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Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s 2014 revenue and expenditure numbers

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At World Cup, Argentina couple kicking Jewishness into high gear

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Families of abducted Israeli teens refuse to succumb to despair

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On Wednesday June 11, 2014 at the German Heritage Museum of Cincinnati, the German Jewish Society of Cincinnati was founded and a permanent collection of German Jewish history was installed. The festive occasion, complete with pretzels and beer, was hosted by the curator, Dr. Don Tolzmann, at their edifice on West Fork Road.

A group of approximately 30 people attended, many of whom came to Cincinnati as the result of World War II and some whose ancestors arrived before the Civil War. The later were known as 1848ers. One of the most remark-

able things learned was that both the Paul Heiman’s (1941) and John Mack’s (1841) families came to Cincinnati from the same village in Bavaria one hundred years apart.

“As I dig deeper into my family’s history, the more I discover that I am related to someone in Cincinnati” said John. Mary Reis Sullivan confessed that her “father and grandfather never talked very much about their German roots”.

Being German and Jewish was not an easy thing to be in the United States in pre WWI and II eras.

Dr. Tolzmann quoted from articles in the Israelite by Rabbi Isaac M. Wise: “Good society, decency,

and instructive, as well as, entertaining conversation, were to be found always in the German Literary Society’s rooms. Tone, language, and taste were ennobled, knowledge was increased and members became real friends to one another.”

The founding of the German Jewish Society of Cincinnati has the backing not only of the German American Citizens League but the Federal Republic of Germany and, it is hoped, that Cincinnati will learn more about our great common Jewish and German heritage.

The board of the newly formed society is pleased to announce that

the following people have been nominated for membership: Netanel (Ted) Deutsch; Dan Hoffheimer; Craig Hoffheimer; Regine Ransohoff; Martin WilhelmyHonorary Counsel, Germany; AM Kinney; Dean Jonathan Cohen; Paul Heiman; Gary Heiman; Vivian Schwab and Jim Schwab; Mary Reis Sullivan and Jack Frank; Joan and Joe Reis; Joe Mendelsohn; Dr. Don Tolzmann; Manfred Schnetzer; Marge and Peter Poole; Karen and Wilhelm Kraeling; Peter Mack; Dr. Michael Meyer; Ute and Hans Papke; Keith Corman; Charles Stix; and Bill Friedlander.

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The American Israelite, the oldest English Jewish weekly in America, is turning 160 years old this year. We are proud to have served the Cincinnati community since 1854, bringing the latest in local, national, international and Israel news to your doorstep. The Israelite is your key to the city, connecting you to the people, places, and organizations in our Jewish community.

We are having a special American Israelite @160 issue on the anniversary of the first American Israelite issue ever published. This is a great way to reach the Jewish Community with your congratulations. We are selling ads for this special issue; if you do business with the Jewish Community in Cincinnati, you can use this edition to reach out to your customers. Lastly, a portion of the proceeds from advertising will be donated to Help Hope Live in honor of Ethan Kadish, the young man struck by lightning in Indiana.

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THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

Jewish Federation of Cincinnati’s 2014 revenue and expenditure numbers

By Beth Kotzin Assistant Editor Since The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati held their annual meeting, they have learned the importance of communicating their revenue sources and expenditures more simply. They are now going to great lengths to synthesize their strategic choices with the sources and uses of revenue they controls. In other words: spending follows strategy.

The principle of identifying sources and uses of revenue may not sound like anything new. But to those in the Cincinnati community, there is something new here – our Federation leadership has made real progress in improving how simply and clearly they communicate core strategies and it has presented the financial detail that supports their execution. There are four Core choices that have been made at the Federation: 1. Maximizing Giving and Participation 2. Planning for a Strong Community 3. Developing Leaders for Strong Congregations and Organizations 4. Connecting with Israel and the Global Jewish People As the Federation sought to more sharply and consistently communicate strategy, it has also sought to far more simply communicate its sources and uses of revenue. The Federation has now taken the important step of relying on internal management reports that more accurately reflect how revenue is generated and where and when that money is spent.

At the recent Annual Meeting, Federation President Suzette Fisher provided an overview of these management reports, which

indicate how revenue is generated: 1. Annual Capital Campaign 2. Revenue from Restricted Grants 3. Annual Endowment Draws 4. Jewish Foundation Grants and Investments (new in 2013, e.g., Safe Cincinnati) 5. Jewish Foundation PassThrough Spending (e.g., Israel trips and camping grants) For the past year and a half, the Federation has both hosted and been a client of Shared Business Systems (SBS). SBS is a shared accounting service that was set up by the Jewish Foundation, and it oversees the accounting/billing/financial aspects of the Federation, the Mayerson JCC, and other Federation partner agencies. They have challenged SBS to help Federation become more transparent in how its spending reflects Federation’s goals. To that end, SBS has helped Federation allocate its staff time among their “core businesses” which include: 1. Maximum Giving 2. Participation and Developing Leadership 3. Aligning Strategy with Financial Reporting 4. Efficiency.

The Aligning Strategy with Financial Reporting piece helps to categorize staff time according to their four business areas, which makes Federation more accountable about how their staff time is assigned and the impact acheived in that time.

Charity Navigator awarded the Federation a 4-Star rating, marking the 4th year in a row that the Federation has received 4 stars.

According to Charity Navigator, only 7% of charities have received 4

consecutive 4 star evaluations, “indicating that the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati outperforms most other charities in America.” Charity Navigator also said, “The exceptional designation from Charity Navigator differentiates the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati from its peers and demonstrates to the public that it is worthy of their trust.”

As for the outgoing expenditures, 64% of the community's money is invested in programs and activities that strengthen our community, connect us to Israel, and help people in need (e.g., Israel Shaliach and Chaverim; Meals On Wheels) 18% goes to initiatives that are managed by the Federation, with a focus on developing leaders, planning for the community, and connecting to Israel (e.g., Community Allocations process; Young Adult Division; LEAD) Management and administrative expenses are 8%.

The final 10% goes to fundraising expenses.

The Planning and Allocations committee of the Federation is the group that “delivers” the funds to the programs Federation supports. Each program/organization/group is evaluated by a team of volunteers, who hold site visits (in small groups) to assess the program first-hand; they also review the application for funding. The program is then presented to the committee, and a vote is held on whether or not to increase, decrease, or hold flat the funding request. Once that is done, the recommendation is passed on to the Planning and Allocations Board, who make the final determination on the amount funded.

Publisher’s note: The above figures were provided to the American Israelite by the Jewish Federation of

Israeli scouts to perform at the Mayerson JCC on July 2 Back by popular demand, the Tzofim Friendship Caravan will perform at the Mayerson JCC on Wednesday, July 2 at 6:30pm. The traveling group of Israeli Scouts criss-crosses America every summer, sharing their lives through song, dance and story as they bring their unique blend of entertainment to children and adults of all ages.

This lively, multi-cultural show is performed in Hebrew and English.

This performance is presented by the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati and the Mayerson JCC. “We are excited to have the Tzofim perform in Cincinnati as a part of our strong connection with

Israel. This is a fun opportunity to enjoy Israeli talent and culture,” said Yair Cohen, Community Shaliach (Israeli emissary).

Cohen continued, “Many caravans travel to the US every year and each Caravan is made up of a group of five girls and five boys and their two leaders. After several rounds of competitive auditions and interview, the scouts spend a year training and rehearsing for their exciting summer in North America. They are really outstanding performers.”

The Tzofim Friendship Caravan was founded in 1973 and the first Caravan came to the United States to bring a message of hope and peace

for Israel. Since that first Caravan, the program has grown to four different Caravans travelling across North America, from New York to California to Wyoming and Toronto.

As part of their visit to Cincinnati they will also visit Camp Livingston, Camp Friedlander Boy Scouts, and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

Play games, learn songs, and dance with the whole family as this exciting musical performance comes through Cincinnati on July 2.

Tickets are free with RSVP. For more information, please contact the JCC.

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The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati and Workum Fund announce 2014 interns

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

VOL. 160 • NO. 48

ing her sophomore year studying chemical engineering. While in high school, Adrianna served as the Youth Group of Rockdale Temple programming vice president during her sophomore year and as president for her final two years of high school.

Adrianna worked as a madricha during all four years of high school and now teaches Sunday school at Temple Beth Shalom in Columbus, Ohio.

Hannah Wise will work at JVS Career Services under Kim Slaton, Acting CEO at JVS Career Services.

She just finished her freshman year at Miami University. During high school, she was involved in BBYO where she served on the board as treasurer. At Miami, Hannah intends on studying marketing and business management and is a new member of Pi Beta Phi. Leah Zimmerman will work at Jewish Family Service under Ann Sutton Burke, Director of Aging & Caregiver Services, and Gail Ziegler, Center for Holocaust Survivors Manager. Leah is currently a student at Stern College for Women in New York City. A junior, she is majoring in Psychology with a focus on development. In Cincinnati, Leah has been a longtime employee of the local day camp-Camp Ashreinu. Leah has also been a youth group leader for Golf Manor Synagogue and Congregation Shaarei Torah, volunteer for the Jewish Family Service Food Pantry, and 2013 summer volunteer at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital in the Child life and Speech Pathology departments.

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 ROBERT WILHELMY Dining Editor MARIANNA BETTMAN NATE BLOOM IRIS PASTOR ZELL SCHULMAN PHYLLIS R. SINGER Contributing Columnists JENNIFER CARROLL Production Manager BARBARA ROTHSTEIN Advertising Sales

at a local bookstore. Underwritten by the Temple Brotherhood, the participants were treated to delicious fruit frappuccinos and cookies in the store’s café, a tour of the store, and then browsing and shopping with the bookstore gift cards that the Brotherhood provided for them.

Armed with paperbacks, art supplies, bookmarks, and a satisfied sweet tooth, the girls loved the afternoon. Participants include Jensen Cassity, Danielle Davis Bettina Ernst, Lexie Hunter and Abby Rosenberg.

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Michelman, Sam Prangley, Savannah Reppart, Fiona Schaffzin, Arianna Silver, and Abby Tito.

Wise Temple sixth grade students may choose to join the Sydney Taylor Club by reading books which have won the Sydney Taylor Award for Older Readers. The award is given annually to outstanding children’s books of Jewish content.

This year, six students read and reported on thirteen award-winning, Jewish-content novels and biographies. Accompanied by our temple librarian, Andrea Rapp, they concluded the school year with a party

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ble or civic agency chosen by the students. This year the children elected to donate the money they raised to Friends of Eliya. Eliya has three centers in Israel—in Jerusalem, Be’er Sheva, and Petah Tikva, serving blind and visually impaired babies and children, along with their families.

Fourth grade participants are Evan Amazon, Evelyn AstafievHolmes, Ryan Ferguson, Garrett Friedrich, Ellie Goldner, Mallory Hanna, Sydney Heldman, Jacob Kogan, Jason Lucas, Erica Liff, Gabe Litwin, Jake Messer, Evan

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014 21 SIVAN 5774 SHABBAT BEGINS FRIDAY 8:49 PM SHABBAT ENDS SATURDAY 9:50 PM

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Sophomore at The Ohio State University, majoring in Political Science and Economics. Originally from Ukraine, he came to America at a very young age. He is active in various Ohio State Hillel groups, like the Israel Intensive Fellowship and a Midrash Learning Circle.

Genevieve Pecsok will work at the Jewish Foundation under Brian Jaffee, Executive Director, and Eric Dauer, Director of Operations.

Genevieve is a graduate of Wyoming High School and has just finished her first year at Washington University in St. Louis. At Washington University, Genevieve has been involved with Chabad as well as Challah for Hunger, where she helps bake challah each week to sell and raise money for social justice causes. In high school, she participated in Wise Temple’s Madrichim teaching assistant program for 1st and 5th graders.

Stephanie Rosner will work at the Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education under Sarah Weiss, Executive Director and Alexis Storch, Director of Educational Outreach. Stephanie attends The Ohio State University where she has just completed her sophomore year with a B.A. in Anthropology and minors in Spanish and Philosophy.

She is involved in her sorority Alpha Epsilon Phi, where she works as new member programmer and public relations committee, and service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega.

Adrianna Schneider will work at Adath Israel under Dara Wood, Director of Education. Adrianna currently attends The Ohio State University where she will be enter-

Wise Temple Sisterhood and Brotherhood support children’s reading The Sisterhood and Brotherhood of Wise Temple underwrote special reading incentive programs for the Wise Temple’s fourth and sixth grade classes in the religious school.

This year, eighteen fourth grade students participated in the “Eitz Fun to Read for Israel” activity.

Throughout the year, these youngsters read a total of 27 books from the Temple library. For each book read, the student earns a leaf with the child’s name, which is put on the Eitz Tree. At year’s end, Wise Temple Sisterhood donates a certain amount per leaf to an Israeli charita-

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Since 1987, the Workum Fund has offered paid, supervised internships in local Jewish Agencies to college students raised in or studying in Cincinnati. Through this program, college students receive work experience and learn the operations of nonprofit Jewish agencies. As the fund is supported through donations, it collects and receives gifts and bequests to support its programs. The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati also partially-funds Workum, as do the local agencies hosting interns.

The interns 2014 summer kicked off with a party on Kanter’s rootop deck in Over-the-rhine.

Here are bios of each Workum intern, including their agency of employment and supervisor: Jay Burgin will work at Isaac M. Wise Temple under Kari Fagin, Director of Communication and Organization Development. He just completed his freshmen year at Denison University, where he is pursuing a degree in Communications.

Jay previously worked as a madrich at Isaac M. Wise Temple, was involved in temple youth group, and recently worked for the Mayerson Jewish Community Center in 2012.

He was a camper and Avodanik at Goldman Union Camp Institute for 8 years.

Daniel Dolzhansky will work at Cincinnati Hillel under Sharon Stern, Executive Director. He currently attends the University of Cincinnati and is in the Lindner College of Business. He is a member of AEPi at UC, and he was a camp counselor at the Mayerson JCC. Anna Fagin will work at Cedar Village under Sally Korkin, Senior Director, Community Relations and Outreach. Anna currently attends Indiana University where she just completed her first year. She is double majoring in Journalism and Communication & Culture, with a minor in Non-Profit Management.

Anna was a Madricha for Wise Temple throughout high school.

Alex Mezhvinsky will work at the JCRC under Seth Harlan, Associate Director. He is currently a

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The Workum Fund is proud to announce that beginning on June 1, 2014, the internship program will be administered by The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati. Sammy Kanter, Esther and Maurice Becker Networking and Networking Mentoring Coordinator at the Jewish Federation, will be the director of the program.

“The Workum fund has been a tremendous asset to our community over the past 97 years, and I’m excited to expand the fund in its current internship program,” Kanter said.

As part of his role to attract, engage, and retain young adults in our community, Kanter will expand the intern’s summer experience to include more activities outside of the office. Those activities include a dinner with participants of the Mayerson Foundation’s Access program, a workshop at JVS Career Services, involvement with the Cincinnati Intern Network Connection (CINC), which is an initiative sponsored by many local companies, and a series of events planned by the interns.

Kanter will be able to align the program with the Cincinnati 2020 mission of attracting and retaining young adults in our community and connecting these young adults to employment opportunities and community leaders.

“These Workum cohorts are our future leaders. I look forward to connecting them to the young adult experience here in Cincinnati, as well as help them build social and professional contacts to jump-start their lives post-college,” Kanter said.

The Workum Fund has a rich history in Cincinnati. In 1917, a small group of Cincinnati women formed a committee to create the original version of this fund, with the goal to young people with the ability to finish high school and to attend college.

As a tribute to the first chairperson, the name of the foundation was changed on April 30, 1930 to the Therese M. Workum Scholarship Foundation (now the Workum Fund).

THE AMERICAN ISRAELITE (USPS 019-320) is published weekly for $44 per year and $1.00 per single copy in Cincinnati and $49 per year and $2.00 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.

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THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

Cincinnati Onward Israel sends 25 students for Israel internships

Top Row (L to R): Jordan Della Bella, Justin Kirschner, Jake La France, Daniel Valentini, Micah Slaton, David Mintz, Daniel Roth.

Middle Row (L to R): Aaron Frankel, Michelle Glazer, Max Wildenhaus, Aaron Goldhoff, Ari Shifman, Chad Chessin, Jeremy Dock, Noah Zelkind.

Front Row (L to R): Emily Gilgoff, Shira Spiegel, Eli Goldweber, Sylvie Hayes-Wallace, Tessa Rothfeld, Nicole Fisher, Liora Bachrach, Nicole Cohen, Abby Liebowitz, Sarah Deutsch.

For the first time, Cincinnati is participating in the Onward Israel program, providing 25 young adults with eight-week internships in Israel.

Participants-rising freshmen through graduating seniors from 16 different universities-have worked closely with Onward internship coordinators to find positions in their chosen fields. They also received help creating their resumes and preparing for placement interviews.

The interns will live in a student village at the University of Tel Aviv.

They will work four days a week and spend one day traveling and participating in group educational experiences designed in collaboration with Cincinnati’s community shaliach (emissary from Israel). The 25 Cincinnatians will join the larger Onward Israel group for a shabbaton and spend another with peers in

Netanya, Cincinnati’s Partnership2Gether (P2G) city.

Finally, a full program of optional enrichment classes and activities is available, including an intensive study of Hebrew.

Onward Israel is the brainchild of a Pittsburgh philanthropist who saw that the existing post-high school internship program, sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel and Masa Israel, required a minimum fivemonth experience. Working hand-inhand with those two organizations, the shorter Onward Israel program, which could be completed in eight weeks, was initiated in 2012. This year, more than 1,000 young adults from across the globe will work as interns in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

The Jewish Federation of Cincinnati coordinated with Onward Israel to promote the program in

Rockdale Temple has annual meeting and family picnic K.K. Bene Israel Rockdale Temple culminated its 190th year of service to the community with an annual meeting on June 5th. The program involved reviewing the past year’s achievements, introducing the new slate of officers and new members of the board of directors and honoring the retiring Executive Director Margaret FriedmanVaughan for a decade of service to the congregation.

Daniel Hoffheimer was elected as the new President and Joshua Shapiro, Deborah Loewenstein and Christine Malhotra became the new Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary respectively. New members of the Board of Directors, along with sustaining members, were also approved by the congregation.

The Gary Heldman Menorah Awards for exemplary service to the congregation were presented by

Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran and outgoing President Steven Ackerman to Stuart Zanger and Aaron Herzig.

Past president Mark Schaengold presented Margaret Friedman-Vaughan her Menorah Award and a lifetime membership to Rockdale Temple.

The Rockdale 190th Family Picnic was held at Montgomery Park on June 7th The main theme of the family picnic was celebrating Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran’s ten years of service as spiritual leader of Rockdale Temple.

Testimonials were given by the cochairs of the event, Andi and Ed Herzig and Sally and Gerry Korkin.

Especially noteworthy were introductions by the Co-chairs of the Rabbinic Search Committee who selected Sigma Faye Coran as Rabbi of Rockdale Temple ten years ago.

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Cincinnati and recruit applicants. The Federation and the shaliach helped design a unique experience that will connect participants with Israel, with Jewish Cincinnati and with each other, and will also provide an important step in developing new leaders for our community.

Funding for the trip is provided through The Jewish Foundation of Cincinnati’s Israel travel grants program, which is administered by the Jewish Federation. Because of these generous grants, along with additional funding from the Jewish Agency, participation in Onward Israel is available at no cost to Cincinnati’s young adults.

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Access pays tribute to Tinseltown with the Hollywood Shabbat Get ready for your close up!

Jewish young professionals are invited to step onto the red carpet for a star-studded night straight off the Sunset Strip when Access presents the Hollywood Shabbat! The fabulous Music Hall will play host to this event that’s sure to give LA’s Glitterati a run for their money on Friday, July 11 at 6:30pm. Guests can expect star-worthy treatment at this free event, complete with live music, a sit-down Shabbat dinner, complimentary beer and wine, raffle prizes and much more!

This is the fifth in Access’ latest Got Shabbat Dinner Series: The United States of Shabbat, in which attendees can experience some of the unique sights, sounds, customs and cuisine of a different U.S. locale each

time. Past events have attracted upwards of 200 people and showcased some of the country’s most desirable destinations such as New Orleans, New York City, Texas and,

of course, Cincinnati!

“These dinners give guests a casual, no strings attached way to celebrate Shabbat, wind down their work week and get to know other

Jewish YPs,” explains Briana Landesberg, Access Event Manager.

“The strong feeling of community that arises when you combine a fresh theme with a little challah and wine is simply amazing,” she adds. “Our Got Shabbat series makes it fun and easy for people to catch up, forge new friendships and connect to Jewish Cincinnati!”

The Hollywood Shabbat will begin with a swanky cocktail hour in the foyer of Music Hall, featuring free beer and wine, hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. Guests will have the chance to mix and mingle under the breathtaking two-story ceiling and strike a pose at the paparazzi-worthy Hollywood Photo Opp Area. Later, guests will walk the red carpet into the Corbett Tower for a delicious Shabbat

dinner, featuring live music and sparkling crystal chandeliers which are sure to set the mood as attendees dine in style like A-list movie stars!

Dinner will be topped off with decadent dessert shooters and a trip to the Access Candy Bar stocked with classic movie theater favorites. Plus, all guests who RSVP by June 27 will be entered to win one of many restaurant, movie theater and spa gift cards at the event! Raffle winners must be present to accept their prize.

The Hollywood Shabbat event is sponsored by Access, a program of The Mayerson Foundation in partnership with the Mayerson JCC, and is open to Jewish young professionals, 21-35, as well as non-Jewish significant others. To RSVP or learn more, please contact Access.

As state shifts rightward, North Carolina Jews raise their voices

By Anthony Weiss RALEIGH, N.C. (JTA) – It was a hot Monday afternoon, but Judy Katzin was standing on the grassy mall outside the North Carolina State Capitol beside the Carolina Jews for Justice banner, as she has many times.

Katzin was among hundreds of activists of diverse backgrounds who had come to participate in the week’s Moral Monday protest.

This time, however, she had

National Briefs U.S. Consulate issues warning on West Bank travel JERUSALEM (JTA) – American citizens should take precautions and avoid demonstrations during travel in the West Bank, the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem warned.

The Security Message for U.S. Citizens was emailed Monday to American citizens living in Israel who are registered with the consulate.

Security arm of U.S. Jewish groups holds international security summit (JTA) – The security arm of U.S. Jewish groups held its first International Security Summit in response to recent attacks on Jewish communities.

The Secure Community Network, or SCN, convened the convocation of more than 80 senior government and law enforcement officials, homeland security and community leaders in New York last week in the wake of violent attacks

brought a pair of new voices – her grandsons, Carson and Noah Merenbloom.

“Most of North Carolina is so conservative,” said Noah, 15. “It’s important to come out here as Jews because we’re a minority.”

North Carolina’s Moral Monday protests have garnered national attention as a sign of liberal energy in a state whose politics have shifted sharply to the right.

The shift has provoked a con-

frontational turn in North Carolina politics, with the Republican-controlled state government pushing a strongly conservative agenda and liberal activists responding with acts of civil disobedience at the State Capitol during which hundreds have been arrested.

The state’s Jews, a small and traditionally politically low-key community, are speaking with a louder voice.

“You’re dealing with a Jewish community in a new era,” said Eli

Evans, the author of “The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South” and the son of a former mayor of Durham, Mutt Evans. “There has been a growth of enormous self-confidence in the Jewish community about politics and about its public stance.”

Carolina Jews for Justice was formed in March of 2013, two months after the Republicans took simultaneous control of the state legislature and the governor’s mansion for the first time in more

than a century.

The new Republican-dominated government immediately set out to implement legislation that would, over time, reduce unemployment benefits, tighten voting regulations, cut state funding for public education, block expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, tighten restrictions on abortion and, most recently, loosen regulations on fracking.

targeting the Jewish communities in Kansas and Brussels.

The Rutgers University School of Law, a co-sponsor of the meeting, announced plans to conduct an assessment of violence against religious and minority communities and study how best they can help combat the threats associated with extremist violence.

Fischer was confirmed along with Lael Brainard and Jerome Powell, who will serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors. The confirmations will allow the central bank to focus on pulling back on its stimulus policies, which were implemented following the 2008 financial crisis.

led the initiative to pass the anti-BDS resolution.

“I’ve seen how divisive antiIsrael BDS campaigns have been on campuses across the country.

[WWU] is a warm, respectful, inclusive community,” Kipersztok said.

David Blatt, ex-Maccabi Tel Aviv coach, meeting with NBA’s Cavaliers (JTA) – David Blatt, who resigned as the coach of Euroleague champion Maccabi Tel Aviv, is set to meet with the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Blatt, 55, will interview Wednesday with the Cavaliers for their vacant head coaching position, Yahoo Sports first reported Sunday, citing what it called “league sources.”

group Hamas.

Initiated by Sens. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Susan Collins (R-ME), the letter said that the new Palestinian government is a “serious setback to efforts to achieve peace.”

Hamas has refused to recognize the Middle East Quartet principles of recognizing Israel, renouncing terror, and adhering to previous agreements.

The letter reiterates the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, which prohibits America from providing funding to any Palestinian government that is controlled by, shares power with, or is influenced

by Hamas. Its submission to Obama follows an earlier request by the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Middle East for Secretary of State Kerry to explain the State Department’s decision to work with the new Hamasaligned government.

88 U.S. senators voice ‘grave concern’ over Fatah-Hamas government (JNS) – Eighty-eight out of 100 U.S. senators signed a letter to President Barack Obama expressing “grave concern” over the unity government between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party and the terrorist

Senate confirms former Bank of Israel head Fischer as Fed vice chairman (JNS) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday officially confirmed former Bank of Israel governor Stanley Fischer as vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, the central bank’s second-ranking position behind Chairwoman Janet Yellen.

First proactive anti-BDS student resolution passes at Western Washington U. (JNS) – Associated Students of Western Washington University (ASWWU) became the first North American university student government to pass a proactive resolution against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

In a 7-0 vote, ASWWU resolved that it would not consider BDS resolutions based on national origin because “tensions between students related to foreign conflicts should be managed in a healthy and collaborative manner rather than be exacerbated.”

Additionally, the resolution noted BDS campaigns can result in students being targeted based on their nationality and lead to “disrespectful bias, hostility, hate, or harassment.”

WWU student Alysa Kipersztok

2 Jewish candidates make Democratic primary for Mass. governor BOSTON (JTA) – Steve Grossman, the former chair of AIPAC, will be one of two Jewish candidates for Massachusetts governor on the Democratic primary ballot.

Grossman, the state’s treasurer and one-time head of the Democratic National Committee, and Dr. Don Berwick, a one-time pediatrician and former Medicare chief, qualified in voting by party delegates at the state’s Democratic convention held Saturday.

A third Jewish candidate, Evan Falchuk, son of former Hadassah national president Nancy Falchuk, is running as an independent. Dan Wolf, a Jewish state senator and businessman, withdrew months ago from the heated race to succeed Deval Patrick, a Democrat.

INTERNATIONAL • 7

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

At World Cup, Argentina couple kicking Jewishness into high gear

By Hillel Kuttler (JTA) – When Argentina plays its opening-round matches in the World Cup, Mariano Schlez of Buenos Aires will be screaming his support from the stands.

But taking in his home country’s matches in Brazil isn’t all that will be occupying Schlez for the first fortnight of the monthlong soccer spectacle.

Also filling his calendar are 14 “Jewish” events that he and his wife have organized in seven of the host cities. They include Shabbat evening prayers, beach soccer games leading into Saturday night Havdalah services, pickup games and Jewish heritage tours.

For Schlez, 38, and his wife, Paola Salem, 37, the World Cup being played in the region prompted them last winter to mull opportunities to fashion Jewish experi-

ences for fellow soccer fans. They figured on organizing two or three activities.

Now, though, “the project is bigger than we’d thought at first,” Salem said.

Their goal was to bring together international Jewish visitors already united by a passion for soccer – known throughout the world, but not in America, as football.

“It’s great to connect Jewish football fans,” Schlez said Thursday after arriving in Rio de Janeiro. “I love football, I’ve played it all my life and I’m a teacher of lots of kids in this lovely sport, so it was an opportunity to make a connection between my love for football and my Jewish life.”

His friends Maxi Klein and Damian Beker joined him on the 1,800-mile, three-day drive from Argentina. They’re helping out in

the Jewish programming, too. All three work for the Maccabi youth sports organization in Buenos Aires.

While remaining at home with the couple’s two children, Salem is serving as a one-woman command center, responding to inquiries posted on the project’s two Facebook pages – Jewish Soccer Fanatics Traveling to Brazil in 2014 and Jewish Connect at the World Cup Football 2014 – along with maintaining communication with Brazilian Jewish organizations helping to organize the events in the seven cities: Belo Horizonte, Fortaleza, Manaus, Porto Alegre, Recife, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Fans from approximately 20 countries have exchanged information on the Facebook pages about the events and such key matters as procuring World Cup

Courtesy of Courtesy Paola Salem

Left to right, Mariano Schlez and Paola Salem, with Damian Beker and Maxi Klein, organized efforts to bring together Jewish soccer fans at the World Cup's seven sites in Brazil.

tickets and places to stay, she said.

Those wishing to attend any of the Jewish events – all are free – must register, with Salem passing

along the information to security officials at the venues. Volunteers WORLD CUP on page 21

Palestinians avoid U.S. aid cutoff, but what happens when Hamas runs in elections?

By Ron Kampeas WASHINGTON (JTA) – Is the new Palestinian government kosher under U.S. law?

A range of American Middle East policy analysts and current and former U.S. officials say that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threaded the needle last week and created a government of technocrats untainted by Hamas and not subject to its influence, although Hamas has declared its backing of the government.

That could all change, however, if elections to replace the interim government are held in about six months, as the agreement between the Palestinian factions requires. Not only could elections bring Hamas to power, or at least into a unity government, but its very participation in the elections may violate the terms of U.S. dealings with the Palestinians.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a State Department official involved in U.S.-Palestinian relations told JTA this week that U.S. intelligence agencies had assessed that none of the new Palestinian Cabinet ministers have any Hamas involvement, and so continued relations would not violate U.S. law banning interactions with designated terrorist groups.

Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser to President George W. Bush, said this Palestinian government did not present the same dilemmas that he and other Bush administration officials faced in 2006 when Hamas won parliamentary elections while Abbas was president.

“In 2006 we had a parliamentary system in which Hamas won the majority and therefore State

Department lawyers told us the Palestinian Authority is under the control of a terrorist group,” Abrams told JTA. “Not today – what we have today is a non-party government.”

The State Department said last week that the U.S. would continue to deliver assistance to and work with the interim government. The announcement drew expressions of outrage from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has called for the new Palestinian government to be isolated because of Hamas’ backing.

Abrams said the United States should continue to deal with the new government.

“I don’t agree with what the government of Israel is doing. I agree with what the administration is doing, much as it may pain them to know it,” said Abrams, now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a leading foreign policy hawk.

But the Israeli government is holding firm to its position.

“We cannot make peace with a Palestinian government backed by Hamas,” Israeli U.S. Ambassador Ron Dermer said Sunday in a speech to the annual State of Israel Bonds banquet in Washington. “Israel will not negotiate with a Palestinian government backed by a terrorist organization, period.”

Republicans and Democrats in Congress have expressed unease with the Obama administration’s decision to maintain ties. The leading Democratic and Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives Middle East subcommittee sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday saying they would convene a hearing to hear explanations from administration officials.

“Any decision to work with this unity government could be extraordinarily counterproductive in our efforts both to promote peace and to help support the security of our ally Israel,” said the letter from Reps.

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), the committee’s chairwoman, and Ted Deutch (D-Fla.), its top Democrat.

Outside of peace talks, however, Israel is maintaining relations with the Palestinian Authority, transfer-

ring customs duties to the P.A. and continuing to coordinate with its security services, among other interactions.

“They have taken a hard line publicly,” the State Department official said of the Netanyahu government. “But our understanding is that it continues to maintain close security cooperation.”

But once elections get underway, Israel may not be as inclined to con-

tinue to work with the P.A., said Nathan Brown, a George Washington University professor of political science.

Underpinning Israeli willingness to cooperate with the Palestinian Authority is the P.A.’s capacity to inhibit the rise of Hamas in the West Bank. Whereas now the Palestinian Authority works to inhibit displays HAMAS on page 22

8 • INTERNATIONAL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

With video showing money-for-divorce demand, France’s rabbinate has new scandal

By Cnaan Liphshiz (JTA) – A month ago, Michel Gugenheim seemed to have succeeded in helping France’s rabbinate recover from the scandal that ended the tenure of its previous chief rabbi.

One of France’s two interim chief rabbis and the president of the Paris rabbinic court, Gugenheim had helped advance an ambitious restructuring plan to address redundancies within French Orthodox institutions.

He also kept his office mostly out of the news – a reprieve much needed after the resignation last year of a former chief rabbi, Gilles Bernheim, amid revelations that he had committed plagiarism and used a false academic title.

The sense was that Gugenheim had paved the way for the smooth election of a successor.

But then a video emerged that reportedly shows Gugenheim ordering the family of a woman seeking a divorce to write a $120,000 check to a religious charity in exchange for securing a Jewish divorce certificate, or get, from her husband.

Dubbed by French media as “L’affaire du Guet,” the scandal broke just weeks before the June 22 election for chief rabbi – a vote that many hoped would help salvage the rabbinate’s reputation following the

International Briefs Jack Lew to make first trip to Israel as U.S. Treasury Secretary (JNS) – U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew will make his visit trip to Israel in his current position next week to discuss economic cooperation between the two countries.

The Shabbat-observant Lew is currently on a tour of the Middle East, visiting the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia before coming to Israel next week as part of the U.S.-Israel Joint Economic Development Group (JEDG).

International community condemns kidnapping of Israeli teens (JNS) – World leaders have expressed their outrage and deep concern over the abduction of the three Israeli teens last Thursday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in a statement released on Sunday, said he “strongly condemns” the kidnapping and called for the teens’ “quick and safe return home.”

Other Israeli allies, including Canada, Great Britain, and Spain also condemned the kidnappings. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called for the teens’ immediate

Courtesy of Consistoire de Paris

An interim chief rabbi of France, Michel Gugenheim, attending the opening of a charitable institution, March 11, 2014.

Bernheim debacle.

Now the rabbinate and its parent organization, the Consistoire – an Orthodox body established as the representative of French Jewry by Napoleon in 1808 – are mired again in controversy and facing emboldened critics demanding reforms.

“While Bernheim’s plagiarisms exposed his own personal shortcomings and failures, the get affair undermines the credibility of the French rabbinate much more profoundly because it flags a systemic failure that touches the lives of ordinary French Jews,” said Jean-Claude Lalou, who heads a group, Future of Judaism, that is pushing for reform of the Consistoire and knew in advance of the family’s plan to record the divorce discussion. release and for both Israel and the Palestinians to “exercise restraint.”

Israel sending 50 executives to foster investment in Africa (JNS) – The Israeli government is sending 50 executives on a tour of Africa in an effort to grow the Jewish state’s business presence in that region during an era of a growing Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in other parts of the world.

Israel’s sub-Saharan exports amounted to $1.4 billion last year, nearly four times the exports to the region in 2003, reported Business Week.

Jewish leader speaks out against anti-Christian attacks at Israel allies summit (JNS) – World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder expressed solidarity with Christians around the world facing persecution during the Jerusalem Day Convention at the Israeli Allies European Summit in Budapest, Hungary.

“I will speak out across the globe with world leaders and with ordinary citizens, and I will tell them that we will never tolerate any kind of antiChristian threats, just as we will not tolerate anti-Semitism,” Lauder said.

“Your fight is my fight.”

Palestinian envoy: Australia at economic risk for stance on eastern Jerusalem (JNS) – The Palestinian envoy to

The “get affair” comes amid a continuing erosion in the prestige of chief rabbis across the Jewish world.

In Israel, a former Ashkenazi chief rabbi, Yona Metzger, was the subject of several fraud investigations while in office, while a former Sephardic chief rabbi, Eliyahu Bakshi-Doron, was indicted in 2012 for allegedly issuing fake rabbinical ordination certificates.

It’s unclear how the latest scandal will affect the race for chief rabbi in France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community. Ten candidates are vying for the votes of the 300 Consistoire delegates charged with electing the chief rabbi.

Gugenheim is not among the candidates, but the man with whom he was sharing interim chief rabbi duties, Olivier Kaufmann, was considered a leading contender before the “get affair” exploded.

The current scandal concerns a 28-year-old woman named Anaelle whose family left a check for $120,000 made out to a French Jewish charity with Gugenheim’s Paris beit din, or rabbinic court, on March 18.

Journalists who have seen the video reported that under an arrangement that the beit din helped broker, the money was to be funneled through the charity, with one-third going to the husband and the charity

pocketing the difference. The family, in turn, would receive an $80,000 credit from the French government for making a charitable donation.

Annaelle’s family secretly recorded the court proceedings on video and has threatened to file a complaint with police unless the check is returned. The video has not been made public, but journalists who have seen it reported that Gugenheim is heard saying, “This is the price of her liberty.”

Another rabbinical judge, Betsalel Levy, is also heard on the recording saying, “I’m not giving a get until we have the check.”

Gugenheim says the video creates a false impression that he and other rabbinical judges pocketed the money. The demand for funds came from the husband, he said, not the court.

“None of the rabbis received the money, but people read the headlines and think there is graft,” Gugenheim told the news site JSS news.

The Consistoire’s defenders accuse those behind the leaking of the video to the media of trying to damage the institution.

“I strongly deplore these unacceptable attempts to destabilize the Consistoire and discredit the rabbinate of France and its tribunal,” said Sammy Ghozlan, the vice president of the Consistoire.

But Lalou says the next chief rabbi will have to carry out major reforms to both the Consistoire and the rabbinate if he is to salvage their reputations and regain French Jewry’s trust.

“These centralist bodies know no oversight, no transparency and no accountability,” Lalou said. “This is driving away Jews from institutional life precisely at a time of great external challenges.”

Reform needs to happen on four major points, said Martine Cohen, a prominent researcher on French Jewry.

“We are talking about women’s place in religious life; a policy of openness on conversions to Judaism; an overhaul of the rabbinical ordination process and, finally, last but not least, the opening of dialogue with other streams of religious Judaism,” Cohen wrote in an article on the French-language version of The Huffington Post.

Some critics of the Consistoire doubt that it has the capacity to carry out such reforms.

Rabbi Yeshaya Dalsace, a wellknown Masorti, or Conservative, rabbi from Paris, cites Bernheim – whom many hoped would bring new openness to the rabbinate and the Consistoire – as an example of French Orthodoxy’s difficulty with change.

Australia says the country is at risk of economic and trade sanctions from Arab and Muslim countries over its stance on eastern Jerusalem, by no longer referring to the area as “occupied” by Israel.

“We think that it’s very provocative and un-useful, and it’s not appropriate,” said the Palestinian envoy to Australia, Izzat Abdulhadi, AFP reported.

were already paid 15 million euros for one of the seized buildings in the 1990s.

Artwork by autistic Israeli children displayed at U.N. (JNS) – Alut – the Israeli Society for Autistic Children – and the Israeli delegation to the United Nations last week hosted an exhibit of artwork by autistic Israeli children.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Kimoon, Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor, and El Al Airlines captain Dubi Ofer – the father of autistic twins – also participated.

After victories in Iraq, jihadists threaten to invade Israel and Jordan (JNS) – Jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) terror group are reportedly threatening to invade Israel and Jordan after their recent victories in Iraq.

According to the Gatestone Institute, ISIS leader Abu Baker alBaghdadi “recently discussed with his lieutenants the possibility of extending the group’s control beyond Syria and Iraq.”

Nazi seizure of stores garners Jewish family $68 million judgment (JNS) – A Berlin court ordered Germany to compensate the descendants of the Jewish owners of a department store chain that was seized by Nazis with an additional 50 million euros ($68 million), The Associated Press reported.

Nazis seized the Schocken family’s chain of stores in the Saxony region in the 1930s. The descendants, who reside in Israel and the U.S.,

Palestinian envoy to Britain: PA should recognize Jewish state (JNS) – The Palestinian envoy to Great Britain together with an Israeli professor have written that the Palestinian Authority (PA) must recognize Israel as a Jewish state in exchange for Israel recognizing a Palestinian state.

Envoy Manuel Hassassian and Prof. Raphael Cohen-Almagor wrote an article for the quarterly publication Fathom in which they propose, “Israel shall recognize the State of Palestine. Palestine shall recognize the Jewish State of Israel.”

UNESCO Jewish connection to Israel exhibit opens without ‘Israel’ in title (JNS) – The title of a oncedelayed United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) exhibit on the Jewish connection to the land of Israel was changed to exclude the word “Israel” before the exhibit opened June 11 in Paris.

Currently, the display is titled “People, Book, Land: The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People to the Holy Land.” The exhibit was originally scheduled to open Jan. 20, but UNESCO postponed the opening due to objections from the Arab League.

Egypt deploys battalion near Sinai border to fight jihadists (JNS) – The Egyptian military has deployed a new infantry battalion near the Red Sea resort city of Taba, which borders the Israeli city of Eilat, to prevent possible terrorist attacks in the region.

According to Egyptian sources, the deployment was coordinated with Israel, Haaretz reported.

Birthright ‘saved a generation’ of young Jews, says Israel finance minister (JNS) – Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid said that the TaglitBirthright Israel program, which provides free 10-day trips to Israel for Jews ages 18-26, “saved a generation” of young Jews.

“Taglit-Birthright saved a generation. We were on our way to losing a generation of young Jews around the world,” Lapid said Wednesday at a farewell ceremony for Birthright cofounder Michael Steinhardt, held at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

INTERNATIONAL / ISRAEL • 9

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

Families of abducted Israeli teens refuse to succumb to despair

By Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS (JNS) – As the days pass following the abduction of three Jewish teenagers near Hebron, the boys’ families are refusing to succumb to despair despite the uncertainty surrounding the situation.

Hamas terrorists kidnapped Gilad Shaar (16), Eyal Yifrach (19), and Naftali Frenkel (16) Thursday night while they were hitchhiking home from school, Israel has said. A massive manhunt has been underway since Friday to rescue the teens.

“I know that our children are on their way home,” Iris Yifrach, Eyal’s mother, said Sunday. “I feel it. I am very serene because God is watching over our children.”

Hosting a religious gathering in her hometown of Elad, she said, “I look at this test that God has set before me, and I pray that He will rescue my son Eyal and Gilad and Naftali. This is a big test for all of us.”

The Shaer and Frenkel families thanked the people of Israel for the waves of support they have received.

“We are going through a difficult time in these last few days and I want to hug the people of Israel with a big embrace, an embrace of gratitude. An embrace of prayer,” said Bat-Galim Shaar, Gilad’s mother.

“Gilad is strong, and I am sure that

Courtesy of Gideon Markowicz/Flash90

Courtesy of Yonatan Sindel/Flash90

Ouria Yifrach (right), father of missing Israeli teenager Eyal Yifrach, and Eyal's brother Assaf pray alongside hundreds for the safety of Eyal on June 14, 2014.

On June 15, thousands gather at the Western Wall to pray for the release of three Jewish teenagers who have been missing since the night of June 12. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that Hamas terrorists kidnapped the teens.

Naftali and Eyal are strong too. I want to ask the people of Israel to continue praying and being together.

Continue giving that strength to our children, and with the help of God, with the power of this togetherness we will succeed.”

Earlier Sunday, Naftali Frenkel’s mother, Rachel, spoke to reporters, saying, “We are enveloped by a very warm circle of wonderful family and community. We know and feel that every effort is being made to bring the children home. We are grateful to every soldier in the field, every Shin Bet operative, the members of Knesset, the mothers and fathers of

ministers flocked to the families’ homes on Sunday to offer their support. As he was leaving the Frenkel home on Sunday, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar said, “I came to support the family. What I am feeling is what everyone in Israel is feeling.

The security forces are doing everything possible, and there is no better force anywhere in the world.”

Education Minister Shay Piron also visited the house, saying that “abducting 11th graders is morally the lowest terror organizations can go. I say this explicitly: This will not be worth it for anyone involved.”

Housing Minister Uri Ariel

the soldiers in the battlefield, all the media personnel who are here, in the hot sun, to bring our story to the world. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

She added that her family is “well aware that the heavens are being torn open with prayer for our children, and we ask that you continue to pray. We are optimistic.”

Directly addressing her absent son, she said, “Naftali, your father and mother and siblings love you to no end. The nation of Israel is turning the world upside down in order to bring you home.”

Israeli Knesset members and

remarked that he had met “three extraordinary families.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, also visited the homes of the families on Sunday, telling the parents that she was deeply moved by the strength of their spirit.

“On behalf of myself, my husband, and the entire people of Israel, I want to give you strength and offer you my embrace,” she said. “We are all praying for the rapid and safe return of the three precious boys.”

Meanwhile, social services TEENS on page 21

Boycotting government Holocaust commemorations, Hungary’s Jews forge new path

By Ruth Ellen Gruber BUDAPEST, Hungary (JTA) – It isn’t every day that Jewish organizations reject funding for Holocaust commemorations.

But that’s what happened in Hungary this spring when Jewish groups refused nearly $1 million in special state grants to protest what they see as the government’s whitewashing of Hungarian complicity in the Holocaust.

“We wanted to send a very strong message to the government that we are interested in truthful, not symbolic, remembrance, and this is something money cannot buy,” said Andras Heisler, the president of the Federation of Hungarian Jewish Communities, known as Mazsihisz.

Now a group of Jewish communities and cultural organizations are uniting in an effort that organizers say is unprecedented for Jewish groups in Hungary. They banded together into a fund-raising alliance, called Memento70, that is using crowdsourcing and social media in a bid to raise money on their own for their now unfunded projects.

The campaign went live in April, the 70th anniversary of the Nazi ghettoization of Hungarian Jews.

The launch coincided with the official start of a special year of

Holocaust memorial observances organized by the state but boycotted by much of the organized Hungarian Jewish community.

These are bold moves for a Hungarian Jewish community that remains highly dependent upon government funding. But the activist stance reflects potentially broader changes for Hungary’s Jewish community, which numbers as many as 100,000, most of whom are unaffiliated with the official communal bodies.

Heisler took the helm of Mazsihisz in 2013 and has outlined an agenda aimed at making the umbrella group a more respected, pluralistic representative body that can credibly lobby for Jewish interests at a time of growing nationalism and open xenophobia and antiSemitism.

“We are not afraid,” Heisler said.

“On the contrary, the Jewish community is reacting and finding itself.

It feels alive.”

Mazsihisz is largely financed by the state’s funding of religious organizations and Holocaust compensation funds. The Memento70 boycott deals only with the Hungarian government’s special Holocaust commemoration grants.

In February, Mazsihisz had decided to boycott the government’s

Courtesy of Ruth Ellen Gruber

Passersby look at the Holocaust-related and other memorabilia left by citizens protesting the monument to the 1944 German occupation, under construction behind sheeting across the street in downtown Budapest.

Holocaust year events because of three specific issues that it said played down Hungarian involvement in the Holocaust.

The umbrella group objected to a planned memorial in Budapest to the 1944 German occupation that critics feel portrays Hungarians solely as victims of the Nazis. Mazsihisz was upset as well by the government’s refusal to share plans for a new statesponsored Holocaust museum or to

involve organized Jewry in developing its exhibition.

Also, the Jewish community had demanded the resignation of the director of a government-sponsored research institute who in January had referred to the 1941 deportation to Nazi-controlled territory of thousands of Jews who sought refuge in Hungary as “a police action against aliens.”

The government has not acceded

to the Jewish community’s demands despite almost daily protests at the downtown Budapest site where the monument to the German occupation is being built. Protestors have left Holocaust memorabilia, written messages and other material spread out on a wide strip of sidewalk across the street.

Last week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected a call by 30 Jewish U.S. members of Congress to reconsider constructing the monument “against the wishes of the Hungarian Jewish community.”

It “is not a Holocaust memorial,” Orban said in a statement, but “a freedom-fighting people’s memorial of the pain of having its liberty crushed.”

In general elections in April, Orban’s center-right Fidesz party was re-elected, but one in five voters cast their ballots for the extreme right Jobbik party, notorious for its nationalist, anti-Roma policies and anti-Semitic rhetoric.

In May, Fidesz won more than 51 percent of the vote in elections for the European Parliament, with Jobbik finishing second with nearly 15 percent. A recent AntiDefamation League survey found BOYCOTTING on page 22

10 • ISRAEL

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

At Herzliya Conference, a split on importance of Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Ben Sales

Courtesy of Gideon Markowicz/FLASH90

Israeli Economy Minister Naftali Bennett speaking at the Herzliya Conference, June 8, 2014.

HERZLIYA, Israel (JTA) – Naftali Bennett and Tzipi Livni don’t agree on much.

Bennett, Israel’s economy minister, sees the West Bank as an inseparable part of the Jewish state and wants Israel to annex its settlements there. Livni, the justice minister, says Israel can remain a Jewish democracy only by evacuating settlements.

But on one thing they agree: Israel must break its status quo with the Palestinians.

Bennett and Livni were two of the five politicians who presented a range of responses to the IsraeliPalestinian conflict Sunday at the annual Herzliya Conference, an elite gathering of Israeli politicians, military officials and security experts weighing in on the central issues facing Israel.

Their debate exposes the cracks in Israel’s diverse governing coalition. But the biggest division in Herzliya wasn’t between hawks and doves; it was between the politicians who prioritized addressing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the

military officials who all but ignored it.

The assessment of the military leadership differed little from last year’s conference, despite the recent collapse of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and the subsequent unity agreement between the Fatah faction of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, which is regarded as a terrorist group by most of the West.

Those developments, which the politicians treated as major changes, were mentioned only in passing by military officials, who focused

instead on threats emanating from Iran, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere.

“We’re in a Middle East that’s undergoing a jolt,” Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said in a speech Monday that focused mainly on tensions on Israel’s borders. “Dramatic instability is a constant in this region and we need to be ready.”

While the military officials were focused on missiles, strategic threats and regional alliances, the politicians were concerned mainly with HERZLIYA on page 19

Bitcoin makes aliyah: Cryptocurrency finds Israeli fans

By Ben Sales

Courtesy of Ben Sales

Nimrod Gruber uses Israel’s first Bitcoin ATM in Tel Aviv, June 12, 2014.

Israel Briefs ‘Bring Back Our Boys’ Facebook page raises awareness on abducted Israeli teens (JNS) – A Facebook page created Friday following the abduction of three Israeli teenagers by terrorists near Hebron had garnered close to 80,000 “likes” by Monday.

The “Bring Back Our Boys” Facebook page, which aims to raise international awareness of the kidnapping, acquired more than 7,000 “likes” in its first four hours, and numerous viewers uploaded pictures of themselves holding signs reading “Bring Back Our Boys.”

Palestinian Authority invokes release of prisoners in statement on kidnapping (JNS) – Speaking to Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas for the first time in more than a year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he expects Abbas to aid the effort to rescue the three Jewish teens Israel says were abducted by Hamas.

The Palestinian Authority presidency, meanwhile, issued a state-

TEL AVIV (JTA) – Blocks away from the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and the headquarters of two major banks, in the corner of the lobby of a boutique hotel, Nimrod Gruber sticks his hand into an ATM. A few seconds later, a QR code prints out. Gruber takes the slip of paper and walks away, no cash in hand.

He’s not worried. He owns the ATM, and there’s nothing like it in the Middle East. It identifies users by scanning their palms, and instead of dispensing dollars, euros or shekels, it dispenses Bitcoin.

“It shows up in your account in 30 seconds, a minute,” he said. ment on the kidnapping that invoked the release of Palestinian prisoners.

Netanyahu says Hamas behind kidnapping, vows ‘serious consequences’ (JNS) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas is behind the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank on Thursday, following widespread arrests of Palestinian terrorists on Saturday near Hebron.

“This morning I can say what I could not reveal yesterday, before the wave of arrests,” Netanyahu told his cabinet Sunday. “The people behind this abduction are members of Hamas, the same Hamas with whom [Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud] Abbas has established a unity government.”

Parents of three abducted Israeli teens meet for first time (Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS) – The parents of the three abducted Israeli teens met for the first time on Tuesday, as the Shaar and Yifrach families arrived at the Frenkel family home in Nof Ayalon, near Modiin.

Amid manhunt, Palestinians try to infiltrate West Bank Jewish community (JNS) – As Israeli security forces continued massive efforts to rescue three kidnapped teens, Palestinians

Bitcoin, a digital currency invented in 2008, has spread across the world, and made a hefty profit for its holders, without printing a single bill. As Bitcoin has gained value over the years, an ecosystem of startups and organizations has taken shape in Tel Aviv to promote its use in Israel’s tech scene.

“Here we adopt new technology earlier than other places,” said Gruber, 28, a former model who became involved in Bitcoin technology during a stint living in New York City. “It makes sense that this would be a Bitcoin center. We’re at the heart of the high-tech area and the Tel Aviv financial district.”

Called a “cryptocurrency” because it is secured by encrypted

data, Bitcoin itself could be best described as cryptic. Its reputed inventor, who goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, has communicated only by email. Unlike mainstream currencies, Bitcoin isn’t backed by a government or central bank and has no physical form.

Instead, it exists in computer code, and its value is determined purely through supply and demand in online exchanges where Bitcoin holders buy and sell it for other currencies. People can “mine” new Bitcoins by performing complex calculations on their computers.

Bitcoin has encountered a host of issues in its development, from the question of government regulation to use for illegal activities to a

volatile growth pattern. According to a digital currency tracker, one Bitcoin was worth about $100 a year ago and had spiked to nearly $1,000 by last November. Three weeks later, though, its value dropped to about $600 after China banned its use. It’s worth roughly $630 now, with $8 billion of total Bitcoins on the market.

The ups and downs haven’t deterred Israeli Bitcoin believers, who expect growth ahead and say the currency will stabilize as more people adopt it. Dozens of startups have proliferated around Bitcoin use in Israel, and more than 120 Israeli businesses, from restaurants to real

on Monday tried to infiltrate the West Bank Jewish community of Kochav Yaakov, which is situated east of Ramallah in the Binyamin region.

“If you don’t understand that, then you don’t understand why the conflict remains unresolved,” he said.

two hitting in the Hof Regional Council.

According to the IDF, nine rockets were fired at Israel over the past two weeks. Since the beginning of this year, 200 rockets have been fired at Israel, twice the total in 2013.

Islamic Jihad leader calls for kidnapping of Israelis (JNS) – Khaled Albatsh, a leader of the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, on Friday called on Palestinians to kidnap more Israelis.

Speaking at a rally in Gaza, Albatsh said Israel has proven that it will release Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the safety of its civilians, and that Palestinians should take advantage of that.

Hamas could take over Judea and Samaria, Israeli defense minister says (JNS) – Hamas could seize control of Judea and Samaria as a result of the recently formed Palestinian unity government, Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said last week at the Herzliya Conference.

“The Palestinian reconciliation is misrepresented,” Ya’alon said. “If anything happens as a result of the reconciliation, it will be Hamas’s takeover of Judea and Samaria.”

Regarding Hamas’s partner in the new government, Ya’alon said the Palestinian Authority “is considered moderate, yet denies our right to a national home.”

Palestinian negotiator calls Netanyahu ‘filthy war criminal,’ slams Abbas (JNS) – In a newly surfaced recording, Saeb Erekat – the top Palestinian negotiator in the collapsed Israeli-Palestinian peace talks – calls Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “filthy war criminal” and criticizes Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

“Why did Netanyahu engage in these random negotiations if not to build more settlements? … You, Abu Mazen (Abbas), have the ability to prevent Netanyahu from traveling anywhere in the world, except from Ben-Gurion airport to New York.

He’s a despicable, filthy war criminal,” Erekat said of Netanyahu, according to a Times of Israel translation of a recording posted on YouTube by the Awraq News Agency.

Gaza terrorists fire rockets on southern Israel (JNS) – Terrorists in Gaza launched a barrage of rockets towards Israel on Saturday.

According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, three rockets were launched towards Israel, with

BITCOIN on page 19

Netanyahu prepares the nation: Finding the teens will take time JERUSALEM (JTA) – Finding the three kidnapped teenagers will take more time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address to the nation.

“We are in the middle of a complex operation. We need to be prepared for the fact that it may take more time,” Netanyahu said Monday afternoon. “It is a serious incident and will have grave consequences.”

Iron Dome intercepts rockets over Ashkelon JERUSALEM (JTA) – Two rockets fired from Gaza at Ashkelon were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system, while two others landed in open areas of the southern Israeli city.

Israel’s Air Force retaliated for the attack late Sunday night by striking five terrorist-related sites in Gaza.

12 • CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

ANNOUNCEMENTS LIAISONS NAMED

my Fisher and Ilana Liss have recently been named the volunteer liaisons of the SHAI program. SHAI is an acronym for Support, Hospitality, and Assistance for Israelis.

The SHAI program was created as a partnership

A

between the Jewish Federation of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Medical Center and the Cincinnati Chapter of Hadassah to welcome Israeli doctors and nurses who come to observe or do fellowships at CCHMC for 2 weeks to 3 years

from hospitals throughout Israel. This program welcomes them to our community and provides help with schooling, housing and other services To volunteer to provide hospitality, please contact the Cincinnati Chapter of Hadassah.

ADATH ISRAEL PURIM EVENTS Three spectacular events highlighted Adath Israel's Purim Celebration. which began with the Megillah reading on Saturday evening, March 15th. Families gathered in our main sanctuary to hear 16 teens read from the Megillah, then the party spilled into the Lerner-Fisher Hall, where The Cincinnati Klezmer Project played while we learned Israeli dances, ate hamentashen and other treats, & socialized with our friends.

The next morning during our daily minyan, nine adults, most of whom had never done it before, read from the Megillah! Then our annual Purim Palooza began! Our Carnival this year included a great baskets raffle, the proceeds of which went to support USY Tikun Olam projects. The Carnival was organized by our Co-Chairs, Emily Harris and Gloriana Laskowski-Cohen, and their amazing committee, led by Mollie Newman, our Youth and Family Program Coordinator. There was plenty of food, including homemade hamentaschen, and plenty of activities for all ages, including a fastpitch inflatable, a photo booth, games, ride-on toys for our littlest guests, professional face painters, tons of prizes, and more games!

Rabbi & Kathy Wise

Enjoying the party!

One of our 8th graders reading Megillah for the first time.

Many of our Megillah readers take a photo break.

Dancing away - even our stilt walker enjoyed leanring some new israeli dances!

Two of our students dress up and have some fun together.

CINCINNATI JEWISH LIFE • 13

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

Our Rabbi comes to Ellis Island and is greeted by the Statue of Liberty!

What fun we are having in the photo booth!

Face Painting extraordinairre!

Another Megillah reader

Rabbi Jonathan Perlman reads Megillah. This is the first time that we have had our adult congregants take part in reading the Megillah.

Our smallest congregants find plenty to do at the Carnival!

5th graders having fun playing and hanging out!

Brian Jaffee reading Megillah on Purim morning.

Plenty of grandparents came to hang out and play with their grandchildren.

Everyone comes together for a group photo before the Megillah rea

Idit leads us in "Yaish," one of our favorite dances, while The Cincinnati Klezmer Project plays!

A couple of our Kindergartners from Kitah Gan show their excitement for Purim!

14 • DINING OUT

WWW.AMERICANISRAELITE.COM

20 Brix offers more than standard fine dining options

By Bob Wilhelmy Contributing Columnist Sitting in the al fresco area of 20 Brix in Old Milford produces a wonderful mindset for dining. Picture the scene: tables for some three dozen diners, corralled in fencing woven through with vines green and heavy-leafed, ferns and potted flowers here and there to further naturalize the setting. So, place is perfect.

For diners who want a little more from spots they choose to eat, 20 Brix offers several extra dimensions, the al fresco area being only the most obvious. There is the wine seller (not cellar, but seller) feature, built integrally into the restaurant proper.

As one enters 20 Brix, to the right is a wine “store,” that is part and parcel to the 20 Brix concept of fine dining.

Of course, you may want to pop in and pick up a bottle of wine and be on your way. But 20 Brix diners can “shop” their wine choice as well.

On my last visit there, I spent at least 15 minutes looking at the labels and the pricing of the bottles waiting to be enjoyed with food in the restaurant. The vintners are smallname producers offering modest outputs, perhaps a few hundred cases, and almost never more than 2,000 cases annually. Such quantities represent a gnat on the elephantine body of production from major wineries, each with yearly outputs of hundreds of thousands of cases for America’s mass market. To me, there is a deeply satisfying appeal in linking myself to those small-timers through the wines they lovingly bring to market. There are pricey bottles in the mix, but also you will find bottles in the teens and twenties; so, very approachable. For those of us who want wine with the meal, 20 Brix is a pleasant variation on the typical.

Another dimension worth attention is the local produce featured with the meals of the menu. At 20 Brix, the produce is provided by local growers almost year round.

“During the growing season, 90 percent of the produce we use in our dishes comes from within 25 to 30 miles of here, and we know the growers by name,” said Clay Mitchell, GM. “Some specialty items come from locals with 10-by-10-foot plots, while others we rely on have small farms, with larger fields of produce. We have one man who grows our mushrooms for us.

Others have greenhouse and hothouse capabilities for the colder months, and we build our menus around what they have and what is best of the season.”

Doing business that way provides fresh-picked, often fieldripened quality, obtained from producers who put a lot of TLC into their plantings.

This time of year, local peas,

Cheese & garlic flatbread on the Sharables menu of 20 Brix.

The wine-store area where patrons may select wines at retail prices.

carrots, spring squash and more are to be enjoyed. For instance, the salmon entrée features pole beans, snap peas and snow peas with the fish, and all the veggies are local and fresh from the farm. That salmon on the plate is Verlasso, from the icy waters of the North Sea between Norway and Denmark. Verlasso is a farmed fish, but free-swimming in a vast netted area of the sea. So the species is sustainable, and another positive aspect of the 20 Brix approach to fine dining, since sustainability is a facet of eating about which we should all worry.

Also in the seafood category is a

chef-special smoked halibut entrée.

“The smoking is done on the premises, and the taste is wonderful,” said Mitchell. “We do all our smoking in-house and we dry-age (14-days) our own beef here too.”

In addition, the restaurant features a charcuterie, which is a rarity these days, especially anywhere outside France. The kitchen preserves and ages its pâtés and terrines for the dining room, relying on a process that pre-dates refrigeration and harkens back two millennia, at least.

Of course, we all seek out spots to dine in anticipation of good, wholesome food, and all the accou-

The al fresco area.

trements in the world are of no consequence otherwise. At 20 Brix, there are many dishes on the menu that excite my palate. One is the wild mushroom risotto, a vegetarian dish that is bursting with flavor. The risotto of wild mushrooms is enhanced by add-ins of fresh peas, sherry and poppy seeds, along with the thickening influence of sour cream. The liquid for softening and creaming the rice is miso stock, with a hearty edamame flavor.

Entrée dishes at 20 Brix range from casual to formal, and the new menu will feature dishes not available at this writing. A dish sure to be

on the new listing is the chicken waffle entrée. The chef makes the waffle with corn, and the sauce ties the textures of waffle and chicken together. Check with 20 Brix in a few weeks for the complete updated menu.

See you at 20 Brix in Old Milford.

20 Brix 101 Main St. Historic Milford 831-2749

DINING OUT • 15

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

RESTAURANT DIRECTORY 20 Brix

Ice ’N Ez

Pomodori’s

101 Main St

115 Reading Rd.

121West McMillan • 861-0080

Historic Milford

Mason

7880 Remington Rd

831-Brix (2749)

336-0062

Montgomery • 794-0080

Ambar India Restaurant

Izzy’s

Slatt’s Pub

350 Ludlow Ave

800 Elm St • 721-4241

4858 Cooper Rd

Cincinnati

612 Main St • 241-6246

Blue Ash

281-7000

1198 Smiley Ave • 825-3888

791-2223 • 791-1381 (fax)

7625 Beechmont Ave • 231-5550 Andy’s Mediterranean Grille

4766 Red Bank Expy • 376-6008

Spicy Olive

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2 blocks North of Eden Park

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281-9791

300 Madison Ave • 859-292-0065

2736 Erie Ave.

7905 Mall Road • 859-525-2333

Cincinnati • 376-9061

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www.BangkokTerrace.com

Specializing in traditional culinary dishes with a modern twist.

Price: $30 and under Closed Mondays 4034 Hamilton Ave. Cincinnati, Ohio

513-541-9600

Stone Creek Dining Co.

Loveland

Johnny Chan 2

9386 Montgomery Rd

239-8881

11296 Montgomery Rd

Montgomery • 489-1444

The Shops at Harper’s Point

6200 Muhlhauser Rd

489-2388 • 489-3616 (fx)

West Chester • 942-2100

Cincinnati

Kanak India Restaurant

Tandoor

321-1600

10040B Montgomery Rd

8702 Market Place Ln

Montgomery

Montgomery

793-6800

793-7484

Baba India Restaurant

The Best Japanese Cuisine, Asian Food & Dining Experience In Town

3120 Madison Rd

Bangkok Terrace 4858 Hunt Rd Blue Ash

Marx Hot Bagels

The Cream of Caffeine Coffee Co.

891-8900 • 834-8012 (fx)

9701 Kenwood Rd

4081 E. Galbraith Rd

Blue Ash

Cincinnati

891-5542

793-0293

Cincinnati

Mecklenburg Gardens

Tony’s

541-9600

302 E. University Ave

12110 Montgomery Rd

Clifton

Montgomery

221-5353

677-1993

Cincinnati

Padrino

Walt’s Hitching Post

321-6300

111 Main St

300 Madison Pike

Milford

Fort Wright, KY

965-0100

(859) 360-2222

Cincinnati

Parkers Blue Ash Tavern

Wertheim’s Restaurant

745-9386

4200 Cooper Rd

514 W 6th St

Blue Ash

Covington, KY

891-8300

(859) 261-1233

Bistro Grace

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16 • OPINION

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Does anti-Semitism threaten American Jews?

By Kenneth L. Marcus (JNS) – In a recent issue of Time magazine, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, writes that anti-Semitism is “not a threat to American Jews.” He could not be more wrong.

Let us start with the obvious.

Any threat to world Jewry is a threat to American Jews.

According to the AntiDefamation League’s (ADL) important new study, there are now one billion adult antiSemites in the world. As Rabbi Yoffie acknowledges, this is fully a quarter of the world’s adult population. Can American Jewry shrug this off?

One can quibble with the ADL’s methodology, but it is not far-fetched. ADL considers a person to be anti-Semitic if they give a positive response to six out of 11 survey questions like these: “Jews are responsible for most of the world’s wars,” “People hate Jews because of the way Jews behave,” and “Jews have too much control over the United States government.”

Consider the magnitude of this finding. In 2012, according to the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, there were 686 reported incidents of physical violence, direct threats, and major acts of vandalism against Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide. This is bad enough on its own, representing an increase of approximately 30 percent over the prior year.

Worse, these figures understate the problem. According to the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency, 64 percent of European Jews who have experienced physical violence or threats do not report even the most serious incident. If this holds true for Jews elsewhere, the actual incident rate is approximately three times higher than reported, reaching 2,000 serious incidents annually.

But it gets worse. Even the adjusted figures suggest that Jews and Jewish institutions are enduring only one serious anti-

Correction In the article entitled “Wise Temple Seniors host Janelle Gelfand” in the June 12, 2014 issue, the time for the event was incorrectly listed as 1:30pm. The event in fact begins at 7:30pm. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Semitic incident per 500,000 anti-Semites annually. This means that in any given year, the overwhelming majority of antiSemites are not acting on their aversions. Their reasons may be lack of opportunity, want of courage, fear of consequence, or adherence to convention.

Economists call this “pent-up demand.”

As the post-Holocaust taboo against anti-Semitism erodes, the ramifications are troubling.

Suppose that one in ten thousand anti-Semites should physically harm or threaten Jews or Jewish institutions in a given year.

Under this scenario, serious antiSemitic incidents would increase to 100,000 per year, even if antiSemitic attitudes remain constant. In other words, things can get much worse.

Should Americans worry? In Western Europe, one in four Europeans harbors anti-Semitic attitudes. One recent survey indicates that roughly the same percentage (26 percent) of European Jews has been harassed for being Jewish within the last year.

Perhaps the worst anti-Semitic incidents will be limited to the Middle East and Europe. But was the Nazi Holocaust no threat to American Jews merely because it remained off American shores?

If there is any such thing as Jewish peoplehood, then security threats to any are threats to all.

Now consider the dangers to Israel. In the Middle East and North Africa, nearly three quarters of the adult population holds anti-Semitic attitudes. This can only fuel continuing threats to Israel. Can American Jews feel secure as long as Israel remains under continuing danger? Given Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Israel remains under the steady risk of catastrophe. No Jewish American could feel secure about this.

Now consider what Rabbi Yoffie probably meant to say. His point is that Americans do not face a direct threat of severe antiSemitism. He is right that American Jews are not under siege. But he is wrong to minimize the threat that does exist.

According to the ADL, only nine percent of Americans hold antiSemitic attitudes. This sounds good, but it translates to 21,000,000 people. It means that there are far more anti-Semites than Jews in America. This may be one reason why the Federal Bureau of Investigation regularly reports that anti-Jewish hate crimes exceed hate crimes against any other religious group.

On some university campuses, THREATEN on page 19

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

Dear Editor, I truly believe your letters are from persons who "heard" about the Messianic Jews, but did not associate directly with them. I, on the other hand, am a physician who cared directly for the Wolf family, both in their home and in my office. I have their permission to write my comments, uncensored.

At no time was I pushed to follow their beliefs, whereas when I was married to a Mennonite lady my mother-in-law constantly made efforts to convert me to her faith. My patients included Jehovah’s Witness followers who most doctors having refuse to accept because they refuse blood transfusions. Surely it is a desirable attitude for us Jews to show

respect for non-Jews, to accept them. To demonstrate kindness and forgiveness may impress others to copy us, but vitriolic secondhand comments, which later are shown to be untrue, will lead to the opposite.

Sincerely, Dr Herb Schapera Cincinnati OH

Fatah-Hamas government reflects American weakness

By Ben Cohen (JNS) – I’ve long argued that any proper understanding of the Palestinian conflict with Israel’s legitimacy is compromised by not taking wider regional factors into account. The school of thought that describes the IsraeliPalestinian conflict as “the Middle East conflict” is dangerously misguided, because it ignores other factors that are far more important, such as the historically violent schism between Sunni and Shi’a Islam, Iran’s renewed assertiveness in Syria and Lebanon, the shared strategic interests binding Israel and the conservative regimes in the Arab Gulf in confronting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the fragmentation of the various jihadi groups in Sinai, Syria, Iraq, and other territories.

That’s why I want to preface my comments about the new Palestinian unity government, which brings together Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah movement with the Islamists of Hamas, by pointing to a political rally several hundred miles to the east of Jerusalem, in Tehran.

At that rally, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei stood in front of a banner that declared, “America cannot do a damned thing.” A “military attack is not a priority for Americans now,” Khamenei boasted. “They have renounced the idea of any military actions,” he said.

In other words, in the Middle East as a whole, America is weak, or is at least perceived to be weak.

And weakness has a natural partner in the form of naïveté – the exact word used by Israeli government minister Gilad Erdan to describe the Obama administration’s acceptance of the new Fatah-Hamas coalition, but which could equally apply to the American approach to conflicts

from Libya in the west to Afghanistan in the east.

After all, would Abbas have cut a deal with Hamas if he were dealing with an American administration with a tough and cogent Middle Eastern policy? Would Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, have been hoodwinked into believing that because the new Palestinian government’s ministries are largely run by technocrats, the American pledge to shun Hamas while it remains a terrorist organization has not been violated? I think not.

Still, Israel’s supporters are compelled to deal with this situation as it is, and not as we would like it to be. Hence, we have a choice. We can lambast Secretary of State John Kerry for placing the lion’s share of the blame for the recent collapse of peace talks on Israel, while ignoring Abbas’s pursuit of unilateral recognition for a Palestinian state and his reconciliation with the genocidal anti-Semites of Hamas. We can laugh, bitterly, at Obama’s statement to Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg that Abbas is “sincere” about resolving “these issues in a diplomatic fashion that meets the concerns of the people of Israel” – a line worthy of a Monty Python scriptwriter.

But as therapeutic as doing all that might be, it is not a replacement for a political strategy. With more than two years to go before President Obama departs the White House, the best strategy we can work for now is damage limitation.

The first element of such a strategy is to point out that the Fatah-Hamas deal, which on the surface looks more secure when compared to previous agreements between these bitter rivals in the recent past, still contains some serious holes. Critically, as the Tel Aviv University security analyst Dr. Benedetta Berti argued in an interview with Fathom, a British

magazine focused on the Middle East, “where the parties have not seen eye to eye so far is on their mutual desire to keep control of Gaza, in the case of Hamas, and the West Bank, in the case of Fatah.” Berti further pointed out that the “core elements of Hamas’s ideology have not shifted, but there is an internal conflict in the organization about how to accommodate ideology with political interests and pragmatism.”

It is nigh on impossible to believe that Hamas will become so pragmatic as to surrender its formidable arsenal of weapons and materiel to the PA. Far more likely, as the Israeli journalist Ehud Yaari has observed, is that Hamas will increasingly mimic the “bullets and ballots” model followed by Hezbollah in Lebanon. Under this arrangement, 20,000 fighters and security personnel will remain under the Hamas banner. At the same time, these terrorists will be able to continue with the production of missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The possibility that the unity government will enable a fresh terrorist assault on Israel that provokes a sustained response on the part of the IDF is, therefore, a very real one. How, then, are we to avoid a repeat of the clashes over the last decade that resulted in Israel’s being smeared with false accusations of war crimes, from Jenin in 2002 to Gaza in 2009?

One avenue is to mobilize the U.S. Congress to frustrate the Obama administration’s determination to deal with the unity government. At present, American taxpayers are supporting Abbas and the PA to the tune of $400 million a year. Now that Hamas, a designated terrorist organization, is part of the PA’s governing machine, we should be demanding that our congressional representatives work for an immediate WEAKNESS on page 22

JEWISH LIFE • 17

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

so that he was left completely bald (Kareah) from this one and from that one – as well as ice (in modern Hebrew, a Karhon is an ice pop).

Both words have one idea in common: neither provides fertile soil for growth and development; hair does not grow on a bald head, and grass or flowers do not emanate from ground covered with ice (witness the devastation of plant life during the Ice-Age).

Rabbi Isaac Luria joined Korach to Tamar because the biblical heroine had been twice married without her womb bearing fruit; in order for her to merit progeny in Israel and to develop Jewish destiny, she had to take matters in her own hands and become impregnated (fertilized, seeded) by Judah. As in every case of yibum, individuals must sacrifice themselves to a certain degree in order to be linked to Jewish eternity.

The midrash understands that an argument which is based on egoistic motivations will not allow for compromise and will never bear the fruit of resolution; such a dispute can only lead to devastation and destruction (karhah).

An analysis of Korach’s argument will quickly demonstrate the symbolic significance of his name.

At first glance he seems to be a populist, arguing in favor of the exalted qualities of every single Israelite who stood at Sinai: “The entire congregation are all holy and G-d is in their midst; why do you (Moses and Aaron) lift yourselves up above the community of G-d?” (Num. 16:3).

But when we remember that the Almighty never describes the Israelites as a holy nation as they are, by right and by privilege without striving and even suffering to achieve holiness, we begin to realize that Korach is more demagogue than democrat, more flatterer than educator. “You shall become holy,” commands and demands our Torah (Lev.19:2); Moses and Aaron worked for and achieved their holiness not by right but by righteousness! Holiness is the result of a process, a growth, a development; it is not a gift bestowed automatically.

Indeed, the antithesis of the hairless bald head and the grass-less icyground is the palm tree, the Tamar,

which – with proper nurture – will produce dates; so, teaches the Psalmist, will the righteous individual develop, just as the palm tree flourishes as a result of painstaking care and development – Korach is impatient; he wishes to usurp Aaron’s (and perhaps Moses’) place – without the concomitant effort which must be expended before one can be worthy of leadership. He is punished by being swallowed up by the earth – perhaps in order to teach him that before a seed develops into a fruit-bearing tree, it must first rot beneath the ground as a necessary part of the process of growth and fructification and our portion vindicates Aaron as the true leader chosen by the Divine; the staff of Aaron, the very antithesis of arid Korach, brings forth flowers, develops blossoms, and bears almonds. True leadership can only emerge after a long and arduous process of selfless and sustained nurture and hard work.

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

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T EST Y OUR T ORAH KNOWLEDGE THIS WEEK’S PORTION: KORACH (BAMIDBAR 16-18) 1. What position did Korach want to have? a.) Leader b.) High Priest c.) Prince 2. What was the complaint of Dathan Aviram? a.) Moshe had not settled the people to Israel b.) Moshe had gotten rich off the people c.) They had grudges against Moshe 3. Did Korach, Dathan, and Aviram die the same way?

5. A 16:15 Moshe never took a gift that even a person would take from his friend, much less a ruler. Sforno

EFRAT, Israel - “What’s in a name?”, wryly asked the great English playwright William Shakespeare, denying any connection between the appellation and the essence. By contrast, “one’s name defines one’s persona” (k’shmo ken hu – as is his name, so is he), declared the Talmudic Sages, insisting that externals – and most certainly the term to which one is expected to answer and by which one is identified to the outside world – must influence one’s internal state of being. The biblical names certainly contained profound symbolic significance, with Moshe meaning “he takes out”, or “he liberates” and Yehoshua – one scout in the minority of two who was in favor of conquering Israel – meaning “God will save”. From this perspective, it is productive to explore the meaning of the name Korach, an uncommon name.

Moreover, a great deal seems to be made of the name Korach, both in the more esoteric Kabbalistic interpretations as well as in the more accessible midrashic commentaries.

Rabbi Isaac Luria (known as the Holy Lion, who taught a path-breaking commentary to the sacred Zohar in 16th century Safed) cited the verse from the Psalms (92:13),”The righteous blossom as the palm tree” (zadik katamar yifrah), noting that the last letter of these three words spell the name KRH (Korach) and insisting that the Biblical tamar (palm tree) is the antithesis – and repair (tikkun) – of Korach. What is the significance of such last-letter acronym word-play on the name Korach? No less strange is the midrashic name-play in its interpretation of the ambiguous Biblical phrase lo titgodedu v’lvo tasimu korhah (Deut. 14:1), taking the words to mean either “you shall not scratch (your skin) and make yourself bald” (in excessive mourning over the dead), or alternatively “you shall not create divisiveness or make an argument (which is not for the sake of heaven but rather for egoistic motivations) as did Korach.”

What does the name Korach actually mean and what does it symbolize?

The Hebrew word Karah means bald – there is a charming midrash about the frustrations of a man who had two wives, one older and one younger, with the older removing the black hairs from his head and the younger removing the white hairs,

Moses and Aaron worked for and achieved their holiness not by right but by righteousness! Holiness is the result of a process, a growth, a development; it is not a gift bestowed automatically.

a.) Yes b.) No 4. Who also died with Korach, Dathan, and Aviram a.) The people that supported them b.) 20,000 people from the Children of Israel c.) Family 5. How did Moshe counter Korach's complaints? a.) He never took any gifts from anybody b.) He led the people out of Egypt c.) He received the Torah at Sinai

3. A 16:27-33 4. A,C 16:32, 35 Even little children to show the power of a fight. Rashi

by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

SHABBAT SHALOM: PARSHAT KORACH NUMBERS 16:1- 18:32

Written by Rabbi Dov Aaron Wise

ANSWERS 1. B 16;10 2. A 16:13-15

Sedra of the Week

18 • JEWZ IN THE NEWZ

JEWZ

IN THE

By Nate Bloom Contributing Columnist Jersey Boys The film version of the big stage hit musical, “Jersey Boys,” about the lives and careers of the members of the famous 1960s pop/rock singing group, The Four Seasons, opens this week. I hope that Clint Eastwood, 84, confounds pundits who claim he was an odd and probably-not-right choice to direct this film.

Like the stage musical, the “Jersey Boys” movie features the many hits of The Four Seasons, all of which were written by band members Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe. What helped make the stage musical so special was its great script, co-written by MARSHALL BRICKMAN, now 79, and RICK ELICE, now 57. They extensively interviewed the band members, and from those interviews, they crafted a truly dramatic story that earned the duo a Tony for best book (script). They also wrote the film’s screenplay.

Brickman is a virtually unknown renaissance man. In addition to his Tony, he has an Oscar, too, for co-writing “Annie Hall” with WOODY ALLEN. He could relate to the members of The Four Seasons, because just about the same time that band began (1962) and was playing clubs, Brickman was in a popular folk group, the Tarriers, playing banjo with ERIC WEISSBERG, now 74 (Weissberg is best known for his 1972 instrumental banjo hit, the theme from “Deliverance”). On top of all this, Brickman has written for TV and has penned acclaimed comic parodies for “The New Yorker”.

None of the real-life Four Seasons members were/are Jewish. However, ERICH BERGEN, 28, who played Gaudio in a touring version of the stage musical, reprises this role in the film. This is the first big screen role for the tall, dark, and handsome thespian. His parents met at a New York acting class.

In 2011, the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles reported that Bergen, the son of a Jewish father and a lapsed Catholic mother, strongly identified as Jewish. The Journal then quoted Bergen as he explained how the drama of the Passover Seder was like a classic theater play. He said: “We’re all in one room together witnessing something that people for many years have done before us. We are not new to this story, but we are experi-

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encing it for the first time together. To me, that’s what I’ve found in the Jewish religion: that the tradition of keeping the story going is what’s most important – of making sure that everyone knows and is affected by the story.”

McSteamy Joins the Navy ERIC DANE, 41, is best known for playing the sexy Dr. Mark “McSteamy” Sloan on “Grey’s Anatomy.” He co-stars in the new TNT series, “The Last Ship”, which is set to premiere this weekend. Here’s the official synopsis: “Their mission is simple: Find a cure. Stop the virus. Save the world. When a global pandemic wipes out eighty percent of the planet’s population, the crew of a lone naval destroyer must find a way to pull humanity from the brink of extinction.”

Dane, who plays the commanding officer of “the last ship”, is the son of a Jewish mother and non-Jewish father.

While he was raised with not much religion, he did have a bar mitzvah. “The Last Ship,” by the way, is one of those “on trial” TNT series. Only ten episodes have been filmed. If it does well, it will return for a longer season sometime next year. If ratings are weak, Dane and his co-stars will not go to sea again.

“I am Contractually Obligated Not to Tell People to Buzz Off” So said BURT SHAVITZ, 74, the co-founder and face of “Burt’s Bees,” the famous cosmetics company based on products mostly derived from honey and beeswax. Shavitz was talking to JODY SHAPIRO, 44, a Canadian Jewish filmmaker who made a documentary about Shavitz, “Burt’s Buzz”, which is now playing a few theaters – but has just been released for ondemand and streaming video services viewing.

I could devote a whole column to what a character Shavitz is. Indeed, a whole film is dedicated to that very subject, as are easily found lengthy on-line profiles. So, watch the film to find out how a Long Islandraised son of a factory worker, who began as a photographer for a Jewish paper, ended up keeping bees in rural Maine, and became a reluctant cosmetics mogul. You can even view Shavitz as he travels to Taiwan, where thousands – including hundreds of kids in bee costumes – turn out to greet the most famous beekeeper in the world.

FROM THE PAGES 150 Y EARS A GO Dr. Strickland’s Tonic: we can recommend those suffering from Loss of Appetite, Indigestion, or Dyspepsia, Nervousness and Nervous Disability, to use Strickland’s Tonic. It is a vegetable preparation, free from alcoholic liquors; it strengthens the whole nervous system; it creates a good appetite; and is warranted to cure Dyspepsia and Nervous Disability. For sale by Druggists, generally at $1 per bottle.

Prepared by Dr. A. Strickland, 6 East Fourth St., Cincinnati, O. Bruel: departed this life on Sunday, June 10, at 10:30 pm at the residence of his son-in-law, Daniel Wolf. Samuel Bruel, a native of England, in the 74th year of his age. – July 15, 1864

125 Y EARS A GO One of the most pleasant events of the season was a basket picnic held on Sunday last, at Red Bank, O. Those participating were the families of Mr. Henry Lowenstein, Mr. B. Freiberg, Mrs. Philip Moss, and the members of the New Grace Aguilar Literary Society. The day was most delightfully spent in all kinds of country sports, and boating and fishing afforded much amusement to all those present. All in all the picnic was a great success and it will be looked back to with pleasure by all who participated in it.

The old reliable floating bath house is at its position at the foot of Vine Street and ready for business. It has been managed for over 20 years

by Mr. Schmidt and in all that time there has never been an accident, nor does one seem possible. This swimming bath through which the river runs affords a healthy, pleasant sport and we would like to see our young people avail themselves of it.

Mr. A. Goldman and Miss Rachel Heineman, who were married in January by a Justice, were remarried

by Dr. Philipson, at the residence of Mrs. J. Brunell, 103 Carlisle Avenue.

– June 27, 1914

100 Y EARS A GO An exceptionally sad death was that of Frances Helen, the fourteen year old daughter of Dr. Louis and Mrs. Blanche Stricker, who died after a short illness on Wednesday, June 10, at the family home in West Rockdale Avenue, Avondale.

Frances was a child of exceptional promise. She was confirmed last Shavuoth and was then apparently in perfect health, but her illness and death followed with such rapidity that the parents and friends hardly realized the gravity of the situation before the end came. The funeral took place on Friday afternoon at the chapel of the Walnut Hills Jewish Cemetery, Rabbi Philipson officiating.

Miss Dora Rosenbaum will be married on Sunday, June 21, to Max Swartz of Middletown, O. Reception will follow from 8 to 12 Sunday evening, at 608 Crown St., Walnut Hills.

Mr. John D. Razall, for many years closely identified with the Israelite, accompanied by Mrs. Razall, will sail next Tuesday on the steamer, “Friedrich der Grosse” to visit their daughter and son-in-law at Zuerich, Switzerland. – June 18, 1914

75 Y EARS A GO Children departing Sunday morning, June 25th, for Camp Strongheart, Lake Tomahawk, Wisc., under supervision of Mr. Harry Struck, include: Joel Dennis, Bert Dorman, Troy Kaichen, Jr., Peter Borden, Maurice Koch, Jr., William Mack, Leon Mack, Millard Mack, William Magnus, Paul A. Pappenheimer, Jr., Stanley Povzner, Howard Schuman, and Julius R. Wolf.

Mr. and Mrs. Herman Goldstein, of Hamilton, will be happy to meet their friends Sunday, July 2nd, at 7:30 pm, in honor of the marriage of their daughter, Miss Marian, to Mr. Mitchell Heltzer, son of Mr. and Mrs. Isadore Heltzer, of Cincinnati, at the Synagogue, Sixth and Butler Streets, Hamilton, O. The marriage of Miss Ethel Aronoff, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Aronoff, of Rockdale Avenue, to Mr. Samuel Ehrlich, son of Mr. and Mrs. Julius Ehrlich of Bogart Avenue, was solemnized Sunday, June 4th, at the home of the bride’s parents. – June 22, 1939

50 Y EARS A GO Dr. Jack Allen Hahn receieved his doctor dental surgery degree from the College of Dentistry at Ohio State University Friday, June 12. He will practice in Cincinnati.

Dr. Hahn is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Joel Hahn of Akron. His wife, the former Barbara Shuller, is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Saul E. Shuller of this city.

Sammy Green, local dance instructor, has taken over managment of Putt-Putt Golf Course, 16 Sunnybrook Drive, Roselawn. Mr. Green plans many special events at the course, which he will be operating until his dance classes are resumed in the fall.

Dr. and Mrs. Ellis Rivkin announce that their daughter, Roslyn, graduated with high honors at Swarthmore College June 8. She also was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa. She will be a caseworker-counselor for Travelers Aid in Baltimore next year.

Mr. and Mrs. Sonny Zimmerman, 2625 Knight Ave., announce the forthcoming Bar Mitzvah of their son Neal Philip, on Saturday, June 27, at

9 a.m., at Ohav Shalom Synagogue, 1834 Section Road.

Relatives and friends are cordially invited to join with us on this happy occasion. A Kiddush will be served following the services. – June 25, 1964

25 Y EARS A GO Philip M. Meyers, Jr., has been elected president of the Cincinnati Zoo for a two-year term beginning June, 1989.

Meyers is chairman and CEO of Williamsburg of Cincinnati Managment Company, Inc., a real estate development company, and a member of the boards of Star Banc Corp. and Star Bank. Other active board membership includes the College of Mount St. Joseph.

Meyers is a past president of the Cincinnatus Association, Harvard and Harvard Business School Clubs of Cincinnati, and board of park commissioners; past chairman of the Cincinnati Better Business Bureau, American Jewish Committee and Jewish Welfare Fund Campaing; past board member of Seven Hills schools, Rockdale Temple, Jewish Hospital, Citizens Schools Committee and Cincinnati Apartment Association.

Social affliations include the Queen City Club and University Club. – June 29, 1989

10 Y EARS A GO Tracy (Kabakoff), Mitch, and big sister Elizabeth Weisberger are proud to announce the birth of their daughter and sister Jaclyn Leeby on June 4, 2004. Paternal grandparents are Marvin and Janet Weisberger.

Paternal great-grandmother is Rose Mayers. Maternal grandparents are Donna Kabakoff and the late Jack Kabakoff.

Michael and Tracy (Holstein) Snyder announce the birth of their daughter, Madison Bella, on April 9, 2004. Grandparents are Richard and Jackie Snyder of Cincinnati, OH, and the late Dr. Joel and Barbara Holstein of Palm City, FL. Great-grandparents are Leah Handler of Cincinnati, OH, William Snyder of West Palm Beach, FL, and Lillian Goss of Bloomfield, NJ. Tara (nee Dunsky) and Jeremy Wayne joyfully announce the birth of identical twin sons (Kahonim) on April 10, 2004 in London, England.

Jonathan Sacha is named for his paternal grandfather Sholom. Jacob Alexander is named for his materal uncle, Avraham. The proud grandmother is Clare Gerber Dunsky and the late Dr. Irvin Dunsky of Cincinnati, OH. The later paternal grandparents are Hilda and Sydney, Order of the British Empire of London, England.– June 24, 2004

COMMUNITY DIRECTORY / CLASSIFIEDS • 19

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 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

BITCOIN from page 10 estate firms, accept Bitcoin as payment.

“I hope we can make Israel a lab for Bitcoin,” said Ayal Yona Segev, an “ambassador” at Bitcoin Embassy, which provides guidance and acts as a meeting spot for Israeli Bitcoin entrepreneurs a few blocks from Gruber’s ATM. “We have the flexibility to become a place where we test and develop everything.”

The ATM in the hotel hooks up to an online exchange. Users can log in to their accounts and either deposit cash to buy Bitcoin or sell Bitcoin and receive cash. Similar ATMs already exist in the United States, Canada and Europe.

Gruber hopes the ATM will be one of many in Israel. He jokes about placing one in the middle of the divider between men and women at the Western Wall.

Another Israeli startup, Colored Coins, allows users the opportunity to trade other currencies online using the Bitcoin code. BitcoinBox offers Bitcoin holders insurance for

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 Sha’arei Torah (513) 620-8080 • shaareitorahcincy.org Congregation Shevet Achim (513) 426-8613 • shevetachimohio.com 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 Temple Beth Shalom (513) 422-8313 • tbsohio.org Temple Sholom (513) 791-1330 • templesholom.net The Valley Temple (513) 761-3555 • valleytemple.com

their “digital wallets.” Coin Commerce offers businesses a service to accept Bitcoin as payment.

“We have a good community here,” said Aaron Aguillard, founder and CEO of Coin Commerce.

“What Coin Commerce is trying to do is set up Tel Aviv for the tourist season so people can buy Bitcoin and travel around Israel, and book hotels and use Bitcoin on the beach.”

Israeli Bitcoin entrepreneurs see the currency as a practical tool as well as an ideological dimension to their work. Segev’s office sells Bitcoin-themed T-shirts and bumper stickers, one of which writes out Nakamoto’s name in a style of chant traditionally used to celebrate the Hasidic sage Rebbe Nachman of Breslov.

Segev says that in addition to Bitcoin’s startup nature, it appeals to Israelis who took to the streets three years ago in massive numbers to protest income inequality. He calls it an alternative for people who are mistrustful of their banks and tired of high credit card fees.

EDUCA EDUCATION Chai Tots Early Childhood Center (513) 234.0600 • chaitots.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 (937) 886-9566 • jwv.org NA’AMAT (513) 984-3805 • naamat.org National Council of Jewish Women (513) 891-9583 • ncjw.org ORT America (216) 464-3022 • ortamerica.org State of Israel Bonds (513) 793-4440 • israelbonds.com

“It will make people aware of the current situation” in Israeli banking, Segev said. “This is an alternative that will make service providers – banks, the state, insurance companies – compete for customers.”

Bitcoin’s regulatory status remains unclear. The Internal Revenue Service in the United States taxes Bitcoin profits as a capital gain, but Israel only taxes income made from Bitcoin once it is transferred into shekels. In February, the Bank of Israel issued a warning regarding Bitcoin, noting that it isn’t backed by any state, is unsupervised, and could be susceptible to manipulation and criminal use.

But Avi Nov, an Israeli international tax law expert, says the legal concerns will fade as Bitcoin expands and that regular currencies also carry risk.

“The risks are greater in the regular world than in the digital world,” he said, adding that “nobody knows if tomorrow a state or a bank will fail.”

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 HERZLIYA from page 10 Zionist values, domestic politics and international legitimacy. One after another, the leaders of five major Israeli parties put forward widely divergent proposals for how Israel should proceed following the failure of peace negotiations.

Bennett suggested partial annexation of the West Bank. Finance Minister Yair Lapid advocated staged withdrawal. Livni and Labor party Chairman Isaac Herzog called for a more aggressive approach to negotiations.

Each speaker criticized the others. Lapid and Bennett, once political allies, called each other’s proposals “delusional.”

“The era of Oslo has ended,” Bennett said. “Now the time has come to admit that it simply didn’t work. We need to think in a different way to create a better reality.”

Lapid said the absence of a twostate solution to the conflict could lead to Israel’s destruction and called for Israel to present a map of proposed borders ahead of resumed negotiations.

“There’s no reason to have settlements that won’t be in the territory of Israel in any final agreement, or to invest millions of shekels in areas that will be part of the Palestinian state,” Lapid said.

The only politicians who weren’t especially bothered by the current state of Israeli-Palestinian affairs were Defense Minister THREATEN from page 16 Jewish students have recently been spit at and called “dirty Jews” and worse. The problem is greater for those students who are known to support Israel on campuses where anti-Israel activism runs high.

As anti-Jewish attitudes increase on some campuses, in some political circles, and in some corners of the Internet, it is naïve to assume that the Jewish American community will not face spillover security risks.

Moreover, we cannot assume that the factors that have rendered American exceptional will persist. In a global age, ideas, attitudes and behaviors are less constrained by national borders

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(513) 531-9600 Moshe Yaalon and Interior Minister Gideon Saar, both of the ruling Likud party. Both dismissed the idea of territorial compromise and blamed the failure of the talks on the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

“I think we made a mistake with land for peace,” Yaalon said. “The conflict is not about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It’s about the existence of a Jewish national home.”

One issue of broad consensus among conference speakers was the need to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Speakers were skeptical that negotiations between Iran and world powers to scale back Iran’s nuclear program would succeed.

“It’s clear to us that this regime has not given up the option of a nuclear military capability and is striving toward it,” Yaalon said.

“And it thinks it will succeed in this through negotiations with the West and a charm offensive.”

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, a Likud member, said a nuclear-armed Iran constitutes a far greater danger than the stalemate with the Palestinians.

“If a difficult scenario comes to be 10 years from now, with Iran holding tens of weapons, all peace plans will be a total failure,” Steinitz said. “With a nuclear Iran, even [Israeli President] Shimon Peres will need to store away the peace plans.”

than they once were.

Immigration, trade and international communications all bring foreign elements to American shores, both for better and for worse. To ignore the dangers of resurgent worldwide antiSemitism is to misunderstand the ways in which we will all be touched by developments around the world, whether we choose to recognize them or not.

Kenneth L. Marcus is president of The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and former staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

20 • ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT / BOOK REVIEW

The WHEREWITHAL: A Novel in Verse by Philip Schultz

By Sue W. Ransohoff Book Reviewer My first reaction on seeing this new book to review was: “I don't understand verse; I can't do this.”

My second reaction after scanning a few lines was: “It carries you,” or, at least, it carried me. It has narrative drive - compounded with the mistiness of poetry; not hidden or obscure, but not invested with the clarity of prose Schultz, a Pulitzer Prize winner and author of several books, has undertaken a daunting task and has carried it out with excellence. A significant part of the back-story is that his mother, during World War II, had saved seven Jews. He continues, with lines that are threaded throughout and that speak vividly: “Her diaries begin on July 10th, 1941, the day the non-Jewish half of Jedwabne's population attacked and murdered the Jewish half.

Two themes or plot lines are threaded through this play; the Holocaust, , and his mother's diary recalling the massacre at Jedwabne , and they recur in no particular order.

A third less powerful subplot is that of Zodiac, a murderer, whose confession of the death of a taxi driver appears in every San Francisco newspaper.

Yes, it is dark; yes, it recalls horrors, in a way that makes it important to remember what horrors did to individuals. I found that although I could not always follow the action, there was something in his text that caught me up and moved me.

How could one not be moved by these lines: “She [Mother] claimed she understood why her neighbors killed all their Jews not only for their property (which they took) or because they'd collaborated with the Bolsheviks (in order to survive; everyone did) or were Communists (whose ideology hated everyone

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‘The Living Memories Project’ focuses on how people channel their grief

By Beth Kotzin Assistant Editor

equally) (They envied everyone) Or because, in order to survive.

Someone had to be one ladder rung lower then their opinion of themselves.” (Emphasis added.)

His mother hid seven Jews, during the Holocaust, but foreshadowing this act of compassion and courage our narrator asks: “Is irony the right word to describe how her Alzheimer's erased the part of her life she wanted to remember and rendered vividly the part she wanted to forget?”

This is a unique book, outside the boundaries of our usual “good reads.” Don't expect another Kate Atkinson, or Jodi Picault (very fine in their ways). Certainly don't look for the excellent histories of Doris Kearns Goodwin or of Robert Caro.

“Wherewithal” is a challenge, an intellectual exercise, and one we might all benefit from trying at least once. Step outside the box; accept the usefulness of poetry in the service of darkness and anger.

The book is further enhanced by a few equally dark reproductions of etchings by Geovanni Battista Piranesi, with staircases leading nowhere, ropes, chains, archways, dim figures of people, exactly appropriate to the poetic text.

When Meryl Ain lost her parents back to back, she needed to find a way to channel her grief.

She remembered how her mother once told her that when you need to get past something, you should immerse yourself in a project.

That advice inspired Meryl to delve into how others managed their grief, and to create a book sharing those experiences with the world.

Along with her husband, Stewart, and her brother, Arthur Fishman, Meryl was able to interview 32 people, including celebrities, about how they channeled their grief into projects memoralizing their lost loved ones. “There’s no such thing as closure,” said Meryl. “It’s more how you integrate the passions and memories (of your loved one) into your life.”

Meryl used interviews, anecdotes, essays, poems and photographs to show the many ways that both ordinary individuals and celebrities manage to keep those memorie alive. From rituals or recipes to the feelings of their loved one’s presence, everyone had some special way of channeling their grief into something positive.

Some contributors to the book include: Author, actor and raconteur Malachy McCourt, who presents his unique take on how he keeps alive the memory of his brother Frank (author of Angela’s Ashes) through the Irish tradition of song and story Robert Meeropol, the son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, who established the Rosenberg Fund

for Children Personality Nick Clooney, who keeps alive the memory of his sisters, Rosemary and Betty, through a museum, foundation and special events, and who carries on his grandfather’s values of social responsibility through his work on behalf of Darfur with his son, actor George Clooney A quilt designer who helps others preserve their memories of deceased loved ones through the creation of memory quilts Physician and musician YeouCheng Ma, sister of famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who carries on their father’s legacy through her work with The Children’s Orchestra Society, which her father founded, and who honors him and another mentor through her poetry A couple who lost their son on 9/11 and created a foundation in his memory to assist trauma victims in Third World countries The parents and sister of an Air Force reservist killed in Iraq who have started a foundation in

his memory for the benefit of Americans in military service Lynda Johnson Robb, daughter of President Lyndon Baines Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson, who, through her work, keeps alive her mother’s love of wildflowers A bride who began her wedding ceremony with a poem she wrote in honor of her mother, whom she lost when she was 12 Gary Toll, writer and director of a feature-length documentary about his late sister, “Judy Toll, the Funniest Woman You’ve Never Heard Of” Sherri Mandell, who, following the murder of her 13-year-old son and his friend, created a foundation to help bring emotional, physical and spiritual healing to bereaved children and adults Author Arthur Kurzweil, who, captivated as a child by his father’s stories of their Polish ancestors, went on to write numerous books on genealogy Emmy award-winning performer and playwright Ellen Gould, who conceived and wrote her play, Bubbe Meises, Bubbe Stories, as a way to resolve the untimely passing of two siblings and to pay tribute to her deceased grandmothers A man who has honored the memory of a deceased golf partner by sponsoring, for more than two decades, an annual golf outing, the proceeds from which are donated to the American Cancer Society To Meryl, this was “very cathartic.” If you keep the values and memories alive of a person who has passed away, then they really don’t die - they are remembered on forever.

Metropolitan Opera urged to cancel “Death of Klinghoffer” The Zionist of Organization of America (ZOA), one of the oldest and largest Jewish organizations in America urges the Metropolitan Opera of New York (the “Met”) to cancel its planned eight fall 2014 performances and worldwide broadcast of the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel opera “Death of Klinghoffer.”

ZOA President Morton Klein stated: “This anti-Semitic opera viciously falsifies history to malign and incite hatred against Israel and the Jewish people. The opera is a disgrace and should be canceled immediately.”

“Death of Klinghoffer” attempts to justify and “humanize” Palestinian terrorists’ cold-blooded murder of a helpless innocent, elder-

ly disabled wheelchair-bound American Jewish man during Palestinian terrorists’ 1985 hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship.

The Palestinian terrorists shot Leon Klinghoffer in his wheelchair, and then dumped Mr. Klinghoffer’s body (along with his wheelchair) into the sea.

“Death of Klinghoffer” opens by purveying a key “big lie” that has incited anti-Semitism and attacks on Israel for the past six decades since Israel’s rebirth. The opera’s opening caption is “May 15, 1948, the day after Israel’s creation.” An Arab chorus sings the opera’s first line: “my father’s house was razed in 1948,” and then speaks of how guests were always welcome to refresh themselves in the Arab home

and its “pure well,” but none of the home’s walls are standing anymore because “Israel laid all to waste.”

Meanwhile, a little Arab girl supposedly watches Israeli soldiers brutally driving Arabs from their homes.

Arab women and children are shown fleeing for their lives, while Israeli soldiers are shown shooting, hitting innocent Arabs with rifle butts, chasing the fleeing Arabs, and slapping an old Arab woman who is sitting passively in the dirt, flattening pita dough.

The entire opening libretto and scene is of course a work of pure defamatory fiction, designed to malign Israel and the Jewish people.

Jews did not drive Arabs from Israel or raze Arab homes in 1948.

Instead, Jewish leaders begged the

Arabs to remain in their homes and to live together in peace.

Immediately after the opening scene, “Death of Klinghoffer” quickly spews forth more of the big lies often used to malign Israel, including extreme “Arab refugee number inflation.” The next scene is captioned “1985: 3.7 Million Palestinians in Exile,” and again depicts fabricated brutal treatment of Palestinians by Israelis. In fact, a detailed analysis of before-and-after Arab demographic data, by Dr. Walter Pinner, revealed that the number of legitimate Arab refugees was 367,000 as of 1966 – less than one-tenth of “Death of Klinghoffer’s” ultra-magnified propaganda numbers. Moreover, even inflated British Arab popula-

tion data was very close to Dr. Pinner’s numbers. Moreover, by contrast to the fewer than 400,000 self-exiled Arab refugees, approximately one million Jews were forced to flee their homes in Arab lands by Arab anti-Semitic pogroms and decrees during the same time period.

Another seriously disturbing aspect of “Death of Klinghoffer” is the opera’s persistent attempts to humanize the terrorists, and equate and confuse the Palestinian murderers with their Jewish victims. In performances of “Death of Klinghoffer,” the same actors/singers play both Palestinians and Jews, in a deliberate attempt to equate both sides. An article on a

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FIRST PERSON • 21

THURSDAY, JUNE 19, 2014

Quantifying what is good in your life Incidentally Iris

by Iris Ruth Pastor To be perfectly honest, I was feeling quite sorry for myself. My husband's road to recovery had been bumpier than anticipated. I was struck down with a killer sinus infection that disrupted the meager Memorial Day holiday plans we had managed to pull together. And one of our best couple friends were moving to Maine. To add to my woes, the other night I had made a huge dent in the bowl of caramels I had recently placed next to me by the couch - in WORLD CUP from page 7 are offering their services through Facebook.

Salem said she budgeted for $9,000, with $5,000 covered by a grant from the Tulsa, Okla.-based Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. Large and small businesses donated funds and products, while others provided discounts for printing promotional flyers and embroidering the 400 kippahs that Schlez brought along to give away at the Shabbat events.

At the Havdalah services, soccer-themed note paper will be distributed for participants to

CONTINUED from previous page performance of the opera in Brussels noted that the dual Palestinian/Jewish roles is only part of the intentional effort to confuse murderers with victims: “There is a blurring of physical identities. The entire cast – principals, chorus and dancers – is dressed alike, in anonymous shirts, baggy trousers or skirts.”

Italian author and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi wrote in his last book, The Drowned and the Saved (1986): “[T]o confuse [murderers] with their victims is a moral disease or an aesthetic affectation or a sinister sign of complicity; above all, it is a precious service rendered (intentionally or not) to the negators of truth.”

The Hebrew words for art and artist, “ooman” and “oomanoot” relate to the concept of truth. The words have the same root as “Amen” – which means “let this prayer be true.” Art should be truth-

an effort to test my new found will power. Ha Ha. My usual positive frame of mind had abandoned me. I was falling into an abyss of negativism I began flipping through my arsenal of pollyanish phrases in an effort to banish the blues. The first one springing to mind was the tried and true "Count Your Blessings" mantra. "Nope," I said to myself emphatically, "I'm sick of that worn out phrase." So I kept searching for a more effective panacea as I roamed my house - my very cherished and carefully tended house that - through my efforts and my husband's willingness - reflected our family history, our tastes, our values and our lifestyle.

But the anemic phrase "Count Your Blessings" followed me as I scrambled eggs for breakfast in my favorite non-stick pan - while watching CNN news on my readily accessible flat screen smart TV. Later in the day, I skyped with two of my grandchildren and then carefully tended my masses of riotously

blooming house plants. Still in a funk, I desultorily fetched the mail, making a mental note to deposit the short term disability check my husband had received and to check my bank balance to see if our Social Security check had arrived. Poor me.

I wandered into my book-lined living room. I stumbled upon the box of family photos I had dumped out while looking for the perfect ones to assemble for a sign-in board for my youngest son's 30th birthday party - a party I would be attending in New York City the following weekend. Poor, poor me.

And that is when I started thinking about what other people had written about their lives and blessings.

Sarah Breathnach - author of “Simple Abundance” - a day book of comfort and joy - focuses on savoring the smallest details, rather than that which is lacking in her life. The daisies in a jar on the window sill.

The fragrance of a child or grandchild's hair. The first sip of coffee in the morning. When we can't access

our inner resources to empower ourselves to feel happy and fulfilled, Breathnach advises us to focus on the abundance in our lives. And gratitude is the key.

In “Chestnut Street”, Maeve Binchy's collection of short stories published posthumously, Binchy cites a character named Molly, who is seeking a cure for her sleeplessness. She is advised to do the following: Buy a big notebook with at least 20 pages in it. Stick a picture on the cover, something to do with flowers. On the night you can't sleep, get up and dress as if were going out visiting, make a cup of tea, get out the notebook and, in your best handwriting, write about just one thing that makes you happy. Then spend a whole hour doing something you had meant to do - like polishing the silver or arranging photographs in an album. Then undress carefully and go back to bed.

At the end of the 20 days, Molly realized that her life was more organized, her sleeping was more satisfying and there were still so

many more blessings she hadn't written about.

No matter how you present it, quantifying what is good in your life works. It works for authors, sages and the common man. And I am going to remember that when the going gets rough, my scale tips high and my spirits sag. As my friend Damon, the plumber, wisely noted in a text he sent me last week about his life, "I continue to look for the right choices, accept what my present circumstances are. I don't focus on the problem. I search instead for the possibilities. And I dedicate my life to a celebration of renewal and change."

The Talmud tells us that we will be called on to account for every permissible pleasure life offered us, but which we refused to enjoy while on earth. So here's to both joyfulness and mindfulness.

Keep coping, Iris Ruth Pastor

write messages heralding the coming week. The messages will be collected and displayed, Salem said.

The gatherings promise to be a multicultural cholent that thrills Salem.

“Connecting Jewish people from all over the world is what I love,” Salem said. “It’s like a dream.”

The dream began taking shape at a family dinner when Schlez, a longtime fan of the Boca Juniors team – Diego Maradonna, who led Argentina to the 1986 World Cup title, was his favorite player – expressed a desire to attend the Brazil tournament. The couple

mulled programming ideas before approaching the Schusterman foundation.

Returning from a camping trip in January, they learned that their grant request was approved.

That’s when the planning gears really started churning.

The World Cup programming dovetails with the aim of Turismo Judaico, a company Salem launched to provide Jewish travelers with information such as Shabbat candle-lighting times, kosher dining options, and sites of cultural and religious interest.

The foundation, which encourages Jewishly focused initiatives for young people under

the theme “Make It Happen,” deemed the World Cup programming a creative way to build community, said Seth Cohen, Schusterman’s director of network initiatives.

“We think that young adults are the levers of change in the Jewish world and in the world Jewishly,” Cohen said, and the Brazil events bring “a Jewish lens to an experience the entire world is watching.”

“The eyes of the world are on Brazil. Let’s shine a light on the Jewish community there as well.”

ROCKDALE from page 5

ful. It should not be used to spread anti-Semitic falsehoods which incite more Jew hatred in an era in which innocent Jews are frequently being violently attacked.

America’s great cultural institutions would at the very least “do no harm.” Unfortunately, however, the Metropolitan Opera’s eight planned prime time performances and worldwide broadcast of the anti-Semitic propaganda opera “Death of Klinghoffer” – which maligns Israel and justifies the murder of innocent Jews – is certain to add fuel to the raging fires of Jew hatred.

Other postings regarding “Death of Klinghoffer,” such as Myron Kaplan’s open letter to the Metropolitan Opera’s General Manager Peter Gelb, have pointed out additional extremely troubling issues with the opera, including the opera’s lyrics labeling Jews as fat, cheating, exploiters, defilers of virgins, defamers, etc., while the Palestinian murders are described as humane “men of ideals.”

ZOA and other groups will be protesting the Met’s performances and broadcast of the “Death of Klinghoffer.”

TEENS from page 9

reading “Bring Back Our Boys.”

The page is predicated on the international protest formula initiated by U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, who created a page called “Bring Back Our Girls” to campaign for the release of nearly 300 Christian Nigerian girls kidnapped by the Muslim terrorist group Boko Haram.

Viewers who arrive at the “Bring Back Our Boys” page are asked to share it with friends, with an emphasis on celebrities who can more effectively raise the page’s profile by adding pictures of themselves with the slogan.

ZOA President Morton Klein also noted: “If an opera attempted to justify the lynching or murder of an innocent black, gay or Hispanic man with false stories about blacks, gay people or Hispanics, the Met would never dream of staging such a racist or bigoted opera. Maligned Jews deserve the same consideration that the Met would give to any other group. Death of Klinghoffer is pure anti-Semitism.”

“Death of Klinghoffer” is particularly dangerous at this juncture. We are living in perilous times. Jews and Christians are being targeted and attacked throughout the world.

The growth in anti-Semitism has been particularly explosive.

In this increasingly perilous environment, one would hope that

provided assistance to the immediate and extended families of the abducted teens.

“We arrive during the most intimate and difficult moments, offer our help, and leave the decision up to the family. In emergency situations like terror attacks we usually wait,” social worker Ariela Segal said.

Social workers visited the boys’ schools to help explain the situation to their classmates, said Segal.

‘Bring Back Our Boys’ A Facebook page created Friday following the kidnapping had garnered close to 80,000 “likes” by Monday.

The “Bring Back Our Boys” Facebook page, which aims to raise international awareness of the kidnapping, acquired more than 7,000 “likes” in its first four hours, and numerous viewers uploaded pictures of themselves holding signs

Boris Auerbach introduced Amberley Village Mayor Tom Muething who presented Rabbi Coran with a proclamation in recognition of her leadership contributions to the village. The certificate established June 7, 2014 as Rabbi Sigma Faye Coran Day in Amberley Village.

The picnic was attended by a significant number of congregational families who enjoyed a great grillout by the event co-chairs and a lavish display of pot luck dishes.

Assistant Rabbi Meredith Kahan led a Havdalah service prior to the festivities and presentations.

Nitzi Yakov, Shlomi Diaz, Shlomo Cesana, Yael Barnovsky, and Ilan Gattegno contributed reporting.

22 • OBITUARIES D EATH N OTICES LICHTIN, J. Leon, age 90, died June 10, 2014; 12 Sivan, 5774.

BLATT, Dr. Ethyl, age 87, died June 16, 2014; 18 Sivan, 5774.

O BITUARIES

ROSENBERG, Beverly Nathan Beverly Nathan Rosenberg of Scottsdale, Arizona – formerly of Cincinnati, Ohio – passed away on May 27, 2014. She is predeceased by her parents Abraham and Esther Nathan, as well as her loving sister Marjorie Nathan Loftspring.

She is survived by her husband of 65 years, Bernard L. Rosenberg of Scottsdale, Arizona, her three children

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Ellyn and Michael Kruke of Scottsdale, Lauren Rosenberg of Dallas, Texas, and Deby and Tim Wolfcale of Austin, Texas.

She is also survived by eight grandchildren: Jaye Kruke Rich and husband Court Rich, Jill Kruke and Kelley Kruke, Jacob, Benjamin, and Russell Wilner, and Preston and Peyton Wolfcale. Beverly is also survived by two great-grandchildren Zachary and Dylan Rich.

She is also survived by many nieces and nephews.

Beverly and her husband Bernard enjoyed a very active life playing tennis, golf, and bridge. She was active in NCJW, O.R.T, and was on the Isaac M. Wise Temple Sisterhood Board. She earned a Master’s Degree in Social Work at Xavier University, which allowed her to help others during her working career.

Beverly touched so many lives and will be missed by everyone that knew her. Her family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be send to Banner Alzheimer’s Research Foundation. Please leave your messages of condolences in the guest book on the Green Acres website.where you can also share a nice memory with the family.

Services were held at the Green Acres Gan Ohav Shalom Cemetery in Tempe, AZ on Thursday May 29, 2014. Shiva was held on Thursday evening.

HAMAS from page 7 of allegiance to Hamas, during free and fair elections it would be obliged to facilitate Hamas campaigning, Brown said.

“For elections to work, both sides would have to operate politically, and I don’t know how you square that with security cooperation,” Brown said. “It would be necessary for the West Bank security forces to ease up on Hamas. The second they do that, the Israelis would object.”

Jonathan Schanzer, a vice president at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said elections would legitimate Hamas and pave the way for what he called the “Lebanonization” of the Palestinian polity, referring to the outsized influence that Hezbollah, an armed militia, has in Lebanon.

Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department, said he anticipated a “central government itself weak and susceptible to the military adventurism of Hamas.”

“Should elections be held and Hamas is a participant, it is a dangerous message that the United States and Abu Mazen are sending that this is a legitimate actor,” he said, referring to Abbas.

Matt Duss, a Middle East analyst at the Center for American Progress, a think tank with close ties to the Obama administration, agreed that BOYCOTTING from page 9 that 41 percent of Hungarians hold anti-Semitic attitudes.

Still, Heisler suggested, the greatest challenges he faces are not related to the national political situation.

“My biggest problem is not Orban or Jobbik but reorganizing Mazsihisz and dealing with the weakness of the organization,” he said.

As the main Jewish umbrella group, Mazsihisz officially represents the interests of Hungarian Jewry to the government and is responsible for the annual distribution of millions of dollars of government subventions and Holocaust compensation funds to Jewish organizations.

Critics have long accused the group of being undemocratic and unrepresentative, and called for a reform of its financial and administrative operations.

“The level of mistrust of Mazsihisz is high,” Heisler said.

WEAKNESS from page 16 suspension of this aid.

Also, just as the Palestinians have used “lawfare” – the invocation of international legal conventions against Israel – so can we.

Abbas and his colleagues should be held accountable for breaching

Hamas’ entry into government posed a danger as long as it maintained a separate militia.

“It’s impossible not to see the possibility of Lebanonization when you have anyone entering the government with security forces,” he said.

Abrams, citing the 1993 Oslo agreements that are the basis for Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and for the Palestinian Authority, said Hamas may even be precluded from running in elections. The agreements ban parties that “commit or advocate racism” and use unlawful or undemocratic means to achieve their ends.

“In my view the real worry is the election and repeating the mistake the Bush administration made and going along with election of Hamas,” Abrams said.

Israel, Abrams said, would be better served dealing with the interim government and trying to keep Hamas from running.

“I wish the Israelis would go along with that and work with the European Union and the United States in barring Hamas from participating,” he said.

The State Department official said Abbas’ strategy in moving to elections was to strengthen his Fatah faction.

“Abbas has been pretty clear that his whole purpose in doing this is to marginalize Hamas,” the official said. “We think Abbas has pursued

the interim government to weaken Hamas, not to strengthen it.”

Abrams chuckled when he heard this was a strategy embraced by the administration.

“Boy, does that sound familiar to me,” he said, recalling that bolstering Fatah’s preeminence was precisely the strategy in 2006 when then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed for Palestinian elections.

Still, Abrams noted that polls of Palestinians suggest that such an aim may not be so quixotic. Hamas is unpopular and has been weakened by the hostility of the new militarybacked leadership in Egypt, which reviles the Palestinian Islamist group. On the other hand, he said, the factors that made Fatah unappealing in 2006 have not changed.

“Fatah is completely unreformed,” he said, referring to its system of patronage.

David Pollock, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that at least until the elections, an advantage for the United States and Israel in the arrangement is that it could allow Fatah to keep a closer eye on Hamas.

“If the U.S. continues funding, one can make a convincing case this is not helping Hamas,” Pollock said.

“On the contrary, it is helping the P.A. keep tabs on Hamas in the West Bank.”

“We have to change this.”

Heisler said a recent operational review showed large-scale flaws in in the management of the organization, which employs nearly 1,000 people, and an economic audit revealed “very serious problems.”

He acknowledged, too, that he faced opposition in his hopes to “open the umbrella wider” to allow Hungary’s small Reform Jewish congregations, which are not recognized by Mazsihisz, to join.

“Mazsihisz is a big organization with huge infrastructure,” he said.

“If these changes can’t be made, we are on a slippery slope.”

Most of Memento70’s 35 member groups are Jewish community or cultural groups that come under the Mazsihisz umbrella. They include most of the mainstream Jewish organizations that had won the government’s Holocaust commemoration grants.

The Memento70 campaign is raising money for projects including the construction of Holocaust memorials, cleaning up Jewish

cemeteries, book publications, educational initiatives, and commemorative performances, exhibitions and concerts.

By early June, Memento70 had amassed more than 3,600 Facebook followers but had collected only $38,400 from 374 donors – just 4 percent of its $957,500 target.

Many of the donations, Memento70 spokeswoman Antonia Szenthe noted, had come from donors with limited means who simply wanted to show support.

“A poor Roma community in a village got together and sent us the equivalent of $25,” she said. “It’s not much money, but it really meant something.”

While the campaign is still far short of its fundraising goals, Szenthe cast the effort in a positive light.

“There has never before been a fundraising alliance like this,” she said. “It is a very new thing.

Fundraising as such has never happened here. Begging, yes. But not fundraising.”

the 1998 Wye Memorandum, which obliges the PA to control the arsenals of Hamas and smaller terror groups like Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The fundamental problem remains: There is no credible Palestinian political force committed to an enduring peace deal

with Israel. Therefore, expect more violence, both among the Palestinians and against Israel, and expect, as a consequence, further international vilification of Israel for taking the necessary measures to protect its population.

Like I said, from now on, it’s all about damage limitation.

AI

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