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Jewish Journal

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February 23, 2006

Shlomo’s World

Leave a Comment / Rob Eshman /

Shlomo Wollins begins his narration well before we reach Hebron, a city on the very fault line of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His tour, by car and by foot, on this late January day is an entry into a worldview of The Chosen and The Other, in which Jews, God’s Good Guys, are the victims of Arabs, but it’s also a world in which Jews are victors over Arabs.

At times, it’s a persuasive, irresistible message.

“You see that bus stop beside the road,” he says, indicating a nondescript crossroads on the drive south from Jerusalem. “That’s where three Jews were gunned down, including a 10-year-old boy and a pregnant woman. Just like that — as they waited for the bus. I came down and helped push dirt into three graves.”

I don’t doubt that Wollins did just that. His bearded, 40-something face is creased with kindness. His handshake is firm. His hug is warm. He was born and raised in America and tells me he made and lost a fortune in corporate America before immigrating to Israel. Inevitably, his conversation circles back to his dark vision of inevitable war.

“Right now the majority of people want to conclude that war is not necessary. That is a delusion,” Wollins says.

I crane my neck for a swift look as our car races by the bus stop. There’s a glimpse of a makeshift stone memorial. There isn’t much else to see there, except for a handful of Jews waiting for a bus.

Wollins himself usually rides the bus to Hebron, so he’s not absolutely sure how to navigate. He almost casually notes that a wrong turn would land us in an Arab village, with potentially deadly consequences.

On the way, we make two wrong turns. Each time, our driver, Orit, the third member of our party, wheels a hasty retreat. Perhaps the element of surprise works in our favor. Some bewildered Arab children seem as though they aren’t expecting an Israeli license plate. Had they been ready for us, would these adorable sprites really have lobbed rocks, or worse?

The unreality, the illogic of it all leaves me more fearless than I know I should be. Even the main road that we stick to runs almost exclusively through West Bank territory populated almost entirely by Arabs. Orit, a journalist I know to be intrepid, clearly looks nervous. Maybe she’s trying to remember if she got that spare tire repaired.

But we arrive in Hebron without incident — just ahead of a tour bus of mostly middle-aged U.S. visitors. If it’s safe for them today….

The bus’ appearance also says something about the irrepressible urge for normality, which asserts itself in Israel at any possible opportunity.

It’s no secret why a tour bus would stop here. Hebron and its environs are revered by both Muslim and Jewish faithful as the burial place, in the Cave of Machpelah, of patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and matriarchs Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. There’s been a Jewish presence on and off since then — and when it was off, it usually was in the wake of a bloody, unprovoked event. A local museum commemorates a 1929 expulsion pogrom that killed 67 Jews and wounded 60. When Jordan controlled the area from 1948 to 1967, its officials tried to raze all traces of the Jewish quarter, including the medieval synagogue. For that matter, over hundreds of years, the Muslims in charge had denied Jews and Christians access to Cave of Machpelah site.

So after Israelis overran the area during the 1967 War, there was plenty of pent up Jewish aspiration. The result was the nearby Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, which began at an old army installation and now houses some 6,500 souls. And, later, Jewish settlers pushed into Hebron itself, where they now occupy four, ever-at-risk neighborhoods, with about 1,000 residents in all.

Everything about Hebron speaks of a separateness dividing Israelis and Palestinians. A no-man’s land has developed between where Israelis live and where Palestinians live. And this dead zone is patrolled by young Israeli soldiers who make the Jewish quarter livable for Israelis outnumbered somewhere between 80-to-1 and 300-to-1, depending on who’s doing the counting. Those are bad odds even for Jews rough-and-ready enough to stage an Alamo-like stand.

This fundamental, almost unquestioned hostility and separateness is discomfiting to me, the child of Jews active in the civil rights movement. But here, in Wollins’ world, it’s a given. And in truth, it’s getting to be a given even for Israelis actively working for peaceful coexistence.

Wollins points to a hill opposite the Jewish quarter, from where Arab snipers used to fire, until the army finally cleared them out. He walks us through the school’s play yard, onto which Arab neighbors on the other side of the divide would toss rocks at grade-schoolers. Up an incline we approach the house where an Arab intruder stabbed to death a rabbi. And in the flats, a monument marks where a sniper shot a 10-month-old girl in a stroller through the head.

Hebron is no place for these Jews to live, except that they consider this site so holy. Besides the patriarchs, it’s also the traditional burial site of Ruth (the biblical grandmother of King David) and Jesse (David’s father). The trail to these tombs snakes between quaint vineyards and Arab homes along a path blocked from open access by razor wire and from view by corrugated metal and opaque plastic. The shielding isn’t bulletproof — and plenty of bullet holes attest to this — but it effectively obscures a clear shot at passing Jews.

But Wollins’ tour is as much about Jewish victory as victimization. He shows off a new apartment building that now stands like a defiant sentinel over land the rabbi’s knife-wielding assailant had once crossed. Next to this new building lies a former Arab parcel that Hebron’s Jews recently purchased over the fury of local Arab officials.

The Jewish quarter is fully rebuilt, sparkling with ancient stones and modern conveniences. So is the medieval synagogue, which a few years ago had been purposefully desecrated through its use as a trash pit and animal pen.

And Jews can once again enter the mosque that sits over the Cave of Machpelah.

Here, alas, there’s still a problem, says Wollins. Jews can only enter half the mosque, except for a few days a year. So some of the ancestors remain out of reach, because of the Muslims who control the grounds. Muslims, he adds, can visit the entire site, but it doesn’t work the other way around. One more example, he says, of Muslim injustice and the Israeli government’s tolerance of inequality when it comes to Jewish settlers.

But that’s not exactly right, as it turns out. After 1967, when Israeli troops took control of the region, Muslims and Jews had access to all parts of the mosque. Then, in 1994, Baruch Goldstein, a radical American doctor who’d immigrated to adjacent Kiryat Arba, entered the mosque armed with a Glil rifle. He opened fire on Muslim worshippers, killing 29 and wounding 125 before being overcome and beaten to death.

After that attack, which was almost exactly 12 years ago, the mosque was divided in half. Jews and Muslims no longer mingle. A few days per year, the whole site is open only to Jews or only to Muslims.

What about that? I ask Wollins, after hearing an Israeli guide explain the actual arrangement and its history to a group of tourists.

How does Goldstein figure into Wollins’ narrative? Wollins, after all, chose not to mention Goldstein on his own, let alone acknowledge that it was Goldstein’s actions, not Muslim perfidy, that precipitated the division of the holy site.

Wollins tries to explain: “I can’t say for sure, because I really don’t know. Maybe he snapped. But I can tell you story after story that I’ve heard of what a good man this doctor was. And I’ve heard from people here — and they say they have good reason to believe it — that Goldstein had advance knowledge of an Arab massacre that was about to happen. And that’s what he was trying to prevent.”

