Rav Dov Fischer

Tarbut v'Torah (TVT): Jewish Education's Crisis of Failure in Irvine, Orange County, California

2011-08-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

When I was ordained in March 1981 with s'mikha from HaRav HaGaon Harav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik zt"l and Rav Nahum Lamm shlit"a at Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), I undertook to be a Rav b'Yisrael, a rabbi and teacher in the greater Jewish community. I have been a Rav for 30 years and have practiced in pulpit and community rabbonus for more than 18 of those years. It is because I love the Jewish People, and particularly because I am devoted to the Judaic education of young people -- of all ages, of all backgrounds -- that I write this considered commentary on my profound disappointment over what I have seen and experienced first-hand at the Irvine-based community day school called "TVT" or Tarbut v'Torah.

Irvine is not New York or Los Angeles, and – given its Jewish demographics – it is proper, even for an Orthodox Rav, to modify expectations in light of the reality of the community and what it realistically can accept in terms of Jewish education, what it reasonably can sustain. I write from that recognition and perspective.

I have been in Tarbut / TVT. I know many of its students. I deeply care for them.

I am deeply pained that, for exactly the same money – or even significantly less – that has been invested in the school, Tarbut / TVT could be a fine community Jewish Day School. Instead, it does not meet its mission as a community Jewish Day School. One readily can discern the focus that donors devoted on the campus grounds and the externals of the facility, but a more experienced and trained eye discerns sadly the lesser focus devoted on the quality of the Judaic component of the academic program. (It is beyond the scope of this commentary to opine on the school's secular program or its administration. Neither approbation nor disdain should be inferred from this commentary regarding either of those two subjects.) This severe weakness is commonly perceived, and it is commonly acknowledged among Jewish educators outside the community. It is discussed quietly among rabbis of all Jewish denominations in Orange County, several of whom lament privately that the Morashah Day School extends only through sixth grade. However, it is regarded as rabbinic-career political suicide to say it aloud, with attribution, within the Jewish community of Orange County. I thank G-d for imbuing me with the courage to write this.

It is not difficult to know what a formal Jewish education can offer its students. Throughout Southern California, there are noble efforts to that effect. Institutions under Orthodox auspices are not the only ones. There are noble efforts under Conservative and Reform auspices, too. In Woodland Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, Bruce Powell has created a burgeoning model of a community Jewish Day School. Tragically, however, Tarbut's / TVT's Jewish studies program is dramatically weaker than one finds at many fine Jewish schools run in the United States under Reform or other denominational auspices.

The students at Tarbut / TVT deserve better. I know many of them personally. Many are bright -- and they would love to learn more. They are quite capable of being taught text knowledge. Certainly, at a tuition of some $15,000 per head, they deserve it. TVT / Tarbut should be a school where capable students learn Jewish knowledge, book knowledge, side-by-side with secular curricula. But it is not. I know this from very personal knowledge: from what I personally have seen, what I have tried to share of myself, and -- primarily -- from what parents themselves privately and confidentially have brought to my attention throughout my three years in Orange County. I have spoken privately with select students and with select faculty through three years here. There is great fear to speak openly about the lacunae. "Rabbi Fischer," I am asked, "Please do something about this. Please say something. Please write something. Please tell what is happening -- or, more accurately, what is not happening -- here. But, please, promise me that you will not quote me. My friends will attack me. My children will lose their friends. Please do not quote me."

There is no need to fear. I will not quote and will not attribute. I speak only as a Rabbi of 30 years -- as a Congregational Rav and as a professional Jewish educator. I speak only in my own name, and I bear full personal responsibility for every word I write here. For a period now extending through several years, Tarbut V'Torah (TVT) consistently has failed its parents and students, failing to transmit a substantive Judaic knowledge foundation to the vast majority of its students. The academic lacunae are palpable, and the failure to transmit substantive Judaic information and to inculcate meaningful Jewish learning is manifest. Given the expansive and lush grounds on which the Tarbut V'Torah campus is situated and the $15,000 annual tuition charge for each student, this poignant institutional failure to achieve the results charted at leaner, more modestly funded Jewish Day Schools operated throughout America under Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox auspices respectively cannot be attributed to a lack of material wherewithal, thus amplifying the concern.

At Tarbut / TVT, the students are not taught to navigate a Chumash. They do not learn Chumash text as part of their curriculum between grades 1-12. They cannot read a Rashi commentary. Over 90% never even have heard the most basic terms that children at any other Jewish Day School would have learned. The kids should be looking and learning inside real texts – Chumash, Rashi, Mishnah.

The level of Hebrew reading at Tarbut / TVT concerns me. I have met any number of parents who have brought their 12-year-old sons and 11-year-old daughters into my office, to start them on the paths of their respective bar- and bat mitzvahs. I would take out four Siddurim -- one for the student, one for the Mom, one for the Dad, and one for me. Typically, I also would invite our Youth Director to participate in the session, handing him a Siddur, too. I would ask the student kindly to read something in the Siddur so I could gauge the level of intensity needed for the forthcoming curriculum of bar/bat mitzvah study. The experience typically would be profoundly disheartening.

This educational shortfall is universally recognized among Jewish educators and rabbis in the region, but there is an understanding within the community that discretion is appropriate. One Youth Director after another who has worked with me has seen first-hand and experienced the Tarbut / TVT failure. Each has expressed amazement. The Youth Director would sit in my office with me, as we -- and the parents -- would gauge the prospective bar/bat mitzvah student’s Hebrew reading to assess the need and plan out a learning program. Because I always would have the Mom and Dad in the room with us, too, as the child would read Hebrew from the Siddur, the parents also would be startled.

As in public schools, where many parents consign pedagogical authority to the employed teachers without always investigating what is being taught and how, many of the parents of TVT students understandably do not investigate what their children are learning at Tarbut V'Torah, often because they understandably do not know how to check or what standard to expect. They are not professionally trained Jewish educators, and they understandably do not have a skills set in that area. Yet even they know that something is severely wrong when their intelligent child, after six years at some $15,000-a-year, sits in the Rabbi's office at age 12 or age 11 and barely is able to read a line of Hebrew smoothly, much less to identify basic Judaic concepts or terms.

If the parents lack the skills set, how then do they know there is a problem? Consider that I do not read Chinese. But if my son, after attending a Chinese-language class for six years at $15,000 a year, were asked to read from a Chinese book, and he were to articulate only a handful of syllabic sounds in a sixty-second minute, and then were to stop after just a few more syllables over three or four more minutes, I would be quite unsettled. And if he then were to turn to me, seeing my dismay, and say “Don’t be angry at me, Dad. I really am trying, but I can’t read this so well. It is a foreign language with a different set of alphabetical characters.” Well, after six years -- and knowing how well my child is able to acquire other knowledge skills -- that would tell me something very sobering about my $90,000 investment.

That is the core of the problem at TVT / Tarbut v'Torah. For those less professionally trained and experienced in the area of Jewish pedagogy, the difficulty to recognize the scope and depth of the problem is amplified and obfuscated by two factors:

(1) A small number of TVT / Tarbut students independently are intensely home-schooled by their parents, after school and on weekends, because those parents are among the proportionately few in South Orange County who enjoy the Judaic background and skills-sets sufficient to perceive that their respective children otherwise are not being taught a meaningfully substantive Judaic knowledge base. Then, after being home-schooled, those proportionately few children are presented to the broader community as “proof” that TVT / Tarbut is doing a fine job.

(2) The second obfuscation is more subtle. The Rabbi and the temple Youth Director -- whether Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, or Orthodox -- is assigned, within the separate institutional framework of the temple that provides services for its members, to train the 12-year-old boy or 11-year-old girl, over the course of the following 8-12 months leading up to bar/bat mitzvah, to essentially quasi-memorize the bar/bat mitzvah service. Thus, on “Bar/Bat Mitzvah Day,” those present at temple hear a young lady or fellow chant and otherwise lead aspects of the service with the perceived erudition that implicitly comes with years of training, learning, and study.

But the actuality differs. Professional and experienced pedagogues in secular schools have encountered this same educational phenomenon when first meeting a child entering the first grade. The child is tested in entry-level reading skills and is given a page, or several pages, to read. The child reads beautifully. The parent beams proudly, but the teacher methodically reaches for a second book of similar grade-level, but written by a different author, illustrated with different pictures. Inexplicably to the parent -- but all-too-common to the trained pedagogue -- the same child cannot read from that comparable book. The trained pedagogue instantly discerns that the child was taught "sight reading," not phonics. Thus, the child essentially has quasi-memorized that first book, page by page. But the child remains helpless when exposed to other illustrations, another page lay-out. The child has not yet been taught to read. Many pedagogues maintain that there nevertheless is some value in teaching "sight reading" if it encourages a foundational love for books and love for reading among nursery children and kindergarteners. However, by eighth grade, it is recognized that "sight reading" is not sufficient.

The same phenomenon underlies the Bar/Bat Mitzvah phenomenon. The Tarbut / TVT student leads the service at the temple. Perhaps she reads from the Torah. Perhaps he reads a Haftorah. Perhaps she leads a portion of the prayer service. Yet, if the same boy were to be asked -- only moments later -- to read also from the Haftorah that appears on the page that precedes or follows his Bar Mitzvah Haftorah, the result well could surprise. Likewise, the boy or girl is taught essentially to quasi-memorize portions of the prayer service that he or she leads. But if he or she were to be asked moments later, quietly and confidentially, to read in the same Siddur from prayers that appear a few pages before or after what he or she has been taught essentially to memorize, the results well could surprise. Thus, for the audience -- the assembled congregation -- an appearance of erudition redounds to the school's reputation. Would that it were so!

Ultimately, then, the need in Orange County is not exclusively for a Brooklyn/Los Angeles-quality yeshiva day school. Naturally, as an Orthodox Rav, it is my goal and dream to see a Jewish Day School of such caliber established some day in Irvine so that my Orthodox rabbinical colleagues and I do not have to endure the enormous logistical challenges and difficulties of having our children educated two hours away at YULA in Los Angeles. But as a Rabbi who recognizes the variegation of the Jewish demographic locally and understands with the experience of a career spanning a quarter century what is at stake and what realistically can be achieved for the Jewish community that I love and whom I am dedicated to serve -- an Irvine-based South Orange County Jewish community of more than 100,000 Jews who are not predominantly Orthodox but who deserve excellence for the tuition dollars being invested in their most precious resources, their children -- it is deeply, deeply painful to watch profoundly bright and capable young children in our community being denied exposure to substantive Judaic knowledge.

As a Rabbi, it devolves on me to observe aloud that wonderful, bright young people are processed year-after-year through Tarbut's / TVT’s revolving doors at a tuition rate that certainly implies a substantive education, yet that demands from and offers them so much less than one typically would find provided to graduates of a Jewish Day School run under Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, or Orthodox auspices.

I know the children because my focus as a Rabbi always has included attending with utmost concern to elementary students, teens, and college students. I know, first-hand in the confidentiality of my relationships with families of Tarbut / TVT students, how deeply so many of those parents are pained. There are parents who literally have broken down, crying in my office. I know, from that same base of direct and confidential personal knowledge, how relieved those parents are when the year-long quasi-memorization process ends, with their sons and daughters emerging from the Bar/Bat Mitzvah having publicly presented the appearance of having a Judaic education. I know the scope of what rabbis in Los Angeles -- who may speak more candidly on the subject because they are outside the penumbra of political fall-out and personal exposure when speaking -- think of TVT / Tarbut. (The school's reputation outside Orange County and its environs is one that I have not encountered in my quarter century in the Rabbinate.) From a career in the rabbinate, I know what other Jewish community and denominational schools can and do teach their charges.

It thus is a matter of grave public concern, compelling a Rabbi to speak out, even as it is a matter of political suicide in South Orange County to discuss this subject publicly with candor. But I am a Rabbi, and that is my calling. It is my soul's yearning. It is incumbent on me to share these concerns publicly. We need only view the greater American society's economic fall-out, in the face of the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae setbacks that were perceived by many who knew that the system was in grave danger but who chose not to speak because their personal political considerations for advancement and personal fundraising opportunities diverted them. And, then, one day Bear Stearns collapsed, and then Indy Mac, and then Lehman Brothers. Yet, with deference to the significant economic and financial institutional concerns of an American polity in which I share, I feel obliged even more to share the present concern. The need for a dramatic overhaul and re-conception of Tarbut V'Torah (TVT), its mission, and its educational aspirations for students and parents who deserve better is most compelling because, at bottom, we are talking about the right of Jewish young people to receive the substantive education they deserve and for which their parents believe they are paying. They are good young people. They are capable of learning great things. And, if they miss these opportunities to grow in Jewish text knowledge -- the study of Chumash, Rashi, Mishnah, Talmud, and so much more -- during their childhood and teen years, they may never get that opportunity later, once "life happens."

And what will they have left to pass down to their children?

This statement of public concern concludes with one more area of attention. A Jewish community day school that offers its students the opportunity to participate in formal daily prayer services lays a foundation for them to have an option to grow spiritually in yet another way, and also to learn the skill of navigating through a prayer book. Those who daven daily are not perfect. But if tefilah -- Jewish prayer (davening) -- is taught with sensitivity and formal training, it sometimes can assist a school's administration and faculty in an effort to guide young people from evolving in their teens towards the coarseness sometimes found in segments of external society. Coarseness is the hallmark of teen evolution in certain circles of society, but the Jewish Day School model aims for something more noble and uplifting. Dirty words, filthy language, coarse sexual references and humor are not compatible with a successful Jewish Day School model. TVT / Tarbut should offer its students the opportunity to pray every day -- a formal Shacharit option each and every school morning, with all boys age 13 or over donning tefillin and with Sephardic boys wearing a tallit in the tradition of their parents. Such prayer need not be mandatory, but it should be a formal curricular offering in much the same way that so many other community Jewish Day Schools offer. Similarly, Tarbut / TVT should offer a formally scheduled Mincha prayer opportunity, even if only optional, every afternoon.

If there is no one else to lead such a daily Shacharit service, I publicly volunteer to lead it. Just as I remain available -- as I have for three years -- to teach Torah text as a formal faculty member. I extend that offer because it is easy to offer analysis and observation when one is not prepared personally to accept a challenge and take up a gauntlet. But the faculty member need not be I. Nor need the prayer leader be I. But it is time. And if not now, when?

Measure for Measure: Bin Laden Gets His Last 15 Minutes

2011-05-08T17:19:00.000-07:00

The American Administration should release the Bin Laden photo(s). Not because the photos will prove he was killed. Photos on the internet prove nothing -- just ask Elvis. Not because of "spiking a football." But because those who celebrated Bin Laden's evasion of G-d's Justice and American determination should be reminded, in the thousand words that a picture provides, that there is no evading G-d's justice and that Bin Laden and his fellow shark food aspirants were writing America's epitaph way too prematurely. Bin Laden thought America was weak, soft, lazy, and certainly never could pursue a determined manhunt for a decade. Those who reveled with him in that belief, those who spiked their own footballs at America after every terrorist outrage, deserve to see photographic imagery revealing the stark reminder of reality: There is no evading justice. Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini all died young. Justice caught up with each.

America does not relent. Even the most incompetent and weak-kneed American Presidential Administration since that of Jimmy Carter -- and possibly the weakest and most incompetent in all American history (with apologies to Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan) -- saw this one through. They had no choice. The American People would not let Obama relent. We would not let him close Gitmo. We would not let him put terrorist leaders on civilian trial in Lower Manhattan. We accepted enhanced interrogation and rendition, refusing to let Holder lay a hand on any of those who protected our country during the Bush-Cheney years. Much as we forced Obama finally to go down to Louisiana and to clean up the mess in the Gulf of Mexico, after the President and his inexperienced and unqualified staff fumbled and bumbled by refusing repeated offers of boom and of assistance from oil-cleaning vessels, so we forced him to clean up after Al Qaeda -- like it or not.

As the final judgment took place, G-d saw Osama finished exactly as he merited, measure for measure. He had murdered 3,000 Americans who perfunctorily had left for work on the morning of 9-11 as they respectively had done every other morning -- a quick cup of coffee, a brief glimpse of a newspaper, perhaps forgetting to say "good-bye" or to hug or kiss a loved one on the hurried way out the door. None saw what lay in store that day, and thousands who survived them live a decade later with the pain that they never said "good-bye." Garth Brooks captured that feeling -- the feeling of never having said "good-bye" to a loved one before he died -- years before 9-11 in his incredible song "If Tomorrow Never Comes." I personally have lived 44 years with that pain, having been too young and immature to exchange "good-byes" with my Father as he lay in a hospital bed dying of leukemia. That pain has wracked me nearly half a century, and it never will end -- never having gotten to say "good-bye." But at least I have been able to visit my father's burial site, and I have said "good-bye" there.

For the families who lost 3,000 souls on 9-11 at Osama's inducement, there were few chances to say"good-bye." The survivors forever will live with that amplified pain, even as the victims never saw it coming. And, for so many of those victims, their final remains never were found by the subsequent crews. Many who died at the Twin Towers never will be found. They are part and parcel of Ground Zero. Their survivors cannot go to their gravesites. There is no coming to terms or ultimate closure.

And so it was fitting, in the ultimate measure for measure, that Bin Laden died a decade later in a sudden hail of frenzy, never having seen it coming. It was a day that had begun like all others with the three wives and the 23 kids. And then, from nowhere, with no advance warning, it all came to thud of a halt. A hail of fire, a blown-off piece of skull, and tomorrow never came. Only A flash of fire and a last image: that of Uncle Sam's SEALs discharging their weapons at his head. And, even as those who survived him never got to say "good-bye," they and their fellow mourners have nowhere to go to pay their respects. His body is gone, remains disappeared. There is no gravesite, no marker. As Moses the Zionist cheerfully sang in Exodus 15:3-5,10: "G-d is a master of war. . . . Pharaoh's chariots and warriors He threw in the sea, and the most select of his officers sank in the sea. Deep waters covered them; they descended in the depths like stone. . . [T]he sea enshrouded them; they sank like lead in water."

And so Osama, too, promptly sank in the ocean like lead, subsumed by the mighty waters and the deepest of depths. There is nowhere to go to say "good-bye, Bin Laden." By now, part of him still may lie on the ocean floor, part in some whale, part in some shark. Perhaps, by now, a bit even in some local aquarium's population.

Gone at once. Never saw it coming. Nowhere to be found. Measure for measure.

That, too, is G-d's justice, as realized by the armed forces of a nation determined not to relent, not to let its weak and inadequate national leadership back off. And that is the testimonial power of that photo -- for every terrorist and terrorist-wanna-be who ever spiked a football towards America. There is no evading justice, and this United States of America will not relent.

Fabulous Jews and Schmendricks at El Al Airlines: On Caroline Low, Elyezer Shkedy, and a Teenage Boy Alone at Heathrow Airport over Shabbat

2011-05-08T16:28:00.000-07:00

So my son followed up this morning in Britain. I have a great story to write about the world of Orthodox Jews and hachnasat orchim. But this post is about the schmendricks at El Al, too. And the follow up customer service department letter from Caroline Low on behalf of Elyezer Shkedy.

My son arrived in London on Thursday. Had things gone smoothly, he would have arrived in Tel Aviv on Friday morning. Alas, flights were canceled to and from Lod Airport that day for important reasons. We all properly accept that. Here is where Jewish policy comes in:

El Al explained to the stranded travelers on Thursday that they would be stranded in London until Saturday night. The flight for Saturday night would start so close after Shabbat that all the shomrei Shabbat stranded in London ultimately needed to remain at the local hotel over Shabbat because there otherwise would have been no time for them to get back to the airport in time for the flight after havdalah. I guess we all properly can accept that, too. Flight schedules are based on many factors. Next:

Yet the schmendricks at El Al agreed to pay for only one night at the hotel – Thursday night. They refused to pay for Friday night. They also insulted several travelers repeatedly for asking El Al also to cover the second night, Friday night, for which they essentially were requiring the shomrei Shabbat to remain at the hotel. This nastiness went back and forth for much of the day, until El Al upper management finally relented to other, older-in-age passengers who also pressed them, and El Al finally agreed a day later to pay for Friday night, too, leaving bad feelings all around. (It is my business experience that, if an airline compels you to wait overnight for its next flight to materialize, they pay for your hotel for as long as they delay you. And they do it with a smile and a soft polite apology to the passengers whom they are delaying.)

In the end, a wonderful Shabbat-observant lady in London, with whom my son and I were connected by the wonderful rav of New York’s Lincoln Square Synagogue, kindly and generously paid fgor and dispatched a taxi cab that delivered complete Shabbat meals for my son, including not only wine and home-baked challah but also meat and desserts of chocolate mousse. (In addition, other among my many wonderful rabbinical colleagues among the RCA and shul members of Young Israel of Orange County also put us in touch with many other London-area shomer Shabbat contacts. In all, in less than half a day, we received more than 25 invitations for my son to spend Shabbat at homes throughout Greater London. Harry Potter should be so blessed!)

This incident tells a great story about Orthodox Jews throughout the world and about hachnasat orchim. El Al is not part of that great story. It seems you can't teach class.

I did, however, give it a try. After all, El Al is the best at security. So one would figure that the term "El Al Customer Service" does not have to be an oxymoron. So I wrote El Al. After a month of "investigating," one Caroline Low wrote me on behalf of the President, Elyezer Shkedy, essentially praising the hachnasat orchim of the lady in London and, in so many words, wishing us better luck next time with El Al!

That's got to be the ultimate Form Letter for incompetent Customer Service departments and nincompoop clerks around the world: "Dear Mr. Jones. Thank you for writing about the poor service you received from our company. We have conducted a one-month investigation and are glad to learn, pretty much from re-reading your letter a month after we first read it, that someone else helped you out while our half-trained employee was yelling at and insulting you. On behalf of our Department President, Corporate President, and the lady who does my nails we all wish you better luck next time. Ciao!"

Remember the names: Caroline Low. Elyezer Shkedy. The next time you buy an airline ticket to Israel, choosing a different airline to receive your $1,500-$2,000 purchase, drop them a note: "Although I am Jewish and a deep Zionist, and always go out of my way to patronize Israeli companies, I have chosen to fly an airline other than El Al because of Caroline Low and Elyezer Shkedy. Better luck next time!"

Israel Independence Day 5771 - Yom HaAtzma'ut 2011

2011-05-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

As American Jews, we are proud and engaged citizens of the United States. We are loyal to America, pay taxes to her, support and often have fought in her armed forces, often giving our lives for her. See, e.g., the website of the Jewish War Veterans of America at www.jwv.org . Many Jews have served America as public office holders, government administration professionals, and military professionals. We celebrate America’s holidays as our own, because they are own: Thanksgiving as a day to thank G-d for bringing us to these shores of a New World, far away from the continents of blood libels, Crusades, and Inquisitions. Columbus Day with thanks that he took that wrong turn and found this place. Veterans Day with gratitude for all who have fought under our flag for freedom. Presidents’ Day to celebrate a tradition of American political leadership that consistently has affirmed our place in America. Memorial Day to remember our fallen soldiers who fought so that America could be safe for liberty. Independence Day for marking the historic break from tyranny and the pursuit of liberty. Thus, our commitment to the country of America is primary and all-engrossing.

At the same time, we also are part of an eternal people, the Jewish People, with our eyes and hearts always turned to Tzion – to Zion – to the heart of Jerusalem where G-d set His eternal dwelling place on the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. For two thousand years of bitter Jewish Exile, through dispersion and persecution, we never abandoned our bond with and yearning for Zion. In our daily prayers, we faced and still face towards the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem. Three times daily, we prayed and still pray for G-d’s return to Jerusalem. After meals that we eat with bread, we recited and still recite our prayer that He rebuild Jerusalem speedily in our days. For two thousand years, we sat and still sit on floors, weeping bitter tears by candlelight as we remembered Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av Night and Day, mourning and fasting for a return to the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem and for restoration of the Jewish People to the land that G-d promised Abraham, Isaac, and Israel (Jacob). The Holy Land, then, is part of our core heritage as Jewish People, and we cannot be separated from the Land of Israel and our connection to our forebears who lived and died there. Indeed, many proud American Jews, like Jews all over the world, arranged through the centuries, and still arrange, to be laid to rest in Israel after a full and rich life.

When the State of Israel was reestablished in 1948, that event marked an historically awesome and momentous event in Jewish faith. After nearly two thousand years of never ever giving up the claim and the hope, we saw its fulfillment begun: a Jewish Commonwealth reborn in the land we spiritually never had left. By 1967, when three Arab armies based in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan forced Israel to fight for her survival in a fearsome and ultimately miraculous defensive war that resulted with Israel’s liberation of East Jerusalem and the reunification of the City of Jerusalem as the temporal capital of the State of Israel and as the Eternal Spiritual Capital of the Jewish People, our lives as Jews everywhere were changed forever.

Israel’s independence, then, is part of our essence as Jews. Militarily, our loyalties are to America. Politically, to America. Economically, to America. Spiritually, even as Catholics throughout the world turn to the Vatican and as Moslems make their haj to Mecca, our eyes and hearts turn to Jerusalem and to Israel. We celebrate her independence as our own. We send money to support her institutions. We lobby our elected officials to take steps to offset those who would endanger her. We visit her, again and again. We send our children to learn there, whether at a yeshiva seminary for a year after high school, or for a Birthright trip, or an Aish program in spiritual discovery, or any of scores of other programs. We learn the ancient Hebrew language with modern inflections, pray almost exclusively in Hebrew, and we visit the holy sites in Bethlehem (where Rachel is buried), Shechem (Nablus, where Joseph lies), and of course Hebron (the resting place of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah). Some of us plan our retirements to include significant time in Israel. So many of us, by now, have family living in Israel – cousins, nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles, grandchildren, and others – who not only speak pure Hebrew but with Israeli accents.

Israel Independence Day, then, is in good measure our celebration, too. We are invested in Israel – spiritually, emotionally, historically through our ancestors, materially. We take pride in Israel’s strides and advances, concern ourselves with her evolution, and plan our lives with the knowledge and understanding that we live in the most miraculous of times, an era that our grandparents and theirs barely could have imagined – an age and a time when many millions of Jews have returned to live in a Jewish country in Israel, with borders open to Jews everywhere so that we never again need be a people with nowhere to flee from persecution. Ours is the miracle era with the city of Jerusalem reunited and now with many hundreds of thousands more pouring into and rebuilding the cities of Judea and Samaria in the heart of our patrimony where Judaism all began. Regardless of whether a particular American Jew personally ever will set foot in Israel, much less live there, the day of Israel’s independence – Yom HaAtzma’ut – is a day for each and every American Jew to celebrate heartily and gratefully, within our hearts, among our families, as part of our communities, and as an eternal Jewish people whose spark never will cease and to whose eternal existence the modern State of Israel bears existential witness.

On the Increased Urgency for a New Jewish Educational Vision to Guide the Pedagogic Model of Tarbut v'Torah (TVT) in Irvine, Orange County, California

2011-02-15T13:53:00.000-08:00

When I was ordained in March 1981 with s'mikha from HaRav HaGaon Harav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik zt"l and Rav Nahum Lamm shlit"a at Yeshiva University's Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), I undertook to be a Rav b'Yisrael, a rabbi and teacher in the greater Jewish community. I have been a Rav for 27 years and have practiced in pulpit and community rabbonus for more than 15 of those years. It is because I love the Jewish People, and particularly because I am devoted to the Judaic education of young people -- of all ages, of all backgrounds -- that I write this considered commentary on my profound disappointment over what I have seen and experienced first-hand at the Irvine-based community day school called "TVT" or Tarbut v'Torah.

Irvine is not New York or Los Angeles, and – given its Jewish demographics – it is proper, even for an Orthodox Rav, to modify expectations in light of the reality of the community and what it realistically can accept in terms of Jewish education, what it reasonably can sustain. I write from that recognition and perspective.

I have been in Tarbut / TVT. I know many of its students. I deeply care for them.

I am deeply pained that, for exactly the same money – or even significantly less – that has been invested in the school, Tarbut / TVT could be a fine community Jewish Day School. Instead, it does not meet its mission as a community Jewish Day School. One readily can discern the focus that donors devoted on the campus grounds and the externals of the facility, but a more experienced and trained eye discerns sadly the lesser focus devoted on the quality of the Judaic component of the academic program. (It is beyond the scope of this commentary to opine on the school's secular program or its administration. Neither approbation nor disdain should be inferred from this commentary regarding either of those two subjects.) This severe weakness is commonly perceived, and it is commonly acknowledged among Jewish educators outside the community. It is discussed quietly among rabbis of all Jewish denominations in Orange County, several of whom lament privately that the Morashah Day School extends only through sixth grade. However, it is regarded as rabbinic-career political suicide to say it aloud, with attribution, within the Jewish community of Orange County. I thank G-d for imbuing me with the courage to write this.

It is not difficult to know what a formal Jewish education can offer its students. Throughout Southern California, there are noble efforts to that effect. Institutions under Orthodox auspices are not the only ones. There are noble efforts under Conservative and Reform auspices, too. In Woodland Hills, in the San Fernando Valley, Bruce Powell has created a burgeoning model of a community Jewish Day School. Tragically, however, Tarbut's / TVT's Jewish studies program is dramatically weaker than one finds at many fine Jewish schools run in the United States under Reform or other denominational auspices.

The students at Tarbut / TVT deserve better. I know many of them personally. Many are bright -- and they would love to learn more. They are quite capable of being taught text knowledge. Certainly, at a tuition of some $15,000 per head, they deserve it. TVT / Tarbut should be a school where capable students learn Jewish knowledge, book knowledge, side-by-side with secular curricula. But it is not. I know this from very personal knowledge: from what I personally have seen, what I have tried to share of myself, and -- primarily -- from what parents themselves privately and confidentially have brought to my attention throughout my three years in Orange County. I have spoken privately with select students and with select faculty through three years here. There is great fear to speak openly about the lacunae. "Rabbi Fischer," I am asked, "Please do something about this. Please say something. Please write something. Please tell what is happening -- or, more accurately, what is not happening -- here. But, please, promise me that you will not quote me. My friends will attack me. My children will lose their friends. Please do not quote me."

There is no need to fear. I will not quote and will not attribute. I speak only as a Rabbi of 27 years -- as a Congregational Rav and as a professional Jewish educator. I speak only in my own name, and I bear full personal responsibility for every word I write here. For a period now extending through several years, Tarbut V'Torah (TVT) consistently has failed its parents and students, failing to transmit a substantive Judaic knowledge foundation to the vast majority of its students. The academic lacunae are palpable, and the failure to transmit substantive Judaic information and to inculcate meaningful Jewish learning is manifest. Given the expansive and lush grounds on which the Tarbut V'Torah campus is situated and the $15,000 annual tuition charge for each student, this poignant institutional failure to achieve the results charted at leaner, more modestly funded Jewish Day Schools operated throughout America under Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox auspices respectively cannot be attributed to a lack of material wherewithal, thus amplifying the concern.

At Tarbut / TVT, the students are not taught to navigate a Chumash. They do not learn Chumash text as part of their curriculum between grades 1-12. They cannot read a Rashi commentary. Over 90% never even have heard the most basic terms that children at any other Jewish Day School would have learned. The kids should be looking and learning inside real texts – Chumash, Rashi, Mishnah.

The level of Hebrew reading at Tarbut / TVT concerns me. I have met any number of parents who have brought their 12-year-old sons and 11-year-old daughters into my office, to start them on the paths of their respective bar- and bat mitzvahs. I would take out four Siddurim -- one for the student, one for the Mom, one for the Dad, and one for me. Typically, I also would invite our Youth Director to participate in the session, handing him a Siddur, too. I would ask the student kindly to read something in the Siddur so I could gauge the level of intensity needed for the forthcoming curriculum of bar/bat mitzvah study. The experience typically would be profoundly disheartening.

This educational shortfall is universally recognized among Jewish educators and rabbis in the region, but there is an understanding within the community that discretion is appropriate. One Youth Director after another who has worked with me has seen first-hand and experienced the Tarbut / TVT failure. Each has expressed amazement. The Youth Director would sit in my office with me, as we -- and the parents -- would gauge the prospective bar/bat mitzvah student’s Hebrew reading to assess the need and plan out a learning program. Because I always would have the Mom and Dad in the room with us, too, as the child would read Hebrew from the Siddur, the parents also would be startled.

As in public schools, where many parents consign pedagogical authority to the employed teachers without always investigating what is being taught and how, many of the parents of TVT students understandably do not investigate what their children are learning at Tarbut V'Torah, often because they understandably do not know how to check or what standard to expect. They are not professionally trained Jewish educators, and they understandably do not have a skills set in that area. Yet even they know that something is severely wrong when their intelligent child, after six years at some $15,000-a-year, sits in the Rabbi's office at age 12 or age 11 and barely is able to read a line of Hebrew smoothly, much less to identify basic Judaic concepts or terms.

If the parents lack the skills set, how then do they know there is a problem? Consider that I do not read Chinese. But if my son, after attending a Chinese-language class for six years at $15,000 a year, were asked to read from a Chinese book, and he were to articulate only a handful of syllabic sounds in a sixty-second minute, and then were to stop after just a few more syllables over three or four more minutes, I would be quite unsettled. And if he then were to turn to me, seeing my dismay, and say “Don’t be angry at me, Dad. I really am trying, but I can’t read this so well. It is a foreign language with a different set of alphabetical characters.” Well, after six years -- and knowing how well my child is able to acquire other knowledge skills -- that would tell me something very sobering about my $90,000 investment.

That is the core of the problem at TVT / Tarbut v'Torah. For those less professionally trained and experienced in the area of Jewish pedagogy, the difficulty to recognize the scope and depth of the problem is amplified and obfuscated by two factors:

(1) A small number of TVT / Tarbut students independently are intensely home-schooled by their parents, after school and on weekends, because those parents are among the proportionately few in South Orange County who enjoy the Judaic background and skills-sets sufficient to perceive that their respective children otherwise are not being taught a meaningfully substantive Judaic knowledge base. Then, after being home-schooled, those proportionately few children are presented to the broader community as “proof” that TVT / Tarbut is doing a fine job.

(2) The second obfuscation is more subtle. The Rabbi and the temple Youth Director -- whether Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, or Orthodox -- is assigned, within the separate institutional framework of the temple that provides services for its members, to train the 12-year-old boy or 11-year-old girl, over the course of the following 8-12 months leading up to bar/bat mitzvah, to essentially quasi-memorize the bar/bat mitzvah service. Thus, on “Bar/Bat Mitzvah Day,” those present at temple hear a young lady or fellow chant and otherwise lead aspects of the service with the perceived erudition that implicitly comes with years of training, learning, and study.

But the actuality differs. Professional and experienced pedagogues in secular schools have encountered this same educational phenomenon when first meeting a child entering the first grade. The child is tested in entry-level reading skills and is given a page, or several pages, to read. The child reads beautifully. The parent beams proudly, but the teacher methodically reaches for a second book of similar grade-level, but written by a different author, illustrated with different pictures. Inexplicably to the parent -- but all-too-common to the trained pedagogue -- the same child cannot read from that comparable book. The trained pedagogue instantly discerns that the child was taught "sight reading," not phonics. Thus, the child essentially has quasi-memorized that first book, page by page. But the child remains helpless when exposed to other illustrations, another page lay-out. The child has not yet been taught to read. Many pedagogues maintain that there nevertheless is some value in teaching "sight reading" if it encourages a foundational love for books and love for reading among nursery children and kindergarteners. However, by eighth grade, it is recognized that "sight reading" is not sufficient.

