LETTERS
Editors: We should like you and your readers to take note of the following Appeal from the American Peace Movement to Soviet Premier Brezhnev: AS ACTIVISTS in the American peace movement...
...MARTHA GOLDSTEIN New York City 504...
...Instead, we see Robert Alter's attack on the "scientific" views of Jean Soler regarding "Kashrut...
...Second, it is unscientific, even antiscientific, since it is pointedly contrasted with an article by an anthropologist, and since the quotation marks around the word "scientific" suggest that Soler's argument is scientific in Alter's own eyes and that Alter actually uses this word to describe it...
...It is a serious matter to insinuate that an intellectual is antiscientific, especially in these times, and especially when to do so requires the malicious misrepresentation of published work...
...I think that Bernard Avishai owes Robert Alter and the readers of Dissent an apology...
...Coordinator: Patrick Lacefield...
...The following quotation is typical of his evaluative remarks: "This is, I think, a crucial perception about the way the minds of the biblical writers work...
...One example will have to suffice...
...Even when Alter disagrees with Soler he never taxes him with being "scientific...
...Phrases such as "intellectual scratching" and "religious baggage" have no place in Dissent...
...The issue of how, or whether, Jews should observe is not part of Alter's project in the piece and he is accordingly silent about it...
...AD HOC COMMITTEE TO SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOVIET PEACE ACTIVISTS c/o New York Americans for Democratic Action...
...However, it belies the Soviet claim to be "peace-loving," when independent Soviet peace activists—our brothers and sisters in the movement—are labeled "provocative, illegal and antisocial...
...In my opinion, the level of Mr...
...Although the editorial focus of Commentary deserves intelligent criticism, Avishai's only intention is to indulge the quasiparanoid fantasies of those who have little acquaintance with Commentary...
...Alter's implicit stance toward Soler is that both of them are literary critics: e.g., "A French Structuralist should hardly need to be reminded that a single signifier can point to very different things being signified...
...Why was the article printed...
...BRUCE A. HEIDEN Ithaca, New York q On Good Taste Editors: I say nothing for or against William Buckley here...
...Unity in the struggle for disarmament requires that all citizens of the world have the right to form peace movements independent of governmental or quasigovernmental control...
...So does Dissent, which has always considered that it was devoted to responsible socialism and responsible reporting...
...However, I regret the fact that a magazine such as Dissent would publish the article written by Steve Meiss (Summer 1982...
...I urge the editors and readers of Dissent to consult Alter's essay and decide for themselves whether Avishai is someone they can trust to review an article for them...
...Editors: We should like you and your readers to take note of the following Appeal from the American Peace Movement to Soviet Premier Brezhnev: AS ACTIVISTS in the American peace movement dedicated to the abolition of all nuclear weapons, we protest the actions of the Soviet government in detaining independent Soviet peace activists and seeking to prohibit their activities...
...Ted Weiss David McReynolds Noam Chomsky Janice Fine Bella Abzug Jack Newfield Ramsey Clark Peter Steinfels Terry Provance Aryeh Neier Sidney Peck Patrick Lacefield Grace Paley Rev...
...Meiss may have been before becoming a toolmaker...
...First, it is an "attack," that is, a work of more belligerence than intelligence...
...But I don't believe that any genuine toolmaker would ever speak so discourteously about anyone's intellectual work or opinions...
...Such actions—taken even as the United Nations Special Session on Disarmament unfolds and after hundreds of thousands rallied on June 12 for disarmament —is a violation of the Helsinki Accords guaranteeing freedom of expression, to which the Soviet Union is a signatory...
...Despite what the quotation marks around the word in Avishai's article suggest, Alter never uses the word "scientific" of Soler or his views...
...Alter's chief objection to Soler's paper does not concern Soler's interpretation of the Jewish dietary laws at all, but rather the conclusion about Jewish thinking in general, which Soler draws from that interpretation...
...Of course, Alter does display great respect for the text he is reading and eagerness to penetrate its mysteries, but then so does any good literary critic: is the interpreter of Sophocles an advocate of Olympian worship...
...Avishai gets the word from a passage in Alter's introduction, where he is referring not to Soler but to interpreters whom Soler opposes just as much as Alter does himself...
...These are Avishai's words...
...Scientific...
...Alter recounts Soler's views on the dietary laws very accurately and accepts their validity almost without reservation...
...Near the end of his article Avishai refers briefly to Robert Alter, "A New Theory of Kashrut," Commentary, August 1979, pp...
...I utterly fail to see where Avishai finds support for Orthodoxy in this article...
...Avishai writes in an ethically questionable manner...
...All three elements of Avishai's characterization, however, are false...
...Robert F. Drinan, S.J...
...Soler's theory remains "an advance in understanding...
...56 West 45th Street, Suite 1205 New York, NY 10036 (212) 869-3790 q Orthodoxy Editors: I recently read Bernard Avishai's essay "Commentary and the American Jews" in the form of a Dissent pamphlet...
...Richard Deats Gordon Adams Leon Shull Mel Wulf Bogdan Denitch and seventeen other leading American peace activists...
...Orthodox Judaism...
...46-52...
...Neither do tasteless sarcasms simplifying the serious problems of the times...
...Paul Mayer Michael Harrington Randall Forsberg Norma Becker David Cortright Hon...
...Buckley deserves something more serious...
...A writer less tactful than Alter would not have hesitated to call this conclusion racist...
...Meiss's writing and thinking does not rise above the abusive rhetoric of the radical students of the '60s—one of whom Mr...
...There is nothing in Alter's article to which the word "attack" can reasonably be applied...
...Avishai is saying three things about Alter's article...
...Attack...
...Commentary has gradually, but surely, reinstated Orthodox Judaism, really a manipulated version of it, lacking in authentic faith, as the only American Jewish practice to match Zionism in inspiring the cohesion necessary for Jews 503 to make their fights...
...As activists opposed to actions by the Reagan administration that would escalate the arms race, we the undersigned call upon you to release Soviet peace activists now detained, cease harassment of their activities, and allow their voices, too, to be heard on this most vital of issues—the issue of survival in the face of nuclear war...
...Alter, however, merely brings to light certain facts that belie Soler's conclusion about the Jewish mind, coolly demonstrating that as a literary critic Soler has made some mistakes...
...Finally, Alter's article represents a defensively Orthodox Jewish viewpoint...
...Such independent peace committees are essential to building the broadest possible movement against nuclear arms and calling all nuclear powers to account for their arsenals...
...His article could perfectly well have been written by an atheist who had knowledge of the relevant texts...
...No more articles by anthropologists like Erich Isaac on dietary laws and circumcision...
...We welcome the recent Soviet renunciation of first-use of nuclear weapons...
Vol. 29 • September 1982 • No. 4
