Newspaper Page Text
The Southern Israelite
Vol. XU 11
New School
Hour Brings
Crisis in TV. Y.
NEW YORK (JTA) — Super
intendent of Schools Bernard
Donovan ordered New York City
public schools to open 45 minutes
earlier in the morning to make
up time lost by students and
teacher pay losses resulting from
the New York City teachers’
strike.
Dr. Donovan acted at the re
quest of Brooklyn Jewish com
munity leaders who complained
that the extension of the school
day by 45 minutes beyond the
3 p.m. closing time originally
ordered created a problem for
more than 50,000 Jewish students
who attend religious classes in
Talmud Torahs after school
hours.
The matter was brought to the
attention of Deputy Mayor Rob
ert W. Sweet who was visited at
City Hall by a committee repre
senting the Brooklyn Jewish
Council. The committee also ex
pressed concern over the “anti-
Semitic climate engendered by
the school strike” and asked the
city administration to help the
Council carry on a continuous
dialogue with black community
leaders to bring about better re
lations between Jews and Ne
groes.
The 34-day teachers’ strike
centered on a dispute between
the mainly Negro and Puerto
Rican Ocean Hill-Brownsville ex
perimental school district and the
predominantly Jewish United
Federation of Teachers.
A Weekly Newspaper for Southern Jewry — Established 19° r
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, November 29, 1968
in brief
Egypt Drops Demand
For Tourist Visas
NEW YORK (JTA) — In an
attempt to revive the tourist trade
from the United States, shattered
by the June, 1967 war, Egypt
has announced it will no longer
require visas from American
tourists. It will no longer ask
visitors their religion and will
no longer bar tourists whose pass
ports contain an Israeli visa indi
cating that they had previously
visited Israel.
NATO Checking
On Soviet Moves
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The
North Atlantic Treaty Organiza
tion (NATO) has inaugurated a
new command intended to track
Soviet submarines in the Mediter
ranean and to interpret the in
tentions and capability of the
Russian fleet there, it was re
ported here from Naples.
NATO Secretary-General Ma-
nilo Brosio warned at a ceremony
introducing the command, that
“any crisis in the Mediterranean
and Middle East would have
world consequences.”
Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer of
the United States, Supreme Al
lied Commander in Europe, said
that the expanded Soviet Medi
terranean fleet “indicated more
than just a desire to be present.”
The new command is called
Marairmed and consists of U.S.,
British and Italian planes. Greece
and Turkey are slated to partici
pate later.
New York Firm
Seeks Oil Assets
NEW YORK (JTA) — Belco
Petroleum Corp., a New York
firm which last week announced
an agreement for exploratory oil
drilling off Israel’s shoreline, has
disclosed it was negotiating am
agreement to acquire assets of a
firm which imports crude oil into
Israel.
Belco is seeking to acquire the
assets of Sonnebom Associates
Petroleum Corp., of New York,
the importer, lor about 215,000
Belco common shares. Belco’s
common shares closed on the
stock market last Friday at
$49.28, and the transaction would
therefore involve $10.6 million.
IN THIS ISSUE
TOURIST
TRAVEL
TO ISRAEL
EMPHASIS
Pages 2, 3, 4
East Jerust
After Blast t.
JERUSALEM (JTA) —East
Jerusalem returned to normal to
day as a curfew imposed after
last Friday’s explosion in the
Jewish Mahane Yehuda market
place in the western sector of
the city was lifted.
The blast, caused by high ex
plosives concealed in a parked
car, killed 12 people, eight of
whom have been identified and
five buried so far. Fifty were hos
pitalized. At least one victim was
an Arab and another, a boy of
about 13, may have been an
Arab. All of the identified dead
were from Jerusalem. The ex
plosion caused extensive property
damage.
Five hundred Arahs were de
tained for questioning within
hours after the explosion. One
hundred persons were charged
with curfew violations and were
to appear in court. Municipal
workers, many of them Arabs,
cleared debris in the marketplace
which was located on Aggripa’s
Way near the Mea Shearim quar
ter, a district inhabited mainly
by Orthodox Jews.
