May 25, 2010

American Jewish Organization Confronts LGBT Issues in Uganda

Leave a Comment / Community / Jewish Journal

As the United States struggles with the issue of gay marriage, countries around the world face their own challenges in discrimination against the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community.

In Uganda, the issue has come to a head as political officials and anti-gay activists seek to impose the death penalty for people who engage in certain homosexual behavior.

The recently proposed piece of legislation, dubbed Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, would make acts of homosexuality punishable by life in prison. Acts of “aggravated homosexuality” — including sexual activity or attempted sexual activity with a person of the same sex by someone who is HIV-positive — would be punishable by death. Gay rights activists could also face five to seven years for “promoting homosexuality.”

Homosexual acts already are punishable by death in other African countries, including Nigeria and Sudan, and in some Arab countries, including Iran and Yemen.

“This is patently unconstitutional,” Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service (AJWS), said of the proposed Ugandan legislation on a recent visit to Los Angeles from AJWS’ New York headquarters. AJWS works with grass-roots groups around the world to support them in their work, provide funding and focus on local tactics that may have a better chance of creating change than direct American intervention.

At a recent forum at Congregation Kol Ami in West Hollywood, Messinger discussed the LGBTQ rights in African countries, focusing on Uganda. Moderated by West Hollywood Mayor John Heilman, the event was part of West Hollywood’s Human Rights Speaker Series.

“We’re talking about treating everyone with respect,” Heilman said in an interview before the discussion. “We are trying to raise awareness, connect people to the extent that we can, to educate and to get connected.”

Americans need to be cautious in how they voice opposition to the Ugandan bill, Messinger warned. Many African authorities have attempted to capitalize on anti-Western sentiment by suggesting that homosexuality was brought to the country by Westerners.

“We need to be careful about this push to not pass the legislation that is coming from the West,” said Messinger, lest it backfire.

Another fallout from the Ugandan bill, should it go through, Messinger said, is the devastating impact it would have on HIV/AIDS work in the country.

“In some places in Africa, the entire 25 to 49 population is HIV positive,” Messinger said. Because openly gay HIV-positive individuals would be in danger by identifying themselves, many would likely not seek treatment.

“This would drive all HIV/AIDS work underground,” Messinger said.

Many of those who have done work either for or against the bill believe that the impetus for its creation was a visit to Uganda by three American Evangelical pastors last year: Scott Lively, Caleb Lee Brundidge and Don Schmierer. During their trip, they alluded to a “gay agenda,” equated homosexuality with pedophilia and suggested that gay people would destroy families and pose a threat to children.

On the heels of that visit, a Ugandan politician drafted and introduced the bill.

Nevertheless, Messinger said, it’s vital that the Jewish community continues to work together with people of all faiths. “The more dialogue, the more opportunity to find issues, to find common cause.”

The bill is currently in Parliament. Messinger remains optimistic that her organization and others like it have “done a good enough job,” and that the bill will be passed over this parliamentary session in favor of other legislation.

Standing up for LGBTQ rights, Messinger said in an interview before the discussion, is the responsibility of the Jewish community. “Jews have always stood for the needs of the other,” she said, because “we know what it’s like” to be marginalized.

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Focus Is Key When Training Aging Brains

Leave a Comment / 50 Plus / Jewish Journal

Games geared toward working out the brain can improve cognitive functioning from middle age on. Most of us now know that we can keep our gray matter in peak form and even help stave off diseases like Alzheimer’s through mental exercises.

But change doesn’t come easy. Whether we are working on our memory or trying to meditate, brain-training exercises require a high level of mental focus to pay off in the end.

“It’s not easy to drive the brain’s connectivity,” said Michael Merzenich, an emeritus professor at UC San Francisco and a leading researcher in neuroplasticity. “You have to be engaged. I go nowhere if I’m not really paying attention to what I’m doing.”

The concept of retraining the brain as we age revolves around neuroplasticity, the ability of our brains to grow and change by creating new neural connections. As we slowly master a new activity or exercise, the brain remembers each step, and neurotransmitters that carry that information through our brains forge new pathways. This ability is the basis for the idea that we can control whether our brains are on the up-slope or down-slope as we age.

While it’s often thought that age-related cognitive decline begins after we’ve hit middle age, researchers say it can start as early as 30. And the older we get, the more likely our brains are to succumb not just to the physical decline of age but also to the lack of external stimuli, since engaging in learning new information becomes less and less likely.

Researchers have looked closely at exactly what kind of mental games and exercises are necessary to combat the slow decline.

In a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 2006, researchers focused on three major cognitive areas that are believed to do the most damage to “instrumental activities of daily living” once they start deteriorating — memory, reasoning and speed of processing.

The researchers provided 10 brain-training sessions, each 60 to 75 minutes long, to nearly 3,000 participants over the age of 65. The training included basic mnemonic strategies for remembering lists or written passages, finding patterns in groups of letters and dividing attention between several tasks at once. Over the next five years, they periodically provided follow-up training to randomly selected subgroups. The goal was to track what kind of long-term impact, if any, this kind of cognitive training would have.

In all three areas, the researchers found that participants showed improvement immediately after starting training. Over the course of five years, those who received supplemental training periodically fared better than those who did not. They concluded that this cognitive improvement could indeed translate into performing daily tasks like remembering grocery lists, preparing a meal and understanding information on medication labels more easily.

In addition to these hands-on training tools, many researchers have theorized that cognitive training can take place without ever looking at a computer screen or a book — in fact, it can be done using only the mind.

To test this theory, researcher Antoine Lutz observed the brain activity of eight Buddhist monks during a meditation in which they concentrated on the idea of loving-kindness and compassion. He found that before, during and after meditating, the monks had higher gamma activity than novice meditation practitioners. Gamma activity has been associated with better memory and increased ability to process information — all concerns associated with aging.

Lutz also discovered that the monks — all of whom had clocked at least 10,000 hours of meditation practice — had developed neural connections that spanned greater distances in the brain than is typical, meaning that regions of the brain that don’t usually connect were communicating. By focusing the mind in a deliberate way, Lutz concluded, the brain can physically change. The results of the study were published in 2004 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

For those of us who weren’t fortunate enough to participate in these studies, or to have devoted 10,000 hours to meditation, there is still hope. In fact, there are a number of competing software programs designed to replicate some of these exercises — as well as some from the JAMA study — at home.

At the forefront of making brain training accessible to the public is Posit Science, a company founded in 2005 by Merzenich. The company offers three different training packages to help with auditory and visual processing, as well as driving skills to reduce car accidents.

“The goal is to drive the brain in a variety of complicated ways, so that it’s operating more efficiently, rapidly and accurately,” Merzenich said.

In the book “Heal Your Mind, Rewire Your Brain,” author Patt Lind-Kyle builds off Lutz’s research by outlining ways to focus the mind in everyday activity. She advocates four main steps to harness the mind deliberately: intention, including focusing on goals to accomplish; attention, or conscientiously processing outside stimuli; receptivity, or letting your mind accept whatever it encounters; and awareness — simply being mindful of everyday moments.

Merzenich speculates that programs soon will be developed to maintain the effects of brain training and that once optimal cognitive functioning has been achieved, it will require only short periods of maintenance to sustain the effects.

Once that’s happened, and once these exercises find their way into the mainstream, he said, “There is a tremendous prospect for really helping older people.”

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Net Gains for High School Tennis Whiz

Leave a Comment / Community, Sports / Jewish Journal

Fresh from a practice match against two boys, Sivan Krems, who turns 15 on June 5, is eager to talk about her favorite way to spend time: playing tennis. She breezes right through talk of the practice match — “It went well,” she said with a sly smile — and into a somewhat understated discussion of her recent accomplishments.

“It’s all very exciting,” she said of her success in tournament play. “It feels great.”

A ninth-grader at Westlake High School in Westlake Village, Sivan, who began playing competitively at 11, is currently ranked 20th in the nation by the United States Tennis Association (USTA) in the girls 16-and-under division and third in Southern California for girls 16 and under. Head athletic gear has chosen to sponsor her, and she is seen as a blue-chip recruit for college in 2013; she has already landed on the radar at several schools.

“I’ve never really seen her show emotion on the court,” Sivan’s Westlake coach, Connie Flanderka, said of the honors student, who won 70 sets throughout this year’s season. “No matter who she plays, she stays very even.”

Sivan’s most recent career achievement came last month, when she won the girls 14-and-under championship in the USTA’s annual Ojai Valley Tournament for the second year in a row, the first back-to-back winner in her age group since the 1965-1966 tournament.

Sivan’s mother, Dikla Krems, an Israeli who came to the United States 18 years ago, said that, of all her daughter’s achievements, what makes her most proud is the way Sivan carries herself.

“She is special. She’s extremely focused and committed. She really learned to play with grace under pressure,” Dikla Krems said.

In addition to USTA tournaments, Sivan also plays No. 1 singles for the Westlake High girls’ tennis team and was named most valuable player for Ventura County’s Marmonte League in the 2009 fall season.

Although she enjoys playing singles, Sivan says being part of a team has been a great addition to her tennis life.

“I really enjoy the whole team aspect,” she said. “On the high school team, I met a lot of people I wouldn’t otherwise have met.”

With her current success and accolades, one wonders how Sivan ended up on a tennis court in the first place. Did she pick up a racquet like other kids pick up toy blocks? Not exactly, though she did start playing for fun at the tender age of 5.

Her father, Michael Krems, a public relations consultant, started Sivan and her older brother, Mitch, now 16, playing tennis as a way to pass on his love for the sport, and for the family to have something they could do together. During his adolescence, Michael Krems was an All-American, NCAA Division 3 player in West Los Angeles.

Michael now serves as Sivan’s coach, hitting with her several times a week. And Sivan credits brother Mitch, who plays varsity singles on Westlake High’s boys team, for a big part of her success.

“He’s one of the reasons for my ascent. He’s worked out with me since I was young,” she said.

Sivan spends an hour and a half practicing each day, but she also puts the same level of effort into her studies. She maintains a 4.0 grade point average and has been known to opt out of a tournament or two that would have required her to miss too many classes.

Her next tournament is the annual Maze Cup in Berkeley, June 4-6, where the top Southern California players in each age bracket play against their Northern California counterparts. Sivan will be the youngest player there, her mother said.

While she toys with the ideas of playing Division 1 college tennis, professional tennis and also a career in medicine, those around her seem to have no doubt that she’ll find success in whatever she chooses to do.

“She has so much potential in life,” Westlake coach Flanderka said. “She’s just a classy kid.”

Perhaps it is that classiness that recently caused Sivan to send a Facebook message to tennis great Andy Roddick. She wanted to thank him for making a statement by withdrawing from a 2009 Dubai tournament when the United Arab Emirates denied a visa to Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer.

Sivan said she feels a strong connection to Israel and longs to visit again; it has been more than nine years since she was there. Her hope is to play in a tennis tournament in Israel.

“I think it would be pretty cool to play there,” she said. “I’d like to have people watch me and wonder: ‘Mi zot?’ [Who’s that?].”

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Israel Under the Radar

Leave a Comment / Israel / Jewish Journal

Here are some recent stories from Israel that you may have missed.

A (Gray) Whale of a Tale

A gray whale that took a wrong turn was spotted in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Tel Aviv on May 8, marking the first time a gray whale was seen from Israel’s coast in more than 200 years. Other types of whales have appeared in the Mediterranean from time to time.

The whale reportedly followed a Russian ship from Turkey into the Haifa port. Gray whales live in the north Pacific and migrate to warmer waters off of Mexico in the fall.

Some scientists believe the whale got through the Northwest Passage, which links the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. In the past, the route through the Arctic Sea has been blocked by ice all year round, but it is now open at certain times of the year due to global warming, according to reports.

The whale left Haifa Bay five days after it arrived, without the help of scientists.

“Over a lifetime, a gray whale migrates the equivalent distance of a return trip to the moon. However, these new images show that this particular whale would have had to beat all previous distance records to end up where it has,” whale expert Nicola Hodgins said.

The King Is Dead, Long Live the Ranch

Burger King will close its doors in Israel this summer after losing out to a local burger chain.

The 55 Burger King fast-food restaurants will be renovated and reopened as Israeli Burger Ranch restaurants.

Burger Ranch first opened in Israel in the 1970s, beginning with two branches in Tel Aviv. When McDonald’s entered Israel’s fast-food market in 1993, Burger Ranch had nearly 50 restaurants and was the largest restaurant chain in the country.

Burger King joins Starbucks, Wendy’s and Dunkin’ Donuts as American franchises that did not make it in the Israeli market.

The same week as the Burger King announcement, McDonald’s Israel announced it is launching a new lower-fat hamburger. Israel’s Big Mac already has 30 percent fewer calories than a Big Mac in the United States; now it will have only 9 percent fat compared to the 19 percent fat of an American burger.

Bar and the Great iPad Caper

Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli was caught trying to smuggle an iPad into the country.

Refaeli put her luggage through the nothing-to-declare line at customs, saying that all she had in her bags was clothing, but an X-ray of her bags showed a new Apple iPad.

The Israeli supermodel, who returned home to Israel to make a brief commercial appearance, will have to pay at least twice the amount of import tax that would have been charged on the device.

Israel recently lifted a ban on personal imports of the iPad into the country. Items brought into Israel worth more than about $200 are subject to duties.

In January, Refaeli asked the Israel Tax Authority to exempt her from paying taxes because she works mostly abroad and, as she put it, “The center of my life is no longer in Israel.” Refaeli earned about $2 million
over the past two years, according to reports, and paid about 46 percent in taxes in Israel.

No New Skyscrapers for Central Tel Aviv

The Tel Aviv municipality will no longer approve the construction of skyscraper buildings in the center of the city.

The new policy is part of the Tel Aviv 2025 plan created by the city’s engineering administration, Ynet reported. Buildings under construction can go forward, but those in the planning stages have been dumped, the news service said.

The new plan does not address the eastern part of the city.

Free Dental Care for Kids Gets a Root Canal

Israel’s Supreme Court says the government cannot offer free or reduced-cost dental care to the nation’s children.

The high court revoked the government’s decision, saying that the health basket funds were not earmarked for dental care. The $17.2 million plan was supposed to begin in July. The Health Ministry responded to the ruling by saying it will continue to seek ways to subsidize dental treatment for children.

Napoleon Coin, Ancient Aqueduct Uncovered

A gold coin bearing the likeness of 19th century French ruler Napoleon III was found during an archeological excavation in Jaffa.

The 10-franc coin with a picture of the nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte was minted in Paris in 1856 and is made of almost completely pure gold.

The discovery of gold coins during archaeological excavations is a rare occurrence, according to Robert Kool, a numismatist with the Israel Antiquities Authority. Coins have been found in the past in Tel Aviv and Beersheva, attesting to the popularity of European gold throughout the world until the end of World War I.

Meanwhile, part of an ancient aqueduct that carried water to the Temple Mount was uncovered during an excavation near Sultan’s Pool in the walls around Jerusalem National Park.

“The bridge, which could still be seen at the end of the 19th century and appears in old photographs, was covered over during the 20th century. We were thrilled when it suddenly reappeared in all its grandeur during the course of the archaeological excavations,” said Yehiel Zelinger, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The Israel Antiquities Authority, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority, is working to expose the entire length of the arched bridge, conserve it and integrate it in the framework of the overall development of the Sultan’s Pool, as part of underscoring the importance of the water supply to Jerusalem in ancient times.

My Fair Knesset Member

Israeli lawmakers are set to attend a government-sponsored finishing school.

The members of Israel’s Knesset will learn how to better represent Israel abroad after completing their classes on improving self-confidence, public speaking and dressing for success. The classes will be led by
expert academics and media figures, as well as by some fellow lawmakers with media experience.

Attendance at the classes, which will begin in the coming months and will be held for several hours over the course of one week, will not be mandatory but highly recommended, Ynet reported.

The new program was initiated by the chairman of the State Control Committee, Yoel Hasson of the Kadima Party, after several lawmakers admitted to difficulty in meeting the challenges of confrontation in front of audiences around the world.

“The 120 members of Knesset are the State of Israel’s ambassadors in their appearances around the world and in Israel,” Hasson said. “Some of them are well acquainted with PR work, but there are quite a few that need guidance, assistance and tools to get to know the subject better. This course can also help the more experienced, as well as the less experienced.”

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L.A. Donors Turn Israel ‘Brain Drain’to ‘Brain Gain’

Leave a Comment / United States / Jewish Journal

In October 2009, an official of the Israeli Council for Higher Education told the Knesset Education Committee that Israel had inadvertently become the world’s largest “minds exporter.”

According to Manuel Trajtenberg, head of the council’s planning and budgetary committee, some 25 percent of Israel’s academics presently choose to live overseas. Israel has lost as many as 1,000 young post-doctoral scientists to research institutes abroad in the last decade due to the lack of science budgets, according to Bar-Ilan University President Moshe Kaveh.

It’s no secret that a significant number of these Israeli scientists have found appointments at universities in California, but two new initiatives funded by Los Angeles donors at Bar-Ilan, in Ramat Gan, near Tel Aviv, aim to turn the “brain drain” into “brain gain” for Israel.

The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Nanotechnology Triplex, a nine-story, $150 million multidisciplinary center housing the Bar-Ilan Institute for Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA), dedicated earlier this month, has already brought back to Israel scientists from a wide variety of fields who had been teaching at leading universities abroad. At least eight of 29 Israeli scientists Bar-Ilan brought back came from
California universities, including the Scripps Institute, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and California Institute of Technology.

With the opening of the new Gonda building at Bar-Ilan, “We have the potential to entirely change the direction of Israeli science and research over the next decade,” Harold Basch, Bar-Ilan’s vice president for Research and Development, said.

“Israel has the best brains, but not enough money. But investment in infrastructure can bring back 20 times as much in new products and patents in a wide variety of fields,” Kaveh said.

The Gonda Nano Triplex is designed for scientific exploration on the nanotech frontier, which involves research and engineering matter at the molecular level. The triplex consists of three interconnected towers — the Nano-Fabrication Building, the Nano-Science Building and the Nano-Health Building — hosting dozens of researchers and their experiments. When fully completed, the triplex expects to become the most advanced facility of its kind in Israel and among the most advanced in the world. It will include lab facilities for nanotech start-up companies that will grow out of BINA’s research groups and 39 individual research labs for
BINA’s scientists.

Los Angeles-based donors Leslie and the late Susan Gonda are Holocaust survivors who immigrated to Venezuela in 1947, where Leslie Gonda developed commercial and industrial complexes leased by American drug and cosmetics companies.

In 1963, they moved to the United States, where Leslie, along with his son, Louis, and Steven Udvar-Hazy founded the International Lease Finance Corp. In 1998, the Gondas created a foundation dedicated to the memory of their relatives lost during the Holocaust that has benefited the Mayo Clinic, UCLA, Santa Monica’s St. John’s Hospital, City of Hope and numerous medical research centers in Israel and throughout the world.

Among the returning scientists is Amos Sharoni, who returned to Israel last September after spending five years at UCSD. After receiving his doctorate in physics from Hebrew University, Sharoni made the difficult decision to leave Israel to pursue his research in nano-magnetics. “I’m a Zionist,” Sharoni said. “I always wanted to come back to Israel, so I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to continue now at this wonderful new facility at Bar-Ilan with all the equipment I need, and bring my wife and three kids back home.”

But it’s not only in the scientific field that scholars have been deserting Israel. Post-doctoral students in the humanities are particularly hard to find in Israel.

The Barbara and Fred Kort Doctoral Fellowships of Excellence Program in the Humanities, also just inaugurated at Bar-Ilan, aims to help humanities students by providing full support for outstanding Bar-Ilan doctoral students in the fields of translation and interpreting French, Arabic, English, and Hebrew and Semitic languages. In return for financial support, the students pledge to devote themselves to their doctoral studies on a full-time basis and to complete their degree within four years.

The Kort Program is part of a university-wide, pioneering Doctoral Fellowships of Excellence Program — the first of its kind in the State of Israel — launched over a decade ago through the leadership of Bar-Ilan president Kaveh.

Barbara Kort traveled from Los Angeles, accompanied by a delegation of nearly 40 family and friends for the dedication of the program, which also was attended by China’s ambassador to Israel, Zhao Jun.

Several years ago, Kort and her late husband, Fred Kort, established the Fred & Barbara Kort Sino-Israel Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, which assisted 100 students from China to conduct joint research with Bar-Ilan faculty in physics, biochemistry, mathematics, the social sciences and even Judaism.

A native of China, Barbara Kort undertook the management of the Imperial Toy Corp. upon her husband’s death in 2003. Fred Kort was one of nine people known to have survived the Treblinka death camp in Poland. When he arrived in the United States at the end of the war, he established and became president of the giant toy company, which has since been sold.

“Both my late husband, Fred, and I felt that education is the key to future quality of life. That’s why doing this project in Israel, and especially at Bar-Ilan, made so much sense for me,” Barbara Kort said at the fellowship dedication.

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$33 Million in Grants to Fund Training of Jewish Educators

Leave a Comment / United States / Jewish Journal

Spurred by a major grant from one of the largest Jewish foundations, the rabbinical seminaries of three major synagogue movements are forging a groundbreaking partnership to train Jewish educators.

The Jim Joseph Foundation announced May 24 that it was giving a combined $33 million to the Reform movement’s Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute for Religion (HUC-JIR), the Modern Orthodox Yeshiva University and the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS).

The grant is aimed at helping the three seminaries attract more teachers to the field of Jewish education and offer them better training.

As a stipulation for receiving the money, each school will be required to use $1 million of the roughly $11 million it receives over the next four years to work with the other schools on figuring out how to market the field of Jewish education to prospective teachers and incorporating modern technology into Jewish pedagogy.

“The presidents of the three institutions, thanks to the Jim Joseph grant process, have spent more time together in the past two years than our predecessors did in the previous decade,” said JTS Chancellor Arnold Eisen. “I think it is historic that you have these three institutions and their leaders working together in this fashion. I think it is good for the Jews, and it is a moment.”

Partnerships have become a driver for JTS, which announced in early May that part of its new strategic vision included finding new allies in the education sector.

Hebrew Union College has become a natural ally for the Conservative movement’s seminary. The schools are in the third year of offering a combined fellowship funded by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman
Foundation that brings together rabbinical students from both seminaries for a joint seminar, and they also are now offering some joint classes as part of their respective cantorial programs.

But Yeshiva University (YU) historically has been a tougher match for both HUC-JIR and JTS because of intense theological differences between the Orthodox institution and its non-Orthodox counterparts.

Under the new initiative, each school will continue to teach its own brand of Judaism, but they will cooperate on elements of the educational process that impact all of the institutions.

It’s a message that YU’s president, Richard Joel, is very careful to send: that the schools are working together on practice and not content.

“There was a time a couple of generations ago where liberal Judaism was viewed as a threat because most people were at least nominally Orthodox,” and liberal Judaism was seen as giving Jews a reason to leave Orthodoxy, Joel said. “But I don’t think that is the reality today. The issue isn’t that liberal Judaism will steal people from Orthodoxy. Now it is viewed as something that continues to urge Jews to know something
about their story.”

According Jim Joseph’s executive director, Charles Edelsberg, the three schools were scheduled to meet May 27 with representatives from the tech giant Cisco to learn about “telepresence” technology. And they are talking with the MacArthur Foundation about digital media and learning.

In recent years, even before the Jim Joseph grant, the leaders of the three schools — Eisen, Joel and HUC-JIR’s Rabbi David Ellenson — had begun to appear on panel discussions together — something that would have been unheard of for much of the last century.

Still, sources at the schools said, even though the collegiality among Eisen, Ellenson and Joel has helped the partnership evolve, the institutions probably would not have come together without the recession and the significant financial carrot offered by Jim Joseph.

When the economy hit a low last year, Jim Joseph stepped up with $12 million to help the struggling schools provide scholarships to students and launch their working relationship. YU will use about $700,000 per year to help defray the cost of education for students at its Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education and Administration and the education program at Stern College, its women’s college, according to Joel. JTS
will use approximately $1 million per year to provide scholarships to its nondenominational William Davidson Graduate School of Jewish Education. And HUC-JIR will use about one-third of its grant on financial aid
for students seeking master’s degrees at its New York and Los Angeles campuses, according to Ellenson.

Outside of the interschool partnerships, each institution will use the bulk of its grant money on training better teachers.

For YU, that means continuing to beef up its Azrieli school, which has gone from one faculty member to 11 since Joel’s arrival in 2003. The school now has more than 160 students seeking master’s degrees in education. YU also is working on creating a certificate in informal Jewish education and a job placement program for the students it churns out over the next four years.

JTS will use a significant portion of its money to better its early childhood education, including forming a partnership with the Bank Street College of Education, a non-Jewish teachers’ college renowned for its early childhood education, Eisen said. It also will try to set up informal Jewish education programs at congregational and day schools modeled after successful efforts at the Conservative movement’s Ramah camp system. And JTS will create an Israel immersion program for students at the Davidson school.

HUC-JIR is planning on starting an executive master’s program and three new certificate programs in Judaica for early childhood educators, Jewish childhood education, and adolescence and emerging adulthood.
Jim Joseph hopes the schools will graduate 700 to 1,000 teachers during the duration of the grant.

In its first four years, the foundation has given about $220 million to Jewish formal and informal education efforts, including day schools, camps and youth groups, as well as to Birthright Israel and the official follow-up program Birthright Israel NEXT.

In recent weeks, Jim Joseph has announced some $45 million in grants to produce more Jewish teachers, including the $33 million gift to the three seminaries and a recently announced $12 million investment to revive and ramp up a dormant doctoral program in Jewish education at Stanford University. All this is on top of the $12 million that Jim Joseph gave the three seminaries last year primarily for scholarships for
advanced degree programs in Jewish education and other significant gifts it has made to a doctoral program in Jewish education at New York University.

“This partnership should have a significant impact on the number of future Jewish educators and the skills they will bring to their professions,” the foundation’s president, Al Levitt, said in a news release announcing the grant. “With the help of these grants, we know the institutions can reach their full potential and produce teachers who continue to positively shape the lives of Jewish youth.”

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Jews for Jesus Founder Dies, Duplicity Survives

Leave a Comment / Opinion / Jewish Journal

Moshe Rosen, the Jewish convert to Christianity who founded the Evangelical missionary group Jews for Jesus, died May 19, 2010, in San Francisco after a prolonged battle with cancer. He was 78. His passing presents an opportunity to reflect on the devastating effect he had on Jewish lives.

Born Martin Rosen in 1932 to immigrant Jewish parents, he was raised with a minimum Jewish education in Denver, Colo. He converted to Christianity in 1953, at the age of 21, and in 1957 was ordained a Baptist minister.

From 1957 to 1972, he worked as a missionary for the American Board of Missions to the Jews. After a falling-out, reportedly over his controversial tactics, Rosen launched the San Francisco-based Jews for Jesus movement in 1973.

He believed “Judaism never saved anybody” and that unless you believe in Jesus, you will burn in hell. This included the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Rosen aggressively targeted Jews for conversion and is responsible for the loss of many young Jews and the destruction of numerous Jewish families. His most deceptive tactic promoted the notion that a Jew can be Jewish and Christian at the same time. However, he simultaneously condemned Judaism as a “false religion” and once said, “The fact is we are not practicing any form of Judaism. We are practicing Christianity.”
This didn’t stop him from encouraging the use of rabbinic Jewish practices, like lighting Shabbat candles or wearing a yarmulke, in an attempt to masquerade Christianity in the guise of authentic Judaism.

Sadly, as a direct result of Rosen’s pioneering efforts, today there are more than 1,000 missionary groups targeting Jews for conversion worldwide. With an annual budget exceeding $275 million, these groups have succeeded in reaching out to tens of thousands of Jews in recent decades. The 2000-2001 National Jewish Population Study estimated that more than 600,000 American Jews have converted to, or are affiliated with, a religion other than Judaism, the most dominant faith being Christianity.

Both Jewish and mainline Christian clergy condemned Rosen’s aggressive and controversial proselytizing methods. In 1990, the Rev. David Selzer wrote, “Jews for Jesus is another attempt to deny Jewish identity to Jews … as a Christian I oppose the group.”

In her doctoral dissertation on Jews for Jesus, Juliene Lipson describes how she infiltrated the group and discovered a disturbing side to Jews for Jesus and Moshe Rosen. According to Lipson, members agreed that “full submission to the leadership of Moshe Rosen is the will of God.” She also described a meeting where “members were asked to stand, whereupon Moshe struck each one across the face hard enough to knock them over.”

On the Web site UsedForJesus.com, ex-Jews for Jesus staff members testify to the abusive and cultlike atmosphere within Jews for Jesus, including the above-mentioned “pain training” as well as shunning of former members, rigid restrictions to personal life, and raging and intense anger. University of California, Berkeley, professor Margaret Singer, respected as a leading authority on cults and mind control, considered Jews for Jesus a cult. This was echoed by former Jews for Jesus member Ellen Kamensky, who categorized them as a destructive cult and told me they misrepresented New Testament passage Luke 14:26 to convince her to cut off contact with her family.

Misuse of biblical passages to prove Jesus is the messiah is a mainstay of Jews for Jesus. Their proof-texts are either taken out of context or mistranslated. In one of their pamphlets, they quote a nonexistent passage from the Zohar concerning the Shema in a pathetic attempt to prove the trinity is a Jewish concept.

This brings me to what I consider to be Rosen’s second-most deceptive tactic. On page 52 of his book, “Share the New Life With a Jew,” he instructs missionaries to not get “sidetracked with discussion on the deity of Christ.” He continues to explain that, as important as this doctrine may be, “correct theology is not what will save your friend.”

In other words, don’t bring up the most crucial beliefs of Christianity, the trinity or bodily incarnation of God, since they are difficult for Jews to accept because they contradict our fundamental Jewish belief in the absolute unity of God. In a remarkable sign of unity, all denominations of Judaism agree this is the No. 1 reason Jews can’t believe in Jesus.

You won’t see Jews for Jesus missionaries standing on street corners as often as they did in the 1970s and ’80s because they can now reach into our homes via the Internet, which they flood with propaganda.
Today, missionaries claim that more than 50 percent of Jews who have recently converted to Christianity did so as a result of an initial contact with a Christian missionary over the Internet. Jews for Jesus is also very active on college campuses and has harnessed the zealousness of millions of Evangelical Christians who have adapted Rosen’s methodology.

Unfortunately, Rosen’s legacy will be that his deceptive tactics have become the accepted protocol in the Evangelical Christian movement. It is now second nature for church members to tell their Jewish friends, and Christian students to tell their peers, that they can be Jewish and Christian at the same time. In Israel, Jews for Jesus missionaries, along with many Israeli converts, promote Jesus exclusively as being the Jewish messiah while intentionally avoiding mentioning their belief that he is God.

In these ways and more, the threat of Jews for Jesus is more serious than ever, and the Jewish community must redouble its efforts to keep Jews Jewish.

Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz is the founder and executive director of Jews for Judaism International. Celebrating 25 years, Jews for Judaism and its Be-True student initiative are dedicated to promoting critical thinking and responding to cults and missionaries that target the Jewish community.

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Does Prayer Have a Prayer?

Leave a Comment / David Suissa / David Suissa

“Prayer can be utterly boring,” Rabbi Elazar Muskin said to a gathering in his own house of prayer, Young Israel of Century City. Muskin was the last of three rabbis to speak on the subject last Shabbat afternoon, after Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David-Judea Congregation and Rabbi Kalman Topp of Beth Jacob Congregation.

The event was part of a national initiative from the Orthodox Union called “Making Our Tefillot More Personal and Meaningful,” and it was introduced by Rabbi Daniel Korobkin, its West Coast director for community and synagogue services.

The initiative makes a lot of sense, if only because, let’s face it, prayer can be boring. Boredom might not have been an issue in the shtetls of our ancestors, but it certainly is in our world, when “Thou shalt be entertaining” has become the 11th Commandment.

The problem cuts across all denominations, but it takes a different slant in the Orthodox community, where shul members feel a strong communal obligation to attend services every Shabbat, and where anti-boredom props like musical instruments are strictly forbidden.

Without the benefit of flutes and drum circles, Orthodox rabbis must find other ways to convince their members not to schmooze about the Lakers and the price of real estate during davening. This is no easy feat.
One of the great benefits of going to shul is the very idea of reconnecting with those we don’t see during the week. We are social animals. We need to talk.

When we talk to God, we’re never sure if He’s listening or answering. But when we ask our buddies sitting next to us how they feel about the latest balagan between Obama and Israel, we can be sure to get a response.

So, while Orthodox rabbis don’t have to compete with Starbucks or 24 Hour Fitness on Shabbat, they do have to compete with human nature: It’s a lot more fun to schmooze than to pray.

This is the mountain that the three rabbis had to climb on Shabbat afternoon, and while I don’t think they made it to the top, they came closer than I expected.

Kanefsky led off by suggesting that prayer can improve your life instantly. The three steps we take right before the silent prayer, he said, are really meant to elevate us. He asked us to imagine entering a private bubble three steps above the ground, where we would think about a specific problem during our silent prayer — a problem with a spouse, with a job, with a friend or relative, etc. — and allow God’s creative and healing energy to enter.

By focusing on the word “Atah” (You), we make our connection with God more intimate. This helps us come out of the bubble on a higher level than when we entered. Intention makes the difference.

Topp focused on the idea of authenticity, to oneself and to the moment. He told the story of a rebbe who allowed a follower to imitate his intense davening. When the rebbe saw “himself” davening, he realized that he made the mistake of trying to “imitate himself”— he wasn’t being true to the moment. We should follow the structure of prayer, Topp told us, but also improvise with our own touches and our feelings of the moment, and not “imitate ourselves” every time we pray.

Muskin focused on two things to make the prayer experience “anything but boring”: the importance of slowing down, and the importance of expressing gratitude. On the first, he held up Chief Rabbi of England Jonathan Sacks’ prayer book as a great example of prayer that “slows down,” and he announced that his shul would soon be offering classes on the meaning of prayer.

But it was the second thing he talked about — expressing gratitude — that got me thinking about the ultimate solution to the prayer conundrum. Muskin mentioned that since he’s had a pain in his leg, his prayers have been more intense because he’s so appreciative of the times that the pain is not there.

As he spoke, I thought, “Eureka! This is the solution!” Shuls should be renamed Thank You Houses, and every Jew should be asked the following: Are you grateful that you can see, walk, hear or breathe? Well, then, here’s the deal: In return for all those blessings, sacrifice a little of your time and come say thank you once a week.

In other words, forget whether the shul is boring, whether you like the chazzan or the rabbi’s sermon, or whether the service is inspirational or stimulating. Those are all bonuses. You’re in shul primarily to give tzedakah to God: to express your gratitude for the things that are most valuable to you. You love your children? Come say thank you that you have them. You love the fact that you can listen to great music? Same thing — come say thank you.

The idea is to recognize a shul’s limitations and turn it into a virtue. A prayer service can never compete with the “entertainment” of a great show or movie, nor should it want to. But with its many rituals and prayers that honor the Creator, a shul is uniquely qualified to facilitate one of the most meaningful and universal acts of the Jewish tradition: the act of gratitude.

You like the fact that you’re healthy enough to schmooze? Dedicate a few hours next Shabbat just to say thank you. That prayer, thank God, never gets boring.

David Suissa is the founder of OLAM magazine and OLAM.org. You can read his daily blog at suissablog.com and e-mail him at {encode=”suissa@olam.org” title=”suissa@olam.org”}.

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Letters to the Editor: Forgiveness, Construction, Alliance, and Rabbi Savit Artison

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, Opinion / Jewish Journal

Forgiveness Defined

David Suissa confuses reconciliation with forgiveness (“Eva’s Peace Process,” May 21). People and nations can be reconciled with each other — and, as part of that, agree to live in peace in the future — without forgiving each other for past wrongs (e.g., U.S. and Japan, Jews and Catholics). Conversely, people and nations can forgive each other for past wrongs but never want to interact with each other again (e.g., divorced couples). I discuss these differences — and a third, related category of pardon — in Chapter 6 of my book, “Love Your Neighbor and Yourself.” David Suissa may be put to sleep by the proposal actively to pursue a two-state solution, but if that could be achieved, most Israeli and Diaspora Jews would say dayenu, it would be enough for us.

Elliot Dorff
Rector, American Jewish University

Real Cost of Construction

Parochial. That’s the best word to describe the arguments that Suissa airs against the settlement construction moratorium: Those living in settlements are worried that it will hurt them financially (“Natural-Born Builder,” May 14), just as it may hurt a number of construction workers.

Suissa ignores the reality that construction in settlements has not actually stopped. The so-called “freeze” implemented by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has many loopholes, including allowing the completion of construction begun before the moratorium was initiated.

But that, too, is a parochial argument. The big picture is about Israel’s survival.

Without a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel may cease to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.

Don’t take my word for it. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has termed the festering conflict with the Palestinians to be a bigger threat to Israel than an Iranian nuclear bomb.

Ongoing settlement construction deepens the occupation. It complicates efforts to reach a two-state solution through negotiations. It burden’s Israel’s security services, incites Palestinian rage, drains Israel’s financial resources and impermissibly changes the status quo that Israel has agreed to negotiate, thereby promoting the dangerous impression that Israel is not interested in a two-state solution.

Suissa interviews a distinguished rabbi whose community is paying a price for settling outside of Israel’s borders in territory over which Israel committed to negotiating.

That price is real. But those of us who care about Israel know that it must be paid. We must not lose sight of the big picture: Israel’s security is more important than settlements. It is priceless.

Luis Lainer
Los Angeles

Fresh Food for Thought

Over the years, I have chastised The Jewish Journal for not covering the Los Angeles Jewish community properly. I am repelled by the insistence that Pico-Robertson area is the source of all Jewishness, and I could not believe that a paper for the Jewish community is represented by five Jewish congressmen and one congresswoman, all liberal, and still your newest offering is the pabulum of the most reactionary public Jew,
Dennis Prager.

But now, I have to somewhat eat my words. I saw the front cover and I knew there had been a change — Ryan Torok’s article, “Our Choices/Their Choices” (“Food Deserts Exposed,” May 21) was the best community article that I have read in The Journal in its many years. Here was an organization of basically lay people getting their hands dirty, trying to help the poor to get at least what one can buy on Pico-Robertson. The article about the work of the Progressive Jewish Alliance was a breath of fresh air. Instead of writing about rich Jews manipulating other people’s money, or about some Israeli singer who is trying to make it in Hollywood, The Journal did me proud because it showed that there are young Jews who take their Jewishness seriously and work for the benefit of good work. This is tikkun olam at its best. Bravo,
Ryan Torok, and the same for the Progressive Jewish Alliance.

Al Mellman
Los Angeles

Seeking Shavuot

I was saddened to read Rabbi Shavit Artson’s article, in which he repeatedly refers to the traditional view of an all-powerful G-d as a “bully in the sky.”

To those of us who affirm an all-knowing and all-powerful G-d, He is many things. He is “Creator of the Earth from end to end … His wisdom cannot be fathomed.” He is “the great, the mighty and the awesome G-d … [who] upholds the cause of the orphan and the widow and befriends the stranger.” Of Him we declare, “I search for You, my soul thirsts for You, my body yearns for you.” We do not see Him as “the bully in the sky.”

True, we do not have neat philosophical answers for the Holocaust or autism or other suffering. We cry out in pain, “Why does the way of the wicked prosper?” We are willing to live with unanswered or unanswerable questions because we live with faith in the Almighty, the G-d who is ever-present and ever caring.

Rabbi Chaim Citron
Los Angeles

Corrections
A column about a new law in Arizona (“Arizona Demands ‘Show Me Your Papers,’ “ May 14) misstated the previous job of Gov. Jan Brewer. Before becoming Arizona’s governor, she was secretary of state.

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion regrets the error in last’s week advertisement announcing their student and alumni degree recipients. Dr. George M. Goodwin was listed incorrectly. HUC-JIR apologizes to Dr. Goodwin and his family and wishes him hearty congratulations on his honorary degree.

Good Money After Bad?

I recently solicited donations on behalf of the American Cancer Society, and I have a sneaking suspicion that more than a few of my donors were agonistic, or God forbid, outright atheist.

Thank you, Dennis, for your article highlighting the seriousness of this problem in our community (“A Letter to Young Jews,” May 21). I will be returning their checks forthwith because, as you assert, they obviously lack a sense of morality, are incapable of any noble action since they are inexorably tied to following the lessons of “survival of the fittest,” and due to their lack of faith in God, I don’t want to take their money, even for a good cause, since they are just as likely to give to evil causes as they are to good because life to them is objectively meaningless.

Elliot Semmelman

Huntington Beach

Seeking Shavuot

I don’t know how I missed your special holiday edition (May 14). I read in the L.A. Times all about the celebration of a Jewish holiday called Shavuot. I then reviewed your edition before the holiday. I did find two references to the upcoming holiday: one in a rabbi’s letter to the editor and another in an ad for an event not held on Shavuot. That was it! May I suggest you more aptly rename your paper: The Journal of the Jewish Liberal Democrats of L.A. When the L.A. Times prints more about a major Jewish holiday than your Journal, it’s a shandeh for the entire community.

J. Dalin

Venice

The Editor Responds: You must have missed Rabbi Brad Artson’s 2500 word essay on God and Shavuot in that issue. You can read it, and see our great video recipe for Lemon Ricotta Blintzes here.

I enjoyed reading your story “Almighty? No Way!” by Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson (May 14). Thank you very much for sharing. May G-d continue to stay with you and Jacob, and may you continue to be inspired and guided by the Divine.

Mary Schermerhorn

Los Angeles

The nature of forgiveness

Forgiving has nothing to do with achieving Israeli and Palestinian accord. The United States has never forgiven, nor should it, Japan for the Pearl Harbor attack. Remember the “day of infamy”? Yet, today, the relationship between those two countries is exemplary.

I will never forgive the Nazi regime for what it did to my people during World War II, but I am accepting of Germany and German citizens today knowing that, for the most part, the executioners of the Holocaust are gone.

Only G-d can forgive a stain upon humanity.

Louis H. Nevell

Los Angeles

Fighting Hatred on Campus

I wanted to thank Roz Rothstein and Robert Said for accurately describing the concerted effort of the Muslim Student Organization to ignite the flame of hatred for Israel, Jews and America in U.S. colleges (“Facing Hatred on Campus: You Can’t Fight Fire With Flowers,” May 14). Let’s not fool ourselves with phony dialogues with these organizations, as their ultimate goal is to delegitimize Israel first and demonize Jews ultimately and at any cost. As a person who has lived in Iran most of my life, I have seen enough of the duplicity in Muslims dealing with non-Muslims so not to believe in addressing of the problem with just more of dialogues and understanding. It is time for all Jews to recognize that a clear Jew-hating intifada is in full swing across U.S. campuses and recognize the need to address this in a very organized way and as an urgent matter. One suggestion is to coordinate Jewish campus organization efforts with freedomcenterstudents.org and their effort to confront Muslim hatred for Israel as well as their soft jihad agenda against America. Freedom Center provides material, speakers and campus events to fight the Muslim Student Organization; this will give Jewish organizations a good head start to fight hatred urgently and effectively.

Wiseman Dawoody

Beverly Hills

Overloading the lifeboat?

Unfortunately, Israel cannot afford the luxury of democratic practice with respect to its growing Arab population. A demographic Arab majority would signal the end the Jewish state. Israel is like a lifeboat with a limited number of seats fleeing a sinking vessel. Should the boat become overcrowded, it will sink and all aboard will die. Jews in Israel are in a position similar to those who have seats on the boat. How many would-be survivors (Arabs) can they tolerate before the boat sinks?

Louis H. Nevell

Los Angeles

Is Anyone Listening?

The irony of Dennis Prager’s “Letter to Young Jews” (May 21) is laughable — does he really think the secular/atheist/agnostic/otherwise marginalized young Jews about whom he speaks are reading The Jewish Journal?

Sharon Rabinowitz

via e-mail

Another View of Arizona

Thank you publishing a lively and open magazine. You are to be honored for your presentation of every side of every issue without significant editorial bias, and I for one think that your magazine is a powerful ally in the wars we face to preserve and expand civilization, liberty and enlightenment against the forces, proponents and profiteers of savagery, balkanization, hysteria and tyranny.

That said, I must take issue with Mr. Sonenshein’s column “Arizona Demands ‘Show Me Your Papers’” (May 14). This cynical screed was composed with no consideration for the reasonable positions held by the governor and people of the state of Arizona, Republicans, lower-case l libertarians and the great majority of American citizens in general. Rather, he would have us believe that people who do not want their capital city besieged and overrun with illegal alien drug cartel violence, illegal alien workers, illegal alien uninsured drivers bumping around and people who entered our country without proper legal authority for a whole host of our public services (education, health care, etc.) are driven by simple and stupid racism.

Well done, Mr. Sonenshein. You just threw away any possibility of reasonable dialogue with anybody to the political right of MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow, as well as anybody less steeped in the theory of “white racial guilt” [than] the Rev. Jesse Jackson. That’s about 85 percent of the American population.

I, personally, am not a Jew. I am a middle-aged American male of biracial parentage, with a conservative/libertarian ideological bent. That thought system compels me to support Israel, the sole exemplar of democratic values in the modern Middle Eastern world, against the plethora of Islamic “basket case” nations who seek to discredit, demonize and ultimately destroy her.

Ernest G. Sewell

Los Angeles

Reach Out to Latino Children

I read the article in The Jewish Journal about Latino leaders visiting Israel (“L.A. Latino Leaders Visit ‘Real’ Israel,” May 21). May I suggest targeting the Latino youth? My daughter attends public school in Rancho Palos Verdes. She is learning Chinese in first grade this year. Students are expected to learn Chinese throughout elementary school. I find her attitude is being shaped in a positive way toward China. If The Jewish Federation were to reach out to Latino children as the Chinese groups do in Rancho Palos Verdes, then Latino children would be much more positive about Israel then their Latino leaders. The Jewish Federation money spent on adults can be better spent on the Latino children. Children learn rapidly. My daughter loves Chinese, the Chinese culture and Chinese food. All this because of the influence of the Chinese program in her school. The Jewish Federation can have a lot of success with the Latino children.

In addition, the Latino leaders of today will be out of touch with the Latino children of today. Many Latino children that you don’t see are second- or third-generation [and] don’t even listen to Latino leaders. They are more sophisticated. I urge the Jewish Federation to recognize the potential of creating a positive image of Israel by reaching out to Latino children and youth.

Louis Manzano

via e-mail

Hurtful Labels

Once again Dennis Prager hits the target spot on in his article of last week, “When Jews on the Left see Americans on the Right as Nazis” (May 7).

Everyone knows why people migrate from Central America and Mexico by the millions here: Their countries have given them no hope, progress, safety or future. However, my wanting to deport illegals back to these countries doesn’t make me or anyone else who believes in this a Nazi, and I thank Mr. Prager for standing up and taking a stance on this.

Peter M. Shulman

Playa del Rey

A gentleman wrote a letter to the editor in which he ripped into Dennis Prager, stating how the left frequently refers to the right as Nazis. This gentleman’s letter stated that he worked for Obama during the election and frequently heard people on the right call Obama a Nazi. I strongly doubt this ever even happened. When Obama was campaigning, he had done nothing but make frequent statements about “Hope and Change.” He said nothing about his specific plans that would make anyone call him a Nazi. So I strongly suspect this letter is to say, “Well, they did it, so we can too!” I am a very strong member of the right and have never heard even one person on the right ever call him a Nazi, although I do have lots of other words to describe what he’s inflicting on this country.

Le Roy Rosen

via e-mail

Borderline Aggression

I was disturbed to read your article related to your position on our open borders and our illegal alien problem. Your paper sympathizes with the illegals, which makes you a hypocrite! Compare what Israel is doing with its border fence and the restrictions on the Palestinians and tell me it’s OK for Israel to control their border but we can’t. What kind of nonsense are you trying to stuff down the American citizens’ throat? If you want my continued support of Israel … wake up!

Richard

via e-mail

Many, many years ago I began college while still essentially wet behind the ears. One of the first things they taught us was the nature of argument and the types of argument to avoid. I still remember a graduate student explaining in detail what guilt by association was, and what it was not. Additionally, we were taught to avoid argument ad homonym, straw man arguments, hypotheticals and the use of non-sequiturs.

I have just finished reading Raphael J. Sonenshein’s latest opinion piece on the Arizona immigration law (“Arizona Demands ‘Show Me Your Papers,’ ” May 14) and all the types of argument I was taught to avoid are on display. Sonenshein begins with the claim that the law will permit racial profiling. This is a straw man argument. Racial profiling cannot occur under the law because the law clearly states that race may not be the sole reason for a stop. If a police officer were to stop someone solely because of his race, the officer would be acting outside the law and in violation of it.

Mr. Sonenshein writes, “As to whether this is about race and ethnicity, we will see when the first Latino doctor or lawyer dressed casually is stopped and asked for papers.” Again, this action would be outside the law because the law specifically forbids actions like this. It is also hypothetical because it has not happened, and in any event, to prove the claim, the motive of the officer would have to be known, which cannot be ascertained in this hypothetical example.

Mr. Sonenshein states, “Reports of a crime wave at the border have been widely exaggerated.” Actually the opposite is true. The crime wave at the border, and more importantly inside the country, has been largely ignored by the mainstream media. In New York, an illegal alien from Jamaica went on a shooting spree on a commuter train, targeting whites and Asians. This man—I believe his name was Colin Ferguson—waited until the train had left the city of New York to avoid giving political grief to the then black mayor of New York, David Dinkins, and then walked up and down a car, killing only whites and Asians. New York is not on the border.

Currently, trials are beginning in New Jersey for a gang from El Salvador who accosted four black teenagers in Newark, robbed them, and forced them to lie on the ground and then shot them in the head. Three of these young people were killed; the fourth survived but was disabled. New Jersey is not on the border.

Recently, an American man and his two sons were murdered in San Francisco by an illegal teenage gang-banger/drug dealer who apparently mistook them for members of another gang. This murderer was in the country illegally and had been released by city officials in compliance with the sanctuary status San Francisco has adopted. In Texas, there is an illegal alien known as the railroad killer. In spite of having been deported many times, he repeatedly rode the rails all over the country murdering people. I believe he killed more than 10.

There are other examples, but I think I have made the point.

