AI2010_08_19

Rockwern creates HUC-JIR infused Rock & Roll Bash innovative learning with $11 million for at the J on Aug. 29 Jewish education programs Rockwern Academy is initiating an exciting and innovative school-wide reading program in which every child, preschool through sixth grade, will read the same book along with their teachers and parents. This will help to create an inclusive and integrated learning community within the Rockwern family, allowing students from different grade levels to work together and support each other’s learning.

Each year, a new book will be chosen to share with the entire school, a book which will demonstrate and reinforce Rockwern’s values. “Three Cups of Tea,” by Greg Mortenson, has been selected for the 2010-11 school year.

“Three Cups of Tea” has been published in three versions intended for different reading levels. Middle school students will read the Young Reader’s Edition, while younger students will read the picture book, “Listen to the Wind.” Parents may choose to read the original, adult version as well. All three

Miami University Professor Mitchell A. Balish has plenty of teaching experience. But his students are college age and the subject is microbiology, specifically, “studies of morphology, organization and division in Mycoplasma species.”

So when Dr. Balish of Oxford, Ohio, volunteers to teach second and third graders

CINCINNATI — On Sunday night, Aug. 29, the Mayerson JCC will host its end-of-summer Rock & Roll Bash from 6:30 – 9 p.m. This free, outdoor party for adults follows the J5K Run/Walk, and guests can cheer for the runners while they also celebrate the end of summer.

Partygoers can enjoy dinner, drinks, dancing and games of chance as they listen to live rock & roll music performed by popular local band, The 4 Hubcaps. The party is open to the public, and everyone is invited.

A pasta dinner will be available from 6:30 – 8:30 p.m., and adults can visit the beer tent and cash bar for refreshments. For a minimal fee, dinner includes salad, pasta and dessert, and a choice of beverage (dietary laws observed).

Throughout the night, guests are invited to try their luck to win cash prizes at various gambling booths.

Partygoers can hit the dance floor as The 4 Hubcaps play rock & roll hits from the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. The 4 Hubcaps have been playing together for more than 30 years, and have performed at countless parties and special events across

HUC on page 20

JCC on page 19

By Barbara L. Morgenstern Senior Writer

Prof. Samuel K. Joseph of HUC-JIR was a key participant in the grant process.

ROCKWERN on page 19

Bedouin demolitions raising Texas two-step: Pre-med tensions in Israeli land dispute student becomes NFL squad’s first Jewish cheerleader

By Marcy Oster Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Courtesy of Tsafrir Abayov / Flash90 / JTA

A Bedouin boy helps to rebuild the family tent in the unofficial village of Al-Arakib in the Negev Desert after it was demolished

by Israeli authorities, Aug. 4, 2010.

JERUSALEM (JTA) — A standoff between the Israeli government and an unrecognized Bedouin village in the Negev Desert is raising tensions over land rights in southern Israel.

Village residents are rebuilding their homes for the third time in as many weeks after their demolition Tuesday by Israeli authorities.

In the first demolition order carried out July 27, some 1,300 police escorted Israel Lands Administration officials into the unofficial village of Al-Arakib before dawn, removing the area’s 300 residents before razing 45 structures, including homes and chicken BEDOUIN on page 20

By Matt Samuels Jewish Herald-Voice HOUSTON (JHV) — It’s a safe bet to assume that there are more Jewish doctors than NFL cheerleaders.

Michelle Lewis, 21, is on the way to becoming both.

Lewis, a native of Bellaire, Texas, already has passed the first test — she was chosen for the Houston Texans cheerleaders, making the final cut from a field of more than 500 women who tried out in April.

Her next challenge soon

will follow, as the pre-med student wraps up her fouryear degree at St. Thomas University next year before taking the medical boards and applying to medical schools.

Lewis is the only known Jewish cheerleader in team history, according to Texans cheerleading programs manager Alto Gary, and definitely the first who hopes to be delivering babies as an obstetrician/gynecologist after she retires her pompoms.

Courtesy of Paul Ladd

Michelle Lewis

CHEERLEADER on page 21

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Northern Hills Synagogue’s YAKS cookout Northern Hills Synagogue is pleased to announce the starting event for their YAKS programming. YAKS, or Young Adults Kids Sometimes, is an active group of young families connecting with their Jewish roots and having fun at the same time.

“When I joined Northern Hills Synagogue three years ago, I was brand new to the area, having

moved from South Florida, and I immediately found instant connections with the other YAKS members,” said Alisa Handmaker.

The YAKS planning committee has worked very hard to create a schedule of fun events for the whole family, as well as much needed adults-only events. The events include a family walk on the purple people bridge, a night

of fondue for adults, and more.

YAKS events are open to the community and always enjoy new faces.

This starting event will be a cookout at Weller Park, Sept. 5, from 12 - 2 p.m. There is no charge for this event, but RSVPs are requested. Please contact Tracy Weisberger for more information.

NHS’s unique creative service for Rosh Hashanah As the High Holidays approach, it’s time to rethink the past year and reflect on our values and mitzvot.

Sometimes reconnecting with Judaism after a busy year can be hard, and for some people, traditional services are difficult to connect with. This year Northern Hills Synagogue will continue their annual Creative Family Service, held on the second day of Rosh Hashanah as an alternative to the main service.

Led by Tracy Weisberger, the Director of Education and Programming at NHS, the Creative Service will be an interactive and participatory service for the family; all ages are welcome. The theme of this year’s creative service will be “forgiveness within the family.”

There will be games, discussions, activities and prayers to connect this theme with the holiday.

“It’s always nice to attend a tra-

ditional service on the first day, but then understand what my prayers are truly about, in the second day’s creative service. It’s also refreshing to see all the different age groups participate together and learn from each other,” said Elana Pentelnik, a younger member of the synagogue.

For more information on the High Holiday services and Creative Service, please contact the Northern Hills Synagogue office.

Adath Israel religious school increases donations The students of Adath Israel Congregation’s Jarson Education Center Religious School have every reason to feel great pride.

Last year, they raised significantly more money through their tzedakah collections to benefit even more charities and organizations than in the past.

Thank you notes from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital and JNF and the Susan G. Koman for the Cure arrived in a single day adding to let-

ters already received from the Kosher Food Pantry of JFS, the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education, and Pennies for Peace.

All totaled, over $700 was donated to the various funds. As in previous years, classes elected where to send their contributions and took the time to think carefully about the different organizations needing financial assistance.

Some donations were made to honor a particular person.

As we know, “mitzvah goreret mitzvah” (one mitzvah leads to another) and so we expect the 2010-2011 school year will see even more tzedakah contributions by our students.

If you wish to know more about the various tikkun olam (social action) projects being done by the students of the Adath Israel Religious School, please contact our director of Education, Sharon Wasserberg.

Café Chabad features SoCal Rabbi plus New York deli On Sunday, Aug. 1, Café Chabad hosted 140 Jewish adults for an evening of food, entertainment and socializing. The evening at the Chabad Jewish Center in Blue Ash featured a menu of New York kosher deli favorites, including a choice of classic sandwiches such as corned beef, pastrami and smoked turkey, knishes, authentic sour pickles and delicious pastry desserts.

While diners enjoyed the food, a Newlywed Game Show (for the newlyweds and not-so-

newlyweds) was led by guest host, Rabbi Abba Perelmuter.

Steve Frankel related that “[Rabbi Perelmuter] was a combination of Jackie Mason and Henny Youngman. We were laughing all night.” Rabbi Abba Perelmuter hails from Long Beach, Calif., where he is the popular leader of Shul by the Shore.

“Cafe Chabad served up a slice of the big apple with a side of California entertainment,” remarked Paul Goldstone. “Great

food, great company, and great entertainment all added up to a very enjoyable evening.”

The Café has made a name for itself in Cincinnati for providing Jewish adults with social events that feature food, entertainment and good company. Held several times throughout the year, these evenings are a chance to meet up with old and new friends in the Jewish community.

The next Café Chabad event will take place on Saturday, Nov. 20, at 7:30 p.m.

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Kroger partners with Chabad Jewish Center’s Shofar Factory This year, High Holiday shopping turns into a family adventure at the Blue Ash Kroger. Chabad Jewish Center’s nationally acclaimed Shofar Factory will be staging two free presentations in

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the kosher department, Sunday, Sept. 5, at 1:30 and 3 p.m. While filling your cart with matzah balls, gefilte fish, fresh-cut roast, and more, the entire family will be entertained while making a

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shofar from scratch.

“The Shofar Factory will make the family’s Rosh Hashanah experience so much more exciting. This is a hands-on experience that provides a real thrill and a great education. Both adults and children participate and it is difficult to tell who is having more fun,” explained Rabbi Berel Cohen, of Chabad Jewish Center.

With unique media and innovative presentation methods, the Shofar Factory offers a firsthand know-how to the ins and outs of the shofar. This interactive program includes a hands-on display of real animal horns fit for making the instrument, a presentation

of the history, laws and spiritual meaning of the shofar, and participation in the crafting of a beautiful, genuine shofar from a raw ram’s horn! There is also an option for each participant to create his or her own individual Shofar including sanding the raw material and applying varnish for his or her personal touch. The Shofar Factory provides an opportunity for the entire family to learn together, and bring meaning to the central mitzvah of the High Holidays.

“This is a great opportunity to offer our Jewish customers a unique shopping experience,” said Tim Schuckman, manager at the Blue Ash Kroger.

Teenagers explore Jewish culture through filmmaking “Making a movie lets teenagers explore their faith through a different lens,” said Mercaz Hebrew High School director, Dara Wood. She runs the weekend religious school that draws students from Cincinnati’s five Conservative Jewish Synagogues.

A new filmmaking class starting in September is a big departure from the bible study and Hebrew courses that Mercaz traditionally offers. Student teams will film, edit, mix and produce a movie, under the guidance of two film instructors and a Jewish educator.

Sophomore Anna Bailes enrolled in the film program because it sounded different, “It’s just something they’ve never done and its hands on,” said Bailes.

“We get to make a film, and I think the best part will be seeing how that turns out at the end.”

Wood hopes to appeal to teenagers by giving them a creative outlet that lets them dig deeper into their religious backgrounds. She’s also appealing to parents through a new ad campaign. A series of print ads, flyers and a Facebook page proclaim: Competition is stiff for top colleges; so come out shooting.

Mercaz introduced a new tag line to launch the program too: You at Mercaz. Just picture it.

Raising money for equipment and teachers started with an $18,000 grant from the Legacy Heritage Fund. Wood led an

appeal that raised another $18,000 in matching donations. Three additional semester-long courses are planned that will mingle Jewish studies with fine arts, including photography and painting.

In addition to purchasing equipment, the high school invested in a first-rate faculty, tapping the University of Cincinnati’s director of Electronic Media Communications, H. Michael Sanders to teach the finer points of filmmaking.

According to Sanders, “Media skills are an increasingly important aspect of being literate in our culture.” One of his goals is to get the students thinking about their cultural and personal identities. He believes that filmmaking will make that mission more exciting and pertinent to their everyday lives, adding, “Young people have grown up immersed in communication forms ranging from film and TV to the internet and are sophisticated consumers of media. Being able to also create and personally communicate in efficient and effective ways through media enhances understanding and cultural connections.”

For Bailes, the filmmaking class will be part of her third year at Mercaz High School. She said the class, “Sounds kind of fun.”

Bailes added, “It’s just like something they don’t really do in Mercaz, so it might be a good thing to try.”

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by Isaac M.Wise VOL. 157 • NO. 4 Thursday, August 19, 2010 9 Elul, 5770 Shabbat begins Fri, 8:07 p.m.

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THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE CO., PUBLISHERS 18 WEST NINTH STREET, SUITE 2 CINCINNATI, OHIO 45202-2037 PHONE: (513) 621-3145 FAX: (513) 621-3744 publisher@americanisraelite.com editor@americanisraelite.com articles@americanisraelite.com production@americanisraelite.com HENRY C. SEGAL Editor & Publisher 1930-1985 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher BARBARA L. MORGENSTERN Senior Writer ELIJAH PLYMESSER NICOLE SIMON Assistant Editors ALEXIA KADISH Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor STEPHANIE DAVIS-NOVAK Fashion Editor MARILYN GALE Dining Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM RABBI A. JAMES RUDIN RABBI AVI SHAFRAN Contributing Writers LEV LOKSHIN JANE KARLSBERG Staff Photographers PATTY YOUKILIS JUSTIN COHEN Advertising Sales JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager CHRISTIE HALKO Office Manager

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For two kinds of ‘survivors,’ filling in the gaps on family medical history

By Suzanne Kurtz Jewisg Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — A crucial question that doctors routinely ask patients left Rifky Atkin speechless.

Diagnosed with an aggressive breast cancer, Atkin was exploring treatment options when her surgeon asked, “Is there a family history of breast cancer in your family?”

The mother of four from Edison, N.J., stammered, “I don’t know and I’ll never know.”

Her parents survived Auschwitz as teenagers, she explained, but not their parents.

Her four grandparents were killed in the death camp, taking with them all knowledge of the family medical history.

“Not being able to know the medical history beyond one generation above me underscored the importance of knowing that history,” Atkin told more than 100 participants during a teleconference and webinar last month hosted by Sharsheret, a national nonprofit group providing services and support for young Jewish women and their families facing breast cancer.

