I grew up middle-class in Baltimore. My parents raised 6 kids on an academic salary and my mother bought all our clothes at thrift shops. From 10 to 12, the object of all my hankering was E.J. Korvette’s. It was the one department store my parents finally agreed to take us to. They wouldn’t take us to Hecht’s or Bamberger’s or Hutzler’s. Those were fancy. But E.J. Korvette’s, lit up on a hill out past the Beltway–that was special. I got plaid pants there in 6th grade, just like the British rock bands.
Rumor had it that E.J. Korvette’s stood for Eleven Jewish Korean Veterans. I don’t know if that’s true, but that was another reason to go, to honor their service. It was the era when Jewish aspiration involved retail and medicine. Now it’s moved on, to hedge funds and media.
I thought of E.J. Korvette’s today when I read Amanda Gelender, a Stanford junior, calling for sanctions against Israel in The Stanford Daily. She begins by announcing, "I am Jewish." You go, girl. Young Jewish progressives stand on the hills outside our cities, like those 11 Jewish soldiers of my youth. They will not be silenced, they grow in number. Here’s Amanda:
We single out Israel for the same reason that others single out
Darfur or Burma: because there are atrocious human rights abuses
occurring in a specific socio-political context….Americans have a unique culpability for Israeli injustices, as the
U.S. supports Israel’s occupation of Palestine with more than $7
million in foreign aid per day… Given this tremendous sum of U.S. aid coupled with its appalling
human rights record, Israel deserves our criticism and consideration
just as much as other nations; subjugation in other countries does not
negate that which occurs in Israel.
In the comments, note the efforts to delegitimize Amanda as a drama major–and the mock posting saying that Jimmy Carter is a Nazi who wants to remove Jews from American public life….
