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BBYO to ‘Occupy the JCC’

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Israeli speaker series kicks off with a ‘Conservative’ choice

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At 91, Harvey Pollack is still NBA’s leading scorer

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How culpable were Dutch Jews in the slave trade?

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Legally Speaking: Two protestor cases

Cedar Village to launch geriatric assessment program to keep seniors healthy and independent To improve the lives of older adults in Greater Cincinnati, Cedar Village Retirement Community will be providing assessments to the public that are designed to detect health issues in older adults as early as possible.

A team of experts who specialize in health problems in older adults will conduct the comprehensive health and wellness examinations. A University of Cincinnati physician who specializes in geriatric medicine, a registered nurse, occupational therapist and physical therapist will be on the team. Other health professionals will participate, as needed.

The goal of the VillageCare Geriatric Assessment Program will be to identify problems and provide treatment to keep older adults as healthy, active, safe and independent for as long as possible. The program also is designed to help families negotiate the potentially challenging task of providing care to seniors.

“The impact of these assessments can be enormous,” said Dr. Vijaya Reddy, the physician who will perform the assessments. “If we diagnose early, we can start treatment early, which could allow the seniors to stay in their homes and continue to go about their daily activities, safely and independently.”

When health conditions are diagnosed late, treatment options become limited and potentially less effective. A late diagnosis also could limit which living arrangements remain appropriate, possibly requiring the senior to move to assisted living or a nursing home.

For people who are concerned whether their parents should be living alone, the assessments can provide objective answers from experienced

professionals. If a problem is detected, the team can help the family devise a medical treatment plan as well as a plan for living arrangements.

After the assessments, a written report will be provided.

Dr. Reddy will check individuals

for health conditions such as depression, dementia and delirium. She will perform a detailed medical history, review medications and make a diagnosis.

Physical and occupational thera-

pists from the Cedar Village Rehabilitation Center will focus on concerns such as the individual’s balance and gait to assess the likelihood of a fall. Injuries from falls can drastically change the course of a senior’s life.

The therapists also can administer driving assessments to determine whether seniors are safe to be driving. The driving assessments can be included in the overall assessments or provided separately.

The assessments, which will take at least two hours, will be held Monday mornings at Cedar Village. Most major health insurance plans will cover the assessments.

Appointments can be scheduled by contacting Cedar Village and asking about the VillageCare Geriatric Assessment Program.

Dr. Reddy has seen the lifechanging difference a geriatric assessment can make. She recently had a patient in her early 80s who was living by herself. Her family was concerned about her because she didn’t always seem alert.

Dr. Reddy performed a comprehensive assessment and found problems caused by the medication. She ordered a change in medications and the patient became more alert again. With Dr. Reddy’s consent, the patient continued to live on her own and kept driving.

Family members, who lived in another town, were relieved.

“Their burden was lifted. They didn’t have to worry about her,” Dr. Reddy said. “It’s a huge success story.”

Dr. Reddy is a geriatrician, which means she focuses on the care of older adults. She is board-certified as a geriatrician and internist, and has more than six years of experience in geriatric medicine.

Coming soon in The American Israelite

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THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

Israeli speaker series kicks off January 9, with a ‘Conservative’ choice Do you have freedom of religious choice? Would you in Israel?

At the first of seven ISRAELITY events, Yizhar Hess, Executive Director of the Conservative Movement in Israel, will explore how the struggle toward Jewish pluralism in Israel affects all Jews, even here in Cincinnati. Hess will speak on Thursday, January 9, at 7:30 p.m., at Adath Israel.

Yizhar Hess is known as one of the leading voices promoting Jewish pluralism in Israel. He is a regular contributor to the press on the subjects of religion and state and co-editor of the book Questions About God. Since 2007, he has been Executive Director of the Masorti/Conservative Movement in Israel, which has been involved in many issues including egalitarian

prayer at the Kotel.

Hess’s presentation is part of “ISRAELITY: Redefining Reality in Israel,” a series of open dialogues presented by the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s Israel Center and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC). Seven social innovators will give first-hand accounts of life in an unknown and unshown Israel – their personal ISRAELITYs. Community Shaliach (Emissary from Israel) Yair Cohen said, “Israel is its people, and what affects them affects us as Jews throughout the world. ISRAELITY is your opportunity to learn about real life in today’s Israel, directly from its people.”

Speakers include a contemporary artist, an Ethiopian member of the Knesset, an American-born member of the Knesset, an Arab-Israeli jour-

Yizhar Hess

nalist, the founder of Israeli Flying Aid and a Tel Aviv council member who founded Israel’s Gay Youth.

Cedar Village is seeking ‘Eight Over Eighty’ honorees The sixth Annual Eight Over Eighty celebration sponsored by Cedar Village will recognize eight senior adults, 80 years or older, who have demonstrated a dedication throughout their lifetimes to Tikkun Olam – Repairing the World. All honorees will be inducted into the Greater Cincinnati Jewish Senior Hall of Fame on May 29, 2014.

Do you know someone over the age of 80 who is inspiring and

remarkable? Do you know someone 80 or older who has been a life-long volunteer in the Jewish community and is an example of strong Jewish values? If so, Cedar Village has a unique opportunity to honor these special individuals who have made an impact on the community.

“This Eight Over Eighty celebration provides us a special way to honor the special gifts and blessings that our elders share

with us. We are delighted to sponsor this event in the Cincinnati Jewish community during Older Americans Month,” said Carol Silver Elliott, CEO/President of Cedar Village.

Nominations are due by January 31, 2014. To make a nomination or request a nomination form, please contact Cedar Village.

NOTICE OF NON DISCRIMINATION POLICY AS TO STUDENTS Rabbinical Yeshiva of Cincinnati, Inc. (the “School”) admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities generally accorded or made available to students at the School. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national and ethnic origin in administration of its educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, and other programs administered by the School.

Insiders preview of Koresh Dance Company at the Mayerson JCC Artistic Director, Ronen Koresh, and dancers of Philadelphia-based Koresh Dance Company, will be at the Mayerson JCC on Thursday, January 3 at 7pm, in advance of the company's residency with the Contemporary Dance Theater at the Aronoff Center, Jarson-Kaplan Theater.

At their appearance Thursday, dancers will perform excerpts of Koresh Dance Company’s original choreographic works. Afterwards, Ronen will speak about how his Israeli roots have influenced his choreography and demonstrate his use of movements, patterns and musical choice that draw from his early training in Jewish folk dance and ongoing connection to the life and people of Israel. He will also discuss the company’s performances at the Aronoff Center, Jarson-Kaplan Theater and his plans for community residency activities.

Koresh, whose company has

received numerous accolades for its blend of modern, ballet and jazz dance, is an Israel native who grew up surrounded by the Yemenite folk dance tradition before joining Martha Graham's Batsheva 2 Dance Company. Since forming KDC in 1991, he has contributed more than 40 works. The company tours extensively, both nationally and internationally, often conducting workshops and residencies.

Renowned for their powerful stage presence and high-energy style, Philadelphia's Koresh Dance Company has been hailed as a vital force to both national and international stages. The technically superb and emotionally compelling company of 10 dancers, led by Artistic Director Roni Koresh, is defined by their openhearted approach that permeates both on and off stage.

“The Koresh Dance Company’s Demo and Insights at the JCC will be a must-see for dance

lovers. This powerful event will provide a unique behind-the-scenes look into this powerful dance troupe,” said Betsy Singer Lefton, JCC Event Coordinator.

Koresh’s Israeli heritage continues to differentiate the Company, producing unique works that range from humorous and eloquent to passionate and explosive. The powerful stage presence and exceptional technique of the 10 member Koresh Dance Company also highlight the work of guest choreographers such as Donald Byrd (Spectrum Dance Theater), Ohad Naharin (Batsheva Dance Company), Robert Battle (Battleworks/Alvin Ailey), Itzik Galili (Galili Dance) and Paul Selwyn Norton.

This is event is co-presented by the Contemporary Dance Theatre and the JCC Wolf Center for Arts and Ideas.

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Rockdale Temple presents Dave Brubeck’s ‘The Gates of Justice’ on January 12 Temple), the oldest Jewish congregation outside of the east coast. The Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion is sponsoring the concert, in conjunction with the Martin Luther King, Jr. Coalition.

The musical piece was written following the death of Dr. King, and was originally co-commissioned by the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati and the Reform

Movement. Its first performance was conducted by Erich Kunzel of the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, on the occasion of the dedication of Rockdale Temple’s new facility in 1969.

It includes texts from the Old Testament, speeches of Dr. King, and the writings of Hillel and Iola Brubeck.

“The Gates of Justice” will be performed by the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, tenor Mario Panuccio, baritone Thom

Mariner, pianist Julie Spangler, a chorus of singers including Cincinnati Camerata and the Rockdale Temple Adult Choir, and will be conducted by Brett Scott. Mary Elizabeth Southworth, choir director at Rockdale Temple, is the Artistic Director of the performance.

Tickets to the event are free. However, reservations are required, and can be made by contacting the Temple office.

BBYO to ‘Occupy the JCC’ to raise money and awareness for Philippine typhoon victims

The American Israelite “LET THERE BE LIGHT” THE OLDEST ENGLISH-JEWISH WEEKLY IN AMERICA - EST. JULY 15, 1854

VOL. 160 • NO. 24 THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014 1 SHEVAT 5774 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 5:09 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 6:10 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 production@americanisraelite.com RABBI ISAAC M. WISE Founder, 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 PHYLLIS R. SINGER Editor & General Manager, 1985-1999 MILLARD H. MACK Publisher Emeritus NETANEL (TED) DEUTSCH Editor & Publisher JORY EDLIN BETH KOTZIN Assistant Editors YOSEFF FRANCUS Copy Editor JANET STEINBERG Travel Editor JULIE TOREM Special Assignment Editor

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•

The January 11th overnight is open to all Jewish teens in the KIO region, regardless if they are members of BBYO, and is the first event of the school year in which 8th graders are invited to attend.

The event offers an array of activities beyond the Standup program on disaster relief, including mixers as well as specific programs just for the girls’ and boys’ chapters, activities in the gym and a dance.

“Occupy the JCC is a fabulous opportunity for Jewish teens to get together, enjoy a night of great fun, and participate in programs that will change their lives. It is something we look forward to every year,” says Joey Slovin, Chapter President.

Est. 1854

JCC is a popular event in the KIO region and has become well-known for the way it infuses the value of tikun olam (repairing the world) into the program.

“Not only do the teen leaders who are organizing this program recognize the importance of utilizing this unique opportunity to educate more than 100 of their peers about something that can benefit thousands of others, they also see it as a chance for Jewish teens to connect with their friends from other nearby cities around a cause that’s close to their hearts,” says Abby Solomon, Cincinnati BBYO City Director.

“The dedication and creativity they are putting into Occupy is absolutely inspiring, not to mention selfless.”

ewish N h-J ew lis

knows, I could be the one needing that help someday!”

Social action is becoming a bigger part of the lives of teenagers more today than ever before thanks to programs like BBYO, the largest pluralistic Jewish youth movement in the world, which provides a comfortable environment for teens to teach teens about a myriad of issues. Occupy the

MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR ZELL SCHULMAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists

• ca

By now, nearly everyone has heard about the devastating typhoon that claimed the lives of more than 6,000 people in the Philippines this past November. And while many felt anguish for the innocent victims of this catastrophe, how many were actually moved to do something about it? In Cincinnati however, a group of BBYO teens weren’t content to just sit on the sidelines. They decided to help spread awareness and raise money to aid those affected by hosting special program called Occupy the JCC, a regional “lock-in” which will take place from January 11th -12th at the Mayerson JCC. For the third year in a row, the Cincinnati’s BBYO chapters, Ner Tamid and Mishpocha, will be heading up this groundbreaking program.

Along with many other teens from across BBYO’s KIO (Kentucky, Indiana, Ohio) region, they will be “occupying” the Mayerson JCC to support an important cause they believe in. “What happened in the Philippines was so tragic.

It feels really good when you can do something to help people who need it,” says Raquel Levitt, Chapter Judaism & Social Action Chair. “Who

AI

r in Am ape er sp i

On Sunday night, January 12, at 7:30 p.m., a collection of numerous Cincinnati area musicians and singers will present “The Gates of Justice”, a jazz-oriented cantata written by renown jazz artist and composer, Dave Brubeck. The performance will be at the Mayerson Jewish Community Center.

The event is in honor of the 190th anniversary of Cincinnati’s Congregation K.K. Bene Israel (Rockdale

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. Periodicals postage paid at Cincinnati, OH. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE, 18 West Ninth Street, Suite 2, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202-2037.

The views and opinions expressed by the columnists of The American Israelite do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the newspaper.

NATIONAL • 5

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

JTA’s 2013 news quiz

By JTA Staff (JTA) – So, you think you know what’s going on in the Jewish world? Test just how closely you followed the year’s news (and remember it) with our end-of year-news quiz.

1. Berlin’s Jewish Museum provoked controversy this year with … a) an exhibit exploring the origins of the swastika as an ancient Hindu symbol b) an exhibit featuring Jews sitting in a glass box answering questions from visitors c) an exhibit featuring selfies taken at Holocaust memorials d) a panel discussion on whether or not Anne Frank would have been a “belieber” 2. Which of the following was NOT among the findings of the Pew survey of U.S. Jews? a) Four percent of Orthodox Jews said they had a Christmas tree in their home last year b) Twice as many Jews said having a sense of humor was essential to being Jewish as those who cited observing Jewish law c) Fourteen percent of American Jews said they ate gefilte fish at least once a month d) Seven times as many Conservative Jews as Reform Jews said they can carry on a conversation in Hebrew 3. Rabbi Binyomin Ginsberg’s Supreme Court case against Northwest Airlines concerned … a) too many Sabbath-eve takeoffs near Ginsberg’s home b) Northwest dropping Ginsburg from its frequent-flier program for complaining too much c) Ginsburg’s removal from a flight after putting on his tallis and tefillin d) the distribution of pretzels aboard a Northwest flight that were not strictly kosher 4. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif surprised many when he offered the following public wish: a) that Jews worldwide enjoy a happy Rosh Hashanah b) that the Zionist regime soon come to a fiery end c) that Ayatollah Khameini take him off speed-dial d) that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “shut up about the Jews and get a life” 5. Jacob Ostreicher, an Orthodox Jewish businessman from New York, was held against his will in Bolivia from 2011 until this December. Under mysterious circumstances, he escaped to the United States and immediately sought the care of: a) Maimonides Medical Center

in Brooklyn b) Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles c) The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society d) Actor Sean Penn 6. Which of the following headlines did NOT accompany a story this year about Jewish mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner in the New York Post: a) Weiner’s Second Coming b) Cuomo Beats Weiner … then goes limp c) He’s Got Some Balls d) Weiner’s Rise and Fall 7. A 13-year-old Indian-American boy, Arvind Mahankali, won the 2013 Scripps National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the Yiddish-derived word that refers to a dumpling often found in chicken soup. How did he spell it? a) Kneidel b) Knaidel c) Kneydl d) Knaidle 8. Which of the following incidents involving former and current Israeli chief rabbis did NOT take place this year? a) The Ashkenazi chief rabbi used a derogatory term to describe black basketball players b) The winning choices for new Israeli chief rabbi were both sons of former chief rabbis c) The Ashkenazi chief rabbi was arrested on suspicion of fraud and money laundering d) One of Israel’s chief rabbis addressed the Limmud-U.K. conference 9. Hawaii’s lieutenant governor, Brian Schatz, was named to replace Daniel Inouye after the senator died last year. In one of his first appearances, Schatz made clear he was not shy about his background when he introduced himself as a “Jewish kid from the state of Hawaii” and … a) sang Aloha-He in Hebrew b) accused Republicans of undercutting Israel through budget cuts c) swore that he had never “treifed it up” at a luau d) recited the Shehecheyanu 10. When Benjamin Netanyahu met with Pope Francis, what did the Israeli Prime Minister give him? a) A copy of his father’s book on the Spanish Inquisition b) A diagram of a cartoon bomb c) A red string as a good-luck charm with Kabbalistic origins d) An IDF T-shirt 11. Which of these parties did NOT compete in Israel’s Knesset elections in January? a) The Pirate Party

b) The Free Love Party c) The Green Leaf Party d) The Na Nach Party (Breslover Hasidic)

was buried d) Took a pound of dirt from the Holy Land for Michelle to plant in the White House garden

12. Which of the following did Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s household NOT spend more than $1,500 on this year? a. Ice cream b. Scented candles c. Mezuzahs d. The peanut snack food bamba

15. Which Israel-related activity has so far NOT been substantiated

by Edward Snowden’s revelations: a) The United States is aware of extensive Israeli spying operations on U.S. soil b) Israel, Cuba, Russia, Iran and China are the five countries that are the focus of U.S. counterintelligence c) The NSA and Israel co-wrote Stuxnet, the computer virus that hobbled Iran’s uranium enrichment program d) Israel is one of several allies that mutually share unfiltered intelligence data with the United States, including names and other sensitive information

13. Dor Transilvan, a traditional Romanian folk ensemble, stumbled into controversy this year when… a) its director revealed he was of Jewish descent b) it incorporated an Israeli folk dance into an appearance in Transylvania, upsetting the region’s strident Romanian nationalists c) it performed a Christmas carol on state-run TV that imagined Jews turning into smoke d) Romania’s highest court upheld its longstanding suit against Sacha Baron Cohen for including one of its unwitting troupes in his 2006 film “Borat” 14. Which of the following was President Obama reported to have done during his visit to Israel in March? a) At the Kotel, he asked why the women’s section was smaller than the men’s b) Placed a pebble from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial on the grave of Yitzhak Rabin c) Asked where Ariel Sharon

16. In July, Martin Indyk, the veteran Middle East peace negotiator, returned to the job and is now steering renewed IsraeliPalestinian talks. He revealed that 15 years earlier, his son Jacob, then 13, designed a screen saver aimed at keeping his computer illiterate Dad on his toes. It read: a) “When they get on your nerves, imagine Bibi and Arafat in their underwear.” b) “If not now, when?” c) “Dad, is there peace in the Middle East yet?” d) “If you will it, it is no dream.”

