Jewish Post, Indianapolis, Marion County, 3 January 2003 — Page 19

January 1. 2003 NAT 15

letters FREEDOM OF THE PRESS — The Post and Opinion encourages readers to send letters. All letters to the editor should be addressed to The Jewish Post and Opinion, 238 S. Meridian St., Suite 502, Indianapolis, IN 46225, or by e-mail: [email protected].

Peck should speak her mind Dear Rabbi Haim. First of all: Calm down. The Random House College Dictionary defines vermin as "objectionable or obnoxious persons," hardly an egregious word for such sub-human scum. People who danced in the streets when they heard of "9/11." People who strap on bombs so as to kill Jews. People who use infants as targets. So-called soldiers who hide behind their women and children when fighting Israelis. And so forth and so forth. Save your misplaced tears. Read up on the Yishuv; they were killing Jews long before they went to their camps. Did you also cry for those "poor" hateful Nazis or Communists who slaughtered our people? Ms. Peck can, and should, speak her mind (as should you), but don't you dare imply that your pious moralizing speaks for me or the millions of other Jews who understand that these evil people want to kill us. They're not my friends. I do not love them. Peace will come when they finally realize that we Jews are eternal, and we will kill them first. Sylven Schaffer, MD, DDS San Diego

No child of polydoxy Dear editor, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article by Rabbi Allen Podet about me and Humanistic Judaism. But there is one glaring historical error. Rabbi Podet assumes that I was a disciple of Rabbi Alvin Reines and that Humanistic Judaism is a child of "polydoxy." That claim is false. Alvin Reines was not my teacher. He was my contemporary as a student at Hebrew Union College. When I first met him, he had not developed his polydox theology. Humanistic Judaism is not polydoxy nor is it descended from polydoxy. When Humanistic Judaism began in 1963, Reines had strong objections to what we were doing. Polydoxy is based on the notion that the heart of Judaism is the use of the word God.

What promotes Jewish unity and pluralism is that every Jew has the right to define this word in any way he or she wants. In a theological polydox community there is no shared ideology, only a shared use of an historic word. Humanistic Judaism is non-theistic and does not use theistic vocabulary. It does not regard the use of the word God as essential to Jewish identity. Nor does it believe that the word is legitimately equivocal, open to any interpretation. The word God is an ordinary word in the English language, a person word with a fairly clear ordinary meaning. For most English speakers it refers to a conscious being of enormous power who manages the world. Changing the meaning of ordinary words undermines communication and is ethically inappropriate. As a Humanistic Jew, I have no need to reserve the word God. I am much more interested in the intellectual abilities of Reines. He was certainly no progenitor of Humanistic Judaism. Perhaps Rabbi Podet should have tried Einstein, Freud, and the philosophers of secular Zionism. Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine Society for Humanistic Judaism 28611 W. Twelve Mile Rd. Farmington Hills, MI 48334

Whom did Moses marry? Dear editor. In your issue of Dec. 11 Rabbi Barry Block writes that he cannot perform a wedding if one of the couple is not Jewish, because the ceremony must be according to the laws of Moses and Israel. I have a question for my colleague: Whom did Moses marry? We've been reading at services about Joseph, who is called a tzaddik, a righteous man in our tradition. Whom did Joseph marry? In our faith we salute King Solomon because of his wisdom. Whom did Solomon marry? Rabbi Samuel M. Silver Boca Raton

Podet Continued from page 5 sent us a lengthy statement of explanation of the Red Cross position, clarifying that the organization was bound by rules, like anyone else, and certain of its protocols under which it was compelled to operate presented problems. I took this document to the class and wondered if another debate was to be forthcoming. It was not to be. Instead, a general discussion ensued, again with arguments and counter-arguments. The upshot was that the class resolved that the Red Cross was hiding behind rules of its own creation, and the motivation for its intransigence was clearly not the existence of its own rulebook but rather a deep-seated bigotry on the part of the Red Cross. I duly sent this to Geneva, along with the comment that a substantial number of these students were education majors, people who would be training the children of tomorrow (well, of today by now). I am still waiting for a reply. Just recently I had a birthday. I got from a charming and thoughtful lady (in the full sense) a card indicating that she and her husband had made a generous donation to the American Red Magen David for Israel in honor of my birthday. When I called to thank her, she told me that her motivation had been her awareness of the American Red Cross's anti-Semitic stance. Her action is something others might consider. For many years now, the Navy and other U.S. Government agencies have subsidized the Red Cross for the undeniably serviceable work they—among others—do. However, a racist organization does not deserve the recognition or support of any of us. George Washington said that this Government is to give to bigotry no sanction. If we believe that his words should be taken seriously, then we, as a nation and individually, have no business supporting bigotry in any way. Until the Red Cross straightens out its act, other and worthier causes should have prior call on our limited resources. Rabbi Podet welcomes reader comments at: [email protected].

Neusner Continued from page 74 capitulate. Hertzberg was deeply involved in the life of American synagogues, and he built two of them, one in Nashville, one in Englewood. He was involved in the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 1960s. He participated in the great events of the creation of the State of Israel. He served as a military chaplain in Cold War Britain. He pursued scholarship and held visiting professorships. He was a principal in the creation of the Encyclopaedia Judaica, one of the greatest achievements of Israeli scholarship in its great age, now over. He was involved in politics in opposition to the Vietnam War. He held high office in the American Jewish Congress and the World Jewish Congress, the World Zionist Organization, the Synagogue Council of America, and other instrumentalities of American and world Jewry and the State of Israel. He was a principal in the rapprochement of the Roman Catholic Church with world Jewry and with Judaism. He held a regular professorship as a full-time faculty member. He knew pretty much everybody who was anybody in organized Judaism and in Jewish politics. And apart from the offices he held, he participated in the great events of the past half-century and more, rarely as a by-stander, always as what

we call nowadays an "activist." He also wrote two enduring works of historical scholarship, The Zionist Idea and The French Enlightenment and the jews. His book on American Jewry made a deep mark as well. These works will endure. Most scholars in full-time professorships are happv to write one, and few do that much, and none, not even Salo Baron, matched his career in Jewish cultural politics. But he is an intellectual, and the engagement of the activist both was animated by and also precipitated reflection and astute criticism. And that is why his memoir bears comparison with The Education of Henry Adams. For like Adams, he makes of his life an occasion for reflection on great issues, enduring dilemmas, those of culture, not merely of politics, theology, not only sociology. As a result, if we had no history of American Judaism in the 20th century but only Hertzberg's memoir, we could reconstruct from the pages of that memoir pretty much everything important that shaped the future — and understand much that conventional histories would not tell us. Specifically, Hertzberg's narrative reveals the reason why. Jacob Neusner is Research Professor of Religion and Theology at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

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