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Jewish Journal

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June 16, 2016

British Jewry condemns slaying of Labour lawmaker

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

The Board of Deputies of British Jews joined the chorus of condemnations over the slaying of a Labour Party lawmaker near Leeds, in northern England.

Jo Cox, 41, died Thursday from wounds she sustained after being shot and stabbed several times on the street, the Bristol Post reported. Police arrested a suspect, a 52-year-old man. His alleged motive remains unknown.

“The Board of Deputies wishes our condolences and prayers to all of Jo Cox’s family after her senseless murder today,” the Board of Deputies wrote on Twitter after word of her death spread. Before that, the organization said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with Labour MP Jo Cox after today’s horrific events.”

Cox had passionately campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union in a June 23 referendum. According to some testimonies, the man believed to have shot Cox shouted “Britain first” before killing her, though other witnesses said they did not hear the shout.

Her husband Brendan said she would want people “to unite to fight against the hatred that killed her,” the BBC reported.

Within Labour, Cox was one of several lawmakers who openly criticized the party’s leader, Jeremy Corbyn, for what she said was insufficient action to bring to a halt expressions of anti-Semitic speech and vitriol against Israel by party members and supporters.

Corbyn, who has acknowledged his party’s anti-Semitism problem but also appeared to downplay its severity, “personally needed to act faster and go much further” in tackling anti-Semitism in the party, Cox told The Independent last month.

British Jewry condemns slaying of Labour lawmaker Read More »

Top officials put a Jewish stamp on the Rio Olympics

Leave a Comment / Worldwide /

Mazel tov! That’s perhaps how the big shots in charge of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, the first to take place in South America, will toast victories when the competition gets underway Aug. 5.

Three of the top officials of the Rio 2016 Organizing Committee, including its president, Carlos Arthur Nuzman, are Jewish.

But in the run-up to the games, there have been more “oy gevalts” than mazel tovs as organizers deal with reports of unfinished venues, polluted swimming and sailing sites and, most of all, concerns about the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

In an interview with JTA, Nuzman said the number of Zika cases in Rio have dropped sharply in recent weeks, and are expected to fall even further during the dry months of the Brazilian winter, as Rio 2016 organizers emphasized at a news conference on June 7. Last month, the World Health Organization said there is no public health justification for postponing or canceling the Games.

“None of the top athletes have declared not to come. If there’s a second-layer one who won’t come, good for him,” an irritated Nuzman told JTA.

One of Brazil’s most prominent sports figures, Nuzman, 77, is a former president of the Brazilian Volleyball Confederation and has been president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee since 1995.

An aerial view of Rio 2016 Olympic Park during construction Photo by Gabriel Heusi/Brasil2016.gov.br

Nuzman preferred to talk about the robust Jewish connections at the games, including a ceremony to honor the 11 Israelis murdered by Palestinian terrorists at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the Israeli company that is providing security for the games and his own deep ties — as an athlete, sporting official and Jew — to Brazilian sports.

“My connection with Judaism and with Israel is through sports,” said Nuzman, who was part of the first Brazilian male volleyball team in 1964  when the sport debuted at the Olympic Games. “I started my career playing at the Brazilian Israelite Club and I have attended four Maccabiah Games in Israel.”

The grandson of Russian immigrants, Nuzman was born in Rio, home to an estimated 40,000 Jews. He is an active member of the 440-family Conservative synagogue Congregacao Judaica do Brasil led by Rabbi Nilton Bonder, his nephew. Nuzman’s father, Izaak, presided over the Rio Jewish federation, the Hebraica Club and the local Keren Hayesod-United Israel Appeal.

“He was one the greatest leaders of our Jewish community. He brought [David] Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir to Brazil,” Nuzman boasted, noting the late prime ministers of Israel.

Nuzman relies on other prominent members of the local Jewish community as deputies. Sidney Levy, a business executive, is the Rio 2016 committee’s chief executive officer and has a $2.2 billion budget to manage. Leonardo Gryner, a communications and marketing director who was part of the Rio 2016 bid, is deputy CEO.

“I have no connection to sports at all,” Levy said in an interview published at the Keren Hayesod webpage. “My duty is totally business-related.”

The Jewish trio at the helm of Rio 2016 is behind the ceremony to honor the Munich victims. The Aug. 14 event at Rio’s City Hall will be co-led by the International Olympic Committee along with the Olympic committees of Israel and Brazil.

Four yeas ago, the IOC rejected appeals for a moment of silence at the opening ceremonies of the London Games in 2012, the 40th anniversary of the tragedy. Critics at the time were not appeased by various events marking the anniversary that took place at other venues.

The IOC also announced a special area in the Rio Olympic Village to commemorate the memory of all Olympians who have died. In addition, a moment of reflection in honor of all dead Olympians will be held during the closing ceremony.

“There will be no minute of silence at the opening ceremony,” read an IOC note, frustrating a longtime request of families.

The widows of weightlifter Yossef Romano and fencing coach Andre Spitzer will instead light 11 candles at the City Hall event. The Israeli government will be represented by the minister of culture and sport, Miri Regev.