Prime Minister Levi Eshkol
visited the scene and praised self-
restraint shown by the Jewish
population. There were only a
few incidents of Arabs being as
saulted by enraged Jews after
the explosion. Last Sept. 4, when
a series of grenade explosions
rocked downtown Jerusalem, kill
ing one Israeli and wounding 51,
bands of Jewish youths roamed
the Old City of Jerusalem’s Arab
.OLiS
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voW-
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jok 12 Lives
quarters attacking Arabs and
smashing their cars and stores
for several hours before police
brought them under control.
Prompt sealing-off of East Jeru
salem was credited with avoid
ance of similar incidents this
time.
Mr. Eshkol called the explosion
an “outrage” that “revealed the
true nature of Israel’s enemies.”
He said responsibility for it be
longed to the Arab rulers who
have encouraged terrorist activi
ties. “They failed to defeat Israel
on the battlefield so they turned
to the murder of civilians by hit-
and-run tactics.”
Police were silent on the prog
ress of their investigation and
would not say whether they had
caught any suspects or found any
leads. The vehicle containing the
TNT, though practically demo
lished, was identified as an eight
to 10-year-old British-made Mor
ris Oxford. It is a model not
owned by many Israelis and may
have belonged to a West Bank
resident. Police said they are
tracing the ownership of the ve
hicle and also the possibility that
it might have been stolen.
Officials said that the damaged
buildings and other property
damaged or destroyed is covered
by Israel’s new national insurance
law which compensates victims
of terrorist acts. Dependents of
persons who were killed and vie-
tims who are permanently in
jured will be entitled to pensions.
THE POWER OF THE BOOK
“A library is a wonderful institution for enjoyment and
instruction. It doesn’t amount to much as an instrument
for social revolution, either for good or evil”, wrote Pro
fessor Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard, author of “The Af
fluent Society”. One wonders whether this cavalier dis
missal of the power of the book is due to Galbraith’s over
emphasis on economics or to de-emphasis on the effect of
history and culture.
That books are weapons for social revolution can ade
quately be documented, both in a positive and negative
manner . . . What did the master Nazi Goebbels fear when
he seized the books of liberal German authors to bum in
pyres in the streets of Berlin? Why were twenty-four car
loads of the books of the Talmud burned in the squares of
Paris by King Louis IX in 1242? Why did Brooklyn Jews
burn the Reconstructionist Siddur? Why is censorship of
text books demanded today in our public schools? Why
are Communist writings, tinged liberally, meeting violent
censorship by Soviet Russia today in Czecho-Slovakia?
Books, evidently, are still regarded as potent weapons.
Even in our times, with the growing use and influence of
radio and television, books are still the purveyors of
civilization, the affectors of change.
What is true of world events, is also true in the history
of the Jew, reflected in Jewish literature from the Bible
to recent outpourings of the State of Israel, and of the
Nazi Holocaust.
The Jewish book of books, the Bible, has not only been
the foundation of Jewish thought, but has set the moral
tone for contemporary civilization. The Ten Command
ments in Exodus and Deuteronomy still remain as a chal
lenging guide to basic human conduct. The cry of the
Hebrew prophets re-echoes in today’s demand for justice
to all, and is particularly relevant to the current racial
demands dividing the United States into black and white
establishments. The walls of the United Nations reflect
the hopes of a prophet who dared to declare that nations
should war no more. And it is interesting to note that
the Exodus story, the revolt of Moses against Pharaoh,
served as verbal ammunition for the American Revolu
tion; that the Biblical period of the Judges served as
source material for the American Constitution; and that
the first seal of America showed the Israelites crossing
*—Mr. Schwartzman was the first director of the Atlanta
Bureau of Jewish Education. He now holds the same
poet with the Miami Bureau of Jewish Education.
By LOUIS SCHWARTZMAN
the Red Sea, in comparing King George IV of England
to the Biblical Pharaoh of Egypt.
The Talmud, in interpreting the Bible, relates an Agadic
story affirming that death and life are in the power of
the tongue. A dying king is told by his physicians that his
only cure may come from drinking the milk of a lioness.
