2
JEWISH   WESTERN BULLETIN
Friday, December 31, 1937
THE
JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
Official Organ of the
Vancouver Jewish Administrative Council
Robert L. Zien_________________________---------------------------------------------------Chairman
Pfarry Musikansky—._______i-------------------------------.------------— Business Manager
Published Every Friday From The Jewish "Western Bulletin Oflfice 2675 Oak St. Bay. 4210
Business and Editorial Hours: 9 aju. to 5 p.m. and 7 to 9 p.m. Closed on Saturday and Jewish Holy Days
"I do not agree with a word that you say—But I will defend to the death—your right to say it. "—VOLTAIRE.
VANCOUVER, B.C., FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1937
i ________ _
ON THE WEATHER
It is a wonder that some one with a statistical turn of mind has not figured out what percentage of conversations are begun by referring to the weather.
It is both a safe and a convenient topic as there are so few of us who do not grumble about it and who find in it a convenient alibi for so many things,—their colds, being late for appointments, passing up dates, non-attendance at meetings, the house not being painted, and even not getting a haircut.
It is an ill-wind that doesn't blow up some good. Even apart from the pay received by some, and the business done as a result of weather changes, there is the great benefit in health that fighting against or being exposed to the weather brings to one. You have surely noticed the rosier cheeks this past week.
Then again we have noticed that periods of very inclement weather such as the fog and heavy Suowfall in these parts, tend to bring out a sense of humor and a great measure of toleration and helpfulness. We have seen how conditions that affect all alike can tend to bring forth, grins, jokes and friendly jibes and comment.
The Jewish Youth Federation Convention scheduled for December 25, 26, 27, was able to carry out only a small part of its program, due to the small attendance. This was blamed on the weather. We would like to feel that the holiday week-end or other causes even such as lack of interest, were the factors—^factors that ca::. be sought out and remedied.
Especially of our young people, let us hope it cannot be said, they will allow "a little weather," to keep them away from conventions or annual meetings arranged in their interests.—G. F.
Prom Yorkton, Sask., have come Mr. and Mrs. C. Daien and daughters, to take up residence amongst us. •    • •
Mr. Sam Morgan, comes to us from Toronto, Ont., and. we hope lie^ will feel very much at home.
Birthplace of Anti-Semitism
The Riddle of Central European Politics
By HENRY MONTOR ;  In his review of M. W. Fader's important book, "Plot and Counter-0ot in Central Europe," the literary editor of the Seven Arts Feature Syndicate calls attention to the fact that anti-Semitism was bom in Central Europe, where the seeds of the next war are being sown.—^Editor.
In the countries south of Hitler are^ the seeds of the next w&r, according to many observers, who feel that the unresolved conflicts in those areas will be the pretext which greater Powers will employ in the drive to gain their political and economic ambitions.
Szechoslovakia, Austria, Hungary, Rumania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria ere beset with internal difficulties that began at their birth or recon-stitution at the end of the World War. Opposition of class interests and variety of racial origins, both exploited by unscrupulous politicians vorking upon more or less illiterate peasantries, constitute the framework cn which Hitler hopes to hang his picture.
To most newspaper readers the news from Prague, Zagreb, Vienna and Budapest is a melange of im-important items as romantic as gypsies and as fantastic as duels. It is true that in the metropolitan centers there is an increasing emphasis on the political, economic and socialogi-cal factors underlying the Balkan countries' frequent and inexplicable change of administration. This is particularly true in recent months as Prance and England. Germany and Italy have wooed various elements in these countries.
For a general siurvey of the background, present status and personnel of the Central European countries there are few recent books to compare with "Plot and Counter-Plot in Central Europe" (Houghton Mifflin Co.) by Marcel W. Fodor, correspondent of the Manchester Guardian and of several American liberal magazines.
As a personal observer of Central European history before and since the War, Fodor is free of the superficial judgments which characterize the four-week visitor. His point of view is also evident in a quotation from a fellow correspondent of the Guardian who warned him: "Fodor, never forget that the world is not dominated by brains. Keep in mind that politicians are almost always idiots, and you cannot go wrong. . . ." In fairness to Fodor, it must be added that he has taken his events and personalities at face value instead of cn the basis of their possible composition.
Fodor writes about Austria. Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Mus-lapha Kemal and Turkey, Rumania, Aus'.ria; Yugoslavia. Macedonia and the complex of races and nations south of Germany. The name of premiers and ministers that flash across the news are pulled down for analysis. The differences between Serbs and Croats, Czechs and Slovaks—
which elude the majority of Americans—are not merely explained but lelated to prospective events.
But the Balkans are not treated as isolated lands. Over all of them Fodor stretches the new tentacles of Fascism, Nazism, militarism, clericalism, gripping all of them into one tjght, compact mass as democracy, practised or incipient, strives to remain free.
