. It is always in our best interest to be involved in white, Christian peace movement conference. I the politics of both parties. Jews have con- was there as the staff representative of the Jewish siderable political skills and sophistication and Peace Fellowship. The speaker, the Rev. Wyatt T. their involvement has been the best guarantee for Walker (of Canaan Baptist Church in Harlem) continued support for Israel. The Republican opened by saying he had been with Jesse Jackson platform is flawed, and as mentioned before, this in Syria, and noted that the captured U.S. pilot, administration has been decidedly indifferent to Lt. Robert Goodman, who is Black, wouldn't Israel's security concerns. Nonetheless, it is clearly have "needed Jesse's help if he'd been white or i the lesser of two evils, and increased Jewish par- Jewish." He continued to talk about Jews j. ticipation is crucial in the party that clearly throughout his speech, declaring "former friends reflects the opinions of the majority of Americans. of the civil rights movement" and "Jewish bureaucrats" had betrayed the Black people. He ! Those Democrats who have a nostalgic attach- drew a chart on a blackboard to illustrate his | ment to their party have even more to gain from analysis of American Black history— that each | its defeat in 1984. Only then will its perverse drift century ended with a major betrayal. The I toward the left be halted, its failed policies betrayal of this century, he said, was by the Jews. f repudiated, and its doors opened to those Walker made clear he blamed Jews for what he j Democrats who feel that they no longer have a considered the loss of Black people's gains of the political home. • civil rights movement. He named specific Jewish The invisibility of jewish leftists leaders he believed had betrayed their cause (by opposing quotas and affirmative action). Not once ! Carolyn Toll Oppenheim did he mention other factors which have set the Black community back, like Reaganomics, the i This summer has been an especially lonely and military budget, the cold war or the change in |. painful time for me as a politically liberal Jew. public priorities. The Jesse Jackson campaign may change the ;l course of history in this country. His positions on i most of the issues are exactly what I believe and Ignoring Progressive Jews rarely hear a presidential candidate express. I I was shocked. I could not believe I was hearing i grew up in a subculture of civil rights work and these things in such a place. Black anger against i political liberalism. Most of my friends and family the establishment Jewish community is not t are Jews working in public interest professions. It something I shrink from confronting and dealing > is unthinkable that I would not want to feel part with. But why come here, to a peace movement of the first black candidacy for president. How gathering where the only Jews attending are sym- i ugly that this one has chosen a campaign of anti- pathetic to the issues, and attack Jews? What Semitism. could be the motive? If I felt pain, the thousands of Jewish civil rights I felt Rev. Walker's motive stemmed from the | and public interest lawyers were suffering, as campaign strategy: to render progressive Jews in- I well. For progressives of principle, this wrinkle in visible. That ploy suited their political purposes the Jackson campaign has not persuaded us that this summer (the reasons for that require a whole the Commentary crowd were right all along and separate article). As much as that enraged me, | that we must all run and join B'nai B'rith. The what disturbed me more was the complicity on ! lonely feelings stem from the awareness that we the part of white, liberal Christians and pro- j have no place to go— not to the Left, where gressive Jews, ourselves. I white Christian silence on this issue is positively After Rev. Walker finished his talk, a few people i' deafening, nor to the insular Jewish Right, which were invited to share their responses. All except i has certainly given Black people justification for one were non-Jews. None of them referred to f feelings of betrayal by some Jews. Walker's remarks about Jews, although they were I My personal sense of loneliness was exacerbated central to the speech. ' by a specific incident. I heard an anti-Semitic Had I really sat in a roomful of white Christians ' speech given by a black clergyman, (a campaign listening to a black clergyman— once a close aide official close to Jackson) to a predominantly to Martin Luther King— tell them that the Jews, CAROLYN TOLL OPPENHEIM, who now lives NOT Reagan, were the