Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 11, 1982 Page: 4 of 20
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TEXAS JEWISH POST THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1980 POSTORIAL PAGE 4
postoriai:
Together on Recovery Road
While the Reagan Administration’s economic
recovery program has yet to show significant
indications of success, President Reagan says we should
keep the faith and bite the bullet, relief is on the way.
It’s surely a hard view to digest for those on the bottom
of the totem pole looking up. But within the Jewish
community, this has prompted one leading official to call
for a show of pluralism to seek a more moderate
program that adapts to the social fiber of the country.
At the same time, this would dispel any notion by those
outside the Jewish community that American Jews are
only interested in domestic social issues when they
affect Israel. This just is not true.
Albert Chernin, executive vice chairman of the
National Jewish Community Relations Advisory
Council [NJCRAC], in an “Overview” of “Basic Trends
and Priorities in Jewish Community Relations,”
presented at a four-day plenum recently in Houston,
admits that there is no quick fix to the problems of the
poor, but he expresses fear that high poverty levels and
increasing unemployment may foster hostilities
between certain groups in society. Chernin says that
social programs must be based on pragmatism, not on
the ideologies of left or right, and such programs must
be altered or dropped when they do not work or
produce adverse unintended consequences. He feels
that a considerable burden of the government’s policies
will fall on the working poor, who may subsequently fall
through the safety net for the truly needy.
Chernin predicts that the prospects for achieving
these reforms are discouraging but expects the tide to
change. He suggests that the time is ripe for the Jewish
community to define its goals, build the necessary
coalitions and increase public consciousness. He
continues, “We have to join with others in the fostering
of pluralism and a sense of common good. Pluralism is
increasingly accepted but there is not the acceptance of
the common responsibility for meeting the social and
economic needs of this nation.” Chernin concludes with
the warning that “unless we do so, the social fabric of
this nation will be threatened.”
letter
Texas Jewish Post ing here a year and a half
^ear Sir: ago, I have been active in
the Jewish Community
I am a 26 year old
single in the Jewish See Letter Page 14
Community. Since com-
r TEXAS JEWISH POST ^
Dedicated to Truth, Liberty and Justice
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The Yellow Post
BY MOSHE DECTER
Shades of Le Carre’ and
Follett!
Must the nation’s capital
— and the eyes of the world
that focus on it — suffer a
daily paper, its only one,
that stoops to yellow journ-
alism?
How far will Washington
Post editors go to sell their
newspaper?
Does the Post even care if
its headlines and lead
sentences — which create
the permanent residual am-
bience that news stories
leave with most readers —
sway public opinion with
grossly misleading impres-
sions?
Is the Post quite indif-
ferent to the damage such
distortions inflict upon
American interests?
Can one not detect, in the
Post’s latest pooper-scoop-
er “revelations,” a distinct
effort to make Israel look
bad?
These questions arise
from a reading of a sensa-
tionalized front-page story
head lined, “Israelis Have
Spied on U.S., Secret Papers
Show”.
The story opens with this
blast:
“Israeli intelligence agen-
cies have blackmailed, bug-
ged, wiretapped and offered
bribes to U.S. government
employees in an effort to
gain sensitive intelligence
and technical information
There ensues an article,
continuing on a full inside
page, that purports to
recount the worldwide activ-
ities of Israeli intelligence,
including — count ’em —
exactly six concrete in-
stances of alleged espionage
upon U.S. government em-
ployees, none of which is
dated later than 1960.
Can it be reasonably
argued that this handful of
incidents, even supposing
them to be true, justifies
such luridly deceptive head-
line and lead?
The provenance of this
report does not exactly
inspire confidence in its
authenticity or accuracy. It
is based on material that
appears in one of a dozen
paperback books published
in Teheran, and allegedly
contains classified American
documents taken by the
Iranian Muslim terrorists
who seized the U.S. embassy
in 1979.
Among the published pa-
pers is a 47-page document
— ostensibly a secret CIA
survey — entitled Israel:
Foreign Intelligence and
Security Services. It is
supposedly one in a series of
CIA surveys of foreign
espionage services publish-
ed for American intelligence
personnel.
No other such country
survey was published in
Teheran. This omission will
surprise no one familiar with
the Iranian terrorists’ fana-
tical hatred of Israel and
Zionism. But it remains a
mystery why the Post
should give credence to a
publication with manifestly
malign political purposes.
