(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week)
A criticism of Orthodox Jewish life that merits response was Michael Steinhardt’s recent speech at Yeshiva University charging the Orthodox with a willingness to take from the larger Jewish community while they give little in return.
I suppose the charge would not have attracted the coverage it received were it not for the status of its author, a major philanthropist. Still, Mr. Steinhardt is a serious man and he was not on virgin territory when he spoke. His accusation is a restatement of reams of rhetoric directed for years at the Orthodox. I am certain that he will not be the last to find the Orthodox guilty of a form of communal parasitism.
It apparently matters not at all that the charge is untrue, that giving to the overall Jewish community and to individual Jews irrespective of their religious orientation is Orthodoxy’s strong point.
Like other distortions, half-truths and outright fabrications, frequent repetition provides sufficient empirical support for what, in fact, is false. The Orthodox must be guilty as charged because, after all, the accusation has been given wide circulation. It is also true that, perhaps out of resignation, the Orthodox have said little to refute the claim that they are selfish.
There is much exaggeration in the widely held view that the Orthodox — especially their institutions — are on the receiving end of substantial Jewish philanthropic support. In the aggregate, federation assistance across the country has been minimal, specifically including day schools whose financial needs increasingly are being met by mandatory charges and parental contributions. With minor exceptions, the record of private Jewish philanthropy is not much better.
We now recognize that day schools are crucial to our communal well-being, to any prospect for Jewish continuity. This alone should induce gratitude for the Orthodox contribution to the larger community. They sustained the belief in day schools in the face of harsh neglect, and they established these institutions in dozens of communities through their personal giving and sacrifice.
Even with the more recent creation of non-Orthodox day schools, the Orthodox schools account for more than three-fourths of the enrollment, including many non-Orthodox students. The Orthodox schools have especially reached out to the needy, as well as to immigrant and marginal families, by maintaining scholarship policies that demonstrate concern for families that cannot afford full tuition or who are unwilling to pay it.
Mr. Steinhardt has devoted some of his considerable talents and fortune to expanding day school opportunity, a commitment that should provide a generous appreciation of what the Orthodox have achieved.
If he wishes to consider the issue that he has raised apart from the field of Jewish education, a good place to begin would be the activity of the hundreds of Yeshiva University undergraduates who, over the years, have served as staff members at the Hebrew Academy for Special Children summer camp. HASC is about to pay tribute to Dr. Norman Lamm, YU’s president, in recognition of the devotion of these students.
If the Orthodox-bashers are willing to travel to Brooklyn, they could learn about HASC’s widely admired yearlong programs that serve special children, including many blacks.
They might also visit organizations like Tomchei Shabbos with its warehouse for distributing free food packages to needy Jews. Or they could drop in at Ohel and look at its foster care services and residential care programs for adults. They might see Hatzoloh in action, with its emergency medical services. In every neighborhood they will see bikur cholims caring for the elderly, frail, needy and sick without any regard for the religiosity of the recipients.
For the critics of Orthodoxy who might find Brooklyn and the outer boroughs too remote, the Manhattan hospitals provide daily evidence of the effective and creative work of bikur cholim volunteers, including, at times, the assistance given to patients who happen not to be Jewish.
A listing of the network of Orthodox-sponsored and sustained charity agencies — just their names and a one-line description for each — easily would exceed the space allocation for this column.
There are thousands of volunteers who give abundantly of their time, means and spirit. Their organizations are often stunningly creative in fashioning new ways of reaching out to the needy. There are telephone hot-lines for the emotionally stressed, facilities for new mothers, projects to assist needy brides, hundreds of free-loan funds and so much else.
Here is where the Orthodox excel and yet their detractors go to great length charging unconcern for those who are not in their religious fold.
One explanation for the disconnect between the reality and the false picture given by the critics is that the Orthodox avoid the American Jewish model for philanthropic activity, shunning public relations and focusing instead on direct and personal service to the needy.
The Orthodox do not as much reject participation in some of the community’s better-known philanthropic agencies as they conduct their charitable activity in the same way that they go about their religious activity.
Like their parents before them they help people directly, feeding and clothing them and meeting their emotional and physical needs. Their critics are ignorant about these activities. They assume that what they do not know cannot exist. In fact, any hospital visit would readily disclose the Orthodox commitment to all Jews.
Beyond this, in the reckoning of those who attack the Orthodox, chesed activities are not taken into account because they are viewed as a separate, less important zone of Jewish life; something that has little to do with the issue of what the Orthodox give to the larger community.
