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Jewish Journal

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May 4, 2011

Israel to legalize some outpost homes

Leave a Comment / Israel /

The Israeli government announced it will authorize some houses in two West Bank outposts because they are built on state land.

However, some houses in the Givat Hayovel outpost near the West Bank settlement of Eli will be demolished within a year because they were built on Palestinian-owned land.

The state announced the plans Tuesday in response to a complaint filed by Peace Now with Israel’s Supreme Court.

All of the houses in the Horsha outpost were built on state land, the state said, adding that it would explore legalizing them.

An exception to the demolition order will be made for the home of the late Israeli soldier Maj. Eliraz Peretz, who was killed last year on the Gaza border. The home in Givat Hayovel will remain standing until a legal solution can be found, the state said in its response.

Israel recently made the same decision on four other outposts in response to a complaint filed in the Supreme Court by the Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din.

Israel to legalize some outpost homes Read More »

CUNY nixes Kushner honorary degree over anti-Israel statements

Leave a Comment / United States /

The City University of New York has voted not to honor playwright Tony Kushner with an honorary degree at its commencement after a board member objected, citing the Pulitzer Prize winner’s anti-Israel statements.

The New York Jewish Week reported that the request by CUNY’s John Jay College to recognize Kushner was turned down at a board of trustees meeting Monday after board member Jeffrey Wiesenfeld objected. Kushner would have been eligible to speak at the graduation ceremony.

The decision could be the first time in the university system’s history that a proposed candidate for an honorary degree has been vetoed, the newspaper reported.

Other candidates approved this year for honorary degrees include former New York Mayor Edward Koch and Bernard Spitzer, the father of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, from the City College of New York; Joel Klein, the city’s former schools chancellor, from CUNY; and Judith Kaye, the state’s former chief judge, from John Jay, The Jewish Week reported.

Kushner has been active with organizations that endorse the Boycott, Divestments and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

He has written that Israel was “founded in a program that, if you really want to be blunt about it, was ethnic cleansing.” Kushner also has said that “it would have been better” had the State of Israel never been created.

Tony Kushner responds in this article on NYTimes.com.

CUNY nixes Kushner honorary degree over anti-Israel statements Read More »

Suspect indicted in Santa Monica synagogue bombing

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

A homeless man was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of detonating an explosive device outside a Southern California Chabad House.

Ron Hirsch, 60, also known as Israel Fisher, was indicted in Los Angeles on Tuesday for the April 7 blast at the Santa Monica Chabad House, which forced the evacuation of the Jewish center and synagogue during early morning prayers.

Hirsch was arrested four days later in a suburban Cleveland synagogue and Jewish center by the FBI and local police shortly after evening prayers as he sat studying from a Jewish text. A local rabbi had recognized his photo from a Jewish website.

The explosion launched a 300-pound metal pipe encased in concrete, which smashed through the roof of a home next door to the Chabad House. It was initially classified by police as an industrial accident. Items found near the site were linked to Hirsch, who fled across country by Greyhound bus.

Hirsch is charged with use of an explosive device to damage property, use of an explosive to commit a federal felony, use of a destructive device during a crime of violence and possession of an unregistered destructive device.

He faces up to 70 years in prison if convicted on the four felony charges, according to reports.

Hirsch was ordered extradited from Ohio, which he did not contest.

Suspect indicted in Santa Monica synagogue bombing Read More »

AJU’s Robert Wexler looks ahead

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Robert Wexler, president of American Jewish University (AJU), eschews the labels of Judaism’s mainstream denominations.

“I’m Jewish,” Wexler said last week. “Religious.”

That’s one way of putting it. Wexler is also an ordained Conservative rabbi who attends a Modern Orthodox synagogue and has been running a (mostly) non-denominational institute of Jewish learning since 1992, much of his professional life. Rounding out this trifecta of major Jewish influences, Wexler subscribes to the social philosophy of Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of Reconstructionist Judaism.

Indeed, AJU, which until its 2007 merger with the Brandeis-Bardin Institute was known as the University of Judaism (UJ), was itself inspired by an essay by Kaplan, and his essay “A University of Judaism: A Compelling Need” gave the school not just its mission and model but also its original name. Founded in 1947, the UJ was originally a joint venture of the Bureau of Jewish Education and the Conservative movement, both of which were looking to serve the growing Jewish population of Los Angeles.

Wexler, who studied Talmud at the university while an undergraduate at UCLA, said it was, at the time, “a very schizophrenic institution.”

Today’s AJU is more expansive than ever. Wexler’s tenure as president has overseen marked growth, in part thanks to new programs like the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, founded in 1996, and the high-profile Public Lecture Series, which since 2002 has drawn thousands to hear from former presidents, prime ministers and other government leaders. Indeed, under Wexler, AJU’s profile has developed not only through academic pursuits, but also through a combination of mergers and acquisitions.

