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part of a story, part of the story,â&#x20AC;? he said.

By Jewish Star Staff Rabbi Soloveichik, director of the ZaRabbi Meir Soloveichik told a communal Yom Hazikaron (memorial day) / Yom hava and Moshael Straus Center for Torah Haatzmaut (independence day) program on and Western Thought at Yeshiva University, Monday night that the unity of the Jewish delighted his audience with a discussion of people was the key â&#x20AC;&#x201D; together with Torah J.R.R. Tolkenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Hobbit.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s about a group of dwarves who once and mitzvot â&#x20AC;&#x201D; to the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s survival over centuries and to the modern rebirth of Medi- lived in a glorious kingdom on a mighty nat Yisrael. â&#x20AC;&#x153;If we are one people itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s because we were always one people and that unity lay at the very heart of Zionism,â&#x20AC;? he told a nearcapacity crowd at the Young Israel of Woodmere. â&#x20AC;&#x153;You kill that and Zionism cannot stand.â&#x20AC;? The event was co-sponsored by Yeshiva University and 15 area shuls.

Rabbi Soloveichik spoke at length of his childhood hero, Menachem Begin, recounting what he described as Beginâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest moment â&#x20AC;&#x201D; during the battle for independence against the British, when an Irgun ship smuggling badly needed arms was ďŹ red on

by Ben Gurionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Haganah, Begin refused to ďŹ re back.

5DEEL 0HLU 6RORYHLFKLN ULJKW ZLWK 3KLO 5RVHQ DW <RXQJ ,VUDHO RI â&#x20AC;&#x153;As Begin said at the time, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;I :RRGPHUHÂśV HYHQW RQ 0RQGD\ QLJKW 7KH -HZLVK 6WDU (G :HLQWURE live by an iron rule, that a Jew must never shed the blood of another Jew, mountain,â&#x20AC;? he said. Their kingdom was deneverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;,â&#x20AC;? Rabbi Soloveichik said, recalling that stroyed and they were â&#x20AC;&#x153;disbursed, strangâ&#x20AC;&#x153;we lost the second Temple because of base- ers in a strange land, speaking the language less hatredâ&#x20AC;? among ourselves. of those among whom they lived and only He spoke of non-observant Jews whose speaking their own language among themconnection to am Israel compelled them to selves. But they never stopped dreaming of join the ďŹ ght for Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s independence. their own kingdom, never stropped mournâ&#x20AC;&#x153;Whether we like it or not, as Jews we are ing for their mountain.â&#x20AC;?

Remembering Aunt Selly

By Judy Joszel wo weeks ago I lost a very special friend. Hundreds of people thought of her as their special friend as well â&#x20AC;&#x201D; I should say relative because, Selma Weber was known as Aunt Selly to all who knew her.

The ďŹ rst time I met Aunt Selly, I was at Aviva and David Weberâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s house for their daughter Daniellaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s birthday party. In through the door came Aunt Selly like The Cat in the Hat. She had two huge bags in each hand loaded with goodies. She greeted everyone with a warm hello and a hug and she had the biggest smile and twinkle in her eyes I have ever seen. Selma Weber aâ&#x20AC;?h, was Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aunt. She was Davidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fatherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sister and, just like her brother Irwin, she was charismatic Continued on page 3

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By Alex Traiman, JNS.org Secretary of State John Kerry’s controversial remark that Israel risks becoming “an apartheid state” in the absence of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shined a spotlight on a perceived demographic threat to Israel—a threat that some experts say is not based on current reality.

The term “apartheid” refers to the former policy of segregation and discrimination in racist South Africa, in which a minority white elite held a monopoly on power over a black majority. Using the term with reference to Israel implies that Israeli Arabs do not have equal rights with Jews, and that Jewish Israelis are on the verge of becoming a ruling Jewish minority.

“It is outrageous that U.S. policymakers would find it opportune to irresponsibly and recklessly accuse Israel of apartheid while Arabs in Israel are the only Arab community in the Middle East that benefits from Western democracy, civil liberties, and freedom of speech,” said former Israeli ambassador Yoram Ettinger, a member of the AmericanIsrael Demographic Research Group.

“The root of [Kerry’s] unfortunate and erroneous statement has to do with a devastating ignorance of the demographic balance of Jews and Arabs west of the Jordan River,” he said. While Jews make up a solid majority of Israeli residents, many have argued that oncehigh Arab birthrates combined with modest Jewish birthrates could mean the end of the Jewish population edge, and thereby create a situation in which Jews would be forced to rule over a majority of Palestinians or cede power. Yet a relatively recent two-way shift in birthrates is altering this paradigm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Maybe the demographic threat was real 10 to 20 years ago, but not anymore,” said Dr. Guy Bechor, an Israeli historian, lawyer, and professor who currently runs the blog Gplanet.co.il.

“There is a rise of Jewish fertility rate in

Israel, and a decline of Arab fertility rate in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority,” Bechor said. He noted that in the 1970s and ’80s, the fertility rate per Muslim mother in Israel was more than 8 children, and today the rate is 3.2.

“In the Jewish community, 20 or 15 years ago, fertility rates were 2.5, and now it is more than 3 children per mother,” he said.

“The numbers today are virtually the same between Arab and Jewish families.”

A dramatic decline in Arab fertility rates can also be seen in virtually every Middle East country, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey, Bechor observes.

Israel, meanwhile, is the only first-world nation in the world currently experiencing an increase in fertility—more than a full child above the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family.

“Four is the new three,” Bechor said.

“There is a renaissance of the Jewish fertility rate in Israel. Today, there is a clear Jewish majority in Israel, and this majority will continue to grow in the next few years.”

There are two other major factors affecting Israel’s population balance: immigration and the misrepresentation of census statistics by the Palestinian Authority.

Since before its creation, Israel has had an aggressive Jewish immigration program, with millions of Jews arriving from Europe, Arab countries, and the former Soviet Union.

Today, Jews from around the world continue to immigrate to Israel, most noticeably from France and Ukraine.

“Jews have benefitted since 1882 from an annual net Jewish immigration, and the next few years are very promising for a potential wave of aliyah,” Ettinger said. “Therefore, not only don’t we have an Arab demographic timebomb in Israel, but there is major demographic Jewish momentum.”

The “demographic time bomb” has been the prevailing theory asserted by historians and demographers for a small Jewish na-

Prime Minister Netanyahu with Secretary of State Kerry in Jerusalem on Jan. 2. State Dept.

tion in a predominantly Muslim region since before the foundation of the state. Yet, according to Ettinger, these theories have been repeatedly proven false.

“In 1898, Jewish historian Shimon Dubnow chastised [Theodor] Herzl’s ideology about Zionism, and published a projection that under the best-case Jewish scenario, no more than 500,000 Jews would live west of the Jordan River by 2000. He was off by five and a half million Jews,” Ettinger said.

Later, Professor Roberto Backi similarly attempted to dissuade Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion from declaring independence in 1948, claiming that Jews could not sustain a majority.

“He projected there would be 2.3 million Jews in Israel by 2001, a 33-percent minority between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean,” Ettinger said. “He was wrong by roughly 4 million Jews.”

Today’s demographers, according to Ettinger, are making the same mistakes—and worse—by adhering to intentionally inaccurate and misleading data provided by the Palestinian Bureau of Statistics on the number of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza.

Ettinger cites numerous statistical inconsistencies and double counting relating to birthrates and net emigration by Palestinians to Europe and other countries, as well as claims that some 300,000 Palestinians live in Jerusalem as Palestinian citizens, even though they are Israeli citizens who are counted in Israel’s census.

