Newspaper Page Text
Page Six
Friday, June 12, 1964
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
and THE SUNCOAST JEWISH NEWS
Published weekly by Southern Newspaper Enterprises, SM Court-
land St., N E„ Atlanta J, G©orris, TR. 8-8249, TR. 8 8248. Second
elaaa postace paid at Atlanta, Ga. Yearly rabecriptlon five dollars
The Southern Israelite In rites literary contributions and correspond
ence but la not to be considered as sharing the views expressed by
writers. DEADLINE 5 PAL, FRIDAY, but material received earlier
will have a much better chance of publication.
Adolph Rosenberg, Editor and Publisher
Kathleen Nease, Jeanne Loeb, Joseph Redlich
Georgia Press Association
NATIONAL EDITORIAL
Telegraphic
Agency
7 Arts Features
World Press
A Pledge Is A Promise
Atlantans and Jews in many another Southern communi
ties have generously pledged support to the 1964 campaign
of the United Jewish Appeal. And this is fine. But it doesn’t
go far enough.
A pledge, worthy as it is, is only a promise. A promise to
pay. But the time has come when the pledge must be re
deemed. Fellow Jews in all parts of the world can’t live on
promises. They need help now.
A total of 751,500 Jewish men, women and children are
in sore need and have nowhere to turn except the UJA.
These are the refugees, the immigrants, the distressed* and
needy Jews of the world.
The ideal for many is to emigrate to Israel. No Jew who
can get to Israel is turned away; all are taken in. The re
sult has been four years of the heaviest immigration that
small country has had since the first influx of its earliest
years. Every ship, every plane, brings the newcomers. A
larger percentage of them are penniless, many are sick and
old—and one out of every two is a child or a young person
under eighteen.
They need—everything! They need food and homes.
They need medical care, both physical and mental. They need
jobs or training for jobs. The children need education, the
youths need guidance and training for employment. Educa
tion for them would be ideal, too—where it can be afforded.
The old people, the infirm and the handicapped, need TLC—
Tender loving care.
The miracle is that so many of these needs can be met
by our UJA agencies—but it takes money—$39,500,000. And
right now money means cash. Not pledges, not promises—
but redemption of the pledges and promises. In cold cash.
And now.
So write your check today, turn it in today to the At
lanta Jewish Welfare Fund Campaign and take pride in the
knowledge that your Jewish community has kept its promise
to our Jewish brothers.
LBJ AND ESHKOL
Guest Editorial
It was a gracious compliment for the White House to
extend an invitation to Israel’s Prime Minister, but Mr. Esh-
kol’s arrival here for a meeting with President Johnson is
motivated by more than social purposes. The meeting may
have truly momentous significance.
There is the question of course of peace in the Middle
East. Backed by German science and Communist arms, Mr.
Nasser has become most bellicose, threatening to destroy
Israel every other day. Recently Mr. Khrushchev visited
Cairo and raised Mr. Nasser’s morale by smiling benignly
at him. No doubt the matter has been gone into at the meet
ing with the President. The U.S. gives many millions to
Egypt and no doubt if it wished could affect the course of
events there. Mr. Nasser is not entirely indifferent to the
money.
There is another matter that may have been gone into.
Einstein once wrote an equation, the substance of which was
that “energy equalled matter multiplied by the speed of
light, squared.” This equation introduced atomic physics. It
meant a revolution, more significant perhaps than the dis
covery of America by Columbus, but thus far, the only re
sults of the equation are its use in such things as bombs and
the making of submarines more deadly. President Johnson
recently proposed a partnership between America and Israel
for the purpose of using atomic or nuclear energy available
for the desalination of sea water.
The problem of an adequate water supply has become an
important one for the whole world. In Israel, it was a life
and death problem and Israel has devoted a great part of its
development budget, one third of which is supplied by Israel
Bonds, for the provision of a water supply. This is achieved
through systems of irrigation bringing the waters of the
Jordan to outlying areas. Also, Israel Bond money has been
used to further experimentation in the desalination of sea
water. At the Red Sea port of Elath, a new pilot plant for
desalination by the method developed by the Israeli, Alex
ander Zarhin, is daily transforming 250,000 gallons of sea
water into fresh water.
