(Federal prison, Manhattan, Lag Ba’Omer, April 29, 1975)
Once there was a television program, which centered about the theme of
intermarriage. The heroes of the piece were named Bernie and Brigitte. The
American Jewish Establishment put great pressure on the particular network that
televised the series and the program was ultimately dropped. Bernie and
Brigitte were no longer. They had been canceled…
How relatively simple it was to cancel Bernie and Brigitte on television and
how much more difficult to struggle against the curse and cancer of
intermarriage and assimilation that exists in real American Jewish life. How
simple to picket a television series to death and how hard to stamp out the
disease that afflicts us daily in the real-life existence that is the lot of
American Jewry. If we no longer find Bernie and Brigitte strolling hand in hand
across our television screens we need only look at our campuses, at our streets
at our neighborhoods, Bernie is alive and well.
What makes Bernie run? What makes Bernie run after Brigitte? What makes
Bernie run away from Judaism and cut the chain of generations? What makes
Bernie run away from the Judaism that his great-grandfather clutched at the
risk of loss of happiness material wealth and so often very life? What makes
Bernie run? This is the question that drives the American Jewish Establishment
to frantically set up committees, study groups, surveys and commissions. This
is the question that drives them to study the problem again and again and then
again. This is the question to which they allocate so much time and so much
communal money. This is the question that is at the top of their puzzled order
of priorities, over which they scratch their collective well-groomed heads:
What makes Bernie run?
The puzzled shepherds of the American Jewish communities can close down
their study groups and their commissions and their committees: they can put an
end to the learned and expensive surveys. They can stop spending Jewish communal
funds. What makes Bernie run away from Judaism? Who created that Bernie who
turns from Judaism in disgust or in indifference? Who created the Bernie who
pants after a shiksa or who marches for Jesus or Trotsky or Arafat or for
nothing Jewish? Who created a Bernie who finds Judaism as unimportant as the
color of his hair?
Why, the answer is obvious: The very same Establishment groups who are
busily creating the committees, commissions, study groups and surveys to find
out the answer to these questions. Who made Bernie run away from Judaism? The
American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, the B’nai Brith, the
federations on every level and in every locality, the temple rabbis and
Bernie’s most intimate Establishment figures- his parents.
All of these are the criminals. All of these had a hand in murdering Bernie
as a Jew. All of these robbed him of his heritage, of the beauties of his
inheritance. All of these make Bernie run. The Jewish Establishment groups –
The AJC, the Congress, the B’nai Brith, the federations, ALL the
spokesmen for the American Jewish community – the ruling clique, uniformly
marched down the American road with a melting pot under their arms, beating it
over and over again and shouting forth the Eleventh Commandment to the American
Jew: Thou shalt melt!
Thou shalt melt, thou shalt integrate, thou shalt amalgamate, thou shalt be
an American as all others. They beat the drums for interfaith, exchanging
pulpits with ministers enthusiastically, in a frantic effort to prove to
Christian and Jew alike that there is essentially no difference between them.
They were partially successful – the Christians were not convinced but the Jews
were.
Thou shalt melt, thou shalt integrate, thou shalt Americanize thyself and so
they raised high the banner of the public school and fought, with a zeal no one
knew that they possessed, the one weapon that might have given Bernie
knowledge, and a sense of pride and roots. In fear and with hostility, they
declared a holy war against the Jewish Day School, the parochial school, and
the yeshiva. They piously rationalized their struggle on the sacred grounds of
separation of church and state but the real reason for their war (and they took
the lead among all Americans in fighting the slightest aid to parochial
schools) was their fear and consequent hatred of the parochialism and
separatism of the yeshiva. The yeshiva threatened them with too much
Jewishness! What would the gentile say if Jews were too Jewish, If they looked
and behaved too differently, if their profile was not properly low? How did one
mix easily with gentiles in the non-kosher country clubs they were so eager to
join; how did one assimilate if Jews did not learn to drop the embarrassing
customs, habits and old ritual baggage?
The public school! This was the way to equality, to uniformity, to mixing
and assimilating. And so, they urged their flock to send Bernie to the public
school (and the flock, as eager to mix as the shepherds, needed little urging).
Bernie went to public school.
And today as the shepherds run frenziedly about surveying Bernie and asking
him, where did you meet Brigitte? He calmly answers: “Why, in the public school
in the public school; in the public school to which you sent me!”
Who made Bernie what he is? Who made Bernie run? The Establishment groups,
and leaders who took a Judaism of particularism, of separatism, of uniqueness,
of DIFFERENCE, and who- in their fears, insecurities and ignorance- created an
American brand that leveled all uniqueness, ‘proved’ that Jews and Christians
were no different, and eliminated every logical and moral reason to be
different. They created Bernie: they made Bernie run.
