Congress bulletin, 1 octobre 1961, Octobre

[" no PUBLISHED BY CANADIAN JEWISH CONGRESS VOLUME 15: No.8 MONTREAL OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 Comment: How Much of a Crime is Race-Hatred?In times of comparative quiet and stability in inter-group relations, there seems to be no cogent reason why anyone should be worried about organized hate- activity and its resultant many dangers, it is too late to do something effective to come to grips with the situation.This is à classic dilemma which faces those who are inheritors of the fundamental legacies of freedom of speech and other time-honoured liberties.It is impossible for one who has followed the course of history in Western society for the last two hundred years and who knows the democratic processes to abandon these basic philosophies.Yet, the history of the past twenty-five years has had much more awesome meaning for the Jewish community than the history of the two hundred years before.We have seen what happens when, within existing concepts of law, hate is spawned into demonic fury leaving in its wake tragedy of such proportion as to truly beggar description.Everyone is against genocide but the great question is \u2014 what steps must be taken preceding the emergence of a strong, brutal, genocide-minded group?- The history of Germany from 1933 to 1945 quite obviously does not form any parallel with Canada nor does the maelstrom of European history and politics reproduce here the exact eddies and currents known on that continent.Yet the scars and wounds of the great tragedy cannot be forgotten; nor can we run away from a haunting fear that while the phrase \u201cit cannot happen here\u201d is but a bromide, its recall does suggest the possibility that we could all be wrong in our assumption of the future course of history.\u2019 All of this is a preface to an analysis of the representations made recently by the Canadian Jewish Congress, on the authority of its Executive Committee, as recommended by the Joint Public Relations Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress and the B'nai B'rith of Canada, asking the Canadian Government in these days of relative calm study the Criminal Code with a view to making it an instrument which can adequately forestall dangerous manifestations of demagogy, race hatred and incipient genocide.What this brief did not do was to rush in to ask that people be deprived of freedom of speech.What it did ask for was a definition which would mean that if someone were to be caught within the meshes of the proposed amendments to the Criminal Code, then it would be known that that person must certainly have gone beyond the realm of freedom of expression into the satanic areas of poisonous race-hatred.More specifically, Canadian Jewish Congress has asked that the present prohibition against spreading false news (Section 166, Criminal Code) be amplified by a manageable definition of exactly what false news should include and this submission stated that \u201cinjury or mischief to a public interest shall include promoting disaffection among or ill will or hostility between different classes of persons in Canada.\u201d Actually, there is no impairment of freedom of speech beyond that already contained in the Criminal Code and the Congress submission supplies a definition.The second improvement that is requested is an addition to the Criminal Code along the following lines\u2014\"Everyone who publishes or circulates, or causes to be published or circulated, orally or in writing, any statement, tales or news, intended or calculated to incite violence or provoke disorder against any class of persons or against any person as a member of any class in Canada shall be guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for two years.\u201d One of the interesting arguments advanced to the Minister of Justice in support of the request ventured into entirely new territory.Congress asked that Canada\u2019s moral obligations, as a member of the United Nations group which helped to enact the Genocide Convention, be considered and it was pointed out that Article 5 of the Genocide Convention obliges the parties to enact the necessary legislation to give effect to that aspect of the Convention which is to prevent crime from being committed.This is not so far-fetched when one recalls that, over a national CBC T.V.network, a self-styled fascist talked about the future needs (Continued on Page 2) k \u201ca UE d Change of Command: Lt.Col.S.E.Alsop, E.D.(retiring Commanding Officer), Mrs.Alsop and Lt.Col.David L.Hart, M.M., who recently assumed command of the 11th Signals Regiment, one of the most important Militia units in the Montreal area.Lt.Col.Hart, a Montrealer, Is one of the few officers of field rank to complete the Militia Staff Course, from which he graduated in 1959, and the only Jew commanding a Canadian Militia Unit at this time.National Executive Convenes in Montreal A meeting of the National Executive of Canadian Jewish Congress was recently held in Montreal under the chairmanship of Samuel Bronfman, national president.The agenda included reports from the Standing Committees on Education; UJRA; Public Relations; Archives.Research and Publications; Religious Welfare; Youth and Leisure Time Activities and Community Services.Mr.Michael Garber, Q.C., made a deailed report on the recent World Jewish Congress and Conference of Jewish Organizations meetings held in Geneva, which he attended on behalf of Congress.Approval was given that the forthcoming Plenary Session of Congress be held in Joronto on June 21-25, 1962 at the King Edward Hotel.Among members attending the meetings were: Messrs.Monroe Abbey, Q.C.; E.E.Barkoff; Ben Beutel; S.D.Cohen; Leon Crestohl, Q.C., M.P.; J.H.Fine, Q.C.; Nathan Gaisin; Michael Garber, Q.C.; S.Harvey; George Hol- linger; David Kirsch; Leon Kronitz; Harold Lande, Q.C.; Prof.Arthur Lermer; Jacob Lowy; Perry Meyer; M.H.Myerson; Mrs.A.Raginsky; Rabbi S.M.Zambrowsky (Montreal).M.Gasner; Arthur Gelber; J.I.Oelbaum; Shammai Ogden and the Executive Director of the Central Region (Toronto).À.H.Lieff, Q.C.(Ottawa); N.Selchen (Winnipeg); the Executive Vice-President of Congress and the Assistant Treasurer.\u2019 Jewish Education to be Re-Examined Jewish education in Canada, the forthcoming Quebec Royal Commission on Education and governmental support for private schools weré major topics of discussion at the National Executive meeting of Congress held recently in Montreal.The Jewish community of Montreal finds itself in the position of paying school taxes to the Protestant School Boards without having any legal right of representation on such Boards.Ways and means of dealing with this matter are now being considered by a Special Committee of Congress.On the brighter side, the Protestant School Board recognized four Montreal Jewish High Schools this year.The schools, supported by the local Jewish community, will be entitled to a measure of financial support from the government through the agency of the School Board.The recognition was granted after the schools met certain requirements: a) that above a certain number of students were in attendance and b) the curriculum met the standards set by the School Board.The question now remains: \u201cIs this support sufficient?\u201d Government Support The National Executive felt that the very question of government support for day schools itself should be examined and, thereby, bringing into view another aspect of the problem, namely, whether such support does, in fact, violate the concept of separation of Church and State and, further, whether this doctrine is really part of the \u201cCanadian way of life.\u201d In Canada, except in the Province of Quebec, many of the aspects of the doctrine of separation of Church and State are followed.Should Quebec be different from the rest of Canada?Is government support, in fact, antidemocratic and against the interests of the general community when certain qualifications ensure that schools receiving support meet specific requirements?Would the concept of education as it has been traditionally accepted by the non-Catholic world of Quebec be undermined by the establishment of addtional School Board Systems?The subject in all its complexity requires extensive discussion and examination.Congress has appointed committees representing a wide cross- section of the community and including people well-known for their opposition to Jewish day schools, as well as fervent supporters of such schools, to enquire into education and discussions are to be held prior to presenting any submission to the Quebec Royal Commission on Education.Quebec The general consensus was that the time had come to take a new look at the question of Jewish education in Canada, particularly as far as the Province of Quebec is concerned.The unique position now existent in Quebec arises from the fact that there are only two school systems within that province, namely Protestant and Roman Catholic, and that there are no secular schools in the sense known elsewhere.The British North America Act, which is Canada\u2019s Constitution, provides that the provinces of Quebec and Ontario may not pass any law depriving any class of persons of any rights which it had on the date of Confederation on July 1, 1867.