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December 11, 2008

Day at the beach – Omaha Beach

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Raphael Sonenshein /

June 6, 1944, may have been the most important day of the 20th century. The Allied invasion of France breached Hitler's Atlantic Wall and decisively turned the war against the Nazi regime.

The invasion itself was a combination of great leadership, detailed planning and a brilliant campaign of deception to convince the Germans that the attack would come at Calais instead of the Normandy beaches. But the final ingredient was the courage of the invasion forces, of which 75 percent were American soldiers. To the Americans fell the nightmare beach to attack: Omaha. It was the most heavily defended and dangerous beach, and it cost by far the most lives.

Had D-Day failed, what would have happened? Would the war effort in the West have become exhausted? Would the concentration camps have been liberated by 1945? Fortunately, these questions will never have to be answered.

Last month, my wife, my daughter and I went to Omaha Beach. We have been in France since September, and this is a trip that I had longed to take. Each semester I spend a full class session on D-Day, because I think it reveals so much — not only about world history but also about the American character.

The Omaha Beach memorial has three important pieces: a creatively designed museum with audiovisual displays, the American cemetery and a path that winds down to the beach itself. The whole D-Day story unfolded at beaches to the north and south, as well, because the attacks took place for miles up and down the coast at other beaches named Juno, Utah, Gold, Sword.

British and Canadian troops joined Americans on those beaches. Attacks on German installations inland were already under way in coordination with the invasion by the French resistance, alerted by coded radio messages from the Allied command.

The museum traces all the intricacies of the invasion planning and execution. The intense secrecy of the invasion plan was dictated by the need to divert the strongest German forces away from the landing site.

Massive deception fooled the German high command right up until the attack and even in the first few days after. The planning was not perfect; in a training exercise for the full invasion force on the English coast, German submarines sneaked in and attacked, costing the lives of more than 700 Allied soldiers.

Even with these snafus, the depth of the planning and training process comes through. This was a well-led project. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's recorded talk to the troops before the invasion is simple and moving, as are accounts of his visit to paratroopers on the way to Normandy.

The decision to attack (moved from June 5) during a break in the stormy weather on June 6 was critical and was, after all, based on something as tricky as a weather forecast. Bad weather would have doomed the invasion.

From the museum you go down to the beach on a winding path. There you can see some remnants of abandoned equipment left as a visual display.

But the real shock is to see how open the beach is, with no real cover or protection for the incoming soldiers. Looming behind you are the hills where the Germans had their guns, with months to set up their lines of fire.

Despite horrific losses in the first wave, the soldiers just kept on coming and somehow made it up the hills and cliffs to silence the German positions. Bold parachute drops behind enemy lines helped turn the tide, but ultimately young American soldiers led by junior officers (taking over for higher-ranking officers who had been killed) had to get their men off the beaches and up the hills.

The cemetery is extremely simple and quiet, as it should be. In neat rows are crosses and Jewish stars with very simple descriptions, all of Americans buried far from home on the soil they had died to liberate. Some are dated June 6, but others are as late as July, a reminder that it took well more than a month to break out of the region and begin in August the push toward Berlin.

Still to come after D-Day were the awful battles of the French hedgerows and the German counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge. Paris was only liberated in late August.

The French have carefully maintained a network of museums and displays all up and down the Normandy coast. Memories of the American GIs who fought and died to liberate Europe and who marched through the Arc de Triomphe in Paris are still strong.

I thought of all those still with us or who have passed on who served in uniform in that war — including my father, my father-in-law, my uncles (two of whom fought in France and helped liberate concentration camps) — and of my mother, my aunts and the many women who served overseas but mostly on the home front.

Much has happened in the U.S.A. and in the world since that day in June 1944. Our relations with Europe have gone up and down, although our alliance remains strong.

Things may never be quite as crystal clear as they were then, when the fate of the world hung in the balance. I listened again this week to the sober address that President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivered to announce the invasion — in the form of a prayer:

“Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.”

No one knew what the outcome would be.

In facing tough times, Americans have historical resources to fall back upon. Those soldiers who fought their way onto French soil had already lived through the worst of the Great Depression. With great leadership, careful planning and a worthy goal to aim for, Americans have a way of getting there.

It is worth remembering.

Raphael J. Sonenshein, a political scientist at Cal State Fullerton, is the 2008 Fulbright Tocqueville Distinguished Chair in American Studies at the Institut Français de Geopolitique at the University of Paris VIII.

ALTTEXT
Part of the memorial at Omaha Beach

Day at the beach – Omaha Beach Read More »

Peace House expulsions show need for sensitivity

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

I understand there are rabbis who used their pulpits on Shabbat to criticize the brave Jewish heroes whom the government forcefully expelled from their homes in Hebron just a few days ago.

Hundreds of other brave Jews were with them in support of their right to stay at the home that was legally bought for them by Morris Abraham, a Syrian Jew living in New York. Abraham spent close to a million dollars purchasing this home from a local Arab, and the deal was legally consummated some 24 months ago. It was his wish that these families live there, and this wish was legally carried out.

Those of us who have had the privilege to visit these folks at the now-famous Peace House in Hebron know that it is a stone’s throw from the tomb of our forefathers and foremothers, where Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were buried with their wives. This is Judaism’s second holiest site, being that Jacob is the Jewish forefather and as his 12 sons became the 12 tribes of Israel.

There has been a Jewish community in the area for thousands of years. Hebron was the first capital of the Jewish people under the reign of King David. Today, there is a community of about 8,000 Jews living in Kiryat Arba (City of Four). A 10-minute walk will take you to the old city of Hebron, right by the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, where 800 Jewish men, women and children live in an enclave protected by the brave soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. For those who have not been to Hebron, it is about a 30-minute drive from the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

Four weeks from now, the Torah portion will be Vayechi. One cannot read this beautiful narrative about Jacob imploring his son to bury him in the Land of Israel and not be moved.

More importantly, this is probably the single act in the whole Bible responsible for planting the seed that has so stubbornly grown into the tree we refer to as the Jewish people. It is my belief that it is this act that has brought back the Jewish people to their homeland after 2,000 years of exile, pogroms and the Holocaust. Because of Jacob’s insistence to be brought back to Israel, the Jewish generations after him always felt an inexplicable yearning to come back home, if for nothing else, just to pay their respects to him and their forefathers and foremothers.

