Letters

...Although admiring its editorial brilliance, he was concerned that Zionists, members of congregations, educators and affiliated laymen, were not effectively represented by the magazine that spoke instead for the alienated Jew, the Jew who was ambivalent to his tradition and people, "loving and hating them at the same time...

...As one genuinely devoted to the future of strong Jewish expression in America he sought to improve the magazine by redirecting it toward "a heightened dedication to its spiritual possibilities...

...If anything will ensure diminishing numbers of identification with the Jewish religion in Israel, it will be the continuation of Orthodox supremacy and total exclusion of any other form of Judaism...

...Solomon Fisher Honorary Chairman Memorial Committee Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Commentary and the Jews To the Editor: Bernard Avishai's article "Breaking Faith: Commentary and America's Jews" (March-April 1981) brings to mind the current story about the Jew found reading the latest issue of The Christian Vigilante...

...Avishai would have us believe that Commentary's "strident arguments .. . have only tended to discredit the Jewish State on campuses and even in the liberal press...

...The subject, in fact, appears to have become a fashionable cause celebre among Jewish academicians of various persuasions...

...Having undertaken to compare the "good" Commentary of the 60s with its wicked stepsister of the 70s, Mr...

...When reprimanded, he explains, "Just like you, I used to read The Forward: all about synagogues being vandalized, the rise of anti-Semitism, the power of the PLO, triple-digit inflation in Israel, intermarriage, cults—I couldn't sleep nights...

...Podhoretz the kind of journalistic muscle that has not been flexed by one man since William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce, he sounds naive...

...It is unfortunate that Orthodox Jews cannot walk for a day in the moccasins of the non-Orthodox...

...This must be the reason he writes that he was involved in shaping the Jewish Studies Program at McGill University, a claim that is as demonstrably imaginary as his description of that process...

...With every year and every experience with Israeli Orthodoxy I began to understand how the structure and power of Israeli Orthodoxy has caused a dichotomy in Israel's population...

...Fackenheim is not talking about "spite," but "in spite of...

...Secular" (non-Orthodox) Israelis are forced into accepting Jewish law in all phases of their life...

...We are blessed in Philadelphia with an active, articulate Survivors' Group known as The Association of Jewish New Americans...

...Such calls for "credentials" miss the point, but they could be damaging were they not so inept: I've put a good deal more of my life trying to take the consequences of Zionist ideas, in and out of Israel, than our new purveyors of cherem (excommunication...

...While living in Israel I drew further and further away from it...

...It is good to note that there are now many communities who are developing public monuments to the martyrs to help ensure that the lessons will not be forgotten...

...Fackenheim contained in an article in the February 1981, issue entitled "Deformations of the Holocaust" by Robert Alter, another target of Mr...

...I do not recall to what effect, but I do recall participating in an extraordinary meeting of the AJCS on Jewish education the following year at which I rose and rather grandly demanded (this was the sixties) that Sam Bronfman see to it that the Jewish Studies Program have the funds to teach Hebrew to all students who register in its courses...

...Although the full range of ramifications of the popular response to the Holocaust has not been examined, several facts have become very clear...

...Holocaust centers and programs . . . are finding their places in the main organizational structures of Jewish communities and reach audiences composed of all age levels and ideological persuasions...

...Ruth Wisse Chairperson, Jewish Studies McGill University Bernard Avishai responds: I did not state in my article that I was "involved in shaping" the Jewish Studies Program at McGill but that Ruth Wisse was, and that I joined the group that "worked to establish it" several years later...

...I was always a "very Jewish" American Jew who affiliated with organized religion...

...The topic has engaged the imagination and thought of mainstream American Jewry and non-Jewry...

...Rabbi Steinberg claimed to speak on behalf of "informed and committed Jews" who were then worried that the magazine was not sufficiently dedicated to Judaism and its intelligent defense...

...He states: "New Haven inaugurated the first Holocaust Memorial in America only in 1977...

...This may all seem slight service in retrospect: I do not remember Ruth Wisse thinking so at the time...

...Since Bernard Avishai compares past to present, it is interesting to compare him with his forerunners as well...

...By this logic, Commentary may be the only reason why Noam Chomsky of M.I.T., Edward Said of Columbia, and Professors Fisher, Stouffer, Meyer and Sheehan of Harvard, together with I.F...

...Sadly though, a demeaning of the Holocaust has occurred within the vicious and undeserved articles that blindly attack well-meaning and often well-designed Holocaust programs...

...According to Mr...

...Instead of being able to choose religious practices according to one's belief, we are left with no choices at all...

