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Jewish Journal

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January 6, 2015

Shmulie Hauptman: Hatzolah leader brings first aid to Jewish community — and beyond

Leave a Comment / California, The Mensch List /
On a rainy weekday in December, Shmulie Hauptman wore a reflective Hatzolah of Los Angeles jacket. A two-way radio was clipped to his belt. His car, a Lexus hybrid, was parked outside the Starbucks at Pico and Robertson, where he met with the Journal. Inside the car were a spare oxygen tank, burn kits, a defibrillator and other emergency supplies. 
 
 “The biggest lesson we learn in this field is empathy,” Hauptman, 37, said, emphasizing that his job as Hatzolah of Los Angeles’ director of operations requires more than nifty gear. “We get to see people at their best and at their worst. Without a healthy dose of empathy, it’s not a job you can do well.”  
 
Hauptman oversees more than 60 active responders and more than 20 dispatchers for the local Hatzolah chapter, which was founded around 1999 as a means of providing first-aid services to synagogues and today functions as a supplementary organization for existing emergency response programs in the heavily Jewish communities of Pico-Robertson, Hancock Park and Valley Village. 
 
Hauptman was among the inaugural class of trainees for the all-volunteer group.
 
He manages to balance his work for Hatzolah with a family life that includes five children, ages 2 to 17 — Hauptman described his marriage at the age of 18 as the “single best decision I ever made in my life”— and a day job. As the CEO of European Specialties, a food manufacturing business, he splits his time between Los Angeles and Newark, N.J.
 
The support of his wife, Samantha, a faculty member at Yeshiva High Tech, helps make the juggling act possible, he said, especially as she understands that emergencies occur at all times of the day. It is supportive spouses who make the work of Hatzolah possible, Hauptman said.
 
“Our strength is from our families, who are ready to give up their Shabbat meals, their family time,” he said. 
 
David Bacall, deputy director of operations at Hatzolah, said Hauptman is able to communicate with a wide cross-section of people, including the many Orthodox Jews who live in the areas Hatzolah serves, but also, as Hatzolah does not discriminate on the basis of religion, to non-Jews as well. 
 
 “He’s really able to understand different people’s points of view and bridge the gap between them,” Bacall, managing director of Capstone Partners, said. “Coming from the corporate world, that’s the sign of a good leader.” 
 
Hauptman is the son of a rabbi, and he describes his work for Hatzolah as a “calling,” just as one might describe the rabbinate.
 
“That’s my calling. I didn’t join this organization to sit behind a desk. When you’re a leader, you lead from the front lines. You don’t lead from behind the scenes. You can’t get a feel for what your guys are doing unless you are there with them,” he said. “Sometimes you need to step in.” 

Shmulie Hauptman: Hatzolah leader brings first aid to Jewish community — and beyond Read More »

Snow forecast takes Holy Land by storm

Leave a Comment / Israel, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News /

With memories still fresh of the Holy Land's worst storm in 50 years last winter, Israelis and Palestinians stocked up on supplies for a forecast heavy snowfall on Tuesday.

The approaching storm, due to peak on Wednesday, was expected to be lighter than in December 2013, when snow fell for three days, paralysing the region and causing power outages that left tens of thousands cut off from electricity and heat.

Israeli television weatherman Danny Rupp predicted 12 to 24 hours of snowfall in Jerusalem. Barry Lynn, a meteorologist at Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the storm would likely dump between 10 inches and 24 inches of snow in the city.

Snowploughs and power crews were on alert in Jerusalem, northern Israel and in the Palestinian Territories.


Jerusalem's light rail de-railed by snow on Jan. 10, 2013. Photo by Michael Friedson/TML Photos

As the skies darkened on Tuesday, Israelis and Palestinians scurried for food supplies and gas or paraffin heaters.

“We ran out quickly,” said one salesmen in Jerusalem's Mahane Yehuda market, “There's not a heater to be found anywhere in the area.”

Heavy rains and near-freezing temperatures in the approaching storm threatened to deepen the misery in the Gaza Strip, where streets are still strewn with wreckage from a 50-day war with Israel last summer, thousands live in U.N. shelters and damaged homes and the power is on only six hours a day.

