$5.95 A Progressive, Secular Voice Jewish Currents Spring 2011

Prints by Joan Snyder Troublemaker: A Memoir of the Sixties A Conversation with the Executive Secretary of Auschwitz As the UN Prepares to Admit Palestine as a State . . . MEGAPHONE: Profiles of Today’s Jewish Activists Editorials and Viewpoints 1 A Fire Still Burning EDITORIALS 2 Letters 4 Israel Greets the Revolution 5 A War to Oust Saddam Hussein Muammar Qadaffi Viewing Obama through a Marxist Lens A Fire Still Burning Dick Flacks Don’t Mourn, Organize Articles and Columns

7 The View from Israel ne century ago, in a factory on the Lower As the UN Prepares to Admit Palestine East Side, 146 lives were lost in flames as a State . . . O — “our dear ones, incinerated coals,” in Ron Skolnik the words of the sweatshop poet, Morris Rosenfeld, 10 Notes from a Small Planet (in a Yiddish poem newly translated by Mickey Mathew Louis-Rosenberg, Lawrence Bush, Flacks, at our website). Do we observe the March Basia Yoffe 25th anniversary of the Triangle Fire solely out of 15 Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Front Lines nostalgia for labor’s militant past, or because it of the Sixties holds some promise for the movement’s future? Bill Zimmerman This year, the people of Madison, Wisconsin made 23 Record-Keeping for the Nazis — and Saving Lives the answer very clear. A Conversation with Katya Singer Their governor cut taxes, and then demanded Susan Spatz-Cernyak and Joel Shatzky concessions from unions. The unions granted the 30 Therapy: Psychotherapists on Psychotherapy concessions, but the governor had already taken Relational Therapy and the Feminist Movement out his flame-thrower. A thousand people turned Susan Gutwill out to create a firewall around their public unions’ 50 Megaphone: Interviews with Jewish Activists collective bargaining rights — and then ten thou- Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance sand, and then a hundred thousand. One could 53 Radical Yiddish almost conjure the spirits of Clara Lemlich, or Rose Elijah the Ethnographer: A New Biography Schneiderman . . . of S. An-sky To hear FDR’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins Joel Schechter tell it, the day of the Triangle Fire was “the day the 67 Concealed/Revealed: Essays on “Games” New Deal began.” America finally understood that 76 In Memoriam the value of the all-union “closed shop” was that it Bennett Muraskin left the doors unlocked — and that the government has a key role to play in enforcing a new labor- JCultcha and Funny Pages capital deal. That deal, however, is now melting 33 Artworks, Poetry and Fiction fast. The House Republicans have already thrust featuring prints by Joan Snyder, Medicare into the fire, and Social Security is bound sculptural art by Laurie Ourlicht, and waiting its turn. Newt Gingrich has more than photographs by Norman Gershman once declared that he wants to repeal the New Deal and much, much more — and these days Gingrich may actually represent the left wing of the Republican Party. Reviews 56 Secular Jewish Thought and Its Antecedents One milestone of the labor-capital meltdown is Bennett Muraskin on Not in the Heavens to be found in another bleak anniversary, thirty

59 The Yiddish Secular Shule and Summer Camp years ago this August, when the thirteen thousand Barnett Zumoff on Passionate Pioneers members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers

64 Voltaire and the Jews Mitchell1 Abidor on God and Human Beings Jewish Currents LETTERS Names will be withheld from publication on Harlem. We eventually moved as married couple to request. Jewish Currents reserves the right South Bend, Indiana and Detroit, Michigan, living to edit letters to restrict their length. in mostly Black communities, where I felt accepted and welcomed at all times. Yes, occasionally I would hear anti-Semitic remarks from coworkers — both The Black-Jewish Connection white and Black — who were not acquainted with Regarding Lawrence Bush’s “The Black-Jewish anyone Jewish. Connection” (Winter 2010-11): I have had a totally In the early 1960’s I taught at an all-Black high different life experience. I grew up in the Coops in school in Detroit, where there was unemployment in the Bronx, where I lived from 1927 to 1943. We had the auto industry and petty thievery was rampant. We some Black families living in our development at a moved to Great Neck, New York in 1963 and lived in time when there was no integrated housing. The Du- a mostly Black community, where we felt welcomed bois family from Jamaica had two sons who became and our children felt comfortable growing up in a my close friends and provided my first experience multi-racial environment. socializing with a Black family. Bush’s ambivalent experience grew from his very During the early 1940s, Councilman Adam Clayton limited contact with Black people and neighborhoods. Powell from Harlem organized a boycott of stores My own experience — rare but not unique — made on 125th Street, many Jewish-owned, because they → page 72 wouldn’t employ Black workers. The majority of the tenement buildings were owned by Jewish landlords. CORRECTION The Harlem community mostly knew white people • It was not accurate to say that the Palestinians only in that context and felt hostility and anger over who rejoiced at the execution of the Rosenbergs their living conditions. During that same period, my were residents of Israel, as described in Carol keen interest in jazz had me making trips to the Apollo Jochnowitz’ review, “The Rosenbergs: What Is in Harlem and the Windsor Theater in the Bronx, Left to Say?” (Winter 2010-11). Emily Arnow where I saw Black and white musicians perform- Alman and David Alman’s Exoneration cited a ing on stage, and to the Savoy Ballroom for more report by “the American consul in Jerusalem,” intimate battles between feuding jazz bands. I never but “the Arab refugees in Palestine” spoken of experienced any hostility or anti-Semitic remarks were living in East Jerusalem, which was at from Black audience members. that time a part of Jordan and would remain so When I dated my wife, a Black woman, in 1947, until 1967. Thanks to Zel Lurie for calling this the only safe place for an interracial couple was to our attention.

Vol. 65, No. 3 (661) Spring 2011 JC Editor: Lawrence Bush http://jewishcurrents.org Editorial Board: Adrienne Cooper, Joseph Dimow, Henry Foner, Esther Leysorek Goodman, Nicholas Jahr, Rokhl Kafrissen, Milton Kant, Lyber Katz, Myriam Miedzian, Alice Radosh, Judith Rosenbaum, Yankl Stillman, Tamar Zinn, Barnett Zumoff

Contributing Editor (from Israel): Amy Klein

Website Resources: Nicholas Jahr, Kabren Levinson Intern: Alyssa Goldstein

1 Cover Artwork: “My Work,” by Joan Snyder, 1997, etching and woodcut, 22 /4” x 25”. For more on our featured artist, see “JCultcha & Funny Pages,” p. 33; bio on p. 49.

JEWISH CURRENTS (ISSN #US-ISSN-0021-6399), Spring, 2011, Vol. 65, No. 3 (661). Published by The Association for the Promotion of Jewish Secularism, P.O. Box 111, Accord, NY 12404. Phone: (845) 626-2427. E-mail: lawrencebush@earthlink. net. Website: http://jewishcurrents.org. Single copies $5.95. Subscription $25 a year in U.S.; elsewhere, $40. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y. Copyright © 2011 by Jewish Currents. Organization went out on Responsive Politics, in 2008 strike. Although PATCO he took in nearly $40 million had broken ranks with from the finance, insurance, the labor movement to en- and real estate industries, dorse Ronald Reagan, he while labor contributed a pal- showed them no mercy. try $534,000 to his record- Firing the strikers and breaking haul. In the 2010 decertifying their union, elections, labor was out-spent he legitimized the use of by business 15 to 1. The math scabs and inaugurated a three-decade-long rout of doesn’t bode well for union influence. Neverthe- organized labor. less, SEIU’s associate general counsel has opposed In those three decades, union membership has campaign finance restrictions, while the AFL-CIO fallen from 17.7 million, 20 percent of the work filed an amicus brief supporting the decision ar- force, to 14.7 million (seven million of them in the rived at by the Supreme Court in Citizens United! public sector), 11.9 percent. Before the PATCO When not fighting for the right of corporations to strike, there were on average 300 work stoppages drown elections in money, our country’s leading involving at least a thousand workers every year unions are too often busy raiding each other’s between 1947 (when the Bureau of Labor Statistics members. This is today’s labor movement: divided, began keeping track) and 1979. After the strike, desperate, and begging to be ignored. the average plummeted to 36. Last year, amid the charred rubble of the economy, the people we once But not in Madison. As this issue went to press, called the bosses enjoyed the second calmest year a judge had issued a restraining order against the on record, with a mere eleven work stoppages. Wisconsin anti-union law, and activists announced But work stoppages take other forms — as on that they had gathered enough signatures to subject the night of March 22nd-23rd, when two airplanes two of eight Republican state senators to a recall coming in for a landing could not contact the election. In Ohio, where the Republican-controlled tower at Ronald Reagan National Airport — be- state legislature has passed a bill that restricts cause the sole air traffic controller on duty, working collective bargaining even more drastically, the his fourth straight overnight shift, had fallen asleep. unions have promised a November ballot refer- endum to win back their bargaining rights. With And where is today’s President, the one who spoke 63 percent of Ohio’s voters backing collective up for the workers of Republic Windows and bargaining for public workers, and 52 percent Doors in Chicago during their December, 2008 even believing they should have the right to strike, factory occupation? (“They are absolutely right there’s hope that this effort will succeed. . . . what’s happening to them is reflective of what’s It had better, because the dismantling of unions happening across this economy.”) Where is the and the dismantling of the standard of living of the President who campaigned with the promise to win majority of Americans go hand in hand. President card-check legislation that would facilitate union Obama can seek “bipartisanship” and the “mod- growth? Barack Obama’s been busy appointing a erate center” all he wants, but the rest of us are banker, William Daley, as his new chief of staff, well advised to heed Rose Schneiderman, the key and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt — whose representative of labor in FDR’s “brain trust” who corporation enjoyed a $65 billion bail-out without protested the Triangle Fire with these words: paying a dime in taxes last year — as chair of the “I can’t talk fellowship to you . . . Too much Council on Jobs and Competitiveness (on which blood has been spilled. I know from my experience only two of twenty-six members represent orga- it is up to the working people to save themselves. nized labor). The President is also busy amassing The only way they can save themselves is by a his reelection cash. According to the Center for strong working-class movement.”JC

Spring 2011 3 Israel Greets the Revolution What Netanyahu Should Be Saying

As protest and revolution have swept through sev- lutions will bring you and your children bread, eral Arab lands and so far overturned regimes in and knowledge, and a better future, which will Tunisia and Egypt, the Israeli government has been help spare us all from the sufferings of unneces- largely quiet about the changes swirling around sary war in the decades to come. them. One group of prominent Israelis, including “Israel and the Arab peoples have too long lived former intelligence and military leaders, have at with harsh anger and a vengeful spirit towards one long last responded to the Arab Peace Initiative of another. This cannot be overcome by our stand- 2002 and 2007 with an “Israeli Peace Initiative” ing, immobilized, in the past. In mortal fear for that includes major Israeli concessions on borders, our existence, Israel has sought the protection of on Jerusalem, and on the status of Palestinian our own armed might, responded harshly to every refugees. The Israeli government, however, has provocation, and embraced the friendship of any done little but resume military actions, including who offer it — including, at times, some of the assassinations, against Palestinian they hold to very pharaohs whom you are driving from their be terrorists. thrones. And in dark despair about your lack of progress and prospects, many Arab people have What follows is the kind of statement we wish the sought solace in the hatred of Israel, acted in vio- Netanyahu government would make to use this lence against us, and believed the propaganda of historic opportunity to try to recalibrate Arab- your leaders, who blamed their ill rule and greed Israeli relations. on the very presence of a Jewish state in the Mid- dle East. halom Aleikhem/Salaam Aleikum! In “Let those days of mutual folly be past! Let de- this time of profound upheaval, when mocracy and prosperity now be our shared mis- “S the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, sion. Our Talmud asks, ‘Who is mighty? The one Bahrain, Yemen, Syria, and other Arab lands have who turns an enemy into a friend.’ Let the might courageously confronted their pharaohs to say, ‘Let by which we have built our nations now be ap- our people go!’ — the government of Israel sends plied to the conversion of our enmity into friend- these words of heartfelt solidarity and hope. ship. Let us work together to see the Palestinian “Our 1948 Declaration of Independence envi- state at last established and ready to prosper, our sioned our tiny country as a land of ‘freedom, jus- occupation of the West Bank ended, our citizens tice and peace’ and ensured ‘freedom of religion, restored to within the secure borders of Israel, conscience, language, education and culture’ in and Palestinian refugees compensated for their the State of Israel. We believe that these are the suffering. Let us work together to see the natural same values for which you are now risking your wealth of the entire region shared, and the guar- lives as you strive to free your lands of corrup- antees of democracy made real, so that this great tion, dictatorship, poverty and other obstacles to land — from Jerusalem to Mecca, from Ramallah democracy, economic development, and human to Cairo, from Amman to Tripoli — becomes not happiness. merely a place of promise but a place of plenty, “In the Hebrew language, the words for war, not merely a land of past revelation but of future milkhama, and for bread, lekhem, come from the redemption.” same root, in testimony to the fact that a people who are not fed bread will be fed hatred and bit- X ______terness instead. We are confident that your revo- Prime Minister B. Netanyahu

4 Jewish Currents A War to Oust Saddam Hussein Muammar Qadaffi

he difference between President Obama’s to have enough military power, shrewdness, and military campaign in Libya and his pre- cash to turn the NATO-led action into a “real” T decessor’s war in Iraq comes down to war; Obama has exceeded even George W. Bush two significant factors: the timing of dictators’ in making war without Congressional approval; the crimes, and the degree of multilateralism. Sad- U.S. and its allies have no real idea of who’s fight- dam Hussein’s worst massacres were in the past, ing whom in Libya, or what kind of government while Muammar Qadaffi was just warming up to Qadaffi’s overthrow might yield; U.S. taxpayers slaughter. Bush’s invasion was “illegal . . . not in are now financing three wars (really, state-building conformity with the UN Charter,” said Kofi Anan efforts) in the Middle East while watching our in 2004, while Obama sought and received UN country founder and our standard of living collapse. Security Council approval before striking in Libya. “War does not permit itself to be coordinated with War has a terrible habit, however, of rendering reason and righteousness,” wrote Stefan Zweig moot such distinctions, and turning idealism into (World of Yesterday). Obama has set us up to learn folly. As we write in mid-April, Qadaffi seems that lesson, once again, the hard way. JC

VIEWPOINTS

Dick Flacks Viewing Obama through a Marxist Lens

“The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” — The Communist Manifesto

thought of this statement while listening to and “the business community.” Centrist pundits President Obama’s State of the Union ad- suggest that Obama has thus moved to the center, I dress and the neighborly talk he gave shortly away from the dysfunctional so-called leftism of afterwards to the Chamber of Commerce (COC). his first two years. Commentators from the left, on Understanding Obama in this light illuminates the the other hand, see the President as pandering to political “contradictions” within the United States the corporate and financial elite in another display today, and suggests some space for democratic of his lack of courage. movement in the struggle to win the future. Let’s take both Marx and Obama seriously and In the COC speech, the President was seeking suggest that the President is actually trying to to “repair” relations between his Administration fulfill the highest function of the executive of the capitalist state. That function is not, according to Dick Flacks is emeritus professor of sociology at Marx, simply to bow down to corporate interests, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and au- but to manage the common affairs of the whole thor of Making History: The American Left and the capitalist class. American Mind, among other books. He blogs regu- The individual investor and corporate execu- larly at http://sb.city2.org/blogs/rflacks. tive will seek to maximize profit and expand their

Spring 2011 5 wealth. A government that is driven by such goals credit plan favoring electric vehicles, and breaks will surely get the enthusiastic backing of those for the nuclear power industry. The emphasis is investors and managers. But Marx’s famous for- on alternatives to fossil fuel, which may have a mulation doesn’t say that the role of the capitalist large impact on economic growth, job creation and state executive is to serve individual greed. On the climate change. Such a program is hoped to attract contrary, the President’s central role is to define and private as well as public investment. It’s a program manage the shared interest of the class. that has the support of the AFL-CIO and the Cham- What we’ve been experiencing since the Rea- ber of Commerce but not the Republican Party. gan years is that the greed of particular corporate • Corporate tax reform: Obama touted this as a sectors and super-rich players are undermining way to reduce corporate tax rates, but the purpose capitalism itself. That’s the situation that Obama will be to plug major corporate tax loopholes inherited. The power of pharmaceutical and in- and increase actual revenues from the corporate surance corporations has blocked an effective sector. universal healthcare program that is needed for • International trade agreements: These will serve other American corporations to restrain costs so globalization but embody provisions that protect as to compete globally. The power of giant energy U.S. labor and environmental standards while corporations has blocked an effective program to revitalizing American exports. promote clean energy, needed to avert the costs of • Education investments: These will upgrade environmental disaster and to promote domestic community colleges, make college more affordable economic growth. The power of huge financial and raise support for K-12 education. corporations has blocked the effective investment • Implementation of healthcare reform despite in infrastructure, technology and innovation needed the crazed objections of the right. for economic growth. Obama’s agenda provides a good deal of space Obama’s COC speech appealed to the assembled for grassroots activity on the left. His promise to business elite to fulfill its “responsibility” to the reduce deficits will require getting out of the cur- U.S. “Today,” he said, “American companies have rent wars and cutting the military budget. The size nearly $2 trillion sitting on their balance sheets.” and character of his infrastructure investing will be A primary cause of our massive unemployment is affected strongly by popular pressure. His empha- that failure to invest. Yes, he sketched a program sis on education can be met by a progressive that ought to make such investment appealing — coalition that opposes the disastrous adherence but he wasn’t bowing down to corporate interests. to market-oriented education policies of testing, Rather, he was warning that business-as-usual authoritarian control, and stratification, and under- will yield growing anxiety, disillusionment and stands education to be not merely dependent upon anger in the American population, and threaten teachers but embedded in social and economic the system itself. environments. The Wisconsin uprising is evidence that lots of Obama is confronting the “whole bourgeoisie” people are ready for grassroots action. The spark with a choice: Be responsible, or face consequenc- for such action is the rightwing threat to hard-won es. And he is betting that a sufficient proportion of rights and cherished social programs. Old Karl them will sign on to his agenda. The result of that would be telling us to contemplate the potentials for will be to isolate the Republicans electorally, if they ongoing class struggle — and his archaic language split over Obama’s managerial agenda or succeed seems exactly right for the time we are in. JC in frustrating it. That agenda is basically the following: MOVING? • Infrastructure investment (and a government Please don’t make us track you down — bank to manage it): Obama has already announced send us your change of address! a $50+ billion high-speed rail program, a large tax-

6 Jewish Currents The View from Israel

Sponsored by Meretz USA

Ron Skolnik As the UN Prepares to Admit Palestine as a State . . .

ang around political and diplomatic the United Nations, over and against the vehement circles in Israel and Palestine these days opposition of the government of Israel. H and the phrase you’ll hear on everyone’s lips is “September 2011,” a month that is likely to In order to fully understand the significance of mark a revolutionary new phase in the history of “September 2011,” it is necessary to go back to a Israeli-Palestinian relations. The dozens of politi- different September, that of 1993, when Yitzhak cal figures with whom I met during Meretz USA’s Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the “Declaration recent study trip to Israel and Palestine were gener- of Principles” and shook hands on the White ally unwilling to go on record regarding the spe- House lawn to officially kick off the Israeli-Pales- cific developments they predicted. There was tinian quest for peace known as the “Oslo Process.” consensus, however, that Israel and Palestine post- It was based on the principle of mutually-agreed “September 2011” will look vastly different from confidence-building measures that would gradually the reality we have come to know. cool off the overheated conflict and prepare the two “September 2011” is policy-wonk shorthand sides for the major bilateral concessions required for the convening of the sixty-sixth regular for a full and comprehensive final-status agreement. session of the United Nations General Assem- Sadly, the reality never lived up to that promise. bly, from the 13th until the 30th of that month. Construction in Israel’s settlements in East Jerusa- Most General Assembly sessions go by with- lem, the West Bank and Gaza not only continued out leaving much of an impression (except, perhaps, but expanded. Extremists, primarily Palestinian but on the traffic-snarled denizens of New York City) Jewish-Israeli as well, resorted to indiscriminate — but the upcoming sixty-sixth is shaping up to be violence in order to block the path laid out by the different, since it is expected to endorse the admis- Oslo negotiators. In Israel, visions of peace quickly sion of the State of Palestine as a member state of crumbled as an incitement campaign engineered by Israel’s expansionist right against Prime Minister Rabin and the other “Oslo criminals” led to Rabin’s Ron Skolnik is executive director of Meretz USA for Israeli Civil Rights and Peace, a non-profit or- assassination by a national-religious fanatic in ganization that supports a genuine peace between November, 1995. Within seven months, a series the State of Israel and its neighbors (including the of horrible Palestinian suicide bombings dramati- Palestinian people) based on a negotiated land-for- cally changed the mood of the Israeli electorate peace solution. Meretz, USA, which until recently and brought about the election of the peace-skeptic published the journal Israel Horizons, will be con- Binyamin Netanyahu of Likud, whose policy of ducting this column throughout the year to come. “reciprocity” (unilaterally setting out a series of

Spring 2011 7 tests and milestones that the Palestinian Authority Authority. Whatever limited confidence Palestinian was required to meet before Israel would freeze negotiators had in Netanyahu’s intentions now dis- settlements­ or seriously negotiate) served to flash- appeared, and their early faith in President Obama’s freeze the once-vibrant Oslo process. willingness and ability to sway the Israeli govern- The fifteen years since Netanyahu’s election ment now seemed naïve and misplaced. have witnessed a series of frustrating fits-and-starts Palestinian Authority President Abbas and Prime in the peace talks. Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat Minister Salaam Fayyad, two moderates committed got close to an agreement in 2000-01 through the to non-violent state-building, were in a bind. Had mediation of Bill Clinton, but ultimately fell short, they agreed to resume negotiations while settle- leading to the second intifada and the collapse of ments were expanding, they would have lost face Barak’s governing coalition. Ariel Sharon estab- among their people, especially if negotiations with lished an important precedent when he uprooted Netanyahu bogged down and failed to produce Israel’s Gaza settlements in 2005, but his unilateral results. This was likely, of course: Netanyahu had approach also included a rejection of the Palestin- begun his second term as prime minister by pub- ian Authority as a credible negotiating partner. licly declaring that he was in no way obliged by the This shut down the possibility of real negotiations, offers made to the Palestinians by his predecessor, discredited Palestinian moderates and contributed Olmert. Peace talks, Netanyahu suggested, would to Hamas’ growing electoral strength and eventual have to start from square one. military takeover of the Gaza Strip. On the other hand, facing a stiff ongoing chal- Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas briefly re- lenge from Hamas, Palestinian moderates did not stored color to the peace process in 2007-’08, get- have the option of standing pat. Hamas has argued ting closer to a final agreement than ever before. consistently that concessions from Israel can only But corruption charges felled Olmert and led to be wrung through violence, while Abbas and Fay- the 2009 election that returned Netanyahu to the yad have staked their reputations on the opposite prime minister’s office at the helm of a hawkish, claim, that violence is a strategic error and that the hard-right government. occupation can be ended and statehood achieved Netanyahu’s repeat performance coincided via diplomacy. With settlement construction back with the election of Barack Obama in the U.S. in full swing and the peace talks on indefinite Obama sought to replace a Bush-era indifference hiatus, the moderate government based in Ramal- to Israeli-Palestinian peace with renewed presiden- lah could now cite little evidence to validate its tial activism, but the last two-plus years of intense strategic approach. The only non-violent route diplomatic efforts have failed to breathe new life remaining for the Palestinian Authority was to tem- into the moribund negotiating process. Still, his porarily bypass American-mediated negotiations early efforts actually gave reason for hope. When and take the Palestinian case to the international the Palestinian Authority decided that they could community. At the same time, the PA was resolved no longer hold talks while Israel used settlements to build its institutional capacity to assume the to tighten its grip on the West Bank, Obama man- responsibilities of statehood. aged to achieve a ten-month limited settlement moratorium starting in November 2009. But the Diplomatic efforts in this direction began late in negotiations, which resumed last summer, quickly 2010, with the Palestinians scoring a series of dip- ground to a halt when Israel’s government refused lomatic victories in South America, where country an American request to extend the moratorium for after country recognized Palestine as defined by the an additional three months — even in return for an 1967 borders (East Jerusalem, the West Bank and extra $3.5 billion in American military aid. the Gaza Strip). Russian President Dmitry Medve- dev made a similar announcement in January, and Israel’s restart of major settlement construction the European Union, including Germany, France last autumn was a watershed for the Palestinian and the United Kingdom, have signaled a clear

