February 28, 2002

A Hero

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman / Rob Eshman

A Hero

As The Journal went to press last week, word came that terrorist kidnappers in Pakistan had brutally murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

The news broke upon us with a special sting. Even as I write this, almost a week later, the sadness is acute, intransigent.

I didn’t know Pearl. But contributing editor Tom Tugend, who reports on his death inside, has long been an acquaintance of Pearl’s parents. The world lost a much-respected journalist, his family lost a loving son and brother, his wife Marianne lost a husband and father-to-be.

Having grown up in the San Fernando Valley, as Pearl did, and having attended Birmingham High School in the class three years before him, I do know that it is no stretch to see Pearl as a product of this community.

The L.A. Jewish community has produced many men and women like him: successful, passionate, committed not to an ideal lifestyle, but to ideals.

In Los Angeles, Pearl experienced a world enriched by the differences of its inhabitants. The particular community Pearl arose from, the Jewish one, was a part of that mosaic. Pearl dedicated his life to closing the distances between peoples by increasing their understanding of one another. Ultimately, he gave his life for this.

Since Pearl’s death, most of the media commentary has rightly praised his courage as a foreign correspondent. Indeed, his determination to shed light on a culture different from our own led to his capture.

But what led to his murder was something else.

We may never know what part his being Jewish played in his death. The war in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of eight journalists, Jewish and not. And the cowards who killed Pearl have vowed to kill any and all Americans.

But the fact is that according to a recently released videotape, Pearl looked into his captors’ camera and said, “My name is Daniel Pearl. I’m a Jewish American. My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish. I am a Jew.” Then they killed him.

That makes Pearl more than just a journalistic hero. He died not just in seeking the truth, but in telling the truth about who he was and what he believed in. What Pearl’s killers took as an admission of his guilt was really an affirmation of his faith.

Daniel Pearl was an astonishingly brave and good man. His memory will be a light not only to his family, but to us all.

A Way to Help

The 200,000-strong Argentine Jewish community is weak to the point of collapse. As reported in these pages last week, the currency devaluation that followed an economic meltdown in that country this winter has left a thriving, mostly middle-class community destitute.

Hit particularly hard are the banks and small businesses that formed the core of the Jewish community’s prosperity. Now, with the poverty rate approaching 25 percent, food and shelter are no longer certainties. Around 20,000 Argentine Jewish families are on welfare and need assistance.

The Dec. 20 riots that led to the downfall of President Fernando de la Rua and the increase in post-collapse crime have added a sense of physical peril to the community’s economic woes.

For some Argentine Jews, the answer is immigration, either to Israel, which expects an influx of between 5,000-20,000 Argentines, or to other countries, especially the United States. For those who choose to remain in Argentina, the answer is economic assistance now, and for the foreseeable future.

How can we help? The Jewish Agency and the Joint Distribution Committee have turned to the North American Jewish communities to raise approximately $42.5 million to support aliyah and relief efforts that could eventually total more than three times that. Los Angeles, the second largest Jewish community, has been asked for $2.125 million of that sum.

The Jewish Federation of Los Angeles has been through troubled and often controversial times over this past year. But, as it demonstrated in its emergency fundraising for the victims of Sept. 11, The Federation is an ideal vehicle through which we can help Jews and others facing immediate danger. The Federation board has committed to provide Argentine Jewry with Los Angeles’ fair share — $2.12 million.

This Sunday, Federation phone volunteers will call seeking donations as part of the annual Super Sunday phone-a-thon. You can direct your donations toward Argentine relief, or give toward the overall campaign, which serves dozens of agencies and needs here, in Israel and elsewhere — including Argentina.

A Hero Read More »

A Portion of Parshat Ki Tisa

Leave a Comment / Kids & Teens / Abby Gilad

Oh boy, do the Israelites slip up this week. They have just received the Ten Commandments, have heard God speak to them and have vowed to do all that God commands them, even if they do not fully understand why they must. Forty days later, they’re dancing around a calf made of melted golden earrings and calling it a god! What happened?

Have you ever had a serious talk with your parents and vowed never to misbehave again? You will never pinch your sister again. You will never miss another homework assignment. The promise you make is a true one, made from the bottom of your heart. Two weeks later, you just can’t take it anymore, and, whoops!

Keeping your promises, especially the important ones, is always an uphill battle. But don’t give up. Wipe the slate clean, and start again.

