The Mishneh Torah

There is a Jewish renewal in our lives, and two idiosyncratic instances occurred right here in this city in recent days.

The first was a Sotheby’s auction of the 386-item Judaica collection painstakingly assembled over the years by Michael and Judy Steinhardt, probably the most imaginative Jewish philanthropists of the age. Now, a sell-off is not exactly a beginning. But since money is some indication of value, the event was a magnificent happening. It actually started before the first lot went on the block. Somebody or somebodies (perhaps the Steinhardts themselves) acquired the most singular item in the catalog jointly for the Israel Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was an astonishing manuscript copy of the Mishneh Torah, the first systematic code of Jewish law, assembled and edited by Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon or the Rambam) and breathtakingly illuminated by a painter from 15th-century Italy, one of the plentitude of Jewish figurative artists in history. This particular instance of the Mishneh Torah came in two volumes, the first of which is possessed by the Vatican, and the second is this one, now to be shared between Jerusalem and New York. The Steinhardt edition deals with property law, law courts, injuries, etc. Yes, Jewish law deals with matters of real life.

The New York Times didn’t quite get what the book was about and also missed that it is the literary and scholarly work of Maimonides, whose name appeared nowhere in the article. Maybe the reporter, Carol Vogel, doubtless Jewish, hadn’t heard of Maimonides except in relation to the hospital in Brooklyn. The Times gets most things about the Jews wrong. So why not this? Here were hundreds of pieces of (mostly) exquisite Judaica going through the life cycle and the holy days, ritual objects from the fourth century C.E. through 17 centuries to a gold Torah crown made in Israel 50 years ago, and other historic items of family and the Jewish people. Maybe you can still get the catalog from Sotheby’s.

There were as many as 25 Sotheby’s staffers on the phones, fielding the bids from people who don’t come to auctions in person. (Most of the really big prices at the Sotheby’s Impressionist auction last week came from such bidders.) Before the hammer came down on the first item in the Steinhardt collection, I looked around only to notice a number of snazzy socialites and other ordinarily dressed males and females, some speaking French, others Spanish, still others Hebrew, at least one couple conversing in German. There were no Asians, who had made the weeks before so rich for Christie’s and Sotheby’s. But the crowd was rich enough. There were also perhaps a hundred men with skullcaps and kapotehs (frock coats) and tzitzis (string fringes), usually worn by Hassidim, of whom there were maybe two dozen, an odd lot, but apparently a seasoned lot. They were bidding aggressively, some on the phone, getting their instructions from on high.

But the real sight was the collection itself, which I’d seen twice on exhibit in the week before the auction. The most popular category was

This Italian Torah crown sold for $857,000.

the Hanukkah lamp, of which there were 56, proving once and for all that this was not an insignificant festival in the life of the Jews. All made by craftsmen, whether candelabras or little lamps, grand or finicky, their diversity tells you about economic class, surrounding culture, his toric circumstance, variety of artistic styles, availability of material—all the stuff about which scholars now write. Not surprisingly, there were 42 tzedakah, or charity, boxes, a testament to the deeply rooted Jewish obligation and loyalty to philanthropy.

Whether jewel-bedecked or made of plain wood, the items in this truly diverse collection testify to the flourishing artistic instincts of the Jews. Tin, brass, glass, textiles, silver, gold, enamel, iron, bronze, items both exquisite and plain from all the lands of the dispersion, all of Europe, deep into Asia, the Arab Middle East and also Africa—the places of exile and the place of the Return.

Jerusalem, which is the capital of the Return, provided perhaps the most exciting moment of the auction. On the block was “an elaborate embroidered sabbath tablecloth, Jerusalem, 1821.” It was estimated to sell for anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000. I don’t know what was meant by “elaborate.” I found it rather plain. But it juiced the crowd, on the phone and off. Scholarship tells us that there are only nine of the type and that this is the first of the genre. Moreover, alone among the nine, it was signed by its maker. Back and forth thee bidding went, between I think three people at the end, then two. Then one (in the room) ... at $137,000. The auctioneer said to the winner: “I hope you use this every Friday,” which surely he or she will not.