I came to learn this through my own personal story. My own father (z”l’) on his deathbed made me and my family promise him that we would bury him in Israel. This was a longing that he had and throughout his horrific battle with cancer, which lasted 18 months, he would insist that we make him this promise. It was the last few words he uttered as we were weeping by his bedside that early evening in February 1988.

For years after we buried him in Israel — and having no real prior connection to my Jewish roots or tradition or, for that matter, the State of Israel — I still kept coming back every year for his memorial. There were times when frankly I had no idea what I was doing there or why he made this request and asked myself whether all the trouble that it took to get there was even necessary — to arrange for a memorial lunch or dinner, to find people to say the Kaddish by his gravesite, etc.

Was it all necessary or was I simply being a little nutty? After all, I had never been there with him while he was alive. Nevertheless, I kept coming back year after year, first as a bachelor and then later as a husband and now as a father.

One Shabbat, many years after that very first trip, I was sitting in our little synagogue in Beverly Hills and my rabbi gave a most beautiful lesson on the chapter Vayechi. He brought my attention to this beautiful narrative, and all of a sudden, everything became clear to me, and tears started rolling down my eyes.

For the first time, I understood my late father’s request. For the first time, I realized how much of an impact those trips to Israel had not only over my life but over all of my family’s lives.

I cannot tell you enough about all the profound experiences I had during these yearly trips. I cannot even begin to think of my life today without these visits. My whole family has found a purpose bigger than ourselves because of the experiences that we were blessed to have in Israel. We have grown to love the people and the land.

On one such visit last year, an old friend took me and a few of my friends from Los Angeles to the Beit Shalom (the Peace House). We met the families who lived there and spoke to their leader, a woman who had moved to Israel from England.

She had been living in Israel for many years, and when the house was bought, she decided to move to it with her husband and many children. My friends and I asked her many questions to try and understand how she could be as brave as she was to live there.

She was a very sensible and a well-educated woman in her 30s, very articulate. She explained that if it was not safe for her to live in her home in Hebron because of the dangers facing her, then it was just as unsafe for anyone to live in Israel because of the dangers facing it.

She made a compelling argument that Jews should have a moral and ethical right to live anywhere in Israel and for that matter, anywhere in the world without being persecuted. And her Peace House was the last stand, so to speak, to bring this point home.

The idea that an area — Hebron, Gaza, West Bank, whatever one might call it — must be devoid of any Jews living in it should be antithetical to modern-day Jewish thinking, she said. After all, this is what Hitler tried to achieve with his Judenrein concept — cleansing Europe and the world of all its Jews.

Last week, this woman and the other families living with her in the Peace House were dragged out by the Israeli government. Ironically, contrary to conventional knowledge, the courts did not order the evacuation of the House of Peace. They left it in the hands of the government to decide what to do until the legalities of the case were fully determined. Sadly, the Ehud Olmert government chose the most divisive and provocative option.

While these Jews were being expelled, Israel continues to have its southern cities bombed with rockets since the expulsion of the Jews of Gush Katif; Iran persists on its nuclear agenda, and Hezbollah and Hamas continue to arm themselves to the teeth. Episodes like the Peace House expulsion are an unfortunate distraction from the real issues and threats that Israel faces.

It is true that some of the actions of a few hot-headed Jews have crossed the line, and while I might understand their frustrations and pain, I do not condone those actions. But the acts of a handful of hotheads should not poison all 300,000 Jews living in Judea and Samaria who stand on the front lines with great sacrifice, and they should not obscure this fact: Just like Arabs have the right to live in Israel among a Jewish majority, Jews should have the right to live in any area they please, even if those areas have an Arab majority.

It is not my intention to offend anyone who does not share this perspective. We all know how diverse Jewish opinion can be, and this diversity is one of our strengths. My intention here is to implore all of us to show a little sensitivity and balance before making loud and sweeping condemnations of our fellow Jews.

Ultimately, if we can succeed in being sensitive toward each other, maybe it will lead to us understanding each other a little better — hence finding our commonalities on our own, rather than having them forced on us by other people with evil agendas.

This was our fate for 2,000 years before the creation of the State of Israel. It must not be allowed to remain our fate moving forward.

Sunny Sassoon is a businessman who lives with his family in Los Angeles.

Peace House expulsions show need for sensitivity Read More »

Edward Kritzler’s history of Jewish pirates is uneven

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment /

NEW YORK (NEXTBOOK) — There are places you expect to find Jews and places you don’t, and in the second category, the deck of a pirate ship ranks pretty close to the top. The very title of “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” sounds like the premise of a science-fiction novel — maybe a sequel to Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policemen’s Union,” in which Yiddish-speaking Jews colonize Alaska — or else the punchline to a joke.

But Edward Kritzler’s new book, despite its serious flaws of scholarship and interpretation, has the merit of reminding us that, in fact, Jews and the descendants of Jews played a significant role in the European colonization of the New World as merchants, diplomats, spies, and yes, even pirates.

The reason has to do with simple chronology: 1492, known to all Americans as the year Columbus sailed the ocean blue, is remembered by Jews in a very different spirit — as the year Ferdinand and Isabella banished the Jews from Spain. In the ensuing diaspora, many Spanish and Portuguese Jews, including the conversos who continued to practice Judaism in secret, found their way to mercantile centers across Europe and the New World.

They were, after all, a well-connected, well-educated and well-capitalized bourgeoisie, ideally suited to play the role of middlemen in the emerging global economy. It is no wonder that conversos sailed with Columbus — a durable legend has it that Columbus himself was from a Jewish family — or that Kritzler finds thriving Sephardic communities in Jamaica, Brazil and New Amsterdam. Wherever the Spanish or Dutch planted their flags, at least some Jews were sure to follow.

And at least a few of those Jews were actual pirates. At a time when the boundaries between war, commerce and piracy were highly porous, it was easy for Jewish sailors and shipowners to mingle peaceful trade missions with privateering. Take Samuel Palache, a descendant of Moroccan rabbis who started his career of international intrigue as a trade representative, exchanging Moorish jewels for Spanish beeswax. He tried to enter the service of King Philip III of Spain, even offering to convert to Catholicism.