Now let’s take a look at some of the argument ad homonym Mr. Sonenshein makes. He writes, “Jeb Bush opposes the law, but he is also the same governor whose Florida in 2000 was shown to have wrongly denied the vote to many blacks who were incorrectly identified as ex-felons …” There is so much wrong with this statement that it is difficult to know where to start. First of all, this is a non-sequitur—there is no relationship between what may have happened in Florida in 2000 in an election and immigration law in Arizona a decade later. But furthermore, Jeb Bush had nothing to do with these events. In Florida, like many states, including California, elections are controlled by the Secretary of State, who is a constitutional officer whose power is defined by the state constitution. The governor has no power over the Secretary of State and cannot logically be accused of malfeasance in this matter. Additionally, when this issue was investigated, it was discovered that the number of voters misidentified as ex-felons was less than 10. This out of a total voting role of more than 7 million. I do not know how Florida law works in this area, but here in California if this had come up the voters would be permitted to cast provisional ballots and elections officials would have looked into the matter to determine whether the votes should be counted.

The article continues with these types of rhetorical glitches, and much more could be written. But let’s just look at a few high points. Voting rights are discussed. What does this have to do with immigration? This argument is a non0-sequitur. Then he states, “Democrats in general have shown surprisingly little interest in protecting minority voting rights.” Really? Has the voting rights act been repealed? Has the requirement that certain states submit all changes in voting rules to the Department of Justice been repealed? Has the voting rights section of the United States Department of Justice been abolished? This sentence, in addition to having no relationship to the issue discussed, is wrong.

Mr. Sonenshein’s manner of argumentation is to simply say whatever pops into his mind and hope that if he throws enough mud at those who dare to disagree with him, something will stick.

Mr. Sonenshein is simply incapable of serious comment on important social issues. Don’t the editors of The Jewish Journal realize that if you continue to publish his logically incoherent article, readers will conclude that The Jewish Journal is a lightweight publication that should not be taken seriously?

Susan Jordan

Hollywood

What Columnist Needs to Know

Marty Kaplan in his “What We ‘Need to Know’ About PBS After Moyers” (May 14) holds to form. The Jewish Journal’s media commentator gilds his florid text with pejoratives aimed at the political right. Marty, with curtsy to The Bard, labels conservatives as “mewling” for having the temerity to label U.S. mainstream media leftist, while opining that Fox News and Wall Street Journal caused “… the center (to be) pulled way over to the right.” Some trick for a party in swaddling clothes, sans the bully pulpit and lacking control of congress. He then savages NPR’s new show, “Need to Know,” for presenting a discussion of the volatile open-carry gun issue with advocates Ed Levine and Larry Pratt interviewed by NPR columnist John Larson. Larson, according to an enraged Kaplan, fails to challenge a reasonable response by Pratt, answering only with “Hmmm.” Marty, an anti-gun guy, demands Larson confront Pratt from “the moral standpoint” and opines Pratt’s omission due to his employer’s having been intimidated by “liberal bias” antagonists thus “(NPR) narrowed its niche to a morally vacuous empathy for all.”

Typically Kaplan cedes himself the moral high ground, a reflexive, time-worn leftist tactic. Further, he needs-identify those he labels as “poisonous (advocates) of cable news.”

Stuart Weiss

Beverly Hills

While it makes sense for your paper to ride the wave of popular interest about Sholom Rubashkin’s state trial, it’s disturbing that recent dramatic disclosures about this case have made no appearance in your paper.

To ignore the revelations that emerged in the sentencing hearing while focusing only on the state trial is more than a journalistic fumble. I believe it is a moral failure that, unless corrected, will bolster the excessive and unjust prosecution of Sholom Rubashkin.

The media’s preoccupation with the state trial guarantees no one will pay attention to some highly sensitive information revealed at the sentence hearing just a few weeks ago. And that is exactly what the Iowa prosecutors are counting on.

I’m referring to the disclosures that knocked out a key pillar of the government’s claim that Sholom Rubashkin defrauded a lender bank of $26 million.

Observers in the courtroom were shocked to witness this claim unravel as defense witnesses lifted the veil on certain actions on the part of the Iowa U.S. Attorney’s office that directly caused the lender bank’s huge financial losses.

Their testimony showed that after AgriProcessors went bankrupt, the government prevented its sale to qualified buyers until it was so devalued it was worth pennies on the dollar. At that point, the sale of the plant could no longer bring in enough capital to repay the bank its collateral.

Sholom Rubashkin was then accused of “defrauding” the bank of $26 million, although all this money would have been paid back had the government not repeatedly blocked the company’s sale to numerous potential buyers.

The evidence of government orchestration in AgriProcessors’ collapse came out clearly at the sentencing hearing. It was deemed so threatening to the prosecutor’s case that the prosecutor, Peter Deegan, sought to suppress it by having two of its witnesses deny that the government had blocked the sale of the company.

Yet it was impossible to bury this particular truth. The would-be buyers themselves (Meyer Eichler of Brooklyn and Steve Cohen of Minneapolis) testified to it under oath, Eichler in a sworn affidavit and Cohen as the final witness in the sentencing hearing. Both affirmed that they had been threatened by U.S. Attorney Richard Murphy with government forfeiture and prosecution, were they to keep anyone from the Rubashkin family in their management after buying the plant.

They said that threats of forfeiture and being prohibited from hiring any of the foremost experts in the kosher slaughter industry drove them and other buyers away (a sworn affidavit by another potential buyer, Mordechai Korf, showed that the bank itself rejected a lucrative offer of $22 million in cash payments).

What is so powerful about this testimony is that it exposes the prosecutors’ recommended sentence of 25 years, based on a $26 million fraud, as completely without foundation.

Given the anti-Rubashkin bias, it’s not surprising that the general media failed to report these bombshell revelations. What is surprising though, it that your paper failed to do so.

Granted it is difficult to send a reporter down to Iowa. But this is no ordinary case and should not be treated in the routine way your paper gathers its news—by merely echoing the leading news wires. One would hope that you would make it a priority to cut to the heart of the story.

Your readers deserve to know the truth about how Sholom Rubashkin is being scapegoated by Iowa prosecutors who are abusing the powers of office. At this stage, misinformation and confusion about this case are still widespread.

“But he did something wrong. Shouldn’t he have to pay the penalty?” one hears people say.

There is little comprehension of the fact that the sinister crimes prosecutors charged Sholom Rubashkin with have nothing to do with the offense that took place under his watch—that of borrowing more money from the bank than the company was entitled to borrow.

In the earliest stages of the holocaust, SS roundups in Germany began with Jews listed in municipal records as having committed traffic violations. These people were arrested, convicted of trumped-up charges in kangaroo courts and dragged off to Dachau and other slave-labor camps. Granted they had committed traffic violations, yet would any of us hesitate to protest that they were innocent?

My point is that once it’s become clear that federal officials used lies, legal tricks and half-truths to turn a comparatively minor offense into a massive $26 million fraud, the spotlight should be turned on the government officials themselves who belong in the dock for this misconduct.

Where is your outrage at this modern-day lynching of a fellow Jew? Where is the relentless probing for the truth, the anguish, the passion and the eloquence in reporting on this travesty of justice?

Where is your moral courage in speaking truth to power, in charting a proper course for rank-and-file American Jews who look to you for a correct reading of events?

Debbie Maimon

Monsey, N.Y.

Letters to the Editor: Forgiveness, Construction, Alliance, and Rabbi Savit Artison Read More »