...As long ago as 1964 the Association, in cooperation with the Philadelphia Federation of Jewish Agencies, planned and consummated into reality the first public monument to the Six Million Martyrs on the continent of North America...

...In sum, one could suggest that the replacement of Rabbi Steinberg by Bernard Avishai as representative critic of Commentary is almost proof enough—if proof be needed— that the magazine has moved in a very healthy direction...

...Orthodox Behavior To the Editor: It was with great dismay that I read moment's editorial ("For Shame," May 1981) about "the wicked son," as described by Nathan Saperstein, an American Orthodox Jew...

...Stone and Nicholas von Hoffman of the liberal press, are not card-carrying Lovers of Zion...

...Valid differences of interpretation and reaction to the recent emphasis on Holocaust history exist...

...To blame Fackenheim's central thesis—correctly quoted in the Avishai article—for what is wrong with Commentary is to give him a power and a place in that publication he has never had...

...Avishai does not even attempt to account for that change except to damn it as careerism, ghettoiza-tion, sanctimoniousness, and other such perjoratives as his very rich vocabulary of sneers commands...

...In the growing number of articles that have appeared on the subject, directors and organizers of Holocaust centers have yet to be accorded the proper space to describe their objectives and activities...

...Are Jews likely to be more steadfast against their enemies after being exposed to Commentary...

...Podhoretz engineered the renaissance of Orthodox Judaism, albeit in a manipulated and inauthentic version, to the detriment of democratic humanism...

...Avishai's own bias here not only shows itself as ugly and spiteful as the people he takes to task generally, but also is irrelevant on one level and morally disingenuous on another...

...Lauri Azoulai Hollywood, Florida and Mazkeret Batya, Israel...

...Why, one may well wonder, are these deprecating academicians so quick to flay the popular concern for Holocaust projects and programs when, in fact, they have no immediate personal contact with the phenomenon...

...Holocaust programming in the community tries to overcome a basic ignorance about the topic Most people cannot distinguish Himmler from Goebbels, identify Korczak or Ringelblum, locate Mauthausen and Auschwitz...

...As one whose progressive credentials are, with all due modesty, as good as Avishai's, and one who has been strengthened by Fackenheim's "commandment" to work for a world where there will be no more Holocausts for us or for any other people, I deeply regret that Avishai felt it necessary to include this mean-spirited attack on one whose philosophy he really doesn't understand...

...Most of all he objected to what he called the "sneering" attitude of the editors and writers who showed inadequate respect towards Jews and the Jewish tradition...

...He would join me, no doubt, in wishing Commentary the critics it deserves...

...And the "not incidentally" socialist magazine for which I originally wrote my piece is of course the democratic socialist quarterly whose editor, Irving Howe, is also our preeminent historian of immigrant Jewish life in this country, and a master-critic of Yiddish literature...

...Podhoretz also might have precipitated war between Israel and Egypt by publishing Uri Ra'anan's article...

...The earliest and for many years representative critic of Commentary was Milton Steinberg, rabbi of the Park Avenue Synagogue and one of the most respected voices of organized American Jewry...

...Any other discussion enters the philosophical sphere, say what you may...

...The "sneer" he once tried to describe is now firmly on the face of the critic whose disdain for the arguments of others and contempt for intellectual honesty allow him to misquote, make false attributions, and distort so systematically that interlinear rebuttal would be required...

...In fact, on April 12th we held our 14th community-wide program under the sponsorship of the Memorial Committee of the Six Million Jewish Martyrs...

...Robert A. Riesman Providence, Rhode Island To the Editor: It is unfortunate that Bernard Avishai's insightful commentary on Commentary is marred by his gratuitous and vicious attack on Emil Fackenheim...

...In fact, I was President of McGill Hillel during the 1968-69 academic year, then a lively Jewish student society of over 800 members...

...If these academicians were to descend from the walls of ivy, they would discover perceptions, programs and projects quite different from the ones they imagine...

...Little could demonstrate more vividly the magazine's subsequent degeneration into a source for demagogy than her marvelous new category, "Jewish credentials," which we prove to be in want of by voicing our hard-earned ambivalence to Halachic Judaism...

...Instead of offering different opportunities for religious self-expression, the average Israeli must opt for none at all—except perhaps personal practices in the home...

...Avishai, Mr...

...I am confident these exchanges and sharing of views will continue as more and more of the history of that era is revealed through many efforts, including those of the survivors themselves...

...I am certain that any scholar using such subjectively created categories to describe a Jewish response to a catastrophe in the Jewish past, be it the Holocaust or any other monumental event, would be subjected to severe criticism within his or her discipline...

...Despite his concern, Milton Steinberg chose to keep his document out of the press, and requested that his listeners and all those among whom it had been circulated do likewise...

...Perhaps the issues they raise are reflections of their own ambivalent feelings about the Holocaust, searching as they are for the positive/negative, sacred/profane content within the subject matter...

...Avishai has given aid and comfort to Commentary fans, who should rejoice in the power ascribed to Norman Pod-horetz...

...This results in a growing rejection of the religious establishment...

...Mr...

...Avishai may have a case against Commentary and its editor, but his overstatements get in his way and impair his credibility...

...To repeat the litanies that the Holocaust has no provocative raison d'etre, that it does not constitute an academic subject, that it detracts from the other "healthy" Jewish subjects, that it has no validity for a Jewish political viewpoint, is to sink into an emotional morass disguised as an intellectual inquiry...

...The Monument, situated in center city, is maintained by the city of Philadelphia, and is the site of an annual city-wide commemoration of the Six Million...

...Avishai seeks to equate socialist interests with Jewish interests, he apparently needs to shore up for himself some creditable Jewish credentials...

...he asked...

...What makes her denigration of my activities at McGill the more gratuitous is that I now raised the formation of Jewish Studies Programs only to praise Commentary's former efforts to view Jewish "interests," "traditions," and "enemies" as subjects for rigorous and open debate...

...As someone who spent seven wonderful years in Israel, one of the only things about my new country that I found needed a major overhaul was organized religion...

...One of our constituent committees acted as the student liason to the Jewish Studies Program, and I personally tried to solicit funds from the Allied Jewish Community Services for the Jewish Teacher Training Program then in formation...

...Do Jewish editors, in the real world, wield such power...

...The real issue for Holocaust studies and programs is the manner in which basic education on the subject should be pursued, and the method by which accurate concepts are conveyed...

...Isaiah Kuperstein Director, Holocaust Center of Greater Pittsburgh To the Editor: The March-April 1981 issue deals extensively with discussions about the Holocaust and its meaning for the world Jewish community today...

...Inge Lederer Gibel New York, New York To the Editor: Commentary's prominence in American Jewish life has always won it as many critics as admirers...

...More than one can say for the Orthodox minority...

...Since Mr...

...By the same token, Mr...

...It is presumptuous for highly respected scholars to establish themselves as judges on what constitutes a "politically motivated distortion" or a "cheap sentimental-ism" that leads to "a negative Jewish identity" without defining their own particular orientation...

...Podhoretz "cannot properly escape responsibility for the emergence of the New Right...

...The bias of the present criticism is political (not incidentally, the article was originally written for the socialist magazine, Dissent...

...Magnifying the abuses as they do avoids the real issues confronting Holocaust programming in the communities...

...Avishai...

...If one examines the situation carefully, she will find that the non-Orthodox Jew in Israel is actually being a very tolerant majority...

...Here I read that we own all the banks, we control the media, we tell Congress what to do, Israel runs American foreign policy—I go to bed, I sleep like a baby...

...And anyone who says otherwise is pulling the wool over her own eyes...

...The course that Jewish scholars should now pursue is to begin the full analysis that is so desperately required to understand this popular phenomenon...

...When he attributes to Mr...

...Furthermore, and more important, while it is unfortunately true that Fackenheim has drifted toward the right, at least on questions pertaining to the Middle East, to speak of "the poverty of his own moral and historical imagination" is insulting not only to a scholar who has provided middle of the night answers for many children of the Holocaust, but also to twist "the heart of the Fackenheim argument" totally out of context...

...A proper professional and responsible examination of the situation necessitates personal visitations in classrooms, inspection of existing curricula, attendance at teacher-training workshops and correspondence with Jews in the heartland of America...

...or worse, by challenging Commentary's quaint—and very public— faith in laissez-faire and Cold War...

...I want to call your attention to a mistake in fact on page 33 in the article by Geoffrey Hartman of Yale University...

...He also sounds naive when he buys the Bechtel Corp-Mobil line that the United States must choose "between support for Israel and the protection of American interests in the Gulf...

...Finally, if he is going to damn Commentary for Emil Fackenheim's idiosyncratic interpretation of the Holocaust, at least he should give credit to the magazine for the critique of Mr...

...Many of these laws are quite archaic and unacceptable to a non-Orthodox person...

...Rabbi Steinberg would not have failed to enjoy the irony of inversions whereby Commentary is now attacked by precisely the kind of "loving and hating" Jew he once thought it served and for just the things he advocated: respect for Jewish tradition, consideration of Jewish interest, support for Israel, and concern for a steadfast stand against one's enemies...