ktw@whuxi.UUCP (WOLMAN) (12/17/84)
I believe this was the article for which a request for reposting was made. ******************* I've observed the discussion of Charlie Wingate's comments for some time now. Those comments were at best crass and insensitive. What I find infinitely more interesting is the fact that Wingate's comments about "Jew-baiting" drew people into/back into the net who implicitly felt themselves attacked. Is there a moral here? If so, could it be this: That no matter how far away we allow ourselves to move away from Judaic belief and practice, what is in our blood will draw us back. Also known as: an attack on all is an attack on one. I recall around Tisha b'Av suggesting that Zyklon-B and its purveyors did not differentiate between a talmid chochem from Kovno or Vilna and a Parisian boulevardier or assimilated German who assumed he was "Jewish by religion only." All suffered equally; perhaps the completely assimilated Jew even more than his frum counterpart in Eastern Europe because the latter might at least have had the concept of Kiddush Hashem in his heart and mind. The assimilationist would have had only fear and confusion. In any case, a Jew was a Jew was a Jew. If anything coming out of the Shoa can be called "positive," it might be the lesson that a Jew by birth remains a Jew in despite of conversion, non-observance, or scorn of his or her roots and birthright. The legacy remains even if the inheritor has no interest in claiming it. It is perhaps unfortunate that Jews exist who can remember their faith and people only when the insensitivity and unacknowledged prejudices of gentiles force remembrance upon them. But that is better than no remembrance at all. It is better than acting as the Wicked Son at the seder and asking "What do YOU mean by this?" When crisis looms, there is no YOU, only US. This identification with a people, history and faith transcends the sectarianism that so often divides correspondents on this net. We are and remain Jews even if we identify ourselves as Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, atheistic, agnostic, socialist, or anarchist. There are those reading this who may argue that the Negative Judaism of the Jew-by-Reflex is inauthentic, is of the "When Attacked I'm A Jew" variety without depth or substance, and responds only to the threat to Judaism, not its enduring promise. Perhaps it is sentimentalism, smacking of the kind of stupid romanticizing of "Jewish suffering" perpetrated by the poets Sylvia Plath and John Berryman, who identified with the suffering but not the faith that made it bearable and transcendable. Nevertheless, it is a place from which one may begin if one has the will and desire. Reflexive Jews can often embrace the positive, affirming aspects of Yiddishkeit if they--and we--allow it. Many have already learned that there is no escape from one's blood and heritage. Many have also learned that there may be no reason to ever want to escape. Ken Wolman Bell Communication Research whuxi!ktw (201) 740-4565