Robert Meeropol

I can’t imagine that any of you knew when you were little children that your parents would die on a specific day, at a specific hour and minute, their lives brought to an agonizing end by the Zeus-like hand of an executioner wielding his lightening bolt of vengeance. Yet this is the story of Robert Meeropol, né Rosenberg, son of Julius and Ethel, both convicted of conspiracy to sell secrets to the Soviets. There’s more to him than that, of course, but the actions of his parents and the government define him in a unique way from which he cannot and apparently does not wish to escape. I spoke with him a couple of days after his appearance in Providence at the Jewish Community Center.

“I was raised surrounded by Jews,” he tells me. “But I was raised in the heart of Jewish culture, not religiously in the traditional sense, but in the Shalom Aleichem tradition.” Able Meeropol, his adoptive father, “used to write alternative bar/bat mitzvah services for Jews in the Mt. Vernon area.” To them, the bar mitzvah was all about a performance, so they wrote scripts and music based on Jewish history. It was in this sort of Jewish milieu that he grew up.

And yes, he had a bar mitzvah ceremony of his own, but as he tells it, the circumstances were very unusual. “After we started living with Able and Anne Meeropol we were seized by the police. The lawyer who had defended my parents died of a heart attack before he’d finished the adoption process. Other Jews wanted us removed from the Meeropol’s. Part of the eventual agreement that allowed our return was we had to be bar mitzvaed and attend synagogue.” So, he says, “I was brought up believing that I was bar mitzvaed by court order.” To this day he continues to feel most comfortable in a cultural Jewish setting.

He feels that “Jewish reaction to his parents was a sign of insecurity. People were terrified. They presumed my parents were guilty,” and that there would be a backlash. Thus the Rosenbergs were traitors to their people even more than to the United States. The odd thing is that Jews in America who had a dual loyalty, to Israel and to the US objected when the Rosenbergs’ dual loyalty was exposed. But to Meeropol his “parents dual loyalties, were of a different sort. In our country we are not steeped in class, but in national, religious etc. loyalty so when seeing my parents, people wondered if they were loyal to the US or to the USSR? They were loyal to the working class which a small portion of capitalists were exploiting. They saw themselves as helping workers by defeating the Nazis.”

His argument is that his parents, or at least his father, gave or sold information to our wartime allies against Nazi fascism, knowing that it was illegal to do so. After all, the government was shipping tons of material there in its Lend-Lease program, why not give them something else to help in the fight against Fascism. But spying for Stalin? True, the breadth and depth of his atrocities had not yet been revealed, but even by the war years his brutality should have been obvious even to casual observers, which the Rosenbergs were certainly not. And the secret to the Atom bomb? No, that information was way above Julius’ pay grade; he couldn’t have revealed what he did not know. In fact he was never formally charged with that crime, only with the more nebulous conspiracy to commit espionage. The case is still shrouded in mystery. In 2008, Morton Sobell who was tried with the Rosenbergs admitted he was a spy and confirmed Julius Rosenberg was “in a conspiracy that delivered to the Soviets classified military and industrial information and what the American government described as the secret to the atomic bomb.” But then in a letter to the New York Times he denied that he knew anything about Julius Rosenberg’s alleged atomic espionage.

In 1990 Meeropol, no doubt with his own experiences in mind, established a foundation called the Rosenberg Fund for Children, which according to its website “provides for the educational and emotional needs of both targeted activist youth and children in this country whose parents have been harassed, injured, jailed, lost jobs or died in the course of their progressive activities. In its 19-year history, the Fund has awarded more than $3 million in grants to benefit hundreds of children.”

Betrayed by WGBH

I suppose that an unstated rule of writing a column in a Jewish newspaper is to write a column on a Jewish theme. So, I’m trying to figure out how the following is Jewish and have decided that if a Jew writes it, it is Jewish. If beloved editor agrees you will read this. If she doesn’t there will be a gap in the paper, a void unfillable.

People of Rhode Island, join in my crusade. Here’s our challenge, inadvertently initiated when a nice lady from WGBH called me the other night asking for my annual pledge. GBH is the Boston based public radio station to which I became addicted when I moved to Rhode Island in 1969. Starting in 1971 Robert J. Lurtsema hosted a five hour a day, seven days a week classical music program.

