Chutzpah.

I MUST CONFESS a grudging respect for Alan Dershowitz. Unlike most civil-libertarians, the Harvard Law professor and controversial defense counsel strives for consistency, a discipline which leads him to oppose political correctness, liberal intolerance, and quotas.

Almost alone among Jewish liberals, he never hesitates to censure left-wing anti-semitism. While others have drifted into a mushy, secular universalism and a ritualistic romanticization of the Third World (any "ism" but Zionism), Dershowitz is an unapologetic defender of Israel.

For all his virtues, however, the champion of downtrodden Danish aristocrats is a zealous self-promoter. Most of his literary works are homage to an all-consuming ego: Alan Dershowitz, courtroom corsair; Alan Dershowitz, civil-libertarian nonpareil. In Chutzpah we have Alan Dershowitz, super-Jew.

The book's thesis: Through timidity and an unwillingness to assert their rights, for fear of alienating the majority, Jews have consigned themselves to second-class citizenship. "American Jews need more chutzpah. Notwithstanding the stereotype, we are not pushy or assertive enough for our own good," Dershowitz writes.

This is not an easy case to make. Transforming a group with incomes far above the national average-who are better educated, better employed, and numerically overrepresented in business, government, the media, and academia-into an oppressed minority takes considerable chutzpah.

The quest is driven by a neurotic need to secure membership in the brotherhood of suffering, to enter the exalted ranks of the victimized, along with the more romantic minorities: blacks, Hispanics, women. In leftist culture, oppression is a mark of high distinction.

Says Dershowitz: We Jews may have the incomes of Episcopalians, but deep down we too are persecuted, by: creches in public parks, efforts to enact a voluntary, nondenominational school prayer, Sunday closing laws, etc. Besides which and moreover, there's never been a Jewish President. Then again, there's never been an Italian-American, Polish-American, or Franco-American President. A pity the others lack a Dershowitz to raise their consciousness.

"Jews in a Christian America" is easily the most remarkable chapter in this highly creative volume. For Dershowitz, the greatest threat to American Jewry lies not in alarming rates of intermarriage, assimilation, Torah illiteracy, a declining birthrate, or a community afflicted with social ills (alcoholism, addiction, divorce, family violence) rarely associated with it in the past, but in the ghastly specter of little plaster statues lurking behind Christmas trees and Santas in city-hall plaza.

"The separation of church and state is the foundation on which the first-class status of American Jews rests," Dershowitz advises. But the erosion of that foundation is well under way. Inflamed by fanaticism, the religious Right seeks to Christianize America, and in so doing to slam shut the ghetto gates on American Jews.

Be not lulled by the siren song of choice: their devices smack of coercion, our civil-libertarian cautions. Consider his analysis of school prayer. "Standing for the flag salute is also supposed to be voluntary-as a matter of law. But as a matter of fact, there are practical pressures to conform. It probably would be worse in the context of prayer. Well-intentioned teachers might ask students why they aren't joining their classmates: Are you an atheist or a Communist?"'

The same analysis could be, but never is, applied to a number of public-school functions. In some schools sex education (which constitutes indoctrination in the establishment's dogma) is supposed to be voluntary. Parents can have their children excused from these erotic brainwashing sessions. But students who don't participate are frequently subjected to ridicule and abuse from both teachers and peers. "Are you a prude or a sissy?" Does Dershowitz agonize over intimidation here?

So anxious is he to eliminate religious values from the political debate that Dershowitz even objects to the term "Judaeo-Christian," which-he declares-implies that Judaism is incomplete without Christianity. Quite the contrary. It is a recognition of the fact that ethically Christianity is an outgrowth of Judaism, that the two share a moral basis in the Pentateuch.

In any society, someone's values will dominate. As a believing Jew, I would rather live in an America shaped by the ethos of Moses, Isaiah, and Ezekiel than by that of Ted Turner, Ted Kennedy, and Shirley MacLaine. Jews with the fewest ties to Judaism tend to be the mo with a mythical reading of the First Amendment. Having no religion of their own, they are intimidated by the intrusion of religious symbols in the public sphere, any perceived entanglement of church and state. It is a self-defeating approach.

Among the imminent threats to the First Amendment Dershowitz discerns is public support of parochial education, in the form of vouchers or tax credits. One reason U.S. Jewry is a dying community is lack of effective Jewish education. How allowing a Jewish family to keep a modest portion of its income to educate its children in a school which teaches Torah values will reinforce the inferior status of American Jews is mystifying.

This concern over status (Are we first or second class? Do we have everything they've got?) is the product of distorted priorities. Dennis Prager, author of Why the Jews: The Reasons for Anti-semitism, believes in a Jewish mission: to repair the world under the rule of God, to bring humanity to a realization that there is but one God, and His primary demands are ethical conduct and holiness. Without that mission, Prager avers, there really is no reason for the continued existence of the Jewish people, other than securing a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-lived minority in history.