LETTERS
Bialystok Ghetto (sic) To the Editor: Mark Singer's article on Jews at Yale (July-August) opens with a quotation that is revealing of more than was intended: "Whenever I hear about some wonderful,...
...Disraeli was extremely concerned with the many contradictions and discords in English society...
...There is a paralysis in our community...
...His victims were Jews...
...As for communal leaders who are charged with corruption, Fein's comments make sense...
...He had been treasurer of the synagogue for a number of years...
...Ruth Wisse Dep't...
...Disraeli's place in the history is well established...
...and prefer to manipulate the presidents and the boards through the distribution of honor, banquets, and Man of the Year "recognitions...
...As to Secretary Kissinger, who recently visited Auschwitz: he could have used his presence there to remind the world of its part in the Holocaust — but he did not...
...May you reach your goals directly and effortlessly without frustration or going around in circles...
...Our appetites are too large, our ambitions too extended...
...This may be a virtue in some areas of human relations but it degenerates into a cancerous vice when we are silent in the presence of chillul hashem...
...As with a stolen object that is used for a mitzvah, so with stolen time that is similarly used, one's defense attorney becomes his prosecutor...
...His advice is simple: accept the money but don't go out of your way to honor the donor...
...This is in Gematria notation according to the writings of Rabbi Azuli...
...Now the brothers were good-natured, generous and apparently public spirited citizens...
...Jacob Neusner Professor of Religious Studies Brown University Providence, R.I...
...As for Kissinger's, who knows...
...And yet what troubles me still more is this: What is it all for...
...It is based on Rashi's commentary in Avodah Zarah, which describes an incident that was elsewhere suppressed...
...Cannot an individual reach God through private channels as well...
...v The reference to Bruria requires a comment...
...Yet, at least, someone profits...
...Wolfe Kelman New York City To the Editor: I would respond to Leonard Fein's thought-provoking and disturbing article on Jewish corruption with a loud amen...
...When the news of the indictment and conviction became known, he was summarily dismissed from all the public boards on which he had served, regardless of the generosity of his contributions over the years...
...In that case — and in the case of the many prominent Jewish figures surrounding Bergman — this is patently absurd...
...In this context, then, what validity rests in a discussion of individual points of Halachah...
...The intellectual traditions of both Bialystok and Yale, for example, would be equally impatient with the imprecision of their heirs...
...although the description refers to the medallic rather than the wall type...
...I'd like to see Man of the Year testimonial dinners held for our community's best Hebrew School teacher or for the most effective social worker...
...It is amazing how much energy is expended against observant Jews, rather than against those who have dropped out of the struggle...
...M. J. Rosenberg Washington, D. C. Disraeli as Jew To the Editor: I read with great interest Garry Wills's article comparing the background and rise to power of the first man of Jewish ancestry to become Prime Minister of England to the life and background of the first American Jewish Secretary of State...
...The community is sensitive to the reputation of its leaders...
...Only a few people can find out exactly how the money has been spent...
...In dealing with donors who try to buy respectability by passing tainted money, let us simply tell them no...
...For an observant and believing Jew, Halachah is binding in its totality...
...Or: take the money and run...
...After all, if there is corruption, someone must benefit...
...During his stay in Palestine the young aristocrat concludes that only a restoration to the Christian Church of its Jewish foundation will bring a moral revival to English society...
...The courts will decide whether certain nursing home entrepreneurs are guilty or innocent of the charges levelled against them.- Yet, I wish that a kippah had not been flaunted on national television...
...This Mafia chief builds orphanages in Sicily...
...To the Editor: Leonard Fein's editorial "Honors and Honesty" was an appalling statement...
...The primary problem is that actually getting something done, actually turning an agency into a means of serving present needs, seems contrary to the interests of our agents, the bureaucrats in their many forms who pass on and pass out the honors and keep us effectively organized to accomplish virtually nothing...
...If there were differences between the Jews of Bialystok and the Protestants of Yale in the 1890's — as indeed there were — and if these differences continue to influence relations between the two groups of descendents — as indeed they do — the distinctions are nevertheless subtler and more complex than either the quotation or the ensuing article suggests...
...One hopeful fact is the growing awareness of the limitations of the business-row, on page 10 leadership into whose (calloused) hands we have been thrown, an awareness richly enhanced by your fine editorial...
...To the Editor: In your first issue, Sharon and Michael Strassfeld's definition of Yasher Koach, "Literally, may your strength increase," is erroneous...
...the kippah on recent televised Senate hearings bordered on chillul hashem...
...or Histadrut dinner honors an ordinary Jew who breaks his back to put together a hundred dollar pledge...
...on /hi6 law merely because he is unhappy with it...
