fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

January 25, 2011

Leaked maps show gaps in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

This time there are maps—not that they necessarily help.

After the collapse of the Camp David talks in 2000, the Israeli and Palestinian sides bickered about who had offered what, and the competing historical narratives were adopted by either side and around the world.

This time, the proposed territorial concessions that former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian negotiators discussed are visible in living color—in a set of leaked Palestinian Authority documents published by Al Jazeera.

The maps are significant because they show how close the two sides are on some issues—for example, which would control certain Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem. But they also show that the gaps on other issues remain far from resolution, particularly regarding Jewish settlements deep inside the West Bank.

Back in 2000, Dennis Ross, now the lead negotiator on the issue, talked President Clinton into not committing anything to paper because he said the controversy that would ensue from maps and percentage sheets outweighed the value of getting things down in writing. He especially distrusted the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Instead of squelching controversy, however, the absence of written proposals and maps stoked it.

Now the leaked maps will help keep the Palestinian and Israeli positions straight.

The map detailing Olmert’s alleged offer to the Palestinian side shows Israel giving 5.5 percent of territory in Israel proper in exchange for 6.8 percent of the West Bank. The swaps that Ahmed Qureia, a former PA prime minister and a top negotiator, reportedly proposed in January 2008 to then-Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni were a 1:1 ratio and amounted to trading to Israel less than 2 percent of the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority accounts of meetings with Israeli and American interlocutors reveal many areas of agreement, most of which have been known widely for years. The Palestinians want recognition of the rights of Palestinian refugees and their descendants from Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, but they also acknowledge that the refugees ultimately will remain where they are living now.

“If the Arabs will be part of the solution, there will be no problem in this issue,” Qureia told Livni in 2008. “We have to engage countries that host the refugees.”

Such compromises appear contingent on the relationship between Palestinian and Israeli leaders. Ties between the Palestinian Authority and the Olmert government in 2008 were better than they are now between the Palestinian Authority and Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. In 2008, direct negotiations were a matter of course, not an aspiration.

How mutual suspicion affects talks is made evident in the leaked report of an October 2009 meeting between George Mitchell, the top U.S. envoy to the region, and Saeb Erekat, the lead PA negotiator. Erekat says that if Netanyahu insists on rejecting refugee rights at the outset, the “Palestinian leadership can only respond by insisting on full exercise of right of return.”

The same dynamic, in which friendlier talks lead to more expansive proposals, applies to territory. In May 2008, in another meeting with Livni, Qureia apparently outlined a deal that would allow Israel to retain a chunk of Gush Etzion, the bloc of Jewish settlements south of Jerusalem, near Bethlehem, as well as nearly all of the Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem. In the October 2009 meeting with Mitchell, Erekat says construction in some of those neighborhoods is inhibiting talks.

The most striking theme that recurs in the documents is how far apart the parties are when it comes to balancing Israel’s reluctance to relocate settlers with Palestinian demands for territorial contiguity in the West Bank.

“In the end the whole matter isn’t merely the value of exchange but the reality of those Israelis and where they live,” Livni says in an exchange from the Jan. 27, 2008 meeting between Livni and Qureia in Jerusalem.

Qureia responds, referring to Maaleh Adumim and Givet Zeev, large West Bank Jewish settlements that serve as bedroom communities for Jerusalem, “I can’t accept Maaaleh Adumim settlement as a reality because it divides the West Bank, and the same goes for Givat Zeev settlement.”

If anything, the documents shatter the illusion that there is a bottom-line consensus about certain settlements being annexed to Israel in a final-status agreement. Many groups refer to these as the “everybody knows” settlements, such as Maaleh Edumim and Efrat, both near Jerusalem.

In fact, the gap is broader than expected, and helps explain why PA President Mahmoud Abbas turned down Olmert’s offer in mid-2008. Olmert refused to give Abbas the map, so Abbas scribbled it down on a paper, and it became known as a “napkin map,” which is what Al Jazeera published this week.

