To the Editor:
Murray Friedman’s article, “A New Direction for American Jews” [December 1981], is a particularly timely statement, one that articulates certain of my own reservations and criticisms concerning the attitudes of Jewish agencies and individuals who almost reflexively voice positions that are no longer as sound as we once believed.
During the past two years, in attempting to enlist Jewish organizations to adopt different approaches seeking to revitalize the Jewish family and foster a Jewish identity in children, I have encountered what may be fairly termed a “business-as-usual” response. Fresh ideas and programs are overridden by the commitment to doing and spending more in what are discernibly “traditional” ways. I hope Mr. Friedman’s excellent article will spur some to reassess their emphases and to adopt new departures that are so sorely needed.
Edward M. Levine
Loyola University
Chicago, Illinois
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To the Editor:
I have been waiting for someone to interpret the activism of today’s Jewish leadership with reference to the motivations and program emphasis of the post-World War II years. It seems to me that Murray Friedman’s article brilliantly highlights the people and events which contributed to molding both the positives and the excesses of “equalitarian ideals.”
When I finished reading Mr. Friedman’s analysis and nodding in agreement with so much that he had to say, I asked myself: is it possible that today’s Jewish leadership is suffering from a failure of nerve, or a failure of talent, or both?
Martha S. Cherkis
New York City
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To the Editor:
Murray Friedman promotes a dangerous myth in suggesting that “federal largesse” has changed the Jewish character of many Jewish agencies. This charge is simplistic to the point of being untrue. Certainly in some cases the use of federal monies has deflected agencies from their original purposes, but overwhelmingly this has not been the case. Jewish hospitals have always reflected the character of their communities, before and after Medicaid and Medicare. Most Jewish nursing homes have maintained their Jewish character and clientele, even as they make the transition from essentially private to public funding.
Jewish vocational agencies have often taken on additional functions with public monies in order better to serve Jews, to see that Jews get a fair share of these programs, or to develop credentials and IOU’s for other programs to serve the Jewish community. A whole new set of inner-city and Orthodox-dominated Jewish social-service agencies has grown up, essentially through the availability of public monies.
There have of course been difficulties with regulations . . . which have had to be negotiated. But the myth is dangerous because it takes Jewish social-service agencies off the hook. The truth is that, with rare exceptions, the Jewish character and Jewish clientele of social-service agencies are determined by the will of the board and staff of the agencies. When these groups are so inclined, public funding has taken them away from Jewish purposes and clientele; but when they are not, public funding has enriched their service to the Jewish community.
Donald Feldstein
Jewish Community Federation of Metropolitan New Jersey
East Orange, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
. . . Murray Friedman writes: “The forces that have led to the improvement of the position of Jews in American life lie deep in the culture itself, but over the years the community-relations agencies have had a significant role to play in the process” (emphasis added). Elsewhere in the article he states: “The Jewish agencies are the wonder and envy of other groups.”
To the contrary, the dreary facts contradict these unacceptable assumptions. The New Anti-Semitism by Arnold Forster and Benjamin Epstein of the ADL (published in 1974) points up the prevalence of hatred and persecution of Jews wherever they live throughout the world. In our own country, the virulence of anti-Semitism has been growing by leaps and bounds. Recent reports in the media document the fact that for the past three years anti-Jewish incidents have been increasing at the rate of 100 percent a year. The neo-Nazis have taken over the streets of some cities and townships; our cemeteries and temples are being desecrated; our defenseless old men are assaulted. . . . What have the agencies or the leadership that directs the policies and actions of the agencies done to reverse this alarming trend? Nothing that I can discern.
The article continues: “Only blacks, with organizations like the NAACP and Urban League, have comparable structures to promote their cause.” Would that we had leaders of the stature of Martin Luther King, Jr., who was ready and did lay down his life for his people; or Jesse Jackson who instilled self-respect and continues to fight for the economic emergence of the blacks; or the journalist Carl Rowan who never misses the chance to promote the cause of the blacks in his syndicated column; or Vernon Jordan, Benjamin Hooks, and a multiplicity of leaders on the local level who, along with the agencies they represent, are responsible for the phenomenal economic and political rise of the blacks in a brief span of fifteen years. . . .
By comparison we have agencies that are run by sociologists, rabbis, fat cats, and their subservient attorneys, all ill-qualified either by instinct or training to provide political leadership to solve the principal problem facing the American Jewish community—anti-Semitism. . . .
The Jewish condition challenges our agencies and our leadership to accept self-examination and self-criticism as a foundation for the new direction for American Jews. They will then be able to provide a fresh point of departure in the struggle against anti-Semitism, and in the struggle for the security, survival, and success of the Jewish community.
Joseph Dechovitz
Atlanta, Georgia
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Murray Friedman writes:
I share Edward M. Levine’s deep concern about the problems of the Jewish family under the impact of the “new paganism” which assaults us from all directions. An article in the Journal of Communication (Summer 1981), for example, reports that daytime television soap opera, now extended to 5:00 P.M. to reach school-age children, teenagers, and working adults, portrays twice as much sex taking place outside of marriage as within it. Jewish community-relations agencies have frequently approached the media to protest anti-Semitic and anti-black appeals—though without threatening boycotts of sponsors; they might consider making their views known on issues of violence and pornography rather than giving such matters over to the extremists of the New Right.
Donald Feldstein is right that some Jewish agencies benefit from government support, but only up to a point. A number of agencies, particularly in the child-care field, have had to broaden their services to include black, Hispanic, and other non-Jewish clients to meet government requirements that they serve a broader public. The price they have had to pay for such assistance has been the diversion of some of their energies; they are thus less able to develop fully and freely their Jewish purposes at a time when the broader culture poses the most serious threats to Jewish survival. Moreover, since Jews are not seen as a minority by federal and other government authorities, Jewish agencies can receive such funding only when they prove they are serving the disadvantaged, a criterion not required of officially recognized minorities. The result is that the Jewish social worker often has to become a Jewish politician and figure out ways to demonstrate how his agency is not quite so Jewish as it seems. However one feels about cuts in government expenditures, and I am troubled by some of them, they are a reality today and for the foreseeable future. I agree, therefore, with Dean Lloyd Setleis of the Wurzweiler School of Social Work of Yeshiva University that we should attempt to step up Jewish funding efforts and intensify the Jewish dimensions of agency programming.
I don’t feel we should ignore the anti-Semitism that exists in our society, particularly in a period of enormous social strain, but I cannot accept Joseph Dechovitz’s view that “neo-Nazis have taken over the streets.” Anyone who lived through the 1930’s and 1940’s knows from experience how far the Jewish community has come since those days. In the changes that have taken place, Jewish community-relations agencies played a significant role which they have every reason to be proud of.