Pogi 4 — The Conadioii Jewbh News, Friday, June 7rii, .1963
THE CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS
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M. J. NURENBERGER, Editor
VOL IV, NO. 23 (180)
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THE ASSOCIATED
THE COMMUNITY AND JEWISH EDUCATION
The annual dinner .;of Toronto's Associated Hebrew Schools this coming Wednesday will demonstrate again our community's dedication to the noblest of allJewish duties: education. It is in the realm of Jewish upbringing in thie classroom, on the playground that the battle for the future generations must be waged and won.
One of the great American Jewish educators recently pointed out in the Reconstructionist that the ideal of the North American Jewish community must be a Jewish Day Schol supported from special funds and available with-
AFRICANS AND ISRAEL
out tuition to every Jewish child. This suggestion is in full accord with our hallowed tradition where the equation of the child in the spirit of Judaism is the duty of the community.
But until this day comes, until the organized Jewish community of North America realizes that its first task is a free Jewish school for everybody, th{»e responsible for such great institutions as Toronto's Associated have a moral right and duty to demand the funds to sustain Jewish education.
SNUB FOR NASSER
The outcome of the Addis Ababa conference of independent African States, can properly be called a triumph for Israel.
Clatherings of this kind invariably become a barometer of feeling on all issues affecting their participants.
Israel was one such issue, since the Arab States attempted to obtain an expression of support from the conference for their own anti-Israel policies. But although their campaign was led by men whose prestige in African circles is beyond question — Ben Bella, hero of the Algerian struggle, and
IN MEMORIAM
Nasser himself — It was rejected by a substantial majority of the participants.
The opposition was so strong that Nasser and his supporters did not even consider it worth while pressing the point, in sharp contrast to earlier gatherings of the same kind, for example the Belgrade (inference in 1961.
The political defeat of the Arabs was due largely to Israel's high stwiding in many parts of independent" Africa, thanks to the practical aid and genuine sympathy it has shown to the emergent nations.
LOUIS LiPSKY
With the passing of Louis Lipsky from the American Jewish scene at the ripe old age of eighty-six, American Zionism has lost its most prominent leader in more than one sense.
A native-bom American, Lipsky was a Zionist before Herzl convened the first World Congress in Basle. He was a talented writer who could have reached great heights in the world of American letters. But he was bitten very early in his career by the bug of Zionism and the ui^e to serve the Jewish people. He forsook general newspaper writing to edit Jewish periodicals which led him eventually to Jewish leadership.
Louis Lipsky's gaunt figure and
wh;te mane were as outstanding as hist brilliant, analytical mind and rhetorical power. Though a liberal in the full-est sense of the word, he never abandoned his firm convictions. He was a friend and comrade-in-arms of the greatest in Zionism, at equal terms of fraternity with both Weizmann and Jabotinsky. /
Of course, man cannot live forever. But those who knew him, who were his personal friends — and the editors of The Canadian Jewish News are among them — will never make peace with the cruelty of the Angel of Death who has taken away from us Louis Lipsky.
\ W^N *'»1J^"
NAVON IN "DAVAR", TEL AVIV
Keep SmllLng
ONE WAY
Max: "You should see the new altEur in our synagogue.
Miriam: "Boy, lead me to it."
QUICK THINIONG
A man hwdly had paid off the mortgage oh his house when hie mortgaged it again to buy a new car. Then he sought out a loan broker to borrow money onjhe car so he could build a garage.
"If I do make you the loan," asked the broker, "how will you manage to buy gas for the car?"
"It seems to me," the roan replied with great dignity, "that a fellow who owns his own house, car and garage should be able to get credit for gas."
NO CRIME
"This crime was the woric of a master criminal," satd the prosecutor, "and was carried out in a skillfiri, clever manner." !
Blushing, the defendant rose to his feet. • ' "Sir flattery will get yoU nowhere. I ain't gonna confess," :
CAUGHT ON I
The lecturer at a medical college was exhibiting a diagram and said, "The subject here limps because One leg is shorter than the other."
"Then be addressed one of his audience: "Now, Mr. Stein, what would you do m such a case?" '.
