So It Goes

Secure With An Asterisk: What American Jewish Architecture Tells Us

BECAUSE WE'RE AMIDST the eight-day celebration of Hanukkah, Sid Schwarz, the founding rabbi of my synagogue, naturally used the festival as the focus of his d'var torah (or explication of the Torah) during Shabbat services yesterday.

He pointed to a directive from the Talmud in which the rabbis instruct Jews to place their lit menorahs either in a window or doorway where their light can be seen by passersby outside. But the rabbis’ prescriptions around the ritual of lighting the menorah qualified that Jews could keep their menorahs hidden indoors in times – and places – of danger. Just as all rules of Jewish law can be abrogated to save a person's life, the rabbis weren't going to require an act that could draw the hostility of others.

With this as background, Schwarz set out to conduct an informal survey, asking this congregation of 21st century, Washington, D.C.-area Jews to say whether or not they feel they are living in a time and a place of danger to them because of their religious identity. Figuratively speaking, how comfortable do we feel putting our menorahs in our windows?

On a scale of 1 (being most secure) and 10 (being highly insecure), a show of hands suggested that they range somewhere between 1 and 3 -- though the vast majority said 1. Some commented that their assessment is situational. That is, when in other countries -- not just the ones you'd think of mostly around the Middle East where anti-Semitism is overt and intense, but even in Europe, where there have been widely reported instances of anti-Jewish hostility in recent years – some said they would register a much higher number, above 5 to be sure. And one visitor from West Virginia pointed out that Jewish institutions there have been vandalized with swastikas and the like, so he’s feeling a bit less "welcome" than many.

If anything, I felt in the room as sense that, as has long been the case, the United States remains one of the most hospitable places for Jews in history, and certainly in our time. (Notwithstanding the tiny minority of extremists who have always had it out for us – and probably always will.) But I also felt a twinge of worry in the air, a sinking feeling that, while we are as welcome as ever in nearly every part of American life, there could be a growing misunderstanding of Jews that could grow into something more troubling.

A more empirical barometer of American Jewish confidence in our surroundings, at least based on somewhat narrow measures, suggests just the opposite. According to a 2010 survey of American Jews by the American Jewish Committee, 25 percent said they think anti-Semitism in the U.S. is currently “a very serious problem,” while 66 percent said it “somewhat of a problem.” Only nine percent said it is “not a problem at all.” In 2000, when AJC asked those same questions, the responses arguably sounded less confident: 32 percent said anti-Semitism is a “serious problem,” 63 percent said “somewhat of a problem,” and just five percent said “not a problem at all.”

That apparent easing of anxiety among American Jews over the last decade could be a function of the aging and dying off of an older generation who grew up in a time of overt, institutionalized anti-Semitism in American life. Either that, or the 2000 or 2010 figures (or both) were anomalous, reactions to passing episodes. In that case, I should probably look a bit more closely – but I will leave that for another day.

I’d like to point out yet another indicator of how secure American Jews feel today: our architecture.

At Beit Hatfusot in Tel Aviv, the Museum of the Diaspora, there is a large room filled with tabletop models of historic synagogues from many places and times where Jews lived. When I visited there years ago, woman from the museum pointed out that the structures most overtly identified as Jewish and seemingly open to the public were those built when and where Jews were feeling secure – even if, ironically, many of these building were burnt to the ground centuries later in pogroms or other convulsions of anti-Semitism. Still other structures appeared relatively anonymous and more fortress-like, suggesting an environment in which the Jews of the day felt more vulnerable.

Where, then, along that scale should we rate the architecture of today’s American Jewish religious and communal buildings? In many ways, I’d argue, it shows we're feeling secure, but with an asterisk.

This could be considered something of a golden age of Jewish architecture. Buildings constructed or redesigned in the last decade or so display some pretty good aesthetic sensibilities (a departure from many of the truly hideous structures the Jewish community put up in the decade or two after World War II).

More importantly, they also reflect that Jews are finally feeling at home in America: unafraid to express their identity publicly. Many of the buildings – synagogues, community centers, Federation buildings – stand out proudly and conspicuously among the rest.

But here’s the asterisk. Today’s sparkling Jewish buildings are now surrounded by large boulders or reinforced fences, designed to ward off attackers in vehicles; increasing numbers have full-time security officers, elaborate door-entry and alarm systems and other measures to detect a threat – or combat it should it materialize.

Many of these measures, which cost the Jewish community dearly, came about in the wake of 9/11, when we learned to worry about even the most remote and even unimaginable threat. Also, there have been periodic violent attacks on a number of Jewish buildings in recent years, which only underlines our resolve to protect ourselves. And rising attacks against Jews around the world understandably ring loudly in the ears of our communal leaders here.