A Portion of Parshat Ki Tisa Read More »

Your Letters

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor / Jewish Journal

Friedman’s Plan

Never mind that Israel has followed the prescription of Thomas Friedman and Peace Now, letter by letter, since 1993 (“Half the Kingdom,” Feb. 22). The result has been an Israel that is challenged more than anytime since her War of Independence.

Rather than take responsibility for leading Israel to its current morass, Friedman runs to Saudi Arabia, the paragon of justice in the Middle East, and comes back with this simple solution: Israel should withdraw from more territory and achieve yet another conference and pledge from the Arab world. Never mind that this withdrawal would now abandon over 10 percent of Israel’s Jewish population behind the new border. “East” Jerusalem, with a majority Jewish population, today would be ceded to the Arab world.

Jerusalem’s walled Old City would become Arab and all of Israel’s remaining neighborhoods would be less than a softball’s throw from the new Arab authority. Jane Harman notes that there could be some “border modifications.” Never mind that even the most “reasonable” Arab Palestinian, Sari Nusseibeh, says that Israel will have to leave all its eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods in such an agreement.

Friedman might get a new book deal, but as history has already shown, his ideas will not bring one day of peace to Israel.

Bennett Zimmerman, Santa Monica

Special Education

Thank you for highlighting the importance of special education (“Leave No Child Behind” Feb. 22). While the challenges in the field remain great, much has been accomplished in the past decade. With the generous support of the Harold and Libby Ziff Foundation, the Bureau of Jewish Education (BJE) has been able to direct more than $1 million to help support the work of resource specialists at 12 Jewish day schools. A number of the community’s day and religious schools use part of the $1.6 million of The Jewish Federation’s financial support distributed annually to schools through the BJE to provide services in support of students with special education needs. In addition to the BJE’s growing Lomed L.A. initiative referenced in The Journal, the BJE, through a grant from the Jewish Community Foundation, is working to establish a special day class for students with moderate disabilities. Information about this class can be obtained by calling Dr. David Ackerman, director of BJE educational services, at (323) 761-8606. This is a time of significant strides toward addressing a continuing, compelling need.

Dr. Kenneth Schaefler, Director, Special Education and Psychological Services Bureau of Jewish Education

A recent issue of The Journal cited the “stunning” and rather alarming statistic that 30 percent of Jewish children suffer from significant learning problems, including attention-deficit (hyperactivity) disorder (ADD/ADHD). Nothing could be further from the truth.

The incidence of mental retardation in the general population is 1.5 percent, that of ADD with or without hyperactivity is about 3 percent, and that of other assorted learning disabilities ranges from 6 to 8 percent. Thus, the total disability load in the general population falls between 10 to 12 percent, and that number includes many children whose problems resolve with fairly minimal treatment. The number of children with learning problems requiring prolonged remediation is most likely closer to 6 or 7 percent. There is absolutely no reason to believe that Jewish children suffer from higher rates of psychological and educational disabilities than non-Jewish children, and, in fact, the mean IQ score of Jewish kids is nearly one standard deviation (12-16 points) higher than that of the general population.

Those who raise funds for the treatment of disabled kids may, unfortunately, be tempted to buttress their cause by exaggerating the vulnerabilities of our children. However, during these troubled times, raising kids is tough enough and there’s no need to alarm parents needlessly.

Let’s focus our remedial attentions upon those youngsters who need them and avoid pathologizing the rest of our children.

Dr. Jonathan Kellerman, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Psychology, USC School of Medicine

“Trembling Before G-d”

Ivor Davis made a dangerous mistake when he reported that Agudath Israel’s Rabbi Avi Shafran saw homosexuality as “mental illness” (“‘Trembling’ Truth,” Feb. 15). Fortunately, readers can see for themselves, since The Jewish Journal printed Shafran’s piece in its entirety the following week. What he did say was that with prodigious effort, some homosexuals are sometimes able to alter their orientation through therapy.

I’m not sure who should take greater offense — Shafran, for being unfairly accused of a position he would never endorse, the entire Orthodox community which was maligned by extension or the millions who see therapists without ever considering themselves mentally ill. Confusing mental illness with seeking therapy is dangerous, because it implies that only people who are seriously ill seek the help of therapists. It thereby discourages the many who could benefit from a bit of support, guidance or crisis intervention from seeking it.

