Letters
Jewish Identity To the Editor: For three years I have served as rabbi of a small congregation in northeastern Texas. I have encountered Jews who became Pentecostals because "they lived too far,"...
...The answer is self-evident...
...Karsh's rationale then should we not also disassociate ourselves from the term Judaism...
...Karsh's letter to the Editor in your April 1980 issue...
...Would it not be a crime to foist upon Israel the Arab-sponsored P.L.O...
...No problem looms so large in Moslem thoughts as the existence of the Jewish State...
...Or that peace can come by submission to terrorism and racism...
...No concession from Israel or guarantee from the U.S...
...Is Judaism any less under attack than Zionism...
...I have encountered Jews who became Pentecostals because "they lived too far," or "couldn't find the synagogue...
...Karsh of the albatross of being identified as a Zionist by anti-Semites...
...Michael Remson Kenosha, Wisconsin Autonomy...
...For Norman Thomas, despite the authentic glow of his sublime humanity, would not have made an ideal advocate of what Mr...
...We can be reached at 17 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Ma...
...All moment readers who would like to devote a full week to serious Jewish study are invited to attend the summer institute...
...We invite moment readers to send us their favorite jokes, cartoons, true stories, one-liners, or other suitable items...
...This is especially true of New York, where we can boast of at least four engagements among the more active participants in the division this year alone...
...Surely, the nature of the autonomy that the West Bank Arabs should be allowed must be contingent upon their willingness to live at peace with their neighbors...
...For more information call or write to the National Havurah Coordinating Committee, Suite 216, 250 W. 57 Street, New York, New York 10019,212-582-6116...
...covenant that says that the Jews are not a people, that they should not have a state anywhere, that only by violence can an Arab State over all of Palestine be established, that the Jews who came to Palestine "since the invasion" (which could mean any time from 1880 to 1948)—at least 80 percent of Israel's Jewish population—must vacate and move elsewhere...
...Schools are usually welcomed as bridges over differences but in Hebron two Jewish schools are a focus of Arab rock throwing and an international furor...
...I have challenged signs the likes of, "Will Rogers never met a Cajun Jew...
...It is also true, however, that they had to go out and look for him...
...The world is tired of the Israel-Arab conflict...
...And I have confronted the local newspaper stories which purport that the Jews killed Jesus, or in the case of a syndicated feature, how the Jews are in league with the devil...
...Diane K. Seidenstein Sioux Falls, South Dakota No Substitute To the Editor: This is in response to Mr...
...Karsh's movement have us return to our previous mold of ghetto Jew trying desperately to avoid antagonizing the non-Jewish majority in the Diaspora...
...Moreover, those Jews were not particularly generous toward Jewish causes, and frequently neglected to give their children a good Jewish education...
...Shadchanut To the Editor: I was very touched in reading William Novak's piece, "Are Good Jewish Men a Vanishing Breed...
...He describes the situation so accurately, it hurts...
...Fein himself expresses...
...Michael Strassfeld Chairperson, N.H.C.C...
...It is only in the context of intolerance that such a furor could be raised over the return of 10,000 Jews to their homes in the administered territories (Arab population 800,000...
...A Jew is a Jew and a Zionist by any other name is still a Zionist, and the "friends of Israel" cannot substitute for the Zionist idea...
...Jonathan Mandell's "A Little Anti-Semitism" (April 1980) describes Owensboro, Kentucky, but it also opens a window to the plight of Jewish existence in countless numbers of small Midwestern and Southern communities where many Christians narrowly view Jews as God's misguided and blinded ones...
...seemingly a takeoff on Will Roger's famous saying, "I never met a man I didn't like...
...In medium size Jewish communities, Rosh Hashanah was celebrated by going to the synagogue, and standing outside discussing the World Series...
...Rabbi Robert A. Jacobs Longview, Texas Starting From Where We Are To the Editor: The American Jewish Community has traditionally been pessimistic in its outlook...
...can alter this roadblock to peace...
...To the Editor: Mark Heller ("Autonomy?," April 1980) seems to have forgotten that the Jewish people and Israel accepted a partition of Palestine between its two claimants in 1948 while the Arabs did not...
...Herbert Jaffe Freeport, New York Havurah Institute To the Editor: The National Havurah Coordinating Committee would like to inform moment's readers that the excitement and enthusiasm generated at the First National Havurah Conference last July at Rutgers University will be recreated this summer at the first National Havurah Summer Institute, which will take place August 3-10, 1980 at the University of Hartford, West Hartford, Connecticut...
...Such views would probably not have commended Thomas to many readers of moment, confirming my own conviction that history is a tale told by an ironist...
...Only through my own concern, effort, and sweat will my family and community remain Jewish...
...Perhaps some of the readers viewed the MacNeil Lehrer report during the recent civil war in Lebanon...
...Given the unbroken history of Arab hostility, a proforma mutual disclaimer would not be sufficient...
...Jonathan Mandell's experiences catalyzed his assumption of being Jewish into a commitment, while at the same time he succeeded in raising the level of Jewish consciousness in the community...
...I am afraid, however, that Benjamin misses a significant cause of that pessimism: our tendency to glorify the past...
...Thank you for providing me with a stimulating Jewish community in my home...
