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Jewish Journal

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August 31, 2011

Punishment of Italian boys includes reading Anne Frank’s diary

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

Two middle schoolers who scrawled a swastika and “Adolf” on a wall near the Venice Jewish cemetery must read “The Diary of Anne Frank” as part of their punishment.

The father of one of the boys contacted a local newspaper to reveal that his son had been one of the culprits in last weekend’s vandalism, the Italian media reported.

According to the media, the father said he felt terrible about the incident and had issued an apology both to the city of Venice and to the local Jewish community. He said both boys, who had confessed to their parents “in tears,” will now have to read about a dozen books on the Holocaust and then prepare a report on what they learned.

City authorities may then assign social action or other civic work to the boys, who also will be punished with the halting of their allowances.

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Dick Cheney, torture and teshuvah

Leave a Comment / News, Opinion /

According to press reports, Dick Cheney’s memoir, set to be released this week, is one long exercise is not regretting any decision he made while serving as Vice-President of the United States. This is a shame. The first step in teshuvah, repentance, is recognizing the wrongs that one has committed. Cheney, rather, articulates his continued support for interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, extremes of heat and cold, sleep deprivation, long-term isolation, sensory deprivation and stress positions. It’s clear he will continue to defend his authorization of such torture and has no remorse for the criminal acts of torture he authorized. Cheney could have helped in the effort to repair the harms caused by torturing prisoners by expressing some regret for his actions. He has not.

I have found that the greatest challenge for me in talking about torture, about why torture is, from the point of view Judaism and from the point of view of the larger faith community, completely forbidden, is getting beyond the initial gut level response of—but of course it’s forbidden, how can any sentient being think otherwise. However, as with many things, the obvious needs to be articulated for those, like the former Vice-President, for whom, as a result of force of habit or willing blindness and moral obtuseness, the obvious is not so obvious. So we begin at the beginning.

Genesis Chapter one verse 27.

And God created the human in his own image, in the image of God He created them; male and female he created them.

The basic facts that the Torah wants us to know about the creation of the first human is that God created the human as male and female and that God created them in God’s image. This divine image, the tzelem elohim in Hebrew, is the guarantor of the human’s humanity. The biblical answer to the question: “what is it to be human?” is: to be created in the image of God.

To be created in the image of God brings with it the very notion of a life worth caring for, a life precious for its own sake. In chapter 9 of Genesis, the Torah records God saying:

He who sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.

The reason that an accounting for the blood of a human will be demanded by God (from person or animal) is that humans are made in the image of God. The corollary of this is that denying a person their divine image, and even more so erasing that Divine image, is at the same time denying or destroying their very humanity.

Having been created in the image of God means many different things. For the midrash, it is the extraordinary synthesis and integration between body and mind or soul that is emblematic of the Divine image. For this reason the Torah (Deuteronomy 21:23) says of one who was executed as a result of a death sentence:

you shall not let his corpse stay the night on a tree but you shall surely bury it on that day, for a hanged man is God’s curse.

The midrash explains that leaving the executed corpse hanging overnight is the same as if the bust of a king were being desecrated. It is the human being, body and soul which represents the Divine and cannot be desecrated, for in that desecration God is desecrated.

For the medieval rationalist philosophers like the great 13th century Sage Maimonides, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, being created in the image of God means having an intellect and intellectual capacity. The ability to make rational choices and arrive at rational decisions, the ability to acquire knowledge and to know God, these are all aspects of the Divine image in a person.

When one human being tortures another, the point of the torture is to destroy the humanity, the Divine image of the person being tortured. Pain, in the torture situation, is not applied towards any specific end. The words that are used in torture interrogations, as Elaine Scarry has argued, are not the actual language of the torturer. The questions which seem to be requesting information are only the background to the language of pain in which the torturer refocuses the torture victim’s whole consciousness on their body and its pain. The torturer assumes the role of God in that room and the torture is deployed so as to undermine any sense of free will, any ability to formulate actual rational thoughts and choices. The distortion of a torture victim’s body and soul through torture is not a by product of the torture, it is its purpose. The lasting effects and long-term insidiousness of torture is that very loss of tzelem, humanity which is hard to regain.