...To the Editor: Reading Leonard Fein's perceptive comments on the reports of corruption in the leadership groups of some segments of our community both in Israel and the Diaspora recalled for me what Professor Heschel would often remind us about the agony of Vietnam: that we may not all be guilty but we are all responsible...
...for the rest of us, the precise destination of the philanthropic dollar remains a mystery, except in the most general terms...
...I find the first of these problems to be the more serious one...
...The list is too long and wrenching, especially when I realize how much people in responsible positions like my own have contributed to the degeneration of public Jewish morality since the days of Baltimore's Rabbi Abraham Rice...
...Our community structures and institutions are to a very great extent financed by tainted money...
...Shlomo Riskin, Rabbi Lincoln Square Synagogue Assistant Prof, of Talmud, Yeshiva University New York City To the Editor: Leonard Fein's article on corruption in American Jewish life and in Israel raises two problems: the lack of accountability for the spending of public funds, and the character of those who are leaders in the Jewish community...
...And that brings us back to where we started...
...Yet, we are usually silent about this when we urge our people to preserve kashrut or return to it...
...Alfred Moldovan New York City Mazal Tov...
...If we cannot depend upon mutual trust and sense of common responsibility, it is because we have ceased to stand for more than private interest, publicly achieved at the cost of the common cause...
...The Jewish community will honor anyone short of Meyer Lansky who has the cash to put up...
...A transgression cannot be a mitzvah...
...That year the "example" happened to be three brothers who ran a large cashflow business where they failed to report a percentage of their earnings...
...Surely we do not need the same treatment from our fellow-Jews...
...But what about the many, many more who transform the mitzvah of tz'dakah into a means of personal aggrandizement...
...Who profits from the other kind of corruption, that of the ego over the claims of responsibility and dignity...
...The Shemoth on the left foot is probably of a similar nature and reference to Rabbi Azuli's writings will possibly elucidate the meaning...
...True, corrupt men and women are among us, as Leonard Fein fairly stresses...
...Most traditionalist rabbis know about the prevalence of corruption and price-gouging in the kosher food industry...
...On page 126 item #62 you will find the Shemoth on the right foot of the Menorah...
...And so Leonard Fein is wrong...
...As long as the public knows, it usually acts...
...Nowhere does yasher mean "increase...
...Undoubtedly, our entire Jewish community requires re-education...
...Bialystok in the 1890's was a thriving textile centre with several hundred Jewish mills, an active, cosmopolitan merchant class, and a proletariat well organized and politically astute...
...I knew many Jews (there are still a few around...
...And who determines that a minyan shall consist of ten people...
...But when the Halachic system as such is debunked in its totality, and regarded as an aberration in the context of contemporary life, it is hardly appropriate to discuss the validity of individual laws...
...the national UJA leaders allegedly involved in questionable projects have already resigned...
...Dworkin introduces, I fail to see how this "exemplified how corrupt the Halachic mode could become...
...one turns at such times to the great and accepted authorities of Jewish law and scholarship, and appeals to them for change...
...It means "firm, upright, straight or smooth...
...and others will follow suit...
...They were subsequently indicted and two, I believe, were convicted and imprisoned...
...He could have pointed out that most of the survivors of the catastrophe now live in Israel and are unable to trust the world — but he did not...
...In a second novel, Alroy, Disraeli deals with Jewish Mes-sianism...
...Our national aspirations were historically bound up with the divine charge that we be "a holy nation and a Kingdom of priests," a people who would teach by'example what it means to emulate a God of compassion and love, of kindness and truth...
...There may be good reason for this secrecy in a few cases, but most of it is unjustified...
...Since there is no disclaiming "(sic)" on the part of the author, nor any on the part of moment's editors, the quotation is given full credence in defining the nature of the gulf between the two cultures...
...The Jewish community must come to the realization that unless we represent unique ethical and moral standards, we have no real excuse for being...
...Visiting" the concentration camp of Auschwitz without talking aloud about the unthinkable was a disservice to the Jewish people and a disservice to the uncertain future of mankind...
...Similarly it is said: "Woe unto him whose defense attorney becomes his prosecutor...
...Starting on page 87 of this same book you will find a good description of this type of Shiviti...
...It is written (Isaiah 61:8) 'I hate theft in a burnt offering.' Along the same lines our Sages of blessed memory have said (Baba Kamma 94a) 'One who steals a measure of wheat, grinds it, bakes it, and pronounces a blessing over it, is not blessing but abusing, as it is written (Psalms 10:3) "And the thief who blesses, abuses God...
