AI2010_12_23

Adath Israel offers mini course in Islam To foster more meaningful and better relationships through understanding other religions, Adath Israel Congregation is offering a four week religious study course, “Introduction to Islam,” on Tuesdays, Jan. 11, 18, 25, and Feb. 1, from 7:30–8:45 p.m. The course concludes with an educational tour of the Greater Cincinnati Islamic Center and Mosque.

“In choosing to offer this opportunity to our congregants and the wider community, we hope to broaden our understanding of Islam as a faith and the requirements and meanings of day-to-day rituals in the lives of our Muslim neighbors,” said Dr. Deb Feldman, chair of adult studies.

“Unfortunately, much of the current dialogue and opinions of Jews and Muslims toward each other are often fostered from ignorance and fear rather than from knowledge and

Vaad Hoier of Cincinnati hires new rabbinic administrator

J Spa combats cold weather with hot stones

Rabbi Josh Finegold has begun working as the new executive director of the Vaad Hoier of Cincinnati.

For the past year and a half, he has worked as the assistant administrator with the Columbus Vaad Hoier where he has implemented new policies and procedures to keep processes more uniform. He has worked with the Orthodox Union and Star K and has upgraded procedures at the Columbus Vaad to match national standards.

Rabbi William Goldberg, the administrator of the Columbus

As one of the Mayerson Jewish Community Center facilities that is open to the public, the J Spa has become a hot spot for many Cincinnatians to combat the cold weather. Winter conditions cause dry, cracked skin which can be easily remedied with the hydrating and therapeutic body treatments, facials and massages performed by licensed massage therapists and estheticians at the J Spa in Amberley Village.

The 50- or 80-minute hot stone massages are among the most popular J Spa treatments during the winter. These full-body massages incorporate the use of heated stones to penetrate deep into muscles to stimulate a feeling of intense relaxation. Through the end of December, the 50minute hot stone massage is available at a reduced price.

Anyone who purchases a J Spa gift card in December may

VAAD on page 19

SPA on page 19

By LeeAnne Galioto Assistant Editor

ADATH on page 19

Kissinger tells JTA: Take remark on gas chambers in context

Caught on tape: Kissinger

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency

WASHINGTON (JTA) — It should have been ancient, if unsavory, news: A cavalier reference to gassing Jews, an aside in a conversation nearly 40 years old.

But the aside was pronounced by Henry Kissinger, a German-born Jew who fled Nazi horrors as a child and who has been honored by multiple Jewish organizations as one of Israel’s saviors during its darkest days, when he was secretary of state to President Nixon.

“If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American

WASHINGTON (JTA) — As far as the NixonKissinger relationship goes, the March 1, 1973 tape is par for the course of their complicated relationship: hard-nosed considerations of policy leavened with Kissinger’s adoring appraisals of his boss’ genius punctuated by Nixon’s hearty encouragement of such obsequiousness.

The conversation relates to Israel’s security, and it includes a discussion of the

KISSINGER on page 20

Courtesy of National Archive

Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, President Nixon (center) and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in a 1973 Oval Office meeting covered in newly released Nixon White House tapes.

Israeli and Egyptian bottom lines in the attempts by Kissinger, then the secretary of state, to head off the war that would explode six months later.

That glides into a discussion of a meeting with Golda Meir, then the Israeli prime minister, and her plea for pressure on the Soviet Union to allow Jews to emigrate and go to Israel.

That was not on the agenda, as far as Nixon and Kissinger were concerned.

Their philosophy was detente TAPE on page 21

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Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life™ Award honoring Mary Ellen & Tom Cody

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

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A rabbinical saint of the ledger

By Jenna Weissman Joselit The Jewish Daily Forward NEW YORK (Forward) — At first blush, there’s probably nothing duller than a ledger book in which columns of credits inhabit one side of the page and columns of debits the other. Only someone completely at home within the world of accountancy is capable of unlocking a ledger’s secrets and of discerning a human story where the rest of us simply see numbers.

How strange, then, to read recently that great excitement attended the discovery of one such account book, which Kestenbaum & Co. auctioned off in late October. As it turned out, this was not just any old compilation of figures but one that belonged to the late Rabbi Eliezer Silver, the guiding light of the Vaad Hatzalah, an American organization that sought, against great odds, to rescue European Jewish leaders, especially those from yeshiva communities, from the Nazis. Moving in high circles, as well as in distinguished rabbinical ones, Rabbi Silver was not only the “personal friend of every United States president since Theodore Roosevelt” — or so claimed one of his obituaries — he was also widely acclaimed as the “Chief Rabbi of Cincinnati.”

Outwardly, there’s little to distinguish Rabbi Silver’s ledger book, whose 45 pages cover the years 1939 through 1946, from the thousands of others in use all throughout the war years: A succession of numbers and names makes its way across the page, recording dollars raised and dollars spent and underscoring the extent to which monetary transactions fuel the modern world. But a closer look uncovers an altogether different, and far more chilling, reality: The numbers that were toted up reflect the sums of money the rabbi collected and expended in a valiant effort to ransom an estimated 10,000 lives, among them some of Europe’s most renowned rabbis. Within the margins of Rabbi Silver’s ledger book, numbers don’t just reflect dollars and cents; they represent lives lost and lives saved.

Understandably, much is being made of this belated discovery.

The auction literature hails it as a “one-of-a-kind window onto one of the darkest periods in world history,” and as “the first definitive evidence of [Rabbi Silver’s] radical approach to saving thousands from the clutches of the Nazi Holocaust.” In both instances, this ledger book is associated, through and through, with the Holocaust.

But there’s even more to it than that. Rabbi Silver’s actions reflect,

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NEW RATES BEGIN JANUARY 1, 2011 Rabbi Eliezer Silver

and shuttle between, a keen awareness of the Jewish past as well as an equally keen awareness of contemporary Jewish life. In the first instance, Rabbi Silver’s heroic efforts to save the lives of his coreligionists were of a piece with the heroic efforts of his medieval Jewish counterparts to save the lives of their fellow Jews. The ransom of Jewish captives was both common practice and a common concern during the medieval period. Sometimes, it was the stuff of legend, like that recounted by Abraham Ibn Daud in his 12th century text, Sefer Hakabbala (Book of Received Tradition).

In it, he told of how Spanish Jews purchased and redeemed several Babylonian Jewish leaders who, traveling on the high seas, had been captured by pirates. After being ransomed, they stayed in Spain, paving the way for its golden age. At other moments, bits and pieces of information culled from the Cairo Genizah demonstrate how communal representatives sought to raise funds in order to ransom a physician and his wife, a boy of about 10 and a “captive woman from Byzantium,” suggesting once again that ransom loomed large within the orbit of medieval Jewry.

Although 20th century Cincinnati was a far cry from Cordoba and Cairo of the 12th, the precariousness of Jewish life has remained a constant. Like his coreligionists before him, Rabbi Silver responded to the dire situation of European Jewry by resort-

ing to the tried and true tradition of ransoming the captive.

Far less gripping but no less potent in explaining the significance of Rabbi Silver’s ledger book was the modernization of the rabbinate. As the 19th century gave way to the 20th century, the role of the rabbi, especially in the United States, expanded exponentially: Much was expected of him by his rapidly acculturating congregants. If, in the Old World, a rabbi’s purview was often limited to teaching and to the supervision of kosher food, in the New World, it encompassed administration, organization-building and community relations. In other words, the rabbi became a professional.

Accountability — and with it, the keeping of records — became an indispensable part of his job. And so it was with Rabbi Silver. While some of his colleagues preferred to make use of index cards and others loose-leaf notebooks, the Cincinnati rabbi demonstrated his commitment to the professionalization of the rabbinate by keeping an account book.

Ultimately, Rabbi Silver’s ledger is a particularly compelling document of our time. In linking together medieval Jewish history, the modern-day imperatives of record keeping and the moral urgency of saving lives, it reminds us how the grand sweep of history can often be found in the most unlikely of sources.

Reprinted with permission of the Forward.

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New Cincinnati Jewish singles group

By Nicole Simon Assistant Editor On Thursday, Dec. 16, Todd Winkler created a Jewish singles group for people in the Cincinnati area to meet online. After gaining five members over the weekend, Winkler is hoping for others to

join the non-affiliated and free-tojoin website assemblage.

The new group can be visited online at Meetup.

“I decided to start a Jewish singles group,” noted Winkler, who created the group through the Meetup social networking portal site after noticing the Cincinnati area’s

number of organizations meant for couples and families. “There’s a void there that needs to be filled.”

Winkler also brought up that he intends the group, which is open to anybody, to be a social gathering, not necessarily for dating purposes.

“I imagine a group getting together for a dinner, movie nights,

and others things that are conductive to a group.”

In addition, Winkler is still in the planning stages, and has ideas, not set rules, of how the group should function. “We are still trying to build up the organization.

The more people who want to help organize and plan, the better.”

Lecture on ‘Soul and the Afterlife’ Lori Palatnik will be scholar-inresidence for an upcoming Sarah’s Place retreat, and while here will lecture to the community and introduce her TAG (Transform and Grow) Israel trip. She will present “Soul and the Afterlife: Where Do We Go From Here?” on Sunday, Jan. 16, at 7:45 p.m. at the Mayerson Jewish Community Center.

Palatnik grew up classically Jewish in Toronto, Canada — attending services twice per year, spinning dreidels at Chanukah, and at the annual family seder in Canada enjoyed not just the four cups, but five: the four cups of wine and the Stanley Cup. She is now a very knowledgeable and popular author and a gifted, dynamic speaker. More importantly she is a passionate visionary who dreams of curbing and reversing assimilation and implements high impact projects to accomplish those goals.

Palatnik majored in communications at the University of Windsor, and did a special degree in advertising at St. Clair College of Applied Arts. After graduating, she worked in radio, winning a national award for creative excellence in radio copywriting. Then it was off to Europe for a backpacking adventure that would eventually lead her to Israel. There she was deeply moved and wanted to stay, but she didn’t understand what she was feeling, so she left.

Back in Canada, Palatnik worked in public relations for McDonald’s Restaurants in Ottawa, and a year later was awarded a fel-

lowship to study in Israel. Once back, the feelings returned, and this time she understood them, and so she stayed, establishing a private aerobics business while immersing herself in Jewish studies programs.

Today, Palatnik is an author, perhaps best known for her book “Remember My Soul: What to Do in Memory of a Loved One.” She has appeared on television and radio and has lectured in North America, the United Kingdom, South Africa and Israel. Her weekly video blog, “Lori Almost Live” tackles all kinds of issues in Jewish thought and life and is viewed by over 50,000 people per month. She is also the director of the Jewish Women’s Renaissance Project, a Washingtonbased, international project, inspiring and empowering Jewish women all over the world. This project has taken hundreds of women to Israel on what is known as the TAG Israel trip. This highly subsidized trip provides all hotels, food and tours at no charge to appropriate candidates and is sometimes described as “like a ‘Birthright’ for moms.” Cincinnati is proud to have been allotted spots on the July 2011 TAG trip. The new Jewish women’s learning center, Sarah’s Place Cincy, will be coordinating the Cincinnati contingency.

Admission to the Jan. 16 presentation can be paid in advance or at the door if seats remain. Senior and student discount information is available on the Sarah’s Place Cincy website. For those who are interested, there will be a brief presentation about the TAG Israel trip following the lecture.

Lori Palatnik

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VOL. 157 • NO. 22 THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010 16 TEVET 5771 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 5:00 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 5:59 PM 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 RABBI ISSAC M. WISE Editor & Publisher, 1854-1900 LEO WISE Editor & Publisher, 1900-1928 RABBI JONAH B. WISE Editor & Publisher, 1928-1930 HENRY C. SEGAL Editor & Publisher, 1930-1985 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher BARBARA L. MORGENSTERN Senior Writer LEEANNE GALIOTO 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 JOSEPH D. STANGE Production Manager ALLISON CHANDLER Office Manager

Bill introduces Ohio scholarship tax credit program CINCINNATI — Ohio is looking to become the eighth state where taxpayers can redirect their taxes to help students attend a private school of their choice.

Introduced this week by a bi-partisan group of more than a dozen legislators, House Bill 610 would allow taxpayers to receive a dollarfor-dollar tax credit for donations to scholarship organizations. The scholarships would then be awarded to low- and middle-income students who wish to attend or continue attending a nonpublic school.

“House Bill 610 will allow parents to take advantage of alternative educational options, saving millions in taxpayer dollars and giving children a better education,” said bill sponsor State Representative Kris Jordan (R-Powell). “In addition, it will provide much-needed help for families who are struggling to keep their children enrolled in private schools.” Similar programs in seven states including Florida, Pennsylvania and Georgia have provided millions of dollars in scholarships to students wishing to

attend private schools, including Jewish day schools.

House Bill 610 allows for scholarship amounts of up to $4,250 for students in grades K–8 and $7,000 for students in grades 9–12. Donors will receive a dollar-for-dollar credit on state taxes for up to $1,000 for individuals, $2,500 for married taxpayers, and $300,000 for corporate donors. The statewide cap for all tax credits will be $20 million.

House Bill 610 will not get a hearing this year, because the legislative session will be over shortly,

but the impressive list of co-sponsors indicates a strong desire on the part of legislators to expand school choice in the upcoming Ohio 129th General Assembly, which begins in January.

Three of the sponsors of this bill will be in the state Senate next year.

