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=> Shmully and guilt

Shmully and guilt

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Shmully and guilt by Philip Weiss on April 26, 2012 All A year ago I met a scholar named Ben Karp who asked if I would come for Sabbath dinner at a Jewish society at Yale called Eliezer. Karp co-founded Eliezer 15 years ago. It is a members-only society that takes Jewishness and Judaism seriously, he said. We started it so that people like you can talk about their Jewish experience. We stay up late and you can spend the night in the bedroom. Karp reeled off some impressive people who’d spoken at Eliezer. I said Sure and it was arranged for a Sabbath dinner in January. I got to a dark stone townhouse in downtown New Haven at about 7:30. There was a stained glass over the front door of a religious character but no other sign that I was in the right spot. I knocked on the big front door and it promptly opened; Ben brought me in. Ben is tall and slender and from a mixed racial background, and his work is decidedly multiculturalist: he studies W.E.B. DuBois, he’s a pragmatic two-stater. He led me upstairs to the scene of the Sabbath dinner. I was surprised to see a redbearded Chabad rabbi standing there in his black coat, with his tie open on his neck. The man asked me my Hebrew name—Pinchas—and then embraced me and began talking about Pinchas great grandson of Abraham. I say surprised because I had last seen Shmully Hecht two years before when Richard Goldstone spoke at Yale. A redhaired, redbearded man with very alive blue eyes, Hecht stood at the back of the hall holding up a big sign that said, “The Dreyfus Affair, 1890, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, 1903… Goldstone, 2009." After Goldstone spoke, Hecht had approached him at the broccoli and red pepper spears reception and engaged in vigorous discussion. Goldstone had nodded quietly and then directed Hecht to look at the supplement to his report, containing a photograph of a Jewish star cut into a field in Gaza by Israeli tanks. Goldstone said that it had been one of the most upsetting things he had discovered in Gaza. Shmully Hecht was also a founder of Eliezer. He and Ben and I went back downstairs to see who else had arrived, then we sat chatting. I could see my bedroom, a big bed with piled pillows waiting for me at the end of the night. Shmully said he was raised in a Chabad household but has had experience with many different forms of Jewish devotion. In fact he has more in common with an imam than he did with most Christian clergy-- the religions were more similar—and for more than 1000 years Jews and Muslims had gotten along fine with one another across the Middle East. Of course I have heard this same idea often from anti-Zionists. Why did that change? I said. Why should 2000 years of harmony suddenly end? Shmully said that when Esau sold his birthright to Jacob there had been a quarrel. That quarrel was reasserting itself now thousands of years later. Shmully’s wife came in. Shmully had told me ahead of time that orthodox women do not shake hands. She was pretty and darkhaired with an animated face and a big smile-- in a word, vivacious. Toby. We talked about my Jewishness. Shmully said that Jewishness was in someone’s soul and it would always reassert itself in a Jew’s life. It would call to him at a certain time in life. I said I think that is what has happened to me, though it has not been religiously. We went upstairs to the long and lavishly appointed Sabbath table. By the time laggards arrived, there were about 18 people at the table, most of them graduate students. We drank wine and I spoke. I believe there were some J Street folks at one end of the table who agreed with me, but hardly any one else did. Still the atmosphere was attentive and respectful. Yale is a serious place, though Shmully is nothing if not charismatic, a storyteller who makes Jewish religion come alive in that immediate, ecstatic Chabad manner. He said that he had also befriended Richard Goldstone since the incident at Yale's McMillan Center and he thought Goldstone was a fine man. Shmully loves to joke around about anything but the Jewish nation. Over the course of the night as we drank red wine and Japanese whiskey I kept joking that we were going to end up in bed together downstairs. Shmully had no problem with the joke. Ben introduced me with a spiritual lesson. He said that there was a deep divide in the Jewish community and it shouldn’t be there. There were people like myself who felt righteous about being outcast. It reminded him of the urban renewal project in New Haven. It had cut a deep divide in the community. When I spoke, I copped to the righteousness of the excommunicated. I said there was a pleasure in it. I spoke for about 15 minutes and told a story I always tell to Jewish audiences, how I as a feature journalist and Christmas tree Jew have a very similar background to the guy who gave Jews the Zionist religion, Theodore Herzl, and like him I have awakened to Jewish experience in midlife. But where the anti-Semites had made Herzl