While I appreciate The Journal’s attempt at Purim humor, as a long time and very proud shtreimel wearer, I was saddened by your cover of Michael Jackson, currently under indictment and on trial for [alleged] child molestation (Purim Cover, March 25). As a senior bureau chaplain for the Los Angeles Police Department and chief of operations for Hatzolah Rescue Team, I, unfortunately, have witnessed too much pain and suffering of children (and adults) at the hands of sexual predators.
A shtreimel situated on the head of our governor, mayor or even the latest Hollywood macher (not currently under indictment) would have garnered a prominent position on our shteilbel’s bulletin board.
Rabbi Chaim Kolodny LAPD Senior Bureau Chaplain
Hahn Gossip
I wish to correct an error made in “Newsroom Rebellion Silences Gossip About Mayor’s Family,” April 1 (“Newsroom Rebellion Silences Gossip About Mayor’s Family,” Apr. 1). It simply is not true that any L.A. Weekly reporters have refused to pursue a line of questioning or potential story pertaining in any way to the mayor’s race. As a general policy, we do not discuss stories we may or may not be working on, and the issue at hand is no exception.
Alan Mittelstaedt News Editor L.A. Weekly
Editor’s note: The Journal stands by its story.
Campus Turmoil
Thank you very much for your concern about the strength and well-being of the Jewish community at UCI, but your concern may be unjustified (“Campus Turmoil,” March 11). Your article was correct, in that there is hostility toward the Jewish population, but you seemed to have left out the fact that we, the Jewish community, are fighting back, peacefully. You made mention of a certain speaker brought by the Muslim Student Union, but you conveniently didn’t mention either of the two articles in the major UCI newspaper (The New University) or the one in the conservative newspaper (The Irvine Review) that responded to the speaker, and criticized the judgment of the Muslim Student Union in bringing him to UCI. Your article appeared much later than any of these three, and not mentioning any of them brings the true intent of this article under question.
The truth is, that since this speaker came, there has been a great response by the Jewish community, and the UCI community as a whole. Hillel, Alpha Epsilon Pi (the Jewish fraternity) and Alpha Epsilon Phi (the Jewish sorority) all partnered in support of the Blue and White Day, which occurred shortly after the speaker, and at least a month before your article was published. The Jewish organizations mentioned above, along with other organizations, also sponsored the visit of the bombed bus No. 19, along with speakers at its side, which also happened before the publishing of your article, but was not mentioned.
Since your article was published, I have seen a response from the readers of your newspaper, and it is not good. It has brought light on to a topic that we, as a community are working to correct, and it did nothing to help our community in that endeavor. I have heard parents of high school students tell their children they can’t apply to UCI because of your article, and this hurts the Jewish community more than anything the Muslim Student Union could ever do to us. Without a steady influx of Jewish students into UCI, the attacks by the Muslim Student Union will only grow stronger, as we will have less people to respond and defend ourselves. Without new Jewish students, we will have a stagnation of ideas, and new ones will be few and far between.
At UCI, we have done our best to foster a Jewish community, and through Hillel and both Jewish Greek organizations, we have begun to do this. With a brand new Jewish Community Center and Hillel center within five minutes from campus, there is a place for us to go and hang out. We organize a kosher lunch every Wednesday and a Shabbat dinner every Friday night, both of which have an amazing attendance, bolstered by the support of all three Jewish organizations.
Every other week, we show a movie from Israel with Israeli food, and it, too, is attended with the support of all three organizations. This year, for the first time, there is a tremendous support for Israel in the editorial section of The New University, something that hasn’t generally occurred in the past. From what I am told, UCI is much better off now than it has been in recent history, and it might have been a better help for your newspaper to highlight the progress we have made, rather than a few setbacks to that progress.
Alex Chazen New University Staff Writer Alpha Epsilon Pi Member
Right to Die
So we should err on the side of preserving life when the facts are not clear? What President Bush said would seem more heartfelt if he was not so quick to go to war, costing untold numbers of lives to noncombatant Iraqis and American soldiers alike (“Jewish Ethical Views Differ on Schiavo,” March 25). The facts were unclear, as he and many have professed, regarding Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, and it is still not clear how it was presumed that they are enemy combatants in the U.S. war on terror.
Similarly, capital cases, where parties are put to death and given scant additional review, during his Texas governorship, would seem to qualify as situations where the facts are not clear, and one may choose to err on the side of preserving life. Genetic analysis, as an aid in reviews and reversals of capital cases in the last two decades, proves this quite effectively. It seems obvious to me that this proclamation, seen in this light, rings of hypocrisy, and demonstrates how cynical and pandering the administration is in taking sanctimonious stands such as these.
Dr. Mark Dreskin Pasadena
I find Judy Gruen’s article on end of life issues it a bit offensive, simplistic and also inaccurate (“Spiritual Help Can Benefit Hopelessly Ill,” April 1). First off, for every intellectual crackpot like the Princeton professor she refers to trying to “eliminate the possibilities for the dramatically ill or infirm,” there are hundreds if not thousands of bioethicists, including rabbis and other clergymen, writing and working in hospitals and hospices to cope with the increasingly and incredibly complex issues related to the end of life. Anyone who has ever spoken to a doctor knows that for many considerations, including the prosaic one of acting to avoid potential liabilities, hospitals and hospices are slow to hasten the death of a patient.
We both know where we stand on the Oregon law. I did a little research on The Netherlands, in fact the legal progression has been to progressively limit the cases in which the law prevents euthanasia. A comprehensive study I found in the British medical journal, The Lancet (equivalent to the New England Journal of Medicine in the United States), found a minimal increase in the percent of all deaths in the country that were by euthanasia increased by .8 percent between the law’s enactment in 1991 and 1995; an increase of .2 percent occurred between 1995 and 2001. The number of deaths by nontreatment decisions showed no increase between 1995 and 2001; there was no increase in explicit requests for euthanasia or assisted suicide during that time. The number of doctors who were ever involved in the ending of life without the patient’s explicit request (one assumes this includes cases where it was done at the family’s explicit request absent that of the patient) declined from 27 percent in 1990 to 13 percent in 2001. This hardly indicates a trend toward widespread “killing of patients.” The authors of this comprehensive study in The Netherlands reach a conclusion diametrically opposed to Gruen’s rhetoric given the advances in medical technology and techniques to prolong. The authors found “the absence of a rise in the proportion of nontreatment decisions [read such actions as removing medical devices] after 1995 surprising.”
The Netherlands has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, which has the dubious distinction of being No. 1 in that category among countries in the developed world. Perhaps we in this country have something to learn from The Netherlands about the dignity of life and utilitarian economic decisions on health care. Unlike Gruen’s idle speculation of what may occur in some brave new world, government health care policies today in our country contribute to the deaths of countless children each year, now.
The Oregon law on euthanasia is quite restrictive. I suspect Gruen has not taken the trouble to read it.
The Oregon Death With Dignity Act states the following:
An adult who is capable, is a resident of Oregon, and has been determined by the attending physician and consulting physician to be suffering from a terminal disease, and who has voluntarily expressed his or her wish to die, may make a written request for medication for the purpose of ending his or her life in a humane and dignified manner in accordance with ORS 127.800 to 127.897. (Task Force to Improve the Care of Terminally Ill Oregonians, 1998, p. 57)
Other sections of the law are designed to provide safeguards for the practice. For example, two unrelated persons must witness the written request; there must be a consulting physician; the patient must make an informed decision; the attending or consulting physician can request a referral to a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist if they suspect that a psychiatric condition or depression may be causing impaired decision-making; and family notification is recommended.
I also found Gruen’s attitudes toward the “proper” actions by family members to be quite judgmental and simplistic. If anything, the growth of hospices has shown that society has moved toward easing an individual’s final days, not a rush to end their lives. While Gruen might have chosen how her mother spent her final days, who is she to speculate that when a family acting with the wishes of the suffering patient decides that it is time for the pain allow the bodily life to come to a close “negate the guiding hand of Hashem”? Right now, my aunt lies on her deathbed and refuses food. If after years of conscientious caring and almost daily visits by my cousin, who is only concerned with her having no severe pain, declines to attach a feeding tube, is she missing a “transcendent moment” at her mother’s passing? Did the millions around the world who prayed in the moments surrounding the pope’s death miss a “transcendent moment” because in his final days the pope declined to be brought to the hospital and at some point in his final hours those around him chose not to continue any extraordinary means to keep him alive?
Jewish tradition teaches that the nefesh (soul) continues on long after it leaves the physical body. One hopes that the tragic case of Terri Schiavo spurs many to have a frank, intimate discussion with their loved ones about the exceedingly complex issues related to the end of physical life. And that no outsider, be he politician, religious leader or self- proclaimed advocate for the “culture of life,” dictate or simplistically judge their decisions on this most complex matter. That would truly be honoring Hashem.
Lawrence Weinman Los Angeles
According to your article, Rabbi Avi Shafran stated that Terri Schiavo was not in a state of goses, the edge of death (“Jewish Ethical Views Differ on Schiavo,” March 25). But how did he know that? Did he know her medical history? According to reports, she had severe brain damage (although she was not considered brain dead), and the base of her brain was slowly filling with spinal fluid, which eventually killed her.
That being the case, how close to death does a person have to be to be declared in a state of goses?
That also means that it is possible the rabbi’s basic incorrect assumption allowed time to arrive at a conclusion, which is incorrect. Or, at least, did not allow him to explore another aspect of this issue.
