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Friday, May S. 1W4
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Pact Fit*
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MU. 8-1976
THE RECENT article in Look
magazine on the future of the Jew
in America has aroused concern and
consternation since if in effect con
signs the American Jewish oommun
ity to extinction by the year 2000
Prophecy is both a dangerous and
foolish business Moreover, a study
to be released soon by Newsweek
may well limn the picture in some
what brisker colors, though there
is no denying the corroding effect
of intermarriage. Marshall Sklare in
the May issue of Commentary makes
a number of perceptive observations
about the problem that are worth
pondering, particularly has asser
tion that “the present state of Jew
ish endogamy seems to have been
grasped more firmly by the novel
b*s than the sociologists ” In his
opinion the real danger is rooted in
Jewish complacency, to which he
ascribes Jewish agency failure to
conduct in depth research in the
area of intermarriage. He calls this
a “surprising lack of interest in a
matter more crucial to Jewish sur
vival than any other.”
» • »
HOW DOES a man look at life
at eighty? Rube Goldberg, probably
the most famous American cartoon
ist of this century, says it may take
a hundred years before we develop
the serenity to discard our prej
udices and bombs but that he “just
can't wait that k*^.” At ei^ity, he
recently told James W. Sullivan of
the New York Herald Tribune, he
simply can’t “stay mad long enough
to rouse the public from its custo
mary ^ate of apathy ’’ A yom^ oc
togenarian with a deeply religious
outlook once told this writer he was
Milling to wait, for if he waited long
cnou^i Messiah vtfili come and all
Yeshiva Officials
Drop Charges
Against Youths
NEW YORK, (JTA) - Ten Neg
ro youths arrested in the attack
last week on pupils of a Brooklyn
yeshiva were released this week
with a lecture by a Family Court
judge after yeshiva officials dropped
charges against them
Some 16 of the pupils and two
teachers of the United Lubawitcher
Yeshivoth were roughed up and
bruised in the attack on April 21
during a lunch-hour recess. One
youth, who was seized in a citi
zen’s arrest by a city building in
spector, was sentenced last week
to an 18-month term in a state
training school. Rabbi Samuel
Schrage, principal of the school,
said - yeshiva officials had decided
that prosecution of the 10 youths
would not serve any purpose since
they and their parents had ex
pressed contrition for taking pari
in the assault. Judge Maurice Bern
hardt then dismissed the charges
AS WE WERE SAYING-By Robert E. Segal
Russian Jewry’s Plight And Our Own Haunts Us
ANOTHER Octogenarian, recently
retired U. S. Supreme Court Justice
Felix Frankfurter, is not a syna
gogue-going Jew. In fact he left the
synagogue a few years after his
bar miitzvah and has never return
ed. However, despite his alienation
from synagogue, he wants to die a
Jew. Recently-rit is disclosed in the
March issue of Atlantic Monthly by
Garson Kanin— Judge Frankfurter
left instructions that when his time
came for the inev.table he wanted
a certain close friend, a practicing
Orthodox Jew, to say a prayer in
Hebrew. Kaddish.’, Kanin asked in
surprise. Waving him off impatient
ly he replied: “I came into the
world a Jew, and although I did not
live my life entirely as a Jew, I
think it is fitting that I should leave
as a Jew. I don’t want to be one
of these pretenders and turn my
back on a great and noble heritage ”
• • *
SECULARIST elements in Israel
are about to launah a campaign to
upset the country’s marriage laws.
Under existing law civil marriages
are prohibited. But according to
Maariv, one of Israel's newspapers,
members of a secularist colony are
planning a test case through a new
device. It is planned to call in a
member of Israel's bar to perform
a wedding as an officer of the
court and then claim for the couple
full marital status If the author
ities balk, the colonists plan to carry
the case to the Israeli Supreme
Court on the ground that the pre
sent law is unconstitutional since it
deprives citizens of Israel of the
freedom of conscience.
THE YIDDISH press in New
York reacted sharply to last week’s
attack on Lubavitoher Yeshiva
youngsters by a gang of fifty youth
ful Negro hoodlums. The press was
chagrined that the incident happen
ed at a time when the Negro Rev
olution was gaining wide acceptance
in the Jewish community. The in
cident also served to revive the
theme of Negro anti-Semitism.
There was no inclination of course
to blame the whole Negro oommun
ity for the acts of a few Negro
rowdies, but it was generally felt
that Negro leadership fell down in
the job of curbing manifest anti-
Semitism in the Negro ghettos of
America. Dr. Samuel Margoshes in
his column in the Day-Jewtsh Jour
nal said "what astonishes a great
A spectre is haunting thousands
of Jews in America—the fate of be
tween 2,500,000 and 3,000,000 Jews
in the USSR
Yes, the phrase is stolen from
Karl Marx, and the reference to
“thousands of Jews in America”
rather than to all of the Jews here
and everywhere in the world is de
liberate.