What counts — perhaps all that counts — is whether the Orthodox accept religious pluralism, a formulation that converts the Orthodox refusal to accept what they regard as religiously counterfeit into the refusal to assist or give to other Jews. The critics transmute giving into acceptance and by doing this they are able to render Orthodox accomplishments as irrelevant.
Monday, February 15, 1999
Wednesday, February 10, 1999
Fairness
(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week on December 30, 1998)
Twelve columns a year limit what I can say in the space, which is the response I usually give when I am asked why I am not more critical of aspects of Orthodox Jewish life which merit criticism. What I have to say on the subject is best said in other forums. Besides, there are others – too many, I think – who are eager to rise to the occasion, too often with reckless disregard of even an atrophied standard of fairness.
A case in point is Michael Steinhardt’s recent speech at Yeshiva University charging the Orthodox with a willingness to take from the larger Jewish community while they give little in return. I suppose that the charge would not have attracted the coverage it got were it not for the status and wealth of its author. Still, Mr. Steinhardt is a serious man and he was not on virgin territory when he spoke. His accusation is a restatement of reams of rhetoric directed for years at the Orthodox. I am certain that he will not be the last to find the Orthodox guilty of a form of communal parasitism
It apparently matters not at all that the charge is untrue, that giving to the overall Jewish community and to individual Jews irrespective of their religious orientation is Orthodoxy’s strong point. Like other distortions, half-truths and outright fabrications, frequent repetition provides sufficient empirical support for what, in fact, is false. The Orthodox must be guilty as charged because, after all, the accusation has been given wide circulation. It is also true that, perhaps out of resignation, the Orthodox have said little to refute the claim that they are selfish.
There is much exaggeration in the widely-held view that the Orthodox – especially their institutions – are on the receiving end of substantial Jewish philanthropic support. In the aggregate, Federation assistance across the country has been minimal, specifically including day schools whose financial needs increasingly are being met by mandatory charges and parental contributions. With minor exceptions, the record of private Jewish philanthropy is not much better.
We now recognize that day schools are crucial to our communal wellbeing, to any prospect for Jewish continuity. This alone should induce gratitude for the Orthodox contribution to the larger community. They sustained the belief in day schools in the face of harsh neglect and they established these institutions in dozens of communities through their personal giving and sacrifice. Even with the more recent creation of non-Orthodox day schools, the Orthodox schools account for more than three-fourths of the enrollment, including many non-Orthodox students. The Orthodox schools have especially reached out to the needy, as well as to immigrant and marginal families, by maintaining scholarship policies that demonstrate concern for families that cannot afford full tuition or who are unwilling to pay it.
Mr. Steinhardt has devoted some of his considerable talents and fortune to expanding day school opportunity, a commitment that should provide a generous appreciation of what the Orthodox have achieved. If he wishes to consider the issue that he has raised apart from the field of Jewish education, a good place to begin would be the activity of the hundreds of Yeshiva University undergraduates who over the years have served as staff members at the Hebrew Academy for Special Children summer camp. HASC is about to pay tribute to Dr. Norman Lamm, YU’s president, in recognition of the devotion of these students.
If the Orthodox-bashers are willing to travel to Brooklyn, they could learn about HASC’s widely-admired year-long programs that serve special children, including many Blacks. They might also visit organizations like Tomche Shabbos with its warehouse for distributing free food packages to needy Jews. Or, they could drop in at Ohel and look at its foster care services and residential care programs for adults. They might see Hatzolah in action, with its emergency medical services. In every neighborhood, they will see bikur cholims caring for the elderly, frail, needy and sick without any regard for the religiosity of the recipients.
For the critics of Orthodoxy who might find Brooklyn and the outer boroughs too remote, the Manhattan hospitals provide daily evidence of the effective and creative work of bikur cholim volunteers, including, at times, the assistance given to patients who happen not to be Jewish.
A listing of the network of Orthodox-sponsored and sustained charity agencies – just their names and a one-line description for each – would easily exceed the space allocation for this column. There are thousands of volunteers who give abundantly of their time, means and spirit. Their organizations are often stunningly creative in fashioning new ways of reaching out to the needy. There are telephone hot-lines for the emotionally stressed, facilities for new mothers, projects to assist needy brides, hundreds of free-loan funds and so much else.
