Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 18 March 1960 — Page 15

COULD BE

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The editors of two of the top papers in the Jewish field, The Jewish News of Detroit and the Jewish Floridian of Miami, discuss what Leo Mindlin, the Southern editor describes as a dull speech by Harry Truman before the recent Israel bond conference in his city. MINDLIN CHALLENGED the “hastily-composed, insignificant observations” made by the ex-president, who merely reviewed the old Hoover Tigris-Euphrates-Nile plan, instead of discussing the current tense bordpr situation between Israel and the UAR or the actions of the U S. government in subtly acquiescing in the Arab boycott as it affected American Jews. Said Editor Philip Slomovitz of The Jewish News: “Perhaps his Jewish advisers are to blame for their failure to guide him properly.” The original error is of course that Jewish groups still need the services of non-Jews in order to bring out a Jewish attendance. EX-PRESIDENT TRUMAN is no dope. By now, he knows the score. And he knows that he performed what he was supposed to do—bring out the attendance—before he opened his mouth at the conference. Our own sneaking suspicion is that President Truman is fed up with the whole business and is demonstrating that he doesn’t Ike it by dishing up a rehash of an almost forgotten program which he ladled out to the same group at the same annual conference in 1957.

rhe EDITOR'S QHMt

SH! SH!

Everyone knows it, but we hate to see it said so plainly. Addressing the three-day seminary for West European Central Organization executives in London, Herbert Katzki, assistant director of the European section of the Joint distribution Committee, stated that “the success or failure of any communal organization depended mainly upon the professional workers, his vision and capacity.” The professionals heading the national Jewish organizations know this. The presidents they put into their offices know this. And the members at-large, when they stop to think about it, know this too. What is objectionable though is that someone would say it out loud. CARELESS STATEMENT? There is a conflict somewhere in what Rabbi Yehuda Elinson, director of the Religious Zionist fund-raising department, had to say about the campaign his body, the Mizrachi-Happel Hamizrachi may launch in the U.S., now that United Jewish Appeal funds will no longer be available to them. RABBI ELINSON said substantially (P-O, Mar. 11) that over a dozen Orthodox philanthropists who now give the UJA a million dollars annually have agreed to cut their pledges to the. UJA in half, applying the other $500,000 to the drive being planned by the Religious Zionists in the U.S. Since the Religious Zionists in Israel received less than $500,000 annually from the UJA, the question then is valid why the group would consider Rabbi Elinson’s plan for drives throughout the U.S. if they can raise their money simply by getting a few wealthy adherents to cut their pledges to the UJA. OUR OWN BELIEF is that Rabbi Elinson is talking a bit through his hat. But even so, it is dangerous for any -Zionist to seek to harm the UJA in this way, in view of the fact that almost all the funds of the UJA now go 1 to Israel.

MY OWN FEELING at this point is that the adult Jew wants desperately to know how to observe. They can’t, however, in their homes, because they were never taught, and in many cases, their parents were totally non-observ-ant. This is what we mean when we charge the rabbis with being delinquent in not giving the Jewish people of the U. S. the basic education missed as children in their homes. THE ADULTS ARE too embarrassed to come right out and say they would like to light the candles on Friday nights, or join in the Purim fun, or conduct a seder. This silence is falsely attributed to indifference, when it is anything but that. There are a number of agencies in the community in addition to congregations, which could join in a mass education campaign. The various women’s organiatizons, most of whom do quite a bit of educational work, could cut out all the frills and fripperies and get down to the business at hand. Before each Jewish holiday, let that meeting be devoted to an exposition as to how the holiday ritual is carried out in the home. WHAT WE NEED is a crash program, but, of course, like any crash program, this can’ tbe brought about before there is a demand from the people. With the people too shy to ask, holiday after holiday goes by and hundreds of thousands of Jewish homes are deprived of any Jewish ceremony when they could be filled with the warm, human, home-completing ritual that graces every Jewish festive occasion. This is part of our theme that the Jews of the U. S. want to know about the rich values of Judaism, but instead, are being fed with generalized sermons (and generalized editorials, too) Halloween dances, bowling, and anything else that can be used to avoid Jewish content. IF YOU STOP to think of the vast organizational apparatus (a marvel which future generations will find hard to believe) of the U.S. Jewish community today, you’ll agree that the tracks are there to reach the' goal. We even have the train. What we need are the engineers.