8 Jewish Currents readiness to issue their recognition announcements invaded later this year by an army of blue-helmeted “when appropriate.” All told, between one hundred UN troops. Even economic sanctions aren’t likely and thirty and one hundred and fifty countries to gain crucial U.S. support any time soon. What now either recognize Palestinian statehood or are is clear, however, is that the Israeli-Palestinian expected to adopt that position this year. conflict is about to enter a new era of internation- In September, barring a swift and dramatic diplo- alization, in which the bilateral mechanisms of the matic breakthrough, a game-changing request will Oslo days will soon be a fading memory. thus be submitted to the UN Security Council: to Judging from my conversations in Israel and Pal- recommend a General Assembly vote admitting the estine, this will mean a sharp escalation in Israel’s State of Palestine as a UN member state within the international isolation. Although not expected at territories occupied by Israel in 1967. The neces- first to include the U.S., a serious erosion of Euro- sary two-thirds majority in the General Assembly pean Union ties with Israel is definitely considered is already assured. possible. It would also come as no surprise should What is not yet clear is the new State of Palestine whether the U.S. will use The only non-violent route remaining take the lead in the effort its veto power to block a for the Palestinian Authority was to to impose a global boycott Council recommendation, temporarily bypass American-mediated and divestment campaign which the Assembly re- negotiations and take the Palestinian (BDS) on Israel. To date, quires before proceeding to case to the international community. the Palestinian Author- a membership vote. Should ity has rejected the idea the U.S. refrain from vetoing, Palestine will enter of “global BDS” and limited itself to calls for the UN and Israel will be considered a member- boycotts of products made in the occupied West state that is occupying a fellow member-state — the Bank, including East Jerusalem. Once it becomes same status held by Iraq after its 1990 invasion of a sovereign nation under occupation, however, Kuwait. Israel, in other words, would be exposed Palestine may up the ante should Israel refuse to to UN-mandated economic sanctions, or, theoreti- accede to the anticipated international calls to cally, international military force. freeze its settlement activity and return to the bar- gaining table on the basis of the 1967 lines. Even if the U.S. blocks Palestine’s official admis- The Israeli government is currently deliberating sion, Israel will by no means be out of the woods. its response to these developments. The loudest In such a case, the General Assembly is likely to public warning to date has been issued by Defense invoke its seldom-used “Uniting for Peace” provi- Minister Ehud Barak, who predicted a “political sion (UNGA 377), enacted in 1950, which allows tsunami” for Israel if the country fails to quickly the convening of an “emergency special session” lay out a bold diplomatic initiative. Hopefully, of the General Assembly in cases where the Secu- Netanyahu will surprise the world by choosing a rity Council, “because of lack of unanimity of the settlement freeze and a credible peace offer that permanent members, fails to exercise its primary embraces the State of Palestine as a welcome responsibility for the maintenance of international neighbor. More desperate reactions are also being peace and security in any case where there appears considered, however, such as the unilateral annexa- to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or tion of parts of the West Bank in the wake of a UN act of aggression.” vote, an act certain to increase Israel’s growing The “emergency special session” would then be isolation among the community of nations. empowered to issue “appropriate recommendations It is no exaggeration to say that Israel’s future to [UN] Members for collective measures, includ- depends on its choosing carefully and wisely in ing in the case of a breach of the peace or act of the months ahead. JC aggression the use of armed force when necessary.” No one believes, of course, that Israel will be

Spring 2011 9 notes from a small planet

first heard about mountaintop removal from land trust and helped spark a movement. After see- some fellow organizers working in post- ing the devastation and meeting so many amazing I Katrina New Orleans. This particularly de- Appalachian activists, I knew I had to stay. structive form of strip-mining involves blasting up to a thousand feet of elevation off the mountains Most importantly, I met the people of Prenter, West of Appalachia and dumping much of the waste in Virginia, a small coal-mining community where I the headwater streams below. An area the size of learned one of Big Coal’s dirty secrets: In nearby Delaware has already been stripped this way, and old mines, coal companies had injected billions over two thousand miles of streams have been of gallons of coal slurry, the waste water from buried. Hearing this, I was appalled, but I was too washing raw coal. Slurry contains high levels of immersed in other political work to get involved. heavy metals and trace chemicals. Once large-scale Later that year, I went home to the beautiful mountaintop-removal operations had moved into Catskill Mountains for Passover, which in my the area, folks had started to notice their well water family of organizers and red-diaper babies is a sometimes running black, orange or yellow, straight celebration of a successful from the tap. The first home I visited stank so Mathew Louis-Rosenberg people’s liberation struggle. strongly of hydrogen sulfide gas that it was almost As I was hiking up Plattekill unbearable, and the water was so corrosive that it Fighting Big Creek with my head full of my visibly tarnished a penny in less than five minutes. Coal in the ancestors’ story, it finally hit After a few hours in the home, my skin was itchy, me: “What if there was coal in my throat was burning and my head was pounding. Appalachians the Catskills? What if it were Tests have revealed high levels of lead, arsenic, my mountains and streams manganese, and other heavy metals in slurry. The getting blasted?” I knew, then, that I had to go to health impacts are devastating: Cancer rates, gas- West Virginia and see what I could do to help — trointestinal disorders, and gall badder, kidney, just as I hope others would do for me. and liver diseases have been rampant. The woman I came to the Coal River Valley in the summer in that first home I visited would lose her sister, of 2008, first attending the Mountain Keepers father, and husband to cancer and organ failure all Festival, which is produced every year by Larry within a year. Gibson on some of the last intact land on Kayford I began working for Coal River Mountain Watch, Mountain. Nothing I had heard could prepare me a local nonprofit in Boone County, West Virginia, for what I saw. A once-thriving Appalachian forest, as an organizer with the Sludge Safety Project, one of the world’s most biodiverse, had been turned which works with communities affected by slurry. into sheer rock cliffs, pits of coal, and endless hills In Prenter, we worked with community leaders to of crushed rock and sparse, invasive grasses — the start an emergency water distribution program, fruits of so-called “reclamation” —as far the eye get a municipal water line installed, and hold the could see. Larry had protected fifty-five acres in a coal companies accountable in the media and in

10 Jewish Currents the courts. Folks in Prenter and other similar com- region has long been a place of innovation and a munities across the coalfields understand the scope catalyst for social change. Coming from radical of this issue: Slurry has been injected underground roots, I knew the powerful history here: From through hundreds of wells John Brown and the early across the state. It is also A broad-based coalition is organizing abolitionists to the great stored in massive, toxic a five-day march on Blair Mountain struggle to form the United lakes behind earthen dams, this June 6th to 11th to demand Mine Workers of America posing a constant threat to (UMWA), Appalachians preservation of the mountain, strong communities that live in the have fought many battles valleys below. That is why rights for workers, and the abolition of against incredible odds for coalfield residents and their mountaintop removal. people’s basic right to a de- allies have been bringing cent, dignified life. their message of “No More Slurry” to the West In 1921, West Virginia was the site of the largest Virginia State Capitol for the last six years. Pres- armed labor conflict in American history, when ten sure from the Sludge Safety Project and our allies thousand union coal miners marched to organize forced the state’s Department of Environmental Logan and Mingo Counties. They demanded an end Protection to place a moratorium on new slurry to the use of private company thugs and the prac- injection permits two years ago. We continue to tice of paying workers in “company scrip” instead fight an uphill battle to ban slurry in our coal- of real money. They were met at the top of Blair dominated Legislature. Mountain by an army hastily assembled by the Logan County sheriff, and fought a five-day pitched Just as people in Prenter understand that their battle that was ended only by the intervention of problem goes beyond the bounds of their town, we the U.S. Army. The miners were turned back, and must understand that what’s happening in Appala- many were tried for treason, but the Battle of Blair chia is our problem. American citizens are being Mountain would prove to be a watershed moment denied their ba- in American labor sic rights to clean history. air and water by Today, several greedy corpora- coal companies are tions and corrupt preparing to strip- politicians. We are mine Blair Moun- wrecking our most tain, obliterating biodiverse, tem- the archaeologi- perate hardwood cal remains of that forest to extract labor battle. At a a fossil fuel that time in this coun- threatens the en- try when the very tire world. And we rights that workers are all responsible. fought and died for Coal provides a at Blair Mountain little less than half Larry Gibson’s sanctuary on Kayford Mountain, WV. are being taken of all the electri- away, the coal in- city in the U.S. The Dynergy power plant in my dustry wants literally to blast away the ground home region of the Hudson Valley in New York on which labor history was made here in West burns coal blasted out of Kayford Mountain. Virginia. A broad-based coalition of community Appalachia is too often portrayed as backwards members, union folks, and environmental organi- and isolated from the rest of America. In truth the zations (led by the Friends of Blair Mountain) is

Spring 2011 11 organizing a five-day march on Blair Mountain to make the industry profitable — a stance that this June 6th to 11th to demand preservation of the his “small government” Republican rivals make mountain, strong rights for workers, and the aboli- no complaint about (they’re too busy shamelessly tion of mountaintop removal — accompanied by crying “Drill, baby, drill!” and again calling for investment in clean jobs and energy in Appalachia. exploitation of the Alaskan wilderness, as if the We’re taking up the old UMWA cry that we now BP Gulf oil disaster never happened). hear from Wisconsin to West Virginia: “We won’t go back!” Is there a particularly Jewish perspective on Readers are invited join us as we forge new soli- nuclear power that deserves to be aired? In a re- darity and a new vision for a just and sustainable vealing article in our magazine in 1982 (“Energy future for Appalachia, and for all of us. For more Policy and Jewish Interests,” available at our Sid information, visit: Resnick Archive, http://jewishcurrents.org/past- • Coal River Mountain Watch issues/historical-archive/, under the letter “N”), www.crmw.net Jeffrey Dekro observed that the Jewish community • Journey Up Coal River was generally supportive of nuclear power because www.journeyupcoalriver.org it was seen back then as the way to end American • Sludge Safety Project dependence on oil from Arab countries and protect www.sludgesafety.org Israel from having its patron blackmailed. Dekro’s • Friends of Blair Mountain piece did a commendable job of undermining this www.friendsofblairmountain.org view — by noting, for example, that only 12 percent •Keepers of the Mountains Foundation of U.S. oil imports came from Arab states, and by l citing the key connections between nuclear power and arms proliferation, which presents a far more hen it comes to nuclear power, there’s direct threat to Israel. Dekro also summarized some no longer a unified view within the of the less obvious liabilities of nuclear power, Wenvironmental movement. Some activ- beyond meltdowns and radioactive waste prod- ists have come to see atom-splitting as a necessary ucts, in a single, prescient paragraph: It “creates energy source if the planetary dangers of climate economic and political imbalance; the centraliza- change are to be averted. Oth- tion of the energy industry limits the investigation Lawrence Bush ers maintain that there are far of other energy sources, threatens to strangle Nuclear Power: better investments to be made, essential industry, and produces unemployment especially in conservation, . . . [and] it increases the threat of nuclear blackmail A Jewish as well as taxes to be levied, and the need for a ‘security-conscious’ society . . .” especially on corporate pol- Twenty years later, while these dangers have Perspective luters, before we start flirting all materialized, there is still no major Jewish again with the possibility of organization taking an outspoken stand against meltdowns and the threats to future generations nuclear power. This is true despite the fact that that accompany the production of nuclear wastes. Iran’s potential development of a nuclear bomb The ongoing tragedy at the Fukushima Daiichi has powerfully confirmed the link between nuclear plant in Japan has again given pause to a lot of power and bomb proliferation. The best statement people about the expansion of nuclear power. Un- we have is from the Religious Action Center of fortunately, however, it is the green of money, not Reform Judaism (RAC) on April 1st: “we remain the green of environmentalism, that seems to be skeptical of the President’s recent call to expand shaping the discussion among the decision-makers nuclear energy development. While the door should of America. President Obama has strongly sup- never be closed completely to energy approaches ported nuclear energy and upheld the federal cap on with the potential to ease our reliance on foreign oil, liability and other government guarantees needed we ought not rely on alternatives such as nuclear

12 Jewish Currents energy or increased oil drilling until outstanding case scenario of successful operation produces issues of human and ecological safety are re- radioactive wastes that persist as deadly poisons solved.” in the environment, some of them for tens of thou- The RAC’s timidity squanders an opportunity to sands of years — an eternity on the timetable of make Jewish values relevant and attractive in the civilizations. There is no foolproof waste disposal modern world. One such value is s’yag l’torah — system yet designed, nor can there be unless that “building a fence around the Torah,” which urges system can be absolutely independent of human people to err on the side of caution when it comes to monitoring and governance for all time. Our protecting life, limb and spiritual wholeness. This willingness to pollute the future this way deeply Jewish version of the “Precautionary Principle” violates the Jewish commitment to generational has historically been applied by observant Jews to continuity — to extending “blessings” to the thou- matters of personal and ritual conduct, but its Tal- sandth generation, while “curses” are limited to mudic origin is about physical safety (preventing four generations (Deuteronomy 5: 9-10). Nuclear people from falling off rooftops) — and its modern power takes this Biblical formula and stands it potency lies in its application to the environmental on its head, extending an energy blessing to the challenges of life-threatening technologies. fourth generation and a radioactive curse to the S’yag l’torah goes hand in hand with a tradi- thousandth. tional Jewish view of human beings as flawed, How can we do this without first capping every self-interested, easily tempted to “sin,” apathy or energy leak, without first regulating the carbon corruption, and therefore requiring an elaborate be- emissions of corporations, without first investing havioral code with which to discipline themselves. in public transportation and other less-polluting From this perspective, human error and frailty will technologies, without first eschewing the environ- predictably plague the technologies we design, and mental devastations wrought by war, without first “regulators” will always be beholden to profit or reducing our consumption, without first practicing power, or subject to overconfidence or complacen- self-restraint and sacrifice? “Trust not in your wis- cy. Dr. Victor Gilinsky, a senior commissioner with dom [read: “your marvelous technology”] unless the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) who you can master your desire,” wrote Ibn Gabirol was the first regulator “in charge” of the Three Mile in the 11th century. That is Jewish environmental Island nuclear power plant accident as it began in wisdom for our time. 1979, put it this way (in a 2009 retrospective article l he wrote for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists): “[E]verything has a political dimension, and al-Mart’s popular “Love, Earth” officials charged with protecting the public jewelry line is advertised as “respon- often have other things on their minds.” Dr. W sible jewelry made from responsible Gilinsky elaborated: “I got lots of useless ad- sources. This may have been the original intent vice from all sides. Outsiders expected me of the manufacturers of the product line — and, to know technical details I had no idea about indeed, this jewelry may be . . . The [NRC] was a paper-pushing operation that “greener” than other brands in Basia Yoffe reviewed license applications.” an industry rife with political Between the helplessness we saw among engi- and environmental abuse — Wal-Mart’s neers in response to the BP oil blow-out, and the but after two years of inves- Not-So-Green helplessness we are seeing among the brave nuclear tigation, Jean Friedman-Ru- workers in the Japanese disaster, haven’t we had dovsky, a freelance journalist Jewelry warning enough about investing our resources so writing for the Broward/Palm heavily in technologies that assure environmental Beach New Times, has told a different story. disaster if — no, when — they calamitously fail? “Love, Earth” jewelry has been part of Wal-Mart’s With nuclear power, moreover, even the best- 2005 decision, writes Friedman-Rudovsky, “to

Spring 2011 13 make sustainability a core part of the retail giant’s Rudovsky outside the factory in La Paz, they mission. Over the next few years, the company complained of abuses, harassment, bullying, and would craft a large-scale green strategy that came the lack of soap and masks to protect them from the to include increased energy efficiency in stores, gold dust. They are paid just above Bolivia’s legal improved fuel efficiency in its trucking fleet, and minimum of about $85 per month, which according reduced product packaging. Eco-attention was put to the U.S. State Department “did not provide a toward supply chains too.” These innovations by decent standard of living for a worker and family.” the world’s largest retailer have gone a long way Much worse than the factory are the talleres, towards raising consciousness about environmen- sweatshop-style workshops where Aurafin subcon- tal responsibility. tracts. A former worker at one of these clandestine In the case of the jewelry, Conservation Inter- shops told Friedman-Rudovsky about the abusive national (CI), a prominent environmental orga- conditions, including pay amounting to half the nization, was recruited to be a founding partner. minimum wage, which led to an attempt to union- However, says Friedman-Rudovsky, CI has often ize. All the workers were fired. been “criticized for putting its business partners’ Purchasers of “Love, Earth” jewelry, she con- interests above those of the environment and local cludes, are victims of corporate “greenwashing.” populations,” including “signing off on land grabs Customers are buying this jewelry thinking that in Panama that benefit pharmaceutical compa- they are contributing to environmental integrity, nies . . .” corporate responsibility, and decent livelihoods for The gold used in “Love, Earth” comes from the workers. The actual reality constitutes robbery on Newmont gold mines of Nevada and Utah, located many different levels. on the lands of the Western Shoshone people. The website www.culturalsurvival.org states that Wal- Robbery, indeed. In the section of his Mishneh Mart did not meet with Shoshone representatives Torah about the laws of theft, Maimonides cites before deciding that the Newmont gold mines are verses in the Torah that prohibit the use of defective “sustainably mined.” Instead, the company relies weights and measures and forbids people even to on Newmont to “self-report” on its compliance own such weights. He and other Jewish authorities with Wal-Mart’s “sustainability principles.” felt that business integrity is so important we must These principles look good on paper. They not even tempt ourselves to cheat. Yet the double- include “safe disposal and management of waste manufacturing system that Wal-Mart is using in and hazardous materials . . . protection of eco- Bolivia is designed for such abuse. “The main logical functioning, ecosystem services and im- factory is a sort of cover,” said one of Friedman- portant biodiversity . . . respect for the rights of Rudovsky’s informants. “There is no doubt that individuals, indigenous peoples and communities conditions in these workshops are extremely pre- . . . contribution to the sustainable development of carious and constitute serious worker exploitation.” communities . . .” But mining is always a danger- Another kind of theft that Judaism warns against ous and dirty business. As with coal mining, one is “geneivat daat,” stealing a person’s mind, of the byproducts of gold mining is mercury, which which applies to deception, including commercial can contaminate streams and ground water. The deceptions such as false advertising. Corporate cyanide heap-leaching process used in the New- “greenwashing” is the latest and very widespread mont mines is actually banned in Montana, and version of this form of theft. Oil giants BP, Shell the European Union is considering a similar ban. and ExxonMobil were all cited for it as recipients What about the factories that manufacture the of the Greenwash Academy Awards presented by Wal-Mart’s jewelry? Aurafin, a member of the Corpwatch at the Earth Summit in 2002 (Newmont, Richline Group, is based in South Florida but the mining company, was among the runners-up). Is makes the “Love, Earth” line in Bolivia. When Wal-Mart positioning itself to receive this dubious workers nervously gave interviews to Friedman- distinction next? J C

14 Jewish Currents Solomon Chigrinsky

Bill Zimmerman An Excerpt from Troublemaker A Memoir from the Front Lines of the Sixties

he FBI and the CIA had spied on antiwar ever they could to sabotage our work. Those of activists and used undercover agents to us who had attracted press attention or were in Tinfiltrate our organizations for many years. leadership positions routinely assumed that our Our overheated revolutionary rhetoric was only movements and communications were monitored, their most recent excuse. They tapped our phones, and not just by the feds. Police departments in New read our mail, followed our travels, and did what- York, Los Angeles, and Chicago had “red squads” that did the same. None of this was legal, and vast sums of taxpayer money were wasted in the effort. Bill Zimmerman holds a doctorate from the Uni- Undercover provocateurs often advocated violence versity of Chicago and is one of the nation’s most to discredit the naive activists who accepted their experienced political consultants. His firm, Zim- merman & Markman, has worked for candidates, advice and to justify the use of force against them. historic ballot initiatives, and advocacy organiza- These official provocateurs also instigated factional tions like the ACLU, NRDC, and MoveOn.org. He disputes, disrupted meetings, falsified documents, continues to advocate for social justice, and lives in and stole money. Topanga, California. This essay is excerpted from his We employed various countermeasures against new book, Troublemaker: A Memoir from the Front them. Anyone advocating violence was assumed Lines of the ’60s, newly published by Doubleday. to be a police agent and isolated. When we had

Spring 2011 15 to discuss confidential information, we did it in beneficiaries were already wounded and at least a noisy restaurant or a car with the radio volume temporarily out of action. We had to consider the turned up to thwart bugs. When we had to make legal implications, too. At best, we would be receiv- plans over the telephone, we assumed our home ing and transporting stolen goods; at worst, passing and office phones were tapped and talked pay them to an enemy in a time of war. phone to pay phone. I always carried the numbers It didn’t take long to decide that the chance to of several pay telephones near my home or office. save so many lives outweighed our reservations When I traveled, I picked up the numbers of a few and fears. We agreed that Ethan should not make pay phones close to wherever I stayed. the delivery to the Vietnamese. There was a small As a result, when Ethan Signer asked me to chance that the offer was a setup designed to en- meet him at a noisy bar in Cambridge, I knew trap him. It was also possible that the FBI knew something was up. Neither of us spent much of the pharmaceutical scientist’s plans and was time in bars. Sitting opposite him, I immediately simply waiting for him to move. If Ethan kept my saw the excitement on his face. An anonymous identity from the scientist and I made the handoff, scientist had contacted him. The pharmaceutical we would have some protection. We had both met company where the scientist was employed had several Vietnamese health officials in Paris two just developed a new form of penicillin that did months earlier. If I went to Paris on some pretext not require refrigeration. I looked quizzically at and delivered the goods to them without being Ethan, not understanding why this news required observed, we could escape detection even if it was a confidential meeting. a setup. It was a good plan. Ethan told the scientist Ethan explained the battlefield implications. he could arrange delivery. Helicopters rescuing wounded American sol- diers were equipped with small refrigerators to The pretext for a Paris trip came easily. My father, preserve their antibiotics. The Vietnamese they Sid, was about to celebrate his 80th birthday. We fought against did not have portable refrigerators, had been close during my childhood, but because and many died from infections that could be pre- of civil rights and Viet Nam we had drifted apart. vented by quick access to fresh antibiotics. The He was a successful immigrant. The United States anonymous scientist knew that thousands of lives had saved him from the Nazis, who had killed one could be saved if Vietnamese medics on the ground of his sisters and other members of his family. As carried a broad-spectrum antibiotic that did not a result, he was unquestioningly patriotic. require refrigeration. He knew of Ethan’s involve- We had argued intensely about the war in Viet ment in the antiwar movement and offered to steal a Nam. In addition, before I was born he had spent sample of the new antibiotic if Ethan could deliver a lot of time in the South as a traveling salesman it to the right people in Viet Nam. An unlimited and had picked up racist attitudes toward African amount could be cultured from the sample. Americans, another arena of passionate dispute Unlike the new organization that we were pre- between us. When my sister Robin married a Black paring to build, Medical Aid for Indochina, which man, she felt unable to reveal it to him; I, rather than would funnel medicines and medical equipment my father, had stood by her side at the wedding. to civilian hospitals in North Viet Nam (they were More recently, however, Sid had come to see the Nixon’s enemies, not ours), delivering this sto- war as a mistake. And for a man his age, he was len antibiotic would actually aid the Vietnamese also making a valiant effort to overcome his racism military. Was it the right thing for us to do? On and befriend my sister’s husband and his family. I the one hand, it might prolong the war by saving wanted to recognize these changes and do some- the lives of enemy troops; on the other, helping thing special for him. An overseas trip fit the bill. the Vietnamese survive the American war was After fleeing Vienna in 1910, Sid had never been precisely our objective. The new antibiotic would back to Europe. I called him in Chicago, using the not directly jeopardize American troops, since the telephone at home in Somerville because I wanted

16 Jewish Currents the FBI to listen. I told him that in honor of his 80th Several times, the antiwar movement’s new birthday I wanted to take him to Europe and Israel, celebrity couple also stayed with us. The inter- a country he had always wanted to see. We would nationally known movie star Jane Fonda was in a spend a few days each in London, Paris, and Vi- relationship with Tom Hayden, one of the Chicago enna, and then a week in Israel. He was thrilled and Seven defendants. She was widely visible as a mili- grateful, his voice breaking as he thanked me, not tant and highly controversial antiwar spokesperson, only for the trip and the recognition of his birthday, and he remained one of the movement’s strategic but also because we would be traveling together leaders. They attracted a great deal of media atten- for the first time in years. I was glad to make him tion, but both were serious organizers and relent- happy; hopefully it would also look like harmless less in their efforts to build the movement. They tourism to the FBI. used their celebrity to recruit During this time, our large Many of us had given up secure roles people, raise money, and communal home in Somer- in society or promising mainstream inject an antiwar message ville often served as a guest- careers to oppose the war. Even Jane, into the frequent coverage house for visiting antiwar despite the Academy Award she would they received. leaders. They came because win in April for her role in “Klute,” I shared an unspoken bond of my housemate, John with these new friends and could no longer get work in Hollywood. Froines, one of the lesser with others who worked know Chicago Seven defendants, but their visits as antiwar organizers. Many of us had given up gave me a chance to develop new friendships, secure roles in society or promising mainstream too. Leaders of Vietnam Veterans Against the War careers to oppose the war. Even Jane, despite the (VVAW) were among them. John Kerry, one of Academy Award she would win in April for her role the founders, was a local guy I knew, but he had in Klute, could no longer get work in Hollywood. become more cautious as he prepared to run for The bond that united us was a simple one: we all Congress later that year. Other VVAW leaders who had made a solemn pledge to ourselves to continue were angrier and more aggressive emerged to speak work against the war until it was over, no matter for the organization. how long that took. It wasn’t a public pledge, but Ron Kovic was one. A Vietnamese bullet had left if you had made it to yourself, you could recognize him paralyzed from the chest down. He negotiated others who had by their focus and determination. his way around our furniture in his wheelchair, but he never let his injury slow him down or dampen In early March, the pharmaceutical scientist gave his determination to stop the war. Later he would Ethan two sealed but unlabeled test tubes contain- write Born on the Fourth of July, a moving book ing the precious cultures. Earlier, we had quietly eventually made into one of the most powerful an- raised the money needed for the Paris trip. Sid and tiwar films Hollywood has ever produced. In 1972, I rendezvoused in New York and flew together he was among the angriest of the vets and could to London. I had no special interest in London project his anger in speeches and media interviews but thought it would help Sid if the first foreign to effectively mobilize others against the war. country he visited was English-speaking. Also, I Bobby Muller, also a founder of VVAW, was didn’t want to go directly to Paris. I had tried to another wheelchair-bound visitor. A determined mislead the FBI by making frequent calls to Sid organizer and a passionate speaker, Bobby had from my home or office to discuss the upcoming been wounded in combat as a Marine Corps officer. trip, but I had no idea if this had worked. We spent He, too, was paralyzed as a result of a spinal cord two pleasant days sightseeing, then left for Paris, injury. Six years later, he would start a new service where we settled into a modest but comfortable organization, Vietnam Veterans of America, and in hotel just off the Luxembourg Gardens. 1997 a group he helped start shared the Nobel Peace Late in the afternoon on our second day, I en- Prize for a worldwide campaign to ban landmines. couraged Sid to deal with his jet lag by taking a

