LETTERS
LETTERS _On the PLO_ To the Editor: In publishing Stephen P. Cohen's article, "The Real Threat of the PLO", MOMENT has made an important contribution to the reading material of the American...
...This is an unfortunate failure to gi ve the facts...
...Others of the Rabbi's contentions, such as our alleged hostility to freedom of speech and indifference to minority rights, are so far from the truth that they require no response...
...Does it mean that Jewish education is no longer "front and center...
...After all, isn't a catalog supposed to be reasonably complete...
...Unfortunately, our prediction has been borne out...
...Ralph Gottlieb Chevy Chase, Md...
...Writing in the May Midstream, editor Joel Carmichael goes so far as to say that no one spoke of the "Palestinians" prior to 1967, and that the very concept of the "Palestinians" is a product of ingenious Arab public relations...
...Arthur H. Samuelson Staff member, Breira New York City To the Editor: A lot of facile nonsense has appeared recently on the subject of the Palestinians in general and the PLO in particular...
...For example, should we who have been called as the Lord's "witnesses" be found in opposition to non-denominational prayer in public schools...
...Samuel advises total destruction of the nation's enemies...
...The Jewish Catalog is an achievement very worthy of recognition...
...Jewish conservatives and Ideas magazine in particular did not depart from the prophetic tradition in defending our country's efforts to protect the territorial integrity and self-determination of South Vietnam...
...The American Jew's political decisions should be made with multiple awarenesses...
...I would like to further the discussion so articulately and sensitively begun by Stephen Cohen, and to this end, would hope that he will soon deal with some of the following questions: (1) How would the Israeli government encourage the organization of non-terrorist Palestinian groups...
...Prof...
...Such references reveal a prophetic view of war and peace a good deal more complex than is commonly supposed...
...There is a Reality beneath and beyond the surface appearance of human existence which is the source and meaning of man's life on earth...
...Prof...
...Next time around may its editors do even better...
...Perhaps a subsequent edition of The Jewish Catalog will make an effort to close these gaps so that its broad appeal with its attractive format will enable its readers to achieve greater understanding of all that goes into enhancing Jewish living in today's complex world...
...I do not see any section on Jewish education—a surprising omission in view of the remarkable upsurge in community-supported projects for which the most articulate of our young leaders have been successfully and properly clamoring in recent years...
...They wrote: "The Palestinian problem is the most urgent problem of Israel today...
...that the right to live in a safe and secure neighborhood should be accorded to Jews as well as to others...
...LETTERS _On the PLO_ To the Editor: In publishing Stephen P. Cohen's article, "The Real Threat of the PLO", MOMENT has made an important contribution to the reading material of the American Jewish community...
...The political decision rests on the answers to the "Jewish questions" of Israel, Soviet Jewry, aid to parochial schools, etc...
...2) For the purpose of representation, who exactly is a "Palestinian...
...It also omits a number of programs of our Jewish Federation's College Age Youth Services on campuses throughout the State of Illinois...
...It is curious that Prof...
...Here we have about a page of "A Guide to History" with not a single reference either to the ongoing operations of our great United Jewish Appeal supported rescue agencies in places like Paris and Rome and Vienna—cities which are frequently visited by and attractive to young people...
...As Jews, we have a responsibility to support Israel, but we also have a responsibility, indeed, a moral obligation, to point out policies which may be unwise and ineffective...
...And what of the prophets' stress on social justice...
...While he endorses Jewish and presumably Israeli recognition of the theoretical existence of Palestinian nationalism, he does not recommend any positive steps that could be made in that direction...
...he fails to say that our one and only article on Rhodesia was published in 1969, some time before that country adopted its plethora of racist restrictions...
...For example, he is correct in noting that I authored an article in Ideas praising Franco of Spain...
...Partition Resolution of November 29, 1947...
...It omits, for example, the Spertus College of Judaica, with its innovative consortium program, which is reaching out to all the state universities...
...today, Israel finds itself dangerously isolated in the world', a condition which will only worsen if the present status quo continues...
...This is no small matter, since it is the one section of the book that has the most potential for practical use...
...For example, 30 pages are devoted to kashrut, food, wine and candles...
...This position of ostrich-like non-involvement has never been advocated by Ideas or by any spokesman whom I would identify as part of the Jewish conservative consensus...
...Here, at last, was someone making distinctions between Arafat and the more moderate Palestinians, and, more significantly, advocating a Palestinian state on the basis of his own Zionism...
...Novak himself is critical of the book's section on travel to Israel...
...So it was refreshing and gratifying to read Stephen P. Cohen's article on the subject in this first issue of MOMENT...
...Would it not have been appropriate for the editors of The Jewish Catalog to suggest contact with peer groups when travelling in Western Europe...
