ago had the law of Moses prohibited the prac
tice of keeping a person in bondage for more than six years.
The Jew is the pioneer of civilization. Ignorance was condemned
in ancient Palestine more even than it is today in civilized Europe.
Moreover, in those wild and barbarous days when neither life nor the
death of any one counted for anything at all, Rabbi Akiba did not re
frain from expressing himself openly against capital punishment . . .
The Jew is the emblem of civil and religious tolerance. “Love the
stranger and the sojourner,” Moses commands, ‘because you have been
strangers in the land of Egypt.’
The Jew is the emblem of eternity. He, whom neither slaughter
nor torture of thousands of years could destroy, he whom neither fire
and sword nor inquisition was able to wipe off the face of the earth,
he who was the first to produce the oracles of God, he who has been
for so long the guardian of prophecy, and who transmitted it to the
rest of the world—such a nation cannot be destroyed. The Jew is as
everlasting as is eternity itself.”
This great, devout Christian writer and thinker looks at us, and
what he sees he admires and calls it good. But what about ourselves?
Are we truly heirs to our great heritage; and can we honestly say
to ourselves, "I, in my own generation, must and will cherish and
will live daily with the Judaism that Tolstoy venerates?”
Off The Record
By NATHAN ZIPRIN
Jewish Poetry ....
%/
Among the latest additions to the Jewish book market is “A Treas
ury of Jewish Poetry” from biblical times to the present by Nathan
and Marynn Ausubel. There has long been a need for the compilation
cf a book of Jewdsh verse both as an educational medium and as a
leflection of the multi-pronged cultural and artistic contributions made
by Jews in the various lands of their habitat over the centuries. Un
fortunately the present book falls short of the objective.
The authors of the book, put out w’ith excellent taste by Crown
Publishers, proceeded on the assumption that the term "Jewish poetry”
does not necessarily denote Jewish content but authorship, a thesis
under whose umbrella they were able to include a number of poets
who are not only personally and thematically remote from Jewishness
but actual apostates and Christian incense worshippers. Inclusion in
what is called a “treasury” of Jewish verse of such poets as Maria
Rainer Rilke, a Catholic, and Karl Shapiro, a gifted American who,
according to the authors themselves, has “evinced strong leanings to
ward Catholicism," is a travesty not even exceeded by the crime of
excluding from the collection a poet of such giant stature as H. Leivick.
The authors say in their excellent, though at times factually in
accurate, introduction that the choice of material was dependent on
the limitations of space and on the availability and quality of the Eng
lish translations. But this lame excuse is pure nationalization. Had they
done the research the project required, they would have found ade
quate, if not excellent, translations of Hebrew and Yiddish poets whose
The Southern Israelite
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