Spring 2011 17 long nap. As he dozed off, I left a note, took the celebratory dinner for me that evening or the next two sealed test tubes, and walked to the Métro day. I thanked them for their kindness, but having station. I wanted to be as cautious as possible already explained the legal jeopardy I might be because Ethan’s liberty was at stake as well as in, I told them I preferred to quietly slip back into mine. I changed trains and direction several times, the role of a tourist to reduce the possibility of boarding cars just before the doors closed, hoping surveillance or interference from my government. to throw off any tails. When I felt secure, I took They accepted my reasoning but insisted on plying a commuter train to the suburb where North Viet me with small gifts, souvenir jewelry, and books. Nam maintained its embassy. I left the embassy sporting a big smile. As a walk-in, uninvited and unexpected, I knew I I didn’t tell Sid about the test tubes. I wasn’t sure would be treated with suspicion. At the locked gate, he would approve, and even if he did, I knew his I used my limited French to explain to the guards concern for my safety would outweigh any satis- that I was from the American antiwar movement faction he might feel. and had something for the ambassador. After a short wait, an obviously apprehensive functionary came Sid expected Vienna to be a high point of our trip. to greet me. We exchanged the usual pleasantries. I After a childhood in Hungary, he had been sent suggested he locate someone on the embassy staff there to attend a gymnasium, an elite high school. who had attended the medical assistance conference Following his graduation in 1910, he had been a few months earlier and could vouch for me. The drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army, no place right person was soon found, and I was recognized for a Jew, so he fled to America. as an American friend. The suspicion disappeared. A draft dodger with no passport, Sid crossed into The ambassador was away and unable to return, Germany buried in a hay-wagon. He was jailed so I was ushered into the office of his second-in- briefly in Munich, but a contact there got him command. Also present was a representative of the out. Traveling to Hamburg, Sid bought a steerage National Liberation Front of South Viet Nam and ticket and arrived at Ellis Island with no money, two interpreters. I told them about the formation of no visa, and no English. He was jailed again. Ten Medical Aid for Indochina, and that we intended days later, a half-brother who lived in New Jersey to function as the European assistance groups did, vouched for him. Sid studied English intensively but with the further edge of doing it from within for six months and then hit the road in 1911 as a the United States. traveling salesman. Two years later, he was rich. I then took the two test tubes out of my pocket In later decades he made and lost several fortunes, and laid them on the table between us. Speak- often quite colorfully, even though at the end of his ing slowly for the interpreters, I explained what life he had little beyond his monthly Social Security was inside. The tone and demeanor of my hosts check. He had been a daring and audacious man, abruptly changed. They were soon on the edge and I respected him for it. of their chairs writing down everything I said. We arrived in Vienna after dark. Sid was en- They understood the immense significance of the thusiastic about the sights we would see the next viscous cream-colored fluid in the glass tubes ly- day. I warned him that sixty-two years had passed ing between us. I explained that this was not a gift and Vienna had suffered through two world wars. from our new organization but a private matter to In the morning, we took a cab to the Ringstrasse, remain confidential. They understood. A courier in Sid’s memory a grand boulevard lined with the was scheduled to leave the next day for North Viet mansions of the rich. Confusion clouded his face Nam. The test tubes would be put in his diplomatic as we inched through traffic on an inner-city street pouch and immediately delivered to the minister lined instead with gas stations, auto repair facili- of health in Hanoi. ties, and broken-down rooming houses. It would Everyone around the table was excited and take an archaeological dig to unearth what Sid happy. The embassy officials insisted on hosting a remembered. He was a time traveler who had left

18 Jewish Currents 19th-century Vienna with an emperor on the throne. there, Israel had been overtaken by consumerism He was disoriented, and when I suggested that we and had lost its commitment to socialist values. fly to Israel that afternoon, he readily agreed. Sid had a distant cousin, Joseph, who was one We arrived at night, and I contacted two old of the patriarchs of a kibbutz. Neither of us had friends. One, a pharmacist, had been my friend in ever met him, but he invited us to visit. Over din- elementary school and then moved to Israel. The ner in his family’s cottage, Joseph asked about the other was an Israeli scientist I knew as a graduate American antiwar movement, aware that some of student in the University of Chicago Sleep Lab who us were critical of Israel. He was in his mid-50s, had become a professor at the Hebrew University. short, squarely built, with the piercing eyes and For the next week, they took turns showing Sid hard look of experienced leadership. Speaking sites I had already seen, so I occasionally left them respectfully, I explained my reservations about his to do some political exploring. country and described my visits to the Israeli dis- Israel was a vexing problem for the American sidents. He did not respond, but after dinner asked left. Initially supportive, many of us were out- Sid and me to join him on the porch for a brandy. raged at how the Israelis treated the Palestinians Joseph then told us his remarkable personal history. they had displaced. Our public criticism of Israel It began in Austria, where he had been an ide- led to a predictable overreaction, and we were er- alistic teenager in the mid-1930s. He joined the roneously perceived to be in agreement with Arab communist youth movement and with his comrades extremists who advocated the destruction of the staged street demonstrations against the emerging young country. Nazi Party and charity drives for its Jewish victims. Israel depended upon financial assistance from When the Nazis came to power, annexed Austria, American Jews, but was also the recipient of a and invaded Poland, Joseph said good-bye to his vastly disproportionate share of American foreign family and went underground. His band of parti- aid. Meanwhile, the surrounding Arab states, many sans lived in the forests. Through 1940 and 1941, of which had wealthy and oppressive regimes, they ambushed German intelligence patrols, blew refused to give substantial financial support to up supply depots, and sabotaged railroad tracks the Palestinians, in part because they feared the and bridges. They also suffered many losses and rise of a politically progressive Palestinian state defeats, but as compatriots were killed or wounded, would inspire democracy movements in their own others came from the cities to replace them. Late in countries. Given the tinderbox of Middle East 1941, they were captured and sent to a concentra- politics, and its relevance to us on the left, I tion camp. The Nazis had not yet embarked on their wanted to use a little of my time in Israel to learn “final solution,” the extermination of the Jewish more. people. Instead, they seized Jewish property and I visited some dissident organizations and met forced their victims into the camps. with activists who supported Palestinian rights. Most of the camp inmates were physically timid, I learned there was also widespread discrimina- but Joseph and the other partisans, all in their late tion against dark-skinned Jews who had recently teens and early 20s, trained the more senior inmates emigrated from Arab countries. Some had formed to fight. When the thaws came in the spring of 1942, the Israeli Black Panther Party, modeled after its they led an uprising and mass escape. Despite the namesake in the U.S. They told me they suffered stereotype of docile Jews being led to slaughter, because of their dark skin and lack of European theirs was not the only such escape. But few of the manners and education. Confined to urban slums escapees were sufficiently fit to survive as guer- and dead-end jobs, they were treated as second- rilla fighters. Most were recaptured. Not Joseph. class citizens in a country that made much of its He kept fighting through the spring and summer. commitment to democracy. By the fall, however, networks that supplied the I saw other problems, too. Since I had been last partisans with food, firearms, and recruits could

Spring 2011 19 no longer operate. The concentration camps had decision to fight with the communists instead of become extermination camps, and the partisans the Zionists had been a mistake. There would be had to disband. no life for him in the Soviet Union, nor in Europe, Joseph made his way on foot and at night to where Nazism had killed everyone he had ever Hungary, which was not yet under direct German loved. Zionists were gathering Jewish refugees and control and not yet deporting Jews. He tried to con- pioneers in the British protectorate of Palestine. tact his family in Austria, but learned they had all That was an alternative, but it was impossible to get been deported to an unknown destination and their to Palestine from the Soviet Union. His only hope property confiscated. He enrolled in nursing school lay in Amsterdam, where the Zionists in Europe and studied for over a year before Nazi tanks rolled were headquartered. It was not impossible to get into Budapest in 1944 and took direct control. to Amsterdam. He could walk. They stuffed the Hungarian Jews into cattle cars and sent them all to death camps. Joseph didn’t go. Joseph’s DP camp was in the Ukraine. One night He organized a band of fighters and again escaped he slipped over the fence and started west. It was into the woods. His group was not equipped to fifteen hundred miles to Amsterdam. He walked operate offensively, but they did engage in sabotage through postwar devastation, lived off charity, and and occasionally assisted Allied intelligence opera- slept in fields or bombed-out buildings. Disgusted tives working behind German lines. They could not by everything European, he moved in a daze. It survive the next winter. Before it ended, the Nazis took him nine months, but he walked across the captured Joseph again. entire European continent. It was early 1945, and he was sent to Auschwitz. He reached Amsterdam in 1947. The Zionists Days before he was to be killed, the Soviet army gave him a passport, clothing, and a train ticket to liberated the camp. Weak and emaciated, he took Marseilles. In the French port, other Zionists gave weeks to recover. When he could, he went east to- him a boat ticket — to Nicaragua. It was part of ward the Soviet Union. He had been a communist a game the Zionists were forced to play to retain and had fought with the communists, so he decided permission to operate on French soil. The French to begin life anew in the world’s only communist were allied with the British, who controlled Pal- country. When the Germans surrendered a few estine and had promised the Arabs that no more months later, Joseph learned that his entire family Jews would be allowed to emigrate there. To back had been killed, even his beloved little sister Edith. up their promise, the British navy blocked all sea- Joseph made it to the Soviet Union and was put lanes leading to Palestine. into a “displaced persons” camp, where he sat As soon as Joseph’s ship sailed outside of French for nine months before having his first placement territorial waters, instead of turning west to Nica- interview. A friend advised him to claim he was ragua, it turned east and ran the British blockade. Hungarian and not reveal that he was Jewish. Out- There were other such ships, old scows purchased raged, he replied that they were in a workers’ state with American money and crewed by Jewish war that did not discriminate against Jews or anyone veterans. During the war, boatloads of European else. He had training as a nurse, and Russia had Jews had been refused entry to U.S. ports. Some untold numbers of war injured. He would be given returned to Europe, where their passengers were a medical job and be treated with respect whether killed, which was why the Jewish heroes running he was a Jew or not. these postwar “Exodus” operations no longer At the placement interview, Joseph’s Jewish relied on other people’s ships or played by other heritage and medical skills were duly noted. Weeks people’s rules. went by, then months, and as others left the DP Joseph’s ship made it past the British blockade. camp to start new lives, Joseph remained. He was The passengers were off-loaded onto a Palestinian told to be patient. One day he realized that most beach at night and were met by Zionists who took of the others still in the camp were also Jews. His them to hideaways. Within days, Joseph was placed

20 Jewish Currents on a kibbutz. Five weeks later, on a Saturday off, answer was chilling. The story is not extraordinary, he took a stroll around a nearby town and was he said. On the contrary, it is commonplace. It’s stopped by a British patrol. Having no papers, he a story that could be told by tens of thousands of was arrested and sent to a DP camp on the island Israelis. It is not, he said, simply Joseph’s story, but of Cyprus, a nearby British colony. This DP camp the story of Joseph’s people. was actually a jail, since the British had to prevent No doubt Joseph would agree. He had told me its Jewish inmates from returning to Palestine. his history to justify the history of his nation and Miraculously, among thousands of Jewish pris- to claim for it the same right to exist as any other. oners, Joseph found Edith, his little sister. She, too, Despite promises made and broken by imperial had a remarkable story of survival, but the rest of diplomats in decades past, and despite the complex their family, and all their aunts, uncles, and first and turbulent history of the local real estate, the cousins, were gone. Joseph and his sister remained suffering endured in the Holocaust, the gathering imprisoned for the next nine months, until the of the Jewish tribes in Israel, and the remarkable underground Jewish army in Palestine declared harvests of plenty reclaimed from desert sands all independence from Britain in May, 1948. made it clear to me that Israel was here to stay. The That month, amid the first Arab-Israeli war, the Palestinians had been grievously wronged and, at a inmates of the DP camp all left for the new country. minimum, deserved equal rights, fair payment for Joseph and Edith joined others to start a kibbutz lost property, and an independent state. It seemed of their own. Over the next few years, they carved to me that the Israelis, given the suffering and op- prosperity out of the desert with irrigation, modern pression in their own history, should be the first to farming, and financial assistance from American understand why and, being in power, should bear Jews. Joseph married and had a son. In the fol- full responsibility for repairing the damage. lowing years, he achieved the personal fulfillment Yet after my evening with Joseph, I felt unable to that had been stolen from him by the Nazis. More side with either the Palestinians or the Israelis. The children were born, and his kibbutz thrived, with intractable conflict carried too much pain and his- hundreds of families, thousands of acres, and a few tory to be subject to glib solutions. In past months, small factories. I had grappled with the problems of fighting capi- Joseph was not quite at the end of his story, but talist abuse and realized that lofty ideals were not I saw his mood change dramatically. Five years always relevant. Morality and legal precedent were earlier, he said, his first-born son had served in the important, but they had limited meaning when con- Six-Day War. Joseph paused in a futile attempt to sidered apart from real conditions on the ground. It master his emotions, then revealed that the boy was clear to me that as much injustice as capitalism had been killed in combat. His story over, Joseph had produced, as much as had come about because leaned toward me. The fierce resolve in his eyes of the State of Israel, both would endure. I needed pinned me to my chair, and the quiet statement he to focus less on what should be and work instead made was said with as much conviction as any I for what could be. I had to stop waiting for perfect had ever heard: “We will never leave this land. We but unattainable solutions, because holding out for have paid for it with our blood.” them could prevent achieving the imperfect solu- He had not tried to answer my critique of Israel tions actually within reach. with reason or history. His tale was the most elo- It was time to go home. The pride I had felt in quent argument he could have made, but it was not the small courageous act I had performed for the until the next day that I fully understood its power. Vietnamese in Paris paled alongside the courage I told Joseph’s story to my professor friend with and sacrifice of my cousin Joseph. Humbled by the same awe and amazement I had felt upon hear- the comparison, I was glad to have lived in less ing it. He wasn’t impressed, which surprised me. interesting times, and happy that a man like Joseph Disappointed, I asked why the story had not made was part of my personal heritage. JC as deep an impression on him as it had on me. His

Spring 2011 21 Jewish Currents is 65 Years Old. If You’re Older Than That, Please Read This.

Dear friends, it is your remarkable generation Death) and then say to yourself: I will not of Jewish radicals that has sustained this be here forever, but the values that have magazine throughout the years — and even sustained me can also outlive me. with all the tsores that accompany aging (it’s We’re asking you to leave a bequest certainly not for the faint-hearted), you have for Jewish Currents in your will. We continued to sustain us. can help with a free legal consultation if We’re doing all we can to renew and grow JC you contact our editor at (845) 626-2427 into a progressive media company that will ([email protected]) or our at- outlive us all and help bring about the return torney, Jerry Wapner, at of progressive politics to America. (845) 679-7207.

But to get there, we need you to do some- Please make that call and thing that’s quite difficult: to take a quick become part of our future glance at the Malekh Hamoves (the Angel of as well as our history.

Jewish Currents Is 65 Years Young. Whatever Your Age, Please Help Us Grow.

In March of 2009, this magazine had only their hearts. We’re doing everything we can 1,700 independent subscribers. At this writ- to achieve our circulation goal. You can help ing, we have 3,000. Our future depends on greatly by giving gift subscriptions for only doubling that figure inthe next two years. $18 each. That would be large enough to meet our budget and allow us to use grants, sales So many progressive achievements are from our marketplace, and other funds to being turned back in America these days, expand steadily. to our outrage! Let’s not allow Jewish Currents be turned back, too. Please send Our innovations in the past two years — our your gift subscriptions to POB 111, Accord, elegant arts section, our new columns, our NY 12404, or visit our website at http:// website, our breadth and quality — have jewishcurrents.org/subscribe, or call (845) broadened the magazine’s appeal tremen- 626-2427 to reach our editor by phone. dously. We need to get into people’s hands, however, before we can find our way into We’re counting on you.

22 Jewish Currents Susan Cernyak-Spatz Record-Keeping for the Nazis ­— and Saving Lives A Conversation with Katya Singer, the Executive Secretary of Auschwitz

Edited by Joel Shatzky

The moral complexity of the Holocaust is an issue still being debated after more than sixty-five years, especially as more information is revealed about how some people were able to survive while others perished. Perhaps one of the most im- portant, least-known figures is Katya Singer, who was a “collaborator” as Rap- portschreiberin, or chief operating officer, for the SS in Auschwitz, as well as be- ing the lover of a notorious Nazi — yet she has been credited by other survivors with saving the lives of countless women in the camp. These she rescued from the rigors of “outside details” by finding “inside jobs” for them, and, more important, by falsifying the numbers of the living and dead so that the SS did not realize that fewer Jews than they thought were being gassed. To judge Singer for having lived a relatively sheltered life as Rapportschreiberin in the death camp, with her own room, maid, and wardrobe, while most other inmates were living in the most de- grading circumstances, is to ignore the fact that she put her life at risk every time she saved the lives of others through her deceptive juggling of numbers.

The following interview was given to Susan Cernyak-Spatz, herself a survivor, thanks to the prompting of Singer’s assistant, Helen “Zippy” Tischauer, a close friend of Cernyak-Spatz. As far as we know, the information revealed here is unique in the record of the notorious death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Katya Singer was an assimilated Czech Jew. She served as Rapportschreiberin from September, 1942 until her deportation to Stutthof in 1944 after being “de- nounced” for helping inmates survive. There is very little information about Singer in any history of the Holocaust, and as far as we know, this is the only recorded interview she gave in her lifetime (July 21st, 1991 at the Prague Intercontinental Hotel).

Katya Singer: I was really not supposed to be Orthodox house. I really think I am Christian; we in the Patronka [a site for deportation in Bratisla- were never together with Jews. My parents were va, Slovakia]. I was renting a room from a Jew- not religious at all. ish family. I had ignored the call-up that all Jew- ish young people received, because I saw myself Susan Cernyak-Spatz: Why were you promot- much more as a Christian than a Jew. When we ed so rapidly to be Rapportschreiberin? were in the Patronka, it was the first time that I found myself among Jews. I did not come from an KS: I don’t know why. The SS always said I was

Spring 2011 23 creating the women’s camp and anybody who Jewish Currents has published numerous authentic wanted the job could have become Rapportsch- testimonies of suffering and resistance during the reiberin. Holocaust. To read more of them, visit the Sid Resnick Zippy [Helen Tischauer, nee Spitzer, Singer’s Archive at our website, http://jewishcurrents.org/past- chief assistant] helped me a lot with the job with issues/historical-archive, and look under the letters “H” the writing, because I spoke very little German. and “W.” SC-S: What were the responsibilities? An accu- rate count of the prisoners . . . a German. Even when I was in the bunker, they measured my nose and my face and said that if I KS: Everything like that. Preparation for the roll would sign that I was a Volksdeutsche [a German call. The figures had to tally. With our pre-roll call from Eastern Europe], they would release me, but in hand, they [SS officials] only had to check the I did not sign. figures; without it they would have to count and Something else happened at arrival in Ausch- write down the individual numbers. witz. There was an SS man there who had been There were separate books for the hospital my professor at the business academy in Olmuetz. compound, for BUNA [the IG Farben slave la- First he slapped me — the first slap I got there. bor camp] for the Stabsgebäude [administrative I did not cry and actually gave him a cheeky an- headquarters for the Gestapo]. Their figures were swer. Then he recognized me. Without hair, it takes entered into the main book daily. Where women a while to be recognized. He looked at me closer were active outside of the main camp, there was and said, “Aren’t you Katarine?” He helped me a a daily report of their numbers. little bit — he was not there very long and was sent to the front, but he must have talked with some- SC-S: Zippy says that you and she developed the one about me. I don’t know whom. At that time, pre-roll call (Vorappell). How did that work? everything was at a beginning: The prisoners were KS: A report was given to the Administrative Susan Cernyak-Spatz, a Holocaust survivor of Office every day by all prison administrators, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and Ravens- blockovas [Jewish women prisoners in charge of bruck, is professor emerita of German at the Univer- the blocks], etc. The SS office handed those re- sity of North Carolina. She has written and lectured ports to us from the hospital compound and from frequently in schools, colleges, and civic groups all the detached prisoners [those working out- throughout the U.S. and Europe about the Holocaust side the camp]. We then made lists of how many and how to teach it. Her memoir of her experienc- es during that period, Protective Custody Prisoner women were at each site. I handed Zippy all the 34042, was privately printed in 2005. In 2008 it was records: how many women in the Revier [hos- published in a German translation by Metropol Ver- pital], at the Stabsgebäude [staff headquarters], lag. Protective Custody Prisoner 34042 is available how many gassed. The numbers had to be pre- from her for $20, 3516 A Colony Road, Charlotte, cise, because if there were six thousand women in NC 28211. the camp, the numbers of the Vorappell had to be the same. Then the SS-Blockführer just checked Joel Shatzky last appeared in our Autumn, 2010 is- the numbers from the Vorappell, and those had sue with an interview of Diane Ravitch and a review to coincide with the numbers from the morning of her book, The Death and Life of the Great Ameri- can School System. He writes a blog, “Educating Zählappell [roll call]. for Democracy,” for the Huffington Post and is an adjunct in the English department at Kingsborough SC-S: Did you have an evening Zählappell? Community College after having retired from full- time teaching at SUNY Cortland from 1968-2005. KS: The numbers for the Vorappell were taken

24 Jewish Currents from the numbers of the evening Zählappell. And to the gas, only a hundred actually went. The rest if they did not jibe with the numbers in the morn- were “dead numbers.” [This method of deceiving ing, we had to start from scratch. the SS into believing that more inmates were ex- Zippy kept track of the numbering, together with ecuted than actually were has been independently the tattooing of numbers. If someone visited from confirmed by Helen “Zippy” Tischauer in her un- the very high-ups in the SS, she would show them published manuscript, “Method within the Mad- the model she made of the camp and her pages ness,” and Magda Blau (nee Hellinger), another and pages of statistics, and they would never come inmate of Birkenau, in U.S. Holocaust Memorial into the camp itself. The model is on exhibit in Museum interview RG 50-030-0030. It is also Auschwitz today. The Hauptbuch [main registry confirmed by Polish political prisoners Wanda of the camp] also has been retrieved. Marassanyi and Anna Palarcyk in their testimony at the Panstvove Muzeum, Auschwitz-Birkenau SC-S: The Hauptbuch contained all the informa- — JS.] tion about the women’s camp. The Nazis wanted only the control list; they did not count the people on the truck. No one ever KS: Yes. We had to deposit it every night at the found out how we had done this. Only one of gate with Drechsel and Mandel [Margot Drech- those we saved ever sought me out after the war. sel, Rapportsführer at Birkenau, and Maria Man- She was in one of the first transports, a woman del, head matron of Birkenau. Both women were who now lives in Illinois and was in Prague just known for their brutality in treating the inmates to see me. She said she was twice on the list to —JS]. But we prisoners made all the entries. the gas, and my intervention saved her. She recog- nized me immediately. I did not recognize her be- SC-S: Zippy says that you and she created the cause I just dealt with numbers, the living and the administrative organization of the camp. How did dead, but she said that I had saved her life. [Ac- you do that? cording to Marassanyi and Palarcyk, over 1,600 Slovakian women were saved by Singer, but there KS: No numbers were repeated were probably many more of [in Auschwitz-Birkenau]. The other nationalities.] numbers were registered run- ning consecutively in the big SC-S: Tell me about Margot camp book. When a prisoner Drechsel. died, the number and name were crossed out. We made individual KS: That one was a real German columns for everything in a new woman. If after the war I would book: columns for the sick, the have all of them standing in dead, the individual blocks, the front of me, and would be asked number of people in each block, whom would I take aside from well, sick, on detachment, Stab- that group [not to be punished], sgebäude, agriculture, factories. I would have to say Drechsel — With that kind of organi- not Palitsch [Gerhard Palitsch, zation in the Lagerbuch, we roll call leader in Auschwitz, saved many women’s lives. Gerhard Palitsch noted for his brutality to prison- Zippy wrote down numbers ers; later he was Katya Singer’s that were dead. When there was a selection and lover] — no one else. Because Drechsel saved all they told me the list of numbers, I inserted “dead Slovakian Jews and everyone she could. And do numbers” instead of live numbers that I wanted to you know why? She was not married, she was in save. If there were five hundred supposed to go love with Palitsch, she had no children, she was

