Going for Broke The Jewish 1960s, An American Sourcebook edited by Michael E. Staub (Brandeis University, 2004), 371 + xxviii pages REVIEWED BY LAWRENCE BUSH “In the 1960s, apartheid was member of the “Woodstock Nation.” driven out of America. Legal segrega- My sadness wells up from the fact tion — Jim Crow — ended. We of his suicide within days of that Van- ended the idea that you can send a derbilt University speech — by which million soldiers ten thousand miles time, the conservative “counterrevolu- away to fight in a war that people tion” was well on its way to reversing do not support. We ended the idea “the big battles that were won” in the that women are second-class citizens. sixties. The U.S. invasions of Grenada . The big battles that were won in (1983) and Panama (1989) had begun that period of civil war and strife you to restore the U.S. military’s sense cannot reverse. of impunity. Yuppies had replaced “We were young, we were reckless, Yippies as a generational symbol. arrogant, silly, headstrong — and we Fundamentalist Christian ministers were right. I regret nothing.” were leading a far-reaching backlash —Abbie Hoffman, April, 1989 against women’s liberation and the Vanderbilt University legitimation of non-heterosexual orientation. White flight from public henever I see the poster schools — including a major exodus with these words on the by Jews — was resegregating a barely W living room wall in the desegregated educational system. The home of my dear friend, Teddy — a War on Drugs was throwing billions middle-aged ex-hippie, like most of of dollars into ineffectual policies and my dear friends — I feel both richly thousands of people into prison — and affirmed and deeply saddened. The af- was frightening the baby-boom genera- firmation comes from the rallying spirit tion into silence about their own drug of Abbie Hoffman’s words: The 1960s experiences. did bring enormous, liberatory changes The counterrevolution of the 1980s to America, and I have thanked my was a lot less successful within the mazel ever since that I came of age as a American Jewish community, however Lawrence Bush edits Reconstructionism Today and Jewish Currents. His newest book, Waiting for God: The Spiritual Memoir of an Atheist, is scheduled for publication in Winter, 2006. 11 • Fall 005 The Reconstructionist — and remains so, despite the hot-and- community of that time — rooted in heavy courtship of Jewish voters and the prophetic exhortations of Judaism, intellectuals by the neoconservative the pro-socialist history of the immi- movement. Yes, several Jewish organi- grant generation, and the perception of zations fell under the spell of neocon- American conservatism as “crackpot” servatism and often treated affirmative (and anti-Semitic) before the Gold- action as an offense against the Jews. water presidential campaign of 1964 Yes, Israel’s dependence on American — empowered its young activists to fol- military and political support led to low the path of conscience without fear splits or incoherence among Jewish of being ostracized. This was especially organizations on such issues as South so when it came to civil rights activism, African apartheid, the Nicaraguan con- which was a catalyst in the awakening tra war, nuclear power and more. Yes, of Jewish identity and Jewish radical- it took until 1985 for the Conservative ism for the rest of the decade. Reform movement to ordain a woman as a rab- Judaism’s veteran social-action leader, bi, and until the 1990s for the Reform Albert Vorspan — represented here by movement to ordain openly gay men three essays — noted in a 1962 piece and lesbians. Still, despite a hot-and- from the Jewish Frontier that heavy courtship by the conservative the Freedom Rides touched the movement, American Jews and most of Jewish community in a deep and their organizations remain tenaciously special way . By and large, left-of-center on many of the pressing Northern Jews responded with issues of our day. high enthusiasm to the Freedom Michael E. Staub’s well-stocked Rides and to Jewish participation anthology, The Jewish 1960s, indicates in them. Some of the congrega- why. tions lavished honors and tributes upon the rabbis who took the Activism as a Jewish Calling Freedom Rides. Some of the congregations raised funds to cover Staub’s book reprints seventy-three bail and bond. Many Jewish brief essays that range across the groups invited Freedom Riders to civil rights struggle, the Vietnam peace address them; a few Freedom Rid- movement, the campaign for Soviet ers spoke in Northern synagogues Jewish rights, the feminist explosion from the pulpit (19). in Jewish life, the sexual revolution and more. While the right-wing Meir Kah- In a 1963 article in The Reconstruc- ane and latter-day conservatives such as tionist, Holocaust theologian Rabbi Lucy Dawidowicz and Marie Syrkin are Richard