December 20, 2001

JCC Mission

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Womans Voice / Marlene Adler Marks

Halfway through my conversation this week about the Jewish Community Centers (JCC) crisis with super-fundraiser Emanuel Forster, we learned that both of us are members of the Santa Monica Family YMCA.

For two Jewish activists to seek recreation at a YMCA goes a long way toward illustrating the challenge facing the JCC board, which is considering closing five of seven JCCs. Last weekend, in conversations around town, I heard it argued repeatedly that there just aren’t good reasons for Jews to play basketball (or swim) alone.

It’s the mission, not the money, that’s the issue in the JCC crisis. Mission is something money can’t buy. Just because I don’t belong to, say, Bay Cities JCC, doesn’t mean it can’t thrive — if someone can explain in compelling terms why it should.

That’s why I called Forster in the first place. Over many decades, he’s helped organizations, including the University of Judaism (UJ), many synagogues and social service agencies build self-confidence against presumed pessimism. In organizational life, the desire to grow seems to outwit the means even to survive.

Forster’s Rules for Meeting a Fundraising Challenge are important to review now, as the institution that once symbolized a thriving American Jewish community struggles for breath.

Rule No. 1: Redefine the Mission

Do the centers still serve needs that are not being met elsewhere? Everyone awaits the answer — both users and the wider community alike. Many of us are still bewildered: Why is membership down in communities with Jewish populations? Are there unmet needs that await articulation?

The biggest givers to the City of Hope are not necessarily the ones who get medical treatment at what has become a nationally esteemed cancer research center, but people who simply have a profound sense that the world needs a cure for cancer.

The JCCs, too, can potentially tap into the good will of both users and those who appreciate what centers do — once the mission is set.

Rule No. 2: Find the Leader

Once we know why we should support the JCCs, a leader can emerge, one who can create a core group of volunteers and donors, including those who may not themselves use the centers, who can get behind the newly articulated goals.

Community leader Bruce Corwin’s personal commitment to Temple Emanuel saved the Beverly Hills synagogue from a merger with the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.

The Federation could create a separate campaign specifically to fund the JCCs. But there must be a leader, one who knows the assets of the organization’s past, and who imaginatively sees its future. Will that leader step forward?

Rule No. 3. Build a Community, Not a
Building

In creating a mission statement by which to sell a project to donors, never argue from self-interest.

When the UJ wanted to build dorms, Rabbi Max Vorspan was asked to consider why anyone should want to contribute to the construction of student rooms. His answer: “We want to create a community of scholars.” And that’s what worked.

The 100-year-old Santa Monica Family YMCA, where I work out, is completing its $9 million, 45,000-square-foot remodel and expansion in January.

“They never said, ‘We need a new facility because the old one is run-down,'” Forster said. “They said that a good Y improves the quality of life in the community.”

What is it that we, the larger Jewish community, can say about the centers? Have synagogues taken over their work? If not, why? Do the centers speak for and to secular Jews? If so, how?

Years ago, the Westside JCC won a reprieve when Shalhevet day school backed out of a proposed sale due to community protest, but it was only short-lived. The problems of JCCs can be faced, most effectively, by redefining the mission, finding the leader, and asserting why JCCs are too important to all of us to let die.

It’s not too late to get the mission straight. But how?

JCC Mission Read More »

Living the Chai Life

Leave a Comment / San Fernando Valley / Wendy J. Madnick

They’re celebrating the fourth night of Chanukah at the Chai Teen and Youth Center, and, to put it mildly, this joint is jumping.

Nearly two dozen teenagers fill the huge recreation room, with its gaming tables lined up two by two, like the animals on Noah’s Ark. Some kids play air hockey, others play video games, but most just talk and snack on the sufganiot and heaps of other goodies their rabbi hosts have prepared for them.

It looks like a postgame party for Calabasas High, with boys and girls both sporting the latest hip-hugging jeans and baggy sweatshirts, only there’s a mezuzah on every doorpost and a huge chanukiah in the background.

It’s not what you’d expect from a Chabad gathering. Although most of the teens are not from observant homes, the Chai Teen Center represents the latest foray of the local Lubavitch into helping Jews connect with their tradition.

