Letters
LETTERS Israeli Policy To the Editor: In a letter published in the June issue, Professor Jacob Neusner writes that he infers that in moment's judgment, Israel's activity with respect to its...
...More so, we asked for—insisted that—the service identify that in this wedding, a Jew and a Christian were marrying, both affirming—not denying—their religious beliefs and backgrounds...
...I encounter the same amount of anti-Semitism as other Jews, but my world is considerably larger than it was and includes some wonderful gentile people whom I would never have come to know had my attitude remained like my father's...
...So she went through the whole megillah, which in my book makes her a double Jewess...
...Rabbi David Klatzker Natick, Massachusetts Rose Chernin lb the Editor: Leonard Sandweiss's letter in your June issue concerning Rose Chernin ("Organize...
...Jane's decision to convert to Judaism and her expression of indebtedness to her grandparents are beautiful tributes and an ongoing memorial to two very special human beings...
...The current policy, then, is aimed at permanent control and apparentlyat de facto annexation of the West Bank...
...Ida may have called blacks "coloreds" and non-Jews "goyim," but her acts of kindness were boundless...
...The Jews, he reported, seek "complete domination, with Jerusalem as the capital of their new land of milk and honey, with the right to colonize in Trans-Jordan...
...No," she said...
...He laughed with pleasure at hearing himself described in these accurate though inaccurate terms (his father was not poor if real wealth was counted...
...Why hold back the truth—good or bad...
...It may have seemed to Jane that Ida and her overdressed friends spent dull hours at their beach clubs, but these were women who had worked at jobs outside their homes in their early teens, then married and raised families and did community work in their middle years and, when Jane observed them, they were enjoying the luxury of earned leisure...
...When my wife, Nancy, who has a strong Methodist background, let me know that she wanted her wedding to be a religious event, I pointed out that if my vow was to have meaning for me, it had to include a rabbi...
...The women (my mother was a great one for that) wore the ornaments with a sense of righteous pride...
...As a parent whose children question the importance of marrying Jewish partners, I take great encouragement from Jane Baron's story of her grandparents...
...In America, are you not a Jew if you think of yourself as a Jew, declare yourself to be a Jew...
...The young JFK, then a junior at Harvard, visited Jerusalem as part of a tour of world capitals on the eve of the war...
...One woman in their circle, Molly, sold frankly phony costume jewelry and gave the proceeds to charity...
...I remember Rose to be a petite, attractive blond with a charismatic personality...
...When I was in my 20s I found myself in constant disagreement with my father and his values...
...Several years later when she told me she planned to take the readings and mikveh to become a Jewess, I was astounded...
...However, I hope by now he knows that to be an "ecumenicist" does not preclude embracing a particular faith...
...His own father was here already, and Pete Baron grew up in the tough environment of the Lower East Side...
...Answer from Jane: "No...
...Even the overdressing of Ida's friends has a partial explanation...
...Rather, they all urge that strong security measures be taken for a number of years...
...No sensible observer of the Middle East believes that any Arab power, PLO or otherwise, threatens the existence of the State of Israel...
...One wonders what use, if any, his father made of JFK's impressions of the Holy Land in crisis...
...Two brief comments on Neusner's position: first, one's life takes precedence only if it is threatened...
...Stanley C. Baron Whitehouse, New Jersey To the Editor: I read Jane Baron's story of becoming a Jew by choice with particular personal interest...
...And, if Neusner refers to saving the lives of individual Israelis, does he believe that the Talmud would have us punish a million people because one percent of them are under arms and sworn to attack Israel...
...In the July 1983 issue of Reader's Digest (page 32), there is a statement by John Bartholomew Gough, which tells in just a few sentences what Rose Chemin, my brother and others were trying to accomplish during the difficult years of the Depression...
...Their abiding love for their children and grandchildren and commitment to their religion through acts of faith and home observance ultimately triumphed...
...LETTERS Israeli Policy To the Editor: In a letter published in the June issue, Professor Jacob Neusner writes that he infers that in moment's judgment, Israel's activity with respect to its neighbors and the West Bank is unjust and unfair...
...Robert J. Schreiber Stamford, Connecticut An Emotional Time Bomb To the Editors: "An Emotional Time Bomb" by Paul and Rachel Cowan (June) reads like the script for an interesting soap opera...
...When Jane announced that she was entering Union Theological Seminary to take her Masters of Divinity degree, asked I of her: "How in the world do you expect to meet a nice Jewish boy there...
...The Jewish Theological Seminary is right across the street...
...But that's in Israel," I said...
...Jane was five when we moved from Father Divine's coach house, so if I blamed him for her "conversion to Jewry," it was my Jewish sense of humor showing...
...JFK's own solution to the Jewish-Arab conflict was a partition plan— two semi-autonomous cantons, with Jerusalem in some way "independent...
...Pope John XXIII was probably the most ecumenical human being of our time but did not compromise his religion to be so...
...that in so doing, we were hopefully opening the door to those separate rooms for Christians and Jews so that both could dwell in the house of the Lord...
...Corinne Kaufman Klafter Great Neck, New York JFK In Jerusalem To the Editor: As a supplement to Lawrence Richs' "JFK and the Jews" (moment, June 1983), I would like to call your attention to a little-known letter John F. Kennedy wrote to his father from Jerusalem in the summer of 1939...
...As 1 explained it to him, "I know why we never see things the same way: Our self-perceptions are so different...
...Ecumenicism can be pursued in intellectual functions, as Jane has done, and can be lived in acts of humanity to people of all faiths and races as Pete and Ida Baron did...
