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Though they publicly deplore the violent tactics of the Jewish Defense League, many Jewish leaders in private welcome the pride-inducing effect they have had—an almost exact parallel of the attitude of many blacks toward the Panthers, whose belligerency has enabled all blacks to walk a little taller. The new Jewish militancy, for all its conscious rejection of the past, contains its own inevitable version of soul.
At Yeshiva University, one karate student says that he had to argue with his mother for six months before she let him take the course. And his black-belt instructor, Doctoral Candidate Harvey Sober, has arrived at a philosophically precise rationale for his unusual activity: "It's not murder when you kick someone assaulting you," he tells his class. "It's a mitzvah [good deed] that you know how to."