Spring 2011 25 very ugly, but she insisted we should keep our- der. Stutthof was a terrible camp. Terrible winds, selves clean, we should wash. She would slap cold. There were only three women’s blocks and women when they were dirty only Hungarian Jewish women. or would not stand up straight. I Only one Unterscharführer [ser- told her once that a certain pris- geant] as commandant. There oner could not stand straight be- were two SS-matrons from Aus- cause she was sick — and she chwitz who knew me and greeted slapped me [for saying that]. me: “Katja you are here; every- Drechsel was the only one thing is all right,” one of them who took no food packages sent said to me. “You were lucky. Two to prisoners, which were stored days ago the gas chamber broke in the Paket Kammer [a deposi- down. Otherwise you would have tory to which the SS had access]. never gotten into the camp.” And she never did more [cruelty to prisoners] than she had to. SC-S: Were the Arbeitsdienst [work registry] and Arbeitsein- SC-S: What about Maria Man- Maria Mandel satz [work deployment depart- del? ment] in Auschwitz also orga- nized by Zippy and you? KS: She was beautiful but evil. She could not stand that I was good-looking. “What do you put KS: Both of these were connected to the Schreib- on your face?” she would ask me. “Nothing,” I stube [offices]. We were the first stage [of “pro- answered. “Why do you not have any scars?” she cessing” the prisoners] and they were the second asked, and I answered: “Do you want to give me and third stages. Arbeitsdienst organized the card some?” catalogue from our records, and the Arbeitseinsatz We were not human beings for her. She had no filled the demand for women prisoners to work interest in keeping the camp in decent condition. from the Arbeitsdienst card catalogue. Drechsel was much better in that way. Mandel The hospital compound also had a daily Zähl- was only interested that everything should run appell and sent the results to the Schreibstube. smoothly. She did very little work. Drechsel was If there were not enough people for a transport always busy in the camp. She always would say: to the gas, they would send these people to the “You can survive only if you can keep clean.” hospital compound and let them wait there until [One wonders if Singer really believed what there were enough for a gas transport. That is why, she was saying, or if she perhaps had never seen in the beginning, those destined for the gas were the inside of a new arrival block, without water, listed as “transferred to the hospital compound.” change of clothes, blankets or strawsacks, and with plenty of disease and vermin. — JS]. SC-S: Were there any political organizations in Drechsel was very honest. It must have been the women’s camp? a great disappointment for her when she found out that Palitsch loved me. When I was deported, KS: Yes, the well-known architect, Vera Foltyno- she did not come to see that happen; she did not va, was the head of a group. It was said after the betray me. She could have shot me at that time; war that it was a communist group. That is rather she could have done whatever she wanted to me. questionable because we all were only interested They sent me to Stutthof to be gassed with in surviving and possibly meeting after the war to “Sonderweisung” [a special directive to be killed create a publication that would reveal everything immediately]. When we arrived in Stutthof [Sep- about the camp. tember 2nd, 1944] the gas chamber was out of or- I often received information that I could hand

26 Jewish Currents on. Once, I accidentally lifted the telephone re- stapo they got a translator for her. Imagine, the ceiver and there was a conversation. I don’t know translator was a former school friend of mine. And who was talking, but the person said that an order they said to her: “Here is a letter for you and who had been issued [by the SS] to destroy the fam- is Macinka?” And the translator told her in Czech: ily camp. I, of course, immediately informed the “Tell them you know nothing.” Unfortunately, my camp inmates. [Confirmation that the information sister said, “That is my sister and I have not heard was spread to Auschwitz-Birkenau was made in from her for three years.” testimony by Polish inmate Anna Palarcyk. Ac- That was her downfall. They sent her to Tere- cording to the Holocaust Education and Archive zin, to the small fortress. Her husband [not Jew- Research Team, www.holocaustresearchproject. ish] was also arrested. They had a son, and they org/othercamps/showcamp.html, at the beginning put him into an orphanage. After the war, I went of September, 1943 two transports with Jews of to a Czech National Office and asked if they had Bohemian-Moravian origin the papers. The letter still left Terezin for Birkenau, The aim of all the political organiza- existed after the war. They without knowing this was tions was to make sure that the free said the Germans had taken another name for Aus- world would learn what had happened all the [other] documents chwitz. It was presented as to us. with them when they left. a family camp from which Palitsch wrote me, say- postcards were sent. It seemed from the outside to ing that when he was on the train and it went past be another ghetto like Terezin. In the summer of the camp, the passengers said it was a big factory, 1944, the Berlin delegate of the International Red and he realized that the people thought those who Cross, M. Roessel, briefly visited those “family worked there were well off. At that moment, he camps” and reported on them favorably. In De- realized that he was one of the murderers of Aus- cember, 1943 an additional five thousand Jews of chwitz, and he could not carry out the death sen- Bohemia-Moravia had to leave for the Birkenau tences in Brno. He refused to follow the orders “family camp.” In March, 1944, just at the Jew- and was immediately arrested. [According to the ish Festival of Purim, the group that left Terezin testimony of a number of Holocaust survivors, in September, 1943 died in the gas chamber. The including Marossanyi and Palarcyk, Palitsch was December group survived until May, 1944, when denounced for “Rassenschande,” having sexual many were murdered in the gas chambers. —JS] relations with Jewish inmates, obviously includ- That was actually the aim of all the political or- ing Singer, and was sent to the Eastern Front, ganizations [among the Jewish inmates]: to make where he died, probably in late 1943. —SC-S] sure that the free world would learn what had hap- pened to us. I don’t know if Zippy told you about SC-S: Who organized the working commandos, the letter she wrote for me, for Palitsch to take such as the rag-picking Effekten and the Effekten when he went to Brno. Palitsch had said he was Kanada? commanded to Brno for a court case, to carry out a death sentence on twenty people. Zippy helped KS: The SS did that weekly from the Stabsge- me write a letter, addressed to my sister, about bäude. They had the information about which how everything was in the camp. Palitsch took factory or work detail needed how many women. with him to Brno. Because of it, they arrested my The figures would be sent to Birkenau, and Man- sister. When I was little, I was “Macinka,” and I del would hand it to Drechsel, and she gave it to had signed this letter “Macinka.” It arrived and us. If, for instance, they said Siemens [a German they took my sister to the Gestapo. We had writ- manufacturing plant] needed people, then we se- ten about everything: the camp and no food, the lected women from the register for Siemens. Most stolen food packages, the gas chambers. My sister of the time, the SS women selected them, but from did not understand any German and at the Ge- time to time we could smuggle a few of our choice

Spring 2011 27 into the group. Thanks to the German bureaucra- higher in position, he would denounce the person cy, many of us survived, because they needed us standing in his way, and that one would be ar- in that bureaucracy. rested. If women stayed in the Aussenkommando [out- side work detail], they did not survive. The wom- SC-S: How come Palitsh came that frequently en in the Stabsgebaude never knew about [the into the women’s camp? horrible conditions of the “outside” workers] in Birkenau. KS: He was commander for both the men’s and the women’s camps in Birkenau. He was higher SC-S: Did you make compromises with the SS? than Maria Mandel. [According to records from Auschwitz, Palitsch did not have a high rank. — KS: When I would say I needed five or ten wom- SC-S] He was in the camp before we came. en to help me with the roll call, they would say, pick whom you want. Or I would say I needed SC-S: Who denounced Palitsch and you? And some help in another block, and they would let me what was the content of the denunciation? choose what I said I needed. Those people would be safe. When inmates brought me things from KS: Palitsch was married and had two children. Kanada [a warehouse of food, clothing and other He was ten years older than I. I was 21. He kept items, including Red Cross packages, taken from saying how I looked so much like his wife and the Jews upon their entry into Auschwitz-Birke- that I was different than all the other women. nau], and the SS needed some for their children He had been in love with a woman in the gypsy [the SS was technically not allowed to take mate- camp, but he sent her to the gas nevertheless. I rials from Kanada for personal use], I would give told him that was not a good thing to do. And he them things. Everything was used to bribe them. said he could not help himself. The SS men and the matrons were often willing That all counted against him. Brno counted to help someone, if that person was healthy and against him. Someone betrayed him. Zippy al- clean. The sick ones you could not help. The SS ways said it was Drechsel, but it was not her; it tried to avoid having to enter the blocks of the was Ria Wolf [Prisoner Camp Eldest, women’s ragged outside commandos. That was one of the camp], Ria’s sister told me. I have never under- reasons why we could save that many. stood how they did not shoot or gas me at that For instance, we would tell them [at the roll call] time. that there were twenty sick women in the block. Actually there would be only four or five, but with SC-S: Prisoners in Birkenau who were not in so many they certainly would not look into the Kanada or in any good position in the camp, ordi- block, and we could hide four to five people we nary prisoners in average commandos, have said wanted to save. The [SS] only wanted to get done in biographies and other books that the blocko- with their daily work. They did not care whether vas, especially the Slovakian ones, were beating someone stayed alive or died. the prisoners and stealing parts of their rations. Since you had selected these blockovas person- SC-S: From my research, I have learned that no ally at the beginning of Birkenau, what were your SS man was ever executed for refusing to follow criteria? orders in the camp. KS: That is not quite true. Only two were known KS: There were a lot of intrigues among the SS. to beat prisoners, the two youngest. It is always Lots of denunciation. Palitsch once told me that like that. Among a thousand people there are al- they never assigned two SS men from the same ways ten who are evil. But I did not select the town to a position. If one of them wanted to climb blockovas. Every matron had been assigned a

28 Jewish Currents block and they had decided who would be a block she could be. She did work for the Germans so she worker and who would be the blockova. . . . The could help the prisoners. She was totally unself- blockovas would beat a prisoner who was dirty ish. She would help whomever she could. As far and did not have to be dirty; who was caught as I know, she never had a lover in the camp, and stealing and did not have to steal. she was always very intelligent. Zippy never did anything harmful to anyone. SC-S: From my own experience in an Aussen- She was always straightforward with me. Once commando block, I know that it is not easy to she asked, concerning Palitsch: “Do you love keep clean there. him?” And I answered, “What is to love about him?” I said that we could help many people, be- KS: I know that Etta Wetzler was one that beat cause I know him, but if he is caught, I will be the prisoners [unnecessarily]. She was blockova caught also. on Block 25 [the death block]; that was terrible. I was also ableto help several prisoners in the SC-S: The rumor was that the blockovas skimmed men’s camp, thanks to him. They would send me off the top of the assigned food rations to the block a message that someone needed help, and through and then distributed the rest to the prisoners. Palitsch I was able to help. He would ask me why I would want to help a certain person, and I would KS: The reason given to me by the blockovas for say, these are my people. They were usually Slo- skimming off the rations was that in the new arriv- vaks or Czechs; no political prisoners. al blocks, the prisoners still had enough nutrition In the women’s camp the Slovakian women did in them to sustain them for a few weeks. Those not need any help from me [since they had “inside that had been there longer were much hungrier, so jobs”], but I also helped the Poles and the Czechs. the block workers skimmed off some rations and There was one radical communist in the camp gave them to their hungry friends. by the name of Laufer. She told me one time: “If you survive, we will kill you. Because you helped SC-S: This was an extermination camp. Why did everyone but the communists.” The men had a the SS need such precise figures for the camp better political organization. In the women’s camp morning and night? the groups were more ordered by nationalities. In the men’s camp there were no national differences KS: I never understood that, either. That is how the in the communist organization. Germans were; if they got an order they had to fol- low it. There was the order to count in the morning SC-S: Did the Jewish Polish women stick mostly and in the evening. That increases the misery of with each other? the prisoners. That had nothing to do with rations or anything; just increasing the misery. KS: Yes. They had come from the ghettos. They SC-S: What do you remember about Zippy? knew how to survive. The Greek women did not survive. Because of the cold. The political prison- KS: She was always helpful for others as much as ers would stick together.

Afterword: After liberation, Singer resumed civilian life and successfully bur- ied her past. Except for this interview, she gave no testimony on her role in Ausch-witz-Birkenau. She married a Christian, had children, and worked for the Czech government as an art gallery curator. None of the people with whom she spent the last fifty years of her life knew anything of what she had done. JC

Spring 2011 29 THERAPY

writings on psychotherapy by psychotherapists

Susan Gutwill Relational Therapy and the Feminist Movement The Personal Is, Indeed, Political

“First become a blessing to yourself that you may be a blessing to others.” ­Samson Raphael Hirsch

or thirty years now, whenever I enter my The dual emphases of relational psychotherapy office, I am grateful to be involved in my — client-therapist trust and the development of Fprofession. I see relational psychoanalytic the client’s story, as described very well by May thinking and practice as a path of liberation, not Benatar in the last installment of this column (“Why only for individuals but for society, too. By devel- Does Therapy Take So Long?”, Winter 2010-11) ­— oping the capacity for what I call “compassionate were both strongly shaped by the anti-authoritarian responsibility” for ourselves, we can better take movements for justice of my youth. The civil on the work of social responsibility. This under- rights movement, the anti-war and anti-imperialist standing — that it is neither “the system” nor “the struggles, and the women’s liberation movement personal” that alone needs to be changed, but that all combined to make it possible for the U.S. to personal change equips us to be transformational become a center of experimentation and renewal agents in the world — is a core article of “faith” for psychoanalysis in the 1960s and ’70s. In Britain, shared by feminism and Judaism, and it very much Donald Winnicott, W.R.D. Fairbairn and others had informs my work as a Jewish, feminist, progressive established object relational theory and therapy, psychotherapist. which at long last honored the fact that psychic life does not begin with the Oedipal period described by Freud, but with the psychic/somatic experience Susan Gutwill has been a psychotherapist for of maternal nurture. Yes, Freud and his immediate thirty years. She is co-author of Eating Problems: A Feminist Psychoanalytic Treatment Model, and followers were the fathers of psychoanalysis — but co-editor (with Lynne Layton and Nancy Hol- the rise of relational psychotherapy was very much lander) of Psychoanalysis, Class and Politics. She a product of the feminist movement’s questioning teaches and trains with the Women’s Therapy Cen- of “patriarchal” authority. tre Institute in New York City. Throughout much of the 1960s and into the ’70s,

30 Jewish Currents college students were not only demonstrating on to get better. So our efforts turned toward develop- campuses but educating themselves as to why their ing a critical analysis of Freud, both theoretically movements were necessary. I studied sociology, and therapeutically. but came to realize that social forces, for all their profound effect on us, could not completely explain I and many others turned to humanistic therapies, the pain in our psyches. In consciousness-raising but also to the great theoretician of the other un- (CR) groups all over the country, women like me conscious — the social unconscious — Karl Marx. began asking ourselves why we were considered By uncovering the political and economic forces second-class citizens. Despite the cognitive clarity underlying the capitalist system, Marx and Engels we gleaned in CR groups, in political action and in also uncovered the social relationships that ac- friendships, why did we still feel afraid of and guilty companied that system. Capitalism, they observed, about our own desires? Why was it so hard to accept had created a split between public and private life. our hunger for recognition, for creativity outside People no longer worked and earned a livelihood and even inside the sphere of the nuclear family, as a family; instead, men became wage workers for the right to express our anger, our sexuality, and while women, as reproducers of the labor force, our power? Why was it hard to express our desire to went unpaid and denigrated. Even women who, of receive nurture and care, as well as our capacity to necessity, worked in the labor force went underpaid, give, nurture and care? Our submissive behaviors, since, after all, it wasn’t their “main job.” These our inhibitions, our compulsions to please, blame, elements of social unconsciousness were hard to and condescend, our discomfort with our own recognize or challenge from inside capitalist soci- bodies regarding both food and sex, our urges ety, until the feminist movement did both. for mastery, our secrets about having been raped, In 1980 I had the good fortune to be introduced to molested, and having undergone unsafe abortion the newly founded Women’s Therapy Centre Insti- procedures — all of this tute (WTCI), where I trained shamed and infuriated us. From the 1960s to the 1990s, feminists and became involved at the In sharing our secrets and and relational therapists together ground floor. I had read Fat our fears, some of us finally overthrew the old ideas of the distant is a Feminist Issue by Susie realized that the struggle to doctor healing his (usually) female Orbach, and now also stud- rid ourselves of the oppres- “patients.” ied her work on anorexia as sion of women was not only a psychological and social a question of consciousness-raising, but of raising condition. Orbach collaborated with Luise Eichen- up the unconscious as well. baum to describe our theoretical and clinical work For that, many of us turned to psychoanalysis on gendered psychology. Nancy Chodorow’s The and Freud. We worked to understand the uncon- Reproduction of Mothering, Dorothy Dinnerstein’s scious mind and its mechanisms for both express- work on the psychological basis for misogyny and ing and hiding our longings and our rage. Freud’s the degradation of the Earth, and Jessica Benjamin’s patriarchal notions, however, could take us only writing on the need to recognize “the other,” were so far. In his theories, psychic life begins with the all part of the blooming of feminist psychoanalysis Oedipal period and explains how boys become and relational psychoanalytic thinking. boys and girls become girls. The contribution of Who better to contribute to such a serious critique early maternal care, for better and for worse, was of psychoanalysis than feminists, women skilled taken for granted. Despite his brilliant and essential in the art of nurture and relationship-making? contributions toward understanding unconscious From the 1960s to the 1990s, feminists and rela- defense mechanisms, for which all therapists are tional therapists together overthrew the old ideas grateful, Freud couldn’t tell us all we needed to of the distant doctor healing his (usually) female know about who we were, and about the kind of “patients.” We insisted on the need in therapy for non-patriarchal relationships we required in order a two-way relationship, in order to create a “poten-

Spring 2011 31 The family of JEWISH CURRENTS JOSEPH SOLARCHIK mourns the death of our long-time life subscriber and stalwart supporter, CULTCHA & FUNNY PAGES wish to mourn his passing J JOSEPH SOLARCHIK on March 20th, 2011 We especially express our sorrow to Joseph was a staunch trade unionist Shirley, Alan, Michael, Gail and the family. and lifelong progressive May Joe’s memory be a blessing. and will be sorely missed by all who knew him. As I see it today, psychotherapy is a process by which we become freed from self-harm and open to love and creativity. Far from cultivating The Solarchik Family navel-gazing and narcissism, therapy enables us to get unstuck and less self-involved: to grieve about our pain and the harm we have done to oth- tial space” within which the patient’s story could ers and to avoid being compulsively stuck in old, emerge and develop. We also struggled with how internalized, relational patterns (what therapists call the outside world became embedded not only in “reenactments”). By confronting, with compassion, our social and interpersonal relationships, but also the relationships and incidents that have hurt us intra-psychically, in our own dissociated selves. in our own lives, by taking command of our feel- Feminists of my generation, while honoring ings and responsibility for our future behavior, we maternal nurture (as Winnicott so beautifully de- equip ourselves to take responsibility for the larger scribes it), also insisted that mothers, inevitably world. JC second-class citizens who rarely saw themselves as subjects in their own right, inadvertently re- produced patriarchy in their daughters and sons. JAY SLOMA While consciously wishing to free their daughters 1926-2011 from its bonds, “good mothers” also had to raise us to develop the emotional antennae for nurtur- Our dear friend Jay was unique. ing others above all else, and to squelch our own A progressive who saw through the haze rage and desire in the process. Boys, meanwhile, spouted by the “born again” had to alienate themselves from their legitimate and “once again” militarists. dependency needs and their relationships with the mothers who met those needs, and instead identify He was steadfast in his commitments for with fathers who were frequently distant and de- peace and brotherhood. fensive, having been damaged by the same rules. A well-read intellectual. Feminist and relational psychoanalytic theorists We will miss him. and practitioners worked in the therapeutic rela- His fight has become ours. tionship to help patients recognize and honor their The struggle goes on undiminished. human needs, throughout life, for dependency, interdependency and self-determination. And Perry and Gladys Rosenstein they had to create a non-patriarchal relationship Jack (Yok) and Bebe (deceased) Ziebel in which to do so.

32 Jewish Currents JCULTCHA & FUNNY PAGES Supported by The Puffin Foundation, Ltd.

Joan Snyder, My Maggie

2000, lithograph, etching, 201/2” x 231/2”

Photo: Bryan Whitney

Spring 2011 33 Joan Snyder, Portrait of Emily [Alman] 1963, woodcut, 30” x 18”

34 Jewish Currents Photo: Bryan Whitney

Joan Snyder, For the Children

1988, woodcut, 391/2” x 24”

Spring 2011 35 Photo: Bryan Whitney

36 Jewish Currents Joan Snyder, Mommy, Why? 1983-’84, woodcut, hand inked, 20” x 26” Spring 2011 37 Photo: Peter Jacobs

Joan Snyder, Wild Roses

2010, lithograph, etching, woodcut, 283/8” x 383/8”

Norman Gershman, Albanian Muslims Who Saved Jews

The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous sup- to the Albanian-Israeli Friendship Association. ports people who saved Jews. Their names come Through them, I traveled all over Albania. One from Yad Vashem. I went to the foundation and professor took me around; he knew everyone. learned that in Albania and Kosovo, Muslims Now I’ve had seventy-five exhibits around the sheltered, at great risk to themselves, nearly world about these righteous people. 3,000 Jews. That led me to Yad Vashem to find out more, and one of the directors introduced me In Kosovo, 90 percent of the people are ethnic

40 Jewish Currents Albanian Muslims. Their code of honor, BESA, Clearly I’m a Jew. But I also have studied Sufi- usually translated as “faith,” dictates a moral ism, the mystical side of Islam. It’s all about behavior, a belief that one should take responsi- music and dance and beauty. When I read about bility for the lives of others, especially in their Muslim terrorists, that’s not the Islam I know. It time of need. I did this exhibit for them. I want to also made me want to take these pictures. thank each and every family, on behalf of all the —Norman Gershman, Jewish people, for their courage. interviewed by Esther Cohen

Spring 2011 41 Robert Deluty/ Beyond Numbers Alice Elizabeth Rogoff/ Happiness

Sharing with his disbelieving grandkids that The little theater company Before cell phones, ten-digit exchanges, and went to the Salvation Army Seniors Area codes included in local calls, in the Tenderloin There were NOUNS — each year, Some proper, some common — being offered Whose first letters formed the beginnings the Seniors’ lunch Of our New York City phone numbers: and getting coffee They stalk in on four graxxy legs. ALgonquin, AMbassador, AUdubon, for ten cents, She first, all buggle eye and frounce. BUtterfield, CAledonia, CLoverdale, with chairs in He rumble talk with thunder teeth CUmberland. CYpress, ESplanade, three rows for thlow like thlug and creepish. HYacinth, RAvenswood, STuyvesant, an audience, SUsquehanna, SWinburne, TIvoli, and three chairs She buzz, buzz, sniff out secret twink VAnderbilt, YUkon, and his personal favorite, for the actors; finger fishin’ in Me greenness, The dashing, heroic IVanhoe. We’d walk past A-cha-cha, I close Me red and puckered eye St. Anthony’s food line She climb Me, strulling trumper. and sidewalk sales of old clothes She reach for parts that Me alone to arrive; big X’s hung all over / Harvey Pekar RIP Alice Weiss Most everyone was Chinese, He cry, some not speaking English, Thith wrong, all wrong Comic book heroes go on forever sometimes a seat mate but Harvey Pekar died. would translate; She bite him then, The Spiderman of navel gazers, We liked to be and Me, Me juices drooly-ooly. the Superman of kvetches, done by four Shake, shake. Shake, shake the Batman of survivors, to avoid She fall on yonder ground. but Harvey Pekar died. the twilight street life; He fall down gnurly, squirrelly. The Mary Worth of memoir, It was usually the Nancy of irony, our quietest audience, Gloaming Doctor come the R Crumb of the ordinary, but when with a priori fix it. still Harvey Pekar died. we changed out of Big, Big Doc, more Drum than Squeezer. He was the whisper our costumes Squeezer don’t un-nix it. in the drawings of a hundred Escapists, and fake beards Big Doc so shmay and moan, Houdinis, and hidden Golems and packed up (whisper: we cannot get out), the props, My Babies, Dunce and Doper. but Harvey Pekar died. one elderly Chinese man, Whence Hence Anon Go long Along In a tale, once, of his heroic origins frail as bamboo, And Me all left, all lone his Krypton, his Yiddish, his zeyde would say, They stalk’t and tear Me limbs, he mourned the first death, the passing “That was very pleasant,” Me baubles Sauce and Pie-zie of the language from his tongue. going up to each one of us, Me baubles, Mameloshn, he was your grandson. shaking everyone’s hand Sauce Embrace him. in the troupe, his soft palm and Pie-zie. the consistency of a cloud.