Each morning at 7:00 my clock radio would as if by magic turn itself on and my wife and I would awaken to the sounds of birds singing, chirping, warbling, cooing, for several minutes, followed by the classical opening of the day. One morning it was always Respighi’s Ancient Airs and Dances Suite another the Entrance of the Queen of Sheba by Handel. If for some reason I couldn’t remember if I’d awakened on Tuesday or Thursday, I could always tell by which theme music lovingly nudged me awake.

And then there was Lurtsema’s rich, sonorous voice and the dead-air pauses he allowed himself, visualizing in his mind, he said, what his audience was thinking, because it was obvious he really, really cared about his audience (apparently unlike the current corporate Philistines who run the station today).

Especially on weekends he might play music featuring one part of the orchestra, the flute, one week, cellos the next or he’d play, in order of composition all the string quartets of a particular composer always at the same time of day. We counted on their being played, looked forward to the next installment as if to a reading of a 19th century novel by chapters and learned about each piece and composer. God, he was good, and then he got sick and shortly before dying he gave an on-air mesmerizing, not previously announced, valedictory statement discussing what he had done in life, and so ended Morning Pro Musica in 2000, nearly 30 years after he first came into our lives. We have a poster of a painting he did hanging in our dining room, a constant reminder of the pleasure of those mornings back then.

But now GBH has decided, except for some off hours jazz and Celtic music to go all news and talk all the time. Fine. But what of us classical music junkies? Ah, not to worry, the station bought the studio of the old WCRB in Lowell which broadcasts on the FM dial at 99.5. But you can’t get 99.5 in Rhode Island. Static, yes, hissing, yes, Mozart and Handel no.

So when the lady called asking for money I told her my complaint and she said I should buy a gizmo to improve reception. “What,” uttered I in undisguised astonishment, “you people read a demographics report, turn the world upside down, change format and I have to pay for the inconvenience imposed? And do those gizmos work in my 1992 Volvo?” “Well, no,” she admitted, really ruing by now having made the call, “but we’re thinking of increasing our signal strength. “When, you do,” I said as politely as I could, “call me back.” Argghh. I betcha Robert J. is rolling over in his grave.

I know that news is important, so is opinion, but we get most of the programs GBH is now saturating the airwaves with from our own local NPR station, WRNI 1290 AM, and in Boston proper, the same news shows are already being broadcast on WBUR 90.9FM. So this displacement was necessary because, why? So as not to be original any more, so that uniqueness could be placed on the shelf along with the old LPs? For shame, GBH, for shame!

So is that Jewish enough? I mentioned Philistines, traditional enemy of the Jews, and God, traditional Friend of the Jews. Gotta be.

A Jew in Music

It’s ironic but this smallest state is blessed with a great symphony orchestra. Larry Rachleff wields the baton, in this his bar mitzvah year with the orchestra. We chatted a couple of weeks ago about being Jewish, about how being Jewish affects his work, his sensibilities, and about his decision, to play works by Richard Wagner.

As a boy in New London he grew up the son of a Conservative Jew who started attending minyan when his father-in-law died and then kept on going until his own death at age 82. “He was the minyan man and he would open up the synagogue.” During that time he developed a relationship with a rabbi with whom he studied Torah, especially what Rachleff calls the “integrity” of Torah which was passed on to him and which he is trying to imbue in his own child, a boy of 5. “We talk to him about his Jewishness and will continue to,” he reports.

Rachleff defines himself as “more spiritually oriented than religious.” His wife was raised Anglican but has Jewish roots on her father’s side and has lived in Israel so she has a wonderful component of both.” When I asked if he celebrated Christian holidays as well as Jewish ones, his answer again reflected his spiritual, non-denominational perspective. Yes Christmas, and yes, he’s gone to church on Easter. In all his travels he participates either directly or indirectly in what he feels is the deep spiritual faith of people. “I’ve always been moved by it. We’ve spent days in Assisi so we can sample the energy of St. Francis.” And does this spirituality influence his music? “It would be hard not to be who you are without all of the influences. It’s there; you can’t erase who you are.”