When the offer was declined, he signed up with Philip’s deadly enemies, the Dutch, and began running guns from Holland to North Africa. As part of this campaign of harassing the Spanish, Palache once led a fleet to attack Spanish shipping in the Mediterranean. While “the result of this expedition is not reported,” Kritzler admits, it is enough for him to grant Palache the dashing nickname “The Pirate Rabbi.” (Even so, the reader cannot help noticing that he never set foot, or sail, in the Caribbean –Kritzler’s title is more catchy than precise.)

Kritzler even stakes a Jewish claim on one of the marquee names in pirate history, Jean Lafitte, the patriot buccaneer who ran a smuggling empire from New Orleans in the early 19th century, then redeemed himself by fighting with Andrew Jackson against the British in the War of 1812. Kritzler quotes Lafitte himself on the importance of his Jewish ancestry:

“My grandmother was a Spanish-Israelite. … Grandmother told me repeatedly of the trials and tribulations her ancestors had endured at the time of the Spanish Inquisition. … Grandmother’s teachings … inspired in me a hatred of the Spanish Crown and all the persecutions for which it was responsible — not only against Jews.”

The oppressed becomes the foe of oppressors, the beaten-down Jew takes up a cutlass: It is an irresistible story line and the central premise of Kritzler’s book. If Lafitte’s confession seems to illustrate it almost too conveniently, that may be because it is almost certainly fictional. According to his notes, Kritzler found the quotation in a book about the history of Jewish New Orleans, where it is cited from “The Journal of Jean Lafitte,” a book published in New York in 1958.

Senior Editor Adam Wills was all over the Jewish pirates story in 2006

Nowhere in his text or notes, however, does Kritzler mention what it took me only moments to find out on the Internet — that “The Journal of Jean Lafitte” was the work of a notorious forger named John Laflin, who claimed to be a descendant of the pirate and also invented documents related to Davy Crockett and Abraham Lincoln. There is no way of telling “from Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” whether Kritzler thinks he has a good reason to trust the “Journal” anyway, or if he is even aware of its true provenance.

ALTTEXTThe Lafitte (image, left) example is a minor one — he appears on only two pages of the book — but it is unfortunately typical of Kritzler’s way with historical evidence. Kritzler relies heavily on the work of reputable historians in putting together his picture of Jews in the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries. But wherever there is a gap in the evidence, he is more than happy to fill it with wild speculation.

Particularly unsettling is his practice of treating as true the desperate admissions of conversos put to torture by the Inquisition — as when he refers, admiringly, to the Brotherhood of the Jews of Holland, “a clandestine group dedicated to fighting the Inquisition” whose “existence was revealed in the tortured confessions of four convicted Judaizers.” Evidently Kritzler believes as strongly as Torquemada in the power of the rack to elicit truth.

Suffice it to say that “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” concludes with Kritzler’s claim to have discovered the location of a secret gold mine belonging to Christopher Columbus on the island of Jamaica, where Kritzler lives. He even reproduces a 17th century code allegedly pointing to the exact location of the mine and invites “the first reader” who cracks it “to join our quixotic search.”

Kritzler is welcome to his gold mine, and I hope for his sake that X does the mark the spot. But the quixotic search he has really embarked on in “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” is a less innocent one. His book is the latest product of what might be called the “Tough Jews” school of history-writing, after the 1998 book by Rich Cohen. Cohen’s book was a paean to Jews such as Arnold Rothstein and Meyer Lansky — murderers and gangsters, or as Cohen lovingly described them, “Jews acting in ways other than Jews are supposed to act, Jews leaving the world of their heads to thrive in a physical world, a world of sense, of smell, of grit, of strength, of courage, of pain.”

By flattening out the immensely complex story of the conversos and their motives into a straightforward parable of freedom-loving, Spain-hating Jewish buccaneers, Kritzler is catering to the same American Jewish thirst for examples of Jewish toughness. “Forget the ‘Merchant of Venice,’ ” he writes, “his New World cousins were adventurers after my own heart: Jewish explorers, conquistadors, cowboys, and yes, pirates.”

I get it; I grew up riding the Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland. But there is something strange about the way American Jews, the most secure, prosperous and assimilated Jews in history, keep returning to tales of Jewish violence and thuggery to affirm their potency.

Jewish pirates, like non-Jewish pirates, were basically killers and thieves, and often slave traders to boot. Surely there are enough examples of courage in Jewish history — physical and also moral — that we don’t need Samuel Palache to prove that Jews, too, can be brave.

(Adam Kirsch is the author of “Benjamin Disraeli,” a new biography in Nextbook’s Jewish Encounters series. Reprinted from Nextbook.org, a new read on Jewish culture.)

Edward Kritzler’s history of Jewish pirates is uneven Read More »

Unprecedented opening for Darfur action exists

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

It’s getting hard to think of Darfur as urgent these days. It’s not that things have slowed down. Quite the contrary. In the last year we’ve seen devastation on par with the worst of the fighting back in 2005.

The information just keeps rolling in — renewed bombings, attacks on Darfuri refugee camps, humanitarian workers under siege, more than 300,000 people displaced just since the beginning of 2008. But as we approach six years of genocide, it’s just hard to think of Darfur as urgent anymore. Genocide in Darfur has begun to feel, let’s face it, status quo. Stale. Old news.

But the truth is that committing to ending the genocide in Darfur has never been more urgent. Darfur activists are facing an unbelievable opportunity to affect real, lasting change in the region. And if we don’t seize this opportunity now, it could be a very long time before such a window opens again.

Three things are happening at once.

First, we have an American public that has been mobilized politically in record numbers. Darfur activists have a remarkable opportunity to harness this momentum while newly activated Americans are still ready to hear from us what the priority issues of the new administration need to be.

Second, we have an administration that for the first time in a long time is poised to change the prevailing attitude toward the United States within the international community. To do so will mean redefining American values toward the wider world and redefining American policy priorities.

President-elect Barack Obama has already promised his “unstinting resolve” toward ending the genocide in Darfur and, since 2006, has expressed that he sees the Darfur conflict not only as a humanitarian concern but as a national security issue, as well.

His recent nominations of Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) for secretary of state and Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador — both of whom have been outspoken advocates for stronger action in Darfur — are particularly encouraging, as they show that this new administration is committed to engaging with the world and to look at peace and prosperity worldwide as an issue for American national security. A bigger push by Darfur activists now will give Obama the grass-roots support — and the constant reminder — he needs to take a firm stance on Darfur.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, we have a Sudanese president who for the very first time is facing a real and credible threat — prosecution by the International Criminal Court. When ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo requested an arrest warrant against Sudanese President Omar al Bashir in July, Bashir immediately spiraled through a broad range of reactions — denial of any wrongdoing, threats to suspend all agreements with the United Nations, promises to unleash a wave of devastation in Darfur unlike any the world has seen.

But in an attempt to win an Article 16 deferral of his prosecution by the U.N. Security Council, Bashir seems to have settled on at least a contrived attempt at cooperation. So far, none of Bashir’s superficial tactics seem to have won him much regard — at least the United States still seems unwilling to grant Bashir his deferral.

Bashir’s new “peace talks” were widely discredited and boycotted by rebel groups en masse. His long-awaited arrest of militia leader Ali Kushayb resulted only in the promise of domestic trials against him — promises that are as yet unfulfilled. His recent announcement of a unilateral “immediate and unconditional cease-fire” has already faltered amid allegations (though as yet unconfirmed) of renewed bombings in rebel territory. But Bashir is, at the very least, attempting to look cooperative in the eyes of the international community.

Coupled with renewed mobilization by the U.S. grass roots and mounting pressure by the president-elect’s proposed administration, Darfur activists have the opportunity to create an atmosphere in which Bashir feels threatened enough to make real concessions in Darfur. And with International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor poised to announce charges against rebel leaders that have attacked African Union forces, we seem to have hit on a prime negotiating position.

It’s going to take all of us — a tall order in a time of economic crisis, a time where our first instinct is to turn inward and take care of our own communities. One day in the near future, however, our economic crisis will have subsided. When that time comes, who among us will want to know that we stood by and did not take advantage of this chance to save lives and end a genocide?

Indeed, the price of inaction is too heavy a burden for people of conscience to bear.

It’s urgent.

Unprecedented opening for Darfur action exists Read More »

The will of the people, the light of Chabad, the gift of ‘The Goldbergs’

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Opinion /

Proposition 8

Thank you for printing Supervisor Yaroslavsky’s eloquent piece (“Proposition 8 and ‘The Will of the People,’” Nov. 28). While I fully respect the concept of the will of the people, I understand that America ensures that when the will of the people seeks to discriminate, violate or abrogate rights of some people in the name of others, that we have instituted a court system of judiciary impartiality to safeguard those rights.

If we left it to the will of the people, would we ever have ended segregation in this country? Would women have gained the right to vote?

Of all people, we Jews should understand that the will of the people is not always what is best in any given time. Thankfully, our Constitution established a system of justice that isn’t, or certainly is not supposed to be, driven solely by the will of the people.

Sometimes the will of the people doesn’t know what is best for all people in a given situation. We depend on judges, who, according to the Torah, are not supposed to take bribes and should administer justice fairly and with righteousness. Lets hope that this happens with Proposition 8, as Yaroslavsky says — soon and in our day.

Rabbi Joshua Levine Grater
Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center

My husband and I picketed the Mormon church on Santa Monica Boulevard 11 days after our legal wedding (Letters, Dec. 5). Our signs said, “I Love My Husband,” and our picture made the L.A. Times.

The Mormon Church chose to make war against our marriage. We were married by a rabbi at our synagogue.

What about our religious rights? I don’t feel sorry for the Mormon Church or for the businesses being boycotted because the owners donated to Proposition 8.

Barry Wendell
West Hollywood

Chabadnik

“I’m a Chabadnik,” Rob Eshman writes in “Open House” (Dec. 5). In sympathy, I davened the last two Shabbats with my Northridge Chabad, where my husband, Marcel, z’l, served as baal korei (master of reading).

I met the Rebbe in 1970, when he gave me a dollar, but I did not know who he was that fall day on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn. Foolishly, I spent the dollar on gas to get back to Queens.

I then had a Chabad wedding in L.A., and later my daughter, Aviva, met her husband, Brett, at a Chabad Shabbat dinner with Rabbi and Chani Backman in Boston. When my husband had cancer treatments out of town, we called Rabbi Minsk and his wife at the Newport Chabad and they invited us over for Shabbat dinner.

Staying in different hospitals, where I knew no one, there was always a Chabad rabbi that would go with a smile and a bracha to visit Marcel. Chabad Rabbis Schwartzie, Rivkin, Spritzer and Korf visited. Chabad Rabbi Bryski sent Shabbat meals to me via his mother-in-law for the first cancer surgery, and had the Rebbe send us blessings.

I may also be a Renewal Jew, but I sure know where I can find chesed, loving kindness. I’m a Chabadnik.

Joy Krauthammer
Northridge

Thank you for that very touching, moving and powerful editorial.

Rabbi Moshe Bryski
via e-mail

No Money

In “No Money, No Cry” (Nov. 28), David Suissa pointed out that the current economy presents nonprofits an opportunity to explore ways to do more with less.

David cited a hypothetical example of a Holocaust memorial struggling to raise the money to build a new museum.

I’m pleased to point out the extent to which David’s example was, in fact, purely hypothetical. L’havdil, the real Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, successfully meets its benchmarks in its $20 million capital campaign.

Construction continues apace at the site in Pan Pacific Park for the new museum. This construction could not have begun had we not been able to demonstrate to the city of Los Angeles full funding for our construction needs.

We invite David and the entire community to attend the gala awards ceremony and screening on Jan. 29.

Mark A. Rothman
Executive Director
Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust

‘The Goldbergs’

I got such a kick out of the Gertrude Berg TV show on your Web site.

Aunt Tilly, as my mother called her, was my grandpa’s first cousin. Today of all days, I’m wearing a bird pin that Aunt Tilly bought at Tiffany’s as a gift when my mother stayed with her in her Park Avenue apartment.

My great-grandmother was a source of inspiration in creating Molly’s character for the radio show, which, as you probably know, was the original soap opera. Anyway, thanks for the memories.

Bonnie Somers
via e-mail

Dose of Spirituality

Last Friday my family sat in our hotel room in Jerusalem glued to CNN and watching the horror in India. Unfortunately, at 3:45 the bulletin flashing across the screen stating that 5 people were killed at the Chabad House brought total gloom to Jews around the world. Even though it was drizzling, my son suggested that we daven Kabbalat Shabbos at the Kotel. Arriving at the Kotel, I finally realized the feeling that I had hoped for. Soldiers dancing with boys from YULA and Skokie High Schools. Charedim dancing with Chasidim and soldiers singing “AM YISROEL CHAI.” The davening was intense and the dancing invigorating.

