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December 5, 2003
Five Jews and a Joo in paper
Columnist ponders the reasons why there are so many Jewish writers.
DOV BURT LEVY SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN
Picture this: A London café, Feb. 28, 2001, me with a cappuccino
and the International Herald Tribune. I turn to the editorial page,
read a column by Richard Cohen of the Washington Post. I
scan the rest and realize that Jews wrote five of the six columns:
Cohen, Stephen Rosenfeld, Robert Kaplan, Ellen Goodman and Thomas
Friedman.
The sixth columnist is Prof. Han Sung-Joo. Five Jews and a Joo –
a Jewish newspaper headline-writer's dream.
As far as I know, that day was the only day such a Jewish event
happened in any major secular newspaper. So today, I give you not
only the headline but also two questions: How did it happen, and
what does it mean in these times, when heads of state like Malaysian
Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad feel free to publicly charge Jews
with ruling the world?
How did it happen? I assume serendipity; that is, just by chance
the op-ed editor had manuscripts about current news events on his
desk by writers who happened to be Jewish.
For argument's sake, and it seems to be true if you look at many
publications, let's say that a disproportionate number of columnists
are indeed Jewish. So what? A disproportionate number of professional
football and basketball players are African American. A whole lot
of restaurant owners are Greek; hotel owners are often Indian or
Pakistani; and many Lebanese and Koreans own small grocery shops.
Very understandable historical, sociological, economic and even
genetic reasons explain the passing phenomena of a disproportionate
number of a particular racial, ethnic or religious group entering
a particular job, business or professional situation. I suspect
that a thousand Jewish college students switched to journalism in
the years after Carl Bernstein became famous in the Watergate investigation,
wrote two best-selling books and was portrayed by Dustin Hoffman
in All the President's Men.
And before you yell at me because you think I said that all the
individuals in those groups are genetically predisposed to be hotel
or restaurant owners, I only mean genetics when it comes to physical
or intellectual prowess. For example, while some 90 per cent of
African Americans don't have what it takes to become a big-league
athlete, enough possess genetic physicality to win disproportionate
representation for the ethnicity in professional sports.
So why would it be any different for Jews? Jews have always revered
rabbis and teachers who spent a lifetime arguing about words and
sentences in the Talmud as they helped produce a dozen children
dedicated to the same life tasks. What were rabbis Hillel and Shammai
if not two of the earliest op-ed writers?
We probably have somehow incorporated opinionated and argumentative
genes into our DNA. Otherwise, how do you explain that continuing
truism: Find three Jews on a desert island and you will find two
or three synagogues, political parties and newspapers?
Should any reader let their ethnic pride overshadow rationality,
I caution that things can change. Greeks once owned the patent on
the philosophical mind and, while there are still Greek philosophers
today, they are a far cry from the thinkers who spewed wisdom during
the heyday of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.
There are those, usually vicious anti-Semites, who argue that a
Jewish cabal controls America's media in order to further "the
Jewish agenda." My time would be wasted answering them, but
to you, dear reader, I will mention that Jewish participation in
journalism and column-writing is just like that old desert island
story. Jewish writers are all over the political, economic and social
map – from the National Review and the Wall Street
Journal on the right, to the Progressive, the Nation
and others on the left. No cabal; just opinions and arguments.
Now, as for the mysterious Joo who made my headline possible –
it turns out that he is more learned and famous, and surely as opinionated,
as his five fellow op-ed writers.
Han Sung-Joo returned to the United States this year to become South
Korea's ambassador to the United States. He was South Korea's minister
of foreign affairs from 1993 to 1994 and a member of the United
Nations' Rwanda Genocide Inquiry Commission in 1999. He also happens
to hold a PhD in political science from the University of California
at Berkeley, has authored 10 scholarly books and is a professor
and acting president of Korea University.
I don't want to hear any groans when I tell you that the ambassador's
mother has praised her son for his "success as a scholar and
diplomat in these very difficult times while at the same time remaining
a very nice Jooish boy."
Dov Burt Levy is a columnist for the Jewish Journal
North of Boston. He can be reached at [email protected].
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