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Jewish Journal

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December 16, 2009

Jews Recall, Record Memories of Iran

Leave a Comment / Blogs, Community, Iran /

Mahmomir Cohen, a proud 80-year-old Iranian Jewish grandmother, clutched a notebook that included a Persian love poem she penned for her late husband. Her hands trembled as she recited the hand-written rhyming poem in front of a video camera on Sunday at Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills.

Cohen was among nearly 100 local Iranian Jews participating in Our Legacy Project, an initiative sponsored by the Los Angeles-based Iranian Jewish organization 30 Years After to record the community’s memories of life in Iran, from fond to painful.

Children and grandchildren accompanied many of the elderly participants who quietly entered Nessah’s banquet hall on Dec. 13. After filling out the proper release forms, each participant was taken to one of four cameras set up in different areas around the synagogue.

During the interview, participants were invited to share their life experiences prior to and during the 1979 Iranian Revolution, their interactions with non-Jews living in their former homeland and their journey of exile from Iran.

“I’m here to leave some sort of record for future generations of Iranian Jews living in the U.S. who will likely speak no Farsi and not have any idea of what difficulties we experienced as Jewish minorities living in Iran after the revolution,” said Manucher Cohan, a 65-year-old real estate agent and writer living in Woodland Hills.

Recording oral history is not a new endeavor for the local Iranian Jewish community. In recent years the L.A.-based Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, with the help of volunteers, conducted more than 100 video and audio interviews with Iranian Jews who had influenced Iran’s history, literature and culture in some way since 1906. In 2002, the group released “Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews,” a colorful book sharing the 2,700-year history of Iranian Jewry along with personal photos from community members.

Yet 30 Years After’s project is unique in that it encourages young Iranian American Jewish professionals to embrace their heritage by videotaping their own parents’ and grandparents’ often painful memories from life in Iran.

“We have been pleasantly surprised by the widespread willingness among our community to describe the anti-Semitism they experienced [in Iran],” said Sam Yebri, 30 Years After’s president. “They are expressing, sometimes for the first time, how painful it was to be called najes [ritually unclean] by their Muslim neighbors or forced to shout ‘death to Israel’ or ‘death to America.’”

Yebri said the video testimonials recorded by 30 Years After will be available on the group’s Web site. Additional tapings will be scheduled during 2010 at local community synagogues and senior citizen centers, and the group plans to use the videos in collaboration with established institutions like the Library of Congress, the Jewish Museum in New York and the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv.

Participants at Nessah Synagogue, which co-sponsored the event, became emotional when sharing vivid details of the random arrests and torture they experienced at the hands of armed revolutionary thugs.

Cohan wiped away tears when he recalled the mood of the Jewish community after its leader, the late “Haji” Habib Elghanian, was executed in May 1979 by the Iranian regime after being slapped with trumped up charges of spying for Israel and the United States.

“When they announced that Haji Habib was executed over the radio that morning it was as if the entire Jewish community of Iran had had a massive heart attack or stroke,” said Cohan, who served in the Central Jewish Committee, a national governing body for Iranian Jewry. “For two or three days Jews were in complete shock because they could not believe this man who had built mosques, hospitals, factories, buildings, and really helped Iran prosper, would be suddenly killed for no reason. Reality hit them hard because they were worried about their own fate in Iran.”

Cohan was arrested subsequently in 1985 on false charges of being a Zionist spy, then imprisoned for 269 days and sentenced to death by firing squad.

“I was given my last rites by a rabbi. I said goodbye to my wife and children, and had totally given up all hope of coming out of jail alive,” he said. “Luckily, due to the efforts of some brave French Jews and the United Nations, I was miraculously released. It’s an ordeal I’ll never forget for the rest of my life.”

During his interview, Nessah’s Rabbi David Shofet recalled a terrifying day when he and other Jewish leaders were rounded up and taken to meet with Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Iranian regime’s newly arrived radical Islamic leader.

“About two or three miles from the place where Khomeini was staying, we were forced to get out and walk. When we arrived, the guards shouted at us ‘Everyone kneel before the leader!’ and we were all forced to kneel.”

Despite their initial willingness to open up about the persecution they faced before and after the Iranian Revolution, a few of the project’s participants displayed an uneasiness about releasing the footage that had just been recorded. Even after 30 years of exile from Iran, fear stemming from the brutal Islamic regime is still prevalent.