To better understand the effects of the Holocaust on breast cancer today, Sharsheret organized the free, hourlong program to address the concerns of breast cancer survivors and Holocaust survivors.

Even the term “survivor” has deep meaning for both groups, said Elana Silber, director of operations for Sharsheret.

“In the cancer community, the word ‘survivor’ is one commonly associated with men and woman diagnosed with cancer who valiantly fight the battle for survival,” Silber said. “In the Jewish community, however, the word ‘survivor’ has traditionally been reserved for those who survived the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust. For the Jewish cancer survivor, the term ‘survivor’ can be troubling.”

Gaps in family medical history can sometimes be filled by genetic testing and is one way to gather valuable information lost in the Holocaust, said Niecee Schonberger, a cancer genetics counselor with Sharsheret.

“Genetic testing is important to rule out or rule in a [gene] mutation,” she said, but it is also important to understand that “mutations don’t cause cancer; they cause a predisposition for cancer.”

Inherited breast cancer is largely due to mutations in two genes that control cell growth, BRCA-1 and BRCA-2, said

The American Israelite is currently seeking a

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Rifky Atkin, left, with her mother, Ethel, and twin sister, Chavie, told a Sharsheret teleconference of the difficulty about not knowing her medical past.

Schonberger. With more than 1,000 possible mutations known today, certain mutations are more common among Jews of Ashkenazi descent.

For Atkin, the testing not only proved helpful for determining her course of treatment, but also for the other women in her family.

“I could now pass on to my identical twin sister, and my daughters, some of the history that had been erased when my grandparents perished in the Holocaust,” said Atkin, 51, and cancer-free for 13 years.

However, “genetic testing has its limitations,” said Schonberger.

A negative test result combined with a lack of family medical history can leave a woman with no real sense of her breast cancer risk, she warned.

And to the surprise of most women, she added, only 5 to 10 percent of breast cancer is inherited.

“Ninety to 95 percent [is] sporadic, the result of the interaction of mostly unknown environmental factors and the specific individual make-up of the woman,” Schonberger said.

An Israeli study published late last year in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute found that Jewish survivors of Nazioccupied Europe were at a higher risk of developing certain types of cancers — like breast cancer — possibly due to an early exposure to environmental factors. Those factors include severe, sustained malnutrition; prolonged psychological stress; and exposure to the elements and infectious diseases.

The younger the individuals when exposed to these extreme conditions, the more likely they were to develop cancer later in life, said Dr. Lital Keinan-Boker, a

researcher from the University of Haifa, who published the study with several colleagues.

“The results of this study extend beyond the Jewish community, with broader implications for the breast cancer community at-large, [by addressing] how much of breast cancer is shaped by our life circumstances and how much is shaped by genetics,” Silber said.

Still further investigation is needed, Keinan-Boker said during the teleconference, “and the sooner the better. Time is a factor here.”

For more information or to apply, call Ted Deutsch (513) 621-3145

You can also send your resume to publisher@americanisraelite.com

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Will the Giving Pledge affect Jewish causes?

By Jacob Berkman Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — The philanthropic world got a happy jolt when 40 members of the world’s wealthy elite — including 13 Jews — announced that they would give away more than half their money before they died.

The participating philanthropists were responding last week to a challenge issued earlier this year

by Warren Buffett and Bill Gates to their billionaire peers to donate more than half of their wealth in their lifetimes. Buffett and Gates called it the Giving Pledge.

But without any obvious signs of where their money will go, it’s unclear what impact this will have on Jewish nonprofits.

“This pledge is a very good thing — I want to be very clear about that — but I remain unsure if it is a game changer for the Jewish community in particular,” said Mark Charendoff, the president of the Jewish Funders Network, an organization for givers of at least $25,000 annually to Jewish causes.

Charendoff said the average Jewish billionaire gives pretty much the way Americans give.

“If that is the case, then we will see money go to higher education, to health care and possibly to the arts,” he said, noting a phenomenon that long has vexed the Jewish philanthropic world.

Wealthy Jews are among the most charitable mega-donors per capita. More than one-third of living donors who have given away more than $1 billion, according to Forbes, are Jewish.

But the overtly Jewish charities among their portfolios pale in comparison to the general causes to which they give. Mega-philanthropists who have made Jewish causes a centerpiece of their giving

Photo courtesy of The Giving Pledge

Warren Buffett, left, and Bill and Melinda Gates have challenged the world’s billionaires to give away half their wealth before they die.

are the exception.

The Jews who have taken the Giving Pledge fit the standard profile: All give to Jewish causes, according to a reading of the 990 tax forms of their foundations and published reports on their giving, but those gifts constitute only a fraction of the tens or hundreds of millions each gives away per year.

The Jewish names on the list are Michael Bloomberg, Eli and Edith Broad, Barry Diller and Diane Von Furstenberg, Larry Ellison, Joan and Irwin Jacobs, George Kaiser, Lorry Lokey, Bernie and Billie Marcus, Bernard and Barbro Osher, David M. Rubenstein, Herb and Marion Sandler, Jeff Skoll, Sanford and Joan Weill, and Shelby White.

Photo courtesy of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Thirteen Jews were among the first to take the Giving Pledge challenge issued by Bill Gates, above, and Warren Buffett.

Lokey is an exception to the rule on Jewish giving. While most of his largesse has been for educational causes, a large chunk also has gone to Israeli recipients.

Lokey gave $33 million to the Technion—the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa and has donated substantial sums to the Leo Baeck High School in Haifa, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, the Weizmann Institute and Hadassah. He also has given $80 million to Catholic schools, by his own estimate.

A journalist by training who moved to public relations and then started his own business, Lokey, 83, says that he wants to make another $300 million or so from his investments before he dies. He

already has pledged everything he has — somewhere in the range of $700 million — to a handful of charitable causes, and he told JTA the next big gifts will be to Israeli education.

“I hope to make it a billion before I kick the bucket,” Lokey said. “The next $60 million or so will go to Israel.”

Aside from Bernie Marcus, who has an arm of his foundation to deal with Jewish causes, and Bernard Osher, who gives away most of his money through the San Francisco Jewish Community Endowment Fund, the Jews on the Giving Pledge list have directed the vast majority of their philanthropic dollars to general causes that are not explicitly Jewish.

Photo courtesy of The Giving Pledge

Lorry Lokey has pledged to give away all of his $700 million, with the next $60 million going to Israel.

That would suggest that the Giving Pledge may not have a significant impact on Jewish causes.

Stacy Palmer, the editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy, suggested the pledge might not have such a great impact on other causes, either, since the first 40 to sign on are the “usual suspects” who already have pledged away more than half their money.

Lokey fits that profile. He had sold his company, Businesswire, to Buffett in 2008, so the two already were quite familiar with each other when Buffet called him.

“A few weeks ago, Warren called to ask if I would be interested in making this pledge,” Lokey said. “I told him that I had already pledged and given away everything. He said, ‘Yes, that is why I want you on board.’”

Other Jews on the list were in a similar position.

“I know of a number of Jewish philanthropists who have already made those provisions long before Gates’ plan,” said Phyllis Cook, a philanthropic adviser to several of the Jews who have signed on to the Giving Pledge.

The foundations of several of those on the list contacted by JTA confirmed that the pledge is not expected to change much about how the foundations will operate.

The question for the Jewish community is how to increase the share of money Jewish givers donate to Jewish causes.

Charendoff estimates that Jews gave between $4 and $5 billion to Jewish-centric causes last year. If the pledge were to inspire everyone on the Forbes list of 400 top givers to give away half their wealth, he estimates that some $600 billion would go into the philanthropic world. That compares to the $300 billion or so that was given out by all Americans last year, according to GivingUSA. More than 130 of those on the Forbes 400 are Jewish.

“I don’t believe that we have begun to tap the Jewish community in terms of the potential wealth that is out there,” Charendoff said.

The problem is that the Jewish community still behaves as if it has a monopoly on philanthropic dollars from Jewish givers, he said.

“Thirty years ago, if you were Jewish and a philanthropist and you wanted to be on a board, your realm of activity was probably going to be in the Jewish world,” Charendoff said. “Now we are competing with Carnegie Hall and the Met and Sloan Kettering. This is the big leagues, and we can’t play as if we are competing between the American Jewish Committee and the AntiDefamation League.”

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These Jewish interns campaign for Washington, not against it

By Nathan Guttman Jewish Daily Foward

Students learning about Israel advocacy as part of their campus engagement work at the Hillel Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, which took place Aug. 11-15, 2010.

Hillel students and professionals gear up to face anti-Israel campus activism

By Sue Fishkoff Jewish World Review ST. LOUIS (JTA) — Amanda Boris is nervous about what she’ll face when classes resume at the University of Wisconsin later this month.

“There’s an uncomfortable amount of anti-Semitism on my campus,” said the incoming senior.

Last year, her campus newspaper ran an ad from a notorious Holocaust denier for several weeks, despite protests from the Jewish community. More troubling, she said, were the anonymous posts that appeared under the ad, stating that the Jews “deserved it” and they “better watch themselves.” And a professor who teaches an introductory course on the Middle East makes “openly false statements about Israel,” she charged.

Boris told her story to a group of Jewish students who joined some 300 of their peers from Aug. 11 to 15 at Washington University in St. Louis at the Hillel Institute, a summer training session designed to help them prepare for Jewish engagement work on campus.

A big part of that work is learning how to respond effectively to anti-Israel activities on campus.

Such activity has been on the rise on North American campuses for several years, but pro-Israel activists say last year was different: The new campaigns are better organized, more prevalent and more vitriolic.

This summer, a number of national Jewish organizations, including Hillel, held training sessions to help their students and staff prepare for what is expected to be

an even more targeted anti-Israel campaign this coming year.

“In the Jewish community there’s a lot of fear and anxiety, and that lands on our campuses, on our students,” said Hillel president Wayne Firestone at the gathering’s plenary session Aug. 11.

“We have seen things on campus, last semester in particular, that are really ugly,” he told the crowd.

“We can imagine what we’ll face when we return this fall.”

Whereas past years might have involved handfuls of anti-Israel students passing out photocopied flyers, last year saw a high-tech traveling exhibit of Israel’s separation barrier, complete with an embedded plasma TV showing anti-Israeli images.

And as part of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign, efforts to bring resolutions calling for divestment from companies doing business with Israel were noted at more than half a dozen campuses — a new tactic in the anti-Israel movement that targets student governments.

Only one of those proposed resolutions passed, in a non-binding student body vote at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

But every time such a bill is put forward, Hillel activists say, the charged atmosphere it creates leaves lasting wounds.

When the student government at the University of California, San Diego voted on a divestment bill in April (see sidebar), Hillel campus director Keri Copans noted some Jewish students standing on the other side of the room with the STUDENTS on page 22

WASHINGTON (Forward) — They flocked to Washington during the summer months, driven by their desire to get a taste of politics and maybe gain some points in the networking game after they graduate from college.

Crowding the Metro during rush hour, they often irritated locals by standing on the left side of the escalator, which by local custom is reserved for speed walkers. In congressional office buildings they were easily spotted, visibly uncomfortable in their khakis and suit jackets.

Summer is the season of internships in the nation’s capital, and about 20,000 students participated this year. Jewish groups estimated that some 6,000 of the summer interns were Jewish.

Graham Hoffman, associate vice president at Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, said the figure is based on estimates by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and other Jewish groups that handled summer internships. The high percentage reflects the disproportionate representation of Jewish students at top universities and in campus leadership roles, Jewish activists say.

Some interns said they were significantly changed by their experiences.

Lyndsi Sherman, who will start her junior year at San Diego State University in September, spent her summer at Americans for Peace Now, which operated a unique joint internship program with the American Task Force on Palestine.

“This summer really shaped my views,” Sherman said. “Before I was very ‘Israel is always right,’ but the internship at APN put me in a different place.”

Molly Benoit, a University of Florida political science major, was pleasantly surprised by her encounter with the world of politics and lobbying while interning at the National Education Association through a program organized by the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

“It really opened my eyes to a side of lobbying that is not part of the corruption we hear of in the news,” said Benoit, adding that she would gladly return to Washington to lobby for public education after she graduates.

By and large, the Washington experience has charged these young students with loads of enthusiasm.

As they get ready to return to their campuses, the interns speak starry eyed of America’s political capital.

They loved their work, even when

Shelley Greenspan, a student at the University of Florida, interned at the office of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

it entailed envelope stuffing and operating the copier. Many felt that the experience strengthened their Jewish identity.

Moreover, they see themselves coming back to Washington after graduation to join the policymaking machine.

“I came out with a really positive impression of how Congress works,” said Shelley Greenspan, who will be a sophomore at the University of Florida.

Greenspan, who interned in the office of U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), said that “People work like dogs over there.” She added, “It’s easy to bash Congress, but things definitely happen here.”

In her summer stint in Congress, Greenspan spent much of her time taking calls from constituents. She also joined the congresswoman and her staff in briefings and committee hearings.

“I share the views of the woman I worked for, and that is what made it so exciting,” she said.

Katie Mintzer of Ohio State University said she was “fright-

ened” initially by the world of Washington politics.

“I was like a fish out of water, and I asked lots of questions,” said Mintzer, 20, an Ohio native who interned at the Jewish Federations of North America.

