Letters
LETTERS What, Then, Shall We Do? To the Editor: The genuine distress of Leonard Fein's April cri de coeur excuses in part his loss of historical perspective. Was Emil Grunzweig's "the first...
...It seems to be a variant of the JIB story, which at least indicates that it has been around for almost thirty years...
...I'd like to hear about new mikveh rituals and all-women's parties...
...In 1944, following the assassination of Lord Moyne, the Haganah hunted down Begin's Irgunists and turned them over to the British...
...Requests for confidentiality will be scrupulously honored...
...Ask your rabbi...
...Better neither...
...Avrum, who, according to an admiring Anthony Lewis, did not have a newspaper in the house until very recently, would "rather have a tiny little state of Jews than a big state that is shared...
...Rabbi Bernard H. Bloom Albany, New York To the Editor: You may inform the Jewish Information Bureau that the reason for the rocking motion is as follows: Way into the last century in pogrom-ridden Europe, Jews were forbidden to engage in any physical demonstrations or public demonstrations of physical prowess of any*kind...
...But if awareness does not bring change, what will...
...As to the United States, the social reforms that occurred during the 1930s and thereafter were hardly the fruit of communist effort as the article might appear to suggest...
...When you think of the number of Uzis and grenades carried so promiscuously by Israelis, you want to award Israel a national Nobel Prize if only one has gone off in anger since the Altalena...
...Forced during World War I to move to the Caucasus Mountains with his family, Shmuel completed his studies as an agronomist at the University of Tiflis...
...It could be the story of any sabra now in his 50s...
...Nor, obviously, would I care gratuitously to run down someone's mother...
...Civil rights for Blacks were a product of democratic legislative and judicial processes, the main features of which were voted in under the leadership of Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen...
...But neither can they be raised surrounded by armed soldiers at picnics and swimming pools, by the ubiquitous barbed wire and by legalized injustice...
...Agreed...
...On July 3, 1904, the day that Herzl died, Rabbi Soloveitchik of the Great Synagogue of Brest Litovsk took the keys of the synagogue home with him to prevent any attempt at a memorial service within its walls by the Zionists...
...Sharon's father, Shmuel, was born in Brest Litovsk and spoke Hebrew as a child...
...Roosevelt's New Deal and Truman's Fair Deal were assailed by the communists...
...Militarism and the deterioration of moral fiber are palpable...
...They deserve to be treated as real men and women living in the real world, people we can hurt or help...
...Fein needn't support Likud policy, but after he's condemned it as often as he already has, what does he accomplish by this incessant scolding, this constant and unrelieved denigration of Israel...
...A number of sophisticated and .deeply concerned Israelis suspect that it was the deliberate deed of a splinter group of American or Ashkenazi ultras rather than of rioting Sephardim...
...Michael Minsberg St...
...Did all your guests learn Chassidic dances during your wedding reception/party...
...It is not ideal, and it will not make many people happy, but the alternatives presently at hand seem to me more dangerous and therefore less moral...
...Why absolve the non-Sephardic right-wing fanatics...
...He asked Mr...
...Shmuel became a farmer in the village of Kfar Malal, Devorah became a farmer's wife, and they sent young Ariel to learn scientific farming at the Agricultural College in Rechovot...
...Amy Hill Siewers Lexington, Massachusetts More Shuckles To the Editor: Your April request in The Spice Box for the origins of shuckling reminded me of an event that may shed a little light on your story...
...Soldiers carrying weapons with ammunition clips in place patrol every corner of the country—cities, villages and the desert, Jewish areas and Moslem ones, inland as well as the borders...
...Begin's policies may prove fatal for his country...
...While Judaism puts its trust in the civilizing of man and society via adherence to God-given moral norms, Marxism, founded by a virulent anti-Semite (albeit descen-dent of a long line of rabbis), puts its trust in the violent unfolding of "nature...
...Send anything and everything to: Anita Diamant, 5 Raymond Street, Allston, MA 02134...
...In 1942, Abraham Stern, of Stern Gang fame, was fingered for the British, who then shot him down in cold blood, by Jewish Agency operatives...