Aside from the excellent introduction to Central European politics which Fodor provides, his book is most interesting for what he has left out. Only in passing does he mention the Jews or rather the conditions to which they are subject. He pauses briefly to describe Magda Lupescu, mistress of King Carol, daughter of a baptized Jew and an Aryan woman, who found out that she was of Jewish blood only when she became an adult. "This brought a strange conflict into her soul: already she had been infected by anti-Semitism, and now she realized that she was 'one of them.' Out of this conflict grew her determination to support Zelea Codreanu." But the Iron Guards, who won a tremendous political victory in Rumania last week, want no support from this Jewish-born woman and are said to have marked her down for assassination.
You can't affiord to pass up the big event and a happy night for all at the Falomar Ballroom January 11th.
Highlights of Convention ;
By G. FLORENCE
THE WEATHER:
A well used expression to explain
the small attendance. ALLUSIONS: Birds of a feather flock together! A man is known by the company
he keeps. Patience is a virtue. IKILOgbPHY: I would like to phUosophize but
it is difficult to do -so after a
meal of corned beef. You can't get the thing you want
by murdering it. The work of an organization is
done by the few—the many await
the call to action. ' That which we prove condemned
—proves need of Federation. When youth has grown to adulthood, will perhaps then unify our
organizations. DEDICATION: We  must  dedicate  ourselves tq
awake faith in the value of the
Federation. QUIPS:
The Federation might more aptly be called "SIGNIFY NOTHING" club. ADVICE:
We will not get an understanding of the traditions and destiny of our people ; through play—it requires study—it is a hard grind.
Our youth must be .prepared for ;.   Jewish living—not; playing.:^
We need, Talmud Torah,o Youth Federation, Synagogue.
The Youth Federation must expect to lose money on its ventures The  commimity  at large must make up deficits. ' DEFINITION:
Organization—suggests a particular service, such as Zionism, Welfare,
Federation—is intended to bring together various groups to aid them in doing their particular jobs. CHAMPIONS:
Longest Speech...._________Rabbi Cass
CHRISTMAS MESSAGE ASSAILS JEWISH PERSECUTION
^ NEW YORK (WNS)7-Setting forth the Christian attitude concerning ■Jewish and Christian .relations in a. Christmas message, the Home Missions Council, representing most of jthie Protestaiit sects, declared that ;"as Christians of the United States and Canada we desire to express to those Jews who are the victims of injustice and abuse our sincere sympathy. We emphatically declare that such conduct is utterly alien to the teaching; and spirit of the faith we profess and an affront to all our ; ideals of civil liberty and justice."
ENGLAND TO ABANDON PARTITION PLAN SAYS WISE
Peace on Earth
Gpodc^ as a Way of Life
By Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt
NEW YORK (WNS)—The British Governinent is considering abandon-.inig entirely  the plan  to partition Palestine, Dr. Stephen S, Wise, president of the Zionist Organization of 'America, said in an address at the 'seventh annual convention of the Federation   of  Palestine   Jews in America. Basing his assertions on a i letter he received from London, Dr. Wise declined to say how much stock he put in the report. ■'LONDON (WNS)—Jewish Agency officials  and the British Colonial Office denied all knowledge of a report that England was preparing to abandon the partition of Palestine.
SINCLAIR LEWIS RAPS I   RACIAL TOEJUDICE
I NEW YORK (WNS)-«ace prejudice was characterized as "a damn fool belief" by Sinclair Lewis, noted novelist and Nobel Prize winner, in an address before the Colimibia University Institute of Arts and Sciences. {"It's completely idiotic to say certain races are inferior," Lewis said. "The vice of race prejudice is no longer amusing and must be stamped out. Active anti-Semitism marks the decadence of a race ii.to. barbarism and there are no exceptions. That's a scientific statement and not a literary,' mark." .
SanAy de Santis 15-piece orchestra, 16 girl floor show, door prizes; admissidn only 60c. -
Most Speeches_________Morris Belkin
Humor------------Rev. N. M. Pastinsky
Defence of Federation Louis Zacks
Once again, as Fodor describes the origins of Fascism, he credits its birth to Stephen Friedrich of Hungary, years before Mussolini marched on Rome. Friedrich, Hungarian Premier, initiated in 1918 a program of action that was, in effect, a progrom against Jews and Bolsheviks, thousands of whom were murdered and placed in concentration camps. He was succeeded by Bela Kun, another sinister figure, even though of Red hue. He, too, like Lupescu, had no knowledge of his Jewish background and was concerned with it even less.
Even Adolf Hitler is only an imitator, even  though he has polished anti-Semitism to a fine art. It was George   von   Schoenerer, Austrian Social Democrat in the latter part of the nineteenth century, who devised the creed which ended in National Socialism. It was typical of the political liberalism that marked those German - Austrian    thinkers that Schoenerer should have made hatred of Jews one of the tenets of his philosophy. "Boycott Jewish merchants!" and "Austria must be freed from the tyranny of Jews" were slogans invented by Schoenerer who, at the same time, campaigrned against medieval,   clerical   and capitalistic
privilege.