...Kissinger, and go on a broad diplomatic offensive, as has been urged by Stanley Hoffman (Foreign Affairs, January, 1975) among others...
...The Jewish Catalog_ To the Editor: I find myself in the small and, perhaps, unpopular minority which has raised questions about The Jewish Catalog...
...However, he failed to mention the reason for my praise, which was Franco's rescue of more than 60,000 Jews from the Nazis, the subject of the article...
...Instead of aiming our heavy artillery at liberals who deviate ever so slightly from the currently accepted line, we would do well to work more seriously against a politician who represents a real threat—George Wallace...
...In the case of the Jewish conservative, the "What's good for me, the Jew...
...question takes over and replaces all the other questions...
...These days, to be a liberal apparently means to be ipso facto suspect in much of the Jewish community...
...Perhaps this is a reflection of Novak's personal feelings toward that magazine or that author, but if it represents the only negative review in the American Jewish press, any "last word" ought to attempt to deal with it...
...But to say only this is to distort the prophetic message by omission...
...The Rabbi's more general contention that the positions taken by Jewish conservatives are motivated either by post-Holocaust fears or by economic selfishness must be answered...
...In fact, the critical question is over the perception of the human self...
...The most encouraging evidence of that commitment is the lively involvement of youth in their future as Jews...
...I acknowledge that its enormous success certainly demonstrates it has met a real need...
...Finally, Novak's article purports to be the "last word" on The Jewish Catalog...
...And should we whose watchword has long been I'chayim add our voices to the shallow, thoughtless cacophony demanding the deadly convenience of "abortion on demand...
...Cohen may regard such an initiative as a sign of weakness, the fact remains that Israel today is in the position of relative strength vis-a-vis the Palestinians...
...Michael S. Kogan Editor-in-Chief, IDEAS To the Editor: I agree with Harold Schulweis when he states that "Jews live with an expectation of the undelivered punch...
...Unfortunately, he does not quite make it to wisdom...
...Novak claims, though, that it represents the "largest and most successful adult education program that American Jewry has ever experienced...
...On Fein on Percy_ To the Editor: Leonard Fein's analysis of the Percy affair was precisely on target...
...Cohen is able to approach the question of the Palestinians with some degree of rationality...
...However, I am concerned that this paranoiac consciousness has become much too potent a factor in the political decision-making process of the American Jew, and I question its constructive value...
...This advantage which Israel enjoys, however, is not permanent, as the Palestinians' political stock has been rising since 1967 and will only continue to do so...
...I was impressed least of all by "The List," which gives us the names of interesting Jewish "teachers" around the country but manages to leave out many major Jewish centers...
...What's good for me, the Californian...
...They bring us into agonizing confrontation with ourselves as the inheritors of a tradition that commands us to get involved on the side which we perceive to be defending that sacral view of life for which Judaism has always stood...
...Such liberal handouts have reduced an alarming percentage of our urban population to perpetual beggary...
...But where is reference to some of the major issues in contemporary Jewish life...
...If the editors felt that such a list was necessary, a decision I found unwise, they could have at least gone to the trouble to make the listing a little more complete and as a result a little more useful...
...James P. Rice Executive Vice President Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago To the Editor: I greatly enjoyed the first issue of MOMENT and I wish the magazine every success in the years ahead...
...Not enough...
...If there is ever another issue, I hope the editors can close the gaps...
...It is difficult to locate the Rabbi's principal objection to Jewish conservatism...
...Rabbi Schulweis has described some of our stated positions only half truthfully...
...on jMfie X reason and the purpose for our continued existence as a Covenant people...
...Should we who bear a divine commission to awaken man to the transcendental reality within and beyond himself, unite with the enemies of religion to deny desperately needed aid to struggling religious school systems...
...But he never fully explains what he understands the prophetic tradition to be...
...Specifically, is it sufficient for the Israeli government to work with and cultivate the cooperation of moderates such as the West Bank mayors, or does Prof...
...3) Should Israel reverse its policy of dealing with one nation at a time on a step-by-step basis via Dr...
...Today these communities are vibrant, viable, concerned with and committed to their own and Israel's survival...
...4) What kind of guarantees, in terms of recognition, demilitarization, and trade should Israel insist upon as pre-conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state...
...Cohen urges us to recognize the problem for what it is: he recognizes the Palestinians as a national group with rights, just as the Jewish people have rights, to self-determination...
...In the article, we warned against the isolation of Rhodesia on the grounds that it would force Premier Smith closer to South Africa and cause his government to adopt many racist policies...
...I must confess to being among those who was not quite as impressed as Novak with The Jewish Catalog...
...Ultimately, we are bound to act in our own self-interest, and it is our perception of that larger self that is, finally, the crucial one...
...The Holocaust has, of course, done much to reveal the folly of the 19th century faith in the inevitable and inexorable progress of mankind...
...Such questions are not easily answered...
