Confronting the Jewish Identity Crisis

...The anti-Semitic Primate of Poland, Jozef Cardinal Glemp, canceled a visit to this country when it appeared likely that he would be served with a Dershowitz complaint in a defamation lawsuit brought by an activist rabbi who had staged a protest in front of a convent insensitively established at Auschwitz...

...Dershowitz' greatest contribution to the American Jewish scene is as a spur to thought and action...

...One can taste the sweetness of revenge when Dershowitz describes how, years later, he won a dscrirnination case in court against Cravath, Swaine & Moore, long the archetype of discriminatory hiring, represented in its litigation by none other than Judge Rifkind's law firm...

...Dershowitz supports his hypotheses with accounts of his experiences relating to incidents outside the United States...

...Now yarmulkes are seen regularly in every major American university, kosher kitchens abound, and more Jewish students identify openly with Jewish tradition than ever before...

...As everyone knows, Alan Dershowitz speaks his mind, regardless of who may be offended, and he urges all American Jewish spokesmen to do the same...

...My concern is not with Alan Dershowitz' candor or with his identification as a Jew...

...And while the "attitude" Dershowitz proposes may differ from that of his mother (who is the book's most frequently cited authority) and from the view of many American Jewish spokesmen, it is not wholly novel...

...The Jewish professors at Harvard...

...Should the Jewish community be reluctant gratuitously to offend America's Christian majority...

...The issue of religious symbols on public property tests Dershowitz' claim that America's Jews should not see themselves as "guests in someone else's home...

...Dershowitz reports that the Israelis refused to take up Sharansky's case because he claimed to be a universal human-rights activist and not exclusively a Jewish protester...

...I agree with much of what he says, and as to the subjects with which I disagree, I am happy to classify him as a wildly liberal fuzzy-headed Harvard law professor who happens to be Jewish...

...The give-and-take of the democratic process requires no less...

...Intermarriage—the consequence of total acclimation—has decimated the ranks of America's Jews far more than ethnic or religious exclusion...

...Dershowitz sets up another straw man when he claims that American Jews are paralyzed because we are afraid to do anything that is a shanda far de goyim —"an embarrassment in front of the gentiles...

...Sharansky is today a symbol for the massive So viet Jewish emigration to Israel, and it is shocking to learn that the Israelis—as well as some American organizations who were fighting for Soviet Jewry—found a pretext to avoid supporting him...

...Dershowitz adopts the standard civil libertarian argument that the "wall of separation" between church and state is eroded by menorahs displayed in public squares alongside Christmas trees, and he deplores Lubavitch's assertiveness...

...Dershowitz' victory was muted by representatives of the American Jewish Congress...

...Too frequently, he says, Jews surrender their rights because they do not want to offend their "hosts...

...Dershowitz' initiation to the faculty of Harvard Law School in 1964 is another fascinating nugget of contemporary social history...

...Given some of his opinions on church-state issues, I am thankful he does not purport to speak for the American Jewish community...

...He should, by the same reasoning, title his book "Chitzpah...

...Dershowitz finally received a job offer from an ethnically "balanced" New York law firm headed by former United States District Judge Simon H. Rifkind, but the offer was withdrawn once Dershowitz disclosed that he was then a Sabbath-observer and would be unavailable for work on Friday evenings and Saturdays...

...It is not the reaction of a confident homeowner...

...It is a comfortable guest indeed who beds his host's daughter...

...Dershowitz has festooned the door of his Harvard Law School office with these missiles of bigotry, and they make frightening reading as set out in a half dozen pages of his book...

...Two years earlier, while at Harvard, I had the same experience...

...It is, in fact, exemplified by today's Orthodox Jewish community—the community in which Dershowitz grew up...

...And Harvard's transformation to an institution that has had Jewish law school deans and will now have a president who is part Jewish is not the consequence of militancy, but of unquestionable quality...

...The most striking illustrations of chutzpah in Dershowitz' book are the vicious hate letters sent to him after his television appearances...

...American Jews are, if anything, too comfortable in this country...

...Dershowitz need look no further than Boro Park, the Brooklyn neighborhood of his youth that he describes fondly, for today's self-confident Jew...