Here is where the Orthodox excel and yet their detractors go to great length and to town charging unconcern for those who are not in their religious fold. One explanation for the disconnect between the reality and the false picture given by the critics is that the Orthodox avoid the American Jewish model for philanthropic activity. Although some of their larger programs have unfortunately yielded to temptation, the essential approach is to avoid public relations and the conventional trappings of organizational life and to focus instead on direct and personal service to the needy.
The Orthodox do not as much reject participation in some of the community’s better known philanthropic agencies as they conduct their charitable activity in the same way that they go about their religious activity. They adhere to what they saw in their parents’ generation and homes. They believe that the way to help people in need is to be with them, to embrace them, to feed them, to cloth them, to bathe them, to be available to meet their emotional and physical needs. Their critics are ignorant about these activities. They assume that what they do not know cannot exist. In fact, any hospital visit would readily disclose the Orthodox commitment to all Jews.
Beyond this, in the reckoning of those who attack the Orthodox, chesed activities are not taken into account because they are viewed as a separate, less important, zone of Jewish life, something that has little to do with the issue of what the Orthodox give to the larger community. What counts – perhaps all that counts – is whether the Orthodox accept religious pluralism, a formulation that converts the Orthodox refusal to accept what they regard as religiously counterfeit into the refusal to assist or give to other Jews. The critics transmute giving into acceptance and by doing this they are able to render Orthodox accomplishments as irrelevant.
This distortion feeds on the already considerable dislike for the Orthodox. As is true of prejudice generally, the bigotry that is being exhibited toward the Orthodox is predicated on a strong foundation of ignorance. Yet, as Mr. Steinhardt spoke, there were hundreds of Orthodox Jews in this city alone engaged in personal and meaningful acts of charity. The next speech attacking the Orthodox for not caring should be given in a hospital or nursing home or in one of the group residences or to gatherings of the poor or to parents of day school children who are only accepted by Orthodox institutions. These are people who because they believe and know otherwise, need to be told that the Orthodox do not care.
Twelve columns a year limit what I can say in the space, which is the response I usually give when I am asked why I am not more critical of aspects of Orthodox Jewish life which merit criticism. What I have to say on the subject is best said in other forums. Besides, there are others – too many, I think – who are eager to rise to the occasion, too often with reckless disregard of even an atrophied standard of fairness.
A case in point is Michael Steinhardt’s recent speech at Yeshiva University charging the Orthodox with a willingness to take from the larger Jewish community while they give little in return. I suppose that the charge would not have attracted the coverage it got were it not for the status and wealth of its author. Still, Mr. Steinhardt is a serious man and he was not on virgin territory when he spoke. His accusation is a restatement of reams of rhetoric directed for years at the Orthodox. I am certain that he will not be the last to find the Orthodox guilty of a form of communal parasitism
It apparently matters not at all that the charge is untrue, that giving to the overall Jewish community and to individual Jews irrespective of their religious orientation is Orthodoxy’s strong point. Like other distortions, half-truths and outright fabrications, frequent repetition provides sufficient empirical support for what, in fact, is false. The Orthodox must be guilty as charged because, after all, the accusation has been given wide circulation. It is also true that, perhaps out of resignation, the Orthodox have said little to refute the claim that they are selfish.
There is much exaggeration in the widely-held view that the Orthodox – especially their institutions – are on the receiving end of substantial Jewish philanthropic support. In the aggregate, Federation assistance across the country has been minimal, specifically including day schools whose financial needs increasingly are being met by mandatory charges and parental contributions. With minor exceptions, the record of private Jewish philanthropy is not much better.
We now recognize that day schools are crucial to our communal wellbeing, to any prospect for Jewish continuity. This alone should induce gratitude for the Orthodox contribution to the larger community. They sustained the belief in day schools in the face of harsh neglect and they established these institutions in dozens of communities through their personal giving and sacrifice. Even with the more recent creation of non-Orthodox day schools, the Orthodox schools account for more than three-fourths of the enrollment, including many non-Orthodox students. The Orthodox schools have especially reached out to the needy, as well as to immigrant and marginal families, by maintaining scholarship policies that demonstrate concern for families that cannot afford full tuition or who are unwilling to pay it.
Mr. Steinhardt has devoted some of his considerable talents and fortune to expanding day school opportunity, a commitment that should provide a generous appreciation of what the Orthodox have achieved. If he wishes to consider the issue that he has raised apart from the field of Jewish education, a good place to begin would be the activity of the hundreds of Yeshiva University undergraduates who over the years have served as staff members at the Hebrew Academy for Special Children summer camp. HASC is about to pay tribute to Dr. Norman Lamm, YU’s president, in recognition of the devotion of these students.