The other question, not fully addressed in the article is the Jewish issue on a living will. Schiavo’s husband maintains that she told him that she would not want to live this way. It took him a long time to prove his point, but apparently, at last, he prevailed. In Jewish law what form does a living will have to be? Can it be verbal? How many people have to vouch for the verbal statement? In Jewish law is it just the husband? Two or more people? Or, does Jewish law recognize a living will at all, written or verbal? According to Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, as quoted in the article, a living will is irrelevant. Is that true?
Gary M. Barnbaum Woodland Hills
As opposed to Judy Gruen, I do not believe in the beauty of suffering.
She accuses doctors, “bureaucrats” and family of trying to eliminate the “mess and expense” of the “inconveniently ill.” How outrageous of her! After my 90-year old mother had a stroke, I faced the terrible responsibility of deciding whether to continue a feeding tube. Mom could no longer speak or swallow. After a week of misery, I believe she said to herself “enough is enough.” Mom fell into a coma and died peacefully.
I would soon have decided against the tube. There was no love or compassion in having this spirited, independent woman, at her age, continue to suffer.
Gruen tells about a friend who brought a young man out of a coma by reading him psalms. Most of us in life-and-death situations must be more pragmatic. Otherwise, we are in danger of skidding on the slippery path so beloved of the neocons: the culture of life. Whether Gruen intends it or not, that path leads to the destruction of abortion rights and the curtailment of stem cell research.
Gruen should stick to frilly hats and comedy writing. She is out of her depth here.
Cynthia Lawrence Toluca Lake
Here and Gone
I read about the swift departure of Rabbi Issac Jeret from Brandeis-Bardin Institute with puzzlement (“Here and Gone,” Apr. 1). Here was a seemingly dedicated clergyman committing to a challenge of a lifetime. Stepping into a storied legacy of Shlomo Bardin; charged and energized to steer a thriving Jewish Institute toward four generations of Jewish outreach. His commitment lasted 10 months. His tenure was shorter than the search to secure his services. I think the admonition was to lay down in green pastures, not to continue to look for them.
I read about a temple that seemingly pursued their target without regard to the morality of their actions. They seem the perfect 21st century moral role model: Pursue your goal at any cost, succeed without regard to damage caused to others, win at any price. Moral relativism has been accepted by religious institutions.
The challenge facing all Jewish institutions in the 21st century is relevance and guidance. In this instance the actions of the protagonists appear to mirror the moral morass of general society, demonstrating little leadership or interest in igniting a beacon to all. It would seem appropriate to demonstrate adherence to our tradition, and make restitution to Brandeis-Bardin Institute.
Bill Kabaker Via e-mail
Counter Culture
Thanks for your article on Zucky’s (“Zucky’s Counter Culture,” Apr. 1). I have very fond memories of the place and the people. I am positive we can all live better with out the food. We could all eat healthy. I grew up in Ocean Park and remember the original location. Please let your readers know if there is anything we can do to help them save the structure. Very disappointed to find out there was an attempt to limit Jewish merchants. I am 72 years old and will never think of Santa Monica the same. I still have a menu from the old Zucky’s restaurant.
Sanford Nadlman Los Angeles
Burden of Truth
It is my opinion that any historian who denies the occurrences, in his lifetime, of the most heinous acts of murder in history, that are well documented and even admitted to by the perpetrators, and also so adjudicated by high courts of law, is a liar, cheat, distorter of facts and history (“Letters,” March 11). His “professionalism and craft,” integrity and credibility is dubious, because once a liar.
Moreover, an academic or whoever, who defends such an historian is not far removed from the one he is defending, and does not enjoy my admiration.
David Brook Professor of Life and Survival University of Buchenwalk Koncentrations Lager, Germany
Absent Husbands
Thank you for publishing Jane Ulman’s well-researched and important article (“Women Still Struggle to Have It All,” April 1). She describes accurately how frustrating it is for most women to be carrying too much of the load in their families.
But she left out a key part of the story — what if the husbands did more to improve the fairness and daily teamwork in their home life? During the past several years while I was researching my new book “Wake Up or Break Up:The 8 Crucial Steps to Strengthening Your Relationship,” I came across hundreds of inspiring examples (especially among Jewish couples) where women were less stressed and more fulfilled because their husbands were doing a much better job of helping out with kids, chores, weekly planning meetings and daily supportive listening and brainstorming.
In the marriages where men do decide to be mensches, it’s amazing how much less arguing and burnout there is. I urge every couple who cares about fairness and a good relationship to start getting creative and finding positive ways to share the load. It can be done!
Leonard Felder West Los Angeles
Joseph Aaron
As a Jewish publisher, already in my 92nd year, I have read more than my share of calumnious articles. But Joseph Aaron’s Op-Ed was especially vicious — not merely because of his nasty attacks on Edgar Bronfman, who has done so much on behalf of Holocaust survivors like me, but also for its bizarre misrepresentation of Isi Leibler. Leibler “a man of integrity and honor?” (“Listen to What the Machers Are Saying,” March 25). Are we talking about the same Leibler whose boundless ego and penchant for communal intrigue are legendary among Australian Jews?
Close to 40 years ago, Leibler successfully conspired to put the newspaper of which I was publisher — The Australian Jewish Herald — out of business. Why? Because on Leibler’s very own recommendation I had taken aboard a columnist by the name of Mark Brahm. An erudite Orthodox intellectual, Brahm was, at times, highly critical of Israel’s policies toward the Arabs. As a committed Zionist, yet one who deeply believes in freedom of the press, I was willing to allow his views to be heard even though I knew they were not popular. Somewhere along the line Leibler realized that Brahm’s views were the diametric opposite of his own and he demanded that I sack the controversial columnist.
I told Leibler that while I disagreed — in fact, strongly disagreed — with Brahm’s ideas, the man did have a right to air his views. For the record, those ideas were little different, than what one hears in mainstream Israeli political discourse today.
That I would not comply with Leibler’s order was too much for the Australian Jewish dictator to bear. He promptly ordered a boycott of my paper forbidding Jewish community institutions from advertising in the pages of the Herald and the Yiddish weekly I published. In a few short weeks my paper — which I had built up from a moribund eight-page bulletin, to a lively 40-page weekly — was driven out of business. This affair swiftly became a cause celebre in Australia and made headlines in the non-Jewish press.
I enjoyed the public support of leading intellectuals and politicians in Australia, both Jewish and non-Jewish, but it was to no avail. Leibler had a virtual stranglehold on the Jewish community and, sad to say, Australian Jews cowered in fear. Many of them agreed with my position, and told me as much in private, but they dared not say so in public! So on Tisha b’Av 1968, weeks before we were to celebrate the paper’s 90th birthday, I had to pull the plug — and the rest, as they say, is history.
Nearly four decades later, Leibler decided that because he couldn’t call the shots in the World Jewish Congress (WJC), the best thing to do would be to bring down that venerable organization — and actually destroy it in the process. No matter that what he did was grist for anti-Semitic mills. No matter that he had no real evidence of any wrongdoing. These days, you only have to hint that someone has done something wrong to tarnish a good name. And because of this reckless egomaniac, the WJC found itself having to fight off all kinds of scurrilous attacks from people who love to see the Yidden at war with one another. That is why Leibler is now the star of so many anti-Semitic hate sheets and is a hero to Jewish muckrakers like Joseph Aaron. But presumably, none of that is important to him. Like a spoiled child, the 70-year old Leibler is used to having his own way and is oblivious to all other considerations.
In my possession is a letter to me from my good friend Nahum Goldmann, who Aaron hails, but upon whom Leibler wrote a vituperative attack in the pages of my paper. When in 1967 I asked Goldmann whether he wished to counter the critique, the great Jewish leader wrote: “I have not the slightest wish to reply to the utterances of Mr. Leibler. For some time already I have given up reacting to the attacks of some of the Australian representatives because of their lack of manners and the form in which they gloat in their criticisms.”
Thanks to the likes of Aaron, Leibler is still gloating. What a shanda!
David Lederman Israel
Praise Scientists
The Journal has a very interesting advertisement (“Jewry Role in Human Affairs”). In this ad, short biographies of outstanding scientists and inventors of Jewish origin appear from time to time. It is important to give tribute to the great minds of Jewish nation.
I don’t object that it is necessary to write about art and charity, travel and politics, Torah and kabbalah, music and spirituality, but existing apparent neglect of science in mass media is undeserved, unreasonable and inefficient for society. Such articles about science and technology will give readers knowledge necessary to better understand contemporary situation and future perspectives. In addition, many of those who work in science and technology have interesting personalities and/or life stories.
Dr. Mark Burgin Via e-mail
When Jews Lose
I recently read your article lamenting Bob Hertzberg’s failure to advance through Los Angeles’ mayoral primary (“When Jews Lose,” March 18).
Before worrying about the implications of the Jewish community not having a representative as a mayor of Los Angeles, I think it’s also important to look at Hertzberg the candidate.
Early in the primary season I received an e-mail from Hertzberg’s office with a 10-point talking list regarding what he wanted to do with Los Angeles. Initially I appreciated the marketing of it as a great starting point for a plan to improve some problems in Los Angeles.
However, when I read Hertzberg’s plans regarding the environment that consisted simply of not doing road construction during rush hours, the paucity of Hertzberg’s ideas was apparent. When he sent an e-mail telling everyone of his support for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s plan to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), his campaign was finished.