This moment of the destruction of a person’s tzelem elohim is the reason that torture needs to be absolutely forbidden. Beyond the arguments that torture is not reliable (since torture victims will say anything to stop the pain) or whether or not there really might ever be an actual “ticking time bomb” situation, beyond all this is the prohibition against destroying a person’s tzelem elohim. This is what we affirm when we read the decalogue.

God introduces Godself by declaring: “I am the Lord your God who has taken you out of Egypt out of the House of Bondage.”

What is the content of this introduction? God took Israel out of slavery, out of the state of being a slave. What is that state? It is a state in which one’s tzlelem elohim is erased. When Moses came to the Israelites with the message that they were to be redeemed by the God of their ancestors, the Israelites “did not heed Moses out of shortness of breath and hard bondage.” They were unable to comprehend because their bodies and souls had been distorted by the torturous slavery.

The corresponding prohibition to the opening saying (as we think of the two tablets in parallel) is: “Do not murder.” Slaves are those who can be tortured or killed with impunity since their essential humanity, which is their Divine image is not recognized.

We manifest God’s presence in the world by recognizing that God is the guarantor of every person’s humanity, that every person is made in the image of God and that it is absolutely forbidden for another person to demean and destroy that image of God.

As a first step towards a national teshuvah, we have a moral obligation to fully investigate the government’s past use of torture, not to brush it under the rug or excuse it in the name of national security. The United States must establish a Commission of Inquiry that fully investigates all aspects of the use of torture by the United States to ensure that U.S.-sponsored torture never happens again.  We must refuse to allow Dick Cheney’s moral obtuseness define us as a nation.

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For Daniel Agami, 9/11 attack was a call to service—and to tragic destiny

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

Daniel Agami was working as a disc jockey in South Florida when the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 changed the trajectory of his life.

Suddenly it didn’t feel like performing at events and parties for well-known entertainers was all Agami, then 22, could be doing with his talents. For nearly a year, Agami wrestled with his emotions over the attacks, often talking to his parents and siblings about his anger.

After about a year he enlisted in the U.S. Army, knowing full well he’d be sent to Iraq. It would not be Agami’s first time in the Middle East: As the son of an Israeli army veteran and part of a strongly identified Jewish family, Agami grew up going to Israel every year. But this would be his first time putting on a uniform.

The fateful decision to enlist eventually would earn Agami a Purple Heart, a Bronze Star and an Army commendation medal. It also would also exact the ultimate price: On June 21, 2007, an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Baghdad, killing Agami and four other soldiers.

Service ran in Agami’s blood. His grandfather, Leonard Becker, had served in the Korean War. His father, Itzhak, had fought in the Israeli army. So when he told his family that he had signed up to serve, they weren’t surprised.

“I believe had a calling,” said his mother, Beth Agami.

Even as a teenager, Agami’s brother said, Daniel would sport dog tags and wear military-style gear.

“He chose to join the Army to become more accomplished,” Ilan Agami told JTA. “He wanted to prove himself.”

Agami wasn’t known for taking things lightly. Growing up in Broward County, Fla., Judaism played “an extreme role in Daniel’s life,” his mother said. Agami attended a Jewish day school, kept kosher and as an adult regularly went to Shabbat services with his family at the local Chabad.

After 9/11, Agami said the Army would give him a chance to do something good for his country, and he was excited about the challenges ahead, his family members said. It was all he would talk about in the months leading up to his deployment.

Agami’s first stop was Fort Benning, Ga., for basic training. Maintaining his religious identity in the Army wasn’t easy, particularly in boot camp. The meals were not kosher, and Agami was confronted once by his sergeant for not eating. When he explained his dietary restrictions, the commander went to prepare a plate of fruit and vegetables for him to eat, his mother recalled.

Agami encountered his first derogatory remark about Judaism in Schweinfurt, Germany, where he stopped en route to Iraq. Agami didn’t take it sitting down, in the process earning the respect of fellow soldiers, his mother said. They often came to him with questions about his kosher diet; for many, Agami was the only Jew they knew.

“Daniel stood up to people for our religion,” his brother told JTA.

In Iraq, Agami’s infantry unit saw frequent combat.

“I go on daily or nightly missions raiding Iraqi homes to find weapons and bombs,” Agami told a Newsweek interviewer in 2007. “I lost six of my closest friends.”

When an insurgent threatened to blow up his tank, Agami jumped off the turret, cornered the insurgent and, armed with just a pistol and wearing night vision goggles, killed him. The action would earn Agami a Bronze Star, the army’s fourth-highest combat award, given for bravery, acts of merit or meritorious service.

