Harry Maryles is taking Chabad to task over a "Bar Mitzvah" for a Holocaust survivor that has received a lot of media attention.
You can find several variations of the story through this link.
In short, the story is that one day, while in a concentration camp, a teenaged Herman Rosenblat has a dream in which his late mother, who was murdered by the Nazis, tells him that she's sending him an angel. The next day, and every day thereafter, a young girl shows up at the fence and brings him bread and apples. One day, he tells her not to come anymore because he's ging to be transferred elsewhere.
Flash forward to the US after the war. Rosenblat goes out on a blind date, discovers that the girl he's been set up with is that very girl, and marries her.
Maryles assumes that this is an intermarriage because otherwise the article would have mentioned the salient fact that the girl was also Jewish. He takes issue with Chabad making a Bar Mitzvah for an intermarried Jew.
Logical, perhaps. But also incorrect. He's got a way too optimistic expectation of media coverage of a religious issue. To most of the reporters there, many of whom were obviously not Jewish, the question of whether or not she was Jewish was not one that would even cross their minds, IMO.
Harry is off-base here. The girl, Roma, was Jewish, but was hiding under Catholic identity papers.
I know. I was told so at the event. I played the gig.
