Out of the Mouths of Babes.../ Rabbi Gerald Skolnik
When you have to deliver a sermon every week, in order to survive the unrelenting pressure of coming up with fresh, relevant and well-presented topics, you become a keen listener and observer.Ideas present themselves in the most unexpected places.The trick is to be open to hearing and seeing them.
When last I wrote, I was looking for a framework for addressing the recent summit in Annapolis between Israel and the Palestinians.I’m always reluctant to speak to issues like that without grounding them in some way in Torah.If I fail to do that, I feel like I’m betraying the authority that gives me the right to be speaking from the pulpit altogether, and I become just another talking head, of which there are more than enough.So…
This past Friday morning, I had the pleasure of being an invited guest to our wonderful Nursery School’s weekly Shabbat celebration.Every week, there is a Shabbat Abba and Ema (mother and father) for each class, and in addition to being guests in the class, they also attend the group celebration of Shabbat in our sanctuary.I can’t get there every week- Fridays are invariably frantic days, especially at this time of year when the days are so short- but our school’s director makes sure that, at the very least before holidays, I check in with the kids and talk to them a bit about what’s coming up in the Jewish calendar.
Since Chanukkah begins in just a few days, this Friday was the right time for a pre-holiday visit, and I was excited.In fact, I had decided that, after more than two years of guitar lessons, I was ready to play and sing with the children, something I had always dreamed of being able to do.I never saw myself- and still don’t- as the classic caricature of the guitar-playing rabbi whose guitar is part of everything he does.Too new-age for me, I must admit.
But particularly with very young children, it seemed to me to be the perfect opportunity to use this new skill.So I reviewed a few Chanukkah songs, and went off to do my thing.
Because it was my first time playing for them, I explained that this was something new for me, and I hoped that it might teach them that even people like their parents, and older than their parents, are capable of learning new things.Simple enough, yes?Well, one of the guest families had brought along an older sibling- maybe seven or eight, I would guess- who immediately raised his hand and asked “Is this what they mean when they say that an old dog can learn new tricks?”The question made me feel just a little like a big old basset hound with droopy ears- not the feeling I was looking for, per se- but it was such a precious moment!
And then later, when I was back in my office, I started thinking…. Old dogs, new tricks.I’d always wondered how Jacob, who suffered so from his parents having played favorites with him and his brother Esau, could turn around and do something very similar with Joseph, with predictably disastrous results.Are learned behaviors necessarily destiny?Can you teach an old dog new tricks?And I thought further still… Are Ehud Olmert and Abu Mazen (and, more importantly, the constituencies they represent) able to learn new ways to relate to each other, or are they too stuck in learned patterns of behavior, incapable of learning and teaching “new tricks?”
It was worth a few minutes of feeling like a basset hound.
Beware The Bully Pulpit: The Problems With Heksher Tzedek / Jonathan Mark in New York
Liberal Jews just love the idea that they are embodiment of ethical behavior, unlike the mean ol' Orthodox who supposedly are only about ritual. The American and Israeli police blotters don't bear that out but so what, being smug is more important than being right.
This past week, a letter to the editor in The Jewish Week asked, "Is someone who swings a chicken over his head in anticipation of Yom Kippur but neglects the hungry and oppressed… really a more 'religious' Jew?"
The falsehood of that slur ought to be self-evident to anyone watching in the evening hours when Orthodox Jews deliver several thousands of food packages to hungry Jews before each and every Shabbat and holiday. And from the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry in the early 1960s (to pick an arbitrary starting point), Orthodox Jews have been as out in front of just about every movement for the oppressed.
Meanwhile, at last winter's convention of Rabbi for Human Rights, several hundred Conservative and Reform rabbis (and just six Orthodox rabbis, all from Yeshivat Chovivei Torah) spent three days talking about the oppressed in Guantanamo and Ramallah without mentioning once - not once -- the Jews in Sderot, or the captive Israel soldiers. Last time I went to a rally for the captives, it was obvious that if it wasn't for Orthodox day schools and day school graduates there'd barely be a minyan, even counting women.
Why is it "ethical" to slander the Orthodox? And there's no doubt that a lot of this interdenominational waterboarding is fed by leaders who fancy themselves the most ethical among us.
The new Heksher Tzedek movement - linking kashrut certification to the treatment of animals and agribusiness workers - is more about being smug, more about positioning the Jew who is casual about ritual against the Jew who is passionate about it.
The rabbis of the Conservative movement, the heart and soul of the Heksher Tzedek initiative, let us know they care deeply about animal right and workers rights. But why don't they have anything to say about consumer rights? A Federation study determined that there are 350,000 Jews near the poverty line, in the New York State area alone. Hekshers are big business. Some restaurants spend upwards of $60,000 a year on kashrut supervision, and an article in the New Jersey Jewish Standard determined that a non-kosher restaurant going kosher will need to spend $130,000 in its first year. Someone is going to pay and it'll be the consumer. The rabbis will be the ones getting paid.
Rabbinical kashrut supervision has reached such cynical heights that some rabbis charge to give a Heksher to bottled water.
Why is it that pre-Passover price gouging has never been policed by rabbis, Conservative or otherwise, but by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs.
And speaking of agribusiness, a Sukkot bundle of branches from a palm, a myrtle and a willow, coupled with an etrog fruit, ought to cost about ten dollars, tops, but can instead cost Jewish consumers $36 or $72 or upwards of $300, prices totally out of whack with real cost, as betrayed by the price hikes of chai. This price gouging often done in conjunction with synagogues and local rabbis who frequently use the gouging for fund raising. It is a cabal that often includes local Judaica stores that kick back money to the synagogues. To the extent that is fund-raising, it is tax exempt, but that's a meaningless sop to a Jew at the poverty line.
When have the ethical voices of the rabbinate ever spoken up on behalf of consumers that see a lulav and etrog not as a luxury but as a necessity?
Heksher Tzedek press releases make a point of saying they do not intend to get involved with actual kashrut certification, the province almost entirely of the Orthodox. Somehow when it comes to religious price gouging, the great ethical arbiters are suddenly reluctant to critique their fellow teamsters in the rabbinic union. But when Orthodox shuls do the opposite and make Jewish life more affordable? Oh, then we hear howls of protest from the Heksher Tzedek crowd.
The other day one of our reporters, a Conservative Jew, let us know that Conservative rabbis on Long Island were indignant - indignant - that Chabad shuls on Long Island were allowing bar mitzvah boys (of any denomination) to be called to the Torah without their families being charged Temple membership - upwards of $2,000 in some Conservative Temples. The nerve of those Orthodox, not charging a marginally affiliated Jew, perhaps in financial trouble, as much as a Conservative synagogue would charge. Giving Jews a financial break?
That is so unethical!
When Conservative rabbis get together, with that sort of elite economic insensitivity, and say they've dreamed up a new form of rabbinic certification, all in the name of ethics, the first thing I want to know is - in the name of ethical concern for oppressed, financially-strapped Jews - how much is this thing going to cost? You can bet these Conservative rabbis will be charging more than Chabad.
It's a curious thing. The Conservative movement certainly values kashrut but yet has no internal kashrut supervision apparatus, and are not planning for it now. I'd be curious how many zip codes in the United States, with a Conservative synagogue but no Orthodox synagogue in the vicinity, would support a kosher restaurant?
The Web site of Conservative movement's United Synagogue congregational organization, noted (Dec. 19, 2006) that the movement's "Committee on Jewish Law and Standards has voted to accept the hashgachot, or kashrut supervision, of… Rabbi Dov Hazdan, whose symbol is the Ner Tamid K," based on Staten Island.
Surely that rabbi and committee know more about kashrut than I do, but I noticed that shortly before they made Rabbi Hazdan their standard bearer, New York magazine ran an item (April 2, 2006), "When is a restaurant that serves bacon considered kosher? To most Orthodox rabbis, the answer is easy: never. But Staten Island rabbi Dov Hazdan has been granting his own kosher certification to city Dunkin' Donuts franchises that have served bacon, ham, and sausage, the trayf trifecta," although Hazdan says his supervision did not extend to Dunkin's non-kosher meat.
Hazdan, reports New York magazine, was subsequently fired "as the kosher supervisor at a Dunkin' franchise on 34th Street after it received complaints from the Yeshiva University community about the rabbi and the pork. Spokesmen for the four top kosher-certifying agencies said they would never approve a restaurant that served nonkosher meats," but of course, those agencies are the kind that care about the quaint. We need to trust Heksher Tzedek to help us with the ethical.
Hazdan insisted to New York Magazine that his methods of supervision are 100 percent kosher. I take his word for it, but it sure sounds curious. Do restaurants serving non-kosher meat have to be Heksher Tzedek or is Heksher Tzedek just for the rest of us?
I was just wondering, all the non-Orthodox journalists and editors and public relations people and lay leaders that have, so far, given an uncritical free pass to Heksher Tzedek, how seriously do they themselves take it? Are we supposed to believe that these Heksher Tzedek cheerleaders will never again eat in a restaurant, or buy a sandwich from a Midtown lunch counter, or buy a burger that doesn't have proper Heksher Tzedek certification? When these Heksher Tzedek aficionados go to the grocery, will they only buy food that has the Heksher Tzedek certification? Will they not eat at Shabbat tables where non-observant Jews are so lax as to not serve Heksher Tzedek food? In other words, are they as serious about Heksher Tzedek in an equivalent way to real kashrut, the kashrut upon whose back they're riding? Or is all of this just ethical grandstanding to show up the Orthodox who, of course, supposedly care more about the ritual but not the animals or the workers?
Why do I have the hunch that the vast majority of Heksher Tzedek advocates, who talk like Cesar Chavez when the microphones are on, will sit down to eat just like the rest of us when the microphones turn off?
There is yet another problem with Heksher Tzedek, and that is the danger of an imperial rabbinate trying to do some social engineering for one Jewish value, decency to employees, by linking it to a second Jewish value, in this case kashrut.
It seems harmless enough. But the Israeli imperial rabbinate has been playing this game for a while, denying a kashrut Heksher to many non-haredi hotels and restaurants that kosher food because those establishments allow "mixed dancing," or because those hotels and restaurants allow New Year's Eve parties. The Israeli rabbinate can't stop dancing or partying, so they squeeze these venues on kashrut.
Imagine another case, if a rabbi would refuse to give a fully Jewish person an aliyah to the Torah, or access to tefillin, or a tahara ritual purification after death, because that person was intermarried or gay. His linkage is his own version of Heksher Tzedek.
A few months ago, the only Jewish elementary school in Vienna expelled a Jewish child, denying that child his only possible formal Jewish education, because that child's father was among the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta who visited Tehran in support Iran's Mahmoud Ahmedinijad. The Zionist rabbinate couldn't touch the guilty father so they punish the innocent child. It is the principle of Heksher Tzedek, a rabbinate that can't enforce one value, grandstands upon a second value entirely.
Liberal Jews and Orthodox Jews alike ought to beware when one religious sentiment becomes hostage to another.
May all rabbis of all denominations be blessed in their attempts to influence agribusiness to operate in more spiritual ways.
May all rabbis enforce existing Jewish law regarding the rights of animals and workers.
But when rabbis on the right or left insist on sanctifying positions in which there can be honest disagreement - be it Zionism, male-female socializing, or the extent of animal rights - by utilizing the pious language of "Heksher" and smug para-halachic self-righteousness, it's time for the rest of us to get up and sit at a different table.
Prescription for an AWOL Community? / James Besser in Washington
Critics have accused Jewish groups of ducking and running every time the issue of the treatment of foreign detainees in the war against terrorism comes up.
That's one reason Rabbis for Human Rights- North America is broadening its own campaign against torture and other forms of abuse. On December 10 the group will officially launch "K'vod Habriot: A Jewish Human Rights Network."
The new project is intended to bring together rabbis, synagogues, community groups and individuals. Rabbi Brian Walt, the group's executive director, said Amnesty International provides a kind of model.
"The intention is to create an activist network across the country," he said. "Action alerts and information on a specific issue will be distributed each month, with suggestions for activism."
Temple Isaiah of Lafayette, CA is the first synagogue to officially join the K'vod Habriot network.
The initial focus will be on torture, he said, but he expects the group to quickly delve into other human rights controversies.
One area will NOT be on the group's agenda for the foreseeable future, he said: the Middle East.
A lot of my time, and every congregational rabbi's time, is spent trying to figure out how to be a good rabbi to the very different constituencies in my synagogue.
There are people who crave change, and others who, with equal passion, want things to stay exactly as they have been. There are liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, the more observant and the less observant, and almost every shading in-between.
The hackneyed old joke about the Jew who builds two synagogues so that he can always have one not to go to has survived all these years because, in no insignificant measure, it's true. We Jews are a contentious lot, and we love our arguments. How appropriate that the Talmud is such an important study text for us; its volumes are built on the idea of machloket, of disagreement. Hillel and Shammai, Rabbi Akivah and Rabbi Yishmael- as long as the argument is considered to be l'shem shamayim, for the sake of heaven, it is not, in and of itself, considered a bad thing. That's how Jews think, and work things out.
On no one issue does this occasionally unnerving tendency to loudly argue things out figure more prominently than the security of Israel and its general state of being.
As this week's peace conference in Annapolis convened and adjourned before we knew too much of what was really happening, I could hear familiar voices from my congregational family speaking (loudly?) in my figurative ear. That's what happens when you serve the same community for twenty-seven years; you can almost construct the arguments without the benefit of the presence of the arguers!
"Remember Oslo!" "Look what happened when they gave back Gaza!" "Remember the intifada(s)!" That was in my left ear (or maybe I should say my right ear?).
In the other ear, I could hear the quieter but nonetheless insistent voice of members who refuse to lose their hope that a peace worth having might yet be achieved, and who lament Israel's reluctance to move more forthrightly in the direction of further concessions. One person posted on our synagogue listserv that he was going to Annapolis to stand and be counted in support of the conference and what it represents. He invited others to come with him. I don't know if he got any takers- my sense was that far more of our members were skeptical than hopeful- but I was glad to "hear his voice."
Woe unto us when we lose the capacity to dream of something better for Israel than endless hostility.
I'm just wondering about my own voice. I have my opinions, to be sure, but "preaching my opinions" as more correct or valid than anyone else's is a tricky business at best. I am hardly the sole possessor of any elevated wisdom, and I would never begrudge the right my members to disagree with me no matter how misguided I might think them. To the extent that I might know the reality of Israel better than many of them, I certainly have both the right and the responsibility to help shape their opinions. But there will always be the people talking in my other ear.