“Look, I don’t want what I just said on film about my participation in the Haganah 60 years ago in Israel to be shown in public,” demanded Masoud R., an Iranian Jewish man in his late 70s, who asked that his real name be withheld. “God only knows what lies the regime in Iran today would use this information for.”

Cohen also expressed some hesitation when speaking with The Journal about her late husband’s community activities nearly 50 years ago, even though he was a Hebrew school teacher. When asked for more details about her husband, she replied defensively, “It’s just not for publication, but I can tell you he helped the Jews of Iran and Israel during those critical years.”

Morgan Hakimi, Nessah’s former president and a psychology professor, said her community’s fear and anger over the circumstances of the Iranian Revolution, even after 30 years, is normal.

“There is no doubt that anger and sour memories are transferable to the new generation,” Hakimi said. “But I cannot think of any other immigrant Jewish group in the U.S. that has not had the same experiences of anti-Semitism from the countries they came from — so we are no different.”

For more information about Our Legacy Project, visit http://www.ourlegacyproject.org.

Jews Recall, Record Memories of Iran Read More »

School Twinning Program Threatened

Leave a Comment / Community /

Teachers and principals in Los Angeles expressed bafflement and concern this week over a decision by Israel’s Ministry of Education that could derail what many believe is a paradigmatic program fostering connection between people in the United States and Israel.

Israel’s ministry took steps that could severely limit trips to Los Angeles by Israeli students, a centerpiece of the Tel Aviv-Los Angeles Partnership’s school twinning program. The partnership, run and funded by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, pairs 19 day schools, public schools, religious schools and secular private schools with Israeli counterparts for joint educational programs and a yearly travel exchange, where students live with families from the host community.

The Los Angeles partnership, founded 13 years ago, was the first of its kind in the country and has been emulated in 45 cities since. Los Angeles’ school twinning program is the largest in the country, and the partnership also includes a filmmakers master class, a social and health services aspect, and an arts exchange.

The program’s goal of connecting Americans and Israelis has long been hailed as a success. While American participants have become more deeply connected to Israel, Israelis have gained an understanding of pluralistic Judaism and learned to view themselves as the center of a global Jewish community.

But the Israeli side has balked over the last few months. A recent article in Haaretz reported that some Israeli parents did not see any educational benefits to the trips, which include outings to Disneyland and Universal Studios. They also claimed that students who didn’t go on the trips were left behind to waste time.

In response to the article, Shimshon Shoshani, the director general of Israel’s Ministry of Education, announced that the trips would have to take place during school vacations and that school districts would have to fully subsidize the trips so that poorer students wouldn’t be left out.

Federation officials say they are lobbying the ministry in order to educate them about the benefits of the exchange and to undo misconceptions. Leaders who are traveling to Israel this season have been tasked with reaching out to contacts in Israel, especially those in places of power who can be instrumental in undoing the decision before it takes effect.

“Israel is a country where relationships count,” said John Fishel, The Federation’s president and CEO. “We’re going to use our relationships to make our case and to make it effectively and cogently, and get them to sit down and look for a solution,” he said.

Rabbi Mitchell Malkus, head of school at Pressman Academy, believes that the partnership program may have gotten caught in the middle of Israeli political maneuvering, as Israel grapples with a crisis in the quality of its public education.

Targeting a program that seems, on the surface, to be a luxury that benefits only a few probably seemed like a good way to score political capital, Malkus said.

Nearly all of the parents who were quoted in Haaretz were from Magen, Pressman’s sister school. The article quoted only disgruntled parents, though many satisfied parents spoke up in reports in other outlets.

Malkus is outraged that neither the Haaretz journalist nor the Ministry of Education contacted Pressman. Malkus said a letter he wrote to Haaretz was never published.

He also wrote a letter to the ministry, demanding a commission to investigate the issue.

“I think there are legitimate questions and concerns that were raised, but I don’t think you throw away the whole program because you have a concern over the amount of classroom hours or what is the exact right age to do this,” Malkus said.

While kids might come home talking about “The Simpsons” ride at Universal Studios or the street performers in Tel Aviv, Pressman and Magen sixth-graders also engage in a joint curriculum on a Holocaust novel, Jewish text study, social service aspects and Jewish rituals.

Around 685 students, parents and educators from Los Angeles and Tel Aviv schools went on trips in 2009.

Federation budgets about $1.2 million for the twinning program. Families pay for airfare for the trips, while Federation funds expenses — day trips, transportation, some meals — for the host schools in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. The schools absorb expenses for extra staff or curricular funding. Federation has a $60,000 scholarship fund for Israeli and American students who can’t afford the trip, and most schools also have independent scholarship funds. Claims in the Israeli press that the trips are only for rich kids have no basis in fact, Fishel said, adding that the trips are part of a long-term strategy to ensure the robustness of Israel-Diaspora relations.

“The program is redefining the connection of our high school students to Israel in a way that I’m convinced will last a lifetime,” said Rabbi Isaac Jeret of Temple Ner Tamid in South Bay. Last year, Ner Tamid enrolled its 10th-grade religious school students in a partnership with students at a Tel Aviv public school.

Because Ner Tamid’s program is synagogue based, the benefits have extended to the whole community, and even to the Los Angeles public schools, when Ner Tamid students bring their Israeli guests to school.

At Ner Tamid and other non-Orthodox venues, Israelis are introduced, sometimes for the first time, to liberal Judaism.

Valley Beth Shalom (VBS) Day School’s sister school, the David Bloch Elementary School, has integrated VBS’ Rosh Chodesh and Havdalah rituals into its curriculum and hired a Conservative rabbi. Parents at Magen, Pressman’s twin, created a monthly Kabbalat Shabbat Friday night service. One secular Israeli mother who visited VBS was so inspired by a bat mitzvah she attended that she decided to celebrate her own daughter’s bat mitzvah with a Torah reading — and she held it while the VBS students were visiting.

New Community Jewish High School has 90 students participating in three twinnings this year, including a three-month program where students attend classes at the host school. Head of School Bruce Powell says the exchange is conducted in 10th grade, because the school then has two more years to harness the students’ Israel passion and knowledge base.

Powell says Israelis take away a sense of their own centrality to the global Jewish enterprise, a benefit that accrues to religious and secular students.

“They come here and they are able, from 9,000 miles away, to get the perspective that for us American Jews, Israel is part of our Judaism,” he said. “That is anywhere from a mildly to a heavily shocking revelation of how important they are to American Jewish identity.”

Powell says he will continue to send his students to Israel, even if the ministry’s decision makes scheduling the Israelis’ trip to Los Angeles impossible.

Other schools and The Federation are making backup plans as well, figuring out how to modify schedules. No one is willing to let the program fade.

“No matter what grade they are in, the kids develop a connection to Israeli people and ultimately to Israel, and if that alone is the outcome of the program for our kids, and their kids have a connection to us as American Jews, that is money well spent in my view,” Powell said.

School Twinning Program Threatened Read More »

Obama Administration Presses Multilateral Approach on Iran

Leave a Comment / Iran, United States /

The Obama administration continues to favor multilateral sanctions when it comes to pressuring Iran, senior officials have said.

“We want to create coalitions,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a Dec. 10 interview with Al Jazeera when she was asked if the United States was nearing the point when it would impose sanctions unilaterally to persuade Iran to make its nuclear program more transparent. “We want to find common ground with people. There are many things we could go off and do unilaterally, as the prior administration certainly demonstrated. That’s not our chosen path. We would prefer to take some more time, to be more patient, to bring people together to make the case.”

Clinton rebuffed claims that the United States and Europe had failed to persuade other major powers to make a common cause on the Iran issue, referring to the recent resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the U.N. nuclear watchdog, condemning Iran for failing to cooperate with its inspectors.

“The vote that was accumulated condemning Iran, calling for Iran to act, was shocking to some people because it was so unified,” she said. “It wasn’t just the United States. It was Russia, it was China and many other countries. That’s because we have spent time listening and working hard to create this common ground and these common interests, and we’ve done it out of a sense of mutual respect.”

Congress has been pressing forward this week with a package of unilateral sanctions. Clinton’s spokesman, Ian Kelly, denied reports that the State Department was lobbying against the package, but added that the Obama administration prefers the multilateral route.

“We want to make sure that whatever kind of package is being considered, that it’s the right kind of package,” Kelly said in a briefing last Friday. “And I think we also want to be sure that whatever we do, we do it multilaterally. I mean, that just makes good practical sense. Any kind of pressure is going to be more effective if it’s implemented broadly and not simply bilaterally.”

Representatives of the major powers — the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and China — will meet before year’s end to consider the next steps with Iran in the wake of its rejection of an offer to enrich its uranium to medical research levels in exchange for greater nuclear transparency.

Last Friday, the White House endorsed a statement issued by the Council of European Union, the EU’s foreign policy arm, that warned of a “clear response” to Iranian recalcitrance, an allusion to enhanced sanctions.

“Iran’s persistent failure to meet its international obligations and Iran’s apparent lack of interest in pursuing negotiations require a clear response, including through appropriate measures,” the EU statement said.

The White House endorsement echoed that language.

“If Iran continues to fail to bring its nuclear program into full compliance with the requirements of the United Nations Security Council and the IAEA, there will be consequences and we will be consulting closely with our partners to ensure those consequences are credible,” the White House said. “We will continue to assess Iran’s responses, and together with our partners will take appropriate measures in keeping with our common approach to the Iranian nuclear program.”

Obama Administration Presses Multilateral Approach on Iran Read More »

Alan and Gabe Polsky bring a literary sensibility — and cash — to Hollywood.

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Entertainment, Hollywood Jew /

In Hollywood, a good entrance is paramount.

Two weeks before the theatrical release last month of their first feature film, “The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans,” producers Alan and Gabe Polsky threw themselves a coming-out ball.

As newcomers in Hollywood, the Polsky brothers sought a venue that would send all the right messages to all the right people: Bungalow One at the storied Chateau Marmont, the legendary hotel steeped in Hollywood history and glamour, where they could earn cachet simply by being seen there.

Not that they needed attention for their parties. Alan, 33, and Gabe, 30, the only sons of Chicago energy magnate Michael Polsky, were already generating buzz in Hollywood for snapping up a snazzy list of properties that looks more like the work of old pros.

Since they founded Polsky Films three years ago, the brothers have purchased life rights to an Albert Einstein biopic from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (“something on the scale of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ but it has to be different,” Alan said), and made a similar deal for a film about Sigmund Freud. They’ve also acquired a respectable list of literary properties — including John Williams’ revisionist Western “Butcher’s Crossing,” with Sam Mendes attached to direct; Daniel Keyes’ novel “Flowers for Algernon,” which they’ll co-produce with Will Smith’s company Overbrook, and Willy Vlautin’s “The Motel Life,” starring James Franco, who may also direct. There’s also a rumored documentary on uber-producer Jerry Weintraub, that one inspired by a March 2008 Vanity Fair article, and another on “one of the biggest comedy actors in the world” — though that’s all they’ll say on that.

With all this on their plate, the industry trade Variety had the foresight — and faith — to name the Polskys “ones to watch” in the producing category earlier this fall, firmly placing them in the spotlight before the entire entertainment industry.

“Hollywood has this long list of people coming in with money and then leaving with their tail between their legs,” Variety film reporter Tatiana Siegel said. “What’s different about the Polskys is that they seem to have really fine literary taste and also a commercial sensibility. If you’ve optioned a book that Will Smith wants to work on, you’re in good shape. They have really good literary instincts and that brings in A-list talent.”

Hundreds of Hollywood’s newest arrivals, along with some established agents, screenwriters and executives, came to the party to celebrate the Polskys’ box office initiation. It was a lavish affair, with two open bars, a popular DJ and catering from Joan’s on Third. Friends flew in from New York, Iowa and Chicago, including Alan’s cohort from business school as well as from his stint in finance.

Alan stood at the center of the party dressed in an expensive suit, his shirt loose and unbuttoned at the neck, and sporting a messy mop of hair (some might say ‘Jewfro’) that matches his exuberant personality. He was a little bit drunk that night, a social force swirling around the room, while Gabe, the more reserved of the two — and the more clean-cut — hobnobbed with a pair of screenwriters by the door. Because they each seem to operate in their own orbit, though with markedly different styles, their partnership draws inevitable comparisons to a legendary sibling duo.

“They’re like the Weinsteins,” Polsky assistant Liam Satre-Meloy said over the din of the party crowd. “They fight — they don’t care who’s in the room — they’ll just start punching each other. It’s mind boggling that they could work together.”

While the Polskys might agree with the latter part of that description, they say they don’t see themselves heading down the same path as the Weinsteins, who ultimately loosened their creative grip to focus on financing. At least for now, these brothers’ clear goal is to be a creative force; a team that dreams up ideas and matches those up with talent.

Their mother, Maya, who had accompanied her sons to the film’s Venice Film Festival premiere in September and made her Chateau debut in a fiery red princess dress, is cautious about their foray into Hollywood. “I hope they have their heads on straight,” she said in a thick Ukrainian accent. “This town can be a little bit crazy.”

And, yet, the Polskys seem completely at ease here. Their drive to ascend to young Hollywood’s highest social perch from the start is an indicator of their grand ambitions in moviemaking. So what if they’re relative amateurs: the Polskys are aiming high with a sophisticated production slate, and as heirs to a massive fortune, they have the capital to compete in the market.

Critically, they’re off to a roaring start, though everyone knows that Hollywood can be a fickle friend. “The Bad Lieutenant,” about a druggie cop chasing down the murderers of five illegal immigrants from Senegal, is directed by Werner Herzog and stars Nicolas Cage, Eva Mendes and Val Kilmer. It opened to admirable reviews, described by New York Times critic A.O. Scott as “it’s own special fever swamp of a movie … a pulpy glorious mess.” Yet it opened only in limited release — a mere 27 theaters, according to Box Office Mojo (at its widest release, it played in 96 theaters) — and, as of Dec. 15, its total worldwide gross had brought in only $1.8 million.

That kind of return has sunk many a new career, but the Polskys don’t appear too concerned. Besides having their own money, they have another of Hollywood’s most coveted assets: youth.

Alan and Gabe Polsky bring a literary sensibility — and cash — to Hollywood. Read More »

Delegation Explores Israel’s Cutting-Edge Water, Energy Solutions

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

“Our inventions came about as a result of necessity.” 

The Israeli official was talking to me excitedly, trying to be heard above the din at the Tel

Aviv Exhibition Center.

“We have no oil and little water, and we’re surrounded by enemies. Solar power, wastewater recycling, innovative irrigation techniques — these are not just environmental advances; they are tools for our survival.”

It was mid-November and we were at WATEC, Israel’s annual water and energy conference and exhibition, which drew 20,000 attendees from 80 countries with 250 exhibitors. However, while this was an international event, the focus was inevitably on Israeli companies and what their creativity could show the rest of the world. And it was exactly that creativity that the California delegation I was privileged to lead had come to witness firsthand.

The California delegation was invited by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Labor to view the prowess of Israeli public and private entities in the environmental arena. The delegation members were drawn from a broad spectrum of political, industry, environmental and business leaders*. The timing of our mission seemed propitious because it was sandwiched between Governor Schwarzenegger’s visit to Israel to endorse a revivified trade relationship (an idea championed by Assembly member Bob Blumenfield, a member of our delegation) and the upcoming climate change summit in Copenhagen, all favorable signs for Israeli companies in the business of helping the world either to stem global warming or to adapt to it.

I arrived a day before the other delegates and visited a Waste to Energy facility, which has made impressive improvements to remedy certain drawbacks that have historically plagued the conversion process. The illuminating presentation I received at the WTE plant was one of many we would be treated to over the next five immensely informative and inspiring days, thanks to our tireless organizer, Sigal Admony-Ravid (the new consul for economic affairs at the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles) who had prepared a jam-packed itinerary for us.

The first day took us to a business that has developed a new solar energy technology (a stand-alone system with multitudes of small mirrors on a dish that concentrate the sun onto an array of solar cells creating energy and heated water). From there, we traveled to the Shafdan wastewater treatment plant that cleans effluent to a level good enough for all irrigation uses (Israel recycles around 75 percent of its total treated raw sewage — this is the highest rate of water reclamation in the world). Next, we visited a facility that has devised ingenious ways of enhancing the wastewater treatment process.

Day two was spent at WATEC (Water Technologies, Renewable Energy & Environmental Control Exhibition), walking the exhibits, talking with the exhibitors, listening to the speeches. The day included a wide-ranging and positive meeting with the Honorable Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor. That afternoon, I delivered a speech at the conference, which addressed the water supply challenges we face in Los Angeles and the strategies we have developed to meet them: conservation; recycling; revising building standards; rainfall capture; re-mediating contaminated aquifers; and underground storage programs. Many of these efforts parallel approaches developed in Israel to create new water resources.

The third day commenced with a visit to a company that has pioneered the “power tower” solar system. This technology involves placing many large mirrors in such a way as to reflect sunlight onto a boiler placed atop a tower. Our second stop was at a company that has developed products to significantly enhance the power output of wind turbines. Next, we toured a plant operated by a world leader in geothermal energy (power extracted from heat below the surface of the earth). We were then taken to the Ben-Gurion National Solar Energy Center, a research institute dedicated to the advancement of solar technology. Our fifth stop was the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research, where we heard a sobering account of the intractable water supply issues confronting Israel. The day ended with a reception in honor of the delegations from Australia, India and California. The Australian delegation made a presentation concerning the extreme drought conditions Australia has endured for 13 years and the steps being taken there to adapt to a new paradigm caused by global warming.

The following day began with a briefing by Zalman Shoval, former Israeli ambassador to the United States, who spoke with the delegation about the current political and economic climate and U.S.-Israel relations. Our second stop was a plant that is the first in the world to use gas from a coal plant to cultivate algae principally for the production of biofuel and food additives. Next, we went to Ashkelon for a tour of the largest seawater desalination plant of its kind in the world. Our last visit of the day was to the facility of a world leader in the development of “parabolic trough” technology, which utilizes parabolic mirrors that concentrate solar energy onto solar receivers that then generate steam to power a turbine.

In just a few days, we had visited advanced wastewater treatment facilities; toured the plants of world leaders in solar and geothermal energy; inspected the largest seawater desalination plant in the world; interacted with renowned institutes conducting cutting-edge research on solar energy and water supply management; witnessed the stunning array of new ideas from Israeli companies on proud display at WATEC; and much more. All of this, in a country with a land mass roughly comparable to New Jersey and a total population less than that of Los Angeles County.

Many of our convictions were reinforced by the examples we observed; for instance, that our wastewater and our trash are not “waste” at all, but assets to be reused through recycling and conversion technologies, and that we have not only the ability, but the obligation, to urgently move away from fossil fuels. The trip also bolstered our view that the water supply goals set by Los Angeles in its Water Supply Plan, its targets for renewable energy and its objectives for the reduction of its greenhouse gas emissions are attainable, affordable and necessary.

We left Israel convinced that, in view of the horrific portents of climate change that confront our planet, the wondrous inventions we had seen were, indeed, not just environmental advances, but tools for our survival.

*The members of the California delegation were, in alphabetical order: David Beckman (director, Water Program, Natural Resources Defense Council); Assembly member Bob Blumenfield (D-Woodland Hills); Brad Cox (chairman, Los Angeles Business Council); Val Frenkel (director, Kennedy/Jenks Consultants); Aaron Grunfeld (director, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California); Mary Leslie (president, Los Angeles Business Council); Slava Libman (senior engineer, M+W Zander); Wally Marks (president, Wally Marks, Inc.); Pedro Pizarro (executive vice president, Southern California Edison); Philip Recht (chairman, Central City Association of Los Angeles); Daryl Temkin (founder, Israel Institute for the Advancement of Alternative Energy Innovation); and Lee Wallach (president, Faith2Green). Our thanks also to Zachary Fishbain, director of business development for the Israel Economic Mission in Los Angeles, for his many efforts to ensure the success of the mission.

David Nahai is senior advisor to the Clinton Climate Initiative. He is the former CEO of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the former chairman of the California Regional Water Quality Board.

Delegation Explores Israel’s Cutting-Edge Water, Energy Solutions Read More »

A Shandah in Spain

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

This past Monday I sadly learned that last week 13-year-old Gai Ben-David died in Madrid, Spain, from the brain cancer he had been fighting for a quarter of his young life. Gai was born of a non-Jewish mother and halachically converted by a Conservative rabbi. His family’s pain was compounded by the shocking news that he would not be granted the right to be buried as a Jew. The authority behind this decision is Rabbi Shlomo Amar, the current rishon l’tziyyon — Sephardic chief rabbi of Israel — whose opinion was sought by the Orthodox chief rabbi of Madrid. Rabbi Amar ruled that because of Gai’s non-Orthodox conversion, he had to be buried in a section of the Madrid cemetery reserved for those whose Judaism is questionable.

Rabbi Amar is a major player in the Israeli religious establishment. Appointed rishon l’tziyyon in 2003, he is a close associate of the influential former Sephardic chief rabbi, Ovadiah Yosef. Amar was chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, and, for a number of years, has fought to change the “Law of Return” so that converts from outside Israel would not automatically be granted Israeli citizenship. In many matters of consequence, Rabbi Amar reflects the point of view of most rabbis in the upper echelons of Israel’s now dominant ultra-Orthodox community. 

In response to the news of the rabbi’s refusal to allow Gai to be buried as a Jew, the Rabbinical Assembly (RA), the worldwide association of Conservative/Masorti rabbis, who stand in solidarity with the Ben-David family at this painful time, issued the following statement:

“As rabbis of the Conservative/Masorti movement, we are honored that the family of Gai Ben-David found a home within our community. Converted as a young child by Rabbi Baruch Zeilicovich, Gai Ben-David celebrated his bar mitzvah this past June at Congregation Ahavath Shalom in Fort Worth, Texas — Rabbi Zeilicovich’s synagogue…. We are dismayed that this exemplary Jewish boy, a student of the Colegio Estrella Ibn Gabirol in Madrid, was not permitted a burial in the main section of Madrid’s Jewish cemetery…. Gai’s conversion — which included brit leshem gerut and mikveh (ritual circumcision and immersion in a ritual bath) — is as unimpeachably kosher and halachic as any conversion offered in the world, including those supervised by Orthodox rabbis, such as Rabbi Amar. In Gai’s memory, we remind ourselves that the Jewish People are one people bound together by common history and practice. We therefore not only take great offense at Rabbi Amar’s incorrect and inhumane interpretation of Jewish law; we also abhor this misuse of power that has increased the suffering of a Jewish family grieving the loss of a child.”

Kudos to the RA for these words. Masorti Rabbi David Golinkin, president of Machon Schechter in Jerusalem and among the leading posekim (deciders of Jewish law) in the world, responding to an Israeli charedi rabbinical court’s retroactive annulment of conversions supervised by another Orthodox rabbinical court in Israel, argued that Jewish law has, for centuries, operated with flexibility in regard to conversions, establishing standards but allowing leeway as to how they are to be implemented. Rabbi Golinkin noted that, especially today, when there are many valid reasons for assisting people seeking or needing to become Jews, rabbinic authorities should be finding ways, within the framework of halachah, to be enablers, not inhibitors, of conversion.

As the RA statement emphasizes, Gai Ben-David’s conversion was done according to the standards of Jewish law. For Rabbi Amar, however, that is irrelevant, because Gai’s supervising rabbi and his beit din (Jewish court of law) are not recognized by the Orthodox rabbinate of Israel. In fact, there are many American Orthodox rabbis whose conversions are not recognized in Israel. Ironically, the ruling of the charedi court, noted above, turned this principle of non-recognition against the chief rabbinate of Israel’s own conversion beit din. Not only do converts, like Gai Ben-David, z”l, and his family, suffer from this unnecessarily strict reading of the law, but, because of it, thousands of Israeli Jews-by-choice from the Former Soviet Union and converts to Judaism around the world are made to endure painful indignities that prove to be disincentives to conversion.

The Jewish people also suffer. We are a tiny people. When non-Jews come to us and seek to join our ranks, they are expressing their intent to cast their lot with a people that is under severe pressure from so many quarters. It is a given that potential converts should have to study, practice Judaism in a manner that expresses their commitments to God, Torah and Am Yisrael and present themselves to a beit din to validate the sincerity and strength of their convictions through the prescribed rituals of conversion. But that some rabbis should heap stringency upon stringency in an area of Jewish law that allows flexibility and, thereby, deny the legitimacy of other rabbis’ conversions, weakens our people and drives wedges between our communities. How much better it would be if we took advantage of the kulot (leniencies) of conversion halachah, opened our doors wider for converts seeking to join our ranks and, in the process, built bridges of tolerance and unity within Am Yisrael.

Joel Rembaum is rabbi emeritus at Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles.

A Shandah in Spain Read More »

Fighting the PR War

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Israel, Opinion /

Is there a PR idea that can reverse Israel’s deteriorating image? I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I can’t say it’s been too much fun. For one thing, being in PR mode doesn’t bring out the best in me. I get linear and think only of “winning the war” — not engaging in complex and nuanced conversation.

Also, I have my doubts that anything can help. I’ve seen how despite a significant outburst of Israel advocacy over the past decade — from groups like CAMERA, StandWithUs and The Israel Project — the situation has only gotten worse.

It’s now so bad that the very legitimacy of Israel is being questioned, which, in a strange way, makes sense: If you’re routinely accused of being an apartheid state, it follows that your legitimacy can be put into play.

So why has Israel’s image gotten so bad?

One reason is that Israel gets little credit for its good deeds, but plenty of rebuke for its mistakes. It can wait seven years before taking defensive action against terrorist rockets raining on its civilians; it can expel 8,000 of its own citizens from Gaza and offer to expel 60,000 more from the West Bank (as Ehud Olmert did) to create a Palestinian state; it can dismantle roadblocks in the West Bank and help to revive the local Palestinian economy, but as far as most of the world is concerned, all those things are nothing compared to Israel’s mistakes.

After all, no matter what Israel has done, it still hasn’t led to a Palestinian state, and as long as that albatross remains around its neck, the world will have all the ammunition it needs to undermine the Jewish state.

And it’s working. We can crow all we want about Israel being a “start-up nation,” but the real news today is how so much of the world is trying to turn Israel into a “shut-down” nation. From the Goldstone report accusing Israel of war crimes to Kadima leader Tzipi Livni canceling her trip to London for fear of being arrested to European polls depicting Israel as the most dangerous country on earth, it’s no wonder so many Jews have given up on trying to win the “PR war.”

But for those of us who haven’t given up, what is there to do?

I wanted to brainstorm that question the other day when I met with a marketing wiz, my friend Gary Wexler. Gary talks a mile a minute, so if I don’t rudely interrupt him, I’ll just sit there for a couple of hours while he goes on about all kinds of fascinating stuff before abruptly getting up and saying, “OK, Suissa, I have to go.”

I was determined to pin him down on the subject of Israel PR, and I am glad I did. It turns out that Wexler, a former Peace Now activist who couldn’t hurt a fly, thinks it’s high time for Israel to “take the gloves off” and “take back the truth,” as he put it.

We both agreed that current efforts at pro-Israel advocacy are like infantry without air support. Lots of different grass-roots programs that reach 10 or 100 people at a time, but very few concerted programs that reach millions at a time.

Just like in real war, air support — in this case, mass and viral media — is what makes everything else work better. But for PR to really work, it needs one short, simple, compelling message that is repeated over and over again in every medium and makes the average person say, “OK, I see your point.”

What should that message be? One thing Wexler impressed on me is that we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing that if we go “beyond the conflict,” as many people are advocating, that somehow the world will be distracted from the Palestinian issue. They won’t.

But still, what can you possibly say in 10 or 30 seconds that can cut through the complexities of the conflict and generate more sympathy for Israel’s position?

In a word, hate.

Specifically, we ought to focus on the hatred and glorifying of violence taught in Palestinian schools, summer camps, media and mosques that many of us believe is the real obstacle to peace.

Even Dennis Ross, a top advisor to the White House on Middle East affairs, once told me that his biggest regret in the Oslo process was the failure to enforce the clauses against incitement in Palestinian society.

In truth, how can we expect Palestinians to want to make peace with those they have been taught to hate and reject? And how can we expect Israelis to take enormous risks for peace with those who have been taught to hate and reject them?

Settlement freezes are nice, but they don’t deal with the core problem: a Palestinian society that worships total victory against the hated Zionist enemy rather than reconciliation and peaceful co-existence.

Israel advocates around the world should begin immediately a concerted campaign around this one single-minded message: “You can’t reach peace while you teach hate.” Factual and visual examples of this teaching of hatred can easily be accessed on Web sites for MEMRI or Palestinian Media Watch.

That’s some of what Wexler and I came up with after a couple of hours of brainstorming. Like I said, not very subtle or pretty, but then again, neither is war.

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine. You can read his daily blog at suissablog.com and e-mail him at dsuissa@olam.org.

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