The Southern Jewish weekly. [volume], November 10, 1950, Image 1

About The Southern Jewish weekly. [volume] (Jacksonville, Fla.) 1939-1992

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THE OLDEST AND MOST WIDELY CIRCULATED JEWISH PUBLICATION irTTHIS TERRITORY
VOL. 27 NO. 42
PLAIN TALK
By Alfred Segal
AL JOLSON'S TALITH
•
I came upon a couple of gen
tlemen whose earnest discussion
suggested they might be on a
Jewish problem, right in the mid
dle of the sidewalk's traffic.
“Now what do you think about
it, Segal” one of 1 them exclaimed.
"About what?"
“A1 Jolson’s talith.”
That morning the newspapers
had reported that A1 was lying
in state dressed in a talith.
“Well, what’s the argument
about?” I asked.
"The question is", one of them
replied, "whether a man who
seldom wore talith during his
life-time should be dressed up in
one for his funeral? What do you
think. Segal?"
I had a ready answer, since I
had been thinking about the mat
ter earlier. So I said: Well, gen
tlemen, I myself won’t insist upon
being dressed up in a talith at
my funeral. Not often, since my
bar mitzvah,vdid I wear a talith
and why should I take on a talith
in my last moments on the earth
and in the eternity of the grave?
But, somehow, gentlemen, I
got a thrill from hearing that A1
Jolson had gone to his funeral in
the talith. I could respect him
the more simply because in this
symbol a visible and public as
sertion of his ancestrial faith was
being offered. He was dressed as
all his forefather were in their
times. Others who come to fame
and fortune have sloughed off
the habiliments of their Jewish
indentity as a kind of social dis
ability not to be tolerated.
I recalled one I had heard
about. This one, having risen to
considerable eminence, liked to
think of himself as a man re
leased from the Jewish context;
though, in fact, he was always
being pushed back into it.
Finally, though, at his grave
he managed to escape from it all.
He succeeded in being buried in
a fashionable cemetery of which
the inhabitants were mostly non-
Jewish. There nobody who came
upon his grave could suspect that
he had been a Jew. It was his
final victory, you see. He had
become a comfortable man at
last with no other Jews around to
disturb him.
So I admire the more dignified
way in which A1 Jolson journey
ed to his grave—in the talith, in
a public assertion of his religious
inheritance. Sure, he probably
hadn’t had a talith on since his
bar mitzvah. I can guess that
even on Yom Kippur he hadn’t
made much of the synagogue; yet
he hadn’t forgotten the teaching
and on his way out' he was say
ing, “I was a Jew!”
One of the gentlemen said:
"Your idea of being a Jew is just
too simple. Does the wearing of
a talith make a Jew?"
It’s the least, I replied. But
I should say that A1 Jolson was
a good Jew even though in the
practice of Judaism he served no
ecclesiastical cult, or was ever
president of a synagogue or
chairman of the lemonade com
(Coniinued on Page Eight)
Abba Eban, Adm. Stanton Salisbury
To Address UAHC Biennial Assembly
. .KB. SI
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Abba Eban, Ambassador of Israel to the United States, and Rear
Admiral Stanton W. Salisbury, Chief of Chaplains of the United States
Navy and Chairman of the Armed Forces Chaplains’ Board, will address
the 41st Biennial Assembly of the Union of American Hebrew Congre
gations, which will convene at the Cleveland Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio,
on Sunday, November 12. More than 2,000 religious and lay leaders
from all parts of the country will attend the 4-day convention to for
mulate a program for the Union and its 425 affiliated Reform congre
gations for the coming two-year period. The Union receives funds for
its religious, educational, cultural and inter-group activities from the
21,875,000 Combined Campaign of the Union and the Hebrew Union
College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
P. N. Coleman Will
Attend J. D. A.
Meeting in Cincinnati
Philip N, Coleman, prominent
in Jacksonville’s communal cir
cles, will represent this area’s
Jewish community at the Fifth
Annual National Council meeting
of the Joint Defense Appeal
(JDA), opening Friday, Novem
ber 10, in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The three-day parley, which
will continue through Sunday,
November 12, at the Hotel Neth
erland-Plaza, will be the largest
assembly of the year devoted to
the problem of fighting anti-
Semitism and promoting better
community and human relations.
Jewish Colonel Who
Captured 508 Nazis
Dies in Korea; Was 39
WHITE PLAINS, N. Y., (JTA)
—Lt. Col. Samuel E. Spitzer, hero
of World War II who single hand
ed captured 508 Germans, died
in Seoul, Korea, of a heart at
tack, it was reported here. The
Jewish officer, who made his
home here, was 39. He was in
Korea as a representative of the
Judge Advocate General’s office.
For his feat in 1944 he was a
warded the Silver Star and the
Croix de Guerre of the French
Government.
Known as ‘the Sgt. York of
World War II” he won the awards
while serving as a lieutenant in
France in July, 1944. “Lt. Spit
zer, his citation read, “laid aside
his personal weapons and walked
openly down the center of the
town street calling loudly in Ger
man for the enemy to surrender.
The fact that the lieutenant was
unarmed impressed and induced
the enemy to surrender virtual
ly en masse.”
JACKSONVILLE, FLORIDA, FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 10, 1950
The Adventures of Captain
Tov—New Comic Strip—
Starts This Week!