Some time after Agami was killed, his mother received a phone call from a non-Jewish chaplain who said that her son had expressed an interest in becoming a religious leader in the military. He had wanted to dedicate himself to America by combining his patriotism and faith, she said.

“This was something he would be amazing at had he had the opportunity,” Beth Agami said. “He re-enlisted for four more years and planned on making the military his career.”

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Journey to freedom: Reflecting on the King memorial

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

Time affirms what heroism discerns. The dedication of a statue in memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. is a belated yet significant tribute to a man who did so much to redefine the meaning of our democracy.

Make no mistake about it, there was a civil rights movement in the middle years of the 20th century, but King was the face of the movement, the pulse of it—one might even say the heart of it.

The memorial in Washington, D.C., about to be dedicated to his memory is made of solid stone, of granite. It will remain for the ages, solid and unmoving, a reminder of what dedication and courage are able to achieve.

Yet contemplating the statue, something seems to be missing. King was not one to sit transfixed for the ages. He was always in motion, always on the move. His travels led him on a heroic if ultimately fatal arc—Atlanta, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, Memphis.

In Selma, Ala., and later in Chicago, I experienced no great moral revelation as I answered King’s invitation to join him, no great sense that destiny was inviting me to play a supporting role. Quite the contrary; the feeling was rather mundane. What was being done had to be done.

I had the privilege of spending several days in Chicago with King, who was there to protest a housing market that remained segregated. King’s presence shattered the illusion that discrimination was a southern disease, not a northern one.

We marched in the heart of the city, down Michigan Avenue. I was walking beside King when a small stone aimed at him hit me on the forehead. It was a glancing, harmless blow, but the scene was picked up by a television camera and broadcast all over the country. Friends in New York called: “Are you all right? Were you hurt?”

“No damage, I am fine,” I answered. And then, in a moment, I started to tremble.

“No, I am hurt—not by the stone but by the hatred, the bitterness, the rage,” I said.

It is the anger behind that stone that remains with me even now, so many years later. How easy it is to deplore hatred—even the political hatreds that still drive us away from our own humanity. Yet how difficult it is to understand the anguish of the poor and powerless. And how impossible it is to contemplate something that has begun to affect both blacks and whites—the steady evisceration of a struggling middle class.

So there he will sit for the ages, the man who for all too brief a span would never let us relax or sit smugly silent. The Martin Luther King Jr. memorial will become a tourist attraction. Facing as it does the Lincoln Memorial, it will serve as a reminder that our country’s moral force remains alive and potent.

King and Lincoln—neither led a simple life. Both were shot down by demented fanatics. Both tell us that the journey to freedom still requires wisdom, dedication and courage.

(Rabbi Robert J. Marx, the founder and a past president of the Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in Chicago and Alabama and fought for civil rights in Chicago and beyond.)

Journey to freedom: Reflecting on the King memorial Read More »

ADL calls on Santa Ana councilwoman to resign

Leave a Comment / California, Community /

A councilwoman in Santa Ana, Calif., should resign after she made a “half-hearted” apology to a Jewish businessman that she had compared to Hitler, the Anti-Defamation League said.

Claudia Alvarez, the council’s mayor pro tem, invoked Hitler last week during a debate on a tax for downtown property owners in comments directed at Irving Chase, the son of Holocaust survivors who owns several blocks of downtown property.

“Hey, so if Hitler rents you a place, he’s giving us a great deal, so who cares what he stands for?” she said.

Her statements reinforced an anti-Semitic sentiment that Jews are greedy, the Orange County chapter of the Anti-Defamation League charged and called on her to apologize.

“I do want to apologize to the Chase family for whatever reason they found my comments offensive. That was not my intent,” Alvarez said in her Aug. 25 apology.

ADL regional director Kevin O’Grady in a statement said that “We asked Ms. Alvarez to make a much more sincere and personal apology to the Chase family, the Jewish community and to the Santa Ana community.”

The statement also said that Alvarez’s “unwillingness to go beyond Thursday’s half-hearted apology highlights her lack of understanding about the tremendous impact of her comments. This dearth of sensitivity and judgment illustrates that Ms. Alvarez is ill-equipped to carry out her duties as a Santa Ana Councilmember. For these reasons, ADL calls on Claudia Alvarez to resign her seat on the Santa Ana City Council.”

