EAR READERS: Outreach is equally important. JC now has a business plan that aims at doubling our circu- As you probably know, our maga- lation by 2012 to 4,500 readers — a number DaPULYLZ\TLKP[ZPUKLWLUKLU[SPMLSLZZ[OHUZP_ Z\MÄJPLU[[VZ\Z[HPU[OLTHNHaPULHUKLUHISL months ago after losing the Workmen’s Circle our continued growth. Getting there will involve as our publisher. At that point in March, we had a great deal of advertising, direct mail, editorial $14,000 in the bank, fewer than 2,000 paying travel, and more — including hiring young pro- subscribers, and very poor prospects. fessionals on a freelance basis to help out with It is now late August. JEWISH CURRENTS is our website and new media development. publishing steadily, meeting its expenses, and All of this requires working capital — which gaining new subscribers every week. is why I now have the khutspe to ask: Can you What is this resurrection about? First and make a contribution for the new year? Can foremost, it’s about you. Throughout the you help JEWISH CURRENTS thrive instead spring, JC received an infusion of $30,000 in of merely survive? emergency contributions. 4VYL[OHUHKVaLUVM For example, we want to purchase a series of you became Life Subscribers for $300 each. display ads in The Nation this autumn — and 6\YSVUN[PTLMYPLUKZ[OL7\MÄU-V\UKH[PVU at Jewschool.com to attract young Internet gave $2,500. Several families contributed readers. JEWISH CURRENTS has never had an $1,000 each, while two of our incarcerated advertising budget! It’s time to break through readers gave $3 and $5, respectively! There that wall. were gifts of every amount — and letters about [OLTHNHaPUL that moved me deeply. We’re planning also to mount public events PUTHQVYJP[PLZHUK[VSH\UJO^LSSW\ISPJPaLK In early summer, we received an unprece- Midwest and West Coast speaking tours. dented grant in honor of the late Sid Resnick Ambitious? You’re darned tootin’. JC has a — a marvelous, beloved activist who served unique role to play in American Jewish life, and as a writer for JC for decades. In July, we also we aim to play it on a larger stage. inherited a large sum from the estate of Muriel Goldring, who with her husband Benjamin was Please use the enclosed envelope to give a lifelong progressive with deep feeling for as generously as you can. (You can also JEWISH CURRENTS. Meanwhile, contributions contribute at www.jewishcurrents.org.) If you were coming in from “lifeguards” who were can afford a Life Subscription for $300, take delighted with our beach supplement the plunge. (How nice for you and us to do away with your renewal notices!) Gift subscrip- As a result, JC is alive and kicking. Despite the tions — only $18! —are always welcome, too. hard-hit economy, despite the crisis of print All amounts will be put straight to work making media, despite the odds, EWISH URRENTS J C JEWISH CURRENTS and the ideals it represents now has a unique opportunity to reshape itself far more visible in the Jewish community and for the future. the world beyond.

That future requires us to spend our money, Thank you, readers, for your extraordinary not to hoard it. Already we are investing in generosity. May the new year be a season of the transformation of our design: We’ve nearly renewal and opportunity for us all. doubled our page count, switched to glossy paper, and added a full-color arts section. New features will be added in the months to come to attract new readers. Lawrence Bush, Editor LETTERS 1DPHVZLOOEHZLWKKHOGIURPSXEOLFDWLRQRQ UHTXHVW-(:,6+&855(176UHVHUYHVWKHULJKW WRHGLWOHWWHUVWRUHVWULFWWKHLUOHQJWK

Camp Kinderland’s True History The facts about Camp Kinderland presented in the International Worker’s Order. The I.W.O. was Lawrence Bush’s cartoon, “My Dinosaur Days,” need the sponsor of the camp until the 1950s. Most of the to be corrected. Readers are left with the impression original counselors were shule teachers, which gave that the Workmen’s Circle founded Kinderland and them an income over the summer. The camp was then left it in the linke’s hands while establishing conducted in Yiddish until the late 1930s. Kinder Ring (in 1928) across the lake. Kinderland has given its archives to NYU’s Ta- It was not the Arbeter Ring that started the camp. miment Library, including the original purchasing It was the left, which departed from the Workmen’s documents and all of our thousands of photos and Circle because of various ideological differences. One documents. (We even have videos of campers who of the disagreements arose because the left wanted went to camp from 1923 on.) Tamiment, in conjunc- to found a camp for children, under the motto, “from tion with Kinderland, is planning an exhibit at the camp to shule and from shule to camp,” and the Ar- library in the fall. beter Ring said no. Several men from the left faction FAY ITZKOWITZ put up the money and bought the property at Sylvan New Hyde Park, NY Lake.The purchase was made in 1923 and the camp RSHQHGWKDW\HDU.LQGHU5LQJRSHQHG¿YH\HDUVODWHU Between 1923 and 1929, Kinderland was operated The Future of JEWISH CURRENTS under the aegis of the “Umparteyisheh Yiddisheh I am writing to you as your newest Life Subscriber Kinder-Shuln.” In 1929, this latter group joined the to commend you for the excellent May-June issue. Jewish section (Jewish People’s Fraternal Order) of ¤ page 76

Vol. 64, No. 1 (655) Autumn 2009 JC EDITOR: Lawrence Bush www.jewishcurrents.org

EDITORIAL BOARD: Adrienne Cooper, Joseph Dimow, Henry Foner, Esther Leysorek Goodman, Nicholas Jahr, Rokhl Kafrissen, Milton Kant, Lyber Katz, Judith Rosenbaum, Yankl Stillman, Tamar Zinn, Barnett Zumoff

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR (from Israel): Amy Klein

WEBSITE RESOURCES: Ira Karlick

MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE: Stan Distenfeld, Nina Gordon, Ira Karlick, Elaine Katz, Bernard Kransdorf, Ruth Ost, Fred Rosenthal

Cover: “Great Catch,” collage by Mikhail Horowitz. For more about the artist, see page 49.

JEWISH CURRENTS (ISSN #US-ISSN-0021-6399), Autumn, 2009, Vol. 64, No. 1 (655). Published by The Association for the Promotion of Jewish Secularism, P.O. Box 111, Accord, NY 12404. Phone: (212) 889-2523. Fax: (212) 532-7518. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.jewishcurrents.org. Single copies $5. Subscription $25 a year in U.S.; elsewhere, $35. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y. Copyright © 2009 by JEWISH CURRENTS. EDITORIALS AND VIEWPOINTS 2 Letters 3 Enemies of the Good Enemies of the Good 4 Just Say No to Settlements

ARTICLES ost of the promises Barack Obama 10 Jews and Genes made about domestic policy during Alan H. McGowan his lengthy presidential campaign, and 16 Pete Seeger’s Project M many of the measures he has effected with the stroke Richard Flacks 21 The Hitler-Stalin Pact, a 70th Year Perspective of a pen, have pointed towards a social democratic Henry Srebrnik vision of America. During the opening months of 52 Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future? his presidency, Obama made this vision seem com- Paul Mishler, Alice Rothchild, Adam Chalom, monsensical, especially in his advocacy of health- Patricia Cousens Becker care reform and of energy policies that will desist COLUMNS from strangling the planet and open doors to a “green” economy. 4 FORSHPAYZN 6 THE VIEW FROM ISRAEL In the halls of Congress, however, vision gives Rabbis for Human Rights: way to compromise — and Big Business and their An Interview with Arik Ascherman political servants get the chance to blow smoke. Diana Scott The Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy 26 RADICAL YIDDISH and Security Act, which passed in May by only Chelm’s Fools and Ours seven votes in the House and still awaits Senate Joel Schechter action, sets weak targets for the control of green- 28 MAMELOSHN house gas emissions and is itself polluted by Two Poems by Boris Sandler Translated by Barnett Zumoff very broad concessions to the coal and utility indus- 30 NEW JEWISH RITUALS tries. Yet ACES, as it is known, is a foundational Opening the Tent to Young Adults piece of legislation insofar as it establishes into law Linda Gritz the principle that corporations must help pay for the 50 OUR SECULAR JEWISH HERITAGE environmental costs of doing business. Over the Weinreich’s Monumental History of Yiddish next two decades, that concept can be elaborated Yankl Stillman through further legislation, regulation, and litiga- 74 IN MEMORIAM tion into a much fuller program of environmental Bennett Muraskin responsibility — if progressive forces mobilize JCULTCHA AND FUNNY PAGES successfully to raise the alarms. 33 Artworks Now the struggle for an overhauled health in- Lawrence Bush, Bernard Greenwald, surance system is raging hot. Of course, the very Mikhail Horowitz, Joel Schechter and Spain, idea that health insurance is a marketplace “prod- Nina Talbot, Harry Wilks uct” that we “consumers” go out and “choose” is Poetry Ruth Berman, Miriam Boral, I. Century, ludicrous for most overworked and overwhelmed Marc Jampole, Judith Kerman, Jack Myers, Americans (whose premiums nearly doubled dur- Elaine Schear ing the Bush years, according to Linda J. Bilmes 41 Torah-True Baseball and Joseph E. Stiglitz in Harper’s). Nevertheless, Nathan Brenowitz public opinion may prove vulnerable to the lies and REVIEWS anti-government bias of the conservative movement — and, failing that, some in the Senate seem per- 64 A Religious Atheist Mitchell Silver on “Living without God” fectly willing to ignore public opinion and public 67 France and the Jews need in order to protect their patrons. Senator Max Mitchell Abidor on “French and Jewish” Baucus (D-MT), for example — who has fetched 70 Coming Out of the Holy Ark A RabbiUTUMN Alissa 2009 Wise on “Torah Queeries” 3 FORSHPAYZN*

JEWS IN THE NEWS nearly $4 million in contributions from the health- care industry since 2003 — has used his power as Max Yasgur, the dairy farmer in Bethel, New York who chair of the Senate Finance Committee to block the allowed his land to be used for the August, 1969 Wood- “public option” that President Obama originally stock Festival (attended by hundreds of thousands), was Jewish. A new children’s advocated. Obama now seems ready to settle for a book, Max Said Yes: bill that will likely be little more “All the Jews The Woodstock Story, than an exorbitant payday for the That Fit in Print” has been published health insurance industry. by Yasgur’s second Has he the power to win a bet- cousin, Abigail Yasgur, and her husband Joseph Lipner. ter deal for the American people? The vituperation and disruptions New York State’s longest-serving prison inmate (46 of the organized right, and the st years), Jerry Rosenberg, died at 72 on May 31 . Known disciplined vacuity of Republican as “Jerry the Jew,” he served as a legal adviser for the politicians, reveal how near to the leaders of the 1971 Attica prison uprising and became White House door the wolves of “the greatest and best-known” jailhouse lawyer, ac- reaction are crouched. Obama has cording to Ronald Kuby, former law partner to William kept them at bay almost single- Kunstler. handedly, as the labor movement Irving Adler, 96, a Life Subscriber to our magazine and has been busy fighting with WKHDXWKRURIERRNVZDVSUR¿OHGLQD-XQHth New itself and the political left has York Times article by Ralph Blumenthal about the dis- yet to translate the volume of its nussal or forced retirement of 378 New York City school blogosphere into lobbying power teachers during the Cold War anti-Communist furor, or street demonstrations that can “when invoking the Fifth Amendment became automatic contest rightwing demagoguery. JURXQGVIRUWHUPLQDWLRQ´$ODZVXLWVHHNLQJWRRSHQ¿OHV Under such circumstances, it is hard to take Obama on more than 1,150 teachers who were investigated has to task for his overly conciliatory policy stands. been launched by Lisa Harbatkin, the daughter of two We like to believe he meant it when he told Joe teachers who were summoned for questioning in 1952. the Plumber: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” We also believe 7KH¿UVWEODFNZRPDQWREHRUGDLQHGDUDEELAlyssa in the sagacity of his warnings not to allow “the Stanton, 45, graduated from Hebrew Union College at the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” when there end of June. She was raised Pentecostal and converted to Judaism in 1987. are plenty of real-life “enemies of the good” wait- ing to replace a stalled Obama presidency and the Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale Democratic majority in Congress. As one Yiddish and Department Store Union (RWDSU) in New York, told expression puts it, “If you look for challah, you Gay City NewsWKDWKLVGHFLVLRQLQ0D\WRDI¿UPKLVJD\ lose the black bread.” Still, crumbs will not suf-

identity within the American labor movement was intended ¿FHIRUORQJJC Bush Lawrence by Cartoon “to make my public role [be] not just as a labor leader or Jewish labor leader, but as a gay Jewish labor leader.” $SSHOEDXPLVWKH¿UVWLQWHUQDWLRQDOODERUSUHVLGHQWWR come out as gay. His union has 100,000 members in the Just Say No 86DQG&DQDGD7KHOHJLVODWLYH¿JKWLQ1HZRabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Teachers and Nancy Wohlforth, secretary-treasurer of the Rights in Israel predicts a “struggle within 2I¿FHDQG3URIHVVLRQDO(PSOR\HHV,QWHUQDWLRQDO8QLRQ I 4 *APPETIZERS JEWISH CURRENTS the [American] Jewish community between those JEWS IN PERU “The notion of a Jew who looks like an who maintain the traditional mantra of ‘Support Indian and lives in a poor house in a small city in the middle the elected government of Israel’ and those who RIWKHMXQJOHLVDWEHVWDQH[RWLFIRRWQRWHWRWKHRI¿FLDOKLVWR- are saying, ‘No, we can have our own opinions ry of Peru’s Jewry,” observed Ariel Segal, a Venezuelan-born on what’s in Israel’s interests.’” This struggle has Israeli historian. His research in Peru has motivated more than already been embodied in the rapid growth of four hundred “forgotten” Jews of Iquitos, Peru — descendants J Street, the new Mideast peace lobby in Washington, of Sephardic merchants of the late 19th century — to formally and the attacks it has fetched in the Jewish press. convert to Judaism and, in most cases, to move to Israel. The But the struggle has been spurred to new intensity 3,000-strong Lima Jewish community has mostly ignored the E\WKH2EDPD$GPLQLVWUDWLRQ¶V¿UPLQVWUXFWLRQWR Jews of Iquitos because, wrote Simon Romero in the New Israel to cease all Jewish settlement growth in the York Times, their presence raises “thorny issues about race West Bank and East Jerusalem. and origins” in a country “where a small light-skinned elite It took some weeks for the old “pro-Israel” still wields considerable economic and political power — and Lima’s Jews are often seen as an elite within that elite.” guard to respond. With the electoral support of 78 percent of American Jewish voters, President Obama had political capital to spend on this critical MAYIM, MAYIM Geoscientist Aaron Wolf has mediated YHQWXUH²DQGZLWKWKH0DGRII¿QDQFLDOGLVDVWHU water disputes among China, Burma, and Thailand as well draining the coffers of Jewish organizations, a as among Georgia, Azerbijan, and Armenia — and has also public relations battle with the White House must helped facilitate Israeli-Palestinian talks about water re- have seemed excessive. But the Anti-Defamation sources. “The two sides have cooperative projects” that have /HDJXH $'/ ¿QDOO\WRRNWKHSOXQJHRQ$XJXVW endured since the Madrid peace talks of the 1990s, Wolf tells Miller-McCune magazine. “In the second intifada, when they 4th with a full-page ad in the New York Times: “Mr. realized how much violence was going to be [taking place], President — The Problem Isn’t Settlements, It’s they took out a joint advertisement asking both sides to try to Arab Rejection.” protect the water infrastructure.” Wolf holds dual citizenship “The settlements are not the impediment,” said in the U.S. and Israel and sees water as “a means for people the ADL. “The issue is simple: the Arab and Pal- of different ideological backgrounds to talk about a shared estinian rejection of Israel’s right to exist, includ- vision of the future.” He has developed and coordinates the ing through violence and terrorism, for over sixty Transboundary Freshwater Dispute Database, which tracks years.” more than 400 water-related treaties around the world. This We agree that the continuing failure of some database, Wolf says, illustrates that “water, rather than being Palestinians and some of their allies to recognize WKHGULYHURIFRQÀLFWLVWKHRQHUHVRXUFHWKDWXQLWHVSHRSOH,W Israel’s right to exist is real and tragic — but this LVVLPSO\WRRLPSRUWDQWWR¿JKWRYHU´ gives no legitimacy to Israel’s settlements, which have been built and continue to be expanded in vio- lation of the Geneva Convention, of numerous UN Security Council Resolutions, and of Israel’s own A NEW LOOK FOR THE NEW YEAR JEWISH CURRENTS is previous commitments to peacemaking. Even if the Israeli claim that there is no one to make peace with now a quarterly, with supplements and other goodies on the Palestinian side were true, the settlements in between issues — and with nearly double the pages, Just Say No would not gain one whit in legitimacy. The ADL’s stance is just a regression to the blame game — mir- including our new color arts section. rored by Hamas’ refusal to honor past Palestinian to Settlements Your comments are commitments and Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to say the phrase “Palestinian state” without caveats. invited, of course. All of these shameful stances place ideology before human life and do not deserve to be defended. JC

AUTUMN 2009 5 Rabbi Amy Klein

Guest Column by Diana Scott VIEW FROM ISRAEL Rabbis for Human Rights An Interview with Arik Ascherman

Rabbis for Human Rights (RHR) was Diana Scott: What does RHR address as human founded in 1988 to champion Israel’s rights violations, and in what ways have you made a difference? poor, minorities and foreign workers and to protest the abuse of Palestinian Arik Ascherman: We’re always involved in at human rights in the Occupied Territo- least one issue dealing with the human rights of ries. Pursuing these and related goals Jewish Israelis, and one dealing with the human rights of non-Jews. First and foremost, our mandate — equal access to public health ben- as rabbis is to speak to our people, so we concen- HÀWVHTXDOVWDWXVIRUZRPHQDQGDQ trate on human rights violations perpetrated by end to forced prostitution and human Israelis or Jews. WUDIÀFNLQJ³5+5PDLQWDLQVZKDWLW For example, we were involved in healthcare calls “a Zionist commitment to the value for a number of years and managed to improve the standard as part of a coalition. Through organizing of justice and equality as expressed in efforts and outreach to ministers, Knesset members Israel’s Declaration of Independence” DQGSUHVVZHPRGL¿HGWKH,VUDHOL³:LVFRQVLQ3ODQ´ (www.rhr.israel.net). [linking welfare assistance to work] and turned things around. Israeli membership exceeds a hundred Another example is our High Court victory in June, 2006 regarding the right of Palestinians to rabbis and rabbinical students from harvest their olives and plow and plant. In 2002, the Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, Palestinians and people who tried to protect them Reconstructionist and Renewal wings were being shot at and beaten by settlers, and the of Judaism, with thousands of U.S. sup- Israeli security forces were either not showing up or coming late or standing by. We served as porters (www.rhr-na.org). human shields, and as a result of our work, many Palestinian farmers are today accessing land they Our reporter Diana Scott spoke with FRXOGQ¶WJHWWRIRUWZR\HDUV¿YH\HDUVHYHQWHQ RHR executive director Rabbi Arik W. RU¿IWHHQ\HDUV$QGQRZLW¶VQRWDOZD\VRQO\5+5 Ascherman in June while he was in and our allies protecting them; in many cases, it’s the Israeli army and the police. However, our work Philadelphia on a speaking tour in the on agricultural access is high-maintenance; we are United States. constantly struggling against forces in the army who want to roll back the gains.

DIANA SCOTT is a San Francisco-based writer DS: You recently said that your work has be- who chairs the Northern California branch of the come more difficult since the missile attacks Workmen’s Circle. on Sederot and the attack on Gaza, because the

6 JEWISH CURRENTS “narrative” in Israel has hardened. What effect do Israeli civilians. But we don’t have a position on you think President Obama’s stand against expand- whether or not we should negotiate with Hamas. ing the settlements and in support of a two-state Personally, I would say that you make peace with Rabbis for Human Rights solution is having on that narrative? your enemies, not with your friends. The Avot de Rabbi Natan asks, “Who is truly mighty? The AA: I think the question is: What constitutes friend- one who turns an enemy into a friend.” While we ship? “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.” I think believe that Hamas is responsible for many, many the Obama administration is showing friendship human rights violations against Israelis and against by trying to get the government of Israel to do what their own people, I’m very cautious about boycot- is ultimately in Israel’s best interest. When there ting them. My general attitude is that if you want are existential survival issues, Israel will do what to move forward, you need to talk to people. it thinks best, no matter who is telling them other- wise. But many of the issues are really not survival DS: A recent article in the New York Review of issues. It is the other way around: Settlements are Books suggested that the two-state solution is now not only a violation of international law, they are associated with the Bush administration in Pales- an obstacle to peace. tinian minds and is therefore discredited as the goal. In the same way that many Israelis became disil- Do you agree? lusioned with the peace process as the Palestinian Authority seemed unwilling or unable to stop AA: I don’t think we’ve crossed the Rubicon yet. terrorism during the Oslo years, more and more However, the settler population has more than average Palestinians now think there is not a peace doubled, close to tripled, since Oslo began. Even process. Human rights violations, home demoli- when you talk only about “natural growth,” without tions, the road building, the expropriations, the on- expanding the territory of the settlements, we will going settlement expansions — all of this has said get to the point at which a two-state solution will to Palestinians, “This is not a peace process.” no longer be viable. It will not be easy to evacuate Right now, we’re at a very dangerous time, 290,000 settlers (not counting East Jerusalem). because the level of support on the Palestinian Of course, not every peace proposal includes street for the Palestinian Authority is nonexistent. evacuating all the Jews from the West Bank. There One of the things driving people towards Hamas could be Jews living as Palestinian citizens; there and more radicalism is this belief that negotiations could be extra-territorial citizens; there could be don’t work, that Israelis are negotiating with one redrawing of borders, with some exchanges to hand and creating facts on the ground with other. keep settlers within Israel proper. There are a lot There isn’t going to be a Palestinian partner if this of theoretical possibilities. continues. But there is a small but very potent minority of settlers who have said, “Whenever you evacuate DS: Does Rabbis for Human Rights consider even one prefab home, we’re going to cause so Hamas to be a partner for negotiations? How does much violence and mayhem that the army will the rise in Gaza of a fundamentalist group with think twice about doing it again.” Just this week little respect for human rights square with RHR’s [in June], settlers around Yitzhar and Khabat Gilad, protection of human rights in Israel and the Oc- south of Nablus, burned trees, pulled people out of cupied Territories? cars and fractured their skulls, and even attacked Israeli army soldiers. This small minority would AA: We have made very, very, very strong criti- apparently even take up arms against the army to cisms of Hamas actions. In 2007, we sent letters to prevent a withdrawal. many governments around the world asking them to put pressure on Hamas to stop their attacks on DS::KDWKDYHEHHQWKHPRVWGLI¿FXOWKXPDQ

AUTUMN 2009 7 rights issues for Rabbis for Human Rights, inter- tinian violence or human rights violations. nally? But yes, it’s a closed circle or spiral of violence in which each side provokes the other — each side AA: Formulating a position on Gaza has been very thinks they’re going to bring change but only gets GLI¿FXOWEHFDXVHRIWKHRIWHQIDOVHFRQWUDGLFWLRQ more violence. between preserving security and preserving human Israelis don’t see that, in fact, Hamas kept the rights. Here is a situation in which Israeli human FHDVH¿UHDJUHHPHQWRI-XQHRIODVW\HDUIRUIRXU ULJKWVZHUHYLRODWHGE\WKH¿ULQJRIVL[WKRXVDQG and a half months. It was we Israelis who failed to rockets on Sederot — yet the response, including keep our side of the agreement by not opening the the targeting of Palestinian civilians, cannot be borders, which was the quid pro quo for having no condoned according to the Jewish tradition. How URFNHWV¿UHG7KRVHIRXUDQGDKDOIPRQWKVGRQ¶W to deal with those two realities has been a source exist, as far as most Israelis are concerned. of a lot of debate within our organization. Our position is based in the Talmud’s tractate DS: Israel has been able to present itself as physi- Sanhedrin, which teaches that if someone is coming cally endangered by determined enemies, even WRNLOO\RX\RXJHWXSHDUOLHUDQGNLOOWKHP¿UVW while it has been the occupying power. Do you fear Within that same discussion, however, we’re taught Israel’s enemies? Do you see them as enemies? the doctrine of minimum necessary force: If you kill the pursuer when you could have stopped him AA: We do have enemies, people who would like with less force, you’re guilty of murder, according to throw us into the sea. Those on the left who try to to the Talmud, even though you were simply trying say we don’t really have enemies are doing human to save a human life. rights a disservice. On that same page of the Talmud, we’re taught I think that a nuclear Iran could be an existential about the man that comes to Raba and asks,“What threat, but most of the other threats we’ve faced if a strong man in my village is going to come and are from people who can cause us great pain but kill me if I don’t kill an innocent third person?” don’t have the power to destroy us. Ehud Barak Raba says, “Let yourself be killed rather than kill. said something like that when he was prime min- Who is to say your blood is redder than his?” There ister, that we’re at a stage at which we have the is a clear distinction between what’s permissible FRQ¿GHQFHWRPDNHSHDFHEHFDXVHZH¶UHnot in and what’s not permissible, even in self-defense. existential danger. What’s not permissible is targeting civilians. We’ve Apart from unconventional weapons, an ex- taken a very clear stand that targeting civilians is istential threat would arise if there were to be a wrong, whether they be Israeli civilians or Gazan pan-Arab jihad against Israel. I think that Yitzak civilians. Rabin — a hard-headed realist, not a starry-eyed idealist — advocated the peace process because he DS: Do you see a relationship between Palestinian saw it as the best way to prevent a wall-to-wall Arab actions and Israel’s blockade of Gaza? coalition that could place us in existential danger.

