Members of the Tribe (7 page)

Lori’s farm belt tour, like all her visits to the hinterland, began with a single contact, a Des Moines woman who wrote to AIPAC and applied for membership. Lori developed a telephone friendship with the woman, who put her in touch with a local Reform rabbi. That led to contacts with other rabbis around the state, and with interested laypeople.

Eventually Lori was able to set up a series of parlor meetings in various cities, where she could meet prospective members and explain the AIPAC program. During her trip, she would also continue to seek out Jews who were not yet in the AIPAC network, which is why our first stop was the Hillel House on the campus of the University of Iowa.

University people are notoriously uninvolved in Jewish community affairs. Like journalists, they tend to be critical of the establishment, and their primary identification is most likely to be with their profession and its values. Besides, most of them are not willing or able to give large sums of money to the United Jewish Appeal or other fundraising groups. But university people are just what Lori is looking for.

“Money is no problem for us,” she said, as we pulled into the parking lot of the Hillel. “I’m not out here looking for rich Jews. I’m looking for activists. Political science professors can be very good, rabbis, anyone involved in local politics. A few people in a district like this can make all the difference in the world.”

People who can make a difference become what are known as “key contacts.” Ideally they have a personal relationship with a member of Congress or a senator, or have political chits they can
cash on behalf of Israel. Given the extraordinarily high degree of Jewish involvement in politics, it isn’t too hard to find key contacts—Lori estimated that AIPAC has them for about ninety percent of the members of the House of Representatives and ninety-eight percent of the Senate.

Our meeting in Iowa City was with Jeff Portman, a Reform rabbi who serves as the local Hillel director. “A couple of years ago we had problems with some of the more liberal rabbis and laypeople who disagreed with Begin’s policies,” Lori told me, “but today things are much easier. Maybe one percent of rabbis give you a hard time and just about all the Jews out here are very supportive.”

Portman, a studious-looking man in his mid-thirties, is a supporter. Unlike some other Jewish organizations, AIPAC does not compete with him for members or money; on the contrary, it enhances his power and prestige by enabling him to introduce congregants to the American political game.

Lori and the rabbi sat in his study poring over a computer printout of Iowa City’s affiliated Jews. Lori wrote down the names of a couple involved in Democratic politics and a woman who once served on the city council. “The faculty here are liberal, but the students are just incredibly conservative,” Portman said with regret, but Lori couldn’t have cared less. AIPAC is an aggressively nonpartisan group, and there is room for everyone. Besides, she got her start as a Reaganite. “Give me the names of some active students and I’ll see them on my next trip out here,” she said.

The meeting took less than an hour, and when it was over she had a list of half a dozen key contact prospects—people whom she could call when she got back to Washington. Not all of them would want to get involved, but Lori knew from experience that at least several would be interested and flattered—and in a place like the Third District, that would be enough. No place is too small or remote for her. After all, every town and hamlet in America has a representative in Congress, and all of them vote on Israel-related issues.

Lori wound up the Hillel meeting with brisk efficiency. We had to make Waterloo by nightfall, and she wanted to stop for lunch at the Amana Colonies. Her years on the road have made her
an experienced traveler, and the colonies, founded in the 1850s by a Protestant religious sect from Germany, were the closest thing to a tourist attraction in this part of the state.

After a heavy Teutonic lunch we took a walk through the village, browsing through stores with German names. We stopped for coffee at a tavern with stuffed moose and wild boar heads above the fireplace and a plastic reindeer propped against one wall. I kept reminding myself that the colonies were founded in 1854 by God-fearing Christians who had nothing to do with the Third Reich, but I couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable, and I noticed that Lori did, too. The gloomy, Wagnerian tavern seemed somehow sinister, and I was relieved when we got back to the car and the flat-voiced disc jockey who played country tunes and hawked farm implements on the radio.

It will be a very long time before American Jews feel comfortable around Germans. The trauma of the Holocaust is still sinking in. Its visible manifestations are television documentaries, monuments, museums—and organizations like AIPAC, whose subtext is that only Jewish political power and the existence of the state of Israel can prevent a future catastrophe. In her presentation, Lori never mentioned anti-Semitism or the Nazis; she didn’t have to. Hitler and Arafat were always present, at every AIPAC gathering, uninvited guests who provided a sense of cohesion and purpose.

