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January 3, 2011

Restore kosher division, new N.Y. Gov. Cuomo urged

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

Lawmakers, Jewish leaders and kosher businesses are lobbying New York\’s new governor Andrew Cuomo to restore the state\’s kosher law-enforcement division. Budget cuts and retirements over the last year have left the division with one employee, the division\’s director, according to The Wall Street Journal. The cuts in the department, which once employed 11 kosher inspectors, will save up to $1 million a year in salary, benefits and services, according to the newspaper, citing a state Department of Agriculture and Markets spokesperson.

National Yiddish Book Center alters focus, cuts staff

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

The National Yiddish Book Center, amid a change in focus, has laid off four employees and closed its bookstore. As part of its strategic change from saving and restoring ancient Yiddish texts to educating people about them, the center in Amherst, Mass., made the layoffs in December, the Amherst Bulletin reported. The cut positions include the director\’s personal assistant, a major gifts officer, the bookstore manager and a designer of the center\’s magazine, according to the newspaper. The center\’s vice president and program director also resigned, leaving the center with 16 employees.\n

Some Arab conspiracy theorists seeing WikiLeaks-Israel link

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

Unless you’re a reader of Islamist websites, you’d probably be surprised to learn that the WikiLeaks trove of U.S. diplomatic cables is an Israeli conspiracy. Wonder why there was so much material about Arab regimes petitioning the United States to contain Iran’s nuclear program? How about why there was conspicuously little in the trove of data that was embarrassing to Israel? It’s because WikiLeaks founder and director Julian Assange struck a deal with Israel and the “Israel lobby” to withhold documents that might embarrass the Jewish state — at least that’s what Al Manar, the Hezbollah-run media outlet, and Al Haqiqa, which is affiliated with a Syrian opposition group, are writing. The conspiracy theories are percolating as well on far-left and far-right websites.

Israeli comptroller cites ‘many flaws’ of restitution firm

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

A company established by Israel\’s Knesset to return or distribute assets belonging to Holocaust survivors and their heirs has been deficient and slow, a state comptroller\’s report said. The report, released Monday, found \”many flaws\” in the activities of the Company for the Location and Restitution of Holocaust Victims\’ Assets, which was established in 2006. The flaws include not searching actively enough for heirs, failing to formulate a long-term policy to detect the needs of and help Holocaust survivors, and granting millions of shekels to other organizations established to assist Holocaust survivors that were not eligible to receive the funds. The report found that the company failed to advertise its assets globally, as it was charged to do three months after it was established, beginning its international campaign three years late, in April 2010.

Alan Bennett, national Jewish education leader, dies

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

Dr. Alan Bennett, a leader in Jewish education and a founder of the Neot Kedumim Biblical Landscape Reserve in Israel, has died. Bennett died in Cleveland at the Hospice of the Western Reserve on Dec. 21 after a short battle with cancer. He was 83. Bennett came to Cleveland in 1967 to work as education director at Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple. He served for 15 years, beginning in 1978, as the executive vice president of the Cleveland Bureau of Education and oversaw its transformation into the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland. Upon his retirement he was named executive vice president emeritus, and in 1997 the JECC created the Alan D. Bennett Staff Development Award for Israel Study.

In U.S., Israeli expats turn to growing number of Israeli rabbis

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

Itzik Abu-Hatzera rarely attended synagogue in his native Haifa when he lived in Israel. But last December his family was among those of nearly 200 other Israelis in South Florida at a Chanukah party sponsored by the Chabad Israeli Center in Boca Raton. “In Israel you don’t need it, Jews are all around you,” says Abu-Hatzera, who moved here 10 years ago. Like Abu-Hatzera, the rabbi of the Chabad center, Naftali Hertzel, is Israeli. At the Chabad he runs with his wife, Henya, Hebrew is the lingua franca. That, rather than the specific religious components of the evening, was why Abu-Hatzera and his family came here rather than to one of many similar Chanukah events organized by American Jews in this heavily Jewish area.

Presidents Conference’s Hoenlein, Assad meet in Damascus

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. Hoenlein said the meeting Monday was at the invitation of Syria and not, as had been reported originally by the Israeli media, at the behest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. \”I went to Damascus on an important humanitarian issue to the Jewish people,\” Hoenlein told Haaretz. \”Netanyahu did not ask anything from me, and any attempt to link me to the diplomatic process with Syrian is manipulation.\”

Gangsta rapper Shyne, now an Orthodox Jew, plans comeback

Jewish Journal January 3, 2011

It was early on during his difficult, isolated years in prison that the former gangsta rapper known as Shyne decided to formally take on the laws of Judaism as his own. Shyne, who legally changed his name in prison from Jamaal Barrows to Moses Levi — Moses is one of his favorite biblical heroes, and Levi is for the Levites who were musicians during Temple times — remembers the initial skepticism he encountered from prison rabbis at New York’s Rikers Island, where he was first incarcerated, and the other prison rabbis that would follow. \”In prison culture, everyone is trying to make a scam, everyone is a con artist, so who is this dark-skinned guy they wondered? Does he just want the Jewish food?\” asks Levi, now cloaked in the black garb of a Chasidic Jew and living in Jerusalem.

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