42 Jewish Currents Alice Elizabeth Rogoff/ Happiness Helen Engelhardt Shavuos in Bethesda The little theater company I’m studying the scroll went to the Salvation Army Seniors of your body unrolled in the Tenderloin under me every phrase each year, Helena Lipstadt and phase of your skin being offered Me Graxxy Limbs a Garden Make, or, Asylum for Two Foolish holds holy script the Seniors’ lunch for my tongue to decipher and getting coffee They stalk in on four graxxy legs. the tips of my fingers to memorize. for ten cents, She first, all buggle eye and frounce. All your laws are sacred with chairs in He rumble talk with thunder teeth onto me into me three rows for thlow like thlug and creepish. your tongue tells all my an audience, secret places secrets and three chairs She buzz, buzz, sniff out secret twink I long to hear. for the actors; finger fishin’ in Me greenness, We’d walk past A-cha-cha, I close Me red and puckered eye St. Anthony’s food line She climb Me, strulling trumper. and sidewalk sales of old clothes She reach for parts that Me alone to arrive; big X’s hung all over Robert Cooperman/ Lukshen Soup Most everyone was Chinese, He cry, Lukshen soup: noodle soup some not speaking English, Thith wrong, all wrong sometimes a seat mate for Friday night dinners, my mother a big believer would translate; She bite him then, in “substantial” suppers, We liked to be and Me, Me juices drooly-ooly. meaning enough food done by four Shake, shake. Shake, shake to sate Napoleon’s army. to avoid She fall on yonder ground. the twilight street life; He fall down gnurly, squirrelly. It was usually We’d begin with the noodles swimming like eels in the broth. our quietest audience, Gloaming Doctor come I slurped them down, first but when with a priori fix it. swirling them in circles, we changed out of Big, Big Doc, more Drum than Squeezer. earning my mother’s frown: our costumes Squeezer don’t un-nix it. food wasn’t to be played with. and fake beards Big Doc so shmay and moan, and packed up “Lukshen,” she’d let the word the props, My Babies, Dunce and Doper. roll off her tongue, her synonym one elderly Chinese man, Whence Hence Anon Go long Along for “Love” coaxing us to ladle frail as bamboo, And Me all left, all lone more and more. would say, They stalk’t and tear Me limbs, “That was very pleasant,” Me baubles Sauce and Pie-zie “Lukshen”: it sounded going up to each one of us, Me baubles, like the baby-bath-warm waters shaking everyone’s hand Sauce in the troupe, of the Gulf when, years later, Beth and I waded in, his soft palm and Pie-zie. the consistency of a cloud. seaweed swirling around our ankles with the tide: noodles in my mother’s lukshen soup.

Spring 2011 43 Laurie Ourlicht, Street Scene

Elaine Schear/ No Joke

At age ninety she makes matzo ball soup He samples the soup and makes for her younger brother age eighty-eight. jokes about what a bad cook she is.

She drives from her place in King’s Point She says Go to hell, Heshie, to his house in Spring Lake in the rain. his nickname from when they were little.

She’s wearing galoshes, soup sloshing in Tupperware I’m never coming back here! on the passenger side floor. He says Good, but

They compare each other’s answers when you pick up the container to the day’s crossword. bring me some brisket.

44 Jewish Currents Elaine Schear/ Generosity

Last year toy boats and farm animals bobbed under the bathtub mirror adjusted to her bubble beards and soaped-up brows. These days she reads in quiet water, washes her hair by candlelight.

She invites me for a foot massage insisting, Don’t Look! as she raises Laurie Ourlicht, Shero her young body, unguarded, from her warm watery cover, even though I’ve been there all along admiring her steamy shrine, the shrine of her.

I sling my bristly legs and knobby feet over the cold edge of the tub, shins suspended above her pool. She takes up the washcloth in silent concentration, applies her favorite cinnamon soap. She gently bathes each toe and wrinkled sole.

Todd Friedman/ A Poem for Nuriel

We’re riding along the Hudson And I’m enjoying the view When suddenly Nuriel asks If we’re going to leave him on the train We would never do anything like that I tell him Then I ask why he would ask such a question Nuriel just shrugs his shoulders

But maybe he’s thinking of that other river After all he talks a lot about Baby Moses Think of Yocheved placing her son in a basket Hope against hope The idea that someone might draw him out

And so here we are, my son Your mother in Guatemala placed you in a basket And now you test the waters Kicking, pushing, biting the other kids in your class As if that could bring you back to the mother you never knew All I can do is hug you, my child Knowing full well Moses had that anger rising in him too

Spring 2011 45 Fredda Jaffe/ Einsteinium

Why is the sky dark at night? We come from the dust of stars. The Universe accordions. Thoughts with no beginning and no end. Folds tent-like. Expansion and cooling. Pictures save words. Time and space are not separate. Words slip from the page, shake off their bindings, and hover. Gravity refuses seconds. Dying stars explode. Beneath a calm exterior, space tells matter how to move. The nearest stars lie more than twenty five million million miles away. Between a thing and a thought. Matter tells space how to curve. The hotter the coffee, the faster it loses its heat. Any universe that is a home for life must be big and old. It doesn’t matter when you are. Even if everything in the Universe were suddenly transformed into light, a hanging picture becomes crooked. Big and old, dark and cold. More stars than drops of water in all the oceans. Just three degrees above absolute zero. A nearby dim star may appear brighter than a more distant bright star. Hydrogen, oxygen, uranium, absolve us. Each element, each moment is a separate universe, just as each frame of a film or page of a book is separate. Isaac Newton performs somersaults. No atoms, no planets, no stars, no gazers. A faint glimmer. Once the night sky was dark for everyone.

Laurie Ourlicht, A Long Way Home

46 Jewish Currents Laurie Ourlicht, Thelma and Rose I. Century/ Dubrow’s Cafeteria

In time for the half-price dinner special, “Maybe something else?” you slide your tray along the steam table You look at your tray once more; with the selections you have made from a Jewish mother’s delight. juice or soup, You look at the counter man’s pallid face; two veggies (no salad), it resembles your father’s. chicken or fish, “How about a kiss?” you hear yourself say. rye, white or whole wheat bread, A wisp of a steamy smile passes over his lips. rice pudding or jello, “That’s a good one,” he says, coffee or tea. and hands you a dish of kasha varnishkas. No exceptions! From somewhere on the line behind you You pause to look down at your choices; a prophetic voice calls out, there is barely room for knife and fork. “Comes the revolution we will all get kasha varnishkas.” The man behind the counter asks, “But I don’t like kasha varnishkas,” another voice says. “Like them or not, you will get kasha varnishkas.”

John DeCarlo/ Mind Expansion

With all our latent brain power — Steadily gaze upward at the night sky the endless number of permutations that contemplating the seemingly endless array of stars can occur between neurons and networks people often wonder how to maximize Draw the luminary points of light down — into their potential the billions of neuronal seedlings in your brain

Go to Berlin and stand dead center of One by one — while mindful of the deceased — the cement pillars of the Jewish Memorial Spring 2011 shower the buds with compassionate attention 47 Photo: Zindman/Freemont

Joan Snyder, Rites of Passage 48 Jewish Currents 1996, monoprint, 351/2” x 231/4” JCULTCHA & FUNNY PAGES BIOS

I. Century is the author of From the Coffee House of Alice Elizabeth Rogoff is the author of Mural, a book Jewish Dreamers and other books of poetry. His work of poems from which “Happiness” is reprinted. She is has appeared in Chelsea Review, Midstream, and Jews., active with the Communications Workers of America and was anthologized in Best Jewish Writing 2003. in the Bay Area and has been an editor of the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal since 1984. Robert Cooperman (www.bobcooperman.com) is the author of My Shtetl, winner of the 2009 Holland Prize, Elaine Schear is co-founder and president of a non- which includes his poem, “Lukshen Soup.” His other profit foundation supporting academic programs at collections include The Words We Used and A Dream Cambridge’s public high school. She is also a writing of the Northwest Passage. He won the Colorado Book tutor and editor working in public schools and in pri- Award in 2000 and recently had his work read by vate practice. Her chapbook, Nine Hours from Oswego Garrison Keillor on NPR’s “The Writer’s Almanac.” (from which two poems appear in this issue of JC) was published in 2011 by Big Table Publishing Company. John DeCarlo teaches in the Writing Studies Depart- ment at Hofstra University. His most recent poetry Joan Snyder is an American painter and printmaker collection is titled Walking Through Lebanon. whose work has been widely exhibited since her in- clusion in the 1972 Biennial Exhibition at the Whitney Helen Engelhardt is an activist, author, poet, story- Museum of American Art. Snyder was among the teller and independent audio artist. She sings with the feminist pioneers who helped break open the world Brooklyn Jewish Community Chorus and is a member of museums and galleries to women artists in the of the Brooklyn Dialogue Circle. Her works include 1970s. A 2007 recipient of the MacArthur Foundation The Longest Night — A Personal History of Pan Am Fellowship, she has work in many museum collec- 103, an audiobook. tions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Todd Friedman is a high school English teacher who Museum of Modern Art, and The Jewish Museum in has won an Anna Davidson Rosenberg award for a New York City, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, poem on the Jewish experience. the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Norman Gershman is a fine-art photographer who also in D.C. In 2005, The Jewish Museum presented spent five years capturing the stories of heroic Alba- a thirty-five-year survey of her work that traveled to nian Muslims who saved Jews from the Holocaust. the Danforth Museum in Framingham, Massachu- His traveling show, “BESA: Muslims Who Saved setts. Abrams Books published a monograph, Joan Jews in World War II,” has been exhibited worldwide Snyder, in conjunction with the exhibition, with an and published in a book by Syracuse University Press. introduction by Norman Kleeblatt and essays by Hayden Herrera and Jenni Sorkin. Snyder currently Fredda Jaffe lives in Seattle and works as a family has two shows at Rutgers University, her alma ma- therapist. She received an Arts Fellowship through the ter: “Dancing with the Dark,” a retrospective of her Earthwatch Institute to study salmon habitat restora- printmaking, 1963-2010, at the Zimmerli Art Museum tion on the Skagit River, and served as a writer-in-res- (until May 29th), and “Intimate Works,” a survey of idence through Writers in the Schools. “Einsteinium” small paintings spanning forty-five years of work, at appears courtesy of Drash: A Northwest Mosaic. the Mabel Smith Douglass Library (until June 5th). Helena Lipstadt lives in Los Angeles. Her two chap- Her work is represented by the Elena Zang Gallery, books are Leave Me Signs and If My Heart Were a www.elenazang.com, (845) 679-5432. Desert and her poems and short stories have appeared in Bridges, Sinister Wisdom, and Lilith, among others. Alice Weiss practiced civil rights law in a southern She designs native plant gardens and plays ukulele. state for twenty years, wrestling for justice and integration in jails, schools and bodies of govern- Laurie Ourlicht (1953-2010) was a widely exhibited ment. Now she struggles to make language sing. She painter, printmaker and sculptor. She worked as a received her MFA in poetry from New England Col- nurse-midwife at Kings County Hospital in New York, lege in January of 2010, a few months after her 68th and was a part of the Camp Kinderland community birthday. forSpring many 2011 years. 49 Jewish Activist Voices A New Column of Conversations

Ethan Nadelmann, Drug Policy Alliance

Ethan Nadelmann is founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance (www.drugpolicy.org), headquartered in New York City, which works with legislators and grassroots organizations nationwide to propose alternatives to the forty-year-old War on Drugs. Nadelmann, the son of a rabbi, holds a PhD from Harvard and a master’s degree in international relations from the London School of Economics. He is the author of Cops Across Borders, the first scholarly study of the internationalization of U.S. criminal law enforcement, and co-author of Policing the Globe: Criminalization and Crime Control in International Relations. He has appeared on The Colbert Report and numerous other media outlets.

Jewish Currents: Six years ago, we had a spiritual benefits of psychedelics used in particular cover story in Jewish Currents that featured a environments. group discussion among several researchers who At the same time, the War on Drugs has increased are investigating the therapeutic possibilities of tenfold the number of people behind bars for drug psychedelic drugs and MDMA (Ecstasy). We violations, from fifty thousand in 1980 to half a “politicized” the article by including a sidebar about million in recent years. We lock up more people the social costs of the War on Drugs, yet many of for drug violations in America than the European our readers, especially of the older generation, Union locks up for all offenses put together — and seemed to consider the whole feature frivolous. they have a hundred million more people than we have. We’re talking about five or six million people Ethan Nadelman: Being able to talk about the carrying a drug felony conviction and hampered for positive aspects of drugs that are currently prohib- life because of it. We’re talking about a massive ited has to be part of this discussion. Our govern- prison industrial complex that eats up between $50 ment is actually paying for serious research about and $100 billion a year. This is also a cutting-edge psychedelics and MDMA as tools for dealing with issue for those people in America who want to push post-traumatic stress, with the fear of death, with back basic civil liberties and basic civil rights, who pain, with a range of conditions. Heavyweights of want to curtail the basic freedoms that are in the American drug research, including some who have Bill of Rights. They use the War on Drugs to legiti- been closely linked to the War on Drugs, have been mize a much more oppressive vision of American

Portraits by Babette Elderbee pointing to powerful scientific evidence about the society. None of this is frivolous.

50 Jewish Currents JC: If you were writing the law, how would you AIDS, Hepatitis C, all these negative consequences handle these issues? of drug prohibition. And the evidence from Europe and Canada shows that you would also see some EN: The framework is to think about the variety of of these people switching into methadone mainte- drug policies on a spectrum, from the most puni- nance or deciding to go drug-free. tive, prohibitionist policies that you see in parts of Part of transforming the way we deal with drugs Asia and to some extent in the United States, to in American society, and more broadly in global the most libertarian, free-market policies. I would society, is sensitizing people not only to the hor- define the sweet spot on that spectrum as accom- rific consequences of a prohibitionist policy — the plishing two objectives: reducing the harms of drug crime, the violence, the corruption, the overflowing use and reducing the harms of drug prohibition prison cells, the violation of rights — but also to and control. My model would be a legal but tough accept the reality that we’re never going to be a regulatory approach, something like the World drug-free society, that drugs are here to stay, and Health Organization’s tobacco control convention. that the real challenge is to learn how to live with That’s been embraced by dozens of governments them so they cause the least possible harm and the as a tough regulatory model that keeps prohibitions greatest possible good. more or less at the edges of the policy. With respect to marijuana, the basic objective is No one should be criminalized or punished for to regulate it and tax it more or less as alcohol is, the possession or use of a small amount of any drug especially in states and countries that have tough for their own use, so long as they’re not behind the regulatory policies. Instead, today we have over wheel of a car or putting other people in direct risk. eight hundred thousand Americans getting arrested If you want to possess a little bit of cocaine or mari- for marijuana, with Mexican gangsters making mil- juana or LSD, that should not lions of dollars, with people be a crime. That’s our core We’re never going to be a drug-free dying, all of that. A significant majority of principle of sovereignty over society. Drugs are here to stay, and the mind and body, that no one Americans now accept the real challenge is to learn how to live should be punished for what evidence that marijuana has they put in their body, absent with them so they cause the least legitimate medical uses. harm to others. possible harm and the greatest But you also have other I would then move in the possible good. benefits, besides the tradi- direction of making drugs tional medicinal ones, ben- available from legally regulated sources to those efits that people use for broader enjoyment of life: people who are determined to obtain them. We’re their tactile life, their sexual life, their intellectual increasingly allowing people who have legitimate life. There’s not been much research documenting medical marijuana needs to use cannabis dis- this, but it’s pretty widely known, and it should pensaries in Colorado, New Jersey, Maine, New be included as part of the broader dialogue about Mexico, Arizona, and California; heroin mainte- drug policy reform. nance programs have popped up in Europe and in Canada, allowing people who are addicted to JC: Why isn’t Phillip Morris funding you? One get pharmaceutical heroin from a clinic. First and would think that tobacco and pharmaceutical foremost we need to allow the people who are companies are poised to make these substances, most addicted to these substances to obtain them especially marijuana, into lucrative products. in legal, regulated forms, because that is the best way to dry up the black market. If the majority of EN: To my knowledge, the alcohol and tobacco people who are severely addicted to heroin could companies are not at all involved. They’re not fund- obtain that drug from legal sources, you would see ing my organization, we’re not seeking their fund- a serious dimunition in arrests, criminality, HIV- ing, and I don’t think they’re funding anybody else

Spring 2011 51 In memory of my beloved comrade Leonard Feldman Paul Bert McGowan April 3rd, 1927—March 8th, 2011 February, 1937—April, 2007 Lenny was a mentsh in all ways: a person of principle, Uniquely insightful teacher and therapist, and a loving and caring brilliant polymath, husband, father, tireless marcher against war and bigotry, grandfather and friend. doting parent and grandparent. He was a teacher and He believed in music, children, poetry, and learning, a lifelong progressive. We will all miss him. in fighting injustice, Our love goes to in caring for friends. Barbara, Linda, Carla, Funny, warm and kind, Paula, and their families. He taught me so much and so well. Troim and Frank Handler “ . . . Say what you like as you trudge along Shirley and Jerry Anger The world won’t turn without a song.” Mickey and Sam Leiner Adele Olson Judee Rosenbaum Milly Safar Brooklyn, New York Bernice Grader involved in drug policy reform. The pharmaceutical EN: I couldn’t do the work I do without being companies are involved around the edges, with optimistic, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t things that directly involve them — for example go through periods when you feel despair. The methodone maintenance. Pharmaceutical compa- 2010 election in the House of Representatives is nies are producers of opioid medications — some- going to push us back, but even there we’ll look for times they’re overly aggressive in promoting these opportunities. If the Republicans want to cut bud- — and part of our agenda as drug policy reformers gets, they should be willing to cut the drug war is to fight against the pervasive opia-phobia in our budget. society and against the unreasonable restrictions The rapid movement of opinion on marijuana imposed by the Drug Enforcement Administration legalization has encouraged me more than almost on the rights of doctors to properly treat pain. So we anything else. Just a few weeks ago, the new and the pharmaceutical companies and the medical Republican governor of Georgia said, Look, we community do dovetail in our interests. can’t afford to keep locking up nonviolent drug As support for making marijuana legal has offenders, we have to find another way. Andrew jumped from 36 percent in 2005 to 46 percent today, Cuomo, in his inaugural speech, said we can’t keep and opposition has dropped from 60 percent to 50 building prisons as part of a jobs program. Just as percent, I would imagine companies are looking the Depression was the thing that brought down more and more at the potential there. The desire alcohol prohibition and led to the 21st Amendment for profit is always going to play a role, whether so quickly, so is the very severe recession we’re it’s legal or illegal on the production side. going through forcing politicians to think and talk some sense around drug reform. JC JC: Are you optimistic about ending the War on Drugs?

52 Jewish Currents Joel Schechter

Radical Yiddish Elijah the Ethnographer: A New Biography of S. An-sky

oward the end of her superb biography of however, he never entirely left behind Yiddish S. An-sky, Gabriella Safran compares the Russian culture or his early friendship with Yid- TRussian-born ethnographer and writer to dishist theorist Chaim Zhitlovsky. the prophet Elijah. Like the prophet, who was First earning income as a tutor while writing imagined by some Eastern European Jews to ap- fiction, An-sky then supported himself as a laborer pear in disguise bearing gifts and news for those in the salt mines near the Donets Basin. He was who welcomed him, An-sky (1863-1920) often traveled alone, without fanfare, to urban centers in Poland and Russia, and spent time in rural discussed in this essay Jewish settlements devastated by pogroms and Wandering Soul: The Dybbuk’s Creator, S. An-sky, war. He delivered gifts in the form of war relief. by Gabriella Safran. Harvard University Press, 2010, While not exactly disguising himself, the new 392 pages. Elijah adopted a pseudonym (An-sky) and kept altering his professional profile during his fifty- arrested in 1907 for writings that allegedly incited seven years of life: revolutionary, ethnographic rebellion and insulted the tsar, but spent only three expedition leader, war relief distributor, essayist, weeks in jail. In 1909, he decided to dedicate his playwright, novelist, revolutionary insider, and life to the collection of folklore. A secular and Jewish museum founder. He became a different progressive Jew, like his friend Zhitlovsky, An- person to different groups, and was accepted, as sky initially thought the folklore and artifacts of Safran notes, “equally among traditional Jews, Jewish religious life that he collected on ethno- radicals, and the Russian liberal intelligentsia, graphic expeditions might inspire a new secular Galician Jews and the Russian soldiers whom they Jewish culture. According to Safran, he was “com- feared.” In the manner of Elijah, “he too revealed pelled to redefine Jewishness for a post-religious his identity only when he chose.” This new biogra- era, to create or promote literature, theater, or mu- phy, the first full-length English language study of sic that could reinforce Jewish identify and satisfy An-sky, adeptly captures his transformations with the aesthetic and spiritual longings of a modern a wealth of lively detail and authoritative insight. people. For him, the way to revitalize the culture Shloyme-Zanvl Rappoport’s birthname was was to seek its roots in ethnographic work.” given to him in the Jewish Pale of Settlement, near Vitebsk, in 1863. Later he began to use a One result was his play, The Dybbuk, written pseudonym, like other Yiddish writers. Rappoport after the author heard Jewish tales about dead derived “An-sky from “Anonim” (anonymous), souls that possess bodies and return to life. Poet with “sky” at the end). Even with the name change, Avraham Shlonsky was not entirely wrong when

Spring 2011 53 he was not shy about speaking in public on urgent issues. Safran vividly describes such scenes as his 1915 address to the First All-Russian Congress of Folk Theater Activists in Moscow, where he spoke against the wartime ban on Yiddish theater. While a police agent recorded his statements, An- sky praised the wartime theater congress for its demonstration that “cultural development is more valuable to the people than bloody slaughter.” Safran’s chronological study and her gentle, Talmudic (but secular) commentary on the cre- ative turns in An-sky’s intellectual, political, and artistic wandering, pay tribute in a form he might have welcomed. “As he faced death in Warsaw [in 1920],” remarks Safran, An-sky “told people to A Habima version of The Dybbuk, with puppets study his biography, not his writings, as though his actions were able to communicate more clearly he described an early version of An-sky’s play, than his words.” While his own works of fiction, with its tale of a bride possessed by the spirit of plays, and ethnographic studies certainly merit a man she could not marry, as “an ethnographic reading, Safran’s groundbreaking biography of- museum strewn with bits of folktales, religious fers a thorough and lively portrait of this cultural rituals, etc.” radical in action. Now considered a landmark in Yiddish theatre history, The Dybbuk was never staged during An- This book is one of several contemporary efforts sky’s lifetime. Stanislavsky considered opening it to revisit An-sky’s work, some of which was un- at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1918, but did not. finished at his time of death. Plates for an album The Dybbuk was translated into Hebrew for the of Jewish graphic art that he planned in 1918 were Habima in Russia, but the play first opened in War- finally published in 1994 and 2001; musical re- saw in December, 1920. That Yiddish premiere by cordings from his early ethnographic expeditions the Vilna Troupe was enormously successful. The were issued on compact discs after 1997; some fact that Russian and Hebrew versions of it circu- of his expedition photographs were published lated before the 1920 opening attests to An-sky’s for the first time in 2001; Joachim Neugroschel’s interest in connecting with diverse communities. English translation of An-sky’s account of travel Safran suggests that An-sky lived, somewhat through the Pale of Settlement and the destruc- like the dybbuk in his play, in at least two worlds, tion of Galicia in World War I appeared in 2002; the Jewish and Russian cultures. He was fully at The Worlds of S. An-sky, an anthology of essays home in neither, but conversant with both. Dedi- (including one by Safran), was published in 2008. cated to documentation of traditional Jewish folk- Like Elijah, An-sky continues to bear gifts — in lore and radical political change, he sometimes this case, new opportunities for Yiddishists, teach- bridged these worlds by collecting remnants of ers, and translators to learn from his advancement destroyed Yiddish shtetl life and seeking state of secular Jewish culture and to continue it. relief for its victims. When dressed in his wartime In his own day, besides the attention he won relief worker’s uniform, including a tall, pale fur from comrades and fellow writers, he also attract- hat, An-sky could pass for a non-Jewish Russian ed police surveillance. In 1910, police attended soldier, which allowed him to act on behalf of his public speeches in Vilna, Dvinsk, Minsk, endangered Jewish communities without anti- Kiev, and Grodno. Without meaning to praise the Semitism obstructing his work. At the same time, activist, one Vilna policeman filed a report stating

54 Jewish Currents that An-sky “was the first of the Jewish writers to respond to the voice of the Jewish worker and to support him in his fight for freedom.” Employing A sizzling account of a life lived Russian, Yiddish, and occasionally Hebrew, the in the thick of every important new Elijah could reach out to different groups, struggle of the sixties. and different political factions. One of his Yiddish songs (“The Oath”) became the Jewish Labor

