guy who also happens to want your
vote so that he can work to apply ?our
ideals with a new maturity to our na?
tion?s future.? With every turn of the
page, he sounds more and more like a
conventional liberal politician, speak-
ing in platitudes, selling hope, and
delivering, at best, token change.
Somewhere lurking in the identity of
the Tom Hayden who was radicalized in
the sixties must reside the yearning to
make history rather than to ride it 0p-
portunistically to some pie-in-the-sky
dead end. Although Hayden?s memoirs


w. 

show him to be a man of strong but
at times wavering moral courage, there
are new, practical reasons that might
compel him to reassess his political
drift to the right. Jesse Jackson, in his
striking showing in the Democratic
party presidential primaries this past
year, and Bernard Sanders, the socialist
mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for the
last eight years, have demonstrated that
you can attack some of the real prob-
lems in our society and credibly com-
pete for political office. Moreover,
the recent announcement of Hayden?s

separation from Jane Fonda will defeat
his attempt to portray himself as a
happily married man, thus making the
political strategy tied to that public
persona no longer viable. As a result,
Hayden may elect once again to become
the perennial outsider, the visionary
spokesman of America?s social con-
science. He still remains one of the
few individuals in this country who
has the intelligence, ability, and fol
lowng to play a critical role in the
reconstruction of the left. In these
times, that would be the ?patriotic?

thing to do. ?3

Current Debate: Is Tikkun Too Conservative?

Social Conservatism on the Left: The Ahonclontnent of 
and the Collapse of theJewz'rh Le? Into Faith and ?nally

 

Jesse Lenzz'sch

ecular and anticlerical radicalism

are important and wonderful Jewish
traditions. But Tt'hhzm is about Judaism
and religious commitment. Although
Jews have a history of rebellion, Judaism,
as it comes to us, is, by and large,
authoritarian and patriarchal, and it
celebrates obedience to a jealous and
vengeful god. Nonetheless, I have no
quarrel with believers who want to
practice any religion. Any veteran of
the sixties, with its powerful religious
expression, would be foolish to invoke
the old-time Marxist religion of militant
atheism. But the collapse into Judaism
by onetime sixties activists and the
proselytizing of radical secular Jews
mark a retreat from radicalism. The
left?s profamily position is part of the
same package. This is the Big Chill,
born of disillusionment and contempt

 

Jesse teacher history at the John
Jay College of Crzint?nal Justice, City
University of New link, and writes
American history ?j?i-om the hottom up.?
This piece hat hear: excerpted from .9
Speech given at the Tikkun conference.
1989 Jesse 

110 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

for feminism, and emerging from a
strategy that abandons the proud,
radical idea of honestly presenting clear
alternatives.

My critique focuses on Tn?ehzm. My
argument is that, although T?ehtm may
be politically liberal, it is sonically comer-
vatt'oe. For some of us, feminism, gay
liberation, and the rejection of the
romance of the family are crucial marks
of separation between the old world
and the new. By these standards, Tile/em:
is part of the old world.

Many of ii'hhtm?s socially conser-
vative articles come from editors of,
and frequent contributors to, the mag-
azine. In no way can these views be
considered atypical, exceptions to the
magazine?s editorial stance. In any case,
why does rescind support for
positions that should be part of our
postsixties consensus? Why argue with
the past when we should be struggling
toward the future? Instead of ques-
tioning the validity of gay and women?s
liberation, we should take the accom-
plishments of these movements as givens
and then argue about future directions.
We don?t need a ?balance,? which func-

tions to revive such ?fties social values
as ?togetherness.?

Although the Jewish emphasis on
social justice and the Prophets? radiant
visions are magnificent, much of Judaism
is patriarchal and authoritarian, and it
smells of homophobia and? contempt
for women. Of course, this isn?t what
Tzhlezm is about. To forge links between
Judaism and a left program, Tilehzm
must oppose these attitudes. How is
this project going?