Jewish again, the neoconservatives did that to me, when they pushed for a war to take everyone’s attention off the occupation. I spoke a lot about Palestinian conditions in occupation, and how they had shaken me, made me want to have nothing to do with the Zionist project. After I spoke the questions began respectfully but critically and grew more heated. At the end it almost became a heated argument. But even then people were polite. It was remarkably civil considering that most people at the table had an active relationship with Israel, had family there even. Ben began the questions by asking me Did I ever have misgivings about my work given that it has been attractive to anti-Semites, and what did I aim to do about that. I said the short answer was Yes. That pained me. There is no doubt that anti-Semites have been drawn to some of what I’ve said, and there have been anti-Semites on the comment board. I tried to explain how hard it is to police a comments board and also how tribal internet communities are. Also, I said that the conflict was polarizing. Communities are deeply divided. It was like Ben’s image of urban renewal, a great wound. I’m in one camp and they’re in another. A young scholar next to me who is studying proto-Zionism in Europe in the 1800s out of a commitment to Israel said how could I be so sure that anti-Semitism was not going to return in a virulent form. It had been recurring throughout our history. Every 50 or 100 years there were major episodes. Of course it could happen again. And why did I not think that Israel could be struck by a nuclear warhead from Iran soon and it would be gone in the blink of an eye, she said. The rebbitzin was also tough on me. She leaned across the table to speak directly and familiarly. She used the word my mother has used with me to describe my website: “vile.” She had gone on it that day and been shocked by things she read. People there wanted to dismantle Israel. And then to see me talk about my Jewishness and Jewish history in a thoughtful way--she couldn’t believe this was the same person yukking it up with haters of Israel. Toby seemed to suggest I was masquerading. But she had gotten a taste of the site and said she was hurt by it. She told me about her grandmothers escaping the Holocaust. But their parents died, and many of their relatives died. This was not that long ago. You are not sensitive to this. This is an emotional issue. It’s not something that you can be rational about. These things really happened to our community. I felt bad. I nodded listening to her and said that I was sorry for her family and that I respected the emotion. Shmully said that I was wrong about the occupation. That land was bought by Jews. It belonged to us. Abraham had bought Hebron to bury Sarah. It’s in the Bible. All of Eretz Israel is the Jews’. He said that some people were afraid of the idea that Jews have guns now. We didn’t use to have guns. Now we do. Nothing would change if Jews left the West Bank. We had left Gaza and nothing had changed. There were just rockets. When I spoke of the dispossesson of Palestinians, several members of the group contested me. They said that Palestinians had sold the land. They said that no one was getting pushed off their land. When I said that Nabi Saleh had been denied access to its wells, and had to have water trucked in, Toby said Well who trucks that water in—Israel. There were other comments: Palestinians were desperate to be on the west side of the Green Line because they were treated better than anywhere else in the Middle East. My time line comparing Israeli discrimination to American discrimination in the deep south circa 1964 was skewed. There were Arab members of the Knesset after Israel was founded and an Arab member of the Supreme Court. I said we should measure a society by people’s consent to their government, and Palestinians didn’t consent to their government, or they did not like it. I felt there was broad acknowledgement at the long table of that truth, though it was stated that Islam doesn’t tolerate being under Jewish rule. The Jews are dhimmi. Second class citizens. Muslims couldn’t accept citizenship in a Jewish state. I said that human history is fluid. I said that American Jews would never accept minority status without equal rights in the U.S. and that is all we should be for in Israel and Palestine. A big handsome young undergraduate with a shock of dark hair said that I was being narcissistic. I was taking my standards and expecting other people in the world to accept them. I was being completely self-referential. It was kind of psychological and I wasn’t sure what to say. I did a lot of listening. Later he came up to me and said I should read Peter Singer’s book about his grandfather in Vienna, who was killed in the Holocaust (when I got home I ordered it). Now and then I looked down at the J Street Jews at the table but they were mostly quiet and listening. They did not get drawn into the conversation. The most heated conversation took place with a small businessman with a green knit skullcap. What I said made him angry. He spoke in a