Bund’s anthem, although at that time An-sky was “Bill Zimmerman’s far more devoted to the Socialist Revolutionary memoir is…both a Party in Russia than to the Bund. thoughtful eyewitness history of America’s For a brief period, his radical politics met with war at home and a success. After years of struggling against those thrilling political in power, An-sky found his friends shaping gov- adventure story. An engaging exhortation ernment programs in Russia after 1917. Safran to take risks and live reports that “he was suddenly an insider of not a meaningful life.” one but all the groups jostling for power. . . . For —Kirkus Reviews everyone who mattered in Petrograd in the spring of 1917, An-sky’s lifetime of writing, editing and speaking, his aid work . . . defined him as an authoritative public intellectual.” He saved a few Available wherever books are sold men from execution, and won election as a Duma Doubleday www.doubleday.com delegate. An-sky expected revolutionary Russia to accommodate Jewish cultural autonomy and protect the rights of landless people, including also may be understood through his biography; for Jews. His optimism led him to plan publication giving An-sky a new life, which she has inscribed of a new “album of Jewish antiquities” and to sell in Wandering Soul, Gabriella Safran deserves rights to a book about Galicia that he hadn’t yet high praise. JC written. In 1917, such cultural and political goals seemed attainable, but all that ended in January, 1918, when the Bolsheviks dissolved the Constitu- ent Assembly in Petrograd. Reprisals and a so- BEBE ZIEBEL called dictatorship of the proletariat followed. As a Socialist Revolutionary supporter, An-sky had to flee for his life to Vilna, where he was highly Lovely, warm and charming Bebe. regarded by the Jewish community. Beauty followed her wherever she went. The promise of a new future for Jewish culture Depression, poverty, and war in Russia, then in Poland, was advanced con- left her undaunted. siderably by An-sky, despite repeated setbacks. Her dream of building a beautiful world, His ethnography progressed to well-financed will continue to inspire us, all. collecting expeditions and museum exhibitions of the culture’s endangered remnants. His fifteen She will be greatly missed. volumes of collected writing, and the artifacts and folklore he preserved, can still be appreciated. But his roles as a public intellectual and cultural Perry and Gladys Rosenstein activist, his profile as a new Elijah who promoted and families secular Judaism and extended its capacity to ad- dress modern crises and create new culture, now

Spring 2011 55 BOOKBOOK REVIEWSREVIEWS

Bennett Muraskin Secular Jewish Thought and Its Antecedents

avid Biale is a first-rate Jewish intellectual Biale cites this story as a religious precedent for and Emanuel Ringelblum Professor of Jewish free thought — even though the dissenter is D History at the University of California, ultimately excommunicated for refusing to accept Davis — a position named for the archivist of the the majority view, while the leader of the majority Warsaw Ghetto, a leftwing Zionist and avowed pays for their rulings with his life. secular Jew who was murdered by the Nazis. It is particularly fitting that the man occupying that Biale’s fundamental argument is that Jewish sec- chair has written a book about the rather neglected ularism was very much grounded in the religious world of Jewish secular thought. tradition it rejected. Going back in the tradition His title refers to a well-known story from the to the Bible, he points to the subversive nature of Talmud, the “oven of Akhnai,” in which the rab- the books of Esther, Ecclesiastes, Job and Song of Songs; Esther for its absence of references to God, Job for its character’s defiance of God,Ecclesias - discussed in this essay ties for its existential world view, and Song of Not in the Heavens: The Tradition of Jewish Secular Songs for its secular love poetry. Biale also cites Thought, by David Biale. Princeton University an array of pre-modern Jewish freethinkers who Press, 2011, 229 pages. kept alive the spirit of critical thought, including Elisha ben Abuyah, the best-known Jewish heretic, who lived in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries CE bis are debating a ritual matter. All but one are as a teacher, student and famously sharp critic of in agreement, yet the lone dissenter backs up his prominent Talmudic rabbis. Biale includes the 9th- opinion by invoking a variety of miracles, even a century Persian heretic Hivi al-Balkhi, who was voice from heaven. The majority, however, refuses at least as radical as Elisha ben Abuyah, and two to yield on the grounds that “The Torah is not in European humanist thinkers, the 16th-century Ital- the heavens,” which essentially means that they ian scholar Azariah de Rossi, who used neglected have the right to come to their own conclusions. Jewish and non-Jewish sources to reconstruct the history of Jews in the Hellenic and Roman eras, th th Bennett Muraskin writes widely about secular and the 15 to 16 -century historian Solomon Ibn Jewish thought and trends and is the author of Verga, who was only one among those exiled from Humanist Readings in Jewish Folklore and Let Spain and Portugal to write about the experience Justice Well Up Like Water: Progressive Jews from a mainly secular perspective. from Hillel to Helen Suzman, among other works. But this is only the forshpays (appetizer). Jew-

56 Jewish Currents ish secular thought, Biale says, really begins with rich Heine, therefore, the Bible symbolized social Baruch Spinoza, who denied the existence of a revolution; to Ahad Ha’am, freedom and justice; supernatural God and demonstrated that the Bible to Ben Gurion, the restoration of a Jewish state. was a purely human creation, full of misconcep- Moses became the exemplary Jewish hero, a man tions. No one disputes this. Where Biale thinks he is of great moral stature as a lawgiver and a leader. breaking new ground is by claiming that “medieval Nearly all of these secularists extolled the prophets Jewish philosophy . . . prepared the ground” for as paragons of Jewish ethics, while removing God Spinoza’s radical subversion of Biblical theology. from the picture. By “medieval Jewish philosophy,” Biale primarily Some Zionists, notes Biale, thought the Bible and means Maimonides (1135-1204). Can he mean the Moses too soft. Micha Joseph Berdichevsky and, same Maimonides who painstakingly listed the to an even greater extent, Joseph Brenner and Zev 613 mitzvot (commandments), conceived the Ani Jabotinsky embraced the Biblical Joshua and other Maamin (Thirteen Articles of Faith), compiled fighting Jews from the Maccabees to the Zealots as the massive Mishneh Torah, explaining all the their heroes. For these Zionist militants, diaspora laws of the Talmud, and unequivocally asserted existence was a disgrace and nearly everything that God gave Moses the Torah on Sinai and that anti-Semites said about Jews was true. Only by He exists throughout time as supernatural creator, becoming Hebrew, pagan warriors in Palestine lawgiver and judge? Yes, says Biale, Maimonides could Jews redeem themselves. inspired Spinoza by insisting that God could not be Only a relatively few notable secularists praised described in human terms and that the Bible could the Talmud, and then it was for its legends (agad- be reconciled with Aristotle’s philosophy. dot) rather than for its laws (halakhot). Hebrew Even more fanciful is national poet Chaim Nach- Biale’s claim that the Kab- Biale’s fundamental argument is that man Bialik, for example, balistic concept of God as Jewish secularism was very much considered the agada to em- a void (Ayn Sof) somehow grounded in the religious tradition that body the Jewish spirit, and paved the way for Spinoza’s it rejected, but this is not the revelation he and Yehoshua Ravnitsky conception of God as nature, were the first to collect them he makes it out to be. no more and no less. Biale for the modern reader. The is more on target, however, in making the con- secular Yiddishist Chaim Zhitlovsky (about whom nection between Spinoza and Abraham Ibn Ezra Biale writes, but not in this context) wrote that (1089-1164), Maimonides’ older contemporary, “[The God of the agada is a humanized God . . . who suggested that Moses could not have written The narratives from the agada . . . contain so much the entire Torah and that the Bible was not the fount human beauty . . . that even the soul of an atheist of all knowledge. can be inspired by them . . .”

While Spinoza had no use for the Bible as a source While Biale’s perception of Jewish secularism of Jewish values, the proponents of the Haskalah, as grounded in religious antecedents is not the the Jewish Enlightenment, and most of their secu- revelation he makes it out to be, he does an excel- lar descendants of the 19th and first half of the 20th lent job summarizing the ideas of many secular centuries emphatically did. As Biale relates, their Jewish thinkers, including Moses Hess, Theodor nemesis was the Talmud. No “oven of Akhnai” Herzl, Zhitlovsky, Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, story could mitigate the oppressive burden of Mordecai Kaplan, Hannah Arendt and Horace Talmudic law and ritual that sapped the vitality of Kallen. Less-known but fascinating figures are also the Jewish people in the diaspora. The Bible, on profiled, such as Juan de Prado, who was excom- the other hand, with its kings, prophets, farmers municated by the same rabbinic court as Spinoza and warriors, hearkened back to a time when Jews but, unlike him, insisted on his right to be both Jew- were a proud people in their own land. To Hein- ish and secular. Another is the French Jew Bernard

Spring 2011 57 ABE ARNOLD ABE ARNOLD In Loving Memory of MADELINE LASHER (1917-2011) His scholarshipHis scholarship inspired our ouraffiliates affiliates Beloved mother, grandmother, acrossacross North America. America. and great-grandmother Long time supporter of Jewish Currents כּבוד זײַן ליכטיקן אָנדענק kovid zayn likhtikn ondenk for Humanistic Judaism, the Congress of Secular All honorkovid zaynto his likhtikn bright ondenk memory! Jewish Organizations, and the oldest secular Jew- All honor to his bright memory! ish organization in North America, the Workmen’s Circle. Instead, Biale expatiates on the fluid nature CONGRESS OF SECULAR JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS CONGRESS OF SECULAR of Jewish identity in the U.S., which allows Ameri- cans to straddle the secular/religious divide, and JEWISH ORGANIZATIONS praises formerly Orthodox Jews Shalom Auslander and Nathan Englander for exploring this dichotomy in their short stories. Lazare, a crusader for the vindication of Dreyfus This is not sufficient. Sherwin Wine, author of and a left Zionist critic of Herzl. We also learn that Judaism Beyond God; Mitchell Silver, author of Emma Lazarus, a Sephardic Jew who worked to Respecting the Wicked Child; Lawrence Bush, improve the lot of Ashkenazi immigrants and wrote author of Waiting for God: the Spiritual Reflections “The New Colossus,” the sonnet engraved in the of a Reluctant Atheist; Barnett Zumoff, editor of base of the Statue of Liberty, was also a Zionist Secular Jewishness For Our Time — are they not and a secularist. American secular Jewish thinkers? Biale is entitled In my judgment, however, Biale pays insufficient to his opinions, positive or negative, of these orga- attention to the seminal figure Simon Dubnow, the nizations, this literature, and these writers, but he chief theorist of Diaspora Nationalism and cultural is not entitled to ignore them. autonomy. He also entirely omits other luminaries It also seems obvious to this reviewer that Biale from Eastern Europe such as the highly influential did not consult Judaism in a Secular Age (1995), Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz and the Socialist Zion- which includes brief biographies and selections ist theorist Ber Borochov — and one searches from the writings of most of the secular Jewish the book in vain for a Bundist, despite the Jewish thinkers he discusses in his book; nor does he cite Labor Bund’s profound commitment to secular the first anthology of secular Jewish thought, The Jewish learning. Faith of Secular Jews (1976). This is unfortunate, Biale discerns the evolving nature of secular as both books are graced with brilliant introduc- Jewish thought in Israel in the poetry of the late tions by two secular Jewish scholars, Israeli histo- Yehuda Amichai and the novels of Amos Oz. He rian Yehuda Bauer in the former case and American notes that young Israeli secularists are now study- Yiddish educator Saul Goodman in the latter. ing religious texts with a critical eye, but fails to Not in the Heavens is an important contribution mention Tmura, the institute that trains Secular to our understanding of secular Jewish thought, Humanistic Rabbis and Jewish leaders in Israel, but its author ought to acknowledge his intellectual which as of this writing has ordained twenty rabbis. predecessors and as well as current movements of Tmura was formed by the International Institute secular humanistic Jews who represent, in both for Secular Humanistic Judaism, based in the U.S. theory and practice, an alternative to religious Although Biale was an invited speaker at one of its Judaism in North America. We may be small and colloquia in Michigan in 2003, he acts as if it does not have all the answers, but mir zaynen nokh doh! not exist. He is equally silent about the Society (We are still here!) J C

58 Jewish Currents Barnett Zumoff The Yiddish Secular Shule and Camp A Hundred-Year History

earning that one’s own corner of history riculum. In 1909, the New York kehile (the formal is but a small piece of an enormous and community structure) established the Bureau of Jewish Lcomplex tapestry gives personal memo- Education to serve as a central focus of these educa- ries even greater depth and meaning. Fradle tional efforts. By 1915, about 100,000 out of a total Pomerantz Freidenreich’s finding that there ex- of 360,000 Jewish elementary-school children in the isted a total of about a thousand Yiddish-secular U.S. were receiving some kind of Jewish education. shuln (schools) and thirty-nine Yiddish-secular summer camps in America at various times during the 20th century came as a marvelous discussed in this essay surprise to me after a lifetime of involvement Passionate Pioneers: The Story of Yiddish Secular with the Workmen’s Circle. On the other hand, Education in North America,1910-1960, by Fradle reckoning with how this wonderfully complex Pomerantz Freidenreich. Holmes and Meier, 2010, 535 Jewish secular institutional structure is now pages. considerably diminished brought me a sort of cosmic melancholy and nostalgia. Though some authorities state that a decline in the Freidenreich begins her book with a detailed number of children enrolled in Jewish educational description of the landscape of American courses began as early as the end of World War I, others Jewish education before 1910, the year when report the contrary: Israel Chipkin, in 1935, reported the Yiddish-secular school movement began. that about 25 percent of the 800,000 American Jew- In those pre-shule years, the major form of ish children of elementary-school age were enrolled Jewish education was religious, comprising in some type of Jewish school; Leibush Lehrer, in the yeshivas, kheyders, Talmud Torahs, congrega- same year, reported an even larger enrollment number, tional schools, day schools, Sunday schools, and about 550,000, and stated that more than 80 percent private tutoring. In 1909, she reports, about 25 of Jewish children received some type of Jewish edu- percent of the 200,000 New York City school- cation at some time during their lives. It should be age Jewish children were receiving some type noted, though Freidenreich doesn’t make the direct of religious education, with similar percentages comparison, that these figures are many times larger in other communities. than the Yiddish-secular school movement at its peak. There were also some schools that were not Still, it is the secular Jewish shule and camping religiously oriented, offering Hebrew language movement to which Freidenreich’s investigations and/or literature as a major feature of the cur- are primarily directed. “The founders of the Yiddish- secular schools,” she writes, “wished to ensure the continuity of the Jewish people as a distinct ethnic Barnett Zumoff, former president of The Work- men’s Circle/Arbeter Ring and long-time physician and cultural group . . . The leaders of the various shule at Camp Kinder Ring, conducts our “Mameloshn” movements fought against the assimilationists, who column and is the translator of numerous Yiddish promoted the idea that in order to fully participate in anthologies, including, most recently, The Water- world culture one must abandon one’s own culture fall: Rhymed Yiddish Couplets, published under . . . They established schools and summer camps to our magazine’s imprint, Blue Thread Communi- transmit a new Jewish secularism by creating their cations and available at http://jewishcurrents.org. own secular culture, with Yiddish at its center.” Inter-

Spring 2011 59 estingly, a hundred years after the founding of the DC, Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, Ot- Yiddish-secular school movement, secular Jews of tawa, Los Angeles, and San Francisco; there were today are still facing that same problem, and many also some located in smaller communities or even feel that the Yiddish-secular school movement, within agricultural communes. while greatly diminished, remains a tool that can There were a few Yiddish-secular day schools in help maintain secular Jewish identity and com- Canada, but day schools never took hold in the U.S. munity. It therefore seems worthwhile to examine A notable exception was the Kinneret day school in the past and present of the movement, and to look New York City, but the time devoted there to Yid- realistically, but optimistically, at its future. dish language soon declined to virtually nothing, to be replaced by Hebrew. All the other U.S. shuln In all likelihood, the principal impetus for estab- were afternoon, evening, or weekend schools with lishing the Yiddish-secular shule movement was the varying lengths of instruction: in the early years, famous Czernowitz Conference of 1908, at which it they mostly offered six to ten hours a week, in later was announced that “Yiddish is a national language years, as little as two to three hours. of the Jewish people” (for a full discussion of the Many shule teachers were distinguished Yiddish Czernowitz Conference, visit our magazine’s ar- literary figures in their own right, including, among chive at http://jewishcurrents.org/2008_june_lang. others: Benjamin Jacob Bialostotski, Menachem htm). A tiny, independent shule was established in Boreisho, Joel Entin, Aaron Glantz-Leyeles, Naf- Brooklyn that year, but it was short-lived. The date toli Gross, Peretz and Esther Shumiatsher Hirsh- that is now universally accepted as the beginning bein, H. Leivick, Mani Leyb, Abraham Liessin, of the Yiddish-secular school movement is 1910, Nokhem Borekh Minkoff, Kadya Molodovsky, when shuln were established under the combined Shmuel Niger, Abraham Reisen, and Yehoyesh. aegis of the Farband-Labor Zionists and the Social- Many of the teachers shifted back and forth from ist-Territorialists; the latter group soon faded out one school system to another, despite the often of the picture, leaving the Farband as the sponsor. sharp ideological differences among the networks. The next group to enter the picture was the Sholem Aleichem Institute in 1916. The Workmen’s With the exception of the Sholem Aleichem shuln, Circle followed in 1918 and the International Work- which espoused an apolitical Yiddish cultural ers Order (IWO) followed in 1930. The shuln in program, all the others developed curricula that these networks were semi-independent, under the were in accord with the political leanings of their control of locally elected lay boards (farvaltungs), respective sponsoring networks. Leibush Lehrer, but they were under the general supervision of the the longtime leader of the Sholem Aleichem shuln, educational departments of the respective spon- is cited by Freidenreich as saying that “isms would soring organizations, which provided financial take time away from Jewish educational matters, support, curriculum development, textbooks, and preventing the attainment of our goals . . . we teachers. There were also shuln associated with a should be on guard not to involve our schools in number of smaller Jewish groups that kept slip- missionary work for one or another idea.” At the ping in and out of relationships with the major other end of the spectrum, as Freidenreich reports, groups, including the National-Radical schools, the “the IWO schools were committed to counteracting Socialist-Territorialist schools, the Ber Borochov capitalist ideology among the students . . . The other schools, and the Nonpartisan Jewish Workers’ network shuln, though largely socialist-oriented, Children’s schools, among others. were united in rejecting the Soviet Union and its A small number of shuln that belonged to no brand of socialism, but the IWO shuln held on to network were scattered in communities through- the defense of the USSR for many years, despite out the United States. Shuln were mostly located what was happening to Jewish life there.” in major Jewish population centers, such as New Freidenreich’s detailed analysis of the curricula York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington of the various shule networks is in some ways the

60 Jewish Currents most interesting part of her book. Yiddish language Jewish Organizations (CSJO) (a group that Frei- and Jewish history were initially major features denreich doesn’t mention at all in her book), and a of the curriculum of all the shuln (the IWO shuln very few independent shuln, such as the Kinderland came to the importance of those topics later than the shule in Brooklyn, which has roots in the IWO other three did because of their heavier emphasis network of old. on political indoctrination), but after the 1940s, as Yiddish was spoken less and less by the families In addition to the elementary Yiddish-secular of shule students and by the Jewish community in shuln, which catered to pre-teen children, all the general, Yiddish language per se gradually faded networks established four-year mitlshuln (middle as a major factor in the curricula. Conversely, schools) for teenagers in major Jewish population celebrations of Jewish holidays and rituals, which centers, with the goal of fostering in them a deeper had initially been considered treyf in these secular knowledge of Yiddish language and literature and schools, started to be more and more prominently Jewish history. These schools, too, gradually faded featured in their curricula, though the celebrations away. Sometimes mergers between schools of usually had a nonreligious, cultural cast. different networks (e.g., between the Workmen’s When this reviewer was a student in the Work- Circle and the Sholem Aleichem Institute) were men’s Circle mitlshul in New York, from 1939 undertaken in the hope of preserving a mitlshul to 1943, the Yiddish shule movement was near presence for a few more years, but at present no its all-time peak, with several hundred shuln and mitlshuln exist anywhere (though there currently is more than 20,000 students throughout the U.S. talk of reestablishing a Workmen’s Circle mitlshul After the war, the number of shuln decreased, in East Meadow, Long Island). gradually at first and then more rapidly. The current All the networks also established post-mitlshul status of the movement is not really addressed by hekhere kursn (higher courses), with three- to Freidenreich, but other sources indicate that the four-year intensive curricula intended to produce decline has stopped and the number of shuln has teachers for the shule movement. These schools, plateaued. At this writing, there are about a half- too, began to decline in the post-war years and are dozen Workmen’s Circle shuln, about an equal now all gone. → number sponsored by the Congress of Secular

The alef-beyz klas, 2010, at the Kinderland Kindershule. Two assistant teachers (both of them graduates of the shule) help them learn Yiddish, beginning with their names and numbers one through ten.

Spring 2011 61 The third part of Passionate Pioneers describes used by a Workmen’s Circle camp in Michigan, the large number of Yiddish-secular and other Jew- IWO camps in New York and Quebec, a Farband ish summer camps that were established, thrived, camp in Ontario, and a Labor League camp in On- and mostly faded away during the 20th century. In tario. “Nit Gedayget” (“Don’t Worry”) was used the early years, though some Jewish camps fea- by four different camps, “Kindervelt” by three, tured Hebrew language programming, most did “Naivelt” by two. In total, at various times, the not offer any significant Jewish cultural component Workmen’s Circle sponsored ten different camps, at all, certainly not a Yiddish cultural component. the IWO seven, the Farband six, and the Sholem Rather, the original impetus for establishing Jewish Aleichem Institute four, including Boiberik. Other summer camps was socio-economic: to provide groups sponsored individual camps. a healthful, fresh-air vacation for urban Jewish In New York State, the non-Communist Yiddish- children, especially poor children. As late as 1946, secular camps had their own informal network, with Albert Schoolman, a pioneer of Jewish camping, fairly close cultural connections and inter-camp stated that “most camping programs were unrelated sporting activities. These included the Sholem to any aspect of Jewish cultural experience . . .” Aleichem Institute’s Boiberik, the Jewish Social- Yiddish-secular camps developed quite early ist Verband’s Gan-Eydn (Eden), the Jewish Labor amid the general cultural desert of other Jewish Bund’s Hemshekh, the Farband’s Kindervelt, the camps. The first was Camp Boiberik, founded Workmen’s Circle’s Kinder Ring, and the Jewish in 1913 by the Sholem Aleichem Institute. In its Workers’ Schools’ Naivelt (under the aegis of the first ten years, the camp moved around to vari- well-known Yiddish teacher Yankev Levin). Camp ous locations in New York and New Jersey, but Kinderland, also in New York on the opposite shore in 1923 it assumed its permanent home, for the of Sylvan Lake from Camp Kinder Ring, was ex- next fifty-six years, in Rhinebeck, New York (on cluded from the “club” because of its Communist what is now the campus of the Omega Institute, a background. retreat center). Freidenreich uses Boiberik as her Freidenreich leads the reader skillfully through model for analysis, partly because its history is so this maze, and presents as clear a picture of the well-documented. She spends a great deal of time histories and programs of all these camps as is describing its spirit, ideology, and programs, which possible, given the sometimes sketchy nature of the endeared it in an almost mythical way to genera- available documentation. All of the camps initially tions of its alumni. Among other things, Boiberik placed heavy emphasis on Yiddish language and held on more tenaciously to the specifically Yiddish culture, but, as in the case of the shuln, this faded as aspect of its programming than most other such the American Jewish environment changed. Aside camps did; some feel (Freidenreich does not men- from this shared interest, however, the programs of tion this idea) that this “purism,” paradoxically, the various camps differed according to the ideolo- was partly responsible for Boiberik’s inability to gies of the sponsoring organizations. For example, survive past 1979, while several other Yiddish- the Farband camps tended to promote Zionist ideol- secular camps that were willing to surrender the ogy and Hebrew language, the IWO camps were primacy of Yiddish-language programming are heavy on leftist politics and support for the Soviet still surviving, and even thriving — notably Camp Union, and Workmen’s Circle camps promoted Kinderland (originally sponsored by the IWO and labor unions and socialist ideology. later independent) and the Workmen’s Circle’s Camp Kinder Ring. Finally, in an Afterword, Freidenreich addresses The other main Yiddish-secular groups soon the question: “What became of the Yiddish-secular followed the Sholem Aleichem Institute’s lead. shuln and camps, and why?” At the very outset of In describing these camps, a serious problem of her discussion, she says that “there is no single an- names arises: many totally unrelated places shared swer to the question,” and then spends some fifteen a common name. “Kinderland,” for example, was pages elaborating, falling back on the “usual sus-

