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Dershowitz delivery opens appeal campaign
Teaching children the benefits of being Jewish is the only way to achieve continuity, lawyer says..
BAILA LAZARUS STAFF REPORTER
if current trends in intermarriage, assimilation and birfiirates continue, "an event like this will not take place," one of North America's best known lawyers told a packed house at Vancouver's Temple Sholom Sept. 10.
Alan Dershowitz, the keynote speaker during the evening that launched the Jewish Federation of Greater Vancouver's annual Combined Jemsh Appeal (CJA) fund-raising campaign, made the comments during a speech on Jewish identity. The Harvard law professor said that 200 non-
religious Jews today will produce only 10 Jews after five generations, while the same number of Orthodox Jews will produce more than 5,000 religious Jews in the same amount of time.
Prof. Dershowitz, who has become known as a "lawyer of last resort" for his defence of such prominent individuals as Mike Tyson, Jim Bakkcr, Jonathan Pollard, Anatoly (now Natan) Scharansky and O.J. Simpson, has written numerous books, including The Vanishing American Jew: In Search of Jewish Identity for the Next Century, Chutz-
pah and Reversal of Fortune: Inside the Von Bulow Ca.se.
In his discussion during the Federation campaign launch, Prof. Dershowitz said that, historically, hostility and anti-Semitism from other societies have kept Jews together and their identity strong.
"'Our enemies , have made us one,'" he said, quoting from Theodor Herzl. "[He] had better be wrong, because if tliis theory of Jewish survival is true, we're through," said Prof Dershowitz. ^ot only won't we survive, but we don't deserve to survive... There has to be a better reason to be a Jew than to survive opposition." ■
Prof Dershowitz said the nature of anti-Semitism has decreased in its potency and the recourse to combat anti-Semitic incidents has improved so much that exterior
"There has to be a better reason to be a Jew than to survive opposition." - Alan Dershowitz.
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