Letters
LETTERS Personal Encounter To the Editor: The article by Vladimir Lazaris (March 1980), "The Dissident Life," brought back to me the memory of a vivid experience. It was an early Saturday...
...I know, having had experience in both...
...A community that would perpetually long for redemption rather than redeem itself...
...Zucker wants to erase the efforts of Jewish scholars and commentators including great philosophers who labored for centuries to reveal the meaning of Jewish experience and to interpret the reasons for Jewish institutions...
...If the majority of the world's Jews will not/cannot take responsibility for Israel, should there be an Israel...
...I am sure of it...
...It was comforting...
...I think the problem is that American Jews believe that because they are a majority, they ought to represent the major thrust in Judaism, rather than the view of Diaspora Jewry during the Second Commonwealth where Israel was the undisputed spiritual and material center of Jewish existence...
...Ephraim Z. Buchwald New York, New York To the Editor: Despite the statement in the introduction to "Some Jews to Watch in the 1980s" (March, 1980) that there are many more who could be included, I am still disturbed by the provincialism of your choices...
...handsome, wearing brushed-denim jeans (a gift from a Westerner), generally unemployed, a Zionist in a land where the word is anathema...
...And this is the way it is with the elite of our Young Jews...
...There was the entrance to the subway...
...They were both recent graduates of a prison labor camp...
...This is an old story, though...
...It is possible to have a Diaspora Zionism, but you have to get your priorities straight before you put an ideology together...
...Louis, Minneapolis, etc., all of which contain young Jews who would have met your criteria of choice...
...Only a few years older than our older son, no childhood training in formal Jewish schools, standing up in the most powerful police state in the history of the world to proclaim his Jewish-ness, his wish to leave this place to live in the homeland of his heart...
...Betty with the younger people, the refuseniks, who did not attend services, busily making arrangements with Dina and Josef Beilin, Yuri and Anna Bercovsky to meet with us the next morning, Sunday, at the apartment of Vladimir Slepak on Gorky Street...
...Your lack of attention to other geographical areas was all the more surprising because moment (August 1979) has itself noted the strength and potential which abounds in the broader reaches of the American Jewish community...
...When the Second Commonwealth was in place we had our own nation, yet many Jews lived outside of Israel...
...however, that is no excuse for a magazine directed to all Jewish readers...
...The Chovevei Zion at the turn of the century found themselves in the same quan-dry, but there was a difference...
...Simone Lotven Sofian Worcester, Massachusetts To the Editor: I was home with my parents in Missouri and read your March/80 issue...
...What are we to make of ourselves...
...If we, the vast community of the galut, are not prepared to support Israel in the flesh, would we still hope and expect that others do so...
...American Jews have come to translate Zionism as Judaism because it is easier to be a Zionist than a Jew...
...Louis, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Miami, Denver, Toronto, and Houston...
...We walked on, down some steps through a tunnel that passed under one of the streets near Red Square just by the Russiya Hotel...
...We stopped for a moment at a grassy area a few feet from the pavement—no one around—and we gave him some of the presents we had brought...
...While I have no quarrel with your selections from New York, Boston and environs, I do question the absence of names from beyond the Hudson, or the Charles...
...There are great talents scattered throughout America—scholars at the West Coast branches of the three rabbinical seminaries—educators and academicians, Federation executives and rabbis who have chosen locales for work outside New England and the Middle Atlantic states...
...Some years ago there were lurid pictures of the Holocaust plastered over UJA posters, reminding us of where we have been and how we are reborn...
...Perhaps a future issue might redress the omission...
...Thank you, for all of the wonderful moments of enrichment and stimulation...
...As a native Southerner who has lived in the Midwest for several years, I will ask the same questions at the beginning of the 80s that I asked at the beginning of the 70s— When, oh when, will the geographic chauvinism stop...
...he was hoping for, expecting, a call from his wife in Israel...
...Barry D. Cytron Des Moines, Iowa To the Editor: A mere glance at the personal bios of the 24 young Jews identified by moment as the future leaders of the Jewish community of the 80's indicates that, contrary to Mr...
...There were two things that upset me enough to prompt this letter...
...My question is why...
...Russian Jews knew that they lived in exile, even if some had more privileges than other Jews...
...I commend your selection...
...Indeed, he had telephoned me several nights prior to his death, requesting that I take on a task which I still harbor hopes of carrying out...
...His frustration was clear, unable to be of support to his wife, to be of comfort to his child...
