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

GOLDMANN'S THESIS FAULTY We congratulate Nahum Goldmann on his outspokenness when he challenged the philanthropists of American Jewry and declared that philanthropy didn’t build Israel, it can only build hospitals. , • This kind of straight talk will finally clear the air. IT IS ONLY pussyfooting which prevents intelligent consideration of problems and this leads to mistake after The pitfall of logic into which Dr Goldmann falls is his belief in the outmoded division as between Zionists and non-Zionists in the U.S. Jewish community. In this same talk in which Dr Goldmann sought to give a raison d’etre for the continuation of the Zionist movement as the supreme body of world Jewry, he said that even the philanthropic organizations of U.S. Jewry, when the occasion arose, acted vigorously in the political arena too. • ,, , THIS MEANS THAT Dr. Goldmann is not so blind to the realities of American Jewish life as he seems when he tried to bend the Jewish community to his will. The plain facts are that there is almost no such thing in present-day life as purely philanthropic bodies. If you go through the list of American Jewish organizations, except for the United Jewish appeal, there is not one than can be called only philanthropic. In other words, Dr. Goldmann’s thesis falls apart, and his analysis is hardly astute. IN ADDITION, there is no such thing as a non-Zionist today, unless you want to consider the American Council for Judaism as part of the Jewish community. All our other bodies, including the American Jewish Committee, do effective political work, and are proud of it. The Committee also is in the forefront of activity in behalf of Israel, and in this instance, can be counted on—as Abba Eban so eloquently testified—to rally to Israel’s cause as quickly as any other American Jewish group, whether labelled as a Zionist body or not. If Dr Goldmann wants to evade reality, then he’ll make little progress. The American Jewish community is so solidly Zionist that the purely Zionist organizations are falling apart because they have nothing to do which isn’t being done by other Jewish organizations, some of which formerly were non-Zionist and even anti-Zionist. THIS IS THE makeup of the American Jewish community whether Dr. Goldmann likes it or not. If he hopes to make any progress in building up the World Zionist Organization and the World Jewish Congress, both of which he heads, he’d better begin to work with accepted fact rather than outmoded theory. AMERICAN MERCURY AGAIN We’re a little bit surprised at the letter from Samuel L. Scheiner, in last week’s POST and OPINION challenging our position that'distributors and dealers in magazines who are Jewish should continue to handle The Amreican Mercury. THIS IS THE same kind of attitude which Mr. Scheiner would be the first to protest if distributors who happened to be Catholic refused to sell a novel or a magazine listed by the Legion of Decency, a Catholic agency, as indecent from the Catholic viewpoint. This is censorship by the individual, and a chaotic one at that. If a Catholic hospital wishes to refuse to dissemminate birth control information, that is its privilege. A Catholic hospital is a Catholic agency. BUT A NEWSDEALER has no right to impose censorship, even though a magazine like the American Mercury is plainly anti-Semitic. As we suggested, there are more democratic ways to fight a publication which spouts hate. The postoffice department evidently has never considered the American Mercury as a breeder of violence, else it would have refused to permit it to be delivered through the mails. A more extreme example, but one which illustrates our point effectively, would be if a Reform Jew who happened to be a news dealer refused to sell Herman Wouk’s “This Is My God.” THE AMERICAN MERCURY is a fascist publication, but any group has a right to propagate fascism in the U.S. as long as it does not incite to violence or disturb the peace. And it is important that Jews in fighting fascism do not resort to fascist methods. IS THIS WHY? South African Jewry failed to protest when the apartheid laws were promulgated, and when five Jews were arrested among the 234 political and liberal leaders rounded up by the government, the news article (P-O, Apr. 8) noted that none was active in Jewish life. THE POSITION OF South African Jewry may be so precarious that it could not safely take a stand on apartheid. But in view of succeeding events, consider how significant the Jewish group would be today in South' Africa, and would be in the immediate years to come, if when apartheid was first voted, it had discounted in own jeopardy and had protested vigorously. The five who were arrested, and the hundreds of other Jewish intellectuals and liberals and rabbis in South Africa must have a difficult time reconciling the religious teachings of Judaism with the silence of South African Jewry. COULD THIS BE the reason why the five are not active Jewishly?

