The New York Times, in an editorial comment on the outcome of the “Protocols” trial in Berne, says:
The notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” are now declared by a Swiss tribunal to be what honest and enlightened men have long known them to be, an impudent forgery and a libel. . . .
It is a gain to have the “Protocols” stamped for the vicious lie they are by a court of law after exhaustive hearings. But it is not to be expected that the Swiss verdict will silence the criminal agitators who resort to such weapons. In this year 1935 and in the land of Kant and Goethe it is possible for a lunatic named Streieher to stand up, with government approval, and declare that the Wassermann test was invented by Jews who need Christian blood for their ritual. It will be mere child’s play for Streicher to “prove” that the Swiss judge was hired to brand the “Protocols” a forgery by the same Jews who wrote the Treaty of Versailles and dominated the Stresa conference.
MOURNS PASSING OF OLDEST ‘SOFER’
The London Daily Express, commenting on the death of Jacob Michael Berg, the oldest Jewish “sofer” in England, says:
Michael the Sofer is dead, aged 100 years.
Another gap appears in the thinning ranks of one of Jewry’s rarest and most famous professions.
Jacob Michael Berg, of Manchester, was known all over the world as an expert scribe. There are believed to be less than a dozen left in England.
He was carrying on a profession dating back to the time of Ezra the Scribe more than 2,000 years ago.
Manchester Jewry knew him as Michael the Sofer—”Sofer” being the Hebrew for scribe. His long, grey beard and venerable appearance were famous. His work was the writing of the Scrolls of the Law. These consist of the five Books of Moses— the Pentateuch.
WINE AND TOPERS OF BIBLE DAYS
Under the headline, “Wet and Dry in Ancient Jewry,” The Freethinker a British publication, philosophizes as follows:
In those robust ages, when an hundred years was little more than infancy, toping appears to have done no harm whatever to the human frame. Centuries later, however, it was otherwise; and hence we find the gay King Solomon describing from personal experience the melancholy effects of excessive vinosity. (Prov. xxiii. 29-35.) Isaiah pronounces woe upon those who, to drink strong wine and to enjoy festive music, rise up early and sit up late; but his reason for condemning their habits is that they allow no time for regarding “the work of the Lord,” and for considering “the operation of his hands.” Subsequently in the same chapter, he pronounces woe upon the strong, whose strength takes the form of a capacity to drink wine in profusion without the ordinary disadvantages. Here again his reason is one not likely to be alleged by omdern advocates of bibulous restraint. It is that these strong drinkers of strong drink take bribes to the advantage of the guilty and to the prejudice of the innocent.
REFUSES TO EXPORT ANTI-JEWISH EDITION
The Manchester Guardian publishes the following interesting facts:
The Cologne Westdeutscher Beobachter issued a special number, entitled “The Jews in Politics, Economics, and Culture,” and devoted to the boycott of the Jews in Germany. Few copies have reached foreign countries; a would-be purchaser abroad received a reply of which the following is the translation:
Westdeutscher Beobachter
Dept.: Postal Supply.
Subject: Special number.
We are sorry we cannot send you the desired copies of our special number as this edition is intended exclusively for circulation within the country.
With German greeting!
Westdeutscher Beobachter
G.m.b.H.,
Circulation Department.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
