fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

July 26, 2011

Remembering Soviet Yiddish

Leave a Comment / Books, Culture, Entertainment /

Since the 1950s, the so-called Night of the Murdered Poets has become a summertime ritual for Yiddish cultural circles in the United States. The gathering commemorates Stalin’s attempted deathblow to Yiddish culture: On August 12, 1952, the major group of Yiddish writers, thinkers, and critics, who were the leading activists in the wartime fight against Nazism, were shot dead, marking a bloody full-stop to a chapter of what may have been the most intense flowering of Yiddish culture in history.

Sketchy reports of the disappearance of those important cultural figures rippled like a long-delayed aftershock to the cataclysm of the Nazi Holocaust. Even before it was clear that the Soviet Yiddish literati had been shot, the New York-based Yiddish writers Joseph Opatoshu and H. Leivick wrote in their literary magazine:

“One thing we know for certain: our Yiddish as a living, creative language is no longer there; Yiddish theater is no longer there; no Yiddish newspaper, not even the most meager Yiddish school. Annihilation has been decreed for the entirety of Yiddish culture and literature in Soviet Russia.”

In America, they were sounding the death-knell not only for Yiddish culture in the Soviet Union but also, so it seemed, for Yiddish. In the fifties, once-strong connections between Jewish writers in the United States and Russia were breaking down in the face of McCarthyism and disillusionment with Communism.

But, it appears that the Cold War’s insistence on breaking and covering up Jewish cultural ties to revolutionary politics may be less necessary these days. In mourning the destruction of Soviet Yiddish culture, the “Nights of the Murdered Poets” give American Jews the opportunity to call attention to the astounding beauty of Soviet Yiddish poetry and to denounce the Soviet State at the same time.

The simultaneous covert embrace and public rejection of Yiddish Communist culture points at the difficulty in celebrating it. How can you celebrate poets who wrote enthusiastic odes to Stalin, or worse, denounced one another? How do you applaud the only state in the world that gave official, often generous, support to the flowering of Yiddish letters and also murdered its greatest writers?

This summer, two new books examining Soviet Yiddish creativity shed light on what the Cold War obscured: one of the most productive periods in Jewish cultural history. The first, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust, by historian David Shneer, looks at the way Jewish photographers invented photojournalism in the USSR. The second, A Captive of the Dawn, edited by Shneer with Gennady Estraikh, Jordan Finkin, and the late Joseph Sherman, is a scholarly examination of the foremost Soviet Yiddish poet, Peretz Markish. Both books, in their own way, look at a certain “Jewish” aesthetic.

Through Soviet Jewish Eyes focuses on the presence of Jews in Soviet photojournalism as a key to understanding a striking aspect of crafting Jewish history. Famed Jewish historian Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi once linked the entry of Jewish life into modernity with the Jewish drive to create history. In fact, the heavy Jewish presence in photojournalism was by no means limited to the Soviet Union, but was a global phenomenon throughout the twentieth century—think of the iconic images captured by Robert Capa and Joe Rosenthal.

In the United States, this “Jewish eye” in the arts in the early twentieth century may be associated with social, often leftist, critique. In the Soviet Union, writers and photographers worked, proudly and confidently (not out of fear, as some who wish to rewrite history claim), in the service of the Soviet State. Although it may be strange to admit, Russian Jewish visual and literary artists in the wake of the October Revolution became the fledgling Soviet Union’s most eloquent advocates.

Shneer’s book challenges the accepted rhetoric that came out of the Cold War’s distortions of Soviet history. In particular, Shneer examines previously neglected work to show that the often-repeated claim that the Soviet Union’s attempt to cover up Nazi atrocities is not only untrue, but completely the opposite. Jewish photojournalists in Russia were able to keep Nazi atrocities on the front page and continually emphasized the Jewish aspect of Nazi violence.

A Captive of the Dawn breaks similar new ground by presenting a complete view of this complex poet, so little known outside of Russia and academic circles. When his name is evoked at the Murdered Poets events, Markish is easily flattened as a simple martyr in the Stalinist “Great Terror.” This volume tells the full story of his creativity and, in doing so, tells the story of this incredible era in Jewish culture.

This year the commemorations of the murdered poets will continue as usual, but, perhaps, with a new focus. A new generation of Jews, both local Angelenos and Soviet Jewish émigrés, who have made LA their home, grew up in the age of bar mitzvah “twins,” perestroika, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. They appreciate art created in the USSR and, even, in service of the State. This generation that was offered only dissidents as Soviet Jewish heroes can now see a richer and far more complicated story of Jewish culture in Russia.

This year the Los Angeles August 12th Commemoration “Words Like Sparks: Celebrating Modern Yiddish Creativity in Russia,” will be held on Sunday, August 14th at 3:00 PM at Workmen’s Circle/Arbeter Ring 1525 South Robertson Boulevard.

