The Structure Totters - 1976

K A H A N E

The Magazine of the Authentic Jewish Idea

June 1976 – Sivan 5736

VIEWPOINT

The Structure Totters (excerpts)

The structure of Jewish life in Israel and the Exile totters evermore and the Jew continues to grope blindly for solutions.  Nothing that occurs can convince him that the entire direction of his search – a false direction of 150 years – is a dead end, leading to disaster.  The American policy of pressure grows, sweetened a bit by the need for Election year deceit.  The Arab contempt for Israel grows, as the spirit of the Sinai accord is violated flagrantly, the inhabitants of Judea and Samaria openly revolt and the Israeli Arab riots now reach Jaffa.  In the midst of all this there is only floundering at the helm of Israeli leadership as Rabin now discovers Syrian “moderation” and open feuds break out between him and Peres.  There is no policy, there is no direction, there is no leadership, there is not a world of G-d.

            And in the United States, Agnew emerges as a lightning rod to draw unto himself and into the open the tens of millions of Americans who think as he does but who are too timid to speak up.  And the American Jew, in his fear, tells himself that Agnew is a “criminal” who is “unrepresentative.”  Foolish Jews, in Israel and the exile!  Foolish Jews who refuse to be Jews, who refuse to understand what the Jewish destiny is and who, by their refusal to turn to G-d, and to gather from Him the courage for a bold and Jewish program, bring on all of us tragedy, unparallel.

Agnew

            The “secure” American Jew has been shaken, once again, by an earthquake of anti-Semitism.  Since the Yom Kippur War, the “secure” Jew has been made nervous by anti-Semitism growing out of the mini-oil crises; has been shocked by General Brown and now thunderstuck by statements by the former Vice President of the United States on national television. That which “could not happen,” is.  The kinds of anti-Jewish statements from high places (let us not forget the Nixon comments) that were relics of a past that the Jewish Establishment assured all was well buried, are now resurrected.

            Of course, the counterattack begins. The more foolish bother to respond and to prove that there is no “Jewish cabal” or “Zionist lobby” that controls Congress.  Others rush to comfort themselves with the thought that Agnew is a disgraced scoundrel.  It will not help.  The fact is that most Americans do think that Jews control media, Congress and American policy.  The fact is that most Americans are delighted with the Agnew who attacks targets they would love to attack.  The fact is that for American Jews, the Golden Age is over and the hostility of the press to Israel in recent months is but one signal of this.  The solution?  The same and only one that has always been cried out by Jews who know that the exile is a curse and sin:  Alliyah; home; Israel.

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