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February 8, 2012

AN IMPORTANT ISSUE—A CONTROVERSIAL BOOK

Leave a Comment / Blogs, News /

Rarely does an issue, an article or a book generate such differing responses from people on the same side of the political spectrum as Charles Murray’s just published ” title=”described ” target=”_blank”> described the book with the following superlatives, “I’ll be shocked if there’s another book this year as important as Charles Murray’s ‘Coming Apart.’ I’ll be shocked if there’s another book that so compellingly describes the most important trends in American society.”

Brooks describes the thrust of Murray’s work, “Murray’s argument is not new, that America is dividing into a two-caste society. What’s new is the incredible data he produces to illustrate that trend and deepen our understanding of it.”

I am a fan of David Brooks and his usually trenchant analysis of current ideas and events. I read his piece in the Times and ordered the Murray book from Amazon. I cited Brooks’ analysis in an email to my kids and nieces and nephews (who in typical millennial fashion dismissed my observations as dated)—-as evidence of the overly simplistic analysis that marks much of our political discourse.

According to Brooks,

Murray’s story contradicts the ideologies of both parties. Republicans claim that America is threatened by a decadent cultural elite that corrupts regular Americans, who love God, country and traditional values. That story is false. The cultural elites live more conservative, traditionalist lives than the cultural masses.

Democrats claim America is threatened by the financial elite, who hog society’s resources. But that’s a distraction. The real social gap is between the top 20 percent and the lower 30 percent. The liberal members of the upper tribe latch onto this top 1 percent narrative because it excuses them from the central role they themselves are playing in driving inequality and unfairness.

It’s wrong to describe an America in which the salt of the earth common people are preyed upon by this or that nefarious elite. It’s wrong to tell the familiar underdog morality tale in which the problems of the masses are caused by the elites.

The truth is, members of the upper tribe have made themselves phenomenally productive. They may mimic bohemian manners, but they have returned to 1950s traditionalist values and practices. They have low divorce rates, arduous work ethics and strict codes to regulate their kids.

Brooks’ description of Murray’s narrative seemed compelling and accurate.

Then I read another analyst’s view, David Frum. He’s the neo-con pundit and former Bush speechwriter who has evidenced a willingness to be less than doctrinaire in his opinions and analysis of current events. He too is a thoughtful and frequently incisive analyst. His ” title=”posts” target=”_blank”>posts on The Daily Beast.

What these two thoughtful, yet divergent, commentators make clear is that this critically important issue—-the increasing gulf between the educated and successful and the unschooled and frustrated—- is a problem that may have myriad explanations and causes but is one that demands attention and a response from our leaders and citizenry.

Take a look at the links in this blog for some entertaining reading.

One thing is for sure, I’m going to read this provocative book.

 

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‘Decapitating’ Palestine, killing peace

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Here’s a “sign of the times” factoid: In recent commentary on Israel’s settlement policy, the number of Jewish settlers beyond the Green Line has ballooned from 350,000 or so to 600,000.  It is as if there had suddenly been a mass immigration to the West Bank.  But there has been no such immigration.  What there has been, more ominously, is the inclusion in “beyond the Green Line” of two venerable major neighborhoods that had long since come to be regarded as part of Jerusalem proper – Ramot and French Hill, as well as other neighborhoods such as Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Givat Shlomo, Har Homa and more.

Ramot and French Hill are, indeed, beyond the Green Line, Israel’s 1967 de facto border.  But they were also beyond controversy.  No one who thought about them — and hardly anyone did — regarded their fate as part of a future negotiated settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians.  Their provenance may have been problematic, but their destiny was not.

And now, simply by absorbing their inhabitants into the estimate of Jews beyond the Green Line, the period after their names has been replaced with a question mark.

That is one sign, a small one, of the impact of Israel’s settlement policy and, in particular, of its policy with respect to East Jerusalem.

This needs to be said as urgently and as clearly as possible: Israel’s settlement policy in and around Jerusalem is not merely controversial; it is calamitous.  Unless it changes, it will within a year render a two-state solution to the conflict impossible. 

There are people, here in America and in Israel, who will celebrate that.  They are comfortable with the prospect of de facto or de jure Israeli rule over, even annexation of, the entire West Bank.  They are prepared to live with an apartheid state, in which a large Palestinian minority is deprived of equal rights, or with a mass emigration of Palestinians, “encouraged” by Israeli actions.  And some few endorse a pure bi-national state, equal rights for all, an end to Israel as a distinctively Jewish state.

But most Jews, according to survey results, here and in Israel, prefer a two-state solution, even if they think it unlikely in current or readily foreseeable circumstances. 

Because my concern here is specifically with Jerusalem and its relevance to a two-state solution, I set to the side all the controversial and all the illegal (according to Israeli law) Jewish outposts and settlements that dot the West Bank, all the violence that emanates from more than a few of them, all the land theft they have practiced and all the current governmental efforts retroactively to legalize them.

(The ongoing work of Peace Now’s Settlement Watch program, headed by the formidable Hagit Ofran and readily available at peacenow.org, and frequent analysis by the apparently indefatigable Lara Friedman, American for Peace Now’s director of policy and government relations, provide comprehensive — and disheartening — details on settlement actions and issues in general.)

In East Jerusalem the pace of Jewish construction now borders on the frenetic.  The goal is so thickly to expand the Jewish presence in what was traditionally the heart of the national Palestinian community and so to encircle the remaining Palestinian neighborhoods as to separate Jerusalem completely from the rest of Palestine.  It amounts, from a Palestinian perspective, to a policy of decapitation. 

