Members of the Tribe

by Zev Chafets

  “Hey, Mace, you were doing this for more than fifteen years before you had any kids,” I reminded him, and he thought about that for a long moment.

  “Damn, boy, you right,” he said in his squeaky southern twang, and he turned to face me with a grin. “I guess I just got me one of them Jewish hearts everybody keeps talkin’ about.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE GREAT

  IOWA JEW HUNT

  I left Macy and flew up the Mississippi to Moline, Illinois. My destination was the Stardust Motel, where I was supposed to meet Lori Posin of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). At the time Lori was based in Washington, but she spent most of her time on the road, searching out and organizing Jews in the boondocks of America. At AIPAC they call it Jew hunting. I came to Moline to join her annual Midwestern Jew Hunt.

  The idea was proposed to me by AIPAC’s director, Tom Dine, over drinks at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. Dine is a Brooks Brothers Jew in his forties, a bright, fastidious fellow with a highly developed aesthetic sense, who judges synagogues by their architecture and rabbis by their political connections. In another Jewish organization, Dine’s unemotional approach might be a drawback. But AIPAC is about politics, and Dine is a consummate Washington insider. Since taking over in 1980, he has turned the group into a sophisticated, powerful voice for Israel.

  AIPAC’s success has excited dark conjecture about a Jewish conspiracy on the part of anti-Semites, causing some Jews to fear the lobby’s high profile. But Dine, who was born and raised in Cincinnati, is far too confident to be intimidated by such fears.

  “American Jews are American citizens, and American citizens have the right to organize, express opinions, and take part in the political process of their country. There’s nothing wrong with that,” he told me. “The secret of our success is organization and hard work. You ought to go out in the field and see for yourself.”

  This kind of self-assurance is relatively new for American Jews. A generation ago they were still political outsiders and the American-Israeli relationship was far from intimate. During the Suez Crisis, for example, President Eisenhower not only threatened Israel, but he refused to discuss the issue with American Jewish leaders (his biographer, Stephen Ambrose, attributed this to Ike’s dislike of Jews). Even John F. Kennedy, whose party had a strong Jewish component, declined to allow Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion to pay a state visit to Washington, preferring to meet with him in New York.

  The Six-Day War was a turning point for Jewish involvement in American politics. The threat to Israel’s survival galvanized Jews around a national issue. Just as important, the Jewish community had outgrown its immigrant jitters; by 1967, most Jews felt sufficiently self-confident to speak out, something they had failed to do a generation earlier when Franklin Roosevelt charmed and bullied Jewish leaders into silence about the Holocaust.

  The year nineteen hundred and sixty-seven also marked the beginning of AIPAC’s transformation from a small, marginal political group into a powerful Washington lobby. Lyndon Johnson was a sympathetic president (his administration was the first to sell Israel sophisticated weapons) and Israel was widely admired in America for its military victory. AIPAC’s growth accelerated once again in 1973, as a result of the Yom Kippur War and the Arab oil boycott. By the 1980s the Reagan administration’s pro-Israel policies, Israel’s high standing in American public opinion, and Dine’s astute leadership combined to make AIPAC one of the nation’s most effective political machines.

  The emergence of Jewish political power in America has more than one cause. The United States is a more tolerant and pluralistic country than it was under FDR or Eisenhower. The Holocaust taught American Jews the price of political impotence. And last but by no means least, Israel has proved an ideal issue—the country is pro-American, widely admired by non-Jews, and emotionally compelling for the Jewish mainstream. There may be occasional distress over Israeli policy, such as in the West Bank and Gaza; but basically, there is no downside to support for Israel in America.

  In many ways, politics in a democracy are a mirror of society, and talking to Tom Dine on the patio of the King David, it occurred to me that AIPAC could provide an interesting view of the American Jewish state of mind. I was curious to know how Jews talked to each other about issues, how they perceived their interests, and how they pursued them. Of course I knew the basics—most Jews support Israel and tend to be liberal Democrats on domestic issues. What I wanted was to get a feel for Jewish politics at the grass roots level. An AIPAC Jew hunt seemed like a good place to start—which is how I wound up in Moline, at the Stardust Motel, in the middle of October.

