Maurice Samuel Honored by B’nai B’rith; Hits ‘alienated Intellectuals’

Author and commentator Maurice Samuel, suggested today that the Jewish community quit chasing after its “alienated intellectuals.” He rejected any concerns that an active and literate Jewish survival is threatened by their loss.

Addressing the B’nai B’rith commission on adult Jewish education, which honored him with its Jewish Heritage Award “for excellence in Jewish literature,” Mr. Samuel said that the greater problem for the Jewish community is “how to get rid of alienated intellectuals who insist on hanging around and giving us the benefit of their alienation.” He decried the pleas for their return to Jewish life as “failing to understand that alienation is their Jewish stock-in-trade.”

His criticism was particularly directed at writers whose books portraying Jewish life “contribute to the large fund of public misinformation on the subject.” The 72-year-old man of letters, author of the current and highly acclaimed “Blood Accusation” and 21 other books was awarded B’nai B’rith’s $1,000 prize for “positive contributions to contemporary literature by his authentic interpretation of Jewish life and values.”

The award was presented to Mr. Samuel by the Israeli author and journalist Elie Wiesel, last year’s winner. Other speakers were publisher Alfred A. Knopf, writer and critic Mark Van Doren and Meyer W. Weisgal, president of the Weizmann Institute, who lauded Mr. Samuel as a Jewish writer “who stayed close to the source.”

At a morning conference on adult Jewish studies, Rabbi Jay Kaufman, executive vice-president of B’nai B’rith, and other panelists stressed the need to make such informal education relevant to contemporary life. “It must be not merely research but reference; it must provide not only skills but values,” Rabbi Kaufman declared.