America, Bleeding My Life in Books, 2008 an Editorial Esther Cohen Analyzing Lithuanian Anti-Semitism Jewish Secularism in France Geoff Vasil Nadia Malinovich Ab

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America, Bleeding My Life in Books, 2008 An Editorial Esther Cohen Analyzing Lithuanian Anti-Semitism Jewish Secularism in France Geoff Vasil Nadia Malinovich Ab. Cahan Meets Friedrich Engels Wrestling with Righteousness Yankl Stillman Diana Scott should — perhaps must — go right ahead with science — explore the macro and micro universes — there is LETTERS all but an imperative to explore the utter limits of the cosmos — chemically, Names will be withheld from publication on biologically, physically, in every way. request. Jewish Currents reserves the right But when it’s time to technologically to edit letters to restrict their length. implement the discoveries of science, that’s where discussion and decision must take place. But discussion and decision by whom exactly? Science and Boundaries the same testing as any other falsifi- I don’t think anything I wrote above I was surprised to find Bernard able claim. I don’t care what a religious is any different than what was said in Bulkin favorably quoting Stephen Jay person thinks or does in the privacy of the interview — it just gives me food Gould’s (in)famous claim that science his or her own bathroom, but in public, for thought. Thanks. and religion are perforce separate and scientific scrutiny is essential. The Russ Bush non-overlapping magisteria (“Religion magisteria overlap constantly. Bethel, Connecticut and Skepticism,” September-October). Barry Goldstein Professor Gould’s intellect was appar- Newtonville, Massachusetts ently on vacation the day he wrote that. • Jews and the Left As long as religion makes assertions I really enjoyed the interview with I agree with the main thrust of about the real world (prayer is effica- Bernard Bulkin. The main point to me Bennett Muraskin’s interesting article cious, creationism is to be taught in is his initial statement: “I am going to (“Jews and the Left: A Natural Alli- schools, only religious people can be make a distinction between science ance?” in September-October), but I moral, etc., ad nauseam) it is subject to and technology.” I think that scientists was disturbed by some inaccuracies. First of all, August Bebel was not a “German Jewish socialist,” as Mu- Vol. 62, No. 6 (651) raskin wrote. His father was a Protes- November-December, 2008 tant Prussian and Bebel was baptized www.jewishcurrents.org and raised as a Protestant. On his Editor: Lawrence Bush mother’s side, the ancestry is less clear Editorial Board: Adrienne Cooper, Joseph Dimow, Henry Foner, (if only because the family name was Esther Leysorek Goodman, Rokhl Kafrissen, Milton Kant, Lyber Katz, Simon), but she too was a Protestant, Judith Rosenbaum, Yankl Stillman, Tamar Zinn, Barnett Zumoff as were her closest relatives. Bebel was Contributing Editor (from Israel): Amy Klein an opponent of anti-Semitism, but that Editorial Advisory Council: Isak Arbus, Henrietta Backer, Paul Basch, didn’t make him Jewish. Anne-Marie Brumm, Alvin Dorfman, Shaurain Farber, Gordon Fellman, Continued on page 42 Eric A. Gordon, Abbott Gorin, David A. Hacker, Estelle Holt, Nicholas Jahr, Carol Jochnowitz, Robert Kaplan, Michael Katz, Robert Kestenbaum, Arieh Lebowitz, Miriam Leberstein, Ira Mintz, Bennett Muraskin, Marie Parham, Peter Pepper, CORRECTION Sam Pepper, Sheldon Ranz, Eugene Resnick, Sid Resnick, Martin Schwartz, • An editing error garbled the final Rhea Seagull, Ralph Seliger, Paul G. Shane, Joel Shatzky, Ruth Singer, Harold Sosnow paragraph of Nicholas Jahr’s report, Website Editor: Rokhl Kafrissen Website Resources: Ira Karlick “J Street Paves Its Own Road,” in Management committee: Stan Distenfeld, Nina Gordon, Ira Karlick, Elaine Katz, our September-October issue. The Bernard Kransdorf, Ruth Ost, Fred Rosenthal paragraph should have read: “The challenge before J Street, as a fun- Cover: “Peace March,” oil painting by Max Ginsburg, from his exhibit, “Visions of Reality,” damentally moderate voice in a con- at Gallery 1199 at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center of 1199/SEIU’s Bread and Roses servative time, is to pry open a space Cultural Project. Ginsburg, a life-long New Yorker, has taught at at the School of Visual Arts, in which the 69 percent of American the Art Students League, and the High School of Art and Design. His work has been widely displayed and is included in several museum collections. He draws inspiration from human- Jews willing to give diplomacy a istic traditions from Goya to Kollwitz and uses Old Master techniques to give his paintings chance can be heard. It remains to of contemporary scenes a timeless power. be seen whether offering candidates the political cover to speak out will JEWISH CURRENTS (ISSN #US-ISSN-0021-6399), November-December, 2008, Vol. 62, No. be enough, or if a more radical ap- 6 (651). Published bimonthly by The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, 45 E. 33rd St., New York, NY 10016. Phone: (212) 889-2523. Fax: (212) 532-7518. E-mail: [email protected]. proach is needed.” Website: www.jewishcurrents.org. Single copies $5. Subscription $30 a year in U.S.; elsewhere, $40. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y. Copyright © 2008 by Jewish Currents. Editorials and Viewpoints Editorials 2 Letters 3 America, Bleeding 5 A Dank! America, Bleeding

Articles “Mission Accomplished” 11 Analyzing Lithuanian Anti-Semitism Geoff Vasil t took the “miracle of the oil,” a one-day supply burning 16 Jewish Secularism in France for eight days, to resanctify the temple in Jerusalem after Nadia Malinovich I the Syrian Greeks ran swine through it during the ancient 20 My Life in Books, 2008 days of the Maccabees. It will take a far greater miracle than Esther Cohen that to restore the United States to sound health and international respect, once George W. Bush and “Dick” Cheney complete their Columns eight-year rampage on January 20th. Nearly all of their intentions were made clear in the earliest 4 Forshpayzn weeks of their administration, well be- 7 Follow-Up fore the terrorist attacks of September 8 The View from Israel Ultimately, the imperial ambitions 11th, 2001. On his very first day in of- Who Counts? of Bush and Cheney were kept in fice, for example, Bush blocked federal Amy Klein check less by Congress, the aid to groups offering abortion servic- 24 Mameloshn Supreme Court, the press or any es overseas— and on his tenth day, he Two Poems by Avrom Reyzn announced his “faith-based initiative,” other arm of our democracy, than Translated by Barnett Zumoff which ultimately channelled billions by their own sheer incompetence 26 Our Secular Jewish Heritage in federal funds for poverty relief and Ab. Cahan Meets Friedrich Engels — in New Orleans after Hurricane social programs to religious organi- Yankl Stillman Katrina, in Baghdad after Opera- zations, almost exclusively Christian 36 Radical Yiddish tion Iraqi Freedom, in allowing our ones. This constituted payback to the Evangelical right, which had invested Pesach Burstein’s Peace Plan country’s infrastructure to degrade Joel Schechter heavily in Bush’s election. And the while the national deficit exploded, payback has never slackened: The 38 Concealed/Revealed Essays about Jerusalem and so on. Unlike dictators of old, Supreme Court and federal judiciary, Bush and Cheney didn’t get the the Justice Department, the National 46 In Memoriam Institutes of Health, even the Parks Bennett Muraskin trains to run on time. Department and the Environmental Reviews Protection Administration, have all been seriously compromised by religious meddling, censorship, 29 Defending the Sixties and hiring biases for eight long years. Lawrence Bush on The Sixties Unplugged On his twentieth day in office, Bush sent his record-setting 32 Wrestling with Righteousness $1.6 trillion tax cut plan to Congress — a fat gift to America’s Diana Scott on Righteous Indignation very richest stratum. A few days later, on February 28th, he an-

nounced his support for a bill to make it harder for people to Poetry and Art file for bankruptcy — a slap in the face of working America. 19 As a Christmas Present I Got Myself a Menorah Within his first month, in other words, Bush set in motion the Angelo Taranta kind of oligarchic, unregulated, debt-laden capitalism that has 23 Hanuka on the Lebanese Border at Kibbutz Yiron produced the financial crisis of 2008 and the threat of economic I. Century recession, if not depression, worldwide. 37 Zeyde Alan Holder Within three months of taking office, Bush and Cheney had 48 The First Hundred Days rejected international agreements on land mines, nuclear test- Solomon Chigrinsky ing and an international criminal court. Simultaneously, they withdrew our country from the Kyoto treaty on global warming, If 48 pages are not enough for you, visit www.jewishcurrents.org. which had already been signed by one hundred and seventy- You’ll find reprints, resources, archives, the editor’s blog, the Root- November-December, 2008 less Cosmopolitan blog, and much more! Forshpayzn*

Mazel Tovs for Gay Couples eight nations. Bush and Cheney cavalierly questioned the scientific Jews representing a variety of organizations consensus about the changing climate and began agitating for oil drill- set up a khupe (wedding canopy) made from a ing in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other plum items lobbied rainbow-striped tales (prayershawl) near the steps for by Big Oil and its associated industries. Here were clear signs of of San Francisco’s City Hall on June 17th, the the administration’s disdain for environmental concerns, loyalty to the first day that same-sex marriages were legally sanctioned by the state of California. Marble cake most rapacious sectors of corporate America, and utter disregard for frosted with the phrase, “Mazel Tov,” was served, international accountability — which peaked with the “preemptive war” and couples were invited to circle one another and doctrine enunciated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and put break a glass while a klezmer band played. “It’s so into action in Iraq in 2003. nice to see our community celebrate around such Obeisance to the religious right, cronyism with the corporate elite, positive energy,” said Lisa Finkelstein, the director environmental heedlessness, military arrogance — these policies of of the LGBT Alliance in San Francisco. —JTA America’s worst president in generations were on display during the first hundred days of his misrule. Once the World Trade Center came down, Uphill, Downhill of course, even the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were treated with The Jewish National Fund is building a 75-mile less respect than a presidential “signing statement,” and even the right to bicycle trail connecting Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, a vote became a computerized crap shoot. Soon, even sensible progressives mostly downhill ride that will take about five hours (and considerably longer in reverse). Tel Aviv is were muttering the word “fascism” and fearing a “state of emergency.” also making about 1,500 rental bicycles available at 100 sites around town, and is paving sixty miles of bike trail within the city in time for its centen- nial celebrations in 2009. In recent years, about 5 percent of Tel Aviv residents have been using bicycles to get to work. . . . Still under construction is the 720-mile bike trail from Mt. Hermon to Eilat, via Lake Kinneret, the Mediterranean Sea and the Dead Sea. The trail will provide twelve days of desert cycling, with accommodations available. —Ha’aretz, Jewish Chronicle

African Refugees in Israel About 2,800 Africans have escaped war and economic hardship in their countries by illegally entering Israel through Egypt in the past several Sunday, November 23rd years. Twenty have been killed by Egyptian border officials. 9:30 A.M.—5:00 P.M. —Jewish Chronicle Central Synagogue, 123 East 55th Street (at Lexington Avenue), NYC Peace, Baking in the Oven Now is the time to tell the President-elect: Les Batisseuses de Paix (“Peace Builders”), a group of Jewish and Muslim French women in Paris, has been sponsoring a monthly pastry- END THE WAR IN IRAQ making workshop since 2002, in which several hundred women from both communities have RENOUNCE THE participated. It was founded by Annie-Paule Derczansky, a former journalist, who says that PREEMPTIVE WAR DOCTRINE hostility had been fostered by “French Jews thinking they’re Israeli and French Muslims HEAL OUR COUNTRY thinking they’re Palestinian.” The Peace Builders golden rule is: “The first to bring up the conflict Register Now at www.jewishcurrents.org has to leave.” —International Herald Tribune Sponsored by The Workmen’s Circle, The Shalom Center, Welcome to America and Jewish Currents magazine Nelson Mandela’s name was removed from the U.S. terrorist watch list on July 1, 2008. About 20,000 names are added to the list each month. —Harper’s Jewish Currents

* Appetizers State of American Religion The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life reports that “while more than nine in ten Ultimately, the imperial ambitions of Bush and Cheney were kept in check less by Americans (92%) believe in the existence of Congress, the Supreme Court, the press or any other arm of our democracy, than God or a universal spirit, there are consider- by their own sheer incompetence — in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, in able differences in the nature of this belief. Six Baghdad after Operation Iraqi Freedom, in allowing our country’s infrastructure in ten adults believe that God is a person with to degrade while the national deficit exploded, and so on. Unlike dictators of whom people can have a relationship; but one in old, Bush and Cheney didn’t get the trains to run on time. four — including about half of Jews and Hindus — see God as an impersonal force.” Among “There you go again, Joe, looking back to history.” That’s what Governor Sarah Jews, “those who say religion is very important Palin said in scorn to Senator Joseph Biden during their one and only debate. But as to them or pray every day are more likely than others to be politically conservative.” the metaphor of khanike (Hanuka) shows, when you run pigs through the Temple, http://religions.pewforum.org with or without lipstick, it takes eight days, not one — more illumination, not less — to recognize the damage and then restore the sanctity of the place. Koshering the Kosher th Besides, the debacle is not “history,” and will not end on January 20 , 2009. In the light of abuse of both workers and animals American troops will not be out of Iraq, and wounded veterans will not mi- at Agriprocessors, the largest kosher slaughter- raculously rise from their wheelchairs. The dollar will not suddenly rebound house in America, “some elements of the Jewish in value, and the national debt will not loosen its stranglehold on the federal community are gaining awareness of the notion government. Schools, roads and bridges will not suddenly become shiny and that kosher qualifications should go beyond the new, and medical offices will not suddenly open their doors to the uninsured. The preparation of food and must include Torah values CIA torture machine will not suddenly break down. The Muslim world will not about treating employees, and customers, with dignity and respect,” writes Gary Rosenblatt, editor suddenly admire us. The globalized economy will not suddenly become socially and publisher of The Jewish Week in New York. A responsible. The United States is bleeding heavily from multiple wounds, and movement in Israel called “Circles of Justice,” for it’s going to take intensive care, not over-the-counter treatment, to restore our example, has “certified about 400 restaurants that country to health. comply with fair employment practices and access As we write this editorial in early October, for an edition of Jewish for the disabled.” In the U.S., the Conservative Currents that will likely reach most readers after Election Day, we cannot movement has established a Hekhsher Tzedek know if Americans will allow their conservative passions and cockeyed racism (“Seal of Justice”) that applies ethical standards to keep our society in the sinkhole for four more years, or give liberalism a new to foods already certified as kosher. “Kosher chance. Whoever ends up in the White House, however, is going to have to be food is now an $11.5 billion industry,” Rosenblatt confronted and pressured into showing forceful, progressive leadership. The notes, “double what it was a decade ago. . . The Orthodox Union, the largest kosher certifying election is, at best, a beginning. agency, now oversees some 7,000 factories in 80 countries . . .” However, “leaders of the Orthodox establishment” are unenthusiastic about the new A Dank! certification standards, according to Menachem Lubinsky, a former spokesman for Agriprocessors. s we close out the calendar year, the Editorial Board of Jewish The new certification, he told Rosenblatt, “will not Currents extends gratitude to our readers, both veteran and new, have any impact” on kosher consumers. Awho help sustain this magazine as a multigenerational institution. The —Jewish Week past year was one of innovation for us, particularly at our website, www.jewishcurrents.org, edited by Rokhl Kafrissen, who has also joined our Editorial NGO Report on Palestinian Board. The site has added many resources designed to attract a young audience Humanitarian Crisis and orient them to the history and the meaning of progressive, secular Jewish Twenty-one relief agencies and human rights identity. Meanwhile, the magazine itself launched two new columns (“Radical groups, including CARE, Oxfam, and Save the Children, issued a report in September protest- Yiddish” and “Concealed/Revealed”) that greatly broadened our range of voices ing the failure of the Mideast peace process and perspectives. Together with The Workmen’s Circle and The Shalom Center, under the “Quartet” (the U.S., European Union, we have inaugurated an organizing project (see the announcement at left) that Russia and the United Nations). They have brings us into an activist relationship with the mainstream Jewish community failed to halt the expansion of Israeli settlements, for the first time in many years. All of this, and more, has been fueled by your lift “obstacles to movement and access,” and generosity. “end to the blockade of Gaza,” where “Pales- Between now and December 31st, we’re offering first-time subscriptions (in- tinian women, children, and men are increas- cluding gift subscriptions) at half-price: $15. Please take advantage of this offer, ingly dependent on aid as their livelihoods are destroyed. . . . [W]e believe that immediate steps by mail or at the website, to share Jewish Currents with your community. can and must be taken to relieve suffering, as well as to ensure that a peace agreement is November-December, 2008 eventually reached.” —www.reliefweb.int WHERE WE STAND THE WORKMEN’S CIRCLE/ARBETER RING POSITION ON CURRENT ISSUES

The Iraq War Versus Economic Recovery by Martin Schwartz Martin Schwartz is director of the Center for Social and Economic Justice of The Workmens Circle/Arbeter Ring.

s this is being written, the presidential election is Street.” During the second presidential debate, when A three weeks away and its outcome is not certain. asked to prioritize energy reform, health care and en- Financial markets throughout the nation and the titlement programs, both candidates stated that all three world are in turmoil. It is not possible to know wheth- were important. But how can they be financed? er the $700 billion-plus bailout of Wall Street, includ- On the revenue side, The Workmen’s Circle advo- ing the direct infusion of $250 billion in government cates a restoration of a progressive tax system that funds into private banks in exchange for equity, will will end the Bush Administration tax cuts for the top help stabilize the markets and free up credit. It is not 1 percent. On the spending side, it is clear to us that possible to know whether the stock market will soon wasteful spending must be cut — and there is no more recover from the record losses that wiped out $2.4 tril- wasteful government program than the $10 billion- lion in stockholder wealth in eight days, or will now per-month war in Iraq. That is why we are one of the experience bipolar mood swings. lead organizers of “Jews Uniting to End the War and Whether Senator McCain or Obama is elected, it Heal America,” a gathering in New York City on No- is clear that he will have to tackle the ramifications vember 23rd. This event is meant to help the American of the current financial crisis as soon as he is inaugu- Jewish community understand the toxic effect of the rated. No one had to remind either of the candidates war on all aspects of our economy and political cul- during this campaign that “It’s the economy, stupid!” ture, and to plan for active participation in setting a More than two months before the crisis on Wall new course with a new administration. Street, The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring National Once America stanches the bleeding from the Convention passed a resolution on “Corporate Re- wounds caused by its preemptive war policy, we will sponsibility” that calls for “effective government also have to reform our ways — much as a heart-at- regulatory oversight of corporations, including the tack survivor must give up smoking, eat healthier banking and mortgage industry, to ensure that the and exercise more. The days of gluttonous corporate livelihood and savings of hard-working Americans greed and cowboy diplomacy are over. The current fi- are not jeopardized.” Another resolution, “Losing the nancial crisis has led even many conservatives to rec- Safety Net,” calls for a stronger government response ognize that the canard that “government is the prob- to a worsening economy that is making it more and lem, not the solution” belongs in the ash heap. When more difficult for working and poor families to make push comes to shove, private industry is relying on ends meet. It was already clear, early last summer, that government — in a spirit of international cooperation stagnant wages, high oil and gas prices, the loss of — to come to the rescue. Similarly, in the realm of jobs, and the increase in food and health care costs international relations, neither the United States nor were straining many American lives. the rest of the world can afford or tolerate our going it The new president will be faced with the dilemma of alone. how the government, now forced to rescue private fi- To view The Workmen’s Circle’s social action reso- nancial institutions, will also be able to provide funding lutions, visit www.circle.org. for necessary government programs that benefit “Main Comments to [email protected]

Jewish Currents FOLLOW-UP her husband, was aware of Julius’s espionage, but did not FOLLOW-UP FOLLOW-UP actively participate. ‘She knew what he was doing,’ he said, ‘but what was she guilty of? Of being Julius’s wife.’” FOLLOW-UP FOLLOW-UP Our editorial in March-April, 2008 noted that the housing crisis is being shouldered disproportionately by Black and FOLLOW-UP Latino communities, groups that have been systematically targeted for subprime and predatory lending. Writing in The Nation (July 14, 2008), Kai Wright notes that “more Sara Ginaite, a former Jewish anti-Nazi partisan in Lithua- than half of all refinance loans made to African-Americans nia during World War II, wrote in September-October, 2008 in 2006 were subprime . . . nearly twice the rate of white in protest of Lithuanian war-crimes investigations focused borrowers. Among low-income black borrowers, 62 percent on three elderly Jewish partisans. As that issue of the maga- of refinance loans were subprime, more than twice the rate zine was on the press, the Simon Wiesenthal Center stated among low-income whites.” Home equity, Wright points at its website that President Valdas Adamkus had declared out, constitutes more than two-thirds of African-American the case closed. Writing her “Rootless Cosmopolitan” blog wealth, compared to less than 40 percent of white wealth. from Vilnius, our website editor Rokhl Kafrissen noted that “United for a Fair Economy,” she notes, “estimates the “the government’s decision to drop the investigation shows wealth loss for people of color at $164 billion to $213 bil- . . . that such an investigation was utterly pointless and, lion, roughly half the nation’s total loss.” indeed, insulting to basic notions of justice and national reconciliation. Second, the government of Lithuania has Myriam Miedzian contrasted American Jewish attitudes seen that the Jewish community world wide is watching, towards the anti-Semitic attack on the Seattle Federation and indeed everyone, Jew and non-Jew, cares about what headquarters, and other incidents of anti-Semitism in the happens here in Lithuania, and they care to see that justice U.S., with American Jewish attitudes towards anti-Semitism really is done.” Kafrissen also reported that seventeen mem- in France, in “Anti-Semitism: A Tale of Two Countries,” in bers of the international diplomatic corps took a walking our January-February, 2008 issue. In June, the trial of the tour of the former Vilne ghetto on August 27th, led by Fania shooter in the Seattle attack, Naveed Haq, ended in a mistrial Brantsovsky, the elderly librarian at the Vilnius Yiddish when the jury deadlocked over Haq’s insanity defense. Institute, who had been one of the targets of the investigation. The group included ambassadors and high-ranking We published a travelogue article by Robert Kaplan about diplomats from Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Abayudaya Jews of Kenya in our March-April, 2008 Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, the issue. The community installed its first African rabbi, Ger- Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the U.S. shom Sizomu, at a July ceremony attended by local Muslim imams from neighboring communities in Uganda. Rabbi Carol Jochnowitz wrote about the death of atomic spy Sizomu was ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Ziegler George Koval in our May-June, 2008 issue. She speculated School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles in May. that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had been prosecuted and executed to cover up the U.S. intelligence agencies’ failure Rabbi Amy Klein wrote in our November-December, to expose Koval’s significant espionage activity. On Sep- 2007 issue about the resistance to conversion on the part of tember 11th, New York Times reporter Sam Roberts wrote Russian Jews in Israel — some of whom do not “see any that Morton Sobell, 91, who had been convicted with the contradiction,” she noted, “between being ethnically Jewish Rosenbergs of conspiracy to commit espionage and served and religiously Christian.” Their status recently became far eighteen years in federal prisons, now admits to having more complex when the Supreme Rabbinic Court ruled that spied for the USSR. Sobell, reported Roberts, “was asked a woman who had converted to Judaism fifteen years ago, whether, as an electrical engineer, he turned over military under state-sanctioned, Orthodox auspices, is not Jewish secrets to the Soviets during World War II when they were because she does not live halakhically. In effect, writes considered allies of the United States and were bearing the Gershom Gorenberg in Moment (July-August, 2008), “the brunt of Nazi brutality. Was he, in fact, a spy? . . . ‘Yeah, court effectively accepted a radical stance that conversions yeah, yeah, call it that,’ he replied. ‘I never thought of it as can be retroactively nullified. . . . Now, one state-backed that in those terms.’” Sobell also “concurred,” Roberts con- rabbinic body can convert you, but another can decide you’re tinued, “. . . that Ethel Rosenberg, who was executed with not Jewish,” Gorenberg notes.