The cost by the present Zarchin method is around 40
cents for 250 gallons.
This is quite satisfactory for home use but too expensive
for agricultural purposes. However, more experimentation is
going on and it is hoped to reduce it further.
The real key to drastic reduction of desalination costs lies
apparently in the employment of nuclear energy for the
process and the meeting of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Eshkol may
promote this. If that results, atomic science will begin to be
employed, not to kill, but as Einstein so ardently hoped, to
bless the world and make it more fruitful.
Jewish Civil Disobedience
We are in the debt of those American
Jewish Congress leaders, led by Rabbi Joa
chim Prinz, who risked arrest in demonstrat
ing last Monday at the New York World’s
Fair against a provocative Jordanian dis
play, in defiance of an ordinance specifically
disallowing such demonstrations, a law of
which they were fully aware. They have
exemplified a truth to the Jewish com
munity which Negroes and others joined in
the civil rights revolution have known for a
long time: that there is a higher law and an
obligation to obey it in the face of manifest
injustice.
When Martin Luther King, called an out
side agitator, was asked to leave Birming
ham, Alabama, by a group of local clergymen,
he enunciated a simple principal that obvi
ously guided Rabbi Prinz and his associates:
“one is obliged to obey just laws and disobey
unjust laws.”
If, as a Boston civil rights leader recently
stated, “America loves order more than just
ice,” then we are grateful to Rabbi Prinz and
all those stalwarts of the fight for equality
in this land, who have redressed the balance
and placed justice on the height.
—BOSTON ADVOCATE
Only SI 5 A Head
What’s in the stars for Jewish education?
It doesn’t take a cristal ball or a ouija board
or a seance to see that we’re in trouble—
serious trouble—on this particular front.
And we’ll remain in serious trouble unless
the warning sounded by Dr. Samuel Dinin
of the University of Judaism is heeded.
Dr. Dinin, speaking before the 38th an
nual conference of Jewish educators in At
lantic City, called for “radical action” to
save the Jewish teaching profession and
Jewish education.
He lamented the low status in which we,
the People of the Book, hold our Jewish
teachers today. He decried the fact that there
is no money to lure young Jews into this
truly lofty profession. He was saddened by
our pinch-penny attitude on this grave mat
ter of our own survival.
Dr. Dinin just didn’t sit shiva premature
ly for Jewish education, though. He and Dr.
Elazar Goelman, president of the National
Council for Jewish Education, came up with
some proposals that merit more than mere
study and perusal by our community leaders.
Dr. Dinin proposed that the organized
Jewish community create a fund of $5,000,-
000, similar to the fund for public education
set up by the Ford Foundation. Income from
the fund, he said, should be used “solely to
strengthen the Jewish teaching structure in
the United States.” He placed emphasis on
the recruiting of young people for careers
in Jewish education. And well he should,
for the American Jewish community needs
1000 new teachers each year, for expanding
education facilities and to replace those who
are retiring.
Dr. Goelman was pointed in his criticism
of Jewish Federations throughout the coun
try. He cited data showing that grants for
Jewish education in the past five years
amounted to nine and one-half per cent of all
funds received by local agencies from Fed
erations and community chests.
How anemic is that nine and one-half per
cent was illustrated by Dr. Goelman who
noted that 40 per cent of public expenditures
in the United Sates went for public school
education. He didn’t expect Federations to
match that 40 per cent figure, however.
“Jewish communal fund allocations should
be tripled to at least 30 per cent,” he said.
Dr. Goelman contended that this was not
unrealistic since education is more important
to the Jewish community than to the gen
eral community.
If Dr. Goelman’s yardstick was applied
to Los Angeles Jewry, our Jewish religious
schools would receive some $1,500,000 a year
instead of the $450,000 they receive today
from Federation.
