Page 4 -The Canadian Jev/ish News, Thursday, June 3, 1982
Editorial
M-T
The Canadian Jewish news
An iiidi-penUciu'Commuiulv Newspaper serving! as jfcirum for diverse- viewpiiiiiis.
Directors: Cfijiles Bronfman. Donald Carr.Q.C. George A. Cohon. JacK Cumminqs, . Viurray B. Ko'fler, AIDert J. Latner, ,, Ray. D. Wolfe. RuDrn Zimmerman
. EOHOr. r\/laurice LuCOW . ; . Assistant Editor.'DavidBiVkan Business Manager, Gary Latoret Advertising Manager, Vera Gillman Controlier, Maurice Bronner
. - VOL.XXIII, NO. 6 (2,106) .
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In his recent book The Third Wave, U.S. sociologist Aivin Toffler spoke aboiit the creation of a new "sphere" joining the other spheres which surrounded the earth-
He called it the "infosphere" and by it he meant the technology of newsgathering that ' has e.xploded in the last 20 years as a result of computerization and instant satellite communication.
One would, think that with all the advances in the science of newsgathering the public would be informed as never before about world happenings.
the problem is that while the speeid of communications has undeniably im~proved, the quality of reporting has, lamentably, fallen short of the ideal.
In the case of the State of Israel the issue of hews coverage is not merely an academic question or the subject of some article in the prestigious Columbia University Journalism Review.
For Israel the accuracy of news from the Mideast is part of the ongoing struggle to survive, that struggle, difficult under optimum circumstances, is made even more parlous by the distorted images of Israel reiaching Western news agencies and the media reflections emanating from them.
Whatever the reason, the image of Israel is being severely tarnished these days by the application of a double standard which zeroes in almost exclusively on the presumed wickedness of the Jewish state and which, at the same time, remains sUent about the much larger Iniquities of Arab Regimes.
A case in point is the recent coverage of allegations that Israel censors news and even deals ungraciously with foreign journalists who violate security regulations.. Let it be noted that Israel has never, repeat never, treated foreign journalists in the manner, that the Galtieri government in -
To paraphrase William Shakespeare, sornething is rotten in Washington.
It has been alleged that U.S. officials . .smuggled hundreds of Russian war ' criminals/into the country, after Wiarld War II and that varioiis government agencies covered up that covert operation. (See The Jevvish. World column on this page.)
These collaborators, who. have been implicated in the deaths of untold numbers of Jews, were brought to the U.S. because they were apparently familiar with the Soviet Union. In the Cold War climate lollowing 1945, men possessing such knowl-
edge were prize catches, questions of morality notwithstanding, •
The justicis department says it .has been investigating this affair "for some time." This is gratifying news; but in bureaucratic; language, thisis almost meaningless. An ih depth probe:, ..sanctioned by the White House and the state department, would be more apt and, we believe, more effective.
For the record* if nothing else, it should be determined who was responsible for.the smuggling and the cover-up. And for the sake of simple decency, these collaborators should be brought to justice.
FranzKafkadiedon June3,1924. He was regarded later as one of the major figures of 20th century literature.
Kafka was born to a middle-class Czecho-slovakian family in 1883, the surviving son with three sisters. Sensitivfe and withdrawn, he was totally disinterestedin his domineering father's exhortations to join him in . business. The tension between what was expected of him and what he felt he had to express was to haunt his works . : . and his life.
Compounding this were the vast external .iconfllcts sweeping Prague, a city at the epicentre-of the Aastro-Hongarian empire in its death throes. Its middle and npper-class Gennan-speaidng citizens clamored to join with Germany, while its Czechs-soaght an independence In which they would ..dominjite^ '.
Prague was the front line in the battle between the new science and technology of the West and the agricnltoral and specifically ' Slavic valuies of the East.
A public statue of the Middle Ages' scholar the Maharal, the Altneaschnl synagogue, and the Hebrew clock tower reminded a largely assimilated community of Its Illastrlons past.