November-December, 2008 Rabbi Amy Klein The View from Israel Who Counts? The Forthcoming Census in Israel

he last time I was counted in a significant way to acquire additional socioeconomic data and to correct for was on a coast-to-coast family road trip, as we statistical errors resulting from the reliance on the registry Theaded home to California, in 1973, when I was data. In Israel’s last census (1995), 100 percent of homes 10. The counting began after my parents unwittingly left were visited, but this has been judged too expensive, so the my younger sister and me at a gas station outside Claysville, government is using the new formula, which it has field- Pennsylvania. tested before the counting begins. We had stopped for gas, and my mother had asked if Many residents are not listed in the Population Registry, anyone needed to use the restroom. No one heard my which accounts for only about 70 percent of the popula- “Yes” through the pile tion. The Central Bureau of Statistics has therefore had to of clothes, food and toys determine for which of the following populations to give Currently, Jewish Israeli women stuffed between the mid- population estimates and for which to develop special dle and rear-facing back enumeration procedures: Arabs and Jews living in locali- have, on average, three children, seat of our Chevy wagon. ties without an organized system of addresses; persons in while Arab Israeli women have My younger sister and institutions; residents of kibbutzim; persons living outside four. Both are having many more I let ourselves out the borders of the specified localities; Bedouin concentrated back — and emerged near Beer Sheva; foreign workers; the homeless. children than their Western sisters. from the restroom to Israel does not count Palestinians residing in the West an empty parking lot. Bank, Gaza or East Jerusalem. Nor is it eager to have the The large, green station Palestinian Authority (PA) count the Palestinians of East wagon, with a bright orange tarp over the luggage stacked Jerusalem: The right to count belongs to a sovereign gov- on its roof, was gone. ernment, and Israel does not want to concede Palestinian One soda and a short ride in a highway patrol car later, sovereignty over East Jerusalem. During the 1997 PA census, we were reunited with the family, who had stopped for ice Israel banned PA census workers from going door-to-door cream down the highway and discovered that we were miss- there, so the PA had to rely on an estimate, which was given ing. After that, we had to count off every time the eight of as two hundred and ten thousand. In October, 2007, when us piled back into the car. the PA conducted its next census, Israel did not prevent the census-takers from counting in East Jerusalem; the resulting I have tried to make myself count, since — which is one figure of two hundred and eight thousand was slightly below reason I moved to Israel twelve years ago. In this little the 1997 estimate — and well below 2007 projections. country, one’s citizenship can make an obvious difference. The 2007 results gave a total Palestinian population of Now, I am about to be enumerated for the first time in the 3.76 million — 2.3 million in the West Bank and East Jerusa- State of Israel’s census, which begins officially on Decem- lem, and 1.4 million in Gaza — compared to the 1997 figure ber 28th. The counting will have important political, social of 2.89 million. According to Palestinian negotiator Saeb and economic consequences — and the key question, as in Erekat (Associated Press, October 15th, 2007), PA officials Pennsylvania those many years ago, is whether anybody in hope that this rapid population growth will help them gain the family will be left, uncounted, at the side of the road. more territorial concessions from Israel, as well as push Is- The census will rely on data from the Population Registry rael to an agreement sooner rather than later due to the ever- (a government compilation established in 1965) and other increasing demographic threat. administrative sources for statistics on age, sex, address, place of birth, date of immigration, race/ethnicity, marital Regarding Israel’s census, due to be published in 2009, we status, religion, and kinship relations. In addition, between already have an idea of the final outcome. Just before Rosh 17 and 20 percent of Israeli homes will be visited in an effort Hashone, the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics published

Jewish Currents its annual population figures and projections. These showed have, on average, three children, while Arab Israeli women 7,243,000 residents currently living in Israel, a 1.8 percent have four. Both are having many more children than their Who Counts? increase over 2007. Of these, 75.6 percent are Jewish (about Western sisters. 5.5 million — up from an estimated six hundred and fifty The Forthcoming Census in Israel thousand Jews at the time of Israel’s declaration of statehood The new census will track housing and population density. in 1948), 20 percent Arab (over 1.4 million — compared In 2007, about two hundred and forty-seven thousand people to an estimated eight hundred thousand in 1948)) and 4.4 moved across Israel, primarily to the Central District, where percent Druze and others, including over three hundred most employment possibilities are concentrated. Property thousand immigrants from the former Soviet Union who values are rising dramatically between Hadera in the north, are, according to the Orthodox authorities who rule on such on the Mediterranean some forty miles from Tel Aviv, to matters, of uncertain religious status. Gedera in the south, about ten miles inland from coastal The new forecast is that Arabs will number 2.4 million Ashdod. Many Russian immigrants, as well as the children by 2030. The Jewish population will rise to 7.2 million. of various Jewish immigrant groups, have moved here to The greater increase in the Arab minority will make it even the center, from the country’s periphery, where they were harder for the State to use its limited resources to overcome settled originally by the Israeli government. This is going to the many inequities in funding and opportunities between mean greater congestion, pollution and reduced open space Israeli Arabs and Jews. Currently, for example, Arabs and in an area that is already significantly crowded. Druze make up only 6 percent of all state employees, falling The statistics for Jerusalem already seem to be contested quite short of their 20 percent share of the population. — which is par for the course for the holy city. One recent The Israeli population will also significantly begin to age, article stated that Jerusalem’s population has increased in according to Bureau of Statistics estimates, with 14 percent 2007, while another stated that sixty-four hundred fled the over the age of 65 in 2030, compared to 10 percent in 2005. city for greener pastures not dominated by the increasingly Israel’s proportion of citizens under 14, currently one of the entrenched and on-the-offensive ultra-religious sector. highest in the Western world, will decrease from 28 percent Meanwhile, few commentators, religious or secular, can to 25 percent (with a numerical increase, however, from 2 resist drawing connections between the modern census million to 2.5 million). Currently, Jewish Israeli women and the several censuses described in the Bible. After the

November-December, 2008 (According to some commentators, it was not the counting, The Worldwide Jewish Population . . . but David’s motivation and methods, that were flawed; perhaps, some speculate, he wanted to replace the traditional as compiled from various sources, is now conserva- tribal levy with a centralized administration.) tively estimated to number between 13 and 14 million Today, Orthodox Jews are still halakhically forbidden to (there were more than 17 million Jews in the world in count heads, and many of them in Israel, especially in the 1939), with about 5.5 million each in Israel and the West Bank settler community, refused to cooperate in the United States. Metropolitan Tel Aviv, with 2.5 million 1995 census — until the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin Jews, is the world’s largest Jewish city, followed by shifted the national mood and convinced Orthodox rabbini- Greater New York (1.9 million), Haifa (655,000), Los cal authorities to permit religious Jews to participate. Angeles (621,000), and Jerusalem (570,000). France has about 600,000 Jews; Canada, nearly The new Israeli census includes new questions about the 400,000; the United Kingdom, nearly 300,000. ownership of personal property, which are meant to help Russia’s Jewish population is down to about 300,000 determine socio-economic status: Households will now be (some estimates, however, peg the number as high as asked whether they have cell phones and Internet connec- 650,000). Germany is home to about 100,000 Jews; tions rather than washing machines and solar heaters. The Ukraine, between 80,000 and 112,000; Hungary, be- census also has a new section about physical handicaps: tween 50,000 and 100,000; Iran, about 25,000; Turkey, whether people have difficulty hearing, walking outside about 18,000. Switzerland also has about 18,000 Jews; or up and down steps, remembering or concentrating, or Romania, about 10,000. In Asian states of the former getting washed and dressed. Beyond that, social-justice Soviet Union, some 20,000 Jews reside: nearly 7,000 activists hope to use the census process to bring to Israeli in Azerbaijan, nearly 5,000 in Uzbekistan, and under consciousness those uncounted groups who face incalculable 4,000 each in Kazakhstan and Georgia. “plagues” of their own. Children at risk, the elderly poor, exploited foreign workers, women trapped in prostitution Argentina is home to the largest number of Jews in — all of these groups suffer not from being counted, but Latin America, between 200,000 and 250,000. Brazil is from being no-count. second with about 100,000. Mexico has about 40,000; Chile, about 20,000; Uruguay, between 18,000 and 22,000; Venezuela, about 16,000. About 80,000 Jews live in Africa, 90 percent of them in South Africa. In Oceania, Australia has more than 100,000 Jews and New Zealand has about 7,000. —Editor

Exodus from Egypt, for example, God commands the Isra- elites to have each man over age 20 pay a half-shekel tax for his “enrollment” in the community. This census (Exodus 30:11-16) is widely seen by modern interpreters as a great social equalizer, since the tax was small enough to enable all men to contribute and be counted. The fee, however, is described in the Bible as a “ransom” levied so that “no plague shall come upon them through their being enrolled.” It is the half-shekel coins, not the actual persons, who were technically being counted. The ancient Israelites apparently considered the counting of people to be dangerous — perhaps for fear that demons, not to mention the tax-man or the military recruiter, would be tempted to come around. When King David conducts a census, for example (2 Samuel 24), the results are disastrous: God sends a plague that kills seventy thousand Israelites.

10 Jewish Currents Geoff Vasil Analyzing Lithuanian Anti-Semitism The ‘Double Genocide’ Theory Refuses to Quit

became involved with the Jewish Museum Holocaust Exhibition in I Lithuania, known as the “Green House,” when I read an article by Ra- chel Margolis, a veteran Jewish partisan, about the library that was housed in the wartime ghetto in Vilne. As Rokhl Kafrissen described in her column, “Vilne, Whispering,” in the September-October issue of Jew- ish Currents, the library harbored a weapons cache and served as a base for the Jewish partisan movement. At the same time, it was an oasis of peace in the ghetto, a place somehow apart, where for a time people could escape the daily roster of starvation, slave labor and death. I wrote a letter to Rachel Margolis The Jewish Community Center in Vilnius was defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti in August. and sent it to her in Israel, where she Photograph by Tobaron Waxman. now lives. To my surprise, she wrote back almost immediately. Eventually, As he said the lines, she began to sense This becomes most obvious on Fridays I met her at the museum itself, where a rhythm, which turned into a melody and weekends in the park that fronts she used to come every summer to that she knew from some Russian film. the Green House — which is hidden lead tours. She showed me exhibits I They took it to a meeting of the FPO in an alley, around a curve, up a hill had already seen but not understood. (United Partisan Organization), where behind apartment houses, with only a Every photo took on new dimensions it was adopted as an anthem. small blue-and-white sign measuring under her guidance; every item told When Rachel told me this story, I less than a foot across and six inches a story, often personal for her as well didn’t know how famous “The Partisan high. Local skinheads, mostly from as part of the shared history of Lithu- Hymn” is — for many Jews, an anthem the apartment buildings around the anian Jews. and a vow. For me it was only a track museum, gather in that park, which is Perhaps most memorably, she showed on a CD, until she told me about its dedicated, ironically enough, to Chiune me a small collection of documents significance. I’m afraid it means even Sugihara, the Japanese consul who res- about “The Partisan Hymn” (“Zog less to most Lithuanians, who have cued thousands of Jews in Kaunas. Nit Keynmol”), by Hirsh Glik. He had never even heard of it. The skinheads wear clothes with flagged her down one winter day in the logos like “HH,” code for “Heil Hit- ghetto, she said, to recite the poem to Something is seriously wrong in Lith- her; people stood looking at these two uania when it comes to Holocaust For a unique archive about the kids reciting poetry in the freezing cold. education and historical sensibility. Lithuanian Jewish situation, visit http://jewishcurrents.org/ Geoff Vasil has lived in Lithuania since 1994 and has worked there as a teacher resources/lithuania.htm and reporter. His family came to the United States from Lithuania in 1905.

November-December, 2008 11 ler.” Other hangers-on sometimes carry to kill Jews and expel Russians. Police a charged tone that played up conflicts axes or other weapons openly. They stood by and watched. The march was within the Jewish community and drink beer and sometimes leave swas- reported in the media, and some foot- downplayed claims that the construc- tika graffiti along with their bottles age is available on YouTube, which tion was, in fact, disturbing Jewish and cans. Last winter, they traced out is where I recognized the ‘Sugihara’ graves. When the issue became some- a giant swastika, along with some anti- skinheads among them. A number of what internationalized (several U.S. Russian graffiti, in the snow. In order other participants were members of the Congressional representatives took to get to the Green House, a visitor Lithuanian armed forces. note), the Lithuanian press reported has to either go through this park or The lack of Holocaust education that someone inside the government go around it. means that many Lithuanians born had stabbed Lithuania in the back and On March 11th, 2008 — Lithuanian after World War II find it ever easier doctored data to make it appear that the Independence Day (February 16th was to deny the facts of history. In public Jewish cemetery had extended into the the traditional day in pre-World War life, this means that Jewish issues often construction site. When archaeologists II Lithuania) — about two hundred get biased treatment in the local and actually discovered human remains skinheads and their friends marched national media. Rarely is a ‘Jewish’ there, the media reported that the Jew- from the Vilnius Cathedral up Gedi- story presented from a detached per- ish community had ordered a halt to the mino Prospect, the main street in town, spective. When controversy arose, for dig “they themselves” had demanded. waving swastikas, neo-Nazi symbols, example, over a construction project Every time a ‘Jewish’ story appears and Lithuanian and Latvian flags and on parts of the former Jewish cemetery — whether it has to do with property chanting “Juden raus!” as well as calls in Vilnius, the news was presented in restitution (there has been none to date), war-crimes trials, the restoring of Lithuanian citizenship to Jews, or LITHUANIA: The Back-and-Forth History of World War II anything else concerning the Holo- Lithuania was an independent country from the end of World War I until caust, many Lithuanian journalists get 1940. At that time, the Lithuanian Jews numbered about one hundred and defensive or go on the offensive. sixty thousand, or 7 percent of the total population. The ‘double genocide’ theory is the In 1939, Lithuania and Germany signed a nonaggression pact, but official party line. President Valdas Ad- within two months, Germany annexed the Lithuanian territory of Memel- amkus (who was a young anti-Soviet Klaipeda, which had an ethnic German majority. fighter who fled with his family to Ger- The Soviet Union occupied Lithuania in June, 1940 and annexed it in many in 1944) tried to put the specter August. Within a year, the Jewish population of Lithuania swelled with of World War II atrocities to rest by refugees from Nazism to about 10 percent of the population. creating a panel to study “the crimes Following the 1941 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, the Germans of the Nazi and Soviet occupational reoccupied Lithuania, and Nazi mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) and gimes” in Lithuania. Initial criticism of Lithuanian auxiliaries began killing Jews. Within three months, most this approach was overcome when the rural Jews had been wiped out, and the surviving forty thousand were commission attracted internationally concentrated in ghettos and labor camps. By the summer of 1944, when renowned figures, including Yitzhak the Soviet Union reoccupied the country, 90 percent of Jews in Lithuania Arad, a Holocaust survivor who was had been murdered. the first director of Yad Vashem in Is- rael. For several years, the panel turned Under Soviet rule, between one hundred and twenty thousand and three out reports and books in English and hundred thousand Lithuanians were exiled to Siberia or other remote Lithuanian, sometimes with important lands. Russians were encouraged to settle in Lithuania, and all political historical information. activity was controlled by the Lithuanian Communist Party. In 1991, Then Arad himself became the tar- Lithuania became the first Soviet republic to claim its independence from get of an investigation by Lithuanian the crumbling USSR. prosecutors for alleged war crimes More than five hundred Lithuanians are recognized by Yad Vashem as committed against Lithuanian civil- “Righteous Among the Nations” for risking their lives to assist Jews. ians in World War II. By following its —Editor ‘double genocide’ theory to its logical conclusion — that Jews also com-

12 Jewish Currents mitted genocide against Lithuanians, war turned and Germany pulled back the octogenarian Vilna ghetto survivor so everyone is ‘even’ — Lithuania from Stalingrad, Germans in Vilnius and partisan who still serves as librar- undermined the credibility of its inter- and Kaunas blamed the Jews both for ian for the Yiddish Institute at Vilnius national commission. Arad withdrew the defeat and for starting World War University, as well as Rachel Margolis and said he wouldn’t be coming back II. The Germans — and Lithuanians in Israel and another former Jewish to Lithuania to take part in a “circus.” — were just the victims of some un- partisan, Sara Ginaite-Rubinson, in Israeli prosecutors refused the request specified Jewish influence emanating Canada. [Ginaite-Rubinson wrote of Lithuanian prosecutors to inter- from behind barbed wire. about the investigation, which was rogate him. Various commentators, finally suspended in late August, in the including neo-Nazis and anti-Semites, Almost all of the claims made by apol- September-October issue of Jewish had a field day posting to websites such ogists for the Holocaust in Lithuania Currents. See “Follow-Up” on page as Ha’aretz and Delfi.Lt to decry the have been roundly refuted. Jews did 7 of this issue. — Editor] double standard of refusing to prosecute Jewish ‘war criminals.’ Claims that Jews committed genocide against Lithu- anians had begun in June, 1941, when pro-Nazi Lithu- anians spread rumors that Jews had deported Lithu- anians to the Soviet Union, that Jewish snipers had fired on Lithuanian civilians, and that Jews had drawn up lists of Lithuanians for death squads to execute. This ad- aptation of the Nazi myth that Jews had “stabbed the nation in the back” helped to assuage the Lithuanian sense Lithuanian militia men round up Jews in Kovno during a pogrom in June-July, 1941. Photo courtesy of of inferiority, resulting from U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, www.ushmm.org. their occupation by Poland for twenty years before Stalin invaded not serve in greater percentages than The investigation centered around in 1940, and their holding out for only Lithuanians in the repressive organs the supposed massacre of civilians in eight hours before handing the Memel of the Soviet authority. Jews did not a small village, Koniuchi, near the territory back to Hitler’s Germany. draw up death lists of their Lithuanian Rudniki forest, which was controlled Rightwing Lithuanians began to neighbors. Jews suffered more from by Soviet partisans late in the war. blame the Jews for the Soviet invasion. the Soviet deportations and faced many Here’s what seems like a probable “Jew” meant “Communist,” “Commu- more restrictions on language and re- scenario: Jewish and Soviet partisans nist” meant “Jew,” they were “one gang ligion than Lithuanians did. A greater regularly commandeered food and of bastards,” according to Lithuanian percentage of Jewish than Lithuanian supplies from local villages. Nazi Activist Front propaganda distributed businesses were nationalized. efforts to contain the partisans in before, during and after the German in- When faced with these facts, how- Rudniki consisted mainly of arming vasion. When even the Nazis expressed ever, true believers in the ‘double villagers and local police as proxy shock at the barbarity Lithuanians used genocide’ theory have plunged deeper fighters. Koniuchi was hostile to in massacring Jews at the Lietukis ga- into conspiratorial thinking — and Soviet requisitioning, and contained rage in Kaunas (June 27th, 1941), it was Lithuanian prosecutors have expanded Nazi sympathizers who organized explained that some of the perpetrators their investigations. Unable to question ambushes of Soviet partisans — who had lost family members during the Yitzhak Arad, Lithuanian prosecutors organized a counterattack and put Soviet deportations. When the tide of decided to question Fania Brantsovsky, torch to the village by firing incendiary

November-December, 2008 13 ammunition into wooden buildings. arrest. They issue as many as they like, of the building along the street. The pro-Nazi police officers made as often as they like. Investigations Within two days, hundreds of com- a last stand and fired back. Around drag on for years, during which time ments by newspaper readers indulged thirty-five villagers, mainly men but prosecutors have the power to control in two conspiracy theories about the also women and children, died in the your life, seize your passport, forbid event: that the Jews did it to them- battle. To date there is no reason to discussion and take you into custody. selves, or that the Russians did it to believe any of the people sought by Most Holocaust survivors really don’t foment ethnic strife. The arguments Lithuanian prosecutors were present have all that much time left on earth, for the first thesis were that Jews in during this violence. barring new breakthroughs in human Lithuania needed to play the victim to Was the incident worth a criminal longevity. win public sympathy over recent bad investigation in 2008? In nearby press. Besides, no Lithuanian would’ve Eyshishok, some thirty-five hundred One interesting theory about what’s mangled the symbol of Gediminas so Jewish civilians were murdered by going on in Lithuania suggests that badly! The arguments for the second Nazi killing squads and Lithuanian even educated people have only re- theory revolved around the fact that collaborators over the course of two cently learned enough English to begin Lithuania had supported Georgian September days in 1941 — and there browsing Holocaust memoirs in that claims to South Ossetia — hence, Rus- has been no criminal investigation. language, and so have had a chance to sian revenge. Since independence, in fact, Lithu- learn something of their own history. Comments about the vandalism anian authorities have intentionally Such a process of discovery hasn’t revealed that the myth of Judeo- dragged their feet in confronting the fundamentally changed the discourse Bolshevism is alive and well in Lithu- Lithuanian role in the Holocaust and about the Holocaust, however — to the ania. The usual charges were reiterated: have delayed trials of known Lithu- contrary, their English literacy allows that Jews had deported Lithuanians anian war criminals deported from the anti-Semites to go wild with Holocaust to Siberia and had death lists of U.S. or stripped of U.S. citizenship. denial, as they discover an entire cor- Lithuanian victims ready before the Since independence, Lithuania has pus of anti-Jewish materials in English, Bolsheviks took power. Some of the prosecuted only three Lithuanian Nazis as well as logos from racist websites more ingenious anti-Semites called — and spared them imprisonment. that have been creeping into Lithu- for charges and punishments to be Yet suddenly it seemed to prosecu- anian graffiti for a few years now, levied against the Lithuanian Jewish tors to be a good idea to investigate alongside the classic “Juden raus!” Community Center itself for display- the Koniuchi incident. Why was this In addition, the Baltic states have ing swastikas along the length of its case more important than all the cases seen something of a pagan revival, es- building, because Lithuania recently in which Jews were worked to death pecially among youth, for a few years, made illegal the display of the swastika building the Vilnius-Kaunas highway, which often goes hand-in-hand with in public! railways and airports in Vilnius and a folk nationalism involving Aryan The defaced building is located on Kaunas; in which Jews were murdered, ideology. Swastikas, of course, are a Pylimo Street. The old headquarters their property stolen by locals, police, pagan symbol, and so fascist imag- of the Jewish museum are located municipalities and Germans; in which ery and ideology are bridging youth right next to it. The Green House and Jewish corpses were raided for their subcultures — though it’s not fair to the Sugihara statue in the municipal gold teeth; in which the Jews of Slo- say fascists are the majority in any square are only a stone’s throw away. If bodka were literally butchered, carved subculture but their own. I were a Lithuanian investigator, rather up, and beheaded by Lithuanians? Swastikas were part of the graffiti than organizing a counter-intelligence Something is terribly wrong in with which vandals defaced the Jew- operation to catch the Russian spooks Lithuania when elderly Holocaust sur- ish Community of Lithuania building red-handed, or setting up cameras vivors, who escaped from Lithuanian in Vilnius in August, during the Tisha to catch the wily Jews in the act of ghettos and, despite hunger, cold and B’Av observance. Other elements in- damaging Jewish property, I would incredible hardship, waged war on the cluded a Star of David at the end of a take the easy way out and decide to Nazi monster, become targets for legal hangman’s noose and gallows, “Juden investigate known local anti-Semites harassment. And harassment it is. In raus!” and a somewhat mangled who congregate nearby. Lithuania, prosecutors don’t leave the rendition of the old symbol of Lithu- office to investigate; they issue a sum- anian statehood, the Post of Gediminas. With the graffiti incident still fresh, mons for you to come to them or face The vandalism covered the entire front Lithuanians received another shock to

14 Jewish Currents their preferred version of history when ern resort town of Druskininkai, once first. When foreign voices have pointed the respected London-based publica- known throughout the Soviet Union out that profit was a major inducement tion, The Economist, ran a story that for its spas. Since the tourism sector for some Lithuanians to murder their labeled the prosecution of Jewish in Lithuania has been a major area of Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust, anti-Nazi partisans as an attempt to growth, a concerted tourism boycott of the Lithuanian press and public have cover up Lithuanian complicity in the the country would send a very strong tended to deny Lithuanian involve- Holocaust. Lithuanian state televi- signal about the values held by the ment and liability, even though major sion reported this as a top story, and modern travelling public. Holocaust sources and documents in excerpts were quickly translated for Unfortunately, the walk-softly ap- the Lithuanian state archives prove that Internet publication at the delfi.lt site, proach hasn’t worked so far. Israel’s volunteer murderers, local police and infamous hangout for Lithuanian anti- Yad Vashem has made a priority of local populations were fully engaged Semites. The Economist website also teaching Lithuanian teachers how to in stealing the assets of their victims, provided the ability to comment, and teach the Holocaust in their class- so much so that the German authorities people lost no time in explaining to rooms, but there is little evidence that had to issue special orders on how to the world how their state was being teaching the Holocaust is important deal with the theft of what they saw as defamed by the Jewish global finan- for more than a handful of Lithuanian Reich property. cial/media conspiracy. teachers. Western embassies in Vilnius The internal dialogue has devolved Perhaps, in the end, a little ‘con- have used various approaches in trying into noise. The most effective pres- spiring’ is what is needed to protect to get the Lithuanian state to take these sure would be deprivation of funding Lithuanian Jews and force Lithuania to issues seriously, but their reluctance for prestige projects, combined with face up to its World War II history. In to rock the boat and disturb the early an increase in funding for Holocaust 2009, for example, Vilnius is to share years of a fragile democracy has made education in public schools, in higher with Linz, Austria, the distinction of their efforts ineffectual. education, and perhaps even in the being named the cultural capital of the Meanwhile, various citizenship laws military and police academies. The European Union. Unfortunately, one enacted in recent years have put Jews logical source of this negative and culture will probably be missing from at a disadvantage in obtaining dual citi- positive pressure would be European the festivities — that of the Litvaks, zenship, while property restitution has Union institutions, Western non-profits the Lithuanian Jews. Cancelling the been delayed through various tactics, and foundations, and the general public designation for Vilnius would send a including the requirement that current in countries where the Holocaust is not strong message to the Lithuanian gov- citizens of Lithuania be compensated kept secret. ernment and public about post-World War II European values. Similarly, the Guggenheim Museum announced a joint project worth mil- IRVING FISHER lions with the Lithuanian government September 25, 1918 — February 23, 2008 to create a major art museum in Lithu- ania. But does Lithuania have a suf- Immense heart. ficiently developed museum culture, given that the so-called “Genocide” Kind, forgiving man of emotional depth. museum mentions Jewish victims once Militant veteran of labor, civil rights and anti-war struggles. or twice in parentheses while the Green Working-class intellectual, union organizer, House is hidden from tourists? Again, furrier, employment counselor. cancelling the deal would send a strong message about values. Proud, secular Jew who respected faith but abhorred dogmatism. The idea of a tourism boycott of Lithuania has also frequently cropped We love, admire and miss him. up in respect to Holocaust denial. Over Estelle the last decade, increasing numbers of Loren, Harvey, Madeline, Ellie, Betsy, Anna, Israeli tourists have begun to visit the Jeremy, Sam, Gregory, Olivia country, which has basically rescued the failing economy of the southeast-

November-December, 2008 15 Lawrence Bush

RELIGION Jewish law, there has been a heartening response from the Jewish world, across the spectrum of practice and denomi- AND nation. Support has been given to the workers and their families, and the issue of what kind of ethical practices SKEPTICISM should be expected from someone claiming to observe the laws of kashrut have been examined. The Orthodox kashrut certification granted by Khal Adath Jeshurun (KAJ), the Guest Column by Moti Rieber main kosher-certifying body in America apart from the Orthodox Union (OU), was withdrawn from Agriprocessors The Kashrut Crisis effective April of this year — even before the immigration raid. A group of Orthodox yeshiva students called a An Ethics-Based Alternative boycott and met with the plant management in an effort to encourage them to revise their practices. B’nai B’rith Youth Organiztion camps and the CAJE education conference ver the past several years, and particularly the chose not to purchase Agri meats for their events. A group of past several months, a lot has been written about Conservative rabbis has been developing something called O the giant meat processing company known as a heksher tzedek, or “righteousness certification,” which Agriprocessors. Located in Postville, Iowa, Agriprocessors would attest that kosher food was produced at a facility that is (or was until recently) the largest provider of kosher meat meets ethical standards in areas like wages and benefits, in the United States. For those who strictly observe the laws employee health and safety, and animal welfare – exactly of kashrut, Agri has been invaluable, providing meat of the what the Torah and Jewish tradition demands. strict kosher standards for a reasonable price. However, there has also been a good deal of trouble at the plant, including: It’s quite easy for liberal Jews to wag a finger at the Ortho- a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals video show- dox for what we take to be their focus on ritual obligations ing cattle being treated inhumanely, in violation of Jewish to the exclusion of ethical context. Yet many of us, having law; a report from largely jettisoned the rituals of kashrut, act as if there were the USDA hold- no ethical considerations to apply to our food, and don’t It’s easy to wag a finger at the Orthodox ing that inspectors make the effort to develop a practice that makes eating a for what we take to be their focus on at the plan were “sacred” act, as our ancestors insisted we do. negligent or cor- We and our world might be better served by our trying ritual obligation to the exclusion of rupt; an admis- to discern the values that underlie the traditional Jewish ethical context. Yet many of us, having sion by the com- practice and to develop a practice that respects the tradi- jettisoned the rituals of kashrut, act as if pany to discharg- tion but addresses the values considerations. That is what i n g u n t r e a t e d I propose to do with kashrut. I want to be clear that I am there were no ethical considerations to sewage into the talking about developing ethical practices regarding food. apply to our food. Postville system, Although I use the term kashrut, that is because I think it’s which resulted in important to lay claim to the Jewish tradition’s vocabulary, a $600,000 fine; and not because I think a traditional kashrut practice is the numerous food safety and workplace safety violations; and, best way to fulfill the values I will discuss. this past May, a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs En- From my years studying and teaching this material, I forcement (“ICE”) that resulted in the arrest of hundreds of believe there are three core purposes for the practice of undocumented immigrant workers. Subsequent interviews kashrut. The first is as a means of connection with the folk- with the arrested workers uncovered such additional always of our people; the second, as a means of developing a legations as supervisors physically abusing and exploiting higher or deeper consciousness around eating; the third, to workers, altering work records, paying some workers off give ethical consideration to food animals. You will notice the books, and paying them below minimum wage. that “because God said so” is not amongst the list of reasons In response to these many violations of both secular and to practice an adapted form of kashrut.

Rabbi Moti Rieber heads the Jewish Federation of Wichita, First, folkways. For many of us, food serves as an el- Kansas. He has written for us frequently, most recently on Paul emental connection to the Jewish holiday calendar and to Buhle’s three-volume Jews in American Popular Culture. Jewish identity itself. Chicken soup, gefilte fish, tsimes,

16 Jewish Currents latkes: These are among the foods that have kept Jews, at use at other times of year, but we ate produce on a seasonal least the Ashkenazic majority, together as a people, which schedule. Today we have come to expect every kind of food was vital throughout a history of exile in which one of the to be available, fresh, all year long. Few of us realize, how- greatest dangers was that of being subsumed into the sur- ever, that the typical “fresh” item in a North American home rounding people. “Bagels and lox Judaism” also helped to travels between fifteen hundred and twenty-five hundred provide a livelihood for Jewish butchers, bakers, vintners, miles to reach our table. Since nutritional value begins to restaurateurs, and other anchors of our communities. deplete from the point of harvest, a food item brought such a Many non-religious Jews participate in these folkways long distance and put on a shelf only a week or ten days after by eating traditional Jewish foods, yet few incorporate the it is picked will have lost much of its nutritional value even sacrificial elements of traditionalkashrut into their dietary before it makes it to our table. More importantly, moving an practice — avoiding eating or serving non-kosher animals, apple from New Zealand or a salmon from Chile requires for example, or products derived from them, such as gelatin. the use of enormous energy resources, with implications By incorporating such practices, however, we can elevate for climate change and the environment in general. our sense of continuity with the Jews who came before us A modern, progressive kashrut, therefore, might entail — some of whom sacrificed their livelihoods, or even their spending a percentage of your food budget on locally grown lives, for the sake of these very practices. Observing the food, such as at the farmer’s market, or buying a share in restrictions of kashrut also enables us to break bread with community-supported agriculture, where for a fee at the other Jews, across boundaries and belief systems, which start of the growing season you receive, each week, an cultivates our sense of Jewish unity and peoplehood. overflowing box of wholesome, organic vegetables from At the same time, of course, the strict observance of a local provider. Such a kashrut might also place a higher kashrut restricts our ability to eat with non-Jews. This may priority on buying in season and on regaining the knowledge have been a value for the classical rabbis, but it isn’t at all a of how to store food. value for most of us in these days of pluralism, when being able to eat across religious and cultural boundaries is as In addition to paying attention to what we eat, we can important as being able to eat within them. One principle of also develop the consciousness with which we eat. In our a reconstructed kashrut practice, therefore, is that it should day and age, we often eat in a rush, at our desks, in our not restrict our ability to eat with our non-Jewish friends, cars, separately from our families, or with the TV on. We neighbors and co-workers. lose the powerful bonding experience of eating together, and we refuse to take the time that it takes to evaluate the A second value of a contemporary kashrut practice is that food we’re eating. it helps us to develop our consciousness around eating. One Eating consciously, without multi-tasking or distrac- who observes traditional kashrut must be aware of what tions, can be a powerful, centering practice. You learn one’s eaten and when, must read labels carefully, and must to chew, smell and really taste your food. The traditional be conscious of this commitment whenever he or she eats Jewish practice of saying brakhot, blessings, before and — which is to say, always. By expanding this awareness after meals helps one to achieve this centering level of to include contemporary environmental concerns, we can consciousness and appreciation. At a shared table, finding turn it into a progressive political force. words with which to connect to one another, to the meal, The industrialization of American agriculture, for and to the world that is providing it, can instantly establish example, has led to the profligate use of pesticides, her- an ambience of mindfulness that even the finest restaurant bicides, and other agricultural chemicals, depletion of the may fail to provide. land’s natural resources, loss of plant species diversity, contamination of our waterways through runoff, and high The third category in my reconstruction of kashrut is concentrations of chemicals in our food. A kashrut that ethics. The Jewish religious tradition is quite devoted to the favors organically produced foods and avoids foods with humane treatment of animals. The Torah forbids us from high levels of additives or processing can help to offset yoking two different sized animals together, lest we cause some of these problems. the smaller one pain, and commands to shoo the mother Eating seasonally is another way to help the environment. bird from her nest before we take her eggs. Such laws ac- People who are baby-boomers or older grew up in a time knowledge that an animal is a sentient being, not simply an when apples were available only in the fall, citrus in the instrument for human use . In fact, there’s an ambivalence in winter, and blueberries and tomatoes in the summer. We Torah about the eating of meat altogether: In the Garden of could can, freeze or otherwise preserved these foods for Eden story, humans are allowed to eat only fruit and seeds.

November-December, 2008 17 It is only after the Flood that meat is permitted — which dollars are the best methods of insuring that the food you some interpreters have seen God essentially giving in to eat is ethically supportable. the weaknesses of human beings. I am aware that the some of the solutions I am prescrib- These humane considerations are quite clear in the laws ing - reliance on locally grown food, purchase of organic of kashrut promulgated by the rabbis. They considered the produce and meat – are inconvenient, more expensive, or prohibition of “eating the limb of the living” — tearing off both. Hasn’t the American way of agriculture led us to a piece of a living animal, which may have been common have the most abundant food for the cheapest prices on the in days before refrigeration and assured food supplies — so planet? But perhaps value-for-money is not the only thing important that they made it part of the Noahide precepts, to consider here. The demand for economies of scale have the seven commandments that every human being, not only handed over food production to the largest and most bottom Jews, must observe in order to be considered righteous. line oriented corporations in the country – leading to all the The rabbis also directed that animals be slaughtered in other ills I have described, in terms of pesticide use, factory the most humane way available at the time: with a single farms, etc. - while smaller and family farmers have been stroke to the artery in the neck with a sharp-edged knife forced into debt, into farming larger and larger plots, or off that has no nicks or imperfections, so that the animal dies the land entirely. And we still have huge pockets of food instantaneously. Stunning the animal before killing it was insecurity in this country and around the world, as well as also prohibited; the animal was entitled to meet its death a burgeoning obesity problem that is the direct result of the with its wits intact. kinds of foods that we, as a society, support, with our tax Yet this is another area where the industrialization of food dollars and with our food budgets. production has had a negative effect. A generation ago the So to recap briefly, I am arguing that a contemporary prac- number of animals on a farm was limited by the capacity tice of kashrut would take into account three elements: the of the acreage to feed and house the animals. With the connection to peoplehood and tradition that comes from a rise of factory farming, though, ever-expanding numbers incorporating elements of traditional kashrut practice; an of animals are housed in as small a space as possible and heightened awareness of what we are eating and how we forced to put on weight as quickly and cheaply as pos- are eating it; and a consideration for the humane treatment sible, without any humanitarian considerations that could of the animals we choose to. To these, I would also add a interfere with the bottom line. They are limited in their fourth consideration: health. Jewish law prohibits us from ability to move or tend to themselves, and deprived of their behavior that will lead to death, illness, or injury, so in natural relationships with each other and with their young. our reconstruction we must stay away from foods that are Animals are fed the cheapest possible food – often corn or known to cause negative effects on our health. soy, subsidized with our tax dollars – whatever their natural Having said all of this, different people, addressing these diet might be. The disease that would naturally result from considerations from a spiritually open and intellectually this kind of operation is countered with huge prophylactic honest point of view, will balance these considerations amounts of antibiotics, which builds antibiotic resistance in differently and will come to differing conclusions. But I both the animals and in those who eat them – meaning us. do have one thing that we each can do, starting right now, The massive amount of sewage generated by such opera- that will address all of these considerations and start us on tions is dumped into waterways, which produce so much our way to a contemporary practice of kashrut. And that algae that they frequently create “dead zones” where no is – don’t eat fast food. In every one of the considerations plant or animal life can survive. And as anyone who has I have mentioned, McDonald’s and the rest come out driven past one of these operations – we can’t really call short. Linkage to traditional kashrut practice, tradition them farms – can attest, the stench can be overwhelming. and peoplehood – no. Awareness of what’s going into your Imagine having to work there. mouth – who knows what’s going into your mouth when A contemporary ethical approach to eating would have to you eat at these places? What is served is so processed, take these factors into account. Many ethically sensitive so full of flavorings and preservatives and additives and Jews choose to forego meat altogether. This may be the only other chemicals that it’s hard to define it as “food” at all. fully philosophically consistent approach, but nevertheless, Awareness of how you are eating – fast food consciousness it is no more likely to be chosen by most people now than sees food not as community or family builder but simply it was at the time of Noah. Possible alternatives include as fuel, to be consumed as quickly as possibly, promoting limiting the amount of meat one consumes, or choosing to a thoughtlessness around food that is the opposite of what purchase organic, free-range, hormone-free and antibiotic- we need. Concern for the welfare of the animals – fast free meats. Awareness and voting your values with your food outlets are probably the single factor most responsible

18 Jewish Currents for moving us to the feedlot/factory farm model, and the destruction of the rainforest to support such operations in South America has implications far beyond the dinner table, in climate change and loss of species diversity, all to satisfy our appetite for meat. And as for health, well, the less said about that the better. The food has absolutely no nutritional value, and is full of all the things that we know are harmful, such as fat, saturated fat, trans-fats, salt, sugar, and chemicals. In any possible way we could define the term, fast food is treyf, and I urge you not to eat it. I guess I included a little finger-wagging after all. I want to be clear that I’m not talking about this so I can convince you that you should observe kashrut the way I do. What I’m trying to do is to convince you to give a new consideration to this vitally important element of both responsible citizenship and Jewish peoplehood and practice, and to encourage you to find a way to make a contemporary food practice a meaningful part of your life. And there is one further consideration, perhaps the crown- ing one – the connection to divinity. Rather than thinking of kashrut as simply a list of don’ts that take the fun out of life, I find it helpful to think of my practice, both what I give up and what I take on, as being for the sake of developing my relationship with God, and I would encourage you to do the same. If we consciously think of our kashrut practice, whether it’s traditional or reconstructed, as a means of expressing our Jewish identity, of living ethically and of striving towards a connection with the divine, we may find that it is spiritually fulfilling in a way few practices can be.

November-December, 2008 19 Esther Cohen My Life in Books, 2008 A Blind Date with Philip Roth

was on the corner of 42nd and She is dogged, though, and unusually along with love, and the Middle East). Ninth Avenue thinking about intelligent. She does not want to be my One example is “Don’t Mind Me,” I whether or not to spend the friend, she wants to sell my books. which is now the book’s title. money on a Starbucks latté when I’ve had many agents. Each time, Hyperion is owned by Disney. It Betsy, my kind-voiced agent, called on it feels a little like a marriage, hard to is one of those megapublishers, with my cellphone. Some agents call their make work. Authors are rarely happy bestsellers and marketing teams. For clients all the time, to cheer them on with their situation, recognition, money, a day or two, I was happy. Then I and give them the it’s not so bad to work, output, position. Agents can never started worrying about the commercial be a writer pep talk. But Betsy has make us happy, and they know it. viability of fifty sentences, funny or called me maybe half a dozen times I’ve always been surprised there not. It depended on the illustrator, and in as many years. She’s not a cheer- isn’t more writing on this subject of I wanted Roz Chast, the brilliant and leader, and she’s not optimistic about writer and agent. For the agent, selling amazing New Yorker cartoonist. Hy- sentences, life, or book publishing. a book must be a little like catching a perion was quick to say no. Roz Chast, fish. Some are more likely than others. they told me, was busy. Also, she was I am not an easy author to sell. There’s famous (unlike myself) and had just nothing especially wrong with my finished illustrating a book with Steve sentences — they are coherent enough, Martin — the implication being Why and sometimes they’re quietly funny. Me After Him? But my prose is not flashy. Nothing I had a list of nine other illustrators. much happens in what I write. Nothing Hyperion said no to all nine. I worried much happening isn’t too commercial, that Don’t Mind Me would disappear unless you’re Larry David, and I’m into book oblivion, a pretty common not. So Betsy selling this book (after fate — but what would make it worse not selling two others, though she sold this time than usual would be the horri- one before that) was one of those good ble, cutesy illustrations of unfunny Jews and unexpected moments that happens that would accompany my words. once in a while. In a story of fate and fluke, after months when all they’d tell me was She had called me to say that Hyperion NO to every suggestion, Roz Chast said wanted to publish my book about Jew- YES to doing the drawings for Don’t ish Lies. Mostly she e-mails, with terse, Mind Me. The whole equation changed. mysterious sentences, telling me of the Hyperion conceded that she and I were many others who choose not to publish a perfect fit. The book got bumped this or that. But with good news, she up a notch in their minds, and it was likes to call. published this fall with her miraculous, My book is a list of fifty lies that zany drawings. It’s still to early to know Jews tell (of course, so do other people, how the book will do (Will anyone buy but Jews are one of my specialties, it? Will it make money? Will I be able to write more lies? Will Roz work with

Esther Cohen, who reviews Jewish fiction in our November-December issue, is me again?), but it seems to make some the author this year of Don’t Mind Me and Other Jewish Lies (Hyperion) and God Is people laugh. a Tree and Other Middle-Aged Prayers (www.pleasureboat.com). She is the executive director of the Bread and Roses cultural program of 1199/SEIU and leads writing Next came my middle-aged prayers, workshops in many interesting places. such as:

20 Jewish Currents Everyone is times over a cup of coffee, and we told all again, after rereading a few of my Younger and thinner stories. There’s no money involved, but Roth favorites, say American Pastoral, Than I am it’s more or less the way I have fanta- or The Human Stain. So what sized that writers actually live. So what On the other hand, I didn’t much like So what Meanwhile, I was reading other peo- Geraldine Brooks’ People of the Book Amen ple’s books all through the seasons. (Viking, 372 pages). I started it three Among the highlights of my year are times and plunged through to the end A while ago I started writing them. I the Jewish Currents boxes of books only the third time, because so many do not pray, in general. That is, I have that constantly arrive at my office. Be- people said that the book was Impor- long composed rituals, but they have cause I’m compulsive without being tant. I’m not sure why. To me it was a more to do with marking occasions discriminating, especially where words variation of The DaVinci Code, which than with paying homage to one deity are involved, I read parts of everything I couldn’t read either. or another. Becoming middle-aged, (I no longer feel I have to read the en- People of the Book is about an illu- however (I can’t pinpoint the moment tirety of every book that everyone sends. minated Hebrew manuscript, Muslims, when I knew I was not young. It was For a while I did, but that became such Nazis, history, courage, and a heroine a while ago), seemed to require a slew an all-encompassing activity that even named Hanna Heath. The book has of poems. Why and how they became I knew it was too much.) maps, historical details, references to prayers, I’m not sure. The prayers are I have been waiting, all year, for the any number of moments in time. Brooks a kind of whisper. new Philip Roth book, which I actually uses words like dapper. It’s hard to say Betsy tried to sell the book and purchased to include in this review. what’s wrong with that. I felt removed couldn’t. I don’t even know who said Many people before me (and I, too) from her story and its convolutions. No. Then I sent the prayers by e-mail to have written many times about Philip a friend of a friend, a small, respectable Roth, and why he is good, bad, impor- My second favorite book was a collec- literary publisher called Pleasure Boat. tant, crazy, difficult, and relevant. I love tion of poems by Philip Schultz, called They said YES, and that book will be him completely, without judgment; I Failure (Harcourt, 106 pages). At least out in late October, called God Is a love him the way some people love Bob read the wonderful title poem. Here’s Tree and Other Middle-Aged Prayers. Dylan, the Dalai Lama, Martin Buber, an excerpt: (A friend suggested we start a line of the Klezmatics, Nina Simone, or the Jewish books for Pleasure Boat, and Yiddish Language. Philip Roth is part To pay for my father’s funeral call it Sinking Ship.) of my DNA. I even went on a blind I borrowed money from people Unlike Hyperion, Pleasure Boat is date with him once, although it was not he already owed money to. one man with a beautiful smile, a tall, a particular success. (Describing the One called him a nobody. handsome, waspy academic named evening to the woman who set us up, No, I said, he was a failure. Jack Estes. He looks like he could do I used a phrase I never thought I could You can’t remember a nobody’s name, something in an actual boat. Jack, by use: He was too crazy for me.) that’s why they’re called nobodies. the way, lost my e-mailed poems the Indignation (Houghton Mifflin, 233 Failures are unforgettable. first time around. I hate to think they pages) was published September 16th, The rabbi who read a stock eulogy were spam, but maybe they were. The and already everyone has reviewed it. about a man who didn’t belong to second time he read them, and liked Roth has been dying in his books for or believe in anything them, and said OK. My favorite de- years, and in Indignation, he’s dead. was both a failure and a nobody. signer, Laura Tolkow, agreed to make (Telling you that does not really give He failed to imagine the son and wife the book. It looks, in a funny way, like away much. Dead or alive, he is still the of the dead man being shamed by a very beautiful middle-aged prayer. same: incredibly honest and perceptive, each word. The difference between Hyperion and funny, intense, angry, and possessed of To understand that not Pleasure Boat is the difference between the gift of telling an intimate story.) believing in or belonging to New York City and a small, perfect Roth is mesmerizing on the page. anything demanded a kind Greek island. Hyperion is efficient and Indignation is as good as he gets: telling of faith and buoyancy . . . young and the word marketing is heard us what life is, and sex, and love, and the more often than, say, poems. impossibility of all three. These themes Failure is a collection of searing, Jack and Laura and I met half a dozen are portrayed so well that I may read it honest, funny, unusual poems. Schultz

November-December, 2008 21 STATEMENT OF OWNERSHIP, MANAGE- Elisa Albert is a hot young writer hard not to admire. Rivi and Michaeli MENT AND CIRCULATION (Act of Aug. 12, 1970, Sect. 3685, Title 39, United States Code) whose first collection of stories, How were probably never again as happy as 1. Title: Jewish Currents. 2. Publication no. 275- This Night is Different, was published when they were together. It’s always 220. 3. Filing date: September 29, 2008. 4. Issue frequency: bimonthly. 5. No. of issues published about a year ago. The title story was been interesting to me to see how Israe- annually: 6. 6. Annual subscription price: $30. wonderful and odd, a story of sharply 7. Complete mailing address of headquarters or lis talk about love — with a disarming general business officer of publisher: 45 E. 33 St., observed people, Passover, and a yeast frankness (maybe it’s a cultural thing, New York, NY 10016. 8. Complete mailing address of headquarters or general business office of pub- infection. Her new book, Dahlia (Free and that disarming frankness is more lisher: same. 9. Full names and complete mailing Press, 276 pages), is oddly enough a a value there than here) that gives this addresses of publisher, editor, and managing editor: The Workmen’s Circle, 45 E. 33 St., New York, NY funny book about cancer, privilege, book its momentum. 10016; Editor, Lawrence Bush, 45 E. 33 St., New dying, and an inoperable brain tumor. York, NY 10016; Managing Editor: Lawrence Bush, 45 E. 33 St., New York, NY 10016. 10. Owner: Dahlia, the star of this story, is 29 and Another Israeli novel is Ron Leshem’s The Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring, 45 E. 33 St., funny. Albert titles her chapters, and New York, NY 10016. 11. Known bondholders, Beaufort (Delacorte, 368 pages) which mortgagees, and other security holders: none. 12. the first is called “Something Wrong.” won Israel’s top literary prize and ap- Purpose, function and non-profit status have not changed during preceding 12 months. 13. Publica- What’s wrong is her brain tumor. peared this year in book form and as an tion name: Jewish Currents. 14. Issue date for The eighteenth chapter, where she unforgettable anti-war film. The novel circulation data: September-October, 2008. 15. a. Total no. copies, average during preceding 12 reaches the end, is entitled “Be Well.” tells the story of soldiers in the year months, 10,900; actual for single issue published In between, she lives her life, with a 2000, when Israel is withdrawing from nearest to filing date, 11,500. b. paid or requested outside-county mail subscriptions, average, 7,534; strong humor driven by Albert’s clever southern Lebanon. A 21-year- old narra- actual for single issue published nearest to filing date, 7,538; paid or requested in-county mail language. tor named Erez tells the story, which is subscriptions, average,1,135; actual for single Foreskin’s Lament by Shalom Aus- the best portrait I have ever read about issue published nearest to filing date, 984; paid distribution outside the mails, average, 10; actual lander (Riverhead, 320 pages) is one of the fear, anxiety, and hopelessness of for single issue published nearest to filing date, 12; those books that is very much like its being a young soldier. paid distribution by first-class mail, average, 195; actual for single issue published nearest to filing title: irreverent, original, a little Ortho- The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit: date, 207. c. Total paid and/or requested circulation, dox somehow, a dark comic-tragic spin A Jewish Family’s Exodus from Old average, 8,874; actual for single issue published nearest to filing date, 8,741. d. Free distribution by on the whole religious thing. Shalom Cairo to the New World, by Lucette mail, outside-county, average, 935; actual for single issue published nearest to filing date, 1,001; free Auslander is a very good storyteller, a Lagnado (HarperCollins, 368 pages) distribution by mail, in-county, average, 41; actual former Orthodox Jew from Monsey, is an unusual Jewish immigrantion for single issue published nearest to filing date, 310; free distribution mailed first-class, average, 44; ac- New York who grew up in the 1970s in story, from Cairo to New York. It isn’t tual for single issue published nearest to filing date, a very religious world where the laws the usual immigrant success tale. Lag- 65; free distribution outside the mail, average, 352; actual for single issue published nearest to filing were absolute. He wanted to leave it nado is the youngest daughter of the date, 420. e. Total free distribution, average, 1,372; all, and he didn’t. The oddness of Or- actual for single issue published nearest to filing book’s hero, her father Leon, the man date, 1,796. f. Total distribution, average, 10,246; thodox Judaism— yes oddness, not in in the white sharkskin suit. She is an actual for single issue published nearest to filing date, 10,537. g. Copies not distributed, average, an anthropological way but more like American success story, an immigrant 654; actual for single issue published nearest to how peculiar is this — is his subject who became a reporter at The Wall filing date, 953. h. Total, average, 10,900; actual for single issue published nearest to filing date, matter. He has a mesmerizing and Street Journal. But the book is about 11,500. i. Percent paid and/or requested circulation, original voice. It’s one of those love it her father, a cosmopolitan Egyptian average, 86.6%; actual for single issue published nearest to filing date, 82.9%. 16. This statement or hate it books. I loved it. Jew — an Arab-Jew he called himself of ownership will be printed in the November- Judith Katzir’s Dearest Anne: A Tale December, 2008 issue of this publication. 17. I — who spoke seven languages and certify that the statements made by me above are of Impossible Love (Feminist Press, lived a large, worldly life, until he left correct and complete. Lawrence Bush, Editor 240 pages) uses an odd conceit. The Egypt and came to America. Changing narrator, a young woman named Rivi, countries is always hard, especially writes a journal addressed to Anne when you feel you have no choice. For brilliantly describes the pattern and Frank about the love affair she had as Jews in Egypt, life became difficult problems and minor successes of his a young woman in the 1970s with her — but he was never able to be who he own life as a poet, as a 60-year-old, married teacher, Michaela, a charm- was here in the U.S., and his daughter recently married man with young ing, beautiful woman that Rivi can’t Lucette, in her very beautiful memoir, children, as an endlessly bothered ever forget. The book begins when shows us why. son. His poems are stories of how he Rivi, a middle-aged mother, goes to lives his life, and they are real and true Michaela’s funeral, and the story, one Not every year is a year full of books and have the original and wonderful of those coming-of-age, forbidden-pas- — mine and everyone else’s. This year surprises of art. sion tales, has a certain honesty that is was both. And I’m grateful.

22 Jewish Currents I. Century Hanuka on the Lebanese Border at Kibbutz Yiron

No rabbis, no christmas trees, no holiday. After working at the apple-packing plant each day you find candles or cookies or candies on your bed; you like to think it is the work of elves or angels, but they are gifts for sojourners from a kibbutz committee.

On the first night you gather outside the darkened dining hall, and are given a Hanuka candle to light before entering. Two hundred candles challenging the night beyond the barbed wire, two hundred kibbutzniks singing a Hanuka song, and though you do not know Hebrew you follow the words along singing yi di di di di, yi di di di de, and whatever doubts you had about living on a kibbutz disappear like lonely clouds passing over the hills of the Galilee.

At the children’s house, Hada Feinberg, the heavy-set schoolteacher, tells the children a Hanuka story while giving them warm jelly donuts. And though you do not understand, it does not matter, it only matters you are sitting in a circle with children listening to a story. And as often happens in this land of return, you return to other places, other times. You return to a day your mother came to school, to plead with the home-relief teacher for you a winter jacket. You sat on a bench in the office (your small behind constricted) listening to your mother’s heavy-legged accent shuffling back and forth between Yiddish and English. You stared at the teacher’s tennis-team legs crossed as casually as Irish lace, and as the kibbutz children begin to sing you remember yourself shouting, “Speak English. Speak English.” And Hada Feinberg, who knows Yiddish and English, gives you a warm jelly donut and says, “Sufganiyah, Sunfganiyah.” And as you bite into the sweet jelly at the center of the Sufganiyah, you are forgiven I. Century is the author of From the Coffee House of a lifetime of heavy-legged shame. Jewish Dreamers (Ben Yehuda Press).

November-December, 2008 23 Barnett Zumoff MAME- LOSHN ct Two Poems by Avrom Reyzn

When I Kindle the Khanike Light

My stars have long since gone away and dark night has replaced the day. But night recedes, the world grows bright when I kindle the Khanike light.

My strength and pride are gone, you see; the wild foe laughs and mocks at me. But now revives my ancient might when I kindle the Khanike light. Ven Kh’Tsind di Likhtlekh on di Akht My poems have no words to say of strength and valor gone away, Farloshn zaynen mayne shtern but they resound throughout the night un fintster iz di lange nakht, when I kindle the Khanike light. dokh heybt mir likhtik on tsu vern ven kh’tsind di likhtlekh on, di akht. My eye is dimmed by an ancient tear; it’s almost blinded now, I fear. Mayn makht un shtolts iz lang ariber, But see how it reflects so bright der vilder soyne shpot un lakht. when I kindle the Khanike light. Es lebt dokh oykh der alter giber, ven kh’tsind di likhtlekh on, di akht.

Es shtumen ale mayne lider Avrom Reyzn was born in 1876 in the village of Kaidanov fun gvure, heldntat un makht, in Lithuania. He was only 15 when his first poem was pub- dokh klingen zey in harts mir vider lished under the aegis of Y. L. Peretz. Reyzn was also a prolific ven kh’tsind di likhtlekh on, di akht. writer of short stories, the first of which was published when he was 16. He was the poet of the defeated, the rejected, the timid, the hungry, the gray, colorless persons whose longings An alte trer mayn oyg fartunklt and frustrations were of no interest to others; he buried his un hot es shir nit blind gemakht, personal sorrows in the common sorrow of his people. Reyzn dokh zet vi hel tsurik es finklt was immensely popular, both in Europe and in America, to ven kh’tsind di likhtlekh on, di akht. which he emigrated in 1911. He was often referred to by the Jewish masses, and even by such sophisticated critics as Melekh Ravitsh, as a “folk poet,” an appellation that fails to do justice to the artful simplicity of his poetry. Reyzn was one of “Di Alte,” the “older generation” of poets against whom the renowned poetic group “Di Yunge” (the Young Ones) announced its rebellion shortly before World War I; ironically, Reyzn was only in his early thirties at that point. —Barnett Zumoff

24 Jewish Currents Our Song

To all of those who take along to every land our lovely song,

in tones of joy or tones of sorrow, both short and long, today, tomorrow,

in new or ancient rhythmic form, of sun or rain or winter storm,

of humdrum days or holidays, of life’s green times or evil ways,

of new — the city’s iron rails — or old — the village hills and dales,

of lovely brides, with braids or curls, or poor and quiet little girls,

of battle or forgiving ways, of ancient or of modern days — no matter!

As long as songs ring out aloud to make us Jews feel tall and proud.

Undzer Lid

Un ale di, vos tsien mit in ale lender undzer lid,

in tener freylekhe tsi bange, in shures kurtse oder lange,

in nayem oder altn forem, fun zun, fun regn, tsi fun shturem,

tsi fun yontev, tsi fun vokh, fun gringn lebn tsi fun yokh,

tsi nay — fun shtot, fun ayzn, shtol, tsi alt — fun shtetl, barg un tol,

tsi fun a kale sheyn un eydl, tsi fun an orem, shtiler meydl,

tsi fun a krig, tsi fun fargebn, fun altn, tsi fun nayem lebn — keyn untershid.

Abi es zingt, abi es klingt, in yedn land a yidish lid.

