Word: peretz
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...HARD TO IMAGINE a less likely situs for controversy over who is a "real" Jew and who is a "pretender" than the Eighth Congressional District of Massachusetts. But Martin Peretz, owner of the New Republic and sometime instructor at Harvard, has managed to interject this arcane theological issue into the politics of Harvard's home district...
...Cambridge Diarist" column, Peretz attacked the "character" of George Bachrach, who ran second to Joe Kennedy for the Democratic nomination to Congress, on the ground that he had "pretended to be Jewish." This is what Peretz said...
...Peretz did not give his readers the benefit of any of the relevant facts about Bachrach. He merely asked them to accept his cryptic condemnation on faith. (It's hard to imagine any decent editor letting a writer get away with this sort of ipse dixit, but I guess the owner of a magazine doesn't have to submit to the usual red pencil...
...Peretz's most bizarre accusation is that Bachrach engaged in some "Machiavellian calculus" by pretending to be Jewish for years. During that time, Bachrach has run for the State Senate in a district with a tiny Jewish population. I recall him telling me once how he responded when an Armenian constituent asked him whether he was an Armenian. Bachrach told him that as a Jew whose family had experienced genocide, he thought he understood the Armenian experience a bit more compassionately...
...APPARENTLY Peretz--who often uses his magazine as a personal plaything, to settle scores and attack enemies--has appointed himself Defender of the Faith. He has taken it upon himself to issue an edict as to who is a real Jew and who is a pretender. What criteria he uses are obscure. (Even Israel would consider Bachrach to be a Jew.) Peretz never tells us why he believes that Bachrach is a) not Jewish and b) has pretended to be Jewish. And why he thinks his theological views should be relevant in a Congressional election is equally unclear...