I, too, bid on some items, one of which (a golden Yemenite woman’s headdress) ran away from my top price. But I succeeded in acquiring three. The first was a kippah that was estimated to sell for between $3,000 and $5,000. I am paying $8,750. Imagine almost $9,000 for a skullcap, even one with gold applique, beads and sequins, lined in leather. Made in Poland nearly two centuries ago, it was on the model of what Jewish men wore at prayer in Spain until the Expusion. I also bought a brilliantly colored talles from Yemen (early 20th century) for $2,000, not bad. Add to this an etching of “David the Harpist” by E.M. Lilien for $4,000. Lilien comes directly out of the pre-Raphaelite tradition of Burne-Jones, Rossetti and Beardsley and the Art Nouveau line of Klimt, Gaudí, Muscha, Whistler, Tiffany, even Josef Hoffmann. Lilien’s androgynous sexuality in imagery was more than once extended to Herzl: Herzl as the young boy David.

“David the Harpist,” by E.M. Lilien, sold for $4,000.

A great collection has been dissolved. It will now go into other collections, big and small. No one takes their art, even the art of the religious life, with them into the grave.

And speaking of the grave brings us to our second instance of religious revival. We had long assumed that Yiddish was already there. Some 75 years ago, Yiddish was the language of 75 percent of the Jewish world. Its literature compares with any other modern literature, and it’s not just Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and Mendele, the three 19th-century masters. My most cherished Yiddish writer is Chaim Grade, who wrote novels (and poetry) of daunting literary imagination, exhausting emotion, taxing logic. His literary estate has now come to YIVO and the Jewish National Library in Israel, a fitting partnership. It will be, I am told, an epiphany. And one thing I already know: in Grade’s lifelong literary struggle with Isaac Bashevis Singer, the little-known figure has already won.

Evgeny Kissin, the miraculous 41-year-old pianist who was born and trained in Russia, had a stint of concertizing in New York. If you can get a ticket to his Carnegie Hall performance (this coming Sunday, with James Levine back at the Met’s baton), you are luckier or richer than I. In any case, I had a Kissin experience that I will never forget. No, he didn’t play Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Beethoven, Chopin or Tchaikovsky, and I have heard him play them before. He was at YIVO, that gem of a Jewish institution, founded in Vilinus (Grade’s hometown; Napoleon called it “the Jerusalem of the North”) in the ’20s to maintain and extend the sobriety and riches of a culture that was always under threat. Hitler almost killed it, and he succeeded in murdering more than half that culture’s lovers and practitioners. But the field is still being plowed, not least by Mr. Kissin himself.

Evgeny Kissin reciting poetry.

He recited nine Yiddish poems, from memory and from the heart, a few of them by Soviet Jewish writers—one of them, Itsik Fefer, who betrayed the rest to the secret police. Yet, Fefer had written, “Even in ashes, Yiddish is fire ...” All the poems were poems about Yiddish, a kaddish, some of them. Each poem that Mr. Kissin intoned is a position in an argument:

Binem Heller:

In the wonderful language of the Jews

The answer is found in the question itself.

Melekh Ravitsh:

I belong to the unlearned

I cannot write the fancy Holy Tongue

I speak the ordinary language

Of the ordinary folk ...

... I am the poet of the unlearned.

And the great Yiddish poet Yankev Glatshteyn, who late in life was an American:

O, let me approach the joy of the Yiddish word.

Give me entire, full days and night

Knot me, weave me

Take all vanities off me

Feed me by crows, give me crumbs

A roof filled with holes and a bad bed.

But give me entire, full days and nights

Do not let forget the Yiddish word

Even for a moment.

Evgeny Kissin’s homage:

My grandparents died

Later, we sold the dacha

But a little Yiddish survived

In my memory and soul

and for me: not mother-, but

grandmother tongue

So why does it resound again and again ...

Obstinate through time, it bursts forth

And a new story begins.

The “not mother-, but grandmother tongue” line is a brilliant and, alas, devastating insight.

The full auditorium was hushed, the audience not knowing whether to clap or to cry. The young American college kids and graduate students, the fancy folk and the people from the boroughs, the Russian émigrés, the old Yiddishists, the people who thought that Mr. Kissin was giving a concert and that the sponsors were providing a good meal. This is YIVO, very much alive and almost fully well. One thing was certain that night: the Jewish past has a future.

Marty Peretz is the former editor in chief of The New Republic.