“All in all there is a 1 million person gap, or 1 million artificial inflation of the number of Palestinian residents in Judea and Samaria, which is 1.7 million and not 2.7 million, as widely reported,” Ettinger said. “And there is a gap of roughly 250,000 Palestinians in Gaza.”

Bechor, who has taught at both Harvard University and Israel’s Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, said the increases in Jewish birthrates not only change the paradigm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also change the overall balance of world Jewry.

He notes that Jews in the Diaspora have declining fertility rates that have dropped below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family. Yet despite the decline of global Jewish populations, “because of the increase of the Jewish fertility rate in Israel, the numbers of Jews around the world are increasing for the first time since the Holocaust,” Bechor said.

“Today, there are more than 1 million more Jews living in Israel than in America,” he said. “For more than 100 years, many believed that America was the solution for the Jewish people. But today, Israel is the center of the Jewish people, and all the other countries are satellites.”

“Jewish majority west of the Jordan River is not only secure, but it is about to grow,” said Ettinger. “We are now at the beginning of major Jewish demographic momentum.”

Holocaust hijack: Making anti-Semitism acceptable again

By Eric Rozenman, JNS.org When the Presbyterian Church’s biennial assembly meets in Detroit, calls for divestment from Israel are likely to be considered, supported by the infamous “Zionism Unsettled” study guide.

Both Iran’s English-language propaganda arm, Press TV, and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke endorsed the guide when it appeared early this year. Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, on the other hand, condemned the booklet as anti-Israel and anti-Jewish. David Borg, executive director of Christians United for Israel, called it a “wicked” work that tries to revive the Holocaustdiscredited doctrine of “teaching contempt” for the Jews.

To understand what the authors, from the church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network, are up to, here is some history: After World War II, open anti-Semitism— previously widespread—had been made disreputable by Nazism and the destruction of European Jewry. Those seeking a substitute— especially an alliance of convenience including far leftists, Islamic extremists and Christian activists influenced by neo-Marxist “liberation theology”—found it in anti-Zionism. The U.N. General Assembly’s 1975 approval of the Soviet-inspired, Arab League-promoted “Zionismis-racism” resolution fueled a trend.

Overturned in 1991, the resolution survived in spirit. The Mission Network’s guide adheres to that spirit, slandering Zionism as “Jewish supremacism.”

The document claims there is a “pathology inherent in Zionism.” It discerns all man-

The cover of the “Zionism Unsettled” study guide and its companion DVD. Israel Pales-

ner of sins in Israel’s “occupation” of the West Bank, an occupation as legitimate as that of the Allies in Germany after World War II. And it urges rejection of theologies that up-

hold Zionism — although Zionism is nothing more than the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, influenced by 19th-century Greek and Italian national movements.

The theology that upholds Zionism is Judaism. The movement took its name from Zion, which appears scores of times in the Hebrew Bible as a synonym for Jerusalem, the political and religious heart of Judaism.

Ultimately, “Zionism Unsettled” rejects Jews as a people. It does so as part of a bid to hijack the Holocaust. The guide urges an “expanded, inclusive” understanding of the Nazi genocide that would shift its lessons from persecution of Jews to Israel’s purported oppression of Palestinian Arabs.

The Mission Network means to subsume the Holocaust into an anodyne “man’s inhumanity to man,” while painting Israelis as new Nazis. If successful, one effect would be to distract from today’s genocidal threats, like that against Israel from a nuclear-armed Iran.

Sanctimoniously, the guide renounces “the morally hazardous claims of a hierarchy of victimhood.” Oddly, when it comes to victimhood, Palestinian life expectancy, infant mortality, education and other standards improved markedly after Israel took the Gaza Strip from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War. Even in the depths of second intifada fighting, Palestinian Arabs were—according to a 2003 U.N. report—better off than the Arabs of Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Syria and Yemen.

The guide scrubs the role of Palestinian Arab leaders who collaborated in the Holocaust including the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti of

Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. He and his colleagues led anti-Jewish riots and massacres in Mandatory Palestine.

This violence helped induce British officials to close the one place in the world ready to absorb large numbers of Jewish people in the 1930s. Palestinian Arabs thus trapped hundreds of thousands of Jews in Europe who otherwise might have escaped.

“Zionism Unsettled” also would reverse initiatives during the papacies of Pope John XXIII (1958-1963) and John Paul II (19782005)—both recently elevated to sainthood—which acknowledged the enduring validity of Judaism. These changes affected not only Roman Catholicism, but also major Protestant movements. Jews were to be seen as religiously legitimate, “older brothers” of Christianity.

It’s often noted that the Holocaust began not with death camps, but with words. These words included Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” the czarist forgery “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and Vienna Mayor Karl Lueger’s turnof-the-century anti-Jewish incitement. Before them there had been centuries of teaching contempt for the Jews. The Israel Palestine Mission Network’s guide echoes, in pseudoacademic jargon, such earlier demonization.

Delegates to the Presbyterian general assembly would be well advised, in the names of both Middle East peace and ChristianJewish relations, to divest not from Israel, but rather from their Israel Palestine Mission Network and its study guide.

Eric Rozenman is Washington director of CAMERA.

THE JEWISH STAR May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774

Apartheid? Demographics don’t threaten Israel

3

Birnbaum-Carlebach connection: Am Yisrael chai!

I

n a statement sent to this column soon after the passing of Yaakov Birnbaum, his long time associate in the struggle to save Russian Jewry from communist oppression, Glenn Richter, wrote: “We were much appreciative of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach’s involvement, from the beginning, of the Soviet Jewry movement.

He composed for us the ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ KOSHER tune in 1965, which BOOKWORM quickly became the anthem of the movement, both here and in the USSR. Shlomo did not pull punches in his condemnation of the Jewish establishment’s early relative silence on responding in a meaningful way to the spiritual destruction of our Russian brethren. We loved Reb Shlomo and Alan Jay Gerber I think he saw SSSJ as a movement which gave young Jews direction and purpose, as well as in some way compensating for most of Jewry’s silence during the Holocaust.”

This heartfelt testimony by Richter to a little known chapter in the Russian Jewry struggle will be the subject of this week’s continuing tribute to the life’s work of the late and beloved Yaakov Birnbaum.

In his monumental biography entitled, “Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach: Life, Mission, and Legacy” (Urim Publications, 2014), Dr. Natan Ophir [Offenbacher] states the following: “The Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry (SSSJ) was founded by Jacob Birnbaum in April 1964. Popular folk songs had proven

Yaakov Birnbaum and Rabbi Shlomo Carleback. Courtesy Naomi Mark from her Sheva Berakhot on Dec. 10, 1990.

Photo courtesy of Dr. Natan Ophir (Offenbacher)

their importance in the American protest movements, and similarly, Birnbaum sought to create SSSJ songs. For that purpose, he recruited Sherwood Goffin and Shlomo Carlebach. Birnbaum asked Shlomo to compose a tune using the words, ‘Am Yisrael Chai’.”

Quoting Birnbaum himself, Ophir continues with the following: “I vaguely recalled that the song, ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ had been an expression of defiance and hope in Nazi Germany, and after the war it had been sung in Displaced Persons camps.

As the Soviet Jewish resistance movement developed, the distinguished Yiddish poet Yosef Kerler composed his own version. However, when I enlisted Shlomo’s aid in 1964, none of these versions were current.”

Further on, Ophir’s narrative continues: “Late on Friday afternoon, April 2, 1965, Birnbaum’s phone rang, and Shlomo’s exhausted voice said, ‘Yankele, I’ve got it for you!’ On Sunday, April 4, two weeks before Passover, some 3,000 protestors led by seven men wearing prayer shawls encircled the Soviet Mission to ‘topple the walls of hate’ in

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Jericho style. They blew on seven shofarot seven times.