Her early fear, however, quickly gave way to a new understanding of politics and government systems.

“I even learned the acronyms,” she said, referring to Washington’s alphabet soup dialect of English, peppered with acronyms and abbreviations seldom heard outside the Beltway.

But for Josh Kahlili, a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles, the encounter with Washington politics also made clear the interest-driven nature of the city.

“In California, people are more laid back and nice to other people,” said Kahlili, who will soon begin a year of work on AIDS issues in D.C. before returning home for medical school. “Over here, people are motivated by interests; they have more of a tunnel vision.”

INTERNS on page 22

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On a Warsaw Ghetto film, an unwitting collaboration

By Tom Tugend Jewish Telegraphic Agency LOS ANGELES (JTA) — The place is the Warsaw Ghetto, the year 1942, and the black-andwhite footage shows fashionably dressed men and women, with yellow Stars of David as accessories, having a high time at a champagne ball.

Later we see emaciated kids rooting through mounds of garbage and excrement for scraps of food.

The contradictory scenes are from “A Film Unfinished,” an unwitting collaboration between a Nazi propaganda crew and an Israeli filmmaker separated by nearly seven decades.

In May 1942, a German film crew in Wehrmacht uniforms arrived at the Warsaw Ghetto with somewhat vague orders to shoot a documentary on the many aspects of ghetto life in order to show the Jewish “folk” character. Each day a local SS commander nicknamed the “Gold Pheasant” would give the crew its assignments.

After 30 days the German crew disappeared. So did its footage — staged shots alternating with actual street scenes. It was never processed into a film or shown in Germany.

In 1954, four reels were discovered in a vault in East Berlin, left behind by the departing Soviet occupation troops. Filmmakers in subsequent years would extract some of the footage for their projects, showing only the scenes of misery, which became accepted as authentic depictions of ghetto life.

It wasn’t until 1998 that a British filmmaker searching for footage on the 1936 Berlin Olympics at a U.S. Air Force base film vault noticed two cans of film on the floor labeled “Das Ghetto.” The 30 minutes of outtakes showed not only that some scenes had been shot repeatedly by the Germans, but also moments in which the Nazi cameramen accidentally entered into

each other’s frames.

That same year, German authorities tracked down and interrogated Willy Wiest, a cameraman on the project.

In 2006, Yael Hersonski, an Israeli television editor and director whose grandmother was a Warsaw Ghetto survivor, started putting together the threads of the story.

Hersonski was attracted to the project for two reasons: her interest in film archives as permanent witnesses to history and the sheer amazement at discovering the Warsaw Ghetto footage.

“After so many years as an Israeli citizen, bombarded with so many films and images that concerned the Jewish Holocaust, I was shocked that I didn’t know anything about this film,” she said.

Hersonski combined the original ghetto scenes with the outtakes to reveal their Nazi origin, adding the testimony of Wiest.

During two years of painstaking research, she said she verified “every document, every page of diary, every archive corridor and staircase shown in the film as the authentic ones, and the languages in which the diaries were written were kept in their origin: Yiddish, Polish and Hebrew.”

For a closing perspective her staff scoured Israel, Poland, England and the United States for Warsaw Ghetto survivors who could recall seeing the German film crew at work. Of the nine that fit the bill, five were willing to watch and comment on the Nazi version of life in the ghetto.

The four women and one man watched the champagne ball patrons dressed up and fed strictly for the occasion. In a “purification” scene, they saw eight young women kidnapped off the street and forced to enter a mikveh naked. The Germans, apparently fascinated by Jewish rituals, painstakingly shot a circumcision, a wedding and the koshering of chickens.

Promotional poster for a “A Film Unfinished,” which features real and staged footage from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942.

The crew didn’t have to stage manage the grimmer scenes: corpses of children and adults lying in the streets; strapping German soldiers shaking down kids trying to smuggle a few carrots into the ghetto; hand-drawn carts piled high with naked skeletons on their way to a makeshift cemetery.

For Hersonski, 34, this was the most difficult part of the project.

“After each session, I found myself physically numb and mentally knocked out,” she said. “I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the survivors themselves

must have felt.”

However agonizing the experience, it may have been the most enlightening, for it showed kernels of truth and reality amid the staged ghetto scenes.

For instance, pedestrians in a number of scenes seemed to walk indifferently past dead children lying unattended on the street. The outtakes showed some of the same pedestrians repeatedly walking past the same point, obviously ordered to do so by the Germans.

One survivor commented that such apparently inhuman cal-

lousness existed as a kind of defense mechanism.

“We became indifferent to the suffering of others, otherwise it was impossible to live,” she said.

In another example, while the champagne ball was enacted under Nazi coercion to show the gap between rich and poor, a few dozen ghetto inhabitants had managed to hold on to their money and temporarily were able to enjoy some privileges.

In the end, of course, the rich suffered the same fate as their poorer brethren.

In any case, Hersonski said, “Nobody who wasn’t in a ghetto or concentration camp can judge these people.”

Hersonski is not surprised that a few factual scenes, such as German soldiers stripping starving kids of some smuggled carrots, were included in the footage.

“Propaganda consists not merely of lies,” she said. “The most effective propaganda mixes the lies with a few kernels of truth.”

What did German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels hope to achieve with the film? And why was it never completed?

Hersonski speculates that Goebbels may have wanted to try something more subtle after the failure of “The Eternal Jew,” which depicted Jews as hordes of voracious rats emerging from a sewer. Although personally supported by Hitler, the film bombed, even in Germany.

“A Film Unfinished” has won major awards at the Sundance Festival, as well as other film festivals in Berlin, Canada and Jerusalem.

Its production was supported by the New Israeli Foundation for Cinema and Television, Yad Vashem Film Project and YES Docu.

“A Film Unfinished” opens Aug. 18 in New York and Aug. 20 in Los Angeles, followed subsequently by other cities.

R rating sticks for ‘A Film Unfinished’

By Tom Tugend Jewish Telegraphic Agency LOS ANGELES (JTA) — Israeli director Yael Hersonski fought long and hard to bring the Warsaw Ghetto documentary “A Film Unfinished” to the screen, but she couldn’t beat Hollywood’s rating board.

Last week the Motion Picture Association of America upheld a previous decision of an R rating

for the film because of “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities, including graphic nudity,” the latter in a Nazi-coerced scene of young women in a mikveh.

The rating, which prevents anyone under 17 from watching the film unless accompanied by a parent or adult guardian, will not block the commercial screening of the film in theaters scheduled for later this month.

However, the designation will

prevent the film from being shown in high school classes as an educational tool, to the disappointment of its creators and backers.

“In a world where young people are bombarded with meaningless entertainment, it’s unfortunate that a film with real educational and historic value would be denied to them by an organization that is supposed to be working to help them,” said

Adam Yauch, head of the film’s distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories and a former Beastie Boy. Hersonski said, “I realize that this may be a difficult film to watch, but I wish I had had the chance to see such a film when I was a teenager. I think high school teachers should have the opportunity to decide whether or not to use it in their classes.”

The MPAA appeals board

voted 12-3 to uphold the R rating, despite fervent pleas by Hersonski and a letter from Warsaw Ghetto survivor Hana Avrutzky.

Further arguments that the 1998 film “The Last Days,” produced by Academy Award winner Steven Spielberg and showing mass executions and extensive nudity, received a PG-13 rating did not sway the board’s decision.

NATIONAL

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

From cowboy hats to black hats

By Rukhl Schaechter Forverts NEW YORK (Forward) — Imagine the scene: Four bearded rabbis sit for hours around a table, swaying before their open volumes of the Talmud, debating whether a Jew who owns a gate tower near the entrance to his mansion is required to hang a mezuzah on it.

A synagogue in Brooklyn’s Borough Park? Lakewood, N.J.?

No, it’s a kollel (Talmudic institute) in Dallas.

In a place where cowboys once roamed and the Reform movement has long held sway, a group of haredi Orthodox Jewish scholars has gained a foothold over the past two decades and is transforming the local Jewish community.

The catalyst for change has been rabbis affiliated with the Dallas Area Torah Association (DATA), which was founded in 1992 and offers an extensive array of adult classes, including Jewish philosophy, Bible, prayer for beginners and Hebrew lessons. Its programs, most of them offered free, have become so popular that they attract thousands of students every year.

Unlike the Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidim, who have become a fixture in Jewish outreach in cities around the globe, the DATA rabbis are members of the scholarshipcentered, Lithuanian-yeshiva community (also known as the yeshivahs or Litvish). This stream of haredi Orthodox Judaism was founded in the 18th century as a protest against the Chasidic movement for its emphasis on mysticism and personal religious experience.

Although the community’s fervent opposition to the Chasidim has since mellowed, the two groups still retain their own rabbis, schools and communal institutions.

Although it is not known how many families have become Orthodox Jews since DATA was founded, Gary Weinstein, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, claims that hundreds of families have done so, and hundreds of others have become more active in Jewish communal life.

“It’s actually a magnificent story,” said Weinstein, 57.

Born and raised in Dallas, Weinstein said that when he was growing up, the city was without a kosher restaurant or eruv, an enclosure around a community to allow Orthodox Jews to carry things on the Sabbath. Today there are six kosher restaurants and two eruvs. Dallas has 10 Orthodox synagogues, three haredi Orthodox yeshivas and a Modern Orthodox day school.

“For us to become a mecca of

the observant community is miraculous,” Weinstein said.

A kollel is an institute of fulltime, advanced study of the Talmud and rabbinic literature. In most haredi circles it consists of married men who receive monthly stipends for their learning.

Now a new kind of institution called a community kollel has emerged in which the rabbis on staff learn Talmud for part of the day, and also teach Torah to affiliated and unaffiliated Jews, men as well as women, through one-on-one study and large-scale outreach programs.

Dallas lies in the heart of the Bible Belt, where evangelical Christians are a significant part of the culture. Seeing how seriously their Christian neighbors take their religious beliefs has encouraged some Jews to begin asking questions about their own religious heritage.

Larry Kosowsky, who was raised in a Conservative Jewish home in Wisconsin, told the Forward that his interest in Orthodoxy was sparked when a friend became a born-again Christian and tried to convince him that Jesus was the Messiah.

“My wife, Karen, and I just couldn’t combat his arguments,” he said.

When DATA was founded, Kosowsky approached one of its rabbis, Yerachmiel Fried, about the matter. Fried gave him a book to read on the subject, and before long the Kosowskys were accepting invitations to Sabbath meals with the families of the DATA rabbis.

“Eventually we kashered our house and started to keep Shabbos,” Kosowsky said.

When Richard Glazer, a native of Fort Worth, Texas, lost his father in 1993, he went to a Conservative synagogue, Shearith Israel, to say Kaddish and realized how little he knew about the prayer service.

“I remember thinking, if I can read Hebrew, how could I be so confused?” Glazer related, with a Texas drawl. “Then someone told me about the classes at DATA, so I started going, took a class about the Jewish calendar and a parshah class [on the weekly Torah portion]. I found the place very warm and embracing. Everyone who comes there gets lots of attention.”

At DATA, the classes are coed except for the Talmud class, which is for men only, because Talmud study has historically been regarded as a man’s activity.

Many of the class topics change from year to year.

Rabbi Bentzi Epstein, the director of DATA, recently began a fiveweek course called Spirituality 101.

HATS on page 22

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Article fuels speculation, debate over possible strike against Iran

By Leslie Susser Jewish World Review JERUSALEM (JTA) — If the United States doesn’t attack Iran’s nuclear facilities within the next eight months or so, Israel probably will.

So says journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in the September issue of The Atlantic magazine in an article that is fueling debate and speculation among many Middle East experts.

Goldberg bases his conclusion mainly on three premises: In the Israeli view, Iran will be in a position to produce a bomb by next spring or very soon thereafter. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is taking persistent Iranian threats to wipe Israel off the map seriously and is resolved to prevent a second Holocaust. And Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak argue that even if Iran doesn’t use the bomb, a nuclear threat

gic level, is the fact that attacking Iran without an American green light could lead to a major rupture between Jerusalem and Washington.

And if distanced from or even abandoned by America, Israel could quickly become a pariah state isolated on the international stage.

The widespread international condemnation of Israel’s action against a Turkish “peace” vessel last May is an indication of where things could go.

Moreover, any Israeli strike against Iran would almost certainly trigger a major regional war, with Israel under missile and rocket attack from Iran, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and also possibly from Syria and Hamas in Gaza. That, in turn, could lead to spiraling oil prices for which Israel would be blamed. And Iran and its proxies almost certainly would unleash terror attacks against Jewish targets worldwide.

Kobi Gideon/Flash90

A recent article in The Atlantic is fueling speculation over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s thinking on Iran.

hanging over Israel could destroy the Zionist enterprise, with Israelis leaving the country and prospective immigrants staying away.

Goldberg makes much of the prime minister’s reverence for his 100-year-old historian father, Benzion Netanyahu, who sees history in terms of successive threats to the existence of the Jewish people. And it is true that Netanyahu at times depicts himself as a latter day Churchill, whose life’s mission is to save his people.

Nevertheless, Goldberg gives many reasons why Israel would think twice before launching an attack on Iran.