The same phenomenon underlies the Bar/Bat Mitzvah phenomenon. The Tarbut / TVT student leads the service at the temple. Perhaps she reads from the Torah. Perhaps he reads a Haftorah. Perhaps she leads a portion of the prayer service. Yet, if the same boy were to be asked -- only moments later -- to read also from the Haftorah that appears on the page that precedes or follows his Bar Mitzvah Haftorah, the result well could surprise. Likewise, the boy or girl is taught essentially to quasi-memorize portions of the prayer service that he or she leads. But if he or she were to be asked moments later, quietly and confidentially, to read in the same Siddur from prayers that appear a few pages before or after what he or she has been taught essentially to memorize, the results well could surprise. Thus, for the audience -- the assembled congregation -- an appearance of erudition redounds to the school's reputation. Would that it were so!

Ultimately, then, the need in Orange County is not exclusively for a Brooklyn/Los Angeles-quality yeshiva day school. Naturally, as an Orthodox Rav, it is my goal and dream to see a Jewish Day School of such caliber established some day in Irvine so that my Orthodox rabbinical colleagues and I do not have to endure the enormous logistical challenges and difficulties of having our children educated two hours away at YULA in Los Angeles. But as a Rabbi who recognizes the variegation of the Jewish demographic locally and understands with the experience of a career spanning a quarter century what is at stake and what realistically can be achieved for the Jewish community that I love and whom I am dedicated to serve -- an Irvine-based South Orange County Jewish community of more than 100,000 Jews who are not predominantly Orthodox but who deserve excellence for the tuition dollars being invested in their most precious resources, their children -- it is deeply, deeply painful to watch profoundly bright and capable young children in our community being denied exposure to substantive Judaic knowledge.

As a Rabbi, it devolves on me to observe aloud that wonderful, bright young people are processed year-after-year through Tarbut's / TVT’s revolving doors at a tuition rate that certainly implies a substantive education, yet that demands from and offers them so much less than one typically would find provided to graduates of a Jewish Day School run under Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, or Orthodox auspices.

I know the children because my focus as a Rabbi always has included attending with utmost concern to elementary students, teens, and college students. I know, first-hand in the confidentiality of my relationships with families of Tarbut / TVT students, how deeply so many of those parents are pained. There are parents who literally have broken down, crying in my office. I know, from that same base of direct and confidential personal knowledge, how relieved those parents are when the year-long quasi-memorization process ends, with their sons and daughters emerging from the Bar/Bat Mitzvah having publicly presented the appearance of having a Judaic education. I know the scope of what rabbis in Los Angeles -- who may speak more candidly on the subject because they are outside the penumbra of political fall-out and personal exposure when speaking -- think of TVT / Tarbut. (The school's reputation outside Orange County and its environs is one that I have not encountered in my quarter century in the Rabbinate.) From a career in the rabbinate, I know what other Jewish community and denominational schools can and do teach their charges.

It thus is a matter of grave public concern, compelling a Rabbi to speak out, even as it is a matter of political suicide in South Orange County to discuss this subject publicly with candor. But I am a Rabbi, and that is my calling. It is my soul's yearning. It is incumbent on me to share these concerns publicly. We need only view the greater American society's economic fall-out, in the face of the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae setbacks that were perceived by many who knew that the system was in grave danger but who chose not to speak because their personal political considerations for advancement and personal fundraising opportunities diverted them. And, then, one day Bear Stearns collapsed, and then Indy Mac, and then Lehman Brothers. Yet, with deference to the significant economic and financial institutional concerns of an American polity in which I share, I feel obliged even more to share the present concern. The need for a dramatic overhaul and re-conception of Tarbut V'Torah (TVT), its mission, and its educational aspirations for students and parents who deserve better is most compelling because, at bottom, we are talking about the right of Jewish young people to receive the substantive education they deserve and for which their parents believe they are paying. They are good young people. They are capable of learning great things. And, if they miss these opportunities to grow in Jewish text knowledge -- the study of Chumash, Rashi, Mishnah, Talmud, and so much more -- during their childhood and teen years, they may never get that opportunity later, once "life happens."

And what will they have left to pass down to their children?

This statement of public concern concludes with one more area of attention. A Jewish community day school that offers its students the opportunity to participate in formal daily prayer services lays a foundation for them to have an option to grow spiritually in yet another way, and also to learn the skill of navigating through a prayer book. Those who daven daily are not perfect. But if tefilah -- Jewish prayer (davening) -- is taught with sensitivity and formal training, it sometimes can assist a school's administration and faculty in an effort to guide young people from evolving in their teens towards the coarseness sometimes found in segments of external society. Coarseness is the hallmark of teen evolution in certain circles of society, but the Jewish Day School model aims for something more noble and uplifting. Dirty words, filthy language, coarse sexual references and humor are not compatible with a successful Jewish Day School model. TVT / Tarbut should offer its students the opportunity to pray every day -- a formal Shacharit option each and every school morning, with all boys age 13 or over donning tefillin and with Sephardic boys wearing a tallit in the tradition of their parents. Such prayer need not be mandatory, but it should be a formal curricular offering in much the same way that so many other community Jewish Day Schools offer. Similarly, Tarbut / TVT should offer a formally scheduled Mincha prayer opportunity, even if only optional, every afternoon.

If there is no one else to lead such a daily Shacharit service, I publicly volunteer to lead it. Just as I remain available -- as I have for three years -- to teach Torah text as a formal faculty member. I extend that offer because it is easy to offer analysis and observation when one is not prepared personally to accept a challenge and take up a gauntlet. But the faculty member need not be I. Nor need the prayer leader be I. But it is time. And if not now, when?

Always the Jews -- Not: There Is No Specifically Jewish Angle to the Giffords Shooting

2011-01-10T12:31:00.000-08:00

I respectfully recoil from asserting a Jewish angle in every story (although JTA effectively finds it). Although everything in HKBH”s world may unfold with a purpose to help the Jewish People to perfect our souls, not everything arises from someone thinking about “The Jews.” Edward VIII did not abdicate the throne after ten months because he was infatuated with the chance to marry a woman who had divorced a Jew. (Wallace Simpson had divorced Ernest Aldrich Simpson. His father, Ernest Louis Simpson, had changed his surname from Solomon. Always the Jews.)

This guy was a nut. He merits the privilege, by dint of his own hard efforts, of being deemed by all of us a 100% nut. He may have had an interface with an extremist hate group because they hate Latinos or African Americans or even people from the planet where Loughner perhaps thinks he comes from.

It does not help us or abet the truth to find a Jewish angle in this if there honestly is none. Giffords is a Jew because a Reform rabbi married her to an astronaut named Kelly?

This maniac, Loughner, loved Mein Kampf? Well, he also loved Marx’s Communist Manifesto and Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz and Peter Pan. http://www.businessinsider.com/jared-lee-loughner-2011-1 My mind can be changed, but I am not persuaded that this is about Jews. Nor is it about American politics. It is about a nut.

It is not about the Tea Party any more than John Hinckley shot President Ronald Reagan because of Democrat rhetoric that demonized Reagan in the day. Hinckley wanted to impress a fictional character protrayed by Jodi Foster in the movie “Taxi Driver.” Our present maniac, Loughner, wanted to change the currency or English grammar. Really. It is like the guy who killed Allard K. Lowenstein – he had been very close to Lowenstein but became a paranoid-schizophrenic. Much as some people needed to find a Jewish angle, or blame the Republicans for prosecuting the Vietnam War in the face of Lowenstein’s principled objections, the bottom line behind Lowenstein's murder was that that his assassin was a nut. Charles Manson’s extended family did not slaughter Sharon Tate because she was married to a Jewish filmmaker.

Representative Giffords’s mother, Gloria Fraser, was a Christian Scientist. In 2001, at age 31, Giffords began identifying with the paternal side of her ethnicity. The interesting thing, though, is that her Jewish paternal-line grandfather, Akiba Hornstein, had changed the family surname to “Giffords” in order to hide their Jewish identity. Now, with Hornstein’s presumably non-Jewish granddaughter tragically shot by a nut, some in the American Jewish media race to turn her tragedy into an act of anti-Semitism. The Hornsteins can run, it seems, but they can’t hide.

Although Loughner may indeed have been motivated by anti-Jewish animus, I am skeptical. Give the crazy man his due – he is just plain insane.

The End of the Rabbi As Mr. Nice Guy

2010-12-27T21:54:00.001-08:00

Note something very subtle here. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach's article is very courageous -- but, uh, is he the rabbi of a congregation? He names Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Wiesenthal Institute as another example of someone brave, But does Rabbi Hier have a congregation? The institutional structure of American Jewish life and, I suspect, that of American Protestant life leaves the clergy at the mercy of the hiring committee. Unlike Lubavitch Hassidism and Catholicism, which are centrally organized from the top (Lubavitch from 770 Eastern Parkway and down to satellite stations, and Catholicism from the Vatican to satellites), the rest of American Jewry, not unlike much of American Protestantism, is institutionally organized from the bottom up. The laity comprise a hiring committee. In most temples and shuls, the rabbi dares not speak an unbridled truth, nor dares a pastor. Nor, I venture, would Shmuley if he were answerable tomorrow to a Shul Board of Directors. That leaves a convoluted religious enterprise, where the truly great rabbis -- people with a greatness like a Rav Marvin Hier, a Rav Shmuley, a Rav Daniel Lapin, a Rav Effie Buchwald, a Rav Shlomo Riskin, or even those with whom I agree less often like a Rabbi Irving Greenberg -- have to establish their own non-shul organizations from which they can speak the truths of the Torah without fear of termination and financial ruin. Alternatively, they must found and lead their own independent temples and shuls where people who join understand that the pulpit
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Seattle Takes Down Those Despicable Anti-Israel Bus Ads: In Fairness, Credit Goes to Pamela Geller and David Horowitz

2010-12-23T20:20:00.000-08:00

For the record, it should be noted that Seattle made the bus-ads decision today only after Pamela Geller’s “American Freedom Defense Initiative” bought 25 bus ads (twice as many as the anti-Israel ones) with an equally confrontational message showing bloody victims from Hamas terror bus-bombings with the header: “Hamas Terror: Your Tax Dollars at Work,” and then David Horowitz entered to buy yet another several-thousand-dollars-worth of confrontational bus ads titled: “Palestinian War Crimes: Your Tax Dollars at Work.”

Today, Pam Geller’s advertising representative first got a phone call that the Kings Metro system had decided to refuse her ads, then received a letter from Sharon Shinbo, in Seattle Metro’s Sales and Customer Services department, advising her that the Geller ads were being denied under rules pertaining to running ads that are “so objectionable under contemporary community standards as to be reasonably foreseeable that it will result in harm to, disruption of, or interference with the transportation system” and that are “so insulting, degrading or offensive as to be reasonably foreseeable that it will incite or produce imminent lawless action in the form of retaliation, vandalism or other breach of public safety, peace and order.” Therefore: “The content of the advertisements and the unprecedented response that the County has received to another recently proposed ad of a similar nature show that the American Freedom Defense Initiative ads do not meet the standards set forth in these sections, including among other things, that they pose an unacceptable risk of harm, disruption and interference with the transportation system and other breaches of the public safety, peace and order.”

It is my humble opinion that the efforts of the Jewish community of Seattle were virtually nugatory in obtaining the satisfactory result that all the ads are being rejected. Nonetheless, Seattle residents may anticipate that the community leaders will race to the mails to rustle up a last surge of tax-deductible donations from the locals before the tax-year ends next week.

Truth is an important weapon. It is important for us to know and to acknowledge that the real turning point came when Geller and Horowitz each used their respective organizations to buy a large number of equally confrontational ads. Those ad-buys guaranteed that the real goal would be obtained: not that Geller’s and Horowitz’s ads would run, but instead that no ads on the subject would run.

Geller and Horowitz deserve the thanks that few will give them, while the local Jewish groups will take the credit next week.

That’s how these liberals work. Free Speech for everyone. Free Speech for everyone. Bash Israel on the city buses. We can’t stop the ads even if we disapprove of the views because we protect all people’s right to speech.

Until the target is not Israel or Dead White Protestant Males. Then they suddenly find the Supreme Court language from Chaplinsky (1942) and Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969). They know that Jews will not vandalize the twelve buses with anti-Israel ads. And they know what they are going to face if there are 30 buses with anti-Palestinian ads depicting . . . blown-up buses.

Olive Tree Initiative and the Jews: Travels and Travails:

2010-12-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

How the Jewish Federation of Orange County, the UCI Hillel, and the Hillel Foundation of Orange County Softened the Pro-Israel Partisanship of Several UCI Jewish Students in 2008

The University of California at Irvine (UCI) published a book of approximately 112 pages in Spring 2009 as part of its “Expressions/ Impressions” series. It is volume 6 in the series and is subtitled “Special Edition: Olive Tree Initiative (OTI).” It contains personal memoirs, averaging 2-3 pages per author, by virtually every participant on the first OTI trip. The volume is instructive, beginning with information published at the end:

On pages 110-111, OTI formally lists with gratitude the institutions and individuals whom they acknowledge as their “partners”: the institutions and individuals that “Olive Tree Initiative would not have been possible without.” These include, inter alia, Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, Hillel Foundation of Orange County, Shalom Elcott, Jay Feldmann [sic], and Jordan Fruchtman. On Page 12, Daniel Wehrenfennig, the then-doctoral student who put together the program, writes: “The Jewish community through the Rose Project of the Jewish Federation in Orange County offered crucial financial support at just the right moment, as well as important contacts in the region.”

The faculty leaders’ theme of the trip was to convince students that they can be citizen peace builders and play a role in bringing peace by learning to refrain from taking sides and instead to listen and learn and communicate. Certainly, it is very important, and a central role of the liberal arts university, to educate students to listen respectfully to and learn from those with conflicting viewpoints. But there is no virtue, after listening and learning and understanding, in refraining from partisanship. It helps that the side is just. Sometimes it is righteous to take a side. The OTI trip did not soften the understandable partisanship of the trip’s Moslem Arab students, but its exceptional ideological tilt attenuated Jewish attitudes for Israel.

Other than a solid memoir by Isaac Yerushalmi, one of the OTI participants, virtually every other Jewish person’s memoir reflects a softening of position – not necessarily to pro-Palestinian, not necessarily to neutral in all cases, but to a greater sense that there needs to be a Palestine alongside Israel, augmented by a deep belief that the masses of Palestinians really sincerely want a peaceful coexistence with Israel, but are obstructed in their dream solely by their political leaders. Contrasted alongside the Jewish students’ softening, among the Palestinian and other Arab students there is an overarching sense that some may have evolved positively in viewing their fellow Jewish UCI students as humans, but that they also were traumatized by seeing in-person, and without meaningful context, the “suffering in Palestine,” the Israeli military checkpoints, the refugee camps. Although some of the Moslem students speak warmly of a Friday night Shabbat dinner the OTI group had on the terrace of a Canadian-Jewish family who recently had made aliyah to East Jerusalem, the Palestinians came out strongly, even strengthened, for Palestine. Two or three speak of their shock in viewing what they honestly saw as apartheid – military checkpoints at the security wall, the people in Qalqilya walled in except for a few hours each day, spiffy new superhighways for Jews to drive from one Judea-Samaria community to the next but barred to Palestinians who instead must use separate roads. Different color licensed plates. The students seem utterly unaware of context:

“I have heard people talk about Palestinian apartheid, and I dismissed this as an overstated comparison. . . . But it wasn’t until I visited the West Bank that I became keenly aware that this was an area inhabited by two groups who were nevertheless separated. I witnessed an elevated Israeli-built superhighway intended for settlers overlapping a narrow road mandated for Palestinian usage. . . . There is no point in building two roads over each other unless it is desired to prohibit at least one group of people from going to certain places.” (P. 54)

Daniel Wehrenfennig, the former UCI doctoral student who now directs OTI, was the central crafter of the itinerary. His own personal bias is that Judea and Samaria are “occupied Palestine.” He formally decided not to bring the students to Sderot or the Golan Heights. (P. 11) So, on a trip that relied heavily on perceptions at the hot spots, the students never saw the shell-shock impact of the unilateral Gaza disengagement, the resultant nightmare sustained in Sderot by those who took risks for peace. And they never saw the facts on the ground in the north, the hands-on actual stakes for Israel in holding the promontories of Golan. But they were brought to several Palestinian “refugee camps.” Those locations were deemed safe. One student came away from OTI’s visit to Bethlehem’s Kanistat al-Mahid (Christians call it “Church of the Nativity”) with an understanding that the site “is a focal point of Palestinian resistance. The nativity church is arguably one of the most abused and neglected holy Christian sites. In it you will find Israeli bullets that have damaged statues of saints only a few meters away from the birth spot of Jesus Christ.” (P. 56)

They met a Holocaust survivor at Yad Vashem who impacted them, but one of the Palestinian students writes in her memoir that, through the Yad Vashem experience, she now better understands why Israel essentially is xenophobic towards Palestinians:

“I understand that after two thousand years of persecution and then the Holocaust, the panic they felt and the sense of urgency to get out of Europe may explain that sometimes you don’t care whose land you’re in and whose farms you’re stepping on. You just want to get out and try and seize any opportunity to a life of security, free of fear and torture. . . .BUT . . . I hope future generations are less overwhelmed with anxiety, fear, and distrust of others, as I feel many Jews are. I hear Jews say Hamas, Iran or the Arabs want to wipe out the Jews, throw them into the sea, etc., etc. . . . These claims from Iran and Hamas are at their heart media stunts which in turn play into Israeli politicians’ rhetoric and instill even more fear and xenophobia in the people.” (Pages 38-39)

An Israeli soldier, Yuval, who had served in Lebanon in 2006 spoke apologetically to the group, saying “. . . I would always ask myself what I was doing, why we have wars, etc.” The UCI student continues: “He spoke of Lebanon’s beauty, the mountains, the sea, the nature. . . . This encounter, although unique, left me uneasy. The truth is, as he spoke of Lebanon’s beauty, I felt violated. As if my country is some protected jewel of mine and Yuval had snuck into my room and held that jewel, enjoyed its beauty, and then threw it on the floor and stepped on it. And although the jewel is still here and mine, it is tainted. He had come into Lebanon uninvited, admired its beauty yet contributed to its destruction.” (P. 42) Consistent with the OTI strategy of presenting Israeli speakers primarily left of the mainstream, the group also met with Yonatan Adiri, a former advisor to Shimon Peres. “He both praised and criticized Israel’s democracy,” (P. 46) complaining primarily about compromises that have to be made to form and maintain multi-party coalition governments in Israel. It is ironic that, in advocating compromise with Palestinian Arabs who are not motivated by Israel’s best interests, he lambasted compromise with Israeli Jews, his own people.

The students were afforded a presentation by an Israeli professor, Muli Peleg, a long-time far-Left “Peace Now” organizer and advisor to Yossi Beilin, formerly one of the Knesset’s most far-Left members and a key shaper of the now-discredited Oslo Accords. Peleg left an impression on many of them, with his basic narrative that Israeli and Palestinian leaders never will make peace, but that peace only will come via the “bottom-up process” – i.e., bypassing the established leadership and institutions, and instead starting with people like the students at UCI who then spread the word, build the momentum, mobilize NGOs, and create a movement from the bottom, working its way up until the leaders at the top have no choice but to make compromises for peace. “One of the speakers on our trip, Muli Peleg, a professor in Tel Aviv, believes that one of the main obstacles is convincing Israelis that Palestinians want peace . . . .” (P. 61) There seems no perception that Israel had disengaged unilaterally from South Lebanon and from Gaza, twice taking risks for peace, being punished brutally for having taken those risks. Southern Lebanon has been controlled by the Hezbollah and Gaza by Hamas ever since.

Most of the students come away with a sense that there is no discernible solution to intractable differences in the region, so there needs to be a two-state solution. Their model is the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, co-owned by an Israeli Jew and an Israeli Arab, where Israelis eat and Arabs eat. An Arab woman had come into this center for Jewish-Arab coexistence a few years ago, blew herself up, and thereby murdered 21 people and severely wounded 51 others. The Haifa community came together to restore the restaurant. That restaurant becomes the metaphor of the two-state. The OTI students learned from a Captain in the Israeli Defense Forces that 95% of the two populations want peace. “Unfortunately, it is the other five percent who are not willing to compromise.” (P. 26) It is noteworthy that, when UCI Olive Tree Initiative emphasizes that its program balances Palestinian Arab views and speakers with Israeli views and speakers, in order to provide UCI students a fair and balanced understanding, the selected Israeli presenters are disproportionately left of the mainstream of Israeli society, thus skewing the UCI students’ perceptions. The UCI OTI group did go to Ariel, a city of nearly 20,000 and capital of the Jewish communities in Samaria, where they heard Ron Nachman, the mayor. However, that session does not resonate in the students’ memoirs. Thus, the IDF captain and Prof. Peleg are misperceived as representing mainstream Israeli perspective as a normative counterweight to Palestinian Arab propagandists.

The UCI Hillel Shaliach, Tzvi Raviv, participated. His only memorable thought was his last sentence: “I believe the future of Israel as a Jewish-democratic state is tied with the creation of an independent prosperous Palestinian state.” (P. 44) That was the Zionist professional who served the Jewish students at UCI Hillel for the two or three years he was on shlichut, and who participated on this trip after helping with the creation of OTI in tandem with UCI Hillel and its director. Shannon Shibata, the tour guide, portrays herself as someone who came to the region as pro-Palestinian but changed to neutral, after getting to hear all sides’ narratives, and she echoes the OTI theme, repeatedly encouraging the students to go back as neutrals committed to peace. It is not clear how much Shibata is paid by OTI.

In summary, the publication confirms that the OTI program is not anti-Jewish or anti-Israel, but surely is deeply repugnant to an identifying Jewish community’s ideals for what a normative and healthy Jewish community should be supporting. There would not be Jews today if Judaism’s forebears had been neutrals. When the world was polytheistic, Jews were not neutral on the question of monotheism. When the ancient world worked seven days, Jews were not neutral on the question of a day’s Sabbath. Jews do not send children to Jewish day schools or Hebrew schools for Bar/Bat Mitzvah study to be neutral. Mainstream normative Jews are fair and honest, and also are not neutral. By contrast, while portraying neutrality, the Israeli portion of the two-week OTI trip is top-heavy with apologists from a distinctly Left orientation that minimizes context and Jewish rights to Judea and Samaria. One swallow does not a summer make, nor does Mayor Ron Nachman of Ariel counterbalance a program inexorably tilted, even if unintentionally, towards moral relativism. One student, a non-Jewish/ non-Arab/ non-Moslem lady, came away with this lesson from her OTI travels: “Both Jews and Palestinians have suffered. I cried for both fathers of suicide victims and for the Palestinians who face humiliating discrimination on a daily basis.” (P. 72) In the words of another OTI student upon her return from the trip, and back at her UCI classes:

“Recently we had an assignment on the Palestine-Israel conflict. Our group had to show the Israeli perspective. One person said, I’m so glad I’m in the Israel group because I’m so pro-Israel. That made me upset because I couldn’t figure out why he would be so one-sided. It doesn’t help that he is Asian, not Jewish, so I don’t know where he’s coming from with this. So even on a small level, [now that I have been on OTI]I can help people better understand [neutrality].” (P.93)

Clearly, the problem transcends OTI, which is an important focus, and the greater problem is that the Orange County Hillel is in the hands of people who are focused on raising money but who, among their critical decision makers, include inter alia individuals who have no vision of Jewish authenticity nor the capacity or depth of Jewish knowledge for having such vision. They run an annual Poker Game, which many of the Hillel directors deem the annual highlight of the UCI Hillel calendar year. Soon after the wrenching Moslem Student Union (MSU) annual Hate Israel Week, they do a reactive week of pro-Israel programming whose substance completely dilutes Israel and her character, so that students learn very little about Israel while watching various non-Jewish dance groups perform and while patronizing booths that mostly are substantively superficial, offering very little about Israel. (That week’s main value is that members of the local Jewish community come down to campus and mingle.) The UCI Hillel has moved away from meaningful weekly Shabbat programming to an occasional once-monthly TGIF dinner. Sukkot and Chanukah have passed by. Meanwhile, it is clear that the Federation is in terrible hands. They do a very good job for the community at the annual Lag B’Omer Israel Fest, and some of their agencies do good work, completely separate from affiliation. Thus, the staff of Federation does little by way of Family Services; rather, Jewish Family Services does its excellent work with its own people, even as that agency has been compelled by the economy to merge into the Federation tent. Perhaps most importantly for the job security of Federation professionals in a community whose lay leaders seem mostly to value superficial displays of wealth and substantively void edifices, they raise some good amounts of cash in a city where, as one rabbi of ten years’ pulpit experience explained, “The Jews here are committed a mile wide and one inch deep.”

So we have a Hillel Foundation of Orange County and a UCI Hillel that is rudderless, without a vision or the people in the critical roles capable of having a vision, and a Federation being guided by those with a vision inimical to ours supported by patrons who are pleased that their Jewish Community Center is 125,000 square feet with a gymnasium, health and fitness center, two basketball courts, pool and aquatics center, and a Holocaust memorial garden. And it was designated a “Facility of Merit” by Athletic Business Magazine, too. With that kind of wealth, it is easy to see how the community would not notice, below the radar, that the Federation has submitted the community’s name and reputation, and has devoted Jewish charitable funds, towards so deeply flawed and damaging a project as the UCI Olive Tree Initiative.

Supporting the Jewish Boycott of the Federation of O.C.

2010-12-20T20:53:00.000-08:00

Sign the Petition at: http://www.ha-emet.com/petition.html

From the Desk of Rabbi Dov Fischer

I have just signed this petition, and I encourage you to sign it, too: http://www.ha-emet.com/petition.html
And please do not hesitate to circulate this far and wide.

I attach (below my signature block) my recent commentary on the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), along with those written by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles and by Prof. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of UC Santa Cruz. You may also wish to visit any of these websites:

http://www.redcounty.com/content/wolf-sheeps-clothing-ucirvine-olive-tree-initiative

www.ha-emet.com

http://octaskforce.wordpress.com/

http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/

www.jewtudes.com

You may think to yourself: “I cannot believe that the Jewish Federation of Orange County really would support something so toxic with Jewish money, and that the UCI Hillel Organization would endorse something so toxic. There must be a mistake.” Please understand: I have been involved in Jewish community organizations for nearly forty years. I have seen the American Jewish Congress fight public menorah lightings, going to court to stop Chabad and others from lighting menorahs in public. I have lived through the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith giving a significant national award to Hugh Hefner for his “courage” in embodying the First Amendment and Free Press by publishing women’s naked photos. More recently, I have watched the George Soros-funded “J Street” work against the security of the State of Israel, arguing in so many words that, hey, we also are Jews, and we and George Soros only want what’s best. I have lived through it all and have seen it all. Well, not “all” – because only G-d knows what tomorrow may bring.

I am joined in my views on this matter by a wide range of Orthodox rabbis throughout the United States, as well as the Simon Wiesenthal Center. If Jewish parents want their sons or daughters to travel to “Palestine” and Jordan on Rosh Hashanah to attend lectures by trained, professional Palestinian Arab propagandists devoted to destroying Israel as a Jewish state, let them do it on their own dime. It does not matter that the same “Olive Tree” (“OTI”) program also brings them to Israel to hear a wide range of Israeli views on the Israel/”Palestine” question. Rather, OTI simply is not a proper cause for the expenditure of Jewish Federation funds -- whether directly from one Federation account or through a “Rose Project” of Federation that assists Jewish students financially with tzedakah funds to help them pay for their airfare and tuition to attend such OTI programs – during this Great Recession when, everyday, rabbis like me are approached for assistance by Jews in need right here in Irvine and throughout Orange County. This is worse than odious and abhorrent. In a word, it is . . .

. . .Foolish.

In arriving at this moment, Orange County Jewry now joins other Jewish communities throughout America in formally beginning to ask: Who exactly are the people who run these “Jewish” community organizations that take our money supposedly to support “our” agenda? What exactly are their private agendas? Do these individuals share our core views? Our core values? Yes, we like their emailed newsletters, and we know they do some real good with some of our funds, for Jewish families, for Jewish singles – but what else are they doing with the rest of our tzedakah, besides the stuff we expect them to be doing? Who are they? Who elected them? What do they privately stand for? And when do we have a say?

This Petition begins a new chapter in Orange County Jewish history. It marks Jews in Orange County standing up and saying, “We want accountability for how our tzedakah is spent.” And if a kid wants to spend Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine,” learning why Israel should cease to exist, let him pay for it – not public tzedakah funds.

Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County

From the Desk of Rabbi Dov Fischer

Having read the letter of December 8, 2010 by Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), responding to valid concerns raised by Prof. Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, I now feel it is time for Jews in Orange County to withhold any further support for the Jewish Federation of Orange County until the Federation disassociates and withdraws from continuing to support the OTI, directly or indirectly, with Jewish charitable funds. I likewise will now urge all individuals of similar mind to mine to withhold support from the Jewish Federation of Orange County on those same terms. The notion that the Jewish Federation is taking Jewish charitable dollars and spending Jewish tzedakah funds to assist UCI Jewish students to participate in OTI is so profoundly disturbing that I cannot see how any Jewish philanthropist would want to know that her hard-won earnings during this Great Recession are being spent in this manner.

Jewish funds should not be expended on paying for Jewish students to travel throughout “Palestinian” towns and villages to hear lectures by trained anti-Israel propagandists from “Palestine,” as part of an OTI mission to expose Jewish students to a “balanced” understanding of narratives: (i) on the one hand, Israel’s unequivocal right to live, (ii) balanced on the other hand with the right of Palestinian Arabs to aspire towards absorbing and nullifying the only Jewish state in the world – the death of Israel. In the words of Dr. Wehrenfennig : “The Olive Tree Initiative is an experiential learning initiative that shows both, and even multiple sides and narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” My Young Israel synagogue does not bring Christian missionaries to our congregation so that our congregants can better receive a “balanced view” of theological narratives. Our “experiential learning initiative” is attained by educating our members by presenting information, including information believed by others – “and even multiple sides and narratives” – for their benefit. We educate expansively, beyond insularity. Yet, we do not need Christian missionaries to educate us. We do not bring Christian missionaries to teach their version of Torah, their version of Isaiah 7:14 or 53, to our teens and college students. We teach. Likewise, we do not need – and we certainly should not contribute towards such endeavor with Jewish tzedakah funds – Palestinians dedicated to the death of Israel to educate our Jewish college students for balance. There are ample Jewish educational programs, from a wide range of perspectives, that can educate ably, presenting multiple perspectives.

It is unconscionable that a Jewish Federation would expend even supplementary Jewish charitable funds to fly and transport Jewish UCI students on programs that compromise the Shabbat – and all the more so, incredibly so, that desecrate Rosh Hashanah. What Jewish philanthropist is so bereft of meaningful Jewish charitable choices for his philanthropic generosity that he must have his tzedakah employed for sending Jewish students to a program that spends part of Rosh Hashanah in a Jewish setting and part of Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine”? Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative, means well when he writes: “Again, if the Jewish students wanted to they could opt out of the Jordan trip or parts of it because of religious reasons,” but he does not realize how damning the statement is. I do not want my college Jewish son or daughter being flown or otherwise transported to “Palestine” and Jordan, along with Israel, during Rosh Hashanah, with some concession of “opting out” from the group dynamic “because of religious reasons.” I want my Jewish son or daughter, if spending time in Israel during the High Holy Day season, devoting that time to experiencing the Days of Awe with everyone else in the group, thus creating a reinforcing socializing and educating experience. The college years pass by so rapidly, and these moments must be cherished for the opportunities they offer us to educate and welcome Jewish students to the meaning of Jewish life.

Please do not misunderstand. Someday my son or daughter will find himself in situations that amply integrate him with the rest of the world. She will meet and encounter Palestinians. She will be on business travel as Shabbat draws near and may need to individuate herself from the mainstream to observe Shabbat. So it will be for them, as it has been for me. In ten years as an attorney with two of America’s most prominent law firms, I socialized and integrated with people of all backgrounds in my firms, and I arranged with judges and opposing counsel to calendar court days so that I would not be compelled to compromise Shabbat or Jewish holy festivals. Despite never having attended an OTI Rosh Hashanah program, I was thoroughly capable of socially integrating my lifestyle and religious beliefs with others, including Arab Moslem friends. But during my formative college years, my time in Israel was spent attending Jewish programs that did not divide Rosh Hashanah with Bethlehem, “Palestine” or trips to Jordan. Perhaps some parents (or college students) differ from me, and they respectively want their children (or for themselves) to attend programs that “balance” Israel’s right to live with a normative Palestinian perspective that Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish State, and perhaps they want to be on a program that gives them the option of spending half their Rosh Hashanah in Bethlehem under the aegis of anti-Israel Palestinian propagandists trained in reaching American youths, like Rachel Corrie, and sensitizing them to the “Palestinian narrative.” They have that right – but not to have it funded, directly or indirectly, with Jewish Federation charitable dollars.

Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig, director of the UCI Olive Tree Initiative (OTI), has written his letter, in explicit pertinent part, to defend the practice of the Jewish Federation of Orange County, its Rose Project, and other of its funding channels to participate in allocating Jewish charitable funds towards OTI. That is Dr. Wehrenfennig’s right and institutional responsibility. I, too, am entitled to my right and responsibility to act in accordance with my free conscience. As a rabbi, a religious leader and teacher in the Jewish community of Irvine in Orange County, I also have a right and a responsibility. At this moment in time, in the face of this very unfortunate situation, my responsibility is to announce publicly that I believe it proper for Jews to withhold any further contributions from the Jewish Federation of Orange County until the Federation publicly and explicitly assures the Jewish community that it no longer will participate materially in supporting Jewish student participation at Olive Tree Institute programs that bring UCI Jewish students in part to “Palestine,” where those Jewish students are exposed to trained and skilled Palestinian Arab propagandists educating them with the “Palestinian narrative” that would mark the death of Israel as a Jewish state. I urge others to follow my lead, and I will encourage others whom I know to spread this call far and wide.

I am grateful to Prof. Rossman-Benjamin for her leadership in bringing to the surface truths that needed to be exposed.

Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From the Simon Wiesenthal Center:

From: Rabbi Aron Hier
Director
Campus Outreach
Simon Wiesenthal Center

Shalom Elcott
President and CEO
Jewish Federation of Orange County

shalom@jfoc.org

Dear Mr. Elcott,

I have become aware of an event on November 22, 2010, in which the Olive Tree Initiative will be providing a platform for anti-Israel activist and International Solidarity Movement cofounder George Rishmawi. Further, the Olive Tree Initiative that will be hosting him is funded in part by Jewish philanthropy, through your organization as well as Hillel at UC Irvine.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center urges the Jewish Federation to disassociate itself from an event that invites the leader of a group whose own website states the following:
“Apartheid is not going to be defeated by words alone; occupation, oppression and domination are going to be dismantled the same way they were erected — through people’s action. The Israeli army and apartheid in Palestine can be defeated by strategic, disciplined unarmed resistance, utilizing the effective resources Palestinians can mobilize — including international participation.”
We further urge the Jewish Federation to investigate the Olive Tree Initiative, which has selected a speaker who advocates overthrowing the Jewish State. What kind of group would funnel impressionable Jewish students into this “wolf in sheep’s clothing” program that aids and abets the enemies of Israel in their pernicious mission?

I look forward to hearing from you about this serious matter.

Rabbi Aron Hier
Director
Campus Outreach

cc: Rabbi Marvin Hier
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Rabbi Meyer May

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Prof. Tammi Benjamin
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 5:30 AM
To: oti@uci.edu

Dear Dr. Daniel Wehrenfennig,

You did not write to me directly, though you did blind-copy me on your recent widely-circulated letter (forwarded below), in which you mentioned my name 18 times and attacked a letter I had sent to the heads of the Orange County Jewish Federation and Hillel. My letter urged these Jewish communal organizations to withdraw their funding and promotion of the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) because at least 15 of the OTI's speakers are affiliated with organizations that have ties to terrorist groups that have murdered Jews, advocate the elimination of the Jewish state, and support boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns against Israel. I also pointed out to the OC Federation and Hillel that it is wrong for Jewish communal resources to be used for a trip that engages Jewish students in activities that desecrate Jewish holy days, such as the OTI trip in 2010, during which students spent the two days of Rosh Hashanah and the following Sabbath (and other Sabbaths) engaged in non-Jewish activity in Jordan and the disputed territories.

