(L-R) Mayor Jonathan Rothschild, Solar Celebration Co-Chair Scott Arden, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon, Temple Emanu-El President John Judin and Solar Project Coordinator Steve Tofel at Temple Emanu-El’s Earth Day Solar Celebration April 22.

When Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon and Tucson Mayor Jonathan Rothschild flipped the switch on Temple Emanu-El’s solar energy array during its Earth Day celebration on April 22, it was the culmination of a long process. “It started last summer,” said Cohon, spurred by “a lot more incentives from the government and the power company to go green.”

“Our congregants were very enthusiastic about doing this because of the moral and Jewish implications,” he said, citing the Jewish value of bal tashchit (do not destroy). “It’s our responsibility as stewards of the Earth.”

There have been a few other solar energy pilot projects at Reform synagogues across the country that didn’t work out, said Cohon. He was primed to take the plunge, having had personal experience with his own home, which he converted to solar power in September 2011. “My parents solar heated their pool in the 1980s,” said Cohon. But it wasn’t yet “the right time for Temple.”

Until recently there weren’t enough incentives for nonprofits to go green. “Cost effectiveness hasn’t been as effective as you would think,” said Cohon. “It’s a little hard to understand how this could work for a building constructed in 1948,” yet it does.

Temple Emanu-El will not be a totally green structure, he said, “but we’re lowering our carbon footprint, creating a source for renewable energy that doesn’t damage the environment, the ozone layer or contribute to global warming.”

“Basically, you go to a solar contractor and pay the same amount for electricity” as you would to the electric company for air conditioning, lighting and other electricity needs, explained Cohon. The solar company installed the photovoltaic panels in the parking lot, which convert light into electricity at the atomic level. An added benefit is that they provide covered parking spaces.

The solar array is “an investment in the future. The panels will last around 40 years,” said Cohon. “It will take around 13 years to pay them off, with no electric bill.” Plus, the cost is locked in, negating a possible rise in the cost of electricity if Temple hadn’t switched to solar.

Is it a coincidence that it takes 13 years to amortize Temple Emanu-El’s new solar project? “By the time the kids I’m naming today become Bar or Bat Mitzvahs,” noted the rabbi, “we’ll be looking at a future with a significantly improved financial situation.”

“You can’t really do any better than this,” said Cohon.

Members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework presented Barbara Esmond with this quilt in honor of her term as president of the chapter. The gift was a surprise, as Esmond never completed her term because she went to Israel for a two-month visit and ended up staying 16 years. “That’s a story for another time,” she says. (Phyllis Braun)

The group is named for the fruit that is one of the “seven species” in the Bible. The pomegranate, said to have 613 seeds symbolic of the 613 mitzvot, provides a colorful theme for many of the guild’s designs.

A long-time member of a chapter in Los Angeles, Esmond moved to Tucson almost four years ago to be near her daughter, April Bauer, who has also been a guild member. Although Esmond still attends some guild meetings in L.A. when she visits her sons and their families, she has decided to start a chapter here. She promises that anyone can produce beautiful pieces like hers, even if they’ve never done so much as sew on a button — as was the case with at least one member of the L.A. group.

Esmond had started doing needlepoint before she joined the guild in 1981, but a canvas she bought at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, which didn’t have a pre-printed pattern to follow, had her stumped. She sought the guild’s advice after seeing a mention of their meetings in a synagogue newsletter.

At her first meeting, she heard unfamiliar terms such as “blackwork,” “hardanger,” “huck” and “Brazilian.”

“It really intrigued me, so I stayed,” says Esmond.

At her second meeting, a member showed examples of Brazilian, a form of three-dimensional embroidery. “I decided I wanted to make a chuppah out of Brazilian embroidery when one of my children got married,” says Esmond, which she did. Three of her four children and a niece have used the chuppah so far.

Barbara Esmond models an apron depicting symbols of the Jewish holidays.

Afikomen bag

As for those other mysterious terms, blackwork traditionally uses black silk, although red, aka scarletwork, is also popular – and perfect for pomegranates. Hardanger uses white thread on a white fabric background, with cutwork, reminiscent of papercuts or lace, while huck is a woven embroidery technique.

In addition to embroidery, guild members may also choose appliqué, quilting and needlepoint projects; pretty much anything that can be done with a needle and thread, says Esmond.

Alef Bet sampler with designs based on ancient needlework. The pattern was created for the Los Angeles chapter of the Pomegranate Guild of Judaic Needlework.