In first issue, Christopher
Lasch found that he could not stomach
the notion of gay marriage, so he put
it in quotes and described it as merely
a ?living arrangement? for people who
seek to ?keep all their options open all
the time, avoiding any constraints or
demands of their own.? After a while,
Editor Michael Lerner understood how
offensive Lasch?s doctrine is, and, al-
though his social views seem generally
congruent with Lasch?s, he took this
one back?but Only partway. ?[Glay
families and alternate families," Lerner
writes, ?also deserve our respect," but
only ?insofar as they represent freely
chosen alternatives and nor simply ac-

 

 

 

 

commodations to a bad reality.?

Tz'hkrm had another go at this prob-
lem in an article on ?JudaiSm and
Homosexuality" by rabbinical student
Bradley Artson. Striving for a ?com-
passionate stance on homosexuality,?
Artson seeks to exonerate homosexuals
from the crimes attributed to them in
Jewish sources. He allays fears that
acceptance of homosexuality will lead
to an increase in the number of homo-
sexuals, predicting, happily, that it will
not. Artson also assures us that gays
can still raise children through adoption
or arti?cial insemination. Spilling seed
?does indeed raise a legal issue of
some signi?cance,? Artson argues, but
he ?nds a way around the problem.
He concludes that, although ?anony-
mous or coercive? homosexual acts
remain ?abominations,? others are OK
?as long as they take place within
Stable, monogamous, loving relation-
ships. A gay chorus cries out, Thanks,
Rabbi!?

Let?s hope for something better as
we look at Tab/(22m on women. Like
Artson, Anne Roiphe?a Tz'le?un regular
?wants to break with the more gro?
tesque aspects of the past in her ?The
Jewish Family: A Feminist Perspective."
But in this egregious and bizarrely
named piece, Roiphe?s obsession is the
declining Jewish birth rate, and her
goal is to have every married Jewish
woman bear four children. truly
feminist positiOn,? she writes, ?does
not mock the family.? It?s a strange
brand of feminism that urges a woman
to bear four children. Maybe it?s
Catholicism.

At the heart of Tz'eezizz?s analysis is
Lerner?s claim that the left has lost the
American people to the right. The
solution? The left should "reclaim the
family, religion, and ethical values, and
[frame its] program in these terms.?
Christopher Lasch argues similarly:
we?ve ?lost touch with popular opinion,"
and we oppose the traditional wisdom
and folkways of the community.?

But the left doesn?t aim to organize
people around repressive of who
they are; it seeks to provide them with
alternate visions of whom they mtg/3:
be. Our failure to identify Lasch as a
conservative reflects the fact that, as

um; .. .

long as people?s politics are left, we
ignore their social conserVatism. Per-
haps we have things upside down, and
we might realign our de?nition so that
adherence to socialism, for instance,
would be seen as secondary to certain
social and cultural values.

eminism taught us that the nuclear

family is Oppressive to women,
children, and even, in some ways, men.
It is hierarchical and patriarchal, it
inculcates submission in the young,
and it institutionalizes inequalities of
power, which inevitably result in bar-
barity. To Tzilalamz?s ?New Traditionalist?
romance of the family, Joel Steinberg
and Hedda Nussbaum are an aber-
ration; to feminists they provide a rare
public glimpse of the underlying reality
of the patriarchal family.

From the beginning, there was ?erce
opposition within the left to feminist
insights. In the sixties many people on
the left saw feminism as a petty bour-
geois diversion. They sought to recruit
a sometimes retrograde constituency
on the common ground of sexism.
After the movement came to a ?ery
end, saner people picked up the con-
servative banner, now bearing the code
word, ?family.?

Today, twenty years after the move-
ment, Tibet?: expounds this ideology,
asking us to reclaim the family from
the right. It's there in Tiberius 1988
attack on NOW for being ?stuck in a
time warp? and for being insufficiently
profamily. And all this comes when
the entire range of the two-party sys-
tem, Reagan-Bush-Dukakis-Jackson,
agrees on the centrality of, in Reagan?s
words, the ?basic values of faith and
family." We?re experiencing a wave of
repression that should be thought of
as social McCarthyism. Tz'lekzm colludes
with the powerful forces in American
society that seek to repeal the sixties.