Another “everybody knows” myth shattered by the leaks is the notion that the Palestinians would accept as swaps Negev desert lands adjacent to the Gaza Strip. In the leaked documents, the Palestinians scoff at such swaps and want equally as arable land as the lands they would cede.

The Olmert map, in its attempt to maximize the amount of settlers Israel would retain, resembles a proposal advanced last week by David Makovksy, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a leading pro-Israel think tank in Washington. Makovsky, who is close to Ross, says he has presented the map to officials in the Israeli, Palestinian and U.S. governments.

“The goal of ‘Imagining the Border’ is to present a menu of options for resolving the territorial component of the conflict, meeting Palestinian demands of minimal land swaps with a 1:1 ratio while allowing Israel to annex areas containing the majority of West Bank settlers,” Makovsky says.

Makovsky manages to narrow the gap between Olmert’s 6.8 percent and Qureia’s 1.9 percent to 3.7 percent, but he retains the “fingers” Olmert’s map thrust into the West Bank to capture large Israeli settlements. The Palestinians insist those are unacceptable.

Sticking points seem never-ending. The Palestinians regard Latrun, an area southwest of Jerusalem secured by Israel in one of the Independence War’s bloodiest battles, as “no man’s land” because of its designation as such on some maps. They regard its retention by Israel as a concession. Israel and the international community view it as Israeli territory.

Such nitpicking has a toll.

According to the documents, Livni starts the May 4, 2008 meeting at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem dryly: “Based on what I have heard in the trilateral meeting with Condoleeza Rice, I believe that your offer will not be exciting,” she tells Qureia, referring to the then-U.S. secretary of state.

The Palestinians are unrelenting in pleading with the Americans, in meeting after meeting, to press the Israelis to freeze settlement growth.

“Everyone is saying look at what they get from violence, etc.,” Qureia tells Rice in a July 16, 2008 meeting in Washington. “Please. We need your help on settlements” and on the removal of roadblocks and other Palestinians demands.

Settlements continue to dog the talks today.

The Palestinian posture now is not to return to direct talks until Israel reinstates a freeze on Jewish building in the West Bank. Palestinian allies are circulating a resolution in the U.N. Security Council that blasts Israel for settlement building and urges a return to talks. The Obama administration is opposed to the resolution but has not said whether or not it will veto it.

Occasionally, however, the leaked documents show a surprising concession emerges from talks that the sides thought were secret.

Livni, apparently warning the Palestinians not to make an issue of Israel’s Law of Return, tells Qureia and Erekat in January 2008 that “Israel was established to become a national home for Jews from all over the world. The Jew gets the citizenship as soon as he steps in Israel, and therefore don’t say anything about the nature of Israel, as I don’t wish to interfere in the nature of your state.”

That seems to undercut a policy that she introduced and that now haunts talks: That Palestinians need to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

In the same exchange, Erekat also tosses aside the Palestinian doctrine that all Jewish settlers need to leave the West Bank.

“We don’t mind to have settlers live as Palestinian citizens who have all rights under the Palestinian law,” he says.

Leaked maps show gaps in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations Read More »

Jews shine at the 2011 Oscar nominations PLUS interviews with the stars, screenwriters and MORE

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

It’s the year of the Jew as the 2011 Oscar nominations definitively proved.

Read the nominations breakdown, by category, with live links to original stories with the stars of the 2011 Oscars.

ACTING: As expected, Jesse Eisenberg and Natalie Portman get top nods for starring in the most talked about movies of the year. Eisenberg, for his fictional portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” and Portman for playing the self-mutilating, psychologically unhinged ballerina in “Black Swan”. James Franco, whose mother is Jewish, is nominated (also for being self-mutilating but in a life-preserving way) for the outdoor adventure film “127 Hours”. And in the supporting category, 14-year old Hailee Steinfeld nabs a nod for her portrayal of Mattie Ross, out to avenge her father’s murder in “True Grit”.

Read our cover story on Jesse Eisenberg in “The Social Network”; a 2002 profile with Jerusalem-born actress Natalie Portman; and the crazy antics of James Franco as performance artist; also actress nominee Helena Bonham Carter (“The King’s Speech”) on what it was like to play a Jewish mother

DIRECTING: Darren Aronofsky gets his first nod for the balletic melodrama “Black Swan” and Joel and Ethan Coen—aka the Coen Brothers—nab a nom for “True Grit”, their most commercially successful movie yet. David O’Russell, the son of a Jewish father and Italian-American mother also achieves in the directing category for the boxing drama “The Fighter”.

Read about the method to the Coen Brothers’ madness in our original coverage of “A Serious Man” as well as Hollywood Jew’s comment on their religious skepticism

; plus Naomi Pfefferman on Aronofsky’s breakout hit “Pi”

SCREENWRITING: Continuing with his sweep of writing awards, Aaron Sorkin is nominated in the adapted screenplay catergory for “The Social Network” and The Coen Brothers are also nominated in this category for “True Grit” for their faithful adaptation of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. Writer/director Debra Granik nabs a nod for the chilling Midwestern thriller “Winter’s Bone”. In the original screenplay category, Mike Leigh is nominated for “Another Year” a glimpse into mid-life crises among the British middle class. Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg are honored for their portrait of a lesbian couple and their family in the “The Kids Are Alright” and David Seidler gets a first nod for the sharp and witty “The King’s Speech”.

Read about Sorkin’s treatment of Jewish women in “The Social Network” script; a profile of first-time nominee David Seidler and “The King’s Speech”; and a 1998 profile of Lisa Cholodenko on her first film “High Art”

BEST PICTURE: Producer Mike Medavoy is nominated for “Black Swan” and bigtime Jewish producer Scott Rudin is nominated for “The Social Network”, as are The Coen Brothers for “True Grit”. 

Read Tom Tugend’s full report on this year’s nominations and see the full Oscar nomination list here

THE RED CARPET

What’s an Oscar ceremony without Joan Rivers? It was the good old days when “No Star Was Safe”

**Special thanks to JJ arts and entertainment editor Naomi Pfefferman for her contribution of archival interviews to this report!

Jews shine at the 2011 Oscar nominations PLUS interviews with the stars, screenwriters and MORE Read More »

Jewish moms taking offense to ‘Tiger Mother’

Leave a Comment / Books, Entertainment /

With her take-no-prisoners approach in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” author Amy Chua has drawn the ire of mothers across America who take exception to the draconian measures she recommends to ensure successful, prodigious offspring.

So it’s little surprise that prominent among her critics are another group famous—infamous, some might say—for what they have to say about how best to be a parent: Jewish mothers.

Chua’s book and a synopsis she wrote in The Wall Street Journal on Jan. 8, “Why Chinese Moms are Superior,” lay out her parental rules—no sleepovers, no play dates, no television—and admiringly relate a story of how she once reduced her daughter to tears when she couldn’t play a piano piece.

“If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion,” Chua writes. “The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.”

Chua’s article summarizing her book elicited a firestorm of criticism and became the most responded-to article in the Journal’s history. It also reportedly elicited death threats for Chua, a professor at the Yale University Law School.

A stream of offended Jewish mothers have waded into the debate, among them Ayelet Waldman, who drew some motherly opprobrium when she made a scandalous admission of her own some years ago—confessing in the pages of The New York Times to loving her husband, novelist Michael Chabon, more than she loved her children.

“The difference between Ms. Chua and me, I suppose—between proud Chinese mothers and ambivalent Western ones—is that I felt guilty about having berated my daughter for failing to deliver the report card I expected,” Waldman wrote in the Journal. “I was ashamed at my reaction.”

Ironically, Chua, who is married to fellow Yale law professor Jed Rubenfeld, is raising her children as Jews. Rubenfeld has yet to weigh in on the brouhaha over his wife’s article—Rubenfeld did not respond to a JTA request for an interview—but Chua does acknowledge they don’t always see eye to eye.

