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4/23
1999
O li
k
aimume
84 Detroit Jewish News
'
Surrounded by Ken Starr's minions,
her world collapsing all around her,
Monica Lewinsky's thoughts turned to
Hannah Senesh, a Jewish poet and war
heroine who parachuted into Nazi-
occupied Europe to rescue Allied pris-
oners and organize Jewish resistance.
The Jewish presidential paramour
was sustained by thoughts of the
Hungarian Jewish fighter on that fateful
day at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, and later
said she identified with the plight of
Holocaust diarist Anne Frank, according
to her authorized biography, Monicas
Story, written by Andrew Morton.
"This is not how we should be living
in America in this century," she said of
the "bullying" tactics of the indepen-
dent counsel's office. It reminded me
of the The Diary of Anne Frank. We
were living in constant fear."
For those who haven't had their fill
of all things Monica and are still won-
dering how a Jewish girl came to be
the source of a constitutional crisis, the
book offers bits and pieces that provide
a slightly more revealing glimpse into
Lewinsky's Jewish identity.
From her acknowledgment of having
received spiritual counseling from New
York Rabbi Mark Gollub to a confes-
sion to having once made "virtually
inedible" matzah ball soup for a charity
group in Portland, Ore., there's some-
thing for every variety of voyeur.
According to the book, she
learned about Senesh after seeing the
1988 film Hannah's War, which
depicts the life of the woman who
became a symbol in the Zionist move-
ment of devotion and self-sacrifice.
Deeply concerned about the fate
of European Jewry and her mother
in Budapest, the Hungarian-born
Jewish poet joined a group of para-
chutists organized by the Haganah
in pre-state Palestine and infiltrated
Hungary in 1944.
She was captured by Hungarian
police and cruelly tortured, but did
not reveal any information before she
was shot by a firing squad.
"I wish that I had the inner convic-
tion that Hannah Senesh had,"
Lewinsky once wrote in an essay for
school.
"I am not nearly half as brave as she
was. However, what I have in com-
mon with Hannah is that I too share a
very close relationship with my moth-
er. Hannah and her mother had-a
bond that could not be broken by
anything and that is the same with
me.
Detained by armed FBI agents and
Starr's deputies in January 1998, the
day Linda Tripp betrayed her,
Lewinsky said she found some comfort
not only in Senesh's story, but in read-
ing the hotel room's Bible over and
over. She paused on a few lines in the
91st Psalm: "I will say of the Lord, He
is m- , refuge and my fortress; my God;
in Him will I trust."
Recounting her childhood, Morton
describes Lewinsky's resentment at
being sent to a "strict" temple for
Hebrew school and her desire to have
an elaborate bat mitzvah celebration.
"Monica anticipated a big celebra-
tion," Morton writes. "Instead, Bernie
[Lewinsky, her father] offered to spend
$500 on a party in the backyard of the
family home. A full-scale party was not
beyond his means, but he believed that
that was quite sufficient to celebrate an
event that was supposed to be religious.
"Monica, knowing well how this
would fail to impress her peers, let it
be known in no uncertain terms that
it most certainly was not sufficient,
nor was it what she wanted."
Her father, who used to call
Monica "my little farfel," is described
as being in a state of mourning when
news of his daughter's exploits became
public, "crouched on the bed con-
stantly saying Kaddish."
Later, he "had to listen in helpless,
silent indignation as local Orthodox
Jewish elders discussed the possibility of
using religious law to cast Monica out
from the faith," accordir.,_,, to the book.
K