Dr. Robert Adler Peckerar is Professor of Jewish Literature and Culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder and is the executive director of Yiddishkayt LA.

Remembering Soviet Yiddish Read More »

Beck and the Jews: Does he get them? Do they get him?

Leave a Comment / Glenn Beck, Is Featured?, News, United States /

Does Glenn Beck get Jews?

It depends on whom you ask – to a degree – but it also seems to depend on the day of the week.

Here he is on the night of July 19: “The Jewish people have been chased out of almost every country on this planet,” he told a crowd of thousands at the annual Christians United for Israel gathering in Washington. “This is why the nation of Israel is vital.”

And here he less than a week later, speaking July 25 on his syndicated radio show, broadcast on 400 stations, describing the July 22 massacre in Norway of dozens of teenagers at a Labor Party summer camp: “There was a shooting at a political camp, which sounds a little like, you know, the Hitler youth,” he said. “I mean, who does a camp for kids that’s all about politics? Disturbing.”

The statement about Israel earned Beck plaudits from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, in a column he wrote for The Jerusalem Post. “I sat there thinking, if only the Jewish community could offer such unequivocal support for Israel,” Boteach said.

Boteach is hardly alone. Beck earned a rapturous reception when he appeared earlier this month before the Knesset committee dealing with Diaspora affairs and immigration, and he is planning a mass rally in Jerusalem on Aug. 24.

“We tend to give up and be hopeless,” Likud’s Danny Danon, a settler leader and the Knesset committee chairman who proffered the invitation to Beck, told JTA. “And it’s heartening to see Glenn Beck and his show winning the battle.”

The statement about the massacre, likening the slaughtered Norwegian teens to Nazis, also produced Jewish comment.

“He’s back!” Dana Milbank, a Jewish columnist for The Washington Post, posted on Twitter, with a link to the audio. Milbank is the author of “Tears of a Clown: Glenn Beck and the Tea Bagging of America, which alleges that Beck’s theories are rooted in conspiratorial anti-Semitism.

Both of Beck’s statements are rooted in the overarching theory he peddles on his radio show — that despotic movements, like communism, fascism and Islamism, continue to seek world domination, and that they have tentacles inside the establishment reaching as far as the White House.

Beck’s speech at CUFI conflated the threats Jews faced in Nazi Germany with his familiar rhetoric about the threats posed by big government. “You cannot break down people’s doors and snatch them,” he said. “All of us have a right to practice peacefully our religion, to raise a family and to use our God-given talent” to start businesses.

Milbank, who launched a campaign in his column to keep prominent Jews from joining Beck onstage in Jerusalem, says such talk is rooted in a conspiratorial mindset that has never been good news for the Jews. He notes that some of the books Beck urges his followers to read contain ancient tropes about Jewish domination and control.

Writing in The Washington Post, Milbank outlined a greatest-hits list of Beck’s offenses: “Hosting a guest on his show who describes as ‘accurate’ the anti-Semitic tract ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’; likening Reform rabbis to ‘radicalized Islam’; calling Holocaust survivor George Soros a ‘puppet master,’ a bloodsucker and a Nazi collaborator; touting the work of a Nazi sympathizer who referred to Eisenhower as ‘Ike the Kike’; and claiming the Jews killed Jesus.”

Such lists are ripped from context, David Brog, CUFI’s Jewish director, wrote in a counterattack on the conservative website the Daily Caller, and they ignore Beck’s efforts to shine a light on Israel’s delegitimization, which Brog characterized as the new anti-Semitism.

“Beck has not only recognized the threat of this new anti-Semitism, but he’s become a leading opponent of it,” Brog said. “How often do cable news shows devote entire episodes to such ratings busters as reviewing the history of anti-Semitism—with a special focus on Christian anti-Semitism—or interviewing Holocaust survivors?”

Beck declined an interview for this story, but his aides provided background on his friendliness to Jewish groups, dating back to February 2008, when he spoke at a fund-raising event for the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Such appearances have proliferated recently, but so have the contretemps between Beck and the Jewish establishment, which tend to follow a pattern: He offends by likening Jews who promote social justice to Nazis or by likening Reform rabbis to Islamists. Then he apologizes, and then he offends again.

Beck’s supporters point to his devoting two episodes of his recently retired TV show on Fox News Channel to the March 11 murder of five members of the Udi Fogel family in their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar.

The Fogel murders occurred during the tsunami that hit Japan, and the American media devoted extensive resources to covering that tragedy.

Beck, Danon said, “was the only one in the media who gave the appropriate time and context to the massacre at Itamar.” The Likud lawmaker added that the intellectual company Beck keeps is less important than his fervent and sincere support for Israel.

“I care about the issue of Israel, and when you see the remarks and comments about Israel, you should be happy about it,” Danon said.