As we walked back to the hotel that night I came to two realizations.

The first is that the next time I visit the Kotel, I should bring more shekels. The poverty level being very high in Israel, I should think more of helping these people than them interrupting my davening.

The second realization is that throughout history hate mongers have tried to destroy us. These acts of violence do not make us weaker but in fact make us stronger and more united. These acts show me how resilient we are as a people and giving some like myself an overflowing feel of spirituality.

Richard Katz
Los Angeles

The will of the people, the light of Chabad, the gift of ‘The Goldbergs’ Read More »

Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, leading Orthodox thinker, dies at 98

Leave a Comment / Obituaries /

Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, a leading Orthodox thinker and an early champion of women’s rights, died Dec. 1 in New York. He was 98.

Tributes poured in from around the world last week, many of them praising Rackman for being an Orthodox pioneer in trying to ease the plight of agunot — women whose recalcitrant husbands denied them a religious bill of divorce.

“One did not have to agree with everything he said or believed or proposed, but one had to admit that he was a remarkable human being and a remarkable Jew,” said Rabbi Norman Lamm, former president and now chancellor of Yeshiva University. “He made invaluable contributions to the Jewish community at large, to Israel and especially to the Modern Orthodox community in America.

“He taught the rest of us to have guts,” Lamm continued. “I sometimes thought he relished opposition: It sharpened his own perceptions. Besides, he enjoyed a clean argument ‘for the sake of Heaven.'”

Rackman also was an early supporter of interdenominational dialogue. He was among the first rabbis to travel to the Soviet Union after the fall of Stalin, and upon his return, he drew attention to the plight of Jewish refuseniks.

“They were, he taught us, our responsibility,” said historian Deborah Lipstadt in her eulogy, recalling the sermon Rackman delivered upon his return. ” When I took my first trip to the Soviet Union in 1972 in order to meet with refuseniks, I remembered his words.”

Rackman’s list of achievements is prodigious. Born in 1910, he earned a law degree and a doctorate in political science at Columbia University while studying for the rabbinate at Yeshiva University. He served as a military chaplain in the U.S. Army Air Corps Reserve in World War II, retiring with the rank of colonel.

Rackman went on to the leadership of New York’s Fifth Avenue Synagogue and Congregation Shaarey Tefila in Queens. He was also a president of both the New York Board of Rabbis and the Rabbinical Council of America.

In 1970 he became provost of Yeshiva University and in 1977 was named president of Bar-Ilan University in Israel. Rackman served as chancellor there until his death.

“The university and the Jewish world have lost a giant of a man whose greatness was derived not only by his intellect, but his passion and sense of social justice,” said Moshe Kaveh, Bar-Ilan president.

One of Rackman’s most controversial achievements — and, some say, his greatest — was in the realm of Jewish law, where he was among the earliest rabbis to demonstrate sensitivity to the plight of agunot or so-called “chained women.” In the 1990s he helped establish Beit Din L’Ba’ayot Agunot, the Court for the Problems of Chained Women, which annulled hundreds of marriages using innovative Talmudic reasoning.

The court was widely condemned in the Orthodox world, and many rabbis refused to officiate at marriages of women whose original nuptials were annulled by Rackman. The fervently Orthodox Agudath Israel of America accused Rackman of “arrogance” and the use of “spurious” legal reasoning, while comparatively more liberal British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks charged Rackman with contributing to the very problem he was trying to solve.

Rackman maintained that his activities were within the realm of Jewish law and drew on recognized halachic precedents. Even Lamm, who approved of Rackman’s objectives if not his tactics on the agunah question, nevertheless credits the late rabbi with drawing attention to an issue many would have preferred to sweep under the rug.

“He put this agonizing problem on the map with great personal power and persuasiveness,” Lamm said. “History will certainly give him credit for that. Even those who disagreed with his Bet Din for Agunot will honor his memory for his courage and good will.”

After a funeral service in New York on Dec. 1, Rackman was buried Dec. 3 in Israel.

He is survived by three sons, Michael, Joseph and Bennett.

Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, leading Orthodox thinker, dies at 98 Read More »

Analysis: Unchecked settler violence sparks fears of new intifada

Leave a Comment / Israel /

JERUSALEM (JTA) — Concerned by settler violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has ordered Israeli security forces to apply a zero-tolerance policy toward extremist settlers.

Olmert and the country’s top security officials fear that unchecked settler violence could spark a new Palestinian intifada, enrage the Muslim world and compromise Israel’s international standing.

They are also worried about a potential spillover into Israel proper, where extremist settlers could target prominent left-wingers or even national leaders. A little more than two months ago, a prominent left-wing professor and Israel Prize winner, professor Zeev Sternhell, was wounded by a pipe bomb planted outside his home.

The latest settler rampage came last week after Israeli police evacuated settlers from a building in Hebron. Jewish settlers had moved into the building in March 2007 after an American Jewish businessman claimed to have bought it for them, but the Palestinian owner denied selling it.

Israel’s Supreme Court ruled last month that the building should be evacuated until the ownership issue was decided. On Dec. 4, in a well-planned operation, special police forces surprised the estimated 200 inhabitants, dragging them out in less than an hour.

The eviction triggered a paroxysm of settler violence against Palestinians in nearby neighborhoods. Settlers set fire to courtyards and olive trees, stoned vehicles and passers-by and terrorized Palestinian residents. In one case, a settler was filmed firing live ammunition from close range and wounding at least two Palestinian men. Settlers also destroyed headstones in a Muslim cemetery and spray-painted slurs on mosque walls.

Meanwhile, in front of the disputed Hebron building, they recited prayers against the government, the army and the police.

In a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Olmert did not mince words.

“The sight of Jews firing at innocent Palestinians has no other name than a ‘pogrom,'” he declared. “I am ashamed that Jews could do such a thing. I have asked the defense minister and other relevant individuals to do all it takes and to use whatever force they need in any place under Israeli control to stop these outrages.”

