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THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW
JULY 17. 1959
BNAI BRITH CONVENTION
An Impartial ICedinm for the Diaaomination of Jewish Ntwa aad Vltwi
MEMBER AUDIT BUREAU Of CIRCULATIONS PUBLISHED BY THE CANADIAN JEWISH REVIEW LIMITED Georgt W. Cohan, Founder
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Authorised ai second class mail by Poet Office Department, Ottawa. Subscription S2 per year; S3 for two years. United States $8 per year; %B for two years. Single copy, 5 cents.
Florence Freedla&der Cohan, Editor Suzann F. Cohen, Circulation Manager
1 wholly disapprove of what you toy and will defend to the death your right to toy it � Voltaire to Helve tine.
JULY 17, 1959
Pmbliefttlon Of Am
VOL. XIX No. 42
ml* Qi*.,
The Jewish Question" Is Under Active Kremlin Review ~~
(Continued from Page One)
the language." Hebrew "can serve as one of the greatest bonds uniting Jews no matter where they live," the resolution said. Premier David Ben-Gurion of Israel urged the Jewish people all over the world to study the language to effect closer ties with his nation.
An appeal was made to the Rumanian Government "to continue its humanitarian policy of permitting the emigration of those who wish to join their families in other lands."
The convention voiced "grave concern" over the tragic plignt of 16,000 Jewish families from Rumania, some of whose members migrated to Israel while their wives, brothers, sisters, parents, and children have not vet been permitted to join them. A resolution mourning the death of John Foster Dulles, former U.S. Secretary of State, also was adopted.
Bnai Brith's new president has been active in the organization's affairs since boyhood! says the New York Times. As a teen-ager, he was president of the boy's component of the Bnai Brith youth organization. For the last three years he has been national chair-
The Kremlin's policy towards the Jews of the U.S.S.R., estimated at between two to three million, is now under serious reconsideration writes Judd Teller, in the New York Herald Tribune. This is evident from a series of recent episodes, some pointing to a relaxation of policy, some pointing to a new tough line. Whenever Soviet policy on any issue becomes inexplicably paradoxical, it has evidently just been�subjected to -violent debate in the top party echelons and is approaching final determination. This now seems to be true of the Kremlin's policy on Jews.
The facts about the status of Soviet Jewry are familiar by now. The Soviet Jew is designated on his identity papers as belonging to the Jewish nationality. This singles him out as an alien in all the Soviet republics and accords him secondary consideration when he applies for employment or admission to educational institutions.
First priority is given to nationals �� Ukrainians in the Ukraine, Russians in Russia, Uzbeks in Uzbekistan. Not having a republic of his own, the Jew enjoys priority nowhere. Alone "among the nationalities of the U.S.S.R., however, the Jews are not permitted to maintain newspapers, theaters and publishing houses in their own languages, Yiddish and Hebrew. Their last
cultural institutions were liquid-ated, along with hundreds of their leaders, in 1948. They have not been restored since.
ruary 15. Attacks on Judaism as reactionary and subversive have been appearing regularly in the Ukraine press. These have been explained away, abroad, as part of a general anti-religious campaign. However, only in the case of the Jews has this oral campaign been accompanied with mounting repression.
There has also been evidence of striking relaxation. On the occasion, last FebruaryT of the 100th anniversary of the Yiddish humorist Sholem Aleichem, the Kremlin ordered issuance of a commemorative stamp. The entire month was dedicated to commemorative rallies. A Yiddish one-volume edition of his "Selected Works," the first Yiddish volume to come off Soviet presses since 1948, was processed through censor and printer and placed on sale within fifteen days. Normally, it takes six months before a book is processed.
It is significant, however, that although the book has been published in an edition of 30,000, it is almost unavailable in the UjS.S.R.: most of the edition has been exported to Jewish por pulation centers in the free world. The Yiddish theater has not yet been restored in the U.S.S.R., but a Yiddish song recitalist, Ne-chama Lifshitz, has been sent on a concert tour to Vienna and Paris.
man of the youth group.
Mr. Katz is on the executive committee of the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds and the national cabinet of the United Jewish Appeal. He is active in the Israel Bond Organization. Both the United Jewish Appeal and the Israel Bond Organization are the two principal fund-raising structures in the United States for Israel.