That certainly seemed to be the view of the CUFI activists—mostly Evangelical Christians, but also including certain invited guests, such as Boteach, who represent the Jewish community’s more conservative wing.

“We love you, Glenn Beck!” a man shouted out from the back of the hall during the CUFI gathering. Beck, who specializes in a self-deprecatory stance, retorted: “That’s somewhat disturbing coming from a man, but I mean, look at me, I’ll take it.”

He concluded his speech by appealing to the anti-Semites he had described: “Count me a Jew and come for me first.”

“Show me the Jews—I’m one,” he said and raised his hand.

So did hundreds of others deep in the cavernous Washington convention center. One woman draped herself in an Israeli flag, and ecstatically danced through the hall.

Beck and the Jews: Does he get them? Do they get him? Read More »

Norway attacks spotlight far-right outreach to Jews, Israel

Leave a Comment / Cover Story, Is Featured?, News, Norway, Worldwide /

For decades after World War II, far-right political movements in Europe stirred up for Jews images of skinheads and Nazi storm troopers marching across the continent.

But in recent years, as European xenophobia has focused on the exploding growth of Muslims on the continent, right-wing anti-Semitism has been replaced in some corners by outreach to Jews and Israel. It’s part of an effort in far-right movements to gain broader, mainstream support for an anti-Muslim alliance opposed to the notion of a multicultural Europe.

Indeed, in the anti-Muslim manifesto attributed to Anders Behring Breivik, the accused perpetrator of the July 22 deadly attacks in Oslo and the nearby Norwegian island of Utoya, the pseudonymous author expresses sympathy for Israel’s plight and cites numerous critiques of the Palestinians.

“Aided by a pre-existing anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, European media have been willing to demonise the United States and Israel while remaining largely silent on the topic Eurabia,” the author writes in his manifesto, titled “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.”

Later, he lists four potential political allies among Israel’s political parties: Likud, Yisrael Beiteinu, Shas and National Union.

Breivik’s apparent proto-Zionist viewpoint is shared by a number of far-right leaders around Europe.

“The Arab-Israeli conflict illustrates the struggle between Western culture and radical Islam,” Filip Dewinter, the head of Belgium’s far-right, anti-immigrant Vlaams Belang Party, said last December during a visit to Tel Aviv.

“Israel is of central importance to us,” German Freedom Party head Rene Stadtkewitz told JTA last year. What Israelis do to fight terrorism, he said, “is what we would have to be doing here. And I am very thankful that they are doing it.”

But after the deadly attacks in Norway, which authorities say left at least 76 people dead, the dangers of making common cause with movements where extremists like Breivik can find an ideological home and where some supporters are known for being violent is all too clear, some Jewish figures are saying.

“A large-scale hate crime attack such as the one in Norway demonstrates the clear and present danger of incitement against political, ethnic and religious groups,” said Deidre Berger, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Berlin Ramer Institute for German-Jewish Relations. “Hate crimes are among the most insidious of dangers to democracy.”

To be sure, Breivik is an extreme example of the anti-multicultural tide rising in Europe, and far-right leaders say they eschew the killing of innocents in their crusade to restore Europe to its pre-heterogeneous state. But some watchdog groups say that European far-right movements provided the ideological underpinnings to Breivik’s attack and they must be held to account.

“Breivik was clearly influenced by an ideological movement both in the United States and Europe that is rousing public fear by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith,” warned the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, Abraham Foxman.

The fact that Breivik attacked those he viewed as collaborators with Muslims rather than Muslims themselves shows just how dangerous extremist ideology can be, the ADL suggested in a statement.

Jewish leaders in Europe, who in recent days have taken pains to distance themselves from Breivik’s proto-Zionism, long have warned that even far rightists who do not espouse anti-Semitism are dangerous for the Jews.

Far rightists “want a Sweden for the Swedes, France for the French and Jews to Israel,” Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary general of the European Jewish Congress, told JTA last October.

“Islamism certainly is a danger to the Jews and to Western democracy,” Stephan Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told JTA last year. “The way to fight [Islamists] is not, however, to demonize and ostracize all Muslims.”

Not all Jews have gotten the memo, however. Polls show that a small minority of European Jews supports some far-right parties, and a few far-right figures have gained a certain measure of respectability among some Jews.

When firebrand Geert Wilders, the leader of Holland’s Freedom Party, spoke at an event in Berlin last year, former Israeli Knesset member Eli Cohen of the Yisrael Beiteinu party was one of the featured speakers.

Wilders also has his Jewish fans in America. One is Daniel Pipes, a columnist and director of a think tank that warns of the dangers of domination by radical Muslims, or Islamists.

In a column last year for The National Review titled “Why I Stand with Geert Wilders,” Pipes called the controversial Dutch political figure “the most important European alive today” and the man “best placed to deal with the Islamic challenge facing the continent.”

