July 26, 2001

World Briefs

Leave a Comment / United States / JTA Staff

Israel Prepares to Call Reservists

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) is making preparations to call up tens of thousands of reservists abroad in the event of a major war. According to an IDF spokesman, recruitment branches have opened in nine cities, which include Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt.

Military Aid for Israel

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a $15.2 billion foreign aid bill that contains $2.7 billion in military and economic assistance for Israel and $2 billion for Egypt. The bill, which goes next to the Senate, also calls on President Bush to impose sanctions if he determines that the Palestinian Authority is not combating terrorism.

Israel May Ban Conductor

A Knesset committee called for conductor Daniel Barenboim to be declared persona non grata in Israel until he apologizes for conducting a piece by Richard Wagner at the Israel Festival earlier this month. Wagner was an anti-Semitic composer and a Hitler favorite.

Fatah Claims Slaying

Fatah group claims slaying of Jerusalem youth Members of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat’s Fatah said the Aksa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated to Fatah, was behind the killing of 18-year-old Yuri Gushchin of Jerusalem. The Israeli teenager’s body was found Tuesday near the West Bank city of Ramallah. He was to be drafted into the IDF next month.

Shoah Denier Denied Appeal

British Holocaust denier David Irving was denied permission to appeal his defeat in a libel suit he brought last year against author-historian Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books, her publisher.

Last Friday, the Court of Appeal in London rejected his request for an appeal, with one of the three judges on the panel calling Irving “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” Irving must quickly pay the first installment in a legal bill estimated at close to $3 million.

Youth Group Gets Financial Boost

The newly independent B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO), one of the largest youth groups in North America, received gifts of $1 million dollars to fund regional offices and other needs.

The funding comes two months after B’nai B’rith International announced it would spin off its youth program into an independent nonprofit, in order to make it easier to raise money for the youth group.

The donations, $250,000 each from Edgar Bronfman, Lynn Schusterman, Michael Steinhardt and Newton Becker, will compensate for the approximately $1 million decrease in allocations this year from B’nai B’rith, which — due to the fraternal organization’s ongoing financial and membership reductions — has consistently cut funds to BBYO in recent years.

According to some insiders, major donors had been reluctant to contribute when BBYO was a B’nai B’rith department out of concern that gifts had to be channeled through B’nai B’rith, which could siphon money off the top.

World Briefs Read More »

Jewish Groups on Stem Cell Debate

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Sharon Samber

"When does life begin?" is not your standard political question, but it’s forcing the debate behind one of the hottest topics in Washington — stem cell research.

As President Bush ponders whether to allow federal funding for research using stem cells from discarded human embryos, Jewish ethicists and groups are debating the finer moral points of the issue.

Like the president, some groups are still delaying a formal position, but most ethicists agree that Jewish tradition allows embryos to be destroyed if the research has the potential to benefit society.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to find traditional Jewish sources that address stem cell research directly, says Prof. Paul Root Wolpe, an ethicist at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. Instead, Jewish ethicists are extrapolating from the Jewish legal tradition and rabbinic commentaries.

Many authorities cite the Jewish tradition’s imperative to heal and the concept of pikuach nefesh — the responsibility to save human life, which overrides almost all other laws — to approve a broad range of medical experimentation.

A stem cell is a special kind of cell that has a unique capacity to renew itself and to develop into specialized cell types.

Researchers use stem cells to replace cells that are damaged or diseased. Many believe stem cell research can lead to cures for Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, heart disease and more.

Hadassah: The Women’s Zionist Organization of America is in favor of stem cell research, as is the National Council of Jewish Women. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs has yet to take a formal stand on the issue.

Jewish tradition places minimal life value in early-stage embryos outside the womb, since the Talmud defines any embryo up to 40 days old "as if it were mere fluid." Forty days roughly corresponds to the onset of "quickening," the first noticeable movement of a fetus in a womb.

In addition, the location of an embryo — that is, whether it is inside a woman’s uterus or in a lab — also makes a difference.

Embryos that remain outside the womb have no chance to become children, and therefore it is a "mitzvah" to use those embryos for research, according to Rabbi Elliot Dorff, rector and professor of philosophy at the University of Judaism in Los Angeles.

"It’s not only permitted, there is a Jewish mandate to do so," Dorff said.

Others are less certain.

