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Page Ml IIIK SOUTHERN ISRAELITE January 31, 1975
Yankee Doodle Year Rabbi Feldman Takes Part
In Jerusalem Dialogue
By DAVIl) SCHWARTZ
The new year 1975 brings us
within a year of (he bicentennial of
American independence.
1775 was no 1776 but it was a
very important year. You might
call it the Yankee Doodle Year
The first fighting occurred aCLex-
ington and Concord in that year,
and the British marching away
played Yankee Doodle
That was the time when Paul
Revere, who was a dentist — he
was working at the time putting a
bridge in a man’s mouth — heard
the tramp of their soldiers, and
looking out the window saw them.
Then he jumped on his horse and
cried out, “The Arabs are com
ing.”
The song made fun of
Americans:
"Yankee Doodle came to town
Riding on a pony.
With a feather in his cap
And called it macaroni.”
Macaroni meant swell, elegant,
and Americans were represented
as simple people who really didn’t
know what “class” means. But the
Americans liked it and it must
have sold a million records. Maybe
the Americans liked it because
they figured that riding on a pony,
at least, was cheaper than buying
gasoline. ,
The picture of the simple
American pleased the more
democratic bosom of America.
It was America’s first national
anthem. You don’t rise and stand
up and salute when you hear
Yankee Doodle like you do when
the Star Spangled Banner is
played. But it does make your feet
move and turns on a smile. There
is the difference between it and the
Star Spangled Banner as there is
between Hatikvah and Hava
Nagila.
The author of Yankee Doodle
was a Dr. Shuckleberg, a surgeon
attached to the British army. It has
been said he was a Jew. The name
Schuckleberg is obviously not
English, and Jews were prominent
in medicine even in those days.
Even Queen Elizabeth had a
Jewish doctor. Jews have to sing to
forget their tzores. Not so many
years later, an American wrote
another song which almost rivals
Yankee Doodle in popularity. The
mother of John Howard Payne,
author of Home Sweet Home, was
a Jew named Isaacs.
Yankee Doodle showed the
emergence of a national feeling but
the United States was not even
thought of in 1775 There was a
meeting of the Continental
Congress and it was decided to
raise an army, but the Congress
only spoke of defending their
rights as Englishmen and they
appealed at the Congress to the
King to treat them as such. The
Congress proposed to fight for this
and they named Washington com
mander of the army and also nam
ed four major generals. One of
them must have been a Zionist. At
least, the name General Israel Put
nam supports the conjecture, and
Putnam sounds like one of those
Israeli generals — all of them
farmers. Putnam was in the middle
of ploughing some corn when the
call came. He put his plow down
and said, “Ma, I’ll be back later to
finish it.” He kept his word. At the
end of the war, he came back and
recognized his old plow at once,
although, of course, everyone after
seven years looks a little different.
No member of the Continental
Congress was a Jew. But Francis
Salvador was a member of the
Provincial Congress of South
Carolina. He was the first in that
state to die in the war.
There were only some 3000 Jews
in the country at the time. They
were scattered all about from
Georgia to Rhode Island. In
Georgia, the first Jewish settlers
coming in almost with Oglethorpe
had introduced the silk industry
from Spain and Portugal. Newport,
Rhode Island had the most thriving
Jewish center of all.
The Jews there were chiefly in
the oil business. They dealt in whale
oil, which was the chief illuminant
of those days. One good thing
about getting oil from whales is
that they don’t raise prices. There
is no monopoly among them. So
there was no oil crisis, but there
was an energy crisis. The British
sought a monopoly of American
trade and manufactures and one
that hit everyone was the attempt
to keep the American tea market
for the British East Indian Tea
Company, a giant corporation in
its day, which probably made ,
many contributions to the election
of King Cieorge. It was so powerful
that it even had its own army.
When you get up in the morning
and can't have your cup of tea,
how can you have energy?
But the Americans would not
take it sitting down, and they made
the English wish they had not tried
to interfere with their tea drinking.
But that didn't take place until a
year later.
Copyright 1975, JTA)
Reish Bar Mitzva
Dr. and Mrs. Martin L. Reish of
Atlanta cordially invite their
relatives and friends to attend the
Bar Mitzva of their son, Kenneth
Louis, at 8:45 a.m. Saturday, Feb.
8, at Congregation Shearith Israel.
Kenneth is the grandson of Mr.
and Mrs. Edward Reish of Atlanta
and Mr. and Mrs. I Harry Lefkoff
of Hollywood, Ela.
Appel Bar Mitzva
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Appel of
Atlanta cordially invite their
friends and relatives to the Bat
Mitzva of their daughter, Audrey,
at 8:15 p.m. Friday, Feb. 7, at
Shearith Israel Synagogue.
Audrey is the granddaughter of
Mrs. Abe Appel of Charleston and
the late Mr. Appel and Mr. and
Mrs. Adolph Eagle of
Montgomery, Ala. Mrs. Albert
Freehling of Montgomery is
Audrey’s great-grandmother.
Herbert Bar Mitzva
Mr. and Mrs. Ira Herbert cor
dially invite their relatives and
friends to attend the Bar Mitzva of
their son Fred at 10:30 a.m. Satur
day, Feb. I, at the Temple.
David Bar Mitzva
Mrs. Judy David of Atlanta cor
dially invites her relatives and
friends to the Bar Mitzva of her
son, Rod David, at 10:30 a.m.,
Saturday, Feb. I, at Temple Sinai
A congregational Kiddush will
follow.
“Gabai” Cited
At a recent semi-annual
membership meeting of Shearith
Israel Synagogue, a certificate of
commendation was given to Harry
Kaufman for his “seventeen years
of untiring efforts, dedication,
faithful and loyal services as Gabai
of the synagogue.”
Rabbi Emanuel Feldman,
spiritual leader of Congregation
Beth Jacob in Atlanta, and
presently on sabbatical leave in
Jerusalem, will be one of the par
ticipants in a multi-national
dialogue being held in Jerusalem.
The dialogue will deal with the
questions such as whether Biblical-
Torah law can become an
operative principle in a democratic
state such as Israel; whether
Messianism should influence
Israeli foreign policy; and what
Judaism’s approach should be to
secular forms of Jewish life.
In the Dialogue, leading intellec
tuals of the religious kibbutz
movement in Israel will exchange
ideas with Jewish scholars and
thinkers around the world concer
ning questions of mutual concern.
Among the Israeli participants
will be Moshe Unna, former
Knesset member, and the leading
thinker of the religious kibbutz
movement; Simcha Friedman,
another former Knesset member
and distinguished kibbutz
educator; Professor Eliazar Gold
man of Kibbutz Sdei Eliyahu, and
Professor of Philosophy at par
llan University.
American participants, in addi
tion to Rabbi Feldman of Atlanta,
will include Irving Greenberg,
professor of Judaic Studies of the
City College of New York; Nor
man Lamm, Rabbi of the Jewish
Center in New York and professor
of Jewish Philosophy at Yeshiva
University; and Michael
Wyshogrod, professor of
philosophy at Baruch College in
New York.
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FILM FOLK
By HERBERT G. LUFT
JACK BENNY’S death on Dec.
26 has shocked Hollywood and the
world, though the 80-year-old
entertainer had lived a full and rich
life and for 45 years enjoyed
success and the acclaim of people
young and old, everywhere. Born
Benny Kubelsky in Waukegan,
Illinois, he made his screen debut
in MGM’s “Hollywood Revue of
1929,” but rose to fame on radio
joined by his wife Mary
Livingston, a nom-de-plume for
Sadye Marks. Benny had not
starred in a feature film since the
ill-fated Warner Bros, picture,
“The Horn Blows at Midnight,”
though he guested in several cameo
parts in recent years.
Much has been written about
Benny during the last week in
December, but hardly anyone
touched upon his Jewishness,
which he embraced openly right
after World War II. Sent to Ger
many as an emissary of President
Truman on two occasions, he
reported on the conditions of the
displaced Jews in the various
camps and fought for assistance by
the American government both
within the DP centers and during
immigration to Israel and the
United Stales. He also went with
the plight of survivors before radio
and later television audiences.
* * *
ANATOLE MICHAEL
LITVAK, director of the stir
ring movie, “Confessions of a
Nazi Spy,” is another artist of
Jewish origin who died in
December. Born in Kiev, Russia,
May 1902, he started in the theater
in Leningrad and made his first
Soviet film in Moscow in 1924, leav
ing the country for good a year
later. Studying cinema techniques
in Western Europe, he became a
film editor at UFA in Berlin in
1930 and quickly advanced to
director of medium-budgeted
features. With the advent of
Hitler, Litvak went to Paris where
he directed a series of films among
them the highly-acclaimed,
“Mayerling,” starring Charles
Boyer and Danielle Darrieux.
Since 1937 in Hollywood, Lit
vak guided “The Woman I Love,”
with Paul Muni and Miriam
Hopkins, “Tovarich,” “This
Above All,” “Decision Before
Dawn,” “Anastasia,” “The Snake
Pit,” “The Journey," and “The
Night of the Generals."
WOODY ALLEN, the
Brooklyn-born comedian, has
returned from three-months loca
tion photography in Paris and
Budapest for his latest United Ar
tists picture, “Love and Death,”
perhaps the wildest and wackiest
yarn the “funny-man" has ever
cooked up for his bwn consump
tion.
We find Woody in a Czarist
Russian prison of 1812 awaiting
execution for the murder of
Emperor Napoleon 1, in itsdf not
such an hilarious situation.jP -- J
But from then on his minjl takes ”
off reminiscing about his past and
the short, fat man named
Bonaparte who, of course, was
missed by the bullets of an assassin
mistakenly identified as our hero.
(COPYRIGHT 1974. JTA)
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Dry Bones
One of the many features about Israel and from Israel
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