...They struck me as a reflection of the disturbing viewpoint that only in New York, Boston, and California is there any truly vibrant and active Jewish life...
...You have located important resources of strength for the Jewish community of America for the years ahead...
...Thus, what follows is in no way a doubting of their qualifications as leaders...
...Whose culture would you distort to fit the mold of the other...
...I can understand and sympathize with Jewish parents who send their children to yeshivas for a Jewish education...
...I don't understand it now...
...Israeli culture which takes its roots from much more than the narrow confines of American Judaism...
...Or is the article's lack thereof an implication that the "real action" can only be found in the Jerusalem of New York (and its environs), in the Sura and Pumbeditha of Los Angeles and San Francisco...
...There were no representatives from the Middle West, the South, and only three from the West Coast...
...Lawyer, editor of the samizdat "Jews in the USSR," young (32...
...I didn't understand it then...
...I trust, however, that you are aware that every single person on your roster of selected individuals was from a community located throughout the several thousand miles between Eastern North America and Western North America...
...Vladimir Lazaris said that he would be unable to join us...
...That of American Jews whose Jewish cultural traditions are foreign to a significant number of Israelis...
...It is the concluding sentence in Miss Pfeffer's article that I find both misleading and repugnant...
...Just before he turned to open the glass door to the subway room I looked into his eyes through the color-tinted glasses he wore and I thought I saw tears welling, starting to spill over and down his cheeks...
...The Torah lives for some but not for him...
...Incidentally, I didn't particularly like your choice, but at least I have read Appelfeld's story...
...A change in attitude is definitely called for...
...How sad that Mr...
...My preliminary shock comes from the fact that approximately 60 percent of your academic, social and organizational leaders are from New York...
...One thing you might consider is a series on Jewish communities around the country—history, present status, etc...
...He was concerned about his child whom he had not yet seen, who was not well...
...Harold Federow Denver, Colorado Brighton Beach To the Editor: Your article on Brighton Beach in the January-February issue was brought to my attention since I am the principal of the public high school which has been serving this shorefront community with distinction for the past fifty years...
...Every single one of them was from either the East or West Coast...
...For Mr...
...Secondly, approximately one-third have HUC backgrounds and 20 percent have JTS backgrounds...
...So we walked the side streets for an hour or so, the three of us, while he spoke of himself and his activist refusenik life...
...Zucker declines to participate in the continuing drama of Jewish history and experience...
...I basically enjoy those issues of your magazine I have read and feel you are doing a good job...
...The Berkovskys lived in Novosibirsk but had come to Moscow for Anna's tumor surgery, afraid for her life to try to have the operation performed by doctors at home...
...Zucker has the answer: there is no reason...
...Unlike other such listings, which appear occasionally in Jewish periodicals (I think of a similar effort in Present Tense some years back) yours truly reflects the emphasis of moment: identifying leaders who not only happen to be Jews, but rather Jews, committed ones, who are also leaders...
...It was an early Saturday afternoon in August 1976, the middle of Arkhipova Street in front of the Moscow synagogue...
...Zucker apparently does not believe that human experience has its own inherent logic and reason, nor does he grant to our ancestors the intelligence to construct meaning out of their experience...
...This gets us back to the Chovevei Zion movement in Russia at the turn of the century...
...Rather than continue the dominance of New York, you could have done a service by highlighting others in places such as Atlanta, St...
...What about the bright and dedicated young Jewish community leaders and teachers in Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, St...
...I can state with assurance, however, that, for a secular education on the secondary level, the public school is superior to most day schools or yeshivas...
...Neusner's piece and the implications of the Haroset recipes spanning several cultures and centuries, both in the same issue...
...The second problem, and one that really bothers me, concerns your choice of "Jews to Watch in the '80s...
...At present we are one of two high schools in the borough of Brooklyn offering a special bilingual program to Russian students...
...Rabbi Cary Kozberg Springfield, Ohio To the Editor: I read with much interest and excitement your article in the March 1980 issue—"Some Jews to Watch in the 1980s...
...Where did he ever get such a preposterous, dangerous idea...
...Rather, the scholars chosen "all assert the importance of involvement of the ongoing life of the community, eschewing the ivory tower...
...I think of leaders in New York with national reputations whom you do not mention...
...Of course, many of them include clergy, academicians and laymen either having Orthodox Jewish backgrounds or adhering to the Orthodox principles of Judaism...
