New Book Twists ‘The Sacred Chain’
‘Cranky’ Norman Cantor Takes on Jewish History
By Jeffrey Goldberg
The Forward, March 3, 1995
NEW YORK — Racism is a “central doctrine” of traditional Judaism. Jewish Hollywood big shots push vulgar depictions of sex and violence on a country rooted in puritanism. “Fat and brassy” Jewish women are leaving their “designer living rooms” for the upper reaches of publishing. Jewish financiers were responsible for junk bonds. Anti-Semitism driven by class resentment is based in part on empirical truths, not just prejudice. Israelis are “shrewd” but ungenerous. Jewish billionaires regularly “jettison” their Jewish spouses for Gentile trophy wives.
Had enough?
If so, then it would be best not to buy “The Sacred Chain — The History of the Jews,” by Norman F. Cantor, a history and sociology professor at New York University. All of these fantastic statements are presented as stone truth in “The Sacred Chain,” which has just been published by HarperCollins. The book is being positioned by its publisher as an easy-to-read, one-volume overview of Jewish history, told in unconventional fashion. “‘The Sacred Chain’ transforms the way Jewish history has heretofore been perceived and written,” states a press release put out by HarperCollins.
This is true. Salo Baron, Howard Sachar and Paul Johnson, three noted authors who have produced comprehensive volumes of Jewish history, have not written passages even vaguely resembling the following excerpt from “The Sacred Chain”:
“Jewish women by the early 1990s were doing very well, thank you. Social acceptance of the egalitarian demands of the women’s movement were sic beneficial to them….They did not have to get fat and brassy sitting around in their designer living rooms anymore, propping up their husbands and organizing Hadassah tours of Israel. They could dress for success…and throw their weight around as cosseted vice presidents of the more upscale publishing houses and magazines. Or they could dress down and frumpy, in Maoist baggies or pseudo-Left Bank dark dresses and serve as chairmen of departments at NYU or Hunter….”
Nor have Baron and company produced anything like this: “A prime reason for the irrational popularity of Zionism among American Jews since 1948…is the Americans’ vicarious projection onto the Israeli Prussian means of integration of self and other, a surrogate union of the dialectic of history and the majesty of pseudo-imperial power. This was never more than a palliative, however, not much more real than masturbating, running off to exotic places, or making out with the closest shiksa.”
Passages such as these are causing “The Sacred Chain” to attract attention of the sort not usually desired by mainstream publishing houses. “It has the veneer of scholarship, but all this seems to be is him getting off his chest whatever’s bothering him,” says Abraham Foxman, the director of the Anti-Defamation League. “I think there’s a danger that someone could take this seriously.”
“The Sacred Chain” has already been taken seriously. Writing in the New York Times Book Review last month, Mark Silk, a reporter specializing in religion, called Mr. Cantor’s work “a cranky, polemical and stimulating account of Jews and Judaism” and compared Mr. Cantor to Jonah. The Washington Post reviewer, Jonathan Groner, took a more critical look at the book, calling it “a highly selective view of the Jewish past that is colored deeply by the author’s extraordinarily virulent prejudice against anything remotely religious or spiritual in Jewish life.”
What concerns Mr. Foxman the most is Mr. Cantor’s writings on Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken and on the role played by “Jewish billionaires” in the American economy, such as the following paragraph:
“In addition to Milken and Boesky, the two prominent Jewish Wall Street felons, other Jewish billionaires or their companies were involved in dubious practices,” Mr. Cantor writes. “The skill of some Jewish billionaires in skirting the limits of the law but somehow emerging unscathed, with the aid of high-priced New York Jewish attorneys and a compliant press, was remarkable.” At another point, Mr. Cantor remarks, “Milken eventually ran afoul of committing technical violations of the Wall Street criminal code. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment by a Gentile woman judge who was married to a prominent Jewish journalist. Eventually, she found grounds for sharply reducing Milken’s sentence.”
“Disgusting,” Mr. Foxman says.