...To them kiddush hashem did not mean only martyrdom in a time of crisis but the constant awareness that the more learned and prominent a Jew, the greater his responsibility to avoid doing anything which might be a chillul hashem, a desecration of God's name, for such actions bring disrepute not only to their perpetrator but to Klal Yisrael, the household of Israel...
...However, it is questionable whether Disraeli really tried to suppress his Jewish background, either in his writings or as Prime Minister of England...
...As for the analogy of the Black Jews at the summer camp, which Ms...
...If whenever Halachah and a popular notion are in conflict, and the Halachah is determined, thereby, to be "corrupt," then Halachic Jews must be a very corrupt group...
...In my opinion, from the colors, style and iconography of the plate it is a late 20th century item made in the bazaars of Teheran for the Jewish tourist trade...
...I don't want to make the obvious parallels...
...Yet if only the businessmen demanded in the Jewish community the objective measure of achievement by which their business success is measured, we should be better off...
...Expressing those anxieties in his novel, Tancred, the hero, a young aristocrat, travels to Palestine looking for harmony and meaning in his life...
...Here his hero tries to build a Jewish Empire but fails because of timing and lack of inspiration...
...Rabbi Samuel H. Dresner Highland Park, 111...
...Synagogue dinners honor not men of learning but men of money...
...Disraeli's defense of the rights of Baron Rothschild, who was elected to Parliament but was not permitted to take his seat because of his Jewish origin, is also instructive...
...There is the ego-food upon which our community lives, the pandering to people through plaques, awards, banquets, and the like, which has cheapened the word "honor" and deprived probity, dignity, and selflessness of all meaning among us...
...It is entirely possible to make a good case for Jewish women without engaging in pseudo-flalachic double-talk...
...The Israel for which we have yearned these two thousand years was not a nation like all other nations, but rather a "light unto nations," which would demonstrate that a political government could provide the moral and ethical leadership so vital in contemporary secular society...
...I think of where my family was in the 1890's — in a ghetto in Bialystok...
...He cannot change or disregard a certain com...
...It was then the custom of the state to make a public example of someone who had violated the income tax law just before the season for filing returns, as a warning and a reminder...
...But best off of all will be the community in the hands of diverse people, men and women, workers and middle-class people, the community in which the median gift lies within the means of the ordinary folk, and in which the wishes of all are respected...
...From a woman's point of view, it is galling that she cannot be counted in a minyan...
...An eighteenth century ethical tract, Mesilat Yesharim (The Path of the Just), has the following to say regarding the righteousness of those who labor on behalf of our people and our faith: "Our teachers of blessed memory have said (Yoma 85b): 'The Day of Atonement does not atone for a man's sins against his neighbor until he pacifies him.' What is more, even if one performs a mitzvah during the time he should be giving to his employer, he is not credited with righteousness, but charged with transgression...
...Disraeli supported Rothschild's right to be admitted, not on grounds of religious tolerance, but based on the debt that Europe owed Jewry...
...If there are serious problems in the Halachah, these will have to be solved by special Halachic provisions that are applicable to the situation...
...We have survived because of our immunity to scorn and contempt from outsiders...
...I refer not to the Israeli side, but to our own...
...Infidelity is so serious an offense in the Talmud that the idea of a sexual involvement between his wife and a student could not have entered the mind of Rabbi Meir...
...Or, put differently, if Judaism can be everything to everybody, if it is merely a reflection of the latest fads or newest trends, then what does it have to teach us...
...This criterion is too often absent in the leaders of our public institutions...
...Perhaps the time has finally come for us to reintroduce some neglected Jewish concepts into our vocabulary and behavior — kiddush hashem (the sanctifications of God's name) and chillul hashem (the desecration of His name...
...Fein tells us that we need not spurn the financial gifts of those Jews whose methods of earning their money may have been questionable or even criminal...
...One of them, in particular, served on a number of communal boards and was among the city's leading contributors to Jewish and non-Jewish charities...
...David Scheinfeld New York City We reserve the right to edit letters to conform to our space requirements...
...But more important is the fact that Fein's argument about fractured lives is the type of logic that has been used to defend criminals for years...
...And there are those who, by participating in the "honors" and the "Man of the Year banquets" gladly serve as fodder, in the certain expectation that, in some later year, they will get to eat the food themselves...
...Despite Bernard Bergman's career of allegedly cheating elderly Jews, Fein does not question his attachment to the Jewish people or his sincerity...
...This was the message of the Prophets and the teaching of our tradition throughout the generations...
...There must be some way to raise these issues and solve them without endangering the gathering of desperately needed funds...
...Seymour Siegel Jewish Theological Seminary New York City To the Editor: Leonard Fein's excellent observations on financial corruption in the Jewish community, here and in the State of Israel, apply also to a different sort of corruption, for not all rewards are pecuniary...