You fiercely criticized my letter, stating that I "made up facts" and that my analysis was "incomplete and misleading," "completely inaccurate," and filled with "wrong information and missing facts," "a pattern of misinformation," "erroneous statements," and "distortion." I would like to reply to your charges, which I believe are wholly baseless, extremely disingenuous, and highly offense to the Jewish community in general, and to me personally as a UC faculty member, and as a Jew.

As I understand them, your primary charges against me are the following:

· I based my analysis of the OTI 2010 trip on a preliminary version of the itinerary and not on the final version.
· The speakers, whom I researched and linked directly to their own or their affiliated organization's on-line statements and actions seeking to destroy or harm the Jewish state, never communicated these virulently anti-Israel ideas to the students on the OTI trip. But even if they had, these were only 15 of the over 70 speakers with whom students met.
· I neglected to acknowledge the pro-Israel speakers with whom students met, and whom you claim provided balance to the program.
· I neglected to acknowledge the many Jewish activities in which the students on the 2010 OTI trip participated, as well as to mention that Jewish students had the option to not join the group if an activity conflicted with their religious observance.

I would like to respond to each of your points in turn:

1) You attempt to discredit my serious concerns about many of the OTI speakers by claiming that my analysis was "completely inaccurate" and "misleading" because it was based on an earlier version of the 2010 itinerary, implying that this earlier version was radically different from the final one. But this is simply not so. In fact, of the 15 speakers and organizations whose efforts to harm Israel I documented in my letter, all but two appeared in the final version of the itinerary. Furthermore, of the few speakers who did not appear in the earlier draft but were added to the final version, at least one would certainly have been included in my letter because of his expression of profound anti-Jewish animus: Xavier Abu Eid, the communication advisor for the PLO Negotiation Support Unit, with whom students met in Ramallah on Saturday afternoon September 4th, was one of a number of Christian Palestinian leaders who in 2009 signed Kairos Palestine, a document which applies anti-Semitic supersessionist theology to deny the historic and religious right of the Jews to their homeland, supports BDS efforts, and advocates the elimination of the Jewish state.

However, even if the two versions of the itinerary were substantially different, as you had falsely implied, it still does not deny the accuracy of my analysis. For the on-line version I accessed represents a document of intent, i.e., it indicates the speakers and activities that program organizers like yourself intended to offer students on the 2010 OTI trip, whether or not these were part of the actual itinerary. Therefore, it is arguably an even better indicator of the mission and goals of the OTI's organizers, which clearly included offering as legitimate perspectives (according to your "philosophy of 360-degree education") the views of numerous individuals who have supported efforts to harm the Jewish state and have advocated its elimination, views which our own U.S. State Department defines as anti-Semitic.

So I hope you can see that whether I base my analysis on the earlier version of the itinerary or on the final one, my conclusion will remain the same, namely, that it is unconscionable for Jewish communal funds to be used to support a program that includes anti-Semitic speakers and organizations.

2) The fact that the preliminary itinerary for the 2010 OTI trip represents a document of intent also speaks to your second point, that although they may have previously expressed their virulent opposition to the Jewish State, none of the speakers communicated such sentiments to the students on the OTI trip. Even if you are correct about the content of the speakers' communication with students -- though you bring not one shred of evidence to support your claim -- it does not change the fact that these speakers were chosen by OTI organizers like yourself before you knew what they would say to students! Indeed, some of the most virulently anti-Israel speakers, such as Mazin Qumsiyeh and George N. Rishmawi, were selected to speak to students on the very first OTI trip to Israel in 2008. Surely you could not have known beforehand what these individuals would say to students, and yet you chose them to be part of the OTI trip.

Moreoever if, as I suspect, you did your due diligence before asking these individuals to speak to students, you undoubtedly accessed the very same information about them as I did. I can only surmise, therefore, that not only did you know about the anti-Semitic views of these speakers when you chose them, but you had every reason to believe that they would communicate their views to OTI students.

As for your contention that only 15 of the 70 speakers had known anti-Semitic views, it is hard to fathom why you would think this statistic is at all comforting to the Jewish community. According to my calculations, 15 speakers in 70 means that over 20% of the people who addressed the students on the recent OTI trip had themselves expressed anti-Semitic views or behaviors, or were speaking on behalf of anti-Semitic organizations.

Please understand that after the Nazis slaughtered one-third of my people during the lifetime of my parents and grandparents, I and my co-religionists are understandably skittish about individuals or organizations that engage in, or call for, harming the Jewish State or the Jewish people. For many of us, having even one anti-semitic speaker, in a program that presents such a view as a legitimate perspective, is one too many! Twenty percent is an obscenity!

I hope you are beginning to understand why for many in the Jewish community, asking us to contribute Jewish communal funds in order to expose Jewish and non-Jewish students to such speakers is extremely offensive.

3) Although I did notice the pro-Israel speakers with whom the OTI students met, the presence of such speakers on the itinerary did nothing to improve my opinion of the program, and in fact made me even more concerned about it. That is because I believe these pro-Israel speakers are being unwittingly used to provide a fig leaf of "balance" for the OTI and to give the false impression that pro-Israel and anti-Israel speakers are not only equally represented numerically, but that these two perspectives are somehow objectively equal -- simply two different but equally legitimate narratives of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Indeed, this is the kind of thinking that underlies your philosophy of "360-degree education." However, I find such thinking to be both logically and morally flawed.

Do you honestly believe that the argument in favor of BDS is equal and opposite to the argument against it, or that advocating for the elimination of the Jewish state and against the elimination of the Jewish state are equally legitimate positions?? For me as a Jew, and, I would wager, for every other Jew who identifies himself or herself with the mainstream Jewish community, advocating for BDS or the elimination of the Jewish State, perspectives which, as I have noted above, our own U.S. State Department defines as anti-Semitic, are wholly illegitimate. However, by pairing them as you have with legitimate arguments made in defense of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people, you have given respectability and legitimacy to illegitimate, anti-Semitic perspectives. In my opinion, it is despicable that you have used Jewish communal funds for this morally reprehensible purpose.

4) In case you do not know, Jewish religious observance is more than just eating a meal, saying some prayers, or hearing a lecture on an occasional Sabbath or festival evening. It is a commitment to living a Jewish life according to G-d's will, and it involves full observance of all of the designated holy days. So while I appreciate the educational value of sharing certain Jewish traditions with all of the students on the OTI trip, Jews and non-Jews alike, this in no way "cancels out" or mitigates those aspects of Jewish faith and tradition that were egregiously violated by bringing Jewish students to Ramallah for their first Sabbath in the country, or by taking them to Jordan for two of the holiest days of the Jewish year. And even though I appreciate the fact that Jewish students were given the option of not joining the group in order to observe their religious practice, what about those Jewish students who had no family or friends in Israel with whom to observe the holy days, or who did not feel comfortable separating themselves from the group, or who did not want to miss out on an important part of the OTI trip?

Undoubtedly there are Jewishly-identified students who are not fully observant and do not mind violating the Sabbath or other holy days. Nevertheless, as the director of a program that targets Jewish students and accepts money from Jewish communal organizations representing Jews who care deeply about Jewish faith and tradition, it was the height of religious insensitivity for you to create and/or approve an itinerary that planned for Jewish students who did not opt out of the program on the Jewish holy days, to violate the basic tenets of their faith.

I hope you can appreciate that not one of the hundreds of observant Jews who will read this letter believes that Jewish communal funds should be used to support a program that knowingly violates Jewish faith and tradition in the way that the OTI has.

I would like to make a few final remarks about your letter.

You assert that the OTI has "become an important hub for bridge-building, dialogue and cooperation between individual students and student groups," although you have produced no evidence of this being the case.
In fact, the campus climate for Jewish students at UCI has not improved since the establishment of the OTI, and in some ways it has significantly deteriorated.

For instance, in February 2010 members of the Muslim Student Union disgracefully disrupted a talk by Israeli ambassador Michael Oren. And just this past May, the MSU hosted a week-long event entitled Israel Apartheid Week: A Call to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction Israel, that featured anti-Semitic imagery and virulently anti-Israel rhetoric from 7 speakers well-known for their animus of Israel, including Imam Abdul Malik Ali, who compared the Jews to Nazis, expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad, and called for the destruction of the "apartheid state of Israel."

Indeed, the campus climate had become so oppressive for Jewish students at UCI last spring that over 100 Jewish UCI students,
including the heads of all of the Jewish student groups and even some students who participated on OTI trips to Israel, signed the following statement in June 2010:
“We are Jewish students at the University of California and we are outraged and deeply offended by the behavior of some student groups on campus who sponsor speakers, films and exhibits that use hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric and imagery and openly support terrorism against Israel and the Jewish people. As Jewish students, we are also deeply disturbed by student initiated boycott and divestment campaigns which falsely accuse the Jewish state of crimes against humanity. Please understand that these speakers, exhibits, events and campaigns are as offensive and hurtful to Jewish students as a “Compton cookout” or noose are to African-American students. We demand that the UC administrators recognize and address the concerns of Jewish students in the same way as they respond to those of all other minority groups.”
At about the same time, over 60 UCI faculty members published an open letter in the campus newspaper stating that they were deeply disturbed about activities on their campus that fomented hatred against Jews and Israelis, and that many faculty and students felt intimidated, and even unsafe at UCI.

So not only has the OTI program not ameliorated the campus climate for Jewish students at UCI, it is my belief that some of the OTI speakers who have met with students have even contributed to the anti-Semitic BDS campaigns at our university, which in turn has led to an increase in anti-Semitic harassment on UC campuses, including at UCI. Consider the following three examples:

· Prof. Mazim Qumsiyeh co-founded both the Boycott Israeli Goods campaign and Al-Awda, an organization which opposes Israel's right to exist, has links to Hamas and Hezbollah, and is a leader in the BDS movement. Al-Awda works closely with Muslim and pro-Palestinian student groups, including the MSU at UCI, to promote anti-Israel divestment campaigns and co-sponsor anti-Semitic events on California campuses. (For more information about Al-Awda's insidious influence on UC campuses, including at UCI, see an article I co-authored entitled "Are Jewish Students Safe on California Campuses?")

· George N. Rishmawi co-founded the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and is the current director of the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement (PCR), which is under the auspices of the ISM. The ISM has links to terrorist organizations, openly advocates the destruction of the Jewish State, and sends activists and unsuspecting volunteers -- students like Rachel Corrie -- into life-threatening situations in order to protect known terrorists. The ISM has endorsed and promoted BDS campaigns globally, including at the University of California.

· Sam Bahour is one of the original endorsers of the recent California Divestment from Israel Initiative, which calls on the State of California to force two enormous public employee pension funds to divest from Israel. Signatures to qualify this initiative for the California state ballot are being collected on campuses across the state, including at UCI.

I would like to end this letter on a personal note. I am deeply offended that in your email, which you distributed quite widely, you wrongfully attacked my academic integrity and dismissed my legitimate concerns about the OTI's value to the Jewish community. I believe your behavior in this regard is yet one further indication of the unworthiness of the program you direct for Jewish communal funds.

Sincerely,

Tammi Rossman-Benjamin

CC:

UCI Chancellor Drake
UC President Yudof
Shalom Elcott, President and CEO of the Orange County Jewish Federation
Jay S. Feldman, Director of Leadership Development & Rose Project Manager at OC Jewish Federation
Jordan Fruchtman, Executive Director UC Irvine Hillel
Organizations that have expressed concern about anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism on UC campuses:
Americans for a Safe Israel
American Freedom Alliance
American Jewish Committee
Anti-Defamation League
CAMERA
Chabad Student Centers on UC Campuses
Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors
David Project
Hasbara Fellows
Hillels on UC campuses
International Hillel
Israel on Campus Coalition
Israel Peace Initiative
Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco the Peninsula, Marina and Sonoma Counties
Jewish Community Relations Council
Jewish Federation of the East Bay
Jewish National Fund
Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA)
National Council of Young Israel
Orange County Independent Task Force on Anti-Semitism
Orthodox Union
Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism
Scholars for Peace in the Middle East
Simon Wiesenthal Center
Stand With Us
United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism
USD/Hagshama World Zionist Organization
Zionist Organization of America

An Open Letter to the Orange County Jewish Community

2010-12-20T20:49:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to the Orange County Jewish Community
From Rabbi Dov Fischer

There is now a full-blown county-wide community controversy over the forthcoming speech at UCI by George Rishmawi. In separate letters respectively e-mailed during Shabbat evening November 19, 2010, from the professional directors of both the Orange County Jewish Federation and the Orange County Hillel, it is emphasized that the speaker coming to UCI campus for the “Olive Tree Institute” (OTI) – an institute that the OC Jewish Federation and the OC Federation Rose Project, and the OC Hillel respectively support and endorse – is George S. Rishmawi, not George N. Rishmawi. In their public letters, the OC Hillel in particular targets for searing personal attack a woman in the Irvine Jewish community, who apparently spearheaded the controversy by first challenging the propriety of the Federation and the Hillel allying so frontally with OTI. In the letter from Hillel, this woman is explicitly named three separate times in a remarkably personal and disparaging way. In addition to the Hillel letter, an appended letter, signed by student leaders at UCI whose names were gathered for the letter, names this woman explicitly four times. I leave it to others to evaluate who wrote the students’ letter and who helped organize the signatures of some one hundred UCI Jewish students, past and present, in a matter of one or two days. However, I am galvanized to write because the effect of the responsive letters by the Orange County Jewish Federation director and the Hillel professional is to delegitimize this lady as a voice in the greater Jewish community.

I know this lady. I have spoken with her twice or thrice in the past year, and I know others who have worked with her. She is a passionate supporter of Israel and a pest, a nudnik, a real annoyance . . . to anyone who fails to act with the energy, passion, and frontal direct path that she feels others should follow. Her approach is not always the right one, but she is a valid participant in the greater community’s support for Israel. So she has annoyed Hillel and the Federation in the past. And now, having ostensibly conflated George N. Rishmawi with George S. Rishmawi, this lady seems to have been targeted as fair game for explicit ad hominem character assassination, to negate her as a serious voice in the community. Interestingly, the Simon Wiesenthal Center of Los Angeles also wrote the OC Jewish Federation two or three days ago to express virtually the same concerns that this lady raised. However, the name of Simon Wiesenthal has not been attacked, nor has the name of the Wiesenthal executive who signed that letter. Thus, it appears that the Orange County Jewish Federation and Orange County Hillel shied away from “picking on someone your own size.” Instead, she was targeted.

I therefore write and soon will be posting on my website. Among other stations I hold in the community are: Rabbi of Young Israel of Orange County, Member National Executive Committee Rabbinical Council of America, former National Vice President Zionist Organization of America, and former Chief Articles Editor of UCLA Law Review. I comment here on several matters:

1. Do Not Stand by Your Brother’s Blood. I have the deepest contempt for people who see someone being slandered or character-assassinated, who further recognize the grave injustice, privately shake their heads with a sense of shame over the injustice that the Jewish community is at it once again, destroying someone daring who challenges a defective aspect of the status quo, but who then remain silent rather than defend someone being attacked. They fear that, if they speak out to defend, then they also will see their own names and reputations besmirched and sullied by the same people ready to character-assassinate. So I write to speak out against the attempted character assassination of this lady. And although I have seen and spoken to her only once in the past five months – for thirty seconds at a wedding that I conducted, where she was but one of the assembled invited guests – I am stating publicly, here and now, that I will stand by her if any further attempt is made after this evening, November 20, to further assassinate or attack her character or motives.

2. The Enormous Value of Orange County Hillel and Hillel at UCI. I believe that Jewish students at UCI deserve the fullest, strongest possible programming in Israel education. Thus, I support UCI Hillel and personally continue to respect its professional director. I am proud to have my name associated with OC Hillel, on whose Board of Directors I proudly served the past three years. I am very glad that UCI Hillel has played a critical role in so many ways to support Israel on campus and to advocate for Jewish students at UCI. UCI Hillel runs an annual pro-Israel week on campus on Ring Round, works closely with UCI Chabad to facilitate aspects of Jewish observance for those students interested in Judaism, and even has coordinated with Hillel of Long Beach to bring Rabbi Drew Kaplan to campus every week for students interested in meeting with a rabbi. UCI Hillel has met with UCI administrators in the aftermath of Moslem Student Union (MSU) acts of hate. UCI Hillel continues to deserve support.

3. Absolute, Unequivocal, Utter Rejection of Irresponsible Suggestions That UCI Is Not Safe for Jews. I further reject – absolutely, unequivocally, and utterly – any and all suggestions or intimations that Jewish students are so unsafe as Jews at UCI that they should consider avoiding the school. I have walked Ring Road many times while wearing my yarmulka, and I never experienced a problem. I have spoken for the UCI Campus Interfaith Center as an invited speaker on several different occasions at UCI, always being treated respectfully. There is a robust Jewish presence at UCI, and I condemn – outright condemn and denounce in the strongest possible terms – any suggestion that UCI is less safe for Jews than is any other American campus.

4. The “Olive Tree Institute” Does Not Deserve Jewish Federation Funding nor Hillel Endorsement as taglit-Birthright Does. I believe it is not responsible for a Jewish organization to bring Jewish students lacking the most maximal possible education in the area of Israel and Mideast Studies to engage in “dialogue” with trained anti-Israel propagandists and others whose life agendas unalterably are to present the anti-Israel narrative in a gentle, yet sophisticated way. According to the Orange County Jewish Federation’s chief professional officer, “The Rose Project has, in the past, provided scholarship funds for knowledgeable Jewish students to participate in OTI’s annual trip to the Middle East, in the company of students of other faiths.” This tangible monetary support of OTI by transferring Jewish funds from the Rose Project of the Jewish Federation to the OTI is appalling. This is, in my opinion, a profound and irresponsible misuse of Jewish communal funds earmarked for Jewish students at this moment in time. By contrast, the Taglit-Birthright Hillel program is a fabulous investment of Jewish funds in the future of our community.

5. On George N. Rishmawi and George S. Rishmawi. The “Olive Tree Initiative” (OTI) is bringing George Rishmawi to UCI. First, the George Rishmawi it is not bringing is George N. Rishmawi. In the explicit words of the chief professional officer of the Orange County Jewish Federation, George N. Rishmawi is “despicable.” That adjective seems sufficient for the moment. And that brings us to George S. Rishmawi, who apparently is the George Rishmawi coming to UCI under the aegis of the Olive Tree Institute.

6. So Who is George S. Rishmawi? In the original OTI announcement, the Olive Tree Initiative described George S. Rishmawi as follows:

"George S. Rishmawi is a leader and co-founder of the ISM, the International Solidarity Movement, and the head of the Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies (http://www.sirajcenter.org/), a Palestinian NGO that operates in the West Bank to lead educational tours about Palestine and the Israeli Occupation.

Born in Beit Sahour, a city known for non-violent resistance, George S. Rishmawi is coming to UC Irvine as a guest of the Olive Tree Initiative, and for those of you interested in becoming part of OTI 4, George is one of our primary contacts in the West Bank."

(Emphases added.) Cf. http://palsolidarity.org/2007/06/2416/

George S. Rishmawi has devoted himself for years to “resistance against the Israeli occupation.”

The Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies. The website of the Siraj Center tells more about the Siraj Center and George S. Rishmawi:

Siraj organized fact finding missions to Palestine in order for people all over the world to have first hand experience of the on going Israeli occupation by meeting with Palestinians and Israelis and meet face to face with the real issues of illegal settlements, the Israeli Wall, Water issues, borders and refugees. . . . (Emphases added.)

As an example of his strategy to use tourism and manipulate children to embarrass Israel and delegitimize Israel’s security concerns, in one case George S. Rishmawi coordinated a donkey ride for Palestinian children that was aimed at creating a horrible anti-Israel media visual depicting Israeli armed forces blocking children from entering Jerusalem on Easter Sunday:

It is hoped that the image of the donkey at the checkpoint will speak with the innocence of a Palestine child who would simply ask the world, especially the Christian world, 'why can't we ride to Jerusalem like Jesus anymore?'

As Sunday's ride progresses, at some point, the donkeys will approach a military checkpoint, and campaigners hope all the world will see what happens next. Most likely, cameras will snap images, not of palm fronds being thrown under the donkeys feet as 2,000 years ago, but of guns and uniforms blocking the way.

"Right now, the checkpoint is heavily militarized," explains Rishmawi. "There is a military base with lots of patrols going back and forth. Rooftops in the area have been camouflaged, and Israeli snipers are all over the place." (Emphases added.)

See “Children Ask Why They Can’t Enter Jerusalem on a Donkey,” http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_050318donkey.shtml

See also http://www.sirajcenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Itemid=6 . One of the Siraj Center’s projects is “Abraham Path Walks.” Click the link on the Siraj Center Home Page, and it brings you to: http://www.abrahampath.org/downloads/Walking_in_Palestine_detailed_info_110610.pdf Look at the map on Page 3.

7. More about George S. Rishmawi – and the Palestinian [C]enter for Rapprochement in Between People. According to the revised announcement by OTI, now posted on Facebook, heralding the visit to UCI by George S. Rishmawi, he also is a former Board Member of the Palestinian [C]enter for Rapprochement in Between People in Beit Sahour. (Emphases added.)

See http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=171310602897452

The Palestinian [C]enter for Rapprochement in Between People (PCR) in Beit Sahour reports its history as follows:
In 2000, we mobilized our dialogue group and international friends for actions to reclaim the military base that was located on town land and was a major issue in the community. We successfully held nonviolent protests at the base (even getting inside the base by the hundreds) and this success led to the formation of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). PCR was heavily involved in ISM for five years, during which it had employed around ninety percent of its efforts and finances to support ISM. PCR hosted ISM in its headquarters until 2005 when the headquarters was moved to Ramallah.
http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcr.ps%2Fread%2Fpcr-history

8. Gary Fouse Makes an Observation and Asks a Question. Gary Fouse has been teaching ESL at the UCI Extension school for more than a decade, having begun after retiring from the US Drug Enforcement Administration. He is not Jewish. He describes having attended many of the Moslem Student Union (MSU)-sponsored events at UCI during his decade on campus. He describes having listened to many of the speakers and on several occasions confronting them with questions. As a retired law enforcement officer of almost 30 years service, he feels he can recognize hate speech and volatile situations. Consequently, he follows these issues at UCI and blogs regarding them. He observes:

In light of Mr Rishmawi's coming appearance to UC Irvine, a controversy has erupted within the Orange County Jewish community. The central question is this: If this speaker is, in fact, a co-founder of the ISM, why are the Rose Project, the Jewish Federation of Orange County, and perhaps, the University of California supporting even indirectly a venture that exposes Jewish students to elements that are devoted to destroying and/or establishing divestment boycotts of Israel? Those questions are being posed to the above entities as we speak. There may be a legitimate explanation for this, but the associations are troubling to many, and it is fair to ask the questions. On Monday, it will be made clear just what affiliations, if any, this speaker has or has had with the ISM.

I should note here that if certain Jewish students at UCI or anywhere else are against Israel to begin with -and there are those- then they can go meet with whomever they want to as far as I am concerned -as long as they are not meeting with enemies of the US. But what about Jewish students who have a strong Jewish identity and support Israel? Do they know exactly who they will be dealing with on these trips to the Holy Land? Perhaps so. Some of them too may decide it is in their interest to do so and hear the other side, which they can decide for themselves. Ditto for bringing certain speakers to campus. I am not questioning the right of this speaker to appear at UCI. But who is supporting this financially?

(Emphases added.) See http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/ . To that I personally would add, as the father of a Jewish college-age student: Heck, if my son could have a rare opportunity to get away from his college studies and requirements for a period of time to travel to Israel, to experience the Middle East and Israel, I can think of better ways for Jewish philanthropic funds to be expended on my son than by helping subvent his tuition fee to participate with either George N. Rishmawi (described by the OC Jewish Federation as “despicable”) or George S. Rishmawi. Unless, of course, there is yet another George S. Rishmawi who is not a co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), active in The Palestinian [C]enter for Rapprochement in Between People in Beit Sahour, involved in the Abraham Path Walks that define the word “Israel” out of the map of “Palestine,” or the Siraj Center for Holy Land Studies that sees Israel as an illegal occupation, the Security Wall as an illegal expression of Zionist Apartheid, and that seeks to press Israel on the “refugees.”

Or to put it another way: Has the Jewish Federation of Orange County or OC Hillel ever sponsored UCI college students to attend a similar-length fact-finding inter-cultural visit to the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria (the Jewish West Bank settlements), so that students could fairly gauge for themselves during a comprehensive tour, and living with Jewish families for a week or two up-and-down Judea and Samaria, who those settlers are, hear from those settlers and learn about Jewish roots in the lands of Judea and Samaria?

9. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – From the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Which leads to the question: What is the International Solidarity Movement (ISM)? In a letter addressed personally to the chief professional officer of the OC Jewish Federation and Jewish Family Services, Rabbi Aron Hier, director of Campus Outreach for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, wrote:

I have become aware of an event on November 22, 2010, in which the Olive Tree Initiative will be providing a platform for anti-Israel activist and International Solidarity Movement cofounder George Rishmawi. Further, the Olive Tree Initiative that will be hosting him is funded in part by Jewish philanthropy, through your organization as well as Hillel at UC Irvine.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center urges the Jewish Federation to disassociate itself from an event that invites the leader of a group whose own website states the following:
“Apartheid is not going to be defeated by words alone; occupation, oppression and domination are going to be dismantled the same way they were erected — through people’s action. The Israeli army and apartheid in Palestine can be defeated by strategic, disciplined unarmed resistance, utilizing the effective resources Palestinians can mobilize — including international participation.”
We further urge the Jewish Federation to investigate the Olive Tree Initiative, which has selected a speaker who advocates overthrowing the Jewish State. What kind of group would funnel impressionable Jewish students into this “wolf in sheep’s clothing” program that aids and abets the enemies of Israel in their pernicious mission?

I look forward to hearing from you about this serious matter.

Rabbi Aron Hier
Director
Campus Outreach

cc: Rabbi Marvin Hier
Rabbi Abraham Cooper
Rabbi Meyer May

(Emphases added.)

10.The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) – From the Anti-Defamation League. The International Solidarity Movement (ISM), co-founded by George S. Rishmawi, was studied in an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) background investigatory report: http://www.adl.org/Israel/israel_int_solidarity.asp

The International Solidarity Movement (ISM) is a well-organized movement that spreads anti-Israel propaganda and misinformation and voices support for others who engage in armed resistance against Israel. . . . ISM’s regimen involves recruiting and coordinating Western volunteers going to Palestinian areas for orientation meetings with Palestinian organizers and to discuss upcoming protests and actions. Once there, these volunteers engage in such tactics as obstructing the activities of the Israeli Army. . . . Since 2001, hundreds of ISM volunteers have placed themselves in front of Israeli Army vehicles, removed concrete boundaries from roads, confronted Israeli troops, and in some cases, stayed in the homes of suicide bombers.

Continuing its report, the ADL further has written:

ISM volunteers often publicize their actions and experiences in the Palestinian areas by preparing statements, articles and diaries and distributing them via the Internet among a variety of anti-Israel groups. Upon return to their home countries, ISM volunteers often describe their experiences in articles and during lectures at high schools, churches, libraries and college and university campuses. Many, though not all such speaking engagements, are organized as part of the ISM-co-sponsored Wheels of Justice bus tour.

During their speaking engagements, ISM volunteers have presented a biased, distinctly anti-Israel view of the Middle East, equating Israel with both apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany. For example, during the fourth annual Palestine Solidarity Movement conference at Duke University, Rann Bar-On, a Duke student, ISM member, and one of the conference organizers, compared the treatment of Palestinians by Israel to “Algiers under the French or Poland under the Nazis. There is always violence under occupation.” The ISM’s Brian Avery criticized the U.S. media for a “campaign of misinformation by Zionist-leaning news editors.”

Numerous ISM volunteers have been arrested, deported and denied entry into Israel. In response, some ISM volunteers have deceptively sought to enter Israel by changing their name in an effort to circumvent their ban from entering Israel.

Ties to Violent Groups

Although ISM claims to be a non-violent group, some of its volunteers recognize violence as a legitimate means of achieving Palestinian goals. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs has warned that ISM activity “at times” is “under the auspices of Palestinian terrorist organizations.” For example:

■Several ISM members met with Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’ leader in Gaza, on August 24, 2008. Haniyeh held the meeting to welcome participants of the Free Gaza Movement, an ISM-affiliated campaign that sailed two boats into Gaza port a day earlier in an effort to bring international attention to what its organizers have called the "increasing stranglehold of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine."

■Richard David Hupper, a Pennsylvania man who was sentenced in August 2008 to three and a half years in prison for donating $20,000 to Hamas, allegedly contributed to the terrorist organization while volunteering with ISM in the Gaza Strip in 2004. He was eventually kicked out of Israel for working with ISM, according to court documents. Hupper pleaded guilty to providing material support and resources to terrorists in May.

■In June 2007, Hisham Jam Joun, an ISM trainer in Israel, said in a letter posted on ISM’s Web page: “Even if part of the population supports military resistance to the conflict, it is only because we see the violence and injustice of a military occupation on a daily basis.”

■Two British suicide bombers met with ISM members before blowing up a popular bar in Tel Aviv near the U.S. embassy in April 2003. ISM claimed that the only contact it had with the suicide bombers “was a brief social encounter” at an ISM apartment in Rafah. However, five days before the Tel Aviv bombing, the bombers attended a memorial service in Rafah for ISM volunteer Rachel Corrie, an American college student crushed to death in 2003 while trying to block demolition of a Palestinian home in Gaza by an Israeli army bulldozer (the Israeli Army’s investigation of the Corrie death concluded that the soldiers operating the bulldozer had no intention of harming her).

■In March 2003, Israeli troops raided ISM’s West Bank offices in Jenin and captured a suspected member of the terrorist organization Islamic Jihad. The Israeli army identified Shadi Suqiyeh, who was hiding in the ISM office, as a senior member of Islamic Jihad who had planned a number of foiled attacks on Israelis. A statement released by ISM soon after the incident explained that Suqiyeh was brought into the apartment by an ISM volunteer "concerned about his welfare" because "under Israeli military curfew, Palestinians spotted in the streets are shot on sight."

■More ties to hard-line Palestinian groups were revealed three months later, when ISM issued a press release inviting volunteers to “join the ISM, the Palestinian National and Islamic Forces and the Apartheid Wall Defense Committee…to block construction of the apartheid wall” during the Freedom Summer 2003 campaign. The Palestinian National and Islamic Forces is a group made up of members of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the hard-edged wing of Arafat's Fatah organization.

■In an article in the Palestinian Chronicle in 2002, ISM co-founders Adam Shapiro and Huwaida Arraf wrote: “We accept that Palestinians have a right to resist with arms, as they are an occupied people upon whom force and violence is being used.” Palestinian resistance, they say, “must take on a variety of characteristics - both nonviolent and violent.”

Tactics

By using international ISM volunteers, who return to their home countries after a stint with the group and describe their experiences in articles and at lectures, local Palestinian activists have generated international attention to their cause.

ISM received its first substantial media coverage in spring 2002, when volunteers slipped into Yasir Arafat’s compound, bypassing the Israeli military that surrounded it. ISM members executed their second major action that year when they entered the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem during a military standoff between Israeli and Palestinian forces.

ISM volunteers have since taken part in various actions, including the annual Freedom Summer campaign. Volunteers have resisted the building of the Israeli security fence designed to deter terrorists by establishing a protective barrier between Israel and the West Bank. Referring to it as the “Apartheid Wall,” volunteers have tried to block construction of the security fence in some areas while attempting to tear certain sections down in others.

In the U.S., experienced ISM members recruit volunteers through various other pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel groups and through the ISM’s Web site. The ISM Web site previously included an “Information Pack,” which provided basic information on getting involved in the anti-Israel cause and offered suggestions, including tips on speaking with the press. In one section, it suggests that “when possible say ETHNIC CLEANSING” when referring to “the expulsion of Palestinians from historic Palestine in 1948 as well as the current situation.”

The packet also urged volunteers to “say RESISTANCE or RESISTANCE TO INJUSTICE [when] VIOLENCE is mentioned,” and to “emphasize STATE TERRORISM [when] TERRORISM is mentioned.”

11. Conclusion. In sum, the George S. Rishmawi who is coming to UCI under the aegis of the Olive Tree Institute, an agency funded in whatever part by the Rose Project of the Orange County Jewish Federation, and an accepted adjunct to UCI Hillel’s vision for encouraging UCI Jewish students better to understand the perspective of those opposed to Israel as an occupier, in whole or in part, of Palestine, is neither the same person as George N. Rishmawi nor as any of the other George S. Rishmawis who assuredly may be found in the world. Nevertheless, he is a skilled, experienced, and gifted tactician in the war against Israel, and his particular area of media-savvy expertise, even during Intifada time, is in presenting the more palatable side of the war to remove a Jewish state of Israel from the map.

In the free marketplace of ideas, we can welcome any and all George Rishmawis to UCI to ply their subtle propaganda. They should be permitted to speak free of the fascist repression that the MSU utilized to silence the Honorable Michael Oren, Ambassador of Israel to the United States, and Prof. Daniel Pipes before him. And Jewish students at UCI who are curious to hear this George Rishmawi should enjoy themselves. Nevertheless – all the more so, now that the Jewish Federation of Orange County has merged with Orange County Jewish Family Services – it is highly objectionable that meaningful Jewish community philanthropy has been diverted towards the Olive Tree Initiative in the past, and that such funding diversions have not been foresworn for the future, so that Jewish funds can better be targeted to address the kinds of real family needs that deeply challenge the Orange County Jewish community and its families in this time of great recession. Every dollar from the Jewish Federation of Orange County towards an Olive Tree Initiative matter represents a dollar less for the real needs of a Jewish community whose children could benefit from so much more Jewish education and whose families include many in dire straits.

It is absolutely unacceptable that a lady who is so passionately devoted to the cause of Israel – a cause we all share even in the face of few, if any, George Rishamwis standing alongside Orange County Jews in our deep uncompromising love for Israel – should now be the target of a concerted vilification campaign to humiliate her by name, target her for obloquy, in the effort to shut her up and to cast her as a pariah in the community of Jewish public participants. And while she and several others may have mixed up their “N”s and “S”s, it is a shame that the Orange County Jewish Federation and the Orange County Hillel lacked the elegance and dignity to mind their Ps and Qs.

I hereby am putting on public notice those who may be planning to finish off this lady’s reputation by humiliating and character-assassinating her that I will stand by this lady. I endorse the letter of Rabbi Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Beyond the smoke and mirrors, let it be clear that the burden of proof devolves onto the Jewish Federation and Jewish Family Services of Orange County, the Rose Project of the Jewish Federation, and Orange County Hillel to justify to the Jewish community of Irvine and throughout our County its continued engagement with and endorsement of an agency that perhaps is acceptable for deeply studied dilettantes but that is not a proper investment of Jewish community resources for the education of UCI Jewish students who, having done Birthright, next need a deeper Israel experience to better understand why the bond between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel is immutable, even as the City of United Jerusalem is the only eternal capital of Israel – period.

Respectfully submitted,

Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County
rabbi@yioc.org

Open Letter to a Jewish Student re the Olive Tree Initiative

2010-12-20T20:46:00.000-08:00

Dear Friend,

You have written several people to explain the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) to them. I have read your words, and I share some thoughts.

