To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer has made major contributions to our understanding of the American Jewish condition and is one of the cannier observers of American Jewish life, but his critique of the current state of the communal agenda is both wrongheaded and just plain wrong [“Jewish Security & Jewish Interests,” October 2004].
Contrary to what Mr. Wertheimer suggests, Jewish groups have not, through some kind of anachronistic and misguided liberalism, “formulated ‘positions’ on every conceivable matter of public interest,” matters that are “far removed from the defense of Jewish security.” American Jews have always chosen their priorities with Jewish security in mind. Not even the most unreconstructed 1950’s liberal would deny pride of place on the communal agenda to support for Israel, combating anti-Semitism, and the separation of church and state.
But Mr. Wertheimer’s conception of Jewish security is too narrow. In America, it does not mean just the absence of persecution. Jewish security is ensured by the health of society across a range of parameters. Civil rights and church-state separation have been supported by American Jews not because of the community’s liberalism or because we are “nice guys,” but out of Jewish self-interest.
Mr. Wertheimer’s idea that elements of the communal agenda have been arrived at “without any debate”—as though there were some kind of liberal cabal pulling the strings—is absurd. Each agency has its own procedures, and some, to be sure, consult less with their membership than others. But with very few exceptions, the official stances of Jewish agencies generally reflect the views of the Jewish populace. There is no end to the polls of American Jews that consistently confirm this. There is a healthy debate within and among the agencies about what is central to Jewish security and should therefore top the agenda. Mr. Wertheimer just does not like the outcome.
Jerome A. Chanes
Stern and Barnard Colleges
New York City
To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer’s well-reasoned and thoughtful article on “Jewish Security & Jewish Interests” should evoke serious self-questioning by the leaders of American Jewish organizations. Mr. Wertheimer is correct to observe that the positions of many Jewish agencies on a plethora of issues have had more to do with their vision of what America should be than with defending Jewish interests, narrowly defined. Their rationale is that a liberal, pluralistic, tolerant America that safeguards individual rights to privacy and separates church and state is best for Jews.
As a past president of the American Jewish Committee, I, for one, subscribe to this vision. But I also wonder whether, in its quest to create “a more perfect union,” the organized Jewish community has at times lost sight of where Jewish interests lie. For example, it was shortsighted of Jewish organizations to support the Voting Rights Act of 1982 to ensure minority representation in Congress. The result was a loss of safe Jewish seats. Is gay marriage a Jewish issue? I doubt it. Even the sacred cow of liberal immigration policies needs to be looked at realistically by American Jewish organizations.
Jews also need to be sensitive to the moral concerns of other groups in our society—including the Christian Right, which is legitimately troubled about things like pornography and efforts to eliminate prayer or any mention of God from the few public spaces where it is still permitted. We need to ask ourselves whether we are driving a wedge between ourselves and our fellow Americans when we spend political capital on issues of marginal or no real concern to us.
But Mr. Wertheimer’s article raises a more fundamental issue that he does not squarely address. To what extent should the defense of Israel overshadow other Jewish interests? There is an understandable reluctance on the part of most American Jewish organizations to think of themselves as concerned primarily with Israel. Contrary to what many think, Jews do not decide their vote in presidential elections based on which candidate is perceived to be better for Israel. (Historically, in any case, there has been little space between presidential candidates on this issue.) This year, an overwhelming majority of American Jews voted for John Kerry despite the Bush administration’s support for Prime Minister Sharon and its portrayal of Yasir Arafat as part of the problem, not the solution. Jews vote on the basis of a “comfort” index that includes Israel but also a lot of other concerns. The body language of the candidates often counts as much as their words.
This explains why most American Jews do not view evangelicals and born-again Christians as natural allies, despite their support for Israel. Nativism, with its history of rigid intolerance, is perceived to be a greater threat to Jewish interests than the criticisms of Israel by some on the Left. American Jews are aware that the Christian Right’s support for Israel is largely driven by theology, not empathy. Mr. Wertheimer may shrug off the millenarian motives of the Christian Right, but on almost every issue other than support of Israel, American Jews and the Christian Right share little.
With the exception of some disturbing incidents on our campuses, anti-Semitism from Europe, where it is spearheaded by radical Muslims, has not spilled over into the United States—a concern raised by Mr. Wertheimer at the end of his article. Most American Jews do not feel endangered by anti-Semitism at home, and clearly most do not regard the growing number of Americans who identify as evangelicals or born-again Christians as a bulwark against future anti-Semitism.
Ambassador Alfred H. Moses
Washington, D.C.