The position of the Orthodox community will continue to be one of unqualified compassion for homosexuals, while rejecting active homosexuality. Our thanks to The Jewish Journal for allowing the record to speak for itself.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein, Los Angeles

I am a Jewish, married, heterosexual woman who has just saw” Trembling Before G-d,” and then I read Rabbi Avi Shafran’s article, (“Dissembling Before G-d,” Feb. 22), which he obviously thought was a cute play on words. For shame, rabbi, using the article as a platform for your beliefs and plugging the organization to do away with homosexuality. The purpose of the film was to portray the plight of homosexuals. It was not to give equal time to the Orthodox rabbinate. There was nothing incomplete and distorted.

The film portrayed the deep anguish and pain experienced by Orthodox gay and lesbians inflicted upon them by their parents, rabbis and communities. They are abandoned and humiliated. The film showed one man who struggled for over 10 years with his homosexuality because of advice given to him by a rabbi in Israel, advising him to be in therapy, to pray … anything to remove his stigma. It did not work. I do not believe Shafran is an example of the “thoughtful Orthodox Jews who show compassion,” as mentioned in his article. Where are they?

Iris Chayet, Los Angeles

Chief Bernard Parks

You have to be hands- on involved with the LAPD and community crime prevention to understand the damage Chief Bernard Parks did (“Should We Join the Fray?” Feb. 15). No division has the vice, anti gang, narcotics or traffic staffing to insure safety and quality of life. Graffiti runs rampant. Wait times on 911 are too long.

Parks decimated community-based policing by eliminating senior lead officers (SLO). Only former Mayor Richard Riordan’s arm twisting got some efforts restored; SLOs still do not get the time or department resources to solve neighborhood problems. Suggestions and complaints from the public to Parks are ignored.

Write to your councilmember and to the police commission. Los Angeles deserves a chief who will respect civil rights, listen to and work with the law abiding public, discipline officers fairly and fight crime.

Neal Berke , Police Community Co-Representative LAPD Reporting District 948 Neighborhood Watch

Jewish Porn Star

As a member of Temple Beth Ami, I would like to say that a sizable number of members were not happy with the invitation to a porn star to speak to our congregation. Seeing your rabbi on Comedy Central may be good for a few laughs, but the honored speaker at Temple Beth Ami’s adult education program was a poor choice on many levels.

Perhaps it was naive to think that Nina Hartley would use her podium to examine her involvement in the porn industry in a meaningful way.

Hartley failed to express remorse, and took no responsibility for damage caused by her “profession.” Her banal advice could have been given more competently by a marriage counselor or therapist. Her mantra was, “make friends with your body,” but she also declared that she had gotten breast implants for her “scrawny chest.” Hartley and her fiancé declared their love for each other, but then announced that they still enjoyed multiple partners. More meaningful discussions of sexuality can be found on MTV. Her appearance as an honored guest of Temple Beth Ami was — dare I say it — wrong.

Sandy Hack , Valencia

Correction

The Feb. 22 calendar included an incorrect phone number for the Fountain Theatre’s production of Arthur Miller’s “After The Fall.” The correct number is (323) 663-1525. The play runs through March 31.

Your Letters Read More »

Sacred Text

Leave a Comment / Womans Voice / Marlene Adler Marks

"We’re coming to Ki Tisa," said my daughter, Samantha. "I remember how I studied the golden calf, and how Aaron asked the Israelites for their jewelry."

Samantha’s bat mitzvah was seven years ago this weekend. Ki Tisa was her Torah portion. Since then, we’ve reminisced about the party and the service, but never the point of it all — the sacred text. Her memory of the event was multilayered, as I should have guessed.

I’ve been thinking about sacred text lately, following New York City’s Feydeau-ish attempt to designate a book that everyone in the Big Apple can read at once. There have been read-a-thons all over the country; last year Chicagoans read "To Kill a Mockingbird."

But the New York project is caught between "Native Speaker," by Chang Rae-Lee, which features a Queens city councilman; and "The Color of Water: A Black Man’s Tribute to His White Mother," by James McBride. Neither book satisfies everyone.

That’s because, I guess, after Sept. 11, people are less interested in ecumenical relief than words that engage the soul, an experience with sacred literature. That’s not what they say, of course. Even intellectuals knock the desire for spiritual challenge.

"I don’t like these mass-reading bees," said Harold Bloom, author of "The Book of J," which posits that a part of the Bible was written by a woman. "It is rather like the idea that we are all going to pop out and eat Chicken McNuggets or something else horrid at once," he was quoted as saying in The New York Times.

Bloom termed the act of reading itself, "too private an experience for such municipal orchestration."