The 30,000 pupils in its school system —
now worth roughly $15 a head to our Com
munity leaders—would receive not meager
and half-hearted instruction but eager and
whole-hearted training. Jewish schools would
be truly worthy of Jewish tradition. Jewish
education would survive as a vital and thor
ough force rather than as a haphazard pot-
luck thing to which we give sympathy and
lip service, but no money.
The alternatives are so clear that it is
difficult to see why Jewish communal lead
ers put on dark glasses and turn down their
hearing aids when it comes to confronting
them. Dr. Dinin and Dr. Goelman, we feel,
speak for the great majority of the Jewish
community with their proposals. It’s our
leaders who need some education about edu
cation.
—B’NAI B’KITH MESSENGER, 1.08 Angeles
Bar Mitzvah Is Not The End
A sage once remarked that “we are a Jew
ish people only by virtue of the fact that we
study the Torah.”
But lip service to this axiom is not
enough. An elementary Jewish education is
not enough. Continuity is the catalytic agent
necessary to transform a Jewish child, re
ceptive and malleable, into a Jewish adult,
aware of responsibilities and proud of his
heritage.
Yet what are the facts? It is true that
more than 80% of Jewish children receive
some sort of Jewish schooling at some time
during school age.
“Some sort” there’s the rub.
A further fact is that just when adoles
cents begin to mature, when their reasoning
power can grasp abstracts and ideals we cut
them off from their heritage.
They are bar mitzvahed—accompanied by
a big party—and set adrift from their moor
ings. The foundation upon which we have
built falls into disuse, deteriorates and is
ultimately abandoned.
In Buffalo, for instance, of 1834 Jewish
children between the ages of 13 and 17, only
340 are receiving some kind of Jewish edu
cation.
To parents we say: if you are interested in
the future of the Jewish people; if you are
concerned about transmitting the values that
have helped us survive for thousands of
years; if you want your child to be an ad
justed, well-equipped American Jew—make
secondary education primary!
Now is the time to insure the future of
your child and of American Jewry. Find out
the facts about a Hebrew high school edu
cation. See your rabbi or principal at your
earliest opportunity.
Give your boy and girl a Hebrew high
school education!
—BUFFAIX) (N.Y.) JEWISH RECORD
Talmudic Treasures
COLLECTED AND TRANSLATED BY
JACOB L. FRIEND
One should not talk with his mouth dif
ferently from what he thinks.
Inquiring the price of an article without
having the money to pay for it is a form of
cheating.
There is no absolution for: (1) An adul
terer, (2) For one who exposes his fellow-
man to shame publicly, and (3) For one who
applies vile names to his neighbor.
Man was created last so that if he be
comes proud and overbearing, it may be
said to him: “Even the mosquito was cre
ated before you.” And also that no one
should claim the Lord had a partner in Cre
ation.
Man was created singly so that no one
may claim he is better than his neighbor,
as all are the first man’s descendants.
There are the so-called Seven Noachide
Commandments (that were given to the sons
of Noach and applying to all humanity, be
fore the Ten Commandments were revealed
on the Mount of Sinai which concerned:
(1) Courts of law, (2) Blasphemy, (3) Idola
try, (4) Adultery, (5) Murder, (6) Robbery,
and (7) The prohibition against eating a
part of the living body of an animal.
The Lord will not pardon the father who
marries off his young daughter to an old
man, or his young son to an old woman.
A sudden command to do something vio
lently opposed to one’s nature may cause
insanity.
JEWISH CALENDAR
•ROSH HASHONAB
Monday, Sept. 7
Tuesday. Sept. 8
•YOM KIPPUR
Wednesday, Sept. 16
•SUCCOTH
Monday, Sept. 21
Tuesday, Sept. 22
SIMHAT TORAH
Tuesday, Sept. 29
•HOLIDAY BEGINS
Sundown Previous Day