tempted to cancel or postpone. But AIPAC plays a kind of hardball of its own, and it attracts people who would rather talk politics than watch Boston get clobbered by the Mets.
Lori gave me a brief smile of recognition when I came in but continued explaining the intricacies of the upcoming foreign aid bill to her audience of ophthalmologists, downtown retailers, and lawyers. She looked like a young Jane Fonda playing the part of a political organizer—wholesomely attractive, crisply professional, and self-confident in a way that didn’t threaten or antagonize anyone.
As I listened to her, I felt a poke in the ribs. A pecked-at-looking man sitting next to me tapped my copy of the
Quad-City Times
(“The Midwest’s Most Exciting Newspaper”) and whispered, “this is a Jewish newspaper.” The paper looked unremarkable tome—just another
USA Today
clone—but the man was referring to its ownership, not its content.
Unsophisticated people, Jews and non-Jews alike, sometimes imagine there is a connection between the Jewish community in America and the Jews who own or run many of the country’s most prestigious magazines and newspapers. In fact, most of these journalistic Jews are about as involved in Jewish life as Jackie Kennedy is in the Knights of Columbus Ladies’ Auxiliary. But AIPAC is made up of pros, people who deal in Washington reality; they would never consider the
Quad-City Times
(or
The New York Times
) to be, in any useful sense, a Jewish paper.
Determined to make an impression, the man poked me again. “See this motel?” he asked. “It’s a Jewish motel.” Here, it seemed to me, he was on more solid ground. Jewish politics in the United States are financed largely by businessmen—the American equivalent of the merchants of Eastern Europe who underwrote struggling Talmudic scholars or built new roofs on village synagogues. In the world of AIPAC, a Jewish journalist means trouble; a Jewish hotel owner means a discount.
Jews originally came to the Midwest for the same reason they went south—to find economic opportunity. My own great-grandfather settled in Sterling, Illinois, a small town not too far from Moline, more than one hundred years ago. He was the only Jew in town. Nominally a tailor, he became a popular figure in the local saloons. It is a little-recorded fact of Jewish history that he organized the first Simchat Torah parade in southern Illinois, holding aloft a Torah he had brought from Europe and leading a procession of staggering Elks down the main street of the dusty little hamlet singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
My great-grandfather spent too much time with the Elks to ever really get ahead, but most of his fellow Jews had a more sober turn of mind and they prospered. In recent years, however, prosperity has turned into decline. As in the South, automobiles, chain stores, shopping malls, and falling farm prices have undermined the small merchants of the heartland. Their children have mostly moved to big cities—Chicago, Minneapolis, or the West Coast. Those who stay tend to marry non-Jews. As a result,Jewish communities in the farm belt are shrinking, their average age is progressively older, and some are already approaching a total collapse like that in Mississippi.
And yet, during the Jew hunt I didn’t feel the same sense of melancholy that had infused Macy’s tour of the Dixie diaspora. Midwestern Jewry has always been a poor cousin of Chicago, and by extension New York; it lacks the southern sense of its own specialness and tradition. And, more important, I was with Lori Posin of AIPAC, a traveling saleswoman with the sexiest item in the American Jewish catalog. In a region of shrinking synagogue rosters and disappearing ethnicity, AIPAC is a dynamic, growing organization. It deals in the substance and glamour of Washington, national politics, and international diplomacy. Lori Posin was able to introduce the provincials to that world, like a drummer showing
Lori gave me a brief smile of recognition when I came in but continued explaining the intricacies of the upcoming foreign aid bill to her audience of ophthalmologists, downtown retailers, and lawyers. She looked like a young Jane Fonda playing the part of a political organizer—wholesomely attractive, crisply professional, and self-confident in a way that didn’t threaten or antagonize anyone.
As I listened to her, I felt a poke in the ribs. A pecked-at-looking man sitting next to me tapped my copy of the
Quad-City Times
(“The Midwest’s Most Exciting Newspaper”) and whispered, “this is a Jewish newspaper.” The paper looked unremarkable tome—just another
USA Today
clone—but the man was referring to its ownership, not its content.
Unsophisticated people, Jews and non-Jews alike, sometimes imagine there is a connection between the Jewish community in America and the Jews who own or run many of the country’s most prestigious magazines and newspapers. In fact, most of these journalistic Jews are about as involved in Jewish life as Jackie Kennedy is in the Knights of Columbus Ladies’ Auxiliary. But AIPAC is made up of pros, people who deal in Washington reality; they would never consider the
Quad-City Times
(or
The New York Times
) to be, in any useful sense, a Jewish paper.
Determined to make an impression, the man poked me again. “See this motel?” he asked. “It’s a Jewish motel.” Here, it seemed to me, he was on more solid ground. Jewish politics in the United States are financed largely by businessmen—the American equivalent of the merchants of Eastern Europe who underwrote struggling Talmudic scholars or built new roofs on village synagogues. In the world of AIPAC, a Jewish journalist means trouble; a Jewish hotel owner means a discount.
Jews originally came to the Midwest for the same reason they went south—to find economic opportunity. My own great-grandfather settled in Sterling, Illinois, a small town not too far from Moline, more than one hundred years ago. He was the only Jew in town. Nominally a tailor, he became a popular figure in the local saloons. It is a little-recorded fact of Jewish history that he organized the first Simchat Torah parade in southern Illinois, holding aloft a Torah he had brought from Europe and leading a procession of staggering Elks down the main street of the dusty little hamlet singing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
My great-grandfather spent too much time with the Elks to ever really get ahead, but most of his fellow Jews had a more sober turn of mind and they prospered. In recent years, however, prosperity has turned into decline. As in the South, automobiles, chain stores, shopping malls, and falling farm prices have undermined the small merchants of the heartland. Their children have mostly moved to big cities—Chicago, Minneapolis, or the West Coast. Those who stay tend to marry non-Jews. As a result,Jewish communities in the farm belt are shrinking, their average age is progressively older, and some are already approaching a total collapse like that in Mississippi.
And yet, during the Jew hunt I didn’t feel the same sense of melancholy that had infused Macy’s tour of the Dixie diaspora. Midwestern Jewry has always been a poor cousin of Chicago, and by extension New York; it lacks the southern sense of its own specialness and tradition. And, more important, I was with Lori Posin of AIPAC, a traveling saleswoman with the sexiest item in the American Jewish catalog. In a region of shrinking synagogue rosters and disappearing ethnicity, AIPAC is a dynamic, growing organization. It deals in the substance and glamour of Washington, national politics, and international diplomacy. Lori Posin was able to introduce the provincials to that world, like a drummer showing
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