The Strangest Bedfellows: Kucinich and Paul? / Jame Besser in Washington
The National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) doesn't mind criticizing some fellow Democrats - especially when they can do that and take a hit at an increasingly popular Republican candidate with the same swipe.
This week the partisan group lashed out at Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio), whose fierce anti-war campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination might sell well with Jewish voters - if not for his views on Israel.
Kucinich's latest sin: his suggestion that if he is nominated, he would consider selecting as his running mate Rep. Ron Paul - the libertarian/isolationist/antiwar Republican who remains low in the polls but is doing extraordinarily well on the Internet and in fundraising.
At a New Hampshire meeting, he suggested a Kucinich-Paul ticket could "balance the energies" of the country.
"Despite his views on the Iraq war, Rep. Paul no more belongs on a Democratic ticket than Dennis Kucinich on a Republican one," said NJDC executive director Ira Forman. "Any Jewish Democrats or independents that are tempted toward Rep. Paul because of his stance on the war should be reminded that this Republican Representative has a terrible record on Middle East politics, is anti-choice, and opposes stem cell research. Rep. Paul has even gone so far as to call the Israel government evil."
What Forman neglected to mention is that Kucinich, too, has a long record of statements and actions that infuriate pro-Israel leaders, including his speech at a conference sponsored by the anti-Israel Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center.
Paul has attracted some far-left wingers who admire his anti-war stance, but a Kucinich-Paul ticket would be the strangest of marriages. Kucinich is the most vocal advocate of a government-sponsored single-payer health care system; Paul wants to virtually dismantle the federal government.
Jewish Democrats can afford to do some bipartisan criticism in his case. Kucinich is going nowhere in the polls or in the fundraising sweepstakes; Paul, on the other hand, is gaining more national attention by the day.
This week's groundbreaking Annapolis declaration, which will in theory result in the immediate start of "final status" negotiations for creation of a Palestinian state, has revived a familiar problem: monitoring and ensuring implementation.
This time around, Israel and the Palestinians have decided to trust the Americans with the job of determining whether both sides are complying with their obligations under the Mideast Road Map, the outline for the resumed negotiations.
The State Department's choice for the job: retired Gen. James Jones, a onetime NATO commander, who will serve as special U.S. envoy for Middle East security.
Jones is a former Marine Corps Commandant with more than 40 years of active duty service.
"I believe that we need an experienced leader who can address the regional security challenge comprehensively and at the highest levels and who can provide the full support of our government to the partners, as they work to meet their responsibilities," Rice said in making the announcement on Wednesday. "General Jones is the person we need to take up this vital mission."
(Watch Secretary Rice's post-summit wrap up here)
The question is, what KIND of experience; some Jewish leaders quickly questioned whether a military man is the right choice for a job that involves security but also delicate questions of diplomacy and Mideast politics.
"He's an excellent marine, but this is not a job for a soldier," said Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). "The mandate is political, by nature."
Other observers wonder how Jones will perform the first time his views about Palestinian security efforts clash with Israeli intelligence and military assessments.
(Rabbi Gerald. C. Skolnik has served as spiritual leader of The Forest Hills Jewish Center for twenty-seven years. He also teaches at JTS, is an officer of the Rabbinical Assembly, and is involved in numerous causes and organizations within the Jewish community.)
This past Sunday I officiated at the funeral of an old friend's mother, and yesterday I attended the funeral of another old friend's brother. As I write, yet another old friend herself lies in a hospice with her family sitting vigil at her bedside. Every time my cellphone rings, I fear the worst. It is a funeral I am dreading.
Ask any seasoned pulpit rabbi and he/she will tell you that deaths tend to cluster, particularly around holidays. This phenomenon is not at all unique to Judaism. My Christian colleagues tell me that the same is very much true in their communities. No one really knows why. It may have something to do with depression, which is an unwelcome leitmotif of holiday seasons for people who aren't well, or aren't happy. I certainly don't know why it is, but I know that it is so.
There is enormous gratification from knowing that others look to you in their worst moments, when they are at their most vulnerable, and that you are the person that they want around to help them through.
I've learned time and again how even in this age when models of clerical authority are so in flux, a good pastor is an invaluable asset to a grieving person or family. I know this. But I've also never been able to escape the feeling that that every death, every sadness that I am a part of diminishes me in some insidious and imperceptible way, and takes its toll. I also know that the day I stop letting someone else's loss affect me is the day that I should leave the rabbinate, for I will have lost my capacity for true empathy.
Behind the Almontaser Stories / Larry Cohler-Esses, Editor at Large
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article for The Nation Magazine denouncing inaccurate smear campaigns against Muslims, Arabs and critics of Israel as a kind of “new McCarthyism”---for which I was strongly criticized in some corners of the Jewish community.
This week I am under attack from another sector of the community, charged with practicing what I so recently denounced. The charge comes from my Page One story on Debbie Almontaser---one of those I cited in my Nation article as a victim of the New McCarthyism.
My story -- headlined “Ex-Arab School Head Rapped for Rally Partners” --highlights the identity or backgrounds of several speakers at a rally in support of Almontaser, who resigned under fire last August as leader of a new dual language Arabic-English public school in Brooklyn. The story implies that these supporters’ backgrounds stand in contrast to Almontaser’s own moderate public positions. It includes the attack of a critic who asks: “Now that [Jewish Week readers] know who the supporters of this school are, are they happy? Are they comfortable?”
The three speakers at Almontaser’s support rally who came under attack were part of a total of nine or 10 who appeared there, including a labor leader, a prominent Manhattan rabbi, an academic and the chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee (all also cited high up in the article). One of those angry about my highlighting the other speakers and their backgrounds asked: “Are you sure this is not tainted by neo-McCarthyism?”
I think the best way to answer this is to relate how the news judgments in this story came about. In this case, this includes how those news judgments interacted with personal feelings I had come to develop about the issues and people involved in this story.
Almontaser resigned last August under fire as founding head of the Khalil Gibran International Academy (KGIA) in Brooklyn. The new public middle school, which opened in September, offers a dual language, dual culture English-Arabic college prep curriculum. One of some 60 dual language public school programs in the city, it aims to draw in students from Arab and non-Arab backgrounds. But from its inception a group of critics has attacked the school and Almontaser herself for, they say, harboring a covert extremist and Islamist agenda.
None of this had any effect until Almontaser granted an interview to The New York Post last August. Almontaser was asked then about her association with T-shirts for local Arab American teen-age girls bearing the message “Intifada NYC.” The T-shirts were produced by Arab Women in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), a group that shared office space with a separate, unrelated group on whose board Almontaser sat. Almontaser was quoted explaining that the root meaning of the word intifada---“shaking off”---had different meanings in different contexts; voicing her understanding that the word “is developing a negative connotation” due to the Israel-Palestinian conflict; and stating her belief that neither the T-shirts nor the girls wearing them meant to extol violence.
Right-wing media outlets slammed Almontaser for not having simply condemned the T-shirts. So did Stop the Madrassa, the group that charged the school and Almontaser with seeking to instill extremism in students. In her suit last week, Almontaser alleged that the Department of Education had illegally forced her to resign as interim principal in the face of this pressure and was now refusing to consider her application for the post of permanent principal.
At the time of her resignation, I wrote a story detailing how this was but the latest episode in a months-long smear campaign by forces opposed to the school who sought to portray Almontaser as an extremist. I detailed specific distortions and falsehoods they had put out about her in the months preceding the ill-fated Post interview. The story reviewed Almontaser’s long history of commitment to nonviolence and interfaith work with Jews and Christians.
The Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater New York and Rabbi Michael Paley, who works for UJA-Federation, were among those who attested to this.
This story and another that followed led Almontaser and her attorney, Alan Levine, to offer me an exclusive interview with her shortly before they filed suit. During this interview, Almontaser reiterated her view that the Post reporter had sought to impose an inappropriate litmus test by asking her about AWAAM’s T-shirts: “I said [to The Post] this organization and its T-shirt have nothing to do with me or the school,” she said.
I also discovered then that I shared a rare common point of personal background with Levine. We had both, it turned out, done civil rights work in Mississippi many years ago and even shared some common acquaintances from that era, an intense and vivid period in both our lives. On top of this, it turned out that Levine’s spouse was Donna Nevel, the person who first recruited me to come to New York and work in Jewish journalism after I finished graduate school in Illinois in 1982. Nevel, with whom I had had no contact for many years, is one of the organizers of the community group defending Almontaser and KGIA.
On a personal level, I liked these people and what they were trying to achieve. I also disliked what I had, through my reporting, found to be the falsehoods, distortions and guilt-by-association charges that school critics had launched against Almontaser.
Because of this, my heart sank when I attended the support rally for Almontaser.
The lead speaker, with Almontaser at her side, was Mona Eldahry, who was introduced as executive director of AWAAM, the group that produced the T-shirts and---equally relevant---the group Almontaser had repeatedly stressed she had nothing to do with. Eldahry praised Almontaser in her speech for having refused to condemn the T-shirts or her organization.
I knew that Eldahry’s role as lead speaker on Almontaser’s behalf with Almontaser next to her ran up against Almontaser’s repeated emphasis previously that she had nothing to do with AWAAM. Whatever the situation before, she did now, and this change was news.
The news impact was similar when City Council Member Charles Barron stepped up to the microphone. Almontaser’s history---one she herself stresses---reflects a consistent commitment to nonviolence in confronting racial and social issues.
In contrast, Barron, after the police shooting of Sean Bell, an unarmed black man in Queens, advocated protest marches and prayer—first: “Then, if they don’t respond to none of that, then don’t ask our people to be peaceful while they are being murdered,” he declared to hundreds at a protest rally last November. “We are not the only ones that can bleed.”
Barron is most famous lately for pushing for naming a street in Brooklyn after Sonny Carson, the late self-described “anti-white” activist involved in the CrownHeights riots and the protests against Korean owned stores in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Of less, but not no significance: I knew a young woman who spoke at the rally from the Council on American Islamic Relations would be of interest to Jewish Week readers. Some non-government investigators, such as Steven Emerson, have accused CAIR of having ties to terrorist groups. Former FBI counter-terrorism investigators have been quoted challenging this. At the same time, the U.S. Justice Department named CAIR as an unindicted conspirator in its recent---failed---prosecution against the Holy Land Foundation for allegedly supporting Hamas.
There was no way the issue of these speakers’ backgrounds could be kept out of a news story. At the very least, Stop the Madrassa would have something to say about how these speakers clashed with Almontaser’s public stand. And since in this case, they were speaking up for Almontaser with her at their side at a rally she endorsed with her presence, I would be obliged to quote the group.
Nevertheless, in my initial draft, I wrote about all this deep down in the body of the story. My lead angle was about Almontaser’s suit and some of the contents of the complaint. But when I turned my story in, Rob Goldblum, the paper’s managing editor, pointed to the section on the speakers and said no---this belongs at the top. Basically, he effectively ruled this, not the suit---whose imminent filing and basic outline had been previously announced and reported----is the story, at least for our readers.
I didn't like this instruction. At the same time, with the clock ticking relentlessly toward deadline, I could not think of one quick knockout response to show he was wrong----by which I mean wrong in his news judgment. Almontaser had made her lack of any connection to the T-shirt people a central point in her position that the Post was wrong to even be asking her about the shirts. Now the leader of the T-shirt people was her lead speaker. This was the "new" in the word "news," independent of whether one thought the T-shirt's message or AWAAM itself was right or wrong in its stance.
Throw in Charles Barron and the woman from CAIR, and the angle Rob favored was reinforced.
Rob Goldblum and I have a long relationship as editor and writer, one in which there is both trust and freedom to challenge and dispute. Yet I could not rebut him. In the rushed and frazzled way in which thought occurs as deadline looms, I concluded that I might well not like Rob’s instruction simply because I DID like Almontaser and did not much care for Stop the Madrassa’s distortions of her record.
I thought: this is what editors are for---to provide the distance from a story that a writer can lose.
Rob's job is to know his publication's readers and what is, or should be, important to them. It's true this can easily turn into simply pandering to their fears. But in this case, the news judgment criteria for Rob's position were pretty solid.
Therefore, my resistance to pandering here would consist of making sure I did not portray the presence of AWAAM or CAIR at this rally one dimensionally, as self-evident evils (as say, The New York Post might). In the space I had (a very big constraint), the best way to do this was by giving good play to the strong responses of Levine, Almontaser's attorney: that the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater New York had actually offered AWAAM a mini-grant of $500 in 2005---a kind of heksher that, he argued, tied JCRC more closely than Almontaser to AWAAM; and that CAIR-NY's chief counsel is a mayoral appointee.
I was not sure what to do about Charles Barron. But Almontaser’s supporters challenge why any of this is relevant to the news. "Does the fact that Charles Baron and speakers from AWAAM and CAIR spoke at her conference cast any doubt in your mind on the facts of her case?” asked one. “If not, why mention them? Because your readers would be interested? How about if one of the speakers was gay?”
If Almontaser was presenting herself as an anti-gay rights advocate who had never had anything to do with gay people, such a speaker at her rally would, indeed, be newsworthy.
In short, there is a big difference between noting the way in which some speakers standing with Almontaser at her own rally stepped on her message; and say, charging---as one of her opponents did---that a member of KGIA’s advisory committee was a speaker at a Muslim youth camp, where another person also spoke who was accused in unidentified “court papers” of helping yet a third person make backup copies of a fundraising site for terrorism. The latter is, to my mind, guilt by association. The former is reporting.
Janet Malcolm of The New Yorker famously wrote about journalists being seducers and betrayers, as a matter of necessity. She spoke about this as a conscious art good journalists cultivated. I never accepted this. But I certainly experienced a deep divergence in this story between my sense of connection and sympathy on a personal level with one side and my professional obligation.
An Annapolis Reading Guide / James Besser in Washington
This week’s Annapolis peace conference has produced a veritable avalanche of words as Mideast think tanks churn out analyses and political groups on both sides of the Mideast peace debate produce position papers and op-eds. And let's not leave out legions of journalists and bloggers.
Here is a modest sample of opinions and perspectives on the conference. (Note for Internet newbies: click on the underlined link to go to the story).
David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who is right more than almost another Mideast talking head, writes a cogent analysis of the meaning of Annapolis – and the “confidence building” measures necessary as followup.