Pipes’ writing was quoted extensively in Breivik’s manifesto. Reached this week by JTA, Pipes declined to comment for this story.

As for Wilders, he was quick to condemn last Friday’s attacks in Norway.

“That the fight against Islam is conducted by a violent psychopath is disgusting and a slap to the face of the global anti-Islamic movement,” Wilders said in a statement. “It fills me with disgust that the perpetrator refers to the [ Freedom Party] and me in his manifesto. … We fight for a democratic and nonviolent means against the further Islamization of society and will continue to do so.”

Of course, not all far-right parties in Europe are trying to make common cause with Jews. Many, like Jobbik, a far-right movement in Hungary, lump Jews with Gypsies, Muslims and others as undesirables.

Far-right parties in Europe have varying degrees of support, but polls show their political backing is rising across the continent. In Norway, the anti-immigrant Progress Party is now the second-largest in parliament. In Hungary, Jobbik won nearly 17 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections last year, making it the country’s third-largest party.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s sagging popularity and the collapse of the anticipated presidential candidacy of Dominique Strauss-Khan following rape charges were filed against him in New York gave Marine Le Pen—leader of the anti-immigrant National Front party and daughter of Holocaust-minimizer Jean-Marie Le Pen—a lead in some polls of French presidential contenders.

In June 2009, far-right parties across Europe captured a sizable share of seats in the European Parliament, a development attributed to rising xenophobic sentiment fueled by the global economic downturn. Among the winners were the neo-fascist British National Party and the Austrian Freedom Party, which campaigned with posters reading “FPO veto for Turkey and Israel in the EU.”

The appeal of far-right political positions is not relegated to the political fringes. Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim stances have permeated mainstream political discourse and influenced government policies.

In Switzerland, the far-right Swiss People’s Party is the largest party in the National Council, one of two federal legislatures. Two years ago the party helped spearhead a national referendum that succeeded in outlawing the construction of minarets on newly built mosques.

Earlier this year, France outlawed the wearing of the niqab, the Muslim full-face veil. Last summer, Sarkozy launched a campaign to strip French nationality from foreign-born individuals who attacked police officers and started a program to rapidly deport Gypsy—or Roma—migrants to Romania and Bulgaria.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel declared last fall that Germany’s experiment with multiculturalism had failed.

It’s still not clear how the deadly attack in Norway will impact Norwegian politics, much less the rest of the continent. That will depend on how well far-right parties are able to draw a sharp distinction between Breivik’s violent attacks against multiculturalists and their own opposition to immigrants, Muslims and multiculturalism.

Norway attacks spotlight far-right outreach to Jews, Israel Read More »

As Norway’s Jews mourn, concern about muting of pro-Israel voices

Leave a Comment / News, Norway, Worldwide /

Norway has just 1,500 Jews, but to hear Avi Ring tell it, the country is reacting to last Friday’s bombing of a government office building and massacre at a political summer camp in a traditionally Jewish way.

“As soon as people speak about it, they start to cry,” said Ring, a neuroscientist and former board member of Norway’s official Jewish community organization, called the Mosaic Religious Community and known by its Norwegian acronym, DMT. “It’s like a country sitting shiva.”

A sea of flower bouquets, candles, photographs and handwritten notes line not just major Oslo memorials—like the fence of the exclusion zone around the blast site or the central Domkirke Cathedral—but far-flung fountains, parks and statues with no connection to the violence.

“We’ll be together in the grief,” said Ervin Kohn, the leader of DMT, which is also the country’s main synagogue and counts about half the country’s Jews as members. No Jews are known to have been injured in the attacks.

Yet even as they mourn along with their fellow countrymen, some Jews here are quietly expressing concern that the attack by a right-wing xenophobe who apparently sympathized with Israel may further mute pro-Israel voices in Norway, where anti-Zionist sentiment already runs strong.

In the rambling 1,500-page manifesto attributed to the alleged perpetrator of the attacks, Andres Behring Breivik, anti-Muslim diatribes are punctuated at times with expressions of admiration for Israel and its fight against Islamic terrorism.

And on Utoya island, the young Labor Party activists who were holding a retreat when Breivik ambushed them, had spent part of the day before discussing the organization of a boycott against Israel and pressing the country’s foreign minister, who was visiting the camp, to recognize a Palestinian state.

If the Norwegian public is looking for a larger villain than Breivik, Jews here are worried that Zionism and pro-Israel organizations may be singled out.

“Can the average Norwegian accept that this is the one random act of one confused ethnic Norwegian?” Ring asked. “What I’m worried about is that in the Norwegian mind it will slowly attach an antagonism to Israel.”

Joakim Plavnik, a young Norwegian Jew who works in the financial sector, said he’s already worried by news reports that have focused on the seemingly pro-Zionist parts of Breivik’s writings.