Ms. Kennedy. (Getty Images)

I kinda like Caroline Kennedy. Not that she would care if I do or don’t. In any case, I haven’t seen her for a dozen years—and before that only fleetingly. We first met when she was an undergraduate at Harvard in the late ’70s. She was the belle (or maybe not ...) of my brilliant student and future colleague Eric Breindel, whose accomplished life working as Senator Moynihan’s top intellectual aide and as chief New York Post editorialist was plagued by tempests and torments that ended tragically in 1998. (He’d had other belles before and after: Benazir “Pinky” Bhutto, for one, and then a gifted writer wife and a devoted girlfriend, and finally his longtime love, Lally Weymouth.)

One fact I remember about Caroline is that, when shopping around for an area of academic concentration, she contemplated applying to the select program in social studies that I had run for years. Since she knew that Eric and I were close, however, she imagined that some favoritism might play into the process, and she went off to study in another field. She brought her mother around to my house at a graduation party. Jackie was not at all patronizing, even though by then she had been married to the most powerful man on earth and then to one of the wealthiest.

Apparently, President Obama now intends to appoint Mrs. Kennedy Schlossberg as the American emissary to Japan. John F. Kerry, the recently confirmed and appropriately grave secretary of state, might have other thoughts on the matter. But I suspect his leeway is not great—after all, most of the important ambassadorial posts have been given or are in the process of going to (mostly) men from Barack and Michelle’s political life. The Russian Federation and Brazil are exceptions; they have been sent academic or diplomatic professionals. On the other hand, hacks have been dispatched to key countries, even to China and South Africa. The editor of Vogue will not be sent to London. But whoever will be needs to have deep pockets like the one who left last week. Five previous ambassadors to the U.K. were elected president of the United States. Paris still has its American plenipotentiary, whose credentials include being the son of a former ambassador and the CEO of the company that brought the Muppets to the world. I am sure they are all fine and estimable men.

(Getty Images)

Why do many people object to Caroline’s ambitions to become our ambassador in Tokyo and take issue with Mr. Obama’s apparent determination to designate her for the posting? Well, one fact is clear: she is no Edwin O. Reischauer, who served as the U.S. emissary to Japan from 1961 to 1966. Mr. Reischauer was a great scholar of Japan and Japanese civilization, perhaps the greatest American in the field ... ever. Oh, and he was appointed by Jack Kennedy, Caroline’s dad. But let’s face it. This administration is not comfortable in the realm of the cerebral, which includes sheer factual knowledge, lots of it, and also presumes deep thought. You will not get that from Valerie Jarrett or David Plouffe. Frankly, the present White House makes me nostalgic for Jimmy Carter’s executive mansion. You had two brainy people with antagonistic views, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance, arguing it all out before an intellectually picky president. The present president already knows everything he needs to know.

But back to Secretary Kerry. He’s just back from one of his many urgent Middle Eastern tours. I suggest that his North Korean agenda item is more significant than whether he can lure the Palestinians to the negotiating table. In fact, the outcome of the U.S. attempt to persuade Pyongyang to reverse its nuclear program will be seen in Israel as an index of what America’s course will be vis-à-vis Iran’s atomic aspirations. The Palestinians can’t destroy the Jewish state. The Palestinians can actually only destroy themselves, like the Syrians are and the Egyptians will soon do. But Tehran might plausibly try nukes out on Israel. So what has this to do with Caroline Kennedy? Japan will be needed in the confrontation with Kim Jung-un. Diplomacy with Asian nations is stylized theater. Will it then be Kabuki? If so, women are forbidden to play. The North Koreans are the real test of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy. If Mr. Obama doesn’t beat them down, then his threats to Iran are implausible. Downright unbelievable.

Another factor behind the Kennedy surprise is that she has tried this once before. She let it be known before agreements had been reached that she wanted to succeed Hillary Clinton as U.S. senator from New York. A good deal of political fumbling ensued, and the fumbling then-governor, David Paterson, couldn’t or wouldn’t bring it about. Enter Kirsten Gillibrand. She was appointed by the governor and then won on her own. She is a nice conventional Democratic hack. Caroline would have made a senator you’d have to listen to, even if it was only because she was a Kennedy. But she is not like some of her cousins. She is serious. Nothing sordid has ever been attributed to her. (Nor to her lamented brother, who couldn’t resist a typical ambition of the very rich to fly, but was otherwise a hardworking journalist who wanted very much to be the editor of a serious magazine.)