To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer has written a cogent and dispassionate analysis of how the Jewish community’s leaders, by championing every item on the liberal agenda irrespective of the interests of the Jewish community at large, have compromised their mission to protect Jewish security. He perfectly describes Jewish leaders and agencies still bound by ancient allegiances in a world that has changed enormously under their feet.
Many of us who share Mr. Wertheimer’s views can testify to the difficulty of being heard when we speak of the need to husband limited resources toward matters of compelling Jewish interest in an age that has seen an alarming increase in anti-Israel sentiment and overt anti-Semitism abroad and in many of our elite institutions at home. Yet, we can also attest to discreet murmurs of approval from those who, for fear of being thought illiberal, are reluctant or too abashed to express full-throated agreement.
Mr. Wertheimer’s essay should be required reading for leaders and active members of the American Jewish community. It provides ample food for thought for anyone who may be troubled about the growing rift between the bien-pensants and those who still believe that pikuah nefesh, the obligation to preserve life, is the primary duty of us all.
Henry Sherman
New York City
To the Editor:
As a politically conservative American Jew who is struggling to “enlighten” the majority of his co-religionists that Jewish principles are no longer represented by modern liberalism, I welcome Jack Wertheimer’s article. Seldom does one hear or read that the leading Jewish organizations are making any attempt to promote, with their unthinking allegiance to liberal ideas, basic Jewish values—monotheism, human freedom, accepting responsibility for one’s actions, respecting the traditional family. It is indeed time for serious reconsideration.
Larry F. Sternberg
Santa Ana, California
To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer is correct to assert that Jewish organizations have spent years focusing on the wrong causes and meddling in the weighty affairs of others. The Jews were commanded to be a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” not to be a secular champion of liberal causes.
Supporting Israel is certainly a priority that should continue to claim our efforts, but equal time should be devoted to promoting Judaism. The job of our leaders is to figure out how to explain the significance of Judaism in the modern world. Without that effort, we will lose a war of attrition with or without the aid of anti-Semitism.
Daniel B. Gelman
Los Angeles, California
To the Editor:
One point from Jack Wertheimer’s article was driven home to me a little over a year ago when I moved to a small town in Indiana. My next-door neighbor came over to offer a welcome, and asked if I belonged to a church. When I replied that I was Jewish, he told me how much he admired Israel and asked if he could give me copies of a magazine, to which I have since subscribed, called Friends of Israel. I read the magazine with utter amazement. Such a positive view of Israel and Judaism! Prudence suggests that Jews ought to embrace the support of friends, especially those, like evangelical Christians, whose value system is more in tune with Jewish tradition than the wildly leftist, self-destructive mainstream of the Jewish establishment.
Albert H. Fink
Vincenes, Indiana
To the Editor:
Jack Wertheimer’s article refers to “the allegedly quietistic posture adopted by American Jewish groups during the Holocaust years, a posture that in retrospect is said to have issued in even greater harm being done to European Jews.” But it is not merely in retrospect that this point has been made. In August 1943, Ben Halpern, soon to emerge as one of the most prominent American Jewish historians, wrote that while the Allies were to blame for doing so little to rescue Jews from the Nazis,
shame and contrition, because we have not done enough, weigh even more heavily upon the Jews of the free countries. Not only do we have the greater responsibility of kinsmen, but our own weakness may be one of the causes why so little has been done. The history of our times will one day make bitter reading, when it records that some Jews were so morally uncertain that they denied they were obligated to risk their own safety in order to save other Jews who were being done to death abroad.
One important exception to Halpern’s lament was the small but determined group of student activists at the institution where Mr. Wertheimer is provost and professor, the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS). In early 1943, a group there led by Noah Golinkin, Jerome Lipnick, and Moshe Sachs organized an unprecedented Jewish-Christian conference at which hundreds of attendees learned about the plight of European Jewry and discussed possibilities for rescue. The JTS students also successfully lobbied national organizations to launch a publicity campaign about the Nazi genocide. Synagogues around the country adopted the proposals to recite special prayers for European Jewry, limit “occasions of amusement,” observe partial fast days and moments of silence, write letters to political officials and Christian religious leaders, and hold memorial protest rallies.
The fact that these efforts owe their origins to the initiative of a handful of JTS students makes one wonder how much more might have been accomplished if major Jewish organizations had shown similar spirit and energy.
Rafael Medoff
David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies
Melrose Park, Pennsylvania
Jack Wertheimer writes:
Jerome A. Chanes rebuts points I did not make while ignoring the overall argument of my article.