For the first time, Shlomo sang ‘Am Yisrael Chai’.”

According to Ophir, the reaction to this tune and its words were immediate: “The simple words, easy to pronounce and repeat, attracted a wide following even of those who didn’t know any Hebrew. The message was an expression of pride, existence, continuity, and solidarity and it became the signature song of the Soviet Jewry freedom movement.”

As if these three words were not enough, Reb Shlomo added three more giving the chant greater meaning.

“Shlomo’s inspirational invention was to add three additional words, ‘Od Avinu Chai’ (our father still lives), thus providing an exegetical link to both biblical and rabbinic tradition.…

“By inserting these words, Shlomo created both alliteration and a metaphoric homily. The expression, ‘our father is still alive,’ is a double entendre, i.e., the phrase is understood in its simple straightforward meaning that Jacob/Israel is still alive, and also in its theological sense that G-d, the father of Israel, exists and protects His people. The musical notes reflect the juxtaposition of the two themes.”

Another literary work, this one detailing the Russian Jewry liberation movement in the United States in its totality, is entitled, “When They Come For Us We’ll be Gone: the Epic Struggle To Save Soviet Jewry” [Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010] by Gal Beckerman. In this work, the author gives both Birnbaum and Richter their just due as the founders and premier leading activists on behalf of Russian Jews. Beckerman’s fluid

literary style is most competently utilized in his narrative of the Birnbaum-Carlebach relationship. Please read further: “The story of how he came to write the anthem of the Soviet Jewry movement is infused with that same spirit of Jewish awakening. On the flight from Frankfurt to Prague in 1965, Carlebach decided to open his mail.

In the stack was a letter from Yaakov Birnbaum. Shlomo had already appeared at a few small SSSJ protests, events consisting mostly of a handful of yeshiva boys loudly singing along to his guitar. Birnbaum had an idea. He wondered if Shlomo would consider writing a melody to accompany the ancient Jewish motto ‘Am Yisrael Chai.’

“As Carlebach was reading, he noticed the man next to him peering over his shoulder.

Realizing that the stationery read ‘Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry,’ he quickly crumpled up the paper and went to the bathroom to flush it down the toilet.”

At the conclusion of this trip, the author picks up again on this episode.

Having been inspired during a Purim celebration by these brave young Jews in the heart of the communist environment, Beckerman informs us of the following response

by Shlomo: “When he was alone again, he felt so moved by the transformation he had witnessed, that he grabbed his guitar and began working on the task Birnbaum had assigned him, a new ‘Am Yisrael Chai.’ He decided that one more phrase was needed, and he remembered the story of Joseph from the Bible. When Joseph’s brothers discovered him in Egypt, where he was a prosperous adviser to the pharoah, the first thing Joseph said to them was, ‘Od aveinu chai?’ (is our father still Continued on page 12

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May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774 THE JEWISH STAR

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â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Proclaiming Liberty Throughout the Landâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; I

t is worthy to note that one of the most famous quotations from the Torah that has been adopted as part of American history was actually originally used, in a sense, in a proper context.

As the Bell was created to commemorate the golden anniversary of Pennâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Charter, the quotation â&#x20AC;&#x153;Proclaim Rabbi Avi Billet Liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof,â&#x20AC;? from Leviticus 25:10, was particularly apt, for the line in the Bible immediately preceding â&#x20AC;&#x153;proclaim libertyâ&#x20AC;? is, â&#x20AC;&#x153;And ye shall hallow the 50th year.â&#x20AC;?

What better way to pay homage to Penn and hallow the 50th year than with a bell proclaiming liberty?

The proclamation of Liberty (in Hebrew, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drorâ&#x20AC;?) was speciďŹ cally during the Yovel (Jubilee) year, once every 50 years, when slaves went free and property was returned to original owners (for a fair market price).

The Talmud (Rosh Hashana 9b) notes that the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drorâ&#x20AC;? refers to freedom, and that whether Yovel was observed in Israel determined if it would be observed in the Diaspora as well. Maimonides notes (laws of Shmittah and Yovel 10:8) that Liberty was only proclaimed in Yovel years until the two and a half tribes (Reuven, Gad and half of Menashe) were exiled from their inherited land.

Nachmanides suggests that the word Dror comes from the word â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dor,â&#x20AC;? meaning generation, as per Kohelet 1:4, â&#x20AC;&#x153;A generation goes and a generation comes, but the earth endures forever.â&#x20AC;?

PARSHA OF THE WEEK

Liberty, therefore, is proclaimed throughout the land on a generational scale. It comes around every 50 years, when each generation has the opportunity to proclaim, as per the change of the times, (and as per Abraham Lincoln in 1863), â&#x20AC;&#x153;A new birth of freedom.â&#x20AC;?

Since Lincoln uttered those words, ironically, the following 50 years housed mostly Republicans in the White House.

The next 50 years housed mostly Democrats in the White House (until Martin Luther King, Jr. essentially declared a new birth of freedom two Jubilees after Lincoln). And the ďŹ fty years since then have had mostly Republicans in the White House. Perhaps in the United States, every â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yovelâ&#x20AC;? has been marked by a shift in the political winds.

Last November was the third Jubilee in the United States, as it were, since the Emancipation Proclamation, and it is indeed a marvel to see how these ďŹ fty-year marks have been able to pinpoint signiďŹ cant changes In Israel, the ďŹ rst 50 years saw mostly leftwing labor party Prime Ministers, though since Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ďŹ ftieth anniversary, primarily right-wing parties have held the premiership.

Chizkuni compares the ďŹ fty years of Yovel to the ďŹ ftieth year of a Leviteâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s existence, when he no longer serves in his capacity as Levi, and in effect retires. While the Levi has only been working for between 20-25 years of his life, it seems his personal Yovel, as determined by the years of his life and not on a calendar of the collective, dictates when his status changes.

The Roâ&#x20AC;?sh noted how the word Dror in Shmot 30:23 means â&#x20AC;&#x153;free of impurities.â&#x20AC;? Perhaps this is a reďŹ&#x201A;ection of what a utopian society looks like, when it is demonstrated that

even those in bondage are set free, and that no one has the right to property monopolies because of the return of such to their original owners. It isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t exactly socialism. It is what some have described as â&#x20AC;&#x153;capitalism with a conscience.â&#x20AC;?

Of course, the Baal HaTurim notes that the word Dror has a numerical value of 410, which reďŹ&#x201A;ects how long the ďŹ rst Temple stood, according to the Talmud Yoma 9a. Perhaps this can suggest that the real Dror/liberty we look forward to, and is yet unreached, is the one that includes a Beit Hamikdash (Holy Temple) at the center of the Jewish existence in the Land of Israel â&#x20AC;&#x201D; in other words, the Messianic Era we always pray to experience. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Drorâ&#x20AC;? certainly means liberty, but the deďŹ nition of Liberty will always be subject to debate and differences of opinion.

Does it refer to political winds? Does it refer to personal freedoms? Does it refer to Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel?

Does it refer to a personal existence, that a person who lives to be 100 experiences two personal Jubilees â&#x20AC;&#x201C; marking the end of the ďŹ rst half and the beginning of the second half of life, as well as the turn towards the end of life, as marked by becoming a centenarian?

The answer can easily be â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yesâ&#x20AC;? to all.

As we read the verse that reminds us that every 50 years a proclamation of liberty is spread throughout the land, we hope and pray in the week that Israel celebrated its 66th birthday that the true liberty will be proclaimed throughout the world when the fox and lamb can live together, and peace can reign throughout the world.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

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THE JEWISH STAR

5

President Obamaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s stealth campaign against Israel T

he Israel-Palestinian talks are dead, and the administration of President Barack Obama is doing its best to let the world know it blames Israel.

