COMMENT
YOU'RE COVERED
With Our New T-Shirt!
Validation of Judaism,
Israel Is Unnecessary
EZEKIEL LEIKIN
Special to The Jewish News
T
Subscribe Today To The Jewish News
And Receive Our New T•Shirt
With Our Compliments!
From the West Bank to West Bloomfield — and all points in between — The Jewish News
covers your world. And now with our new T-shirt, we cover our new subscribers, too.
It's durable, comfortable, easy to care for and attractive. And it comes in an array of adult
and children's sizes. But most important, your new subscription will mean 52 information-
packed weeks of The Jewish News, plus our special supplements, delivered every Friday
to your mailbox.
A great newspaper and a complimentary Tshirt await you for our low subscription rates.
Just fill out the coupon below and return it to us. We'll fit you to a T!
I
1
Jewish News T-Shirt Offer
Please clip coupon and mail to:
Yes! Start me on a subscription to The Jewish
News for the period and amount circled below.
Please send me the T-shirt.
JEWISH NEWS T-SHIRT
20300 Civic Center Dr.
,
Southfield, Mich. 48076-4138
NAME
This offer is for new subscriptions only. Cur-
rent subsdcribers may order the T-shirt for
$4.75. Allow four weeks delivery.
ADDRESS
CITY
STATE
ZIP
(Circle
One) 1
year: '24 2 years: $45 Out of State '26 Enclosed $
(Circle
One)
ADULT EX. LG. ADULT LARGE ADULT MED. CHILD LARGE CHILD MED. CHILD SMALL
14, FppAY, 6E9: 4,
he late author and
pundit Maurice Sam-
uel has written —
presumably with tongue in
cheek — that according to a
widely-held perception, the
Jew's principal mission in life
is "to be nice." He was referr-
ing particularly to the Jew's
relations with the gentile
world.
Being nice, the dictionary
tells us, denotes "being
amiable, agreeable and plea-
sant." However, when being
nice evolves into a deliberate
effort to curry favor with our
gentile neighbors and whee-
dle out from them a benign
reciprocal response, the
distinction between a
dialogue of equals and a plea
for sympathy and understan-
ding becomes increasingly
blurred.
In the Jewish vernacular of
the time, ingratiating flattery
was known as mah - yofit (in
Yiddish, mah yofis), a
reference to a Sabbath hymn
which East European Jews
were often forced to chant in
order to amuse the poritz or
landed aristocracy.
Strains • of this melancholy
mah yofit refrain resonated in
my mind when a number of
American Jewish leaders
hailed, in highly effusive
terms, the recent pro-
nouncements from several
major church groups,
acknowledging — lo and
behold! — the validity and
legitimacy of Judaism.
On June 13, a report in the
New York Times states that a
"landmark document on
Christian-Jewish relations
ran into sharp, unexpected
opposition at the annual
meeting of the nation's
largest Presbyterian
denomination and appeared
headed for defeat!" The docu-
ment mentioned in this
report was a statement con-
sistent with other documents
that came out from the Se-
cond Vatican Council in 1965,
but "it went further in affir-
ming the legitimacy of
Judaism and Zionism than
any previous statement!'
It appears that the state-
ment was in preparation for
six years, but its final version
was downgraded from a
"policy statement" to a
"study document!" The stick-
Ezekiel Leikin is executive vice
president of the Zionist
Organization of America, Detroit
District.
ing point was Zionism and
Israel. "The State of Israel is
a geo-political entity," the
final draft postulated, "and is
not validated theologically."
The United Church of
Christ, a major Protestant
denomination in the United
States in a statement issued
in July, 1987, declared:
"God's covenant with the
Jewish people has not been
abrogated." In this draft,
Israel is mentioned only in-
cidentally, ostensibly for the
reasons cited in the
Presbyterian study
document.
Ironic as it may seem, while
the Christian-Jewish
dialogue was proceeding on
many levels and Jewish
representatives were scurry-
ing to and from the Vatican
and huddling with other
church leaders here and
abroad, Christian theologians
were writing books and
publishing papers, making it
abundantly clear that insofar
as the Jews were concerned,
nothing of substance has
changed in basic Christian
theology.
Christian-Jewish
dialogue .. .
presently . . . may
have run its
course.
It is axiomatic that once a
bureaucracy gets a hold of a
"cause," it has a vested in-
terest to pursue it regardless
of the results. No one argues
that a well-delineated
outreach program with other
faiths conducive to a better
climate of understanding and
-possible collaboration on
issues of mutual concern is
not a worthy or desirable ob-
jective. However, there is
enough evidence to suggest
that the process of the
Christian-Jewish dialogue, as
presently structured, may
have run its course and may
have even become
counterproductive.
The realities of the late
1980s bear little resemblance
to the post-Holocaust era
when Jews "yearned" for
Christian sympathy and ac-
ceptance, no matter how
tenuous. Both in the indepen-
dent State of Israel and in the
United States, the Jew can no
longer be cast in the role of a
perplexed and jittery suppli-
cant. Nor is Judaism or the
Jewish claim to the Land of
Israel in need of Christian
"validation" or "legitimiza-
tion!'