What we see, then, is a collective indicator of how Jews are feeling in America and the ambivalence we have felt in many places and times throughout history. Whether it reflects the true state of our existence at this time and in this place is something we can debate - at another time. 

Jeff

The Planned Burning of Korans is Terrorism; We Must Stop It

OF ALL THE GALLERIES OF HORRORS contained in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., I somehow have the most emotional reaction to the one on Kristallnacht, that spasm of Nazi-provoked violence in 1938 across Germany against Jewish lives and property. The exhibit at the museum includes several Torahs -- scrolls with the Five Books of Moses handwritten onto parchment -- that were damaged on Kristallnacht and remain in a desecrated state, strewn on the floor as they might have been that terrible November night.

I've been through the museum countless times, and the sight of these scrolls and the thought of so many other such scrolls that were completely destroyed in the violence of Kristallnacht still tears me apart. Sure, the frightening images of the human toll of the Holocaust -- such as the lifeless piles of death camp victims and emaciated survivors -- cut me to the core. But there's something about the desecration of a Torah that leaves me literally weak kneed and overcome with despair.

I suppose there are many reasons I react this way. It is not only because the Torah is the spiritual and intellectual heart of the Jewish historical and theological narrative, which we are duty-bound to read over and over and which has kept the Jewish nation going, even when the odds of our survival were about nil.

The other reason is that the deliberate destruction of something so dear to a people -- there is nothing more precious in a Jewish house of worship -- is really a symbol act of violence against the entire community. In that sense, it is an act of terrorism.

The targets of terrorism are not only those who are immediately harmed by its unthinkable violence. It is also the larger community from which the victims come. The attacks on September 11 were so frightening, for example, not only because thousands of people lost their lives and countless others had their lives upended in the aftermath. Americans -- and I would argue citizens of many others nations -- hundreds or thousands of miles away from the carnage, with no personal connection to the victims were also deeply shaken.

Why? Because the terrorists chose their targets carefully: some of the highest-profile symbols of our nation and they left everyone with the feeling that, but for the grace of God, it could have been them in one of those towers, or in that ring of the Pentagon or on that plane that crashed in Pennsylvania. (Remember how that felt?)

That's the way terrorism works and why it wreaked such a tremendous psychological toll on this country. It's also why our society suddenly after September 11, 2001, began transforming itself in a multitude of ways -- most notably with heightened security procedures at airports, public buildings, international borders and critical infrastructure facilities. We were scared -- still are. 

The plans by Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Fla., to burn Korans next Saturday, September 11, is an act of terrorism. They will create a real state of fear, which is what terrorism strives to do. Especially given surging protests around the U.S. against the presence of mosques, demagogic demonstrations of anti-Islamic bigotry from some high-profile public figures, and  rising public opinion against Islam , Muslims in America have cause to be terrified by the sight of a deliberate assault on their sacred book.

There's more than a little irony here that someone would commit terrorism on the very day this nation remembers the most disastrous act of terrorism on our soil. Just to show how bizarre the Dove World Outreach Center is, though, its website features a blog posting that offers "Ten Reasons to Burn a Koran."  None of the 10 reasons states it is in remembrance of the tragegy of September 11, which makes you wonder why this organization chose that day to burn Korans. But the reasoning is strange, vile and delusional, suggesting a willful misunderstanding of Islam and its holiest book. "We are using this act to warn about the teaching and ideology of Islam, which we do hate as it is hateful," the post declares. What the hell kind of a theology is this?

Right now, less than a week before the Dove World Outreach Center plans to carry out this act of terror, there have been some groups and leaders who have spoken out against the planned burning of Korans (see this and this, for example). But everyone of decency -- and even those who have their own misgivings about Islam -- must speak up, early and often. We must stop treating this another of the bizarre freak shows that our circus-like news media fixate on and more as a threat to well being of our civilization.

Every society has and can withstand its crackpots and bad seeds -- or, more politely, its social deviants. But only when most of the rest of us show that they're truly deviant and that we're committed to the sustenance of what is good and civil.

When this core is quiet -- or, worse yet, when they seem to join in with and endorse the deviants, which was what made the Holocaust possible -- we are, all of us, in for big trouble.

Jeff

Kristallnacht: The Other Anniversary

HOW INTERESTING THAT TODAY, NOVEMBER 9, is the anniversary of one of the most exhilarating moments of happiness in 20th century history and one of the most terrifying: the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and Kristallnacht in 1938. One is a celebration of liberation, the other a solemn remembrance of how a people became enemies of their own country overnight.

I don't mean to dim the bright light of elation we should all feel about the fall of the Berlin Wall, to make any comparisons or to suggest that one was linked to the other -- though for those in the East the dark cloud of dehumanization that appeared in 1930s Germany and Austria hovered for another 50 years.