"There’s potential life here, and we need to respect that and be cautious," said Rabbi Aaron Mackler, professor of theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. Mackler, who supports stem cell research, notes that using embryos taken from fertility clinics makes the case for research easier, because those embryos already have been created — for the purposes of in-vitro fertilization.

Dorff, who wrote a book on Jewish medical ethics, said creating an embryo specifically to be a source of stem cells is permissible, but less morally justifiable.

Current recommendations of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) state that federal funding should go only for research on frozen embryos that are slated to be discarded.

Early this year, Bush asked the Department of Health and Human Services to review stem cell research.

Government oversight of stem cell research could result in better research and quicker results, which would bolster the ethical argument for proceeding with federal funding, according to Ruth Macklin, professor of bioethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

A just-released NIH report found that both embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells "present immense research opportunities for potential therapy."

But while embryonic stem cells can proliferate indefinitely, adult stem cells cannot.

Rabbi Moshe Tendler, professor of Jewish Medical Ethics at Yeshiva University in New York, called stem cell research "the hope of mankind."

"The only hope we have of understanding what’s going on in the whole field of oncology, of cancer work, now resides in the stem cell research," he said at a recent event in Washington, D.C.

Tendler criticized a Senate bill that would stop the possibility of stem cell research. "That I believe to be an evil that’s being perpetrated on America," he said.

The Orthodox Union and Agudath Israel of America do not have formal positions on the issue. David Zwiebel, the executive vice president for government and public affairs for Agudath Israel, suggested there would not be an ethical problem with using those embryos slated to be discarded, but was unsure whether the group wanted to weigh in on a policy level about use of government funds for the research.

The Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations sent letters last week to Bush and Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson in favor of "carefully regulated" federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.

Quoting Deuteronomy, the letter noted that Jewish tradition says that while only God can create life, God has charged humans with doing everything possible to preserve it.

"I have put before you this day life and death. Choose life, that you and your children may live," the letter said.

Jewish Groups on Stem Cell Debate Read More »

Maccabiah Games Come to a Close

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Jessica Steinberg

The 16th Maccabiah Games ended with a lot of fanfare, flaming batons and fireworks — and a sigh of relief from the organizers that the much-anticipated event had ended safely and without mishap.

There were hundreds of police officers and soldiers surrounding the outdoor Jerusalem space where the event was held. In addition, X-ray scanners and metal detectors checked bags and bodies, making the attendees feel more secure.

This was the first time the Maccabiah opening and closing ceremonies were held in Jerusalem. Last week’s opening event was at Teddy Stadium, in the city’s southern corner; the closing party was in the cavity of Sultan’s Pool, a Herodian reservoir that looks up at the ancient walls of the Old City.

One delegation head said that he would breathe more easily once his athletes were home safe and sound, but that he was glad the participants had attended this year’s games.

"This was about solidarity, showing a deep connection to the State of Israel," said Richard Feldman, the delegation head for Great Britain, who brought 160 athletes instead of the usual 350 British delegates.

Indeed, at the closing ceremony, "Am Echad," (or One Nation) and "We Are One" were both printed on the T-shirts worn by American athletes.

"This year’s Maccabiah made a statement, and the athletes should feel proud," said Bob Spivack, president of the Philadelphia-based Maccabiah USA. "It’s about more than sports."

Israel blew away the rest of the field in the medal race, winning 96 gold, 74 silver and 74 bronze medals. The U.S. team came in second, with 21 gold, 23 silver and 30 bronze medals.

Israeli athletes, who were used to the security situation in their native land, constituted the largest team; its member athletes were considered among the most skilled and competitive.

With this year’s competition safely behind them, some began setting their sights to the future. "We need to start planning now for the next games in four years," said Mark Berman, a coach for the Israeli softball team. "My view is that this continues to serve a purpose. It’s bonding for Jewish athletes, and I’m encouraged that so many individuals made a statement and showed up for the Maccabiah."

It didn’t seem as if the athletes were ready to leave after Monday night’s closing ceremony. They stamped their feet, waved colored flashlights and hooted their way through the show, which included belly dancers, the Israel Defense Force choir performing disco numbers, and a helicopter bearing the Maccabiah flame from Teddy Stadium.

In return, the athletes were thanked and applauded for their decision to compete.

"We’re grateful to the athletes, because without them, we wouldn’t have had the Maccabiah at all," said Oudi Recanati, chairman of the Maccabi World Union and one of the sponsors of the 16th Games, which were shortened to seven days from the usual 10.