“The mayor will open the doors of his house in a gesture of great friendship with the Brazilian Jewish community and the whole people of Israel,” Israel’s honorary consul in Rio, Osias Wurman, told JTA. “We are deeply moved. Symbolically falling on Tisha b’Av, one of the saddest days of the Hebrew calendar, the event will be a unique moment.”

The security of the 12,000 athletes and anticipated 500,000 visitors is among the most sensitive issues for organizers, and the Israeli company International Security and Defense Systems, or ISDS, won the international tender to secure the games. ISDS has coordinated security at previous Olympics and World Cups, and will provide services from consulting to security supply systems.

“It’s an honor for ISDS to be the very first ever Israeli group to be part of the Olympic family,” Leo Gleser, ISDS president and a former Mossad agent, told JTA.

Rio 2016’s first test event, an international sailing regatta that gathered 326 athletes from 35 countries, Aug. 3, 2014. Photo by Alex Ferro

Last November, a French national identified as an executioner in ISIS propaganda videos tweeted, “Brazil, you are our next target.” Brazil’s counterterrorism director, Luiz Alberto Sallaberry, recognized the statement as credible.

“I can’t speak much about security or it won’t be security anymore,” Nuzman told JTA .

Brazil has long regarded itself as an unlikely target of extremists thanks to its historical standing as a nonaligned, multicultural nation. Security experts have warned that many Brazilian officials do not realize how big a stage the Olympics is for anyone seeking to sow terror.

Israel will make its 16th appearance at the Olympics by bringing to Rio its largest delegation ever, with nearly 50 athletes for the Olympics and another 50 for the 2016 Paralympic Games following immediately afterward. Some 10,000 Israelis are expected to make it to Rio to root for their national heroes. A temporary Israeli consulate will be established in Rio to serve the Israeli population during the games.

“The local Jewish community enjoys seeing the Olympics team in international cooperation with other countries. The federal police have very well trained staff. We are very optimistic,” Octavio Aronis, head of security of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, told JTA.

Rio’s Jewish federation president, Paulo Maltz, is more guarded.

“There is always a first time, it has happened twice in Argentina and Brazil is not free of it,” he told JTA, citing the Buenos Aires bombings of the Israeli Embassy in 1992 and the AMIA Jewish center in 1994. “We’ll be on total alert.”

Schools will be closed during the Olympics following a Rio municipality decision to move the winter school vacations from July to August, in large part to reduce traffic.

“It’s a relief,” Maltz said.

Those who make it to Rio will be able to take part in two special Shabbat ceremonies. Some 300 guests are expected at Bonder’s synagogue, including Regev, the Israeli sports minister. Chabad will host a Shabbat event during the Paralympics.

In a joint educational project around Rio 2016, students from four Jewish schools and four municipal public schools will produce a book about the Munich murders and the Olympic spirit.

“Children must understand the evil caused by terrorism,” said Sergio Niskier, one of the project organizers and a former Jewish federation president. “It’s fantastic to see Jewish schools and public schools from the municipality, despite their abyssal social and economic realities, working hand in hand in this project.”

The Israeli singer Ester Rada, whose parents were Ethiopian immigrants, will perform at official sites where fans can watch the sporting action on big screens.

“It’s an example of the polyvalent, multicultural aspect of the Jewish state, which is formed by over 70 different origins that make up the Israeli society,” said Wurman, the honorary consul.

Top officials put a Jewish stamp on the Rio Olympics Read More »

I’ve got something for you

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

“I’ve got something for you,” my grandfather says.

Now, I’ve heard this time and time again over the years from him, usually followed by a generous gift or words of wisdom. But this time, things are a little different.

This time it’s not an expensive watch, not an envelope with a check inside, not a lengthy discussion about my future, but rather, a manila envelope that simply says “Paul Rothman” on the outside.

If you haven’t figured it out, that’s my grandfather’s name. And I’m Michael Rothman, nice to meet you.

So, here we sit – myself, Paul and his girlfriend of 25 years, Geraldine Rosen – in the kitchen of their New York City apartment, a place packed with memories — a place I used to come and stay  long before I moved to the city five years ago. 

It’s the same kitchen where he’s sat me down time and again, while asking me to think bigger and start planning my future. 

I thought I’d seen every inch of this place, every picture on the wall, heard every story.  I was wrong. Paul was cleaning out the guest room last week and found something he felt compelled to show me.

“I just never threw this out,” he says, handing me the envelope.

The first item I grab from inside is a scroll. It’s yellowed and delicate and the wood handle falls right off when you unravel it, but on the inside of this scroll is an 80-year-old picture of Paul, with the words, “Confirmation Reception and Dinner for Master Paul Rothman.” It’s his Bar Mitzvah invitation from Dec. 22, 1935.

The Hatikvoh and the Star Spangled Banner are printed on the scroll, right next to a picture of Paul at just 13 years old, dressed to the nines, Tallit over his shoulders. 

It’s a picture I’ve never seen before, but it’s reminiscent of one hanging in his bedroom, where Paul has the Tefillin wrapped around his arm. We’ve never really spoken about that picture, his faith, or what it means to him. 

The menu is also attached, and amid fancy language I’ve never heard like 'noix salee,' I see items I do recognize, including filet, martini and petit fours (though not necessarily in that order.) 

The meal is catered by Kotimsky & Tuchman, an establishment which, according to Yelp, is shockingly still around today.

Also around today is the venue – The Hotel St. George, although this Brooklyn landmark is now public housing for college students and not the swanky hotel it once was. 

A Little Backstory to Fill You In

Growing up, I was never intensely religious. I also never understood the meaning of family until my grandfather and I became close. My father was relatively absent, and my mother has a closer relationship with my sister, but she always tried her best with me and worked hard as a single mom.

It was Paul who I was able to connect with in high school, through college and still, all these years later, with whom I remain close. 

His stories of traveling the globe, not only for the Army in WWII, but for his business in textiles that brought him to the ends of the earth, captivate me and have always taught me about hard work and leaving your mark. 

And Paul has this special gift of making his adventures relatable no matter what business you're in–even journalism. I’m an entertainment reporter for ABC News and though Paul is a businessman at heart, he still has lessons that are boundless.

“You interviewed Oprah?” he would ask about my work. “That’s good, now follow up with her and build a relationship. She can really help you out.” 

It's simple idea, but something I would never think to do in this socially disconnected, yet totally inter-connected internet era.

It’s brilliant and classic 'Paul.'

As I’m looking through this treasure trove of documents and artifacts from a lifetime ago, I know a lesson or a story is coming.

The surprisingly intact meal receipt reads $13 per couple for the lavish dinner at the Hotel St. George, the note cards from Paul’s speech have words like “holy” and “rejoicing” underlined for emphasis, and the pictures tell a story of a roaring good time. 

The conversation with Paul quickly turns to faith and family–something I hate to admit I still know very little about. 

“Religion was very important to my family,” Paul says, adding that his grandfather on his mother’s side, Abraham, was actually president of his temple in Brooklyn when he was a kid.

Paul describes the procession near Prospect Park that took place when his grandfather died. The neighborhood actually stopped to pay homage to this man. I never had any idea of such a familial legacy.

I'm having an awakening that I didn’t know this 93-year-old hero of mine could still create in me.

A war hero, an ingenious businessman who built an empire out of nothing, and now he's a spiritual advisor?

I’m not going to lie and say this will have an immediate effect on me or that I will now become a religious man and have kids as soon as humanly possible so I can teach them faith, but he is, and has been, the absolute guiding force in shaping who I am today. He's always the first person I call for advice or to tell good news. I’ll never be half the man he is, but I can sure try.

Lesson Not Learned, But I’m Getting There

What I learned about my family and its history really sinks in on June 10, the day the world said goodbye to Muhammad Ali.

Covering the procession and later the funeral for ABC News, I was taken aback by the thousands who gathered in Louisville, Kentucky, and followed his hearse for miles, hoping to just put a hand on the vehicle carrying the champ’s body.

I couldn’t help but think of my great, great grandfather and of course, Paul. 

I may not have realized the importance of what Paul was telling me at the time, just days prior, but it became crystal clear on that Friday.

No one really knows exactly what life is all about, but what these men – Ali, Paul, and a distant relative I never knew – did was touch and affect people in positive ways. So positive, that they will be remembered long after they are gone.

That’s the lesson here. I just hope to influence others in a fraction of the way my grandfather has influenced me. The man has been a hero to so many people over his lifetime, just like his ancestors before him. 

That’s the goal. That’s the bigger picture he always lectures me about. I don’t know what the future holds 10, 20, 30 years down the road. I just hope I can help people in a way similar to him.

And it may not be a fancy watch or a check, but I hope this column is me telling my grandfather, “Paul, I’ve got something for you.”

Happy Father’s Day.

I’ve got something for you Read More »

Polish adman creates buzz with his pro-Jewish graffiti

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Anti-Semitic graffiti is so common in Poland that it hardly makes the news, except maybe when it’s on Holocaust sites or Jewish cemeteries.

But huge philo-Semitic slogans painted in the national colors and confessing a sense of loss over the destruction of Polish Jewry in the Holocaust are somewhat more remarkable. Which is why Polish media is abuzz this week with reports about a graffito reading “I miss you, Jew” that an artist painted on a main street in Lodz.

Rafał Betlejewski, who is not Jewish, coordinated with local Jews and others before painting the attention-grabbing inscription on June 11 on Piotrkowska Street, a main artery. The graffito was part of a series he began in 2005. The founder of an advertising firm, Betlejewski, 48, has painted or helped paint the message dozens of times at sites with a special place in the history of Polish Jewry.

One such site was Brzeska Street, which used to form one of the boundaries of Warsaw’s Jewish ghetto. Another, in 2010, was Jedwabne, where local Poles killed hundreds of Jews in 1941. Betlejewski also set up a display there of a burning barn in memory of the Jews who were burned alive by their Christian neighbors. It was this dark episode in Polish history — the epicenter of the acrimonious debate in Poland over Holocaust-era complicity — that got him thinking about Polish-Jewish relations in the first place, he said in interviews about his work.