major undoing of Black in Brookline, MA., travels to New York monthly people in the twentieth century? I needed for meetings of the Jewish Peace Fellowship and someone to break the silence that greeted that the Sh'ma Fellows Program. attack on Jews. It was the silence of white Chris- tians— the lack of awareness of what it felt like silent. Those of us who work as secular to us, in that room— that terrified me. It caused Americans, in the many peace and social justice me to wonder about our invisibility on the Left groups keeping our Jewishness a private matter, and in the peace movement, today. It reminded leave the field open for anti-Semites to pretend me of a particularly enraging phone call I had we don't exist. Why do we Jews do all our Right- ; received from a peace activist. "We need the wing activities as Jews and our Left-wing work as Jewish Peace Fellowship's endorsement for this general Americans? peace meeting," the caller said, "Because the whole thing looks overwhelmingly Christian. Can Two Exceptional Leaders you help us find more Jews?" I felt frustrated. Two brave Americans on the Left deserve support j The thousands of Jews he already had working and recognition. One is Erwin Knoll, editor j with him were simply invisible. But they were of The Progressive, published in Madison, there: in all the national peace groups, the Freeze Wisconsin. Knoll, a Viennese Jew who fled campaigns, and so forth. How dare he ask me Nazism as a teenager, edits a journal whose where are the Jews? But our silence— as Jews, editorial view might have easily led him to sup- when we work on these things— renders us invisi- port the Jackson candidacy. In the Spring, he ble, it seems. It also makes us vulnerable to those wrote an editorial refusing to support Jackson and who would exploit that invisibility, like a Rev. citing the attacks on Jews and their implications Walker, whose own personal relationships with as a reason. Knoll has been deluged with angry Jewish civil rights lawyers go back some thirty mail from Left Jews who cannot believe he is put- ' years. ting his Jewish feelings before his Left convic- , tions. Knoll knows they are inseparable. I am Liberal Jews Choose Silence proud he had the guts, in that political camp, to j Both Naomi Goodman, JPF president, and I stood stand up. His doing so makes it easier for others, 'j up and confronted Rev. Walker at that gathering. We must learn to stay on the Left— not run But I felt that was not enough. To me, the inci- away— but insist they accept us as Jews, like Er- dent was a metaphor for the position of all Jewish win Knoll. liberals this summer reading and watching the But we need support, and for me it came from news and following the "Black/Jewish playoffs." Virginia Baron, editor of Fellowship magazine, So I began calling friends and colleagues all over the organ of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a the country, Jews on the Left, for their com- predominantly Christian, interfaith pacifist ments. I was astonished at the depth of their con- organization with which Jewish Peace Fellowship viction that liberal Jews should refrain from say- is affiliated. Virginia heard about my experience ing anything critical about Jesse Jackson until and urged me to write an article about it, candid- after the November election. Many Jews with a ly explaining my feelings as a Jew to the mainly lifetime of Left political activism behind them Christian readership. She has broken Christian counselled me to be silent so we do not appear to silence on this issue and taken a lot of heat from be adding our voices to the chorus of those who the organizers of the conference where Wyatt T. are truly not on the side of advancement for Black Walker spoke. There has been an abundance of people. mail in response to the article— most of it Interestingly, it was not for a self-hating will- grateful for the candor on the subject. ingness to suffer insults to Jews to protect the Erwin Knoll's Left Jewish pride and courage Blacks. Rather it was for a very Jewish fear of be- together with Virginia Baron's integrity, prin- ing scapegoated in the end. The thinking went as ciples and guts, give me inspiration. I think if the follows: if Mondale loses the election, white rest of us stand together with people like them Christian liberals will be angry that the Jews and follow their model, on the Left, we can beat forced Mondale to choose between them and the the bullies down and do more for our cause than Blacks. The feeling was that it would be better we ever thought we could. • for the Jews if we all kept a low profile and stayed out of the struggle. I personally know a number of prominent Jewish Leftists (including ...but others say about foreign aid... some Rabbis) who turned down well-meaning It may be a surprise to the reader to see our Christian clergymen trying to get Jews to publicly Jewish community labeled as Israel's worst support Jesse. But these same people felt it wisest enemy. We have earned that title through our not to talk publicly about the issue. lobbying for ever increasing economic aid to I personally feel the greater danger is in staying Israel, aid that has made it possible for the Israeli
