(2 of 3)
Eight gun clubs in the New York metropolitan area are linked in an organization known as Palmach, named after an elite corps in Israel's army in the 1948 war of independence; half of Palmach's 400 members are Jewish, and most, for the record, insist that the target shooting is "strictly for sport." But one, an Auschwitz survivor, has his own reason. "Jews have to learn to shoot a gun," says Joseph Mittelman. "We didn't know the last time, and look where it got us." Even the organization's president, Sy Alper, admits that more than sport is involved for many. "Citizen patrol groups come to us all the time, or a local merchant who has had his store broken into. The rich Jews don't understand that these people are genuinely concerned. Our group doesn't look for trouble, but if someone comes to us for help, we will never turn him away."
What explains a will to violence in contradiction to Jewish teaching, history and insight? Unhappily, it is a response to what many urban Jews are experiencing as a renewed oppression—this time, physical violence from black and Puerto Rican street toughs and verbal attacks from extremist black leaders. Repeatedly, all-Jewish neighborhoods have become partially or predominantly black or Puerto Rican. A dress-store owner has received phone calls: "Get out, you dirty Jew, or we'll burn you out."
∙
Forming the background of the new Jewish response is, of course, the example of Israel, tough and defiant in a hostile sea of Arabs. "Israel has changed everything," says Rabbi Sholom Ber Gorodetsky of the Lubavitcher group in Crown Heights. "The Six-Day War has given Orthodox Jews a courage they never had before." Israel, in a carefully nonofficial way, has supplied more than example. The first karate classes in Brooklyn were taught by bearded, fifth-generation Israeli Zvi Kasspi, an Israeli army veteran. Another Israeli. Hillel Oman, is listed as a teacher of Hebrew studies at the Yeshiva of East Flatbush in Brooklyn; another course, not listed, is self-defense.
Significantly, the spreading self-defense movement—though involving only a small percentage of New York's 1,800,000 Jews—is not the preoccupation of only young sectarians. One central figure has been Daniel Abraham, the middle-aged head of a drug-manufacturing firm who lives in a cooperative apartment on Fifth Avenue and worships at the prestigious Fifth Avenue Synagogue. He has been helped in adding karate to the curriculum of many Jewish day schools by Dr. Joseph Kaminetsky, director of Torah Umesorah, an organization of 422 Hebrew schools, 175 of them in the New York area.
∙
Men like Abraham and Kaminetsky are apt to explain their intent in terms of psychology and image. Rabbi Emanuel Rackman of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue says: "Jewish children have been taught to flee. I think it is healthier for kids to defend themselves." At the other extreme, Rabbi Mendel Greenberg of the Hasidic Satmar group sits in his Williamsburg home and displays a .38-cal. pistol and M-l rifle.