City Hall received dozens of phone calls and e-mails calling for her resignation, as well, according to reports.

ADL calls on Santa Ana councilwoman to resign Read More »

AMIA president taking leave after parties fail to form coalition

Leave a Comment / News, Worldwide /

The president of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires was granted a two-month leave of absence after the center’s parties failed to form a coalition to name a successor.

Guillermo Borger asked last week for the leave of absence due to “personal necessity to return to my business and family life,” he told JTA. The AMIA executive committee acceded to the request, which came after five months of negotiations to find his successor. AMIA’s vice president, Angel Barman, like Borger a member of the Religious United Front bloc, will assume the presidency during Borger’s leave.

In April, a record number of 10,757 Buenos Aires AMIA members voted to choose a successor for Borger that would take office May 31. Since no candidate obtained more than 50 percent of the vote, the participating parties must negotiate a coalition to name a candidate to replace Borger.

Borger’s bloc achieved 41 percent of the vote, followed by the non-religious Plural Action party.

Borger will return to office on Oct. 30 to lead a new electoral meeting the following week. If that fails, voters could be called on to cast ballots again.

After 117 years of democratically choosing its leaders, this year the vote-getting parties failed to nominate a new executive committee. The Religious United Front and Plural Action have opposing views on core issues such as conversion, mixed marriage and the type of education that AMIA must support.

Borger was elected in 2008, the first victory for an Orthodox group in AMIA history.

“This result confirms that AMIA members want the continuity of our management,” he told JTA after the 2011 elections.

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Protesters get jail time for pie attack on Jewish senator

Leave a Comment / News, United States /

Two war protesters were sentenced to 30 days in federal prison for throwing a pie in the face of U.S. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan.

Ahlam Mohsen, 24, and Max Kantar, 23, both of Michigan, attacked Levin in August 2010 while Levin was meeting with constituents in a deli in Grand Rapids. Kantar read a statement before Mohsen hit Levin in the face with the pie. After being arrested, Kantar acknowledged that his message had been “lost.”

Levin, who is Jewish, was targeted because of his role as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He was unharmed.

According to mlive.com, U.S. District Judge Robert Bell criticized Mohsen and Kantar at their sentencing for attacking the senator even after Kantar had been given the opportunity to share his views.

A 2008 article on the anti-war site Information Clearinghouse attributed to a Max Kantar provided a “translation dictionary” of “the unspoken meanings” of terms referring to “U.S. Foreign Policy, Israel and International relations.” In it he defined “anti-Semitism” as “An accusation usually used to define criticism of Israel’s ongoing war crimes” and Israel’s “Right to Exist” as “Israel’s right to continue outwardly racist policies … apartheid … [and] a genocidal siege on Gaza.”

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EU lawmakers back open markets for Palestinian goods

Leave a Comment / Israel, News /

The EU moved closer to a trade deal with the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday after unanimous backing from European lawmakers to fully open markets to farm and fish products from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The 27-0 vote by the European Parliament’s international trade committee paves the way for full parliamentary approval for a deal later this year, signalling EU support for the Palestinian Authority as it prepares to bid next month for statehood recognition at the United Nations.

While small—trade between the EU and the West Bank and Gaza was worth 60 million euros in 2009, of which just 10 percent constituted Palestinian exports to the EU—the move nonetheless represents an opportunity for exports to boost an economy weakened by chronic conflict with Israel.

“This deal is enormously important. It gives more power to the Palestinians to trade directly with the EU. And it’s a signal of good will from the international community that comes at an important time,” said Maria Eleni Koppa, a Greek socialist lawmaker who led the committee’s discussion on the issue.

The West Bank and Gaza mostly export vegetables, fruits and cut flowers to the European Union, while the territories import EU machinery, chemicals and transport equipment.

The new deal will give Palestinian exporters unlimited duty-free access to European markets for farm goods and products as well as fresh and processed fish.

“For us this is one of the agreements that will help us build the economy of an independent sovereign state,” Majed Bamya, a Palestinian diplomat in Brussels, told Reuters.

The full European Parliament is due to vote on the trade agreement in late September.

Once approved, the deal needs final backing from EU member states and ratification by the Palestinian Authority. It is expected to enter into force before the end of 2011.

GREATER OPPORTUNITIES FOR PALESTINIAN EXPORTERS.

