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Jewish Journal

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October 10, 2002

IDF Could Target Gaza Next

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

A new Israeli military operation has many wondering if the army now has the Gaza Strip in its sights.

For months, Israeli forces have been engaged in a massive anti-terror operation in the West Bank, but have not carried out such operations in Gaza. Several reasons were given, including the argument that an incursion into the densely populated area would exact heavy Israeli casualties. Israeli officials also said a security fence between Israel and Gaza was preventing terrorists from attacking Israeli targets.

In recent weeks, however, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke of the inevitability of military action in Gaza to root out the terrorist infrastructure there.

Following a series of Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks from Gaza, the army carried out a strike in Khan Yunis, in southern Gaza, early Monday. Fourteen Palestinians were killed and more than 100 injured in the raid on a Hamas stronghold.

On Tuesday, the White House expressed concern over Israeli raids "that have resulted in the deaths and wounding of many Palestinian civilians.

"While the administration supports Israel’s right to self-defense, it is critical that Israeli forces make every effort to avoid harm to civilians in exercising that right," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said in a statement. "The president urges Israel to minimize the risk to civilian populations in areas in which Israeli Defense Forces are operating."

The Israeli army denied Palestinian claims that a military helicopter fired a missile at a crowd of civilians outside a mosque. The army said the missile was fired at armed Palestinians who were shooting and throwing grenades at Israeli soldiers. During the operation, Israeli troops detained a Palestinian with a bomb and blew up a bag containing three mortars, Army Radio reported. Palestinian officials denounced the strike as a massacre and called for international protection.

During clashes later in the area, eight people were wounded by Israeli fire directed at a Palestinian hospital. The army said it targeted the hospital after Palestinians fired from the facility at a nearby Israeli settlement.

Shortly after the military operation ended, Palestinians fired three mortars at an Israeli settlement in southern Gaza, but caused no injuries. A senior Hamas official called for revenge and urged all Palestinian groups to attack Israel.

On Tuesday, Sharon said the raid had been a success and that Israel would continue its anti-terror operations in Gaza. He expressed regret for the civilian casualties but said Israel had to prevent future terror attacks. Because of the Palestinian civilian casualties, the Israeli army operation drew international protests, including from the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.

On Tuesday, the Israeli commander in Gaza, Brig. Gen. Israel Ziv, acknowledged that none of the 14 people killed in the raid was wanted by Israel. A day earlier, Ziv told Army Radio the operation was "very important [because it made] clear to the other side that there is no place that constitutes a fortress against the Israel Defense Forces."

Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said Israel was trying to disrupt a mission to the region by E.U.’s top diplomat, Javier Solana.

"Every time we see efforts to get the peace process back on track, the government of Israel commits new war crimes against innocent civilians," said Erekat in the Israeli daily Yediot Achronot.

With the threat of more violence in the offing, and the United States asking Israel to avoid flare-ups that could distract attention from the U.S. campaign against Iraq, Foreign Minister Shimon Peres defended the operation.

"Israel tries to employ restraint, but it is committed to acting to prevent terrorist activity,’" Peres told Army Radio.

IDF Could Target Gaza Next Read More »

Passion for Politics

Leave a Comment / L.A. Woman /

Amanda Susskind doesn’t look like she was raised in Berkeley. With her tweedy, conservative suits, paired with sweater sets and pearls, the new West Coast director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) doesn’t look like she was brought up anywhere near the laid back, hippie haven.

But don’t be fooled by appearances. Susskind, 45, brings a down-to-earth, politically liberal but eminently practical style as one of the top people in one of the most powerful organizations in the country. In that role, her background has served her well.

“Berkeley in the ’60s was a place of great and open debate,” Susskind said. “Everywhere you went, whether in school or with friends or around the dinner table, there were great discussions. We were at the center of all the larger movements: free speech, the women’s movement, the anti-war movement, even the environmental movement. It was a great place to be.”

Susskind attended Stanford University and UC Hastings College of the Law, after which she moved to Los Angeles and built a career as an attorney specializing in public policy. Her passion for politics led to a run for the Assembly in 2000. Though unsuccessful, the campaign laid the groundwork for her eventual bid for the top job in ADL’s West Coast region, which she officially took over July 15.

Her duties include overseeing three West Coast offices and 35 employees, acting as spokesperson for all organization-related issues and raising funds for both the local and national offices. She has begun to refine her role as leader of one of the most influential Jewish organizations in California devoted to the task of fighting bigotry and discrimination of all kinds.

Lay leaders in the ADL describe Susskind as warm, friendly and passionate about her causes. They believe that she has the leadership ability necessary to boost the morale of an office in a slump after the dismissal last December of Susskind’s predecessor, David Lehrer.

Lehrer had been with the ADL for 27 years and was fired by Abe Foxman, the organization’s national director, without any consultation with Los Angeles lay leaders. The dismissal generated anger and confusion among both lay leaders and the West Coast staff.

The outcry and bad feelings over Lehrer’s dismissal lasted well into the spring, making a challenging year even more difficult because of increases in hate incidents and anti-Semitic rhetoric. For a new director facing such a situation, Susskind met the challenge with diplomacy and skill, ADL leaders and staff said.