On May 12, AJU will honor Wexler and celebrate his 60th birthday. The Jewish Journal caught up with him to talk about his 18 years of service at AJU, and about the future.

Jewish Journal: I understand that you prefer to be addressed as doctor, rather than rabbi. Why is that?

Robert Wexler: Actually I prefer to be called Bob. Barring that, if I’m in the academic realm, and I’m functioning as president of the university, doctor. If I’m at someone’s bar mitzvah, if I’m the rabbi, or if I’m doing a funeral, then it’s Rabbi Wexler.

JJ: When people think about a university, often people will point to labs or libraries. Is there a central core that you feel holds the AJU together?

RW: You mean a physical facility?

JJ: I mean, at AJU, there are so many disparate things going on, between the summer camp —

RW: And the academics.

JJ: And the Whizin Center for Continuing Education.

RW: Right, but the way we look at it in terms of our mission, there’s two aspects to it. One is leadership preparation. We want to provide leadership for the community at every level. The other is educational and cultural outreach. Virtually everything that we do fits into one of those categories.

JJ: But saying that the American Jewish University is about outreach and about leadership preparation is kind of the second step. What’s the first step? Is there an overarching mission that those two goals are in the service of?

RW: I don’t think that I have anything earth-shattering to say on that level. It’s the usual dualism of Jewish continuity, but continuity for a purpose — meaning that it’s the continuation of Jewish life, but with the assumption that Jewish life has something important to contribute to the world. But it’s not a particularly original thought.

JJ: The school changed its name from the University of Judaism to American Jewish University when it merged with Brandeis-Bardin Institute.

RW: I loved the name University of Judaism on an emotional level — because I was here as a student. But I remember one of my Israeli friends, many years ago, said to me, “All of Judaism? You’re doing all of Judaism?” When you’re used to a name, you don’t really think about how it’s perceived on the outside, and it very much said “rabbinical school” to a lot of people. The irony is, of course, that’s one of our more recent programs.

JJ: When one looks at the recent history of American Jewish University, it’s hard not to notice a lot of acquisitions of programs, of properties.

RW: Right, but they’re very consistent. Brandeis-Bardin was very consistent with our outreach function, and because we didn’t have a conference center where we could do things over weekends in a nonurban setting, that provided us with a number of wonderful opportunities.

JJ: When Jay Sanderson became president of The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles in 2010, AJU acquired the Jewish Television Network (JTN), of which he was then CEO. Sanderson said he felt confident JTN was going to be in good hands at AJU. How do you make people feel like AJU, which has its own specific mission, is going to be a good steward to these programs?

RW: Hopefully it’s because we have a good track record. Brandeis, they had two things that they were looking at. One is that we were nondenominational. The other was their sense that we knew how to run a nonprofit organization, and they felt that we wouldn’t mismanage what was so precious to them.

Having said that, we would never have taken on JTN if we didn’t already have in our strategic plan, for about five years, something that was called our “third campus” — a cyber campus. Likely the name will change at some point, because it’s not really a Jewish Television Network anymore, so we’ll have to come up with a new way of explaining what it is. We want to make it more interactive.

JJ: I understand that a new library space is part of what AJU is raising money for at the upcoming dinner.

RW: We’ve never had a library here. What we call a library is — we took a bunch of classrooms and part of the parking lot when we first moved into this building and cobbled it together and created a space and called it a library. We’ve raised over $4 million toward the new library project, which will allow us to start construction this summer.

JJ: You’re turning 60. How are you feeling about that?

RW: The funny thing is, now people know how old I am. If you’re having a dinner in honor of your 60th birthday and it’s public, people are going to know that you’re turning 60, obviously. But that part didn’t penetrate. So people come up to me and say, “I had no idea you were that old!” And then I thought, OK, did I just get complimented or insulted? I’m not sure. Does it mean, “You don’t look that old and that’s great”? Or, “I kind of thought you were young and vital, and now I’m finding out you’re 60. So are you retiring soon?”

JJ: They say that?

RW: No, no one says that. They don’t go that far.

AJU’s Robert Wexler looks ahead Read More »

Dancing in Rabin Square

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Israel /

I have danced in Rabin Square!  That’s a major happening in Tel Aviv the night of Yom HaAtzmaut, Independence Day in Israel. I have bounced my noise-making hammer off my fellow dancers all around me. That is also a major happening on Independence Day. I have no idea what the symbolic meaning of those plastic hammers is, but they are everywhere on Independence Day. The day before, I have stood silently by my car in the middle of a busy roadway.  For miles and miles I could see the cars stopped and the people standing at attention.  They were answering the call of remembrance signaled by the sirens heard all over the State of Israel.  We stood to honor all those heroes who had fallen while defending this land of freedom, redemption, and incredible opportunity. Yes, I have danced many times in Rabin Square to celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut, but this Independence Day, it is different.