(Getty Images)

It seems to me, though, that Caroline’s wish to be the president’s designee in Tokyo is the last act for the Kennedys. They’ve been upstaged among the Democrats by the Clintons, maybe even by Chelsea Clinton, if you can believe it. On the Republican side, we’ve already had George I and George II in the White House. And there’s another son/brother waiting in the wings. Hey, we started out with the Adams family and we survived even the grim Education of their prodigal Henry. A later prodigal, Thomas Boylston Adams, ran for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 1966, following a similarly disastrous run in the Bay State four years earlier by the grandson of Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. “Peace candidates” they were called, and I was involved with both. Alas.

No such hoity-toity aims animate the pols in the Kennedy family. Ted’s son left Rhode Island’s seat in the House with a sickness that resembles that of Jesse Jackson’s heir. The new Kennedy in Congress, Joseph P. Kennedy III, is the son of another congressman (Joe Kennedy II) who now runs Hugo Chavez’s “charity” oil company for some of America’s poor families, at a salary of around $600,000. Once, long ago, we just about came to blows in the lobby of a Washington hotel. His bodyguards or whatever separated us. But this was not the worst of Joe’s troubles. He left politics. That’s the good news. The better news is that his son and namesake is a serious person with serious attainments in his young life. Robert Kennedy’s family has been the most seriously afflicted by wealth, fame, power, drugs, killer sports, a bizarre mother and an assassinated father who was no instance of virtue in his personal relations. (And lest one forget, he was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist.) Young Bobby, the attorney general’s son and a very bright student of mine, was a roommate of Eric Breindel’s.

There is a Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in Boston, an urban island of soft gardens and soon a carousel. Maybe some people know who this Kennedy was. In a few years, only the Kennedy cultists will know, and they will not remind you of the suffering that she, the former president’s mother, experienced as paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy’s betrothed. There is also in Central Park a Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir to “commemorate her contributions to New York.” It is true that she jogged in the park and that her Fifth Avenue apartment overlooked the place that has been named for her.

Of course, all over the country there are memorials to her husband. But JFK’s presidency has also been undergoing reappraisals. In my view, there were two great moments to his term in office. One was his rhetorical link in Berlin to the victims of Stalinism: “ich bin ein Berliner.” The other was his staring down Krushchev when the Soviet leader and his comrade Castro had brought the world to the edge of war in the Cuban missile crisis. Brother Robert has also been memorialized around the country. For what achievements, I do not know. Four years ago, the New York State Department of Transportation announced that it was about to spend $4 million to change the name of the Triborough Bridge to the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge. Last month, I asked my taxi driver to take the Kennedy Bridge on my ride from Manhattan to LaGuardia. He said: “What?” And then he suggested instead that, given the time and the traffic, it would be faster and cheaper to take the Edward Koch bridge on 59th Street. Which we did. And yes, he knew who Mr. Koch was.

editorial@observer.com

Moynihan Station will testify to the senator’s fidelity to both the commonplace functionality of public transportation and the grand aspirations of civic architecture. He rescued not only this railroad hub, but also the national capital’s Union Station. Nothing was too slight for this very big man’s attentions, neither the Smithsonian Institution nor this city’s Botanical Gardens nor Cooperstown, where he believably feigned an interest in baseball. 

Moynihan’s Moment, the new book by the deep and graceful historian Gil Troy ($29.95; Oxford University Press), is about Pat’s singular struggle against the rancid anti-Semitism embedded in the United Nations, once thought of as the world’s “last best hope for peace.” Alas, that world is no longer Eleanor Roosevelt’s universe of good intentions. Factually and structurally, the U.N. is now set up in two ways for grand fibbing. The Security Council is governed by the veto privilege of its five permanent members.

Do you want to know why nothing ever was done against the genocide in Sudan or, for that matter, in any other African country? Any measure that could have curbed the slaughter would have been nullified by a Russian or Chinese veto, probably both. The General Assembly, on the other hand, is a mob scene, like the Durban conferences convened by the U.N. Human Rights Council and its equally mendacious predecessor. It is, in effect, just another venue for the Nonaligned Movement, which has 120 members, all of them represented in the U.N. and almost all of them voting as one. Mohamed Morsi was last year’s chairperson of the NAM; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is this year’s. Chairperson, shmairperson: no woman has ever served.

