WHERE FAR LEFT MEETS FAR RIGHT : ANTI-SEMITISM (via Reductio Ad Absurdum) :

Internal conflict for progressive American Jews : Worries about anti-Semitism are resulting in torn feelings about politics (Glen Martin, July 29, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle)

Right after the planes smashed into the World Trade Center, San Francisco State University Professor Laurie Zoloth returned from anEast Coast visit by a uniquely American and prosaic conveyance -- a Greyhound bus.

Her traveling companions were neurologists and fellow academicians, all embarked on an unexpected continental road trip because the nation's airindustry had been paralyzed by international terrorism.

It was an exhilarating interlude, said Zoloth, director of the university's Jewish Studies Program -- a genuine journey of discovery, one that planted seeds of change in the way Zoloth viewed herself, her religion, the nation, the world.

"We spent the entire trip talking about neurology and brain function, about free will, about the essential elements of good and evil," recalled Zoloth, a woman with a facile tongue and a sense of humor that rides the balance between dry and absurd.

"I was tremendously gratified by what I saw as we drove across the country, " Zoloth said. "Everywhere we went there was enormous solidarity, the sense that we were all in this thing together."

But that all changed when Zoloth got back to San Francisco State -- a historically liberal school in what is arguably the nation's mostliberal city.

Here, she found that the climate for progressive Jews such as herself was suddenly different.

"I was horrified," Zoloth said. "First, a senior member of the faculty, a person I consider both bright and thoughtful, approached me with a theory that was making the rounds -- the CIA and Mossad had collaborated on the bombing and had given Jews working in the (World Trade Center) towers advance warning. She allowed she considered it a credible theory. I was stunned."

At that point, said Zoloth, "I remembered thinking: 'This is different. This is really bad.' "

As It Happened One Night makes abundantly evident, on a bus you see the real America. As this article shows, in SF you don't. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 12, 2002 10:41 AM