L. Rubeinstein wrote about included, most of the voices here are left a contingent of nineteen rabbis who or leftish, as befits “the ’60s.” left a Rabbinical Assembly convention Consistently, we see how the well- to meet the Rev. Martin Luther King, entrenched liberalism of the Jewish Jr. in Birmingham, Alabama and felt The Reconstructionist Fall 005 • 115 entitled to stress “in all our contacts Rabbi Balfour Brickner responded to . that we came as representatives of President Richard Nixon’s attempt to almost 800 Conservative rabbis who neutralize Jewish opposition to the serve over 1,500,000 congregants” (23). Vietnam War by “subtly suggesting Also writing in The Reconstruction- that [American support for Israel] ist (1962), Betty Altschuler thought might erode if American Jews continue about “the women of Israel who left vigorously to oppose the war.” Brickner Egypt and went into the desert, trust- declared that ing their men, but still fearful for the safety of their children” as she rides the American Jewish community with her daughter from Chicago to . will end up in a bind . if it Albany, Georgia on a civil rights “prayer gives up its right to be independent pilgrimage” (14). — to be critical, if need be, of its own government, of Israel, of it- Leadership Role of Rabbis self. It will find itself discredited by the other American communities A second impediment to the coun- with which it must work and un- terrevolution that shines through The heeded by its government, which Jewish 1960s is the leadership role of will look on it as merely a group progressive rabbis, and rabbis-to-be, in of special pleaders whose loyalties stirring Jews to engage with Jewishness if not allegiances are subject to as an insurgent identity. Speaking for question (162-163). the American Jewish Congress at the 1963 March on Washington, Rabbi Rabbi Arthur Lelyveld, a bloodied Joachim Prinz evoked Judaism and veteran of the civil rights struggles, the Jewish experience as wellsprings of wrote in a 1966 Congress Bi-Weekly conscience: article of “the imperatives of the Jewish heritage . in relation to Vietnam,” Our ancient history began with which he named as “fairness,” “truth,” slavery and the yearning for free- “freedom to dissent,” and “the con- dom. During the Middle Ages tinuing search for peace” (146). And my people lived for a thousand the ever-independent Rabbi Arthur years in the ghettos of Europe. Hertzberg, in a 1964 Jewish Frontier Our modern history begins with article, argued that “the Jew cannot a proclamation of emancipation. settle down in freedom to be himself, It is for these reasons that it is not ‘just like everybody else.’ When in his merely sympathy and compassion own inner consciousness he begins to for the black people of America approach a real feeling of at-homeness that motivates us. It is . a sense within the larger society, what remains of complete identification and of his Jewish identity is too little and to solidarity . (90) personalized to sustain a community” In a 1970 Christian Century article, (44). 116 • Fall 005 The Reconstructionist Positive Impact of Feminism and Halacha . the problem is how to attain some justice and some growing The third stumbling block to the room for the Jewish woman if one is conservative counterrevolution was the committed to remaining within Hala- change-making role of women within cha” (331). Jewish life, beginning in the 1960s. In In many of the book’s essays, we rec- his introduction to the chapter, “Jewish ognize the self-correcting or moderating Women and Feminism,” Staub notes influence of Judaism and Jewish iden- that despite the hypothetical arguments tity upon the radicals of the community made during that time against Jewish — an influence that kept the “Jewish feminism — that it might reduce the 1960s” from getting out of control Jewish fertility rate, drive men away and imploding the way the “American from synagogue involvement and 1960s” did. The hard-to-define terms weaken the Jewish family — the “wide- of Jewish identity (religion, philosophy, spread revitalization of Judaism that did ethnic group, civilization?), along with take place after the 1960s was due in its many internal contradictions (Zion- no small part to the success of — not ist or internationalist? Hutspedike. radi- the resistance to — a Jewish women’s cal or vulnerable minority member?), movement” (318). seemed to protect Jewishly-identified Thus the “Brooklyn Bridge Collec- Jews of the 1960s from some of the tive,” in a 1971 article in their “un- sectarian excesses of the day. derground” journal, identified Jewish women’s oppression with the oppres- Nuanced Political Stands sion of the Jews: “What has gone down and continues to come down on Jewish Bill Novak, for example, in a 1970 men on the outside has affected us on article in the CCAR Journal, described the inside” (326).