I learn later that Goldstein’s grave has become something of shrine for the radical right wing. And that the graveside inscription reads, in part: “Here lies the saint, Dr. Baruch Kappel Goldstein…. His hands are innocent and his heart is pure. He was killed as a martyr of God.”

To me, it sounds a lot like the posters lionizing the Muslim suicide bombers. I can’t resist thinking that the only thing missing is the 70 virgins waiting to greet Goldstein in heaven.

For his part, Wollins prefers to change the subject, like to a discussion of the peace process, which he regards as a disaster.

What is the better option? I ask.

He says he likes the way it was before then, before Palestinians had any pledge from Israel to turn over land to form a Palestinian state. Sure, he concedes, they would attack us, and we would attack them. And some people would die violently on a regular basis. But overall, that status quo was acceptable compared to the present. He could have lived that way forever — on the presumption that Israel would keep the lands it won in battle and continue to settle them.

And what about now? How can Israel hold onto all this territory and retain its Jewish identity — if that means that most residents of this greater Israel would, in fact, be Arab Muslims?

Wollins has an answer for that, too. Inevitably, he says, there will be a war, and the Muslims must, in the end, leave the land.

That is Wollins’ world — and that of many Israelis, though still a minority. Take that last paragraph and replace the word Muslim with Jew and that’s the world of Hamas, which has now assumed control of the Palestinian Authority. The leaders of Hamas seem equally certain that it is the Jews who ultimately must exit.

And did I mention that these visionaries of conflict confidently proclaim God to be on their side?

On this week after President’s Day, I am reminded that Abraham Lincoln once admonished the Holy Rollers of his day by saying that he never presumed that God was on his side. He could only pray that he was on God’s side.

With all due respect, the world of my friend Wollins is not my world. And I shudder to think that the best that so many can hope for is a bloody time when opposing worlds are fated to collide.

 

Shlomo’s World Read More »

Director Pays Price in Making ‘Capote’

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

Truman Capote, the legendary writer and subject of the eponymous Sony Pictures Classics release that has been nominated for five Academy Awards, spent six years writing “In Cold Blood,” the book that would cement his literary legacy while also leading to his spiritual downfall.

If the writing of “In Cold Blood” proved a Faustian bargain for Capote, the making of “Capote” has not left its principals unscathed. Bennett Miller, 39, who has received an Oscar nomination for best director, speaks over the phone with the world weariness of a much older man, one who has weathered many crises.

“I can’t imagine anything that’s going to prove as difficult,” he said about directing “Capote.” “It took everything out of me, and it took everything out of Phil [actor Philip Seymour Hoffman], as well.”

Caroline Baron, the film’s producer who worked with Hoffman on “Flawless” and has known screenwriter Dan Futterman and Miller for a number of years, said that all films present challenges, but that from the outset, she had “100 percent confidence in Bennett as a director and Phil as an actor.”

Hoffman’s presence in the project helped her convince investors to pony up $7.5 million for a movie to be directed by a first-time feature filmmaker.

Where Capote never forgave himself for betraying, or at least manipulating, Perry Smith, the murderer with whom he had bonded in writing “In Cold Blood,” Miller said that collaborating on “Capote” brought him, Futterman and Hoffman, who have known each other since they were teenagers, “even closer. Something like this challenges you.

“In the natural course of a friendship,” he continued, “it doesn’t always happen that one’s wants are up against another’s. Not just any wants. Deeply felt wants.”

Miller, who like Futterman is Jewish, met the latter in junior high in Westchester County, N.Y. He spent much time at Futterman’s house, even occasionally celebrating Passover together. If Miller is not very religious, he has been obsessed with filmmaking since he got his first camera, a Super-8, when he was 11.

He got some strong reviews but little recognition for “The Cruise,” a 1998 documentary that follows the quirky life of a homeless Manhattan tour guide who rattles off statistics about the Big Apple while riding a double-decker bus. “Capote” marks his entree into the A-list, just as “In Cold Blood” made Capote an international literary phenomenon.

Capote was already a darling of cafe society, renowned since the late 1940s for his short stories and later novels like “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” when he saw the potential for creating a nonfiction narrative using techniques traditionally associated with fiction writing — interior monologue, differing points of view and voice. He wanted to get the reader so deeply into the heads of two murderers that the reader would not only be chilled but also feel a modicum of empathy for Dick Hickock and particularly Smith.

Miller, Futterman and Hoffman have honored the man some view as the greatest postwar writer by making a film that, like the best of Capote’s prose, has both a spareness and beauty. One of the frequent images in the film is a shot of barren trees in the early Kansas morning; they stand alone like sentinels that have failed to protect the Clutter family from violence.

Without a word of dialogue, these shots tell us what we have to know about Kansas, that it is a lonely part of the country with a lot of open space, and that there is something austere, even a little sinister, that could be lurking in this land.

If Capote disarmed people with his self-deprecating wit, his effeminate mannerisms and above all his bizarre voice, he also disarmed them with his surprising toughness, the kind that allowed him to brave a foray into Middle America, where few had encountered an eccentric like him before.

Still, it took its toll on him, just as it has on Miller, who relates a story from kindergarten. All the kids were asked to take those colorful, big blocks, known to all kindergarteners, and to construct “a kind of needle, a pyramid.” Miller hid underneath a desk and watched as the other kids assembled their structures.

“Finally, I ventured out to do it. I did it deliberately upside down.” With characteristic fatigue in his voice, he said, “That is how this movie feels to me.”

 

Director Pays Price in Making ‘Capote’ Read More »

Community Briefs

Leave a Comment / Community /

‘Munich’ Still Topic of Debate

Even with Republican sponsors and a largely Republican audience, the panelists at a recent discussion on Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” covered most of the spectrum from left to right.

At the event, held at Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy and sponsored by the Republican Jewish Coalition, Kathleen Wright, a writer, distributed an article titled, “‘Munich’ Stands for ‘Appeasement.'” Her piece recycled New York Times’ columnist David Brooks’ argument that Spielberg, who has been nominated for a best directing Oscar, had posited a moral equivalence between the Black September terrorists and the Israeli commandos.

She was followed by Robert Kaufman, a professor at Pepperdine’s School of Public Policy, who criticized Spielberg for failing to put the Munich attacks and response in the proper historical context.

The next speaker, professor Michael Berenbaum, disagreed with the charges of historical inaccuracy, saying it’s not the job of a filmmaker to tell the complete history of Islamic-Jewish relations in one film. He also countered the moral equivalence argument by pointing out the scrupulous care with which the Israelis depicted in the film try to avoid inflicting collateral damage — compared to the terrorists, who are shown gunning down the defenseless Israeli athletes.