1. You are active in something you cannot control. You will not always be at UCI. Not everyone thinks like you. With each ensuing year, the OTI becomes something that less-devoted Jews will choose to do also. Some will do it because they hear it is “awesome.” Cool foods, cool music, and you get to meet people who even know terrorists. (But don’t worry – Gomez will be there, so it’s safe.) Some will hear that it is fabulous on a resumé if you want to apply to a major law school or MBA program. Little by little, the founding generation and its successor passes, and what is left is an institutional protoplasm that takes on a life of its own, which you no longer can control. Not every trip to Jenin will be met with responses by Jews who understand why Israel had to smash through those alleys and kill terrorists, in the aftermath of an interminable series of suicide bombings emanating specifically from Jenin-trained suicide terrorists. They will see the propaganda movie that is shown to UCI Olive Tree Initiative students in Jenin, with the Arab body parts, and they will wonder why Israel had to be so cruel. They will hear about Jenin as a “Palestinian Refugee Camp” and will not even have the presence of mind to ask how the people in Jenin can call themselves “refugees” if they now supposedly are repatriated and live in the land from which they supposedly fled, “Palestine.” They will hear the George Rishmawis telling them at OTI programs about how Israelis literally shoot live ammunition randomly at Arabs. They will see the Israeli military checkpoints at the Security Fence, and it will lack context. It would be like someone who died in the 1990s coming back to life and seeing the TSA security lines at the airport. If people do not like the long oines and invasive body searches with context, imagine the impact of seeing it without context. Maybe there will be one or two Jews on the trip who know a bit, although definitely not what you know. But you will not be there. Who will be there to ask the Arab Palestine propagandist – who bemoans the “Israeli occupation” and says “all we ever wanted was our land” – the obvious question: “You had the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip before June 1967, so what were you trying to accomplish when you founded the terrorist Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964? What were you trying to liberate when the anti-Israel Arab terrorist movement formally began in 1964?” Instead, the least-ignorant-Jew on the trip – a far cry from the most knowledgeable Jew – will become the Zionist voice: “Well, East Jerusalem. I guess Israel should let that be the capital of Arab Palestine, but Israel also should be allowed to have some of Jerusalem. And Israel should not have cut so deeply into the Arab West Bank – “Palestine” – with that fence just to protect a few settlers who probably don’t belong there. OK, guys, that’s my compromise, what’s yours?” Yes, there will be OTI visits with the Israel side, too, for “balance.” But, unlike the monolithic Palestine side that does not accept a permanent Jewish-sovereign polity anywhere in the Middle East, the Israel side will be diverse. There will even be the retired Israeli general who looks back on the 1967 liberation of Jerusalem – “haKotel b’yadeinu!” – and will apologize to the UCI students on the OTI adventure for his having been caught in the same "mindless euphoria” back then that caused Israelis to lose sight of the big picture. But he will assure his UCI OTI audience that he has atoned over the years and has been active in several “peace” campaigns in recent years, even writing the Israeli Prime Minister that Israel has it all wrong – and, after all, he knows because he served under the Prime Minister’s brother.

2. You continually are under the misapprehension that Daniel Wehrenfennig is something more than a grad student who just got a Ph.D. a year ago. Despite what has been conveyed to you, which you have conveyed to me, he is not a world-famous nor even a significant peace maker. He has some publications. I have publications, too. I published a law review study that was cited by at least nine different prominent federal judges in handing down significant multi-million-dollar federal decisions. That does not make me a Supreme Court justice. This fellow is not Richard Holbrooke. He is not Henry Kissinger. He is a fellow with some publications on ideas for citizen involvement in peacemaking, from Northern Ireland to “Occupied Palestine.” It is like a lovely slim blonde woman or a great-looking hunk of a guy coming to Hollywood and expecting to be hired immediately for a starring role in the first movie for which she or he auditions. In time, she or he is waiting tables. At a seedy bar. You see, the problem is that I come at it from the perspective of someone who not only loves all of Israel, including the communities of Yehuda and Shomron, including the Neve Aliza community I helped establish in 1985 in Karnei Shomron, but also from the perspective of a rabbi. I am a rabbi who cares about Jews. This is not a good program for Jews, and it does not bring Jewish students an inch closer to Judaism, to Torah, to Shabbat, to mitzvot. An OTI Friday night at Aish HaTorah with a group that is 80 percent non-Jewish doesn’t cut it, particularly when the program spends Shabbat Day in “Arab Palestine.” A program that appallingly but predictably spends most of Rosh Hashanah in “Palestine” and Jordan doesn’t cut it – even if they tell the Jews that “Hey, if you want to leave the group for two days for your holiday, that’s OK.” I expect that from a law firm where I work. I expect that at a public school in Iowa. That does not cut it as a program for Jewish students to be spending two weeks in Israel.

3. Note that this issue never really energized me until the salaried Hillel director and the Hillel student president each opted to launch mass-distributed character-assassination letters against a member of my shul. Those letters were sent to me and thousands of other Jews on Shabbat. What Jewish organization publicly desecrates Shabbat so blithely? And they really calumniated her. Can you imagine? Based on the dozens upon dozens upon dozens of signatures to the letter defaming this woman, every single UCI Jewish student leader, every UCI Jewish student group president and vice-president, every last Jewish group on campus, and dozens other present and former UCI Jewish students all supposedly were so infuriated by her that they supposedly all signed onto a hate-filled letter within a day? In a lifetime, you will meet many Jewish leaders and even rabbis whom you will think have sold out a bit, slowed down a bit, lost whatever idealism or gleam in their eyes they may ever have had. You will hear them patronize you and talk to you about “life experience.” Well, let me tell you: I have been there, done that. I also am an activist. I still respect your fire without seeing you as “some stupid dopey kid who needs to grow up.” If I thought you were unworthy, I never would be devoting this kind of time and effort to write you as extensively as I am writing you here. I cherish and value student activists for Israel. But just as I do not superimpose on you a prejudice that you are too young for a serious discussion, don’t you superimpose on me a prejudice that I am too old. And, as a Jewish activist myself, I will tell you that in forty years of activism, going back to my first campaign – to convince NBC to renew “Star Trek” for another season – I never have gotten that many signatures onto a petition or a letter, that 100% a response, in less than a day. So there was something rotten immediately. I am telling you that the two letters that were mass-distributed that Shabbat bordered on legally actionable slander. More, the three separate letters were coordinated – a campaign coordinated among the Federation professional, the Hillel professional, and the Hillel student leader. And those letters not only were nasty, not only may have been legally actionable, but also included – in at least one case – significant forgery of names who did not sign onto it and even opposed it. Those letters attempted to a destroy a good woman over a possible scrivener’s error, but instead they opened huge new cans of worms, revealing far more than any of us had expected. That is what it took to wake up many people in this community that something here is not right. If they can defame and destroy this woman today, and we remain silent, what will stop them from defaming someone else next time? So those of us who never stopped being activists – just got detoured a few extra exits by the need to rear children, put them through high school and college, and earn income to pay bills for the kinds of personal needs (electric, gas, water) that are not funded by the Federation’s Rose Project – woke up. We found each other. We started doing some research. And we could not believe what we learned.

4. We found, as much to our shock as to our chagrin, that there is a cover-up in play. Suddenly UCI Hillel conveys that it never has supported or advocated or encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. First of all, that is a lie. It is not merely a fabrication, a falsification, or a mendacity. This is not Foggy Bottom nor “Cat on a Hit Tin Roof.” Here, we talk plainly. I am a congregational rabbi in Irvine, a member of the national executive committee of one national rabbinic body, a leader in another national rabbinic body, a former Chief Articles Editor of a prominent law review and former clerk to a nationally prominent federal appeals court judge, and I am saying it plainly: It is an outright lie by UCI Hillel. By contrast, the truth is that UCI Hillel actively advocated for and encouraged UCI Jewish student participation in the Olive Tree Initiative. I know what Tzvi Raviv told me, and I know what Bruce Manning told me. And I am a bit surprised that you seem unaware that Hillel encouraged the formation of OTI. So, as always happens in politics when the truth gets uncomfortable and difficult to answer, people give up on answering the truth and start creating “straw men” instead, knocking them down gleefully. So we now are being told by certain Hillel spokespeople that the activists are accusing Hillel of paying money towards OTI. Not true. That Hillel is accused of supporting OTI with money. Not true. Rather, Hillel stands accused of having been among those encouraging the formation and establishment of OTI, and it stands accused of having used its resources to encourage UCI Jewish students to go on OTI programs. And it is time for UCI Hillel to stop covering up and instead to admit the truth of its role in the formative year of Olive Tree Initiative. That – along with an apology to the Jewish community and to the Jewish students it misguided. Similarly, we now are being told that the activists accuse Federation of funding OTI. Not True. Of financially supporting OTI. Not true. Rather, Federation stands accused of taking Jewish charitable funds during this Great Recession, a time when Jewish Family Services of Orange County was forced to abandon its independence and to merge into Federation because there no longer was enough Jewish charitable money available to it, and giving those Jewish funds towards the airfare and tuition of Jewish students attending the Olive Tree Initiative program. Again, that Federation money made it possible for those UCI Jewish students to travel with OTI to “Palestine” to hear those terrible anti-Israel speeches in “Palestine,” to see that hateful movie in Jenin, to hear George Rishmawi threaten that, if the demands of the “Palestinian peacemakers” are not met this year, then the “peace activists” of “Palestine” may well have no alternative but to turn to violence next year.

5. More “straw men” ensued. We were told that, in our ignorance, we are calling OTI anti-Semitic. Not true. That we are calling Daniel Wehrenfennig anti-Semitic. Not true. That we oppose Wehrenfennig because he is a German. Not true. That we regard OTI as anti-Israel. Not true. That we regard Wehrenfennig as anti-Israel. Not true. Rather, what is true is that we regard the OTI as a terribly unfortunate and misguided initiative, clutched at by Dean Michael Drake and Vice President Gomez as a publicity bonanza to show their donors that, you see, we are doing something about the Muslim Student Union and its annual “Hate Israel Week” and its incessant disruptions of Jewish speakers ranging from Prof. Daniel Pipes to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren. To paraphrase in common parlance, once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “Look, Jews, we have the Olive Tree Initiative. So stop bothering us. And stop telling Merage that, all because he is a Jew, he should stop giving us tens of millions of dollars. OK?” Likewise, originally, the Federation and Hillel proudly also bragged about their OTI involvement. It was once upon a time. Now, in the face of the revelations about what actually happens at OTI programs, they have reverted. Now they deny, and once we cut through the phraseology and rhetoric, we are hearing this: “We never said that. We don’t support it. We don’t fund it.” It is like Bill Clinton denying that he had sex with Monica Lewinsky. “I did not have sex with that woman.” Then they tell him she preserved a dress with his DNA on it. “Oh. Well, in that case . . . .” So now we are told that it is not Federation money; rather, it is Rose Project money. But the Federation is the Rose Project, and the Rose Project is the Federation. Let us hypothesize that Rose came and said to Federation “We want to donate money to start an Institute for Historical Review, to do research disproving that the Holocaust ever happened. We will fund research to prove the Holocaust is a hoax.” Would that project be accepted as an utterly independent “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Denying the Holocaust”? Let us hypothesize, with greater warmth, that Rose came and said “We have met and tested Jewish kids in Orange County who go to TVT, and we are beyond-shocked at how little they know after twelve years at TVT, so we want to start a million-dollar-fund to start a Modern Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine for grades 1-12.” Do you think – for a nano-second – that there would be a “Rose Project of the Jewish Federation of Orange County for Establishing an Orthodox Hebrew Academy in Irvine?” D’ya think so? The reality is that the Rose Project’s funding of those airfares and tuitions for the Olive Tree Initiative students is part-and-parcel of a project that the Jewish Federation of Orange County proudly has accepted under its wings, and Federation boastfully has bragged about that financial subventing of OTI whenever it has suited Federation’s public relations purposes.

6. More straw men: We are being told that activists have written that [student name withheld] is anti-Israel because he/ she supported OTI. Not true. Rather, we regret that the student or students, who care about Israel, have failed to see the longer-term consequences of their promoting OTI now. It is called the Law of Unintended Consequences. In the end, then, Jews are the losers – primarily Jewish students. Think about it: If this Olive Tree Initiative, which you tell us is so good for the Jews, really were so sound and worthwhile, why would UCI Hillel and the Jewish Federation of Orange County now, before your very eyes, be denying their demonstrable direct involvement in OTI? Alas, this misguided initiative now has spread to two other far-flung UC campuses where there are even fewer Jewish students like you who would know what to say in Jenin. This is not what may have been intended by those within the Jewish community who helped create it, but this is what has been created, a program that neither will bring peace to the region nor harm it, but will be used manipulatively by third-parties who were not on the original radar, including but not limited to: (i) the UCI Administration, manipulating this OTI program to excuse themselves for their abysmal record on protecting Jewish students walking along Ring Road during the worst moments of “Hate Israel Week” and failing to assure that the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel could speak with dignity to a UCI audience; and (ii) future Jewish students looking for something awesome for their resumes, while also enjoying an awesome Mideast experience in the hot spots like Jenin, in the company of people who count terrorists among their acquaintances, and maybe parlaying it to a great law or business graduate school – devoting their Mideast experience to “doing OTI” rather than, say, doing Birthright-Israel. And is it not ironic? The Olive Tree Initiative already was in full bloom, supposedly having peeled away layers of animosity and distrust that underlay prior Muslim Student Union (MSU) actions endangering UCI as a campus safe for Jews to hear Jewish speakers, when – nevertheless and despite OTI – the MSU still broke up Ambassador Oren’s appearance at UCI.

7. A final “straw,” perhaps better characterized as “the last straw.” One of the students would tell us that “We students are the new leaders of the American Jewish community. We are the future. We know best what is best for UCI. Your role in the community is to give us the funds. And otherwise – just butt out.” And so, a word to a friend. Irvine is our community, too. We, too, are its leaders. In the Irvine and greater Orange County Jewish community, there are nationally prominent experts on Israel and the Middle East, published authors, trained and experienced teachers, leaders capable of offering Israel advocacy training and teaching, Jewish leaders who actually fly across the country to teach and train others. There are Ph.D.s and scholars, scholarly researchers and exciting speakers. We are not called upon. Our offered services repeatedly are rejected. So be it. A $5,000 honorarium from an East Coast Jewish audience pays more than would the pro bono (free of charge) presentation that the same expert among us offers locally as a loving service to the community. But let us be clear: This issue transcends the students on campus. Perhaps you may have seen Breaking Away, an Academy Award®-winning flick. Its subplot is instructive. We the Jewish community live here in Irvine today, and we will be living here tomorrow, long after several of today’s UCI college and grad students have moved on. We have a long-term stake in the community, and we therefore have a stake in the neighborhood campus that brings occasional Jew-haters (including Jewish Jew-haters) out of their respective rat holes and into our midst. We are asked – even guilted – to contribute money to UCI Hillel, apprised that it is our obligation to do so because we have a stake. I personally have made such a donation to UCI Hillel. Some of us even have devoted hundreds of hours of our own personal time to students at UCI, even at the expense of personal family time, vacation time, and at the expense of money. We have seen students come into Irvine, then move on, much as I moved on in my life 35 years ago from the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University, and subsequently from the Westwood campus of UCLA Law School. Thus, it is important to recognize that, in the course of a lifetime, many of our respective lives are intersecting concentric circles, elliptical encounters. The world does not revolve around me, and it does not revolve around this or that student. One day it is about mobilizing the Irvine and Orange County Jewish community to help the former salaried Hillel Director actualize his hopes and agenda, and then he is gone, forgotten, but we still are here. Jewish organizational professionals come and go. We have seen the revolving doors at the Irvine Bureau of Jewish Education, the American Jewish Committee, the Tarbut v’ Torah school, and yes at UCI Hillel. Through each of the transitions, we donate money and time, patience and passion and participation. One day it is the new Hillel Program Director arriving all excited with big plans, and another day it is someone else with a different program agenda. But we the Orange County Jewish community remain here, committed and devoted to this place and to our friends and families and dreams, realizing that our tzedakah dollars are being allocated in ways that we find objectionable. While phantom students’ names are signed to documents without the signatories’ knowledge, assent, authorization – and in some cases over their explicit objections – it is we, the community, that receive the defamatory letters, breaking the peaceful moment as the Shabbat ends. We do not heatedly return the letters with overheated, over-exercised verbiage, telling the senders: “The students on campus are the leaders of tomorrow, so solicit the Big Gifts and Major Donations from them. It is they, the students at UCI, who alone are impacted at UCI, so let them tend to themselves, and how dare you approach with a fundraiser’s solicitations those of us who are not on campus?”

But there is a time for everything under the heavens: A time to be still, and a time to speak. A time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing. Among us as Jews there always is a time to love and a time for peace. But this also is a time to speak and time to refrain from embracing. There will be absolutely no support for the Federation of Orange County from this quarter, nor from those who share my concerns, until the Federation and Hillel publicly withdraw from their associations with the Olive Tree Initiative. Not one penny. My desk is loaded with ample Jewish charitable alternatives to support, and tzedakah never stops in my home. But tzedakah must be just. And there is never a shortage of worthy Jewish causes to support that never would spend a penny of Jewish tzedakah money to fly a local Jewish student to “Palestine” for a film viewing in Jenin depicting the Israeli people as barbaric and cruel murderers. No, not a charity for me.

-- Rabbi Dov Fischer

The Flotilla of the Damned:

2010-06-01T01:54:00.000-07:00

Who in the world runs private “supply ships” through naval blockades?

When mass murder was rampant in Rwanda, did the “International Solidarity Movement” run supply flotillas? What would Kamal Ataturk have done if a civilian flotilla were sent to Armenia while the Turks were committing genocide there? When President John F. Kennedy blockaded Cuba, would anyone have tried running a flotilla through to Havana? If they had, what would the U.S. Navy have done if they refused to stop? Has anyone tried running a parade of boats to Guantanamo Bay to assure that America’s Gitmo prisoners are well provided for? If America ultimately maximizes sanctions against Iran, blockading Ahmadinejad’s ports, how will we respond to flotillas seeking to ram through?

Israel seems positioned as the target of every bully or wannabe-tough-guy who wishes to dabble in social justice. She is perceived as the kid with thick-framed glasses whose lunch money is easiest to steal. For left-anarchist groups like the International Solidarity Movement, Israel is the target for a radical-chic war game, perhaps to alleviate students’ residual stress from just-completed final exams. Many of them may have been unaware that the International Solidarity Movement is a front group created by Palestinian Arabs, funded by Palestinian Arabs, with direct ties to Arab terrorists. Even so, a hint of the flotilla’s unilaterally hostile agenda against Israel should have been apparent when ISM leaders refused a plea from the parents of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli kidnapped by Hamas in June 2006, to transmit a letter and package to him if they arrived in Gaza.

Israel disappointed the naifs who were lured by ISM as window dressing for the flotilla confrontation. Israel is a real country with real people who have real hopes for happiness and real aspirations for peace. Her borders are open to tourists. Her cafes and night clubs are vibrant and safe. People in her land – even outsiders – can think what they want, say what they want, even politically mobilize as they want. They have protests running all over the country. Try that in Iran.

When three youngsters inadvertently hike into Iranian territory, they end up in prison – and they remain incarcerated there for a year and more. Two American journalists journey into North Korea, and promptly are locked up in jail, unable to leave until an American President personally flies in to beg the country’s dictator personally to free them. An American journalist travels into Pakistan to conduct an interview and is butchered by Moslem fanatics. An American innocent goes into Iraq and gets himself beheaded by Islamofascists.

As juxtaposed against the real murderous oppressors of the world, Israel seems a safe place to bring one’s Berkeley activism onto the world scene for a week on the high seas after final exams. No one tells the American activists that those “freedom songs” the ringleaders are singing in Arabic actually are lyrics about massacring Jews. Unknown to the volunteers, the “peace activists” already have armed themselves with metal pipes, baseball bats, slingshots and marbles, and firebombs for the real action they are planning for the cruise. Instead, the naïve board the flotilla, cheerfully thinking: “Let’s run through a naval blockade today – won’t that be fun?”

Well, no, that won’t be fun. Israel’s neighbors have forced her to learn to survive amid a sea of hostility, surrounded by more than twenty countries that want to destroy her. Her border problems are not illegal immigrants trying to run a porous fence from one side, while people on the other side bring in all these dimes that jam up vending machines. Rather, she is bordered by the worst gang of murderous cutthroats to have run a polity since, perhaps, Attila the Hun. For Hamas, death is an industry.

Hamas runs Gaza. They are so murderous that terrorists from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah gang have fled. The nominal “President” of the “Palestine Authority,” Mahmoud Abbas stays out of Gaza because he expects he will get butchered there if he shows up. In Gaza, the internationally outlawed Hamas terror organization rules the streets, arbitrarily tortures and takes Arab Moslem opponents off to their deaths, and rules a veritable Gangland.

Hamas came into power because Israel, in one of its idyllic moments, opted unilaterally to “take a risk for peace” and abandoned all Israeli assets and properties in Gaza, forcibly uprooted and removed all Israeli citizens resident there, even dug up deceased Jews for reburial outside Gaza, and handed Gaza to Mahmoud Abbas. He lost it soon after to the Hamas thugs, as they seized power and killed Abbas’s own terrorists. Hamas then converted the Gaza region into an armed camp.

Hamas receives international funds in the hundreds of millions of dollars and euros – and the money goes disproportionately for weapons like the rockets that Hamas incessantly shoots into Israel. To get even more weapons, Hamas has constructed a labyrinth of subterranean tunnels beneath its border with Egypt and even taxes weapons smugglers for the privilege. They need those tunnels because even Egypt has to blockade Gaza.

Israel is compelled to blockade Gaza at this time. Countries like Syria and Iran already supply deadly military weaponry to Nasrallah’s Hezbollah, along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. Having shot at Israel everything they had in 2006, Hezbollah finally sued for a truce when she ran out of weapons. Israel was assured that an emergency United Nations peacekeeping force would enter the terrain, and Hezbollah would not be re-supplied. Yet, today, Hezbollah has restocked so completely, with the aid of Iran and Syria, that she is more heavily armed than she was in 2006.

Israel cannot control the borders throughout Lebanon and therefore is stymied in relying on the United Nations to do what the UN never could achieve. By contrast, Israel can prevent Gaza from being stockpiled similarly, and she is obligated to protect her citizens.. In January 2002, a cargo ship the Karin-A, sailed for Gaza, ostensibly loaded with civilian supplies – food, flowers, children’s books. When Israel’s navy boarded the ship in the Red Sea, they instead found the vessel loaded chock-full with rockets, grenades, and anti-tank missiles. That is why Israel blockades and needs to blockade Gaza.

Even so, despite nonsensical slanders against Israel, ample food supplies are evident throughout Gaza. Medical supplies get through. So do fancy restaurants and Olympic-sized swimming pools.

When college youngsters decide that it would be romantic to get out their Ché Guevara t-shirts and play “freedom fighter” – maybe even get some great cell phone photos for friends, some great tweets, and even a “How-I-Spent-My-Summer” experience to “ace” a college termpaper back home for their class in “The Politics of Liberation” – they need to understand that Israel is not on summer break.

Next time, try Darfur.

Reagan and Obama: A Great President, An Empty Suit

2009-10-25T13:12:00.000-07:00

I was searching something pertaining to Menachem Begin -- his wonderful first-ever TV interview (in Hebrew) after being elected Israeli Prime Minister – and I also came across these pearls, four or five jokes that Ronald Reagan told about the Soviet Union and Communism: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN3z3eSVG7A&NR=1

They say on CBS, NBC, ABC, PBS, CNN, and MSNBC that Obama is brilliant, the greatest speaker and communicator in the White House in our lifetimes. Just four or five minutes listening to Reagan tell these jokes is all it takes to remember back and realize what an empty suit we now have sitting in the chair that once was filled by a truly great leader.

Also, despite his greatness, Reagan also had a humility. You hear it in his voice, and you see it in his bearing. How different from the empty suit that arrogantly now walks down stairways refusing to hold the bannister or even to have his hand seen near the bannister, to signal to all the media that “Hey, I do not slip. I do not use bannisters. Bannisters are for wimps. Bannisters get in my way.”

As painful as it is to live in the Age of Obama, it is even more painful after hearing a few minutes of Reagan.

Universal Health Care Issues -- and a Congress in Default

2009-08-18T02:21:00.000-07:00

Some basic health care principles:

1. If there is a public government health-care option, assuring universal coverage, it will be cheaper than private insurance. Private companies exist to make profits so the owners can pay their food bills and rent. A government agency can exist on a permanent-losing-money basis because, no matter how much money the agency loses, the Government always picks up the tab either by taxing more or printing more money. Compare the Post Office and Fed Ex.

2. Because the Government plan will be cheaper than the private plans, private plans will be driven out of business. Private citizens will opt for the cheaper plan. Companies, knowing that a cheap public plan is available, will stop insuring their employees.

3. In short order, private insurers will be driven out of business. At that point, with a monopoly, Government insurance will become the health equivalent of the Post Office. Lines will get increasingly longer. Service will get increasingly shoddy. The best doctors will try avoiding patients on Government coverage, offering services on private bases.

4. As the demands for health care increase, resources will be strained, and the Government will need to cut back. Sit in a Post Office with six teller windows, and note that four are closed. Think back to the 4-cent stamp and contemplate the 44-cent stamp, even as the Post Office continues to lose a fortune. The reason that Britain and Canada have long lines and long delays in treatment is that the Governments lose control of costs and soon respond by cutting back in ways that make sense only to bureaucrats in Washington.

5. Now when you need an immunization, you go for immunization. Once the Government assumes full control of American health care, Government guidelines inevitably will be drawn to prioritize whether you may get an immunization before someone else. Expect guidelines that define "epidemic" to limit access to certain immunizations until a certain epidemiological number is reached. Thus, in the case of a Hepatitis A outbreak, gamma globulin immunization may be expected to be restricted until a minimum number of residents in a community have been stricken.

6. Universal care will take away from doctors an aspect of the motive to provide excellence. Private doctors vie for paying patients with reasonable health plans. By contrast, many gatekeepers on several of the HMOs take what they can get, compromise on fine points of quality care, live off capitation fees that pay them based on the number of heads they treat each day, and consequently drop all pretenses of bedside manner.

7. Under Government care, it will become profoundly difficult to see specialists, as money will be conserved by forcing patients initially to see lesser specialized "Gatekeepers" who will lose money by referring out, so will insist on personally treating symptoms that best would be treated by specialists. Instead of one visit to a dermatologist for a proper acne treatment regimen, then, a patient will need to first go through the time waste, inefficiency, and delay of being treated by a general Gatekeeper less experienced with specialized treatment.

8. Of the 47 million uninsured Americans, only 5 million actually need a fix in the current system. More than 10 million others are illegal aliens. Others can afford health care but opt, for their own reasons, to spend the insurance premiums instead on other items like cars, vacations, clothes, etc. For them it is a matter of choice, not desperation.

9. Any effort aimed at truly cutting health care costs would include, among its range of proposals, a proposal to reform Medical Malpractice Tort Litigation. Such litigation is often important, aimed at catching up with doctors who have malpracticed. However, such cases are few and far between. The vast majority are crap-shoot cases, in which an attorney takes case on contingency -- meaning that the client has nothing to lose in attorneys' fees -- and sometimes wins and sometimes loses. Often, malpractice insurers force weak cases to settle, even as their medical-doctor clients beg for a full defense at trial. These cases cost a fortune in litigation costs, even when plaintiffs lose, and doctors who are sued get penalized with huge increases in their malpractice premiums. Therefore, to avoid litigation at all costs -- literally, at all costs -- doctors tie up their patients and increase health costs exponentially by ordering ranges of unnecessary lab tests. The lab tests are costly, but they help the doctor establish for the disappointed patient that he was thorough. Moreover, costs are compounded by the tens of millions that doctors need to spend each year on malpractice premiums, costs that they shift to the consumer. There must be tort reform, and the failure to seek tort reform in the midst of a 1,017-page bill demonstrates that the Government is not seeking to save money.

10. It is a fallacy that increased funding for "prevention" will save money. Prevention is important, and it is necessary medicine. Doctors do it and should do it, but the reality to face is that prevention costs more money than it saves. Although prevention saves a rare patient from a costly illness and treatment regimen - a wonderful result that justifies prevention medicine -- the reality is that the cost entailed in applying the same prevention efforts for the many hundreds others who never would have contracted that disease anyway more-than-offsets savings. Yes, prevention still is important. It is costly but a worthwhile societal cost. However, no one should claim falsely that prevention saves money.

11. It is a falsehood that a doctor would rather evade prevention -- a low-income process for the doctor -- so that he ultimately can have the opportunity to make big money by amputating a diabetic's foot or removing a child's tonsils. We have doctors, and we know that such allegations simply are demagoguery. A doctor does not receive $30,000 for amputating a foot, but less than $750. Nor do doctors, sworn to uphold the values of Hippocrates, practice such vicious medicine.

12. There are two bona fide problems with the current health-care system. First, portability: a person who leaves a job loses his coverage. This quirky phenomenon forces people to work at jobs they hate because they risk losing their health coverage. Moreover, those who do lose their jobs, as has been so prevalent during this downturn, lose their coverage. If, G-d forbid, they contract a disease during the interregnum of non-coverage, then they cannot later get insurance privately as individuals because they are barred for "pre-existing conditions." Congress needs to resolve the portability and "pre-existing conditions" issues. On the one hand, insurers would be hurt financially by being forced to insure people with "pre-existing conditions." On the other hand, large corporations with many dozens of workers, typically provide health coverage for all employees without regard to pre-existing conditions. That is because their employee health pool is sufficiently large to offset anomalies. Congress should be able to craft a system or fix that pools enough private individuals in a way that somehow addresses these two issues.

13. At least two states have attempted Obama-style universal health care: Tennessee and Massachusetts. Both programs began with great promise -- they would provide universal care, keep costs down, and prove societal boons. Instead, both have emerged as unmitigated disasters, with costs skyrocketing and the states forced into heavier debt as a result. In both states, as the programs have fizzled, predictions of cost savings have fizzled, and care has been rationed.

14. Obama may not intentionally be planning to pull the plug on Granny, but his plan ultimately will do just that. As funds disappear, public health care skyrockets in cost, resources become more scarce, demand builds, there will be efforts to find cost savings. People needing surgeries that are adjudged non-essential -- say, a person with a painful knee who wishes a meniscus operation -- will be compelled to wait longer than conceivable, offered pain killers during the extended interregnum. And octogenarians needing hip replacements will be evaluated not as people but as expenses: "Is it a worthwhile expense to replace the hip of someone with a life expectancy of X years?" That is British and Canadian, but that is not the way that America values its citizens.

15. The most disheartening aspect of the public debate on universal health care is the revelation, most artfully stated by Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, that he parcels out to others the responsibility to read the legislation on which he will vote. It is disheartening that legislators would vote on a 1,017-page bill without reading the bill and understanding every provision. They did this with a stimulus bill that they passed on a short fuse, told falsely that they needed to pass it immediately because shovel-ready projects were awaiting cash infusions to begin. So they voted to spend $780 billion -- and only ten percent of the funds have been spent, lo these six months later. Similarly, the Democrats in Congress rushed through a terribly complex and ill-advised "Cap and Trade" bill that really is a "Home Heating Tax Raise for the Middle Class." State utility companies will be compelled to reduce emissions at such staggering rates that they necessarily will need to spend fortunes on infrastructure modifications -- all of which will be passed along to the end consumers. This project, an insane initiative at a time when the country cannot afford the luxury of turning the economy upside-down on a theory of Global Warming, will force enormous increases in our electric and gas bills . . . and in bills for all other commodities that use electric or gas: food, clothes, everything. It emerges as remarkable that the Democrats of the House voted for such a massive bill, so massive an infrastructure overhaul, without reading its provisions either. They were elected to do a job, and they have proceeded with malfeasance and recklessness, voting to approve the most extraordinary expansions of the American debt burden in our history -- without even reading the bills they approve.

The Judicial Panel That Ordered 40,000 California Prisoners Released Was Lop-sided and Will Be Overruled

2009-08-13T13:29:00.000-07:00

A federal judicial panel recently ordered California to release some 40,000 prisoners over the next two years, if prison medical conditions do not improve markedly. In all the reportage on the remarkable ruling, the media missed one telling point:

All three jurists on that particular panel regularly judge from the more extreme side of the liberal bench. Two of them, District Judges Lawrence Karlton and Thelton Henderson, are Jimmy Carter appointees with long and distinguished extreme liberal records on the bench. The third, federal appellate judge Stepehen Reinhardt, is among the most extreme liberal judges on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Thus, news was made when, by the luck of the draw, a judicial panel was composed of three judges way-out-left.

No media attention was paid to the probability that such an extremely one-sided panel would be declared "tilt" on appeal.

The odds are overwhelming that a more balanced federal appellate panel will overturn the extreme ruling which, if impelemented, would convert California life overnight into scenes from a horror movie. If not overruled en banc, one would expect that the panel would be overruled by an appeal to the United States Supreme Court, unless the Supreme Court denies certiorari. But this one seems too important to be left unaddressed on appeal.

Kevin Skinner's Stirring Moment: A Tribute to the Human Spirit

2009-08-10T13:07:00.000-07:00

Two or so years ago, I sent everyone on my list a Youtube link to a remarkable performance on “Britain’s Got Talent.” It was a fellow named Paul Potts, a very unattractive cell phone salesperson with a very unimpressive appearance, who immediately drew laughs of contempt from a packed audience. He told them he had come to sing opera, and they laughed. And then he sang “Nessun Dorma” and blew everyone away. Last year it was Susan Doyle and a number from “Les Miz.” I have just seen this clip from “America’s Got Talent,” and it touched me very deeply, so I share it.

In our great society, we live amid many wonderful people. Yet, we also live amid too many others who are very materialistic, remarkably superficial, catty, cliquish and caustic -- too many who rush to judgment and too many who judge based on inadequate, superficial information. A look, a prejudgment – and that’s it. Suddenly, a person is pegged, pigeon-holed. Too many hear a malapropism, a mistake, and assume a person is an idiot. They see someone with a shirt a bit wrinkled and assume that the person is a bum -- never pausing to realize that the shirt is 100% linen, not a polyester mix, and every wrinkle will show. So many jump to conclusions, and then the mockery begins, and the character assassination.

This clip is six minutes. Listen during the first two minutes as people literally laugh-out-loud at this man, laugh at his accent, laugh at what he was doing for a living before he became unemployed, laugh at his appearance, laugh at his simple honest confession that he is not very good at math. There is no way fully to gauge how much that caustic response must have hurt him, hurt his soul. They all have him pegged as a bumpkin, a hillbilly from Kentucky. What must it be like to be the butt of humor, the target of attacks and behind-the-back finder-pointing? How much it must have hurt him, through a lifetime.

They all have him pegged for just what he is. Even one of the three judges starts laughing at him, as he speaks.

And then he opens his heart with the pluck of a guitar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzul5rxd-i8

Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Billy Mays: Counting the Stars and Numbering the Days

2009-06-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

Last week’s news was dominated by the deaths of three celebrities: Ed McMahon, who entered our homes as Johnny Carson’s sidekick, and later – we wished – as the man bearing the big check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Farrah Fawcett, whose pin-up poster sold 12 million copies and appeared in the dorm rooms of a generation, and whose hairstyle literally sent millions of American women to stylists asking to “look like Farrah.” And Michael Jackson, who was performing as a gifted song-and-dance talent from as early as age five. By the time he would emerge from among his family as the preeminent Jackson entertainer, his albums would sell 750 million copies. Days later, we learned that 50-year-old Billy Mays had just died of a heart attack. Billy was the “As Seen on TV” pitch man who sold us products while operators were standing by: OxiClean, Orange Glo, Mighty Putty, a health insurance plan, ESPN 360.

Michael Jackson’s death set off a veritable panic. It took one of my family members, who works near UCLA, three extra hours to get home because the crowds outside UCLA Medical Center, where Jackson died, were so massive. On the famous Hollywood Walk of Fame, throngs placed wreaths and wept at Michael Jackson’s star on the cement – not realizing that they were mourning at the star of the wrong Michael Jackson, a radio talk show host.

