In the United States, a country with a Jewish population the size of Israel?s, nothing surprises me. Recent years have produced a culture of extremes, in which it has become as fashionable for non-Jews to claim to be Jewish or at least of Jewish descent, as it is for Jews to intermarry and assimilate. Even the most tentative Jewish connections are unearthed to make a story fit the author?s intentions. Finding just one Jewish grandfather of Dylan Kleebold, albeit a ?philanthropic? one, was enough to put a covert anti-Semitic slant on the horrific shooting at the Colombine High School in Colorado some years ago.
On the other hand, many celebrities have always sought to exploit the ?Jewish? angle to their advantage. One needs only to think of Sammy Davis Jr. And there are many more.
A recent revelation came from the man who commanded the NATO forces in Serbia and was Supreme commander in Europe, General Wesley Clark. Addressing a group of Russian Yeshiva students in Brooklyn some time ago, he proudly disclosed that he is ?the oldest son of the oldest son of more than five generations of Rabbi?s from Minsk?. He was raised as a Southern Baptist and converted to Roman Catholicism in adulthood, and during an interview he claimed that according to his grandmother he is a Cohen, a member of the priestly class. Obviously, he has not learned that this privilege is derived from the paternal line. Clark, who grew up in Little Rock Arkansas, said he is proud of his family, his cultural heritage and has always found kinship with the Jewish community. Who knows, he may be preparing early to enter the next presidential race where the sizable Jewish vote is much sought after. If so, he would do well to befriend one of the syndicated newspaper columnists who are sympathetic to the Jewish cause. One much respected such journalist, - Ann Landers, - reminded her readers that it?s a free world, and you don?t have to like Jews if you don?t want to, but if you are going to be an anti-Semite, you should be consistent and turn your back on the medical advances that Jews have made possible.
She listed the vaccine for hepatitis discovered by Baruch Blumberg, the Wasserman test for Syphilis developed by August von Wasserman and the first effective drug to fight syphilis developed by Paul Ehrlich. Bela Schick developed the first diagnostic skin test for diphtheria. Insulin would not have been discovered, if Oskar Minkowski had not demonstrated the link between diabetes and the pancreas. It was Burril Crohn who identified the disease that bears his name. Alfred Hess discovered that vitamin C could cure scurvy. Casimir Funk was the first to use vitamin B to treat beriberi, an inflammation of the nerves that can cause heart failure. Jonas Salk developed the first Polio vaccine, and later Albert Sabin perfected the oral version.
Ann Landers writes that Humanitarianism requires us to offer these gifts to all the peoples of the world, regardless of race, colour or creed. So the anti-Semites who don?t want to accept these gifts can go ahead and turn them down, but ? I?m warning you?, she said, ?you aren?t going to feel so good?.
On the other hand, there is the widely syndicated Arianna Huffington, according to whom ? the spiritual patron of the disaster in Kosovo ? as she calls her, is none other than Madeleine Albright, who insisted on dragging the US into the Balkans, because of her experiences in World War II. She quotes The Cyprus Mail, who published a picture of a little boy and girl. The girl grew up to become Secretary of State and Lutko Popitch (the boy) told the paper that when Madeleine?s Jewish family fled from the Nazis in Czechoslovakia, they found refuge in his home in a Serbian village. The Russian news agency Itar-Tass reported, according to Ms. Huffington, that an unexploded NATO bomb in that village now carries the graffiti message written by local residents: ?Thank you Mrs.Albright for the gift sent to us in exchange for our hospitality?. Ms. Huffington?s venomous article implies that Madeleine Albright was obsessed with her memories of Munich. She quotes her as having said:? I saw what happened when a dictator is allowed to take over a piece of a country, and the country went down the tubes.? I ask you, what is wrong with THAT observation?
There are some observations, however, that are like a mirage in the desert, an illusion, and I now have to eat my words which I wrote in an edition of Shalom in 1994, the forerunner of The London Jewish News. It was soon after the death of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe z?l, when I predicted that without a new Rebbe, the organisation would find it difficult to continue.
Instead, the outreach programme has since then expanded at an even faster rate to the furthest outposts of civilisation where Jews can be found, and in the United States, there is hardly a City without a Chabad House from where the rabbi reaches into the darkest corners. Having seen at first hand and written about how uninterested the British Jewish establishment is in our prisoners, it was refreshing to see the Lubavitch shaliach, the emissary in the University City of Princeton NJ, where I spent some time this year, taking a great interest. He went into the New Jersey State Prison, where, with the help of a few of his congregants he performed Bar Mitzvah rites for six 35 to 55 year old men. Four are convicted of first degree murder, one of first degree kidnapping, all lifers and one serving 20 years for sexual assault. Oh yes, we are a society like any other, but Rabbi Dubov said: ?I look at their potential, not at their past, and with more spiritual direction, it helps them to be more spiritual and moral?. I hope he is right; but Kol Hakavod, all my respect goes to him anyway.
But spirituality sometimes takes strange turns. Take for instance the case of an unusual Jewish Holocaust survivor, whose home is in Philadelphia. Lena Allen-Shore survived by posing as a Roman Catholic. Nothing unusual about that, you might say; Is that not saving a life - Pikuach Nefesh? But for the past 22 years she has kept up a correspondence with Pope Paul II and has had audiences with him. ?If I survive the war? she vowed, ?I will try to promote understanding among people?. Born in Krakow, she came to Philadelphia in 1971 and today teaches art history, philosophy and Holocaust studies at Gratz College. She said: ?There is hope for everyone on earth if the leader of 900 million Catholics promotes understanding?. But does He? Personally, I, am still waiting to see that happen, but Ms. Allen-Shore, who is writing a biography of the Pope said: ?He gives me hope?. Would that it were, that her hope is not misplaced.
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Walter Bingham lives in London.