62 Jewish Currents pects,” those demographic, historical, and cultural changes that have slowly but inexorably affected American Jews during the 20th century. These In loving memory of include the upward social and economic mobility of American Jews and their increased integration DUDLE with general American society; the move of many BERNSTEIN Jews from uniform urban Jewish neighborhoods February 11th, 1928—March 12th, 2003 to decentralized suburban communities where synagogue membership became a practical neces- He filled our lives sity for the maintenance of Jewish continuity; the with his gentle manner, increasing importance placed by the community on Hebrew rather than Yiddish, largely because his love, his music of the establishment of the State of Israel; the and his laughter. centrifugal forces that tended to disperse the Jew- ish community toward religiosity on the one hand He is sadly missed and assimilation on the other; the Holocaust, which by his family and friends. shocked and reoriented the minds of American Jews, and also was responsible for cutting off the Shirley source of new native Yiddish speakers and Yiddish Jeffrey, Sandy, Sarah writers; the near-impossibility of educating and Lauren, Meira supporting teachers of Yiddish language, literature, Tina, Arthur, Channa, Eric and culture; the loss of any need for Yiddish as a Howard, Beth, Jamie, Carrie lingua franca among American Jews. Freidenreich consoles herself, and would like to console her readers, by enumerating three lasting legacies that the Yiddish-secular shuln and camps the Yiddish League and its magazine, Afn Shvel, have left the American Jewish community even as and the International Association of Yiddish Clubs. they have faded away: 1. the tens of thousands of All together, however, the whole landscape she Jewish children who were influenced positively in describes comprises just a few thousand American terms of Jewish content, values, self-image, and Jews, probably well under 1 percent of the total attitudes toward Jewish life; 2. loving attitudes to- American Jewish population of 5.5 million. Nev- ward Yiddish language and literature; and 3. belief ertheless, the secular Jewish community remains in a Jewish future. She adds, almost apologetically, committed to perpetuating itself and is not going to that there are still a number of organizations and disappear any time soon. The number of Yiddish- institutions that continue to support and promote secular shuln is not declining, but has remained the Yiddish-secular heritage to this day: YIVO, essentially the same in recent years, and a few the Congress for Yiddish Culture, the Workmen’s shuln are actually growing healthily. True believers Circle and its handful of shuln, the Farband-Labor look at this phenomenon and ask themselves: If it Zionists (now Ameinu), the National Yiddish Book can happen there, why not elsewhere? Center, Yugntruf, the Folksbiene and other Yiddish Passionate Pioneers is a valuable history and theatrical groups, KlezCamp, the Mendele website, analysis of a world of secular yidishkayt that has Yiddish newspapers and magazines including the greatly diminished but hasn’t disappeared. It is Forverts, the Zukunft, the Pakn-Treger, Yugntruf, a book that members of the secular Jewish com- and others, and Yiddish studies departments in munity should read to understand their past, their many colleges and universities. She omits a few present, and their possible future. All honor to from this list: the CSJO, which continues to spon- Fradle Freidenreich for exerting the heroic efforts sor a number of Yiddish-secular shuln to this day; that have enabled her to create it. JC

Spring 2011 63 Mitchell Abidor Voltaire and the Jews

book is published almost every week reason, to the Catholic Church. Through his influ- on this or that subject with the subtitle, ence, the French Enlightenment was Americanized A “How X Changed the World,” or “How via the works of Thomas Paine, whose Appeal Y Can Tell You How to Live.” In fact, on the table to Reason is a summary of Voltairean ideas; by before me are Why Mahler? How One Man and Thomas Jefferson; and then on through the 19th and Ten Symphonies Changed the World (a book that 20th centuries with intellectual inheritors such as neither makes nor proves the dubious claim) and Robert Ingersoll, Mark Twain (his A Connecticut How To Live: The Life of Michel Montaigne (a Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, an uncompromising wonderful book that does make a convincing claim attack on the Catholic Church, is almost lifted from for its title). Voltaire), and H.L. Mencken. Nor was Voltaire’s If there ever was a writer who does deserve a popularity restricted to America’s intellectual cen- book with a “He Changed the World” subtitle —but ters: when a small-town freethinker in Michigan hasn’t (yet) had one written — it is Voltaire (pen wanted to ensure that his newborn daughter would name for François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778). One live her life under the right sign, he named her of history’s great critics of religious intolerance Voltairine, and young Voltairine De Cleyre (1866- and superstition, Voltaire completed the work of 1912) became one of the great lights of American the Reformation by attributing all that was evil and anarchism. perverted in religion, all that was contrary to human In our own dismal times, when religious ob- scurantism has the upper hand, it is good to have a translation of God and Human Beings, a work discussed in this essay by Voltaire that — such are the vagaries of trans- God and Human Beings, by Voltaire, translated by lation — has never before appeared in English. Michael Shreve. Prometheus Books, 2010, 183 pages. Though not a central text in Voltaire’s oeuvre, God and Human Beings serves as a good, brief, concise summation of the ideas found throughout his works. We find here Voltaire’s refusal to accept the superiority of Western religions over those of the East, his joy in thumbing his nose at received opinion, his insightful biblical criticism — and, not least, his vicious hatred of Judaism. The volume’s introduction, by S. T. Joshi, speaks of Voltaire’s “frank and at times satirical discussion of Jewish history.” Joshi is being disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst, for it is clear to anyone who reads God and Human Beings or almost any of Voltaire’s anti-religious writings that a hatred of Jews and Judaism not only runs alongside his free thought but in a very real way serves as its source. But did Voltaire hate Jews because of the religion they ultimately spawned — Christianity — or did he hate Christianity because it was the spawn of the Jews?

64 Jewish Currents We must first add nuance to the question. Voltaire or followers. This is not the case, however, when is often classified as an atheist, yet of the Enlight- he dealt with the Jews and their Bible. enment philosophers, only the Baron D’Holbach Voltaire fairly and even presciently questioned, (Paul-Henri Thiry, 1723-1789) truly deserves this for example, the Biblical account of the origins of title. The rest, Voltaire first among them, were more the Jews — but in describing these origins he spoke properly deists, believing in a benign Creator who of “their extreme passion for thievery, which the could be properly worshipped without religious Jews themselves admit to,” and called them “both dogma or organized religious institutions. The later lepers and thieves.” While accurately pointing out Jacobin cult of the Supreme Being was drawn from that the Jewish religion grew and developed over Voltaire, though the Jacobins would never have the course of years, with different practices being said, as Voltaire did, “Let us worship the Supreme added and subtracted at different periods, he was Being through Jesus,” since Reason was their tute- unable to avoid invective: “Therefore, we cannot lary deity. It should be remembered that Voltairean doubt, based on the very books of the Jews, that anti-atheism led the Jacobins to level the charge of the religion was very uncertain, very vague, very atheism against their enemies to the left, Jacques weakly established; such, finally, that it should be Hébert and the Enragés, who ended their days on with a small group of wandering brigands living the guillotine. only off their plunder.” The first clause of this sen- Indeed, Voltaire’s opposition to atheism led him tence is almost unarguable; the second is explicable in some cases to outright falsifications. InGod and only by its author’s anti-Semitism. Human Beings he speaks of the “Testament” of Jean This anti-Semitism can hardly have been the Meslier, a country priest whose one book, written result of any knowledge of actual Jews, for there in secret and only revealed to a few after his death, were fewer than fifty thousand in France during is a foundational text of atheism. Voltaire spoke Voltaire’s lifetime, with only about five hundred of falsely of Meslier’s “ask[ing] forgiveness of God them in Paris, where Voltaire lived. French Jewry for having accepted an occupation [i.e., the priest- was denied almost all civil rights and for the most hood] in which he was obliged to deceive men.” part lived miserably in their historic communities Voltaire was also responsible for adding a similar in the Alsace and the south of France. It is precisely claim to his anonymous abridgment of Meslier’s the unlikelihood that Voltaire knew many Jews that Testament, which was long the only version of the makes his anti-Semitism all the more odious, for work known to the public; Voltaire even added this it was purely the fruit of his philosophy and preju- deathbed request to his abridgement of the work, dices, to which he gave a free-thinking veneer. in order to turn the atheist Meslier (who called re- Specific doctrines of the Jews were explained as ligion “error, illusion, and imposture”) into a deist. products of fundamental flaws in the Jews them- Voltaire’s criticisms of the Bible can all be found selves. “If they denied the immortality of the soul in Meslier, but whereas Meslier frankly admitted it was solely through crudeness and ignorance.” that he lacked the courage to openly avow his ideas While Voltaire wisely and correctly pointed out during his lifetime, Voltaire lacked the courage to the similarities between the major religions and take the step from deism to atheism, and tried to those of antiquity, showing that to some extent drag down those who did. each affected all, Jewish tales such as Noah and the It is certainly true, as Joshi writes in his introduc- flood were the products of “plagiarizers.” In fact, tion, that in God and Human Beings Voltaire’s Voltaire dedicated a chapter to these plagiarisms, Biblical criticism “is anticipating the ‘higher criti- listing “labors of Hercules, labors of Samson,” and cism’ of the 19th century regarding the Scriptures” — but in a peculiar way. Voltaire’s criticisms of the Mitchell Abidor is the author, most recently, of Christian Bible were uncompromising yet were Communards: the Paris Commune of 1871 as Told phrased respectfully. He mocked its contradictions By Those Who Fought For It (Marxists Internet and foolishness but cast no aspersions on its authors Archive Publications).

Spring 2011 65 “the ass of Silenus talks. The ass of Balaam talks.” elaborated on this with anger and mockery (in his These are useful points to anyone interested in “Essai sur les Moeurs”): “it is not light proof of criticizing the Bible and religion, but Voltaire was the caprices of the human spirit to see the descen- unable to restrain his venom against those who dants of Jacob burned in procession in Lisbon,” wrote the tales down. he wrote. “[T]heir famous rabbis, Maimonides, The customs of the Jews got a chapter of their Abravanel, and Ibn Ezra could say in their books own, consisting almost solely of long quotations all they wanted to about the Christians, that ‘we are from The Important Examination of Lord Boling- your fathers; our scriptures are yours, our books are broke. Though purporting, as in the case of Meslier, read in your churches, our canticles sung there.’ to be taking his words from another author, they are The response was to pillage them, to drive them pure Voltaire: “If we move on from the fables of the out, to have them led away between two dogs. In Jews to their customs, are they not as abominable Spain and Portugal the usage was to burn them.” as their stories are absurd? . . . The Hurons, the Voltaire thus recognized that as “degenerate” as Canadians, the Iroquois were philosophers full of Judaism might be, it is the “father” of Christianity. humanity compared to the Children of Israel; and (He insisted, however, on the primacy of Greek it is on behalf of these monsters that the sun and thought in Christianity’s development, therefore the moon were made to stand still in the middle of “Plato is the true founder of Christianity.”) the day” (translation slightly revised). In the end, what Voltaire hated above all was the The Jews as monsters and abominations figure Catholic Church — which enslaved humanity, shut throughout Voltaire’s work, as by their very nature down thought, and, according to his calculations, the enemies of mankind. In his Dictionnaire Phi- was responsible for 9,468,800 murders from the losophique, Voltaire said of the Jews that “as the time of its foundation to the writing of God and only peoples they knew were their neighbors, in Human Beings. It was this hatred of both oppres- hating them they believed that they detested the sion and the Church that allowed Voltaire to draw earth in its entirety and thus became accustomed the line at Jewish extermination. to being the enemies of all men.” This attitude, we Yet the Church, for Voltaire, was just a magni- are told in his “Essai sur les Moeurs” (“Essay on fied version of the Judaism he execrated. “From Customs”), was a result of their education, so that the time since Christians have existed, the Jews, the Jews must “subjugate all or be crushed.” their fathers, insulted the Romans under the em- And no abomination is beyond the Jews. If there pire where they lived, and insulted one another in is an injunction against eating one’s children in the turn.” The Church, in short, simply magnified what Jewish religion, as he wrote in his “Un Chrètien Voltaire saw as the Jews’ tendency to treat all other Contre Six Juifs” (“A Christian Versus Six Jews”), peoples as enemies, and “hardly did they preach it is there because eating one’s children was cus- Christ before they accused one another of being tomary for Jews — “but we’re not told that Jewish the anti-Christ.” The true believer must therefore mothers gladly ate their children; rather we are told free himself of the Jews and the Church: “Let us that they were sometimes eaten.” praise God, let us thank God, let us invoke God in the way of Orpheus, Pindar, Horace, Dryden, Pope Nevertheless, there was a limit to Voltaire’s hatred and not in the Hebrew way.” of the Jews, best expressed in an important section The Jewish religion, in Voltaire’s eyes, spoke of his entry on the Jews in his Dictionnaire Philos- only of abasement and degradation. Even if, as he ophique: “One finds in them nothing but an ignorant said in his “Essai sur les Moeurs,” “Deep down and barbaric people, who have long combined the we are nothing but Jews with foreskins,” the most sordid greed with the most detestable supersti- purging of Judaism from Voltaire’s vision of God tions and the most unconquerable hatred of all those and humanity was absolutely central. There is no peoples who tolerate and make them wealthy. But Voltaire without it. JC they should not be burned” (italics added). Voltaire

66 Jewish Currents “Concealed/Revealed” invites readers to write essays of up to 300 words that focus on personal experiences that have been transformative, provocative, or just plain unforgettable. Names will be withheld CONCEALED upon request. Future topics and deadlines will be posted in each edition of the column REVEALED (see box, below left). Essays should be sent to [email protected] or mailed to PO Box 111, Accord, NY 12404. You will be contacted if your essay is selected for publication.

“If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good.” “Games” —Dr. Seuss, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

This is a story about a game that lasted four hundred While they are practicing Catholics today, the game and fifty years after going underground. is a poignant piece of their legacy of tradition and perseverance in the face of terrible odds. My friend’s father grew up in Portugal. In his frequent Nancy Miringoff storytelling about his childhood, it became clear to us Poughkeepsie, New York that he is a descendant of the conversos, the Sephardic Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism or . risk expulsion or worse during the Inquisition in Spain When I was in college, young and wildly opinionated and Portugal. Some of them continued to subscribe to (now I am older and continue, in spite of logic and Jewish customs, and some of their descendants still re- years, to be wildly opinionated although I am more veal elements of their Jewish roots in their daily lives. aware that it’s not such a good thing), I created an unfair and peculiar test, which I called a game, for men When he was a small boy, on the streets of Mangualde, I knew. (Sometimes, in an odd, unexpected moment, he played a game of chance with a small, four-sided this same game kicks in. For men and women both.) top, made of wood, sanded, with a letter on each face. The game was called Rapa, which means “Clean it I went to school in Washington, D.C., an odder city up!” Children would bet with small coins, buttons than most give it credit for: Black and white, Southern or candy beans. The letter “D” meant: “Don’t take and with more parks than any other U.S. city, full of it, leave it.” The letter “T” meant “Take one.” The the charm of the South, the problems too, and monu- letter “R” meant “Take it all.” The Letter “P” meant ments, endless monuments. My favorite, because of “Put.” It was clearly the dreydl game in disguise! My the way it was situated, was the Lincoln Memorial. It friend’s family also had a Jewish star over the front looks good where it is, and most things don’t. door of their home, and some of her relatives wear Jewish stars. Around the memorial was a circle, a wheel with spokes. Roads flew off it over bridges to a lot of dif- Topics and Deadlines for ferent places. Here’s what I’d do: tell the driver (I am not a good driver), usually a man I was sometimes “Concealed/Revealed” seeing, “Let’s go to Alexandria,” and then I’d take him E th “In the Bedroom” ...... June 15 instead to Arlington. We’d go over the wrong bridge. I “Don’t Ask”...... August 10th wouldn’t let on, and the unaware game players would Submit to: [email protected] soon discover that we were somewhere different from where we’d intended.

Spring 2011 67 I knew that’s how I wanted to live my life, and “Picklepiner.” thought this might be a tiny way to test it out, with “Right.” company. I was playing HD with the current world champion, One man pulled over and actually broke the window, my nephew Jonah Griss-Bush. He went on a “run” he was so mad we were in Arlington. Someone else, a — I guessed incorrectly seven straight times! When visiting psychiatrist from Morocco, said, “I wonder if I finally got one right — I think it was Picklepiner — there’s a bar where we are.” And for a while I thought, we were both absolutely delighted about it all. You “He’s the man for me.” don’t keep score in Howdy Doody (although I suppose Esther Cohen you could if you really have that kind of personality). New York, New York The only true scoring involved is the level of fun and companionship and shared rhythm. Oh, by the way: . HOWDY DOODY!! Russ Bush Fifty or so years ago, I made up a game for two per- Bethel, Connecticut sons that I named “Howdy Doody” (known as “HD” to its few aficionados). It was revealed to me in a . dream. The game had absolutely nothing to do with the TV show (although that was a great show! — I A lively game of Trivial Pursuit at a family gathering especially loved Phineas T. Bluster). over twenty years ago is engraved in my memory. We had three teams, two players per team, and lots HD is at the same time a competitive and coopera- of kibbitzing. My brother-in-law Joe started to read a tive game, a simple yet subtle game. Here’s how it geography question, “What Russian erection started works: One player (“the Thinker”) thinks of one of rising. . . .” but could not finish because we were all the following names: Grey, Jones, or Picklepiner. rolling on the floor from this apparent Freudian slip. Then he or she says, “Howdy Doody!” The other Joe started again, “What Russian erection started ris- player (“the Guesser”) has to guess which name the ing. . . .” and we gave him a hard time for making the Thinker is thinking of and say it out loud: “Jones!” same gaffe twice. Finally, he was able to read the entire Immediately, the Thinker shouts either “Right!” and question, “What Russian erection started rising on a the players switch sides, or the Thinker declares the summer night in 1961?” The answer: the Berlin Wall! correct name he or she was thinking about and takes another turn. Later during that same game, Joe had an arts and literature question for my in-laws: “What author won The Thinker must be absolutely honest. If the Thinker the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1952?” My in-laws is thinking “Grey” and the Guesser guesses “Grey,” pondered several possibilities, with my father-in- under no circumstances should the Thinker lie. law favoring Wouk, but my mother-in-law was not Howdy Doody will not work without complete trust so sure. Finally she threw her hands up, “You want between the two players. It is a cooperative game, Wouk? Okay, zol zayn Wouk.” Not familiar with that a game of telepathy, with feeling. You do want to Yiddish phrase, which means “Okay, let it be Wouk,” “beat” the other player, to get a sense of their guessing Joe exclaimed, “Who the heck is Zolzayn Wouk? It’s patterns and fool them, but the beauty of the game is Herman Wouk!” the sense of shared thought and feeling that the two Linda Gritz players experience, no matter who “wins” or “loses.” Somerville, Massachusetts There is a palpable rhythm to Howdy Doody that builds up, especially if the players keep their dialogue . down to the basics: There are lots of political and cultural developments “Howdy Doody.” in the U.S. that have empowered women in the course “Jones.” of my lifetime, but Title 9 athletics — the requirement “Grey. Howdy Doody.” that educational institutions take sports for women “Grey.” seriously if they want federal funding — is probably “Jones. Howdy Doody.” the least appreciated. Playing sports as a boy taught

68 Jewish Currents me at least three major life lessons: that team play is a wonderful, joyous thing; that you can get hit/smacked/ blocked/fouled/even injured without dying; that eye- In Loving Memory hand coordination can give you an unsurpassed sense of mastery and power. I’m delighted that my daughter, BUSIA KOSTOV now 24, grew up with this knowledge, and gained from it in toughness, team spirit, physical power, and 1910-2010 a sense of fun.

One unusual experience of eye-hand coordination Busia was a remarkable woman stands out in my memory, from when my darling who inspired us with her and I were courting, thirty-six years ago. We were in the midst of a two-month hitchhiking pilgrimage wit and wisdom across America, and we were standing by a cornfield in Illinois, waiting to catch a ride. We had a pint of San Diego Secular Jews big, fresh blueberries, and I began tossing them way, for Peace and Social Justice way up in the air and catching them in my mouth. Toss-two-three-four-five-six-chomp! Over and over, blueberries against a blue sky, landing on my tongue. I couldn’t miss. No wonder she fell in love with me. asking the question, “If you were throwing a dinner Solomon Chigrinsky party and could invite any five people from the past New York, New York or present, whom would you choose?”

. When I was first posed this question, I was 15 and living in the Bronx with my parents and two brothers. There are two games I invented to play with my kids. My answers were Moses, Abraham Lincoln, Babe Remember when restaurant ice cubes sometimes had Ruth, Lenny Bruce, and Sophia Loren. Every few a hole through the middle? I’d run a straw through years since then, I have asked myself the question one and perch it across the top of the glass. Whoever and have noticed that my answers keep changing. guessed closest to how many minutes it would take for the cube to melt enough to fall into the glass was When I was in college and graduate school, writers, the winner. innovative thinkers, and national leaders dominated my lists. Over the next twenty to twenty-five years, The other game I call “Mental 3-D Tic-Tac-Toe.” Pic- my lists began including movie directors, composers, ture three Tic-Tac-Toe boards stacked on top of each singers, and artists. other, forming a cube. The first player says something like “top, upper middle,” meaning you’re going in I am now 56. My wife (of nearly three decades) and I the top layer, middle square of the top row. Next one have a 22-year-old daughter and an 18-year-old son. counters with something like “middle, lower right,” My father and mother passed away in 1981 and 2007, meaning you’re going in the middle layer, lower right respectively. My father died far too young and never hand corner. Three in a row through any dimension, had the opportunity to meet my wife and children. any which way, wins. Of course, you have to keep When I asked myself the question again a few days an increasingly complicated picture in your head. In ago, my answer surprised me, because my new dinner fact, you win if the other player admits he or she has party list did not contain anyone famous. It consisted lost track of what’s where. My 11-year-old son and I of my wife, my daughter, my son, and my parents. stopped playing when I kept losing to him that way and it became boring. The chance to have my wife, children, and father Harry Brod spend a few hours getting to know one another; the Cedar Falls, Iowa chance to hear my parents chat, laugh, and bicker once again; and the chance for me to ask my father . the questions I never had the chance to pose, and A generation ago, a popular parlor game involved to tell him how very much I loved him — these are

Spring 2011 69 the principal reasons that, right now, I’d choose my dividually, transferring formal authority to a friendly “family five” over any renowned quintet. non-MGM who is less vulnerable to losing his or her Robert Deluty position and can therefore act as a front. Members Ellicott City, Maryland of the resource-deprived Red region, however, often act in a rebellious way (including the MGM in that . region) and disrupt the society in various ways while I recently wrote an autobiographical essay, “My demanding a remedy to their lack of resources. As I Lifelong Involvement with Games,” which had me reflect on the decision to make vulnerability rather asking myself whether any of this involvement had a than deprivation or inequality the special character- distinctively Jewish aspect to it. Most of it doesn’t ,but istic of MGMs, I see it as representing the Holocaust one part of the game I invented, SIMSOC (Simulated experience of highly assimilated and economically Society), clearly has a strong Jewish component. comfortable European Jews. William Gamson SIMSOC attempts to create a situation in which par- Chilmark, Massachusetts ticipants must actively question the nature of social order and examine processes of social conflict and . social control. As an inevitable by-product, partici- In the summer of 1936 I was a camper in Camp pants find themselves dealing with a host of issues Kinderland, which, naturally, fully supported the that include interpersonal trust, leadership, “deviant” Spanish loyalists in their struggle against Franco’s behavior, social protest, and power relations. As many falangists, Mussolini’s fascists, and Hitler’s Nazis. To as 20 percent of the members of the society may be get the campers more involved, the camp administra- designated as Minority Group Members (MGMs) tors decided to convert the usual “capture the flag” when the society begins. They are required to wear games into an educational. Campers were divided some insignia or armband so that everyone can clearly into two groups, the “loyalists” and the “fascists.” identity them as MGMs. The “loyalists” outnumbered the “fascists” by a ratio The first edition of SIMSOC was published in the late of about 5 to 1, with one bunk from each age group 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement, when designated as “fascist.” To assure a loss for the “fas- minority group status was associated with various cists,” a simple tag by a “loyalist” was sufficient to kinds of social, political, and economic inequality. “kill,” although the reverse was not true. The flag was SIMSOC, however, separates minority group status stored on the second floor of the social hall, reachable from inequality and instead emphasizes vulnerability. only by two outside staircases. The plan was that after MGMs have, on average, as many resources as others all the “fascists” were “killed” or tied up, they would but operate under the restriction that any two non- be marched, in disgrace, past the flagpole on the way MGMs can, at any time, have any MGMs fired from to the dining room. their jobs and/or removed as head of one of the eight My bunk, from the oldest camper group, was des- basic groups in SIMSOC (businesses, political parties, ignated as “fascist.” The unfairness of the rules and etc.) or as owner of a subsistence or travel agency. the prospect of being marched in “disgrace” as losing There are four regions in the game (Red, Blue, Yel- “fascists” made us determined to turn the tables. I low, and Green), with the first of these deprived of was also sure that the “loyalists” could not see much resources, the last having surplus resources, and the satisfaction in winning such an unfair competition. middle two with moderate resources. There is at least On the morning of the competition, three of my one MGM in every region, but they are concentrated bunkmates hid in an abandoned, camouflaged well in the Yellow region, where they comprise about 50 outside the social hall shortly before the games were percent of the population. to start. Two or three others of our bunkmates were to sneak into the social hall and throw the flag out of a MGMs in SIMSOC rarely act collectively or try to window to their hidden comrades. To make sure that organize others MGMs or non-MGMs for enhanced they could get up the stairs, where a simple tag by a protection. A more typical response is for those defender would have “killed” them, we had to provide MGMs that begin with a position of power to act in- a distraction. For this purpose, each of my remaining