The death of Michael Jackson the Moonwalker eclipsed Ms. Fawcett’s death earlier that morning. When she had died, the TV networks began preparing to preempt their regular programming for the night, for their respective documentaries remembering her life: the hairdo, the poster, the marriage to the Six Million Dollar Man, the divorce, the surprising reminder that she had acted only one year on “Charlie’s Angel’s” before moving to made-for-TV films. Ryan O’Neal, her long-time companion, told an interviewer that, while there are many “celebrities,” Ms. Fawcett genuinely was a “star.” And yet her star was eclipsed the day of her death; media focus of remembrance rapidly shifted mid-day to Jackson

And so, as each element of our media-driven society – the cable news and celebrity-gossip programs in particular – endeavor to keep the stories running, it is worthwhile pausing to ask whether there is anything for us to learn from it all.

There is.

Life is short. So terribly short. “The days of our lives are seventy years and, [if blessed with extra] strength, eighty years . . . so much of it hard work and emptiness cut off suddenly and we fly away. . . . So teach us [O G-d] to count our days.” (Tehillim 90:10,12 ) We know we will not live forever, but how we do let the days go by! And why not? For “tomorrow is another day.” And then, suddenly, the little boy for whom we bought his first ice cream cone at his first state fair, and the little girl we pushed on a swing, each has a packed suitcase at the front door, bidding us good-bye as each leaves the nest, closing a chapter in our biographies. And soon our parents’ friends – people with whom we grew up – are dying. And then parents.

Tomorrow is not another day. Tomorrow is a noun that means that today is lost forever. Yesterday, too. There is no tomorrow for even the greatest of celebrities whose time comes. Nor is there a today for those of us who would consume it watching and reading all about them. Our moments to realize our own dreams and hopes are today.

Synagogues are filled with congregants who congregate to reach the spiritual, the Divine. The rabbi or shul president announces after services that Torah classes will be meeting during the week. A chesed committee will be doing acts of kindness on Tuesday. A scholar is visiting and will speak next week. Do we take advantage of every moment, every opportunity that comes our way to grow Jewishly? Do we passionately seize the day’s opportunity to grow closer to G-d, acting as if there is no tomorrow and as if today is too precious to waste?

The real stars are not on the screen but in the firmaments, and they are counted only by G-d. “He counts the number of the stars, and He calls each one by its name.” (Tehillim 147:4) But we do have the chance – at least a bit – to number our days. We need only contemplate how quickly our heroes and our legends pass. How quickly their laughter fades, their smiles fade, their hair, their booming voices, their dancing. There is so little time. And every precious moment is witnessed by the stars above and G-d above them.

PRESIDENT OBAMA'S GREAT PYRAMID SCHEME: The Two-State Solution as Final Solution

2009-06-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

The Obama Administration has endeavored to move American Mideast policy away from a traditional understanding of Israel's security concerns and historic rights, towards a view that renders undue currency towards Mideast political theories that have not served America well, aimed more at appeasing terrorism than at assuring justice.

My extensive commentary on the subject may be found at: http://rabbidov.com/twostate.htm

After you have read it, you may circulate it as you wish, even reprinting the text rather than merely forwarding the link, but you are limited only by these two caveats: (i) you may not edit the text; (ii) the link must appear with any forwarding you do.

No Shul Ever Should Sponsor a Casino Evening, Poker Game, or Other Game of Chance

2009-06-04T16:33:00.000-07:00

It long has been my halakhic position that all synagogues should not – and many synagogues may not – sponsor, conduct, participate in, or otherwise associate with poker games, “Las Vegas Nights,” “Casino Evening” events, or other such events. As I have gotten to know Jewish communities outside main Torah centers, my position has solidified further that, at such places and at such times in Shuls’ and Jewish communities’ evolutions, such an halakhic position prohibiting these events is mandated.

In reaching my opinion, grounded in several authoritative halakhic sources, I note a policy statement written for the benefit of both the laity and the rabbinate and adopted four years ago by the convened membership of the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA). The RCA resolution is not singularly determinative of those deeply grounded views. Rather, it is comparatively understated when compared to positions taken by other authoritative halakhic sources. But I do share it, hopeful that it helps shed an aspect of light on this issue of national significance:

Gambling as Communal Fundraising Vehicle:

RCA Calls Upon Communal Institutions to Desist from Using High-Stakes Gambling to Raise Funds

(Newark, NJ) May 17, 2005 -- Whereas gambling in general, and card games involving significant wagering such as poker in particular, have received tremendous public attention as a result of numerous depictions in the media of both gaming professionals as well as popular celebrities engaging in high-stakes games of chance; and,

Whereas certain Jewish communal institutions – e.g., synagogues, day schools, federations, and other Jewish fraternal organizations - have recently placed an increased emphasis upon offering “Las Vegas” nights and poker games as a new way to raise significant funds; and,

Whereas it is readily apparent that high stakes gambling runs counter to Jewish values; and,

Whereas Jewish communal organizations must always model appropriate ethical and moral standards not only as they carry out their mandates, but also as they promote themselves, especially when encouraging Jews to participate in specific activities for fundraising purposes; and,

Whereas the Orthodox community recognizes that the alarming, “at-risk” behavior of many adolescents, including excessive gambling, is in part fostered by the well-publicized activities of their adult role-models and of the Jewish institutions of their communities:

Therefore, the Rabbinical Council of America hereby calls upon all Jewish communal institutions not to use gambling as a fundraising vehicle and to seek alternative fundraising methods instead, even if they thereby raise less money.

A synagogue is a House of G-d, and even outside its sanctuary walls it is bidden institutionally to stand as role-model for spirituality. All synagogues need to raise funds, and funds often are difficult to come by. Even so, there are limits -- real spiritual and public-policy limits -- to what synagogues and temples may do in pursuit of funds.

For example, the National Council of Young Israel bars its shuls from honoring at their banquets individuals who -- but for their money -- are not honorable. At its most recent national convention, in May 2009, the Rabbinical Council of America adopted this forthright and unequivocal stand:

Communal and Synagogue Honors Must Be Given Only to Those with Reputations for Ethical Behavior

May 12, 2009 -- Our Torah commands sanctity in the marketplace and workplace as in the home and synagogue. From Biblical times to the present, Jews have been summoned to a life of ethical behavior and social responsibility, of respect for both ritual practice and the rule of civil law. This tradition acknowledges the legitimacy of property rights as well as business profit, but simultaneously challenges us to fulfill principles of just conduct, even when faced with serious financial challenges.

It is naturally the responsibility of synagogues as central Jewish institutions of assembly, and of Jewish day schools as centers for teaching Jewish knowledge and imbuing Jewish values, to implement and practice exemplary public policies that demonstrate and promote the centrality of these values.

Recently the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) has begun issuing a series of guidelines delineating ethical business practices for employer and employee, market and consumer, in an effort to educate and inspire sanctity in earning a livelihood, as in the entirety of our religious lives.

This effort to educate and inspire recognizes that a person's past impropriety does not irrevocably define his path. Consequently, we fervently hope that individuals who have become associated with questionable activities will find ways to rehabilitate themselves and engage in the sorts of meaningful acts of teshuvah that will demonstrate to the community's satisfaction that they have put these activities behind them. However, until such acts of honest contrition take place, other courses of action, symbolic as well as substantive, are required.

Therefore, be it resolved that we must vigorously educate and demonstrate to our laity and our day school students and parents, especially in our trying economic times, that the Torah mandate for ethical behavior and social responsibility is paramount.

We call upon synagogues to review longstanding policies and publicly reaffirm among their membership that ritual kibbudim, leadership positions and public honors and recognitions should be conferred only upon those whose reputations for honesty and ethical conduct comport with these values.

Ritual kibbudim include leading services, opening and closing the Aron Kodesh, ascending to the Torah, and raising the Torah and rolling it closed.

Leadership positions include serving as gabbai, synagogue officer or board member, or otherwise occupying a position of honor in the synagogue administration.

Public honors and recognition include receiving special mention at synagogue banquets and assemblies, and having names assigned to synagogue facilities or inscribed in places of honor.

It is understood that moral turpitude may come to light only long after it has been committed. In some cases, allegations of corruption may defy judicial clarification for months and years. In such circumstances, the synagogue should take all of these steps immediately upon its verification of past corruption.

We further call upon synagogues to place an enhanced premium on according meaningful honor - honor in synagogue ritual, honor in selection to serve in synagogue governance, and honor in other aspects of public synagogue recognition - to individuals whose financial standing may be modest but who, by their own exemplary conduct and noble deeds, bring honor to their synagogues, their communities, and to the Torah and G-d of Israel.

We call upon other Jewish institutions in our land to adopt and execute policies similar to those we urge above for synagogues and Jewish day schools.

Against this backdrop, it is clear that our community now stands at an important moment in its evolution, a spiritual crossroads. Just as a shul would not publicly honor or accord a position of lay leadership to a social miscreant, or someone who perjures himself in sworn court declarations, or someone who commits financial fraud or otherwise perpetrates gross violations of business ethics, and just as it is inconceivable that a congregation would accord significant ritual or lay honors to someone who has sexually harassed someone or who acts as a bully assaulting someone or hurling a person's papers or desk paraphernalia around his office, so it devolves on a spiritual congregation to stand forcefully, yet gracefully, as a beacon for spirituality. Its halls should be filled with the sounds of Torah study, not the shuffling of a deck of cards. Its programs -- even those conducted "off-site" -- should be enlivened by the sights and sounds of kosher cooking and Israeli dancing, Torah classes and Judaism lectures, not the sounds of a spinning roulette wheel or stacking of betting chips.

In the past, it was understandable within the American Orthodoxy of the 1950s and 1960s that an immigrant generation and its first-generation-American children did not always "get it." They saw Catholic churches running Bingo games in America and figured "Why not?" (After all, don't we respect the traditions and teachings handed down to us from B-4? Don't so many of us assure our worried mothers: "Mom, I-8 already"?) Their lay leaders had not attended yeshiva schools, never had studied real Jewish texts in the text, never had learned to read and study Rashi and Chumash, Mishnah, or Talmud. Many had never even attended a Jewish day school, where -- because all Jewish schools of any substance have daily davening -- every child emerges by third or fourth grade with core Hebrew reading skills and the skills to navigate a siddur with ease. So it was understandable that such a generation of parents reflected their own lack of access to Judaic learning by sponsoring such events.

But in this, the 21st century of the Common Era, where Orthodox congregations are led almost uniformly by lay leaders who can open and learn a Gemara sugya, who send their children to yeshiva day schools where Torah and Rashi are taught as basic subjects, and where davening Shacharit and Mincha every day are fundamental basics of the school curriculum they demand for their children and where their children (if sent to camp) are sent to Orthodox summer camping programs, we may expect more of ourselves, our lay leaders, and our institutions of religious and spiritual substance. In such a world, such an environment, the virtually unanimous voice of Orthodox Jewish practice and deep-seated values is clear, as represented above in the resolutions so recently adopted by the Rabbinical Council of America: poker games, casino evenings, "Las Vegas Nights" -- all these variations on "games of chance," regardless of what individuals may do with certain of their friends in the privacy of their own homes, are absolutely outside the pale of acceptability for a shul's or a synagogue's fundraising or socializing program.

And for any shul that kids itself into believing that they will find favor in G-d's eyes by trying to raise funds for their institution by sponsoring "Casino Evenings" -- well, I wouldn't bet on those odds.

Why I Love Israel and Am Proud to Be Judged by Her Standards

2009-05-12T23:17:00.000-07:00

Because I am Jewish, of course, I love Israel. It is my cultural patrimony, even as America, the land of my birth and that of my parents, is the country I love and to which I owe my allegiance. In fact, after I lived in Israel for two years during my 30s, I came back to America more appreciative than ever for the unique things and values that America has given me. The English language and the puns within it. The kinds of opportunities that are unique to this great land. Broad-based free enterprise.

The Yankees. The Mets. The Giants. The Jets.

The Lakers.

But, as a Jew, I am inevitably bound culturally with Israel. And – like it or not – I am judged by my fellow Americans, to one degree or another, by what Israel does. And that, too, is why I am so proud of Israel. I am so proud that people judge me – an American – by what Israel does. By what she is. And by what she does not do. And by what she is not.

In the middle of the Middle East – where modern-day terror has its birthplace and its breadbasket – Israel is an island of freedom, free speech, democracy. Anyone can say whatever he or she wants. The one country in the entire Middle East where there is freedom -- and safety in freedom.

The Jewish religion is protected there, and so are all other religions. Can you imagine a Jew being free and safe in Saudi Arabia? Heck, Jews and Christians are not even allowed to set foot in Mecca. No Mecca for us there.

In all of world history, which has seen so many countries pull free people out of Africa to enslave them, only one country ever risked its citizens’ lives in covert operations aimed at extricating African slaves from Africa to set them free as full citizens in their land: Israel. When Vietnamese “boat people” risked their very lives in rickety crafts on the high seas in a desperate effort to escape Communism and totalitarianism, Israel opened its doors and rescued survivors, who today are third generation Vietnamese Israelis.

In Israel there is hope, even though all the surrounding populations aim their weapons at her. Her northern border is not Canada but the terrorist Hezbollah who rain rockets on her. Her southern border is not Mexico but the terrorist Hamas who swear to destroy Israel. And yet, somehow, Israelis keep believing in peace. No one in her region is willing to negotiate a sincere peace with her, yet she remains a nation ever-optimistic that the terrorists someday will change course. From the Palestine Authority to Hamas to Hezbollah, the leaders of those polities manipulate their children, through corrupted kids’ television shows and summer camps and hateful school texts, to hate the Jews next door. And yet Israel teaches peace and mutual acceptance, preparing its children for the day when the others stop hating.

I am so proud to be judged by the standards that Israel has set.

Understanding How to Daven an Amidah -- How to Pray from Your Heart

2009-04-30T14:25:00.001-07:00

In the course of several shiurim I taught “For Women Only,” we studied concepts of Tefilah (Prayer) that seem worth sharing with men, too.

The Shacharit service in the Morning and Mincha in the Afternoon are Torah-based, time-centered commandments, while Maariv at Night was added later by our Sages. (That is why we do not conduct a formal “Cantor’s Repetition” – chazarat ha-Shatz -- of the Amidah during Maariv). For each Tefilah, the central components are: (i) the Sh’ma (although not at Mincha) and (ii) the Amidah. The Sh’ma is recited at Shacharit and Maariv in fulfillment of the Torah commandment to recite it b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha (“when you lie down and arise”). The Talmud teaches that those words are not understood literally but as a command to recite
Sh’ma during the time of day when most people typically prepare to lie down (evening) and the time of day when they typically arise (morning). So we recite every night and morning the two Sh'ma paragraphs that include the Torah obligation -- b’shakhb’kha u-v’kumekha. We add the third paragraph of the Sh’ma to fulfill the Torah mandate that we remember, every day of our lives, that Hashem took us out of Egypt.

(Indeed, there are Six Memorials that we must remember every day of our lives: (i) Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim – the Exodus from Egypt; (ii) our assemblage as a Nation at Har Sinai and what we saw, heard, and experienced at Matan Torah; (iii) Hashem’s gift of the Holy Day of Shabbat; (iv) what Amalek did to us as we were weak and tired; (v) the incident of the Golden Calf; and (vi) what Hashem did to Miriam in the Wilderness.)

We already are accustomed to reciting two blessings before eating bread (al n’tilat yadayim and ha-motzi). So it is not alien to learn that we recite two blessings before fulfilling the commandment to recite Sh'ma (at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah) (at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam). Similarly, just as we recite certain blessings after eating bread or other foods (e.g., Birkhat ha-Mazon; Bo-rei N’fashot ; al ha-Michyah), so we recite the blessing Ga’al Yisra’el after the Sh’ma. (In addition, at Maariv, we recite the blessing Hashkiveinu, and some add another.) This “package” of (i) blessings before Sh’ma, (ii) the three paragraphs of Sh’ma, and (iii) blessings after Sh’ma, then, is supposed to connect immediately with the “package” of blessings we call the Amidah.

Thus, the matrix of core elements of the formal Jewish Prayer Service are:

* 2 brakhot before Sh'ma:

at Shacharit: (i) Yotzer Or u-Voreh Choshekh and (ii) Ahavah Rabah
at Maariv: (i) ha-Ma’ariv Aravim and (ii) Ahavat Olam.

* Sh’ma in its three paragraphs

* The Ga’al Yisra’el brakhah after Sh'ma

* The Amidah

As we explore the 19-blessing daily Amidah itself (reduced to 7 blessings on Shabbat and Yom Tov days when we avoid petitioning Hashem), we first consider the opening three blessings of any Amidah and compare those expressions of love and closeness with the way we would approach anyone for help. When we come with a petition for assistance or just come to "ask for a break" (as in "please gimme a break") – whether seeking help from a politician or even at a job interview -- we initially grasp at some basis to open the discussion by seeking ways to associate on common ground with the person before whom we are supplicating – “Mr. Governor, I think you knew my father.” “Madame Senator, I think my father was in a foxhole in Europe with your father during the Second World War.” “Sir, I think we went to the same college.” (Cf. the “Game of Jewish Geography.”) Well, in like fashion, we begin the Amidah by seeking to create a place of common ground with Hashem by recalling to Him that we are the children of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, the descendants and heirs to Hashem’s blessing to Avraham: "V’nivr’khu b’kha" (B’reishit 12:3) – that Avraham’s name shall be invoked in blessing. And so we recall the lineage we share and end by invoking Avraham in blessing -- "Magen Avraham." In other words, "You knew my father, and You actually had promised him that, if his sons or daughters ever need something, they should not hesitate to come by your office and ask."

Next, when supplicating before a person who wields power and influence, one typically transitions to praising the achievements of the person whom he is petitioning. “Thank you, Governor, for the changes you have made in your first term, the initatives you have launched. You have changed the climate of hope. You have confronted this social crisis, that economic dilemma, the litigation flood.” (The comparison can apply to any state or political party.) Well, it seems only natural that we similarly would thank Hashem as we inch towards bringing Him our petition: “Thank you, Hashem, for all You have done: With kindness, You sustain the whole world with livelihood; You revive the dead; You support the fallen; You heal the sick; You free those imprisoned.”

Makes perfect sense that a real person petitioning G-d would follow this rhythm.

To add extra meaningfulness to our words, we might do well to personalize this prayer, fighting the tendency to allow prayer to become rote from daily repetition, and think in our "minds’ eyes" of actual, personal examples we have experienced, witnessed, or lived through: “With kindness You sustain the whole world with livelihood” (thinking, as we say the words, of the time we got the job we sought, the promotion, the raise, closed the big deal, got the unexpected tax refund); “You support the fallen” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative who went into therapy, mired in deep depression, and has bounced back productively); “You heal the sick” (thinking, as we say the words, of the friend or relative whose examples of recovery from grave illness are striking); “You free those imprisoned” (thinking, as we say the words, of Soviet Jewry of the 1960s and 1970s, Ethiopian Jewry, and the Jews freed from Iran and from Arab Lands like Syria and Iraq in our own lifetimes).

From this foundation, we typically would conclude introducing ourselves by saying that the politician or job interviewer – whomever we are petitioning – really is someone who is well known, does so much, and is highly regarded by others. And that is how we conclude our Amidah introduction: You are Holy, and Your Name is Holy, and the holiest [entities] praise You every day!” This is not rote prayer – rather, this is the way that people really communicate with power when they come for help.

And then we begin our twelve paragraphs of petition and supplication.

This is the way of Jewish Prayer. The Amidah should be personalized every time we pray it. Be Waldo: Put yourself into the picture, and then look for yourself in the Siddur. Unknown to most, for example, the halakha expressly encourages us to add real personal prayers, in whatever language we can speak them, inserting them into the various paragraphs of the Amidah – preferably in the paragraphs most pertinent to the respective petitions. Thus, in the face of stress in earning livelihood, we insert the personal supplication into the “prayer for seasons” – M’varekh ha-Shanim. For health and recovery, we insert a personal petition into the R’fa’enu paragraph. And, if we are not certain which paragraph is appropriate for insertion, we may insert any prayer on any reasonable subject into the Sh’ma Koleinu paragraph.

By inserting such personal prayers, we indeed personalize Tefilah. Every Amidah is the same – yet becomes fresh and different. How can it be boring and rote when each prayer takes on new foci?

Yes, of course, we recite it three times every day. That is challenging. So it requires some perspective. What if your President, your Governor, your job interviewer is not inclined, for whatever the reason, to grant the entirety of your petition at the time you appear at your meeting? What do you do then?

You wait a while, and then you struggle and cajole to get another meeting, if only it would be possible, to follow up. Or maybe you donate $2,000 (or 5 or $10,000) to attend a soiree for a charity you do not really endorse but at which the politican will show up. You hope that maybe you can rub shoulders, just get in his or her face so that she remembers you, is reminded that you exist and are waiting to hear back.

That is the perspective of the thrice-daily prayer. We do not always get everything we have asked for, but we have an open door to return for a follow-up meeting, to ask again. And again. And again. And again.

At what point would it be rote, would it be boring, would it be too many meetings with the job interviewer, the CEO, the Congressional representative, the United States Senator, the President? Rote? Au contraire, mon frere -- it would great!

So that is what we get -- three audiences a day.

Not every prayer and petition and request is answered the way we seek. But, hey, it took two thousand years of Jewish prayers -- three times a day, millions of people, generation after generation -- before He permitted us to realize the actualization of the request to return to Jerusalem. So it takes time.

Jerusalem took approximately 1,800 or 1,900 years. But see that not only as two milliennia but alternatively as a third or a half of a People's lifetime -- because that was a People prayer. So maybe some prayers in your personal life will take a third or a half of a lifetime to realize. Maybe that's 20 years or 30 or 40.

Nu? So get started.

Parsha - D'varim

2009-04-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

I primarily do two kinds of teaching: teaching Torah classes in a wide range of areas within my extended congregational community and teaching California Civil Procedure and Advanced Torts at law school. As the terms winds down, my law students often ask whether I would mind devoting time in our last class of the term to reviewing material we have studied. And that is the way of teaching. One begins by explaining where she is going with her message or class, one teaches or writes accordingly, and one concludes by reviewing for her students or readers what she has taught.

In Parshat D’varim we begin a new book, Deuteronomy, the fifth and final volume of the “Five Books of Moses” or the Pentateuch. In Hebrew, we call it the Chumash or the Torah. Christians call it the Old Testament. Each of these names implicitly perceives the Book of D’varim as part-and-parcel of an integrated package.

Primarily in the late19th century – only a bit more than a century ago – Julius Wellhausen, a German scholar who undertook to analyze the Pentatuech, emerged with his “Documentary Hypothesis,” arguing that the Torah was not the revealed word of the Creator to the Jewish People but instead had been authored individually by several different contributors. One of those authors, he submitted, was the Deuteronomist, the supposed human author of the Book of D’varim. Wellhausen posited that the presence within Deuteronomy of so much text that recounts and repeats the substance of earlier Chumash volumes proves a separate human author.

Interestingly, many non-observant Jewish historians and theologians see in Wellhausen’s writings an unmistakable reflection of the intense anti-Semitism that pervaded German academia in the late 19th century. It was incomprehensible for so many Germans, including intellectuals, to fathom that the Master of the Universe would have chosen the Jewish People, as among all nations on earth, to have received the Torah in their millions amid thunder and lightning, dramatic Shofar sounding and the glory of the Divine revelation at Mount Sinai. It was easier to posit that a bunch of individuals had written book parts. The school of literary provided an angle.

For those of us who believe with absolute intellectual certitude that the entire Chumash is the exact Word of the Creator, down to each letter – Divinely revealed in Ten Pronouncements to the Nation at Mount Sinai and further Divinely revealed in 613 laws orally taught to Moses atop the mountain and thereafter in text that Moses transcribed by direct dictation from Hashem’s “mouth” during the peregrinations through Sinai – the repetition in D’varim is not redundancy but review. If Moses was anything, he was Moshe Rabbeinu – Moses our Teacher. And, just as a trial attorney sums up for a jury in an elegantly woven fabric everything they have heard and experienced in bits and pieces during days or weeks of a trial, so Moses begins his summation before dying, reminding the nation what they have seen and experienced in bits and pieces, heard and learned over forty years and two generations, weaving the strands into a coherent fabric.

They will not be preparing to take a written final or to sit for a bar exam, as the teacher weaves together a term’s lectures. But they will, as we all ultimately will, encounter a final test. In preparing for that test, there is no better starting point than to study carefully the words of the Book of D’varim that will be read at your temple this year in nine weekly installments between August 9 and October 4. Our greatest teacher is summing up the lessons of a lifetime. Get out your notebooks and pens, your laptops. Start writing and typing notes right after Shabbat each week.

And share the Word.

Parsha - B'ha'a'lot'kha

2009-04-29T11:28:00.000-07:00

Not many people – yet – among Irvine’s pedestrians and shoppers wear yarmulkas. The city’s Orthodox Jewish community indeed has expanded in recent years to four Orthodox congregations – including our own Young Israel, two Chabad congregations, and a fourth where I previously served – as well as an Eruv and a forthcoming Community Mikvah. Even so, not many of us wear yarmulkas outdoors. Therefore, wherever I meander, people assume that I am a rabbi – a pretty good guess.

The thing about wearing a yarmulka is that you not only become the involuntary emissary of the Jewish people (as, for example, when someone at the supermarket asks: “Excuse me, are you a rabbi – and, if so, do you know where I can find borscht?”). More curiously, you become a prize candidate to be converted. It seems there are “extra points” to be garnered in certain circles for “witnessing the Good News” to a guy with a kippah. Recently, while sipping at a Coffee Bean – if only they sold sandwiches here! – two women approached and asked whether I was open to accept their Messiah into my heart. I demurred politely, but they continued: “Don’t you see that you never can get forgiveness from God without a Temple sacrifice? Prayer is not enough. G-d does not forgive unless there is blood, a sacrifice at the Temple. And that is why He sent his only . . . .”

Which brought that discussion and this week’s Parsha analysis to five words that Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our Teacher) cried out to the Master of the World after Miriam was smitten with Biblical leprosy for speaking lashon hora (deprecatory speech) about her brother. Miriam had initiated a brief discussion with her other brother, Aaron, concerning Moshe’s relationship with Tziporah, the woman he had married. (Numbers 12:1-3) And then suddenly – not even allowing time for them to purify themselves properly before appearing in the Divine Presence – Hashem came down among them, explaining Moshe’s unique role as His Prophet and as His ever-ready Servant. (12:4-6) “How dare you speak that way about My Servant, about [My] Moshe?” And Miriam was smitten with a Biblical leprosy that compelled her into a humiliating exile outside the Jewish encampment.

The Torah records that Moshe wasted no time, crying out: “Kel, na, R’fa na lah” – “G-d, please, heal her, please” (12:13) In only five words, Moshe pleaded with earth-shaking force for Miriam. There was no sacrifice of animal. No blood. Just the exhorting lips of Moshe, crying out to the Creator: “G-d, please, heal her, please.” And she was healed.

Prayer is a powerful vehicle. Our lips substitute for bulls. (Hosea 14:3) Long before the first Tabernacle was erected, Cain had pleaded to Hashem in prayer that the punishment for murdering his brother was too heavy to bear – and the Creator responded by placing a mark on him to protect him. (Genesis 4:13-15). Avraham prayed for the safety of the righteous who might be residing in Sodom and Gomorra – and Hashem was moved to change His plan. (Gen. 18:23-33) Avraham awoke early in the morning, praying in his usual place, on the day he set forth with Yitzchak for Mount Moriah. (Gen. 22:3) Yitzchak was conversing with Hashem – praying – in his field during late afternoon on the day he met Rivkah. (Gen. 24:63) Yaakov prayed at night. (Gen. 28) When Hashem spoke of wiping a nation out of history, Moshe prayed and pleaded for their forgiveness until He said: “I have forgiven, consonant with your words.” (Numbers 14: 20; cf. Exodus 32:14)

Prayer is powerful. Joshua prayed, and the world’s sun stood still on a Friday afternoon so that Israel’s enemies would be dispatched before the Shabbat. (Joshua 10:12-14) Samson, blind and bound as a spectacle for the Philistines, prayed and was answered. (Judges 16:28-29) As evidenced throughout so much of Psalms, David prayed – as he stood before Goliath, later as he fled from Saul’s pursuers and into Avimelech’s kingdom, and ultimately as King of Israel.

Prayer is not only powerful for Biblical figures. Through 2,000 years of Exile, tens of millions of the meekest and least historically prominent individuals in the Jewish nation prayed three times daily for a return to Jerusalem and the restoration of Zion. They prayed for centuries despite no possible rational basis to believe their prayers would be answered. But prayer is not only about empirical data, and – paradoxically – faith tests one’s faith. Prayer is about submitting oneself to a greater Power, a more omnipresent and omniscient Authority. Prayer tests our resolve – can we continue praying long after our prayers ostensibly have not yet been answered? Prayer forces us to search within and to judge ourselves: can we distinguish between the substantive needs that justify our passions and the vanities that are passing fancies? Prayer directs our hearts and teaches us humbly to acknowledge our own limits.

Prayer teaches us to harmonize with the Creation, to hear His response. When prayer is not answered, sometimes – as the country singer Garth Brooks poetically has observed – one reflects, stunned, and suddenly realizes that some of G-d’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers. Sometimes, it takes 2,000 years and millions of tear-soaked prayers to receive the beginnings of an answer. And sometimes it only takes five words.

Or, as I explained respectfully to those two lovely women, sometimes the only sacrifice G-d demands of us is not someone else’s tragic death but the service of our hearts, the passion of our lips, and the unabashed exposing of our souls.

Two Mediocrities Who Were Not . . . in a World Where Too Many Allow Mediocrity to Destroy So Much Greatness

2009-04-29T00:13:00.000-07:00

England has a TV show comparable to "American Idol” – you may even recognize one of the panelists . . . – called “Britain’s Got Talent.” One or two years ago they had a plain-looking middle-aged cell-phone salesman on, and everyone in the audience got ready for a good laugh, the lesser side of the societal bell curve. And then he sang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEo5bjnJViA

Recently, a 47-year-old “plain-Jane” got on the stage, and you again perceive the audience and panel gearing up for a laugh and some vicious banter. And then she sang: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY&sid=ST2009041502908

So unexpected. So unlikely to succeed. And so utterly great.

There is nothing in the world that holds any of us back from being great, from making a difference in the lives of people around us, from making a difference in the world. We have talents and gifts – each of us – and we are surrounded by people who will support and encourage us to succeed, to believe in ourselves. Hashem puts them in our lives.

Yet we also are surrounded by the mediocrities, the nay-sayers, the negativists, the people who hear us sing . . . or play a musical instrument . . . or who read a poem we have penned . . . or taste a recipe we have cooked . . . and tell us to give up. “You are too old.” “You are too young.” "You just are not that good." "What makes you think that you are better qualified than others?" “What’s the use? What’s the point?” “What are you trying to prove?”

Hashem puts them in our lives, too.

Life is not about trying to prove oneself great. Rather, it is about drawing from the skills and talents, the gifts and dreams that HaKadosh Barukh Hu placed in each and every one of our souls, to be our finest. We read in the Torah of so many mediocrities and nay-sayers around Moshe Rabbeinu who said to him: “What’s the use? We were better off as slaves in Egypt. We had garlics and onions and leeks. We had water. We had a steady field of endeavor.” At every setback they rounded up a choir of grousers to echo: “We told you so. We told you to leave us alone, to let us stay in Egypt.” And after every success – the splitting of the Red Sea, the raining of the monn from heaven, the flowing of water from the rock, the assembling at Har Sinai – they slinked away into their corners, out of sight. We can imagine what they said then: “I never doubted the Sea would split. I never said the food would run out. I never said we would not reach Sinai. Don’t look at me – I never said that.”

And then a new setback – and out came the mediocrities again. “We told you so. See? We told you so.”

But Moshe Rabbeinu proceeded forward.

I listen to Paul Potts and to Susan Boyle, and they are the heroes and an inspiration way beyond their borders and their chosen field of excellence. We all have greatness within us. Each and every one of us has something so extraordinary and great within us. We just have to know how to believe in ourselves, to have the humility to know and understand that nothing succeeds unless HaKadosh Barukh Hu chooses for it to succeed, and that – with His blessings and help – our lives are so preciously important and valuable. No one can take the dream away from you unless you let the mediocrities beat you down.

And if you find yourself surrounded by nay-sayers who would take away that dream, that confidence – well, who has compelled you to surround yourself that way? Find new friends, friends who see your greatness and who encourage you to be great. Take a moment and think back to Paul Potts and Susan Boyle. And then go-ahead and be great.

And you will be.

Israeli Public Relations: Road to Nowhere and Friendly Fire in the P.R. War

2009-04-28T23:56:00.000-07:00

It took me forty years to figure it out, but I think I finally have figured out that Israel is not going to win any PR wars. The best we can hope for is that Fox News remains the way it is, along with the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Until Israel gives up Judea, Samaria, and half of Jerusalem, she will not win any PR wars. Only after she does so will she enjoy the great-and-enduring PR gains she previously has enjoyed when she showed courage and magnanimity by giving up Yamit . . . and the Sinai . . . and her toe-hold in Southern Lebanon . . . and Gaza . . . and by signing the Oslo Accords . . . and by allowing Arafat to establish a Palestinian Authority with its own independent newspapers, television and radio, and school text books.

Each of those P.R.-winning concessions turned the tide and won Israel demonstrable and enduring worldwide enthusiasm. . . . at least for a week or two.

That kind of PR boost in world attention all-too-often seems associated with pictures from Auschwitz and Dachau and Buchenwald when the respective Allies Forces liberated the camps. That is quite a price to pay for world sympthy. One picture may be worth a thousand words, but is it worth a thousand souls?

Still, it seems useful to try to explain the truth, to try the clarify the facts, if only to give some encouragement and chizuk to those comparatively few who incline to hear the truth. There is a measure of chizuk in knowing that we are right and that the whole world is wrong. (Sure, it is better if we are right, and the whole world is equally right, and we all are in synch. But if Israel is going to stand alone among the nations of the world, it still is a nice chatzi-nechamah to know, at least, that she is right.

An effort at public relations just seems the right exercise. Much as we do kiruv r'chokim, knowing that -- even when we chart successes in bringing r'chokim to Torah -- there is so much traffic going the other direction, too. Still, one does what one must do.

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that the PR war is not winnable on the large scale. The nations are not motivated as much by "Right and Wrong" as they are motivated by what is best for them. Outside America, we see it everywhere. And, frankly, America has been the source that has pressured Israel to retreat from Sinai in 1956, to retreat from Yamit/Sinai/South Lebanon/Gaza, to sign Oslo, to move "kadimah" towards a "roadmap" to abandon Yehudah, Shomron, and East Yerushalayim. That is America -- Israel's best friend.

It is important that we not kid ourselves. Israel's "great friend" George W. did tremendous damage to Israel's security posture during his second term by pressuring her into insane concessions to appease oil interests, "our friends the Saudis," etc. The regular bombing of Sderot and the Hamas seizure of Gaza is the result.

But we fight the fight for truth because, oh, we may as well. Not because we will accomplish anything macrocosmic, but our friends do benefit from the truth. It helps Fox News, George Will, Cal Thomas, Mark Steyn (not Jewish), a few others among them, Martin Peretz, and Krauthammer and Jeff Jacoby to have access to truth data from which to write.

And it is a good exercise to fight for the truth. Truth muscles are rarely exercised enough.