Ha’aretz blogger and chief U.S. correspondent Shmuel Rosner has one of the best characterizations of the downsized expectations and upsized guest list for the conference. In a story that also appeared in Slate, he suggests readers think of Annapolis as “a big party.”
The Orthodox Union has decided that the battle for Jerusalem is on whether or not there are any breakthroughs at Annapolis. The group’s political director, Nathan Diament, published an op-ed in the Baltimore Sun that called Jerusalem the “unbridgeable divide in the followup negotiations” after Annapolis.
The conventional wisdom is that Annapolis is just a fancy photo-op, but Americans for Peace Now spokesman Ori Nir, writing in the Jewish Week’s Machers Blog,makes the case that this week's conference is “a beginning of a new, somewhat different Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process.” The set-piece conference in the Maryland capital, he writes, was intended to “generate drama” to launch that process.
American Jewish groups have been mostly mute in the run-up to the conference, but JTA has an interesting report on some of the behind-the-scenes drama in Jewish communal boardrooms.
Writing in last week's Forward, Leonard Fein writes about the stakes of Annapolis; failure, he argues, could lead to a resumption of large-scale violence and a "terminal collapse of the 'two-state solution.'"
The Council on Foreign Relations offers a somewhat gloomy analysis of the talks, saying that “the conflict is not even close to being ripe for resolution,” and suggesting that the best goal now is simply to avoid making matters worse.
Several weeks ago the Israel Policy Forum (IPF) presented a paper to U.S. officials listing recommendations by their diplomatic experts for a successful conference. It’s not new, but it’s still informative.
Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and now head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, worries that the Annapolis conference signals a shift away from the new U.S. approach to the region laid out in April, 2004, which included a statement that Israel is not expected to return to its pro-1967 borders. Read it here.
Meretz USA offers a “Guide to the Perplexed” on the conference listing the key players and major issues.
An interesting political item in Monday's Washington Post speculates about President Bush's absence from Israeli-Palestinian mediation efforts and the fact he has never traveled to Israel as president. "For Bush, It's Not About Being There" is the headline.
The Post also has a long excerpt from a new book about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that describes her evolution from "passive participant to activist diplomat" on Israeli-Palestinian talks.
Pundits and analysts seem to be competing over who can be more dismissive of the Annapolis conference. A “charade,” a “mere photo-op,” a “parody” - are some of the kinder expressions used to trivialize the gathering by those who seem happy to bury it before it is born.
These nattering nabobs of negativity – to borrow William Safire’s phrase – are both wrongheaded and wrong.
They are wrong because the Annapolis summit is not intended to result in peace now. It is intended to launch a new Israeli-Palestinian peace process. It is intended to make a statement that bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are resuming and that this time negotiations are based on a sounder, more promising foundation. Annapolis is not intended to be a venue for negotiations. It is rather a beginning of a new, somewhat different Israeli-Palestinian negotiating process.
The Annapolis conference is supposed to generate drama. Call it a photo-op. Call it a media event. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it will mark the beginning of a process and that it does so with some drama.
How is this process different? First - for the firs time - it is sponsored by an American administration that says it views Israeli-Palestinian peace as a vital U.S. national security interest. The administration apparently recognizes now how much Israeli-Palestinian peace could help America achieve its goals in the region, particularly its efforts to curtail the regional influence of Islamist militants led by Iran. Second, for the first time, there is broad Arab support for Israeli-Palestinian peace. Third, there is a Palestinian partner who is regarded as legitimate and credible by Israel, the U.S. and other stakeholders in the peace process. Fourth, there is a mutual commitment by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders to steer the negotiating process toward resolving the “core issues” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while detangling the complex reality on the ground of the West Bank.
For those who support a negotiated Israeli-Palestinian peace – a large majority of Israelis and American Jews do, as do most Palestinians – this new process is an exciting development. But there is little excitement, whether in Israel or on the other side of the Atlantic
Unfortunately, past failures, violence and the lack of any significant positive movement in the seven years that passed since the collapse of the Barak-Arafat negotiations have left almost everyone weary, skeptical and cynical.
That’s why drama is important. An impressive event in Annapolis might could rekindle some hope and trust in the viability of a negotiated peace process. If that happens – and there is good reason to believe it will - the conference will have achieved significant success. That is why eulogizing the conference before it happens is simply wrong.
Obviously, garnering enthusiasm for the relaunched peace process is but a means to an end. For this process to succeed, Israelis and Palestinians must follow through with real negotiations and with on-the-ground implementation of peace-oriented measures. The U.S. government must follow-up with robust leadership and. The Arab world and international community must demonstrate real support. Such follow-up efforts could turn into a credible, ongoing process. We will probably refer to it in the future as the “Annapolis process.”
Focusing on the Annapolis conference rather than on the Annapolis process is not only wrong. It’s wrongheaded. Done right, the process may bring about the peace that Israelis so yearn for, peace not only with the Palestinians but with Syria and Lebanon, as well as normalization with the entire Arab world.
Israelis don’t need American naysayers. They need American friends who can influence America’s government to stay engaged and steer a responsible, credible diplomatic process that will provide peace with security for a democratic Jewish state.
Shades of Shepherdstown/ James Besser in Washington
In Mideast capitals and in American Jewish boardrooms, optimism about Tuesday’s Mideast summit in Annapolis, Md. is hard to come by.
But local leaders in Annapolis – with its trendy waterfront district, old state capitol building and the sprawling U.S. Naval Academy, where the talks will take place – are hoping the city’s name will enter the political lexicon as a positive landmark in the quest for Mideast peace.
This week Mayor Ellen Moyer issued a proclamation welcoming the upcoming talks.
The city is “honored” to be the venue for “these important talks,” she said.
The city, she said, “offers attendees…its best wishes and urges them to find the courage, strength, commitment, determination and humility necessary to achieve success in this important endeavor.” She proclaimed Tuesday “Annapolis Conference Day” in the city.
The statement won praise from Americans for Peace Now (APN).
“This proclamation demonstrates the depth of American support for negotiations to achieve Arab-Israeli peace and the widespread recognition of the importance of this issue to American interests,” said Debra DeLee, the group’s president. “We join Mayor Ellen Moyer and the City of Annapolis in rolling out the red carpet to the delegates.”
The proclamation might also reflect plain old boosterism.
In 2000, the mountain hamlet of Shepherdstown, West Virginia hosted Syrian-Israeli peace talks. Stores along the city’s main street posted signs welcoming delegates; pictures of doves appeared everywhere. Local church ladies set up money-making concession stands for the army of reporters who descended on the small town; entrepreneurs produced T-shirts and other souvenirs.
But ultimately Shepherdstown, like Camp David, Wye River, Taba and Oslo, became just another name associated with missed opportunities.
Groups on both sides of the Mideast debate won’t miss the opportunity afforded by next week’s talks.
APN and other pro-peace process groups are awaiting permits for a Monday afternoon rally supporting the talks. Other participants include Ameinu, Meretz USA, the Union of Progressive Zionists and Brit Tzedek v’Shalom.
Americans for a Safe Israel and other Jewish and Christian Zionist groups that oppose Palestinian statehood and Israeli concessions are planning rallies on Monday and Tuesday at the Naval Academy; some groups also plan a Sunday demonstration at the White House and march to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Golan Negotiations at Annapolis? / James Besser in Washington
With only days left before participants start streaming onto the grounds of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., some elements of the Bush administration’s latest Mideast peace venture are starting to jell while others remain as murky as ever.
The onetime international peace conference, downgraded to a short Israeli-Palestinian meeting with a huge cast of international onlookers, may now also delve into the core issue in long-stalled Israel-Syrian negotiations: the Golan Heights.
That’s what the Syrians are demanding, and there are signs the Bush administration, desperate to get Damascus to attend, is willing to pay that price.
Washington sources say private diplomacy over the weekend will seek a formula that allows some reference to Golan without shifting the focus away from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the reason the meeting was called in the first place.
Is that good or bad? The debate will rage for a long time, but a few things are clear.
The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has been flirting with the idea of negotiations over Golan for a while now, apparently believing there’s a better chance of dealing with strongman Bashar Assad than the weak, vacillating Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.
Washington has opposed talking to Syria because of its sponsorship of terrorism and its lack of cooperation in Iraq, but officials here are under growing international pressure to ease that policy because of the widespread perception it just isn’t working.
For Olmert, selling any new land-for-peace deal to an Israeli public disillusioned by the Gaza and Lebanon pullouts won’t be easy, but a deal with Assad may go down better because at least the dictator looks like someone who can deliver on his promises - assuming, of course, that he wants to.
In contrast, any movement toward a deal with Abbas will be regarded with skepticism by the Israeli public, especially since Hamas tossed him out of Gaza and may soon threaten his control of the West Bank, as well.
But from the perspective of the U.S. State Department, settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the key to dealing with a wide range of regional problems, starting with Iran. A Syrian –Israeli deal may be nice, but there’s concern that wouldn’t boost other U.S. foreign policy priorities.
The administration got one bit of good news over the Thanksgiving holiday: the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia said he would attend. That fulfills a key goal of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who hopes Saudi participation will stiffen Abbas’ backbone.
But according to an Associated Press report, Saud al-Faisal's participation is grudging; he said he isn’t interested in diplomatic niceties like handshakes and photo-ops, at least with Israeli leaders.
Religion in Campaigns, Again / James Besser in Washington
Responding to the rise of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in the Republican presidential sweepstakes, Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen had a provocative column yesterday on the growing focus on religion in American politics in general and the 2008 presidential race in particular.
Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, has talked more openly about the connection between his faith and his politics than any other current candidate. Cohen writes that if he wants to keep doing that, he should “tell us how your religious beliefs, your rejection of accepted scientific knowledge, will not impinge on your presidency.”
Cohen offers a backhanded defense of former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney, whose Mormon faith continues to be a problem in his effort to win over the GOP’s important religious right faction.
Romney’s turnabouts on issues like gay rights and abortion are a kind of virtue in today’s political world, Cohen writes.
“If anything, Romney is the anti-Huckabee. There is not the slightest hint that his religion has constrained his politics in any way. You name the issue and he's been for it and against it -- gun control, abortion, gay rights. Call this what you may, it is proof that Romney is not enslaved by any dogma.”
Romney’s Mormonism is also the subject of alleged “push polls” in Iowa and other early primary and caucus states.
Push polls are bogus public opinion surveys commissioned by one candidate that ask a lot of questions about a particularly controversial aspect of an opposing candidate. The goal isn’t to get statistics but to remind voters of something the sponsoring candidate doesn’t dare to raise publicly.
Push polls have been used against Jewish candidates in the past, including Jill Docking, a Democrat who ran against Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) in 1996. Calls from pollsters in that race reminded voters that Docking was Jewish.
In Romney’s case, pollsters asked voters if they knew he was a Mormon and that he had served as a Mormon missionary.
In the past two presidential elections, the Anti-Defamation League has campaigned against the growing emphasis on personal questions of faith and religious practice in campaigns; looks like the group has its work cut out for it in 2008.
As the U.S. gears up for the Annapolis Middle East conference, an invitation and enticement for the Syrians to join is being carried out. While including the Syrians in a peace conference might be a political consideration, it would constitute a violation of United States Public Law 106-89 (“The Zachary Baumel Law”).
Zachary Baumel is an American-Israeli citizen who was captured by combined Syrian and Palestinian forces during the Lebanon War’s battle of Sultan Yakoub in 1982. He has been held by the Syrians with no reports of his whereabouts since he and his tank crew were beaten and paraded through the streets of Damascus on the day of the battle. His parents, American citizens, live in Jerusalem and along with me have carried out a 25-year campaign to gain information on his status, dead or alive.
To date the Syrians and Palestinians have stonewalled all efforts.
Several years ago, information was gained which indicated that Zack was alive and being held in a Syrian military instillation. Efforts were renewed to pressure the Syrians to cooperate but without results. As Zachary Baumel’s legal guardian in the United States, I have since filed a hallmark lawsuit against the president and government of Syria in Washington, DC district court under the exception of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. The Syrians have never responded to the lawsuit. We will soon be pursuing the State and Justice Department to freeze and liquidate all Unite States based Syrian assets.
In November 1999, “The Zachary Baumel Law” was passed by Congress and signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. The law clearly states that the Secretary of State must continuously raise the issue of Baumel and his crew with all governments and authorities involved, specifically the Palestinian Authority and the Syrians until they cooperate with inquiries. It further details that no assistance can be provided to these entities until they cooperate. I would specify that during the Oslo accords, Yasir Arafat was pressured to hand over half of Baumels’ dog tags to Yitzchak Rabin and promised to tell Rabin what Zack’s status was as soon as he got everything he wanted from the negotiations. He never followed through on the promise.
The United States government has been in frequent violation of this law since providing the Palestinian Authority with material assistance for years. Should they greet the Syrians at Annapolis, this will compound these violations. The catch lies in the subtle “precatory” exception written into the law. This means that if the president of the United States decides that the law should not be enforced, it can be ignored. The question must be raised as to why a law would be written with such an exception other than to satisfy political expedience. The answer lies in the sometimes not fully forthcoming foreign policy of the United States government as it pertains to the Palestinian Authority.
Giving the Syrians a seat at Annapolis would require President Bush to allow Secretary of State Rice to utilize this Presidential precatory exception. His conscience should not allow him or any other president to do so.
My commitment as Zack’s friend is to be the voice of one who cannot speak for himself. In a resounding voice of Zachary Baumel, he and his family say no! The fact that the Palestinian Authority has been given a pass for all these years since Oslo is painful enough for the family of an MIA and a United States citizen. Allowing the Syrian government that is holding Baumel to the Annapolis summit would be an insult that they could not and should not bear.
Lax Reporting in Hate Crimes Report / James Besser in Washington
Once again, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported an increase in hate crimes – those crimes based on the race, ethnicity, religious, sexual orientation or disability of the victims.
And once again, Jewish groups say the numbers may significantly understate the problem, thanks to lax reporting by many states.
According to the latest FBI statistics, collected under the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act, there were 7,722 hate crimes committed last year – an 8 percent increase from 2005.
There were 1462 hate crimes based on the religion of the victims – and 66 percent of those were against Jews and Jewish institutions.
Among hate crime perpetrators, 59 percent were white, 21 percent black. California, New Jersey and Michigan led the nation in hate crimes; Northern states reported significantly more hate crimes than those in the South.
But that, according to hate crime monitoring groups, mostly reflects big differences in reporting.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, only 17 percent of the local law enforcement agencies that contributed data reported even a single hate crime. 5000 police departments didn’t bother to participate at all.
