Judge approves $7.2-billion Madoff settlement
The largest settlement to date in the Bernard Madoff multi-billion dollar Ponzi scandal has been approved by a U.S. judge today, the Judge approves $7.2-billion Madoff settlement Read More »
The second Lemkin’s Genocide story frames the ‘Enemies’
Filmmaker Rob Lemkin’s most famous relative is the late Raphael Lemkin, a Polish attorney who spent his life crusading against mass murder and who invented the term “genocide” to describe what the Nazis had done to the Jews, including 40 members of his family.
Rob Lemkin never knew Raphael Lemkin, a distant cousin. But the elder Lemkin’s legacy has motivated much of the filmmaker’s work, notably his documentary “Enemies of the People,” an exposé on the Cambodian genocide that claimed two-million lives during the Pol Pot regime of the 1970s. Co-authored with Teth Sambath, the groundbreaking film – which culminates with a confession by Pol Pot’s second-in-command, Nuon Chea – is short-listed for the Academy Award and has received a Writers Guild Award nomination.
“We went from village to village looking for individuals,” Lemkin said of his search with Sambath for lower-level peasant executioners. “I felt I was with people who had repeatedly looked into the faces of people they were killing. “It was utterly chilling. But also inspiring that they were willing to be so open about their deeds.”
The movie is also the personal story of Sambath, whose father was stabbed to death in the Killing Fields and whose mother died in childbirth after being forced to marry a Khmer Rouge leader. Orphaned by age 9, Sambath became a journalist specifically so he could seek out and query the kinds of people who had destroyed his family. His most fervent mission was to insinuate himself into the confidence of Nuon Chea by repeatedly visiting the octogenarian in order to elicit a confession. Sambath was so obsessive about his work that his newspaper career languished, and his wife and children were sometimes left without money for food.
Lemkin’s dedication to the project was also obsessive, stemming from his own family’s experience, he said during an interview in Los Angeles. The conversation turned back to Raphael Lemkin, who put everything else in his life on hold in order to convince the United Nations to declare genocide an international crime. The work took years and proved exhausting: Just three days after the U.N. finally voted to adopt the Genocide Convention in 1948, Raphael Lemkin became gravely ill and collapsed. When hospital doctors queried him about his malady, he said his condition was “genocide-itis.” After he died in poverty in the late 1950s, only seven people attended his funeral.
“My grandmother was very active in the Kindertransport,” Rob Lemkin continued of his connection to the Holocaust. “And my father was very much haunted throughout his life that another holocaust could happen in Britain—a nightmare that lurked in the shadows for him as a sort of brooding threat. I myself was very frightened by photographs of concentration camps as a child. There are images in ‘Enemies of the People’ of dead bodies and piled bones that are similar to the images I saw through the keyhole when my parents were watching late-night films about the Nazis. I think that was definitely a motor to keep me going on ‘Enemies of the People,’ because the work was quite tedious and grueling.”
Lemkin met Sambath in September 2006 when Lemkin traveled to Phnom Penh to make a film on Cambodian genocide following news that a United Nations-backed war tribunal was preparing cases against Nuon Chea and others. Initially he hired Sambath as a translator and “fixer” to help him secure interviews, but when he discovered that the Cambodian journalist already had access to Nuon Chea, the two men decided to collaborate.
Their goal, according to Lemkin, was to “peel back the so-called ‘mask of evil’ to reveal the human beings who committed these terrible crimes.” The resulting interviews are both chilling and heartbreaking: One peasant demonstrates with a plastic knife how he pulled back the heads of prisoners – in such a manner that they were unable to scream – and slit so many throats at once that his arm ached, and he had to switch to stabbing victims in the throat.
An elderly woman recalls how the swollen, piled-up bodies made hissing sounds as they decomposed in mass graves, causing rainwater to “bubble as if it were boiling.” Several executioners admit to drinking the liquid from human gall bladders, which they believed was a medical elixir. Echoing the language of the Nazis, they say they were only carrying out orders, and would have been killed had they refused.
