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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

September 14, 2007

Food Stamp diet underscores need to aid the poor

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

I’ll be the first to admit that cooking isn’t my strong suit. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a delicious home-cooked meal — as long as I’m not the person preparing it.

In fact, it’s come to be somewhat of a joke among my family and friends: If you’re hosting a holiday or other food-focused gathering and are looking for contributions, you can call Eric, and he’ll connect you to a deli, supermarket or restaurant conveniently located in your neighborhood.

And so it was with some trepidation that I signed up this summer for the Food Stamp Diet Challenge, a weeklong experiment in limiting my food budget to the amount provided by the federal food stamp allotment. With $21 per week, buying lunches and dinners out was clearly not going to work. I would have to conquer my low cooking self-esteem and make a trip to the grocery store.

What I found there will be little surprise to anyone. Eating on $3 per day — and doing it nutritiously in a way that would leave a person feeling satiated — was not just going to be a challenge. It was a near impossibility.

Most of my career has been spent in the halls of higher learning, and I decided to approach the project like any academic, relying on sound research before drawing my conclusions. I started with produce and quickly realized how foolish a choice that had been.

At $1.89 each, avocados were not only out of my budget, but they were more than 50 percent of what I was allowed to spend in an entire day. Red bell peppers, a particular favorite of mine, weighed in at $5.99 per pound, fine if that was all I wanted to eat for 48 hours. I thought it might be a good time to head to another section of the store.

Protein seemed like an important thing to have. I am careful about the meats I consume, high cholesterol being one of my more unfortunate genetic legacies. White meat chicken is about the only thing I’ll allow myself — but at $6.49 per pound for boneless, skinless breasts, the thigh fillets for almost half as much looked awfully tempting.

So, what could I buy? Beans. A lot of canned beans: garbanzos for 79 cents, black beans for 89 cents. And boxes of macaroni and cheese, though even there I was in for a bit of sticker shock. Kraft, a cornerstone of my childhood, went as high as 33 cents per ounce. Instead, I opted for the no-name box at the more sensible four cents per ounce.

The Food Stamp Diet Challenge impacted more than just my bottom line. It was physically debilitating and emotionally exhausting. I was lethargic and found that I lacked my usual enthusiasm for getting through the day. I had difficulty reading, writing, communicating — doing anything other than anticipating (and, in some ways, dreading) my next meal.

Every year at the High Holy Days, I try to find words that connect each of us to our liturgy and tradition, words that educate us about the ways we are commanded by our texts and our faith to lead a prophetic call for change. This year, on the heels of my Food Stamp Diet Challenge experience, I have no words. Because, for the first time, I realize in an immediate and personal way that words alone will not provide sustenance or bring justice to millions of families whose only crime is getting stuck in a cycle of poverty.

Words without action are just words — lovely but as empty as the stomachs of 35 million Americans facing hunger.

These Holy Days are a time for reflection. But for reflection to mean something, it must be followed by change. This year, there is something we can all do to make an immediate difference: Ask our senators and House members to support full extension of the nutrition title in the Farm Bill now before Congress.

It is the Farm Bill that authorizes food stamps and other key federal nutrition programs, without which millions of hungry families would simply not be able to get by. A diverse group of California politicians has already taken the challenge.

We have reached the threshold of another new year. Let us pledge, you and I, to cross it together, committed to a future in which food stamps, the majority of which go to feed children, require neither a diet nor a challenge. Hungry people deserve better. We all do.

G’mar hatima tova.

H. Eric Schockman, Ph.D. is president of Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger and is chair of the National Anti-Hunger Organizations.

Food Stamp diet underscores need to aid the poor Read More »

What will your rabbi be talking about?

Leave a Comment / Holidays /

“Too late. To be continued. Get over it.”

Rabbi Laurence Goldmark, of the Reform Temple Beth Ohr in La Mirada, can summarize his main High Holy Days sermon in just those eight words. After 29 years at the shul, he plans to retire next summer, and he wants to take this season to reinforce those three fundamental themes, which he believes define his rabbinate.

Rabbi Laura Geller, of Reform Temple Emanuel in Beverly Hills, will launch a Greening the Synagogue campaign in her Rosh Hashanah sermon, springboarding off a Judgment Day question posed by the fourth-century Babylonian sage Rava. While Rava inquired about involving ourselves in procreation, Geller plans to reframe the question, asking congregants to reflect upon the world we will leave for our children.