Ât that time the Jewish population of Montreal, for example, numbered 403 while the community today comprises some 105,000 individuals.The provisions of the BNA of 1867 no longer adequately cover the needs and rights of the enlarged Jewish community of 1961.The aforementioned clause in Canada\u2019s Constitution was tested in 1930 when the Quebec Legislature passed a law which permitted the Jewish community to establish a separate school system with the right to levy taxes on Jewish property owners.This law was revoked on April 4, 1931 through agitation on the part of French-Cana- dian clergy which felt that multiplicty of school systems might lead to secular education throughout Quebec Province and because of the majority opinion of Jewish citizens who did not want a separate school system.4 \u2018 - ( > - era ad ws mn | JEWISH BOOK MONTH r Horace R.Cohen, O.B.E., has been appointed chairman of the Centennial Year Planning Committee of the Baron de Hirsch Institute, it has been announced by Joe Caplan, president of the agency.The Baron de Hirsch Institute and Jewish Child Welfare Bureau will celebrate its centennial in 1963.Horace R.Cohen, O.B.E.Throughout its history the Baron de Hirsch Institute has kept pace with the varied and expanding needs of the Montreal Jewish community in providing many necessary services to thousands of families.The agencies present family welfare and casework counselling services, legal aid, cemetery and other departments, offer specialized assistance to men, women and children to cope with the complex problems of modern living.The staff of the agencies is composed of professionally trained social workers, lawyers and other specialists in family life and home care, supplemented by medical and psychiatric consultants.The Jewish Child Welfare Bureau offers foster care, adoption placement and other services to neglected and disturbed children.A constituent and chartered agency of the Federation of Jewish Community Services, the Baron de Hirsch Institute is the oldest welfare organi zation in continuous service under communal auspices in Canada.Ruth Wisse Wins LaMed Award Ruth Roskies Wisse, a former editor of Congress Bulletin, has been named winner of the $500 LaMed Award for an outstanding Master's Thesis on a Jewish subject by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for her paper \u201cGreen Aquarium: A Critical Study of Fifteen Yiddish Prose Poems by Abraham Sutzkover.\u201d Mrs.Wisse, a Montrealer, has been enrolled in the Graduate Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, New York, since January, 1960, following a combined Yiddish and English program.She received her M.A.degree in June, 1961 and is presently working for a Ph.D degree in the same areas.She graduated from McGill University in 1957 with a B.A.degree.The National Foundation for Jewish Culture will offer the LaMed Award for a Master's Thesis on a Jewish subject for the present academic year and entries in duplicate, should reach the Foundation office at 729 Seventh Avenue, New York 19, N.Y.by May 15, 1962.Awards for $500 for essays in Yiddish and Hebrew by students enrolled at recognized colleges and universities in the United States and Canada and three prizes totalling $250 for essays in each language will be awarded for discussions of an aspect of contemporary Jewish culture.CONGRESS BULLETIN Cohen Heads Baron de Hirsch Centennial Committee Several centennial year projects are currently in the planning stages including the preparation of a commemorative volume on the agency's history.Gerald Tulchinsky, M.A., lecturer in history at Loyola College, has been commissioned to compile this book.The centennial committee chairman, Mr.Cohen, is past president of the Baron de Hirsch Institute and a member of the board of trustees of the Federation of Jewish Community Services.He represents the third generation of his family in the leadership of the Montreal Jewish community.Mr.Cohen is an honorary president of the Shaar Hashomayim Synagogue and has been an active leader in B'nai B'rith and Masonic activities.A Canadian army veteran of World War I, he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services with the Wartime Prices and Trade Board during World War II, Marcus M.Sperber, Q.C, is honorary chairman of the centennial year planning committee.Chairman of the various sub-committees are: Cecil Usher and Monroe Abbey, Q.C, publicity and public relations; Joe Cap- lan and Max Pascal, program, Abe Nissenson and Lawrence Z.Cohen, publications; Max S.Kaufman, Q.C, special events; and William Gittes, banquet.Technical advisors are Alvin Bronstein, Saul Hayes, Q.C., Harvey Golden and Sam Cohen.All centennial activities will be coordinated by David Weiss, executive director of the agency.Canada-Israel Development Report Meeting \u201cMore than $1,650,000 worth of shares in Canada-Israel Development Ltd.have been sold in Montreal,\u201d announced William Gittes, treasurer of the company, in his report to a Board of Directors meeting recently held in Montreal under the chairmanship of Samuel Bronfman, president.Mr.Gittes further stated \u201cApplications for $175,000 of shares had been received from Ottawa; $222,000 from Winnipeg; plans were underway for a subscription campaign in Toronto and that the response of the public in general had been most encouraging.\u201d William Gittes Specially invited guest at the meeting was Dr.Yesayahu Foerder, chairman of the Board of Directors, Bank Leumi Le-Israel, who gave a review of the economic conditions in Israel as well as outlining the investment possibilities in that country.Other officers present at the meeting included: J.I.Oelbaum, Toronto, and Lawrence Freiman, Ottawa, vice-pres- idents; Saul Hayes, Q.C., secretary.Board members present were: Alex Betcherman; Joseph N.Frank and Jacob Brin, general manager.OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 Nansen\u2019s Centenary The centenary of Fridtjof Nansen's birth this month will be commemorated by world-wide tribute to the great Norwegian humanitarian.Canadian Jewish Congress joins with other organizations in the recognition of his outstanding achievements, particularly in the field of refugee relief work.Nansen served science through polar explorations, research and teaching and served his country as one of the greatest Norwegians in history.But his successes in these fields are dwarfed by his work in the realms of international politics and refugee work sv + REPU LT 21: PRANGAT & bs \u2019 ; Ja PRISTCIERC iM Pog pit 2% \"a CERTIFICAT D'IDENTITÉ ; Valable maga mn + 1050 40.8 Barner to fr Gran our te Cart a posts ut © 3% , 2 LA - - yoo +« Jé 714 A Nansen passport during the 1920s.His humanitarian activities on behalf of prisoners of war, refugees, and other suffering communities \u2014 not least the millions of Russians who in 1921-1922 were threatened by death from starvation as an aftermath of the war and the revolu- tion\u2014are unparalleled in the history of mankind.(riminal Code Amendments Urged Mr.Harold Lande, Q.C., chairman of the Eastern Region of Congress and the executive vice-president of Congress, had a conference in Ottawa with the Hon.Davie Fulton, Minister of Justice, on September 27, further to representations which were made to the Minister in writing by Canadian Jewish Congress suggesting amendments to the Criminal Code.The Congress proposals suggested that an addition should be made to Section 166 of the Criminal Code of provisions that \u201cinjury or mischief to a public interest shall include promoting disaffection among or illwill or hos- itility between different classes of persons in Canada\u201d and a new section (62A) reading \u201cEveryone who publishes or circulates, or causes to be published or circulated to incite violence or provoke disorder against any class of persons or against any person as a member of any class in Canada shall be guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for two years.