Opinion Where Is Reform Judaism Now That We Need

---- ------------------------ ••••••••••••••••••••••••5-DIGIT 02906 2239 11/30/ 88 • • 33 Inside: Local News, pages 2-3 R. I . JE WISH HISTOR I CAL ASS OCIATION Opinion, page 4 130 SESSION S ST . PROV 1 DENC E, RI 02906 Around Town, page 8 Anti-Semitism Without Anti-Semites The Battle Of The Blaze In The House Of The Rising Sun by Rabbi Abraham Cooper History has taugh t us to bla med international .Jewish Rockefellers, Duponts, Morgans associate anti-Semitism with conspi racies for a va riety of t he and Mellons! Jews, Japanese threats, di scrimination or violence world's ills - from the overvalued readers a re told, are plotting an against the Jewish people. Yen to an alleged cove r-up of the economic co ll apse fo r 1990 - Throughout the milleni a - from Chern obyl nuclear disaster. One designed to cripple Japan's the Crusades to the Inquisit ion, author - Masami Uno - who economic ascendancy. Other Jews and the 20t h century Nazi professes to be a fundamentalist plot WW III - guaranteed, - they Holocaust - Jews have been the Christian minister, has sold over say, to hasten the coming of the targets of well-organized hate 1.5 million vo lumes of his work s, Mc8siah. campaigns, often designed by in cluding If You Understand the Why the Jews? Clearly, cha ri smatic leaders who ignited J ew - You Will Understand the ext remists in the Arab world who deep-seated religious, cultural and World, ~nd If You Understand the have been promoting t hese political prejudices of the masses. Jew - You Will Understand tra nsmuted classic Christian and But how to account for serious Japan . Czari st anti-Semitic t hemes anti-Semit ism in a country with Some ninety other titles have around the wo rld serve as a source virtua lly no ,Jews or physical 'educated' t heir average readers - of inspiration and information. manifestations agai nst the 400 or middle and high ranking company There is a.n overwhelming fear of a so ,Jewish inhahitants1 How to employees - further about J ews. A potential Arab-inspi red oil boycott explain the scapegoating of J ews new, hardcover bestsell er I bought and some Japanese are prepared to Intifada against trees keeps Israelis constantly alert for signs for real and imagined problems in in Tokyo's largest bookstore is by do anything to satisfy some of the of smoke. Arsonists have begun setting synchronized, multiple a society which venerates cultural an outspoken anti-nuclear critic, most fanciful visions of the blazes destroying, to date, over 35,000 acres of forests and achievement, pursuit of knowledge T a kashi Hirose. He reveals to his Arab-rejectionist front. But while pasturelands. (Story on page l:l .) and whi ch boasts a 99% literacy readers that industrialist Armand this may explai n Japan's almost rate? Hammer is actually a pro-Israel slav ish adherence to the Arab Yet the fact is that Japan, a age nt who heads up a "shadow boycott, and perhaps partially scenari os. Further, some nationalism. " You can't nation of 120 million citizens, network," which worked to hush account for the presence of these academicians and media experts automatically dismiss these which has emerged in the 1980s as up the extent of the Chernobyl themes, it cannot explain their sought to reassure me that books," said one member of the economic power, has nuclea r accident, even as he popularity. Japanese readers are well educated Tokyo's Jewish community, " ... experienced an explosion of conspi red to cash in on the Not surprisingly, everyone I and uery cynical, who "surely Japan is a democracy and one popular anti-Semitic works over catastrophe by manipulating spoke to in Japan had their own dismiss t hese ridiculous notions cannot discount the potential the past three years that have gone international food supplies which theory. A Foreign Ministry official even as they toss the used impact popularly circulated ideas virtually unchallenged by - you guessed it - are also di smissed the anti-Semitic thrust paperbacks into the garbage." cun have on public opinion and Japanese intellegentsia, the controlled by Jews. Another of these books, asserting that But others aren't so sure. They policy ... " government or the media. Last popular book reveals who the many Japanese often look for see anti.Semitism as a function of Clearly, continued silence on year alone, over 1% of all books 'Jews' are in America who control 'conspiracies' to explain past deteriorating relations with this problem will impact in sold in Japan had themes which so much of the world's wealth: the events and to project · future America and resurgent Japanese (co ntinued on page 19) The Major Effects Of America's Social Feminist Revolution On Orthodox Women And Communities by Jeff Benkoe sweatshops, and as peddlers. the University's Stern College for leadership positions with What is required in meeting the