Rabbi Judith HaLevy, of the Reconstructionist Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue, spent nearly four weeks this summer in a rabbinic leadership program at Jerusalem’s Hartman Institute. On Rosh Hashanah, she will talk about Israel at age 60 — comparing the reality versus the dream. While her overall theme is to explore the notion of “one people,” she believes the relationship between Israel and America must be “a two-way street.”

In sermons on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur throughout Southern California this year, rabbis will continue to exhort their congregants to look inward and outward, to reflect upon and repair themselves, their families and communities, the nation and the world.

Almost every rabbi interviewed for this article said they will discuss the timeless High Holy Day theme of teshuvah (repentance), and examine American Jews’ ever-important relationship to Israel. Many will talk about global warming and the environmental consequences, and for some, though not an easy subject, the war in Iraq is on the agenda.

But it is often the case that the most successful sermons, the ones deemed most inspirational and most powerful, are those that emanate directly from the rabbi’s heart. “It has to be spoken from the truest place of a rabbi’s being,” said Rabbi Ed Feinstein of Conservative Valley Beth Shalom in Encino.

Feinstein described the process of creating a sermon as “a profound work of teshuvah for the rabbi.” He said the process forces rabbis to sit down with himself or herself and really examine where they are this year, what matters to them and what motivates them.

Feinstein’s two sermons will focus on Israel and its 60th anniversary and on the question of power and powerlessness.

Feinstein worries that most Americans have given up on their ability to affect the condition of our national existence — and even our communal existence — and have become very private.

“This is a terrible sign for our democracy and a terrible spiritual disease,” he said. He wants his sermon to motivate people to engage in “significant acts of volunteerism,” which he believes is the remedy.

It isn’t easy to write these sermons, and to help facilitate the process, the Board of Rabbis of Southern California holds an annual High Holy Days seminar, which this year took place on Aug. 14 at Stephen S. Wise Temple. More than 100 rabbis from synagogues extending from San Luis Obispo to San Diego attended, as well as about 35 student rabbis from the three local seminaries.

This year’s seminar featured Valley Beth Shalom’s Feinstein as both morning and afternoon keynote speaker, talking about the Yamim Nora’im (Days of Awe) as a window to change our lives and our world and also discussing the challenges and opportunities of preaching and teaching about Israel at 60. The seminar also offered six different workshops, from Rabbi Richard Levy’s “Troubling Passages in the High Holy Day Machzor” to Rabbi Daniel Bouskila’s “Revolutionary Traditionalism: Reading Theology in S.Y Agnon” (for a review of the book by Bouskila, see p. 21). Each participant selected two sessions.

“[The purpose] is to spark interest in ideas they’ve been turning around, to provide stories for mini-sermons and divrei Torah and to debunk the popular myth out there that rabbis copy sermons lock, stock and barrel,” said Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.

Diamond also added that the finest sermons combine some kind of serious engagement with Jewish text and Jewish tradition with a specific issue of the day or a personal issue that people are facing.

For veteran Rabbi Dov Gartenberg, returning to Southern California as the new rabbi of Conservative Temple Beth Shalom in Long Beach, the most pressing communal issue is Jewish hospitality and the tradition of welcoming the stranger. Gartenberg will devote his main Rosh Hashanah sermon to the subject, introducing hospitality as the synagogue’s yearlong theme. This is an extension of “Panim Hadashot: New Faces of Judaism,” the program of Shabbat-centered learning and outreach Gartenberg founded while serving as rabbi of Congregation Beth Shalom in Seattle.

Rabbi Elazar Muskin, of the Orthodox Young Israel of Century City, will deliver four High Holy Days sermons: on hearing the cry from the shofar and recognizing the pain of other Jews; on parenting as the ultimate gauge of success in life; on the importance of community; and on caring for the poor.

But the sermon he finds most challenging — and the one on which he spends the most time pondering and preparing — is the one he’ll be giving on the afternoon of Shabbat Teshuvah, the Shabbat of Repentance, which this year immediately follows Rosh Hashanah. Hundreds of his congregants as well as others in the Pico-Robertson community will attend the hour-plus presentation, which he has titled “In Search of Spirituality.”

“Spirituality is the key word today, but what does it mean?” Muskin asked. “A lot of people think it just means warm and fuzzy, but it’s a question of really pursuing and trying to find a spiritual direction in one’s life.”

Rabbi Jan Goldstein is inaugurating a nondenominational High Holy Days experience this year, called “Bayit Shelanu,” or “Our House” with singer/composer Debbie Friedman. Their goal is to reach out to Los Angeles’ unaffiliated Jews. The services will be held at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom.