The November 10, 1975, vote of the General Assembly declaring that “Zionism is racism” was a foregone conclusion. So foregone that, as Mr. Troy explains, it led the Soviet bloc and its odd alliance of some 50 Muslim states—monarchies, “revolutionary republics” and just plain klepto-murderous gangs—to contemplate throwing Israel out of the U.N. altogether. Ultimately, they settled for their umpteenth rhetorical triumph, which accomplished literally nothing for the miserable Palestinians. Of course, the Palestinians have counted for nearly zero in the calculations of their Muslim brothers, and for less than zero in the arbitrage of their mischievous comrades, whose game was less to punish Israel than to encircle the United States with the anger of its beneficiaries and putative clients.

Mr. Moynihan understood this convoluted chess game, and he trounced the Arabs and their cynical Communist patrons with the straightforward eloquence for which he was beloved. Mr. Troy captures nearly every moment of the intra-bureaucratic American struggle for Ronald Reagan’s soul. Henry Kissinger, who clearly did not like Mr. Moynihan, connived against him.

And many others, like J. William Fulbright, actually an embittered but haughty anti-black racist, New York Timesman James Reston and a large cohort of diplomat-professors like Columbia’s Richard Gardner and Princeton’s Richard Falk, an anti-Semitic Jew now in the career service of the Human Rights Council, all of whom did not especially like Mr. Kissinger either—he was a pushy Jew, an arrogant intellectual and, oh, yes, Vietnam and Chile—came down on Mr. Moynihan from the internationalist left. (In 1969, I went to see Mr. Fulbright and his wife in the Senate dining room on behalf of the children of Biafra. He came directly to the point: “Why, for God’s sake, are you interested in these pickaninnies?”)

In any case, no one had really gauged the deep and abiding racism of those governments and societies that were so eager to accuse Israel of racism. As it happens, there was hardly a government in the anti-Israel swarm that was not deeply racist. And they are sanguinely racist still: Russia, China, each and every one of the Arab countries, and most of Asia and Africa. This was the prosecution, and this is the prosecution still.

U.N. Resolution 3379 was ultimately revoked 16 years later. But the bitter fact is that the repudiation of the libel was little more than symbolic. Condemnation of Israel is still a reflex, sometimes noticed, sometimes not. Palestinian “victories” in the Assembly bring no political or economic relief to these orphan Arabs. Those who fight for them on New York’s East River are indifferent to their fate, the anger mustered against the Jews a disguise of their disdain and heedlessness.

So Palestine is now a United Nations non-member state, comparable only to the Vatican. Moreover, the fratricide in Syria, the civil war in Egypt, the coming erosion of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan, the ongoing inter-sectarian murder in Iraq, the escalating carnage in Yemen, the breakup of Lebanon and the religious wars in Africa are all portents of the evaporation of the Muslim center. It may be disguised by oil wealth. But not for long. And, let’s face it, the petro-monarchs do not govern integral societies. Their wealth is not at home but in London, New York and Beijing.

This book is a highly sophisticated intellectual history of liberal America in the last decades of the 20th century. Mr. Moynihan was a major actor in this history, as well as one of its great interpreters. So, too, was that epitome of complicated honesty, Nathan Glazer, who was Pat’s partner in the writing of Beyond the Melting Pot, a disturbing narrative picture of race and ethnicity in America. Resentment against the truths in this book spilled over into the hatred that the mere mention of Mr. Moynihan’s name sometimes provoked in the self-defined thought capitols of the country.

But Pat was intrepid, knowing when he was stepping into a shitstorm. Like when he ran against Bella Abzug, Paul O’Dwyer (Mayor Bill O’Dwyer’s deep-lefty brother) and Ramsey Clark (LBJ’s attorney general), who was just then entering his nutsy period, pronouncing America as guilty of trying at once to rule and destroy the world. Mr. Moynihan was adept in the political arena. He was a brilliant teacher. He was also a diplomat who, with his wife Liz, charmed India and virtually single-handedly persuaded New Delhi that a better destiny lay with the democracies.