Prior to her first Pomegranate Guild meeting, Esmond imagined members working on pictures of rabbis at the Western Wall, which wasn’t the case at all. “I went and saw they were doing all this wonderful stuff,” she says.

But Esmond got more out of the meetings than just beautiful needlework. She also met wonderful people. “When I moved to L.A.in 1978 I was very lonely. I started a business and I didn’t really have friends, I didn’t know people,” she says. “Pomegranate opened up the world to me.”

Many of the group’s projects, such as challah covers and afikomen bags, fulfill the commandment of hiddur mitzvah, enhancement or beautification of a mitzvah. The pomegranateguild.org website notes that when members sit down to stitch, “They are reviving Jewish traditions … Some create their works as heirlooms for their children; others stitch to recreate memories of ceremonial objects or perhaps of family members lost in the Holocaust.”

Matzah cover

But you don’t have to be Jewish to join, says Esmond — the L.A. group had Christian and Muslim members. You also don’t have to be a woman, she adds.

Esmond has a list of 10 or 11 prospective new members in Tucson, and plans to hold the chapter’s first meeting either in early June or in the fall. Dues are $36 per year and include a subscription to the quarterly national newsletter, The Paper Pomegranate. For more information, contact her at 204-3364 or brealjs@yahoo. com.

Rabbi Ephraim Zimmerman with his wife, Mushkie, and daughters Devora (right) and Chana

Chabad of Tucson has appointed Rabbi Ephraim Zimmerman to be the first full-time rabbi serving the spiritual, religious and educational needs of Oro Valley Jews.

“This is a response to the growing Jewish population in the Northwest,” says Rabbi Yossie Shemtov, regional director of Chabad of Tucson.

Zimmerman and his wife, Mushkie, will establish and run Chabad of Oro Valley as a team, an approach often practiced in the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, considered the largest Jewish outreach and education network in the world. The center will be

financially independent.

Regular Shabbat services and meals will be offered, along with adult education classes, holiday and youth programs and visitation to the ill and elderly, says Zimmerman, who was ordained by Chabad in Atlanta in 2008.

This won’t be Zimmerman’s first foray as a Tucson educator. In 2007, the Chicago native spent a year teaching Judaic studies at the Yeshiva High School of Tucson and heading its extracurricular activities.

“I immediately fell in love with this gorgeous city,” says the father of two. “And when the opportunity was presented to return here, I was very happy to accept it, fulfilling a lifelong dream of helping others explore and experience our heritage.”

Oro Valley residents, says Shemtov, “have been calling on Chabad to establish a permanent presence and we couldn’t have chosen more suitable people than the Zimmermans.”

Zimmerman studied in yeshivas in France, New Jersey and New York and has done community outreach work in Montana, Lithuania and Safed, Israel. Mushkie grew up in Jacksonville, Fla., studied in New York and Australia, taught in California and France and was twice a head counselor of Chabad’s overnight Camp Emuna for girls in New York’s Catskills.

“We both knew as soon as we were married that this is what we wanted to do,” says Mushkie, who grew up helping her parents run Chabad Lubavitch of Northeast Florida.

Chabad has 22 permanent rabbi-rebbetzin couples around the Grand Canyon State. In Southern Arizona, in addition to Rabbi Yossie and Chanie Shemtov and Rabbi Yehuda and Feigie Ceitlin of Chabad of Tucson, there are Rabbi Yossi and Naomi Winner at Chabad at the University of Arizona and Rabbi Rami and Chani Bigelman of Chabad on River Road.

The Zimmermans will arrive in Oro Valley in June, in time to prepare for the 5773 High Holidays. They can be reached at 477-8672 or online at JewishOroValley.com.

Edna Feldman San Miguel

Edna Feldman San Miguel is a sixth generation Tucsonan who has spent more than two decades discovering her Jewish ancestry. In February, the artist and illustrator led a tour for visiting Israeli artists of the San Xavier Mission, where she’d worked as a conservationist, which was followed later that day by a Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona Lion of Judah Chai Tea at the Tucson Jewish Community Center. San Miguel was sitting next to Wendy Feldman, a part-time Tucson resident from New York. When someone, seeing a resemblance, asked if they were related, San Miguel — who recently added Feldman to her name to honor her great-grandmother — wasn’t at all surprised.