AA: I want to be very clear in saying that I cannot DS: How would you preserve peace with people accept Palestinian arguments that their actions are who see Israel as a usurper and an illegitimate MXVWL¿HGEHFDXVHRI,VUDHOLDFWLRQVRUEHFDXVHRI political presence? the occupation — any more than I can accept the DUJXPHQWWKDWWHUURUMXVWL¿HV,VUDHO¶VKXPDQULJKWV AA: Under conditions of peace, there’s a much, violations against Palestinians. I really do not ac- much greater chance of evaporating those kinds cept either of those propositions, and want to make of hostilities over time. Waiting for precon- it very clear that in no way am I condoning Pales- ditions to be met before you start a peace process

8 JEWISH CURRENTS is a recipe for never having a peace process and you possibly have a Museum of Tolerance on for the destruction of Israel, because time is not somebody else’s cemetery?” The excuses — that it on our side. was an inactive cemetery, or that some discredited cleric gave permission — don’t change the fact that DS: How do you square the fact that the most you’re trampling on people’s feelings. religious people in Israel seem to be the least What I can’t understand is that the Wiesenthal progressive? Does this say anything to you about Institute has chosen to interpret any opposition to Judaism’s fundamental values? their plans as anti-Israel Islamic radicalism, which LVQRWZKDW¶VJRLQJRQ,QIDFWWKHSHRSOHZKR¿UVW AA: When I grew up [in Erie, Pennsylvania], I contacted me about this are incredibly moderate! learned from my teachers and my parents that to The last communication from Wiesenthal said be concerned with human rights was a basic part of the issue was moot since all the graves have actu- what it was to be a Jew. It was really shocking to ally been exhumed. Nevertheless, I think that the PHWR¿QGWKDWWKHUHOLJLRXVFRPPXQLW\LQ,VUDHOLV best outcome would be for the Wiesenthal Center on the other side. I don’t deny that the people who to accept Mayor Barkat’s offer of an alternative think differently from me also have their textual site. The State of Israel and the municipality of sources, but my perspective is at least as Jewishly -HUXVDOHPFRXOGKHOS:LHVHQWKDOZLWKWKH¿QDQFLDO authentic, at its base. losses; perhaps the architect could reduce his fees :H¶UH¿JKWLQJIRURXUVRXO²WKHVRXORI-XGD- or donate his time to adapt the plans for the other ism. site — and I’d be willing to appeal to all RHR sup- SRUWHUVWRVXSSRUWWKH:LHVHQWKDO&HQWHU¿QDQFLDOO\ DS: Do you fear for your physical safety and that for doing the right thing. of other RHR activists? DS: What is the role of women rabbis in RHR, AA: I wouldn’t put myself or anyone else in an since they are not recognized as rabbis in Israel? inordinate amount of danger, but anyone going to the West Bank has to understand that there are a lot AA: Our chairperson right now is Rabbi Anita of people with guns running around, and accidents Steiner, and we have many women rabbis in RHR. happen, and there are Palestinian crazies and there Most of the people who don’t recognize women are Israeli crazies. We’ve had people who have been as rabbis don’t recognize non-Orthodox rabbis injured over the years; I was hit by a stone from either. It’s one of the challenges we face: There are a settler just a couple of weeks before I came to even Orthodox rabbis who agree with us on the hu- the U.S. We’ve had people with their heads split; man rights issues but are not willing to be part of things do happen. an organization that includes non-Orthodox rabbis. That’s part of the Israeli reality, and as far as I’m DS: RHR recently urged the Mayor Nir Barkat of concerned, I’m encouraged that there are Orthodox East Jerusalem to stop construction of the Simon groups that want to do things without RHR. Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance — or as you’ve called it, the Museum of Intolerance — on the DS: How do you think American Jews can best help site of a Palestinian cemetery. What’s the status of maintain Israeli democracy as well as security? RHR’s challenge? AA: In the brief time I’ve been on tour in the U.S., AA: The Wiesenthal Center won the legal battle, I’ve gotten a powerful sense of an impending strug- but we’ve signed on to another High Court appeal. gle within the Jewish community between those Many Jews, American and Israeli, who aren’t nec- who maintain the traditional mantra of “Support essarily left-wing people, are saying, “How could ¤ page 73

AUTUMN 2009 9 Alan H. McGowan Jews and Genes

hat is a Jew? What has kept the Jewish FKLHÀ\RQWKHSURPLVHRIGUDPDWLFLPSURYHPHQWVLQ people, descendants of the ancient Is- health. Yet the Project and its allied activities have W raelites, together for such a long time? produced a huge amount of data useful for many Who are the descendants of the “lost tribes?” Two activities other than medical analysis. Among these recently published books, one by a writer who has written extensively on genetics, the other by a distinguished geneti- cist and “genetic historian,” provide intriguing insights into these and other questions. The two books, Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People, by Jon Entine (the writer), and Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History, by David Goldstein (the geneti- cist), raise many questions and appropriately provide only tentative answers. Goldstein essentially speaks for both of them, however, when he con- cludes: “Being Jewish is about culture, not DNA.” The massive Human Ge- nome Project, which pub- lished its initial working draft sequence with great is the use of DNA sequences to determine ethnic fanfare on February 12th, 2001, was funded based and racial histories. The new profession of “genetic historian” has thus been born.

In 1953, James Watson and Frances Crick pub- ALAN H. MCGOWAN is a faculty member of the lished their seminal paper describing the structure Science, Technology, and Society Program at Eugene of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA. DNA had for Lang College, The New School for Liberal Arts. He was founder of the Gene Media Forum and president some time been understood to be the chemical of the Scientists’ Institute for Public Information, of genetics, since the chromosomes — the small a major bridge between scientists and the media. bodies found in in the nucleus of every human cell McGowan is an executive editor of Environment that show a different color when stained (hence magazine and a member of the Council on Foreign their name) — were basically composed of it. The

Photocollage by Solomon Chigrinsky Solomon by Photocollage Relations. discovery of the double helix structure gave a clue

10 JEWISH CURRENTS as to how the molecule could be replicated so that routes of human migration out of Africa that have copies of genes could be transferred from parent already been discovered using this technology. to child. The double helix of DNA carries its message in Both Jon Entine and David Goldstein add zest a code, built from four molecules called nucleo- to their books by seeking to trace their own Jewish WLGHV)RURXUSXUSRVHVLWLVVXI¿FLHQWWRVD\WKDW origins. As they both point out, however, there is the four nucleotides are like letters in an alphabet, DJUHDWHUPRUHVFLHQWL¿FUHDVRQWREHLQWHUHVWHG and that “genes” are basically words made up of in the genetics of the Jewish people. Hundreds of that alphabet. Each person’s DNA is slightly differ- diseases have now been determined to have some HQWZKLFKLVZK\LWFDQEHXVHGOLNHD¿QJHUSULQW JHQHWLFLQÀXHQFHIURPVRFDOOHGPRQRJHQLFGLV- IRUIRUHQVLFLGHQWL¿FDWLRQ7KHGLIIHUHQFHEHWZHHQ eases such as Huntington’s Disease, where just individuals’ codes, however, amounts to less than one gene variation (called an “allele”) can cause one tenth of one percent of their total genetic the disease, to those diseases such as early-onset composition! EUHDVWFDQFHULQZKLFKDVSHFL¿FDOOHOHLVQRWFDXV- Two aspects of the genetic structure of all ative but greatly increases the chance of the disease mammals allow us to trace the history of popula- developing. WLRQV7KH¿UVWLVWKHSUHVHQFHRIDQ³RUJDQHOOH´ Many more of these disease alleles wait to be within the cell — the mitochondrian — outside GLVFRYHUHG7KH¿UVWVWHSLQWKHGLVFRYHU\SURFHVVLV the nucleus (which, as noted, is the site of the chromosomes and therefore of most of the DNA). The mitochondrian CITED IN THIS ESSAY is where cellular biochemical processes Abraham’s Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the of respiration and energy production oc- Chosen People, by Jon Entine. Grand Central Publish- cur. Because mitochondria contain their ing, 2007, 432 pages. own DNA (mtDNA), separate from our Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History, by chromosomal DNA, they are not sub- David Goldstein. Yale University Press, 2009, 176 ject to natural selection pressure: The pages. mtDNA passes from mother to daughter relatively intact across the ages (it also goes to a son, of course, but mtDNA that goes to WR¿QGD³PDUNHU´RUVHWRIPDUNHUVDVVRFLDWHGZLWK males is eaten by the egg and does not survive). the disease. Once this has been done, the particular The Y chromosome can be used in a similar mechanism by which the alleles cause or predict the way to trace the genetic history of males. Mam- disease has to be determined, to demonstrate that malian males have one X and one Y chromosome; the alleles are, indeed, the actual cause. females have two X chromosomes. Because the Y 6LPSO\¿QGLQJVXFKPDUNHUVLVDKXJHFKDOOHQJH has fewer than a hundred genes, whereas the X has since there are hundreds and hundreds of diseases approximately a thousand, the Y is also less subject and some twenty thousand genes in the human to natural selection pressure, and is passed down genome (the exact count is in dispute, based in part largely intact from father to son. on a 2004 paper by John Dupre,“Understanding Mitochondria and Y chromosomes provide Contemporary Genomics,” which even questions powerful tools for the analysis of genetic history, the notion of a singular “gene”). In comparing particularly given the rapid sequencing that is now genomes, it would be very helpful, of course, if possible (sequencing means determining the exact people’s genomes were identical except for that one sequence of DNA nucleotides on the chromosome). allele or set of alleles we think might be a marker The August, 2008 issue of 6FLHQWL¿F$PHULFDQfor for the disease. This would require, however, that example, has a fascinating article describing the everyone be an identical twin! Instead, we must

AUTUMN 2009 11 look for the next best thing: a population that is LIDQ\RIWKHSUR¿WVKRXOGEHVKDUHGE\WKHSRSXOD- genetically similar. tion, and in what form? Should Icelanders have a When Nancy Wexler, for example, was looking voice in how their data are used? for the allele that caused Huntington’s Disease Given the history of the Jews, the same issues are — which had killed her mother and represented certainly going to be raised should there ever be an a risk to her — she went to a remarkable village, attempt to establish a Jewish health database. Who San Luis on Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela, where will have access to the data? How will privacy be DVVKHKDGVHHQLQD¿OP DYHU\ODUJHQXPEHURI maintained? What protection will there be against people appeared to have the disease. The setting abuses? How will people avoid being discriminated was perfect for her research, since everyone was against? What voice should the Jewish people have closely related, with very similar genomes. It was in the use of their data? These are all part of the SRVVLEOHWKHUHIRUHWRFRPSDUHWKHLUJHQRPHV¿QG larger questions concerning genetic privacy for the the relatively few alleles that were different, and entire human population. match those differences with people who had the disease. (Although no cure has yet resulted from Jon Entine is particularly interested in using the discoveries made by Wexler and the geneticists one’s personal genome to trace ancestry. Henry with whom she worked, there is now, at least, a test Louis Gates has made this technology famous by that at-risk people can take to determine whether presenting a television series in which he had a they will get the disease.) variety of well-known people test a swab of their -HZVDOVR¿WWKHELOOIRUVXFKJHQHWLFUHVHDUFK DNA. The results indicated what percentage of their Although 50 percent of American Jews are now ancestry is African, Jewish, Irish, or whatever. marrying non-Jews, there has been, until very :LWKLQWKHVFLHQWL¿FFRPPXQLW\VXFKDQDO\VHV recently, a remarkable genetic cohesiveness to are very controversial, especially since they give no Jewish communities worldwide, produced by their indication as to their accuracy or the size of their disinclination to proselytize and the social pres- data base. As David Goldstein notes, “individual sures on them, from within and without, to marry genotypes — that is, one person’s DNA signature fellow Jews. at any place or places on the genome — rarely carry Genetic research raises interesting ethical issues, much information about geographic ancestry. Why? however. In Jacob’s Legacy, Goldstein relates the Populations are generally similar and rarely show story of deCODE Genetics, a biopharmaceutical more than slight statistical differences.” company based in Reykjevik that took genetic Goldstein explained further to me in an e-mail: samples from native Icelanders, all of whom are “A variant at a single site in the genome does not descendants of a relatively few Norwegians who carry very precise information about geographic settled in Iceland centuries ago. The assumption ancestry because population genetics is stochastic was that this “founder effect” would produce a [non-deterministic or random]. Let’s imagine that an population with very similar genomes and therefore African American carries out one of those ancestry provide opportunities for the discovery of disease WHVWVDQG¿QGVDPDWFKDWVRPHGHJUHHRIUHVROXWLRQ alleles. for his Y chromosome in a particular place in Africa. The original intent of deCODE was to establish Does that mean that the individual’s ancestors came a Health Sector Database, with complete medical, from that precise village? No. It could have been genetic, and genealogical information on the whole another place where that kind of Y chromosome population — from which the company ultimately was found in the past [but] no longer due to chance KRSHGWRPDNHDSUR¿W:KLOHWKHSODQZDVHIIHF- changes. As you look farther back in time, these tively quashed by the Icelandic Supreme Court, stochastic changes magnify. the controversy remains: What responsibility did “On the other hand,” he continued, “when you deCODE have towards the Icelanders? What piece, pile up many differences throughout the genome

12 JEWISH CURRENTS then you can get more precise information about from this history. “Shadowed by the racist ideolo- geographic ancestry . . . thus, you can tell whether gies [of Nazi Germany and eugenics],” he writes, an individual is from north Europe versus Africa ³FRPPRQVHQVHZDVVDFUL¿FHGWRWKHQHZLGHRORJ\ ZLWKDYHU\KLJKGHJUHHRIFRQ¿GHQFHRUIURP of environmental determinism.” Africa or East Asia, and so on. Indeed, you can It is true that the eugenics period in American HYHQWHOOZLWKKLJKFRQ¿GHQFHLIDQLQGLYLGXDOKDV and European history was sad and degrading, with Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry [or is] European without nobody involved looking very good. Many leading such ancestry.” progressive thinkers, including Margaret Sanger, In short, the accuracy of genetic history depends H. G. Wells, and John Maynard Keynes, fell RQWKHQXPEHURIVSHFL¿FSODFHVRQHORRNVRQWKH prey to the seductions of the notion that im- genome. Since none of the commercial databases proving the human condition was simply a disclose how much of the genome they examine matter of having the right people have children. to come up with their numbers, there is no way to Entine is right in criticizing the excesses and errors GHWHUPLQHWKHDFFXUDF\RIWKHLU¿QGLQJV6HTXHQF- of that time, but wrong in his assessment of the ing one’s entire genome costs about $5,000. A “politically correct” attitudes of scientists today commercial company will provide your “genetic who question the validity of the biological race history” for between $219 and $650. How much of concept. There is much more substance to their your genome is used? You do the math. (An article arguments. in the July 3rd, 2009 edition of Science called for Harvard University’s Richard Lewontin, for standardization and regulation of such ancestry test- example, in a 1972 paper, “Apportionment of Hu- ing and noted that the American Society of Human man Diversity,” which Entine actually highlights, Genetics has issued recommendations urging the points out that genetic differences between races “need for greater responsibility, research, explana- must be compared to genetic differences within WRU\FODULW\DQGDFFRXQWDELOLW\´LQWKH¿HOG races. Populations may differ in the frequency of allelic distribution, for example — African-Ameri- Implicit in this ancestry discussion is the contro- cans have more of the sickle cell allele than do versial issue of the validity of “race” as a genetic non-African Americans, and Ashkenazi Jews have category in human beings. Goldstein deals only a higher frequency of the BRCA1 allele, which indirectly with this by equating “race” in the begin- predisposes to early-onset breast cancer, than do ning of his book with geographic ancestry (a much non-Jews — but there is not one allele that is exclu- less loaded term). Entine, however, tackles the is- sive to one population. “As a biological rather than sue head on. (Readers interested in the debate over a social construct,” Lewontin reiterated in 2006,

race may well want to turn to Revisiting Race in a “ ‘race’ has ceased to be seen as a fundamental Genomic Age, edited by Barbara A. Koenig, Sandra reality characterizing the human species” (http:// Soo-Jun Lee, and Sarah S. Richardson.) raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/). Lewon- +H¿UVWOLVWVWKHPDQ\OHJLWLPDWHUHDVRQVWRGLV- tin notes that 85 percent of our genetic variation tance oneself from the racist past, when scientists actually occurs “among individuals within local spent a good deal of time “proving” that non-white national or linguistic populations” and that there populations were innately inferior. Entine details is “continuous [genetic] variation over the whole WKHIDXOWVDQGGLI¿FXOWLHVRIHXJHQLFVWKHSVHXGR world with no sharp boundaries and with no greater VFLHQFHRIWKH¿UVWKDOIRIWKHth century that called similarity occurring between Western and Eastern for the “superior” races — primarily whites — to Europeans than between Europeans and Africans! propagate mightily while preventing the “inferior” 7KXVWKHFODVVLFDOO\GH¿QHGUDFHVGRQRWDSSHDU races from doing so. Ultimately, however, Entine from an unprejudiced description of human varia- believes that scientists who today reject the validity tion. Only the Australian Aborigines appear as a of race as a biological category are simply recoiling unique group.”

AUTUMN 2009 13 Other Views on Race and Biology On the issue of the validity of race as a biological FDWHJRU\WKHUHLVRQJRLQJVFLHQWL¿FFRQWURYHUV\$O- Entine’s treatment of Franz Boas (1896-1942), though the 19th- and 20thFHQWXU\FRQFHSWRI¿[HGDQG who is widely viewed as the founder of modern markedly different human “races” has been widely American anthropology and pioneered the idea that discredited, there remains medical evidence of racial race is a statistical artifact, is especially unkind. En- difference. There is, for example, “observed racial tine calls Boas’ ideas “discredited,” and bolsters his variation” in the metabolism of psychotropic and other criticism by suggesting that Boas fudged the data medications, notes Muideen O. Bakara of Nigeria in in one of his important studies about the craniology Frontiers of Retrovirology, September, 2009, which of different populations. Boas’s paper attempted to may mandate “new treatment or prescription guide- show the plasticity of head shape and to attribute lines that would put into consideration variations in LWSUHGRPLQDQWO\WRWKHLQÀXHQFHRIWKHSDUWLFXODU genetic make-up . . .” Racially-grouped differences environment in which children grow up. However, in responses to treatments for asthma, kidney failure, even Corey S. Sparks and and Richard L. Jantz, types of cancer, and heart disease have also been clearly two important modern critics of Boas’ paper, note GRFXPHQWHG:KLOHVRFLDOIDFWRUVFHUWDLQO\LQÀXHQFH that the more sophisticated methods of analysis human immune response and disease susceptibility, needed to show that the size and shape of human many studies indicate an important role for genetic heads result from genetics, not environmental factors, including factors that are racially grouped. factors, were not available to Boas, and “make no “In practicing medicine, I am not colorblind,” claim that Boas made deceptive or ill-conceived writes Dr. Sally Satel in the New York Times Maga- conclusions” (Proceedings of the National Acad- zine (2002). “I always take note of my patient’s race. emy of Sciences, 99.23, 2002). Moreover, Entine So do many of my colleagues. We do it because cer- fails to note that other scientists have challenged tain diseases and treatment responses cluster by ethnic- the view of Sparks and Jantz. The controversy was ity. Recognizing these patterns can help us diagnose aired in several papers in the American Anthropolo- GLVHDVHPRUHHI¿FLHQWO\DQGSUHVFULEHPHGLFDWLRQV gist; in one (Gravlee, Bernard, & Leonard, 2003), PRUHHIIHFWLYHO\$VURXJKDELRORJLFDOFODVVL¿- three leading anthropologists state: “When we cation as race may be, doctors must not be blind to clarify Boas’s position and place the immigrant its clinical implications. So much of medicine is a study in historical context, Sparks and Jantz’s re- guessing game — and race sometimes provides an nalysis supports our conclusion that, on the whole, invaluable clue.” Boas got it right.” The New England Journal of Medicine (May 3, 2001) describes “racial and ethnic differences” in pa- We have learned a great deal since the comple- tients’ responses to drugs, differences that “do indeed tion of the Human Genome Project in 2001, includ- appear to be based” on variations “among different ra- ing the fact that the complexity of the genome is cial and ethnic groups.” Nevertheless, in 2001 the New far greater than we thought. We tend to look for England Journal of Medicine also declared race to be simple answers — a “gene” for everything — when D³VRFLDOFRQVWUXFWQRWDVFLHQWL¿FFODVVL¿FDWLRQ¶¶DQG the truth is much more complicated. denounced “race-based medicine,’’ including “medical Part of this complexity has to do with “gene research arbitrarily based on race. . . . in medicine, regulation.” We all carry every part of our genome there is only one race — the human race.’’ in most cells in our body — including the alleles, These radically different statements in the same for example, that determine eye color. Clearly that PHGLFDOMRXUQDODUHGLI¿FXOWWRUHFRQFLOH3HUKDSVWKH VHWRIJHQHVFDQQRWH[SUHVVLWVHOILQWKH¿QJHUQDLOV comment made by the geneticist Harry Ostrer of NYU however fashionable blue nails might be. Therefore, School of Medicine in a 2003 interview with the New part of the genomic structure has to tell the genes York Times is useful: “There are,” he said, “meaningful when to be operative, and when to lie dormant. distinctions among groups that may have implications Furthermore, just as in a crossword puzzle, in for disease susceptibility.” By replacing the politically which a single letter may be part of two words, a explosive word “races” by the neutral word “groups,” JEWISH CURRENTS Ostrer appears14 to have defused the issue. —Editor single strip of DNA can actually be part of several “genes.” Part of the complexity of the genome is Make Your Favorite Photograph the stitching together all of these pieces to produce the correct genetic information. Look Like a Painting Notwithstanding this complexity, and the funda- through JEWISH CURRENTS! mental agreement between Goldstein and Entine that Jewishness is history and culture far more than DNA, there are certain aspects of Jewish history on which DNA can shed some fascinating light. Tradition has it, for example, that after the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, Aaron, brother of Moses, ZDVVHOHFWHGDVWKH¿UVW³&RKHQ´RUSULHVWDQG that his sons were also so designated. Since the Y chromosome is passed from father to son, it might be possible for DNA in that chromosome to give evidence of such a priestly hereditary tradi- tion. Indeed, some 90 percent of contemporary Cohanim do have some genetic features in the Y chromosome that are different from those of other Jews. This is the Cohen Modal Haplotype. (A haplotype, shortened from “haploid genotype,” is a cluster of alleles that exist on the same chromo- some, although at different places, and tend to be inherited together. Many inherited characteristics Printed on canvas with colorful are thought to be related to haplotypes rather than archival dyes. Large, $36 (16”x12”) or to individual genes.) Medium, $25 ( 10” x 7.5”) The Cohen Model Haplotype is found in indi- viduals among both Ashkenazic and Sephardic with free shipping! populations around the world, as well as among A wonderful gift. the Bene Israel in India. This phenomenon speaks To order, contact: WRJUHDWVH[XDO¿GHOLW\DPRQJ-HZLVKZRPHQ DW least those married to Cohens!) since only a few [email protected] or sons born from extramarital unions, and therefore (845) 626-2427. without the Cohen Modal Haplotype, would have lowered the percentage a great deal. The Lemba people of South Africa, who follow and (to a lesser extent) Armenians. Does this call Jewish traditions and claim to be descended from into question the basic thesis? Not really — but it the Israelites, also displays the Cohen Modal Hap- does underline the essential point that while DNA, lotype, although at a slightly lower frequency than with other pieces of evidence, may be indicative of among Ashkenazim or Sephardim. A sub-clan, the -HZLVKDQFHVWU\LWLVFKLHÀ\FXOWXUHIDUPRUHWKDQ Buba, are held to be the priestly clan of the Lemba, JHQHWLFVWKDWGH¿QHVDSHUVRQDVD-HZ and most of the haplotype found in the Lemba are With science is advancing all the time, along among the Buba. with sophisticated statistical methods of analysis, However, the Cohen Modal Haplotype is also there are fascinating stories to be told, questions the most common haplotype found among south- to be asked, and more books to be written in the ern and central Italians, Hungarians, Iraqi Kurds, immediate future. JC

AUTUMN 2009 15 Dick Flacks Pete Seeger’s Project

ete Seeger turned 90 on May 3rd, providing my students can identify him. Even with the at- the occasion for a huge celebratory concert tention he’s received in recent years, he remains P in Madison Square Garden featuring a wide paradoxically shadowy, given his political and array of popular musicians. In the two years prior, FXOWXUDOLQÀXHQFH Pete got more mainstream attention than he’d This paradox goes to the heart of what his life received in the previous seventy years. Bruce project has been. One obvious reason for Seeger’s Springsteen toured internationally with a large marginalization has been his commitment to the band playing material from Pete’s folksong reper- political left. His father, noted composer and mu- WRU\7KHUHZDVDGRFXPHQWDU\¿OPLQWKHDWHUV sicologist Charles Seeger, was an important leader and on public television, Pete Seeger: The Power of the cultural front fostered by the Communist of Song. Two new biographies are in the stores Party during the 1930s. Charles helped form a (“To Everything There Is a Season”: Pete Seeger composers’ collective that sought to create a new and the Power of Song, by Allan Winkler, and The music for revolutionary workers and to preserve Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger, and reinvigorate folk and vernacular musics as an by Alec Wilkinson), and David King Dunaway’s DOWHUQDWLYHWRFRPPRGL¿HGPDVVFXOWXUH LWVPHP- earlier work, “How Can I Keep From Singing”: bers included Marc Blitzstein, Aaron Copland and The Ballad of Pete Seeger, has been updated and other young radical musicians). So Pete grew up republished. There’s even an ongoing campaign to get Seeger nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The attention he is now getting is certainly GHVHUYHGJLYHQKLVOLIHVWRU\DQGKLVLQÀXHQFHRQ American music. One feature of that story, how- ever, is that he is one of the least-known famous people in America. I use protest music a lot in my teaching about social movements, and over the \HDUV,¶YHIRXQGWKDWIHZHUWKDQ¿YHSHUFHQWRI

Dick Flacks is emeritus professor of sociology at University of California, Santa Barbara. His many writings on U.S social movements include Making History: The American Left and the American Mind. He hosts a weekly radio show, “Culture of Protest,” which can be heard on Thursdays 6-7p.M. EST at www.kcsb.org. He has co-authored the forthcoming Playing for Change: Music and Social Movements with Rob Rosenthal, to be published by Paradigm publishers.