Despite the low turnout and some unusual competitions — in some events every team won a medal, because there were only three teams — it seemed that the significance of this year’s games was that they took place at all during such a tense and trying time for Israel.

"The very fact that the 16th Maccabiah was held, against all odds, is a tribute to the Jewish people of the world," Recanati said.

Maccabiah Games Come to a Close Read More »

Now It’s Jewish Terrorists

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Larry Derfner

The settler movement is in serious denial over last week’s killings of three Palestinians, including 3-month-old Dia Tmeizi. While all settlers publicly condemn the killings, even the most "mainstream" don’t see any connection between the nighttime ambush near Hebron and the incessant cries for "revenge" by settlers at funerals, demonstrations and elsewhere.

"I also shouted ‘revenge’ at demonstrations," says Yehoshua Mor-Yosef, spokesman of the YESHA Council, the lead political action committee of the settler movement. "There’s nothing forbidden about revenge, it’s perfectly legitimate as long as it’s carried out by the state, not by individuals taking the law into their own hands."

The gunman or gunmen, who opened fire on the car driven by the Tmeizi family, fled in the direction of "Israel proper," not towards a Jewish settlement or Palestinian Authority territory inside. It’s possible the gunmen were not settlers. But the more radical settlers insist that Arabs might well have been the killers.

This was the argument Adir Zik, a tremendously popular commentator on the settler radio station Arutz 7, made on his program the morning after the killings. "It’s being taken for granted that this was done by Jews, but it’s very doubtful," Zik said in an interview, recalling a 1995 murder of Halhoul Arabs at first thought to have been committed by settler extremists, when it turned out to have been done by Palestinians.

Reminded that there have been instances of settlers killing innocent Palestinians, the most grievous case being the massacre of 29 Palestinians by Baruch Goldstein in Hebron, Zik replied, "I have many doubts whether he killed the people there. He might have been pulled into [Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs, where the Arab victims were shot during prayer]. It might have really been a feud between Arab clans."

That Goldstein was seen going into the tomb with his Army rifle; his dead body was found in the tomb afterward; his rifle and his spent bullets were recovered from the tomb; and scores of Palestinian survivors testified that it was Goldstein who opened fire, evidently hasn’t made an impression on Zik. Soon after the killings, Women in Green sent out an e-mail headlined, "Don’t Blame the Jews!" "The fact that Arab survivors testified that the attackers looked Jewish doesn’t mean anything," said Women in Green, noting that Efrat settler Sarah Blaustein was shot to death by Palestinians wearing a kippah. There is no known case of Arabs disguising themselves as religious Jews and killing Arabs for the purpose of discrediting settlers, but this doesn’t deter the Women in Green. With Arab pressure mounting to bring international observers to the territories, there is a "clear Arab interest in portraying themselves as victims," went the statement.

A few days before the assault on the Tmeizi family — all told, three of them were killed and four wounded, including Dia’s mother — Shin Bet head Avi Dichter told a Knesset committee that at least one Jewish terror cell was operating in the West Bank. In June, a Palestinian was killed in a drive-by shooting by unknown gunmen calling themselves the Shalhevet-Zar Brigade, named for two Jewish settler victims of the intifada, the infant girl Shalhevet Pass and security officer Gilad Zar. At the time of Dichter’s warning, explosives were found in the car of the wife of Noam Federman, a Kach leader and Hebron settler arrested and convicted numerous times for hate crimes.

Yet while even moderate settlers say the guilt for the Tmeizi killings are confined to the gunmen who carried them out, the Israeli human rights organization B’tselem says that all told during the current intifada, eight Palestinians have been killed by Israeli civilians in what could be called murders. In some cases the killers were never found, in other cases the police arrested settlers but freed them for lack of evidence — over the testimony of Palestinian who said they witnessed the killings. Beyond these killings, B’tselem points out, settler vigilantism is a continuous phenomenon, and has been especially grievous during this intifada.

"In recent months, settlers have shot at Palestinians, stoned their cars, damaged property, uprooted trees, burned a mosque, harmed Palestinian medical teams, attacked journalists, prevented farmers from going to their fields and blocked Palestinian cars from traveling on roads. Although some of the shooting was in self-defense, the vast majority of violence was premeditated," B’tselem stated.

Asked to respond to this statement, Mor-Yosef interrupted the reading of it and said, "I believe a B’tselem as much as I believe a Hamas report. I don’t believe a word they say."