People cannot choose their life span. I was lucky (or should I say unlucky) enough to be born into the most incredible history in the story of mankind. I first saw the light of day in St. Louis Mo, in the year, 1936. The great world-wide depression, of which I was totally unaware, was ravishing mankind. We were middle class, Midwest Americans. There were members of my family who were a lot poorer than us. We were witnessing the sun setting on a semi-sane civilization, and the rising darkness of the insanity of World War II. Of course, the greatest act of insanity was the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people and Judaism. 

If this wasn’t enough history, the world was to witness the rebirth of the State of Israel, just a few short years away. The Day of Independence, Yom HaAtzmaut exploded, literally, the moment that David Ben Gurion declared the birth of the State from that historic Hall in Tel Aviv.  Personally, I was almost blissfully unaware of all of these events. It wasn’t until the shock of the Yom Kippur war that I was thrust, kicking and screaming, into the tumultuous history of my people. I was in Israel, almost by accident, in the waning days of hostility of the 1973 war. I was so struck by the intensity of emotion of my own Jewish discovery that I have returned 69 times to the land of my cultural and spiritual birth. This land of Eretz Israel. Now, 37 years later, and with the help of the JNF, my life has changed forever.

So why is this year, 2011, different from all other years?  My son is about to experience the searing emotion of self-discovery that will be far greater than my own. Yes, besides my 3 daughters and nine grandchildren, I have an 18-year-old son. Can you believe this old man has a son who is just graduating high school?  I have three grandchildren older than him. So what is this great discovery that he is experiencing? Today, Max is in Poland for the March of the Living.  This is a program that has been an outstanding success for 23 years. This year there are 7,000 Jewish high school seniors, and hundreds of Holocaust survivors from all over the world trekking to Auschwitz and other slave labor camps in Poland. The interaction between the survivors and the students has been truly life changing. It is not lost on the kids that they are being led by members of the last generation of Jewish survivors. I am reminded of the line in the Passover Seder that reminds us that we are the “the last generation of slaves and the first generation of free men”. On May 2nd the 7,000 kids and survivors assembled in Auschwitz for the famous death march to the killing camp of Birkeneau. The kids understood that this was a daily occurrence during the height of the Shoah. But Birkenau was not the final stop for our kids.  Not this time, not on the The March of the Living. From Poland, the young students fly to Tel Aviv to celebrate Israeli Independence day.  In a few hours they will experience the transition from the blood-soaked earth of the slaughterhouses of Poland to the vibrant free soil of Eretz Israel. This is truly a journey from slavery to freedom. A new chapter of Exodus is being written by the Jewish people, and my son is there.

And so once more I will dance in Rabin Square. But this time it will be my Son, Max, who will wield the plastic hammer noisemakers, and will stand at attention to sing the Hatikvah. It will be Max who will dance at Rabin Square to secure the future of the Chosen People.  Could a father feel more pride than this? Am Yisrael Chai. The People of Israel live, and from generation to generation we will give each other strength. Amen!!

Bud Levin is a Vice President of Jewish National Fund.

Dancing in Rabin Square Read More »

Osama’s 85% dead

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

Two interesting stories surfaced today. In one, at a press conference, the Jamaat-e-Islami party’s chief in Karachi Professor Ghafoor Ahmed said that he wasn’t entirely sure that Osama bin Laden was dead. Our reporter Saher Baloch went to cover it. She came back with this:
Responding to a question, the JI leader said that the operation against Osama bin Laden may have come has a relief for the US but the JI has doubts over whether the outcome was successful. “The pictures that were released after his capture look doubtful,” said Ahmed. “It is unknown whether he has been killed or not.” However, he added that even if Bin Laden is dead, he deserved a burial in line with Islamic traditions.
In the second story, a lawyer has filed a petition in the Sindh High Court, as reported by our Zeeshan Mujahid, saying that the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority should prevent Pakistani and international television channels from airing footage of the US operation Abbotabad as it wasn’t credible and made Pakistan look bad. It was propaganda, he argued. I guess he wants al Jaz, CNN and the BBC to chuck it out. He said they should wait until credible footage is release. He used the word “confidence-inspriing” video.
He said that the burial at sea was problematic as all evidence has been destroyed.
The thing about these people is, I feel, personally, that they can make a pretty convincing argument if you don’t know any better. At this point, however, I’m not sure it really matters to the person on the street whether Bin Laden is dead. As for me, I’ve been reading as much as I can and watching as many analysts battle it out – sort of like who’s the bigger analyst – on television.
I thought I’d share some art work that came up in the newsroom. I’m not sure if it’s already on the internet.

Osama’s 85% dead Read More »

Reporters: ‘Obama was killed … whoops I mean OSAMA’

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /