HONORS AND HONESTY
HONORS AND HONESTY News of corruption in Israel, and especially in its defense establishment, has quite properly disconcerted many of us. One does not hear much talk of it in the American...
...It is, as we have all long known, a problem also in private business...
...In local community after local community, virtually every organization has had to face the problem of what to do about leaders who were known to be unethical in their private business dealings...
...Does the example make the problem look simple...
...Yet one segment of our community continued to honor him, elevating him to the very highest position it had to offer...
...HONORS AND HONESTY News of corruption in Israel, and especially in its defense establishment, has quite properly disconcerted many of us...
...But he forbade the c o n g r e g a t i o n from responding " A m e n . " Let those in our community who know themselves less than honorable have the courtesy to refrain from exploiting their fellows in order to salve their own consciences...
...In our mothers' words, " b e n i c e ." But this epidemic of dishonesty requires more of us than repair to simple homilies or legal formulas...
...At the same time, however, we are prepared to indulge Israel all manner of error, understanding, as we do, the strains with which it lives...
...The question that arises is whether such private corruption, when it involves leaders in American Jewish life, has any implications for Jewish communal behavior...
...He confronted there a new problem in the Jewish experience...
...Some of us here still remember that Harry Truman was catapulted to national prominence through his chairmanship of a Senate investigation of corruption in World War II defense contracts...
...Leonard Fein MOMENTARILY...
...Ought a person who was not a shomer Shabbat, a Sabbath observer, be given the honor of being called to the Torah...
...When do HONORS AND HONESTY we close our eyes, and how tight do we shut them...
...we can launder money...
...But the fact is that we have no way of policing ourselves in such matters, nor are the issues involved always so clear-cut...
...The Israelis must know that their record of leniency towards criminals convicted of corruption makes a poor impression...
...Most Israeli officials are, we imagine, honest, but if the day should ever come when our contributions to Israel, whether conceived as tax or as charity, were seen as lining the pockets of corrupt men and women, in large numbers, we would surely balk...
...But we cannot, and will not, launder reputations...
...Do we accept tainted money...
...We cannot expect, and would not want, any formal procedure for "ethical clearance" as a prior condition to involvement in organized Jewish life...
...But the fact is that the Israeli journalists asked the question and pursued it, and the reason they did is that they understand full well that our relationship to Israel, passionate though it be, is not wholly open-ended...
...The problem is not new...
...Thus: Long before New York's leading operator of nursing homes was accused of cheating the government— an accusation which, we hasten to add, has yet to be proved in a court of law— it was apparently evident to many people that he was cheating the elderly Jews who lived in his homes...
...In Los Angeles, an insurance scandal...
...In a third case, a nursing home operator in New York was accused, on national television, of stealing the government blind, essentially by stealing the residents of his homes blind...
...we understood not only that the law would have sought us out, but also that there is a distinction between the State, as an enduring entity, and the government of the day, a collection of officials who hold, and sometimes abuse, power at a specific time...
...In the world of business, we recognize something called "fiduciary r e s p o n s i b i l i t y . " Is there not some analog for us, a kind of ethical responsibility which ought be no less binding...
...After all, we did not withhold our income tax payments to the United States during the Watergate scandal...
...Not one of the instances of corruption which have lately come to our attention involves a person who is insincere in his attachment to our people or in his concern for its welfare...
...Even now, it is widely supposed that kosher butchers deal with the Mafia, and that kosher caterers are often involved in illegal activity...
...Is Israel not beleaguered...
...The second is that corrupt behavior is a shame as well as a crime, and we ought to know better...
...On the one hand, we sometimes expect Israel — and the Israelis — to hew to a higher moral standard than we demand of others, even ourselves...
...At last Rice conceded—in part...
...We have never been particularly adept at dealing with such matters...
...Let them, out of their concern, come to our shul, but let them sit inconspicuously...
...in New York, questionable behavior in a new Jewish institution of higher education...
...Yes, we like to say that our contributions are, in effect, a selfimposed tax on our membership in the Jewish People...