In April, in the Warsaw neighborhood of Powiśle, unidentified parties blacked out the word “Jew” in Betlejewski’s graffiti, prompting him to call on fans to “counter hatred” by continuing to write the word on the wall every time it gets blacked out. Though he had permission from the owners of that wall, he has in the past had legal problems over his “I miss you, Jew” inscriptions, which municipalities saw as vandalism.

“I want to reclaim the word ‘Jew,’ snatch it from anti-Semites, who are in this country are the only ones using it freely,” the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper quoted Betlejewski as saying in 2010 about his campaign and the Jedwabne action especially. “I aim to build a platform used to express positive emotions towards the people known as the Jews.”

The Lodz operation was less controversial, but the site selected for the artwork is no less symbolic. Forbidden to Jews when it was first built in the early 19th century, Piotrkowska Street was finally opened to some Jews of means in 1825. During the German occupation of Poland, it was renamed Adolf Hitler Street. Jews were rounded up, shot and beaten on its cobblestones during various pogroms.

People dining at the Jaffa Israeli restaurant in Lodz, Poland, June 11, 2016. Photo by Courtesy of Rafal Betlejewski

The city in central Poland, about 80 miles from Warsaw, was historically home to one of the country’s most vibrant Jewish communities and one of the largest ghettos during the Holocaust. But Jewish life all but disappeared from Lodz in 1944.

Nearly all of the ghetto’s 164,000 residents were murdered in the Holocaust, according to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem, along with 90 percent of Poland’s pre-Holocaust Jewish population of 3 million.

Despite this tragic legacy, Betlejewski said he enjoyed working there, compared to past experiences in Warsaw.

“Lodz was a very nice change,” Betlejewski wrote on his blog. “Maybe it’s because we painted in a semi-private space, maybe because the wall was ready, and I went there at the invitation of the people who wanted this inscription. Everyone ate a delicious hummus served by the Israeli Jaffa restaurant.”

Jonny Daniels, the founder of From the Depths, a nonprofit that works on commemorating the Holocaust and building bridges between world Jewry and Poland, said that, despite occasional expressions of hostility to Jews there, “The number of those with a positive attitude toward Jews far outweighs those with negative attitude.” Thousands of non-Jewish Polish volunteers engage with From the Depths, he told JTA, while the Polish government maintains a keen interest in “issues connected to the Jewish past.” In March, Polish President Andrzej Duda opened a museum for the Righteous among the Nations, non-Jews who saved Jews during the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, some of the Polish government’s interest in Jewish issues — like the criminal investigation into a Princeton University professor who has explored Polish culpability during the Holocaust — has not gone down very well internationally. Jan Gross, a Polish Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1969, is suspected of violating Poland’s laws against insulting the nation by saying during an interview recently that Poles killed more Jews during World War II than they killed Germans.

Poland also shows little interest in offering restitution for property that belonged to Jews before the genocide. The “current government, leading a tough nationalist line, is not likely to agree to this painful process,” wrote Dina Porat, head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry in Tel Aviv, in an Op-Ed in Haaretz earlier this week.

But back in Lodz, Betlejewski was staying positive, noting that to him, it was “important that there were young Polish Jews there. Young Lodz Jews. People who are trying to rebuild the Jewish of community.”

Polish adman creates buzz with his pro-Jewish graffiti Read More »

The Hottest Summer in Baghdad: 75th anniversary of the Farhud

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Opinion /

The festival of Shavuot, which this year took place June 12-13, commemorates a time when Jews received the Torah at Mount Sinai. It also marks the beginning of a new agricultural season, Chag Hakatsir (The Harvest Holiday). It comes seven weeks after Passover.

Shavuot in Baghdad marks the beginning of the brutal summer heat and dry weather. The temperature during the day reaches up to 110 degrees, and at times even 120 degrees. Air conditioning and refrigerators were unheard of when I was growing up in the 1930s. At night, it cooled off a bit. Everyone slept on the roofs of their houses. Poor people slept outdoors.

After a joyful celebration of Passover with family and friends, I remember we children anxiously waiting for the new and different celebration of Shavuot.

On the eve of Shavuot, my uncles and distant relatives would come to our house. They prayed and chanted throughout the night, reading the book of Ruth and studying Torah. Grownups and children would stay up late all night, enjoying delicious festive foods and sweets, and light candles for the departed.  One of my fondest memories is gathering around the kindled lights with my cousins collecting the wax and making different figurine and animals.

On the actual day of Shavuot, many families went on a Ziara (Pilgrimage) to visit the grave of the biblical Prophet Ezekiel, on the Euphrates River, some 50 miles away from Baghdad. This was a great time for us children to play with others in the community and picnic with many of my Mom’s treats such as chicken rice with almonds and raisins, along with other snacks, such as mango and cucumber pickles.

The Shavuot of 1941 fell on June 1 and 2. On April 13, 1941, a pro-Nazi Coup was headed by Rashid Ali Algailkani and plotted successfully by the German attaché Dr. Fritz Grova and the grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Al Husani. This inextricably lead King Faisal, the Regent Abdyl Illah and the Prime Minister Taha Al Hashimi to flee Baghdad.