A fuller version of this article was originally published

Google images, photographer unknown photographer images, Google on Truthdig (www.truthdig.com).

16 JEWISH CURRENTS immersed in the left. He joined the Young Com- in turn, should aid in inspiring people “into more munist League during his brief time at Harvard, and independent, capable, and democratic action.” We was a Communist Party member (according to his can read in these lines the principled foundation biographers) during most of the 1940s. Although for Pete Seeger’s seventy years as an artist and he dropped formal membership in the CP in the political being. They are a primary source for the ODWHVKHZDVRQHRIWKHVWDUFXOWXUDO¿JXUHV life project he began to formulate and implement of the communist-oriented left for many years after. when he was in his early 20s. Teenagers like me and my wife (both red-diaper I use the word “project” instead of “career” babies) were proud that Pete was “ours,” appear- because Seeger himself resisted talking about his LQJDWWKHEHQH¿WVKRRWHQDQQLHVVXPPHUFDPSV “career.” From the outset, he sought to channel his DQGUDOOLHVWKDWGH¿QHGPXFKRIRXUFXOWXUDOOLYHV ambition toward social and cultural change and during the 1950s, when kids of our background felt to exorcise his strivings for personal recognition. pretty isolated from the political and cultural main- In the early 1940s, the Almanacs even performed stream. His allegiances made him the prototype of anonymously (with Pete often using an assumed the blacklisted entertainer — and it was the blacklist name), emulating various European artistic col- that excluded him from television and blanked him lectives of that time. A number of politically com- out of the awareness of mainstream America. mitted young musicians were part of the Almanacs That exclusion did not derail Pete’s life project. collective, but Pete, in his early 20s, was the most 2QWKHFRQWUDU\LWFRPSHOOHGKLPWRIXO¿OOWKDWSURM- disciplined — focused on keeping the group to- ect rather than succumb to temptations or demands gether and achieving its shared purpose, which was that might have come from more conventional com- to create new songs, rooted in vernacular music, mercial success. I want here to spell out what that with lyrics that might mobilize political action. project was, and how it affected history. The Almanacs’ most lasting songs were those like Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid” that became $OHF:LONLQVRQ¶VQHZELRJUDSK\GH¿QHV6HHJHU anthems of the CIO organizing campaigns or as the epitome of the rugged individualist. We see spurred anti-Nazi sentiment to support the war him in very old age, living in a house he built on the effort (“The Sinking of the Reuben James”). banks of the Hudson River. He, his wife Toshi and In the entertainment world, there was something their small children moved there in the 1940s, and new and attractively fresh about the fusion of folk their lives were indeed rugged — without electricity music and contemporary topics. The middle-class and running water for a while, they chopped wood Almanacs, especially Seeger, undoubtedly thought and grew food in a clearing in the forest. Near the that their unprofessional style (they wore blue end of the book, we see Seeger and members of jeans or overalls, and their performances were his clan collecting sap and making maple syrup. deliberately unpolished) would help them forge Wilkinson appreciates the paradox that this man, connections to the working-class audiences they long reviled as a communist, has tried to live the hoped to reach. That assumption has often been $PHULFDQLGHDORIWKHVHOIPDGHVHOIVXI¿FLHQW mocked; workers were much more likely to want man. the polished performances of Tommy Dorsey, Bing But Seeger was a Communist, and continues to Crosby or the Andrews Sisters. But the mockery describe himself as a “communist with a small c.” misses the deeper aim of Seeger’s project, to make He was raised by his father to see music as a group space for a popular music created not for the com- activity, dependent on the people’s participation, mercial market but for sustaining the “democratic more than as a realm of individual accomplishment action” envisioned by his father. dependent on the virtuosity of a few. “Vernacular” The Almanacs’ collective didn’t last long, in music, said Charles Seeger, is the foundation part because several members entered the military. from which all other musics derive, and music, While in uniform, Seeger continued his project,

AUTUMN 2009 17 recording songs of the Spanish civil war and a num- the Red Scare thoroughly marginalized the network ber of other topical songs (accompanied by other Seeger had worked so hard to build. emerging folksingers such as Burl Ives, Josh White, Still, his penchant for organizational entrepre- and Sonny Terry). He served in the Philippines as neurship was an important dimension of his work that deserves more attention than any of his biographers provide. Seeger’s major successes have included the song magazines Sing Out! and Broadside, which pub- lished and publicized the politically conscious new songwriting of the 1960s; the Newport Folk Festivals of the late ’50s and ’60s, which brought together a new generation of troubadours with a vast array of traditional performers; a book, originally mimeographed, How To Play the 5-String Banjo, which in- spired tens of thousands to play this largely forgotten instrument; the formation of the Freedom Singers (Cordell Reagon, Bernice Johnson, Charles Neblett and Rutha Mae an entertainer for wounded GIs and learned quite Harris), who toured (with Toshi as their agent) to a bit about how music can work to build collective raise awareness and money for the Student Nonvio- morale. By war’s end, he was certain that making lent Coordinating Committee; and the Clearwater politically relevant music was his life’s work. Sloop, which sparked the movement to clean up the Hudson River and became the center of an ongoing After the war, Seeger’s energies turned to- environmental education program. ward organizational entrepreneurship rather than None of these efforts was single-handedly cre- merely performing. He sparked the formation of ated by Seeger, of course. In fact, his biographers a national “People’s Artists” network of leftwing suggest that he was not exactly a detail person. music-makers to serve as a booking agency, a Toshi took on many of the managerial tasks his SXEOLVKHURIVRQJ¿OOHGQHZVOHWWHUVDQGERRNV work required (while managing their household of and a support framework for advancing a popular three children in their log cabin). But Pete always music relevant to political action. In the immediate had the ability to make the impossible seem plau- postwar period, leftists hoped that the dynamism sible and thereby inspire and goad others to help of the 1930s labor movement would continue and IXO¿OOKLVYDULRXVRUJDQL]DWLRQDOYLVLRQV,W¶VDUDUH that the social democratic logic of the New Deal thing for an artist to be so aware of the need for would be followed by the post-FDR government. institution-building, but Seeger saw from the start Seeger imagined that his people’s music network that cultural change is inextricably bound up with would be wedded to the unions and other social social organization. movements, providing fertile ground for growing a leftward popular culture. But a profound split in His most promising mainstream venture was the union movement on the “Communist” issue the effort by the Almanacs’ successor group, the dashed such optimism, and the increasing tempo of Weavers, to work commercial venues. The quartet,

18 JEWISH CURRENTS born out of the People’s Artists cultural left, was his cultural impact steadily increased during those discovered and signed by Gordon Jenkins of Decca, years. When the Weavers reunited in an historic one of the largest record labels of the 1940s and Carnegie Hall Christmas season concert in 1955 ’50s. Jenkins produced a series of enormous hits LQGH¿DQFHRIWKHEODFNOLVWWKHUHFRUGLQJRIWKLV with the Weavers, and they were booked into many event on the upstart Vanguard label hit the charts, of the leading club and concert venues. Rightwing and the group continued to tour and record for sev- entrepreneurs quickly went after them, however, eral more years (although Seeger separated from it). largely based on Seeger’s long association with Seeger drew ever larger concert crowds, including “Communist” politics, and only two years after they PDQ\RIWKH\RXQJZKRKHDUGKLP¿UVWDWVXPPHU had burst on the scene, the Weavers’ commercial camp or college campus. He recorded dozens of career was over. albums for Folkways in that period. Seeger quickly embarked on a perpetual tour of Meanwhile, a pop-centered folksong revival be- America’s college campuses, summer camps, and came commercially huge. The Weavers’ imitators, auditoriums, where he honed a solo performance led by the Kingston Trio and, later, Peter, Paul and VW\OHDQGUHSHUWRU\WKDWGH¿QHGKLPDVDPXVLFLDQ Mary, sold millions of records. The resulting com- In the process, he brought into being a ragtag army PRGL¿FDWLRQLQHYLWDEO\GHQDWXUHGDQGFRQWUDGLFWHG of young fans. His commitment to his project was Seeger’s project. embodied in his particular performance style: The His support of the Newport Folk Festivals helped goal was not to display his own talent, nor to thrill provide alternative, more authentic access to rooted an audience, but to bring songs to people so that musics and performers. By the early 1960s, a musi- they could make them their own. Every Seeger per- cal rebellion against pop folk was in the works, as a formance was centered on group singing. Simply band of young troubadours, consciously following getting a mass audience to join in requires skill, in Woody and Pete’s footsteps, started singing. Bob but he aimed further — to teach new songs, and to Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Odetta and many foster singing in harmony. He particularly relished others performed in new folk clubs, recorded on teaching South African songs in their original lan- upstart labels, appeared at civil rights and ban-the- guage (most famously “Wimoweh”) with two or bomb rallies, and dominated the college tours. The three competing melodic lines. folk music revival became a political as well as There is an empowering effect in the very sound cultural phenomenon. The festivals, concerts and of a singing assembly. There is a persuasive effect clubs where folk fans congregated were among that can come when audience members sing lyrics the prime social spaces for shaping awareness and expressing a political perspective or commitment. engagement with the civil rights movement and There is a sense of mutual validation when a crowd the New Left. of people sing together in an attitude of resistance. And once you sing a song, there is a good chance Pete Seeger’s belief in the power of song derived that you will be able to reproduce it by and for your- in large part from the fact that a number of great self, with no need for the professional performer to social movements were fueled by music. There is evoke it. By working as a song leader and teacher, a tradition of labor song in America, dating from Pete was achieving Charles Seeger’s wish for a the 19th century, and a number of songs from that mode of musical performance that had an ability WUDGLWLRQFRQWLQXHWRWKLVGD\WRKHOSGH¿QHWKH to “aid in the welding of the people into more in- identities of labor organizers and raise spirits on dependent, capable, and democratic action.” the picket line. Seeger’s dream of a singing mass movement was much more fully realized, however, Pete Seeger’s blacklisting by network TV lasted in the civil rights struggle. As marchers gathered in at OHDVW¿IWHHQ\HDUVDQGPDGHLWLPSRVVLEOHIRU churches to prepare to challenge segregation with him to have access to mass audiences in U.S. Still, their very bodies, traditional songs and song styles

AUTUMN 2009 19 used in African-American churches were turned sang about.” into hymns of solidarity and shared risk-taking, In our time, troubadours have become icons of with lyrics adapted for the occasion. It was Seeger resistance, and Pete Seeger did quite a bit to popu- ZKRKDG¿UVWPDGH³:H6KDOO2YHUFRPH´NQRZQWR larize them, most notably the Wobbly bard Joe Hill civil rights activists in the1950s, and his concerts in and Woody Guthrie. Then, in the 1960s and ’70s, the early ’60s taught the new freedom songs to mass iconic troubadours emerged all over: Bob Marley audiences in the north. The music of the southern in Jamaica, Victor Jara in Chile, Vladimir Vysotsky movement was an important factor in forging a in the Soviet Union, Wolf Biermann in East Ger- PRUDOLGHQWL¿FDWLRQZLWKLWDPRQJQRUWKHUQVWXGHQWV many, Cui Jian in China, Miriam Makeba in South ²DQLGHQWL¿FDWLRQWKDWOHGWRDÀRRGRIYROXQWHHUV Africa. Some, like Jara, explicitly used Seeger and to southern organizing campaigns. Guthrie as models. All were able to achieve iconic By his mid-40s, Pete Seeger could take satisfac- stature and profound popular affection despite, and tion that his decision to organize his life around because of, persecution, censorship, martyrdom. a principled project and disdain a “career” had Meanwhile, all over the world, many hundreds of changed history. More than any other individual, other singers have taken on the troubadour role, not he had conceived and fostered a tradition of protest as heroes and martyrs, but, like Seeger, as cultural song that drew from a number of cultural roots, had workers pursuing various versions of his project. VLJQL¿FDQWSROLWLFDOFRQVHTXHQFHDQGUHVKDSHGWKH The Madison Square Garden 90th birthday cel- forms and content of popular music. He had revived ebration featured many American musicians of the social role of the troubadour — a special kind this sort. Some like Bruce Springsteen and Dave of intellectual, who, as Bruce Springsteen said at Mathews have had enormous commercial success, Madison Square Garden, pointed a dagger at the and most of the others on stage are probably better heart of Americans’ illusions about their history known to a wider public than Seeger himself. Their while telling their stories in song. But Seeger per- participation was evidence of the cultural effect formed in ways that intended, and sometimes suc- RIKLVSURMHFWDVHDFKVWDUWHVWL¿HGH[SOLFLWO\RU ceeded, in empowering audience members to sing implicitly, to the pull of Seeger’s devotion to social WKHLURZQVRQJVDQG¿QGFDSDFLWLHVIRUGHPRFUDWLF movements and his challenges to the constraints of action through that singing. the culture industry. That event was the culmination of several years If he’s often portrayed as a victim of blacklist during which the “entertainment industry” and the and censorship, it is clear that his long margin- state not only stopped blacklisting Seeger but be- alization from the mainstream was necessary for stowed honors on him: enrollment in the Rock and WKHIXO¿OOPHQWRIKLVSURMHFW:KHQKHUHIXVHGWR Roll Hall of Fame, the Kennedy Center Award, the discuss his political allegiances with the House President’s Medal of Freedom. A cynic might say Un-American Activities Committee in 1955 (basing that in America, political troublemakers are margin- his non-cooperation on his First Amendment rights alized and suppressed, then canonized when they are rather than on the Fifth Amendment protection safely old or dead; that’s how we periodically per- against self-incrimination), Seeger’s courageous suade ourselves that we really are a free country. stance led the committee to charge him with ten At 90, Pete, we imagine, must feel enormous counts of contempt of Congress, each punishable SHUVRQDOIXO¿OOPHQW+RZUHZDUGLQJWRJHWWRVLQJ by a year in jail. Trial and appeal of these charges Woody Guthrie’s radical verses to “This Land is took seven years and reinforced his blacklisting. Your Land” at the inauguration concert for our In the end, the Court of Appeals overturned his ¿UVWEODFNSUHVLGHQWVLGHE\VLGHZLWKRQHRIWKH conviction. It was in many ways a costly time for biggest stars of popular music! Still, I can hear him the Seegers, yet as a result he came, says Wilkinson, saying: “Yes, but will the human race survive the to “typify the principles of all the brave people he 21stFHQWXU\"7KHUH¶VD¿IW\¿IW\FKDQFH:H¶YHJRWJC a lot of work to do.” 20 JEWISH CURRENTS Henry Srebrnik The Hitler-Stalin Pact, a 70th Year Retrospective

e’ve all heard, on old newsreels, Presi- dent Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s W “day of infamy” speech following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th,1941. Among numerous other infamous days GXULQJWKDWZRUOGZLGHFRQÀDJUDWLRQWKHUHZDV one, seventy years ago, that involved not an aggressive act of war but a futile attempt to avert it: August 23rd, 1939, the day of the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Soviet Union, better known as the Molotov- Ribbentrop or Hitler-Stalin Pact. Vyacheslav Molotov was the Soviet foreign min- ister, and Joachim von Ribbentrop was his German counterpart. The treaty they concluded contained a secret protocol partitioning Poland and dividing Eastern Europe into German and Soviet spheres RILQÀXHQFH7KH1D]LVLQYDGHG3RODQGDZHHN later (September 1st), which triggered a British and French declaration of war against Germany. th Joseph Stalin, meanwhile, joined in the dismem- Cartoon by Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel), June 20 , 1941, berment of Poland, with Soviet troops entering the two days before the Nazi invasion of the USSR. eastern portion of the country on September 17th. On September 21st, the Soviets and Nazis signed Friendship Treaty was signed on September 28th a formal agreement coordinating military move- by von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov, who ments in Poland. The next day, they held a joint had earlier in the year replaced Maxim Litvinov military parade in Brest-Litovsk. Polish resistance (whose Jewishness was an issue with the Nazis). soon ended. Their joint declaration stated that “the Government A follow-up German-Soviet Boundary and of the German Reich and the Government of the USSR have, by means of the treaty signed today, definitively settled the problems arising from the collapse of the Polish state and have thereby Henry Srebrnik is a professor of political studies at created a sure foundation for a lasting peace in the University of Prince Edward Island in Charlotte- Eastern Europe . . . they mutually express their town, PEI, Canada. He is the author of Jerusalem on the Amur: Birobidzhan and the Canadian Jewish conviction that it would serve the true interest of Communist Movement, 1924-1951 (2008) and London all peoples to put an end to the state of war . . . Jews and British Communism, 1935-1945 (1995). He between Germany on the one side and England is now completing a book on American pro-Soviet and France on the other. Both Governments will

Jewish organizations that supported the creation of a therefore direct their common efforts, jointly with http://orpheus.ucsd.edu/speccoll/dspolitic/Frame.htm Jewish Autonomous Region in Birobidzhan. other friendly powers if occasion arises, toward California, of University Library, Collections Special Mandeville

AUTUMN 2009 21 attaining this goal as soon as possible. World War (1982), there were occasions when “Should, however, the efforts of the two Gov- RI¿FLDOSURQRXQFHPHQWVRIWKH&RPPXQLVW3DUW\ ernments remain fruitless, this would demonstrate USA (CPUSA) “left listeners with the impression the fact that England and France are responsible that the Nazis were in some ways preferable to the for the continuation of the war, whereupon, in Allies. Hitler, after all, had made his peace with case of the continuation of the war, the Govern- the Soviet Union, while British and French inten- ments of Germany and of the USSR shall engage tions remained unclear and seemed to hold a more in mutual consultations with regard to necessary sinister potential.” measures.” The CPUSA opposed U.S. assistance to Britain During this period, in which the Nazis could and France, and any American military involve- count on the USSR as a de facto ally, Adolf Hitler ment in the war. Franklin Roosevelt, considered conquered most of Europe, including Denmark, a progressive president during the New Deal France, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxem- 1930s, was now derided as untrustworthy, and ERXUJ*UHHFHDQG

Google images Google in the wake of the Soviet-Nazi pact. rialist war” line were forced to rational-

22 JEWISH CURRENTS ize their defense of the treaty in hastily-published had “no foundation in fact,” he wrote. The prospect booklets. Shloime Almazov, who headed ICOR for European Jews improved even more dramati- (idishe kolonizatsye organizatsye), a group dedi- cally, according to Communist leaders, when the cated to the development of a Jewish territory in Soviet Union occupied Romanian Bessarabia and Birobidzhan, published Der Sovyetish-daytsher northern Bukovina, and the three Baltic states of opmakh: vos meynt er? (“The Soviet-German Pact: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. (As noted, these What Does It Mean?”) immediately following takeovers had also been agreed upon in a secret the announcement of the pact. The enemies of protocol to the Hitler-Stalin Pact.) the USSR were displeased, Almazov wrote, that Frayhayt contributor Moishe Katz related the the Soviet Union had thwarted the German attack sad history of the Jews in the two Romanian ter- against it that its foes devoutly desired. The three ritories, who had been living for twenty-two years national Yiddish papers, he continued (the Forverts, in the “bitterest conditions under the Romanian Morgn Zhurnal and Tog), were fomenting a “po- yoke.” He described their incorporation into the grom mood” against the Soviet Union and against USSR, at a time when the Romanians had been all the organizations that supported the pact. They moving closer to an alliance with Nazi Germany, were drawing upon the entire arsenal of curses and as “a miracle.” Katz was so certain that “a new lies to besmirch the USSR and convince the masses and bright day” had dawned that in August, 1940 that the country had betrayed its principles. They he wrote an article entitled “The Rejuvenation of were portraying the USSR as “a friend of the Na- East European Jewry.” zis” and even insinuating that Moscow sanctioned By 1941, perhaps as many as 6.5 million Jews, Hitler’s anti-Semitism. about two-thirds of European Jewry, lived under This was nonsense, Almazov assured readers=. the relative protection of Soviet power. From the If anyone was responsible for the plight of Poland’s news of Jewish life in the USSR, enthused Gabriel Jews, it was the “men of Munich” who had made it Alman in April, 1941, “there rises before us a co- possible for Hitler to become master of central Eu- lossal picture of freedom, happiness and security” rope. They had shown no interest in protecting the — this two months before Hitler’s invasion, which rights of Jews. The fact that the USSR had signed would decimate the Jewish communities in the a treaty with Germany did not mean it condoned newly-occupied areas as well as in the pre-war Germany’s policies, any more than it approved of borders of the USSR. the policies of numerous other states with which it enjoyed diplomatic and trade relations. Most American Jews did not buy the party line. Almazov concluded that the foreign policy of Opposition to the “unholy alliance” was almost the Soviet Union served the interests of peace, and unanimous across the American Jewish political that the pact was motivated by the USSR’s desire to spectrum, from the religious and Zionist groups live in peace with its neighbors and to guard with on the right, to mainstream organizations such as all its strength the peace of the world. The country the American Jewish Committee, American Jew- was in the midst of constructing a new socialist ish Congress, and B’nai B’rith, to the left-wing order; these achievements would be preserved, not social democrats and Bundists grouped around endangered, through the pact. How could anyone the Jewish Labor Committee, Workmen’s Circle think otherwise? and Forverts. All of these organizations quickly In The Soviet Union and the World Crisis, writ- denounced the pact. ten right after the Russian occupation of Poland, Communists worked hard to counter the Jewish Almazov declared that the Soviet “liberation” had community’s anger. Rabbi Moses Miller, president already saved some two million Polish Jews. Ac- of the CP-dominated Jewish Peoples Committee for cusations that Moscow and Berlin had signed a United Action Against Fascism and Anti-Semitism, secret provision to partition Poland in their pact cautioned against “the warmongers . . . working

AUTUMN 2009 23 feverishly to pull us into this war” in A Jew Looks into the imperialist war,” in his article “Zionism at the War (June, 1940). The rulers of Britain and and the Imperialist War,” published in the May, )UDQFHZHUHQRW¿JKWLQJDZDUDJDLQVWIDVFLVWDJ- 1940 issue of the Communist, the CPUSA’s theo- gression or to end the persecution of the Jewish retical journal. Novick pictured the Zionists as people, he argued, and so Jews had nothing to gain “violently” anti-Soviet, since the “solution of the IURPVXFKDFRQÀLFWZKLFKZRXOGFDXVHIXUWKHU Jewish problem in the Soviet Union was the great- VXIIHULQJDQGDQLQWHQVL¿HGDQWL6HPLWLVP est blow Zionism has received. The fact that two Tragically, Miller wrote, many Jewish leaders million more Jews, formerly persecuted under the “are adding fuel to the cries of these anti-Semites semi-fascist Polish government, were liberated, who proclaim that the Jews want to drag America made matters still worse — for Zionism.” These into the war.” But unlike them, “the Jewish people Jews, he continued, “are no more candidates for of America . . . are against this war [and] do not emigration” as “their problems have been truly want one single American young man to lose his solved by the Soviets.” For that same reason, “The life over there.” Miller concluded by noting that destruction of the scourge of fascism in Germany his organization, at a national conference held would hardly be welcomed by Zionist leadership, April 6th-7th, 1940, had resolved to remain relent- VLQFHWKLVZRXOGVWRSWKHÀRZRIHPLJUDQWVWRZDUGV less in leading the Jewish people “in the struggle Palestine.” to keep America at peace.” Organizations such as For Novick, the new imperialist war “again dem- B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Committee, the onstrated that the interests of Zionism run counter American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor to those of the Jewish people, who have nothing to Committee were hindering the work of the Jew- gain” from the war. He accused Stephen S. Wise, ish Peoples Committee, he added a year later in A president of the American Jewish Congress, and Message to American Jewry, because “they have the American Zionist leadership of wanting the no faith in the people [and] in democracy.” U.S. to enter the war “[c]ontrary to the wishes and Paul Novick, editor of the Frayhayt, condemned interests of the Jewish people in the United States the Zionist groups as “true servants of British as well as Palestine.” imperialism” who “seek to draw the Jewish people Apologists for the 1939 pact have defended it on two counts: First, they maintain, it prevented For Sale: Volume I, Nos. 1-8, the “reactionary” Western powers, who hated bol- of Israel Horizons, 1952-’53. shevism more than fascism, from pushing Hitler Bound volume, very good condition, eastwards. Britain and France had already shown $75, includes shipping. their true colors, they say, in the Autumn of 1938 Also available: Vol. 14, 1966, at Munich, where they reneged on their promise bound edition, $40, very good condition. to defend Czechoslovakia and allowed Germany )LUVWFRPH¿UVWVHUYHG to seize the Sudetenland and later the rest of the country. The Soviets had not even been invited to DOOSURFHHGVEHQH¿WJEWISH CURRENTS. the conference, and Stalin had concluded that Great Call 845 626-2427. Britain and France, having appeased the Nazis and thrown the Czechs to the wolves, might do the same The Sholem Aleichem were the Soviet Union threatened. So he decided to Bobblehead Doll turn the tables on them. The two powers had also $18 — available exclusively at enforced an arms embargo against the Spanish the JC Marketplace, Republic during the 1936-1939 civil war, allow- www.jewishcurrents.org ing the fascist-backed forces of Francisco Franco to win power.