To be sure, if we don't do it, no one else will -- least of all, the Israelis. The Israelis send us, in 99% of the cases, the most useless political hacks for their public relations. People who barely speak English (and thank G-d that they are so hard to understand!), who make the most inane arguments, people whose twenty years' dutiful service in Israel in one or another political party's inner circle, pushing papers from right to left, receive the game-show-like reward -- first prize : an appointment as an ambassador or a consul-general in America. These are people who come to an audience of the best American legislators who support Jewish rights to Yesha . . . and argue with them for an hour to modify their position to support a "Two-State Solution."

The mindless equations of israeli public relations. Never sending Ethiopian Jews to present Israel's story to African Americans.

Rarely, if ever, sending successful American olim back, with their American-accented English, to explain the case for Israel in America's mama-loshon. Instead, we are sent one after another common hack, with a thick foreign accent, with barely any concept in public relations.

Only rarely did Israel give her supporters a chance to work in America with people who spoke American English -- Golda and Bibi. Both were so successful that they became Prime Ministers. A third guy, Abba Eban, spoke English so beautifully that people who heard him supported Israel even though they (like he) barely knew what he was talking about.

The lesson: send people to America who lack clever political acumen, who barely can speak English, and with thick accents at that.

The most common causes of "friendly fire" casulaties in the PR war.

To Pray, To Daven, To Feel: So Where's the Fire?

2009-04-28T23:36:00.000-07:00

When I was a boy in yeshivah k’tanah, I davened with kavanah – although I cannot mean that I actually knew what I was saying. One day, someone took me aside, in Shul on Shabbat, a religious person who meant well for me, and told me that I daven too slowly. He kindly taught me how to daven faster, to keep pace with everyone else. He explained that I should move my lips, make a soft buzzing sound, and try reading the words with my eyes. Thus, I learned how to daven. . . .

In most shuls, good shuls with sincere balabatim, it is hard to daven with kavanah. Let’s do some math. In my Artscroll, Mizmor Shir Chanukat Habayit is on page 54. The Shir shel Yom is on p. 162 ff. That’s 108 pages to cover each morning, divided by 2 = 54 pages. We do not say everything – no hotza’at ha-Torah on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday. No "long tachanun" on those days either. But it is still, what, 40 pages? And add another 5-10 pages for the birkhot ha-shachar and maybe some reduced korbanot. How long does it take to read 40-50 pages of Hemingway – or even Dave Barry?

The best of our people, in the sphere of tefilah, are those who come to daily minyan. They need some sleep so most minyanim start, what, 6:00 a.m., 6:30 a.m., a bit later? And they have to get to work, so they need to be out by, what, 7:30 a.m.? So there are 45 minutes to read 40-50 pages. How many of us read that quickly, merely by eyes, at that clip, even Dave Barry? That would be 53-67 pages an hour.

Now, imagine you are reading the same 53-67-page chapter every weekday of your week, of your life, and you are exhausted and just waking up. You see? We begin confronting our dilemma with an inherent difficulty. We are training people, our most committed daveners, to daven wrongly. The need for speed.

Comes Mincha and Maariv during the week. The best are the ones who make the effort, no matter what, to come to minyan. But they have had an exhausting day, so they do want to get home. That speeds them up. They want to see their kids, their wives. Eat dinner. Yes, they make the time for davening b’tzibur, and yet their minds are in other places. So, again, there is the sense of “let’s get the show on the road” – even among those who never have produced theatrical productions for a national touring audience.

There is an expression in the Navy, I am told: “A convoy can travel only as fast as its slowest ship.” One might say in davening: a minyan travels only at the speed of its fastest shaliach tzibur. Comes the Shacharit and the Mincha Shmoneh Esrai – how long will the tzibur wait for the slowest davener to finish before it begins chazarat ha-Shatz? So there is pressure to daven fast.

The daily davening act is dulled for many because they do not understand the peirush ha-milim. That is one reason that I am not much concerned how Koren Publishing's commentaries compare to those of Artscroll because, after you read a commentary once, that’s it. People barely have time to look at the peirush ha-milim, hence Artscroll’s fascinating effort to publish interlinears. Some have a deep bitachon within their kishkas, a deep connection with HaKadosh Baruch Hu, and daven nevertheless with a deep and utterly sincere kavanah, even though they have no clue what they are saying, sort-of-like the stories of the person who recites the Aleph-Bet and asks HaKadosh Baruch Hu kindly to form the words for him. But for most people it is a challenge.

So we have mishigass from the FFB world that helpfully teaches young people how to daven faster, to keep up with Evelyn Woods even though she is not counted in the minyan, and we have ba’alei teshuvah who sometimes come in with the best inculcation and sometimes with mishigass of their own.

For me, it was in high school one day that I learned, for the first time, that you are allowed to insert your own private requests into the Amidah. I always thought that was “mafsik.” Who knew from Orach Chaim and Mishneh Brurah? We were too good for that in fifth grade. So we learned Gemara. For me, that revelation – that you may add your own private prayer – was my first breakthrough. So, if someone was sick, I suddenly was going to start inserting a request at R’fa’einu. So, now, I suddenly wanted to understand that paragraph more. I got very involved in Soviet Jewry, and I started to add a personal prayer at “[t]ka’ b’shofar gadol . . . v’kabtzeinu yachad mei-arba’ kanfot ha’aretz.” Well, I needed to understand that paragraph better, if only to craft my own insertion.

When the contractor who was building my home in the new American neighborhood in Karnei Shomron went bankrupt with my life’s savings, I started adding a prayer in “Bareikh Aleinu.” So I needed better to understand that brakhah – and what does wind and rain have to do with my finances? As I grew more, evolved more – and it takes many decades in my narrative – and started recovering from the hubris of my teens and college years and my 30s and a chunk of my 40s, realizing ways in which I had messed up my life, I started adding prayers to “S’lach Lanu.” People in my extended family veered from the derekh, people in my shul community would come to me crying about this or that personal tragedy, and I would pray for them in “Hashiveinu Avinu l’Toratekha.” So I wanted to know – and to feel – that paragraph better.

My life took many hard turns, very hard setbacks. Yet, each time that I felt like I was mamash bound on my akeidah, there would be some miracle to turn my life around. In time, I found that even the non-petitional prayers of hoda’ah compelled me to pause for greater clarity to say thanks to HaKadosh Barukh Hu for miracles that are with us every day -- evening and morning and afternoon. I thought of the evening when I received a phone call at 12 midnight, notifying me that I had been selected Chief Articles Editor of Law Review, something that would positively change my life in many ways short-term and long-term. I thought of the morning car crash, the most freakish accident imaginable, that should have killed me and those in my car according the derekh ha-teva’ back in 1992. (The police had made a terrible, terrible mistake, waving me forward into a death trap; yet my children and I escaped with nary a scratch.) I thought to the afternoon miracles I had experienced from one career to the next -- miracles that once again led to a series of toggles that changed my life for the better in ways I cannot describe.

By now, my only “problem” was the first part of the Amidah, which I still raced through in order to get to “the good stuff.” And one day it hit me like a ton of . . . light. M’khalkel chaim b’chesed. I picked a time in my life, when that builder went bankrupt and nearly bankrupted me, and thought of how HaKadosh Baruch Hu miraculously got me through, how he got me through years of yeshiva tuition while I was going to law school in my late 30s, and so many stories I have heard from balabatim who privately have told me their miracles of how they were sustained by miracles that they could not fathom. Someikh Noflim. Each Amidah I would pick another time He had raised me from the brink of real disaster. Rofeih Cholim – the time my Dad was expected to die from his leukemia. I was only age seven at the time. Had he died then, I barely would know who he was. Miraculously, he lived seven more years, and those seven years gave me a booster-rocket impact that has lived with me for a lifetime. The ten years extra that my Mother lived, despite contracting illnesses that, by natural expectations, should have brought her to a physical end a decade ago, and the impact those extra ten years had. Matir Asurim: I have seen it all – Soviet Jewry, Syrian Jewry, Iranian Jewry, Iraqi Jewry, Ethiopian Jewry. We all have experienced it.

Thus, the beginnings of my own rehabiliation in prayer. I started making an effort to understand every single word in the davening, no matter how poetically florid and esoteric. One day, a balabos came to me with a revelation: “Rabbi, do you know which commercial breakfast cereal the Siddur endorses?” Without a blink I responded: “Cheilev chittim yasbi’eikh.” He replied “I don’t know what that means, but look at this thing about Cream of Wheat, rabbi.” I knew I had started making my davening what it should have been forty years earlier.

Thus the beginnings. We do not teach people to personalize the davening, to remember their personal health miracle, their personal parnassah miracle, the miracle that literally unfolded before the eyes of a generation as He was matir millions upon millions of asurim before our eyes this past quarter century. Nor do many of us really urge people to take a minute and to pray for a relative off the derekh, to devote an extra minute to “Bareikh aleinu” and petition for a helping hand from above.

I think books about davening are great, but the beginnings come with understanding that, like the “Twilight Zone” episode about the guy who mentally-thinks-himself into a painting on the wall, we need to think-ourselves into the prayer. We need to see our faces in that Siddur, our personal problems and needs in those words. That helps make it relevant to today. It is relevant, and it is sensible. It is personal.

But, somehow, some way, we are fighting the time element. The convoy that goes no slower than its fastest ship. The fire truck of tefilah racing through traffic. That is a challenge. Time preys on us. Can we pray through time?

Orthonomics -- Losing Our Best and Brightest

2009-04-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

The issue of Orthonomics, like the weather, is much discussed but not much acted upon. Perhaps it is too complicated to tackle.

How do Orthodox Jews do it? How can we expect others to live this lifestyle? With Americans on unemployment and in foreclosure in record amounts, how in the world do average people pay $10-20,000 per child for private Day School schooling? If we promote nice-sized families, how can we afford it? And summer camp . . . and bar mitzvahs. And kosher meat and cheese. Moreover, virtually every “Orthodox community” is more expensive to live in than are the exurban communities in the sticks. Because of supply and demand, there is inordinate demand for real estate within walking distance of the epicenter shuls, jacking prices further. And families with 3 and 4 children, not to mention 5 and 6, cannot fit comfortably into 2- or even 3-bedroom homes. So the food is high, and the home property is high, and the schooling is high.

In order to manage, it would seem everyone Orthodox needs to earn significantly more than the median income. That itself poses a conundrum – how can everyone be above the median? The answer is that it seems the Orthodox need to be above median, and the others in society therefore comprise below median. But does that make sense? Is that the m’tzi’ut?

It seems from impressionistic observation that non-observant Jews are financially more successful, making more money, than do Orthodox per capita. So, that adds to the conundrum. Are all the Jews that high-earning?

But not everyone sells diamonds or practices private medicine. Some people are employees in middle management, or lower. How do they do it? They get scholarships, and that helps. They get reduced shul dues. But the mortgage is not reduced for shomrei mitzvot, nor the meat or cheese.

Orthonomics is a legitimate concern. By failing to address it, we also bring upon ourselves a second shame, less closely analyzed. Given the economic demands, many of our best and brightest opt out of rabbonus. That leaves the yeshivot in the control of faculty from a different oilam, an oilam where people do not get graduate degrees in medicine, law, or the arts. Those with graduate degrees avoid chinuch, so chinuch becomes populated by those who have less appreciation for our hashkafah – and that leads to concerns of other kinds.

Nor will government tuition grants/vouchers for yeshivot solve the problem, even if adopted and permitted by the Supreme Court. Just wait and see. Those who think vouchers will bring down tuition are mistaken. Inasmuch as tuition does not cover the full cost of the education anyway, vouchers will be employed by yeshivot not as offsets to reduce tuition but as supplements to augment full tuition and fill the gap. Thus, I anticipate that tuition will remain relatively the same.

If hard times breed crime, it is understandable that this situation imposes a strong yetzer hara’ inducement. Not everyone is rich, even though my teen son comes home with forms from his yeshiva high school asking me for $80 for a one-day ski trip among his classmates, his friends all seem to have cars by their junior or senior years, and they all seem to travel the globe during the summer.

Something does not add up.

Bar & Bat Mitzvahs: Spending Ourselves into Oblivion

2009-04-28T23:19:00.000-07:00

Bar Mitzvahs typically are foolishly extravagant to a degree that is Jewishly unjustifiable. Nothing about being a boy becoming 13 or a girl becoming 12 justifies the insanity of turning it into a wedding, replete with a 20-minute film retrospective on the kid's life, as though it were the Biography Channel reviewing the life of Abraham Lincoln.

In this time of massive economic crisis, it must be quite a spectacle for many to behold Jewish profligacy in spending $15,000-$50,000 on a kid's 13th birthday.

I am reminded of the commentary on Yaakov Avinu sending his sons to Egypt on their first go- round to ask for food (as it turned out, from their brother Yosef). Did they really need food? Were they being impacted adversely by the same famine that affected others? (The question is amplified because we know that the "seven-year" famine predicted by Yosef lasted only two years in Egypt, stopped "prematurely" by Hashem when Yaakov arrived there and bestowed a brakhah on Par'oh. Rashi & Tanchuma on Breishit 47:10. )

So, in Breishit 42:1, Rashi brings the Gemara from Ta'anit 10b that says they still had ample food. Ya got that? Yaakov and his sons had ample food in Canaan, and they did not need to ask for food from Egypt. Nonetheless, Yaakov said to his sons in Cana'an: "Lamah tit-ra'u?" which Rashi defines as "Why make yourselves be seen [by the non-Jews around us as though you are sated]?" That is, when everyone around is starving, it is not our way to refrain from seeking food from Par'oh, just like everyone else. Don't relish while others lack.

That should be the slogan in American Jewish Life -- "Lamah Tit-ra'u?" It really is a terrible thing, not only insane and counter-intuitive, a source of fodder for fostering hatred, but such excessive galas also impose enormous burdens on the majority of amkha who do not have the courage and commonsense to resist the social pressures to spend beyond their means on these foolish events.

Running Interference: Hank Greenberg as Mixed Metaphor

2009-04-28T23:07:00.000-07:00

When a Torah-observant rabbinic figure participates in a Church service honoring a newly elected American President, the episode creates an interesting problem for other Rabbonim in the future, who choose not to do so. When I have faced that situation in the past, I have explained the situation gingerly to my political sponsor, who always has respected the halakhic position. I would in the future, too. The situation becomes more awkward if asked on the rebound: “But wasn’t there some Orthodox Rabbi back in 2009 who attended the church service for Obama’s inauguration?”

The image that most immediately comes to mind is that of Hank Greenberg not playing on Yom Kippur in 1934. He was not at all a religious Jew – that is, he was very forthright that religion and he were not, shall we say, both ends of a doubleheader. He was not a guy who atoned once a year with deep charatah. But he very demonstratively took Yom Kippur day off to make a statement. He won so much respect for his position, as evinced in the famous ditty penned by the columnist for the Detroit Free Press: “We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion--and I honor him for that.”

No Jew ever again has had a problem taking off a Day of Awe after Greenberg did it. He blazed the way for Koufax, Shawn Green, and others.

But what if he had played on Yom Kippur? If Hank Greenberg had played on Yom Kippur, he would have made it a zillion times harder for Koufax, Green, and the others later. That, too, is part of the analysis.

I remember my first September as a litigation associate at a very "WASPy" prominent law firm where I began my litigation career. Came Rosh Hashanah, and they knew I would take off a day. When I mentioned I would be gone for two days, they told me that Weinberg only takes one day, and Goldberg only takes one day, and Iceberg only takes one day. (Names changed.) "So how can you justify taking two?" Then came Sukkot.

The best was Sh’mini Atzeret. That always freaked them the out.

My experience was complicated having had "One-Day Jews" preceding me.

Years later, a fellow phoned me to thank me. He said he had approached the management and his partner and told them he needed to take two days for Rosh Hashanah, and then another two days were coming for the hut holiday, and then . . . uh, Sh’mini Atzeret. And the partners rolled their eyes, confirmed that, yes, they "knew all about this stuff," and one even added: “I suppose that means you won’t go hunting with me either when I take the other associates on my annual hunting trip?”

It’s nice when someone else already has run interference for you. Hank Greenberg ran interference -- even though the metaphor mixes a football term with a baseball legend. And it is deeply disquieting when you have to take a stand complicated by someone else who has placed an iceberg in the way.

The Arch Holocaust Denier -- and the Encouragement He Offers

2009-04-28T22:54:00.000-07:00

In this 6-minute snippet, K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson speaks of his perception that (i) no Jews died in gas chambers, and (ii) “only” 200-300,000 Jews died in concentration camps. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AezZLdBqXhg (The Youtube clip changes hyperlinks every so often, as Youtube pulls down one version, and then someone else posts it again. Just search for "Williamson and Holocaust" and variations thereon.) I publicize and share it for two reasons:

1. I have read any number of accounts and articles about the Institute for Historical Review, but I never before actually have heard someone discuss this thinking. I do not shiver or quake or get shocked by most anything, so my default reaction to this kind of thing is pure fascination. I am struck with fascination by the interview because the guy is so well spoken, so ostensibly knowledgeable. A very nice accent, sounds and lookms a bit like Commissioner Gordon on the old "Batman" TV series. Gotta trust Commissioner Gordon. I also am fascinated by the image that I never before have seen quite like this: I imagine this is what Jews in Spain saw in the 14th and 15th centuries and what Jews throughout Western Europe saw between the 12th and 15th centuries. Fascinating.

2. More importantly for me, his words give me incredible encouragement in a way he would not intend. I think of Rabi Akiva reacting to the tragic sight of the Temple Mount in ruins. While his colleagues are crying, he sees reason for rejoicing – because he looks at what they see, but from a different perspective. For thirty years, going back to my college days, in combating rabbis and Jewish Studies professors who deny the Torah’s truth, who deny that there was a Ma’amad Har Sinai because mathematical measurements make it "impossible" to validate that three million could have fit in the area, who deny that there was a Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim because "archaeological findings do not support the claim," who deny that there even was a massive Jewish presence in Egypt (only some nomadic Habiru tribe) – I have found few more compelling responses to them than this interview with K’vod HaBishop Richard Williamson.

I once wrote about this: http://www.rabbidov.com/Major%20Sermons/denyingpassoverandholocaust.htm My thesis is that I believe it more anti-Semitic – more an act of Jew-hatred – to deny Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai than to deny that six million died or that Jews died in gas chambers. When you take away from me Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim and Ma’amad Har Sinai, you are taking away from me everything that Jews ever had to live for: the Torah, our unique relationship with HaKadosh Barukh Hu, our role as a Mamlechet Kohanim and an Am S’gulah, our essence.

The Holocaust is not our essence. Ma’amad Har Sinai is our essence. Even when it is done soft-spoken, in scholarly tones, with mathematical charts and permutations, and maps of the Sinai Desert, and sand samples, it is the ultimate Jew-hatred. It is a scholarly amplification on Ezra Pound’s ditty: How odd/ Of God/ To choose/ The Jews. K’vod HaBishop Williamson, in these six minutes, demonstrates that anything can be denied by an intelligent, pensive, contemplative intellectual, who is well read, well studied, soft spoken, and well degreed. But, whether it is Bishop Williamson discussing gas chambers or a rabbi discounting Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim, it is ironically one-and-the-same, in terms of using secular tools of scholarship to deny the Essence. And how fitting it is that academic scholarship already is being wielded today in this way.

If Moshiach tarries, we may be assured that, in a few hundred years, the majority of the world will deny the scope of the Shoah. They will cite their math and their archaeology, their rationales and their logic. Whether coming from an Ivory Castle of Judaic Denial or from a Bishop, we need not be their pawns.

Toilet Paper and Shabbat

2009-04-28T22:48:00.000-07:00

Actually, of course, the toilet paper thing starts with the principle of not tearing. Tearing is (although sounding destructive) inherent in the construction process. Thus, tearing is not done on Shabbat.

There are exceptions, primarily with the permissibility of tearing food. Food packages may be torn open. On a related principle, toilet paper may be torn if there is no alternative. Human dignity is paramount. For example, one may tear toilet paper in a public facility (say, a hotel) while attending a conference on Shabbat if no alternative exists.

Nevertheless, for love of the Shabbat, we endeavor to prepare alternatives. Most use tissue boxes. However, facial tissue is wasteful, not ideal for plumbing. Hence the new Shabbos Bathroom Tissues.

My expression is: "It’s a thing." And this is a thing that expands a consciousness that today is different, not unlike the Passover Seder. "Q: Why the different toilet paper? A: Because today is different. Today we avoid tearing." And, while we avoid tearing construction material for building purposes, we maintain the mindset.

That’s all it is, really.

It is sad when people get frenetic and miss the underlying message. So it is in everything. How many people – on both sides of the political aisle – miss the message of what the American experiment in freedom and democracy is meant to be? Spending July 4 setting off fire crackers without contemplating freedom from tyranny? Slaving to prepare a Thanksgiving turkey dinner with cranberry sauce and yams and pumpkin pie without contemplating the loneliness of Roanoke or Jamestown, the fear of meeting the first Native Americans in a New World where King George, from whom they fled, was not nearby to protect them?

So it is. But the rituals at least offer some hope that at least some will contemplate.

Yeshiva Education Matters -- More Than We Realize

2009-04-28T22:36:00.000-07:00

In California, people (not necessarily Jewish) who home-school also have a network that connects them. So, for example, twenty parents home-schooling thirty kids connect through the network, and consequently arrange among themselves to meet at the local park each day from 1-2 pm for all their kids to play. That way, they home-school, family-by-family unto its respective self, while still enabling the kids to interact socially with other kids rather than emerging in isolation.

If there were an Orthodoxy culture shift that encouraged home-schooling to the degree that a sub-institution were created to connect/network together home-schooling Observant parents/families by locale, then those families could interface on bases ranging from coordinating among themselves daily play time to weekend Shabbat meals. It would require an infrastructure, though not terribly large, to facilitate the home-schooling network.

The thing is, Jewish Day Schools provide more than text study; they teach kids to interface with other Observant kids, and they bring kids into contact with a wide range of rabbonim. If middot are taught properly, that is a great thing. Public schools today are not what they were in the days of Blackboard Jungle. I never attended a public school, and I do not know first-hand whether condoms are distributed at the nurse’s office or what goes on, but the sex education environment, and the way that young people dress today, and the free-flow of words that come out of their mouths is unbelievable. And the thing is, I am much more contemporary than are most rabbonim. So it takes more to shock me. I got a Columbia University degree and was friends with a whole crazy world of people through four years of college. I later went to a secular law school, clerked in Kentucky, presently teach law school as an adjunct.

It’s quite a world out there. Many public schools nowadays really are out of control. Even the so-called “Jewish Community Day School” out here in Irvine. I have spoken there several times, and I am shocked by how much utter hefker exists. Utter and udder.

So that goes into the equation on the cost of day school. They used to rationalize that, even if your professors at Columbia are no better than those at some “lesser college,” you nevertheless are paying for the Ivy League degree. There is hidden monetary value in having a degree from the Ivy League. In the same way, even for those who can home-school the text without yeshiva, maybe the parents of yeshiva kids really are paying for the atmosphere. With a full range of rabbonim on the limudei-kodesh faculty, maybe there are a whole bunch that do not “click” for a particular kid, but usually there is going to be one or another rav who will do it. In high school, I had a rav – Rav Yaakov Dardac z”l – and he changed my life. He did not do it for other students. But my father had just died, and he did it for me. In four years of high school – actually, twelve years since first grade – that one rav deeply affected me. I never would have encountered him from home schooling.

I have lost contact with most, maybe all, of my friends from high school. But those were formative years in my life, and I had friends who wore yarmulkas just like me. Shabbat was the norm. Torah and Judaism was the norm, even if we were not all the best b’nei Torah. We were pretty good. Yeah, a kid got kicked out one year for stuff he had in his locker. But that was also the point – one kid had the stuff in his locker. When I began college, I did not know personally a single kid who ever had smoked weed, uh, marijuana. I went through four years of college, and that stuff remained foreign to me. That affected friendships.

It is impossible to place a value in today’s corrupted social order on having a child or children in an Observant Day School. For gerim in particular, who enter our Observant universe with a world of ideals and the highest motivations that often transcend those of the FFBs who take it all for granted, they still cannot transmit to their children that element of acquired culture. Like the John Goodman character in that Coen Brothers movie or the dentist in “Seinfeld” who converts to Judaism for the jokes, there is such a cultural disconnect, despite the intellectual truth, that it sounds absurd when the person who converted last week suddenly says “I am not going to let them do that to us any more. We have been putting up with this for too long.” And that is why the children of gerim particularly need that submersion into the culture and experience of the Observant Day School. To meet a rav who might change a life, and to meet rabbonim of all sorts. To have a wide range of classmates who wear kipot or otherwise are frum girls in modest attire. To have the right kind of social pressure – “What? You’re not going to the Regional Shabbaton?” To have Chumash or Gemara homework and to know that a bad grade can affect college admission. There is no substitute for Observant Day School, particularly for the children of gerim.

This does not solve the money issue. But that is the starting point. Kosher meat costs more. Shul membership. Maybe a summer group experience. That is the price and pressure of living a Torah life at this moment of time in this society. Even the obligation to live in a community that is walking distance from shul – which often increases home living costs, because financially pressed people would prefer living in exurbia, but there are no shuls there. It is what it is.

We pay for what is important. A fancy car. An expensive bar mitzvah. A family vacation out of state or country. And yeshiva also is important.

A Mindset that Drinking Is Not Cool, Vodka Vomiting Is Not Cool, Crookery Is Not Cool

2009-04-28T22:27:00.000-07:00

When I attended yeshiva high school, everyone kvetched about the school: kids kvetched about the teachers, the facility, the bathrooms, the color the walls were painted. It was in the culture to kvetch about the place -- even though we loved it so much. And then I went to college at Columbia University. Students at Columbia did not love that place as passionately as we loved our yeshiva high school. But no one kvetched at Columbia. (Yes, there were political riots -- but it was a different thing. You had to be there.) The thing is, those of us from yeshiva high school who attended Columbia at that time quickly saw that it is not cool to kvetch at Columbia. It was not cool to shoot spitballs at Columbia. You did not get popularity points for interrupting professors with wise cracks, as you did in high school. So there is great value in changing a milieu, changing the mindset of what is cool.

There are places where it is perceived by some that it is cool to be frummer than the next guy. Each guy in such a milieu wants to exhibit his chumrah. That is an environment -- maybe it is good, maybe not -- but in that environment, people proudly demonstrate their chumras.

The goal needs to be to create a nationwide mindset in the Torah-observant community that it is cool to be honest, and it is not cool to cheat. It is not cool to avoid paying state sales tax by paying in cash -- and, for the one who does so, he keeps it to himself out of a proper sense of shame, rather than telling people in shul how he does it and where he goes.

To create that mindset -- and it can be created, just as Columbia created a mindset that differed from yeshiva high school regarding what is cool to talk about -- there needs to be a nationwide concerted effort. It means shiurim and divrei Torah and sermons. It means hand-outs and circulars placed on shul seats. It means a concerted effort that denies honors to certain people and that starts to honor others.

These things are never easy. We all know that one reason that Dor HaMidbar did not enter Eretz Yisrael -- transcending the p'shat of the punishment for how almost all the men responded to the m'raglim -- is that they were not able to evolve the mindset of free people after a lifetime of slavery. Their children, experiencing freedom in their youth, could evolve that mindset. And so it goes.

In some places, people speak loshon horo, typically starting each sentence with: "I don’t think this is loshon horo, so I want you to know that . . ." It is like a culture. And then, in some places, people just do not speak loshon horo. Can you imagine going to a Yeshivat Chofetz Chaim and speaking loshon horo? Inconceivable -- because there is a mindset. It is not cool.

In some places, there are Kiddush Clubs. In other places, such things are inconceivable. Many Torah authorities have made an effort to send the word that Kiddush Clubs are not cool. That it is not cool to brag about what whiskey or malt scotch or whatever one drinks. One Young Israel rav here in Los Angeles took a powerful, powerful stand against Kiddush Clubs in his shul. Some people left his shul. His shul emerged better, stronger, and holier for his heroic leadership on that issue. His strength on this issue made him a role model for many other rabbonim.

In some places, it is cool to get so much vodka into one's body on Simchat Torah and on Purim that fellows actually expel that intake uncontrollably, publicly on streets. Even as they are being plied with more. And so the community arose with a campaign -- at least here in Los Angeles -- to teach people that is not cool. That it is not cool to vomit on the sidewalk in front of shul on Purim or Simchat Torah night. It is not cool to drink or to serve teens such alcohol or to let your teens get drunk. It had such an impact that the Los Angeles Times did a beautiful story on it, and it was a beautiful story that, in turn, gave impetus to other rabbis to lead on the subject.

These are hard things. Kiddush Clubs. Teen and Adult inebriation on Purim and Simchat Torah. Loshon Horo. Business dishonesty. In each case, it is about creating a new mindset -- putting circulars regularly on shul seats, having not just one or two strong rabbonim talking about the issue but having a national campaign that urges all rabbonim to speak about an issue. Creating an environment where it is not cool to cheat or to tell others.

And you know what? We still may fail because it takes only one Madoff -- only one -- to destroy a generation's efforts. So, if Ivan Boesky does not go to our shul, nor Madoff, nor the junk-bond guy, nor Marc Rich, nor the money-laundering crooks involved in that East Coast/West Coast scandal (including Chasidim, Israeli bankers, and the guy who was a West Coast Orthodox Union leader), nor the others -- we still lose. But at least we know we tried. And-- who knows? -- maybe in an environment with the right kind of mindset, maybe a Madoff would not get to be a Treasurer at Yeshiva University nor chairman of a school within YU. Who knows? But that takes a mindset-change, and maybe it takes a generation.

The Sea does not split until someone jumps in. We probably should try everything.

"J" Street, Growing up on the Street, and Street Survival: Why Israel Cannot Abide the Morons Who Call Themselves "Friend"

2009-04-28T22:23:00.000-07:00

Today’s “J Street” was yesterday’s Peace Now and Breira. Always rushing to “make peace,” to trust Arafat to keep his word, to encourage and push Israel to sign Oslo Accords.

I like to think of myself as an intellectual, too. I do not cede that ground to the “J Street” crowd. But I also grew up a bit on the streets. I know both sides – the people who attended Columbia University with me, the law school types, the scholars. And I know street fighters.

Israel has a real problem -- because she is not bordered by Mexico and Canada. She is bordered by Hezbollah and Hamas. Every time Israel has conceded land, the result has been the opposite of what the J Streeters predicted. She gave up Southern Lebanon unilaterally on the theory that the cession of land would bring peace in the north. “After all, what would Arabs have to complain about up north?” Yeah. So Hezbollah moved in and eventually put Haifa within range of its shelling.

Then Israel ceded Gaza. “Who needs Gaza anyway – with all its Arab overpopulation and all the trouble? It’s not worth it – let them choke on their own suffering! They will be so busy running an economy and a government that they will not have time to bother Israel.” Yeah. So Hamas took over and turned Gaza into an arcade, with terrorists raining down missiles and rockets on Sderot. When the air raid sounds in Sderot, a person has 15 seconds lead time to get to safety underground before the shell strikes. So people cannot shower.

Israel is not dealing with post-war Germany or Japan, with France or England. She is dealing with a theology that is sworn to subjugate all Jews and to destroy a Jewish country. There is no way to get them honestly to live with us except to persuade them that the cost of fighting us is too dear. That is how Israel took Jordan and Egypt out of the confrontation – beating them in war after war, until those governments gave up on destroying Israel.

K'doshim: Separating the Holy from the Despicable

2009-04-28T18:57:00.000-07:00

“Tell the entire assemblage of Israel: you shall be holy because I the L-rd your G-d am holy.” (Vayikra 19:2)

This week’s Torah portion lays out a comprehensive array of Divinely ordained commandments that define the range of Judaism’s unique values. Legislated to an assemblage of just-liberated slaves, these are the concepts and aspirations taught orally to Moshe at Sinai and thereafter transmitted in an appendix – the Written Torah. Through them, we were sculpted into an entity greater than mere physical emancipation could have offered. We were made holy.

In Judaism, “holiness” is epitomized by separation -- "separateness." “Behold [they comprise] a Nation that shall dwell alone.” (Bamidbar 23:9). We are holy because we are separate.

These laws separated us from the surrounding world. Don’t just fear your Dad but also your Mom; don’t just cuddle up to Mom with honor but also honor your Dad. And, yet, remember that both your parents, no less than you, answer to the Creator; their authority extends only within Torah’s parameters.

Yes, be really careful to observe all the detailed rituals governing animal sacrifice, and carefully observe all kinds of esoteric laws: Refrain from donning garments made from a combination of both linen and wool. Don’t shave with a razor blade or obliterate your sideburns or get caught up in a societal tattooing craze. Tatt too will pass. Don’t go to fortune-tellers, and don’t erect statues.

But also remember that, as part of being holy – of being different – your Creator will hold you accountable for cursing deaf people and for tripping up the blind, even if they are oblivious to your deeds. He will demand you account for conducting business dealings deceitfully, for failing to leave a corner of your field’s produce as open-pickings for the poor. Don’t you dare steal or deal falsely. If you invoke His name in a false oath, if you perjure yourself in a court filing, you will have to account. Don’t you dare cheat your neighbor, and don’t you rob, and don’t you withhold your employee’s wages past payday. Don’t you dare.

Maybe the late-night TV talk show hosts make fun of elderly people, but not you. When you see someone with white hair, you get up from your cozy chair and you stand out of respect, and you honor that time-worn face. She has endured it all, and she has earned your reverence.

So it’s not just about meticulously observing 39 rules that define Jewish Sabbath observance – although that, too, is central to the very concept of a Jewish People. Nor is it only about eating kosher and avoiding forbidden mixtures. Rather, it also is about being honest, ethical, trustworthy, and thus noble. Your scales must be honest when you weigh a pound of meat or a hill of beans. Your every transaction must be honest; even your resumés must be truthful: where you went to school, the degrees you truly earned. A holy nation is not led by crooks, nor does it honor them.

That is what makes a great people. Such separateness makes “holy.”

Greatness is not measured by the size of your bat mitzvah smorgasbord or the layout of your backyard pool, but by how you acquired them. Your fancy car and your home landscaping and the jewelry in your safe do not define you. Your deeds define you. As Rabbi Emanuel Rackman taught: It is not enough to do well; you must do good.

Whom do we honor? At our every organizational banquet, our every special event, do we make room on the dais to honor at least one person of modest means whose presence is grounded exclusively in her kindness, her goodness, her nobility of character?

Money is great. And many profoundly wealthy people also justly populate the platform of the noble, those blessed with dignity and grace of character. But is wealth the standard we employ in selecting our nobles, our honorees? Can a Holy Nation count among its leaders those whose wealth is bound with mendacity? Those who became rich by ruining others or those who climbed ladders by destroying the reputations of others?

Not a holy nation. Not a nation separated and set apart by the command of their Creator to deal honestly, to judge honestly, and never to do unto others what they would not want done to them.

That is the striking message of this week’s Torah portion. It should be mandatory reading for every banquet committee and every nominating committee in organized American Jewish life. Its message is that extraordinary. And we all should study it, too.

On Bernie who Madoff with the Loot -- Fifty Billion

2008-12-16T16:23:00.000-08:00

It was said of Lev Bronstein, a revolutionary in post-Czarist Russia, who -- to dissociate himself from his Jewish roots -- changed his name to Leon Trotsky: “It’s the Trotskys who make the revolutions, and the Bronsteins who pay the bill.”

We are 5 million Jews in America, and ten percent of us are Orthodox. So: 500,000 Orthodox Jews . . . 5 million American Jews. There are one or two of these crook situations each and every year. One or two out of 500,000 . . . one or two out of 5,000,000. The large-yarmulka’d rabbi of the 1970s nursing home scandal. The Brooklyn yeshiva condemned by United States Senator Sam Nunn for drawing federal Pell Grant funds for students who do not exist in a yeshiva that does not exist to eat meals that do not exist. The junk bond dealer. The Washington lobbyist. The fellow who fled America for Switzerland, then got pardoned by a departing President who said the pardon was requested by Israel’s Prime Minister. The New Square Chassidic community that bullet-voted for Hillary for U.S. Senate after Bill did not pardon but commuted sentences of three of their chassidim. The East Coast Chassidim, West Coast Orthodox Union lay leader, and Israeli bankers involved in a federally indicted money-laundering scheme. And of course Postville. Some are “Orthodox.” Some are otherwise denominated.

