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Jewish Journal

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April 6, 2007

Sex and The 30-Something Professional

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Theater /

Before David Rouda became a stage director and writer, he was an internationally ranked rower who placed 17th in the 1999 World Rowing Championships. Rouda, who started training as a sculler at 13, won six Gold Medals at the Maccabee Games and just missed qualifying for the 2000 Olympics.

The discipline he brought to rowing informed his years as a lawyer and his current work as a dramatist, whose plays “Pomp & Circumstance” and “Sperm Warfare” are being staged at the Matrix Theater. While these two one-acts do seem to go on a bit long, they both feature a great deal of humor and revolve around the issues of 30-something men as they attempt to make it in the worlds of law and business.

The set of “Pomp & Circumstance” is a courtroom, surrounded by two law offices. Like David E. Kelley and many lawyers before him, Rouda knows his way around a trial scene, but he also knows his way around the Bible and Jewish law. Perhaps the funniest part of “Pomp & Circumstance” is the denouement when an Orthodox Jew who has been victimized by Viagra becomes entranced by the Song of Songs, which he recites for his sex-starved wife.

Rouda says he grew up “Reform, meaning I had a Christmas tree,” but he understands the Talmudic distinctions regarding a Jewish marriage. He also understands what it’s like being a single guy dating older women in San Francisco, where he lives as a fourth-generation San Franciscan.
“Sperm Warfare” focuses on a couple seeking in-vitro fertilization. Like “Pomp & Circumstance,” it deals with phallic concerns. At one point, the lead refers to himself as “an emasculated hermaphro-dad.”

Rouda might overdo it on occasion when his characters complete each others’ sentences with a flourish of alliteration, but he will make you laugh with lines like, “You’re not just a sperm dispenser to me.”

The 40-year-old playwright, who has a degree in rhetoric from UC Berkeley and a law degree from the University of San Francisco, says that one of his frustrations with law was spending “two years of drudgery” and then “right before the premiere” the other side settles out of court and “you don’t get to show” your work to anyone.

Rouda is now based in Los Angeles and the Matrix shows mark his Hollywood premiere. He still has a home in San Francisco but he says that being a writer isn’t so easy in the Bay Area: “In San Francisco, it’s outside the scope of what other people are doing.”

“Pomp & Circumstance” and “Sperm Warfare” play through April 15 at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Ave., Los Angeles. For reservations, call (800) 838-3006. For more information, visit the Matrix Theatre
” target=”_blank”>www.davidrouda.com

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The Magic of Mimouna

Leave a Comment / David Suissa /

Go back a few centuries and picture yourself on a small street in a Jewish neighborhood in Casablanca, Morocco, as the sun is starting to set.

You’ve just finished the late afternoon prayers on the last day of Passover, and as you head home, you see Arab grocers setting up shop and laying out butter, milk, honey and, most importantly, flour and yeast. They are doing what their ancestors did for generations: helping the Jews of Morocco prepare for the ancient tradition of Mimouna, a night when the Jews celebrated the end of Passover by opening the doors of their homes to their neighborhood.

After sundown, Jewish men would rush to gather all the supplies — either by purchasing them or receiving them as gestures of good will from local Arabs — and bring them home, where the women would prepare elaborate sweet tables.

These tables were laden with delicacies, but the star of the show was a thin, mouth-watering Moroccan crepe called the moufleta, which you would roll up with soft butter and honey. Please trust me when I tell you that to this day, few things in life are as perfect as a couple of hot, sweet, tender moufletas — right after you’ve come off a strict eight-day diet of dry matzahs.

Moufletas were not the only sweet things floating in the Arabian moonlight on the night of Mimouna. According to folklore, Mimouna was known as the ideal night to meet your sweetheart. It was a night when doors and hearts were open, and young men and women, dressed in their finest, would move and mingle like butterflies from one party and sweet table to another. (I know, it sounds a lot more romantic than speed dating.)

The free-flowing and joyful atmosphere that made you feel the promise of finding love was not a coincidence. The night of Mimouna was all about bringing good fortune into your life. After eight days of prohibitions, Mimouna was the night you broke free, the night anything was possible.

For the Jews of Morocco, Mimouna was the Jewish holiday that celebrated optimism.

All night long, people would give the same greeting over and over again: “Terbach,” an Arab word that roughly means, “May you win and be fortunate.”

The word “mimouna” itself combines the Hebrew/Aramaic root “mammon,” which means riches, with the Hebrew word “emunah,” which means faith. Have faith in your good fortune: If Mimouna ever becomes a big deal in California, I bet the California Lottery would salivate to sponsor Mimouna parties.

As many of you know, the mainstreaming of Mimouna has already happened in Israel. The tradition has morphed from magical nights among neighbors to loud daytime barbecues in public parks, where politicians of all stripes come to sell their wares. I’m guessing the politicians want in on the good Mimouna vibes, which might explain why they’ve made it a national holiday.

From what I hear, the rabbis in Israel also got involved. They were afraid that people would rush out to buy their moufleta ingredients before the holiday was officially over, so they nudged Mimouna into the bright sun of the next day.

These rabbis obviously have no feel for romance — Mimouna is for the moon, not the sun. My memories of Mimouna nights in Casablanca can never mesh with the notion of an afternoon barbecue in a public park. Even though I was only a child, I recall feeling this mysterious, nighttime magic in the air. Even the nervous rush after sundown to gather the goods and prepare the sweet tables were part of the excitement.