If the Orthodox-bashers are willing to travel to Brooklyn, they could learn about HASC’s widely-admired year-long programs that serve special children, including many Blacks. They might also visit organizations like Tomche Shabbos with its warehouse for distributing free food packages to needy Jews. Or, they could drop in at Ohel and look at its foster care services and residential care programs for adults. They might see Hatzolah in action, with its emergency medical services. In every neighborhood, they will see bikur cholims caring for the elderly, frail, needy and sick without any regard for the religiosity of the recipients.
For the critics of Orthodoxy who might find Brooklyn and the outer boroughs too remote, the Manhattan hospitals provide daily evidence of the effective and creative work of bikur cholim volunteers, including, at times, the assistance given to patients who happen not to be Jewish.
A listing of the network of Orthodox-sponsored and sustained charity agencies – just their names and a one-line description for each – would easily exceed the space allocation for this column. There are thousands of volunteers who give abundantly of their time, means and spirit. Their organizations are often stunningly creative in fashioning new ways of reaching out to the needy. There are telephone hot-lines for the emotionally stressed, facilities for new mothers, projects to assist needy brides, hundreds of free-loan funds and so much else.
Here is where the Orthodox excel and yet their detractors go to great length and to town charging unconcern for those who are not in their religious fold. One explanation for the disconnect between the reality and the false picture given by the critics is that the Orthodox avoid the American Jewish model for philanthropic activity. Although some of their larger programs have unfortunately yielded to temptation, the essential approach is to avoid public relations and the conventional trappings of organizational life and to focus instead on direct and personal service to the needy.
The Orthodox do not as much reject participation in some of the community’s better known philanthropic agencies as they conduct their charitable activity in the same way that they go about their religious activity. They adhere to what they saw in their parents’ generation and homes. They believe that the way to help people in need is to be with them, to embrace them, to feed them, to cloth them, to bathe them, to be available to meet their emotional and physical needs. Their critics are ignorant about these activities. They assume that what they do not know cannot exist. In fact, any hospital visit would readily disclose the Orthodox commitment to all Jews.
Beyond this, in the reckoning of those who attack the Orthodox, chesed activities are not taken into account because they are viewed as a separate, less important, zone of Jewish life, something that has little to do with the issue of what the Orthodox give to the larger community. What counts – perhaps all that counts – is whether the Orthodox accept religious pluralism, a formulation that converts the Orthodox refusal to accept what they regard as religiously counterfeit into the refusal to assist or give to other Jews. The critics transmute giving into acceptance and by doing this they are able to render Orthodox accomplishments as irrelevant.
This distortion feeds on the already considerable dislike for the Orthodox. As is true of prejudice generally, the bigotry that is being exhibited toward the Orthodox is predicated on a strong foundation of ignorance. Yet, as Mr. Steinhardt spoke, there were hundreds of Orthodox Jews in this city alone engaged in personal and meaningful acts of charity. The next speech attacking the Orthodox for not caring should be given in a hospital or nursing home or in one of the group residences or to gatherings of the poor or to parents of day school children who are only accepted by Orthodox institutions. These are people who because they believe and know otherwise, need to be told that the Orthodox do not care.
Monday, February 01, 1999
Yale Five
(Originally published in the New York Jewish Week in July 1998)
Because I do not believe in conspiracy theories, I have no easy explanation for the curious circumstance that Rabbis Eric Yoffie and Ismar Schorsch, the key leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements, chose the same time and similar language to go after Orthodox Jews, both using the Yale housing dispute as the springboard for attack.
This may have been their dubious contribution to the pre-Tisha B’Av period, giving the Jewish people another reason to mourn. Or, it may have been their peculiar way of promoting tolerance, an ideal which they embrace for everyone but the Orthodox. Most likely, they needed no special reason to excoriate religious Jews. If Yale was not on the horizon, they would have found some other cause. Whatever still separates the Reform and Conservative - and the gap is small and becoming narrower – Rabbis Yoffie and Schorsch are bonded by a fierce detestation of the Orthodox. Strange bedfellows they are not.
