Fair Game

...No, this Jewison is not for or against Jews...

...Game Fair BY WALTER GOODMAN Forster & Epstein For as long as I can remember, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith (ADL) has been sending out dispatches about the anti-Semites among us, and these have periodically been pasted into books under the names of Arnold Forster, the ADL's Associate Director and General Counsel, and Benjamin R. Epstein, its National Director...

...Well, although one may prefer not to have the news bruited about, there are such things as Jewish pressure groups, and I fail to see why they ought not be open to fair or even slightly unfair comment—unless one regards all journalism as a species of public relations...

...The Forster-Epstein perspective, much less cloudy than mine, seems to me not only philistine, pardon the expression, but slightly subversive...

...Hence, criticism of Israel is evidence of insensitivity toward Jews, if not worse...

...For most Jews, the fate of Israel is linked ineluctably to their own fate...

...contempt breeds familiarity...

...They also note what comes as no revelation, that the anti-Semitism long indigenous to the Radical Right may today be found on the Radical Left as well...

...Is the recent TV production of The Merchant of Venice or a picture like Portnoy's Complaint likely to spread anti-Semitism in America...

...The movie lays the crucifixion of Jesus to Jews of that time, and Forster-Epstein are concerned that the spreading of the famous canard among the Christian masses constitutes a threat to Jews of this time...

...and Forster-Epstein are indignant that Federal funds should be used to build a road into Eureka that will benefit so renowned a Jew-baiter...

...And, yes, sometimes the reader may get the feeling that the authors are prisoners of the ADL's reason-for-being...

...Forster-Epstein apply their simple criterion of appropriate discourse in areas where it begins to sound like Nixonian pique...

...The security of Israel is of heartfelt importance to America's Jews...

...With the Middle East suddenly in the center of America's concern, the behavior of Jews here at home is bound to be scrutinized...

...For Forster-Epstein to decry reports of Jewish influence at the same time that they denounce the propaganda efforts of the Arabs among us is merely humorous...

...But I feel no more reassured by Fiddler than threatened by Superstar—and in any case, I would have trouble trying to figure out precisely how bad a movie has to be for Jews before Jewish organizations should start to holler...

...Group sensitivities do not breed frank discussion...

...The first personality spotlighted is Gerald L. K. Smith, Mr...

...Sure, if there must be musicals, let them all be Fiddler on the Roof...

...The charge of anti-Semitism is and ought to be a most serious one, too serious to be used in a scattershot way...

...Evans & Novak When they take on some of the critics of Israel, Forster-Epstein do manage to touch my sensitivity...

...Superstar' & Tiddler In their chapter on "The Media and The Arts," for example, Forster-Epstein come down hard on Norman Jewison (no, he's not Jewish), producer-director of Jesus Christ, Superstar, which they describe as "virtually Oberammergau and Gerald L. K. Smith's 'Great Passion Play' set to rock...

...Somebody has to do the job, and it's not as though your sister has to marry one of them...

...It's not exactly that these people don't like Jews...

...They are, to use a word Forster-Epstein seem to have copyrighted, insensitive...

...Oh, a certain repetition does set in—the same ugly people saying the same things and having the same things said about them, but that's a hazard of the business...

...I conclude that their impulse, if not their avowed intent, is to make serious discussion of touchy issues impermissible...

...it's that they don't like Jews enough...

...In their discussion of The Media, they express dismay at the insensitivity of Time magazine and syndicated columnist Nicholas Von Hoffman and CBS reporter Robert Pierpoint and others for suggesting that America's Jews exercise a disproportionate influence on the nation's foreign policy...

...Their pro-Israeli arguments come straight out of fund-raising functions, and they write off exceptions to their beliefs as affronts to morality, humanity and decency...

...The quotes are at hand, and are served up in generous portions, with the customary garnishes...

...But so what...

...The argument is well taken, but Smith just isn't what he used to be in the days when William Dudley Pelley and Father Coughlin and the rest were doing their turns, and the chapter about him seems to be powered as much by nostalgia as by immediate concern...

