fbpx

GET HOME DELIVERY! CLICK HERE »

ADVERTISE
pick up locations
HOME DELIVERY
donate

Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

August 18, 2016

Stolen Jewish property in Egypt – Resentment remains 60 years later

Leave a Comment / Blogs /

As my friend Maurice and I strolled towards the Jaffa Gate to enter the Old City of Jerusalem several years ago, he told me the story of his family. He was  a young teen in Egypt when the 1956 Suez War broke out between Egypt against the United States, France and Israel. After fighting ceased the remaining Jews who had not left for Israel after the 1948 War of Independence were forced out.

In 1948, 800,000 Jews fled their homes in Arab countries when their governments persecuted them as retaliation for Israel's victory. Their property and wealth were either stolen or nationalized. They arrived in Israel penniless and to this day have not retrieved their lost property nor been compensated.

The same fate happened to Maurice and his family in 1956. Because they spoke French and Arabic they fled to Montreal leaving everything behind.

Last week an article appeared in 972+ Magazine called “No more lip service: How to retrieve lost Jewish property in Arab countries” (by Uri Zaki) (http://972mag.com/no-more-lip-service-how-to-retrieve-lost-jewish-property-in-arab-countries/121310/). Knowing Maurice’s story, I sent him the article's link and asked for his reaction. He granted me permission to reproduce his letter:

Hi John: Thanks for thinking of me. It is so nice to have a friend that knows and understands my history. You probably also know that this topic touches a sensitive nerve so please take what follows with those feelings in mind.

It is a very important topic for the Jewish people as a whole and one to me and my family…. 

Egypt was home to a vibrant and rich Jewish community for centuries. Jewish and general scholarship … was tremendous and to this day sits as one of the Jewish people’s most important assets … Egypt was more than a comfortable home for us….

In the years leading up to the mid-1950’s we endured increasing racism and harassment. Eventually, the substantial assets that we had earned over the years were seized and stolen from us. We were mercilessly (and pennilessly) expelled from our home, country and community. We left behind not just our property but our way of life…

Although I was just in my teens, I remember well the struggle that my family and parents faced without country and any financial strength.

…We left, rebuilt and regained the position of strength (financially,Judaicly, culturally, and intellectually) that we always occupied. We didn’t do it with the help of the UN or foreign governments….we did it on our own.

The truth is that after the Egyptian King was deposed, the country went through a period of violent nationalism and home-grown radicalism. Years before we were expelled, I remember that my father was nearly stoned to death in the street for the simple crime of being a Jew.

Our plight … had to do with anti-Semitism and the use of xenophobia by the Egyptian leaders to stir the public.

Jews [in 1956] were …not persecuted because we represented any credible threat….[it was] Xenophobia and racism plain and simple….

I believe that we Jews have always been the canary in the mine!

It is a stark contrast to the Palestinian approach. … my story isn’t any better than the Palestinian….arguably much worse. Yet no Jew has sat in a refugee camp for nearly 70 years. Israel quickly absorbed its people (sometimes with bumps, but ultimately successfully) and the displaced and abused Jewish communities of the Middle East quickly reestablished themselves and are thriving.

With much love

Maurice

Maurice rightly notes the distinctions between the plight of Jewish and Palestinian refugees (note: 700,000 Palestinians fled or were forced to leave their homes in 1948, a number equivalent with Jewish refugees leaving Arab lands that same year). Both stories are deeply troubling, to say the least, and both peoples deserve and require restitution. The 972+ article offers insight into the Jewish struggle. The Palestinian struggle is of a different order altogether.

Two points:

[1] All neighboring Arab nations (except Jordan) refused to absorb Palestinians into their populations;

[2] The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) was created in 1949 to assist Palestinian refugees. It is the only organization in the world devoted to only one refugee community and has sustained Palestinians as refugees for more than six decades thus enabling so many of them to continue living in poverty and statelessness.