We Jews are such a profoundly ethical and honest community. How many prisoners in the federal prisons really ask for kosher meals? Five? Eight? Nine?

Yet, there comes a point where it no longer seems or feels like only three out of 500,000 -- because this is the area of stereotype. It plays and feeds into stereotype. And therein lies the profound sensitivity.

Stereotypes are foolish, built on apocryphal presumptions. Do Jews really know more about money than do others? Clearly, anti-Semites throughout history have thought so, always keeping a Jew around to head the Treasury or the Exchequer. Even Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand, when they expelled all Jews from Spain, asked one individual Jew, Don Isaac Abravanel, to stay behind to do the books. Insane! If Jews know so much about managing money and turning a profit, why is Israel unable to manage without American largesse? How did Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke help preside over the American fiscal fiasco? And was it Mayor Abe Beame who took New York City into bankruptcy? And Robert Citron in Orange County?

Who got the idea that Jews know so much more than anyone else about how to manage money? Yet several Presidents seem to have brought in some Jewish monetary advisors. FDR had Treasury Secretary Morgenthau. Nixon had Herbert Stein as chairman of his Council of Economic Advisors. Carter had W. Michael Blumenthal. (Shhhhh! He was not really Jewish despite being named Blumenthal.) Clinton had Robert Rubin. Certainly, to employ a double negative, there is no reason that a Jew should not be welcomed as an economic advisor if she is best for the job. And certainly Jewish deep thinkers populate the entire spectrum of economic thought from a range of liberals including Paul Samuelson to conservatives like Milton Friedman and even objectivist-libertarians like Ayn Rand (Shhhhh! She was Jewish despite changing her name to Rand . . . from Alice Rosenbaum.)

It is impossible to avoid noting that this latest crook, Bernard Madoff, was prominently positioned in the Yeshiva University lay hierarchy. (He personally is not Orthodox, nor is he nominally so or thus quasi-denominated.) He also invested hundreds of millions of charitable dollars in his Ponzi schemes. We need to do something as a community akin to what Jews in America did 100 years ago to separate ourselves in the popular imagination from the likes of Arnold Rothstein and Bugsy Siegel and Legs Diamond and Meyer Lansky. And we did.

Whether it means refusing to count these characters in minyans, to give them aliyas, to permit them to attend banquet dinners, taking their names off synagogue walls and out of siddur/chumash inside-covers, or the like, it seems necessary to do something to separate our community from them.

There should always be a chance for teshuvah -- sincere, heartfelt repentance. Absolutely -- that is a core Jewish value and belief. And someday in the future, maybe after therapy, after restitution, after complete repentance (teshuvah g’murah), new books can be dedicated, and new minyanim can be formed with their inclusion. They can be given new honors. But there needs to be a separation, a havdalah g’murah, pending teshuvah.

Similarly, we must give real thought to changing the way we do business as an organized theological and spiritual community. Are we too material-focused? Do we respect money more than good deeds? To paraphrase Rav Michael Broyde's quote of Rav Emanuel Rackman's observation: Do we teach that it is more important to do good in this world -- or that it is more important to do well? Do we honor people who are monied more than people who exude righteousness? (Yes, a monied person simultaneously can exude righteousness. I have known some such people, like Jack Nagel of Los Angeles, and they have touched my life by their example without really donating my way.)

What a moment of opportunity we have before us to teach our community and our young people real Jewish values! Or to capture some of these thoughts in a public statement promoting reconsidered public policy. We have before us -- right now -- an opportunity to propose or suggest standards that limit or regulate the vulgar excesses of Bar Mitzvah and Bat Mitzvah parties. (How many meals can a Jew eat in three hours? Does every thirteen-year-old merit a life-sized ice sculpture of his luminescence and deserve to have 300 adults compelled to watch a fifteen minute retrospective of his life-and-times as though compiled by Ken Burns?)

What a moment of opportunity to reinforce condemnations that rabbinic organizations repeatedly have published against those who conduct synagogue-centered poker games and casino-like gambling. To teach people that the great names that have lived in Jewish history are those of rabbis who taught Torah, scholars and teachers, pioneers who built Israel, other pioneers who built and defended Jewish communities throughout the world -- and monied people who distributed their wealth generously. The greatness of Baron Rothschild, Moses Montefiore, Baron de Hirsch, Haym Salomon, Jacob Schiff, and others was not their riches but their philanthropy. They did not sit on their money and hoard it. They worked hard for it, took real risks in the world of industry, and then shared generously with those less fortunate.

What an opportunity we have! To require that every public event/banquet include at least one major award to be conferred on a humble less-prominent person purely for his or her profound leadership in Torah and ethics, regardless of money. To teach about honesty. To invite to schools the person who returns a lost bag of cash that he finds left behind in a taxi. This is the moment to turn this shame into a moment of pride.

And, even as we truly have a remarkably proud record throughout the world as a law-abiding community – can you think of a safer place to walk alone in the middle of the night than in a frum neighborhood that is not plagued by midnight interlopers from outside? -- we need to teach our yeshiva kids again and again, nukh a-mol un takeh nukh a-mol, that financial crimes are cardinal sins because they implicate the name and honor of HaKadosh Barukh Hu.

And now a final exposition: “Why is the religion of these isolated perpetrators relevant?”

In Torah terms, the problem is Chilul Hashem. Their actions desecrate the Holy Name of the G-d of Israel Who took us out of Egypt and brought us to Mount Sinai to receive His Word and to transmit its glory to the Nations around us.

And in secular terms, the problem is in the stereotype. If David Berkowitz, the non-Jewish “Son of Sam,” went around murdering blonde women in their cars with his .44-caliber gun, it still did not feed a stereotype. Jews are not stereotyped as killers/murderers.

But this Madoff thing fits a stereotype. For some prejudiced non-observant Jews, it fits one intra-Jewish stereotype: “Oh, those Orthodox! They are so strict about their supposedly high standards. They think they are so much better than we are. Why, one of their rabbis would not even drink wine that I poured for him! They won’t eat my food – even though they will eat the food of people who hire illegal aliens and employ child labor. So they are oh-so-holy, but when it comes to being honest, they take a back seat, those Orthodox. I’m a better Jew than they are, any day of the week. We may eat pork on Yom Kippur, but we are better Jews than they are. Because we have Jewish hearts.”

Cardiac Jews.

That is why Madoff -- who is not Orthodox in the first place -- is a problem of Chilul Hashem of one sort, when dealing with one sub-group of non-observant Jews. And it is not an answer to respond that the Reform Community Day school in Los Angeles is named for a junk-bond dealer who perpetrated crimes of financial shame. How can that be an answer? What kind of response is that? Rather, that is the road of falling into the same silly trap when, in fact, we all should be working together as Jews of all stripes and spots, denominations, genders, and politics, to eradicate financial malfeasance and defalcations.

Again the question, then: Why is the religion of the perpetrator relevant? I would say, because the real concern is the way that we -- all Jews -- appear in the eyes of those bigots among the non-Jewish world who may bear prejudices and stereotypes that feed off these aberrations.

There are plenty of non-Jewish crooks, frauds, and defalcators. The present Illinois Governor (still in office as of this second) was elected to shake up Springfield but instead shook down Illinois. How Jewish is a guy whose name is pronounced Bla-goy-avich? And Martha Stewart is not Jewish. And, during my high-stakes litigation career, I represented and defended powerful clients, including a solid cross-section of non-Jews who were accused of financial malfeasance.

Yet it is not a sufficient answer to say that Enron were non-Jews and that Global Crossing were non-Jews and that Charles Keating was a non-Jew who used his fraudulent gains to support Mother Theresa – indeed, she even wrote a letter to the judge in his support during the legal proceedings against him. Because, at day’s end, there are stereotypes. Stereotypes are so hard to squelch and so easy to reinforce. People truly believe that Polish people are stupid, even though they have produced a Pope of the Catholic Church, a brilliant (if disastrous) foreign policy advisor to a past American president, my favorite / sharpest / most brilliant morning talk show hostess, and at least two Prime Ministers of Israel. If an Irish person gets involved in something arising from inebriation, well, it is as though the only alcoholic beverages ever concocted were Jameson's, Powell's, and Bailey's. When an Italian person is associated even obliquely with something arising from organized crime, it feeds stereotypes, even though Italians like Rudy Giulliani led vigorous struggles against organized crime.

People of color particularly are subjects of stereotypes.

The stuff of Madoff feeds our stereotype. The vulgar use of the word “Jew” as a verb is shamefully tied with financial vulgarism. We may fight the Oxford Dictionary, but this is what it is. The stereotype is Shylock the Moneylender. It is hook-nosed Fagin who corrupts and sends urchins to steal for him. Both were fictional creations of literary minds and pens that could have designated them Anglicans, but didn't. During the Civil War, the stereotype prompted Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to issue General Order No. 11. When William Jennings Bryant railed at the 1896 Chicago Democrat National Convention against Wall Street financiers, saying “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor a crown of thorns; [y]ou shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,” everyone understood what he was saying. He was not stereotyping the Romans on Wall Street.

This is the viciously unfair stereotype of us. In the streets of the rustic Midwest, even where no Jews live, arson-for-insurance (as contrasted from pyromaniacally setting wildfires in California) is called “Jewish lightning.” The term is so defined on Wikipedia's Wiktionary website: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Jewish_lightning I heard it for the first time while traveling in the Bible Belt. The person was a non-Jewish colleague of mine, a friend, who did not even realize that the term was offensive. (It is like absent-mindedly criticizing a Native American as an “Indian giver.”) It is Marc Rich getting pardoned by an American President who pens dishonestly in the New York Times that he did so at the urgent behest of the Prime Minister of Israel. And every single time that an outlier, isolated Jew emerges in one of these things, it builds, and it builds on itself. It builds on stereotypes. It poses the single greatest calumny against Jewish people.

That’s why the religion of the perpetrator matters to me. I wish we could figure out a way to separate ourselves in the public mind from these guys, but it is easier said than done. As long as we allow such defalcators and crooks to be honorees at our events, to have their names on our institutions' buildings and in the inside covers of our holy books, to hold positions of lay leadership in temple and synagogue boards of directors or trustees, we inadvertently become ignorant accessories, teaching children for the next generation that we accord our highest honors based not only on how deeply within his denomination he bears his bond and trust in G-d . . . but on how consummately he is deeply pocketed in bearer bonds denominated “In Gd We Trust.”

We have to aim higher. We absolutely must.

The Mumbai (Bombay) Massacre of Jews

2008-12-16T16:05:00.000-08:00

Not all Jews, even the Torah-observant Jews among us, even Chassidic Jews, count themselves as Chabad Jews. There are doctrinal differences, sometimes very significant, that individuate Chabad from the larger normative Orthodox community. Particularly, there are real issues of profound halakhic significance concerning the place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in the constellation of great Torah leaders of the past generation. For an overwhelming majority of Orthodox Jews, particularly in communities where yeshivas proliferate and Torah learning dominates Orthodoxy, the roles of late Torah giants like HaRav Aharon Kotler, HaRav Moshe Feinstein, HaRav Yosef Ber Soloveitchik, and HaRav Eliezer Shach – and, yibadel l’chaim, HaRav HaChacham Ovadia Yosef – overshadow the role of Rav Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Likewise, in the Chassidic world.

Nevertheless, virtually each and every one of us has been at some end-of-the-earth place where even MasterCard/Visa is not accepted, but where a Chabad House exists to provide a kosher meal, a local Jewish resting place, an address for Shabbat. No matter where in the world you are, there is a decent chance that you can catch a Mincha or a Torah reading on Shabbat morning at a local Chabad House, where one or another darling rabbinical couple will be there. When traveling through Oklahoma, my family knew it could stop for Shabbat in Oklahoma City because the local Chabad couple was hosting Shabbat meals. Others have told me their stories, from Hong Kong to Thailand. And for so many people who today are members of shuls like Young Israel of Orange County, their first step into normative Torah practice took place at a Chabad House or at a campus Chabad.

Rabbi and Rebbetzin Holtzberg and their Mumbai Chabad House were just the quintessence of that image we have. Just looking at the photos, these were such beautiful young people who had just begun their life’s journey together, contributing so powerfully at a time when more Westerners are traveling to India as participants in the burgeoning global economy. Americans, Israelis, and others travel to India when their jobs compel them to do so, and – as with those compelled by the need to earn a living by traveling occasionally to Hong Kong or other such places – there is the Chabad presence to assure that Shabbat can be celebrated, that kosher food can be found, and even (thanks to Rav Holtzberg, who also slaughtered kosher meat) that kosher meat could be had.

It is the paradox of the Jewish experience in history that we so uniquely among peoples get caught in others’ cross-fires. The Christian Crusaders, en route to liberate the Holy Land from the infidel Moslem Saracens – it had nothing to do with Jews – stopped along watering holes throughout Europe to massacre whole Jewish bystander communities. Three centuries later, as a bubonic plague took hold throughout Europe – it had nothing to do with Jews – insane justification somehow was found to murder one-third of our people there. Three centuries later, Bogdan Chmielnitzki and the Cossack Massacres reflected Cossack poverty in Eastern Europe – it had nothing to do with Jews. Three centuries later, Hitler, the Nazis, and their European confederates perpetrated the Holocaust in the aftermath of Germany’s financial collapse post-WWI. That collapse really had nothing to do with Jews; it was the result of brutally punitive terms of surrender foolishly and cruelly imposed against Germany by the victorious and imperial-colonialist British and the French.

Not to mention medieval expulsions from lands as gentle as France (1182, 1306, 1394) and England (1290), the persecutions of Mashad, the mellahs of Morocco and the ghettoes of Italy, the June 1941 Iraqi Shavuot Pogrom after the fall of the Golden Square. In all these insane outbursts of anti-Jewish hate and murder, we were pedestrians, bystanders. We had nothing to do with the issues. We were just standing at the corner, waiting for the light to change.

And now it is a dispute between Pakistani Moslems and Indian Hindus regarding suzerainty over Kashmir. It is an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with Jews. (Ask the average Jew his thoughts about Kashmir, and he will tell you that he cannot afford it and buys sweaters made from Shetland wool instead. We do not know what it is, where it is, and -- maybe the ultimate indicator -- it is so far off our radar and alien to our world that there is not even a Chabad in Kashmir.) So these horrible IslamoNazi thugs and goons perpetrated these terrible murders in Mumbai targeting Jews in general, and this wonderful young couple in particular.

From these things come many tears, but great responses come, too. We may be certain that a much bigger, much stronger, far more widely visited-and-utilized Chabad House will rise in Mumbai. We may be certain that plenty of Chabad young Rav-and-Rebbetzin couples will step forward to serve there. And we may be certain that every Jew will feel, for years to come, that she must make a pilgrimage at least once to that Chabad House, even if she has never been to Jerusalem or to Oklahoma City.

Things happen for reasons. Bad things sometimes happen for the purpose of laying foundations for great things. As Rav Avigdor Miller brings out, all of our Patriarch Yaakov’s setbacks in his relationship with Esav were necessary for the expansive formation of a Jewish People. Had Yaakov emerged from the womb first, there would have been no animus when he duly received a first-born’s bracha. Had his father, Yitzchak, had better eyesight, there would have been no animus. Had there been no animus, Yaakov would not have been compelled to flee home for Charan. If Yaakov had not fled home, then his parents presumably would have done for him as Avraham did for Yitzchak: sending out a messenger to Charan to find him a wife. The messenger would have come back with one wife, not two.

If the messenger had come back with Leah, there would have been no Rachel and no children born to Rachel: no Yosef, no sale to Egypt, no subsequent relocation of the Jewish People to Egypt for the slavery, the Aseret HaMakot (the Ten Plagues), the Y’tzi’at Mitzrayim (the Exodus), and the receiving of the Torah at Har Sinai. There also would have been no Benjamin born – so no King Saul, no Mordechai to save the Jews in Persia, no component alongside the tribes of Yehudah and Levi to comprise the Jewish People during our long Second Exile.

And if, instead, the messenger had come back with Rachel rather than Leah, there would have been no Leah-as-Wife, so no children born to Leah. Thus, no Levi, so no Moshe and no Aharon, no tribe to stand alone for G-d at the time of the Golden Calf, no Pinchas and no Eliyahu, no Chashmona’im and no Maccabees. And there would have been no Yehudah, so no Nachshon ben Aminadav to jump in first and begin Hashem’s process of splitting the Sea, no Elisheva to marry Aharon, no Calev ben Y’funeh to stand with Yehoshua for G-d’s word at the time of the m’raglim (the spies), no David HaMelekh, so no Moshiach.

But history is fact beyond "what-if." So there, in fact, was animus and hate. Yaakov came out second, and Yitzchak’s eyesight was impaired. Rivkah knew the plan because Hashem had revealed to her, but not to Yitzchak, Yaakov’s superior destiny. And, as a result, Yaakov ultimately had to flee for his life, and he ended up with two wives rather than one, along with children from Bilhah and Zilpah.

That is how setbacks work for Jews. One must wait twenty years (as during Yaakov’s sojourn with Lavan), and sometimes 200 years or even 2,000 years, to know how it all will play out. And this tragedy in Mumbai that has no words for its pain is not the final word on how the result of this incident will play out. May it be for a blessing, and may the memories of the holy martyrs, Rav and Rebbetzin Holtzberg, be for a blessing and inspiration to all of us.

On Obama, Democrats, Republicans, Israel, and the Futility of Knowing Who Are Friends

2008-12-16T15:44:00.001-08:00

I did not vote for Obama, instead choosing to vote as the exit polls told us that most Jews in Orthodox circles did. Still, I view Obama's election with fascination and a touch of wonder.

Clearly, Hashem has a plan that we do not yet see or understand regarding Obama. By the natural course of events, Obama should never have been elected or, frankly, even nominated. Historians will not understand it. Nevertheless, he now is the President-elect, and we will recite the same blessing in Shul for his welfare and that of his Government as we have recited for his predecessors.

As Geraldine Ferraro said -- and she got canned for telling the truth -- rather than being victim for not looking like all those guys on the dollar bills (whose skin presumably was green?), Obama actually was the beneficiary of being quasi-African-American. Any other guy who would have sought the Presidency with his skimpy public record, youthful inexperience, and circle of corrupt acquaintances and associations, never would have gotten past Iowa and New Hampshire.

A State Senator who voted "present" 130 times, or whatever? A guy with no known record of accomplishment but with a coterie of personal associations ranging from Tony Rezko and Bill Ayres to Louis Farrakhan and Jeremiah Wright and Father Phleger?

Gimme a break.

A law school professor, former president of the Harvard Law Review, who never published an article in a legal journal? Who among us in the legal field -- among those who practice, among those who focus in the halls of scholarship -- ever has heard of such a thing?

He has lived what-some-might-see as a charmed life. Hashem has a plan. This all is too aberrant to be natural life. There is a plan. G-d apparently has a plan in which Obama factors particularly.

So many of us -- half the country -- voted against Obama (not really for McCain, who was not the right choice of the moment) because we do not know what Obama stands for, do not trust him an iota, believe that he stands mostly for himself, has no record of meaningful achievement, shifted 180 degrees on Jerusalem in hours, surrounds himself with the same Clinton crowd that forced Oslo down Israel's throat and that made Arafat the most frequent foreign visitor to the White House.

All that said -- and one can go on -- I have to put my faith in Hashem and know that He has an ultimate plan, and His plan will go forth. Hubert Humphrey was a great friend of Israel, but it was Nixon-the-anti-Semite who acted rapidly and forcefully as Hashem's tool to assist Israel meaningfully during the 1973 War. Gerald Ford had a record of friendship for Israel through decades in the House, and he had Kissinger in Foggy Bottom, but they surprisingly combined to subject Israel to a searing "reassessment" of the traditional American friendship.

So many of us voted for Jimmy Carter the first time he ran. Many thought that Evangelicals --given the pro-Israel leadership models of Reverend Jerry Falwell, Reverend John Hagee, etc. -- are among Israel's biggest backers, inspired by the mandate of Genesis 12:3. Go figure -- it turned out that Carter was not evangelical on that verse, while his sister was missionizing to Jews and his brother was in bed with Kaddafi.

When Reagan came, so many of us expected George Shultz of Bechtel Corporation, which makes so much money from Arabs, to be a disastrous Secretary of State for Israel -- and, yet, Shultz probably was the best friend Israel ever had in the State Department. We thought the First Bush would follow Reagan's pro-Israel policies, and yet his Secretary of State seems to have been the worst anti-Semite in State since Cordell Hull and WWII. We figured the Second Bush would be as bad as the First, particularly after James Baker played so active a role in the legal fight over ballot-chads, and instead Bush II proved a great friend of Israel when Sharon invaded Jenin.

Thus, when Bush II was reelected, we thought we now have a proven friend in the White House and, with Sharon in Jerusalem, we now have some good strong leadership; in place. Instead, Bush turned his Mideast Policy on its head and made a point of his second term to press Sharon for a "Palestinian State" -- i.e., not really a "state" but a country called by that phony name -- and the Great Sharon unexpectedly went along with it, starting with Gush Katif and then the Gaza.

What stopped the momentum of Bush and Sharon, after the Gaza retreat, to move the retreat-pressure kadimah (forward, eastward to Judea and Samaria)? Only the combination of Sharon being felled by a stroke, then another, and Olmert thereafter being felled by a Hezbollah War and then a debilitating financial scandal and another, and Bush being felled by an incomprehensible economic collapse that started unfolding with mortgage problems just as Condoleezza was flying to the Middle East to start the pressure against Israel for new retreat.

Only that extraordinary confluence of incredible events stopped the Gush-Katification of Yehudah-Shomron.

So, I am long past predicting who among the princes of flesh-and-blood is good for Israel and who bad. I vote based on commonsense natural analyses, but I know I can be wrong because good politicians can fool you, and so can bad ones. I know that all we can do is vote based on what we reasonably expect. But, in the end, it is all in Hashem's hands. Politicians often surprise.

For the many of us who voted against Obama during this recent round, a man who entered the national stage as Tisha B'Av was ending in 2004, we could vote only based on what we thought is best. In the end, what do we know? We don't know. We absolutely do not know.

Our parents' generation bullet-voted for FDR, whom they regarded as the best American friend that Jews ever had in the White House. Turns out he and his State Department were not our best friends. Rather, they hated us and in some real measure were accessories to the mass murder of six million of us.

Democrats-Republicans. We don't know. Nixon rushed weapons to Israel in an full-blast urgent airlift. Bill Clinton gave us Oslo and Arafat.

Shalom Chaver.

Time to Pardon Jonathan Pollard

2008-12-16T15:29:00.000-08:00

1. Pollard did a terrible, terrible thing.

2. A terrible thing. Just terrible.

3. Horrible. And he messed up the position and status of Jews in American government. He fed into anti-Semites’ worst diatribes about Jews being of diverted loyalty to foreign powers. He had no right to imperil the Jewish position in this country and, thereby, to lend credence to haters elsewhere in the world who wonder about Jews and our loyalties in those countries.

4. He has been sitting in prison for more than twenty-three years.

5. He never had a trial. He entered into a plea bargain. Then, suddenly-and-unexpectedly at sentencing, Caspar Weinberger (then the Secretary of Defense – a guy with a Jewish surname who opted for his mother’s interest in the Episcopalian Church) submitted a secret 46-page sentencing memorandum to the sentencing judge. No one knows what the memorandum said. Pollard’s lawyers were not allowed to see the secret memo. To this day, no one has ever been permitted to see what that guy wrote.

6. We know that Weinberger ultimately was found, in another context (Iran-Contra), to be one who would lie under oath. He ultimately was found guilty of perjury. The fact that someone swears to G-d to tell the truth one day and then lies that day does not prove that he lies under oath on another day. But it’s sure worse than gambling with dice. One may question whether Weinberger’s secret 46-page memorandum – which played a defining role in Pollard’s sentencing – contained pure truth or whether, as Rashi tells us about the cleverness of the m’raglim, the future-perjurous-felon began with the truth and then stretched it into falsehood. For nearly a quarter century, no one has been permitted to read the thing and dissect it.

7. Although charged with espionage (spying), Pollard never was charged with treason. Thus, he was guilty of passing classified info to an ally.

8. I am told that no one else in American history ever was sentenced to life in prison for passing classified info to an ally. I am told that the punishment for such behavior historically has been in the range of 2-4 years in prison. I have not independently verified this. I do note that the Rosenbergs went to death for passing American atomic secrets to the Communists at a time when the Communists actually were allied with America. I leave it to the objective-minded to consider the difference between passing atomic-bomb secrets to Stalin and passing whatever Pollard passed to the Israelis.

9. Pollard’s trial attorney failed him miserably by not timely appealing from the sentencing. The rules of federal appellate procedure are very strict.

10. Later, Pollard got new lawyers who perceived the outrage that no appeal ever was filed by the original attorney . They filed what-might-be-called an “appeal requesting the right to file an appeal.” (The more formal term is habeas corpus.) Three federal appeals judges considered the motion. The non-Jewish judge on the federal appeals panel ruled that Pollard had suffered a grave miscarriage of justice and deserved to have his appeal from the sentencing filed and heard. The two Jewish judges (one of them, Ruth Bader Ginzburg) ruled avar z’mano, batel korbano.

11. Israel has freed thousands of Arab terrorists, hundreds with blood on their hands, often under intense American pressure: "C'mon, Israel. Why can't you take a chance for peace? Just free them already." America itself has pardoned and freed FALN bombers. Also, a guy named – what is it? – Bill Ayers, I think – bombed American defnse establishments, and got off the hook over time. Also his wife – uh, whats-her-name Dohrn.

12. When Clinton left office, he pardoned some crook named Marc Rich, a crook on the lam in Europe. Clinton later curiously wrote an op-ed in the NY Times that he pardoned this crook at the personal request of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Time Magazine legitimately calls this one of the Ten Most Notorious Presidential Pardons in American History: http://www.time.com/time/2007/presidential_pardons/index.html Clinton's pardon of Rich was an outrage.

13. Fittingly, another of the Ten Most Notorious Presidential Pardons in American History was the elder George Bush’s pardon of the perjurous Caspar Weinberger.

14. Clinton also quasi-pardoned (not a full pardon, just a reduced punishment) some other crooks affiliated with a Chassidic group in Monroe, NY. By coincidence, even though many among their number do not even read English (only Yiddish), the Chassidic group bullet-voted for Clinton’s wife in her first U.S. Senate race against Rick Lazio. If Teddy Roosevelt had given Americans The Square Deal, and Franklin Roosevelt had given Americans The New Deal, Clinton had given the Jewish-American bullet-voters The New Square Deal.

15. Several prominent legal scholars and men of letters are among those who have filed amici curae (friends-of-the-court) briefs for Pollard. My favorites include: the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, President Emeritus of Notre Dame University; the ACLU, and a long list that can be found at: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/2000/122800.htm

16. I refer readers to a web page that lists comparative crimes and sentences: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/sentences.htm

17. Alan Dershowitz (of whom I am no Chasid, but he is a good gauge of whether it is an act of Jewish overreaching to seek Pollard’s pardon) has written why American Jews should be working for Pollard’s freedom: http://www.jonathanpollard.org/1999/030799.htm

18. Seymour Reich, a former chairman of the Presidents Conference, advocated a Clinton pardon seven years ago. More recently, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations has called on President George W. Bush to pardon Pollard.

19. A final word: I cannot emphasize enough that Pollard did terrible, terrible stuff. I am not impressed with some people's arguments that he needed to do what he did, that he gave Israel documents that America was obligated to share with Israel anyway, that he had to do it to save lives. But, for G-d’s sake, after 23 years in prison, his continued incarceration no longer is about him. It is about us -- it is about Jews. It is a statement to American Jews that says to us every day: “We in Washington regard you differently from Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, African-Americans, German-Americans, Polish-Americans, Latino-Americans. You may need a reminder that other people don’t need. You need to remember what we do to people who are not loyal to this country, who have loyalties diverted elsewhere.”

Thus, Pollard's continued incarceration is personally offensive to the Jewish community.

Revisiting the Extraordinary Obstacles that Stopped Politicians Forcing a Retreat from Judea-Samaria

2008-12-16T15:21:00.000-08:00

I believe, as we all do in your and my circles, that things happen for reasons that HaKadosh Barukh Hu understands better than we. As we say in the Haftorah for the fast day, His thoughts are not our thoughts.

Every single time, since June 1967, that an Israeli Prime Minister has tried to give up any part of Yesha, or that an American president has pushed the Israelis to cede part of Yesha, something unnatural has happened. Highlights: Shamir, after Madrid, rapidly lost control of Government. After Rabin was assassinated, Peres had some 80-90% popularity, so called early elections with a goal to have a strong Knesset to support massive Yesha concessions. Yet, a few months later, he had lost all support in the face of an absolutely unprecedented wave of bus bombings, and Netanyahu was elected. Netanyahu went to Wye Plantation, conceded on Hebron, and almost immediately ran into a complete turn-around from heavy popularity to a nose-dive. Ehud Barak came to Washington, offering to give up so much, and he returned to Intifada II and a landslide loss to Sharon. Sharon initially pursued targeted assassinations of terrorists and was fantastically successful and popular. Then he turned to giving up land, and he was given a potch. He proceeded to give up Gaza and announced that his next focus was kadimah – to give up land in the east. He has been in a coma ever since. Olmert had initial popularity and success, then turned to giving up Yesha, and he was hit with the war in Lebanon, which destroyed the rationale for giving up land. He persisted, so was brought down remarkably.

Meanwhile, Ford turned on Israel with the Kissinger reassessment. Soon after, Ford’s popularity declined, unrelated to the Middle East, culminating with his slipping, falling, and then saying that eastern Europe was not under Soviet hegemony. Carter came in, was immensely popular. He turned anti-Israel, brutally pressed Begin. And soon the Iranians were holding hostages while inflation hit 20%, and he was out. Reagan was mostly pro-Israel and made it through eight years with his name mostly intact. But he did press Begin on Lebanon during the 1982 War, leading to the events that caused the worst security debacle in Reagan’s Presidency – the 241 Marines blown up in South Lebanon. Bush I pressed Israel, with James Baker. There were horrible words spoken. And a strange thing happened: in the midst of an election campaign, he was in Japan at a banquet, and he was televised suddenly vomiting on the Japanese Premier. He went from 80+ popularity overnight to a nothing. The Clinton White House pressed Israel and ended up with its own crises. Bush II was the best friend Israel ever had, for most of his first 4-5 years, and he was blessed at home with great popularity. He then began pressing Sharon to give up Gaza, recognizing a “Palestinian State” and pushing a “Road Map,” and suddenly he nose-dived with huge losses two years ago. He did not learn from his potch, started talking about pursuing the Road map with Olmert, and further was reduced.

I am not sure that all this is coincidence. The past 40 years do not show that Hashem disturbed the momentum of giving up the Sinai, as He seems absolutely to have changed the course of nature to prevent every effort to give up parts of Yehuda and Shomron. But, even there, Begin went from glory and a Nobel Prize to an incalculable mental breakdown that left him spending his last years as a mentally distraught recluse in his apartment.

Disinviting Gov. Palin: A Sad and Disgraceful Day for American Jews

2008-09-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

I live in California and could not have attended the anti-Ahmadinejad Rally at the United Nations in New York anyway. But Californian Jews, too, may recoil at the New York political circus that became a national disgrace for American Jewry as the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the “Presidents’ Conference”) disinvited Sarah Palin from speaking at the event. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, I attended rallies-upon-rallies-upon-rallies sponsored by the GNYCSJ (Greater New York Conference on Soviet Jewry), the Student Struggle for Soviet Jewry, the National Conference for Soviet Jewry, and the Presidents’ Conference. Malcolm Hoenlein, now executive director of the Presidents’ Conference, was executive director of GNYCSJ in its time. They always, always had prominent political personalities and candidates speaking. No one ever had a tax-status issue.

In reading the press release that Gov. Palin has been disinvited from speaking at the rally, what were we really being told? That there never were campaigning politicians at New York’s annual Solidarity Day for Soviet Jewry? At the annual Israel Day Parade down Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue?

C’mon. Gimme a break.

If they had invited only Palin but no Democrats, then the Presidents’ Conference conceivably would have invited a series of questions about partisanship. But Hillary was coming. And they had invited other Dems. It was balanced, as these events always are balanced and non-partisan or, more accurately, bi-partisan.

Sen. Barack Obama speaks at churches. Do they lose their tax status? That overheated priest in Chicago, who mocked Hillary from the Sunday pulpit at Jeremiah Wright’s church. Did that church lose its tax status? Bill Clinton campaigned at churches, speaking at Sunday morning prayers. Gore. Even our own Orthodox Jewish VP candidate some time back spoke at plenty of religious houses of worship. There is absolutely no risk of losing tax-exempt status if a balanced array of politicians speaks out on a public stage against a matter of public concern, like Ahmadinejad being warmly greeted at the General Assembly. And Malcolm Hoenlein knows those rules very, very well because he has been at the vortex of American Jewish political activity for at least 35 years.

No organization endangers its tax status by providing a platform for political leaders to speak publicly, with bipartisan concern, over Ahmadinejad coming to NY.

What happened here is that Hillary already was coming. Then Gov. Palin was invited, and Hillary backed out for narrow political reasons — no point in giving Palin a public stage to demonstrate her awareness of an international foreign policy concern, while she simultaneously builds bridges to American Jewry. Hillary took a non-partisan issue regarding a public protest against one of the most dangerous Jew-haters in the world, and she turned it into a circus.

I have been a political activist and street-protest kind of person for 35 years. OK, I stopped after leaving New York in the mid-1980s because we have no good places to protest here. (Where are we going to protest Ahmadinejad – At a beach? At the “Hollywood” sign? In Malibu?) I have never seen anything like this. It is a disgrace, an absolute disgrace, that the organized Jewish community got pushed around like this on so critical an issue and gave in so meekly.

Outside New York, in states throughout the nation, the protest against Ahmadinejad lost all its bite, all its meaning. Words were spoken on a stage, and the syllables floated and dissipated into thin air. The news was the disinvitation to Palin. Here she was, readily accepting a Jewish invitation to add her voice to others across the spectrum on the Ahmadinejad invitation. In a few months, it is conceivable that she could be a heartbeat away from the Presidency of the United States. She graciously accepted our invitation, as Hillary graciously had done earlier – and then we publicly humiliate and disinvite Gov. Palin? It is a disgrace.

And it is not a very nice thing to do, either.

I put my faith in Hashem. For me, in the end of the day, Israel’s survival stems from His grace. In that regard, the United Nations does not matter, nor does Ahmadinejad. Among others whose efforts to destroy Israel have failed, Israel has survived Gamal Nasser, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Yassin, and Yasser Arafat. In that sense, none of this matters. But, as our Patriarch Jacob prepared for his encounter with the dangerous twin-brother Esau with gifts and with prayer and with a readiness to fight, so we are bidden to pursue the natural course of defense side-by-side with the religious values of repentance, prayer, and charity.

This disinvitation was a shameful decision. As such, it also reflects and recalls the kinds of Jewish organizational infighting that sabotaged rescue efforts during the years of the Shoah. The American Jewish Congress and American Jewish Committee and Anti-Defamation League jockeyed against each other. Rabbi Stephen Wise induced President Franklin Roosevelt to ignore the March of the Rabbis when more than 400 Orthodox Rabbis from throughout America marched to the White House in 1943, seeking an audience to discuss rescue. In their volume “A Race Against Death,” Professors David Wyman and Rafael Medoff tell the sordid details of American Jewish organizational efforts to detour the Bergson Group in its efforts to press Washington to save Jewish lives in Holocaust Europe.