24 JEWISH CURRENTS The second defense of the pact claims that it \HDUVLQGHHGWKH*HUPDQVEHQH¿WWHGIURPWKH bought the USSR time to prepare for war. During supplies of foodstuffs and raw materials that the this period, the USSR’s boundaries, from the Arc- Soviets had supplied them during this pact period. tic to the Black Seas, had been moved hundreds 7KLVEHFDPHFOHDULQWKH¿UVWWZR\HDUVDIWHUWKH of miles westwards, providing a buffer against 1941 Nazi invasion of Russia, when Germany con- aggression. quered huge areas of the USSR and took prisoner Neither of these rationales stands up to scrutiny. millions of Soviet soldiers. While it is true that the areas occupied by the USSR Although the American Communist movement in 1939-1940 were wrested from autocratic, back- gained a new lease on life among Jews in the 1941- ward regimes, the heavy-handed methods used by 1945 period, as it became evident that Germany was the Soviet occupiers — including mass deportations responsible for the deaths of millions of European to Siberia of “class enemies” by the dreaded So- Jews while the Soviet Union, America’s ally, bore viet secret police — made these populations hostile WKHEUXQWRIWKH¿JKWLQJWKH&386$ZDVQHYHU to Russia. In Poland, the stereotype of the anti- again as strong as it had been before the pact. The Polish, pro-Soviet Jew was reinforced during the Nazi attack on the USSR, and the subsequent mass Soviet occupation of the eastern Polish territories murder of the majority of Eastern European and in 1939-41. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, many Soviet Jews, punctured the fantasy that Stalin’s de- people in these regions greeted them as liberators cision to sign a pact with Hitler had wisely enabled ²DQGRIWHQLGHQWL¿HGWKHORFDO-HZLVKSRSXODWLRQV 6.5 million Jews to live safely and productively in with the Communists, which led to collaboration a peaceful Soviet Union. In the wake of the shift- and made the job of Nazi genocide easier. ing policies and rationales to which they had been In fact, the Soviet Union suppressed news of exposed during the pact years, even pro-Soviet Jews Germany’s anti-Semitic actions during the 1939- realized that they had been lulled into a false sense of 1941 period, in order not to offend Hitler. Jewish security. Those who remained in the movement were journalists in the USSR were forbidden to write never again as certain as they had been before 1941 about Nazi atrocities. Many Soviet Jews were there- that they could trust the USSR to protect Jews. JC fore caught unprepared when the Nazis invaded, DQGWKH\GLGQRWÀHHLQWLPHWRDYRLGGHDWK $ERXW one-third of the six million Jews eventually mur- Happy 85th Birthday to dered by the Nazis were killed on Soviet soil.) So friendly had the Soviets become with Hitler SAM LERNER that it carried into the realm of explicit “racial” anti-Semitism. According to Stanford University Truly a Mentsh! professor Herbert Lindenberger, the German Com- munist Party, which was, of course, underground by then, refused to accept Jews as members after With love — the signing of the Hitler-Stalin Pact! Defending the pact, Molotov himself had told journalists that Troim and Frank Handler “fascism is a matter of taste.” The USSR had Barbara and Lennie Feldman become, in effect, an ideological ally of Nazi Shirley and Jerry Anger Germany. $VIRUWKHFODLPWKDWWKH6RYLHWVEHQH¿WWHGIURP 0LOOLH6D¿U the time the pact bought for them, the relative Adele Olson strength of Nazi Germany vis-a-vis the USSR was Bernice Grader actually greater in 1941 than it had been in 1939. Hitler gained far more than Stalin during those two

AUTUMN 2009 25 Joel Schechter

paranoia, wit, and paradox, but these qualities surface more fully in his tales about Chelm, the fabled city of fools. Far removed from the actual Polish city of Chelm, Singer’s Chelm rivals Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland for the comic logic and ab- surd dicta issued by its rulers. Instead of having a Q`chb`k Queen of Hearts as tyrant, Singer gives his realm a would-be sage named Gronam Ox, whose reign Xhcchrg initiates war, revolution, and other events not al- ways regarded as suitable for children. “Children think about and ponder such matters as justice, the Chelm’s Fools and Ours purpose of life, the why of suffering,” the author once wrote, adding: “they cannot accept the fact saac Bashevis Singer (1904-1991) disas- that the strong should rule the weak.” Perhaps that sociated himself from Yiddish writers who is why weak and simple folk rule Chelm. I “fought for what they thought was a just Last spring I had the pleasure of directing actors world.” While other authors “scolded the rich and in a touring production of this story, which was praised the poor, I never felt this was my function read aloud to children of all ages in schools, com- in literature.” Singer rarely called for social justice munity centers, and at San Francisco’s Contem- in public statements, but the Nobel laureate did al- porary Jewish Museum. Accompanied by klezmer ORZFKDUDFWHUVLQKLV¿FWLRQWRVFROGWKHULFKSUDLVH accordion and comic sound effects, actors told the the poor, and seek a more just world. His idealistic story of a council of fools who declare war with- characters often prove to be misguided visionaries out good reason, lose a military invasion against or naïfs who speak narishkayt (foolishness). Nar- neighbors in Gorshkov, then see their own people ishkayt is not an entirely negative quality, however; suffer economic calamity. Only Yente Peshe, in a world where supposedly wise men promote Gronam Ox’s sensible wife, voices opposition to injustice and war, folly has its attractions. Chelm’s ill-fated invasion plan. Gronam asks the Who are wise men, and who are the fools? dissenting woman to remember she’s “address- Singer raises these questions in his long children’s ing the future Emperor of Gorshkov,” to which story, “The Fools of Chelm and Their History.” his wife replies: “Emperor, shmemperor. To me (Not included in his collection, Stories for Chil- you’re nothing but a fool of Chelm.” If only other dren, this tale was issued in 1973 as a book il- would-be emperors had such outspoken critics, the lustrated by Uri Shulevitz, with translation by world might be a better place. Elizabeth Shub. Regrettably, it is out of print and Singer’s fable about unnecessary war followed available only from rare-book dealers and some by economic crises could be a story about the children’s libraries.) United States right now. But he wrote it in Yid- dish, decades ago, and probably had the disasters Even Singer’s darkest novels about survivors of earlier European wars in mind. The names of from Eastern Europe feature episodes full of comic his sages (Shmendrick Numskull, Zeinvel Ninny, Shlemiel) indicate from the start that they are naïve individuals, whose lack of experience leads them Joel Schechter is a theater professor at San Francisco to start a war quickly, without an exit strategy. State University and author of Messiahs of 1933: Soon their army retreats in disorder and returns How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity home “half naked, barefoot, weaponless, with through Satire. broken noses and black eyes.”

26 JEWISH CURRENTS One of Uri Shulevitz’s witty illustrations for the book portrays bearded, armed Chelmites in disarray, with cooking pots and teakettles worn as helmets, kitchen forks, scissors and knives held aloft as weapons. The ragged army ORRNVXQ¿WIRUDQ\ZDUDQGQRW particularly dangerous, but obvi- ously their own worst enemy. After the lost war, undemocratic ¿DWVZRUVHQFRQGLWLRQVLQ&KHOP and lead to more folly. Gronam Ox is temporarily displaced by dictator Bunem Pokraka, who abolishes money. (He doesn’t bail out banks, because Chelm has only one vault, which is looted by Feitel Thief.) “Without money,” the new ruler The warriors of Chelm, illustration by Uri Shulveitz, boldly declares, “everyone will be from Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Fools of Chelm and Their History, 1973. equally poor” — as if this were a gift to his supporters. Had he declared that without story, “Property,” notes that anarchism “always money, everyone will be equally rich, Pokraka attracted people with individuality, even the igno- PLJKWKDYHEHHQPRUHVXFFHVVIXOLQVWHDGKLV¿- rant ones had a kind of independence. . . . In the nancial rescue plan fails, Chelmites protest, and Yiddish neighborhood on the Lower East Side, the abolition of money triggers the abolition of DQDUFKLVPVWLOOÀRXULVKHG´6LQJHUVKDUHVZLWKWKH Pokraka’s regime. /RZHU(DVW6LGH¶VDQDUFKLVWVD¿HUFHLQGLYLGXDOLW\ The story ends with the women of Chelm, tired and independence. That commitment leads him of the men’s miscalculations, taking over the lo- WRPRFNRI¿FLDOODQJXDJHDQGWKHDEVXUGJRYHUQ- cal government. Their coup might be regarded ment programs of Chelm, in passages such as as a defeat of patriarchal and tyrannical rule, if Bunam Pokraka’s declaration: “Gronam Ox is to one takes the conclusion seriously. Gronam Ox, abdicate. He must be forced to do so of his own would-be Supersage, protests against female- free will.” initiated change by telling his wife, “This is the Language itself is one source of Chelm’s end of the world.” Wiser than he by far, Yente problems. Before the word “crisis” existed in the Peshe replies: “Not the end of the world, but the fabled town, Singer reports, “there were no crises end of your tyranny.” That’s not quite the end of and no one tried to solve them.” Then Gronam the story, however, as the narrator reports that the Ox invented the word “crisis,” and erroneous wisdom of Chelm — which led it to lose a war in solutions followed. Of course, the language here WKH¿UVWSODFH²LVVSUHDGLQJ³7KHFKDQFHVDUH is all Singer’s. Chelm’s war and revolution are good that someday the whole word will be one his inventions, too, but they frequently recall and great Chelm.” So it may come to pass . . . parody the narishkayt of our own country, and that of other nations. A prophetic and comic vision for In his depiction of the Chelmites, Singer displays our time, “The Fools of Chelm and Their History” subtle anarchist tendencies — and I mean this as should be reissued and widely circulated in Yid- a compliment. One of his characters in his short dish and English. JC

AUTUMN 2009 27 Barnett Zumoff

MAME- Two Poems by Boris Sandler LOSHN ct

ON LISTENING TO BEETHOVEN

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, none other, was being played in the famous hall, and it never occurred to anyone there that Cain was murdering his brother.

The hearers were captivated by magical chords — the brotherhood of sound united them all. Which of them could possibly have imagined that the Crusade was preparing to unsheathe its swords?

Quiet in the hall — one could hardly hear a breath. EQUILIBRIUM The conductor was conducting eternity. Who sensed at such a moment In the park, in the springtime, that chimneys were belching the smoke of death? on a quiet, narrow bench, two little pigeons kiss: a ‘she’ and a ‘she.’ The chords were sustained by the orchestra — Above their heads, in the blue of the sky, immortality was delayed for another moment. two clouds embrace: a ‘he’ and another ‘he.’ Would there not remain in the world Only the Creator, alone as always, a single voice to cry “bravo!” to the maestro? is divided between ‘she’ and ‘he,’ His eternity shared with himself. He wavers — now toward the ‘he,’ now toward the ‘she,’ Boris SandlerLVRQHRIWKHPRVWSUROL¿FRIOLYLQJ

Dr. Barnett Zumoff, our translator, conducts our “Mameloshn column” and is a past president of the Workmen’s Circle. His sixteen books of Yiddish translation include Songs to a Moonstruck Lady: Women in Yiddish Poetry.

2288 JEWISH CURRENTS

BAYM HERN BETHOVN

Bethovn, simfonye numer nayn, Two Poems geshpilt hot men in dem barimtn zal, un keynem iz nisht ayngefaln, az by Boris Sandler dem bruder in retsikhe harget kayin.

Kishef fun muzik farkhapt hot yedn — geeynikt hot di brudershaft fun klang. Iz vemen volt in zinen kumen, az der kraytstsug iz shoyn greyt antbloyzn shverdn?!

Shtil in zal, me hert dem otem koym es — GHUGLULJHQWPLWH\ELNH\W¿UWRQ ,]YHU]KH¿OWLQDPLQXWD]D D]JX¿PUR\NKHUQVKR\QIXQGLNR\PHQV"

Hengen blaybt fermato in orkestro — umshterblekhkeyt farhalt nokh oyf a rege . . . Tsi den vet mer nisht blaybn in der velt EQUILIBRIUM a kol tsu shrayen “bravo” dem maestro?

In the park, in the springtime, on a quiet, narrow bench, GLAYKHGEVIKHT two little pigeons kiss: a ‘she’ and a ‘she.’ Above their heads, in the blue of the sky, Es hobn zikh in park um friling, two clouds embrace: a ‘he’ and another ‘he.’ oyf a shtiler bank a shmoler, Only the Creator, alone as always, tsvey taybelekh gekusht — a zi mit nokh a zi. is divided between ‘she’ and ‘he,’ Un iber zey’re kep in bloykeyt funem himl, His eternity shared with himself. tsvey volkns zikh gehaldzt —an er mit He wavers — now toward the ‘he,’ now toward nokh an er. the ‘she,’ Un bloyz der boyre, vi shtendik, elnt, as if a broad strip had been laid across the middle tseshpaltn tsvishn “zi” un “er” — of the sun’s disk. zayn eybikeyt geteylt mit zikh aleyn. +RZFDQRQH¿QGHTXLOLEULXPKHUH Un s’hot di linie funem horizont and who will point it out, gevaklt zikh — ot tsu dem “er,” ot tsu when two pigeons der “zi,” in the New York park, swooning, kiss, vi s’volt geven a bret a breyte and in the New York City sky aroyfgeleygt in mitn oyfn kaylekh fun WZRFORXGVKXJHDFKRWKHU¿HUFHO\" der zun. 9LNRQPHQGRGHPJOD\NKJHYLNKWJH¿QHQ un ver vet do dem glaykhgevikht onvayzn, az in nyu-yorker park tsvey toybn kushn zikh farkhalesht, un in nyu-yorker himl tsvey volkns haldzn zikh biz toyt?

AUTUMN 2009 29 the veteran members of Boston Workmen’s Circle and the “Young Turks” (as they called us back then) whom they were recruiting to provide new energy. While both generations shared the traditional Jew- ish focus on food, for example, the younger folks Linda Gritz did not embrace their elders’ enthusiasm for having catered luncheons at a hotel, while the older folks considered our 100-person potluck gatherings too FKDRWLF3HUKDSVPRUHVLJQL¿FDQWO\WKHROGHUIRONV Opening the Tent did not understand our desire to expand holiday observances beyond Hanukkah, Purim, and Pass- to Young Adults over. In their minds, Rosh Hashone and Yom Kippur were purely religious holidays and had no place in Developing the Content and Aesthetics the life of a secular Jew. (To be honest, I shared WKDWYLHZIRU\HDUVXQWLO,¿QDOO\DWWHQGHGDQGZDV of Holiday Rituals for a New Generation completely captivated by our meaningful secular observances — even though my father-in-law has jokingly “disowned” me for aiding and abetting o we have to sing ‘When I’m Gone’ such activities.) at Rosh Hashone and Yom Kippur Remembering those generational differences, we “D every year?” baby boomers in Boston Workmen’s Circle took “When I hear ‘Blowing in the Wind,’ I feel as if notice and reviewed our ceremonies from a new I’m in a documentary movie.” perspective. We formed a committee of young These comments from several young adults in adults and asked them to suggest ways to make our Boston Workmen’s Circle community caught themselves more comfortable in our boomer-domi- us by surprise. We had been singing these cherished QDWHGFRPPXQLW\DQGWRSURSRVHVSHFL¿FLGHDVIRU anthems of the 1960s for over twenty years, from the High Holidays. RXU¿UVW+LJK+ROLGD\JDWKHULQJVLQDFR]\%RVWRQ backyard to today’s programs in a rented church Boston Workmen’s Circle has actively sought with over four hundred attendees. young adult participation for the past several years: Most members of Boston Workmen’s Circle are hiring young adults as shuleWHDFKHUVDQGRI¿FH in their 50s and 60s, and — until this year — all staff, holding educational seminars geared towards the members of the ritual committee, which creates young adults, recruiting community organizers from WKH+LJK+ROLGD\SURJUDPV¿WWKDWGHPRJUDSKLF the Jewish Organizing Initiative (which provides It had not occurred to us that our programs were one-year fellowships for young activists), hosting JHQHUDWLRQVSHFL¿FVLQFHRXUDWWHQGHHVFRPSULVHG VFUHHQLQJVRIWKH¿OP³

30 JEWISH CURRENTS of the Jewish rituals of their childhoods. (Many of also interested in broadening our focus to Jews our members, young and old, are seeking spiritu- around the world. Until now, our rituals included ality without the supernatural.) Interestingly, this English, Hebrew, and Yiddish. Hebrew has the reso- diversity mirrors the backgrounds of the boomers nance of ancient tradition, and Yiddish is central to in our community: We are sprinkled with Yiddish- the mission of the Workmen’s Circle to foster “Jew- ists, social activists, and secularists with religious ish identity and participation in Jewish life through backgrounds. Jewish, especially Yiddish, culture and education, friendship, and the pursuit of social and economic The young adult group shared many proposals justice.” But we have been gently reminded that for the High Holidays, including: having a young Jews have come from other regions besides Eastern adult serve as emcee; having a young adult give the Europe and have spoken other languages besides d’var (each year, a member of our community is

32 JEWISH CURRENTS JCULTCHA

Shalom Gorewitz/Harriet Tubman Leads the Jews Out of Eastern Europe & FUNNY PAGES

AUTUMN 2009 33 34 JEWISH CURRENTS AUTUMN 2009 35 Miriam Boral/Sarah Laughs Jack Myers/Playing God

She suppresses a small snicker, With his arms raised to heaven yet it grows to a giggle, a guffaw, a bellowing Face in holy protest from deep within her wrinkled barren belly. My wooden rabbi glowers She clutches her sides, falls to the ground, rolling On the nakedness of my seductive woman with laughter loud enough to shake the earth under Abraham’s sandaled feet. Thirty years playing God On clay wood and stone creations He shushes her, beseeches her From my couch: a pouting clay redhead to cease, but the roaring swells until Exposing a coy bare shoulder an angry voice bellows from the skies: A walnut nun with downcast eyes “Why does Sarah laugh?” God demands, and An ironwood head half blind Sarah doubles over with renewed peals With mouth agape stares at me as her helpless husband throws hands to heavens and shakes his white-haired head. I cringe to think of my Orthodox zeyde’s censure Were he to see me wherever he may be

36 JEWISH CURRENTS Jack Myers/Playing God

Bernard Greenwald/David and Bathsheba #11-12

I. Century/Rules of the Pool, J.H.S. 40

The swimming teacher told the class You would have a red mark on your record not to piss in the pool. for the rest of your life. If you did, a chemical in the water would activate a red dye I didn’t believe him then, that would bubble up around you. I don’t believe him now, You would be taken to the police station but I never, never and charged with violating the Health Code. piss in the pool.

AUTUMN 2009 37 Harry Wilks/Crane Street, Long Island City, 2005

38 JEWISH CURRENTS AUTUMN 2009 39 Marc Jampole/Uncle Freddy’s Home Movies

In those days they lived on Amboy Street, fathers laid carpet, mothers worked part-time doing hair. Whenever Uncle Freddy aimed his eight-milli Polaroid they shamed him with their jokes. Now they watch in tears as the dead reanimate Ruth Berman/Eden Ornamentals and an ancient Brooklyn comes to life:

Row of Brownstones, Chinese laundry I vertical neon Deli sign. You’d think the plants would’ve had a day. The animals of sea and air had #5. A sweep across the grandstand, Ebbets Field, The animals of earth had #6. men and boys cheer and wave their matzos while at a distant second base a player wipes A mist went up in Eden red dust from his shirt and pants. Even before the rivers Rushed from the well Head cut off in black and white, To water the garden Bubby waddles towards us holding infant Ira to her hip. Even before there was Anyone to till the ground Aunt Ruth, hair in pin curls, looks up from ironing, sees the camera, II throws her hands across her face and runs away. There grew in Eden every fruit and herb The seeds of every plant Aunt Fran blows smoke rings at the screen WKHQVSLWVD¿OWHUOHVVEXWWDWWKHVWRRS That’s good for food.