Not by blatantly coming out and saying it, because that would cause Israel to ďŹ ght back against the slander, but by sneaking around and creating a whisper campaign.

Jeff Dunetz Most famous was Secretary of State John Kerryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s statement about Israel becoming an apartheid state, made in an off-the-record speech at the Trilateral Commission. Not as well known was a recent interview a senior member of the State Department gave to Ynet Newsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Nahum Barnea (on the condition of anonymity) where the ofďŹ cial suggests that Israel may have earned a third intifada, echoing a previous Kerry statement.

Time and again, Secretary Kerryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s erroneous declarations have suggested moral equivalency between Israel and its adversaries. With the possible exception of agreeing to negotiate, Kerry has never announced any concession by the Palestinian side. The reason is there hasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t been any.

Kerryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recent gaffe suggesting that without a peace deal Israel will become an apartheid state was just the latest of many made by the Secretary of State. Three months after negotiations began, he participated in a joint interview by Israeli and Palestinian reporters. When asked by an Israeli reporter why the peace talks were important, Kerry answered, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Does Israel want a third intifada?â&#x20AC;?

The American stance seems to be that if Israel doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t make one-sided concessions to every Palestinian demand, the Jewish State will return to the era of suicide bombers murdering hundreds of civilians.

While addressing a February conference in Munich, Kerry seemed to give support to the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divestment and sanction) movement, saying, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The risks are very high for Israel. People are talking about boycott. That will intensify in the case of failure.â&#x20AC;?

In the stealth interview with Ynetâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Barnea, the State Department phantom ignored that, under the previous administration, negotiations went ahead despite Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s adding homes to existing â&#x20AC;&#x153;settlements.â&#x20AC;?

Blaming Israel, one State Department ofďŹ cial said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;I guess we need another intifada to create the circumstances that would allow progress.â&#x20AC;? Not that they want another intifada; that would be a tragedy, ofďŹ cials added. â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Jewish people are supposed to be smart; it is true that theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re also considered a stubborn nation. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re supposed to know how to read the map: In the 21st century, the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation.

The occupation threatens Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s status in the world and threatens Israel as a Jewish state.â&#x20AC;?

The Obama administration has a double standard when it comes to Israel and the Palestinians; while moaning about Palestinians taking â&#x20AC;&#x153;unhelpfulâ&#x20AC;? steps, their â&#x20AC;&#x153;scoldingâ&#x20AC;? has not approached the criticism leveled at the Jewish State. More than once this administration has blamed Israel for the failure of the talks only to walk the statement back to blame both sides.

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May 9, 2014 â&#x20AC;˘ 9 IYAR 5774 THE JEWISH STAR

6

who would have been executed if their crimes took place in states such as Texas, were just as damaging to the peace process as the daily anti-Semitic incitement on Palestinian TV, the continued rockets and other terrorist attacks, or the deal signed by the Palestinian Authority with the terrorist group Hamas.

Kerryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s apartheid comment, ironically published on Yom Hashoah, proves the administrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s lack of understanding of Israeli society. ot only is Israel the only democracy in the Middle East, it is also the only pluralistic society. All citizens of Israel enjoy the same freedoms and full human and civil rights. Minorities in Israel participate in government, are elected to parliament, and

N

serve as ministers and judges, including on the Supreme Court. Palestinians have sued the Israeli government and won in the courts.

Where else in the Middle East does that happen? In Israelâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Muslim neighbor countries, including the Hamas-controlled Gaza, Christian minorities, as well as women and homosexuals, are oppressed. Most Jews have longsince been thrown out of the Arab countries, and by making the â&#x20AC;&#x153;settlementsâ&#x20AC;? an issue, the Obama administration is declaring Judea and Samaria must also be â&#x20AC;&#x153;Judenrein.â&#x20AC;? To this administration, Israel is the oppressor nation.

A key part of foreign policy, of all negotiations, is to understand what is in the mind of the other side.

The Obama administration does not understand that the Palestinian sideâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ultimate strategy is to destroy Israel; thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what they tell their people in Arabic.

In every prayer service, Jews make multiple prayers for peace; those prayers continue to be in the hearts of the Israeli government as they negotiate with their neighbors.

What this administration doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t understand is, despite the desire to make peace, Israel will never agree to a treaty that endangers its security, no matter what slander and pressure come from the U.S. Sixty-six years ago this week Harry Truman ignored much of the world and his own State Department to recognize the brand new state of Israel, because morally it was the right thing to do. This Administrationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s actions over the past few weeks makes one wonder if Barack Obama would have the moral ďŹ ber to make the same decision as Harry Truman did.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

7

By Jeffrey Bessen Nassau Herald In addition to the budget vote on Tuesday, May 20, residents in Lawrence School District can cast ballots in the race between incumbent Board of Education Trustee Asher Mansdorf and challenger Asher Matathias.

Sitting Trustee Murray Forman is running unopposed. All terms are three years.

Mansdorf, 61, is running for his ďŹ fth term.

His main incentive for running again, he said, is to continue working to help make the school district what Mansdorf called â&#x20AC;&#x153;a community of learnersâ&#x20AC;? and not just viewing the district as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;community of voters.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;I feel I have not only talked the talk, I have walked the walk,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I have put my heart and soul into this, and been in the schools almost every single day.â&#x20AC;?

District programs such as pre-kindergarten and after-school classes have been geared to not only help children, but to get parents involved in their education, according to Mansdorf, who said under Superintendent Gary Schallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leadership, the district has reached out to the Spanish-speaking community and worked to improve communication.

Mansdorf stressed the ďŹ scal health of the district, guidance provided to administrators and working with local legislators to ensure that Lawrence receives its fair share of state money. He wants to use the Number Six School sale money for capital improvements.

Matathias, 70, is calling for improvements ranging from increased transparency and public comment at board meetings to shifting

THE JEWISH STAR May 9, 2014 â&#x20AC;˘ 9 IYAR 5774

Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Asher versus Asher for Lawrence school bd.

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to an at-large vote for trustee seats to â&#x20AC;&#x153;eliminate artiďŹ cial animosity in District 14.â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;We need a new way of looking at problems and resolve them,â&#x20AC;? he said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Public comment means public comment. [The board] should be encouraging not discouraging open public comment.â&#x20AC;?

His platform also calls for voting â&#x20AC;&#x153;yesâ&#x20AC;? on the library budget but â&#x20AC;&#x153;noâ&#x20AC;? on the school budget, attention to the needs of immigrants, reviewing what he called the districtâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s â&#x20AC;&#x153;irreversibleâ&#x20AC;? decline, and â&#x20AC;&#x153;exploring consolidation/absorption by a neighboring district (s).â&#x20AC;?

The attention to immigrant needs would include a mentorship program, where students would take a peer under their wing to help guide them through school. Matathias is also calling for anti-bullying initiatives for children and adults, what he called a â&#x20AC;&#x153;responsible contract for administrative personnelâ&#x20AC;? and improved student achievement and graduation rates.

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By Rafael Medoff, JNS.org “We know we are going to be bamboozled,” a despondent Stephen Wise, the foremost American Jewish leader of his time, confided to a friend before boarding a ship bound for England in early 1939. The British had invited Wise and other Zionist leaders from the United States and Palestine to take part in a “peace conference” with Arab leaders.

Wise expected the worst, and he was right. The conference in London’s majestic St. James Palace would set the stage for the imposition—75 years ago this month—of the infamous British White Paper, choking off Jewish immigration to Palestine on the eve of World War II and the Holocaust.