Surely Bloom knows better. As my daughter and I can attest, much more happens when we read sacred text together than can be derided as a "reading bee." Having everyone on the same page creates civic engagement, intragroup respect and generational commitment, the very goals that, I believe, are inspiring these various city read-ins. Jews had the idea of the joint read, the chevruta, 1,000 years ago.

I guess it’s too much to hope that America’s cities will take up studying the Torah, the Christian Bible and the Quran, though that is precisely the kind of spiritually satisfying feast that we require these days. In the meantime, we in the Jewish community might at least savor what we have. The Los Angeles Board of Rabbis, in its own effort to share the reading spirit, encourages us to share "Who Wrote the Bible?" But as Rabbi Steven Carr Reuben told me, "Of course our goal is to have everyone read the Torah itself."

What happens to Jews who read Torah together?

Not for nothing is reading Torah together considered a mitzvah. When two Jews discuss Torah, God is among them, the sages say. Otherwise, it’s a wasted opportunity.

What happens next is magic, far more than merely learning the law. Through Torah we learn how to ask a question, how to hone the imagination, and how to measure time.

There is no past, no present, no future in Torah, the sages teach. We learn that our most brilliant ideas were considered long before us, and that we’ll be both courageous and lucky if our children will carry them on.

When I first began reading the weekly sedrah, my secular Jewish friends thought I was nuts. They were still unified by what author Moshe Waldoks called the sacred text of the Borscht belt: Henny Youngman’s "Take my wife, please."

But as Andrew Silow-Carroll writes in last week’s Forward, jokes, even Jerry Seinfeld’s, have lost that power of memory. We need to read text again, to knit the group memory, whether or not we agree on what that text might say.

I have read Torah week after week, year after year. I’ve read it as a young mother; an ardent feminist; with Orthodox, secularists and people who never saw the text before. Somehow or other, my daughter came along for the ride.

Sacred Text Read More »

World Briefs

Leave a Comment / United States / JTA Staff

Violence Continues, Despite Plan

Despite the Saudi peace initiative being bandied about, violence continued in Israel. On Wednesday, a Palestinian murdered his Israeli employer at a factory in Atarot, north of Jerusalem. Also Wednesday, two Israeli police officers were wounded when a female Palestinian suicide bomber blew up her car. The incident took place when police stopped the car at a West Bank checkpoint near the border with Israel. Police said two other people in the car with the bomber were critically wounded.

Anti-Israel Move Expected at U.N.

Israel is bracing for an anti-Israel resolution at the U.N. Security Council. A draft of the resolution initiated by the Palestinians calls for a Security Council mission to the region, an international monitoring mechanism and for Israel to abide by rules regarding the protection of civilians in times of war.

Israel is meeting with representatives of other countries to express its opposition to international mediation, which they say would reward Palestinian terror. An American official said the United States is likely to veto “whatever resolution is put forward” and has told Council members that only direct engagement with the parties on the ground, not resolutions, will help solve the conflict.

13 Americans Killed in Intifada

At least 13 American Jews have been killed in the 17-month-old Palestinian intifada, a new report says.

The report, released by the Zionist Organization of America, says an additional 38 Americans have been wounded in Palestinian terrorist attacks.

The Zionist Organization of America says 25 Americans have been killed by Palestinians and 63 wounded since the Oslo peace accords were signed in 1993.

El Al President Resigns

After 15 months on the job, David Hermesh, the president of El Al airlines, resigned Feb. 20, citing “substantial professional differences” with the airline’s chairman, Michael Levy. Among the points of dispute between the two was a strategy for rehabilitating the airline, which has suffered substantial losses because of sagging tourism to Israel.

Vandals Hit Two Paris Stores

Anti-Semitic vandals painted large yellow Stars of David on the windows of a Jewish-owned toy store and a kosher butcher shop in Paris. The stars, which appeared last Friday in an affluent Paris neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower, resembled those used by the Nazis in the 1930s to designate Jewish- owned businesses.

A B’nai Brith spokesperson called the vandalism at the toy store the more “worrisome” of the two incidents, because, unlike the one at the kosher butcher’s, there was “no indication that it was owned by a member of the Jewish community.” This was the third such incident in France in February.

3 Lebanese Accused of Spying

Lebanon claimed to have uncovered an Israeli spy ring. The Lebanese Army said in a statement that three Lebanese men had been arrested on suspicion of passing information to Israel regarding the locations of Lebanese and Syrian army positions in Lebanon as well as information about Hezbollah operations.

ADL Settles Suit

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) settled a 9-year-old civil lawsuit against the organization. The ADL agreed last week to pay three remaining plaintiffs $178,000 in a suit dating to 1993.