withering dismissive tone, a little snappish. As if I were the enemy. How much time had I spent there? Five visits, six or seven weeks, I said. Well that’s no time at all to be reaching such judgments. I said I never went to Vietnam or South Africa. He said it was worrying when people like me expressed such ignorance. I said that he should be worried, because Israel had always depended on the American Jewish community and we’d had enough. He said I had no idea what I was talking about. Israel was a free place for Palestinians by and large and what was the point of what I was saying, you want to destroy Israel, you think it was a mistake, you want to undo the mistake. That is what you are trying to do. I said I waffled on partition for just this reason. I wasn’t against a Jewish state per se but it wasn’t up to me, it was up to the people there to accept it or not, and Palestinians citizens didn't want it. He said, What do you want Israel to do. What do you want it to do? Right now? I am asking you, tell me! I said, stop discriminating against Arabs and allowing Nabi Saleh to have access to its water. The man in the green skullcap said that such discrimination was by individual landlords, and he denied that the occupation was hateful. I said that the Palestinians did not like it. He said I was calling for the destruction of Israel and I was dangerously naïve. I said that many American Jews were coming to the same conclusion I was because they didn’t want to continue to support these practices. Shmully said that if you went around New Haven there were just as stark economic differences between one community and another as there was in Israel and Palestine. Why didn’t I begin my reform efforts in New Haven? There was a soup course and then a main course of chicken at 11 o’clock. The food was excellent. The wine was excellent. I know because I drank a lot of it. Shmully kept refilling my glass. Then he led the end of the Shabbat service. I stayed up joking with him and Ben. Then I went to bed, that kingsized bed on the first floor with the big white comforter. There was a computer and a desk in the room and also a Chinese cabinet with liquor inside, all for the taking of guests. Ben said that I should lock the guestroom door as members of the Eliezer group might be coming and going all night. The Eliezer group now owns the next door building and will soon expand into it. Eliezer felt like a fancy club, not that different from the men’s clubs at Harvard when I was there. It’s odd for me to see Jews having a fancy club at Yale. But this is our modern condition. Wassail! I had had too much to drink and did not sleep well. I had a dream about a football game. A Jets player was scoring a touchdown by stretching out over the goal-line. I was watching the player and noting that he was white. He used a clever device to hold on to the ball as he stretched over the goal-line, almost like phylacteries. I decided the dream was about racism. I notice race on the football field-- so who am I to be upset when the members of the Eliezer society speak of Jews in exceptional terms and as a nation. So many people are guilty of racism, nationalism. I woke up at 4 and then at 5 from having drunk too much red wine, feeling terribly guilty. I was in an entirely Jewish setting and had betrayed the Jewish people. I was not helping, I was not helping. I was alienating myself from highly intelligent and kind people. They were kind to me anyway. Now I understood why Goldstone had reconsidered his report, if he had spent any time with Shmully! The tiled bathroom was beautifully appointed, with a glass bowl sink set on the countertop. I used the toothbrush provided and went upstairs to the Sabbath room of the night before. It was miraculously cleaned up, there was no sign of the tumult and food of the night before. The chairs were back upside down on the table top. The silver Judaica wine pouring device to pour 20 silver cups at once was cleaned and set upside down in its different parts on a drying rack. I took some of the cookies I had not been able to eat from the night before and closed the heavy front door after me. It was 6 a.m. and still dark on Shabbos. I drove back home wondering how I was going to mend my ways. About Philip Weiss Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net. View all posts by Philip Weiss → Posted in American Jewish Community, Beyondoweiss, Israel Lobby, Israel/Palestine | Tagged featured chuckcarlos says: April 26, 2012 at 1:01 pm ADL and others throw around a lot of BS and call anybody and everybody an anti-semite which has become absolutely and totally meaningless…so what… Semite a : a member of any of a number of peoples of ancient southwestern Asia including the Akkadians, Phoenicians, Hebrews, and Arabs b : a descendant of these peoples Don’t know about Akkadians but do know that Phoenicians became Carthagians so sounds to me like this anti-semite deal includes a pretty broad spectrum…and doubt that many Jews in the USA are actually Semites… You are the enemy…because like Paul Krugman you’re basically an American…and shares a heritage with James