On the tactical level, a strike against Iran’s well-protected and far-flung nuclear facilities might have limited effect. Also, the operational complexity of having to fly great distances, over American lines or Arab territory, is a military planner’s nightmare.

Far worse, though, on the strate-

For reasons like these, outgoing Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi is said to be unenthusiastic about launching an Israeli strike. Although the Israel Defense Forces reportedly has conducted simulation exercises as far afield as Greece, and is continually fine-tuning its operational plans, Ashkenazi would prefer not to have to carry them out.

Ashkenazi is not the only senior military man with doubts.

Maj. Gen. (Res.) Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser and one of Israel’s sharpest military analysts, argued in a muchtouted position paper late last year that there is no way Israel would risk harming its key strategic relationship with the United States for the lesser gain of putting Iran’s nuclear program back by a few years. Moreover, he said, if there is to be a military strike, the chances are that the Americans would prefer to carry it out themselves.

According to Eiland, some U.S. Army chiefs maintain that since America would be affected by the fallout of any strike, it should bring its greater military prowess to bear to ensure success.

In Eiland’s view, for Israel to have a realistic strike option, the following conditions would have to pertain: a clear failure of the current sanctions against Iran; American unwillingness to take military action despite what some of the generals have been saying; and American understanding for Israel’s need to act. Then Netanyahu would have to make his own personal calculus— bearing in mind that failure could leave the Gulf unstable, Western interests undermined, Israel blamed and isolated on the world stage, and worst of all, Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons accorded a degree of legitimacy.

Zeev Maoz, a political scientist at the University of California, Davis, and at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, adds another concern. In a mid-August article in Haaretz, he suggested that an attack on Iran could lead to international pressure on Israel to dismantle its presumed nuclear arsenal and to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. If Israel refuses to buckle, it could be ostracized, Maoz wrote, and if it does buckle under pressure, it would be losing a key bargaining chip for the creation of a new regional security order.

So given the risks an attack on Iran would entail, would Israel consider a nuclear balance of fear with Iran?

According to Maj. Gen (Res.) Yitzhak Ben Yisrael, former head of military research and development in the IDF and the Defense Ministry, in such a balance the advantage would tilt hugely in Israel’s favor. He told JTA that the Iranians are trying to build a fission bomb that at around 20 kilotons would be about the size of the American bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

Foreign experts assert that Israel possesses fusion bombs that can be from 50 to 250 times more destructive than the 1945 atomic bomb.

In late 2007, Anthony Cordesman, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, published “Iran, Israel and Nuclear War: An Illustrative Scenario Analysis,” in which he tried to gauge the outcome of a nuclear showdown sometime in the next decade. His bottom line: Israel would be able to survive and rebuild, while Iran would not.

ARTICLE on page 21

Israeli Ministry of Defense

Then-Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard meets with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Jerusalem, June 22, 2009.

Parties wrestle over ‘pro-Israel’ label in Australian campaign

By Dan Goldberg Jewish Telegraphic Agency SYDNEY, Australia (JTA) — As the two major parties in Australia’s federal election vie for the title of Israel’s most ardent backer, most Jewish leaders believe that Australia’s longstanding, strong bilateral support for the Jewish state will not be jeopardized regardless of the outcome.

Along with support for Israel, Australia’s 110,000-strong Jewish community will consider perennial election issues such as the economy, refugees and Aboriginal affairs in Saturday’s race pitting Prime Minister Julia Gillard of the Labor Party against Tony Abbott of the Liberal Party.

Since voting is mandatory in Australia, Sabbath-observing Jews will be using early polling booths to cast their ballots this week.

Polls show a tight race between Gillard, whose bloodless coup two months ago toppled Labor leader Kevin Rudd, and Abbott, the conservative Liberal leader once known as the “Mad Monk” for making some brutishly candid remarks.

The Liberals have been trying to drive a wedge between Labor and the Jewish community, according to Philip Mendes, a Melbournebased academic.

During the campaign Abbott, 52, has described his party’s bond with Israel as “unshakable.”

Abbott, a London native who was educated at Oxford, charged Labor with occasionally abandoning the Jewish state at the United Nations and pledged to take action against the “vicious anti-Semitic message” of Hizb-ut Tahrir, a radical Islamist group banned in America.

The latter, said Mendes, is “another unapologetic appeal to

Jewish voters.”

But Mendes, the co-editor of “Jews & Australian Politics,” said Labor’s record on Israel has been “superior to virtually every other Western social democratic government, including the recently deposed New Labour in the UK.” In Labor’s first term in office, the party proposed a bipartisan resolution on Israel’s 60th anniversary in 2008, supported Israel during its showdown with Hamas in 2009, boycotted the Durban II UN anti-racism conference, opposed the the Goldstone report on the Gaza war and ramped up sanctions against Iran.

Michael Danby, a Jewish lawmaker and perhaps the most ardent Israel backer in the government, said Gillard “stood like a rock” during the Gaza incursion and that Labor “will not shirk its historic responsibility” to defend Israel against Iran.

But a diplomatic meltdown in relations with Jerusalem took place in May following an inquiry finding that there was “no doubt” Israel forged four Australian passports used in the assassination of a Hamas leader. In response, Rudd ordered an official from the Israeli Embassy in Canberra to leave the country.

Many Jews were “taken aback at how vehement Rudd was in his handling of the affair,” said a senior Jewish leader who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Indeed, Robert Goot, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, issued a statement at the time describing the expulsion as “an overreaction.”

In an attempt to heal the rift, Rudd hosted a kosher dinner with senior Jewish leaders at the prime PARTIES on page 22

SOCIAL LIFE

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

11

ANNOUNCEMENTS

BAR MITZVAH lijah and Gabriel Koreman, twin sons of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffrey Koreman of Terrace Park, Ohio, became B’nai Mitzvah in Israel on July 22, 2010.

They were accompanied by their brother, Asher Koreman, their grandparents, Dr. and Mrs. Raymond Fine and all their aunts, uncles and cousins; Susan and Henry Rollman, Amy Rollman, Justin and Robin Rollman, Dr. Mindie Hastie and Timothy Goldsmith, Emily and Elizabeth Hastie, and Dan Schultz.

All four grandsons of Dr. and Mrs. Fine have now become B’nai Mitzvah in Israel.

E

R E F UA H S H L E M A H Frieda Berger Fraida bat Raizel

Pepa Kaufman Perel Tova bat Sima Sora

Daniel Eliyahu Daniel ben Tikvah

Murray Kirschner Chaim Meir ben Basha

Mel Fisher Moshe ben Hinda

Alan Schwartzberg Avraham Pesach ben Mindel

Edith Kaffeman Yehudit bat B’racha

Ravid Sulam Ravid Chaya bat Ayelet

Roma Kaltman Ruchama bat Perl

Edward Ziv Raphael Eliezer Aharon ben Esther Enya

THE OLDEST ENGLISH J E W I S H W E E K LY I N A M E R I C A IS NOW AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLINE

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CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

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JVS 70 ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION & REDEDICATION TH

JVS opened its Blue Ash building to the public May 6 to thank the community for 70 years of support and to show off its renovations.

JVS president and chief executive officer Peter Bloch gives a tour to Joe Brant.

Bridget Barzman, a consultant with Cincinnati Career Network, a JVS program, gives a tour to Brian Monk, director of operations for the Mayerson JCC.

JVS president and chief executive officer Peter Bloch gives a tour to Jeff Baden, executive director of the Mayerson JCC.

Barry Wolfson, a JVS manager, gives a tour to Diana Fenichel.

JVS staff member Marge Selm dances with consumer Mary Weber in the renovated JVS Adult Day Services during a Cinco de Mayo theme day.

JVS Adult Day Services consumers James Zurline and Virginia Parker strum guitars during the Cinco de Mayo festivities.

JVS president and chief executive officer Peter Bloch affixes a mezuzah to a doorpost.

JVS consumer Beth Schneider handles plastic for packaging.

Chrissy Perkins, left, a JVS manager, gives a tour to, from left, Judy Bertsch, Scott Steiger, Ken Wigton and Mark Fay.

JVS consumer Chaun Williams assembles a box in the JVS workroom.

JVS consumer Chris Witz puts together a box in the JVS workroom.

JVS consumer Michael Lane puts together boxes in the JVS workroom.

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

JVS board chair Jody Brant addresses the crowd.

Shep Englander, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, speaks to the gathering.

JVS board member Robert Clayton, who headed the building committee, explains how the renovations came about.

Social media expert Michael Loban, chief marketing officer of InfoTrust, gives a presentation about social media during an evening program.

JVS board members gather outside the JVS building in Blue Ash. From left, Sarah Weiss, Michael Margolis, Jody Brant, chair; Peter Bloch, president and CEO; Edie Rau, Robert Clayton, Charlie Croog and Brian Szames.

Peter Bloch, JVS president and chief executive officer, presides at a ribbon-cutting ceremony, with, from left, Cheryl Phipps, superintendent of Hamilton County Developmental Disabilities Services; Joel Brant, chair of the JVS Board of Trustees; and Shep Englander, chief executive officer of the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati.

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Elegant, thy name is Palace

By Marilyn Gale Dining Editor Yes, Virginia, there really is a palace in town. From the moment I entered the stately Cincinnatian Hotel where the Palace restaurant is located, I knew I had come to the world of magical dining. Here, cooking is artistry, an alchemical process of infusing flavors, textures and culinary methods to provide Greater Cincinnati residents, out of town vacationers and business travelers with upscale dining in our downtown.

Amazed at the elegance of the hotel, I looked up the historic significance of this fine old establishment. Wikipedia is a quick, useful reference and I soon found a blurb on this architectural treasure.

“Built in 1882, the Cincinnatian Hotel was designed as a ‘Grand Hotel’ of the 19th century. It was the tallest building in Cincinnati and designed by the same architect as Cincinnati’s Music Hall and City Hall. There were hitching posts outside and the hotel was located where the trolley cars made their turn. With a renovation in 1987, the hotel retained the old world charm with its marble and walnut grand staircase continuing to maintain its imposing lobby presence. The original Cricket Restaurant has since been replaced by the Palace Restaurant and the Cricket Lounge.”

The current establishment overflows with ghostly spirits of chic couples dining after the opera or symphony; ethereal ladies wearing floor length lacy dresses, family heirloom jewels dangling over their full bossoms, and exquisitely mannered gentlemen clothed in tuxedos with long tails, sipping after dinner cognac or sherry, or puffing on an imported cigar.

Yet, in spite of the memory of vintage elegance, the Palace chefs radiate new trends, flavors and cooking processes that would bewitch even the most learned foodie. For this review, I met with dessert chef Summer Genetti and assistant chef Adam Tenhundfeld, both local Cincinnatians.

Chef Summer Genetti loves her job and her four-star desserts confirm her passion. “Cooking was something that I never got tired of,” said Genetti. “I watched my parents work jobs they hated and I vowed not to go in that direction.” After graduating from high school in the Eastgate area, Genetti reports she was in a middle class kid rut, not sure what she wanted to do. She became a body piercer and to earn extra money, she started to make pies, muffins

and cookies for the coffee shop down the street. The demand for her pastries grew and she gave up body piercing and took a job as a chef at an upscale restaurant in Kentucky. Soon she was catapulted into her first pastry position because the baker quit. “I had no idea what I was doing,” Genetti

tion, said Genetti. “It is an instant reward. There is a lot of artistry and a skill set. Food plays on your emotion and heartstrings, it is paired with romance. You have a love affair with the image and fragrance of grandmother making jam as compared to your first office job.”

Executive chef, Jose Salazar, and Summer Genetti, innovative dessert chef, are the culinary magicians at the Palace restaurant.

Try the Kentucky Black Angus rib eye, which is a mouth watering favorite. Afterward, treat yourself to the Palace’s malted chocolate collection.

chuckled, recalling her early trialand-error creations, including ruining 11 pounds of chocolate in one day. “Cooking is tactile, hands on labor, in contrast to wrapping your mind around someone else’s thoughts as in a traditional educa-

Executive Chef Jose Salazar leads the pack of talented culinary artists knowledgeable in a wide range of American, European and Asian food traditions. A native of the Queens borough in New York City, and proud of his South

American origins, Salazar is eager to entice foodies and diners from the Tri-state area with a seasonal menu and gastronomical gems.

The Palace menu bursts with local ingredients and hybrid combinations of comfort cuisine.

Vegetarian gnocchi, English peas, mushrooms, local squashes, watermelon gazpacho, and fruit based soup show attention to detail and delicate flavor. A celebration of Summer’s Bounty is a luscious entrée consisting of available fresh vegetables that are pureed, braised or poached, then layered on top of a succulent mound of dried mushrooms and olives. Beets are golden and red; pea soup is a bright, glittery green.

Colors are highlighted—call these creations edible art.

Every third Thursday, the Palace presents a regional cuisine.

On Aug. 19, it will feature Jamaican cooking; two courses for two people plus a bottle of wine, at the reasonable price of $60. Food from Thailand will be highlighted on Sept. 16 and on Oct. 21, Moroccan specialties will be prepared. Genneti and Tenhundfeld enjoy the research and creativity that is involved in planning these regional culinary delicacies.

Genneti added that the chefs get a chance to make food that isn’t typically on the Palace menu, like red velvet cake and fried chicken to feature southern American cooking.