For some reason, it just seemed appropriate to think for at least a few minutes about what was a pivotal moment in the war against the Jews in Europe. For Jews in Germany and Austria who had hoped the ominous depredations imposed on them by the Nazis would either level off or go away, Kristallnacht was a clear message that they were in serious danger. It shook and frightened them, hastening their efforts to find refuge elsewhere. Some got out, many didn't because many governments around the world, including the U.S., were unwilling to be burdened by them.

For those not familiar, Kristallnacht was a Nazi government-inspired pogrom against German and Austrian Jews. The pretext for the pogrom was a Jew's assassination of a government official in the Germany Embassy in Paris. That incident set off a flurry of violent attacks on Jews and their personal and communal property.

In his 1985 historical book "The Holocaust," Sir Martin Gilbert described the toll:

"Bonfires were lit in every neighbourhood where Jews lived. On them were thrown prayer books, Torah scrolls, and countless volumnes of philosophy, history and poetry. In thousands of streets, Jews were chased, reviled and beaten up.

"In twenty-four hours of street violence, ninety-one Jews were killed. More than thirty thousand -- and one in ten of those who remained -- were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Before most of them were released two to three months later, as many as a thousand had been murdered, 244 of them in Buchenwald. A further eight thousand Jews were evicted from Berlin: children from orphanages, patients from hospitals, old people from old peoples' homes. There were many suicides....

"During the night, as well as breaking into tens of thousands of shops and homes, the Stormtroops set fire to one hundred and ninety-one synagogues.... The destruction of the synagogues led the Nazis to call that night Kristallnacht, or 'night of the broken glass'; words chosen deliberately to mock and belittle."

For a more personal reflection from a surviver of that terrifying time and for some images of the destruction, click here.

As I sit here in the quiet of my house in a country where I move freely and fearlessly, it's hard to imagine what it must be like to witness this sudden and furious spasm of violence aimed at everything that sustains me -- to have, as the survivor in the video relates, neighbors break down my door and run through the house destroying everything in sight. And, knowing now what would happen over the next several years, it is terrifying to think how quickly the tide can turn. And, finally, it is unfathomable to understand how desperate it must have felt to be trapped inside this hostile land with few options to leave.

It is almost like being buried alive. Indeed, that's exactly what it was.

Jeff

Photo above: A synagogue burns in Siegen, Germany, on November, 10 1938. [Photo Credit: The Pictorial History of the Holocaust, ed. Yitzhak Arad. New York: Macmillan, 1990.]

Some Good News

FIRST THE BAD NEWS: they're still out there, those crazy-ass guys who believe the Holocaust never happened, that Jews control the world, non-whites are genetically deficient, homosexuals are emissaries of the devil, all Muslims are terrorists, etcetera, etcetera. According to the watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, the numbers of hate groups are growing, up by 54 percent between 2000 and 2008.

More bad news: they will probably always be out there. Much as I hate to believe it, history has shown the staying power of hatred is remarkable, more resilient than cockroaches. As the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska once wrote in a brilliant poem entitled, appropriately enough, "Hatred":

See how efficient it still is,
how it keeps itself in shape -
our century's hatred.
How easily it vaults the tallest obstacles.
How easily it pounces, tracks us down.

It's not like other feelings.
At once both older and younger.
It gives birth itself to the reasons
that give it life.
When it sleeps, it's never eternal rest.
And sleeplessness won't sap its strength; it feeds it....

,,,,It's always ready for new challenges.
If it has to wait a while, it will.
They say it's blind. Blind?
It's got a sniper's keen sight
and gazes unflinchingly at the future
as only it can.

Now some good news: hatred doesn't always go unchallenged. Indeed, we've seen many times and in many places how majorities of people often do the right thing when hatred appears. They suffocate it with the sound of their own voices.

Just one small and recent example. In Reston, Va., a suburb of Washington, D.C., Ken Meyercord, a local resident who has long claimed the Holocaust never happened, ran unopposed for a seat on the Reston Citizens Association, a quasi-governmental body representing more than 60,000 residents in a non-municipality.

Alerted to Meyercord's pronouncements about the Holocaust (not to mention his advocacy of zero population growth, a cause that many have used as a pseudo-intellectual cover for anti-immigrant racism), Reston resident Debra Steppel stepped up and launched a write-in campaign to oppose his candidacy. The result of the election just two days ago: the write-in candidate Colin Mills trounced Meyercord 1,157 to 23.

A small, isolated victory, one might say, but consider the response to the fatal shooting by a white supremacist at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum only a few weeks ago. The outcry from many quarters was loud and clear. There was a sense that this was not just a shooting, terrible as that is, but something even more sinister, an attack not just on a museum guard but on the entire community. Even the shooter's own son denounced him, saying, "My father's actions are unforgivable."