In the third week of the conference, a clerical error by a British secretary resulted in World Zionist Organization President Chaim Weizmann receiving a letter from Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald that was intended to be seen only by the Arab delegates.

In the letter, MacDonald promised severe limits on Jewish immigration and land purchases in Palestine, and no Jewish national home without Arab consent.

His worst fears confirmed, Dr. Wise and the other American members of the delegation returned to the United States with one last hope in their hearts—that the Jews closest to the White House could persuade President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prevent the British from imposing the new policy. In fact, Wise had remarked to the president, not long before, that with war looming in Europe, “the English need you—our Government—

in every sense.” And FDR had replied, “You bet.” The British could not afford to ignore pressure from the White House on Palestine.

Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, a confidant of the president as well as a supporter of Zionism, had already telephoned the president and urged U.S. intervention against the British plan. FDR waxed sympathetic on the phone and told Frankfurter to draft a note from FDR to British Prime Minister Chamberlain, urging him not to close Palestine’s doors. Frankfurter wrote it. FDR never sent it.

Next it was the turn of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, whom FDR affectionately called “Old Isaiah.” But the president didn’t display much affection when it came to Zionism. In a handwritten note, Brandeis pleaded with Roosevelt to “induce the British to postpone the threatened announcement.”

Two weeks passed; there was no reply. An exasperated Brandeis asked if the president could at least spare “a few minutes” to see a Zionist representative. White House aide Stephen Early broached the request with the president, and then jotted down FDR’s curt response: “Can’t see him—Sec. State is all that is possible.”

On May 17, 1939, the White Paper was announced. Palestine Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion said it was “the greatest betrayal perpetrated by the government of a civilized people in our generation.” Dr. Weizmann called it “a death sentence for the Jewish people.” He was especially dismayed that “the White Paper produced no reaction on the Continued on page 12

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Continued from page 1 and full of fun, always the life of the party. Her sister-in-law Esther Weber became her â&#x20AC;&#x153;sister,â&#x20AC;? and she spent all yomim tovim with them and their growing family of kids and grandchildren.

Although Aunt Sellly never married and never had kids of her own, she had more â&#x20AC;&#x153;kidsâ&#x20AC;? than anyone could imagine. You see, everyone wanted a piece of her. I started calling her Aunt Selly; I wanted to think of her as my aunt.

Little did I know that everyone else had the same idea.

There were hundreds of people at her Judy Joszef funeral, most of them referring to her as Aunt Selly. There were little kids, teens, people in their 20s, 30s and so on. Everyone was telling Aunt Selly stories and tearing up.

I thought only I was treated like her niece all these years, but in reality so was everyone who came to know her. She was transcendently brilliant in her capacity to understand each of us individually in the most profound manner.

I was a bit insulted to think I was one of hundreds. She had the ability to make everyone feel special, loved and cared about. It amazed me the way she touched all these people.

As her nieces and nephews, and great nieces and nephews spoke, we alternated between tears and laughter. Laughter because how many 81 year old women would take the LIRR from the city and walk three-quarters of a mile from the station so as not to bother someone for a ride. She would peer into the window Sunday mornings from the backyard to catch someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s attention and not wake up the whole house. How many 81 year olds get down on the ďŹ&#x201A;oor to play with the infants and toddlers, tutor the older ones and end up using some questionable words because it was the only way they would remember the facts for their tests. And when she would baby-sit and the kids would ďŹ ght whose room she would sleep in till they fell asleep, she would lie on the ďŹ&#x201A;oor between the two bedrooms.

Included in her antics was her willingness to let all the kids put tons of gunk in her hair and style it for hours at a time. My favorite was when she put on a black hat and jacket and held her great nephew as she â&#x20AC;&#x153;shuckledâ&#x20AC;? back and forth so the infant would think it was his father Avi and would stop crying.

How many people do you know like that?

When her brother Irwin, ended his hesped (eulogy), he said Selly was standing in the hall in shul on Simchat Torah and there was a crowd of children around her. Jeremy Pollack (my son) asked his father David, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Who is that lady?â&#x20AC;? David replied, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jeremy, thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Aunt Selly. You donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have an Aunt Selly, I canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t give you an Aunt Selly, but everyone should have an Aunt Selly.â&#x20AC;? And that about sums it up.

Selly Weber aâ&#x20AC;?h was witty, intelligent, worldly, kind, caring, fun loving, generous to a fault and lived for her family and extended family of hundreds. I have never before seen a funeral where friends of the nieces and nephews came by the dozens and then onto the cemetery, because they thought of her as their relative as well. I know I said earlier that she never had children of her own, but in the end, all of her nieces and nephews became her grandchildren and their children were her great grandchildren and the rest of us were zoche (merited) to be nieces and nephews.

Selly Weber aâ&#x20AC;?h, you have left a tremendous void in all of those who grew to love you over the years. You will never be forgotten and your legacy will live on. You would be proud of your brother Irwin and â&#x20AC;&#x153;sisterâ&#x20AC;?

Esther during the week of shiva; they told stories about you that involved us and made us feel special, just as you would have, Selly.

The last time Aunt Selly was at my home

for a Yom Tov meal, she said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m coming back here, you know, I had a great time.â&#x20AC;? I responded that it would be my pleasure and I promised to make the acorn squash side dish loved.

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ries, cinnamon and oil to make stufďŹ ng. Remove squash from the oven after 30 minutes. Turn halves over and stuff center of each squash half with apple mixture. Return to oven and bake for 30-35 minutes (or longer) until squash and apples are tender.

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THE JEWISH STAR May 9, 2014 â&#x20AC;˘ 9 IYAR 5774

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May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774 THE JEWISH STAR

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By Malka Eisenberg The community turned out in force — 1,600 strong — to the 33rd annual Hatzalah Barbecue on Sunday at the Sands at Atlantic Beach.

Rabbi Elozer Kanner, a coordinator of the Chevra Hatzalah of the Rockaways and Nassau County, said “it was the first time that we actually spread out across the Sands — we used all 360 degrees.”

Since last year’s barbecue, Hatzalah has been upgrading, offering CPR classes for men and women and in Spanish for housekeepers.

Plans are underway to renovate the ambulance site on West Broadway in Woodmere to “make it fit in with the neighborhood,” Kanner said. It will be used as an office, supply room and a place to park the ambulances. “Hopefully we will make Woodmere our next main station,” supplementing the station at 621 B. 9 St. in Far Rockaway. And new ambulances are slated to be added to the fleet this summer, he said.

“After Sandy we realized that our ambulances are not heavy or high enough,” Kanner explained. “When dealDr. Moshe Weizberg ing with rising water, was awarded Mem- a couple of inches ber of the Year honor. make a difference.”

The new ambulances “are considerably higher and heavier duty.

When driving in water it makes a difference.

They have more ability to go over a branch and go where we need to go. It’s not a helicopter, but the best we can do in the world of ambulances.”

Hatzalah added West Hempstead to its roster of covered towns more than a year ago, and now services the Rockaway peninsula and Nassau County from Belle Harbor through Far Rockaway, from Atlantic Beach to Long Beach, and up through Woodmere, North Woodmere, East Rockaway, Inwood, Hewlett, West Hempstead and JFK Airport.

“Recently there were a number of times that we received six simultaneous calls and all the local ambulances were on calls, 24 members all on call,” recounted Kanner. “It’s a little bit scary. What is going to be if there is a seventh call? We will have to call in from an adjacent neighborhood. It’s impressive and scary.”

