May I suggest to you and your co-religious
friends several things:

1) More Talmud Torah

2) More davvenning

3) More deeds of kindness

4) Be careful of all goy–including me.

A goy,

Gerry Mullen

Re: #42. You have an unusual talent for misconstruing what I write. I am not looking to “blame” one particular segment of the people. The whole topic of this thread, starting with Topas’ letter is not to blame any particular group but generally what we can do to improve the moral condition of the country. If anything, it is just because this latest development of raising Toeva marriage to a new legal status and therefore giving it extraordinary prestige and acceptance that sparked a new level of concern based on Torah sources that treat this particular issue with more stringent regard.

I’m not interested in dealing with anyone’s Yetzer Hara except maybe the Yetzer Hara that says: “Ah, what’s the use of doing anything, it won’t help” or the one that says “Well we have lots of other problems” or the one that says “Well, you aren’t so hotsy-totsy either, so why pick on this particular group”. Respectfully, you’ve demonstrated on this thread that someone can come up with a thousand reasons not to do something, so I have to ask: “What Yetzer Hara are you listening to?”

Last but not least, I want to repeat so you can’t make the same mistake again, I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT HARMING ANYONE OR PICKING ON ANYONE. I AM ONLY TALKING ABOUT WHAT WE CAN DO TO INFLUENCE THINGS IN A BETTER DIRECTION SO WE CAN AT LEAST SAY WE TRIED TO PLEASE HASHEM, WE TRIED TO PREVENT HIS ANGER FROM POURING DOWN ON THIS WONDERFUL COUNTRY. Yes, this may mean right now trying to prevent more Toeva rights, but only because it is the leading edge of the moral decay right now.

Re: the McCarthy era, we also disagree. The public, not the WSJ, has been re-educated to think that the communists were just starry-eyed idealists who stood up for their principles and were victimized by the most evil man in American history, Joe McCarthy. McCarthy did not give spy hunting a bad name, but he gave the anti-communist movement a bad name, which did make it a lot harder to root out the stunning number of commies who populated the State Department and many other vital government agencies. McCarthy was right, but he went totally overboard in his approach.

As you noted, the Rosenbergs were the only American spies executed (albeit in the last century). Their devotion to communism helped stamp communism as a Jewish or Jewish-influenced enterprise.

Leaving these movements behind, one still has to look around today at the number of extremely liberal Jewish judges (Ginsburg, Breyer on the SCT), liberal Jewish academics (Chomsky, Finklestein, many others), politics (Feinstein, Lieberman, Waxman, Wechsler endless list) media (NYT, NPR, etc) and entertainment (Streisand, Gefen, Spielberg, etc.) and you can see that there is plenty of fodder for any committed or willing anti-Semite to look around and decide that Jews play a big role in a lot that is wrong with the country, starting with the moral decay.

Please explain this sentence in #39:
“Your question about the nature of a backlash is somewhat naive for a student of Jewish history and the dynamic of anti-Semitism as a supernatural force.”

I’m not familiar with much anti-Semitic literature, so if you say that the idea that Jews are behind the Communists movement is an important theme in today’s publications, I will agree with you. But given that communism is no longer perceived as the threat it once was, how much influence can this literature have? Are there really more people who are concerned _today_ about Red-loving Jews than there are who those who hate Jews because of their association with the Civil Rights movement? And yes, there _are_ people today who would call the Civil Right movement a “decadent movement that undermined the fabric of our country”.

Regarding the McCarthy era, I believe that most people today don’t believe that Communists were the good guys; rather, they were turned off by McCarthy’s blanket accusations of thousands of loyal Americans. According to an editorial I read in that bastion of liberal thought, _The Wall Street Journal_, those who investigated actual spies believe that McCarthy gave spy hunting a bad name.

Of course it’s important to note that the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg associated Jews and Communism in the eyes of the American public more than anything McCarthy said. The publicity surrounding the trial frequently mentioned the fact that they were Jewish. And they were (and still are) the only Americans executed for espionage in this century.

Anon for this said:

“While you find it surprising that many high level Nazis had poor “personal morality” despite their treatment of “pink triangle” people …”

Where did I say such a thing? I am not surprised, just pointing out the paradox, not the surprise that people who oppressed the pink triangles were themselves often engaged in the same behavior.

Your question about the nature of a backlash is somewhat naive for a student of Jewish history and the dynamic of anti-Semitism as a supernatural force. Your point about the stance of Agudah is exactly my point: if the frum world can make a strong enough impression on the larger culture, be a light unto the nation, we may avert disaster altogether. That is what I would advocate, which includes a change of course in the tendency of many Orthodox organizations to back candidates even though they promote legal recognition of Toeva. Moreover, the question remains if the efforts of the Orthodox world will be enough to offset the high profile Jewish presence on the other side of this issue.

Your comparisons to the Red Scare and the Civil Rights movements are both erroneous. In the case of the heavy Jewish role in the American communist movement, we are suffering from it to this day. If you study contemporary anti-Semitic literature then and now, you will find that a repeated theme is that Jews are behind the communist movement, still seek to undermine the country and are viciously hated for it. It is only the Grace of Hashem that has kept these sentiments from boiling over into the larger public debate. That, and the fact that, since commies and liberals run the education system, two and now three generations of Americans have been raised to think the commies were the good guys during the McCarthy era.

When it comes to the civil rights movement, you’ve got two problems: one, the civil rights movement wasn’t a decadent movement that undermined the moral fabric of the country; two, a great majority of America recognized that the civil rights movement was just. Therefore, the whole constituency for hating the Jews over their involvement is rather limited to the deep south, neo nazis and white supremacists. Thankfully, they are still (for now) very much fringe groups who are rejected by the overwhelming majority of Americans.

“Townshrier, while I hear what you are saying, but another problem is that from recent news events, it often turns out that the strongest family-values politicians are actually the weakest in their personal adherence to the cause. It is easy to make noise, not so easy to control one’s own yetzer hara. It is hard to know who to trust on matters of morality.”

PY: what’s your point? Because we don’t know who’s really moral, we should not fight for morality? I don’t get it.

If you are looking for a “natural explanation” for what brought the Nazis to power, I think the main motivation was the difficult economic situation in Germany. Of course most of the world was suffering as a result of the Great Depression, but the situation in Germany was more difficult because of the sanctions imposed by the victors of World War I. It seems to me that most Germans cared more about starving than they did about what the “pink triangle” people were doing.

While you find it surprising that many high level Nazis had poor “personal morality” despite their treatment of “pink triangle” people I think the two behaviors are related: some of their aversion was due to the fact they recognized this behavior (or its potential) in themselves and were disgusted by it. If more than one US Senator is capable of this sort of hypocrisy I don’t hold Nazis to a higher standard.

Do you think that there could be a backlash against the Jews due to their association with this? If so exactly what form do you think this would take. I personally think that due to the stance of the Agudah and other Orthodox organizations this is not likely to happen.

Certainly in the past there’s been a backlash against Jews who were associated with unpopular movements in America’s history. The examples I’m most familiar with are the “Red scare” in the 1950′s and the Civil Rights movement in the ’60′s. During the 1950′s, many Jews in the entertainment and other industries were blacklisted due to their actual or perceived association with Communists (and in some cases, their refusal to name names). During the Civil Rights movement, many Jews marched along with African Americans and helped register voters (Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were the best known of these). I don’t think that in either case Jews in general suffered as a result of these movements.