122	The Story of the Jewish Defense League

bJews for whom they had done nothing and worse! When bBrooklyn and the Bronx and Mattapan in Boston and bWynefield in Philadelphia were dying, who cared about bthem? Certainly not the wealthy, fat and un-Jewish groups bwho had been so rightly labeled by Jewish editor Trude bWeiss-Rosmarin in March 1970 as being more concerned b“with prestige and spheres of influence” than with Jews and bas so busy “scrambling for office in quest of satisfying a bneurotic hunger for pseudo power.”

bWhen the Jewish communities of Brownsville and East bNew York in Brooklyn were decimated by crime and fear band those who could, fled, leaving behind the poor and the belderly, where were the voices and deeds of the Jewish bgroups who now condemned the JDL for its “taking the law binto its own hands?” How many of the disgusting models of bindifference who pass for Jewish leaders lived in these hor- bror neighborhoods and knew the agony? How many sat at bhome waiting for their children to come from the library or ba friend’s home with every minute of tardiness an agony for ba parent in a neighborhood where shadows and hallways bmeant danger? The crime of the Jewish Establishment was bwrit with an iron pen but their brazenness was even more bobscene.

bThose Jews who lived in fat neighborhoods and had not bcared stood condemned by such men as Rabbi Gerald bZelermeyer of the dying Jewish neighborhood of Mattapan bin Boston. Zelermeyer was the victim of an acid attack by bthree Blacks in his home. He had this to say concerning the bJews of Boston, the wealthy ones who fled to Brookline and bNewton, leaving behind the poor:

b“The sad fact is that the community beyond has sounded a brequiem for our area through almost wholesale indiffer- bence to our plight. The more affluent have left; the less baffluent, who need help most, remain.”

bOne could multiply Mattapan by tens of Jewish neighbor- bhoods and the people there by tens of thousands. The poor bJew in the Brooklyn slums who locked himself into his bapartment in fear and waited to die could not expect help in brelocating from the American Jewish Committee, which, b