\u201d 7 / .Fridtjof Nansen 1861-1930 In 1921 when he was appointed the first High Commissioner for Refugees by the League of Nations, he found that stateless refugees, lacking a passport could not travel and, therefore, could not go to countries where they might have a prospect of finding work.Faced with the problem, Nansen himself invented the solution in the form of the famous Nansen certificate or passport which, at the League's request, was accepted by more than fifty governments.There are still many refugees or former refugees in the world for whom the Nansen passport marked the return of hope into their lives.Nansen was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 in recognition of his work for the starving and the homeless.Four Schools Recognized The Protestant Committee of the Montreal Council of Education has granted recognition to four Jewish high schools in Montreal thus entitling them to the benefits provided to recognized high schools.The schools are: United Talmud Torahs; Herzliyah High School; Adath Israel, Lubavitcher Rabbinical College and Beth Jacob School for Girls.Such recognition means that the Protestant School Board of Montreal will pay for each child under its jurisdiction attending the four high schools tuition fees of $200 and an annual allowance of $12 per child for textbooks, if these books are provided free of charge.Legislation also stipulates that recognized independent secondary schools have more than 100 pupils of whom at least 60 are in grades 10 and 11 are entitled to a basic subsidy of $2,000 per grade and an additional $75 per pupil.Other recognized independent secondary schools are entitled to a subsidy of $75 per student.Plenary Session Date Set Plans are now underway to hold the 13th Plenary Session of Canadian Jewish Congress at the King Edward Hotel, Toronto, on June 21-25, 1962, according to a statement issued jointly by Sydney Harris and Sheldon Kert of Toronto, co- chairmen of the Arrangements Committee.The session, which marks the 43rd anniversary of the first Canadian Jewish Congress and the 28th anniversary of its reorganization in 1934, will be addressed by speakers prominent in Jewish affairs.In order to facilitate arrangements for committee meetings and discussion, the National Arrangements Committee has decided to follow the practice established at the 12th Plenary Session and will designate chairmen of standing committees ahead of the Plenary Session in anticipation of the approval of delegates.Advance planning by these chairmen will allow the time available during the meetings to be utilized to the utmost.Comment (Continued from Page 1) for concentration camps in Canada.It was the gravamen of the Congress submission that Canadian public law must take account of the post-war world and provide for the prevention of the crime of genocide.It is also not without interest to note that reference was made to Canada\u2019s own domestic legislation, the Bill of Rights which seeks to guarantee the right of the individual to life, liberty and security of person without discrimination by reason of race, national origin, colour and religion.Public notice has been served by rabble-rousers that they advocate the exact opposite and that if the Criminal Law is inadequate to deal with such matters\u2014and it is the Congress\u2019 contention that this is so\u2014then the imperatives of the Canadian Bill of Rights call for an examination of the Criminal Code to bring it into line with its spirit and intent.At the time of writing, no official reply has been received on this new foray into these difficult areas of mixed philosophy and practical legislation.0 - > LC ST (ERT rr op + 5 24 oe my \u2014 =\u2014 \u2014.\u2014 es 0 en ee tt und iis tt, or gl OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 When Nehru rises to speak in the Lokh Sabha, Indian's House of Commons, friend and foe appear to forget their arguments.They sit entranced by his magnetic personality, suave, diplomatic speech, Oxonian diction, and benign, yet forceful Brahmin air.Nehru is India.The very fact that he espouses Hindi, yet addresses his fel- low-Parliamentarians in English is indicative of the cultural diversity and yet culminating harmony that characterize India and that are embodied in this man from Kashmir to the North.Birth and Rebirth A thorough definition of India is impossible.South India, some reliable geologists claim, constitutes one of the oldest continuously exposed geological formations in the world.This may account for Indian civilization, particularly that stemming from South India, being considered as one of the world's oldest, if not the oldest, of continuing civilizations of which we have record.Since time immemorial, India has been invaded and visited with cultures that have perhaps been predominant in the country for centuries, however, in the final reckoning it has been the basic Indian culture, Indian civilization, Indian people that have continued on in their own habitat.What the foreigner brought has been largely assimilated, and usually there has been a tolerance for the unassimilable, even allowing for some notable exceptions, that was many centuries ahead of more latter-day efforts at tolerance in democratic areas of the world.The evolvement of the Hindu religion was, of course, largely responsible for this.The universalism which is Hinduism may be claimed by all other religions.The difference, however, is that its definition of universalism permitted Hinduism to include and even adapt aspects and beliefs of those other religions as constituting integral parts of its own universalism, without in the slightest doing damage to its own continuing existence and even growth.Buddhism was born in India about the 6th century before Christ, but after leaving a heritage, particularly under Asoka in the 3rd century C.E., that was largely incorporated in the Hindu religion, it found its own direct expression in Asiatic countries outside India.The Muslim faith, at first, through Arab contacts between the 8th and 13th centuries, and then largely through Turkish and Central Asian Moghu invasions, left an indelible imprint that is noticeable even today in a good deal of certain of the languages, cultures and practices of Indian life.As a way of life of its own, however, even allowing for 10 per cent of the present Indian population still being Muslim, it became necessary for the Muslim civilization to break away to form its own independent state of Pakistan\u2014while Hindu India continues as such.Missionary efforts on the part of Christian churches and sects have contributed most laudable projects of a medical and general welfare nature in various parts of India.But except for a few strongly entrenched areas, the influence of Christianity, since Indian independence, has been considered to be anything but as effective as it was before.Hinduism itself has had various splinter groups, which sometimes consider themselves as religions apart\u2014 such as the Jaines, who trace their beginnings back to about 6th century C.E., or even the Sikhs, who broke away during the 15th century C.E., yet they are greeted as integral parts of the Indian people, without question.CONGRESS BULLETIN Kaleidoscope India By Prof.J.B.Lightman* Congress Bulletin Exclusive Question, of course, might properly be raised as to whether this general condition of universal religious Hindu tolerance can continue, considering that Dancing Krishna (16th century C.E.) what is now the Republic of India, when it came into existence on August 15, 1947, eschewed a theocracy, and through the Constitution it adopted a few years later, legislated against Casteism and consequently, even against tolerance thereof.It is this writer's opinion that tolerance of a kind not only can but will continue, for the reason not only that the uni- versalistic principles of Hinduism are psychologically and culturally built into the social and political framework of India and its leaders, but that India\u2019s present Constitution, being democratically based, with its declared objective of establishing a Welfare State and a socialistic pattern of society, inherently guarantees tolerance of differences that are not directed against the state.The blood-baths that followed the separation of Pakistan from India, and the refugee incidents, however, must be viewed in terms of the mutual Hindu-Muslim hostilities that existed at the time in terms, only, of the quest- tion of national entity and national hegemony rather than purely on the basis of religious differences within the same country.The long-range point of view has clearly demonstrated now, only some 14 years after independence, the welcome role that is accorded Indian Muslims who chose to remain in India and to be identified as Indians.\u2018The Elephant and the Jewish Problem\u201d Jewish life, too, has had its day on the Indian scene.And to an extent still continues to.What is interesting is that among India\u2019s teeming hundreds of millions of people, the little, although not altogether insignificant, minority of only about 17,000 Jews in the country, almost reflect the same ethnic colour variety and background as the general population itself.The Black Jews of Cochin (In September issue of Congress Bulletin a special article was devoted to the Jews of Cochin, therefore, bearing in mind space limitations, this section of Prof.Lightman\u2019s article is being regretfully omitted\u2014Ed.) B'nei Israel Brown Jews Greater in number but with not quite as romantic a background, are what are sometimes known as the \u201cBrown Jews.