149 government to follow irresponsible economic policies. m, m*! what's that? The Likud government ran on a budget with a 1 Should te R*eSident in huge deficit. The printing presses ran to make up '85 and '8t> fcnd -you Should this deficit and bring on 400% inflation. We all i know that among these budget expenditures were iaVe over in. aad, '88. the war in Lebanon and West Bank settlements. How many know of the bribery of coalition part- es: ners? Each of Likud's partners received allocations . from the treasury for its institutions (Aguda's 1 yeshivot, for example). Likud economic policies were also a form of | bribery to the electorate. The value of the Shekel I was kept at an artificially high level until the fall of 1983. Israeli goods were expensive on world markets and imports were cheap in Israel. First Israeli's bought cars, then imported color televi- sion sets. By the time I was in Israel (end of • September, 1983 to end of January, 1984) almost . ..and maybe i everybody I know in Israel owned a video John JpaeTSon |' recorder. Almost nobody I know in the U.S. owns tro Can dotcr on ; one. As we all know Israel's balance of payments Weekend.) and halt iayt [ is in a state of crisis, rescued only through I economic aid which deepens Israel's dependency. up in ideological gerrymandering, carving out all j( Do I feel that Israelis should not have the goodies virtues for my movement and consigning the I of our technology? No. I do want the Israeli worst parts to the other movements. Such economy to earn these goodies. dialogues tend to degenerate into Buckley-like What should be the thrust of our lobbying on debates less interested in understanding than in economic aid for Israel? one-downsmanship. i ii I fear a too sudden cutoff and the dislocation it Still I believe with Buber that "all real life is [' would cause. We should be lobbying for a taper- meeting" and that as long as there is meeting •j| ing off of aid and for making that aid contingent there is the hope of life. Towards this end I pro- il on reforms in economic policy. pose a sort of dialogue which calls for role rever- sal. Quite simply, each of the panelists agrees to I do not believe the Labor-Likud coalition will explain and articulate the virtues of the other's i' take the needed steps without pressure. Too many ideology. For example, my role as a conservative I compromises were needed to bring about the rabbi would be to depict the strength of Or- coalition.'Likud remains in control of all the thodoxy, the attraction of its belief and practice, ministries dealing with economic policies. • its contributions to Jewish life. And my Orthodox I Martin Fox counterpart would do the same, exploring the East Lansing, MI positive contributions of my movement. The ade- quacy of my presentation of Orthodoxy would de- ! ...but others say about dialogue... pend upon the approval of my Orthodox col- league. He may point out what I may have miss- I am a firm believer in dialogue and particularly ed or exaggerated. And I would be free to correct among Orthodox, Reform Conservative and his presentation of my ideology. Such exchanges, I I Reconstructionist Jews who live in increasingly am convinced, may provide growth experiences j segregated worlds. Yet I turned down a recent in- for all parties concerned. They would not lessen vitation for such a dialogue with two other col- the fidelity to one's own ideology but would likely leagues, each of us to represent our respective reduce the provincial caricaturing of other ap- | religious movements. I did so because I have proaches. t found that such intra-faith exchanges tend to turn I into sporting events with hasidim from each camp This role reversal may help encourage Jews to cheering the parrying of their denomination's own enter into the mind-set of the other and to over- I heroes. In that environment, I find myself caught come the prejudices of insularity. Empathy is not
