BOOKS
THE JEWISH NEWS
Fatal Attraction
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WHAT IS P'TACH?
Parents for Torah for All Children.
"P'TACH," is a national non-profit
organization which provides secular and
Jewish education for children with learning '
disabilities who are enrolled in our schools.
Before P'TACH existed, the doors of
almost all day schools were indeed closed
to children with all levels of learning
disabilities, and the parents of these special
children were often frustrated by a
community that failed to recognize the need
for providing special educational programs
in our schools. Now, through P'TACH, the
doors of our schools are "OPEN" to all
our children.
The Michigan branch, P'TACH of
Michigan, Inc., was founded in May of
1979 by a group of parents, lay people and
professionals in fields related to special
education. Our main objective is to provide
special education for learning disabled
children with the goal of mainstreaming
them into regular classrooms whenever
possible. Today, P'TACH has grown to
serve over twenty children in its two
programs. Unfortunately, due to a lack of
financial resources, children are currently
on a waiting list to enter P'TACH's
programs.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
P'TACH of Mich., Inc.
18150 Alta Vista
Southfield, Michigan 48075
(313) 399-6281
All donations are tax deductible
128 FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 1990
affair.
Estelle Donna Evans was
rushed to Lenox Hill
Hospital, where she under-
went a two-hour operation for
internal injuries. At 6:40
A.M. on August 1, she died.
It was Meir Kahane's thirty-
fourth birthday. Deeply
depressed, Kahane attended
her funeral where he dropped
to his knees and cried out:
"Oh my darling, please
forgive me:' In the years after
her death, he would some-
times place roses on her
grave.
Kahane told a few friends
who knew about the affair
that Estelle committed
suicide after learning that she
was dying from terminal
cancer. According to a JDL
source who was then close to
Kahane, however, Estelle did
not have cancer. But she was
pregnant, possibly with
Kahane's child.
Kahane later set up a char-
itable, tax-exempt foundation
in the name of Estelle Donna
Evans. By his own admission,
the foundation raised more
than $200,000. Fred and
Edith Horowitz were the
president and vice-president.
Kahane claimed the money
was given to Israel's poor,
although he has no records
and cannot document how
the funds were spent. Kahane
even advertised in Jewish
publications that the founda-
tion adopted orphans in
Israel. "The schtick was he
would give you a picture of an
orphan kid and you'd adopt
him," says former JDL of-
ficial Irving Calderon. In re-
ality, Kahane used the money
to help finance the JDL,
which he created in 1968.
In 1971, New York Times
reporter Michael Kaufman
was assigned to do a story
about Kahane, by then the
controversial leader of the
JDL, which was waging a
campaign of violent harass-
ment against Soviet officials
and their families in New
York. Kaufman noticed that
JDL publications carried ads
for the Estelle Donna Evans
Foundation. When asked
about the fund, Kahane ex-
plained that she had worked
as a secretary for one of his
think tanks and had died
tragically. He said her
wealthy parents from Connec-
ticut established the fund as
a memorial.
Teamed up with fellow
Times reporter Richard
Severo, Kaufman soon ex-
posed Kahane's lie. Severo
first located Evans's parents,
who recognized Kahane's
photo as Michael King, their
daughter's fiance. Kaufman
found Laura Warner at her
apartment on the West Side
of Manhattan. The ex-room-
mate confirmed that the
"Dear Jane" letter was writ-
ten by Kahane. Then the
reporters flew to the United
States Air University at
Maxwell Air Force Base in
Montgomery, Alabama where
Joseph Churba was teaching
Middle Eastern studies. "It
was a hot day and Churba
started sweating," recalled
Kaufman, who is now the
assistant foreign editor of the
Times. "The half-circle sweat
stains under his armpits
began to grow. He confirmed
that Kahane had had a phys-
ical relationship with Evans."
Kaufman and Severo pre-
sented Kahane with their
evidence at a New York televi-
sion studio, where the JDL
leader had just finished tap-
ing "The David Susskind
Show." "The three of us went
upstairs to a little office and
I said to Kahane: "Ibll me
about Donna,' " Kaufman re-
called. "He reached over and
put his hand on my knee and
he said 'I loved her.' "Kahane
completely unburdened him-
self to the startled reporters.
If the paper of
record had
published all it
knew about
Kahane ... then
perhaps both he
and the JDL would
have been
destroyed.
He admitted that he had
"stumbled" into Estelle in a
Second Avenue bar where he
often went to pick up women
under a variety of pseudo-
nyms. He confessed that with
Estelle he had never known
such passion, that they had
lived together in an East Side
apartment, that she was in
the process of converting to
Judaism, and that he knew
that breaking off the affair
had driven her to suicide. He
also said that his relationship
with his wife Libby was "un-
satisfactory" and that he felt
his sex life was confined by
the strictures of Orthodoxy.
"During the course of the
conversation, Kahane ap-
pealed to Mike as a Jew not
to hurt another Jew by in-
cluding details of the affair in
the Times" Severo recalled.
"We were so repulsed by what
we had collected, and it was
such volatile stuff that we
drove to Arthur Gelb's
house." Gelb was then the
Times Metropolitan page
editor. When Gelb heard what
Meir Kahane
his reporters had learned, he
phoned Abe Rosenthal, the
Times managing editor, who
joined them. Kaufman had
composed a lead for the story
that described a distraught
Kahane placing roses on his
dead lover's grave. Gelb and
Rosenthal told Kaufman to
rewrite the lead, deleting
references to the rabbi's
adulterous relationship. They
argued that emphasizing the
affair "would generate anti-
Semitism," said Severo. Kauf-
man has a different recollec-
tion. He said that the editors
decided that leading with the
graveside scene would violate
the Times's standards of
fairness.
Several days later, while
Kaufman was polishing his
story, Kahane turned up at
the Times. Kaufman recalled:
"He told me a parable about
the old rabbi and the young
rabbi. The young rabbi says
he wants to save all the Jews
in the world. And as he grows
older he says he wants to save
all the Jews in Poland, and
then when he grows much
older he says he wants to save
himself. And I said, you are
that old Jew, and he said yes.
Then he tried to make a deal.
He promised he would disap-
pear from public life if I didn't
write what I knew about his
dead lover. I said that's not
my role. I'm not here to
chastise you, but you have
this Damocles sword hanging
over your head. You're the one
who put the ad in the JDL
paper for the Estelle Donna
Evans Foundation. He said,
`Yes, I know, but my mother
has cancer; my wife is inno-
cent; I have four children.'
And then ensued a lot of soul-
searching on my part, and a
lot of conversations with my
editors."
Although the Times would
expose many sensational as-
pects of Kahane's career in a
January 24, 1971, front-page
story, only an elliptical
reference was made to Evans.
The Times reports that
Kahane considered her "an
unusual person," and that he
was so shaken after her sui-