Powerful and enigmatic, intelligent and creative, idealistic on the one hand and materialistic on the other, the Jewish people have always fascinated me. Few teenagers growing up in the middle '60s, as I did, could have avoided acquiring a positive image of Israel and the Jewish people. Because of my years of Sunday school, my perception of the Jews was even more idealized than most. I was 11 years old when I saw the movie classic Exodus.¹ It made an enduring impression on me, so much so, that for a few months its beautiful theme song became my favorite, one that I would often hum or sing.

I remember an episode of embarrassment when my sister and her teenage friends stumbled upon me loudly singing the stirring words, "This land is mine, God gave this land to me." Heroic Israel inspired me. It was as if the Israelites of the Bible transposed themselves to modern times to live out their Old Testament adventures again. My image of Israel strongly reinforced my acceptance of the idea that Gentile intolerance had caused every historical conflict with Jews.

After I had discovered the extensive Jewish involvement with early Communism, which I had hoped was an uncharacteristic blight on Jewish history, I began to ask questions one dared not ask in polite society about this interesting people and religion. I had read about the many persecutions of the Jews throughout history, including their great suffering now called the Holocaust (in the mid-60s that term had not yet been appropriated by the Jews to apply exclusively to their sufferings during the Second World War - holocaust merely meant, as it always has, destruction of anything by fire).

Mark Twain wrote, "Every nation hates each other, but they all hate the Jew." Somehow I found the impertinence to ask why. In a historical context, almost every major nation of Europe had expelled them, some repeatedly, after renewed waves of Jewish immigration. What was it, I wondered, about the Jewish people, that inspired such hatred?

Normally, when we study historical conflicts between nations or peoples, we do it dispassionately. For instance, in examining any war from long ago, we list as objectively as possible, the grievances and rationales of the opposing sides. When studying the War for Southern Independence, every American school child learns the Southern arguments for secession and the Northern arguments for forced union. In contrast, when studying the historical disputes between the Jewish people and others, only the Jewish point-of-view is acceptable.

In early 1995, Congressman Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House, fired his newly appointed congressional librarian, Christina Jeffrey,² for having once suggested that history students, when studying the Holocaust should also be exposed to the German point of view. She was fired in spite of her high standing in her profession and notwithstanding her long and cozy relations with the powerful Jewish ADL (Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith). The very suggestion that there could be another side to any issue affecting Jews is decried as "anti-Semitic." In both the entertainment and news media, the only permissible opinion is that Jews are always innocent victims persecuted by intolerant Christians and other "anti-Semites." Maybe they were always innocent, and all the other peoples of the world were always unjust, I thought. But they weren't so innocent in the Russian Revolution. I realized I could not evaluate the issue fairly until I had read both sides.