As for the Jews and the Jewish state, Pat grasped the romance of Zionism, its unprecedented revival of Hebrew as a living language, its pioneering esprit, its treacherous experience with Arabs, its transformation of a dispersed people into a modern and democratic polity. Some aspects of the rancor Israel provokes are envy, incompetence and historical hatred, much of it located in the church to which he was faithful. But nothing matches Islam’s hatred of Zion, and Gil Troy captures its resentment at its sad and self-defeating worst.

Marty Peretz is the former editor in chief of The New Republic.

Now, The Harvard Crimson is reporting that Peretz may have been removed as a speaker. The official schedule for the day does not list him as making a speech, and Anya Bernstein, director of studies at the department, confirmed that the website was updated yesterday. (The full schedule can be found here, at the department's website.)

The New York Times reported last week that university officials have been discussing the possibility of downplaying Peretz's role in an upcoming 50th anniversary of the social studies department, where the outspoken publisher was to be honored for establishing an undergraduate research fund in his name.

The Times quoted the president of the Harvard Islamic Society as saying that because of Peretz's statement — which reads "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims" — the department would "alienate a large segment of the student body" if they did not ask Peretz, a Harvard alumna, to bow out of the ceremony. 

The Crimson said the development comes on the heels of yesterday's interdepartmental meeting that was called to discuss the criticism. 

The official statement that was to appear yesterday has not materialized, and a confirmation on exactly how Peretz will participate is still forthcoming. Bernstein did, however, say that he will be "recognized in some fashion at the ceremony."

Mr. Peretz, the former owner of TNR and its current editor in chief, sold his stake in 2007 to CanWest, the troubled Canadian communications company that has now said it is looking to sell non-core assets. The New Republic is the only major American asset that the company owns.  

Mr. Peretz, Mr. Grafstein and a small team of roughly a half a dozen investors are in negotiatoins with CanWest and are hoping to strike a deal that could be completed as early as this afternoon, said the person familiar with the discussions. There is no guarantee a deal will be completed.

Update, 5:05 PM EST: No deal by the end of the business day. More as it breaks.

Earlier that week, Ms. Reeve’s former boss, The New Republic’s editor, Franklin Foer, had published a 7000-word piece that concluded by formally retracting three first-person columns that the 24-year-old Mr. Beauchamp had written for the magazine over the summer. Soon after their publication, a chorus of conservative bloggers had raised questions about the veracity of the columns, in which Mr. Beauchamp offered first-person accounts of American troops in Iraq engaging in shocking behavior, such as running over dogs with their Bradleys, and mocking a woman whose face had been disfigured in an explosion. After carrying out a nearly five-month investigation, which involved attempts to corroborate Mr. Beauchamp’s claims with other members of his unit, Mr. Foer had concluded that the stories could not be verified.

It was Ms. Reeve, 25, who, while working at TNR as a reporter-researcher, had recommended Mr. Beauchamp—not yet her husband at the time—to the magazine’s editors. Nevertheless, Ms. Reeve said, she wasn’t going to let the fact that Mr. Foer had publicly denounced Mr. Beauchamp’s work spoil her mood on the eve of her reunion with her husband.

“[Scott] survived the war, he’s coming home, we’re newlyweds, it’s Christmas,” she said. “I’m living in a romance novel. It’s kind of hard to be down.”

Ms. Reeve said she was surprised to learn, in early November while visiting her husband in Germany (where he was transferred upon completing his tour of duty in Iraq), that Mr. Foer planned to retract the stories. She said that she and Mr. Beauchamp had not expected Mr. Foer to take any decisive action until Mr. Beauchamp returned to the U.S. this week, at which point they thought it would be much easier for him to speak up in his own defense.

“I think Scott thought Frank was on his side, you know? And that he understood that he was in a really difficult situation and so would be patient until Scott got out of Iraq,” Ms. Reeve said. “I don’t think Scott realized the limits on Frank’s patience.”

Ms. Reeve also argued that Mr. Foer’s retraction, titled “The Fog of War,” had failed to prove that any of Mr. Beauchamp’s stories contained fabrications—all it did, she said, was demonstrate that Mr. Foer was tired of dealing with the scandal.

“When I first heard about this piece,” Ms. Reeve said, “I thought they would have taken all the different things that the soldiers had said about each of the three stories and analyzed them for inconsistencies, and said, ‘Here’s where we think Scott exaggerated’ or ‘Here’s where we think the stories don’t match up and that’s why we can’t stand behind them anymore.’ But instead they were like, ‘Here are all the reasons to support Scott, but this is hard.’ And they just threw up their hands.”