And who else made Bernie run away from Judaism? Who else made Bernie what he
is and is not? The massive, gaudy mausoleums that dot the landscape of every
Jewish suburb. The temples. The temples whose senior rabbi is the caterer. The
temples that perform human sacrifice rites each Sabbath morning and they call
them, The Bar Mitzvah.
The Bar Mitzvah, that is not the beginning of a Jew but his end, his
spiritual death. The Bar Mitzvah- that culmination of an empty, vapid,
childish, shallow Jewish “education,” taught by men and women whose ignorance
and lack of Jewish content makes them superb vehicles for the “education” they
pass on. The Bar Mitzvah, that obscene cult of ostentatious-ness, the ultimate
in Jewish status seeking, the competitive drive to bankrupt that pathetic and
hapless “father of the Bar Mitzvah.” The Bar Mitzvah where the young lamb
babbles the words he neither understands nor cares to, to the accompanying
nachas, pride, of beaming women and men who would not know a correct word from
a mistake, whose ignorance is sublime and whose disgusting display of
conspicuous vulgarity sends God fleeing from the mausoleum in wrath…
The Bar Mitzvah whose necessary “religious” interlude long ago was
subordinated to the piece-de-resistance of the entire immorality play – the
“reception.” The sickening waste of money and degrading of Judaism, where
materialism runs amok in the guise of religion, where drunks and half-dressed
women dance and give praise to the Lord, with African dance, American tunes,
and universal abomination. The Bar Mitzvah where the assimilationists,
ignoramuses and despoilers of Judaism, beam with patronizing pleasure as the
decrepit grandmother- Bubby- is resurrected from her nursing home or Miami
Beach condominium and trotted out to light a candle to the applause of the
go-go girls and dirty comedians waiting to do their act.
The temple, where man thinks up God rather than admit that He made him. The
temples, where the Jew can create any kind of religion that he cares to and
call it Judaism. The temple, where things too difficult are junked and where
from the Board of Directors shall come forth Torah and the voice of the Lord
from the approving Sisterhood membership. The temple, run by men whose
ignorance of Judaism is exceeded only by their arrogant insistence on saluting
it. The temple, where Bernie visits “God” and meets “Judaism” and flees from it
in horror. The temples: they created Bernie, they made Bernie run.
And who else made Bernie run from Judaism? The temple rabbis. The kept
theologians who knowingly preside over fraud and grotesque jokes. The well-paid
functionaries whose salaries are payments to hold their silence and to declare
light, darkness and darkness, light: to give their stamp of kashrut on the
impure meat that their temples serve up as “Judaism.” The bribe takers whose
eyes are blinded and consciences dulled by kavod, the honor of sitting on the
pulpit before the eyes of the congregants, and by the comfortable salary
augmented by the offerings of thankful beneficiaries of weddings, funerals and
unveiling's. The false prophets who hold their silence as Judaism is twisted,
perverted, turned into a humorless joke and who, knowing their own corruptness
and fraud of soul, rush to justify the fraud by ‘rabbinical’ or lingo that
pronounce them “good.” The temple rabbis who take a Judaism of Divinity and
truth and go about Reconstructing it and Reforming it and making a mockery of
Conserving it.
The temple rabbis who took the age-old axiom of Revelation, real Revelation,
upon which is built the Divinity of Torah and junked it. The temple rabbis who
made Judaism the product of ”wise men” (and if so, are there not wise
Christians and Buddhists and atheists) and thus removed any sacredness and
necessary reason for observance. The temple rabbis, so many of whom do not
believe in God, who took the real and awesome Jewish God of history who made man
and Created all and who rewards and punishes, and exchanged Him for a “god” who
is “the spirit within man,” indistinguishable from indigestion…They are the
models of Jewish “religious” leadership we give unto Bernie, these empty
vessels whose greatest fortune is that their congregants know even less, about
Judaism than they do.
These are your rabbis, Oh Bernie, and then we wonder why he refuses to enter
the temple over which they preside. Only they themselves know what frauds they
are; only they, in their hearts, know what a life of lies they lead: only they,
in the inner recesses of their being, know the self- hate and contempt they
feel for themselves each day that they have to perform acts of faith they no
longer believe in and teach a religion that long ago they secretly began to
doubt. The temple rabbis; they created Bernie, they made Bernie run.
And who else made Bernie run away from the embrace of Judaism into
Brigitte’s waiting arms? The parents, the good Jewish parents. The loving
Jewish mother who took off her golden nose rings and made a Golden Calf, which
she worships avidly. The Golden Calf called “success” and “money” and “making
it” and “my son-the-doctor.” The Golden Calf of material success before which
she burns incense and for which she threw the God of Jewish values into the
trash cans of medieval obscurantism. The Jewish father whose values are those
of the garment center and the racetrack and bagels and lox on Sunday morning
before taking the family out to the Chinese restaurant on Sunday after-noon.