Inevitably the conversation turned to Wagner and his decision to perform him. First some background. Wagner, one of the 19th century’s most magnificent composers of magisterial music, was also one of the century’s outstanding anti-Semites who, by lending his name to the movement made Jew hatred culturally respectable. Judaism was inherently alien and inferior to European culture, he preached. In his notorious Das Judentum in der Musik (Jews in Music) Wagner denied the existence of any Jewish cultural creativity. Musical originality was totally inaccessible to the Jew. The Jew is the most heartless of all human beings, alien and pathetic in the midst of a society he cannot understand, whose history and evolution are foreign to him. There’s more, but you get the idea.

Rachleff has been quoted as saying that “it was important to do this,” to perform Wagner. But why, I asked? “Well, it’s been an enormous struggle for me. Mostly out of the deepest respect for my family and my family’s family. “So it wasn’t just Wagner I couldn’t bring myself to do. Some of the music of Richard Strauss—nearly a Nazi—I don’t know if he was a sympathizer or he was just protecting himself… And so I waited and waited and then I started to see some revered maestros—Zubin Mehta and Daniel Barenboim bringing to Israel the music of Wagner and Strauss.” And while the reaction there was at best mixed, “the point they were making was ‘Listen, this is music of grand and great worth. And what others did with it, perhaps was not necessarily completely their own doing.’ To this day I’ve only conducted and performed one piece of Wagner. But I haven’t made a night of it. And I’m delighted that we did do it because the prelude of the Liebestod [from Tristan und Isolde] is enormously gratifying and deep and wonderful music. I guess the point is our message is to present all these issues and things with the fullest of our integrity.”

The rest of our conversation covered music and what it means and why we listen and how black notes on white pages are transformed into soul stirring glory by the skill of the musician who can take a piece written by Mozart (“Probably the single greatest creature who has ever lived on the planet,”) and bring it to life. But those remarks are for another time when more column inches are available.

Have you read the November 9 New Yorker article on Gaza yet? Kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is the centerpiece, used as a metaphor by each side. For Israelis he represents the inhumane lawlessness of Hamas in Gaza, for Palestinian Arabs, he’s but one man isolated from his family, like all of Gaza is from the whole world. To me his kidnapping is another example of Arab response to nobody taking their case seriously. Yassir Arafat would order the hijacking of a commercial airplane. Now it’s Shalit upon whom all of Israel, and through Israel all the world, is focused. Hamas wants for his return fourteen hundred individuals, four hundred and fifty of whom have been convicted of terrorist killings. One Jew is equivalent to 1,400 Arabs? I’m surprised they admit it. The chief “negotiator” between Hamas and Israel is Osama Mozini, a professor of education at the Islamic University. The New Yorker reporter “asked him why he could not be more flexible in his negotiations for Shalit.”

Mozini began reciting the names of Gazan prisoners. Hassan Salameh, is serving forty-eight consecutive life sentences for recruiting suicide bombers. Walid Anjes helped plan the bombing of at least three devastating attacks. He has twenty-six life sentences. Abdel Hadi Suleiman Ghneim’s name came up. According to Mozini all he was doing was riding in a bus when he grabbed the steering wheel and took it over a cliff. (Mozini laughed at this point, apparently seeing the humor in the situation.) Sixteen people died, many others were wounded—including Ghneim who received a life sentence for every person who died on the bus. “These punishments struck Mozini as ludicrous.”

With such people Israel is supposed to negotiate? With Hamas whose charter maintains that “There is no solution to the Palestinian problem except by jihad”? The last time Israel bargained with kidnappers, it turned over a mass murderer and received in compensation the corpses of two Israeli soldiers. Israeli families, wanted their sons back for a decent Jewish burial, but from an objective viewpoint it’s lunacy to trade murderers for the bodies of people murdered. It can only encourage more cross-border kidnappings. Relatives of Palestinian prisoners have gone on record that more Israelis should be kidnapped to exchange for those in Israel’s jails. “Just outside Rafah, the smuggling capital of Gaza,” reports the New Yorker, “there is a billboard with a portrait of Shalit, behind bars, juxtaposed with a photograph of a masked Hamas fighter. The Arabic text declares, ‘Your prisoner will not have safety and security until our prisoners have safety and security.’”

