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BEEPERS • FAX • TELEX [313] 474-7777 SUBURBAN ANSWERING SERVICE' GEMINI HAS GIFT IDEAS For Mother's Day, Father's Day, Summer Fun Parties at Graduation INFLATABLE CADDIES WE HAVE APRONS THAT LIGHT UP! FOOD COOLER WITH STEREO RADIO ATTACHED RUBBER BOAT BUILT FOR TWO Gemini II 2E400 Twelve Mile, Smithfield, Mid. 48034 • 353-3355 Gemini 1 10600 Galaxie, Feredale, Md. 48220 • 399-9830 Inside Franklin Savings Centre 42 Friday, April 10, 1987 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS BACKGROUND Jewish Information Service Do We Share Guilt For Pollard And Boesky? "We must face up to the fact that Jews behaved very badly and have tarnished Judaism," says a rabbi and ethics professor. JOSEPH AARON Special to the Jewish News S pring may have sprung, but let's face it. All the recent news about Jews has not exactly reminded one of springtime. Let us count the ways: • Mordechai Vananu, traitor to his country, reveal- ing secrets to the world of Israel's nuclear weapon capability. • Ivan Boesky, Dennis Levine and other like-minded Wall Streeters with Jewish sounding names, whose highly illegal and very profitable in- sider tradings were revealed to the outside world. • Jonathan Pollard, traitor to his country, revealing secrets to Israel belonging to the United States. Jews all and all doing big,bad things that have made big, bad headlines. What are we to do? Es- pecially in light of that oft- quoted and oft-felt feeling that "every Jew is responsible one for the other." Should then the run-of-the- mill Jew feel guilty about and take responsibility for the wrongdoings of these promi- nent Jews? Yes and no. So says Seymour Siegel, professor of ethics and theol- ogy at the Jewish Theological Seminary. No, in that the Book of Ezekiel tells us, Siegel said in an interview, that "every person is respon- sible for his own sins. Unless the sin is the result of a col- lective action there is no reason the Jewish community 'should feel collective guilt." Yes, said Siegel, in that when individual Jews falter, it is the responsibility of all in the community to "clean up our community so that others don't do misdeeds." Not, he added, that the re- cent spate of misdeeds is an indication of the moral de- cline of the Jewish people. What's been going on, he said, is nothing new. "Since the beginning of time the Yetzer Harah, the evil inclina- tion, has been implanted in man. The only difference is that now misdeeds are more exposed to the public. More can look at us more carefully." Which is why, he said, we have to be more careful. For in being more exposed, the public sins of Jews are more serious. "The more known the sin, the greater is the Chilul Hashem, the desecration of God's name." And Chilul Hashem, he said, is something for which the community suffers be- cause of the actions of the in- dividual. "If a Jew does good, wins the Nobel Prize, it is considered a Kiddush Ha- shem, a sanctification of God's name, something all Jews take pride in. Pollard and Boesky, on the other hand, have put the name of God, and so the Jewish peo- ple, into disrepute. The sever- ity of Chilul Hashem is rel- ative to how known a quan- tity it is. The greater the fame, the more serious the of- fense." And when you're talking of an offense that becomes known to hundreds of millions of people, Siegel said, you start talking about Moser, the sin of putting the whole Jewish people into danger. That's possible, he said, if Pollard's action leads to U.S. punishment of Israel or if Boesky's leads to an outbreak of anti-Semitism. "When Jews do bad things, it's bad for all Jews, reflects badly on all Jews. We can't pretend that in some way, then, all Jews are not somehow re- sponsible." The problem, said Siegel, is that just as modern methods of communication have made Jewish offenses more serious, modern times have made the Jewish community's means of dealing with those offenses less effective. "There used to be central authorities that could punish Jews and make known the community's displeasure in a dramatic and direct way, but we don't have those kinds of central authorities and we don't have such things as the institution of excommunica- tion." Still, Siegel said, the com- munity has to do what it can do. In Pollard's case, he said, Israel should use all the powers available to it as a sovereign state to punish all those involved. In the other cases, he said, the American Jewish commu- nity, as a non-self-governing