Europe imposed strict labelling laws on goods arriving from the occupied territories in 2005. But complex laws and the fact that trade is conducted largely through Israeli channels has created lingering concerns that Israeli farm operators may be benefiting from deals designed to aid Palestinians.

“We have been campaigning, especially in European countries, that they should not import from Israel products that are produced in (Jewish) settlements … and if they want to import anything from settlements then it has to be labeled separately (as settlement produce),” Ghassan Khatib, spokesman for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah, told Reuters.

Palestinians say that controls by Israel, which took control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967, restricts their access to export markets, denying them economic opportunity. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

Palestinians have argued that better access to export markets is vital to allowing the Palestinian economy to grow, in turn allowing the Palestinian Authority to ease its dependence on aid from donors including the European Union.

Europe’s deal with the Palestinian Authority also forms part of ongoing EU moves to open up trade and investment with the Mediterranean rim along North Africa and the Middle East. (Additional reporting by Thomas Perry in Ramallah; Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton) ($1 = 0.693 Euros)

EU lawmakers back open markets for Palestinian goods Read More »

Israel says Palestine upgrade at U.N. would be mistake

Leave a Comment / Is Featured?, Israel, Lead Story, News /

Upgrading the Palestinians’ U.N. status would be a “strategic mistake by the world”, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday, cautioning that Israel had prepared a slew of punitive and diplomatic responses.

Outlining government strategy ahead of next month’s showdown at the United Nations, the official said long-stalled peace talks would sag further should the Palestinians sidestep Israel in staking out statehood.

“It’s clear to all that no foreseeable Israeli government could give the Palestinians what they get from the U.N.,” the official said, referring to proposed recognition of their claim on all of the Israeli-occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“It will create an unbridgeable rift. It could set negotiations back by years,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is going to be a strategic mistake by the world.”

The United States has said it would veto any such resolution at the Security Council, but Israel is troubled by the Palestinian fallback option of seeking upgraded “non-member state” capacity at a supportive General Assembly.

Such an upgrade could speed Palestinian recourse to international agencies through which to pressure Israel over its West Bank settlements, East Jerusalem annexation, Gaza Strip blockade and military crackdowns.

The Palestinians have vowed to seek full U.N. membership for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

President Mahmoud Abbas has said he would deliver the application to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon during the General Assembly session, which begins the week of Sept. 19.

The Israeli official played down the prospect of the U.N. campaign deepening Israel’s isolation—something the Palestinians deny seeking—or triggering new fighting after years of relative West Bank quiet.

While Israeli forces were preparing to respond to flareups in the Palestinian territories and on volatile border regions if necessary, the official described this as a worst-case scenario and among many contingency plans being prepared.

OPTIONS

He said others ranged from slap-on-the-wrist sanctions like revoking the travel permits of Palestinian notables to, at the far end of the spectrum, unspecified diplomatic “declarations”.

With the exact ramifications of the Palestinians’ U.N. move still unclear, Israel “has not made a decision about any of the arrows in the quiver”, the official said.

Israeli media have speculated that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could annex swathes of settlements built on territory captured in a 1967 war.

At least one of Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers has proposed cutting off the Palestinian Authority, whose mandate was truncated to the West Bank after it lost Gaza to rival Hamas Islamists in 2007 and whose security services and economy rely heavily on cooperation with Israel.

While the official said the Netanyahu government wanted to resume talks with the Palestinians rather than see them pursue the U.N. route, he ruled out meeting their conditions such as a renewed moratorium on West Bank settlement construction.

Asked whether Israel might itself recognize Palestine, casting the standoff as a turf dispute between sovereign states rather than an unequal military occupation, the official said this option had been examined but was unlikely.

Israel would, he said, try to turn the tables on the Palestinians at the United Nations by exploiting drawbacks to their upgraded status.

“If they’re a non-member state, then there’s no place for the PLO in the U.N.,” he said, referring to the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, whose purview includes the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza Strip as well as war refugees who demand the right to return to homes and lands lost to Israel.

Some jurists have argued that a U.N. move formalizing statehood in the Palestinian territories would dovetail with Israel’s insistence that refugees be resettled there—another core sticking point in two decades of stop-start negotiations.

“It’s clear to all what the ramifications will be regarding the refugees,” the Israeli official said.

Writing by Dan Williams

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