...The standard Fein sets for Israel and the Israelis reminds me of the lady buying a dressed chicken...
...And in June 1948, a month after the State was founded, dozens of Jews were killed and wounded when the Irgun tried to land the Altalena and the military forces of the infant State destroyed the ship...
...In addition to minhagim, I'm collecting midrashim—stories to explain and illuminate your new customs—as well as new translations of the Sheva Brachot (the seven wedding blessings), stories about how you resolved family tsuris, alternative wedding souvenirs, toasts, menus, gifts, costumes...
...Children" she said, "caanot.be raised in bomb shelters" as they had to be when they were only 6 kilometers from katyusha rockets...
...The American Communist Party through the 30s, 40s and 50s followed the Soviet line and was under Soviet control...
...But under presently prevailing conditions, the talmudic principle that applies is this one: chayyechah kodemin I'shela'acherin, your life takes precedence over that of the other...
...relinquishing the West Bank could prove equally disastrous...
...They have managed to live together for 35 years thereafter and to maintain a democratic government—however untidy—with orderly succession and transfer of power...
...Lucille G. Natkins Great Neck, New York To the Editor: I believe that, in the aggregate, your judgment of the policy of the State of Israel in regard to its neighbors and the lands of Judea-Samaria/the West Bank is unjust and unfair...
...As a student rabbi I served a small congregation in Essex, Maryland, which formally dedicated its synagogue building in the fall of 1955...
...But native and naturalized Jews have more in common than we have that is dissimilar, for Judaism looks not only to the past, but to the future...
...Sheinerman, a veteran Zionist teacher, delegate to Zionist Congresses and active in Jewish affairs, made aliyah in 1908 and worked as a teacher in Rechovot, but fell ill and was forced to return to Europe...
...My daughter, a Sherut La'Am volunteer in Ma'alot, shed pacifism to support the invasion of Lebanon...
...This is simply not so...
...A young soldier boasts of stealing from the Lebanese ("They hate us, so why not...
...Was your wedding invitation something special...
...Better Avrum than Arik, like better Red than dead, is still a false dichotomy...
...It is that common commitment to the Jewish future that needs the attention...
...Another murder, 50 years old, the assassination of Labor Zionist Chaim Arlosoroff in June of 1933, is still a live political issue in Israel between Labor and Likud...
...Whatever Sharon's problems, they don't arise from his lack of a belly button...
...As part of the tour we were on we received tickets for the ballet, but it being Simchat Torah, we chose to give them to Arkady and Helen...
...Several weeks later I received a letter from him, along with a hand-written note that he had written to then-Secretary of State Alexander Haig...
...Alas, this did not work, for they are still in Moscow...
...Aron did...
...And when he lectures Israel and her American supporters on morality, he might reflect on the morality of abandoning Israel to the jackals tearing at her in every medium of communication, including those who want to Save Israel In Spite Of Herself...
...refugees from Hitler's Europe talk, with unintended irony, of the "need" to make Israel Arab-free and passengerless cars speed by hitchhiking soldiers, a sight unthinkable in 1973...
...His bride-to-be, Devorah, studied medicine for four years at the same university and hoped to complete her studies in Palestine, where they moved after the war...
...It's hard for me to understand why moment, dedicated to Judaism, printed the article...
...While Arabs are jailed for speech, a Kiryat Arba settler "who opened fire as he passed a refugee camp" is "questioned...
...Collective punishment is imposed on Arabs as "refugee camps are placed under curfew" but, although a Hebrew University professor (stoned while driving through Mea Shearim on Shabbat) lies near death, "police are not optimistic about discovering the perpetrators since they have difficulty penetrating the ultra-Orthodox community in search of criminals" and after "a group" of Jewish vandals commit arson (they object to a non-Orthodox way of life) "only one" is arrested...
...I explained to him how I had come to know this family, and asked him if there was anything he could do to help...
...It is agony to see and to write of the dream turning nightmare...
...While communists sought free speech for themselves they disdained it for "fascists," "imperialists," etc...
