Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 65, No. 14, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 7, 2011 Page: 5 of 32
thirty two pages : ill.View a full description of this newspaper.
Extracted Text
The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
TEXAS JEWISH POST #SINCE 1947
he blogger is
a dog
• • •
By Faye Bittker
BEERSHEBA, Israel (JTA)
— Or a lunatic, extremist or
just someone whose opin-
ion you would dismiss were
you really to know him.
Like the famous 1993
New Yorker cartoon, where
one dog explains to the other
that "On the Internet, no-
body knows you are a dog,"
we are inundated today with
information from sources
we know nothing about. So
though it is unlikely that the
blog or column that you are
reading actually was writ-
ten by a dog, it is more than
possible that it was written by
someone with a personal or
political agenda.
Over the past two decades,
the media have undergone a
massive evolution with the
introduction of new technol-
ogies. From the onset of cable
TV with its nonstop 24-hour
news networks, to the rise of
the Internet, we have become
inundated with an ever-in-
creasing number of "news"
sources, some more credible
than others.
For whatever reason, when
the written word appears on
the computer screen, readers
check their critical thinking
skills at the keyboard. We
teach our children to be wary
of "friends" who approach
them online, while we will-
ingly believe "facts" written
by people about whom we
know nothing.
Online bloggers have be-
come arbiters of truth. Sud-
denly these random com-
mentators, who often write
nothing more than unsub-
stantiated remarks and nearly
libelous personal observa-
tions, have access to a wide
public forum without any
context.
When I was a young edi-
tor working at The Jerusa-
lem Post, the legendary Alex
Berlyne would walk around
the newsroom repeating his
golden rule of reporting: "If
your mother says she loves
you, check it out." Confirma-
tion by a second source was
the rule, not the exception.
Journalists saw themselves
as servants of the fourth es-
tate committed to unraveling
the truth and defending the
greater public good.
No such standards apply
to bloggers or, for that matter,
columnists now appearing in
your daily paper. Once seg-
regated onto pages clearly la-
beled as opinion, these essays
have become an inexpensive
source of page filler and page
views. News sites link to a
range of writers under the
banner that all opinions are
equal without vetting creden-
tials. And we, as consumers,
rarely check the background
of the writer, trusting that
someone has done the leg-
work. But that simply isn't so.
Recent events around the
world remind us once again
that in the open marketplace
of ideas, the loudest voices
are usually those of the most
extreme points of view. Talk
radio has become talk-back
Internet, where one link sim-
ply leads to another. Without
the moderating influence of
editorial accountability, the
blogosphere has become a
place of black and white, with
no room for the gray tones of
a more complex reality.
This is particularly true in
Israel, where bloggers are tak-
ing a cue from the country's
politicians and turning up
the volume of the debate. La-
bels such as anti-Zionist and
fascist are the new grenades
being tossed around in a bat-
tle of words that has turned
cyberspace into a very dan-
gerous place. More often than
not, it turns out that those at
the forefront of the battle are
motivated by their own agen-
da, positioning extreme ide-
ologies as an objective reality.
Scratch a blogger behind the
ears and you may discover his
political affiliations are not
what you expected.
This is where we as con-
sumers have to learn to be
wary. We have to sniff out
the reliable commentators,
research our sources carefully
and become our own investi-
gative journalists.
So the next time you read
a blog or column citing seem-
ingly shocking "facts," check
out the source. You may just
find that the writer's name is
Rover.
Faye Bittker is a former journalist who
now works in media relations at an
Israeli university.
OPINION April 7,2011
What the Civil War meant for
American Jews, then and now
By Jonathan D.
Sarna
WALTHAM, Mass. (The Forward) —
The 150 th anniversary of the Civil War
is upon us. April 12 is the anniversary
of the firing on Fort Sumter, the war's
opening shot. From then, through the
sesquicentennial anniversary on April
9, 2015 of Robert E. Lee's
surrender at Appomattox
Court House and five days
later of Abraham Lincoln's
assassination, every major
event in the "ordeal of the
union" seems likely to be
recounted, re-enacted, re-
analyzed and, likely as not,
verbally re-fought.
The American Jewish
community, meanwhile, has
expressed little interest in
these commemorations. A
few books, a play, a film and a forth-
coming scholarly conference form the
totality of the Jewish contribution to
the sesquicentennial. When I suggested
a talk on the Civil War and the Jews in
one setting, the organizers questioned
the relevance of the topic. Only a small
minority of Jews, they observed, boast
ancestors who participated in the Civil
War. By the time most Jewish immi-
grants to America arrived, the war was
but a distant memory.