Eight of them will be in the House, including two in House leadership (Adams and Blessing). The Governor and legislative leaders will have to decide if they prefer this bill or a different method of expanding school choice.

THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE (USPS 019-320) is published weekly for $44 per year and $2.00 per single copy in Cincinnati and $49 per year and $3.00 per single copy elsewhere in U.S. by The American Israelite Co. 18 West Ninth Street, Suite 2, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-2037.

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THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

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AIPAC viewed U.S. gov’t as targeting pro-Israel groups during espionage probe

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — It was a case that transfixed the proIsrael community: the arrest in August 2005 on espionage charges of two senior officials at the most influential pro-Israel group in Washington, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

Before the government dropped the case in May 2009 amid questions of whether the officials actually committed a crime by talking to Israeli officials about classified information one of them had received alleging an Iranian plot against Israelis stationed in Iraq, AIPAC fired the two men: foreign policy chief Steve Rosen and Iran analyst Keith Weissman.

Now the battle is on to clear their names.

Rosen has filed a defamation lawsuit demanding $20 million from his former employer, and new court filings on Tuesday shed light on a key element of the case: Before firing the two senior staffers, AIPAC prepared a robust defense of them that alleged a conspiracy inside U.S. government agencies to target pro-Israel groups.

The filings by Rosen’s lawyers aim to undermine AIPAC’s claim that the decision in March 2005 to fire him and Weissman was based on the revelation that the two dealt in classified information. Rather, the documents allege, AIPAC approved in some circumstances of dealing in classified information.

The court case is significant because it shows the inner workings of AIPAC, a lobbying group that both enemies and supporters call one of Washington’s most powerful and feared lobbies. The new court filings also show the extent to which some of AIPAC’s highest officials believed the U.S. government was targeting the group because of its pro-Israel stance and activities, not because of suspected criminality.

That point comes through especially clear in the draft of a speech that was to have been delivered by AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr, Rosen’s boss, just weeks after the FBI raided AIPAC’s offices on Aug. 27, 2004. In the speech, Kohr was to say that the government was targeting AIPAC for “who we are and what we do.” The speech was never delivered.

The documents filed this week show that Kohr and AIPAC’s lawyer already were aware in

October 2004 that Weissman suspected that the information he had received about the Iranian plot was classified. Kohr and other officials acknowledge that chatter about classified information, while never solicited by AIPAC officials, inevitably bubbles up in the course of lobbying routines.

Rosen’s suit alleges that he was defamed when AIPAC spokesman Patrick Dorton told the media in 2008 that he was fired because he and Weissman “did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees.”

The cache of documents filed this week are part of Rosen’s response to a request filed last month by AIPAC lawyers asking a judge to dismiss the case, claiming that Rosen does not have enough evidence to go to trial.

In their court filings, Rosen’s lawyers describe two earlier cases in which AIPAC defended and praised Rosen and another employee for receiving apparently classified information and passing it along.

“Rosen had received and shared potentially classified information concerning Libyan officials giving money to an American Presidential candidate in 1984,” the lawyers’ brief says. “AlPAC did not disapprove of his actions but in fact issued him a positive performance appraisal that year and every year thereafter.”

Rosen told JTA that at the time he tried to leak the Libya story to the media with the approval of his bosses. Reporters never were able to confirm the story with a second source, however, and this week’s court filings mark the first time that the information has been made public.

Rosen identified the candidate as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, but said that it was never alleged that Jackson knew about the accusation that his staffers had received $100,000 from the Libyans.

In another case that made headlines in 1984, AIPAC defended an employee who had distributed to congressional offices a classified paper outlining U.S. strategies in trade negotiations in Israel. AIPAC said at the time that the staffer never solicited the paper and had returned it immediately upon learning that it was classified. The document had a relatively low “business confidential” classification, and FBI agents at the time said that it “contains no national defense information and was originally classified to protect

the U.S. bargaining position.”

Dorton denied that AIPAC ever dealt in classified information.

“AIPAC does not seek, use or request anything but legal and appropriate information as part of its work,” he said. “No current employee of AIPAC was involved in knowingly obtaining or distributing classified information.”

But in the draft speech Kohr prepared but never delivered to top AIPAC donors on Oct. 18, 2004, AIPAC’s chief is blunt about who he blames for the raid on AIPAC’s offices and for erroneous leaks to media alleging a “spy ring” at the lobby.

“We believe that some people may be trying to distort the meaning of the law in order to undermine AIPAC, and indeed the entire proIsrael movement,” the draft speech says. “They are not only suggesting that two members of our staff broke the law. They are also trying to gather evidence that AIPAC, by virtue of who we are and what we do, is violating the law.

“Most of the FBI’s questions have focused on the very nature of how AIPAC works,” Kohr was to have said. “They have focused on AIPAC’s role in affecting U.S. Middle East policy.”

AIPAC on page 21

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U.S. rabbis offer rare rebuke of Israeli edict

By Josh Nathan-Kazis The Jewish Daily Forward

Courtesy of Hadassah

Hadassah, which is in the midst of a major construction project at the Ein Karem campus of Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem, agreed in a settlement to pay $45 million to the trustee for Bernard Madoff’s estate.

Winners, pay up! Madoff ‘clawback’ lawsuits going after Jewish groups, others

By Jacob Berkman Jewish Telegraphic Agency NEW YORK (JTA) — When Bernard Madoff’s multibilliondollar Ponzi scheme first came to light two years ago, several Jewish organizations suffered heavy losses, their assets devastated by the fraud.

Now with the filing of lawsuits by the trustee for Madoff’s estate, it is the winners — the Jewish organizations that inadvertently benefited from the scheme — that are at risk of losing money.

Among them are: • The America-Israel Cultural Foundation, which raises money to support artists and cultural institutions in Israel. The foundation, which allegedly made $6.68 million in fictitious profit between 2002 and 2008, is being sued for just over $5 million, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

• The American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, which is being sued for approximately $7 million, according to the Forward.

• United Congregations Mesorah, a nonprofit religious organization registered in Suffern, N.Y., and operated out of the offices of the Wolfson Group, according to the Forward. It is being sued for more than $16 million.

The biggest lawsuit, a claim of

$19.6 billon, was filed against an Orthodox Jewish woman in Austria named Sonja Kohn. A housewife turned banker who was born in Vienna and resided in the Orthodox community of Monsey, N.Y., in the 1980s, Kohn is described as the biggest feeder of investor money into Madoff funds. She allegedly conspired with Madoff to lure investors, and reportedly withdrew some $423 million from Madoff’s fund just a month before Madoff was arrested in 2008. Representatives for Kohn have denied any wrongdoing.

Other Jewish institutions that benefited from the Ponzi scheme reached settlements with the Madoff estate’s trustee, Irving Picard, before the Dec. 11 deadline for filing the so-called clawback lawsuits. Picard filed more than 1,000 such lawsuits.

Hadassah: The Women’s Zionist Organization of America announced last week that it had agreed to pay back $45 million of the estimated $90 million it made in the scheme, according to a letter sent by the organization’s president, Nancy Falchuk, to supporters.

“Hadassah, like so many others, was misled,” she wrote.

“Precisely because we were following a sound investment strategy, we realized more than we invested and will return some of the proceeds to be distributed to

those who lost.”

Boston-area Jewish philanthropists Carl and Ruth Shapiro, who allegedly made more than $1 billion off their investments with Madoff, reportedly have agreed to pay back $625 million, which includes all the assets of their family foundation.

The agreement effectively wipes out the foundation, which had assets of $112 million in 2008, the last year for which data was available. The foundation had doled out annual seven-figure gifts to such Boston institutions as Brandeis University, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Carl Shapiro is 97.

For now, many of the organizations targeted in the lawsuits are holding firm.

“AICF was and remains a victim of the fraud perpetrated by Bernard Madoff,” David Homan, the executive director of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation, said in a statement.

Homan denied any wrongdoing and called the lawsuit against his organization “unfortunate.” He also reportedly said that the foundation, which believed it had $13 million invested in Madoff’s fund, could seek a settlement. Homan did not return phone calls to JTA. MADOFF on page 22

NEW YORK (Forward) — An edict signed by dozens of Israeli rabbis barring the sale or rental of homes to non-Jews in Israel has led to a rare consensus among American rabbis, who have issued a nearly unanimous condemnation of the ban.

Statements by the American Modern Orthodox and Conservative rabbinic associations, and by the spokesman for an American haredi Orthodox umbrella group, all denounce the Israeli rabbis’ directive. So does an online petition signed by more than 900 rabbis, most of them affiliated with non-Orthodox denominations.

Controversial proclamations by Israeli rabbis are not unheard of, but this sort of broad American rabbinic response is rare. Now it appears that the collective response has reached a tipping point — so many American rabbis have spoken against the edict that others may feel compelled to concur.

“The halachic issues here are complex,” said Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, first vice president of the Rabbinical Council of America, the largely Modern Orthodox rabbinic group. “But a blanket statement that singles out a certain population and says ‘don’t rent to them; don’t sell to them’ in such a blanket fashion is something that struck a very raw nerve.”

The Israeli letter was drafted in support of an effort by the chief rabbi of Safed to bar home rentals to Arabs. Tensions have run high in recent months between haredi Orthodox and Arab students in that northern Israeli city.

Exactly how many rabbis signed the edict is unclear. Some right-wing Israeli news outlets reported that the letter had 300 signatories, while other news organizations pegged the number at fewer than 100.

Regardless, the edict drew attention in the Israeli and international media because dozens of those who signed were municipal rabbis employed by the government.

Israel’s leading Lithuanian haredi leader, Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, refused to sign the letter, as did, according to one report, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the spiritual leader of Israel’s Shas Party. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned the letter.

In America, rabbinic opposition to the letter came quickly. An online petition for rabbis posted by the New Israel Fund on Dec. 10 had received 914 signatures by Dec. 15.

“Statements like these do great damage to our efforts to encourage people to love and support Israel,” the NIF statement read. “They communicate to our congregants that Israel does not share their values, and they promote feelings of alienation and distancing.”

Signatories of the NIF petition included Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, executive vice president of the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

Most signatories appeared to be members of the Reform, Conservative and Reconstructionist movements, with a few notable exceptions including prominent New York, liberal-leaning Orthodox Rabbis Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale and Yeshivat Chovevei Torah rabbinical school, and Marc Angel of Congregation Shearith Israel.

Some Orthodox rabbis said the sponsorship of the petition by the NIF, which is identified with leftwing causes, may have discouraged the participation of rabbis who otherwise might have agreed with the petition’s sentiment.

The RCA’s statement, released Dec. 14, criticized the Israeli rabbis’ letter in somewhat gentler terms.

“We are surely sympathetic to the impulse to protect a Jewish community in the face of intermarriage, communal conflict, or unsafe neighborhoods,” the statement read. “It is our view that in spite of the concerns of the authors of the statement, it is wrong and unacceptable to advocate blanket exclusionary policies directed against minorities of other faiths or ethnic groups.”

Goldin said the RCA felt compelled to speak because, unlike an off-the-cuff comment by Yosef, who is known for making provocative remarks, the Israeli rabbis’ edict was a formal statement of Jewish law.

“That is what drew our attention — that once such a formal statement is issued, we felt that it couldn’t be left on the record without a response,” he said.

The RCA’s statement came hours after the posting of a translated version of a letter opposing the edict written by prominent centrist Orthodox Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein, an American living in Israel, to a widely read Orthodox blog. Some observers saw the RCA’s response as a gambit to protect the group from recriminations for not speaking out on the issue.

RABBIS on page 21

NATIONAL

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

National Briefs Baltimore Jewish Times publisher emerging from bankruptcy (JTA) — Alter Communications, which publishes the Baltimore Jewish Times, is set to emerge from bankruptcy.

A U.S. Bankruptcy judge on Dec. 16 approved the company’s reorganization plan, the Baltimore Business Journal reported. The plan will go into effect late next month, according to the report.

Alter, which puts out the Baltimore Jewish weekly and other publications, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in April.

While under bankruptcy protection, Alter continued to publish the 91-year-old Jewish Times, with a circulation of more than 50,000, and sister publications Style and Chesapeake Life.

“I’m elated,” Andrew Buerger, Alter’s CEO and the Jewish Times’ publisher told the newspaper. “To be able to put this chapter behind us is great for us, our employees, our community, advertisers and readers.”

Since 1996, Alter has sold off Jewish newspapers in Detroit, Atlanta and Palm Beach and Boca Raton, Fla., as well as Vancouver, British Columbia.

Seattle buses to carry ‘Israeli war crimes’ ads (JTA) — Buses in downtown Seattle will carry advertisements about “Israeli war crimes” to mark the second year since the Gaza war.

The Seattle Midwest Awareness Campaign has paid $1,794 to place the advertisements on 12 buses beginning Dec. 27, the day Israel entered Gaza to stop rocket attacks on its southern communities, according to Seattle’s King 5 News.

The ads feature a group of children looking at a demolished building under the heading “Israeli War Crimes: Your tax dollars at work.”

Advertisements are accepted for Seattle buses as long as they do not publicize pornography, alcohol and tobacco, and as long as the images and material used don’t interfere with public safety or incite a riot.

“As a government, we are mindful of the provisions in state and federal constitutions to protect freedom of speech,” King County Metro Transit spokesperson Linda Thielke told King 5 News. “So we can’t object these campaigns simply because they offend some people.”