Young Stein pondered deeply before answering. "I imagine, sir, that I should limp, too." •
Another Quebec Jewish Mayor
Jewish mayors in the province of Quebec are not quite as rare as was suggested here recently at the thne Sam Moskovitch was elected mayor of Cote St. Luc. In addition to William Hyman in the Gaspe area a century ago, somewhat more recently Jules Loeb hSs been the mayor of South Hull for the past two years. There are those who may wish to dispute this by insistmg that South Hull is merely a satellite of Ottawa and therefore spiritually in Ontario. There IS, however, no doubt — South Hull is located in Que-jec whatever be its relationship to Ottawa.
A Tailor In Bohemia
Gary Lautens, Toronto Star colunmist, has imcov-ered a Yiddish poet, located appropriately enough in the heart of Toronto's Bohemia, the "ViUage" area of Ger-rard Street, where he earns lis living as a tailor. His name is Sam Urbas (despite the mitials "J. A," which adorns his shop wmdow), he is 44, he has been in Canada ten years and escaped from Poland in 1939 at the time of Hitler's invasion. He lived in Russia, left after the war, fought in the Israel War of Independence, and left Israel four years later.
A native of Ostrovtze, he has had some of his Works published in the various Yiddish anthologies that appear from time to tune. His
Canadian Panorama
BY MORDECAI HIRSHENSON ----
newest source of publication is one where no Canadian writer has yet apeared — Sovetish Heymland, Moscow's nod to Jewish cultiu-e. (In his interview with Lautens, Urbas disclaimed any interest in Soviet politics).
Mrs. Urbas knew no Yiddish when Sam met her but she knows enough now to translate his writings. A Tor-ontonian, she is principal of Hillcrest Progressive School and was a widow when they met. (She was formerly Mrs. Avrom Rotenberg).
The search for and interest in the Jewish tailor-poet has long been a favorite pastime of the Gentile journalist. Fifty years ago writers from the big New York dailies discovered Morris Rosenfeld, a Ghetto poet who lived by the needle, introduced him to the metropolitan reader and lionized him for years afterwards.
The Warsaw Ghetto On TV
The CBC's program on The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising seen the other Sunday evening on "Close-Up" was a well-done documentary meriting high praise. The film footage of scenes in the Warsaw Ghetto actually taken within its walls were starkly moving and told the story more directly than any amount of script or commentary.
Willis' Binnder
There were, in this reviewer's reaction, several flaws
— not major ones — which marred the effect of the program. The usually urbane and alert J. Frank WiUis in interviewmg Chaika Spiegel a Montrealer who survived the Ghetto, was rather gauche in his questioning J>nd produced an embarrassing moment when he said to Mrs. Spiegel: "You had, then an adequate supply of arms in the Ghetto?" Perhaps it was meant in irony but somehow Frank Willis did not carry it off. ^Incidentally both interviewee* — Mrs. Spiegel-and Henryk Fenigstein, now a Toronto physicizui — handled themselves very well, with dignity and simplicity
— in the discussion.
IVoi All Warsaw Chassidic
In the introductory section there was an approach whose error should not have eluded script-writer Ben Shek. The Jewish population of Warsaw as it existed On the eve of World War II was pictured in a one-toned hue —. bearded, Chassidic, and pious, as Uiough drawn from a Chagall pamting or a Men-dele word-picture. Even in the days of Peretz, who died in 1915, Warsaw Jewry did not uniformly follow this pattern. If course there were
JEW FACES GEBMAN (10)
hj ill. J. Norenberger
strange ^ no fiction
It Avas just seventeen years ago to the day that I Mw her in a little village in Bavaria, She was walking honie from church with some peasant girls. Somehow she attracted my attentiori. Though dressed like a Bavarian peasant woman, her walk, her very composure, suggested a difference, a feeling of not belonging to this backward hamlet.
I was standing with a group of American soldiers, admiring the pastoral, Sunday morning scene in this village, noting men, women and children on their way home from church. No one believed wfe were in Germany merely months after the end of .the war.
To the Bavarians this girl did not seem strange. I, however, noticed her sad, dark velvet eyes, "Jewish" eyes which only another Jew could detect.
