The flight from Iraq, Einstein and Chasids
Migration from Iraq
During the past few days the harassed and overburdened Government of Israel has found itself confronted with yet another emergency. For some time the Iraqi authorities have been speeding up the departure of Jewish emigrants, and at the same time making their exit more burdensome. These measures have now reached a climax in what amounts to confiscation of the bulk of Jewish property in Iraq, coupled with the demand that all registered emigrants must be out of the country by June. In practice this means that Israel must now absorb the newcomers at the rate of a thousand daily, to give the 60,000 or so who are still on the list a chance to leave before the exits are barred. Some 40,000 have already arrived, and when the whole process is completed over 100,000 out of Iraq’s total of 120,000 Jewish inhabitants will have been transferred to Israel. What the Iraqi Government gains in the process — apart from the satisfaction of seeing most of its Jewish citizens leave — is the wholesale transfer of their property to the Iraqi Treasury.
UJA funds for Israeli higher learning
Professor Albert Einstein, President of the American Friends of the Hebrew University, Weizmann Institute, and Haifa Technion. this week signed an agreement under which the three institutions will receive a share of the funds collected by the United Jewish Appeal this year. Hitherto, the “friends” have conducted independent fundraising campaigns in the United States for the Israeli institutions. After signing the agreement, Professor Einstein said: “there is a definite relationship between the United Jewish Appeal’s efforts to rescue and re-establish uprooted persecuted Jews, and the Israeli institutions’ efforts to help develop Israel’s agriculture and industries and thus absorb the great number of immigrants.”
Chasidism lives on
Until 12 years ago the ecstatic flame of Chasidism burned in the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of pious Jews in Eastern Europe. Then came the tempest that scattered or killed the “miracle-working Chasidic rabbis, destroyed their sumptuous courts, blew down the houses of workshop and learning, snuffed out the faithful. All seemed lost. Yet to-day Chasidism still lives on.