The EDITOR'S CHAIR • • •

As we told you last , week, we covered the convention of the National Jewish Welfare Board in St. Louis, and although you saw our report on Dr. Sachar’s speech, which easily was the highlight of the sessions, still that was not a germaine part of the converition, since he took up as his theme the relationship of Israel and U.S. Jewry, something, which is of interest to all Jews, not alone delegates to a JWB convention. THERE WERE A number of fine speeches, and intelligent action taken at the convention, and a report of that convention, should not be solely Dr. Sachar's speech, important though it was. The significant move made by the convention was that which--will make the JWB financially stable, and end its recurrent financial crises. The organization went about this new program with a thoroughness that indicates a kind of maturity which is slowly becoming part of organized Jewish life. Under this plan, called the community quota plan, about $400,000 of the $1.5 million, as in past years, of the JWB budget will come from the New York city through the United Jewish Appeal of New York. THE JWB IS MADE up of two equally important divisions. One has to do with its ; role as the national agency of the Jewish community centers. The second has to do with its job of providing for the needs of the Jewish men in the armed services. Back in World War I there was a residue in funds'from this armed services work, which was put in trust to be used to finance the JWB operation. These recurring deficits have reduced this figure from approximately $1 million to slightly more than one third the amount, and the anticipated deficit of the , JWB for the next five years is estimated at $% million. So the JWB had to do something 1 , and the program they’ve developed shows good common sense and maturity. The local communities have three years in which to accept it, and we believe that there will be almost universal consent. NO COMMUNITY takes exception to providing its share for the JWB’s work with the Jewish servicemen. This end of the budget is to be prorated among local Jewish communi- ' ties on the basis of what they raise in their annual local drives as compared to the figure raised by all Jewish communities throughout the U.S. For instance, if a community raised $1 million and the total raised by all Jewish communities is $50 million, then the assessment on the community is one-fiftieth of the total amount needed for the armed services work, or 2 per cent. The same approach will be used for the amount needed to finance the service given by the JWB to local community centers, except that the ratio employed here will be the total budget of the local community center : as against the combined total budget of all community centers in the U.S. ANOTHER INTERESTING session was that on Jewish content in the work of the Jewish community centers. This too was not an explosive session, since the principle was accepted when the Janowsky report was adopted some 12 or 13 years ago. Yet some of the remarks made are worth being brought to your attention, since acceptance of a report is only the first and the easiest step. The important question is how is the report being implemented, ahd on- this phase of the subject the answer depends on what your viewpoint is. The two papers were delivered by Louis Stern, of South Orange, N. J., a national vice president of the JWB, and Yehuda Rosenman, of Baltimore, executive director of the Jewish Community Centers Association there. Mr. Stein admitted that he had “no clear and complete solution” for the question of what he called “the difficult problem of Sabbath programming.” HE THEN WENT on to list three “principles for possible success.” “First, no progress is possible with the fundamentalist elements in the community. Our support must be sought elsewhere. “Second, no success is possible or community acceptance achievable if we try to evade or avoid the spirit of the Sabbath while going through the motions of living within the letter. There is no substitute for mtegi ity in this. area. If on the other hand our gjod faith is beyond question, we will achieve support from large groups in the community, particularly the rabbinate who

share our concern about making tradition meaningful in modern terms. “Thirdly, if we really mean to provide, programs consonant with . the spirit of the Sabbath, all the positive creative forces of the Center, both lay and professiohal must be mobilized. Perhaps a touch of the traditional chasid with his feeling about the joy and happiness in life needs to be part ‘of all of us.” AFTER THE TALK I went over to Mr. Stein and aSked him a pertinent, question, which brought the problem c down from the general to the ?pecific, and very shrewdly, he evaded, and I told him he. was evading. Perhaps this 1 is the way progress here will be made. That is that we set for ourselves the guiding principles towards which we work, and refuse to let ourselves be brough into a fight over the specific issues. . I asked him what he • would do if the Jewish Center opened its pool on the Sabbath and its gym, and provided no programming at all that might be considered as in consonance “with the spirit of the Sabbath.” He replied that he would try to introduce some Sabbath programming. I refused to let him go and persisted, would he still acquiesce in the opening of the pool if this Sabbath programming were not instituted. This is where he balked. Nevertheless, we wouldn’t be fair to him if we dropped the subject here, for his paper was positive throughout. For instance, here is an illuminating paragraph: “For those of us who cannot or will not accept the theology and ritual of tradition, certainly the wisdom, the moral and ethical teachings so laborously built over thousands of years ought not to be abondoned, often without even an examination of their substance and meaning.” JUST TWO other points. One is the remark by JWB President Solomon Lift, which we feel was unfortunate. ‘T say to you with all candor that American Jewish boys and girls deserve no less consideration than Jewish boys in other lands.” On more reflection, Mr. Litt would agree that American Jewish boys and girls never had it so good, dnd if anything, need some of ’ the deprivation and hardship that Jewish boys and girls in North Africa and Israel endure to make them understand that life’s goals are not alone comfort and accommodatoin of moral problems. THE OTHER point is the contrast made in the press reports of the speeches of Dr. Sachar and Rabbi Jerome D. Folkman. Sachar’s talk you read as we reported it last week. It plumped solidly for the creativity of the U.S. Jewish community, and challenged those who said Jewish life outside of Israel must be sterile and a pale imitation. YET DR. SACHAR didn’t evade the heavy problems which face the Jewish community if it is to reach full maturity and add its contributions to those made by other great Jewish communities of the past. IN OTHER WORDS, Dr. Sachar saw- the good and the bad, ahd weighing one against the other, arrived at the conclusion that the seeds of great pi’omise have been sown. Dr. Sachar’s paper is important because it sets the tone for the activity of the Jewish community. It is one thing for this chair to have insisted over the years that American Jewry would play a great and creative role and another for the president of Brandeis University to say it. Careful we must be. The future is never assured. But it is just as harmful to ignore the positive developments as it would be to ignore the signs of disintegration and cultural degfedation.

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