\u201d Their average types strongly resemble the average North Indians.Known as the B'nei Israel, they number about 15,000\u2014largely in the Bombay area, with a sprinkling throughout other parts of India.An industrious, generally well-educated community, that has long since passed its hey-day in both economic endeavour and in its Jewish cultural expression, with a resultant and significant degree of poverty and insufficient schooling among an appreciable number, today, they are believed by some to be the offspring of original high-caste marriages between North Indian women and Jewish traders and refugees from the Middle East who settled in the more northern trade centers of India during a period going back perhaps 2,000 years.There are, of course, other claims to direct unmixed descent.In some of the villages outside Bombay, poor Jewish families, engaged in one or another handicrafts, labouring or agricultural activity, cannot be distinguished from non-Jews, even as to their dress, squatting while eating, or household practices, except for their adherence to, a minimum set of Jewish religious traditions whose expression frequently reflects the influence of neighbouring Hindu practices.When this writer in the spirit of Benjamin of Tudela of the Middle Ages, took a side excursion during his stay in India, to visit this group, he observed and reflected long, before convincing himself that this too, not unlike that small community of Mexican Indian Jews whom he had found living in primitive style as part descendants of earlier Conquistador Marrano Jews on the Middle American Continent\u2014was likewise a remnant of Israel.Iraqui Jews And then there are the \u201cIraqui\u201d Jews, centered largely in Calcutta where perhaps there are no more than LA : (\"A ' Sherbet-Seller.about 1,000 left out of what was at most perhaps three or four times that number before Indian independence.Relatively speaking, their arrival is more recent, most of their antecedents having come largely from Baghdad, only about 150 or 200 years ago.Included among these were a small number of still wandering descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews.What with a fair degree of economic success, the use among them, particularly in the older generation, of Arabic, and their comparatively recent arrival in an area where caste and religious differences were rather accentuated, they maintained a fairly close Jewish community consciousness to which they gave expression through various Jewish institutions.What impresses a latter-day Benjamin of Tudela, in his visits with these people, is the strong emphasis placed early in youth on a British-type of education, with the result that the last two generations speak an impeccable British English, and sometimes with little knowledge of the local, now commonly used Indian dialect-lan- guages.This is particularly true of the \u201cIraqui\u201d Jews, and somewhat true of an element of the B'nei Israel Jews in the city of Bombay.Western Jews When Nazism and the war drove Jewish refugees to the four corners of the globe, India received its first perceptible number of Western Jews.While they numbered no more than a few hundred, they readily found a place in the Indian economy as doctors, pharmacists, journalists, university professors, teachers, scientists, photographers, representatives of commercial houses and in other capacities.But with war\u2019s end, comparatively few of them remained, along with a handful of British, American, and other Western Jews who are settled in India for business or organizational reasons.In fact, the entire Jewish community of India, despite India\u2019s tolerance and planning for the future, has gradually been dwindling since Indian independence.Reasons are not difficult to find.One is the realization of the State of Israel and the desire of a declasse remnant, particularly among the Cochin and B\u2019nei Jews to \u201creturn\u201d as well as, among them the Iraqui Jews and former refugees from Nazism, to find new opportunities, especially for their children, in a Jewish setting.And where, in some cases, Israel has not been the focus of emigration from India, English-speaking Commonwealth countries, generally are where there are no unfortunately serious colour restrictions for those with a nevertheless perceptible Indian hue, or where Indian nationality has not been equated with that type of undemocratic colour restriction.Be that as it may, there will, fore- seeably, always be a Jewish community in India, mostly centered in somewhat westernized Bombay, even thought the community be a relatively small one.Conversations with a number of its members, some of them prominent and active in civic and government affairs, convince one that they consider themselves, in one sense, as Indian and as much a part of the Indian polity as, in another, they are Jewish and part of the wider-world Jewish community.*Prof.Lightman, McGill University School of Social Work, bas recently returned from an 18-months assignment as a Technical Cooperation Mission Consultant on Social Work Education for the Government of India.Montreal Mr.Samuel Bronfman was the guest of honour at the sod-turning ceremony for the additional school building of the United Talmud Torahs in Montreal in the St.Laurent area.Mr.Ben Beutel who is the President of the United Talmud Torahs and chairman of the Education Committee of the Canadian Jewish Congress, Eastern Region, presided at the ceremony.Others who participated in the program were Messrs.Joseph S.Caplan, Rabbi P.Hirschprung, Cantor N.Mendelson, Horace R.Cohen, Jules Roos and Abe Bronfman who turned the sod.Greetings were also extended by the Mayor of St.Laurent and the chairman of the St.Laurent Protestant School Board. CONGRESS BULLETIN OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 Books cn Review \u2018\u2018Adam to Daniel\u2019\u2019\u2014an illustrated guide to the Old Testament and its background.Edited by Gaalyahu Cornfeld, assisted by Bible scholars, historians and archaeologists in Israel.Brett-Macmillan Ltd., Canada.560 pages, $13.95 Reviewed by Lena Newman If ever a man fulfilled his destiny, Gaalyahu Cornfeld did in producing the wonderful scholarly book \u201cAdam to Daniel\u201d with its new approach to Bible study.Born in Israel, he wandered as a young lad in every part of the Holy Land, Bible in hand, searching for historical landmarks to identify with the life of the Biblical peoples.His home environment strengthened this interest for his father, who came to Israel in 1880, was a noted Hebrew scholar, linguist and pioneer.He encouraged Gaalyahu (which means \u201cMay God Redeem\u201d) to seek out biblical lore in Palestine, Syria and Egypt.Fluency in Arabic, Hebrew, Yiddish, German, French and English enabled him to achieve stature as a Bible scholar.\u201cWe remember the fish we ate in Egypt.\u201d Sun-dried fish ¢.1250 B.C.E.As chief editor, he has made possible this fine study which, no doubt, will fascinate scholar and layman, young and old.In one volume, the reader is given a condensed Bible library with quotation, commentary, illustration and analysis.Modern archaeological studies that shed new light on various aspects of biblical life have reshaped the study of the Old Testament and moved the Bible out of the isolation of centuries into the mainstream of world history.\u201cAdam and Daniel\u201d reveals the cultural idiom of ancient thought and belief and thus adds new meaning, pertinence and urgency to the books of the Old Testament.It unfolds, chapter by chapter, its stories, \u2018carefully illustrating every point with sociological and cultural background materials now available from extra-biblical sources.In this way, the authors have™uncovered the fundamental spiritual, social, economic and political forces of the Old Testament.This confirms the Bible record in general and specific instances, as is explained in the book.Syrian or Palestinian carrying a vase accompanied by a deer.Such were the people and their dress in Canaan in the days of Judges.Reterence to the many books and guides that constitute a library of biblical science is avoided.Supporting quotations from the biblical text are given.Text and background are correlated, immersing the reader in the atmosphere of antiquity as it is understood by competent scholars.The final result is a book as exciting as a rediscovery of the Bible itself.The illustrations give an entirely new idea of biblical times and a new sense of the historical veracity of the Old Testament.The books are presented in what now appears to have been their historical chronological order.