Other groups say reporting has been particularly lax in southern states.
ADL officials say the results show the need for more comprehensive anti-bias education, better cooperation by local enforcement agencies – and passage of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crime Prevention Act, an expanded hate crimes statute now pending in Congress.
Immigration Reform Retreat: Why Jews Should Care / Lisa Shuger Hubliz, Washington director, The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS)
With the collapse of comprehensive immigration reform in Congress in June of this year, not only have the prospects for a reasonable and humane fix any time soon to our broken immigration system decreased considerably, but it appears that an all-out assault on immigrants, reminiscent of backlashes we’ve seen in the past, especially against Jews after the creation of national origin quotas in the 1920s.
As a people historically all too familiar with outsider status, and based on our religious and ethical teachings and values, there is a clear and firm foundation for Jewish involvement in the current immigration debate. Jews have long understood what it means to come to a country in search of freedom, opportunity, and to be with family members. Like our grandparents and great-grandparents who benefited from these opportunities and along the way made this country better – economically, politically, culturally, and in many other ways – today’s immigrants want these same opportunities for themselves and their families. They want to contribute to their new homeland and become full participants in American society and should not be denied that same opportunity.
In spite of its support to get a comprehensive immigration reform bill across the finish line, the Bush Administration recently released a 26-point plan containing enforcement-only measures that unfairly and unreasonably hampers the lives of undocumented immigrants who are only here to work hard and make important and necessary contributions to this country. Shortly after the release of this plan, the draconian enforcement-only Sensenbrenner bill of 2005 was reincarnated by Senators Kyl (R-AZ), Sessions (R-AL), McCain (R-AZ), and Graham (R-SC). Senators Specter (R-PA) and Martinez (R-FL) are also cosponsors of this legislation. This bill would supercharge immigration arrests, raids, and detention, all while rolling back legal protections and due process for immigrants, and include a provision that would make it a criminal offense to be out of immigration status.
While it is not surprising that some in Congress would continue their pursuit of legislation that focuses entirely on enforcement measures, it is extremely curious and downright disturbing that the Administration and Senators McCain, Graham, Kyl, and Specter, who were ardent supporters of the Senate comprehensive immigration reform bill, would turn their backs on immigrants and a comprehensive approach.
It seems they have opted to secure political points rather than to secure our borders, adopting an enforcement-only strategy that ignores an entire population of undocumented immigrants already here in this country. Abandoning efforts that would provide hard-working immigrants the opportunity to get on the right side of the law combined with tough enforcement policy does nothing to bolster our national security and stem the tide of illegal immigration.
For the past several years, HIAS has consistently urged Congress and the Administration to enact legislation that does both by: offering a path to citizenship to the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the shadows; creating wider legal channels for future workers and worker protections; reuniting families; and including enforcement and border security measures that are tough, effective, and humane.
To abandon this effort and move so far in the wrong direction creates more systemic dysfunction and anti-immigrant backlash, neither of which we, as a nation, can afford to do. Only by channeling the current undocumented flow into a legal and orderly system that is secure and protects human and civil rights at the same time will we truly be able to secure our borders and more easily distinguish between those who mean to do us harm and those who only seek to work or reunite with family. Rejecting a compassionate approach in favor of one that is harsh and unrealistic is simply not a solution.
We agree that our borders must be secure. However, the only way to stop illegal immigration is to develop a national policy that is truly comprehensive and will effectively fix our broken immigration system.
Reacting to the Iran Story / James Besser in Washington
Recently the Jewish Week ran a story describing a Zogby International poll showing growing support in America for military action against Iran – and an even sharper increase in the Jewish community.
Now, according to Zogby, more than 60 percent of Jews favor military action to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program, 48 percent “strongly” supporting it. That contrasts with an American Jewish Committee poll a year ago showing 60-plus percent opposed.
Do you believe it? A lot of Jewish leaders around the country don’t, as calls from several suggested after the story ran.
“Attention? Yes, it’s on peoples’ radar screens now,” said a Jewish Federation leader in response to the Jewish Week story. “But I don’t see the support for military action. Zogby didn’t poll my community.”
Overall, the Zogby numbers differ from other key polls, which show smaller and in some cases declining proportions of Americans favoring the military option. If Zogby is wrong about the nation as a whole, couldn’t he be wrong about the Jews, as well?
The Jewish Week story was picked up by numerous blogs as “proof” that Professors Walt and Mearsheimer are right: that the Jewish groups that “caused” the war in Iraq are trying to do the same with Iran.
The fear such notions could get a lot of additional traction if there is a military confrontation with Iran – and if it goes as badly as the war in Iraq – has made many Jewish leaders fearful of talking about trends in the community.
In private, they say that relentless warnings about Iran from groups ranging from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs to AIPAC are having an impact on Jewish public opinion.
But that doesn’t necessarily translate into support for military action, although some concede the focus on Iran by major Jewish groups and the apocalyptic rhetoric of some (which, many observers say, seems to be getting toned down of late) creates that impression.
Increasing awareness of the menace of Iran is coexisting with growing fears that the Bush administration could be following the path it blazed in Iraq right into Iran, many say.
Even for the segment of the Jewish community that puts Israel at the top of its list of political priorities, there is ambivalence – concern that the warnings about Iran’s nuclear effort are more accurate than those about Iraq’s, but also fear Israel could pay the price for any attack and uncertainty over this administration’s ability to conduct yet another war.
Jewish public opinion is in flux on Iran, many say – but for it to jump to support for another military action by this administration would be a political stretch few see happening.
In 2000, then-Gov. George W. Bush went before Jewish groups and promised to start moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as soon as he was elected, and attacked his opponent – former Vice President Al Gore – for the Clinton administration’s position that the issue should be decided only after final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
But once in office, Bush did exactly what his Democratic predecessor did: he used the waiver provisions of the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act to put off the move, and has repeated that waiver every six months since then.
Now, according to a Jewish Week Political Insider item this week, surrogates for three of the top Republican 2008 presidential contenders -- Sen. John McCain, former Gov. Mitt Romney and former mayor Rudy Giuliani - say their champions will move the embassy as soon as they are elected.
Pardon us while we yawn.
Even many vocal supporters of moving the embassy admit the issue is more about politics than policy; the realities of Mideast diplomacy are strangely impervious to casual campaign promises.
The original embassy statute was sponsored by then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kans.), who was planning to run for president in 1996 – and needed a good issue to help him quickly establish pro-Israel credentials. Dole announced the legislation to great fanfare at the 1995 AIPAC policy conference as his campaign was gearing up.
The issue was trotted out again in 2000, when Bush forces lashed out at President Bill Clinton for invoking the law’s waiver provisions. That effort was particularly energetic in Florida, where the Republicans ran ads touting the GOP nominee’s Jerusalem stand.
And what was the reaction of Jewish Republicans when Bush started his own string of waivers? Not a peep, suggesting the issue has utility only in election years, and only when it can be used to bash an opponent.
Now, with Bush getting ready to ride off into the sunset, the issue is back.
The Democrats are taking a faith based approach to the Jerusalem embassy question; mostly they are praying it doesn’t get asked. Politically, they have nothing to gain from wading into the fray, since the Jewish voters most likely to care about forcing the embassy move are those already inclined to vote Republican.
Republicans are assuming Jewish voters have no memory; most Democrats don’t have the nerve to admit they support the Republican president because they’re scared of getting bashed by … the Republicans.
Isn’t politics a hoot?
Mainstream Jewish and pro-Israel groups face a similar problem.
Most believe either that forcing the embassy move now would complicate U.S. peace efforts, or that fighting the waivers is a losing proposition, so why squander resources?
But no Jewish leader wants to get on the wrong side of the Jerusalem-as-eternal-and-undivided-capital-of-Israel doctrine. So they equivocate, saying the embassy should be moved, but getting all vague when asked about when.
That curious dance is likely to continue after next year’s election no matter who is elected.
A front page story in this week’s Jewish Week looks at the upcoming Annapolis summit, the Bush administration’s downsized expectations for the meeting and the general murkiness surrounding who will be there and what will be discussed.
In numerous interviews, several things stood out that reinforce the conclusion that in the Jewish world, skepticism and doubt are the order of the day
Mainstream Jewish leaders, almost to a person, say they don’t expect much from the conference. Some are publicly praising Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for her determination to make Annapolis work but privately scratching their heads over the whole idea of holding a high-profile, high-risk conference at this juncture.
And there is a palpable fear that the conference will fail – and Israel will be blamed, or new Palestinian violence will break out, or both.
Maybe Bush administration strategists know something they they’re not telling that might point to a better likelihood of success, some Jewish leaders say – but they doubt it.
The Jewish right may be the only segment of the Jewish community truly galvanized by Annapolis. Groups like the Orthodox Union (see their special Jerusalem Web site here ) and the National Council of Young Israel have been sounding the alarms about a possible compromise on Jerusalem, but talking to some of the leaders of the new “Our Jerusalem” coalition, it’s hard to believe they really think the talks will advance enough to get negotiators anywhere near critical final status issues such as Jerusalem.
So why the intense focus on Annapolis by the right? Is it because they think the conference will succeed – or because they want to lay down markers for future peace efforts, and especially to establish the precedent that American Jews should have a say in what Israel does with Jerusalem?
And is it just about Jerusalem, or about generating opposition to any new territorial concessions?
The left is harder to read as the conference approaches.
Few believe President Bush is really interested in committing the kind of resources it will take to make Annapolis a turning point in Israel-Palestinian relations, or that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas are ready to take the huge political risks any real progress will require.
At the same time, the doves can’t afford to be seen as cool to the only peace game in town. And they fear the consequences of a failed conference – which could include renewed violence and even deeper divisions over negotiating with the Palestinians.
There are whiffs of hope that the administration might have some tricks up its sleeve – and deep unease that maybe it doesn’t, and that a failed Annapolis summit may just make matters worse.
Promises, Promises At RJC Debate / Adam Dickter in New York
Three of the Republican contenders for president would immediately move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, their representatives said at a debate Tuesday night.
Surrogates for Sen. John McCain, Gov. Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani told members of the Republican Jewish Coalition their candidate would not seek a waiver of the 1995 embassy relocation act, as Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have done.
“Sen. McCain was a cosponsor of the relocation act and would implement it rather than waive it,” said Randy Scheunemann, director of foreign policy for McCain, in response to a Jewish Week question. “The idea that we don’t want to move an embassy to the capital because someone in the State Department thinks it will predetermine the peace process is, frankly, ridiculous.”
Ken Kurson, chief operating officer of Giulani’s campaign said: “I believe he will do it. This is a guy who has a proven record of doing things people said were impossible.”
The surrogates were in agreement on most other issues, including the state of the Mideast peace process and the upcoming Annapolis summit.
“We are falling into the trap of believing that all problems are somehow stemming from the Israel-Palestinian issue,” said Scheunemann . “We need to have long-lasting resolution of the process but we must never pressure Israel into making a deal. It’s fine to reinforce Abbas, but the real question is whether he can deliver anything.”
Steven Schrage, representing Romney, said the former Massachusetts governor had “raised very serious concerns [that the conference must] address issues of security and not looking toward some kind of legacy-type program [for President Bush].”
Kurson said the State Department was perpetually looking at the Mideast “through rose-colored glasses. Anyone who has seen Rudy Giuliani in action understands that he is a realist when it comes to dealing with real life threats and issues.
“Pressure on Israel is wrong and we should never do it again.”
All three campaigns favored cracking down on illegal immigrants, rejecting proposed measures to incorporate them into society. In a jab at Giuliani, Schrage noted that “the most famous city in the world,” New York, had become a so-called sanctuary city, passing legislation barring officials from inquiring about anyone’s immigration status. Kurson retorted that Romney’s state had four sanctuary cities.
The surrogates also agreed on strong action against Iran, including military options, if necessary.
“As senator [McCain] has been very clear about the nature of the threat,” said Scheunemann. “He said the only thing worse than military force is the danger of a nuclear Iran.” He said McCain had raised the possibility that Iran’s dependence on imported refined gasoline could be a weakness, and suggested that the United States, Britain and other allies use it as leverage against its nuclear program.
Asked about the three Israeli soldiers held by Hamas and Hezbollah, Scheunemann said McCain, a former POW during the Vietnam war, had met with the soldiers’ families and believes their release must be tied to pressure on Syria. “We have to make clear to Syria that as long as they support Hezbollah they will have to pay a price.
“His own experience as a POW is that can’t easily negotiate with a totalitarian regime. You have to address the underlying conflict.”
Kurson said Giuliani understands that “Hamas is actively involved in some of those kidnappings and they are not a negotiating partner. Rudy understands that you don’t negotiate with people from a position of weakness.”
None of the campaigns directly opposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia, but each said such deals must come with restrictions.
“The privilege of buying arms should come with responsibility,” said Kurson. “We have to ensure that they stay where they are intended and in stable hands.”
Schrage said Romney has raised “some serious questions [about the arms sales] but has also talked about building security guarantees and making sure, instead of writing blank checks.”
All the surrogates expressed their candidates support for the Bush administration’s embattled faith-based initiatives program , addressing the larger issue of religion and government.
“Gov. Romney believes in complete equality of opportunity,” said Schrage. “He believes very strongly in the power of faith and doesn’t believe there should be any indication that one religion [is favored] over the other.”
Kurson said “there is a rush to condemn any involvement in religion. It is a force for good in our society and in our country. The few voucher programs Rudy Giuliani was able to get through in New York City showed that when you give people more choices … they will choose the right thing for themselves.”
Scheunemann said McCain “doesn’t believe you can artificially keep faith out of public life.”
On the issue of appealing to Jewish voters, the majority of whom are not Republican, Kurson predicted Giuliani would break Ronald Reagan’s record of Jewish votes.
“There is a real opportunity for the Republican party this year,” he said. “Jews aren’t having that FDR reaction. They get that we face enormous danger from [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and other extremists who blame Israel for just about everything wrong with the world.”
Scheunemann said “you don’t have to be from New York to win a lot of Jewish votes,” while Schrage said Romney has “a huge history of involvement in the Jewish community and as people get to know him he will do very well.”
The crowd at the event showed a decidedly conservative streak. When Scheunemann said McCain believed “you can’t take 12 to 15 million illegal immigrants and put them on cattle cars,” several in the crowd shouted“ why not?”
Also in the crowd were people who hissed at the mention of Democrat Nancy Pelosi and at least one defender of Ann Coulter.
Kurson demonstrated that Giuliani’s penchant for putting 9-11 at the center of his campaign also extends to his aides by mentioning it in the first sentence of the answer to the first question. Asked about his candidate’s domestic priorities, Kurson said it was “securing the homeland and protecting the American people” from terrorism, noting that he “understands it, I believe, in a unique way, having experienced it personally and witnessed it personally.”
In recent weeks, former President Jimmy Carter has held several private meetings with Jewish leaders, and sought to meet with others, only to be rebuffed.
What’s up?
Why is Carter, whose book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid" blames Israel for the lack of peace progress in the Mideast, suddenly trying to cozy up to the likes of Abe Foxman, Malcolm Hoenlein and Elie Wiesel?
Sources close to Carter say he is bent on getting a prime time speaking slot at next summer’s Democratic National Convention and feels that “he has to kosherize himself” with the American Jewish community in order to do so. To date, he has made no apologies for his book, filled with errors of omission
and commission.
We’ll know if he was successful when we tune in to the convention in Denver next August.
Is There A Rabbi in the House? / James Besser in Washington
Is Congress ready for its first blind rabbi? Dennis Shulman, a rabbi and clinical psychologist hopes New Jersey voters will give him a chance to find out after next November's congressional election.
Shulman, who has been a pulpit rabbi, practicing psychologist and author, is hoping to unseat Rep. Scott Garrett, a three-term Republican, in a GOP-leaning district that the Democrats hope will turn blue next year.
The Fifth District includes parts of Bergen, Passaic, Sussex and Warren Counties. Shulman campaign officials say the district is about 10 percent Jewish.
Shulman hopes his personal story – he grew up poor in Massachusetts, lost his sight as a child and earned degrees from Brandeis and Harvard, where he received his PhD j-- will get the attention of voters. He currently serves as rabbinical associate at Chavurah Beth Shalom, which describes itself as a “progressive reform congregation.”
He is also the author of several books, including “The Genius of Genesis: A Psychoanalyst and Rabbi Examines the First Book of the Bible.”
“The trajectory of my life compels this decision,” he said before announcing his candidacy on Wednesday. “Now it is time to apply my experiences serving individuals and my congregants to serving my district and my country.”
He promised to stay in touch with the folks at home.
“Too often, the relationship between Congressmen and lobbyists is closer than the relationship between Congressmen and constituents,” he said.
And he said he would “apply common sense solutions to issues like Iraq, energy independence, and the incompetence and corruption of our government .”
Political observers say he has his work cut out for him.
“He’s an interesting personality, but the seat is an extraordinarily difficult one for a Democratic,” said Gilbert Kahn, a Kean University political scientist who closely follows New Jersey politics.
But if the national Democratic avalanche is as big as some polls suggest, Shulman might have a chance, Kahn said. “A good campaign and a Democratic landslide could change things dramatically."
Picture Imperfect in Indiana / James Besser in Washington
Some political issues are like heartburn; they just keep coming back.
This week the American Jewish Committee filed a Supreme Court brief dealing with one of them: a law requiring photo IDs in order to vote.
In this case, the controversy involves an Indiana law, but the AJC and other Jewish “defense agencies” have long opposed any photo ID requirement because of the potential impact on certain populations of voters.
“The Indiana law places an unconstitutional burden on the right to vote by unfairly discriminating against particular groups such as the elderly, the poor, the handicapped, students and minorities, who are less likely to possess government issued photo ID,” said Jeff Sinensky, the group’s general counsel.
The Indiana statute, according to the brief, imposes “the most restrictive voter ID provisions in the nation. Millions of otherwise eligible voters, particularly in certain segments of the electorate, fail to possess a government-issued photo ID.
Twenty four states now require some form of identification to vote. The Supreme Court will take up the issue in the current term; a decision could affect numerous other state statutes.
My Most Memorable GA /Gary Rosenblatt in Nashville
This my 25th GA (General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities), and I find myself thinking back on some of the highlights of this annual event, the most influential in the organized Jewish community.
I remember a thrilling encounter between Rabbi Yitz Greenberg and then-Brandeis University professor Leonard Fein that touched on religious and secular influences, at my first GA, in Chicago in 1974; the "off the record" pronouncement made by Arye Dulzin of the Jewish Agency to thousands of delegates in Montreal in 1979 that Ethiopian Jews were about to be rescued; and marching in solidarity with thousands of delegates through the streets of Jerusalem in 2003.
But the most dramatic GA scene I've witnessed took place in Dallas in 1977, late on Shabbat afternoon, when a frail Golda Meir entered a room full of several thousand delegates and was greeted by a spontaneous and spirited singing of "Am Yisrael Chai."
In contrast to the carefully staged and planned presentations of the GA now, when plenaries are scripted to the minute, the beloved former Israeli prime minister delivered an impromptu speech, recalling her career in the service of the Jewish people and, particularly, her connections to the American Jewish community.
We knew she was ill and many in the crowd sensed that she was delivering her farewell address to Diaspora Jewry.
Golda spoke in her raspy voice, a little softer than usual, about how David Ben-Gurion chose her to come to America to raise desperately needed funds for the war effort in 1948, in large part because, having been born in Milwaukee, she spoke English better than other leading members of the new government. Her effort was a huge success, catapulting her career that took her to Israel's highest political office.
Only three years before the GA, Golda had resigned in the wake of a commission report faulting her government for the thousands of Israeli casualties suffered in the Yom Kippur War. Today she is reviled by many in Israel for her role leading up to the war, but for those few moments, the bond between several thousand American Jews and this small elderly woman reminiscing about her career was powerful and palpable, and there was real love in the room.
Then she thanked us for our support, waved good-bye to thunderous applause, and was soon back in Israel, where she died two months later of cancer.
Jewish Right Losing Key Congressional Advocate / James Besser in Washington
Opponents of land-for-peace agreements between Israel and the Palestinians are losing one of their best friends in Congress.
But in fact, Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ), a 24-year House who announced last week that he will retire at the end of his current term for health reasons, had already pulled back as the most visible congressional supporters of groups like the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA).
The reason, according to several pro-Israel activists: a reluctance to criticize the policies of the current Republican administration.
Still, Morton Klein, the ZOA president, lamented Saxton’s impending departure.
“He understood that the Palestinians weren’t serious about peace, and said so with conviction and aplomb,” Klein said. “His presence will be sorely missed.”
But not to worry; ZOA has found another strong advocate in Rep. Shelley Berkley (D-NV.) a former AIPAC activist who has of late taken a much harder line on Mideast negotiations.
Former AIPAC Leader Goes to Pro-Peace Process Group / James Besser in Washington
Tom Dine, who helped turn the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) into a lobbying powerhouse, may be set to try the same thing with a pro-peace process group that wants to expand its Capitol Hill presence.
Dine has signed on as a consultant with the Israel Policy Forum (IPF), a group that promotes a more robust, U.S.-led peace process.
Beginning in 1980, Dine played a major role in creating AIPAC’s sprawling regional network that includes “key contacts” in every congressional district, a major factor in its legendary Capitol Hill clout.
“He went deeper into the grass roots than anybody else had gone before,” said Douglas Bloomfield, the former legislative director of the lobby group.
But it’s Washington that will be Dine’s primary responsibility with IPF, said the group’s president, Seymour Reich.
“Tom has a great deal of talent; he’s a dynamo,” Reich said. “Washington will be a big part of his focus, as well as strategic planning, management, and political action issues.”
Dine was the loser in a 1993 power struggle with AIPAC’s lay leadership; the conflict centered on the lay board’s day-to-day involvement in AIPAC management and Dine’s support for nascent Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts.
(Editors note: Christian Zionists such as Pastor John Hagee, president of Christians United for Israel, have become an increasingly vocal pro-Israel force. Here a leading advocate of close cooperation between Jewish and Christian pro-Israel groups – and leading critics of the Christian Zionists – make their cases.)
For the long and lonely centuries of our Diaspora in Christian lands, we Jews prayed to be left alone. For almost two millennia, all we wanted was for the Christians in whose midst we lived to agree to disagree with us on theology and to let us practice our faith without persecution or coercion.
In America, we have found such an existence alongside our gentile friends and neighbors. And, in recent years, we have found even more than cold neutrality. We are now seeing a growing movement of evangelical Christian Zionists who see past our theological differences and passionately want to focus on what we share as Jews and Christians. These Christian friends have a 3-point agenda:
- To thank us for giving them the fundamentals of their faith, from the Bible to that Jewish Rabbi named Jesus;
- To ask forgiveness for the atrocities committed against us by prior generations of Christians; and
- To stand with us in support of Israel so that future atrocities can be avoided.
But instead of thanking God for answering our prayers, we have found reasons to complain. We are, after all, still Jews. Now we are the ones who are often unwilling to agree to disagree on theology. Representatives of our community now point to various tenets of Christian theology as a basis for rejecting so many hands extended in friendship.
What is even more troubling is the fact that so many of the complaints about Christian Zionists are based on myths about Christian beliefs with no basis in reality.
Many critics repeat the urban myth that Christians support Israel merely to speed the Second Coming of Jesus, at which point the Jews get killed or converted. Others ignore a clear record to the contrary to insist that Christians support Israel merely to convert us in the here or now. Still others look down their noses at Christian positions on social issues and declare that they – open minded people that they are – cannot partner with those who dare to disagree with us on abortion or gay marriage.
This nonsense about Armageddon is particularly offensive. As a people who have suffered persecution flowing from lies about our beliefs, we should be the last to embrace and repeat lies about other faiths. We all know how much Jewish blood was spilled over the libel that Jews need the blood of a gentile to make their matzah. Shame on us if we participate in repeating a new blood libel which claims that Christians support Israel merely to speed the widespread bloodshed that will accompany Armageddon. This claim demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of Christian theology. And it reveals an unseemly prejudice against the religious “other.”
It is odd that we Jews would seek to invent enemies when reality already supplies us with such an abundance of them. Even here in America, the threats are growing. The likes of Jimmy Carter , Walt and Mearsheimer are spreading a very big lie – that if America only abandoned Israel, the terrorists would leave us alone. In the face of this distortion, we find so many fair-weather friends running for the exits. The Christian Zionists, by contrast, want to stand with us and work with us to maintain American support for Israel.
As a people who have had such a solitary walk through history, we are blessed to find ourselves with so many new and enthusiastic allies. If those who don't like our Christian friends wish to remove themselves from the scene and lick their imaginary wounds, this is their right. But they mustn't be permitted to spread lies or misinformation which will poison a very important and beautiful new friendship. Sometimes, even a club that would have us as members is still a club very much worth joining.
“Apocalyptic Fixation” / Rabbi Haim Dov Beliak and Jane Hunter, editors of JewsOnFirst.org .
Christian Zionism is an extreme modern apocalyptic movement that shares with Nazi philosophy the paranoid idea that Jews and Judaism are the central actors in the world. Both movements seek the eventual dismantling of the Jewish people and Jewish faith - Nazism by death and Christian Zionism by conversion to Christianity of a remnant of Jews, who will finally learn their "lesson" from the death of most of the Jewish people at Armageddon (Ir Megiddo); then the "left-behind" remnant is expected to commit apostasy by converting to Jesus worship.
All the Christian Zionists' expressions of love and friendship-- all their farm aid (including red heifers to use in revived temple sacrifices) and help for Russian Jews to immigrate to Israel -- are preparations for genocide by remote control.
Christian Zionism entirely ignores Jewish/Zionist aspirations for normalcy. Zionism was to be a new start for Judaism and the Jewish people living enlightened lives in peace. Instead Christian Zionism encourages the Israeli government and the US Jewish organizational leadership on a path toward enmity with the Palestinians and disrespect for Islam.
Most of what has been written about Christian Zionism by Jews (for example, Yechiel Eckstein's The Journey Home, and CUFI Executive Director David Brog's Standing with Israel: Why Christians support the Jewish state, and Zev Chafets' A Match Made in Heaven) projects a romantic version of Zionism that assumes maximum claims for land and barely nods to pragmatic political considerations. Virtually the entire pantheon of Zionist thinkers from Theodore Herzl to David Grossman and Amos Elon saw peace with Arab neighbors as the culmination of the Zionist dream, not as an impossibility.
Jewish organization leaders may laugh off their Christian Zionist friends' apocalyptic fixation. These leaders are less convincing when they pass on guarantees from Hagee and his ilk that they will not evangelize the Jews with whom they work. Max Blumenthal's recent video showed the emphasis Hagee followers place on converting Jews to Christianity.
And beyond evangelizing, there is disparagement of Judaism -- notably Hagee's statement last year on Fresh Air casting Jews as Christ killers when he "clinched" a volley with host Terry Gross about the necessity of professing belief in Jesus: He said "Now, when it comes to the Jewish people, Zechariah very clearly says that they are not going to believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah until they see him. Zechariah says in the 14th chapter `and when they, the Jewish people, see him whom they have pierced'--and the word pierced there actually refers to his rib and side--`when they see him whom they have pierced, they will weep as one weeps for his only son for a period of one week. They're simply not going to believe he is the Messiah until they actually see him, and that's at the Second Coming."
Robertson Picks Rudy, Jewish Dems Thrilled / James Besser in Washington
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, the surprise frontrunner in the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, may have improved his chances with the conservative Christian wing of the party when he scored an endorsement from TV evangelist and Christian media magnate Pat Robertson this week.
Robertson cited Giuliani’s promise to promote “a conservative judiciary” and his ability to protect the nation “from the bloodlust of Islamic terrorists.” (See Robertson’s announcement here)
But while Robertson’s blessing may smooth relations with one important GOP constituency, it could prove a big liability in the general election with other voter groups --starting with the Jews.
“Rudy’s first, looming task is to win the nomination, and this endorsement helps,” said University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato. “Rudy will never get a majority of the evangelicals but he has to get a decent slice to win the party nod, and he has to be acceptable enough to them so that they don't defect to a third party in November.”
Robertson’s endorsement, he said, “helps with both goals.”
But the TV preacher’s anti-gay rights, anti-feminist and apocalyptic views and controversial pronouncements like his 2006 claim that Ariel Sharon may have been felled by a stroke as divine retribution for ceding land to the Palestinians could prove toxic with many swing voters who might otherwise be attracted to the former mayor.
“Rudy’s challenge is to cut down on the cross-currents – the potential cost of Robertson’s blessing with moderates, Jewish voters and other groups not attuned to the evangelicals,” Sabato said. “He’ll worry about that later.”