Uncle Irving’s head emerges from a racing form But it was, after all, a garden and mouths a silent curse. Out in the east, Where the sun was rising — Cub Scout Harvey casts a hookless line towards a dolphin-patterned Melmac plate. There must have been ornamentals, too, As well as edibles Mom and Dad, thin and living, Rising up as fast as mushrooms dance among a crowd of family, my father counting steps. ,QWKH¿UVWUDLQ 'DGFLJDUHWWHVDJJLQJIURPOLSVSRLQWVWRRXU¿UVW79 And now we see a jiggly approach III to the enormous box with the tiny screen The tree of knowledge was and the wobby lines of Milton Berle in drag. Not only good for food But a delight to the eye. Mom walks down an airplane ladder, points to her swollen body IV thumping with my brother’s life. Still each year the winter passes Flowers appear on the earth And now the artist shoots himself: Roses of sharon 8QFOH)UHGG\ÀRDWLQJLQDPRXQWDLQODNH Lilies of the valley knees bent round an inner tube, :LOGÀRZHUVDQGFXOWLYDUV bath cap hanging off an ear, teeth hanging from his mouth, Paradise blooming in the grasses and the trees hand waving. Nathan Brenowitz Torah-True BASEBALL with authentic baseball cards collaged by Mikhail Horowitz

KH YHU\ ¿UVW ZRUGV RI 7RUDK DUH DERXW baseball: “In the big inning, God created Tthe heaven and earth.” As you explore Holy Scripture, it keeps getting better:

Genesis 6:9: “Noah walked . . .” Genesis 6:16: “. . . bottom, second and third decks.” Genesis 24:45: “Behold, Rebecca came forth with her pitcher . . .” Leviticus 4:18: “. . . out at the base . . .” Numbers 15:25: “. . . for it was an error . . .” Joshua 6:1: “none . . . out, and none came in . . .” Joshua 6:5: “. . . a long blast . . . that all the people shall shout with a great shout . . .” Joshua 8:17: “There was not a man left . . .” Judges 3:8: “ . . . the Lord was hot against Israel . . .” Judges 20: 18: “They said, ‘Which of us shall go XS¿UVW"¶7KH/RUGVDLGµ-XGDK¿UVW¶´ Samuel 10: 7: “And let it be, when these signs come to you, that you do as the occasion demands . . .”

n the summer of 2007 I had the good fortune New York City had three Major League Baseball to spend a month in Israel watching my son teams. I watched those games with my dad. Base- I /XNDV SOD\ LQ WKH ¿UVW ,VUDHO 3URIHVVLRQDO ball, fathers and sons: it’s in my blood. Baseball League. One might think that having The Israeli season lasted several months with a son working on a master’s degree in Middle games played almost every day (except Saturday, Eastern history would be a reason for a father to of course). The games all started with the singing be proud. Yes, I am proud of my son’s academic of Hatikvah, and the seventh-inning stretch was achievements, but they take a back seat to having replaced by the minkha service held beneath the WKH¿UVWHYHUSURIHVVLRQDOEDVHEDOOSOD\HULQWKH date trees. The weather was uncommonly hot and family. Now that’s a dream come true! every game was rigorous and extremely exciting. I grew up in Brooklyn, during the era when /XNDV ZDV D FDWFKHU DQG RXW¿HOGHU IRU WKH %HW

AUTUMN 2009 41 Shemish Blue Sox. He still carries a scar on his Australia, Dominican Republic, the United States DUPIURPDGLYLQJFDWFKKHPDGHLQOHIW¿HOGWR and Puerto Rico. It came down to a championship choke off an opponent’s rally . . . JDPH¿OOHGZLWKGUDPDDQGWHQVLRQVRWKLFN\RX Three of the teams were lucky to have retired could slice it with a ÀHLVKLJH knife. In the end, the American Jewish major leaguers as their manag- Bet Shemish Blue Sox, managed by the person- er: Ken Holtzman, Art Shamsky and Ron Blom- able and comical Ron Blomberg, won the cham- berg. The season was a roller coaster, with play- pionship. It was magic! HUVÀRZQLQIURPYDULRXVODQGVLQFOXGLQJ-DSDQ

arney Dreyfus, owner of the Pittsburgh cian Konstantin Medvedovsky, the hitters in the Pirates from 1900 to 1932, was the Jew- lineup of a Jewish all-star team would, over the B ish man who devised the World Series in course of a full season, actually score more runs 1903. And the theme song of the game we love, than such powerhouse teams as the 1998 Yankees “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” was written by (114-48 won-lost record), the 1986 Mets (108- a Jewish songwriter Albert Von Tilser (born Albert 54), and the 1954 Indians (111-43). What’s more, Gumm, 1878-1956) and his Tin Pan Alley partner, the Hebrew hurlers would also allow fewer runs Jack Norworth. than the mound men on these legendary clubs. $PRQJ-HZLVKSOD\HUVWKH¿UVWWRFRPHWRPLQG My Jewish all-star team would have Mike are always the Dodgers’ unhittable Sandy Koufax, Lieberthal behind the plate. Lieberthal played for a three-time Cy Young Award winner, and Hank the Philadelphia Phillies and in 1996 batted .300 Greenberg, home run king of the Detroit Tigers. with 31 home runs. That’s not chopped liver for The list of noteworthy Jewish players however, a guy forced to crouch behind the plate on every is much lengthier. According to baseball statisti- pitch. Harry Danning of the 1933-’42 New York

42 JEWISH CURRENTS Giants would share the catching. My Jewish shortstop would be Lou Boudreau, Hank Greenberg, perhaps the greatest Jewish who in 1948 batted .355 while also managing his SOD\HUHYHUZRXOGEHDW¿UVWEDVH+LV¿IW\HLJKW Cleveland Indians to a World Series title. The homers in 1938, which almost broke Babe Ruth’s RXW¿HOGZRXOGFRQVLVWRI6LG*RUGRQDWKLUWHHQ record of 60, brought hate letters to him daily. \HDU PDMRU OHDJXH RXW¿HOGHU DQG LQ¿HOGHU ZLWK This was a foreshadowing of the abuse that Jackie the Giants, the Boston Braves and the Pirates; Robinson would experience a decade latter. Elliot Maddox, an African-American player who At second base I would start Ian Kinsler, who converted to Judaism in 1974; and Shawn Green currently plays for the Texas Rangers. In 2008 he of (most notably) the Toronto Blue Jays and Los hit .319 with a .527 slugging percentage. Buddy $QJHOHV 'RGJHUV ZKR HQGHG KLV ¿IWHHQ\HDU Myer of the 1925-’41 Washington Senators, who career with more than 2,000 hits and 328 home is the all-time Jewish hit leader with 2,131 hits, runs. On the bench would be Ryan Braun, 2007 would platoon with Kinsler. Rookie of the Year, and Art Shamsky, a member Al Rosen of the Cleveland Indians would be at of the 1969 Mets who batted .538 in the National third base. In 1953, he missed winning the Triple League Championship Series, helped the Mets Crown by a mere point in his batting average. The win the World Series, and made skeptics believe Triple Crown (leading the league in batting aver- in miracles. age, home runs and runs batted in, all at once) has How appropriate that our Designated (or “Cho- been achieved only sixteen times in baseball his- sen”) Hitter is Ron Blomberg. After all, when tory, and not for the past forty-two years (Boston’s Blomberg stepped up to the plate for the Yankees Carl Yastrzemski in 1967), and not in the Nation- on April 6thKHEHFDPHEDVHEDOO¶VYHU\¿UVW al League in seventy-two years (St. Louis’ Joe DH. Medwick in 1937). Al Rosen had himself quite a On the mound would be Sandy Koufax, Ken year! Holtzman (who keeps kosher and is the all-time

AUTUMN 2009 43 winningest Jewish pitcher with 174 victories), and José Bautista, who was 10-3 with a 2.82 ERA for Steve Stone, who was 25-7 for the Baltimore Ori- the Chicago Cubs in 1993. Born to a Dominican oles in 1980 and won the Cy Young Award. father and an Israeli mother, José was a bar mitsve In the bullpen would be Larry Sherry, MVP and would never play on the High Holidays. relief pitcher of the 1959 World Series, in which Other notable characters on my team would his Dodgers defeated the Chicago White Sox, and be Moe Berg, who may be the only true genius

44 JEWISH CURRENTS ever to be a major leaguer. Moe, a catcher on four teams, spoke several languages and served as an undercover spy for the U.S. to determine the de- gree of progress the Germans were making toward building a nuclear bomb. Casey Stengel described him as the “strangest man ever to play baseball.” I’d also make use of Andy Cohen, who in 1928 re- placed the great Roger Hornsby at second base for the St. Louis Cardinals. Cohen was carried off the ¿HOGE\-HZLVKIDQVDIWHUKLVWKUHHKLWVSURSHOOHG the Giants to an opening-day win. There have been more than a hundred and sixty Jewish major leaguers, so I could go on . . . I mentioned Elliott Maddox as a starter in my RXW¿HOG +LV VWRU\ DFWXDOO\ KROGV WKH DQVZHU WR baseball’s future, especially with all of today’s steroids scandals. In 1973, Maddox batted a puny .238. During the off-season he was acquired by the New York Yankees and made a monumental life-decision by converting to Judaism. In 1974, Attention all major leaguers, to improve your sta- his batting average improved to a very respectable tistics, forget about the steroids — simply convert .303 (sixth in the league); in 1975, he batted .307. to Judaism!! JC

Elaine Schear/Before She Was My Mother

She glowed before the foaming smash of Niagara WKDW¿UVWPDUULHGVXPPHULQXSVWDWH1HZ

glad to be pregnant, but more than the baby, the belly of success, her bright open face as if to say Look! I’ve got a man and he got me this way!

That was before the infant broke water, before thick snow bore down into rooftops, before she pressed hankies

for his new job in Batavia which she called Siberia. That was before mortar nightmares, malaria sweats. She missed her mother’s cooking,

her sister’s gossip, high-heeled treks across the Brooklyn Bridge, stroking her purse where the latest letter from her sergeant lay waiting.

AUTUMN 2009 45 Elaine Schear/Lipstick

I watch my mother from the hallway outside the examining room. She sits in the elevated chair dwarfed by its levers and lights.

An eyelid descends involuntarily over one eye. Her face has taken on a lopsided look.

Her Florida sandals dangle above the footrest. She’s been left in this room for almost an hour.

She’s here for the best of the best in this medical Mecca, P\VFKHPHIRU¿QGLQJWKHH[SHUWRSWKDOPRORJLVW

When my friend told me, if you take your mother to the doctor make sure she’s wearing lipstick, I was appalled.

Studies have proved that sick women get better care when they wear lipstick, even while in their beds after surgery.

I don’t know the names of the specialists here nor do they know my mother. I race to the nearest Walgreens and choose the shade Bold Berry.

My mother’s old but game to try the glamour trick. The doc comes in and greets her by name. She winks at me with her good eye.

Judith Kerman/Imagining Sukkot —Your tents, O Yaacov

The children camped across the desert 40 years with never any rain to fall on them holes in a roof and stares eyes glowing red not solid anyway but thatched LQWRWKHÀDVKOLJKW with branches starlight gleams through gaps in the dark branches as we the delusion that there could be try to sleep on an air mattress stone palaces on a pressure-treated deck now the kids want to in the backyard of a suburban house put up a nylon tent the silence never absolute next to the barbecue WKHVRXQGRIIUHHZD\WUDI¿F they giggle at crackling branches carried miles on the wind the possum who lives under the neighbor’s shed once a year for a week VFXIÀHVWKURXJKWKHOHDYHV hoping it won’t rain.

46 JEWISH CURRENTS Lawrence Bush/Teshuvah 1-3

AUTUMN 2009 47 Serena Stamler was liberated from the Mauthausen concentration camp in Germany in 1945 by an $PHULFDQEDWWDOLRQFRQVLVWLQJSULPDULO\RIEODFNVROGLHUV,WZDVWKH¿UVWWLPHWKDW6HUHQDKDGVHHQD black person, having been raised in pre-war Hungary, a homogeneous European society. To Serena, they were heroes. “I could kiss their feet,” she said. Upon coming to America, Seren was surprised how badly blacks were treated here. She was a single mother of eight children when she arrived in Brooklyn in 1946. She supported herself as a kosher cook in hotels. Serena lived in Borough Park with her 77-year-old widowed daughter. Although she lived in this country for nearly half a century, Serena spoke no English, managing with her Hungarian and Yiddish in her community. She could be found on most Sundays in Amnon’s Kosher Pizza shop, where her relatives in Brooklyn visited her at her regular table. Serena died in her sleep on August 18, 2003, at the age of 107.

Nina Talbot/Serena’s Story

48 JEWISH CURRENTS JCULTCHA & FUNNY PAGES BIOS

Ruth Berman¶VSRHWU\DQG¿FWLRQKDYHDSSHDUHGLQ Judith Kerman is a poet, performer and artist who Jewish Frontier, Shofar, Saturday Review, Asimov’s has published eight books or chapbooks of poetry, Science Fiction, Birdwatcher’s Digest, South Dakota most recently Galvanic Response (March Street Press) Quarterly, Poem, and other journals. and the bilingual collection, Plane Surfaces/Plano de Incidencia (Santo Domingo: CCLEH). Kerman was a Miriam Boral lives in Austin, Texas. Her poetry has Fulbright Senior Scholar to the Dominican Republic appeared in Visions International. in 2002. A book of Dominican translations, Praises and Offenses, is forthcoming from BOA Editions. Nathan Brenowitz is a diehard Mets fan whose own baseball career began at age 43 when he organized Jack Myers is a retired teacher who has been pub- an over-40 baseball league in Kingston, New York. lished by the New York Times and the American He is a co-founder of the Woodstock Jewish Congre- Poetry Society. gation. Elaine Schear is a writer, swimmer, tutor, and man- Lawrence Bush edits JEWISH CURRENTS and is the ager of a household for her tween and teen daughters author of American Torah Toons: 54 Illustrated Com- DQGPDWH6KHLVFRIRXQGHURIDQRQSUR¿WIRXQGDWLRQ mentaries, among other books. supporting teachers and students at her daughter’s high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her poetry I. Century is the author of From the Coffeehouse of DQG¿FWLRQKDYHEHHQSXEOLVKHGLQOLWHUDU\MRXUQDOV Jewish Dreamers, among other books of poetry. and newspapers.

Shalom Gorewitz (www.gorewitz.com) has been Joel Schechter is the author of Messiahs of 1933: working with new communication technology since How American Yiddish Theatre Survived Adversity the late 1960s creating poetic, intellectual, and politi- through Satire. Spain Rodriguez is an underground cally charged art videos relating to faith, relationships, comic artist, illustrator, most recently, of Che: A and social issues. Most recently, Gorewitz produced Graphic Biography, and a founder of the United Hot Stains, inspired by a term scientists use to describe Cartoon Workers of America. Joel and Spain recently places that have run out of clean water. His Harriet published Rivington Street, a book of comics about Tubman collage (page 33) references Elizabeth Catlett Yiddish culture, most of which have appeared in and Camille Pissarro. JEWISH CURRENTS.

Bernard Greenwald was a professor of studio arts Nina Talbot (http://ninatalbot.com) lived in the at Bard College for four decades until his retirement Bronx with her maternal grandparents, immigrants this year. He works extensively with Hudson Valley from pre-WWII Poland. Her paintings have been landscapes and also creates paintings and etchings on shown at the Bread & Roses/1199 gallery, the Wil- Biblical themes. liamsburg Historical Center, the Ingber Gallery, and in the Bronx Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, and in Mikhail Horowitz is a performance poet, musician the Smithsonian Institute’s traveling exhibition “Three and collage artist, author of Big League Poets, The Brooklyn Artists.” Opus of Everything in Nothing Flat, and Rafting Into the Afterlife. His baseball cards are collages built upon Harry Wilks (www.harrywilks.com) has been hauling authentic cards. his cameras up to New York City rooftops for twenty- ¿YH\HDUVWRUHYHDODQXUEDQODQGVFDSHWKDWSHRSOH Marc Jampole is the principal of a public relations wouldn’t ordinarily see on their own. His photographs agency in Pittsburgh. His poetry has been published in are included in the collections of the Metropolitan Mississippi Review, Oxford Review, Janus Head, Nega- Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum tive Capability, Main Street Rag,and other journals, of the City of New York, the George Eastman House, and has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize. and numerous other museums.

AUTUMN 2009 49 Yankl Stillman cially if you are interested in Yiddish, or linguistics, or the history of the Middle East and Central Eu- rope. As I thumbed through each volume, I found OUR SECULAR JEWISH HERITAGE myself enthralled repeatedly by a word or phrase. Right at the beginning, for example, on page11 of Volume 1, Weinreich notes that “as soon as Abraham Cahan [long-time editor of the Forverts newspaper] used the word “olraytnik” [to mock Jews who have “made it”], it was accepted, for it was easy to identify the -nik of the brand-new word” with similar uses of -nik (a Slavic ending) Weinreich’s Monumental in existing words like nudnik, shmaravoznik, sh- History of Yiddish limezalnik. Weinreich compares this to Khayim Zhitlowsky’s use of -ekhts to coin a word like “radikalekhts,” to signify an inferior radicalism ax Weinreich’s History of the Yiddish — which is understandable when one thinks of Language, published last year by Yale “shraybekhts,” inferior writing. M University Press in cooperation with On page 182, Volume 1, there is a brief discus- the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, is a two- sion of kreplekh, dumplings that are eaten on Purim volume set with 733 pages of text and 988 pages and Yom Kippur eve. Weinreich says that this is a of notes, index and bibliography. “The history deeply entrenched Jewish custom, but “Catholics of Yiddish,” Weinreich writes, “and the history in western Germany [also] eat dumplings on fast of Ashkenaz are identical — and far more than days.” Fascinating! PHUHO\FKURQRORJLFDOO\/DQJXDJHUHÀHFWVOLIH´ On page 399 of Volume Two, note 7.13 discusses In this book, “Ashkenaz” ( Hebrew for Germany) the pronunciation of Yiddish’s Lithuanian dialect, denotes the general geographical area of France DQGWKHLQÀXHQFHRI%DE\ORQLD PRGHUQ,UDT RQ and Germany from which Yiddish and the Ashke- central Europe. The note ends up discussing the nazim stem. 11th-century French Talmudist Rashi’s ties to the “The book is constructed,” Weinreich writes yeshiva in Pumbeditha, Babylon (which closed in further, “so that the reader may go through the work the year of Rashi’s birth, 1040 CE). The sages in and thought processes of the author. Numerous WKDWFLW\DQGLQ6XUDZHUHFKLHÀ\UHVSRQVLEOHIRU points required technical detail and methodological the creation of the Babylonian Talmud. GHOLEHUDWLRQLQRUGHUQRWWRLQWHUUXSWÀRZRIWKH presentation, the . . . material has been divided into Dr. Weinreich (1894-1969), a linguist and histo- two parts, text and notes, to be used together.” The rian, wrote his History in Yiddish as a four-volume notes are often longer than the corresponding text set over the course of many years. It was published and frequently expand and supplement it. In brief, posthumously in Yiddish by YIVO (Yidisher this is an encyclopedia of some 1,700 pages. Visnshaftslekher Institut, LHWKH-HZLVK6FLHQWL¿F These are not books with which you would sit Institute), and has now been translated into English down to relax, but the material is fascinating, espe- by Dr. Shlomo Noble, YIVO research associate, as- sisted by Dr. Joshua Fishman of Yeshiva University. The entire English text, notes, bibliography and YANKL STILLMAN, our regular columnist, has trans- indices have been cross-checked with the original lated the works of Mendele Moykher Sforim and Yiddish and edited for accuracy and completeness Joseph Opatoshu, among other Yiddish literary — in itself a major undertaking — by Dr. Paul lights. Glasser of YIVO.

50 JEWISH CURRENTS The work is not only a history of the Yiddish Talmudic method of inquiry, also known as pilpul, language, but also of the culture of the Ashkenazi that involves the sharp questioning of all assump- community. Weinreich contextualizes Yiddish tions. Absorption of this method has given Yiddish among all Jewish languages, starting with Aramaic an intimate quality. Harold Bloom, in reviewing and Hebrew at the time of the Babylonian exile and Weinreich’s work in the New York Review of Books, advancing to Judezmo (which the book spells as offers sample questions that have entered daily “Dzhudezmo”), Judeo-Arabic and contemporary Yiddish life (and into American-Jewish humor) be- Jewish languages. He distinguishes among Biblical cause of the Talmudic mindset: “Why not?” “Why Hebrew, loshn-koydesh (literally the “holy tongue,” ask?” “Who is asking?” “Is there a choice?” — all which became the Hebrew used in synagogues and examples of the pilpul way of answering questions the Hebraic element in Yiddish over the course of with questions. centuries), and ivrit, the Hebrew used in daily life in Israel today. He discusses the relationship between Around the year 1000, several contemporary Eu- language and society, and in this sense his book is ropean languages began to emerge. Among them, an important general linguistics work. Weinreich’s in a region that came to be known as Loter, along grasp also includes folklore, psychology, cultural the Rhine and Moselle Rivers in Germany/France, history and literature. By far the main focus of his Yiddish was born. Other locations have been pro- work, however, is Ashkenazi Yiddish, its growth posed — elsewhere in Germany, or among refugees and development among other languages and its life from the Khazar empire in the Caucasus whose among the cultures of other peoples in Europe. language migrated west to become “German- As Paul Glasser writes in his preface, “Having ized” before migrating back east — but as Glasser read through the entire work numerous times in both points out, Weinreich’s Loter theory still reigns Yiddish and English, I continue to be astonished by supreme. the breadth and depth of Weinreich’s scholarship.” Variants of German were spoken in this region. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a note on The Jews there created their own language, which the chapter entitled, “Yiddish in the Framework included fragments of Hebrew and elements of the of Other Jewish Languages.” The subject is the vernacular languages — usually of Romance origin

AUTUMN 2009 51 Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future? Our Discussion Continues

he May-June issue of our magazine fo- • Why do you think secular Jewish identity has cused almost exclusively on analyses of been so marginalized in Jewish life today? To what T the decline of Jewish secularism to its do you attribute the decline of the vibrant secular struggling status today. Three articles, as well as Jewish culture of one or two generations ago? eighteen responses from people from various cor- ners of the secular Jewish world, described the va- • What steps/models/actions do you think would rieties of Jewish secularism and the processes of help revive secular Jewish identity as an alterna- assimilation, anti-Semitism, political and cultural WLYH ZD\ RI EHLQJ DQ DI¿UPDWLYH -HZ LQ WRGD\¶V repression, and internal factors that led to that de- world? What’s getting in the way? cline. Representatives of thriving secular Jewish communities also offered some “best practices” • To what extent do you see possibilities of turning advice and thereby turned the conversation to- the secular-religious “wall” into something per- wards the future. PHDEOH"7RZKDWH[WHQWLV\RXURZQLGHQWLW\ÀXLG We now continue the discussion, with more in this way? short essays that respond to these questions:

Eric Caplan Preparing for a Cultural Shift

bserving contemporary American Juda- atheists uncomfortable. LVP DV D ZKROH VHFXODU -HZV FDQ ¿QG On the other hand, Orthodox Jews constitute a O enough in it to encourage them or to JURZLQJSHUFHQWDJHRI$PHULFD¶VDI¿OLDWHG-HZV depress them. On the one hand, there is great continue to hold right-leaning positions on most LQWHUHVWLQ-HZLVK¿OPVPXVLFDQGRWKHUQRQUH- political and social issues, and are likely to wield ligious, cultural expressions of Jewish identity. LQFUHDVLQJLQÀXHQFHRQWKHSRVLWLRQVRIWKHRI¿- Growing numbers of Jews engage in social justice cial Jewish community. Of the growing number — a commitment dear to secular Judaism since RI-HZVZKRGRQRWDI¿OLDWHZLWKV\QDJRJXHVWKH its inception — doing so as a response to Jewish PDMRULW\VWLOOGH¿QHWKHPVHOYHVDVUHOLJLRXV6WXG- history rather than to please a commanding God. ies also indicate that American Jews are more in- Religion itself has been secularized, focusing dividualistic than their predecesors. This is espe- above all on improving the lives of its adherents cially challenging for secular Jewish organizations in the “now.” The afterlife is a minor, if not van- because they see Jews as a people with a priori ishing, concern. As Lawrence Bush and Mitchell attachments and responsibilities to each other. Silver have shown in their latest books, much of All of these developments mirror trends in contemporary Jewish theology presents God in American life that are unlikely to change in the naturalist terms, avoiding statements that make very near future. But the present cultural moment

52 JEWISH CURRENTS — for good and for bad — will pass. It is not hard ish organizations should reach out to the many to imagine a change in cultural winds that would new Jewish groups organizing cultural events and reposition Jewish secular organizations. After all, social activism. There they will encounter strong it was only twenty-three years ago that Jonathan numbers of Jews who are engaged with the same Woocher was able to describe American Jews as cultural aspects of Jewish peoplehood that secular embracing a “civil Judaism” built on the very na- Judaism promotes. But while these new groups tional ties that have become so elusive in contem- can organize a successful event or series of events, porary American Jewish life. they are not built to offer a full range of permanent What should secular Jews do while awaiting community ties. Ultimately, people need a com- this possible cultural shift? One thing that they prehensive community within which to celebrate should not do is tone down their atheism or their their simkhesDQG¿QGVXSSRUWLQKDUGWLPHV7KH commitment to Jewish peoplehood in the hope of HVWDEOLVKHG VHFXODU -HZLVK RUJDQL]DWLRQV FDQ ¿OO attracting more Jews. The most successful groups this vacuum, and their ability to do so may be key in America put forth a clear position that differ- to their survival. entiates them from the general culture and from other groups. They offer a distinct approach to life Eric Caplan is chair of Jewish Studies at McGill WKDWMXVWL¿HVWKHLQYHVWPHQW ¿QDQFLDODQGRWKHU- University and author of From Ideology to Liturgy: wise) demanded by group membership. Reconstructionist Worship and American Liberal On the proactive side, established secular Jew- Judaism (2003).