“It’s more my story,” she told the Times. “I was the one that in a very overconfident immigrant way thought I knew exactly how to raise my kids. My husband was much more typical. He had a lot of anxiety, he didn’t think he knew all the right choices.”

Writing in the Huffington Post, Wendy Sachs, editor of the parenting Website Care.com, claimed that Jewish and Chinese mothers aren’t in fact so different. The difference is one of style more than substance.

“Chua says that Chinese moms don’t mince words when it comes to their children’s appearance either,” Sachs writes. “They can say, ‘Hey fatty—lose some weight.’ The Jewish mom would more likely kvell over her daughter than insult her, no matter how fat she had become.”

Echoing a similar theme, Allison Kaplan Sommer, writing in the Forward’s Sisterhood blog, claimed that Jewish and Chinese mothers are both uncompromising when it comes to their kids—they just don’t measure achievement the same way.

“It is their broader definition of ‘success’—one that treats social status as important to climbing the American Dream ladder as academic success—that leads to their different ground rules,” Sommer writes. “Chua’s ‘Tiger Mother’ model dismisses activities that are crucial to gain social skills important for climbing the ladder in modern America. If one doesn’t master the politics of play dates and sleepovers, how are they going to handle dorm life and office politics?”

That was the line as well taken by the most prominent Jewish father to weigh in on Chua: New York Times columnist David Brooks. In a piece titled “Amy Chua is a Wimp,” Brooks writes that Chua is actually channeling her children’s attention into less mentally challenging tasks by depriving them of vital social outlets.

“Practicing a piece of music for four hours requires focused attention, but it is nowhere near as cognitively demanding as a sleepover with 14-year-old girls,” writes Brooks, the author of a recently released book on how brain chemistry impacts human achievement.

“Managing status rivalries, negotiating group dynamics, understanding social norms, navigating the distinction between self and group—these and other social tests impose cognitive demands that blow away any intense tutoring session or a class at Yale. Yet mastering these arduous skills is at the very essence of achievement.”

Jewish moms taking offense to ‘Tiger Mother’ Read More »

Israeli court sentences Birthright assailant

Leave a Comment / Israel /

A New Jersey man who assaulted a fellow Birthright Israel participant was sentenced to time served and community service.

Jonathan Haft, 25, was convicted Monday in Israel of aggravated assault for attacking Sherry Kestenbaum, 23, also of New Jersey, last May. He was sentenced to to 2 1/2 months in prison and six months of community service. The prison time has already been served.

Haft also was ordered to pay Kestenbaum about $55,000 in compensation, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Since his release from prison, Haft has been under house arrest at a hotel in Rishon Lezion, the Post reported.

Haft, a martial arts expert, attacked Kestenbaum on May 31 in the hallway of a hotel at a kibbutz guest house near the Dead Sea after she rebuffed his advances, according to reports. Her injuries included multiple broken facial bones, loss of teeth and severe chest contusions that brought on pneumonia.

Kestenbaum told the New York Post Monday that she is afraid Haft will come after her to “finish the job” after he serves his community service time in Israel.

Israeli court sentences Birthright assailant Read More »

Still Blonde. But Not Sixteen.

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

The first time I went to Israel, I was 16.


And from Los Angeles.


And blonde.


We’re talking triple threat.


I was on one of those summer programs in Israel–you know, those Jewish hookup-fests thinly disguised as “educational and spiritual trips” where hormonal teenagers hike, swim, and share mono together.


(I think most of our parents imagined that we’d all be earnestly singing Hava Nagila and Hinei Ma Tov around a camp fire, but no.)


It was a great time to be in Israel: The dollar-to-shekel exchange rate was in our favor, and Ben Yehudah Street was our motzei Shabbat smorgesboard, teeming with other Jewish American hormones teenagers helping the economy.