Tzi?kzm?s doctrine is not only wrong;
it won't work. Trifka says the left
needs Judaism to be credible in ad-
dressing the American people?s spiritual
concerns. The idea of approaching the
American people as family folk and
believing Jews is another in a long line
of tried and failed left strategies de-
signed to conceal who we are and

what we really want. Once again, some
of us seem to think that the way to
organize people is to become those
people and to abandon the notion of
standing up, in honest dignity, and
holding out real alternatives. Isn?t there
in this attitude a touch of Progressive
Labor, and before that the Communist
party, claiming that communism was
Americanism, 'RventiethCentury-Style?

Why should we go off in retrograde
pursuit of roots that most of us do not
feel? Now we have a curious variation
on the authenticity racket in which
secular left Jews are urged to be re-
ligious in order to make themselves
more acceptable to mainstream America.
In other werds: Judaism is American-
ism, 1989-Style. The whole package is
so utterly and frankly instrumental that
Americans have reason to see it as a
plot. Americans do take religion ser-
iously, and they won?t tolerate seeing
it used this way.

We do nor need a conservatism that
comes inevitably from immersion in
tradition. We don?t need systems of
thought that are of fatigue,
defeat, and isolation. We don?t need a
tired acquiescence to things as they
are. We need a new movement, but
Tikkzm will not get us there. While
respecring people?s traditions, we need
a movement that will make it 
clear that we do indeed stand for
alternative values, for things the likes
of which the world has never seen.
Sometimes we on the left mm! stand
apart, as we did on Vietnam, which we
opposed from outside the consensus
for many years. Had we decided, in
1965, to accept what was then common
sense" about the war, there would have
been no antiwar movement. And some-
times the best the left can do in hard
times is to keep the door open for the
future, to hold high a banner that
presents clear alternatives, and to say
that things as they are are not things
as they have to be. \We don?t need a
return to the tired, the tribal, and the
old; but rather?not as liberals or pro-
gressives, but as radicals?we need
the courage to pick up the great
adventure temporarily left off and re-
sume the dif?cult quest for the new,
for utopia. Cl

CURRENT DEBATE 111

- cx-Wv 

Tikkun Responds to fesse Lemz?sc/a

It is Ti'lalami's policy to print alterna-
tive perspectives to ours. Hence we
have printed Jesse Lemisch?s attack,
even though it so grossly distorts our
actual positions. Were it similarly mis-
leading about anyone else except our~
selves, we would have reiected it on
grounds of factual inaccuracy alone.
In fact, not only do we not hold many
of the positions Lemisch attributes to
us, but we ?nd those positions morally
distasteful. The Lemisch attack forces
us to prove that we are morally OK
and that we really have the ?correct
line.? That very dynamic is precisely
what destroyed the social movements
of the 19603; it also ensures the con-
tinued isolation of the left.

Lemisch?s covert message is that
?no one is as morally pure as we on
the sectarian left are." This message
demands that potential allies ?prove
themselves? before they can be ac-
cepted as part of the left. This attitude
makes people feel invalidated by the
left at the very moment when the left
should be embracing new friends. The
right, meanwhile, has succeeded in con-
vincing tens of millions of Americans
that all liberals and progressives se-
cretly hold the same contempt for them
and their lives that Lemisch manifests
in his wild assertion that the nuclear
family creates dynamics ?which inevit-
ably result in Because
Lemisch?s article is a fresh embodiment
of this self-destructive leftist approach,
it deserves comment despite its unfair
characterization of Taileleun?s views.