Thus, if building projects now under way or already approved are completed, it will not be possible for Palestinians from Bethlehem to Jerusalem’s south or from Ramallah to its north, to access Jerusalem.  And if, as seems likely, Israel finally begins active development of the area known as E1, East Jerusalem will be hemmed in on all sides.  It will not be available as the capital city of a new Palestine, nor as Palestine’s commercial and intellectual center. The northern half of the West Bank and its southern half will have been bisected, Palestine will successfully have been cantonized, transformed into a set of disconnected towns and villages. Palestine will not be a viable state. 

The acknowledged leading expert on what is happening in and to Jerusalem is Daniel Seidemann, founder of Ir Amim (A City of Nations). In his own writings and in the work of Ir Amim, it is made clear that the grim prospect of a de facto separation between all of Jerusalem and the Palestinian hinterland is no longer a distant hypothetical; it is around the corner. Seidmann himself is convinced that by 2013, currently unfolding facts on the ground will have destroyed the prospect of a two-state solution.

Those who understand that only a two-state solution can offer Israel genuine security, can protect the ever more fragile prospect of a democratic and Jewish Israel living at peace with its neighbors, should be alarmed and make their distress known — to the Obama administration, to their representatives in Congress, and to their friends in and government of Israel. Now.

Leonard Fein has written and advocated for progressive Jewish causes since the 1960s. In 1974 he founded Moment magazine, the journal of Jewish ideas, and in 1985 he founded MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger.

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Who are the Charedim?

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The disturbing recent episode involving the harassment of an 8-year-old Orthodox girl in the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh, and the ongoing controversy over separate seating for women on public buses in Jerusalem and elsewhere, has focused new attention on that group of Jews known as Charedim (or ultra-Orthodox). But who are they, and where do they come from?

In their own self-presentation, they are the direct heirs of a long-standing Torah-true Judaism. Indeed, they frequently declare the desire to walk in “the path of the ancient Israel” (derekh Yisrael sava), as if they represent an unbroken chain of tradition. And yet, Charedim are a relatively new phenomenon in Jewish history, a group born in modern times, even though possessed of a decidedly anti-modern worldview. Insofar as they regard the world around them as corrupt and polluted, they believe that it is necessary to engage in a prolonged struggle to assure the purity of their Jewish lives. This leads to a set of impulses that often grate against one another: a martial impulse to join in battle on behalf of the Almighty, paired with a separatist impulse to isolate themselves from the rest of society in order to assure that purity. In both cases, they are motivated by “charada,” a Hebrew word that connotes a trembling fear or anxiety in the face of God’s omnipotence. From this state of vigilant anxiety issues the name “Charedim.”

In studying the Charedim, scholars such as the late Israeli historian Jacob Katz point to the advent of a “new traditionalism” in 19th century Europe. They note the influence of the German-born rabbi, Rabbi Moses Schreiber (1762-1839), known as the Hatam Sofer, who gained renown for his forceful opposition to currents of change in Judaism in his time. This opposition was immortalized in the Hatam Sofer’s famous credo: “Chadash asur min haTorah” — innovation is forbidden as a matter of Torah. He himself left his native Germany for Pressburg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire to establish a yeshiva that would gain renown for its traditionalist curriculum and rigor. There he would join forces with an unlikely partner, the Galician-born Chasidic Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum, to combat the “modernizers” — such as the first Reform Jews, whom they believed were undermining the true faith. (Chasidism was an 18th century populist movement of spiritual revival that took aim at elitist Torah scholarship inaccessible to the masses.)

The unlikely pairing of a non-Chasidic Germany rabbi and a Chasidic rebbe from Galicia reveals one of the characteristic features of Charedi Judaism: its diversity. There are not only non-Chasidic and Chasidic components to the phenomenon, but many variants of Chasidism within the Charedi world. The same Austro-Hungarian Empire where the Hatam Sofer settled proved to be, in the late 19th century, the chief incubator of this new experiment in religious traditionalism. In particular, Hungary was the site of an intense battle among differing Jewish factions including the Neolog (akin to Reform), Status Quo (somewhere between Conservative and Orthodox), Orthodox and Charedi camps. Already in the late 19th century, the Charedim insisted on a new degree of ritual stringency in Jewish communal life. The descendants of Rabbi Moses Teitelbaum were especially energetic in insisting on new standards of kashrut, gender segregation, modest dress for women, and resistance to secular studies. The most famous of those descendants, Rabbi Joel Teitelbaum (1887-1979), also gained renown for his fierce and unrelenting opposition to Zionism, which he regarded as a violation of the rabbinic injunction against “hastening the [messianic] end.” 

As a matter of fact, opposition to Zionism was a key feature of the many new forms of traditionalist Judaism that took rise in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Indeed, it is best to think of these new forms as occupying a spectrum that included more moderate and more radical versions, though the differences would not be readily discernible to the average observer. For example, a new traditionalist movement took rise in 1912, the Agudat Yisrael, composed of Chasidic and non-Chasidic Jews from Poland and Germany, with the express mission of warding off the secularizing influence of the Zionist movement. They were not joined, however, by the leaders of Hungarian Charedi Judaism such as Joel Teitelbaum and the Munkaczer Rebbe, who, in fact, forbade their followers from having any contact with the Aguda. This reminds us that the impulse to engage in battle that has been so central to Charedi Judaism was often directed against one’s putative allies. The Hungarians regarded themselves as purists and branded the Aguda as collaborators, for reasons that will soon become clear.

