Manhattan—Last week, as part of its year-long centennial celebration and its associated lecture series, the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy (MTA)/The Yeshiva University High School for Boys (YUHSB), together with the Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, welcomed Alan Dershowitz, a 1955 graduate, as a speaker in conversation with Straus Center Director Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveichik.
The topic of the talk was ostensibly focused on anti-Semitism in the Academy, but Dershowitz, in his inimitable way, answered Rabbi Dr. Soloveichik’s questions in a way that communicated not only a deep understanding of Jewish history and the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also shared some of his most definitive experiences as one of the country’s most passionate defenders of Israel in academia. The mode of the lecture’s delivery, with Rabbi Dr. Soloveichik asking broad yet clearly directed questions, showcased Dershowitz’s charming, homey storytelling skills, and his somewhat unique perspective as a political liberal in 2017 who cares deeply about the survival and vibrancy of the Jewish state. This made the evening less about the Academy and the dangers it faces from BDS and the like, and more about the argument “for Israel,” which Dershowitz has spent the better part of five decades developing.
In his latest memoir, “Taking the Stand,” he discusses his family background and childhood in Brooklyn as the son of Jewish immigrants. Dershowitz shared that his experience at the Brooklyn Talmudical Academy (BTA), the now-defunct Brooklyn branch of YUHSB from which he “barely” graduated in 1955, was the most difficult, transformative and meaningful of all his schooling, and it informed many of his major alliances and loyalties as he grew up.
The irony of Dershowitz barely graduating from high school was not lost on the audience, which filled Lamport Auditorium almost to capacity. After graduating from BTA, his academic credentials were stellar. Dershowitz attended Brooklyn College and Yale Law School, and retired in 2013 as the Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, a faculty he joined at age 25. “Everything was easy after BTA,” said Dershowitz, who relayed that the school’s then-principal took the subway from Brooklyn “all the way up to Washington Heights” to explain why Dershowitz could not be admitted to Yeshiva University.
Dershowitz explained that his head of school sat him down toward the end of his high-school years and explained this “difficult” student’s choices as he saw it. The principal told him he was good at talking, but sometimes he just didn’t think. “The only professional options I had, he said, were to either become a lawyer or a Conservative rabbi,” Dershowitz said. The room erupted into laughter.
But in retrospect, it is important to note how very prescient this principal was to direct Dershowitz toward law school. “Alan Dershowitz has been called ‘Israel’s single most visible defender—the Jewish state’s lead attorney in the court of public opinion,’” said Rabbi Josh Kahn, head of school of MTA, in his introductory remarks.
Addressing the seriousness of the topic of anti-Semitism in the Academy, Rabbi Kahn explained: “In every generation our enemies rise up to try to annihilate us. The approach in each generation may differ, but the ultimate goal is the same,” he said. Rabbi Kahn also addressed why the lecture-series group was determined to ask Dershowitz to discuss the topic. “In the year 2017, we face a different mode of attack. We face an enemy that is also attempting to use academia to try to destroy us. The anti-Zionism movement is using college campuses, academic freedom and tolerance as their platform to bully us and try to win the court of public opinion. The challenges are nuanced and appeal to the enlightened and educated person in this day and age who wonders why we cannot just share the land with the Palestinians,” Rabbi Kahn said.
Dershowitz answered Rabbi Dr. Soloveichik’s questions directly and honestly, but shared his view that the biggest threat to the Academy’s support of anti-Semitism was not from the BDS movement or its related organizations, but from Jewish professors who do not, cannot or choose not to speak out against it. He explained that the culture and pervasiveness of political correctness (“originally a Stalinist concept, where you would be taken out and shot for expressing politically incorrect views,” he said) has led Jews in academia to understand, quite correctly, that if they speak out on this topic they risk their jobs. When probed on this topic regarding tenured professors, who should, in theory, be able to say whatever they want, Dershowitz explained that tenure does not protect Jews from losing their jobs. He shared an anecdote in which he himself had been the victim of an organized group of students giving him poor teaching evaluations, even though the claims they made were proven to be untrue. The role to fight for Israel is, then, to give the job to the students, to arm them with facts, and fight not with anger but with truth, said Dershowitz.
Dershowitz also spoke briefly about the latest presidential election and the apparent splintering of support for Israel inside his own Democratic party, and the blatant anti-Israel stances of Bernie Sanders, “a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who moved to Vermont,” who almost won the nomination. Dershowitz also added that he would have left the party had Keith Ellison been elected as chair of the Democratic National Committee. He added, however, that he also struggled with any other party with which to identify, noting that he was supportive of social welfare programs, racial equality programs and a woman’s right to choose.
Dershowitz also shared that Barack Obama had been his student, and he had longstanding relationships with Presidents George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama only ever supported Israel from the neck up, for tactical reasons. When I see him at Martha’s Vineyard this summer, I am going to ask him why he did not allow his U.N. representative to veto that resolution,” referring to one of President Obama’s last acts, to abstain from a U.N. vote declaring the Kotel and two other historically Jewish areas in Jerusalem part of “occupied Palestine.”
Politics and Israel notwithstanding, some of the most charming and memorable portions of Dershowitz’s lecture occurred when he spoke about his years at BTA, sharing the halls with the likes of now-Rabbi Yitz Greenberg; now-super-lawyer Nat Lewin; now-Rabbi Steve (“You know him as Shlomo”) Riskin, now the chief rabbi of Efrat; and Rabbi Meir Kahane, a right-wing member of the Israeli Knesset who was assassinated by an Arab gunman in 1990.
“But, I am the reason why YU needed to establish an admissions office,” he joked.
Learn more about other events planned during MTA’s centennial year at http://centennial.yuhsb.org/.
By Elizabeth Kratz