But the magic of Mimouna was not just the sweet tables and the Arabian nights. There was something else.

When I talk to Sephardic Jews today who spent a big part of their lives in Morocco, they go on and on about Mimouna. It’s like they’re talking about an ex-girlfriend they were madly in love with and wish they had married. There’s a sense of nostalgia, yes, but also of loss — a loss of what that one night represented.

It’s true that they have tried to take Mimouna with them. In Montreal, where I grew up and where there is a large Moroccan Jewish community, people drive to fancy Mimouna parties all over town until the early morning hours. Even here in Los Angeles, there are Mimouna parties sprinkled all over the area, especially in Moroccan Jewish homes.

But everyone knows there’s something missing. You could serve the world’s greatest moufletas (my mother’s), wear a gold-laced caftan and have a live Middle Eastern band, and there would still be something missing.

It’s the neighborhood.

Mimouna represented the love and intimacy of a neighborhood. There’s nothing like popping in to see 10, 20, 30 different neighbors on the same night, most of whom you see all the time — especially when you know your great-great-great-grandparents probably did the same thing in the same place.

According to tradition, Mimouna itself came out of a neighborhood need. Because many Jewish families in Morocco each had their own Passover customs, Passover week was the one time of the year when families would usually not eat in each other’s homes.

Mimouna was a way for the neighborhood to dramatically make up for this week of limited hospitality — a night when things got back to normal, and everyone invited everyone.

If Passover was the holiday that drew you in — toward yourself, your home, your family — Mimouna was the holiday that blew you away, back to the neighbors, your friends, your freedom, your dreams, maybe even your future love.

Many years later, I find myself living again in a Jewish neighborhood, and I can’t help wondering if my moving here had something to do with my memories of another neighborhood.

Especially on that one magical night of the year, when the moufletas were hot, the doors were open and everything was possible. l

David Suissa, an advertising executive, is founder of OLAM magazine and Meals4Israel.com. He can be reached at dsuissa@olam.org.

The Magic of Mimouna Read More »

Road to Freedom Is Paved With Relationships

Leave a Comment / Torah /

My father grew up in Buenos Aires, and he maintained close ties with a circle of friends from his Jewish neighborhood until his death a few years ago. His name was Marcos,
but to his friends he was Mote.

Around 1960 he entered into an appliance import business with a friend from the neighborhood, and they made good money together. My family was one of the first to have a refrigerator and television, and we took some of the first jet flights out of Argentina to Europe and Israel. My father’s friends would gather at the airport to send us off and greet us when we returned.

When I was about 5 years old, the business’ merchandise vanished. My father suspected his partner defrauded him, but could never prove it. He was left with nothing — or so I thought.

My father went on to become an insurance agent, and it took us some time to get back on our feet. While my family never recaptured the wealth we had enjoyed, there was always food on the family table.

“It’s terrible that this man has taken everything we had,” I said.

“No, he did not take everything,” my father said. “We are keeping all the friends.”

More than 40 years later, all of those friends from the neighborhood and their children are still some of our dearest friends. My father always knew what was most essential.

When we put material things ahead of our spiritual selves and our relationships, then we are on the path to idolatry, a practice that has changed only superficially in the last few millennia.

The lesson of the Torah is one of freedom from idolatry, rejecting any worship that is material. When Moses asked Pharaoh to let God’s people go and worship in the desert, his plea was focused on the One God and rejecting idolatry.

If there were one material thing that could have been considered holy, it would have been the first set of tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. And what happened to those tablets? When Moses saw the Golden Calf, to his credit, he threw them down and smashed them to bits. Moses dramatically demonstrated that even the tablets, the product of God’s “hands,” were mere objects. They were not sacred in and of themselves.

When we celebrate Passover, we must put ourselves in the very same place the Israelites were when they rushed away from bondage. Every year we have the obligation, as we read in the haggadah, to see ourselves as if each one of us individually left bondage. Bechol dor va’dor, in every generation, each individual must think of himself or herself as if he or she personally left Egypt.

The miracle, the rabbis teach, was not that God took the Israelites out of Egypt, but rather that God took Egypt out of the Israelites. And that is the message.

Our world hasn’t changed all that much. Wars, hatred and conflict enslave us in every generation. Each individual in every generation has the obligation to set himself free, along with his fellow human beings.

This message is a universal one. Even in our own history, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s narrative was that of the Exodus. In his beautiful sermons, the message that guided the civil rights movement, “free at last,” is the message of Passover.

On Shabbat Hagadol, the Shabbat that precedes Passover, we read a special section from the Prophets that contains the following words: “And children will come back to their parents, and parents will return to their children.”

In preparation for the seder, we must make an effort to reconcile with those who are estranged from us. That reminder before the holiday is a challenge and an opportunity, given to us so we can find a way back to those who once were close to us. If there is somebody in our life with whom we have lost contact, willingly or unwillingly, this is our chance to call and renew the relationship. And if there is someone who will be with us at the seder with whom we haven’t been on the best of terms, the seder is the place to make things better and to refrain from renewing the feud.

While my father never reconciled with his former partner, he didn’t let the sense of betrayal stand in his way of attending the funeral of the partner’s wife. In fact, Mote was the only friend from the neighborhood to show up.