Jonathan Rosenbloom, chairman of the ADL’s Valley advisory board who has known Susskind for almost 20 years, said, “She has a wonderful energy and enthusiasm that she brings to any task she undertakes. She’s passionate about the issues on which she works, whether it involves legal problems for private clients or women’s causes or, now, the ADL’s mission. What’s really admirable is how quickly she has absorbed what the ADL does and brought her own style to the leadership of the ADL.”

Nicole Mutchnik, a member of the ADL’s Salvin Young Leadership group, first met Susskind four years ago, when both became involved with the Women’s Political Committee in Los Angeles. Mutchnik was one of the more vocal supporters of Lehrer, but eventually came to serve on the search committee for his replacement. She encouraged Susskind to apply for the ADL job.

“While I was and am an enormous fan of David, when the opportunity arose to select someone from our community for the job, I thought Amanda had all the goods to become a strong leader for the ADL,” Mutchnik said. “She is part of an emerging group of young women leaders.”

“She is so fresh, despite all her experience, so unjaded, and that is not common for people in politics and community work,” she continued. “We needed someone with her strengths, someone with a confident public face, but who can also lay back and let other people shine.”

Susskind said her most profound on-the-job discovery is the depth of anti-Semitic sentiment that lurks beneath the surface of 21st century society. “I think my generation and the generations that are the children and grandchildren of the Holocaust have been really blessed with peaceful times and cursed with complacency,” she said.

“If you ask the common man, ‘Does anti-Semitism really exist in Los Angeles?’ they would say no, it’s a thing of the past, look how far we’ve come,” Susskind said. “But when you’re in a position where every day you get the reports and the e-mails across your desk, you see that it’s not a thing of the past. It’s on the rise in the world, and it’s on the rise in America, and it is very much alive and well in the Pacific Southwest region.”

The specter of the Holocaust is ingrained in Susskind’s psyche. Her father, Charles Susskind, was one of the 10,000 mostly Jewish children who were forced to flee from Nazi persecution, in what was called the Kindertransport, and found safety in Great Britain.

His mother was not so lucky, Susskind said. “My grandmother was in three different camps, including Auschwitz, but she survived,” she said. “There is a story [that] she was visiting one of my uncles in Amsterdam, and on the train going back to Germany, a German official turned to her and said, ‘Madam, you are going in the wrong direction.’ But who could imagine what was ahead. They were a well-to-do, assimilated family, much like a well-to-do, assimilated family in Los Angeles today.”

Susskind’s mother, Terry, was in London during the war, and lost an entire contingent of her family from the Lodz ghetto. Her parents met and married in London and immigrated to the United States in 1945.

“They actually came to Pasadena [first], and my mother thought she had died and gone to heaven,” Susskind said. “You can’t find two bigger patriots than my dad and mom.”

Susskind said she is impressed with the commitment of the ADL staff, which she attributes to Lehrer’s leadership, and hopes to continue building on that quality. She said that if she were to change one thing, it would be to increase the organization’s political profile.

“With my experience and comfort in the political arena, I would like to have us to have a slightly higher presence,” she said. “We need to participate in the political process, and we need to be seen as participants in the political process. “

“We need to raise people’s awareness that we are here, that we have amazing programs and resources available,” she said. “There is a belief in the greater community that Jews only care about Jews. I like to say we [the ADL] are not only here to serve the Jewish community, we are Jews that are here to serve the community.”

Passion for Politics Read More »

Chains of Support

Leave a Comment / L.A. Woman /

Two days after her radical breast cancer surgery last May, Missy Stein hit that moment where all the emotional and physical implications of her condition came crashing in on her.

But then she remembered Sari Abrams’ words.

In a phone call before the surgery, Abrams, who had a similar surgery four years before, had warned Stein that there would be one day that would be tougher and bleaker than any before it. Just get through that day, Abrams told her, and you’ll be fine.

“It was really so helpful having the preparation and knowing what was coming, so I didn’t have that fear of the unknown going in,” said Stein, a 36-year-old mother of five from Aberdeen, N.J.

Stein and Abrams found each other through Sharsheret (Hebrew for chain) a year-old organization that sets up links between young Jewish women with breast cancer so they can offer support and knowledge gained through experience.

“I strongly believe in the positive effect of social support on the outcome for cancer patients,” said Abrams, who was diagnosed at 30 and again at 33, and had a baby boy when she was 37. “It’s so helpful to know that others are going through the same thing and have gone through it and survived and come out of it OK. I feel like this is my part in this chain, being part of the so-called sisterhood of breast cancer survivors.”

The match between Stein and Abrams is one that Sharsheret founder Rochelle Shoretz holds up as a remarkable success. Not only did the two have similar diagnoses and treatments, but both were the wives of rabbis.

Abrams, the wife of B’nai David Judea’s Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky, answered many of Stein’s questions about the surgery and helped quell some of Stein’s fears about how to tell the community while keeping some measure of privacy when so many people wanted to help. The rabbis also spoke directly with each other.

Shoretz, an Orthodox mother of two, came up with the idea of Sharsheret after she was diagnosed with breast cancer at 28, when she was a clerk to Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg.