Radio Baghdad, the government’s mouthpiece, along with other media outlets, began a steady stream of anti-Jewish propaganda. On the Daily, public hatred increased as the summer heat and shook up every Iraqi Jew to the core. Many stayed home fearing for their lives. I distinctly remember my father and my older brothers not being able to hide their sadness and worries of what was to come. They tried to put on a happy face, thinking that would protect me, 11 years old, and my 8-year-old brother, Nory. We were restricted from leaving the house, which made things worse for us. I began to have nightmares and sleepless nights. I found myself crying for no reason at all.

The Iraqi coup leaders in Baghdad, decided to do the next best thing — exterminate the Jewish population in a single blow. Jews were ordered to stay in their homes. The “proto-Nazi youth movement,” Al Futuwwa, marked the doors of the Jewish home with a red Hamsa (shape of a palm, a symbol that allowed the rioters to identify Jewish homes.

On May 31, the British forces arrived with fresh troops from Nepal and India on the outskirts of Baghdad. The extermination plot fell apart. The coup leaders fled, which created a power vacuum.

Bands of soldiers in concert with police in civilian clothing, and common criminals along with nondescript mobs, rampaged through Baghdad hunting for Jews. They were easy to fine. Hundreds of Jews were cut down by sword and rifle, some even decapitated. Babies were sliced in half and thrown into the Tigris River. Girls were raped in front of their parents. Parents were mercilessly killed in front of their children.

Hundreds of Jewish homes and businesses were looted and then burnt. The official government count shows that 180 were killed and 240 wounded; private estimates indicate as many as 400 were killed and 2,100 injured. There were no arrests, convictions or sentencing. Jews were afraid to report or file a complaint against any Muslim, for fear of retaliation and threats to their lives.

For almost two days, June 1-2, the carnage continued unabated. If it weren’t for some righteous Muslim men standing in front of Jewish homes with knives, daggers, and swords preventing the rioters from breaking into Jewish homes, the carnage would have been much more devastating. Those were the decent and honorable Muslims, the Righteous among the Nations.

We began fortifying our house. We reinforced the front door by stacking heavy furniture against it. My brother Eliyahoo electrified the chicken wire fence atop the stone wall on our side of the garden. I helped carry buckets of boiling water to the roof, ready to toss on marauders if needed. From the second-floor window, I saw looters on the street carrying away clothes and boxes. We stayed awake all night. Two of my brothers maintained contact with the neighbors via the roof, bringing any news downstairs. By afternoon the next day, June 2, the British soldiers had entered Baghdad and quelled the riots. We were safe.

My family was fortunate; we had moved a year earlier from the old city to Bab el Shargy close to the Tigris River. My Uncle Moshi and Uncle Meir’s houses in the old city were totally emptied. They escaped by jumping from their roof to the neighbor’s and then to another. They were lucky; they sustained minor injuries —twisted ankle and scratches.

This Holocaust-era pogrom became known as the Farhud. In Arabic, it means “violent dispossession.” The Farhud left bitterness and hopelessness in the hearts of the Iraq Jewish community. Many wanted to leave after the Farhud, but there was no place to go to or a country that would take us in.

After the establishment of the State of Israel, in 1948, most of the Iraqi community, including my family and I, fled to Israel. We became refugees. We stood in line for free meals, slept on a steel bed anchored in the sand during scorching hot summers.  We had left behind our homes, our stores and other businesses, our land, buildings, schools and other property.

The memory of a few, decent and honorable Muslims’ and their deep friendship was overshadowed by the long history of fear, pain, suffering and humiliation. I doubt if there is one Jew from an Arab land or Islamic country who would ever entertain the idea of going back to live there again permanently. We are lucky to be out and lucky to be where we are.

In 1948, there were some 135,000 Jews in Iraq. Baghdad’s population was nearly 25 percent Jewish. By 1953, some 80 percent had left for Israel. The rest stayed, deluding themselves that they would be seen as loyal Iraqis. Over the years, they have faced systemic pauperization — their bank accounts were frozen, and they have faced trumped-up charges and forced confessions through torture.  In 1969, seven Jews were hanged in Baghdad’s public square, accused of spying.  At present, this 26-century-old Jewish community has now totally vanished. Only 8 Jews are reported to remain.

This Shavuot marks the 75th anniversary of the Farhud. It was commemorated in four cities — London, New York, Washington and Jerusalem — by lighting 27 candles, one for each century the Jews inhabited the land. It is also commemorated annually by the survivors, their descendants and every decent freedom loving person, I know.

Joe Samuels is a native of Baghdad who served in the Israeli navy from 1950 to 1953. He has been living in Santa Monica for the past 36 years with his wife, Ruby, and his family. He is a retired real estate developer and currently serves on the board of Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa, Los Angeles.

The Hottest Summer in Baghdad: 75th anniversary of the Farhud Read More »

Anti-BDS laws don’t perpetuate discrimination. They prevent it.

