The Late
Blooming Of
A.M. Rosenthal

ARTHUR J. MAGIDA

Special to The Jewish News

.M. Rosenthal has astonished himself.
Six years after retiring as executive editor
of the New York nmes, the most powerful pa-
per in the country, and becoming a columnist,
he has discovered something about himself
that he never knew, something he never sus-
pected:
He has a deep, passionate, and wholly
partisan interest in the State of Israel
and in being Jewish.
This truth has emerged about him-
self as he has watched his thrice-week-
ly column on the Times op-ed page
evolve. It was as if the column would be
69-year-old Rosenthal's Rosetta Stone
and unveil a part of him that had lain
dormant for decades, patiently waiting
to surface and announce itself.
Mr. Rosenthal prefers to leave such
speculation to readers, saying only that
he attempts "to bring some sense and
history to what is taking place today ...
In the column, I try to make connec-
tions."
Connections to what? To history? To
the day before yesterday? To a time
when things really did make sense? Or
to himself and his past, a past that start-
ed, he recalled, in Canada as the grand-
son of a "rabbi manque" and the son of
a utopian farmer from Russia, a "won-
derful, wonderful man" who died when his only son
was 13.
One way to look at the column (which bears the
slightly lame name of "On My Mind") is to say that
it's the Times' way of finally letting Mr. Rosenthal
be himself. For years, the paper of record neutered
his ethnicity by masking his Jewish-sounding name,

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FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 1992