“When I was diagnosed, one of the first things I wanted to do was to speak to someone my age with my background who was experiencing what I was experiencing, and it was very difficult for me to find another young Jewish woman with whom to speak,” said Shoretz, who lives in Teaneck, N.J. Eventually friends put her in touch with Lauryn Weiser, who now serves as Sharsheret’s link coordinator.

“We talked about everything from the side effects of chemotherapy to community support to coping with parents and children and husbands. I used her as a resource for everything I was about to experience,” Shoretz said.

Doing more research, Shoretz found that while there were organizations that linked cancer patients with each other, mostly based on diagnosis, none met the specific needs and experiences of young Jewish women.

“We ask women who call in what their biggest concerns are, what their biggest fears are and what they would like to speak to someone about and we do our best to find them a match,” Shoretz said. “Some women just want to draw religious strength from one another.”

Observant women might share experiences relating to mikvah or sexuality. Single women might want to talk about dating after mastectomy. Young mothers may talk about taking care of the children while on chemo. Some callers have been women who don’t have breast cancer but are carriers of the genetic mutation found in many Ashkenazim that can portend breast cancer.

About 60 women, from Chasidic to unaffiliated, have been paired up through Sharsheret so far, and the organization has fielded more than 500 phone calls from people and other organizations who want to find out more.

In its first year Sharsheret raised and spent about $100,000. Aside from a recently hired part-time administrator, the entire staff is volunteer.

The organization has come to occupy an important place in the cancer community. Early on Shoretz formed an alliance with the American Cancer Society, which she has spoken to on several occasions about Jewish issues. Sharsheret is currently featured on the Web site of UCLA breast specialist Dr. Susan Love (susanlovemd.com). This month in New York, Sharsheret is sponsoring its first conference, a symposium on fertility and cancer held at Cornell Medical School and co-sponsored by the American Cancer Society, the Cornell Institute for Reproductive Medicine and Hadassah.

At the American Cancer Society’s Making Strides walkathon, Sharsheret has a 100-person team walking in Central Park. This month, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, Shoretz is busy responding to an upsurge in media interest in breast cancer among young women, who face much different prognoses and emotional issues than older women.

About 250,000 women under the age of 40 currently are living with breast cancer, and about 1,300 a year die. Among young women, the disease is often more aggressive, and often caught at a more advanced stage, than among older women.

Missy Stein, whose mother is also undergoing treatment for breast cancer, said Sharsheret’s focus on young women has been important to her.

“We’re all young people with, God willing, long lives ahead of us, and there is a vitality and upbeat attitude that I found in Sharsheret over and over that makes it an important organization for younger women,” Stein said. “To have the opportunity to walk with each other this whole crazy journey is a wonderful thing.”

Chains of Support Read More »

Religion Blossoms for Bialik

Leave a Comment / L.A. Woman /

Mayim Bialik’s nickname on campus is “Super Jew.” The down-to-earth 26-year-old who starred for five years in the hit sitcom “Blossom” has ceased acting, focusing her attention instead on Judaism.

She is currently studying neuroscience for her graduate degree at a prestigious Southern California university, which she declined to name. As an undergraduate, the actress majored in neuroscience and minored in Hebrew and Jewish studies.

Bialik, who relishes Hebrew grammar, said, “I love to learn about the history of a language, and how it became the voice of a new generation in Israel.”

Her devotion to Israel extends outside the classroom. “Every aspect of my life centers around Judaism and Israel,” she said. “Israel is my home. I kiss the ground when I am there.”

Unfortunately, Bialik said, aggressive anti-Israel groups fill the campus. She often finds herself defending Zionism and Israel to peers. “It is important to open communication with them,” Bialik said.

The former actress is active in Hillel, where she began a Rosh Chodesh group. Bialik also regularly writes for the Hillel newspaper on campus, in which she discusses Judaism and feminism. Recently, with a friend, Bialik redesigned the siddur used for Hillel services. She is also a Hebrew teacher at a Hebrew school in Beverly Hills.

In addition, Bialik is the musical director for the Hillel a capella group. However, she is modest about her talents. Whenever anyone compliments Bialik on her “perfect-pitched” voice, she blushes and says, “You should tell my grandfather. My grandfather is the one with the voice. He has the voice of an angel.”

Bialik is very close to her grandparents.

“My background has always humbled me. My grandparents were European immigrants who escaped the Holocaust. My mother’s mom arrived in America on the last boat from the Czech-Hungary border. Her family didn’t make it. My mother’s father and my father’s mother also escaped from Poland.”

Bialik didn’t go the way of many childhood stars, some overdosing on drugs, some in rehab, others never quite recapturing their glamorous youth. After impressing audiences in the 1988 film, “Beaches,” starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, Bialik was offered the title role in “Blossom.” The sitcom, which ran from 1991 to 1995, centered on the title character’s everyday challenges of growing up.

Looking back on the five years of the show, Bialik said, “Blossom was a wonderful experience for me. People often come up to me and really feel that they know me, because I was in their living room for a long time. I certainly would not be the same person I am today without the show.”

At the show’s completion, Bialik chose to take a different path in life: education.

“My parents were both teachers, and education was always significant in my family,” Bialik said. “When I decided to go to college, I wanted to be completely immersed in it. I wanted to experience what life was like without the distractions of show business.”