A legendary hero, “Captain
Tov,” born of the strife and
struggle of Israel pioneers, will
greet readers of The Southern
Jewish Weekly with a hearty
“Shalom” beginning with this
week’s issue. Mounted atop his
faithful steed, “Mazal,” the il
lustrious “Captain Tov” gal
lops the sandy plains of Israel’s
Negev desert to ward off the
attacks of Arab Bedouin ma
rauders and to aid pioneer set
tlements just as in the glorious
days of the Old American
West. Watch for this comic
strip every week in The South
ern Jewish Weekly.
Temple Sisterhoods
To Meet
-4
Delegates representing the 75,-
000 members of the National Fed
eration of Temple Sisterhoods
will meet in Cleveland, Novem
ber 12 to 15, for the 18th Bi
ennial Assembly of the organiza
tion, to be held concurrently with
the 41st General Assembly of its
parent body, the Union of Ameri
can Hebrew Congregations. Mrs.
Louis A. Rosett of New Ro
chelle, N. Y., national president,
will preside.
CJFWFi ge neral assembly
WASHINGTON^^^SHOREHAA^HOTEL
Truth is Not a Sure Cure for
Prejudice, Rabbi Finds Alter
Scientific Experiment
Not factual information but open group discussion is the latest
approach to reducing prejudice.
That is the conclusion reached by Dr. Henry E. Kagan, rabbi
of Sinai Temple in Mt. Vernon, N. Y., and a graduate of the Hebrew
Union College of Cincinnati, after an experiment in social atti
tudes involving 477 Episcopalian and Methodist college students
in Connecticut and West Virginia.
His findings appear in a bro
chure, “Changing the Attitude of
Christian Toward Jew,” which
has just been published by the
Joshua Loth Liebman Depart
ment of Human Relations of the
Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion and the
Central Conference of Ameri
can Rabbis. The brochure is a
summary and the complete study
will appear in book form in the
mar future.
Rabbi Kagan concludes that in
formation does not reduce pre
judice; that silence in the face of
National Broadcast
Will Originate
From Charleston, S. C.
On Sunday, November 26th, the
MESSAGE OF ISRAEL will ori
ginate from 200-year-old Temple
Beth Elohim, Charleston, South
Carolina. Radio ceremonies mark
ing the Bicentennial of the .fam
ous old temple will feature its
Rabbi Dr. Allan Tarshish, one of
the South’s outstanding religious
broadcasters. The American Re
form or Liberal Jewish move
ment which Dr. Eisendrath now
heads, began in Charleston in
1824, giving the city the title of
“The Cradle of Reform Judaism.”
Founded by Rabbi Jonah B.
Wise of Central Synagogue, New
York City, in 1934, and conducted
by him ever since as the only
national Jewish weekly religious
radio service, the MESSAGE OF
ISRAEL is co-sponsored by the
Union of American Hebrew Con
gregations, the central body rep
resenting 425 Liberal Jewish Con
gregations throughout the United
States and Canada.
Jewish Broadcast
Slated for Sunday
On November 12th, the Eternal
Light, (12:30-1:00 P. M.„ EST
NBC Network), will feature “The 1
Way of Willingness” written by
Irve Tunick and presented in ob
servance of the 125th Anniver
sary of Congregation B’nai Jes
hurun of New York City, accord
ing to an announcement by the
Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, under whose auspices
the program is conducted.
“The Way of Willingness” is
the story of the three Hebrew
words for a synagogue; a place of
ingathering, a place of study, and
a place of worship. These are the.
three words for synagogue, and
this is the tale of how one Con
gregation made them come true.
prejudice only diminishes the ef
fectiveness of the effort to reduce
hostilities; that a repetition of
the rights and virtues of minority
groups accomplishes little in
changing people's attitudes.
Rabbi Kagan holds that a new
attitude cannot be accepted until
the old one is dislodged, and pro
vision must be made during dis
cussion for a free expression of
hostility. He says, ‘This cathar
sis must be guided or it may
merely reinforce self-justifica
tions. But the cathartic discus
sion technique used in groups has
served as a talking cure by shock
ing listeners out of complacency
or by exhausting pent up hostil
ity until they are receptive to new
facts. Only then does the recon
struction of attitudes begin. The
individual must himself become
actively involved in the inter
group problem and he will ac
cept new values if he considers
them to be accepted by the
group.”
Rabbi Kagan exposed one
group of Christian college stu
dents to the conventional infor
mational interfaith approach,
stressing the common religious
ideals of Jew and Christian and
the Jewish foundations of Chris
tianity. A second group was
given the same information, but
this group was led into direct
discussion of contemporary anti-
Jewish attitudes, including their
own. Rabbi Kagan then reports:
“When the second group evalu
ated hostility, achieved insight
into its stereotype thinking and
made its own decisions about the
validity of its prejudgments, then
the prejudice of the individual
members of the group was sig
nificantly reduced.
"Statistical analysis conclusive
ly substantiates the superiority
of the direct guided cathartic
method over the indirect infor
mational method. The reduction
in prejudice, in fact, was main
tained eight months later. Fur
thermore, those individuals
whose, attitudes had been chang
ed by the better method carried
lever their new values into actual
{behavior as they reported an
nonymously eight months later
on their independent discussions
about Jews in their own groups
and their defense of Jews in the
face of anti-Jewish remarks.
“Because the new attitude of
these persons was anchored in
something as large, substantial
and supra-individual as the in
dividual’s own peers in the dis
cussion group which approved
the new attitude, they were able
to stabilize their new beliefs suf
ficiently to keep them immune
from day to day fluctuations of
mood and social influence.”
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