America’s love affair with food preparation is growing.

Perhaps this is a sign of an affluent society. With our leisure time extended, the quest for exotic flavors to excite the palate has escalated. The Palace offers the Chef’s table, an interactive dining dream for foodies of all ages. A party of up to eight people can dine in the actual kitchen. Seven day advance notice is required. Questions are asked prior to the dining event, as to what diners love, what they hate, what they are allergic to.

Lucky patrons participate in a tasting of between five to nine courses. This marvelous eating adventure is great for entertaining clients or celebrating sophisticated appetites.

“You dine to enjoy life,” concluded Genetti. How true, so treat yourself to a very special experience at the Palace. From three course prix fare to Elysian fields lamb to sweet corn cream brulee or the malted chocolate collection, your taste buds will surely be stimulated in this majestic atmosphere.

The Palace 601 Vine Street Downtown Cincinnati (in the Cincinnatian Hotel) (513-381-3000)

DINING OUT

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

15 Dine-In / Take-Out / Delivery

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OPINION

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Divining Ms. Kagan Imagining that one can divine how a new Supreme Court justice will rule on the sort of fundamental issues often brought before the High Court – particularly when the justice has never before served as a judge – is a pastime best left to gamblers and fools.

Even Justices who had long judicial records before ascending to a seat on the nation’s highest court have sometimes surprised observers with positions they subsequently took. Certainly a Justice who has no track record on the bench whatsoever – our newest member of the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan – cannot at this point be counted on as a safe vote for anything.

Still, there are subtle indications of the new Justice’s legal philosophy that can be at least noted with – depending on one’s beliefs – either hope or dread. Certainly, the fact that Americans United for Separation of Church and State expressed concern during the nomination process about Ms. Kagan’s views on religious liberty and the funding of religiously sponsored social service programs is, at least from an Orthodox Jewish perspective, cause for hope.

The descriptively named organization’s concerns were about Justice Kagan’s attitude toward the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which bars the government both from “the establishment of” religion (the Establishment Clause) and from “prohibiting the free exercise of” religion (the Free Exercise Clause). During the hearings on her nomination, Ms. Kagan mirrored the inherent tension between the two clauses by stating that “there needs to be some freedom for government to make religious accommodations… and some freedom… to enforce the values of the Establishment Clause.”

Her further comment, that the Constitution intends to “ensure that you have full rights as an American citizen… no matter what your religion is… and to ensure that… people – because of their religious belief… [are not placed] at some disadvantage with respect to any of the rights of American citizenship,” might have discomfited some. Many religious Americans, though, had reason to take heart at Ms. Kagan’s words.

As they did about revelations of other positions she has promoted. When, for instance, in 1995, Congress endorsed the concept of “charitable choice” – the forerunner of the “faith-based” program, which enables religious groups to access federal funds to provide social services – Ms. Kagan, then Bill Clinton’s associate White

House Counsel, wrote in a memo that she was not in favor of a provision that would bar such funding for “pervasively sectarian” organizations.

Similarly, two years later, in a memo on a Clinton proposal to subsidize volunteers working with religious groups, Ms. Kagan wrote: “It seems to me that we have to give people a very strong signal that we need to find some way of including people who are doing service activities under the auspices of [religious] programs.”

She added that “At the very least, we should be able to include participants in programs that aren’t ‘pervasively sectarian’” – seeming to imply that she was even open to the broader model.

And in 1999, she called herself “the biggest fan… in the building” of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which helped prevent the enactment of laws that might substantially hinder Americans’ religious freedom.

(Although her declaration was in the context of advising then VicePresident Al Gore’s staff to not mention it at what she considered a sensitive time.)

Perhaps most encouraging (and impressive in a personal way) was her willingness, during hearings on her nomination last year for the post of solicitor general, to admit that something she wrote in 1987 while clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall was “deeply mistaken” and “utterly wrong.”

That something was the notion that “all religious organizations should be off limits” when government funding is being used to offer instruction to adolescents about their personal behavior. Although she took pains to note that “the use of a grant in a particular way by a particular religious organization might constitute a violation” of the First Amendment if the funds were used to promote “specifically religious activity,” her description of her earlier memo as “the dumbest thing I’ve ever read” indicates a realistic and inclusive attitude toward religious groups’ involvement in federal programs – and a refreshing honesty.

None of which is to say that there aren’t things in Ms. Kagan’s record that are cause for concern to some of us religious Americans.

During her tenure in the Clinton administration, she played an aggressive role – some would say an inappropriate one – in defending “partial birth abortion.”

On another social front, her ban on military recruitment at Harvard Law School where she served as Dean, because of the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, has generated some concern regarding her apparent support for some of the more extreme positions of the “gay rights” agenda. (Although,

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Do you have something to say? E-mail your letter to editor@americanisraelite.com

Dear Editor, AJC welcomes the U.S. State Department’s decision to remove Eilat from its online advisory on travel to Israel.

AJC had called on the State Department to retract its warning

on Eilat, which was issued after terrorists fired missiles from Egyptian-controlled Sinai that killed a Jordanian in Aqaba, bordering Eilat.

The inexplicable warning on Eilat was misplaced and hurtful to our ally, Israel, and to the city

of Eilat, a popular tourist destination. We are pleased that the State Department has removed any reference to Eilat in its travel advisory on Israel.

Barbara Glueck Director, AJC Cincinnati Region

T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: KI TZEI (DEVARIM 21:10—25:19)

2. Is the right in question one without limit? a) Yes b) No

4. Which commandment has a limit of forty? a) Maximum times one is required to return a lost item to his owner b) Maximum amount of lashes administered as punishment c) Times one must warn a child of improper behavior

3. Are Egyptian or Edomite converts acceptable? a) Yes b) No

5. If a man seduces a girl into a relationship can he marry her? a) Yes b) No

1. What does the Torah permit during a war? a) Spoils b) Taking captive women c) Use of any weapon

regret his decision.

3. A 23:8,9 There is a 3 generation wait before they can marry in the general populace.

4. A 25:3 Actually 39 lashes were administered. Rashi 5. A 23:28,29

By Rabbi Avi Shafran Contributing Columnist

ANSWERS 1. B 21:10-14 The Torah permitted him to take a non Jewish woman in battle (where emotions run high) because he would take her anyway. However the Torah says the result is he will dislike her and have children who stray from the path. Rashi 2. B 21:10-14 The Torah mandates a waiting period (21:13) to see if the man will

16

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

during her nomination hearings in 2009 for the position of Solicitor General, she did clearly state that “there is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”)

Still, these qualms aside, it would appear that our new Supreme Court Justice has deep sensitivity to issues of religious liberty. That is cause for optimism, especially when her views are con-

trasted with those of the man she has replaced – Justice John Paul Stevens. Justice Stevens consistently voted against government aid to religious institutions, and took an extremely narrow view of the scope of protection afforded by the Free Exercise Clause.

The conventional wisdom is that Justice Kagan’s replacing former Justice John Paul Stevens her-

alds no real change in the Court’s ideological makeup. With respect to issues of religious freedom, though, that may not be the case.

Will Justice Kagan turn out to be Stevens redux or a Justice of a very different stripe? Time will tell, but, at least with regard to her approach to the First Amendment’s religion clauses, here’s hoping we will see a meaningful upgrade.

Have something on your mind?

Write a letter to the editor and let your voice be heard.

Send your letter by e-mail:

editor@ americanisraelite.com

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

JEWISH LIFE

17

Sedra of the Week

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARASHAT KI TETZE DEUTERONOMY 21:10—25:19

“When a man takes a wife and marries her, and she does not find grace in his eyes because he has found her to be sexually immoral, he shall write her a bill of divorcement, give it to her in her hand, and send her away from his house” (Deuteronomy 24:1).

This text is the source for divorce law in Judaism. At first glance, the Torah seems to be making two clear statements: first, that a divorce can only be initiated if a major sin of adultery has been committed, and second, that it is the husband who must give the bill of divorce into the hand of his wife unilaterally.

Our sages within the Oral Law of the Talmud interpreted these verses differently. They taught that sexual immorality is merely an example of what could go wrong in a marriage; the operative factor is the first part of the verse, “...she does not find grace in his eyes. Because they realized that marriage can become intolerable even though the couple has been faithful to each other, the Rabbis permitted divorce as long as both husband and wife agreed to one.

They also ruled that it is still the husband who must give the divorce to the wife, the wife has the right to initiate divorce proceedings certainly if he is abusing her and even if she simply finds him detestable. If the Rabbinical Judges feel that a divorce is warranted, they could have the husband beaten up until he agrees to give his wife a divorce. (B.T. Ketubot 63, Rambam Laws of divorce chapter 2 law 20). So anxious were the Rabbis to make certain that women would not be unfairly subjected to an impossible marital relationship, that the Talmud brings five instances whereby the Rabbis themselves can nullify and abrogate a marriage if the husband acts like a scoundrel and refuses to give his wife a divorce.

And when there were objections to the principle that a religious court could send legal “enforcers” to “beat him until he declares that he really wants to divorce her”—since such corporal enforcement is the very antithesis of a volitional act—Maimonides explains that since every Jew really wants to do what is right, and since it is right for the husband to free his wife from a marriage she finds intolerable, the corporal

enforcement merely helps him do what he knows he should do.

Although Jewish law, as codified in the 16th-century Shulhan Aruch, was loathe to enforce a divorce when the woman had no more compelling grounds than “I am no longer in love with him; I

religious political party system of wheeling and dealing—one of the leaders of the haredi world, has effectively taken over the Chief Rabbinate and its courts. Of the latest decisions regarding divorce is based on a responsum by a noted scholar, Rabbi Shmuel de

MODERN ORTHODOX SERVICE Daily Minyan for Shacharit, Mincha, Maariv, Shabbat Morning Service and Shalosh Seudas.

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RABBI HANAN BALK & ASSISTANT RABBI STUART LAVENDA

If the Rabbinical Judges feel that a divorce is warranted, they could have the husband beaten up until he agrees to give his wife a divorce. find him detestable,” the courts did coerce the husband if they discovered more convincing objective reasons, such as sexual dysfunction, physical abuse, etc. One of the important functions of the Ohr Torah Stone Monica Dennis Goldberg Women advocates and their legal aid center and hotline is to expand the possible reasons for compelling husbands to give divorces: for example, verbal abuse can be just as insidious as physical abuse, and male philandering can be just as destructive to family life as female promiscuity.

It should also be noted that no 21st century religious court in an enlightened country can enforce its decisions by beating an individual until he “agrees” to accept its ruling. Hence, other means of “enforcement” have been introduced, such as rescinding the recalcitrant husband’s professional degrees, canceling his driving license and—if all else fails— sending him to prison. In this way, we maintain the biblical norm—it is still the husband who gives the get—while the woman is now offered a real opportunity to “sue” for divorce, initiating the process when a marriage reaches the point of utter misery. In this way the religious courts in Israel remained true to Jewish Law at the same time that they did everything possible to alleviate the suffering of a woman whose husband would not free her of his own volition. And this is fully in accordance with the statement in the Talmud, “in order to free an agunah (a woman denied a get by her husband), the sages employed every leniency” (B.T. Gittin 2b, 3a.).

So, to quote a Yiddish adage, if it’s so good, why is it still so bad?

In recent years—via the Knesset’s

Medina (known as the Maharashdam, 1506-1589)—a minority opinion, which maintains that the only time a religious court can obligate a husband to give a divorce is if the husband refuses, absolutely and categorically, to give one. If however, the husband says he will give a divorce, but only on condition that he receive a substantial payment or receives visiting rights (alone) to children he has abused, then the wife must acquiesce if she wants a divorce.

Tragically, the policy of many of our chief rabbinical court judges today is to accept the view of the Maharashdam!

God is defined as a God of love and a God of compassion when He is asked by Moses to explain the way in which He wants His wishes to be expressed in this world (Exodus 34: 5-6).

The Talmud expresses this truth by doing summersaults to free a woman from a difficult marital situation, even to the extent of accepting the single testimony of a woman or of a gentile in order to make her free. The use of a minority stringent opinion in order to keep a woman chained to an impossible marriage or in order to wrest from her difficult conditions of payment or children visitations in return for a divorce goes against the spirit as well as the letter of Talmudic Law and the way in which it was interpreted by generations of decisors (Poskin). For the sake of the God of compassion, our religious courts must be compassionate toward the Agunah.

Shabbat Shalom Shlomo Riskin Chancellor Ohr Torah Stone Chief Rabbi — Efrat Israel

6442 Stover Ave • 531-6654 • golfmanorsynagogue.org

3100 LONGMEADOW LANE • CINCINNATI, OH 45236 791-1330 • www.templesholom.net Miriam Terlinchamp, Rabbi Marcy Ziek, President Gerry H. Walter, Rabbi Emeritus August 20 6:00 pm Shabbat Nosh 6:30 pm Shabbat Evening Service

August 27 6:30 pm Shabbat Evening Service Picnic to follow services

August 21 10:30 am Shabbat Morning Service

August 28 10:30 am Shabbat Morning Service Jacob Habib Bar Mitzvah

Sincere Sympathy To: Steve and Barbara Levinson, Scott and Courtney Levinson on the death of their mother and grandmother, Gladys Kirtchik

18

JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

Jewz in the Newz

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist A MAJOR LEAGUE BAR MITZVAH On Aug. 9, former major league outfielder ELLIOT MADDOX, 62, celebrated his bar mitzvah at a Jewish summer camp run by the New Jersey “Y” organization. The camp director invited Maddox to celebrate his bar mitzvah there after learning that Maddox, who had converted to Judaism in 1975, never had a bar mitzvah ceremony. Some 300 campers attended the bar mitzvah.