\u201cAdam to Daniel\u201d is a beautiful book \u2014a treasure to possess and a joy to give.It will enrich synagogue libraries and homes where there is a feeling for closer knowledge of one of the source books of Western civilization.Handsomely bound, it is oversize\u2014834\u201d x 11\u201d.There are well over 400 arresting and magnificent photographs, drawings and maps, many in superb colour.It is noteworthy that this book, which was printed in Tel Aviv by the Hamikra Baolam Publishing House Ltd, just two months ago, is already sold out at the distributor\u2019s level in the Scandinavian countries and Germany and to the Macmillan Company, New York and the Brett-Macmillan Company in Canada.A second printing will be ready soon.The success and growth of the publishing business in Israel should surprise no one who has browsed in the many bookshops on the streets of Haifa, Tel Aviv or Jerusalem where one is impressed by books in every language.The worship of the golden calf in Sinai may have represented the god Apis, the bull {or calf) of Memphis.Mr.and Mrs.Gaalyahu Cornfeld live in Tel Aviv.The family, as is the custom in Israel, has changed its surname to Dagan, the Hebrew word for \u201ccorn.\u201d A brother, Zion Dagan, is the chief engineer for the Israeli Government.The Macmillan Company will bring out a second volume \u201cDaniel to Paul\u201d in the same rich format, and others in this series will follow.This publisher has bought several other works in English by G.Corrifeld\u2014\"The Jewish Encyclopaedia\u201d and \u201cThe Children\u2019s Bible,\u201d with drawings by an Israeli artist.Another book of his \u201cAncient Jewish Art,\u201d profusely illustrated, will soon appear in the United States.Bridge to Brotherhood by Stuart Rosenberg (Abelard-Schuman (Canada) Ltd., 167 pages) Dr.Stuart Rosenberg, well-known Rabbi and lecturer, has achieved considerable recognition also as an author.In fact, he is a very prolific one and his latest book reflects his concern with the 2,000 year old dialogue of Judaism and Christianity and is entitled \u2018Bridge to Brotherhood.\u201d The dust-jacket indicates that the book is an attempt to bridge the gap between the two major Western religions.This reviewer feels that he has succeeded admirably in an entirely different field by bridging the gap between the basic ignorance of Jews about Judaism and the need for Jews to be quite knowledgeable about their customs and rites and the elements of their faith.His book, therefore, should be seriously considered as a text by synagogues, centres and other study groups in their quest to further the knowledge of Jews on Judaism.In felicitous language, he writes a lucid explanation of the origins of our Jewish practices, Judaism's conflicts with its daughter religion Christianity, and the internal struggle among Jews to preserve their faith in an environment of Western society which itself is the heir of the doctrines of icason and enlightenment.Parenthetically, it should be noted to be remembered that the great revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries so fundamentally altered fundamentalism that it is risky indeed (Continued on Page 6) The Redeemed Children\u2014Story of the rescue of 1,116 war orphans by the Jewish Community of Canada by Ben Lappin.* There must be a good many hundreds of Canadian Jews for whom reading this report of the War Orphans Project of the Canadian Jewish Congress will be an intense emotional experience.For it is a retelling of an important chapter in their lives.Indeed, nearly every Jew in Canada of mature age is either himself a newly-resettled immigrant from war-wrecked Europe or is a Canadian of longer standing who, in one manner or another, took part in resettling in this country the 60,000 who came during the past decade and a half.This book by the former director of the Central Division of Congress is a report\u2014in part objective and scientific, in part emotional, subjective and partisan\u2014of one segment of this important migration.It is a complex story: for it is a section of the great tragedy of our time, and Mr.Lappin was forced to relate it to the entire epic of murder and fascism and ghetto and deportation and survival and camps and wandering and mutual Jewish recognition.Of such dramatic and significant elements is composed the entire story of Canadian Jews when viewed from the standpoint of history.The coming of these youths has a pre-history which Mr.Lappin tells too briefly or not at all.Canada had not heeded the pleas made by Congress earlier which might have spared these thousands the entire experience of war.But our country remained shut to immigrants during years when \u201crescue\u201d was indeed the proper term.By the time our country got around to admitting orphans, the first 1,000 assembled for Canada were seized by the Nazis.No one dares visualize what happened to them.It was only after the war that Canada admitted the survivors; among the first of these, the group of youths which are the subject of Mr.Lappin\u2019s report.This was practically Canadian Jewry\u2019s first experience in organized migration in a quarter of a century.Considering this fact, and the complex problems presented by the immigrants, the movement was absorbed smoothly \u2014or so it seems to a generalizing outsider.Mr.Lappin, who writes\u2014indeed pleads \u2014 from the viewpoint of the social worker, points out the multitude of problems that had to be resolved Reviewed by David Rome before this appearance of smoothness could become evident.These problems had many roots, but one to which Mr.Lappin adverts repeatedly is the high social sophistication of many of these youths who were so much more tragically experienced than their hosts and their trained guides.Inevitably there developed a \u201cwe\u201d and a \u201cthey\u201d between the immigrants and the hosts, and each behind it knew better the way of a youth in the middle of the twentieth century.had to make headway on its own stark and conventional terms, and it was hard to know when the foster-parent, the acquaintance, the social worker and the employer were a help and when they were a hindrance.Youth is seldom the best time of life, and the youth of these migrants was not the easiest of all the adolescents who ever were.In the final analysis time and Canadian circumstances worked out a generally acceptable solution, and these a vo A À A group of war orphans brought to Canada by Canadian Jewish Congress In 1946.But this did not come about quite so automatically.There were the disappointments of those who had dreamed of blond-five-year-old little girls, and of those who dreamed that across the ocean was the golden magic- land of fairies with wands, of mothers who had died east of the Atlantic, of new fathers with love and millions, of an entire continent which was one Hollywood set.There were new people to meet who stood in the way of American success, new strangers who did not understand, who were entrenched but not smart, new officials who wished to be kind, new hostels and institutions and rules and authorities.There were eternal social problems new to each youth experiencing them, and complicated by a world of loneliness only mocked by goodwill.There was a new world in which one 1,000 youths of 1947 are now practically indistinguishable members of the Canadian community.Only someone really far out will ask whether this is all to the good; whether the experiences before 1947 are best erased from Canadian life in the interests of assimilation, adjustment and conformity.But what in all fairness should not be erased are the names of those who helped to do the job which is the subject of Mr.Lappin\u2019s report.Everyone recognizes the danger inherent in mentioning names, the peril of omission, commission, judgment and selection.But the peril and injustice of erasing those who did so much are no less, and indeed Mr.Lappin did not hestitate to take sides on other controversies involved.Co ; *Pre-publication manuscript text.du qu part alt ng Lk Ame vod al Mon gue hoo Fr Ste tel the stee 100 lng Wy ark hard the the they -_ OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 CONGRESS BULLETIN Saul Bellow or America Rediscovered By Naim Kattan Saul Bellow occupies a most important place among the generation of writers succeeding Faulkner and Hemingway.The depth and beauty of his work present a new phenomenon in American literature.It is significant work for it gives a portrayal of an unexplored America.Bellow was born in Lachine, near Montreal, in 1905.At nine years of age he left Canada with his family to live in Chicago.He studied anthropology at the universities of Chicago and Northwestern and taught, in turn, at the universities of Minnesota, New York and Princeton.In 1954 he won the National Book Award, the most important literary award in the United States, for his book \u201cThe Adventures of Augie March\u201d and acquired worldwide fame.ve Saul Bellow Bellow belongs to a family of immigrants from Central Europe.His childhood was spent in Montreal, where the French spoken on St.Dominique Street formed one of the facets of a reality which has deeply affected him.Bellow has grasped the essence of the American spiritual world.