Schwarzenegger is the governor who has reneged with California educators to the tune of 4 billion of the last two years. How is breaking up the LAUSD and cutting 4 billion out of the education budget supposed to help California? Maybe it could, but neither Schwarzenegger nor Hertzberg cared to explain.
Meanwhile, Arnold has raised 50 million on unspecified campaign/campaign initiatives. I thought he had enough money to be able to govern without it? But I digress. Hertzberg lost the election because of his lack of ideas and his thoughtless alignment with Schwarzenegger as all things good for California.
P.S. I thought Hertzberg was a Democrat…
Zachary S. Brooks Via e-mail
I have participated in many elections during my lifetime. I do not decide on a candidate because he or she is of my ethnic background or my religion. I consider his ability to lead and his experience to administrate any number of people and his or her ethical background. Los Angeles is a very big city with citizens of many different backgrounds. We need someone who has proven that he is capable to administer this city. It is my opinion that no one person or group is all right or all wrong and we should decide if the candidate is able to make decisions that are going to be the greatest good for the greatest number of people.
I am a regular reader of The Journal and I am hoping that this runoff re-election will be free of unnecessary contentions.
Polly S. Hertz Los Angeles
Campus Turmoil
Regarding your “Campus Turmoil” cover story, I find it rather telling that Muslim students at UC Irvine and other American campuses are so vehement in their protest against Zionism (their politically correct term for Judaism and Jews) and Zionist (Jewish) influence and “control” (March 11). Compare that intense fervor with the nearly total silence of American Muslims after Sept. 11. There were no criticisms of or protests against their fellow Muslims who so hideously attacked the United States, killing nearly 3,000 innocent people.
It is quite clear to any objective observer that Muslim students in America support the goals of the worldwide Muslim offensive against everyone and everything that does not conform to Muslim doctrine.
Richard Saunders North Hollywood
Terri Schiavo
I am not obsessed with religious doctrine and practice (“Jewish Ethical Views Differ on Schiavo,” March 25). I am an ex-liberal and Democrat. But, a phrase from the past plays loudly in my head, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” Sorry, but “they” cannot be forgiven for they knew exactly what they were doing when they obsessively and stubbornly pressed ahead with their suspect hidden agenda that resulted in the state-sponsored execution of innocent Schiavo. Those undeserving of forgiveness are also the “limp-wristed” “girlie-men” types who pulled the covers over their head to protect themselves from political fallout. Those undeserving of forgiveness include those who made politically “watered-down” attempts to save one innocent American life.
More specifically, “they” are supporters and practitioners of the law/legal system that obsessively paved the way for the barbaric execution of an innocent, disabled woman. They are people of power who “heroically” ducked the issue to save their political careers. They are the ghoulish and perverted advocates who arrogantly and obsessively drooled at the thought of bringing this disabled woman to the altar of the “blessed” and “peaceful” priests of euthanasia (attorney George Felos, a deranged Hemlock society neurologist, the morally twisted ACLU….). They are represented by the allegedly adulterous and bigamist husband who cruelly wrenched Terri Schiavo from the caring hands of her biological family for suspected personal gain. They are the media and the legal/medical apologists that tried to calm and soothe the passion against Terri Schiavo’s state-sponsored execution with legalese and justification that seemingly made her execution appear so reasonable.
Is it not an irony that another Schindler [Terri Schiavo’s maiden name], a German businessman, risked his life and fortune to add those slated for the Nazi crematoriums to his famous “Schindler’s List,” the list that saved a thousand or so innocent from the legal, state-sponsored executions of the Third Reich. Yet, the most powerful politicians in our nation could not and would not save one innocent life from the obsessed and dedicated federal bench and Floridians bent on consummating the execution of Terri Schiavo. It took a reformed Nazi supporter, turned humanitarian, to save thousands from cruel and unusual/inhumane punishment when he faced risk to his person and fortune (and he did lose his fortune). But, professed American humanitarians of power could not bravely set aside their fortune (political) to step forward and add Terri Schiavo to a “Schindler’s List,” when no risk to their life existed. How truly shameful!
No, those of political power and others that let Terri Schiavo or did little or nothing to stop it cannot be forgiven when they are weighed against one reformed Nazi, Schindler, who faced death and lost his fortune as he passionately protected lives from the law of the Third Reich; law that justified and promoted euthanasia against the innocent of Germany and Europe.
We, as nation have moved one large step backward toward confirming the precedents set for life and death as advocated by the Third Reich, and one major step forward to trashing the lessons of the post-Nazi Nuremberg trials. We have soiled our undergarments, and it is very doubtful that this stain will ever be removed.
Pope John Paul II died at 9:37 p.m. in Rome, which was 11:37 a.m. Saturday in Los Angeles — in the middle of Shabbat — at the same time that Rabbi David Wolpe talked to his Sinai Temple congregation about a pope who deserved the gratitude of the Jewish people.
“Although we are not without grievance, we are surely with thanks,” Wolpe said before the assembled at the Conservative temple in Westwood. “Considering the world from which he came, the church in which he was raised, the teachings that he heard — as did every Catholic in Europe for a thousand years, day after day, year after year — that he grew up to be the person who apologized to the Jewish people, who traveled to Israel, who visited Yad Vashem [the Holocaust museum in Israel], who went to the synagogue, who embraced rabbis, who spoke the truth, is an extraordinary feat. For that, he deserves our tribute and our thanks.”
Similar praise of John Paul II’s papacy and of his historic outreach to Jews echoed from bimahs throughout Los Angeles. Despite their disapproval of some Vatican decisions, Jewish leadership generally echoed Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s CNN comment that John Paul II “will have a very important place in Jewish history — never have the relations between Catholics and Jews been as good.”
Praise also emanated from the pulpit at B’nai David-Judea, an Orthodox shul in the Pico-Robertson district.
“Everyone recognizes that no one is perfect, that there is no perfect record, but on the whole, there is a feeling of appreciation for what he accomplished, specifically for the Jewish people,” Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky said.
The pope met with many Southern California religious leaders during his 1987 visit to the Los Angeles Archdiocese, including Rabbi Emeritus Harvey Fields of Wilshire Boulevard Temple and the late Rabbi Alfred Wolf.
“It was a very thoughtful and constructive meeting; it must have gone on for about an hour and a half,” Fields said. “The pope listened very carefully. He was most gracious.”
Fields, a Reform rabbi, added that the pope was most interested in hearing about the interreligious tenor of the town, and how religious groups worked together on behalf of the city.
“‘No matter what their religion, they are serving the same God,’ — those were almost his exact words,” Fields recalled.
“I thanked him for coming to Los Angeles. He shook his head and said, ‘We’re all brothers and sisters.'” The passing of a leader like the pope, Fields continued, “is a real loss.”
Rabbi Harold Schulweis had a private audience with the pope in Egypt in 1979. “All we did was basically greet each other, but I recognized in him one of the deepest friends of the Jewish people and a man of tremendous heroism,” said Schulweis, a longtime leader at Valley Beth Shalom, a Conservative congregation.
Schulweis added that Jews should not be disappointed at Pope John Paul II’s interfaith missteps, “any more than I was disappointed that it took 2,000 years for the Bishop of Rome to pray in a synagogue. Jews have to learn patience and gradualism. It’s important for Jews to know that Mel Gibson does not speak for the Catholic Church.”
Among the clergy attending a Tuesday interfaith memorial at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels was Reform Rabbi Steven Jacobs, from Kol Tikvah in Woodland Hills. The longtime liberal activist saw a kindred soul in John Paul II, despite the pope’s opposition to abortion, the ordination of women priests and gay marriage. Because John Paul II just as fervently supported human rights, labor unions and global debt relief.
As the spry, athletic pope — who used to climb staircases two steps at a time — became stooped with Parkinson’s disease, Jacobs’ admiration deepened.
“He triggered a deep spiritual reflection on the meaning of my own life,” Jacobs said. “We rabbis are in the public all the time. He let the whole world see him struggle physically, and he maintained his dignity and his passion. That’s a great gift. Millions of people who suffer relate to him. He just empowered me as a human being and as a rabbi.”
Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein said he drew strength from the blemish-free personal life of the pope, who began his papacy as an almost macho pontiff, excelling at kayaking, mountain climbing and skiing. He could take center stage and charm millions with the ease of a rock star, yet without rock star excesses.
“We live in a time that chews up heroes and spits them out,” said Adlerstein, adjunct professor of Jewish law and ethics at Loyola Law School. “Here’s a fellow who lasted in the public limelight for 26 years, and no one could attach a hint of scandal to him. No one could come up with a way of diminishing his integrity and his goodness. There are very few people in the world today who can restore the notion of the modern hero.”
Jews have a particular connection to John Paul II, because of his deep, personal remembrance of the Holocaust and because he saw to it that the Vatican officially recognized the State of Israel. But some criticized his private Vatican meetings with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and former United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, who served with Nazis units during World War II.
There also was discomfort with the Vatican’s continuing refusal to make public the baptism certificates of Jewish children who were raised as Catholics to save them from the Holocaust. Many of these children, now elderly Catholics, don’t know they were born Jewish.
“But it would be churlish, foolish, narrow and ungrateful,” Wolpe said, “not to realize that this pope’s position [regarding Jews] was different from that of his church and that of his predecessors.” In describing the pope, Wolpe alternated between the verb “is” and the verb “was,” even as the pope was passing from one state of being to the other.
Outside the Sinai sanctuary, a 90-year-old man wrapped in a prayer shawl stood among an overflow crowd. He listened as Wolpe’s tribute emanated from a loudspeaker mounted on a table.
In Yiddish, the elderly man said he came to the United States in 1939 from the Polish city of Krakow, where Karol Wojtyla served as archbishop before becoming Pope John Paul II in 1978. When asked after the sermon how he felt about his fellow Pole, the man gently waived away the question, pointed to his eyes and said, in English, “Cry.”
Though a staunch conservative on most Catholic issues, Pope John Paul II made bettering Jewish-Catholic relations a centerpiece of his policy and took revolutionary strides toward this goal during his more than 26-year reign. The pope repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism, commemorated the Holocaust on many occasions, presided over the establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel and met frequently with Jewish religious and lay leaders.
To be sure, lingering tensions and unresolved issues remained. But most Jewish observers say the Polish-born pontiff, who died Saturday night at age 84 after a lengthy illness, will be remembered as the friendliest pope ever toward the Jews.
“Pope John Paul II was a man of peace, a friend of the Jewish people, who worked to bring about historic reconciliation between the peoples and to renew diplomatic ties between Israel and the Vatican at the end of 1993,” Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told his Cabinet on Sunday. “Yesterday, the world lost one of the most important leaders of our generation, whose great contribution toward reconciliation, unity among peoples, understanding and tolerance will remain with us for many years.”
The Anti-Defamation League noted in a tribute, “It is safe to say that more change for the better took place in his … papacy than in the nearly 2,000 years before.”
Rabbi Jack Bemporad was one of more than 100 rabbis and cantors who met with the pope in January to thank him for his commitment.
“No pope has done as much or cared as much about creating a brotherly relationship between Catholics and Jews as Pope John Paul II,” Bemporad, director of the Center for Interreligious Understanding in Secaucus, N.J., said at the time.
“For me, it’s simply revolutionary,” added Bemporad. “I believe Pope John Paul II will be considered a great healer in the relationship between Catholics and Jews.”
Karol Jozef Wojtyla, then the 58-year-old archbishop of Krakow, was elected to the papacy in October 1978. The first pope from Poland and the first non-Italian to sit on the papal throne in more than 450 years, he took the name John Paul II to honor his immediate predecessor, who died after only three weeks in office.
Wojtyla assumed the papacy just 13 years after the Vatican’s historic Nostra Aetate declaration opened the way toward Jewish-Catholic dialogue. The declaration, issued in 1965 by the Second Vatican Council convened by Pope John XXIII, condemned anti-Semitism, and for the first time, officially repudiated the age-old assertion that the “perfidious Jews” were collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.
John Paul’s papacy built on this, and in Jewish terms, it was marked by dramatic firsts, starting with the pontiff’s own personal history. Born in 1920 in the town of Wadowice, near Krakow, he was, in short, an eyewitness both to the Holocaust and to the oppressive and often anti-Semitic policies of communism.
Wojtyla grew up at a time when Poland was the heartland of European Jewry. The country’s 3.5 million Jews represented 10 percent of Poland’s overall population. Wadowice itself was more than 25 percent Jewish, and the future pope had Jewish friends, neighbors and classmates.
Half of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Shoah were Polish, including the future pope’s friends and neighbors. Wojtyla himself worked in a Nazi slave labor camp and studied for the priesthood in secret.
After World War II, the discovery of what had happened at Auschwitz, only a few miles from his hometown, marked Wojtyla for life.
As pope, John Paul referred to the 20th century as “the century of the Shoah,” and it was highly symbolic that in 1979, on his first visit back to Poland after his election, he knelt in prayer at Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the Jews killed there.
Throughout his reign, John Paul repeatedly recalled the Holocaust and condemned anti-Semitism as a sin against God and humanity. On his more than 100 trips around the globe, he sought to meet with Jewish leaders. He also issued unprecedented expressions of contrition for past Christian hostility and violence toward Jews.
The most dramatic of the pope’s many meetings with Jews took place in April 1986, when he crossed the Tiber River to visit the Great Synagogue in Rome, becoming the first pope to visit a Jewish house of worship since Peter. After warmly embracing Rome’s chief rabbi, the pope spoke of the “irrevocable covenant” between God and the Jews.
With Judaism, he said, “we have a relationship that we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers, and in a certain way, it may be said that you are our elder brothers.”
At the end of 1993, the pope took another unprecedented step, overseeing the formal establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel and the Holy See, 45 years after the founding of the Jewish state.
“The pope has both understood what Israel means to the Jewish people, and thus the importance of the establishment of full relations between the Holy See and the State of Israel, to which he lent his personal weight,” Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s (AJCommittee) international director for interreligious affairs, has said. “It is no exaggeration to say that the successful conclusion of those negotiations were thanks to his personal involvement and even intervention.”
The pope’s historic visit to Israel in March 2000 marked a culmination of these policies. His visit was formulated as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to mark the beginning of Christianity’s third millennium, but it brimmed with significance for Jews, as well.
He visited Yad Vashem, and at Jerusalem’s Western Wall, he bowed his head in prayer and slipped a typed, signed note into one of the cracks between the stones.
“We are deeply saddened by the behavior of those who in the course of history have caused these children of yours to suffer, and asking your forgiveness, we wish to commit ourselves to genuine brotherhood with the People of the Covenant,” the note read.
Since that historic visit, the world has been rocked by terrorism and war, and the eruption of the Palestinian intifada plunged the Middle East into violence. Also, what some observers call a “new anti-Semitism,” linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has erupted in what the pope liked to call “Christian” Europe.
But several issues still dog Catholic-Jewish relations and continue to provoke clashes from time to time. These include differences over what can be called “historical memory” — for example, over the wartime role of Pope Pius XII, whom the Vatican wants to beatify, but whom critics accuse of failing to speak out to save Jews during the Shoah.
There also is a continuing internal debate within the Catholic hierarchy about whether the church as an institution is responsible for anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, or whether responsibility rests with individuals.
Outstanding differences on bilateral issues, as well as broader differences over Middle East politics, also have clouded relations with Israel and are the focus of protracted negotiations. These matters include taxes and the legal status of church institutions, as well as questions of visas and residency permits for Christian clergy in Israel.
Looming above all is the question of whether John Paul’s proactive teachings about Jews will endure, and whether they will trickle down to the world’s 1 billion Catholics.
During his audience with the rabbis and cantors in January, John Paul noted that 2005 marks the 40th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate declaration and urged “renewed commitment to increased understanding and cooperation.”
But Jewish observers have expressed concern that John Paul’s successor may not have the same commitment.
“You’re not going to get anybody with his sensitivity,” Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Conn., said in January. “The fear is, whatever you’ve got done can be undone.”
Rabbi A. James Rudin, the AJCommittee’s senior adviser on interreligious affairs and a visiting professor at St. Leo University in Florida, also considers the perpetuation of John Paul’s policies on Jews as “a major challenge for the post-John Paul II church.”
“To have his church retreat from the gains John Paul II has achieved in building mutual respect and understanding between Catholics and Jews would represent a huge setback and an insult to this remarkable pope, who will be remembered in Jewish history as the ‘greatest’ pontiff in the 2000-year history of Christianity,” said Rudin, who has met with John Paul 10 times.
For their part, Vatican officials say the pope’s legacy should be safe, noting that the sea-changes wrought by Nostra Aetate in 1965 and by Vatican documents and pronouncements issued throughout John Paul’s papacy are enshrined as official church teaching.
“The whole Catholic church stands for these changes, not only Pope John Paul II,” the Rev. Norbert Hofmann, secretary for the Holy See’s Commission for Religions Relations with the Jews, told JTA in 2003. But, he added, “it remains the task of the whole church to continue these efforts, and we must do everything so that the course will trickle down to all levels.”
After 22 years of living as an Israeli, Justina Hilaria Chipana can finally consider herself a full-fledged member of the Jewish state.
The 50-year-old native of Peru was one of 17 petitioners who won High Court of Justice recognition of their non-Orthodox conversions to Judaism on Thursday, in what the Conservative and Reform movements hailed as a breakthrough for efforts to introduce more religious pluralism to Israel.
Orthodox rabbis and politicians disagreed.
By a vote of 7-4, the High Court ordered the state to recognize “leaping converts” — so called because they study in Israeli institutes but then convert with Reform or Conservative rabbis abroad — as eligible to immigrate under the Law of Return.
The ruling was a small step in a decades-long controversy in Israel over who is a Jew, who can turn a non-Jew into a Jew and who can decide whether that process was done correctly.
Thursday’s ruling also broadened a 1989 decision recognizing immigrants who arrive having gone through the entire non-Orthodox conversion process abroad; those immigrants are considered to be Jews and the Law of Return applies to them.
But the ruling did not endorse Reform and Conservative conversions performed in Israel, a move that effectively would end Orthodoxy’s de facto hegemony in the Jewish state and could stir up a government crisis.
In response to a demand presented by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party and signed by 25 legislators, the Knesset will meet in special session next week to debate the court decision.
Shas Chairman Eli Yishai called the ruling an “explosives belt that has brought about a suicide attack against the Jewish people,” according to Ha’aretz.
The Orthodox Rabbinate, which controls the observance of life-cycle events in Israel — including births, weddings and funerals — also cried foul.
“There aren’t two movements or three movements in Judaism. There is only one Judaism,” Sephardi Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar told Israel Radio. “Whoever doesn’t go through a halachic conversion is not a Jew.”
Yet with many Israelis increasingly concerned about the lack of a unifying religious identity in the country — where some 300,000 citizens are non-Jews from the former Soviet Union — the Conservative and Reform movement remained confident that their more lenient conversions would provide a solution.