The Jewish father who tries to think like a gentile, act like a gentile, dress
like a gentile, drink like a gentile, and curse like a gentile and then demand
that Bernie marry a “nice Jewish girl.”
The Jewish parents whose credo is upward and upward in wealth and status and
who created a comfortable Judaism that would accommodate their needs. Who moved
to the suburbs and created a suburban Judaism, and a suburban God, ethical and
cultured and nice- a vaguely Jewish Santa Claus. Who turned down the Orthodox
synagogue of their parents, grandparents and generations beyond because it was
too Jewish and too out of step with modern times and too difficult and too
outmoded and not compatible with the new pagan-Jewish lifestyle they were
creating. Who turned either to the Reform that gave both status (how familiar
their Christian friends would find it if ever they stopped by) as well as
license (one could be almost anything and do the same in that incredible
anarchy known as Reform or -better still- to that new and upcoming movement
known as “Conservatism.”
How many Jewish refugees from Brooklyn and the Bronx arrived in their new
status symbols in Massapequa find themselves surrounded by strange natives
known generally as “goyim” with large tribal groups called “Protestants?” How
many of the Jews, in panic, fearing that Bernie would come home with a Mary
rather than a Shirley banded together to build a quick temple of “Jewish
Center” to save their precious ones? How many of them who did not know a Jewish
concept from a Catholic catechism decided to call it ‘Conservative’ because
Orthodox is ‘too old-fashioned’ and Reform is ‘like a church?’ And how amazed
was the minuscule, unimportant Conservative movement to be suddenly besieged
with requests for ‘Conservative rabbis’ that did not exist? And how many
Conservative temples were suddenly hiring Orthodox rabbis who prostituted
themselves to the Long Island god of gold? And how true it is that it was not
the Conservative movement (sic) that built all the new temples that suddenly
made them so prominent but the ordinary, ignorant Jews who bought a temple just
as they bought any other commodity they needed and who set the terms of the
deal. Bernie’s Parents bought their temple and their rabbi and proceeded to create
Judaism and God in their own image. The garment center knew exactly how to cut
a suit to fit…
Judaism, but not too much, If Bernie was sent to that vast cultural
wasteland known as the “religious” or “Hebrew” school which he so despised, it
was not so much that he become religious as so that he might acquire ‘culture.’
(At least enough to let him babble the proper words on the great day of Bar
Mitzvah initiation rites.) lf he came home and mentioned something about
Sabbath observance or a ban on ham and bacon, his parents smiled and told him
that “we are not sending you there for that” or “you do not have to listen to
everything the teacher says.” They played games with Bernie and thought that
they could deceive him never realizing in their own stupidity, that no one can
ultimately deceive a child. They created a fraud and thought that they could
foist it on their Bernie. They created a Judaism that was created in their own
image- a Cohenism or a Goldbergism or a Schwartzism and tried to pretend that it
was Judaism. They defrauded themselves because it so suited them and thought
that Bernie would grow up to be as fraudulent, hypocritical, materialistic and
disgusting as they. But he did not. That which makes Sammy run does not
necessarily affect Bernie.
They thought that Judaism was a faucet that could be turned on and off at
will. They wanted to give up the uncomfortable and the inconvenient things but
still keep the ‘important’ things, like marrying a Shirley. Bernie was honest.
He took the whole thing and junked it. He turned on the faucet all the way and
Judaism spilled out in to it. He married Brigitte to the wailing of his parents
who shrieked to one and all: Where did we go wrong??
Where did they go wrong??
Where did they go right??
When one thinks about it, the gall and the arrogance of Bernie’s murderers
are stupefying. All of them- sleek Jewish Establishment organizations and their
portly leaders; the million-dollar temple-mausoleums; the temple
rabbi-functionaries; the pitiful and hapless parents. All those whose yardstick
was “what will the gentile say” and who proceeded to tailor their ‘Judaism’ to
fit not the Jew but the gentile; all those spiritual schizophrenics who did not
know whether they were Jews or not, fish or fowl, meat or milk; all these now
point their grubby accusing fingers at Bernie and shout indignantly:
“Why are you such a bad Jew? Why are you a traitor to your people? Why can’t
you marry a nice Jewish girl, Iike your mother? Why do you want to marry
Brigitte the shiksa?”
The hypocrisy is nauseating and amusing at the same time, but Bernie listens
and finds nothing humorous in it. “Why do I want to marry Brigitte? Why not?
She is good looking, polite and doesn’t nag. Why do I want to marry Brigitte?
Why not?
What is a nice Jewish girl like my mother? One who desecrates the Sabbath
like my mother? So does Brigitte. One who eats non-kosher food like dear Mom?
So does Brigitte. One who comes to synagogue three times a year to parade about
it in our version of Eastern parade? Brigitte has the real thing.”
Of course, what Bernie is really saying — NO, CRYlNG OUT — is: “Tell me
someone. Why should I be a Jew? Why is it so important to be a Jew? What
difference does it make? Why not knock down the barriers between religions,
nations and groups once and for all? What is there to Judaism that is so unique
and special that I should adhere to it faithfully and marry within my faith?
Why be a Jew!!!
It is an agonizing cry from the souls of tens of thousands of young Jews who
assimilate, integrate and disappear into the outer space beyond Judaism. It is
THE cry, THE question. It is asked by young men and women who have seen the
emptiness and the vapidness of the Judaism they grew up with. It is asked by
young Jews who have seen the ugliness and the vulgarity of their empty temples
and the fraud and bankruptcy of their temple rabbis. It is asked by young
people whose ‘Judaism’ gives nothing, absolutely nothing, in terms of ideals,
self-sacrifice and meaning. It comes from those who equate the ‘Judaism’ they
know with ostentatious wealth, fat and contented leaders paying lip service to
God and ‘religion’ and the reality of that religion in the form of rabbis who
do not believe in the Divinity of Torah or (increasingly) in God and in lay
people whose ignorance of anything Jewish is compensated for by Hadassah and
UJA checks.
Those who murdered Bernie took a Judaism of their ancestors that was strong
and powerful enough to withstand inquisitions and Crusades and pogroms and
Kishinevs and Auschwitzes, big and small. It was a Judaism that lived because
its adherents were ready to die for it. It was a Judaism of the zeyde who
believed in God and proved it by observing His commandments. It was a Judaism
that came from God and not from man. It was a Judaism whose rabbis and leaders
knew Torah, not the latest best-selling book list and who did as they said,
setting a supreme example for the Bernies of old who knew why Judaism was
different, who never for a moment thought of Brigitte.
The murderers took this and threw it away, exchanging it for ‘American
Judaism,’ a grotesque mixture of Myron Cohen jokes, Miami Beach, UJA checks,
Hadassah membership, Jewish food and Moshe Dayan eye-patches. It was a
‘Judaism’ that was stripped of all non-essentials so as to lighten the burden
on the long-distance Jewish swimmer through the American waters of
assimilation, equality and brotherhood. It was a “Judaism” whose adherents
beamed as their leaders got it down to “ethics.” Ethics! As if that was the
beginning and end of Judaism. As if Christians and Shintoists could not be
ethical, too. As if Brigitte was necessarily less ethical than Shirley. Ethics-
intoned the well-paid rabbi from his magnificently furnished pulpit. Ethics-
that is Judaism. lf that’s all there is, then Bernie knows that Judaism has
lost any exclusive hold on him. Everyone, today, is ethical. George Meany is
ethical and Nelson Rockeffeller is ethical and Rev. Moon is ethical and Prince
Sihanouk is ethical and the late King Faisel was ethical, as are his un-countable
sons. Is that all there is to Judaism? lf that is all there is, then stop
lecturing Bernie as he marches into the sun with his ethical shiksa. Bernie
wants to know what is exclusive about Judaism, what is unique, what is special,
what it has that others do not. Bernie wants to know this and those who
murdered him have no answers for him. The head of the B’nai Brith has no answer
for him. The temple caterer has no answer for him, nor the Board Chairman, nor
the Sisterhood president. The temple rabbi has no answer for him. Mother and
father surely have no answer for him. All of these have no answers for him
because all of these have no answers for themselves.
Judaism lives or dies on the unique fact that God Revealed Himself at Mount
Sinai and gave the Jew a truth that no one else has. Judaism lives or dies on
the fact that the Bible and the Talmud with their laws, commandments, statutes
and ordinances were divinely revealed and that the only way to holiness and
true goodness comes from the observance of Torah laws. This is what kept
Bernie’s zeyde and bubby Jewish; nothing else. This is a reason for being
Jewish. This is a reason for not marrying Brigitte. All the rest is fraud and
buff. Poor Bernie, victim of the worst kind of robbery – the taking of his
heritage and reason for being. lf only he would realize that the ‘Judaism’ that
he saw his entire life was anything but that. lf only he realized that he was
the victim of the worst kind of spiritual swindle. How fortunate he would be.
How joyous and happy and how meaningful would his life become if he
rediscovered the Judaism of his ancestors that was sold on the American
continent for thirty pieces of dross. Jewish is beautiful if you do not play
games with it- or with yourself. lf only Bernie understood. How fortunate he
would be. He could then turn in his Brigitte for a reason for being.
A reason for being Jewish.