Paul C. Mishler The Zionist Stumbling Block

he “Jewish secular progressive tradition” has to go beyond the relationship between our- is a euphemism and we cannot move into selves and religious Jews. The “secular-religious Tour future without going to the heart of divide” may have been important a hundred years the euphemism. What we really mean is that we ago when Jewish activists in the labor and radi- are part of a tradition that rejected all supernatural cal movements broke with their own religious up- notions of divinity and looked to a radical restruc- bringing and fashioned a different way of being a turing of the social order to bring about social jus- Jew. They argued that the Jewish community was tice for Jews and everyone else. Traditionally this DQHWKQLFFXOWXUDOFRPPXQLW\GH¿QHGE\FRPPRQ meant we were atheists of the left. Those of us experiences and, very importantly, a common who continue to identify as progressive, secular language, Yiddish. (Of course they were thinking Jews are radicals and not religious. about their own community in Eastern Europe and With this as an introduction there are a number did not incorporate the Sephardim or other Jew- of critical questions raised — and omitted — in ish religious communities with different cultural JEWISH CURRENTS that we need to unpack and traditions.) critique in order to address where we as a commu- The relationship between these secular Jews nity, and as individuals within a number of com- and the religious communities in which they had munities, can go. grown up was central to their analysis and sense of )LUVW WKH GH¿QLWLRQ RI -HZLVK VHFXODU LGHQWLW\ identity. Yet so was the relationship they conceived

AUTUMN 2009 53 with the non-Jewish world. Instead of believing in within the Jewish community, it is obvious that a the ineradicability of anti-Semitism, they looked direct confrontation with the Zionist sentimental- to the solidarity possible between Jewish and non- ity pervasive in the U.S. Jewish community would Jewish oppressed peoples. Jewish (especially Yid- EHDPLVWDNH%XWLIZHDUHLQWHUHVWHGLQGH¿QLQJ dish-speaking) activists participated in the broader ourselves, we should be clear that our worldview radical movements in the countries in which they is not their worldview. lived, and argued not only for the recognition of Finally, Bush’s discussion of the debates within Jewish ethnicity in international radical contexts, the secular Jewish world between the “left” and but also for the recognition of the non-Jewish the “right” reduces this to a kind of camp color movement within the Jewish communities. war between Kinderland and Kinder Ring. I know This has been crucial in the United States, where that at this point in history these battles may seem the movement for social justice has been, and will arcane. But they were important. It seems that ev- be, largely non-Jewish. Jews have distinguished eryone from the “left” part of this tradition is sup- themselves in making solidarity against racism posed to apologize for the policies of the Soviet — and against all other forms of discrimination government, but somehow the role of the “right” and oppression — central to who we are. The im- is left alone. If the Jewish communist left saw the portant question for us now is: What is required Soviet Union with idealistic rose-colored glasses, in our relationship to the multiple communities the “right” have more direct positions to answer engaged in struggle? for. It was Jewish social democracy that defended the Vietnam War. It was Jewish social democ- This leads me to something most important racy that split the long alliance between Jewish that was absent in Lawrence Bush’s cartoon-es- labor and the African-American community dur- say: the profoundly negative role of Zionism. Here ing the 1968 teachers strike in New York. It was I am not addressing the particular issues of Israeli Jewish social democracy that ended up support- policy, but the Zionist ideological position, which ing the role of the Central Intelligence Agency in has positioned itself in opposition to the progres- the AFL-CIO based on the belief that the anti-co- sive tradition in the Jewish community. While we lonial movements in the developing world were are skeptical of state power and — following in fundamentally anti-Semitic because they saw in the footsteps of the best of our biblical prophets the struggle of the Palestinians a sister struggle. — judge our leaders on the basis of where they These were, and remain, positions that damaged stand in relation to justice, Zionism, like all na- the struggles for justice here, and contributed to tionalisms, claims our allegiance regardless of the deadly policies in Latin America. When do they justice or injustice of Israeli state policies. While have to apologize for that? our tradition is internationalist and anti-racist and I had hoped to write about my tradition in an sees the future of our people as tied to justice for elegiac and celebratory fashion. Instead I have all peoples, Zionism holds that what happens to ended up with the other Jewish trope: being ar- others matters less than what happens to Jews, and gumentative and critical. Still, I do think there that other peoples, especially colonized people is a future for us. Our history and tradition calls of the Mideast, are less than we are. The Zion- upon us to bring our Jewish sensibility into the LVWDUJXPHQWLVWKDWWKH+RORFDXVWMXVWL¿HVDQDU- broader movements for social justice here and row self-preservationist perspective, when in fact around the world. Ours is not better than other tra- the history of the Holocaust is full of examples ditions, and we need to be in respectful dialogue of non-Jews acting in solidarity with us (not least with the other social justice traditions — those of among the nations that united to defeat Nazi Ger- the African American community, Christian tradi- many militarily). tions, and the frameworks brought by more recent For those radical Jews committed to working LPPLJUDQWV:HNQRZKRZGLI¿FXOWVROLGDULW\LV

54 JEWISH CURRENTS and how desperately it is needed. There are many young Jews who are distinguishing themselves in Paul C. Mishler teaches Labor studies at Indiana the current struggles in the labor movement, in University South Bend. His book Raising Reds the global justice movements, in gender justice looks at left-wing culture for children, including the struggles and many more. If we cannot offer them history of Kinderland and similar children’s institu- a real tradition to be part of, we will lose them. We tions from the 1920s to the 1950s. He has also writ- will not lose them from the struggle for social jus- ten about the Jewish left, U.S. radicalism in general, tice, but from the Jewish people. And that would and about current issues facing the labor movement. be a great loss.

Adam Chalom The Advantages of a Congregation

y maternal grandparents were in a person, marrying a non-Jew, or marrying a political Jewish secularist intermarriage: one conservative (i.e. “fascist”)? In other words, was it M from Workmen’s Circle, the other MXVWD-HZLVKÀDYRURIVRFLDOLVPEHLQJSUDFWLFHGRU from the Sholem Aleichem shules. My mother at- ZDVLWDVRFLDOLVPLQÀHFWHG-HZLVKQHVV" tended a Sholem Aleichem shule and a Farband 3) Losing your horses: Even among those for (Yiddish-speaking Labor Zionist summer camp) whom Yiddish was an end in itself, America is and loves her Yiddish. There were other factors, where languages come to fade — as has happened however, that prompted her and others like her to in many ethnic groups — and not just because per- move away from a secular Jewish community and nicious German Jews try stamping it out. If you towards a Jewish congregation besides the fear of hitch your wagon to socialism (though “bourgeois” anti-Semitism and the desire for social acceptance liberalism becomes more attractive as you rise eco- described by April Rosenblum. nomically) and to Yiddish (in which the third gen-  $IÀXHQFH6RPH-HZVVWRSSHGEHLQJVRFLDO- eration can swear but not read, write or converse), ists because the labor movement was successful. you end up needing a new driving force to keep a Children of sweatshop laborers became profession- secular Jewish identity moving. als, and children of professionals became academ- 4) Attraction: There are strengths to the religious ics and intellectuals. Once you are more successful model of the beyt kneset (synagogue) as a house of and have more “stuff,” an economic revolution is meeting that have attracted formerly secular Jews, both more abstract and too radical. You may well even beyond their desire for social acceptance. Here keep voting Democratic, but socialism or commu- WKH\FRXOGFHOHEUDWHPRUH-HZLVKKROLGD\VGH¿QH nism just aren’t who you are any more. their connection to Jewish tradition positively rath- 2) Priorities: In the secular Jewish world, politics er than in opposition, and have an expert guide to could be more important than Jewishness.Yiddish Jewish life and personal philosophy “on staff” to was the mameloshn, but for some it turned out to KHOSLQVSHFLDODQGGLI¿FXOWPRPHQWV be a means to the end of socialism. The leftism was A Humanistic Jewish congregation, in particular, transmitted, but not always the secular yidishkayt. enabled my veltlikhe yidishe mame to have her sec- Which was the greater “sin”: marrying a religious ular beliefs and her cultural Judaism, and eat some

AUTUMN 2009 55 Jewish tradition (as appropriate), too. manistic Judaism (or whatever you call it) should Rather than castigating those who joined congre- try to bring them all together by what they share gations as submitting to “circumstances of oppres- — a cultural Jewish identity driven by a human- sion and fear,” we should also explore the positive focused philosophy of life — which is greater than reasons they made their choice, and then reach out what divides them. to them with new alternatives that speak to them Demanding that secular Jewish circles believe in where they are, not where their parents were or all 95 Theses means a small future, not the serious where we want them to be. This is what Humanistic presence we both need and deserve. Judaism strives to do — to reach secular Jews from many backgrounds: raised secular, raised Conser- vative or Reform or even Orthodox and evolved Rabbi Adam Chalom is dean of the International out of those origins; Americanized Israeli and Rus- Institute for Secular Humanistic Judaism, North sian Jews; “just Jews” who feel culturally and eth- America and rabbi at Kol Hadash Humanistic Con- nically Jews. A big-tent secular Jewishness or Hu- gregation in suburban Chicago.

Alice Rothchild Secularism Is Endangered without Progressivism

he vigorous secular Jewish culture of the occupation, politically progressive Jews found early 20th century was grounded in a potent themselves forced to choose between an uncriti- T mix of yidishkayt and progressive politics. cal love of Israel or a complex, multi-dimensional Yiddish, the language of the worker as well as the understanding of the Middle East. Many secular poet, was a fertile vehicle for American populism Jews, uninvolved with any form of religious Juda- and activism, melded to a Jewish identity stretch- ism and weighted with a sense of alienation from ing back to the shtetls of Eastern Europe. As Jews the basic tribal instincts of the group, began to ask: lost their underdog/outsider status, many assimilat- Why be Jewish, if it means bearing responsibility ed or joined suburban temples, and the old-world for a country that is building walls and ghettos and cohesion and the political pull of union struggles, treating Palestinians with a mixture of hubris and civil rights, and women’s liberation lost their po- racism? tency. The policies of the Israeli government — de- On another front, with the founding of the State spite the country’s vibrant educational, cultural, of Israel in 1948, Jewish identity increasingly be- and religious contributions — have thus tainted came synonymous with Zionism. Immediately many Jews’ pride in their history and their sense after the Holocaust, this presented few issues for that Jews are on the side of justice. Without that Jews, secular or religious, and was a point of group sense, secular Jews are an increasingly endan- FRKHVLRQ%XWWKH,VUDHOL3DOHVWLQLDQFRQÀLFWJURXQG gered species. Besides self-deprecating humor, on for decades, with the emergence of painful klezmer music, and comforting food, there is less insights from Israeli historians and increasing and less to draw upon in secular Jewish culture awareness of a coexisting Palestinian narrative. that is both particularly engaging and particularly With the destructive persistence of the Israeli Jewish. The rise of the Jewish right, their links to

56 JEWISH CURRENTS Christian evangelicals, and the muzzling of Jew- the next generation in search of their unique place, ish dissent on the topic of Israel, push many secu- identity, and community. lar Jews over the edge. The paucity of vibrant and growing progressive Alice Rothchild is an obstetrician and gynecologist Jewish secular movements and cultural institu- and author of Broken Promises, Broken Dreams: tions combined with the troubling consequences Stories of Jewish and Palestinian Trauma and Re- of Zionism, make secular Judaism a hard sell to sistance.

Jerald Bain An Unorthodox View of Survival

espite the cover title — “Does Jewish Sec- it is warm and fuzzy and heartwrenching to recall ularism Have a Future?” — the May-June the past fondly — but yes, there is somebody else Dissue of JEWISH CURRENTS was mainly a RXWWKHUHDQGWKH\¶UHQRWKDUGWR¿QG DWOHDVWLQ nostalgic review of what was. Secular Jewish his- larger cities). tory of any merit seemed to end with the demise Rabbi Adam Chalom’s eloquent tribute to Rabbi of yidishkayt in the 1960s. This was clearly enun- Sherwin Wine held out hope for a glimpse of the ciated by April Rosenblum in her article, which present and perhaps the future. It described Rabbi gave a very coherent and interesting version of Wine’s transformation from a Reform rabbi into a events that, in her view, caused the disintegration Humanistic rabbi and the creation of the world’s and ultimate loss of the vibrant, secular, Yiddish/ ¿UVW+XPDQLVWLFFRQJUHJDWLRQWKHDUWLFOHGLGQRW ideologically-based Judaism so near and dear to however, address the future or the achievements of many of us raised in that tradition. But she ended the present. How many JEWISH CURRENTS readers her overview with this: “The loss of a proud, ac- know, for example, of the successful growth and tively secular Jewish identity was a casualty of a development of SHJ congregations in Canada and larger push to subdue Jewish ethnicity as a whole United States? . . . What has been lost is the range of possibilities Many of the ideas expressed by the respondents in which actively secular Jewish identity is one of have been grist for the discussion mills of the con- the legitmate ways to be a proud Jew.” ferences of both the CSJO and the SHJ. The concept Has she not heard of the Congress of Secular of spirituality, for example, has been well-worked Jewish Organizations (CSJO), the Society for over. Is spirituality possible only in the context of Humanistic Judaism (SHJ), the Workmen’s Circle divine inspiration? Of course not. Why do you need and many, many more Secular Jewish individuals, a god to experience awe at the grandeur and beauty congregations and organizations in active pursuit of the natural world? Why do you need a god to of secular Jewish identity both old and new? feel inspiration and excitement, sometimes to the Lawrence Bush’s “Dinosaur Days” gave an en- point of tears, upon seeing a beautiful work of art tertaining, personalized romp through his Secu- or hearing an incredible piece of music? Theists lar Jewish experience. But what did his last page have no corner on the spiritual market. say? “Guess it’s time to go looking for dinosaurs! Anybody else out there?” For those of us born Another jarring sentiment arose from the pages and raised in a classical Secular Jewish milieu, of the May-June issue: the desire of some to have

AUTUMN 2009 57 Jewish strands all rolled into one neat little pack- consciousness, social action that emanates from a age made up of traditional secular yidishkayt in heritage of caring for our own rights and dignity combination with a touch of religious trappings and that of others. The list could go on. Human — perhaps a few prayers or selected blessings. creativity continues to make the list longer. No problem. We’re autonomous individuals who Don’t look for dinosaurs, Larry Bush. Look have the capacity to do whatever we can or wish for new life, new forms, new adventures, many to (within the boundaries of respect for others and of which have arisen since the 1960s to replace their wishes). But to create this particular reli- the dinosaurs. Leftwing, socialist, Yiddishist life gious/secular blend belies the essence of what it DVZHNQHZDQGORYHGLWLVHLWKHUJRQHRUVLJQL¿- means to be a Secular Humanistic Jew operating cantly transformed. Yet if we commune with oth- within a Secular Humanistic Jewish organization. HUVRIOLNHPLQGZHFDQ¿QGZD\VWRVDWLVI\WR Let individuals who want this type of communal some extent, whatever craving we have to express HQYLURQPHQWFUHDWHRUJDQL]DWLRQVWKDWUHÀHFWWKDW our Jewishness. We have plenty of rich and fertile philosophy, but don’t come to a Secular Human- VRLOZLWKZKLFKWRZRUN/HW¶VJRGLJLWXSWR¿QG istic Jewish organization looking for adulation the roots and seeds with which to enlarge upon of the divine through the occasional interjection and embellish our garden. of theistic interludes. Secular Humanistic Jewish The evidence that we are already doing this organizations eschew the divine and focus on the now abounds. New life has arisen from the de- earthly essence of their existence. mise of secular yidishkayt in the 1950s described The art of being Jewish takes many forms, none by April Rosenblum. In the early 1960s there were of which have existed forever, all of which have no CSJO and SHJ, no Secular Humanistic rabbis, been created through human endeavor, sometimes no vegvayzers, no International Institute of Secu- as a slow process of transformation with slow evo- lar Humanistic Jews. Since the 1950s, thousands lutionary changes of history, sometimes through of Jews across North America and elsewhere have more abrupt change as human creativity burst become engaged in an organized secular expres- forth from a mentality of conservatism and tradi- sion of their Jewishness. And if one cares to look, tion. Secular Humanistic Judaism is one of these there is a brand new literature arising since the Judaisms, as authentic and grounded as, say, the VOLWHUDWXUHWKDWVSHDNVVSHFL¿FDOO\WR6HFX- Lubavitch khasidic movement. Why do some of lar Humanistic Jewish existence, its meaning and us become defensive, nervous, shifting from one its maturation. Secular Humanistic Judaism is not foot to another when confronted with the accusa- a new invention but there are creative new ways tion that our version of Jewish existence does not of expressing it. carry the same weight as the Judaism that ema- The core curriculum may be different from what nates from an Orthodox synagogue? Overcoming we experienced in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s, but it this inferiority complex would help us pursue our is still Secular Judaism, with bright and energetic agenda with renewed vigor and optimism. leaders forging a new Secular Humanistic Jewish What about the future? The future unfolds from consciousness. What’s more, the core curricu- the inspiration of the present. Do we have to pre- lum can be completely innovative. For some, the pare for the future? Of course. But our prepara- core curriculum of organizational existence must tion is in the present, and when we do what we contain Yiddish, Sholem Aleichem and particu- do in our communities, we do it largely to satisfy lar ideological constituents. But Secular Human- our personal needs, which might include: spiritual istic Judaism is not composed of a rigid dogma IXO¿OOPHQW-HZLVKHGXFDWLRQIRURXUFKLOGUHQDQG of practice and ideology. We Secular Jews have ourselves, community life and a personal sense diverse backgrounds and diverse ways of extract- of Jewish identity, participation as creators or ob- ing the meaning of existence from our literature, servers of art that expresses our Jewish and human from our history from our collective experience.

58 JEWISH CURRENTS There’s more than one way of doing this. Despite the multiplicity of ways of acting out our secular Jerald Bain is an emeritus professor of medicine Jewish consciousness, we are united, I hope, in the at the University of Toronto and an endocrinologist belief that human beings are in charge of human at Toronto’s Mount Sinai Hospital. He chaired the affairs without the need to seek divine intervention &6-2IURPWRDQGLVDYHJYD\]HUFHUWL¿HG as inspiration or as the object of our supplication. by the Leadership Conference of Secular Humanis- tic Jews.

Patricia Cousens Becker Secular, Humanistic, and Jewish

grew up in a Workmen’s Circle family in town Reconstructionist congregation, the Jewish Detroit, which provided me with a strong 3DUHQWV,QVWLWXWH DI¿OLDWHGZLWKWKH&RQJUHVVRI I FXOWXUDO -HZLVK LGHQWL¿FDWLRQ$W  , FDU- Jewish Secular Organizations), and Rabbi Wine’s ULHGWKLVLGHQWL¿FDWLRQIRUZDUGLQWRFROOHJHLQ$QQ Humanistic Birmingham Temple. Poring over the Arbor, and found that I had no home. I certainly literature from each, I was swayed by the Tem- GLGQ¶W¿WLQDW+LOOHOEHLQJLQDURRPIXORI-HZ- ple’s Sunday school curriculum. I had been leery ish students during orientation scared me to death. of a formal congregation and its suburban char- And I had no belief in any god; my father’s death acter, but my husband liked the idea. The upshot: from pancreatic cancer, when I was 15, had settled we joined. the issue for me. We decided to attend the erev Yom Kippur ser- I gravitated toward student coöps. I was active vice. That was the day of the 1982 Israeli invasion in supporting the sit-ins in the South. I was on the of Lebanon. Rabbi Wine (whom I always called fringes of the nascent SDS. I was active in causes “Sherwin) put aside his formal talk and said, “To- WKDW¿WP\SKLORVRSK\EXW,KDGQRSODFHWRH[- day I am ashamed to be a Jew.” I was hooked. press and enjoy my Jewish identity. Over the next several years, as our involvement After graduation, I moved on to the University and participation in the Temple increased, I kept of Wisconsin in Madison and spent a short time saying, “Sherwin gives words to what I feel.” I in Berkeley during the Free Speech movement of had never before understood Humanism as a 1964. Returning to Detroit, I became active in a philosophical concept, yet I was clearly a human- new WC branch of “young people,” but did not ist and had been raised as one. At last, I had a really enjoy the social interactions. structure in which to combine my fundamental All this time, I was “looking” for Mr. Right, and philosophy of life and my Jewish cultural iden- I did want him to be Jewish. In 1971, I found him. tity. He had grown up Conservative but was no longer Born in 1940, I was right on the cusp of a gen- interested in God-oriented Judaism. Our marriage erational shift. My generation (and those older) ceremony was performed by Rabbi Sherwin Wine, grew up with Yiddish-speaking grandparents. We who represented our compromise between a judge knew of the Holocaust as a contemporary event and a more traditional rabbi. and we experienced the joy of the creation of the When our daughter became 8, she needed a State of Israel. We were Jewish at our core. Jewish education outside the home. There were The world is different for younger people, who four viable options: the WC shule, the down- are moving in a pluralistic world in which being¤

AUTUMN 2009 59 ¤Jewish is just one of their many characteristics. ideas that shapes who we are and the decisions Even if they went to Sunday school or were bar or we make. bat mitzvah, Jewish identity is often not a priority • What’s getting in the way? Life! People have for them. precious little time for intellectual pursuits, and What can we do for the future? let’s face it, humanistic learning is an intellectual • We need not only to teach our children our val- pursuit. I think we need to identify it as such and ues but to help them feel Jewish. Even the children attract people who want it. Combine it with Jew- who grow up in the Birmingham Temple receive ish identity and culture, and the Jewish calendar a good humanistic education but not enough of a and life-cycle, and market it! Jewish one. My daughter has said, “The Temple doesn’t make me feel Jewish!” Patricia Cousens Becker is a demographer with • We need to teach humanism as a value sys- her own business, APB Associates. She worked as a tem wherever we are. I call humanism my reli- demographer for the City of Detroit from 1968-89, gion, and Jewish identity my culture. We need to and was also a senior research associate in the 1989 value humanism as a religion, an integrated set of Detroit Jewish Population Study.

Bennett Muraskin Without the Religion and the Nationalism

ssuming that one does not believe in pation for secular, progressive Jews. Standing up God or in a God that answers prayers, WR IDFH WKH ,VUDHOL ÀDJ IRU WKH VLQJLQJ RI Hatik- A it is impossible for a secular person to vah, listening to endless plugs for Israel trips and attend a synagogue service without squirming. appeals to “support Israel” (meaning “the Israeli True, half the congregation in many synagogues government”), is unappealing for most of us. may share the same beliefs, but a secular Jew with I know why many Jews attend synagogue, and principles cannot in good conscience play “let’s if it gives them comfort and a sense of community, pretend.” Worse yet is the treatment of the Torah more power to them. But for me, the secular-reli- that is at the heart of Sabbath services. The ark, gious wall is a real barrier. If breaking down that the breast plates, the parading, the kissing and, of wall means that secular Jews are asked to pray to a course, the required reading resemble nothing less God they don’t believe exists, to read from a book than idol worship. If the Torah were in a differ- that offends their sense of human decency, and to ent cover and the names of the major personali- listen to speeches that sound like press releases ties were changed, most Jews would reject it as a from AIPAC, then count me out. fundamentalist document, because that is what it Unfortunately, secular Jews seem to think that substantially is. How do the Israelites take pos- they don’t think they need to express their Jewish- session of the Promised Land? What is the fate ness outside their daily routine. So there are huge of the Canaanites? Anyone who cares to answer numbers out there, but few joiners. What we need this question truthfully can only shudder in horror, is $10 million for a huge publicity campaign. But considering our own experiences with expulsions it won’t be Yiddish or social justice that will at- and genocide. tract them, like in the old days. Yiddish and social Zionism is another obstacle to Jewish partici- justice are part of our package, but in addition to

60 JEWISH CURRENTS childhood and adult education, we need to provide the Sabbath. Yes, like the best synagogues, but more in the way of quasi-congregational services without the religion and the nationalism. -— lifecycle ceremonies, book clubs, social ac- tion committees, entertainment — and vibrant BENNETT MURASKIN is the author of Let Justice programs for all major Jewish holidays, including Well Up Like Water

Irv and Sim Lesser Marketing Our Movement

e are the immediate past presidents of believe, are those who are bright enough to ques- the Congregation for Humanistic Ju- tion the ideas handed down to them, and tend to be W daism (CHJ) in Sarasota, Florida, more liberal in their political outlook. which has a membership of more than three hun- +XPDQLVWLF-XGDLVPKDVEHHQGH¿QHGE\5DE- dred. One reason for our move to this area in 2002 bi Wine as a cultural religion, as opposed to the was the presence of this congregation. We had more common theistic religions. It retains many previously lived in the Miami area and had been of the traditions of Judaism, but without any re- very active members of a very large Reform tem- liance on a supernatural being. While the initial ple. We dropped our membership when Reform UHDFWLRQRIPDQ\-HZVRQ¿UVWFRQWDFWLVXQFHU- moved too far toward traditional practices for us tainty about our identity, they soon see that we WRUHPDLQFRPIRUWDEOH:HUHPDLQHGXQDI¿OLDWHG fully celebrate the culture, history and ethics of for a few years because we didn’t even know of Judaism, but without reference to a deity. Many of the existence of Humanistic Judaism. Then we at- our members, in fact, have spoken of feeling far tended a High Holiday service at CHJ and imme- more Jewish in CHJ than they felt when they were diately felt we had found a home. members of more traditional congregations. What has always puzzled us is why more Jews Since research has shown that perhaps half of don’t join similar congregations or other secular all Jews in the U.S. are secular, it would seem that Jewish organizations. We put this question once we should be just on the edge of a major growth to Rabbi Sherwin Wine and his reply was that spurt. Alas, that does not seem to be the case. We there was a lack of money that prevented getting believe that some kind of major marketing pro- the word out. While this may well be a major part gram is needed. We are not experts in marketing, of the reason for limited memberships, it doesn’t but it seems quite likely that there are many com- fully answer the question. We think there has been petent marketing professionals who are secular too limited a drive for memberships. Jews and who would be interested in leading or A major reason for joining a congregation is the helping in such an effort. spirit of community that is engendered. Secular Jews are often hungry for such community, but KDYHQRLGHDRIKRZRUZKHUHWR¿QGLW:KHQZH joined CHJ, we immediately bonded with other Irv Lesser is a retired clinical psychologist. Sim bright and thoughtful Jews, and in a short time Lesser is a retired Reform day school principal and we developed many close friendships than we had college professor. They just celebrated their 54th an- during our decades in Miami. Secular Jews, we niversary and are still best friends.