Bialik said her parents strongly believed in Jewish education and sent her to Hebrew school at Temple Israel of Hollywood as soon as she turned 4. She also attended camps Hilltop and Hess Kramer, where her love for Judaism deepened.

Although Bialik’s mother raised her family Reform, Bialik now considers herself Conservative.

Many members of Bialik’s family made aliyah to Israel, and Bialik visits Israel every two years. When she visited Israel this past June for a cousin’s wedding, things were different.

“We didn’t do anything. It is not the Israel that I want my kids to experience,” she said. “But it felt really good just being there, going to the supermarket, buying stamps.”

“I feel obligated to support my homeland both emotionally and financially,” she said. “So, I run tzedakah programs, donate trees to Israel, raise money for Israel.

Despite her busy schedule, Bialik tries to find “at least one moment in a day where I can stop and look in awe at the creations of God. Every day, I try to appreciate the universe, science, nature and the human capacity for compassion.”

Bialik, who has been dating her boyfriend for six years, hints that she will marry her “significant other” within the next couple of years.

The former actress is proud of all of her work for Israel and her love for Judaism, but she admits to a fault.

“You know,” she said with a chuckle, “I hate gefilte fish. I don’t have the Jewish fish gene. People always laugh that that is the most un-Jewish thing about me.”

Religion Blossoms for Bialik Read More »

Woman of the Book

Leave a Comment / L.A. Woman /

Sherrill Kushner’s crusade on behalf of the Santa Monica Public Library system began with her realization that Jews are the People of the Book.

“I’ve always felt comfortable in a library,” she said. As a child, Kushner spent many happy hours in the “cozy and wonderful” Carnegie Library in her hometown of Lincoln, Neb. The library was a welcome refuge in a community (population 175,000) where the Ku Klux Klan flourished, the singing of Christmas carols was mandatory in the public schools and Jewish classmates were few and far between.

Descended from Ukrainian immigrants who came to the Midwest via Galveston, Texas, Kushner grew up in a family that emphasized community service and dedication to Jewish life. Her parents were pillars of the local Conservative synagogue, whose congregants barely spoke to the members of the anti-Zionist Reform temple across town.

“We lived at the synagogue. When you’re a minority — a real minority — you cling to it all the more.” She herself found social outlets in such organizations as Young Judaea and United Synagogue Youth. But her intellect truly blossomed when she moved from Lincoln, where there were eight Jewish students in her high school class, to St. Louis’ prestigious Washington University, where fully one-third of the student body was Jewish.

Despite her intense involvement in Jewish campus life, Kushner came to California in 1971 to join a Catholic boyfriend. By 1976, however, she was married to Ed Klein, a young physician whom she met through an ad in the B’nai B’rith Messenger. Unsure about a career path, Kushner explored teaching, journalism and consumer affairs, before “working up the nerve” to enter Loyola Law School at age 33. Daughter Alana was then 3 years old; Shana was born two years later.

“I was fortunate to have a very supportive husband and a housekeeper,” she said.

As a new attorney, Kushner gravitated first to labor law. But her struggle to help her refusenik relatives leave the Soviet Union turned her into an immigration specialist. Today, she’s proud of having helped 18 family members from Ukraine, along with eight she discovered in Argentina, obtain U.S. citizenship. Still, she’s concluded that the practice of law is not for her: “I don’t have the temperament to be an attorney. I don’t like adversarial situations.” Her current plan is to segue into a writing career. One goal is to complete “Don’t Let the Lights Go Out,” a nonfiction work for children containing rare and unusual Chanukah stories.

But the writing is going slowly. “I get waylaid, because I get enmeshed in volunteer stuff.” Back in 1981 she helped found Santa Monica’s Kehillat Ma’arav. The Conservative synagogue’s staunch egalitarianism is largely a tribute to Kushner, who opposed from the start the forming of a Sisterhood-type group that might relegate women to the kitchen. Her feminist principles also come into play when she airs her annoyance with The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles’ Women’s Division, which she views as a form of voluntary segregation. “Aren’t we all Jews? Can’t we all give?”

Currently, it’s the city of Santa Monica that benefits from her activism. In 1998, her complaint that her local branch library needed refurbishing led to her chairing the campaign that overwhelmingly passed Proposition L, a $25 million city bond to cover the renovation of the entire system. She now serves on the committee overseeing the design of a new Main Library for downtown Santa Monica, while also raising funds for library furniture at her own neighborhood branch. Beyond this, she’s taking on the cause of historic preservation. As a founding member of the Santa Monica Conservancy, she rose before dawn this past July to stop the bulldozing of the city’s last 1880s shotgun house.

Kushner occasionally questions the focus of her energies. She wonders whether she ought to be tutoring children or helping Ethiopian Jews instead of struggling to save buildings. In the future, she may choose a different path: “I have done many, many things, and I’m not done yet.”

Woman of the Book Read More »

Jewish Women Fight for Choice

Leave a Comment / L.A. Woman /

Fran Teller of the National Council of Jewish Women known as “Madame NCJW,” is one of the many Jewish women who keep a vigilant watch over reproductive freedoms in the United States. She has been active on the issue even before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that gave women the right to chose an abortion — and she is concerned.