“No electricity, no drinkable water, no reconstruction, and now a storm. Our people need the help of the entire world,” said Samir Ali, 47, a Gaza city taxi driver.

Inside a packed supermarket, Jerusalem resident Alon Issashar, 29, said he had hoped to beat the crowds by shopping early.

“As you can see Armageddon is coming,” he joked. “People are going crazy. I guess people outside of Israel will laugh but we are used to sun.”


A man prays at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City during a snowstorm on Jan. 10, 2013. Photo by Darren Whiteside/Reuters

In the Palestinian city of Ramallah, shoppers cleaned bread, water and diapers off supermarket shelves.

In Jerusalem, Mayor Nir Barkat said roads to the city were likely to be closed at the sight of the first snowflakes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu joined Barkat, police commanders and emergency services officials at a meeting in Jerusalem to prepare for the storm.

“I ask all Israeli citizens to simply watch out for their neighbours' welfare and help them,” Netanyahu said in a statement.

Last winter, hundreds of motorists trying to reach Jerusalem were trapped in their vehicles for hours before being rescued by troops in armoured personnel carriers.

“Last year's lessons have been learnt to their fullest,” Barkat told Army Radio.

Snow forecast takes Holy Land by storm Read More »

Dave Bullock: Bringing cameras to Skid Row residents

Leave a Comment / California, The Mensch List /
Dave Bullock is a co-founder of the Skid Row Photography Club, which provides digital cameras to Los Angeles’ Skid Row residents — the club’s members — and through their pictures allows outsiders like himself a chance to see their lives in another light. Bullock raises the funds to buy the cameras, and he collects used ones for the project, as well. 
 
“It’s given them, members of the club, an outlet and a way to express themselves artistically and also to document their day-to-day lives,” Bullock said of the club, which he co-founded in 2007 with Skid Row resident and homeless advocate Michael Blaze. “They have access to the community that only someone who is part of the community can have. Any photojournalist or outsider like myself can never hope to capture the stuff that they do. It’s amazing what they get.”
 
Bullock, a freelance photographer, says when he’s had time, he would spend time with the residents and offer classes on photography, as well as help them organize their photos and create shows. These days, as he juggles several paying jobs including being lead developer at the crowd-funding charitable website CrowdRise and on the faculty at Art Center College of Design, he’s mostly doing fundraising for the club, and Blaze distributes the cameras to the community, working from a list he maintains of people he trusts will put the cameras to good use. 
 
The residents’ photographs have captured a variety of subjects, including ash on the street, piles of trash and even flowers — images visitors to Skid Row might never think to photograph. Some of them have been displayed publicly and have been sold for money.
 
“They find the beauty of everyday things,” Bullock said.
 
A Reform Jew who grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Bullock began to learn about Skid Row when he moved into a nearby neighborhood in downtown L.A. roughly 10 years ago. He and Blaze, whom he met at a gallery exhibition, launched the club with the help of the Downtown Los Angeles Neighborhood Council. 
 
Most recently, in an effort to purchase additional cameras, Bullock launched an online campaign on CrowdRise that has raised nearly $2,000 for the club. It costs $100 to buy a Canon point-and-shoot camera as well as an 18-gigabyte memory card and a tripod, Bullock said. To date, the club has provided 50 digital cameras to Skid Row community members, Bullock said.
 
Somehow, he’s also found time to document Wilshire Boulevard Temple’s recent restoration and to serve on the San Bernardino Cave and Technical Rescue Team.
 
“It is the whole tikkun olam thing,” Bullock said of his volunteer work. “It wasn’t a conscious choice. I didn’t go out and say, ‘I am going to … help out the world,’ but I think it’s part of our culture … tzedakah and all that stuff,” he said. “I think it’s part of our duties to help out any way we can, and I happened to land on a path that has allowed me to do that.” 

Dave Bullock: Bringing cameras to Skid Row residents Read More »

Ellen Brooks: Lending a hand at Cedars-Sinai for 38 years

Leave a Comment / California, The Mensch List /
When Ellen Brooks retired in 1977 at the age of 34 from her job as a production assistant on the Warner Bros. lot, she was looking forward to spending some time traveling the country with her new husband, Dr. Philip Brooks, a gynecologist approaching his 50th anniversary at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Dr. Brooks was preparing to take some advanced classes and attend seminars around the United States, and Ellen wanted to spend that time with him.
 
Shortly after she left Warner Bros., Ellen went with Philip to an OB-GYN dinner and was sitting at a table with a handful of gynecologists and their wives when she told the woman sitting next to her about her decision to retire. That short conversation, as it happens, changed the next four decades of Ellen’s life.
 
“ ‘She said, ‘You retired? OK, you’re going to come and work at Cedars,’ ” as Brooks remembers the conversation. “I said, ‘Maybe someday.’ She said, ‘No, you’re going to come and work. I said, ‘OK, we’ll see.’ ”
 
The next day, Brooks received a call from the president of Helping Hand of Los Angeles, a Cedars-Sinai support group founded in 1929 that has helped raise more than $20 million for the hospital’s Obstetrics and Gynecology Department, which has allowed the department to endow two chairs and establish an ovarian cancer detection program. 
 
The president asked Brooks if she would be willing to sign up as a volunteer. The commitment was not too big — four hours one day per week. She figured it was a nice thing to do and, anyway, her husband was already working at Cedars-Sinai. So she enrolled in training with the volunteer services department and began working at the Helping Hand gift shop, which, like its parent support group, donates all its proceeds to support obstetrics and gynecology at the medical center.
 
Now, 38 years later, every week (and almost always multiple times a week), Brooks is at the hospital to help patients and their loved ones who wander into the gift shop, or she’s at the hospital because she’s now the president of Helping Hand of Los Angeles (a position she assumed three years ago), or she’s at the hospital because, well, she loves to help people who maybe just can’t find where they’re going in the massive complex.
 
“When I come here every week, it’s like coming home,” said Brooks, who came into the gift shop on a Friday just for this interview, but still took some time to do her (volunteer) job — offering comfort to people with whom she crossed paths.
 
“What’s very rewarding is, just now, while I was waiting, I said to a woman, ‘Can I help you?’ And she said, ‘No, no, I’m just waiting; I have somebody in surgery.’ And so we started talking.” 
 
The gift shop and the lobby (which are adjacent) are filled every day with friends, relatives and patients who, for example, are recuperating from surgery and may venture into the gift shop if only to get out of their room for a few minutes. Brooks uses those few minutes to infuse a bit of warmth or simply some basic human interaction that can go a long way in any hospital, for any patient.
 
“When people are anxious and nervous about their loved ones who are in surgery or upstairs in a room,” Brooks continued, “they need to just get a breath of fresh air and walk out. They wander into the gift shop and we provide comfort for them by making them feel they can take their mind off the worries that they have.
 
“Something makes you decide you want to do it [volunteer],” Brooks said. “In my case, I didn’t have anybody that was sick, but I always knew that when I had time I wanted to do volunteer work.
 
“It makes me feel good to help people who, many times, are in a very stressful place,” Brooks said. “Every aspect of it has enriched my life.” 

Ellen Brooks: Lending a hand at Cedars-Sinai for 38 years Read More »

After decades of distance, Japan and Israel establish closer ties

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Reading his Japanese-language newspaper over breakfast, Rabbi Mendy Sudakevich spotted an ad for a self-help DVD titled “Get rich like the Jews.”

“Almost anywhere else in the world, such an ad” — published in several widely read Japanese dailies — “would have been deemed anti-Semitic incitement,” noted Sudakevich, an Israel-born Chabad emissary who settled in Tokyo in 2000.

But in Japan, he and others said, it’s something akin to a compliment.

“[T]he takeaway is that Jews, and Israel by extension, should be emulated and embraced,” said Ben-Ami Shillony, a historian and lecturer on the Far East at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

Indeed, Japan’s government — buoyed by the population’s generally positive bias toward Jews — has been actively seeking stronger economic ties with Israel. That’s especially true now that the nation’s decades-long dependence on Arab oil is waning due to America’s increased energy production and Japan’s decreased reliance on fossil fuels.