Sadly, despite the Palestinian people’s legitimate rights to a state of their own beside Israel in what must eventually (sooner rather than later) become a two states for two peoples resolution of the conflict, the Palestinians have been used cynically as pawns by both the UN and  Arab nations for their own political purposes, and by their own leaders who have time and again refused to accept a two-state solution and the rights of the Jewish people to a nation state of our own.

In conclusion, Zaki wrote:

Recent trends in international law place the emphasis on “satisfaction,” which derives from publicly addressing the past, issuing apologies and taking responsibility for creating injustices. These, alongside reparations and restitution of lost property, are essential in conflict resolution. … Only thus could mutual recognition of the injustice inflicted upon millions of people and their descendants, on both sides of the divide, emerge. In addition, it could create a buzz in the relevant countries as well as internationally, paving the way for actual reparation and restitution as well as satisfaction.

Maurice’s story is one among millions. In his case, his family has done well though they were exiled from their home. Not so for so many others.

Stolen Jewish property in Egypt – Resentment remains 60 years later Read More »

Anne Frank: “No Asylum” before the attic

Leave a Comment / Culture, Film /

The story of how Anne Frank’s family hid in an attic before being discovered by the Nazis became well-known through the diary she wrote that was found by her father, Otto, after the war. But less is known about Otto’s prior attempts to find refuge for his family when the Nazis invaded Holland in 1940. The family had fled there from Germany several years earlier and felt safe until the invasion, after which Otto began writing letter after letter hoping some nation would offer asylum.

His failed attempts and their aftermath are chronicled in the new documentary, “No Asylum,” by filmmaker Paula Fouce, now playing at the Laemmle Music Hall. “Anne Frank is probably the most well-known icon of tolerance and respect in the world,” Fouce said. “And, although she died 70 years ago, the words in her message are still very well known. And recently the letters of her father, Otto, came to light, a whole cache of documents that [was] lost for 70 years. And these documents reveal how he struggled to save his family during the Holocaust, to get them visas to many countries, and the world turned its back on the Franks.”

As the film illustrates, country after country erected barriers to Jews and other persecuted groups seeking sanctuary from the Nazis. While conducting her research for the film, Fouce said she uncovered some explanations as to why the U.S. didn’t take in more refugees during the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. “We found out it was because the United States had just gotten out of the Depression, and people were worried about jobs.  It was also because of anti-Semitism, and it was because of the fear of people being German spies.” Even after the war, when the world learned about the atrocities of the death camps, barriers continued.

The filmmaker said her preparation was helped immeasurably when she learned from a friend about the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, which houses some 23 million items, including letters, films, recordings, memoirs and other materials. Amidst the collection is the Otto Frank file.

“I got to actually hold the letters of Otto Frank in my hand, and my heart was beating,” Fouce recalled. “It was so moving. You know, they're very fragile, and they're on thin paper. There are some telegrams. There are all sorts of different documents in there. Nathan Strauss, whose family had founded Macy's department store, and his wife, were also trying to help the Franks. 

“When the Nazis tried to destroy all the wisdom of the Jewish people by burning the books,” Fouce said, “they kept a sort of collection of one of the best of everything, and they stamped it. And the stamp said that this was intended for the Museum of the Extinct People. And that was going to be built in Prague. So, apparently the U.S. Army found this collection of materials and eventually sent it back to the United States.”

In her film, Fouce includes testimony from surviving members of the Frank family, as well as representatives of YIVO, among other figures, along with archival footage from before, during and after the war. The documentary starkly depicts the results of the world’s indifference to Nazi victims, largely through footage from the concentration camps.

Fouce said she has long been concerned about religious intolerance and persecution, going back to when she was living in India and the Himalayas and working in such countries as Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir. “I was trapped in a religious riot, and I nearly got killed. It was in New Delhi in 1984, when Indira Ghandi was assassinated. And it was such a horrifying and frightening experience,” she said. 

“I'm very interested in all the world's religions,” Fouce added. “I was brought up Catholic, but I studied with teachers of many, many faiths and did films on different faiths, and wrote books. I actually wrote a book called, ‘Not in God's Name: Making Sense of Religious Conflict.’ I have an interview with Mother Teresa and the Dalai Lama and many people in that book, and, in fact, I got introduced to the Jewish rabbis in India, and I went to the synagogues there.” 

Fouce said the kind of religious hatred Jews experienced during the Holocaust persists. She pointed out that Jews are still being attacked in various parts of the world, as are other groups. “It's something that we just really need to try to grow beyond. Obviously, a lot of us are very peaceful people.  But we have to somehow change the mind of those that would be drawn to radical fundamentalism, in whatever religion it may be.”

She added that given the issue of refugees today, her film is particularly timely. “This film just happens to come out when we are having a huge problem in the world with refugees. And we have to look to helping people, and we also have to be aware of safety. There has to be some way to deal with that. When we showed the film at the Museum of Tolerance, that's pretty much what people were saying. I don't think there's an easy answer to anything, but it does draw an interesting parallel.” 

“No Asylum,” Laemmle Music Hall, 9036 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, Aug. 19-25. Tickets: Anne Frank: “No Asylum” before the attic Read More »

Amy Schumer says her show is on hold, not canceled

Leave a Comment / Entertainment, Hollywood /

Comedian Amy Schumer assured fans that her Comedy Central sketch series “Inside Amy Schumer” has not been canceled.

“@ComedyCentral has provided us with a wonderful home and we couldn’t be happier there. I am just touring,” Schumer wrote Tuesday on Twitter after previously suggesting that the show is no longer in production.

Schumer said, however, there are no plans for a fifth season of the show in the “foreseeable future.”

Schumer, 35, whose rapid rise to fame was capped with her starring role in the 2015 film “Trainwreck,” was clarifying a previous tweet in which she asserted, “We aren’t making the show anymore.” Schumer was responding to criticism of one of the show’s writers, Kurt Metzger, who had posted on social media several messages that many interpreted as insensitive to rape victims.

Urged to comment on reports that Metzger had been fired, Schumer responded Wednesday, “I didn’t fire Kurt. He isn’t a writer for my show because we aren’t making the show anymore. There are no writers for it.”

In her new collection of essays, “The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo,” Schumer recalled her bat mitzvah and attending Hebrew school on Long Island. Schumer suggested she became a comedian after her voice cracked during the chanting of the Torah portion and the congregation erupted in laughter.

Amy Schumer says her show is on hold, not canceled Read More »

Love and Judaism are built into couple’s distinctive home

Leave a Comment / Culture /

There is divine justice in the fact that the daughter of a survivor of Auschwitz now lives in a beautiful home wrapped in a metal sheath pierced with Hebrew letters and filled with Judaica.

Meyer Wiesel, who died in 1987, survived the Holocaust — the only member of his family to do so. And now, the Jewish heritage of that boy from the Czechoslovakian town of Topolčany — who would later become Michael Morris of Denver — plays out daily in the most public fashion possible in the Cheviot Hills home of his daughter, Maxine Morris, and her husband, Bob Hale.

“It is like a giant mezuzah,” Morris said with a laugh during a recent afternoon interview at the house. 

Indeed, like the V’ahavta prayer of love hidden inside every mezuzah’s decorative casing, this home is a 5,000-square-foot, three-story declaration of ahavah — love — with the word repeated in hundreds of perforations across the corrugated aluminum that encases its structure. The design is an expression of gratitude and deep affection between the two people who built the house, with the Hebrew letters inscribed both forward and backward, becoming, as well as an expression of their Judaism, an abstract, decorative pattern allowing light and shadow to seep through into the private spaces inside. 

The “Beit Ha-Ahava” — “House of Love,” as it has become known — was, of course, a very personal project. In 2008, Morris, director of research finance operations at the Rand Corp., met Hale, a highly regarded architect and principal at the Los Angeles firm of Rios Clementi Hale Studios. (Hale has also been a vice president at Universal Studios and a principal architect for Frank O. Gehry Associates, including working on, among many projects, the landmark Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.)  Morris and Hale fell in love and decided to marry. Both lived on the Westside, and when they thought about designing and building a new home for a life together, they found they had very compatible tastes in modern design. 