When the Cambodian war crimes tribunal got word of the confessions, officials demanded that Lemkin and Sambath turn over their hundreds of hours of videotapes. “We refused,” Lemkin said. The two had promised interviewees their testimony would be used only for historical purposes. And a promise is a promise, even to a mass murderer. As a result, former executioners are continuing to speak to them, and, last year, a historic teleconference took place between several perpetrators and survivors now living in Long Beach, CA. The plan is for another such conference to take place at the Museum of Tolerance in 2011.
The film has been described as a Cambodian “Shoah,” albeit without the hidden cameras. “But I see Sambath as quite different from [a figure like Nazi hunter Simon] Wiesenthal,” Lemkin said, “because Sambath believes reconciliation is not only desirable, but possible and every action is dedicated to that end.”
Lemkin does see parallels between Sambath and his famous cousin. “Raphael Lemkin waged an incredibly lonely, one-man campaign to get the word ‘genocide’ enshrined into international law, and in fact after that finally happened, he was found [exhausted] in the basement of the United Nations building, having about given up on the idea that the world would take it seriously,” Rob Lemkin said. “He was fighting a solitary campaign against world indifference, which is very similar to what I found in Sambath. The echoes are very real, because Sambath has been fighting alone for a kind of truth and reconciliation commission in his country, and to come to terms with the trauma of Cambodia.”
The Oscar nominees will be announced on Jan. 25.
The second Lemkin’s Genocide story frames the ‘Enemies’ Read More »
Marvin Hier to Sarah Palin: You’re “Over the Top”
If Sarah Palin has learned anything in the past week, it has to be this: words matter.
First, she faced a storm of criticism for her use of hunting language and imagery after the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Then, in defending that use, she invoked the language of centuries of Jewish persecution, saying that the accusations against her amounted to a “blood libel.”
Yes. Palin equated the criticism she’s facing for her arguably questionable use of language to the completely fabricated accusations that resulted in the murder of thousands of innocent men, women an children over the ages. That provoked Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, to call an out-of-bounds.
“It is simply inappropriate to compare current American politics with term that was used by Christians to persecute Jews,” said Hier. “She has every right to criticize journalists without going over the top.”
From Europe in the Middle Ages to modern Syria today, Jews have been accused of killing Christian (and now Moslem) children for some nefarious purpose. The accusation often led to increased persecution of Jews. The origins of the blood libel likely have to do with the precarious existence of Jews as a minority.
Professor Israel Jacob Yuval of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published an article in 1993 that argues that blood libel may have originated in the 12th century from Christian views of Jewish behavior during the First Crusade. Some Jews committed suicide and killed their own children rather than be subjected to forced conversions. Yuval investigated Christian reports of these events and found that they were greatly distorted with claims that if Jews could kill their own children they could also kill Christian children. Yuval rejects the blood libel story as a Christian fantasy that was impossible due to the precarious nature of the Jewish minority’s existence in Christian Europe.
In any case, it has been an enduring and particularly oppressive myth that Jews have suffered under for centuries.
Why react so strongly to what is clearly just another case of Palin’s recalcitrantly sloppy use of English? After all, Hier is no Democrat partisan. He was a strong, visible supporter of former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and has been close to Republican and Democratic leaders. He is not one to pile on to an political leader under attack, especially one like Palin who has clearly demonstrated her support for Israel.
But as Palin may someday learn, and Hier and other Jewish leaders know wel, words really do matter. Equating even harsh criticism with “blood libel” is like going to the ER for a boo boo. It grossly demeans the historic reality of the blood libel and the victims who suffered brutally and needlessly because of it.
Even if it turns out that the man who tried to kill Laughner was not motivated by Palin’s “crosshair” imagery, or by her use of the language of treason and revolution in describing her political opponents, she has to be thinking that there must be better words to use to characterize those who disagree with her over policy. And Palin must also find better words to describe what happens when the wrong words come back to haunt her.
Marvin Hier to Sarah Palin: You’re “Over the Top” Read More »
Ted Williams heading to rehab
Ted Williams, the formerly homeless man with the golden voice, is reportedly heading to rehab after the above confrontation on “Dr. Phil.”
My friend Sharon had this to say after surveying the landscape on Twitter:
Yeah, I know #TedWilliams is a flame-out, but damn, there are a lot of people who are happy that a homeless guy is down on his luck again.
It’s different, but Dr. Phil’s confrontation reminds me of Oprah taking on James Frey. I only hope the outcome here is better.