By omitting speciflc discussion of the Jewish problem in European lands, Fodor has illustrated, though not consciously, two things: First, that the presence or absence of Jews m those countries bears no relation to the economic or social problems from which they suffer; secondly; that not until these problems are solved can the Jews expect a release from the special burdens resting on' them.
By this time it ough't to be "boring rather than startling to remark that the Jewish problem is not a special phase of the'world's ills but merely one of the symptoms of -^^e^lfastric ulcers from which, Eufro^e suffers. Those ulcers, are caused, by fevidal: exploitation of workers, inequitable treatment of the, agrarian,'.elements^ savage nationalistic ambil^^ns that are nurtut-ed by ecafio^iQ^^^i as much as by chauvinistfe:^^|;^|3'^^^^^^^^ Czechoslovakia,   for   exVmjjle^'';?is now facing a bitter pr6spect.| Its great German minority is helping? to make it a prey for the Reichi pn .tb'e one hand; the unfair treatnfteht of the Slovaks is giving it political indigestion, on the other hand. In the late Masaryk and in Benes.today, the Jews of Czechoslovakia have had not patrons but understanding friends And yet even in liberal Czechoslovakia the stirrings of anti-Semitism are visible, faint, though they may he. Certainly that is. not due to Governmental pressure or indifference. It is a phenomenon resulting from' economic   conditions   exploited b^. political demagogues.
The number six million is often used to describe the Jewish population of Central and Eastern Europe. The sympathy for them must be boundless; the effort to aid them must be accelerated and extended. But political and sociological realism must also take into account the con-
Mfdnile Frolic for New Year's Eve
. . Pea«e and good will among nations are impossible until people begin to discover the meaning of brotherly love and practice it in their individual lives, Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt says in this moving essay. It is presented as a special year=sBd feature by special arrangement between the Seven Arts Feature Syndicate and H. C. Kinsey & Co., publishers of Mrs. . Roosevelt's book on world peace,"THIS . TROUBLED. WORLD,", of which this essay forms the
concluding chapter.—THE EDITOR......
We can establish no real trust between nations until we acknowledge the power of love above all other power. We cannot cast out fear and therefore we cannot build up trust. Perfectly obvious and perfectly true, but we are back again to our fundamental difficulty—the education of the individual human being, and that takes time.
We cannot sit around a table and discuss our difficulties until we are: i able to state them frankly. We must feel that those who listen wish to get at the truth and desire to do what is best for all. We must reach a point where we can recognize the rights and needs of others, as well as our own rights and needs.
I have a group of religious friends who claim that the answer to all these difficulties is a great religious revival. Thiey may be right, but great religious revivals which are not simply short emotional upheavals lifting people to the heights and dropping them down again below the place from which they rose, mean fundamental change in human nature. That change will come to some people through religion, but it will not come to all that way, for I have known many people, very flne people, who had no formal religion. So the change must come to some, perhaps, through a new code of ethics, or an awakening sense of responsibilitty for their brothers, or a discovery that whether they believe in a future life or not, there are now greater enjoyments and rewards iri this world than those which they have envisioned in the past.
I would ha.ve people begin at home to discover for themselves the meaning of brotherly love. A friend of mine wrote me the other day that she wondered what would happen if occasionally a member of Congress got up and mentioned in the House the existence of brotherly love. You laugh, it seems fantastic, but this subject will, I am sure, have to be discussed throughout the world for many years before it becomes an accepted rule. We will have to want peace, want it enough to pay for it, pay for it in our own behavior and in material ways. We will have to want it enough to overcome our lethargy and go out and find all those in other countries who want it as much as we do.
Some time we must begin, for where there is no beginning there is no end, and if we hope to see the preservation of our civilization, if we,^ believe that there Is anything worthy of perpetuation in what we have built thus far, then our people must turn to brotherly love, not as a doctrine but as a way of living. If this becomes our accepted way of life, this life may be so well worth living that we will look into the future with a desire to perpetuate a peaceful world for our children. With this desire will come realization that only if others feel as we do, can we obtain the objectives of peace on earth, good will to men.
A gala New Year's Eve is being planned for- the enjoyment of the public by the Famous Players Corp.
A mldnite frolic, complete with super-entertainment, favors and fun fcr all is in store for you at the Capitol, Orpheum, Strand and Dominion. .
Make New Year's Eve the grandest night of the year by attending yovx favorite Famous Players theatre!
Get your tickets now!
ditions of the peoples among whom they live. The peasants of Rumania, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Poland are under a crushing burden of poverty. It cannot be said that, they have plenty while Jews want.