Always the infighting, the smallness and pettiness, even at life-and-death times of Pikuach Nefesh. So sad.

From: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Date: September 19, 2008 3:21:34 PM EDT
To: "Conference of Presidents" <info@conferenceofpresidents.org>
Subject: Rally Update

September 19, 2008

We know that organizations are receiving many inquires and protests about the decision not to have any political personalities at the rally. This was not a decision of the Conference of Presidents. We will have the opportunity to explain the full process once the event is behind us. Our partner agencies did not feel that they could continue to participate given legal opinions regarding their tax-exempt status and other factors. The choice was either to cancel or remove all the political speakers. Among the speakers on Monday will be Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel, Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik, Natan Sharansky, former Canadian Minister of Justice Irwin Cotler and many top national figures.

We hope that the focus of the rally can now be back on Iran and that everyone who worked to have the maximum turn-out to urge their constituencies to come to protest Ahmadinjad’s threats to “wipe Israel off the map.”

Harold Tanner, Acting Chairman
Malcolm Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
633 Third Avenue, 21st Floor,
New York, NY 10017Tel. 212-318-6111 /
Fax 212-644-4135
Email: info@conferenceofpresidents.org
http://www.conferenceofpresidents.org/

On the Ethic and Morality of Eating and Experimenting on Animals

2008-07-15T10:09:00.000-07:00

On pure business ethics, I once published this commentary: http://www.jewishjournal.com/articles/item/the_price_of_freedom_20010202/ I have published others like it, too. Thus, on Torah ethics, we are commanded to be honest, to be decent, to be square with our measures and scales.

We also are encouraged to do acts of kindness, the good deeds that are called “chesed,” acts like visiting the sick, housing the wayfarer, helping the bride to marry, attending to the needs of the deceased. The Torah even builds in forms of charity – leaving the corner of my field untilled, leaving behind the sheaves I drop when I gather in the field – so that the poor can gather. I am supposed to lend to the needy without interest. I am not supposed to stand on my brother’s blood.

But I am not obligated, nor am I expected, to be self-sacrificing as a raison d’être or philosophy of life. When we are called for judgment, not only will we be asked whether we conducted our financial affairs honestly and whether we made time to study Torah – but we also will be challenged as to whether we sufficiently enjoyed G-d’s world and whether we participated sufficiently in all there is to enjoy. Sure, we are not supposed to enjoy pork or meat-and-milk together. But G-d gave us fruit to enjoy and vegetables – and meat. To go through life without wine is sinful, and the Nazirite who takes upon himself such abstinence needs to bring a sin-offering for the sin of having failed to enjoy that which G-d permitted us in His world.

G-d permitted us to eat animals. After the Noah Flood, He determined that this was a concession to human needs. He established parameters – kosher slaughter, for example – but He permitted us to eat animals, to have complete dominion over them. They exist for our benefit, for our comfort – to be friends and pets, but also to carry loads as beasts of burden, to provide transportation, to be our clothing. We may not wear leather footwear on Yom Kippur, which implies that leather is appropriate for footwear throughout the year.

He created some animals very much like humans. For secularists, they see in that parallel an argument for evolution, that we evolved from monkeys. That is the ideology that allows Hitler to justify mass murders – “extermination” – of “races” that do not meet his Aryan definition of “fully evolved” . . . and it justifies Mengele experimenting on humans as though they were rabbits or laboratory mice. But for believing Jews, G-d created certain animals with systems like our human systems – digestive systems, circulatory systems, excretory systems – so that, through them, we could indeed experiment and learn more about the functioning of the human body, ultimately to improve and even save lives.

We are bidden not to torture animals. When plowing the field with oxen, we may not muzzle them; it is torturous for them to be denied the chance to nibble on what they plow. We must feed our pets before we sit to eat. One of the seven cardinal “Noahide laws” that applies even to non-Jews is the ban on eating the limb of a living animal. But that’s where it stops. If shechitah is humane slaughter, it remains slaughter for the purpose of killing animals to provide a pleasure and enjoyment for humans. Contrary to one slogan, animals are not people, too. They are animals. And a Torah Jewish life is not about asceticism but about enjoyment. One can enjoy life while doing acts of kindness for others, and one can do acts of kindness without missing out on life. The two are not exclusive, and Judaism advocates a golden mean.

Agriprocessors Now Doing What They Need to Do

2008-06-16T20:42:00.000-07:00

A prominent public-relations personality in the national marketing of kosher foods recently published an article lambasting students, mostly in the New York area, who urged a boycott of the Postville company at the center of the recent Postville scandal. He called them a bunch of "leftists" reflecting a "lynch mob mentality."

Although that initiative a few weeks ago by those students at a rabbinical seminary in New York to boycott Agriprocessors was misplaced and premature at its time, those students who circulated the boycott call were motivated by their ethical sense of right and wrong. Theirs was not a call motivated by their being “leftists.” Rather, students act more quickly and intensely than do people who are older and who need to balance various personal and institutional considerations and interests. A centrist also could have joined their boycott call. I am a Centrist, a RIETS musmakh – and I came pretty close to going their route. Nor is the students’ institutional affiliation central to their boycott call, and I was deeply offended that the author of the article chose to level ad hominem attacks against the boycotters – instead of pointing a shining light to help the Postville slaughterhouse see how better to rebuild public trust.

The “road back” for Agriprocessors to win public support and to persuade consumers not to boycott them is by assuring the public that the company has taken and continues taking important steps to prevent recurrences of the things that have happened. Don't attack the boycotters. Rather, bolster public trust in corporate compliance. Indeed, since the scandal, Agriprocessors has been doing lots of right stuff, even if long overdue. For example, it was compelling that the company terminated its in-family CEO and has launched a significant search for a new CEO outside the family. It is particularly compelling that the company recently has retained a significant former federal prosecutor, Jim Martin, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to deal with compliance issues. Martin was a federal prosecutor for 21 years, apparently was top of his class at University of Michigan Law School, and was a tough-as-nails USA investigating and prosecuting corporate white-collar crime in the Midwest. He went after Chrysler, prosecuted a CEO at Blue Cross Blue Shield, and basically is as solid a person as you could find to be chief compliance officer for a corporation. Now that is impressive. That builds public trust.

The Postville issues are complex, and I summarize many of them in my blog on the matter. http://ravfischer.blogspot.com/2008/05/post-about-postville.html But don’t sneer at the boycotters as “leftists” and a “lynch mob.” Such ad hominem name-calling in that context is shameful.

Ezras Torah Luach, Yom Yerushalayim, and Centrist Orthodoxy

2008-06-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

It is fascinating that, 41 years after the liberation and reunification of Jersualem, and 60 years after the creation of the State of Israel, the Ezras Torah luach still does not list either day. It lists Yom Kippur Koton. It lists Pesach Sheini. It lists Taanis B’hab. But Jews need to e-mail each other to determine and confirm the days for Yom Ha’Atzma’ut and Yom Yerushalayim. Yes, the days float because of Shabbat concerns and the desire to avoid public celebrations that can threaten her sanctity. Well, the Ezras Torah calendar advises when the Fast of Tisha B’Av floats into Motz’ei Shabbat or when Bedikat Chametz and Biur Chametz floats because of Shabbat. But, to get the date of Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim, there is no point looking in the Ezras Torah luach. It ain’t listed. Period.

This meaningfully points to why the Center Ground of Torah-Observant Judaism is a most precious, yet most demanding, theological ground to stand and hold. There is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.

It is understandable that, for one halakhic reason or another, one or another hashkafah-group may choose to daven on Yom Ha’Atzma’ut or Yom Yerushalayim as though it were a regular day in the calendar. Fine. But not to even note the day’s existence in the definitive halakhic calendar of the year, used by Shuls and Gabbaim throughout the world? Not to even note that it exists?

No, there is nothing sacrosanct about being tugged excessively to the Right either.

A Way to Moderate That Chicago Church of Hate

2008-06-02T09:57:00.000-07:00

It occurs to me, with Barack Obama now quitting the Chicago Church of Hate -- Trinity United -- after the latest controversy, that the Church's hate agenda can be modified. All we have to do is to encourage each of the church's members to run for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. That brings a public spotlight on why such a person would belong to a Church of hate. In turn, that spotlight forces a person who wants to be thought of as a decent human being to quit the church. If we can encourage several hundred of those church members to seek high office, in time enough of them will be embarrassed into resigning, as Obama finally has done. And that will gently moderate the tone of hate.

Obama's "Wonderful Young Pastor" Conducting a Sabbath Service

2008-06-02T09:51:00.000-07:00

Maybe Not an Obama Nation -- But an Abomination: Obama's "Wonderful Young Pastor"

As you know, one of the Presidential candidates is a member of Trinity United Church in Chicago. After the Reverend Jeremiah Wright recently retired from the pulpit and into his multi-million-dollar mansion, paid for by the parishioners whom he exhorted to reject middle-class values, a new minister was named. Barack Obama has praised The Rev. Otis Moss, the new spiritual leader of the church where Obama is a member, as “a wonderful young pastor.”

I have never attended a church service. I just know what goes on in shuls. But this Youtube video of what the Reverend Otis Moss brought into his church on a recent Sunday is absolutely shocking to those of us who associate prayer services and worship with something very different. The video runs three minutes, and it is instructive beyond words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H11x6bMu4Y

Postville, Kosher Meat, Rubashkin, Ethics Scandal

2008-06-02T09:37:00.000-07:00

Clearly, the allegations against the slaughterhouse may be false. It may be that undocumented workers were working at Postville, but that they deceived Postville management, inducing them to believe that their working papers were in order. Employers in Iowa cannot be expected to suspect every Latino and Latina who arrives in Postville, seeking employment. It would be understandable that legal immigrants from depressed societies would flock to a large plant that offers labor opportuntities, albeit at lower pay than skilled professional work.

Similarly, it may well be that the undocumented workers, and other low-paid workers, now are fabricating stories of workplace abuse and even sexual harassment for any of a number of reasons: (i) thinking that such claims will shift the focus of law enforcement away from them and onto Postville's management and rabbis; (ii) thinking that, if they are going under, they may as well take their employers with them; and (iii) perhaps even being motivated by union activists, immigration groups, and others -- including activists within the legal community --to fabricate accounts that could lay a foundation for class-action lawsuits.

So I am not yet prepared to believe unequivocally anything being said, dissseminated, or otherwise spread and published within the media, including the JTA daily news reports.

But there is no question that this thing is a massive Chilul Hashem. By this weekend, Jewish weekly newspapers will be having a field day, lambasting "the Orthodox," using the news to revisit the issue of the filmed slaughter that troubled those who viewed it previously. Already, there are those using this scandal to imply that it is they who are the more noble guardians of kashrut and Judaism by suggesting that, unlike "the Orthodox," they would deem Jewish ethics an essential part of any certification.

Like we don't?

Even as the Gerut Crisis emerged unexpectedly in Israel and compelled an organized response, so does the Postville matter call us to address the matters being disseminated and to set forth that, although the early reports and press conferences may prove absolutely and utterly unfounded, there is an halakhic imperative to be ethical in all business matters.

Now, let us be fair and understand the dilemma faced by kosher certifiers at any meat plant, whether at Rubashkin or anywhere else. In a way, it goes back to the politics of the 1970s when people asked how anyone could certify the kashrut of Pepsi products when the company was doing business with the Arabs and the Soviets but not with Israel. Kashrut certification should almost-always be separate from politics. And, just as the USDA has a limited mandate -- to inspect food and not to adjudge working conditions and workplace issues -- it would be quite a thing to have kashrut certifiers take on themselves the responsibilities of OSHA, the EPA, the EEOC, the INS, and all those other acronyms.

A rabbinically trained mashgiach is trained particularly in the laws of Yoreh De'ah, one of the four compendia of the Shulkhan Arukh, the Code of Jewish Law. Those laws are complex and esoteric. I know because, as a Rav with Orthodox s'mikha, I had to pass a whole series of exams on aspects of Yoreh De'ah. We learned Yoreh De'ah intensely for a year, and we still did not learn everything that a trained mashgiach certifier at a slaughterhouse must know.

It would be profoundly unfair to expect such a person to be expert also in determining whether immigration documentation is authetic or forged, to adjudge whether workplace conditions comply with OSHA rules, etc. Certainly, no one expects such broad knowledge among USDA inspectors. Moreover, if the rabbinate ever were to assume the duty to inspect worker documentation, that assumption of responsibility would open the floodgates of litigation liability. So let's be fair.

That said, this scandal looms as such a mammoth Chilul Hashem – just wait till this weekend’s secular Jewish weeklies arrive – we have to ask, good and hard – when there looms a Chilul Hashem on so mammoth a proportion as looms at Postville – whether we ought to have a mechanism in place to affirm and explain the Torah community’s position on business ethics.

On the one hand, we know our balabatim (laity) are, for the most part, as honest or more honest than the norm. As a purely impressionistic observation, the paucity of kosher meals ordered by Jewish prisoners in the federal incarceration system reflects that we make up far fewer crooks than our numbers in the population might otherwise anticipate. Few of us know any real crooks among our balabatim, and those who are crooks are profoundly outlier.

Yet, the stereotypes pervade. The image of a Chasidic community in upstate New York that bullet-voted for a particular United States Senate candidate after her husband, who did not pardon Pollard, extended quasi-pardons to crooked members of that Chasidic community. The gentleman who was photographed wearing his black fedora as he alighted the federal courthouse steps in Washington, D.C., in the center of the lobbying scandal two years ago. The recent money-laundering, tax-evasion scandal involving certain Chasidim on the East Coast and certain members of the Orthodox Union leadership on the West Coast. And now Postville.

Our position on ethics – a position we all intuitively know like “aleph-beis” – should be made clear to a Jewish public that whispers. For example, my role model on this issue (as on so many other issues) is Rav Steven Weil of Beverly Hills. When a financial-ethics scandal hit in Southern California, including a prominent member of his shul, Rav Weil spoke so strongly and firmly from his pulpit that the waves reverberated down to Orange County. (Well, at least I heard about it in Irvine.)

It is important to do hasbarah on the issue of Jewish ethics. And rabbonim (Orthodox rabbis) must be fearless to lead the way. We should speak out on the ethics issues arising from Postville, fully cognizant that for all we know the Rubashkins may have done absolutely nothing wrong. I re-emphasize: it may well emerge that the Rubashkins did absolutely nothing wrong. They may have been deceived by people who traffic in undocumented workers, forging papers to present to unsuspecting employers. I absolutely scoff at the notion that there was a methamphetamine lab on the premises with their scienter. That is so bogus.

Yet we must speak out on the imperative of Jewish ethics. We should seek a mechanism for explaining to the public why mashgichim cannot check immigration documentation the way they check lungs. And we should explain that “Orthodox” Jewish behavior assumes, as a foundational principle, ethical business behavior.

These scandals raise questions in the minds of non-Jews because, as history has unfolded, that is the stereotype that we Jews have the "merit" to shoulder unfairly. Just as Italians unfairly are associated in the public mind with stereotypers of organized crime, just as Irish people unfairly are stereotyped with imbibing, and just as Polish people unfairly are stereotyped with jokes about being less smart. These are terribly unfair stereotypes. Not only unfair -- but ridiculously wrong-headed. Rudy Giuliani is Italian and rose as a crime fighter. Justice Antonin Scalia is tough-headed on crime. Similarly, Poles include world leading thinkers and just regular intelligent and even brilliant people, ranging from a former pope to Zbigniew Brzezinski to my morning radio fix, Laura Ingraham. Menachem Begin grew up in Poland. So did two of my four grandparents.

Stereotypes are tough. As for the stereotype that we bear, we are perceived as being very smart but also very cheap and so unethical that we will do anything, no matter how unethical, to make an extra penny. (And what a false stereotype it is! Only Jews want to save money? Like they never have a department store sale in Montana or Idaho?) And, as far as Wall Street crimes go, our boys did not run Enron.

Yet, this is life. If the immigration raid takes place at a shoe manufacturing plant owned by Jews, it is a shame, but it is not as stereotypically horrible as watching the federal government set up special holding cells for people being dragged from a kosher slaughter plant overseen by Chassidim. On the one hand, there is a glorious reward for wearing a yarmulka and tzitzit. On the other hand, the federal raid makes quite a story on page one of the New York Times (for those who still buy the paper).

Even for a guy like me who does not care a whit about what non-Jews think about me as a Jew -- c'mon, do non-Jews worry every day about what "the Jews" will think of their bad apples? -- it is a shonda. Clearly something has been terribly wrong in Postville. For goodness sakes, the owner just fired his son, who was the CEO, and now is seeking a new CEO.

So let us not remain silent. Let us explain that a mashgiach, like the USDA, certifies the meat, not the documentation of workers. Let us explain that Americans go to supermarkets and Home Depot stores, and we receive help from workers whose accents suggest they were not born here. Yes, theoretically, they may be undocumented. But we do not ask questions. No one checks. We assume that the people in Human Resources ("HR") have checked the papers. Similarly, we assume that the Postville slaughterhouse has someone in HR who checks the documents. Let us explain that a mashgiach who certifies kosher slaughter has no right and no business encroaching on HR.

This is what we must explain to the public. In the federal government, one agency checks workplace safety – OSHA. Another checks compliance with discrimination – EEOC. Another checks compliance with environmental concerns – EPA. It is not fair to mashgichim, who have their hands full protecting our access to kosher-slaughtered and -checked meat, to expect them to do so much else. Even among the secular government agencies, the officials who check the meat – USDA – do not have to check compliance with building codes, documentation of workers, etc.

We must explain that a large corporation typically has a Human Resources department. “H.R.” is a common reference in corporate parlance. HR assigns workers, checks documentation, gathers W2 forms, oversees whatever benefits, if any, are paid, assures compliance with minimum wage laws, settles disputes among workers, makes sure that all those annoying posters that no one ever reads are posted in the proper font and typeface, advises on terminations, etc. Therefore, when a federal INS raid reveals that 300-plus employees apparently have gotten jobs despite false, forged documentation, there is something scandalously wrong at HR. First and foremost, the HR director has much to answer.

When a markedly Jewish business is conducted as a model of decency, we all stand prouder, as we did when Aaron Feuerstein, the employer in New England, took care of and continued paying his idled employees while he was rebuilding his burned down factory. Yeshiva University proudly advertised his story. We were so proud. We were a light unto the nations.

And an important lesson may be derived for the future: It may be worthwhile for kashrut-certifying agencies in the future to modify their business contracts with food producers, instituting a policy that, while rabbonim and mashgichim do not and will not check businesses for their adherence to ethics, such businesses will need to know – as part of their respective kashrut contracts – that any convictions for ethical violations that transcend a certain rubicon will result in immediate withdrawal of the kashrut certification. Just as a business that is open on Shabbat scares away the vast majority of kashrut certifiers, so a business that is exposed as run unethically should be denied kashrut certification.

Pastor John Hagee: Thank You from a Rabbi

2008-06-02T09:29:00.000-07:00

A media firestorm erupted last week against Pastor John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, Texas.

In the aftermath of revelations regarding Barack Obama’s controversial intimate relationship of twenty years with The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the media have raised questions about John McCain’s endorsement by Pastor Hagee. The media critically have reported that Pastor Hagee calls the Catholic Church a “whore” and that Pastor Hagee has justified Hitler’s Holocaust as G-d’s plan for returning the Jews to Israel. Seeking to avoid further controversy, Sen. McCain has separated himself from Pastor Hagee, and the pastor has withdrawn his endorsement to quiet the media frenzy.

In a similar vein, the media are reporting that Pastor Rod Parsley, a televangelist based in Columbus, Ohio, who also had endorsed McCain, has spoken against the Moslem religion. To avoid the media firestorm generated by an endorsement from a Protestant theologian who rejects Islam, Sen. McCain has stepped away from Pastor Parsley’s endorsement.

I have considered what Pastor Hagee has written and said. He theologically disagrees with the Catholic Church. Well, of course he does. He holds different set of beliefs. But he has never used the terminology ascribed to him by the media in the way that the media suggest. And I am buttressed in my certainty that the media have it wrong because I know Pastor Hagee's support for Israel and for the Jewish People -- and they have it so wrong on that one, too.

I have written Pastor Hagee today a brief e-mailed communication. I share with you my brief note, which appears below my signature block. I also share with you Pastor Hagee’s statement (both in his words and in his voice) – and his Church’s response – to Pastor Hagee’s public statement in response to the media frenzy. You can read and hear it at: http://www.jhm.org/ME2/Sites/dirmod.asp?sid=&type=gen&mod=Core+Pages&gid=47BEB58F9EF24337835DB74C0E0760D9&SiteID=4AC79C9B25B24DF3AF21C42311BE3921

Pastor Hagee’s message runs maybe four minutes, and I am struck particularly by the Church congregation’s impromptu response to one particular statement towards the end of his message. These are Christians in San Antonio, Texas.

Rabbi Dov Fischer
Rav, Young Israel of Orange County
Irvine, CA 92612
http://www.ravfischer.com/
ravfischer@sbcglobal.net

Dear Christians United for Israel:

I am a Jew. I am not only a Jew but a
Rabbi. I am not only a Rabbi but an Orthodox Rabbi. My rabbinical credentials
are solid, and I am established within my professional bodies, including the
Rabbinical Council of America, the Rabbinical Council of California, and the
Board of Rabbis of Orange County, California. Of course, because those bodies
include rabbis of widely divergent views on virtually all issues, I write only
for myself.

I write to express my strongest support for Pastor Hagee
during this time of pain for him, as he is criticized by a Left-inspired
communications media desperately struggling to sanitize the Obama-Wright
relationship. I understand what Pastor Hagee has said about the Holocaust and
the return of Jews to the Holy Land. I have quite different a theological "take"
on the matter, but Pastor Hagee's view actually is compatible with certain
Jewish rabbinical scholars and Torah authorities, including the author of Em
Ha-Banim S'meichah.

I understand Pastor Hagee's words. I understand
the sentiment and motivation behind his words. And I will have him in my prayers
this weekend as he endures the travails and suffering that come with an
hypocritical Left-induced media that cannot individuate between Pastor Hagee, a
loving man of G-d who speaks the truth of scriptures as he believes them, and
The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a vicious and angry hate-monger whose message of
hate against America, against Israel, and against the Jewish People is offset
only by the kind words he speaks for Louis Farrakhan and those who would damn
the land that I love.

Rabbi Dov Fischer

Clergy Abuse: The Other Kind

2008-06-02T09:23:00.000-07:00

The Other Kind of Clergy Abuse:
When Congregants with Social Pathologies Abuse Their Clergy

During my fifteen years in the practicing rabbinate and ten years as a practicing attorney, I have encountered – both first-hand and, as a result of my open discussion of those experiences, through the parallel and often horrifying experiences that many colleagues and even clients have shared with me – a whispered subject that shames American Jewish life: Clergy Abuse. In its Jewish dimension, I use the term “Clergy Abuse” to describe the shameful, disgraceful, and painful efforts by certain laity to destroy their clergy: their rabbis, their cantors, and others among their klei kodesh.

These abusive and destructive efforts are advanced through many forms and vehicles, primarily including disseminating libel and slander, character assassination, and building of alliances through social groupings, carpools, and even the weekly coffee klatch, bowling match, or poker game. Thus, if one is a strong enough personality and imposes enough intensity on his or her social grouping, a dominating environment can influence others in the social subgroup to join along, if only for the social equanimity of the group and its dynamics. Soon, people with children the same age and attending the same school, or simply carpooling together, join the dynamic.

The phenomenon of Clergy Abuse, as directed against rabbis, is discussed with refreshing honesty and pinpoint accuracy in Chapter 22 of Rabbi Berel Wein’s latest volume, Tending the Vineyard (N.Y.: Shaar Press, 2007). Nor is this tragic and disgusting phenomenon unique to Jews. See, e.g., G. Lloyd Rediger, Clergy Killers: Guidance for Pastors and Congregations Under Attack (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997); Kenneth C. Haugk, Antagonists in the Church: How to Identify and Deal with Destructive Conflict (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House, 1988).

In classic literature, the stage, and screen, one is reminded of the tragic figures of Sir Thomas More (“A Man for All Seasons”) and St. Thomas Beckett, notwithstanding certain historical inaccuracies in the respective representations. Even outside theology, the phenomenon parallels social tragedies reflected by the dynamics so well captured in Henrik Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People,” in which Dr. Thomas Stockmann finds himself targeted for destruction.

Through the many stories I have heard from colleagues – ranging from Reform, Reconstructionist, and Conservative rabbis to Orthodox rabbonim – and transcending Judaism to include Catholic priests, Christian pastors, and Protestant ministers -- I have come to wonder whether our American Jewish secular organizations were similarly plagued by destructive internal politics of this nature during the Holocaust years. People on boards of directors -- driven by their own personal needs for recognition by the Group, their inadequacies or their needs to manipulate others like marionettes, their needs to draw attention to themselves or to demonstrate, for their spouses or their children, their supposed importance -- with personal social pathologies so engrossing that they would have distracted their organizations from focusing full 100% attention on saving Jews on the bring of Holocaust in Europe.

And, a bit to my shock (and a bit not), my research reflects that, indeed, the internal politics of destruction existed in the 1940s and deterred American Jewish organizations from effecting rescue at maximum force and full throttle – at a time when 12,000 Jews went to the ovens in East Europe every day.

To this day, every time I meet a rav who now is a full-time stock broker, a full-time realtor, an entrepreneur with a storefront business or an export-import firm (not to mention a lawyer, an accountant, or even a therapist) -- and I then ask why the rav left the rabbinate --the answer always is the same. He did not leave to make more money, although he has found he makes more money. He did not lose interest in his desire to serve G-d.

Rather, in case after case, I have learned that he is but one more Jew recovering from Clergy Abuse.

Israel's Usual Gang of Idiots: Withdraw from Reality

2008-06-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

February 12, 2008 11:50 a.m.
The Usual Gang of Idiots . . . We Told You So

Amid condemnation throughout the world against Israel unfairly cutting off utility services to Gaza, as Israel has done from time to time in its pathetically inadequate response to the incessant Hamas rocketing of Sderot, it is forgotten that the rocketing continues unabated. Israel gave up Gaza unilaterally, and Israel’s leaders congratulated themselves on the brilliance of their step toward peace. “What a concept!” they arrogantly boasted. “We just got up and left. And now we have no more problems from Gaza.”

Yes. And Hamas soon took Gaza from Abbas, almost as methodically and predictably as a fullback taking a hand-off from a quarterback in a straight draw play. For those who have been keeping score, the reign of terror never has rained more torrentially. The same cast of characters – when I was younger, Mad Magazine used to refer to its crew as the “usual gang of idiots,” but they knew what they were doing – left Southern Lebanon unilaterally with no safeguards to prevent Nasrallah from converting the area into a Hezbollah rocket garden. And the same characters, the usual gang of idiots, now pursue their lame “two-state solution” for Judea-Samaria as the murderous Abbas and his surrogate terrorist con men take advantage of George Bush’s desperate need to get the news focus away from the subprime mortgage crisis, the looming recession, oil prices, and stalemates in Iraq -- while also manipulating Olmert’s desperate desire to keep people focused on anything other than Olmert and his own incompetence. (With all the official governmental investigations underway against Olmert, it is amazing that anyone can con him. It’s like the movie “The Sting,” where only the Paul Newman character can out-con Robert Shaw’s Doyle Lonigan.)

So, Olmert’s plan to slowly hand over parts of Judea and Samaria to Abbas – who inexorably will be overthrown by Hamas on the next set of downs – would condemn Jerusalem and Tel Aviv to the kind of incessant rocketing from the east that Haifa now faces when Nasrallah goes on frenzy up north, and that Sderot lives under every day. When Ehud Barak – Israel’s least effective Prime Minister ever – gave up South Lebanon unilaterally, he assured that he had brought peace. “What a concept! We just got up and left. No more problems.” When Sharon gave up Gaza unilaterally, he assured that he had brought peace. “What a concept! We just got up and left. No more problems.” Both foolishly said that, if the Arabs go into the evacuated areas and turn them into terror zones, Israel simply could and would march right back in and take the land back. Nice and simple. So, nothing to worry about. What a concept!

Turns out they can’t. Israel can’t just march right back in, nice and simple, and turn back the clock. They can’t even turn off the electric. If the Leftists have an organization still named “Peace Now,” our side ought to form an organization called “We Told You So.”

We told you so.

In the world press, when the dozens of rockets land each day in Sderot, the reports pooh-pooh the event. “Twenty rockets fell, but no one was injured.” Or – “Twenty rockets fell, but no one was killed. Only two injuries are reported.” Read below to understand what it means when “only two injuries are reported.”

From the Jerusalem Post of February 11, 2008, written by Judy Siegel-Itzkovich:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1202742131362&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FPrinter

Brothers wounded by Kassam undergo more operations
Osher Twito, the eight-year-old Sderot boy who was very seriously wounded in a Kassam rocket attack over the weekend, underwent a second operation on his remaining leg at Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer on Monday.

He remains intentionally anesthetized and respirated to minimize his pain.

His 19-year-old brother, Rami, was in good condition after he underwent a second operation on Monday as well. Although Rami was stable, Sheba officials said that both Osher and Rami would need to undergo more operations and rehabilitation to improve their functioning. The brothers were hurt when a Kassam rocket landed a few meters from where they were standing. They had gone out to buy a present for their father, whose birthday was on Monday.

On Sunday, Osher and Rami were transferred to Sheba on Sunday because Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, where they were first hospitalized, does not have the rehabilitation facilities that Osher requires.
Sheba doctors still couldn't say on Monday whether Osher's remaining leg would have to be amputated or not, as there is always the threat of infection and the main artery in the ankle was damaged.

Meanwhile, the brothers and their parents were visited at Sheba on Monday by the Shabu family from Kiryat Shmona. The Shabus' son had lost a leg in a rocket attack in the North, and they wanted to reassure the Twitos that rehabilitation was possible even after such a traumatic event.

The family also received visits from outgoing mayor of Sderot, Eli Moyal, and former defense minister Yitzhak Mordechai. On Sunday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited them at Sheba.

We're Right and The Whole World Is Wrong

2008-06-02T09:08:00.000-07:00

We're Right, the Whole World's Wrong
From The Forward (April 19, 2002)

"The whole world is demanding that Israel withdraw. I don't think the whole world, including the friends of the Israeli people and government, can be wrong."
— Kofi Annan, United Nations Secretary General, speaking in Madrid, Spain
At this moment in time, many Jews who love and support Israel hear the soft voice within, asking the question to which Kofi Annan recently alluded in Madrid: Can we alone be right, while the whole world around is wrong?

The evidence that we are standing on the other side of the "whole world" is manifest. The Arab League is united in condemnation, and Egyptian students march for an end to their country's diplomatic relations with Israel that were engraved at Camp David. The United Nations Security Council roundly condemns Israel several times in mere weeks, and its human rights commission again takes up the Durban chant against Zionism that was silenced by September 11. The European Union is rife with talk of boycotting the Jewish state. Synagogue attacks in France give vent to the feeling expressed with gentility by the French diplomat who termed Israel "that sh—-y little state." All three major political parties in Germany vie to lead their nation in condemning Israel. England accuses Israel of using British-made tanks illegally. Mobs attack Jews from Ukraine to Belgium to the Netherlands. The pope condemns Israel for its military presence outside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, while armed Arab terrorists repose inside, holding monks and nuns as icons for terror.

We Jews are bemused. Are we the only ones who see the unrelenting suicide bombings of women and children at pizza stores, of teenagers at a discotheque, of families at a Seder celebration?

After 19 months of slaughter at open-air fruit markets and bus stations and bat mitzvah parties, deadly shootings of motorists, stabbings of school children in caves, has no one seen this but us?
Do we alone notice that the attacks target Jewish and Arab civilians alike throughout pre-June 1967 Israel, from Haifa to Hadera, West Jerusalem to Beersheba?

The whole world demands Israel take risks for peace with Yasser Arafat — again. Are we the only ones who perceive that, after he was conferred a Nobel peace prize and given authority to create a new polity and a new atmosphere for coexistence, he desecrated the next eight years by wielding television to inculcate grotesque images of murder, radio to disseminate a culture of hate, schools and summer camps to train young people to murder the Jews they were being taught to hate? Can no one but us decipher the receipts he signed, authorizing funds to purchase weapons of terror?

The whole world endorses President Bush's call for war against terrorists and those who harbor them. The United States invades Afghanistan to uproot the infrastructure of terror and hunkers down there for seven months, preparing to extend the incursion into Pakistan.
Aerial bombs strafe cities. Thousands of civilian non-combatants are believed dead. The Taliban government crumbles, but the incursion continues. We must find Osama bin Laden. We must find Mullah Omar. We must reach Daniel Pearl's killers. And we yet shall begin the mother of all incursions into Iraq.

We Jews see this. We also see the same "whole world" roundly condemn Israel for its incursion into a jungle of terror. Israel will not drop incendiary payloads from the air on civilians, so Israeli reservists, husbands and fathers, die in house-to-house fighting in Jenin, where the terrorists booby-trap buildings, station snipers and outfit children as human bombs.
Israel asks that Arafat turn over the assassins of an Israeli cabinet minister and the mastermind of the Karine-A affair that tried to smuggle 50 tons of explosives to his minions. But the whole world wants Israel instead to pull back while the bombers of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade and the Tanzim play for time. Doesn't the whole world see what we see? Can we alone be right?

Well, yes. If we Jews are anything, we are a people of history. From our first patriarch to Israel's precision-targeted destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, which laid the foundation for a successful Operation Desert Storm and the rescue of Kuwait, our history provides the strength to know that we can be right and the whole world wrong.

We have confronted the question many times. The whole world was polytheistic, and we alone preached belief in one God. We preached a Day of Rest, and the whole ancient world mocked us as lazy people. We were right, and the whole world was wrong. They said we crucified a Jew — as if the Romans would have allowed any of its subjects to do such a thing, as if Jews ever had such a punishment in our code — and we insisted such a thing was beyond impossible. We were right, and the whole world was wrong. In the Middle Ages, the whole world said that we use children's blood to make matzo; we denied it. They said that we poisoned the wells of Europe, and we denied it. We were right, and the whole world was wrong. The Crusades. The blood libels and Talmud burnings in England and France, leading those nations to expel Jews for centuries. The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisition. The ghettoes and the Mortara case in Italy. Dreyfus in France. Beilis in Russia and a century's persecution of Soviet Jewry. The Holocaust. Kurt Waldheim in Austria. Each time, Europe stood by silently — or actively participated in murdering us — and we alone were right, and the whole world was wrong.

Today, once again, we alone are right and the whole world is wrong. The Arabs, the Russians, the Africans, the Vatican proffer their aggregated insights into and accumulated knowledge of the ethics of massacre. And the Europeans. Although we appreciate a half-century of West European democracy more than we appreciated the prior millennia of European brutality, we recognize who they are, what they have done — and what's what.

We know, if they don't, that they need Arab oil more than they need Jewish philosophy and creativity. We remember that the food they eat is grown from soil fertilized by 2,000 years of Jewish blood they have sprinkled onto it. Atavistic Jew-hatred lingers in the air into which the ashes rose from the crematoria.

Finally, the best of Europe truly are wracked by the burdened conscience of what they, their parents and their bubbes and zeides did, or failed to do, in the 1940s. So, instead of confronting a shameful past that belies their self-vaunted Romantic civilization, they seek now to assuage their consciences with the mendacity that Israel 2002 is no different from Europe 1942.

Yes, once again, we are right and the whole world is wrong. It doesn't change a thing, but after 25 centuries it's nice to know.

Rabbi Dov Fischer, an attorney, is a board member of the Los Angeles Jewish Federation-Council's Jewish Community Relations Committee and national vice president of the Zionist Organization of America. He is the author of "General Sharon's War Against Time Magazine."