Fifty years ago, for the Civil War
centennial, the level of interest within
the Jewish community seemed notice-
ably higher. New York's Jewish Mu-
seum mounted a grand exhibit titled
"The American Jew in the Civil War."
Fully 260 photographs, documents
and objects appeared in the multi-
gallery show. It was the largest display
of Jewish Civil War memorabilia ever
assembled.
In the exhibit's catalog, the late
Bertram Korn, the foremost expert
on American Jewry and the Civil War,
examined "the major meaning of the
Civil War for American Jews." He list-
ed five key themes:
•The opportunity accorded Jews
to fight as equal citizens and to rise
through the ranks, something not
granted them by most of the world's
great armies at that time.
•Jews' "total identification with
their neighbors" — Northern Jews
with the North and Southern Jews
with the South. Jews demonstrated
their loyalty and patriotism during the
Civil War, and then boasted of it for
many years afterward.
•Jews' tenaciousness in coura-
geously fighting for their rights. Soon
after the war began, they organized
to correct legislation restricting the
military chaplaincy to "regularly or-
dained ministers of some Christian
denomination." In December 1862,
they rushed to the White House to
fight Ulysses S. Grant's notorious Gen-
eral Orders No. 11 expelling "Jews as a
class" from his war zone. In both cases
they won empowering victories.
•The forthright repudiation of anti-
Semitism by Abraham Lincoln, who
overturned Grant's order ("To
condemn a class is, to say the
least, to wrong the good with
the bad," Lincoln declared. "I
do not like to hear a class or
nationality condemned on ac-
count of a few sinners."). In
the Confederacy, Jefferson Da-
vis likewise repudiated anti-
Semitism and worked closely
with Judah Benjamin, his Jew-
ish and much-maligned secre-
tary of state.
•The acceptance by the
president and Congress of the princi-
ple of Jewish equality. Notwithstand-
ing considerable wartime anti-Sem-
itism, Jews achieved equal status on
the battlefield, and Jewish chaplains
won the right to serve alongside their
Christian counterparts.
A sixth and somewhat uglier
theme, largely overlooked in the cat-
alog, should now be added to this
list: complicity with slavery. Korn, a
pioneering historian who elsewhere
penned an essay on the topic of "Jews
and Negro Slavery in the Old South,"
demonstrated that Jews were in no way
exceptional when it came to the pecu-
liar institution.
"Any Jew who could afford to own
slaves and had need for their services,"
he wrote, "would do so."
In the North, meanwhile, Jews di-
vided over the question of slavery.
Some advocated abolition; others
sought peace above all else, even if that
meant acquiescing to Southern slav-
ery. Many Jews simply remained silent.
To be sure, Jews formed far less than
1 percent of the national population,
and their contribution to the overall
institution of slavery was negligible.
Still, notwithstanding their ancestors'
slavery in Egypt and their own cel-
ebration of freedom on Passover, Jews
basically followed in the ways of their
neighbors when it came to slavery. As a
group they did not oppose it.
All of this is worth recalling as ses-
quicentennial commemorations of the
Civil War multiply. Far from being
irrelevant to contemporary Jews, the
anniversary provides a welcome op-
portunity to learn from our past, to
recall the evolving relationship of Jews
to America and to remember that fol-
lowing in the ways of our neighbors
can sometimes lead us astray.
Jonathan D. Sarna is the Joseph H. and Belle R. Braun
Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis
University and chief historian of the National Muse-
um of American Jewish History. He is the co-editor,
with Adam Mendelsohn, of "Jews and the Civil War:
A Reader" (NYU Press, 2010).
Moto TIP
It's easy to renew your ■ ■
subscription online!
Click and 'Keneio
TODAY! www.tjpnews.com
Texas Jewish Post | 7920 Belt Line Rd.,Suite 680, Dallas,TX 75254
972-458-7283
■ I T x«J«wuh Poll I Stnct 1947
In My Mind's I News Shalom Irom the Shabbafl
I TEXAS JEWISH POST 0 SINCE 1947
JCC'S BAGEL RUN DRAWS DOZENS
Click and 'fenetd
Upcoming Pages
Here’s what’s next.
Search Inside
This issue can be searched. Note: Results may vary based on the legibility of text within the document.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.
Citing and Sharing
Basic information for referencing this web page. We also provide extended guidance on usage rights, references, copying or embedding.
Reference the current page of this Newspaper.
Wisch-Ray, Sharon. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 65, No. 14, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 7, 2011, newspaper, April 7, 2011; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth188339/m1/5/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .