Sen. Joseph Lieberman participates in the Race for the Cure event in Jerusalem in 2010 with his wife. Hadassah, left, and Komen founder Nancy Brinker. (Photo U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv)

February 3, 2012, Washington, DC — The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) today commended the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® foundation for reversing its decision to defund cancer screenings performed by Planned Parenthood. NCJW CEO Nancy K. Kaufman released the following statement:
“NCJW was deeply disappointed when the Susan G. Komen for the Cure® foundation first announced it would no longer fund breast cancer prevention services provided by Planned Parenthood clinics. Today, we applaud the foundation for reversing that decision.
“Thousands of NCJW members and supporters spoke out against Komen’s initial decision, dismayed that a women’s health organization would put politics ahead of women’s health. We are pleased that the Komen foundation responded to the public outcry by reconsidering their decision and reaffirming their commitment to promoting health and wellness for all women.
“For years, NCJW advocates from across the United States have helped initiate and coordinate Komen Races for the Cure. Likewise, our members and supporters have a long history of partnership with Planned Parenthood. Both relationships are essential to our efforts to improve women’s access to health care, and Komen’s decision to retain its association with Planned Parenthood ensures that those partnerships can carry on and that women will continue to get needed cancer screenings and referral services from a trusted health care provider.”

Amendolara Mayor Salvatore Antonio Ciminelli, left, standing next to JTA's Ruth Ellen Gruber, after presenting award certificates to some of the 100 schoolchildren who attended a Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony in the town hall, Jan. 27, 2012. The children received awards for art or writing projects about the Shoah. (Photo courtesy Amendolara Town Hall)

AMENDOLARA, Italy (JTA) — It was International Holocaust Memorial Day, and when I told my audience that I was a Jew, they burst into applause.

I was speaking at the City Hall in this ancient seacoast town in Calabria, deep in southern Italy on the instep of the Italian boot. My audience consisted of some 100 schoolchildren aged 10-13, along with their teachers, city officials and a few parents.

Italy marks Holocaust Memorial Day on Jan. 27 with an array of commemorative and educational initiatives, and schools all over the country organize special lessons, study units, projects and other programs on the Holocaust.

This year I was invited to Amendolara and Oriolo, another small Calabrian town perched high amid rugged hills, to speak to elementary- and middle-school students as part of municipal events.

In Amendolara and Oriolo, my presentations came at the end of a series of other speeches by local officials and educators. The mayors of both towns denounced the dangers of Holocaust denial.

“Democratic western countries must not forget that these democracies were built on the ashes of Auschwitz,” said Amendolara Mayor Antonello Ciminelli. “We must fight Holocaust denial; denying the Holocaust can lead to denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel.”

In Amendolara, the program included a film about the drawings made by children interned in the Terezin ghetto camp near Prague. In Oriolo, a young local woman who had written a novella set during the Holocaust talked to the kids about the book.

For my turn to speak, I wasn’t quite sure what to say. The kids had begun to fidget as the ceremony wore on, and I was concerned about keeping their attention.

So I decided to change gears. I wasn’t going to talk about the Holocaust per se, I told them. They had been studying that and were aware, I think, of the horror.

What they didn’t know anything about was Jews – Jews as living people, and not abstract Holocaust victims in striped pajamas or faceless components of the 6 million.

So, I told them, “I’m a Jew, living and kicking” — and that’s when they applauded.

In a manner of speaking, my message was my very presence.

We are normal people, I said. We come in all shapes and sizes; some of us are rich, some poor; some are smart, some dumb; some are religious and others, like me, are not.

I recited the Shehecheyanu blessing, telling them that I thought it appropriate since I felt so moved and privileged to be able to meet with them.

Then I showed them pictures of the impact of the Holocaust — color pictures, not black and white shots or grainy film. They were pictures that illustrated the work I have done over the years documenting the synagogues, cemeteries and other remains of prewar Jewish life and also chronicling the rebirth of Jewish life in post-Communist Eastern Europe.

There was no time to take questions after the event in Amendolara. But later, a woman told me that tears had come to her eyes when I said I was a Jew.

And a group of girls came up to talk.

“You’re the first Jew we ever met,” they told me.

What did they think of that? I wanted to know.

“You must have lived through a lot,” one said.

The kids had studied the Holocaust in class and, as part of their lessons, had created artworks and writing projects. Some of the pictures they drew were displayed on the walls: There were Stars of David and human faces penned in by barbed wire, prisoners in striped uniforms with the caption “so as not to forget,” images of death-camp barracks.

One picture, I noticed, quoted the lyrics of a famous song about Auschwitz written in the 1960s by the Italian singer-songwriter Francesco Guccini.

“I died when I was a child,” the song begins. “I died with a hundred others. Passed through a chimney, and now I’m in the wind …”

About 30,000 Jews live in Italy today, but none, as far as I can tell, lives in either Amendolara or Oriolo. Calabria was home to a flourishing Jewish community in the Middle Ages, but Jews were expelled from the region 500 years ago.

Ironically, the largest Jewish presence in the region came during World War II, when Italy’s fascist government held more than 3,800 Jews, most of them from other countries, in the Ferramonti internment camp near Cosenza. Schoolchildren often visit Ferramonti as part of Holocaust education programs.

That evening in Oriolo, the program went on longer than anticipated, but the kids were eager to stay on and ask questions afterward.

“Did you lose any family in the Holocaust?” asked a girl who looked to be about 10.

I explained that no, my mother’s parents both had been born in the United States and my father’s parents had emigrated from what is now Romania more than 100 years ago. My relatives in Romania were deported to a labor camp in Ukraine and, as far as I know, survived. I showed pictures of myself visiting the grave of my great-grandmother, who had died in Romania after the war.

Then one boy of about 11 asked a question that I couldn’t even begin to answer. It was the question underlying the entire evening and decades of history.

“What,” he asked, “did the Nazis have against Jews? What made them kill them like that?”

(Ruth Ellen Gruber’s books include “National Geographic Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe,” and “Virtually Jewish: Reinventing Jewish Culture in Europe.” She blogs on Jewish heritage issues at http://jewish-heritage-travel.blogspot.com.)

Nearly two months after their dispute made headlines, both parties have been left bloodied — and some in the pro-Israel community say they wish the issue had never played out in such a public way.

“We have been contacted by a couple of people” at CAP “who want to see some peace,” said Jason Isaacson, director of government and international affairs at the American Jewish Committee. “We don’t want a war with CAP, although that probably is the intention of some people.”

Today, CAP is noticeably more careful about how its affiliated Think Progress and Middle East Progress blogs treat the issue of Israel. Block, meanwhile, was ousted from the Truman National Security Project, a network of young Democrats with an interest in foreign policy, for what it described as “uncivil discourse.”

At issue in the controversy were posts on the Think Progress and Middle East Progress blogs that either criticized Israel and its American allies — sometimes in harsh terms — or questioned calls for a tougher line on Iran. In addition, there were personal tweets by a Middle East Progress blogger that used the words “Israel Firster” — a phrase that many in the Jewish community feel is anti-Semitic — to disparage some supporters of Israel.

Late last year, Block shopped to reporters with whom he had longstanding ties a file of what he portrayed as statements that he said showed CAP, as well as the liberal group Media Matters, using the “words of anti-Semites.” Politico was the first to bite, running a story Dec. 7 that said CAP and Media Matters were “challenging a bipartisan consensus on Israel and Palestine that has dominated American foreign policy for more than a decade.”

The story quickly garnered attention, and it proved to have legs. On Jan. 19, the Washington Post reported on the anger of Jewish groups over some of the Israel rhetoric employed by CAP bloggers.

CAP has responded throughout by emphatically denying charges that it is hostile to Israel and insisting that its bloggers’ writings do not necessarily reflect the organization’s position.

CAP emailed a statement to JTA noting the group’s “zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism and other forms of bias.

“The Center for American Progress is and always has been pro-Israel, committed to a peace process that produces a durable two-state solution negotiated by the parties, and it takes seriously the threat posed by Iran and its nuclear activities,” CAP said in its statement. “The overwhelming record from hundreds of our articles, posts, and policy papers demonstrates our support for the longstanding bipartisan consensus that the two-state solution is in the moral and national security interests of the United States.”

CAP officials, seeking to contain the controversy’s fallout, have instructed staffers and others close to the organization not to speak to the media.

But figures close to the think tank, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they perceive Block’s efforts as an attempt to keep views critical of Israel out of the discourse or challenge what they see as pieties about the dangers posed by Iran. They also acknowledged, however, that since the controversy broke, CAP has become more careful about moderating its writers’ language on the topic.

Officials at some pro-Israel groups expressed frustration with the public attack on CAP at a time that they were trying to address their differences with the group through quiet diplomacy. A number of Jewish organizations had been making representations to CAP before the Politico story was published.

“At the highest levels of AIPAC, there is a philosophy of never going to the media with policy disputes,” an AIPAC official said on condition of anonymity.

“We’re not happy this has taken the course it has,” the official added. “We would have preferred it was dealt with quietly.”

Block declined to respond to suggestions by some Jewish communal officials that the issue should have been handled more discreetly. But within minutes of Block being approached for comment, the same AIPAC official, spurred by Block, called JTA and said that he would prefer not having his quote used. But he agreed that since he had said it for the record, it was fair to publish.

The AIPAC official made clear that his organization remained frustrated with CAP. Top AIPAC officials would meet with top CAP officials, the official said, and these meetings would conclude with an agreement by CAP to monitor blog posts more closely. AIPAC recently took CAP officials on an Israel tour, the official noted.

Yet CAP and its Middle East shop in particular would consistently return to what AIPAC perceived as unfair depictions of the policies of Israel and its supporters.

The stakes are high because of CAP’s perceived closeness to the White House and its centrality in Washington’s Democratic policy community. In 2008, Time Magazine called it “the most influential independent organization in Obama’s nascent Washington.”

Block says that CAP has allowed its bloggers to peddle distortions and falsehoods that demonize the pro-Israel community.

“As long as CAP chooses to have people writing the organization’s day-to-day views on national security and Middle East issues who truck in language and theories more at home on White Power and anti-Jewish conspiracy websites than in the mainstream of the Democratic Party, CAP’s work will be judged accordingly and the organization will continue to see its credibility erode,” Block told JTA.

Block is not alone in his distaste for some of CAP’s rhetoric.

“There were certain things that CAP was responsible for putting in the public arena that were not fair to Israel’s strategic situation and people who are sympathetic to Israel’s situation,” the AJC’s Isaacson said.

Perhaps the most incendiary items were tweets by Think Progress staffer Zaid Jilani, who several times used the term “Israel Firster” on his private Twitter feed.

In the wake of the Politico article, three Jewish groups — the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Simon Wiesenthal Center — expressed alarm. The term, the ADL says, plays “into the old anti-Semitic notion that Jews are more loyal to some foreign entity than to their own country.”

CAP repudiated the term “Israel Firster,” and Jilani expunged from his Twitter feed the posts that used the term.

Sources close to CAP said Jilani, who is 23 and has since left CAP, used the term because it had the imprimatur of repeated use by M.J. Rosenberg, a one-time AIPAC staffer who long ago turned against the organization and now blogs for Media Matters, another target of Block’s ire. Rosenberg is a figure known in the left-leaning Middle East policy community as an analyst who can be incisive but who frequently veers into provocative rhetoric and name calling.

Rosenberg deferred comment on this matter, directing queries to Ari Rabin-Havt, Media Matters’ executive vice president. In an interview, Rabin-Havt said the terminology was beside the point.

“When we’re talking war and peace, the facts that tweets come up is symbolic of how the conversation has gone awry,” said Rabin-Havt, who said the survival of Israel was critical to him personally. “We should debate this. As Israel is one of our largest recipients of foreign aid, this is an American and Israeli issue.”

Yet it is the contours of that very debate that trouble pro-Israel groups. Abraham Foxman, the ADL’s national director, singled out an article by Eli Clifton, a Think Progress staffer, that seemed to suggest that AIPAC was driving the country toward war with Iran.

In an Aug. 10 post, Clifton described an AIPAC statement applauding a bipartisan Senate letter urging sanctions on Iran’s central bank as drawing “eerie parallels between the escalation of sanctions against Iran and the slow lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003.”

Foxman said it was legitimate “to say that there are those in the Jewish community who feel very strongly about confronting Iran. But when it’s linked to a conspiratorial view of the Iraq war, ‘It’s the Israel lobby, it’s the Jewish community,’ that parrots a line.”

Sources close to CAP say the organization recognizes how Clifton’s language may have been problematic, and that it would be more useful to describe groups like AIPAC as backing measures that could escalate into military conflict, as opposed to accusing AIPAC of seeking war.

AIPAC does not advocate war with Iran. In public and private forums, top AIPAC officials have made clear their fears of the consequences of military conflict.

In a later clarification appended to Clifton’s post, Think Progress said that “Given Iran’s horrible record on human rights abuses and outright hostile and anti-Semitic rhetoric towards Israel, an Iran with nuclear weapons is very concerning and we support responsible measures to reduce that threat.”

In a Dec. 7 email forwarding the Politico story about the controversy to reporters, Block pointed to examples of what he said were provocative writings from CAP. But he included blog posts suggesting that Iran might be further away from a nuclear weapon than is commonly believed and advocating deterrence as opposed to an escalating confrontation.

“CAP authors have long sought to both debunk and sneer at suggestions of Iranian nuclearization, right through this morning,” he said. “This flies in the face of overwhelming congressional and center-left conviction that Iran is nuclearizing and that a robust sanctions regime is necessary to counter their efforts.”

CAP’s position on Iran is that it backs multilateral sanctions but opposes attempts in Congress — and backed by some pro-Israel groups — to impose sanctions unilaterally. It is the lumping together of criticisms of policy positions with accusations of anti-Semitism that infuriates CAP supporters.

“It was clearly a smear campaign against people, not because they are anti-Semitic, but because he disagreed with them on policy,” said Dave Solimini, the Truman National Security Project’s spokesman.

Block, who is a partner in a Washington consulting firm and a senior fellow at the centrist Progressive Policy Institute, has said that he is not bothered by being ousted from the Truman Project.

He expresses pride in what he sees as his role in spurring CAP to change.

“I don’t think this is who CAP, its new leadership or its allies want the organization to be,” Block said.  “I hope we will see more meaningful corrective measures in the future.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, seen here addressing a regional economic summit in Tehran in May 2011, says he is "optimistic" that nuclear inspectors will not find anything amiss this week during their visit to the country. (Parmida Rahimi via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Israel, the United States and Iran have all gone deep into mixed-signals territory.

Conversations with Israeli officials, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, left one prominent journalist convinced that Israel will strike Iran by year’s end. Yet two weeks ago, Barak had said that any possible Israeli attack on Iran is “far off.”

Leon Panetta, the U.S. defense secretary, said in December that any military strike would only set Iran’s nuclear program back a couple years — a remark that some Israelis read as conveying a sense of resignation to the idea that if Iran really wants a nuclear weapon, eventually it will be able to get one. But in a television interview broadcast Sunday, he vowed that the U.S. would take “whatever steps are necessary” to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Meanwhile, Iran is responding to international sanctions with a mix of threats to shut down the Strait of Hormuz and efforts to placate Western concerns about its nuclear program by allowing in inspectors and calling for new talks.

Two questions remain the focus of considerable speculation: Will Israel strike Iran? And will the sanctions cause Iran to bend?

The first question was the subject of a much-discussed Sunday New York Times Magazine cover story by Ronen Bergman, one of Israel’s best-connected security journalists. It featured rare and extensive on-the-record interviews with top Israeli officials, most prominently Barak.

Recent moves by the Iranians have underscored the significance of the second question.

Last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that Iran was ready to sit down for talks to discuss its nuclear program. On Sunday, a team of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog, arrived in Tehran.

The team, according to the Associated Press, includes two weapons experts and will visit an Iranian nuclear facility near the religious city of Qom. President Obama’s revelation in 2009 of the until-then secret underground facility helped the U.S. make the case to the world community for intensified sanctions, leading to the recent international squeeze on Iran’s economy and energy sector.

The inspectors’ visit is the first since an IAEA report in November concluded that Iran was engaged in activities — particularly in the area of enhanced uranium enrichment capabilities — that could have no other discernible purpose but weaponization.

Iran continues to insist that its nuclear program has strictly civilian purposes. Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran’s foreign minister, was quoted by various media on Monday as saying that he was “optimistic” about the results of the inspectors’ three-day visit, and that it could be extended “if necessary.”

“One shouldn’t get too carried away, but I assume they have something to offer or they would not agree to schedule this visit,” said Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has written a book on U.S.-Iran relations titled “Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies.”

But Michael Adler, an Iran expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, noted that the Iranians resisted setting a formal agenda for the inspectors’ visit, which suggested a lack of seriousness by the Iranians.

“Iran has a history of offering to talk when it is under pressure, and then stalling so that the talks delay punitive measures against it,” Adler said.

Iran is also sending mixed messages to the United States in the region. In addition to its threat to shut the Strait of Hormuz in response to mounting sanctions, Iran’s army chief warned a U.S. aircraft carrier not to return to the Persian Gulf. But other Iranian officials later seemed to backtrack, calling the entry of another U.S. carrier into the gulf a routine event. Also this month, Iran test-fired cruise missiles that could be used against U.S. ships.

Israel’s plans, meanwhile, also have been the subject of speculation.

Bergman in his New York Times Magazine article concluded that an Israeli strike before year’s end was all but inevitable.

“I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012,” he wrote. “Perhaps in the small and ever-diminishing window that is left, the United States will choose to intervene after all, but here, from the Israeli perspective, there is not much hope for that.”

A number of Iran experts questioned his conclusions, noting that his article included a wealth of Israelis warning against such a strike — and even referred to Barak’s Jan. 18 statement that any decision to strike was “very far off.”

“It was a very odd article considering all the people he quoted who said that a strike was a bad idea,” Slavin said.

In part, Bergman argues, the feeling that Israel will need to strike Iran stems from what he suggests is Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s belief that the U.S. will not attack in its stead should Iran be on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.

U.S. officials, including Panetta, have tried in recent weeks to emphasize their commitment to stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In an interview broadcast Sunday, Panetta told the CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” that the United States would take “whatever steps are necessary” to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, calling it a “red line” for both Israelis and the United States.

Asked about the possibility of military action, Panetta responded that “there are no options that are off the table.”

Panetta also stressed the urgency of the situation, suggesting that Iran would be able to develop a nuclear weapon in approximately a year.

“The consensus is that if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon,” Panetta said.

In articulating the notion that Iran could be able to develop a nuclear weapon in fairly short order, Panetta seems to be on the same page as Israeli officials.

In a statement Monday after returning from the annual economic forum in Davos, Switzerland, Barak again sounded a note of concern.

“Over the course of the various meetings” with other leaders at the forum, Barak said, “we repeatedly emphasized our stance that we must urgently intensify and broaden the sanctions against Iran. The determination of world leaders is critical in order to prevent the Iranians from advancing their military nuclear program.

“We must not waste time on this matter; the Iranians continue to advance [toward nuclear weapons], identifying every crack and squeezing through. Time is urgently running out.”

“Three years ago this week, NCJW was there as President Obama signed into the law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which reversed a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that deprived Lilly Ledbetter of the right to sue her employer based on a flawed interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Ledbetter law marked an important step forward in the pursuit of equal pay for women. But women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. Clearly, Congress has not yet finished its job. Passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act to strengthen and update the 1963 Equal Pay Act is long overdue. The Paycheck Fairness Act, under consideration for decades, passed the House in 2009, only to be narrowly denied a cloture vote by a minority of senators in November of 2010.

“NCJW has long supported the Paycheck Fairness Act, and we join with those calling for its enactment, including Lilly Ledbetter herself. Now in a time of continuing economic stress, it is even more important for the well-being of American families that women receive equal pay for equal work. The fact that the reforms promised by the Paycheck Fairness Act are still languishing in Congress is a disgrace to our nation’s promise of equality.”

The National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) is a grassroots organization of volunteers and advocates who turn progressive ideals into action. Inspired by Jewish values, NCJW strives for social justice by improving the quality of life for women, children, and families and by safeguarding individual rights and freedoms.

]]> http://azjewishpost.com/2012/in-honor-of-ledbetter-anniversary-ncjw-calls-for-passage-of-paycheck-fairness-act/feed/ 0 http://azjewishpost.com/2012/controversy-grows-in-israel-over-extension-of-tal-law-granting-haredim-army-exemptions/ http://azjewishpost.com/2012/controversy-grows-in-israel-over-extension-of-tal-law-granting-haredim-army-exemptions/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:36:16 +0000 SHEILA WILENSKY - AJP Assistant Editor http://azjewishpost.com/?p=12529

Soldiers from the Israeli army's haredi Orthodox unit called the Netzah Yehuda Battalion praying. (Abir Sultan/Flash90/JTA)

JERUSALEM (JTA) — When Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, granted a few hundred haredi Orthodox Jews an exemption from army service, it’s likely he never dreamed that 63 years later, tens of thousands of haredi Israelis would claim the exemption — or that the issue would be among the most contentious in modern Israel.

Haredi army service took center stage again this week when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he would not seek a five-year extension of the Tal Law but would allow the Israeli Knesset to vote on the issue.

The law, named after retired Supreme Court justice Tzvi Tal and enacted in 2002 under then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak, allows full-time yeshiva students to delay their army service until age 23. At that time, students either can continue studying full time, do a shortened 16 months of army service (instead of three years) or a year of national service. Afterward, they may choose to join the workforce.

“The Tal Law has failed,” said Yehuda Ben Meir of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies. “It has not been able to wean the community off the idea of not serving and not working. There is now a third generation that believes this is the way they should live.”

Until the Tal Law, haredim were theoretically draftable unless they were full-time Torah students. Opposition to joining the army meant that tens of thousands of young men were staying full time in yeshiva just to avoid army service. Theoretically the men were subject to the draft if they left the yeshiva before age 40, but practically they could leave the yeshiva after turning 30.

The Tal Law was intended to get the students out of the yeshivas, into the army briefly and then into the workforce, solving a problematic cycle.

It hasn’t turned out as its proponents had hoped.

Only a small number of haredi Israelis have joined the army, though the numbers are increasing slightly. According to Israel Defense Forces figures, 1,282 haredi men enlisted in the army in 2011, up from 898 in 2010 and 729 in 2011. Most of them served in special male haredi units, where the kashrut standards are higher and there is no mixing with women.

But the vast majority of haredi men have stayed in the yeshiva, and their rabbis continue to discourage serving in the army. The opposition is largely ideological. Haredi leaders worry that the army will open up a path to lax Jewish observance. Some haredi sects are anti-Zionist, and those that support the state believe that Torah study is a legitimate alternative way of contributing to Israel’s security by sustaining the state spiritually.

“Jews are fighting this war on many fronts, and learning Torah is also fighting a war,” said Rabbi Shimon Hurwitz of the Aish Hatorah yeshiva. “A hundred years ago Teddy Roosevelt said, ‘To educate a person in his mind and not his morals is to educate a menace to society.’ Torah study teaches morality.”

Hurwitz said some staff and students at his yeshiva do serve in the army. His main objection to his students joining the army is the difficulty in maintaining strict levels of Jewish observance, he said.

“We tell the students that there’s a lot of peer pressure not to be religious and it’s very difficult to stand against that,” the rabbi said. “We don’t want them to lose something valuable in terms of their personal and spiritual growth.”

Resentment against haredi army exemptions from Israelis who do serve in the army — both secular and Modern Orthodox — is growing.

“Social justice begins with equally sharing the national burden and army service,” opposition leader Tzipi Livni told reporters this week. “This is a battle for everyone who believes in Zionism and who wants to live in this country.”

The Tal Law was passed initially for five years and extended in 2007. Now it’s up for another renewal, and many Israelis say the law has failed and should be canceled. The Israeli Cabinet was supposed to vote on the law this week, but Netanyahu said he will leave it for the Knesset to decide, insulating himself from expected haredi protests if the law is not extended.

The fight against extending the law is being spearheaded by the same group of Israelis who were behind last summer’s protests against the cost of living in Israel.

They are working middle-class Israelis who serve in the army and find it difficult to make ends meet. They believe they are shouldering an unfair amount of the national burden both in paying taxes and in army service. They say they feel like “friars,” or suckers, something to which Israelis have an inborn aversion.

This week, a group of these Israelis formed a “sucker’s encampment” to campaign against renewing the Tal Law.

“We want the government to legislate a law that requires mandatory service, army or civilian, from everyone — Jews, Arabs, religious and secular,” activist Boaz Nol told reporters.

The Tal Law seems likely to be extended for at least a year, although Barak, now defense minister, insists he will not back it for more than another year. At the same time, the haredi political parties have enormous power in the current coalition. The Sephardic Orthodox Shas Party has threatened to pull out of the government if the law is not extended.

It seems unlikely that the haredi community will join the army in large numbers anytime soon.

“The government didn’t correctly estimate the cultural gap between the haredim and the mere idea of military service,” said Zeev Lerer, a professor on gender and organization at Tel Aviv University. “The Tal Law failed and it will continue to fail. It will take a long and deep revolution to incorporate the idea of military service.”

Even if haredim did decide to join the army en masse, it’s not clear that the army is prepared to utilize them. On one hand, there is a growing manpower shortage. At the same time, the army has to make special accommodations for them, such as organizing all-male units and providing glatt kosher food.

“It really is more of a symbolic issue,” Lerer said. “As the army has become more dependent on women serving, often in more combat roles, I don’t see how they can absorb the haredim. It would mean a complete change in the identity of the army.”

Some analysts say that if the government decides that it is important enough for the state, haredim evenutally could be integrated into the army.

“You would have a tremendous social crisis, and many of the rabbis would tell their students to go to prison rather than serve in the army,” said Ben Meir. “But they don’t really want to go to prison.

“It can be done, perhaps. But not with this government and this coalition.”

Activists connected to Jews Against Hydrofracking demonstrating in New Jersey on Nov. 21. (Jews Against Hydrofracking)

NEW YORK (JTA) – To frack or not to frack?

As concerns mount over the environmental and public health consequences of hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, Jewish groups are coalescing around a strategy that supports efforts to extract natural gas from shale rock while seeking to mitigate its worst effects.

In May, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the community’s main public policy umbrella group, will consider a draft resolution on fracking that in its current form acknowledges the potential benefits of a major new source of natural gas while urging greater oversight and government regulation of the practice.

“Our goal is to see energy independence that protects the environment,” said Sybil Sanchez, executive director of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, or COEJL, an initiative of the JCPA that promotes environmental stewardship.

Fracking refers to the process of pumping water, sand and chemicals into rock deep below the surface of the earth in an effort to release trapped deposits of natural gas. The controversial technique, which critics allege poisons groundwater and creates significant public health problems near drilling sites, has grown into a major policy debate.

In Pennsylvania, thousands of wells already have been dug to tap gas from the Marcellus Shale Deposit, a vast subterranean rock formation that is believed to hold enough natural gas to supply American demand for decades. New York, which also sits atop the Marcellus, has a moratorium in place on fracking, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo is considering lifting the ban.

At least four Jewish summer camps in northern Pennsylvania have signed leases to permit fracking on their land, the Forward reported last summer.

In the Jewish community, the fracking debate pits two established communal policy objectives against one another: protection of the environment vs. the desire to achieve independence from foreign energy sources, particularly from the Arab Middle East.

Energy independence is among the major policy objectives of the American Jewish Committee, whose New York chapter will host a panel discussion on Feb. 6 with three speakers who either endorse fracking or accept its inevitability.

Richard Foltin, AJC’s director of national and legislative affairs, told JTA that his organization believes that natural gas can be safely extracted from shale.