Juanita Feldman Chavez Arvizu was her great-grandmother on her father’s side. San Miguel’s great-great-grandfather, Robert Feldman, came to Tucson as a blacksmith with the military at Fort Grant in the early 1860s. He married Estafana Chavez and they had three daughters. “Their middle daughter, Juanita Feldman, was my great-grandmother,” says San Miguel. “One day Feldman left camp and never returned. I don’t know what happened to him, but I’m still trying to find out.”

Estafana, as a single mother, was living at Fort Bliss in El Paso with her three daughters. When Juanita was eight years old, Tucson’s Mayor Esteban Ochoa was there on business. “My great-great grandmother handed over Juanita and said, ‘please take care of her,’” says San Miguel. He did, she says, and “Juanita was raised in Tucson where she received the best education. She learned to read and write. That was unusual at the time.

“My mother’s last name was San Miguel. Her relatives were Jewish, too,” says San Miguel. “They were persecuted in the Spanish Inquisition.” Although San Miguel was raised Catholic, “in my heart,” she says, the message was “you are Jewish. Go.” Now 54, she started to explore her Jewish ancestry in the late 1980s. “Members of my family have European features,” San Miguel told the AJP. In 1990 she asked her father, Al Aquilar, if they were Jewish, and he said, “‘Yes, we are.’”

“I left the Catholic Church,” says San Miguel, who has raised her two teenage sons with Jewish traditions. “I’m still exploring. My artwork is very Judaic. It comes from my soul.”

She’s taught art at Tucson High Magnet School and in local middle schools, “throw-away kids who were high on drugs, involved in drive-bys, or had just had abortions,” says San Miguel. “I worked with them painting murals. I really wanted to affect their lives.

“I want to go to Israel and paint beautiful murals, inside and outside of the bomb shelters” for children there to see beauty, she says.

San Miguel’s newest book, “Mission San Xavier” (Arizona-Sonora Museum Press, 2011), recently won first place in the history/nonfiction division and second place in the fine art division in the Royal Dragonfly Book Contest. She illustrated “My Nana’s Remedies/Los remedios de mi nana,” a children’s book by local author Roni Capin Rivera-Ashford. San Miguel received a bachelor of fine arts degree from the University of Arizona.

She recently participated on a Handmaker Services for the Aging Celebration of Lifelong Learning Series panel, “Between the Lines: A Conversation with Local Authors,” along with Edie Jarolim and Bill Broyles. Two of her paintings, “Honor Thy Father and Mother” and “Noah’s Ark,” hang at Handmaker.

In July, San Miguel will discuss Judaic artistic influences on the Mission San Xavier at the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies 22nd annual conference in Albuquerque, N.M.

She recently was interviewed for a documentary on the mission, which will be submitted to the Sundance Film Festival. San Miguel is currently working on illustrations for several children’s books, including a Chanukah story. And she’s considering future Judaic art projects.

“Walking into a temple and feeling at home,” she says, “is not as easy as I thought. I’m really part of two cultures. I’m trying to sort it all out.”

Among the artifacts are over 40,000 paper items, including articles, photographs, documents and scrapbooks, which will be sorted, scanned, photographed and, in some cases, researched prior to being placed in archival storage boxes for preservation. Interns from the University of Arizona History Department, as well as volunteer archivists from the Tucson community, will be working with museum professionals over the next year to complete the work.

One of the first items to be archived is a delicate fragment of paper with a typed list of the Theresienstadt Cremation Log dated May 22, 1944. The list contains the names of 18 individuals who were murdered at the concentration camp, their year of birth, age and the time of day that they were sent to the crematorium. Two of the 18 names appear to be Roman Catholics, says Eileen Warshaw, executive director of the museum; the remaining names are believed to be Jewish. The fragment was presented to the museum by the late Gerd Strauss, a Holocaust survivor. The Strauss family donated a large collection of papers to the museum.

Additional volunteers and funding are being sought. For more information call 670-9073. Donations may be mailed to JHM Archives, P.O. Box 889, Tucson, 85702.

Daniel Saban, 21, completed his military service with the Israeli Air Force. He is fluent in English and Spanish, enjoys horseback riding, jazz dance and travel, and has served as a kibbutz summer camp counselor.

Ravit Rokach, 20, finished her military service with the rank of sergeant. Fluent in English, she has served as a youth movement and summer camp counselor and worked in an afternoon child care facility.

