By Bruce S. Ticker
PHILADELPHIA–New York City lost a talented, generous citizen when Ronan Tynan moved to Boston where he can patronize their businesses and pay their taxes instead. Adding the ultimate insult to injury, the Irish tenor donned a Red Sox jersey when he sang at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in his new hometown.
Tynan emigrated from Ireland to America in 1998, and since 2000 sang “God Bless America” during the seventh-inning stretch of important Yankee games. His 10-year stint with the Yankees ended abruptly last Oct. 16 after being accused of uttering an anti-Semitic remark, and this was followed by death threats, nasty e-mail messages and a threat from a surgeon that he would let him die on the operating table.
New Yorkers – a slight minority, we trust – called down the thunder upon Tynan because he made a vague joke about “two Jewish ladies”; the quip was perceived as anti-Semitic. Unlike others who made this kind of mistake, Tynan apologized and agreed to spend time on Anti-Defamation League endeavors. He even sang at the ADL’s annual dinner in Manhattan.
Tynan claimed in a New York Times piece that he was moving to Boston for a change and to be near friends and relatives. One must wonder if the Bronx Cheer he endured drove him out of town. An overreaction can produce that kind of reaction.
Perceived ethnic slurs can produce overreactions among all groups, and the pattern persisted in recent episodes involving the Jewish people. As Tynan adjusted to Boston life, South African Justice Richard Goldstone considered canceling his attendance at his grandson’s bar mitzvah because of an impending protest, and a Catholic bishop was fined by a German court for denying the occurrence of the Holocaust.
Goldstone in short order became an unwelcome household name among Jews for leading the United Nations commission that accuses both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes during last year’s cross-border war in Gaza. Some Jews – members of the South African Zionist Federation – planned to demonstrate in front of a Johannesburg synagogue if Goldstone attended his grandson’s bar mitzvah there.
Even harsh critics of Goldstone were offended by the protest plans. U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman, a Democrat who represents portions of Queens and Long Island, stated in a letter to federation chairman Avrom Krengel that he was “appalled and utterly disgusted” by reports that Goldstone would not attend because of the protest threat, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.
The backlash to the federation’s backlash worked. Krengel’s organization canceled the demonstration and will meet with Goldstone.
In Germany, Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson was found guilty on April 16 of Holocaust denial in a district court in Regensburg that upheld a $22,473 fine imposed in 2009. Holocaust denial is illegal in Germany.
The year before, the London bishop was initially fined in connection with an interview with the Swedish SVT broadcaster in which he decried as “lies, lies, lies” the murder of Jews in gas chambers during World War II, JTA reported. He also allegedly claimed that no Jews were killed in the gas chambers during World War II and said the number of murdered European Jews did not exceed 300,000.
Anyone with this attitude must be a reprehensible lunatic, but Williamson hurt nobody except our sensibilities. The First Amendment here allows Williamson to talk this way. We can appreciate Germany’s sensitivity to the Jewish people, but punishing a person for exercising his free speech is not necessary.
By all means, anyone against bigotry must call attention to Holocaust denial, a judge who might have unfairly criticized Israel or a celebrity who makes a questionable joke about a minority group, but the backlash in all these cases is an overreaction, excessively so. We are talking proportions here. Far more compelling concerns menace the Jewish community that are downplayed or ignored altogether.
Did critics of Williamson, Goldstone and Tynan express their fury for the sake of Pamela Waechter or Gilad Shalit? Sorry, most people may not readily recognize their names. Waechter was murdered in 2006 inside the Jewish Federation building in Seattle when she and other colleagues were shot by a man after he entered the building; Naveed Haq was found guilty for the shootings last December. Shalit is an Israeli soldier held in captivity by Hamas, presumably in Gaza, since June 25, 2006.
The murder of a Jew and the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier are compelling issues while less significant matters dominate our attention.
For those not familiar with Tynan’s situation, he told the Times that it began when a real estate agent innocuously referred to two women as “two Jewish ladies” as they were being shown a vacant apartment adjacent to his on the East Side of Manhattan. He spoke with them and determined that the “two Jewish ladies” might not like residing next to a loud tenor.
On Oct. 16, an associate of that agent told Tynan that the apartment was sold, adding, “Don’t worry, they’re not Red Sox fans.” He said his response – “As long as they are not the Jewish ladies” – was misinterpreted by a Jewish woman who was with the agent, and who subsequently complained to the Yankees and the media. Tynan explained that the term “Jewish ladies” was intended as a shorthand identification of the women he thought would not enjoy the apartment, not to malign their religion.
He was told by the Yankees not to appear that same night at Game 1 of the team’s playoff series against the Angels, and that was the end of his time with the Yankees.
He claimed that the Yankees would not meet with him to hear his side of the story, but he met with Abe Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. That led to Tynan‘s involvement with the ADL. “He publicly apologized, and he wants to be a soldier in the struggle against bigotry. What else can you asked for?” Foxman said.
Foxman is right. Some of those offended by the incident needlessly got their Irish up.
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Ticker is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia