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Jewish Journal

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March 4, 2009

Commandments Bring Duties — Love May Follow

Leave a Comment / Family /

Three times the Torah commands us to love: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 18:19), “You shall love the stranger” (Deuteronomy 10:19) and “You shall love the Lord your God” (Deuteronomy 6:5). Nowhere are we commanded to love our parents, our siblings, our children or even our spouse.

Perhaps families are too fragile, and the emotions of love too fleeting, to be the object of a commandment. Perhaps family is too important to be subjected to the vicissitudes of love. And perhaps, when God gave us the Torah, God realized that we cannot command feelings. We can only command actions, certain duties toward our family.

We have specific, Torah-given responsibilities toward our families. First, we are commanded to honor our parents. This commandment is spelled out in the Ten Commandments, and rabbinic law describes this commandment in some detail. We must give parents the respect due their position, even if they were not very good parents and are not necessarily deserving of this honor. We must also be sure they are taken care of in their old age. (The only possible exception is abusive parents, an area treated in great detail by Jewish law.) We honor our parents because, by doing so, we show the importance of the chain of generations. Human redemption takes place only over the course of generations. (L’dor v’dor, from generation to generation, as our prayer book teaches over and over.)

We are commanded to be our brother’s, and for that matter, our sister’s keeper. We must take care of our siblings. The Torah teaches that if our brother grows poor and must become an indentured servant to pay off a debt, his brother must redeem him. Our obligations grow out of our obligations to honor parents. As I tell every bar and bat mitzvah, “You honor your parents by taking care of your brothers and sisters.”

Caring for siblings becomes the paradigm for taking care of all our fellow human beings. We learn kindness toward others by how we care for our own siblings growing up. In a sense, every human being is our brother or sister. As the Bible teaches, “Have we not all one father? Has not one God created us?” (Malachi 2:10).

We are commanded to teach our children. In fact, the Hebrew words for teaching (Torah), teacher (morah), and parents (horim), all come from the same root. Animals are born knowing by instinct most of what they need to survive. Humans must be taught from the youngest age. The human period of childhood and adolescence is one of the longest in the entire animal kingdom. Part of the reason is that we humans have so much we must be taught. Perhaps most important, we humans must be taught to make moral decisions, to know the difference between right and wrong.

The Torah commands us to marry, not necessarily to fall in love and then marry. In fact, one of the strongest marriages in the Torah was between the patriarch Isaac and matriarch Rebecca. Yet the Torah goes out of the way to show how it was an arranged marriage; the couple did not fall in love until they were married. The Talmud defines a whole series of mutual obligations between a husband and wife. Many of these grew in a more gender-defined age, with a husband as breadwinner and a wife as homemaker. Nonetheless, if every person would approach their marriage with the question, “What should I do for my spouse?” we can build stronger marriages. Perhaps if young people spent more time looking for the right kind of spouse and less time worrying about falling madly in love, we could build stronger marriages.

Family is about obligation. We have obligations toward our families of origin, our parents and our siblings. We have obligations toward the families we create, our spouse and our children. These obligations remain, whether we feel the emotional draws of love or not. One of the great pieces of wisdom is that love grows out of actions.

Rabbi Michael Gold is the author of “The Kabbalah of Love” (BookSurge, 2008), from which this column is adapted. He is online at www.rabbigold.com.

Commandments Bring Duties — Love May Follow Read More »

ORT’s Training Booming as Economy Plummets

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As the economy tanks, business is booming for ORT, the Jewish nonprofit that runs schools and training centers in the United States, Israel and 61 other countries.

Although now marking 129 years since its 1880 founding in St. Petersburg, Russia, the global organization is not your father’s/mother’s ORT and certainly not your great-grandparents’ ORT.

That’s the message from ORT America’s annual meeting held March 1-2 at a Santa Monica hotel bordering the Pacific and attended by some 250 international and national leaders and California supporters, as well as by Larry King and actor Ed Asner.

Only the most assiduous historians know what the letters ORT stand for, but they are the acronym for the original Russian name, roughly translated as the Society for the Promotion of Handicrafts and Agricultural Labor (for Jews).

The first students, moving from the shtetls of the Pale to the Russian cities of the late 19th century, learned such useful trades as shoemaking and carpentry. Later, immigrants to the New World were taught corset-making and other needle trades.

In the post-World War II decades, high-tech classes in computers and information technology topped the curriculum. In 2009, however, with pink-slipped white- and blue-collar workers joining new high school graduates in looking for jobs likely to afford some long-range security, two new trends are developing.

“In this country, the most popular courses are now in the health care field, particularly for nursing and pharmacy jobs,” said Ephraim Buhks, director of U.S. ORT operations, in an interview.