What will your rabbi be talking about? Read More »

Letter from Tangier: Preserving the music of the Jews of Morocco

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Video, Worldwide /

At 6:30 a.m., I was walking toward Sha’ar Rafael, the synagogue on Boulevard Pasteur, the central drag in downtown Tangier.

It is the last synagogue in this
community of fewer than 100 Jews, the last one left in this Northern Moroccan port city that at its zenith housed 22 synagogues, had 100 cantors and 50 kosher butchers.

The city was still sleeping; few people were out. The cafés were open, men were sitting at sidewalk tables looking toward the street; veiled women were wearing jalabiyas and hurrying on their errands and a few older Jews were going to Selihot services. As I crossed the street, I met Rabbi Avraham Azancot, president of the Tangier community hurrying up the synagogue steps.

I am in Morocco for five months on a Senior Fulbright award from the State Department and the Moroccan government, researching Judeo-Spanish songs from Northern Morocco for their connection to liturgical poetry and kabbalistic practices. I arrived just two weeks ago and have installed myself in Tangier. Selihot, led by Rabbi Azancot, was very moving, with a piercing shofar that brought tears to my eyes. Later, over breakfast of homemade bread, argan oil and biscuits with coffee, Rabbi Azancot described for me the particulars of the Tangerine community’s prayers for the High Holy Days, especially Rosh Hashanah. The Achot Ketana, a piyyut (liturgical poem) welcoming the new year and sending off the old, follows a different order in Tangier than in the traditional prayer book: They sing Achot Ketana first, then the psalm for Rosh Hashanah and finally the Kaddish, to maintain the integrity of saying Kaddish over the holier text, which is the Psalm.

Some of the siddurim, published in Livorno, have both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers together; full of piyyutim sung with Andalusian melodies. Listening with Western ears, the music sounds Arabic, but this music was brought to the communities of Tangier and Tetouan by the Jews exiled from Spain — with lilting melodies, counter rhythms and many flourishes.

The first wave of Spanish Jews came to Morocco after the riots of 1391, and the larger group came during and after 1492. The expulsion brought scores of people, and later others followed who had thought a nominal conversion to Catholicism could be an easy solution to the persecution but then learned otherwise. Many of them moved to these communities in the North of Morocco, returning to Judaism. The community that predates the Spanish Jews has been here since the time of the First Temple.

” target=”_blank”>Vanessa Paloma sings and plays harp with the Los Angeles-based Sephardic/Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) Folk Music group, Flor de Serena (Siren’s Flower).

Letter from Tangier: Preserving the music of the Jews of Morocco Read More »

Fraternity brothers of Sigma Alpha Mu ponder future after Chapman College denial

Leave a Comment / Education, United States /

The brothers of Sigma Alpha Mu aren’t wearing their letters to class at Chapman University this semester.

The Sammys aren’t even allowed to meet at Chapman to gather for an off-campus event. Their rush parties can’t be advertised on university Web sites nor on any other campus property for that matter, even at the height of fall recruitment.

And while other fraternities are boasting their merits to prospective pledges, the Sammys might well warn unsuspecting freshmen that associating with them on campus might not be the best idea.

It’s a far cry from the dream of starting the first Jewish fraternity at the private Orange County institution hatched by then-sophomore Pascal de Maria back in 2005. And yet after what seemed a promising beginning, the group now finds itself banned from campus, the outcast of Chapman Greek life.

Amid accusations of mutual wrongdoing, including a pending federal investigation into possible student privacy violations and anonymous threats against school administrators, who’s to blame for the current morass remains in the eye of the beholder. What is certain is that the Chapman students feel betrayed by the very administrators they entrusted to guide their aspirations, and university officials are fed up with rogue operations by students who won’t take “no” for an answer.

From his office at the Indianapolis national headquarters of Fraternity brothers of Sigma Alpha Mu ponder future after Chapman College denial Read More »

UCLA takes Yiddish to the next level — a Japanese accent

Leave a Comment / California, Education /

Like many children of East European immigrants, Miriam Koral was “totally ashamed” that her parents spoke only Yiddish at home, but now she wants to teach the mameloshen to everyone within reach.

So she’s understandably upbeat that UCLA is adding a second year of Yiddish studies to its curriculum, reflecting a growing worldwide interest in the culture of the Yiddish world, she said.

Koral has been teaching first-year Yiddish at UCLA for eight years, but with the addition of a second year of studies, she will put more emphasis on Yiddish culture and literature.