“We believe that with this precedent, it is just a matter of time until alternatives to Orthodox Judaism are fully recognized,” said attorney Sharon Tal of the Israel Religious Action Center, a pro-pluralism lobby associated with the Reform movement. “It could mean filing more High Court petitions, or just waiting for Israel to come to its senses.”
The Jerusalem Post reported that the Reform movement was unsatisfied that the court didn’t issue a more far-reaching decision, and plans to bring another petition in hopes of forcing the state to recognize Reform conversions performed in Israel.
The only way for the Orthodox to counter Thursday’s ruling would be to have a new law passed defining their stream as the only legitimate form of Judaism in Israel. But repeated efforts to mount such legislation in the past failed to muster majorities for even preliminary Knesset readings.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon counts one Orthodox political party, United Torah Judaism (UTJ), in his coalition, and he has been courting Shas. Still, it seems unlikely that either party would be able to apply enough pressure on the government to push through motions against the High Court ruling.
“We have no coalition agreement regarding this,” UTJ leader Rabbi Avraham Ravitz said. “I’m sure there will be discussions about what can be done, but I’m not especially hopeful.”
The High Court ruling is immediately binding on the government. That’s a relief for Chipana and her fellow petitioners, who filed their suit in 1999.
“We are going to implement the decision in a crystal-clear manner,” Interior Minister Ophir Pines-Paz of the Labor Party told Army Radio. “I think that it provides an answer for many people who are living among us and are forced to go through a very tough journey, exhausting and tiring, that causes many to lose hope.”
In the United States, reaction to the decision broke along denominational lines.
“As a Conservative rabbi, I am of course delighted that the High Court in Israel has mandated the recognition of conversions performed by Conservative rabbis in America,” said Rabbi Joel Roth, a scholar of Jewish law and the former head of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s Law Committee.
“I’m very much aware that some segments of the Jewish world will continue to refuse to accept as valid conversions performed by Conservative and Reform rabbis, and the court’s decision will create problems in those communities,” he said. “I accept as valid any conversion that complies with halachic requirements, and conversions that do not, I do not accept.”
The Orthodox Union, on the other hand, said it is “deeply concerned” by the ruling.
“The decision of the court may eventually lead to the division of the people of Israel into two camps. There will be a group of halachically valid Jews and a group of people who are Jewish only by the ruling of the Supreme Court,” the union said in a news release signed by its president, Stephen Savitsky, and executive vice president, Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb. “The consequences of this ruling will be tragic.”
For the petitioners, however, the ruling was a long-overdue relief.
“I always dreamed of really belonging to the country,” said Chipana, who first came to Israel in 1983. In 1993 she converted at a Reform congregation in Argentina, and filed the lawsuit in 1999. “Now perhaps it can really happen.”
But should she want to marry to her Israeli-born boyfriend, Yosef Ben-Moshe, she will have to go on waiting or do it abroad: The chief rabbinate in Israel remains exclusively Orthodox, and its grip on life-cycle events remains unchallenged.
That’s the way the UTJ’s Ravitz wants it. Asked what will happen if “leaping converts” apply for marriage licenses in Israel, he said, “I imagine they will be told to take a flying leap.”
Sallai Meridor, chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, sees the question of Orthodox control as a larger problem than the one the High Court addressed.
“The entire acrobatic phenomenon in which people are forced to marry or convert abroad does no honor to Judaism or the State of Israel,” he said.
JTA Staff Writer Joanne Palmer in New York contributed to this story.
It disturbed me to hear on U.S. public radio and read in The New York Times that Saul Bellow was to be seen as simply an American writer — which, of course, he is — and not significantly a Jewish writer.
Maybe they think they’re doing him a favor? I think they’re bleaching out a lot of the substance of Bellow, who died Tuesday at 89.
The Times quoted him as saying he had no wish to be part — along with Roth and Malamud — of the “Hart, Schaffner & Marx” of American letters. Well, who would? No good writer wants to be pigeonholed or limited in scope. But he is deeply a Jewish writer — not just a Jew by birth.
Jewish culture, Jewish sensibility, a Jewish sense of holiness in the everyday, permeate his work.
As a child, Bellow attended Jewish schools and grew up in a Jewish family, where he learned Hebrew thoroughly and spoke Yiddish as a primary language. It’s a Yiddish that never went away.
Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool” is read today in Bellow’s great translation. Yiddish phrases and syntax are found in many of the novels. In “Herzog,” the protagonist is snobbish about the Yiddish of his wife’s lover.
But more important is a Yiddishkayt sensibility: never a schmaltzy echo of Sholem Aleichem, but a reliance on the Eastern European Jewish heart against which to measure life. I’m thinking, for example, of Schlossberg in “The Victim,” the old Yiddish journalist who makes the beautiful speech that defines the moral vision of the book. It’s a great speech and central to Bellow’s vision.
Attacking those whose suspicions of human life turn it into something cheap and empty, Schlossberg says, “I am as sure about greatness and beauty as you are about black and white. If a human life is a great thing to me, it is a great thing. Do you know better? I’m entitled as much as you…. Have dignity, you understand me? Choose dignity. Nobody knows enough to turn it down.”
Bellow has said of the “Jewish feeling” within him that it resists the claims of 20th-century romanticism, the belief that man is finished and that the world will be destroyed.
The world in Bellow’s fiction is, on the contrary, sanctified. The sanctification is often ironic, often in struggle against the neurotic patterns of characters and the foolish, vulgar, meretricious quality of contemporary life. Herzog, for instance, resists “the argument that scientific thought has put into disorder all considerations based on value…. The peculiar idea entered my [Jewish] mind that we’d see about this!”
Of course, Moses Herzog, like so many of Bellow’s Jewish characters, feels ashamed that he can’t live up to his ideal, his Jewish ideal of a mensch. But it is a Jewish ideal — for Herzog and for Bellow.
In novel after novel by Bellow there are Jewish characters in a significantly Jewish milieu. “The Victim” concerns a character facing anti-Semitism and his own neurotic defenses as a Jew. “Seize the Day” deals with a son who wants love from his cold, un-Jewish father; the novel ends at a Jewish funeral with the protagonist weeping for the dead stranger and for himself. “Herzog” is centered on the complicated world of a Jewish childhood.
Even the late short fictions, especially “A Silver Dish” and “Something to Remember Me By,” are deeply Jewish. “A Silver Dish,” for example, sets a Jewish worldview against a Christian one.
Bellow has given us a rich Jewish American world. But he has also given me as a writer a complex style, a way of handling contemporary reality, which he derived from both Jewish and American fiction.
You find in Sholem Aleichem, in I.L. Peretz, in Isaac Bashevis Singer, a way of finding the beautiful, the holy, the meaningful in the midst of the comic, the ordinary, the tragic. Bellow is a poet who works with laughable, vulgar materials and works them in the service of a noble vision.
Irving Howe quotes these famous lines from the great Yiddish writer Mendele Mocher Seforim: “Israel is the Diogenes of the nations; while his head towers in the heavens and is occupied with deep meditation concerning God and His wonders, he himself lives in a barrel.”
But Bellow has added to this mixture the grace and rhythms of the art novel in English, such as those by Henry James and James Joyce, and the speech rhythms of American writers like Mark Twain. He has given us a new kind of sentence, composed of street talk and philosophy, mixing language of the heart and language of moneymen, machers, American sports and con men.
This new sentence has been taken up by all American writers, Jewish and non-Jewish. If Israel is a blessing to the nations, Saul Bellow has been a Jewish blessing to all writers.
John J. Clayton, a retired professor of modern literature and fiction writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, is an award-winning and widely published author of novels, short stories and literary criticism. His work “Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man” won awards in literary criticism. His collection “Radiance” was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award in 1998.
In a rapid, confidential near-whisper, Jeff Ballabon was offering his counterintuitive take on former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft.
“If you go to his house today, he has a mezuzah on the door,” Ballabon said. And when they went to a Baltimore Orioles baseball game together, he recalled, Ashcroft knew that combining hot dogs and ice cream wouldn’t be kosher.
“Ashcroft isn’t an evangelical,” Ballabon explained. “He’s not a fundamentalist.”
If you’re looking for a New Yorker with deep ties to the Christian right — you know, the folks running America — Ballabon is your man. Which is odd, first of all, because he’s not Christian but an ultra-Orthodox Jew from Long Island. And, second, because he’s spent most of his career as the lobbyist for New York media companies, including Court TV and Primedia.
But Ballabon is also the man whom Pennsylvania GOP Sen. Rick Santorum called when he was headed out to the Orthodox Jewish enclave of Borough Park during the Republican National Convention last year. The senator’s journey took place on the same day that Ballabon helped organize a meeting between White House officials and Orthodox leaders.
Ballabon’s unlikely relationships have put him in touch with other unlikely allies. His friend, Ralph Reed, the former head of the Christian Coalition, introduced him to Gov. George W. Bush in 1999. He’s close to Ashcroft and to Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). And he is “very well-known at the highest levels of the White House,” said a Bush administration official, who returned a call to talk about Ballabon on short notice, skipping standard press office rigmarole.
Ballabon is a bulky man whose face, under his black velvet yarmulke, looks younger than his 42 years. He has maintained a low public profile, but he is among the few New Yorkers with close ties to the nation’s leadership.