Originally filed by 19 plaintiffs, the suit had accused the ADL of illegally obtaining and disseminating the private records of the 19 people in order to blacklist them. The ADL continues to deny any wrongdoing.

London Calling Ends

Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks has postponed his sabbatical to become the acting head of the cash-strapped London School of Jewish Studies (LSJS) after the dramatic resignation this week of its principal, Rabbi Abner Weiss.

The recently divorced Weiss, 63, also tendered his resignation less than one-third of the way into his five-year contract as rabbi of Western Marble Arch Synagogue. The South African-born rabbi, who arrived in England in September 2000 after serving for many years as the spiritual leader of Beth Jacob Congregation in Los Angeles, cited stress as the reason for wanting to return to the United States to pursue “a vocation in counseling and academia.” Sacks, who will take on the role of acting principal of LSJS — Britain’s only centrist Orthodox rabbinic training and higher-education institute — pledged to “set in motion a series of measures aimed at turning the school into a financially viable educational centre for the community it serves.” — Staff Report

Above briefs courtesy of the JTA.

World Briefs Read More »

Calling It Like It Is

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Rabbi Daniel Gordis

Not long ago, we were invited to friends for Shabbat lunch. They’d recently moved into a new apartment, in more or less the same neighborhood, and over the course of conversation, someone asked them how they liked the new location. Our hostess, a refined and relatively private person, said that she liked the new location much better. She mentioned a number of reasons, following which she added that from the new apartment, they didn’t hear as much of the shooting at Gilo during the night. "And in the old place," she added as a kind of afterthought, "I just couldn’t stand making love to the sound of gunfire."

A complete showstopper. All the adults at the table (the kids, thankfully, seemed not to have heard her) were silent, and you could see all the spouses looking at each other. Everyone knew exactly what she was talking about. No one ever mentions it, but now, this incredibly strange side of life in southern Jerusalem had just been made explicit. There’s no dimension of life that hasn’t been affected by this now-admitted war, but there’s also no sense that anyone has a way out of it.

Sharon’s speech to the nation tonight, Feb. 21, was pathetic. In the absence of anything concrete to suggest, he reminded Israel’s citizens how we’ve made the desert bloom, have built a medical system second to none, a top rate-educational system, a first-rate military, yada yada yada. "The country is not collapsing." Direct quote. How inspiring. The only thing that people wanted to hear was a sense that he had a solution or a plan. That, of course, was not forthcoming.

Interestingly, the only thing that most people in this country agree about is that he’s got to go. The left thinks that the way out of this is to talk to our erstwhile peace partners, and since Sharon would rather bomb them than talk to them, he’s got to go. The middle, which does not believe that there is anyone out there worth talking to and therefore more or less prefers some sort of unilateral separation, knows that Sharon doesn’t have the stomach or the political stability to allow him to withdraw from the settlements that such an approach would require, so they think he’s got to go. And the right, which says, "if we’re going to have a war, let’s at least win it," believes that Sharon is a prisoner of American interests on the eve of the war against Iraq (scheduled, according to the Israeli press, for May), and thus, he’s paralyzed, and has to go. Sharon, of course, plans to stay.

So in the absence of any good news on the horizon, we decided to leave the kids in Jerusalem for two days and go to Tel Aviv overnight. Some museums, some shopping, sleep late — a mini-vacation. But it turns out that it’s not as simple to get away from it all as one would expect.

The night before we left, there was a suicide bombing on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. A policeman who had pulled over a suspicious car and ordered the driver out of the car was killed when the driver detonated the explosives by remote control. The news mentioned that it happened on Highway 1. Later that evening, when we’d long forgotten about the report, our son, Avi, asked how we were going to get to Tel Aviv.

We told him the regular highway. "Isn’t that Highway 1?" he asked. He turned white as a sheet, but we had no idea why. When we finally figured it out, it made no difference that we explained that it’s a completely different part of the road, and that nothing has ever happened on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway. Avi was petrified about our leaving, this time not because he’d be home alone, but because he figured we’d get killed just trying to go on vacation. We promised to call when we got there, and did.

We didn’t get shot on the way to Tel Aviv, but traffic was slow at times because of a large number of tanks being trucked from Jerusalem somewhere north. Unusual, even here. We got to Tel Aviv in the middle of the day, checked in at the hotel, and walked to the outdoor market at Nachalat Binyamin, which has a wonderful outdoor crafts fair every Tuesday. Signs of the effects of the hostilities and of the collapsing economy are everywhere, quite obviously. A lot of bumper stickers for sale, many reading "ein shalom, ein parnassah" — "with no peace, there’s no income."