“The grandchildren and great-grandchildren of immigrants are discovering the huge legacy of a unique civilization, with an amazing literature, music and theater,” Koral said.

The cost of the added year is being underwritten by the Lainer brothers — Luis, Mark and Nahum — “the first family of Yiddish in Los Angeles,” as described by David N. Myers, director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies.

While Yiddish courses and research have been part of academic life for decades, with Harvard and Oxford among the leading institutions, only a few universities offer two years of studies, and the number of students is still relatively modest.

In Koral’s first-year classes at UCLA, enrollment in the first quarter ranges from 12-14 students, declining, like other foreign language classes, to about half that size by the third quarter.

However, from a standing start, her students are able to read the works of such masters as I.L. Peretz and Sholem Aleichem in the original Yiddish by the third quarter, Koral said.

Not all her students are Jewish; there’s usually a sprinkling of Chinese and Japanese nationals in the class.

“The Asian students seem to pick up the Yiddish alphabet right away,” Koral said. “For them, it’s a piece of cake, although it is unusual to hear Yiddish spoken with a Japanese accent.”

Koral finds an ever-wider diversity in the Yiddish classes she teaches at the American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism), with students including Latinos, African Americans and white non-Jews.

In addition, her UCLA classes are offered through the UCLA Extension adult program.

Koral’s parents, who were living in Poland, fled to the Soviet side after the Nazi invasion but spent most of the war years in a Soviet gulag. According to family lore, her father’s crime was to remark that Polish bread tasted better than Russian bread.

The parents survived, moved to Israel, where Miriam was born, and then to New York, where her father opened a tailoring and dry cleaning store. At home, the sole language was Yiddish, and young Miriam didn’t learn English until she went to school and quickly turned her back on the language.

In college, she majored in environmental planning, moved to Los Angeles and worked for many years as a regional planner.

It was only after her parents died that Koral found a new interest in their history and language. She began studying Yiddish on a formal basis at Oxford, in Paris and Los Angeles and discovered a new respect for the language and its complex grammar.

“Here was a language murdered by the Nazis and Soviets and then strangled through American assimilation and by Zionism,” she said. “It was the glue that had kept the Diaspora together. Somebody had to see to it that Yiddish survived, and if not me, then who?”

Of her career switch, she comments, “I turned from saving endangered species to saving an endangered language.”

Koral started teaching at UCLA at the request of Janet Hadda, the university’s veteran Yiddish professor, who has since retired.

At the same time, Koral started branching out. She began by writing Yiddish poetry, joined a Leyenkrayz, or Yiddish reading circle, and founded the California Institute for Yiddish Culture and Language.

The institute offers one-week programs on Yiddish cultural programs at different skill levels, from “Yiddish Vilna” to “The Yiddish Tango.”

It was through one of these programs that Luis Lainer first met Koral and soon became an enthusiastic supporter. The real estate developer and philanthropist had been raised in Mexico City, together with his brothers Mark and Nahum.

Their mother was a Yiddish lecturer and author, and “our mother tongues were Spanish and Yiddish,” Luis Lainer recalled.

After taking Koral’s program at the institute, Lainer saw “how hungry the young participants were for more, and I realized that one program or one year at a university was not enough to solidify a knowledge of Yiddish.”

The three Lainer brothers have pledged to support the new studies program at UCLA for at least two years through the Simcha and Sarah Lainer Family Foundation.

The support was welcomed by Myers of the UCLA Jewish studies center.

“Yiddish was the cultural homeland of one of the greatest of Jewish communities, and its study today is both testament to the grandeur of that culture and an indispensable part of Jewish history,” he said.

“Just as one can’t imagine Jewish life without Yiddish, neither can one sustain a serious program in Jewish studies without Yiddish language and literature.”

People interested in Koral’s Yiddish classes at UCLA, American Jewish University, or at her California Institute can contact her by e-mail at miriam@yiddishinstitute.org or by phone at (310) 745-1190. Her Web site is www.yiddishinstitute.org.

UCLA takes Yiddish to the next level — a Japanese accent Read More »

Listen and Respond

Leave a Comment / Torah /

On the New Year we learn to pay closer heed to the words we speak, their impact on others and the subtle messages our words convey. As we listen more acutely
to the call for help from others, we also take upon ourselves the duty to respond in a timely manner and rally around those in need.

Ha’azinu begins with a word for careful, intentional listening. It is a type of focused attention. The root of the Hebrew word is ozen, an ear, or to lend an ear. One commentator suggests that it was strange to be told to listen before God’s words were actually spoken, but in reality, the opening of the heart and mind is a form of preparation to hear and receive (Kabbalah).

To paraphrase Rabbi Sidney Greenberg, who in his prayer book presents a prayer preceding the “Shema” that speaks volumes on this subject: Judaism begins with the commandment “Hear O Israel!” But what does it mean to hear?

The person who hears the news and thinks only of how it affects the market hears but does not really listen. The person who walks amid the songs of birds and only thinks of what will be for dinner hears but does not really listen. The person who hears the words of friends, husband, wife or child and does not catch the note of urgency — “Notice me, care about me, help me” — hears but does not really listen. The person who stifles the sound of conscience and says, “I’ve done enough already,” hears but does not really listen.

Cultivating our sense of listening is an essential skill for the sacred moments of a New Year. In the blessing we are commanded not to sound but to hear the sounding of the shofar. It gives us an opportunity for the sacred through holy listening.

Once we listen fully, how do we respond? Also contained in the sedrah for this Shabbat is a word that appears only twice in the Torah. “Like an eagle lights over its nest, over its young, does it hover.” The Hebrew word merachef, or hover, near the end of Deuteronomy, is found in Genesis describing God’s presence “hovering over the face of the waters” during creation.

Hovering implies an act of concern and an immediate presence. Our reaction to a call of distress cannot wait. On a personal note, friends who have lost loved ones, especially children, need to be surrounded by and given the overwhelming embrace of friends and family.

A time of crisis for our people demands no less. When we find Israel vilified at the European Parliament and by a former American president as an “apartheid state,” we cannot allow that perversion of truth and defamation to stand. When journalists like Philippe Karsenty expose the irresponsibility of the French state television in airing the fraudulent depiction of the killing of a Palestinian father and son, which resulted in mass hysteria in the Arab world, we must stand by him and demand justice. There will be many opportunities for us to listen and to hover in the coming year.

On these days of repentance and soul-searching, it is worthy to note that a teshuva, most commonly defined as repentance, also means a response. Let us listen and respond rapidly to the needs of our friends and neighbors. Let us be fully present for each other. May our prayers lead to actions that merit our inscription for a sweet year of life and peace.

L’Shana tova tikateyvu.

David Baron is rabbi of the Temple of the Arts at the Wilshire Theatre in Beverly Hills.

Listen and Respond Read More »

Record anti-Semitism weighs heavily on British Jews

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

With anti-Semitism in Britain at record levels, life is changing in subtle and not-so-subtle ways for the country’s Jews.

Armed guards escort Orthodox Jews in Manchester walking to synagogue. Vendors sell Arabic-language editions of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” outside train stations. Academic and labor unions routinely issue calls to boycott the Jewish state.

Jews in Britain say they feel a growing sense of unease and insecurity.

“Jews today, compared with three or four years ago, are feeling increasingly worried about anti-Semitism,” said Mark Gardner, a spokesman for the Community Security Trust (CST), the organization charged with providing security for the country’s Jews.

Apparently they have good reason to worry. A recent CST report showed that all forms of anti-Semitism in Britain increased in 2006.

Last year saw the highest number of reported anti-Semitic incidents in Britain since recordkeeping began in 1984 — a 33 percent increase over the previous year. Anti-Semitic incidents in Britain have doubled in the last decade.

Jews are violently assaulted and subjected to threats. Schoolchildren face abuse. Communal property and synagogues are damaged and desecrated. And Britain is home to a growing cottage industry of mass-produced, anti-Semitic literature.

The sharp rise in anti-Semitism has not gone unnoticed in Parliament, which in 2005 formed an investigative committee to address the Jewish community’s concerns.

In its first report in September 2006, the All Party Inquiry into Anti-Semitism recommended investigating the reason for the low number of prosecutions of anti-Semitic crimes and developing strategies to combat rising anti-Semitism. The report found that only a minority of police forces in the country were even equipped to record hate crimes as anti-Semitic incidents.

“Anti-Semitism has not been taken as seriously as other forms of hatred in some parts of our society,” Iain Wright, the parliamentary undersecretary of state for communities and local government, acknowledged this summer.

Wright pledged to significantly increase funding for monitoring and classifying anti-Semitism as a hate crime.

But are any of these responses to the problem making Jews feel safer?

In some communities, residents are volunteering to help provide security for Jews.

