To the Editor:

I should like to comment on Aaron Frankel’s “Back to Eighty-Sixth Street” in the August number of Commentary, not only because I am deeply interested in the theme, but also because I have spent the last fifteen years working on 86th Street, struggling with the very problems Mr. Frankel discusses. I have, too, a somewhat personal interest in Mr. Frankel. He will not object, I hope, if I reveal that he was one of my “boys.” If his essay implies that I have not done a very good job, I plead for clemency on the grounds that his essay also tells why. On 86th Street, being a rabbi is not easy.

But the job is not made any easier when a sensitive and idealistic chap writes about my Jews in anger. As long as Aaron insists that he did not need any “adjustment” after his return from the war, I cannot blame the anger on the stresses and strains of the veteran’s state. I must attribute it to his failure to have thought through carefully the anxieties and the temptations of the 86th Street group. It is not difficult to turn Amos and find fault with the mink-coated, well-fed (on Greengrass sturgeon), manicured, and permanented kine of Bashan-Broadway. Nor, for that matter, is it any more difficult to denounce any group of people, rich or poor, Jewish or non-Jewish, for the faults they all share or for those they have uniquely evolved.

It is quite another matter to try to understand what makes these people tick. Aaron Frankel has viewed them quite superficially. For example, even in his description of the neighborhood, he omits altogether one of the most significant factors, namely, that the Jews line the avenues and the main cross streets, while the non-Jews, mainly Irish Catholics, occupy practically all the other side streets and the dwellings on Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. This means, first, that the only Jews around 86th Street are virtually all middle class, living in the very midst of poor, almost slum-dwelling non-Jews. It means further that the Jewish boys and girls on 86th Street are very much aware of this disparity. And those who are not so aware are reminded of it by little gangs of hoodlums who accost them and ask, “What’s your religion?” and then take their money, or baseball, or skates away. Jewish kids are actually afraid to play in Central Park—even in daylight. This was not the case when Aaron himself attended my school.

When he writes, therefore, that 86th Street is “reputedly that street where Jews feel most comfortably at home,” and bases all his subsequent paradoxes and contradictions upon that statement, he misses the mark completely. The Jews on 86th Street are less secure there than they would be in Brooklyn or the Bronx. In those boroughs, especially in the poorer sections, where Jews are not middle class, they share to a much lesser degree the individualism characteristic of the middle class. They are more community-conscious, they share experiences to a greater extent, and hence have learned to meet the hazards of anti-Semitism cooperatively. If they do not organize counter-gangs (which sometimes they do), they organize real centers of recreation. Or at least, the wealthier Jews organize such centers for them; and contributions come from the papas and mamas of the 86th Street kids who need such centers as badly—or worse.

The individualism of the middle class, one of the blessings of free enterprise and initiative, is deepened by the kind of buildings these people live in. They are cut off from one another. The buildings are what they are because land values are enormous, and buildings must yield a maximum return. This physical fragmentation, so inimical to communal-mindness, is not mitigated by any forces of inner cohesion. These Jews, like so many thousands of other Jews, have less and less in common as Jews. Their attachment to the language, literature, traditions, and folkways of their people weakens from year to year.

Yet they are still Jews, still uneasy as they drive their cars down the side streets, still fearful lest the doorman, the elevator man, the back elevator man, curse them for being rich. They are still faced with quotas in the schools—not only the colleges, mind you, but the elementary schools, yes, even the nursery schools. Aaron Frankel writes, “Perpetually they fret that they do not yet ‘belong,’ and are not yet ‘accepted.’” They are not accepted socially by their own “class”; and they are resented by the non-Jews of the economic class below them.

It is true that not all of them just “live out their martyrdom” on heavy cream and comfortable upholstery. Some of them “go into” liberal movements. But there too they are made to feel that they are Jews. Political parties are very conscious of the need for maintaining a careful equilibrium among the three major groups. And those organizations dedicated to bringing in the classless society are so predominantly Jewish in personnel that they form a new and different sort of ghetto.

Mr. Frankel happened to have the refreshing experience of meeting decent and fair non-Jews in the Army, and of avoiding any anti-Semitism. He should talk to some of my other boys with very different experiences. He would learn that the barracks were not very different from 86th Street for many of them.

Because he does not see the problem clearly, he not only cannot offer answers, he cannot even ask the right questions. He asks: Why can these people not stop being obsessed with their insecurity? Why can they not become interested in the larger question? The proper query should be: How can these people be given the inner strength necessary to cope with the antagonisms which surround them? How can they be provided with the morale to stop hating themselves because they are Jews?

I believe Mr. Frankel puts his finger on one clue to the answer when he says: “Unfortunately, they [the synagogues] are also conducted almost as private clubs or family affairs; unfortunately, the rabbis who lead the activities of these congregations rarely organize jointly for the long-range benefit of the community in common.” Our leaders have not yet recognized how vital it is to create a form of community.

Aaron does not like Reconstructionism because he thinks it involves the creation of a ghetto. No. The ghetto is what we have now; the community takes this ghetto, this concentration of Jews in a particular area, and transforms it from a creature of external pressure into a creature of inner cohesiveness. The community gives content to Jewish life, mutual responsibility, culture and the arts, ethical standards, and social idealism. When Jews will have created a community in which they can feel at home (as they do not yet feel at home on 86th Street), when they will have consolidated their position as a group, their individuals will be able to turn with confidence and self-assurance to the broader questions. No one who has not made his intimate, personal emotional adjustments is a fit candidate for remaking the world.

To the extent that philanthropies are now communally organized, the Jews of 86th Street have risen above the average of American middle-class folks. Jewish contributions to Federation and the UJA are something to be proud of (and account to a great extent for the reputation New York has for its generosity). When some of the other mitzvot of Judaism are as efficiently publicized and organized, these Jews will throw off the “bad values” of “American middle-class life.”

If Aaron Frankel would like to do something for his people—and for our country—he might give himself to teaching them the values of the Jewish tradition. He might roll up his sleeves and do some social work with these unhappy rich people, to restore their faith in themselves, to wipe away their cynicism about American democracy (which is powerful in spite of their patriotism), to capture something of the proud spirit of resistance their brothers in Palestine are displaying.

A long time ago, Aaron almost wanted to become a rabbi. He could do worse.

Rabbi Ira Eisenstein
The Society for the Advancement of Judaism
13-15 West 86th Street
New York