“We see this as a crucial part of a larger, multifaceted approach to promote reduced energy dependence that also includes enhanced efficiency and movement toward alternative fuels and alternative technologies,” Foltin said. “We want to see development of these domestic resources go forward — as safely as possible, but with an emphasis on allowing it to be done.”

Some environmental activists are deeply skeptical of both those claims.

The environmental safety of fracking has yet to be conclusively demonstrated, they say, and the industry has a poor track record. Moreover, even if the environmental concerns were addressed, the effects on foreign oil imports are likely to be negligible in the short term.

“The impact that increased natural gas production has on our consumption of foreign oil has more to do with whether or not natural gas becomes a viable vehicle fuel,” said Mark Brownstein, an attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund and a panelist at the AJC event. “The vast majority of oil is for transportation.”

Even so, fracking is virtually certain not just to continue but to expand. Thousands of wells already have been drilled, vast economic interests incentives are at play and the natural gas would be a cleaner-burning replacement for coal, the main U.S. source of energy.

Consequently, some in the environmental world have adopted a harm-minimization strategy rather than pushing for an outright ban.

The JCPA resolution, which was proposed by the Jewish Labor Committee, the Jewish Reconstructionist Federation and the community relations councils of Pittsburgh and Silicon Valley in California, urges legislation that eliminates the gas industry’s exemption from the Safe Drinking Water Act and requires full disclosure of the chemicals used in fracking.

“In an ideal world, it would not be happening at all,” said Deborah Goldberg, an attorney at Earthjustice and another AJC panelist. “We’re realists. We know this is going forward in many parts of the country and that it will go forward whether we like it or not. So in those areas we are working to get the best possible protections in place that we can.”

For some, though, no regulatory regime will ever be sufficient.

“We should not be expanding it,” said Mirele Goldsmith, an organizer with Jews Against Hydrofracking who would like to see New York ban the practice permanently. “We should instead be looking at renewable sources of energy that don’t have the risks that hydrofracking has.”

Peter Keeda, an Australian retiree, stumbled upon the story of a group of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe who were sent by the British from Cyprus to Palestine and later to East Africa. (Courtesy Peter Keeda)

The “Seeking Kin” column aims to help reunite long-lost friends and relatives.

BALTIMORE (JTA) — A virtually unknown episode in prestate Israel grabbed Peter Keeda last year and won’t let go: the British government’s June 1941 shipment of 384 European Jews from Cyprus to Palestine. They and 39 others were transported six months later to what are now Malawi and Tanzania in East Africa.

The travelers were refugees who had fled the Nazis for Cyprus, which like their next two stops were ruled by the British. The transfers occurred two years after London issued its notorious MacDonald White Paper, an edict severely restricting Jewish immigration to Palestine and dooming incalculable numbers of people to death in the Holocaust. The 1941 episode drips with irony because during and after World War II, the British captured Jewish refugees aboard ships attempting to reach Palestine and often dispatched them to internment camps in Cyprus.

Keeda — a 68-year-old retiree in Sydney, Australia, who is researching the period for a master’s dissertation — thinks that the 1941 refugees were evacuated from Cyprus for their own protection, with nearby Crete having just fallen to the Germans. The naval odyssey fascinates him politically because it relates to Britain’s colonial policy and to its concern over “enemy aliens,” since most of the Jewish passengers came from Germany and Austria. Keeda has traveled to London to research the matter in state archives, and has located documents online in governmental and Jewish archives around the world.

But he dearly wants to find passengers and hear their personal stories. Keeda hopes that the passengers or their descendants have retained diaries, journals and letters that illuminate the period. He has tracked down an Australian and a New Yorker who were among the travelers, and the children of two others, but their information provided little help.

Keeda’s appeal recently was broadcast on the Israeli radio program “Hamador L’Chipus Krovim” (Searching for Relatives Bureau). He agreed to an interview with “Seeking Kin” despite concerns that other researchers could preempt his work before its publication in late 2012.

Keeda stumbled across the episode when an old friend in his breakfast club mentioned being born to Austrian refugees in the city of Zomba in Nyasaland (Malawi’s name under British rule). She displayed her parents’ photographs of the Jewish encampment there, and Keeda was hooked.

“Outgoing letters from people — that would be a gold mine,” he explained of his search. Valuable correspondence would relate to such questions as “How did they make a living? How did they deal with the weather? This is subtropical Africa, and they came from Europe,” he continued. “Physicians were dumped in the middle of Africa — what did they do? How did they survive?”

Passengers included merchants, physicians, engineers, hoteliers, farmers, musicians and artists. Once in Palestine, the people were not confined; they stayed in hostels and with friends and relatives. In Jerusalem, Keeda found two Jewish Agency documents relating to the refugees’ arrival and care. He’d love to get his hands on the ship manifests, but appeals to Britain’s Maritime Museum in Southampton have been unsuccessful.