First, he accuses me of not noticing the priority placed by “the communal agenda” on support for Israel and combating anti-Semitism. In fact I acknowledged and discussed these efforts at length. But I also criticized the diversion of energies and resources to matters far removed from these core issues of Jewish self-interest. To read Mr. Chanes’s letter, one would never know that “the communal agenda” gives great weight to such burning Jewish “interests” as the status of immigrants infected with AIDS, gun-safety legislation, flag burning, and term limits. Whether or not such causes are supported by “the Jewish populace,” they are marginal to core Jewish concerns and are already addressed by a panoply of non-sectarian groups.
In this connection, Mr. Chanes wrenches out of context my remark about the absence of debate. What I wrote was that there was little or no discussion “about whether it was good for Jewish groups to be taking vocal stances on a wide spectrum of issues, still less about whether the positions taken might not create as many foes as they would win friends.” Mr. Chanes offers no evidence of a debate about such strategic questions affecting the “communal agenda,” and indeed his letter altogether ignores my central contention—that times have changed, American society has been transformed, and the place of Jews is no longer the same as it was when that agenda was first formulated in such expansive terms. Instead, he simply defends the business-as-usual approach that my article set out to challenge.
Symptomatic is Mr. Chanes’s repeated and unqualified invocation of “church-state separation” as a Jewish interest. Given that the First Amendment requires such separation, the real issue is not whether Jews ought to support it but how they should understand its meaning. To take an example recently in the news: in France, where church-state separation is also the law of the land, the state has banned religious head-coverings in public institutions like schools. In the French understanding, such a ban is implicit in church-state separation. Yet the organizations of the Jewish community in the United States, basing themselves on the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment, support legislation protecting the right of Americans to wear religious garb in the workplace. The debate in the United States, then, is not over the principle of church-state separation but over its proper application.
Regrettably, Jewish leaders, even as they favor certain accommodations, fuel the current hysteria over separationism when they suggest that the “wall” will crumble if it is not impermeable. Some 50 years ago, as Jewish organizations were first embracing the separationist faith, they at least acknowledged that no “frontal attack” was imminent on a principle “so deeply ingrained in our tradition.” The danger, nevertheless, lay in “watering down, evasion, circumvention, and compromise.” It is evident today that so rigidly uncompromising an approach does not work—even for Jewish groups.
I am grateful to Alfred H. Moses for his own “serious self-questioning” of positions once supported by institutions he has led. Some Jewish organizations themselves do seem prepared to rethink, while others remain mired in the past even as they celebrate their “progressive” ideals.
I wish to stress that my article did not address the voting preferences of American Jews, but rather institutional strategies and alliances. Fortunately, it is rarely the case that Jewish organizations must weigh the interests of Israel against those of American Jews. Rather, the central question, as Ambassador Moses puts it well, is “whether we are driving a wedge between ourselves and our fellow Americans when we spend political capital on issues of marginal or no real concern to us” as a group.
I agree that evangelical support for Israel is confusing to many American Jews. I also agree that most American Jews seem to share little with adherents of the Christian Right. As a traditional Jew, I lament the closed minds of many of my coreligionists toward Jewish teachings and values that in fact converge at some points with evangelical teachings. Simply put, if more American Jews were animated by their own religious traditions, they might find certain areas of common ground with evangelicals. On a pragmatic level, I also wonder how Jews expect to forge successful alliances when they ignore or antagonize a group that is estimated to form between 33 and 40 percent of American voters.
Apparently, large percentages of American Jews are not as sanguine as Ambassador Moses about the future intensity of anti-Semitism on these shores. In the latest survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, at the end of August 2004, 43 percent of respondents anticipated that anti-Semitism here will increase over the next several years. One might expect so pessimistic an assessment to prompt Jewish organizations to re-examine their strategies for insuring Jewish security.
Rafael Medoff reminds us of the activism of young Jews at a time when the organized community was divided and often passive. I too admire the energetic efforts of such activists. Mr. Medoff’s example, however, reinforces my larger contention that responses to the destruction of European Jewry in World War II can hardly serve as a useful template for today’s concerns, which include the impact on American Christian attitudes of Mel Gibson’s Hollywood extravaganza. Not every provocation requires, or deserves, the same type of response.
I am grateful for the letters of Henry Sherman, Larry F. Sternberg, Daniel B. Gelman, and Albert H. Fink. I certainly agree with Mr. Gelman that Jewish organizations cannot afford to ignore internal attrition, even as they combat external threats.