Firsr, to the distortions. Given that
liliekzm has an editorial board of severity
people with widely different views
on many issues, and given that we
frequently print articles with which
we partly or entirely disagree, it?s
easy to string together a set of out-of-
context quotes and misrepresent the
positions of the magazine (which are
stated in our editorial policy). Lemiseh
has done that.

l. Gays. Tr'kil?zm?s editorials have
shown full support for the gay lib-
eration movement. In our two-and-a-
half years we have printed several
articles dealing with gay struggles
and with AIDS. \Ve have criticized

the Jewish community for overt and

112 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3

covert discrimination against gays.-
Lemisch?s insinuations to the contrary
are outrageous.

A typical example of Lemisch's taking
something out of context is his quotes
from Rabbi Bradley Artson's article
on ?Judaism and Homosexuality" (Trie-
ktm, Mar/Apr. 1988). Artson is a sup-
porter of gay liberation, and in this
article he takes on those who claim to
base their opposition to gays on a
careful reading of Jewish law (balakba).
Artson?s point is that even if one takes
lmlakba seriously, one can provide a
defense of homosexuality wit/Jr}: that
context of thought. We didn?t expect all
our readers to buy Artson?s premises.
But we were trying to do a service to
those gays and lesbians who do take
seriously the balak/n?c frame of refer-
ence and need support from it. To use
Our attempt to provide that support as
proof of social conservatism is typical
of the irresponsible way that Lemisch
makes his argument.

2. Farrzz'ly. Tobey}: has made it clear
that our support for family does not
privilege one kind of family over Others.
We are supportive of people?s attempts
to build single-parent families and gay
families, as well as more traditional
family forms. Before starting the mag-
azine, both Ttilzkun?s editor and pub-
lisher worked for ten years with a wide
variety of American working people.
In our experience, most people use
the word ?family? to refer to the only
institution in their lives that has as its
explicit mission and ideal the uncon-
ditional provision of loving care to
each of its members. The logic of the
family ideal runs directly counter to
the logic of the capitalist marketplace,
where each person is valued only to
the extent that he or she can produce
something that someone else will buy.
Consequently, when Americans are at-
tracted to the ideal of the family, they
are attracted to the norion of an insti?
tution whose goal is to support long-
term, committed, loving relationships.

Most Americans don?t have to be
told that their families don?t actually
work in this way?too many people
have been scarred by their family lives.
This is precisely the point that 
wants to make when it urges liberals

and progressives to adopt a progres-
sive profamily agenda. Our point is
not to glorify the actualities of family
life in America, but to help people
understand that it is often not their
fault that the legitimate things they
want in family life (loving support and
rec0gnition) have nor been available.
A progressive profamily agenda would
be one that helps people understand
that the dynamics of the competitive
marketplace, the ethos of self-interest
and ?look out for Number One,?
and the stress and powerlessness that
people experience in their workplaces
all help undermine the building of
loving families. 

Ironically, much that is associated
with liberal culture has tended to rein-
force self?blaming. for
example, often encourages people to
believe that if one can simply get one?s
own head straight, everything else will
work out. Thus, it tacitly supports the
belief that if things are not working
Out, one can blame only oneself. Even
the struggle for equal opportunity has
unintentionally had this consequence
to the extent that it supports the notion
that, apart from overt sexual or racist
discrimination, the econOmic market-
place is fair and what one achieves
therein is a re?ection of individual
merit.

Besides raising consciousness about
this dynamic of self?blaming, a pro-
gressive profamily movement would
also help people become aware of
the ways they undermine the pos-
sibility of having loving, committed
relationships?by sexist assumptions
and behaviorgby parents? invalidating
children?s experience, by family mem-
bers? being emotionally phony in order
to preserve family stability, and by other
emotionally destructive family routines.
These dynamics are likely to appear in
any institution in which people raised
in this society seek emotional intimacy,
as can be attested to by the experience
of those in alternative families and
those who sought to build communes
in the 19605. It is silly to blame ?the
family? for these dynamics; it is more
sensible to incorporate techniques for
overcoming these dynamics as part of
a progressive profamily program.