When we prepare for Passover we clean our dwellings of chametz, leavened foods. Matzah is the essence of bread: flour and water. When we rid our houses of chametz, we must likewise rid our lives of that which is not essential. We want to find our essential selves.

At the end of the day we find ourselves, and God, in one another, especially in those who are most dear to us. As Passover comes, let us free ourselves from the yoke of materialism. We must understand that the essence of life is in relationships. When we touch another soul we transcend our material selves. It is the way in which we become eternal.

My father was a man who was not tied to money. Most important in life, he taught me, are our relationships. When we care about others, we will then find the essence of who we are.

Daniel Mehlman is the rabbi at K’hilat Ha’Aloneem in Ojai and teaches the Introduction to Judaism class in Spanish at American Jewish University.

Road to Freedom Is Paved With Relationships Read More »

Reunion Re-Kindles ‘Miracle on Florence’ Memories

Leave a Comment / Community /

It was called the “Miracle on Florence Avenue,” a small, humble synagogue that thrived for 50 years before shuttering its doors in 1986, a victim of old age and changing demographics. By all accounts, Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation, the second Conservative synagogue established in Los Angeles, should be buried in the sands of oblivion by now. And yet, 30 of us — all fiercely loyal former members, ranging in age from 50 to 97 — gathered on Jan. 7 at the home of Elliot Monka in Sierra Madre for a reunion that brimmed over not only with nostalgia, but with insight into how this tiny Jewish enclave could produce an unprecedented number of successful professionals and deeply committed Jews.

“In spite of being from poor immigrant families, the Jewish community in Huntington Park gave its children an extraordinary core set of values that we’ve all carried through the years,” said Ben Tenn, an entertainment executive whose father served as a synagogue president.

Indeed, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) became a bar mitzvah in Huntington Park, as did Lee Bycel, my old next-door neighbor, who has become a well-regarded rabbi. Religious school graduates also fill the ranks of doctors, attorneys, entrepreneurs and professors around the country.

According to my mother, Evelyn Rosenwein, who spearheaded the reunion, her parents and the other founders “wanted the temple’s foundation to be built on Torah [education], tzedakah [justice], avodah [ambition ] and ahdut [unity]. I think they succeeded.”

A strong connection to Judaism has proven another hallmark of Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation alumni. Besides producing a rabbi, the temple inspired several members to make aliyah. My brother, Lloyd, lived in Israel during the Yom Kippur War and screenwriter Dan Gordon is a captain (reserve) in the Israel Defense Forces.

The neighborhood of Huntington Park, located in a lower-middle-class area seven miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, was never a “Jewish” area. Today, in fact, the population is almost entirely Latino, and our little two-story synagogue has morphed into a Seventh-day Adventist church. But when my grandparents, Albert and Lillian Brownstein, settled there around 1915, they met with a handful of enterprising Jews on Aug. 10, 1927, to establish a Jewish community. The new group called itself B’nai Yehuda Congregation, after my great-grandfather, and looked for members by finding Jewish names in the telephone book.

“Solomon Israel gave my dad an earful. Turns out the guy was Lutheran,” chuckled Paul Brownstein, my uncle, who served as keynote speaker at the reunion, along with Dr. Gerald Turbow, a member of the board of directors of the Jewish Historical Society, and the son of temple founder Dr. Arthur Turbow.

The fledgling congregation persevered, in spite of the Great Depression, the city’s refusal to zone a building and, finally, the 1933 earthquake. On March 27, 1938, Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation finally opened at 2877 Florence Ave., becoming the community’s spiritual center for the next 50 years.

During the following two decades, the synagogue flourished, and by the mid-1950s, its membership surged to 180 families with a religious school boasting 130 students. This was the time I remember best — Hebrew school three times a week (we would have rather been home playing, but no one asked us); Rabbi Harry Hyman glowering as my still-best friend Clare (Zellman) Reider and I giggled during Friday night services. But somehow, in spite of all our worst childish intentions, we learned about responsibility and loyalty and Jewish identity.

There is a cycle of life and death, and our congregation reached the end of its cycle with the mass migration of Jews to the Westside and Valley in the mid-1960s. The temple lingered on until 1986 — hence the moniker “Miracle on Florence Avenue” — but fewer than 30 families had remained. It was a sad time, but we vowed to get together again, and 12 years ago we had our first reunion. This time around fewer people came — many have died, some were away “repairing the world.” But they vowed to come to our next gathering.

People left the January reunion with a glow that, after so many years, seemed surprising. Was it seeing our beloved Sunday school teacher, Henrietta (Kartin) Zarovsky, who remembered us all? Was it just hearing the name of Irving Jacobs, our spiritual and sweet-voiced cantor who volunteered his services for 46 years? It was more. There was something indefinably satisfying about knowing that there are still people around who understand, truly understand, quality of life and qualities of life worthy of pursuing. Huntington Park Hebrew Congregation is no longer a place; it is a collective memory. When the old timers are all gone, and we baby boomers have joined them, that memory will be obliterated. But what will remain for our children and children’s children will be a legacy of Jewish values, blended with small town ideals. It’s worth glowing about. l

Andrea Rosenwein is a writer and adjunct English professor at Pierce College.

Reunion Re-Kindles ‘Miracle on Florence’ Memories Read More »

A Troubled Exodus

Leave a Comment / California, United States, Worldwide /

With two miles of bare footprints behind them, Ahmed and Fatima and their three children approached the border with Israel in the middle of a cold winter night. Snow was falling in the Sinai.

Avoid the Egyptian military patrols, they were warned by their Bedouin smugglers, whom they paid with money borrowed from Sudanese friends.

“If they catch you, you could be shot or deported back to Sudan,” the Bedouins said.

The 12-hour trip from Cairo was the last leg of a multiyear journey stretching from the violence of Darfur to Sudan’s dangerous capital of Khartoum to the teeming streets of Cairo. Ahmed had been imprisoned in each city.

Israel was their last hope for what Fatima calls “a normal life” without the “fear of being sent back to Sudan.”

Two hours after dusting the sand off their dark clothing, dirtied while crawling under two security fences, their 5-month-old baby’s cry pierced the silence of the frigid Negev air. The response was an Israeli military spotlight.

“Do you know where you are?” the soldiers called out in Arabic.

“Yes,” they answered.

“Why are you here?”

“Because we were mistreated in Egypt.”

“Who are you?”

“We are Sudanese.”

Ahmed lowered his 2-year-old son from his shoulders and held up his Sudanese passport, as well as the worn yellow card given to asylum seekers by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The card had been obtained in Cairo and saved them from being deported back to Sudan, as the Egyptian police had threatened.

The Israeli soldiers gave the children their green military coats.

“We were afraid of the Egyptian army, not of the Israeli army,” Ahmed recalled later.

In an often-reluctant ritual that has been repeated almost weekly for two years, involving Sudanese sneaking into Israel, Israel Defense Forces patrols gathered up the tired refugee family, placed them in an ambulance and handed them over to the Border Police. The Border Police sent Ahmed to Ketziot Prison for violating the Infiltration Law, a 1954 statute enacted against enemy combatants.

If the experience of others before him is any precedent, Ahmed could remain incarcerated for at least a year, until Israel figures out what to do with him and the more than 120 other imprisoned Sudanese.

Fatima and the children were sent to a battered women’s shelter in the western Galilee that has largely been taken over by Sudanese refugees whose husbands are in prison.

The failure of the United Nations to cope with the doubling of refugee applications in the past decade or to intervene to prevent the genocide in Darfur has had ripple effects throughout the world. That now includes Israel and the Jewish world.

Faced with genocidal threats from Iran and terrorist groups, a legacy of the Holocaust and even echoes of the Exodus 3,700 years ago, Israel is torn between its commitment to universal humanitarian concerns and its own security interests.

A four-month investigation into the plight of the refugees and the Israeli government’s handling of the situation found a system that even the top Israeli official adjudicating each of the cases has said often violates Israeli and international law.

After two years of legal challenges and growing Israeli media attention, the issue now is coming to a critical juncture.

The practice of arresting and indefinitely detaining Sudanese asylum seekers on security grounds is being tested in the courts, even as Israeli Border Police are showing signs of resisting the orders to arrest and detain the refugees crossing the borders.

Major international human rights figures have embraced the cause, and a handful of Knesset members and activists in Israel are pressing for a resolution of the crisis. Some of these activists, in turn, have strong ties to the American Jewish community, which has embraced the cause of Darfur as a top humanitarian priority. Some 200,000 to 400,000 people have been killed in the Darfur region of western Sudan. Another 2.5 million have been displaced.

Israel’s quandary is a difficult one.

“Sudanese refugees are right now considered enemy nationals since Sudan is an Islamic fundamentalist country,” explained Anat Ben Dor, Israel’s leading refugee rights lawyer, who has emerged as a top advocate for the Sudanese refugees. “Yet Israel is a signatory to the International Convention on Refugees, which guarantees humane treatment and a safe haven from genocide.”

Ben Dor, 40, who directs the Tel Aviv University Law School Refugee Rights Clinic, in late February filed suit against the government for its alleged treatment of three refugees.

Israel helped author the convention in the aftermath of World War II. Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany were routinely refused safe haven because they, like the current Sudanese, were classified as enemy nationals.

Activists enjoyed a small victory on March 21, when Israel’s Supreme Court gave the state 45 days to determine whether the detainees were getting a fair and proper judicial review.

“Bringing justice is the issue here,” said Supreme Court Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch, who is presiding over a three-judge panel hearing the case.

“This is very significant,” said Ben Dor, who together with the Hotline for Migrant Workers, filed the appeal to the court, arguing that those Sudanese arrested and put in jail for illegally entering the country should not be charged as infiltrators of an enemy state.

The petition against Israel’s defense and interior ministers argues that even though 150 Sudanese have been released into alternative detention, the lack of formal judicial review makes the detention illegal.

Under Israeli law, other nationals who sneak through the Sinai Desert into Israel are charged with the Law of Entry. In those cases, the government must review their cases every 30 days and justify their imprisonment. But since Sudanese are considered “enemy nationals,” they are charged under the harsher Infiltration Law, which has no official review mechanism and by which detainees can be held indefinitely.

Irwin Cotler, Canada’s former minister of justice and human rights attorney for such well-known dissidents as Natan Sharansky and Nelson Mandela, has joined with the Israel Bar Association in filing supporting documents on behalf of the Sudanese with the Israeli High Court.