...How insensitive of the columnists Evans and Novak or Senator Fulbright to observe that American Jews have a notable influence on our government's approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict...

...To Truman Capote's complaint that a "Jewish Mafia in American letters" controls much of the nation's literary life, their main rebuttal is that he shouldn't say such things...

...Could one discuss McCarthyism without seeming insensitive to Catholics...

...Can one discuss IQs without seeming insensitive to blacks...

...How insensitive of Dean Sayre of Washington's National Cathedral or of the Christian Science Monitor or of the American Friends Service Committee to criticize the actions of Israel and say a nice word for the Arabs...

...I'm afraid I have more difficulty with that question than Forster-Epstein...

...Let me paraphrase their argument: Criticism of Israel or of Israel's boosters in this country constitutes a threat to that nation's security...

...They found it "heartwarming...

...Their singleminded objection to Jesus Christ, Superstar and a batch of other movies and TV shows is that they are an offense to the nation's Jews...

...I am probably more sanguine than they—although, I confess, I would prefer that Middle America be spared any untoward influences whatever in this matter...

...Every criticism is not a defamation, and unless the ADL is careful, it's going to give anti-Semitism a good name...

...they liked it because it "spoke of the triumph of a faith, Judaism, and a people...

...About half of Forster-Epstein's latest book, The New Anti-Semitism (McGraw-Hill, 354 pp., $7.95), travels the nasty old ground in the way we have come to expect...

...The authors tackle newer, younger, darker subjects, too—Black Panthers and Black Muslims, the Afro-American Teachers Association and the former LeRoi Jones—whose attitudes toward Jews are scarcely distinguishable from those of the Ku Klux Klan...

...A good deal of what is presented here as the new anti-Semitism is not anti-Semitism at all...

...Yet, by entitling their book The New Anti-Semitism, Forster-Epstein had quite another group of adversaries in mind—not declared Jew-haters who could be hung with their own words, but persons whose attitudes fail to pass ADL muster...

...Anti-Semite himself...

...Surely, no American Jew ought to be placed in a position where he feels compelled to defend every turn of Israeli policy, but if any of us disagrees with Dean Sayre or with Senator Fulbright or with this or that columnist, let's take them on openly and not zip ourselves up in a custom-made cloak of sensitivity...

...And, no, elegance of style and refinement of thought are not their fortes...

...Jewison is the fellow who also brought us the film version of Fiddler on the Roof, and Forster-Epstein liked that a lot...

...The New Anti-Semitism is evidence that the standard tools of the Anti-Defamation League, wondrous-ly suited to exposing the Gerald L. K. Smiths, are clumsy instruments for dealing with, say, the differences between a Dean Sayre and a Daniel Berrigan, between the Christian Science Monitor and an Arab propaganda sheet, between the American Friends Service Committee and the American Council for Judaism...

...If somebody utters the word Jew in public, it had better be accompanied by a favorable adjective or the ADL may pounce...

...If you want to know about the ugly overtones of the John Birch Society, the ugly actions of the Ku Klux Klan, the ugly language of the Radical Right, there is no better source in the country...

...In short, they have no difficulty in making their customary case about outright anti-Semites, black and white, Right and Left...

...He has been bad-mouthing Jews for three decades, his fortunes rising and falling in response to national attitudes over which he has as little control as the rest of us...

...These days he is promoting a Passion Play down in Eureka Springs, Arkansas...

...At issue here is not the kind of person the ADL usually confronts...

...he's simply show biz...

...If it's merely a question of my sensitivity, I defend anybody's right to offend that...

...Columnists and commentators would not be doing their jobs if they pretended that when it came to Israel we were just like everybody else...

...We need not apologize for our anxieties about Israel's survival, our prayers for its well-being, but why should we expect others to place our actions beyond comment...

...Leaving aside Superstar?, artistic virtues or historical deficiencies (at which Forster-Epstein make a pro forma pass), I think that whether one sees the movie as a threat to Jews depends on one's sense of the feelings that prevail across the land...