Kiaflca forced himself to.complete law school and a perfunctory legal apprenticeship before taking up a relatively untaxing clericar position so that he could devote himself to literature. As well as writing, he led discussions~itr-the city's top artistic circles — a/captivating^and witty conversa-tionalist. / ■■ .-.N.. ■ ■ ■ ' "'"X
Kafka^was only vaguely aware of hls^ Jewish heritage. He learned about Zionism from fellow writer Max Bred, his closest friend and mentor. He.took an academic
interest in chassidism, studied Hebrew and attended classes at the German-language adult Jewish evening school. With Dora Dyment, the Polish-bom .woman who saw him through his last year of life, Kafka l>egan plans for settling in Israel.
Kafka allowed only a few minor pieces to be published iri, his lifetime. His will directed the destruction of all his manuscripts, which executor Brod refused to do. Kafka's'novels — The Trial, The Castle, . Amerika, In a Penaf Colony, and The Metamorphosis -r- and his short stories posthumously 'made him the literary. spokesman against the chaos, impersonal-ness and bureaucratic repressions that were descending on modern man. -—
Kafka, for example, wrote The Metar morphosis in 1912. In style, its powerful dream-like sequences linked in symbolic logic to form the story, as well as the vividly presented but never rationalized central image of a man who has turned into a gigantic insect, placed Kafka in the forefront of Expressionism. This movement describes artists who choose to interpret appearances rather than depict them photographically.
-Kafka has provided an inexhaustible mine for interpretaion. The.existentialist, the psychoanalystic and the . religious schools have all suggested consistent but contradictory patterns; Even religious interpretations range from nihilism to faith in a Divine salvation. ^^-.r---^
The word Kafkaesque has \come to describe any grotesque and inexplicable set of chxnmstances to befall an individual.
Kafka's reputation developed, hronically, in occupied Europe and in the EngUsh-' Nspeaking coni^tries atthe yery time his three sisters were dep^led toN^and killed in concentration caihps. . )
to
Argentina has treated foreign reporters. Despite official disclaimers of responsibility for the-acts, newspapermeri in Argentina have been kidnapped, beaten and threatened with their lives.
While the Western stringers in Israel report fully on every mishappening in that country, from demonstrations to strike, concentrating ialways on the negative elements..their counterparts in Arab countries . are strangely silent. .Why is that?
The reason is. that Western journalists have been frightened out of their wits by previous experiences in Beirut. Damascus and other Mideastern capitals where FLO threats have succeeded in dictating to journalists what news may be reported — that is to say, the handful of them that has sta;yed in the area to receive the press ' handouts.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation , does not earn any plauditis in this regard. True, it has stringers in Israel and they do a commendable job there. . This CBC does' not, however, have any men on the spot in Lebanon,' the current crisis centre in the Mideast. Every time ■ there is a clash between Israeli and PLO forces in south Lebanon, it.is the CBC's Jim Muir whogiyes the hews and commentary.
Muir, however, broadcasts from Nicosia in Cyprus, an average distance of 300 miles from, the scenes which he describes with such apparent competence and precision. It is ludicrous to suppose that from "this vantage point", (as the CBC prefaces its . introduction to Muir) either Muir or anyone else could comment intelligently on what is going on.
The next time we hear repoirts from Beirut and Daihascus we should ask what the origin of the account is... and whether it represents news or PLO propaganda.
By SHELDON KIRSHNER
The isisue of Nazi war crimhials has been thrust into the limelight again with the recent disclosure on the 60 Minutes TV program that the state department smuggled Russian collaborators into the U.S. after Worid War II.
John Loftus. a former U.S. government prosecutor, said they were welcomed to the U.S. because of their familiarity with the • Soviet Union. Loftus was employed by the justice department's Office of Special Investigations, established by the Carter administration in 1979 for the express purpose of rooting out these people.
According to Loftus, at least 300 collaborators reside in the U.S. (There is a smaller number in Canada. It appears that Ottawa does not have "the legal machinery"' to prosecute them, Solicitor-General Robert Kaplan says.)
Several weeks prior to the broadcast, Alan Ryan, the director of thfe Office of Special Investigations, Informed the World Jewish Congress that he expects to begin deporting''Nazi war criminals shortly. But he offered a caveat. The process, when it begins, will amount to "a trickle, not a torrent."