For all of their opposition to Zionism, Charedim of different stripes — moderates and radicals alike — felt a deep bond with Eretz Yisra’el and sought to settle there. The more radical among them established in 1919 their own “Edah Charedit” (Charedi Community) in the Mea She’arim neighborhood of Jerusalem. This community served as an alternative, anti-Zionist source of religious authority, with its own synagogues, yeshivas and kashrut norms in various Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as Bnei Brak. Their own curious blend of quietism and activism rested on the belief that while one should not seek to establish Jewish self-government in Palestine in advance of the Messiah, one should not surrender the Holy Land to the Zionists, with whom compromise was impossible.

The Aguda adopted a different tack. In 1933, it entered into an agreement with the Zionist-led Jewish Agency to receive 6.5 percent of the immigration certificates to Palestine that the agency had to distribute. And in 1947, the Aguda was partner to the famous Status Quo agreement that David Ben-Gurion, soon to be Israel’s first prime minister, proposed that guaranteed that the new state would observe the Sabbath, maintain kashrut in government institutions, and cede control over education and personal status matters to religious authorities. 

Over time, the Aguda has become more and more integrated into Israeli political life; its representatives serve as deputy ministers and members of Knesset. Some would say that the price to pay for the Status Quo agreement — and the Aguda’s involvement in Israeli public life — is a high one: coercive Orthodox control over religious affairs in Israel. That may well be, but what transpired in Beit Shemesh — and the battle over gender segregation on buses in Israel — result from the more radical Charedi component, whose roots extend back to the Edah Charedit. While adamantly separatist — for example, their leaders do not serve in the Knesset or in government ministries — they are, at the same time, an increasingly aggressive, visible and populous component of the Israeli public square. Their heavy-handed and at times violent tactics are not new. They have their roots in the formative Hungarian setting of Charedi Judaism. The key question is: Will their growing numbers necessitate a greater integration into and accommodation to Israeli society, thereby mitigating their separatist and martial impulses? Or will their increasing prominence and sense of empowerment result in ever-deeper fissures in Israel’s social fabric? To a great extent, the future of Israel hinges on the answer to these questions.

David N. Myers is chair of the UCLA History Department; he is writing a book, along with Nomi Stolzenberg, on the Satmar Chasidic village of Kiryas Joel, N.Y.

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Israel must criminalize purchase of sex

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In Israel, an estimated 15,000 individuals are involved in prostitution, including 5,000 under the age of 18, according to reports shared with the Task Force on Human Trafficking by Knesset member Orit Zuaretz of the Kadima Party, as well as other experts and activists. The reports say that the average age of entry is just 14 and that more than 90 percent of those involved in prostitution in Israel are subject to severe physical abuse, often by their clients.

Justifications abound for having prostitution be legal. Some claim that prostitution is a source of easy money or that its lengthy history points to its inevitable continuity. There’s even the dubious claim that it is a necessary conduit allowing men to fulfill their biological needs. Such myths clash dramatically with the truth and conceal a sordid underworld of violence, rape and the worst forms of abuse.

Merely utilizing terms such as “employment” and “profession” to describe prostitution lends credence to a system that preys on women who have faced severe physical and emotional oppression. More than 80 percent of women in prostitution have been sexually or physically abused in their youth, often by family members, according to reports shared with the task force. Entry is not a matter of choice but an unwitting endpoint in a cycle of abuse and despair.

Even with its recent decline — attributed to pressure from civil society organizations and the United States — Israel remains a destination country for human trafficking. The industry thrives on the vulnerable and exploits the troubled past of victims of abuse.

So why, especially if the negatives are even more disturbing than we had imagined, is this practice allowed to continue — with emphasis on the word “allowed”? For in the most basic sense, not enough has been done to combat an “industry” that thrives on the degradation and abuse of women and is supported by human traffickers. Allowed because though it is illegal to traffic human beings, run a brothel or work as a pimp, becoming a “consumer” of prostitution is still legal in Israel.

Essentially, though it is illegal to sell women, buying them is deemed acceptable. Though the world of prostitution is a hub for physical abuse, the transmission of fatal diseases and the restriction of freedom, it is still legal to fuel this horrid practice. The result should come as no surprise.

With no attempt to reduce demand, there is a constant incentive for criminal bodies to provide the supply. Targeting pimps and brothel owners is simply not enough, as evidenced by an average of more than 1 million brothel visits every month in Israel and a trade that accounts for more than $500 million each year, according to the reports.

Some argue that regulation and control of prostitution is needed, not prohibition. It’s a route that could provide for safer environments, less criminal involvement and an end to human trafficking. However, when such laws were enacted in Germany and Holland, conditions for women failed to improve and the laws were proven to be abject failures.

On Feb. 12, Zuaretz will bring a law to the Knesset that places criminal responsibility on those who purchase sexual services. What’s more, the legislation, which was proposed in 2010 to a ministerial hearing and is based on a law that has been enacted in Sweden, Iceland, Norway and, most recently, France, would allow Israel to join the ranks of those nations working tirelessly toward a world free of modern slavery.

The result of this legislative action speaks of far more than simply whether we Israelis will choose to punish individuals who perpetuate these crimes. It will ask us to determine where we as a society stand in a debate centered on how we appropriate human rights. Do we feel that all individuals deserve liberty and justice, or have we set criteria that ultimately strip those less fortunate of the opportunities that freedom entails?

