The Forward

September 11, 1998

'I'm Going to Kill You, Cracker,' And Other Greetings of the Day

Midway through the so-called Million Youth March, a teenager, perhaps 15 years of age, brushed by me on his way to the stage. I was standing near the densely packed corner of 119th Street and Lenox Avenue, surrounded by members of the Assata Shakur Freedom Fighters, the Socialist Workers Party, the Umoja Nation, along with a seller of disposable cameras, a lone Garveyite and my friend Tamar Jacoby, the author of the recently published "Someone Else's House," which argues for the revival of the integrationist idea.

The 15-year-old was wearing a T-shirt that featured a photograph of Mayor Giuliani, as well as a text message, which I could not make out. I asked him what the shirt said. He responded: "He's a cracker. He's killing all of us. And we're going to kill you too, you white cracker expletive."
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June 5, 1998

Farrakhan the Chasid

After spending a delightful afternoon with Minister Louis Farrakhan in his Chicago home, I can report that the leader of the Nation of Islam is actually a chasid of the Satmar sect. Or so he suggests. I consider this a scoop.

We were sitting at his immense dining room table, along with his chief of staff, Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad, who, unlike his boss, doesn't believe that it is worth the Nation of Islam's while to sit down with Jewish journalists. It's not that he's anti-Semitic, you see, it's just that Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League will eventually get to me and order my opinions trimmed to conform to those of the ADL.
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April 17, 1998

Time to Name Names

Several years ago, at one of the money-wasting general assemblies the Jewish federations fete themselves with, Malcolm Hoenlein, the major American Jew who runs the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spotted me in a hallway and called me over for a huddle. It turned out that Mr. Hoenlein had a warning for me.
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March 13, 1998

The Relevancy Standard

There are only two issues of overwhelming importance facing the American Jewish community today: the survival of Israel in the face of Iranian and Iraqi nuclear, biological and chemical terror, and the survival of the American Jewish community itself, in the face of intermarriage, assimilation and general ennui. The rest, as the saying goes, is commentary. Or something even less than that.
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February 27, 1998

Latvia's Empty Gesture

Janis Lipke lived and died in a squalid and freezing hut by a river in Riga, Latvia. He and his wife, Johanna, lived there without money and without honor. Many of their countrymen saw them as traitors. When I met the Lipkes in their hut in the winter of 1986, there were even rumors afoot in Riga that they were part-Jewish. How else to explain their inexplicable behavior during World War II, when they rescued Jews from the Riga Ghetto, a ghetto maintained -- and then liquidated -- with the enthusiastic help of the Latvian people?
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January 23, 1998

Kings (and Queens) of Denial

The current state of denial in Jerusalem, New York and Washington:

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: The denier's denier, refusing to recognize that handing over Hebron, which betrayed his father's vision of a Greater Israel, left him looking like a man without principles who might as well just give Yasser Arafat the rest of what he wants.

THE LIKUD PARTY: Israel's ruling party has not yet realized that, with the Netanyahu era over, Yitzhak Mordechai should be anointed the new Likud leader. Mr. Mordechai, who, with David Levy and Avigdor Kahalani, leads Israel's sensible Sephardi center, is the best hope for actual progress in the peace process, and his accession would block the rise of Ehud Olmert, Irving Moscowitz's real estate partner and an all-around mamzer, which he would take as a compliment.
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December 26, 1997

The Schweitzenbasheringen Problem

It is now time to remember a fundamental fact in the never-ending controversy over Swiss bank accounts and Nazi gold: It isn't all that important.

This might be an inopportune moment to be saying this -- we (by "we" I mean we Jews and our King, H.R.H. Edgar of Seagram's) have got the Alpine skinflints right where we want them, which is...I don't know where, exactly.
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December 12, 1997

Syrian Spy Story Finds Its Heroes

WASHINGTON -- Major General Moshe Ya'alon, the chief of the military intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Forces, paid last week a hushed-up visit to the Virginia side of the Potomac River. There, he shared with his friends at the Pentagon and CIA the rather distressing news that much of the inside intelligence on Syria that Israel had supplied to the Americans over the past several years has been -- how to put this diplomatically? -- rendered inoperative by recent events.

General Ya'alon was in America on a damage-control mission, but the damage was not of his own making. The damage was done by the Mossad, the Institute for Intelligence and Special Tasks, whose special task, it has recently seemed, is to endanger the State of Israel.
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November 7, 1997

Births of a Nation

We were an hour into a discussion about the war in Rwanda and the future of Africa when the President of Uganda, the dome-headed capitalist Yoweri Museveni, invited me to sit with him under an acacia tree and talk cow-talk. Mr. Museveni is the owner of a stupendous herd of Ankole cattle, and in the course of conversation I couldn't help but mention my own kibbutz-acquired calf-birthing skills -- one of the only real practical skills this Diaspora Jew possesses.

The mention of kibbutz gave Mr. Museveni pause, and he narrowed his already narrow eyes and asked: "Are you Jewish?" It is my policy never to deny my Jewishness except to tefillin-bearing pubescent Lubavitchers and so I answered yes, even though I worried about the arc of this conversation: Mr. Museveni knew me as a representative of The New York Times Magazine, and Third World intellectuals believe certain things about the leanings of The New York Times.
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June 28, 1996

The Latest Uganda Plan

Weeds push through the cracked tarmac at the old Entebbe airport, where, 20 years ago this July 4, a Ugandan soldier fired the shot that launched Benjamin Netanyahu's campaign to be prime minister of Israel.

I try to guess the spot where his brother, Jonathan, fell during the Israeli raid on this airport; there are, of course, no markers. The airport is in ruins, closed to visitors and fenced off from the new airport and the new Uganda.
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June 14, 1996

'Swimtime for Hitler' -- A Synchronized Satire

ATLANTA, JULY 20, 1996 (Associated Press) -- Emotions ran high at poolside today during the finals of the synchronized swimming event, as the four remaining teams in this year's competition, dubbed "Mikvahfest '96" by Olympic organizers, tried to outdo each other in their aquatic interpretations of post-exile Jewish history.

But the competition was overshadowed at times by the notable absence of the Israeli team, which was eliminated in the first round of competition by what was being termed a "cultural inability to synchronize."
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February 23, 1996

Yearning for the Days of Abraham Bayer

In my hands is a document so mind-numbing in its irrelevance that only the apparatchiks of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council could have produced it. It makes me yearn for the days of Abraham Bayer, but more about that in a minute.

The 51-page document contains the "Joint Program Plan Drafts for the 1996 Plenum," and is written in a language related to English. I have forced my way through this document in order to understand what NJCRAC does. This is an important question because NJCRAC, under the guidance of its executive vice chairman, Lawrence Rubin, is trying to expand beyond its original mandate -- which no Jew I've spoken to understands exactly -- and become an independent presence on the Jewish political scene, as a counterpart to the mainstream defense agencies, the ADL and the AJCs.
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March 10, 1995

Rev. Robertson Under Fire For Links to 'Jews for Jesus'

NEW YORK -- Overlooked in the controversy surrounding allegations that the evangelist Pat Robertson traffics in anti-Jewish conspiracy theories is another accusation -- that the Rev. Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition, is an active supporter of groups that are targeting Jews for conversion to Christianity.

These groups, Christian missionary organizations that operate under names including Jews for Jesus and the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations, are disliked by mainstream Jewry because they target Jews in particular for conversion to Christianity, evoking memories of past Christian attempts to destroy Judaism through conversion.
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March 3, 1995

New Book Twists 'The Sacred Chain'

NEW YORK -- Racism is a "central doctrine" of traditional Judaism. Jewish Hollywood big shots push vulgar depictions of sex and violence on a country rooted in puritanism. "Fat and brassy" Jewish women are leaving their "designer living rooms" for the upper reaches of publishing. Jewish financiers were responsible for junk bonds. Anti-Semitism driven by class resentment is based in part on empirical truths, not just prejudice. Israelis are "shrewd" but ungenerous. Jewish billionaires regularly "jettison" their Jewish spouses for Gentile trophy wives.

Had enough?
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November 18, 1994

Bayer, Freedom Fighter, Dies

NEW YORK -- Abraham Bayer, a tenacious fighter for Jewish freedom, died last week at the age of 62 after a long battle with cancer.

Bayer figured prominently in all the great struggles of post-Holocaust world Jewry -- he was a pioneer in the movements to free the Jews of the Soviet Union and Ethiopia and made numerous clandestine trips to both countries. He was among the first to push the American Jewish community to embrace the survivors of the Holocaust, and his advocacy led to the building of the U.S. Holocaust Museum.
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June 24, 1994

Second Schneerson Will Boding Ill for Top Aides

NEW YORK -- In what may prove to be a devastating blow to the fortunes of two of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe's closest aides, a second, secret will left by the Rebbe has emerged that names a previously obscure rabbi as the top administrator of the Lubavitch movement.

There's just one problem -- for reasons still unclear, the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, never signed the will, a copy of which was obtained by the Forward. Even though the Rebbe didn't sign the 1988 document, any writings believed to come from the Rebbe himself are sure to be taken seriously by his thousands of followers, Crown Heights rabbis say.
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June 17, 1994

Battle Among Lubavitch Erupts Over Rebbe's Will

NEW YORK -- Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the chauffeur-turned-Richelieu of the court of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, appears to be doing a masterful job of outmaneuvering his rivals as he asserts day-to-day control of his late master's empire -- and cracks down on Lubavitch's still-potent Messianic faction.

Less than 72 hours after the death of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the streets of Crown Heights were buzzing with talk of the Rebbe's will, which was read Tuesday night to a crowd of thousands of Chasidim at Lubavitcher headquarters. The talk centered not so much on the will itself, but on Rabbi Krinsky, the man designated by the Rebbe as executor of his estate, and on the rabbis who witnessed its 1988 signing -- most importantly, Rabbi Leib Groner, Rabbi Krinsky's rival in the Rebbe's fractured secretariat. Chasidim see the Rebbe's deft hand at work in the will's construction: By having Rabbi Groner as witness, Lubavitcher insiders say, the Rebbe forestalled any challenge to Rabbi Krinsky's bona fides as executor.
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April 15, 1994

Chicago Censors Talmud

If Graydon Snyder only knew that he would be convicted of sexual harassment for teaching the Talmud, he might have kept his mouth shut.