The Forward this week asked Mr. Cantor why he focused on “Jewish billionaires” and their misdeeds. “Maybe there is an element of corruption that runs through all of American business,” Mr. Cantor said in a telephone interview. Speaking from his New York University office, he noted: “There were a significant number of Jews involved in this. I think it’s a fact of history that in the ’80s in the speculative side of American capitalism, Milken and Boesky were prominent. There was a Jewish side to this corruption. One can debate the significance.”
“The Sacred Chain” returns repeatedly to the subject of “Jewish billionaires.” He is particularly interested in the career, thoughts and clothing of one particular Jewish billionaire, Laurence Tisch, the chairman of CBS. What is striking about Mr. Cantor’s interest in Mr. Tisch is that the TV magnate also happens to be chairman of the board of New York University, and thus, in a sense, Mr. Cantor’s boss.
“On a stocky body is a large, round, bald head with piercing bright eyes forever seeking out vulnerability in the person he is addressing, forever looking for an opening, an advantage,” Mr. Cantor writes. “The body clothed in a fifteen-hundred-dollar designer suit, just emerged from his limousine…a half-smile frequently opening his lips to reveal the large white teeth. Tisch is what the American Jewish moneyed and professional elite…admire as the dynamic embodiment of business acumen and social domination. In the eyes of the American Jewish elite, these are the only games, besides travel and decorating houses, worth playing….Like his network of friends, colleagues and admirers, Tisch is extremely well-informed while being self-consciously anti-intellectual. They all hold the opaque humanities professors and the leftist-bearing social scientists in contempt, regarding them as equivalent to low-level clerks….”
Mr. Tisch, reached at his CBS offices, declined to comment on Mr. Cantor’s musings, but he did question the accuracy of Mr. Cantor’s description of his allegedly extravagant lifestyle. “He’s got me clothed in 1,500 designer suits? I buy all my suits off the rack at Paul Stuart,” Mr. Tisch says. “He’s got me in a limousine? Please.”
Mr. Cantor, who served as an NYU dean, says he has met Mr. Tisch before and actually has great respect for him. He says he devotes so much attention to Mr. Tisch in the book simply because the billionaire is a key Jewish leader, not because he had any run-ins with him when he served in the NYU administration. “He is extremely important,” Mr. Cantor says. “The attention derives from the role he plays in the American Jewish Committee, in the American Jewish Congress.”
Mr. Tisch says he does not serve on the Congress or Committee boards, and only makes an annual donation to the Committee.
This is Mr. Cantor’s first excursion into Jewish history — he has written several books on medieval history — and it becomes clear from speaking with him and from reading “The Sacred Chain” that his command of even basic facts is questionable. Inaccuracies are laced through the book — Moshe Dayan lost his eye in World War II, not the Israeli War of Independence, as Mr. Cantor has it; children born to Jewish fathers and non-Jewish mothers are not “mamzers”; the Triangle Shirtwaist fire killed 146 sweatshop workers, not 300; Rav Kook’s last name is not spelled “Cook”; Israeli soldiers are not encouraged to carry their weapons on them after their military service is concluded.
Mr. Cantor, who describes himself as a “committed Jew” and an “American supporter of Israel,” is by no means solely negative about Jews and Judaism. He states at least twice in his book that Jews are genetically “superior” to other “races.”
“The Jews are a superior people intellectually and as long as Jewish genes exist, the extraordinary impact Jews have had in twentieth century thought will continue indefinitely,” Mr. Cantor writes. He does not offer scientific proof to back this assertion; in fact, the book contains no footnotes.
“There must be some factor, something to explain the Jewish record of superior achievement,” Mr. Cantor told the Forward. “There is a standard explanation that a marginalized group that values scholarship does well. But I don’t think that that’s it. There has been some scientific study on this genetic thing. I wish to point out, without endorsing ‘The Bell Curve’ or its hidden or not-so-hidden message, that it points out that on IQ tests, Ashkenazic Jews have the highest IQ in the country.” Mr. Cantor reports that “The Sacred Chain” has reached the end of its second printing and has already sold about 20,000 copies. He is convinced the book will have an impact. “I’ve spoken at the largest Reform synagogue in Brookline, I’m speaking at the largest Reform synagogue in Cleveland this week,” Mr. Cantor says. “I’m getting a hearing.”