Host families are also needed for one night for 10 Israel Scouts, who will perform at the JCC on Thursday, June 21 at 6:30 p.m. as part of their Friendship Caravan tour.

For more information, contact the Weintraub Israel Center at 577-9393 or IsraelCenter@jfsa.org. The Israel Center is a joint project of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona and the JCC, in partnership with the Jewish Agency for Israel.

Tucsonan Bill Kugelman and teens from the Western region of the United States lead the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau in Poland on April 19. (Courtesy CJE)

Holocaust survivor Bill Kugelman has been to Birkenau before, once on a previous March of the Living trip in 2006, and as a prisoner of the Nazis. From 1939 to 1945, Kugelman, 88, spent three and a half years in concentration camps, including Birkenau, and two and a half years in the Jewish ghettos of Poland.

The long-time Tucson resident embarked on this year’s journey “to raise curiosity, so Jewish parents will send their kids on the March of the Living,” he told the AJP. “If they want their kids to remain Jewish, to have a spark of Jewishness, they need to know the price of Jewishness.”

Physically, the trip was difficult for Kugelman. “Emotionally, I’m strong enough. I know how to shake off my feelings,” he says. “Basically, I’m there for the kids, to show them what happened.”

Kugelman took part in the MOL with two Tucson teens and 36 others from the Western region of the United States, along with six staff members, including Rabbi Steph­anie Aaron of Tucson’s Congregation Chaverim and Rabbi Daniel Pressman from Silicon Valley, Calif. Their participation on the trip to Poland and Israel, which took place from April 15 to 29, was administered by the Jewish Coalition for Jewish Education of the Jewish Federation of Southern Arizona.

In Poland, the group visited Kugelman’s hometown, Sosnowiec, the first time he’s returned since being abducted by the Nazis. Thirty thousand of the 150,000 people who lived in Sosnowiec in 1939 were Jews. Today there are around 225,000 residents, says Kugelman. “Zero Jews,” he adds.

“I showed the kids the Jewish streets where all the Jewish stores were. My parents were in the shoe business; so were my grandparents. I was in the shoe business in Tucson,” he says, noting that his son now owns the business, Alan’s Shoe House.

Kugelman, who has lived in Tucson for 47 years, participated in this year’s MOL at the request of CJE Director Sharon Glassberg. “Every trip is a little different,” says Kugelman. “In 2006, we saw the demolished crematoria. Our guide asked me if we knew what we were stepping on,” which turned out to be pieces of bones.

This year, “the kids saw other things that were just as traumatic for them, piles of hair and babies’ shoes,” he says, adding that he was too busy explaining everything to the teens “to let my feelings get to me.”

At the end of World War II, says Kugelman, “when I came out of the camps I wondered, why did I have to pay that price to be a Jew?” He’s thought about this a lot since, noting that “a lot of New Yorkers try to wash their Jewishness off themselves to fit in. I like to fit in myself. I don’t want to be an oddball, but I wouldn’t submerge my persona. Be careful. Don’t sell out! If you’re a Jew stay a Jew.”

Benjamin Bressler, one of the Tucson teens who went on the trip, delivered a speech, “Not Changed But Enlightened,” at the Hebrew High graduation on May 8. “From what I learned in Poland and understood in Israel, I can proudly say that I have a heightened appreciation of life,” said Bressler, “because I saw the dark depths of humanity, while later seeing a reason to celebrate.”

Kugelman, who has been to Israel many times, volunteered in the Israeli Army twice, once repacking pharmaceutical items and once building movable fortifications, “an invention that only a Yiddishe kup could do,” he says. On this trip, “Ben Ye­huda [Street] was packed with Jews. I said, ‘God bless you and multiply.’ It’s the joy of my life to see so many Jews in one place.”

The mood was different in Israel than in Poland, notes Kugelman. “The kids were jazzed up on the way there so they could let loose. In Poland it was a subdued, depressed situation. All you see is shadows of the past and the Jewish community who once lived there.”

But for teens who participated in the MOL, Kugelman’s efforts were not in vain. “I cannot stress enough how important this trip is,” said Bressler in his speech. “Not just because you are Jewish but because you are human … So if you’re not sure about going on this trip, listen to me, you have to go, in the end it’ll be the best experience of your life.”

Its national import notwithstanding, it’s also a race homey enough that two of its principals lapse after a few minutes into referring to each other by their first names.

