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12 Friday, November 12, 1982

THE DETROlt JEWISH 'NEWS

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New Jew Has Emerged Since the Holocaust

By REV. FRANKLIN
LITTELL

National Institute
on the Holocaust

PHILADELPHIA — At
the recent Annual Confer-
ence on Teaching the
Holocaust, two of the key
speakers agreed upon this
point: the emergence of
Jews from powerlessness
has created a new kind of
Jew.
In earlier generations in
Christendom the Jewish
minority learned to live
without power. The virtues
cultivated were patience
and long-sufferingness. The
axioms were, "Don't make
waves ... Don't fight back:

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winter through." That kind
of Jew, according to Prof.
Yehuda Bauer of Hebrew
University and Rabbi Irv-
ing Greenberg of the Na-
tional Jewish Resource
Center, disappeared from
center stage with the read-
ing of the first lessons of the
Holocaust.
The first lesson of the
Holocaust, for Jews, is this:
the Jewish people must
never again be dependent
for its survival upon the
charity of the heathen.
Vidal Sassoon, veteran
of the Israel War of Inde-
pendence, makes a very
strong presentation of
the thesis that the found-
ing of the state of Israel
has given us a new Jew —
one conscious of his
rights and dignities,
without obsequiousness,
not beholden to the
generosity of others for
the right to live.
Whether we date the ap-
pearance of a new type of
Jew with the Warsaw
Ghetto Uprising and other
resistance actions, or with
the establishment of mod-
ern Israel, the message is
the same: the suffering and
wandering Jew of Chris-
tendom is gone and a new
Jew steps forward as pro-
tagonist.
The reaction of Christian
anti-Semites, who can
tolerate (temporarily) the
Jew who is a loser, but can-
not stand the Jew who is a
winner (and hates with a
passion the state of Israel),
is further documentation of
the fact that a change has
occurred.
The Jew who fought back
in Warsaw, who revolted in
Sobibor and other camps,
who ambushed Nazi forces
in the forests of Eastern
Europe, was a new kind of
Jew. He had to break from
the traditions of his fathers,
traditions developed during
centuries of survival in
Christendom.
The transition was
hard. The Jews of War-
saw did not fight when
they were 400,000
crowded in during the
first stage of Nazi tactics:
they only fought, those
who were left, when it be-
came clear that survival
was no longer an option.
For them the only ques-
tion left was, "How shall
we die?" The new type of
Jew does not intend to
allow that question to
arise again. -
In the Holocaust, the logic
of Christendom - was
brought to its final conclu-
sion. The gentile Church
Fathers had taught that
God was through with the
Jews, and that message was
proclaimed for centuries
thereafter in sermons and
lectures. The Holocaust was
a logical if terrible reading
of that proposition.
Today, the new type of
Jew rallies to the banner:
"Never again!" This slogan
should not be identified
with the lunatic politics of
Meir Kahane and Kach in
Israel. Kahane is as far from
the center of Jewish life and
Jewish survival as is the
Satmer rebbe who prefers

REV. LITTELL

the miseries of Christendom
to the glories of a restored
Israel.
"Never again!" receives
its most important transla-
tion into action in the oath
of Israel's young recruits:
"Masada shall not fall
again!"
The new problems of
the new type of Jew, after
1,500years of alternating
patronage and persecu-
tion by officially Chris-
tian nations, have to do
with the responsible uses
of power.
This writer, an "out-
grouper," has often won-
dered why Americans feel
so free to tell Israelis how to
live and die. Public indi-
viduals and agencies re-
lentlessly apply a double
standai'd, sitting on Cloud
Nine to moralize about Is-
rael's government and its
actions. Not Soviet Russia,
not red China, not the
medieval fiefdom of Saudi
Arabia, not the lunatic div-
tatorships of Libya and Iran
are bludgeoned by self-
righteous judgments of the
sort daily levied upon Is-
rael.
As for the media, we did
not lie about Nazi Germany
in World War II the way the
media have in recent weeks
lied about the IDF police ac-
tion against PLO terrorists
in Lebanon. The media have
done everything possible,
up to and including deliber-
ate falsification of data, to
portray that action — for
which the whole civilized
world should be grateful —
as equivalent to World War
III.
The gentiles, and espe-
cially anti-Semitic nests
like the Near East office of
the National Council of
Churches, are propelled by
traditional Christian anti-
Semitism and resentment of
Jewish survival. But why do
some American Jews re-
lapse so readily into ob-
sequiousness and protective
coloration when the hea-
then rage?
Why, to ask an impolite
question, is there so
much evidence of the
ghetto mentality in the
Jewish establishment —
so much eagerness, for
example, to prove that
Jews, too, can hate Begin
and Sharon and join the
chorus to condemn Israel
whenever a mistake is
made or said to be made
by that government?
After all, legitimate gov-
ernments make mistakes
and in due time they are
corrected: only dictator-

.

,

ships "never, make mis-
takes"!
The question forces itself
to the fore: Have some of
these spokesmen for Ameri-
can Jewry really learned
the lessons of the
Holocaust? Are they really
this side of the mountain,
along with the few sur-
vivors of resistance to
Nazism, alongside the
people of Israel?
Do they realize that
America is radically differ-
ent from old Christendom,
that under First Amend-
ment protection all citizens
can stand up straight? Or
are they still carrying the
burdens and anxieties of
state-church Christendom,
still instinctively reverting
in crisis to the postures of
powerlessness?
(Editor's note: Franklin
H. Littell is a Methodist
minister, professor of reli-
gion at Temple University
and corresponding faculty
member of the Institute of
Contemporary Jewry, He-
brew University,
Jerusalem.
(He was educated at Cor-
nell College, Iowa, Union
Theological Seminary and
Yale University.
(Since 1958 he has been
consultant on religion
and higher education to
the National Conference
of Christians and Jews.
Other public services in-
clude: co-founder and
first chairman of the In-
stitute for American
Democracy, an organiza-
tion specializing in prob-
lems of extremism and
terrorism; founder and
honorary chairman of
the National Institute on
the ' Holocaust; co-
founder and first chair-
man of the Annual Schol-
ars Conference on the
Church Struggle and the
Holocaust; founder and
honorary chairman of
the Annual Conference
on Teaching the
Holocaust; founder and
honorary president of the
National Christian Lead-
ership Conference for Is-
rael.
(Dr. Littell is the author
of 275 major articles and 20
books, including "The
Crucifixion of the Jews,"
"Religious Liberty in the
Crossfire of Creeds" and "A
Pilgrim's Interfaith Guide
to the Holy Land."
(He is a member by
Presidential appointment of
the U.S. Holocaust Memo-
rial Council and by Israel
Cabinet appointment of the
International Council of
Yad Vashem. In 1980 he re-
ceived the Jabotinsky
Medal from. Prime Minister
Begin for his work in furth-
ering Christian - Jewish
understanding.
(For nearly a decade he
was an officer in the Ameri-
can occupation of post-war
Germany and in 1959 re-
ceived the Grosse Ver-
dienstkreuz from' the Ger-
man Federal Republic for
his assistance to religious
and educational institu-
tions and movements and
for furthering American/
German reconciliation.)