A Failed Editor
Comes now the latest whiffy-minded Los Angeles Jew, the I-Am-Not-Sure-What-I-Believe-Today editor of the Jewish Journal. He is todays poster boy as the most Jewishly Useless Jew in Los Angeles. He probably should be a Unitarian. They, too, believe in nothing and everything, all while chewing used gum. In this weeks column, the editor wonders why Jews would bother to protest the ill-advised decision by the County Human Relations Commission to honor a filthy-minded old man, Maher Hathout, a virulently anti-Semitic Muslim from the old pre-terror days. Leaving aside the problematic selection process, what has happened to the trademark Jewish character trait of standing up and protesting a person, an idea you believe to be morally wrong?
He Seems Uncomfortable With Judaism
The editor periodically writes about his allergy to religion, and it frequently shows up in his wading-pool reasoning. But the editor will not be scolded by readers because the newspaper is patronized almost exclusively by non- and anti-religious Jews who take their religion in annual rather than daily or weekly doses. Their collective lack of understanding about the religion that the Jewish Journal editor publicly represents has grown for them a thick epidermis that walls them off from sensitivity that workaday Jews feel when insulted. If you are a religious Jew and you are referred to as a kike, or a similar epithet, you fight back. If you are black, and you are called a nigger, you fight back. If the editor of the Jewish Journal possessed a modicum of knowledge of, or commitment to, Judaism, he would understand that workaday Jews are offended by grossly bigoted Muslims such as Hathout. But he says he does not want to offend Muslims. He wants to engage in interfaith dialogue. Result, he writes with incomprehensible puerility, could be improved relations, increased understanding and a better city. With that kind of reasoning, he could get an overnight job at Dunkin Donuts as the Middle Man. He talks as if he were of our parents generation. Dont make a fuss. Dont draw attention to yourself. Instead, the weak-minded gentleman asks his readers, What possible end game could (the protestors) have in mind? How can one debate with a person whose thinking apparatus is merely an inch beneath the surface? So this is what he was born and saddled with. That is not a crime. But he should be toiling in a factory, not be in a position where he can influence a wide number of people. Like many non-religious Jews, the editor defends the bigot Hathout faster, probably, than he would defend his own family. Political correctness is his main mantra. My fondest wish, going into Yom Kippur, is that the editor of the Jewish Journal, a devout subscriber to interfaith dialogue, take aside one of the ministers at his next convenience and at least explore the possibility of converting to Christianity.
One Brave Jew
The Jewish landscape, from Hancock Park to the ocean, from North Hollywood to Agoura, is barren if you are looking for men and women of courage who also are public. I, however, found a candidate for the Bravest Jew in Los Angeles. Dr. Steve Windmueller, the interim dean of Reform Judaisms Hebrew Union College, near the USC campus, showed the guts that the panty-waisted editor of the Jewish Journal lacks. The case for honoring the morally obscene Hathout is so outrageous that Mr. Windmueller returned a similar prize the County Human Relations Commission awarded him 11 years ago. When you consider that Mr. Windmueller has spent his professional career in sensitive, diplomatic positions where he has been forced to swallow his true feelings, this is an act of profound courage. Mr. Windmueller explained to a reporter why he went public with his one-man protest: The Commission did not look for a candidate who could find common ground, he said. Rather, they chose one who was divisive by his actions and words. Raise your child to embrace the values of Mr. Windmueller, not the editor of the Jewish newspaper who believes surrender is preferable to causing a Muslim to criticize his views.