And in places like Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where neo-Nazi skinhead groups had congregated and thrived for many years, citizen groups fought them by exposing them, denouncing them, prosecuting them and courageously crowding them out of what most of us understand as decent society.

That's the key. In this country at least, we don't legally prohibit someone from uttering hate or mobilizing people around it, nor should we. What's even more powerful is when the rest of us put hatred in its proper place, which is out of the mainstream, away from respectable society and far from the prospect of gaining legitimacy. That takes the kind of effort and persistence that Debra Steppel showed in Reston. Considering the stakes -- that some might mistake silence for acceptance, which is the foothold that sends hatred beyond our reach -- it's well worth it. Indeed, we who value the health of our society have no other choice.

Notwithstanding their growth in recent years, as the SPLC has shown, haters still, by all measures, represent a minuscule proportion of the population. They make a lot more noise and wreak much more devastation than their numbers suggest, but their actions resound more loudly when the rest of the public square is empty, when the rest of us are passive and silent.

Jeff

The Drama of Durban II

THERE WAS SOME EXTRAORDINARY and, for me, heartening drama today at the U.N. Durban Review Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, the follow-up to the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.

That last confab, which took place in Durban, South Africa, was so shot through with anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism that the U.S. and Israeli delegations ceremoniously and under a barrage of intense criticism walked out. It was one of the very few actions by the George W. Bush Administration that I thoroughly applauded. But much of the attention that should have been directed at this surreal event in Durban was obscured when the attacks of September 11 occurred less than a week later. Except for many of the activist groups that focused their energies (for either good or bad) on Durban I, few others even knew it took place.

A number of countries -- including the U.S., Canada, Australia, Poland, Italy, and Israel -- are boycotting the Durban II conference, which began today, and, as you'll see below,  a number of other European countries walked out today when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad took the conference dais to speak.

Yes, that's right, Ahmedinejad, who has called the Holocaust a lie and has spouted reams of anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist invective during his tenure over the last several years and whose government is hardly the model of human rights practices. He was the lead-off hitter at a conference against racism. And he was fresh off of a meeting last night with Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz, a gesture that prompted Israel to ask its Ambassador to Switzerland to go back to Israel for consultations (not a formal recall, but a rebuke nonetheless). Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak put it just right when he said today, "It's an upside-down world, when the president of Iran can be a guest of honor at an anti-racism conference."

Critics of the boycotting countries are pointing to the fact that all of the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel language in the conference's official pronouncements have been expunged. But, as National Security Council aide Samantha Power reportedly said in a conference call last week with Jewish leaders, Durban II is still on track to "reaffirm, in toto, Durban I," as if to say, everything we said then goes for us double now. "We want to show good faith to our allies and the people who are working hard to improve the text." Power said. "...But we are also not interested in being involved or associated with fool's errands."

In the words of one those who attended Durban I, "The World Conference against Racism triggered intimidation and harassment against Jews, just a few hours before the September 11 attacks on the United States. The brutality unleashed in Durban, the collective anger against Israel, the United States, and the West in general resonated as a warning of what was to come.... In Durban, the international NGO community was complicit in the attempt to criminalize the Jews. At a lightning pace, a minority of delegates managed to manipulate thousands of participants and impose their resentful ideology. In only a few days, a collective moral code was constructed. It called upon civil society to distinguish the 'good' from the 'evil.'"

What also scared and saddened me after Durban I were the number of human rights and anti-racism groups (including many prominent and otherwise respectable ones I've known and even worked with in the United States) that looked the other way on this. So invested were they in a conference that would shine a spotlight on certain kinds of human indignities that they were willing to throw the Jews and Israel over the side to get what they wanted. They pilloried Jewish community, Israel and the U.S. government as opponents to racial harmony and tolerance, even as pronouncements about "Israeli apartheid" and "Zionism = racism" and even worse stuff than that floated around them in Durban. It didn't matter that, on so many occasions and for decades, Jewish activists had been there with them to fight racism. When it came to bigotry against Jews and Israel, however, our friends did not reciprocate. (I'm pleased to see that at least one of the groups that took this stand in 2001 has urged the U.S. to address the problems at Durban II. I'm not mentioning any names, sorry.)

I was pissed and hurt by this. For a period of maybe 50 or 60 years since the Holocaust, the world was finally aware of the danger of anti-Semitism, and, at least in respectable company, it was viewed as radioactive. But, by Durban I (and, arguably well before) that taboo had worn off to the point that a U.N.-sponsored forum on racism became a legitimate platform for taking shots at the Jews and Israel. And, since 2001, that taboo seems to have all but disappeared in some geographies and communities. It is getting scary.