Let’s pause to consider this apparatus. Take any one national Jewish organization, whether the B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee or scores of others. Not only do they have vast, trained personnel and staffs running into the hundreds, and regional offices, and publications, and publicity staffs, but whereever you go there is a local chapter, or a woman’s division, or a youth division, or all three and more. (Wonder why none of them have not gone into the old-age field and established such divisions yet.) IF ALL THIS organizational set-up were to cast in their strength with the synagogue, which has its own apparatus, and the Jewish school system, then the means to mount the crash program is there. Now what is lacking is leadership and if you are a Jewish leader, try this shoe on. e U. S. JEWS ARE going to have to take a back seat to top givers of British Jewry, according to reports of sums contributed this past week to the JPA, the English counterpart of the United Jewish Appeal. Unless our memory forsakes us, the largest gift to the UJA in its history was $500,000. I think it was from the family of William Rosenwald. BUt that was some years ago. The largest gift to the UJA this year, according to what we’ve been able to learn, has been $250,000. THE BRITISH meeting, addressed by Abba Eban, who learned how to do it (raise funds, not speak mellifluously) brought in one gift of 150,000 pounds, which when you consider one pound equal to $2.80, is well over $400,000. The giver was Isaac Wolfson, who built the Hechal Shlomo, the religious centre in Jerusalem. Another top gift was from Sir Simon Marks in the amount of 141,000 pounds. Great Britain’s 400,000 Jews can not, of course, contribute what U. S. Jewry does. Many British Jews are in the working classes, and there is hardly the prosperity in England as in the U. S. So the big U. S. givers are going to have to watch their laurels. Or is the competition from England too keen?

How Cars A Modem Jew Believe irs God?

NOT THE WAY

The news story to the effect that Jewish distributors and dealers of newspapers and magazines have refused to handle “American Mercury,” which is clearly anti-Semitic, L distressing. THIS IS NOT the way to fight anti-Semitism. We can understand the feelings of these vendors, yet theirs is not to make the choice, and by refusing to handle this publication, they lend credence to the anti-Semitic accusations made by it and other hatelers. The public will eschew publications which seek to stir up hatred against the Jew. IF THE POSTOFFICE finds that the publication seeks to create enmity within the body politic by attacking falsely one element of it, it can withdraw mailing privileges. There are many other ways to fight this vicious magazine, which once bore an honorable name and reputation. But refusing to let it go through the normal trade channels is not one of them. MAYBE DEGREES FROM ALL 4? We doubt that it made other Jewish institutions of higher learning fele a little less envious when they saw the reports which tend to show that David Ben-Gurion did not make his trip to the United States specifically to receive that degree from Brandeis University. It may have been that the Prime Minister himself insisted that he be allowed to visit each of the seminaries of the three wings of Judaism in America (P-O, Mar. 11). We can’t dismiss the possibility that one of them has offered Ben-Gurion a post on its faculty, and thorough man : ^hat he is. he felt he should inspect all three before deding to resign as Prime Minister to take the teaching positoin.

By PROF. MARVIN FOX (Ohio State U. Philosophy Dept.) The fundamental assumption that God exists and that we are his creatures, is an assumption without which we cannot make genuine sense out of our world. Given all the criteria which you would employ in any other areas of human thinking for the justification of a fundamental principle of this kind, we can show that we are fully justified in accepting a belief in God as the foundation of the whole of our religious thinking and, I would want to add, of the whole of our lives. FIRST, THERE are what I would like to call intellectual reasons for the belief in the existence of God. Most fundamental of all, and most commonplace, is the undeniable and inescapable fact of the marvelous order and structure in the universe itself. Our tradition expressed this thought in early times. The Psalms speaks with awe about the order of the natural world and sees it as the result of God’s creation and. of God’s control. If we are to have any grounds for moral values whatsoever, we are obligated to accept the reality of God’s existence. I don’t say that all of us always practice the main elements of conventional morality; but we all accept them and believe them to be correct and binding. I don’t think there is anyone who does not believe that justice is better than injustice, that truth is better than falsehood, that kindness is better than cruelty, that mercy Is better than lack of mercy. We

usually accept the conventional moral principles. WHAT IS the ultimate moral value? The one value to which we owe the greatest respect in our own tradition and in that of the society in which we live is the love of our fellow man. “Thou shalt love they neighbor as thyself”; this, in a way, is the greatest principle of the Torah. But why should you love your neighbor and how can you love him? Unhappily most of our neighbors are singularly unlovable people. It is not easy to love your fellow-man. Think of how much is ugly in man, how much that is corrupt, brutal, repellant in every way. What is there to love? Unless you see in man the

basic dignity that makes him essentially different from all creatures, there is little to love. And this, of course, depends on the belief that God exists. THERE IS GOOD intellectual ground for believing in the existence of God. There seems to be inescapable moral grounds for believing in the existence of God. If you begin with the intellectual and moral, you must come ultimately to the act of will which is the commitment of faith through which you will come to see and to understand far more than you can from the outside. This, I think, is what the modern Jew can believe and it is, I am convinced, what the modern Jew and modern man must believe, if he is not to be responsible for his own destruction.

The NATIONAL JEWISH POST OPINION Published every Friday by The National Jewish POST. Inc.. 546’ S. Meridian. Indianapolis 6, Indiana, in 5 Editions MIT 1 rose 4-1307 GABRIEL COHEN. Editor and Publisher CHARLES ROTH. Executive Editor CHARLES GAMZEY Managing Editor ZEV KRONISR Associate Edltoi EARLE D MARKS Executive Director JERRY GOLDSTEIN New York Advertising Director GERSHON JACOBSON New York Bureau Chief FRANK GROSS Circuistlop Manager

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FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1960