Allan Mayer, a consultant who helped Spielberg navigate the “political minefield” of the film, addressed the frequent criticism that the film humanizes the terrorist masterminds by showing one to be a learned poet and another to be a family man with a charming daughter.

“That’s the nature of evil,” Mayer said, adding that it would be unrealistic and simplistic to portray the terrorists as being “painted blue with horns.”

After questions were shouted from the audience of 150 — despite the agreement that questions would only be submitted on cards — each speaker was given an opportunity to sum up. The last word was left to Mayer, who said merely that he was glad that the film had gotten people talking about the issues. As he had noted earlier, “It’s hitting people at a very deep level.” — Robert David Jaffee, Contributing Writer

Jewish Groups Get Federal Safety Funds

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has allocated $5.1 million in security funding for nonprofit, faith-based institutions in California, with $3.75 million earmarked for L.A. County. Synagogues, Jewish agencies and day schools across Los Angeles County make up the bulk of local nonprofit institutions receiving the local funding.

A state Office of Emergency Services listing of recipients shows that of the 46 local nonprofits getting funding, 28 are Jewish institutions representing almost $2 million combined out of the $3.75 million. The grants attracted 87 Los Angeles nonprofit applicants. Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss, whose district includes the San Fernando Valley and the Westside, spearheaded the push for L.A. funding.

These grants will cover improvements on physical security, such as fences and security cameras. Jewish institutions receiving $100,000 grants include the Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance, the University of Judaism, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Emek Hebrew Academy in Sherman Oaks and Yeshiva of Los Angeles high school.

In a Feb. 10 press release announcing the grants, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said L.A. nonprofits finally are getting, “a larger portion of security funds available to local governments.”

Along with Jewish institutions, federal security grants of $100,000 also have been awarded to the Los Angeles Music Center, plus hospitals in Los Angeles, Glendale, Burbank and Long Beach.

Synagogues receiving federal funding in the $90,000 range are the Orthodox shuls Chabad of the Valley in Tarzana and the Pico-Robertson’s Torat Hayim, plus Conservative synagogues Adat Shalom in Westwood, Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles and Venice’s Temple Mishkon Tephilo. A grant of $88,559 was awarded to the Orthodox Young Israel of Century City, while Conservative Shomrei Torah of West Hills is receiving $75,631.

Jewish agencies getting federal money include a $96,500 grant to Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles. The L.A. office of the National Council of Jewish Women and the L.A. Hillel Council each will be receiving funds in the upper $40,000 range. The Westside Jewish Community Center received almost $61,000, while Long Beach’s Barbara & Ray Alpert Jewish Community Center got $91,500, according to the Emergency Services Office.

Jewish schools with grants include the Fairfax District’s Yavneh Hebrew Academy ($90,339) and Bais Yaakov School for Girls ($69,746), plus New Community Jewish High School in West Hills ($31,900), the Pico-Robertson’s Maimonides Academy ($41,978) and West Covina’s Atid Hebrew Academy ($80,000). — David Finnigan, Contributing Writer

 

Community Briefs Read More »

Wiesenthal’s Project in Jerusalem on Hold Amid Dispute

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Since its beginning in 1977, with one phone and a very long extension cord, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center has seemingly moved from one success to the next, with its shrewd, strategic planning and winning message of tolerance. Now it faces a daunting, unfamiliar and discomforting challenge.

At risk is its dream project, the Center for Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance in the heart of Jerusalem. For the past five years, Rabbi Marvin Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s founder and dean, has poured his formidable energies and negotiating skills into the $200 million project as the capstone of his career.

But now the project is running into a roadblock: In a petition to the Israeli High Court of Justice, lawyers for two Muslim organizations asserted that thousands of Muslims who died during the Crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries are buried at the site where the center is being built.

They also argue that associates of the Islamic prophet Mohammed were interred at the site in the seventh century.

Muslims aren’t the only ones opposing the project — the building plan is also unpopular among many Israeli Jews.

In response, the High Court this week appointed former Chief Justice Meir Shamgar as a mediator. Shamgar has a month to find a resolution on the topic.

So far, Hier is standing his ground.

“We have done everything lawfully for the past five years,” said Hier, who noted that the site had been used for years as a parking lot. “We had open City Council meetings, put notices in the Hebrew and Arab presses and architect Frank Gehry came to Israel and gave lengthy interviews. All that time, there were no complaints from the Muslim community. Surely, it is more sacrilegious to park 700 cars on the site than to build a museum of tolerance.”

How different things looked last May, when after years of bureaucratic wrangling and vocal opposition from influential Jerusalemites, the road finally seemed clear. A gala ceremony marked the groundbreaking on the three-acre campus. Ready were Gehry’s plans for seven buildings, including a library, education center, performing arts theater, international conference center and two museums.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Ehud Olmert (then the mayor of Jerusalem and now Israel’s acting prime minister) lauded the new center’s goal of promoting civility and respect among Jews and between Jews and Muslims.

In recent weeks, workmen excavating the site unearthed bones and partial skeletons from the old Muslim Mamilla, or Maman Allah, cemetery.

There is agreement among all parties that Muslims have been buried at the site for many centuries, and that bodies may possibly lie five layers deep.

Hier, in an interview with The Journal, forcefully laid out his case for moving ahead regardless with the project, on which the center has spent $10 million so far.

“Never in a million years would we have undertaken this project if the government of Israel or the Jerusalem municipality had told us that we were building atop a Muslim cemetery. We would have rejected the site out of hand.”

But Hier said he was assured by local and national authorities that there were no legal impediments to building on the site, now mainly a large open parking lot.

Also on the site is a four-level underground garage, excavated and built 30 years ago, with no protests from Muslim religious authorities.

Even earlier, in 1964, when the now-defunct Palace Hotel stood on part of the parcel, the highest Muslim religious council in Jerusalem ruled that the cemetery had been inactive for such a long time that it had lost its sacred character and could be used for public purposes.

In a region where religion and politics are so closely entwined — and where the Islamist Hamas recently won Palestinian elections and Israelis are poised to vote on March 28 — the ramifications of the dispute are bound to inflame already edgy tempers.

Lawyers for the Wiesenthal Center presented three possible compromises at last week’s Supreme Court hearing: Build a dignified monument to the ancient cemetery; refurbish a nearby modern Muslim cemetery; or rebury the bones at another site, all at the center’s expense.

“We want to do the right thing,” Hier said.

Israeli politicians have criticized the Wiesenthal Center’s plans.

Likud Party member Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of the Knesset, asked, “Why, for God’s sake, does a house of tolerance need to be built on a Muslim cemetery. It goes against logic.” He added: “My parents are buried on the Mount of Olives. If someone decided they needed to be moved to build a museum of tolerance, I’d be very angry.”

The Israel office of the Anti-Defamation League has appealed to the Wiesenthal Center for a “pause” in construction, but retracted the call after the High Court appointed Shamgar.

On the Muslim side, Irkrima Sabri, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, has petitioned UNESCO to declare the disputed area an international historical site.

One underlying factor contributing to the confrontation is long-standing hostility to the project by influential segments of Jerusalem’s citizenry, despite support for it from some municipal and national political leaders.

Such opposition, well before the cemetery dispute, helps account for the antagonistic tone of some Israeli critics.

Among the early skeptics were officials at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, who argued that there was no need for a competing Holocaust museum.

The Wiesenthal Center agreed that its new museum would not deal with the Holocaust.

Hier emphasized that his goal was to press forward as planned.

“I have absolute faith that the Center for Human Dignity will rise in Jerusalem … in the present location,” he said. “We’ve gone through all the required processes for more than five years, all the architectural and building plans are for this specific site. And we’ve gone too far for any changes now.”

For one thing, Hier’s architect, the renowned Frank Gehry created a design for this specific site. For another, finding a new location is hardly a given in a city where every parcel, in effect, could be regarded as an archeological site.

This week, the project received a boost from acting Prime Minister Olmert. In a phone call with Hier and Wiesenthal Center board chair Larry Mizel, Olmert reaffirmed his full support for the museum, according to the Wiesenthal Center.

“This is an essential project for Jerusalem, a landmark that will change the face of Jerusalem forever,” said Olmert, as quoted in a center press release. “I stand behind it 100 percent, with all my power.”

Wiesenthal’s Project in Jerusalem on Hold Amid Dispute Read More »

7 Days in The Arts

Leave a Comment / Picks and Clicks /

Saturday, March 4

Before the Oscar envelopes are opened tomorrow night, head to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today to hear the directors of the five nominated foreign language films (subject to availability) discuss issues of art, politics and filmmaking. Clips from the films will be shown, and a Q-and-A will follow. The nominees include the Palestinian entry, “Paradise Now,” and the German “Sophie Scholl — The Final Days.”

9 a.m. Free (with advanced tickets). Samuel Goldwyn Theater, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. (310) 247-3600.

Sunday, March 5

Last chance to see the West Coast premiere of the Jerome Kern Broadway musical extravaganza, “Never Gonna Dance.” The story follows professional dancer John “Lucky” Garnett to New York City as he tries to prove himself to his fiancee’s father by earning a salary through means other than dancing. But the big city’s rhythms get his feet to tapping to Kern songs like “Pick Yourself Up,” “The Way You Look Tonight,” and “I’m Old Fashioned.”

Through March 5. $25-$50. Carpenter Performing Arts Center, 6200 Atherton St., Long Beach. (562) 856-1999.

Monday, March 6

Their mission? To teach you how to put on tefilin. But if you’ve ever wondered why the young Chabad shlichim have made Jewish outreach their life’s work, author Sue Fishkoff offers insight into their lives tonight at Conejo Jewish Academy. Her lecture, based on her similarly titled book, is, “The Rebbe’s Army: A Journalist’s Look Inside the World of Chabad.”

8 p.m. $10-$13. 30345 Canwood St., Agoura Hills. R.S.V.P., (818) 991-0991.

Tuesday, March 7

USC fine arts major Michael Maizels has found a new way to build community among the many art students in our city. His project is “Boroughs of Los Angeles,” an art exhibit that features the photos, paintings, digital media and drawings of undergrads from five major L.A. art campuses: USC, UCLA, Otis, Art Center and Cal Arts. The first-ever collaborative student art show of this kind, it runs daily through April 14.

Noon- 5 p.m. Free. William Grant Still Arts Center, 2520 S. West View St., Los Angeles.

Wednesday, March 8

Tobey C. Moss Gallery presents “David P. Levine: In Memorium (1910-2005),” an exhibition of the late artist’s emotional paintings, drawings and assemblages depicting the history he lived through. His works take the viewer from Depression-era California through the “signs and symbols that dominate the contemporary landscape,” according to the gallery.

Through April 22. Free. 7321 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles. (323) 933-5523.

Thursday, March 9

Plan a trip to San Diego to coincide with the Lawrence Family JCC’s eclectic Distinguished Author Series, which begins today. Tonight’s opening speaker will be Dr. Susannah Heschel, scholar and daughter of theologian and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Or save your trip for future speakers, including actor and former teen idol Tab Hunter, authors Faye Kellerman and Alexandra Zapruder and Rabbi Elliot Dorff.

Times vary. March 9, 21, 23, 26 and 28. $9-$12. 4126 Executive Drive, La Jolla. (858) 362-1348.

Friday, March 10

The Lost Studio’s “Pinter Project,” exploring plays by the recent Nobel Prize winner, began in 2000 but was interrupted for a time by an arson fire that destroyed the theater in 2002. Three years later, it’s back to work on another Pinter play, “No Man’s Land.” The mysterious and emotionally turbulent story involving two men — maybe friends, maybe strangers — unfolds slowly over the course of two days.

Through March 26. $20. The Lost Studio Theatre, 130 S. La Brea Ave., Hollywood. R.S.V.P., (800) 595-4849.

7 Days in The Arts Read More »

Robot Dances Off With Award

Leave a Comment / Up Front /

Don’t have time to shlep to a museum? Too tired to remember if the free museum day is the first or second Tuesday of the month? Want to conquer a large, overwhelming exhibit in small, 15-minute intervals? Then bring the museum to your desktop and browse at your own pace.

The Jewish Women’s Archive has launched “Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution,” an inspirational and evocative online exhibit. It’s an innovative way to introduce today’s generation of Jewish women to the pacesetting leaders who paved the way before them.

“‘Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution’ brings the story of Jewish feminism into the story of American feminism for the first time, connecting their histories in a landmark project,” curator Judith Rosenbaum said.

The brightly colored site is easy to use and fun to surf. Complete with video clips, documents, posters, flyers, photographs, art, radio news reports and first-person statements, the exhibition explores Jewish women’s significant contributions to the American and Jewish feminist movements of the 1960s and 1970s. How did these times change the lives of Jewish women, and how did Jewish women create change during the times?

The site organizes material by themes, timeline, people and medium and covers topics like women’s health, female rabbis, sexuality, arts, education and spirituality.

The exhibition features artifacts from the private collections of 74 notable women, including Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg; Gloria Steinem, pioneering activist and founder of Ms. Magazine; and feminist artist Judy Chicago.

