Forum
FORUM Excellent Kosher Chinese Food You may add these to Lillian Feinsilver's article "Seeded Wry: Yiddish Fun in Commercial Names" (June 1991): • Me Tsu Yen,* a glatt kosher Chinese...
...The Hillel is funded separately by B'nai B'rith International.] The adult Jewish leadership at Maryland, on the other hand, paid $10,000 to Dr...
...unintentionally offended Father Greeley because our assumptions are so different that we talked right past each other...
...I always enjoy reading MOMENT...
...In view of the fact that this is the eve of a presidential election year," Shultz proposed, "ways can be found to indicate to the administration...that the large and influential Jewish communities will find a way of registering at the polls [their] dissatisfaction over the failure of the administration to take any effective steps to save the Jews of Europe...
...Shultz, Goldstein and Syrkin were in the minority...
...Prager among the Warmongers Dennis Prager's column (June 1991) on why Jews remain liberal is full of such simplifications and distortions about Democrats and liberals that I am baffled why he identifies himself as a member of that party...
...Their calls for a more aggressive American Jewish response to the Holocaust were drowned out by colleagues whose fears of provoking antisemitism and reluctance to criticize Roosevelt hampered the possibility of effective Jewish political action...
...Where does she get such statistics...
...Tzenah Urenah's Antifeminist Streak To cite Tzenah Urenah as furthering the aims of feminism is ludicrous ("Was the First Feminist Bible in Yiddish...
...It means at a bare minimum and also at the poetic maximum that by his life, death, and resurrection Jesus exorcised Sin and Fate and Death—not completely, not totally, but in principle and definitively...
...By His life and death Jesus taught us how to live and die....Jesus saved us by showing us how to live generously and gracefully and how to die confidently....We now understand from the study of human language that language is the way we respond to reality and the way we define it and therefore create it...
...Time and again I have been told by the great public speakers who make their rounds (and their livelihood) on the "Jewish fund-raising dinner circuit" that they would love to speak at Maryland if they receive a hefty fee that usually prices them right out of our budget and my assurances that there won't be too many hecklers in the crowd, as if I could somehow tell the ticket office not to sell tickets to anyone who doesn't profess their love of Israel before making their purchase...
...Outraged at Pogrebin I am outraged at Letty Cottin Pogrebin's column (June 1991...
...Perhaps I misinterpreted the book and Transplant Patient Dies Shortly after we went to press with the August issue of MOMENT, we learned that Tamar Amnon had died...
...Everything is simple in their view...
...Karen S. Edelstein Houston, Texas The Jewish Premium on Compassion The reason three out of four Jewish voters consistendy support Democratic candidates is that the Democratic party consistendy supports positions that are in the Jewish community's best interests...
...There" are thousands of us out here just waiting for our opinions to be listened to...
...I have a problem with conservatives like Mr...
...If your favorite group's name is not on this list, maybe it's time you stopped taking their word for how great they are and ask a pro-Israel student what we really think...
...At the University of Maryland, College Park], when Black Muslim students (some of whom are members of Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam) brazenly stride into the Jewish Student Union office and begin cross-examining us on what we (Jews) meant in a particular passage of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," when for five years in a row Jews have had to watch the celebration of "Free South Africa-Free Palestine Week" on our campus (last year it was with the endorsement of the office of human relations that operates out of the office of the president), we are told to sit tight and let it pass...
...Until the Jewish community makes good English speaking lecturers available who aren't afraid to answer the tough questions and at a price that won't deplete our entire limited budgets, pro-Israel students will continue to reach to those fringe elements who, radical though they may be, at least respect and understand our needs...
...Father Greeley repeatedly emphasizes the similarities between Christianity and Judaism, while Rabbi Neusner stresses the differences...
...Last fall, when dozens of fliers went up proclaiming, "Stop the Israeli Butchers" and "A riddle: Why is an American soldier like Jesus Christ...
...Another example of Jewish programming dollars well spent...
...As a magazine with a conscience, please consider: If we don't remember—who will...
...We mourn her passing, while at the same time we feel gratitude for those additional months that she and her loving family had together...
...We Jews have always placed a premium on compassion...
...Andrew Greeley National Opinion Research Center University of Chicago Chicago, Illinois Harvey Minkoff Replies: Since Father Greeley did not write easily quotable articles of faith, I tried to paraphrase in a short review what I understood him to be saying in effect...
...For Mr...
...If you don't salt it, it soon becomes putrid, and therefore women have to adorn themselves with good spices and clean clothing...
...The bleak picture Charles Jacobs draws ("Arab PR: How the Arab Viewpoint Is Promoted in America," June 1991), documenting the pervasive degree to which antisemitic and anti-Israel Arab propaganda has permeated educational and religious communities in the United States, should be a red flag to ajewish community that has been largely complacent in addressing this danger...