His unique position at the intersection of these worlds — Orthodox Jews, the Christian right and the New York media scene — is the product of an unusual journey from ultra-Orthodox yeshivas to Yale Law School and Capitol Hill, but also of the changes reshaping American Jewish politics.
President Bush’s backers bragged that he would turn around the Democrats’ success among Jews last November. But as the New Republic’s Peter Beinart wrote days before that election, Bush did something different. He “ended” the notion of a “Jewish vote” and split Jews along the same lines that divide the rest of America: religious vs. secular, devout vs. nonobservant.
Secular Jews lined up with the Democratic Party’s secular values, while Orthodox Jews — attracted by everything from moral strictures to government money for openly religious programs — swung toward Bush.
There are no reliable nationwide figures on the Orthodox vote, but evidence from some New York-area counties is telling. The village of New Square, an Orthodox enclave in Rockland County, went for Al Gore in 2000. Last year, Bush won the village, 1,530 votes to 16. Less dramatic but still striking, turnarounds were visible across Rockland County and in Lakewood, N.J., another community with many Orthodox Jews.
Conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews “are just a natural alliance,” said Barbara Ledeen, an aide to Santorum at the Senate Republican Conference. “Jeff works in that vineyard.”
Ballabon spent the climactic weeks of last year’s election pushing the Republican cause in crucial states like Florida and Pennsylvania. According to people familiar with the campaign, he advised the White House on how to reach each of the dozens of distinct Orthodox communities — Syrian and Hungarian, Chasidic and Haredi.
His work on the campaign was part of a broader effort that has made him a key player in Jewish and Republican politics, though little known outside them. He’s been the driving force behind the Jewish College Republicans, a group that has caught on fast. (During a recent meal at a kosher burger joint, as Ballabon downed sushi in an attempt to lose the weight he gained on the campaign, a young woman at the next table chimed in admiringly that she was a new member of the college Republican group.)
He’s in the process of starting a think tank, the Center for Jewish Values, to push his agenda.
Ballabon’s political strength comes from his willingness to depart from the strenuously nonpartisan stance of major Jewish organizations. For one thing, they’re dominated by non-Orthodox Jews. And for another, many, like the American Israel Political Affairs Committee, take the position that the policies of both parties are good for Israel, and that support for whatever the current Israeli government is doing is the only political test.
“It’s baloney to say that Bush vs. [John] Kerry is win-win for Israel,” Ballabon said. “That’s like saying on the issue of abortion, ‘We like the candidates that are pro-women.'”
Needless to say, Ballabon prefers Bush’s position on Israel, though he’s “troubled” by the administration’s pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to remove settlements from the West Bank.
Ballabon talks a good deal about Israel and has allies in the settler movement. Not long ago, he hosted a fundraiser for a Hebron settlers’ group, and at another recent gathering he introduced, with a wink, a settler friend as “a minor terrorist.”
But Israel is more an example of his broader political stance than the heart of it. The point, he argues, is a willingness to align with natural allies on the right on issues from Israel to school vouchers, and to put overwhelming fears of Christian anti-Semitism aside.
Ballabon argues that the Democrats have inflamed Jewish fears to keep Jews in the party, and that the support Christian conservatives offer on Israel and on issues of faith should be taken at face value.
“We need to have clarity about who our friends are, as much as we need to have clarity about who our enemies are,” he said.
Ballabon, the son of a board of education supervisor and an economics professor from Queens, has always lived in two worlds. A Haredi, or ultra-Orthodox Jew from the scholarly Lithuanian tradition (as opposed to  the more visible Chasidic groups, which place less emphasis on education and are typically poorer), he’s a yeshiva boy first.
But after studying at a prestigious Baltimore yeshiva and then spending three semesters at Yeshiva University, he decided to take the LSAT, the law-school entrance exam, on which he got a perfect score. And the next thing he knew, he was on the very foreign soil of Yale Law School.
There, friends recalled him as brilliant and not particularly hard-working. One close friend, Mark Costello, recalled shooting pool with him at 3 a.m. before an exam. But Ballabon also maintained his faith, and Costello said that he once found his friend exhausted after being unable to turn out the lights in his dorm room on the Sabbath.
Ballabon also found his religion challenged frequently.
“Some guy said, ‘You’re an Orthodox Jew — you must hate homosexuals,'” he recalled. “I said, ‘What a bizarre thing to say. Do you think I hate people who eat cheeseburgers?'”
Ballabon did a stint at the law firm of Sherman and Sterling after law school, then used a Yale connection — Sen. John Danforth’s daughter was a law school friend — to move to Capitol Hill. His time there made him a political conservative. He believed Danforth was unfairly attacked for backing the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. And he opposed Democratic resistance to requiring welfare recipients to work.
When Danforth announced his retirement, Ballabon jumped to the private sector, landing a job as the lobbyist for Court TV. It was, in some ways, a lucky continuation of a life on Capitol Hill unusually free of sleaze. Danforth, an Episcopal priest, had been known as “Saint Jack,” and Court TV’s lobbying was more about persuading state legislators and judges than it was about delivering piles of checks to Capitol Hill.
“He was very effective,” said Steve Brill, the founder of Court TV. “It’s sort of a dream lobbyist job, because you’re really lobbying for money. It’s all out in the open.”
Ballabon then took a lobbying job at Channel One, the for-profit educational television venture that was trying to get into the nation’s classrooms. Ballabon defused an attack on the station led by conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly, who thought Channel One was pushing liberal values, and by liberals, who objected to the idea of children seeing Channel One’s commercials.
He also made friends on both sides of the political divide, including Cindy Darrison, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s campaign manager, an Orthodox Jew who, like many, appeared a bit amused by Ballabon’s many apparent contradictions.
“He may think that women should be at home barefoot and pregnant, but when it comes to interacting with us, he encourages us to move forward and do what we want to do,” she said.
Ballabon lives a traditional family life on Long Island with his wife and five children, and observes religious strictures that seem exotic even to other Jews: He won’t celebrate Halloween, for example, and insists on explaining his card tricks because of rules against magic.
His piety may have won him friends among conservative Christians, but it was his decision to get behind Bush early that brought him to his current level of influence. His commitment began when Reed invited him to Austin, Texas, to meet the future president early in 1999, and extended to his organizing and raising at least $100,000 for the Bush campaign last year.
“I think he saw the same thing I saw,” Reed said of Ballabon. “He saw a gleam of what this president was capable of.”
Still, Reed must know that Ballabon is walking on dangerous ground, acting as both a political fixer and a purveyor of values, not to mention as a Jew in Christian Republican circles. Reed, who created a political channel for evangelical Christians similar to what Ballabon hopes to create for Orthodox Jews, is now a lobbyist in the midst of an ugly investigation into Indian gambling. (Reed made millions off the deals in question, although he hasn’t been personally implicated in anything criminal.)
But it’s the kind of complex terrain Ballabon has navigated so long, and so strikingly well, that Costello, his law school friend, made him a character in a best-selling crime novel, “Bag Men” (Harvest, 2003).
Costello noted that there’s a bit of Ballabon in the character of Shecky Bliss, a rare Jewish cop on the largely Irish Boston police force. The son of an Orthodox rabbi, Bliss is steady, private and trustworthy; he won’t participate in the endemic corruption, but he isn’t a rat, either.
Though Bliss is the most honest character in the novel, he never quite fits in. His strange name draws attention, and some of the cops never trust him. And when one of the officers goes crazy, it’s Bliss who gets shot in, of all places, his nose.
Ben Smith is a staff writer for The New York Observer where this article originnally appeared.
Four months after he was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas is fighting for his political life — and possibly for the survival of the peace process.
Last week, Abbas fought off militants’ attempts to challenge the authority of the Palestinian government and dismissed a number of senior officers who had failed to prevent the challenge.
Abbas forced the resignation of West Bank security chief Ismail Jaber after riots aimed at the P.A. president ended with shots fired at his Ramallah headquarters.
Abbas took the move primarily to prevent the possible collapse of his rule, but it also is an advance payment to President Bush, with whom he was scheduled to meet later this month. According to the U.S.-led “road map” peace plan, the many P.A. security bodies should be whittled down to three.
Jaber had been commander of the national security force, which with 15,000 police officers is the largest security body in the West Bank. Israel recently has exerted a great deal of pressure on Abbas to get rid of Jaber, considered too weak to cope with terrorists.
Avi Dichter, head of Israel’s Shin Bet security service, recently met with Abbas and expressed Israel’s concern at the P.A.’s failure to reform the security services, disarm militant groups and stop terrorist attacks against Israeli targets. Even in Jericho and Tulkarm, the two cities Israel already has handed over to P.A. control, the Palestinian Authority is refusing to implement promises to disarm specific wanted terrorists and restrict their freedom of movement.
As a result, Israel has delayed handing over additional cities to P.A. control.
Abbas issued a presidential decree over the weekend mandating the forced retirement of thousands of police officers over age 60, cutting both the size of the armed forces and his budget. Yet in a confrontation with the core of his opposition, the Al Aksa Brigades, the terrorist militia of his own ruling Fatah party, Abbas backed down.
In an apparent initial attempt to restore law and order, P.A. officials last week ordered six terrorists who had found shelter at the Mukata, Abbas’ headquarters in Ramallah, to give up their weapons, join the P.A. security forces or leave the compound.
Instead, the men instead went on a rampage. They were joined on March 30 by other brigade members, who fired shots at the Mukata and in the streets of Ramallah and damaged businesses and restaurants that senior P.A. officials frequent.