Williams’ story, for one, is not fiction. It’s also a lot more redeeming than Frey’s. And in his story God was focal both for Williams and the videographer who shared Williams’ voice with the world. There is also something a lot more biblical about caring for and about the homeless.
Ted Williams heading to rehab Read More »
Baltimore Jewry shows sharp rise in a decade
The number of Jewish households in the greater Baltimore has grown substantially in the past dozen years.
A new demographic study of the Baltimore Jewish community also shows that Baltimore’s Jewish population has jumped by 2,000 people since the last survey, conducted in 1999.
Baltimore is home to 93,400 Jews, according to the 2010 Greater Baltimore Jewish Community Study conducted by Ukeles Associates on behalf of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore.
The number of households with Jews jumped from 36,000 to 42,500 in the last decade. There are now 108,100 people living in homes with Jews, up from 99,900 in ‘99.
The study is the first major community survey to measure the impact of the national recession as well as the first to include cell phone interviews, which comprised about 10 percent of the total, according to demographer Dr. Jack Ukeles.
The study found that the total percentage of Orthodox Jews in the Baltimore area soared from 21 percent to 32 percent; Jews that say they are “just managing” economically or worse shot up from one in five to one in three; and people from age 85 have gone from being 9 percent of the 65-and-older population to 20 percent.
Some 87 percent of the Orthodox young adults aged 18 to 34 are married, according to the study, and 91 percent of non-Orthodox Jews in that group are single.
The study found that 30 percent of children of intermarriages are being raised Jewish.
Michael Hoffman, the Associated’s Vice President of Community Planning and Allocations, said his staff and volunteers are only beginning the lengthy process of calculating how the data differs among age groups, geographic areas, religious identity, intermarried families and other groupings. That, in turn, will help guide the planning and allocations process in the future.
More than 1,200 interviews were completed in 2010 between February and May. The survey has a margin of error of 5.3 percent.
Baltimore Jewry shows sharp rise in a decade Read More »
Limmud becoming new favored networking tool for Jewish authors, artists, groups
Journalist and author Lisa Alcalay Klug flew across the country this month to present at Limmud NY, the annual New York version of the worldwide Jewish learning extravaganza.
The Jan. 14-17 conference in upstate New York will be Klug’s seventh Limmud gathering in 12 months. Like the hundreds of other Limmud presenters whose paths she crosses, she doesn’t get paid for her time.
“I’ve met amazing people, developed new friendships and reinforced past relationships,” said Klug, who splits her time in California, New York and Israel. “My world has grown exponentially because of it.”
Limmud, which started out 30 years ago in Britain as a conference for professional Jewish educators and has burgeoned into the world’s largest network of gatherings promoting informal Jewish education, has become a creative and professional hub for presenters, some of whom have become regulars on the Limmud circuit.
More than 35,000 people took part in one of 55 Limmuds held last year from Siberia to South Africa, according to Limmud. As more branches opened in more countries – there are eight now in the United States alone – it has become a collaborative opportunity for musicians and visual artists, who meet at Limmud and begin working together.
Some performance acts formed for a Limmud event continued afterward, including Los Desterrados, a British band that sings in Ladino, and the klezmer-house dance mash-up project Ghettoplotz. Limmud gives writers an opportunity to promote their books and educators a chance to try out new topics. It also puts Jewish organizations in front of new audiences and potential donors.
Much has been written about Limmud’s impact on those who attend—the celebratory atmosphere, the array of learning opportunities, the radical egalitarianism of its all-volunteer structure that encourages participants to present and presenters to participate.
That was all intentional from the beginning, says Raymond Simonson, the project’s Britain-based executive director. But what he and other organizers didn’t foresee was how Limmud would become a networking tool for presenters.
Unlike most festivals and conferences, which tend to invite experts, anyone can apply to be a Limmud presenter—a big draw for inexperienced presenters and established professionals wanting to try out new material.
“We tell them, you don’t get money, but there’s an opportunity for people to have access to your merchandise,” said Karen Radkowsky, founding president of Limmud NY, which in 2005 became the first Limmud in the United States. “It’s an opportunity for them to be exposed to other thoughts and ideas. When they’re not giving their own presentations, they go to others.
