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Jewish Journal

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August 21, 2012

Jerusalem’s Pamela Weisfeld dies after brief battle with cancer

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Pamela Weisfeld, an Israeli immigrant from New Jersey who became the subject of a social media campaign after discovering last month that she had cancer, has died.

A mother of two young children, Weisfeld, 40, was diagnosed with brain, liver, breast and bone cancer in mid-July after going to see doctors to alleviate back pain she was experiencing while nursing her baby. A Facebook page and website set up to help support the family, pay for Weisfeld’s treatments and urge readers to pray for her health quickly garnered thousands of followers.

Originally from Yorktown Heights, N.Y., Weisfeld moved about six years ago to Jerusalem, where she worked in social media and Internet marketing. Her husband, Shmuel, an immigrant to Israel from England, hosts a radio show and builds websites, according to a Haaretz item written in July by a friend of the family, Rabbi Yehoshua Looks.

Weisfeld died Monday; her funeral was scheduled for Tuesday evening in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem’s Pamela Weisfeld dies after brief battle with cancer Read More »

Egypt’s deployment of armor in Sinai worries Israel

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Israel is concerned about the deployment of Egyptian armor in a push against militants in the neighboring Sinai desert, saying the vehicles’ entry wasn’t coordinated and is in violation of a 1979 peace treaty, an Israeli official said on Monday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has not lodged any formal protest preferring to try and resolve the issue in quiet contacts including U.S. mediation, to avoid worsening ties with Cairo already strained since Hosni Mubarak was toppled by a popular revolt last year.

Egyptian security sources said this week they were preparing to deploy aircraft and tanks in Sinai for the first time since a 1973 war with Israel, in a crackdown on Islamist militants blamed for killing 16 border guards in an August5 attack.

The U.S.-brokered 1979 peace treaty between Egypt and Israel sets strict limits on military deployment in the Sinai.

The Israeli official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said Egypt had already sent “some” armored vehicles into the desert peninsula and that “Israel is bothered by the entry of armored vehicles in Sinai without coordination.”

Egyptian television footage showed General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Sinai addressing troops with tanks and heavy equipment behind them. Other images from his visit broadcast by Egypt’s private ON TV showed a row of six tanks and five armored personnel carriers.

While Israel does not view the armor as a threat, the official said, it wants to make sure it has a say over what weaponry is deployed in the Sinai, which the peace treaty intended as a demilitarized buffer zone.

“There is no precedent for armored vehicles being deployed in Sinai and certainly not without any coordination,” he said.

Israel had urged Egypt to crack down on the militants, and its security cabinet had approved an Egyptian request to use attack helicopters in Sinai two weeks ago, after the Islamist gunmen who attacked Egypt’s security personnel also penetrated Israel’s border where they were killed.

But local media say Israel was worried coordination with Egypt may suffer after a shakeup this month of Egypt’s military, including Islamist President Mohammed Morsi’s dismissals of officials Israel had long been in contact with.

In Cairo, Yasser Ali, a spokesman for Morsi, told Reuters security measures in Sinai were “crucial” to Egypt’s security.

An Egyptian military source told Reuters the Sinai security sweep was in keeping with agreements reached with Israel a year ago after eight Israelis died in a cross-border attack.

“We don’t need to issue a daily report to Israel on the operation as it is a matter of sovereignty and national security,” the source went on to say.

Additional reporting by Edmund Blair, Yasmine Saleh and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Myra MacDonald

Egypt’s deployment of armor in Sinai worries Israel Read More »

Miss-education and mass control

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There is one country in the world that has the highest ratio of female to male undergraduates, according to UNESCO.

It is not the United States. Nor is it a European state. Nor is it Israel.

It is the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI).

Surprised? I’m not. Iranian women are brilliant. In fact, women outnumbered men in a ratio of three to two this year alone in passing Iran’s notoriously difficult university entrance exams, having consistently outperformed their male counterparts across a variety of subjects.

The regime this week showered Iran’s female students with an extraordinary reward for their incredible hard work and commendable intelligence: leading universities from all over the country announced the ban of women from some of the most popular academic subjects in the state, ranging from English literature to electrical engineering and business management.

Perhaps one could make the argument that proficiency in electrical engineering would enable an Iranian woman to create dangerously feminist digital hardware (perhaps the only chip the government wants Iranian women to tackle is the kind that is baked and/or fried). Or maybe there is a concern that a background in business management would result in the Iranian female equivalent of a Steve Jobs (somehow, “Seeb” sounds a lot less promising than its English counterpart). But it seems to be about much more than that. Writing from exile in the UK, Nobel laureate and extraordinary poet Shirin Ebadi noted that the action “is part of the recent policy of the Islamic Republic, which tries to return women to the private domain inside the home as it cannot tolerate their passionate presence in the public arena. The aim is that women will give up their opposition and demands for their own rights.”

Iran’s senior clerics believe that such a ban would counter the state’s declining birth and marriage rates. 

“Some fields are not very suitable for women’s nature,” said Abolfazl Hasani, a senior Iranian education official, according to the Rooz Online report.

But Ebadi believes that the policy is geared towards reducing Iran’s proportion of female students to 50% (it currently stands at 65%).

To us in the U.S. and elsewhere, this move seems counter-productive to the ideal role of government as encouraging, not discouraging, an educated citizenry. How can we understand a system in which the state actually wants to REDUCE the percentage of citizens that seeks higher education? Yet with regards to Iran today, I can imagine something almost akin to Superman’s “Bizarro World,” wherein powerful male government officials congregate in a room and an education minister woefully declares, “We are facing a national emergency. This blasted 65% ratio cannot continue to rise. Therefore, it is truly in the state’s best interest to ensure that the female student rate is reduced to a healthy 50%.”  It might be simplistic and even unfair, but that’s how the scenario would play out in my mind. Maybe I’ve read one too many comic strips. Or maybe the fact that in a country with 23% inflation rate, crippling economic sanctions, and tangible instability as a result of internal political backstabbing and external military threats—a sudden urgency to target women and ban them from studying accounting seems almost cartoonish and comical in and of itself.

Iran today is by no means a model for promoting human rights. Yet for me, attacking women on the educational front truly hits below the belt. And it is for one simple reason: I know the potential of Iranian women, of the magic of their minds and the necessary essence of their imaginative knowledge.

I have lived in the U.S. for many years and have been exposed to brilliant Iranian-American women, particularly young professionals whom I count as colleagues through 30 YEARS AFTER—young women such as Channah B., who will begin her Ph.D. in September at UCLA with a full scholarship or Parisa R., who arrived in Cambridge this week to pursue her Master’s at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Yet this is precisely what kills me when I read that dozens of Iranian universities are enforcing “single-gender” courses and programs, i.e. those that will be the exclusive domain of men. For there are millions of Channahs and Parisas living in Iran today. The only disparity is that their opportunities will be very different.

I would like to ask my Iranian-American female friends to imagine for one moment a world in which they could not freely declare their major or submit their graduate thesis…solely on the basis of their gender. To be told to find something other than archaeology or computer science to study, to explore, to devour—two subject areas that will now be off-limits to women at many Iranian universities. Women in Iran that were gearing up for school have received such letters in the past few weeks, notifying them of the various bans.

I suddenly feel silly for having complained about a letter I received from USC in 2010 notifying me of the bookstore’s reduced summer hours.

There’s another point to consider: As Iranian-American Jews, we are irrefutably blessed with regards to the opportunities at our disposal. Yet we must not perceive the situation of Iran’s women today through a simplified lens of pity.  I am suddenly reminded of Azar Nafisi’s words in January 2012, ironically delivered at a lecture at the University of Southern California. The Johns Hopkins professor and famed author of “Reading Lolita in Tehran” made an observation that mesmerized me.

“Iranian women,” she declared, “do not need to look at the West to learn how to be free. They simply need to look at their own history, their own ancient texts, and above all, to remember the power of the Iranian woman throughout time, to know exactly what they are capable of, and what can never truly be taken away from them.”

Nafisi was right. She had captured the rock-like inner strength and irrefutable passion that is part and parcel of the genetic makeup of every Iranian woman—regardless of religion or social class.

This is not about feeling sorry for Iranian women. This is about finding ways to empower them. 

The story of these recent university bans in Iran has barely made the news. That is why I implore us to understand that the new bans on Iranian women in higher education are OUR problem as well. Therefore, I can only off this simple suggestion: Channah, please take an extra class and write an extra paper while at UCLA. Never take one day as a Bruin for granted, and remember that the topic of your dissertation (Iranian Jewry’s historical relationship with Israel) would not even be an option of study in Iran. Parisa, please find a way to use that public policy degree you will earn in 2014 to promote BETTER policies at home and abroad. For both of you, your hard work and natural intelligence earned you a seat among the best of the best. In this, you are no different than women in Iran today. But to have this seat actually be ACCESSIBLE to you once you’ve earned it is something entirely different.

As for these recent academic bans against women in Iran, they constitute a part of a much bigger picture—a thread in the larger fabric of restrictive state control that spans everything from denying Iranians their pop
music to future access to global internet (just Google “Iran halal internet” to learn more). The regime has added another straw to the burdened back of the Iranian citizen—or as some would note, another nail in its own coffin—by creating yet another grievance for the people of Iran to hold against their leaders.

It is true that a few subjects banned at a few universities may not seem like much in the bigger scheme of things (77 fields across 36 universities, to be exact).  But there is only so much people can stand to be withheld from them. I can already see the signs during the next round of mass Iranian protests that died off in 2009, which are now all but inevitable:

“Where’s my vote?”

“Death to the dictator.”

“Long live a free Iran.”

And perhaps,

“I want my Computer Science back.”

Miss-education and mass control Read More »

German rabbi criminally charged for performing circumcisions

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A rabbi in Bavaria has been slapped with criminal charges of committing bodily harm, in the first known case to arise from an anti-circumcision ruling in May.

The charge against Rabbi David Goldberg, who is a mohel, or ritual circumciser , means that the May decision in the state of Hesse has been applied in Bavaria, confirming the fears of Jewish leaders here that the local ruling would have a wider impact.

Goldberg, 64, a Jerusalem native living in Hof Saale in Bavaria, told JTA he had not yet received a notice from the court. He said he would decide what to do after he had seen it. The charge was confirmed to the main Jewish newspaper of Germany, the
Juedische Allgemeine Zeitung.

The rabbi also said he did not know what act the charges could refer to, since he has not performed any circumcisions recently in Germany. “Only abroad: in Budapest, in the Czech Republic, in Italy,” he said.

Still, the rabbi said no secular ruling would stop him from performing brit milah in the country. If a family in Germany came to him with a request to perform a circumcision, Goldberg said he would ask the Central Council of Jews in Germany what to do. “A few weeks ago, they said, ‘You can continue,’” he said.

Goldberg said regional journalists had informed him of the suit, saying it had been filed by a doctor in the state of Hessen who had gathered 600 signatures on an open letter to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that supported the anti-circumcision ruling. Merkel and the German parliament have said, however, that they intend to push for legislation to ensure that Jews and Muslims have the right to carry out the religious ritual.

The original ruling in May related to a Muslim family in Cologne whose son suffered complications after his circumcision. The court found that non-medical circumcision of a minor is a criminal act. Although the ruling was local, it has alarmed traditional Jews and Muslims across the country. Virtually all Jewish denominations have joined in condemning the ruling. This week, Israel’s chief Ashkenazi rabbi, Yonah Metzger, was in Berlin for high level meetings on the issue.

Meanwhile, anecdotal evidence shows that Jewish ritual circumcisions continue to be performed in Germany despite the ruling’s chilling effect. Although several hospitals have declared moratoriums on the practice for now, brit milah is being performed in private homes and in synagogues.

The head of the Conference of European Rabbis, Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, said of the lawsuit: “This latest development in Hof, Germany, is yet another grave affront to religious freedom and underlines the urgent need for the German government to expedite the process of ensuring that the fundamental rights of minority communities are protected.”

German rabbi criminally charged for performing circumcisions Read More »

From homelessness to the table tennis summit, Paralympian Tahl Leibovitz is London-bound

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Tahl Leibovitz spent much of his adolescence riding New York City’s subways – not for transportation or because of the trains’ allure.

The subways were where Leibovitz lived.

A troubled home and problems at school got Leibovitz kicked out of both places. Daytime, he wandered. At night, he rode the trains.

Now, at 37, Leibovitz is flying to London to compete in the Paralympics, the international event for athletes with physical handicaps that runs Aug. 29-Sept. 6. A world-class table tennis player, Leibovitz has osteochondroma, a sometimes-painful condition characterized by noncancerous bone tumors.

Leibovitz is in class 9, among the least severe physical limitations that categorize Paralympians. (Classes 1 through 5 are for those who are wheelchair users, with class 1 the most severe.) Leibovitz also has competed in standard tournaments, including the 2004 Olympic regionals, where the United States lost to Canada. He earned two bronze medals at the 1997 Maccabiah Games in Israel and plans to compete there in 2013.

The 227-member United States team includes at least one other Jewish athlete, Ian Silverman, a 16-year-old swimmer from Baltimore whose cerebral palsy affects both legs. “This is my first international meet,” Silverman said Monday from Germany, where his Paralympic team is training. “I’m really privileged and honored to represent the U.S. Hopefully, I’ll do well and make the country proud.”

Olympic great Michael Phelps, who trains at the same swim club, has given Silverman pointers on his flip turns and kicking. “That was really nice of him,” Silverman said.

Leibovitz, meanwhile, discovered table tennis as a teenager. A Haifa native who moved to New York at 3, the adolescent Leibovitz often ran away from home or was kicked out by his father, Ernest, a Romanian native who fought in Israel’s Six-Day War. The sport was his salvation.

“My dad had problems with alcohol. At about 14, before I entered high school, I ended up living on the E train. I didn’t have anywhere to live,” Leibovitz related Sunday night from the Ozone Park, Queens, condominium he shares with his wife, Dawn. “I’d play table tennis in the day, and at night I would take the trains everywhere.”

One summer, Leibovitz slept on the street nearly every night – other times, at the beach in Rockaway and at two Manhattan branches of Covenant House, a national organization that assists at-risk youth.

Leibovitz had discovered table tennis at Lost Battalion Hall, a Queens parks department facility. He struggled to score any points in his games and waited hours for the chance to play again. At age 16, Leibovitz started winning. He did well at a tournament in Indianapolis and had found his passion.

For sustenance, Leibovitz visited a neighborhood soup kitchen and shoplifted from supermarkets. Over several years, he frequently stole into a steakhouse by the back door and loaded items from the salad bar into his paper bag – “basically, stealing it,” he admitted. “I was caught a few times.”

It was a long fall from Leibovitz’s days attending Hebrew school at the Ozone Park Jewish Center, close to where he grew up in Howard Beach. He missed nearly all of junior high school and high school, but passed his General Educational Development exam and attended a community college. Leibovitz dropped out because his educational gaps placed him far behind in math. Eventually, he enrolled at Queens College, earning bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy and a master’s degree in urban affairs. When he returns from London, Leibovitz will continue working toward a master’s of business administration.

Leo Compton, who retired last January as executive director of the South Queens Boys and Girls Club, remembers Leibovitz being troubled by incessant bullying about his height – he now stands 5’4” – and his right arm’s being shorter than his left. Leibovitz said that the teasing led to fights and to his being kicked out of school. His home life deteriorated simultaneously, with Compton often asked to mediate between the boy and his mother, Felicia Weisskohl. She died of cancer in 2007.

“I’d say, ‘You can’t ride the trains. It’s dangerous. You don’t have to love [your mother], but you have to respect her,’ ” said Compton. “My rule at the club is: You have to go to school. But with Tahl, it was different. He would’ve been lost if he didn’t have something to grow with and build his confidence. He had that with table tennis.”

At the club, Leibovitz befriended other boys passionate about the game. Leibovitz favored table tennis and billiards – never playing other sports or attending personal development sessions, Compton said.

Leibovitz played for hours. When Leibovitz had no one to compete against, Compton pushed the table against a wall so he could hit solo. Leibovitz would play from afternoon until the club closed after 10 at night.

“The ball and paddle would just click, and he could spend an hour straight without missing the ball at all,” Compton said. “Then I bought a machine for him that could hit the ball to him at angles.”

Leibovitz left at 18 to train at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s center in Colorado, returning to New York a serious player. He qualified for the U.S. Paralympic team, and taught table tennis at the South Queens club when not away at competitions.

The sport is now Leibovitz’s livelihood. He’s worked for SPiN New York, a table tennis center in Manhattan co-owned by actress Susan Sarandon, since it opened a few years ago. A substitute teacher in city schools, he also coaches promising players in the Queens neighborhood of Flushing, home to a large immigrant community from South Korea, where the sport is wildly popular.

Sponsorship deals with the Stiga table tennis equipment company and United Airlines help, and Leibovitz receives USOC stipends and health insurance.

Zeev Glikman, a coach on Israel’s Paralympic table tennis team, said he looks forward to seeing Leibovitz in London. The two have faced each other in the Paralympics. During free time at competitions, Leibovitz asks about Israeli political and diplomatic news. “He’s very nice,” said Glikman. “He’s one of the best players in the world in his category.”

Assessing his medal chances in London is a dicey proposition for Leibovitz, who earned a gold medal in singles and a bronze medal in team competition at the 1996 Atlanta Paralympics, and a bronze in singles in Athens in 2004. He also competed at the Paralympics in Beijing in 2008.

“You can’t control the outcome of a match. You want to control what you can: your training and your energy level,” he said. “You can’t go into any match and say, ‘I’m going to win it.’ But you have to have the belief that you can win it.’ ”

From homelessness to the table tennis summit, Paralympian Tahl Leibovitz is London-bound Read More »

GOP platform to back two states

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The Republican Party’s platform is expected to include support for a two-state solution in the Middle East.

The platform committee, meeting in Tampa, Fla., on Tuesday, rejected three amendments that would have removed language supportive of a two-state solution, according to a delegate who put forward two of the amendments.

A vote before the full Republican Convention in Tampa is expected next week.

The proposed language as it now stands, written by the Romney campaign and committee aides, states, “We envision two democratic states,” according to BuzzFeed, the political news site that first reported on the amendments.

Three amendments were offered but not adopted following objections from a Romney surrogate, Sen. Jim Talent (R-Mo.). Two of those amendments were put forth by delegate Kevin Erickson, pastor at Cross Hill Church in Virginia, Minn., who wanted to replace the two-state language with tough language on terrorism, BuzzFeed reported.

A former public defender, Erickson told JTA that Israel “is not one of my primary issues.”

He said he was intrigued after listening to a “pretty vigorous” discussion about a two-state solution that ended in “such a close vote.” He proposed alternatives that he said were aimed at satisfying both sides, but these were also defeated.

J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group, welcomed the result.

“That such amendments could garner even a modicum of support demonstrates the very real threat to longstanding bipartisan support for the two-state resolution as a central feature of America’s unwavering commitment to Israel’s survival and security as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people,” it said in a statement.

GOP platform to back two states Read More »

U.S. seizes $150 million in Hezbollah-linked funds

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U.S. authorities announced the seizure of $150 million allegedly linked to a money-laundering scheme by the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.

The Lebanese Canadian Bank and other unidentified institutions sent nearly $330 million to the United States between 2007 and 2011 to finance the purchase of used cars that were shipped to West Africa, according to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Money from the sale of the cars was then routed to Lebanon, where it was handed over to Hezbollah, according to the attorney’s office.

Monday’s seizure concerns a December 2011 money laundering and forfeiture complaint filed in U.S. federal court in New York that targeted the bank and two other Lebanese financial institutions with alleged ties to Hezbollah.

“As we alleged last year, the Lebanese Canadian Bank played a key role in facilitating money laundering for Hezbollah controlled organizations across the globe,” Drug Enforcement Administration chief Michele Leonhart said in a statement.

A Hezbollah official refuted the charges, saying they were “another attempt to tarnish the image of the resistance in Lebanon,” but U.S. prosecutors said there was no doubt about the institutions’ ties to the militant outfit, AFP reported.

U.S. seizes $150 million in Hezbollah-linked funds Read More »

Obama campaign launches rabbis list

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More than 600 rabbis joined a campaign initiative called Rabbis for Obama.

Obama for America announced Tuesday that Rabbis for Obama is designed to “engage and mobilize grassroots supporters.”

The rabbis represent themselves and not individual synagogues or organizations, according to the news release. The names of all the rabbis can be found on the website barackobama.com/rabbis. Most of the rabbis are Reform or Conservative, although a handful are Orthodox.

“This list of rabbis represents a broad group of respected Jewish leaders from all parts of the country. These rabbis mirror the diversity of American Jewry,” Ira Forman, the Obama campaign’s Jewish outreach director, said in a news release.

“Their ringing endorsement of President Obama speaks volumes about the president’s deep commitment to the security of the state of Israel and his dedication to a policy agenda that represents the values of the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community,” Forman said.

The number of rabbis signing on is more than double the number who added their names to President Obama’s 2008 campaign at the launch of a similar effort then.

Rabbis Sam Gordon and Steven Bob, both of Illinois, and Burt Visotzky of New York are co-chairs for this initiative. The first two started Rabbis for Obama in 2008.

Obama campaign launches rabbis list Read More »

Israel protests to U.N. over Iranian rhetoric

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Israel submitted a letter to the United Nations Security Council protesting recent statements by Iranian leaders against Israel.

“Over the past several days, the most senior Iranian leaders have issued yet another series of outrageous statements, which called for the destruction of Israel and spread the vile anti-Semitism that forms the core of their ideology,” Israeli Charges d’Affairs to the Security Council Israel Nitzan wrote Monday in a letter to Gérard Araud, president of the Security Council. The letter was also sent to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

The letter pointed out that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said that “Zionism is a danger for entire humanity” and that Israel “is a cancerous tumor … in [the] heart of [the] Muslim world.” It also quoted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as saying that the “the very existence of the Zionist regime is … an affront to all world nations”—and called on “all human communities to wipe out this scarlet letter, meaning the Zionist regime, from the forehead of humanity.”

[Related: Israel’s not a ‘cancer’]

Ahmadinejad also repeated several anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and slurs, including that “the two world wars were designed by Zionists … [who] have been inflicting very heavy damage and suffering on the whole humanity for over two thousand years.”

“Iran—a member state of the United Nations—continues to declare that it seeks the destruction of Israel, another U.N. Member State,” the letter said.

“As Israel has made clear in our previous letters to the Security Council, complacency in the face of Iranian hate speech and incitement is dangerous. The delusional statements of Iran’s leaders are not those of crazy people, but rational fanatics, with irrational hatreds. One can only imagine what such an extremist regime would do if it got its hands on the world’s most dangerous weapons. There are certain times when silence is not an option. We expect the Security Council and all responsible members of the international community to condemn Iranian hate speech without any further delay,” the letter concluded.

Israel protests to U.N. over Iranian rhetoric Read More »

GOP, Democratic conventions will gain Jewish focus for similarities and gaps

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Get set for a political double feature with much of the same plot, but with different outcomes for the issues that tend to preoccupy Jewish voters.

The same key words and themes will bounce around Jewish events at next week’s Republican convention in Tampa, Fla,. and at the Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C., the week after that: “pro-Israel,” “marriage,” “Jewish vote”  and “abortion.”

With the exception of “pro-Israel,” however, the content of the sessions will be as different as, well, Tampa (famed for its beaches and strip joints) and Charlotte (known for its seminaries and colonial history).

There will be telling programmatic differences as well. The National Jewish Democratic Council will maintain a recreational vehicle where convention-goers dropping by any time day or night are likely to run into one of the several dozen Jewish Democrats in the Senate and House. Prominent among those featured will be Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who chairs the Democratic National Committee.

Since Republicans boast only one national Jewish lawmaker, and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, is a busy guy, don’t expect a lot of face time. The paucity of Jewish lawmakers helps explain why the Republican Jewish Coalition tends to dub its events “pro-Israel” receptions and not “Jewish” events.

The presence of national and local Jewish organizations will be felt at both conventions.

The American Jewish Committee is hosting Jewish-Latino events in both cities – Florida’s substantial Cuban American community trends Republican, while the other Latino communities trend Democratic. Notably, however, the AJC’s only Jewish-African American event – aimed at a community that votes overwhelmingly Democratic – is in Charlotte.

This year’s there’s an AJC first for a convention: a Mormon-Jewish get-together cosponsored by the Tampa Jewish Federation, a nod to the interest in the faith of the presumptive Republican nominee, Mitt Romney.

“This is not something we were doing 20 years ago,” Jason Isaacson, the AJC director of government and international affairs, told JTA. “But obviously, it’s a community America is being introduced to in new ways in the course of this election campaign.”

Most of the differences between the conventions have to do with an increasingly polarized polity. RJC and NJDC leaders agree that the overriding issue is one that will play out throughout the convention, not just in the Jewish forums on the sidelines: the economy.

“American Jewish voters first and foremost are Americans,” said David Harris, the NJDC president and CEO. “The things that concern American Jews are primarily the things that concern most Americans, the economy, jobs, everyday kitchen table interests.”

Jobs would also be the core of Romney’s message, said Matt Brooks, the RJC director.

“People are going to be looking to hear about his vision going forward,” he said. “Job creation, getting the economy moving.”

That said, social issues also will feature prominently, particularly among Jews at the conventions.

The Democratic convention platform committee, heeding submissions from a slew of groups that included the Anti-Defamation League and the NJDC, will endorse marriage equality.

The Republican platform frames the concept as an “assault on the foundations of our society”; language that gay Republicans sought that would have urged “respect and dignity” for gays was made vague, recommending instead “respect and dignity” for all Americans.

On abortion, according to the National Journal, the GOP will adhere to its 2008 plank. It declares that the procedure “is a fundamental assault on the sanctity of innocent human life” and has no explicit exemption for rape or incest. Romney has said he favors such exemptions.

The National Council of Jewish Women, which will be present at both events, has reproductive rights high on its agenda and is allying with like-minded members of both parties to promote them.

NCJW also will promote voter registration at both events; it strongly opposes efforts by some Republican legislatures and governors to tighten voter registration, saying that requirements of photo IDs discriminate against minorities and the elderly.

Likewise, both conventions will feature sessions on the perennial question of whether this election will be the one that sees a substantive shift in the Jewish vote.

Brooks, the RJC director, will speak on the topic to reporters. In Charlotte, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) will moderate a panel on the matter; with her will be speakers from J Street, the liberal pro-Israel lobby, NCJW and Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, the latter of which seeks to revitalize neighborhoods.

Republicans have been especially focused this year on moving Jewish votes, with the RJC running TV ads featuring three disaffected Jewish 2008 Obama voters who say they are committed to Romney.

Speaking on background, officials in both parties have said that a showing of less than 70 percent for President Obama at the polls would represent a substantive undercutting of his support among Jews. Obama scored 78 percent of the Jewish vote in 2008 exit polls, although a deeper analysis of such polls this year by The Solomon Project, which examines the role of Jews in U.S. politics, sets his result at 74 percent.

Not surprisingly, both parties will feature events with “pro-Israel” in the title: The RJC will have a “Salute to Pro-Israel Officials,” and NJDC will have a similar event. (At past conventions, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has co-hosted these events; officials at AIPAC did not return multiple requests for information about what they planned for this year.)

“Pro-Israel” also is likely to be a theme during the prime-time speeches by candidates and other top officials. The differences will not be of substance; both parties and candidates are in virtually identical places when it comes to the Middle East peace process and confronting Iran.

Romney’s surrogates on Tuesday successfully pushed back attempts to introduce language into the GOP platform that would have undercut commitment to a two-state solution, BuzzFeed Politics reported.

Yet, expect each side to depict the other as hapless in defending Israel’s interests. Rep. Paul Ryan (D-Wis.), Romney’s running mate, leveled a typical GOP criticism of Obama at a town hall-type function on Monday in Goffstown, N.H.

“When President Obama made the 1967 borders the precondition for the beginning of negotiations, it undercut our ally,’’ The New York Times quoted Ryan as saying. “It made it harder for the peace process to move forward, and as a result we have no peace process.’’

Obama’s 2011 speech proffering the 1967 lines as the basis for negotiations noted the necessity of land swaps, and included specific security guarantees for Israel.

For its part, the NJDC is running an ad noting Obama’s role in putting in place the Iron Dome anti-missile system, and featuring Israelis expressing their gratitude for its efficacy during a recent spate of rocket attacks launched from the Gaza Strip.

Jimmy Carter, the former president who has angered Israel and some U.S. Jewish groups because of his warnings that Israel’s West Bank policies could culminate in an apartheid state, will have a prime-time speech at the Democratic convention, to be delivered by video. Some groups, including the ADL and the Zionist Organization of America, have criticized the slot, saying Carter is divisive.

Differences of foreign policy emphasis will come up, too. Romney has preserved the two-state option in the platform and some of his surrogates have suggested that he is interested in advancing peace talks should he become president. Still, don’t expect the issue to be front and center.

Expect, instead, to hear a lot about Iran at the GOP event. Both candidates say that an Iran with a nuclear weapon is unacceptable, but the Romney campaign has suggested that Obama has not been assertive enough in making clear to Iran the consequences of not making transparent its nuclear program.

Finally, in Charlotte, J Street will join the Arab American Institute as well as Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) in promoting the two-state solution as a cornerstone of U.S. policy.

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