Also featured are three Los Angeles women: Rachel Adler, feminist theologian and professor of modern Jewish thought and Judaism and gender at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion; UCLA history professor Ellen DuBois, feminist author and scholar of 19th century women’s history; and Reform Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell, director of the Pennsylvania Council of the UAJC and founding director of the American Jewish Congress Feminist Center in Los Angeles.

The exhibition can be found at www.jwa.org/feminism.

 

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Exodus’ Trail of Woe

Leave a Comment / Israel, Judaism, Worldwide /

Just outside the gates of the Jewish aid compound in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a shantytown of decrepit tin shacks, overcrowded homes and debris-filled byways beckon the reticent visitor.

Barefoot children stumble amid the flotsam, part of the milieu of stray dogs, mule-drawn carts and mendicants that comprise the dusty street scene in this part of Addis Ababa.

Here, among the fetid smells and homes fashioned from scrap metal, live several thousand Falash Mura — Ethiopians linked to Jews whose progenitors converted to Christianity, but who now are returning to Judaism and bidding to immigrate to the Jewish state.

They’ve come here and to slums in the city of Gondar from their rural villages, abandoning their farms and occupations as blacksmiths, potters and weavers to live near the aid compounds and, more importantly, to be close to the Israeli officials in whose hands their fate rests.

Every month, about 300 of the luckier ones are selected to be taken to Israel. Once there, they are granted Israeli citizenship and taught Hebrew and Judaism, while residing in absorption centers. In due course, they are provided with about 90 percent of the funds they need to buy a home.

It is a generous package, and one that has more than a few Israelis and American Jews concerned that there will never be an end to the Ethiopian aliyah.

This fear — and stories of Ethiopians fabricating Jewish ties to escape Africa’s desperate poverty by way of a visa to Israel — has stalled plans to end mass Ethiopian immigration to Israel by the end of 2007.

The Israeli Cabinet decided in February 2003 to bring up to 26,000 Falash Mura remaining in Ethiopia to Israel. A year ago, Israel agreed to expedite the pace of aliyah — immigration to Israel — for the 20,000 the state was told remained, setting in place detailed procedures for an operation that would double the rate of aliyah to 600 persons a month, bringing over the total number of those deemed eligible by the end of 2007.

But so far, none of the plan’s key phases have been put in motion, a fact many attribute to the disappearance of the plan’s key political champion: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

“Sharon was the engine behind this. He pushed this through. He took the decisions. He set the timetable,” said Ori Konforti, the senior official in Ethiopia for the Jewish Agency for Israel, which is responsible for immigration to Israel. “Now there is no engine for this.”

A 36-hour visit to Ethiopia this month by a delegation of approximately 70 American Jewish federation leaders, including a delegation from Los Angeles, aimed to change that. The mission to Ethiopia came five months after the umbrella group of the North American federation system, the United Jewish Communities (UJC), launched Operation Promise, a $160 million campaign for overseas needs. Of that total, $100 million is to go for Ethiopian aliyah and absorption; the other $60 million is designated primarily for elder care in the former Soviet Union.

The goal of the five-day trip to Ethiopia and Israel was to motivate federation leaders to go out and raise the money needed to reach the $160 million goal. The Ethiopian project already was a centerpiece focus for one official on the trip, John Fishel, head of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

UJC’s hope is that moving forward on that pledge will prompt Israel to begin expediting the Ethiopian aliyah. So far, more than $45 million has been raised for the operation, according to UJC officials.

“The money needs to be there, and all the rest flows,” Howard Rieger, president and CEO of UJC, said in an interview at the time the pledge was made.

“Frankly, I think we came to the conclusion that we need to hold up our share of the bargain, so to speak, and by moving forward and taking this action — which we very much plan to implement — at least we’ve carried out our responsibility,” Rieger said. “Will the government carry out theirs? I hope and expect they will.”

Even if the $100 million for Ethiopian aliyah is raised quickly, the lion’s share of the burden will continue to rest squarely on Israel. On average, each Ethiopian immigrant costs the state approximately $100,000 over the course of a lifetime, according to Israeli government estimates. And more money for Ethiopian immigration means less money for Israel’s other pressing needs.

“It’s very difficult to absorb them, and there are so many poor Israelis who need help, too,” said Nachman Shai, director general of UJC Israel. “This will happen, but it will take time.”

Money will not solve some of the most significant problems that have riddled the Falash Mura aliyah since its inception in the early 1990s, after the final group of practicing Ethiopian Jews were airlifted to Israel en masse in Operation Solomon in 1991. The conundrum of the Falash Mura aliyah is tied up with the questions of how many potential immigrants exist among Ethiopia’s 70 million citizens, how to stymie unqualified Ethiopians from emigrating to Israel and the cost of absorbing the immigrants.

The most important piece of the puzzle, by many accounts, is nailing down the final list of who is eligible for aliyah. That would enable Israel and American Jewry to close the chapter on mass Ethiopian aliyah and get a real sense of the total cost and scope of the project. Without such a list, officials fear, the number of Ethiopians seeking to emigrate to Israel will perpetually grow.

“If you ask me today how many people are waiting for aliyah, I can’t tell you how many,” acknowledged an Israeli Interior Ministry official working in Ethiopia.

The Interior Ministry is the Israeli government body charged with determining who is qualified to immigrate to the Jewish state.

“It’s hard for us to bring an answer,” the official said. “People are still in the villages who have not yet come.”

Last year, a special investigation by this reporter found indications of thousands of heretofore unknown Falash Mura in the Ethiopian hinterlands of Achefar, potentially adding thousands to the number of those seeking to immigrate to Israel.

“I hear stories about Israel from the elders,” said Guade Meles, 46, one of the Falash Mura living in the Ethiopian countryside. Guade — Ethiopians are known by their first names — is from the town of Ismallah, in Ethiopia’s rural Gojam province. “They told me there are benefits there. My cousins have gone to Israel. My wife’s brothers have gone to Israel.”

Other accounts exist of Falash Mura communities scattered elsewhere in the country, and there are many individual Ethiopians of Jewish descent living among non-Jews in places like the northern Ethiopian province of Tigray.

In the hovels of Addis Ababa and the mud-and-straw tukuls of rural Ethiopia, it’s difficult to sort out exactly who is and who isn’t Falash Mura.

The Ethiopians seeking to emigrate today call themselves Beta Israel, a caste designation associated with the smithing trades the Ethiopian Jews — known pejoratively as Falashas — traditionally performed during centuries of prohibition against land ownership.

While the Jewish state decided in the early 1980s to welcome Beta Israel who had kept their Jewish faith and identities — and facilitated their aliyah in Operations Moses and Solomon in 1984 and 1991 — Israel turned away the Beta Israel who had abandoned Judaism generations ago when their ancestors converted. These people are called Falash Mura.

Israel’s policy on the Falash Mura changed in the 1990s, largely due to advocacy by American Jews and vocal protests by relatives of the Falash Mura who had made it to Israel.