For the last five years, Maddox has helped his former New York Yankee teammate RON BLOOMBERG run baseball clinics at the camp. Bloomberg said of Maddox and the ceremony: “He’s a brother of mine and a teammate of mine and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I would never have missed.”

Maddox, who is AfricanAmerican, grew-up in Union, N.J., the son of religious Christian parents. Many of his friends and Little League teammates were Jewish and one young Jewish friend took it upon himself to acquaint Maddox with Judaism.

Maddox was drawn to Judaism and this interest continued as he went off to attend the Univ. of Michigan, where he took some courses in Judaic studies. He left the University after two years when he was drafted (1968) by the Detroit Tigers. However, he eventually got his Univ. of Michigan degree (1976) by taking courses in the off-season.

Maddox, an excellent defensive player, spent one season (1970) with the Tigers, before being traded. All tolled, he played 10 years in the majors, mostly with the Yankees and Mets. In 1974, while with the Yankees, he had his best offensive year, hitting over .300.

The same year, he began his conversion studies with a New York Conservative rabbi.

FUN FLICKS “The Switch” stars Jennifer Aniston as Kassie, a smart single woman who is determined to have a baby, even if it means using a sperm donor. Her best friend, Wally, (Jason Bateman), objects when told of the plan. Wally’s objection is partially based on the fact that he harbors romantic feelings for Kassie—but, as his best friend Leonard (JEFF GOLDBLUM) tells him: “You waited too long to make your move and now

she’s put you in the friend category.” A series of almost-slapstick events results in Kassie unknowingly carrying Wally’s baby; instead of the baby of the sperm donor she selected (Patrick Wilson). Fast forward seven years, and Wally finally meets Kassie’s precocious-but-neurotic son —a spitting image of him. Of course, there are further complications before Wally, Kassie and their child can live happily ever after.

Emma Thompson plays the title role in “Nanny McPhee Returns.” McPhee is a nanny with magical powers who comes to the aid of Mrs. Green, a harried young British mother (MAGGIE GYLLENHAAL, 33). Her husband is off fighting in WWII, leaving Mrs. Green to run the family farm, take care of her own young children, and cope with some bratty city cousins living with her for the duration of the war. (“Switch” and “McPhee” open on Friday, Aug. 20.)

TURKISH DELIGHTS On July 27, MORRIE YOHAI, most famous as the inventor of the famous snack food Cheez Doodles, died at age 90.

Perhaps you saw one of his obituaries. Yohai’s life was covered in fairly long obituaries written by the New York Times and by the Associated Press. As is often the case, some interesting details found in one obituary were not found in the other, and vice versa.

Morrie Yohai was born in Harlem, the son of Turkish Jewish immigrants. His family later moved to the Bronx. His father founded a successful snack food company (Old London) in the 1920s. Morrie joined his father’s firm after WWII. Before doing so, he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in business from top schools and served as a Marine combat pilot in the South Pacific.

In the ‘50s, he hit on the idea of using an existing machine that could extrude liquefied corn meal to make Cheez Doodles. In 1965, his company was bought by Borden and he was made vicepresident of Borden’s snack divisions. One of his duties was deciding what prizes to put in Cracker Jacks. He left Borden in 1975 and taught college business classes.

Later in life, he got interested in Jewish mysticism. He learned Hebrew in his ‘60s so he could read the Zohar and he wrote a poetry book on interpreting the Torah.

He also supported many environmental and conservation causes.

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

FROM THE PAGES 100 Years Ago The Misses Marie and Eugenie Sachs have gone to Charlevoix, Mich.

Mrs. Isaac Mann, accompanied by her daughters, Misses Juliet and Madelin, and Mrs. Chas. Longeni are in Atlantic City.

Mrs. Sara Heilbrun and her granddaughter, Miss Margery Heilbrun, will leave Sunday for Niagara Falls, Thousand Islands and other eastern resorts.

Mrs. Adolph Haas, formerly of Cincinnati, but now of New York City,

is visiting her daughter and family, Mrs. Martin A. Meyer, of San Francisco, Cal. Complaint has reached this office that a lot of young hoodlums around Sinton Park are annoying and assaulting the Jewish people of that locality, especially the old and helpless men.

On Barr Street, between John and Baymiller, an old man doing some hauling was attacked by a number of these young ruffians and pelted with stones and rubbish. Another old man

at Eighth and Mound Streets was treated in a like manner. Investigation showed that this had been going on regularly in that section of the city.

The people who are the chief sufferers seem to know of no way to have these outrages checked. They maintain that they can do nothing against the large numbers of street toughs infesting that section, and appeal to the police has thus far brought no relief. The old Jewish men are singled out for these attacks generally. — August 18, 1910

75 Years Ago Mrs. Morris J. Frieder and daughters Peggy, Jane and Susan, are spending August at Atlantic City, where Mr. Frieder will join them. They will visit relatives in New York before returning to Cincinnati.

Dr. and Mrs. Harry Baskind and sons, Leonard and Daniel, have returned from a week-end at Genevaon-the-Lakes.

A beautiful wedding was solemnized on Sunday, Aug. 18th, in the

presence of some 500 guests, when Miss Rose Nathan, daughter of Mrs. Celia Nathan and Mr. Benjamin Wolf, son of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wolf, were married. Rabbi Eliezer Silver officiated, at the home of the bride’s mother.

Awedding dinner was held for the bridal party and guests, who came on from Middletown, Dayton, Hamilton, and other Ohio cities.

Mr. Wolf and the bride are spending their wedding trip in Chicago.

Upon their return they will reside at the home of Mrs. Wolf’s mother at 3564 Bogart Avenue.

Among a party of Cincinnatians who spent a few weeks at Frankfort and Charlevoix, Mich., were Mr. and Mrs. Fred Weiland, their daughters, the Misses Janet and Marilyn, and little son Dickie, and Mr. and Mrs. Harry Liebschutz, their son, Mr. David and daughter, Miss Caroline. — August 22, 1935

50 Years Ago Dr. Ernest C. Foulkes, Research Associate at the May Institute, Research Division of the Jewish Hospital, has been invited to attend a Symposium on “Membrane Transport and Metabolism,” to be held in Prague by the Chechoslovak Academy of Sciences Aug. 21.

He will present a paper written in collaboration with Dr. Benjamin F. Miller, on “The Role of Potassium in the renal Transport of Paraaminohippurate.” The trip is supported by the National Science

Foundation.

Miss Lora E. Kaufman, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Kaufman of 1855 Avonlea Avenue, Bond Hill, has returned from the University of Honolulu, Hawaii, where she completed a summer course in Chinese Philosophy and Asian Studies. A Hawaiian tour concluded her two-month trip.

Dr. Maurice Moonitz, son of Mr. and Mrs. Sam Moonitz, 805 Clinton Springs Avenue, has been appointed director of accounting

research of the American Institute at New York City. He will have charge of research on accounting postulates, and of a project to draw up a statement of broad accounting principles.

Dr. Moonitz has been a professor at the University of California at Berkeley since 1953. He served as associate dean of the Graduate School of Business Administration 1955-59, until appointed co-editor of the California Management Review.

— August 18, 1960

25 Years Ago Michael Stuart Doyne, son of Dr. and Mrs. Emmanuel Doyne, will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah Saturday, Aug. 31, at 10:45 a.m. at Rockdale Temple. Friends and family are invited to attend the service and the reception immediately following.

Grandparents are Mr. and Mrs. Barney Doyne of Nashville and Mrs Phillip Lampert of Chattanooga.

Fred Abel, chairman of the Jewish Vocational Service Nominating Committee, announced recently that the following persons have been nominated for the JVS

board: for a third two-year term, James Heidman and Dr. Stanley Kaplan; for a second two-year term, Richard Heimlich, Steven Schild and Phyllis Sewell.

New board members are Howard Brecher, Judi Graceman, Barbara Heldman, David Mabo, David Mauer, Jim Schloss and Edie Solomon.

Dr. Henry Felson has been elected to the Marion A. Blankenhorn Society.

In 1984, the Department of Internal Medicine at the UC Medical

Center in conjunction with directors of Departments of Medicine at major affiliated hospitals, established the Marion A. Blankenhorn Society, to recognize outstanding internal medicine physician-educators who were members of the volunteer faculty and who work predominately in community hospitals.

Those selected would best exemplify the skills, knowledge, motivation and example of Marion A. Blankenhorn, director of the Department of Internal Medicine from 1935-56. — August 22, 1985

10 Years Ago Stephen and Lisa (Munick) Haffer announce the birth of their son, Drew Ryan, who was born on August 1, 2000. Proud big sister is Jane Louise. Drew’s maternal grandparents are Dr. Leo Munick of Cincinnati, Ohio, and the late Jane Munick. His paternal grandparents are Gloria and Myles Haffer of Cincinnati, Ohio. The maternal great-

grandparents are Maxwell and Ruth Field of Bay Harbor Island, Fla., and the late Morris and Bessie Munick.

Paternal great-grandparents are Benjamin Schottenstein, and the late Louis Haffer and Mildred Haffer.

Ella Dorfman Hammer Katona, 88, passed away on Aug. 5, 2000.

Mrs. Katona was the widow of the late Leonard Hammer of New York and

the Cincinnati pediatrician, Dr. Nicholas Katona. She is survived by her children: Dr. Steven Katona of Bar Harbor, Maine, Dr. Eugene Katona of Cincinnati, and Andrea Pactor of Indianapolis, Ind. Mrs. Katona is also survived by her five grandchildren: Amanda Katona, David Katona, Nicholas Katona, Jacob Pactor and Ellen Pactor — August 17, 2000

CLASSIFIEDS

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc.

(513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Beth Tevilah Mikveh Society (513) 821-6679 Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7226 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 • camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 336-3183 • cedar-village.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Community Center (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org Jewish Community Relations Council (513) 985-1501 Jewish Family Service (513) 469-1188 • jfscinti.org Jewish Federation of Cincinnati (513) 985-1500 • shalomcincy.org Jewish Foundation (513) 792-2715 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 Jewish Vocational Service (513) 985-0515 • jvscinti.org Kesher (513) 766-3348 Plum Street Temple Historic Preservation Fund (513) 793-2556 The Center for Holocaust & Humanity Education (513) 487-3055 • holocaustandhumanity.org Vaad Hoier (513) 731-4671 CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 335-5812 Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net Congregation Beth Adam (513) 985-0400 • bethadam.org Congregation B’nai Tikvah (513) 759-5356 • bnai-tikvah.org Congregation B’nai Tzedek (513) 984-3393 • bnaitzedek.us

Congregation Ohav Shalom (513) 489-3399 • ohavshalom.org Golf Manor Synagogue (513) 531-6654 • golfmanorsynagogue.org Isaac M. Wise Temple (513) 793-2556 • wisetemple.org Kehilas B’nai Israel (513) 761-0769 Northern Hills Synagogue (513) 931-6038 • nhs-cba.org Rockdale Temple (513) 891-9900 • rockdaletemple.org Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com EDUCATION Chabad Blue Ash (513) 793-5200 • chabadba.com HUC-JIR (513) 221-1875 • huc.edu JCC Early Childhood School (513) 793-2122 • mayersonjcc.org Mercaz High School (513) 792-5082 x104 • mercazhs.org Reform Jewish High School (513) 469-6406 • crjhs.org Regional Institute Torah & Secular Studies (513) 631-0083 Rockwern Academy (513) 984-3770 • rockwernacademy.org ORGANIZATIONS American Jewish Committee (513) 621-4020 • ajc.org American Friends of Magen David Adom (513) 521-1197 • afmda.org B’nai B’rith (513) 984-1999 Hadassah (513) 821-6157 • cincinnati-hadassah.org Jewish National Fund (513) 794-1300 • jnf.org Jewish War Veterans (513) 459-0111 • jwv.org NA’AMAT (513) 984-3805 • naamat.org National Council of Jewish Women (513) 891-9583 • ncjw.org State of Israel Bonds (513) 793-4440 • israelbonds.com Women’s American ORT (513) 985-1512 • ortamerica.org.org

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ROCKWERN from page 1 versions of the book have reached the top of the New York Times bestseller lists for their respective age categories.

Additionally, this nonfiction account of one man’s effort to foster peace in Afghanistan and Pakistan by building schools focuses on many of the values incorporated in Rockwern’s school mission statement.

Studying Mortenson’s work will provide integrated cross-curricular opportunities in reading, writing, geography, comparative religion, history, art and social studies for all students.

Reading this book will also offer a unique interfaith opportunity to collaborate with the International Academy in West Chester. Rockwern librarian, Julia Weinstein and language arts teacher, Elaine Kaplan are working with Umama Alam, the princiJCC from page 1 Greater Cincinnati. Band members include: John Fox, lead vocals, guitar, and harmonica; Dave Goodman, sax and rhythm guitar; David Stonehill, bass guitar and keyboards; Rod Kaplan and Barry Wagner, drums; and Oscar Jarnicki, dance leader and backup vocals.

