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May 26, 1989 - Image 34

Resource type:
Text
Publication:
The Detroit Jewish News, 1989-05-26

Disclaimer: Computer generated plain text may have errors. Read more about this.

I MEDIA MONITOR I

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quested to name one leader
from the 19th century and
another from the 20th.
The winners: Isaac Mayer
Wise from the last century
and Louis Brandeis from this.
The only other Jewish
leader from the 19th century
considered worthy of inclu-
sion was Isaac Leeser, who
received two votes, half as
many as Wise. Of the 20th
century candidates, runners-
up to Brandeis were Louis
Marshall and Stephen S.
Wise (three votes each),
Mordechai Kaplan (two
votes), Henrietta Szold (two
votes) and Julius Rosenwald
(one vote).
In an essay accompanying
the "nominations," Benny
Kraut, director of the Univer-
sity of Cincinnati's Judaic
Studies Program, noted that
all those from the 19th cen-
tury were spiritual leaders,
while nominees from the 20th
century were laymen, as well
as rabbis. The careers of these
laymen — law, retail mer-
chandising, scholarship and
social welfare — were, said
Kraut, representative of those
areas in which Jews have at-
tained "a remarkable degree
of success" in the United
States.
One similar characteristic
of the 20th century leaders,
Kraut noted, was that they
were all "accommodationists
with respect to America .. .
[They] had a vision of an
America in total consonance
with Judaism and Jewish liv-
ing."

Kraut rejected historian
Melvin Urofsky's assertion
that American Jews have
gone from a leadership of
"titans" to one of
"managers." "Powerful,
charismatic" Jewish leaders
do exist, wrote Kraut, but
"they are not found within
the framework of the organiz-
ed Jewish community." Some,
he said, are in "non-
democratic, traditional socio-
religious settings . . . or
representative only of a small
segment of the overall com-
munity."
Among these were Nobel
Prize winner Elie Wiesel. But
despite Wiesel's role almost
as a "visionary prophet," said
Kraut, "he is not 'the' leader
of the Jewish community
because he is not actively in
the fray" of working on the
many issues on the contem-
porary Jewish agenda.
Perhaps, added Kraut, the
greatest Jewish leader in
America today is the
Lubavitch Rebbe because "he
possesses all the ac-
couterments of extraordinary
community leadership. He is
charismatic, enjoys incredible
power and influence among
tens of thousands of followers

A bust of Louis Brandeis.

and has the ability to in-
fluence Jewish religious,
social and (world) political
issues . . . [But] still," advised
Kraut, "the Rebbe speaks on-
ly for a relatively small
number of Jews — even of
Chasidic Jews, notwithstan-
ding protestations of his
devoted followers to the con-
trary."

PNC Leader
Says Its State
To Be Peaceful

In what Tikkun publisher
Nan Fink called — with a lib-
eral dose of journalistic hyper-
bole — "the most important

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