À world steeped in traditions without deep roots in its own continent yet containing an honest and diversified wealth which has been neglected, even scorned, up until the present.Formerly, American literature dealt with the attributes of the Yankees or Southeners who were deeply rooted in the customs of the new continent, which had been subjugated by men who had turned their backs on Europe.Adventurers and puritans, who had taken off in search of a renewed affirmation of their virility, a rediscovery of a lost innocence and salvation, which they sought to achieve by means of toil and sweat.Stained souls seeking salvation by ransom.This literature has always acknowledged and recognized law and order: even if to oppose them.Europe was present when the need arose to expand such a reduced horizon and gave temporary satisfaction.For Hawthorne and James, it was no longer necessary to seek new territory.It was sufficient for them to establish contact with their own world and Anglo-Saxon Europe was still the nourisher of their far-flung roots.In the bars of Montparnasse and the cafes of the Quartier Latin, writers of the \u2018lost generation\u2019 rediscovered their true belonging and renewed their alliance with the land of their birth.American Dream Since the Middle Ages, the relationship between the natural and supernatural has upset and tormented the West.Europe has taken several centuries to establish an uneasy equilibrium, which is being shaken constantly, between man and his surroundings and man and his neighbour.Since his arrival on the virgin land of the New World, where the footsteps of man the sinner had not trampled, the American has sought a new marriage between man and the earth in order to secure the relationship between man and God.This new birth, this total reevaluation, this quest for a genuine rapport between men was modified in its adolescence when the attainment of a perfect world became impossible and reappeared in the form of the American dream.Then came the generation of immigrants to whom the puritan Anglo- Saxon traditions were completely foreign.These motley masses arrived during a period when America was no longer the Promised Land or Paradise Lost but a new country where men who had been plunged into misery and deprived of hope could break their hitherto unavoidable fate.These immigrants, living and dying in obscurity, crossed the Atlantic not to find a new path towards salvation but to escape humiliation and live freely in a country where the future was there for anyone willing to work for it.Multitudes deserted the towns and vil lages of Ireland, Central Europe, Italy and Greece.In their homelands they had not thought about salavation.They had been matched against other groups which had persecuted them on the grounds of their beliefs or had held them in a pariah state by means of economic and social depression.The \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d only revealed itself to these people in the guise of the hovels and sordid districts in which they were crowded together, and insecurity and the unmerciful fight for survival which often pitted them one against the other.A literature of social revendication fulfils a double function: to protest against prevailing conditions and, at the same time, to express the desire and will to participate in the life of a country.These newcomers did not reject America but they wished to reform her so that she would be more hospitable and favorably-inclined towards them.Never-ending Game At the turn of the 20th century, they had only been able to make a small breach in the wall which divided them from well-established Americans.True, they were now on the other side of the wall but most doors were still closed.Over many decades they had made remarkable inroads into American life but the positions they occupied were fragmentary and marginal.They shone with the artificial brilliance of city- lights.Their talents were employed in entertainment, sports and the Arts.They became the clowns, the minstrels and the acrobats who exhausted themselves inventing new variations of a never-ending game for an audience which had so much to forget, so much to hide and so much to hush up.No one despised them, it it true.They became big symbols of a new type of success: they became stars.However, they were not taken seriously.Entertainment was all that was asked of them.It was left to others to express the hidden dreams, the nightr.ares, the confusion and the emptiness.The newcomers were not permitted to penetrate into a world which they were considered unable to understand.Bellow is the son of immigrants.In Montreal, a cosmopolitan city, and above all in Chicago, he felt the weight of all these masses capriciously herded together and which have not yet formed themselves into a living entity.Bellow is not only the product of a species growing in the anonymity of urban areas, he is a Jew.He is certainly neither the only American Jewish writer nor the first.However, he is, perhaps, the first writer who as a Jew and because he is a Jew has been acknowledged and recognized as the conscience and spokesman of the American since Babbitt\u2019s influence has begun to dim.Bellow\u2019s arrival is timely: the \u201cAmerican Dream\u201d has exhausted itself in the sombre streets of the ever-spread- ing tentacles of the cities.Writers are attempting solider and truer frameworks under other skies, such as in Spain or Africa, and are forsaking the paths of introspection for the easier, more popular and commercially profitable ones of the exotic and the illusory.Hemingway's imitators follow less his dialogue with death than the incidents of the derisory combat which tests men and beast in the arenas of Spain or the forests of Kenya.Nothing but a spectacle.Bellow\u2019s Judaism It is in the theme of the exiled and wandering Jew that Bellow has discovered his roots.This is not presented as a collection of truths in his work but as a platform from whence springs interrogations not dissimilar from those of Twain, Melville or Hemingway but which are clothed in contemporary dress and use the monotonous streets of Chicago and New York for a setting.Bellow is a Jew but his Judaism is neither of choice nor a bond.Any defence or illustration of Jewish community life are absent from his work.For him, there is nothing to deliberate or to search for in this state of being Jewish.Nothing negative either: he is a Jew not simply because he had no other alternative nor because he has refused to adopt Christianity.His Judaism is axiomatic.It is as much a part of him as his being alive.It is so natural, taken for granted, that it does not appear to be present, In \"The Adventures of Augie March\u201d it is only possible to divine the origin of the characters by their names And, at times, even these names are ambiguous.This ambiguity is not a deliberate device under which the author seeks to hide himself in order to please the reader.There is no desire to specially dress up his characters to render them more acceptable to the general public which otherwise would find them too far removed, too different and thus more readily exotic.There is nothing picturesque in Bellow\u2019s books.Even though all of his novels (except the last one) are set in a Jewish milieu, it would be a search in vain to look for a description of a Rte ingly or condemningly \u2014 was an endless game between the world of instinct and that of the spirit.The presence of the Negro in American literature was constant subject matter evoking nostalgia for the forbidden dream and rejection of violent desire \u2014 an instinct which projected itself in a torrent which neither pierced the thick screen of a severe puritanism nor the surface respectability from under which cover the true face of the beast did not manage to penetrate.This impression of the Negro is still apparent today in the works of Faulkner and Tennessee Williams.From the outset the Jew was the intellectual counterpart of the Negro.Powerful but using his strength as an instrument of corruption and animated with a spirit of domination and cupidity.In short, a familiar anti- Semitic picture without the sexual charge.In Europe, the anti-Semite sees the Jew as the intellectual corruptor and the lustful male.In the United States, the role of Eros was conferred on the Negro and the Jew was limited to the satanic role of corruptor of souls.Thus the Jew and the Negro became two poles of obscure and blind force which blocked the road leading to innocence thereby hindering the materialization of the American Dream.Whether it be in the novels of Henry Harland or Sidney Luska, the Jew is thus depicted by second-rate non-Jewish authors.The first American Jewish writers attempted to correct this erroneous picture displayed in popular stories.Their passage in American life and, to a certain extent, in Jewish life was not of long duration, mainly because the Yiddish world from whence they sprang was itself transitory.A new phenomenon was becoming more and more discernable: Jews themselves were begining to draw portraits of Jews for the benefit of the American public at large.However, even they were protagonists of their past and their traditions, the defenders of the rights and dignity of their brethren or they were The Lower East Side (New York) in its heyday (1894) Seder