...Here Cohen demonstrates the same political myopia displayed by Prime Minister Rabin when Rabin unequivocally and repeatedly states that "the only place that Israel will meet the PLO is on the battlefield...
...I'm not sure if Prof...
...What's good for me, the laborer...
...However, the liberal American Jew must continue to address himself to all his other interests: "What's good for me, the suburbanite...
...Delay in dealing with this problem does not make it disappear, but makes the problem only that much more difficult and contributes to Israel's isolation in the world...
...One should ask, "What's good for me, the Jew...
...Furthermore, we have an obligation to decide which Israel we are to choose: the Israel of the abstract or the Israel of flesh and blood where there are serious internal discussions over policy...
...Cohen terms Israeli recognition of the PLO as a "concession," which could only be perceived as a sign of weakness by the other side...
...It is only the Jewish consciousness that is allowed to play a significant part in the decision-making...
...As I see them, they are these: A "Jewish Catalog," presumably patterned after The Whole Earth Catalog, implies a certain univer-salism, and has the objective to cover all the major and meaningful areas of Jewish life...
...I know that the way of man is not in himself," said Jeremiah...
...Prof...
...Should nonrefugees and, in some cases, assimilated Palestinians in Lebanon, Syria, the Persian Gulf states, and abroad be included...
...Cohen favor the organization of some body representing the Palestinians, as the Yishuv as formally represented by the Jewish Agency in dealing with the British...
...on page 12 Letters —continued_ On page 299, listing "Jewish Studies and Universities," only the University of Chicago and Roosevelt University are listed under the State of Illinois...
...It really gives us a lesson in how to "rip off" the average unsuspecting Israeli by appearing to be on the verge of starvation...
...Similarly, Rabbi Schulweis chides us for supporting Rhodesia's racist policies...
...Sklare is right, but the fact that Novak fails to respond leads me to believe that Sklare might have touched a sensitive nerve...
...For that matter, there is no reference to the renaissance of Jewish communities in Western Europe which were in a shambles three decades ago—sometimes given up for lost, even by the Jewish rehabilitation teams sent to aid them...
...To his credit, Prof...
...But, together with Maimonides, we do not consider that throwing vast sums of money at the poor constitutes the highest level of Tz dakah...
...Whose Middle East policies would we rather have — Wallace's or Percy's...
...While Novak was impressed most of all by the section on travelling in the Soviet Union, those of us who have been there ourselves found it lacking (at least I did...
...His underlying assumptions seem to be that the prophetic tradition stands upon two principles: peace and social justice...
...Fortunately, there are many Israelis who are aware of this necessity to take the initiative in the conflict with the Palestinians...
...Hopefully, these errors of omission apply only to Illinois, but one cannot help but wonder whether the same might not be true for the rest of the list...
...David M. Szonyi New York City The New Jewish Right To the Editor: In your premiere issue, Rabbi Harold Schulweis offered his analysis of what he termed "The New Jewish Right...
...Of course, no one ever expected anything good from Wallace, so no one can be disillusioned with him...
...It is only through the consideration of many and conflicting interests that one can arrive at a realistic appraisal of one's self-interest...
...If it is worth 30 pages to go into detail about kashrut, food, wine and candles, wouldn't it be valid to use a couple of pages to stimulate some interest in such subjects...
...We share such concerns with our liberal counterparts...
...Israel and the Palestinian people have to negotiate in order to achieve peaceful coexistence...
...I'll grant that in many ways The Jewish Catalog has been a success...
...The ethno-religious consciousness has now become a case of paranoia: "It's only good for me if it is good for the Jews...
...That's fine, for at a time when young people are searching for symbols, the ceremonial aspects of Jewish life are meaningful to them (as they should be to all of us...
...Such understanding presents some very painful questions as we seek to define our role in society...
...Unfortunately, it seems to me that is why its weaknesses are so serious...
...to determine the criteria against which political alternatives can be compared...
...Must we be accused of selfishness because we point out that equal opportunity for all Americans includes such opportunity for Jews...
...Not that we have given up on progress, but having seen the abyss in man we now realize that it will be that much more difficult to achieve the heights of the ultimate prophetic vision...
...The positions we take as a corporate body or as individuals become valid in the full Jewish sense only if they express our ultimate commitment to the religious view of life which lies at the heart of Jewish self-understanding...
...he would have done better to advise the community how to answer this question...
...The prophets were indeed seized with the vision of a peaceful age to come, but many of them understood that the path to that idyllic future would be anything but peaceful...
...In so doing we were also defending America's position as a world power and principal opponent of the forces of totalitarianism...
...We do not oppose quota systems, destruction of neighborhoods and social revolution simply because these are "bad for the Jews...
...but indifference to one's own survival is a condition of psychological ill health that a small people cannot afford...