A Troubled Exodus Read More »

Sudanese Discover Parallels in Visit to Yad Vashem

Leave a Comment / California, United States, Worldwide /

A group of refugees from Darfur on a visit to Yad Vashem lingered next to a model of the crematorium at Auschwitz, taking in the ghastly sight of bodies carried on cots and pushed into ovens.

They walked through the museum in silence, listening to the words of the guide and trying to understand that the photographs of young boys in sailor suits and girls with silk ribbons in their hair were the same children whose names appeared on the list of those transported to concentration camps and among those killed.

“It’s such a sad history, tears fell from my eyes,” said G, 25, whose parents and two siblings were killed by Arab militiamen when they raided his home village. “It made me remember things that happened in my own past.”

His visit to Israel’s Holocaust memorial was the first time he ever set foot in a museum, and he left hoping that one day the victims of the Darfur genocide might build a similar memorial.

“I hope there will be such a place in the future, but I don’t know when,” he said. “Maybe in another generation far from our own.”

G, who asked that his name not be used, said he escaped on foot from his village the day of the attack. He does not remember how or even where he first ran before he began the long journey through Sudan and Egypt to Israel, where he is seeking asylum.

He spent 15 months in an Israeli jail because of his status as an enemy alien before being released to Kibbutz Yotvata in southern Israel, where he works in the date fields.

Yad Vashem Chair Avner Shalev addressed the group of 11 refugees, saying they might take inspiration from the museum to one day record and document their stories and the story of their people. Although the bloodshed continues in Darfur, Shalev urged them to think about commemoration even now.

“It is important that you already begin to think about ways to remember the events and memorialize the victims,” he said.

“As Jews, who have the memory of the Shoah embedded within us, we cannot stand by as refugees from genocide in Darfur are knocking on our doors,” Shalev said. “The memory of the past and the Jewish values that underpin our existence command us to humanitarian solidarity with the persecuted.”

He reached out to shake hands with the refugees, most of them recently released from prison.

Yad Vashem has been among the more outspoken elements in Israeli society, advocating for a swift and humane response to some 300 Sudanese who have crossed into Israel in recent years via the Egyptian desert. About a third of the migrants are from Darfur; others include Christians who claim they also are victims of persecution. Since Sudan technically is at war with Israel, most of the refugees were put in prison.

Some are being released to kibbutzim and moshavim while they await word on which country might give them political asylum. Israel has yet to officially make such an offer.

The Yad Vashem tour was initiated by the Committee for the Advancement of Refugees From Darfur, which works to assist the Sudanese refugees in Israel.

Robert Rozett, director of the Yad Vashem Libraries, led the group on its tour, explaining the ideology of the Nazis and how they executed their plan to murder the Jews. The Sudanese leaned in to each other, occasionally putting a hand on each other’s shoulders for comfort. Some could be seen wiping away tears.

Some images seemed to hit home especially hard: a blurry photograph of an SS soldier aiming his rifle at a mother who had wrapped her body protectively around her young child, and a portrait of a young woman with sad, empty eyes gazing at a globe and wondering if she would ever find refuge.

The Sudanese, too, live with uncertainty over what country might take them in, and with the memories of relatives and friends killed before their eyes.

The parallels told in the museum felt cruel, including the story of the St. Louis, a ship full of Jewish refugees from Europe that sailed to Cuba in 1939 only to be refused entry. After sailing to the United States and Canada, where it also was refused entry, the ship returned to Germany. Most of its passengers were killed in the Holocaust.

The Sudanese refugees also speak of no one wanting them and of their fears of being deported back to their home country. In Egypt, where many said they were abused and harassed by the authorities, some said they were threatened with being sent back to Sudan.

As Rozett guided the group into a section of the museum documenting roundups from the ghettos to concentration camps, he also talked to them about commemoration.

“You have photographs, you have documents maybe, you have your stories,” he said. “It’s important to know, so people in 50 years will also know” what’s happening.

At the Hall of Names, the repository for Yad Vashem’s collection of “Pages of Testimony” — short biographies of each Holocaust victim — the group gathered in a semicircle and looked up at the photographs of some victims. As they peered up at the faces, Rozett reminded them, “They don’t have a cemetery, but they do have a page.”

“It was very hard; I was shocked,” said M, 24, from Darfur. “It reminded me of my own people, seeing the killings, the shootings. I want to say that I am sorry that this happened to the Jews.”

G said it will take him a long time to digest what he saw at Yad Vashem.

“People were supposed to learn from history,” he said. “But still it happens now. In 1994 in Rwanda and now in Darfur. I thought the world was supposed to learn.”

Sudanese Discover Parallels in Visit to Yad Vashem Read More »

From Darfur to Israel: A Family’s Perilous Exodus

Leave a Comment / California, United States, Worldwide /

“We left Sudan, took a boat on the Nile to Aswan and went to Cairo to seek protection at the United Nations office,” said Ahmed, sitting in Ketziot, a maximum-security Israeli prison near the Egyptian border.

Some 150 miles away, sitting in the office of a women’s crisis center in the western Galilee, Ahmed’s wife, Fatima, learns of her husband’s whereabouts from this reporter. They had not seen each other since Dec. 29, when they sneaked into Israel with their three children.

“My husband was arrested in Darfur and then in Khartoum,” said Fatima, her head wrapped in a blue scarf, with her children beside her. “We had to leave.”