  The Stardust is a kind of Big Ten Versailles, with marble pillars in the lobby and bogus Greek statuary in the parking lot—not Tom Dine’s kind of place at all. When I arrived, I found Lori Posin in a private room, conducting a working dinner with fifteen or so middle-aged people. The seventh game of the World Series was on television that night and another Jewish organization might have been 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 to me—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 appr
oaching 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 Paris fashions to farmers’ wives.

  Despite its depleted state, midwestern Jewry is an important element in AIPAC’s planning. The organization thrives because it is able to muster a national constituency. The areas of highest Jewish density—New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Southern California—are easy. But there are Jews in the boondocks, too—people who vote and contribute money and identify, or can be taught to identify, with Israel. The job of the Jew hunter is to track them down and throw the AIPAC net over their heads.

  That night at the Stardust, Lori and I went over her itinerary for the coming few days. Most national Jewish groups divide the country into congregations or federations, but AIPAC sees the world in terms of electoral units. During her midwestern swing, Lori was scheduled to visit every one of Iowa’s eight congressional districts, with side trips into Illinois, Nebraska, and South Dakota. It is arduous work, but it has its rewards, not least of which is the gratitude and respect she receives from people eager to be caught.

  The next morning, Lori wheeled her rented Chevrolet onto Interstate 80 in the direction of Iowa City in the Third Congressional District. In her three years at AIPAC Lori had visited forty-two states and driven hundreds of thousands of miles. Usually she is alone. Most nights she winds up in a motel, curled up with road maps and congregational rosters, eating greasy meals off room service trays, and watching Johnny Carson.

  Lori Posin has visited Israel, too, and she likes the country, but she would never consider living there. Although she believes strongly in AIPAC’s message, she is first and foremost an American political organizer; it would be easy to imagine her working for the AMA, the Republican National Committee, or the Teamsters. Like her boss, Tom Dine, there was no schmaltz in her presentation or her personality, no appeal to ethnic ties or religious imperatives. “AIPAC is perfect for people who are looking for a Jewish activity without becoming involved in the Jewish community,” she told me on the way to Iowa City.

  Lori’s farm belt tour, like all her visits to the hinterland, began with a single contact, a Des Moines woman who wrote to AIPAC and applied for membership. Lori developed a telephone friendship with the woman, who put her in touch with a local Reform rabbi. That led to contacts with other rabbis around the state, and with interested laypeople.

  Eventually Lori was able to set up a series of parlor meetings in various cities, where she could meet prospective members and explain the AIPAC program. During her trip, she would also continue to seek out Jews who were not yet in the AIPAC network, which is why our first stop was the Hillel House on the campus of the University of Iowa.

  University people are notoriously uninvolved in Jewish community affairs. Like journalists, they tend to be critical of the establishment, and their primary identification is most likely to be with their profession and its values. Besides, most of them are not willing or able to give large sums of money to the United Jewish Appeal or other fundraising groups. But university people are just what Lori is looking for.

  “Money is no problem for us,” she said, as we pulled into the parking lot of the Hillel. “I’m not out here looking for rich Jews. I’m looking for activists. Political science professors can be very good, rabbis, anyone involved in local politics. A few people in a district like this can make all the difference in the world.”

  People who can make a difference become what are known as “key contacts.” Ideally they have a personal relationship with a member of Congress or a senator, or have political chits they can cash on behalf of Israel. Given the extraordinarily high degree of Jewish involvement in politics, it isn’t too hard to find key contacts—Lori estimated that AIPAC has them for about ninety percent of the members of the House of Representatives and ninety-eight percent of the Senate.

  Our meeting in Iowa City was with Jeff Portman, a Reform rabbi who serves as the local Hillel director. “A couple of years ago we had problems with some of the more liberal rabbis and laypeople who disagreed with Begin’s policies,” Lori told me, “but today things are much easier. Maybe one percent of rabbis give you a hard time and just about all the Jews out here are very supportive.”

  Portman, a studious-looking man in his mid-thirties, is a supporter. Unlike some other Jewish organizations, AIPAC does not compete with him for members or money; on the contrary, it enhances his power and prestige by enabling him to introduce congregants to the American political game.

  Lori and the rabbi sat in his study poring over a computer printout of Iowa City’s affiliated Jews. Lori wrote down the names of a couple involved in Democratic politics and a woman who once served on the city council. “The faculty here are liberal, but the students are just incredibly conservative,” Portman said with regret, but Lori couldn’t have cared less. AIPAC is an aggressively nonpartisan group, and there is room for everyone. Besides, she got her start as a Reaganite. “Give me the names of some active students and I’ll see them on my next trip out here,” she said.