“That can potentially have very negative ramifications toward the small, vulnerable Jewish community,” Plavnik said. But, he added, “We can’t be paralyzed by that fear.”

Rachel Suissa runs the Center Against Antisemitism, a pro-Israel group that counts about 23,000 supporters and 10,000 subscribers to a quarterly journal. She said the Norwegian government’s general pro-Palestinian stance—Norway’s foreign minister, Jonas Gahr Store, recently said that Oslo soon would announce its support for an independent Palestinian state—makes Zionism difficult to promote here.

“Anyone who dares support Israel is demonized,” said Suissa, a professor of medical chemistry. “The Jews need to know that they have a lot of friends in Norway, but the Norwegian politicians are not our friends.”

In an interview published Tuesday by the Israeli daily Maariv, Norway’s ambassador to Israel, Svein Sevje, said it was important to recognize the distinctions between the Norwegian attacks and terrorism in Israel.

“We Norwegians consider the occupation to be the cause of the terror against Israel,” he said. “Those who believe this will not change their mind because of the attack in Oslo.”

Suissa said she is concerned that Breivik’s attack will make it more difficult for Israel supporters and the right-wing Christian groups she works with to express their views. But Rabbi Joav Melchior, spiritual leader of the community synagogue also known as DMT, dismissed such concerns.

“That someone … calls himself pro-Israel shouldn’t in principle change anything for us,” he said of Breivik. “We don’t feel that he’s a part of our group.”

The bombing in Oslo and shooting rampage on the nearby island of Utoya has sparked a national debate in Norway about security measures in this country of 4.6 million where political leaders routinely travel without a protective security detail and police officers do not carry guns. The slow police response to the massacre—it took about an hour for police to reach Utoya—has been widely reported and debated here.

“This happened in a place where if someone walks in and steals a pack of eggs, it would make the news,” Ring said. “Norway will have to increase its awareness of security on all levels.”

At Oslo’s main synagogue, which was the target of an early-morning shooting attack in 2006 that resulted in cosmetic damage but no casualties, security already is high. Concrete barriers make it impossible to park in front of the building, and a receptionist told a reporter that he could not enter the facility on Tuesday “for security reasons.”

Norway, like practically every country in Europe, has a spotty history when it comes to the Jews.

Jews were first allowed into Norway after the Inquisition, but were banned from 1687 to 1851. The first synagogue in Oslo was established in 1892. Some 800 Jews were killed during the Nazi occupation of the country, and many who fled to seek asylum in Sweden did not return after the war.

Today, most of the country’s Jews live in Oslo, though smaller congregations do exist in other cities, like Trondheim, a seven-hour drive north.

David Katzenelson, an Israeli transplant who has lived in Norway for 15 years, said Norway is not known as a particularly hospitable place for Jews. A high school math and science teacher who also runs the small Society for Progressive Judaism here, Katzenelson said he has had a swastika spray-painted on his mailbox and that Jewish students of his have been afraid to publicly disclose their faith.

“There’s a feeling in the society that you have to be nice to everyone who’s in the room—and since Jews are generally a very small group who are usually not in the room, you’re allowed to speak nasty about them because that doesn’t discriminate against anyone present,” he said. “That can develop into very ugly things.”

In the wake of last Friday’s attacks, however, the prevailing mood among Norwegian Jews has been solidarity—as it has for all Norwegians.

More than 150,000 people participated in a “rose march” in front of Oslo City Hall on Monday even after the event was officially canceled for security reasons because it had grown too large. People have taken to cheering for policemen and Red Cross workers when they pass by on the streets. And bars and restaurants are packed in Oslo in an apparent show that this city of about 600,000 will not cow to terror.

While many Norwegian Jews interviewed by JTA were quick to say now is the time for grief and that soul searching should be put off for later, Rabbi Shaul Wilhelm, who runs the 7-year-old Chabad-Lubavitch center in Oslo, said the way to prove Breivik and his ideology wrong is to embrace tolerance.

“What we should try to learn from all this is that multiculturalism isn’t just a thesis and a concept,” he said. “That would be the greatest revenge against this murderer and against people of his ilk: that we can actually practice tolerance in a very real way.”

As Norway’s Jews mourn, concern about muting of pro-Israel voices Read More »

World Trade Center relic installed at Beverly Hills’ 9/11 Memorial Garden

Leave a Comment / California, Is Featured?, News /

When the towers of the World Trade Center fell on September 11, 2001, wreckage was strewn across Lower Manhattan. Papers from offices fluttered all the way into Brooklyn. And as cities across the country prepare to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, the remnants of the towers are traveling even farther from Ground Zero.

On Tuesday morning, July 26, construction workers installed the centerpiece of the Beverly Hills 9/11 Memorial Garden, a piece of twisted steel salvaged from the World Trade Center.