In Israel, the United States, Europe and developing countries, the uncertain economy is filling ORT’s training and retraining classes to the bursting point, reported Robert Singer, director general and CEO of World ORT headquartered in London.

By countries, Israel has the largest ORT student population, followed by the East European nations of the former Soviet Union.

Globally, ORT currently trains some 250,000 students and has roughly an equal number of members. This year’s budget runs to $300 million, of which 80 percent comes from the governments of the 63 countries in which ORT operates and 20 percent from member support. Equivalent figures for the United States are 50,000 to 60,000 members in 300 chapters, while student enrollment stands at about 3,000.

By its philosophy, and as a condition of governmental support, ORT is nonsectarian. With Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union and Iran largely in the past, and a massive Latino and Asian influx to major American cities, the ethnic demographics at ORT schools are shifting.

Buhks estimated that in the United States, Jews constitute from 25 percent to 75 percent of the enrollment in ORT classes, depending upon the subject and location.

At the Los Angeles ORT Technical Institute on Wilshire Boulevard in mid-city, some 500 students — second to New York’s 1,000 students — are evenly split between Jewish and non-Jewish students. English-as-a-second-language classes are among the best attended. There is also a smaller satellite facility in Van Nuys.

In New York, ORT has now joined hands with Chabad in offering technical classes to former yeshiva students who have decided not to follow a strict, full-time religious life, Buhks said. Talks are under way for a similar collaboration in Los Angeles, as well as for training young Orthodox women in New York.

In Miami, Detroit and Los Angeles, ORT has established partnerships with day schools and bureaus of Jewish education.

Last Sunday’s annual dinner gala at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel held some historical significance as the first joint gender-integrated summit meeting of the women’s and men’s ORT wings, which merged in 2007 to form ORT America.

Highlights included Asner conferring the 2009 Tikkun Olam Award on Dr. Sam Goetz, an optometrist and longtime leader of the 1939 Club in Los Angeles, who initiated the club’s chair in Holocaust studies at UCLA.

Goetz, a concentration camp inmate liberated at age 16, movingly recounted his two years in a displaced persons camp in Italy, where ORT classes “provided us with basic skills and hope at a time when hope was a very precious commodity.”

TV’s Larry King moderated a discussion among five Israeli and American panelists on ORT’s role in Israeli education. In appreciation, he received a pair of ORT suspenders.

ORT is doing something about the perennial Jewish organizational problem of attracting young people through its Next Generation affiliate. The program’s Los Angeles leader, Deena Eberly of Beverly Hills, said her group numbers about 200, whose ages range from 25-40.

Like others among her contemporaries, Eberly came to ORT through the examples of her family. “Both my father and grandfather were active in ORT here, and my great-grandfather probably was a member in Russia,” she said, “So it was natural for me to join.”

The evening’s proceedings were conducted by meeting chair Judi Lieberman of Thousand Oaks and national President Doreen Hermelin of Detroit.

ORT’s Training Booming as Economy Plummets Read More »

ICan Ad Targets Student Boycotts of Israel

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ICan Ad Targets Student Boycotts of Israel
In the wake of Israel’s war in Gaza, anti-Israel rhetoric and anti-Semitism have once again flared up at some American universities. Now, as “Israel Apartheid Week” is being held on college campuses, the Simon Wiesenthal Center is fighting back with an ad campaign focusing on all the Israeli innovations that college students love: cell phones, instant messaging, Intel processors.

The ICan campaign was announced last Friday at a press conference featuring Judea Pearl, the UCLA professor and father of slain Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Judea Pearl, a columnist for The Jewish Journal, recently drew attention to a symposium of anti-Israel scholars at UCLA that included audience chants of “Zionism is Nazism,” “Free, Free Palestine” and “F…, f… Israel.”

“The verbal abuse is there, the intimidation is there, the feeling of helplessness is there, not only among students but among faculty,” Pearl said at the press conference at the Wiesenthal Center’s West L.A. office.

The Wiesenthal Center, Anti-Defamation League and other agencies have reported an explosion in anti-Semitism during and following Israel’s three-week assault on Gaza that began in late December. A protest outside the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles featured a now-infamous sign that depicted the Israeli flag with a Magen David twisted into a swastika and the words, “Upgrade to Holocaust Version 2.0.” On college campuses, some student bodies passed resolutions condemning Israel’s military actions; what for many crossed the line into anti-Semitism, though, were anti-Israel symposiums and lectures.

The ICan ad, which can be viewed at jewishjournal.com, is scheduled to run in student newspapers in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States including at Columbia, University of Chicago, San Francisco State, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine and UCLA.

“You have these student boycotters who are claiming Israel is an apartheid state. The worst kinds of lies are being spouted on campus. We want to give them some way of combating this, and the best way to reach college students is through slick posters and flyers,” said Rabbi Aron Hier, the Wiesenthal Center’s director of campus outreach. “This ad speaks to the hypocrisy of student boycotters. They don’t realize that to ask people to boycott Israel is to ask them to go back to the dark ages. Israel has developed so many things important for our time. We believe they are hypocrites because they use cell phones and IM and so many of these things that Israel has developed.”

— Brad A. Greenberg, Senior Writer

Jewlicious Festival 5.0 Draws Nearly 1,000
Jewlicious Festival 5.0, a gathering that celebrates Jewish youth culture, drew a diverse crowd of nearly 1,000 college students and young professionals from more than 25 states and nine countries to the Alpert Jewish Community Center in Long Beach Feb. 27-March 1.

This year marks the festival’s largest turnout, with 250 more participants than the previous year. Participants paid $36 for the conference only, or $199 for a package including hotel accommodations.

“We were concerned that the recession might put a dent in the number of festival-goers, but actually we had an unbelievable turnout,” said Rabbi Yonah Bookstein, the festival’s co-founder.

Ten groups of students from college Hillels across California and Arizona attended the festival. Scripps College’s official Hillel representative, Becca Neril, joined 30 other students from Hillel at The Claremont Colleges on the drive to Long Beach. 

“I find it inspirational that so many Jews, especially college-aged Jews, can come together for this event,” Neril said. “I feel that especially in the Los Angeles area, you feel very separate. There is not very much unity between college students. So, it’s awesome to have all of the Hillels come together.”

The festival included three concerts, as well as 120 programs and workshops, from discussions on environmental activism to belly dancing classes. A highlight of the festival was a five-hour acoustic show on Sunday afternoon that featured singer Matisyahu performing a one-hour set.

Other events included a Jewish comedy performance, a Jewish film competition, a main festival stage show on Saturday night and a drum circle that ended right before the break of dawn on Sunday morning.

Ezra Flom, coordinator of the Jewlicious green initiative, Greenkeit, said festival planners were also more environmentally conscious this year.

Participants generated only one large garbage can of actual trash over three days. Flom said organizers accomplished this by using a combination of compostable and paper goods.

“A lot of it is completely invisible, because this isn’t a green conference,” Flom said. “This is about unity. This is about celebrating Judaism and learning, but underneath that are our values, which are Jewish values: shomrei adamah, that Jews should be guardians of the earth.”

Bookstein said the festival worked with Long Beach Food Finders, a Long Beach-based nonprofit, to donate the leftover food and drinks to local homeless shelters, and Long Beach Conservation Corps helped with glass and plastic bottle recycling.

— Jason Lipeles, Contributing Writer

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Bibi Faces Moment of Truth

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Pressed to take a firm stand on the two-state solution, Benjamin Netanyahu’s moment of truth may have come sooner than he wanted.

Despite strong international and domestic pressure, Israel’s prime minister-designate is refusing to come out in support of the idea of two states for two peoples, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace.

Ever since President George H. Bush outlined his vision of two states in June 2002, the two-state solution has been consensus international policy and the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Netanyahu’s refusal to reaffirm Israel’s commitment to the two-state principle leaves him out of step with the rest of the international community. It also is likely to cost him the chance of forming a more moderate coalition.

Already the main international players are ratcheting up pressure on Netanyahu to back the two-state idea.

In an interview in advance of her trip this week to the Middle East, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told Voice of America radio on Feb. 27 that Washington would continue working “to create an independent, viable Palestinian state in both the West Bank and Gaza.”

A few days earlier, European Union foreign ministers meeting in Brussels insisted that the two-state solution was “the only option.”

In Israel, Kadima Party leader Tzipi Livni has made acceptance of the two-state idea a condition for joining Netanyahu’s coalition.

“Two states is not an empty slogan,” she said. “It’s the only way Israel can remain Jewish and fight terror.”

Even though he very much wants to see Kadima in his government, Netanyahu has made only vague promises to continue peace talks. In messages to world leaders, he has pledged to honor commitments by previous Israeli governments but has omitted any explicit references to Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu also has been very careful in statements to the media. Asked specifically about the two-state solution in an interview with the Washington Post, he replied guardedly, “Substantively, I think there is broad agreement inside Israel and outside that the Palestinians should have the ability to govern their lives but not to threaten ours.”

The obvious reason Netanyahu is treading so carefully is that he doesn’t want to alienate his hard-line potential coalition partners before he has even a narrow, right-wing government in place.

But his opposition to Palestinian statehood goes much deeper. In fact, Netanyahu is adopting very much the same position he did during his first term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999. He argued then that in any agreement with Israel, the Palestinian entity would be so severely restricted that it would be less than a fully independent state. It would not be allowed to have control over its airspace, control border crossing points, raise an army or enter into military pacts with foreign powers.

The Likud leader also insists that for security reasons, Israel must retain nearly 50 percent of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley. This, too, runs counter to the international consensus notion of a “viable and contiguous” Palestinian state.

While all other Israeli prime ministers have dramatically changed their views on Palestinian statehood in the decade since Netanyahu was last prime minister, Netanyahu appears to remain unwavering in his opposition to Palestinian statehood.

In early 2002, when then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, aware of Bush’s impending “vision speech,” announced his tentative acceptance of the two-state idea, Netanyahu hurriedly convened the Likud Central Committee to challenge Sharon.

In the ensuing ballot, Sharon was humiliated. His proposal to defer the vote on a Netanyahu-backed resolution that “no Palestinian state will be established west of the Jordan” was defeated 696 to 465. As Sharon left the podium to loud booing, the Netanyahu measure was carried by a nearly unanimous show of hands.

The vote, however, had no impact. Sharon adopted the two-state solution and his successor, Ehud Olmert, declared that without it, Israel “was finished.”

Ironically, at the time of the 2002 Likud ballot, Netanyahu joined forces with the hawkish Moshe Feiglin, whose far-right Jewish leadership movement advocates transfer of Israeli Arab citizens out of Israel. But in this year’s election, Netanyahu pushed Feiglin down the party slate in a bid to give Likud a more moderate image.

Some Netanyahu watchers suggest that his position on Palestinian statehood may only be tactical, designed to earn Israel a better deal at the bazaar-like Middle East bargaining table. In Netanyahu’s view, they say, statehood should come only at the end of a negotiating process after being used as a lever to acquire concessions from the Palestinians and not conceded up front as Sharon, Olmert and Livni all have done.

But it is almost certainly too late for such a gambit. Holding back on Palestinian statehood when it has been conceded by previous Israeli governments is unlikely to fly in an international climate where the two-state goal long has been taken for granted.

The stance could well bring Netanyahu into conflict with the United States and European Union. Worse, it could lead to renewed confrontation with the Palestinians, with Israel in the untenable position of putting down a Palestinian uprising for a two-state solution Israel itself had previously accepted.

The same is true of Netanyahu’s attempt to turn back the clock on the issue of West Bank territory. It’s hard to see how Netanyahu could offer the Palestinians only 50 percent of the West Bank when Olmert, Livni and Labor’s Ehud Barak all have offered well over 90 percent, with land swaps for whatever areas Israel annexes. This was also the U.S. position as expressed in the December 2000 parameters set down by President Bill Clinton.

It is partly because he realizes the implications of his hard-line positions that Netanyahu so desperately wants Livni and/or Barak in his government.

If he doesn’t back the two-state solution, they could serve as a fig leaf for his government. If he does, they could provide both the excuse to the right for his making such a major concession and the political support to see them through.

First, however, Netanyahu would have to say the magic words and back two states for two peoples.

If does, he might lose the hawks, though even Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman supports a two-state solution. If he doesn’t, he almost certainly will lose the doves.

Netanyahu is trapped, and in this moment of truth there is nowhere for him to hide.

Bibi Faces Moment of Truth Read More »

Obama’s Plan to Tax Wealthy Worries Nonprofits

Leave a Comment / United States /

After offering strong support for President Obama’s spending proposals, Jewish organizations are raising major objections to a tax provision in the administration’s budget plan that they say would lead to a sharp drop in charitable donations.

Officials at the United Jewish Communities (UJC) and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), as well as the Orthodox Union and the American Jewish Committee, are opposing a provision in the budget that the Obama administration says would be used to help create a $634 billion reserve fund to pay for health-care reforms.

Set to take effect in 2011, the provision would reduce the charitable tax deduction for households earning $250,000 in gross income annually. Under the current system, those in the 35 percent tax bracket receive a 35 percent deduction on charitable contributions. Under Obama’s proposal, the deduction would be reduced to 28 percent.

The reduction comes on top of general proposals for raising the marginal tax rates on the wealthiest Americans.

“We are generally supportive of health-care reform and working with the administration toward this goal, but I don’t see it as my job to find the money for this,” said William Daroff, UJC’s vice president for public policy and the director of its Washington office, which lobbies for hundreds of millions of dollars annually in federal money for social services.

“It is my job to say this is the wrong place to get it because you are hurting those you are attempting to help — average folks in need of the services of charities. Beyond that, there are over 15 million people who work for nonprofits, and we are like a lot in the federation system. We are laying off people.”

UJC, the national arm of the network of local Jewish charitable federations, and JCPA, an umbrella group bringing together national groups and local communities, were among the many Jewish organizations that came out in support of the stimulus bill. And many groups back the push by the Obama administration for a boost in social service spending and reforms to the health-care system.