The violent settler response to the evacuation of the building, dubbed the House of Contention by Israeli media and called the Peace House by settlers, was symptomatic of a relatively new phenomenon: growing numbers of radical settlers who feel alienated from the state, don’t accept its authority and are ready to use violence to prevent it from taking action against settler interests.

The eruption of violence in Hebron was not a case of spontaneous anger but part of a calculated strategy radical settlers call “price tag.” The policy is intended to demonstrate to Israel that it will have to pay a very high price for any action the government takes against them in the hope that Israel eventually will get the message and desist.

This way, the settlers believe, they will prevent the Jewish settlements in the West Bank from suffering the same fate as those in the Gaza Strip, which were evacuated, destroyed and handed over to the Palestinians in the summer of 2005.

Two seminal events inform this radical thinking: the 2005 “disengagement” and the destruction of illegal settler homes at the West Bank outpost of Amona in February 2006.

Radical elements among the settlers attribute these setbacks to insufficient settler resistance to the government, hence the new price tag policy.

Radical settlers also are telling their followers that in working against the settler movement, successive Israeli governments have acted against Jewish principles, tikkun olam (repairing the world) and the messianic era, and therefore are illegitimate. Some settlers consequently have disavowed their allegiance to the State of Israel, refusing to serve in the army and backing the establishment of a rival breakaway Kingdom of Judea based on Torah and Jewish law.

The extremist fringe is estimated at between several hundred to a few thousand out of the West Bank’s 300,000 settlers. Most of the settlers’ leadership, including the Judea and Samaria Council, disavow the radicals. Dani Dayan, the council chairman, said they are doing the settler enterprise more harm than good. Others, however, have spoken out in defense of the radical settler youth.

This year has seen approximately 700 cases of settler violence against Palestinians and Israeli soldiers. More than 500 criminal complaints have been filed, and more than 200 people have been arrested.

The Shin Bet internal security service, which monitors radical Jewish activities on the West Bank, warns that extremists are ready to use live fire to stop peacemaking with the Palestinians.

There is deep concern that this sort of settler action could spark a new Palestinian intifada. Palestinian leaders have warned that if settler violence continues, acts of revenge are almost a certainty. This could spiral out of control quickly.

Some fear that if the Israeli army becomes involved against Palestinian lawbreakers, Palestinian police — who have won kudos from Israel recently for the way they are keeping the peace — might turn their weapons on the Israeli forces, sinking the peacekeeping framework their U.S. sponsors have so assiduously helped to build.

There is fear, too, that footage of Jewish graffiti on mosques and desecration of Muslim cemeteries will ignite the Muslim world the way the Mohammed caricatures in the Danish press did in 2005.

Already the settler violence has sparked severe European criticism of the radicals and of Israel’s inability to contain them. If not addressed, it could severely undermine Israel’s international standing.

As for the spillover of violence into Israel proper, the September attack outside Sternhell’s home in Jerusalem almost certainly was perpetrated by radical right-wingers. Pamphlets at the site of the bombing referred to the Kingdom of Judea and offered a $275,000 reward to anyone who kills a dovish leader.

After the evacuation of the house in Hebron, radical settlers blocked roads into Israel proper. On Monday, small groups of settlers demonstrated outside the homes of the commander of the Israeli army’s Judea and Samaria Division, the deputy state attorney and the head of the Shin Bet’s Jewish desk, broadcasting a threatening message.

“In the same way as we were surprised in Hebron, we can surprise the law enforcers and get to their homes,” they warned.

Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are taking the threat posed by the radicals very seriously.

The army has been given instructions to clamp down strongly on any hint of violence, and the Shin Bet’s Jewish desk is stepping up its already intensive monitoring of radical groups.

Although the radicals have nothing like the wide base of tacit support they had when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist in 1995, the lesson of the past few months is that without concerted action by Israel’s forces of law and order, these radical settlers will be very difficult to stop.

Analysis: Unchecked settler violence sparks fears of new intifada Read More »

Balancing resources and lives — being Jewish and ‘green’

Leave a Comment / Green Living /

I entered the classroom, where more than 30 Jewish adults who had been studying together for the past semester buzzed in conversation. I began class by asking my students a simple question: “Are you concerned about what is happening to our environment and worried about what the future will be for your children and grandchildren?”

Without a single exception, everyone in the room said yes.

Read any newspaper today and you will find stories about the problems that are being created by global warming: water, air and soil pollution; destruction of ecosystems and rain forests, and, of course, our dependency on oil. However, human abuse of our earth is not a new issue or one that has developed solely as a result of technology. Sadly, man’s instinct to destroy the natural world dates back to biblical times.

It seems that we have always needed guidance in how to treat the earth. In Deuteronomy 20:19-20, we are commanded not to cut down fruit-bearing trees during a siege against a city, although we can cut down nonfruit-bearing ones for building materials. This prohibition on destroying (bal tashchit) teaches us two very important lessons: restraint in how we act upon the earth and the value of humility.

What better time could there be to limit the human tendency to act without concern for the earth than in a time of conquest, when we are easily carried away by our own sense of power? Even more significant is the idea of our responsibility for and to future generations. Bal tashchit prohibits us from destroying a source of food that will one day feed the people who survived the battles that are being fought.

Judaism has a lot to say about how to create a balance between using the resources we have and abusing or destroying them. The rabbis and sages greatly expanded the concept of bal tashchit to prohibit the wasting of everyday goods and materials, as well as clogging of wells, release of toxic fumes and chemicals and killing of animals for convenience.

The basic principle they established bears repeating today: While man may use the earth for his needs, he may not use any resource needlessly. But how do we weigh our needs against our excesses? Who decides what is a legitimate use and what is wasteful?

In attempting to answer these questions, we need to look at the purposes for which man was created in the first place. Our first answers are found in Genesis 1: 28, where we learn that man was put on the earth to “fill it and conquer/subdue it,” and in Genesis 2:15, where our Divine purpose is “to work it [the Garden of Eden] and to guard it.” Our marching orders seem clear, or do they?

From the beginning of time, we have had to face the challenge of balancing our obligation to use the environment for our own needs with the responsibility to preserve and protect it. Jewish tradition is rich with ideas, rituals and holidays that enable us to develop a sound Jewish environmental ethic keeping this tension in mind.