“Community leaders are trying to find ways to harness the fact that people want to help,” Gardner said.

For secular Jews in Britain, who may not be subject to the same street dangers that visibly Orthodox Jews face, the country’s increasingly populist anti-Israeli campaigns have been unsettling.

“When people start talking about how terrible Israel is behaving, I feel sensitive about it and how it might possibly be linked to anti-Semitism, even if it wasn’t meant that way,” said Lauren Tobias, who works in London. “Then I find myself acting very defensive.”

Gardner said the boycott Israel movement “has an anti-Semitic impact psychologically on the Jewish community. Boycotts remind us of the Nazi boycott of Jews.”

One British journalist, Richard Littlejohn, said bashing Israel has become so trendy that it is “this year’s AIDS ribbon.”

As in other places in Europe, anti-Semitism in Britain isn’t limited to the extreme right. On the far left, in unions and other forums where liberal-leaning Jews once felt politically at home, activists now leading the charge against Israel are driving Jews away.

Josephine Bacon, director of a Hebrew and Yiddish translation company, said she feels under attack at her volunteer office job in the Labor Party.

“I get incredible hostility at work at the Camden Labor Party,” said Bacon, who holds dual British and Israeli citizenship. “The only reason it’s not the same as the anti-Semitism of the ’30s is that Israel exists now.”

Bacon says many Jews are “voting with their feet” and cutting ties with the Labor Party, Bacon said, or “if they stay in the party, they don’t talk about their past.”

Anti-Israel activists by and large reject accusations that their campaigns are anti-Semitic. Ian McDonald, a senior lecturer from Brighton who supports the University College Union’s proposed academic boycott of Israel, said in debates about the boycott, “We have to challenge the notion that to be anti-Zionist is to be anti-Semitic.”

At a recent debate on the All-Party Inquiry into Anti-Semitism, Wright called the boycott proposal “anti-Jewish in principle.” But that pronouncement hasn’t changed matters much on the streets.

Last year the CST launched a program to safeguard Jewish schools and community centers, pledging more than $6 million over a three-year period to install bomb-proof windows in some 600 community buildings.

Despite those efforts to help religious communities across the country beef up security, for some it hasn’t been enough.

British Jews are choosing to move to Israel in record numbers. British aliyah last year set a new record with 738 new immigrants, a two-thirds increase over the year before, according to the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Nevertheless, agency spokesman Michael Jankelowitz said he doesn’t believe the aliyah is the result of British Jews fleeing anti-Semitism at home.

“By and large the reasons for aliyah are positive ones,” he said.

Bacon said that despite the hostility she faces in Britain, she has no plans to move.

“I’m determined to tough it out,” she said. “I think that the current wave of anti-Semitism will eventually die out. But I can’t say how soon.”

The report is available at Record anti-Semitism weighs heavily on British Jews Read More »

American Jewish youth alienated from Israel, study finds

Leave a Comment / Israel, Worldwide /

Young American Jews are increasingly alienated from Israel, according to a report released last week.

The report, titled “Beyond Distancing: Young Adult American Jews and their Alienation from Israel” and commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, generally substantiates current suspicions rather than revealing new surprises.

The major findings are that successively younger American Jews feel increasingly distant from Israel, and that the trend has been increasing steadily for decades.

For example, fewer than half (48 percent) of respondents younger than 35 agreed that “Israel’s destruction would be a personal tragedy,” compared to 78 percent of those 65 and older. And just 54 percent of the younger group is “comfortable with the idea of a Jewish State,” compared to 81 percent of those 65 or older, 74 percent of those in the 50-64 age group and 64 percent in the 35-49 group.

The report is based on data from the 2007 National Survey of American Jews, a mail- and Web-administered survey conducted in December 2006 and January 2007 by Synovate, Inc. It only considers the attitudes of non-Orthodox Jews. Of 1,828 respondents, 124 Orthodox were removed from the sample on the assumption that their relationship to Israel is markedly closer than that of their non-Orthodox peers.

According to one of the report’s co-authors, Steven Cohen, a sociologist and research professor at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, the generational differences are more a function of the decade people were born than where they are on the life-cycle continuum. That means the American Jewish detachment from Israel will increase as younger Jews age and replace their parents and grandparents’ generations.

“There is growing discomfort with the drawing of hard group boundaries of all sorts,” Cohen said of the so-called “millennials,” those born after 1980. “The idea of a Jewish state reflects hard group boundaries, that there is a distinction between Jews and everybody else. That does not sit well with young Jews.”