The obvious retort to what might seem a condescending remark is: that may be true, but let us worry about the Jews! The others have plenty of people to worry about them! They have the power to rebuild their governments if they are unjust! And even if they.are suffering, there is no justification for whipping Jews in the peasants' drunken stupor of frustration and misery.
The, importance of understanding all phases of the Central European serene is not that an exaggerated sympathy inay be created for the downtrodden peasants but that the plight of .the downtrodden Jews may be seen in its true aspects, and how these are related to a general and lipt, specific situation. i?;i<Michel Fodor has provided the key to that situation. There is no fiair tdv sensuousness or even drama in his writing,; He writes as a reporter wotild; a trifle more dully. But he has facts and he makes judgments solely on the basis of those facts. The sentimental vaporings about , Central Europe can best be dissolved for a clear picture of those countries by a reading of "Plot and Counter-Plot." —1937 SAFS.
BIAUK EXCERPTS
Behold   the   night —the shadows gather round,
And we go stumbling forward like the blind, .
A something crossed our midst—^no man knows what.
And ho one speaks and there is none to tell,
If now for us the sun arose or set.
Nor if he set forever,
And all around is chaos, black and vast,
And refuge there is none. And if we cry aloud and if we pray— Who hears us? And  if  we  fling an awful abroad—
On whose head will it fall? And if we gnash our teeth and clench our fist—
Whose skull shall start in twain?"
curse
Don't miss Council Novelty Dance January 11th.
At Anristerdam, at the Internation-|al Scout Jamboree, the 20,000 Boy .Scouts from 43 lands sang the Palestine chalutz melody as one of the five official marching tunes.
The novel "For Immediate Release," by Ridn Bercovici, son of the dlrooping-mustached Konrad, tells the story of a New York Jewish press agent.
"When all within thee has died away
to silence, Go touch the wounds, and they will live and
Speak, then bear the woes remembrance in thy breast To all the confines of the whole wide world,
And seek a name for them, and find
it never ... Thy mouth shall ope tq shiek aloud
for vengeance, And dumb as are the tombstones
Shalt thou stand. Gp,  look, and  look,  behold them
where they lie Like butchered calves, and yet thou hast no tear
To give to them, as I have no reward."
Chaim Nachman Bialik.
CHICAGO PATHOLOGIST MARTYR TO SCIENCE
CHICAGO (WNS)—Science claimed : another > Je«^6h mactyr. here iwhen Dr. Richard J; Jaffe,. chief pathologist of the Cook County (Chicago) Hospital and one of the nation's leading pathologists, died at the age of 48 of a heart attack resulting' from overwork during his feverish efforts to determine the cause of the strange disease which killed 13 new-born babies in St. Elizabeth's Hospital.
A native of Vienna, where he received his medical educatidni Dr. Jaffe had lived In Chicago siiice 1923. He was a professor in both the University of Illinois and University of Chicago Medical Schools and had developed the laboratories of Grant Hospital.
Date up your girl now for the dance at the Palomar Jan. 11th.
CALENDAR OF THE WEEK
HONEY CAKE
4 tablespoons Crisco 1 cup brown sugar 4 eggs, separated 1 pound honey 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon soda % teaspoon salt % teaspoon cinnamon 1 teaspoon cloves 2% to 2% cups flour
Blend Crisco, sugar, and egg yolks together, then blend in the honey. Sift the dry ingredients together and add slowly. Fold in the beaten egg whites. Pour into pan 6% x 13 inches and bake in a moderate oven (350 deg. F.) for 50 minutes.
Friday, December 31, 1937:
4:00 p.m. — Schara Tzedeck.Congregation.
8:00 p.m.—^Beth Israel Congregation.
Saiuruay, January 1, 1SS8:
9:00 a.m. — Schara Tzedeck Con-grregation.
9:00 a.m.—Beth Israel Congregation.
Sunday, January2, 1938:
9:30 a.m. Beth Israel Religious SchooL
: 8:15 p.m.—^Rabbi Zlotnik Lecture.
Monday, January 3, 1938:
6:15 p.m.—^Beth Israel jiden's Club; Dinner at Centre." i!
Tuesday, January 4, 1938: 8:00 p.m.—B'nai B'rith Installation.
Auxiliary
B.P.M.V.P.
Wednesday, January 5, 1938:
4:15 p.m. — Beth Israel Religious^ School.
8:00 p.m.—Executive Committee of the Administrative Council.'
Thursday, January 6, 1938: 8:00p.m. — Samuel.Lodge B'nai; B'rith Installation.
Get your tickets now . .. keep the date with your wives and sweethearts for January 11th ... and have a grand time.
Japan's successes in North China brings the soldiers of "The Son of Heaven" much closer to Biro-Bidjan —which Hitler's henchmen call "Hell on Earth."