Newspaper Page Text
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The Southern Israel*^
A Weekly Newspaper for Southern Jewry — Estc
Vol. XLIV
Atlanta, Georgia, Friday, May 30, 1969
o»«*
No. 22
• • •
in
brief
LONDON (JTA)—Secretary of
State William P. Rogers told the
opening session of the Central
Treaty Organization (CENTO)
conference here Tuesday that
United States talks with the So
viet Union on the Middle East
situation “are reaching a more
concrete stage. Fundamental dif
ferences remain but some prog
ress has been made.” The Middle
East was expected to be one of
the major topics of discussion at
the parley.
JERUSALEM (JTA) — Then*
was an open question this week
about Gen. Itzhak Rabin’s fu-
. ture: Would he return from his
post as Israel's Ambassador to the
United States and run for the
Knesset on the Israel Labor
Party list? The Foreign Ministry
denied such a possibility several
weeks ago. But press reports now
said that Gen. Rabin, Chief of
Staff during the Six-Day War,
planned to take an active part
in the national election campaign
in hopes of becoming a Cabinet
minister.
SAN FRANCISCO (JTA)— A
West Coast Reform leader will
propose before a major rabbin
ical organization next month ab
olition of the practice of sending
rabbis into the military service
as chaplains. Rabbi Joseph B.
Glaser, regional director of the
Union of American Hebrew Con
gregations, says he will recom
mend before the convention of
the Central Conference of Amer
ican Rabbis (Reform) that civil
ian rabbis be assigned to take
care of the needs of servicemen.
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A col
lection of historical mementos on
“The Jew in American Political
Life,” including flyers, buttons
and other campaign material on
Jews who have sought political
office, is currently on display at
the B’nai B’rith Klutznick Ex
hibit Hall here. The 75-itein ex
hibit also indudes documents and
petitions relating to Government
action involving the religious lib
erty of Jews in the United States
and abroad. Tlje exhibit is joint
ly sponsored by B’nai B’rith and
the American Jewish Historical
Society.
READING, Pa. (JTA)—Police
officials reported this week that
an explosion that caused exten
sive damage to a synagogue here
Sunday was deliberately set. De
tective Captain Douglas Palm
said that the Temple Sholom
bombing involved dynamite. Win
dows of the synagogue were
blown out and damage was sus
tained by nearby homes. There
were no injuries although a con
firmation class of several chil
dren had left the synagogue only
10 minutes before the bombing.
Two synagogue officials escaped
injury inside the building. The
FBI has joined state and local
police in an investigation. Detec
tive Captain Palm said, “We have
a lot of ideas, but nothing con
clusive. At this point, we don’t
know what motivated it.” Police
said that another synagogue near
Oheb Sholom was recently de
faced with a swastika.
Jewish Seminaries Attacked
As Irrelevant “Trade Schools
NEW YORK (JTA)—America's
Jewish seminaries came under a
barrage of criticism by the pres
ident of the National Foundation
for Jewish Culture who described
their mood as “placid, past-ori
ented and pedantic.” Rabbi Dan
iel Jeremy Silver of Cleveland,
the son of the late Rabbi Abba
Hillel Silver, the Zionist leader,
said that a major overhaul of the
seminaries is needed to trans
form them from mere “trade
schools” for rabbis serving emp
ty synagogues to training centers
for Jewishly-formed social work
ers, youth leaders and scholars.
He also endorsed the principle of
female rabbis, calling the present
“womanless ministry” an “im-
American Jewish Press Week June 1-7
becility.” He asked, "Why alone
among the professions is the rab
binate in violation of the Fair
Employment Practices Act?”
Rabbi Silver was the principal
speaker in a symposium pn “The
Future of Rabbinic Training in
America sponsored by “Judaism,”
a quarterly journal published by
the American Jewish Congress.
Eight other leading rabbis served
on the panel.
Rabbi Silver, religious leader
of the Temple in Cleveland,' said
that seminary grades should
serve not only in congregations
but also in colleges and cities,
working with the “urban-unaf-
filiated, the apartment-alienated,
the campus disenchanted.” He
charged that pressures to provide
the seminaries to be “technical
schools” and to lower admission
standards and achievement levels.
The institutions have fallen, he
said, into “that unhappy pattern
in American education which
has transformed our schools into
essentially apprentice - training
centers” in which “scholarship is
sacrificed to courses in techni
que.”
He assailed as an "intolerable
scandal” the sectarian separation
of Jewish seminaries. Although
seminary students need “courses,
teachers, perspectives and ideas
which no insulated seminary can
provide, almost all rabbinical
isolation, even in the middle of
training is carried out in splcndlng
isolation, even in the middle of
New York,” Rabbi Silver said.
He proposed an inter-disciplinary
approach which would permit
students of the Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Re
ligion (Reform) to take Codes or
Talmud at the Jewish Theolog
ical Seminary (Conservative) and
a Yeshiva University (Orthodox)
student to take Bible hermenu-
tics at Hebrew Union. “A mind
trained only to parrot a sectarian
party line can harly teach Israel
to love all Israel,” he said.
TSI Editor Concludes
Office as AJPA Chief
Winding up his final year of
eligibility, The Southern Israe
lite’s Adolph Rosenberg next
week will preside over the an
nual convention of the American
Jewish Press Association in Dos
Angeles.