YESHIVA UNIVERSITY Among second generation Women and the dawn of a UJA/Federation, the Board of challenges put forth by the America's -"social revolution" immigrants, beginning with the generation of college-educated Jewish Education, and Council of changing social conditions of the which has trickled down to the !920's, the mother remained at Jewish women, new circumstances Jewi~h Federations, for example, 1980's is "a rethinking and Jewish community is posing new home while the father worked. have arisen, according to Dr. have become role models, said Dr. restructuring of the educational challenges for the Orthodox Women only worked if it was Gurock. Gurock. approach to our children to better Jewish woman as mother, parent, financially necessary. "When Stern College was first Yeshiva University, too, he said, service this new world," Dr. and communal leader, according to "One of the signs of the founded in 1954, very few women has responded to this Gurock said. a professor of Jewish history at maturation of second generation were interested in pre.med, law phenomenon, with its recent ''The achools have to respond," Yeshiva University. American Jews, of having ' made it' and business," Dr. Gurock noted. election of a woman to its Board of he said. "We're not questioning "The signs are in place of a in America at the time," said Dr. "Remarkably, towards the end of Trustees - a first in the how they [the achools] go about social transformation that is Gurock, "was the removal of the 20th century, we are finding institution's history - and the teaching children, but rather, what emerging in Jewish life," said the women from the work force. Only Orthodox Jewish women are formation of a Board of Directors the social approach is to this professor, Dr. Jeffrey S. Gurock, the poorest women had to work behaving more and more like their for the University's Stem College Jewish family in an Orthodox author of The Men an,l Women of alongside their husbands, like they brothers and their husbands, for Women. school." Yeshiva: Higher Educatum, did in Eastern Europe." which has had tremendous The 'New' Jewish Family According to Dr. Gurock, Orthodoxy, an,l American Judaism Those women who did work implications in terms of how this But the strides made by the American Orthodox Jews "are not (Columbia University Press 1988), during the pre-1945 period, community is going to be run in Orthodox Jewish career mother immune to the same processes a social history of Orthodox according to Dr. Gurock, assumed the 21st century." have given some cause for concern which affect everybody. It may be Judaism using the evolution of positions as secretaries, The 'New' Jewish Woman about the future of the Jewish delayed to some extent, but Jews 100-year-old Yeshiva University in bookkeepers, and stenographers - The Orthodox woman who is a family unit, according to Dr. - who live in both the secular and New York City as a metsphor. jobs which they held until product of the college and graduate Gurock. traditional worlds - are going to " Orthodox women are beginning marriage. "To be a private education and who has assumed "With both parents working and be troubled by the interface of to manifest the same sort of career secretary was maybe the highest professional and leadership out of the home, how is one to live these worlds." aspirations that the men have aspiration, a sign of status," Dr. positions in the business world an Orthodox life and raise the Impact On Ultra-Orthodox wanted," said Dr. Gurock, Libby Gurock said. "And once they now faces new challenges, traditional Jewish family?" Dr. Community M. Klaperman Professor of married, if they could then leave according to Dr. Gurock. Gurock asked. "With parents "Centrist Orthodox Jews are American Jewish History. the work force because their "She is beginning to see a leading dual careers, who is going engaged in the interface with "We have a modern orthodox husbands were doing well, then dichotomy between her power in to be the stablizing agent that very 11,1odernity," Dr. Gurock said, "but community, where men and that, too, was a sign of status." the real world and her much is a part of the Orthodox people to the right on the women are both involved in But, historica lly, the powerlessness within the Jewish conception of the Jewish home? ideological spectrum - whether pursuits outside of the home and implications of Jewish women communal fold," Dr. Gurock Who's going to raise the children? they are conscious of it or not also outside of the community, and remaining at home have been observed, "as a member and If two parents are working, who have to be seen as being engaged in women ere behaving more like the importa nt in the formation of chairman of executive boards, as shares Jewish knowledge and the same type of dialectic with men," he said.

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