Daroff says he’s been hearing concerns about the tax provision, and about a half-dozen Jewish organizations are looking to the UJC to take the lead in fighting it. He floated a few alternatives to pay for Obama’s programs — a higher tax on cigarettes, a tax on employee health-care benefits or a raise in marginal taxes — but said ultimately it’s up to the president to find an alternative.

Even organizations like the AJC, generally associated with foreign policy and church-state issues, are feeling the need to speak out. Executive Director David Harris wrote an open letter to Obama administration budget czar Peter Orszag estimating that the provision could cause a 20 percent decrease in giving among the $250,000-and-up set.

“As most nonprofits derive 70 to 80 percent of their donations from a small proportion of donors who are major givers, this proposal will deal a destructive blow to many charities,” Harris wrote.

Similarly, the OU expressed “grave concern” over the tax provision and threatened to fight it in Congress unless it is immediately removed from the budget proposal.

While such concerns are widespread among nonprofits, Jewish and non-Jewish, some observers see them as an overreaction.

The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University acknowledged that the reduced deduction would “increase the challenges nonprofits have,” but said it would only have a moderate impact.

If the proposal had been implemented in 2006, the Indiana center estimated that the change would have caused a 2.1 percent drop in itemized giving by households with incomes of $250,000 and above. The far greater concern, according to center officials, is the decline in personal wealth and the economic crisis. All three factors combined would have resulted in a 4.8 percent drop in charity in 2006.

The estimates, however, have not allayed Daroff’s concerns.

The UJC and the Jewish federation system it represents rakes in roughly $2.5 billion per year through its general campaigns and endowments. By Daroff’s estimate, even if Indiana is accurate, the so-called modest cuts would cost the UJC $50 million per year.

“That is a heck of a lot of funds for Jewish Family Services across the country,” he said. “Maybe $50 million is not a lot of money to the endowment of the University of Indiana, but for the Jewish Family Services across the country that depend on donations, that is real money. Do the math: One or 4 or 8 percent doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but do the math and that is real green money that is lost.”

Diana Aviv, Daroff’s predecessor at the UJC before becoming the executive director of the Independent Sector, a philanthropy leadership forum that has more than 600 member organizations, offered a different take.

“I think there are arguments on both sides of this page that are important,” she said, “and we need to weigh both sides of the arguments.”

Independent Sector issued a statement saying that the tax provision “could be a disincentive to some donors,” but it has not formally adopted a stance, Aviv said.

For some backers of the provision, it is not only a matter of raising more revenue but also of equity among taxpayers. Those making less than $100,000 per year who donate $1,000 now receive a $150 tax break, compared to those making $1 million per year who receive a $330 tax break. The proposed rule would close the gap, lowering the deduction for wealthier Americans to approximately $230.

Aviv noted that some believe the tax provision could end up helping nonprofits.

For starters, since the change would not take place until 2011, there could be a short-term spike in giving as donors try to get in their gifts before the provision takes effect. In addition, the provision is being presented as a way to help fund changes to a more universal health-care plan — a step that eventually could create major savings for charities.

“That is the argument,” she said. “But it is cold comfort for some in 2011.”

Obama’s Plan to Tax Wealthy Worries Nonprofits Read More »

‘12’ Jurors’ Lives Reveal Tensions, Heart of Russia

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Film /

The case before the Moscow jury of 12 men is clear-cut. A Chechen teenager is charged with murdering his stepfather, a Russian army officer. Although the boy maintains his innocence, witnesses clearly identify him as the knife-wielder, and his own attorney hardly bothers to mount a defense.

The judge tells the jury that its verdict must be unanimous, but the bailiff assures the jurors that they’ll be out in 20 minutes. In a quick show of hands, 11 jurors vote for conviction and only a lone holdout asks for further deliberations.

So opens “12,” loosely based on the classic American drama, “Twelve Angry Men.” The film was Russia’s entry in this year’s Academy Awards.

As the deliberations drag on and tempers rise, so do old-new prejudices against the “barbarian” Chechens and also against the “tricky” Jews.

A contemporary voice of the ancient Russian anti-Semitism is a cab driver, whose target is a fellow juror and Holocaust survivor (Valentin Yosifovich Gaft), who becomes the second man to vote for acquittal. He bases his doubts not on any new piece of evidence, but on the belief that “anything can happen.” Like each of the other jurors, the survivor tells something about his life, to shed light on his attitude toward the defendant.

The survivor’s story is less coherent than most of the others, but when his family was in a ghetto during World War II, his father fell in love with — of all people — the beautiful Lithuanian mistress of the resident SS commander. Even more unlikely, the Lithuanian woman in return fell in love with the “scrawny, ugly Jew” — so, you see, anything can happen.

Director Nikita Mikhalkov, who won the 1994 Oscar for best foreign-language film with the Stalin-era “Burnt by the Sun,” has fashioned a remarkable psychological thriller.