But Mr. Snyder, a Bible professor at the United Church of Christ's Chicago Theological Seminary, could not have foreseen the dangers that lurk in talmudic discourse, and he now stands at the center of perhaps the most bizarre and troubling political-correctness case yet.

In a graduate-level Gospels class two years ago, Mr. Snyder told a story from the Talmud's Baba Kama tractate, a book that covers tort law. Mr. Snyder says the story, which contains one of the Talmud's more famous and challenging hypotheticals, helps his students understand the differences between Jewish and Christian notions of sin.
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April 1, 1994

Rangel Offers Olive Branch to ADL's Foxman

NEW YORK -- Charles Rangel, the Harlem congressman whose fence-sitting in the Rev. Louis Farrakhan imbroglio upset many in the Jewish community -- including some of his backers -- is expressing regret for making statements critical of the Anti-Defamation League.

Mr. Rangel had a public falling out with Abraham Foxman, the national director of the ADL, after the ADL set off a national controversy by printing in a New York Times advertisement vitriolic anti-Jewish remarks made by a Nation of Islam spokesman, Khalid Abdul Muhammad. Mr. Rangel publicly excoriated the Jewish group and accused Mr. Foxman of placing the advertisement to scare up donations. Mr. Rangel could not be reached for comment this week; Mr. Foxman said in an interview only that "it takes a big man to accept that he may have made a mistake and then to move forward from there."
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March 25, 1994

Bingo! One Man's Battle to Buy Up Jerusalem

NEW YORK -- Many men have conquered Jerusalem -- Saladin, Allenby, Dayan -- but Irving Moskowitz is the first to defend his campaign in the language of the American civil rights movement -- and the first to finance his conquest in part by operating a bingo parlor.

A physician and real estate developer whose charitable foundation owns one of California's largest bingo operations, Dr. Moskowitz is emerging as the linchpin of the increasingly desperate effort by right-wing Jews to buy up property in Arab-dominated East Jerusalem in advance of peace talks.
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March 18, 1994

Secret Will of Rebbe Confounds Followers

NEW YORK -- The Lubavitcher Rebbe, whose followers believe him to be the Messiah, is harboring a most un-Messiah-like secret -- in 1987, sources tell the Forward, the Rebbe made out a will.

The critically ill Rebbe wrote the will after winning a nasty court battle against his nephew, who claimed ownership of a library of priceless Lubavitcher books. According to several well-placed sources, the Rebbe, chastened by the experience, reorganized his movement's legal structure and wrote the will to protect his material goods from claims he feared others would make when he died.
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When Jews Sweat Labor

BROOKLYN -- In a cold and windowless Williamsburg factory that houses the S&W Knitting Mill, the garment workers -- mostly Hispanic women -- smile as their boss, Issachar Weiss, walks through. "It's a real nice place," one employee tells a visiting reporter. But after work, when the bosses aren't around, workers tell a different story. "We want a free union," one worker says in Spanish. "But they won't let us have one."
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March 4, 1994

Kahanists Plot Weapons Deal

NEW YORK -- A top leader of the radical group Kahane Chai says his organization will redouble its efforts to smuggle weapons to its allies in the territories, now that the Israeli government is cracking down on armed settlers affiliated with the Kahane movement in the wake of the Hebron massacre.

Prime Minister Rabin, who already has some extremist leaders on the run, may in fact be running them all the way to America, the Kahane Chai leader, who asked to be referred to only as Mordechai, told the Forward. Many extremist settler leaders are, like Goldstein, American citizens.
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February 25, 1994

Farrakhan's Ally Weighs Owens Race

NEW YORK -- The challenge wasn't long in coming. In the wake of Rep. Major Owens' ringing denunciation of Rev. Louis Farrakhan, a new candidate is eyeing the Brooklyn Democrats' seat -- Eric Adams, who last month condemned Jesse Jackson for denouncing an anti-Semitic speech by one of Rev. Farrakhan's aides and who last year attacked a Puerto Rican candidate for comptroller for marrying a Jewish woman.
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January 21, 1994

Ailing Rebbe Faces Life in Bed -- and CNN

CROWN HEIGHTS, Brooklyn -- Menachem Mendel Schneerson will celebrate the 44th anniversary of his ascension to the throne of the Lubavitch Chasidic kingdom this weekend in a spare room whose blinds are tightly drawn. He will be prostrate in bed, and, barring divine intervention, he will not speak or see.
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January 14, 1994

Jews Divide Over School For Satmars

NEW YORK -- As the Clinton administration heatedly debates whether to weigh in on the Supreme Court battle over Kiryas Joel, sharp differences are emerging among Jewish groups, many of which argue that the nation's highest court should uphold a lower-court ban on the establishment of an all-Chasidic public school for handicapped children.
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