A correction in today's New York Times displays the newspaper's classic attitude toward Jewish matters. It says, "A television review on April 21 about 'Varian's War,' a film on Showtime about the efforts of Varian Fry, an American, to save European artists and intellectuals from the Holocaust, misstated the religious affiliation of some notable figures he rescued. Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Heinrich Mann were not Jews."
Well, glad that was cleared up -- not. The correction raises more questions than it answers. If Ernst, Duchamp and Mann were not Jews, why did they need to be rescued from the Holocaust? Were they victims of the Nazi campaign against "degenerate" art? Did they have Jewish grandparents? It would be nice if the Times filled its readers in on the answer.
The glaringly odd wording, though, is the description of whether someone is or is not a Jew as a "religious affiliation." The definition being used by Hitler at the time Fry was operating had little to do with "religious affiliation" and much to do with bloodlines. Similarly, many Orthodox and traditional Conservative Jews today consider anyone born to a Jewish mother to be a Jew -- you can't convert out. And many secular Jews and non-practicing Jews and Zionist Jews today consider their Judaism to be a cultural, national or historical heritage, not a "religious affiliation." The only camp that would naturally describe Judaism strictly as a "religious affiliation" is the classical, German-influenced, American Reform Judaism. And that, coincidentally, was the Judaism preferred by those members of the Ochs and Sulzberger families who hadn't yet become Episcopalians.