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

On June 16, the New Jersey Assembly is expected to have a final vote on a bill restricting the state’s dealings with companies that boycott Israel. The measure, S1923/A925, would have the Garden State join the nine states that have already adopted such measures in just the past year. Last week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order implementing similar policies in New York state.

These bills are motivated by state lawmakers’ conviction that boycotts of Israel are fundamentally discriminatory and often a thin veil for anti-Semitic motives. They have passed by overwhelming bipartisan votes. But some critics of the measures have recently begun to argue that they violate the First Amendment.

It is important to make clear what these laws do and do not do. None of the laws bans or punishes criticism of Israel, or stops anyone from boycotting Israel. They apply solely to businesses that contract with or get investment money from state governments.

These laws simply say: If you want the state to do business with you, you need to abide by the state’s policies of sound and fair business practices, including anti-discrimination rules.

Take, for example, a company whose CEO speaks out strongly against Israel and hangs a banner from its headquarters that says “Zionism = Racism.” That company would in no way be affected by such laws.

That’s because these laws are not about speech or viewpoints. They are about unfair and discriminatory business decisions. And whether one agrees or not with such laws as a policy matter, there is no question they do not pose a First Amendment problem.

Under well-established U.S. Supreme Court precedent, states can choose not to do business with companies that they regard as engaged in discriminatory activity. That is how states routinely legislate, for example, that their taxpayer money will not go to businesses that maintain sexual-orientation boycotts. Indeed, many localities even require state contractors to engage in affirmative action hiring policies — even if the contractors have a principled objection to affirmative action. The contractors are entitled to their viewpoints, but the state can legislate about their business practices.

Eugene Kontorovich (Courtesy of Kontorovich)

Moreover, if refusing to do business with a country constitutes protected speech because it expresses criticism of a country, then the opposite is also true. That is, choosing to do business could also be a political statement. Yet as Israel boycotters love to point out, some U.S. states adopted boycotts of South Africa. Today, many states restrict business with companies because of their business with Iran or Sudan.

If choosing whether to do business with a country is protected speech, it would lead to the surprising conclusion that states could not regulate any of this conduct. The First Amendment is content neutral and protects expressing support for the government of Iran or South Africa as much as it protects criticism of them.

Some boycott apologists say they are just standing up for human rights. That’s what they say — but state legislators are not bound by the First Amendment to agree with them, any more than they were obligated to accept the argument of some apartheid apologists that they are really motivated by fighting communism.

Instead, state legislators are free to take the word of the founders and leaders of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, who have repeatedly made clear that their problem is with the existence of the Jewish state itself. They can notice, as they do in other discrimination situations, the broader context: that the BDS movement is a direct continuation of the Arab League boycott, which is as old as Israel itself. The boycott existed before Israel took control of territories across the 1949 Armistice Lines.

It is true that Israel is not synonymous with Jews. But having a largely Jewish population, and being home to the plurality of the world’s Jews, it is certainly a proxy for Jewishness. Just as a company runs afoul of discrimination rules by using proxies like “neighborhood” for impermissible bias, lawmakers can reasonably conclude that an Israel-focused boycott is such a proxy.

Indeed, Spanish and French courts ruled recently that the boycott movement is a form of nationality-based discrimination.

The American Civil Liberties Union in New Jersey has come out against the bill. Under the statute, like its companions in other states, regular commercial decisions that are not boycott-related do not trigger the law’s provisions.

Critics of the bill, including the ACLU, use this banal feature to argue that the statute creates a “thought police” that will have to determine a company’s “motivation” in not doing business with Israel. However, anti-discrimination law typically requires the government to make a decision about motives. If a company fires a gay person, it could be because of normal business reasons or because of their sexual orientation. It is exactly because discriminatory business decisions can look like regular ones that the question of intent is always primary.

The ACLU does not see other anti-discrimination laws as creating a “thought police” into company’s motives. But there is only one Constitution, and its meaning does not change when it comes to Israel.

(Eugene Kontorovich is a professor at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law. He has been involved in drafting numerous anti-boycott laws across the country.)

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Why Jewish moms are celebrating with Hillary

Leave a Comment / Election 2016 /

It happened all at once and not to me alone.

There was Hillary Clinton, in her June 7 victory speech, honoring her mother’s memory; saluting her daughter, Chelsea; paying tribute to herself for raising such a child, and claiming her party’s nomination as the “milestone” it is.

“I really wish my mother could be here tonight,” Clinton said. “I wish she could see what a wonderful mother Chelsea has become and could meet our beautiful granddaughter, Charlotte. And of course, I wish she could see her daughter become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president of the United States.”

I suddenly understood why I identify with Hillary Clinton, and why that’s important to me and to other older Jewish women – her contemporaries.

It has little to do with the details of our careers; even less with politics or party affiliation. It has nothing to do, in my case, with our shared Wellesley alumna status, and won’t necessarily translate into “likeability” (how I hate that word) or votes.

It has everything to do, I believe, with several tenets of Jewish tradition and culture that became the warp and weft of our lives and, it now seems to me, that of Hillary Clinton.