7

Nancy Kaufman going national with model twinning social justice, Israel

By Ron Kampeas Jewish Telegraphic Agency WASHINGTON (JTA) — With the prospect for the first American universal health care plan apparently dimming in Massachusetts because the three outsize personalities vital to its passage -- the state's governor, its House speaker and its Senate president -- could not agree on the details, Nancy Kaufman came to the rescue.

At a critical meeting with the speaker of the state House of Representatives, Kaufman, the director of Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council, overwhelmed Salvatore Di Masi with statistics, broke down the cost analysis and, most critically, knew how the deal could be made.

As Kaufman spoke, the speaker visibly shifted, recalls the Rev. Hurmon Hamilton, who heads the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, which led lobbying for universal health care in the state since the late 1990s.

"His perception of us changed - you could see it in his face and his body language," Hamilton recalled of Di Masi.

That's when Hamilton knew universal health care would become a reality in Massachusetts.

Within weeks of meeting with Kaufman in the fall of 2005, DiMasi had introduced the bill, and it passed less than a year later.

"Nancy was phenomenal because she knew personally all the players, from the speaker of the House and the governor and the president of the Senate to providers to chiefs of the hospitals," Hamilton said, noting that some were Democrats and others Republicans. "She knew where they were as people, their politics.

She was a phenomenal strategic thinker. And all the while her heart is wanting to serve those who have no voice, no influence."

It's a familiar tale: Colleagues say that in Kaufman's 20 years directing the Boston JCRC, she combined street smarts with a passion for the underdog and made social justice an inextricable part of Jewish activism in that city.

Now she hopes to do the same on a national stage when she assumes the directorship next month of the National Council of Jewish Women.

“This is an opportunity to take everything wonderful I did in Boston and bring it to a national level,” said Kaufman, who will fill the newly created position of NCJW chief executive officer. “It’s an opportunity to have a broader impact.”

Courtesy of Boston JCRC

Nancy Kaufman with Dean Jep Streit, left, Father Demetrios Tonias, Pastor Wesley Roberts and Bishop Gideon Thompson on a summer study tour in Israel in 2009.

With 90,000 members in 100 chapters, NCJW is a vehicle to make social justice activism a must-have item on Jewish agendas across the country, Kaufman says.

She sees the individual chapters as catalysts for change.

“I'm a community organizer by training,” she said. “People need to feel it and touch it and become advocates for making change.”

Kaufman ascends to the national stage after decades of anxious introspection by Jewish social jus-

tice groups over why issues such as workers’ rights, gender and race equality, and alleviating poverty -once the core of the Jewish agenda -- have been shunted aside in favor of Israel activism, left and right.

NCJW had been searching for a successor to Stacy Kass, who left the executive director's position at the women’s advocacy organization a year ago. Nancy Ratzan, NCJW's president, said expanding membership was a key consideration. Like many other national

groups, NCJW has been grappling with how to replenish membership.

NCJW insiders say Kaufman was hired because of her track record in wrapping the pro-Israel activism that has become a sine qua non of national Jewish advocacy with the social justice focused on women, children and families that is the group’s bread and butter.

“She was brilliant in bringing together a lot of diversity and creating a lot of welcoming mixed players into the social justice arena and combining that with the commitment to Israel in Boston,” Ratzan said. “We look forward to making what she accomplished in Boston a national model.”

In Boston, Kaufman united a politically diverse community by making clear that her Israel commitment was unassailable, said her deputy, Alan Ronkin, who is set to step in as acting director of the Boston JCRC. Kaufman, 59, is a veteran of former Gov. Michael Dukakis’ administration, and has not been abashed about her liberalism. In 2007 she spoke out when the AntiDefamation League fired its Bostonarea director for railing against the national group’s opposition to recognizing the Armenian genocide.

KAUFMAN on page 21

8

NATIONAL

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On Israel, can U.S. Jews disagree nicely?

Courtesy of JCRC

An interactive theater exercise was one of 18 workshops at the Dec. 12, 2010 launch event for the “year of civil discourse” in San Francisco.

By Sue Fishkoff Jewish Telegraphic Agency SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — Laura Sutta says she doesn’t feel safe talking about Israel.

Sutta returned to the United States in 2003 after 23 years living in Israel and found that while she was away, the vitriol over Israel had reached a fever pitch in her Jewish community in the San Francisco Bay area.

“I’ve lost two friendships over it,” she said. “One was a friend from high school. When I talked to him about Israel, I could feel him judging me.”

Sutta says she’s dumbfounded by the “fury of the volleys being exchanged.”

Cecilie Surasky also doesn’t feel safe. The deputy director of Jewish Voice for Peace, an Oakland-based organization that says it supports security and selfdetermination for Israelis and Palestinians but whose detractors claim it is anti-Israel, Surasky says she has filed four police reports in the past four months.

In one highly publicized incident in November, members of Surasky’s organization were pepper-sprayed at a meeting in Berkeley by a woman associated with StandWithUs, a pro-Israel activist group that often clashes with Jewish Voice for Peace. Other incidents Surasky reported to police included graffiti on the organization’s headquarters.

“We fear for our safety,” Surasky said. “The issue of Israel is really tearing this community apart.”

To deal with the growing rancor, the San Francisco Jewish Community Relations Council has launched a “year of civil discourse” to encourage local Jews to agree to disagree on Israel without name-calling or violence.

The question now is whether dialogue will help heal the rifts or make things worse. The effort, which was launched Sunday with an invitation-only, all-day conference in San Francisco, is being watched closely throughout the United States by communities considering similar efforts.

The kickoff event at Congregation Beth Israel Judea and the Brandeis Hillel Day School drew more than 200 people. Each invitee was asked to bring two friends who disagree on Israel.

“This is not about changing people’s views but about listening respectfully and hearing divergent views, with the health of our community at stake,” said Rabbi Doug Kahn, director of the San Francisco JCRC. The civil discourse program here is being co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Federation and the Northern California Board of Rabbis.

“Dialogue has gotten a bad rap, that it’s about glossing over issues,” said Rachel Eryn Kalish, lead facilitator for the San Francisco initiative. “That’s not what this is about. You can be an advocate and still be civil.”

It’s an uphill battle in San Francisco, a city where the Israeli Consulate is routinely picketed, where the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel is very active, and where activists on both sides call each other Nazis, pigs and worse.

One comment posted online under a Jewish Voice for Peace video suggested that the organization’s supporters should have been taken away on trains to concentration camps.

Dr. Mike Harris, spokesman for the local branch of StandWithUs, attended the Dec. 12 gathering. He says it’s too soon

to tell how useful the civil discourse effort will prove.

On one hand, he said it is “absolutely necessary” for people to “get beyond the tension, so Israel can be talked about.” But he considers Jewish Voice for Peace outside the bounds of the Jewish communal conversation, saying the group “does not accept the ground rules” of Israel as the Jewish state.

“There is a conflict between the imperative for civil discourse and the imperative to name and shame those who are anti-Israel,” Harris said.

Cities across the country report similar troubles, and they are turning to JCRCs and other community relations specialists for help in dealing with their internal conflicts.

“San Francisco is not the only place where discourse has devolved into something unpleasant,” said Ethan Felson, who heads the civility campaign for the Washington-based Jewish Council for Public Affairs. More than 350 national Jewish leaders have signed onto the JCPA’s civility pledge; some have reached out to the JCPA for programming ideas.

“Quite a few communities are interested in doing something,” Felson said. “The breakdown of respect for different views, the demonization of fellow Jews — it feels that engaging on issues that matter has become a blood sport.”

In Atlanta, an Op-Ed in the local Jewish paper by an Israeli who noted that pursuit of peace is a Jewish value was followed by a letter to the editor accusing the author of supporting suicide bombers. In Boston, tempers flared when the local Workmen’s Circle rented space to Jewish Voice for Peace and Adalah, a proPalestinian group that supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

Alan Ronkin, deputy director of Boston’s JCRC, says extremists on both sides shut down dialogue at times. Ronkin says he is worried not about how to bring those people into the fold, but how to reassure moderates who “hear the loudest voices and turn away from the Jewish community because they’d rather not be involved in a rancorous, divisive conversation.”

The launch of San Francisco’s civil discourse project on Sunday actually grew out of a 5-year-old initiative called Project Reconnections in which the JCRC trained groups of 20 to 25 people in three congregations to act as conversation facilitators.

DISAGREE on page 22

Courtesy of Mendy Chanin

Rabbi Menachem Stern, with his baby, Esther, says serving in the Army is “my calling and mission.”

A cutting-issue rabbi sues the Army: Let me keep my beard

By Adam Kredo Washington Jewish Week WASHINGTON (Washington Jewish Week) — Menachem Stern’s bushy black beard is at the center of a federal court case.

Stern, 29, a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi from Brooklyn, N.Y., filed suit recently against the U.S. Army saying that a no-beard restriction violates his religious freedom.

In January 2009, Stern had applied to become a chaplain in the Army, which has been historically short on Jewish spiritual leaders.

That June, his application was accepted, according to a lawsuit filed Dec. 8 in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with one condition: He must shave his beard to comport with Army regulations prohibiting facial hair.

An Orthodox Jew who is prevented by halachah, or Jewish law, from shaving his facial hair, Stern maintains the Army’s requirement that he be clean shaven is overly burdensome and violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as well as the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

But rules are rules, the Army asserts, and Stern — like the 550,000 other enlisted personnel — must adhere to the military’s strict regulations if he wishes to serve.

Stern, however, argues that his journey through the Army’s bureaucracy has revealed widespread contradictions in the way its polices are applied to service members. Enlistees from other religions, he said, have been granted facial hair exemptions in the past.

From the outset, Stern explained in an interview, he made it clear that his beard is fundamental to his faith.

“By not trimming my beard, I represent the unadulterated view of the holy Torah, the way we believe a person should live,” Stern wrote in his original chaplain application.

“It is the strength Jews have retained of traditions for thousands of years.”

After submitting his application, Stern then filed a formal request to be exempted from shaving his facial hair, according to court documents.

In his request, Stern points to Leviticus chapter 19, noting that as a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi, he is “strictly prohibited from shaving or removing” his facial hair “in any manner.”

On Sept. 1, 2009, the unshaven Stern was appointed formally as a reserve commissioned officer and instructed to complete the Chaplain Officer Basic Course.

The following day, however, his appointment was rescinded.

A missive penned by Col. Scottie Lloyd, the Army’s director of Human Resources and Ecclesiastical Relations, noted that Stern’s appointment was an “administrative error” wrongly sent. He did not qualify for active duty, Lloyd continued, “because of the military regulation prohibiting the wearing of beards.”

Rabbi Sanford Dresin intervened to advocate on Stern’s behalf. As executive director of chaplains at the Aleph Institute, a group that certifies and provides support for Jewish chaplains, Dresin thought he could run interference.

With just nine active duty rabbis serving as Army chaplains, Dresin believes the Army should bend its rule to accommodate Stern — as it has in the past.

BEARD on page 22

INTERNATIONAL

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

9

Greece-Israel relations soar as ties with Turkey fade

By Jean Cohen Jewish Telegraphic Agency ATHENS, Greece (JTA) — Israel’s ambassador to Greece, Arye Mekel, was on the phone with a journalist earlier this month when the call came in that Israel’s Carmel region was up in flames.

The Israeli prime minister needed to speak urgently with his Greek counterpart.

Mekel quickly located Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou in Poland, where he was meeting with the Polish president. But a Papandreou aide told Mekel the meeting could not be interrupted.

“Tell him Bibi Netanyahu wants to speak with him urgently,” Mekel pressed, using the Israeli prime minister’s nickname.

A few moments later Papandreou was on the phone. In just hours, five Greek firefighting planes were in the skies along with a cargo plane loaded with spare parts, mechanics and pilots.

Benjamin Netanyahu greeted them at the airport.

The quick response by Greece was a sign of the increasingly close relations between two Mediterranean countries that until 18 years ago did not even have diplomatic ties.

Papandreou visited Israel in July, and the following month Netanyahu made the first-ever trip by an Israeli prime minister to Greece. In October, the two countries held joint military exercises.

The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations recently announced that Greece would be the site of its annual leadership mission in February.

“Greece and Israel have opened a new chapter in their ties,” Mekel said. “Our two governments have taken a mutual decision to develop multifaceted cooperation in the fields of politics, security, the economy and culture.”

The subtext behind the sudden flurry of activity between Greece and Israel is the crisis in relations between Israel and Turkey, Greece’s chief rival. Those ties, already on the skids, took a nosedive after the flotilla incident of May 31, when nine Turkish nationals were killed in a clash with Israeli commandos aboard a ship trying to break Israel’s naval blockade of Gaza.

After the incident, Turkey canceled joint military exercises with the Israelis and withdrew its ambassador to Israel.

With Israeli Air Force pilots no longer able to train in Turkish airspace, and the Turkish market for Israeli military hardware and other exports at risk, Israel turned to Greece.

Courtesy of Amos BenGershom / Government Press Office/FLASH90/JTA

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, on a Greek Navy boat with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and his wife, August 2010.

Conditions appear ripe for a boost to Greek-Israeli relations.

For Israel, nearby Greece would seem to be a natural ally in a Mediterranean region dominated

by Islamic countries.

For Greece, which is in the midst of a severe financial crisis, friendship with Israel is seen as a great asset, particularly due to Israel’s perceived closeness to the administration in Washington. By the same count, Papandreou hopes Greece’s closeness with Israel will convince Diaspora Jews to invest in Greece and support Greece in international disputes.