Palestinians have killed scores of West Bank and Gaza settlers in this intifada, and hundreds have been wounded. The roads the Palestinians drive to and from home have become killing zones. But settlers have not only been victims during the current fighting, they have also been victimizers. Their claims of innocence in the killing of the Tmeizis are hollow when their cry of "Revenge!" has become so common.

Now It’s Jewish Terrorists Read More »

Peacekeeping Conundrum

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / James D. Besser

Speculation about a possible observer force in Gaza and the West Bank reached a fever pitch this week, thanks to proposals by the G-8 and the European Union, and a confused response from a U.S. administration that is foundering in the whirlpool of Mideast politics.

First, officials here indicated that they supported the call for an international force, but then amended that: only if both sides agreed, they said.

Later, leaks in Washington and Israel suggested both countries were really just talking about expanding the current CIA role in monitoring the tattered cease-fire.

Jewish leaders were anxiously trying to determine whether U.S. policy was really shifting, but one thing was plain: the Bush administration, rebuffed and frustrated in its peacemaking efforts, is casting about desperately for something on which to hang U.S. policy in the region.

And some kind of expanded outside presence will continue to look attractive to many here, despite the fact that it could produce a plethora of unintended and damaging consequences.

Ironically, the countries whose demands for international observers are most insistent are the ones that have created conditions that make the idea a nonstarter for Israel.

The European nations that have been loudest in their demand for some kind of peacekeeping force have also been at the forefront of blaming Israel for each new outbreak of violence and ignoring Yasser Arafat’s role.

Just before his swearing in as U.S. ambassador to Israel last week, Daniel C. Kurtzer was called into the White House for an urgent conversation with President Bush. One thing on the president’s mind, reportedly: his surprise at the strong bias against Israel among the European nations.

There’s also the United Nations, which should be a natural source of international observers. On Monday, Secretary General Kofi Annan endorsed the G-8 demand.

But an endless series of one-sided resolutions on the Middle East reveal a tilt that explains the powerful Israeli aversion to U.N. observers. Shocking revelations that U.N. peace monitors along the Lebanese border concealed videotape that could provide clues to the Oct. 7 kidnapping of three IDF soldiers added to long-standing mistrust.

Just in case anybody missed the point, the international body is outdoing itself these days with an upcoming international conference on racism that has turned into a forum for unrestrained Israel bashing.

Then there’s the possibility of American observers.

This week, under growing international pressure because of continuing clashes and a grisly Jewish terror attack against Palestinian civilians, some members of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government hinted that U.S. observers might be acceptable, possibly in an expansion of the current CIA role.

But that, too, has huge dangers.

These observers wouldn’t be supervising a peace agreement already inked; even if they weren’t an actual "peacekeeping" force, created to separate the two sides, they would necessarily be placed along the front lines of a conflict with few rules and many targets.

And they would be thrown into an environment in which anti-Americanism among the Palestinians is rampant.

A tragic incident could send this country fleeing from active Mideast diplomacy.

Such a force would also put the U.S. government in the awkward position of tacitly equating Palestinian terror attacks and Israeli military responses. There would be strong pressure for fairness and evenhandedness, but it is the nature of the battle that observers would be less likely to see acts of terror than to see the organized military response.

That, too, would add strains along the U.S.-Israel axis.

Congress is likely to recoil at any expanded U.S. presence on the Israeli-Palestinian front lines; Jewish groups that oppose negotiations with the Palestinians will get a receptive hearing when they highlight the dangers of such a plan.

Israel has a number of reasons for rejecting the idea of monitors, aside from the obvious bias of most of the probable monitoring groups.

Sending monitors to the region would be rewarding Arafat for starting the current terror campaign, Israel believes; in the long run, caving in to his demand would just encourage new violence. And having monitors in key places would limit the ability of the IDF to mount operations to pre-empt terror attacks and stage reprisals.

At best, the idea is a bandage, not a cure for generations of conflict. But when the alternative is massive hemorrhage, a bandage can look pretty attractive.

In the eyes of much of the world, last week’s vigilante attack by Jewish extremists only reinforced Palestine’s demand that its citizens need protection.

But the real reason the proposal is gathering momentum is that officials in Washington are at their wits’ end about how to stop the violence and keep it from harming other U.S. interests.

There no longer is even faint hope here that a genuine peace process can resume; the only goal is damage control, especially as anti-Americanism builds among Arab and Persian Gulf allies.