...What better way to create a Northern Ireland than to force Arabs, at gunpoint, to erase PLO slogans others wrote, to weld their shop doors shut because of stones others threw, to deny them family benefits enacted for Jews, etc., etc...
...Moreover, while Emil Grunzweig's death was indeed a tragedy, it does not have the national significance with which Fein endows it...
...Henry Stern Omaha, Nebraska Author's Query To the Editor: For a book about modern Jewish weddings I am collecting modem minhagim—revived, revised or entirely new customs attendant to the round of festivities that surround a Jewish wedding...
...I say: Ariel Sharon no and Avrum Burg no—but first let's look at Sharon's umbilical cord...
...I want to know if, where, how, when and why you chose to include a chossen's tish (groom's table) at your wedding...
...Jacob Neusner Providence, Rhode Island Lack of Vision To the Editor: Kim Chernin's piece in the April 1983 issue of moment contained genuinely touching sentiments about a daughter's ambivalent feelings toward an obviously strong-willed mother about which 1 would have no inclination to comment...
...our Jewishness is defined for us, as for native Jews, by a myriad of experiences and encounters with Torah and Jewish learning, ritual and observance, Israel, and American Jewish communal concerns and actions...
...Norwas murder the only political violence committed by Jew against Jew in the Holy Land...
...While no Jew-by-choice would deny that there are problems surrounding the issue (and certainly these deserve occasional attention), the repeated emphasis given by a monthly column suggests that for the convert, it is the fact of the conversion that defines his or her entire sense of Jewishness...
...They have been refusniks since 1974...
...Consequently, the rabbis ordained that shackling in the synagogues could give our people the necessary outlets for their energy...
...Just how "visionary" was the mother...
...Did the vision include the darkness-at-noon show-trials of the old Bolsheviks, the Hitler-Stalin pact during the duration of which the line was that America should stay out of the war with Hitler, the demise of Russian Jewish writers such as Babel and Mandelshtam, the terror and slave labor of the Soviet gulags, the murder of millions in the USSR, the destruction of Jewish and other culture in the Soviet Union, the Stalinist Jewish doctors and anti-"cosmopolitan" campaigns, the occupation of East Europe and brutal put-down in the 1950s of efforts by the Hungarians to rule themselves, the anti-Israel policies of the USSR from the 1950s on...
...No wonder his young friend has come to view Israel as "a place where bad things happen...
...The following night we met again, and I promised them that I would do everything within my power to help them...
...We reserve the right to edit for publication...
...However, since the mother, Rose Chernin, is described as a "visionary" who was "a leading figure in the American Communist Party in the 30s, 40s and SOs," and since the article appears to romanticize the communist activities, comment on the public aspects of Ms...
...Avrum Burg is an articulate young man, whom Fein has found to be an inspiring alternative model to Sharon...
...For instance, I do not feel the same alienation Rachel Cowan does when hearing about the Yiddish culture of "our grandparents...
...Goldberg, a test like that you could pass...
...I had never heard that particular explanation either before or since until your April item...
...It never was, and it's time we stopped flagellating the Israelis for not acting out our dreams for us, for not playing their prescribed roles in our morality plays or serving as characters in our fables and fairy tales...
...He took their names and address...
...A single Jerusalem Post issue (April S) speaks volumes...
...To refer to a Being whom Marxism holds in contempt and treats with ridicule, we should all thank God that this country—including Judaism in this country—has survived to this day without Rose Chernin's vision having at least so far been visited upon us...
...it's another to paint her, as Fein does in your jeremiad, as a wall-to-wall wart...
...The butcher looked her in the eye and asked, "Mrs...
...Herzl's often-quoted line, "If you will it, it is not a dream," is a mistranslation of his original, "Wenn ihres wollt, ist es kein Mdrchen...
...What happened to the dream...
...Leonard S. Sandweiss New York, New York On Meeting Soviet Jews To the Editor: In regard to Bill Aran's photo essay "And In This Generation, Still...
...Was Emil Grunzweig's "the first political murder...
...As morality dies, so must security...
...Anita Diamant Allston, Massachusetts Letters to the Editor moment welcomes letters from readers...