Overall, the picture of detachment from Israel is not as dismal as those figures might suggest, Cohen argued. More than 60 percent of Jews younger than 35 in the study show “some level” of attachment to or caring about Israel.

“The glass is still half full, it’s just not as full as it used to be,” said Cohen, who wrote the report with Ari Kelman, assistant professor of American studies at UC Davis.

Political leanings didn’t seem to affect the attitudes of younger Jews toward Israel. In fact, the data suggest that those who say they vote Republican or describe themselves as politically conservative are more alienated from Israel than self-professed liberals.

Cohen surmised that there are so few young, non-Orthodox, right-wing American Jews that they are distanced from their Jewish peers in general, including when it comes to Israel.

The overall slide in attachment to or interest in Israel does not mean that young American Jews are less “Jewish.” On the contrary, numerous recent studies and anecdotal evidence demonstrate great cultural and religious vitality and creativity among young Jews. Israel is just not as much a part of the picture, which should concern the greater community, the report warns.

“It’s worrying that young Jews may be creating a latter-day Jewish Bundism, which affirms Jewish belonging but is neutral to the Zionist enterprise,” Cohen said. “We’re seeing this growing phenomenon of Jews who have no problem saying the Shema but won’t sing ‘Hatikvah.'”

Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, executive director of Mechon Hadar, which provides networking and support to startup minyans nationwide, seconded the notion that young Jews have a more nuanced attitude toward Israel than their elders. In the independent minyan movement, he said, that means they have not yet figured out how to do Israel programming.

“I think that reflects a problem that our generation has not solved: how to engage with Israel without slogan-slinging” — left-wing or right-wing — “but still remain emotionally engaged,” he said.

Kaunfer described Israel Independence Day celebrations at these minyans as “muted, not because of a lack of connection to Israel, but because we are still searching for appropriate ways to celebrate and connect to” the Jewish state.

One factor that seems to increase the attachment of young Jews to Israel quite dramatically is, not surprisingly, spending time in Israel.

While the report shows that 19 percent of young Jews who have never been to Israel exhibit a “high” level of attachment to the country, the number jumps to 34 percent after a first trip and 52 percent after two or more trips. Conversely, 42 percent of young Jews who have never been to Israel report a “low” level of attachment. That number drops to 17 percent after just one trip.

The policy implications?

“Trips matter,” Cohen and Kelman write. “More trips are better than fewer, and trips of longer duration have more impact than those with shorter duration.”

“In some ways, that’s the most dramatic finding” of the report, said Barry Chazan, professor of Jewish education at Spertus College in Chicago and educational director of Birthright Israel, which has taken nearly 150,000 college-age and post-college Jews to Israel over the past seven years.

The finding confirms what Chazan and his colleagues have been telling people: Taking young American Jews to Israel on these free, carefully organized trips is a powerful tool in Jewish identity-building.

“The motivation is strong; they’re not being dragged there,” he said. “They get a hefty dose of Zionist history, Jewish history and contemporary Israel. It’s very explicitly about that.”

Chazan has just finished a book about Birthright, scheduled for a publication this spring, with Leonard Saxe, director of the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University. They dispute the Cohen-Kelman report’s prediction of a continuing downslide in American Jewish attachment to Israel, and say Birthright has a lot to do with their optimism.

“Tens of thousands of young adults are having these experiences in Israel,” Saxe said. “It will create a generation of people who know Israel and are interested in Israel that is unprecedented.”

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Letter from France: Battle against anti-Semitism enters new phase with increased legal action and ha

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French Jews were relieved to learn of the arrest and conviction of Nizar Ouedrani, a man who assaulted a young Jew wearing a kippah in Paris last July, as the victim was walking toward a synagogue.

The incident is one among dozens, but for the first time, Jewish leaders noted, the court opted for a severe sentence.

On Saturday, July 21, two men and a boy were going to their synagogue on Petit Street when a man driving a truck honked at them and started shouting anti-Semitic slurs. When 24-year-old Yossef Zekri tried to calm the driver down, the latter jumped out of the car and started hitting him while shouting, “Dirty Jew, I’ll finish you.” Ouedrani hit Zekri on the head with a vacuum cleaner and ran away. He was caught the next day after police traced his license plate number.

In court, Ouedrani testified he didn’t realize his victim was a Jew, but failed to convince the judge, who sentenced him to nine months in prison (of which six months are suspended).

