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Subject:  Hine Ma Tov Umanayim

Posted by Dr. Ursula A. Falk

Posted 11/23/00

This very meaningful song  together with the fact that I am snowbound  sent my thoughts to Jewish brotherhood.  How good and beautiful it would be if we took this concept seriously and would stand up for one another.  There are many aphorisms such as WE ARE ONE or, as the gentile community believes, JEWS HELP EACH OTHER.  Do we really?    Yes, we do have Jewish organizations which are for the express purpose of collecting money on a grand scale for such worthy causes as helping Jewish emigrees or assisting Israel in remaining strong, or establishing and maintaining holocaust memorials.  Do we, however, remain together in adversity or assist one another on a one to one basis where our deeds are not recorded in a public ledger or appear in bold letters on a display?  Unfortunately the answer is so frequently negative.

We are more than willing to give to black causes and have gone so far as to die for these.  Some examples come to mind here:  During the l960's numerous Jews traveled to the rural South to assist in helping blacks obtain and maintain their civil rights.  Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, two Jewish students from New York, were murdered in Mississippi in the cause of civil rights for African Americans.   As reward for giving their lives black leaders, such as the civil rights leader Archie Shepp, held speeches declaring that these Jewish men were merely assuaging their conscience. Black professors are notoriously anti-Jewish and Leonard Jeffries, a professor of  "black" studies  at the City College of New York teaches that Jews were responsible for the slave trade and that “Jews are dogs.”  Another of their revisionist “scholars” teaches that the holocaust never happened.  Louis Farrakhan,  one of the most notorious black antisemites, is able to spread his Jew hatred freely without suffering any consequences for his prevarications. In spite of the many false condemnations by these people we continue to help our enemies instead of helping one another.  Our helping has often been interpreted as : “All Jews are rich” and other such “laudatory” statements on the part of these recipients.

The notorious Louis Farrakhan organized the Million Man March to show the world that African – Americans are a united force and will take action when needed.  Do we Jews act in a similar fashion?  Are we united?  I must here cite a number of examples to the contrary:  Jews frequently side with antisemites against one another.  We deny even among ourselves that not all of us are wealthy; when a Jewish physician was driven out of his profession the Jewish doctors allied themselves with his antagonists and he stood alone, ostracized by his own people.  We have not stood up in a body to extricate Jonathan Pollard from his imprisonment.  Our votes count and if we had united and marched on Washington in a large group he would possibly be a free man today.  We are unfortunately too often divided and thus we fail.  This can be seen in the enormous intermarriage rate where for the most part the non-Jewish partner wins and the couple's offspring are raised as gentiles.  Many of our people attempt to hide their uniqueness by changing their names, by working on the high holidays and by hiding their identities.  Have we not learned anything from history?  In Nazi Germany it was not infrequent that the Christian spouses of Jews deserted their partners and left them to die alone.

Let us change our style, stand up for each other, consider our brethren first and unite in the face of adversity.  Only then can we truly feel good about  our uniqueness, our similarities, our differences and ourselves.

                                                                            Shalom,

                                                                                 Ursula Falk

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