The challenge has been issued, but whether Israel decides to place itself on the right side of history has yet to be determined.

Gili Varon, an attorney, is the director of the Task Force on Human Trafficking, a joint project with ATZUM that aims to engage the Israeli public and government agencies to confront and eradicate modern slavery in Israel.

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Letters to the Editor: Film in Israel, Los Encinos and kosher food

Leave a Comment / Letters to the Editor, News, Opinion /

On the Set … but Not in Israel

I am not surprised that “Zionism and the Three-Picture Deal” (Feb. 3) neglected to mention that Hollywood has rarely produced a movie in Israel. Other than a few days, one scene in Jerusalem, Hollywood and the Jews of Hollywood (including prominent Israeli producers) completely ignore it. Even biblical projects that take place in Israel are shot outside of Israel, including History Channel’s “The Bible” miniseries.

It’s very comfortable to buy concepts for 50 to 100 grand apiece, but other than that, Hollywood Jews don’t really care. As an Israeli filmmaker, I tried to pitch Israel-based international projects and those nice Hollywood Jews didn’t give a damn, including those prominent figures who donate money to Israeli causes. No Hollywood Jew wants to be accused of “favoring” Israel. That’s a bigger crime than producing a box office or rating bomb.

Dan Rosin
via e-mail

Los Encinos a Haven for Longtime Valley Residents

Bravo, Rob. Your comments on Los Encinos brought tears to my eyes (“Save Los Encinos,” Feb. 3). I grew up in Encino and have lived here since 1949. We visited Los Encinos as children almost weekly with my parents. We fed the ducks, enjoyed a picnic lunch, did some homework. And later, as parents, and still living in Encino, my wife and I took our two sons on a Saturday morning outing to feed the ducks and talk to the rangers. And, now as grandparents, we take our six grandchildren to enjoy this remarkable five-acre park as a haven from the massive traffic on Ventura Boulevard.

The culture and people have changed in Encino. Massive apartment buildings dot the landscape. Car dealers build structures, large enough to house jumbo jets, to show off the latest, most expensive models. Restaurants overflow with business people at lunchtime. And everyone is in a hurry! Too bad. We need to take time to breathe and relax and enjoy. Hopefully we can find ways to keep this incredible park open. In the “old days,” we would rally at Encino Park and find solutions to community issues. Maybe we can solve this one as well. Thanks again, Rob, for your interest.

Robert Levey
Encino

For a second time in the last two years I actually enjoyed Rob Eshman’s editorial, which described an environmental concern that I could wholeheartedly support. To cover Los Encinos State Historic Park’s expenses, how about getting rid of two or three termed-out legislators or politically influential friends, relatives and supporters of legislators or governors appointed to the plethora of do-nothing commissions/boards (e.g., the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board) earning more than $100,000 a year? Preserving a spot of green in a concrete jungle is always a good idea.

Warren Scheinin
Redondo Beach

Washing Away the Essence of Judaism

I used to think difficult vegetables were those that were too hard to get children to eat, but “Can We Afford Kosher Lettuce?” (Feb. 2) taught me difficult vegetables actually are those that are too hard to look at. What do I mean? I learned it’s too hard to wash a raspberry, it’s too hard to inspect a blackberry, it’s too hard to open an artichoke and look at it before you eat it, it’s just too hard to wash lettuce (and don’t get me started on how hard it is to use the salad spinner!), arugula needs a light table, and asparagus need a circumcision.

We once lived in a world where, if a worm was found in a fruit, that part was cut away. We continue to live in a world where water is generally scarce. How have we evolved to where an ever-flowing tap and the knee-jerk discard of whole swaths of harvest are required for a certifying organization to ensure religious piety? I remember when waste itself used to be a sin, a sin with agricultural roots that grew straight from the words of the Torah.

Maybe the real message of the article is that we as Jews are avoiding what should matter to us most: personal involvement, personal responsibility and balance in our observance. We still have holidays with strong agricultural overtones (Tu B’Shevat, Sukkot, Pesach, Shavuot) but we’ve made ourselves numb to their agricultural underpinnings and the conditions under which they were originally celebrated. Even if we today purchase certified produce, we are not absolved from inspecting what we’re about to put in our mouths. If we allow ourselves to outsource our religious undertakings, we will, as a community, eventually have no experience in what it takes to be a Jew. If we eliminate from our lives what isn’t convenient, there will be no community. And if we hoard the basics of life behind a fence, justify doing so with an imbalanced application of rules, then tax these basics until they become luxuries, are we not engendering disdain and coming dangerously close to creating a Chillul Hashem?

Mel Rabb
via e-mail

Preventing Genocide

Rob Eshman supports crying crocodile tears over any genocide, but does he agree to actually do something to prevent it (“Bridge to Empathy,” Jan. 27)? Or does he, like all the left, bemoan the military action that stopped two genocides in time?

I define “in time” as before a large part of the target population was killed, and I refer to the attempted genocides of the Kurds and of the Marsh Arabs in Iraq (the reasons for the northern and southern no-fly zones under the armistice agreement).

Louis Richter
Reseda

This Is What’s What’s Bugging Him

As an Orthodox Jew, I was greatly disturbed by your article on the religious laws surrounding checking lettuce and other vegetables for bugs. I ran into this issue a couple of years ago and spoke at great length with a variety of Orthodox rabbis about it.  Additionally, I wanted to find out for myself where all this came from.