or a Bar Mitzvah.Naturally, they are mentioned but only in passing.Bellow does not intentionally avoid this easily exploitable theme which is used and figures so prominently in the second-rate novels of authors like Wouk and Weidman.His work is above such nostalgia and this sentiment is foreign to his characters.Rather their childhood memories are much more deeply personal and fundamentally individualistic than those stemming from a community or family life which would bind them to a specific group.It is equally significant that the majority of Bellow\u2019s characters have German-sounding names.Without attaching too much importance to this, it would seem to be a distinguishing mark of third and fourth generation immigrants.American life and the literature which described it \u2014 either prais- simply just writers whose aesthetic and intellectual preoccupations were far removed from propaganda attempts.This did not change the fact that they were addressing a very large audience which was far from being entirely Jewish.Suburbia The American Dream was becoming increasingly a figure of illusion.America was no longer God's own country nor a huge field of adventure.It was no longer the Promised Land where a better world could be built free from sin.Men built their homes there.Those who dreamed of riding in the Wild West contented themselves in darkened rooms looking at their favourite actors taking their place as strong and free men taming the savage wilderness.What is more, the huge domain where they had come to preach the word of God was buried forever in the forest of (Continued on Page 6) Bellow (Continued from Page 5) suburbia.The American had become \u201caverage.\u201d The only world he still hoped to conquer was that of the small houses of suburbia where he was able to reign as the uncontested master.The immigrants who had sought an escape from misery in this new land were the first to identify themselves with these well-fed, well-housed masses.This \u201caverage\u201d class was portrayed in the novel \u201cMarjorie Morningstar.\u201d Herman Wouk dressed the young American Jewess with embellished finery which reflected the standard image of resignation to life in suburbia.The success of this novel was enoromus.Girls in Oklahoma and Arizona recognized themselves in the face of the young girl who vacationed at Scroon Lake.The same author in a book on his \u201cfaith\u201d (This I Believe) gave a diluted version of Judaism more like a twin sister of the Christianity of Vihcent Peale or Monsigneur Sheen: a soothing religion designed to make one forget the daily conflicts of suburbia.Wouk\u2019s success was only surpassed by that of Harry Golden, director and sole editor of a Jewish newspaper in the American South, \u201cThe Carolina Israelite\u201d in which the problem of segregation is treated with wry humour.Golden, a Jew from Brooklyn, has installed himself in the Southeast and has become a national myth and one of the greatest successes in the American publishing world.He bestows cocky confidence while giving a totally ineffectual, droll solution on the gravest problem confronting American society today.The American Dream did not only collapse into a state of torpor, though by rationalization it has been elevated into a position of worth by the middle class, but also into a disenchantment which ended the Marxist revolutionary movements.Partisan Review, a periodical of high intellectual standing, was the organ through which this disenchantment was expressed.The writers who gravitated around this journal upheld a neutral position\u2014anti-Marxist left wing.It is noteworthy that a large number of Jewish writers: Philip Rahv, Delmore Schwartz, Saul Bellow, etc.gave \u201cThe Partisan Review\u201d its quality and dynamism.American Reality Saul Bellow arrived at the precise moment \u2018when reality and a new dissatisfaction could, when embodied in character-form, give birth to a myth.Second-rate writers did their best to console the American middle class by idolising their drab lives.The paths of adventure were closed and the age of innocence was arriving at the end of its term.Revolutionary movements, broker by the abuses of Stalinism, had been disbanded in the era of plenty.Americans of every origin and every religion could recognized themselves in Bellow\u2019s work.He is able to know the American mystique through his own nourishing background and culture.He reflects to Americans their own image through the medium or ordinary Jewish types.It would be idle to ask him if he were primarily Jewish or American.Bellow is both at the same time and he is both of them very deeply.The stream which feeds him would dry up completely, if one or the other of these two sources were cut off.The denial of blessed comfort, edified in the demolished dream, transformed America into a land of exile.Bellow is the carrier of a rich culture: the Yiddish culture.À culture which springs from a mixture of refined talmudism and an unbridled and barely stylized folklore.This alliance could result in sprawling works or in a literature so regional that it would be incomprehensible without a knowledge of certain landmarks and background, or it could result in a work unified by contrasts.The American public is indeed forunate that Bellow knows how to build a bridge between daily experience and a traditional culture of CONGRESS BULLETIN European origin: a culture emanating from a society of multiple stratifications where, with time, the framework has become so complex that it nearly impossible to transplant its essence.Another Jewish writer Lionel Trilling, has attempted, with relative success, to tackle this situation so ready for exploitation.Ludwig Lewisohn has succeeded in a way because he worked on the basis of his personal experience and eroticism.Bellow has transplanted nothing.Yiddish experience is part of him.There was no obstacle to overcome, no richness to adopt.It belongs instinctively to his being and requires no other interpretation.Bellow\u2019s luck is that the treasure he subconsciously has was precisely the thing demanded, even required, by American reality.À coincidence, certainly, but what a fruitful one.Orangeade Stand, New York Bellow\u2019s Judaism, besides bringing reconciliation composed of doubt and tension with the spiritual world, offers in a profound way, even heartrendingly, a compromise with life in all its impossible manifestations for the force of life brings the most irreducible opposition to terms.Thus this Jew, a character in a book, bathes in the mire right up to his chin but his forehead touches the sky.Sensual and mystic at the same time, he does not sacrifice earth\u2019s smells to soar into the stratosphere.The dichotomy born of a tired purtianism has ended in revolution, in denial and in unhealthy unruliness.Bellow\u2019s solution is not an easy one, nor an escape of temporary intoxication induced by eroticism without joy or a hypnotic trance.He has drawn a sketch of a course which does not have escape as its point of departure but which draws its élan from a desire for the realization of a complete and full life.This theme constitutes, more or less, the heart and bloodstream to be found in varying forms in Bellows work: relationship between the individual and reality.Be it the relationship between another individual with society or with the rest of the world, this search for contact with reality lives in the American consciousness in a state of constant crisis.If this reality were receding or changing there would be a sad or picturesque intensification of life in the effort to understand and the desire to seize it.However, this reality appears non-existent or, at the best, elusive.Translated from the French by Jean Sadler.Montreal Dr.Shlomo Bardin, national director of Brandeis Institute, recently addressed a meeting sponsored by the Inter Organizational Council for Adult and Young Adult Education of Montreal.His topic \u2018New Frontiers in Jewish Communal Life.\u201d Newfoundland The Memorial University of Newfoundland, which was recently officially opened, conferred honorary degrees on a number of important personalities, among whom was Edmund de Rothschild, head of the British Newfoundland Corporation.Mr.Rothschild is an old friend of the Jewish community in St.John's, having attended services at their Synagogue on several occasions.Recently he published an article in \u201cThe Jewish Times\u201d of England on Newfoundland Jewry.\u201cJewish Town Hall\u201d Dr.Maurice L.Perlzweig.\u201cJewish Town Hall,\u201d a series of four open forums on current problems of Jewish life, will be presented this season jointly by the Canadian Jewish Congress, Eastern Region, and the YM-YWHA of Montreal as a community-wide cultural project.Dr.Maurice L.Perlzweig, Director of International Affairs, World Jewish Congress, will open the series on November 5 with the topic \u201cJewish Life around the World.