...Finally, he distorts my thesis in The Bible and Us beyond recognition...
...What better place to try to influence tomorrow's leaders than on the liberal campuses of our nation...
...FORUM Excellent Kosher Chinese Food You may add these to Lillian Feinsilver's article "Seeded Wry: Yiddish Fun in Commercial Names" (June 1991): • Me Tsu Yen,* a glatt kosher Chinese restaurant • Barnum & Bagel, a restaurant and deli...
...Of approximately six million North American Jews, you mean to tell me that half a million are gay...
...They could say that they had been freed at the price of the blood of Christ and communicate to others that the suffering ofJesus had set them free...
...Above all, that means supporting the Democratic party...
...When every Jew-hater from Louis Farrakhan to Kwame Toure, Abdul Alim Muhammed (Farrakhan's spokesperson), Representative Gus Savage, Steven Cokley, Professor Griff of Public Enemy, Edward Said and Hatem Husseini visit my campus, the response from the Jewish community is muted at best...
...I was pleased to be mentioned in the article, but my organizational affiliation was incorrect...
...Now as a metaphor this was a perfectly valid description...
...Why Tzenah Urenah, supposedly meant primarily for women, is so heavily laden with antifeminist material is an enigma to me...
...Consider three examples: Israel Goldstein, Marie Syrian and Lillie Shultz...
...Morgan quotes continues: "...while battered women's shelters and rape crisis centers are scrounging for pennies to help Jews (and others) who are in agony right now...
...That means supporting social programs that improve the lives of disadvantaged Americans...
...Not all American Jewish leaders subscribed to that point of view...
...Do I sound bitter...
...Moreover, his suggestion that my thoroughly orthodox Christology is somehow or other "minimalist" portrays an attitude that produced the Spanish Inquisition...
...Hence the concluding chapters: "Can Christianity and Judaism Conduct Dialogue?No, Says theRabbi....Yes, Says the Priest...
...He himself felt his view required defense...
...Jews stay liberal because it fits our learning and our culture...
...As a Jewish magazine, you have the responsibility to publish articles that do not deliberately mock and callously disregard the memory of the six million Jewish souls who perished in the Holocaust...
...Prager's careless generalities belong in a political rally rather than in an intellectual journal...
...Jewish Democrats seek to put that compassion to action...
...Jesus had sacrificed Himself for them...
...Minkoff, then at least from MOMENT magazine...
...In this context, Father Greeley seems to be distancing himself from fundamentalist or literal interpretations of the New Testament, which are clearly incompatible with Judaism, and aligning himself with sociological and metaphorical ones, especially in the chapters "Jesus—What He Did" and "Jesus—Who He Was...
...I do not believe, as he says, nor do I say anywhere in the book that "Jews too can accept his version of Christ, albeit not immediately and without soul searching...
...Ruth Westheimer, a concentration camp survivor and member of the Haganah, not to speak on her experiences in the camps, not to talk about pre-1948 Israel and the underground, but to address a packed house (mostly non-Jews) on the best way to achieve orgasm...
...The amount of money and resources, but most importandy the amount of respect, set aside for this country's 400,000 Jewish college students is appalling...
...Answer: Because he too will die for the sins of the Israeli Butchers," where was the outcry...
...The world we create with our language, our images, our metaphors is radically different now than it was before Jesus came to tell us how much God loves us...
...While it is not consciously feminist by current standards, it did, ironically (or enigmatically), "advance the position of women"—thereby fulfilling a goal of feminist exegesis...
...It speaks of how easy it is to beguile women and how Eve committed the sin "with an eager will" (mit villegem...
...It is also in this light that I interpreted the optimism in the last chapter...
...Jewish leadership to "concentrate on the war effort" may seem to Francine Klagsbrun to have been sensible, but in 1943 it moved the distinguished historian Ben Halpern to write: "The history of our times will one day make bitter reading, when it records that some Jews were so morally uncertain that they denied they were obligated to risk their own safety in order to save other Jews who were being done to death abroad...
...That means supporting human rights abroad...
...That means favoring federal judges who will preserve freedom of speech, separation of church and state and civil rights...
...he says on page 192: "Is not my minimum/maximum account of Jesus as our Savior nothing more than 'exemplary' salvation...
...how she lusts for her husband to rule over her (based on Genesis 3:16) with the comment "as a master rules over his slaves...
...If so, the review may have inadvertently proved that, for better or worse, Rabbi Neusner is correct—we are different religions talking about different things to different people...
...If I have misrepresented his position, I apologize...
...Rabbi A. James Rudin New York, New York Roosevelt and the Jews Francine Klagsbrun (Column, April 1991), seconding the view of the late Lucy Dawidowicz, asserts that American Jewish leaders refrained from mounting vociferous protests during the Holocaust because they "were convinced that the best way to stop the murder of the Jews was to defeat HiUer as quickly as possible and therefore to concentrate on the war effort...