November-December, 2008 25 Yankl Stillman Ab. Cahan Meets Friedrich Engels Our Secular Jewish Heritage The Legendary Forverts Editor Encounters Karl Marx’s Famed Collaboraor

n August, 1891, Abraham Cahan was elected by the Yiddish- speaking branches of the Socialist Workers Party as a delegate to I the second International Socialist Congress, in Brussels. When the comrades in England found out that he was coming to Europe, they Abraham Cahan edited the Yiddish invited him to give a series of lectures in London. He arrived in Liv- daily Forward for more than 50 years erpool in July, having traveled in steerage. From there he took a train to London, where he was set up in the apartment of Abraham Gold, and built it into one of the most one of the most active members of the city’s social democratic group. influential and widely circulated Cahan met a number of well-known socialists and anarchists like Mor- Yiddish newspapers in the world. In ris Winchevsky, Sergius Stepniak, and Peter Kropotkin — as well as Eleanor Marx-Aveling, Karl Marx’s third daughter, and her husband his 1926 memoir, Cahan described his Edward Aveling. Years later, Cahan described his encounters in his encounters in London with Karl Marx’s five-volume memoir, Bleter fun mayn lebn (“Pages from My Life”), lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels, published by the Forward Association. Cahan became best known for his work with the Yiddish Forverts, and Eleanor Marx-Aveling, daughter which he helped to found in 1897 and edited, with two brief hiatuses, of the world-famous revolutionary. until his death in 1951. (He chose the German word for “forward” Columnist Yankl Stillman observes instead of the Yiddish foroys, to echo the name of a kindred German newspaper.) Cahan built the Forverts into the largest newspaper in th Marx’s 125 yortsayt with an original the Yiddish-speaking world, with some two hundred and fifty thousand translation of Cahan’s words. left-leaning readers by the early 1920s. He thereby became a major influence in the Jewish cultural world. Cahan was also a novelist, best known for Yekl: A Tale of the New York Ghetto (1896), which was adapted as a film, Hester Street, in 1975, and The Rise of David Levinsky (1917). He wrote under the byline “Ab. Cahan” in both Yiddish and English. —Yankl Stillman

From Ab. Cahan’s Memoirs Meeting Eleanor Marx-Aveling In London I became acquainted with the Avelings and saw them quite often. . . . She and I happened to speak at the same meetings several times. She was very lively and an interesting person. Once, standing with me among a group of our Jewish socialists, she put her arm around me and said, “We Jews have special obligations to work for the working class.” As the reader knows, her mother was Christian and even her father was raised as a Christian because his parents were baptized when he was still a small child. But she liked to refer to herself Ab. Cahan as a Jewish child.

26 Jewish Currents She and her husband made a living as writers and she had a foreword for my translation from Engels. As soon as Mrs. to work very hard. Since she knew several languages, she Aveling heard this, she suggested that she would introduce translated from German, French, Italian and sometimes even me to him. Engels lived in his own house and, one evening, Norwegian. Her English translations of several of Ibsen’s the three of us . . . rode over there. works became the standard versions. The English transla- In my notes at the time, I described him as “a fairly tall, tion of Flabuert’s famous realistic novel Madame Bovary quite healthy-looking, high-spirited man with a clever ener- is also hers. She once confided to me, with a sad mien, that getic and jaunty expression on his face . . .” I marvelled at she frequently writes original works that are signed by other his liveliness and agility. He would dash into another room people. There are people —people with a lot more money for refreshments or a book or newspaper, and, standing or than talent — who want to make a name using other people’s sitting, he spoke happily and often with a witticism. It was literary efforts. . . . hard for me to believe that this man was over 70. The room During one of my visits, Mrs. Aveling led me to a basket in which we sat, and also the adjacent one, was full of books and showed me five little kittens to which her cat had given and newspapers in a variety of languages. . . . He received birth a few days earlier. The oldest, she informed me, was a the socialist and trade-union newspapers of every country, gentleman, “and do you know what I named him?” she asked read all of them and remembered everything he had read. with a smile. “Abraham! I gave him your name.” He read to me in Russian and also a few lines in Yiddish Three or four days later when I visited again, she informed from the Arbeiter Zeitung. me with a sad smile that Abraham had died. “Do you think I can’t read loshn koydesh?’ [“the When I became more closely acquainted with her husband, holy tongue,” i.e., Hebrew he did not please me. I also heard from other comrades that —Y.S.] he asked . . . . people in the movement also had little respect for him. But “No wonder the capitalist everyone loved and thought highly of her. press claims that I am also . . . Before Aveling joined the movement, he was a natural a Jew.” scientist. Once he gave a public lecture about flies. When I happened to have a he finished, a man with a broad gray beard came over and copy of Bakunin’s history said to him, “Young man, you have a good career ahead of of the [socialist] interna- you as a natural scientist.” When Aveling asked him who tional, which I had bought he was, he answered, “Karl Marx.” in a Jewish bookstore in “My father found time to attend all kinds of scientific London. Engels asked lectures,” Mrs. Aveling commented. “He found everything me to show it to him and Friedrich Engels interesting and he followed the developments.” Some time he read the Russian title after that lecture, Aveling met Eleanor in the library of the page. He said that he’d had this book, but it had disap- British Museum and began to pay attention to her. When peared. he realized that she was Marx’s daughter, he told her how On a nearby table lay a beautiful, richly-bound album, he had become acquainted with her father. Little by little, which Mrs. Aveling opened for me. It contained photographs an intimate friendship developed between them. He was a of all the socialist members of the Reichstag — a present that married man, then, but was not living with his wife. the comrades in the Reichstag had given him on the occasion . . . Mrs. Aveling used to tell me about her father. For ex- of his 70th birthday. In a corner stood a big, old, leather easy- ample, she described to me how he was popular among the chair. Suddenly, Mrs. Aveling pushed me onto the leather boys in their neighborhood in London. “As soon as he sat cushion. She laughed, and Engels smiled happily. down on a bench in the park near our house, the boys used “That was my father’s chair, the chair in which he died,” to descend on him from all sides. . . . My father used to sit she explained. and talk to them. They would show him their little knives and At that time Engels was busy working on the third vol- other trinkets and he would talk to them about their interests ume of Marx’s Das Kapital, which was an incomplete as though he were a boy himself.” manuscript. This was a major undertaking. In addition, he corresponded with dozens of comrades in various countries. . . . When Eleanor asked how his work was going, he made Meeting Engels an unhappy, almost despairing face. I was considering translating Karl Marx and Friedrich Eleanor used the familiar du with Engels and spoke to Engels’ Communist Manifesto into Yiddish and wanted to get him as though he were her father, and he to her as though

November-December, 2008 27 she were his daughter. vacation. The German comrades had tried to convince him He bought some bottles to attend the Congress. At first he had firmly refused. He of beer and we drank a didn’t want the applause that they were planning for him. toast to social democ- The German delegates, however, sent one emissary after racy in the world. Then another to him until he finally agreed to come on the last he poured me a second day after all the work had been completed. glass, but I declined. That day, in the middle of the morning session, I was “You know, Comrade conversing quietly with someone in a corner of the hall Engels, Jews are not when we heard a commotion, followed by stormy cries of drinkers.” “Hurrah.” I looked up and saw old gray Engels, with his tall “Yes, that’s really a figure, his white beard and military moustache, standing in pity,” he answered with the center of the platform. All the delegates stood up and a smile. “If Jews drank most of them yelled and applauded. I say “most” because the more, they would be French delegates were quiet. They had stood up reluctantly even better people.” and looked on with cold, dissatisfied glances. I spoke to him about I applauded and yelled “Hurrah” with all my strength Eleanor Marx-Aveling an introduction to my and all my heart. translation of the Com- When the cheering ceased, Engels gave a brief speech in munist Manifesto. He promised to write it up and send it to me German and promptly translated it into French and into Eng- as soon as he had some time. He spoke about the Manifesto lish. “The movement that is represented by this congress is as if Karl Marx had written it with no input from him. the natural outcome of economic and historic development,” As a farewell gift, he took out six photographs of Karl he said. “People cannot create such a thing; but if there is Marx and gave them as presents for me and my closest one person who helped to bring it to life, it was he!” — and comrades in America. he pointed to the bust of Karl Marx. Once again there was stormy applause. The French dele- e gation was upset by all this. Why were they giving an ovation Two years later, in 1893, Cahan, now 33, was again elect- to Friedrich Engels, the German? [In the Franco-Prussian ed as a delegate of the Socialist Party to the International War of 1870, the French had been defeated by Prussia, the Socialist Congress, to be held in Zurich, Switzerland. Once forerunner of Germany, and lost the provinces of Alsace and again, he arrived in Liverpool by ship and took the train to Lorraine —Y.S.]. They were worried about the impression London before crossing the channel to Brussels. He went this would make in France, where it would be said that the on to Paris, Berlin and Vienna, where he had a rendezvous congress and socialist movement were German. with his parents, aunts, and several cousins, all of whom he The attitude of the French delegates made a bad impression hadn’t seen for twelve years. on me. Such feelings at an international socialist congress! He described his reunion with his mother as follows: “I The Zurich Congress ended with a banquet. Engels sat rang the bell and heard sounds inside. The door opened all in the middle of one of the tables. Eleanor Marx-Aveling the way and I saw an old lady. At first glance she did not look and her husband sat on one side of him and . . . August familiar to me; but I realized right away that this was my Bebel [1840-1913, a German Social-Democratic writer mother. I threw myself towards her and she towards me. and leader —Y.S]. on the other. I went up to greet Engels, “ ‘My son, I don’t recognize you!’ she wailed without wishing to remind him about the introduction to my Yid- tears. I forgot about my resolve to be calm. I was confused dish translation of the Manifesto, which he had promised and nervous.” me two years ago. Cahan spent eleven days with his family. Then his parents He recognized me immediately and asked about the and aunts had to return to Russia. He left Vienna for the Jewish workers in America. Just as I was about to remind Zurich congress the same evening. In his memoir, he wrote him about his promise, however, Bebel turned to him with the following: a remark, and he got involved in a discussion with Bebel e and other delegates. I did not want to disturb them or be a nuisance! I did not have another opportunity to speak to him. The Congress lasted a week. A rumor began to spread on Thus I never received the introduction to the Manifesto from the last couple of days that they were expecting Friedrich him. I finished the translation and it was printed without an Engels, who happened to be in Switzerland on summer introduction.

28 Jewish Currents Lawrence Bush Defending the Sixties The Transformations Were Real — and the Backlash is Ongoing BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS

hen I visited Israel for the first time three years ago, Reviewed in this essay: W I felt a bit like a mourner The Sixties Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly late for a funeral. The decedent was Decade, by Gerard J. DeGroot. Harvard University Press, 2008, Israeli socialism: the kibbutz system, 508 pages. the austerity of the pioneering days, The Jewish 1960s, An American Sourcebook, edited by Michael E. the concern for economic justice and Staub. Brandeis University, 2004, 399 pages. equity, all of which gave rise to a ro- mantic ideal of the Jewish state that has outlived its reality yet still has liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” 1967 as Students for a Democratic mythic power. Life: We opposed the war in Vietnam, Society (SDS)! The kibbutzim I visited were all in which was killing tens of thousands Did that simplistic thinking and the final throes of privatization. The annually. Liberty: We struggled to self-importance lead to melt-downs, famed “children’s houses,” collective abolish legal segregation and terroristic implosions, and abuses? They did child-rearing centers, were long gone. racism, to win legal rights, job oppor- — but to describe, as DeGroot does, Austerity had succumbed to shopping tunities and basic self-determination the half-million strong Woodstock malls, and the socialist vision had giv- for women, and to destigmatize sexual Festival (1969) as “a flash of emotion en way to what is said to be the second orientation. The pursuit of happiness: confined by time and place,” the Black most wealth-polarized economy in the We sought to exorcise guilt and fear Panthers as having “very little virtue industrial world. from sex, to explore a ‘post-scarcity’ . . . against which to measure [their] Those Israelis who had lived through lifestyle of share-and-share-alike, to abundant vice,” and the psychedelic the days of socialist experimentation overturn the depressed, conformist subculture as “a totalitarian movement, were not, in the main, now rah-rah spirit that ruled in the 1950s, and to ruled by the despotism of drugs,” is capitalists. They seemed wistful about try to expand and energize mental like describing the American revolu- yesteryear, and their consciences were awareness through psychedelic drugs, tion as a movement of slaveholders anchored there. While realism, they meditation, and other consciousness seeking to dodge taxes. felt, mandated a competitive market technologies. Did the social-change movements of economy for Israel and a rise in indi- Did some of these quests involve the 1960s alienate large sectors of the vidualism and self-interest, the era of simplistic thinking and adolescent self- American population and fuel the con- socialist striving had deeply refreshed importance? For sure. The proof lies in servative counterrevolution? Appar- the country’s culture and had lent dig- my surprise at learning how marginal ently: President Johnson was reported nity to the Jewish people. the 1960s countercultural movement to groan, “We have lost the South for a was in reality — as when Gerard J. generation,” when he signed the 1964 I would say similarly about the 1960s DeGroot points out, in The Sixties Un- Civil Rights Act, and contemporary in America: that the movements of that plugged, that the conservative Young liberal analysts have spent a good decade expanded and refreshed the Americans for Freedom had four times deal of ink analyzing how Richard fundamental American values of “life, as many college-student members in Nixon’s so-called “silent majority” linked the radicalism of the 1960s to Lawrence Bush is the editor of Jewish Curents and author, most recently, of street crime, immorality, and national Waiting for God: The Spiritual Explorations of a Reluctant Atheist. disintegration. To describe the decade,

November-December, 2008 29 though international insurgency were simply a viral disease. Whenever De- Groot lends interpretation to the events he’s reporting, he seems to break out in hives. The source of his allergy? — the idealism that wafted like incense throughout the 1960s. He quotes SDS activist and historian Todd Gitlin’s fascinating reflection that “only true believers in the promise of America could have felt so anti-Ameri- can” — but then he dismisses SDS as a mere fraternity of egotists: “Their self-proclaimed status as the gifted of their generation convinced them that they had a right and duty to lead the masses back toward the American however, as “an era of magnificent Dream — as they defined it.” portant, from love.” futility” in which “fantasy worlds were He recognizes Martin Luther King, “The decade brought flowers, music, built on a flimsy understanding of how Jr.’s courage, subtlety, and capacity to love and good times,” DeGroot con- the real world works” is not merely to “fire the conscience of America” — but cludes. “It also brought hatred, murder, “unplug” the 1960s from its mythic then makes much of King’s alleged greed, dangerous drugs” and nine other status, but to miss its essential insight: promiscuity as “sex addiction” and, plagues that he seems to consider “par that the so-called “real world” is not worse, as hypocritical: While “others for the course” for the human race. Yet an inevitability but a social construc- indulged openly,” he writes, King “did for women who finally had access to tion that can and should periodically so in secret, all the time trying to main- a career other than teacher, nurse or be redesigned, if only to renew hope tain the image of an upright, moral, secretary, the ’60s meant a lot more and creativity. Christian husband and father.” than love beads. Ditto for the Black He quotes actress Julie Christie on traveler who could finally sleep in a DeGroot’s book may provide shock drug use — “Sometimes being stoned hotel instead of in his car; for the gay therapy for those baby-boomers who helped you to perceive the things that man who could finally hang at his have yet to reckon with their enthu- were hidden from you by all the . . . favorite bar without worrying about siasm for China’s diabolical Cultural brainwashing” — but then he lumps cops; for the abused woman who could Revolution, or to realize that the 1967 together the use of psychedelic drugs finally gain a divorce without having to “Summer of Love” in San Francisco and addictive opiates like heroin as prove adultery; for the GI who could was an urban-planning disaster. His creating a landscape of “thousands find plenty of partners with whom to fact-filled account of the 1960s can of faceless dead remembered only by refuse a suicidal order; and for little undermine all rosy nostalgia, and his their families” — while offering no ol’ me, who saw in my teens that “par perspective is panoramic. In his por- supporting statistics. for the course” was not engraved in trait of that most combustible year, He quotes novelist Angela Carter’s stone, because the course itself can be 1968, for example, he does not confine defense of the “sexual revolution” landscaped differently. himself to Columbia University, Port — “sexual pleasure was suddenly Ever since, I have identified mightily Huron, and Chicago, but ranges to divorced from not only reproduction with the late Abbie Hoffman’s descrip- Paris, where a student-inspired strike but also status, security, all the foul tion of the ’60s generation as “reckless, paralyzed France, to Mexico City, traps men lay for women” — but then arrogant, silly, headstrong — and we where some two hundred students were he describes a group rape scene at a were right. I regret nothing.” gunned down by troops, and to Prague, Central Park hippie gathering as the where Soviet tanks crushed “socialism quintessential act of the sexual revolu- Hoffman spoke those stubborn words with a human face” into the mud. tion, which he priggishly derides for just a few days before his suicide, in Yet all of this adds up, for DeGroot, “redefin(ing) sex, decoupling it from 1989. By then, many of the gains made

Collages by Lawrence Bush Lawrence by Collages to a year of “mindless violence” — as convention, emotion, and, most im- during the 1960s had been undermined

30 Jewish Currents — and many of us who “regretted noth- ish community, which has remained change-making role of women within ing” had nevertheless been challenged solidly liberal on both economic and American Jewish life, especially in the many times over by the conservative social issues, despite the hot-and- late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. counterrevolution to reconsider our heavy courtship of the neoconserva- Staub observes that despite the argu- beliefs. tive movement. Michael E. Staub’s ments made against Jewish feminism White flight from public schools had substantial anthology, The Jewish — that it might drive men from the resegregated the recently desegregated 1960s, gives some indication of why. synagogue, reduce the Jewish fertility system. Fundamentalist Christian rate and weaken the Jewish family ministers were leading a far-reaching The Jewish 1960s comprises seventy- — the “widespread revitalization of backlash against women’s and gay three brief essays from the 1960s, most Judaism that did take place after the liberation. The War on Drugs was from a progressive or radical perspec- 1960s was due in no small part to the throwing billions of dollars into inef- tive, that range across the movements success of — not the resistance to — a fectual policies and tens of thousands of the decade. These writings reveal Jewish women’s movement.” Essays of people into prison. The U.S. military how the well-entrenched, post-World by Paula Hyman and Rachel Adler, was restoring its sense of impunity War II liberalism of the American among others, lend credibility to this with small-time invasions (Grenada Jewish community empowered young thesis by revealing how Jewish women in 1983, Panama in 1989) that would Jewish activists to follow the path of who made their revolution within Jew- built momentum towards the preemp- conscience during the ’60s without fear ish communal networks (becoming tive war doctrine of the current Bush of being ostracized. Albert Vorspan of rabbis, rewriting liturgy and creating administration. And the collapse of the Reform synagogue movement, for new rituals concerned with a woman’s anti-capitalist governments and move- example, describes how “Northern lifecycle, building new organizations ments worldwide was about to throw Jews responded with high enthusiasm and reforming existing ones), helped dust in the faces of radical idealists of to the Freedom Rides and to Jewish the Jewish mainstream identify their many stripes. participation in them. Some of the self-interest with the zeitgeist of the The 1960s seemed a discredited congregations . . . raised funds to cover 1960s rather than with the backlash decade, with most Americans, in bail and bond . . .” that followed. DeGroot’s words, actually “eager to Other essays are even more explicit The positive changes wrought dur- blame their problems — moral decay, about the progressive leadership role ing the decade thus found acceptance crime, violence, and the plight of the played especially by rabbis — in sharp within the Jewish community — and family — on a permissive genera- contrast to most Christian clergy in Jewish liberalism became a seedbed for tion . . . ” One hold-out from the the U.S. — in stirring their people to progressive values that has yet to be scapegoating, however, was the Jew- engage with progressive politics in dug up by conservative activists. fulfilment of their religious identity. Rabbi Joachim Prinz offers a prime example of this in his address on behalf of the American Jewish Congress at the 1963 March on Washington:

Our ancient history began with slavery and the yearning for freedom. During the Middle Ages my people lived for a thousand years in the ghettos of Europe. Our modern history begins with a proc- lamation of emancipation. It is for these reasons that it is not merely sympathy and compassion for the black people of America that motivates us. It is . . . a sense of complete identification and solidarity . . .