He added that the potential long-term costs of the endorsement may be outweighed by the short-term political benefits for Giuliani, whose personal history and past support for gay and abortion rights continues to be a problem for many evangelical Republicans.
Meanwhile, Jewish Democrats were trying hard to contain their glee.
“This proves once and for all that Giuliani is selling out to the party’s right wing,” said Steve Rabin, assistant director of the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC). “It’s been disappointing to see the Republican candidates catering to the far right, whether it be Romney flip-flopping on every position he’s held, McCain claiming this is a Christian nation – or Giuliani gleefully accepting Robertson’s endorsement.”
Making Nice on Jerusalem/James Besser in Washington
While Orthodox and right-of-center Jewish groups expand their efforts to block new territorial compromises at this month’s Annapolis peace talks, a prominent group of Jerusalem clerics was in Washington on Tuesday with a different message.
The Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, which includes leading Christian, Moslem and Jewish clergy, met under the auspices of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA).
Attending were representatives of a number of Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, B’nai B’rith, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, Hadassah and the Orthodox Union – which has been leading efforts to block any compromise involving Jerusalem.
One of the hosts said there were two major themes at the meeting.
“The first was the question of creating greater sensitivity to each others’ holy places,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, the JCPA executive director. “A second goal was to try to have an impact on Annapolis and the pursuit of peace.”
At first, “it was somewhat stilted, but it turned into a very open conversation,” Gutow said.
Was the Washington meeting about “dialog?”
Gutow scoffed. “It wasn’t just dialog; it was about doing things.”
Among those things: marshalling broad religious support in this country for the upcoming peace talks, creating a phone hotline so the religious leaders can keep in touch with other during crisis situations in Jerusalem and getting Israel to ease restrictions that bar some members from attending meetings in the city.
The group is also proposing mechanisms to monitor the media for “derogatory representations” of any religion.
One of the Palestinian religious leader at the session told the group that Palestinian leader Abu Mazen ordered him to participate.
The coalition, created in 2002, includes the Chief Rabbinate of Israel, the Supreme Judge of the Sharia Courts in the Palestine Department and the Meeting of Heads of Local Churches in Jerusalem.
The Washington visit was facilitated by Theodore Cardinal McCarrick, the former archbishop of Washington, and Ambassador Tony Hall, a former congressman now working on Middle East peace issues.
AIPAC Case: Stranger and Stranger / James Besser in Washington
Is there anybody in Washington who still believes the bizarre case of former AIPAC officials Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman will actually go to trial in January?
Last week’s ruling by Judge T.S. Ellis that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other top administration foreign officials must testify was another setback to a government case that looked like a stretch at the outset and now seems ready to snap.
That may be the reason many Jewish leaders who once saw the case as a dangerous effort to cut the pro-Israel lobby down to size now seem mostly indifferent.
The prosecution, many now believe, has less to do with official antipathy to groups like AIPAC than with this administration’s overarching focus on stopping leaks about how it conducts its foreign policy – not exactly a surprising goal, given the controversy raging around issues such as how we got into the Iraq war.
And a prosecution that once seemed threatening to many Jewish leaders now sees more bumbling than malevolent.
Want to worry about attacks on the pro-Israel lobby? In recent interviews, several top Jewish leaders said they now see Walt, Mearsheimer and Carter as much bigger problems than a Justice Department that seems intent on putting Weissman and Rosen in jail for just hearing secret information and talking about it, but can’t seem to get its act together in court.
Once, Jewish leaders worried that a trial could reveal AIPAC secrets – something no lobby group relishes. Now, it’s the Bush administration that worries a trial could open up its inner workings to outside scrutiny.
“It’s an embarrassment to the Justice Department,” one longtime pro-Israel lobbyist said this week.
All of this, of course, doesn’t make things easier for the defendants, whose lives have been on hold for more than two years and whose futures are clouded no matter what the legal outcome.
Weissman, an Iran expert who was not part of the rough-and-tumble of AIPAC lobbying, has become a sympathetic figure as the legal wrangling drags on.
Rosen, a mercurial personality known for both his brilliance and the enemies he has made over the years, is seen as a tough-hided survivor, but even some longtime adversaries say it can’t be easy for him, either.
The other interesting aspect of the case is how it has affected AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby giant. Detractors – including some in the Jewish world – predicted the repeated headlines about the “AIPAC spy case” would cut into its influence on Capitol Hill.
Not so; two years into a “spy” case that doesn’t really involve spying, AIPAC’s Capitol clout seems undiminished. Indeed, the controversy has been a fundraising boon for the group.
Not One Inch on Jerusalem / James Besser in Washington
With reports in today’s newspapers suggesting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is ready to discuss all key Israeli-Palestinian issues at this month’s Annapolis peace conference, the coalition of mostly Orthodox groups that wants to thwart any negotiations about Jerusalem is taking to the Web.
This week the Orthodox Union posted a special page on its Web site devoted to the issue. The goal: to provide information about Jerusalem and encourage activism to block any compromise on the city.
“The Orthodox Union has long supported the Israeli government's position,” the group writes on the site. “Yet recently, some inside both the U.S. and Israeli governments have suggested that ‘some’ of Jerusalem could be split off from the rest of the city. We oppose any such redivision of Jerusalem, our holy and eternal capital. It's time to take action, and here's how.”
Groups that are hoping for significant progress at Annapolis are getting more active on the Web, as well. Americans for Peace Now (APN) has a page on its Web site highlighting its “Push for Peace Now” campaign.
But groups on the left are generally steering clear of the emotional Jerusalem issue, even though some pro-peace process leaders argue that it is being raised as a “wedge” to make it harder for Israel to make any territorial concessions.
Update: Schumer, Feinstein Supporting Mukasey / James Besser in Washington
On Friday, we reported that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was expected to be the key when the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General.
All that suspense didn’t last very long; on Friday Schumer announced he will vote for Mukasey, despite growing Democratic opposition because of the nominee’s refusal to talk about his position on waterboarding and other forms of interrogation critics say amount to torture.
In a statement, Schumer said “This is an extremely difficult decision. When an administration, so political, so out of touch with the realities of governing and so contemptuous of the rule of law, is in charge, we are never left with an ideal choice. Judge Mukasey is not my ideal choice.”
But the former judge, Schumer said, “is far better than anyone could expect from this administration.”
Also promising a “yes” vote: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), another Judiciary Committee member.
The decision by Schumer and Feinstein helps offset Friday’s announcement by Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-vt.) that he will vote “no” on Tuesday.
Most Jewish senators remain undecided; only Vermont independent Bernie Sanders has announced opposition.
Meanwhile, Washington Post writer Paul Kane speculates in his Capitol Briefing blog that Feinstein could become the "next Joe Lieberman" -- a onetime Democrat reviled by the progressive wing of the Party for siding with the Republicans on key issues.
In a debate at the Manhattan campus, NJDC’s national director, Ira Forman, faced off in a debate against RJC’s Greg Menken, director of the group’s New York chapter.
Fully aware that GOP president George W. Bush is widely perceived to be the most pro-Israel president ever, Forman didn’t try to weaken the Republicans’ bona fides. In fact, as he did in the 2004 election, Forman argued that both Republicans and Democrats are pro-Israel, and therefore Israel shouldn’t be an issue in the national debates. “We should be proud of bipartisan support for Israel,” he said.
There was no such magnanimity in Menken’s comments as he assailed House Democrats for voting against Israel’s security barrier and blasted presidential contender Barack Obama for saying the barrier “divided two nations” when Palestine is not yet a nation. And then there was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “shocking trip to Syria” and the Democrats’ scuttling of pro-Israel John Bolten’s nomination as UN envoy. For good measure, Menken also reached back to 2000 and then-Senate candidate Hillary Clinton’s infamous Suha Arafat kiss.
“There are real differences between the two parties” on Israel, Menken insisted.
With the gloves now off, Forman retaliated that ten Republican senators had voted against a measure condemning Hezbollah, that California Republican Rep. Darrel Isa had called Israel an “apartheid state,” that Bush Middle East envoy Karen Hughes had compared Israel to Arab governments, and that GOP White House hopeful Ron Paul once said “the goal of Zionism is to intimidate us on Capitol Hill.”
But Forman then added, “this does not prove the Republicans are anti-Israel. It only proves they make mistakes, just like the Democrats do. The difference s that Jewish Democrats criticize their own. Jewish Republicans almost never criticizetheir own.”
Menken repeatedly referred to “Islamofascists” who want to overrun Iraq, “set up a Muslim caliphate and use it to influence the rest of the world” in justifying the war on Iraq.
Forman said he credited Bush with good intentions, but asked “is Israel’s security better? Is Iran weaker? What has come about has been drastically bad for Israel and drastically bad for the United States of America.”
And so it went, with Menken and Forman trading barbs over everything from senators’ voting records to the growth of Orthodox Jews in America. As the exchange became more heated, many of the students laughed as if watching a traveling comedy team.
“I didn’t hear anything new,” said Debra Birnbaum, a second-year law student from Long Island. “They chose to speak about the strengths of the parties, but they didn’t speak about the weaknesses adequately.”
Birnbaum said she is “definitely voting Democrat” in next year’s election.
Jewish Senators Key to Mukasey Confirmation?/James Besser in Washington
It’s a minor irony; as Jewish groups stay well clear of the intensifying Senate battle over the nomination of Judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, a handful of Jewish senators may hold the key to Justice Department headquarters for the Jewish jurist.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who initially welcomed President Bush’s nomination of Mukasey, is widely seen as the pivotal vote. Schumer now says he is “wrestling” with the nomination, according to a story in Friday’s Washington Post .
Schumer’s dilemma: he believes Mukasey is the “best we can get” from the Bush administration, according to the Post. But a growing number of Democrats have signaled opposition to Mukasey based on his refusal to say the interrogation technique of “waterboarding” is tantamount to torture.
In the full Senate, most Jewish members say they’re still undecided; only Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) has formally announced opposition, while Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) say they’ll vote for the embattled Mukasey.
And six Jewish members of the critical Judiciary Committee remain undecided, according to a tabulation by Talking Points Memo. That includes five Democrats and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.).
The Committee will vote on Mukasey on Tuesday; if Mukasey loses, the nomination could die there.
On Thursday President Bush warned that if that happens, the top Justice Department slot could stay vacant for the rest of his administration.
Foxman Breaks Anti-Sharpton Taboo / Adam Dickter in New York
For the first time, a mainstream Jewish leader has issued a joint statement with the Rev. Al Sharpton, breaking an unwritten taboo among Jewish organizations.
Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League and Sharpton on Thursday called for tougher penalties against anyone who displays a noose with the intent to threaten or harass.
Many Jewish leaders feel Sharpton played a divisive role during the 1991 Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn and later during protests against a Jewish merchant in Harlem in 1995 that turned deadly, and have demanded that he apologize.
Leaders of major Jewish organizations have refused to deal with Sharpton until he does so, despite the fact that Sharpton has taken a much softer tone toward Jews in recent years and has sought to cooperate on such issues as fighting slavery in Sudan.
On Thursday, in response to a rash of incidents involving nooses and swastikas directed against Jews and blacks, Sharpton and Foxman called on “all people of good will of all races, religions and ethnicities to stand up and say such acts will not be tolerated.”
The statement further called on New York legislators to amend existing laws making the painting of a swastika on another person’s property a felony to include nooses.
In an interview, Foxman said “if we can find opportunities for our communities to stand together against hatred and bigotry we should, without preconditions, and urge others to do likewise.”
Foxman said Sharpton, who ran for president in 2004, is “a savvy activist and he’s toned down some of his rhetoric. I think he’s trying to be more acceptable to the mainstream.”
What Communal Crisis Over Jerusalem? / James Besser in Washington
So what do we know?
Several weeks ago, the Jewish Week published a story about the looming confrontation over Jerusalem as Orthodox groups rally to oppose any Israeli concessions on the city at the upcoming Annapolis peace summit.
With polls showing that a strong majority of American Jews favoring compromise on Jerusalem, that seemed to point to a looming communal crisis.
But not so fast; in a serious of subsequent interviews, few observers now see a coming crunch.
The reason: surging doubts that the upcoming talks – if they are, in fact, held at the end of November, which nobody is betting on – will produce enough progress to get Israel and the Palestinians anywhere near sensitive final status issues such as Jerusalem.
“To even start talking about Jerusalem, they have to go through a lot of steps, and it’s hard to see how they’re going to get past even the easy ones,” said an official with a Jewish group that supports new land-for-peace negotiations. “The gap is huge, and nobody expects Annapolis is going to produce a miraculous way of bridging it.”
“I talked to a lot of Israelis this week, and almost nobody believes (serious talks about Jerusalem) are going to come to fruition,” said Dr. Mendy Ganchrow, a former Orthodox Union president and pro-Israel blogger. “I don’t see the sense of going to war with the government of Israel over something that isn’t likely to occur.”
If the Annapolis talks do produce progress and Jerusalem neighborhoods are put on the table at some future negotiating sessions, Orthodox opposition will be widespread, Ganchrow said.
But others say even if that happens, in the end most American Jews will go along with the Israeli government’s wishes.
“Since the Gaza disengagement, more Orthodox voices have been more openly critical of Israeli policy,” said Dr. Steven Bayme, Director of the Contemporary Jewish Life Department of the American Jewish Committee. “You’ll probably see more of that. But the overall principle that the American Jewish community stands with the government of Israel will hold.”
And that will hold in the Orthodox, as well as non-Orthodox communities, he said.
More on Sudan: Be Wary of War Option / Rabbi Steve Gutow
(Editors Note: recently Shoshana Bryen, special projects director for the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, wrote a Machers Blog item chastising Jewish groups involved in the fight to end the genocide in Darfur for their unwillingness to consider military solutions to the problem.
Goodness, Shoshana's simple answer seems so easy. Why not walk in with troops and teach those animals in Khartoum once and for all that we mean business and that their genocide must stop? The United States could do that. Our power is great. Thursday, I took a taxi to Reagan in DC and listened to a cab driver from Sierra Leone attack a "bullying" United States in a way so venomous that I had to shout back just to maintain my conscience.
I hate the policies of the Khartoum regime, hate them enough to fill up my days as co-chair of the interfaith, intergroup Save Darfur Coalition---no rest for the weary, particularly when Sudan’s devastation of Darfur is the main genocide in town. I have toyed with, challenged the State Department with, and tried to ingest the idea of unilateral war as the answer. It is not.
There is a world of worries and they are not minor ones. At the outset, I enter this debate as one who believes that 'war is hell' not to be entered into lightly without a moral and just reason, without a winning plan, and without an easy to understand and embrace endgame.
Sudan-- even though it would be difficult to deny that the main perpetrator is al-Bashir, there are many unclean hands among the tribes of Darfur. That does not obviate the idea of military action but it makes it less simple. We are doing this to take power from one tyrant and give it to_____? Or are we assuming that we will just maintain the place ourselves? Not often a good plan!
Add the DC taxi-driver factor into the mix--much of the world sees us as bullies who cannot keep our greedy hands to ourselves. Iraq is not seen by third worlders, second worlders, or allied first worlders as a moment of American idealism. Our standing, our ability to lead is at a nadir and we have some major challenges ahead.
If we walk in to Sudan as bulls in china shops, will we merely infuse the Arab and Moslem world with a sense of deja-vu; of we need to stop the 'great Satan'; of let's rally around he flag of Allah and stop these evil monsters before they eat us. If we do this little 'let's have a fight on the playground' scene, will Europe just sit back and say, 'There they go again' and lessen its already tenuous connections to a nation they used to see as an ally. Is there an end-game? G-d knows that whatever endgame we imagined in Iraq when the warriors decided that we should engage there has taken us into an unintended and seemingly endless purgatory.
I do not want 'war' off the table. I want to think about the efficacy of war, unilaterally and more optimistically, in coalition. If not war, there may well be other strong avenues of force such as no-fly zones and strategies to stop flows of arms to Sudan but to suggest that there are no more peaceful avenues to resolution may sound good in some corners but they do not hold water in the real world.
Looking at the recent success in North Korea might give the libido for armed conflict a little pause; most recognize the power of sanctions and political pressure in stopping apartheid in South Africa. Moreover, the horrific slaughters in South Sudan by this same Khartoum regime were stopped by economic and political pressure just a few short years ago.
Those of us who want to stop the slaughter will continue to do all the things that Shoshana seemed to dismiss. We will hang banners, support divestment, urge the country and the world to take stronger and stronger economic and political action. We will try and pressure China to exert more pressure and we will use the Olympics to help increase such pressure. When we say 'war', we are walking in a very dangerous minefield.
Perhaps, we should go in that direction but not flippantly and without the kind of full analysis and thought that should precede any such action. War is Hell for sure and we best be very, very wary of hell.
Jews Still Mostly Mum on Mukasey / James Besser in Washington
At first, it looked like his nomination would pass muster with many Democrats who expected an appointee with a more strident ideological past.
But opposition to the confirmation of retired Judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General is surging in the Democratic ranks. This week three Democratic presidential hopefuls – Sen. Chris Dodd (Conn.), Sen. Joe Biden (Del.) and Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) – signaled opposition to the Mukasey nomination because of his positions on presidential authority and his refusal to say that “waterboarding,” a controversial interrogation technique, is a form of torture.
And it’s not just Democrats; some key Republicans, including Sen. Lindsay Graham (SC) are unhappy about Mukasey’s vagueness on the subject.
And where are Jewish groups? Mostly silent.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which called Mukasey’s nomination “wise” and predicted strong bipartisan support, has stayed mum as the Mukasey fight heats up. So has the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), which has actively opposed many Bush administration judicial nominees.
Ditto the American Jewish Committee and the American Jewish Congress.
“We certainly aren’t going to say anything before all the answers are in,” said AJ Congress legal director Marc Stern.
The Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism may be taking a somewhat more skeptical view as the Mukasey controversy heats up.
“We have been following his testimony closely,” said RAC associate director Mark Pelavin. “Although we do not have a position on the nomination, his testimony does raise some significant questions – both concerning his views on what is and what is not torture, and on his analysis of the limits or lack of limits on Executive power.”
Hillary and the ‘P’ Word / James Besser in Washington
Blogger Steve Clemons had an interesting take on this weekend’s national leadership conference of the Arab American Institute in Dearborn, Michigan.
Clemons noted that of the huge pack of Democratic and Republican presidential contenders, only Republican Ron Paul and Democrats Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson “took the time to be at this important assembly of Arab-Americans.”
More interesting was the videotaped message to the group by Sen. Hillary Clinton, the current Democratic frontrunner who has worked hard to take on hard-line pro-Israel positions.
Clinton, Clemons reported, seemed “genuinely interested in the importance of Arab Americans.
But the New York senator “just did not say ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian state’ in her taped message.”
While Clinton officially supports a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, she appears unwilling to utter the “P” word, and in doing so is joining the stampede away from Bush administration policy that has made Palestinian statehood a centerpiece.
Which isn’t to say that if elected, most of these candidates are likely to stand American policy on its ear.
“A two-state solution means Palestinian statehood,” said a longtime pro-Israel lobbyist in Washington. “It may be bad politics to talk about it during a campaign, but it’s hard to imagine the next president will stray very far from the course this administration has charted.”
Jewish Dems, Thinking Ahead, Slam Huckabee / James Besser in Washington
Some political analysts say former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the man to watch as a slew of contenders for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination fight for support from the important evangelical wing of the party.
Apparently the National Jewish Democratic Council (NJDC) agrees; this week the partisan group leveled a broadside against the former Baptist preacher.
According to NJDC leader Ira Forman, Huckabee is “way out of the mainstream,” which is why he may be emerging as the “new favorite candidate” of the religious right.
Polls show Huckabee running well behind the GOP frontrunners, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
But both have problems with Christian conservatives – Giuliani because of his past support for abortion and gay rights, Romney because of his Mormon faith. The affable Huckabee is expected to do well with that segment, especially if a strong finish in the early Iowa caucuses convinces GOP big givers to shift their giving to his campaign.
Huckabee’s appeal to Jewish Republicans is hard to gauge, especially since he did not attend last week’s presidential forum held by the Republican Jewish Coalition, where Giuliani was the clear favorite.
Despite his dark horse status, NJDC may be worried about Huckabee for another reason: his support for Christian right “values agenda” issues is mixed with what John Fund, writing in Friday’s Wall Street Journal, called his “liberal-populist on some economic issues.”
That, some analysts say, could prove an effective mix if Huckabee manages to overcome the long odds and win the GOP nomination.
New Saudi School Flap in DC Suburb / James Besser in Washington
Some interesting back and forth on a roiling controversy in Fairfax County, Va. involving a school funded by the government of Saudi Arabia.
According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, the Islamic Saudi Academy is part of a Saudi religious outreach system that teaches intolerance. The group is demanding the school, housed in a former public high school in the Washington, DC suburb, be closed. Read their analysis of the school here.
For a good look at the arguments of those concerned about the school, check out the Micah Report , a blog by terrorism analyst Micah Halpern. In an entry headlined “The School of Extreme Hatred," Halpern describes a “school that has chosen to teach hatred - pure, evil, hatred. And that hatred is directed at you and me.”
But a Washington Post editorial on Friday complained that critics haven’t bothered to actually read the books used in the school and reported that Academy officials have been very open with local officials responding to the controversy.
And while drawing the line at the teaching of violence, the Post raised a church-state argument: “It is worrisome anytime government tries to weigh in on what's appropriate for a religious school. Many such schools teach what outsiders might consider intolerance: that homosexuality is a sin, for example, or that only those who believe in Jesus Christ are destined for heaven.”
Trying Again at COEJL / James Besser in Washington
Ask any major Jewish organization and they’ll be quick to tell you energy independence is a top priority for them, and many will add their concern about environmental issues such as global warming.
But there is little consensus on the best way to deal with those priorities. Conservation or new oil exploration? Jewish groups haven’t agreed on the proper balance. Action on global warming? But what to do?
Coordination and cooperation between groups is rare; the group set up to do that, the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life (COEJL), has had a hard time dealing with the differing priorities of various Jewish groups and complex problems of turf and leadership politics (big donors, reflecting big business, are often out of synch with the more liberal views of the Jewish rank and file.)
Now COEJL is trying again. The group, under the auspices of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA), has hired a new climate and energy director.
The goal, according to JCPA leaders: to move the Jewish community to action on both energy and environment-related issues, and to provide a measure of coordination.
“Many groups have policy on these issues, but it’s hard to know exactly what to do,” said Hadar Susskind, JCPA’s Washington director. “There are a number of Jewish orgs that are active on environmental and energy policy, but there isn’t a clear community consensus on specific policy. The goal of COEJL and the JCPA is to help create consensus.”
The tough assignment is going to Jennifer Kefer, an environmental lawyer and longtime activist. Kefer starts her new job on November 1.
Getting It on the Environment / Rabbi Nina Beth Cardin in Baltimore
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why more people don’t get it. The truth is this: we are killing ourselves, and it is happening a lot faster than we thought. The glaciers are melting; the sea-level rising; droughts are persisting; floods are raging; crops are failing; people are dying all because we are entrenched in a dead-end, cat-in-a-sack misguided pursuit of energy sources.
Cushioned Americans may be the last to feel it. But here’s the bottom-line: there is nothing that we do that does not begin and end with the earth and its treasures. If we trash them or exhaust them or otherwise debase and abuse them, they will either rear up and attack us (as in hurricanes and floods) or collapse in a heap before us (as in our water tables, wildlife and perhaps even life-giving bees). Either way, we are doomed.
You don’t have to be an environmentalist or activist or visionary to be moved to do something. You only need to be a realist to see that our Twentieth Century technologies and our Twenty First Century appetites are bound in a self-destructive embrace. We have to intervene and realign these two.
The good news is that the solution is within our grasp. To make it happen, the Jewish community must get in the game big time. Now. We must focus on two things:
(1) We must use our celebrated minds and means to lead the charge in the next technological revolution. We need to re-focus our resources and creativity on designing and financing truly green energy, the kind that never runs out and that doesn’t leave any waste; the kind you don’t have to wrest from the earth but capture in mid-flight: sun rays, wind power and ocean movement. We should not spend a penny more on extracting fuels but on harnessing them. We should be designing ways to convert the inexhaustible pulsing of the universe into energy that lights our cities, runs our businesses, warms our homes, preserves our food and powers our transportation.
Jewish money and Jewish brains can once again help change this world for the better. It is something that the altruist and the greedy and all the folks in the middle can all agree on. For there is no doubt this frontier, like all those that came before it, will reward its pioneers with riches. But this time, everyone, including the earth, will benefit.
(2) We must use the teachings of our tradition to re-center our values. Modern society has made an idol out of engorgement. Bigger cars, bigger houses, bigger pay checks; bigger body parts; bigger portions. When the product is small, we market it with bigger packaging. We believe that bigger is happier, safer; that more is better. But we know, and studies tell us, that we are not one wit happier, and hardly healthier, have no more friends and no more leisure and no more pleasure, than our “smaller” parents and grandparents before us. The bulky, bulgy, bloated life doesn’t get us to Paradise. And yet we somehow delude ourselves into thinking that while this purchase or that paycheck or the last deal didn’t get us there, the next one surely will.
Sustainable satisfaction, true contentment, comes from a life lived in seeing the goodness we have, not the stuff we don’t. Judaism teaches us to dream and explore; to dare and innovate. It encourages enough dissatisfaction for progress and growth to thrive. That is what we do on the six work days. But it also teaches us to pause and rest and look and appreciate, and to see how little it takes to truly feel full. That is the magic of Shabbat, and a lesson the world needs to learn once again.
Shabbat does not come when our work is done. If that were the case, Shabbat would never come. Rather, our work is done when Shabbat comes. Amidst all that we don’t have, Shabbat shows us what we do have. Amidst our yearning for more, Shabbat shows us what we have in abundance. Paradoxically, it is in doing nothing but being with our friends and family; eating with them, talking with them and basking in their company; acknowledging our dependence on others and the world, that we grow sated, wise and happy.
Learning to hold these two in balance, desire and contentment, appetite and ease, is the grand message of Shabbat that we must again teach ourselves, and the world. And we haven’t a moment to lose.
He’s 24 years old, he entered Saturday morning services with the name of Nash, and left with the name Noah. In New Orleans Noah nee Nash is another symbol of a Jewish community rebuilding itself.
On Parshat Noah, when the biblical Torah portion about the ark and 40 days of rain are read in synagogues, Nash showed up for the first time at Congregation Beth Israel, the city’s major Modern Orthodox synagogue.
I was there on assignment last week, chronicling New Orleans Jewry’s attempts to recoup from the losses it sustained in Hurricane Katrina two years ago. The community lost a third of its residents, including many of its prominent members and leaders.
In the last year, hundreds of Jews have settled again in New Orleans, among them rabbis like Uri Topolosky of Beth Israel, and teachers like Nash.
Rabbi Topolosky’s and Nash’s decisions to move to a decimated city are symbols of New Orleans’ potential future. The Jewish community needs leaders. And it needs regular members.
The rabbi has already met scores of Jewish New Orleanians in shul, in his house, in the city’s pair of kosher restaurants. He invites everyone – virtually none of them Orthodox – to his interactive Shabbat services. There is singing, Carlebach style. There are impromptu Torah discussions. There are responsive readings in English. There is an unorthodox tone for an Orthodox synagogue.
So Nash showed up Saturday morning with his girlfriend, also a young idealistic teacher.
Rabbi Topolosky offered him an aliyah. Nash declined. It turned out he had no Jewish education, no bar mitzvah, not even a Hebrew name.
Finally Nash agreed to be called to the Torah. By what name? The rabbi asked for suggestions. “Noah” was the best name offered. The rabbi read the Hebrew name that conferred on Nash the Hebrew name Noah ben Abraham. Haltingly, he read a transliteration of the Hebrew blessings. Everyone broke out in a round of “Simon tov u’mazel tov,” a traditional bar mitzvah song.
“This,” Rabbi Topolosky announced, “was the first bar mitzvah this congregation has had in a long time.”
On Parshat Noah, the Jewish community of New Orleans gained another member.
Rudy Spurned by "Values Voters" / James Besser in Washington
Although nobody took a poll, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani seemed the clear favorite at last week’s Republican Jewish Coalition presidential candidates forum.
But even though he has been polling well among evangelical voters, Giuliani got a dose of bad news at the “Values Voter Summit” over the weekend, an event sponsored by the conservative Family Research Council.
In a straw poll among 1500-plus activists at the convention and another 4500 online, Giuliani finished eighth out of nine candidates, despite his into-the-lions-den appearance and his promise to appoint only conservative judges.
“People of good conscience come to different conclusions about whether abortions should be legal in some circumstances,” he told the group. “But you and I…share the same goal: a country without abortion, achieved by changing the minds and hearts of people.”