AUTUMN 2009 61 Lawrence Bush Why Be Jewish?

ave I been an alarmist in inaugurat- mitsve. I was so ignorant of the customs and pro- ing this symposium about the future of cedures of Jewish services that I found the ex- H Jewish secularism? Judging from some perience mortifying — and I have never since of the responses, the secular movement is zipping been able to shake that feeling. But surely a high right along, creating new literature and new for- amount of discomfort with Jewish ritual cannot be mats — and I am, in essence, Chicken Little. conducive to developing a passionate, unambiva- Nu, is the secular Jewish sky falling or not? lent Jewish identity! Given the decline of the secular Jewish shule movement, from hundreds of schools in the 1930s $ VLJQL¿FDQW SOXUDOLW\ RI SURJUHVVLYH VHFXODU to less than a few dozen across the U.S. and Cana- Jews also consider the theory and/or practice of da today, I would say yes, the sky is falling. Zionism to be antithetical to their sense of Jew- Given the very advanced age of the bulk of ishness — as essays in this round of the sympo- Workmen’s Circle membership, I would say there sium by Paul Mishler, Alice Rothchild and Bennett is a crisis of secular Jewish continuity. Muraskin make uncomfortably clear. This, too, Given the lack of dynamic growth even within narrows the Jewish horizon for secularists. the congregationally-based (therefore decently As for the socialism of the classical secular Jew, funded) Society for Humanistic Judaism, I would it is associated by most people with political repres- say we’re missing an opportunity. sion, economic failure, anti-Semitism, and very Given the nearly complete invisibility of the little that is positive. The secular Jewish movement secular Jewish legacy among Jewish young peo- KDV\HWWRUHGH¿QHWKHLUVRFLDOLVWRXWORRNLQFRQWHP- ple today, I would say that even secular Jewish porary terms — in connection with human inter- history is in danger of obliteration. connection and with environmental sustainability, for example — or to root it in Jewish philosophy. The challenge of building a future is especially As a result, if Jews know about Jewish secular- daunting because secularists seem to ignore or ism at all, they know it by what it has historically even oppose so much of the Jewish tradition — rejected: religion, Zionist “normalization,” and leaving themselves with relatively slim pickings capitalism. But what is it that Jewish secularists from the Jewish civilizational package to call their WRGD\ DI¿UP" And what is Jewish about our af- own. Observant Jews of every stripe, by contrast, ¿UPDWLRQV" have not only the sea of religious texts to wade in For me, over the course of my work for thirty and a religious ideology that shapes their world- years as a “professional Jew,” politics has cer- view, but a menu of daily mitsves upon which to tainly been a key motivator: I have seen Jewish FRQVWUXFWDVWURQJVHQVHRI-HZLVKLGHQWL¿FDWLRQ liberalism as an important “natural resource” for Secular Jews, for the most part, ignore these texts America, and I’ve wanted to play a useful role and mitsves in the name of rejecting “religion.” in its cultivation. I was thrilled, therefore, when They mostly fail to inform their kids about these 78 percent of American Jewish voters selected Jewish resources and even foster in them a dis- Barack Obama for the White House last Novem- comfort with Jewish religious rituals. To illustrate: ber. Despite an outrageous smear campaign that When I was a kid, despite spending several years portrayed him as a Muslim, a radical, and hostile in a secular shule, I was never once exposed to to Israel, my people said “Feh!” and cast a vote in synagogue until a friend of mine became a bar favor of their history and their conscience. That

62 JEWISH CURRENTS vote represented a vindication for the secular Jew- Freud spoke about how the “otherness” of being ish movement, which has helped shape the Ameri- Jewish gave him the freedom to be a pioneer who can Jewish conscience for over a century. challenged convention. Jewish religious folklore, Still, politics can go only so far in inspiring Jew- too, places great value on the creative intellect, as ish commitment. As a self-interested magazine in the story of Rabbi Akiva, who “brought out into editor, I often ask myself: What would prompt a the light . . . things that used to be hidden from young, radical Jew to read not only the Nation or people” (Avot de Rabbi Natan). I am interested in +XI¿QJWRQ3RVWbut also JEWISH CURRENTS? Why preserving this capacity among Jews, even as we would she bother making the effort to achieve seek to escape the oppressions of “otherness.” Jewish literacy if the righteous transformation of the world were her single most consuming pas- I admire Judaism, the religion, because I sion? Why would she be interested in the tribalism c ¿QGLWFRQGXFLYHWRWKHHYROXWLRQRIKXPDQ of Jewish identity when there’s a wide world out ism, progressivism, and self-insight. Judaism is a there to save? worldly religion, more concerned with how we can Why be Jewish? live successfully in community than with how %HORZ DUH VHYHUDO RI P\ RZQ DI¿UPDWLRQV LQ we can achieve salvation in some after-life. Juda- response to that question. They make it obvious ism’s messianic promises are vague and coy, de- that my own “secularism” has fringes rather than signed mostly to inspire Jews to envision a better walls as borders. I proclaim myself an atheist, but world. Judaism also privileges the community I see the so-called “religious” tradition of Juda- over the individual in matters of wealth, property, ism as a rich resource for contemporary Jews. I rights and decision-making. Some Jewish texts also don’t understand why most committed secular emphasize compassion (rakhmones, or “womb- Jewish households don’t adopt some version of feeling”) as a necessary complement to justice (or kashrutWKDWUHÀHFWVWKHLU-HZLVKHWKLFDODQGHFR- vengeance) if our world is to survive. My selective logical values. I don’t understand why most secu- study of the Jewish religious tradition helps me lar Jewish households don’t observe some kind root my political philosophy in a values system. of shabes. I don’t understand why secular Jewish children leave our shules and summer camps with Jewish tradition and Jewish history have no knowledge of the Talmud, no favorite stories d produced a paradigm of non-violent mas- from rabbinic folklore (not even about Aher, the culinity — notwithstanding the military macho of heretic who doubts the existence of God). I don’t both biblical and modern Israel — that we urgently understand why secularists narrow their Jewish- need to cultivate in our modern world. Judaism, as ness so. H[HPSOL¿HGE\WKH7DOPXGLFUDEELVDVVLJQVGLJ- Don’t agree with me? Great! JEWISH CURRENTS nity to men based less on toughness than on char- would love to publish your answers to the ques- acter, compassion, and impulse control. tion “Why be Jewish?” as a follow-up to this sym- posium. Send your thoughts to lawrencebush@ The challenge to capitalism offered by Jew- earthlink.net or POB 111, Accord, NY 12404. s ish radicals, and the democratizing role played by some Jewish capitalists within the sys- tem (Edward Filene, Ben Cohen and Jerry Green- >O`)L1L^PZO&:P_(MÄYTH[PVUZ ¿HOG6RO3ULFH0XULHO6LHEHUW-XOLXV5RVHQZDOG and other entrepreneurs who created mass-market Jewish people, in my experience, are access to consumer goods and often pursued pro- t characteristically interested in self-exami- gressive philanthropy), deserve to be studied and nation, self-expression, humor, tolerance of dif- emulated. ference, and independence of thought. Sigmund ¤ page 73

AUTUMN 2009 63 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS

Mitchell Silver A Religious Atheist

onald Aronson is my kind of atheist- can rattle off standard religious answers to these — a religious one. Many atheists are questions, answers that tend to rely heavily on God. R insensitive to religious concerns and are But religious atheists have to answer them, too. puzzled by the claim that living without God is Aronson implicitly rejects typical atheist glibness problematic. Aronson’s book is not for these ir- about such issues. A recent advertising campaign religious atheists. promoting atheism in England proclaimed: THERE Aronson knows that God is dead — indeed, he knows that, objectively speaking, God never lived. Yet he also REVIEWED IN THIS ESSAY knows the purposes for which belief Living without God: New Directions for Atheists, Ag- in God serves human beings, and that these purposes are not to be dismissed nostics, Secularists, and the Undecided, by Ronald lightly. Many recent atheist polemics Aronson. Counterpoint Press, 2008, 288 pages. give lavish attention to the very strong evidence of God’s non-existence, but short shrift to the problems created by God’s ab- IS PROBABLY NO GOD. STOP WORRYING AND EN- sence. These problems are what I term “religious” JOY YOUR LIFE. If it were only that easy! I know — and identifying and responding to them is the lots of people who believe, as I do, that there is subject of Aronson’s Living Without God. almost certainly no God, yet they still worry. The text of the English atheist ad betrays a profound Aronson treats of four religious questions (he misunderstanding of religious psychology: God would probably prefer to call them existential): To is not the source of the believers’ worries, it is a whom should we be grateful? What does morality remedy for them. That the remedy is a placebo is demand of us? How are we to live in light of our a problem not for believers but for atheists, whose LQHYLWDEOHGHDWK"$QG¿QDOO\ZKDWFDQZHKRSH pharmacological knowledge prevents them from IRU"$Q\RQH¿UPO\URRWHGLQDUHOLJLRXVWUDGLWLRQ swallowing the pill. However, just because the placebo won’t work on atheists is no reason to MITCHELL SILVER is the author of A Plausible God: presume they don’t have the disease. Religion 6HFXODU5HÀOHFWLRQVRQ/LEHUDO-HZLVK7KHRORJ\and is a response to the human condition, and you Respecting the Wicked Child: A Philosophy of Secu- don’t escape the condition merely by realizing the lar Jewish Identity and Education. He teaches phi- delusional nature of the standard response. losophy at the University of Massachusetts. Central to Aronson’s vision of a meaningful,

64 JEWISH CURRENTS Godless life is the rejection of the myth of au- them?) Believers also can be thankful to God for tonomy. The exaggerated individualism of our creating the natural world, whereas atheists may society, he writes, is blind to the “actual sources, feel a little silly about thanking the Big Bang. both natural and social, in the past and in the pres- Atheists, I think, would do well to distinguish ent” that enrich and support our lives. Aronson the notions of “gratitude” and “appreciation.” argues that natural feelings of gratitude, which the Aronson is right to direct a great portion of our religious direct toward heaven, are more appropri- feelings of “gratitude” to the widely unrecognized ately directed to our real benefactors. collective human creators of our well-being, but it is a mistake to wedge all such feelings into that After all, when we gather with friends and framework. Society, past and present, is the source IDPLO\IRUKROLGD\IHHOLQJVRIJUDWLWXGHÀRZ of many goods, but unlike God, it is not the source spontaneously. . . . Giving thanks to all that of every good. For some good things, there is no is beyond us, but makes us possible, is a one to thank, but we can still savor and appreciate common need. It has traditionally pointed our good fortune. people in a religious direction, and so we may even lack the language for acknowledg- )RU$URQVRQRXUPRUDOREOLJDWLRQVDOVRÀRZ ing our cosmic, natural, and worldly sources. from our essential social nature: “If there is any . . . [But we can] be grateful for natural ultimate lawgiver,” he writes, “it is our social be- sources that have made our own life, and LQJ´7KLVVHHPVWRLQYROYHWZRLGHDV¿UVWWKHROG this reunion, possible, for the remarkable platonic idea that moral obligation is grounded in congruence of humans and the natural world our debt to society; second, the Sartrean notion that that enables us to survive, to our ancestors it is inauthentic, or “bad faith,” to deny responsibil- distant and recent and their struggles, whose ity for our own actions, including the social effects labors have accumulated in the comforts we of those actions. Aronson takes pains to argue that enjoy, and to countless other people, wher- DVFLHQWL¿FDOO\URRWHGDWKHLVPOHDYHVXVHQRXJK ever they are, whose toil helped set the table freedom to make sense of moral responsibility. His at which we feast. DUJXPHQWWKDWZHDUHVXI¿FLHQWO\IUHHWREHPRUDOO\ responsible, lacks the rigor to satisfy a close reader To my mind this is an important moral point, and interested in the classical philosophical problem of I agree with Aronson that a keen awareness of the “free will,” but it lands us at the right conclusion. social creation of wealth and knowledge should be a Although he never directly quotes it, Aronson’s core element of human education. It does not, how- SRVLWLRQUHÀHFWV.DUO0DU[¶VIDPRXVOLQHVIURPThe ever, fully solve the atheist’s “gratitude” problem. Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: “Men Good luck is an important ingredient in a good life, make their own history . . . but under circumstances as Aronson acknowledges, and the atheist may feel encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” like thanking someone for it — but there is no one And individuals make their own choices, albeit not to thank for dumb luck, or, for that matter, for the in conditions of their own choosing. Whether or “natural” sources of our well-being. Believers, on not it is objectively true, we act in the belief that the other hand, can be grateful for their “luck,” be- our choices matter. cause in their worldview it isn’t blind or unplanned Aronson is most interesting and eloquent when — it is God’s grace. For believers, everything hap- he ponders death and hope in a godless world. Like pens for a “reason,” by which they mean everything standard-issue atheists, he takes the Nietzschean happens for a divine purpose, and they are grateful line that death, being the complete cessation of when God’s purposes are kind to them. (Of course the only life we will ever have, should cause us to that leaves them with the problem of rationalizing embrace life all the more. But unlike many cheer- their misfortunes — why is God being cruel to leaders for atheism less insightful than Nietzsche,

AUTUMN 2009 65 Aronson recognizes the tragic dimensions that ac- get to the promised land, but your journey won’t company our march toward death — the emotional, be a self-centered, meaningless meandering, for mental and physical losses suffered in even the best you will have helped carry the load along the road life, inevitably culminating in the complete loss to freedom and equality, and in shouldering this of individual life. He doesn’t sugar-coat aging or responsibility in life, you and your hopes outlast dying to diminish the potential despair of living your death. without God. 0RUHRYHU DQG,¿QGWKLVDQRULJLQDODQGSUR- found insight), Aronson believes that our anxiety By 70 — this writer’s age at the publica- at the prospect of death is largely a product of our tion of this book — one can draw up a worries for the future: How will my spouse, chil- list of the signs of aging . . . trembling dren, grandchildren, America, the Jewish people, hands, memory loss, hearing loss, loss and humanity fare in the future? My deathbed of hair color, deteriorating eyesight, a would be a happier place if I were assured that all lengthening nose, loss of fullness of face, those I love and care about would be safe and happy loss of height, pains that won’t go away, without me. There can never be such assurances, medical conditions needing constant but if I were dying in a just world, I’d at least have medication or other therapeutic interven- the comfort of believing that my progeny will have tion, more frequent and lasting tiredness, broadening education, good medical care, meaning- loss of strength, loss of physical stamina, ful work, respectful treatment from society, peace, speech becoming less precise, urinary prosperity, and a beautiful and healthful environ- complications, sexual dysfunction, sleep ment in which to live and play. disruptions, and more frequent muscular Indeed, I have muttered secular shehekheyanus stiffness. And of course, the most terrify- (blessings of thanks for new or special occasions) ing face of death today, cancer. . . . [We upon witnessing the end of apartheid in South Af- are] charged with an awareness that our rica, the end of the war in Vietnam, the collapse of machinery cannot continue to run end- Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe, and the elec- lessly, that it is in the process of wearing tion of an African-American to the White House. out, that death awaits us, we are inching If, however, I die unsure that there will ever be a closer to it. . . . [There are] times of loss, just peace and true reconciliation between Israelis loneliness, sadness, emptiness, dread, and Palestinians, it will add no small measure of fear, and mourning . . . We know that it is grief to my last gasps. Although I cannot hope for possible to hide from [thoughts of death], heaven, I can at least hope for peace; if I cannot and that they can be ignored. But, to speak work for eternal salvation, I can at least work for in the imperative, there is really no hiding social and historical justice. from them, they must be lived. I suspect that Aronson might be uneasy with my However, Aronson does argue that death need LQWHUSUHWDWLRQRIKLVERRNZKLFKSODFHVKLP¿UPO\ not be a total loss if we recognize our social na- in the camp of progressives. He begins his essay tures, and identify with people and causes beyond by claiming that the classical atheistic answers to ourselves. I call the view that Aronson is preaching living without God are inadequate, especially those “historical spirituality.” You may not be part of Enlightenment answers that are rooted in belief in the Universe’s plan (alas, it has no plans), but the Progress. Throughout Living without God, Aronson long arc of human history reveals universal human says that the Enlightenment hope of social progress, aspirations, and if you commit to those universal born of belief in advancing science and morals, can- goals, your death is not the death of your aspira- not survive the evidence of the 20th century (nor the tions. Like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., you may not ¿UVWELWVRIWKHst). No clear-eyed person can pin

66 JEWISH CURRENTS her hopes to Progress, seeing what we have seen. for he gives powerful voice to the true progressive However, notwithstanding his demurrals, Aron- vision: son is a progressive and has hitched his hopes and Sometimes fitful, sometimes sustained, life’s meaning to the possibility of a better world. sometimes partial, the determination to be His dispute is only with a crude, fundamentalist pro- free becomes part of a people’s identity gressivism that is a caricature of the Enlightenment . . . we know in our bones that all people progressive vision. By the end of the book, Aronson are entitled to live free and fully, and well. In all but concedes his progressivism in specifying the the long run this may be as powerful as any Progressivism he is denying. “[My view] is in no belief in God. . . . Those times of collective way meant as a vision of Progress with a capital P hope are no less profound, no less worthy of or to place us in history with a capital H.” Granted, reverence, than are what those who believe some Comtean positivists, many thoughtless Marx- in God call sacred. . . . ists (and Marx himself in less thoughtful modes), some simple-minded champions of Science, and Earlier Aronson has wisely written that “cyni- VRPHRYHUFRQ¿GHQWVRFLDOHQJLQHHUVWKRXJKWRI cism is irresponsibility masquerading as tough- Progress as certain, linear, steady, and moved by QHVV´,QWKHERRN¶V¿QDOSDUDJUDSKVKHLPSORUHV impersonal forces. Nevertheless, from Bentham us to live our lives in solidarity with the millions and Mill to Luxemburg and Dewey to Orwell and of people who, over the centuries, in ever-renewing Rorty, progressives have understood that nothing is hope, have worked for freedom and social justice. fated, all gains are reversible, movement is uneven He may be no determinist preaching an eschatol- and often oblique, and success will greatly depend ogy of “There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” on human intelligence and will. or “End of History” or “Each-According-to-His- I wish Aronson would recognize this as the Needs” inevitability, but in Aronson’s homily, I authentic progressive tradition so that he could ¿QGWKHPRGHVWVREHURSHQPLQGHGEXWGHHSO\ unambivalently and proudly proclaim the creed, committed faith of my old-time religion. JC

Mitchell Abidor France and the Jews

odern French Jewish history is too of- DQLQVLJQL¿FDQWSDXVH&RPSRXQGLQJWKLVLVWKH ten viewed as a series of catastrophes. notion that France is a profoundly anti-Semitic M First came the Dreyfus Affair (1894), country, one where the shadows of anti-Semitic followed by the Nazi occupation and the Holocaust. giants like Edouard Drumont, Charles Maurras The period in between is a blank, or even worse, (and the Marquis de Morès, and Louis-Ferdinand Céline . . .) obscure the far more important defend- ers of the Jews such as Emile Zola and Charles Péguy. Then there are the many Jews who achieved MITCHELL ABIDOR is a writer and translator living in Brooklyn. He is the author of The Great Anger: a central place in French intellectual and political Ultra-Revolutionary Writing in France from the life — men such as Léon Blum, the philosophers Atheist Priest to the Bonnot Gang and is a columnist Julien Benda and Léon Brunschvicg, and the moral for the French quarterly Le Grognard. and political guide of a generation, Lucien Herr.

AUTUMN 2009 67 7KHLPSRUWDQFHRIWKHVHODWWHU¿JXUHV undermines the notion that what hap- REVIEWED IN THIS ESSAY pened to French Jewry between 1940 French and Jewish; Culture and the Politics of Iden- and 1944 was built into French society’s tity in Early Twentieth Century France, by Nadia DNA. It is too easily forgotten that even Malinovich. Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, WKH¿JXUHZKRVWDQGVDVWKHV\PERORI 2008, 280 pages. the mistreatment of the Jews, Alfred Dreyfus, was ultimately exonerated and reintegrated into the army, that France had a Jew- Third Republic — but it was only with its defeat ish head of state at the time of the Popular Front that they were able to do anything about it. in 1936, and that anti-Semitic legislation was only It is a strength as well as something of a weakness promulgated when the country was occupied by in Malinovich’s book that her focus is primarily on the Nazis. the institutional structures constructed and main- tained in those years up to the Great Depression. The truth is that between the great parox- Individual writers appear, but only insofar as they ysms, Jews in France lived a safe, full life, both give voice to the currents within the community, individually and collectively, as French citizens or as avatars of a position within the community. like any others. Nadia Malinovich’s French and Henri Bergson, unquestionably the most important Jewish makes clear that during the decades of the -HZLVK¿JXUHLQ)UDQFHGXULQJWKLVSHULRGEXW early 20th century, “rather than trying to legitimate whose ties to the Jewish community were loose, to Jewish particularism by demonstrating Judaism’s put it mildly, receives but a handful of mentions, universal value, [French Jewry] argued that French and these primarily concerning the effects of his ‘universalism’ and Jewish ‘particularism’ were anti-rationalist philosophy on French politics and complementary, and in turn, that French Jewish philosophy. As an individual he receives no at- identity should be based on a synthesis between tention. WKHP´7KHUHZDVQRFRQÀLFWEHWZHHQEHLQJD-HZ Malinovich’s gaze is instead cast on the varied and being French; in the inter-war years, being truly religious and cultural organizations of the Jewish Jewish meant being truly French. elite of the early 20th century. She closely examines Malinovich reminds us that this period did not the organizations involved in religious, Zionist, and VLPSO\DUULYHIXOOEORZQEXWZDVWKHIXO¿OOPHQWRI educational affairs, all of which were given ample the promise of the Great Revolution of 1789 — the opportunity to act, thanks to the absence of a serious emancipation of the Jews engineered by the Abbé DQWL6HPLWLFWKUHDWHLWKHURI¿FLDORUSRSXODU Grégoire (who, French and Jewish observes, not only wanted to emancipate the Jews but ultimately Although freed of outside fears, French Jewry to convert them), and the recognition by Napoleon ZDVQRWIUHHRILQWHUQDOFRQÀLFWVEHWZHHQVHFXODU- I of Judaism as a state religion, with all the rights ism and religion, between religious orthodoxy and and duties granted the other recognized sects — and liberalism, between Zionism and anti- (or at least of the secular Third Republic (1870-1940), which non-) Zionism, between issues of particularism and VDZWKHIXOOÀRXULVKLQJRI-HZLVKOLIHDQGLQZKLFK universalism. Malinovich lays out these issues and as she says, Jews “were represented in the civil the evolving positions in great detail. service in proportions far beyond their numbers )UDQFHZDVORYHGE\LWV-HZVDVWKH¿UVWFRXQ- in the wider society . . . As the last vestiges of try to emancipate them. Even the Orthodox, in state-sponsored discrimination fell away, Jews also defending Jewish difference, did so within the began entering the liberal professions and the arts context of viewing Jews as being just one among in large numbers.” Such Jewish liberty was one of the many peoples that made up the French nation. the many things the extreme right hated about the “It was France’s role as a protector of minorities,”

