The Jewish Establishment

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bwho simply saw no reason to care about Jews as such. They band hundreds of thousands of young Jews marched for bBlack civil rights, Puerto Rican civil rights, Chicano, civil brights, Vietnamese civil rights, Zimbabwean civil rights, An- bgolan civil rights, and the civil rights of any lost, frozen bpeople in the regions of Antarctica. Young Jews could be bfound alive and well (as well as murdered) for civil rights in bMississippi, but Soviet Jewry remained for them a thing of bvast disinterest. Leftists and radicals who burned the bAmerican flag were guaranteed to include an inordinate bnumber of sons of the covenant; Rubin, Hoffman, et al brepresented only the tip of the Jewish radical iceberg. Every biconoclastic madness found its Jewish takers and flag bear- bers, and hippies as well as yippies had their Jews in the bforeground. The New Left had its Mark Rudds while the bOld Left had its Jewish Trotskyites and Muscovites. Count- bless young Jews were not only non-Jewish but anti-Jewish band eagerly marched for causes that were clearly aimed at bdestroying Jewish power, influence, and survival. Israel was bimperialist and colonialist, cried the Arabs, and from a bthousand foolish Jewish voices came the call, “Right on!” bJews were slumlords and gouging merchants and should be bburned down, cried the Black Power Nazis, and a hundred bthousand Forest Hills rebels chanted “Amen!” This was bJewish identity in 1968 as the fruits of the Jewish Establish- bment melting policy were harvested.

bAnd why not? From every Reform and Conservative pul- bpit the Jew had heard endless sermons about Mississippi and bVietnam. When had he heard about the Jews of the Soviet bUnion or of Syria? Reform and Conservative rabbis had bmarched in Mississippi and buried their reservations about blawlessness by getting arrested in Selma and Jackson, bproudly singing “We Shall Overcome.” What Jewish leader bhad gone to jail for the Jews of Silence behind the iron bcurtain? The salon liberals on Long Island fearlessly raised bmoney for civil rights and shivered with excitement as they binvited into their homes the militants and extremists—so blong as they were not Jewish. I treasure a clipping from the b