Jews in New Mexico Since World War II

7: Issues

| 105 Jews almost everywhere have faced problems throughout their history based on the fact of their religious distinction and small numbers. These factors have shaped the legal, economic, and social character of their lives. Their experience in the United States voided any legal disabilities but left them with a social distinctiveness. World War II raised their consciousness as to both the dangers and the hopes of their condition. A comparison between the two eras—prewar and postwar— in New Mexico reveals some differences. The state’s relatively isolated character before the war changed after the war as a result of rapid growth, more varied social character, and the presence of a new economy. For the Jews of New Mexico, as noted throughout our examination, the expansion of economic and social diversity brought a broadened range of religious practice, and a felt need to respond openly to the major new problems—the aftermath of the Holocaust and the formation of the state of Israel—that intimately concerned them. The result produced a new dynamism in CHAPTER SEVEN Issues | chapter seven 106 the search for answers to the new conditions. New Mexican history added its own unique issues to which its Jews responded. In some instances the issues existed within the community itself and solutions had to be found within it. Anti-Jewish feeling, anti-Semitism, is historically the most painful and most widespread group experience encountered by Jews in Christian society. New Mexico, with its traditionally Catholic culture among Hispanos and its more recently introduced Protestant culture, in the presence of which the Jews were a tiny minority, could scarcely escape its existence. Yet, compared to the experiences of Jews elsewhere before World War II, in New Mexico its overt expression was slight. Anecdotal evidence offered by prewar Jewish settlers has always suggested a near absence of its existence and importance. Written evidence in business affairs indicates that it did exist but that it was quite minor compared to its European and even to its northeastern American expression before World War II. That viewpoint carried over into the postwar environment, and anti-Semitism’s intensity was low compared to what the newcomers knew in their earlier environment. A visiting professor at the University of New Mexico expressed this view in Harper’s in 1965. “I discovered,” he wrote, “that there was virtually no anti-Semitism in Albuquerque.”1 Despite such protestations, anti-Semitism did exist. The influx of new populations in the post–World War II period brought with it thoseattitudesthatexistedinotherpartsoftheUnitedStates.Always sensitivetoitspresence,theeventsofthewarandthepostwarperiod increased the defensive reactions of New Mexico’s Jews. However great the attestations of memoirs and interviews to its absence, antiSemitism manifested itself in individuals, in organizations, and in issues | 107 acts that belie the denials of its existence. For instance, the creation of Israel brought not only a great upsurge of Jewish activity on behalf of the new state but also the existence of anti-Israel views. The influx of Arab students to American universities, for example, allowed their campus organizations to practice both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic messages. The Cold War offered opportunities to those who viewed Jews as Communists—an old viewpoint, often when they backed civil rights causes—to disseminate their message . The range of messages afforded the anti-Semite grew even as did the messages of toleration and anti-discrimination. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the Jews’ chief institutional instrument to combat anti-Semitism, monitored its manifestations in individuals, organizations, and institutions where such a danger came to light. It noted the appearance of George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party who spoke at Highlands University at Las Vegas. It posted notice of discriminatory content toward housing, incidents involving slights at hotels, and organizations where membership might be denied. Such activity was heavy in the 1960s when civil rights legislation became the law of the land.2 Yet, in the view of Milton Seligman, an attorney and head of the ADL and a native New Mexican who lived in Albuquerque in the sixties, “Albuquerque was not a scene of big problems in anti-defamation at that time after the war. . . . We didn’t have any real forceful bigots.”3 There were, however, incidents worthy of note. One of the most dramatic, if short-lived, expressions of anti-Semitism since World War II in New Mexico was associated with the name of Reies Tijerina, a Hispanic figure...