...Granted, in an ideal world, a suitable and lasting peace could allow a settlement acceptable to all sides...
...Dov Zeev Begin, later to be father of Menachem, came to the synagogue with an axe, broke the lock, opened the doors wide and conducted a sparsely attended service in Herzl's memory with his friend Sheinerman, paternal grandfather of Ariel Sharon...
...Fein left the impression that he was the victim of Sephardic violence...
...We all have different ways of relating to the past...
...moment, March 1983), it turns out that my brother and I visited the apartment of two of the people he photographed—Arkady Mai and his wife Helen Seidel—the same week that Mr...
...Indeed, the heroes of the labor union movement, people such as Reuther, Rose, Dubinsky, knew way back that the communists were no good for the union movement and did their best to dissociate the unions from them...
...Upon returning to America I visited my senator, Rudy Boschwitz, in Washington, D.C...
...She picked one up, pinched it, poked it, lifted one wing and sniffed under it, did the same with the other wing, sniffed at the neck opening, sniffed at the vent and handed it back to the butcher, remarking that it didn't smell so fresh...
...Chernin's mother's life certainly is in order...
...While we were dancing in the streets of Moscow, her parents were seeing Swan Lake performed by the Bolshoi Ballet...
...Doors were knocked at any time by the creeps and bandeetim to see that Jews were not engaging in any types of physical exercises...
...Fein doesn't know, I don't know, and besides, it's the Israelis' decision...
...For the interim, which apparently is going to be protracted, what that means is that the State of Israel will have to retain the lands gained in 1967...
...His studies were interrupted by the War of Independence and he joined the Haganah...
...They had never seen the Bolshoi...
...Paul, Minnesota Our People To the Editor: I would like to express my agreement with Joanne Hemmer, whose letter in the April issue objected to the recent inauguration of a monthly feature about conversion and intermarriage...
...All letters should be typed, double-spaced, and sent to the moment Editorial Office, 462 Boylston Street, Suite 301, Boston, MA 02116...
...Haig if it was somehow possible to expedite the paperwork that was holding this family from immigrating to Israel...
...He said it wasn't a fable, a fairy tale—and it isn't...
...In the entire issue, there is no report of an Israeli who protests these acts...
...Fein says, "Ariel Sharon, bom with no umbilical cord, with no inhibiting connection to any civilized tradition, be it Jewish or secular democratic—Ariel Sharon yes and Avium Burg no...
...Rolled barbed wire is the fencing of choice, and bounds kibbutzim, schools, forests, and archaeological sites...
...Only signed letters with a complete return address can be considered...
...Despite a Supreme Court decision in their favor, Arabs ordered to evacuate Birim in 1948 are not permitted to return to their homes there "because of the fear of creating a precedent...
...We spent several days with them, and celebrated Simchat Torah with their daughter...
...Under these conditions—peace being now out of reach—the wisest policy is to secure those lands and, without driving out the Arabs now in them, retain them for Israeli advantage...
...So would most Israelis—if the tiny little state were granted by its neighbors the tranquility of a Liechtenstein or a Luxembourg...
...Fein's sign for the next demonstration reads: an end to false dichotomies...
...Robert A. Riesman Providence, Rhode Island To the Editor: Back from my third visit to Israel in ten years, I share Leonard Fein's pain and concern over "what went wrong...
...Fein should remember that many of these bitter adversaries are still active in Israeli political life...
...An East Jerusalemite is "arrested for inciting shopowners to close their doors," Nablus youths are "detained for allegedly spreading rumours about poisoned water" and Nazareth villagers are "arrested for suspicion of raising PLO flags...
...It's one thing to depict Israel, warts and all...
...I think of them daily, and hope and pray that someday soon they may be able to join their brethren in Beersheva...
...Let's try one on for size...
...Maryland Governor Theodore McKeldin graciously participated in the event, and in his remarks he alluded to shuckling being derived from what you called "the swaying motion peculiar to camel riders...
...Far from there having been "vision" there seems to me not to have been even a smidgeon of hindsight...
Vol. 8 • June 1983 • No. 6