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around, and then eventually walked to dinner at the Azrielli Towers.

As we were getting ready to go into the Towers, some teenagers approached us and offered us a bumper sticker. It read: "Transfer — A Step in the Right Direction." Disgusted, I handed it back to one of the kids, probably about 18 years old or so. "Why don’t you want it," she asked me.

"Because you’re revolting," I told her.

My wife, Elisheva, was appalled. "Why were you so rude to her?"

"Because she’s old enough to have a brain. Here’s what I want to know. When she hands out bumper stickers about transfer, what does she think? That they’re all going to go willingly? And if they don’t, how do we get them to move? How many is she willing to kill? And what about the fact that they, too, live here? And to where will she send them, since no one else wants them? And what does she think transferring millions of Palestinians by force will do to the image of Jews in the world? Actually, I think I was nice to her, relative to what she deserved."

A bit of a downer before dinner, so we walked through the mall for a while. And I told Elisheva about a conversation I’d had the night before with a friend when we went out for a late-night beer. An academic sort with great liberal credentials (very involved in foreign workers’ rights groups, interfaith dialogue, etc.), he said that there’s never been a worse period in the 25 or so years he’s been here. And he sees no way out. And he just can’t take it anymore. "You know what we should do," he said. "The next time they do a suicide bombing, we should pick a midsize village, and just wipe it out. Every man, woman and child. No one survives. And we tell them that the next time they do it, we’ll take out two villages. And then three. We’ve got to put a stop to this."

I was completely stupefied. This, from the person who more than anyone else is responsible for our decision to move here. "That’s a great idea," I told him. "First of all, what good will it do? Just make them hate us more? And why do you think the world will let us do that? But more than that, is that the kind of country you want us to be? I thought you moved here because you want to create a different kind of society. You want to sink to their level? What will you tell your kids about why you moved here?" He hesitated for a second, and then muttered, "I already have nothing to say to my kids when they ask why I moved here." So we ordered some more beer and left it at that.

The next morning, we’d missed the morning news when we woke up, and got stuck with one of those horrific Israeli talk shows, in which everyone (left and right) agreed that Sharon had to go and that yesterday had been a terrible day. But what, I asked myself, was so bad? We had heard that one couple had been "moderately wounded" in a drive-by shooting in the West Bank. But something else must have happened. We decided to buy a paper before heading to breakfast in the hotel dining room. And then we saw the headlines: six soldiers shot dead at the checkpoint. One wounded. One survived.

As we listened to the hum of conversations in the hotel dining room, in which every single person was reading the paper, it was clear why this was such a big deal. It wasn’t only the tragic loss of life, or the fact that Marwan Barghouti, seen by many as a possible successor to Arafat, had sent "blessings" to the gunmen. It was that this wasn’t terrorism, but guerrilla warfare. And we’re not winning. They blew up a tank a few days ago, ending the myth that the kids we send out there in armor are safe. They attacked a checkpoint, and using impeccable military tactics, wiped out more kids. "Fourteen soldiers killed in seven days," said the paper. War, was the clear message. But not one that we seem to know how to win. Which was why everyone was so hopeful — even though we basically knew better — that Sharon would have something to say tonight. But he didn’t. "The country is not collapsing." That’s it? For a moment, I wasn’t even sure I was hearing right.

Making our way back to the hotel later that day after a visit at the Tel Aviv Museum, we saw a handwritten sign taped to a nearby store window. At first, we both thought it was something about the store. But it wasn’t. It said, "yihyeh tov — ein vada’ut legabei ta’arikh ve-sha’ah." Rough translation: "Things will be OK. But no information is available as to the date or time."

It was, it suddenly struck me, possibly a bit too optimistic.

Calling It Like It Is Read More »

Security vs Civil Liberty

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / James D. Besser

As the United States intensifies its war against terrorism at home and abroad, the Jewish community may be poised to serve as a bridge between the Bush administration and some of its critics in the civil liberties community.

That was evident at last week’s Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) plenum in Washington, where delegates debated and ultimately passed a resolution expressing reservations about some of the policies instituted by the government to wage this new war.

Judging by the JCPA debate, Jews are deeply ambivalent — torn between admiration for an administration that is firm in its resolve to fight a terrorist threat its predecessors ignored, and the fear that some of its leaders are exploiting the crisis in an ideology-driven effort to roll back these protections.