“Vindicated,” “valued,” “affirmed.” I’ve spoken with an admittedly unscientific sampling of women in the past few days – baby boomers from across the Jewish and political spectrums, plus the most spiritually Jewish non-Jew I know. They include married and un-; with kids and none; only children and those with siblings. They all heard that moment in Clinton’s speech as mutual appreciation – “a kindred spirit giving herself and us our due,” as one woman said – for a job well done in the pivotal family role we’ve played.

By that we mean not simply assuming the matriarch mantle without question and devoting ourselves to in-law, parent, sibling, spouse or child – even those with whom we have shaky relationships. We mean doing so without a sense of sacrifice or regret; without allowing our debtors to know that they’re in our debt.

Margot Slade (Courtesy of Slade)

“We didn’t feel as if we were sacrificing anything,” said another woman. Rather, we were playing an important role that Judaism has traditionally valued. She was recalling when her kids needed to be the center of one parent’s life and knowing that she would be that parent.

Yet another noted that as with Clinton, the former secretary of state, U.S. senator and first lady, it’s usually been outsiders who have declared us silent sufferers. Younger women, in particular, often seem troubled reconciling our sense of fulfillment as partners and spouses, daughters and mothers with our passionate pursuit of a feminist agenda.

We lack resentment, except toward family members who assume that we want to shoulder these responsibilities alone. Why we don’t routinely disabuse them is a curious question. Perhaps we’re afraid they’ll say no.

Otherwise parading pride in our handiwork or suggesting to the care-given that we have martyred ourselves on their account would undo all that we accomplished. Which is one of several reasons I think we, like Clinton, have stayed mum on this subject. (The other being we think it’s nobody else’s business.)

What words can we use that won’t translate into lifelong guilt and “you owe me” or the debilitating message that “I made you what you are” for people we’ve nurtured to stand on their own? None, as Clinton clearly knows.

Dominique Browning, author of “Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found Happiness,” wrote in a recent New York Times essay: “At the end of the Brooklyn rally, she and Bill clasped each other tightly, and I choked up at the durability of that bond.”

So did many of my contemporaries who believe that Hillary Clinton’s silence on that subject, while she loudly advocated for children’s health care, gun control and other social justice issues, was a sign of strength, not weakness. It signaled the value she accords her role – and thus ours – in these kinds of family relationships.

Clinton’s Brooklyn speech also testified to her kinship with an ancient Jewish moral imperative that Hillel the Elder declared and our mothers taught by example: “If I am not for me, who will be for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?” (Pirkei Avot 1:14)

Hillel was exhorting us to advocate for ourselves (no one, after all, will fashion our lives for us), but to be ever mindful of the kind of selves for whom we’re advocating: those whose actions isolate them from others, or whose actions embrace others to benefit family, community and society at large.

Channeling Hillel, Clinton told the Brooklyn crowd: “My mother believed that life is about serving others. And she taught me never to back down from a bully, which, it turns out, was pretty good advice.”

It was the prompt I needed, another spark of mutual recognition that Hillary Clinton has tried to live that life and follow her mother’s advice – as have we all.

(Margot Slade has held senior and executive editorial positions at The New York Times, Consumer Reports and Bloomberg News. She is currently founding Senior Editor at Lawdragon Campus, the law student division, website and online service for Lawdragon, Inc., a leading legal media company.)

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Anti-BDS law can’t be ‘pro-Israel’ if it tramples on free speech

Leave a Comment / Opinion /

This is the first of two contrasting views on an executive order by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that prevents state agencies from doing business with companies that support a boycott of Israeli products. In the second, a law professor who tracks anti-BDS legislation says such laws do not pose a First Amendment problem.

If you’re a supporter of Israel and of the Jewish community, you should be very worried about a new executive order issued by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo on June 5.

While billed as an initiative to prevent New York state from supporting the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, the law actually constitutes a frightening attack on free speech while likely creating a backlash that will do harm both to Israel and the Jewish community.

Cuomo’s order mandates the creation of a list of every company worldwide that “engage[s] in any activity, or promote[s] others to engage in any activity, that is intended to penalize, inflict economic harm on, or otherwise limit commercial relations with Israel or persons doing business in Israel for purposes of coercing political action by, or imposing policy positions on, the government of Israel.”

That is, a company might end up on the list because it actually chooses to boycott Israel. Or it might end up on the list because of a statement by its CEO or a board member. Since the executive order makes no distinction between what’s inside or outside the Green Line — Israel’s pre-1967 borders — a company that chooses to set up shop in Israel proper but avoid the settlements might find itself on the New York blacklist. Ditto a company whose leadership publicly calls for a distinction between Israel and the settlements, or who otherwise criticizes government policy.

I oppose boycotting or divesting from Israel. Yet the right to free speech means, in the famous words of Evelyn Beatrice Hall, that even if “I disapprove of what you say … I will defend to the death your right to say it.” The way to fight distasteful speech is with more speech, not by shutting down the other side.