“Adam and I are so different in how we should go about tackling challenges,” said Democrat Lois Frankel, referring to likely GOP nominee Adam Hasner.

“I have better solutions than Lois,” Hasner said in a separate interview.

Both have deep roots in local politics. Frankel is a former West Palm Beach mayor and before that served in the Florida House of Representatives, where she rose to the position of minority leader. Hasner’s own tenure in the State Legislature began as Frankel’s was ending, and he eventually rose to majority leader.

But there are reasons for their familiarity: Hasner’s mother, Judy, ran Frankel’s first campaign, for the State Legislature, back in 1986.

For their part, the candidates play down the fact that Frankel, 63, has known Hasner, 42, since he was a Republican teenager needling his Democratic mom over her politics.

“I would just say it’s a small world,” Frankel told The Palm Beach Post when it made the connection in February. “It’s not going to be personal.”

Judy Hasner has said she is backing her son in the race.

Neither, however, is yet their party’s nominees — both must win Aug. 14 primaries, although Hasner’s opponent, a local county commissioner, is not seen as a serious contender. Frankel also is favored to win, Democratic insiders say, although they say her opponent, Kristin Jacobs, a popular Broward County commissioner, could pull off the upset.

“There are 10 different levels of intrigue in this campaign,” said Robert Watson, a professor of American studies at Lynn University in Boca Raton, where the final presidential debate is set to take place in October. “It’s like a made-for-TV movie.”

Indeed, it has already been a dramatic race with a shifting cast of characters. The district is represented now by first-term Republican Rep. Allen West, a bomb-throwing Tea Party favorite and a top target of national Democrats. But decennial redistricting shifted the 22nd in a more Democratic direction, and West shook things up by opting to run instead in a more Republican-friendly district nearby.

A Democratic hopeful, Patrick Murphy, followed West to the new district, briefly leaving Frankel as the last high-profile Democrat standing before Jacobs jumped in. Hasner had been running for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate until a stronger contender entered the race and Hasner switched his efforts to trying to succeed the departing West.

Democrats see the district as one they must reclaim if they are to demonstrate that the Tea Party conservative insurgency is a spent force. Without making a formal endorsement in the primary, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has seemingly pinned its hopes on Frankel, naming her one of its “majority makers.”

“The party feels it’s a necessary race to win back the House,” said David Harris, the president of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Republicans view the district as a test of whether they can pitch another conservative — Hasner also has Tea Party ties — as palatable to independents and disgruntled Democrats.

“She’ll get hardcore Democratic supporters,” said Sid Dinerstein, chairman of the Palm Beach County Republican Party. “Adam will get the independents and the Republicans and the Democratic Jews who are no longer Obama supporters.”

Harris scoffed at that notion, saying that “Hasner is the best they can do, but the best they can do will lose.”

The stakes are high for Democrats.

West captured the seat from Democrat incumbent Ron Klein during the Republican surge of 2010, but Florida’s Republican-led Legislature redrew the 22nd to make it more Democratic — apparently in a bid to reinforce neighboring districts with likely Republican voters, Watson said. In 2008, Barack Obama won 52 percent of the old district’s vote; a national Democratic official says he would have received 57 percent in the reconfigured district based on how the precincts voted.

The new map also was seen in some quarters as a rebuke of West, who has made national headlines with often inflammatory statements. He called Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, “vile,” likened Democrats to Nazi propagandists and suggested that a quarter of the members of the Democratic congressional caucus are communists.

Hasner, by contrast, is the affable local boy made good, rising to state House majority leader in his 30s. The new 22nd encompasses 70 percent of his old State Legislature district.

Matthew Brooks, the executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, noted another plus for Hasner, who through the years has assiduously networked with the national party leadership through the RJC.

“It’s likely the Congress is going to stay Republican, and to have a Republican congressman there is going to have an impact” for the district, Brooks said. “He’s someone who can get things done, who has a relationship with the leadership.”

Hasner is not compromising on his commitment to conservative fiscal, security and social policies, but he is eager to portray himself as able to win crossover votes. In an interview he noted the endorsement of Clay Shaw, the GOP moderate who represented the district for years.

Hasner said he would stress fiscal policy in his campaigning, pointing out his embrace of the budget proposed by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Ill.), the chairman of the House budget committee, which includes privatizing parts of entitlement programs like Medicare, the government-run medical care program for seniors.