After reading more about it in the Talmud (Oral Law) and commentary of our Sages, I think that although the Rabbinical Counsel of California (RCC) is well meaning, they are also misguided.  While I agree that there is a Torah prohibition against eating bugs, what is at issue is the degree to which one must check and wash vegetables to avoid the possibility of eating bugs.

What the Talmud and Sages say is that you must check your vegetables, but anything that looks like a speck of dirt is a speck of dirt.  The talmudic law does not require light boxes, multiple rinses, soap or staring at the leaf in question for 10 minutes.  The law requires that one do the type of checking that pretty much every average American would do.  As the article says – the RCC is not concerned about a snail or something big like that – they are concerned about something so small that it is, for all practical purposes, indistinguishable from a speck of dirt to the unaided eye using a reasonable amount of care.

I don’t want to eat bugs any more than the next person – religious law or not – but don’t you think that tiny bugs land on our food all the time?  It is impossible to avoid eating these near-microscopic bugs and is just a part of the way that G-d set up the world to work.

The article points to the fact that pesticides used to be more effective so our parents’ generation didn’t have to check as thoroughly for bugs.  What about generations before that?  Rabbis in their sermons are constantly saying how high a religious level Abraham and our forefathers were at and how they kept all the mitzvot.  Do you think that in the deserts of the Middle East that they lived and wandered in that they would waste precious water on rinsing vegetables numerous times?  They didn’t have pesticides back then either.  What would Moses do upon seeing fresh, ripe vegetables thrown in the trash?

Additionally, I think that the RCC is actually doing more harm than good by pitting Jews against each other.  This is an actual conversation that I had with someone that I invited for Shabbat dinner:

Ms. X to Me:  “Do you keep kosher?”

Me to Ms. X:  “I have separate dishes and ovens for dairy and meat.  I buy all my food at Glatt Mart.”

Ms. X to Me:  “Do you check your vegetables?”

Me to Ms. X:  “Yes, of course.”

Ms. X to Me:  “How do you check your vegetables?”

Me to Ms. X:  “I rinse with water and do a visual inspection.”

Ms. X to Me:  “Maybe I’ll just come for dessert.”

I think it is time to tell the RCC that we answer to a higher authority.

Jason Rosenbaum
Los Angeles, CA

Candidates Don’t Offer Much of a Choice

Shmuel Rosner and no doubt many Jews wonder which Republican candidate would be best for Israel (except for Ron Paul; everyone pretty much gets that horror of that option) (“Are Jews Trending Republican?” Jan. 27). On the one hand, you have Newt Gingrich, who out of one side of his mouth attacks Mitt Romney for depriving Holocaust survivors of kosher food while out the other side denigrates the president by offering voters the choice between the Declaration of Independence and Saul Alinsky (read: radical Jew). This he augments with the promise to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem before the Chief Justice has finished administering the oath of office – regardless of repercussions for the Jewish state and its citizens. The sechel choice? Hardly. On the other hand, you have Mitt Romney, a business school graduate with a little bit of experience as a governor and no discernible convictions other than a desire to exceed his father (sound familiar?) – a man likely to have his foreign policy dictated and implemented by others (sound even more familiar?) and who has already engaged in bellicose threats. 

Beware the choice: phony intellectualism shrouded in undisciplined megalomania or someone who can be ignored or counted on for uncritical support, regardless how extreme the policy. While there is some thought that the Bush administration was good for Israel – basically allowing it free rein – a great deal of its current difficulty can be traced to that poorly considered policy. Doubts about the president’s commitment to Israel are exaggerated, and a thoughtful leader dealing with the world as it is should always be preferred to ignorance and empty posturing. 

Mitch Paradise
Los Angeles

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Technology may reveal missing Holocaust graves

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Scientists using ground-probing electronics may have discovered the missing mass graves at the site of Treblinka, one of the Nazis’ most notorious death camps.

No actual bodies were found and the graves were not excavated, in keeping with Jewish law, but bones and bone fragments were discovered in the ground, according to Caroline Sturdy Colls, a forensic archeologist at Straffordshire University in Britain, who headed the research.

The underground structures detected by her equipment outline what most likely are the graves.

Historians believe as many as 850,000 people, mostly Jews and some Roma, or Gypsies, died at Treblinka.

Although eyewitnesses told of the existence of mass graves, the Germans did everything they could to cover up their crimes, and the inability of researchers to find them was sometimes used by Holocaust deniers to claim large-scale murder did not occur there.

Sturdy Colls used aerial photographs from the 1940s, satellite imagery, GPS mapping devices and new ground-penetrating radar. The radar could not detect corpses but could detect differences between the ground and disturbances and inconsistencies in the ground, such as buried objects, in 11 areas.

“Given their size and location, there is a strong case for arguing that they represent burial areas,” she said.

Sturdy Colls began working at Treblinka in 2010. She and her colleagues used radar and electrical imaging to get an idea of what was underground without actually disturbing the site. One of the first things she discovered was that the early maps of the site were incorrect — the northern boundary line was off by 160 feet.

After the war, Treblinka’s neighbors had looted some of the graves, seeking gold they thought the Jews had hidden. That complicated the topography, but Sturdy Colls’ equipment found several pits exactly where witnesses said they would be.

The largest is 85 feet long, 55 feet wide and at least 13 feet deep, with a ramp for access. At least five others that deep also are in the area.

Treblinka was opened on July 23, 1942, as an extermination camp in east-central Poland, part of Germany’s Operation Rheinhard, the extermination of European Jewry.

It was designed for one purpose: murder. Ninety-five percent of the people sent there were killed immediately, mostly by carbon monoxide poisoning from tank engines pumped into gas chambers.

Treblinka was closed on Oct. 19, 1943, following a rebellion by the Sonderkommando unit — Jews forced to assist in operating the camp. Several German and Ukrainian guards were killed in the rebellion, enabling 300 prisoners to escape.

The Germans, however, were suddenly afraid that their crimes would be detected.

In 1943, they had discovered the bodies of thousands of Polish officers executed by the Russians at Katyn three years earlier and realized that if anyone found the bodies at concentration camps, they would be blamed.

Nazi leader Heinrich Himmler ordered that whenever a camp was to be abandoned, all the bodies had to be exhumed and cremated, Sturdy Colls said.

Sturdy Colls said that it takes very high temperatures to cremate a human body, and bone fragments almost always remain after the process, even when the cremation is done in a modern facility.

The job was done in a rush. As late as the 1960s, human remains would emerge from the ground, often after a rainstorm.

The Germans leveled the camp, destroying all the buildings, built a fake farm on the site of the bakery and even settled a Ukrainian family on the farm to make it look as if nothing had happened there. Little of the camp remained above ground.

A five-day Polish war crimes investigation in 1946 found a cellar passage with the “protruding remains of burnt posts, the foundations of the administration building, and the old well. Here and there can also be traced the remains of burnt fence posts and pieces of barbed wire, and short sections of paved road. There are also other traces.”

The early researchers also found decomposing corpses that the Germans had misplaced. Construction of a stone memorial at the site also turned up human remains.

They did not, however, find the graves themselves until the current research.

“We mapped what we can. We’ve identified 11 individual pits that we can survey,” said Sturdy Colls, whose work is ongoing. “A good chunk of the memorial was built where they thought the mass graves were, so there is a good chance there are more in the forest and under the memorial itself.”

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Seniors angry over plans to close JCC

Leave a Comment / California, Community, Is Featured?, Mobile Sections, News /

There was no question how Zita Kass felt when she learned that The JCC at Milken in West Hills will shut its doors permanently this summer. Her reaction was swift and powerful:

“Anger, fury, frustration,” the 76-year-old Woodland Hills resident said.

Kass frequents the community center to take part in groups related to books, current events, history and more. Now, she worries about the impact of the closure on Jewish life for seniors in the San Fernando Valley.

“We’re frantically looking for places for our various programs,” Kass said.

She’s not alone in her concern, now that it’s official that the JCC as a whole will shut down June 30, with its Early Childhood Center ceasing operations June 15. The news was delivered in a Feb. 1 e-mail by the organization’s chairman of the board, Steven V. Rheuban, and was preceded by a decision by The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles to sell its land to New Community Jewish High School (NCJHS).

Frequent JCC user Sheila Silverman, 77, said she was particularly upset by what she said were reassurances even after it was announced that the property would be sold for an undisclosed amount. At the time, officials said they did not anticipate a major impact upon the JCC’s members.

“We’re sort of in disbelief,” Silverman said. “They gave everybody that false hope.”

The JCC at Milken is only the latest of its peers to shut down. Disclosures of financial troubles and fiscal mismanagement within the former Jewish Community Centers of Greater Los Angeles (JCCGLA) in 2001 led to the closure of centers, including Santa Monica’s Bay Cities JCC in 2002 and the Conejo Valley JCC in 2004.
Valley Cities JCC shut down in 2009, less than a year after moving from its longtime Sherman Oaks site, which had been sold by JCCGLA, re-formed as the JCC Development Corp. 

Milken JCC’s closure will leave the North Valley Jewish Community Center (NVJCC), which seceded from parent organization JCCGLA in 2002, as the only JCC in the San Fernando Valley. Although it lost use of its Granada Hills campus after a developer purchased the property in 2004, NVJCC continues to offer programming at various locations.

For a while, it seemed that the JCC at Milken might escape closure, in part because its home, Bernard Milken Jewish Community Campus, was owned by Federation, not JCC Development Corp. But it struggled to stay out of the red and won’t be able to meet its rent obligations this year, Rheuban told The Jewish Journal.

When the deal was made to sell the campus to NCJHS as its permanent home, the West Hills center had hoped to permanently move its Early Childhood Center of more than 80 students to a new location. Senior services would be transferred temporarily to a different site while NCJHS undertook a yearlong reconstruction project at the Milken campus, after which the programs would return.

Ultimately, though, there was too much certainty about the school’s plans and no appropriate, affordable venue for the JCC to use in the interim, Rheuban said.

“We looked at every possible location that we could think of, some beyond the boundaries that we really wanted,” he said. “The simple fact is we couldn’t come up with a piece of property that we didn’t have to do a lot of construction on ourselves.”

Representatives for both Federation and NCJHS said they were surprised to hear the news about the JCC, which has more than 1,000 members.

Federation President Jay Sanderson said that his organization had no role in the decision to close and that the Jewish community center has its own board. And while Federation has funded the JCC at Milken with millions in recent years, he said the plan always was for it to become fiscally self-sufficient.

“It came down to the fact that they needed to be able to be more independent financially, and they were incapable of doing that,” he said. “We still thought that they were going to continue to provide services to their constituencies going forward.”

