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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 A® ^ voW- -^oO 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.”