Indeed, Mr. Foer’s piece was a classic Alford plea, which declared that even though the re-reporting effort had failed to turn up any discrepancies in Mr. Beauchamp’s stories—other than his placing a key scene in Iraq when in fact it took place in Kuwait, which Mr. Beauchamp has said was an honest mistake—the investigation had hit a dead end. TNR could no longer stand by the stories because too many of the facts were impossible to check, Mr. Foer wrote, and because Mr. Beauchamp, who continues to maintain that he did not fabricate anything, had consistently failed to help TNR in their attempts to vindicate him.

According to Jonathan Chait, a senior editor at TNR, the magazine received little cooperation from Mr. Beauchamp throughout the investigation process. “The basis [for the retraction] was just that Scott is maddening,” he said. “He’s just flaky, he’s irresponsible, he doesn’t do things that are in his own obvious interest to do. … Scott was the guy who lives in the group house and is supposed to pay the electric bill and just doesn’t, and the lights get shut off. Frank was the guy who had the lights shut out on him.” Mr. Beauchamp declined to comment for this story.

According to Mr. Chait, some of Mr. Foer’s colleagues at TNR, though generally supportive of the steps he has taken during the past few months, were not certain that the pieces deserved to be retracted outright just because Mr. Beauchamp had failed to cooperate with the investigation. “I don’t think anybody on staff had a clear idea of what the article would or should conclude before Frank wrote it,” Mr. Chait said.

But Martin Peretz, the magazine’s editor in chief, who, until earlier this year, was also its owner, stood behind the decision to retract the stories. “Certainly in retrospect we shouldn’t have published them,” he told The Observer Monday. “They did not meet the highest standards of proof.”

Mr. Peretz also said Mr. Foer’s piece should finally put to rest the notion, advanced by some conservative bloggers, that Mr. Beauchamp’s stories were intended to undermine the troops’ mission.

“There was certainly no editorial decision to trash the United States Army, because as you know, The New Republic has a very—what shall I say?—careful view of the war,” said Mr. Peretz. “So we would not be motivated in any way to say, ‘Hey this is hot! It makes our soldiers look like shit!’”

As for what the future holds for Mr. Beauchamp and his bride—they’re moving to Germany, where Mr. Beauchamp has two more years of service to complete. Ms. Reeve said Mr. Beauchamp does not yet know what he wants to do when he leaves the Army.

The Observer first reported in Dec. 2006 (2nd item) that CanWest was taking a majority stake in the company. That was confirmed on Feb 23. Instead of just majority interest, CanWest now owns 100% of the company.

Marty Peretz, who no longer owns part of the magazine, for the first time since 1974, will remain as Editor in Chief.

-Michael Calderone

Full release after the jump

NEWS RELEASE
For Immediate Release:
February 27, 2007
CanWest Buys The New Republic

Toronto, ON: - CanWest Global Communications Corp. ("CanWest") today announced that a wholly owned subsidiary has acquired a 100% interest in The New Republic, a 93 year old United States based political magazine. This acquisition follows the purchase by CanWest in 2006 of a 30% interest.

"The New Republic, similar to CanWest's other publications, has a strong foundation and a proud history. We look forward to seeing it become even stronger" said Tom Strike, President of CanWest MediaWorks International. "In today's media environment, we need to place a priority on delivering quality content to readers when, where and how they want it. The New Republic is well-positioned to do just that".

The magazine and its website are currently undergoing a major overhaul. The makeover includes a new frequency of publication, bigger issues and a new reader-friendly design. The enhanced website will be launched soon with more daily digital content.

Greg MacNeil, a well-respected veteran of Canadian publishing, is acting as Interim Publisher. Marty Peretz will continue as Editor-in-Chief.

But I'm going to try to not be self-serving here. The fascinating thing about this Jewish perestroika is that it liberates everyone. Not just my camp, the anti- or non-Zionist camp that wonders if the dream of a Jewish state hasn't slid hopelessly away, but also the We-are-very-upset-about-Israel's-current-policies-but-we-love-her-and-believe-in-her camp. The Zionist left is angered and embarrassed by the AJC report, feel that it's broadbrush and reactionary, and so are standing up with renewed energy, as if the ball is about to be handed to them, at last—the rightwing having shot itself in the foot.