But back to what happened in Geneva today. As Zvika Krieger, a correspondent for The New Republic recounts in a live, play-by-play blogging account, President Ahmedinejad was the first of several heads of state to open the conference with short introductory speeches:

"Ahmedinejad just walked in.

"There seems to be some confusion. He is walking to the seat of the Iranian delegation, not the stage. The chair of the conference seems confused. Ok, now he is finally being escorted to the podium. He begins speaking, thanking Allah.

"Some activists are interrupting his speech. They are wearing clown wigs and red noses, and yelling 'Racist! Racist.' There seem to be three of them, in different parts of the hall. They've been escorted out by security guards. There is a loud applause, though it is unclear whether they are clapping for the activists or the guards.

"He continues speaking through the whole fiasco. He is taking a lot of time to thank Allah and his prophets.

"Now we're getting a lecture on the history of war, ending with WWII. He transitions into an indictment of the Security Council, questioning the motives of superpowers giving themselves veto powers. Enough of the subtlety -- he condemns their role in the creation of the state of Israel, and starts ripping into Zionism.

"The EU is walking out! The entire France, Bulgarian, and Hungarian delegation just walked out. I think others walked out too -- can't see their placards. The press box is going crazy. The entire hall has erupted in applause -- some applauding the delegate who walked out, some applauding Ahemdinejad for continuing his anti-Israel tirade.

"Ahmediniejad continues, condemning 'the most racist regime,' a litany of generic Israel canards. A group of Israeli students start yelling 'Racist! Racist!' from the viewing gallery. No one seems to be stopping them. Two Iranian women in hijabs start waving their fists at them. After a few minutes, security finally arrives and escorts out one of the Israel students. Now another one has started yelling 'Facist! Facist!'

"Ahmediniejad is now ripping into America for invading Iraq. The usual stuff about arrogance and racism.

"Now he's blaming the global economic crisis on the US. He's condeming US's selfishness and lack of transparency. He's even condemning the bank bailout plan!

"Now he's veered into banal pronouncements about ignorance and history and racism and the creation of the universe and worshipping god.

"Oops, he's back to Israel! 'A kind of racism that has tarnished the image of humanity ... The word Zionism personifies racism that falsely resorts to religion and abuses religious sentiments to hide their hatred and ugly faces." And Jews control the media! And the major world powers! "Cultural endeavors are not enough. Efforts must be made to put an end to efforts made by Zionists and their supporters. ... Governments must be encouraged in their efforts and their fights to eradicate this barbaric racism.'

"Another protestor starts shouting from the plenary floor. He is quickly apprehended and silenced.

"Now A-jad is talking about a changing of the global order, and the upending of traditional power structures. "Western liberalism and capitalism, like communism, has reached to its end since it has failed to perceive the truth of the world and humanity as it is.

"Another protestor starts yelling 'Racist!' and is quickly escorted out. Two hijab-clad women start waving and blowing kisses to A-jad.

"Now he is back to the Security Council, calling for the elimination of the 'discriminatory veto right.' Some generic language about love and happiness and cooperation and overhauling the global monetary system. And finally, 'Let us all join hands in amity ... in fulfillment of a decent new world.' Amen.

"UPDATE: The foreign minister of Norway is up next, and he is calling out A-jad, whose speech he says 'threatens the very focus of the conference.' The declaration of this conference included 'the need to protect against incitement to hatred. I heard the messages inside the president's speech. I heard incitement and hatred. This is not a finger-pointing exercise. The president has made Iran the odd man out, and Norway will not accept the odd man out hijacking the efforts of the many. ... We cannot surrender the floor of the United Nations to extremism.' Huge applause erupts in the hall."

I'm not always a fan of street theater, but it seems to fit in this circumstance given the absurdity of the scene. And let's hope it raises some real awareness about the toxicity of racism and bigotry, in this case against the Jews.

Jeff

Fighting for What's Right

I SAW THE DOCUMENTARY "REFUSENIK" ABOUT TEN DAYS AGO, and it provoked a lot of thoughts about what happens when people fight for what's right.

 The film chronicles the plight of Jews who tried to free themselves from the persecution of the Soviet Union and of the people -- mostly in the United States -- who tried to help them. It shows how what ultimately became a celebrated global movement for human rights started with only a few rather passionate and determined people inside and outside the U.S.S.R.

The movement was powered by a relatively small  (as compared to the vast numbers in the U.S.S.R. overall) group of Jews, who took enormous personal risks by daring to apply for exit visas from their country. The subsequent refusal (thus the moniker "refusenik") by the Soviet authorities ensured these applicants and their families would lose their jobs, be monitored and harassed constantly by the KGB, committed to psychiatric hospitals and/or exiled to remote, inhospitable locales such as Siberia.

