I'm writing to commend Henry Gonshak and The Montana Professor for sharing with their Montana readership two very interesting and timely articles ("In Limbo in the Promised Land," Winter 1999, and "Notable Narratives at the Haifa Conference," Spring 1999). They may depart from The Montana Professor's usual focus on the state of the American academy, but the issues they raise are clearly of importance to everyone in higher education, as well as to the public at large.

In particular, I thought Prof. Gonshak hit the mark when he said, in regard to "an anti-Semitic resurgence in the American heartland," that "the real problem in our state [is] less anti-Semitism than utter ignorance about Jews, Judaism and Israel" (7) and that the answer is education. I know perfectly well, having lived in Montana for 16 years now as one of a very small number of Jews in this state, that most residents know very little about Judaism, American Jews, or the religious history of Israel, as two anecdotes will demonstrate. Not too long ago, I heard a story about a Parmly Billings Library user who expressed surprise, after browsing through a children's Chanukah book, that "dreidl" really meant something; she had always thought it was just a nonsense word someone had made up. Likewise, a former student of mine who was also a reporter for the Billings Gazette (and so, one might assume, could be more knowledgeable about history and politics than many other Montanans) had never learned that at the time of the Six-Day War in 1948, resident Palestinians had been invited by the new Jewish government to remain in Israel, but many instead had chosen to flee the country on the strength of neighboring states' promises to push the Jews into the sea and regain Arab control in a matter of days.

Granted, most readers of The Montana Professor are probably more highly and widely educated than these two individuals appear to have been, and certainly, many readers have greater experience with more diverse cultures than the average (white) Montanan may have. Nevertheless, it still seems likely that awareness of things Jewish is not something to count on here, any more than it would be expected of the American public at large, given this country's lack of exposure to non-Christian religions in school or the media.

Of course, the same can be said for any number of other minorities in this country (Muslims come immediately to mind). While I do believe the observation once made to me that in many communities, it's the local, better- (but not well-) known minority that's despised, while the distant minority is regarded more positively (or at least as more interesting and exotic), we can still easily identify many groups about whom negative stereotypes are propagated regardless of community representation. In those many cases, then, the obvious remedy is to acquaint stereotype holders with the real richness and variety of the minority's culture and beliefs (a very real component of the Jewish-American literature course I taught a few years ago), the truths about historical events and personal actions (as in Prof. Gonshak's Holocaust course), and other aspects of the minority that turn a group from a safely faceless target of bias to fully understood individuals who are impossible to hate. We all know this happens, as we've all heard references to the "good Jew" or "good Black" who's an "exception" to all the negative things a bigot believes about the Jews or African Americans he or she doesn't happen to know personally.

Surely, one of the most important goals of higher education is to propel our students past the level of superficial, two-valued thinking many of them start out with to a more sophisticated ability to recognize the complexity and depth of any issue--not in black and white, but shades of gray. The Montana Professor, as a cross-disciplinary journal for academics, should then also be a forum where readers broaden their intellectual horizons in the same way, as I trust Prof. Gonshak's articles have allowed many to do. I hope this publication will continue to offer such perspectives on other cultures, provide insights into the diversity of our state and educational system, and demonstrate the value of that diversity.

Deborah Schaffer
English
MSU-Billings