At that time I was seeking surviving Jews, relatives lost in the holocaust. This girl with the walk of a Jewish city dweller intrigued me. Tthought: are you really that sensitive? Can't it be normal that, among Bavarian girls walkuig to church arm-in-arm there can be one with "Jewish" eyes? Yet, how can'there be aJewish girl in aTieighborhood where Jews never lived before?
No, I decided. It Tuust be ray nostalgia for Jews on a Sunday morning in a Bavarian village a few months after the debacle of Hitler that could have put such nonsense into my head.
Very soon I discovered that it really wasn't nonsense. The girl had sensed ray gaze, or else she had noticed me before, for she turned her head, looked my way and smiled. Then she said, hello, in English — with a^German accent.
Her "hello"; accompanied with a smile, was not that_ of the fratemizing Fraulein, On the contrary, it reminded me of the warm greeting in a Hasidic home in the Poland that used to be.
She Started the conversation: "Why do you stare , at me?" And her mien became pathetic in its sadness. .—■ I think I know youl ./ —- How can you, an American, know a girl iron Bavaria? ■
~ Your accent is not Bavarian.
•— How do I sound to you?
— I believe I saw you once in Warsaw.
Of course, I lied, She understood; she knew I was
trying to "discover" her. As we sauntered along, she spoke in Yiddish.
True, I am a Jewish girl. Rather: I was the dau^ter of a Jew.
Then she suddenly began to cry: "You talk like a Nazi. Why don't you leave me alone and let mefbrgei my past? My name is Anna Louise and they call me Liesl. The rest is dead and buried. I want to forget my father the Hasid, my mother, my brothers." *■' ■ ■ * ■ * ■
Lieisl had worked in a section of Auschwitz where the Nazis systematically, efficiently assorted the bC: longings of their cremated victims. Many a time had she asked the SS supervisor to kill her too, for she couldn't stand her "work". But. in his sadism, the Nazi enjoyed telling her constantly, "Not yotu" God, but / shall decide when you die."
Liesl had lost all faith. 'As a result, she vowed never to bother with Jews should she survive.
Before we parted, she gave me her address, hoping to see me agam. But when I returned the next day, the peasant woman with whom she lived informed me that Liesl had gone without leaving a forwarding address.
Seventeen years later, On a sunny afternoon in pusseldorf, my companion left me for awhile to my glass of brandy at Dusseldorf's Park Hotel. Sudden-ly, in the lobby, I felt a pair of eyes piercing right through me. I raised my head; before me stood a middle-aged couple. I recognized those eyes — the same warm, sad, velvet eyes.
"Liesl!"
"No more Liesl," she replied, sitting down. "Now it's Sarah, and this is my husband, YekhieL We hve
in Israel." ' ■ ;:,„; ■ y.:
We could not continue our conversation for my companion returned. But I met them in Bonn the next day. They told me they were in Germany upon the invitation of the government to testify at the rial of a war criminal.
She continued: "Several weeks after I met you, I went to Munich, for I realized how foolish I had been to flee from my destiny. I even saw the piece you had written about me in a New York Yiddish
KARL AAARX OF DUSSELDORF: "NO MARXIST'^
daily. Despite the fictitious descriptions and the change of milieu, I recognized myself. At first I was peeved because you had classified me as one of the survivors whose body remained hale but whose soul was sick. Then I resized you were right. Your article was what a psychiatrist would have described as shock treatment. It helped me find myself, my husband and, later, my way to a kibbutz in Israel. ■■■*.■■■ *■■..,
That same evening in Dusseldorf I dined with Karl Man?; Jewish publisher of the Allgeroeine Wo-chen Zeitung, and Mrs, Marx. (Veiy few people outside Germany are aware of the Allgemeine Wochen Zeitung which is, perhaps, the finest Jewish news-pr • -inb'ished anvwhere.) :
Over a cup of coffee, Mr. Marx jestingly told his charming wife, who helps him durect the newspaper, that she was facing one of her husband's most astute critics. In fact. Marx remembered with kindness an article written years ago where in I had disagreed with him on our Jewish position vis-a-vis Ger^^any. (Continued oh Pago 10)
Jews in shtreimtach aiid peyos who were constantly wrapped in talis and rapt in prayer. But in Warsaw — which was no shtetl —-there were also Polonized Jews, Jews of the middle class, secular-minded Jews who would be divided and subdivided into countless varieties of Zionist, Socialist, Yiddishist and "culture-ist". The monolithic image of the whitesocked shtreiml-v!eaTeT sunply no longer applied.