...The first is that a decent respect for privacy and for civil liberties in general requires that we not act, or even think, as vigilantes...
...unscrupulous, perhaps immoral in business, yet full of good will and good works in the community...
...And do we honor its donor...
...Which raises another, and more proximate, question: Over the course of recent months, a number of very prominent American Jews have apparently been involved in highly questionable business transactions...
...The point was simple: Ill-gotten gains can still be put to good use...
...One does not hear much talk of it in the American Jewish community, most likely because we are somewhat ambivalent in our reaction...
...We are a voluntary community, come together for noble purpose, and we must be able to assume the integrity of our fellows...
...But his congregants rebelled, and subjected him to fierce pressure, demanding that he be more lenient...
...He agreed to call the non-observers to the Torah, and, having called them, agreed that they might chant the appropriate blessings...
...Accordingly, we must depend on one another, on our shared sense of Jewish responsibility...
...Non-observers of the Sabbath had the virtue of consistency...
...Corruption, in short, is not only a problem of government officials, whether in this country or in Israel...
...If a person engages in corrupt behavior, the agencies of the state will deal with him, and there is no doubt that if he is found guilty, he will lose his position in our community...
...T o the degree to which there is a Jewish community in this country, and not simply a statistical aggregate of individuals who call themselves Jews, that community is based on mutual trust...
...Already, the Rabbinical Assembly of America — the rabbinic arm of the Conservative movement—has passed a resolution condemning the alleged diversion in Israel of charitable funds to political purposes...
...Some years back, a major real estate operator in Boston, whose name had been associated with much of the worst slum housing in the city, offered to build a new school of nursing for one of the local u n i v e r s i t i e s . The trustees sweated over the offer, and finally — and properly — concluded that they were perfectly agreeable to accepting the gift, but would not name the school after its donor...
...In the old country, the problem did not arise...
...But this was America, its Jews a strange new breed...
...they did not come to shul...
...And, if they will not let it go at that, if they insist on being honored, let us have the self-respect, and the courage, to refrain from saying " a m e n " —for we are not a wild people...
...There are two immediately obvious answers to this question, neither of which satisfies...
...It has new prominence these days because national fortunes are involved, where, a generation or two ago, corruption in business may have been about such things as black-market meat or violation of housing codes...
...Rumors circulate concerning the imminent collapse of still another major Jewish fortune, again of a man prominent in philanthropic circles, again involving the possibility of criminal indictment...
...The first ordained rabbi in America was Abraham Rice, who served a c o n g r e g a t i o n in Baltimore in the 1840's...
...Irving B e r n s t e i n , the Executive VicePresident of the UJA, was surely correct when he told a group of Israeli journalists recently that the issue of corruption in Israel had not affected the UJA campaign at all...
...ELIE WIESEL ON ADAM AND EVE • HERBERT GOLD: FROM ISRAEL •JULES HARLOW ON TRANSLATING LITURGY •ALAN MINTZ: BREAKING FAST • KISSINGER: A SYMPOSIUM • CATALOG: HOW TO BUILD A SUKKAH • IRVING GREENBERGON "THREE WHO ATE...
...In one case, a highly respected businessman — an ordained rabbi — committed suicide, and there is at least some reason to believe that there was a connection between his personal distress and the actions of the corporation he headed...
...But the analogy is strained, for a self-imposed tax can be collected only so long as it purchases a share in decency...
...Their lives are fractured...
...After all, no man so flagrantly iii violation of the most elementary norms of decency should so be honored...
...Rice, writing home, quoted Amos in describing his people: "Am parua hu...
...Is Israel not Zion...
...In a second case, several national leaders of UJA were allegedly involved in a very shady investment project which cost their friends — mostly innocent victims who were themselves prominent in UJA — millions of dollars...
...They are a wild peop l e . " ) In keeping with elementary Jewish understanding, Rice refused to permit Sabbath violators the honor of an aliyah...
Vol. 1 • June 1975 • No. 2