Knesset members and the Israeli media have been barred from Ketziot, where dozens of Sudanese are being detained. But JTA was granted an exclusive interview and entrance to the Negev prison.

Together, the husband and wife pieced together their story.

From Darfur, where he was imprisoned and tortured, Ahmed and his family made their way to Khartoum, where he was similarly arrested. Seeing that the Sudanese capital was not safe, they went to Egypt.

Even as he sits in an Israeli prison, Ahmed’s fate and the fate of his fellow refugees could still be determined by Egypt. Both the government of Israel and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) would prefer to see the deportation of the refugees in Israel back to Egypt, if they were guaranteed not be to be deported back to Sudan.

Ahmed’s family was among the tens of thousands of Sudanese who have sought safe haven in Cairo, with the hopes of being recognized as refugees by the United Nations and therefore eligible for asylum in a third country.

Egypt’s handling of the current Sudanese refugee crisis can be traced to a 1996 assassination attempt, in which extremist Egyptians had been plotting for months in Sudan to kill Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Although the assassination attempt failed to kill the Egyptian leader, it did lead to a change in policy for Sudanese entering Egypt. For half a century, some 2 million Sudanese had entered Egypt without a visa and had unrestricted access to employment, education and health care.

According to UNHCR’s Cairo office, between 1994 and 2005, 58,535 Sudanese nationals sought safe haven in Egypt, with two-thirds coming from either the Darfur region, where some 200,000 to 400,000 people have been killed and another 2.5 million displaced, or the south, where an estimated 1.5 million Sudanese, mostly Christians, were killed in a 21-year civil war.

By the end of 2005, 31,990 Sudanese were granted refugee status in Cairo and obtained the coveted U.N. blue card that certifies their refugee status and qualifies them as candidates for resettlement to third countries, mostly the United States, Canada and Australia. About half of those were actually resettled, but another 13,327 were still in limbo, and they were becoming increasingly frustrated.

“I went to the U.N. office,” and was told “to come back in six months for an interview,” Ahmed said. “He went back six months later, and they said they had to wait another six months,” Fatima said.

On Sept. 29, 2005, at the start of Ramadan, Sudanese refugees moved into Mustafa Mahmoud Park, put up protest banners and received the protection of the Egyptian police.

“We lived in the park with the other families, across from the United Nations office for three months,” Fatima said. “It was very hard to find work, to feed my family,” recalled Ahmed, who has been transferred to an Israeli prison near Ramle. “I joined the demonstrations.”

The demonstrators wanted UNHCR to resume processing applications for asylum, which had been suspended for all Sudanese since June 2004, when a cease-fire was announced in southern Sudan.

At 1 a.m. on Dec. 30, 2005, 4,000 Egyptian security force members surrounded 2,000 Sudanese protesters. First came the water canons, Ahmed and Fatima recalled. They clubbed Fatima, then three months pregnant, in the stomach. Ahmed saw five people, including two children, killed. Fatima’s aunt was shot point-blank. The official death toll in front of UNHCR’s Cairo headquarters was 27.

“They took us all to jail, each one to a different lockup,” Fatima recalled. “There, they tortured me, gave me no food and I learned that they did the same to my husband. Only later did I learn from my children that each of them was alone.

“Only when my 2 1/2-year-old began crying did the police take him around to other jails to see if anyone could identify him. My 8-year-old daughter identified him and told the police that he was her brother. They were allowed to be together, but they weren’t given food for long periods.

“After five days, they released me, and I began looking for my children. I went from jail to jail until I found them.”

Ahmed said he was freed a week after his wife.

They threatened “that we would be deported to Sudan.” That is when “I decided we are going to leave Egypt and go to Israel to seek protection. We were not safe in Egypt.”

The UNHCR office in Cairo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Ahmed said he kept his departure plan secret from everyone, including Fatima. Visiting an Internet cafe in Cairo, he was able to find friends from Darfur who were resettled in the United States and Canada. With earphones on, sitting next to the computer, the Darfurian with a seventh-grade education used a computer voice communications program to plead with his friends to send him money, but he didn’t say what it was for.

When the money arrived, he told Fatima of his plans to escape with the family to Israel, arranged for the Bedouin smugglers and set out to cross the Sinai Desert.

“The Bedouins said that I was going to be taken to prison, and that Fatima would be taken to a shelter in the north,” Ahmed said. “But at least we would be safe.”

Yosef Israel Abramowitz is an award-winning journalist and founder of socialaction.com. Abramowitz, who moved with his family last year to Israel, blogs daily at peoplehood.org. JTA correspondent Dina Kraft in Israel contributed to this piece. The names of the refugees have been changed to protect them from reprisals against family members in Arab countries.

From Darfur to Israel: A Family’s Perilous Exodus Read More »

Israel Policy of Imprisoning Refugees Being Challenged

Leave a Comment / California, United States, Worldwide /

Israeli activists and lawmakers are challenging in court the current policy of incarcerating Sudanese refugees who illegally enter the country under a law dealing with “enemy nationals” that allows them to be detained indefinitely.

The majority of the refugees made the trek across the Sinai Desert after Egyptian police violently broke up a demonstration outside the headquarters of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, or (UNHCR), in Cairo at the end of 2005.

A year ago at Passover, activists petitioned the Israeli courts, claiming that it was illegal to incarcerate the Sudanese refugees under what is known as the “infiltration law,” because it does not allow for individual judicial review.

