Alfred Kazin, who sometimes passes for America's most venerable literary critic, casually perpetrated a drive-by infamy last week. In an essay honoring Murray Kempton in the New York Times Book Review, Kazin gratuitously smeared Adm. Lewis L. Strauss, who in a long and controversial career was private secretary to Herbert Hoover, an investment banker on Wall Street, a wartime naval strategist, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, and secretary of commerce. In a discussion of the sainted J. Robert Oppenheimer, whom Strauss opposed, Kazin remarked en passant that Strauss "pronounced his own name 'Straws' to make himself sound less Jewish."
This would be a hilarious allegation if it were not so contemptible. Strauss was as prominent a Jew as could be found in the United States for four decades. If Strauss was out to disguise his faith, he could not have done a poorer job of it.
He was a member of numerous Jewish organizations, assuming a leading role in many of them. In the summer of 1939, he was in Europe, attempting to rescue Jews from Germany. For over 10 years, he was president of Temple Emanu- el in New York. He once refused to eat a ham lunch that Queen Elizabeth served him. And until his death in 1974, he was in the forefront of Jewish philanthropy, donating large chunks of his fortune.
Kazin's lame excuse for the libel is that he heard it from people, long ago. The truth is that Strauss grew up in Richmond, Va., and, like other southerners, pronounced the name "Straws." (So had his father and grandfather.) Presented with this explanation, Kazin would have none of it, insisting that anyone saying " Straws" had to be trying to pass. With Strauss's Jewish credentials, Kazin was irritably unimpressed.
The truth is, Lewis Strauss had no interest in making himself appear other than as he was. He was notoriously blunt, bold, and proud -- even if he pronounced his name as a Virginian, rather than as a German. Strauss was an honorable man -- more than can be said of Kazin.