...Leo Morgan Skokie, Illinois The sentence Mr...
...I am not prepared to exclude such a possibility...
...It is typical of CAMERA's exaggerations and guilt by association, reminiscent of McCarthy and the Daily Worker...
...They have names like CAMERA [Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America], ZOA [Zionist Organization of America], ISFI [Institute of Students and Faculty on Israel], USD/AZYF [University Student Department of the American Zionist Youth Foundation] and JCAB [Jewish Campus Activities Board...
...Not now, surely, not for a long time, but maybe, if we begin to talk about what we do share now, sometime...
...How can we help...
...Women's talkativeness is mentioned by citing the Talmudic [precept] "nine measures of talk (out of ten) were given to women...
...With communism as evil, Saddam Hussein as Hitler and Leonard Bernstein as an anarchist, Prager has invented a world as fanciful as a nightmarish wonderland...
...I am the interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee...
...Letty Cottin Pogrebin states (Column, June 1991) that "at least a half million Jews are gay...
...For example, on page 190 he says, "By His life and death and resurrection, Jesus had paid the purchase price to win them their new freedom...
...And if not now—when...
...Gary S. Rubin, Member Executive Committee of the National Jewish Democratic Council Des Moines, Iowa Prager Is beneath Contempt Most of Dennis Prager's column (June 1991) boils down to a thinly disguised attempt to smear liberal Jews with the discredited slogan of being "soft on communism," which is beneath contempt as far as I am concerned...
...What follows are a few examples of how the work treats the Genesis "first sin" story (Jerusalem, 1966 ed...
...The combined budget funded by university-collected student activity fees of the Jewish groups at Maryland (although one of the largest on any college campus) hovers around $17,000...
...We are also told that women run to [see] the dead [person] before their husbands since they brought death to the world...
...Student activists have been all but ignored by the very Jewish organizations your article lists as places to go to when one wants to combat propaganda...
...Jason Hoffman, National Secretary North American Jewish Students' NETWORK Former President University of Maryland Jewish Student Union College Park, Maryland Rudin's with the AJ Committee The June 1991 issue of MOMENT contained an excellent article by Charles Jacobs, "Arab PR: How the Arab Viewpoint is Promoted in America...
...is "Maybe...
...What action could American Jews have taken against Roosevelt's policies...
...I apologize if I do because some Jewish groups do care, but they are not the traditional big name, high profile, pro-Israel organizations you may expect...
...Pogrebin would be more appropriate in one of the screamers sold at the check-out counters in supermarkets...
...Tamar's struggle to live and the extraordinary efforts by a group of students to help her were told to us in Hanoch Teller's article, 'Tamar's Race for Life...
...Fred Heuman, Associate Professor Bernard Baruch College, CUNY New York, New York Harvey Minkoff and Evelyn Melamed Reply: Professor Heuman is quite right that Tzenah Urenah contains unflattering comments about women, as we note on pages 31 and 52 of our article...
...They pack an auditorium and verbally annihilate any hecklers in the audience...
...It is the aggregate of statements such as these that I characterized—perhaps mistakenly—as minimalist...
...We students are the front line for antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment that has been festering for so long...
...David Alpert Oak Park, Michigan Letty Cottin Pogrebin Replies: My source was the resolution on gay and lesbian Jews of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, meeting in New Orleans, November 2-6, 1989, which begins: "In North America today, it is estimated that 100,000 Reform Jews—and 500,000 members of the larger Jewish community—are gay or lesbian...
...Metvin Merzon Skokie, Illinois *M'tzuyan is a Hebrew word meaning excellent Lies, Lies, Lies If I say something that is inaccurate about Judaism, it is certainly within Harvey Minkoff s rights to tell me I've got it wrong...
...I demand an apology, if not from Mr...
...The decision of most of the U.S...
...Father Greeley says (page 282) that "we must consider whether it be possible...to explore the possibility of heating that fracture" that broke first-century Israel into today's Judaism and Christianity...
...At the first annual assembly of the American Jewish Conference in August 1943, Dr...
...As a survivor I take issue with her comment that "It's crazy that the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the National Holocaust Museum can collect millions of dollars in the name of people long since in their graves...
...Reminiscent of McCarthy Tying PBS and David Shipler to Arab propagandists ("Arab PR: How the Arab Viewpoint Is Promoted in America," June 1991) is neither accurate nor fair...
...The trouble arose when the metaphor was turned into an allegory and the question arose as to who was the slave owner to whom the price had to be paid...
...Since Christianity cannot eliminate Christ, the only solution would seem to be finding a place forJesus in Judaism...
...Man was created from earth, which doesn't stink, but Eve was created from the bone of a rib...