This wouldn’t be too different from the approach Israel and American Jewish organizations took vis-a-vis Turkey until recently — for example, opposing efforts to have the Turkish massacres of Armenians officially labeled as a genocide.

Greece also seeks an expanded role as a mediator in Middle East peacemaking — a role that until recently was occupied by Turkey.

“Greece could contribute in a positive way,” said the country’s foreign minister, Dimitris Droutsas.

By capitalizing on its close ties with the Arab world, Greece could be a source of trustworthiness, confidence and objectivity for both sides, he said.

For the time being, trade and tourism between Greece and Israel are growing. Approximately 250,000 Israeli tourists will have visited Greece in 2010, a 200 percent increase over last year, and bilateral trade stands at approximately $140 million, according to

Mekel.

“Clearly there is a lot of room for improvement,” Mekel said.

“Last week, a delegation from Israel came to Greece to present proposals to the Greek government for 13 large-scale joint projects in fields like tourism, agriculture, renewable energy sources, water and waste management, space technology and investments.”

The American Jewish organi-

zational world already appears to be on board.

Aside from the Presidents Conference mission, Jewish organizations lined up behind a U.S. congressional resolution on Oct. 1 asking Turkey to respect the cultural heritage and the religious sites of the Greek Cypriots in Turkish-occupied northern Cyprus. Turkey invaded the Greek-speaking island in 1974

and retains control of its north.

Israeli tourism to the Greekspeaking southern part of Cyprus, a Mediterranean island nation, is robust.

It’s all a major turnabout for two countries that until two decades ago didn’t really get along. In the 1980s, Greece was widely considered the most hostile country to Israel in Europe.

Andreas Papandreou, the father of Greece’s current leader, was prime minister, and he pursued a policy of cozying up to Arab regimes.

Greek officials recognized the PLO in 1981, and it wasn’t until Andreas Papandreou left office that Israel and Greece established formal diplomatic ties, in 1992.

Droutsas says Greece and Israel were never in conflict, but he acknowledges that governmentto-government ties lagged far behind “true relations between the two peoples.” He said, “This gap must be closed and we are determined to strengthen and to deepen these relations at a fast pace.”

They’re catching up fast. Just three weeks after Papandreou visited Israel in July — the first visit since Greek’s then-premier, Constantine Mitsotakis, visited Israel in May 1992 when his country first recognized the Jewish state — Netanyahu spent a few days in Greece. The two prime ministers, both of whom speak flawless English from time spent living in the United States, appeared to be hitting it off as old friends, even cruising the Greek islands together.

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ISRAEL

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Challenging orthodoxies, Shas maverick seeks to put Israeli haredim to work

By Leslie Susser Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) — Not so long ago, few Israelis had heard of Rabbi Chaim Amsellem, a softspoken Shas backbencher in the Knesset.

Over the past few weeks, however, Amsellem has emerged as a maverick in Israeli politics. Having broken ranks with the Orthodoxoriented Shas and its haredi leaders, he is talking about establishing a new party to challenge for the Sephardic vote.

It’s not so much the politics that makes Amsellem’s move significant; the chances are slim that other Shas Knesset members will break with the party to join Amsellem.

Rather, Amsellem’s very public rejection of Shas orthodoxy is part of an emerging movement in the Israeli Sephardic world against the rigid Orthodoxy that Shas leaders have tried to impose on followers.

Indeed, Amsellem speaks of nothing less than a Sephardic “social and cultural revolution,” which his new party would both tap into and promote.

At the heart of the movement is a novel reassessment of the idea of the “society of Torah scholars,” perhaps the most fundamental formative principle of the haredi world.

Both Shas and the Ashkenazi haredi parties hold that virtually all young haredi men should devote themselves solely to Torah study, as a society of Torah scholars who are exempted from mandatory army service as long as they stay in the yeshiva. This has led to deep poverty in the haredi community because rather than serve in the Israel Defense Forces, many haredi men choose to stay on indefinitely in the yeshivas.

Amsellem and others want to change this approach. Amsellem advocates a society of Torah scholars comprising only a small elite of specially gifted students, with all others serving in the army and joining the labor force. This, he argues, is the true, more lenient Sephardic approach: a productive, working life combined with Torah study whenever time allows.

Amsellem says excessive Ashkenazi or “Lithuanian” influence led Sephardim to embrace the model of an all-inclusive society of Torah scholars.

Now, he says, it’s time to break free from such thinking, mainly because it perpetuates a state of poverty among the haredim.

“Our goal is that people who genuinely study should get a real cost-of-living stipend, not just pennies,” Amsellem told JTA in an interview. “This will be possible only when those who are genuinely part of the society of Torah scholars devote themselves to study, and those who aren’t combine Torah study and work, the way the Sephardim down the ages have always done.”

Amsellem’s ideas reflect major social changes already under way in the haredi world.

“Over the past few years we are witnessing a dramatic increase in the number of haredim enlisting in the army,” said Asher Cohen, a Bar-Ilan University political scientist who focuses on religious parties and movements. “We also see a growing trend of both men and women going to colleges of higher education. People are trying to break out of the vicious cycle of poverty, as happens in any normal society. They are studying and looking for work.”

Cohen believes the notion of

Coutesy of Miriam Alster/FLASH90/JTA

Chaim Amsellem, left, speaks with fellow Shas Party member Avraham Michaeli during a plenum session in the assembly hall in the Israeli Knesset, Feb. 15, 2010.

the society of Torah scholars is already collapsing; it’s just that haredi leaders are not ready to admit it or condone it.

The numbers alone suggest that something serious is happening. A decade ago, hardly any haredim served in the IDF. When a special haredi infantry battalion was established in 1999, it had just 30 soldiers. Today it numbers more than 1,000, including three companies at various stages of training and two combat units. Another 1,000 haredim serve in special haredi technological units in the Air Force, Navy and intelligence corps.

In Israel, where the IDF is a vehicle for giving young Israelis marketable skills for later in life, these numbers are significant not just to the military but for Israeli society as a whole: These haredim are picking up skills for the job market.

An additional 1,000 haredim are enrolled in National Service, an alternative to military service that makes it possible for them to join the job market without being drafted into the IDF. The number of haredim studying mainly vocational secular subjects in haredi colleges or secular colleges with special programs for haredim has more than quadrupled since 2005, to approximately 5,000.

Most of the students are women — many of them, ironically, in institutions supported by Shas.

The government also is playing a key role. Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar has proposed a blueprint to increase the numbers by another 3,000 over the next five years. The Trade and Industry Ministry has launched special vocational courses for haredim and offers incentives to businesses that employ them.

These programs clearly are meeting a growing need. In a recent poll conducted by Chakima, an institute that helps haredim prepare for higher education, 53 percent of haredim said they would be interested in studying for a secular profession in a religious, gender-segregated classroom environment.

The new trend seems to be fueled by a confluence of interest between haredim desperate to break out of the cycle of poverty and a government eager to bring them into the labor force. Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz has even suggested waiving for haredim the national requirement to serve in the IDF, so they can go straight into the workforce.

MAVERICK on page 22

Courtesy of KKL-JNF Archive

Alleppo Pine trees like the ones pictured here will soon be sprouting again in the burned Carmel Forest

After Israeli fire, a hands-off approach to the forestland

By Marcy Oster Jewish Telegraphic Agency JERUSALEM (JTA) — Omri Boneh has been in a daze since the massive fire in Israel’s Carmel Forest.

The director of the northern region of Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, Boneh saw decades of the agency’s work destroyed in the four-day inferno, which reduced swaths of the verdant forest in northern Israel to a black, dead landscape. Boneh had personally planted thousands of the trees over a 25-year career as a forester on Mount Carmel.

But Boneh, whose name means “build” in Hebrew, doesn’t want to dwell on the past; he’s already thinking about the future.

The first step for rehabilitating the forest, Boneh says, is waiting, allowing nature to take its course.

It’s called natural regeneration.

“Planting, which is probably the most important action in forestry, will be just in case natural regeneration is not adequate,” said Boneh, who has dealt with the aftermath of five other significant fires on Mount Carmel.

The most recent blaze, which broke out Dec. 2, was at least six times as large as the next worst fire. Some 12,000 acres of land were burned and 5 million trees consumed. Forty-three people were killed and 250 homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

Late last week, four days after the fire was extinguished, Israeli Environmental Minister Gilad Erdan convened the first government committee on the rehabilitation of plant and animal life for the Carmel Forest region.

The committee agreed that natural regeneration was the best course of action and that no planting would take place in the Carmel in the coming year. The committee

also suggested that buffer zones with sparse vegetation should be created between communities and roads to prevent the spread of fires to populated areas, as well as in large forest areas to prevent the spread within the forests.

Approximately $46 million would be needed for rehabilitation, the committee estimated. That includes rehabilitating plant and animal life and preventing soil erosion, and infrastructure repairs of trails, roads, camping grounds and observation points.

Compensation to the victims of the fire and their families would add to the estimate.

Not everything in the path of the fire was burned indiscriminately. In some places the fire skipped a hill, valley or field; in others homes were spared. Boneh said he found that some of the groves he planted at the beginning of his career were only partially damaged. He called the surviving trees “a good start for the next generation.”

Ido Izhaki, head of the University of Haifa’s Carmel Research Center, has been researching the Carmel region since a major fire there in 1989. He agrees it would be a mistake to plant new trees on a large scale in the wake of the fire.

“The forest needs to be left alone to recover, with only minimal human intervention,” Izhaki said.

Most of the trees burned were Allepo pines. Seeds from the massive trees, which have adapted themselves evolutionarily to forest fires, were released from the trees’ pine cones by the heat of the fire and were spread far and wide by its coals and winds. These seeds will begin sprouting in a few weeks, according to Boneh.

FIRE on page 22

SOCIAL LIFE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life™ Award honoring Mary Ellen & Tom Cody (PT. 1) Jewish National Fund honored Mary Ellen and Tom Cody (recently retired VP of Macy’s Inc), with the prestigious Tree of Life™ Award on November 1, 2010. With close to 300 people in attendance, $300,000 was raised toward a park and playground area at Givot Bar, a new community in the Negev desert. Special guests and presenters of the evening included News Anchor WCPO-TV, Clyde Gray, Rabbi Gary P. Zola, Rabbi Kenneth E. Ehrlich, Dr. Albert Weisbrot, Dick Weiland, Nina and Eddie Paul, Louise Roselle, Michael and Suzette Fisher, Russell Robinson (JNF CEO) and Stanley M. Chesley, JNF National President. A special thank-you to our dinner co-chairs, Margie Adler, Randy Miller, Patti Schneider, and Diane Weber and the great team of volunteers who made this evening such a success.

Special congratulations to our 2nd Annual Board Member of the Year: Patti Schneider!

PHOTOS CONTINUED ON PG.12

11

ANNOUNCEMENTS BIRTH itch and Tracy (nee Kabakoff) Weisberger announce the birth of their daughter, Rina Nadine, born October 28.

Rina joins three sisters, Elizabeth, Jaclyn and Hailey.

Paternal grandparents are Janet and Marvin Weisberger.

Maternal grandparents are Donna Kabakoff and the late Jack Kabakoff.

M

R E F UA H S H L E M A H

Back row: Rick Krosnick (JNF Chief Development Officer); First row: Tom and Mary Ellen Cody (2010-2011 Tree of Life™ Honorees), Russell Robinson (JNF CEO), The Honorable Susan J. Dlott, Chief Judge, Stanley M. Chesley (JNF National President and previous Shalom Peace Award recipient)

Frieda Berger Fraida bat Raizel

Pepa Kaufman Perel Tova bat Sima Sora

Daniel Eliyahu Daniel ben Tikvah

Murray Kirschner Chaim Meir ben Basha

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

FREE! ANNOUNCEMENTS AR E F R E E! • BIRTHS • BAT/BAR MITZVAHS • ENGAGEMENTS • WEDDINGS • BIRTHDAYS • WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES • REFUAH SHLEMAH/GET WELLS To place your announcement in The American Israelite, send an e-mail to editor@americanisraelite.com

Back row: Melissa Ann Fabian (JNF Southern Ohio Regional Director); 3rd row: Louise Roselle (JNF Southern Ohio Regional President), Diane Weber (Dinner Co-Chair), Stanley M. Chesley (JNF National President & previous Shalom Peace Award recipient) & the Honorable Susan J. Dlott, Chief Judge; 2nd row: Randy Miller (Dinner CoChair, JNF Executive Board Member), Eddie Paul (Special Events Co-Chair; JNF National Board Member), Ray Schneider, Steve Adler; Front row: Russell Robinson (JNF CEO), Tom and Mary Ellen Cody (2010-2011 Tree of Life™ Honorees), Nina Paul (Special Events Co-Chair; JNF National Board Member), Patti Schneider (Dinner Co-Chair, JNF Executive Board Member), Margie Adler (Dinner Co-Chair), Rick Krosnick (JNF, Chief Development Officer)

Don’t forget to include a photo!