About the conflict at Yale, when the Sunday Times Magazine visited the issue, what emerged was a sympathetic portrait of the religious Jewish students. I imagine that had the challenge to Yale come from Amish students or members of another insular religious group, our patrons of liberty would raise their voices in support of individual choice. Alas, the beneficiaries of freedom and tolerance at Yale would be religious Jews and this fact alone results in the amazing transformation of putative liberals into advocates of intolerance.
It is said, apparently correctly, that there are Modern Orthodox, including rabbis, who are unsympathetic to the claim advanced by the Yale students. That is their shame and one more example of how when they are forced to choose between the imperatives of modernity and Torah standards, they go with the crowd and abandon the latter. It is small wonder that except in their great capacity to attract publicity and fundraise among the affluent who despise the Orthodox, they are a negligible factor in contemporary Jewish life.
In his attack, Rabbi Yoffie goes beyond the pale of decency when he refers to Jews who are determined to maintain their distinctive way of religious life as “ghetto Jews.” The term, with all of its nasty and painful historical echoes, is another building block in the relentless campaign to make Orthodox Jews the object of ridicule and loathing. For the record, the Yale students live in a mostly Black neighborhood in New Haven. By attending Yale, they inevitably open themselves to new experiences, intellectual and social. And these are ghetto Jews!
Yoffie tells us, “ghetto Judaism exists in Israel . . . and here, too, in Williamsburg and Borough Park.” Williamsburg remains one of the most ethnically integrated communities in all of America, which is to say that it is the sort of place where Rabbi Yoffie’s chasidim are not to be found, not so much because they do not want to dwell among Jacob’s tents – although that is a factor – as because of their intense determination not to have close encounters with so many Latinos.
In general, Orthodox Jews are more likely to be found in places with heterogeneous populations, rather than, to use Pete Seeger’s words, in communities of little boxes on the hillside which all go ticky-tacky that are favored by Reform and Conservative suburbanites. Incidentally, I learned this little ditty in the Borough Park ghetto.
Instead of constantly using the Orthodox as punching bags, Reform and Conservative leaders ought to look inward and reflect on the Judaic devastation wrought by the wholesale abandonment of tradition, practice and belief that their movements encouraged. There is talk of a return to Torah in these quarters, but it is a strange Torah that is being returned to. Among the more Jewishly committed Conservative Jews, about three-quarters do not light Shabbos candles or attend synagogue as often as once a month or keep a kosher home. The statistics are more woeful in Rabbi Yoffie’s bailiwick.
There has been an upsurge in Reform and Conservative day school education, but even this development is severely compromised by the compromises made during a century of unrelenting Judaic abandonment. There is so little left to be salvaged and even this small opportunity is being forfeited.
Orthodox Jews separate themselves from much of the society in which they live in their dress, food choices, cultural preferences, Sabbath observance, use of leisure time and much else. This does not make them ghetto Jews. It makes them Jews who are determined to live in the contemporary world and also to be faithful to the world of their fathers.
For all of the vituperation directed against them, the Orthodox are a varied lot and their engagement in the larger society is quite pronounced. Like the Yale students, many go on to college or professional training, some after years of complete immersion in their religious studies. They hold down jobs like the rest of us, although their penetration of the job market is at times limited, primarily because of the tenacity of the discrimination that is practiced against them. Still, corporate life, especially in New York, includes many of these religious Jews who our ersatz advocates of tolerance denounce as ghetto Jews.
What these Orthodox Jews seek is the retention of religious elements that have ensured the endurance of the Jewish people, while they selectively accept those aspects of American life that are compatible with their religious belief and practice. Perhaps I have it all wrong, but this is what I thought the American dream was about. We Jews eagerly endorse the ideal of diversity for other people. Is it too much to ask that we adhere to the same standard in our own community?
Frankly, in their talk of ghetto Jews and in their scorched earth policy against the Orthodox, Rabbis Yoffie and Schorsch increasingly sound like Reverend Louis Farrakhan and his talk of Judaism as a gutter religion. The Muslim leader has toned down his rhetoric. Is it too much to demand the same of the leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements?
Because I do not believe in conspiracy theories, I have no easy explanation for the curious circumstance that Rabbis Eric Yoffie and Ismar Schorsch, the key leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements, chose the same time and similar language to go after Orthodox Jews, both using the Yale housing dispute as the springboard for attack.