 

 

 

 

be right has been able to Speak to

the pain people feel about the fail-
ure of their family lives by talking ab0ut
the external forces that it says undermine
family: gays, feminism, and individual
rights. The right has been able to get
away with this position only because
liberals and the left have ignored the
family issue, or, worse, like Lemisch,
have spoken about family life as though
it were fundamentally reactionary, as
though what people want from fam-
ily life is the opportunity to sup-
port hierarchy and patriarchy. The left
could make major advances in popular
consciousness if it were to help people
see that hierarchy and patriarchy?
manifested in the way work is orga-
nized, the competitive marketplace, and
the desrructive legacy of sexisr practices
and in fact major
obstacles to meaningful family life. To
get that message across, the left should
nor start by telling people that what
they want is bad or evil. It isn?t. A
progressive profamily program is the
exact opposite of a glori?cation of the
current realities of family life or a
barking back to a mythical past in
which families supposedly did better.

ideas about the family are
clear in the magazine. For Lemisch to
mischaracterize them requires either a
willful desire to misrepresent our views
or a spotty reading of our articles. Con-
sider some of the speci?cs connected
to our vision of profamily legislation:
paid maternity and paternity leaves; a
well-funded nationwide network of
community-controlled child-care cen-
ters, as well as governmental funding
of training programs for child?care
workers; supplemental parental ?nan-
cial support during the first seven years
of a child?s life; a governmental man-
date to ensure that workplaces provide
additional sick days for children?s ill-
nesses and extra leniency when tardi-
ness can be shown to be related to
family health emergencies. Can anyone
with the least familiarity with American
society say that this is a position of
?social conservatism??

3. Judaism. has been in the
forefront of critiquing sexist practices
within Judaism and in encouraging and
supporting the development of Jewish
feminism. But to reduce the entirety of
Judaism to its patriarchal or Oppressive
aspects re?ects a fundamental lack of
familiarity with Jewish texts. To do so
is to offer an interpretation of Judaism

in?uenced more by traditional Chris-
tian slander than by a careful under-
standing of 2,500 years of midrashic
interpretation.

It?s not that there is no basis for a
critique of Judaism, but rather that
those of us at nits? who are wrestling
with the Jewish tradition have incor-
porated that critique. Yet, in doing so,
we insist on a more complicated and
less rejecting interpretation of our long
historical tradition?an understanding
that places in historical context the
various distortions that have emerged
from that tradition. This, of course, is
what leftists like Lemisch try to do
with (/98er own problematic Madman,
the twentieth-century history of leftist
barbarism. They try to explain the
context for the tens of millions of
people murdered in the name of social-
ism or communism in the Soviet Union,
China, and Eastern Europe; the anti~
Semitism that manifested itself not only
in the writings of Karl Marx but in the
actual practice of the Communist move-
ment in the past seventy years; and the
sexism and homophobia that have been
a recurrent theme in those societies
where leftist regimes have taken power.
People like Lemisch say that this op?
pression should not be given too much
weight, that there are underlying liber-
atory themes in the left tradition that
can be separated from the actual his-
t0rical distortions, and that a new and
better politics can be built around these
themes. Yet when Tritium makes simi-
lar arguments about Judaism, Lemisch
wants to place us in the same category
as every reactionary that ever misused
our tradition.

mam: does not argue that every?
one must become religiousmours is
not a missionary magazine. \X?hal we
do argue, however, is that there are
important truths and insights within
the Jewish tradition from which secular
Jews and non-Jews can learn and draw
inspiration and guidance. Some of us
at Tikkrm are strongly secular; some
of us are committed to a religious
vision. The majority of our board is
composed of secular Jews, but it also
has representatives from every major
approach to Jewish spirituality?from
feminist perspectives, gay and lesbian
perspectives, bemoan-style Judaism,
Reform, Reconsrrucrionist, Conserva-
tive, and Orthodox Judaism. While
alternative approaches to these ques-
tions are often hotly debated in Tl?kkmr,

and secular voices often aggressively
critique religious perspectives, we seek
to rcjecr the attitude that dominates
so much of the secular left?that any-
one with a religious sensibility must
constantly be on the defensive against
the kind of knee-jerk, know-norhing,
antireligious prejudices that Lemisch?s
article exempli?es.

