Page 8 - The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, May 17,1984
M-T
Jewish communities are fond of lacerating themselves over the problems of non observance, assimilation and other deficien-■ xies. ■..;
Scarcely a'day goes by without pur rabbis, community leaders and other personnel from the official community pointing up, often in melodramatic images, the alleged hemorrhaging of the Jewish "spirit. . ~
It was refreshing, therefore, vi'hen Elie rWiesel came to Toronto recently as the advertised speaker on the theme of Jewish survival— and both surprised and charmed his listeners with an address thait brimmed over with confidence in the Jewish future (CJNMaylO).
What was especially engaging about the Wiesel evening (which attracted an unpre-ceclented audience of about 2,500 people—-itself a remarkable achievement) was the fact that easily half of his audience was made up of young Jewish people between the ages of 15to20. .
Wiesel — who has known enough personal suffering to last several lifetimes and who has reason to be melancholic about the future, given hiimariity'is record r—chose to emphasize the positive in Jewish life rather tha.n underline the hegative.
The fuithor of more than 25 boojks on varioas aspects of the Jewish condition, Wiesel took the liigh road hi advlsfaig Iiis endrasiastic aadience that if Soviet Jews could have maintained their indenty after 60 years of Commonism, It was fanproper to engage in excessive concern over the prospectiye snrvival of Jews in North America.' .■
In an epoch when the Jews of Canada and indeed of all democratic countries are being assailed regularly with predictions about imminent collapse, it is invigbrating to hear words of consolation and hope from one of the most eloquent modern prophets of Judaism.
View
A new book by a former White House consultant in the Carter administration is making an explosivie impact oh the Israel-Arab situation.
Joan JPeters, vice-president of the National Committee on Foreign AffairsLand an advisoi-to the stite department, says in From Time Immemorial (Fitzhenry and Whiteside) that one of the great factors about the Mideast conflict has been successfully obscured by four decades of Arab propaganda..
Peters has approached Mideast struggle in an entirely original fashion -—by concentrating on immigration patterns to Palestine — especially by Arabs — during the period when the country was under the British mandate.
According to Peters most of those who now call themselves Palestinians are the offspring of recent immigrants to Palestine, that is to say those who came into mandated Palestine in the 192()s, 30s and 40s in search of employment and better living conditions.
Peters' study, backed up by meticulous demographic analysis, effectively gives the lie to Arab claims about the Palestinians' thousands of years of domicile in Eretz Israel. She? goes further and asserts that the number of refugees who fled Palestine in 1948 is almost exactly the same as the number of Jews who were dispossessed from Arab, lands. An exchange of population has taken :place..;-'•
The historical and demographic perspec* tiyes wliich have for so long been ignored in the Mid^t conflict have now been brilliantly iUaminated to show IsraePs Just claims In the 'region.
''Represents intellectiud of modem racism
?5
■■■■ ^' ■ ■^■By :■-,:•:""■•..:,'-•
SHELDON KmSHNER
Eugenics, a term popularized by Sir FrancisGalton (1822-1911), is "the science of the improvement of the human r^ce by better breeding."
If eugenics has an ondnous ring to it, this may weU be understandable. For eugenlfs has been used to promote racism. No wonder the Nazis were interested hi it.
According to an article in a recent edition of Israel Horizoiis, a new eugenics movement— consisting of a growing network o|^ foundations, associations, Journals and academicians   has arisen in the U.S.
Barry Mehler, the author of this informative piece, contends that the movement "represents the intellectual backbone of modern fascism."
Eugenics, he observes, laid the groundwork for the death camps in Europe where millions of jews were killed.
The movement, as described by Mehler, arose in Britain aiid grew in America. Madison Grant, the foremost eugenicist of his day, was a notorious racist. And in his noted work. The Passing of the Great Race (1916), he wrote:
"Tliere exists today a widespread and fatuous belief in the power of environment to alter hereditary, which arises from the dogma of the brotherhood of man . . . Such beliefs have done much damage . . . Wearing good clothes and going to school and church does not transform aNegro into a white man.
' 'Americans will have similar problems with the Polish Jew, whose dwarf stature, peculiar mehtality and concentration on self interest are being engrafted upon the stock of the nation."
Mehler, who is completing a PhD in the history of science at the University of Illinois, claims that eugenicists in the U.S. successfully lobbied for anti-miscegnation laws, harsh criminal codes and immigration restrictions which reduced to a trickle the influx of Slavs, Italians and Jews.
The 1924 Johnson Immigration Restriction Act, he recalls, effectively cut off the main route of escape for European Jewry during the Holocaust,
When Hitler came to power, he and his closest advisors studied the American eugenics movement as a model, says Mehler. Indeed, Nazi German's first eugenic sterilization law was based on a model written by Harry Laughlin, director of the Carnegie Institution's Eugenics Record Office.
Laughlin's colleagiie, Frederick Osbom — secretary of the American Eugenics Society, traveled to Germany m 1937 and, commenting on the anti-semitic Nurenberg Laws, said: ' 'The ban on interracial marriage lacks
scientific basis, but may be justified by social conditions."
in the same year; Osbom and Laughlin established the Pioneer Fund which, in the 1950s and 1960s, was directed by Rep. Francis Walter/theii chairman of the witch-hunting House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Another member pf the Pioneer Fund >Vas Henry Garrett, chairman of Columbia University's psychology department. Garrett, in a4960 paper On IQ and heredity, remarked: "In Brazil, coastal Bahia with its negroid mixtures is primitive and backward, as compared with the relatively advanced civilization of white southeirn Brazil.. . Haiti is an unhappy example pf what the Negro can do when left to govern himself."