68 JEWISH CURRENTS VKHSRLQWVRXW³WKDWZDVSURRIRIWKHDI¿QLW\ ing to Malinovich, although there was extensive between the French and Jewish peoples.” scholarship about Jewish history in both France and The integration of Jews into French life was so Germany, the scholars working in France — who complete that even some rightwing nationalists produced, for example, an extensive book of Jewish ZHUHDEOHWR¿QGURRPIRUWKH-HZVDQG-HZLVK jokes — aimed their work at the broad masses. nationalism. Malinovich traces an interesting de- Despite their large numbers and success, German velopment in the writings of Maurice Barrès, the Jews throughout the period in question were in a far greatest literary champion of French nationalism in more precarious position than their French brethren. the late 19th to early 20th centuries. Barrès evolved While German Jews formed associations to protect IURPYLHZLQJ-HZVDVDQDUWL¿FLDOH[FUHVFHQFHRQ themselves from the outside, the French groups French society (the above-mentioned Lucien Herr “attempted to work out a new kind of French-Jew- proudly considered himself déraciné — rootless ish synthesis in step with the changing cultural — which Barrès had insultingly considered Jews a and social realities of the day.” Even assimilation generation earlier) to seeing them, around the time took on a different coloration in the two countries, RI:RUOG:DU,DVRQHRIWKHSDWULRWLFVHOIVDFUL¿F- Malinovich observes, for however much German ing, true “spiritual families of France.” In no other Jews might have adopted German ways, “they had European nation did a nationalist take this position. never truly been accepted as equals by the surround- Malinovich shows that Barrès’s evolution was not ing society.” Jewish assimilation in France had unique by citing the case of Pierre Benoit, a former therefore been far more successful, and “criticism rabid anti-Semite who became a philo-Semite after of the excesses of ‘assimilation’ was most often his visit to the Jewish settlements of Palestine left tempered by a sense of respect and gratitude to him struck by the similarities between Jewish and previous generations, who had paved the way for French nationalism (a similarity of the worst kind, Jewish integration into French society.” demonstrating the Western mission civilisatrice among the unwashed savages of the “Orient”). Though Malinovich’s focus is largely institu- tional, along the way we encounter not only many (YHQWKHFRQÀLFWEHWZHHQWKH2UWKRGR[DQGWKH RIWKHVLJQL¿FDQWZULWHUVRQ-HZLVKWKHPHV PDQ\ nascent Reform movement was relatively muted. RIWKHPQRZIRUJRWWHQ EXWDWUXO\XQLTXH¿JXUH Both groups saw assimilation and an abandonment Aimé Pallière, born a Catholic. As a result of an of Judaism as the things most to be feared. They saw epiphany that occurred when he visited a synagogue the source of these evils differently, with Reform on Yom Kippur, he delved into Judaism. Never for- Jews blaming it on “the atavism of traditional Ju- mally converted — he called himself a “Noahide” daism,” Malinovich writes, while for the Orthodox (a biblical category of non-Jews who observe seven “the blame for the community’s assimilation and fundamental civilizing laws) — he played a vital secularization lay in the ignorance of the French Jew role within the Jewish community itself, working about Judaism.” Even the traditionalists, however, in from within the Reform Union Libérale for a modus their organ Foi et Reveil (“Faith and Awakening”), vivendi with the Orthodox and the Zionists, and tried to bring or keep progressive Jews within also for interfaith dialogue. Perhaps more than the fold. The French ideals of human rights and any Jew by birth, Pallière occupies a central role brotherhood were too important to be cast aside, in French and Jewish history. and so were assimilated to Judaism, just as Jews $VZHOFRPHDV0DOLQRYLFK¶VUHFWL¿FDWLRQRIWKH were assimilated to France. image of Jewish life in France might be, however, Similar issues were faced by major Jewish she gives Irène Némirovsky far too easy a pass. communities all over the world, and Malinovich Némirovsky, author of the brilliant Suite Française, illuminates the French difference by contrasting published by her daughters nearly sixty years after them with their neighbors across the Rhine. Accord- her death in the camps, is quoted as explaining her

AUTUMN 2009 69 XQÀDWWHULQJSRUWUDLWRID-HZLVKIDPLO\LQKHUDavid speaking immigrant community participated as Golder by saying that that’s “how I saw them.” In Jews, Frenchmen, and workers in all the struggles fact, Némirovsky’s entire oeuvre stinks of anti- of the era, and played the most important role in Semitism, and when she was arrested in 1942 her WKH5HVLVWDQFHE\SURYLGLQJWKH¿JKWHUVRIWKH)73 husband attempted to get her released by the Nazis 02,DQGWKHIDPRXV0DQRXFKLDQ*URXS2I¿FLDO on the basis of her portrayal of Jews. She was oc- Judaism was not all that existed in France, and casionally brilliant, but almost always odious. Malinovich does her story a disservice by omit- Far more serious is Malinovich’s choice to ting them. omit the Yiddish press and the Yiddish-speaking These reservations aside, French and Jewish community. As she notes, the Jewish population does much to right a wrong-headed view of French of France leapt from 150,000 to 300,000 between Jewry as a community always under siege. Their 1919 and 1939, almost all of this increase attribut- peaceful life in the early years of the 20th century able to immigration. The omission of these largely lacked the drama of the events that preceded and working-class Jewish immigrants, with their strong followed them, but helps us understand the suc- left-wing, not to mention Communist, sympathies FHVVRI)UHQFK-HZU\RQFHWKHFULVHVKDG¿QDOO\ and their organizations, leaves us with a distinctly passed. JC elite view of the Jewish community. The Yiddish-

Alissa Wise Coming Out of the Holy Ark

y sweetheart frequently reminds me bisexual, transgender or intersex people, thereby that everyone is queer. She will point reclaiming the word from its derogatory use, M to a teenager who chose to be part of “queer” is also about questioning and challenging a beauty pageant though her lefty, hippy family norms. As Rabbi Jacob Staub notes in the book, frowned upon that kind of thing. Or the Jew whose queerness challenges “not only norms of gender Jewish identity does not rely on Torah, prayer, or UROHDQGGH¿QLWLRQRUVH[XDORULHQWDWLRQEXWDOO Israel. Or the “straight” couple where the dad stays at home and takes care of the kids while the mom goes out REVIEWED IN THIS ESSAY of the house to earn money. In Torah Torah Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Hebrew Queeries: Weekly Commentaries on the Bible, edited by Gregg Drinkwater, David Shneer and Hebrew Bible edited, it’s the Torah’s Joshua Lesser, with a foreword by Judith Plaskow. turn to be queer. NYU Press, 2009, 368 pages. Though some use “queer” as an umbrella term to refer to gay, lesbian, norms .” For some, simply picking up the Torah RABBI ALISSA WISE is the program director at is an act of challenging norms — as it was when Ma’yan, a project of the JCC in Manhattan. Ma’yan women started to unravel the scrolls. As Jewish LVDQRQSUR¿WWKLQNWDQNIRFXVHGRQWKHFXOWXUDOFKDO- feminist theologian Judith Plaskow notes in her lenges and identity issues that Jewish teenage girls foreword, “just as feminist perspectives on Jewish face in contemporary society. texts opened to the whole Jewish community a new

70 JEWISH CURRENTS world of questions and categories for understand- passion that mark queer discourse. Revealing how ing, so queer perspectives do the same. ” the story has been spun by rabbinic and medieval As scholars and rabbis, queer and straight, the commentators from one of “unbridled love and contributors to this book successfully fuse innova- longing into one of willful sin and divine punish- tive and traditional hermeneutics, yielding durable, ment,” she breathes new life into this parsha and profound commentaries about each weekly parsha stimulates curiosity for those of us who care about (Torah portion). These commentaries teach us how liberation and Torah. to reclaim, liberate and celebrate amidst imperfec- tion — whether the imperfection of a fearful society Drawing upon Biblical scholar Robert Alter’s RUDÀDZHGWH[W²DVTXHHUVKDYHEHHQGRLQJIRU translation of the word khalutzim as “vanguard” generations. The various writers in Torah Queeries (as compared to “pioneers”), Rabbi Lisa Edwards offer decidedly queer readings of Torah, at once views the khalutzim in Parashat Matot (Numbers challenging and reasonable. Readers learn about 30:2-32:42) as representing people who lead soci- queer theory and Biblical interpretation in equal ety in the new direction it needs to go, who push SDUWVDQGRIWHQDVWKHERRNSURPLVHV¿QGEUDQG boundaries — as queers do, just simply by being new insights into the text. who we are. Edwards explains the thinking behind Take, for example, Dr. Tamar Kamionkowski’s establishing October 11th as National Coming Out reading of Parshat Shemini (Leviticus 9:1-11:47). Day: “the theory is simple: if all queer people .DPLRQNRZVNL¿QGVDUHODWLRQVKLSEHWZHHQWKH declare themselves queer on one day, every ho- two sections of this Torah portion — the story of mophobe in the world would discover they know Nadav and Avihu and the laws of kashrut (Jewish someone queer. And as we encounter over and over dietary practice) — which are often read as com- again, often all it takes for someone to overcome pletely unrelated to one another. Kamionkowski homophobia is to discover that someone they know reads Nadav and Avihu’s risk-taking act of mak- or love or like or respect is queer. It can be world- ing a non-prescribed, “profane” offering in the changing, and most especially if everyone — the Tabernacle as a challenge to the cultural norms of whole vanguard — takes part.” She thus reinvents their generation. She sees their passion and desire the Biblical role model, beyond Abraham, Isaac as “an example of homoerotic attraction between and Jacob, to include all who study Torah from human males and the male God of the Bible.” She any lens, queer, feminist, socialist, agnostic, and reads the Biblical response — Nadab and Abihu beyond. Edwards’ queer reading brings us ways to DUH³GHYRXUHG´E\D³¿UH>WKDW@ZHQWRXWIURPWKH UHÀHFWRXUFRQWHPSRUDU\VWUXJJOHVIRUYLVLELOLW\ Lord” (Leviticus 10:2) — as containing “both a inclusion and acceptance, through an otherwise EHQH¿WDQGDORVVWKHORVVLVDQHUDVXUHRIWKH militaristic text. VWRU\RISDVVLRQDQGWKHEHQH¿WLVWKHHVWDEOLVKPHQW In her piece on Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25:19- of necessary boundaries.” 28:9), Sarra Lev reads the Biblical Esau as a gender- Drawing from the work of Mary Douglas, Ka- crosser who boldly chooses passion over detach- mionkowski claims that as the parsha “proceeds ment. Lev points both to the Torah and to rabbinic in great detail with lists and categories, with pro- midrashim that “contain gender inversions in which hibition after prohibition, the acts of passion by Esau rejects his overtly male description and legacy Nadav and Avihu are lost, and the importance of in favor of what in contemporary terms we might PDLQWDLQLQJFOHDUERXQGDULHVZLWKUHJDUGWRÀHVK think of as more ‘classically female’ choices.” emerges victorious.” A queer theorist herself, she Lev’s exploration of the parsha raises the impor- sees in the Biblical text the deliberate erasure of tant issues of conformity, parental expectation, and queer experience and themes, the construction of gender assignments, the typical preoccupations of rigid rules and binaries to control people and retain queer theorists. This reading adds another layer of hierarchies, and the fear of eroticism, desire, and meaning often not discussed as part of this parsha,

AUTUMN 2009 71 and is instructive for understanding the values that gender binary. shape our society as well as the attitudes and beliefs I am grateful to these writers for their willingness that are used to repress queers today. Lev points out to read Torah in way that elevates marginalized that in “both the Biblical and rabbinic traditions, peoples’ experiences. Some queer Jews see the Esau’s gender-crossing comes to bite him in the Torah as a text of oppression that forbids them from back in the end.” In the Torah, she says, Esau cannot their desires and passions, silences their voices, and IXO¿OOWKHUROHRIIDPLO\SDWULDUFKZKLOHGHVSLVLQJ delegitimizes their experiences. For some secular the trappings that come with that role. “So too, in Jews, the Torah has had the same effect. What Torah the rabbinic text, Esau cannot both be the dominant Queeries demonstrates is that by bringing who we (male) nation and also act the role of (female) pen- are to bear on Torah texts, we are legitimating our etrated. Something must give — and in the end he otherness and being role models of courage, desire, will be punished. ”As it was for Esau, so it is today integrity, and honesty, thus inching our way toward for many gender non-conforming, gender-queer, justice and liberation for everyone. This book, an and transgender people who are punished for being indispensable resource for all teachers and learners who they are. Lev’s reading challenges us to think of Torah, in the best way possible makes queers more critically about the way we participate in the of us all.JC

Weinreich . . . War II. Recognizing the geographical changes, from page 51 ¤ Weinreich adjusts the historical periods chrono- the language itself. We have here basically three logically as: Earliest Yiddish (1000-1250); Old from page 63 problems: When did Yiddish come into existence? Yiddish (1250-1500); Middle Yiddish (1500-1750); When was it recognized, both on the part of Jews Modern Yiddish ( 1750-present). themselves and on the part of others, that Yiddish Geographical development also led to dialects was a linguistic unit in its own right? When was “between 1500 and 1700,” according to Weinreich. WKHQDPH

72 JEWISH CURRENTS his dialect was a challenge for me. Thus, when we On September 1st, 1939, when the Nazis invaded had a disagreement, he always won . . . Poland, Weinreich was in Denmark with his wife Regina and their eldest son Uriel. The men stayed Amazingly, Max Weinreich was not a native Yid- abroad and emigrated to New York in 1940, while dish speaker. He was born in 1896 in Latvia (then Regina returned to Vilna for a short period, manag- part of the Russian Empire), and the language in his ing to escape to New York with her younger son home was German. He became active in the Jewish Gabriel during the brief time when Vilna was part Labor Bund, where he learned Yiddish. At 13 he of an independent Lithuania. was already writing articles in Yiddish for the local 7KH<,92RI¿FHVDQGDVPXFKOLWHUDWXUHDVSRVVL- Bundist press. After studying at the University of ble were transferred to the U.S., and Max Weinreich St. Petersburg (not an easy feat for a Jewish student served as director of linguistics and history. He was in the Russian Empire), he settled in 1917 in Vilna. DOVRWKH¿UVWSURIHVVRURI

Jewish Secularism . . . The most basic story of Judaism and Jew- ¤ from page 63 i ish peoplehood — the Passover myth of lib- Jews have historically blended a tribal eration from slavery in Egypt, which is refer- v sensibility with an international sensibility enced over and over in the Torah as a reason for that is uniquely not rooted in colonial or imperial Jews to “love the stranger” — bespeaks an es- power. For centuries we have had to juggle our sential Jewish concern with the transformation particularism with our universalism, our “Ezra” of systems of oppression. Jews, suggested I.B. tradition (gather the exiles, exclude non-Jews) Singer, (Family Moskat) are “a people who can’t with our “Ruth” tradition (embrace the stranger, sleep themselves and let nobody else sleep.” That enlarge the tribe). In a world that can survive only resistance to complacency, and restlessness in the if human beings begin to identify as earthlings as face of injustice, are invaluable resources that in- much as citizens of particular nations, Jews have fuse Jewish history, Jewish secular thought, and something important to teach. Judaism. JC

Rabbis for Human Rights down, within the Jewish community. People who ¤ from page 9 want to support democracy and human rights in the elected government of Israel” and those who Israel therefore have to stand up and be counted so are saying, “No, we can have our own opinions on it’s clear to all, including the decision-makers, that what’s in Israel’s interests — and friends don’t let being “pro-Israel” means supporting policies that friends drive drunk.” I think there’s going to be a are in Israel’s best interests — even when the Israeli very, very serious struggle, maybe even a show- government is advocating something different. JC

AUTUMN 2009 73 Bennett Muraskin

in the country, the descendants of African slaves. In In 1953, under a new constitution that allowed for greater home rule, Cheddi Jagan was elected chief minister and Janet deputy speaker of the par- Memoriam liament on a platform of independence and work- ers’ rights. Four months later, British Prime Minis- ter Winston Churchill used military force to topple the new government. The Jagans were imprisoned JANET JAGAN for nearly six months and spent two more years under house arrest. 10/20/20 to 3/27/09 The British encouraged Burnham to establish Since Queen Salome Alexandra reigned in a new party, the People’s National Party, with its Judea from 76 to 67 BCE, there have been only base in the Afro-Guyanese minority. Despite British two Jewish women who became heads of state: manipulation of electoral rules, Cheddi Jagan re- Golda Meir, prime minister of Israel from 1969 to turned to power in 1957 and again in 1961, with 1974, and Janet Jagan, prime minister and presi- Janet as minister of labor, health and housing. She dent of Guyana, a small nation on the northeast instituted major public works and welfare programs coast of South America, from 1997 to 1999. that raised the standard of living. She was born Janet Rosenberg to a politically The Kennedy administration considered the conservative, Jewish family in Chicago that later Jagans dangerous Marxist revolutionaries and di- moved to Detroit. During the Great Depression, rected the CIA to undermine their government. In she became a communist. In 1942, while studying 1961, Cheddi Jagan made a state visit to Israel at nursing in Chicago, she met Cheddi Jagan, a den- a time when Israel was supportive of anti-colonial tistry student from British Guyana. His parents movements. Israel lobbied the U.S. to stop interfer- were sugarcane workers, descended from Indians ing in Guyana’s internal affairs, but was rebuffed. who were brought there as indentured laborers. After a campaign of CIA-funded strikes, sabo- 7KH\PDUULHGLQRYHUWKH¿HUFHRSSRVLWLRQ tage and misinformation, race riots that discred- of her parents, and went to live in Guyana. ited the Jagan government broke out. In 1964, In the late 1940s, the Jagans did labor organiz- the People’s Progressive Party lost an election ing among sugar and bauxite workers. With oth- to the CIA-backed People’s National Party. With er women, Janet founded the Women’s Political Forbes Burnham a more compliant leader, Britain and Economic Organization and helped organize ¿QDOO\JUDQWHGLQGHSHQGHQFHWR*X\DQDLQ domestic workers. In 1950 she and her husband Burnham remained in power as a corrupt autocrat joined with independence advocate Forbes Burn- until his death in 1985, as the nation devolved into ham in founding the People’s Progressive Party. one of the poorest in the Americas. Burnham represented the other major ethnic group ,Q*X\DQDKHOGLWV¿UVWIUHHHOHFWLRQVLQ decades, with Jimmy Carter serving as elections observer. Cheddi Jagan was elected president and In Memoriam -DQHWEULHÀ\VHUYHGDVDPEDVVDGRUWRWKH81,Q LEON BLOOMBERG DIWHUKHUKXVEDQGGLHGLQRI¿FHVKHZDVDS- February 20, 1919—December 22, 2008 pointed prime minister. Later that year, she was HOHFWHGSUHVLGHQW²WKH¿UVWZRPDQWRDWWDLQVXFK California North Bay DSRVLWLRQVLQFH(YD3pURQDQGWKH¿UVW-HZWRGR so in South American history. Her years in power Jewish Currents Discussion Group were marked by violent unrest that the opposition People’s National Congress fostered by exploit-

74 JEWISH CURRENTS ing racial grievances. After suffering a heart at- versy in Israel with its depiction of West Germany tack in 1999, Jagan resigned, but her Progressive as a vibrant society willing to reckon with its Nazi People’s Party remained in power. past. His two other books about Germany were a In a 2006 interview, Janet Jagan stated,“Cheddi biography of the founder of the Rothschild dynas- and I always believed in socialism. To us that ty (1996), and The Pity of It All (2002), a history meant getting rid of oppression, so the poor could of German Jewry that offended Zionist opinion by . . . enjoy the fruits of this country.” arguing that the Holocaust was not inevitable. While she did not have strong feelings about her A week after the Six-Day War in 1967, Elon Jewish identity, she said it contributed toward her wrote in Ha’aretz: “We have a moral obligation “interest in the underdog and in helping out the because the road to Israel’s independence was impoverished of the world.” In 2006, she issued a paved on the backs of these people [Palestinian statement condemning Israel’s attack on Lebanon Arabs], and they paid, with their bodies, their as “wanton destruction” that punished the entire property and their future, for the pogroms in the SRSXODWLRQIRUURFNHW¿UHIURP+H]EROODK Ukraine and the Nazi gas chambers.” In his 1970 -DJDQZDVWKHDXWKRURI¿YHFKLOGUHQ¶VERRNV book, Jerusalem: City of Mirrors, he lamented In 1997 she received the Gandhi Gold Medal for the fact that in Jerusalem, Arabs and Jews “hated Peace, Democracy and Women’s Rights from their fellow man to the glory of God.” His next UNESCO. book, the bestselling Israel: Founders and Sons (1971), celebrated the Jewish renaissance in Israel but warned that Israel’s victory in the Six-Day AMOS ELON War could become “worse than a defeat” if Israel continued to occupy the West Bank and Gaza and 7/4/26 to 5/25/09 deny self-determination to the Palestinians. Zionism’s mission was to promote the “ingath- Elon also wrote in English for the New Yorker, ering of exiles” to the ancestral home of the Jew- New York Times Magazine and the New York Re- LVKSHRSOH7KHUHZHUHDERXW¿IW\WKRXVDQG-HZV view of Books+HDQDO\]HGLQGHWDLOWKH¿UVWinti- in Palestine at the time of the Balfour Declaration fada, the peace process that began with the Oslo in 1917, and there are about six million Jews liv- Agreement in 1993, settlement expansion, the ing in Israel today. That is a success story by any second intifada, and the Israeli political scene. GH¿QLWLRQ%XWWKHUHDUHDOVRXSWRDPLOOLRQ,VUDH- A devout secularist, Elon became more disillu- lis living outside the Jewish state. For most, the sioned with Israel in the 1990s, not only with the motive for leaving is economic, but for some it is occupation but with the growth in religious fanati- political. The most famous Israeli political exile, cism. In 2004, he departed for Italy. In a farewell Amos Elon, recently died in Italy at age 82. interview in Ha’aretz, he remarked, “Nothing has Elon was born in Vienna into a middle-class changed here in the last forty years. . . . The solu- family. In 1933 they emigrated to Palestine, yet tions were already known back then. But no one retained a strong attachment to German language paid attention to them . . . I was a lone voice in the and culture. Elon joined the Haganah in 1946 and wilderness.” JC participated in the War of Independence. In 1951 he began a long and distinguished career as a writer for Ha’aretz. While the Ashkenazi popula- In memory of a wonderful lady, tion was consolidating its hold on the new nation, a supporter of so many good causes — Elon wrote about new arrivals from North Africa DORIS SCHAEFER who were shunted to remote locations. +LV ¿UVW ERRN Journey Through a Haunted Martha Sipser and Family Land: The New Germans (1967), created contro-

AUTUMN 2009 75 Letters Nobody answered the question, “Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future?” Some writers expressed from page 2 ¤ hopes. I offer an answer to a different question by April Rosenblum’s essay was superb, and the editor’s observing that the November-December issue had “Dinosaur Days” was delighful. Both of them kept me three Hanuka poems; January-February had an ar- up late last night. I hope that JEWISH CURRENTS will ticle based on Tu B’Shevat; March-April had a riff continue for many years. on the Fier Kashes. In the 1930s there was a promi- Gezunt un stark, nent Jewish communist in Toronto who walked CHIC WOLK down Spadina Avenue on Yom Kippur eating a ham Los Angeles, California sandwich among the crowds outside the synagogues. • He wasn’t observing the High Holy Days but his be- $V,ZDVÀ\LQJKRPHIURPP\NLG¶VFROOHJHJUDGXD- havior was conditioned by them. Jewish secularism tion in New York, I had the good luck to have brought needs Orthodox Judaism. Without that anchor, Jew- along the current copy of JEWISH CURRENTS to read: ish Secularism would spin away to nowhere, like the “Does Jewish Secularism Have a Future?” If I never planets and asteroids if the sun disappeared. get another issue, the article by April Rosenblum was MURRAY CITRON worth the whole sub. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada Her analysis had me reacting (nodding, snorting, • muttering, etc. — great to look at in a plane, right?) The recent election of Barack Obama proves that halfway to Los Angeles. I want to read it aloud to our values, as expressed in JEWISH CURRENTS, are my kids and husband so that they’ll get it, especially alive, well, and thriving! The mass movement spear- the what-it-was-like to be raised by proud secularist headed by our youth did, in actual fact, change Amer- parents in a world where there were many outlets for ica. Jewish expression that were not coöpted by theists. Most American Jews are secular but don’t think in I was raised in a very active and progressive Jewish such labels. They are aware, and proud, of the ethics community center: no rabbis needed, thank you very that our Jewish heritage presents. How they behave much. This issue really helped me put together where in their day-to-day actions, and the political positions it all went and why, and since I’m married to a Jewish they take, are based upon these secular, humanist be- theist (a mixed marriage for this atheist if ever there liefs. Still, many belong to and occasionally attend a ZDVRQH ,¿QDOO\KDYHDKLVWRU\RIZKDWKDSSHQHGWR synagogue, which may be due to the fact that there the secular community in America as I put up with the aren’t that many other venues available in which one prevailing Jewish community disdain and alienation can feel part of the Jewish community. Yes, there are faced by us secularists. JCCs and YM-YWHAs, and yes, there are Work- JANET LENT men’s Circles and humanist synagogues and Sholom Venice, California Aleichem shulesEXW¿QGLQJDV\QDJRJXHLQXVXDOO\ • an easier way to connect, even for those who are I read the May-June issue on Jewish Secularism more secular than spiritual. with the feeling of someone walking a path with a JEFFREY KASSEL deep hollow beside it — or three hollows in one. New York, New York The country with the greatest number of Secular Jews in the world today is Israel. Your writers don’t mention that. Israel is hardly mentioned at all, except JEWISH CURRENTS at the Beach as an embarrassment. It seems that none of your writ- ers think Israel has done them any good. My memory Thanks for the phenomenal summer supplement, goes back before there was a State. North America “JEWISH CURRENTS at the Beach.” I’m an old Coney was full of snide anti-Semitism. Within ten years af- Island boy, and some of the poems and stories brought ter 1948 that was largely gone. No doubt there were tears to my eyes. other reasons. History is a process in which a sure Fred Dolgon assignment of cause and effect is rare. Old Orchard Beach, Maine

76 JEWISH CURRENTS