UNEASY AT HOME
Anti-Semitism and the American Jewish Experience
Leonard Dinnerstein
New York: Columbia University Press, 1987
281 pp., $25
AMERICAN ASSIMILATION OR JEWISH REVIVAL?
Steven M. Cohen
Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1988
192 pp., $27.50
It is difficult today to take American anti-Semitism seriously. Within the last decade or so, Jews have penetrated the highest echelons of the American society and economy. Jews have served as the secretaries of state and defense, as chairman of the National Security Council and head of the Postal Service, and as the presidents of the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, Dartmouth College, and Columbia University. A Jew even had the temerity to turn down the presidency of Yale University, preferring to remain at Harvard where presumably he, along with the Cabots and Lodges, could talk to God. A Jew is rumored to be named the next chief of the Chrysler Corporation, Jews have been presidents of the nation's major stock exchanges, and a Jew is head of the Wall Street Journal, the most important of American daily newspapers. A Jew is even president of the corporation that arguably has had the greatest impact on American culture--Walt Disney Productions.
Jews have moved into the higher ranks of the eastern banking elite, among the holiest of the holy enclaves of the American establishment, and Jews have headed the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve System. During the financial problems of the Hunt family, caused by its failure to corner the silver market, one of the Hunt brothers remarked that he was not comfortable with Jews, since they are different from other people. He was quick to add, however, that his major financial advisors were Jews, as is the Hunt's current lawyer. (Jesus saves but Moses invests.)
Also during the past decade and a half, one Shapiro (Irving) served as the president of the Dupont Corporation, while another Shapiro (Harold) was recently inaugurated as the president of Princeton University. (A third Shapiro [Karl] was one of America's most prominent poets.) In this tale of two Shapiros the case of Princeton is especially significant. At one time it was assumed that a Jew would become president of the United States before he would become president of Princeton, the most waspish and socially elitist of American universities. (A recent article by Marianne Sanua in American Jewish History noted that anti-Semitic incidents occurred at Princeton until the late 1950s.) Moreover, the selection of Harold Shapiro is hardly idiosyncratic since the three other most important academic officers at Princeton are also Jewish.
America's Jews are no longer a pariah group. They have become part and parcel of the American establishment. Even the most unassimilated sector of American Jewry is now within the American mainstream. The winter 1987-88 issue of Jewish Action, the quarterly published by the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, has a press release announcing that Pepperidge Farm products are now kosher. Dr. Anthony Ranalli, the company's vice president of quality
...
Read Full Article
|