Longstreet, Chief Joseph, Juarez, General Vallejo, Jane Fonda, William Tecumseh Sherman, Lady Gaga, Whitney Houston, Nelson Rockefeller, Brian Wilson, Chuck Berry, 2Pac, Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemmings… Damn site more interesting than talking about some tall tales from ancient Sumeria or Egypt that some scribe in Babylon borrowed…. yeah, I think you are the enemy…congratulations… Shmuel says: April 26, 2012 at 1:27 pm Te absolvo, Pinchas (the proto-zealot). You were set up and outnumbered :-) Annie Robbins says: April 26, 2012 at 1:50 pm this is another of your bests phil. it gives me a very creepy feeling reading it. it requires layers of lies and denials to believe some of the stuff they are saying, like the jews bought all the land. of course they didn’t. even israel’s supreme court understands this. the idea jews bought the land around nablus back in the day and therefore still own it now is simply fabulous, tho not in a good way. but it does inform how just this week netanyahu can throw together a ‘special ministerial committee’ and presto, declare palestinian land theirs. just like that. i mean, it’s crazy. the entire settling tho sounds so very intoxicating and intimate but psychologically devastating, manipulating and almost cult like. breathe. David Samel says: April 26, 2012 at 2:27 pm Annie, I think that’s a great point about comparing it to a cult. Check you reason at the door and try to battle your way against a bevy of true believers. How do police get innocent people to confess? I think there’s a connection there. We are all susceptible to having our realities turned upside down when confronted by skillful interlocutors. I admire Phil’s courage, or is it recklessness, for accepting the invitation – I never would. I’m much better suited to solitude and a keyboard, and can too quickly get hot under the collar and unpleasant in person. Their arguments seem ludicrous in print, but at the time, I would have found it difficult to swat each of them down comfortably. I wonder if Phil would subject himself to this again, and how long it took him to get over his undeserved guilt. It’s a good thing Phil did not mend his ways after all. Annie Robbins says: April 26, 2012 at 3:55 pm Their arguments seem ludicrous in print, but at the time, I would have found it difficult to swat each of them down comfortably. yeah, that is the whole point. another thing is the complete insular ethnic thing. i wonder if goys are ever allowed to these affairs. i suppose the psychological ‘logic’ doesn’t work on them so well. when i was younger i was associated with a chanting group. there was a leader and he had a holier than tho way about him. everyone deferred to him. i couldn’t. i’m just not attracted to manipulative control freaks. Pamela Olson says: April 26, 2012 at 10:18 pm Reading this was like reading George W. Bush’s book, Decision Points. (A family member gave it to me for Christmas two years ago.) Psychedelic, creepy, crazy-making. A fully internally consistent world is created, and all you have to do to believe it is disengage completely from actual observable reality. Once you do, anything is possible. Black is white, up is down, freedom is slavery. No land was stolen. Israel doesn’t take water, it gives water. Phil, you’re not a humanist, you’re a traitor. Glad you’ve stopped falling for it. But I know how disorienting it is to fall back into that rabbit hole for a while. tokyobk says: April 27, 2012 at 2:54 a.m. There are no social events at Eliezer that don’t include Jews if all backgrounds and non Jews who are included among founders, members, speakers and guests. Shmuel says: April 27, 2012 at 3:31 am tokyobk, I presume that you are Ben Karp (the Japan connection, initials and intimate knowledge of Eliezer). If I’m right, could you explain why you invited Phil, what you thought might happen, and whether you think such an atmosphere is really conducive to open discussion. Thanks. One more question: Do you think that MW is “vile”? tree says: April 27, 2012 at 4:48 am You’re especially sharp today, Shmuel! Great analysis of Phil’s dream and now this revelation. I’d likewise be interested in bk’s explanation of his thought processes and reasoning – and his take on MW. Annie Robbins says: April 27, 2012 at 5:06 am yeah, smart shmuel ~ tokyo BK Annie Robbins says: April 27, 2012 at 5:13 am There are no social events at Eliezer that don’t include Jews of all backgrounds and non Jews who are included among founders, members, speakers and guests. tokyobk, just for clarification..