“Last year,” Teller said, “we took a whole busload of [NCJW] women over to the Planned Parenthood center to take a tour, and the sad thing is that there were certain areas you couldn’t get into because they’re under lock and key — the intake centers have bars in front of them — so you know these are dangerous times. We’ve got some people, for whatever reason, doing horrible things, for what they think are good causes.”

“Back in the early ’70s even then there was the [anti-abortion, anti-choice] opposition,” Teller continued, “but now the opposition has become even more sophisticated, even more effective as the years have gone on, and they also have become a strong political force.”

Jewish women such as Teller have long been involved in the fight for reproductive rights. However, recent legislation has raised their concern.

Among the actions that have caused alarm and mobilized organizations like Planned Parenthood and Jewish women’s groups, such as NCJW, are: increased prenatal funding for fetuses, permission to health entities to decline abortion services and the withdrawal of $34 million from the U.N. Population Fund that was earmarked earlier for women’s reproductive health-care services around the world.

The NCJW was one of state Sen. Sheila Kuehl’s (D-Santa Monica) staunchest supporters of a recent bill she authored protecting California women’s right to chose. Last month, Gov. Gray Davis signed her bill, the Reproductive Privacy Act (SB 1301). The new law ensures California women the right to a safe and legal abortion, regardless of what happens at the national level.

To support the bill, the NCJW used a network of members in letter-writing, phone and e-mail campaigns to get the word out to legislators.

“We promote any stance that supports the right to choose,” said Harriet Rothenberg of Long Beach, NCJW’s state public affairs chairwoman. “Each NCJW section has a public affairs committee that I can talk to to mobilize the entire membership toward a campaign. California is very fortunate in having a strong reproductive rights stance … but we have to be continually watchful.”

Rothenberg also serves as the West Coast point person for NCJW’s BenchMark Campaign to Save Roe, which was launched last January by the national office in Washington, D.C.

“We are careful to see that judges who are appointed to the Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court are fair-minded, open-minded,” Rothenberg said. “We take a careful look at nominations … through access to records, publications, decisions they made. These are available on the Internet, but we take the time to look at them, and then spread the word.”

“The public pays very little attention to the comings and goings of the federal appeals courts,” wrote Bob Herbert in an opinion piece in The New York Times last month, “but whoever runs these courts are crucial arbiters and shapers of the American way of life.”

To illustrate the point, Herbert noted that seven of the 13 circuit courts are controlled by Republican appointees, and wrote that the ratio can, and most likely will, change in the next few years.

Since taking office, President Bush has overwhelmingly favored conservative, anti-choice nominees to the federal courts, such as his most recent choices, Michael McConnell and Miguel Estrada. Choice advocates predict that a conservative takeover of the Supreme Court is not far behind.

Joyce Schoor, the young and enthusiastic founder and president of WRRAP (Women’s Reproductive Rights Assistance Project), worries that it will take just one Supreme Court justice appointment to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Currently, three justices favor abortion, three oppose it and three are in the middle on the issue.

WRRAP, which was started by NCJW in Los Angeles in 1991 but now operates independently, gives money to poor women for abortions. At a fundraising event in Hollywood last month, the organization presented author-feminist Gloria Steinem and the film, “Rain Without Thunder,” to draw attention to the vulnerable state of women’s reproductive freedom in the United States today.

“It’s not that the majority doesn’t support choice — there is a huge majority opinion of 70 percent in this country,” said Steinem, representing Voters for Choice, a nonpartisan organization she helped found that educates the public on pro-choice candidates. “It’s that the anti-choice [bloc] votes 90 percent of their membership, while the pro-choice [bloc] votes 15 to 20 percent.”

For Teller and Jews who support choice, the real tragedy is what happened at a time in our history when women sought back-alley abortions.

Teller remembers in the early ’70s, when she first became interested in the issue of women’s reproductive rights, she learned that the major cause of death among women of childbearing age was the result of botched abortions. A few months ago, when she was reading a Planned Parenthood report, she found that 17 percent of women died due to unsafe abortions before Roe vs. Wade.

“I never had the figure. I only got it the other day, but I knew back then that it was an overwhelming thing, and I thought that in a civilized society, this just doesn’t make sense.”

Jewish Women Fight for Choice Read More »

Knesset to Get First Openly Gay Legislator

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Activists in Israel’s gay and lesbian community are hailing the upcoming swearing in of the Knesset’s first openly gay member, calling it a breakthrough in their efforts for greater recognition.

When the Knesset reconvenes in November following its summer recess, Uzi Even, a Tel Aviv University chemistry professor, will become one of the Meretz Party’s 10 lawmakers. He will succeed veteran legislator Amnon Rubinstein, who is retiring from politics.

“This is a day of celebration for the gay and lesbian community, but also for the free and civic society in Israel,” said Itai Pinkas, chair of the Association of Gays and Lesbians in Israel. “Those who for years tried to push the community outside the public discourse will now get a declared homosexual as a Knesset member.”

Rubinstein was to have been replaced by the next person on Meretz’s roster, businessman Benny Temkin, who is currently in Mexico. But Temkin announced he would decline the position for personal and family reasons.

The seat then passed to Even, 61, who was next on the list. At a news conference, Even said he would focus on science, technology and education. He also promised to lobby for gay rights.