In 2014, trade between the two nations rose by 9.3 percent to $1.75 billion, according to Israel’s Ministry of Economy.

Warmer relations also yielded several recent joint memoranda on enhancing cooperation on research, trade, tourism and even security cooperation — an area that successive Japanese administrations regarded as taboo for fear that it would anger oil-rich Arab nations.

And in Japan, government policy has a substantially larger impact on private firms than in the West, Shillony said. This was evidenced in the decisions by nearly all the large Japanese carmakers not to enter the Israeli market until the 1990s, when the Arab oil boycott — a set of sanctions applied against nations that did business with Israel — began to loosen, he added.

Japan’s new certainty owes to the arrival in October of U.S.-produced shale oil, which is expected to put the United States ahead of Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest exporter of black gold. As production in the United States nears the projected rate of 11.6 million barrels a day by 2020, exports to Japan are expected to grow far beyond the current level of 300,000 barrels a month. At the same time, Japan is increasingly relying on green energy.

More evidence of warmer ties between Israel and Japan: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official visit to Tokyo in May, where he and his wife, Sara, dined with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his wife, Akie, at Abe’s residence. Their meeting exceeded its allotted time — unusual for a state visit in Japan.

Abe, a center-right politician whose career and worldview in many respects align with that of Netanyahu, is heading to Israel later this month in the first state visit of its kind in nine years for a Japanese leader. Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, visited Japan in 2008.

“I am determined, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu, to make further efforts to strengthen Japan-Israel relations, so that the potentials are fully materialized,” Abe told the media in Tokyo during his meeting with Netanyahu.

The feelings appear to be mutual.

On Sunday, Netanyahu’s Cabinet approved a series of measures aimed at boosting trade to the tune of  several tens of millions of dollars. Israel will open an Economy Ministry office in Osaka and increase by 50 percent government grants for joint Israeli-Japanese research projects.

For Abe, strengthening ties with Israel is part of a larger vision for enhancing innovation and diversifying Japan’s highly centralized industries and markets in an attempt to reverse its declining economy and creeping inflation, according to Shillony.

In Abe’s Japan, the historian added, Israel is a particularly valuable partner because its unique expertise in defense and military technologies fits his plan for beefing up Japanese military capabilities against an increasingly defiant North Korea.

The Arab Spring of 2011 also changed Japan’s view of the region in Israel’s favor, according to Naoki Maruyama, a professor of history at Japan’s Meiji Gakuin University.

“With the region falling into chaos and internal strife, Israel stands out as the exception – and the place in which to invest,” he told JTA.

Abe’s economic doctrine of openness, which analysts often call “Abenomics,”  already is changing the reality of doing business in Japan as a foreigner, according to Yoav Keidar, an Israeli businessman who has been working in Japan for the past 25 years.

“Once the main bottleneck for foreign firms, the government is now actively helping those firms overcome other blockages,” he said. “In Japanese terms, this is nothing short of a revolution.”

In Keidar’s case, the government fast-tracked permits for his telemedicine service — a vetting process that would have taken years in the past, he said.

Despite the dramatic increase in trade between the two nations, it’s still some 30 percent lower than Israel’s trade with South Korea, one of Japan’s main competitors.

That competition is another factor enhancing Israel’s appeal in Japan, according to Peleg Lewi, head of mission of Israel’s embassy in Tokyo.

“It did not escape Japanese industrialists and officials that Israel still has much stronger trade with some of Japan’s strongest competitors,” Lewi said. “At a time when giants like Samsung, Intel and Google are operating research centers in Israel, Japan is beginning to feel left out.”

 

After decades of distance, Japan and Israel establish closer ties Read More »

Historians on Israel

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

According to Voltaire, history “is nothing but a pack of tricks we play upon the dead.” I’m more concerned about tricks that historians play upon the living.

In some ways, the past year was fertile ground for mischievous historical trickeration (a favorite Louis Farrakhanism) at Israel’s expense.

Some months ago, recovering leftist historian Ronald Radosh called the anti-Israel petition signed by hundreds of historians in the U.S., with an added list of “international” fellow travelers, “Historians for Hamas.”

I recognized only about ten names, but I’m no longer as plugged into the organized profession as I once was. I don’t doubt that the signers were representative of a broader swathe of opinion. My alma mater, UCLA, was a petition hotbed more than Berkeley.

I would guestimate that of the signers, 10 percent were African American, 30 percent were  Arab or Muslim, and 40 percent were Jews who hate Israel.

I agree with Radosh’s characterization of the petition as a modern instance of what Julien Benda in the 1930s called the “trahison des clercs”—the intellectual betrayal of freedom by totalitarian-leaning intellectuals. In this case, the signers’ criticisms of Israel were  mostly indistinguishable from apologetics for Hamas’ barbarities, although the petition signatories lacked the honesty to admit it.

The publicizing of this  petition followed  the unanimous decision by the 20-Member National Council of The American Studies Association (ASA) to join the academic boycott of Israel.  Throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, the ASA’s blunderbuss resolution cited: “US military and other support for Israel”; “Israel’s violation of international law and UN resolutions”—perish the thought they mention Iran’s violations of UN uranium enrichment bans for which it is now being rewarded; “the documented impact on Palestinian scholars and students”—no mention of 75 years of Arab and Muslim boycotts of Jewish institutions;  Israeli universities’ complicity in “state policies that violate human rights”—no specifics provided; and “the support of such a resolution by many members of the 5,000-member ASA”—how “many” was not indicated.

Fortunately, the ASA’s academic big brother—the American Historical Association (AHA)—has now implicitly rebuked anti-Israel  know nothingism about the Middle East of the American Studiers’ leadership.

Meeting about a year after the ASA’s late 2013 resolution, the AHA has  refused to suspend normal procedures to put current or future resolutions condemning Israel to a membership vote. The vote was 144 to 54.  One defeated motion claimed that Israel commits “violence and intimidation” against Palestinian academics and archives, damaging “Palestinians’ sense of historical identity as well as the historical record itself.” Of course, it failed to mention Palestinian defacement of West Bank Jewish historical sites and threats to topple the Western Wall  or the Palestinian Authority’s claim that neither King David nor the Second Jewish Temple ever existed.

Twenty years ago, the AHA also struck a blow  against bigotry-posing-as-history by issuing a statement debunking the anonymously-authored The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, the product of the anonymous “Historical Research Department” of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  Volume 1 of The Secret Relationship argued that a handful of Jewish merchants “dominated” the Atlantic slave trade. Volume 2’s subtitle is: “How Jews Gained Control of the Black American Economy.”

Combine the AHA’s record with the tepid reception for John Judis’ revisionist Genesis: Truman, American Jews, and the Origins of the Arab/Israeli Conflict—all the major claims of which have been  refuted by Ronald and Allis Radosh’s A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel—and 2014 has not been such a bad year  after all for mainstream historians in relation to Mideast history.

Historian Brackman, a Simon Wiesenthal Center consultant, is coauthor with Ephraim Isaac of From Abraham to Obama: A History of Jews, Africans, and African Americans (Africa World Press, forthcoming).

Historians on Israel Read More »

Israeli nationalist leader in spotlight over 1996 Lebanon attack

Leave a Comment / Israel /

Naftali Bennett, leader of an ultra-nationalist Israeli party and a potential future defense minister, is in the spotlight over his indirect role in an army shelling attack that killed more than 100 Lebanese civilians nearly two decades ago.

Bennett, whose Jewish Home party is in Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition and is expected to perform well in elections in March, was a junior commando officer during Israel's 1996 Lebanon offensive against Hezbollah guerrillas.

After his troops were pinned down, an artillery strike was called in to help cover their retreat near the village of Kafr Qana, killing 102 locals who were sheltering at a U.N. facility. International outrage prompted Israel to curtail the operation.

Two unsourced Israeli media reports over the past week have questioned Bennett's soldiering. One said he had undertaken risky maneuvers without authorization from commanders he deemed “cowardly and not steadfast enough”. The other suggested his “hysterical” distress calls precipitated the errant shelling.