Desperation, not the hope of real progress toward peace, is the engine driving the push for monitors. As the violence continues to spiral, that’s a logic that will be difficult to counter — even if the idea is rife with pitfalls.

Peacekeeping Conundrum Read More »

Beyond Stem Cells

Leave a Comment / Womans Voice / Marlene Adler Marks

Were you queasy last week, when U.S. senators quoted the Bible in their effort to stop potentially life-saving stem cell research?

Did you feel discomfort on Monday when Pope John Paul II told President Bush he condemned the study of human embryos because the practice would "devalue and violate human life?"

The cynic in me suspects what’s going on: This pseudo-debate, focused on a fundamentalist reading of the Bible, asserting that man was formed from the "dust of the ground," is merely a setup for an inevitable (and, one hopes, tolerable) compromise in which the Bush administration retains the support of the Christian right while allowing science to proceed. Give them airtime, then cut a deal.

Nevertheless, the show is uncomfortable to witness. The stem cell debate replays an argument dating back at least to the second century and the ways Christians and Jews translate Exodus 21:22, on the killing of a fetus during battle. But are we, in 21st century America, faced with so many competing views of life’s beginnings, eternally limited by that trap?

One can grant Christian believers their view that six fertilized cells in a petri dish constitutes life, but not grant them a czar-like grip on whether destroying those cells — containing untold pharmaceutical miracles — equals murder.

Embryonic stem cells contain the basis of all other cells and hold the potential for resolving many serious diseases, including Alzheimer’s. Yet, this one-sided faith-based debate can hold research hostage, and jeopardize the lives of thousands. Where does spiritual commitment end and life-threatening intolerance begin?

The stem cell debate is hardly the only distortion of the religious enterprise of our political era. At a time when "faith-based" organizations are being sold out to the lowest bidder, I wish the Jewish community would rise and reject public monies that torture our civic purpose. Absent that, it’s time now to redefine our political strategy and return to our basics. Now is the time to reclaim and harness the Jewish secularism within which so many of us were raised, and to reassert, as a result, the pluralistic tolerance which guarantees a civic role for all faiths and, yes, even for those without religious faith.

Nearly 20 years ago, the current battle over who would control the public discourse heated up. Richard John Neuhaus’ book, "The Naked Public Square," urged the religious Christian community to adopt a new political activism based on opposition to secular humanism, a universalistic philosophy dating back to John Dewey during the 1930s. It had great appeal among Jews as a corollary to Zionism.

Neuhaus’ target was Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision which supported abortion without due respect for religious beliefs on when life began.

"From the pro-life viewpoint, [abortion] is a matter of how we define the human community for which we accept collective responsibility," Neuhaus wrote.

The stem cell debate, dominated as it is by Christian understanding of "ensoulment" of cells at the time of conception, without competing respect for a non-religious sensibility, is the apotheosis of Neuhaus’ call to action. "The Naked Public Square" is now dressed to suffocation.

The Jewish community has been slow to respond to the growing dominance of Christian political activism. In fact, our religious groups are at a particular disadvantage in the current climate, because they appear to be merely asking America to accept the Jewish version of religious truth over another: either "ensoulment" begins at conception, or at birth. Our numbers aren’t big enough.

Secular Judaism has no such disability. While grounded in the Jewish religious calendar, love for Israel and the romance with Yiddishkeit, secular Judaism in the public sphere respects and relishes the widest diversity of thought and culture, including the rights of the nonbeliever to have no opinion at all. Secular humanism has a profound respect for privacy, for the wall between church and state. Secular Judaism reminds America that the goal is not to create a Bible-true or Torah- true society, but an America in which all can flourish.

As Samuel G. Freedman writes in "Jew vs. Jew," secular Judaism was "not so much defeated as loved to death. America made a promise to Jewish immigrants, and to its enduring grandeur as a nation, it kept that promise. It welcomed history’s wanderers into a greater whole."

But though America accepted bagels, rugelach and Steven Spielberg into its culture, the creation of the "greater whole" remains unfinished today, and not only for Jews.

In an article reprinted in the magazine of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Ya’akov Malkin, professor of Rhetoric and Aesthetics at Tel Aviv University, calls secularism "principled pluralism."

"We see the passing of divine authority from those who speak in God’s name … to human beings who decide according to their own reason and by means of the decision of the majority, and in accordance with the principles of the prophets who believed in the primacy of social justice over any cultic mitzvot."