...And so we married with Rabbi Samuel Baron (no relation) of Brooklyn and Salem, New York, and Reverend Robert Sneyd of Toronto in attendance...
...As he put it, it was unfair to him and narrow of me to assume that each Christian I met was an anti-Semite until proven otherwise...
...As a result I altered my stance in life...
...My enthusiasm was dampened by the concluding piece, where you published a response by Robert Loup, National Chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, to Dr...
...We can thank them for unemployment insurance, Social Security, etc...
...He appears to have been unaware of the pressing needs of the Jewish refugees from Nazi-dominated Europe, noting only that the White Paper's limitations on immigration would doom the Jews to minority status in Palestine...
...I feel you were justified in featuring the article on Rose Chernin since I know for a fact that many Jews other than Rose and Ben were at least sympathetic to the cause at that time...
...In many ways, their lives more or less paralleled one another...
...Anne Kean Baltimore, Maryland The Jewish Agency To the Editor: Last night I received the June 1983 issue of moment and read it, almost from cover to cover, in one sitting...
...He believed that Palestine had been promised twice: first to the Sherif Husayn in 1915, and then, a second time, to the Jews, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917...
...On the other hand, I perceive of myself as the son of a rich bag manufacturer who raised his four children in the comfort of the suburbs during the Depression, sent them all off to college and gave them a great start in life...
...perhaps he meant that, by the time of his visit, British soldiers had largely succeeded in clearing the hills and villages around Jerusalem of Arab rebels...
...He mailed Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy reports from each of the places he visited...
...In his thoroughly enjoyable book, An Orphan in History, Mr...
...Far from it...
...Said she: "Don't worry, Dad...
...Billions of dollars are being spent to house and support a large Jewish population...
...I pondered that thought, so different from my father's teachings...
...You perceive of yourself as the son of a poor Jewish immigrant with a tough, really tough childhood...
...Jaffe and those who share his dismay will continue to resonate as long as the major philanthropic activities and disbursements for Israel are controlled by the Zionist political parties and their diaspora counterparts who, in most instances, are reminiscent of the English rotten borough system of the early 19th century...
...I was fascinated by the hitherto unknown details...
...Cowan writes of his father and himself as having buried their identity, consciously and subconsciously, until he—the son—rediscovers himself through Judaism...
...My five children, of which Jane is the oldest, are of a Christian mother and a Jewish father...
...The recent (May 1939) MacDonald White Paper "theoretically presents a good solution, but it just won't work," JFK wrote...
...by Kim Chernin, April 1983) prompts me to take my pen in hand...
...The letter from Jerusalem is in the President's Office Files, Special Events Through the Years 1939-1951, Box 135, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts...
...Rabbi Wolfe Kelman New York, New York...
...In my early 20s I was chastised by a Christian I had just met forgoing out of my way to identify myself as a Jew...
...And he adds, "For the interim, Israel will have to retain the lands gained in 1967...
...Second: Neusner's words, "in the interim,'* are shared by the peace movement...
...I met Rose a couple of times in about 1950 through my brother, Ben Raoul, who was also a Communist leader and was closely associated with her...
...In his undated letter from Jerusalem (his itinerary suggests May or June 1939), JFK accepted the interpretation of British officials...
...He observed that the British were "doing a good job" in Palestine...
...Yamit was a tiny village—and it was almost impossible to evacuate...
...In opposition, he cites the talmudic injunction that "your life takes precedence over that of the other...
...I have carried them with me...
...Not Jewish enough...
...he was not rich by the same standard...
...Her grandparents, Peter and Ida Baron, were dear, close friends of my parents...
...He apparently thinks the Barons of his article also have an identity crisis and have sought to solve it by burying their past...
...She was already a Jewess, since I am...
...No responsible peacenik in Israel, to my knowledge, has suggested that the West Bank be turned over willy-nilly to the Palestinian residents of that area...
...It should be clear by now that I reject the article's notion that religion has a "separate room for Jews and a room for Christians...
...Since it purports to be about real people—of which I am one, namely, Jane's father—a decent appreciation of personal history requires me to set the record straight for the generations succeeding...
...Since then I accept people at face value...
...It is packed with so many absorbing articles, especially those dealing with the Jews in the political arena...
...The laments of Dr...
...When Irene, the black woman who had worked for the Barons years earlier, developed breast cancer and chose not to undergo surgery, Ida and Pete Baron provided a haven for her within their home for her last years...
...Jane's grandfather, Peter Baron, had arrived in this country from a shtetl in Poland at the age of 12...
...Stanley Baron (Jane's father) always marched to a different drummer...
...On his last evening in Jerusalem, he himself witnessed a series of "Jewish terrorist" bombings...
...As a Jew, 1 feel maligned by the Cowans' article since there is the suggestion that I have somehow run from my Jewish roots...
...Eliezer Jaffe's critical remarks about the Jewish Agency...
...It just wouldn't happen...
...The problem, however, is that the policy of the government—settling the West Bank with a large Jewish population—precludes the "interim" from ending...
...The Arabs "realize (the Jews') superiority and fear it...
...Imagine what would happen if any government discussed asking one hundred thousand Jews to leave homes, schools and businesses on the West Bank...
...The very first line exposes his father's mind set, if not his own: "Dear Dad: I thought I would write you my impressions of Palestine while they are still fresh in my mind, though you undoubtedly, if I know the Jews, know the 'whole'story...
...I am a Jew who believes strongly that the single greatest strength of our religion is the concept of One God—Adonai Echad— who created the Universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and me and you and all other people, whom I worship daily without needing to go to a synagogue or a church...
Vol. 8 • September 1983 • No. 8