In addition to its preschool and senior programming, the JCC at Milken is home to arts and fitness programs, after-school programs, sports and summer camps, and Team Los Angeles, an award-winning team that competes in the JCC Maccabi Games.

Sanderson said Federation is committed to making sure that the people who use the organization’s services continue to have places to go.

“There are many synagogues and other organizations in the Valley doing great work,” he said. “I think that there will be minimal negative impact.”

(In his e-mail, Rheuban also promised that the center’s board and staff will compile a list to help members find similar programs within the Jewish community.)

New Community Jewish High School, which started on the Milken campus in 2002, has plenty of work ahead before it can relocate its 400 students to the property next year from its current home on the property of Shomrei Torah Synagogue. Once that is settled, though, one top school official has a message to JCC members:

“We’re saddened by [this news], but we also want to let the community know that once we finish our remodel of the campus and we move back in, which will take place between the end of June and hopefully July of 2013, we are very, very motivated to do something with the community, particularly with the seniors,” said Michael Greenfeld, president of the school’s board of trustees.

The end of the JCC at Milken will leave the Westside Jewish Community Center on Olympic Boulevard, Silverlake Independent Jewish Community Center off Sunset Boulevard, North Valley JCC and Long Beach’s Alpert Jewish Community Center as the only Jewish community centers in the Greater Los Angeles area.

Westside JCC Executive Director Brian Greene said he is heartbroken over the development. “For decades, so many thousands of people have looked to Milken JCC as their Jewish home base,” he said.

He stressed that Westside, also an independent center, remains strong with its rebuilt Aquatic Center, expanded teen programming, new health and wellness offerings, and more.

Looking at the situation from a national perspective, it’s natural — but unfortunate — that some community centers struggle during difficult economic times, according to Gary Lipman, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the JCC Association of North America. Los Angeles faces additional challenges due to its diverse, dispersed Jewish community.

Still, he said, there remains hope. In the short term, he sees local Jewish leaders coming together to serve preschoolers and seniors. And in the long term? A chance to re-envision how a revitalized JCC may serve the community.

For now, though, Rheuban worries about the losses that come with the Jewish community center’s closure that go beyond everyday programming.

“I believe that the loss of centers is the loss of the home for unaffiliated Jews,” he said.

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Larry Greenfield to head JINSA

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Larry Greenfield, a Los Angeles-area native, has been named national executive director of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs in Washington, D.C., JINSA president David Ganz has announced.

JINSA was founded in 1976 as a non-partisan and non-sectarian think tank and its motto calls for “Securing America and Strengthening Israel.” Its major emphasis is on the importance of a strong U.S. defense capability and on close military ties between Israel and the United States.

Greenfield, 50, was born in Long Beach and grew up in Encino and has worked in the fields of law, business, philanthropy, politics, Jewish organizational life and academe.

Looking at one of the early challenges in his new job, Greenfield said, “I take my appointment as underscoring JINSA’s advocacy to the rising threats from Iran with sanctions that do not leak or waiver, and in a strong military alliance with our close ally, Israel.”

JINSA’s Ganz commented, “We are thrilled to have Larry Greenfield join JINSA as the new executive director. Larry’s dynamic leadership and vision will lift JINSA to even greater heights as the leading organization supporting a strong U.S. military and a strong American security relationship with Israel.”

Among JINSA’s key annual programs are study missions to Israel for retired U.S. flag and general officers, and separately for cadets and midshipmen from America’s three military academies.

A graduate of UC Berkeley and the Georgetown University law school, Greenfield has been active in the California Jewish community as regional director of the Republican Jewish Coalition and of the Israel Cancer Research Fund.

He has also served as vice president of the Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles, and on the board of the Endowment for Middle East Truth and of the Israel-Christian Nexus.

Greenfield was the founding executive director of the Reagan Legacy Foundation and is a Fellow in American Studies of the Claremont Institute and a Senior Fellow of the American Freedom Alliance. He has also served in the U.S. Naval Intelligence Reserve.

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Britain’s Chief Rabbi visits L.A. … Cue the choir

Leave a Comment / Community /

With pomp and ceremony, the Los Angeles Modern Orthodox community in Pico-Robertson welcomed the British Commonwealth’s Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Lady Elaine Sacks for a full weekend of appearances Feb. 3-5.

Sacks responded to the pageantry with enough warmth, graciousness and inspiration to shatter all preconceptions of British stiffness and titled aloofness.

“I thought I would never be able to relate to him, but he was very real. He just talked to people, and in his speech he made a lot of connections to the real world,” said Liberty Fuchs, an eighth-grader at Harkham Hillel Hebrew Academy, where Sacks kicked off his visit on Friday morning.

The school spearheaded and organized the “Weekend of Jewish Unity,” working with five synagogues for a schedule that brought nearly a dozen rabbis onto one bimah and standing-room-only crowds to services Friday night at Congregation Bnai David-Judea, Saturday morning at Beth Jacob Congregation and Saturday afternoon at Young Israel of Century City. On Sunday, Sacks attended and spoke at a morning service that blended Ashkenazic and Sephardic traditions at Mogen David Congregation, and was the keynote speaker at the dedication of a new building for Young Israel of North Beverly Hills.

The weekend culminated at Hillel’s scholarship banquet Sunday night at the Westin Bonaventure, where Sacks gave a spirited endorsement of Jewish education to the 700 parents and supporters of the Modern Orthodox preschool-to-eighth grade day school.