“I was the architect, Max was the client,” Hale said. “She had a lot to say about it.”

They married in 2010, but had bought the property while engaged (the house wasn’t completed until 2012). Hale said he had always envisioned wrapping the exterior with perforated corrugated aluminum, but, at least at first, he’d simply thought of a pattern of holes. 

Bob Hale and Maxine Morris at their Cheviot Hills home. Photo by Trevor Tondro

“I said, ‘Just holes?’ ” Morris remembers. “Sounded not so interesting.” 

Morris had been collecting images of objects she liked, and one day she came across a lamp in the graceful, turning shape of the Hebrew letter lamed. 

“I was staring at it, and it just struck me: Hebrew letters are so beautiful,” she said. “So I said to him, ‘Can we do something with Hebrew letters?’ He said, ‘Sure, why not?’ And then it became, well, what letters?”

They quickly settled on an expression of their love. “And it was perfect,” Hale said. “It was concise, and it allowed us to make a pattern, and, as Max said, if you know the letters, you can make it out, and if you don’t, it just reads as a pattern.”

The house is set back enough from the street to allow for privacy, and the metal, while a prominent feature, encases only the top floor of the house. Throughout, large sliding windows open onto terraces that take advantage of the Southern California climate and allow for a fluid openness between inside and out. Upstairs, the metal-enclosed bedrooms and office spaces are lit both day and night by light flowing through the lettering, which marks the rooms with shadows of ahavah across every surface — walls, windows and ceilings. 

“It’s really cool in the middle of the night,” Morris said. 

“The streetlights and the moon create the light coming through,” Hale explained. “And in the morning, the eastern light comes this way,” he said, pointing to their bedroom window, “and rakes across here, and sometimes it seems like it’s on fire. I have to say, it exceeded my expectations of how nice it could be.

“I made it so we can actually open it up and have a completely open view,” Hale added. “But we almost never do.” 

The home’s furnishings and décor are colorful, including shelves throughout displaying a host of menorahs, Shabbat candleholders and dreidels, as well as other toys and collectibles. On the walls are many vivid paintings by Hale’s late first wife, Anne Greenwald, an accomplished artist and children’s book author-illustrator. Hale said he converted to Judaism at the time of his first marriage, and the Jewish connection continues with Morris. 

Together Morris and Hale traveled to Topolčany, to rediscover Morris’ lost paternal heritage, and today they proudly announce their own Jewish connection for all the world to see.

“This isn’t a very busy street, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people outside pointing and looking,” Hale said. “And sometimes I’ll go out there, and they’ll ask me, ‘What’s it say?’ ”

“People will ask, ‘Is it a word, or just letters?’ ” Morris added. “And some people know it’s Hebrew; some people know ahavah. It’s the whole spectrum.”

It’s not hard to notice that their joyous, public display of their Judaism is the absolute opposite of what young Meyer Wiesel would have experienced when he was carted off to Auschwitz at age 12. 

“One of my Jewish architecture friends, Michael Lehrer, when he saw the house, he wrote me an email and called it, ‘The House of an Optimist,’ ” Hale said. “He’s right, I am an optimist. We’re open to the street, and we say who we are.”

Morris stressed that the never-ending commitment to Judaism her father  passed on to her is essential to who she is, and to making this architecture possible.

“He kept his love of Judaism. And I hold onto that — it’s a part of him. It’s who he was.”

Love and Judaism are built into couple’s distinctive home Read More »

At the center, battling left and right extremism

Leave a Comment / Opinion, Rob Eshman /

It’s not going to end. 

I’m talking about the increasing demonization of Israel by progressive organizations and individuals. This month it was Black Lives Matter’s platform, and the vulgar cold shoulder given the Israeli Olympic athletes by some Lebanese and Egyptian athletes. 

Next month it will be the BDSers waiting to greet your college kids back to a new school year with mock Israeli checkpoints, divestment drives and protests against Israeli speakers.  

More and more progressive voices are falling prey to the simpleminded and extreme formulations of the radical anti-Israel crowd. These are not people who want a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — they see Israel’s existence itself as unjust. 

The Black Lives Matter platform is the perfect example. It took legitimate concerns over the amount of United States aid to Israel and turned it into hate speech. The platform accused Israel of “genocide” against the Palestinian people — something that should come as a shock to the 4.1 million more Palestinians alive today in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza than in 1948, when Israel came into being. 

Black lives do matter. But when it comes to Israel, so do facts. The only genocide in the Middle East is being perpetrated by Syrians against Syrians. On that, the BLM platform is unconscionably silent.

But BLM’s seemingly out-of-the-blue illogical attack on Israel should come as no surprise to people watching what’s happening everywhere from college campuses to the Bernie Sanders campaign — pro-Israel progressive voices are playing defense. 

“So-called intersectionality and identity politics,” Omer Benjakob writes in Haaretz, have been “conflating progressivism with blind support for BDS [Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions], creating an impossible dilemma for liberal Jews who want to be supportive of Israel.”

The fringes have bought the arguments of the Israel haters, and the extremes are eating toward the center.

And who are their greatest enablers? The extremists on the other side. 

In their persistent defense of the occupation, their cynical attempt to paint every act of Palestinian resistance as a stalking horse for Islamic fundamentalism, and their constant support for — or silence in the face of — the settlement project and its attendant injustices, the pro-Israel extremes continue to undermine the strategic and ethical standing of the Jewish state. 

These are the people who keep telling us that Israel is nothing but a victim, that the problem is only anti-Semitism, that if Israel could just do a better job of telling its story, of teaching our children to defend its actions, then the world would understand. 

What they don’t get is you can’t change the narrative without changing the reality. You can’t fix the image without fixing the facts. And the fact is that a democracy cannot deprive millions of people of their democratic rights and remain viable, much less popular. 

Occupation and the settlement project behind it undermine Israel’s security, its morality, its very existence. That’s why the strongest voices against the occupation have always been pro-Israel and pro-security. That’s why people who put Israel’s security first, like Ariel Sharon and Yitzhak Rabin, stood up to their extremists. 

Whether you are Israeli or Palestinian, Jew or Arab, the center is an increasingly lonely place these days. In the center are those of us who understand that the occupation does not justify anti-Semitism, and anti-Semitism does not justify the occupation. 

In the center are those who choose to fight BDS as if there is no occupation, and fight occupation as if there is no BDS. In the center are those who believe neither Israel nor the Palestinians need to justify their existence to anyone. In the center are those who believe the happiness and security of both peoples are inextricably linked to one another. 

The center might not be dead, but it is shrinking. From the left and the right, extremism shows no sign of ending. And if that continues, none of this is going to end well.

ROB ESHMAN is publisher and editor-in-chief of TRIBE Media Corp./Jewish Journal. Email him at robe@jewishjournal.com. You can follow him on Instagram and Twitter @foodaism and @RobEshman.

At the center, battling left and right extremism Read More »

Israeli Jewish man buys Palestinian girl new bike after police broke hers

Leave a Comment / Israel /

An Israeli Jewish man bought a Palestinian girl a new bicycle after border guards took and broke hers.

Sami Jolles donated the pink bike Wednesday, according to The Times of Israel. He told the news website the girl’s experience reminded him of when anti-Semites attacked his father in 1920s Europe and threw his bike in the river.

“I think that my father would be proud of me,” Jolles said.

Two Border Police officers in the West Bank city of Hebron were caught on film July 25 taking 8-year-old Anwar Burqan’s bicycle and putting it in nearby bushes. The bike was damaged beyond use, according to the girl’s family.

The video was released on Aug. 1 by the left-wing human rights group B’Tselem.

After reading about the incident, for which the border guards were suspended but not charged with a crime, Jolles said he decided to “close that circle” between Anwar and his father.

