Letters to the Editor

Nov. 15, 1933.

To the Editor of the

Jewish Daily Bulletin

A. H. Fromenson’s letter in your issue of Nov. 12 under the title of “The Price of Peace” struck a sensitive chord. I am taking note of the criticism of my recent article for two reasons:

1. I, too, happen to belong to the militant Jewish group which refuses to wait for a catastrophe to find us spat upon.

2. I have sufficient respect for Mr. Fromenson to take into account his views.

I am anxious to assure Mr. Fromenson that I have not forgotten his recent excellent act of repentance, under the striking title of “Chatosi”, with regard to his sins committed against Dr. Chaim Weizmann. I assure him that I am not above emulating the example set by his “Chatosi”, and that I, too, am capable of saying “Chatosi” — “I have sinned.”

I deny, in the first place, that we have a right to relinquish ridicule as a method of attack upon anti-Semitism. Under no circumstances must we lose our sense of humor, and certainly not our sense for balanced practical action. Should we yield to hysteria and sacrifice that power which enables us to ridicule while we attack, we may be doomed, and the reason I say this is not because of what is happening in Germany but because of the attacks made upon us on every front in every country.

There is a partial answer to Mr. Fromenson in the article by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver in the very issue of the Bulletin in which Mr. Fromenson’s letter appears. Dr. Silver pleads for “cool heads and stout hearts”, and warns that “we should guard ourselves against magnifying every piddling incident and every two-by-four case of ‘rishus’ into a national issue.”

My plea in answer to Mr. Fromenson is for a retention of a sense of balance and against the loss of a sense of humor. Otherwise we shall go mad, and if Mr. Fromenson desires further proof I shall give it to him:

1. A fanatical evangelist is conducting a campaign in Detroit at the present time against the Jews, incidently throwing in a few brickbats against the Catholics and the present national administration. He proposes as a solution the hanging of just a few Jews, and then the rest would be cowed. So far he has drawn only a handful of fanatics to his meetings.

2. A Hungarian Catholic priest is transporting his anti-Jewish mania to a Detroit church, and is attacking our people as having fomented communism in Hungary and in Russia. His mean campaign is a result of a personal feud with an individual Detroit Jew. The bishop of the Detroit Catholic diocese has the matter under advisement.

3. A group of anti-Semites is conducting another set of meetings attacking the Jews as being responsible for “The communistic dictatorship in the United States”, and telling the world that the NRA scheme was deliberately conceived by Jewish communists for the purpose of bringing failure to the present government and thereby bringing ruin upon this country.

Would Mr. Fromenson propose that we lose our heads and raise the cry “wolf ! wolf !” ?

Very sincerely yours,

Philip Slomovitz.

Detroit, Michigan.