For, in the first instance, the
somber prospect of seeing the last
groat wallspring of Judaism deJu-
(laized has an eerie quality intelli
gible to Jews alone. But, alas, it is
not the entire Jewish community
of this or any other land that has
as yet begun to appreciate the
enormity 'of the Russian campaign;
only a compartively small sector
of American Jewish opinion is in
formed on and interested in this cat
astrophe
The failure of a large part of the
American press to take more than
ephemeral cognizance of the early
April conference in Washington on
Russian anti-Semitism dramatizes
the general indifference to the
Soviet procedure During Hitler's
ravages, one in every three Jews
extant in the 1930’s and 1940’s lost
their lives. This was murder in
the physical sense. Now, if Nikita
Khrushchev does not alter his
course, one in every four Jews still
on the earth (after Hitler’s atroc
ities) will be spiritually incapaci
tated. And while this is not hom
icide or exactly genocide, it amounts
to the deprivation of much that
makes Jewish life noble, glorious,
meaningful, and enduring.
What is happening to the hundreds
of thousands of Jews in Russia has
been told and retold in the JewiMi
press. One of the speakers at the
Washington Conference epitomized
it for all: “In Russia, a Jew must
be a Jew, but he is not allowed
to be Jewish.” This is the final
distillation of the truth that the
Soviet high command sees to it that
every Jew is stamped a Jew as a
member of the 100 and more nation
ality groups in Russia. As Ukrain
ians are stamped, labeled, identified
Ukrainians; Georgian, Georgians;
Armenians, Armenians; and Azer
baijans, Azerbaijans, so Jews of
Russia, regardless of the area they
live in, are catalogued Jews. Thus
many of us, however, is the com
plete failure of the Negro leader
ship to raise its voice against the
outbreaks of anti-.Iewish hostility.”
He charged that Negro intellectuals
and public opinion molders were
silent on the issue “when the Amer
ican Jews would expect leadership
to dampen the fires of new hatred
now smoldering in the Negro ghet
tos."
Jews becomes another diamond in
the Russian crown of nationality
grim*.
But Jewish the Jew cannot be
Circumcision is derided; Jewish
burial denied; Jewish seminaries re
duced to ghostly shadows of the
teeming intellectual balls of learning
and prayer they once were, Hebrew
and Ytdchsh are practically ver-
boten.
Oh, but why are the Jews of
America complaining about Khrush
chev's destruction of Judaism, a
dedicated anti-Communist asks in a
letter to the editor. Don’t the Jews
realize that all religions in Russia
are pressed to the wall?
This, too, is a part of our ordeal
For while leaders of the Russian
Orthodox Church, and heads of Lu
theran and Baptists assemblies,
among others are free to travel out
of Russia to meet with colleagues,
rabbis are not allowed to do so.
Judaism definitely is circumscribed
to a degree far more severe than
the proscriptions restraining other
faiths in Russia
Interesting enough, it was “The
National Observer,” a Dow Jones
& Company weekly, that had the
enterprise to give ample coverage
to the Washington Conference on
anti-Semitism In a mast compre
hensive article, extending nearly
four columns, that newspaper cover
ed the Conference and then went
on to do what we are called upon
now to do That is to speculate in
tensively on what is going to happen
to Jews outside Russia, not only
with regard to their responsibilities
for mobilizing opinion regarding the
Russian scourge that pulverizes Ju
daism within the USSR but m the
sense of what is happening and may
happen to Jewish communities and
individual Jews everywhere.
If it is true that in Russia, the
spectre haunting the Jewish com
munity is eradication of all spir
itual, cultural, linguisic, and ritual
istic Jewish continuity, then we are
obliged to say that the spectre
haunting American Jews is the very
real threat of diminution, attenua-
tation, and Jewish managerial up-
•abiiits
MIS
SULVM
TRUCKS
RACKS
BERRY
I ramoNi
RE. 5-3250
manstop.
Let me hurry to explain:
Diminution: no reasonable stu
dent of the American Jewkh scene
can fail now to be alarmed by the
sharp increase in intermarriage as
R affects the Jewish oommmity.
This factor, plus the ckying up of
the streams of immigration, plus as
sknilatoonist trends will certainly
curb the growth of America’s Jew
ish population.
Attenuation: ask yourself whether
television and dinner parties on Fri
day night, golf on Saturday and
dozens of other distractions aren’t
whittling away at the former robust
ness of synagogue-based Jewish
life.
Jewish managerial upmanship:
are Jewish laymen honestly, energe
tically, and consistently moving our
Jewish enterprises along; or is most
of this left to the professionals? And
why? Raising the question would,
in the minds of a great number of
earnest people, answer it.
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