(and i am serious) in the context in which you are referring, are sabbath dinners classified as ‘social events’? tokyobk says: April 27, 2012 at 6:18 am Yes, I am The BK of tokyo BK. I invited Phil Weiss because he is an interesting guy doing intersting things on a subject which matters to Jews and the larger world which is the only criteria for a guest of Eliezer. I wont out some of our other guests but trust me they are people that are both revered and reviled here. No litmus test. Or at least a very, very wide one. (prob would not have the grand dragon of the kkk… or, hmmm…). There is no commentator on I and P of any background that I would not invite and a few on schedule. What I thought might happen did happen and happens pretty much every Friday during the year which is people eat, drink, and talk about serious things. I think the conversation about Israel happens in various echo chambers and I pride Eliezer on being a place where Conversations are honest and I think that happened the night Phil came. No I do not think the commenters here are vile I think some comments have reflected jew hatred, most crazy standards for Israel. Some commenters flip to provide any context of understanding for any group other than Jews and Israel. Some. Mostbhere imo romanticize the Palestinians abit thiugh I understand that given what many are going through. I give a little money to this site because I believe in free soeech for the Jewish world, so in short, no. Annie, yes Shabbat is religious but also the main social event at Eliezer. More random personal beliefs: Indeally one secular democratic state, practically twonstates but alas that might be indeed dead. Inwould live i. a secular Palestine before a religious Israel. No, God did not give Israel to the Jews. God does not give land and land is not”Jewish” or “Arab” (one of my problems with the BDS platform). I understand why a rabbi believes that just as an Imam believes that his Prophet landed in Jerusalem on a winged horse making it Islams third holiest site. Jewish paranoia makes sense, though Phil is not wrong that Jews now are rich and seure and the claim that only Israel makes us safer is unproven. Nationalism and religion (redundant?) is dangerous in all groups. All cultural and academic boycotts are obnoxious. I am against boycotting Pakistan, China, Iran inthis way too. And, lastly the theme that gets me to post here sometimes: Jews are a natural and normal part of the middle east and north Africa. Helen Thomas can kiss my ass. Jewsih expulsions changed the character if Israel some as an entity conceived in Europe and enacted as a settler state (the nakba not denied of course – a human tragedy that Jews deny at the peril of our collective soul). Jews should be able to live freely among other groups there including in a small, secure Israel that gives rights to all its citizens and makes consideration and restitution to expulsed Palestinians. Israel was born in blood and war on artificial borders at the expense of indiginous peple (some of whom were trying to enact their own expulsion). and thatbis the origin of many countries especially my own, the US. I am with NF, however, Isreal exists as a legal country. excuse typing. this is an ipad and I have jetlag. Terryscott says: April 27, 2012 at 6:40 am Fantastic. This has been a real surprise. Both Phil’s piece and your post struck me hard. tokyobk says: April 27, 2012 at 6:41 am …no God did -not- give Israel to the Jews… tree says: April 27, 2012 at 6:50 am the nakba not denied of course – a human tragedy that Jews deny at the peril of our collective soul And yet it seems you stood silent while others did just that, and preferred instead to focus on whether some people have said “anti-semitic” things in the comment section here, and whether the Jewish community was “divided” or not. This isn’t a particularly auspicious omen for the health of your own soul. And, lastly the theme that gets me to post here sometimes: Jews are a natural and normal part of the middle east and north Africa. I’d certainly agree, but have you read the books by Shabti and others, that point out that it was, and is, the Ashkenazi elite that chose to alienate the Arab Jews from their own Arabic culture, and remake them in a European mold, yet still relegated to an inferior status, never quite achieving the same lofty heights above the reviled Arab non-Jew that the elite choose to claim as their birthright? Do you ever bring this up in your evenings? Or do you rely on others to avoid the echo chamber? And do you really think that the ongoing I/P conflict is equivalent to urban renewal in New Haven? Would you have made the same comparison between apartheid South Africa and New Haven? tokyobk says: April 27, 2012 at 7:01 am Thanks for concern about my soul, but if it is in jeopardy it is not for any open conversation that happens at the Eliezer table. Yes, in my capacity as host I have remained silent while all sorts of garbage I disagree with is spouted. Since, as a host at a salon I am responsible for getting people to voice their opinions, some of which offend me personally. Then, I get to talk and others are quiet while I talk. That is how a conversation happens. I find the idea of “a land without a people” and denying Palestinian’s their sense of identity to be abhorrent at every level and no one who knows me is not aware of this. I certainly did ask Phil if he worries about people who are Jew haters using his site. Its a question many Jews ask and assume to be the case and I think it gives them an excuse, btw, to alienate people like him. I wanted him, as all my guests, to be able to speak openly and honestly and he did. I