A much more consequential Jewish feud has been the one between liberals, the by no means silent majority, and their outnumbered but by no means outgunned neoconservative critics. Again, Ruth Wisse was among the first in the field with her Commentary articles that culminated in the feisty polemic If I Am Not For Myself: The Liberal Betrayal of the Jews (1992). Nearly two decades later Podhoretz returned to the fray with his equally explosive book Why are Jews Liberals? It is a question well worth puzzling over. Meanwhile, Jack Wertheimer has brought to the realms of religion, education, philanthropy, demography and many other issues the erudition of the historian and the skills of the pathologist. He has been courageous in diagnosing self-delusion, while pointing to strategies and habits of mind that will lead the patient to recovery. 

On that recovery, it is safe to say, more depends than the future of American Jewry alone. Americans are not inclined to anti-Semitism, however much Vidal might accuse Norman Podhoretz and his wife Midge Decter of "doing more to arouse the essential anti-Semitism of the American people than anyone since Father Coughlin." But elsewhere in the world anti-Semitism is indeed rampant. Ruth Wisse was surely right in Commentary last year to call on Jews and all "decent human beings", in the name of "truth and justice and genuine liberalism", to "reject vigorously the role of defendant at the bar of world opinion and to instigate political, diplomatic, moral, and intellectual countersuits on every front." That forensic ferocity is a key part of Standpoint's mission, too.