  The meeting took less than an hour, and when it was over she had a list of half a dozen key contact prospects—people whom she could call when she got back to Washington. Not all of them would want to get involved, but Lori knew from experience that at least several would be interested and flattered—and in a place like the Third District, that would be enough. No place is too small or remote for her. After all, every town and hamlet in America has a representative in Congress, and all of them vote on Israel-related issues.

  Lori wound up the Hillel meeting with brisk efficiency. We had to make Waterloo by nightfall, and she wanted to stop for lunch at the Amana Colonies. Her years on the road have made her an experienced traveler, and the colonies, founded in the 1850s by a Protestant religious sect from Germany, were the closest thing to a tourist attraction in this part of the state.

  After a heavy Teutonic lunch we took a walk through the village, browsing through stores with German names. We stopped for coffee at a tavern with stuffed moose and wild boar heads above the fireplace and a plastic reindeer propped against one wall. I kept reminding myself that the colonies were founded in 1854 by God-fearing Christians who had nothing to do with the Third Reich, but I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable, and I noticed that Lori did, too. The gloomy, Wagnerian tavern seemed somehow sinister, and I was relieved when we got back to the car and the flat-voiced disc jockey who played country tunes and hawked farm implements on the radio.

  It will be a very long time before American Jews feel comfortable around Germans. The trauma of the Holocaust is still sinking in. Its visible manifestations are television documentaries, monuments, museums—and organizations like AIPAC, whose subtext is that only Jewish political power and the existence of the state of Israel can prevent a future catastrophe. In her presentation, Lori never mentioned anti-Semitism or the Nazis; she didn’t have to. Hitler and Arafat were always present, at every AIPAC gathering, uninvited guests who provided a sense of cohesion and purpose.

  We arrived in Waterloo around sunset and rendezvoused with Lori’s contact, Martha Nash. They had never met before—Lori got Nash’s name from a local rabbi and called her cold—but within a few minutes the two women were chatting like old friends. Martha, a diminutive grandmother with seemingly boundless energy, took us to the best restaurant in Waterloo, Lodge 290 of the Elks Club. There we were joined by a rou
nd, jolly professor of Spanish from the local college, his equally round, jolly wife, and a dignified, Pillsbury-prim widow in her sixties. The professor and his wife were transplanted New Yorkers and they had a Broadway flamboyance. Martha and the widow, by contrast, seemed as austere as Grant Wood figures.

  The talk at dinner was mostly about the Jewish community of Waterloo, which is in a state of decline. Once there were ninety pupils in the synagogue religious school; now there are twenty-three. Most Waterloo Jews marry Christians, and the widow lady, who genteelly lowered her voice whenever she said the word “Jew,” confided that her bachelor son would almost certainly marry out of the faith. Neither she nor her dinner companions seemed to feel that this was in any way unusual or undesirable; in a place like Waterloo, Jews have long since made their accommodation with the realities of American life.

  Farm belt anti-Semitism was a hot topic that fall—there had been several articles in national publications, and 60 Minutes had recently done a segment on disgruntled Iowa farmers who allegedly blamed Jewish bankers for their financial hardships—but none of our hosts had any personal experience of it. Martha Nash explained that the Elks Club, the pinnacle of Waterloo society, has been open to Jews for years, and even the Elkettes, once restricted, now welcome Jewish members.

  A sense of confidence in American tolerance is a necessary condition for Jewish political activity, and it makes up a large part of AIPAC’s appeal. The formula requires just enough atavistic fear to keep Jews on their toes, but not enough real anti-Semitism to frighten them or make them lose faith in the system.

  This equilibrium is at the heart of the AIPAC effort. Jews in America remember the Holocaust and the price of powerlessness in the face of an indifferent U.S. government. The determination to develop political power is in large part a reaction to that experience. But it is the sort of power that only works under the existing ground rules. As long as America remains decent, tolerant, and pluralistic, political clout of the AIPAC variety has value. But it is an umbrella designed for a sunny day. AIPAC’s power is conditional, not independent, and even its most assertive members must always keep that in mind.