12

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

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Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life™ Award honoring Mary Ellen & Tom Cody (PT. 1)

Margie & Steve Adler (Dinner Co-Chair)

Judy Levy & Karen Schiffer

Les and Elece Kovel

Arlene and Bill Katz

Michael and Carol Ann Schwartz

Donna and Richard Barasch

Tom and Beth Lockshin

Ray and Patti Schneider (Dinner Co-Chair, JNF Executive Board Member)

Janice and Sidney Goldstein

Stewart and Hindi Friedman

Isaac Hazen and Toby Luster

Howard and Marlene Mayers

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

Herb & Bess Paper, Florence Lieberman (JNF past president), Alice Zipkin, Faye Horwitz, Helen Werner, Bernie & Marcia Weller

Barb Levy Wall and Shelley Fischer

Stanley M. Chesley (JNF National President and previous Shalom Peace Award recipient), Bill Ziv, and Elinor Ziv (Executive Board member)

Alan & Diane Weber (Dinner Co-Chair) and Joel & Ellen Golub

Michele Wiener, Marvin Weisberger, and Ron Solomon (JNF Southern Ohio Regional President-elect)

13

David Gershuny, Carol Ann Schwartz, and Peter Cline

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DINING OUT

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Ferrari’s Little Italy, our Tuscan sun! are always on the menu Inside, the ambience is as inviting as the menu choices—with red checked tablecloths, small dining rooms and three fireplaces. I asked Reed to suggest a menu for the first time diner to Ferrari’s. “Start by sharing a small salad as they are quite large,” said Reed. The signature salad—Insalate Ferrari—is a tantalizing combination of romaine lettuce, mixed greens, sun-dried cranberries, toasted pine nuts and gorgonzola cheese in balsamic vinaigrette for $8.95. “And then try one of the pastas starting at $9.75,” added Reed. He praised the vegetarian selections, too. All sauces are vegan, no animal products in the marinara and alfredo sauce nor in the minestrone soup.

The everyday specials at Ferrari’s are grand. On Sunday and Monday, martinis, cosmos, chocolate, raspberry – all flavors, are only $5. Children under the age of 12 eat free on Sunday when one adult entrée is ordered. Tuesday and Wednesday offer half price bottles of wines from all over the world, DMX satellite radio provides background music, crooning Italian favorites from such icons as Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra.

Large rooms are available for rehearsal dinners, celebrations and holiday parties. Catering is another option and Ferrari’s will gladly deliver their fine food to your home. Or surprise your office or business meeting and order box lunches freshly prepared by the Ferrari’s bakery and deli.

Pizza made from a multi-grain dough and paninis, an Italian sandwich that is heated and pressed at the same time in a scalloped panini press are lighter meal alternatives and fun to eat. The Mediterranean pizza has garlic, olive oil, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, mushroom, roma tomatoes, feta cheese, fresh spinach and Ferrari’s secret spice for $10.95. Sally’s vegetarian gourmet pizza is loaded with Tuscan vegetables for $9.95. Order a pizza, the salad, and a bottle of wine – eat on Tuesday or Wednesday and take advantage of the half-price wine special, and you and a companion will bask in culinary bliss.

I decided the secret of Ferrari’s success turned out to be a family owned business where customers are known by name and food is made from ancestral recipes. The atmosphere can’t be duplicated.

Choices are in abundance at Ferrari’s. I recommend you plan on treating your family to an Italian adventure in the near future by dining at this family friendly, gastronomically pleasing restaurant.

By Marilyn Gale Dining Editor Quaint and cute, large and inviting, a country inn minus sleeping rooms, that is Ferrari’s, an Italian restaurant and bakery nestled in a corner of the business district in Madeira. As I drove into the parking lot, after the formal lunch hour, I saw the restaurant still filled with cars. Here, patrons linger after the meal, digesting the daily lunch special, kibbitzing with old friends, sipping wine and eating a freshly baked Italian pastry. This is the kind of neighborhood restaurant favored by people enjoying their golden years—retirees never looked happier, or healthier, for that matter. Walking into the restaurant, which looked as if it could be straight from the Tuscan countryside, complete with a picturesque bakery brimming with Italian sweets, breads, focacias, cheese and olive oil, I no longer felt as if I were in the suburbs of Cincinnati. Instead, I could have been transported into an Italian coastal town where the smell of yeast and flour filled the air.

“Fifteen years,” said Chris Reed, general manager of Ferrari’s, which is how long the restaurant has been in existence, serving lucky Queen City residents seven days a week.

I asked Reed how things were going for this large dining spot, which seats 160. In spring and summer there is an outdoor dining area framed by charming wisteria that serves an additional 60 patrons. He answered, “Busy.” How glorious to hear that word, given the questionable economy. There were secrets to uncover from this dining crew and my task was to find them.

Reed described himself as a longtime hospitality guru at Ferrari’s. Owners Patty and Tony Bassano hired Reed as soon as they opened the restaurant. Reed had grown up in the restaurant business, as his father was the Maitre d’ at the Kenwood Country Club. “I’ve worked in all areas of hospitality at the country club, started cooking in the snack shack, became a caddie, then a busboy,” said Reed.

The Bassanos have worked in restaurants for the last 34 years.

Tony had been the manager at Prime and Wine. Reed told me that most of the recipes are Bassano family culinary favorites, a mixture of Northern and Southern Italian cuisine. Patty makes the desserts and is known to stay up late at night creating the colorful cupcakes that sit happily on the counter of the bakery. Homemade cheesecake is a common occurrence, which changes regularly and the day that I was there, it was brownie. Other days it could be turtle or chocolate.

Award winning tiramisu and gelato

Chris Reed (left) and friendly staff are at your service; Country ambience invites diners to linger and enjoy fine food and good company; Ferrari's Italian bakery is full of mouthwatering surprises.

Ferrari’s Little Italy and Bakery 7677 Goff Terrace Madeira, Ohio 45243 513-272-2220

DINING OUT

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

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DINING OUT Andy’s Mediterranean Grille At Gilbert & Nassau 2 blocks North of Eden Park 281-9791

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OPINION

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Our not-sohumble opinions Miss the good old days?

When, that is, we had a President who refused to allow the U.S. to participate in the UN’s Durban Review Conference because he believed Israel would be unfairly criticized.

A President who rejected the Goldstone report, and refused to participate in joint military exercises with Turkey when Ankara insisted Israel be excluded.

A President who asked Congress to approve a $205 million package to help Israel build a new anti-missile defense system.

A President who spoke up on Israel’s behalf to help it gain acceptance into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

A President who didn’t shy from authorizing the killing of an American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen.

A President who, in a speech delivered in the heart of the Arab world, told his listeners that they need to recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state.

A President who, addressing the UN General Assembly, stated clearly and unequivocally that “Israel is a sovereign state and the historic homeland of the Jewish people” and went on to say that “It should be clear to all that efforts to chip away at Israel’s legitimacy will only be met by the unshakeable opposition of the U.S.” A President who, on the domestic front, signed an executive order that preserved the faithbased social service funding initiative and pointedly did not forbid participating religious groups from discriminating in hiring in order to be faithful to their religious beliefs.

Well, take heart. The good old days are more recent than you think. You have that President.

His name is Barack Obama.

No, I didn’t vote for him in 2008. I’m a lifelong Republican, an alumnus, in fact, of Young Americans for Freedom. (I was once young.)

But it bothers me that Mr. Obama is negatively viewed by so many Orthodox Jews, ostensibly because he treats Israel badly and is hostile to religion.

I have no statistics, only anecdotal evidence and journalistic

gleanings, for my feeling that he is so viewed by many intelligent and otherwise well-informed frum folks. But if I’m right and he is, one has to wonder why.

Maybe it’s his fiscal strategy.

Economics is an esoteric, inscrutable science to me, something on the order of particle physics. And so it may well be that the President deserves opprobrium by the heapful for his fiscal policies. But those policies are not the major part of the criticism one hears about Mr. Obama “in the mikvah,” so to speak. There he is indicted on charges of insensitivity (or worse) toward Israel or religious Jews.

Surely our community is not so uninformed as to consider Mr. Obama’s middle name, given him at birth, an indictment of his character; or so credulous as to doubt his citizenship; or so crass – one hopes – as to distrust him for a surplus of melanin.

There may well be reasons to feel negatively toward the current Administration (certainly many people, and they are hardly limited to our community, do). History will have its say in time. But if any readers were surprised a few paragraphs above to discover that the “good old days” of American support for Israel and concern for religious rights are the here-andnow, they must admit that they were not as well-informed about our President as they thought.

The real problem here, though, isn’t Mr. Obama or our feelings about him. It’s something deeper.

One of the most basic Torah imperatives is modesty. Not only in dress and in speech but in attitude – in recognizing that there are things we don’t know, in some cases can’t know.

And yet so often we seem to feel a need to embrace absolute, take-no-prisoners political opinions; to reject any possibility of ambivalence, much less any admission of ignorance.

Certitude is proper, even vital, in some areas of life. But in the realm of politics it can be, in fact usually is, an expression of overconfidence or worse.

Part of wisdom is knowing what one doesn’t know. And part of modesty is acting accordingly.

Rabbi Shafran is an editor at large and columnist for Ami Magazine.

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

Dear Editor, Enclosed is a copy of the June 5, 2007 letter to President Bush, a copy was also sent to Senator Obama. A Nazi-type genocide has already started in Arizona. A bipartisan plan in Arizona is terminating the practice of the state paying for organ transplants for people on Medicaid. They say it saves the state 0.1 percent a year.

One lawmaker said, “These people are going to die anyway.”

In 1938, the Nazis started the slaying of the sick. In 1940, they had the death camps up and running, and you know the rest.

Eleven million people were slaughtered, six million of them Jews. When good people do nothing… right?

June 5, 2007 Dear President Bush, Enclosed is the May 31, 2007 letter to the Department of Justice. The good news is you’re not guilty of war crimes.

However, where do you stand on terrorism? Naziism? I have no idea where you stand on these matters.

The Department of Justice has the power to do something about this matter.

1. They could come to Ohio

and arrest all the elected officials past and present that have supported terrorism and Naziism.

2. They could file a lawsuit on my behalf and things could be settled that way.

3. They could allow people to exercise their Second Amendment rights under the Constitution to the fullest extent.

Scottie Spurlock Cincinnati, Ohio Dear Editor, Firefighter Dany Hayat lost his life fighting the Carmel fire set by Arab arsonists. He is the 44th victim of this horrible attack. His death shows that the Israeli government has failed to protect its citizens again by not punishing the Arab arsonists, by not being prepared for such catastrophes, by the lack of fire fighting equipment, and by the slow response to the fire.

The Arabs who set these fires are Israeli citizens, they are not the so-called Palestinians, but there is no difference. They all hate the Jewish State of Israel and would love to wipe us out.

One reporter exposed the cover up of the arson by the police and media who tried to claim it was an accident while they knew it was Arab arson. They know the

people of Israel had enough of Arab terror and the government’s inaction while Jews are imprisoned for self-defense.

The Arabs have been burning Israel’s fields and forests for years with JNF money spent to reforest the burned areas. The money could instead be used to plant new forests or for other projects in Israel like building dams in the desert to store water during the short and heavy rainfalls and prevent floods.

It is time to remove the hostile Arab cancer from our midst, and those who say it can’t be done have an example from the Gush Katif atrocity where Jews were brutally removed from their homes and livelihood in 2005.

Many ‘Jewish’ organizations cheered the removal of Jews from their own land and gave money to the Arabs in Gaza.

Arabs have been murdering Jews with impunity for far too long and it’s time to send them back to the Arab countries where they came from. Arab terror has claimed more Jewish lives than the soldiers have been killed in the wars they have started against Israel. Removing the Arabs will make the Jews of Israel safe from terror attacks.

Ezra Kattan Cincinnati, Ohio

T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: MISHPATIM (SHMOT 1:1—6:1) 1. What does the Torah review in the beginning of the book of Shmot? a.) Bnei Yisroel has three fathers: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob b.) Hashem told Abraham of a 400 year exile in Egypt c.) The names of Jacob sons who came to Egypt 2. How does the Torah describe the new king? a.) Wicked b.) Cunning c.) New 3. What does the name Moshe mean? a.) An Egyptian name 3. C 3:12 Moshe was “taken or drawn” from the waters.

4. C 5:1-3 Pharaoh had heard about Hashem from the stories of Avimelech (Braishith 20) and Pharaoh and Sarah (Braishith 12). But he did not have first hand experience. R'Bchai 5. B 5:22

By Rabbi Avi Shafran Contributing Columnist

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

b.) Light c.) Drawn from the water 4. What was Pharaoh's first reaction to letting Bnei Yisroe go? a.) Agreed but only on certain conditions b.) Politely refused c.) Refused and burdened the people with more work 5. What was Moshe's reaction to the complaints of Bnei Yisroel? a.) Postive b.) Negative c.) Ambivalent ANSWERS 1. C 1:1-5 Hashem listed them after their passing, to show that he loves and counts Bnei Yisroel just like the stars. Rashi Isiah 40 2. C 1:8 He was either a new king, or instituted new laws against Bnei Yisroel. Rashi

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Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

JEWISH LIFE

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

17

Sedra of the Week

By Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT SHEMOT • EXODUS 1:1-6:1

Efrat, Israel – “Moses wished to dwell with the man [Jethro]” (Exodus 2:21) Moses is the greatest leader the Israelites have ever experienced —or will ever experience. He gave his people two most precious gifts: He freed them from Egyptian servitude, and he infused them with a Divine mission and legal code, challenging them to become a holy nation and a kingdom of priest-teachers. Whose influence contributed to the development of this outstanding liberator-legalist?

Undoubtedly, Yochebed and Amram, his biological parents from the tribe of Levi, taught Moses the traditions of the covenantal family of Abraham, the fundamental teachings of ethical monotheism, with its emphasis on compassionate righteousness and moral justice. Whatever he received from them, however, was limited to his early years, since as soon as he was weaned; he was taken to Pharaoh’s palace by his adoptive mother, Princess Bitya.

