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Pag* Four
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
Friday, Oct. 4, 1968
THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE
BETWEEN YOU AND ME .... by Boris Smolar
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ence but is not to be considered as sharing the views expressed by
writers. DEADLINE is 5 P.M. FRIDAY, but material received earlier
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Georgia Press Assn.
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7 Arts Features
Jewish
Telegraphic
Agency
World Union Press
Another Season
GUEST EDITORIAL
The penitential season is now ended, the book of judg
ment sealed, and our eyes are now turned to a season of
mellowness and rejoicing.
Soon Sukkot will come with its symbolism of imperm
anence, and Simhat Tova with its promise of the en
during.
Sukkot is a harvest festival when Jewish thoughts go
back to ancient pastoral days that happily have assumed
fresh meaning in our days in the new Israel, a reminder
of the vicissitudes in Jewish history and of the culmination
of a journey that began in the darkness that was ancient
Egypt and ended in the glory that was Sinai and in ultimate
fulfillment of promise.
Simhat Tova symbolizes both the end of a way and
the beginning of a new path.
On that day the last parchment of the Scroll has been
read and on that day the scroll has been unrolled to its be
ginning, bereshith, thus reminding us not alone of the con
tinuity and renewal in life but that learning, like creation,
is a never-ending process.
The leaves will be falling when our cycle of holidays
ends, kindling a new season.
UJA’s “Herb” Friedman
LEADER AT 50
Few men in this country can catalogue with
pride at the age of 50 such impressive achievements
in Jewish communal life as can Rabbi Herbert A.
Friedman, the executive vice-chairman of the United
Jewish Appeal, who reaohed 50 recently.
When Rabbi Friedman—affectionately called
Herb by his friends—came to New York from Den
ver in 1955, to suoceed Dr. Joseph Schwartz in the
important position of the UJA’s top executive, he
was a young rabbi known as a powerful speaker,
who during World War II served in the U. S.
armed forces as assistant advisor on Jewish affairs
on the European front. It took him practically no
time to prove his ability as an excellent organizer,
a tireless worker, and a man with imagination.
Today, at 50, he is known as a dynamic Jewish
leader throughout all the communities in the United
States and Canada, as well as in Israel. Benefiting
from his abilities is not only the United Jewish
Appeal, but the American Jewish community in
general which is being, to a great extent, Jewishly
stimulated by the UJA campaigns. And it goes
without saying that Israel is the largest beneficiary
of his dedicated work in this country. Even Jewish
communities in countries like England, France and
South Africa are gaining from his energetic efforts.
He gives them guidance and advice in their fund
raising campaigns in person and by correspon
dence.
Rabbi Friedman’s achievements are many and
varied. In addition to bringing the UJA to its
greatest heights, he conceived the idea of develop
ing young Jewish leadership to succeed the aging
generation of UJA leaders. This was and still re
mains one of his favorite projects. Many of the
younger people whom he attracted in various com
munities to join the young leadership ranks now
have leading roles in the UJA, having “graduated”
from young leadership into national leadership in
the UJA Cabinet.
It was Rabbi Friedman also who initiated the
Israel Education Fund—an effort separate from the
UJA annual campaign—to strengthen high school
education in Israel which is not being maintained
by the state. Established at the end of 1964, the
Fund has brought millions of dollars to Israel and
has provided about 50 new high school buildings,
teachers’ training programs, student scholarships
and related centers, equipment and facilities. It is
a campaign project for which gifts of not less than
$100,000 are sought, payable in up to five years,
with no diminution of the gifts from the same giver
to the regular annual contribution to the United
Jewish Appeal.
The role which Rabbi Friedman played in mo
bilizing American Jewry to unprecedented giving
during the historic Six Day War period last year
can only be described as extraordinary. It resulted
in the outpouring within a few weeks of aid by
American Jewry for the Israel Emergency Fund
totalling about $180 million dollars. This was in
addition to the proceeds of the regular UJA annual
campaign which were also larger in 1967 than ever
before. Through the concentrated efforts of Rabbi
Friedman and the Council of Jewish Federations
and Welfare Funds, a record sum of $323 million
was raised by the American Jewish communities in
1967, of which about 76 percent went to Israel
through the UJA.
* * *
UJA AT 30
Rabbi Friedman’s 50th birthday coincides with
the completion of 30 years existence of the United
Jewish Appeal. During these 30 years, the UJA
raised over $1,920 million. Of this sum, UJA dis
tributed $1,127 million through the Jewish Agency
and $648 million through the Joint Distribution
Committee. About $85 million was allocated to
United Hias Service and other agencies.
The story of the UJA is the story of about two
million persons who each year have made con
tributions on a per capita scale never equalled by
any other present-day American voluntary effort.
It is the story of incomparable devotion by tens
of thousands of men and women who have given
their time, energy and enthusiasm in immeasurable
quantity to serve as the leaders and key workers
of the yearly UJA campaigns. Finally, it is the story
of reclaiming 3,000,000 Jewish lives and building
for most of them a new life in Israel, while helping
some 400,000 of them to settle in other free lands.