“I am proud to be a Knesset member and represent the community that sent me there,” Even told the Israeli newspaper, Ma’ariv. Labor Party Knesset Member Yael Dayan, who initiated the first Knesset conference on gay and lesbian issues 10 years ago, in which Even participated, welcomed his appointment to the Knesset.

Dayan invited Even to head a parliamentary subcommittee on gay issues that would function under the auspices of her Committee for the Advancement of Women. Legislators from fervently Orthodox parties condemned Even’s appointment.

Shas legislator Nissim Dahan called the appointment “a black day for the State of Israel.” Even dismissed the criticism. Once the media hype blows over, he said, Shas “will have no problem cooperating with me in the Knesset. My vote will be equal to that of every other legislator.”

Even, who lives with his longtime partner, has played a key role in advancing gay rights in Israel. In 1993, when the army found out that Even was living with a man, it removed him from his job as an intelligence officer.

He later was invited to address the Knesset about discrimination against gays in the army. Orthodox lawmakers walked out when he spoke, but his efforts eventually helped outlaw such discrimination. Within months, a regulation prohibiting discrimination against gays in the armed forces was signed by then-army Chief of Staff Ehud Barak.

Even later successfully sued Tel Aviv University to get the same benefits for his partner, Amit Kama, a communications professor, that the school extended to faculty spouses. Even and Kama also were among the first homosexuals to become foster parents in Israel, when they took in a 15-year-old whose family had thrown him out for being gay. The social welfare authorities and the boy’s biological parents approved the arrangement.

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Hate Drives Jews Back to Spain

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Growing anti-Semitism and poor economic prospects are threatening to extinguish two Jewish communities on the North African coast.

After the expulsion from Spain in 1492, a small number of Jews escaped across the Strait of Gibraltar to two fortress cities that Spanish kings were establishing as beachheads in North Africa. Despite the Inquisition on the Iberian mainland, the Jewish inhabitants of Ceuta and Melilla were largely left alone for the next five centuries. They were joined by other Sephardic Jews over the centuries.

Their descendants now are leaving the enclaves, which are surrounded by Moroccan territory, and returning to Spain.

"In 10 years, perhaps there will be no one here," said Mesod Bengio, a Jewish perfume merchant in Ceuta.

Ceuta and slightly smaller Melilla are unlike any other part of Spain, where no Jews lived — at least not openly — until religious freedom was reinstated in the 19th century. Jews in Ceuta and Melilla, which measure about 8 and 5 square miles, respectively, have lived cheek by jowl, but largely in peace, with Christians, Muslims and a small minority of Hindus.

Historical evidence shows Jews living in Ceuta as far back as the 12th century. The Jewish presence in Melilla is said to have started several years after the expulsion, with a Spanish aristocrat who had Jewish ancestors.

Ceuta’s total population is around 70,000; Melilla is slightly smaller. Though their Jewish communities today are small — about 300 in Ceuta and around 800 in Melilla — they still have functioning Sephardic synagogues, schools and butcher shops. The Jewish population is down from the late 1960s, when there were about 600 in Ceuta and 1,000 in Melilla.

However, the communities’ future has grown uncertain since the Sept. 11 attacks. Moroccan King Mohamed’s renewed claims of sovereignty over the cities has stirred up young Muslim inhabitants.

In the past year, eggs, rocks and bottles have been thrown at Ceuta’s Sephardic synagogue while Jews were at prayer. Palestinian flags and graffiti glorifying Osama bin Laden have been painted on synagogues and churches, and graves in Melilla’s Jewish cemetery have been desecrated.

Meanwhile, Moroccan claims over the enclaves have become more vociferous since last summer’s crisis with Spain over Perejil Island, an uninhabited island a mile and a half from Ceuta. Moroccan troops occupied the island, but were swiftly forced off by Spanish soldiers.

Morocco argues that if Spain wants Gibraltar back from Britain, which has held it since the early 18th century, then, by the same logic, Spain should be prepared to give Ceuta and Melilla to Morocco.

"Now they’re Spanish," said another Ceuti Jew, Jose Benchimol. "Who knows what could happen in 10 years?"

"If anyone doesn’t think that within a year or two we’ll be at war over Ceuta and Melilla — be it terrorism or open war" — then he "doesn’t want to see the obvious," one columnist wrote in Spain’s El Mundo newspaper.

What might Moroccan rule be like for Jews in the enclaves?

"Morocco has always accepted Jews," said Benchimol, who spent 12 years as vice president of Ceuta’s Jewish community. He noted that there are still Jews in Rabat, Morocco’s capital, who "live peacefully and have endured the intifada without repercussions."

However, many Jews who today live in Ceuta and Melilla fled there from Morocco after the 1967 Six-Day War, when Morocco was swept up in the Arab world’s outrage over Israel’s victory.

Benchimol echoed Spanish leaders’ frequent assertions that Ceuta and Melilla are paragons of interfaith harmony. The leaders of the different faith communities "always wish each other happy holidays," he noted.

Still, he conceded that interethnic harmony doesn’t always filter down to the population at large — particularly to Muslim youths who have become radicalized since Sept. 11.