“This isn’t about ideology, this is about math,” Hasner said. “Doing nothing is the path to insolvency.”

Frankel also zeroes in on the Ryan budget.

“The big issue especially for this district is protection of Social Security and Medicare,” she said. “He endorses the Ryan budget, which attempts to voucherize Medicare.”

With an emphasis on the economy and entitlements in a disproportionately elderly district, it remains to be seen what role other issues will play in the race.

Both candidates have visited Israel multiple times and emphasize it as a top foreign policy issue.

Hasner suggested that Frankel’s association with Obama might harm her.

“I believe the foreign policy of the last three years has made America weaker and less respected,” Hasner said.

Frankel touted her endorsement by pro-choice groups such as Planned Parenthood. Hasner, by contrast, has said that he would have voted in Congress to defund Planned Parenthood, and he believes “life begins at conception” — language rarely used by Jewish candidates, although he says he would not oppose abortion in certain cases of rape and incest and to preserve the life of the mother.

Dinerstein suggested that Frankel’s personality could become an issue, saying she earned a reputation for name calling and confrontation when she was West Palm Beach mayor.

“Why do you think she’s facing a real primary challenge?” he said.

Her challenger, Jacobs, asked to distinguish herself from Frankel, said she would “bring a voice of unison” to Washington, pointing to her own work with Republicans and others in improving commuter choices in the district.

Frankel dismissed talk of personalities.

“I don’t think it’s going to be about personalities in terms of policies,” she said. “Adam Hasner is even more to the right than Allen West — people will be voting their pocketbook, their values.”

Watson said that Frankel had a reputation as being “tough, at times controversial,” but this also helped lend her credibility — she got things done. Her fundraising of $1.8 million is the best of any Democratic challenger in the country.

Jacobs, whose husband is Jewish, has raised $200,000 in the five weeks since she announced her candidacy.

Both Hasner and Frankel have courted fundraisers nationally and locally. Hasner said he had $700,000 in cash on hand.

Both parties have listed the district as among their 25 must-wins. The Hill, a newspaper tracking congressional races, calls it a “toss-up,” while The Rothenberg Political Report lists it as leaning Democratic.

Brooks said that Hasner was attracting support of Jewish donors not simply because a victory would help preserve the Republican majority, but also in the hopes of getting some Jewish company for Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the majority leader and the only Jewish Republican on Capitol Hill.

“We’re raising a lot of money for him in our PAC,” he said, referring to the RJC’s separate political action committee. “Leaders are opening their checkbooks for him.”

An Interpol European Regional Conference brought 110 senior law enforcement officers from 49 countries to Tel Aviv, while a homeland security conference drew 37 mayors from two dozen worldwide cities to sites throughout Israel last week.

“Israel has been forced to overcome difficult circumstances, including war and terror, in order to survive,” said Alfred Vanderpuije, mayor of the Ghana capital of Accra, following a visit to Elbit Systems, a defense electronics company based in Haifa. “And this has put the Israelis in a unique situation to develop security technologies.”

In the decade following the terror attacks of 9-11, Israeli security exports rose from about $2 billion a year to more than $7 billion, according to data supplied by SIBAT, Israel’s Defense Export and Defense Cooperation Agency. Part of the rise was attributed to the growing international demand for more effective homeland security systems.

At Elbit and other security firms such as Magal Security Systems and Elta Group, a subsidiary of Israel Aerospace Industries, Vanderpuije and the other mayors saw presentations on defense technologies.

Originally developed for the Israel Defense Forces to fight wars and terror, many of the systems are being modified for civilian use, such as securing large cities.

Called the “digital army project,” Elbit’s technology connects all military forces to a single communication network that enables the free transferral of audio and video information.

“From the individual soldier to entire divisions on the land, in the air and on the sea, all our forces are interconnected,” said Dalia Rosen, Elbit’s vice president of corporate communications.

“In the past few years we have begun adopting the tools we have developed and applied on the battlefield for use in a civilian context to create what we call ‘safe cities.’ ”

The basic tools that are used to fight terrorism can be used to fight crime and help officials react more efficiently to natural disasters, said Amnon Sofrim, who heads Elta’s homeland security projects.

“Instead of endless patrols, we can use strategically placed cameras or electronic devices connected to a situation room to detect the beginning of a robbery or a fire,” said Sofrim, former chief of the IDF’s intelligence corps. “And this allows us to use a limited amount of security forces or firefighters only where they are really needed.”