He contacted Israeli peace activists, who together with Palestinian activists delivered the bike, along with a “good lock,” to Anwar’s home, one of the Israeli activists, Lonny Baskin, told The Times of Israel.

“She’s a shy little girl, but she was so appreciative; her eyes were shining,” Baskin said.

The Burqan family has struggled in recent years, after Amer Burquan, Anwar’s father, had one leg amputated and lost use of the other after a 6-ton truck fell on him at a work site. Since then, the family has mostly lived off charitable donations and is trying to raise money for a wheelchair, according to Baskin.

Hebron is home to some 200,000 Palestinians and fewer than 1,000 Israeli settlers, who live under heavy military protection. The city, religiously significant to both Jews and Muslims, has long been a hothouse of Jewish-Palestinian violence.

The Justice Ministry’s Police Internal Investigations Department said the officers’ conduct was “inappropriate and unprofessional,” but the investigators determined it was not criminal.

The guards told investigators they confiscated Anwar’s bike because they could not communicate with her in Arabic and wanted to stop her from crossing into the Jewish neighborhood of Hebron, which Palestinians are barred from entering, Haaretz reported.

Israeli Jewish man buys Palestinian girl new bike after police broke hers Read More »

Is Israel exporting Orthodox bias to all Jews?

Leave a Comment / Israel, Israel, News, Rosner's Domain, Rosners Domain-mobile, Worldwide /

Facts first, preferably without spin: the government of Israel has decided to allocate funds for strengthening Jewish identity in world Jewish communities. The decision is not new – it was made in 2014 – but it took some time, hand wringing, and deliberations to get to the implementation of the program. Now, three organizations that work in college campuses will get about seven million dollars each in the hope that this will make them more successful in reaching out to Jews – the ambition is to triple the number of Jews on campuses (not just American, but also European, Australian, etc.) that engage with Jewish programs. The organizations that get funding from Israel – through Mosaic United, a non-profit that was established to make Israel’s investment more efficient – have to invest two dollars for every dollar Israel invests in the program.

More facts: the organizations that were selected – that is, the organizations that can prove that they have significant presence in campuses around the world, that are willing to coordinate their work with the initiative and with their competitors (that is a precondition for participating), and that can put $14 million on the table to get Israel’s $7 million – are three: Hillel international, Chabad, and Olami. The last two of the three are Orthodox groups, a point that many reports highlighted. I will get to the Orthodox question later.

But before we do that, we need to move from facts to questions and interpretation – and while we do that it’s important not to mix different questions as if they are the same. There are ideological questions, there are political questions, there are professional questions. Let us separate them first.

The most important question about this program was asked and answered two years ago, and it is ideological in nature: should Israel invest in Jewish identity abroad and why? It is not a simple question to answer – it is not obvious that Israel ought to take taxpayers’ money and, instead of using it to purchase computers for children from lower economic brackets, use it to fund programs for – generally speaking – American college kids from well-to-do families. Then again, the government of Israel, by making this decision, was also answering the question: Israel believes this to be a worthy goal and is willing to put its money where its mouth is.

Another ideological question is about this term “Jewish identity” and what it means. “Our vision,” the web site of Mosaic United claims, is “an inspired, empowered, thriving Jewish people – connected with each other and the State of Israel – illuminating the world.” That is nice, but we can still ask: what do they mean by “inspired,” and what do they mean by “empowered” and “thriving?” What connection with Israel will they promote, and how do they intend the community to illuminate the world? Obviously, the answer Chabad operators are going to give to such questions are different from the answers you will get from Hillel activists, and these will be different from answers given by other groups and organizations. Thus, the real test of the initiative cannot be measured by looking at one organization at one time, but rather by looking at the mixture of programs and organizations that will gradually define what this initiative considers to be an expression of Jewish identity. 

Professional questions are also important, and for many of these questions I do not have a clear answer: Does it make sense to begin with an investment in college campuses? Can the organizations that were chosen achieve the goal of the program? Are these the best organizations to achieve the goal of the program? How does the government (and Mosaic United) intend to monitor and asses the success of the program? Why seven million and not twenty million or three million? What are they going to do with seven additional million that they couldn’t do without them?

Of course, to the average reader most of these questions are quite boring. As an Israeli tax payer, I’d like to know that this project is handled professionally and responsibly – but this is not different from all other things that the Israeli government handles, some with impressive efficiency, other with less impressive slovenliness.

Political questions are the ones that make this story a topic of some discussion. They prompted a story in Haaretz with the headline: Orthodox Groups to Lead Israel's New Bid to 'Strengthen Jewish Identity' of Diaspora Youth. They then prompted an editorial under the headline: Israel Is Exporting pro-Orthodox Bias. I received several inquisitive messages following these stories, and these are the questions I will try to answer.

The basic idea of the supposedly factual news story and the openly ideological editorial is simple: 1. The Diaspora Affairs Ministry is controlled by an Orthodox minister, Naftali Bennet. 2. It is thus allocating funds to Orthodox organizations. 3. That makes no sense because most Diaspora Jews are not Orthodox. 4. It also raises the suspicion that Jewish identity will be interpreted in ways that are not compatible with a pluralistic approach to Judaism.

Fair enough. Let’s examine these arguments one by one.

1. Bennet is indeed the head of an Orthodox party and is an Orthodox Jew. He is Diaspora Minister because he wanted the job – in fact, he insisted on keeping it. He has gained political power, and being the Minister of Diaspora Affairs is a legitimate way to use his political power.

2. I have yet to see proof of any kind that the ministry somehow manipulated the process to ensure that allocations go to Orthodox organizations. The ministry claims that these organizations were the ones meeting the criteria, and that other organizations – non-Orthodox – can get the same deal if they meet the criteria. Of course, criteria can be tailored for the purpose of allocating funds to certain organizations, but I have also yet to see any proof of that. Thus far, all we have is guilt by association – Bennet is Orthodox, two of three organizations are Orthodox, so the process must have been skewed. Would Haaretz insinuate that the process was skewed had the minister been a non-Orthodox Jew and all three organizations would be non-Orthodox? I think you know the answer to that.

3. This is a thorny point. But it goes back to professionalism: are these organizations the best situated to accomplish something? Only time will tell. But we know that for many years Chabad has been the envy of the Jewish world because of its ability to connect with Jews of all worldviews. And we also know – I know – that the people of the ministry want to succeed. They want to make a lasting impact. So they probably think that these organizations can provide them with success.

4. This is the thorniest issue: how these organizations interpret Jewish identity, and do you feel comfortable with their interpretation. The short answer to this question is no. I don’t always feel comfortable with the interpretation of Chabad. So what? I also don’t always feel comfortable with other interpretations. But there are certain things that we ought to keep in mind as we examine the program and the organizations that were chosen to activate it:

A. The ministry was put in charge of a lot of money and is entitled to use it in ways compatible with the worldview of its managers – as long as this is done within reason and is professionally defensible. That is why we have a political process, and that is what it means to have a government that makes policy. In other words: preferring an Orthodox interpretation is well within the rights of the ministry.

B. Only a fool (and Haaretz) would think that Bennet, the ultra-nationalist, fairly relaxed-Orthodox, interprets “Jewish identity” and “connection to Israel” the way Chabad and Olami do. Bundling all Orthodox Jews together to make a point might work with some readers whose distaste of Israeli Orthodox Judaism (in many cases for good reasons) blinds them in ways that disable their ability to see nuances.

C. As I already said: The ministry wants success. The wish to succeed is a powerful human motivator to do the right thing. It is not impossible that the right thing, in this case, was to allocate funds to two Orthodox-tilting organizations.

D. Having said all that, the ministry and Mosaic United ought to be careful and take the public’s view into account: it is easy to lose the confidence of Diaspora Jewry. It is especially easy for a ministry whose head is the ultra-nationalist-Orthodox Bennet.

Is Israel exporting Orthodox bias to all Jews? Read More »