Starting in the early 1960s, small groups of vocal activist students began to publicize the cause of Soviet Jews, later capturing more widespread attention first from what the film repeatedly refers to as the "establishment" of the Jewish community and then leaders and grassroots from many non-Jewish backgrounds.

With the benefit of some rather remarkable film footage from the time and of more recent interviews (with many of the most famous refuseniks such as Natan and Avital Sharansky, Vitali Rubin, Vladimir and Maria Slepak, and Ephraim Kholmyansky, as well as with figures such as Eli Wiesel, Mikhail Gorbachev, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz), we hear the captives and their supporters in the West talk about some of the brazen efforts to outwit the KGB and to inflict pain on the Soviet government. Like survivors and rescuers during the Holocaust, the refuseniks leave you wondering whether you could ever endure what they did if you had faced the same harsh choices.

For so many years, their efforts appeared rather like a flea stepping on the toe of an elephant. Little by little, as the movement for Soviet Jewry grew around the world and the heroic refuseniks themselves loomed larger as symbols of Soviet oppression, the Soviets started to relent. The elephant yielded. In the 1970s, the Soviets allowed the incremental release of a few small groups of Jews and some higher-profile refuseniks, whose celebrity embarrassed the regime. Eventually, as the Soviet system began to crumble, hundreds of thousands eventually left for refuge elsewhere.

Second to the extraordinary and inspiring heroics of the refuseniks themselves, what moved me also was the Soviet Jewry movement itself, which was committed not to let the refuseniks' struggles be forgotten. The movement drew on people far beyond the Jewish community -- civil rights leaders, such as Martin Luther King and Bayard Rustin, leading Christian clergy, sympathetic public commentators and the political leadership of many nations, especially my own. They created a juggernaut that put the refuseniks' plight high on the list of U.S. foreign policy priorities and on the agendas of summits between American and Soviet Presidents.

Learning about this (again, as I had some involvement with it in the '80s), I was struck that nearly no one, certainly no one thoughtful and influential in American political life, questioned this massive mobilization by the American Jewish community in the way many do the efforts today of pro-Israel activists.

Why is that? I know this might sound willfully ignorant to those who have criticized Israel's actions against Palestinians, but tell me, please, how Israel's struggle to defend itself from terrorism and possibly all-out destruction is any less just a cause than that of Jews trying to throw off the yoke of repression in the U.S.S.R.?

How is it that a well-organized, passionate community of pro-Israel activists is accused -- even by otherwise respected political analysts -- of subverting the U.S. foreign interests, when there was no similar opposition to the Soviet Jewry movement some 20 or 30 years ago (at least not as much as I think there was)?

Part of the answer, of course, is that the cause of Soviet Jewry served the cause of anti-Communism, which enjoyed broad-based support in the U.S. And the Rooskies were the villains and the poor suffering Jews were the victims; it was a simple frame.

To most, the Arab-Israeli conflict looks far more complicated -- and in many ways it is, not least because the Israelis are well armed, and, notwithstanding horrific acts of terror against Israelis, they don't always appear to be the victims. And to some, the very notion of Zionism -- of Jews having their own state -- is illegitimate.

What's most disturbing about all that is a willful ignorance to see that the cause of peace and prosperity for Israel -- and, yes, for non-Israelis, too -- is as just as the cause for Soviet Jewry, or for any oppressed group around the world. No people should be forced to endure a 60-year siege, to be subjected to murderous attacks on its streets and to be constantly targeted for extinction, as Mssrs. Ahmadinejad, Nasrallah, Meshal and others like them would have it.

Still there are those who question pro-Israel activism. They almost invariably assume that the goal of U.S. support for Israel is the result of some immoral deal that lawmakers cut for political expedience. Did it ever occur to them that political leaders believe in U.S. support for Israel because they see it as a just cause?

I'm not defining "U.S. support for Israel" as unconditional support for any Israeli policy, no matter how misguided. Israel, like any grown-up, modern state is not perfect. And, as I have argued here several times before, it is faced with two bad choices -- on the one hand, the insecurity that comes with a policy of restraint, and the opprobrium that comes with taking firm, decisive action to defend itself.

Still, tell me what is unjust about sticking by a nation that shares what we believe are enlightened values, that is an agent of intellectual, human and cultural progress in the world and that is the object of so much irrational and vitriolic hatred. Is it that some are uncomfortable with the prospect of Jewish power -- either in the form of a well-organized community of advocates or in the form of a state capable of protecting itself?

What's this really all about?

Jeff

Another Jerk: What Will We Learn from Judith Regan?