We arrived in Waterloo around sunset and rendezvoused with Lori’s contact, Martha Nash. They had never met before—Lori got Nash’s name from a local rabbi and called her cold—but within a few minutes the two women were chatting like old friends. Martha, a diminutive grandmother with seemingly boundless energy, took us to the best restaurant in Waterloo, Lodge 290 of the Elks Club. There we were joined by a round, jolly professor of Spanish from the local college, his equally round, jolly wife, and a dignified, Pillsbury-prim widow in her sixties. The professor and his wife were transplanted New Yorkers and they had a Broadway flamboyance. Martha and the widow, by contrast, seemed as austere as Grant Wood figures.

The talk at dinner was mostly about the Jewish community of Waterloo, which is in a state of decline. Once there were ninety pupils in the synagogue religious school; now there are twenty-three.
Most Waterloo Jews marry Christians, and the widow lady, who genteelly lowered her voice whenever she said the word “Jew,” confided that her bachelor son would almost certainly marry out of the faith. Neither she nor her dinner companions seemed to feel that this was in any way unusual or undesirable; in a place like Waterloo, Jews have long since made their accommodation with the realities of American life.

Farm belt anti-Semitism was a hot topic that fall—there had been several articles in national publications, and
60 Minutes
had recently done a segment on disgruntled Iowa farmers who allegedly blamed Jewish bankers for their financial hardships—but none of our hosts had any personal experience of it. Martha Nash explained that the Elks Club, the pinnacle of Waterloo society, has been open to Jews for years, and even the Elkettes, once restricted, now welcome Jewish members.

A sense of confidence in American tolerance is a necessary condition for Jewish political activity, and it makes up a large part of AIPAC’s appeal. The formula requires just enough atavistic fear to keep Jews on their toes, but not enough real anti-Semitism to frighten them or make them lose faith in the system.

This equilibrium is at the heart of the AIPAC effort. Jews in America remember the Holocaust and the price of powerlessness in the face of an indifferent U.S. government. The determination to develop political power is in large part a reaction to that experience. But it is the sort of power that only works under the existing ground rules. As long as America remains decent, tolerant, and pluralistic, political clout of the AIPAC variety has value. But it is an umbrella designed for a sunny day. AIPAC’s power is conditional, not independent, and even its most assertive members must always keep that in mind.

After dinner we drove to the temple, where about thirty people, most of them middle-aged, were gathered. Martha Nash introduced Lori, who spoke in a low-key, direct way about the AIPAC program. She briefed the audience on foreign aid (“At three billion dollars a year, Israel is a
real
bargain for American security”), the fight against arms sales to Israel’s enemies (“We support the proposal to require congressional approval for arms sales to the Arabs”), and the effort to grant Israel a status equal to that of the NATO countries. These were Washington issues, well
known to capital insiders but somewhat abstract out in Iowa, and she did her best to simplify them. The crowd followed her presentation carefully, and with obvious affection. There was something of the good Jewish daughter about her, and as she spoke many of the older people nodded their heads encouragingly, wanting her to do well.

There was only a month or so until the 1986 elections, and Lori gave a rundown on AIPAC’s view of various contests. She was careful not to endorse specific candidates, but she made the organization’s preferences clear. She was especially concerned about Senator Alan Cranston of California, who was fighting for reelection. “How many of you have received direct mail appeals for Cranston?” she asked, and most of the hands in the room went up. “He’s been very,
very
good on issues that concern the pro-Israel community,” she reminded them.

AIPAC rarely talks about “the Jews.” The phrase “pro-Israel community” sounds more professional, and in any event about half the people Lori deals with have non-Jewish partners. Intermarriage is not an issue for AIPAC (Dine himself is married to a non-Jewish woman); the organization seeks to build the widest possible coalition, and it takes its supporters where it finds them. One of the great ironies of the “Jewish lobby” is that an increasing number of its activists aren’t Jewish.