...The April issue was especially absorbing, moment is really providing an acculturation for me that I have not previously found...
...02116...
...I hope always to keep my experiences from a small Southern Jewish community alive within me as a necessary counterpoint to the false security of urban Jewish life where we can forget why we're Jewish, where we forget to take ourselves sufficiently seriously as Jews, and where we forget that even if we don't suffer the inevitable consequences, our children one day will...
...Despite Thomas' acetylene commitment to social justice, the pacifism and nonintervention-ism he championed in the late 1930s and early 1940s had disastrous implications for the Jews threatened with Nazi occupation...
...Can anyone believe that the elimination of Israel will bring peace to the Middle East...
...May 1980), is written with characteristic persuasiveness and grace...
...Sentiment is heartwarming and nostalgia is fun, but as long as we continue to remember every alteh Yid as a rebbe, and every shtetl as a center of talmudic scholarship, we will never recover from our pessimism...
...Fein defines as the Jewish interest...
...Karsh's premise is that Zionism "has accomplished its goal" with the birth of the State of Israel and that the movement should therefore abort itself, thereby apparently relieving Mr...
...The disappearance of the three million Israeli Jews would merit but a few obituaries and passing comments...
...The only problem is the headline, which bears little relation to the views Mr...
...Autonomy is a loose and indefinite concept...
...Stephen J. Whitfield Watertown, Massachusetts Providing Community To the Editor: As a shiksa in the Dakotas, I must tell you how much I am enjoying your magazine...
...We are what we are and no matter how we anglicize our names or remove our yarmulkes, we will not survive as Jews nor with the State of Israel survive as a Zionist State if our response to the threat from our enemies and detractors is to simply give ourselves another name...
...I've enjoyed the articles on Havurot and this issue's coverage of burials —these are philosophical concepts I think I would be unaware of without your magazine...
...Burton B. Polansky Milwaukee, Wisconsin Appeal To the Editor: Moshe Waldoks and I are currently putting together The Big Book of Jewish Humor, to be published by Harper and Row...
...If we follow Mr...
...The small town, particularly one in the "Bible Belt," forces an urban Jewish newcomer to come to terms with who he or she is as a Jew...
...Robert Benjamin ("Starting From Where We Are," April 1980) is correct when he writes that we do indeed have communities, and that Jewish life in America is quite viable...
...It appears to me that those are questions that a magazine with a Jewish readership should be asking...
...Living in Longview, Texas has had a similar effect on my own Jewish identity...
...Karsh's "friends of Israel" movement uplift the Jewish spirit, restore their sense of national pride and dignity to the Jewish people as does the Zionist movement, or would Mr...
...It is true, as Benjamin points out, that the tenth man for a minyan was outside on the street...
...Thomas visited Israel in the 1950s, warning against "Israeli expansionism," urging "maximum possible repatriation of refugees on Palestinian soil, with indemnification for those who do not desire repatriation," and condemning Israeli inflexibility in a way that prefigured the recent rhetoric of the American government...
...Peaceful relations among neighboring countries implies, at a minimum, a recognition that a peaceful existence is preferable to continuous warfare...
...The "In all its aspects" phrase in the Camp David agreements will be a sham unless the matter of Arab intolerance is confronted...
...Rosh Hashanah may have been in the air, but most of the Jews of Flatbush and the East Bronx celebrated it by sitting outside of their homes and watching a minority go to the synagogue...
...Though in smaller communities, the divisions are frequently made up of married couples in their middle thirties and older, there are also many younger and single people involved...
...It is considered impolite to bring the explosive issue of racism into the peace process but a Jewish magazine should be able to face up to an impolite issue...
...The book also includes selections from fiction, poetry, film and drama, and all suggestions and nominations in these areas are most welcome...
...Julius Lester's piece in the April issue ("Affirmations: All God's Children"), which he wrote to describe his experiences with the Black-Jewish issue, described the virulence of Arab hatred of Jews...
...The Arab spokesman declared that their death was a minor affair compared to the peaceful removal of a few hundred Arabs from their homes in Israel to another parcel of land a few miles away, also in Israel...
...William Novak Boston, Massachusetts...
...Can Mr...
...Many thousands of people, Arab and Christian, were being killed...
...The Arabs openly declare to this day that they will not accept the presence of a Jewish State...
...I can take nothing Jewish for granted again...
...In a couple of months I will leave Texas to take a position in Florida where there are many more Jews...
...A Jewish community must be more than chicken soup, bagels and redn Yiddish...
...Having grown up in a large Jewish community, lived and studied in Israel, I now also know what doing without an atmosphere of Yiddishkeit is all about...
...Mark Heller has equated the Arab determination to obliterate Israel with the refusal of Israel to be obliterated...
...Rabbi Mark Hurvitz New York, New York Wrong-headed To the Editor: Leonard Fein's articulation of the Jewish interest in the 1980 election, "Norman Thomas, Where Are You Now That We Need You...
...I've always valued being Jewish, as I think all of us have, but living a Jewish life has become more compelling as a priority to me than ever before...
...In response to Arnold L. Cohen's question of how to bring the two sides of the mountain together, I suggest he become involved with his local Federation and/or UJA campaign, Young Leadership Division...
Vol. 5 • June 1980 • No. 6