In America’s coarsening political environment, such sympathetic love of diversity may be just the ticket.

Beyond Stem Cells Read More »

7 Days In Arts

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks / Solange Borna

Saturday, July 28

With the famous line: “It matters nothing if one is
born in a duck yard, if one has only lain in a swan’s egg,” Hans Christian
Andersen’s play became a classic success. “The Ugly Duckling” proved to be a
story with a moral for children of all generations. Today, the perfect Saturday
afternoon outing for the kids is to take them to see the new version of the
production by A.A. Milne. In this humorous rendition of the 1941 fable, Princess
Camilla is distraught from years of being branded as the ugly one, unfit for
marriage. Her endearing determination at proving everyone wrong and showing her
true worth is exceptionally inspiring. Free admission. Saturdays and Sundays at
2 p.m. Through Aug. 5. For more information, call (310) 712-5482.

Sunday, July 29

Tatjana is a woman who can do it all, from singing
popular Broadway musicals to dancing in hilarious skits, she never fails to
captivate the audience with her one-woman shows. She eloquently gushes songs
from Gershwin, Porter, Mancini, Bernstein and Weber, flooding the stage with her
graceful and passionate dramatic performances. The Yugoslavian beauty has
studied around the world with notable opera, jazz and drama teachers, leading to
her chameleon-like abilities of changing from one act to the other with rapid
and entertaining ease. $10 (members); $12 (nonmembers). Discounts for students
and seniors available. 2 p.m. Westside Jewish Community Center, 5870 W. Olympic
Blvd., Los Angeles. For reservations or more information, call (323) 938-2531
ext. 2225.

Monday, July 30

Jascha Heifetz played at Carnegie Hall at the age of 17
and received unprecedented acclaim from the audience and press. Because he was
such a frequently requested violinist and public performer, the 4th Annual Los
Angeles International Laureates Festival 2001 is dedicated to his memory,
celebrating the centenary of his birth. The event lasts for five days, each
performance complimented by a distinct instrumental flavor all its own. From
Sunday, July 29, the Chamber Orchestra will play with Eduard Schmeider
conducting, soloists play strings emulating Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence
and Heifetz’s most promising student, Erick Friedman, will join the orchestra of
piano and violin through Sunday, August 5. Performances vary in admission price.
Sun., July 29, 6 p.m.; Mon., July 30, 1 p.m.; Thurs., Aug. 2, 8 p.m.; Sat., Aug.
4, 8 p.m.; and Sun., Aug. 5, 2 p.m.-4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Locations vary. For
tickets or more information, call (310) 281-3303.

Tuesday, July 31

The only way one could determine the role that Jews
play in society is to pretend they never existed as the movie “The City Without
Jews” has done. Based on a popular novel, the dark comedy chronicles Austria’s
choice to enact anti-Jew laws during the onset of World War II. When the laws
are finally implemented, the country realizes the loss it has incurred upon
itself as the economy is left without its livelihood. The movie is silent and
the audience is guided through the drama by Robert Israel. $6 (general
admission); $5 (members); $4 (students). 7:30 p.m. Skirball Cultural Center,
2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. For tickets or more information, call
(323) 655-8587.

Wednesday, August 1

In the mood for a little romance? Go with your sweetie
to the Hollywood Bowl and relish in the sweet sounds of jazz. A starry hot
summer night is not complete without vocalist Dianne Reeves and ballad singer
and pianist Shirley Horn’s harmonious musical union with the Henri Mancini
Institute Chamber Orchestra. Ticket prices vary. 8 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N.
Highland Ave., Los Angeles. For reservations or more information, call (323)
850-2000.

Thursday, August 2

Every Thurday night at the Skirball offers an escape to
a different country with its free outdoor evening concerts of August. Tonight,
journey to Cuba with the sweet sounds of flutist Danilo Lozano, an originator of
the Hollywood Bowl orchestra. The performance will express rich and lively Cuban
culture spiced with a hint of American musical flavor. Along with Lozano, Ilmar
Gavilan will play the violin, the piano will be graced by Alberto Salas, Carlos
Puerto is on bass and clave and Luis Conte is the percussion. 7:30 p.m. Through
Aug. 30. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles. For
more information, call (310) 440-4500.

7 Days In Arts Read More »

A Time to Pay

Forms of Frustration

Leave a Comment / California, Other Voices, United States / Mike Levy

Marie Kaufman needed help.