think the dysfunctional conversation between Jews is like the urban renewal in New Haven, too many cuts and segregations destroyed that town (which is now being reconnected). That was the analogy not to I – P which no does not resemble New Haven. Shmuel says: April 27, 2012 at 7:09 am Thanks for answering, BK. You say “prob would not have the grand dragon of the kkk”, yet the ideology of Chabad in general, and it seems Rabbi Hecht in particular, is not that different from that of the Klan (see e.g. Syd Nestel’s comment on this thread). What is more, not only is Rabbi Hecht invited to the table, but it is his table and his rules. I think that is what has “creeped” people out here about the whole story. It doesn’t seem like an open forum at all, but a kind of set up, in which one (very offensive) perspective is given primacy, and people like Phil are, at best, decorative fig leaves that allow Eliezer to strike a pluralistic pose. Judging by Phil’s description, I don’t think there was any meaningful discussion going on at all – more like a kind of public dressing down by an authority figure. It’s no wonder Phil left feeling guilty. tokyobk says: April 27, 2012 at 7:28 am Phil “decorated” the table long into the evening and was a memorable guest. I don’t think anyone left that evening without liking him as a person whatever continued disagreements. If you have any other suggestions for mere window dressing in our grand project to dominate all opinion let me know! I am open to anyone having a turn in the guest seat except the raving narcissist Gilad Atzmon who has nothing good to offer Jews or Palestinians. Re Chabad. Every group has their schtick and Chabad has theirs. Religion divides, and the subdivisions of course divide even more. All told, I am grateful for having the chance to spend time in that community and having met so many wonderful people. Lastly, Shmully runs the religious aspects of the table. Members bring whomever they want. Its a Yale and Jewish organization, everyone thinks they are running the table frankly and everybody speaks loudly with authority. Phil gave as well as he got as you can imagine. Shmuel says: April 27, 2012 at 8:13 am Every group has their schtick and Chabad has theirs If that is the attitude of the “moderate” founder of Eliezer, I suspect the club has (to borrow your phrase) “nothing good to offer Jews or Palestinians”. Shmully runs the religious aspects of the table The “religious aspect” is the setting, and according to Phil’s account, the entire discussion has a decidedly religious (viz. Chabad) bent. Just out of curiosity, does Rabbi Hecht sit at the head of the table? tokyobk says: April 27, 2012 at 8:28 am Yes, moderation is precisely realizing that everybody has their schtick. No, he does not. David Samel says: April 27, 2012 at 8:33 am Ben, I am particularly interested in your question to Phil about whether he worries that Jew-haters use his site. I think his in-person answer was honest but inadequate, and as his un-retained lawyer, I would like to offer something more. First, what would you suggest Phil do to avoid providing fodder for anti-semites? Should he keep silent in the face of Israeli crimes as he sees them? Isn’t that the classic Jewish-paranoia cliche: “Shhh, don’t make trouble. Don’t give the goyim reason to hate us.” Besides, true anti-semites don’t need Phil or anyone else to spread their hatred. If he kept his mouth shut, they’d find plenty of other sources. Should Americans who disagree with their government’s policies keep quiet for fear of provoking hatred of the US and possible terrorist attacks against it? Second, if you are really concerned with acts that promote anti-semitism, you should ask Israelis and their supporters if they are worried about the same thing. Israelis commit monstrous acts against the Palestinians, and do so in the name of the Jews worldwide. Isn’t it better for Jews like Phil to say “I’m not part of that” and to demonstrate that there are many more Jews who also distance themselves? Israel behaves like, indeed stands for the principle that, Jews born everywhere in the world have more rights in Israel/Palestine than non-Jews who have lived there all their lives and whose family roots go back more than a millennium. Can you think of any obnoxious/arrogant attitude that is more likely to spread anti-semitism? On the other hand, if you ask Israelis if they are concerned about their actions encouraging anti-semites around the world, their honest answer might be yes, they hope so. Israel likes to bill itself as the only place of true refuge and security for Jews, and they like to exploit incidents of anti-semitism in the diaspora, real or apparent, by encouraging Jews to move there. Phil answered your question honestly, because as the proprietor of the site, he really does worry about some of the comments he sees. But he should feel zero responsibility for them. He fights true anti-semitism more than Israel, Abe Foxman, and Elie Wiesel combined. --------------------- - BACK TO INDEX - REPLY - QUOTE - EDIT - DELETE -

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