There were signs that the meetings between mayors and Israeli security experts might lead to business ties.

“I was very impressed with what I saw and am even thinking about bringing some of these ideas back to Ghana,” Vanderpuije said.

While private Israeli firms were showing the mayors homeland security technologies, a similar show-and-tell was taking place in Tel Aviv at Interpol’s 41st regional conference, the first time Israel has hosted such a conference since it joined the international police organization in October 1949.

Among the Israeli innovations on display were the “skunk,” a liquid with a putrid odor, and the “screamer,” a hand-held device the size of a bullhorn that emits a sound so loud that it can paralyze.

Israeli police developed both as non-lethal means of crowd control in the wake of the October 2000 riots that left 12 Arab Israelis dead.

The Or Commission, an Israeli panel of inquiry set up after the riots, criticized the police for being unprepared and possibly using excessive force to disperse the mobs.

“The skunk and the screamer are more ethical than your average police baton since they don’t cause long-term injuries,”  said Cmdr. Oded Shemla, who heads research and development for the police technology division. “They also happen to be more effective.”

An interactive simulator capable of constructing realistic scenarios, from soccer game riots and violent demonstrations to kidnappings and sniper attacks, also was on display.

“What is unique about our technology is that it is developed by policemen for policemen,” said Shemla, who previously was a police helicopter unit pilot.

Interpol officials were not authorized to comment on Israel’s innovations vis-a-vis other member countries.

Shemla said, however, that senior police officers from Europe were particularly impressed that the Israeli technologies presented at the conference already were in use and had proven to be effective in real-life situations.

“We were not showing them an abstract concept,” he said. “We were showing them things that actually work in the field.”

Jake Rosen, who chairs the American Council for World Jewry that organized and sponsored the international mayors’ conference, said there is room for more security export growth.

“One of the goals of this year’s conference is to break down prejudices [toward Israel] and overcome feelings of hesitation about doing business here,” Rosen said. “We have to be proactive in allowing access to Israeli know-how and in countering anti-Israel sentiment.”

Rosen said that political leaders such as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who has claimed that Israel plans to “terminate” the Palestinian people, are “obstacles to openness” when it comes to economic ties with Israel.

However, Rosen noted that Venezuela should be seen as monolithic. Antonio Ledezma, who beat a pro-Chavez candidate to become mayor of Caracas, attended the conference.

Otto Perez Leal, the mayor of Mixco, Guatemala, and son of Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, said his municipality already was implementing security cameras and other technologies developed in Israel.

“Our army and police use this equipment to integrate our forces and improve our ability to respond to natural disasters and other challenges,” Leal said.

“It’s not just about training people and it’s not just about technology. It’s about combining them both. And that is something that we are learning from you.”

Sen. Richard Lugar, right, accompanies actor George Clooney with Sen. John Kerry for Clooney's testimonial on Sudan issues, in Washington, D.C., March 14, 2012. Lugar's defeat in a primary election has pro-Israel activists worried about bipartisanship in Congress. (Medill DC via Creative Commons)

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Richard Lugar was never considered to be one of Israel’s leading advocates on Capitol Hill.

The veteran Republican senator from Indiana, who suffered a primary defeat last week after 35 years in office, is famously his own man.

Lugar, the top Republican on the Foreign Relations Committee, consistently backed defense assistance for Israel and in the 1980s championed freedom for Soviet Jews. But he was also known for pushing a more active U.S. approach to brokering Middle East peace than that favored by much of the pro-Israel lobby, and he preferred to move ahead cautiously on Iran sanctions.

Yet pro-Israel groups ponied up when Lugar came calling as it became clear that a Tea Party candidate was threatening to unseat him, lending logistical and financial support.

Israel advocates and GOP insiders explained that Lugar represented a breed of lawmaker who pro-Israel groups see as valuable to their cause and disappearing: One who reaches across the aisle.

“Lugar wasn’t actively pro-Israel, but he wasn’t anti either,” said Mike Kraft, a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the 1970s and 1980s who now is a consultant on counterterrorism and writes for a number of pro-Israel websites and think tanks. “But generally losing a good, balanced, thoughtful guy on foreign policy is a real tragedy. It weakens the American political system.”

Lugar received $20,000 from NORPAC, a leading pro-Israel political action committee based in New Jersey — the most of any candidate this cycle.

“We sent extra money to Lugar because he called and asked,” said Ben Chouake, NORPAC’s president.