We’d sidle in and out of shops, duped into thinking our novice haggling actually made a difference in the prices, and inevitably, we’d buy too many T-shirts at Mr. T’s. But hey, you can’t leave Israel without an olive-green IDF T-shirt (in English) or a fire engine-red Coca-Cola T-shirt (in Hebrew.)


During that summer, I spoke Bat Mitzvah Hebrew. And I was fluent in my mistakes.


Not that it mattered.


Whenever we would have exchanges with “the natives”– and by “the natives” I mean rich kids from Ramat Aviv who spoke English as well as we did– I’d inevitably end up playing around in their language: An ingénue tripping adorably over words with “Chet,” “Ayin” and “Resh.” But in a cute way.


And every time I’d stumble through the language, the Israelis around me would hold my hand and help me through.


And who can blame them? I was 16, from Los Angeles, and blonde.


Well, that summer was a long time ago, and things have changed.


In the interest of full disclosure, let me break it down:


I am closer to turning 40 than I am to being 16.


I have two children, and a postpartum tummy to prove it.


I can feel the first signs of early arthritis twisting my fingers like the roots of a begonia plant. Really.


Retinol is my weapon of choice in the War on Aging.


Gravity is

a bitch not my friend.


While it’s true my Hebrew has improved a little, the language is still new to me.


In Hebrew, I misplace words, leaving them somewhere buried deep in memory.


In Hebrew, I’m a time traveler, turning past tense into present, future tense into past. My passive verbs go running. My active verbs are stoned on a beach in the Sinai. I confuse my masculine and feminine verbs and nouns so often that it’s as if they’re cross dressing.


In Hebrew, I’m 16 again: breathless and giddy as I stumble over new words, wrapping my lips and twisting my tongue over unfamiliar sounds. Speaking Hebrew gives me butterflies in my stomach.

And like that summer, as I trip through the language, I’ve found that others are still willing to pick me up and walk me through the nuances of something that is both a little familiar and yet utterly foreign.


(After all, I may no longer be 16, but I’m still from Los Angeles, and I’m still blonde.)

But this time, I am not going home in eight weeks. This is my home. I’ve got two children who need a mother and not a 16-year-old friend. They need badass, not breathless.


They need a grownup.


And so, I must continue to practice.


Instead of grunting and pointing at something on a menu, I will speak up and order. In Hebrew.


Instead of wandering around lost for an hour and a half, I will ask for directions from a shopkeeper. In Hebrew.


Instead of letting B. do the talking for me when we speak with M.’s preschool teachers, I will find out how my daughter’s day was. In Hebrew.


And even though I know that I will inevitably fall hard on my ass, I will take these first few steps. And somehow, someday,I will toddle toward linguistic adulthood. In Hebrew.




A big Todah Raba (See?  I’m busting out my mad Hebrew skilz!) to


“>Jewish family could need for raising “>Jewish names for babies… and advice from


 

Still Blonde. But Not Sixteen. Read More »

Thousands of Egyptians: ‘Mubarak, Get Out!’ [VIDEO]

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

[UPDATE] Three people, including a soldier in Cairo, were killed during the protests in Egypt, the New York Times reports.

In a day marked for commemorating the struggle against European colonizers, tens of thousands of Egyptians, inspired by the popular uprising in Tunisia, took to the streets Tuesday to protest the iron-fisted policies of the police state.

Ironically called “Police Day,” the January 25 national holiday had been created in tribute to the heroism of 50 Egyptian policemen killed by British forces in 1952 in the city of Ismailia after they refused to surrender their weapons to their European colonizers.

But today’s demonstrations spewed anger against President Hosni Mubarak’s increasingly authoritarian, 29-year-long regime.

“On January 25 I will take back my country” was the call to action circulated on Facebook by the “April 6 Youth Movement,” a grassroots opposition group which was organizing nationwide anti-government protests.

“Security forces are killing us and can’t protect us – so why do you remain silent?” a brochure, one of 20,000 distributed ahead of the protest, asked. “Egyptians are burning themselves – so why do you remain silent?”

