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Jewish Journal

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April 26, 2011

An open letter to my son

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman /

Dear Adi:

This column will appear online just about when you arrive in Poland.

As a participant in the March of the Living, you’ll visit the Jewish

Quarter of Krakow, the Lodz Ghetto, Schindler’s factory, the site of the forced labor camp at Plaszow, the original homes of two Holocaust survivors and Auschwitz. That’s just the first four days.

Then you’ll tour the Zbilagovska Gora Forest, where 800 children were buried, many of them clubbed to death by Ukrainian guards who were following Nazi orders, as well as the Belzec death camp and the Warsaw Uprising Memorial.

The highlight of week one will be the actual Holocaust Remembrance Day March, which will see thousands of Jewish high school students from around the world, accompanied by Holocaust survivors, walk from Auschwitz to Birkenau, to reaffirm the very lively existence of a people those places tried to swallow.

From there, you and the thousands of other participants will fly to Israel,  where you’ll travel the country for a week, then celebrate Israeli Independence Day with a second march, this one through Jerusalem. 

“The goal of the March of the Living is for these young people to learn the lessons of the Holocaust and to lead the Jewish people into the future vowing ‘Never Again,’ ” the March of the Living Web site declares.

When you decided to become one of some 100,000 teens who have participated in the March of the Living since its founding in 1988, I was probably less enthusiastic than I should have been.

You had already spent a semester in Israel as part of Milken High School’s Tiferet Israel Fellowship program — a rich and extended experience that gave you a much deeper feeling for the country than one week could.

And I had recently returned from a conference in Warsaw on “Jews and Poland,” sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at which many speakers detailed the negative impressions created when well-intended March of the Living organizers neglect to emphasize the positive aspects of Jewish history in Poland, the current resurgence of Polish Jewry and the close contemporary ties among Poles, Jews and Israel.

Several years ago, when criticism of that aspect of the program peaked, The Jewish Journal ran a cover story exploring these issues. We called it “March of the Living Dead.” (And yet, the organizers still let you on the trip …)

There is no denying the power of the Jewish journey from near-obliteration in the death camps of Europe to strength and independence in Israel. I’ve watched the YouTube video of Israeli fighter jets screaming across the skies in formation above Auschwitz. That’s not just, “Never Again.” That’s, “Don’t Even THINK About It.”

And, come to think of it, I like the idea that even as the vast majority of the English-speaking world is thoroughly immersed in the happy, fluffy nuptials of Prince William and Kate Middleton, you and your friends are spending today and tomorrow wallowing in some of the most painful dark memories known to man. Clearly, we Jews march to a different drummer.

In any case, you convinced me that no matter what critics say, and what I myself thought, you wanted to see for yourself and draw your own conclusions. So, welcome to Poland.

I know the trip will be meaningful, and you will bring your own unique point of view, your own emotions and intelligence to what you see and hear.

I know you know that in one week you won’t be able to take in or comprehend Poland, nor the whole of Jewish history in that country: The 800 years of relative acceptance that nurtured a Jewish culture of such richness, brilliance, industry and creativity. The interweaving of Polish and Jewish cultures, in food, in language and in the arts. The role of contemporary Poland in supporting its current Jewish communities and in helping to strengthen Israel. Polish Jewish history didn’t begin in 1939 or end in 1945. It began about 900 C.E., and it’s still unfolding. 

I know you know that in one week no one can grasp the complexity of Israel: the ancient roots of the Jewish attachment, the many-threaded narrative of political Zionism, the light and darkness that accompanied its founding and development.  

If joining the March of the Living doesn’t inspire you to look beyond what you see and hear to understand as much as you can about the history and people around you, it will have been a fun spring break, a kind of Holocaust Cancun, but a wasted opportunity.

Finally, one small, pedantic, fatherlike lesson. I’ve already told you my favorite story about March of the Living. It took place at the height of the Second Intifada, when Palestinian terrorists were blowing up civilian buses in downtown Jerusalem. After one explosion made the news, a friend of one of the march participants called the girl’s mother in Los Angeles and asked if her daughter was safe. “Oh, yes,” the mother said. “Thank God they’re still in Auschwitz.”

You can draw your own lessons from that story. Mine is that the world is quite capable of change — change that we can’t even imagine, change that we even despair of. Sometimes it is up to us to turn the wheel, sometimes it just turns. The way things are is never how they have to be. That’s the real march of the living.

Love,

Dad

An open letter to my son Read More »

The book festival gets a new home

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture, Entertainment, Judaism /

The headliners at the 2011 edition of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books range from literary luminaries like Carolyn See, Dave Eggers, T.C. Boyle and Jennifer Egan, to fitness icon Jillian Michaels and master prestidigitator Ricky Jay, but the biggest news is the change of venue. After a 15-year run at the UCLA campus, the event has moved to the lively and welcoming campus of the University of Southern California in downtown Los Angeles.

The festival kicks off, as it does every year, with the presentation of the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes. The winners in 12 categories will be announced at a ceremony on the evening before opening day, but one winner has already been announced — the Robert Kirsch Prize for lifetime achievement, named after my late father, which will be awarded to beloved children’s author Beverly Cleary.

For complete information about the schedule of events — including readings, performances, panels and exhibits featuring more than 400 authors and 300 exhibitors — and for information on how to order free tickets, visit latimes.com/festivalofbooks. Parking on the USC campus is $10. Free nonstop shuttle service between USC and Union Station is sponsored by Target.

The festival takes place Saturday, April 30, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Sunday May 1, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Among the author appearances on the USC campus, there are several standouts:

Chris Hedges (“The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress) is among the participants in the panel titled “Fear & Trembling in the New World,” which assures some pyrotechnics. Also featured on the panel are Barry Glassner (“The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things”), Shane Harris (“The Watchers: The Rise of America’s Surveillance State”) and Russell Jacoby (“Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence From Cain and Abel to the Present”). It will be my honor to serve as moderator. (Saturday, 2 p.m., Davidson Conference Center)

Jewish Journal columnist Gina Nahai will moderate a panel on “Fiction of the Middle East” featuring Reza Aslan (“Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes From the Modern Middle East”), Assaf Gavron (“Almost Dead”) and Laila Lalami (“Secret Son”). (Saturday, 2 p.m., Norris)

Ricky Jay (“Celebrations of Curious Characters”), who has worked magic in print, on stage and in movies, will be featured in conversation with Joe Morgenstern. (Saturday, 2:30 p.m., Campus Center Ballroom)

Reza Aslan will moderate a panel titled “People Power: The Rise of a New Middle East,” featuring Laurie Brand (“Citizens Abroad: Emigration and the State in the Middle East and Africa”), Tom Hayden (“The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama”) and Parag Khanna (“How to Run the World: Charting a Course to the Next Renaissance”). (Saturday 10:30 a.m., Bovard)

Aimee Bender will read from the latest of her unique and enchanting works of literary fiction, “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake.” (Saturday, 11:45 a.m., Harris)

Los Angeles Times editor Russ Stanton will moderate a panel titled “From the Front Page to the Book Shelf,” featuring Ralph Frammolino and Jason Felch (“Chasing Aphrodite”), Gayle Tzemach Lemmon (“The Dressmaker of Khair Khana: Five Sisters, One Remarkable Family, and the Woman Who Risked Everything to Keep Them Safe”) and Judy Pasternak (“Yellow Dirt: An American Story of a Poisoned Land and a People Betrayed”). (Sunday, 1 p.m., SAL 101)

Carolyn See, literary lioness and author of enduring, delightful and important novels (ranging from “Golden Days” to “The Handyman”) and memoirs (“Dreaming” and “Making a Literary Life”), will be featured in conversation with Times staff writer Thomas Curwen. (10:30 a.m., Taper 201)

Feminist author and scholar Lois Banner will moderate a panel titled “Hollywood Icons” featuring Leo Braudy (“The Hollywood Sign: Fantasy and Reality of an American Icon”), M.G. Lord (“Astro Turf”) and Karen Sternheimer (“Celebrity Culture and the American Dream: Stardom and Social Mobility”). (Sunday, 2:30 p.m., Harris)

Poet and USC professor David St. John will moderate a panel titled “The Poet’s Journey: Personal Reflection and Public Revelation” featuring Nick Flynn (“The Ticking Is the Bomb: A Memoir”), Dana Goodyear (“Honey and Junk”), Yehoshua November (”God’s Optimism”) and Matthew Zapruder (“Come on All You Ghosts”). (Sunday, 12:30 p.m., Annenberg Auditorium)

Jonathan Kirsch, author and publishing attorney, is the book editor of The Jewish Journal. He blogs on books at The book festival gets a new home Read More »

U.S. Holocaust museum pushes West Coast visibility

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

During a lecture on genocide prevention at American Jewish University (AJU) on April 13, Michael Abramowitz, director of the Committee on Conscience at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, discussed a shift in the international community’s view of how to handle crimes against humanity. 

