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f£— , l 1 — IBB ioDXHB EN 18B A ELITE Fridfay, August te, i^ 7 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE VJt *w- 'tm Published weekly by Seothen Newspaper Enterprises, 390 Court- land St, N. J3L, Atlanta, Georgia 30303, TR. 6-8249, TB. 6-8240. Second class postage paid at Atlanta, Georgia. Yearly subscription fWt. Hie Southern Israelite invites literary contributions and correspondence bat is not to be considered as sharing the views expressed by writers. DEADLINE is 8 P.M. FRIDAY, but material received earlier will have a much better chance of publication. Adolph Rosenberg, Editor and Publisher Kathleen Nease, Joseph Redlich Vida Goldgar, Harry Rose, Betty Meyer, Kathy Wood Georgia NATIONAL NEWSPAPER 7 Arts Features Jewish Telegraphic Agency World Union Press ^ASSOCA^ The Community Approach To Jewish Education June was the season of the year when graduation and com mencement exercises were held in schools and colleges throughout the land. An ever-increasing number of Jewish students are enrolled in these colleges and consequently are found among those who complete their undergraduate as well as their graduate and professional studies. We now find Jewish practitioners in every specialty of the medical, dental, accounting, engineering and business pro fessions. Technological advances and computerized program ming have also produced specialists in the teaching profession. Education has always been held in the highest esteem among Jews. But we are particularly concerned here with the status and the future of the area of education which has special significance to us as members of the Jewish community. Ours as an open and free society allows for the strength ening and development of the different religious faiths pro fessed by our citizens. Each group is free to develop, to the maximum of its resources, those institutions which will ex press the highest ideals and goals of its own religious faith and cultural values, without undermining the aims and purposes of public education. This makes possible the establishment of private schools, under Jewish auspices, either as supplemental to public edu cation, or on a full time basis, allowing for a more intensive concentration on Hebraic and Jewish studies. This requires, of course, that such institutions meet all the standards for ac creditation by public education bodies. In this frame of reference there has been a great develop ment and expansion of the allday school movement. At the same time it should be noted that the bulk of Jewish children receive their Jewish education in afternoon Hebrew Schools and Sunday Schools, under congregational auspices. At the National Conference of Professional Jewish Educa tors, held in May reports were received noting positive devel opments “in the increase in the number of pupils in Jewish schools, the expansion of the Day school movement, the growth in the study of the Hebrew language, the emphasis on the im portance of Jewish educational camping, and the increased number of students enrolled in Hebrew High Schools.” However, these reports also noted certain negative aspects. These pertain to an emphasis on ideological differences rather than to those aspects of Jewish education which tend to unite all Jews on common purposes. In our own community we have witnessed the growth of a Day School such as the Hebrew Academy of Atlanta, which has succeeded in enlisting the support of all segments of the Jewish community. We have noted the constant, though slow, development of a Central Hebrew High School sponsored by the Bureau of Jewish Education. The afternoon Hebrew Schools, the religious schools which meet on Sunday mornings, have shown progress in the organi zation of their curricular programs of studies. All of these institutions face a serious shortage in the availability of competent Hebrew teachers. Communities throughout the land face also a similar shortage in professional personnel for communal agencies and services. We need to concentrate on finding and encouraging, among our Jewish college students, an interest and desire to make Jewish communal service, in all its phases, their professional life service. To overcome the separateness and differences, without in any way jeopardizing the autonomy of our denominational groupings, we must unite on a community approach to Jewish education. We must interest the leadership of all of our organi zations in the problems of Jewish education that confront us on all levels—elementary, secondary, college, and adult Jewish education. < We must find the common elements in Jewish education which can unite us in accepting a common core curriculum in our schools, on their respective levels of interest and under standing. To accomplish this we require the support of the total Jewish community in making available scholarships for pro fessional study, research and experimentation in curriculum studies and create a climate of acceptance of the importance of Jewish education. We have made progress. But this should be regarded as a mere beginning of greater things to come. At stake is the identification of Jewish youth with Judaism jmH Jewish communal life. We need our college graduates to return to a continued, active participation in the leadership fnri service of the Jewish community. —E.M.K. FAREWELL TO “SNICK” Actor-fotksinger Theodore Bikel, long active in the civil rights movement and a veteran supporter of SNCC (the Student Non violent Coordinating Committee), has written the following open letter to the leadership of SNCC explaining why he can no longer be part of that organization. Mr. Bikel itr a national vice president of the American Jewish Congress. Although his letter is a personal one and does not speak for the Congress, we are distributing it because we feel it to be an eloquent—indeed, a passionate—statement by an American and a Jew deeply com mitted to the unity of the Jewish people and the brotherhood of all men. —THE EDITOR By THEODORE BIKEL You know me well—or ought to. I am the fellow who, long be fore it was fashionable or safe, followed SNCC’s call for help and advice. I am the man who help ed organize money and “bodies” at -the bidding of Jim Forman, Robert Moses, Chuck McDew and John Lewis; who went to Ala bama and Mississippi because SNCC needed his presence; who slept in a different loft each night because he would not sleep or eat where his Negro brother could not and because the sheriff resented his presence. I am the man who was called “kike nig ger-lover” both to his face and in print. You owe me nothing. I did what I did as a commit ment of conscience, a commit ment that is as real to me now as it was then and one which will continue as long as I breathe. But you do owe yourselves a reappraisal of recent actions and reoent pronouncements. You who spoke of a “philosophical concept” behind your position on “Jewish oppressors” owe both friend and foe a clearer defini tion of such “philosophy.” It ap pears from your statement that you have arrived at your posi tion after exhaustive research which took you as far afield as the Arab embassies and the At lanta Public Library; the latter presumably because no Jewish, Israeli or Zionist position was available to be explored. Since you speak of the establishment of the “illegal” State of Israel in 1948, of population figures and movements, of conquest and of oppression, one must presume you are guided by historical, po litical, socio-economic and demo graphic considerations. One must also hope that as a matter of principle you are engaged in an earnest search for truth — and justice. Unfortunately, such hope comes to grief when confronted with your stated position. Let us briefly consider the “il legal” State of Israel. Palestine was, from 1922 until 1948, a Brit ish Mandate. The Mandate gave the Jewish people the political right to re-establish Palestine as a Jewish State. It was neither a gift of land to the Jews nor did it take land from the Arabs. Lands were purchased—often at excessive prices — from their holders. Never in all history had Palestine been an Arab state. Turkish yes, British yes, and cer tainly from time immemorial Jewish. When in 1948 the UN voted to accept Israel as a sov ereign state, was that an “illegal” act? Surely the Rothschild who seems to be the villain of your memorandum did not buy both the U. S. and the Soviet vote on that occasion. And is the mantle of UN recognition any less legal when applied to a white state than it is for Mali, Chad, Ghana or Zambia? And, speaking of the emerging black African nations, I wonder if your researchers ever bother ed to inquire from whence came the help and support for these countries in the days of their struggle? Was it Arabs or Israelis who trained their engineers, craftsmen, builders, seamen and teachers? Ask who almost single- handedly built Ghana’s merchant marine; ask whether emerging black Africa looked to Cairo or Jerusalem for their “bond of friendship and brotherhood.” You seriously assert that the destinies of Arabs and Negroes are intertwined; you are, of course, perfectly correct in that assertion. History itself will bear out the constant relationship of Arab and Negro. Your own an cestors would hardly have ar rived <xi these shores had it not been for the beneficence and dil igence of Arab slave traders. And speaking of slavery, did it escape you — or was it conveniently glossed over—that at least one of the countries whose cause you have just espoused, Saudi Arabia, THEODORE BIKEL practices slavery today, in 1967? And that many of its slaves are Africans brought to Arabia and ■sold there by Moslems engaged in the Holy Pilgrimage to Mecca? Indeed, what manner of gov ernments ere these, your new proteges? What political struc tures do they represent? King doms and sheikdoms, on the one hand; dictatorships and military juntas on the other, whose masses live in poverty, squalor, serfdom or slavery, with a total absence of even the pretense of demo cracy. How do you think a cry of “black power” would be met in Riyadh or Mecca? How would “poor power” sound in Baghdad? To top it all, you found your selves actually capable of repeat ing the obscene comparison be tween Israelis and German Nazis advanced at the UN by the Soviet delegate, replete with hideous caricatures worthy of the finest anti-Semitic pamphlet. I feel nothing but the deepest contempt for such irresponsible behavior. It insults the memory of the martyrs who perished in the mass slaughter; it insults the dreams and hopes of their sons and heirs who built a home and a refuge in Israel, and who resisted being “pushed into the sea.’