In fact, the Arabs who say, as does Ahmed Yousuf, Hamas’s Deputy Foreign Minister “We are all Shalits” are right. They are prisoners, but not of Israel, but of their own rage. Rockets raining down on Israeli towns, suicide bombers blowing up pizzerias are actions met with incarceration. Israel is also prisoner of Arab extremists. It’s like the cancer patient whose disease is being treated as chronic. It’s not too bad today, but what will tomorrow’s test results indicate? When will the next plane explode, the next suicide murderer detonate himself killing innocents who are merely riding a bus or crossing a street. To the bomber there are no innocents. Like Shalit everyone in Israel, whether citizen or tourist is part of the occupiers who must be driven into the sea and if the world will not provide us with warplanes and tanks, we’ll do it our way.

The paranoids who control the Muslim world in their grip with their grudges, imposing their fundamentalist religious beliefs, would rather die than concede that Allah has returned Israel to the Jews. They talk of al-Nakba, the calamity. But the real calamity is war and grudges and kidnappings and rockets and suicide bombings all for nothing, for nothing except more blood, Jewish and Arab. Tom Friedman was right in last week’s Times. Nobody over there wants peace; it’s all a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. As Yousuf, the Hamas Deputy Foreign Minister says, “we are all Shalits,” to which I add, “caught in a world of madness unimagined even by Kafka.”

Do Jews under 30 care about Israel?

In the October 15 Jerusalem Post Daniel Gordis, an American ex-pat in Israel since 1998 writes that he is very concerned. So am I, if he’s right.

A recent sociological study reports that “among American Jews aged 35 and younger, a full 50% said that the destruction of the State of Israel would not be a personal tragedy for them.” Assuming that the findings are accurate, the obvious questions are why and what does it mean?

Prof. Jonathan Sarna, who Gordis calls “perhaps the greatest living analyst of American Jewish life” argues that “the problem is that American Jews have been raised on an idealized image of Israel, and that ‘in place of the utopia that we had hoped Israel might become, young Jews today often view Israel through the eyes of contemporary media: They fixate upon its unloveliest warts.’” There’s probably truth in that statement but I think more in the reflections of Rabbi Morris Allen of Minnesota. He argues “that for contemporary American Jews, life-cycle rituals have become infinitely more significant than the holiday cycle.” We are interested in the “me,” not the “we.” Bar/Bat Mitzvah, marriage, even death are the focus of attention, not Sukkot, not Shavuot, not even Shabbat. The things that define us as a people are of less interest than the things that define us as individuals. And this is reflected in the growing number of youths for whom Israel, the embodiment of the people Israel, is less important than social justice, things we can do that make us feel good about ourselves. In my day, a long time ago, the two were seen as complementary, not antagonistic; we could march for civil rights and sing Hatikvah. Black people were bullied by whites in Mississippi; Israel was surrounded by Arabs determine to destroy it.

The plight of the Palestinians must be taken into consideration if Jews are to be faithful to the principles of Judaism, it’s argued. I don’t remember the birth of the State of Israel, but I do recall the pride I felt in 1967. But I think 1967 is the dividing line between people of my age and people who do not remember what it was like to live in little Israel with its narrow waste and exposed borders and divided Jerusalem, the guns of Golan pointing at the Galilee. The generations that have grown up since only see the tail we hold, not the tiger at the other end. Of course the Palestinian people are suffering—Arabs need them to suffer at our hands; their plight could have been resolved decades ago, but to promote a bifurcated Arab state or to create a bi-national state within Israel are both to destroy Israel, the dawn of our redemption, no to save it. But for people of my generation (who think as I do) the destruction of Israel is the inevitable consequence of even well intentioned appeasement.

Readers may recall the columns by Alison Golub in this newspaper as she, a young American who made Aliya opposed the give-back of Gaza; more recently we’ve been reading dispatches from Daniel Stieglitz, another young man who has moved to Israel and joined the army. At the same time, some people of my generation are willing in the name of good conscience and the hope of peace to surrender land with no assurances that peace will result. In July 2008 we gave Hezbollah Samir Qantar who had murdered four Israelis. We received in return two corpses. In appreciation for the pullout of Gaza, Israel received rockets on Sdorot and another soldier was kidnapped. There are Arab advocates of peaceful co-existence, but do they represent anyone other than themselves? I’ll check with Hamas and Hezbollah leadership on that and get back to you. When the desire for peace is one-sided, as it appears to be, Israel will cease to exist, and it won’t take Iranian nuclear bombs to do it; we’ll have accomplished the task ourselves. Will half the Jews under the age of 35 not care? Will the appeasers be content that at least the Palestinians finally have a home of their own? If you are under 35, write to me on this issue at the address below and I’ll take your comments and report the sum of them in a future column.

