Beginnings
There's a man named Gus Belmonte who works in the Mailing Requirements Section of Boston's main post office, and he's a gem, the very model of a helpful, knowledgable and industrious public...
...Mondale fits especially well in this issue of the magazine, which, as you will soon and readily see, deals mostly with diverse aspects of American politics...
...Harumpf...
...I begin with that lest I be thought an idle grouch when I complain, yet again, of the ways of the United States Postal Service with this magazine...
...Our own contribution to the consideration of Black-Jewish relations this month is, as it happens, quite apolitical...
...the authorities, we're told, are "looking into it...
...This plug is as unsolicited as it is well-deserved— and it would be incomplete if I didn't add that the AJHS is a membership organization, and that information on how to join is available by writing to the AJHS at 2 Thornton Road, Wal-tham, MA 02154...
...Speaking of Jews and American politics, which we were, just a while back, we await with interest the detailed analyses of Jewish voting behavior in the recent mayoral elections in Chicago and Philadelphia...
...My copy of the May issue arrived in the mail today, exactly two weeks after it was put into the mail—a couple of miles from where I live...
...An interesting and (for us) novel perspective...
...it takes the form of a memoir by George Cureton on what it was like growing up black in Newark...
...As it is, we bring you Mr...
...But rest easy out there...
...Or is it "harumph...
...The AJHS is what stands between us and collective amnesia, a disease that is usually fatal...
...It's June...
...Brrrr...
...For then our interview of Walter Mondale (be he winner or loser, or perhaps not even in the running by then) would surely seem peculiar...
...Of events Middle Eastern, there is—as usual—much to be said...
...There's a man named Gus Belmonte who works in the Mailing Requirements Section of Boston's main post office, and he's a gem, the very model of a helpful, knowledgable and industrious public servant...
...For two of our principal articles this month, we're especially indebted to the American Jewish Historical Society, one of the less visible but more worthy organizations of our community, sturdily and steadily going about the kind of work that a dignified and mature community requires...
...At one m.p.w., think when our hardy readers in Alaska will see their May issue...
...Anyway, there's a sunny side to the matter: this way, I can legitimately say, "The magazine's in the mail," when I'm asked by anxious readers where their new issue is...
...Enough ruminating...
...The fundamental difference, and one important way for Americans to appreciate the Israeli experience, is that what took two hundred years of time and a continent of space to happen here in these United States has been compressed, in Israel, to a few brief decades and to a tiny area...
...And here it is...
...Mondale, in his own words, and in timely fashion, as we hope, in due course, we will bring you others of the candidates for the highest office in the land as well...
...It continues to be the case—and would be, I think, even if there were no Jews at all in this country—that there is a very special connection between the United States and Israel, a connection that arises far more out of a sense of shared values than out of strategic considerations...
...take a moment in the sun, and enjoy...
...Truman, Kennedy, Felix Frankfurter and Louis Brandeis— they're all here, as is the issue of affirmative action...
...I do hope that the presidential election of 1984 will not have passed by the time it's reached you...
...Nor has Israel enjoyed the luxury that attended this nation's early years, a world in which national independence meant exactly that, in which the links that tied one country to all others were tenuous, weak...
...Early reports have it that Jewish precincts voted in far larger proportion for the black candidates than did white precincts in general, evidence, perhaps, that descriptions of the Jewish turn right-ward have been somewhat exaggerated...
...Oh well, what's the point...
...But our attention this month is focused less on Syria and Lebanon, on the Likud and the settlements (fear not, we'll get back to those), more on elements of the U.S.-Israel relationship...
Vol. 8 • June 1983 • No. 6