Yet no set of arguments can ever ade-
quately offset the damage that Lemisch
manages to cause by the tone and
manner of his attack?the way it forces
?the other" (in this case us) into a
defensive posture so that we are re-
quired to prove that we are ?politically
correcr.? Lemisch provides a classic
example of what destroyed the New
Left of the 19605. The verbal brutality
of the left in the late 19605 was directed
at every single person; every individual
had to ?prove? that they had adequately
transcended their elitism, their racism,
their sexism, their self-involvement,
their loyalty to anything that might be
shown to be inadequately revolutionary
(their country, their people, their family,
their profession, their religion, their
friends). Those leftists who weren?t
baiting each other for not ?picking
up the gun? with the Black Panthers
or joining the Weathermen in revolu-
tionary violence were baiting each other
for not being adequately revolutionary
on ?the social issues.?

Perhaps Lemisch?s insistence on the
fundamentally reactionary nature of
the family will remind our readers of
the days when his type of leftist insisted
that monogamy was slavery, marriage
a revolutionary sin, and heterosexual
coupling fundamentally oppressive to
gays and lesbians. In the course of a
very few years (1969?1973), these left-
i5ts managed to drive away the millions
of people who were initially attracted
to the liberatory ideals of a progressive
politics. The left reverted to a tiny
group of ideologues, happily distanced
from the popularity the movement
once enjoyed, embracing isolation and
powerlessness as the badge of moral
purity. As a result, the right has man-
aged to undermine the credibility of
all liberals,_feminists, and social change
movements. One important reason that
millions of Americans agree with the
left on specific but still
don?t trust it to govern is that they
suspect that all liberals and progressives
secretly hold them and their life choices
(particularly their choice to try to build

CURRENT DEBATE 113

a family and make a living in imperfect
circumstances) in the same kind of
contempt that Lemisch makes no effort
to hide.

For these very reasons, it is politically
important for liberals and progressives
to dissociate themselves from the style
ofpolitics represented by Lemisch and
others like him. Tritium wants no part in
Lemisch?s kind of left. We have sought
[so far unsuccessfully) to find a good
word or phrase for our politicsa-a
politics that emphasizes and validates
the need of all people for mutual
recognition and confirmation, love and
ethically centered community; a politics

 

that focuses its critique of the estab-
lished order on the ways that this order
frustrates the ful?llment of these needs;
a politics that emphasizes compassion
and caring; a politics that addresses our
respOnsibility to preserve and protect
our physical envirOnment while simul-
taneously standing in awe and wonder
at its grandeur; a politics that insists
on the sanctity of human beings and the
primacy of individual freedoms and
human rights; a politics that repudiates
the legacy of patriarchy and sexist prac?
tices; a politics that opposes economic
exploitation; a politics that seeks to
reconstruct the world of work so that

it promotes the development of our
highest human capacities; and a politics
that advocates a radical reconstruction
and democratization of our economic
and political sysrems based on prin-
ciples that help to maximize our shared
humanity, deveIOp our ethical sensi-
tivities, and undermine the coercive
power of entrenched elites. This is
hardly a conservative politicswbut if
it does not ?t as part of the left, so
much the worse for such a left. All the
more reason why we who seek to heal,
repair, and transform the world need
to build a very different kind of social
change movement. l3

 

LETTERS
(Continued from p. 7)

analyze bad at all but
instead should see its frequent success
as another expression of people?s desire
for connectedness. But thenbad therapists?) It was
not my intention, nor am I (or anyone
else) able, to propose some radically
new vision ofhow to combine 
relief, restructuring, and
social change.