That ambivalence is hardly surprising.

The enemy in this new war is shadowy, its next moves impossible to discern. Six months into the battle, it’s harder than ever to judge whether the new threat facing the nation justifies a significant recalibration of the balance between national security concerns and basic constitutional protections.

After a slow start, the Jewish community is beginning to wrestle with those issues, taking a balanced approach that could be useful to the nation in the days ahead.

The Bush administration may have good reasons for policies like detention without charges and military tribunals to try terror suspects, but they have done a woefully inadequate job of explaining them to the American people. Instead, they simply invoke national security as reason enough, and imply that critics are somehow soft on terrorism. Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, in particular, sometimes gives the impression he is just settling old ideological scores, not responding rationally and responsibly to a new national threat.

But the civil liberties groups haven’t been any better at making their case. Al Qaeda has been hurt by the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan, but its leaders are probably still alive, and its adherents are still active in up to 60 countries around the world.

Critics of administration anti-terror policies have failed to convince the public that they understand the new threat and the need to take serious action against it.

They offer few clues how they would remedy the deficiencies that left the nation wide open to attack on Sept. 11.

The Jewish community is poised to play a bridging role between the critics and the administration, although until now, the debate has been muted. Too many Jewish leaders, fearful of losing precious access to the administration, have been reluctant to utter anything that implies even mild criticism. Others, pleased that the administration seems ready to take on some of Israel’s enemies as part of this new war, have refused to say or do anything that might rock that boat.

The debate at the JCPA plenum may signal a new and more useful role for the Jewish community. Delegates debated a resolution, sponsored by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (UAHC), that strikes a balance between praising the administration’s anti-terror efforts and pointing out specific areas of concern.

The resolution acknowledges that we live in a radically changed world, with new dangers that must be dealt with.

But, in language that never becomes strident, it makes it clear that new policies and procedures must be examined carefully, to make sure the need for them outweighs the costs regarding civil liberties.

To its credit, UAHC forced the Jewish community, through the JCPA umbrella, to start dealing with some of these difficult questions.

Despite the active, informed debate at JCPA, the Jewish community — with its long commitment to civil liberties, but also with an acute awareness of the challenge of fighting terrorism in this brave new world — is still groping in the dark. So is the rest of the nation. But that groping is much better than blind acceptance of the newest claim that national security requires sweeping, hard-to-reverse changes in traditional protections of American civil liberties.

Security vs Civil Liberty Read More »

Saudi Arabia Stirring

Leave a Comment / Worldwide / Eric Silver

Henry Kissinger famously said that Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics. Last Sunday’s cabinet decision to pull back the tanks from Yasser Arafat’s Ramallah headquarters, but keep the Palestinian leader quarantined in that West Bank city, was a classic vindication of the former secretary of state’s wit and wisdom.

The decision was dictated by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, against the more generous urgings of his foreign and defense ministers, Labor’s Shimon Peres and Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, and even some of his own Likud legislators and the Shin Bet security service. Never mind that it insulted Arafat and played badly abroad. It kept Sharon’s ungainly coalition intact — and put off the moment when far-right ministers like Avigdor Lieberman will defect to Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign to replace Sharon as party leader and ultimately as prime minister.

The Palestinians were furious. This was not the response they had been led to expect after arresting three of the alleged assassins of the Israeli Tourism Minister, Rechavam Ze’evi, and agreeing to an informal truce during a Jewish and Muslim holiday week. Saeb Erakat, a senior peace negotiator, condemned the cabinet resolution as “despicable and shameless.” It showed, he said, that the Israelis had no political program. “They just want to take the path of escalation and destruction.”

Peres and his Foreign Ministry professionals were left to pick up the pieces. Like half-hearted cheerleaders, they accentuated the positive. Israel, one diplomat said, was signaling Arafat that “there is a reward for good behavior.” The Palestinians had yielded to pressure and arrested the Ze’evi suspects, “a move in the right direction.” So Israel pulled back the tanks.

Sharon’s spokesman, Ra’anan Gissin, put a less sunny spin on it. The arrests, he acknowledged, were a small step in the right direction, but the Palestinians needed to do more. “If Arafat doesn’t want to be humiliated,” he said, “let him act against the terrorists. If he wants to leave Ramallah, he knows what he has to do.”

The dovish half of Sharon’s coalition argues that the partial lifting of the Ramallah siege is not the end of the story. They highlight the key clause in the cabinet resolution which says that Israel’s answer to any request by Arafat to leave Ramallah will be determined by the prime minister and defense minister. The issue will not have to go back to the cabinet. “That leaves a lot of leeway in the hands of Sharon and Ben-Eliezer, who also have to compromise with each other,” a Foreign Ministry official suggested.