Even though the 60-year-old social worker is the president of a Holocaust child survivor’s support group and has worked as an interviewer for Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, she had trouble when she applied for restitution for slave labor from the German government.

“I realized I couldn’t do it myself — and I’m a social worker,” Kaufman says of the six-page application, one of the shorter forms among a myriad of government and corporate Holocaust restitution settlements of recent years.

With deadlines looming for Holocaust restitution applications, survivors like Kaufman — and many others who have fewer resources — are struggling with complex restitution applications that force them to relive their experiences during and after the Holocaust.

Though they have agreed to pay restitution funds, no government, financial institution or victims’ fund will distribute money unless the survivors (or their heirs) can prove their suffering. The Swiss Refugee Program (for restitution to those who were mistreated or refused entry into Switzerland to avoid Nazi persecution) requests documents proving mistreatment or denial of entry, but will also accept a written personal history. The German foundation Remembrance, Responsibility and the Future, for example, requests a liberation certificate, repatriation document or displaced persons ID card from slave laborers and those forced to work. Most claim forms must be either notarized or stamped by the organization that helped fill out the form.

“The forms are so … formal,” Kaufman says. “You don’t know where you fit. And once you start, you have to go through your whole history. It isn’t just as easy as a day or a date,” she told The Journal.

Kaufman turned to the Jewish Family Services (JFS), one of a number of local organizations — like Bet Tzedek Legal Services and The Jewish Federation’s Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust — that help frustrated survivors get through the maze of paperwork, along with the painful memories that inevitably return.

JFS volunteer Muriel Honig, who has been working with survivors for 20 years, says that the process triggers painful memories. “I remember one lady from Poland, after the war she went back to see the village where her family was from. She saw her brother’s house, went to visit. The occupants said to her, ‘You’re a Jew? I thought they burned you all.’ And they slammed the door in her face.”

Anne Kutrow hears these stories all the time. A 23-year veteran volunteer and board vice-president emeritus at JFS’ Frieda Mohr Senior Center, Kutrow has felt the frustration of many survivors, as she helped them apply for restitution. “The forms ask for things they couldn’t possibly have,” she says. “Documentation … from people who were forced to flee or herded onto trains in the middle of the night.” Volunteers, like Kutrow, get hours of training from licensed social workers specifically to help with the wide range of restitution applications.

Volunteers at JFS’ six Los Angeles locations have helped more than 700 survivors fill out restitution applications since February. Social workers and case aides at Bet Tzedek Legal Services have assisted another 300. When settlements are finalized, application forms are mailed to survivors who have previously qualified for restitution programs. Others who may be eligible are informed via newspaper advertisements (the Claims Conference ran ads in The Jewish Journal in May regarding the Swiss banks settlement) or word-of-mouth among survivors. In either case, applicants are instructed to contact local organizations for help if they have difficulty with the forms.

Until she got help, Kaufman says she was stymied: “I feel like I’m being toyed with, with these forms. There’s a real frustration: ‘Why are you doing this?'”

The process is purposely thorough. says Hillary Kessler-Godin, Claims Conference communication director. “We’re going by the guidelines established with the German government and industry. A lot of thought went into the design of the forms, to make them as easy as possible, keeping in mind the goal of processing a very large amount of information. We are making every attempt possible to get survivors restitution,” she says.

A lack of documentation or evidence should not prevent any survivor from applying for restitution, says Lisa Grant, Bet Tzedek’s Holocaust Services paralegal and restitution coordinator. Though it is still too early to know exactly how much documentation the banks or government settlements will deem mandatory, it is not yet too late to trace many pieces of documentation, she says.

Grant has been working with the Red Cross, which has access to millions of documents relating to Nazi persecution and which maintains a Holocaust and War Victims Tracing and Information Center in Baltimore. With a request filed at any local office, the Red Cross can trace many survivors’ records through archives. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent declassification of Soviet files and captured WWII files, the Red Cross has gained access to even more Holocaust-related information.

Like all of the organizations for survivors, the Red Cross traces this information for free. And though a full search for documents can take six months to a year, German and Swiss foundations have recently accepted the Red Cross’ fast-track program, which can provide a simple “yes” or “no” to the question of whether an individual was persecuted, in only a few weeks.

Grant knows that no application for Holocaust restitution will feel appropriate: “How can you conform your life story to a paper application?” Still, she encourages all eligible survivors or their heirs to apply, even without documentation, even though it may be difficult. “We keep Kleenex around here,” she says.