The “survey’s” most
egregious statement is the
following:
“The Israeli intelligence
service depends heavily on
the various Jewish com-
munities and organizations
abroad for recruiting agents
and eliciting general infor-
mation. The aggressively
ideological nature of Zion-
ism, which emphasizes that
all Jews belong to Israel and
must return to Israel, has
had its drawbacks in enlist-
ing support for intelligence
operations, however, since
there is considerable opposi-
tion to Zionism among Jews
throughout the world.”
If this mendacious concoc-
tion is an actual CIA paper,
it can only be the product of
ignorant prejudice; other-
wise, it is the figment of the
Iranians’ virulent hysteria.
In either case, what has I
public opinion gained by it? |
But even if the document
is authentic and its factual
details accurate, nothing in
this entire tale suggests that
Israel is not alone in its
cloak-and-dagger opera-
tions. Everyone does it and
everyone knows that every-
one does it. Why single out
Israel?
The Post offers us “facts”
pre-digested by Iranian
maniacs. Why not do a sober
report on the invaluable
services rendered the free
world by Israeli intelligence
on Soviet military strength
and political subversion, and
on international terrorism?
between 1
you one) me |
BY BORIS SMOLAR
[Editor-in-chief emeritus, J.T.A.]
[Copyright 1982, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, Inc.]
THE “JEWISH FAMILY WEEK”:
Communities in a number of cities are
conducting during February a “Jewish
Family Week” as part of their cultural
program to strengthen Jewish family life,
which is now in a state of erosion. This
follows the setting up by the American
Jewish Committee of a special Task Force
to examine the various factors that affect
the Jewish family; also to identify the
major changes that have occurred in
American families in recent years,
highlighting those which are most
characteristic of Jewish families. The AJC
Task Force is composed of educators,
sociologists and experts in family
problems.
The erosion in Jewish family life is
coming more and more to the surface in
practically all Jewish communities
throughout the country. It is no longer the
Jewish college youths who become
estranged from the parents; it is the
growing chaos in adult family life that is
causing grave concern — the decrease in
Jewish marriages; the increase in
divorces; the growing number of
“one parent families,” with children not
seeing their parents together; the
tendency of young women to become
“career women” rather than to marry and
raise a family; the tendency of young men
not to marry, or to wait with marriage till
a later age; the splitting of families
geographic mobility for the sake of a
better job or better opportunities; the rise
in the number of young men and women
who live together non-married.
All these factors — and other negative
trends — undermine the stability of the
Jewish family; they provoke disturbing
thoughts as to what the 1980’s hold for
Jewish family ties that have been the
bastion of Jewish continuity ever since
Biblical times. They, naturally, lead to the
decline in Jewish birthrate, thereby
reducing the proportion of the Jewish
population within the general population.
Today, Jews constitute no more than 2.7
percent of the total population, and are
likely to become even a smaller proportion ■
over a period of time, if the present trends I ;
in Jewish family life continue. *
In introducing a “Jewish Family Week,”
local Jewish leaders aim to reach all
elements in their community — young and
middleaged, men and women, “singles”
and married. Their program includes
lectures, discussions, workshops, enter-
tainment, art exhibitions and other means
of educating local Jews to the importance
of a solid Jewish family life for the well
being of American Jewry and its
continuity.
* * * *
THE MISSING CENSUS DATA: There
is no national data on Jewish families
comparable to overall statistics of the
characterization of the U.S. households
and families. However, it would be a
mistake to think that the erosion in
Jewish family life is a purely Jewish
problem. It is a national malaise.
Significant changes are taking place in
families of many millions Americans as
well.
The absence of data on the character-
istics of the Jewish family is due to the
fact that Jews are not classified as Jews in
the government census of the population.
Jews are the only ethnic listed in the
census according to ethnic origin. The
Census Bureau would like to identify Jews
by ethnicity, but is under pressure from
leading Jewish organizations not to do it.
American Jewry — the largest Jewish
community in the world — is thus
non-existent as far as the census is
concerned. The approximately six million
Jews in the United States are anonymous
within the entire American population;
they are Americans but not Jews.
Russian-born Jews in America are
included in the data on Russian ethnicity,
although most of them emigrated from
Czarist Russia as persecuted Jews. The
same is true of Jews who emigrated from
the Soviet Union in the recent year. In the
census, they are part of the Russian ethnic
group — a ridiculous classification, since
See Between You and Me-Page 6
r
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 36, No. 6, Ed. 1 Thursday, February 11, 1982, newspaper, February 11, 1982; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth754493/m1/4/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .