THE STORY OF THE JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE Page 146
Chapter 5: I Am a Jew
 
 
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146 The Story of the Jewish Defense League

b“When I saw that,” she said, “I knew I had to come bbecause we’re proud to be Jews, because we can never be bsilent again, because maybe this generation can stop it from bhappening all over.”

bAnd Bart Brodinsky, another 16-year-old from the pres- btigious Bronx High School of Science, who said as he bwaited to be arrested:

b“There are too many apathetic Jewish people who are all bfor the Puerto Ricans, the Negroes, the Indians, and all the bminority groups but the Jews. I’m for them, too, but what babout the Jews?

b“My father thinks that just because he was in the army in bthe war and did his best, everything’s O.K. And my mother, bshe’s Hadassah and B’nai B’rith. They’re do-nothing or- bganizations that hand out plaques at graduation for being a bmensch.

b“Handing out plaques wasn’t enough for six million Jews band it’s not going to be enough for six and a half million.” bAnd then Bart went off to jail while 56-year-old Louis bZuckerman of Bethesda shook his head and told a reporter, b“This doesn’t serve anything.” Poor Louis Zuckerman . . .

bWhat was happening before the eyes of Zuckerman—who bcould not recognize it even as he did not recognize the btragedy that he and his generation had helped to create— bwas that Jewish identity was being created in thousands of byoung Jews who were part of a lost generation. For decades, bthe Jewish Establishment had presided over the spiritual band national destruction of the young American Jew. In bthis, it was aided by the parents of those young Jews who bthemselves did not object to the Establishment direction bbecause, in great measure, that was what the parents them- bselves wanted.

bThe Jew who had arrived in America in his millions with bfaith, tradition, and Jewish pride, could look upon grand- bsons who in alarming numbers simply could not care less babout being Jewish and to an equally distressing degree bwere beginning to intermarry, assimilate, and march for bnon-Jewish and anti-Jewish causes.

bOne did not have to be a sociologist to be aware of the b 

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THE STORY OF THE JEWISH DEFENSE LEAGUE Page 146
Chapter 5: I Am a Jew