...There may or may not have been football at Yale in the I890's, but there was certainly no ghetto in Bialystok, a city whose Jewish population then numbered 47,783 of a total population of 62,993...
...The rabbis tell us — "silence hedges wisdom...
...The time is long overdue for the inculcation of Jewish ethical consciousness into our Yeshivot, Hebrew Schools and the U J A-Federation educational seminars...
...We cannot maintain the programs and institutions of the community without grandiose budgets, which far exceed the capacity of the majority of the community to meet, and which, therefore, cast us into the hands of those willing to buy what their character and achievement cannot gain, the esteem of their neighbors...
...Their lives are fractured...
...Much of what we do to support the community is an embarrassment...
...Isn't it, in this case, we who are telling it what to teach us...
...There are, of course, many similarities in their style, behavior, and dedication to the countries and societies in which they were raised and grew up...
...Bialystok Ghetto (sic) To the Editor: Mark Singer's article on Jews at Yale (July-August) opens with a quotation that is revealing of more than was intended: "Whenever I hear about some wonderful, grand Yale football game that was played in the 1890"s...
...Israel — the people and the state — will either express this truth, or God forbid, suffer the consequences of a nation whose ideal has been forgotten...
...Instead, we cynically acquiesce when people in high office are judged by lower standards of public and private morality than we demand from other citizens...
...But if this can be rectified by arbitrary fiat, another question arises: by what measure is the minyan itself necessary...
...My own observation is that the presidents of Federations can accomplish as little as any of us...
...I would like to see the day when a U.J.A...
...At present, virtually all Jewish organizations are run by one class of people only, businessmen...
...As Prime Minister of England during the Berlin Congress, Disraeli insisted upon a very well-defined clause in the final treaty, granting and securing rights to all Jews living in the Balkan countries...
...Such a discussion is simply to perpetuate a legal fiction predicated on another fiction...
...Our communal lay leaders seem to have one claim to esteem: wealth...
...who measured by these standards the worthiness of every word they uttered and every deed they performed, in public or in private...
...That Jew-hater loves and supports stray animals...
...One institution alone retained him on their board and as an officer — the synagogue...
...That is, may your strength be firm, undaunted and unafraid, and used in upright purposes...
...Sigmund Strochlitz New London, Ct...
...But it is highly unlikely that a disciple was charged with the task of actually seducing Bruria...
...Immoral individuals, in other words, but good Jews...
...How great is the distance, then, between the corruption of which Leonard Fein writes and this other, more insidious kind...
...If we give money to Federations and elect officers, as we do, then can we turn to our elected leaders in order to influence the policies and conduct of the local agencies supposedly subject to our vote and money, allegedly created to effect our will...
...On Corruption To the Editor: Your editorial on community ethics reminds me of an incident which occurred in a Massachusetts community that I knew intimately for a number of years...
...After all, the "nursing home czar" has resigned from the leadership of his organization...
...As has been pointed out by such courageous commentators as Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, editor of the Jewish Spectator, vast sums of public money are spent without any real accountability...
...The Torah was given to unite and purify humankind...
...especially when it is committed by people we have chosen to establish our community structures and attitudes...
...To the Editor: With regard to the plate pictured on the front cover of your second issue, please refer to the book Hebrew Amulets by T. Schrire, distributed by Humanities Press...
...Rabbi Israel Bornstein Norfolk, Va...
...Our institutions and organizations seem to exist for the sake of the budget, and the budget for the sake of raising next year's...
...Fein argues that we may do this because "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...
...It is not because the leaders are not elected or are not responsive to the citizens, but because the executives are not responsive to the lay leadership, transient as it is...
...The point is that the Jewish community's love affair with anyone who has wealth and/or power grows more obscene every day...
...Peretz wrote a memorable story about wearing a kippah as an act of kiddush hashem...
...I agree with Leonard Fein that financial corruption is deplorable...
...How about a little kavod for the people whose lives are models of Yiddishkeit, and not all of it for those who give easily of what comes to them easily — and sometimes immorally...
...Wouldn't it be an act of kiddush hashem if we proclaimed a moratorium on private and public kosher catering and became vegetarians, at least until some of the corruption were eliminated...
...of Jewish Studies McGill University Montreal, Quebec Women and Halachah To the Editor: Susan Dvvorkin's article on Jewish women in your premiere issue may be music to some ears, but to mine it comes as more of a shout...
...Dwor-kin's view of Halachah is neither fair nor accurate nor calm...
...He could have pointed out that the old Russian anti-Semitism found a new ally in the Moslem world — but he did not...
Vol. 1 • October 1975 • No. 4
