Seton Hall professor to head identity department at AJCongress

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

After stints in the MetroWest community and at the Anti-Defamation League, Seton Hall University professor Rabbi Eugene Korn is taking on a new challenge as national director for Jewish affairs at the American Jewish Congress.

In his new role, Korn hopes to promote Jewish identity, forge greater spiritual connections between Diaspora Jews and those in Israel, and all the while strengthen bonds of understanding with Christians in America.

Driving him is what he sees as a “potential problem that Israeli identity is going to be completely independent from Jews in the Diaspora, and we want to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Korn, who lives in Bergenfield, said he would like to help the 50,000 members of the AJCongress — as well as the wider Jewish world — gain “a much better sense of Jewish values and a sense of being proud Jews for both practical and non-practical reasons.

“First,” he said, “they should be strong in their sense of Jewish identity and understand Jewish interests so they can more strongly defend Jewish and Israeli interests here and abroad. Without a strong sense of Jewish identity it is hard to be highly motivated to work for Jewish interests.”

Since his appointment was announced Jan. 27, Korn has been aiming at strengthening bonds between people both inside and outside the Jewish community.

He is anxious to repair relations with “the mainline Protestants — the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the Methodists, the Church of Christ members,” who “have lost a sense of the reality of Israel and the theological significance of Israel for Christianity.”

Some denominations have urged their churches to divest in stocks of companies that trade with Israel, while others have become “much more in sympathy with the Palestinians than they are with Israel, and that has caused a huge crisis in Jewish-Protestant relations.

“I think the Protestants are coming from a distorted view of prophetic religion. They have taken our highest moral themes — as depicted by the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah — that you have to help the poor and be on the side of the oppressed. They have taken that to what I consider to be an illogical and almost lunatic extreme. They see the Palestinians as the poor and the oppressed. They completely identify with the Palestinians and give no serious credence to legitimate Israeli security concerns.

“Look, the Palestinians are suffering terribly, but one has to go beneath that. So are the Israelis, which the Protestants don’t see. They see one side of the picture only.”

As for the strongly Zionist evangelicals, “the Jewish community needs to reassess the whole relationship” with them, Korn said.

“Israel needs all the friends it can get and we ought to give the evangelicals all the praise and support for the financial and political support they raise for Israel,” he said. “We should not have any hesitation there. On the other hand we have to be very unequivocal and strong in saying, ‘Because we support you on Israel does not mean we have the same domestic agenda or we can tolerate in any way overt actions to convert Jews.’”

Korn said he considers intermarriage “a threat. My feeling is we ought to strengthen the number of Jews and serious Jewish identity and commitment to Jewish values. Sometimes intermarried families and intermarried couples decide to live serious Jewish lives, and to that extent we would support them. After the Holocaust I would say one of the messages is we should never give up on any Jew, intermarried or not.”

Similarly, he is opposed to ostracizing gay and lesbian Jews, although he noted that relations with that group “is not an area I am going to be working on.

“In Judaism, one’s sexual orientation does not define one’s identity. We ought not to look at Jewish homosexuals or Jewish lesbians as an abomination. They’re Jews that do certain things. And we ought not to try to drive them out of the community.

“I’m an Orthodox Jew. I don’t eat pork. Eating pork is also an abomination, but I certainly interact and talk to Jews who do eat pork. So why is homosexuality and lesbianism and sexual orientation any different? The message for today is we need to include as much as possible Jews who are interested in leading meaningful Jewish lives.”

‘A lifelong fantasy’
Jewish interests have been front and center on Korn’s agenda since his days at Irvington High School and his membership at the Conservative Congregation B’nai Israel in Irvington.

Korn later studied at Yeshiva University in Manhattan and its rabbinical seminary before enrolling as a graduate student in the philosophy department at Columbia University in Manhattan. As he grew closer to receiving his doctorate, he put his rabbinical studies on hold.

Some 30 years later he was able to pursue his ordination with the Israeli rabbinate. “I took the exams in Jerusalem three years ago. It was a lifelong fantasy and I had to do it.”

But Korn said he has no intention of becoming a pulpit rabbi.

“I don’t see it in the cards. I think my leanings are more toward national communal work and academic and scholarly orientation in the areas of Jewish community and Jewish values.”

For four years, from 1997 to 2001, he honed some of those values in Whippany, at what was then the United Jewish Federation of MetroWest New Jersey.

He started a branch of the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School for Jewish Education, a two-year program in Jewish studies. “We started from zero, and when I left there were about 150 students enrolled in the program,” he said.

When Korn left MetroWest, he headed across the Hudson to become director of interfaith affairs at the Anti-Defamation League. Two years later, he and his organization became embroiled in a bitter dispute with filmmaker Mel Gibson over his cinematic version of the crucifixion of Jesus.

In August 2003, seven months before the controversial movie’s opening on Ash Wednesday, Korn attended a private screening of The Passion of the Christ at a Houston museum.

Within days, he was widely quoted, denouncing the movie as portraying Jews as “blood-thirsty, sadistic, and money-hungry enemies of God.” In an ADL release, he expressed fears that “this film may undermine Christian-Jewish dialogue and could turn back the clock on decades of positive progress in interfaith relations.”

Then as now, Gibson denied the film was made with any anti-Semitic intent. Critics in and outside the Jewish community said the strong public denunciations by Korn and ADL national director Abe Foxman only increased the film’s box office sales.

Others have suggested that a rift between Korn and Foxman caused Korn to leave the ADL suddenly in mid-November 2003. Both men have denied it. Korn said that differences with Foxman “really wasn’t” the reason he left ADL.

“I’m not going to speak to that. It wasn’t primarily that. There was a difference of, one can say, political and strategic orientation. I am a scholarly person; I have a PhD. I wanted a more reflective environment.”

Nearly a year after The Passion’s opening, Korn labeled the controversy “yesterday’s news.

“I don’t think it is the issue of the day. Fortunately, the effects of the film did not cause the anti-Semitism that many people feared, and that is a good thing for our community.”

He blamed Gibson for refusing any off-screen compromise with people who complained about the movie’s treatment of its Jewish characters.

Korn said a lesson to be learned is to “create coalitions and alliances with our friends within the Christian community who are also very interested in fighting any forces for potential anti-Semitism.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.