Rabbi Herschel Weber first launched the

At Sunday’s Hatzalah Heroes barbecue (left to right): Mark Gross, Rabbi Yaakov Bender, Shaya Luzer Wolcowitz, Rabbi M. Lerer, and Rabbi Elozer Kanner.

Hatzalah concept in the mid 1960s in Williamsburg. Kanner recounted that Weber was present when someone collapsed and 911 was called. By the time the ambulance got there the person had died and the EMT stated that if they had arrived a few minutes earlier the victim would have had a chance.

“That was the spark that ignited Rabbi

Weber — that never again would he allow someone to die because help didn’t get there in time,” Kanner said.

Hatzalah of the Rockaways and Nassau County has almost 150 members, receives more than 6,000 calls a year, and provides “cutting edge emergency medicine in the field,” he said. Rabbi Weber’s concept has

been adopted worldwide with independent Hatzalah branches across the United States and in Israel, South America, England, Europe, Russia, and Australia.

The barbecue is the local Hatzalah’s main fundraiser but, said Kanner, beyond raising funds it is also “the opportunity for the community to give chizuk, support, to members who drag themselves out of bed at midnight, give appreciation” that their efforts are “noticed and give them strength to go on. The community comes to show their appreciation to those who give so much and get nothing in return.”

He said that the yearly budget of $1.2 million is used to pay for insurance, drugs, equipment, training, telephones and radios.

Hatzalah suggests a minimum donation of $250 per family.

Currently, the local network uses eight ambulances and provides life-saving medications, oxygen, CPR (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) and AEDs (Automatic External Defibrillators). They also transport patients to all area hospitals. Their website offers information on Jewish law and handling emergencies on Shabbat. There is also information regarding requests for the Shabbos taxi, a Hatzalah sticker and CPR magnet.

For information, go to hatzalahrl.org.

Nahal Haredi raises funds in 5 Towns

By Malka Eisenberg “The Rabbaim are the ema and abba (mother and father) of the chayalim (soldiers),” Nahal Haredi CEO Rabbi Tzvi Klebanow, on a fund-raising visit to the Five Towns, told the Jewish Star this week.

He and IDF Sergeant Nesanel Silverman, formerly of Flatbush, will speak this Shabbat before musaf (about 10:15) am at Congregation Aish Kodesh in Woodmere; at seudah shlishit after the 7:30 pm mincha at Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst, and motzai Shabbat at 9:45 pm at the home of Anne and Shelly Golombeck, parents of a Nahal Haredi soldier, at 6 Washington Ave. S. in Lawrence.

The Netzah Yehuda Battalion, also known as Nahal Haredi, is a battalion in the Kfir Brigade in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and was created to accommodate the needs of religious Israelis to serve in the IDF in a strictly orthodox environment. More than 6,000 have gone through the program.

A group of haredi rabbis led by Rabbi Yitzhak Bar Chaim, a chavruta of Klebanow, held

discussions with the IDF over a year and a half and founded the battalion in 1999. It started with 30 soldiers and has now grown to 1,400 men, including those in training, educational programs and the actual battalion.

The soldiers train in NH for seven months and then enter different branches, some in surveillance activities, snipers, mortars, and providing security at air force bases.

Silverman, 25, said he returned to the U.S. to represent NH and that his time in NH has been an “amazing experience” — seeing more than a few Molotov cocktails and getting shot at a few times.

Some of NH’s unique services are financed by donations, including shiurim by rabbanim who visit the bases, a hareidi standard of kashrut, minyan three times a day during training, and all-male instructors and programs.

Silverman lauded the chizuk and daily shiurum of the affiliated rabbis, the ruach (spirit) of Shabbat where everyone is shomer Shabbat, the beautiful singing, davening, Kiddush

and divrei Torah. He recounted that everyone always got together for minyanim regardless of the rain and cold.

Klebanow said that the NH is the only IDF battalion in the two Arab sectors of Jenin and Tul Karem. “It’s a serious program,” stressed Silverman. “We are fully trained and the officers are excellent, did officer school just like others, no cutting corners, just as tough and strict maybe more because we see so much action and have to cope with it. Nothing is watered down.”

Klebanow emphasized the importance of the NH rabbanim and programs in the development and growth of the young haredi men.

They have more lone soldiers than other army divisions and provide education, help find shidduchin, provide apartments for soldiers who can’t live at home, and help set up their homes once they are married. It helps them “be successful in life. That’s the goal of the program.” They help the young men transition from the community into the army — it’s Continued on page 12

Teacher of US students in Israel visits West Hemp

By Malka Eisenberg A chronicler of American Jewish history, a talmid muvhak of Rav Joseph B. Soleveitchik and a teacher of thousands, Rabbi Aaron Rakeffet-Rothkoff, will speak this Sunday at the Young Israel of West Hempstead.

The talk, “The Silver Era: Rabbi Eliezer Silver and His Generation,” is part of Yeshiva University’s Kollel Yom Rishon that is celebrating the new Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS) YU musmakhim (ordained rabbis). New RIETS rabbis from the area will be speaking Shabbat in various local minyanim. Rav Rakeffet is a member of RIETS’ 50th anniversary class that was celebrated at YU’s recent chag hasemicha.

In an interview with The Jewish Star, Rav Rakeffet stressed the importance of studying and learning our history, “If we don’t know our past we are going to make the same mistakes in the future.”

He said his book “Bernard Revel: Builder

of American Orthodoxy” was the first book published by the Jewish Publication Society of America more than 40 years ago. His book, “The Silver Era: Rabbi Eliezer Silver and His Generation,” has been called “the single most excellent volume on the history of Orthodoxy in the United States.”

Rav Rakeffet was honored by the Bernard Revel Graduate School on May 4 for his contributions to the study of Jewish history, on the occasion of the republication of those two books. “I never got so much honor in my life,” he said. “I am overwhelmed and humbled. I am very thankful to my students for their beautiful words,” he said.

Identifying himself as a “Yeshiva University graduate with a good sprinkling of Bnei Akiva, Lakewood and Chabad with a basic orientation to Lithuania,” he began his career as a rabbi in Pennsylvania in 1961, was a rebbe at MTA, and with his wife Malkah made aliyah in 1969, changing his name from Ar-

nold Rothkoff to Aaron Rakeffet. He worked as a staff editor for the Encyclopaedia Judaica, was among the first teachers at BMT (Jerusalem Torah College) in 1969, and taught at Machon Gold, Michlala and one of the founding teachers at Midreshet Moriah. He has been on the Gruss Rakeffet-Rothkoff Kollel faculty since it opened in 1976.

He served in the IDF until he aged out of service and was recruited by the Mossad to teach Torah in the Soviet Union. During his first visit to the USSR, in 1981 with his wife, he was motivated to assist in the founding of Shvut Ami, an organization to help Soviet Jewish immigrants in Israel. He returned to the USSR in 1985 and 1989.

He discussed the current shift in learning and influence of rabbis, suggesting that “there is a negative and positive to everything.”

“The roshai yeshiva are more learned than shul rabbis and wield tremendous influence because so many people are looking up to them,” he said. “But they may not know what’s going on outside the yeshiva. A shul rabbi has his hand on the pulse of the community and may not be as learned. Ideally there should be a partnership which may be evolving on the Anglo scene.”

He stressed the importance of Torah learning and of aliyah. “I hope the best will accept the challenge and come on aliyah,” he said.

“Boruch hashem (thank G-d) we have over six million halachik Jews in Israel today.”

He estimates that he’s taught 11,000 students in the classroom, more “virtual” students and tens of thousands in the IDF. Rav. Rakefet’s May 11 lecture begins at 9 am. It is open to men and women.

THE JEWISH STAR May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774

Hatzalah grows as more volunteers step forward

11

May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774 THE JEWISH STAR

12

Birnbaum-Carlebach…

Continued from page 4 alive?) Shlomo added the affirmative answer to this — our father is alive — as a refrain, and within minutes he had composed the song and sung it into his tape recorder. His version had the rhythm of an assertive battle cry, of a military chant; each word was belted out slow and strong and then repeated again and again. The people of Israel live. He left Prague that night, and within a few weeks he was in New York again, playing ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ for the first time to a rapturous audience; their fists pounded the air with so much enthusiasm, it seemed to Shlomo that they themselves had pulled the song out of him.”

Yaakov Birnbaum was indeed the father of the movement that led to the liberation of over three million Jews from the physical and ideological clutches of communism. His recruitment of Shlomo Carlebach to be the movement’s voice of song was a master stoke

of pure genius that should serve as an inspiration to all for all time to come.

As the city of Leningrad was changed back to St. Petersburg and as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, as revolts and bloodshed permeate the airwaves and airspace of nations world wide, we must come to realize that the victory over tyranny has yet to be fully realized. We Jews continue to experience the witnessing of the machinations of the jaws of hate and the shedding of blood.

Our existence and legitimacy is still questioned and to all this we must take strength from the great example of the deep relationship we have come to witness between that of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach and Yaakov Birnbaum, a relationship of mutual love, love of their people, and a deep trust and belief in G-d Almighty, with whom they now both abide together, once again, this time in heavenly bliss.

Columnist@TheJewishStar.com

Jewish death sentence…

Continued from page 8 part of the American authorities.”

Mainstream historians have always regarded England’s White Paper policy as severely unfavorable to the Jews. Prof. Henry L. Feingold has argued that a policy restricting immigration and land purchases only by Jews was “at least partly motivated by antiSemitism.”

Recently, several pro-Roosevelt authors have depicted the Allies’ Palestine policy in a new light. Robert Rosen, author of “Saving the Jews,” claims the White Paper “saved [the Jews of the Middle East] from the Holocaust,” because otherwise the Arab world supposedly would have revolted against the Allies and the Nazis would have captured the region and killed all the Jews living there.

Richard Breitman and Alan Lichtman, authors of “FDR and the Jews,” claim that at the St. James conference, Roosevelt secretly pressured the British “on behalf of Jews.”

Their source for that claim turned out to be a paranoid Arab delegate to the conference.

These revisionist accounts got it all wrong, and Prof. Feingold got it right. We now know

from declassified British records that some senior British officials harbored anti-Semitic sentiments and that Roosevelt never considered pressing the U.K. on Palestine.

FDR went through the motions. He instructed the State Department to inform London that the U.S. hoped “no drastic changes” were intended. In a private memo to Secretary of State Cordell Hull on the day the White Paper was issued, FDR called the new policy “something that we cannot give approval to.”

But he instructed the U.S. ambassador in London, Joseph Kennedy, to limit his criticism of the White Paper to unofficial conversations. There was to be no official U.S. protest. The British took note of Roosevelt’s response.

The history of FDR’s response to the persecution of European Jewry is littered with empty promises and missed opportunities.

Seventy-five years ago this month, one of the most important of those opportunities was squandered—and as a result, one of European Jewry’s last avenues of escape from the Nazis was almost completely shut off.

Nahal Haredi visits…

Continued from page 11 a “foreign environment and requires support” — and “transition back into civilian life.”

He noted the draft law that will first come into effect in 2017 has had a some what negative effect on recruitment but hopes that will pass. He said there has been a “gradual change. Social change has to take place slowly” noting the change since 10 years ago that Haredi men want to be educated and there has been increasing movement in that direction with law programs, institutes and civilian service.

“Little by little what needs to take place will take place. NH is not a solution for all haredi youth; those who want to sit and learn NH is not for them. But for a large growing percentage of the haredi word not sitting and learning, it is wonderful to build themselves and their families. This is the message over ten to 15 years from the army, ‘if you are learning, learn, if not, join us.’ NH is a service to help boys who want to be in the army; it’s a platform for haredi youth in the IDF.” Sheldon Golombeck of Lawrence spoke about his son David, who recently completed his 14 months of Machal in Nahal Haredi. A graduate of DRS, David learned a year and a

half at Yeshivat Torat Shraga before enlisting.

“Thank G-d, I’m proud of all my children,” said Sheldon. “Our home was always a Tzioni (Zionist) home. When he told us about his plans to go to the army we had no hesitation.”

They insisted that he learn some additional time first in Israel. David did and then chose to enlist in NH. “He chose to volunteer to contribute to Eretz Yisrael and Am Yisrael on a level most of us don’t have the opportunity to and at the same time without compromise to his religious background in our home and his years in yeshiva,” Sheldon said.

Silverman cited a company all-night hiking exercise as a prime example of how NH is tuned in to the needs of the religiosity of their recruits.“The first bullet shot was at 4:30 am and the first exercise was at 7:30 am. The company commander asked what time was zman kriyat shma (the latest time that the Shema can be said and fulfill the mitzvah), if there was time for another exercise and then daven or daven and then have the targil (exercise). Only in Nahal Haredi!”

“We are able to accomplish, able to get everything into the same day, even with davening mincha.”

Sterling racism a contrast to Jewish rights fight role

By Dmitriy Shapiro Washington Jewish Week Amid the fallout from the recording of racist comments by the Jewish owner of the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team, Jewish organizations both local and national have moved quickly to take the focus off his ethnicity and remind the country of the Jewish involvement in the civil rights movement.

Meanwhile, elements of the Jewish community in southern California, including a number of organizations Sterling donated to, are worried that focus on Sterling’s Jewishness has been overplayed.

“I’m troubled by the fact that the Jewish community and the Jewish press seem to be making Donald Sterling more Jewish, and more of a Jewish leader than he actually is,” said Jay Sanderson, president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles. “I think it’s dangerous for us to just take someone who’s Jewish and connect them to the Jewish community. In fact, nothing about Donald Sterling’s involvement would make you think that he’s involved in the Jewish community.”

Sanderson said Sterling’s foundation would make occasional gifts of $10,000 dollars to groups attached to the Los Angeles Jewish community “to make himself look like a philanthropist,” but that in reality Sterling was uninvolved. Besides donating to the Jewish federation, Sterling also gave to the Jewish Vocational Service, the Museum of the Holocaust, Creative Arts Temple, Temple of the Arts, Beit T’Shuvah, and, ironically, the Museum of Tolerance, according to the Forward.

Rabbis Marvin Hier and Abraham Cooper of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance said in a statement that they fully support NBA Commissioner Adam Silver’s actions against Sterling—a lifetime ban and fine of $2.5 million. Silver also urged the NBA’s board of governors to find a way to force Sterling to sell the team.

The Wiesenthal Center and Museum of Tolerance will no longer accept funds from the Donald Sterling Foundation, the statement said. A previous gift of $30,000 “will not be returned because all funds were used for programming that help fight and prevent the very racism and hate that was expressed in Mr. Sterling’s tape.”

The outrage followed a leak of a taped phone call between Sterling and his mistress, V. Stiviano.

In it, Sterling told Stiviano, who is of African American and Hispanic heritage, not to bring “black people” to his games—specifically referring to Instagram pictures of Stiviano with basketball legend Magic Johnson.

Stiviano can be heard on the recording challenging Sterling’s racism by comparing his hatred of African-Americans to hatred of Jews.

“The white Jews, there’s white Jews and black Jews, do you understand?” Sterling explained to Stiviano about Jews in Israel.

“And are the black Jews less than the white Jews?” asked Stiviano.

“A hundred percent, fifty, a hundred percent,” Sterling answered.

In addition to the local Jewish community, Sterling’s comments outraged a number of national Jewish organizations, who felt compelled to decry him publicly.

“The Jewish people have a long history of fighting racism and we are deeply

disturbed by the reprehensible statements attributed to Donald Sterling,” the Jewish Federations of North America said in a statement. “There is no place for racism or bigotry in America today and certainly not in Jewish life.”

With the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in June and this year the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education decision striking down segregation in public schools, Sterling’s comments stand in stark contrast with a longstanding American Jewish tradition to support civil rights.

Jews played a large role in the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

Jews, including prominent rabbis both from the North and the South, participated in marches, sit-ins, and freedom rides. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel demonstrated alongside Martin Luther King.

According to Larry Brooks, editor and publisher of Southern Jewish Life Magazine, Jews made up the largest proportion of the white activists arriving from the North to participate in the Civil Rights movement— causing resentment from Southerners who would direct their anger against the local Jewish community.

But years before the Freedom Riders came South, white supremacists were targeting the Jewish community. The Hebrew Benevolent Congregation in Atlanta, known as The Temple, was bombed in 1958. Its rabbi was an outspoken supporter of African American rights. That same year, 54 sticks of dynamite were found near Temple Beth-El in Birmingham, Ala. Wet fuses prevented the detonation. In 1960, Congregation Beth Israel in Gadsden, Ala., was firebombed during Friday night services.

During the “Freedom Summer” of 1964, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner—two Jewish activists working in Mississippi—were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, an event and its aftermath dramatized in the film “Mississippi Burning.”

The Anti-Defamation League, established because of anti-Semitism in the South, denounced Sterling’s statements and agreed with the commissioner’s punishment. But the ADL had a different reaction when, just a week prior to the revelations about Sterling, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy was recorded openly saying that he believes that “Negroes” had it better as slaves than in the government-dependent society he says exists today.

Bundy was taking a stand against the federal Bureau of Land Management, and lost much of his support after the racist comment. Unlike with Sterling, the ADL took no position against Bundy. Did the group placed the Sterling under more of a microscope because he is Jewish? The ADL says no.

“We responded with a formal statement on the racist comments of Donald Sterling because this was a national and international story involving the owner of a major sports franchise whose coach and many of his players are African-American,” the ADL said in a statement to JNS.org.

“Cliven Bundy’s racist remarks,” said the statement, “coming from an individual who was unknown to the public until recently, were so over the top, offensive and outrageous and there was enough of a public outcry that we did not feel the need to weigh in at the time with a written statement.”

This article is exclusive to JNS.org.

13 THE JEWISH STAR May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774

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Dr. Aaron E. Katz is Chairman of Winthrop’s Department of Urology and an internationally recognized teacher and clinician who joined Winthrop from a prestigious New York City academic medical center.

He is a widely published author and a pioneer in the use of cryotherapy and active holistic surveillance for prostate cancer.

“After 20 years at a major metropolitan teaching hospital, I moved over to one of the most outstanding medical centers in the nation: Winthrop-University Hospital. I firmly believe that Winthrop cancer care is the highest I have seen. Our prostate cancer program is the most progressive I know of, with modalities including ® CyberKnife , cryotherapy, minimally invasive robotic surgery and active holistic surveillance. It all comes down to what’s best for each patient.

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Rambam’s mock trial team goes Beis Din It started as a schmooze. Mr. Hillel Goldman, Rambam’s assistant principal, was discussing the many programs and activities at Rambam with his father. After mentioning the Mock Trial team, that finished in the final four last year in the Nassau County Tournament, his father asked, “Why not have a model Beis Din? That would teach the boys how to analyze a contemporary, real life issue from a halachic perspective.”

This had long been the dream of Mr. Goldman’s father, Judge Ronald Goldman, who spent years as an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn’s Special Victims Unit.

The idea was brought to life approximately one month later during a meeting held at Rambam between the administrative team of Landers College for Men, that included Landers’ President Dr. Alan Kadish, Dean Dr. Moshe Sokol, and the Rosh Mesivta of Rambam, Rabbi Zev Meir Friedman, Princi-

pal Rabbi Yotav Eliach, and Mr. Goldman.

In the course of talking about various cooperative programs that could be run, Mr. Goldman mentioned his father’s idea as something Landers could take ownership of and present to the Tri-State Area Yeshiva world. The concept of the Model Beis Din was met with enthusiasm and alacrity and a few weeks later, Rambam, MAY, JEC, and TABC were competing in a Landers College Model Beis Din Tournament.

The teams were presented with a case of an individual who was robbed of his sandwich and the halachic measures he was allowed to take concerning addressing his grievances. The rosh yeshiva of Landers, Rabbi Yonason Sacks, headed the dayanim.

Rabbi Yaacov Weisenberg, Rambam rebbe, spent a great deal of time with the members of Rambam’s team, Ben

Silverstein, Ariel Blumstein, Avi Brandel, Cameron Broder, Evan Edelstein, and Jacob Roffe delving into the various sources, culminating last weekend at a Rambam Model Beis Din Shabbaton, hosted by the Edelsteins, the Broders, and the Blumsteins, where the team met to learn, sing, and continue building a kesher over a love of learning.

Special thank you to Rabbi Josh Sturm of Landers for coordinating the logistics of the program. Rambam placed second, with TABC on top.

HAFTR students gathered to commemorate Yom Hashoah. Fourth and fifth graders (above left) listened to Ms. Joy Hammer, principal, speak of her experience visiting concentration camps and her reaction when she encountered Holocaust deniers. Fifth grade students performed Patricia Polacco’s The Butterfly. HAFTR parent, Mrs. Tahra Mastour, told the story of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor. Mrs. Mastour and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Kerman, and the Mastour children lit candles. HAFTR Middle School (above right) commemorated the day with literary readings, psalms and a history of the day; the choir sang as a background to images of the concentration camps. Menahel Rabbi Kupchik led the reciting of Kayl Maleh Rachamim.

Rabbi Yaacov Weisenberg and the Rambam Mesivta Model Bais Din team with their second place award from the Landers College Model Beis Din Tournament.

HAFTR wins LI math honors HANC’s bracha on trees First graders in Morah Katz’s class at HANC’s Samuel & Elizabeth Bass Golding Elementary School, in West Hempstead, took their siddurim on a walk to a blossoming blueberry bush so that they could perform the mitzvah of “Blessing the Trees,” which is done during the month of Nisan, when fruit trees begin to bloom.

Before the children left on their walk, Mrs. Katz told the students about the Midrash in Masechet Ta’anit that tells the story of a traveler who sits under a shady

fruit tree and then wants to bless the tree for giving him shade and fruit to eat.

The traveler debates how to bless the tree for he already has shade, he is already surrounded by water and he already has fruit.

In the end the traveler blesses the tree that all of its saplings should also provide shade and sweet fruit. Morah Katz explained to the students that it is always important to thank Hashem for everything that He has created for us.

Four Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway HS students were awarded medals for outstanding research at the final round of the Long Island Math Fair on May 2, 2014 at Hofstra University. Samantha Lish captured a gold medal and Matthew Goldstein captured a silver medal. In addition, Elizabeth Berger and Maxwell Lent captured bronze medals.

Samantha researched the use of fractal geometry in medicine, and Matthew did research on traffic patterns. Elizabeth investigated the cardinality of numbers and Maxwell researched recursion relationships in triangular numbers.

All four students worked with their mentor, Mr. Neil Bernstein, mathematics department chairman at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway High School.

Congratulations to our students on their academic success!

THE JEWISH STAR May 9, 2014 • 9 IYAR 5774

Jewish Star Schools

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