In the countryside of Gojam province, the Falash Mura can be found in clusters of mud-and-straw huts built amid eucalyptus trees. In one village, a pair of women are bent over incipient clay pots, their mud-covered hands shaping the wet earth into new jugs. Not far away, a few dozen men work barefoot in the field, cutting hay for the roof of their church.

Although they pray in a Christian church and hang pictures of the Virgin Mary in their home, these people call themselves Beta Israel. Many of them have relatives who have gone to Gondar and Addis Ababa, some of whom have since made it to Israel.

Those who have left their villages and gone to live in the cities, closer to where Israel’s representatives in Ethiopia work and live, say they have ceased their Christian practices. Some of them don yarmulkes while in the Jewish aid compounds, many take lessons in Judaism and all hope that embracing the Jewish faith will help get them to the Jewish state.

Abeyna Worku, 33, came to Gondar from the nearby village of Alefa four years ago. Most of Alefa’s residents have left for Gondar, but about 200 remain in the village, he said.

“Most of my relatives are in Israel, and I want to join them,” Abeyna said. “Israel is good since it’s the promised land from our grandparents.”

It is difficult to prove the Jewish heritage of these Ethiopians, most of whom were practicing Christians until they were told they needed to embrace Judaism to be eligible for aliyah. As a result, they are not petitioning to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants automatic citizenship to anyone with a Jewish grandparent.

Rather, Israeli officials are verifying whether the Falash Mura qualify for aliyah under Israel’s Law of Entry, a humanitarian law designed to enable relatives of Israelis to immigrate to the Jewish state. So rather than having to come up with documents proving they are Jews, which nobody in Ethiopia has, these Ethiopians are trying to prove they are the immediate relatives of Ethiopians already in Israel.

That also means that some of those seeking to qualify under the Law of Entry are not Jews at all, but Christian relatives of Jews. Some estimate these Christians constitute up to 30 percent of Ethiopian olim or immigrants.

Habtu Gidyelew, 32, is one of those people. He married an Ethiopian Israeli six months ago and now hopes to join her in Israel. She moved to Israel 15 years ago, and the couple met during her visits back to Ethiopia.

“I met her three years ago,” Habtu said. “I want to be with her because I love her.”

The eligibility verification process for Ethiopian aliyah is slow and painstaking, and it is plagued by the problems of trying to verify who is related to whom when there are no birth certificates or written records. It also requires running an operation simultaneously in Israel and Ethiopia and weeding out the liars from the truth-tellers among people who know that demonstrating one’s ties to Jewish kin is a way to get a free ticket out of Africa, automatic Israeli citizenship and access to a broad array of social services in Israel.

More than 75,000 Ethiopians have immigrated to Israel since the early 1980s. Because it is so costly to absorb these immigrants in Israel, this means the stakes are extremely high both for Israel and for the Ethiopians seeking aliyah.

At the moment, it is American Jews like the federation leaders on the mission who are trying to grease the wheels of the aliyah operation.

“I think the government plan that was approved was a good plan, and I think it needs to be implemented,” said Barry Shrage, head of Boston’s Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

“The worst thing that happens is they take them out, and there’ll be another 20,000,” Shrage said. “But I’m not going to be suicidal if in the end it’s 40,000.”

That sort of attitude is precisely what worries officials in Israel, who will have to bear the burden of absorbing the immigrants.

Some of the Falash Mura’s advocates — namely American Jews and Ethiopian family members and community leaders already in Israel — accuse the Israeli government of indifference or racism in dragging its feet on accepting these Ethiopians as immigrants.

There are Ethiopians who have been waiting in Addis Ababa and Gondar for as long as eight years, impoverished by the loss of their livelihoods in their move to the city, susceptible to the HIV-infected prostitutes that ply their trade on the city’s streets at night and dependent on assistance like the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s feeding program for young mothers and their babies.

For their part, many Israelis, including some Ethiopians, blame the Falash Mura’s advocates with creating this state of ongoing misfortune. These critics say groups like the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry (NACOEJ), which has been the primary advocacy and aid group for Ethiopian aliyah in the last decade and receives funding from Jewish federations, created a crisis of internal displacement in Ethiopia by maintaining their aid compounds.

By doing that, NACOEJ has tacitly or intentionally given Ethiopians with no knowledge of their Jewish lineage the expectation that they will be able to get to Israel if they move to the cities and turned communities of self-sustaining farmers and craftsmen into aid-dependent internal refugees, impoverished and condemned to a hardscrabble urban life.

NACOEJ rejects such arguments, saying that if not for its work, not only would Beta Israel migrants starve in the cities while awaiting aliyah, they also would be far less prepared for life in the Jewish state once they arrived there.

This claim is belied, however, by the current situation in Addis Ababa, where the community continues to survive despite the closure of NACOEJ’s compound there about 18 months ago, following legal troubles. Those troubles prompted Ethiopia’s Justice Ministry to bar the group from operating in Addis Ababa .

Privately, some Jewish officials herald this as a positive development, because they say that NACOEJ’s advocacy has helped swell the number of Ethiopian petitioners seeking to immigrate to Israel. Both these American Jews and officials in Israel worry that once the Falash Mura now in Gondar and Addis Ababa emigrate, thousands more will show up and demand to be taken to Israel.

“We’ll take these 20,000, and then there’ll be more,” said one senior American Jewish organizational official who asked not to be identified. “This could be 1998 all over again.”

In 1998, Israel’s government held a ceremony at Ben-Gurion Airport welcoming what then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu heralded as the last planeload of Falash Mura to arrive in Israel. A month later, 8,000 more people poured into NACOEJ’s compounds in Addis Ababa and Gondar demanding to be taken to Israel. The number soon swelled to 14,000.

This time, having learned some of the lessons of 1998, Israel plans to have the Jewish Agency take over the NACOEJ compounds, which provide food aid, schooling and some employment but not places to live. The goal is to shut the compounds down as soon as the current group of immigrants, now estimated at 13,000 to 17,000, are brought to Israel.

Acknowledging that U.S. Jewish federations had a role in keeping the compounds open in 1998, Robert Goldberg, chairman of the UJC, said, “In some way, we’ve encouraged these people to come. Nobody’s perfect. We do our best, and we have the best of intentions.”

Now, Goldberg said, “The compounds have to be closed.”

“What I would like to see is all of them come in a weekend,” Goldberg said of the Ethiopians awaiting aliyah. “If you can prepare everything in Israel, you don’t have to wait and bring out 600 a month. You can bring them all out. I’m going to push for it.

“Unless there’s a good plan to end it, there will be more,” he warned. “We don’t even know if they’re telling the truth. They just want to get out of here.”