“We believe that this ruling, the first to be as severe as we expected, is exemplary and will dissuade thugs from attacking our community,” Sammy Ghozlan, the head of the Vigilance Bureau Against Anti-Semitism, said.

With the Ouedrani case, the battle against “new” anti-Semitism has entered a new phase.

Until 2002, the left-wing government led by Lionel Jospin refused to even recognize the spectacular increase of anti-Jewish attacks triggered by the second intifada.

Local Jewish organizations, strengthened by American Jewry, demanded President Jacques Chirac present a firm battle against anti-Semitic attacks.

The French president and his new center-right Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy — now France’s president — launched a plan to fight anti-Semitism, including reinforced surveillance of synagogues and unprecedented efforts on behalf of police to hunt down the attackers. The next phase was to get offenders to court. The French Assembly approved the Lellouche legislation, doubling the sentences for anti-Semitic and racist assaults.

Jewish community leaders fought forcefully for serious sentences following dozens of symbolic rulings that failed to dissuade new aggressors.

The Ouedrani ruling, the first severe court decision after an anti-Semitic attack, opens the door to a new phase of the battle against anti-Semitism. Authorities appear to have taken every possible measure and precaution, yet anti-Jewish attacks continue as if nothing had been done.

“There are no new ideas on how to fight anti-Semitism, no new plan in the horizon,” said policeman Michel Thooris, who follows anti-Semitism issues. “French Jews voted massively for Sarkozy hoping that he would put an end to hatred, but he has no new answers. It sometimes seems as though hearing about anti-Semitism is starting to annoy our leaders…” and the French in general, Thooris said.

Simone Veil — former minister, European Parliament speaker and current president of the Shoah Remembrance Foundation — told me, as we were visiting the Shoah memorial with President Sarkozy, that certain forms of anti-Semitism denounced by schoolteachers could easily be countered.

Since the beginning of the second intifada, French professors in troubled schools have complained that their Muslim pupils have been refusing to learn about the Shoah, claiming it was Zionist propaganda. The pupils have prevented professors from teaching the Shoah and the trend has extended to other lessons that involve Jews. Anti-Semitic assaults against Jewish pupils and teachers have also increased.

“I actually noticed that Arab pupils failed to appear in class for courses on the Shoah long before the second intifada, but at the time I didn’t understand what motivated them,” said Irene Saya, the head of the teachers association PEREC (For a Republican and Civil School).

In 2002, a dozen professors gathered their testimonies in a book called, “The Lost Territories of the Republic.” Irene Saya said that nothing has changed in five years.

“Jewish professors and pupils are subject to anti-Semitic remarks and it feels like there isn’t much to do. Anti-Semitism isn’t just going to disappear,” Saya said. “The ministry created a special department for these issues but there are no official figures and no real measures to battle anti-Semitism in school.”

“The way I see it, the pupils who refuse to study are not at fault,” Veil said. “The teachers are the ones who should find solutions to this problem and find ways to teach what happened in WWII. But I think some of these professors don’t really want to make that effort.”

Every year, the Shoah Memorial sends up to 10,000 adolescents from throughout France to Auschwitz. Troublemakers aren’t invited. It also launched several projects commemorating the genocides perpetrated in Rwanda and against the Armenians.

“Today, we have to talk about Rwanda if we want schools to keep on teaching about the Shoah,” sarcastically observed the leader of one European Jewish organization.

Obviously, most of those who combat genocide and fight racism do so genuinely, and their efforts often lead to positive results.

“We have to be irreproachable at a time when revisionists are still trying to distort history,” Veil said.

Anti-Zionism and the boycott of Israeli products and skills are viewed by French Jews as another form of anti-Semitism. But, unlike other countries, France has successfully countered the phenomenon, launching the France-Israel Foundation in July 2005 to reinforce ties with the Israeli government and encourage collaboration in various fields, from literary exhibits to stem cell research.

The foundation has prevented boycotts that would have isolated Israel in the intellectual and commercial fields. It instigated French investments in the Israeli film industry, for example, leading to the success of the Israeli Film Festival of Paris and to numerous productions and prizes, the latest ones being the awards granted at the Cannes film festival to two Israeli films, “Jellyfish” and “The Band’s Visit.” Israeli movies, once rare in French theaters, have become common and, at times, even popular.

Those who supported the boycott against Israel, mainly within the pro-Palestinian association CAPJPO (Coordination of the Calls for a Fair Peace in the Middle East), are about to observe a new high in French-Israeli relations since the annual book fair — the major cultural event of the year — selected Israel to star the 2008 exhibit.

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