RE: Klezmer in corporate hands?

[Reyzl Kalifowicz-Waletzky <reyzl...>]

Jeff, 

We know that Lubavitch is against gays, abortion, and pornography.   Even if we 
would not be familiar with Lubavitch, we would guess that they, as strict 
Orthodox Jews, would be against all these 3 things that you listed.  I am not 
arguing about homosexuality with you or (wasting my time arguing) with them, 
but you can't mix American Nazi party and Ku Klux Clanism with abortion, 
homosexuality and pornography.   Not all fundamentalists are cut of the same 
cloth.  Sorry.  Despite their severe turn toward political right-wingism 
vis-a-vis Israel in recent years, you still can't claim that because they are 
against homosexuality that they would also support a David Duke.   You may want 
to sweep everyone into the same general box, but it isn't fair, nor is it 
deserved in this case.    I am neither (=no longer) Orthodox or Lubavitch, and 
have some very, very serious issues with Lubavitch, but you can't paint 
everyone with the same black brush.   I don't know why you are doing to this 
group what you wouldn't want anyone to do to the leftists groups you belong to. 
  It isn't fair.    Josh reminds me that Jabotinsky and Betar heartily 
supported Hitler after his publishing of Mein Kampf, because they shared his 
anti-Union and anti-Communism position (they refused to believe that his 
anti-Semitism would ever take hold), but it's not like that in Crown Heights.   
They are the ones who chose to stay in the neighborhood, and learned to get 
along with everyone till the Al Sharpton types came in to get city-wide 
attention.   I would still bet you any amount money that Lubavitchers have more 
and more positive interaction on a day to day basis with regular Black folk 
than avant-garde people on this list.   It's real easy to argue for a gifted 
Black artist, but it's something to live in a mostly black neighborhood.   It's 
also something else to suffer the severe hatred and envy of local people who 
have not bothered to learn how to use the political system to their advantage, 
just because the Lubavitchers have successfully done that.   That's just what I 
said to my Black political friends and neighbors in my local Community Board, 
the very same Community Board that my neighborhood, Prospect Heights, shares 
with North Crown Heights.  I don't think that the faces of silent, liberal Jews 
who abandoned Lubavitch during the 1991 pogrom (yes a pogrom) just because they 
resented Lubavitch's who-is-a- Jew position in Israel politics looked any 
better than Mayor Dinkins' face did, when Dinkins argued that the police did 
everything they could to stop the violence. 

>If a person has a religious belief that homosexuality is against the 
>laws of God, that is the business of that person.  But to translate 
>that belief into politically opposing equal rights for gays helps to 
>strenghthen the very same right wing forces which want to take the 
>rights of Jews away too.

They don't see their religious beliefs as their private issues and they will 
not mind you when you will tell them that they should make them so.   To them 
and to all orthodox Jews, religious beliefs are communal and they wouldn't 
understand why you don't understand that.   As a Jew and as Jewish ethnographer 
who has studied Lubavitch, I can tell you Lubavitchers pick their issues in the 
same way liberal Jews and feminists pick their issues.   God knows that I don't 
agree with them on this point and I happen to be very proud of our long-time 
friend Evan Wolfson, who heads the legal department of Lambada and was the one 
to successfully argue the case for the recognition of homosexual marriages in 
Hawaii.  But I don't understand why you won't let them pick their issues.   For 
them it's a religious issue and the only way to counteract it successfully is 
halakhically, just as Lamabada needed the American legal system to win this 
point (and will continue to need it because this ruling is unfortunately being 
appealed by right-wingers.)   Your mother may want to label all 
anti-abortionists as Nazis, but I don't think that rational people should 
depend on her classification system.  There are many thoughtful people who are 
against abortions, but just because I come out with a completely different 
conclusion on this issue, doesn't mean that I should call them bad names.   If 
Hitler got to gays before Jews, I think that was only because it was harder to 
remove Jews from their property and status than it was to gather up gays.   I 
don't think that there is any question that his anti-Semitism burned much more 
brightly in him than anti-gayism. 


You want something to worry about as a Jew?   How about Lubavitch's turn to a 
Christian concept of the rebbe as Mashiakh?   I never, ever thought they would 
degrade themselves into this total apostasy and insanity, but it's still way 
far from supporting the American Nazi party.

Am having trouble getting my mail this morning so this may be all I get to 
write today.  

OK, this is also the end of this thread for me before Ari starts screaming at 
us that we are getting too deeply into political issues on this list.
 


Reyzl


----------
From:  JeffSchan (at) aol(dot)com[SMTP:JeffSchan (at) aol(dot)com]
Sent:  Friday, January 01, 1999 8:46 AM
To:  World music from a Jewish slant.
Subject:  Re: Klezmer in corporate hands?

Marvin Margoshes wrote:

<How does it become "if it's not censorship, it might as well be" when the
government decreases its support for the arts.  I think there should be some
government support for the arts, but I can't justify making it enough to pay
every artist who asks for a grant.  Then, some choices need to be made, and
"he who pays the piper calls the tune".  That would be more like censorship,
IMHO.>

What is the result of artistic censorship?  That the artist is not allowed to
bring his work to the public.  If an artist can't make a living at his art and
has to do something else to survive, he is also not able to bring his work to
the public, which is the same result.  I myself objected to the use of the
term "censorship" in Ingemar's friend's statement.  However, the NEA and other
institutions have made clearly political decisions to support institutions who
produce the "safe" work of primarily dead European artists as opposed to
institutions who produce the work of living American artists.  The US
Government's support for the arts is perhaps the least of any industrialized
nation.  The point is, in American capitalism, you have kids who barely know
how to play their instruments making enormous amounts of money (mainly
immitating African-American musical styles) because the big corporate media
companies can make lots of profit from them, while a great black composer like
Leroy Jenkins is still struggling after thirty years of prominence.  And, to
bolster my views that Leroy is one of the greatest living composers in the US,
please see _Village Voice_ critic Kyle Gann's new book "American Music in the
Twentieth Century."  (OK, I know I am a bit biased since Kyle also gave my
wife, Bernadette Speach, a nice section in his book)

Reyzl wrote:

<But Jeff, he didn't have to mention this issue because the chance of a =
candidate of the American Nazi Party or the Ku Klux Klan running in =
Crown Heights would be virtually nil, so why are you holding this =
against him?>

Of course my point about the rebbe's political guidelines not excluding a vote
for fascists is a polemical tool.  In fact, there are plenty of anti-Semitic
politicians in New York.  It just strikes me as supremely suicidal for members
of a minority group which has a history of persecution to support the
persecution of another minority group.  If a person has a religious belief
that homosexuality is against the laws of God, that is the business of that
person.  But to translate that belief into politically opposing equal rights
for gays helps to strenghthen the very same right wing forces which want to
take the rights of Jews away too.  And since both Reyzl and I are both second
generation, let's remember that Hitler began throwing gays in concentration
camps before Kristallnacht.  Abortion is also a touchy subject, but when my
mother sees some right wing anti-abortion fanatic on TV, she immediately calls
them a Nazi.

Jeffrey Schanzer