Invoked now, months after the war in Gaza, which was condemned abroad but which Bennett said should have been more aggressive, the episode has tapped into pre-election debate on national security and diplomacy.

Bennett, a former tech entrepreneur who urges Israelis to “stop saying sorry” for their country's policies, has denied any wrongdoing at Kafr Qana. In a speech on Tuesday, he reiterated his vociferous defense of Israeli soldiers facing investigation over the latest Gaza war.

“Attack me as much as you want,” said Bennett, the economy minister. He said of critics: “They were never in the battlefield and are unworthy of the sacrifice these warriors make for them.”

Bennett's conduct at Kafr Qana drew surprising endorsement from the liberal newspaper Haaretz, which said its investigation had found that the young officer had “functioned excellently”.

But Haaretz argued Bennett may lack sufficient experience to serve as defense minister, a post some Israeli analysts predict Netanyahu will offer him if re-elected.

Such an appointment would anger Palestinians, whose goal of statehood in the West Bank and East Jerusalem is rejected by Bennett, and likely deepen U.S. concerns about stalled peacemaking.

David Zonsheine, Bennett's former deputy in the army and now chairman of the board of B'Tselem, a leading Israeli human rights group, said: “I find it unbelievable that, instead of dealing with the bad things Naftali is bringing on Israel, some left-wing journalists, with a badly reported story, have compelled someone like me to come to his defense and confirm that he was a good officer.”

Israeli nationalist leader in spotlight over 1996 Lebanon attack Read More »

Report: Qatar deports Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Qatar reportedly has deported Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Mashaal to Turkey.

The move was first reported over the weekend in a Turkish newspaper. It comes as Qatar is working to strengthen ties with Egypt and several Gulf States that object to the Hamas presence.

Mashaal visited Turkey in a surprise appearance about two weeks ago, where he called for Turkish help to “liberate” Jerusalem.

On Tuesday, Hamas leaders denied that Mashaal was deported.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry in a statement issued Tuesday praised Qatar for deporting Mashaal, saying the ministry had worked openly and through private channels to Qatar and other countries in order to effect Mashaal’s deportation.

“We expect the Turkish government to now follow suit,” the statement said.

Mashaal spent 13 years in Damascus before leaving in January 2012 due to Syria’s continuing civil war.

 

Report: Qatar deports Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal Read More »

Ringleader in killings of 3 Israeli teens sentenced to 3 life terms

Leave a Comment / Israel /

The leader of the terrorist cell who kidnapped and murdered three Israeli teenagers in June was sentenced to three life sentences.

On Tuesday, the Judea Military Court sentenced Hussam Kawasme of Hebron for planning and financing the kidnapping and murder of Gilad Shaar, Eyal Yifrach and Naftali Fraenkel, a dual Israeli-American citizen. Kawasme, who was arrested in July, also was ordered to pay $63,000 to each of the three families.

He was convicted last week based on his own confession, according to The Jerusalem Post.

Kawasme did not see the boys as human and killed them because they were Jews, the military prosecutor said at the sentencing.

Avraham Fraenkel, Naftali’s father, told the court that Kawasme deserved to be punished to the full extent of the law. He described his son to the court as a good student with a variety of interests who also enjoyed helping  his siblings according to The Jerusalem Post.

Kawasme said he used money provided by Hamas to carry out an attack to buy the car used in the June 12 kidnapping, as well as four firearms. The money was procured through his brother Mohamad, the indictment said. Mohamad Kawasme had been deported to Gaza after being freed from an Israeli prison in the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

Kawasme said he helped bury the bodies on a plot of land he had purchased two months prior to the murders. He then helped hide the two men who drove the car and shot the teens. Those men, Marwan Kawasme and Omar Abu Aysh, were killed on Sept. 23 in a firefight with Israeli troops during an operation in Hebron to apprehend them.

The bodies of the three teens were discovered June 30, after a massive search, in a shallow grave in a field near Hebron, 18 days after they went missing.

Hussam Kawasme had served six years in an Israeli prison for his involvement in Hamas terror attacks.

 

Ringleader in killings of 3 Israeli teens sentenced to 3 life terms Read More »