Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 41, No. 41, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 8, 1987 Page: 4 of 20
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TEXAS JEWISH POST THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 7987
Opinion
Jewish, Catholic Hate Mail
I hope this be my last column on the Pope John Paul II
meetings with Jewish leaders in Rome and Miami for some
time. But I cannot leave that scene without commenting on
the amount and quality of hate mail that other Jewish
Spokesmen and I have received during these weeks, both from
Jews as well as Catholics.
The Catholic hate mail generally follows one track: The
Pope is our "Vicar of Christ on earth and how dare you Jews
attack our Christ-figure?" My response to that is that Jews
have much respect for this Pope, and the criticism that Jews
level is against the particular political decision to have
received Waldheim, and then to have said nothing whatsoever
about his Nazi past or the Nazi Holocaust.
The Jewish hate mail generally uses the Pope-Waldheim
meeting to vent Jewish anger over 1,900 years of anti-
Semitism, much of it through the agency of the Catholic Chur-
ch. Whenever references were made to the "progress" in
Jewish-Catholic relations especially in the United States, the
hate mail simply dismisses that as irrelevant. What such
responses indicate is that a great many American Jews not in-
volved in Jewish-Christian relations in any way know virtually
nothing about the extra-ordinary progress made in removing
the poisonous weeds of anti-Semitism in Christian culture.
That may be one of the important internal educational task
Jewish agencies will need to undertake in the months ahead.
— Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum
JESS JAWIN
Continued I rom l>,tine I
In the intervening years there was exile to Siberia from 1978 to 1982
for announcingher protest to all Muscovites through large signs and
posters which she hung from her window.
The more the Soviet commisars punished Nudel, the more support
she received from world Jewry and many other non-Jewish suppor-
ters. While she was in Siberian exile she received over 10,000 letters
and cards of empathy from people in over 42 nations allied with the
West.
The remainder of her exile was spent in Kishinev where she finally
received the news of her permission to leave.
We know that Nudel’s release is a predicate to the facade being
erected prior to Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s anticipated summit visit
to Washington later this year.
Last year less than 1,000 Jews were allowed to leave the U.S.S.R.
This year, as a new detente is taking shape, more than 5,000 Jews
have departed. The Soviets admit they have a backlog of nearly 15,000
applications to be processed. According to reports they promise that
many of these will be acted on favorably within a yean
However, a closer inventory would reveal that perhaps as many as a
half million or more Jews would relish leaving the U.S.S.R.
We’ll never forget the classical story we reported from Israel many
years ago.
One of Israel’s top diplomats, who returned to Jerusalem, following
the break in relations with the tl.S.S.R., was asked about the problems
relating to Jewish emigration from the U.S.S.R.
“How many Jews are left in the Soviet Union?” he was asked.
“About three and a half million,” he replied.
“How many do you think would want to leave if the floodgates were
opened?”
“Eight million!" was the emphatic answer.
Ida Nudel is free at last.
We must remember there are many more who are not.
They can only be helped by our constant efforts and the full ex-
patiation of their cause which is the constant banner for all those who
love liberty.
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» i iw n i .^waai
Near East Report:
What It Really Means
ffaaae are one.” That message of Jewish
Vw solidarity, of Jewish peoplehood, is
invoked at countless banquets, in lectures
and sermons. It supports United Jewish
Appeal solicitations, underlies work for
Soviet and other oppressed Jewries and
promotes travel to Israel.
And periodically, headlines remind us of
the human cost demanded to turn slogans
into facts, to make dreams reality. Last
month’s headline in the Jerusalem Post
read “So others may live.” The story, from
southern Lebanon:
“Three members of a small and inex-
perienced Givati [Brigade] force, out on a
terrorist-search mission, ambushed in the
Mt. Hermon area ... by a Syrian-spon-
sored Lebanese terrorist gang apparently
on its way into Galilee: Ronen Weissman,
the company commander, who was the first
to be hit, Alexander Singer, the platoon
commander, who was killed trying to aid
Weissman, and Private Oren Kamil, who
was felled attempting to pull the two offi-
cers to safety.”
Singer, who died on his 25th birthday,
exemplified the ideal behind the slogans.
According to stories in the Washington
Jewish Week and the Washington Post, the
1980 graduate of Bethesda-Chevy Chase
High School in suburban Washington
“formed a deep attachment to Israel" while
living there with his family from 1973 to
1977.
A Cornell University honors graduate
who spent his junior year at the London
School of Economics, Singer traveled to
Europe and the Middle East. Wanting to
see an Arab country as well as Israel, he
went to Jordan. In the Soviet Union, he met
with Jewish refuseniks, and "the trip inten-
sified his feelings of being a Jew," accord-
ing to the Jewish Week account.
Singer reported on his travels in letters
addressed to “Dear Everyone.” Shulamith
Elster, headmasterof the Jewish day school
which one of Singer’s brothers attended,
said these were “not just a travel mono-
logue, he related his individual experience.
This was a young man in search of some-
thing."
What he found was his place with the
Jewish people, in Israel. He lived in Kib-
butz Ein Tsurim and then in Jerusalem. Im-
pelled by what a college friend described as
his desire “to be doing something, having a
challenge”—he decided as a draftee to be-
come a paratrooper and an officer.
A family friend added to the portrait,
calling Singer “a happy man, an optimistic
person, very curious, very interested. He
believed in tikkun olam, both the perfect-
ability of the world and the need to work for
it, and he acted on his belief."
In a letter written early this year, Lt.
Singer described duty in south Lebanon,
including watching the bursts from a night
fight between Lebanese factions north of
his position:
“1 think about staying warm, about get-
ting home, about not falling asleep on pa-
trol and about how fast I can get onto our
APC's [armored personnel carriers] when
we’re ‘jumped’ to investigate . . . signs of
freedom fighters trying to break through
the fence ... to liberate the children’s
houses of one of the kibbutzim which glare
so much more sharply than the Arab vil-
lages do. They don’t need floodlit fences.”
Blocking a group of those “freedom
fighters" seeking to “liberate” some small
part of the Jewish state, Alexander Singer
died. His death, and those of Capt.
Weissman and Private Kamil, were part of
the cost of maintaining Jewish solidarity
and protecting the Jewish state.
Seven years ago, when Abbie Hoffman,
the electronic radical, surfaced after years
of hiding from drug charges, he described
himself as an existential Jewish hero—and
then said that label was a contradiction in
terms. For himself, perhaps. But not for
Alexander Singer and his comrades-in-
arms.
The story cannot stop with them. Sing-
er’s father Max is president of the Potomac
Organization, a public policy consulting
firm. His mother, Suzanne, is executive ed-
itor of Moment magazine and managing ed-
itor of Biblical Archeology Review. Two of
Alexander’s three brothers have made al-
iyah. One already is a paratrooper in the
Israeli army, a second plans to enlist.
Without such individuals, without such
families, “we are one” would remain only a
slogan. E.R. □
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Texas Jewish Post
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 41, No. 41, Ed. 1 Thursday, October 8, 1987, newspaper, October 8, 1987; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth755718/m1/4/?rotate=90: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .