Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 28 October 1977 — Page 11

Digest Of The Yiddish Press Gloom Is The Word For Warsaw

By RABBI SAMUEL SILVER Gloom is the word for Warsaw, as a former resident sees it. Mena^pjpQ^BHkhem Flasker, who mr used to live and write in Warsaw, back again ^I^Bfor another look ^^XjgJsee, and he can Kv scarcely express leelm^s HHHcalled how Poland SILVER had harbored and then saw the extinction of hundreds of thousands of Jews. All that is left of Jewishness in Warsaw is a monument—a tiny congregation, a kind of museum cum archives and a street named after one of the martyrs (Mordeeai Anilevitch). The monument depicts a bewildered child gazing at its dead mother, and some of the heroes of the Uprising in the Ghetto. The congregation comprises mostly old men who are not beneath begging for coins from tourists. The museum is a skimpy one, and the government of Poland has done nothing to salute the heroes of the ghetto or to commemorate the thriving Jewish community which did much for Poland culturally. At the little shul Flasker met the Algemeiner Journal’s Nissan Gordon who. in his article, joins Flasker in an attempt to describe the desultoriness one feels at visiting a city where Jewishness once flourished and is now erased. A grim touch was a performance of a playlet meant lo delineate

Jewish life. Most of the actors are non-Jewish, though they have learned Yiddish. One scene was a Jewish wedding done so poorly that a tourist whispered to Flasker: a wedding in a cemetery! • Yiddish Theatre The Jewish Actors Union is trying to form such an entity, and it got a good start not so long ago at a conference in the New York headquarters of the Histadrut. On hand were Herman Jablokov, head of the union, and most of the Yiddish actors. Main speakers at the gathering were Dr Joseph Landis, who teaches Yiddish at Queens University, and Theodore Bikel. A committee to push the idea was formed; it includes Julius Schatz, of the American Jewish Congress; Elenore Lester, a reporter for “The Jewish Week,” Amos Hirschbein, of the 92nd St. Y; Joseph Miotek, of the Workmen's Circle; Dr. Nehema Sandrow, a Yiddish playwright; and Ann Kessler, of the United Federation of Teachers. Now, writes Isaac Perlov, of the Forward (himself a playwright who did the lyrics for the musical, “A Guest from Texas,” to be offered bv the country’s best Yiddish troupe. Folksbiene), let’s see whether there’ll be any follow through • Jewish Revolutionary Few in this generation know the name of Vladimir Medem. He was

a Jewish revolutionary in Russia, was imprisoned in the Czarist regime, and, when he came to America, became one of the leaders of the Socialist Bund and one of the favorite speakers at trade union gatherings. His autobiography, “From My Life,” ran serially in the Forward back in the 20’s and was published in two volumes. Now the Medem book is being translated into English by Dr. Samuel Portnoy, professor of history at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Fla. Son of Workmen’s Circle parents in the New York area, Portnoy was a student in the Arbeiter Ring who learned to cherish Medem’s idealism and personality. Portnoy says that Medem’s description of the Russian revolution contains materials of value to all students of Russian history. He is delighted also to become the perpetuator of the memory of a now- legendary personality who was one of his childhood heroes. (I. Shmulevitch, in the Forward.)

Burlington, Vt. The burial society (chevra kadisha) is the most effective Jewish organization in Burlington, Vt., we learn from a history of that town’s Jewish community written by Myron Samuelson

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The 187-page volume intrigued the Forward's resident historian, P. Sandler, who guesses that the author is a lawyer. Now' boasting 1,300 souls, the Jewish community was an offshoot of one in Poultney, Vt., the first town in that state to have an organized “kehilla.” After the Revolution, some Jewish businessmen from New York penetrated Vermont to buy up some land, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War that Jewry in Burlington got organized. The burial society, whose records were Samuelson’s chief source, and the first synagogue, got started in 1885, with a membership of 18. Now there’s a second synagogue (thanks to the usual disputes), Zionist organizations, and even a Yiddish Corner. Sandler thinks the little tome should be a spur to other communities to record their Jewish happenigns. CONSULTATION AND INFORMA TION CENTER on JUDAISM Confidential sympathetic counseling Panel of Rabbis of all schools

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The Lox Box When Humor Comes Easily By MARTIN MOSKOVITZ Sometimes I work so hard to try to be humorous that I’m forced to be envious when some of our public figures come out with remarks which are inadvertently funny. j Like President Carter the other week when he | A addressed the United Nations General Assembly wm » about the possibilities for peace in the Middle i j&r East: “For the Arabs, the legitimate rights of P anaman ians must be recognized.” WHICH JUST SHOWED how much the PresHj|^^^^Hident's mind was wandering that day. Or. take Henry Kissinger’s passing comment Mur JHH durin g a dinner party for Sen. Charles Percy in MOSKOVITZ Chicago recently. Referring to Bert Lance, Kissinger said, “You have to give him credit.” And then there was this British newsman’s written comments in the Guardian, referring to Idi Amin. “...I have no special views about him, other than he is an ignoble savage, a bullfrog, a ranting murderous monomaniac, a preposterous vulgarian, and almost certainly mad.” WHICH MAKES ME madly curious about his opinion in the event he did harbor a special view of him

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