One thing seems certain: The longer it takes to close the chapter on mass Ethiopian immigration to Israel, the more immigrants, there will be. That infuses the current push to speed up the aliyah process. And for the first time in a long time, it seems that many of the necessary ingredients are in place to accelerate the aliyah of the Falash Mura and write the last chapter on Ethiopian immigration to Israel.

The Jewish Agency has trained 40 to 60 workers to take over the aid compounds in Gondar and Addis Ababa from NACOEJ, which has promised to cease its advocacy work for Ethiopian aliyah once the expedited aliyah process begins.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry signed a deal with the Ethiopian government last fall on coordinating the aliyah eligibility verification process, and Israel’s Finance Ministry says it has allocated an extra $45 million for the accelerated aliyah operation in 2006. But Israel’s government has not yet given the green light to begin the operation, and nobody is quite able to say why.

The Interior Ministry blames the Finance Ministry. The Finance Ministry says it is waiting for the government to decide on an exact date. In one sign of the mishandling of this issue by the Israelis, a spokesman for Israel’s Foreign Ministry recently declared that the expedited aliyah already had begun. It had not.

Many observers say the accelerated aliyah will not commence until the prime minister himself gives word. Earlier this month, Israel’s acting prime minister, Ehud Olmert, canceled a meeting in Israel with the American delegation that had visited Ethiopia. By all accounts, Ethiopian aliyah is far down the list of priorities for a state dealing with a comatose prime minister, upcoming elections and a new Hamas terrorist state on its doorstep.

Meanwhile, the Falash Mura continue to wait in Ethiopia, their fate in the hands of faraway Jews in New York and Jerusalem.

 

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Falash Mura Plight Stirs Support in U.S.

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Perhaps no single party outside the Israeli government is as vital to Ethiopian aliyah as the American Jews committed to help paying for it.

So this month, when the United Jewish Communities (UJC) brought a group of 100 people from America’s wealthiest Jewish communities, including Los Angeles, to the straw-and-mud huts of one of the poorest countries on earth, it was a signal to the Israeli government that American Jewry is serious about its own role in bringing Ethiopians to Israel.

Now the question is what the members of the mission — including approximately 70 federation leaders, their staffers and family — are going to do with their newfound, hands-on familiarity with the issue of Ethiopian aliyah.

“Operating here in Ethiopia is extremely complex,” said John Fishel, president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. Fishel said his role is to help raise money. “Doing the aliyah is a whole other issue that I’ll leave to the experts.”

The picture presented to the group was both complicated and even morally ambiguous. For one thing, there’s a chance that Israel will back down from its prior commitment to the immigration of the Falash Mura, who are Ethiopians with ties to Judaism through their relatives or ancestry. Even with aid from U.S. Jews, Israel, in the long run, will likely have to foot most of the cost.

“There’s a 30 percent chance that [Israeli leaders are] going to revoke this decision,” said Joe Tauber, national chair of the fundraising campaign during a dinner at Addis Ababa’s Sheraton Hotel on the group’s last night in Ethiopia. “We’ll know within six months.”

In case they do renege, Tauber added, “I’d go back and talk to donors.”

Tauber’s cautionary note, along with the knotty problems with the aliyah that many observed in Ethiopia, prompted some federation fundraisers to say they would focus on UJC’s absorption programs in Israel when pitching Operation Promise to donors, rather than the idea of bringing more Ethiopians — as many as 20,000 more — to the Jewish state.

Another federation fundraiser from the East Coast said she would raise funds only for the absorption part of Operation Promise, because of personal misgivings about Israel’s criteria for immigrants from Ethiopia and management of the aliyah verification process.

But Israel’s commitment wasn’t the only issue. Some on the delegation could understand why critics question whether the Falash Mura should be considered Jews at all. Some Ethiopians are merely responding to an implied message of: “Come to Israel and convert to Judaism, and we’ll make things happen for you. Anybody in Africa would choose that,” said a federation official, who asked not to be named.

“I’m not sure I agree with, ‘Once a Jew, always a Jew,'” the official said. “I just have questions about the Falash Mura.”

Others said it was UJC’s historic responsibility to ensure that the aliyah takes place — and that it is successful.

“They want to be Jews,” said Meryl Ainsman, a federation official from Pittsburgh. “It’s a moment in history where we can continue to make mistakes or do the things that can really make a difference.”

So far, UJC has raised more than $45 million in pledges for Operation Promise, a $160 million campaign that includes $100 million for Ethiopian aliyah and absorption and $60 million for care of the elderly in the former Soviet Union. Participants pledged an additional $873,000 on the mission’s last day.

Without question, delegation members were taken aback by what they witnessed.

“I’ve never in my life experienced seeing the kind of poverty we saw,” said Julie Lipsett-Singer, an official from the Federation of Central New Jersey. “It was very startling and really altering to my psyche.”

Like many missiongoers, Lipsett-Singer said she was heartened when the UJC group returned to Israel and encountered so many successful Ethiopians and vital absorption programs.

“Many Ethiopians are giving back to the community,” she said. “I’m so much more hopeful and positive about the future.” Many federation executives said the operation to bring the Falash Mura to Israel was justified simply on humanitarian grounds.

“Out of this 20,000, let’s say [only] 10,000 will decide in the end not to be Jewish — so what?” said Barry Shrage, president of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. “If part of them convert to Christianity, Israel is filled with guest workers. Israel is a heterogeneous society.”

The key to the operation’s success, Shrage suggested, is not only bringing the Ethiopians quickly from Africa, but making sure that they are given the right kind of assistance to become productive Israeli citizens.

“It would be such a tragedy if this group of people lost faith in the Jewish identity and the Jewish state,” Shrage said. “We can produce out of this group many great Israelis, many great Jews. This does not have to end up a permanent underclass.”

 

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Fishel to Play Key Falash Mura Role

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John Fishel took his seat on the jetliner and glanced across the aisle. Seated near the president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles was an Ethiopian woman. Resplendent in traditional garb, she cradled an infant in her arms and looked lovingly at her toddler son seated beside her.

Fishel smiled. Everywhere he looked, he saw the excited, nervous, expectant faces of nearly 150 Jewish Ethiopian olim, or immigrants, on their way to Israel to begin their new lives.

When the plane landed at Ben Gurion Airport in Israel after the 4 1/2-hour flight from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, the olim and the 100 American Jewish federation members accompanying them erupted into applause. Some of the immigrants cried; others kissed the tarmac as they exited the plane.

“It was very emotional,” said Fishel, whose work on behalf of Ethiopia’s Jews has helped put their plight high on the agenda of United Jewish Communities (UJC), the umbrella organization that represents 156 Jewish federations and 400 independent communities across North America. “Jews must help each other whether they live around the corner in Fairfax or around the world in Addis Ababa or [the Ethiopian city of] Gondar.”