As each of the 12 men, from wealthy entrepreneur to surgeon, cab driver and actor, reveal crucial episodes from their lives, we begin to get a feel for daily life in Moscow. There is epic corruption — a cemetery director tells of collecting bribes to assure a decent burial place for the deceased — but also spontaneous generosity and even civic courage.

Always looming in the background is the savage fighting between Chechen guerrillas, who view themselves as freedom fighters, and Russian soldiers, who see the enemy as ruthless terrorists.

“12” opens March 6 at three Laemmle theaters, Royal in West Los Angeles, Playhouse in Pasadena and Town Center in Encino, as well as Edwards West Park in Irvine. For more background on the film “12,” visit www.sonyclassics.com/12.

‘12’ Jurors’ Lives Reveal Tensions, Heart of Russia Read More »

20th Century Zionist Asks: ‘Has Jacob Become Esau?’

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment /

“Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz” by David N. Myers (Brandeis University Press, 2009).

In the Middle East, questions endure for generations; answers elude the generations.

For some time now the relationship between Israel and its neighbors has centered on the outcome of the Six-Day War. Would the cost of peace — if it were achievable and viable — be Israel’s withdrawal to the boundaries of June 1967, undoing the gains it had seemingly made by its impressive victory? If so, then who won the Six-Day War? Was it wise of Israel to capture the lands of historic Israel?

Politicians and demographers see a closing window of opportunity for the two-state solution. There will soon come a time when Arabs will outnumber Jews in the lands between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, or, at best, be but a slim majority. A recent op-ed piece in The New York Times by Muammar Al Qaddafi, Libya’s ruler — and no friend of Israel — has suggested a one-state solution, not a Jewish state, but a state of all its citizens in the land called Israel by the Jews and Palestine by the Arabs. The discussion may well move beyond the Six-Day War back to Israel’s War of Independence, perhaps back to the issue surrounding partition in the 1930s.

With “Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz,” David N. Myers has entered the debate, or perhaps more accurately, Myers has united his own insights on the discussion with those of the long-revered but underappreciated Jewish thinker, Simon Rawidowicz. Rawidowicz is best remembered for his pioneering work at Brandeis University, where he taught and helped found the Near Eastern and Jewish studies department, and for his important essay, “Israel: An Ever Dying People,” which must be reread time and again as we, one of the oldest people in the world, face the dire predictions of our own demise. Rawidowicz’s magnum opus in Hebrew, “Babylon and Jerusalem,” a study of the interrelationship between the two great centers of Judaism, argues passionately for two centers of Jewish life, the Diaspora and Israel. The book was designed to counteract those Zionists who wrote and continue to write of the negative effects of the Diaspora and clothe their arguments in an understanding of Jewish history that few are equipped to refute. Israel is the stage, Israelis the actors in Jewish history, and the Diaspora, even the vibrant American Jewish community, is but the attentive audience, one Israeli writer recently told American Jewish leaders. Not so for Rawidowicz, not so for Myers either.

“Between Jew and Arab” begins with a mystery. Why was Rawidowicz’s chapter on Israel and the Arab question left out of “Babylon and Jerusalem”? Was he playing it safe, trying not to alienate those who would read the book in the original Hebrew — citizens of the fledgling state of Israel intent on establishing the state and creating a revolutionary society that was by its nature overturning the world that preceded it? Was it out of deference to his Paris-based publisher, friend and partner? Was the omission self-censorship? Myers is intent on recovering the essay and translating it, together with his UCLA colleague Arnold Band, into literate and readable English. But readers will correctly suspect that the essay is but Myers’ excuse to write a book that transcends the importance of Rawidowicz’s significant work, even as Myers offers the text in its entirety for the first time.

Myers demonstrates his virtuosity at intellectual history as he creates a marvelous context for us to understand this major thinker. He traces Rawidowicz’s birth in Grayewo, Poland, the son of Rabbi Chayin Yitzhak Rawidowicz — a merchant scholar, ardent Hebraist and Zionist — and young Simon’s early education and the impact of his father in shaping the mind of this most promising of students. He follows the family in their migration to Bialystok in 1914 and then journeys with Simon to Berlin, which, before the rise of Nazism was the cultural destination of brilliant Jews who had left the world of the yeshiva to be trained in universities and seminaries.

These same men would shape Jewish culture and intellectual life in Palestine/Israel and the United States for the next half-century, and Rawidowicz was clearly not the least of them. An avowed Zionist and determined Hebraist, he more than held his own in this intellectual milieu, and despite strong ideological convictions, he was respected by and personally friendly with those with whom he vehemently disagreed. Rawidowicz also wrote under the pen name of Ish Boded (which translates as a lonely man or man alone) and though surrounded by friends and enjoying the companionship of his wife, Esther, he was often alone in his intellectual pursuits, which is the price he paid for the originality of his thought.