People are already talking about the upcoming Rock & Roll Bash at the J. “The band has a great repertoire that keeps us on the dance floor, and it should be a very nice evening,” said Iris Eppel, who along with her husband Len is one of the hosts for the party. The other event hosts are: Judy Brafman, Steve Fohlen, Elen Golub, Carol Harris, Ken Kuresman, and

pal there, and Shakila Ahmad, education and outreach coordinator at the Islamic Center of Greater Cincinnati, to develop a program.

Students in both schools will read the book and discuss it, initially as pen pals. Service learning will be an essential element of the program, through the Pennies for Peace program offered by Mortenson’s organization, the Central Asia Institute. This exciting school-wide reading program will support Rockwern Academy’s goals of creating intellectually engaged, spiritually aware and socially responsible students.

The Jewish Community Relations Council and Rabbi Sigma Coran, of the Greater Cincinnati Board of Rabbis, have also been consulted in the development of this program. This program is being funded by The Manuel D. and Rhoda Mayerson Foundation and the Saul Schottenstein Foundation.

Karen and David Fox. The Rock & Roll Bash at the J follows the J5K Run, which starts at 6 p.m. The J5K is a “chip” timed event, and the race course runs through the neighborhood streets of Amberley Village. There is also a J5K walk, with several male and female age categories. An awards ceremony at 7:15 p.m. will recognize the fastest males and females in each age group.

Runners and walkers who are planning on attending the Rock & Roll Bash can utilize the Mayerson JCC’s locker room facilities after the race.

For more information about the Rock & Roll Bash at the J on Sunday evening, Aug. 29, please call the Mayerson JCC or visit their website.

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NEWS

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Seminary of America (JTS).

Dr. Samuel K. Joseph, rabbi and professor of Jewish Education and Leadership Development at HUCJIR, stands out as a key player in the grant process.

“He’s the best in the field,” said Cincinnati’s HUC-JIR Dean Kenneth E. Ehrlich, who credits Joseph with creating a model partnership with Xavier University in Cincinnati a decade ago, where rabbinic students study side by side with students from the Jesuit university toward a Master’s Degree in Educational Administration.

Joseph’s global view of Jewish

education includes his experience teaching at the first rabbinical seminary in Germany since the Holocaust. He also is the founding rabbi of the liberal congregation in Hong Kong and has worked with Jewish communities in Australia, New Zealand and Argentina.

For the past three years, Joseph has chaired the college’s subcommittee on the Jim Joseph Foundation grant, meeting in various cities to help forge the historic working relationship among the three branches of Judaism.

“This process has been one of the most exciting things I have been

part of in my career,” he said.

“Working on the Jim Joseph Foundation grant has allowed us to dream what we could create to bring the very best trained and educated Jewish educational leaders into the community to facilitate the learning of the next generation of the Jewish community. Receiving the grant means that I am going to have the joy of helping make that dream come true.”

Joseph emphasized the grant’s goal to train Jewish educators to teach age-appropriate curriculum, rather than “catch as catch can.”

The grant enables HUC-JIR to “heavily fund” the cost of the programs through scholarships, he said.

The program will offer three, yearlong certificate programs in Judaica for early childhood educators; for Jewish childhood education; and for adolescence and emerging adulthood. Classes will be a combination of long-distance learning, via computer and Internet, and face-to-face meetings.

Joseph explained that research indicates early childhood education “tends to grow a Jewish community,” by drawing families with young children to their Jewish roots. Yet these teachers are the worst paid.

“It’s a very tough job,” he said, adding that providing affordable, first-class training for their staff can help.

Another emphasis will be to train leaders to effectively teach adolescents and young adults at, for example, Hillel centers on college campuses, where understanding the mind of a 21-year-old is critical.

HUC-JIR and JTS have experience partnering with each other, according to a recent Jewish

Bedouin are new to the land.

Balancing Bedouin claims to the land and their nomadic lifestyle against the needs of the modern Israeli state has never been easy in the Negev, where the Bedouin compete for space with Israeli military training zones, towns and agricultural zones. For decades, Israel has tried to get the Bedouin to settle down in organized towns the state established for them.

Approximately 155,000 Bedouin live in the Negev, 60 percent in the seven permanent towns the government created between 1979 and 1982, according to the Israel Lands Administration. The remainder live in homes and shanties scattered about the Negev.

It is these Bedouin who frequently run up against government enforcers.

Israel has plans to build 13 new villages in consultation with Bedouin representatives to house these Bedouin, according to the ILA. Approximately 150 to 200 Bedouin structures of the 40,000

considered illegal by the Israeli government are torn down each year.

The flare-up at Al-Arakib is the latest in a series of similar incidents since 1998, when the ILA says the Bedouin began to enter the area under dispute. The village has been the subject of cases in the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Bedouins’ residence at Al-Arakib was illegal.

The ILA offered the Bedouin a deal under which they would rent the land at the nominal fee of about $2 an acre, which they refused to pay. The ILA received a court order in 2003 to evacuate and demolish the homes in the village.

Many of the residents of AlArakib also have permanent homes in one of the Bedouin towns, Rahat, where their children are registered in schools, according to Ortal Sabar, an ILA spokeswoman.

Yeela Raanan, spokeswoman for the Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages, told Human Rights Watch that only a few dozen Al-Arakib residents have other homes and that “there are at least

250 people now who don't have another option.”

Some Al-Arakib residents reportedly also have individual land claims pending in Beersheba District Court.

Ariel Dloomy, projects director for the Negev Institute for Strategies of Peace Development, says he believes that in the wake of AlArakib there will be more demolitions of Bedouin settlements. He said the wholesale demolition of Al-Arakib was a trial balloon to see how the Israeli people would react.

“There is a deep lack of knowledge about the Bedouins and their historic presence on the land on the side of the Jewish population in Israel,” Dloomy said. “Most of the Jewish Israelis view this conflict as a zero-sum game, while we think there is a place for everybody — Jews and Arabs — in the Negev.”

In an editorial criticizing the government for demolishing the homes at Al-Arakib, Israel’s daily Haaretz called the Bedouin “the children of the Negev.”

“Destroying their homes and

HUC from page 1 at B’nai Tikvah Congregation in Deerfield Township each Sunday, he is entering new academic terrain.

Now thanks to an $11 million grant to Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion, Balish will be eligible to participate in a certification program at the college’s Cincinnati campus to learn how to best teach his religious school students.

The funding, part of a combined $33 million grant to the three leading synagogue movements to improve Jewish education, will: • Bring together Reform, Conservative and Orthodox educators for training in common areas, such as technology, while sidestepping theological differences.

• Provide one-year certificate programs in Judaica for educators such as Balish, training them to teach students of specific age groups.

• Create a new Executive Master’s Degree in Jewish Education for professional educators, such as religious school directors, and administrators in Jewish organizations, camps and Jewish community centers.

• Create a new Master’s Degree in Jewish Education for rabbinical students in Cincinnati.

The Jim Joseph Foundation’s national goal is to graduate 700 to 1,000 teachers during the five-year grant, and to attract more teachers to the field of Jewish education.

In addition to the grant awarded to HUC-JIR, the foundation in June also gave roughly $11 million each to the Modern Orthodox Yeshiva University and to the Conservative movement’s Jewish Theological BEDOUIN from page 1 coops. Residents rebuilt their homes and the police returned — twice.

The government says the Bedouin are occupying the land illegally; the Bedouin refused the government's offer to let them stay as renters.

Among the Bedouin of the Negev, the demolitions are stirring anger.

“These demolitions will lead to an intifada in the Negev,” Bedouin and Israeli Arab Knesset member Talab El-Sana told reporters as he barricaded himself in one of the structures that ultimately was demolished.

The demolitions are the result of a dispute between the Bedouin and the Israeli government over rights to specific lands in the Negev comprising about 8,500 acres and 30,000 Bedouin. The Bedouin say the area has been in their families for generations, even if it has never been formally registered with the government. The Israeli government says the

Miami University Professor Mitchell F. Balish with son, Ian, 7, and daughter Anika, 11, volunteers to teach at his children's religious school. Dr. Balish will be eligible to take the certificate program at HUC-JIR to teach Jewish childhood education.

Telegraphic Agency report. But working together is new ground for the Orthodox institutions because of intense theological differences between the Orthodox institution and its non-Orthodox counterparts, the report said.

With sensitivity to these theological differences, the groups are committed to working together on practice, not content, Joseph said.

For example, the grants are intended to attract the best minds to train Jewish educators in effective use of technology, such as social networking. This will not intrude upon theological differences, Joseph added.

Conceptually, the programs will operate as do the various trips to Israel for youth, which cross all theological differences, said Ehrlich.

Moreover, as a stipulation for receiving the money, each school will be required to use $1 million of the roughly $11 million it receives over the next four years to work with the other schools on deciding how to market the field of Jewish education to prospective teachers and incorporating modern technology into Jewish pedagogy, according to JTA. Joseph said that leaders of the three movements are hopeful that this combined $33 million grant will transform the landscape of Jewish education.

“We all want the best educational leaders to help educate the future generations of the Jewish community,” Joseph said.

The college will begin accepting applications in the next few months for the new programs and details soon will be released. In the meantime, those interested can contact Joseph by e-mail at HUC-JIR. pushing them into the crowded and poor Bedouin cities creates a much more severe political and social problem than the danger of the Bedouin living on state lands,” the editorial said.

During the demolitions at AlArakib, some critics suggested that the state wanted to clear the area for the Jewish National Fund to plant a forest at the site. JNF denied the claim, issuing a statement last week saying it “was not involved in this operation and has no link to the subject of evacuating Bedouin soldiers whatsoever.”

The organization plants forests throughout the country under a master plan of the Israeli government, a JNF spokeswoman told JTA. JNF’s Blueprint Negev, a plan to bring about 250,000 Israelis to live in the Negev by 2013, also is raising funds to benefit the local Bedouin population. Among the sites planned is the Abu Basma Regional Council Complex/Medical Center, to be built on land donated by JNF, as well as parks and water supply and treatment projects.

NEWS

THURSDAY, AUGUST 19, 2010

CHEERLEADER from page 1 “It’s been a lot of hard work to get to this point — it’s very challenging, both school and making the Texans,” Lewis said. “I’m definitely glad to represent the Jews on the team. I’m enjoying every moment of it.”

Except for perhaps that moment when she was sitting at Texans headquarters anxiously waiting for her number to be called as the final team of 29 girls was announced.

“It was real nerve-racking because it came down to that final moment,” Lewis said. “I had mentally prepared for a year and then physically prepared for several months.

She added, “I had my parents waiting out in the parking lot in case I didn’t make it.”

Lewis didn’t have to wait long: Her No. 32 was the sixth number called as the announcements were made live on Texans TV. “Michelle really gained my attention with her determination and poise,” Gary said. “She is a beautiful person inside and out and has been a great addition to the team. I’m excited for her.”

Lewis was excited, too, but had to keep temper some of her emotions as she was surrounded by those who tried out but did not make the squad.

“I let out a little shriek, but I couldn’t really celebrate too much right there,” Lewis said. “I felt my eyes water up, but I didn’t really cry.”

Keeping that even keel could pay off for Lewis in the medical field, something she really is looking forward to.

“I want to be an OB/GYN because I feel like that’s the one field in medicine that a doctor can experience it all and more,” Lewis said. “You can experience the physician aspect of medicine when performing annual woman wellness exams. You can work with diseases and viruses if faced with an STD patient. And you can also perform surgery.

“And on top of all of that, you ARTICLE from page 10 According to Ben Yisrael, the Iranians are very well aware of this disparity and therefore would be unlikely to start a nuclear war against Israel.

“Maybe the Iranian man in the street doesn’t know these facts, but the engineers working on the Iranian bomb certainly do. And so does [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad,” Ben Yisrael told JTA. Nevertheless, Ben Yisrael, like most Israeli analysts, is adamantly opposed to Iran acquiring the bomb for two reasons: The Middle East almost certainly would go multinu-

21

get to deliver babies — the one thing that no other field of medicine enables you to do.”

While Lewis finishes up her pre-med requirements, she will take advantage of her opportunity with the Texans. It is something she has been building toward her entire life.

While she didn’t really decide on wanting to be a doctor until she entered college three years ago, Lewis has known since she was little that she wanted to be a dancer.

In the first grade she took ballet and tap classes at the local JCC, as well as piano lessons and gymnastics.

“In third grade I was falling off the balance beam, and I had to pick one — so I picked dance and really stuck with it,” she said.

Together with Lewis all the way has been her twin sister, Rachel, who also is into dancing — more on the ballet side—and also hopes to apply to medical school.

Rachel was interested in trying out for the Texans as well, but ended up keeping her focus on school.

“It’s always great to have that person there, your best friend, for support,” Lewis said. “She helps me out in school and we are just there for each other.”

At Bellaire High School, Lewis was vice president of the dance company and was a member of the cheerleading squad.

After graduating from Bellaire in 2007, however, there was a bit of a void in her life.

“Once I entered St. Thomas, all of that went away,” Lewis said.