A third stumbling block to the counter-revolution among Jews was the

November-December, 2008 31 Diana Scott Wrestling with Righteousness For a New Generation, Spirituality and Politics

ighteous Indignation is a book with an agenda: to inspire Reviewed in this essay: young, progressive Jews to R Righteous Indignation, A Jewish Call for Justice, edited by Rabbi increase their political activism. Con- Or N. Rose, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, and Margie Klein. Jewish tributing essayists seek to energize that Lights Publishing, 2008, 351 pages. activism with traditional Jewish texts and real-life examples that exemplify Jewish spiritual and ethical values. Why, at this particular time, a call for justice that illuminates the Jewish religious underpinnings of so many diverse social action causes? The book evinces progressive Judaism’s renewed internal dialogue, too long drowned out by hawkish neoconservatives, as well as the need felt by Jewish institutions to reverse the tide of declining membership by reaching out to a younger generation drawn less to religious affiliation than to religiously inspired activism. In their introduction, editors Or N. Rose, Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, and Margie Klein call on those already affiliated with mainstream Jewish institutions to reach out beyond the direct service needs of their communi- with Jewish spiritual and ethical val- (Aging Baby Boomer Activist), I admit ties, which have been adequately ad- ues, is viewed here as key to achieving that I involuntarily stiffened at times dressed, to translate traditional biblical social transformation. (Far less empha- during my reading — feeling, in turn, and talmudic values into advocacy for sized in this and most other essays are angry, disappointed, even wistful about more fundamental social change. The the socialistic values of early progres- the tardiness and comparative restraint editors also sound the shofar call to sive American Jews.) of some of the calls for action issued Jewish activists “who are uninvolved Well-versed in Jewish religious here. I’ll feel more convinced of their in or alienated from organized Jewish values, the editors have chosen forty staying power, I thought, when I see life, with the message that the religious essays that are wide-ranging, thought- more rabbis and Jewish organizations teachings and practices of our tradition provoking, and even inspiring. These marching in the street to protest war can be profound sources of inspiration, essays commendably counterbalance — something many mainstream Jews guidance, and support for the work of the conservative, fundamentalist spin have eschewed because of anti-Israel social justice.” The transformation of of many religious groups today. None- (sometimes anti-Semitic) rhetoric and consciousness, through reengagement theless, as a secular Jewish “ABBA” Palestinian flag-bearers at many of those street events. Impressively, Diana Scott is a member of the National Executive Board of The Workmen’s however, Righteous Indignation is Circle/Arbeter Ring and vice-chair of the Northern California Branch #1054. She evolving, with the help of a multi- writes on culture and urban and environmental issues and lives in San Francisco. year grant from the Nathan Cum-

32 Jewish Currents mings Foundation, from a book into a an index!) to the Jewish ethical choices Labor Committee, pinpoints labor’s movement aimed at mobilizing young of the hour informed by social change challenge to the Jewish community Jews into progressive activism (http:// activists. today in his essay, “Why a Labor Move- righteousindignation.info/). ment Matters”: “The question . . . is Given my own preoccupation with how we can translate our historical Rabbi Sidney Schwarz’s opening essay coalition-building, I was deeply im- connections and traditional values [in] asks, “Can Social Justice Save the pressed by April Rosenblum’s in- our new roles as owners and managers, American Jewish Soul?” Our shared sightful and constructive essay, “How and as activists joining in solidarity Jewish values, says Schwarz (the to Split the Sea: Anti-Semitism and with workers.” Substituting support of founder of PANIM: The Institute for Social Change” — despite my strong ‘fair-trade’ consumerism for support Jewish Leadership and Values in Wash- aversion to the subject, which conser- of union drives, he argues, is short- ington, DC), are the reason “Jewish vatives have hammered at for years. sighted and will lead to niche markets particularism is okay” — a premise According to Rosenblum’s sophisticat- rather than overall improvement of that, in my view, lands us just a hoped analysis, “Anti-Semitism’s job is to working conditions. step away from parochialism. Schwarz make the systems that create injustice Lebowitz cites traditional Jewish believes, however, that a focus on Jew- invisible. It protects power structures, texts that uniformly side with the less ish values and social justice may be just diverting anger at injustice towards powerful party in employer-employee the ticket to bring non-affiliated young Jews instead.” While at various times, negotiations. He traces the roots of Jews into the organized Jewish fold. she notes, Jews around the world the Jewish labor movement in the He posits the waning influence of have attained positions of status in traditional Jewish backgrounds of the an older “tribal” or “Exodus” Jewish society, they’ve also been convenient Bund’s early leaders and the political identity, that “state of siege” mentality scapegoats when political discontent ferment of the Haskalah (in Yiddish, that has plagued Jews for centuries and has erupted. Cooperating with those haskole, the Jewish Enlightenment). intensified after the Holocaust and the in power — not challenging the status His exegesis ultimately calls on Jews founding of the State of Israel amid quo — also has been understood as the who have moved out of the working hostile Arab nations. Schwarz sees this price of protection. Her astute obser- class and up the socio-economic ladder form of identity giving way to “Sinai vation: All of this happens in cycles, to support unions by supporting orga- (or covenant) consciousness,” which giving the appearance, at times, that nizing campaigns and, as consumers, supports a life of ethics and values. anti-Semitism is “over.” by protesting or boycotting exploitative Younger Jews, he says, are less likely to Rosenblum’s refreshing class per- companies and showing preference for trust institutions, and “Israel is no longer spective refocuses attention on the union companies. (Shareholder activ- the engine to Jewish identity or to Jew- roots of this brand of racial/ethnic ism and socially screened investing are ish philanthropy that it once was.” hatred. (Her in-depth, online essay, additional means of holding corpora- Schwarz’s pragmatic approach to “The Past Didn’t Go Anywhere,” was tions responsible for their employment outreach would be more compelling reviewed by Rokhl Kafrissen in the practices and union policies, but nei- were more Jewish leaders prepared March-April, 2008 issue of Jewish ther Lebowitz nor any other essayist to walk their talk, but that entails Currents. The complete essay can in this volume deals substantially with some risk-taking, as a rabbi with an be downloaded at www.pinteleyid. these investor strategies.) unpopular message may be given com/past/.) She also offers Jewish ac- Today, immigrant rights advocacy walking papers. Rabbi David Saper- tivists tools and strategies with which (including on behalf of workers round- stein of the Religious Action Center of to challenge hate-speech within their ed up in government raids) is second Reform Judaism significantly notes in social change movements — even only to union organizing as a form his essay, “Religious Leadership and while they’re marching! of pro-worker activism. In her essay, Politics,” that rabbis need additional “And If Not Together, How?” (Adri- education and training in the many Change movements in which non-gov- enne Rich’s addition to Hillel’s famous skills that doing social justice work ernmental organizations (NGOs) now three questions), Dara Silverman, the requires, given today’s well-educated take the lead were once spearheaded departing director of Jews for Racial and informed Jewish congregation. In by labor unions. Noting the American and Economic Justice in New York, this sense, Righteous Indignation can labor movement’s deep roots in the urges Jews to help build a pan-ethnic become a tool for Jewish activists, a Jewish community, Arieh Lebowitz, immigrant rights movement. “As Jews,” handy reference guide (though it lacks communications director of the Jewish she writes, “we are grounded in our his-

November-December, 2008 33 tory, our tradition, and our rakhmones Israeli-Palestinian Peace: The Role rejected Theodor Herzl’s vision of [compassion] . . . We must use that of American Jews,” suggests that we “normalization” through statehood. understanding to challenge our legisla- “formulate, organize, and put forward Instead, it favored a revolutionary, tors to stand for what we know to be a third political and cultural path for utopian experiment. right, a comprehensive immigration supporting Israel, independent of the Magid recalls that Jewish theolo- program . . .” right-wing/neo-conservative U.S. gian Martin Buber advocated a bi-na- foreign policy agendas, and stepping tional state of Jews and Arabs before Waging peace in the Middle East has clear of left-wing denial that Jews need 1948, and, after statehood, advocated been a polarizing issue for the Jewish a homeland.” This third path, she says, “strenuously for the repatriation of community. In “The Challenge of Mak- would be based on reclaiming early Arab refugees . . . an idea that is now ing Peace,” Stephen P. Cohen, founder progressive Zionist ideals, which were considered almost anti-Semitic!” and president of the Institute for Middle aligned with basic Jewish ethics. Buber also sought a federation of East Peace and Development, observes The Jewish left and the Jewish right, Middle Eastern states with common that “violence grows exponentially,” in of course, can both find support for interests and goals, and saw “insular- the form of “hatred, acts of violence, their views in Jewish tradition: witness ity (individual or collective)” as “a and self-styled revenge” whenever the conflicting claims to the idealistic profane act.” For Buber, “the sacred people are overpowered, dominated, legacy of Zvi Yehuda Kook, the first act is . . . coming out of one’s hid- and “humiliated by their weakness and Ashkenazic chief rabbi of modern denness to greet the other in spite of inability to protect their families.” Re- Israel, by both the Israeli settlers move- precarious circumstances,” rather than versing this violence, Cohen suggests, ment and the champions of a two-state friendly ones. requires a total reassessment of Ameri- solution. Kook’s legacy, according to In a more secular and personal vein, can national identity — including the Rabbi David Ellenson, head of the He- Ruth Messinger and Aaron Dorfman Bush Doctrine of preemptive military brew Union College-Jewish Institute of of the American Jewish World Service Religion (the Reform seminary), in his speak of a “universe of obligation.” foreword to Righteous Indignation, is In their essay, “Am I My Brother’s The older, secular, utopian Zionism, summed up in this quote from Kook: Keeper If My Brother Lives Halfway Magid writes, rejected traditional “The love for Israel (ahavat Yisrael) Around the World?” they make a pitch religion as the exclusive backbone of entails a love for all humankind (kol for extending this universe, not out of ha’adam).” Yet Shaul Magid, a pro- pity (which leads to a glorification of Jewish identity, and even rejected fessor of modern Judaism at Indiana the suffering of others, according to Herzl’s vision of “normalization” University, links the messianic aims Hannah Arendt), or from sympathy through statehood. Instead, it favored of the current settler movement to a (which, Susan Sontag observed, lets conservative reinterpretation of Kook’s us off the hook by allowing us to think a revolutionary experiment. teachings. well of ourselves), but out of a deeper The resolution? In “Imitatio Dei: empathy with the suffering of others. strikes. American Jews, as part of the and/as Shared Space: A Jewish Theo- Messinger and Dorfman suggest “American cultural, intellectual, and logical Argument for Sharing the Holy ways to combat actively the “com- financial elite,” have a special role to Land,” Magid calls out to both progres- passion fatigue” evoked by constant play in this reassessment, says Cohen. sive Zionists “and those who may not media images of suffering. The solu- This special role also extends to “the call themselves Zionists but who care tion is actually to help: by consuming reshaping of Israeli legal and institu- deeply about Israel, Palestine, and responsibly, avoiding the purchase of tional life,” so that Israel becomes “as social justice . . . to revisit some of the unethically-produced goods, invest- comfortable a place for Arab citizens theological underpinnings of the Zion- ing in companies with ethical prac- who wish to participate in Israeli-Jew- ist project” rather than focusing nar- tices, giving tsedoke to international ish society, as Christian societies like rowly on territory, national revival and development, humanitarian relief, France, the United Kingdom, and even survival. The older, secular, utopian and human rights organizations, and Italy have been for Jews.” Zionism, he writes, set out to create a by acting not just as individuals but How do we effect such changes? new society “that would share territory as a Jewish community to influence Diane Balser, former executive direc- with its Arab neighbors.” It rejected American foreign policy. (Missing is tor of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, in her traditional religion as the exclusive any critique of our reliance on NGOs essay, “Plotting the Middle Path to backbone of Jewish identity, and even to do the work that should be part of

34 Jewish Currents our government’s spending priorities, tion of Righteous Indignation is the conscience — and seek others who from peace-building to international decades-old movement for environ- hear it as well. My Jewish identity is disaster relief.) mental justice, led by people of color, cultural, familial, ethical and secular, Jewish Currents editor Lawrence to redress our country’s corporate his- and rather than connecting with a deity, Bush, as head writer for the Coalition tory of venting/burying/dumping toxic I seek to deepen my living connections on the Environment and Jewish Life, waste on economically and racially with people, animals, even habitats. challenges observant Jews (and those marginalized communities. Joining Shared effort on a worthwhile task; who are less so) to review biblical text this struggle as Jews might help heal singing, dancing, eating, enacting and halakha (Jewish law) through a the rift between the African-American secular rituals together in shared joy lens of environmental activism. In and Jewish communities. or sorrow; experiencing the spiritual in “Wonder and Restraint: A Rabbinical art and nature — all of this constitutes Call to Environmental Action,” a stir- Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder and my “spirituality.” Unfortunately, the ring, poetic evocation of the natural editor of Tikkun magazine, advocates editors of Righteous Indignation do not universe’s treasures and their impend- injecting spirituality into the secular include any essays linking politics and ing destruction, Bush summons Jews, “rights and inclusion” focus of the spirituality from this kind of secular with rabbinical cadence, to stewardship traditional liberal/ progressive agenda. Jewish perspective. of the earth. Inspired by the work in interfaith co- Nonetheless, the personal, political, A secular Jew, he nonetheless trum- alitions of his mentor, Rabbi Abraham cultural and spiritual are well-tied to- pets two covenantal responsibilities: Joshua Heschel, Lerner sees love, gether in the closing essay of Righteous stewardship, through restraint (roughly kindness, generosity and wonder at Indignation, “Reopening the Tent of translated as conservation) that exceeds the grandeur of the universe as dimen- Abraham” by Rabbi Arthur Waskow the routine obligations that sacred sions missing from today’s progressive (of the Shalom Center) and Rabbi text directs individuals to fulfill, and political organizations. Phyllis Berman (of the Riverside Lan- “speaking truth to power,” which can Heschel, Lerner notes, believed guage Program for adult immigrants wield a real impact, given the Jewish that alienation was the result of iso- and refugees in New York). Reweaving community’s influence at the highest lation from the spiritual core of our threads of connection among ethno-re- levels of policy-making. being, and he linked this isolation ligious groups, say this couple, will re- Rabbi Natan Margalit, in “Jewish to the money-and-power orientation quire action in three arenas: ending the Textual Practice and Sustainable Cul- of Western societies. Lerner wants a addiction to oil, creating public opinion ture,” cogently suggests specifically politics that speaks to our hunger for in Muslim and Western countries that Jewish contributions to environmental meaning: “a movement of spiritual firmly rejects the resort to violence struggles and calls for a new Jewish progressives . . . that can clearly ar- (whether by official armies or under- eco-theology that eschews market- ticulate the deprivation of meaning, of ground warrior bands), and transform- based technological solutions and our alienation from our own selves as ing the religious relationships among product-based thinking in favor of a created in the image of God and yearn- Jews, Christians, and Muslims. gardener’s ethic to work the land and ing for our connections to the God of The Shalom Center has subscribed guard it. Margalit reasons that a clear, the universe, a deprivation that is built to Gandhi’s dictum, “Be the peace new paradigm is necessary to mobi- into and reinforced by every aspect of that you seek,” by pioneering inter- lize the considerable power for social the economic and political order in religious gatherings in seasons of change latent in our communities. Of which we live.” religious celebration. Here, under one course, secular think tanks like the Paradoxically, while I accept much community tent, “sharing hearts and International Forum on Globalization of his political analysis and frequently minds” has led to respect for shared have spread this gospel since the early do long for a deeper feeling of convic- values enunciated in sacred texts, and 1990s, exposing how corporations tion or connection to help me keep mutual trust has fostered local coali- profit by externalizing environmental swimming against the current, Lerner’s tions for social action, across ethnic costs, with wanton toxic waste dis- God-centered appeal for meaning and divides. posal and destruction of health and spirituality, absent any self-disclosure The editors of Righteous Indignation habitat. Will a Jewish eco-theology on his part, falls short of opening my have issued a wake-up call that is wel- dare take on this formidable corporate heart. I’m more inclined to listen for come, albeit long in coming, and offers opponent? that “still, small voice” within — the something for almost everyone who Conspicuously absent from this sec- voice of political, ethical, or moral walks the path of social justice.

November-December, 2008 35 Joel Schechter Pesach Burstein’s Peace Plan Der Komediant’s Jewish Anti-Militarism Radical Yiddish

y grandfather, Isidor Schechter, never wanted to In tsarist times, Jews rejected military service in response join the tsar’s army. When he was drafted in or to the forcible conversion of young Jewish boys to make M around 1903, he went absent without leave. Isidor them “worthy” of endless military service, and to the dangers fled from Russia to Germany, safely crossed the Atlantic posed by battle and by anti-Semitism within the ranks of Ocean to Ellis Island, and entered New York’s garment the army, which made it almost as dangerous to face one’s industry as a maker of men’s caps. The stories about his fellow soldiers as to face a foreign enemy in a war zone. flight became quite important to me during the 1960s, when I Ruth Rubin, in her collection of Yiddish folk songs, Voices persuaded my draft board that I was a conscientious objector. of a People, includes this lyric: Then and now, I identified with my grandfather’s position: I Der ershter ukaz iz aropgekumen oyf yidishe zelner, believe that no one should be compelled to serve in an army, Zenen zikh ale tselofn in di puste velder, oy vey, oy vey! particularly when troops are serving autocratic governments in imperial wars. And once they’re done with their term of The first decree for Jewish soldiers was issued, service, I believe that soldiers should be given chances to Then all fled to the wild woods, oh woe, oh woe! leave without “stop-loss,” those mandatory extended tours of duty currently enforced in Washington. The conscription quandaries Jews faced in Russia also en- liven Sholem Aleichem’s story, “The Automatic Exemption” You don’t need a Yiddish-speaking grandfather who suf- (in which a draft exemption is far from automatic), as well fered from unwelcome conscription to oppose war — but at as a number of Yiddish stage plays, notably “The Recruits” a time when political leaders rarely advocate reducing our by Israel Axenfeld, which was adapted and staged to acclaim armed forces or redeploying our military budget for civilian by the New York Yiddish theatre collective Artef in 1934. needs, the strands of Jewish anti-militarism warrant more (I discuss some of these plays and the Federal Theater’s attention. “The Eastern [European] Jews were the most catalogue of Yiddish anti-war plays, the Anti-Milkhome heroic of paci- Zamlung, in my new book, Messiahs of 1933.) fists,” wrote Jo- Emma Goldman and her comrade Alexander Berkman When German troops took over his seph Roth in his advanced the practice of anti-militarism in the United States theater’s Polish town, Pesach Burstein 1926 book, The by founding the “No-Conscription League” and opposing Wandering Jews, the draft during World War I. Their speeches against war befriended an army commander who but “no one has and conscription led to their arrest, which in turn led to a loved stage plays and who authorized yet celebrated free speech movement supported in 1915 by Yiddish authors the Yiddish thespian to exempt all his t h e h e r o i s m Moishe Nadir, Sholom Asch, Avrom Reisen, anarchist news- of these Jews. paper editor S. Yanofsky, and Forverts editor Ab. Cahan. fellow actors from military labor. . . . It is rare to They all joined Goldman in her efforts to free Berkman from find a Jewish prison, where he was confined for his alleged “conspiracy” family in the East that doesn’t have an uncle or cousin in against the draft. (Goldman was convicted with him, but America. Somebody emigrated, twenty years ago, say. He released earlier.) fled the draft. Or received his call-up papers and deserted. If Eastern Jews weren’t quite so timorous, they could take Today, the recruitment policies of the “all-volunteer” justifiable pride in being the most antimilitaristic people in U.S. army especially beg a new look at Jewish responses to the world.” military service. Successful military recruitment depends,

36 Jewish Currents after all, on the serious lack of alternatives, economically Pesach Burstein’s and educationally, for the generally disadvantaged men and women who enlist. If they could afford a college educa- Alan Holder Peace Plan tion or secure a job with a future, many of them might not volunteer for warfare. (The army promises to give soldiers Zeyde Der Komediant’s Jewish Anti-Militarism educational opportunities after they serve, if they survive the ordeal.) If anti-war activists and legislators could secure Small, bent, wizened, hidden a redeployment of war funds for civilian uses, including the behind whiskers, Yiddish, tobacco fumes, provision of interest-free college loans to low-income young and the Talmud, my grandfather sat alone adults, I suspect many would take the higher education and in his kitchen, an exile, run from army recruiters. while my grandmother queened it Such a proposal has an intriguing precedent in Yiddish in the living room. actor Pesach Burstein’s wartime life. In his autobiography, What a Life!, Burstein recalls how he rescued fellow Jews Had he really once mounted her, and repeatedly, from the military in Poland during World War I. When Ger- to produce my aunts, my uncles, my mom? man troops took over his theater’s Polish town, Burstein be- Was I actually connected to him? friended an army commander who loved stage plays and who Only decades later did I take in authorized the Yiddish thespian to exempt all of his fellow the casual heroism that had enabled him actors from military labor. “Anyone car- to pull up out of the Hungarian known rying a card with my sell store and mill, gather wife signature, Paul Burst- and nine children for the odyssey to America ein, would be spared,” (losing and burying the baby en route). he writes. A group of Jewish mothers What have I ever done to set beside that? begged Burstein to let their sons join his Yid- dish acting company. Alan Holder has taught at Hunter College, as well He complied and gave as Columbia, Williams, Cornell and other colleges all of them signed and universities. He is the author of four books of literary criticism. cards. The German Pesach Burstein (1896-1986) was a commander who at- Yiddish actor, comedian, singer and tended their perfor- director who performed extensively mance loved the show employment — a public works program — through a new with his wife Lillian Lux and their and invited the entire st twin son and daughter. A film about 21 -century Works Progress Administration. his career, The Komediant, was made cast to a champagne One oft-quoted statement about Jewish anti-militarism in 1999. supper. “Because of is found in Isaac B. Singer’s 1978 Nobel Prize acceptance his patronage,” writes speech, in which he declared that Yiddish, “a language of Burstein, “we became even more popular in the small town; exile, without a land, without frontiers, not supported by business flourished.” The situation he describes could al- any government . . . possesses no words for weapons, am- most be the plot of a Mel Brooks comedy. Instead of The munition, military exercises, war tactics.” Singer’s appraisal Producers, this one would be called The Actors, or Pesach of the language and its culture cannot be taken literally, Burstein’s Peace Plan. of course; Yiddish references to weapons certainly can be found, not least in partisan songs celebrating anti-Nazi resis- I hesitate to conclude that war is good for the performing tance. Nevertheless, in yesterday’s opposition to conscrip- arts, but certainly some new legislation subsidizing careers tion by Yiddish-speaking Jews, one glimpses the roots of in the arts and education as an alternative to military ser- tomorrow’s hoped-for radical anti-milkhome movement. vice (and paid for with some of the military budget) would give the younger generation career choices as enjoyable as Give Jewish Currents as a holiday gift — only $15, Burstein’s. One Workmen’s Circle/ Arbeter Ring resolution half price, until December 31st! Call 212 889-2523. from its 2008 convention calls for the creation of just such

November-December, 2008 37 “Concealed/Revealed” invites readers to write essays of up to 300 CONCEALED words that focus on personal experiences that have been transfor- mative, provocative, or just plain unforgettable. Names will be withheld upon request. Future topics and deadlines will be posted REVEALED in each edition of the column (see box, below left). Essays should be submitted to [email protected] or mailed to us at 45 East 33 Street, NYC 10016. You will be contacted if your essay is selected for publication.