Myers details the frustrations of Rawidowicz — Zionist that he was — who was unable to find suitable employment in Palestine when leaving Berlin was essential to survive. An appointment in Jewish philosophy to the Hebrew University was given to Julius Gutmann, who did not speak Hebrew, while Rawidowicz was overlooked.

Myers follows his intellectual alter ego to England — London and Leeds during World War II — as the world that once nurtured Rawidowicz and his generation was destroyed. He traces Rawidowicz’s journey to the United States — to Chicago and Waltham, Mass. — in the immediate aftermath of the war, when the responsibility for the Jewish future seemed to fall upon an ill-prepared American Jewish community; European Jewry had been devastated, nearly destroyed, and Israel was fighting for its life — its present precarious, its future uncertain.

Anyone who has read Myers’ earlier work will be rewarded by the intelligibility, the lucidity of his writing. He clarifies even the most complex ideas and finds no need to demonstrate the subtlety of his learning and intellectual talent by obfuscation.

In “Between Jew and Arab,” Rawidowicz argues that the Arab refugee problem is neither an Arab problem nor a world problem, but a Jewish problem, one that engages Jewish history and memory, Jewish values and tradition. Rawidowicz is posing a Nietzschean question in Jewish prose. The great German philosopher asked: Is Judaism the religion of the powerless? Would an empowered people share the same values, uphold the same traditions? Rawidowicz asks: “Will Jacob become Esau?” “Has Jacob become Esau?”

How Jews treat the Arab has to be considered with respect to how Jews historically have judged their own past treatment by dominant cultures, as well as how Jews want to be treated in today’s Diaspora. The “miracle” of the Arab exile from Palestine, which was being celebrated so widely by Israeli political and intellectual leaders in the early 1950s, was no miracle at all for Rawidowicz. Anticipating some of the discoveries of the new Israeli historians, who have overturned the conventional Zionist myth of the voluntary flight of Arabs, Rawidowicz was clearly appalled by their treatment, ill at ease with how Israel was treating its own Arab citizens and publicly advocated the return of the refugees and the right of repatriation. One is forced to wonder if the problem had been dealt with then — been handled by repatriation or by compensation — how different the landscape of the Middle East might be today.

The Arab question has only grown more acute in recent years — both with regard to the Arab citizens of Israel and to the Palestinians living on the West Bank and elsewhere. The discourse has become more brutal, as well, as the leader of what is now Israel’s third largest political party talks of imposing a loyalty oath on the Arab citizens of Israel, or transferring the “Triangle” — the Arab towns of the Galilee — to the Palestinian state in exchange for the Jewish settlements near Jerusalem. Even as sensitive a soul as Daniel Gordis, an American oleh, can both celebrate the election of Barack Obama and the statement that makes about the United States, and then advocate for a secondary status for Arab citizens in Israel, the Jewish state where Jews have come home.

As for Myers, throughout the work he admires Rawidowicz unabashedly, not only as a brilliant intellectual but as a man steeped in Jewish tradition and Jewish learning, at home in the history of his people, in the values of their religious teaching from the Bible to the Talmud, from midrash to halachah, from Maimonides to Rabbi Nachmun Krochmal, who wants to speak from those traditions to the core issues of his time, speaking truth to power and speaking the truth with power.

In Rawidowicz, Myers has found his hero, his model — perhaps even his calling. l

Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute: Exploring the Ethical and Religious Implications of the Holocaust and a professor of theology (adjunct) at American Jewish University.

20th Century Zionist Asks: ‘Has Jacob Become Esau?’ Read More »

Picks and Clicks for March 7–13, 2009

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SAT | MARCH 7

” title=”www.thefuelfilm.com” target=”_blank”>www.thefuelfilm.com.

(CONCERT)
Musician Peter Himmelman is both an edgy rock troubadour and a wholesome children’s entertainer. He has scored numerous films and television shows, composed runway music for fashion designer Issey Miyake and written songs for a teddy bear used to help autistic children and rape victims. See this multifaceted musician in concert tonight as part of the Getty Museum’s Saturday Nights at the Getty series. The free performance series features a mix of music, dance, theater and spoken word in a casual, social setting. Sat. 7:30 p.m. Free. $10 (parking). Getty Center, 1200 Getty Center Drive, Los Angeles. Reservations required; limit of four seats per reservation. (310) 440-7300. ” title=”www.craigpomranz.com” target=”_blank”>www.craigpomranz.com.

