A Drool-Evoking Moment
Mr. Allen clearly was guilty of an indiscretion. Within seconds, the incident sprang to life for liberal reporters from coast to coast. They drooled. They hugged. They sloppily kissed the story over and over. Salivating over the sexy thesis presented to them a conservative politician had criticized a dark-skinned man the salacious scenario that followed thoroughly demeaned the veteran Forward reporter E.J. Kessler. A so far uncredited person smoked out the information that Mr. Allens mother, the little-known wife of the famed late pro football coach George Allen, was French Tunisian. Kessler, the Jewish journalistic detective, put French Tunisia with the epithet and began digging. Dear reader, I am a Jew who likely is old enough to be your father. I have never before heard of the epithet Mr. Allen used. The word is 1 mile beyond obscure. Such arcanity did not discourage the intrepid Kessler, determined to pin an embarrassment badge on the senator. Kessler determined Mr. Allens grandfather was a Jew, whom the Nazis sent to the death camps during the Holocaust. But Kessler, being a Jew, knew that Jewish law says the Jewishness of a child hinges entirely on the mother. By Jewish law, the father can be any brand of yahoo. The fathers background is irrelevant. If Kessler could show that Mr. Allens mother was born of a Jewish mother, that would prove Mr. Allen, previously known to be a Christian, was, by Jewish law, as Jewish as the Lubavitcher Rebbe. However, Kessler, driven by political passion, could not find the damning evidence needed to convict.
A Guess That Detonates a Bomb
At that point, Kessler tossed journalistic ethics into a trash can. Who needs proof? The passion of a reporter should be sufficient, Kessler reasoned. Kessler guessed that the story would trigger long-buried guilt emotions within an old lady, Mr. Allens mother who still lives in the South Bay. In a Forward story dated Aug. 25, Kessler speculated that the 83-year-old Mrs. Allen secretly was a Jew. Instantly, Kessler struck gold. Two days ago, Mrs. Allen told the Washington Post that about the time the Forward story was published, she disclosed her Jewish background to her middle-aged son for the first time. Her unremarkable explanation will be familiar to Jews. Millions of Jews have told the identical story to their children. What they put my father through (in the Nazi death camps), Mrs. Allen said, I always was fearful. I didnt want my children to have to go through that fear all the time.
It Was a Yawn, Really
During the 15 years I covered the Jewish community, I must have heard similar stories from children of Holocaust survivors hundreds of times. The pain and the guilt that survivors have lived uncomfortably with for the past 61 years remains numbing and overwhelming. Shielding their children from such cruel suffering is their highest value. Flash back to the journalistic punk, Ms. Fox, who must come by her lack of class naturally. On the television stations website, in a cynical story about Ms. Foxs incident, a channel 9 reporter wrote, sneeringly, about Mr. Allen: In the wake of conceding his Jewish ancestry, and claiming he just learned of it within the last month Mr. Allen repeatedly was pilloried this week for denying he was Jewish. Mrs. Allen said, however, she had sworn her son to secrecy. Incisively, Mrs. Allen pronounced the perfect denouement to the mess made deliberately by liberals: The fact that this is such an issue justifies my actions and my behavior. As an aside, Mr. Allens Democratic opponent defeated Harris Miller, another Jew, in last springs primary. Mr. Allens opponent believed he helped his cause by mailing out a flier intended to promote two of the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes. Mr. Miller was portrayed with a greatly enlarged nose and with paper money sticking out of his pockets.
Postscript
Going into Rosh Hashana, it scarcely is comforting to know that being a Jew in public still is freighted with unimaginable perils and threats. .
