154	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bradicalization, apathy, and, yes, anti-Semitism of the young bJew, need not seek complex or mysterious answers to where bthe young Jew went wrong. The ironic words of the Torah bin Deuteronomy mock us as they direct us to the source of bthe pollution and corruption: “It is not in heaven . . . but bthe word is very nigh unto thee, in your mouth and in your bheart to do them.”

bIt was our mouths and our hearts and our deeds and our bmisdeeds. It was we, the American Jewish community, be- bginning with the homes that spawned them and the temples bthat were spawned to perpetuate the fraud and the rabbis bwho were bought to give it a touch of cosmetics and the bJewish plutocrats who reigned over all the stench. It bwas all those—parents, teachers, leaders and “modern” brabbis—who created the young Jewish anti-Zionist, the byoung Jewish radical, the young Jewish drug-user, the byoung Jewish apathetic, the young Jewish assimilator, bthe young Jewish non-Jew.

bFor decades the Jewish Establishment presided over the bdeath of the young Jew. In its never-ending battle to be bJewish but not too Jewish, to have its cake and eat it too, to do bthe impossible—melt but not dissolve—the American bJewish Establishment made every effort to hinder the most beffective, and in the end, the only weapon against assimila- btion and Jewish national destruction: Jewish education.

bI hasten to add that I do not refer to the crude joke that bpasses for Jewish education, which so many hundreds of bthousands of Jewish youngsters have been forced to en- bdure: the “Hebrew” school, the religious school, the five- bday-a-week, or three-day, or one-day-a-week-after-public- bschool bar mitzvah factory.

bI remember speaking at a certain university to a packed bauditorium that included a large number of vociferous and boutspoken leftists. Most were Jewish, as was clearly indi- bcated by one of the questioners, who began his question with bthe statement “My parents are Jewish and I’m a Trotskyite.” bAt the end of the evening, about fifty young Jews, including bmany of the leftists, came over and asked if they could bcontinue the discussion. We all went to the home of the local b