Targeted for investigation, he said, are "perpetrators of the Holocaust — concentration camp staff. au.\iliar>' storm troopers, SS murderers and government officials —. who were specifically ineligible to enter the United States under the law,"
Recently. Ryan's office filed a complaint in a New Haven district court in a. move to revoke the citizenship of a former Yale University lecturer in Slavic languages. Vladimir Sokolov, 68, is'said to have been a Nazi propagandist in the Soviet Union who advocated the annihilation of all Jews. He entered the U.S. in 1951 by withholding his background from authorities, and the justice department will prosecute him' for that omissioh.
In the three years since Its establishment, the Office of Special Investigations has investigated more than 500 persons,but has failed to deport a single individual. Ryan told the World Jewish Congress that this failure stems from the "complex and terribly time-consuming system of appeals and hearings", which "encourages and rewards delays."
Nevertheless, the Office of Special Investigations has made an important breakthrough, . having enlisted the co-. operation of East European governments in . investigative work. .
Recently, Ryan went to Moscow, aiid negotiated the first agreiement under vyhich . the U.S. would take.testimony from Soviet . citizens who .witnessed atrocities, the. result has. been encouraging to date. Seventy-five videotaped depositions have been collected and already used in a few court cases;
Despite the imposition of martial law in Poland, the Polish authorities are co-operating. Ryan was scheduled to visit East Germany and Czechoslovakia this month in an effort to-secure their assistance as well.
One of the difficulties Ryan has had comes from people who ask. why he is "going after" old men who pay taxes and lead nominally law-abiding lives. ,
"We are proceeding against them under the law, not because of what they might do in the future but because not to proceed against them would necessarily forgive-what they did in the past. What we are doing is enforcing the law agahist the very-people who. violated it."
Last September, New York state passed a civil rights law making anti-semitic harassment acrime. Previously, it was treated as a. minor violation, punishable by a fine. . A 25-year-oId woman has the dubious distinction of being the first person in the state to be convicted under the new law.
Jeanette Poggioni, of Suffolk county, was recently ordered to perform community service for having abused her neighbor, Marsha Falik, on a number of occasions for —a period of one year. She admitted to having called Falik a "Jew bastard'' and other choice epithets. On-Rosh Hashanah, she phoned her, said "Happy Jew day," and ■ 'hung-up.' ■
In the other incidents, she either yelled anti-semitic remarks from her.home across the street, or drove her car In front of the Falik house and cursed her in a like manner. The Long Island Jewish World reports. —_
Commenting on Poggioni's sentence, district attorney Patrick Henry said: "This serves notice to the people of Suffolk county that (I) will not tolerate that type of behavior ... ."
Suffolk county reportedly has the nation's highest arrest rate of-anti-semitic vandals, butpoliceare being hampered hi their work by Jews who refuse to press charges.
. "The problem of Jewish passivity is great," police chief Howard Mahdell said. "We keep running into Jews who refuse to sign a complaint because they don't want to get involved. They don'i'want to have to
A new survey says 1.1 million Jews live in New York city. [CPWh-ephoto]
spend a few hours in court to see justice
done."'
Mandell'drew a parallel between this problem and Israel's existence. As he put it; -'Someone asked me how Israel could have bombed the Iraqi nuclear plant knowing it would lose all its support in the worid community. 1 replied that survival comes before support. You don't have to go through life with bigots tauntirig you."
A survey put out.by the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies in New York City says that Jews in Suffolk county comprise 13.8% of its total population.
The survey reveals the presence of 1,118,000 Jews livtag hi New York City, representing 15.8% of the city's population. The borough with the largest number of Jews is Brooklyn, Where 411,400 [18.4%] live. The greatest concentration is in Manhattan, where the population Is 19.3% Jewish,
Four thousand five hundred persons were interviewed for the survey, the first comprehensive one of its kind in this city. For the purpose of the study, a Jew was "a person who defined himself or herself as a Jew," ;said Steven Cohen, one of the sociologists who took part.