70 Jewish Currents bunkmates had charge of a group of younger camp- ers. One group would charge the stairs, and then run back, with the defenders, anxious to record a “kill,” The Editorial Board offers chasing them. condolences to our editor After several such sorties, there was such pande- on the loss of his lifelong friend, monium among the defenders that the “fascists” designated to throw the flag out the window were ROBERT CANTOR able to slip in and accomplish their task. The flag was grabbed by the “fascists” hidden in the man- “The enduring love hole, who ran with it down the hill to Sylvan Lake, designated neutral territory, where they were joined is the love that laughs.” by the remaining, “unkilled fascists.” We were go- —G. J. Nathan ing to march to the “fascist” home base, located on the sports field. We mourn with Rob’s daughters When the administrators realized the catastrophe and dear ones, and we thank that had taken place, they tried to order us away those in his community who have from the lake. We refused to leave and kept march- ing to a path at the camp borders that would lead us honored Jewish Currents safely to the sports field. As we were nearing the with contributions in his memory. border, an appeal was made to us on the basis that “es vet zayn a shande eyb the fashistn veln gevinen” — “It would be a shame if the fascists won.” We agreed, but said it was their own fault for creating JEWISH CURRENTS such an unfair game. wishes a happy 90th birthday Finally, just as we were about to reach the bor- to our retired office manager der, we reached a compromise. We were not to be marched in shame as losers, but would renounce ESTHER SUROVELL “fascism” and all march together as one victorious with happiness and health biz 120! people. Lyber Katz Bronx, New York captain of the Red team. Like a general charging into . battle, I led my team into the bicycle barn, where we As one of the only Jewish girls in a Presbyterian discovered a treasure map under the floorboards. An boarding school, I was alternately the object of curi- arrow sketched in the headmistress’s hand pointed to osity, judgment, and praise. The headmistress viewed the treasure. But as we tracked it to the pansy patch my intense focus on a game or an assignment as a behind the schoolhouse, Jerry Lynn and her team Jew’s one-track mind at work. My history teacher were fast behind us. Starved for breath, I let the map regarded me as one of the chosen people destined to fly on the wind. suffer and excel. Since I was being singled out as a “Forget the map,” Jerry Lynn shouted. “Let’s just Jew, I decided I’d better do something to distinguish run. Not for the treasure.” myself. I became a pugnacious guard on the basket- We did, and at first it felt faster than the speed of ball court; I could smack a baseball into a shooting sound. Sometimes Jerry Lynn got ahead of me and star. In gymnastics competitions, my cartwheels were sometimes I got ahead of her. Then we came together perfect pinwheels of motion. inventing a new game of running shoulder to shoulder, The headmistress deemed the treasure hunt the which felt better than all the other ones. most important game of the year. In sixth grade, Stephanie Hart I was captain of the Blue team and Jerry Lynn, a New York, New York Protestant girl with sleek, strawberry-blond hair, was

Spring 2011 71 Letters . . . → from page 2 me understand that racism and anti-Semitism always cation to Israel’s destruction and the annihilation of have an economic base and are promoted by those its entire population. They should form a partnership, who profit from our separation and distrust. he writes, with the Palestinians — who are teaching Boris Ourlicht their children that there is no more glorious fate than Great Neck, New York to die while killing as many Jews as posssible, using that most wonderful invention: the suicide bomb. Who was it that said, “If the Palestinians give up The Gaza Flotilla their weapons, there will be no more war. If the Jews I strongly disagree with the Gordon Fellman’s re- give up their weapons, there will be no more Israel”? view of the book about the Gaza Flotilla (“The Gaza Lou Charloff Flotilla: Victims and Victimizers,” Winter, 2010-11), Encino, California which casts the entire blame for the incident on Israel and never allows the word “justified” to enter into Gordon Fellman replies: the discussion. Lou Charloff sees the Jewish people as eternal vic- Professor Fellman does not speak of the years of tims and never the victimizers. He does not acknowl- rockets hurled from Gaza onto civilian Israeli targets. edge a difference between proactive violence (that of He does not mention that Hamas placed its launchers West Bank settlers against Palestinians) and reactive within civilian areas so as to be able to criticize Is- violence (that of Palestinians against their occupiers). rael’s attacks upon those launchers as attacks against He does not see that the “cycle of violence” is rarely poor innocent civilians. He does not mention Israel’s ended by yet another act of violence. withholding its retaliation for years. I believe it was foolish and wrong for the passengers He excludes any comment that justifies Israel’s on the ship to attack the Israelis. They would have blockade of Gaza as an attempt to block the receipt done better to resist nonviolently. But that is a disci- of weapons from Hamas’ allies. Not a word mention- pline that is hard to learn and hard to sustain. Would ing that other nations have blockaded their enemies violence have resulted had the Israeli commandos without the international disapproval that has been boarded the Mavi Marmara from a ship instead of hurled at Israel. Fellman does not even mention that from helicopters, aggressively ready for battle? the blockade is aimed at weaponry; he describes it Proactive aggressors always claim to be act- only as blocking humanitarian supplies and food for ing defensively — always, always. They dismiss underfed children. nonviolence, negotiation, etc. as unworkable and Fellman does not even discuss the actual events of unmanly. They assume that violence eventually will what he describes as Israel’s “attack” on the flotilla. end violence, but it rarely does. This is part of the Blockading countries have traditionally reserved the tragedy underlying the agonies of the prolonged right to search incoming ships for contraband in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. form of forbidden military equipment and supplies. Documents recently made public by Al Jazeera As Israeli soldiers descended onto the decks of the show the readiness of Palestinian negotiators over Mavi Marmara, each soldier was attacked and beaten many years to make peace, mostly on Israel’s terms. by a group of six to eight pro-Gazans armed with This gives lie to the continuing Israeli claim that there clubs, daggers and iron bars. Those soldiers were is no one to talk to on the other side. Lou Charloff fighting for their lives. The other boats in the flotilla needs to recognize the culpability of both sides in did not attack the Israeli soldiers, and those boats were sustaining the conflict, and the real humanity of most permitted to dock and unload their cargos in complete people on both sides. He also needs to recognize the calm. I did not read that in Fellman’s report, either. power of Israel for ending the conflict is great, while I did read his pleading suggestion that Israel re- that of the Palestinians is weak. nounce its bullying of its neighbors. He asks if Israel can “imagine rejecting revenge in favor of compas- The Rosenberg Case sion.” He urges Israel to give up its weapons and cooperate with the people who have sworn their dedi- I write to express surprise that Carol Jochnowitz’s

72 Jewish Currents review of the Almans’ excellent book, Exoneration does not mention my father, Joseph Brainin, in writing JEWISH CURRENTS mourns the deaths of of the organization of the Committee to Secure Justice for the Rosenbergs. It is an omission which cannot be GEORGE and VERA UN — attributed to the Almans, who not only mentioned but long-time supporters of our magazine gave appropriate credit to Joe Brainin’s contributions. Fortunately, promoting the book itself is the best way to correct this omission. I hope your readers will parents or grandparents believed in them. read the book in order to learn more accurately about My first encounter with Jewish Life involved my the origins and efforts of the courageous men and reading a most bizarre January, 1953 essay by Louis women who tried very hard to prevent the execution Harap, its editor, “The Truth About the Prague Trials,” of the Rosenbergs, often at considerable personal cost. which was an absurdly delusional defense of Stalin’s David N. Brainin brutal purge of fourteen Czechoslovakian leaders, in- Bronx, New York cluding eleven Jewish Communists headed by Rudolf Slansky. In his essay, Bush included this in his list of “Jewish Life’s failings,” as well as the magazine’s More on “Our Communist Past” defense of the Doctors’ Plot, which Bush described as The debate in the letters column engendered by “Stalin’s final terror campaign (judged byJewish Life Lawrence Bush’s essay, “Our Communist Past” (Au- to be untinged by anti-Semitism and possibly rooted tumn, 2010), should continue. There was something in the defendants’ guilt).” Yet I was stunned by how especially evil about Stalinism, described by Max both his essay, and some of the responsive letters to Gordon in this journal in 1979 as “a personal dictator- it in the Winter 2010-11 issue, inadequately appreciate ship . . . sustained by mass terror and worship,” that just how monstrous was the phenomenon of Stalin- needs to be distinguished from mere communism. ism. Instead Bush offered a witless whitewashing of Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, teams the legacy of Jewish Communists by suggesting that of both Russian and foreign historians concluded Jewish Life took a “uniquely forthright and com- the number of people murdered by Stalin to be in mendable stand” on civil rights and other issues in the twenty to twenty-five million range, making him the 1950s. Why attempt to balance Stalin’s crimes more of a mass murderer than Hitler. with a sugar-coating? There was also something especially troubling Like Bush, I “do not hold [his] family members about Jewish Life’s role as Stalin’s preeminent Ameri- . . . responsible for the mountain of corpses associ- can Jewish voice that Bush’s essay failed completely ated” with communism, but I do hold him responsible to convey. Peter Novick, in his seminal 1999 study, for not writing a credible story. If “cultivating the The Holocaust In American Life, used the 1948 writ- ‘Genuine We’ is the work of socialists,” as he wrote, ings and activities of Jewish Life to suggest a reality I would suggest that writing a “genuine” history of far worse than merely acting as a Stalinist rag. The this journal and its support group would help Jewish Jewish Life crowd willfully acted to destroy the Currents sustain itself in the 21st century. American Jewish community’s standing by cultivating David E. Blank what Novick calls “a popular association of Jews with Louisville, Kentucky Communism.” By its absurd defense of Stalin, Jewish Life sought to self-isolate and marginalize Americans Lawrence Bush replies: Jews, merely to aid Stalin. In 1948, for example, the Good books have been written that describe the Jewish Life crowd falsely accused President Truman kind of ideological thinking that dominated the men- of instigating “American fascism” through his coura- tal lives of many communists; my article could only geous moves in response to Stalin’s Berlin Blockade. offer a brief look. Is it “sugar-coating” to point out In its shrill and strident voice, Jewish Life shouted that that style of thinking propelled many courageous that the Truman years would create conditions “under deeds of activism, even while blinding people to the which millions of Jews would be murdered.” Today’s bloody reality of the USSR and the grave pitfalls of Jewish Currents readership needs to accept that Marxism-Leninism? these words constituted a slanderous lie about our My “Footprints” article pivoted on two ideas: beloved U.S. and not excuse them because one’s that the editors of Jewish Currents, when brought

Spring 2011 73 We mourn the death of RUTH SINGER March 14th, 1924 – March 15th, 2011

HUMANIST AND ACTIVIST

Jewish Young Fraternalists • National Board JPFO, IWO Camp Kinderland Camper and Staff Hamilton Grange Mothers Council • Harlem Parents Associations Upper Manhattan PTAs and Local School Board A Founder of Empire State College’s Federation of Alumni/Student Associations Former President and Executive Member, ESC Metro Alumni/Student Associations and Architects/Engineering Guild, AFL Womens Equity and a devoted mother and grandmother

We love you, you will be missed!

from her loving family, Bob, Susan, Jeremy, Jean-Marie and Jonathan

At her families request, those wishing to make a donation on Ruth’s behalf

should make them to Jewish Currents.

74 Jewish Currents JEWISH CURRENTS We mourn the loss of our dear friend mourns the death of our long-time and “mitglid” Life Subscriber and member RUTH SINGER of our Editorial Advisory Council 1924-2011 RUTH SINGER, a woman of insight and great energy. Her lifelong devotion and participation against racism anti-Zionist position, but gay pride marches are held and for promoting Yidishkayt, throughout the world every year, and Jewish as well social justice and equality as Zionist contingents participate fully. Just this past June, the Jerusalem gay-rights organization, Jerusalem will be remembered Open House, was welcomed with cheers when they by all who knew her. marched in New York City. In addition, gay-rights organizations as well as Amnesty International work to publicize threats to gays in Islamic and Arab coun- Our condolences to the family. tries, including Iran, Egypt, and Malaysia. The gay press regularly reports on the situation of gays in the Islamic world. Please be more careful in the future so Nekhe Farber Yiddish Leyen Krayz our readers do not get misleading information. Jeffrey Kassel New York, New York face-to-face with Stalinism’s reality after years of defending it, did not go very deeply in their teshuve Our Passover Supplement (repentance), and that folks today who remain at- Just a word to tell you how wonderful and impres- tached to socialist ideals need to separate those sive the Haggadah mailing was. I was moved by it all ideals from the Marxist-Leninist realities that have but particularly by the piece on Harriet Tubman — just discredited them. The article successfully opened wonderful! Thanks so much. up a discussion of our magazine’s communist past. Matthew Weinstein We are also building the Sid Resnick Archives at the Brooklyn, New York magazine’s website (http://jewishcurrents.org/past- • issues/historical-archive) without censorship, posting The two poems by Lawrence Bush and Esther Co- the most appalling as well as the most invigorating hen were wonderful. What talent! What sentiments! articles from our sixty-five years so that readers can What expressions! Keep it up. We need you. survey our complete history of both folly and insight. Harriet Ayer Niantic, Connecticut Gay Movement Anti-Zionist? Regarding George Jochnowitz’s letter (Winter, 2010-11) about “Our Communist Past”— Careful! There is nothing like painting an entire movement with a broad brush. When he writes that the gay movement seems ignorant of the evils of Islamic fundamentalism and embraces anti-Zionism, he knows not what he is talking about. The Madrid gay pride march committee may have embraced an

Spring 2011 75 Bennett Muraskin

In this poem, she compared Jews to sturdy stumps In of trees consumed in a forest fire, whose ashes would nourish new growth. While still in Belgium, she married Henry Mor- Memoriam genthaler, her childhood sweetheart from Lodz, and conceived a child. They immigrated together to Canada in 1950, where she graduated from the Jewish Teachers Seminary in Montreal. Her husband became a doctor who, in the late 1960s, became Canada’s foremost advocate of abortion CHAVA ROSENFARB rights. The couple divorced in 1977. February 9th, 1923—January 30th, 2011 Rosenfarb sacrificed her sleep to find time to write while raising two children, working, and car- Chava Rosenfarb survived the Holocaust to be- ing for an aging mother. Her poetry collections in- come Canada’s most outstanding female Yiddish clude Dos lid fun yidish kelner Abram (“The Song poet and novelist. of the Jewish Waiter Abram”), about her father; She was born in the industrial city of Lodz, edu- Geto un ander lider (“Ghetto and other Poems”); cated at a Bundist elementary school, and active and Aroys fun gan-eyden (“Out of Paradise”). in a Bundist youth organization. When World War Rosenfarb also wrote a play, Der foigl fun geto II broke out, the Nazis herded her family into the (“The Bird of the Ghetto”), about the martyrdom Lodz ghetto, where she was stirred, as a teen, to of Isaac Wittenberg, a leader of the resistance in write poetry. She was soon discovered by a prom- Vilna. Turning to historical fiction, she produced inent Yiddish poet, Simcha-Bunim Shayevitch, her masterpiece, Der boym fun lebn (“The Tree of who introduced her to a Jewish writer’s group. Life”), published in 1972, a three-volume histori- Sent to Auschwitz, she, cal novel of the destruction of the Jewish commu- her elder sister and her nity of Lodz. The novel, which was translated into mother were fortunate to Hebrew and English, received acclaim as a unique be selected for slave labor contribution to Holocaust literature and won her rather than extermination. many honors, including Israel’s prestigious Man- At the war’s end they were ger Prize. in the Bergen Belsen con- Rosenfarb is also known for a two-volume centration camp. Rosen- novel Bociany (1982), a grim story loosely based farb had contracted typhus on the lives of her parents in the years preceding and was near death when the German invasion of Poland and considered to the British Army liberated be a prequel to The Tree of Life. The only novel the camp and saved their in which she directly depicted the Jewish suf- lives. In a DP camp, Chava fering and terror in the concentration camp was taught Yiddish school and her last, Briv tsu Abrashn (“Letters to Abrasha”), began writing about her which appeared in Yiddish in 1992. Her daughter experiences. Her first collection of ghetto poems, Goldie Morgenthaler is currently working on its Di balad fun nekhtikn vald (“The Ballad of Yes- translation, but an excerpt translated by Barnett terday’s Forest”), appeared in 1947. She dedi- Zumoff has already appeared in his recently pub- cated the poem of the same name to two of her lished Yiddish Literature in America—1870-2000 heros: Shayevitch, who perished in Auschwitz, (2009). In 2004, a collection of her short stories and Bundist leader Arthur Zygelboym, who com- about the lives of Holocaust survivors in Canada mitted suicide in London in 1943 to arouse the appeared in English, translated by her daughter as conscience of the world to stop the Nazi genocide. Survivors: Seven Short Stories. It won the 2005

76 Jewish Currents Canadian Book Award and a 2006 Modern Lan- He promoted the emerging generation of folk guage Library Book Award. musicians, including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Rosenfarb was the subject of a radio documen- Baez, Judy Collins and Arlo Guthrie, many of tary aired on the CBC in 2000. She spoke all over whom sang at a 1965 “Sing-In For Peace” anti- the world on Yiddish literature. In a 2006 com- Vietnam War concert at Carnegie Hall that he or- mencement address to the graduating class of the ganized with his wife, singer Barbara Dane. As University of Lethbridge, she said: a music critic, however, Silber had a dogmatic streak. He once criticized the Weavers, the fa- I never sat in a brightly lit classroom . . . mous folk ensemble of four white performers, for My university was the Second World War. singing about the Black experience in America. My classroom was the Lodz Ghetto, my He was also unfair to political opponents. When teachers were my fellow inmates there folksinger Oscar Brand, an opponent of Stalinism, and especially the poets, painters and was interrogated by the FBI, Silber, without any intellectuals of the doomed writers com- evidence, wrote an article in the Daily Worker ac- munity, incarcerated between the barbed cusing Brand of turning informer. wire walls of the ghetto, who accepted me Silber produced an impressive body of work as at a very early age as a member. So I am the editor of folksong anthologies, including Lift a graduate of the Holocaust, of the death Every Voice (with a Foreword by Paul Robeson, camps of Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen. 1953) and Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit Peo- I have matriculated in one of the greatest ple (with a Foreword by John Steinbeck and notes tragedies known to man… by Woody Guthrie, 1967). He and Dane also es- tablished Paredon Records, which recorded songs IRWIN SILBER from liberation movements throughout the world. A ten-year association (1968-’78) with the Na- October 17th, 1925—September 8th, 2010 tional Guardian, a news magazine that emerged Sing Out!, the magazine that played an invalu- from the ashes of the failed 1948 Henry Wal- able role in sparking the folk music revival of the lace presidential campaign and gained a reputa- 1960s, was the creation of three men: Pete Seeger, tion on the left for excellent reporting and analy- Alan Lomax and Irwin Silber. Although not a mu- sis, ended with his dismissal when he and other sician like Seeger or a musicologist like Lomax, staffers embraced Maoism and tried to transform Silber was the one who kept it going as editor from the paper into a forum for building a “new com- 1950 to 1967, publishing protest songs, folk, blues munist movement.” A few years later, he moved and American roots music with a working-class to Oakland and became the leader of the far left sensibility. His regular column, “Fan the Flames,” organization, Line of March. After breaking with featured controversial, forthright opinions on China over its rapprochement with the U.S., Silber music and political issues. swung back toward critical support of the Soviet Born on Manhattan’s Lower East Side as the Union. He disparaged the Solidarity labor move- child of Jewish communists, Silber joined the ment in Poland and approved the Soviet invasion Communist Party (CP) after graduating from of Afghanistan. In his 1994 book, Socialism: What Brooklyn College in 1945 with a degree in Eng- Went Wrong, he changed positions once again, lish. In 1946, he collaborated with Seeger, Woody repudiated Marxism-Leninism and asserted that Guthrie and Lee Hays in founding People’s Songs capitalism, although highly flawed, is not inher- Bulletin, a precursor to Sing Out! When called be- ently doomed. fore the House Un-American Activities Commit- His last book was the acclaimed Press Box Red: tee in 1958 and asked about his role in the CP’s The Story of Lester Rodney, the Communist Who Jefferson School for Social Science, he could Helped Break the Color Line in American Sports honestly answer that he taught “square dancing.” (2003). J C

Spring 2011 77

A Prophetic Voice in Jewish, Economic Justice ” web section at www.thesha- Multireligious, & American Life lomcenter.org/treasury/37/.

What does it mean to ask this question: “Who Who Are the Pharaohs, Caesars, are the Pharaohs, Caesars, and Abu-Jahls of To- and Abu-Jahls of Today? day?”

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow It stems from the world crisis we are living through, a crisis in which arrogant centers of top- For the last six months, The Shalom Center has down, pyramidal power are bringing social and been shaping a great deal of our thought and ecological disasters on the world in much the action around the archetypal story of the Exo- way ­— according to the great archetypal stories dus, Sinai, and the Wilderness. Whether or not of our great traditions — ancient Pharaoh, Cae- the history actually happened as described in sar, and Abu-Jahl did. the Torah, many millennia of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and secular thought and action about In these formative stories, all these power cen- power, tyranny, freedom, and community have ters fell or were transformed by grassroots com- grown out of the telling and reshaping of the munal energy that responded to Power-over and story. Control-over that ran amok — responded not by restoring older forms but by shaping new forms We certainly had in mind the approach of Pass- of community. over as an important theater in which to relearn the story for our own time. But more important, And in all the stories, it was the power of the Uni- we have been facing the appearance of global ty that interbreathes all beings in the world that “pharaohs” that are dominating and endanger- brought success to freedom and community. ing the lives of all Humanity and even of the Earth today. In Judaism, and by inheritance in Christianity and Islam, this archetypal tale of arrogance and resis- So we commissioned five reports on what we tance centers on Pharaoh. His stubborn tyranny st consider major “pharaohs” of the 21 century: over human beings brings him into collision with global corporations in the four arenas of Big the Earth itself, and a series of “plagues” results Coal, Big Oil, Big Banking, and the Big Military- in the liberation of part of the society he rules. Industrial Complex, plus a report on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has drawn on In the crisis brought upon the biblical Jewish massive amounts of money from all these cor- community by the Roman Empire, both those porate pharaohs to become a domineering force Jews who created Rabbinic Judaism and those on its own. who created Christianity drew deeply on the sto- ry of the Exodus in responding to Caesar. These five reports are by Basia Yoffe and Nos- sen Yoffe, volunteer researchers who responded The Rabbis reworked the story by giving Sinai to a request from The Shalom Center, and they new significance as the origin not only of the were edited by Marc Gave, program coordinator Written Torah but also of verbal playfully serious on The Shalom Center’s staff. You can access all midrash that made the Torah malleable for a new these reports by clicking to our “Globalization & era.

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The archetypal tales in the Gospels of nonviolent So The Shalom Center commissioned Basia Yof- resistance to Rome, carried forth especially dur- fe and Nossen Yoffe to examine these modern ing the week of Passover, crest with the Pass- corporate “pharaohs.” over Seder that gives rise to Holy Communion, and with the death that becomes a victory, a Identifying our modern oppressors is only the first Resurrection. step toward liberation. Organizing against them, as Moses, Aaron, and Miriam organized the op- In Islam, stories of Moses and the Exodus take pressed public-sector workers into a Brickmak- up about one-fifth of the Quran, and the story ers Union, is the second step. of the prophet Muhammad echoes it. In Mus- lim tradition, a brutal and tyrannical member of But more is necessary. It is not enough to over- the Meccan power elite, Abu-Jahl, was one of come an old Pharaoh. It is crucial then to shape a the bitterest enemies of the nascent Islam — a new community, as the ancient Israelites are said pharaonic figure. Muhammad was forced to to have done at Sinai and thorough struggles in leave Mecca, as Moses had fled Egypt, only to the Wilderness. In the world we are entering, we return in triumph with the help of God, as Moses can survive only by learning to celebrate as part had, and lead the new community to become a of our sacred community not only Muslims and transformative force in and beyond Arabia — as Jews and Baptists and Mormons and Hindus, Moses had led the ancient Israelites. not only Americans and Chinese, Iranians and Libyans, Israelis and Palestinians — not only all (For essays on how Rabbinic Judaism, early the “other” human communities — but the frogs Christianity, the Quran, and Black churches in and the mushrooms, the rivers and mountains, America drew on the Exodus tradition, see the the carbon dioxide and oxygen that give our book by Rabbis Phyllis Berman and Arthur Was- planet life. kow, Freedom Journeys [Jewish Lights]. It is available through The Shalom Center’s on-line We encourage all who celebrate these festivals bookstore, “Shouk Shalom”: Click to our home of freedom and all whose sacred texts and ethi- page at www.theshalomcenter.org and then on cal wisdom care for the process of liberation and the “Buy Books” banner on the left-hand column community-building to integrate this knowledge of that page.) into their efforts to make a world of fuller free- dom. In all these cases, part of the tasks of liberation and community-building was locating and resist- ————————————————————— ing the source of oppression. And that is a part of our task today. To receive our weekly “Shalom Report,” send your e-mail address to [email protected]. At this point in the 21st century, great global cor- porations are even more powerful and even less To support The Shalom Center’s efforts with a responsible to public governance than are gov- tax-deductible contribution, send a check to: ernments themselves. Indeed, the wealth and The Shalom Center, 6711 Lincoln Drive, Philadel- power of corporations are so great that often they turn governments into sheepish doers of phia PA 19119 — or click the “Donate” button at: their bidding. http:www/theshalomcenter.org.

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