“It’s very different from the GA, where you might fly in, speak, and then leave,” she said, referring to the annual General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America.
The Limmud structure facilitates this cross-pollination, says Uri Berkowitz, co-chair of Limmud International, which oversees all branches outside the UK. Last month, some 2,500 people went to Coventry, England, for the 30th anniversary Limmud Conference.
“Each Limmud is its own community, with a fresh audience, but they’re still part of the same family,” Berkowitz told JTA. “That’s why presenters can go from one to another. Now that there are enough of them, they’ll often know at least one or two other presenters, and can continue the conversations and collaborations.”
That’s what happened to Klug. In February 2009 she went to Limmud LA on her own dime to talk about her new book, “Cool Jew,” and was spotted by friendly spies from Limmud UK. They invited her to present at Warwick in December 2009, which led to invitations to Limmuds in Atlanta, Berlin, Amsterdam and Budapest. Next month she’ll be back at Limmud LA, then on to Winnipeg in March for that Canadian city’s first Limmud.
Limmud usually covers travel and accommodations for invited presenters but does not pay them for their presentation.
Klug’s experience is not atypical, according to Radkowsky. Core volunteers from the British, New York and Los Angeles Limmuds attend each other’s gatherings to poach presenters.
Arthur Kurzweil, a well-known genealogist, educator, magician and former book publisher, has presented at four Limmuds in New York and is headed to his first Limmud LA next month. Like Klug, he is an invited presenter. An experienced public speaker, Kurzweil gets more invitations than he can accept. Limmud is one to which he says yes.
“These are my people,” Kurzweil said. “It’s what I do. Limmud is one more great opportunity to teach and share my interests.”
Joel Chasnoff, a stand-up comedian and author of “The 188th Crybaby Brigade,” the story of his experience in the Israeli military, has presented four times at Limmud UK. Last year he led Limmud sessions in New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta, and this February he’s headed to Los Angeles.
“The first time I went, I had no idea what it was,” he said. “I love it. It’s like summer camp. In terms of the audience, I find them smart and interested in Jewish thought. They’re in tune with what I talk about.”
A number of Jewish organizations have latched onto Limmud as a way to present their message before a self-selected, motivated Jewish audience.
Marc Rosenberg directs One Aliyah, the singles and young professionals department of Nefesh B’Nefesh, which sponsors North American immigration to Israel. He’s presented at Limmud UK the past three years, and this year will be his second at the New York one.
“Since Limmud draws such a strong crowd from across the Jewish spectrum and Israel is a central topic, it seems a natural fit for our organization,” he told JTA. “By attending Limmud we are able to increase our exposure, tap into trends inside the community and answer anyone’s aliyah questions.
“It’s a great place to meet activists and information-seeking Jews,” agreed Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service, who has presented or sent staffers to New York, Philadelphia, Colorado, Los Angeles and Boston, as well as Turkey and three Limmuds in South Africa.
“You can assume the people who choose your session are really interested in what you have to say. And we get to determine, or at least influence, the structure of the presentation, which is not true of most conferences.”
Best of all, Messinger added, “It’s fun.”
Limmud becoming new favored networking tool for Jewish authors, artists, groups Read More »
Scottish burial society employee makes landmark bias claim
In a landmark case, a Jewish burial society employee in Scotland says he was fired for becoming involved with the Masorti movement.
It marked the first case of a Jewish individual claiming discrimination against a Jewish employer in Scotland, according to the Herald Scotland newspaper.
Warren Bader, 49, said in a preliminary discrimination hearing that he was dismissed by the Glasgow Hebrew Burial Society after he helped set up Masorti Scotland in a Jewish community that is largely Orthodox.
The case now moves to a full employment tribunal, the paper reported.
Bader said he was fired within weeks of helping to set up the Masorti organization, and after the creation of the organization was criticized by the rabbi of Glasgow’s largest Orthodox congregation.
About half of the country’s 9,000 Jews live in Glasgow, according to the Herald.
Scottish burial society employee makes landmark bias claim Read More »
Israel, Greece agree to establish disaster force
Israel and Greece agreed to set up a regional force to deal with natural disasters following a meeting between the foreign ministers of the two countries.
Avigdor Lieberman arrived in Greece Wednesday on the first official visit by an Israeli foreign minister in 15 years.