Jerusalem “Jerusalem, like Heaven, is more a state of mind than a place.” —Israel Zangwill

“For nineteen years the city was di- my first year of study at a Hebrew The “khevra” seemed equally divided vided.” So begins a segment of the teacher’s academy in Jerusalem. Stand- between academics and poets, includ- poem, “Songs of Zion the Beautiful,” ing with me was my best friend in the ing Dennis who, with his disheveled by Yehuda Amichai. Yearning for the program, a young man from Boston, hair, wrinkled clothes, and intense dark serenity of that smaller Jerusalem, “the his head crowned with a cloud of curly eyes, looked like a poet, while Yehuda, quiet one” that existed from 1948 to brown hair. Our goal was to cross into well-dressed, with short hair and a quiet 1967, Amichai bemoans the return of no-man’s land, enter and explore the manner, looked more like a lawyer or an “the noisy matron . . . to full, fat, and college building, and claim the blue UN accountant. Yehuda’s last name, which legal life.” He misses the quiet beauty flag that fluttered from the roof. didn’t mean much in those days, was of the smaller Jerusalem. So do I. “Amichai.” Our plan worked to perfection, and the The 1948 armistice lines that divided experience was electric; the silence It was before the Six-Day War and the Israeli and Jordanian halves of of overgrown grounds in the scarlet Arieh’s beautiful Abu Tor house was in Jerusalem also created buffer zones; Jerusalem twilight, the stillness of dim no-man’s land. When we sunbathed on no man’s lands, or as Amichai called masonry-strewn halls and empty class- the roof and got catcalls from a Jordanian them, “placid bays.” One of these was rooms remain with me years later, along outpost on one side and an Israeli outpost the ridge overlooking the Old City; with the blue UN flag. on the other, we thought it was funny and here was Government House, center of waved to both. British Mandatory power in Palestine Amichai referred to three categories of until 1948, when it was taken over by people who were drawn to the “placid We were not amused when fighting broke the United Nations. Here, also, was the bays” of no-man’s land; a) lovers, b) out our last night. We had an early-morn- Arab College, built in the 1930s to rival enemies, and c) crazy people. I figure ing flight, and the boys we had been wav- Hebrew University and abandoned in that I would fit into categories a) and c); ing to were now shooting at each other. 1948 when it was taken over by weeds crazy in love with Jerusalem, the quiet We were at a party and two of the guys and silence. one. offered to wait with us until it was safe Michael Cooper to pick up suitcases. By the time things On a warm evening early in the Spring Lafayette, California quieted down, it was dawn. Running for of 1967, I stood on a road in Talpiot our suitcases, we passed Israeli men, bordered by coils of rusting barbed wire m women and children waiting in front of overlooking the apple orchards of Ramat their doors with suitcases, ready to be Rachel. On a rise beyond the orchards I had finished the first draft of my Ph.D. evacuated in case shooting broke out and partially concealed within a stand thesis and needed a mindless vacation. again. A great mindless vacation with a of pine trees was the abandoned Arab A friend, recently returned from teach- very sobering ending. College. I was 18 and midway through ing at the Hebrew University, said. “Go Myriam Miedzian to Jerusalem, to Finks Bar; ask Moishe High Falls, New York the waiter to point out Fred Sommers’ Topics and Deadlines for friends. You’ll have a great time.” m E “Concealed/Revealed” My friend Suzanne joined me. We went It’s 1996, and I’m in Israel for the first “Justice, Justice”... November 21st to Finks our first evening and found time. A dear friend who has lived there “Jewish Men” . . . January 21st Moishe, who pointed to a corner table. since 1969 has invited me to stay with “Idolatry” . . . March 21st Within minutes, we had rooms dirt her, and is accompanying me to Jerusa- cheap in Abu Tor, and invitations to lem for a few days. I am a Jew and Jew- Submit to: [email protected] drop by people’s homes and parties. ishly literate, but not at all observant, not

38 Jewish Currents even a believer. I expect to be interested write two words on my little yellow pad. in Jerusalem’s history, to be entranced by “Keep us.” It seems as rational a request JClassifieds its beauty, as I am. But something odd is as any other. Let the indifferent universe, or the pious men who collect all the notes $25 for up to 25 words; happening. I am agonizing over visiting 50¢ each additional word. the Kotel, the Western Wall. I know that every week and burn them, make of it Multiple entry discounts. as a woman I have second-class status what it, or they, will. Contact jewishcurrents@ there — confined to a small area, obliged circle.org, (212) 889-2523. It’s only after I walk away that I realize, to adhere to a dress code more rigid than laughing and crying at the same time, that for men. But after all — so much that I never signed it. Two adjoining plots for sale in Beth history. Should I go? Anna Gordin Moses Cemetery section 3. $1500 for “Jerusalem, like Heaven, is more a state of mind than a place.” —Israel Zangwill both or $1000 each. Please reply via My friend assumes that I will. “Everyone Brooklyn, New York e-mail to [email protected]. does. What’s the big deal? Wear a skirt; it won’t kill you.” But that’s not all that’s m troubling me. It’s the kvitl — the note, Haiku about Jerusalem: Host an Exchange Student. The Aca- the petitions to the Almighty that Jews demic Foundation for International leave between the stones. It’s ridiculous Jerusalem’s hot Cultural Exchange (AFICE) is looking for me to leave one, but I want to. And and it’s not just the weather for host families in the local area to if I do, what shall I ask for? I spend a people, politics host foreign exchange students. good deal of time agonizing over this. These young ambassadors are It’s not a city Should I? Shouldn’t I? How does one between 15 and 18 years of age Jerusalem’s a concept begin? How does one end? “Dear God and all speak English. Student pro- wherever you are files have arrived for students from . . . Respectfully yours . . .”? various countries. Students come On each seder night I decide to go, and I take a notepad and a with their own spending money “Next Year in Jerusalem!” pen. If I feel like it, I tell myself, I’ll write and medical insurance. Please call and right here, right now something. Maybe something like “Hey Anne or Dianne, 1-866-462-3423 if Dan Brook God, give us a break already!” you are interested in opening your San Francisco, California hearts and homes to one of these As I walk toward the Wall, an old man individuals. Please visit our website, calls out to me and points to my arms. m www.afice.org. My shirt, which has elbow-length sleeves, isn’t modest enough, he implies. Within Las Vegas is an entity called Join Branch 1907, the Jewish Cur- I stop right there, furious. If I go back, the Strip; within Jerusalem is the Old rents Branch of The Workmen’s however, he wins. So I take the shawl I City. Both the Strip and the Old City are Circle. Information: lawrencebush@ have with me, wrap it around my arms unique works of art reflecting the collec- earthlink.net. and shoulders, and go on. At least he’s tive effort of separate entities, such as, in distracted me from the question of the Las Vegas, the casino companies. note. The Jerusalem analogue for the casino pete with each other for the attention of people there, so do the churches, syna- When I arrive, I see small groups of operators is the religious institutions of gogues, and mosques of Jerusalem. As women praying together, and others the world — Jewish, Muslim, and Chris- the epitome of corporate folk art, both scattered about, praying, touching the tian, from Europe, Africa, and the Middle were realized without the benefit of any time-worn stones, some even kissing the East — that have built and rebuilt holy Master Plans. Wall. There are folded scraps of paper places for centuries. Among the last are thrust into little crevices, into small gaps Armenians and Coptics, Eastern Ortho- Given the results of centuries of collec- between the stones. Tiny green shoots dox and Episcopalians, each of whom tive effort, Jerusalem attains spiritual are sprouting here and there in the cran- make a unique contribution to that Art quality unlike any other place on earth; nies and joints of an ancient ruin. Why that is the Old City. so does the Las Vegas Strip, likewise re- am I crying as I touch it? I feel the ac- As the Strip is organized to create the flecting decades of building and rebuild- cumulation of millennia-old longings, preconditions for gambling, so the single ing, in this case of incomparable hotels, of centuries of pleas for help from . . . industry of Jerusalem is religion, orga- all to attain a different sort of quality that what? The universe is indifferent, to nized religions, whose artifacts are meant is vulgar to some and spiritual to others. Jews and non-Jews, to men and women to instill higher levels of spirituality. Were you blind-folded and set down in alike. But who am I to separate myself either place, you would quickly know, from the rest of suffering humanity? I As the Las Vegas hotels implicitly com- once your eyes were clear, that before

November-December, 2008 39 you was either Las Vegas or Jerusalem. most of my shopping for gifts right there. rusalem. I left when I befriended another Not only was I getting lovely items but I American who, because only his father One need not be an aesthetic sociological was also giving back: The monies raised was Jewish, was not allowed to stay at determinist to accept this proposition: in the gift shop go back into the program, the Jewish hostel. As Jerusalem is like no other city in the which mostly relies on outside support. world, so the art most reflective of Jeru- We went where many Jews now go (for salem should be like no other art. According to Maimonides, the highest a weekend) to be free: to Egypt — to the form of tsedoke is giving someone the desert where our people once wandered People make long-planned pilgrimages skills to help themselves. I think I found blindly for forty years. to both. the holiest place in Jerusalem, right there Lawrence Fogel-Bublick Both depend upon donations, albeit ex- in that courtyard. Takoma Park, Maryland tracted in different ways. Seena Parker New York, New York m Both appeal to people possessing faith. Richard Kostelanetz m Jerusalem, the Old City, was the first New York, New York city I truly loved. (There have been oth- I was eight when I first went to Jerusa- ers. I won’t pretend otherwise.) How it m lem. I liked counting soldiers. smelled was what I loved first: ancient, I returned when I was 21. I stayed just wild, greenish wild thyme zatar smell, After spending three days touring the strong scent of place, counter to the an- Galilee, our buses stopped atop Mount outside the Damascus Gate; the Arab hostels were cheaper. tiseptic Lemon Pledge undercurrent of Scopus — and there it was, stretching my Connecticut childhood. Lamb and before us, the panorama of Jerusalem Arabs and Israelis asked me, “Are you other meats hung on rods, bright red. glowing in the late afternoon sun. Jewish?” as if the answer would explain There was a faint open sewer scent, and Yad Vashem was moving, especially the which side of the ideological wall I so many spices, some in barrels, were Children’s Memorial where a few candles belonged on. Usually, I’d evade the in stalls that sold honey and fruits and are infinitely reflected, but I missed the question and answer truthfully, “I’m candies and coffee and tea. I wanted all power of the U.S. Holocaust Museum. American.” of it, wanted to become what I felt the city was, wild and ancient, unpredictable Later, we welcomed shabes at the Kotel, One day, while visiting the Wailing Wall, with its matching stones and plants grow- and holy, musical, eternal, passionate, I met a kind rabbi. He was dressed in a chaotic. Arabs, Jews, Armenians, Kopts, ing out of the crevices. Some of the slabs dark blue suit and had a long beard. His used are enormous, and the excavations of tourists, all walking, always walking. job, it seems, was to accost wayward They seemed engaged and so alive. the South Wall and the tunnels show the visitors and ask them if they were Jew- genius of the ancient architects. ish. When he found out that I was Jew- I was in Sherut La’am, a program in which We were separated by gender and behav- ish and staying in the Arab quarter, he Americans volunteered to help in a thou- ioral rules. Men are allowed to sing and invited me to stay at the Jewish hostel. sand ways. I lived in the north, but often dance on their side (90 percent) of the I wasn’t interested — until he told me took the three-hour bus ride to Jerusalem wall, but when a group of young women it was free. for the weekend. I’d stay inside the walls from Project Birthright began dancing a in the Petra Hotel, like the Chelsea Hotel The following night the rabbi invited for brightly colored tourists who were in hora on the women’s side (10 percent) me to a party. I sat on a rooftop terrace side, a female security officer rushed love with the Old City and wanted the in the Old City with a dozen hasids who, chance to wander. over to stop them. between prayers, played the guitar, sang, On our way out of Jerusalem, we stopped drank vodka, and railed against Israel’s I’ve been trying, in so many ways, to on a small side street and stepped into enemies: the Syrians and the Israelis who write about Jerusalem all my life. a courtyard surrounded by a group of were willing to negotiate. Esther Cohen New York, New York quaint buildings. We had entered Yad They grew more raucous as they drank, Lakashish (“Lifeline”). Within the but the vodka was not enough to take buildings were workshops where over off my edge; I listened uncomfortably as m two hundred needy, elderly and disabled they praised God and quoted scriptures I don’t remember how I found the grave- people did high-level handcrafts, which of hate. The realization that they and I yard. All I recall is that it was on shabes, they learned as part of the educational were all Jews was sobering. program for the mostly immigrant popu- when Jerusalem shuts down, and a feel- lation that Yad Lakashish serves. I did I stayed another couple of nights in Je- ing fills the streets that can be a lilting,

40 Jewish Currents unmatched peace or a nonconsensual mutual understanding broke down. I’d boredom to while away, depending on been in Jerusalem so long that I’d for- your circumstances. That day I felt the gotten the Yiddish word for justice, and In memory of latter, so I wandered to surprise myself try as he might, he couldn’t understand NETTIE with new places and pass the time. what I meant by tzedek. Do you mean laws? he asked, groping for something GOLDSTEIN It was a fenced-in area off a busy road intelligible. in Jerusalem — hardly hidden or out of FARBER the way, though it was abandoned. On It would be nice to say that that day in the contrary, Jews around me streamed the graveyard was an exception, a blem- A beautiful nature, a heart of gold. through it without a glance, short-cut- ish on my time in Jerusalem. Instead, it We cannot forget her, ting to a popular nearby park. It took me summed up my summer month there. a few minutes to put together the pieces It was hard to reconcile the Jerusalem We don’t ever try. of where I was — literally. Huge shards before me with the city people told of, so Greatly loved, sadly missed. of stone lay around me, their carved let- steeped in spiritual power. This was the ters, some very recent and some faded city people all over the world imagined by time, gradually coming into focus: while praying? Where people who called Al & Ann Wasserman Arabic. themselves pious spoke of other human and families beings in terms that would demean ani- I pieced together dates and names while mals? Where, in some terrible reversal, the shock slowly settled in. The grave- it was Jews desecrating graves? yard had been destroyed — and from the devoted guide offered me words that rang looks of the damage, people were con- The lowest point of that summer came on true and allowed me to see something tinuing to desecrate it fairly regularly. Tisha b’Av, the Jewish calendar’s day of holy here. First, he shared a teaching deepest mourning. The commemoration that yerushalayim can be understood I had two conversations in the graveyard of the destruction of ancient Jerusalem, as a plural, one name that holds a place that day. A Palestinian day laborer saw and all the lost wholeness it evokes for for both a heavenly Jerusalem and an me staring at the ruins and sat down Jews, has always been a holiday I con- earthly one. The earthly one that we with me before beginning his long return nect with most strongly. I can get through walk through may scarcely resemble through the checkpoints and back to a world in such great disrepair more eas- the city of peace that we pray for, but his home. We shared chocolate and, in ily if I take one day a year to despair and we can work for a day that the two will splinters of Arabic and English, told each cry out for something better. meet. The second was a rabbinic saying: other about our lives. In the genuineness “Ten portions of beauty descended to born of extreme word limits, we con- But that day I felt profound desolation the world. Nine are in Jerusalem, one cluded together that, while we weren’t of a different sort. Nowhere had these in the rest of the world.” But it goes on: sure whether peace was in reach anytime lamentations felt more hollow than in “Ten portions of suffering descended to soon, we didn’t trust that the politicians modern Jerusalem. As night enveloped the world. Nine are in Jerusalem, one on either side really cared to find it. us on the tayelet (balcony) overlooking in the rest of the world” — and so it is, East Jerusalem, we mourned for the city the commentator goes on, not only with By the time he left, darkness had fallen. that had been lost, but blithely ignored wisdom and Torah, but with godlessness As I made toward the exit, a middle- the real destruction that seemed to me to and hypocrisy. aged hasidic man beckoned to me from pulse through this city — just as no one the shadows, where he’d made a chair mentioned, in all the earlier times I had This rabbi’s words helped me finally for himself out of one of the Palestinian stood on that balcony, that the houses we make sense of Jerusalem as a city where graves. In Yiddish, our only common gazed on belonged to Palestinians. inhumanity and devotion all dizzyingly language, we had a long conversation magnified themselves. If Jerusalem is about God, my generation, and my belief It wasn’t that the city was devoid of holy, it’s not because it transcends the that reaching out to secular Jews and sweetness. In the homes of some of my crudeness and disgrace of the world giving them an authentic, secular Jewish most beloved friends, in the afternoon around it. It’s because Jerusalem distills space would benefit all Jews. But when stillness of Old City alleys on shabes it into concentrated form, pushes it into it came to what I really wanted to tell afternoon, I found things to savor. But our face, and demands our response. him — about how parts of observance I didn’t feel spirituality in Jerusalem. I There’s where — if we face up to it interested me but I could never feel right felt its void. — holiness begins. in a synagogue that treated prophetic April Rosenblum exhortations to justice as symbolic — our Near the end of my time in Jerusalem, a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

November-December, 2008 41 Letters . . . Review article that had charged that and socialist leaders far more closely Jews participated in the Civil War only approximated our stereotype of the rad- Continued from page 2 as war profiteers. ical Eastern European Jew in America Much more problematical is Mu- The needle trades employed German than that of the German Jew. raskin’s statement that “the American Jewish tailors early on, and when some Then there were socialists like Au- Jewish identification with the left . . . striking German tailors in New York gusta Lilienthal, who joined the Social- dates not from 1848, but the early were arrested for picketing in 1850, at ist Labor Party and wrote on women’s decades of the 20th century.” That is least one was Jewish. By 1865, New rights for its German language paper, a common misconception, to be sure, York’s tailors included large numbers Die Neue Zeit, while a generation later but Muraskin didn’t have to read my of German Jews who belonged to a her daughter Meta “Hebe” Lilien- article on German Jews in the Ency- multi-ethnic union led by a German thal did the same for the New York clopedia of American Jewish History Jew named Jacob Morestadt. Many Volkszeitung and served briefly on the to discover that it is wrong — he could German Jewish tailors were driven Socialist Party’s Women’s National have just looked at Morris Schappes’ from the trade in the late 1870s and Committee before devoting most of classic works for numerous examples 1880s by the willingness of more her efforts to the fight for women’s to the contrary. recently arrived Polish Jews to work suffrage. Adolf Strasser and Louis Ber- Here a few examples of American for ever-lower wages. It was this liner were also important early socialist Jewish leftists between 1848 and 1900: wage competition that led the Ger- leaders in post-Civil War America, We can begin with August Bondi, who man Jewish tailor and union leader while Victor Berger, an arrival in 1878, joined John Brown to fight against Charles L. Miller to get the citywide became a founding leader of the So- slavery in Kansas. But there were Central Labor Union and United Ger- cialist Party of America in 1901. many German-Jewish abolitionists man Trades to finance the creation of Some of these Jews might not be as — rabbis like David Einhorn, Bernhard a United Hebrew Trades — to orga- radical as some of us might prefer, but Felsenthal, and Isaac Mayer Wise, and nize unions among Yiddish-speaking they were certainly a significant part radicals like Sigismund Kaufmann, Eastern European Jews. The UHT went of the 19th-century American left. It is leader of the Socialist Turnverein on to become an important factor in the a shame that Muraskin has given in to (gymnastics union), and Kommunist creation of the Yiddish labor move- the myth that German-American Jews Klub secretary Fritz Jacobi, who died ment of the 20th century, but it was a were all bourgeois. On the other hand, fighting slavery in 1862. Kaufmann product of German Jewish workers and his main point still holds true: that arrived in New York as a German labor activists who have often been this leftist pedigree for American Jews radical 1848’er and maintained his neglected by historians who focused on doesn’t mean that Jews have always radicalism for decades. As editor of the more “successful” German Jews. been tied to the left — or that they Turnverein’s newspaper in the 1850s, Organized German-American Jew- always will be if we flag in our efforts he published the writings of Karl Marx ish workers also made hats and shoes. to keep them there. and other German socialists. He was a The Capmaker’s Union had German- Stan Nadel prominent abolitionist, an elector for American Jews serving as vice-presi- Salzburg, Austria Abraham Lincoln, a Republican can- dent, secretary, and treasurer in 1874 didate for lieutenant governor of New — while one section of the Knights Bennett Muraskin replies: York in 1870, and a member of the of St. Crispin shoemakers’ union was I thank Stan Nadel for the correction state board that ran Castle Garden, the called the Purim Lodge. Other Ger- about August Bebel. As to the rest of main immigrant landing depot before man Jews worked as butchers and his comments: There were, of course, the opening of Ellis Island. bakers, but it was the cigarmakers who German-speaking Jews on the left in Another 1848’er who came to the stood out as German Jewish work- 19th-century America, but they were U.S. was Simon Wolf, who practiced ers, employers and trade unionists par the exception rather than the rule. The law in Washington D.C. and was the excellence. Chicago cigarmakers sent political refugees from the failed 1848 leading, albeit unofficial, Jewish lobby- the German-American Jew Jacob Selig revolutions in Germany and Austria ist for decades. Like Kaufmann, he op- to be their delegate to the 1867 meet- were indeed leftists, but the number posed slavery and supported Lincoln. ing of the National Labor Union. But of Jews among them did not exceed He took the lead in protesting General the cigar making industry centered in their proportion in the overall German- Grant’s 1863 order expelling “Jews as New York, and it was there that Adolf speaking immigrant population. Jews a class” from his military district and Strasser, Louis Berliner, and Samuel were not prominent in the Free Soil quickly got the order canceled. Wolf Gompers rebuilt the Cigarmakers’ In- Party (founded 1848), the abolitionist also published The American Jew as ternational Union after the depression Liberty Party, the National Labor Union Patriot, Soldier and Citizen, in 1895 of the 1870s. All in all, German-Jewish (1866), the Greenback Labor Party, the to refute an influentialNorth American workers with their radical labor unions Knights of Labor (1869), the Populist