Madrid’s chief rabbi, Moshe Ben Dahan, is a former Ceuta resident. He moved there from Morocco with his family after the 1967 Six-Day War, when he was 12 years old, and later moved to Madrid after yeshiva studies in Israel.

Ben Dahan downplayed the impact of anti-Semitism in Ceuta and Melilla. Yet he acknowledged that the communities are dwindling — primarily, he said, because there’s little future for young Jews in the enclaves, whose economies are dependent on tourism, trade and government subsidies.

"The Jews are going to big cities like Madrid, Malaga and Barcelona, where there are more possibilities for educated people to work," the rabbi said. "The young people are leaving and the old are dying."

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Einstein in China Not Just a Legend

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

The China-bound exhibit of Albert Einstein, once canceled, is back on track — maybe.

The exhibit on the life of the great scientist, a joint project of the Israeli foreign ministry and the Hebrew University, was slated for display in Beijing in September, as part of a Far Eastern tour.

However, China threatened to censor parts of the exhibit dealing with Einstein’s Jewish and Zionist ties, and Israel, after filing a diplomatic protest, called off the China tour.

The contretemps came just as China-Israel relations were mending, following a rift after Israel, under pressure from Washington, canceled a deal to sell Phalcon airborne radar systems to Beijing.

Particularly disturbed by the new incident was the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Asia and Pacific Rim Institute, which has spent more than a decade cultivating relations with major Asian countries.

In a letter to the Chinese foreign minister, dated Aug. 8, Neil C. Sandberg, the institute’s founding director in Los Angeles, and Barry A. Sanders, its chairman in Washington, protested the Chinese censorship.

"The objection of Chinese officials to including references to Einstein’s Jewishness and to his support for creating a Jewish state are deeply offensive to Jews everywhere," they wrote. "The fact that Einstein was invited to be the president of Israel is critical to an accurate understanding of one of the greatest individuals in modern history."

China’s ambassador in Washington, Yang Jiechi, responded Sept. 11 with a conciliatory note, which seemed to leave the way open for a resolution of the incident.

"We wish to clarify the basic facts that the exhibit has never been canceled," wrote Yang. "What has happened is that China and Israel had some differences on certain wordings with respect to the exhibit, which led to some misunderstandings.

"Unfortunately, the said misunderstandings … were exaggerated by some media, especially some in Israel, and finally turned out to be groundless rumors about the ‘cancellation’ of the exhibit and the Chinese ‘objection’ to this and that."

Yang continued, "In fact, the Chinese people always have friendly sentiments toward the Jewish people, as evidenced by, among others, the many Jews who were protected by Chinese against Nazi Germany’s Holocaust during World War II. We all admire Albert Einstein as a great scientist and a great son of the Jews. It is definitely a good thing to have such an exhibit in China.

"The very purpose of the exhibit is to highlight the scientific accomplishments of Einstein and his contribution to mankind in the field of science, which should be prioritized. It is thus unwise to outshine, in any way, this primary achievement of his whole life. Nevertheless, we have no objection to the inclusion of his political views in appropriate places of the exhibit. Please be assured that China and Israel are able to solve this issue through friendly consultation."

The ambassador concluded, "I wish to thank you for your interest in deepening the understanding and friendship between the Chinese and Jewish people. Naturally, this is also one of the goals that we, on our part, will spare no effort to work for."

That’s where the situation seems to stand at the moment, according to Sandberg.

Repeated attempts to obtain additional information from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, the Israeli foreign ministry in Jerusalem and the Israeli embassies in Washington and Beijing were unsuccessful.

The AJC institute’s main focus, said Sandberg, has been to interpret Israel and Jewish life generally to Asian countries, combat the Arab economic boycott and fight anti-Semitism.

Einstein in China Not Just a Legend Read More »

World Briefs

Leave a Comment / United States /

Princeton, MIT Professors Win Nobels

A professor with dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship is sharing this year’s Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences. Daniel Kahneman, 68, based at Princeton University, is sharing the roughly $1 million prize with professor Vernon Smith, 75, of George Mason University. They were given the award for their work using psychological research and laboratory experiments in economic analysis. On Monday, H. Robert Horvitz, a professor at MIT, was announced as one of three winners of the Nobel Prize in medicine.

Israel Dismantles Three Settler
Outposts

Israeli soldiers dismantled three uninhabited settler outposts in the West Bank. Wednesday’s move came after Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer pledged to remove all illegal enclaves, including populated ones. The head of the army’s Central Command on Wednesday presented settler leaders with a list of some 24 outposts due to be dismantled within a week, Israel Radio reported. Settlers asked to be allowed to appeal before steps are taken, according to the report. On Tuesday, settler leaders accused Ben-Eliezer of targeting the outposts for political reasons. His detractors allege that his stance on the outposts was taken in an effort to win votes from the dovish wing of the party as he fights for reelection as Labor Party leader in November.

Israel Transfers Funds to Palestinian
Authority

Israel transferred nearly $15 million in tax money to the Palestinian Authority. The money was the third and final payment of Israel’s promised transfer of some $42 million in tax revenues that Israel had refused to turn over to the Palestinian Authority since the outbreak of the intifada two years ago. The latest transfer was approved following U.S. pressure on Israel to ease the economic hardships of the Palestinians, Israel Radio reported.