Even if they do find evidence of their suffering, putting it on paper can be even more difficult. “People are being asked where they went first, second, the city, the factory name, and of course they become very emotional,” JFS volunteer Charlotte Kamenir says. “Very often, when they mention a certain place, a certain incident comes back. The whole thing becomes very upsetting to them.”

One restitution form includes a box to check off “if you were subjected to medical experiments in a concentration camp.” A questionnaire for the Austrian Reconciliation Fund asks female forced laborers: “Were you coerced to terminate a pregnancy by abortion…?” Another form has space to fill in a family tree.

No matter what their story, survivors welcome the help of volunteers. Kaufman was a child when she fled with her family from Poland and was hidden throughout the war in Vichy France — she has vague memories of her experience during the war. “Just to have somebody else be in charge of it was helpful. Thank heavens for the volunteers.”

Upcoming application deadlines:

Swiss Banks Deposited Assets — Aug. 5, 2001

Refugees to Switzerland — Sept. 30, 2001

Slave and Forced Laborers — Dec. 31, 2001

For more information, contact:

Jewish Family Services, Pico Robertson Storefront — (310) 271-3306

Bet Tzedek’s Holocaust Restitution Hotline –(323) 549-5883

Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust –(323) 761-8170

On the Internet:

Claims Conference — www.claimscon.org

Red Cross document tracing — www.redcross.org/services/intl/holotrace/index.html

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Wonder Women

Leave a Comment / Health / Michael Aushenker

Last year Hollywood unleashed woman of action Erin Brockovich, and won the Academy Award for its star, Julia Roberts.

Next month, the Israel Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) will honor the real Brockovich at the Sixth Annual Women of Action 2001 luncheon banquet on Aug. 8. Brockovich’s boss, attorney Ed Masry, will present the woman who valiantly took on an entire corporation with ICRF’s “Woman of the Year” award.

In addition to honoring Brockovich, ICRF will celebrate the achievements of four other individuals who have contributed to the betterment of both science and society.

The award ceremony will salute Dr. Alexandra Levine, medical director of USC/Norris Cancer Hospital and chief of the hematology division, who worked with Dr. Jonas Salk in the development of an AIDS vaccine; California Real Estate Commissioner Paula Reddish Zinneman, the first woman in the state to hold the position; Superior Court Judge Marsha Revel; and Israeli singer Hedva Amrani Danoff (wife of Dr. Dudley Danoff, an ICRF board member). The luncheon, along with an annual racetrack event and winter ball, is a major fundraising opportunity benefiting ICRF’s cause. Overseeing the event will be Jacqueline Bell, chairwoman of the board of ICRF’s L.A. chapter, and Dorothy Chitkov, its vice president.

The achievements of the ICRF itself are worth countless accolades. Since its inception in 1975, the New York-based ICRF, an organization with branches all over North America, has supported research at the 20 major institutions in Israel, including Bar-Ilan, Ben Gurion and Tel Aviv Universities, Hadassah, the Weizmann Institute of Science, Sheba Medical Center and the Technion. Over almost three decades, ICRF has raised $24 million toward cancer research.

Just this year, doctors supported by ICRF developed Gleevic, a wonder drug for leukemia and rare stomach cancers.

Past achievements have included the application of the p53 protein as an inhibitor of the proliferation of disease cells; the hepatitis B vaccine for the treatment of liver cancer; and Doxil, which helps patients with cancer and AIDS.

ICRF relies on a board of 100 doctors who meet and review applications presented by Israeli scientists to determine who will receive research money. Last year, more than $50,000 was raised toward two fellowships. Chitkov, who herself once suffered from Hodgkin’s disease, said that 100 percent of the contributions sent to Israel by ICRF is spent purely on research.

Right now, ICRF has an eye toward propelling its work into the next millennium. The L.A. Chapter recently formed Visions – the Next Generation, a new fundraising group composed of young professionals, ages 20-40, and headed by attorney, and ICRF board member Greg Bell. Visions’ first outing will be a Monte Carlo Night on Sept. 8 at the Park Plaza Hotel in the Wilshire District.

And this year, the L.A. Chapter plans to double the $1-million tally raised last year.

“I’m a former cancer patient, and I came to this because my doctor told me to get involved. I was told to do it for four weeks, and that was eight years ago,” Chitkov said with a laugh.

For more information on Israel Cancer Research Fund and Visions – The Next Generation, call (323) 651-1200.

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