42 Jewish Currents Party (1890) or the early Socialist Labor tions on war, on politics, on religion, majority of members who are commit- Party. Furthermore, although nearly all on taxes, on Israel? Certainly, individu- ted Workmen’s Circle activists. of the Haymarket martyrs (1886) were als have every right to voice their opin- The merger took place because it German, none were Jewish. ions and views on any or all of these was seen to be of mutual benefit to both In Philip Foner’s History of the Labor issues, but The Workmen’s Circle, as organizations. The Workmen’s Circle Movement in the United States, there an organization, is not affiliated with gained the opportunity to publish an is not one single entry in his index for any political party (left or otherwise) established magazine dedicated to the “Jews” in his first volume, which ends and is definitely not the accepted voice organization’s fundamental progressive with the founding of the immediate of Jewry. and secular Jewish values, including the predecessor to the American Federation Der Arbeter Ring has an obligation celebration of Yiddish and yidishkayt, of Labor in 1881. to its membership to provide those and to recruit as members the maga- The Jewish role in the labor move- services and benefits which defined zine’s independent subscribers. The ment and, by extension, the left, grew its establishment and success. We magazine gained an expanded reader- more prominent in the mid-1880s, with should not divert our energy into those ship and an expanded editorial board, the arrival of the first wave of East Eu- areas beyond and outside our initial as well as an organizational home and ropean Jews. So if I miscalculated the intended purpose. We should concen- improved contacts throughout the Jew- real advent of American Jewish leftism, trate on preserving Yiddish, educating ish world. Through this relationship, it was at most by fifteen years. our children, providing health insur- both the organization and the magazine ance and cemetery benefits, keeping enormously improved their prospects us entertained with music, literature, for a future. JC and the WC and theater, maintaining a wonderful A commitment to social action has What has happened to unser Arbeter summer camp . . . being what we are been widely identified throughout the Ring? Back in the ’40s, when I and my — Der Arbeter Ring. Jewish community as a key element for family became members of this won- Bernard Stone attracting young Jews. Jewish Cur- derful organization, it was clearly and Monroe Township, New Jersey rents is one important tool through openly a Jewish, labor-oriented frater- which The Workmen’s Circle can nal society that offered and provided The Editorial Board replies: communicate the values implicit in the many needed and worthwhile benefits Bernard Stone’s perspective on The concept of a shenere un besere velt in to its members: medical care, life Workmen’s Circle expresses a welcome new and expanded ways. insurance, cemetery services, a sum- sense of ownership and loyalty, but he mer camp for children, entertainment seems to ignore the fact that political (chorus, mandolin orchestra, theater), activism has always been a vital part More on the Rosenbergs and, most important, schools teaching of the organization’s identity, since Our compliments to Bennett Mu- Yiddish literature, culture, and history. its founding. Social action resolutions raskin for his thoughtful and illuminat- Since the Workmen’s Circle (the have been passed by the Convention ing traversal of the history of Jews and name says it) catered to labor, it was at every two years for most of the life of the left. His response to our letter on that time stigmatized by the uninitiated the organization, and public forums on the Rosenbergs, however, cries out for as being a communist organization. both domestic and foreign policy are three small, friendly corrections: This was effectively refuted by our regularly organized by The Workmen’s 1. Germany invaded Russia in June, leaders making it quite clear that we Circle around the country. not July, 1941. There is still debate as were fraternal and not political. Presi- The organization legally changed its to whether the Soviet-German non- dent Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote status several years ago from a frater- aggression pact had constituted an to us at that time complimenting our nal benefits and insurance society to a “alliance.” good work and assured us that he was cultural and educational not-for-profit. 2. Alexander Feklisov, the self- aware of our independent, non-political Around the same time, the acquisi- professed Soviet handler of Julius, position. tion of Jewish Currents by The has been shown to be an unreliable, Now, to my dismay, I find that Workmen’s Circle was negotiated in the widely discredited source. Professor through Jewish Currents, ostensibly course of a two-year process in which Timothy Naftali, who conferred with the published organ of our Workmen’s the boards of both organizations were Feklisov in Moscow in 1989, wrote us Circle, we are attempting to become deeply involved. In the arrangement in 2001 of his “deep skepticism about the voice of international Jewry and are that was struck, the magazine did not his [Feklisov’s] memory.” Ronald taking positions that are, in my opin- become the organ of The Workmen’s Radosh’s introduction to the English ion, quite inappropriate and ultimately Circle: The magazine’s editorial policies translation of Feklisov’s memoirs damaging to our intended purposes. remained in the hands of its editorial describes parts of the book as taking Why are we publicly taking posi- board, which was expanded to include a “on the cast of fantasy.” One can wryly

November-December, 2008 43 that Julius passed non-atomic technical York Times reporter that they have no secrets to our then-ally. We’re sure that reason to doubt Sobell’s admission HELEN MEYEROWITZ no members of the Rosenberg commit- —or his implication of Julius. “I had October 3rd 1908 — tee would be opposed, or would have considered that a real possibility for been opposed, to exchange of techno- some time,” Robert said. In fact, even September 26th 2005 logical information, in any direction, before Sobell’s confession, no seri- and in the interest of world peace or ending ous historian doubted any longer that tyranny. Suggesting otherwise, as Mu- JULIUS MEYEROWITZ Julius Rosenberg was a spy for the raskin does, smacks badly of red-bait- Soviets — although as Ellen Schrecker Died December 13th 1978 ing, unworthy of Bennett Muraskin. wrote in her acclaimed Many Are the Leonard J. Lehrman Crimes: McCarthyism in America Richard Corey (1998), “Rosenberg’s involvement with Daughters National Committee to the atomic bomb seems to have been Ruth and Selma Reopen the Rosenberg Case a genuine fluke, made possible by the www.rosenbergtrial.org army’s assignment of his wife’s brother, and Families New York, New York David Greenglass, to the Manhattan Project’s Los Alamos site. A machinist Bennett Muraskin replies: in the shop that assembled the bomb, Granddaughters According to the New York Times, Greenglass had no access to high-level Julia and Rachel September 12th, Morton Sobell con- information, but whatever he picked up, Nila and Anjali fessed in an interview with reporter Sam no doubt, went straight to Moscow once Roberts that he was indeed a spy who his brother-in-law recruited him for the and Families passed military secrets to the Soviets. cause.” Sobell also confirmed that Julius Rosen- It is clear, however, that Ethel Rosen- berg was both a military and an atomic berg was guilty of nothing more than, conclude, as Richard Corey did, that spy. For Lehrman and Corey to claim as Sobell put it, “being Julius’ wife” Feklisov’s widely publicized gesture of otherwise is sad. “What he gave them,” and that the execution of the couple bringing earth from his Moscow dacha Sobell said of Rosenberg’s efforts, “was was completely out of line with Julius’ to spread on the tombstone of his “dear junk.” Nevertheless, he told Roberts, crime. This may be reason enough for friend” Julius was little more than liter- “His intentions might have been to be a the National Committee to Reopen the ally throwing dirt on the Rosenbergs. spy.” “Might have been” is a funny way Rosenberg Case to pursue its cause, but 3. The Rosenbergs’ execution was to put it, but the message is clear. The to defend spying for the USSR as “an based on the false accusation that they fact that David Greenglass could not exchange of technological informa- gave the Russians atomic secrets. To come up with more valuable information . . . in the interest of world peace” continue attempting to justify the case tion to pass along to his brother-in-law is, in my opinion, disingenuous. The against them, Muraskin cites the post- does not take Julius off the hook. Stalin regime’s idea of “world peace” trial accusations (recently confirmed The Rosenbergs’ sons, Robert and during and after WWII included the as apparently true by Morton Sobell) Michael Meeropol, told the same New deportation of minority nationalities, the subjugation of Eastern Europe, massive atrocities against German civilians and the intensification of repression within the Soviet Union, including persecution of Soviet Jews.

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44 Jewish Currents מיט געבויגענע קעפּ — —mit geboygeneMit geboygene kep kep—Heads — heads Bowed bowed inin Sorrsorrowow we mourn the death on October 11, 2008 of We mourn the death on October 11, 2008 of GERRY (GERAGERRYLDINE (GERALDINE)) REVZIN, ve gREVZINvayzer/Leader 1vegvayzer919 — 200/Leader8 Organizer…Raconte1919-2008ur…All-around mentsh Organizer . . . Raconteur Gerry Revzin was the co-founderAll-around in 1969 (withmentsh the late Harold Gales) of the Conference on Secular Jewish Education, which she guided into becomingGerry the Revzin Congr wasess the of Secular co-founder Jewish in 1969 Or (withganizations the late Harold (CSJO) Gales) as ofits the long-time,Conference deeply on beloved Secular volunteer Jewish Education, Executive which Dir sheector guided (1970-1994). into becoming the Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJO) as its long-time, deeply beloved She served,volunteer from executive its founding director (1970-1994). in 1986, as the first North American Vice President of the International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews She served, from its founding in 1986, as the first North American vice president of the and as Chair of the Certification Committee of the Leadership International Federation of Secular Humanistic Jews and as chair of the certification Conference of Secular and Humanistic Jews. committee of the Leadership Conference of Secular and Humanistic Jews. Gerry wasGerry a graduate was a graduate of Chicago’s of Chicago’s Secular secular YiddishYiddish shulnshuln (schools) (schools) of the of Jewish the Jewish People’sPeople’s Fraternal Frater Order,nal Or I.W.O.,der, I.Wand.O., maintained and maintained her devotion to her secular devotion yidishkayt to secular(Jewishness)yidishkeyt throughout (Jewishness) her long thr lifeoughout as a progressive her long activist. life She as wasa a founder of progressivethe Southside activist. School She of was Jewish a founderStudies and of of the the SecularSouthside Jewish School Study Group, of both Jewish ofStudies Chicago. and of the Secular Jewish Study Group, both of Chicago. The twenty-six CSJO-affiliated schools and communities across North America and in England have been orphaned by the loss of a person whose patience and wisdom The 26 allowedCSJO-af ourfiliated very diverse schools groups and to cooperate communities and learn acrfromoss each North other. AttendeesAmerica at and in Englandthe annual conferenceshave been of orphaned CSJO will deeply by the miss loss Gerry’s of a humorous person whosestories and her patiencerapid-fire and wisdom recital from allowed memory our ofder very mames diverse maynse gr (myoups mother’s to cooperate story), an involved and learn frYiddishom each tongue-twister. other. Attendees She frequently at the lectured annual on Yiddish Confer humor.ences of CSJO will deeply miss Gerry’s humorous stories and her rapid-fire recital from memoryHer of familyder mames has requested maynse that (my memorial mother’s donations story), be made an involved to the Gerry Yiddish Revzin tongue-twisterScholarship. She Fund fr ofequently CSJO and lectur maileded to: on Yiddish humor. Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJO) Her family has requested that 320memorial Claymore donations Boulevard be made to the Gerry Revzin Scholarship Fund of CSJOCleveland, and mailed OH 44143 to: Congress of Secular Jewish Organizations (CSJO) 320 Claymore Boulevard Cleveland, OH 44143 Bennett Muraskin

In addition to featuring news in Hebrew and Arabic, the station interviewed celebrities and became the first in the In region to play rock music. During the Yom Kippur War in 1973, he used “Voice Memoriam of Peace” to appeal for a ceasefire. In 1977, before Israel and Egypt began negotiations leading to the Camp David accord, he sailed “The Peace Ship” through the Suez Canal and distributed candy and toys to Egyptian children. Later that year, he met with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Abie Nathan who initiated peace talks with Israel. April 29th, 1927-August 27th, 2008 In 1993, Israel repealed the law under which Nathan had been prosecuted for consorting with the enemy. The Abraham Jacob Nathan was a free spirit and a visionary. government negotiated directly with the PLO and signed In 1966, as tensions mounted between Israel and Egypt, he the Oslo accords. Nathan used this opportunity to scuttle his flew a small plane named “Shalom One” to Egypt to dis- Peace Ship/radio station, which was also in financial and cuss peace with Egyptian President Gamel Abdul Nasser. legal difficulty. In 1996 and 1998, Nathan suffered strokes Nathan attepted to repeat the deed in early 1967, shortly that caused partial paralysis and deprived him of speech. before the outbreak of the Six Day War. Turned away by He lived in a nursing home until his death. Egypt, he was arrested by Israel and imprisoned for forty Nathan never identified with any political party. Uri days. During the 1980s and early ’90s, he served two more Avnery, a close friend and one of Israel’s most radical prison sentences for defying Israeli law by peace activists, commented upon his death meeting with Yasser Arafat and other PLO that “Abie did not address people’s minds, leaders. Nathan put his life on the line by but rather their hearts. He wanted to bring going on hunger strikes in 1978 and 1991 peace, and did that through feeling.” Nathan to protest the building of Jewish settlements organized aid to refugees victimized by in the occupied territories and to urge direct war, famine and natural disasters all over Israeli talks with the PLO. Near starvation, the world. He participated in some of these he asked that his epitaph be “Nisiti” — He- relief missions himself, in Lebanon, Biafra, brew for “I tried.” Cambodia, Nicaragua, and, most recently, Nathan was born in Iran into a wealthy for Rwandans stranded in Zaire. Nathan was family and educated in Bombay, India. He affiliated with the Sarvodaya International joined the British Royal Air Force at age 16 Trust for Peace, an Indian-based multi- and served as a fighter pilot during World War faith organization dedicated to Gandhian II. He emigrated to Israel in 1948 and imme- principles of non-violence and universal diately volunteered for military service as a human rights. fighter pilot for the nascent Israeli Air Force. He settled in Tel Aviv, where he owned an art gallery and then an Ameri- Abraham Brumberg can-style restaurant popular with the bohemian crowd. Some th th credit him with introducing the hamburger to Israel. November 7 , 1926-January 26 , 2008 In 1965, he entered public life by running (and losing) A towering intellect of the anti-communist left, Abra- for the Knesset on the pledge that he would fly to Egypt ham Brumberg was born in Palestine — an odd place for on a peace mission. But he signaled his devotion to peace a son of a leader of the Jewish Labor Bund, which was much earlier. After visiting several of the Arab villages that famously anti-Zionist — but his family returned to Poland he bombed in 1948, he expressed shock over the damage when he was a young boy. He attended a Bundist elemen- he had caused and befriended many Arab civilians. tary school, where he imbibed a heady mix of socialism, After his unsuccessful forays into Egypt, Nathan pur- Yiddish and secularism. “We were taught,” he wrote, “to chased a freighter, installed radio equipment and named it admire socialists like Karl Kautsky and Jean Jaures, and to “The Peace Ship.” It was partially funded by former Beatle condemn Vladimir Lenin, once a good socialist who had and peace activist John Lennon. Nathan positioned the ship gone dreadfully wrong . . . in . . . setting up a dictatorial in the Mediterranean off Tel Aviv and, in 1973, he began state that in time became more anti-working class than broadcasting mainly in English as the “Voice of Peace.” many capitalist countries in Europe.”

46 Jewish Currents After the outbreak of World War II, his family escaped to Faces of Yiddish Poetry (2001). Brumberg also wrote Vilne, which soon became part of Soviet-occupied Lithu- Yiddish articles and poetry and acted and directed in the ania. A Bundist militant who did not accept Soviet rule Yiddish theater. could not long survive there, which prompted the family to flee across Russia to Japan, with the help of Chiune Sugi- Abe Osheroff hara, and onward to the U.S. in 1941. Others in Brumberg’s th th family were not so lucky: Most of his mother’s family fell October 15 , 1915-April 6 , 2008 victim to the Nazis, and his grandfather and two uncles The veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade have lost were executed by the Soviets. another comrade, Abe Osheroff, who died at 92 in Seattle, Brumberg served in the U.S. Army in World War II three days after speaking at the dedication of America’s and used the GI Bill to acquire a college education. He first monument to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in San received a bachelor’s degree in social science from City Francisco. The monument includes a quote from Osheroff College in 1950 and a master’s in Soviet studies from Yale that summed up his life: “If you look out the window and University in 1953. While there, he interned for the U.S. see a hungry emaciated child and do not feel a desire to Information Agency and, much to his surprise, was offered do something to make the world a little better — then you the editorship of its new journal, Problems of Communism. are not a complete human being.” He remained at its helm for eighteen years, until 1970. He was born to Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants in Although a U.S.-government publication, it was quite open New York City and graduated from City College. He was to a range of interpretations of Soviet-style communism, a radical even before the Great Depression. By 16, he had rejecting the approach that depicted the Soviet Union as a been arrested and beaten by police for fighting against static totalitarian monstrosity. tenant evictions. Four years later, he was organizing steel Brumberg clearly chose the U.S. camp in the Cold War, workers in Ohio and coal miners in Pennsylvania. Along but said that he “had no sympathy for its ideological sim- the way, he joined the Communist Party. In 1937, after plifications, nor for the idea that it should be supported seeing a newsreel of German warplanes destroying the by military means . . . by propping up unsavory albeit Spanish city of Guernica, he volunteered to fight with the ‘anti-communist’ foreign leaders” or by engaging in CIA Abraham Lincoln Brigades to defeat fascism in Spain. He “dirty tricks.” From 1972 until his retirement in 1980, he was wounded in the Battle of Belchite. Nine hundred out of ran the U.S. Information Agency’s research department, the three thousand volunteers did not make it back alive. but clashed with the agency’s leadership over their con- In 1940, Osheroff ran for the New York State Legisla- servative bent. tive as a Communist Party candidate. As soon as the U.S. His writings appeared in the New York Review of Books, entered World War II, he volunteered for the Army and The Nation, Dissent, Foreign Affairs, The Economist, The fought in Europe. After the war, he taught at the Jefferson New Republic and the Times Literary Supplement. He wrote School of Social Science. In 1951, he went “underground” a memoir, Journeys Through Vanishing Worlds (2007) and to escape potential arrest during the McCarthy period. edited numerous anthologies focusing on reform move- He quit the Party in 1956, after the Khrushchev revela- ments in the Soviet Union and communist Poland. tions about Stalin’s murderous regime. Moving to Venice, In 1999, he wrote a long article for Jewish Social Stud- California, he organized against real estate developers to ies on the history of the Jewish Labor Bund that examined protect the Venice canals. In 1964, at a critical juncture its strengths and weakness. He encapsulated its unique in the civil rights movement, he went to Mississippi for characteristics as devotion to the Jewish working class, to Freedom Summer and helped build a community center democratic principles, to Jewish solidarity and to Yiddish for Black people. His car was firebombed. In 1985 he culture. He emphasized that the Bund’s lasting legacy is travelled to Nicaragua to support Sandinista social policy the principle of do-ikayt (hereness), which affirms the and help build cooperative housing for peasants. Relocating necessity of cultivating strong Jewish communities in the to Seattle in 1989, he joined that city’s anti-war movement countries where we live. and, despite failing health, became deeply involved in An accomplished singer, Brumberg collaborated with protesting the U.S. war in Iraq. In 2006, he was arrested “labor’s troubadour” Joe Glazer on an album, My Darling at a sit-in. Party Line (1968), which satirized communist conformity. Osheroff’s documentary film about fighting fascism in He was a devoted Yiddishist and made two Yiddish-lan- Spain, Dreams and Nightmares, was released in 1974. A guage albums: Of Lovers, Dreamers and Thieves: Yiddish second film, Art in the Struggle for Freedom (2000), has Folk Songs from Eastern Europe (1981) and The Many been shown at many universities and high schools.

November-December, 2008 47 Solomon Chigrinsky The First Hundred Days

Solomon Chigrinsky is a New York-based artist.

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