Every day, each time we eat, the Jewish menu of kashrut reminds us that the world is ours to use, but that there are limitations on how we can use it. The concept of restricted foods is incrementally introduced in the Torah — first, when God permits Adam to eat only fruits and vegetables and then, later in the Torah, when the Israelites are given a long list of animals, birds and fish that they are no longer permitted to eat — reinforcing the idea that we do not have unrestricted use of the world in which we live.

Jews have a special weekly reminder to help us balance our need to control the environment with caring for it. Shabbat is the original Earth Day: It celebrates the majesty of creation and tells us in no uncertain terms that the earth is for us to enjoy, but that we have a weekly obligation to let it rest, just as we are commanded to rest. On Shabbat, we relinquish our own work in order to pause and reflect on the wonder of creation, rather than to dominate and control it.

The concept of the sabbatical year, or shmita in Hebrew, also helps us develop a continuing environmental awareness by requiring us to refrain from agricultural activity, such as planting, plowing and harvesting during the seventh year of the seven-year agricultural cycle mandated in the Torah. Once again, we are required to limit our use of the earth, which is on loan to us, in order to fulfill our role as stewards.

Recently, much has been written about the concept of ecokashrut, which is the practice of using environmentally friendly, ecocertified kosher foods, goods and materials as a way of sanctifying individual use and consumption. Ecokashrut looks for Jewish solutions to contemporary environmental problems in traditional texts and ideas like tikkun olam (repairing the world), chesed (compassion) and tzedek (justice). It encompasses more than just the food we eat, but the clothing we wear, the cars we drive and the products we use to sustain us.

A Web site sponsored by the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life ( Balancing resources and lives — being Jewish and ‘green’ Read More »

Kadima cuts costs via Community Tuition Partnership

Leave a Comment / California, Education /

Kadima Hebrew Academy/Kadima Heschel West Middle School is confronting the economic crisis by reducing tuition school-wide for 2009-2010 by an average of 20 percent.

Kadima hopes the move — the first of its kind in the Los Angeles area — will encourage struggling families to keep their kids enrolled at the private day school and make Jewish education seem more financially feasible to those who formerly could not afford it.

“We wanted to find a way to make our day school education more affordable for more parents,” said Dr. Barbara Gereboff, head of school. “A couple of our families have come in and said times are tough and they don’t know how they’re going to make it work. We decided it was time to make an innovative, bold move outside of the normal paradigm to make that possible.”

The West Hills school joined community supporters and parents who could afford to donate extra funds in a partnership to subsidize the tuition cut. The Community Tuition Partnership, which will take effect in the 2009-2010 academic year, will lower costs for the entire K-8 student body: kindergarten students currently paying $16,273 for 2008-2009 next year would pay $13,070; elementary school fees would fall from $18,314 to $14,300; and middle school rates would drop from $20,910 to $16,905. New enrollees pay an extra one-time entry fee, but total tuition and fees are slightly lower if families pay for the year in full upfront.

“Most schools in the last few years have continued to increase tuition, in Los Angeles and across the country,” board of trustees president Shawn Evenhaim said. “What we’ve done is we’ve pushed a large part of our community away because it just wasn’t accessible anymore. We wanted to look at what we could do to correct that.”

This year, many families receiving financial aid asked for increased aid, and several families that had never applied for financial aid before did so for the first time, Evenhaim said.

But simply increasing financial aid wasn’t addressing the extra stress put on middle class families, Gereboff said. Even as the economic downturn began to plunge formerly stable households into financial turmoil, many parents resisted making the psychological adjustment necessary to ask for help.

“Many middle-class parents didn’t see themselves as people who should apply for financial aid, so they wouldn’t even walk in the door to begin with,” she said.

Evenhaim also said he spoke to parents who couldn’t afford a day school education on their own, but refused to apply for aid because they didn’t see themselves as “financial aid families.”

Kadima board members started exploring ways to subsidize tuition four months ago in response to what they saw as a “perfect storm” pushing students out of Jewish education across the city and beyond. The school modeled its rate cut on a similar step taken by Gross Schechter Day School in Cleveland, Ohio, five years ago. At that school, parents, community donors and Jewish organizations pooled their funds to cut yearly tuition almost in half — students now pay $6,500, a steep drop from the $13,000-$14,000 they would be paying without the subsidy.

“If we could shock the system by lowering tuition, we felt we could provide relief to our current families and also attract new families,” said Rabbi Jim Rogozen, headmaster. “We figured we could either take a chance, given the economy, and wait to see what the next year brought — or we could do something different.”

Since slashing tuition in the 2004-2005 academic year, Gross Schechter has seen its enrollment rise by 24 percent. The school has also retained more students at all grade levels who might have otherwise opted to switch into public schools, Rogozen said.

Parents and administrators at Kadima are hoping their own partnership produces similar results. PTO president Natalie Spiewak said the move would tip the scale for families who found the school’s former price tag intimidating.

“I think people who otherwise wouldn’t look at Kadima because it was too expensive might say, ‘This is more affordable now; maybe I can consider it,'” she said. “I think this is going to open the door for a lot more people to be able to choose a private day school education.”

News of the program is also a much-needed boon to families that are now struggling to keep more than one child enrolled at the school, said Spiewak, whose two children are students.

But even with the tuition cut, Kadima’s rates are still middle-of-the-road as far as L.A. day schools go. The Rabbi Jacob Pressman Academy of Temple Beth Am this year charged $13,345 to $14,650 for its elementary and middle school students, Valley Beth Shalom Day School charged $16,150, and Sinai Akiba Academy’s fees ranged from $17,083 to $19,275.

“Some schools cost significantly less, some are on par, and others cost more,” said Miriam Prum Hess, vice president of The Jewish Federation and director of day school operations for the Bureau of Jewish Education. “The struggle for schools is to make their education as affordable as possible, yet operate in a responsible way. It will be interesting to see how this works, but it’s hard to tell.”

While Kadima is still “not cheap,” Evenhaim said it wasn’t hard to get donors on board to fund the tuition cut. For the school’s parent donors, it was as simple as asking them to pay what they paid in tuition this year — under the new, lowered-rate system, the extra dollars would suddenly be tantamount to tzedakah.

“Almost everybody that we went to were extremely excited about this concept,” he said. “Just by writing a check for tuition, they are giving tzedakah to the community. When they become part of this partnership, they feel good because their money is working to ensure the future of Jewish education. This is the best investment that we can concentrate on today.”