\u201d Saul \u2018Hayes, Q.C., executive vice-president of Congress, will be the moderator.Dr.Perlzweig was one of the founders of the World Jewish Congress, and has been a member of its World Executive since its foundation in 1936.He has been head of World Jewish Congress\u2019 Political Department since 1942.\u201cGeneration of Decision\u201d will be the topic of the second session to be held on December 10 with Prof.Sol Liptzin as guest speaker.\u201cAn Inside Look into Two Worlds\u2014the Soviet Union and Israel\u201d with Ben Zion Goldberg, internationally renowned columnist, author and world traveller, as speaker will be held on January 28.The closing session in the form of a debate on \u201cJewish Perspectives of Today\u201d with Prof.Oscar Handlin and Dr.Judah T.Shapiro, will take place on February 25.Leading personalities in the community have been invited to act as chairmen for the sessions and as members of the panels.Discussion with audience participation will form part of the sessions.Winnipeg The CBC Information Services advised us of a new CBC television series entitled \u201cThe Lively Arts.\u201d The first program in the series introduced John Hirsch, founder and artistic director of the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg.The announcement noted \u2018\u2018Destitute, Hirsch at 17 was brought to Canada by the Canadian Jewish Congress, and enrolled at the University of Manitoba.The description of his meteoric theatrical career since then makes for a fascinating television program.\u201d (John Hirsch came to Canada as part of the war orphans movement sponsored by Congress in 1946).Montreal Chayele Grober and her Ensemble present English adaptation of famous Israeli Musical Comedy \u201cI Like Mike\u201d by Aharon Meged on December 16 at Montreal YM-YWHA.The performance is under the auspices of Canadian Jewish Congress, Eastern Region.Ottawa The executive vice-president of Congress was guest speaker at the opening session of this year's program of the Ottawa Jewish Community Institute of Jewish Studies.He spoke on \"The Three Faces of Canadian Jewry.\u201d He was introduced by Hyman Soloway, Q.C., president of the Jewish community Centre.The meeting was presided over by Dr.Nathan Schecter, chairman of the Centre's Adult Program Committee, OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 Winnipeg Samuel Bronfman, national president of Congress, was recently in Winnipeg to address an Israeli Bond function.The executive vice-president of Congress was also in Winnipeg at the same time for conferences on local Congress problems including the Maimonides College.He also met with leaders of the United Jewish Welfare Fund in Winnipeg.Nova Scotia The Journal of Education, published by the Province of Nova Scotia (October 1961 issue), contained an article entitled \u201cJewish Communities of Nova Scotia\u201d by C.Bruce Fergusson, Archivist of the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, written in connection with the Bicentenary celebration.The article concluded: \u201cIn our pluralistic society, Jews have found opportunities and are making their contribution.It is worth remembering that a number of them came to Halifax only shortly after its founding.\u201d Montreal Mrs.Anna Raginsky, who is a member of the National Executive of Congress, was honoured October 31 by Montreal Hadassah on her 70th birthday.Mr.Samuel Bronfman, National President of Congress, Mr.Harold Lande, Q.C, chairman of the Eastérn Region, and the Executive Vice-President of Congress extended congratulations to Mrs.Raginsky for inclusion in a souvenir book being presented to her on this occasion, indicating Mrs.Raginsky's participation in Canadian Jewish Congress since 1919.Brotherhood Dr.Rosenberg\u2019s readable and useful text\u2014let us continue to regard it as such and a good text is high praise indeed for any book\u2014we hope will be read by a larger number of people than those who read the more technical studies above described.This is all to the good though it could very well be that the authors motivations and objectives were not these at all but rather to attract a large non-Jewish readership in the hope that the explanations would be the eponymous bridge.This reviewer cynically disparages the value of any books which try to render apocrypha that which is canon.No matter how learned or correct is the author's analysis of the gospels, the clear fact emerges that Christian theology is based on them and that doctrine and creed will not be altered because criticism proves that \u2018Matthew and John were incorrect in their versions of what took place during the life of Christ.It is of great interest that we should know about Christ as a Pharisee or perhaps as an Essene.It is of importance that we recognize the historical position that the early followers of Christ were also God-fearing Jews.It is of great use to appreciate that \u201cwithout a proper understanding of their own Jewish sources, Christians can hardly expect to know very much about Christianity\u201d (Rosenberg).For all of this, Dr.Rosenberg is to be unequivocably commended.But if there is a belief lurking in the minds of the brotherhood- orientated that this will change the essentials of the dialogue, this reviewer for one feels they are being guilty of self-deception and illusion.Dr.Rosenberg\u2019s book is valuable, particularly for Jews, and on this basis alone it deserves to be in print and, hopefully, ought to be widely read.The added dividend would be if objective non-Jews were so impressed by it that they reconsidered their attitudes on the teachings of their own religion and the way it 1s taught in the schools so as to take into account what Dr.Rosenberg recalls for his readers.It would also be a great source of good if the wise injunction of a Christian philosopher were followed: \"We would do well to remember that God is not necessarily a member of a respectable upper middle class family having had the advantages of an English public education nor is he necessarily a member of the Athenaeum.\u201d (Continued from Page 4) S.H. id Thi No of Wil Ÿ ce h Our fog Ir gp.thy Lol, ber ges, Mei Me Ent or id te 5 tr arch ben Li on 1 19 ify ef] ity prose il be hin Mal dit fl be and | but en e 70 di vid is 0 qu thi: then 0 ke thst an dir gr bout ji | WÈ tha he xl pes wih (fe qi OCTOBER-NOVEMBER, 1961 @W)(arcel Braitstein = images ing The Great Conqueror Invocation The Call CONGRESS BULLETIN ~ Doli] Marcel Braitstein has progressed considerably since he sent a piece of sculpture to the Salon des Refusees in Montreal; even since his meeting with Lothar Kerstenbaum to whom he is indebted for introducing him to metals and welded rods and the art of creating them into plastic expressions.Yes, the encounter of Braitstein and Kerstenbaum in San Miguel was a lucky experience for the young Canadian for now both the form and content of his sculpture is becoming his own.Despite his winning of awards as well as domestic and international recognition in his youth, there is integrity about him and his work.There is growth and poetry too.The struggle in his heart is irreconcilable with the conflict in the world; fear and obsession grips his heart and he uses words and metals to retaliate.The struggle to find the exact image expression.He wants to be understood.A drawing for a sculpture is a thumbnail ideograph at first\u2014in the heat of creation there is torment of decision between the concept in two dimensions to the plastic expression in three dimensions, and the ideas are there in ones, twos and threes.The selection from the images begins.He works on one, perhaps to the third and back to the second, but once the image yields to the metal and fire his decision is made and the final concept is born.Technique and skill are exercise but it must go beyond that \u2014 it must go to expression.At times plastic values are sacrificed for the sake of expression.The theory of war and the misuse of power is all- powerful and must be narrated; he holds up his images in a mirror, and his mirror is his sculpture.The reflections it makes are his thoughts.Saul Field Marcel Braitstein was born in Belgium in 1935 and moved to Canada in 1951 and is now a Canadian citizen.He studied and graduated from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Montreal and also Folds a teacher's certificate from the same school.He has also studied at the Instituto Allende, San Miguel Allende, Mexico.He bas been awarded prizes for his sculpture at \u201cSpring Exhibition\u201d Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1961; \u201cSalon de la Jeune Peinture et Sculpture,\u201d Montreal, 1961; Quebec Provincial Competition, 1959 and \u2018Contemporary Ceramics of Quebec,\u201d Montreal, 1958.He has exhibited in various group shows since 1957 in Montreal, Quebec, Toronto, London (Ontario), and Mexico.Has had one-man exhibits at Galerie Ptah, Brussels, 1960 and Galerie Agnes Lefort, Montreal in 1961.Mr.Braitstein is at the moment in Europe for one year on a grant from the Canada Council.Angry Bird CHITRA TIT Cu Hr