Gershom Gorenberg, who is in that camp, yesterday said the real story is that the left is alive, it's empowered groups like the Union of Progressive Zionists, which is harshly critical of the occupation. Isn't it great they haven't been thrown off the Israel on Campus Coalition, Gorenberg writes, despite the best efforts of the ZOA. And he is right. Tamara Shapiro, the 24-year-old who runs UPZ, is an amazing young woman, idealistic and tough. She brought Breaking the Silence to America last year; she gets it from the right (ZOA) and the left (me). Now the AJC report has given her more room to operate, by blasting open the debate. (Leonard Fein makes the same point in the Forward this week).

Just as the AJC gave leftish John Judis of the New Republic freedom to talk about something he has probably been secretly bitching about for years: the pressure on Jewish intellectuals to be loyal to Israel, from people like his boss, Marty Peretz (he didn't say that part out loud). When is Mickey Kaus, another not-all-the-way-on-the-reservation Jewish intellectual whose career has been boosted by Peretz, going to speak up about this pressure? Or Mike Kinsley? Time is now, boys. Everyone's letting their hair down in the sweatlodge.

The best analysis I've seen yet of the politics of the Jewish left in America is from Daniel Sieradski—"Mobius," of Jewschool. He explains to me that the two big roadblocks are a, ideological differences, and b, dough.

Well now in The New Republic, John Judis has joined me in legitimizing this question. Here is the money quote:

This is intellectually valiant work, Judis should be applauded; and TNR praised for running the piece. As for the demand made on Jewish intellectuals to be loyal to Israel, it is one that anyone who has worked for the New Republic (I did it once, and carried Marty Peretz's anti-U.N. water for him) has experienced.

Wow, I'm just stunned by this. It's another achievement of the AJC report, which Judis's piece addresses (and of Walt-Mearsheimer, who broke the whole thing open). Don't you see what is happening? The dual-loyalty question is being mainstreamed. The degree to which neocons and neolibs and American Jewish journalists generally have been recruited in passive/unconscious identification with Israel is, as I've said here before, a legitimate issue. The suppression in the American Jewish community of any alternative discourse to Zionism—well, thanks to the AJC, the bridges are being dynamited...

Ginsberg is far more pro-Israel than, say, Walt and Mearsheimer, but he was intellectually honest enough to talk about the power of the Israel lobby. The lobby enjoys a reputation as "Washington's most powerful lobby." During the Reagan era, an "important role" for the pro-Israel forces was played by "'neoconservative Jewish intellectuals who used their access to the print and broadcast media to promote national defense." Reagan called on these pro-Israel forces to support his policies in Latin America, and "to portray these policies as part and parcel of the same struggle against communism as Israel's fight against the P.L.O. Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, obliged."

(Then it was Communism. Now it's the fight against Islamic terrorism. Just check the box, and deny the Palestinians basic rights...)

Ginsberg goes even further than Walt and Mearsheimer (as I have in this blog) in the sociologial vein. "Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual, and political life," he states. Indeed, they are "extremely influential." And Jewish "ties to Israel," he notes, have sometimes played a part in accusations of dual loyalty: "the potential result [of these ties and the suspicions they cause] is to undermine the position of Jews in American government and policy-making capacities—long a major source of Jewish influence."

Ginsberg establishes these facts to serve a point of view that Walt and Mearsheimer and leftists like myself would disagree with. He's pro-Israel, and fearful (as I believe David Brooks is, though Ginsberg does not resort to code) about a radical populist reaction against a tiny Jewish elite. Ginsberg is concerned that the gentile American powers-that-be would then sell out the Jews. Fair enough; I have many friends who believe this too: that the U.S. is basically run by the goyim and we Jews are simply convenient, for now, and watch your back. But what if you don't share this concern? What if you are a universalist, as opposed to Peretz/Wieseltier's particularism? What if you were horrified by a visit to the occupied territories (and angered that Jewish particularists cannot even describe the lands as occupied, let alone face what religious nationalist Jews have done there)? What if you are concerned about the way that an extremist U.S. foreign policy has emulated that occupation, alienated the Arab world and made the Middle East more dangerous than ever?

Answer: You should be able to use the same points that Ginsberg marshals—influence, Jewish neoconservativism, and a powerful lobby—without being labelled an anti-Semite.