As a result of that challenge, the government appointed a special investigator, Eldad Azar, to interview the prisoners and make recommendations to the minister of defense on the status of each one.

Of the dozens of cases Azar has reviewed, he hasn’t found one that represents a security threat, said Anat Ben Dor of Tel Aviv University, who has been instrumental in challenging the legality of the detentions.

Azar did not return phone calls, and the Ministry of Defense did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

But in Defense Ministry documents of the cases obtained by JTA, Azar routinely concludes that “the prisoner is eligible under the U.N. refugee convention,” meaning the prisoner is a legitimate refugee and not a security threat or terrorist. In the documents, Azar often points out that the prisoner is “held without a proper arrest document” and frequently recommends that the prisoner “should be freed for humanitarian reasons.”

Among the cases is UNHCR Case Isr114, a father of three who fled Darfur after being arrested and detained for 10 days, was arrested again in Khartoum, then again in Cairo before fleeing to Israel on April 25, 2006.

Azar concludes: “From the minute he arrived in Israel, there is no returning the prisoner to Sudan, because of the danger that is expected from the authorities if they are alerted that he was in Israel.”

In 1985 a coup d’etat brought control of Sudan into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists and Omar al-Bashir, who had fought in the Egyptian army during the Yom Kippur War against Israel.

Based on the documents, a significant number of cases involve sloppy paperwork or lack of due process, Dor said. She has sued for damages on behalf of some of the prisoners and is a principal in the petition before Israel’s High Court, which is challenging the legalities of the detentions.

“There have been serious, systemic violations of the basic right to liberty,” Dor said.

Her goal, she said, is to free the prisoners and enable future asylum seekers to be able to go directly to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees and skip prison.

According to an Israeli Interior Ministry official, “On the one hand, Israel is obligated not to return refugees to a place where their lives are likely to be endangered. On the other hand, the matter raises security-related and diplomatic issues.”

Dor has some new, unlikely allies in her efforts to keep the refugees out of prison.

On Jan. 10, two Sudanese slipped under the Egyptian-Israeli border fence and, like hundreds before them, gave themselves up to the Israel Defense Forces. But in what is believed to be a first, the Border Police refused to take them. Reportedly they were fed up with imprisoning Sudanese refugees.

The IDF had intelligence officials check out the two Sudanese and concluded “their intentions are not national [security] and therefore they do not require the services of the Prison Authority,” according to a confidential IDF document obtained by JTA.

The Sudanese were dropped off at the Beersheva central bus station by a sympathetic IDF officer, who told them to go directly to the UNHCR office in Jerusalem.

Since then, IDF or Border Police have circumvented the prison services four more times, interviewed the Sudanese themselves, determined they were not a threat and brought them to Beersheva. Individual soldiers gave them bus money to make their way to the UNHCR offices for an interview.

Some involved in the issue say Israel has made it more difficult for the refugees to be resettled to third countries because they were imprisoned in Israel.

Michael Bavli, the UNHCR representative in Israel, said no third country is willing to take the Sudanese refugees, because each country will follow the security lead set by Israel. The thinking would be, he said, that they are imprisoned in Israel, which knows what it is doing security-wise, so they must be a security risk.

Bavli said it was concerns over future resettlement for the Sudanese that spurred those involved in the issue to seek alternative detention, placing the refugees on kibbutzim.

“Within six months on a kibbutz, we’ll find them an alternative country, because suddenly they are not criminals who are sitting in Israeli prisons,” he said.

Bavli and UNHCR have approached Australia and the United States, among other countries.

Eytan Schwartz of the Committee for the Advancement of Refugees from Darfur, a coalition of groups involved in the issue, said, “The ideal solution” would be twofold: first, to speed up the release of the refugees detained in prison to a kibbutz or a moshav, then grant asylum to at least some of the refugees, while stressing that the move is a one-time deal.

“This would demonstrate Israel’s willingness to help a community in distress and comply with the country’s moral and international obligations,” Schwartz said. “At the same time, Israel should make it clear that the Sudanese refugee problem should be dealt with by the international community and cannot become an Israeli problem.”

Schwartz said it is important for the Israeli government “to recognize some of them as refugees, because we believe that unless Israel accepts at least some of them, no other Western nation would be prepared to take the rest of them in.”

A U.S. State Department official confirmed that Israel has asked for assistance in resettling the refugees. Despite the quiet fact that 55 “enemy nationals” — mostly Iraqis — have been resettled from Israel to third countries, the Israelis “don’t want to encourage the arrival of more refugees.”

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Class Notes

Leave a Comment / Education /

Deep Thoughts for Teens
Teens searching for meaning and direction — and what teen isn’t? — can find some Jewish guidance at Nativ-Jewish Teen Seminars, a new nondenominational weekend workshop program affiliated with the West Valley’s JCC at Milken with the goal of helping teens navigate big decisions and difficult issues in a Jewish context.

The two-and-half-day or four-day seminars are facilitated by Jackie Redner, rabbi of Vista Del Mar Child and Family Services and former campus rabbi at Kadima Hebrew Academy, and by Beth Freishtat, who developed the program and who has a master’s degree in clinical psychology and adolescent and family therapy.