Sacks was accompanied on his visit by the Shabbaton Choir, a 26-member choral group from London, who enhanced services on Shabbat and performed at the Sunday night banquet. Choir co-founder Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld, cantor and rabbi at the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London, and Jonny Turgel, cantor at the Stanmore and Canons Park Synagogue near London — the largest Orthodox synagogue in Europe – were the featured soloists, under the leadership of musical director Stephen Levey.

The choir’s presence highlighted a major point for the Chief Rabbi, as Sacks made song one of his central messages throughout the weekend. On Friday night, he spoke of the need to bring song — literally and metaphorically — back into a Judaism that has become too cognitive, “which is English for boring,” he said. When Jews speak, they argue, he repeated at several points over the weekend, but when they sing, they sing together.

“Sometimes Judaism can become overly intellectual, but sometimes the heart must sing,” he said in an interview. “The renewal of Judaism can come about through renewal of music as easily as by anything else.”

Founded in 1989, the choir melds styles ranging from 18th and 19th century traditional chazzanut (cantorial liturgy) with cathedral-like harmonies, to the folksy tunes of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, to original works composed for the choir. Angelenos unaccustomed to choirs in shul responded with enthusiasm to the quiet emotion and spirited celebration the choir evoked.

The Shabbaton Choir also sang with the Hillel student choir on Friday morning and at the Sunday night gala, and added “God Save the Queen” to the usual lineup of “Hatikvah” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Students at Hillel had been prepping for months for the Chief Rabbi’s visit, listening to his lessons on YouTube and authoring their own poems, essays and illustrations on Jewish unity, which they presented to Sacks in a book during his Friday visit to the school.

Sacks later said he was impressed by the depth of knowledge and faith the students showed both in the book and in his personal encounters with them.

“I think the enduring memory of this trip that I’m going to have is of the children. I haven’t seen children like this. The big cities, the consumer society can make them world-weary, a little bit materialistic and a little bit cynical. The kids here have not been like that,” Sacks said in an interview.

The Hillel students weren’t sure what to expect from someone with the title “Lord” — some nursery-schoolers thought they were going to meet God himself. Preschoolers and elementary students greeted Sacks with Hebrew songs of welcome as he came in, flanking his path and waving British, American and Israeli flags. Sacks not only sang and clapped with them but squatted down beside them and waved a flag himself, delighting the children.

Sacks invited participation during his talk with the Hillel students, and he told stories and humorous anecdotes while delivering a message about looking toward God in order to see the Divine image in humans.

He later had an intimate meeting with school principals and congregational rabbis and then held a Q-and-A with Hillel eighth-graders and high-school students from four Jewish high schools around the city.

In his sermon Saturday morning, Sacks compared the Israelites’ unexpected victory over the Egyptians during the Exodus to modern Israel’s victory over combined Arab armies in 1967, saying that the true miracle in both events was that human pretentiousness fell to those who had faith in God and were able to look toward a future without hatred. He criticized the troubled Arab Spring as a movement that has been unsuccessful because it has not yet let go of hatred.

Sacks echoed the same theme in his talk on education at the Hillel gala Sunday night, saying that the Jewish focus on educating children, and on the future, ensures its success, while a focus on the quarrels of the past will mire any advance toward freedom.
“To defend a country, you need an army, but to defend a civilization, you need schools,” he said.

Sacks enlivened all his speeches with references both to the current political and intellectual leaders with whom he converses, as well as to centuries’ worth of literary, historical and scientific giants that he draws upon to build his points. One of the main messages he wanted to drive home, Sacks said, was that only by living fully in both worlds — living a life of Torah while drinking from and contributing to the bounty of secular offerings — can both Torah and secular knowledge be complete.

“I’m constantly reading across different secular disciplines, whether economics or sociology or neuroscience. Every single one of these discoveries teaches me something I didn’t know about Torah,” Sacks said in an interview, echoing a theme he brought up at a Saturday afternoon talk.

Sacks has authored 24 books, some of them expounding on broad social issues such as global ethics, multiculturalism or education; eight of his books have been serialized in British newspapers.

Hillel conceived of the Chief Rabbi’s visit after Uri Harkham, a longtime supporter of the school, connected Hillel head of school Rabbi Boruch Sufrin with Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld in London.

Sufrin constructed a vision that would bring congregational rabbis on board and offer Sacks an impressive display of collaboration and the chance to impact the entire community.

Sufrin also agreed with Rosenfeld’s imperative that the Shabbaton Choir be included, which turned the weekend into a full-blown event. Uri Harkham and his family foundation, along with the Sunny and Debbie Sassoon and Mitchell and Joleen Julis families, sponsored the weekend.

Sufrin, who grew up in the London suburb of Ilford, declined to say what it cost to bring in the rabbi, the choir and accompanying family members — close to 40 people. But he said the event has raised nearly double what the banquet usually does, going a long way toward meeting the school’s annual fundraising goal of $700,000 to $1 million, most of that for scholarships.

The school, which has a budget of $7 million and around 600 students, is in the second phase of a long-term strategic plan, and Sufrin believes the weekend helped raise the school’s stature in the community.

But, mostly, Sufrin said, he was motivated by the opportunity to offer students a living exemplar of the school’s guiding vision.

“Hillel’s mission is to be a religious Zionist school in a nurturing environment that empowers students to live a full Modern Orthodox life. Rabbi Sacks is a role model who has reached the top, whom our students can look up to and say that is something to aspire to,” Sufrin said.

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