Rabbi Eli Broner is one of three rabbis volunteering their time at the center tonight. A boy approaches him and asks if he should call his friend, who so far is a no-show at the event. The rabbi tells him, "Of course. Tell him to get his tuchis over here." Then, realizing he is being observed, he gives a slightly embarrassed smile.

"It’s a different lingo," Bronner told The Journal. "You have to improvise a little on how you talk with teenagers."

Broner shouldn’t worry: his connection to and affection for all the young people who make their way to the Chai Center are two of its winning points. Broner, 25, and his wife, Talia, 21, moved here from the East Coast about four years ago, after he was asked to take the post of youth director for the Conejo Jewish Academy, Chabad’s main center in Agoura.

He ran a junior congregation out of a storefront in the minimall, adjacent to the academy, where the landlord was kind enough to donate the unrented space. When a tenant rented the space, Chabad leased other office space in the same facility. Not long afterward (time is a little vague in the Lubavitch world), plans were made to turn the space into the youth center.

In addition to the recreation room, the facility — made possible by a donation from David and Debra Levine — includes two lounges, one at the front and one at the back, where students can sit and do homework or chat; restrooms; a sink for washing hands (with the obligatory two-handled pitcher); a miniature library (needs more books), and a classroom. The environment is comfortable, and the teens are free — within certain limits — to play music or games or just hang out.

"We knew there was that need for a warm, Chabad environment for teens," Broner said. "We made it a fun place to hang out, schmooze, watch a video … a big, public rumpus room."

There are usually one or two rabbis on hand to supervise, answer questions and even help with homework, Broner said. Many of the teens are also involved in Chabad’s Hebrew High, where Broner teaches after his day job, which is teaching Jewish history and values to first- and second-graders at the new Conejo Jewish Day School. Broner said he enjoys the opportunity to provide young people with an introduction to a traditional lifestyle in a fun and nonthreatening way.

"They see we are rabbis yet normal; that you can live a normal life and be Jewish as well," he said.

The teens’ casual and friendly attitude certainly bears this out. They call Broner "Eli" and cajole another rabbi, Rabbi Mendy Pellin, into singing one of his self-styled rap songs for them.

"The rabbis make it fun, and it attracts people from the neighborhood [who are] easy to be around," said 14-year-old Joey Benchetrit, one of the few center members from an observant home.

Another such teenager, Jaclyn Greenberg, 16, a tall, athletic-looking blond, said her family started attending services at Chabad of Oak Park several years ago, gradually growing more observant. She said it can be challenging to be an observant teenager living in the Conejo Valley, especially when the nearest kosher eatery is in Tarzana, a half-hour away.

"There are plenty of teens out here, but there are no hangouts," she said. "There are a few temples out here [with youth groups] and of course BBYO [B’nai B’rith Youth Organization], but this is where we’re involved and know people."

Greenberg said she enjoys not only the Chai Center’s space, but what she’s learned here. The center offers classes and lectures on topics such as "Why Be Jewish?" — given at the facility’s opening event by talk show host and author Dennis Prager — and how to react to religious challenges and debates, taught by guest lecturer Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz. The rabbi is the founder and executive director of the Los Angeles branch of Jews for Judaism.

Rabbi Moshe Bryski, spiritual leader and founder of the Conejo Jewish Academy, said the center tries to plan classes and programs that will speak to the issues Jewish teens confront today. He added that teenagers in 2001 are far more spiritual than adults realize.

"They want to know who and what is it that determines the morality of their actions," he said. "Well, isn’t that what we’re asking of God? Adults have the same questions. We just need to look at them from a teen’s perspective."

Bryski believes the teenage years present one of the greatest challenges facing the Jewish community.

"When you’re a child, Hebrew school is imposed on them, and then they have a bar or bat mitzvah which sends the message, ‘You’re done, you’ve graduated.’

"So they come into their teenage years with that attitude, and then they go to college, and we wonder why we lose them [there]," he said. "There needs to be a way of fixing that gap — to say to them we care about you; we care about your questions. The Chai Center is our answer."

The class most teens commented on was the three-part series on relationships, which gave a traditional Jewish perspective on God, friendship and romance. Broner said that while forming romantic alliances was not the aim of the center, it could be a byproduct.

"It’s not what we’re here for," he said. "Actually, we’re here to show teens they can have a good time without having a 15-year-old girl on their lap. But if they’re going to find a shidduch, let them find it here."

Living the Chai Life Read More »

Beyond the Kitchen

Leave a Comment / San Fernando Valley / Shoshana Lewin-Fischer

A roomful of women come together on a chilly December evening in Southern California. They eat, they laugh, they talk. One woman stands up and tells everyone that she learned how to say, “No.” Her announcement is met with applause. Another stands up and says how happy she is that she has the support of her friends and family.

No, this is not a self-help group. It’s a Chanukah party for the sisterhood of Temple Adat Elohim, a Reform congregation in Thousand Oaks, where the 45 or so women in attendance spend so much time helping others that sisterhood isn’t just an activity, it’s a way of life.

While “sisterhood” used to conjure up images of a klatch of women wearing aprons and serving challah and wine as the men took care of synagogue business, today, the sisterhood has made a comeback. In an era when women often have equal roles to men in and out of the synagogue, sisterhood groups give women an opportunity to raise funds, learn, teach and gain sisterly bonds similar to those found in a sorority.

“Sisterhood has always been seen in the kitchen,” said Wendy Margolis, Sisterhood president at Temple Etz Chaim, a conservative congregation in Thousand Oaks. “Women who say, ‘Sisterhood isn’t for me,’ probably have never tried it. They make assumptions that aren’t necessarily true.”

The sisterhood comeback isn’t the only one in the area. The Women’s Group at Chabad Agoura Hills/Conejo/Oak Park offers weekly study groups, roundtables, Rosh Chodesh programs and retreats. Hadassah of Southern California has three groups in the Conejo Valley that raise funds for numerous causes, including breast cancer research and the Hadassah hospital in Israel.

Margolis, who has been an active member for 10 years, began as recording secretary in the Etz Chaim Sisterhood and had no idea that she would someday be president. She believes that the old-fashioned view of the group is gone.

“I want people to have an open mind and don’t assume that it’s the sisterhood of their mother and grandmother,” Margolis said. “It’s not. There’s been a resurgence this year.”

Sisterhood membership at Temple Etz Chaim, which has typically been around 100, shot up to 160 this year, she said.

The Etz Chaim Sisterhood has three guiding principles that are really shared by all sisterhoods: a connection to Jewish women of all generations, a commitment to the synagogue and its children and a contribution to the greater Jewish community.

Ruthanne Begun, of Adat Elohim, found herself seeking to make a contribution to the Jewish community when she moved to the Conejo Valley in 1980, after attending the now-closed Temple Soleil.

“When I first came out here, nobody even knew what a bar mitzvah card was,” she said. “I went to buy one at Rite-Aid and asked where I could find one. They said, ‘What?'”

Like Margolis, Begun, who was named Woman of the Year for her sisterhood and coordinated the Sisterhood 2000 convention, had no idea where things would lead when she joined.

“In 1970, they told me to take one job — make sure the candlesticks are on the bimah for the Shabbat services. By 1980, I was president of Sisterhood, and by 1990, I was president of the [24th] district.”

Begun, whose mother was also in sisterhood, said one of the best reasons for joining is that “it’s a place to meet people with similar interests who have common goals.” She said you don’t necessarily have to be a member of the temple to belong to the Sisterhood, whose 180 members’ similar interests include a Rosh Chodesh program, a women’s seder, book clubs, Torah study groups and a mah-jongg tournament.

Meeting people was one of the biggest reasons Lori Crane was drawn to the Adat Elohim Sisterhood. The b’nai mitzvah coordinator was at first just a member of the temple but found that getting involved in the group made a big difference.

“You keep going back because you like the women,” she said. “You feel like you can make a difference, and it makes you feel better.”

For Wendy Gootkin, co-president of Emek Hailanot Chapter of Hadassah, making a difference was what brought her to the organization. Gootkin, who grew up in Los Angeles, moved to the Conejo Valley because she wanted to give her kids a chance to ride their bicycles on the street in a safe community. She joined Hadassah soon after she moved, even though she didn’t know anyone.

“I wanted to meet Jewish women,” Gootkin explained. “The more involved I was, the more inspired I was to Hadassah’s cause.

“We are doing something very important and not only for Israel,” she said. “We adopt families for the holidays in the Conejo who have terminally ill children.”

The 200 members of Emek Hailanot are the youngest of the three Conejo Valley groups, with participants between the ages of 35 and 45. Out of the 200 members, Gootkin said, 30-40 women are the most active members.

“There’s a giant Jewish community out here,” said Gootkin’s co-president, Betsy Saltman, who believes that one of the biggest rewards women’s groups like Hadassah can offer are the friendships its members make.

Those friendships are expected to continue to bloom every year as more Jewish families come to the Conejo Valley. However, for those in their 20s and early 30s who fear these groups are still only for mothers and grandmothers, Saltman offers some advice: “When I got out of college, joining a Jewish organization gave my life meaning. Getting involved in Jewish life gives you direction.”

As one sisterhood member said, “Remember, the sorority president of today can be the sisterhood president of tomorrow.”

For information about Chabad of the Conejo, call (818)
991-0991 and for Chabad of Simi Valley, call (805) 577-0573; for information
about area Hadassah chapters, phone (818) 783-3488; for a list of congregations,
visit The Journal’s directory at Beyond the Kitchen Read More »

Goodman Quits Team

Leave a Comment / Up Front / The Baltimore Jewish News

Star basketball player Tamir Goodman ended his career at Towson University in Baltimore last week, when the school took the side of the head coach in a dispute that ended with Goodman’s resigning from the team.

The incident that sparked this took place after Towson beat Morgan State on Dec. 8 at the Towson Center. Goodman alleged that men’s basketball coach Michael Hunt held a chair over the player’s head and later kicked a stool that hit Goodman’s leg. Goodman filed a complaint later that night with the university police, and it was forwarded to the county state’s attorney’s office. He later dropped the charges. The Towson statement said the investigation had determined no criminal charges would be filed.

"Mr. Goodman’s participation as a basketball student-athlete has not been suspended or terminated," a university press release stated. "However, he has conveyed to [Athletic Director Wayne] Edwards and [Associate Director of Athletics] Margie Tversky his decision that he will not continue as a member of the Towson University men’s basketball team unless a head coaching change occurs."

That change will not occur, according to the university. Goodman’s father, Karl, said he was hoping his son could find another Division I school to play for, possibly in New York, and that they’d already received calls.

Goodman, formerly a student at Talmudical Academy High School, reacted with faith and confidence: "[Hunt] never liked the fact that I wouldn’t break down when he didn’t play me or when he criticized me. I kept coming back with a smile on my face, stronger and stronger. He was the one who broke, not me. I have the faith of Hashem, the faith of my people behind me. This is fitting that it happened during Chanukah, because like the example given over to us by the Maccabees, I had to keep strong for my people. And I did." — The Baltimore Jewish News

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He Mines the Mannerisms

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film, Up Front / Naomi Pfefferman

Don’t tell Elliott Gould his hysterically shticky "Ocean’s Eleven" character Ruben Tischkoff, is a negative Jewish stereotype. Sure, Tischkoff — wearing a gauche gold Magen David — says "schmuck" a lot and forks out bucks to finance the con in the Las Vegas heist flick.

But then again, Gould insists his brilliantly campy character is "an honest portrayal of an ethnic connection to old Vegas." The character is the kind of schmoozy, Jewish has-been who started out in the music biz, switched to casinos and still dresses in the 1960s-style garb that was popular when he was in his heyday (his wardrobe rivals Liberace’s). Of course, the ex-casino owner may just be pretending to be Jewish: "He could have taken on the name and the mannerisms to succeed in Vegas," Gould says.

The 63-year-old actor, who plays Ross and Monica’s dad on "Friends," began experimenting with Tischkoff’s voice and mannerisms as costume designer Jeffrey Kurland dressed him in rust-colored lamé. "By the third fitting, I was smoking a cigar, and I don’t smoke," says Gould, who shot to superstardom with ’60s films such as "M*A*S*H" but languished before reemerging as a tragic Jewish mobster in 1991’s "Bugsy."

He steals scenes from "Ocean’s" co-stars Brad Pitt and George Clooney but claims he wasn’t first in line for the role. "They dug deep to get conscious of me," says Gould (née Elliott Goldstein), who committed a Tischkoff-like faux pas when he asked if director Steven Soderbergh was Jewish. "He said, ‘No, I’m Swedish,’ and I said, ‘Well, you know, Swedish is a nationality, while Jewish is a way of life,’" Gould recalls. Soderbergh looked nonplused. "Hey, it’s OK with me," the actor quickly added. "I hope I haven’t blown the job."

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Destination: Strasbourg

Leave a Comment / Travel / Anthea Gerrie

It’s not every day a grown woman gets her cheeks pinched by another woman who’s tickled pink to see her eating, but then Yvonne Haller is no ordinary French restaurateur.

She’s one of the handful of honorary Jewish mothers — actually elegantly coifed and no doubt WASPy grande dames — who make the winstubs (wine bars) of Strasbourg so special; even heads of state gather to discuss business at their crowded trestle tables rather than somewhere more private.

Chez Yvonne has hosted European leaders, while members of the rock group, Radiohead, were equally unlikely guests at Le Clou, round the corner. These convivial hostelries and dozens like them provide a disarmingly homely counterpoint to the grave institutions that bring so many suits — politicians, lawyers and lobbyists — to the European city.

Perhaps the haimish ambiance is the result of Jewish influence — the community may have been decimated during the war, but Alsace has a phenomenally strong Jewish heritage reaching far beyond city limits. More than 200 historic sites document a shtetl system to rival Eastern Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries, when the region was home to half of France’s Jews. All but a quarter were wiped out by the Nazis, but Strasbourg remains a Jewish haven thanks to an influx of Sephardim from North Africa who have been enthusiastically embraced by the remaining Ashkenazim.

The blood link makes a visit to one of the prettiest parts of France particularly resonant for the Jewish visitor, who will find antique synagogue furnishings of magnificent quality in Strasbourg’s exquisite Musee Alsacien. There are also a host of other museums, synagogues and other testaments to Jewish life across the region.

Strasbourg, which has a host of magnificent museums, houses medieval Jewish tombstones in its Musee de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame; there is also a third-century mikvah that can be visited, the inevitable Rue des Juifs and two restaurants specializing in Jewish Alsatian cuisine. Although the magnificent Gothic synagogue was destroyed by the Germans in 1940, many beautiful shuls (Moorish in Thann, neoclassical in Haguenau, neoromanesque in Struth) still stand in the countryside, notably the 1791 temple in Pfaffenhoffen with its matzah oven and superb painted ark.

Even without the Jewish sites and heritage tours on offer, Alsace would be a delight and Strasbourg its crown jewel. The most decorated city in France, where every wooden surface seems to be exquisitely carved, every piece of cloth embroidered, every wineglass etched and every piece of pottery hand-painted, the riot of ornament somehow comes across as far from sweet, more a celebration of life.

To get an overview, take immediately to the water; bateaux-mouches (river boats) await in front of the Palais Rohan, where a teenage Marie-Antoinette came to be married. You will float through the picturesque ancient quarter of La Petite France into the handsome harbor and upriver to see the breathtaking buildings that are Strasbourg’s modern raison d’etre — the elliptically elegant European Parliament and swirly, swaggering Court of Human Rights designed by Richard Rodgers.

Once off the boat, your first stop in the engrossing Old Town should be the world’s prettiest and most engaging cathedral. Reminiscent of a pink wedding cake on the outside, the interior boasts a magnificent 16th-century astronomical clock whose 12:30 p.m. performance is not to be missed. The clock portal outside the cathedral is remarkable, too, not the least because it is flanked on one side by a piece of ancient synagogue statuary. Around the cathedral lies a warren of streets rich in winstubs and fine shops. The best shop for regional products is the large emporium on the square where you disembark the bateaux-mouches, lying in wait for the discerning tourists with fine linens, painted cookware and the carved iron for which the region is also famous.

Strasbourg is rich in well-priced, comfortable hostelries like the Tulip Inn-Hannong, where elegant rooms range from $60 to $125 per night. In a smart shopping street only a five-minute stroll from the Old Town, it offers a quieter alternative to the Maison Kammerzell, a hotel-restaurant famous for its ornate medieval exterior, and other lodgings close to the cathedral.

Although there is enough in the city to command a dedicated weekend trip, it would be a shame to miss the riches of the surrounding region. Colmar is another handsome town packed with fine museums and Jewish heritage sites. The Musee Bartholdi, dedicated to the creator of the Statue of Liberty, contains a collection of artifacts and works amassed by the Historical and Contemporary Jewish Art Fund, but the town’s most justly famous museum is the Unterlinden, a former Dominican convent with 13th-century cloister, packed with fabulous mediaeval art and a famous altarpiece.

Like Strasbourg, a river runs through it, and it’s delightful to have lunch by the water during summer; head for the Tanners’ District and Little Venice. Although Colmar does have a luxurious riverside hotel, it is more pleasant yet to stay in one of the surrounding villages on Alsace’s delightful Route des Vins.

While picnics are a good reason to summer in Alsace’s rolling hills, December is when the region, famous for its Christmas markets, is at its most atmospheric and entrancing. Strasbourg’s festive lights are simply unforgettable.

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A Look Back

Leave a Comment / Torah / Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben

When I was 16, my family moved from Santa Monica to Sacramento. I had just finished my first year at Santa Monica High School and had been selected to play drums with the school’s jazz band in the Hollywood Bowl (which I did the night before we moved). I was certainly not looking forward to leaving all my friends behind — and everything I had grown up with — to move to a strange new place where I knew no one. But my dad had a new job, so move we did.

What I could never have known at the time, as I sat glumly in the back seat of my parents car on that long drive to a new, unknown life, was that Sacramento would provide me with some of the greatest experiences of my life. Because I moved to Sacramento, I became very involved with the local synagogue youth group so I could meet new friends and ended up being elected president, going to leadership institutes at Jewish camps in California, and then in New York, and started on the road that led me to become a rabbi.

Because I moved to Sacramento, I found a remarkable drum and percussion teacher, through whom I got my first professional job as a drummer at 16. A year later, I was invited to join the Sacramento Symphony Orchestra, where I soon became the youngest principal percussionist in its history. I also had the privilege of performing all over California on tour with Germany’s leading electronic composer, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and became involved with some of the leading avant-garde composers in America. I remember looking back on the move to Sacramento later in life and saying, “I guess there really was a plan for my life, and I just didn’t know it at the time.”

This week’s Torah portion tells a similar tale about Joseph and his forced relocation to Egypt. Of course in Joseph’s story, his brothers are so jealous that they throw him in a pit and then sell him into slavery. After a series of ups and downs, Joseph rises to become second-in-command of all Egypt, and is responsible for saving his country and others from starvation during the great seven-year famine. The famine forces his brothers to seek food in Egypt, where they end up standing in front of Joseph — whom they don’t recognize — and pleading with him for their lives.

In one of the most poignant moments in the Torah, Joseph can’t hold back the emotion that is welling up inside of him and finally reveals himself — to their great shock and fear. In doing so, he tells them what human beings have so often said: “There was a purpose to what happened to me, and none of us knew it at the time.” And in so saying, Joseph extended the hand of forgiveness to his brothers.

But it’s more than that. Joseph, in this passage, did what we humans probably do best. He took the otherwise random experiences of his life, and he created a sense of meaning and purpose out of them. All of us do that. We look back at our experiences with a kind of spiritual 20/20 hindsight, and we choose what those experiences mean.

Joseph is a beautiful model for each of us. Each of us has the chance, over and over in our lives, to transcend difficult experiences of the past and to find a renewed sense of purpose and meaning in our relationships, struggles, triumphs and even tragedies. Perhaps that is the real lesson of this portion: that we are not trapped by the past; that we are not doomed to attach only one set of meanings to what happens to us and to the choices that we make.

As you look back over the past year and accept the challenge to find new meanings, perhaps you can forgive those who were the cause of petty hurts and injuries and find a renewed sense of your own vision of who you are and why you are here in the first place.

Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben is senior rabbi of Kehillat Israel Reconstructionist Congregation in Pacific Palisades and president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

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Schmoozapalosers

U.S. Terror Victims

Leave a Comment / United States, Worldwide / Jewish Journal Staff

The U.S. State Department will now include American victims of Palestinian terror on its Rewards for Justice Program, which offers “substantial monetary rewards”for information leading to the arrest or conviction of people responsible for acts of terrorism.

The government’s decision to include victims of Palestinian terror victims was spurred, in part, by an inquiry from Wendy Madnick, a Jewish Journal reporter, in connection with a July 2000 Journal article.

“The Journal’s reporter called the State Department and got a quote that articulated State Department policy distinguishing between the murder of Americans-qua-Americans versus the murder of Americans stam [simply],” said Rabbi Dov Fisher, whose daughters led a public awareness campaign on the issue. “That quote was one of the first times that someone from [the State Department] provided a quotable quote to a journalist for publication, and that quote’s publication gave the Zionist Organization of America [ZOA] something tangible to counter during its lobbying in Washington, D.C.,” said Fisher, head of the ZOA in Los Angeles and frequent Journal contributor.

The State Department is asking American families whose relatives were killed by Palestinian terrorists for permission to post their stories — along with rewards for information — on the Internet. Between 50 and 60 letters are being sent to families of Americans killed by Palestinian violence.

Stephen Flatow has already responded. His daughter Alisa was killed in April 1995, when a suicide bomber affiliated with Islamic Jihad blew up a bus near Kfar Darom, a settlement in the Gaza Strip. Alisa, 20, of West Orange, N.J., was taking a break from her studies at Brandeis University to visit Israel.

Until the recent State Department decision, Flatow said he had felt there was what he called a double standard, between efforts to apprehend those who kill Americans in other parts of the world and Palestinians who attack Americans. “We always felt we were being treated like the foster kids,” he said.

State Department officials say the decision to broaden the rewards program is not a response to the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, but had been under consideration for months as the administration weighed the legalities.

In September 2000, the State Department said it did not want to post rewards for information on Americans killed in the Middle East because of efforts by Israel and the Palestinian Authority to apprehend suspects. At that time, 60 of 65 suspects were either dead or in custody, they said.

However, the last year of violence — when the Palestinian Authority released many prisoners from its jails — forced the United States to change tactics, officials said.

Morton Klein, national president of the ZOA, said that in other parts of the world the U.S. government actively seeks information related to the deaths of Americans, including advertising in print and broadcast media and on billboards. “We are urging the State Department to try to capture these killers in the same way as they do in other countries,” Klein said.

Matthew E. Berger of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency contributed to this report.

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Sharon: No More Words

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / David Landau

Trick or treat? That slightly out-of-season challenge reflects Israeli reaction to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s dramatic call on his people for “a complete stop to all armed activities, especially the suicide attacks.”

Analysts noted that it was Arafat’s strongest call yet — in Arabic, on Palestinian television — to end Palestinian terror.

He also mentioned mortar bombing of Israeli settlements which, he claimed, give Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a pretext to strike at the Palestinian Authority. That showed that Arafat’s call extended to the territories as well — and not, as some chagrined Palestinians claimed, only to Israel proper.

However, after Arafat has voiced support for so many cease-fires that never materialized, Sharon did not even deign to react.

Indeed, within hours of the speech Sunday, Palestinian gunmen were again shooting at Israelis in the West Bank and firing mortars in the Gaza Strip. Three Israelis were injured Monday, one seriously, in shooting attacks.

“Israel’s patience with empty words and false promises has run out,” Sharon told French President Jacques Chirac in a phone call Monday. “Israel wants to see actions and results.”

Just 10 days earlier, at Sharon’s behest, the Security Cabinet formally declared Arafat “irrelevant” and forswore further dealings with him.

But in the army and the intelligence community, there is a view that Arafat’s speech might — just might — be a turning point, representing his belated realization of just how precarious his position has become.

Arafat spoke from his office in Ramallah, with Israeli tanks parked less than 300 yards away. Other Israel Defense Force armored units had entered Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza over the weekend on search-and-arrest missions that made a mockery of Palestinian pretensions to sovereignty in these territories. Israeli helicopters continued to destroy Palestinian security installations.

Perhaps even more sobering, from Arafat’s standpoint, was the fact that the United States was not publicly criticizing the Israeli military moves. It was as though Sharon had a green light from the Bush administration to mangle Arafat’s state-in-the-making.

Worse yet, Arafat’s standing in the international community, which plummeted drastically after a wave of suicide bombings in early December, showed no real signs of recovery.

Even within the Arab world, Arafat could feel his isolation growing. Egypt and Jordan signaled that they, too, are fed up with Arafat’s prevarication and want to see real action against terrorists such as those from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

For Egypt and Jordan, it is not just a matter of the peace process with Israel: The rise of Islamic fundamentalism can spill over into their countries, putting their regimes at risk.

Some Israeli observers therefore say Arafat may have reached a watershed and will finally take meaningful action to quell violence. If he does so, however, he surely will demand a diplomatic quid pro quo — from Israel, the Americans and the international community.

Palestinian officials said early in the week that they had shut dozens of Hamas and Islamic Jihad facilities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and arrested 180 activists.

Sharon’s circle gave little credence to such claims, or to Arafat’s call for an end to violence.

“All bluff,” Finance Minister Silvan Shalom said. “Anyone putting any faith in it will quickly be disappointed.”

Close aides say Sharon wants to resume negotiations with the Palestinians, but not with Arafat. After endless “last chances,” Sharon has concluded that the veteran Palestinian leader is committed to a “strategy of terror.”

In Sharon’s book, Arafat made his strategic choice back in 1993, as soon as the Oslo peace process began. He doggedly built up illegal armed groups alongside the Palestinian Authority police force — which itself was allowed to grow far beyond its legal size — and stockpiled weapons for them.

Moreover, Sharon sees the Hamas and Islamic Jihad activity as part of Arafat’s strategy. Ostensibly in opposition to the Palestinian Authority, the fundamentalist factions are, in effect, active members in Arafat’s “coalition of terror,” Sharon says, a means of bleeding Israel while leaving Arafat ways to profess his innocence.

On Monday, Hamas activists protested Israel’s assassination of a senior militant, Yakoub Dakidak. As Dakidak’s body was paraded through the streets of Hebron, the more militant Palestinian organizations seemed in no mood for peace.

In a manifest released Monday morning, Hamas and Islamic Jihad called upon all Palestinians to continue violence against Israel. Moreover, in interviews with Arab television networks, the groups announced that they refuse to obey Arafat’s order against suicide bombings.

The premier’s aides concede that Sharon promised President Bush not to harm Arafat physically or drive him out of the country. That, they say, is the meaning of the Cabinet’s “irrelevancy” resolution: Arafat will not be attacked directly, but will simply be ignored and rendered meaningless.

The frustration with Arafat now affecting Washington, Europe and Jerusalem is shared even among some in Arafat’s close coterie, Sharon’s aides say.

“We are not going to intervene in who leads the Palestinians,” the aides say. “But we hope he will be succeeded by someone ready to abandon terror, someone we can speak to. Meanwhile, if Arafat does not do the work of stopping terror, Israel will do it instead of him.”

With this kind of mood at the top in Israel, there is little time left for Arafat to prove to the rest of the world — above all to Washington — that this time he is serious.

Despite the U.S. veto on the stationing of international observers in the West Bank, America has myriad means to determine whether, at last, the Palestinian Authority is acting forcefully against terrorist groups. “Revolving-door” jails — in which terrorists are imprisoned with great fanfare, then quietly released shortly afterward — are no longer featured only in Israeli rhetoric; their existence has been confirmed by American, British and other diplomats who will be watching to see if the latest wave of Palestinians arrested actually remain behind bars.

This is a defining moment, both for Arafat and for the future of Israeli-Palestinian relations. Sharon may be earnest when he talks of his desire to see the last of Arafat. But at the end of the day it will be difficult for him to affect that outcome if the American administration does not agree that Arafat has become dispensable.

JTA Correspondent Aaron Lightman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

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