Greece said it would organize the regional force and has invited the Palestinian Authority and other countries in the region such as Turkey, Egypt and Jordan to join the effort. The force comes in response to the Carmel Forest fire in northern Israe last December; Greece was among the countries to assist in quelling the blaze.
Lieberman told his Greek counterpart Dimitris Droutsas on Wednesday that he “wishes Greece would help with Israel’s dispute with its neighbors.”
Asked about the comment, Lieberman told JTA, “I will not elaborate, but I will say that Israel is enjoying the good offices of Greece.”
The ministers agreed that in two months the country’s cabinets would hold a joint meeting to help set up joint joint committees in the areas of energy, environment and technology.
They reportedly also discussed the Exclusive Economic Zone with Cyprus and how Greece can participate in the Leviathan natural gas reserve.
Lieberman visited the Athens Jewish community and laid a wreath at the Jewish Holocaust memorial.
Israel, Greece agree to establish disaster force Read More »
Obama speech: ‘Our children’s expectations’ [VIDEO]
As I was driving to one speech last night, I was listening to another in my car.
“Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame,” President Obama said in the aftermath of the violence in Tucson, “let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.”
Uplifting words and good advice for those of us hurting on the sidelines – those of us hoping for news of the next uptick in Congresswoman Gabrielle Gifford’s condition or wishing we could just stop thinking about guns, hatred and accusations of “blood libel”—images that keep hitting us like the aftershocks of a emotional earthquake. Good advice, particularly if you’re feeling the pain and sharing the experience vicariously through news reports and wondering what you can do to help.
I’d also spent some time earlier in the day looking at pictures of orphan children in Haiti, survivors of the earthquake a year ago this week, and wondering how they can smile when their living conditions are so dire, a full year after the real earthquake.
How do people who have survived such pain, hate or despair continue to hope, dream and love?
As Obama finished talking, I arrived at the downtown Los Angeles Public Library, where Dr. Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian obstetrician/gynecologist had come to speak about his book, “I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey” at a forum sponsored by ALOUD and funded by the Righteous Persons Foundation, Stephen Spielberg’s charity to promote peace, interfaith healing and Holocaust remembrance.
Abulaish is a Palestinian doctor who worked in an Israeli hospital and has always been a friend to both sides in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He became famous when he was interviewed on Israeli television immediately after the killing by Israeli fire in 2009 of his three daughters and his niece at his home in Gaza. As he cried out for the violence to stop, the Israeli television anchor interviewing him broke into tears. Two days later, the war ended.
And there, in the L.A. library auditorium, just two years after his tragic loss, he talked to a packed house about love and reconciliation and his mission to save lives. “I may have the right to hate,” he told the audience, many of us Jews with strong allegiances to Israel, “but the antidote of hate is success.” His own success is embodied in his service as a doctor, saving lives and delivering babies, and in realizing his own mother’s dream of what having an education can provide: Born to poverty in a refugee camp, Abulaish earned his degrees in Cairo, London and at Harvard. In addition to his ongoing work as a physician, he has started a foundation, Daughters for Life, to provide scholarships for high school and university for girls and women.
“The only thing impossible is to bring my daughters back,” Abulaish told us. “Anything alive is possible,” any dream of greatness can be realized he showed us, by example.
Story continues after the jump.
Holocaust archives volunteer arrested for document theft
A volunteer at a private Holocaust archives in Texas was arrested for stealing documents and selling them online.
Mansal Denton, 20, was a volunteer for a year-and-a-half at the Mazal Holocaust Library in San Antonio of the largest privately held Holocaust archives in the world, the Houston Chronicle reported.
Retired Mexico City businessman Harry Mazal, 73, owns the archives. He reportedly spent $1 million collecting the documents.
While scanning documents to post on the archive’s website, Denton allegedly stole the documents. In December, Mazal found some of the missing documents for sale by Denton on line.
Denton continued to return to the archives until last week. He was arrested Wednesday and charged with second-degree felony theft.
Among the items Denton is believed to have stolen, the Chronicle reported, were a handwritten letter by Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler, a diary kept by Himmler’s daughter and documents related to the Nuremberg War Crimes trials.
Holocaust archives volunteer arrested for document theft Read More »