“The first time I saw it I said a ‘Hail Mary’ it was so powerful,” Reggie Sully of McCoy Construction said of the beam, which is about 30 feet high and weighs approximately 1,800 pounds.

The memorial garden is being constructed on the grounds of the Beverly Hills Fire Department at the intersection of Rexford Drive and South Santa Monica Boulevard.

Sully estimated the cost of the project at around $400,000, all of which is being covered by private monetary and in-kind donations. Sully, who has been overseeing the work at the site on a daily basis since April, has had his time donated by his construction company’s owner, Peter McCoy.

The beam will stand upright on a base shaped like the Pentagon, which will be inscribed with the names of the nearly 3,000 people who died in the coordinated terrorist attacks ten years ago. Beside then beam will stand two towers shaped like those of the World Trade Center.

The twisted piece of metal is but a small section of the 13,000 feet of steel that remained of the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks. When the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey announced in 2010 that it would make the relics available—free of charge—to any organization that promised to exhibit them publicly (and could pay the cost of shipping), over 1,500 local governments, fire and police departments and other nonprofit groups submitted requests.

The curators of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, now being built at Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan, got first pick from the remains, which were stored for years in an abandoned hangar at the John F. Kennedy International airport in New York. A cross-shaped section of steel was moved into place at the museum last week.

The remaining relics were all allocated to groups in all 50 states and entities in seven foreign countries—more than 1,100 groups in all—on a first-come, first-served basis. Fifty-three of the pieces are set to be installed as memorials around California.

In Beverly Hills, work is proceeding on schedule for the memorial’s scheduled dedication on September 11, 2011.

World Trade Center relic installed at Beverly Hills’ 9/11 Memorial Garden Read More »

GOP, Democratic appropriators agree on funding for Israel

Leave a Comment / News, Politics, United States /

House Republican and Democratic appropriators said assistance to Israel would continue at existing levels, although they agreed on little else.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Appropriations Committee, in a joint statement with Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of Appropriations, said that Israel’s $3.075 billion in aid would remain unaffected under the 2012 State and Foreign Operations Act.

Hearings on the bill start this week.

Rep. Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), the top Democrat on the foreign operations subcommittee, said she was “pleased” that the measure “fully funds our commitment to ensure our ally Israel maintains its qualitative military edge,” but she decried other proposed cuts, saying the result would be to “downsize” the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Granger countered that the cuts ensure “tough oversight and accountability.”

The appropriations bill, which outlines spending, is a companion to the State Department authorization bill approved last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which sets conditions for spending.

GOP, Democratic appropriators agree on funding for Israel Read More »

Israeli ex-generals, diplomats press for U.S. role in peace talks

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Seven retired Israeli diplomats and military officers met with high-ranking U.S. officials to press for greater U.S. engagement in brokering Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The seven, including Gen. Natan Sharoni, a former chief of planning; Gen. Nehemiah Dagan, a former chief education officer; and Gen. Shlomo Gazit, a former intelligence chief, as well as former ambassadors and top military and peace talks advisers, met Tuesday with senior officials at the White House National Security Council and at the State Department.

The group, sponsored by J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, also conducted briefings in Congress. It pushed back against suggestions from some conservatives that President Obama’s call on the sides to base negotiations on the 1967 lines, with land swaps, would leave Israel with indefensible borders.

Speaking of the 1967 Six-Day War, Dagan told The Washington Jewish Week, “We were small and we won. The borders are defensible.”

Israeli ex-generals, diplomats press for U.S. role in peace talks Read More »

With debt crisis looming, Jewish service groups are on alert

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, News, United States /

Jewish service groups are telling their constituents to be on guard for a possible government shutdown or slowdown after Aug. 2, when the United States is scheduled to hit its debt ceiling.

What that means is not yet clear: The government isn’t saying what it will stop paying for or which debts it will halt payment on.

Moody’s, one of the three pre-eminent credit-rating agencies, said the crisis could affect not only the AAA rating of the U.S. credit risk—the best offered by the agency—but also the ratings of nations that have loans guaranteed by Washington. It named Egypt and Israel.

Democrats, Republicans, the U.S. House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House have deadlocked over a formula that would raise the limit the U.S. can take out in loans while shaping a longer-term formula to tamp down the deficit.

The White House says that as of next Tuesday, it will not have the money to fully fund government, which means that anything from government paychecks to defense spending to social services could come to screeching halt. For Jewish service groups, housing grants that help maintain Jewish homes for the elderly could stop paying out, Medicaid money that funds services for the vulnerable could dry up and the Social Security checks that help the Jewish elderly make ends meet could stop coming.

“We are sending out guidance to federations and Jewish social service agencies to make sure they are aware of the situation and to act accordingly with a message that they should stand by” for further guidance as the deadline looms, said William Daroff, the Washington director for the Jewish Federations of North America.

Daroff said the “game of chicken in Washington could have an impact on the most vulnerable.”

“We are most worried about Medicaid payments that go to Jewish nursing homes and Jewish family services,” he said. “The people who will be most affected are the most vulnerable of our population—the people who are suffering most because of the recession.”

The effect won’t be felt immediately on Aug. 3, according to Rachel Goldberg, director of aging policy for B’nai B’rith International. Instead, its effect will become apparent as the Obama administration chooses what to cut.

“No one is going to be happy with the choices made,” she said.

There could be a ripple effect on the economy. If millions of elderly Americans don’t get their Social Security checks directly deposited after Aug. 2, then mortgages and rents due could be affected.

Likewise, said Mark Olshan, the director of B’nai Brith’s Center for Senior Services, if the Department of Housing and Urban Development fails to send out subsidies to homes for the elderly, the institutions will have to dip into reserves immediately.

“That eats up future moneys,” he said.

The principal division between the parties is over revenue—whether or not to raise taxes as part of a recovery package. Democrats want some tax hikes, while Republicans want only cuts for now.

It’s a division that seeps into the Jewish groups. The Reform movement and B’nai B’rith International back plans that include increased taxes. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the umbrella body for Jewish policy groups, last week wrote to Congress to oppose the cuts-only Cut, Cap and Balance Act backed by the Republicans.

On Tuesday, the JFNA wrote to the president and congressional leaders appealing to them not to gut discretionary spending—the allocations that states use to fund services that provide food, shelter and medicine to the needy, as well as Medicaid. The letter also appealed to the parties to leave alone charitable tax deductions, which have been targeted by Democrats.

Yet as the crisis looms, Goldberg said, it becomes harder to advocate for the whole social services package that Jewish service groups once favored.

“We want to protect Medicare and Medicaid,” she said of the programs that respectively subsidize health care for the elderly and the poor. “But we don’t want to keep pressing for that and end up with default. Everyone is struggling with how hard to push.”

Goldberg said that cuts that do not immediately affect Jewish services may have ancillary effects one or two weeks into the crisis. The government could authorize funds for HUD to pay institutions, she said, while cutting back government salaries.

Another consideration is whether a deal forged after a cutoff in funds would be retroactive, Daroff said.

With the sides continuing to disagree on the best way out of the crisis, no one is sure what may happen.

The looming crisis drew Muslim, Christian and Jewish clergy to the Capitol on Tuesday to press for a resolution.

“The stiffening of the ideological lines is really alarming,” said Rabbi David Saperstein, who directs the Reform movement’s Religious Action Center. “The people who fall through the cracks are very often the people in our pews. When you cut the safety net out from under, it’s the elderly and the hungry and the disabled.”

With debt crisis looming, Jewish service groups are on alert Read More »

Jewish Identity of Intermarrieds in Chicago and their Kids Up

Leave a Comment / Uncategorized /

Chicago has grown to 291,800 Jews, an increase of 8% since the last survey in 2000. Part of this growth may be attributed to children of intermarrieds who identify as Jewish.

Some of the other findings of the 2010 Metropolitan Chicago Jewish Community Study:

Intermarriage rates are moderate: using previous study definitions, 37% of married couples are currently intermarried, compared to a similarly computed 2000 30% intermarriage rate;

While intermarriage has increased since 2000, the proportion of children living with intermarried parents being raised unambiguously Jewish (“Jewish-only”) increased from 38% in 2000 to 49% in 2010.

Intermarried parents who are raising their children unambiguously Jewish are much more connected to the Jewish community than other intermarried families with children.

The Second City has released the findings of the which interviewed a sample of two thousand households and New York is in the midst of their 2011 Jewish Community Study currently surveying about six thousand Jewish households.  Both these cities have conducted regular Jewish population studies every ten years since the early 1980s.

Unfortunately, Los Angeles hasn’t had Jewish population survey in about fourteen years and is not slated to. We can only conjecture as to what is happening in Los Angeles.

Jewish Identity of Intermarrieds in Chicago and their Kids Up Read More »

Foreskin Man gets a new cartoon doppelganger: Smegma Man

Leave a Comment / Culture, Is Featured?, News /

When the second issue of “Foreskin Man” became public, the anti-circumcision comic book’s portrayal of a villainous Jewish ritual circumciser, Monster Mohel, generated accusations of anti-Semitism against the comic book’s creator and against the entire anti-circumcision—or intactivist—movement.

A new online comic strip, “Smegma Man Gets Circumcised,” recently entered the fray, aiming, in the words of its creator, to parody “Foreskin Man” and argue the case for circumcision’s health benefits.

“We point out the hypocrisy of the people who use cartoons and other methods to defame the Jewish people,” Ed Margolis, one of the creators of “Smegma Man,” said.