Cuomo’s action constitutes a dangerous threat to this right. As explained by Lara Friedman of Americans for Peace Now, which also opposes BDS, the order seeks to achieve “the goal of chilling/suppressing such constitutionally protected free speech. It does this by defining such free speech – including the act of merely calling for boycotts – as de facto illegitimate.”

Rabbi Jill Jacobs Photo by Emily Pearl Goodstein

In fact, boycotts constitute legally protected speech. Cuomo himself has joined a boycott in barring non-essential New York state travel to North Carolina in response to its discrimination against transgender people. T’ruah, the organization I lead, has endorsed a boycott of Wendy’s, declared by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, in response to the company’s refusal to participate in the standards adopted by the rest of the fast-food industry to protect the workers who pick their tomatoes. In the 1960s and 1970s, thousands of members of the Jewish community joined in boycotts of lettuce and grapes. More recently, prominent rabbis called for a boycott of Whole Foods in response to the CEO’s support of a known sexual offender.

Only half a century ago, the American Jewish community suffered disproportionately from a blacklist that aimed to wipe out certain political discourse and associations. Even then, perceptive Jews understood that an attack on the free speech of one community would ultimately affect all of us. In his 1947 testimony to the House Un-American Affairs Committee, playwright Samuel Ornitz declared, “In speaking as a Jew, I speak in a deeper sense as an American, as the one who has to take the first blow for my fellow Americans. For when constitutional guarantees are overridden, the Jew is the first one to suffer … but only the first one.”

As Jews who have too often suffered from invasions on our civil liberties, we cannot pretend that the attack on free speech will spare us. Nor can we defend or ignore an attack on American democracy, which has allowed our community unprecedented safety and religious freedom.

This is not to say that all speech is protected. Proponents of BDS have sometimes blurred the lines by insisting that free speech includes the right to say anything anywhere anytime. Rather, this right prevents the government from regulating speech. Those who complain about being evicted from forums where they try to yell over an Israeli speaker, or about not being invited to speak in certain settings, cannot claim a violation of free speech. Nor is there constitutional protection for hate speech, such as that defaming Jews or inciting violence. BDS supporters seeking allies on free speech protections lose their credibility when they ignore these distinctions.

Beyond the violation of free speech, the executive order and the likely copycat laws have already sparked a backlash against Israel and the Jewish community. To some, our community’s willingness to tolerate and promote such strategies proves our unwillingness to hear any criticism of the State of Israel or of its current government. This perception only fuels the growing BDS movement. To reverse this trend, Jewish organizations that have publicly supported New York’s anti-BDS measure must ask Governor Cuomo to rescind this law, oppose the passage of copycat laws and proudly stand up for the right of free speech, even when we disagree.

Ultimately, BDS will not be overcome through banning speech, through rhetoric or through diverting attention to Israel’s positive contributions to the world. The only way to end popular support for BDS is to create a long-term agreement that protects the human rights and security of both Israelis and Palestinians. Rather than support extreme measures to curtail free speech, Jewish organizations and leadership — both in the United States and in Israel — should devote our full energy and creativity to this pursuit of peace.

(Rabbi Jill Jacobs is the executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights.)

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Orlando, God, and Iftar

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment /

Although the timing was obviously not planned, sharing Iftar with our friends at the Islamic center just two days after the massacre in Orlando was enormously poignant.

The attack in Orlando blended two of the most intense and emotional issues within our society.  One, is the visceral hatred of gay and lesbian people that still bubbles in too many quarters. To me, it is clearer than ever that none of us can any longer stand on the sidelines. It is a time of danger, an עת לעשות, a time to consistently and clearly declare that both in theory and in practice, we fully embrace all human beings, and are committed to upholding everyone's God-given dignity and innate worth, whether they are gay or straight. To be non-committal or timid on this principle, is to unwittingly contribute to the stigmatization that when mixed with religious extremism or mental illness, leads directly to violence.

The other intense emotional issue – and this is the one that made the Iftar so powerful – is about whether the violent terrorism inspired by radical Islam should or should not redound to Muslims generally. This pertains to American Muslims no less, as it is logically impossible  to cast all Muslims who live beyond our borders beneath a net of suspicion, without implicitly doing the same to  Muslims already living here. As a society now, we again stand at a moral crossroads, facing Dr. King's challenge to either judge people by their skin color or religious faith, or to judge them by the content of their character.  It is very hard to make the right choice when we are so afraid. But our ability to do it is the essence of what we mean when we use the term “American Exceptionalism”.

Our Iftar with our friends at the Islamic Center on Tuesday night, was a magical and magnificent testament to our shared commitment to judging people by their moral character, and to driving out darkness not with more darkness, but with light. It was an evening suffused with the genuine human connection, friendship, love,  shared moral vision, and the recognition that a common commitment to the One God can bind people together in a way that almost nothing else can.

Our fears of Islamic terrorism are real and serious. It is a scourge upon the world that must be eliminated (and the American Muslim community continues to be a vital ally to US law enforcement in this regard.) The tool that you and I have in our hands, is the tool of building bridges of acceptance, warmth, and joint community.

May God look upon all His creation with compassion, and give strength and courage to the upright and just.

   

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