Mehler says that tibe Pioneer Fund was instrumental in bringfaig Roger Pearson, an active British fkscist, to the U.S. hi the mid-19708. Pearson, he adds, subsequently worked with Willis Carto, the head of the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby.
FiWftiermore, Pearison helped organize the 1978 World Anti-Commuhist League meeting in Washington. The Washington Post, he writes, pointed out that the 800 delegates represented the forces of authoritarianism, neo-fascism, racial hierarchy and ariti-semitism.
In recent years, Pioneer Fund grants have been given to Arthur Jensen, whom Mehler says is America's leading proponent of JBlack inferiority, and to Audrey Shuey, whose book, The Testing of Negro Intelligence, has become "the basis for numerous racist studies."
Of course, it would be fallacious to argue that every eugenicist is anti-Jewish. As Mehlerpointsout, Ernst Van Den Haag, who is associated with the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenicjs, Is anything but anti-semitic. His book. The Jewish Mystique, uses eugenic arguments to claim Jewish superiority!
BOOK REVIEWS IN CAPSULE
The Jews Were Expendable [University of niihois Press, $21.95] is a book one cannot put down easily. Monty Noam Penkower^ a Touro College historian, claims that the Allies were basically indifferent, and disbelieving, toward the plight of European Jewry during the Holocaust. Penkower has produced an admirable work of scholarship.
The Rescue of Danish Jewry [The Jewish Publication Society of America, $9.95] is a
story of resistance and courage in the face of adversity. Leni Yahil, a Hebrew University historian, relates the dramatic tale of how practically an entire nation saved its Jewish population from the Nazis in 1943. One reads it with a growing sense of wonderment and gratification.
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Ahad Ha-am... 14 essays
At The Crossroads [State University of New York Press, $34.50] is an important contribution to Zionist historiography. Edited by Jacques Romberg, a University of Toronto professor of history. At The Grossroads consists of 14 essays on Ahad Ha-am (1856-1927), a seminal figure in modern Zionism. The contributions range from studies of him as a literary stylist and role in the revival of Hebrew to his political thought and his debates with_ contemporaries about the Jewish future. Kornberg's introductory essay reveals a man of learning, depth and vision.
Golda Meir... a pen portrait :
My Mother Golda Meir [Fitzhenry & Whiteside, $23.95] fleshes out the career and personality of Israel's first female Prime Minister. Her son, Menachem, has created an extended pen portrait of the stubborn, tenacious lady who devoted all her energies to a cause of which she never lost sight.
The Mases Flee Hitier [Smithsonian Institution Press, $8.95] revolves around the migration of Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and their adaptation of new homes in North America and elsewhere. The essays, ranging on topics from Gentian Emigres in Southern Califronia to Canada and the Refugee Intellectuals, are informed by intelligent analysis and good research.
The Interrupted life [Lester & Orpen Dannys, $15.95] pierces the heart and mind with its observations of diepriyation, fear and hope. This is the sensitively-rendered diary of a 27-year-old Dutch Jewish woman, Etty Hillesum, who braved a world torn asunder by the Nazis. Hillesum perished in Auschwitz.
A Voice That Spoke For Justice [State University of New York Press, $16.95] sheds much light on the life and times of a titan in American Jewry — Rabbi Stephen S. Wise. A creator of the American and World Jewish Congresses, and a leading Zionist, Wise, in author Melvin Urofsky's words, possessed "a singular vision in which the ethical teachings of the ancient Hebrew prophets merged with the Jeffersonian ideals of an egalitarian society."
The Rosenberg FUe [Holt,-Rinehart & Whiston, $13.95] resurrects the trial and tribulations of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, executed 31 years ago for having committed treason. Authors Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton, having scoured the cross-checked the files on this extraordinary case, conclude that Julius was indeed a Soviet spy and that his wife was almost certainly his acconiplice. The Rosenberg File will, no doubt, shatter illusions and confrim long-held truths.
The Fate of the Jews [Fitzhenry & Whiteside, $25.50] pricks at a reader's perceptions of Jewish history and Israel. A passionate — and controversial — polemic, Roberta Feuerlicht's book posits the thesis that the reality of the Jewish past and present has been so distorted by myth that "a historical, moral and political overview will make (Jews) aware that they are worshipping wrong gods." Not everyone will agree with her, but few will question her sincerity and her commitment to a better world.
Why The Jews [Musson, $20.95] explores the quintessential conundrum: Why have Jews been the object of enduring and universal hatred? Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin try to prove, sometimes successfully, that the causes of anti-semitism are paradoxically the very beliefs that have ensured Jewish survival over the centuries.
ToDwellIn Unity [The Jewish Publication Society of America, $19.95] sets out to chronicle the development and status of Jewish federations on this continent, Philip Bernstein, who was chief executive officer of the Council of Jewish Federations from 1955 until 1979, believes that they have performed stellar service for American Jewry and for Israel.