On this optimistic scenario, Arafat will get the message, rein in the gunmen and make more arrests. Then Sharon will let him travel more freely. The same diplomat was ready to bet that the government would allow Arafat to go to Beirut for an Arab League summit at the end of March.

There are a lot of “ifs” along the way. A month is an eternity in the Middle East. Arafat is not known for swallowing his pride, nor is Sharon for flexibility. As Yediot Aharonot’s political analyst Shimon Shiffer wrote on Monday: “If it were up to Sharon, Arafat would remain imprisoned in Ramallah forever.”

The doves are pinning their hopes on a gathering diplomatic momentum. The world will not leave the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to spiral into chaos. The Egyptians, who have influence with Arafat and a peace treaty with Israel, are active. So are the Europeans and the Americans.

Most intriguingly, Saudi Arabia is stirring. Crown Prince Abdullah’s initiative under which all the Arab states would recognize Israel and establish normal relations with it, in return for Israeli withdrawal from all the territory occupied in the 1967 war. Abdullah expects an Arab League summit next month to back his peace initiatives, EU foreign policy chief Javer Solan told Reuters on Wednesday. “He expects at the Arab League summit they will be approved,” Solana told Reuters.

The Israeli right remains suspicious. Is Abdullah laying a trap? Does he simply want to show how “intransigent” Israel really is? But even Sharon acknowledges that the initiative cannot be brushed aside. He has asked the Americans to investigate it further, not least because the prince has won the endorsement of Arafat, the Arab League and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell. “I think it’s an important step that we have welcomed,” Secretary of State Colin Powell said Monday, adding that he hoped “that in the weeks ahead, it’ll be flushed out in greater detail.”

The Israeli media have given it exuberant, even enthusiastic, coverage. “What looked like a brilliant public relations ploy,” star columnist Nahum Barnea commented in Yediot Aharonot, “has developed, maybe, a life of its own. The optimists among us recall President Sadat’s peace initiative. It also began with a declaration that looked like a public relations ploy.”

The Israeli diplomat offered a more sober assessment: “The Saudis are saying to Arafat, if you don’t get your act together, we may make a deal without you. They are also giving Israel an incentive to be more forthcoming.”

Henry Siegman, an American Middle East analyst who knows the Saudis and the Israelis well, was even more phlegmatic. In an interview with Israel television, he said he did not expect the Sharon government to accept the initiative, but the Saudis were planting a seed for the future. They were telling the Israeli public that the Arab world was not bent on destroying them.

He is probably right, but, as Barnea wrote: “The excitement caused by the Saudi initiative attests to how great the thirst is for a new, redeeming idea that will fill the void that has been created between the Israelis and the Palestinians.”

Saudi Arabia Stirring Read More »

Eulogies:Rosalind Glaser Peters

Leave a Comment / Old Stories / Herb Glaser

Rosalind Glaser Peters died on Jan. 6, 2002, at the age of 91.

She was our "Aishes Chayil," woman of valor, elegance, strength and dignity. The unparalled, articulate, beloved matriarch of our family.

Born in New York in 1909, she was a true pioneer of the Los Angeles Jewish Community, an expert spokeswoman and fundraiser for innumerable philanthropic causes. Among her many accomplishments, she founded the FDR chapter of Hadassah and was one of the founders of the Benefactors. She is loved and will be dearly missed by everyone who ever met her. She is the Crown Jewel of her family and her extended community.

She is survived by her husband, David Peters; sons, Manuel (Harriet), Jerome, and Herb (Sharon) Glaser; grandchildren Tamar (Doron), Jonathan (Nancy), Samuel (Marcia), Aharon (Dena), Yom Tov (Leah), Joel, Samantha and Aubra; 10 great-grandchildren; brothers, Jack and Charles Barenfeld; and sister-in-law, Marion Barenfeld.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be sent in the name of Rosalind Glaser Peters to Hadassah Medical Center-Jerusalem or the United Jewish Fund.

Eulogies:Rosalind Glaser Peters Read More »

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

Jewish Journal

Cable Vision

A Hero

A Portion of Parshat Ki Tisa

Your Letters

Sacred Text

World Briefs

Calling It Like It Is

Security vs Civil Liberty

Saudi Arabia Stirring

Eulogies:Rosalind Glaser Peters

Jewish Journal