...Wise feared that use of the "Jewish vote" might stimulate antisemitism...
...This is not a suggestion—it is an imperative...
...Minkoff to attribute such a position to me is a lie...
...In fact, as we say on page 31, our answer to the question "Was the first feminist Bible in Yiddish...
...Marcus M. Rosenblum Rabun Gap, Georgia...
...Having said (page 281), "We share a common God, common stories, common metaphors, common sacred books...common experiences of God and common feasts....Experience, image, story—what more does it take for there to be, at least at the pretheological level...a common religion...
...Prager...
...They are superficial and sophomoric...
...That is another lie...
...Page 192 continues, "So what does it mean to say Jesus was our Savior...
...Jesse Zel Lurie Delray Beach, Florida Get Involved...
...On the eve of the 1944 presidential election, Wise issued a statement urging American Jews "not to vote as partisans of a particular racial or religious bloc...
...That is the real question, isn't it...
...but his attempt to tell me I have my own religion wrong in his review (Books, June 1991) of The Bible and Us (Andrew M. Greeley and Jacob Neusner, Warner Books, 1990) is offensive, outrageous, arrogant and ignorant...
...Israel Goldstein (representing the Zionist Organization of America) charged that American Jews "have not been stirred deeply enough, have not exercised ourselves passionately enough, have not risked enough of our convenience and our social and civic relations, have not been ready enough to shake the bonds of so-called amicability in order to lay our troubles upon the conscience of our Christian neighbors and fellow citizens...
...Walter A. Sheldon New York, New York Disgraceful Columnists Prager and Pogrebin do not grace your pages: They disgrace them...
...When the Roosevelt administration agreed in 1944 to allow a token group of about 1,000 European Jewish refugees to be housed in upstate New York, American Labor Zionist leader Marie Syrkin publicly criticized FDR—a highly unusual step for a prominent American Jew to take—for limiting the operation to such a small number of refugees that it was "impressive neither as a practical measure of alleviation nor even as a gesture...
...Where has Dennis Prager put his heart but with the hatemongers and warmongers...
...Rafael Medotf Jerusalem, Israel The writer is author of 'The Deafening Silence: American Jewish Leaders and the Holocaust (Shapolsky, 1987).—Ed...
...Nor do I say that "if we believe that Jesus changed the way we view life and death, then we have accepted the Christian message...
...Had they known at the outset that her chances of prolonged survival were slim (which I suspect they did know) it would not have altered their drive and sacrifice...
...Could we eventually arrive at a Christology with which both Jews and Catholics could live...
...The caution that I advised was directed to Jewish readers, the audience I was writing for in MOMENT, lest the desire for dialogue and rapprochement blur what is acceptable to Judaism...
...At a meeting of representatives of major Jewish organizations on August 10, 1943, Lillie Shultz of the American Jewish Congress boldly suggested the use of the 'Jewish vote" to soften FDR's hard line against helping European Jewry...
...The quaintest and most unflattering comment regarding women's etiquette runs as follows: "Why does a woman have to adorn herself with good spices and clean clothing more than man...
...Regardless of my personal political beliefs, I am going to invite those "right-wing fascists" to speak because they are willing to support our fight...
...Joan Swirsky, Vice President Jewish Political Caucus Great Neck, New York Ignoring Student Activists While your recent article "Arab PR: How the Arab Viewpoint Is Promoted in America" (June 1991) may have shaken a few in the so-called Jewish establishment, the rise in Arab propaganda probably came as litde surprise to any pro-Israel activist on our nation's college campuses...
...Shultz's superior, AJ Congress president Stephen Wise, disagreed...
...By getting involved—in whatever way is compatible with one's style, temperament and resources...
...Rabbi Avi Weiss and the late Rabbi Meir Kahane (t"zt) would come to speak at my school for littie more than the cost of a dinner and a plane ticket...
...And when pro-Israel student leaders complain to our self-appointed "elders," our complaints are rarely, if ever, taken seriously...
...Dennis Prager (Column, June 1991) is out of touch with our people...
...I can't believe it...
...In fact, it is shameful...
...I don't think so and neither do the Catholic theologians with whom I have consulted on this delicate but important point...
...Teller writes that the group of yeshivah students "were determined to uphold the Torah's injunction to save a life...
...A change in the way we give meaning to life and death actually transforms these two central realities as they are experienced in the human condition...
...He concludes: "Jesus is the problem, is he not...
...This guy is further right than Reagan...
...Are a Half Million American Jews Gay...
...The world proves every day that nothing is simple...
...and I meant the term neither as an insult nor as a critique of Father Greeley's knowledge of his own religion...
...As to the authors of the article, they should surely look elsewhere for expressions of Jewish feminism...
Vol. 16 • October 1991 • No. 5