(PURIM PARTY)
Who says Purim is just for kids? Young professionals will have a plethora of opportunities tonight to get masked and boisterous. Purimpalooza VI at Beverly Hills’ A Cow Jumped Over the Moon features DJ Eric Rosen and a live performance by the Moshav band. The party also offers a bonus: free parking in Beverly Hills on a Saturday night (lot on Rodeo Drive and Santa Monica Boulevard). The event is co-hosted by JconnectLA, Jewlicious, AISH L.A., the Chai Center, StandWithUs and the Zionist Organization of America. Sat. 8:30 p.m. $25 (includes one drink). A Cow Jumped Over the Moon, 421 N. Rodeo Drive, Beverly Hills. (310) 405-2336. ” title=”www.atidla.com” target=”_blank”>www.atidla.com.

SUN | MARCH 8

(CONCERT)
Neshama Carlebach began singing with her influential father, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, at age 15. But it wasn’t until after his death in 1994 that she launched a professional singing career. In “Feed Your Soul!” a concert hosted by Makom Ohr Shalom, Neshama will perform her father’s legendary music, but with her own flair and original compositions. Reb Shlomo’s longtime collaborator in Jewish outreach, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, will deliver a blessing live at the concert via Skype. Sun. 6:30 p.m. (doors open). $40, $72 (Supporters Package), $108 (Premier Package), $180 (Premier Couples’ Package). The Writer’s Guild Theater, 135 S. Doheny Drive, Beverly Hills. (818) 894-1754. ” title=”www.ikar-la.org” target=”_blank”>www.ikar-la.org.

(SPECIAL-NEEDS PURIM)
The theme of the Los Angeles Friendship Circle’s Purim festival is the Wild West, and we can think of lots of cool costume ideas: a cactus, a tumbleweed … a barstool, maybe? Perhaps cowboys and Indians would be easier. Children with special needs and their families can come together, costumed or not, to hear a megillah reading, eat Western-style fare, do arts and crafts, frolic in the moon bounce and play carnival games. Teen volunteers will join the fun and assist those who need it. Sponsored by the Monkarsh Family Foundation. Mon. 6:30-8:30 p.m. Free. Bais Chaya Mushka School for Girls, 9051 W. Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 277-3252. {encode=”info@fcla.org” title=”info@fcla.org”}. ” title=”www.valleyruach.org” target=”_blank”>www.valleyruach.org.

WED | MARCH 11

” title=”www.zocalopublicsquare.org” target=”_blank”>www.zocalopublicsquare.org.

(NETWORKING)
Have you been laid off, downsized, replaced, pink-slipped, forced into early retirement or just plain fired? Help is here. Pink Slip Party L.A. is a new business-networking mixer that lets you bemoan the circumstances of your job loss and then helps get you back on the work wagon. Rather than trying to mine the Web for jobs, spend your evening with job hopefuls, recruiters, coaches and resume writers in a casual, social setting (with alcohol!). Wed. 6-8 p.m. Free entrance and parking, $5 margaritas. Pink Taco patio, Westfield Century City Shopping Center, 10250 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. (310) 691-2178. ” title=”www.djeliran.com” target=”_blank”>www.djeliran.com.

(lecture)
Journal Editor-in-Chief Rob Eshman will be speaking on current events in the L.A. Jewish community at Social Circle’s gathering this week. Eshman’s Letter-From-the-Editor-style talk will be the centerpiece of an evening that includes a light dinner, wine, dessert, coffee and plenty of time to mingle and socialize. The Social Circle is an active Stephen S. Wise Temple group for Jewish singles in their 50s and 60s, but this event will be open to the entire community. Thu. 7 p.m. (dinner), 8 p.m. (Eshman’s talk). $15 (members), $20 (guests). Stephen S. Wise Temple, Hershenson Hall, 15500 Stephen S. Wise Drive, Los Angeles. (310) 204-1240. {encode=”johnseeman@aol.com” title=”johnseeman@aol.com”}.

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Vanity Fair Unleashes on Madoff

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“Why is he not in prison?”

“How can he be allowed to sit on his couch in his penthouse while the rest of us are scrambling?”

Vanity Fair unleashed on Bernie Madoff this month, with a chilling look at how he betrayed his closest friends, and, online, a video documentary that looks at the stories of several of his victims.

The anger, loss, shame and despondency are apparent in their testimonies. Last week, when Madoff victim Elie Wiesel said the only fitting punishment for the man would be to sit in a jail cell the rest of his life watching video-taped testimony of the people whose lives he devastated, must have had something like this in mind.

In the introduction Rabbi Marc Gellman reflects that perhaps what the Madoff crime all came down to was the desire on the part of Madoff and his victims to be part of the in group. This may be rabbinic reductionism—when he says it it sounds much more profound—but his last line is particularly resonant:

“The only valid way of understanding who is in and who is out is this: Who is kind and who is not?”

Vanity Fair Unleashes on Madoff Read More »