The Jewish Bishop

“Two roads diverged in a wood/And I took the one less traveled by/And that has made all the difference.”

I recalled Robert Frost’s words when a couple of weeks ago I met a very godly woman. We talked about religion and growing up Jewish; we talked about life and death and mysterious feelings we sometimes get that give direction to our lives. We talked about saying Kaddish for loved ones (I’m doing it now, her turn was a decade ago). We talked about Israel and the Arabs, about choices people make. The woman with whom I shared these thoughts was Geralyn Wolf, the Episcopal bishop of Rhode Island, a woman born Jewish with fond memories of Jewish ceremonial whose grandparents were observant (but not her parents).

Once as a girl of five, Wolf went with her Orthodox grandfather to shul. She remembers asking him, “Grandpa, what were you saying to God?” And he admitted, “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter because God knows.” For Wolf that interaction between a little girl and her elderly grandfather was and remains seminal. What she learned is that in a relationship with God we don’t always have to know everything we are saying to God or God is saying to us but that God knows and God can sift through things we cannot know, things that to us remain mysterious.

As a little girl Wolf was left by a babysitter on the steps of a Roman Catholic church while she looked for her own son in the play yard. No one bothered her, the doors to the church were closed, she could neither see nor hear if anything was going on, but she remembers having “this incredible sense that God was there and that I had heard that the God who lived at the Catholic Church was Jesus.” How do we explain such a thing? Is she a latter day Joan of Arc? No, she doesn’t claim any supernatural voices nor a re-birth, just a feeling which she held on to while still attending synagogue and Passover Seders like any other Jewish girl of her generation.

Again, a few years later, she felt this calling, this time when she went into St. Patrick’s Cathedral and was overawed by the sights, sounds, fragrances, the Latin, the candles, the feeling that God was there, and that their God was Jesus. This feeling was very real to her and it started her on a search for God as Christians worship him. Her parents were not pleased. They were not religious, so this was a challenge not only to their Jewish roots, but to their basic irreligious perspective. Eventually she found a sympathetic response to the English speaking Episcopal Church that did not dwell on sin and Hell as its punishment, but was welcoming. Telling her parents the news wasn’t easy. Her mother was full of guilt. “I should have done this, I have done that, I should have raised you as a Jew.” Her father, who had no use for religion, and certainly not for Christianity told her, that the story of Jesus “is concocted; two young people got in trouble, and this is what they concocted, and for some reason it caught on.”

So she became first an Episcopalian, then a priest and, remarkably, a bishop. One question that pervaded our conversation, though it wasn’t always spoken, was, “Is there any Jewishness left in your view of the world; is there still a Jewish soul whispering to your subconscious core? The bishop might disagree, but I think the answer be a muted, “Yes, there is.”

When her sister died she asked her non-religious family, “‘Who will say Kaddish for Val?’ They all looked at me dumbfounded, like you have to be crazy. And I said ‘I will, she deserves that much.’” So for eleven months the Episcopal bishop of Rode Island sat in the chapel of Temple Emanu-El, twice a day, and said kaddish for her sister. You can’t tell me that there isn’t a Jewish heart beating in that body. (Once she was away from Providence for a few days. Upon her return, one of the minyan regulars came up to her and said, “Glad you’re back. We were worried. After all, we’re the only shul that has a bishop and a rabbi.”)

The Episcopal Church leans towards support of the Palestinians. “I think the Episcopal Church has been extremely one-sided” she says. “In my mind they have been looking at the situation from the lens of the Palestinian people and they compare the Palestinian people with the Israeli government. But they don’t look at it from government to government or people to people. So we hear about how the Israeli government does such terrible things to the Palestinian people, but then I sort of question, well the Palestinian people have also suffered at the hands of Palestinian leadership.”