This daughter of Pharaoh must have made a tremendous impression on him. She risked her life to save him, drawing him out of the River Nile in defiance of her father’s orders that every male Hebrew child be drowned there.

She then nurtured him during his formative years. Surely, it was she who served as his model when he reached out to his Hebrew brethren and killed the Egyptian task-master who was striking a Hebrew slave, thereby forsaking the plush, playboy life which could have been his in Pharaoh’s palace.

But we dare not forget yet another role model for Moses, Jethro, the priest-sheikh of Midian, his father-in-law and mentor for 60 years. The Biblical narrative provides only the barest outline of how Moses got to Midian, but Rabbi Moshe Lichtenstein, in his superb commentary, “Moses: Envoy of God, Envoy of His People” draws on the Midrash to flesh out the details. The Bible records that “on the second day”—the day after this Prince of Egypt killed the Egyptian—Moses went out to his people, and found two Hebrews fighting between themselves.

Why did Moses go out on the sec-

Moses is the greatest leader the Israelites have ever experienced—or will ever experience. He gave his people two most precious gifts: He freed them from Egyptian servitude, and he infused them with a Divine mission and legal code, challenging them to become a holy nation and a kingdom of priest-teachers.

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

Kiddush follows Shabbat Morning Services

RABBI HANAN BALK & ASSISTANT RABBI STUART LAVENDA

ond day? Rabbi Lichtenstein suggests that he hoped to inspire the slaves with his fervor for freedom, inciting a rebellion against the Egyptian taskmasters. Instead, he found dissension within the Hebrew ranks and resentment and derision toward him for leading this initiative (Exodus 2:13, 14).

Disappointed by the Hebrews, the Egyptians and perhaps by humanity in general, frustrated, and frightened lest he be killed by the Egyptian authorities, Moses fled to Midian. Why Midian, a city in the midst of a great desert?

Perhaps the attraction was not so much the place, or even the shepherdess he rescued there, but rather Zipporah’s father, priestsheikh Jethro. This man was a seeker after God, a spiritual personality who deliberately chose to live in an isolated area ideal for meditation, working as a shepherd and living in tune with nature.

Indeed, when Jethro met Moses many years later, after the splitting of the Reed Sea, he declared, “Now I know that JHVH is greater than all the gods” (Shemot 18:11).

Apparently, he had investigated all the gods himself.

Now, Moses yearns to spend significant time in search for and in the company of God. He spends 60 years in the desert, developing his spiritual energies, his “active intellect.” As the Bible tells us, “Moses wished to [or swore to, according to Rashi] dwell with the person [Jethro], and he [Jethro] gave Zipporah his daughter [as wife] to Moses” (Ex. 2:21). “And Moses was shepherding the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, Priest of Midian, and he led the sheep far away into the desert; and he came to the Mountain of the Lord, to

Horeb.” Moses is searching, Moses is praying, Moses is meditating. Moses is near Horeb, at Sinai. Then Moses has a Divine revelation, an angel of the Lord in a blazing spark at the heart of fire in the midst of a sneh (thornbush) at Sinai. The thornbush is glowing red with fire, but it is not being consumed. This prickly bush symbolizes the ungrateful nation of Israel, lowly slaves in Egypt’s social pecking order, but still passionately burning with the fiery message of God. Israel is suffering, but it is also basking in its eternal covenant with God. And God expects Moses to suffer the thorn pricks and lead the bush to Sinai and beyond.

The Almighty describes Himself as “I will be who I will be,” as the God of history. He is the God who demands people in general, Israel in particular, and most especially of Moses, to be His partners in redeeming the world. The lowly sneh must rise to the exalted heights of Sinai, the word and fire of God must transform an unfriendly and difficult desert into a peaceful and secure universe.

God is telling Moses to assume his rightful place in world history, to act rather than to meditate.

“Know and be informed about Me that I am the Lord who does loving-kindness, justice and compassionate righteousness on earth; it is these things that I want, says the Lord” (Jeremiah 9:24, and Maimonides, at the end of his Guide for the Perplexed).

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

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18

JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

Jewz in the Newz

By Nate Bloom, Contributing Columnist GRIT, GULLIVER AND FOCKERS A re-make of “True Grit,” the hit 1969 Western starring John Wayne, opened yesterday, Dec. 22. Directed by the COEN brothers (ETHAN and JOEL), the remake stars Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn, a drunken U.S. Marshall. Cogburn is hired by Mattie Ross, a 14-year-old girl, to hunt down her father’s murderer, Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin). A young Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who is after Chaney for another crime, eventually teams up with Mattie and Rooster.

HAILEE STEINFELD, 14, plays Mattie. She won the role via a video audition tape. 15,000(!) other young actresses also submitted tapes for the role in a nationwide search. This is Hailee’s first feature film. Born and raised in Southern California, her Jewish father is personal trainer PETER STEINFELD. Peter is the brother of famous fitness guru and occasional actor JAKE STEINFELD, 52. Hailee’s mother, who is of mixed white, Filipino, and African-American ancestry, isn’t Jewish. As of press time, I was unable to find-out if Hailee was raised in any faith.

Also opening yesterday were “Little Fockers” and “Gulliver’s Travels.” “Fockers” is the third installment in the “Focker” movies starring BEN STILLER, 45, as Greg Focker, a Jewish male nurse married to the non-Jewish daughter of Jack, an overbearing ex-CIA agent (Robert DeNiro). The whole original cast returns, including BARBRA STREISAND, 68, and DUSTIN HOFFMAN, 71, as Stiller’s parents. This sequel begins with Greg and his wife as the parents of newborn twins.

However, Jack’s hard-earned trust in Greg is undermined when Greg starts moonlighting for a drug company. Jack thinks there is something “off” about this job.

Greg must prove, again, to Jack that he can be trusted and, in Jack’s words, “be the man of the house.”

The director is PAUL WEITZ, 45 (“American Pie”). Veteran HARVEY KEITEL, 71, plays a new character, a contractor hired

by Greg.

“Gulliver” is a modern (3-D) take on Jonathan Swift’s famous 18th century story. JACK BLACK, 41, plays Lemuel Gulliver, a lowly mailroom clerk at a NY newspaper. He’s smitten with Darcy Silverman, an editor (AMANDA PEET, 38) and to impress her, he passes off articles

lifted from the internet as his own.

Silverman is taken in and she gives Gulliver an assignment to travel to the Bermuda Triangle and write a story. He goes there, only to be supernaturally transported to the land of Liliput. As in the original story, Gulliver towers over the tiny people of Liliput. Gulliver tells the Liliputians tall tales about how many great things he has done in his own land.

JASON SEGEL, 30, (“How I Met Your Mother, “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), plays Horatio, a Liliputian who befriends Gulliver.

Horatio is in love with the Princess of Liliput (Emily Blunt). An enemy of the Princess and her father, the King, plots to take over Liliput. Using a giant robot body, he defeats Gulliver and exposes him for the faker he is. Gulliver, helped by Horatio, finally finds his inner courage and in the flick’s climax, defeats the evil rebel.

KENNEDY CENTER HONORS Each year, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., holds a gala to honor five artists for lifetime achievements. The gala was held earlier this month and will be broadcast on CBS on Tuesday, Dec. 28 at 9 p.m. This year’s award recipients are country singer Merle Haggard, talk show host Oprah Winfrey, dancer/choreographer Bill T. Jones, musician Paul McCartney, and Broadway music composer JERRY HERMAN, 79. Herman is most famous for writing the music and lyrics for “Hello, Dolly,” “Mame,” and “La Cage Aux Folles.” One of his lesser known, but well-respected musicals is “Milk and Honey,” a 1961 show about a busload of Jewish widows who tour Israel with an eye toward “catching” a new husband.

Herman, by the way, must be shouting with “glee” at the extra royalties he’s now earning. His song, “We Need a Little Christmas,” from “Mame,” is included on the best-selling “Glee” TV show Christmas album and it is selling very briskly as a single song download.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney, who isn’t Jewish, defied many when he played Israel in 2008. His late wife, LINDA EASTMAN, was a secular Jew and McCartney has been dating Jewish businesswoman NANCY SHEVELL since 2007. (Shevell is BARBARA WALTERS’ second cousin). Bill T. Jones is African-American and not Jewish.

His life partner, and the cofounder of his dance company, was Jewish dancer ARNIE ZANE (1947-1988).

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FROM THE PAGES 100 Years Ago Mr. and Mrs. Leopold Joseph will be at home Saturday and Sunday, December 24 and 25, in honor of the bar mitzvah of their son, Sylvan.

The engagement has been announced of Miss Rebecca Zapoleon, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. S. M. Zapoleon, of Dayton, O., to Mr. Sidney J. Newman, of this city.

The Cincinnati Union Bethel evidently does not believe that money earned by the manufacture

and sale of intoxicants is tainted. Its largest subscriber is a family of Christian beer brewers and the next is a family of Jewish distillers.

Mr. Leopold Block, of the American Grocery Company, one of the best known men of the trade in Cincinnati, died Monday, December 19. He is survived by a widow and two children. Funeral services were held Wednesday afternoon at 2:30 o’clock at Sherith-

Israel Cemetery at Lick Run. Rabbi Jacob Mielziner officiated.

Last Saturday, at the Hebrew Union College, Mr. Samuel Cohon, a student at the institution, preached a memorial sermon for Prof. Sigmund Mannheimer, who died a year ago.

The theme of the sermon was the value of scholarship and the late Prof.

Mannheimer was extolled as a shining example of love of Torah and its study. — December 22, 1910

75 Years Ago Mr. and Mrs. Fineman, Pittsburgh, announce the marriage of their daughter, Miss Anne, to Mr. Alex Lowenthal of Pittsburgh, on December 18th. Mr. Lowenthal is a son of Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Lowenthal of 350 Hearne Avenue.

With a party of friends, Messrs.

Milton Schloss and Richard Bluestein motored to Florida for the holiday season.

Mrs. Samuel Ach passed away

Tuesday morning, Dec. 24th, at her home, 541 Forest Avenue. She had been ill for some time.

Her husband is past president of the Cincinnati Board of Education, former County Commissioner, and former County Treasurer and long a leader in the Charter and Citizens Committee’s movements.

Mrs. Ach is survived by her husband; a son, Ernest; and four

grandchildren.

Mr. Irvin Pollack, in Cincinnati for the holiday recess from Ohio State University, recently celebrated his 21st birthday.

Mrs. Rose Bluestein and Mr. and Mrs. Al Wides (Virginia Bluestein) of Mitchell Avenue, are enjoying a vacation at Miami Beach, Fla., where they are registered at the hotel Blackstone.— December 26, 1935

50 Years Ago Mr. and Mrs. David Wolfson, 4815 Yarmouth Place announce the forthcoming bar mitzvah of their son, Stephen Lawrence, Saturday, Dec. 24, at 9 a.m., at the Bond Hill Synagogue, 4906 Reading Road. A kiddush will follow the services.

Stephen is a grandson of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Wolfson and Mr. and Mrs. I. Hiudt.

Alfred Friedlander was named chairman of the Professional division of the 1961 United Fine Arts campaign. Fred Lazarus III is general chairman.

Mr. Friedlander’s assistants will be Simon Lazarus, Jr., Frederick Rauh, Carl A. Strauss, Robert Westheimer, Thomas Muir, and David Temple.

They and their associates will seek funds Jan. 6-March 1 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Taft Museum, Summer Opera, and Art Museum.

Miss Louise Herminghausen, with the Jewish Hospital since 1912, retired Dec. 16.

She joined the hospital when it was a single building on Burnet

Avenue. This has been her only employer.

Miss Herminghausen undertook a variety of duties–admitting patients, answering phones, keeping medical records, working with the Nursing School and Board of Trustees.

She originally was the Accounting Department. Today 30 persons handle the complex accounting procedures that evolved from Miss Herminghausen’s original job.

She is supervisor of general accounts payable. — December 22, 1960

25 Years Ago Harold “Pat” Goldberg, endowment director and former executive vice president of Jewish Federation, will be honored by Jewish Federation at the 89th Annual Meeting to be held Sunday, Jan. 19 at 7 p.m. at Rockdale Temple.

Mr. Goldberg came to Cincinnati in 1952 as assistant executive director of the Jewish Community Center, where he became director in 1965. In 1968 he joined the staff of Federation as its first social planning director.

He became executive vice president in 1969 and served in that capacity until 1982.

As endowment director, Mr. Goldberg has made the Federation’s largest of its kind in the country.

Mr. Goldberg is a board member of the American Jewish Committee and of its Human Relations Award Committee. He is active with the Soviet Jewry and mid-East Affairs Committees of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

He and his wife, Inge, have

five children.

Mrs. Regine Lustberg of 2200 Victory Parkway passed away Dec. 19.

She is survived by her husband, Alfred; three sons, Daniel M. Collier Jr. of New York City; Dr. Thomas J. Lustberg of Patomic Md.; and Roger E. Collier of Cincinnati; a brother, Howard Altman of West Berlin, N.J.; and six grandchildren, Shelby, Alexandria and Robert Collier; and Michael, Mark and Lisa Lustberg.

— December 26, 1985

10 Years Ago Members of Northern Hills Synagogue—Congregation B’nai Avraham have approved the purchase of 5.03 acres of land located at 8430 Fields-Ertel Road. The approval came at a special congregational meeting Dec. 10. The congregation plans to relocate its synagogue to the sight, with an anticipated completion in 2002.