Abbas was in the Mukata during the shooting, but escaped unharmed under heavy security. Similar incidents were reported in other places in the West Bank, especially in the Bethlehem and Tulkarm regions.
Some Al Aksa terrorists threatened to violate the truce declared Feb. 8 if the Palestinian Authority continued to pressure their men.
After the March 30 riots, Abbas ordered a crackdown on the militants. He fired the Ramallah commander, Younis al-Hass, whose men did nothing to stop the gunmen.
But he did not go further, and ultimately he agreed to a deal allowing the terrorists to keep their weapons. That showed Abbas still has a long way to go on implementing Palestinian promises to take the weapons from all but authorized members of the P.A. security services.
The riots, and Abbas’ failure to cope with them, intensified the P.A.’s internal crisis. To protest Abbas’ deal with the terrorists, the commander of the general intelligence forces in the West Bank, Tawfik Tirawi, resigned March 31, charging that his fellow security commanders were not doing enough to restore law and order.
As the commanders met with Abbas, Tirawi told him, “The commanders around you are not telling you the truth. I cannot work when others do not do their job and when the Palestinian resident is deprived of the necessary feeling of security.”
Abbas turned down Tirawi’s resignation and Tirawi eventually withdrew it.
P.A. Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei condemned the March 30 riots and called on Palestinians to abide by the law.
“These acts serve the interests of those who are against our people,” he said. “We must all respect the rule of law.”
But Qurei’s own relations with Abbas have deteriorated considerably in recent months. Ehud Ya’ari, Arab affairs analyst for Israel’s Channel Two television, reported over the weekend that Qurei was keeping information from Abbas in order to weaken the president.
According to Israeli intelligence, senior figures surrounding Abbas are compartmentalizing him, reporting to him in a distorted manner or ignoring his orders altogether.
Abbas might name Jibril Rajoub, the P.A.’s national security adviser, to Jaber’s old job as head of all West Bank security services. Can Rajoub meet the complex challenges of the job?
Rajoub, 52, was Yasser Arafat’s longtime national security adviser until the two had a falling out and Arafat fired him.
He is considered a pragmatist in terms of relations with Israel and is feared on the Palestinian street. If anyone can confront the militants, it is Rajoub.
Only if Abbas and Rajoub succeed in stabilizing the situation will the Palestinians be able to demand that Bush pressure Israel to speed up the timetable for handing over additional Palestinian cities and dismantling West Bank roadblocks.
Palestinian officials have claimed time and again in recent weeks that it has been difficult to gain popular support for anti-terrorist measures because Israel is dragging its feet on relaxing security restrictions.
They also have been discouraged by Israel’s plan to expand the settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim to effectively link it to Jerusalem from the east, inconveniencing Palestinians traveling between the northern and southern parts of the West Bank.
Israel rejects Palestinian claims that P.A. security forces have been so crippled by Israel’s anti-terror operations during the intifada that they now can’t act.
However, after four years of intifada, power on the Palestinian street flows from the barrel of a gun, and for many, especially the young, weapons are a major source of respect, authority and livelihood.
The militants are feared but at the same time are still popular, considered by many Palestinians as the heroes of the intifada.
Meanwhile, the fundamentalist terror group Hamas grows stronger each day. Abbas has to take drastic measures to take the P.A.’s reins, and Israel has to prove to the Palestinians that they can gain more with Abbas at their helm than anyone else.
If there is no progress, Hamas may turn out to be a decisive political force in Palestinian parliamentary elections scheduled for this summer. Then P.A. officials may rue their failure to confront the terrorist groups during the 12 years since the Oslo peace process began.
Israelis and Palestinians may appear to be on the verge of a new peace process, but Israeli army generals and seasoned observers of the Palestinian scene predict a new round of fighting, perhaps as early as next fall, after Israel completes its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank.
The generals point to continued weapons smuggling and other military preparations by Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, while the Palestinian watchers see signs of growing discontent and radicalization among the Palestinian public.
According to military intelligence estimates, if there is a new eruption of terrorism it will come from the West Bank and could include Kassam rockets being fired at towns and cities inside Israel proper.
Writing in the newspaper Yediot Achronot, military analyst Alex Fishman says the Israel Defense Forces’ central command, which is responsible for the West Bank, already is gearing up for a renewal of the intifada.
The thinking in army circles is that after the Israeli withdrawal the Palestinians will see Gaza as “liberated” but will view the West Bank, which still will have a strong Israeli military and settler presence, as “occupied,” Fishman reports.
According to the army assessment, the Palestinians will have an interest in keeping the peace in Gaza to show that they can run their own affairs. But the West Bank will be an entirely different story.
With dozens of Israeli settlements and army camps still in place, the Palestinians will argue that they are fighting to end the occupation there, just as, in their view, they did in Gaza. And they will adopt the same model — firing rockets at both military and civilian targets.
According to military intelligence, the Palestinians are making a major effort to obtain the materials they need to produce rockets in the West Bank, something that until now they have been able to do only in the Gaza Strip.
West Bank-based terrorists reportedly have placed large orders for weapons and explosives for the rockets from Bedouin smugglers. One of the routes to the West Bank would be from Egypt through Gaza; another would be directly from Jordan.
Moreover, army sources say, once the IDF withdraws from all West Bank cities, as it is set to do under the terms of the current lull, the Palestinians will be able to set up workshops and manufacture the rockets unhindered.
Fishman reports that the army sees the arms smuggling as a major threat and is doing all it can to block smugglers’ routes. He says it has established a special unit to this end and taken steps to enhance intelligence- gathering capabilities among the Bedouin.
Appearing before the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee in late March, Military Intelligence Chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Ze’evi-Farkash confirmed that the Palestinian terrorists are trying to export technological know-how from Gaza to facilitate the manufacture of Kassam rockets in the West Bank.
Farkash added that despite a steep decline in current terrorist operations, the militias are enhancing their capabilities for future attacks. Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz also expressed concern.
During a visit to Washington, Mofaz said that Palestinians had smuggled Strella anti-aircraft rockets into the Gaza Strip, which he said “crosses a red line” for Israel. The Israeli fear is that if the Strellas are smuggled into the West Bank, they could be used against passenger planes taking off from Ben-Gurion Airport.
In addition, observers of the Palestinian scene report growing grass-roots frustration with the way the nascent peace process is developing. Israeli academics and Western diplomats whose work takes them into the West Bank note mounting popular discontent because ending the armed struggle so far has failed to change people’s everyday lives, as they had hoped it would.
Menachem Klein, a Bar Ilan University expert on the Palestinians, sees signs of growing radicalization, which he believes could erupt soon in violence. Klein notes that twice, within two weeks in March, jailed Palestinian militia leader Marwan Barghouti smuggled letters out from his prison cell calling for a return to armed struggle.
Three months ago, Barghouti backed Mahmoud Abbas’ candidacy for Palestinian Authority president, though Abbas’ entire campaign was based on ending the armed struggle. Klein argues that Barghouti, with his sharp political sense, would not have written the new letters unless he felt there was considerable support for the views expressed.
“The fact that Barghouti is calling for a return to the armed struggle shows that something very profound is happening on the Palestinian street,” Klein said.
Klein sees another expression of Palestinian radicalization in the way the secular Fatah Party and the fundamentalist Hamas movement, once divided by a huge ideological gulf, are growing closer. He notes that Hamas leaders are even calling for a “joint political program” — which might tame Hamas, but more likely would radicalize the entire Palestinian movement.
The bottom line for Klein is that he believes there is no way Israel and the Palestinians will be able to conduct a successful peace process. In his view, the two leaders already are conducting a “dialogue of the deaf.”
Abbas, he says, is only interested in negotiating a final peace deal, whereas Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon — who believes the sides are too far apart on basic issues to strike a lasting deal — insists on long-term interim arrangements instead.
There is no possible meeting point, Klein says.
“I see a great danger of a blow-up. I don’t know when it will happen, but it’s almost inevitable. It’s in the DNA of the process,” he said.
Not all observers agree that the process is doomed to failure. But if there is to be any chance of success, the two sides must solve a more fundamental problem: how to synchronize the rhythm of mutual concessions even before peace negotiations begin.
For now, Israel is reluctant to hand additional West Bank cities to P.A. control until the Palestinians carry out promised security reforms, while the Palestinians are reluctant to make the reforms until Israel hands over the cities. The Palestinians also have not moved on promises to take weapons from wanted terrorists in the cities already turned over to their control.
In an editorial, the left-leaning newspaper Ha’aretz suggests that Israel take the initiative.
“[Israel] must, to the best of its ability, contribute to the process that Abu Mazen is having difficulty in carrying out,” it says, using Abbas’ nom de guerre. “Even if such assistance often entails security risks.”
In the meantime, leaders on both sides see no alternative but to contemplate the possibility of failure — a state of mind, pundits warn, that could become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Leslie Susser is the diplomatic correspondent for the Jerusalem Report
On Feb. 24, The Blue Ribbon and the Fraternity of Friends hosted a gallery opening reception and book signing for Frederic Roberts’ “Humanitas” (Hylas Publishing) at the Peter Fetterman Gallery at the Bergamot Station arts complex in Santa Monica. “Humanitas” captures the lives of Southern Asians before the tsunamis that ravaged the areas where they live.
Leaving behind the comforts of modern civilization, Roberts, a former investment banker and former chairman of the NASD and NASDQ, has spent the last four years living with and photographing the lives of those in Southern Asia.
