HELEN THOMAS AND THE QUESTION OF ANTI-SEMITISM

Helen Thomas, just shut up.

The doyenne of the Washington press corps has long been known for her tart tongue. She opens her mouth for better or for worse, and people listen, perhaps not sufficiently to shape public policy, but enough to gain a glint of polarizing attention from the hoi polloi.

A week ago, she broadsided about Israel’s Jews, “Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine . . . Tell them to go home to Poland and Germany . . .” Ironically, during the 1930s, the streets of Poland and Germany were covered with graffiti, “Jews, go back to Palestine!”

God knows, here is not the place to reassert the millennia-old claim to Israel as the Jewish homeland, even for those of us who advocate a two-state solution. And God knows, one need only Google “Holocaust” to determine the historic “hospitality” of our Polish and German hosts.

Ultimately, we cannot hold Helen responsible for what she thinks. However, what she says demands accountability. That’s because it gives new legitimacy for every vituperative anti-Semite, from the right and the left, to come creeping out of the woodwork. Her words might not be a rallying cry, but they certainly embolden those who are already pre-disposed to think ill of Jews, Israel, even Judaism.

As an upper-middle-class Jewish kid growing up in the shadows of the Holocaust, I had occasional minor encounters with Helen Thomas style anti-Semitism. A crotchety guidance counselor (back then they were called “adjustment teachers”) announced to our recalcitrant seventh grade class, “You Jewish children are all too high-strung.” Then, the principal would each year preface the holiday pageant with, “Isn’t it a pity that so many of you children don’t have a Christmas holiday?” Armstrong Elementary School was 90% Jewish.

Parents didn’t protest, because, well, that generation of Jewish parents just didn’t protest.

By ninth grade, the stakes turned higher. Now in a high school that was only five percent Jewish, I became whipping boy of a mechanical-drawing teacher, despite my timidity. He accused me of cheating, and of having my father, an expert draftsman, do my homework. (No, he didn’t.) Naïve or just a sap, I had no idea that the teacher was motivated by anti-Semitism. And if my parents thought so, they weren’t saying anything to me.

Spring of 1963, my private hell ensued. Passover came, and I stayed out of school to attend religious services. Such absence, properly verified by parents, rabbi, and guidance counselor, was officially excused. All but to Mr. Hellman. He summarily expelled me from class for not bearing an excused absence and flunked me.

This time my father did, atypically, react. He protested to Hellman, to no avail. The rabbi was called, again to no avail. Four days later, the guidance counselor intervened, and Hellman begrudgingly reinstated me. Naturally, the balance of the year was beyond purgatory – accusations, poor grades, losing homework assignments that I had handed in, capped by a D- grade. And no honor roll that year for an otherwise exemplary student.

But, you know what I remember most? Hellman mumbling at me upon my readmission, “You people are always pulling strings.” Then, as I took my seat, he announced loud enough for the entire class to hear, “Why don’t you go to one of the special schools they have for your people?”

The message was clear: “You don’t belong here. ‘We’ belong here. You belong in a yeshiva, or maybe your home in Poland and Germany. Just not here.”

By and large, the kids laughed. The rest of the year, they jeered about my “special school.” “A joke,” said Nietzsche, “is an epigram on the death of a feeling.”

Hellman may not have fomented anti-Semitism that day for a class of ninth graders. And, I guess that for me it built character. But, he did legitimate anti-Semitism, the same way that Helen Thomas did on the White House lawn. And, legitimacy opens many foreboding doors.

An epilogue: Hellman was promoted to assistant principal. I kid you not. At least Helen shut up, resigned, went home, and probably blamed the Jewish lobby.