The land is located on the north side of Fields-Ertel Road, east of

Snider Road and west of I-71. The site is adjacent to the Hunter’s Ridge condominiums. The Conservative congregation will be the first synagogue in Deerfield Township and Warren County.

Edith A. Buchheim, 66, passed away December 8, 2000. Mrs. Buchheim was the daughter of the late Julius and Hedwig Block. She was the wife of Gerd Buchheim, who survives her. Surviving children are

Linda and David Tadir of Moshav Nir Moshe, Israel; Rebeccah and Schmuel Birkan of Blue Ash; Gary and Anota Buchheim of Springfield, VA; and Jay Buchheim of Landen, OH. Mrs. Buchheim is also survived by her grandchildren: Maya, Yamit, May-Tav, Naveh, Daniel, Adam, Lana, Jillian, and Dewey. Mrs. Buchheim was the sister of Anita and Lothar Haas of Cincinnati, who also survive her. — December 21, 2000

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

CLASSIFIEDS

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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) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.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 Workum Fund (513) 899-1836 • workum.org CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 984-3393 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 Cincinnati Hebrew Day School (513) 351-7777 • chds.shul.net 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) 204-5594 • 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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ADATH from page 1 understanding. We hope this opportunity will spark the beginning of ongoing interfaith dialogue and quest for many of us to continue to learn more about Islam, as well as other faiths. Ethically, morally, and practically, we may find we share considerably more than we differ.”

The course will be taught by Dr. Muhammad Nawaz. He earned his docorate in education from Indiana University and his master’s degree in history with emphasis on Islamic history from Pakistan. Dr. Nawaz taught at the graduate level for about 20 years and worked at Livingston University (currently the VAAD from page 1 Vaad, says Rabbi Finegold has “been well-received and has done a great job. We hope to continue our relationship.”

Before working with the Columbus Vaad, Rabbi Finegold studied and taught for five years in the Columbus Community Kollel.

Finegold attended a post high school yeshiva as well as the Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem while living in Israel over a period of four years. After living in Israel, he came back to the United States and SPA from page 1 be eligible to receive a free 30minute massage, signature pedicure or express facial. Then, in January, the 60-minute hot stone pedicure will be discounted. To learn more about monthly discounts and gift cards at the J Spa, contact the JCC or visit their website.

Catherine Neeb recently had her first hot stone massage at the J Spa. “I loved the entire experience, and the stones felt great on my sore muscles,” she said.

The Dead Sea exfoliation, moisturizing warm algae wraps, and purifying facials are also in high demand at the J Spa this season. The Dead Sea exfoliation begins with an invigorating scrub that removes several layers of dead skin cells, followed by a hydrating massage with natural oils and antioxidants, leaving the skin soft and moisturized.

The wrap provides a hydrating, pro-

University of West Alabama) for 23 years where he retired as professor of education and associate dean of the graduate school. Dr. Nawaz has published two books on Islam, lectures on the subject, and participates in interfaith discussions at Raymond Walters College in their Beyond Dogma class.

All adults in the community are welcome to join this class. Contact Marilyn Kiefer at the synagogue office to register or for further information. You can also register online through the Adath Israel website.

Tuition waiver is available to anyone with financial circumstances who contacts Rabbi Wise in confidence to enroll in this program. attended Ner Israel Rabbinical College for three years where he earned his master’s degree in Talmudic law.

Born and raised in Memphis Tenn., he currently resides in Columbus, Ohio.

In the future, Rabbi Finegold will share his plans for the Cincinnati Vaad in regard to any policies and procedures he hopes to implement and how he intends to expand the number of kosher restaurants and number of establishments offering kosher food.

More information will follow. tein-rich algae application and full body moisturizing massage. There are a broad array of rejuvenating, healing and cleansing facials at the J Spa designed to benefit men, women and teens of all skin types.

Group packages for special events such as bridal showers or birthdays are available at the J Spa with advance reservations. They also offer in-office/corporate chair massages as a cost effective way for local businesses to boost employee moral and recondition employees’ work-related neck and back strain.

J Spa services are available by appointment, every day of the week. Walk-in appointments are based on availability, and schedules are posted at the JCC front desk and fitness desk daily. Appointments may be made in person, by phone or on the JCC website. For more information about the J Spa, contact the Mayerson JCC on The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati Campus.

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BUSINESS

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Hospice of Cincinnati receives NIJH accreditation Hospice of Cincinnati, the fourth oldest hospice in the nation, recently received recognition and accreditation from the National Institute of Jewish Hospice (NIJH), a 55,000-member organization established in 1985 to help alleviate suffering in serious and terminal illness. Although Hospice of Cincinnati has been serving Jewish families for decades, the accreditation confirms that the leadership, management and caregivers of the organization have

taken additional steps to address the unique needs and preferences of Jewish patients and families.

The National Institute for Jewish Hospice provides education, conferences, booklets and other resources designed to equip hospices, hospitals and clergy of all faiths to better serve the Jewish terminally ill.

“This accreditation demonstrates Hospice of Cincinnati’s commitment to personalized care and further confirms my affilia-

tion with this organization,” notes board member Eddie Goldstein.

“Through the outstanding work of Hospice of Cincinnati, I am able to leverage my time, talent and treasure contributions because of their mission-driven outreach and care that goes above and beyond.”

Fellow Hospice of Cincinnati board member Iris Diamond is also pleased with the accreditation. “First as a volunteer and then as a trustee, I have watched as Hospice of Cincinnati has become

KISSINGER from page 1 concern,” Kissinger is heard saying on the latest batch of Nixon-era Oval Office tapes released by the Nixon Library.

Following its publication Saturday — buried deep in a New York Times story that focused more on Nixon’s well-known bigotries — a shock shuddered through the Jewish community and led to calls to shun Kissinger, and then to calls to forgive him.

Kissinger in an e-mail to JTA would brook no request for an apology and did not even directly address his gas chambers remark.

Instead he appeared to insist on context: His frustration at the time with the insistence of the Jewish community and U.S. senators such as Jacob Javits (R-N.Y.) and Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.) on attaching human rights riders to dealings with the Soviets.

“The quotations ascribed to me in the transcript of the conversation with President Nixon must be viewed in the context of the time,” Kissinger wrote to JTA. He and Nixon pursued the issue of Soviet Jewish emigration as a humanitarian matter separate from foreign policy issues in order to avoid questions of sovereignty and because normal diplomatic channels were closed, Kissinger wrote.

“By this method and the persistent private representation at the highest level we managed to raise emigration from 700 per year to close to 40,000 in 1972,” Kissinger wrote. “We disagreed with the Jackson Amendment, which made Jewish emigration a foreign policy issue. We feared that the Amendment would reduce emigration, which is exactly what happened. Jewish emigration never reached the level of 40,000 again until the Soviet Union collapsed.

The conversation between Nixon and me must be seen in the context of that dispute and of our distinction between a foreign policy and a humanitarian approach.”

In fact, the historical consensus is that while it was true that what became known as the Jackson-Vanik Amendment — named for Jackson and Rep. Charlie Vanik (D-Ohio) — at first

Courtesy of National Archive

President Nixon walking with Henry Kissinger on the south lawn of the White House, Aug. 10, 1971.

inhibited emigration, it formed the basis for the late-20th century politics of making human rights a sine qua non of statecraft. That resulted not only in the mass emigration of Soviet Jews 15 years later, but also in contemporary efforts to end internal massacres in countries such as Sudan.

Kissinger, however, was dedicated to realpolitik — the art of securing the grand deal, even at the expense of the moral and ethical considerations of the moment — and his disdain for human rights activists knew few bounds.

Gal Beckerman, a historian of the Soviet Jewry movement, told Tablet on Tuesday that this even led Kissinger to suppress a letter that might have helped salvage a deal with the Soviets to release Jews under the Jackson-Vanik stipulations.

Similar considerations led Kissinger to press Nixon during the 1973 Yom Kippur War to delay delivering arms to Israel by a few weeks. Their conversations at the time show Kissinger arguing that Anwar Sadat, Egypt’s president, needed an unadulterated victory to make peace concessions. Nixon argued — correctly, as it turned out — that Sadat was already able to claim a victory, and that it was more important to staunch an ally’s casualties in a war that would claim 3,000 Israeli lives.

In a 2009 review of the period in The Jewish Press, top Nixon aides Alexander Haig, the chief of staff; Leonard Garment, the White House counsel; and Vernon Walters, the deputy CIA chief, all recall the same dynamic: The time for hanging Israel out to dry had ended.

“Both Kissinger and Nixon

a dynamic leader in hospice and medical care in our community.

The NIJH accreditation illustrates the kind of forward thinking compassion that has been the hallmark of the organization.”

Rabbi Eric Slaton, who serves on the Hospice of Hamilton Advisory Board, commented on the accreditation: “I am very pleased that Hospice of Cincinnati and Hospice of Hamilton have received accreditation from NIJH. I hope this will encourage mem-

bers of the Jewish community to consider hospice care sooner.”

Hospice of Hamilton is an affiliate of Hospice of Cincinnati.

Hospice of Cincinnati is Greater Cincinnati’s first and oldest hospice, offering experienced, compassionate end-of-life care that addresses the unique emotional, physical and spiritual needs of patients and families. Services also include adult/child bereavement programs and holistic programs such as art, pet and music therapy.

wanted to do [the airlift],” the Press quoted Walters as saying. “But Nixon gave it the greater sense of urgency. He said, ‘You get the stuff to Israel. Now. Now.’” The image of Kissinger as a cold-blooded sociopath has long been a staple of his most virulent critics, and the newly revealed quote was like manna to their theories.

“In the past, Kissinger has defended his role as enabler to Nixon’s psychopathic bigotry, saying that he acted as a restraining influence on his boss by playing along and making soothing remarks,” said Christopher Hitchens, who has said Kissinger should be tried as a war criminal for his role in ordering the bombing of Cambodia and for enabling Latin American autocrats. “This can now go straight into the lavatory pan, along with his other hysterical lies.

“Obsessed as he was with the Jews, Nixon never came close to saying that he’d be indifferent to a replay of Auschwitz. For this, Kissinger deserves sole recognition.”

Menachem Rosensaft, vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, reached a similar conclusion after reading accounts of the newly released Nixon tapes.

“Now that Kissinger’s true nature has been exposed, the Jewish community and Jewish institutions must draw the appropriate consequences,” he wrote in an Op-Ed in The New York Jewish Week.

“We now come to the realization that as far as he was concerned, human rights in general were an irrelevancy,” Rosensaft said in an interview with JTA. “He needs to know that when he is in the company of Jews, we will know precisely who he is and we hold him in contempt.”

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said that approach goes too far.

The ADL issued a statement saying that Kissinger’s comments show a “disturbing and even callous insensitivity toward the fate of Soviet Jews” and are a reminder that “even great individuals are flawed.” But, it noted, “Dr.

Kissinger’s contributions to the safety and security of the U.S. and Israel have solidly established his legacy as a champion of democracy and as a committed advocate for preserving the well-being of the Jewish state of Israel.”

Foxman elaborated in an interview with JTA. “He worked in an atmosphere that was intimidatingly anti-Semitic toward Jews,” the ADL leader said of Kissinger. “We need to understand the intimidation under which it occurred.”

Beckerman wrote in a review of a book that examined Kissinger’s psychology that his upbringing — the horrific transition, at age 10, from a world of safety to one of chaos — helps explain an ideology that places order above all as the salvation of humanity. Kissinger, Beckerman wrote in the Forward in 2007, “was guided by the sense that the world needs a strong America — led by versatile statesmen — that will stand as a bulwark against the disorder and disequilibrium that he experienced as a child.”

How did Kissinger’s Jewish identity play out in the White House? It was a complex matter and not always consistent.

In September 1972, when Kissinger was still the national security adviser, he and his archrival, Secretary of State William Rogers, had a bitter exchange at a Cabinet meeting over whether the government should lower flags to half mast for the 11 Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics.

Nixon took Kissinger’s advice and lowered the flags.

Nixon regarded Kissinger as his truest aide, although he also noted, in another tape released recently, the “latent insecurity” of Kissinger and his other Jewish advisers.

On the eve of Nixon’s Aug. 8, 1974 resignation, the result of scandals besieging his administration, Kissinger could not help himself and burst into sobs, according to Robert Dallek’s account, “Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power.”

Nixon, too, joined him in weeping. In what has become an icon of how the isolation of power brings strong men to their knees, both men kneeled in the White House living room and prayed.

NEWS

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2010

TAPE from page 1 first and human rights would follow later — but they weren’t about to reveal the strategy to Meir.

“You didn’t give them any specific commitment,” Kissinger says, unaware of the tape Nixon had recording all his meetings with aides. “You prepare your meetings very carefully.”

“And also saying we weren’t planning anything, knowing damn well we will,” Nixon chimes in, apparently referring to his overtures AIPAC from page 5 Kohr suggests that AIPAC is caught in the internecine wars between Bush administration neoconservatives and their enemies in and out of government.

It was not clear whether Kohr and AIPAC planned on making a public counteroffensive accusing U.S. law enforcement and intelligence officials of deliberately targeting pro-Israel groups. Officials and lay leaders within AIPAC at the time were privately telling associates that AIPAC was targeted by anti-Israel obsessives inside government agencies.