The convention is being held
during the observance of Nation
al Jewish Press Week from June
1-June 7.
Joseph Cummins, editor and
publisher of the B’nai B’rith Mes
senger, Los Angeles, and vice
president of the AJPA, is con
vention chairman.
The convention will begin on
Thursday, June 5, at the Ambas
sador Hotel and continue through
Friday.
A program of workshops has
been arranged to cover the ga
mut of challenges and problems
facing the English Jewish news
papers of today.
Leading the workshops will be
these editors and publishers:
Arthur Weyne, Cleveland Jewish
News; A1 Bloom, Pittsburgh
Chronicle; Jimmie Wlsch, Dailas-
Ft. Worth Texas Jewish Port;
Morris Janoff, Jewish Standard,
Jersey City; Joe Wleeberg, Boston
Advocate; Leo Frisch, Jewish
World, Minneapolis-St. Paul; Mr.
Cummins; Connie Isenberg, Jew
ish Civic Leader, Worcester,
Mass.; Milton Firestone, Kansas
City Jewish Chronicle.
Delegates will be guests of the
B’nai B’rith Messenger at a din
ner-reception on Wednesday
evening and of Disney Land on
Thursday afternoon. On Friday
afternoon, the wives and family
of the newsmen will be guests at
a movie studio.
Mr. Rosenberg is only the
third member of the newsmen’s
group to be elected president for
as much as three years, now the
limit. Phil Slomovitz of the De
troit Jewish News, Hounding
Continued on page 4
Attempt To Oust Jewish Groups Fails
Soviet-Arab Attack Boomerangs In UN Council
By DAVID HOROWITZ
UNITED NATIONS (WUP)—An all-out Soviet-Arab
offensive to sweep all Jewish organizations from af
filiation with the United Nations was thrown back by
the West supported by some Latins, Africans and Japan
in addition to, significantly, Yugoslavia. But the victory
of the Jewish groups was mostly due to the eloquence
of the U. S. Representative to the Economic and Social
Council where the bitter battle had raged for almost
two weeks.
The struggle on this heated and emotional issue had
its origin in a Report submitted to the 27-Member Coun
cil in which some six Moslem states have representa
tion, including tiny Kuwait, the Sudan, Libya and Pa
kistan by its Committee on Non-Governmental Or
ganizations which had undertaken a sweeping review
of the status of some 196 non-governmental groups that
had acquired accreditation to the Council in one of three
different categories.
Although the re-examination of their status had
been requested by the General Assembly, the Committee
on the whole recommended few changes until the issue
of the Jewish organizations was raised by the Soviets
and the ever-malcontent Arabs who questioned the val
idity of their status, specifically five: the World Jewish
Congress; the Consultative Council of Jewish Organi
zations; the Womea’s International Zionist Organization;
the Agudath Israel World Organization, and the Coordi
nating Board of Jewish Organizations, whose American
entity is B’nai B’rith.
For years, these established Jewish bodies have en
joyed full recognition here at the UN in Category II
from which listing Jewry’s enemies now attempted to
shift to a lower category known as Roster. Some of
them the Soviets and Arabs wanted completely out.
Following a bitter debate in which the Soviet-Arab
coalition denounced the “Zionist” activities of the Jew
ish groups in connection with the Middle East crisis;
their alleged hostility to the Soviet and other UN mem
ber states, their alleged lobbying and propagandas the
UN, etc., the Soviet and Arab members in the Council
along with their supporters, India, Pakistan, Indonesia
and Bulgaria, were confronted last week with a situation
they had never expended to develop: in the voting
showdown, four of the five organizations “on trial”
survived motions to down-grade them.
The motion to downgrade the Consultative Council
of Jewish Organizations, whose representative here is
Dr. Moses Moskowitz, was defeated by 7 to 15 with
5 abstentions.
Motions to oust altogether the Women’s International
Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress
were defeated by similar votes while the Agudath Is
rael World Organization, represented by the eloquent
Dr. Isaac Lewin, scored the highest victory with 10
votes. Interestingly, Agudath Israel had already prev
iously been demoted to Roster but was now re-instated.
The countries standing by the Jewish groups versus
the Soviet-Arab combine were Argentina, Belgium,
Chad, France, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, Mexico, Nor
way, Sierra Leone, United Kingdom, Tanzania U. S.
Upper Volta and Uruguay and, in the case of Agudath
Israel, also Yugoslavia.
However, the Arab-Soviet axi%. scored some victory
when the Council, influenced by the Committee’s dead
lock, failed to confirm the status of the Coordinating
Board of Jewish Organizations. It sent the case back
to the Committee. Of course, this stands out only
as a half a victory because the Council remained di
vided on what status to grant the Board pending a
second review.
Walter Kotschnig, the ever-alert and dynamic U. S.
representative, was adamant in his view that the Board,
led by B’nai B’rith, continues to enjoy its previous
status until a new decision is made, while the opposing
USSR-Arab group insisted that the Board was “sus
pended.” i
The fight is not ended. A new battle now beginp
against Israel herself within the Council on chargee
alleging Israel’s violation of the Geneva Convention on
prisoners of war. It is possible that the Council vote
may be contested also in the next General Assembly.
Until then, the Arabs have, on the whole, lost the
“war” here in the UN as they did on the battlefield.