Beginnings

Purimtime. For which, in this issue, some pictures and some words about Purim in Boro Park these days and Purim in Tel Aviv in other days. As well as other light-hearted tomfoolery. Not so with the...

...And now it is...
...No comment required...
...But it also depends on the reception he encounters in his new community...
...And the evidence of Jewish indifference and even insensitivity to the converts in our midst is abundant...
...A favor, please...
...Three months ago, most of us were rooting for the Shah...
...Think spring...
...Leave them be...
...in any event, there are still more sinister characters waiting, armed, in the wings...
...The others...
...But since a different tradition has emerged, the president cannot honorably ignore his brother's boorish drivel...
...We get to vote for the President, and the President's parents, children, uncles and aunts, sisters and brothers—yes, even the President's wife—are not any part of what we are asked to vote for...
...This month's prize for idiotic excess, however, does not go to Billy, no matter how hard he tried to earn it...
...There may not be much the President can do about Billy, but he ought to be able to do something more for us than shrug his shoulders in bemused resignation...
...The new regime will not be good for Israel, not at all—but may not be actively bad...
...Instead, it is awarded to the anonymous farmer who, during the course of the tractor protest in Washington, painted a sign—yes, he really did, we have a photo to prove it—which reads: "Carter Is to the Farmers What Hitler Was to the Jews...
...It could be worse, we said...
...A decent man, by all accounts...
...Billy Carter is not entitled to his own views, given their content...
...And then there's Billy Carter...
...Whether it does depends in part on the energy which the individual brings to the matter...
...Not so with the other Persian connection of the month, our lead article on Israel and Iran...
...Those who believe, with Alex Schindler, that Judaism should more energetically seek converts must reckon with that evidence, for there is no point in inviting others to join our ranks if, once they arrive, we refuse to embrace them...
...But whoops, we find that it could still be worse...
...The Ayatollah is in power...
...We do not need to persist in treating the Presidency as if it were the Monarchy...
...good for oil, not good for Israel, better than the alternatives...
...It does get confusing...
...Our special section this month focuses on conversion to Judaism...
...It is not enough for him to say that Billy is entitled to his own views...
...Better, for sure, than the Ayatollah Khomeini, a frightening enigma...
...If the President, on the merits, chooses to assign responsibility to a member of his family, that relative becomes proper game...
...The man deserves to be ignored...
...Then we learned a new name to root for: Dr...
...No, we don't have an article about him in this issue, nor are we ever likely to...
...No one is entitled to such views...
...Given the noxiousness of those views, they should be explicitly repudiated and condemned...
...As does also "Kokomo," the short story by Yitzchak Ben-Ner, one of Israel's most promising writers, not yet well known in this country...
...Acceptance of a new faith may or may not lead to the development of a new sense of identity...
...Not because anyone might otherwise suppose that the President supports those views—clearly he does not—but because such views fall very far outside the boundaries of the acceptable, even when it is one's own brother who professes them...
...The evening MOMENT'S editors spent with several converts (whose comments appear later in these pages) was, for us, a fascinating experience...
...It is offensive that the press attends the remarks of the President's family as if they were significant...
...He will be...
...Bakhtiar...
...Its message is of considerable importance...
...Despite his tyranny, despite his greed and his endorsement of corruption, the Shah was good for oil, good for Israel, safer than any plausible alternative...
...The continuing Iranian saga is a painful reminder of the confusing complexities of public events in our time...
...Take a minute to read the facing page...

Vol. 4 • March 1979 • No. 4


 
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