Researchers used a list of what were called "distinctive Jewish names" — 1,600 names borne by one-third of all Jews. Allowances were made for Jews who do not possess a "distinctive" name, for the non-jews who bear one of them and for households with unlisted telephone numbers.
■* ■■ . ■ . * In general, Jews are more inteliectually
inclined than others. They're more likely to attend university, particularly graduate school, and they've producisd more than, their share of eminent scholars, scientists and writers.
Writing about this phenomenon in' Commonweal, the Catholic weekly. Prof. Stephen Steinberg concludes that "the key to Jewish intellectual achievement Is not culture, but class;"
Comparing Jews tb Catholics, Steinberg notes that Jewish immigrants arriving in the U.S. in the 1880s had an advantage over their Catholic counterparts because they had already been urbanized as petty traderis in Eastern Europe. The Catholics were of peasant stock;
Most Jewish immigrants went into business and. with hard work.. they managed, to achieve an occupational head start compared with other immigrants. Early Jewish intellectual achievement was conditioned by the "economic mobility" of the parents, he.says.
In Steinberg's opinion, the children of , East European Jewish immigrants'.were admitted into colleges in disproportionate numbers because "they had fathers who owned small busine:sses." h was thus economics and not the "Jewish value system" which prompted so many Jews to opt for higher education.
Steinberg may be underestimating cultural factors, but his theory is intriguing, nonethelisss. ^
'.■..*.♦ . *
Lynne Reld Banks writes about Israel from quite a different perspective. She is a
British novelist who lived oh a kibbiitz, and she |s a Gentile. Today, she lives in Britain. But ishe has retained her kee;n and abiding interest in the Jewish state.
Defy The Wilderness [Oarite, Irwin, $18.95], Bsuiks' latest novel, treats contemporary. Israel and Its problems much like Amos Oz has done. Banks, .unlike Oz, Is an outsider looking in. Still, she is an acute observer and she possesses a deft facility to moiild rather interesting characters.
there are a few in Defy the Wtlderriess. Ann Randall, who is probably patterned after Banks herself, is a married woman who returns to Israel after a long absence. She is in Israel to do a book on the War of Independerice. and so she se'ts out to interview veterans who 'were in that conflict.
In researching this subject, she comes ' face to face with an Israel far different from the country she knew before th6 Six Day War. And she meets several men whose political ideas symbolize this change.
Randall, who seems to have left her un-compreheiiding British husband for the uncertainty of Israel, is torn between two men — Menachem, her old kibbutz lover, and Boaz. a rough, tough individual whose chauvinistic views clash with those of her own.
Menachem. however, is a peripheral character, being introduced, fleetingly, toward the end. Boaz appears through most of the book, and the relationship they have is stormy. -
There is a third man in her life, Amnon. but her relation to this gentle advocate of Arab-Jewish reconciliation is strictly platonic, much to her own surprise.
The Israel with which Randall was familiar was a much simpler place. It was, she writes, an era of "blinkered introversion, over-confidence and a sort of innocence—a lingering national virginity." The Israel she encountered Is a nation in transition. Kibbutzniks are leaving the land "to live as hedonists, materialists." There Is a drug problem in the cities, and organized crime exists.
Banks, who is married to a Jew, reflects on thedifficulties Gentiles have in adapting Jewishness if they decide to stay in Israel. As she writes:
"The Jewishness was. In a sense, forever closed to her, a foreign territor>' to -which she could never get a visa, a different planet, light years away . . . She iharveled that people could delude themselves into thinking they could 'Join' just by going . through sonie mdmbo-Jumbo ritual... . No amount of study or solemn, undertakings or dips In the mikveh cou|d transform youlnto the genuine article. You might as well paint yourself black and ieam a few ichahts and customs and call yourself an Ibo or a Tutsi. You cari't implant tribal memories and emotions into your marrowboneis."
Defy the Wilderness is full of such tautly drawn observations of Jewishness and Israiel. and the wonder of it all is that it .comes from the pen of a woman who is supposedly an.outsider.
rom
uvcis one of EaSterrt Europe finest
By J. B. SALSBERG
Recently, Leibe Bograd, a righteous -and incorruptible moral man, who lived among us for many decades, passed away, m his 90s, in Kibbutz Urim, a long-established, successful and ex-amplary pioneering community— an outpost that once bordered on "the largely uncultivated Negev desert.