...We currently have over 160 Russian-born students, most of them enrolled in a Russian bilingual program with two Russian-born teachers, a Russian paraprofessional assistant, and other supportive services...
...There are significant and large Jewish communities all over this country...
...I agree that the Holocaust is used as a cop-out to avoid confronting the issue of Israel and Zionism...
...Private schools are never ipso facto better than public schools...
...You discuss your concerns over "the growing distance between Israeli culture and American Jewish culture...
...Y. Judd Azulay Chicago, Illinois To the Editor: There is no question that the persons you selected for the article ("Some Jews to Watch in the 1980's," moment, March 1980) are uncommonly gifted individuals who will serve their communities with their unique talent and commitment...
...Jack M. Pollock Brooklyn, New York Encouraging Words To the Editor: To arrive home after a working day and find a current issue of moment in my mail is always a true pleasure and an anticipated joy...
...To have arrived home and received the March issue was extra special, for after a day filled with problems, who could not experience immediate delight from the seemingly personal and sensitive greeting atop the cover which read, "Be Happy, It's Adar...
...In your haste to prove to the reading public that your magazine is secular, you appear to avoid like the plague any hint of Orthodox involvement in American Judaism...
...We were in the middle of a crowd there in the street, I, surrounded by the elders because I could babble a few words of childish Yiddish...
...Milton Feierstein Gloversville, New York...
...Stanley Mayersohn Scottsdale, Arizona Wanted: A New Myth To the Editor: Jacob Neusner's article ("Wanted: A New Myth," moment, March 1980) was painful and true as well...
...Zucker there is no "living Torah...
...Like any schools, they vary in quality...
...Shari Troy Brookline, Massachusetts To the Editor: Jacob Neusner offers a strange dilemma for American Jewry...
...It is as if you wrote your rationale ignoring both Dr...
...Vladimir suddenly stopped, turned to us, shook our hands and said, "I must go now...
...Zev Davis Oak Park, Michigan Jewish Leaders To the Editor: After reading the other responses in the Adar issue symposium, "Some Jews to Watch in the 1980's," I saw that I was remiss in failing to mention that, outside of my parents, the most decisive influence on my Jewish growth was my revered teacher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, who served as my spiritual father for the eight years that I spent at the Jewish Theological Seminary...
...With one stroke of his pen Mr...
...The First is contained in point three on your Aleph page...
...Mary F. Huberman Chester, Pennsylvania Women Rabbis To the Editor: Alan Arthur Zucker (March 1980) states that Judaism "is not based on logic or reason...
...Nowhere in the selection of leaders can one find a strictly religious leader who espouses a strong religious as well as secular education...
...Betty, my wife, and I had not been inside the shul, having spent the morning looking for the residence of a refusenik whose name was among those of such Jews whom we had come to see...
...He promised to share them...
...Since the time six or seven years ago when Russian families began arriving in sizable numbers, our services to these youngsters have been constantly expanding...
...Yes, bringing Israeli literature to your readers is good, but surely you have a better rationale than the one you gave...
...I realize the Eastern myopia which recognizes very little between the East and West coasts but, perhaps, Chicago...
...At some point the settlers took preeminence in Zionist affairs and the Chovevei Zion movement became lukewarm to the Zionist idea...
...Living in Chicago, I can think of at least five people whose academic credentials are equal to or superior to those of your scholars and whose contributions to the community are equal to or greater than those of your scholars...
...Is there no leadership in the metropolises of the Midwest or in the South (where more and more Jews are moving), that is worth mentioning...
...I own all of them since the beginning, and each one has been special...
...Reuven Kimelman Waltham, Massachusetts To the Editor: In reference to your article, "Some Jews to Watch in the 1980s," (March 1980) I am surprised and disappointed at the presented selection...
...One must ask what is wrong with the ivory tower...
...I do want to voice one reservation...
...These figures in and of themselves reflect a certain lack of comprehensive Jewish outlook in your magazine...
...Fein's introduction, there's plenty of bad news ahead...
...Of the twenty-three, nineteen came from the East Coast...
...If fully one third of the leaders of the 80s (ages—late 20s to 37) are unmarried, and if these 24 leaders and their spouses (total 40 adults) have reproduced only 26 little Jews—then we are indeed in trouble...
...Only Mr...
...I cannot bring myself to believe that the future leaders of the American Jewish community are all located in New York, New England, Toronto or Los Angeles...
...Keep it up...
Vol. 5 • May 1980 • No. 5
