Robert J. Avrech attended Brooklyn Talmudic Academy at the same time as Yossi Klein Halevi.
Robert replies to my email of inquiry about Klein's Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist:
Yes, I read the book. It was accurate and exactly mirrored my experiences. I knew who he was, but I kept my distance because he hung out with the Betar, JDL guys. They used to go to the basement, behind the lockers, and smoke cigarettes and discuss how they wanted to kill Arabs and goyim. All of them were children of Holocaust survivoirs. Their collective pathology was so naked, so raw that we who had American parents, kept a respectful/fearful distance.
I was not part of any group. I was solitary, poetic, sensitive; I would sit in a corner reading "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man." One of my Rebbeim once caught me, as I had it hidden inside my gemara, he leafed through it and grimaced:
"Avrech, what are you readng?"
"It's great literature."
"How would you know?"
"Um, it's tauight in all the universities?"
"Goyim and goyishe kups. Your father, does he know you read such narishkeit?"
"I guess he's aboout to find out, right Rebbe?"
"Such a smart boy."