The official winner was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who has been fighting hard to overcome the anti-Mormon views of many evangelical Christians.
But the big winner may have been former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who finished just a few votes behind Romney. Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, told delegates “I come today as one not who comes to you, but as one who comes from you. You are my roots.’’
Huckabee also stands to gain from last week's decision by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) to end his cash-starved quest for the GOP nomination -- despite telling the RJC crowd that he'd stick it out to the Iowa caucuses. Brownback and Huckabee have the strongest connections to the Christian conservative faction of the party of any of the current contenders.
As for Giuliani, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato said his eighth place finish in the “values voters” straw poll isn’t necessarily terrible news for Giuliani.
“In my view, Rudy actually gained from that appearance,” Sabato said. “He was never going to get their votes in the primaries, but they saw that he doesn’t have horns and he took some positions that will make it easier for most of them to swallow hard and vote for him in November, should he be the GOP nominee.”
Huckabee, he said, still faces two big obstacles: money and organization. But Sabato added this: “I’d add this: there is no real favorite for the GOP nomination. Almost anything can happen.”
SCHIP Veto Plants Seeds for 2009? / James Besser in Washington
As expected, the House on Thursday failed to override President Bush’s veto of a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Jewish groups were quick to express their disappointment, but the flurry of press releases barely concealed its depths.
“The failure to renew this bipartisan program will have real-life consequences for millions of children and their families for whom insurance is unaffordable or even simply unavailable,” said Phyllis Snyder, president of the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW).
Groups like NCJW and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism went all out to beat the veto, but leaders of the SCHIP push conceded it was an uphill fight from the start.
Why did SCHIP, which funds state programs that help provide coverage to children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, too little for private insurance, take on such urgency for Jewish groups?
Part of it was simply the obvious imperative of expanding what even many Republicans agree is a successful program and starting to make a dent in the growing population of the uninsured.
“People really felt that a lot of factors were coming into alignment,” said NCJW’s Sammie Moshenberg. “It had bipartisan support; it involved children’s health. It was a real opportunity.”
But the effort also had a lot to do with the desperate politics of human services in these days of tax cuts, tight budgets and government cutbacks.
Backers of a strong government health and human services safety net have been engaged in a fighting retreat for years. They believe the idea of the SCHIP program is so basic that it was an appropriate place to draw a line in the sand.
With a loss on SCHIP, despite significant Republican support and Democratic control of both Houses of Congress, what chance do they have of expanded programs to cover the 40-million-and-rising population of Americans without any health coverage?
That also explains why some conservatives are so vehemently against it, calling it the foot in the door to socialized medicine. If they can beat the Democrats on basic insurance coverage for kids, you can kiss more ambitious proposals good bye.
Congressional and administration officials are expected to start negotiations over a compromise SCHIP package, but in private many Jewish leaders say the fight for a major expansion is probably over for now.
Still, Mik Moore of the Jewish Funds for Justice said all is not lost in the wake of the veto override failure; the huge commitment to SCHIP by groups across the political spectrum and around the country laid the groundwork for broader efforts in the future – especially if there is a political realignment in Washington after the 2008 elections.
“In a way, it was a win-win situation,” he said. ‘You’re either winning a victory for 4 million children who need health coverage – or you’re building a movement for expanded health care for all Americans.”
For a good analysis of the thinking of Jewish groups supporting the SCHIP expansion, check out this item on JSPOT, the Jewish Funds for Justice blog.
Odd Political Twist in Mideast Debate / James Besser in Washington
In an odd political twist, Democratic contenders for their party’s 2008 presidential nomination are mostly supportive of President Bush’s policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, although nobody’s rushing to talk about it, while Republican candidates are running away from the centerpiece of administration policy: Palestinian statehood.
First former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani came out against Palestinian statehood, at least anytime soon; former Arkansas Gov. Mick Huckabee, running hard for support from a Christian right faction that includes many right-of-center Christian Zionists, told the Jewish Week that he might support Palestinian statehood – but not in the lands the Palestinians want.
Now Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kans.) has announced support for major portions of a plan by Knesset member Benny Elon that would effectively foreclose the possibility of a Palestinians state on the West Bank and recognize Jordan as the sole representative of the Palestinians people, effectively eliminating the Palestinian Authority as a diplomatic entity.
In a press video shown in Jerusalem and posted on YouTube, Brownback called the plan “a different way forward…so we don’t go back to old solutions that haven’t been working.”
At Tuesday’s Republican Jewish Coalition candidates forum, nobody had a good word to say about the upcoming Annapolis summit called by President Bush for November, and one – former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney -- was openly scornful.
"How could you possibly have a peace conference at this stage? Who would you talk to?” he said.
How do Jewish Republicans explain the seeming contradiction between their contention that President Bush is the most pro-Israel president ever and the growing opposition to an idea – Palestinian statehood – that has become the centerpiece of his Middle East policy?
“It’s the State Department,” said an official with one of the GOP presidential campaigns. “President Bush’s support for Israel’s security is unchanged, but the State Department seems to be moving in a different direction.”
The Chicago Tribune this week called her the “Queen of the Drive-by Outrage,” and there’s not much doubt about it: conservative commentator Ann Coulter has outraged Jews across the political spectrum with her televised insistence that Jews need to become Christian to be “perfected” and her view of the Republican Party as a bastion of happy Christians.
And don’t even mention her view of New York City as a Christian Garden of Eden.
Appearing on the CNBC “Big Idea” show, Coulter was asked this question: “If you had your way…what would this country look like?”
Her answer: “It would like a lot like New York City during the (2004) Republican National Convention. In fact that is what I think heaven is going to look like. People were happy. They’re Christian. They’re tolerant. They defend America.”
Host Donny Deutsch, sniffing pay dirt, followed up by asking “It would be better if we were all Christian?"
You can guess Coulter’s answer by the indignant press releases churned out by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress and some Jewish members of Congress.
Coulter, either unaware of how her comments would be received or eagerly aware that they would keep her in the national spotlight, went on to explain that Jews shouldn’t be insulted by her implication that the nation would be better off without them because Christians just want Jews to be “perfected,” like Christians are, by accepting Jesus.
“While Ann Coulter has freedom of speech, news outlets should exercise their freedom to use better judgment,” said NJDC executive director Ira N. Forman. “Just as media outlets don’t invite those who believe that Martians walk the Earth to frequently comment on science stories; it’s time they stop inviting Ann Coulter to comment on politics.”
The group is also calling on the Republican presidential candidates to repudiate her statements; at Tuesdays' Republican Jewish Coalition presidential forum, none of the five major candidates mentioned her name.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) said “Ms. Coulter has shown time and again that she is willing to demonize non-Christians in order to promote herself and her agenda. She should be ashamed of herself for promoting anti-Semitism and intolerance and should apologize."
“I strongly, strongly take issue with her comments,” said Matthew Brooks, the RJC director. “I think she’ absolutely lost her mind and far over the line of what’s acceptable in terms of political discourse. It’s interesting to me that she speaks of tolerance when she herself speaks so intolerantly of others.”
But Brooks said he doesn’t expect real political fallout from her comments.
“People know she’s outrageous and outlandish. I don’t see any political linkage. But I doubt she’ll be asked to speak at any political fundraisers.”
Democratic lawmakers issued indignant press releases -- but so far, the GOP contingent in Congress and the Republican National Committee have been mum on the issue.
Still, Coulter’s comments came only two weeks after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) raised some Jewish hackles up with his agreement that the Constitution created America as a “Christian nation” and a month after a poll showing that a majority of Americans agree with that proposition.
Pastor John Hagee, president of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), has been understandably shy about talking about Bible prophecy at the pro-Israel events he has sponsored around the country.
But in an interview with CNN’s Glen Beck, he laid it all out , but with one exception: he never talked about what happens to the Jews when the “antichrist” allies with Russia to invade and ravage Israel.
Read the transcripts of the interesting interview here.
While you’re at it, check out journalist Max Blumenthal’s video of attendees at this summer’s CUFI convention.
Sixty two years after the end of World War ll, the Holocaust remains a hot topic for legislators, especially ones from districts with lots of Jewish voters and contributors.
This week it was Rep. Carolyn Maloney , a Democrat who represents parts of Manhattan and Queens. Maloney has re-introduced her bill to “hold railroad companies that worked with the Nazis accountable in U.S. courts,” according to the lawmaker’s office.
The specific target: the companies that transported more than 75,000 French Jews to Nazi concentration camps.
According to Maloney, the measure gives plaintiffs the rights to seek damages in Federal Court against the French National Railway. The French government claims immunity from legal action in such matters; the bill is meant to counter that.
Maloney has had lots of practice; she has been introducing the measure since 2003, but it hasn’t grabbed the attention of congressional leaders in either party.
More Than a Newspaper / Gary Rosenblatt, Editor and Publisher
Three projects founded by The Jewish Week are launching anew this week.
First is this web site, which now includes more content from videos to exclusive blogs to unique features than we are able to publish in print each week. We hope you will keep coming back to the site as it continues to grow in quality and quantity, and we welcome your suggestions.
A second project is Write On For Israel, our advocacy through journalism program for high school students, starting its sixth year this Sunday. Created at the height of the intifada, with funding from the Avi Chai Foundation, Write On is committed to teaching high school students a mix of modern Zionist history and skills in journalism and communication so that when they get to college, they will have the knowledge and moral confidence to become the leaders of pro-Israel advocacy activities on campus.
Each year about 30 high school juniors are chosen for the two-year program from about 100 applicants. The group is made up of students from public, private and Jewish high schools in the metropolitan area. They will spend one Sunday a month during the school year in instruction and discussion, hearing from educators, journalists, Mideast experts and media analysts.
The first year culminates with a 10-day free trip to Israel where the students meet Israeli political leaders, journalists and military and diplomatic experts while touring the country.
In their senior year, the group will take on a special project of its own. One of the things we have learned in keeping in touch with graduates of the program is that they become leaders of pro-Israel programs even as freshmen in college.
Also this Sunday, The Jewish Week will sponsor the third annual conference known as The Conversation, a two-day meeting of 65 American Jews who are leaders or emerging leaders in a variety of fields, including the arts, business, journalism, philanthropy and science. Held this year at a retreat near Atlanta, The Conversation is focused around the theme of “being Jewish in America in the 21st century,” giving participants 48 hours to meet, network, discuss, debate, dream together and inspire each other.
Our primary partner in this exciting venture is CLI (Center for Leadership Initiatives), with core funding from philanthropist Lynn Schusterman. Several other foundations are sponsors as well.
What is unique about this conference is that there are no plenaries or panels, no keynote speakers and no planned outcomes. Rather, the participants are invited to propose the topics on the spot that they want to talk about, and then they do.
The program is off the record so that participants can speak openly without concern about being quoted directly. But I hope to report on the themes and points of view that emerge, so stay tuned.
And here you thought The Jewish Week was "just" a newspaper.
From a synagogue Listserv: “A CLEAN CAR AND A CLEAN CONSCIENCE: Stop by on Memorial Day – between noon and 3:30 to support my tzedakah project and have your car washed. All donations to the Save Darfur Coalition. Thank you for your support!”
It was a Bar/Bat Mitzvah project, no doubt, and not to be mocked. But it begs the questions, “What are adult Jews doing about Darfur, and are we able to move beyond our political comfort zone even in the circumstance of genocide?”
Everybody wants to “Save Darfur.” Sermons, banners and “awareness raising” projects are fixtures in the Jewish community, but produce little more than the self-satisfaction of being ahead of the churches. Paying for “feeding stations” in refugee camps under attack is a sop to our conscience. Food is good, but in 1943 would it have been enough to demand that the Jews ate in Auschwitz? (“Never mind that oven over there.”) Enough to demand financial sanctions on Hermann Goering? Bombs on the railroad tracks would have been better.
President Bush has announced sanctions for Sudan, but sanctions hurt the weakest people, and anyhow have no traction in the UN where China protects Sudan’s government in exchange for oil drilling rights. Negotiations? Even the UN Special Envoy for Darfur admits, “Our peace strategy so far has failed. All we did was pick up the pieces and muddle through, doing too little, too late.” He asked the UN for a “force of… peacekeepers with the authority to use violence to prevent attacks against civilians and disarm militias.”
The death of nine "peacekeepers" in September makes it clear he means warfighters.
Militias, with government assistance and Chinese protection, are waging genocidal war against Darfur, and warfighters – people with the authority to use violence – are needed to protect the refugees and kill, yes kill, the perpetrators. Our own history tells us there is no reason to believe anything less will stop the ravaging of an already ravaged people.
The people of Darfur need American Jews – who have the political clout they don’t have – to argue the case for their salvation. But as a community, we rarely acknowledge that war can serve the interest of peace and have been unable to demand military intervention where it is needed. Instead we have made the case for ensuring that the victims die full.
To the extent that we only clean our cars for Darfur, we are cleaning our collective conscience at their expense.
If you think dealing with the issues surrounding intermarriage is easy, just ask any rabbi -- or Jewish newspaper editor.
Julie Wiener's "In the Mix" column about the challenges facing intermarried couples continues to draw heaps of reader mail --some of it positive, some absolutely outraged.
For a sample of the latter, here's something from Jay Saltzman, a reader in Woodmere, who raises an interesting dilemma. Saltzman argues that publishing Wiener's monthly column "undermines what (Jewish Week editors) seem to believe is important to the survival of the Jewish people."
Saltzman goes on to state that "rather than publishing a monthly column about intermarriage, how about a monthly column about the struggles of parents to send their children to private Jewish day schools, the failure of the Jewish 'establishment' to help make tuition affordable and the failure of rabbis to speak out against this utter disaster?"
Publishing "In the Mix," Saltzman writes, is "antithetical to American Jewish survival."
Jewish Week editor Gary Rosenblatt acknowledges that the inclusion of Wiener's column may outrage some readers -- a lot of readers, actually -- but argues it provides an important service to many others who are wrestling with similar issues in their own lives.
"We believe that publishing Julie's column about one intermarried woman's attempts to raise her children as Jews, and the issues she struggles with, is not an endorsement of intermarriage but an effort to explore a situation faced by an increasingly large percentage of families in American Jewish life," Rosenblatt said.
The Jewish Week faces a difficult choice, he said.
"We could ignore or confront these and other delicate issues; we choose to bring them to light and welcome the resulting debate, as long as it is not hurtful on a personal level."