Leibe'sdeparture calls for a tribute to his memory and, at least, a word or two of Appreciation of one of the finest human beings that Eastern European Jewry produced towards the end of the _[ast century and-the beginning of the present one. ■
Leibe Bograd was born in the small town of Zhuravitz, where the czarist borders of the Ukraine, White Russia and Lithuania met; I never saw Zhuravitz and yet it became a_v-ital part in the fabric of my life.
I met Zhuravitzer in Canada, in the U.S. and in Israel; the meetings differed only in the degree of their attractiveness. I have never met an unattractive, unpleasant or objectionable person who came directly from that town or who was the offspring of Zhuravitzer parents or ^grandparents. It must have been a
spiritual, decent and admirable community.
. Indeed, 1 became a Zhuravitzer by marriage andremained one forlife.^ Leibe was enrolled, very young, in a "Yeshiva that placed great emphasis on -the fulfilment of the moral precepts of Judaism. It was steeped in the traditions of the Musar movement. Shortly after his arrival the head of the Yeshiva.:
stopped using Leibe's first name but always referred to him as Der Zhuravitzer.". ■■ ■ ■ . ■ :■ •
As was customary in those days, the Yeshiva student [except for those from well-to-do homes] was a "guest" at selected homes for the main meal of the day. [It was called "essen teg."] Often it meant a different home for every day of the.week and often it also meant sleeping on a bench or table of the Yeshiva.
Leibe's favorite family was that of a local tailor. They treated the younger scholar like a precious jewel. They sat him respectfully atthe table and urged him on to eat."Es, es, mein kind,'"the tailor's wife would urge him,"vest du-hoben koyach tzu lerrten the heilike Torah."
Leibe's most disliked home was that of a very rich "and influential man of the community. That family did not invite the young student to their table, but sat him in thekitchen where the cook, sensing the young man's dismay, urged him to accept the demeaning treatment, since, so she said to the Zhuravitzer, "azoi is the velt mine kind," (that's the wayof the world.) .
One evening, Leibe discovered that he was offered the leftovers from the plates of the family. He left the house in anger and told the kindly, motherly cook to tell the family that he would never agai': enter their home.:
The chief rabbi of the Yeshiva called Leibe into his private study the next day and though obviously filled with kindness, understanding and sympathy, urged his pupil to return to the home he left in such a huff. ''Zhuravitzer," the rosh Yeshiva pleaded, "the family is prominent, the story is circulating all over town, ".they feel offende^d, they promise to have you at their table from now on, soyou should return there/'
But Leibe was adamant; he would never return to that house . . . and he didn't.
Leibe once came down with a -bad bronchial, feverish cold. The Jewish doctor was called to the Yeshiva.. He examined the lad and decided that he was undernourished and with fever. The doctor took the sick boy in his carriage.
Leibe Bograd
drove him to his own home, put him to bed and hovered over him for the better part of a week. When the student was sufficiently recovered, the doctor gave him some pocket money, urged him to eat.more regularly and drove him back to the Yeshiva.
But soon enough the winds of the Haskalah (enlightenment) movemisnt, czarist discriminations and pogroms, the emergence of the Zionist, Poale-Zionist (Labor-Zionist) and the Jewish Labor Bund: in Eastern Europe and the meteoric rise of the Yiddish press and literature, affected the. traditional Jewish'way of life most profoundly.
Young men and women flocked to the new standards raised everywhere in EasternEurope. . ; .
Leibe's brother, Noah, and his sister, Sara, went to Palestine with the second aliya to become, founders of a kibbutz and Leibe came to Toronto to join his' family, the Wilenskys. .. Here, Leibe became a founder of the PoaleZion Party and, during World War I, received guidance from the young Ben-Gurion, whom the Turks had expelled from Palestine, and who spent time helping to establish the. Labiar-Zionist movement: and groups of cha-lutzifn in North America.. (My late mother-in-law often related how Leibe brought Ben-Gurion to her home for Shabbes.), _
[More next week]
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