Students Sue Mich. U

Two students sued the University of Michigan for hosting a Palestinian solidarity conference. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday, is intended to force the university to cancel the conference, slated for this weekend, on the grounds that it “violates free speech by inciting hatred against Americans and Jews,” according to Rick Dorfman. Plaintiffs Dorfman and Adi Neuman head the Michigan Student Zionists campus group, which is supported by Aish HaTorah, the Zionist Organization of America and Coalition for Jewish Concerns-Amcha.

Israel to Close Fuel Depot

Israel’s central fuel depot, a feared target of mega-terror attacks, is to be closed by January. Infrastructure Minister Efraim Eitam decided in consultations Oct. 2 with the director general of the Pi Glilot facility that the fuel stored there would be moved to other installations around the country. Pi Glilot is located near densely populated areas north of Tel Aviv. An attempt earlier this year to carry out an attack at the site failed when a bomb planted beneath a tanker caused only a small fire.

Two Israeli Women on Fortune List

Two Israelis have been included in a list of the most powerful women in business. Bank Leumi President and CEO Galia Maor and Strauss-Elite Group chair Ofra Strauss-Lahat made Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women in Business list, to appear in the Oct. 14 issue. Maor was ranked 34th, while Strauss-Lahat placed 46th on the list of 50 women.

Crown Heights Riots Retrial Likely

The U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for a third trial stemming from the 1991 Crown Heights riots. The high court decided this week not to consider a defense request to throw out charges against Lemrick Nelson stemming from the riots in Brooklyn. During those riots, Yankel Rosenbaum, a Chasidic man, was fatally stabbed during violence that followed the death of Gavin Cato, an African American child hit by a car in a Chasidic motorcade. In January, after an appeals court overturned the convictions of Nelson and Charles Price for civil rights violations in the 1991 murder of Rosenbaum, citing technicalities, the Anti-Defamation League wrote the Justice Department to continue the case. The department’s civil rights division subsequently affirmed the office’s commitment to “continue to pursue meaningful and serious punishment” against Nelson. Price struck a plea bargain in April for 11 years and eight months in prison, but Nelson’s case is still pending.

Y.U. Bequest Now Worth $36 Million

Yeshiva University plans to begin awarding scholarships from a multimillion dollar bequest to the school. The scholarship and loan fund was created after Anne Scheiber, a retired New York civil servant, left $22 million to the school when she died in 1995. The bequest was invested during extended probate hearings and is now worth $36 million. Beginning with the current academic year, students enrolled in Y.U.’s Stern College for Women and those attending the Albert Einstein College of Medicine who previously graduated from Stern will be eligible for the scholarship.

Report Slams Publisher’s Wartime Past

German media giant Bertelsmann used Jewish slave labor and made large profits by selling millions of anti-Semitic books during the Nazi era, according to a commission set up by the firm. The commission also said in a report issued Monday that the longtime company contention that it was a victim of the Nazis was a lie. According to the commision, the Nazis closed the firm in 1944, but probably because the Nazis’ own publishing house wanted to kill off competition, not because of any subversive texts published by Bertelsmann. When Bertelsmann became America’s biggest book publisher by acquiring Random House in 1998, it had said it was prosecuted by the Nazis for its theological works. Accepting the report, the company immediately issued a statement expressing regret for its wartime activities and for subsequent inaccuracies in its corporate history.

Campus Anti-Semitism Blasted

Hundreds of college presidents blasted anti-Semitism on college campuses in a New York Times ad that appeared Monday. Spearheaded by the American Jewish Committee’s (AJC) Task Force on Anti-Semitism, the statement was created in response to campus activism on the Middle East that in some cases has veered into overt anti-Semitism.

The letter was initiated by James Freedman, former president of Dartmouth College and chair of the AJC’s Domestic Policy Commission. It follows a September speech by Harvard University’s president in which he said that some activities of the campus anti-Israel movement are anti-Semitic.

Musicians on Solidarity Tour

Three American musicians arrived in Israel on a solidarity tour sponsored by the United Jewish Communities. The “Gift to Israel” tour was organized in response to reports that international artists were avoiding appearances in Israel because of the security situation. Andy Statman, Peter Himmelman and Steve Hancoff were due to team up with Israeli musicians in a series of performances around the country.

Lanner Plans to Appeal Conviction

Rabbi Baruch Lanner plans to appeal his conviction for sexually abusing two teenage girls. Lanner, 52, was sentenced last Friday to seven years in prison for fondling the two students between 1992 and 1996, when he was their principal at the Hillel High School in Ocean Township, N.J. The judge denied Lanner’s request for a new trial and for bail pending appeal of the sentence, instead ordering him to prison.

Museum to Act on Artwork Claim

The British Museum said it may return four Old Masters drawings seized from a Jewish collector by the Nazis during World War II.

According to surviving family members, the 16th- and 18th-century drawings were part of the collection of Dr. Arthur Feldmann, a Czech citizen who died during the Holocaust.

Feldmann’s family has spent years searching for his collection of more than 750 drawings, which was seized by the Gestapo.

On Oct. 2, The museum called the family’s claim “detailed” and “compelling,” according to Reuters. A spokeswoman for the museum said the works may be returned to the family, or they will be paid compensation.

Briefs courtesy Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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