Loren Galler Rabinowitz is not an overachiever. Not to say that she hasn\’t achieved more than most accomplish in a lifetime during her 24 years, however, none of it came without expectations. Galler Rabinowitz has felt the pressure to succeed her whole life, and borne it well.
From leafy eucalyptus trees lapping the shores of the Sea of Galilee to date palms in the desert to pine and oak trees in the North — many of which were destroyed in the Carmel’s forest fire last month — Israel will celebrate trees on Tu b’Shvat. The holiday, which for centuries was a rather obscure festival mentioned in the Mishnah as the new year for trees, was revived by the early Zionists as part of their back-to-the-land ethos. It\’s now a highlight of the Israeli national calendar, with tens of thousands of Israelis, most of them schoolchildren, pouring out across the country to plant saplings in celebration of the Jewish Arbor Day. But this year, in wake of the Carmel Forest fire that killed 44 and consumed some 5 million trees and 12,000 acres of land, a growing understanding has taken root that mass replanting of trees is not the way to go. At least not right now.
My grandfather, Akiba Hornstein, was the son of a Lithuanian rabbi. My grandfather changed his name to Giff Giffords for reasons of anti-Semitism and moved to Southern Arizona from New York more than a half century ago. In the 1940s, he founded my family\’s tire and automotive business, El Campo Tire, which grew into a successful and thriving business for 50 years, which I ran for several years before serving in the Arizona Legislature.
An analysis of Internet musings by Jared Lee Loughner dismisses speculation that he may have targeted U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords because she is Jewish. \”In the end, the writings so far revealed seem to indicate no particular leanings about race, and it is difficult to come away from the postings with such a conclusion,\” according to the analysis published Tuesday by the Anti-Defamation League. The ADL analysis also said that the writings do not \”point to a particular ideology or belief system.\” Loughner\’s \”semi-coherent\” writings \”are indicative of an individual who has been exposed to a number of different ideas, from across the political spectrum, and has sometimes appropriated external concepts — often seemingly divorced from their original context,\” the analysis said. Loughner, 22, waived bail Monday when he appeared in a federal courtroom to face two federal charges of murder and three charges of attempted murder. He is expected to face additional state murder charges.
Cynthia Ozick and Gal Beckerman are among the winners of the 2010 National Jewish Book Awards. The awards, which were announced Tuesday, are given out annually by the Jewish Book Council to honor the best in American Jewish writing. Ozick, a novelist and essayist, won a Lifetime Achievement Award for her many works of fiction and criticism. Beckerman, a journalist, was honored with the Everett Family Foundation Jewish Book of the Year Award for “When They Come For Us, We’ll Be Gone: the Epic Struggle to Save Soviet Jewry,” his account of efforts to obtain freedom for Jews in the former Soviet Union.
Rabbi Israel Dresner, 81, says he’s the most arrested rabbi in America. At least that was the case in the 1960s, he says, when Dresner was one of dozens of rabbis who answered the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call for clergy from the North to join the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South. From the Freedom Rides of 1961 to the famous march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965, when Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel walked in the front row with King, Jews were prominent participants in the battle for civil rights that dominated the first half of the \’60s.
The Jewish green day of Tu b’Shvat is not just the new year for trees anymore. Jews are being asked increasingly to dedicate Tu b’Shvat to repairing the world. The Tu b\’Shvat seder at the Jewish Funds for Justice is called \”Tikkun [repair] and Transformation.\” Kolel, the Adult Center for Liberal Jewish Learning, suggests four tikkunim, or repairs, to interact with traditional Tu b’Shvat seder themes: social, cosmic/existential, national and ecological. On the Reclaiming Judaism website, Rabbi Goldie Milgram writes, \”Tu Bi-Shevat is meant to help repair this world.\” But before you go out and make your repairs to the world, don\’t you think you should fix up your home? Like what about that broken clothes dryer or dishwasher? You might be surprised, but this has a basis in Jewish tradition. The injunction of \”ba\’al taschit\” — do not destroy — is the Jewish version of waste not, want not. To avoid waste, we need to learn how to repair rather than throw things away.
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