As a young woman of Jewish descent Geralyn Wolf decided to take the road less traveled. Where it will bring her is hard to say. I think co-existing with her mitre and her staff, there is still something Jewish about her, something she does not try to conceal or avoid but which makes its presence felt like the unexpected Call she received as a little girl at those Catholic churches. Is she still a Jew according to halacha? Once on a snowy morning, there were only ten people at minyan at Temple Emanu-El, but one of them was the Episcopal bishop, born Jewish. Did she count? No one knew; a teacher from the Schechter school was brought in and the issue resolved that way, by not resolving it at all. It’s not for me to say that this woman who is a leader of the Episcopal Church maintains her Jewishness, but I can say that despite her conversion and her sincere belief in Christian doctrine and practice, that she is a friend of the Jewish people, and in that way her road and ours are at least parallel, occasionally intersecting before diverging again.

High Holiday Thoughts

The rational side of me, normally dominant, concedes that the other part exists, especially at this time of year. As I write it’s the 27th of Elul, the penitential month preceding the High Holy Days. Each day in shul the normally staid services are punctuated with the shofar’s blast. Tekiah! Teruah! Tekiah-Gedola! “Wake up, you sleepers, from your sleeping, and those of you who are in deep slumber, arouse yourselves from your slumber. And Return to Hashem!” The rational side of me says I’m not sleeping, I’m fully awake, aware, curious about my surroundings, exploring possibilities, but the other side, the normally dormant one looks forward to the opportunity to stop being rational. Do I really believe in my heart of hearts that there is a beneficent though awe-inspiring grandfatherly figure in Heaven, sitting on his throne of thrones, a huge book in His hand, staring down to earth, to Providence, within the actual walls of my synagogue at me, judging me, gauging my sincerity of repentance, deciding whether to write my name in his Book of Life? Me, of all people?

Let me tell you of another irrational part of my being. I have a lucky number. I know, I know, how stupid can I get? (The answer, apparently, is “quite.”) Today is my luck number, 27. I was born on the 27th; my street address growing up in a loving household was 27-09; my father’s office address was 207; I was married on my 27th birthday, therefore on the 27th. And all this month of Elul in shul we’ve been reading the 27th psalm. Surely this can not be coincidence. Let us parse (partially).

“The LORD is my light and my salvation—whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life—of whom shall I be afraid?” I like that, don’t you? It’s like the closing words of the Adon Olam hymn, “Adoni li, v’lo ee’rah.” “God is with me, I fear no evil.” It’s a comforting thought as we wend our way through life’s intricacies, facing challenges and whether true or not, the irrationalist in me wants to believe it, so I do. Then after elaborations on that theme we come to: “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.” That gives pause. My mother died 13 years ago, my father this past February. They did not forsake me, I know that; they did not betray me, I know that; if they could have stayed and continued their loving guidance, they would have, but death which strikes without rhyme or reason which blindsides us all took them; I know that, or the rational person in me, the usually dominant one knows that—but today we’re concerned with the irrational half of our psyche, what Jung called the anima. And so, yes, I feel betrayed, but I don’t know by whom—by them for leaving me, by nature for designing us to expire? But though they have left, though their deaths have suddenly made me an adult, it’s comforting on the irrational level to think that there is another father/parent who is there to guide me. And finally there is this: “Wait for the LORD; be strong and resolute!” I particularly like that last verse. It’s a take-off on Moses’ instruction to his successor whose name I bear. Joshua is told to be strong and resolute, so in my self-centered view of the universe at this time of the year, I’m convinced the words apply to me, and through me to those I love—my family, my friends, my students and my teachers.

So, when I sit and stand in shul on Rosh Hashanah, which begins today, and when I repeat the exercise ten days later on Yom Kippur, do I really, really do I really believe in my heart of hearts that there is a beneficent though awe-inspiring grandfatherly figure in Heaven, sitting on his throne of thrones, a huge book in His hand, staring down to earth, to Providence, within the actual walls of my synagogue at me, judging me, gauging my sincerity of repentance, deciding whether to write my name in his Book of Life? Me, of all people? You better believe I do. On those days, anyway.

Shana Tova, Haverim. I hope I’ve not offended any of you this year; if I have, I beg your forgiveness.