Newspaper Page Text
Rights activist Bookbinder
honored for years of service
by Joseph Folakoff
TSI’s Washington correspondent
WASH INGTON — With sincere
affection and deep appreciation,
some 300 friends of Hyman Book
binder honored him here for his
work for civil and human rights
and in Jewish affairs in a half-
century career that he began in
1938 in New York as an economist
for the Amalgamated Clothing
Workers Union.
He was later a legislative repre
sentative for the AFL-CIO, chair
man or member of numerous fed
eral and private commissions and
task forces and for the past 19
years the American Jewish Com
mittee’s Washington representa
tive. In the latter capacity he has
frequently appeared as a witness at
Congressional hearings and has
spoken in most of America’s major
cities as well as appearing on in
numerable television and radio
programs.
The occasion was the third an
nual “leadership luncheon”on April
10 given by the Washington Jewish
Week newspaper whose publisher,
Dr. Leonard Kapiloff, mentioned
that he and “Bookie” had been
members of “the Lavender Hill
Mob”—meaning the site of the
institution that was first named
City College of New York, the
poor man’s Harvard with a pre
dominantly Jewish student body.
They graduated in 1937.
Among the luncheon guests was
a group of young West Germans
invited by the American Jewish
Committee and the Konrad Ade
nauer Foundation. Their in
troduction was warmly applauded.
Ambassador Max Kampelman,
who heads President Reagan’s deleg
ation engaged in the U.S.-Soviet
nuclear arms control talks in Gen
eva and who had been the chief of
the U.S. delegation to the Madrid
conference on the Helsinki accords,
presented Bookbinder with a hand-
Hyman Bookbinder
crafted, silver Hanuka menora.
His Hebrew name Chaim is part of
its design.
Kampelman and Bookbinder, who
have been friends for 35 years,
were both associated with the late
vice president and senator, Hubert
H. Humphrey, whom Kampelman
had eulogized at the American
Jewish Committee’s offices here at
the time of his death as a foremost
Zionist. Kampelman told the lun
cheon that Bookbinder has for
nearly two decades worked to merge
American ideals with Jewish values
and that Jews at present are “an
integral part of American society.”
Another old friend, Rep. Sidney
Yates of Chicago, observed that
“Bookie has fought authoritarian
ism in any form” and “fought
(Louis) Farrakhan and (Rabbi Meir)
Kahane as demagogues.” The Jews
in Congress, Yates said, have a
“non-caucus and Bookie is our
adviser.”
In an emotion-filling address
that moved some to tears. Book
binder, now 70, spoke of his “al
most compulsive interest in public
affairs” because he was “born into
a world that soon exposed me to
^Israel to stock U.S. army unitsv
JERUSALEM (JTA)—The U.S. Department of Defense may
open a procurement office in Israel, Israel Radio reported. Accord
ing to the report, Prime Minister Shimon Peres received a favora
ble reply from the Pentagon to the request made on his visit to
Washington last month that the U.S. increase its military pur
chases in Israel for army units stationed in Western Europe. Peres
asked that they be increased from $100 million to $500 million.
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depression, war and the Holocaust.”
Reviewing memorable points in
his career, he mentioned roles in
the uplifts of wages of workers and
their need for cultural participa
tion in their lives, association with
the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.,
personal observance of the Senate’s
censure of Sen. Joseph McCarthy,
the presidential reception in 1971
on the South Lawn of the White
House for Israeli Prime Minister
Golda Meir at which Hatikva was
played by the U.S. Marine Band,
and the signing of the Camp David
peace treaty on the North Lawn of
the White House in 1978.
“And how can I not mention one
more memorable White House gather
ing, this time in the East Room. At
a Yom Hashoa ceremony, with the
president and cabinet members
and congressmen—to hear can
tor from Atlanta (Isaac Goodfriend)
singing the Yiddish words of H.
Levik,” he said.
“To remember such events is to
feel reassured that there is no con
flict between our great love for this
blessed land of ours and our deep
feelings for Israel—that not only
are such feelings compatible, they
are mutually reinforcing.”
“What makes me particularly
proud is that over the years we
have defined our Jewishness, our
Judaism, as a commitment to jus
tice for all people, to peace for all
people, to freedom for all people,”
Bookbinder said.
“How important it is never to
stop caring about shirt workers in
Tennessee or grape pickers in Cali
fornia or the 40 percent of black
youngsters unable to find jobs,” he
said at another point.
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PAGE 3 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE April 25, 1986