This month, the delegation that included Fishel took a whirlwind trip from Israel to Ethiopia and back to witness the dire situation of the Falash Mura — Ethiopians who have ties to Jews either through relatives or their own ancestry. Others on the trip included Ada Horwich, co-chair of the L.A. Federation’s annual campaign; Barry Shrage, president of the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, and other professional and lay federation leaders from around North America.

During the UJC-sponsored five-day mission, federation members visited health clinics in Ethiopia run by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC). They saw JDC distribute meals of carrots, potatoes and beans to hungry Falash Mura, who were eating, perhaps, for the only time that day. The delegation also saw families living in one-room, windowless huts without electricity or running water, adjacent to raw sewage-flooded streets.

The visiting Americans then took the emotional trip with 148 olim to Israel. In Israel, mission members watched the newcomers welcomed with sandwiches, shekels and smiles in absorption centers.

For Fishel, the recent journey brought back memories of his first visit to Ethiopia nearly two years ago. Traveling with four members of the UJA-Federation of New York, the delegation saw the myriad difficulties faced by the thousands of Ethiopians waiting to make aliyah — immigration to Israel. Then, as now, Fishel wanted to help.

After the trip, UJC leaders asked the L.A. Federation leader to co-chair a group to recommend how North American federations can help the estimated 15,000 to 20,000 Falash Mura remaining in Ethiopia.

It was partly at Fishel’s instigation that the UJC launched Operation Promise. The ambitious campaign hopes to raise $160 million over the next three years, with $100 million for Ethiopia and $60 million to help Jews of the former Soviet Union.

The Ethiopian funds would go toward Jews waiting to emigrate, for the construction of temporary housing and other needs. It also would pay for new absorption centers in Israel, as well as for improving educational opportunities for young Ethiopians living in the Jewish state.

“John helped keep [the plight of Ethiopian Jews] on our map and put it strong and center with his strong advocacy,” said Howard Rieger, president and chief executive of the United Jewish Communities.

Fishel has long been interested in the work of supporting struggling Jewish communities abroad. In the past five years, Fishel has visited Argentina, Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. Fishel, who holds two degrees in anthropology from the University of Michigan, said Africa’s cultural diversity and migration patterns have made the continent particularly fascinating to him.

Going forward, Fishel said he plans to spotlight the problems faced by Ethiopia’s Jews to raise $8.5 million for Operation Promise over the next three years. Much is at stake.

“Through pictures, through words, we will now begin to publicize a lot more aggressively the needs of Jews in that part of the world,” he said.

Without aid from American Jews, Fishel added, the plight of the Falash Mura “could become even more desperate.” These Ethiopians “want to come to Israel, and they have the potential to become an extremely important human resource for the country.”

 

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Suit Filed Over Police Shooting of Israeli

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Nearly 20 months after Assaf Deri, an Israeli national, was shot and killed by Burbank police in a North Hollywood alley, his parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit in L.A. Federal Court against Burbank and Los Angeles, both cities’ police departments, and officers involved in the incident.

“The conduct by Burbank police officers was clearly outrageous,” said attorney Robert Jarchi, who is representing Deri’s estate and parents, Pinchas and Yehudit Deri. “Burbank police officers targeted my clients’ son because of his Middle Eastern appearance.”

Deri is Jewish but could be perceived as a Muslim, the lawyer contended.

Police claim Deri was a suspect in a multiagency task force investigation into drug-trafficking, gangs and organized crime. But Jarchi insisted their claims are absurd.

“Assaf Deri was not involved in drug dealing or any other illegal activity. He didn’t drink or do drugs,” Jarchi said. “Police killed an innocent man who was just sitting in his Jeep. Anyone could find themselves in that position.”

The coroner’s exam found no evidence of drugs or alcohol in Deri’s system. The civil complaint, filed last week, also alleges violations of Deri’s federal and state civil rights, negligence, assault and battery and false arrest.

This wrongful death lawsuit comes one month after the L.A. district attorney’s office cleared Burbank undercover officers, Scott Meadows and Sgt. Jose Duran. The duo also was cleared last February by their department’s shooting review board, which found they were “defending themselves against death or serious injury.”

The long-delayed report, by the district attorney’s justice system integrity division also ruled that Meadows fired in self-defense, after Deri, 25, allegedly tried to drive his borrowed Jeep away from approaching officers. Meadows, whose leg was grazed by the Jeep during the incident, received medical treatment at a local hospital. Duran, the D.A.’s office found, had discharged his weapon to protect his partner.

LAPD robbery homicide detectives handled the field investigation because the shooting happened in Los Angeles. The North Hollywood alley where the incident occurred lies behind a row of apartment buildings on Oxnard Street near Los Angeles Valley College.

According to the LAPD investigation, Deri was the target of daylong surveillance on June 25, 2004, by Burbank police.

Meadows and Duran followed Deri as he drove into the alley and parked with his engine idling, behind one of the buildings. At about 10:30 p.m., Duran decided to stop Deri after deciding he was monitoring their surveillance of him.

The two Burbank officers allegedly approached Deri’s jeep and ordered him out. The officers claim Deri then drove toward Meadows. In self defense, they opened fire.

Meadows reportedly shot 13 rounds and Duran 10 rounds. According to the autopsy, Deri was hit nine times, including five shots to the head. Paramedics pronounced Deri dead at the scene at approximately 10:37 p.m.

The Deri family’s suit alleges Burbank police violated Assaf Deri’s constitutional rights by illegally detaining and shooting him to death. The suit also alleges Deri’s father, who was visiting from Israel, was wrongfully imprisoned during a warrantless search of his son’s North Hollywood apartment several hours after his death.

“Burbank officers compounded the problem by going to Assaf’s apartment without probable cause in a desperate attempt to find something to justify this fatal shooting,” Jarchi said. “There they made a fruitless search and ended up illegally detaining and handcuffing my client’s father.”

The federal suit specifies no dollar amount, but last year, the family submitted a $51 million claim against the cities of Los Angeles and Burbank, which both cities rejected. The family is seeking general and punitive damages for the loss of their son and his future support and reimbursement for the transport of the body to Israel, funeral and legal expenses, as well as compensation for counseling, lost wages and medical expenses incurred by Deri’s father.

The family is represented by Greene, Broillet & Wheeler, which has taken on local police cases before, including that of a Los Angeles woman who received $7.6 million after she was broadsided by a car being chased by LAPD officers and the case of a Long Beach man who was awarded $6.7 million after being shot by Long Beach police.

The city of Burbank, representing the police officers, denied any wrongdoing in the case. Los Angeles officials declined to comment pending a review of the lawsuit.

 

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