The new tuition system would not affect the quality of classroom instruction for the school’s 260 students, according to Gereboff.

Evenhaim said he hopes the program will inspire a local trend. He wants other private schools to adopt similar plans and make a unified effort to boost the number of L.A. students in Jewish day schools. “If this is successful, we would love to share it with many other schools,” he said. “Our goal is not just to make sure Kadima has a lot of students — our goal is to make sure that as many Jewish kids as possible receive a Jewish education.”

Spiewak said she plans to keep her children in private day school.

“I believe in the education that my children are getting there,” she said.

Kadima cuts costs via Community Tuition Partnership Read More »

Protests over Jerusalem Museum of Tolerance spread

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

For years, the Simon Wiesenthal Center faced protests and lawsuits over its plans to build a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem. The legal challenges, which had halted construction, faded last month after Israel’s Supreme Court issued a unanimous opinion in favor of the project. But the protests against the Los Angeles-based human rights organization continue. In fact, they have taken a new turn, spreading from the confines of Jerusalem to a wide array of groups in the United States.

Last month Israeli writers in Ha’aretz and The Forward sought to put the controversy on the broader American Jewish agenda. Here in Los Angeles, three Jewish leaders signed onto a letter from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) that called upon the organization to stop construction of its Center for Human Dignity, a $250 million campus designed by Frank Gehry, which will include a museum, conference and education centers and a library and theater.

At issue is not the museum itself but the three-acre plot of land upon which it is being built.

For the past half century, the land, which was given to the Wiesenthal Center by the city of Jerusalem, has served as a multistory car park, where more than 1,000 Muslims, Christians and Jews parked daily.

But beneath the land lie Muslim remains that are hundreds of years old. Although the cemetery hasn’t been used in at least 50 years and has long since been declared mundras — no longer sacred — by Muslim authorities, critics of the Center for Human Dignity have charged the Wiesenthal Center with being intolerant in its quest to build a Jerusalem version of its West L.A. museum.

“Building a Museum of Tolerance atop the cemetery, unlike the admirable goal of furthering tolerance and understanding, will only add to the existing pain and suffering of Palestinians and Israelis, irreversibly damage relations between Muslims and Jews worldwide and sow new feelings of animosity and division for generations to come,” Hussam Ayloush, the director of the Los Angeles CAIR office, wrote in a letter signed by Rabbi Steven B. Jacobs of the Progressive Faith Foundation, Sydney Levy of Jewish Voice for Peace and Rabbi Haim Beliak of Jews on First.

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center, has held for years that his organization never would have accepted the land if it were still recognized as a cemetery.

Last week, Hier said in an interview that Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Aksa Association, which filed the lawsuit against the Wiesenthal Center, is not concerned with the sanctity of the Muslim bones buried beneath the future site of the Center for Human Dignity — indeed, no Muslims complained during the nearly 50 years the former cemetery spent as a car park. Hier said that Salah is interested in a “land grab,” in securing a foothold for Palestinians in West Jerusalem and with establishing a precedent that would allow Arabs to reclaim other Jewish property built on top of ancient Muslim graves.

“They weren’t going to go back to what it was three or four centuries ago,” Hier said of the court’s decision. “It either was going to remain a parking lot or it was going to become the Center for Human Dignity. I think a lot more benefit will come to the future of the Middle East by creating a Museum of Tolerance there than having a parking lot there.

“Unfortunately you have a lot of people with baggage and political posturing that don’t want to see this happen. Some of them are big extremists like the sheikh.”

As an ancient city, Jerusalem is built on top of its previous inhabitants. And it is common for human remains that are thousands of years old to be found during the preconstruction excavation required by Israeli law. By early 2006, the Israel Antiquities Authority had already removed 250 skeletons and skulls from beneath the car park, Osnat Gouez told the Jerusalem Post at the time.

The Supreme Court, in siding with the Wiesenthal Center, concluded that the land was not protected because Muslim authorities had ceased to recognize it as a cemetery.

“For decades this area was not regarded as a cemetery by the general public or the Muslim community,” declared the court. “… No one denied that position. Not only was the compound not identified as an area with religious sanctity … but it was the subject of planning for various purposes throughout decades, without any objection for reasons of sanctity.”

There were no flowers left for loved ones or prayers said there on special days. Power and sewer lines had been buried beneath the soil.

But, as is often the case in the Middle East, criticism of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem may have more to do with perception than reality.

“You can be technically right and be emotionally and structurally wrong,” Jacobs said. “I don’t think they were sensitive to the Muslim community in terms of marat ayin — that what the eye sees the eye believes.”

“Both sides are right,” he continued. “But just because both sides are right, we don’t plow on given the sensitivities and the world we need to build together as Muslims and Jews. We’ve come a long way and this is very disturbing to Muslims worldwide and, I must say, to a portion of the Jewish community too.”

Regardless of the fact that the cemetery hasn’t been used or classified as such for decades, and besides the fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem presented plans in 1946 to convert the adjacent Mamilla cemetery into a 15-building Muslim university, Jewish critics of the Wiesenthal Center’s project say Jews should be sensitive about the appearance of disturbing a person’s eternal resting place.

“We have a long history as Jews asking that our cemeteries not be desecrated — and for good reason,” Levy said. “We have been the victims of that one time too many. We should not be in the business of building on and desecrating other people’s cemeteries.”

“Even if, in the best case for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the cemetery was 100 or 200 years old, 300 or 400 years old, would that be OK? Would we be happy if there was desecration of a Jewish cemetery from the Middle Ages? Of course we wouldn’t,” Levy added. “There is no expiration date on a cemetery.”

However, Hier, who has spent years defending this project and last month, after winning in Israel’s court of law, outlined the case for the museum in the court of public opinion — Ha’aretz and the Jerusalem Post — told The Journal that the biggest misconception is that the Wiesenthal Center was to build on top of the Mamilla cemetery, where Muslims still visit their loved ones.

“We have to allow for truth despite confrontations,” Hier said. “The world of perception in the Arab world is there shouldn’t be a Jewish state in the Middle East. It is their land. Are we prepared in the interest of perception to give up the Jewish state and the State of Israel?”

ALTTEXT
Rendering of proposed museum

Links:
CAIR press release regarding letter to Hier
Forward
Haaretz
Hier’s response to Haaretz
And Haaretz columnists response to that
More at The God Blog

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