This may have been their dubious contribution to the pre-Tisha B’Av period, giving the Jewish people another reason to mourn. Or, it may have been their peculiar way of promoting tolerance, an ideal which they embrace for everyone but the Orthodox. Most likely, they needed no special reason to excoriate religious Jews. If Yale was not on the horizon, they would have found some other cause. Whatever still separates the Reform and Conservative - and the gap is small and becoming narrower – Rabbis Yoffie and Schorsch are bonded by a fierce detestation of the Orthodox. Strange bedfellows they are not.
About the conflict at Yale, when the Sunday Times Magazine visited the issue, what emerged was a sympathetic portrait of the religious Jewish students. I imagine that had the challenge to Yale come from Amish students or members of another insular religious group, our patrons of liberty would raise their voices in support of individual choice. Alas, the beneficiaries of freedom and tolerance at Yale would be religious Jews and this fact alone results in the amazing transformation of putative liberals into advocates of intolerance.
It is said, apparently correctly, that there are Modern Orthodox, including rabbis, who are unsympathetic to the claim advanced by the Yale students. That is their shame and one more example of how when they are forced to choose between the imperatives of modernity and Torah standards, they go with the crowd and abandon the latter. It is small wonder that except in their great capacity to attract publicity and fundraise among the affluent who despise the Orthodox, they are a negligible factor in contemporary Jewish life.
In his attack, Rabbi Yoffie goes beyond the pale of decency when he refers to Jews who are determined to maintain their distinctive way of religious life as “ghetto Jews.” The term, with all of its nasty and painful historical echoes, is another building block in the relentless campaign to make Orthodox Jews the object of ridicule and loathing. For the record, the Yale students live in a mostly Black neighborhood in New Haven. By attending Yale, they inevitably open themselves to new experiences, intellectual and social. And these are ghetto Jews!
Yoffie tells us, “ghetto Judaism exists in Israel . . . and here, too, in Williamsburg and Borough Park.” Williamsburg remains one of the most ethnically integrated communities in all of America, which is to say that it is the sort of place where Rabbi Yoffie’s chasidim are not to be found, not so much because they do not want to dwell among Jacob’s tents – although that is a factor – as because of their intense determination not to have close encounters with so many Latinos.
In general, Orthodox Jews are more likely to be found in places with heterogeneous populations, rather than, to use Pete Seeger’s words, in communities of little boxes on the hillside which all go ticky-tacky that are favored by Reform and Conservative suburbanites. Incidentally, I learned this little ditty in the Borough Park ghetto.
Instead of constantly using the Orthodox as punching bags, Reform and Conservative leaders ought to look inward and reflect on the Judaic devastation wrought by the wholesale abandonment of tradition, practice and belief that their movements encouraged. There is talk of a return to Torah in these quarters, but it is a strange Torah that is being returned to. Among the more Jewishly committed Conservative Jews, about three-quarters do not light Shabbos candles or attend synagogue as often as once a month or keep a kosher home. The statistics are more woeful in Rabbi Yoffie’s bailiwick.
There has been an upsurge in Reform and Conservative day school education, but even this development is severely compromised by the compromises made during a century of unrelenting Judaic abandonment. There is so little left to be salvaged and even this small opportunity is being forfeited.
Orthodox Jews separate themselves from much of the society in which they live in their dress, food choices, cultural preferences, Sabbath observance, use of leisure time and much else. This does not make them ghetto Jews. It makes them Jews who are determined to live in the contemporary world and also to be faithful to the world of their fathers.
For all of the vituperation directed against them, the Orthodox are a varied lot and their engagement in the larger society is quite pronounced. Like the Yale students, many go on to college or professional training, some after years of complete immersion in their religious studies. They hold down jobs like the rest of us, although their penetration of the job market is at times limited, primarily because of the tenacity of the discrimination that is practiced against them. Still, corporate life, especially in New York, includes many of these religious Jews who our ersatz advocates of tolerance denounce as ghetto Jews.
What these Orthodox Jews seek is the retention of religious elements that have ensured the endurance of the Jewish people, while they selectively accept those aspects of American life that are compatible with their religious belief and practice. Perhaps I have it all wrong, but this is what I thought the American dream was about. We Jews eagerly endorse the ideal of diversity for other people. Is it too much to ask that we adhere to the same standard in our own community?
Frankly, in their talk of ghetto Jews and in their scorched earth policy against the Orthodox, Rabbis Yoffie and Schorsch increasingly sound like Reverend Louis Farrakhan and his talk of Judaism as a gutter religion. The Muslim leader has toned down his rhetoric. Is it too much to demand the same of the leaders of the Reform and Conservative movements?
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