The UJA was bom out of the immediate need
to grapple with relief and rescue problems created
by Hitler’s determination to annihilate European
Jewry. But the UJA’s fund-raising work for the
Joint Distribution Committee relief activities and
for resettling uprooted Jews in Israel did not end
with the fall of the Hitler regime. On the contrary,
with the end of the war in 1945, and the defeat
of Hitler, came the assessment of the staggering
losses sustained by Jewry; 6,000,000 dead; tens of
thousands of Jews homeless; Jewish communities
overrun by Hitler in ruins; and the great cultural
centers of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Eur
ope irretrievably destroyed.
At once the American Jewish community reacted
to help the survivors of the greatest holocaust in
Jewish history and set new and unprecedented goals
for UJA campaigns to provide aid in many millions
of dollars for the Jewish displaced persons liberated
from the Nazis. The JDC and the Jewish Agency
—the two major partners in the UJA—were the
principal organizations which served the Jewish
DPs, whose number had swelled to more than 250,-
000 following the mass migration of Jews from
Poland, Hungary and Rumania after the 1946 po
grom in Kielce, Poland.
The greatest emphasis in UJA operations since
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, has
been on resettlement and absorption in Israel of;
the tens of thousands of Jews from the DP camps
and of the hundreds of thousands of Jews residing
in the Moslem countries in North Africa and in the
Middle East whose situation became perilous. At
the same time hundreds of thousands of Jews living
in Europe and in North Africa have had to be
helped to repair their shattered lives, to survive as
communities and individuals in the faoe of post
war economic hardships, poverty, disease and hos
tility. This task was undertaken by the JDC which
is still operating today on a global scale providing
welfare, medical and educational services to many
thousands of needy Jews in more than 20 coun
tries.
As the UJA concludes now its 30th year of
functioning, it is confronted with greater obliga
tions than ever before, in view of the danger facing
Israel even after the victorious 1967 Six Day War.
All indications point to the fact that the outbreak
of a new war by the Arabs against Israel cannot
be ruled out—this time with active aid of the
Soviet Union which makes no secret of its hostility
towards Israel. The UJA therefore enters its 31st
year of existence aware of the fact that the Jews
in Israel must concentrate all their efforts on the
security of their lives and their country. This im
poses upon American Jewry the obligation to rise
in 1969 to new heights in generosity in order to
help Israel to take care of its welfare and cultural
needs and of the absorption of new immigrants
which oontinue to come.
Yom Kippur— Antidote
To Fear, Loneliness, Surrender
By RABBI EDWARD T. SANDROW
Chairman Board of Governors
New York Board of Rabbis
The days of awe, the holiest
of the Jewish festivals, come
with the autumn season, the fall
ing of the leaves, “the pale
flowers dying,” as the poet puts
it. It is a melancholy time of
the year, Vom Kippur follows
Rosh Hashanah and the Jew is
told to fast, to unburden him
self, to remove the cement block
of guilt which weighs him down.
The holy days, on the surface,
come at a time of shorter days
and longer nights; yet in spite
of this apparently depressing
mood, Yom Kippur arrives with
o message of new hope. It is a
time of renewal of heart and
spirit. It is a time for repent
ance and forgiveness. It is not to
put us in a frame of mind which
sinks us deeper into the mire
of guilt and anxiety but rather
to carry us over the winter into
the spring of life.
We live at a time when people
are prone to surrender to dis
couragement and defeat. Some
people feel that all is dark and
that we are doomed. It is a kind
of fatalism originally espoused
by the ancient Greeks and pagan
faiths of antiquity. They taught
that we are all caught in a web
and that our destiny is all pre
arranged. “Choose life that you
may live,” says the Bible. We
are not little puppets. True, we
and our world are imperfect.
There is poverty. There is the
urban crisis- There is the black
revolution. There are student
riots. There is the cold war
between the East and the West.
There is the tragedy of Vietnam.
There is no peace for heroic and
democratic Israel in the Middle
East. In addition, we as human
beings are weighed down by our
individual tensions and anxie
ties. Yet, says Judaism, Yom
Kippur can give us some guide
lines as to how we can repent,
how we can change, how we
can restructure our lives and
the world in which we live. We
have free choice. That is why
it is tragic to notice so many
people who freeze, who resign
themselves to defeat, who give
in to all the prejudices and
hostilities which beset our so
ciety.
So Yom Kippur stands as a
beacon of light, precisely at a
gloomy time of the year, to give
us inner strength and courage.
Yom Kippur is an antidote to
fear, to loneliness, to surrender.
When the lights of the world
seem dim, it urges us to brighten
the spirit of man and not give
in to panic or fear or violence
or impatience or poverty or
bigotry or hatred or indifference.
We Jews are a people cov
enanted to God. We have a duty
through faith and courage to
support Israel, to enrich the
synagogue, to make Jewish edu
cation relevant and meaningful
to this generation and to parti
cipate in bringing about a just
and peaceful society. The pro
phet Isaiah, whose words We
read on Yom Kippur, called on
the Jew to help build a better
world. Then, says Isaiah, “will
the light of the Lord shine upon
us-”
Jewish
Calendar
•ROSH HASHANA
•IIASHANA RABBA
Sept. 23-24
Oct. 13, Sunday
Mon. - Tues.
•SHEMINI ATZERET
•YOM KIPPUR
Oct. 14, Monday
Oct. 2, Wednesday
•SIMHAT TORAH
•SUKKOT
Oct. 7-8
Mon. - Tue*.
Oct. 15, Monday
•HOLIDAY BEGINS SUNDOWN PREVIOUS DAY 1