Through discussions and activities, the groups will explore themes such as peer relationships, family conflict, spirituality, self-image, sex, love, individuality and belonging, anger, discrimination, drugs and alcohol, and hopes and dreams. The semiars take place at the Westside JCC and at the JCC at Milken. Upcoming Nativ dates are April 13-15, May 18-20, June 22-24 and July 6-8.

For more information, visit www.nativseminars.com.

Preschool Teachers Get Basic Training
Close to 1,000 preschool directors and teachers attended a day of Judaic, pedagogic, and child development workshops at the Bureau of Jewish Education’s annual Bebe Feuerstein Simon Early Childhood Spring Institute last month.

Nationally renowned early Jewish educator and author Bev Bos led sessions in her field of expertise — “Memories and Traditions,” “How Children Grow” and “Creative Art, Music and Language.” Forty other presenters led sessions on a range of topics.

The day also featured awards presentations. The Lainer Distinguished Educator Awards for Early Childhood Educators, which include a cash gift of $2,500, were presented to Jeri Dubin, a preschool teacher at the Adat Ari El Rose Engel Early Childhood Center; Miri Hever, a Gesher teacher at University Synagogue; and Hilary Steinberg, a 20-year veteran educator at Valley Beth Shalom Nursery School. Some 15 teachers also received The Smotrich Family Educator Awards, which recognize innovative Judaica curriculum projects.

For more information, visit www.bjela.org.

YULA Scores Diplomatic Coup
For the sixth time in the last eight years, Los Angeles’ YULA yeshiva high school was named best delegation at the Yeshiva University National Model United Nations. Students from more than 40 Jewish day schools from across the United States and Canada participated in the conference, representing 46 countries and international agencies. They spent three days analyzing and developing solutions to such problems as global warming, the distribution of power within the United Nations, gender discrimination in the world community, and the international response to natural disasters.

YULA’s 18-member delegation, led by senior co-captains Ari Platt and Adina Wolkenfeld, represented India, Belarus and Uruguay. The team brought home four best delegate and six honorable mention awards.

For information visit www.yula.org or www.yulagirls.org.

New Educational Leadership at HUC-JIR
Michael Zeldin, professor of Jewish Education a the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Los Angeles, will succeed professor Sara S. Lee, who will retire after 27 years as director of HUC-JIR’s Rhea Hirsch School of Education (RHSOE) on June 30. Lee and Zeldin have worked together as colleagues for the past 25 years.

“The appointment of Dr. Zeldin signals that the distinguished legacy of professor Lee will be carried forward,” HUC-JIR President David Ellenson said. “As a renowned scholar, gifted teacher, and passionate advocate for Jewish education, Dr. Zeldin will sustain the RHSOE as a model of integrated learning and excellence that has inspired others in the field of Jewish education.”

Lee will continue to teach and guide special projects part-time as a professor emeritus. More than 275 graduates of the RHSOE lead Jewish educational programs in Reform congregations and day schools throughout North America.

For more information, visit www.huc.edu.

Hi-Tech Jetsetters
Two students and a professor from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology visited the Western states last month as guests of the American Technion Society.

Anat-Anna Gileles a third-year student, who studies molecular biochemistry, and Reuven Nir, who is pursuing a doctorate in medicine and conducting research on the neurological mechanism underlying pain and the processing of pain itself, toured with professor Shimon Haber, the Technion dean of students, and a member of the faculty of mechanical engineering. The students met with supporters not only to share their research, but to add a personal element to the connection between Technion and the United States.

For more information, call (323) 857-5575 or visit www.ats.org.

Free Holocaust Workshop for Teachers
Educators are invited to a free workshop that will present “Echoes and Reflections: A Multimedia Curriculum on the Holocaust,” developed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Yad Vashem and USC Shoah Visual History Foundation.

The workshop, sponsored by the ADL in partnership with the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, will take place at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, 6435 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 303, May 6, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. R.S.V.P. required by April 20, at (310) 446-8000 ext. 241 or vmorishige@adl.org.

Holocaust Workshop
Last month, 30 educators from across Los Angeles participated in a five-week workshop, “The Relevance of Teaching the Holocaust in the 21st Century,” co-sponsored by the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance and the Center for Excellence on the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights and Tolerance. Teachers from public, private and religious schools learned the historical background of the Holocaust, as well as practical ways to introduce their students to this material.

For further information visit www.adl.org or www.echoesandreflections.org.

College Shabbaton
EdJewCate, a new organization bringing Torah-observant teachers, information and programming to college students and young adults, is holding its kickoff Shabbaton weekend retreat in Los Angeles April 20-22 at the Westin LAX Hotel. Featured speakers include rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, author of “The Committed Life” and “Life is a Test”; Rabbi Yaakov Yisroel Wenglin, author and presenter of “Full Contact Judaism” and Rabbi Alexander Seinfeld, author of “The Art of Amazement.”

For more information visit www.edjewcate.com.

Preteens Get a Taste of the Future
Middle schoolers at Pressman Academy took part in the daylong Total Teen Expo last month. Rabbi Shawn Fields-Meyer was the keynote speaker, and she used a personal story, a Chasidic tale and popular music to help students understand their power to improve the world. The day’s sessions included a police detective, author Dana Reinhardt, screenwriter Ed Solomon and L.A. City Council Chief of Staff David Gershwin, leading sessions on Internet safety, fitness, etiquette, nutrition and budgeting. The day ended with a poetry slam led by Eitan Kadosh and a drumming circle.

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