150 innate. Empathy is an art that requires cultiva- SCHWARZSCHILD, Professor of Philosophy, tion. It is indispensable to laying the grounds for Washington U., Editor, Judaism, 1960-69... accommodation and eventual reconciliation of broken parts which belong together, SEYMOUR SIEGEL, Director, United States Holocaust Memorial Commission, who has recent- Harold M. Schulweis ly edited the collection of papers Conservative Encino, CA Judaism and Jewish Law... PLEASE NOTE the following corrections in the ELIE WIESEL, Mellon Professor, Boston Univer- recent article by Lawrence Baron, "Restoring sity, whose latest book is The Golem... ARNOLD faith in human kind" (Sh'ma 14/276): JACOB WOLF, rabbi K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Con- gregation, Chicago, Editor, What is Man?... In the first paragraph, it should read several hun- MICHAEL WYSCHOGROD, Professor of dred thousand Jews were saved during the Philosophy, Baruch College, author of The Body Holocaust, and not several thousand. Estimates on of Faith. the number saved range from 200,000 to 1,000,000. OUR EDITOR, EUGENE B. BOROWITZ, is i Professor of Education and Jewish Religious In the process of abridging, he inadvertently Thought at Hebrew Union College— Jewish In- forgot to mention Pierre Sauvage's Friends of Le stitute of Religion and author of the recent book Chambon, "a nonprofit charitable foundation Liberal Judaism. devoted to fostering an understanding of righteous conduct during the Holocaust." It represents one STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP MANAGEMENT AND CIRCULATION (Act of August 12. 1970; Section 3685. Title 39, United States Code) of the few exceptions to the general neglect of the Date of Filing: Octolier 1984. Publication No. 490385 ! Righteous Gentiles which has characterized the Title of Publication: SH'MA a journal of Jewish responsibility I Frequency of Issue: Bi-weekly except June, July and August. 20 issues annually. American Jewish response to this aspect of the Annual Subscription Price $12.00 , Location of Known Office of Publication: 735 Port Washington Blvd., Port Holocaust. Washington, N.Y. 11050 Location of the Headquarters or General Business Offices of the Publisher: Sh'ma fellows returning for a second or third year Sh'ma, Inc., 23 Murray Ave., Port Washington, N.Y. 11050 Publisher: Sh'ma, Inc., 23 Murray Ave., Port Washington, New York 11050. are DOUGLAS ARONIN, New York attorney, Editor: Eugene B. Borowitz Owner: Sh'ma, Inc., 23 Murray Ave., Port Washington, N.Y. 11050 JOSEPH KAPLAN, New York attorney now living (non-profit corporation under the laws of the State of N.Y.) in Teaneck, NJ., CAROLYN TOLL OP- Known Bondholders, Mortgagees, and Other Security Holders Owning or Holding 1 Percent or More of Total Amount of Bonds, Mortgages or Other Securities: None PENHEIM, free-lance journalist and SARI TROP- The purpose, function and non-profit status of this organization and the exempt PER, formerly an English teacher, currently ex- status for Federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding 12 months. pecting her seventh child. • A. Total No. Copies Printed: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 > Months, 9.405. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date. 8.700. B. Paid Circulation. 1. Sales Through Dealers and Carriers, Street Vendors and Our contributing editors Counter Sales: None. 2. Mail Subscriptions: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 7.272. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date. 6.678. (Continued from 14/278) C. Total Paid Circulation: Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 PAULA HYMAN, Dean of the Seminary College, Months, 7.272. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date. 6,678. D. Free Distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier or other means: Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 2,000. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date, 2,000. author of From Dreyfus to Vichy... NORA E. Total Distribution (Sum of C and D): Average No. Copies Each Issue During LEVIN, Professor of Jewish History at Gratz Col- Preceding 12 Months, 9.272. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date. 8.678. F. Office Use. Left-over. Unaccounted. Spoiled After Printing: Average No. lege, author of The Holocaust... Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months. 133. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date. 22. DAVID NOVAK, Rabbi, Bayswater Jewish C. Total (Sum of E & F): Average No. Copies Each Issue During Preceding 12 Months, 9.405. Single Issue Nearest to Filing Date. 8.7
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