We’re seeing a “shift from a culture responding after the fact to a culture of prevention,” Abramowitz said.

The discussion, titled “From Memory to Action,” along with other recent events, including a presentation in Long Beach last February focused on Nazi collaborators, is part of the Washington D.C.-based museum’s “strategy to expand our presence” on the West Coast, according to Michael Sarid, Western regional director of the museum.

The museum has programs he believes have “flown under the radar,” Sarid said, including an annual teachers’ forum on Holocaust education that takes place in Los Angeles and San Francisco, as well as the museum’s efforts to partner with local universities, including Loyola Marymount, UCLA and California State University, Long Beach, to present lectures and traveling exhibitions. 

At AJU Abramowitz discussed his recent trip to Sudan, which he said was true to the mission of the Committee on Conscience, the museum’s genocide awareness program — part of his effort to “bear witness” by going to “a place where genocide has happened or there exists the threat of genocide.”

In February, Sudan offered its citizens the opportunity to vote on a referendum to split the country into northern and southern regions. Despite violence leading up to the vote, most people living in southern Sudan endorsed independence from the north.

Abramowitz, a former Washington Post White House correspondent, explained that he and others on the Committee on Conscience had been concerned that genocide, similar to those in Darfur or Rwanda, could have occurred in Sudan.

But at AJU, Abramowitz described the new state of Southern Sudan as secure. It’s a poor but relatively peaceful place, he said.

Jewish World Watch, a nonprofit dedicated to genocide prevention efforts, co-sponsored the event at AJU, along with the school’s Sigi Ziering Institute.

Despite the vast array of local Holocaust programs and institutions worldwide, among them Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance and the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, as well as USC’s Shoah Foundation Institute, there is still the need for programs put on by the D.C.-based museum here in Los Angeles, Sarid said.

The museum’s director, Sara Bloomfield, “has said many times through the years that no one organization can carry the massive burden of Holocaust remembrance education alone,” Sarid said. “It really takes a village, a broad effort.”
— Ryan Torok, Staff Writer

U.S. Holocaust museum pushes West Coast visibility Read More »

Yaroslavsky observes Nigeria’s democratic process

Leave a Comment / Bill Boyarsky, Opinion /

Zev Yaroslavsky’s latest nation-building assignment wasn’t easy.  Dispatched to Nigeria as part of an international corps of election observers, he checked on polling places during elections this month in a nation better known for ethnic violence and corruption than orderly changes in government.

I talked to the Los Angeles County supervisor on the phone last week as the United States was engaged in doubtful efforts to install some form of democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya and is hoping for democratic regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Syria.

Yaroslavsky has served as an international election observer for the past several years, an assignment given him by the Washington-based National Democratic Institute. He has learned something about trying to plant democratic institutions in unwilling nations. He previously served in Romania, Mexico and Ukraine.

From those experiences, he has a realistic view of the process of building democratic nations.

“A free and transparent election does not in itself mean you are living in a democracy,” he said. “The institutions that protect democracy, the rule of law, have a great trouble taking root when people are starving.

“It’s not enough to have a free and open election if the person you are electing is becoming part of a government that is corrupt and insensitive to the needs of the people. Once the election is over, the political and social institutions that protect [the results of] that vote are as critical as the election itself.”

That’s a major challenge in Nigeria. The nation is one of the world’s largest oil producers, but, a BBC analysis noted, “Few Nigerians, including those in oil-producing areas, have benefited from the oil wealth.” Nigeria is the United States’ fourth-largest source of imported oil, ranking below Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

Yaroslavsky observed Nigeria’s national assembly elections April 9 and then returned to Los Angeles. Later in the month, President Goodluck Jonathan was elected to a full term in a contest marked by a sharp division between the Muslim north and the Christian south. Supporters of the loser, Muhammadu Buhari, who is popular in the north, rioted afterward. The Web site allAfrica.com reported 121 people were killed and hundreds injured in post-election violence.

When Yaroslavsky and others on the observer team met before scattering throughout the country, they were wary of the outcome. And Election Day, he wrote in his blog, “started ominously.”

“The night before, a terrorist bomb exploded in the city of Suleja, 12 miles from the nation’s capital, Abuja. At least 13 people were killed. There were several other incidents Friday night that were obviously designed to disrupt the election.” He added, “It didn’t work.”

But although “the prospects of a successful democratic election are very slim … what happened in this election, if you judge by what Nigeria has had over the last 12 years, was a dramatic improvement.”

As for himself, Yaroslavsky found the work exhausting. He wrote in his blog, “It took hours in the a.m. for people to check in, and then several more hours in the p.m. for voters to cast their ballots. All voting was outdoors, and it was hot and humid. I was wiped out, and I had an air-conditioned car to which to escape. I can’t imagine what women with babies on their backs were going through, standing for hours at a time. These waits created some episodic tension.”

In the end, Yaroslavsky felt the effort was more than worthwhile: “On the whole, the consensus of opinion of all the observation groups was that the will of the Nigerian people was represented in this election.”

While watching the voting in sweltering heat, he was impressed by the voters. The complicated Nigerian election procedures require them to sign up, and then wait to vote. He said they stood “for five hours outdoors … in 95 degree heat and 97 degree humidity. … Here were these women, many with babies on their backs, standing for hours at a time just to cast their vote, and many stayed for the count.”

Next up for Yaroslavsky is the decision on whether he will run for mayor of Los Angeles in 2013. Even though the election is far away, politicians, their fundraisers and campaign managers are already at work.

The others interested in the race are City Controller Wendy Greuel, Councilwoman Jan Perry, Council President Eric Garcetti, former mayoral aide and businessman Austin Beutner, developer Rick Caruso and state Sen. Alex Padilla. Yaroslavsky is best known from his years as a member of the city council and the board of supervisors. He’s also part of the Westside-West Valley Jewish community, which should help with votes and fundraising.

“I’m looking at it very seriously,” Yaroslavsky said. “I’ll make a decision by this summer. I am doing my due diligence, talking to my supporters. It’s an important election. The city is at a crossroads.“

If he runs, it sounds as if Yaroslavsky will run against the city hall insiders. Years ago, he was once one of them but most — if not all — of his old colleagues are gone.

“City hall is like summer camp,” he said. “You go to camp and leave reality. It’s become surreal and unreal.”

A mayoral election would be more peaceful than the one he observed in Nigeria. But, in a much more mild way, the challenge is the same — campaigning among many ethnic and economic groups, all of them convinced they are right.

Bill Boyarsky is a columnist for The Jewish Journal, Truthdig and L.A. Observed, and the author of “Inventing L.A.: The Chandlers and Their Times” (Angel City Press).

Yaroslavsky observes Nigeria’s democratic process Read More »

AJU women to honor filmmaker Mazursky

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Culture, Entertainment, Film /

Filmmaker Paul Mazursky will be honored with the Burning Bush Award by the University Women of the American Jewish University (AJU) at the group’s author-artist luncheon on May 3.

Sharing the stage at the Beverly Hills Hotel will be Marion Goldenfeld, who will receive the Woman of Achievement Award.

The organization was founded in 1963 to support what was then called the University of Judaism and has hosted the luncheons for 45 consecutive years.

The 155 members of University Women raise close to $100,000 each year for scholarships and other AJU needs. They host the annual Young People’s Concert; run an all-volunteer gift shop, information center and bookstore; provide docents for university tours; and involve the community through lectures and classes, said Myrna Margol, the group’s president.

From the late 1960s to the early 1990s, Mazursky’s movies set the standard for social satire, exploration of the nascent sexual revolution and creation of complex Jewish characters.

He received four Oscar nominations for his screenplays and movies, such as “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,” “Harry and Tonto,” “Next Stop, Greenwich Village,” “Moscow on the Hudson,” “Down and Out in Beverly Hills” and “Enemies, A Love Story.”

Previous Burning Bush honorees include Isaac Bashevis Singer, Neil Simon, Helen Hayes, Steve Allen, Norman Corwin, and Ariel and Will Durant.

Goldenfeld has served and supported numerous community organizations and institutions throughout Los Angeles, including the American Youth Orchestra, Jewish Home for the Aging, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Friends of Sheba, Anti-Defamation League and University Synagogue.

Barbara Dickson will chair the May 3 luncheon, which starts at 11:45 a.m., preceded by a boutique at 10 a.m. Men are welcome.