17. After Emory professor and rabbi Michael Broyde was forced to resign from a leading Orthodox

Jewish religious court after admitting he systematically used a fake identity in scholarly journals, he said: a) He hadn’t really wanted to be a member of the religious court anyway b) He had been struggling with multiple personality disorder c) He was being framed d) Writing on Torah issues using a pseudonym is an old practice with support from religious sources 18. Which celebrity made which statement concerning Jews?

1) “Black people don’t have the same level of connections as Jewish people.”

2) “It can’t be like this 70-yearold Jewish man that doesn’t leave his desk all day, telling me what the clubs want to hear. I’m going out, I know what they want to hear.”

3) “Most jokes are about Jewish people, rednecks, black folks … I can’t determine what offends another person.”

4) “I am not going to sit here and say that I hate Jewish people because that is not the case, nor is this about Jews. It is about Hitler and his side of the story that was never told since he was not the victor. All he wanted was to be able to feed his people from the depression, defend his country from being attacked unfairly.” a) Tila Tequila b) Miley Cyrus c) Kanye West d) Paula Deen

QUIZ on page 22

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Edgar Bronfman: Prince of the Jews

By Ami Eden NEW YORK (JTA) – In the coming days, many eulogies will attempt to capture the magnitude of the loss suffered this week by the Jewish community.

Really, though, all you need are eight words: Edgar Bronfman was a prince of his people.

There are other machers who devote much of their time and money to Jewish causes. But none of them boast the same combination of lineage, intrigue, eccentricity, wonder, grandness and love for Judaism and the Jews.

By birth, he was the son of Samuel Bronfman, chairman of Seagram Ltd. and president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, making him the scion of a family renown both for its beverage empire and its tradition of Jewish leadership. And on both counts it showed: He was never quite like the other boys, never quite like the other billionaires.

The differences were on display the first time I met him, at a conference in Chicago in 2000 dedicated to making synagogues more meaningful and attractive.

He shared the stage with two other mega philanthropists, financier Michael Steinhardt and oil and gas magnate Charles

National Briefs Brandeis alumni, students protest pay to former president Reinharz (JTA) – More than 1,600 alumni and students of Brandeis University and others with ties to the institution have signed an online petition protesting pay to former university president Jehuda Reinharz.

Reinharz reportedly receives more than $600,000 a year in retirement pay and at least $800,000 a year from the Mandel Foundation, which he serves as president. The Boston Globe reported last month that Reinharz has earned at least $1.2 million for part-time advisory work since stepping down as president at the end of 2010.

“We owe a great deal to the university, which taught us the tenets of social justice that continue to influence our lives and careers. We expect to see these values reflected in the decisions the university makes,” the petition says. “The gulf of inequality at Brandeis University is growing.”

Courtesy of JTA

Edgar Bronfman: Prince of the Jews

Schusterman.

Steinhardt berated the Reform and Conservative rabbis in the audience, sounding very much like a Wall Street guy who made enough cash not to suffer fools lightly. But he was balanced by Schusterman, who was more humble and modest than most of the rabbis getting the Steinhardt treatment – not surprising for a self-made man who, though he literally struck it rich, never thought of himself as too big for Tulsa.

And then there was Edgar.

He talked about how holding the end-of-Shabbat Havdalah ceremony on Saturday night didn’t feel right to him in the middle of his ski weekends, so he started doing it on Sunday night. High Holidays services were boring, so he started putting together his own in his East Side apartment

Federal judge dismisses Chabad lawsuit against Northwestern U. (JTA) – A federal judge dismissed a religious discrimination lawsuit filed against Northwestern University for censuring a Chabad house for underage drinking.

The university cut ties in September 2012 with the Tannenbaum Chabad House and its director, Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, after reports that the rabbi had served underage students wine and hard alcohol.

The rabbi told the Daily Northwestern that he did not violate any laws because the alcohol was consumed in the framework of a religious ceremony, which is legal according to state law. The university countered that Chabad does not have an exemption for religious meetings.

According to the court documents, a student was taken to the hospital for alcohol poisoning at a Chabad party sometime after 2001.

55 U.S. universities condemn ASA boycott of Israel (JTA) – At least 55 American universities and colleges have rejected the American Studies Association membership vote in

building. Then mid-session, without comment, he stood up, left the stage and exited the room. When he returned a few minutes later, he let us know – with his particular brand of selfassuredness – that it was just a case of a man’s got to go when a man’s got to go.

In those moments, I saw the silver spoon side of Edgar and had little trouble comprehending his tabloid-rich family history or his roller-coaster business record. It also wasn’t hard to see how two other traits – his occasionally vulgar rebuke of political opponents and his reliance on and loyalty to a cadre of lieutenants – helped fuel the controversy and dysfunction that would bring an end to his otherwise storied tenure as the president of the World Jewish Congress.

But in between, and in the years since his stepping down as WJC president, what became clear was that his immeasurable contributions to the Jewish people far outweighed the bumps and were byproducts of the same set of life experiences and character traits.

Edgar’s memory is already a blessing, and will be for decades to come, because he chased big ideas and remained true to him-

self in a way that few of us could afford to be.

He lived large but was no dilettante, neither in his defense of Jewish rights around the world or his determination to connect young Jews to their heritage. He was passionate about studying Jewish texts and hearing what the policy experts had to say, but at the same time never hesitated to speak out against tradition or convention.

Occasionally I would get a call that Edgar wanted to get together. Almost always the agenda was simply to talk about the state of things in the Jewish world. He asked as much as he answered, talked as much as he listened.

There were other journalists, academics and rabbis with whom he spoke far more often.

From time to time he would put us all in a room – when we were really lucky, at a resort in Park City, Utah – and it was the same as our lunches. Sure, he had his two cents, but he was there to learn, to be excited by new ideas.

He would tell you what he thought, however crazy, but he always wanted to know what other people were thinking, however crazy. And in the diversity of bios and backgrounds of

the people in those larger gettogethers, you could see the passion and concern he had for Jews of various stripes from around the world.

In politics, he was an increasingly rare combination – an unabashedly outspoken liberal with a nearly unparalleled track record of sticking up for the Jews.

You can find plenty of wealthy liberals ready to make the case for electing a Democratic president in the United States or dismantling settlements in the West Bank. But how many of them also can boast of having played a lead role in exposing Kurt Waldheim’s Nazi past? Or fighting for the freedom of Soviet Jews? Or pushing for the repeal of the U.N. resolution equating Zionism with racism? Or battling the Swiss banks on behalf of Holocaust victims?

“In terms of defending Jews, I’m a Jew,” Bronfman said.

“And I was in a position to do so, so I did so.”

Unlike many liberals, Edgar was increasingly, deeply curious about Judaism itself.

“As I was growing up, my knowledge of Judaism was

favor of an academic boycott of Israel.

The Conference of Presidents said it wrote to each of the institutional members of the ASA outlining why the boycott call is an unjustifiable and blatantly discriminatory act.

“The response is very encouraging and we are grateful that so many took the time during a holiday week to respond,” the group’s leaders said. “We continue to urge the rest of the members to speak out against the action and to disassociate from supporting the ASA.”

good. You gotta get rid of him.’”

Greco did not fire Brenner.

A year later, while Greco was on a leave of absence following an injury, Anastasi fired him and said, according to Greco, “I told you to take care of something, and you didn’t.”

or a “very big problem.”

Hungary, which is believed to have 100,000 Jews, also led in the number of Jews who said they had considered emigrating because of anti-Semitism, with 48 percent of Hungarian respondents replying in the affirmative, compared to 18 percent in Britain and a 29-percent average overall.

N.J. man claims he lost job for not firing Jewish employee (JTA) – A New Jersey man said he was fired after refusing to fire a man his boss called a “nogood New York City Jew.” Greco said after he was hired in May 2011 as a superintendent at the U.S. Custom House in lower Manhattan, his boss, Howard Anastasi, ordered him to fire the Jewish worker, the New York Post reported.

“He says: ‘You got a guy working for you – Chuck Brenner — he’s a no-good New York City Jew,’” Greco told the Post. “‘You know what that means: He’s no

New York Times launches Hungarian anti-Semitism survey (JTA) – The New York Times is conducting a survey of Hungarian Jews to help deepen its coverage of anti-Semitism in that country.

The survey, published online on Dec. 24, asks respondents whether they experienced antiSemitism and considered emigrating as a result, among other questions.

“An openly anti-Semitic political party has gained power in Hungary’s Parliament in recent years, fueling fears that the Eastern European nation is experiencing a rise in anti-Jewish sentiment,” the paper wrote in an introduction to the online survey form.

Ninety percent of 517 Hungarian respondents to an EU survey on anti-Semitism conducted last year said anti-Semitism was either a “fairly big problem”

BRONFMAN on page 21

Boston funeral home drops Orthodox burial society for Jewish alternative (JTA) – A new nondenominational Jewish burial society has replaced an Orthodox one at a Boston-area Jewish funeral home.

Community Hevra Kadisha of Greater Boston, which launched this fall and is part of a growing movement of Jewish burial societies that include non-Orthodox volunteers, began performing tahara – the ritual preparation of bodies for burial – at BrezniakRodman Chapel in West Newton, Mass., on Dec. 16.

Until this month, the Orthodox-run Chevrah Kadisha of Greater Boston, whose membership is by invitation only, had been the sole provider of tahara at Brezniak-Rodman and other area funeral homes.

NATIONAL / INTERNATIONAL • 7

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

At 91, Harvey Pollack is still NBA’s leading scorer

By Hillel Kuttler PHILADELPHIA (JTA) – Fittingly, Harvey Pollack was the one who scribbled the number 100 on the most famous photograph in basketball history: Wilt Chamberlain holding the piece of paper signifying his astounding point total in a 1962 game for the then Philadelphia Warriors.

After all, Pollack is basketball’s ultimate numbers and public relations man.

But the scrawling is hardly Pollack’s sole legacy in a nearly seven-decade career in basketball.

He was the first to track a player’s blocked shots, rebounds, minutes played and dunks. The term “triple-double” for a player netting 10 or more points, rebounds and assists in a game – Pollack’s doing. These days he even charts which NBA players sport tattoos.

Pollack is the Philadelphia 76ers’ director of statistical information, a paltry title for the unofficial historian of all things throughout the National Basketball Association’s existence.

“The word ‘legend’ doesn’t appropriately describe Harvey,” NBA Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver tells JTA. “He’s really the heart and soul of the 76ers, a walking encyclopedia of NBA history and a testament to the family nature of this league.”

Courtesy of Hillel Kuttler

A self-proclaimed “one of a kind,” Harvey Pollack at 91 continues to work courtside at Philadelphia 76ers home games.

Pollack, vigorous at 91, remains a Philadelphia courtside fixture, scrupulously keeping each game’s statistics without so much as eyeglasses to assist. Pollack, in fact, predates the NBA, going back to the Warriors’ Basketball Association of America debut in 1946.

Not even Philadelphia’s basketball-orphan status during the 1962-63 season – the Warriors moved to San Francisco and the 76ers had not arrived from Syracuse – could interrupt Pollack’s 68-year tenure in pro basketball: That season he handled public relations for NBA doubleheaders.

He’s on a T-shirt streak, too, never wearing the same one twice and nearly all donated to the cause. When a reporter visited this month, Pollack was on T-shirt day number 3,817. With pride he says the Guinness Book of World Records people told him he’ll own the record – actually no one sought it pre-Pollack – as soon as the streak actually ceases.

Like his work streak, that’s hardly imminent.

The native Philadelphian has outlived his wife of 58 years, his four siblings, three basketball arenas, the many newspapers for which he wrote and even Chamberlain. He’s at his 76ers

office daily and works every home game, a must greet for referees and opposing coaches, players and trainers. Non-game nights he attends movie screenings and theater performances and visits restaurants for a society column he has penned for decades.

Lara Price, a 76ers executive, says Pollack goes to nearly every concert – most of them rock and roll – at the Wells Fargo Center, the team’s home. When seats aren’t available, he unhestitatingly noodges the arena’s owner, Ed Snider, for tickets.

Pollack is a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame and several others, but the ultimate tribute may have been the 76ers presenting fans with a Harvey bobblehead a few years back.

He’s loved sports since growing up with his immigrant parents, Louis and Rebecca, both dressmakers, on Dauphin Street, in the northeast section of Philly, not far from where he now makes his home. The family lived a few blocks from Shibe Park, home of the Philadelphia Athletics, and Pollack and his friends would sneak into the baseball games there with youth groups admitted for free.

But basketball has been Pollack’s preferred sport since his senior year at Temple University,

when he served as the hoop squad’s manager and started logging statistics the coach hadn’t thought to keep.

“They call me the last of the Mohicans because I’m the only one left in the league since [the NBA] started,” he says. “There’s no clone of me hanging around, so I’m one of a kind.”

Employing Harvey hyperbole is as acceptable for ex-76ers as Pollack’s flaunting prohibitions against staffers asking players for autographs, which he does for his interns.

“When you mention ‘dinosaur,’ you’ve got to put his picture next to it,” says Hall of Famer Julius Erving. “He’s refused to become extinct.”

Erving’s former 76ers frontcourt mate, Bobby Jones, offers, “People say that athletes are freaks of nature, but he may be, too.”

Larry Brown, the one-time Sixers coach who was inducted into the Naismith Hall with Pollack in 2002, says discussing NBA history with Pollack is “like going to graduate school.” To Jim Lynam, also an ex-76ers coach, Pollack is “a gem… one of a kind.”

Moments before a 76ers game earlier this month against the Los Angeles Clippers, Pollack, POLLACK on page 21

How culpable were Dutch Jews in the slave trade?

By Cnaan Liphshiz and Iris Tzur THE HAGUE, Netherlands (JTA) – On a busy street near the Dutch Parliament, three white musicians in blackface regale passersby with holiday tunes about the Dutch Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, and his slave, Black Pete.

Many native Dutchmen view dressing up as Black Pete in December as a venerable tradition, but others consider it a racist affront to victims of slavery. With Holland marking the 150th anniversary of abolition this year, the controversy over Black Pete has reached new heights. Hundreds demonstrated against the custom in Amsterdam last month, and more than 2 million signed a petition supporting it.

Through it all, Dutch Jews – some of whom celebrate their own version of the Black Pete custom, called “Hanukklaas” – have largely remained silent.

But that changed in October, when Lody van de Kamp, an unconventional Orthodox rabbi, wrote a scathing critique about it on Republiek Allochtonie, a Dutch news-and-opinion website. “The portrayal of ‘Peter the slave’ dates back to a period when we as citizens did

not meet the social criteria that bind us today,” Van de Kamp wrote.

Speaking out against Black Pete is part of what van de Kamp calls his social mission, an effort that extends to reminding Dutch Jews of their ancestors’ deep involvement in the slave trade. In April, he is set to publish a book about Dutch Jewish complicity in the slave trade, an effort he hopes will sensitize Jews to slavery in general and to the Black Pete issue in particular.

“I wrote the book and I got involved in the Black Pete debate because of what I learned from my Dutch predecessors on what it means to be a rabbi – namely, to speak about social issues, not only give instructions on how to cook on Shabbat,” van de Kamp told JTA. “Money was earned by Jewish communities in South America, partly through slavery, and went to Holland, where Jewish bankers handled it,” he said. “Non-Jews were also complicit, but so were we. I feel partly complicit.”

Though he holds no official position in the Dutch Jewish community, van de Kamp, 65, is among the bestknown Orthodox rabbis in the Netherlands, a status earned through his several books on Dutch Jewry and

Courtesy of Cnaan Liphshiz

Amsterdam musicians dressing up as Black Pete, the slave of the Dutch Santa Claus, Sinterklaas.

frequent media appearances.

His forthcoming book, a historical novel entitled “The Jewish Slave,” follows an 18th-century Jewish merchant and his black slave as they investigate Dutch-owned plantations north of Brazil in the hope of persuading Jews to divest from the slave trade. In researching the book, van de Kamp discovered data that shocked him.

In one area of what used to be Dutch Guyana, 40 Jewish-owned plantations were home to a total pop-

ulation of at least 5,000 slaves, he says. Known as the Jodensavanne, or Jewish Savannah, the area had a Jewish community of several hundred before its destruction in a slave uprising in 1832. Nearly all of them immigrated to Holland, bringing their accumulated wealth with them.

Some of that wealth was on display last year in the cellar of Amsterdam’s Portuguese Synagogue, part of an exhibition celebrating the riches of the synagogue’s immigrant founders. Van de Kamp

says the exhibition sparked his interest in the Dutch Jewish role in slavery, which was robust.

On the Caribbean island of Curacao, Dutch Jews may have accounted for the resale of at least 15,000 slaves landed by Dutch transatlantic traders, according to Seymour Drescher, a historian at the University of Pittsburgh. At one point, Jews controlled about 17 percent of the Caribbean trade in Dutch colonies, Drescher said.

Jews were so influential in those colonies that slave auctions scheduled to take place on Jewish holidays often were postponed, according to Marc Lee Raphael, a professor of Judaic studies at the College of William & Mary.

In the United States, the Jewish role in the slave trade has been a matter of scholarly debate for nearly two decades, prompted in part by efforts to refute the Nation of Islam’s claim that Jews dominated the Atlantic slave trade. But in Holland, the issue of Jewish complicity is rarely discussed.

“This is because we in the Netherlands only profited from slavery but have not seen it in our own DUTCH on page 22

8 • INTERNATIONAL / ISRAEL

International Briefs Ayatollah’s ‘rabid dog’ remark tops 2013 list of antiSemitic/anti-Israel slurs (JNS) – Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s remark that Israel is the “rabid dog” of the Middle East topped the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of the top 10 anti-Semitic or anti-Israel slurs of 2013.

Following Khamenei on the list were Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who blamed the “Jewish diaspora” for protests against his government; U.N. Special Rapporteur Richard Falk, who accused Israel of “genocidal intentions” against the Palestinians; the American Studies Association for its academic boycott of Israel; and Pink Floyd band member Roger Waters for affixing a Jewish star on a floating pig during his summer concert tour of Europe.

Israeli team forced to compete anonymously in Dubai chess tournament (JNS) – Israeli children competing in the World Youth Chess Championships in Dubai are being forced to compete anonymously and not represent Israel in the international tournament.

The Israeli children were allowed to compete only after Israeli Chess Federation head Moshe Shalev, supported by Deputy Foreign Minister Ze’ev Elkin, warned the Dubai organizers that the FIDE would cancel the tournament, the Times of Israel reported.

Sephardic group cautiously praises Iraqi government for recognizing Jewish history (JNS) – The Sephardic group Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) cautiously praised the Iraqi government for its recognition of Jews’ role in the country’s history, but it maintained its opposition to the government’s claim to the Iraqi Jewish Archive.

In a recent religious ceremony attended by Iraq’s ambassador to the U.S., 49 Torah scroll fragments included in the archive were buried in accordance with Jewish tradition in West Babylon, NY. The Iraqi government said the Jewish community “played a key role in building the country; it shared in its prosperity and also suffered exile and forced departure because of tyranny.”

Iran building ‘new generation of centrifuges’ for nuclear program (JNS) – Iran’s nuclear chief said

the country is building a “new generation” of centrifuges for uranium enrichment. November’s interim nuclear deal between Iran and world powers stipulated that the Islamic Republic would not make new centrifuges operational for six months, but did not prohibit Iran from developing centrifuges.

Iranian lawmakers, defying Geneva deal, propose increasing uranium enrichment to 60% (JNS) – Iranian lawmakers have proposed a bill that will force the government to enrich uranium up to 60 percent “in order to provide fuel for submarine engines if the sanctions are tightened and Iran’s nuclear rights are ignored,” said lawmaker Mehdi Mousavinejad.

If passed, the bill would conflict with the recent deal brokered by world powers in Geneva.

Third Palestinian intifada may be imminent, says PA report (JNS) – Palestinian security officials warned over the weekend that a third intifada might be imminent, despite Israeli assessments to the contrary.

Israel Defense Forces officials have deemed that recent attacks on Israel are “atmospheric attacks” that have not been directed by any of the major Palestinian terrorist groups.

But a report compiled by the Palestinian Authority’s security forces, leaked to the media over the weekend, warned that chances of a third intifada are very high.

Warren Weinstein, Jewish hostage in Pakistan, releases new video message (JNS) – Warren Weinstein, a Jewish U.S. government contractor who is being held hostage in Pakistan, said he feels “totally abandoned and forgotten” by the U.S. and urged President Barack Obama to negotiate his freedom in a 13minute video message released by al-Qaeda on Christmas.

Weinstein, 72, was abducted in Lahore, Pakistan in 2011. He had been working in Pakistan for several years for J.E. Austin Associates, a U.S.-based development contractor that advises different Pakistani business and government sectors.

Egypt declares Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization (JNS) – The Egyptian government last week declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, blaming the Brotherhood for a suicide bomb attack that killed 16 people and wounded more than 100 at a police headquarters in a Nile Delta city. As a result, membership in the Brotherhood is now a criminal offense.

The Muslim Brotherhood denied involvement in the recent bombing, and al-Qaeda-inspired and Sinai-based group Ansar Bait

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Al-Maqdis claimed responsibility for the attack, Reuters reported.

Turkish PM Erdogan threatened by corruption scandal (JNS) – Turkey’s Islamist Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is facing increasing pressure on his rule amid a corruption scandal that has already caused three of his ministers to resign and seven others to be forced out.

One of the resigned ministers, Environment and Urban Planning Minister Erdogan Bayraktar, in a surprise move called for Erdogan to step down.

Rocket from Lebanon strikes northern Israel (JNS) – A Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon exploded west of the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona on Sunday. Four other rockets were fired from Lebanon but did not land in Israel, and no injuries were reported.

Netanyahu to hail Israeli cyber industry at World Economic Forum (Israel Hayom / Exclusive to JNS) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will speak at a session titled “Israel’s Economy” at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in late January, the Prime Minister’s Office announced. Netanyahu is expected to discuss Israel’s cyber industry, which is among the world’s most advanced.

Gaza rockets hit Ashkelon as wave of Palestinian terrorism continues (JNS) – The uptick in Palestinian terrorism continued Dec. 26 when two rockets from Gaza were fired into the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. The rockets landed in open areas and caused no injuries. The Israel Defense Forces responded by striking a weaponsmanufacturing facility and a weapons-storage facility in Gaza.

The Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups promised on their websites to avenge the Israeli airstrikes.

London church accused of anti-Israel bias over Christmas festival (JNS) – A prominent London church is drawing accusations of anti-Israel bias over its Christmasthemed festival.

Called “Bethlehem Unwrapped,” the Dec. 23-Jan. 3 festival at St. James’s Church is held to draw attention “to the Barrier that affects every aspect of daily life” in Bethlehem, the church’s website said. The church erected a 26-foot replica of a walled section of the Israeli security fence outside Bethlehem and included several pro-Palestinian speakers in the festival’s program.

Fate of Bedouin resettlement plan a mystery in aftermath of apparent cancellation

By Alex Traiman (JNS) – Several weeks after Bedouin and global anti-Israel elements celebrated the apparent cancelation of a plan to resettle tens of thousands of Bedouin in Israel's southern Negev region, the fate of the plan remains unknown.

In a dramatic press rence on Dec.12, former Israeli minister Benny Begin, placed in charge of the implementation of the “Prawer Plan,” resigned his post and announced that the plan would be withdrawn. Just days later, however, Knesset members continued to meet to discuss the plan's continuation.

“As for whether or not the plan will move forward in the aftermath of Begin's resignation, no one can say with certainty,” Ronit LevineSchnur, a member of the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told JNS. “I'm not sure if anyone really knows what's going on,” LevineSchnur said.

According to Levine-Schnur, the plan's apparent cancelation stemmed not only from Bedouin protests, but also from the fact that lawmakers from both ends of the political spectrum opposed it in its current form.

“Begin had assured lawmakers that Bedouin supported the program,” Levine-Schnur said. “And the Knesset members supported the plan, on the basis that the Bedouin themselves supported the program. Not only are the Bedouin not in favor, they are publicly demonstrating against it.”

According to Regavim, an NGO in Israel that focuses on illegal Arab building, more than 90,000 of 210,000 Bedouin live in more than 2,000 separate unauthorized encampments, covering 800,000 dunams (200,000 acres) in the northern Negev between the

cities of Beersheva, Dimona, and Arad.

Bedouin often live in structures built below modern standards, without basic services such as electricity and water that are provided legally by national infrastructure.

Israeli police are often carrying out court-mandated evacuation orders, particularly when new encampments are built.

According to Levine-Schnur, the only Bedouin legally residing on the land they possess are those who agreed to join one of seven pilot cities that were built to begin urbanizing the nomadic Bedouin several decades ago. The problem is that conditions in these recognized towns are significantly lower than other Israeli cities.

“The Bedouin population is the poorest and most deprived population in Israel,” said Levine-Schnur.

“That has been the situation for decades.”

“If you look at the seven existing Bedouin villages established by the government, no Bedouin want to join them,” she said.

“These cities are clearly known as social failures, with rampant poverty, and lacks in education, civil and social services.”

The purpose of the Prawer Plan would be to legalize some of the larger unauthorized encampments, while offering a combination of land and monetary compensation to officially and legally resettle Bedouin residing in other encampments. As part of the plan, all Bedouin would receive proper title-either on lands in which they are permitted to stay, or on new land granted by the government.

Many of the costs included in the plan would be to improve infrastructure and civil services in legalized Bedouin communities. Yet the plan's future is now unknown due FATE on page 22

Courtesy of Flash90

On Nov. 30, 2013 in the southern Israeli town of Hura, demonstrators protest the Israeli government’s “Prawer Plan” to resettle Bedouin residents of the Negev desert. The fate of the plan, which continued to be discussed by Israeli Knesset members after its apparent cancelation Dec. 12, remains a mystery.

ISRAEL • 9

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

Two decades on, Russian immigrants a rare case of successful aliyah

By Ben Sales TEL AVIV (JTA) – Growing up in the Urals, Pavel Polev was a precocious ice skater and a member of the Soviet Union’s national youth figure-skating team.

But in 1992, at age 15, Polev’s life was upended when he joined the massive wave of Jews immigrating to Israel from the crumbling Soviet Union. After serving a mandatory three years in the Israel Defense Forces following high school, Polev took a job as a custodian.

Two decades later, Polev is a successful small-business owner and rising politician. He runs an air-conditioning store and serves as deputy mayor of Ariel, the Israeli West Bank settlement city home to a large Russian-speaking population.

“It’s impossible to compare now with the situation 22 years ago,” said Polev, a member of the Russian immigrant-founded Yisrael Beiteinu party.

Polev’s immigrant success story resembles those of many of the 1 million Russian-speaking immigrants who arrived in Israel in the 1990s. Along with their descendants, Russian speakers now comprise nearly one-fifth of all Israelis.

Unlike other immigrant groups

Courtesy of JTA Staff

Ariel Mayor Pavel Polev, a rising star in Israeli politics, worked as a custodian when he first arrived in Israel in 1992.

that moved en masse to Israel only to find themselves poor and socially marginalized, two decades on Russian aliyah is by many metrics a story of resounding success. The Russian influx has had a palpable impact on Israeli society, from the countless storefronts with signs in Cyrillic characters to the many Russianspeaking immigrants who have assumed critical roles in the highest echelons of Israeli politics.

Though many Soviet immigrants, especially older ones, still face poverty and significant cultural barriers, overall statistics

show a community on the rise.

According to a 2013 report by the Adva Center, an Israeli social policy think tank, 56 percent of Russian immigrants in 1992 were in the poorest third of Israeli society – below the poverty line or at risk of poverty. By 2010, the figure had dropped to 38 percent.

Over the same period, the percentage of Russians in the upper third of Israeli earners grew from 10 to 27 percent.

“With any group of new immigrants in any country you won’t find such a huge success,” Natan Sharansky, the famous Soviet

refusenik who now serves as chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel, told JTA. “If you look at service in the army, at medicine and science, you can see how deeply it’s entering Israeli society.”

Russian immigrant success stands in marked contrast to the ongoing challenges faced by Ethiopian immigrants, who arrived in Israel in large numbers at around the same time. More than half of Ethiopian Israelis live below the poverty line, according to the Adva report. Ethiopians also lag the broader Israeli public in education and and have salaries about one-third lower than the average Israeli.

The Russian success owes at least in part to the education and skills that enabled them to succeed in an modern economy. Ethiopians emigrated from an agrarian subsistence economy and have struggled to adjust their traditional lifestyles to a Western society.

“The education there was at a high level,” said Chen Bram, an expert on Russian Jewry at Hebrew University’s Truman Institute. “So their ability to direct themselves was very high.”

Russian success is all the more startling considering how ill-prepared Israel was to absorb them when they first arrived. At the

time, stories abounded of highly trained Russian scientists forced to take jobs cleaning streets.

“They got here and they felt that there was no one who was caring for them,” said Betzalel Shif, a law professor who immigrated from Tashkent, a Soviet city in Uzbekistan, in 1971.

“Thank God they understood how to survive in Russia and survive here.”

Shif was a founding member of the Zionists’ Forum, a Russian immigrant advocacy group that was the precursor organization to Israel B’Aliyah, a Russian immigrant party founded by Sharansky that won seven seats in its first Knesset election in 1996.

The party merged with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party in 2003, helping to cement the mounting political influence that has been a hallmark of Russian success and another distinguishing feature of Russian integration.

Moldovan-born Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party, a faction that also counted Russian immigrants as its primary constituency, won 15 seats in the 2009 elections before joining lists with Likud last year. Liberman is one of two RUSSIAN on page 22

Despite rising threats faced by Israel, Iron Dome manufacturer’s CEO sleeps well

By Josh Hasten (JNS) – The security situation in Israel has grown increasingly tense of late, with a spike in terror attacks carried out on numerous fronts, and through various means, by both recognized terror groups and presumed “lone wolf” assailants. But such developments don’t rattle VADM (ret.) Yedidia Yaari.

“I sleep well because I know we (Israelis) have the capability to outsmart our enemies in every respect,” says Yaari-president and CEO of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., Israel’s second-largest government owned defense company – in an interview with JNS. Recent attacks on Israel include Qassam rockets fired by Palestinian terrorists in Gaza last week, and a Dec. 29 barrage of Katyusha rockets fired at northern Israel from Lebanon. There were no injuries reported in either incident. The Israel Defense Forces responded in the south by targeting Hamas terror targets in Gaza, including a weaponsmanufacturing facility and a weapons-storage facility. In the north, the IDF launched artillery shells targeting the source of the rocket fire. The IDF, fearing further escalation, has also reportedly redeployed the Iron Dome system in several southern Israeli towns.

Rafael – the Iron Dome’s manufacturer – researches, develops, manufactures, and supplies a wide range of air, land, sea, and space application defense systems for domestic use and for IDF soldiers in the field. The company’s 2012 sales amounted to $1.8 billion, with a backlog of orders worth $4.2 billion.

Since its deployment in April 2011, the Iron Dome has had a success rate of better than 90 percent, intercepting more than 500 short and medium range rockets and missiles fired at southern Israel within 100 kilometers from Gaza. In partnership with U.S.-based Raytheon Missile Systems, Rafael has also developed the David’s Sling system to defend Israel against long-range artillery rockets, short-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and other traditional air-defense threats. In November, the system successfully completed its second interception test against a short-range ballistic missile. Yaari is hopeful that David’s Sling will be fully operational by 2015.

Yaari has been in his current role at Rafael since December of 2004, after an illustrious 39-year career in Israel’s Navy during which he served as commander in chief since 2000. The Iron Dome and David’s Sling, he explains, are the first two components within Israel’s “three-

Courtesy of Alon Bason/Defense Ministry/Flash90

On November 27, 2012, then-Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak (far right) visits the production plant of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the manufacturer of the Iron Dome missile defense system. VADM (ret.) Yedidia Yaari, Rafael’s president and CEO, told JNS that despite the threats facing Israel, “I sleep well because I know we (Israelis) have the capability to outsmart our enemies in every respect.”

tiered umbrella defense system,” which also includes the joint U.S.Israel Arrow Weapons System, already deployed to intercept longrange surface to surface ballistic missiles while they are still outside of the earth’s atmosphere.

But how is Rafael – a relatively small defense company when compared to other similar companies around the world, with just 6,500 employees – able to compete in the global marketplace? Yaari tells JNS,

“Our secret to compete with the U.S., Russia, France, in this brutal competition is simply the skill set and excellent engineering corps developed here for the past 60 years in our R&D (research and development center. [With] our variety of technicians, their depth of knowledge, [and] such a variety of technologies, we are a unique company, and while we are small [we] can compete with these giants.”

Another advantage Rafael has is

“the spirit of the people,” according to Yaari.

“Rafael has retained a special type of personal commitment from everyone who works here, which has enabled us to form a concentrated effort,” he says.

Yaari says Rafael developed the Iron Dome system in a way no one else has done – from scratch. “This was accomplished with hundreds of people working together around the clock for three years,” he says.

At one point while the Iron Dome was being developed, Yaari recalls that those working on the project took a break and were bused down to the beleaguered Gaza-border town of Sderot, where thousands of rockets have fallen since the year 2000.

“We went down to Sderot for a day, to meet with the residents and get an intimate feel of who we were working for. That visit made us push even stronger [to finish],” he says.

Yaari explains that the Iron Dome – currently with six operational batteries available for deployment at short notice, based on threat assessment – is a relatively inexpensive, yet highly efficient, solution against different types of “mass rocket-based artillery that the opposition is using, including Qassam DOME on page 22

10 • ISRAEL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

Israel seeks to extend Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations by a year

By Israel Hayom (JNS) – Amid an uptick in Palestinian terrorism, Israel has asked the U.S. to extend the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations by a year. If such an extension is not approved, Israel believes it is likely the talks will fail. Israel’s concern stems from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s eagerness to get a framework agreement signed.

Israel, the Palestinians, and the U.S. agreed at the onset of talks that

negotiations would proceed uninterrupted for nine months, with the goal of reaching a final peace accord and announcing an end to the conflict.

The two negotiating teams, led by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian Authority chief negotiator Saeb Erekat, have met more than 20 times. Currently, there are major differences that have yet to be resolved and disagreements that could potentially derail the talks.

The nine-month period ends in May. Israel’s request to extend the

negotiations comes during a new wave of Palestinian terrorism. A Palestinian sniper on Tuesday fatally shot 22-year-old Salah Shukri Abu Latyef, a civilian employee of the Israeli Defense Ministry who was making repairs to the Israel-Gaza border fence, following Sunday’s bus bombing near Tel Aviv and Monday’s stabbing of an Israeli policeman. The bus bombing resulted in no civilian injuries after the bus was successfully evacuated, and the policeman who was stabbed, Rami

Ravid, survived after “a complex surgery that began when the knife was still lodged in his back,” said Dr. Ofer Merin of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Medical Center.

“We are pursuing the peace process as if there is no terror,” Israeli Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett said. “The assertion that the Palestinian Authority is not tied to the attacks is blowing up in our faces every day.”

While May is still months away, and because Kerry wants to be able

to declare tangible advances in the negotiations and to anchor the talks in a framework agreement, Israel has offered to sign a document stating that the two sides agree to extend the negotiations for another year to find a solution to the conflict.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked Kerry not to put any agreement on the table during his most recent visit, out of concern that a U.S. proposal could be turned NEGOTIATIONS on page 19

In familiar pattern, Palestinian terrorism surge runs parallel to negotiations

By Alex Traiman

Courtesy of Gideon Markowicz/FLASH90

Israeli police and rescue personnel at the scene of an explosion on a passenger bus in Bat Yam, near Tel Aviv, on Dec. 22, 2013. The bomb was part of a recent upsurge in Palestinian terrorism that runs parallel to Israel-Palestinian conflict negotiations.

Israel Briefs Israeli population surpasses 8 million (Israel Hayom / Exclusive to JNS) – Israel’s population grew in 2013 by 1.8 percent, or 147,000 people, bringing the country’s total population to 8.1 million, according to data from the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Immigrant Absorption Ministry.

Some 19,200 Jews moved to Israel from other countries. The most significant rise was in the number of immigrants from France, with 3,120 French Jews moving to Israel in 2013, a 63percent jump from the previous year (1,916). The largest group of immigrants, 7,520, came from the former Soviet Union. Some 2,680 immigrants came from the United States.

Jordan Valley sovereignty bill approved by Israeli ministerial committee (JNS) – Israel’s Ministerial Committee on Legislation on Sunday approved a bill proposed

by MK Miri Regev (Likud) that

would apply Israeli law to Jewish lands and communities in the Jordan Valley.

“This bill is purely motivated by diplomatic and security considerations,” Regev said, Israel Hayom reported. “Until now, the position of all Likud governments was that under any permanent agreement with the Palestinian Authority, the communities in the Jordan Valley would be transferred to the sovereignty of the State of Israel.”

The Jordan Valley has been a source of disagreement in the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations.

The Palestinians have rejected Israel’s demand to maintain a security presence there following the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Israel names 26 Palestinian terrorists to be freed in third phase of release (JNS) – Israel on Saturday night published the names of 26 Palestinian terrorist prisoners to be freed in the third installment of its prisoner release for negotiations with the Palestinian Authority. The release is expected to take place Monday night.

The prisoners to be released are nearly all convicted of murdering Israeli civilians, soldiers

(JNS) – Upsurges in Palestinian terrorism are often tied to progress – and eventual breakdowns – in Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations over the past 20 years. The latest round of talks, brokered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, are proving to be no different.

Palestinian attacks on Jewish military and civilian targets have been on the rise since a Lebanese sniper killed an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier in midDecember. A civilian hired by the IDF was murdered Dec. 24 while repairing the Israel-Gaza border fence. A bomb exploded on an evacuated bus in the heavily populated city of Bat Yam, just south of Tel or Palestinian collaborators, according to the Israel Prison Services website, and have all served 19-28 years of their terms.

Among the murderers being released are Muammar Ata Mahmoud Mahmoud and Salah Khalil Ahmad Ibrahim, convicted of stabbing Menahem Stern to death. Stern was a history professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and winner of the prestigious Israel Prize.

Aviv, on Dec. 22. A police officer was stabbed and moderately injured Dec. 23 while directing traffic at one of the West Bank’s busiest intersections along the Ramallah bypass road in Samaria, and Jewish drivers have reported several potentially deadly stoning attacks. In one of several recent Palestinian rocket attacks from Gaza that have provoked Israeli retaliatory airstrikes, one rocket landed near a bus stop used by schoolchildren near the city of Ashkelon.

“Unfortunately and regrettably, it’s quite typical to the junctures in which political decisions and painful compromises are expected to be taken by the negotiating parties,” Gilead Sher, former chief of staff and policy coordinator to Israel’s

former prime minister and defense minister Ehud Barak, told JNS regarding the uptick in Palestinian terror.

“Time and time again, we see the leash loosening for these kind of acts, that typically characterizes the Palestinian response to the kind of progress that seemingly is what is happening within the negotiating room,” said Sher, who was a chief peace negotiator at the Camp David summit in 2000 and at the Taba summit in 2001, in addition to taking part in several other extensive rounds of covert negotiations with the Palestinians.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin

the release of Palestinian prisoners on the U.S. freeing imprisoned Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, according to a new Israel Hayom poll.

In the same poll, 79 percent of respondents said Israel should not go ahead with the third stage of the Palestinian prisoner release next week due to the recent spate of Palestinian terror attacks.

According to recent figures released by Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics, there are roughly 161,000 Christians living in Israel, amounting to about 2 percent of the population and up from 158,000 in 2012. Nearly 80 percent of these Christians are Israeli Arabs, while the majority of the remaining 20 percent are largely from the former Soviet Union.

The Israeli cities with the largest Christian populations are Nazareth with 22,400, Haifa with 14,600, and Jerusalem with 11,900.

Natan Sharansky a possible candidate for Israeli president (JNS) – Natan Sharansky, the famed refusenik and current chairman of The Jewish Agency for Israel, is a possible candidate to run for Israeli president in June 2014, Israel Hayom reported.

Habayit Hayehudi party Chairman Naftali Bennett has reportedly thrown his support behind the candidacy of Sharansky, who has overseen the Jewish Agency’s strategic shift in attention from aliyah to building global Jewish identity.

Dore Gold to serve as Netanyahu’s political adviser (JNS) – Dore Gold, the head of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA) and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, will serve as an external political consultant to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2014.

Gold replaces Netanyahu’s former political adviser, Ron Dermer, the new Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Gold will not be considered a state employee of Israel and will therefore be able to maintain his post at the JCPA.

Israelis in poll: Condition Palestinian prisoner release on Pollard’s freedom (JNS) – More than half of Israeli Jews – 52.4 percent – believe Israel should condition

Israel’s Christian population continues to grow in 2013 (JNS) – Israel’s Christian population continued to grow in 2013, increasing by 3,000 people over the last year.

TERRORISM on page 19

Sderot opens rocket-proof train station (JNS) – A new train station in the southern Israeli city of Sderot was inaugurated last week in a festive ceremony attended by top government officials. By linking up to Israel’s national railway system, Sderot residents will be able to reach Tel Aviv in just under an hour.

The Sderot station – which cost 56 million shekels (around $16 million) – is the first in Israel built to withstand a rocket strike.

Sderot, located adjacent to the Gaza Strip, has been subjected to thousands of rocket attacks from Gaza over the past decade.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

LATKAPALOOZA On Tuesday, December 24, Access, an initiative of The Mayerson Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s Young Adult Division (YAD) hosted Latkapalooza at Tin Roof. More than 200 people turned out to “mix and mingle without the jingle.” This annual event, which has taken place on Christmas Eve for more than a decade, is the perfect night for Jewish young adults to connect and reconnect with out-of-towners and college students who are home for the holidays.

More photos on Page 12

SOCIAL LIFE • 11

12 • CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

LATKAPALOOZA Continued from Page 11

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

HAVE PHOTOS FROM AN EVENT? Whether they are from a Bar Mitzvah, Annual Meeting, School Field Trip or Your Congregation’s Annual Picnic, spread the joy and share them with our readers in the Cincinnati Jewish Life section!

MAIL: MAIL Send CD to The American Israelite, 18 W 9th St Ste 2, Cincinnati, OH 45202 or E-MAIL: E-MAIL production@americanisraelite.com Please make sure to include a Word doc. that includes the captions, if available, and a short synopsis of the event (date, place, reason, etc.).

If sending photos by e-mail, please send them in batches of 3-5 per e-mail (16MB MAX). All photos should be Hi-Res to ensure print quality.

THIS IS 100% FREE. For more information, please contact Jennifer at (513) 621-3145.

All photos are subject to review before publishing.

14 • DINING OUT

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Izzy’s downtown locations are century-long attraction for diners

by Bob Wilhelmy Izzy Kadetz and his tiny Jewish deli are the stuff of legends. Over 100 years of good, wholesome food ie. sandwiches built for giant appetites. In fact, I recently sunk my teeth into a Reuben (hold the Swiss), flanked by a whopper potato pancake, and could only handle half the sandwich. It’s colossal. Big! Really big! Slap some brown mustard on that sandwich, and you have yourself a true delight.

So when you walk through the doors of Izzy’s on Main Street in downtown Cincinnati, remember the Jewish heritage and tradition you are perpetuating. Lunch is the time to enjoy the full experience: crowded; clangorous; alive with happy, hungry diners. Gone is Izzy Kadetz yelling at everybody, including customers.

But importantly, there still is what has attracted diners for more than a century: the wondrous deli food that is the match of any Jewish deli in the Big Apple, long- acknowledged home of the quintessential deli.

It’s interesting that recently, when the producers of the cable TV show Man vs. Food wanted a deli Reuben sandwich challenge, they did not trundle off to NYC. No, they came to Cincinnati. They enlisted the help of Izzy’s on Main Street, having folks there prepare a 5-pound Reuben sandwich. Pitted against the giant plateful was a local eater. So Izzy’s Main Street location went national, a celeb in the big eats category.

An advertising banner on Izzy’s menu declares: World’s Greatest Reubens—plural. The plural is necessary, since there is the original Reuben, but also a cod Reuben, a turkey Reuben, a veggie Reuben, a pastrami Reuben, and even a beef frank Reuben.

“Our staples are the excellent corned beef and the Reuben sandwiches, no doubt,” said John Geisen, owner of the Izzy’s franchise. “But we’ve added a little something for everyone. We have the hamburgers and the turkey; the chicken salad, egg salad and tuna salad; and a new brat Reuben (which goes along with the beef frank Reuben already on the menu). We butterfly the brat and grill it rather than boil (or steam) it.

We use Scheckler relish, with the sauerkraut, and put it on a pretzel bun along with a mustard-horseradish sauce. It’s really a good sandwich!”

Geisen is correct about the menu at Izzy’s: there does seem to be something for everybody. And the Izzy’z brain-trust has focused on variety with the sandwich offerings.

For instance, under Specialty Sandwiches, you’ll find a tuna melt, a boneless cod, a spicy delight (pastrami with onion, minced olives, sweet peppers and garlic), and a salami sandwich as well.

Also, Izzy’s offers wraps, soups and salads. The wraps feature fill-

The sandwich counter, where Dante Behanan assembles a classic Reuben.

One of Izzy’s famous sandwiches and the potato pancake that is part of a sandwich order.

The signage outside Izzy’s on Main Street.

and chopped liver and a special dressing on top before the rye lid is put in place.

All Izzy sandwiches, burgers, Reuben choices and others, come with the “award-winning” potato pancake (unless specifically stated otherwise). “So what you have with an Izzy’s sandwich is a meal, with the potato pancake and the pickles.

It’s a great value, and that’s why I think we have been successful during this tough economy of recent years,” Geisen said.

Now, added to the lunch trade, you can stop by Izzy’s for breakfast.

The menu features some items you’d expect at a place called Izzy’s, namely bagels and cream cheese. But there is more, such as vanilla crispy French toast, served with maple syrup. Also, Izzy’s makes its own maple cinnamon rolls, featuring coffee-maple icing. There are breakfast sandwiches, with your choice of meat, egg and/or cheese served on an English muffin.

Speaking of the breakfast menu,

ings of turkey, beef, corned beef and tuna. Burgers are made of USDA prime Angus beef, which is the highest quality grade of US beef; the Izzy burger is served on a toasted Kaiser roll with lettuce, tomato and red onion.

Don’t pass over the signature sandwiches, which are tasty combo concoctions created by patrons over the years, such as the Jeff Ruby. Are you ready? The Ruby is a doubledecker on rye, the bottom deck being roast beef and slaw, then roast turkey

Geisen emphasized that the Izzy’s general menu has evolved greatly in the past several years to better meet the wants and needs of his customers. Judging by the people flocking to his Izzy locations, he’s right about that.

See you there!

Izzy’s 612 Main St. 241-6246 (plus 8 other locations)

DINING OUT • 15

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

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Izzy’s

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9521 Fields Ertel Rd

489-2388 • 489-3616 (fx)

9386 Montgomery Rd

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239-8881

10040B Montgomery Rd

Baba India Restaurant

Montgomery

3120 Madison Rd

793-6800

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Marx Hot Bagels

321-1600

9701 Kenwood Rd

Bangkok Terrace

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4858 Hunt Rd

891-5542

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891-8900 • 834-8012 (fx)

302 E. University Ave

Cafe Mediterranean

Clifton

9525 Kenwood Rd

221-5353

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Mei Japanese Restaurant

745-9386

8608 Market Place Lane

Carlo & Johnny

Montgomery

9769 Montgomery Rd

891-6880

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936-8600

111 Main St

Durum Grill

Milford

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965-0100

489-4777

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16 • OPINION

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Israel must develop Negev for benefit of all

By Theodore Bikel LOS ANGELES (JTA) -- This past May, I made a YouTube video with the Israeli NGO Rabbis for Human Rights that drew a parallel between my role as Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof,” in which the Jews in Sholem Aleichem's tale faced expulsion from the Russian shtetl of Anatevka, and a Knesset proposal to forcibly displace up to 40,000 Bedouin-Arab citizens. The video included anguishing footage of the July 2010 demolition of the unrecognized Bedouin village of El-Araqib.

The proposal, known as the Prawer-Begin plan, has reportedly been withdrawn, but this is not certain. A Knesset committee debated the bill even after the supposed withdrawal. There are also indications within the governing coalition that force may yet be used to expel thousands from their desert homes with a law shaped to be more punitive than Prawer-Begin.

The Bedouin have been living in the territory of the Negev Desert for many generations. After Israel’s War of Independence, during which some Bedouin actually fought for the emerging state, much of the population was uprooted and concentrated in a siyag, or enclosure, in a barren part of the Negev’s northeast.

Subsequently, the government maintained a policy of ambiguity.

Villages that became home to roughly half of Israel’s Bedouin were not officially recognized and were denied state services, such as utilities and roads. But the government largely left these villages alone. During the 1970s, the government allowed the villagers to file legal claims for their land. These were contested over many years, with two-thirds eventually denied.

Six years ago, the government organized a commission headed by a retired Supreme Court judge and a former state comptroller, Eliezer Goldberg, to prepare recommendations regarding Bedouin property rights and unregistered villages. In 2008, the commission proposed that the homes and villages be legalized, pursuant to a regional plan, and land claims resolved. The implementation of these recommendations, however, was outside its purview.

The following year, the government organized a committee headed by the former deputy chair of the

Correction In our December 19 issue we failed to identify Dr. Jonathan Cohen of HUC on Page 13.

We apologize for the oversight.

National Security Council, Ehud Prawer, to draft an implementation program. The committee included no Bedouin and prepared its work without consulting the affected communities. The resulting plan called for expropriation of at least half the claimed land, at minimal cash compensation, and the forced relocation and destruction of at least 25 villages where 35,000 to 40,000 people reside. Even this proposal was too generous for one committee member, who called for the expropriation of all claimed land.

Benny Begin, recently retired from the Knesset and a former cabinet minister, was tasked with further shaping the Prawer Plan into legislation. He supplemented it with programs for urban development to address the historical neglect of Bedouin residing in seven povertystricken and crime-ridden urban townships. But with the details of relocation left vague and uncertain, most Bedouin in the 35 unrecognized villages understandably viewed Prawer-Begin as a scheme that threatened them with dispossession and forced urbanization.

Those previously pushed into towns generally found inadequate employment opportunities and poor social conditions. Understandably, most Bedouin distrusted this kind of deal.

In addition, some Bedouin prefer agrarian lifestyles for cultural reasons and were deeply disturbed by the prospect of being forced out of their homes and lands.

Jewish groups both inside and outside Israel also spoke out against the proposal. In the Knesset, a mix of left and right-wing legislators opposed the government bill. Those on the left objected to the prospect of forced relocation, while the right opposed Begin’s proposed package of inducements and compensation for the Bedouin.

Israel and its Bedouin citizens are at a crossroads. They could return to a hostile policy that destroys homes and fields and condemns thousands of Bedouin to displacement from their unrecognized villages and neglect in the townships. Or the government could implement provisions of the Goldberg Commission, resolving land claims and legalizing villages as part of a regional plan developed in consultation with the affected population. Bimkom, an Israeli planning group, has suggested an alternative master plan, to guide the integration of these villages into a broader regional framework.

Working in this way, Israel can move forward to restore trust between the state and its Bedouin citizens, and to establish a constructive program of developing the Negev for all.

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

Dear Editor, We would like to take a moment to thank the Cincinnati Jewish Community for the love and support shown to us over the last six months. When we rushed to Indianapolis on June 29 upon receiving the news of the lightning strike that seriously injured our son, Ethan, we could never have imagined what would be waiting for us upon our return to Cincinnati. By the time Ethan

was airlifted from Riley Children's Hospital to Cincinnati Children's Hospital, there was already a team of over 100 volunteers, and has since grown to over 400 strong and willing individuals. We have been extremely humbled and overwhelmed by this outpouring of pure love. We are so proud to live in a community that truly embodies the Jewish value of Kol Yisrael aravim zeh lazeh (All Jews are

responsible for one another).THANK YOU to the many wonderful, committed people of Cincinnati for their generosity, time, efforts and resources.

Todah Rabah V'Ahava, Alexia and Scott Kadish Loveland, Ohio

Answer to BDS is Jewish power

By Ben Cohen (JNS) – On a virtual stroll through the website of the “U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel” – a deeply unpleasant experience, I should add – I came across an article that drew an analogy I hadn’t encountered before.

Intellectually ludicrous and morally ugly, the writer compared the situation of Aida, a Palestinian refugee camp near Bethlehem, with the bombing by the German Luftwaffe of the Basque city of Guernica in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The Aida camp is not the most luxurious place on earth, yet it is far from being the worst.

Its residents don’t live in tents, but in proper housing that clusters tightly around dilapidatedlooking streets, a common enough sight across the developing world, and in certainly far better conditions than prevail in large parts of Africa or Asia. By contrast, the bombing of Guernica – the subject of a famous Picasso painting – was one of the true horrors of the 20th century. The destruction wrought by German bombers, wrote George Steer, a British journalist who witnessed it firsthand, was “unparalleled in military history.” Steer described the human cost of the raid in plain terms: “In a street leading downhill from the Casa de Juntas I saw a place where 50 people, nearly all women and children, are said to have been trapped in an air raid refuge under a mass of burning wreckage... When I entered Guernica after midnight houses were crashing on either side, and it was utterly impossible even for firemen to enter the centre of the town.”

Here, in a nutshell, is why Jews are so rightly infuriated by the movement to boycott Israel.

In its quest to portray the Palestinians as the most oppressed, downtrodden people on the face of this earth, there are few comparisons to which Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) proponents won’t stoop, no matter how outlandish – whether that’s the parallel with Guernica, or the Holocaust, or apartheid South Africa, or the slander that what Israel has done to the Palestinians approximates a genocide.

The moral vacuum at the core of the BDS movement has again come to the fore since the American Studies Association (ASA), an academic body with 5,000 members, revealed that it was signing up to the academic boycott of Israel – the second such announcement in 2013, following the same decision by the Asian American Studies Association in April. A third academic group, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, has now also joined the Israel boycott.

What has stood out, unfortunately, in the media coverage of ASA’s shameful decision is not the fact that less than 1,000 ASA members supported the boycott, in a vote that attracted only one quarter of the entire membership, or the rank hypocrisy of boycotting Israel, given the slaughter that has consumed Syria next door. Instead, we are left with the sense that the boycott is a bold new initiative that will, as a New York Times headline put it, be regarded as a “symbolic sting” to Israel.

There is, however, another way of looking at this. And that requires us to remember that the academic boycott wasn’t launched this month, but ten years ago. And while its activities have roiled universities in the U.K., Europe, South Africa

and Australia, it has signally failed to become a mass movement. We should be heartened by the knowledge that Israel’s robust economy and the firstclass academic reputation of its universities have easily withstood this propaganda onslaught.

Moreover, the American Association of University Professors, the closest thing in this country to a representative body of academics, has roundly rejected the boycott as an assault on academic freedom.

I don’t point to those facts to make the case that we shouldn’t be worried – we should be. There is no room for complacency in the face of a movement whose worldview is rooted in the struggle against Jewish sovereignty in much the same way that the Nazis saw the Jews, or the communists saw the bourgeoisie, as the ultimate enemy. But in fighting the academic boycott and BDS more generally, we should not lose awareness of the power we 21st-century Jews have, nor our ability to wield it.

Hence, let’s by all means ridicule the pretensions of the BDS movement to be a latter-day incarnation of the movement against apartheid in South Africa. Let’s not hesitate in pointing out its failures. At the same time, let’s not permit it to mushroom because we don’t think it’s a threat. Both Brandeis University and Penn State Harrisburg have pulled out of ASA since the boycott was announced, and we should push for a similar outcome in the case of similar initiatives. Much as some Jews are uncomfortable with acknowledging this reality, we have the power to harass, frustrate and crush the BDS movement wherever it appears.

Let us do so without mercy.

JEWISH LIFE • 17

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

sons and with our daughters” (Ex. 10:9). It’s a family affair.

Hence, the Bible tells this wicked child that the Passover sacrifice is a reminder of a Divine miracle that preserved the Jewish family.

The Seder is precisely the kind of family ritual that is crucial for familial continuity.

The author of the Haggada cites a different verse: “When the Lord brings you to the land which He swore to your fathers to give to you... You shall tell your child on that day, saying, ‘It is because of this [ritual] that God did [miracles] for me when I went out of Egypt’” (Ex. 13:5-8).

The key words here are “did for me.” Passover teaches the two most important messages of Judaism: the inalienable right of every individual to be free and the injunction that we love the stranger because we were (unloved) strangers in Egypt. The continuity of the generations and the familial celebrations of crucial historical events demand that each Jew have the ability to transform past history into one’s own existential and personal memory. The initial biblical answer emphasizes the importance of familial experiences for familial continuity; the author of the Haggada adds that without incorporating past into present there can be neither meaningful present nor anticipated future.

I am my past. Despite the fact that the wicked child has denied his roots, we dare not tear him out of the family. He may think that he wants to remove himself from historical continuity, but it’s the task of his family to remind him that this celebration is an indelible part of his existential identity, that he is celebrating his own personal liberation.

The Haggada instructs us to set the teeth of the wicked child on edge. The phrase in Hebrew is “hakheh et shinav.” It doesn’t say "hakeh", which means to strike, to slap him in the teeth, but rather “hakheh,” from the language of the prophet Ezekiel, “The fathers eat the sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge (Ezek. 18:2). The prophet is expressing the fundamental unfairness in the fact that the parents have sinned but their children

are the ones who must suffer the pain of exile. Indeed, children do suffer for the sins of their parents – always. Anyone who comes from a difficult or dysfunctional home will bear the burden.

But just as the child has responsibility to his past, the parent has responsibility to the future. Are we certain that the wicked child’s teeth are not set on edge because of the sour grapes that we, the parents, have eaten because we have not properly demonstrated the requisite love and passion for the beauty and the glory of our traditions? Have we been there to hear his questions when he was still ready to ask them and to listen to answers? Have we been the appropriate models for him to desire continuity within our family? The author of the Haggada subtly but forthrightly reminds both parents and children of their obligations to each other, to past and to future.

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

LITTLE KNOWN CINCINNATI FACTS Adolph Ochs purchased the New York Times in 1896. Under Ochs, the New York Times became the leading newspaper in the US. Where is Ochs’s father-in-law interred?

Issac Mayer Wise may be the most famous man interred in JCGC’s Walnut Hills cemetery. He had fourteen children, one of whom was Effie Miriam Wise. Effie married Adolph Ochs in 1884. Already in the newspaper business in Chatanooga, TN, the Ochs moved to New York after buying the Times. Adolph’s commitment to keeping editorial content separate from news stories and providing accurate reports led to a huge This quiz provided by: increase in readership and massive circulation.

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T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: BO (SHEMOT 10:1-13-16) 1. What was unique about the plague of locusts? a.) Number of locusts b.) Length of plague c.) Other insects also came 2. What happened to the locusts after the plague? a.) They were food for the Egyptians b.) They died c.) The wind blew them away 3. What did Pharaoh tell Moshe after the plague of darkness? a.) The Children of Israel do not have to work, 4. A 12:29 Hashem and his court. Rashi The Children of Israel baked them and were forced to leave before they rose

EFRAT, Israel – “When your children will say to you, ‘What is this service to you?’You shall say, ‘It is the Passover service to God.’” Why does the author of the Haggada call the questioner in this sequence “the wicked child?” The reason that the Haggada itself emphasizes this lies in the questioner’s exclusion of himself from the family ritual when he says, “What is this service to you?” The Haggada explains: “Saying ‘you,’ he excludes himself, and by doing so he denies a basic principle of our faith.” For a Jew, it is considered “wicked” to exclude oneself from the Jewish ritual-familial experiences.

Also, in this instance, the child doesn’t ask his parents anything; instead, he tells them: “...when your children shall say to you” (Ex. 12:26). An honest question reveals a willingness to learn, but the wicked child is not interested in answers – only in making statements.

How might we respond to such a child? The Bible itself gives one response: “It is the Passover service to God. He passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt [when he slew the Egyptian firstborn] and He saved our homes” (Ex. 12:27); the author of the Haggada gives another: “You shall cause his teeth to be on edge, and say to him, ‘It is because of that which God did for me when I went out of Egypt’” (Ex.13:8).

Why the difference, and what is the specific message of each? The Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, 1817-1893) teaches that the wicked child’s statement reflects his belief that so many years after the original events there is no reason to retain such an old-fashioned and outmoded service. The biblical answer is that it is a Passover sacrifice to God, who saved our homes, and our families.

There are two central pillars in Judaism: family ties and Divine directions. Family has been an important Jewish value from the beginning of our history, when Abraham is told that he is distinguished and loved by God “so that he command his children and his family after him that they do righteousness and justice” (Gen. 18:19).

And when Pharaoh’s servants agree to allow Moses to leave Egypt – but only with the males – Moses and Aaron respond, “We shall go with our young and with our old, with our

The prophet is expressing the fundamental unfairness in the fact that the parents have sinned but their children are the ones who must suffer the pain of exile. Indeed, children do suffer for the sins of their parents – always.

but can not leave b.) He did not want to see Moshe anymore c.) He warned him that the Children of Israel could not survive in the desert 4. How did the plague of the first born happen? a.) Hashem b.) Angel c.) Mysterious virus 5. What was unique about the first matzohs?

2. C 10:19 Even locusts that were preserved for eating were blown away. Rashi 3. B 10:28 In the end, Pharaoh told Moshe in person to leave Egypt

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT BO EXODUS 10:1-13:16

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

ANSWERS 1. A 10:14,15 There was only one type of locust in this plague, in the Book of Joel there were four types of locusts. Rashi

Sedra of the Week

18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

JEWZ

IN THE

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist Golden Globes, Part I The annual Golden Globe Awards will be hosted by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Here are the “confirmed” Jewish nominees in other than those in the acting categories. I’ll cover the thespians next week.

Film categories: Best director: DAVID O. RUSSELL, 55, “American Hustle”; Best screenplay: Russell, “American Hustle,” and SPIKE JONZE, 44, “Her”; Best original song: Taylor Swift and JACK ANTONOFF, 29, for the song, “Sweeter than Fiction,” written for the movie “One Chance” about a Brit talent show.

Antonoff is best known as the guitarist for the popular rock band, “Fun”.

Best film and TV series awards go to the principal producers. Here are nominees in those categories with a Jewish director, screenwriter, or creator (TV).

Drama film: “Philomena,” directed by STEPHEN FREARS,72; also “Rush,” written by PETER MORGAN, 50; Musical or comedy film: “American Hustle,” directed and co-written by DAVID O. RUSSELL, 55; also “Her”, Jonze, director/writer: also “Inside Llewyn Davis,” directed/written by JOEL and ETHAN COEN (ages 59 and 56).

Best TV Drama: “The Good Wife,” created by Robert King (not Jewish) and his Jewish wife, MICHELLE KING, 50; Best TV comedy: “The Big Bang Theory,” created by CHUCK LORRE, 61 and BILL PRADY, 53; also “Parks and Recreation,” created by GREG DANIELS, 50; also “Girls,” created by LENA DUNHAM, 27.

Best TV movie/mini-series: “American Horror Story: Coven”; created/co-written by BRAD FALCHUK, 41; also “Dancing on the Edge,” a 5 episode series about a black jazz band in Britain in the 1930s. It was written and directed by STEPHEN POLIAKOFF, 61, long a top figure in quality UK TV. Made for the BBC, the series played on Starz.

New TV Show: Maybe Intelligent?

“Intelligence” is an actionadventure series that premieres on CBS. It stars Josh Holloway (“Lost”) as an elite spy with a tiny computer embedded in his brain.

Marg Helgenberger co-stars, with PETER COYOTE, 72, appearing in a recurring role as her father The show was created by and is written (mostly) by MICHAEL SEITZMAN, 46, whose previous credits include penning the pretty good 2005

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NEWZ

film, “North Country.” Seitzman is an occasional Huffington Post blogger. He has addressed antiSemitism in a couple of his columns, including anti-Semitism he experienced as a child.

Spotlight on Ephraim When the ABC series, “Last Man Standing,” starring Tim Allen and Nancy Travis started in 2011, I thought that MOLLY EPHRAIM, now 27, who plays Allen’s daughter, Amanda, might be Jewish. Well, I was right. Her participation in a fun 2013 Passover Seder video confirmed it. Ephraim has made three feature films: “College Road Trip”, “Paranormal Activity 2” (2010), and “Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones.” In the last flick she again plays “Ali Rey” and once again Rey jousts with demonic ghosts.

Ephraim has a B.A. in religion from the Univ. of Pennsylvania and in 2010 she starred in a offBroadway production of “The Diary of Anne Frank” that the NY Times praised. By the way: Nancy Travis isn’t Jewish, but she and her Jewish husband are raising their kids in their father’s faith.

Love Story Surprises Most baby-boomers will remember “Love Story,” the mega-hit 1970 film that co-starred Ryan O’Neill as a rich “WASP” college student who weds a working class Italian-American college student (played by Ali MacGraw), over the objections of his snob father.

The late ERICH SEGAL, who wrote the story, was a practicing Jew. Also Jewish was the late JOHN MARLEY, who played MacGraw’s father (He’s best known for playing the film producer with a horse’s head in his bed in “The Godfather”). But here are some surprises: a friend who is a family history expert has confirmed that MacGraw’s mother’s parents were both Jewish.

The actress has only ever “admitted” to maybe having a Jewish grandmother. He also tells me that Ryan O’Neill’s maternal grandma was the daughter of two Jewish parents (His other grands weren’t Jewish).

Not sure if O’Neill and/or MacGraw even know that they are “halachic” Jews. Still, I don’t think I can watch the movie, again, without thinking that its famous tag line should be changed to: “Oy, Papa, love means never having to say you’re sorry. Nu?”

FROM THE PAGES 150 Y EARS A GO Notice is hereby given that the Board of Delegates of the United Jewish Cemetery have dedicated a part of their grounds for the interment of Jewish soldiers, who have fallen or may fall either by wounds or disease contracted while engaged in the defense of the Union. The use of the ground for such purposes will be free of all charge whatever, and the officers of the Cemetery will carefully superintend funerals when requested by absent friends. It is designed also to erect a monument over the remains of all soldiers deposited in the Cemetery. For further particulars apply personally, or by letter to either of the undersigned, Abraham Aub, President, Philip Heidelbach, Vice President, or Lewis Abraham, Secretary.

The family intimacy should never make brothers and sisters forget to be polite and sympathizing to each other. Those who contract thoughtless and rude habits towards the members of their own family will be rude and thoughtless to the whole world. But let the family be tender, true, affectionate and considerate, and the members of the family thus trained will carry into the world and soceity the habits of their childhood. They will not be satisfied without mutual esteem, and their own character will be sustained by that in goodness which belongs to a mind exercised in pure and high thoughts. – January 29, 1864

125 Y EARS A GO One of the most pleasing social events of the season was a surprise party tendered to Miss Hattie Goldstein on last Friday evening by the members of the G.A.L.S., of which organization she has always been an active member. About fifteen couples were present, and the unanimous verdict was that the affair was a complete success. Miss Goldstein is completing her education at Oxford, O., and was home on a brief visit to her parents and friends.

Cards are out for the wedding of Mr. Charles M. Rothschild, of this city, to Miss Tecla, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Simon Cahn, of Evansville, Ind, to take place in the latter place, January 6, 1889. – January 3, 1889

100 Y EARS A GO Leonard H. Freiberg, until recently in the office of City Solicitor Alfred Bettman, has formed a partnership for the practice of the law with Stanley W. Lewis, formerly associated with Charles Wilby. The new firm has offices at 500 and 501 First National Bank Building.

The remains of Lyman Straus,

who died on December 24, on a railroad train, going from Jacksonville to St. Petersburg, Fla., were brought to this city and buried in the Judah Touro cemetery. Mr. Straus was 70 and unmarried and has been living at the Sterling Hotel for many years.

It is understood that he leaves to the Home for the Jewish Aged and Infirm $25,000 to be known as the Lyman Straus Fund, and the Jewish Hospital Association $25,00, to be know as the Solomon and Hannah Straus fund. The balance of the estate is divided between 15 nephews and nieces with the exception of $1000, which was left to a friend, H.J. Momber, who has been employed in a pharmacy at Seventh and Main Streets for the last 25 years. The will is dated July 21, 1913. – January 1, 1914

75 Y EARS A GO Mr. and Mrs. I. Aronoff, 918 Dana Avenue, will receive relatives and friends Sunday, Jan. 8th, from 3 to 6 and 8 to 11 pm, in honor of the marriage of their daughter, Freda, to Dr. Samuel Reingold. The reception will be held at 936 Dana Avenue.

No cards. The wedding will take place in the presence of the immediate family at 1pm.

Miss Aronoff and Dr. Reingold graduated from the University of Cincinnati. She is widely known in Cincinnati music and dramatic circles. She is a dramatic instructor in Cincinnati Public Schools.

Dr. Reingold has studied and traveled widely in Europe and Palestine and has been heard on many occasions on reports of his travels abroad.

After a wedding trip, the couple will reside at 918 Dana Avenue, where they will be happy to receive their many friends. – January 5, 1939

50 Y EARS A GO Mr. and Mrs. Kartan M. Mailender announce the engagement of their daughter, Karen, to Lieutenant Fred H. Abel, son of Mrs. Joel Caller of Knoxville, Tenn., and the late Mr. Armand Abel of Columbus, Ohio.

Miss Mailender attends Ohio State University, where she is a senior in the College of Education and is affliated with Alpha Epsilon Phi Sorority.

Her fiance attended Cornell University and is a graduate of Ohio State University. He is a member of Zeta Beta Tau Fraternity.

A June wedding is planned.

Sol Greenberg, 63, of the Hotel Netherland, passed away Saturday, Dec. 28, in Houston.

Mr. Greenberg was the owner of the Gilsey Shoe and Bag Company, 116 W. Fourth St. the past 35 years.

He was a member of Wise Temple, Shriners, and Masons.

Surviving are his wife, Mrs. Ruth Greenberg; two sons, Jack and Roger; a brother, Dr. Harry I. Greenberg; a sister, Mrs. Leon Pastor; and two grandchildren.

Rabbi Albert A. Goldman officiated at the services at the Weil Funeral Home Tuesday, Dec. 31, with interment in Love Brothers Cemetery. – Janaury 2, 1964

25 Y EARS A GO Six Cincinnati BBYO members were elected to leadership positions on the regional board for the Kentucky, Indiana, and Ohio chapters. Their election took place at the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization Convention December 26-30 in Indianapolis.

Those elected to the regional board for 1989: Julie Jacobson, president; Zach Ratzman, vice president; Jason Tockman, religious chairman and Judaism Institute; Martin Fish, membership chairman; Karen Lerhaupt, regional convention; and Erin Fish, Roundtable and Leadership Training Institute.

A total of 19 Cincinnati Teens attended the BBYO convention. In addition to elections, special business meetings and social activities took place as well.

The Cincinnati BBYO chapters now have about 60 members and are continuing their strong growth.

BBYO meetings are held every Monday at the Jewish Community Center. – January 12, 1989

10 Y EARS A GO After a lengthy illness, Katherine “Kitty” Rosenthal Frank, 95, passed away at her residence in East Hyde Park, on Wednesday, December 31, 2003. Mrs. Frank was the wife of the late John J. Frank, president of the Frank Tea and Space Company.

She was a life-long volunteer, who coached deaf children, spent time with the Red Cross, and was very active in the Women’s City Club.

She was a talented sculptress, who, until she became ill five years ago, produces sculptural works under the supervision of local sculptor Walter Driesbach. She was very active in many of the local organizations dealing with the arts. Prior to her illness, she regularly attended Cincinnati Symphony concerts, productions of the Playhouse in the Park, and all types of art exhibits.

Mrs. Frank is survived by her children: John and Suan Frank; and Carol and Julian Magnus. She also leaves her four grandchildren: Richard Magnus; Nancy Magnus Kopnick; Charley Frank; and Andrew Frank of Toronto, as well as six great-grandchildren.

A memorial service was held at the Valley Temple in Wyoming on January 4th, 2004. – January 8, 2004

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY / CLASSIFIEDS • 19

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS ORGANIZATIONS Access (513) 373-0300 • jypaccess.org Big Brothers/Big Sisters Assoc.

(513) 761-3200 • bigbrobigsis.org Camp Ashreinu (513) 702-1513 Camp at the J (513) 722-7258 • mayersonjcc.org Camp Chabad (513) 731-5111 • campchabad.org Camp Livingston (513) 793-5554 •camplivingston.com Cedar Village (513) 754-3100 • cedarvillage.org Chevra Kadisha (513) 396-6426 Cincinnati Community Kollel (513) 631-1118 • kollel.shul.net Cincinnati Community Mikveh (513) 351-0609 •cincinnatimikveh.org Eruv Hotline (513) 351-3788 Fusion Family (513) 703-3343 • fusionnati.org Halom House (513) 791-2912 • halomhouse.com Hillel Jewish Student Center (Miami) (513) 523-5190 • muhillel.org Hillel Jewish Student Center (UC) (513) 221-6728 • hillelcincinnati.org Jewish Cemeteries of Greater Cincinnati 513-961-0178 • jcemcin.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) 214-1200 Jewish Information Network (513) 985-1514 JVS Career Services (513) 936-WORK (9675) • www.jvscinti.org Plum Street Temple Historic Preservation Fund (513) 793-2556 Shalom Family (513) 703-3343 • myshalomfamily.org

TERRORISM from page 10 Netanyahu, tweeted that the recent terror attacks “are a direct result of the incitement and hatred propagated in Palestinian schools and media.” Regev added, “We are disappointed that so far [Palestinian Authority] President [Mahmoud] Abbas has not condemned these acts of terrorism as one would expect from a partner in peace talks.”

Sher, who currently serves as a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, told JNS, “[The recent terrorism is] intolerable, and I believe it has to be quite explicitly explained by the Americans and the international community to the heads of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization] and the PA that it is their responsibility and duty to subside those acts, and to prohibit these kind of acts emanating from their territory against Israeli civilian and military targets.”

“Israel has to do whatever it takes in order to counter those terrorist attacks, and at the same time, the government has a duty to pursue, explore whichever avenue possible

The Center for Holocaust & Humanity Education (513) 487-3055 • holocaustandhumanity.org Vaad Hoier (513) 731-4671 Workum Fund (513) 899-1836 • workum.org YPs at the JCC (513) 761-7500 • mayersonjcc.org CONGREGATIONS CONGREGATIONS Adath Israel Congregation (513) 793-1800 • adath-israel.org Beit Chaverim (513) 984-3393 • btzbc.com Beth Israel Congregation (513) 868-2049 • bethisraelcongregation.net B’nai Tikvah Chavurah (513) 284-5845 • rabbibruce.com Congregation Beth Adam (513) 985-0400 • bethadam.org Congregation B’nai Tzedek (513) 984-3393 • btzbc.com Congregation Ohav Shalom (513) 489-3399 • ohavshalom.org Congregation Ohr Chadash (513) 252-7267 • ohrchadashcincinnati.com Congregation Sha’arei Torah (513) 620-8080 • shaareitorahcincy.org Congregation Zichron Eliezer 513-631-4900 • czecincinnati.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 Shevet Achim, (513) 602-7801 • shevetachimohio.com Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com

Chabad Blue Ash (513) 793-5200 • chabadba.com Cincinnati Hebrew Day School (513) 351-7777 • chds.shul.net HUC-JIR (513) 221-1875 • huc.edu JCC Early Childhood School (513) 793-2122 • mayersonjcc.org Kehilla - School for Creative Jewish Education (513) 489-3399 • kehilla-cincy.com Mercaz High School (513) 792-5082 x104 • mercazhs.org Kulanu (Reform Jewish High School) (513) 262-8849 • kulanucincy.org Regional Institute Torah & Secular Studies (513) 631-0083 Rockwern Academy (513) 984-3770 • rockwernacademy.org Sarah’s Place (513) 531-3151 • sarahsplacecincy.com Yeshivas Lubavitch High School of Cincinnati (513) 631-2452 • ylcincinnati.com ORGANIZATIONS 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 BBYO (513) 722-7244 • mayersonjcc.org Hadassah (513) 821-6157 • cincinnati.hadassah.org Jewish Discovery Center (513) 234.0777 • jdiscovery.com 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

EDUCA EDUCATION Chai Tots Early Childhood Center (513) 234.0600 • chaitots.com

in order to attain a two-state reality and a two-state solution, even if it is only a framework agreement or a partial agreement,” Sher added.

The rise in terrorism has stirred a heated debate among Israeli defense officials and parliamentarians about the need to continue pursuing U.S.brokered Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations. Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, head of the Jewish Home Party, said, “Israel is continuing with the diplomatic process as though there’s no terror, while the Palestinians are continuing with the terror as though there’s no diplomatic process.”

Bennett mirrored the messages of Netanyahu spokesperson Regev and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, attributing the attacks to Palestinian incitement.

“When you educate your children to terrorism from kindergarten, when your television broadcasts paint Jews as monsters, when even Tel Aviv is missing from your map – you’re a terrorist,” Bennett said in a statement.

Ya’alon stated, “As long as the Palestinian Authority continues to instigate against the State of Israel

and its citizens and does not encourage a culture of peace, we will be forced to deal with terror attacks.

This is an intolerable state of affairs as we see it.

Responding particularly to the rocket attacks, Ya’alon added, “We will retaliate forcefully and painfully to this shock to our sovereignty and harm to our civilians and soldiers. If there is no peace in Israel, there will no peace in Gaza.”

Member of Knesset Eitan Cabel (Labor) warned that the violence – including the bus bombing – should not get in the way of current efforts to jumpstart negotiations with the Palestinians. “We’ve been hearing about efforts to renew the diplomatic process,” Cabel stated. “Despite the bombing attempt, we must continue the process with all our energies.”

Sher believes that while Israel is “always looking for as little collateral damage to the political process as possible,” the Jewish state “cannot by any means agree to have it in a way taken hostage or being handicapped in terms of its response and retaliation because there is a political process.”

DO YOU WANT TO PLACE A CLASSIFIED? Send an e-mail including what you would like in your classified & your contact information to

business@ americanisraelite.com or call 513-621-3145 NEGOTIATIONS from page 10 into indisputable fact and potentially become another obstacle to negotiations. According to government sources, Kerry had arrived with a U.S. proposal during his last visit.

Netanyahu asked him not to present it, but to propose its main points instead. The American proposal details security arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians as well as U.S. proposals for security in the Jordan Valley. Kerry is expected to visit Israel again after the new year.

Government officials say the Palestinians refuse to sign a framework agreement that would at the end of negotiations require them to recognize Israel as the Jewish state and require Israel to recognize the Palestinians’ need to form a nation.

As long as the Palestinians refuse, Netanyahu will refuse to draw out a future Palestinian state on a map.

The Israeli demand is that the framework agreement must include an extension to the negotiations to mark borders and recognize the Jewish state.

Israel’s Diplomatic-Security Cabinet has reached a consensus on several issues in the negotiations, including security arrangements and the Palestinian right of return, but Israel’s insistence on receiving recognition as a Jewish state remains controversial. While most of the cabinet members support the demand, Yesh Atid Party Chairman Yair Lapid believes it can be dismissed.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian Authority official confirmed reports that Israel and the Palestinians would sign a framework agreement based on a U.S. proposal by the end of the month.

Palestinian Affairs adviser to the Arab League Muhammad Sabih told the Palestinian news agency Maan that Kerry and his team were expected to present the outline of the agreement, to be signed by the end of December.

Sabih, who in the past was head of the Palestinian delegation to the U.N., told Maan that it had yet to be decided whether a signing ceremony between the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams would be held.

But Kerry is believed to be cutting his holiday short in order to present the agreement.

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(513) 531-9600 According to Sabih, PA President Mahmoud Abbas presented the details of the proposal to the Arab League. “Abbas told Kerry he would give his response to the proposal only after presenting it to the Arab League and getting their support,” Sabih said.

Without mentioning specifics, Sabih said the proposal includes Israeli demands for security arrangements on the border of the prospective future Palestinian state: early warning stations and JordanianIsraeli-Palestinian security cooperation at the border crossing between the Palestinian Authority and Jordan.

“Abbas told Kerry that the Palestinians will not tolerate an Israeli presence, but have not ruled out an international force,” Sabih said.

Sabih called the American plan an “over-arching draft for all the core issues leading to a permanent accord… Abbas has stressed that he will refuse any temporary solution regarding core national issues, such as the status of east Jerusalem and recognizing Israel as the nation of the Jewish people.”

Meanwhile, government officials in Israel stated on Monday that the next wave of Palestinian prisoner release would proceed as planned.

Two rounds have taken place so far and the third round is expected to take place next week. On Monday, five members of the Schijveschuurder family, who lost their parents and three siblings in the Jerusalem Sbarro bombings in 2001, appealed to the High Court for the government to reconsider the prisoner release.

Meanwhile, the Knesset Interior Committee on Monday debated security prisoners pursuing academic studies during their incarceration.

“People who murdered children should rot in jail, they do not need to be studying,” the committee’s chairwoman, MK Miri Regev (Likud), said. A representative from the Zionist advocacy group Im Tirtzu demanded that the sources of funding for the academic programs be revealed, saying, “Aside from the fact there is nothing moral about academic studies for terrorists on the Israeli citizen’s dime, it should be stressed that providing academic studies only produces certified terrorists.”

20 • LEGALLY SPEAKING

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Two protestor cases Legally Speaking

by Marianna Bettman In this month’s column I want to discuss two cases that involve challenges made by protestors to their free speech rights. One case has already been decided by the Supreme Court of Ohio; the other was just recently argued.

The first case, Mahoning Edn. Ass’n. of Dev. Disabilities v.

State Emp. Relations Bd., involves picketing by public employees.

At the time this matter occurred, the Union (officially the Mahoning Education Association of Developmental Disabilities) was negotiating a new contract with the Mahoning County Board of Developmental Disabilities (MCBBD). Union members picketed an MCBBD evening meeting to express their dissatisfaction with the progress of contract negotiations.

MCBDD is a public employer.

The Union represented agency employees.

Public employees have certain kinds of limitations on their activities that other employees do not.

Under Ohio’s Public Employee Collective Bargaining Act, public employees are prohibited from picketing, striking or other concerted refusal to work without giving ten days’ written notice to the public employer and to the State Employment Relations Board (SERB). In this case, the Union did not give the ten days’ notice required under the statute, so MCBBD filed an unfair labor practice with SERB, which is the administrative agency that must first hear such matters. SERB concluded that the Union had violated the statute and had committed an unfair labor practice.

After a ruling by the agency, the losing party can take the case to court. Here, the Union appealed SERB’s decision to the trial court, challenging the constitutionality of the statute’s ten-day notice provision. The trial court upheld the constitutionality of the provision, and affirmed SERB’s decision. The appeals court reversed, finding the ten-day notice provision of the statute unconstitutional. SERB and

MCBDD both appealed to the Supreme Court of Ohio.

At the Supreme Court, all seven justices agreed that the Union had not committed an unfair labor practice, although the justices split 5-2 on their reasoning. Five of the justices, in an opinion written by Justice Sharon Kennedy, decided not to reach the constitutional question. Instead, the majority found that the legislature only intended for the tenday notice requirement in the statute to apply to the kind of picketing related to a work stoppage, but not to the kind of picketing which was informational only, which this was. As a general principle of appellate review, if a Court can decide a case on a non-constitutional basis, it will, which is what the majority did in this case.

But two of the justices believed the Court should have dealt with the constitutional question in this case. Justice Judy Lanzinger wrote a separate concurring opinion to address this.

She was joined in her concurrence by Justice Bill O’Neill.

SERB had argued, in defense of the constitutionality of the statute, that it was a proper time, place, and manner restriction on speech. The right to free speech is not absolute. Governments are allowed to place reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of expression. But Justice Lanzinger did not accept this argument, finding no explanation for why ten days’ notice was necessary.

Another constitutional principle Justice Lanzinger found implicated in this case is that of prior restraint on speech. A prior restraint is a kind of regulation that bans the expression of ideas before they are published. Such restrictions place a very heavy burden on states to justify them.

SERB had argued that the tenday advance notice provision of the statute gave the parties time to mediate or resolve their disputes, gave a public employer time to provide security for the picketing and to respond to the media, gave unions a cooling off period to work with employers to avoid a confrontation, and gave SERB time to intervene.

After considering SERB’s arguments, Justice Lanzinger concluded that the advancenotice requirement did not meet the government’s heavy burden of justifying the prior restraint on speech. It interfered with a fundamental function of free speech, which is to invite dispute, and “disperses the drama of the moment,” she wrote.

This decision came out in October of this year. In

November, the Court heard a constitutional challenge to a Cleveland city ordinance that prohibits individuals from remaining in the Public Square between 10:00 p.m. and 5:00 a.m. unless a permit is obtained. The constitutional challenge was brought by two protestors from the Occupy Movement, who were arrested on the Public Square after the 10p.m.curfew. They argued that the ordinance was not a proper time, place, and manner restriction.

In overly simplified fashion, to pass constitutional muster, time, place, and manner restrictions must be content neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest, and leave open alternative channels of communication.

The trial judge in the case found that the Cleveland City ordinance was a content-neutral time, place and manner restriction that did not violate the First Amendment. But the appeals court in Cleveland disagreed, finding the ordinance unconstitutional, finding that although it was content-neutral, it did not advance a substantial government interest and was not narrowly-tailored.

When the case got to the Supreme Court of Ohio, the city argued the ordinance was a proper time, place and manner regulation. It was the city’s position that there is no constitutional right to have twenty-four hour access to a city park or any other city property, and that the protestors either could have applied for a permit and stayed after the curfew, or moved their protest to the sidewalk.

The Protestors argued that Cleveland’s Public Square is a quintessential place for free speech. Historically, there have been protests and rallies at all times of day and night on the square until this ordinance was adopted. They argued that the ordinance is unconstitutional because it is not narrowly tailored, and does not further the substantial governmental interests that the city claims that it does. Nor is it content neutral, because the director can deny a permit if he thinks an activity will detract from the public health, safety and general welfare.

We won’t know the outcome of this case for several months, but the argument was interesting to watch. The lawyer who argued for the protestors has an office right on the Public Square.

Consequences of a criminal conviction A LEGAL LOOK

by Michael Ganson In a recently published article by the Ohio State Bar Association in “Ohio Lawyer” magazine, the collateral consequences of a criminal conviction were discussed. With the holiday season just behind us, visiting this subject may be worth the read. Below is a small sample of the multiplying collateral consequences of a criminal conviction – even of what some people may consider a “petty” criminal conviction or “just a ticket.”

Some of the consequences, such as loss of the right to bear arms or to vote, are often recognized.

However, many others are often overlooked or unknown until it is too late. Some are the result of state law; others by federal law or regulation. Some consequences flow only for certain types of offenses, others from those one would think of as petty. By no means is the list below comprehensive. The purpose of this article is to know what to discuss regarding any proposed plea agreement which calls for one to admit guilt.

In addition to potentially affecting your privilege to vote and bear arms, a conviction might affect your ability to: hold public office, serve on a jury, witness certain documents, posess state licenses, receive federal benefits, immigrate into the USA, serve in the military, receive military benefits, participate in federal contracts, be employed by the federal government, qualify for certain licenses, pass security checks, travel internationally, and much more. In fact, it is noted that Ohio law alone imposes at least 404 different consequences following a felony conviction, 72 percent of which relate to employability.

With the consequences of a conviction discussed above in mind, one would be well served if they do not help the system convict them.

Which brings me to the consequences of speaking when “in custody.” Since we just went through the holiday season, the chances of having contact with a law enforcement officer surely increased.

Almost all of those who had a close encounter with an officer probably made an incriminating statement.

The rule of thumb though is that

when you are in doubt about whether or not you should speak, the only thing out of your mouth schould be asking for a lawyer and saying nothing else. You will be in well advised company. Even a fish wouldn’t get caught if he kept his mouth shut. To quote US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, “…any lawyer worth his salt will tell the suspect in no uncertain terms to make no statement to police under any circumstances.”

If questioned or approached by an officer, you have the right to remain silent. You must identify yourself and you may not lie ABOUT ANYTHING. However, you give up your right to remain silent when you voluntarily keep talking! Always ask the officer if you are free to leave. If you are stopped or asked to identify yourself, ask politely and respectfully, “Officer, am I free to leave?”

If the officer tells you to leave or says you can leave – LEAVE (and keep on going). Do not ask to go looking for your friends or say anything back to the officer. Leave. Do not get in a car as the driver if you have been drinking. The officer’s friends are waiting for you down the street.

If you are not permitted to leave and cannot stop the police contact, you are in custody. Immediately ask for a lawyer and remain quiet. Your desire to remain silent or to speak with an attorney must be clearly and expressly stated. “Should I talk to a lawyer? Do I need a lawyer? Maybe my lawyer should be here,” does not cut it. Say the magic words “Officer, I would like to be helpful, but with all due respect, I do not wish to speak to you at this time. I want an attorney. If you decide that I am free to leave, please let me know.”

Remember: “anything you say can and will be used against you.” Bet on it and then some. The officers will choose for you which words may be used against you, and disregard the rest.

The police officers will do what they can to get you to respond to their remarks even after you have asked for an attorney and made it clear that you do not wish to speak to them. You will be under pressure.

They do this all day long, every day.

So, remain peaceful and polite, but most of all, be quiet.

The information contained in this article is intended to provide only general legal information and is not intended to be relied upon for specific legal issues or any particular legal matters. For specific legal issues or any particular legal matters, the reader is advised to consult with and secure the legal advice of an attorney of their choice.

JEWISH LIFE • 21

THURSDAY, JANUARY 2, 2014

This Year in Jerusalem This Year in Jerusalem

by Phyllis Singer This year in Jerusalem there was a record-breaking snowstorm in December. Meteorologists reported that the average snowfall in Jerusalem was 40 centimeters (that’s almost 16”), and that areas in Gush Etzion outside Jerusalem received a meter of the white stuff (39”). It was beautiful, but it wreaked havoc everywhere.

Snow covered Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), part of the Galilee and the Golan. The rest of the country also experienced the extreme weather, but in wind and rainfall.

Four people died as a result of the storm, tens of thousands throughout Israel were without electric power and heat, and Jerusalem was cut off from the rest of the country as the roads to and from the city were closed due to the terrible road conditions. An emergency shelter was opened in Binyanei Ha’u ma (the convention center) to house people who were stranded in the city and could not leave and also to take care of the elderly and indigent who were without heat and electricity.

The storm began on Wednesday, Dec. 12, with torrential downpours.

Early Thursday morning, the rain changed to snow. It stopped snowing for a little while early afternoon, but BRONFMAN from page 6 limited to lessons for my bar mitzvah and attendance at a junior congregation that I found dull and pointless, especially since I knew my father did not attend synagogue on Saturdays – he went to the office instead,” Bronfman wrote in his 2008 book, “Hope, Not Fear.”

Not surprisingly, as an adult he avoided Jewish practice, privately raising his children in a home mostly devoid of Jewish life even as he publicly dove into Jewish activism. Over time, that involvement led to a religious awakening of sorts.

“Starting in my sixties, I began to make changes in my life,” Bronfman wrote. “I lit Shabbat candles with my wife every Friday night. I stopped

resumed again late afternoon and continued through the night into Friday. It snowed most of Friday and Friday night and began to abate Saturday. Sunday, the weather forecasters said the worst was over. But it would take the city a long time to recover.

Some people were still without electricity or heat, and trees were decimated everywhere. Sidewalks and streets were filled with broken branches, making it nearly impossible for anyone who dared to drive to do so. And brave walkers had to walk in the middle of the streets. The municipality’s snow plows cleared the main streets, but not the side streets.

“The big question is, how do you repair the physical damage [the storm] caused the city?” Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat asked Haaretz in an interview. “The parks, the roads, the trees–how do you bring the city back to its pre-snow state?”

So how did I cope during the storm? On Friday afternoon, just as I was about to light candles for Shabbat (at 4:00pm – Shabbat starts early here in the winter), the electricity in my apartment went off. I lit the candles and then went upstairs to have Shabbat dinner with friends–two young observant women–who live above me.

The situation in our building was crazy. There are 10 apartments, but right now, only six are occupied (we have some absentee owners). Of the six apartments, I was the only one who lost full electricity. My friends and two other apartments lost power in half of their apartments, and two apartments had full power. Nobody can explain how that happens. My theory is that when the building was built in the early 1950s, or when renovations were done, each apartment was wired separately as it was completed, so therefore, each apartment eating pork and shellfish to assert my Jewish identity. I became a proud Jew, in my home and my heart.”

Edgar felt it was time for Jewish organizations and Jewish leaders to let go of fear as a selling point. He also believed ordinary folks needed to take an active role in reclaiming their heritage, to make personal commitments to Jewish religious observance and text study.

In the end, Edgar’s view of the Jewish tradition could serve as a metaphor for his own legacy – he was not without flaws, but he was grand, provocative, tirelessly generous and devoted. Most important, he was ours.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Wikicommons

has an outside line.

My friends were planning on four people for dinner–the two of them, me and another guest. In the end, they had eight people because four others who were without power called to see if they could come here.

Two people, young women who are studying in Jerusalem for the year (one is my neighbor’s niece), stayed for several days since their dorms were without power. The other young couple ventured homeward.

I lent my friends a room heater, since their main heat was off, but some lights and some outlets were working. I spent most of the evening upstairs but went back to my apartment to sleep–in a flannel nightgown and wool sweater with two big quilts.

Saturday, my friends went to Beit Knesset and then to friends for Shabbat lunch. I didn’t dare venture out; all I need is to fall and break a hip (the fear of all “older women”).

They gave me the key to their apartment, so I took some tuna fish and rolls upstairs for lunch and spent the day and evening in their apartment.

The electricity to their refrigerator was off, so they took food from the

refrigerator and freezer and buried it in the snow on their mirpesset (balcony). I also brought some food upstairs to do the same. They have the highest mirpesset on their side of the building, so it was filled with snow. Mine, on the other hand, is covered by the mirpesset above me, so there was no snow on mine.

Every once in a while I would go downstairs to check the temperature in my apartment. Slowly it continued to drop, so I stayed upstairs but came home to sleep. Sunday was the same. They couldn’t go to work, but they ventured out to the store.

Meanwhile, I stayed inside their apartment. listening to the news on their computer, and we heard about all that was happening in Jerusalem.

The electric company said it hoped to have everyone’s electricity restored in Jerusalem by Sunday night. A pipe dream! Even though my apartment was getting colder, I still went home to sleep. After all, people go on camping trips in the cold weather and sleep in tents or sleeping bags with quilts. I was OK, but when I got up and got dressed, it was chilly!

Meanwhile, my family kept call-

POLLACK from page 7

from near the basket, calling out turnovers and substitutions. Not even the elder Pollack can monitor everything.

But Pollack’s basketball work extends beyond courtside.

Silver’s “encyclopedia” metaphor is literal, too, since the “Harvey Pollack NBA Statistical Yearbook,” published annually since 1966, remains a staple of offices throughout the league.

As a player, Jones says he’d open the book and wonder how Pollack conjured such arcana as who had the most 360-degree dunks or the most offensive rebounds in the first quarter of a game – the latter mark belongs to Jones.

Besides basketball, Pollack’s No. 1 is Reba Greenberg Meyers, a 91-year-old widow known as Ritzi. (One of his Tshirts reads “Harvey is Ditzy

sporting a full gray mane and slightly stooped over, ambles down the corridor from his cramped office – one littered with papers and paraphernalia – settles into his scorer’s table seat, straps on earphones and a microphone, and goes to work.

He long ago developed an intricate code to convey information to a colleague across the court for input into a desktop computer.

The colleague recording the data for statistical posterity? His 67-year-old son, Ron, who has worked with dad since 1962. On the night of Chamberlain’s wondrous game in Hershey, Pa., it was Ron who ran copy to the Western Union desk for transmittal to the wire services.

Ron’s son Brian, 40, works nearly every game with them

ing me on my cell phone to see how I was doing. Everyone was nudging Hanan to come to Jerusalem to get me and take me to Kibbutz Merav, which had no snow. But that was an impossibility! First of all, the Jordan Valley road was flooded, so no traffic was allowed there. But even if he went around the longer way–past Afula and then Tel Aviv–he couldn’t get into Jerusalem because the roads were closed. Even after all the people in stranded cars on the highways entering Jerusalem had been rescued, the city kept the entrances closed because the authorities did not want sightseers coming to the capital.

Monday, I again spent the day upstairs. Much of the time I read, but part of the time, I did some work that I was able to do by hand. I’m serving as journal chairperson for Emunah’s annual dinner, so I was able to proofread and correct ads by hand.

Monday evening at 5:30, the power came back on–about 73 hours after it had gone off. I was very fortunate that I had a place to go, inside my building, so I didn’t have to venture out. If I didn’t have friends in the building, I would have had to call some others to see if they could house me. But that would have meant venturing out in the snow, hopefully not falling. And, if I couldn’t find friends to stay with, perhaps I would have gone to a hotel (that might have charged astronomical rates) or just stayed home huddled under quilts, wearing lots of clothes.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

The weather bureau here always used to cite 1992 for record statistics of a snowy winter. We were here then because that’s when Hanan and Judy got married. Now they will cite statistics from the winter of 2013.

And I was here then too!

When He Sees Ritzi.”). They began dating in 2004, set up by a mutual friend.

For one with a hard drive’s memory, Pollack hadn’t realized until their first date – at a restaurant in Voorhees, in southern New Jersey, he notes – that she belonged to his Simon Gratz High School Class of 1939.

Something else Pollack doesn’t know: What became of the iconic “100” sign and the ball Chamberlain used to score his 99th and 100th points that night in a victory over the New York Knicks.

Says Pollack: “Biggest mistake I made.”

There haven’t been many.

22 • OBITUARIES

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

D EATH N OTICES

QUIZ from page 5

SCHWARTZ, Marilyn, age 85, died December 26, 2013; 23 Tevet, 5774.

19. Which Jewish celebrity was arrested in Paris before Yom Kippur with a live rooster tied to his penis? a) Actor Gene Wilder, who was in town filming a remake of Woody Allen’s 1972 film “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex *But Were Afraid to Ask.” b) Author Jonathan Safran Foer, during a protest of vegetarians against the ritual of kapparot. c) Dancer Steven Cohen, in an effort to convey a sense of being pulled between his two homelands. d) Singer Matisyahu, who while waiting to perform kapparot showed that his beard wasn’t all he had shaved.

SANDERS, Mark H., age 66, died December 30, 2013; 27 Tevet, 5774.

DUTCH from page 7 eyes,” van de Kamp said. “The American experience is different.”

The slavery issue is not van de Kamp’s first foray into controversial territory. In Jewish circles, he has a reputation as a contrarian with a penchant for voicing anti-establishment views.

That image was reinforced last year when he spoke out against a compromise the Dutch Jewish community had reached with the government over kosher slaughter. Designed to avert a total ban, the compromise placed some restrictions on kosher slaughter that Holland’s chief rabbis said did not violate Jewish law. Van de Kamp denounced the deal as an unacceptable infringement on religious freedom.

More recently, he angered Dutch activists by suggesting that vilifying Dutch Muslims helped generate antiSemitism. He also advocated dialogue with professed Muslim anti-Semites at a time when Jewish groups were calling for their prosecution.

But his reputation as a maverick rabbi in a consensus–oriented community has also endeared van de Kamp to some supporters.

“He is in a league of his own,” says Bart Wallet, an Amsterdam University historian and expert on Jewish history.

“From the sideline, he is free to criticize and does not have to conform to anything.”

RUSSIAN from page 9 Russian-speaking ministers and one deputy minister in the governing coalition, compared to just two Ethiopians in the entire Knesset.

Polev said Yisrael Beiteinu has passed the stage of appealing only to narrow Russian interests and is now aiming to present itself as a mainstream party – a shift that also speaks to the success of Russian integration. In their first years in Israel, Russian politics focused largely on securing government support for communal priorities. Now Russians are beginning to deal with the consequences of their successful integration.

“There are some kids who grow up here and feel bad about their Russianness, they want to forget their language,” said Alexey Tashaev, an organizer of the Russian Israeli youth organization Fishka. “That’s a problem. On the other hand, some don’t identify with Israel.”

Even as the community grows more successful, chal-

DOME from page 9 rockets as well as Grad and Fajr missiles, which is our current problem.” He says the Iron Dome “exceeded all expectations” during Israel’s 12-day Operation Pillar of Defense mission against Gazan terror in November 2012.

During that time, when more than 1,500 rockets were fired at Israel, Iron Dome batteries were strategically deployed and programmed only to shoot down rockets that were headed directly towards Israeli civilian population centers.

The Iron Dome deemed two-thirds of the rockets fired at Israel during Pillar of Defense to be non-threatening, and the system intercepted 90 percent of the threatening rockets.

Thanks to the Iron Dome, Israel was “still able to function in the midst of a war” during Pillar lenges remain for elderly Russians and those living in Israel’s economically disadvantaged periphery.

Nadejda Tatarenko, 70, who moved from the Ukraine at 47, said that older immigrants often do not receive all of their government benefits and encounter disrespectful conduct at government offices.

But as the Russian community continues to integrate, she added, such challenges likely will become a thing of the past.

“For a long time there will still be a difference between people without roots here and people who do have them and who know their rights,” said Tatarenko, the founder of the nonprofit Immigrants for a Successful Absorption. “Now we have the third generation, and they’re Israeli. I don’t see many differences between them and sabras.”

Holocaust Christmas carol merits prosecution 14. B – Obama: Israel prevents another Holocaust 15. A – U.S. counterintelligence targets Israel with Iran and China, secret budget reveals 16. C – Martin Indyk and his history 17. D – Rabbi Michael Broyde booted from religious court after using fake identity 18. 1-c, 2-b, 3-d, 4-a 19. C – An artist, a rooster, and a penis on a leash 20. B – Greek parliament votes to stop state funding for Golden Dawn party

4. A – The tweets heard ’round the

world 5. D – Report: Ostreicher with actor Sean Penn at undisclosed location in U.S. 6. C – That headline appeared in the N.Y. Daily News, not the Post.

7. B - How do you spell knaidel?

8. D – It was the British chief rabbi who addressed Limmud.

9. B – Brian Schatz’s first pro-Israel shot: Get over the sequestration, Congress 10. A – Bibi’s gift to Pope Francis: A book on when the church persecuted the Jews 11. B – Israel’s campaign ads: the positive, the negative and the controversial 12. D – Bibi’s wine, doggie care, smoking soldiers, diamond savior 13. C – Romanian foreign minister:

of Defense, says Yaari.

“The trains were running, people were going to work, the port at Ashdod was open, everything became sustainable,” he says, adding that the Iron Dome’s presence meant that the Israeli government’s decisions during the war were made “in a controlled manner.

“They didn’t have to make hasty decisions, as the entire situation was manageable,” Yaari says.

Rafael’s CEO feels deep gratitude to the U.S. government for providing Israel with the funding necessary to deploy an additional four Iron Dome batteries once the first two were in place.

“We should be thankful to the United States and the president,” Yaari says. “Whenever I travel to the U.S. and meet with Congress I say, ‘Thank you.’ It was really

life-saving, and we all have to be grateful for that. It was a special gesture, and [for those who doubt the U.S. commitment to Israel], it is wrong to downplay the effect [U.S. support] has on our defense.”

Since the Iron Dome is specifically geared towards countering one type of threat, Yaari says the joint U.S.-Israel David’s Sling system is necessary “to intercept the cruise missiles, and short to medium range ballistic missiles, which are becoming more and more relevant.” He says that David’s Sling also has the capability to defend against “UAV’s (unmanned ariel vehicles, also known as drones), jetfighters, and helicopters – any flying object within the atmosphere.”

Shifting the focus of the conversation to the Iranian threat, Yaari says that the current chal-

lenges posed by the Islamic Republic – not only for Israel, but also for other countries who might be targeted – are “Iran’s unlimited funding, skill sets, manpower, and huge amounts of resources which for quite some time have been directed towards defense.”

Yaari describes a fierce and competitive race for technology, where in the coming years he says Israel “must distance itself” from Iran by making greater military advances. He believes Israel is up for that challenge.

“I think it’s feasible [for Israel to outpace Iran], I really do,” Yaari says. “The real problem is what eventually will be translated into practice on the battlefield. In other words, how much of [Iran’s] potential capabilities will we have to confront. But I believe we are capable

FATE from page 8

recourse, meaning that Bedouin had no way to appeal any evacuation decisions in court-unlike most such pieces of legislation.

But given the current legal status of Bedouin, and the fact their population is growing at more than twice the national average-due to a combination of high birth rates and the cultural practice of polygamy-the plan offers the framework for ending at least certain parts of a widening legal and social problem.

“There is something with this bill that grants people rights more than they would have had if they were put under the constraints of legal rulings,” Levine-Schnur said.

“If you look in that manner, there are lots of benefits to this plan. They don't have titles to the land in which they live, so in one respect Bedouin should just say thank you. But in reality it is not like that. To present the case as if Bedouin have no rights, is not really legitimate.”

“What I see from comparative research, when you come to a complete community, and you force this community to leave the place where it lives, just as happened during the disengagement plan [when 21 Jewish communities were forcefully

evacuated] from the Gaza strip and northern Samaria in 2005, you can't say, 'We could have just evacuated you because you have no rights, but then because we want to be fast and clean, we will give you some rights.

You can't do that,” she added.

According to Briggs, while the current plan may not be perfect, the general outline plan provides ample benefits and reasonable solutions to difficult problems. Furthermore, many third-party opponents of the plan, including Israeli-Arab Knesset members and Palestinians, seem to be using the Bedouin and their legal conundrum as an opportunity to present Israel as an illegal occupier.

“This is an extremely generous plan,” Briggs said. “Israel is bending over backwards to try and help the Bedouin, and instead enemies of the state are trying to use this as a baton to beat Israel over the head. Arab MKs and others are using this as an opportunity to delegitimize Israel internationally.”

“There are meaningful and important problems with the bill that are not related in any way to an occupation narrative,” said LevineSchnur.

20. What is Golden Dawn? a) Jewish actress Goldie Hawn’s new one-woman Broadway show. b) A Greek neo-Nazi party. c) Ashkelon’s new basketball franchise. d) Tzipi Livni’s new political party.

Ready for the answers?

ANSWERS 1. B 2. C - Pew survey of U.S. Jews: soaring intermarriage, assimilation rates 3. B – Supreme Court hears rabbi’s frequent flier case

to the fact that Begin was unable to garner Bedouin support, and as such lost the support of Israeli lawmakers.

“Begin got up, and said that after discussions with the Prime Minister, the plan has suspended,” Ari Briggs, director of Regavim, told JNS. “Well the plan has not been suspended. The only part of this that has been suspended is Begin, who has resigned his position. They are going to find somebody to replace him, somebody who can implement the plan.”

“The plan might look a bit different,” Briggs said. “But the government is still very interested in implementing a plan, because they realize the situation is only going to get worse, and not better.”

There is no need to “give up on seven years of efforts to find a solution” to the Bedouin issue, Briggs believes.

“You might need to make some changes to the plan, and some are needed,” he said.

Additionally, according to Levine Schnur, the Prawer Plan provided no preliminary hearing procedures, and did not provide legal

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