“Our message today is “Hosni Mubarak – out!” Muhammad ‘Adel, a spokesman for “April 6 Youth”, told The Media Line. ‘Adel said that as of 3 pm, some 40,000 demonstrators were on the streets of Cairo and thousands more in other Egyptian cities.

Maye, another “April 6 Youth” activist, spoke to The Media Line from the operations room setup by her movement to monitor police violence during the demonstrations. She said that sporadic violence was reported against demonstrators near the Lawyers’ Union building.

“What took place in Tunisia has inspired us,” Maye said. “Faith in the police is currently very low because of police violence.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s main opposition group, recently warned the government of pending mass protests modeled after those that toppled Tunisian President Zine Al-Abidine Ben Ali last week. The Brotherhood did not publicly endorse Tuesday’s protests, however, saying only that individual party members would participate, AFP reported. 

Story continues after jump.

Police brutality recently came to the fore in Egypt, following widespread publicity of a number of cases of abuse. Earlier this month, Egyptian secret service agents allegedly dragged 32-year old Al-Sayid Bilal from his home in Alexandria and tortured him to death as part of a crackdown on Islamists following a church bombing in the city on New Year’s Eve. Last June, Khaled Said, a 28-year-old Alexandria resident was allegedly tortured to death by two police officers who tried to search him.

President Hosni Mubarak saluted the police forces in an interview with the police force magazine, saying “those who claim oppression exists in Egypt spread baseless lies and rumors.”

Counter protests in favor of President Mubarak and the police forces also took place in Cairo. Dozens of protesters stood across from Egypt’s Supreme Court building chanting slogans in favor of Interior Minister Habib Al-‘Adli, who they said effectively clamped down on home-grown terrorism. “Al-‘Adli is a symbol of security, who put an end to terrorism, bullying and drugs in Egypt,” one sign read.

But that view was disputed by other Egyptians.

“The ministry of interior now has turned the police from the service of the public to the service of the regime,” an Egyptian blogger identified as Zeinobia wrote on “Egyptian Chronicles” on Friday. “There is no security anymore in the Egyptian street.”

Heba Morayef, an Egypt researcher at Human Rights Watch, told The Media Line that the image of Egyptian police has steadily deteriorated over the last decade as the media widened their coverage of human rights abuses.

“People here are afraid of the police,” she said. “If you go to a demonstration there’s high likelihood you will get beaten up. When it comes to court, the police enjoy complete impunity.”

Egypt’s State Security Intelligence (SSI) was harshly criticized by Human Rights Watch in its new World Report 2011. According to the report, during 2010 SSI “disappeared” political detainees, mostly members of the Muslim Brotherhood, subjecting them to torture and lengthy detention without trial.

Thousands of Egyptians: ‘Mubarak, Get Out!’ [VIDEO] Read More »

Jews get lots of nods in Oscar nominations

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

As Jay has explained, it’s pretty simple to ” target=”_blank” title=”Jews run Hollywood”>Jews run Hollywood”—just not in ” target=”_blank” title=”rundown at Hollywood Jew”>rundown at Hollywood Jew. Here’s what she had to say about the acting, directing and screenwriting nominations:

ACTING: As expected, Jesse Eisenberg and Natalie Portman get top nods for starring in the most talked about movies of the year. Eisenberg, for his fictional portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” and Portman for playing the self-mutilating, psychologically unhinged ballerina in “Black Swan”. James Franco, whose mother is Jewish, is nominated (also for being self-mutilating but in a life-preserving way) for the outdoor adventure film “127 Hours”. And in the supporting category, 14-year old Hailee Steinfeld nabs a nod for her portrayal of Mattie Ross, out to avenge her father’s murder in “True Grit”.

(skip)

DIRECTING: Darren Aronofsky gets his first nod for the balletic melodrama “Black Swan” and Joel and Ethan Coen—aka the Coen Brothers—nab a nom for “True Grit”, their most commercially successful movie yet. David O’Russell, the son of a Jewish father and Italian-American mother also achieves in the directing category for the boxing drama “The Fighter”.