As for Rabbi Stone?s claim that
ACAs don?t blame their ?dysfunctional
families? or emphasize ?taking care of
themselves first," I can only say that
their books explicitly say these things
over and over, and the dozens of
friends, students, and patients that
I?ve talked to who are involved in
the movement say likewise. And the
?society,? within which they aim to
funcrion better, increasingly celebrates
these very qualities.

SOVIET JEWRY

To the Editor:

Robert Cullen has written a compel-
ling argument for altering American
policy on Soviet emigration. He has
noted some of the recent changes that
have resulted in the USSR as a result
of penetrated and glamost, including
those relating to travel and emigration,
and he argues in favor of a "kinder and
gentler? approach toward the Soviet
Union as a reward for these changes.
Essentially, the soft approach should
consist of a more liberal trade policy
and a benevolent attitude that would
be expressed by a change in refugee

114 TIKKUN VOL. 4, NO. 3

status for Soviet Jews because there is
no longer a unilateral presumption of
persecution and suffering in the way
that there is in Central America and
Southeast Asia. To be sure, any and
all changes in the Soviet Union should
be acknowledged and even rewarded
by the US. and theJewish community.
To imply, however, that the Iron Curtain
is on the verge of crumbling seems a
bit farfetched.

More important, Cullen has errone-
ously assumed that the question of
how the US. should respond to change
in the USSR is identical to the ques-
tion of how the Jewish community
should respond. He has based his as
sumption on the notion that ?Jackson-
Vanik? has the same meaning for the
US. as it has for theJewish community.
For the U.S., Jackson-Vanik is a tactic
within a larger geopolitical framework
of East-West relationships. For the
Jewish community, trade policy and
Jackson-Vanik serve as a convenient and
substantive tool in its arsenal of po-
litical leverage to liberate Soviet Jews.

The plight of Soviet Jewry is more
than a human rights issue for theJewish
community. The effort to liberate Soviet
Jews is a ?redemptive? movement. The
mission, to paraphrase an eminent
Jewish communal leader, is to save a
signi?cant community from going down
the memory hole of history and to enacr
the vital mitzvah of the redemption of
captives. Twentieth-century Jewry has
witnessed the devastation of one-third
of the world?s Jewish population in the
Holocaust during World War II. It has
seen Jews die defending the newly
created State of Israel, and there is
great fear that more Jews will be lost
to assimilation and, in the case of the

Soviet Union, cultural genocide. The
backdrop of one thousand years of
popular, state-sanctioned anti-Semitism
coupled with the reality of a seventy-
year spiritual wasteland underlies the
fundamental urgency of the movement
to free Soviet Jews.

Until the Yom Kippur War in 1973,
more than 90 percent of the Jews who
emigrated from the USSR went to
Israel. Each year since then, greater
numbers have chosen to go to countries
other than Israel, mainly the US. Now
more than 90 percent choose the US.
It seems ckutzpadi? for American Jews
to demand that others do what they
won't do (move to Israel) and as a
consequence restrict the free movement
of Soviet Jews . It is a sad commentary
if the American Jewish community be-
lieves that Soviet Jews will be?105t? to
the Jewish community if they come to
America just because we offer greater
economic opportunity and perhaps a
more peaceful existence. We do believe
that every effort should be made to en-
courage alz'ya/J, but if Soviet Jews would
rather come to America, we should
not consider it a ?loss? to the Jewish
people. The fact of the matter is that
Soviet Jews are choosing America and
may choose not to leave the USSR
if that choice is all but eliminated.
The American Jewish community must
rise to the challenge of absorption
and respond. Perhaps this new influx
will spur our community toward self-
examination so that we can not only
find a solution to help these new immi-
grants identify, but also create innova-
tive ways to strengthen our own Jewish
identities. Soviet Jewish emigration
could be for us what Eastern European
Jewish emigration was for America in