June, July Aug 1993

WHICH MAGEN DAVID DEFINES A JEW?

 The remarkable configuration
on the right is a reproduction of an OP ED dialogue exactly as it appeared in
the New York Times on Friday, May 28, 1993. It has

to do with recent allegations
made against the A.D.L.(Anti-Defamation League) of the B'nai Brith that it ran
a spy-network across the country, and, worse, sold information to foreign
governments. There is no question that its enemies to the right and to the left
who have been at different times exposed by the A.D.L. as bigots and anti-semites
have picked up with gleeful abandon these charges and have exaggerated and
contorted

them  way out of all
proportion in the hope of crippling its ability to function as vigorously and
effectively in the future as it has in the past. But what chiefly drew my
attention to this item, entirely apart from the opposing messages it conveyed,

were the two Magen Davids
carved out of the words that comprised the differing arguments: The distinc­tive
forms taken on by these Stars of David. In one, it is the words without that
cause a Magen David to emerge.

In the other, it is the words
within. It seems to me that they speak to the question of what in the end
defines a Jew. Indeed, what makes us Jewish. Is it the Jewish content within
that makes us Jews or the anti-semites without who don't let us forget that we
are Jews - who make us Jews. The great British historian of a generation or two
ago, Lord Namier, once remarked during the Hitler M.H.B.R. period: I had
always considered myself first and foremost a human being and then an
Englishman and finally a Jew. But I have since learned that while not all are
of one opinion that I am a human being and some question whether I am an
Englishman, all are agreed that I am a Jew. So. I have discovered that I am
first a Jew and then a human being and lastly an Englishman. Here was the Magen
David defined by adversaries outside of the Jew not by the content within
him.

But what hit me especially,
with enormous force, as I looked at these Magen Davids, was the stark
blank bottom one configured by the statement of the A.D.L. Uncannily, it
reflected a truth about itself and other Jewish defense groups who put their
enormous energies and material goods in fighting our enemies outside and all
the while not realizing that at least and no less formidable enemy to Jewish
survival and continuity is the absolute emptiness within the Star of David
within the Jew. Far belt from me to gainsay entirely the significant
contributions of the A.D.L. and its sis­ter agencies and I have no doubt that
they should continue their work and that they merit support. But I'm many more
times concerned about the Magen David devoid of any Jewish content
within, then I am by the fierce and unyielding adversaries who pounce on us
from without.

Rabbi Zevulun Charlop