Keeda’s research includes fascinating nuggets and detours. Non-Jewish Poles in the group assembled a choir and performed religious music in Israel. In Africa, some of the Hungarian Jewish musicians ran a brothel. Other Jews ended up in nearby Mozambique and became involved in an international spy ring that for Keeda conjures up the film “Casablanca.”

Suzanne Rutland, a University of Sydney professor and Keeda’s dissertation co-adviser, said that his research contributes to scholarship on British colonial policy and on the Holocaust. The group’s removal from Palestine in December 1941 and relocation to Africa “really shows how concerned [the British] were with keeping the Arabs on their side,” Rutland said, emphasizing that she was offering only conjecture.

“The episode obviously [also] has to fit into the broader context of the Shoah. There are lots of stories we don’t know,” she said. “There’s so much we need to learn and understand.”

Please send a message to seekingkin@jta.org if you know people involved in this 1941 episode or if you would like our help in searching for long-lost friends or family. Include the principal facts in a brief e-mail (up to one paragraph) and your contact information.

Tucsonan Josh Landau, left in second row, with teammates at the opening ceremony of the Pan American Maccabi Games in Brazil.

“We were staying in a really nice four-star hotel and you look out our window and across the street is this slum. It was really an awakening experience,” says Landau, who was a member of the U.S. Men’s Open Soccer Team.

While the poorer neighborhoods might have presented a good opportunity for volunteer activities, Landau explains that unlike the JCC Maccabi Games for teens, which always feature a “Day of Caring and Sharing,” the Pan Am games are much more competitive and there was no social action program.

Now a sophomore at the University of San Diego, where he plays soccer and is studying finance and accounting, Landau had played on the Tucson JCC team in 2008.

Nevertheless, participating in the Pan Am games was still an extraordinary experience, says Landau. “We had a lot of really good players, a mix of college players and a couple of professional players,” he says, explaining that the pros were second-tier players who may not be household names but have played against the likes of David Beckham. The U.S. team took the silver medal, losing in the final round to Brazil.

“It was a good bonding experience to get to play with a bunch of new guys who share the same religion, and in a foreign place. It’s not something you get to do often,” says Landau.

Landau was also excited that the U.S. team played in honor of Ethan Zohn, a Maccabi USA alumnus who was the winner of TV’s “Survivor: Africa.” Zohn used his Survivor prize money to co-found Grassroots Soccer, a nonprofit organization that uses the sport to educate African youth about HIV and AIDs. Landau has contributed to Grassroots Soccer through his B’nai Tzedek teen philanthropy fund (B’nai Tzedek is administered by the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona in partnership with the Jewish Community Foundation). Zohn, who has Hodgkins lymphoma and recently suffered a relapse, was the honorary coach for the U.S. Men’s Open Soccer Team, whose members wore warm-up T-shirts honoring him, adds Landau.

Tucson teens Shawn Spitzer and Dakota Kordsiemon, who participated in the JCC Maccabi Games in Israel this summer, also were part of the Maccabi USA team in Brazil. Spitzer played on the junior boys’ soccer team, which won a silver medal, and Kordsiemon played on the junior boys’ basketball team, which took bronze.

A marker at the edge of Tombstone’s famous Boot Hill cemetery points the way to a ‘Jewish Cemetery and Memorial,” but most tourists don’t know that no one is actually buried there. It was dedicated in the late 19th century, but “we have no record” of any Jewish citizens buried there, says Eileen Warshaw of the Jewish History Museum. The memorial there now was dedicated in 1984 as a symbol of friendship between Jewish and Native American communities. (Jennifer Goldberg/Jewish News of Greater Phoenix)

Evergreen Cemetery in Tucson contains the grave sites of the men and women that figure prominently in the city’s early Jewish history, including the grave of Harry Arizona Drachman (1867-1951), first Caucasian male born in the Arizona Territory.

“He was honored so much by that fact, he changed his middle name to Arizona,” says Barry Friedman, board president of the Jewish History Museum.

Along the border, the land for the Nogales city cemetery was donated in the 1890s by a Jewish immigrant, Leopold Ephraim. Paul Bracker, a member of Nogales’ Jewish community whose family has lived in the border town since the 1920s, says his late father, Charles, was the one to suggest a Jewish cemetery there. “That was one of my father’s things: You have to give back to your community,” he says.

Buildings rise and fall, but Arizona’s Jewish cemeteries help keep alive the memory of those who have gone before us.

“It’s amazing how many people are there that you can find,” says Eileen Warshaw, executive director of the Jewish History Museum.

Reprinted with permission of Jewish News of Greater Phoenix.