Antek and Tziiia
It was a pity that the Jewish viewers could not hear and enjoy the rich Yiddish tones of~Antek Zukerman and Tzivia Lubetkin whose words were drowned out by an E n g 1 i s h sound-track. HoweverTthis is understandable for their story was telecast for the broad and general public, not just for those who could follow their native tongue, (Incidentally, the script did not mention that these two — now living m Israel -— are, and were then husband and wife.)
Whence The FUm?
A question likely raised by some viewers but not answered in the script or credits was: whence the fllm footage of the Ghetto? Most viewers, we are surei would have wanted to know this. The fact that the fihn was shot in that period by the Germans is a revealing commentary on the inner attitude of the German con* querors. They no doubt wanted to preserve for purely historic and "objective" archival purposes some rfr cord of the Warsaw Ghetto. They probably never dream? ed that this material would some day be used to show the worid the depths^of Nazi bestiality. In their mind it was probably an example of how thoroughly, efficiently, and effectively for all concerned they were dealing with and disposing of the "Jewish problem".
Credit is due to Jim Guth» ro, Ben Shek, and particu^ larly Felix Lazarus who inD" tially suggested the program and assisted greatly in its production.
SERMON FOR THE WEEK'
THE SONS OF JUDAISM
And I hove given the Levitcs - they ore given to Aaron and his sons from among the children of Israel, to do the service of the children of Israel in the tent of meef-ir>g, ond to moka atonement for the children of Israel ... (Numbers viii, 19).
During the Temple period the function of the Levltes was to play musical instruments, and sing hymns of praise while the sacrifices were being offered on the altar. Commenting on our text, the Jerusalem Talmud observes: "The song of the Levltes atones for Israel".
The truth taught here is that for Judaism to-win the hearts of Jews there must be found in Israel those who follow the Torah as man's su-preme joy and delight, who view the mitzvot as life's poetry, and sin as a disturbance of the sublime harmony which ideally ought to exist between the Creator and His creatures. The old saying that the heavenly gates of prayer are never closed has often been vindicated during Israel's^ tragic history. It is true that some have only" found God out of the depths of despair. But there is another saying which declares that it is the gates of song which are never closed. Israel needis the atoning song of the Leyites.
There is, of course, joy and joy. ZangwiU's description of Judaism as a "cheery" faith was not one of his happiest terms of phrase, suggesting as it does that the aim of Judaism is for a good time to be had by one and all. Judaism is too profound a faith to be over-optimistic about man's capacity for achieving perfection, serenity and balance, though it refuses to look upon him as depraved from birth. The joy of which Juda-Ism speaks is that of "simcha shel mitzya", the glorious privilege granted to finite man to worship the Infinite and to address Him as "thou".
A common fault in presenlxiay Jewish preaching is to advocate observance of the mitzvot because of their value for Jewish siurvival. Quite apart from the fact that with the establishment of the State of Israel the chances of Jewish survival are greater than ever before, it is unsound on both psychological and theological grounds to imply that the mitzvot have no Intrinsic value. The great Jews of the past knew better. They had not lost their capacity for wonder and for seeing God's glory filling the earth.^They saw, in the words of the rabbis, each blade of grass reaching heavenwards in respond to an angel summoning it to grow. They saw sun, mOon and stars in their courses bowing to\their Maker and they heard the divine music of the^spheres. They saw life as so many opportunities for divine f worship and man as a ladder linking heaven and earth. Because they saw these things their exist-ence, for all its sorrowful dimensions, was never surrendered to gloom. Only when Jews learn to recapture this spirit, seeing Judaism as a religious faith and the mitzvot as ways to God, will thei song of Judaism be heard in all its power.