After her pitch for Cranston, Lori reminded the audience that Senator Jim Abdnor of neighboring South Dakota was lukewarm on foreign aid to Israel. A few years ago, Israel had some real enemies in the Senate—William Fulbright of Arkansas, James Abourezk of South Dakota, Charles Percy of Illinois—but, one by one, they bit the dust. From AIPAC’s viewpoint, the 1986 elections were for the most part a choice between good and better. Abdnor was the closest thing it had to a villain.

Lori concluded on a Mr.-Smith-goes-to-Washington note. “You have representatives in the House and Senate, and they want to hear from you,” she said. “Your job is to let them know what you want. Remember, that’s your right as American citizens. Your opinion can really make a difference.”

The next morning we hit the road for Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Lori took the wheel, driving across southern Minnesota with a calm competence. By mid-morning we were both hungry
and decided to stop for lunch in Blue Earth, a small town whose entrance is guarded by a huge statue of the Jolly Green Giant. A sign informed us that Blue Earth’s population was three thousand and change.

“Do you think you could find a Jew out here?” I asked, and she grinned at the challenge.

“Give me a stack of dimes and a phone book and a couple hours and I could,” she said confidently. She had noticed a Cantonese restaurant on the main street, a sure tip-off for a Jew hunter. “You find a Chinese restaurant, there’s got to be some Jews around,” she said.

When we arrived in Sioux Falls, Lori changed from her driving outfit of jeans and a sweater into her work clothes, a navy blue suit and high heels. An AIPAC volunteer met us downtown and took us to the home of a local lawyer named Duke Horowitz, where twenty or so people—roughly ten percent of Sioux Falls’s diminishing Jewish community—were sipping coffee and eating sponge cake.

President Reagan was campaigning that day in Rapid City on the other side of the state. According to radio reports, monster crowds had turned out for his rallies, while Lori addressed a group of twenty. But a handful of dedicated people in a state like South Dakota are all you need; it is quite possible that there weren’t twenty people in Rapid City that day—including the president—who would have been willing to give up an afternoon to discuss Middle Eastern policy.

Here, as elsewhere, Lori was greeted with affection by people hungry for a Jewish winner. Most of them seemed to be second- and third-generation midwesterners, but despite their prairie isolation they identified with Israel in a deeply personal way. When Lori mentioned the peace treaty with Egypt, for example, a woman with blue hair and a corn belt twang interrupted with a loud “If you can call what we have peace.” During this trip and all across the country, Jews constantly referred to Israel as “us” and “we,” usages I found alternately touching and gratuitous.

In Sioux Falls, Lori gave her standard presentation and answered the usual questions. The audience was willing, even eager to sign up. She was offering them a Jewish activity they could
understand and appreciate, something that didn’t threaten them or put them off.

The accessibility of AIPAC’s work is a key factor in its popularity. A couple of months later, in Los Angeles, I discussed this phenomenon with Norman Mirsky, a sociologist who is an expert on the subject of Jewish affiliation. Mirsky once spent four months at Factor’s Delicatessen on Pico Boulevard in L.A. studying the restaurant’s patrons. He discovered that most of them are highly assimilated Jews, often with non-Jewish partners. “They want to identify as Jews, but they don’t know how,” he said. “They don’t feel comfortable in a temple or synagogue, don’t know how to behave or what to do. But they know enough not to order pastrami on white bread, and they can impress their non-Jewish spouses with their familiarity with Jewish foods. That’s why they come.”

For Jews in places like Sioux Falls, AIPAC is a kind of political Factor’s Deli. They belong to temples because affiliation is the sine qua non of Jewishness; but they are not religious people, and any ethnic differences between themselves and their neighbors are more imagined than real. These people are Jews without Jewish skills, and they feel comfortable with AIPAC because the organization doesn’t require any.

We left South Dakota and returned to Sioux City, Iowa for Lori’s last meeting of the day. Sioux City’s main claim to Jewish fame is as the hometown of “the twins”—Ann Landers and Dear Abby. Back when they were growing up there were three thousand Jews in town; but in recent years the number has shrunk to seven hundred.