!- Their crime seems to have been that they were resisting their own an nihilation successfully. Had the “Holy War” celled for by Nasser and accomplices succeeded, you might have joined the list of those offering condolences for yet another case of genocide; for the annihilation would have been total, make no mistake. War is cruel and inhuman, as is all violence. Only the open blade of a murderer can ever justifiably be met by force. Such was the case in the Middle East last June. I am an American. I am a Jew. Thus I have a commitment, dou bly reinforced by historical and moral commandment. I am de termined to make equality and freedom a reality in this country, no matter what the setbacks. I am equally determined to honor JEWISH CALENDAR ♦ROSII HA SHAN A Oct. 5-6, Thurs-Fri. •YOM KIPPUR Oct. 14, Saturday ♦SUKKOT Oct. 19-20, Thurs.-Fri. ‘HOSHANA RARBA Oct. 25, Wednesday ♦SHEMINI ATZERET Oct. 26, Thursday •SIMHAT TORAH Oct. 27, Friday •HANIIKA Dec. 27—Jan. 3 Wednesday—Wednesday ♦HOLIDAY BEGINS SUNDOWN PREVIOUS DAY the bonds to my ethnic and re ligious background. “For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jer usalem.” You have this day at tempted to violate both my com mitments. The violation of one alone would have been enough. That you have for some time past made a mockery of the word “non-violent" in your name, both in word and in deed, was in adequately defended by the fa cile explanation of violence be getting violence, chaos begetting chaos. That the innocent should have suffered — Negroes more often than whites, that in the wake of “Burn Baby Bum” real babies got burned and most of them Negro, is a responsibility which partly lies on your shoul ders. I hope it lies heavily. Yet while I more and more disap proved of your methods I still be lieved that your ultimate aims deserved support. I am no longer certain of that either. I support ed Black Power as a political concept; as a tool of anarchy I find it reprehensible. Not that the concept of revolution is in itself frightening; our modem world and America itself have been built on the foundations forged by one revolution or another. What is frightening is a revolu tion without a blue-print. If it’s a case of “get Whitey” first and worry about planning later, then the tactic seems both stupid and dangerous. The assumption that, by definition, all whites are enemies and all blacks are friends is as simplistic as it is untrue. It is not my intention to pres cribe what direction SNCC should take, either in theory or in practice. It is, as you will quite rightly argue, none of my affair. What is my affair, how ever, is whether or not I wish to associate myself, my name, my energy or my resources with an organization with which I have fundamental disagreements. Thus it has become quite clear to me that, for the various reasons outlined in this letter, such loose ties as I may still have with SNCC will have to be severed forthwith. I cannot in conscience be part of .any organization which condones injustice, let alone com mits it. I shall continue to be part of the civil rights movement and to be active in it. But I shall choose to fight on the side of those who, like Dr. Martin Luther King, speak with the voice of sane and deliberative determina tion; who believe that this Is a movement to unite men as bro thers, not divide them by the litmus test of color; who seek not to establish one kind of su premacy doctrine in place of another but who concentrate in stead on the fight against the real enemies—poverty, ignorance end hatred of fellow-man. What you have wrought in this latest of a long line of missteps will be with us for a long time to come. It will not deter those among us who are secure in the knowledge that the Movement is bigger than your pronouncements and that it speaks responsibly and with reason. But many thou sands not so secure will in be wilderment withdraw support from all civil rights causes be cause of your incontinence and folly. Thus once again you will have harmed no one but the Negro himself. Not being able to turn my mind from your monstrous comparison of my brothers with the arch foe of my people—nay, of all people —I shall leave you this thought: you may want to spit in my face for being Whitey and a Fat Cat. But do not look to me for silence while you insult the memory of my people so recently martyred; you have no right to tamper with their graves. And think of Mickey Schwemer and Andy Goodman. You have no right to spit on their tomb; they died for a concept of brotherhood which you now cover With shame. Is CMMTMNH) A HIRSCH’S EffiBBEM RMTMI OC IAN FRONT BLOCK - ****^‘ ■■A 6 " ROSH HASHANAH ATOM KIPPUR SankM h Hr Owi SfUfRfM 0i Mali Hmt Early liMnrttiBB San**tMl ITWCTLY KOSHER DIMIMC ROOM 0Pfl 10 PUBLIC CatBflas fjdjj&g (100 t» 350) lm ww Ail" 00n wwwwi STRICTLY KOSHER unitr RBRBfBWoK ONLY BUTT MEATS SERVED • Fr#t Chaise Lounges ft Hals • Free Parkins On Nnliii • Salt t Swpr Free Meta SPECIAL WEEKEND RATES MSERVATISniJI t-mt