A warning that the emancipation of Jews from ghetto Iife_and_ their integration into a free society were a "new danger" to Jewish survival was sounded by the president of the World Zionist Organization, Dr. Nahum Goldmann, who-IS. alart chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He told the Bnai Brith triennial convention that the Increasing "process of emancipation" had caused a "danger greater than all that has threatened Jewish survival in previous centuries." "It could easily lead to the disintegration of the Jewish communities and the loss of their consciousness of being all parts of the Jewish people," he said.
The Zionist leader maintained that the "tragic challenge of the Nazi period" and the establishment of Israel as a nation had strengthened "Jewish consciousness among our generation." However, he emphasized, these challenges will no longer exist for the next generation.
As a result, he said, "Jewish unity becomes more essential for our generation than it was for past generations. We have learned in past centuries to survive bad times," he added. "Now we must learn what is more difficult � to survive good times and remain Jews."
Two other "threats" to Jewish unity, Dr. Goldmann said, are the "cold war," which has split the Jewish community by separat-
ing Jews in the Soviet Union from the mainstreams of Jewish life, and "natural differences" between the Jews of Israel and the Diaspora, the Jews who were scattered through the Old World after the Babylonian captivity*
To bridge the gap between Israel and Jewish communities else-where, Dr. Goldmann said, it is "essential" that both groups "work out a system of relationships which will create permanent ties and methods of mutual influence" reports the New York Times. He cited as examples of "promising indications" of united action in Jewish life the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the World Jewish Congress, and the Conference of Jewish Organizations, the latter a consultative body of major Jewish groups throughout the world.
Dr. Goldmann's conclusion on the need for greater cooperation among Jewish groups in different lands is supported hy the leadership of Bnai Brith, a service organization. However, his thesis on the threat of emancipation to Jewish survival is challenged by most of the delegates attending the five-day meeting. Philip M. Klutznick, retiring president of the organization, maintained that predictions "of a bleak future" outside Israel were unrealistic.
Mr. Klutznick emphasized that Jewish youth in the United States now welcomed identification as
Jews "with affirmative pride" and that there was more active Jewish participation in Jewish affairs than ever before.
Henry Edward Schultz, of New York, national chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of Bnai Brith, said that the United States and Israel "represented two radically different, but happily successful, solutions to the problem of anti-Semitism."
Both countries, he said, made "a clean-break away_from Euro^ pean institutions which through the centuries brought Jews so much misery, tragedy and' bloodshed."
In a dried river bed in the -Judaean�hHlsr-Bnai-Brith dedi ated a shrine hewn out of solid rock in memory of Jewish men. women and children who died under Hitler's regime, says the New York Times. The sanctuary is fifteen miles southwest of Jerusalem. Beneath a blazing sun, 1,300 delegates listened in reverential silence as Cantor Lieb Glantz and youthful choristers chanted the El Mole Rachamim (God full of mercy), the Hebrew prayer for the dead. "~ As the mournful chant echoed over the barren hills, the iron grilled doors of the shrine were opened by Label A. Katz, the newly elected president of Bnai Brith, the Jewish service organization. Inscribed in bronze on a stone facade at the entrance was the inscription:
"This shrine and remembrance to the memory of our six million brothers and sisters who perished in the Nazi holocaust in the years from 1933-1945."
With" Mr. Katz leading the^way, the delegates filed through the curved passageway in the shrine. In one corner is a vault, also hewn out of rock, in which the names of those Bnai Brith mem-
bers and their kin who died will be inscribed on scrolls and de-
fiosited. Near-by is a bronze tray n ' a chiseled place in the rock, holding six ignited wicks. Each wick represents a symbolic figure of 1,000.000, adding up to the estimated total of 6,000.000 Jews who perished during Hitler's regime.
. The dedication came at the close of Bnai Brith's triennial convention, the first time in its 116-year history the organization has held a convention outside the United States.
The shrine is situated between the Israeli settlement of Eshtal and Isora, an area that is rich in Biblical tradition. It was here that, according to legend, Samson lived and fought the Philistines.