Together with his nephew, Noah Crissey, Margolis, a Jewish lawyer based in Chicago, has been creating editorial cartoons on a freelance basis.

Most of Margolis and Crissey’s work has focused on the Middle East, but on July 25, Margolis, 67, posted the first two of six planned chapters of “Smegma Man Gets Circumcised.”

If “Foreskin Man” looked like an action comic—think Spider-Man, Superman or Daredevil—the style of “Smegma Man” is much more similar to cartoons that appear in newspapers.

Margolis and Crissey’s parody, which is named for the substance that collects on the tip of an uncircumcised penis, is at times confusing and convoluted. Its plot jumps quickly through place and time and its first two chapters do not include discussion of the implications of circumcision on a person’s health. Its narrative is filled with subtle and not-so-subtle references to Nazis and Nazism, in an effort to draw attention to what Margolis sees as the anti-Semitic goals of intactivists.

“The efforts to suppress circumcision go back to the Romans,” Margolis said. Speaking of the current effort to ban circumcision in San Francisco with an initiative set to be included on the November 2011 ballot, Margolis said, “It’s definitely directed at destroying the Jewish community. That’s what it is. There’s no health basis for being an opponent of circumcision.”

As has been covered in the Jewish Journal and elsewhere, intactivists say circumcision has no medical benefits, puts patients at risk of complications and can cause a reduction of sensitivity in the penis.

In its 1999 Circumcision Policy Statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that although there were potential benefits to infant circumcision, the data were not sufficient to recommend that the procedure be carried out on a routine basis.

“Foreskin Man” was written by Matthew Hess, who also wrote the San Francisco ballot measure that aims to prohibit circumcision of all male minors in the city for any reason other than medical emergency. The comic has been entered as evidence in a lawsuit being brought by Jewish community groups and interested parents in an effort to have the measure removed from the ballot. That lawsuit is scheduled to be heard in a San Francisco courtroom on July 28.

“Smegma Man,” by contrast, has been seen by very few people and is still a work in progress.

In the first two chapters of “Smegma Man,” the strip’s hero, a blond boy named Helmut, moves from Brazil, where his parents live in “a close-knit expatriate German Enclave,” to Detroit to live with his Uncle Max. When Helmut’s girlfriend, Delilah, discovers, to her horror, that he has not been circumcised, Helmut decides to consult with a sports medicine doctor, Hans Mengele, who uses growth hormones and steroids to buff Helmut up.

“Every word in that comic has a reference,” Margolis said, explaining that Brazil was a country where Nazi officers were known to have emigrated after World War II. Detroit, Margolis said, was the city where he thought John Demjanjuk, a notorious prisoner-guard who was convicted by a German court in May 2011 as an accessory to the murder of 27,900 Jews in two Nazi death camps, lived in the United States. (Demjanjuk actually lived in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio.)

Crissey works for the United States Postal Service and lives in Seattle, Wash. He is, Margolis said, working to complete the remaining four chapters of “Smegma Man.”

Margolis has already written the rest of the story, in which the newly muscular Helmut returns to the United States, reconnects with his childhood sweetheart and—at her urging—undergoes an adult circumcision.

In the comic’s subsequent chapters, Margolis said, Helmut meets “Foreskin Man” creator Hess at a party. But, Margolis explained, in his book, the anti-circumcision superhero is always referred to as “Smegma Man.”

“We didn’t want to have any trademark problems,” Margolis said.

In the comic’s dénouement, Margolis said, Helmut, after being mistaken for “Smegma Man,” denies that he is the intactivist superhero in a TV interview with Larry King. He then prevails in a fight against Warrior, a long-haired character with a Swastika tattooed across his chest that Margolis said he plucked directly from the pages of “Foreskin Man.”

“His is the enforcer for an organization called the Intactivist Underground,” Margolis explained.

On www.foreskinman.com, Warrior has no tattoo, and Hess has repeatedly denied that he or his comic is motivated by anti-Semitism, saying that his efforts are “pro-human rights.”

Margolis is not convinced. “I think that his work is anti-Semitic, and the images that he has created are anti-Semitic and have foundations in traditional anti-Semitic drawings, which he seems to be very familiar with,” he said.

The conclusion of “Smegma Man” can already be seen on the comic’s website. One panel shows Warrior sliding down a deli counter—groin first—directly toward a meat slicer.

Asked whether he thought his comic—which is replete with Nazi imagery and references, and concludes with a man being unwillingly circumcised by spinning metal blades—would advance the cause of those looking to preserve the rights of Jewish parents and others to circumcise their sons, Margolis said he wasn’t concerned.

“This guy is getting his balls cut off. It’s poetic justice. I never thought of it like that,” he said. “I still like the ending.”

Foreskin Man gets a new cartoon doppelganger: Smegma Man Read More »