By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Sometimes, we have to distinguish between goals and tactics.
A case in point: A member of our Jewish community is justifiably outraged by the campaign to ban circumcisions as inhumane, and is particularly up-in-arms by a cartoon book depicting mohels as blood-thirsty, bearded torturers – caricatures reminiscent of those that appeared in Nazi magazines.
He phoned and wrote to the regional Anti-Defamation League urging that a suit be brought against the creator of the comic book for defamation of character. For a long time, he said, his messages were ignored, and later, when he did get a response, he felt he was being dismissed. So he is outraged.
If the ADL was indeed unresponsive, then it needs to reexamine its way of doing business. Legitimate concerns of every member of the Jewish community need to be treated with dignity and with dispatch. Worse than being disagreed with is being ignored, put off or patronized.
In this particular case, the ADL ultimately disagreed with the gentleman’s call for a lawsuit against the comic book’s creator. The community’s defense agency concluded that as reprehensible as the cartoons are – and they indeed are disgustingly anti-Semitic—they did not attack a particular person, so individual libel laws do not apply.
Speaking, writing or cartooning against a large group of people –be they mohels , Muslims, gays, judges, Jews, right-wing Christians, African-Americans, immigrants, members of Congress, or any other collective – is considered protected “free speech” in this country. An ADL attorney wrote to the gentleman in question that insofar as such a law suit probably could not be won, it made little sense to file it.
In fact, the ADL suggested, such a tactic could backfire, rallying civil libertarians to the defense of the odious cartoon creator with Voltaire’s famous quote on their lips: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to my death your right to say it.”
Meanwhile, the ADL has joined a lawsuit in San Francisco brought by Muslim and Jewish groups—in recognition of their common interests—to declare the proposed initiative measure in San Francisco to be unconstitutional, null and void.
So, the ADL is pursuing a different tactic, yet has the same general goal as the gentleman in question—to defend our ancient religious ritual against scurrilous attack. I am sorry that in the process his feelings were hurt. His heart, and those of the ADL workers, all are in the right place.
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I was reminded recently of the need to keep in mind the goal and not to fall in love with tactics in my own correspondence with a group of creative people in Sha’ar Hanegev about possibly setting up a program to attract older visitors there, either through an ElderHostel program or an independent effort. Sha’ar Hanegev is the partnership region in Israel with the Jewish Federation of San Diego County.
The correspondence has revolved around such practical issues as how big should the visiting groups be, what are bus sizes, and what kind of programming would be most appealing.
It would be easy to become bogged down in this or that aspect of the planning, and for one of us in the planning group to insist that this or that aspect of the program is of paramount importance. We could, in other words, let our egos get in the way of creating a viable program. But, instead, we try to keep our focus on the larger goal – creating a program of value that can expose older San Diegans in a qualitative way to Sha’ar Hanegev.
This is true whenever a new project is being planned – be it a business or a new initiative within the Jewish community. People must not be so in love with their own ideas to preclude the possibility of reaching a common goal.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com