After many attempts to secure the necessary medicine,
one man is successful in milking a lioness. Returning
toward the King’s palace he stops at an inn, where, in his
sleep, in many parts of his body claim individual superior
ity. When the claim of the tongue is denied, the next
morning the tongue declares to the King’s messenger that
the milk being brought is the milk of a dog, for which
the man is imprisoned. Only when the parts of the body
agree that the tongue is superior, is the milk delivered to
the king, the king is cured, and the man amply rewarded.
Today, death and life may be in the power of the written
word, in treaties of peace, in treaties limiting nuclear
weapons.
The survival of the Jew is primarily due to his adapta
bility to changing social and economic forces. Both the
Talmud and the Jewish Codes of the sixteenth century
adjusted Jewish law, thru expanded Biblical precedent,
to meet the change from an agricultural to an industrial
society, from rural to urban life. Joseph Caro’s Shulchan
Aruch, usually regarded as an ultra-dry Code, expresses
keen philanthropic thinking: “Whatever is given for a
noble purpose must be the finest. If a man builds a house
of worship, it should be more beautiful than his home.
If he provides food for the hungry, it ought to be the best
on the table. If he gives clothing to the naked, it should
come from among the finest of his clothes.”
In confronting academic philosophical thought, the Jew
ish sages of the Golden Age of Spain challenged monopoly
of Aristotelian masters in the tomes of Maimonides, the
Ben Ezras, and Yehuda HaLevi. In HaLevi’s “Kuzari”, the
Rabbi condemns philosophical extremes to the King of the
Chazars, pleading for harmony: “Judaism does not urge us
to lead the life of a hermit, but guides us in the middle
path, equally distant from the extremes of too little and
too much. It allows free play to every God-given faculty of
both body and soul, within the limits set by the Divine
hand itself. For certain it is that what we devote to one
faculty in excessive measure, we withdraw from another
faculty, and thus lose the harmony which should pervade
our whole life.”
When Theodore Herzl published his “Jewish State” in
1895, he not only prophesied the coming of a State of
Israel in fifty years, but produced a blue-print for its
future growth. His book, viewed as another Utopia when
published, released the national impetus leading to modem
Israel. And when the new State was challenged by four
Arab armies, another book, containing the great epic of
the poet Haim Nachman Bialik, pointed to the need of
military courage to defend the State. After the Kishinev
pogrom in 1903, Bialik had written his masterpiece, “In
the City of Slaughter”, in which he chastised the Jews for
lack of resistance and for commercializing their own
wounds after the contrived Czarist massacres:
“Go, tramping pedlars, see the field of victims,
And dig white bones from out of your
new-made graves,
And fill your baskets, evr’y one his basket.
Go out into the world, and drag them with you,
From town to town, wherever there’s a market,
And spread them out before the strangers’ window*,
And sing hoarse begger songs, and ask for pity!
And beg your way, and trade as heretofore
In flesh and blood, your own ...”
The poem brought prompt response in thc*formation of
defense corps among the Jews of Russia — leading to the
Shomrim in the early Jewish colonies in Palestine and
supplying the spiritual backbone of the Haganah, the “il
legal”, and then the national, army of Israel.
Other dangers to the creative continuity of the Jewish
people were met by the stories of the Hasidim, giving fire,
fervor, new spirit, decrying the tendency toward dry
formalism in Jewish law and tradition. Books of humor, in
the Maaseh Books, in the famous Helm stories, strengthen
ed hope and optimism in times of Jewish persecution and
insecurity.
Thus, there is added significance today to the sayings
of the Sages: “A book and a sword descended from heaven.
Said the Almighty: ‘If you wiU abide by the moral law
of the Book, you will be saved from the sword.’” Or —
“More books, more wisdom.” Or — “for they are our life
and the length of our days.”
Said John W. Studebaker: “Books are weapons of de
mocracy. When people are burning books in other parts
of the world, we ought to be distributing them with
greater vigor; for books are among our best allies in the
fight to make democracy work." Said Thomas Carlyle:
“All that mankind has done, thought, or gained, is lying ha
magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the
chosen possession of men.” And Emulie Poulsson wrote:
“Books are keys to wisdom’s treasure;
Books are gates to land* of pleasure.
Books are paths that upward lead,
Books are friends. Come, let us read.”