I DON'T KNOW JUDITH REGAN PERSONALLY, so I'm certainly in no position to judge her character, or, as our President has claimed to have accomplished in his first meeting with Vladimir Putin, to look into her eyes and to know her true soul. (Bush sure go that one right, eh?)

The media accounts, which are all I have to go on, suggest that Regan may have uttered something in private that was anti-Semitic. At best, she said something that was garbled in the translation. At worst, she has problems with Jews. A story about her on National Public Radio revealed reports that, among other things, she once boasted about replacing the sacred parchments inside of her neighbors' mezuzahs, those small prayer holders Jews put on the doorposts of their homes, with torn dollar bills.

Whether all of this is true, I can't verify, and whether it suggests terribly warped mind or real animous for Jews, many of whom must surely be a big part of her personal and professional life, I really can't say. If it is true, obviously, she deserves all the condemnation that has rained down on her over the last few weeks.

But even if it's not, my question is this: what took the publishing world and the people around her so long to run her out of her powerful perch? By all accounts -- and there seems to be absolutely no disagreement about this -- she's a despicable human being, who treats everyone around her terribly. Indeed, she seems to be a legendary abuser. Writing in today's San Francisco Chronicle about how the "foul-mouthed" Regan changed publishing for the better, of all things, Steve Kettmann also reported that she burned through employees rapidly because of her offensive style. "Another former Regan Books editor told me that according to News Corp. financial statements, Judith went through 80 employees just in the last year -- including 18 personal assistants," Kettmann wrote.

What finally got her fired from her parent company, HarperCollins, was not this reputation for chewing up people and spitting them out or other infamous indiscretions, which she apparently did not deny or shrink from. It was, rather, bad publicity that went far beyond even bad taste. It was the news that the Regan imprint would publish the O.J. Simpson book "If I Did It." There was, as most people know from the the barrage of cable news coverage, a firestorm of controversy about the book, and the publishers withdrew it for sale. HarperCollins subsequently fired Regan in the aftermath.

Again, I am hardly privvy to what was behind that decision, but one must ask the question, why now? Regan's behavior had been outrageous and well known for years. So, too, many of her books, as Kettmann points out, exploited the sensational, even seamy aspects of American society and current events.

One, for example, was the Jose Canseco memoir, which many argued played fast and loose with the facts about steriod use in Major League Baseball (though Canseco himself courageously came clean and the book was a catalyst, one might argue, for a lot of progress in baseball on this issue since). Her other authors have included Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern, professional wrestler Mick Foley, and porn star Jenna Jameson. Hardly America's literary heritage.

Kettmann says that this sort of roster has been a Regan's great contribution to the publishing world. "'I think publishing learned from her that you have to appeal to the masses,' said one former Regan Books editor. 'Enough of being too high-brow. She was the one who said yes to wrestling when everybody was turning their noses up at it. Bang, No. 1. She had an ear to the ground and it worked for a long time.'"

Maybe. I won't enter this high-brow vs. low-brow debate. Perhaps Regan did have a gift for this, and, say what you want about how degenerate this stuff is; people bought it in large quantities.

So as long as Regan's horses kept winning, her bad behavior and schlocky "literature" didn't matter. Not to the people above her who, it turns out, truly had the power to put her out of the business at any moment, or the people below her, who kept coming back for more -- like the acolytes of Miranda Priestly, the "Devil Wears Prada" character based on the notoriously abusive real-life editor of Vogue magazine, Anna Wintour.

In all these cases, and the ones I mentioned in a much earlier posting on jerks about the famously undiplomatic diplomat John Bolton, there is an unfortunate game in which everyone ignores the most obvious personality flaws of the one in charge. There is a tacit acknowledgement that bad behavior counts for very little, or maybe even nothing, as long as the cash cow, whatever that is in an organization or industry, lives. As soon as the cow swoons and dies, the character flaws suddenly become apparent. People are shocked, shocked, to learn about them.

But the fact is that bad behavior matters, and it ought to be taken into account before it's much too late and before we find ourselves making excuses for overlooking it. We can blame the abuser, but the rest of us who allow him or her to act badly bear responsibility, too.

The sad thing is that Judith Regan will probably survive this episode just fine, and even do much better than she did before in some enterprise, whether it's publishing, her own talk show, movie producing, a line or make-up or who knows what. We have a way of forgiving famous people for their slip ups (except maybe O.J. and the Saddam Hussein), even when they don't undergo substantial character change.

It will be interesting to see if Regan changes, if she learns anything from this and puts her flaws behind her. But it will be much more interesting to see if the rest of us do, too.

Jeff

The Question of Anti-Semitism

THERE ARE THOSE IN THE JEWISH COMMUNITY who have long and firmly believed that if you only scratch the surface -- or, to be more topical, get a guy like Mel Gibson to talk while he's really drunk -- you will readily discover a rich trove of anti-Semitism in America.