“They don’t have a dance team and the cheerleading squad isn’t as big. So my mom said, ‘You live in Houston. You can try out for the Texans.’ And I said, ‘This is the year I’m going to do it.’ ” So began the intense process of trying to make the team. After three rounds, the field of competitors was cut to 50.

“It takes a lot of work to be able to get in shape to do this,” Lewis said. “The girls that woke up that morning and decided to try out are the ones that got cut in

Michelle Lewis, a pre-med student, is the first Jewish cheerleader for the NFL’s Houston Texans.

round one.”

To stay in shape, Lewis does several intense training regimens, including a cross-fit program and a boot camp. She has changed her diet to stay in shape. And before every performance is two hours of hair and make-up.

“I really have no social life,” Lewis said. “This is my life. If I’m not doing school stuff, I’m doing Texans stuff. If I’m not stressing about school, I’m stressing about the Texans.”

“But this is the greatest opportunity in the dance world; it is elite. I just wanted to go for the best — NFL, pro. And now I can relax a little bit because I’m in.”

Besides the practice and dancing at games, each cheerleader is required to make 40 appearances a year on behalf of the team at various functions. The cheerleaders are paid — minimum wage and two season tickets, which Lewis already has promised to her parents.

“No one does it for the money, for sure,” Lewis said. “But it’s really awesome to see the kids look up to you. A little girl at an appearance the other day asked me my name, and she went and painted a T-shirt for me and gave it to me. It was very sweet. The kids look up to you and their eyes are really bright. It’s just a really good feeling.”

So which is going to be more exciting, cheering and dancing in front of nearly 100,000 fans on Sunday afternoons or delivering babies as a doctor?

“That first game is going to be a huge adrenaline rush, for sure,” Lewis said. “I’ll be soaking it all up. It will definitely be a rush, which I’m looking forward to.

“But delivering babies is the one thing I look forward to most because you get to literally bring life into the world. I’d be performing a mitzvah by delivering a couple’s baby, and I would also be fulfilling the final part of that couple’s blessing from God when He enabled them to conceive a child.”

And who wouldn’t cheer for something like that?

clear in its wake, exponentially increasing the chances of someone mistakenly pressing a nuclear button, and terrorists might get their hands on a nuclear device with no balance of fear possible.

Indeed, most Israeli analysts see compelling American reasons for action. They argue that the Obama administration would be loath to see a Middle East nuclear arms race undercutting the president's vision of a nuclear-free world. It also is crucial for America to prevent Iran from using a nuclear umbrella to promote terror and extortion against the West, or terrorists from getting their hands on a dirty bomb, or Iran from using

its nuclear posture to gain control of Middle East oil supplies in the Gulf.

In addition, the failure to stop Iran from going nuclear could lead to a loss of American prestige and influence in the region, with wavering Gulf states moving from the American to the Iranian orbit.

So if sanctions don’t work, and if a popular uprising in Iran led by the opposition Green Movement fails to materialize, the Israeli leadership’s hope is that America will see the necessity of taking military action, despite the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Israelis are careful not to spell this out, since they don’t want to be seen as

Obama reassures Israeli leaders that he will not allow Iran to get the bomb.

But what if Israel and the United States differ in their estimates of the Iranian nuclear timetable? Or if the United States proves reluctant to attack when Israel feels that time is running out?

Will Israel, because of the threat posed by a nuclear Iran, then take the risk of acting alone? And, crucially, will the United States then give Israel a green light to attack?

For now, so many variables are in play that Netanyahu and Obama themselves are probably still unsure of the answers.

pushing for an American attack.

Israeli analysts point out that what would be very difficult for Israel to achieve, militarily and diplomatically, the United States could achieve much more easily.

According to Goldberg, Netanyahu himself often tells visitors “the secret” that the U.S. Army is much bigger than Israel’s.

Netanyahu in his meeting with Obama in early July was heartened, according to aides, by what he heard from the president on Iran.

Indeed, it appears that U.S. policy is to prevent Israel from going it alone, with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen urging Israel to bite the bullet, while

22

OBITUARIES

DEATH NOTICES KIRTCHIK, Gladys, age 92, died on August 10, 2010; 30 Av, 5770.

SARASON, Cornelia S., age 96 died on August 14, 2010; 4 Elul, 5770.

STUDENTS from page 7 pro-divestment crowd, even as most Jewish students stood with her in opposing the bill.

As a professional charged with helping students develop all aspects of their Jewish identities, Copans said she found the physical divide painful.

“Divestment bills come and go, but these are Jewish students,” she said. “I want them to have positive Jewish experiences, and that’s not what they get by being glared at across the room.”

Asking students to act as Israel advocates along with all the other things they do at college isn’t easy, activists say.

“Our students are coming to school to learn, and now they’re expected to defend,” said Roz Rothstein, co-founder and CEO of StandWithUs, a Los Angeles-based international organization that INTERNS from page 7 It’s a reality that some in the Jewish world have spent time thinking about.

A July 22 conference organized

by Hillel and other organizations brought together 200 interns, Jewish and non-Jewish, to discuss ways of changing public discourse and returning civility to politics.

“We found that interns were modeling what we think is wrong HATS from page 9 Epstein, who also teaches the popular class “Breakneck Through the Bible,” is a native of Monsey, N.Y., which has a large haredi population. He and his wife, Batya, moved to Dallas and are two of the founders of DATA. She is the director of the local mikveh, and they are busy parents of eight children.

Oscar Rosenberg, whose father was a Holocaust survivor, invited PARTIES from page 10 minister’s residence in June. And Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told the Australian Jewish News last week that it was “business as usual” between Canberra and Jerusalem.

The Liberals, who in 2004 also ejected an official from the Israeli Embassy, have focused on Labor’s record at the United Nations during the campaign. Since coming to office in 2007, the Labor govern-

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describes itself as working to ensure that Israel’s side of the story is being told on campuses and in other public spheres. “Israel is the target, but Jewish students who stand up for Israel also become the target.”

In mid-August, StandWithUs flew 40 of its campus leaders to Oxnard, Calif., for a training session, and the organization will host another session in November for 150 students. J Street U, a self-described pro-Israel advocacy organization with a network of supporters on about 40 campuses, sponsored its first student leadership conference in late May outside Baltimore, where work to counter the anti-Israel sanctions campaign was addressed along with other concerns. And AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, offers such sessions throughout the year.

“We want to enable students to open up these difficult conversations on campus,” said Daniel May, J Street U’s national director.

“Everyone’s concerned, and that’s good,” said Rothstein of StandWithUs. “Once the year begins, everyone’s work on this will merge and hopefully strengthen the students.”

AIPAC declined to speak about the issue on the record.

Israel advocacy is a nuanced issue, say Jewish campus profes-

sionals, and that can be divisive.

“For the average student, Israel is a problem — and they don’t want more problems,” said Michael Faber, longtime Hillel executive director at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y. “It makes that leg of their Jewish identity wobbly."

Students with varying religious and political views are being asked to stand together for Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state, and that can bring them into conflict with other friends and other causes, activists say.

“College is emblematic of what’s happening in the general society — Israel both unites and divides the Jewish people. That’s what we’re wrestling with,” said Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kelman, Hillel’s executive director at the University of California, Berkeley, which also faced a protracted struggle over a divestment bill last spring.

“For me, pro-Israel is someone who wants to develop a deep, meaningful, mature, loving relationship with Israel. How this is manifested may be different for different people.”

But students active in Jewish affairs say it’s something they face whether they want to or not.

“We were very affected by the divestment struggles at Berkeley and San Diego, and we’re fully aware it is coming to our campus,” said

Raquel Saxe, who is beginning her sophomore year at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Firestone also weighed in on the issue.

“We want the students to be prepared, not paralyzed with fear,” the Hillel executive said. “We are in the identity-building business, and the Israel issue is one we are standing up for.”

During the Hillel Institute in St. Louis, some 80 Hillel professionals arrived early to take part in a 24-hour simulation exercise in which they played various roles on a mythical university campus faced with a divestment bill and a boycott of visiting Israeli professors.

The techniques used in the simulation are included in an Israel Advocacy Playbook that Hillel distributed at the conference and plans to give every Hillel campus professional.

“The group that went through this exercise together now has a common language,” said Chicago educator Carl Schrag, who developed and ran the exercise on behalf of the Israel on Campus Coalition.

“When BDS [the sanctions campaign] hits — and I presume it will — hopefully they’ll remember they’re not alone."

Coalition building is key to Israel advocacy work on campus, say

those involved in leading such efforts. It shouldn’t come down to Jewish students against the rest of the campus community, they add — and as interfaith efforts increase on more and more campuses, Jewish students should find themselves less isolated.

Allison Sheren, now Hillel program director at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, says that things were different five years ago as divestment efforts hit her campus when she was a student.

Now she points to a “MuJew” program — a Jewish-Muslim alternative spring break option on her campus that has brought Jewish and Muslim students together on social action projects for the past three years.

“There’s a real focus on dialogue, on partnerships,” Sheren said.

“When Israel issues come up, even if there are disagreements, there is discussion.”

Samantha Shabman, a student at George Washington University in Washington, says she’ll “defend Israel until the day I die,” but at the same time she notes that her school has a large Arab and Muslim student population she hopes the Jewish students will reach out to.

“We have to work together and show we respect each other,” she said.

in Washington — a bunch of people who only think of their own interest,” said Hillel President Wayne Firestone. “We wanted to see if there is another paradigm that Washington internships can follow, to see if we can make it about being good citizens.”

But for the young interns, Washington wasn’t about only hard work and long hours in the office.

A Facebook page set up by and

for Jewish summer interns offered a variety of afterwork activities.

Some were the expected schmoozing meetings in local bars but others, such as the invitation to attend an evening cruise on the Potomac with Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), could take place only in Washington.

For the first time, an organized effort was made to get Jewish interns together for networking to add some Jewish content to their

Washington experience. In the D.C. headquarters of Hillel, activists — themselves interns — worked the Internet trying to reach out through social networks and personal acquaintances to other Jewish interns in town.

“We’ve become a resource on Jewish life in D.C.,” said Julie Scherbill, who attends the University of Michigan. Her colleague, Rachel Hodes from Rutgers, added, “We found out

that people wanted us to tell them what is going on in town.”

Jewish groups with Washington advocacy offices are among the most sought-after destinations for Jewish interns from across the country. The biggest and most well known is AIPAC, which hosts dozens of interns who are later placed in congressional offices and thus learn pro-Israel advocacy from the perspective of both the lobbyist and the lobbied.

the Epsteins and other rabbis to Dallas. The younger Rosenberg had become an Orthodox Jew, as had his two brothers, and felt strongly that a kollel would benefit the Jewish community.

“Rosenberg could have provided the initial seed money himself, but chose to involve the entire community in the fundraising in order to make it a community-supported institution,” Epstein said.

Today there are hundreds of donors who help fund the kollel

and its activities.

Each year, the kollel organizes a retreat for families at a local hotel. In June it sent a delegation of women to Israel.

Although DATA is now an integral part of the Jewish community in Dallas, it did not become that overnight.

“When they first came in, they didn’t know the community dynamics, they didn’t collaborate or consult with the other Jewish institutions here, and just didn’t

know how to navigate the politics, so it took years for them to gain acceptance by the mainstream,” Weinstein said. “Today they are much better at team building, and work together with the other Dallas synagogues and Jewish organizations.”

Weinstein said that DATA’s most valuable contribution has been to provide Dallas Jews with its first adult-centered, communitywide institution.

“In the beginning, some people

questioned their motives for inviting nonobservant Jews to their classes,” he said. “They worried that they would try to ‘convert’ Conservative and Reform Jews to the Orthodox lifestyle.

“It took time for them to realize that all boats rise in a high tide.

One of the first things DATA teaches its students is the importance of giving, tzedakah. If the rabbis at DATA could get Jews to be more engaged in Jewish life, then everyone benefits.”

ment has supported three controversial U.N. resolutions against Israel, prompting Jewish leaders to write to the prime minister last year expressing their disappointment.

Deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop said this week that a Liberal government would return to the U.N. voting pattern of former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, whose government was staunchly pro-Israel.

“I make no apology for my strong support of Israel,” Bishop

said.

For her part Gillard, 48, ignored calls to boycott a visit to Israel in June 2009. In Jerusalem, Israeli leaders feted her for supporting the Jewish state during its Gaza military operation in the winter of 2008-09. Last December, she delivered a speech at a Jewish function in Melbourne and danced the hora with Jewish women.

But soon after she upstaged her boss and became Australia’s first female prime minister, two former

Australian ambassadors to Israel accused her of an unbalanced position on the Middle East, with Ross Burns, Australia’s envoy in Tel Aviv between 2001 and 2003, blasting her for being “remarkably taciturn on the excesses of Israeli actions.”

Gillard hails from Labor’s left flank, which has been hostile to Israel in the past. Prior to her first visit to Israel in 2005, Jewish leaders were uncertain of her position on the Middle East.

This weekend’s election will likely see two Jewish lawmakers, Danby and Mark Dreyfus, reelected for Labor. Joshua Frydenberg, a former adviser to Howard, is set to become the first Jewish Liberal member of Parliament since Peter Baume in 1991.

The Liberals need to win 17 more seats in the 150-member House of Representatives to regain power after less than three years of Labor rule.

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