For information and reservations, contact Betty Carmona at (310) 440-1283, or e-mail {encode=”bjcarmona@aol.com” title=”bjcarmona@aol.com”}.

AJU women to honor filmmaker Mazursky Read More »

A daughter tells her mother’s story of the Holocaust

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

A Los Angeles native and child of a Holocaust survivor, Tema Merback has written “In the Face of Evil,” a unique kind of Holocaust book — a novel written in the first person from her mother’s perspective. 

In relating the true story of what her mother faced during the war, Merback says that the narrative form she chose was missing from the canon of Holocaust books.

“Every survivor writes a memoir, but they are not pieces of literature,” she said. “That’s why I turned to the novel form, [so it] wouldn’t turn people off, would inspire them, hold them.”

On April 29, Merback and her mother, Dina Frydman Balbien, will appear at the Malibu Jewish Center and Synagogue. They will discuss, read from and sign copies of the book.

The book begins in the summer of 1939, when Balbien was 10 years old, and follows the girl through her life in the ghetto, to a labor camp and Auschwitz, where her family was killed.

Merback self-published the book in 2010 — it took her two years to write — and the descriptiveness of the prose reflects not only Merback’s talent, but Balbien’s inability to forget what she went through.

“Although I have tried at times to put the war behind me for both mine and my children’s sanity,” Balbien says in the book’s prologue, “like the tattoo that I bear, it is burned into me and has colored every moment of my life.”

A daughter tells her mother’s story of the Holocaust Read More »

Progressive Jews support improved contracts for Hyatt employees

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Progressive leaders from the local Jewish community showed support for employees of the Hyatt hotel chain on April 21.

A delegation of Jewish community leaders convened at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza and met with hotel staff persons. The delegation called on the hotel to provide better wages for the hotel’s nonmanagement employees, an end to union busting and a safer work environment for its employees.

Rabbi Jonathan Klein, executive director of the economic justice advocacy group CLUE-LA, led the group, which brought symbols of Passover — matzah, bitter herbs and cups of wine — to the meeting to illustrate their message.

“Symbols of enslavement and suffering, and symbols of freedom and liberation,” Klein explained.

Tracey Pool, senior executive assistant manager at Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, met with the delegation on behalf of the hotel.

“Please understand that we would love to settle the issues we have had, and we would love to have a fair contract in place, that this is not an anti-union hotel,” Pool said.

Klein asked Pool which “she’d rather consume,” wine or the bitter herbs. When Pool said she preferred the wine, Klein handed her a glass, and they both drank.

CLUE-LA, an interfaith social justice organization, in partnership with Unite Here Local 11, the union that represents the workers at the Hyatt Regency Century Plaza, called for the meeting, which took place in the reception area outside the office of Hyatt Regency Century Plaza general manager David Horowitz.

The delegation in support of the workers included the Progressive Jewish Alliance, the Jewish Labor Committee, several Los Angeles rabbis and Christian leaders.

L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz attended the meeting, and he spoke of a bright future for hotel employees. “This change has to happen. It is going to happen,” Koretz said to Pool. “It’s just a question of when.”

The meeting showed the Jewish community’s ongoing commitment to Hyatt employees. Last July, CLUE-LA participated in a large protest on Sunset Boulevard on behalf of Hyatt workers. That day’s events included a sit-in that led to 63 arrests for civil disobedience.

Progressive Jews support improved contracts for Hyatt employees Read More »

We were not alone

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Opinion /

This year, the first day of Passover and the anniversary of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising fell only one day apart. Passover teaches the story of the Jewish people’s historic, successful dash for freedom. The young Jewish men and women of the Warsaw Ghetto, who led the first mass uprising against Nazi rule in occupied Europe, were ultimately defeated, and most of the survivors were transported to the death camps. No Red Sea parted for Warsaw’s Jews during the terrible years of Nazi occupation, nor did the heavens darken; however, they were not totally abandoned to their fate. The 23,788 names on the Yad Vashem roster of Righteous Among the Nations remind us of that. One of those names, Irena Sendler, will be the focus of a new American documentary film that will premiere nationwide on PBS on May 1, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The single largest group of the Righteous comes from Poland, once host to Europe’s largest Jewish population and the country the Germans singled out as the focal point of the Holocaust. And although thousands of individual Poles — whether motivated by hatred, greed or fear — did take part in the genocide, throughout the war thousands of others risked their lives and the lives of their families to help save Jews, often complete strangers. Irena Sendler, a woman of enormous courage and prodigious organizing skills, was one of these rescuers. Titled “Irena Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers,” the PBS documentary includes the last in-depth interview Sendler gave before her death in 2008, at age 98. Jewish men and women who as children were saved by Sendler’s rescue operation are also profiled.

Sendler was a dedicated social worker before the war, and her wartime activities on behalf of the Jews were a logical extension of her early commitment to do what she felt was just. Placed in charge of the children’s department of Zegota, the Polish underground’s committee to save the Jews, she organized the escape of some 2,500 Jewish children from the ghetto in 1942 and 1943. Many were placed in Catholic institutions and survived the war. Denounced to the Gestapo, arrested and tortured, Sendler was able to escape, only to be hunted down as a “dangerous communist” by extreme-right elements in the Polish underground. Safety eluded her even after the war, when she was arrested by the communist authorities for having been active in the general Polish underground rather than the communist one. Again imprisoned and tortured — she suffered a miscarriage — Sendler was eventually freed from prison but became a “nonperson” in the eyes of the communist state. Yad Vashem remembered her, awarding her a listing in 1965, but she was otherwise surrounded by official silence, even after the communist government fell.

People forgot about Sendler, and she refused to remind them of what she had accomplished. Then, in 1999, a group of American high school students decided — based on a small clipping from a 1994 issue of U.S. News & World Report — to research her story as a class project. They went on to stage a play about her life, and Sendler was “rediscovered.” The Polish state has since honored her with its highest decorations and nominated her for the Nobel Peace Prize. Polish schools now carry her name, and two annual Irena Sendler awards are presented: one by the Polish Association of the Children of the Holocaust, whose members survived the war in the early years of their lives, the other by my own Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture in San Francisco. Since 2008, the Taube Foundation has honored Poles who have heeded Sendler’s larger message of justice and humanity through their rescue and preservation of Jewish life and heritage in Poland. This year’s recipient will be announced on May 13, the anniversary of Sendler’s death.

We live in a time when one is not required to risk one’s life for one’s brothers and sisters — yet, as the Pirke Avot reminds us, “Neither are we free not to do our part.” Irena Sendler, her contemporaries and the recipients of the Sendler Award did not — do not — work alone; thousands of Poles work to preserve and cherish their country’s Jewish legacy and to further understanding between Jewish and Gentile Poles. Midrash teaches that the children of Abraham, fleeing Egypt, were joined by other slaves, who wanted their freedom no less desperately. Even then, we were not alone. And throughout the ages, thanks to those whose love of freedom and their fellow human beings was more powerful than the shackles of prejudice and fear, we never really were. Nor shall we ever be.

Tad Taube is honorary consul for the Republic of Poland in the San Francisco Bay Area, chairman of Taube Philanthropies and president of the Koret Foundation. In 2007, he was recognized as a Forward 50 American Jewish Leader.

We were not alone Read More »

Authors to discuss terrorism at AJU

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Authors Thanassis Cambanis, Joel Chasnoff and Mordechai Dzikansky will present on-the-ground perspectives of terrorism in Israel and the Middle East when they appear together next week during a panel discussion, “Terrorism and the Middle East,” at American Jewish University.

Cambanis, a veteran Middle East correspondent and author of “A Privilege to Die: Inside the Hezbollah’s Legions and Their Endless War Against Israel” (Free Press, 2010), offers a detailed look at the cross section of people willing to die for Hezbollah and explores the hatred of Israel and the United States that binds its diverse supporters.

Chasnoff, author of the irreverent memoir “The 188th Crybaby Brigade: A Skinny Jewish Kid From Chicago Fights Hezbollah” (Free Press, 2010), delves into the eye-opening time he spent enlisted in the Israeli army, including his tour of duty in Lebanon.

Dzikansky, one of the few Orthodox Jews in the NYPD, recounts his journey from homicide detective to suicide bombing expert in Israel in “Terrorist Cop: The NYPD Jewish Cop Who Traveled the World to Stop Terrorists” (Barricade Books, 2010). After Sept. 11, Dzikansky was NYPD’s intelligence liaison in Israel, learning firsthand how to prevent terror attacks.

The event, sponsored by the Whizin Center for Continuing Education, takes place on May 1, 4 p.m., at American Jewish University.

For more information, visit wcce.ajula.edu.

Authors to discuss terrorism at AJU Read More »

Bringing Shalit home

Leave a Comment / David Suissa, Opinion /

One of the most ironic obstacles to peace in the Middle East is what I call the Jewish disease of “ifonlyitis.” This is the school of thought that says “if only” Israel would do this, or “if only” Israel would do that, then we finally might resolve the conflict. I suffer from the syndrome myself, and for that I blame my mother. She convinced me from a very young age that “if only” I put my mind to something, there’s nothing I can’t do. 

Well, Mother, it turns out there’s plenty I can’t do, and one of those things is make my enemies like me.

I was thinking of this last week when I read about the plan to increase pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held captive by Hamas since June 2006. According to reports, the plan in the Shalit camp now is to “take the gloves off” against Netanyahu. That might include politicizing the cause and having more disruptive demonstrations throughout the country.

In an editorial in Haaretz, Nehemia Strassler wrote that the Shalit family has to “wage a personal war against the prime minister” and be “much more militant.” They must “organize mass protests and bring the country to a standstill. They must not give Netanyahu one moment of quiet.”

Evidently, because Bibi has failed to convince Hamas to return Shalit in exchange for the release of almost 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, he’s now the bad guy and must be punished. If you ever needed more proof of the Jewish instinct to blame ourselves for everything, this is it.

This is a sure sign of the “ifonlyitis” disease: The belief that everything is on our shoulders. It’s all about us. We can achieve anything. If only we would release a few hundred more terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands, we might finally free Gilad Shalit.

If only we did this, or if only we did that.

There is a wonderful psychological benefit to this disease. It gives us the illusion that we are in control; that we can affect our situation, no matter how bad it might seem. It empowers us. And when we’re in a hostile and unpredictable environment, we desperately need to feel we are in control of our destiny.

But we pay a heavy price for this illusion of control. First, it leads to tremendous tension and mutual animosity among Jews. Because we assume we are the ones who are always responsible for any situation, we end up constantly beating each other up.

Second, we get so busy beating each other up that we lose sight of the real obstacles to peace. To the Haaretz writer who is calling for a “war” against Netanyahu because Shalit is still not free, I want to scream: “Why on earth are you declaring war against Bibi? In case you forgot, he’s not the one who kidnapped Shalit and is holding him hostage!”

What Jews need, it seems to me, is less hatred of one another and more hatred of evil. Any group that will target a guided missile at a children’s school bus is evil. Any group that will codify the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel in its charter is evil. Those, my friends, are real obstacles to peace.

If we didn’t have this obsession with blaming ourselves for everything, we might focus more of our energies against the real bad guys — and maybe even come up with some imaginative ways of getting what we want.

For example, instead of pressuring the Israeli government over Gilad Shalit, why not transfer some of that pressure to the Palestinians?

A Syrian Jew who sat next to me at the first Seder this year had this idea: Take the names of the hundreds of Palestinian prisoners whom Israel has already offered to release and promote those throughout the Palestinian territories. Drop millions of leaflets with their names and pictures. Promote them on the Internet and social networks. Buy ads in Palestinian newspapers. Film some prisoners pleading for their freedom and run the clips on Al Jazeera.

In other words, put the real pressure on Hamas, not on Bibi. Humiliate Hamas for refusing to obtain the release of its own Palestinian brothers. Have them answer to the hundreds of Palestinian families who would love nothing more than to see their own Gilad Shalits returned home. Expose Hamas for turning its back on its own people.

Think that wouldn’t be more effective than starting a “personal war” against the Israeli prime minister?

It’s ridiculous to keep beating Bibi up over Gilad Shalit. His offer to release hundreds of prisoners is already risky — going beyond it would be reckless and irresponsible. He’s done his part. Now we must do ours.

Just like the global movement to free Natan Sharansky focused on pressuring the Soviet Union, the global movement to free Gilad Shalit must focus on pressuring the Palestinians. Ideally, we ought to find someone with international credibility who could spearhead this effort — someone highly motivated to do something special for Israel and the Jewish people.

In fact, I have a name in mind: Richard Goldstone.

Now “if only” I can convince him to go after the bad guys.

David Suissa is a branding consultant and the founder of OLAM magazine. For speaking engagements and other inquiries, he can be reached at {encode=”suissa@olam.org” title=”suissa@olam.org”} or davidsuissa.com.

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