I've always resisted that assumption, and for the most part I still do. Gibson's anti-Semitism, if that's what he is even when sober, is his own special mishegass, as the sages might say, though it is everyone's problem, too.

I resisted because I never had much proof that this assumption was true. I grew up in a relatively small Jewish community, where I can happily say that I encountered no anti-Semitism. Except for the one incident when, during football practice in high school, a frustrated teammate, called me a "fucking Jew" and, as only an idiot would, start punching me as I stood there in full pads. I was reassured when some of my best friends on the team, bigger guys than the idiot, starting jumping on him and when on the next play the coach called for pretty much everyone on offense to run over this guy, a defensive lineman.

So with experiences like this, I never acquired a reflexive sense that there is an anti-Semite behind every tree. If anything, because so many of my friends were not Jewish and I got to know them so intimately, I learned who they really were and what they really thought of us.

I think that also had to do a lot with when I grew up, not just where. Unlike my parents and certainly my grandparents, socially accepted and legally sanctioned anti-Semitism was not something I faced first hand, but they did. So I can understand why they may have kept their guard up more than I, though even my parents have never been so quick to hurl the charge of 'anti-Semite' in anyone's direction as others of their generation.

For my grandparents, all of whom grew up in regions in or around the Pale of Settlement in Eastern Europe, the story was much different and more painful. Here in America they stayed close to their own community, in large part because they relied on the comfort of their linguistic and social ties, but also because they had been taught in the Old Country that venturing beyond your boundries could get you in big trouble.

Though my grandfather was rather quiet about (at least to me) anti-Semitism, one incident in the last years of his life told me how deeply imprinted this learned instinct was in his mind. He lived his last couple of years in a nursing home because he suffered increasingly from dimentia and needed constant assistance. One night, a fire alarm went off at the home, and the nurses woke him and tried to get him to leave the building. He fought them off, crying out that he would not let them take him to the gas chambers, so sure was he that he was living through the ultimate episode of anti-Semitism. Even though he had been living safely in American during the Holocaust, something in his head, formed much earlier in life and shaped by experiences with anti-Semitism, played over and over that night like a compact disc.

Some might say that I am too cavalier and just whistling past the graveyard. That's what many people said when the Charles Silberman published his book "A Certain People" in the mid-1980s. The book chronicled how Jews had in many ways has "made it" in America -- starting as a poor immigrant class and becoming part of "the Establishment." Many warned that Silberman was tempting the evil spirits, pooh, pooh, pooh, committing the same error as the German Jews of the Weimar Republic and Third Reich eras, assuming that their high place in society would insure their security. They even told Silberman and his readers not to believe some of the survey data that demonstrated that anti-Semitism in America was waning. They could not take yes for an answer.

If it makes some of the hair-trigger Jews feel any better (and strangely, it just might), I've grown more nervous about the world's view of Jews in recent years. It's not just the rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Europe (not to mention the shooting and killing at a Jewish community center in Seattle just last week).  It's not the rising tide of virulent anti-Semitic rhetorical paricularly from the Muslim world. It's also a certain tone, a certain regard for the "Jewish questions" of today.

I think Jonathan Rosen articulated this best in November 2001, in the New York Times Magazine, and in the nervous weeks following September 11, when he wrote:

I am not being chased down alleyways and called a Christ killer, I do not feel that prejudicial hiring practices will keep me out of a job and I am not afraid that the police will come and take away my family. I am, in fact, more grateful than ever that my father found refuge in this country. But in recent weeks I have been reminded, in ways too plentiful to ignore, about the role Jews play in the fantasy life of the world. Jews were not the cause of World War II, but they were at the metaphysical center of that conflict nonetheless, since the Holocaust was part of Hitler's agenda and a key motivation of his campaign. Jews are not the cause of World War III, if that's what we are facing, but they have been placed at the center of it in mysterious and disturbing ways.

Similarly, today Jews -- in particular Israelis, but also their brethren like me around the diaspora -- are charged by many to be the source of a worldwide conflict that is imperiling everyone. Sure, there is recognition that we're dealing with bad, murderous characters who have wrapped themselves up in the banner of Islam. But why can't the Jews just leave them alone, the narrative seems to be saying?

I still give most everyone the benefit of the doubt (and I may be the only one to say this, but can we truly judge a man when he's stinking drunk?). And it's not that I feel antipathy from anyone around me. But I worry that, for all our gains, our assimilation and our efforts to reach out to others, we Jews are increasingly not being entirely understood (such as the recent letter by Rev. John Thomas of the United Church of Christ), and that part is unsettling to me right now.

Jeff