The Blue Ribbon, led by president Joyce Kresa, was founded in 1968 by Dorothy Buffum Chandler, and comprises more than 625 women who champion the performing arts and annually contribute more than $2.6 million to the Music Center.
The Fraternity of Friends was founded in 1978, and comprises businessmen and entertainment industry executives, including its president, Tom Weinberger, whose combined membership and support of the Music Center Spotlight Awards program contributes more than $1 million annually to the Music Center.
Eyes on Einstein
To mark the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein’s annus mirabilis (miracle year), supporters of the American Friends of the Hebrew University (AFHU) celebrated with an intimate dinner at the home of Beth and Joshua Friedman in Holmby Hills on March 12.
Co-hosted by AFHU West Coast Chairman Richard Ziman and his wife, Daphna, and AFHU board member Dr. William Isacoff and his wife, Judge Susan Isacoff, the event raised $100,000 to support Einstein scholarships at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
A founding director of Hebrew University, Einstein bequeathed his intellectual property, including his library and personal papers, to the university.
Featured guest for the evening was professor David Gross, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Physics and a graduate of the Hebrew University. Other guests included Dr. Gerald Levey, dean of the UCLA Medical School; AFHU board member Vidal Sassoon; and professor Hanoch Gutfreund, president emeritus of Hebrew University.
Acclaimed chef Josie LeBalch of Josie Restaurant catered the event, while renowned contemporary violinist Lily Haydn and jazz pianist Freddy Ravel entertained the guests.
In The JNF Zone
Ken Mintzer has been appointed the Jewish National Fund’s Greater Los Angeles zone director.
Mintzer has more than 20 years of experience in the field and comes to Los Angeles after running major federation campaigns in several cities. His recent past position was as the assistant executive director for the United Jewish Federation of San Diego County.
“I’ve had the opportunity to be mentored and learn from some of the brightest Jewish communal professionals from around the country,” Mintzer said. “My goals as the new LA zone director are threefold: helping donors fulfill their Jewish philanthropy by listening to them and matching their interests to projects; engaging the next generation, from people in their 30s to their 50s, in philanthropic opportunities for Israel; and advancing
JNF as a key player in the L.A. market for support for Israel, especially in the area of environmental issues and the development of Negev.”
From West to Easton
Former L.A. local Glenn Easton, was named president of the North American Association of Synagogue Executives (NAASE) at a ceremony in Jerusalem in February.
Easton is also the executive director of the Adas Yisrael Congregation in Washington, one of the largest Conservative synagogues in the country.
Prior to his East Coast move 13 years ago, Easton was the executive director at Adat Ari El in Valley Village, as well as a synagogue youth director and youth adviser in the Los Angeles area and a regional youth fieldworker.
NAASE is a membership organization serving the professional needs of synagogue executive directors of the Conservative movement, in order to further the development of their profession.
Good Friends
Some 700 people gathered for the annual Friends of Sheba Medical Center gala on March 2 where Michael Nathanson, CEO of MGM, received the Humanitarian Award; Jamie Masada, owner of the Laugh Factory, received the Rabin Philanthropy Award; and professor Mordechai Shani, retiring director general of Sheba Medical Center in Israel, received the Medical Visionary Award.
The center’s president, Aron Shapiro, praised the work of co-chairs Lonnie and Jimmy Delshad and Aviva and Zalman Harari, and honorary co-chairs Arnon Adar and Arthur Hiller.
Sharing introduction duties were Super Dave Osborne, Cedric the Entertainer, Paul Rodriguez and Kathy Griffin.
A musical interlude was performed by piano virtuoso William Joseph, and the evening concluded with a rousing performance by the Pointer Sisters.
Proceeds from the event went to new projects at Sheba Medical Center.
The Morning Report
The Anti-Defamation League’s Pacific Southwest Region hosted ADL’s New York-based associate national director Kenneth Jacobson who spoke on anti-Semitism at a March 16 morning briefing at the ADL West L.A. office.
Addressing 25 of ADL’s local lay leaders and volunteers, Jacobson said, “We’re never going to have lovers of Zion in the Arab world. Anything that’s not Arafat has to be better. [He] was far more interested in destroying the Jewish state than in building a Palestinian state.”
More campus awareness of Israel is needed, but less for students and more for teachers, Jacobson said, adding that surveys have shown that American college students are generally as pro-Israel as the rest of country, yet their professors consistently are “two-to-one” in favor of the Palestinian agenda.
Attendees included longtime ADL patrons Lenore Wax, Lily Steiner, Mary Weissman, Don Dreyfuss, Harvey Prince, Josh Keel and Lou Fox. – David Finnigan, Contributing Writer
ALL’S WELL WITH THE HUMAN
Philanthropists and celebrities were on hand at the Wellness Community West Los Angeles Tribute to the Human Spirit Awards dinner at the Beverly Hilton on March 11.
Actor Steve Guttenberg delivered a brief introductory speech at the awards, where actress and singer Daisy Torme took on the role of emcee. Michael States presented a posthumous award to Rhio Weir, who died in February, for the humanity he had shown as a survivor, by inspiring cancer patients and being committed the Wellness Community.
Actress Constance Marie (“The George Lopez Show”) presented an award to actor Eric McCormack (“Will and Grace”) for his breast cancer awareness advocacy. McCormack shared with the audience how his comedy helped his mother get through her cancer.
Television host Daisy Fuentes received an award for her commitment to spreading breast cancer awareness, particularly in the Latino community.
Dr. Armando Giuliano presented dedicated volunteer Ruth Weil with an award, and actor Robert Goulet received his Tribute to the Human Spirit Award for his role as spokesperson for the American Cancer Society for prostate cancer.
The evening entertainment was provided by Monte Montgomery and singer Roslyn Kind.
The Wellness Community is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to providing free emotional support, education and hope for people with cancer and their loved ones. – Emily Pauker, contributing writer.
During his papacy, Pope John Paul II repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism and met frequently with Jewish religious and lay leaders. He also took certain steps that Jews criticized. Following are some of the milestones in his relations with Jews and Israel:
1920s-1930s — Karol Jozef Wojtyla is born in Wadowice, Poland, on May 18, 1920. As he grows up, he has Jewish friends, neighbors and classmates.
1940s — He works in a Nazi slave labor camp, studies secretly for the priesthood in Nazi-occupied Poland and witnesses Nazi persecution of Jews.
1950s-1970s — He witnesses anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic policy by the Communist regime in Poland, including the forced exodus of approximately 20,000 Jews in 1968.
Oct. 16, 1978 — He is elected the first non-Italian pope in more than 450 years.
June 1979 — During his first return trip to Communist Poland, he prays at Auschwitz and pays homage to Holocaust victims.
April 13, 1986 — John Paul crosses the Tiber River to visit the main synagogue in Rome. He embraces Rome’s chief rabbi, describes an “irrevocable covenant” between God and the Jews and declares that Jews are Christians’ older brothers.
June 25, 1987 — The pope angers Jews by granting an audience to Austrian President Kurt Waldheim, sparking a crisis in Catholic-Jewish relations.
Dec. 28, 1993 — The Vatican and Israel establish full diplomatic ties.
Oct. 31, 1997 — In a major speech, the pope says Christians failed during the Holocaust.
March 16, 1998 — The Vatican issues “We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah,” a major document on the Holocaust. Its aim was to promote “an awareness of past injustices by Christians to the Jewish people” among “Catholics in those countries that were far removed by geography and history from the scene of the Shoah, and encourage their participation in the present efforts of the Holy See to promote throughout the church a new spirit in Catholic-Jewish relations.”
However, it disappointed many Jews by defending the wartime behavior of Pope Pius XII, and for failing to “make the linkage between 1,000 years of the Christian teaching of contempt of Jews and Judaism with the anti-Jewish climate in Christian Europe, where the Shoah took place.”
1999 — A six-member team of Catholic and Jewish historians is appointed to review published Vatican documentation on the role of the Holy See and Pope Pius XII during the Holocaust.
March 12, 2000 — On what he declares a “day of request for forgiveness” for Catholics, John Paul asks forgiveness for the past sins of the church, including its treatment of Jews.
March 20-26, 2000 — Marking the Christian millennium, the pope makes a pilgrimage to Israel. He visits holy sites in Israel and the Palestinian territories, visits Yad Vashem and prays at the Western Wall, where he slips a note into the cracks.
Sept. 3, 2000 — The pope beatifies Pope Pius IX, the 19th century pontiff who was the last pope to keep Jews in the ghetto and who was behind the 1858 kidnapping of a young Jewish boy who had been secretly baptized as a baby. On the same day, however, he beatified Pope John XXIII, the much-beloved pontiff who died in 1963 and whose five-year reign marked a turning point in church history and in Jewish-Catholic relations.
July 2001 — The commission formed to review published Vatican documentation on the role of the Holy See and Pope Pius XII during the Shoah suspends work. It has been denied the full access to the Holy See’s wartime archives, and it needs that access to answer questions raised during its research. Jews are unhappy at moves to beatify Pius XII.
February 2003 — The Vatican opens a number of documents relating to the Vatican’s relations with prewar Nazi Germany to the public. These include diplomatic documents from 1922 to 1939, held in the Vatican’s Secret Archives, when Eugenio Pacelli, who became Pope Pius XII, served as Vatican ambassador in Berlin and Vatican secretary of state.
Jan. 18, 2005 — John Paul holds an audience with more than 100 rabbis and cantors from the United States and other countries, who thank him for his efforts in bettering relations between Catholics and Jews.