...What sells is not necessarily good and no matter how many copies are distributed, the book, any book, has to stand on its own merits...
...He does respond in some length to one of the Catalog's critics (Deborah Weissman's review in the Jerusalem Post), but he simply dismisses Marshall Sklare (in Commentary) as "wrong-headed and nasty...
...And yet, how much have we heard lately about Wallace's foreign policy views, his financial backers, and his threat to dictate terms next summer to a spiritless, leaderless, and divided Democratic Party...
...Cohen has done well to caution moderation for American Jewry...
...To carry it a step further, note that those who have become targets of the blind hatred of many Jews, such as Charles Percy, Ramsey Clark, and George McGovern, have invariably been left of center...
...Marti Cooper Princeton, N.J...
...He finds fault with us for advocating a kind of Jewish "moral isolationism" by urging Jewish Americans not to take public positions on controversial questions...
...The Catalog makes practically no reference to the Holocaust, and consequently no suggestion is made about opportunities for travellers to meet the survivors and see the impressive documentation centers and monuments throughout both Eastern and Western Europe, and in Israel as well...
...Which brings us to the central emphasis of the prophetic tradition: the transcendental or religious view of human life...
...In conjunction with this question, should acceptance of the idea of a Palestinian state be simply announced, or used as a "blue chip" in negotiations...
...Furthermore, he rejects the one Israeli move that would constitute recognition of Palestinian nationalism by refusing to advocate the giving up of the West Bank to the PLO or even recognizing the PLO as the preeminent spokesmen for the Palestinians...
...I was particularly disturbed by Novak's equation of the book's large sales figures and its quality...
...A significant example of this growing consciousness is the memorandum which twenty-one Israeli political leaders, professors and scholars directed to the government on July 11, 1974, demanding a new policy toward the Palestinians...
...We are accused by Rabbi Schulweis of abandoning the prophetic traditions of Judaism...
...We would never deny our obligation to the poor and the stranger...
...it is they, after all, who have no government, no army, no state of their own...
...The self-interest approach is necessary and desirable within the framework of the interest group liberalistic political structure that now exists in this country as defined by Theodore Lowi...
...com...
...It is not that publicity, as such, is sought for those programs, but the failure to list them means that Catalog readers are simply not told about opportunities that exist...
...I disagree with Harold Schulweis, who states that the critical question is over the perception of the Jewish self...
...In my view, this represents an arrogance that can be found, perhaps to a somewhat lesser extent, throughout the Catalog...
...With mutual respect and fraternal regard, Jewish conservatives and liberals can create a rich dialogue of the kind that has always served to strengthen the intellectual and moral fabric of Jewish existence...
...Jeremiah issues a call to "sharpen the arrows and take up the shields" to obliterate the Babylonian empire...
...or that the laudable political, social and economic principles which have made our nation the freest and most prosperous in history should be defended by Jews as well as by all other Americans who have benefited from them...
...While Prof...
...Cohen might have added that, in light of the history of the Middle East in the past 27 years, it is one of contemporary history's more striking ironies that the Zionists alone, of all the parties concerned, accepted the principle of coexisting Jewish and Arab states within Palestine at the time of the U.N...
...I would like to add a few words to William Novak's "Last Word on The Jewish Catalog...
...Cohen should term Israeli recognition of the PLO a "concession"- a term which has decidedly negative connotations to the Israelis...
...If the latter, how should such a body be chosen...
...Where in the psychological dynamics of the welfare mentality can one find the prophetic emphasis on human dignity and self-respect...
...A portion of the article concerned Ideas, the politically conservative Jewish journal...
...Among the signatories were Shlomo Lahat, Mayor of Tel Aviv (Likud), Moshe Unna, MK (National Religious Party), Nissim Eliad, MK (Independent Liberals), Amnon Rubenstein, Dean of Tel Aviv Law School (Shinui), Lova Eliav (Labor Alignment-Mapai), Yitzhak Ben Aharon and many other prominent Israelis...
...But we can't let our subjective feelings of disillusionment take precedence over the realities of those whom we ought to Jonathan Groner Washington, D.C...
...This is both the com...
...Especially disappointing is the section on "Jewish Travel...
...But, unfortunately, he seems to be more concerned with helping Jews win debating points in their defense of Israel than in recommending an effective Israeli foreign policy...
...Deutero-Isaiah sees Persia's military successes as God's own victories...
...That I can't buy and I don't see how Novak came to that conclusion...
...I was encouraged to find that unlike many American Jews, Prof...
...We call upon the Government of Israel to initiate real and immediate steps for the promotion of such negotiations...
...The difference here is more than semantical, and points to a very different way of perceiving the reality in which Israel finds itself...
...Would it not be more constructive to view such a step as evidence of an Israeli "initiative...
Vol. 1 • September 1975 • No. 3