It is in the heart of Martyrs' Forest, a gigantic reforestation project of the Jewish National Fund, the land development arm of the World Zionist Organization in Israel.
The Jewish National Fund has: been engaged for more than fifty years in what was first Palestine and then Israel in a vast program of land redemption. Two and a half million saplings dot the Ju-. daean hills already. Ultimately the fund will plant 6,000,000 trees in the Martyrs' Forest to restore fertility to the hills. -
The forest, covering an area of 7,500 acres, is divided into nine-
D�. Oft* KIImmti, ftvhutr tf MCltl pay. chalafy it Cahiaikia Ualmaity la Haw Yark, wis li MMtrtil fa lactvrt at tha MknhK Ctlltt* SwwMr lattltata, i* Sta. Am* m �alfavwa. Dr. *m4 Mrs. KIlMMff ara �rtCMtV Im; to fMtfi Anarica, wbara Sr. KIlMMff wiH racilva haaarary StfrM at tha Up> vanity, af Iraill, �wi will s*�*k at awatlaai � af tha- iataf.Ainaricaa) Sadaty ~ at~ Ptydwtaayr Dr. aad Mn. Ofta Xllaaaarf vlalttS hit matbar, Mr*. I. KlfMtarfl, 4ff* SrMvaMf AvtMt, Maarraal.
teen woodlands, each representing a destroyed Jewish community in various parts of Europe.
Bnai Brith has pledged the planting of an additional 500,000
trees in a special section near the Shrine, says the New York Times.
The section has been named the Philip M. Klutznick Forest in Jionor of the retired president of "Bnai Brith.
More important straws in the wind are two recent statements by Ilya Ehrenburg, the Soviet
Faced with these facts, Soviet officials have denied them. There can be no anti-Semitism under Communism, they have blandly replied/and there is no need for Yiddish cultural institutions because Soviet Jews prefer to assimilate. Yet these questions have persisted. Foreign delegations visiting the Kremlin have posed them to Khrushchev himself. Anastas Mikoyan was asked about the Jews on his visit to the United States.
There have been defections from the Communist parties in the free world, and there is festering schism inside their ranks, over the Kremlin's discrimination against the Jews. Howard Fast, the novelist, led defection from the Communist party in the United States. In Britain, Professor Hyman Levi, mathematician and a party theoretician, was expelled from membership after publishing an expose of Soviet policy towards the Jews. However, debate inside the party in Britain continues, and its theoretical organ, "Marxism Today," has carried in several of its recent issues statements both criticizing and defending the Kremlin's policy.
Soviet reaction to this mounting avalanche of criticism has been schizophrenic, and never more so than in recent months.
There has been, on the one hand, tough reaction. More and more feuilletons on abuses in Soviet society single out as villains persons with Jewish-sounding names. The most recent and vicious attack of this kind was published in "Izvestia" on Feb-
"wflter, and a Jew himself. In an essay "On Rereading Chekhov," published in the magazine "Novi Mir," he expatiates on Chekhov's defense of Capt Alfred Dreyfus, who, at the turn of the century, was the victim of an anti-Semitic plot in France to protect the true culprits of an espionage plot by pinning the blame on Dreyfus, a Jew. Nothing published in "Novi Mir" is without topical * relevance. Ehrenburg was evidently suggesting to Soviet writers that they might emulate Chekhov in relation to present-day Soviet anti-Semitism.
Several days earlier, on passing through Paris, Ehrenburg confided to a private reception that he could not quite assimilate because anti-Semitism still prevails in the U.S.S.R. "and everywhere else in the world." If Soviet Jews were permitted to depart for Israel no more than 100,000 would avail themselves of the opportunity, he said.
Ilya Ehrenburg has long been the Kremlin's literary weather-vane. Although an assimilated Jew, he has also served as its weathervane on Jewish issues. When the Nazis marched on the U.S.S.R., he signaled the Kremlin's attempt to woo world Jewish public opinion by publishing im-passionste Jewish nationalist essays. Then, in 1948. just before the wholesale liquidation of Yiddish cultural institutions, he published attacks on "Jewish nationalists" in the U.S.S.R. His present statements, st the very least, indicate that the "Jewish question" is under active Kremlin review.
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