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Especially for North American Jews -- in the U.S. and Canada, half the world's Jews -- a key issue is assimilation, a slow seepage of Jewishness out of diaspora Jewry, except for those who retain or return to religious practice. It is ironic that assimilation is seen by both [Barbara Smith] and Bulkin (Pratt doesn't mention it) only as a ticket out of Jewish oppression. Anyone who has heard -- as I have heard -- Jew-hating remarks said to her face because to the speaker she didn't look Jewish knows both the survival value and the knife twist of passing. (And consider how some Jews came to look "non-Jewish": Jewish women raped by Gentile men; Jewish women with lighter skin, hair, more Gentile features, considered prettier, more desirable than their darker, more Semitic looking sisters.) But assimilation is a much larger issue than appearance: it is the blurring or erasure of Jewish identity and culture. If you value Jewish culture and Jewish peoplehood, then assimilation is a source of pain, something to reverse. Discussion of these issues is crucial for radical Jews: how to undo assimilation without being xenophobic, insular, or atavistic? how to reach in and out at the same time? Smith's essay responds explicitly and critically to the development of a Jewish feminist movement, and as the woman of color in this group of three, her contribution has got to seem skimpy. I wonder: why did she have so little to say? I have too much respect for Barbara Smith's work on Black, lesbian, feminist, and third world issues not to recognize the difference between work in which she digs deeply and this essay, where she skims the surface. Her failure to pay any attention to the subject of Jewish identity as anything other than an escape from dealing with racism; her utter neglect of Jewish women's experience and sources is something of a shock. When she says, "Holy wars, crusades, and pogroms qualify, I suppose, as `Christian totalitarianism'" (p. 77, my emphasis), one wonders what it would take to convince her. She tells Jewish women to stop saying that Christianity is inherently anti-Semitic; but anti-Semitism is embedded in Christian theology. Christianity harbors anti-Semitism unless anti-Semitism is consciously confronted and rooted out. Smith may not like this but she better look at it.(3) Her notes cite one book written by a Jew prior to 1983 ([Jo Sinclair]'s The Changelings, see above), and almost all Jewish references are negative examples. I want to ask Barbara Smith: is there nothing in the Jewish tradition you have learned from? Nothing you value, that you can point to and point other Black women to when you ask them to challenge themselves about anti-Semitism? Similarly, [Elly Bulkin] charges Jewish women who have raised the subject of anti-Semitism with contributing to a "strain" of antileftism in the women's movement (p. 134). Bulkin makes it sound as though criticizing the hardly invisible anti-Semitism of some left groups is the same as being a reactionary (which is, of course, what these groups say). In fact, much of the criticism has come from Jewish leftists stung by Jew-hating in their own movements. Moreover, when Bulkin says, "Regardless of the history of each (Jewish) woman's perspective on the left, it is unlikely that she has remained unaffected by the antileftism of so much feminist writing," (p. 134) (10) one gets the impression of Jewish women being so gullible that "so much feminist writing" (skimpily documented (11)) can turn us into cold warriors so quickly. Are we so naive that a few remarks can erase histories that include parents out of work for being associated with the party, relatives who had to leave the country, memories of the Rosenbergs, and a lifetime of teaching about the value of working people's struggles? The general impression created by this section of Bulkin's essay is that Elly Bulkin is the lone Jewish feminist able to withstand the inherent antileftism of Jewish and feminist writing. A bit more careful attention to the words of other radical Jewish women would have left her less stranded. Look around the left, the women's movement, protests organized, documents published, over the past several years: are radical Jewish women hard to find?