Dear Editor
Dear Editor In the Beginning... Allow me to add a historical note to Rachel Shteir's "Latke versus Hamantasch" (NL, June 30). She writes that at the University of Chicago "50 years ago, a rabbi...
...Perennial fear and uncertainty would still militate for full U.S...
...und es geht auch zum mögen (and it also goes straight down to the stomach...
...New York City Elliott A. Cohen Undeluded The discussion of Walker Percy's inherited tendency toward depression in Bertram WyattBrown's review of Patrick H. Samway's new biography ("The South's Lost Gentleman," NL, June 30) reminded me of an article I read several years ago...
...I do not recall Finch's arguments, for he was not a "foodie" and knew little Yiddish...
...engagement in European affairs...
...Why two...
...Finally, Lind's proposal for transmuting NATO into an entity like the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe would be perceived in the U.S., whatever the reality, as a relinquishment of national power and therefore rejected...
...Actually, I was the one who initiated the debate...
...Later generations clearly lost the dialectical skill...
...Discussing the symbolism of Jewish holidays before Purim, I proposed the idea of the debate...
...Ithaca, N. Y. Gekrold Kazan...
...But not at the creation...
...Thus it fulfills all the conditions of our existence...
...China's ambitions may grow, as Lind asserts, but that quest need not take the shape of aggrandizement...
...A number of us—including Daniel Boorstin, Benjamin Nelson and Henry Finch (a philosopher who, with Edward Shils, translated Max Weber's Methodology)—had begun a study group with Rabbi Pekarsky...
...Europeans, albeit grudgingly, have accepted this American notion...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...So it became one or the other...
...But a latke is made from potatoes...
...Shema Yisroel, adoshem elokenu, adoshem echod, emphasizing the oneness...
...Arrogance, grandiosity, envy, and nostalgia, however misplaced, were the motivating factors behind that decision...
...Butlwould like to take issue with the following points...
...The hamantasch...
...As one says...
...achievement of its ultimate goal of free trade throughout Europe and a benign Russia within NATO would allow it to concentrate on the Asia-Pacific world...
...She writes that at the University of Chicago "50 years ago, a rabbi and two professors gave birth to the famous exchange...
...I do recall mine: The latke ties heaven and earth...
...It is illusory, though, to believe that U.S...
...He gave us two hands—not one, or three, but two...
...Restored status and the erasure of national humiliation may well suffice...
...Percy's depression, while a burden to him personally, thus merely points up the fact that he was clear-eyed and undeluded...
...It is round, and therefore has a oneness...
...The real test of pilpul is to present the case for both sides...
...Happiness, the psychiatrist argued, exhibits all of the symptoms of a delusion...
...The rabbi was Maurice Pekarsky, the campus director of Hillel...
...I would submit for consideration as concurrent causes (in addition to the fear of invasion provoked by the Tartars, Poles, Swedes, French, and Germans), bureaucratic vested interest and a strategy designed to divert national attention from internal weakness...
...Henry Finch and I were the two protagonists and antagonists...
...And what do you have if you place one hamantasch over the other—the Star of David, or the mögen duvid of the Yiddishe volk...
...Daniel Bell Scholar in Residence, American Academy of Arts and Sciences At Issue As usual, Michael Lind ("Looking Past NATO: A Plea for a New Global Strategy," NL, June 30) is provocative and politically imaginative...
...I say protagonists and antagonists because each debater had to take both sides of the argument...
...So that we can take two hamantaschen to eat...
...Having recorded my own opposition to NATO expansion elsewhere, I concur with Lind's exegesis and his exposure of the fallacious reasons advanced for enlargingthis political-military alliance...
...For good or ill, Americans want a military alliance in which they exercise substantial, if not total, control...
...Not that his readers need more evidence ofthat...
...And when you eat it, it sinks straight down to the earth, adomah...
...After all, it is easy to argue one or the other...
...A trinity...
...This is true even of his conjectures, which by definition are not empirically demonstrable...
...It told of a British psychiatrist—I forget his name—who published a paper maintaining that while those suffering from low-grade melancholy are often strikingly rational, a sense of well-being bears a strong resemblance to psychological states marked by feelings of persecution or by a belief that one is a figure of historical importance...
...It is regrettable that Lind would attribute France's withdrawal from NATO in 1964 to a "senile and deluded" Charles de Gaulle...
...While the idea that Russian great-power imperialism is the source of its 20th-century expansionism does stem from a misreading of Russian history, I think Lind is equally culpable in attributing it to Soviet ideology...
...But God will not betray us...
...The hamantasch is made like a tricom...
...The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
Vol. 80 • July 1997 • No. 12