(skip)

SCREENWRITING: Continuing with his sweep of writing awards, Aaron Sorkin is nominated in the adapted screenplay catergory for “The Social Network” and The Coen Brothers are also nominated in this category for “True Grit” for their faithful adaptation of the 1968 novel by Charles Portis. Writer/director Debra Granik nabs a nod for the chilling Midwestern thriller “Winter’s Bone”. In the original screenplay category, Mike Leigh is nominated for “Another Year” a glimpse into mid-life crises among the British middle class. Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg are honored for their portrait of a lesbian couple and their family in the “The Kids Are Alright” and David Seidler gets a first nod for the sharp and witty “The King’s Speech”.

Jews get lots of nods in Oscar nominations Read More »

Can Jewish giving weather the transfer from one generation to the next?

Leave a Comment / United States /

Last week’s news that one of the country’s largest Jewish foundations will close in two years, its assets to be divided among the foundations of its founder’s heirs, is shining a spotlight on a major question in the Jewish philanthropic world:

How will Jewish philanthropic giving weather the transfer of assets from one generation to the next?

The San Francisco-based Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, which has given out about $700 million since it was started by Richard Goldman in 1951, with most of the gifts benefiting environmental, health and Jewish causes, will close at the end of 2012, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The foundation, which has about $280 million in assets, will continue to make grants until then, but after the end of next year, its remaining money will be divided among the philanthropies of John and Douglas Goldman and their sister, Susan Gelman—the heirs of Richard Goldman, who died at the age of 90 in 2010, and Rhoda Goldman, who died in 1996.

In 2010, the foundation distributed $12.6 million to Jewish causes, including The Israel Project, the Chronicle reported. The foundation will continue to help Jewish charities until it closes, according to one of the heirs.

“We realized that this time would come,” John Goldman told the Chronicle. “While it will be a transition for all of us, I do feel there is an opportunity for each of us to have an impact in the world and to have our role in tikkun olam,” repairing the world.

It is unclear exactly how much of the assets remaining in the foundation will find their way to Jewish causes after 2012. Of the heirs’ three funds, Gelman’s Morningstar Foundation is the only one that has a primary focus on Jewish causes.

The news about the Goldman fund comes just as several of the most significant foundations in the world of Jewish giving are in the process of spending down their assets ahead of closing.

The Avi Chai Foundation, which donates funds primarily to Jewish education and continuity, is scheduled to give away all of its estimated $700 million by 2020. The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, a family of foundations that helped to found Taglit-Birthright Israel, is set to close in five years.

Both those foundations are taking steps to ensure that the philanthropic wishes of their benefactors are fulfilled. Although Zalman Bernstein, who founded Avi Chai, died in 1999, the foundation trustees he hand picked before his death have been ambitious about coming up with strategies to distribute the foundation’s money in a way that meets Bernstein’s desire to increase Jewish literacy.

Charles Bronfman, who is 79, is overseeing the final years of his philanthropies’ activities. According to the president of the foundation, Jeffrey Solomon, Bronfman and his children decided during the 1990s that it made most sense for Bronfman himself to continue his charitable endeavors until he saw fit and then simply to close up shop. His children have their own foundations with their own goals.

As trillions of dollars in wealth are transferred from generation to generation in the United States over the next four decades – about 15 percent of which will go to charity – questions linger about what will happen to Jewish philanthropy as younger generations become more assimilated and less connected to the Jewish world.

That has become a primary focus for Bronfman over the past decade. Since 2002, his foundation has engaged in several initiatives designed to encourage the heirs of Jewish fortunes and family foundations to get involved in Jewish giving. The projects, known as 21/64, Grandstreet and Reboot, are aimed at helping young heirs to discover for themselves the value of Jewish giving and to carry on the tradition of their families’ philanthropic choices.

“The first generation of Jewish philanthropists are reaching the end of their life spans, and that manifests itself very differently from foundation to foundation,” Solomon said. “Once you lose the knowledge of the original donor or granter, it becomes a different dynamic at the foundation.”

