Globe The big switch Barak leaves Labor to start new political party Page 10
THE JEWISH CHRONICLE thejewishchronicle.net JANUARY 20, 2011 shevat 15, 5771
Vol. 53, No. 38
Pittsburgh, PA
Rediscovering Jewish roots
$1.50
With Stuxnet delaying Iran’s bomb, is the urgency gone? BY RON KAMPEAS JTA
Photo courtesy of Rabbi Barbara Aiello
Rabbi Barbara Aiello officiates as Leila Sobral becomes a bat mitzva in Rome, Italy. Leila is only the third young woman in Italian Jewish history to read directly from the Torah as a part of the modern liberal progressive movement in Italy.
Pittsburgher is Italy’s first female rabbi BY TOBY TABACHNICK Staff Writer
Back in the 1950s, when Barbara Aiello was growing up in the Hill District, Dormont and Beachview, and attending Catholic school, no one could have guessed what the future would hold for the dark-haired girl from a large Italian clan, the first in her family to be born in the United States. Now, in her 60s, she is a self-described
“pioneer,” the first woman rabbi to serve as a spiritual leader in Italy, as well as that country’s first non-Orthodox rabbi. Aiello comes from a family of anousim (Italians whose ancestors were forced into conversion from Judaism), and has made it her mission to help other Italians re-connect with long lost Jewish roots. “I was raised to know I was Jewish from both (mother’s and father’s) sides,” Aiello told the Chronicle, speak-
ing from the Kobernick House, an assisted living center in Sarasota, Fla., where Aiello serves as spiritual leader for senior citizens during the winter months. But, growing up in Pittsburgh, her family was secular, and what remained of its Jewish heritage had been reduced to a handful of customs. Aiello’s family came from southern Italy, where a once strong Jewish presence had been practically obliterated Please see Aiello, page 19.
WASHINGTON — In the wake of revelations that a computer virus may have set back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the Western groups and analysts that track the Islamic Republic are saying, “More of the same, please.” The benefits of a nonviolent program that inhibits Iranian hegemony by keeping the country’s nuclear weapons program at bay are obvious: Better to stop Iran with cyber warfare — in this case, the Stuxnet computer virus, which reportedly caused Iran’s nuclear centrifuges to spin out of control — than actual warfare. For those who favor engagement, the cyber attack buys more time to coax the regime in Tehran into compliance. For those who favor the stick, it allows more time to exert pressure on Iran through sanctions and diplomatic isolation. Almost coincident with last weekend’s revelations — published in Sunday’s New York Times in a piece that detailed the extent of the damage caused by the virus — Meir Dagan, the outgoing head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, said that Iran likely would not have a bomb before 2015. Prior to that, Israeli assessments had predicted a weapon as early as this year. The Stuxnet revelations, if anything, reinforce the need for a tough stance, said Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. They underscore how committed Iran is to producing a bomb, he told JTA. “It’s a reason to push down on the pedal,” said Berman, who crafted the most recent Iran sanctions law in the Congress. “Iran is still enriching Please see Stuxnet, page 19.
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Times To Remember
KINDLE SABBATH CANDLES: 5:06 p.m. EST. SABBATH ENDS: 6:09 p.m. EST.