It is our Jewish concern for human welfare that takes the rabbis where the needs exist. It is the United Jewish Fund\’s concern for justice and human need that directs Federation support to the chaplaincy program.
Mickey Weiss, everybody\’s favorite mensch and philanthropist, diedmore than a year ago, but his good works go on.
Last Tuesday evening, we had dinner with Dick Morris. Can you think of a more fitting person to dine with during these days of atonement? Dick Morris: one-time adviser to the president of the United States. Widely credited with winning President Clinton\’s re-election. Caught on a tabloid video, sucking a prostitute\’s toes in a Washington hotel room. Admitted to letting his special friend listen in as he consulted with the commander in chief. Fired. Mocked gleefully by the media. Told to take a hike by his attorney wife,Eileen McGann. Dick Morris is the poster boy for atonement.\n
Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels received the surprising news during Rosh Hashanah morning services at Beth Shir Sholom in Santa Monica. The Rev. Sandra Richards of the Church in Ocean Park stood up in her seat to tell him: The Oct. 1 vote on whether to decertify the union at the Miramar Sheraton Hotel had resulted in a virtual draw.\n
Amid the bizarre string of foreign-policy fiascos in which Israelfound itself mired as it greeted the new year, surely none was quiteso bizarre as the case of runaway teenager Samuel Sheinbein ofMaryland.
Manasreh\’s tale is part of a pattern of official intimidation, physical and financial, that has silenced almost all criticism of Arafat\’s regime in the mainstream Palestinian television, radio and newspapers.
\”Israel has 5 million inhabitants and China has 1.2 billion,\” Kaveh said during a visit to Los Angeles last week. \”However, we are both ancient civilizations, which have survived much suffering and mighty empires.\”
On Sept. 10, the day Secretary of State Madeleine Albright arrived in Israel, the country became preoccupied with another event: the disappearance of Ya\’acov Schwartz.
Madeleine Albright left behind a Middle East that\’s more fearful than when she arrived on Sept. 10 to salvage the peace process. In her first official visit, the secretary of state failed to restore even a modicum of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, or to coax the Syrians back to the negotiating table.
How did it come about that, just prior to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright\’s visit to the Middle East, the government of Israel released some funds it was withholding from the Palestinian Authority? And then after her departure, it transferred 50 percent of the moneys owed to the Palestinians?