Chouake acknowledged that Lugar, 80, was “never the most” pro-Israel member of Congress, “but sometimes you have to back someone because of who a person is.” He was referring to the Indianan’s 36-year career in the Senate and his reputation for getting Democrats and Republicans to work together.

A pro-Israel political giver told JTA that Lugar also raised money from supporters of Israel at events in Indiana and New York City.

Ultimately it was for naught: Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s state treasurer, easily defeated Lugar in the May 8 GOP primary by a margin of 61-39 percent. Mourdock now faces Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) in the general election.

Mourdock campaigned on a platform that opposed compromise.

“I have a mind-set that says bipartisanship ought to consist of Democrats coming to the Republican point of view,” he told the Fox News Channel.

Matthew Brooks, the Republican Jewish Coalition’s executive director, said that Lugar’s defeat had more to do with his particular vulnerabilities — he famously has not lived in his home state since the 1970s — than with any larger trend toward uncompromising partisanship in the party.

“No matter how long you’ve been in office, politics starts at home — and maybe it would be a good idea to have a home in the state,” Brooks said.

A pro-Israel donor said that his fellow givers were now focused on preserving the career of Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), who also is facing a Tea Party insurgent in next month’s primary.

While some Israel Republicans are rooting for the establishment GOP incumbents, it is not because their Tea Party opponents are hostile to Israel.

Indeed, the Tea Party wave of 2010 has turned out to be pronouncedly pro-Israel, with the exception of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who says he would end assistance to Israel as well as all foreign aid. Pro-Israel insiders single out Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), a Tea Partier who ousted Robert Bennett, as a star of that class. Mourdock himself backed Israel Bonds as Indiana treasurer and has initiated outreach to the pro-Israel community.

The problem, the insiders say, is not one of enthusiasm for Israel but in how members of the party’s right wing have proposed changing the mechanisms for allocating foreign aid.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee has always emphasized the importance of backing the entire foreign assistance package. The logic is multifold: Aid overall builds good will for the United States and its allies; the perception that aid to the developing world is inextricable from aid to Israel promotes good will for Israel in those countries; singling out Israel for assistance while neglecting other countries promotes unseemly stereotypes about Jewish influence; and cutting aid inevitably will likely lead to cuts in assistance for Israel, however much the current Congress supports the country.

“They want to cut everything but Israel, but in the end, if everything else is cut, assistance to Israel will have to be cut,” said the pro-Israel donor.

Marshall Breger, President Ronald Reagan’s liaison to the Jewish community, predicted that as Tea Party conservatives gain in strength, the pro-Israel community may have to work out a formula — first proposed in a 2010 interview with JTA by Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), now the majority leader — whereby Israel assistance is treated separately from foreign assistance.

“When the thinking is going to be, ‘do you want to make a special exception for Israel or do you want to drop foreign aid for Israel?’ AIPAC will likely say ‘special exception,’ ” said Breger, who is now a law professor at the Catholic University in Washington.

More intangibly — but equally as critical — is how polarization has corroded bipartisanship in Congress, said Jason Isaacson, the legislative director for the American Jewish Committee. Even with overwhelming support for Israel, the failure of the parties to forge compromises on foreign policy undercuts America’s international profile — and that’s not good for Israel, he said.

“Because of the commitment of a great many people over a long period of time, support for Israel is a deeply entrenched nonpartisan sentiment,” Isaacson said. “What I do see under stress is the ability of either Congress or the executive branch to work together to pursue a consensus foreign policy.”

A senior GOP congressional staffer who supported Lugar conceded that Mourdock, albeit within his limited public experience as a state treasurer, has been more unequivocal in his support for Israel than Lugar had been.

“The statements that Mourdock has made that are troubling are less on policy and more on bipartisanship and working across party lines,” said the staffer. “We haven’t demonized each other enough? That sort of ideology isn’t just a problem for centrists, it’s a problem for anybody who wants to get something done.”

Morris Amitay, a former AIPAC executive director who now heads Washington PAC, a pro-Israel political action committee, said the failure to compromise, which he blamed on both parties, was undermining the U.S. profile internationally.

“Sometimes I long for the days of the Cold War,” said Amitay, who first worked as a congressional staffer in 1969. “Now extremes at both ends have more influence than they should. We’ve got problems in Latin America, Africa, especially northern Africa, Russia won’t cooperate — and Congress can’t function.”