...Dershowitz' view fails to differentiate between a guest and a minority stockholder...

...Today's committed Jews are not embarrassed at all...

...Rather than advocating chutzpah, Dershowitz should encourage chochmah—knowledge of Jewish tradition, values and history...

...Dershowitz argues that there should be no symbol whatever, including theChristmas tree, on public property...

...Chutzpah's publishers are marketing it as "a bold call for a new attitude by and toward American Jews...

...Dershowitz is also saddened, as I would be, by the Jews who write to him in frightened terms, asking him to keep silent because his outspokenness could harm the Jewish community...

...My answer is yes, but not because I consider myself a guest in someone else's United States...

...They blamed therabbi, rather than Cardinal Glemp, for promoting anti-Semitism, and Dershowitz properly calls this "sycophantic behavior...

...The Orthodox community, which he left because he could not accept its emphasis on ritual, is producing Jews who have enough self-assurance to remain distinctive in American society...

...were...

...A recurrent Dershowitz message is that American Jews are full-fledged owners of the real estate...

...I applaud Dershowitz' outspokenness...

...This leads into one of Chutzpah's principal themes: America's Jews should not, like Harvard's Jewish faculty members in 1964, see themselves as "grateful guests in someone else's home...

...They said, "Our concern is exclusively with Jews who want to emigrate to Israel and who are being prevented from doing so, or punished for their Zionism...

...litigator of religious rights cases in the Supreme Court Despite its arresting title and a front dust-jacket photo of the author that shrieks smugness, Alan M. Dershowitz' latest work is a thoughtful meld of reminiscence and opinion...

...the most goyish group I had ever encountered...

...There are many owners of this valuable property besides its Jewish occupants and, in the spirit of a partnership, Jews should treat co-proprietors with civility...

...Just 30 years ago, when he was at the top of his class at Yale Law School, he could not land a summer job with the leading Washington or New York law firms because of pervasive anti-Semitism...

...We have contributed mightily to America's wealth and culture and are entitled to share in its fruits...

...The rule that Sabbath-observers could not be hired was, according to Dershowitz, established by Simon Rifkind personally—although the judge, virtually a legend in New York legal circles, was himself a graduate of a yeshiva...

...No one can accuse the Israelis of lacking chutzpah, and one wonders what lesson we are to learn from their gross miscalculation...

...Some of them looked like they were probably wearing tweed underpants beneath their British-tailored slacks...

...But if America is "home" for Jews, why shouldn't Jews display their religious symbols in their home—i.e., in front of City Hall —just as the Christian majority displays its Christmas trees, Santa Clauses and other holiday symbols...

...The book has unfortunately been victimized by its own sales hype...

...The cardinal had falsely accused the rabbi of wanting to kill the convent's nuns...

...That proposal is totally unrealistic, and is the petulant response of an outsider who feels insecure and unwelcome...

...It's "bold" in the sense that anything Dershowitz does is presumptively bold...

...The change of attitude in America's law firms that shattered the antiSemitic barriers of 30 years ago resulted not from increased chutzpah, but from the sheer numbers of highly qualified Jewish and Sabbath-observant lawyers who proved irresistible even to firms that had a history of discrimination...

...Even more startling is the story of Dershowitz' negotiations with Israeli bureaucrats over the case of the famed Soviet prisoner-of-conscience Anatoly Shcharansky—who simplified his name to Natan Sharansky once he was freed and settled in Israel...

...The Lubavitch Chasidic community has won the right to exhibit Chanukah menorahs in public parks...

...He insists on mistransliterating as "fur" a Yiddish word properly pronounced "far...

...The "guest in someone else's home" metaphor is a handy target for Dershowitz, but it is far from clear that it is truly a motivating force in American Jewish life...

...The most intriguing passages in Chutzpah are Dershowitz' narratives of his personal experiences...

...His mother and grandmother may have hesitated to display their Jewishness out of fear that it would be a shanda...

...The cure for the identity crisis of American Jewry may not, therefore, be the dose of aggressiveness Dershowitz suggests...

...When he and I attended Ivy League law schools more than 30 years ago, no Jew wore a yarmulke on campus...