An AIPAC briefing paper prepared around the same time as Kohr’s speech — and also never distributed — also intimates that RABBIS from page 6 “They came up with it because they had no choice, because everyone else was already speaking out and they felt, ‘We better say something so people don’t think we’re in favor of this,’ ” said Angel, a former president of the RCA and a frequent critic of the group.

“They’re facing the reality, political realities, that this is not an issue that you want to have your name stamped on,” Mendy Ganchrow, former president of the Orthodox Union and a retired executive vice president of the Religious Zionists of America, said of the RCA. In an e-mail Rabbi Avi Shafran, a spokesman for the KAUFMAN from page 7 The ADL eventually reversed its posture, rehiring the Bostonarea director and recognizing the massacres of Armenians as “tantamount” to genocide. National director Abraham Foxman paid Kaufman the compliment of influence.

“The last thing we need now is for Barry Shrage and Nancy Kaufman to be fighting us,” Foxman told JTA at the time, referring also to Shrage, the president of Boston’s Combined

to the Soviets.

Kissinger understands the butter-me-up-buttercup cue and lays it on thick, with the requisite dismissal of John F. Kennedy, Nixon’s bugbear even a decade after his assassination.

“Yesterday she was like a tiger,” Kissinger says of Meir. “But in your careful preparation and the subtlety with which you conducted the conversation, never a note in front of you, you take that for granted. You take Kennedy — he was supposedly an expert on foreign policy, but the prosecutors were seen as singling out pro-Israel groups.

“That speech was never given because we were uncomfortable with what the draft said and it’s not relevant,” Dorton told JTA this week. “One of its principal authors was Steve Rosen’s defense counsel,” Abbe Lowell, “and at the end of the day, we just didn’t feel comfortable with its content.”

Rosen has alleged that AIPAC fired him and then for years refused to pay his legal fees because it was under pressure at the time from the government — which, he alleges, had threatened to invoke a rule allowing the government to charge corporations that protect employees under indictment. A judge considering a different case subsequently ruled American haredi Orthodox umbrella group Agudath Israel of America, said his organization concurred with Elyashiv and Yosef.

“The rabbis who signed the letter [banning the rentals] were simply misguided,” Shafran wrote.

Though the mainstream American rabbinical associations appear to oppose the Israeli rabbis’ letter, at least one prominent Orthodox rabbi was sympathetic.

“I think it’s part of a concern — and I believe a rightful one — that there’s a war going on, and we’re trying our best to maintain normalcy,” said Rabbi Moshe Tendler, a rosh yeshiva, or dean, of the rabbinical school at Yeshiva University and a major rabbinic arbiter.

Jewish Philanthropies.

When Israel’s Foreign Ministry recalled its Boston consul, Nadav Tamir, for publishing a memo criticizing the Netanyahu government for how it handled its relationship with the Obama administration, Kaufman was outspoken, calling Tamir the “best Israeli diplomat I have worked with in my 19 years here.”

“The strong and valuable relationships she was able to build during moments of crisis,” Grossman said, “you see how important it is.”

not only — he understood nothing.

But Johnson in addition didn’t care.

Johnson was bored by it.”

“Was he?” Nixon says.

“Oh yes,” Kissinger indulges.

There follows a Johnson anecdote, and then Nixon returns to policy.

“It’s important to get across to them, Henry, and I hope you’ve gotten to [Senator Jacob] Javits [Republican of New York) and [Senator] Henry Jackson [Democrat of Washington] and the rest of them,

by God, if the Jewish community in

this country makes Israel exit permits the ambition of the Russian initiative ... it will not work,” he says.

That’s when the conversation takes a dark turn, unusual even for tapes notorious for detours by Nixon and his aides into expectorations of paranoid abuse.

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” Kissinger says. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a

Courtesy of Debra Rubin/Washington Jewish Week

Steve Rosen speaks with an unidentified woman at a 2009 Yom Ha’Atzmaut celebration sponsored by the Embassy of Israel.

21

humanitarian concern.”

“I know,” Nixon responds.

“We can’t blow up the world because of it.”

There’s more: Nixon calls Jewish lobbying on the issue “unconscionable” and says getting the Soviets most favored nation status is critical.

Kissinger then returns to flattery, referring to the back-and-forth with Soviet boss Leonid Brezhnev: “You have outmaneuvered Brezhnev in a way that is almost pathetic.”

Nixon murmurs his assent. that such threats were unconstitutional and the government has stopped the practice.

AIPAC has always denied government pressure played a role in the firing of Rosen and Weissman.

The government, in its August 2005 indictment, hinged the charges against the former AIPAC staffers on a section of the 1917 Espionage Act criminalizing the receipt of classified information.

The section had been invoked only a handful of times before, and never successfully.

The threat to free speech posed by the law has made headlines in recent days in considerations of whether the U.S. government could successfully sue WikiLeaks, which has received and distributed classified diplomatic cables.

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22

OBITUARIES

DEATH NOTICES SATIN, Irene, age 48, died on December 14, 2010; 8 Tevet, 5771.

SCHULZINGER, Edward, age 93, died on December 18, 2010; 11 Tevet, 5771.

MADOFF from page 6 One of Madoff’s largest suppliers of investors in the United DISAGREE from page 8 “We emerged with a cadre of people who can lead tough conversations, who can be the voice of moderation and create safe spaces within their institutions,” said the JCRC’s associate director, Abby Porth.

The project was taken to Atlanta last month, and about a dozen cities have contacted the JCRC for information about bringing it to their BEARD from page 8 Dresin — as well as Stern and his lawyer, Nathan Lewin of the Washington firm Lewin & Lewin — argue that the military is being overly rigid in its enforcement of the facial hair policy, as service members from the Muslim and Sikh religions have been granted similar exemptions.

“Do you think that one or two rabbis are going to destroy good authority and discipline in the army?” Dresin rhetorically wondered in an interview. “We are not asking for a blanket exemption.

MAVERICK from page 10 Employment of haredi men will increase rapidly over the next decade, the Ministry of Trade and Industry forecasts. Some Israelis are talking about the emergence of a haredi middle class.

Others, however, see a much slower change. They note that some 50,000 haredi students still have IDF exemptions that are

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States was J. Ezra Merkin. The former chairman of the financial services giant GMAC, Merkin funneled some $2 billion of investors’ money to Madoff.

Merkin is now the subject of multiple civil lawsuits brought by investors and the New York State attorney general.

In total, Picard has recovered about $2.6 billion through settlements. The lawsuits he filed this week seek more than $50 billion, a figure that is considerably higher than the $18 billion or so esti-

mated lost in the scheme.

Among the lawsuits, Picard is seeking $6.5 billion from Madoff’s primary banker, JPMorgan Chase; $3.6 billion from the Fairfield Greenwich Group hedge fund; and $2.5 billion form the Swiss bank UBS AG, according to Reuters.

Picard also is suing for significant money from two Jewish philanthropists who were Madoff friends and beneficiaries but have died since the fraud came to light: $7.2 billion from the estate of

Jeffry Picower, who died in October 2009, and $1.1 billion from the estate of Stanley Chais, who died in September. Both men had family foundations that gave to Jewish causes.

One of Madoff’s sons, Mark Madoff, who was believed to have been a target of Picard’s lawsuits but who maintained his innocence, committed suicide on December 11, in his New York apartment.

The full extent of the damage that the recovery process will have

on the nonprofit Jewish world will not be known until all of the lawsuits are settled. Even for those that already have reached a settlement, it’s not clear how the organizations’ activities will be affected.

“Hadassah’s fiscal discipline will allow it to pay this obligation from existing unrestricted funds,” Falchuk wrote to supporters about the $45 million settlement. “As always, Hadassah gifts will continue to be used for their intended purpose.”

communities, according to Porth.

The effort already has yielded fruit. At Temple Beth Israel in Aptos, Calif., 90 minutes south of San Francisco, Rabbi Richard Litvak said that by November 2009 things were so bad that members on both sides of the Israel divide threatened to quit if the temple’s Israel policies weren’t clarified to reflect their viewpoint.

Kalish, the lead facilitator for

the San Francisco initiative, held several dialogue evenings along with another facilitator, and community members took the effort seriously. By this fall, leaders of the opposing sides managed to talk it out and come up with a policy setting boundaries for speakers invited to the congregation, Litvak said.

“A train wreck was averted,” Litvak said. “There definitely seems to be more understanding

between the members. We found a way to affirm each person’s right to their point of view, yet not be drawn into inviting speakers or co-sponsoring events with groups who deny Israel’s existence as a democratic, Jewish state.”

In the Bay area, rabbis are taking the lead. Virtually every local rabbi has signed onto a civility pledge published in j, the local Jewish weekly, and many have

joined a Rabbis’ Circle to foster dialogue on an ongoing basis.

Ironically, several rabbis at Sunday's event said they no longer do Israel programming in their congregations, fearing it will lead to excessive divisiveness.

“If the polarization reaches a point where the subject of Israel is too difficult to discuss,” said the San Francisco JCRC’s Kahn, “we all lose.”

We are not asking that you change the regulation. We are just asking for equal opportunity.”

An Army spokesman declined to comment on Stern’s case specifically, but said in an interview that the Army’s guidelines are straightforward.

“We consider [people] on a case-by-case basis,” George Wright said.

Any exemption that is granted, Wright added, would apply during an explicitly delineated period of time, meaning that no enlistee can receive blanket immunity from the regulation.

Moreover, no applicant can be granted a pass before formal admittance into the Army, which means that Stern would have to shave his beard first before asking for permission to grow it back.

“I asked them [Army officials], ‘Do you want me to be a hypocrite?’” Stern recalled in an interview. “To shave it only to grow it back?”

Unruly beards, others maintain, are unseemly and make service members appear sloppy.

“It’s unbecoming really of a person in uniform,” said Rabbi Marvin Bash, who served as a

Jewish chaplain at Fort Belvoir in Virginia and is rabbi emeritus at Congregation Etz Hayim in Arlington, Va. Large beards “somehow go beyond what we call ‘tight regulations’ [that] are neat looking.”

While Bash admitted that the military’s guidelines and policy for exemption can seem fuzzy, the beard ban itself is clear.

“I would either say [Stern trims] it or he’s out,” Bash said, explaining that in his opinion, “there’s no halachah that says you can’t trim the beard.”

Asked if he’d be open to trim-

ming his beard, Stern was dubious.

“I believe my beard is neat,” he said. “I take care of it.”

While the Army has not formally responded to the lawsuit, Lewin said the suit is relatively “clean cut,” as a litany of documentation illustrates the Army’s unjust conduct. Lewin litigated and won a similar case against the Air Force in 1976.

For Stern, the case comes down to duty and mission.

“I believe this is my calling and mission,” he said. “I want to get into the service.”

valid only as long as they stay in yeshiva and don’t work (until a certain age).

Holding back change are haredi leaders who believe that dramatic or rapid change may destroy the very fabric of haredi society.

“It’s only happening at a snail’s pace because there is no real leadership,” Amsellem said. “No one has stood up and openly said this is the way things ought to be except me.”

Amsellem wants to build a genuinely socially concerned party independent of rabbinic fiat.

Unlike conventional haredi Orthodoxy, which turns its back on modernity and often on the secular Israeli state, Amsellem is willing to entertain a working symbiosis between haredi Orthodoxy and the modern world.

He also is unabashedly ready to call himself a Zionist.

His positions have earned him rogue status in Shas. In late November, the Shas Council of Torah Sages expelled Amsellem from the party and demanded that he hand over the Knesset seat he had won on the Shas ticket.

Amsellem refused, resulting in a campaign of discreditation.

Placards in Jerusalem and Bnei Brak compared Amsellem to Amalek, the biblical Israelites' worst enemy.

Among the haredi leadership, Amsellem is very much a lone figure. His ideas, however, enjoy wide public support. In an early December poll by the Panels Research Institute, 52 percent of Israelis polled said enlisting haredim in the army and having them join the workforce was the only way to save haredi society.

An astonishingly high 22 percent of haredim concurred.

Despite evidence of some sup-

port among haredim for such change, the chances of Amsellem being politically successful are minimal as long as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the nonagenarian spiritual mentor of the Shas Party, is alive.

His impolitic remarks about nonJews notwithstanding, Yosef commands universal praise within Shas, and even from Amsellem.

“I don’t think anyone could defy Rabbi Ovadia and win votes,” Bar-Ilan University’s Cohen observed. “And I don’t see rabbis, even those who say privately that Amsellem is right, joining a political movement that challenges a rabbinical authority of Ovadia’s stature.”

FIRE from page 10

begin to regenerate naturally soon, with sprouts emerging from the stumps of the destroyed trees.

Fires also contribute positively to a forest’s growth, Izhaki said.

Following a massive fire in the Carmel Mountains in 1989, he said that “We observed the development of flora and fauna in the region and saw that some 15 to 20 years after the fire, the forest reached a climax in terms of its fauna and vegetation

diversity. This indicates that after about this amount of time following a fire, the forest will be home to more species of wildlife and vegetation than there were before the fire.”

Fires, however, are only beneficial to biological diversity if they are infrequent. Today, due to human factors, the frequency of fires is too high, and thus the forest’s recovery is likely to take longer, Izhaki said.

At some point, he said, foresters could become involved in “selective thinning” to limit the new forest’s density and help young trees grow, as well as some planting to ensure biodiversity — creating a mixed forest by re-introducing broadleaf trees such as oaks, carobs and other species natural to the area. Some of those trees also will