Solomon pointed to a lack of preparation in the next generation of philanthropists.

Gelman, daughter of Richard and Rhoda Goldman, declined to comment for this story, but Solomon predicted that her Morningstar Foundation will become a much more significant player on the Jewish philanthropic scene in coming years.

Asked if the Jewish world should be concerned about the closing of major foundations like Bronfman’s philanthropies and Avi Chai, Solomon said no.

“For every foundation that spends down, there are three or four or five foundations being created,” he said. “There continues to be growth in the foundation field, and especially the Jewish foundation field, and I believe that as newer business entrepreneurs come into the field, we are going to see greater support.”

Can Jewish giving weather the transfer from one generation to the next? Read More »

Tiger Moms tamed by American experience

Leave a Comment / United States /

Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin earned two A’s, one A-plus and one A-minus during her first semester at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

When she told her Chinese grandfather, she was disappointed but not shocked by his response.

“He said: ‘You got an A-plus, but an A-minus, too,’ ” recalled Mates-Muchin, 36, now the associate rabbi of Temple Sinai in Oakland.

Mates-Muchin, whose mother is second-generation Chinese-American and whose father is the son of Austrian Jewish immigrants, recognizes a lot of her own childhood in “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother,” Yale University professor Amy Chua’s controversial book about raising her daughters with traditional Chinese norms of strict discipline.

Mates-Muchin’s parents, both physicians, expected her and her four siblings to get good grades and go on to graduate school. But the expectation was stronger from the Chinese side of the family, she says, as was the insistence on respect for elders.

When her older brother graduated from medical school, she and her sisters joked that “we’d be introduced from now on as ‘Dr. Mates and his siblings,’” she recalled.

But like other children of Chinese-Jewish couples interviewed by JTA for this story, Mates-Muchin sees a lot of exaggeration in Chua’s description of her heavy-handed approach to child rearing, which included forbidding her children to sleep over at friends’ homes and pressuring them to excel at music lessons.

“When I read The Wall Street Journal article about her book, I expected it to feel more familiar than it did, because I have a Chinese mother,” Mates-Muchin said. “But it was very extreme.”

Noah Leavitt and Helen Kim, sociologists at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., had a similar reaction to Chua’s book and the passionate reaction to it in media and blogs all over the country.

The duo recently concluded in-depth interviews with 37 Asian-Jewish couples as part of a two-year research project on how Asian-Jewish couples navigate their cultural identities, and they report that they did not find the level of discipline Chua describes.

“We talked to a lot of different kinds of families – Chinese and other Asian, straight and gay, East Coast and West Coast – and we found nothing close to the way Amy portrayed the way she mothered,” Leavitt said. “We met a number of their kids, and they didn’t complain about anything like that.”

It’s true that the children of the couples they interviewed “were very involved in lessons and homework and other programmed activities of upper-middle class life,” Leavitt said, but he and Kim, his Korean wife and co-researcher, attribute that to class as much as to cultural background.

When it comes to parental expectations, it’s hard to tease out the Asian from the Jewish component, he said. Both cultures prize academic excellence and hard work. But children are subject to a myriad of influences, as are their parents, and after a certain point, causality becomes murky.

“When you hear my name, you think: Hebrew first name, Chinese last name—I should have been a neurosurgeon who plays the violin,” Dafna Wu joked.

Wu, raised in Brazil by her Shanghai-born father and Ashkenazi Jewish mother, is a nurse practitioner in San Francisco who raised three daughters with a Jewish lesbian partner.

“I think culture informs everything,” she said. “All of us have lots of stories, and they all inform who we are.”

Tiger Moms tamed by American experience Read More »

Egyptian police confront protesters [VIDEO]

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Protesters in the Egyptian capital were met with tear gas and water cannons as police tried to control the crowd Tuesday, the ” title=”NYTimes.com” target=”_blank”>NYTimes.com.